Bummer

Lori asked me how the office project was coming along. I am embarrassed to say you can look at the last post from 6 weeks ago and see -- I have not made much progress since then, I am afraid. Mostly because I don't know where to put all of Ben's stuff. It is a small room but he was a master at tucking things in there. I load up a box or two and there is just as much left as when I started. He doesn't have time to go through it all, and if I pack it up and send it to his house with him then Kelli has to deal with it. She is moving a bookshelf from the LR to the bedroom, so he will have a place to put his tractor books and magazines soon, then maybe I will get going again.

Mostly I have too many unfinished projects around here. I am getting the day to day stuff done (except vacuuming and cobwebs) but anything extra gets pushed to the next open day, which is quickly filled with other things that just come up. I will just keep trying to do a tiny bit here and there, and eventually we'll have it. Lou definitely needs a good place to put all his books and study stuff, though. Think I can train him to keep it in there instead of the 3 rooms it takes up now? Sort of like kids' toys -- they eventually work their way back out.

Harvest continues. Ben and Kit probably have 2 days of chopping left, and Lou spent some time in the combine getting some corn out of the field today. We have been out of corn for a month. bought some on the open market, pretty spendy, but since we are selling it to someone else, it is theirs to pay for eventually. After a government report about 10 days ago, the price of corn zoomed up again. With any luck we will get really good prices locked in for next years' corn too. We have hopes that the yields will be good -- the sunflowers did better than expected (pleasant surprise) and the corn looks pretty good standing in the field. We'll see if it gets done by Thanksgiving (always the goal). So far only one or two nights with freezing temps; supposed to be in the 40 degree range for the rest of the week overnight. Days have been pretty nice this week.

We spent 2 days in the Midwest earlier this month, to the Augsburg pastors preaching conference in Brookings, SD. Since that is the headquarters of the seminary Lou is taking classes from, we arranged to meet one of his professors for dinner one night (which happened to be their anniversary), and he sat in live for one other class session. Hard to take those trips smack in the middle of harvest season -- would be nice if we could add 2-3 days and do some visits with family while we are back there one of these times. Or every time... Next trip in early December, the CHS annual meeting in downtown Minneapolis (our annual December trip there). The travel schedule might explain why my projects at home have fallen by the wayside.

Terrorized by this thought, as pointed out by niece Lisa on Facebook the other day: Christmas is two months away. YIKES.