Happy Anniversary to us

I really must post today since it is our 42nd wedding anniversary.  For dinner we are having grilled brats, a salad and leftover corn.  Since my dear husband will be spending the evening working on something for work we will not be going out to any fancy place.  I certainly am not complaining; I am grateful that he has a job.  While he works on that, I will work on a project that need completing, namely the Christmas letter. I am planning to email it to everyone for whom I have an email address.  We will see what the response is to that.  But it will get to everyone faster and with less expense.  I know, I should be supporting our postal service!

The parties are happening

It seems that my life has centered around food for the last two weeks.  We had two dinner parties at our house, the first for 12 (Gerry's group at work) and the second for 16 (the motorcycle riding group that we have dinner with at a restaurant every Monday).  Gerry also rides with the guys and I have taken trips to New York City and Savannah with some of the women.  This year I hired a 16 year old neighbor to help me.  I kept my sanity thanks to her.  Of course I was so preoccupied that I forgot to take pictures.

The AAUW group had a pot luck and for a speaker a women who is an "expert" in storytelling.  She told stories of her life and culture and encouraged us to do the same, especially with our children and grandchildren. She said to do it even if they don't indicate interest.  It is important.  It doesn't matter if you don't have all the facts correct- it is your story.

One of the photography groups I attend had pizza and other goodies.  The speaker was Ian Adams.  Look at his work on his website:  http://ianadamsphotography.com/  I bought his book, A Photographer's Guide to Ohio.  That was a Christmas gift to myself.

Testing the smoke detectors

Last night when G was taking a nap I decided to light our wood stove in the basement.  First I placed paper, then small wood pieces, then larger.  It started burning fine but the smoke came out into the room instead of going up the chimney. I worked frantically for a couple minutes, but to no avail.  Soon there was smoke in the room, in the whole basement and going upstairs.  The smoke detectors were screeching and I was running upstairs shouting, "I need help". Gerry rushed down and kept adding paper to the fire to get the draft to go up the chimney instead of the room.  It took several minutes to get it reversed. Buy now our house was filled with smoke.  He did get it reversed (smoke going up the chimney instead of into the house) and we opened windows and aired out the house.  This morning I cannot smell any smoke, thankfully.

Then I asked my engineer/scientist husband what had happened.  Aside: this is always dangerous because a lengthy explanation and perhaps drawings will follow.  He said we had made our house too air tight.  There was no supply of air coming into the house to replace the air that was to go up the chimney and the heat was not intense enough to force it up. He is now thinking about a plan to put in an air vent of some kind that we can open when we burn the stove.  All I can say is  that I learned a lesson and am glad I did not do it when we had a house full of guests.  Of course if I had, that would have been a memorable night for them.