Wow! It’s Saturday and I just woke up! The last thing I remember was eating Thanksgiving dinner last Thursday then sitting down on the couch for a nap afterward. I’m not sure if I even went to bed. I’ll have to wait until Diane gets up to find out.

Thanksgiving was wonderful. With the exception of Alan, Alicia, Arianna, Bob, Brian, Carol, Cheryl, Chris, Daniel, DanYell, Donna, Gene, Greg, Heather, Heather, Jack, Jay, Jeff, Jeffrey, Jerrie, Jim, Julia, Juliette, Kathie, Larry, Laura, Logan, Martin, Maryssa, Mike, Ray, Ruth, Sarah, Shene, Shirley, Steffani, Steven, Susan, Tianna, Tyler, Wynette, and Valerie, a large pat of the Cate clan, was at our house. I know … I missed a few, but remember, I’ve been unconscious for about 36 hours. I think. Two that I know I missed live in Arizona, they’re young, and I’ve never met them, so I have a reason.

Those who made it to dinner were  Bailee, Cedric, Daniel, Diane, Gilligan, Jean, Jeran, Jerrie, Jennifer, and Lydia. I know. It’s sad that those who attended only made it up to the “L’s”, but we all had a good time and there was plenty of food. Like normal. And, we were all able to sit at the same table. I heard that somewhere in Connecticut a crowd of 25 was expected. Nothing has been heard from that part of the world since the holiday. Perhaps they, too, are still sleeping.

 Back to reality …

Since Diane didn’t get up until 10am or so, I didn’t get any work done this morning. I would have, but we had a date at the Walters house to watch the Oregon vs. Oregon State civil war football game. The entire Walters household are dedicated Ducks fans, as are we most of the time. Today, however, to ensure I backed a winner, I dressed for the occasion,

Either way I was a winner. However, as Dan pointed out, either way I was also a loser. Not only is that just a mean thing to say, I thought it was inappropriate for a son-in-law to call his well respected father-in-law a loser. I didn’t pursue that for two reasons; I like Daniel, and he’s way bigger than me. Just a friendly pat on the back from Daniel can be fatal. Oh, there’s third reason, too … what he said was totally true. When dressing  I failed to consider both sides of that coin. Truly, my heart was with the Ducks who won handily.

After the game Diane took me home and forced me to change into some work clothes so I could see about fixing the leak around her Mom’s (Jean’s) chimney before it starts raining again. On the way to Mom’s house we stopped by ACE to get the supplies I thought I might need. I had to rush because the light was fading fast and I’m just not comfortable tramping around on anyone’s roof in the dark.

After a thourough inspection of the chimney flashing I discovered that much of it was loose allowing water to seep in and leak into the garage. This is kinda what I suspected and was prepared for it. That was unusual because generally I’m never prepared to fix anything until I see what I’m dealing with. Doing things this way allows me to make multiple trips to ACE Hardware in order to effect a solution. I don’t know what came over me that caused me to obtain a solution before I knew what the problem was. It was kind of mind boggling.

One of the reasons we went to Dan’s and Jen’s to watch the football game was because we have DirecTV service which doesn’t carry the Pac-12 Network. It’s the only provider that doesn’t. But, by not being able to watch it at home we were treated to a terrific afternoon. It was very relaxing for us both. But, because of DirecTV’s obstinance in making the Pac-12 Network available, I’m switching to Comcast. That means I will also switch our internet provider from CenturyLink back to Comcast. CenturyLink is cheap because it’s really, really slow. Diane isn’t pleased.

Speaking of Diane … her computer is currently going through it’s third malware scan because something(body) hacked her email and/or her computer. The first scan found 146 malicious items. The second found 40+. The third has only found 2 so far. But, the security software won’t run because something has apparently imbedded itself so deep into the system that online solutions suggest that we just reformat the hard drive and reinstall windows. If it comes to that, I’ll just get her another computer because this one is 5 years old and I’m surprised that it’s still working. Actually, that’s a terrible lie. It’s been working well for all these years but I have had to reset it to OOB condition. That means Out Of the Box, as in brand new. I hate to do that, however, because of all the security patches involved in getting it to where it is now. There’s hundreds of them. I don’t know if I have the energy. Perhaps I’ll just set up the laptop in front of her and see if she notices. It would be lots cheaper to do that. Yes, that’s what I’ll do. I’ll leave it to her to let you know how things go with that.

Now for some good news … Tom called this afternoon and we had a nice visit. He’s home, didn’t have hiccups any longer, and he’s getting around with just one cane. This is amazing and it makes Diane and I so happy. While discussing the blessing of being rid of the hiccups, he started hiccupping, again. I can only believe that I jinxed him by talking about it. Makes me feel real bad, but I gave him Diane’s hiccup solution which he said he’s going to try. She just eats a marshmellow. I hope it works, Tom.

While talking with Tom I discovered that he’s one of the five people that read this. I’m blessed.