Sunday, October 14, 2007

A great weekend!

My sister and her husband came to spend this past weekend with me. It's always fun to spend time with them, whether we are gadding about on the island or loafing in Moses Lake. This weekend they arrived midafternoon on Friday and left this morning after breakfast and we were going and coming pretty much non-stop all weekend.

Friday night I cooked supper; we had a small pork roast with steamed rainbow chard, delicata squash, and for dessert, brownies with chocolate ice cream on top. Yummo, as Rachael Ray would say. J. (sis) made a rhubarb pie which we proceeded to eat for a late snack and breakfast on Saturday and Sunday mornings. (What? it qualifies---at least two food groups, three if you count the cream we poured on top.)

Saturday we made do with pie because we wanted to go to the Cranberry Fest over at House of Prayer, where my friend Glen is the pastor. The guys were out washing windshields of Fest-goers when we arrived about 9:30 a.m., hungry for cranberries. The ladies of HOP sold us bags of fresh organic cranberries out of the HOP cranberry bog plus a cranberry upside down cake and slices of almond cream cake, cranberry cheesecake, and peach queen cake, plus cranberry cider.

From the Cranberry Fest, we moseyed on to a couple of garage sales where I picked up a good rug for the basement family room for $10 and, the biggest prize of all, a box full of silverplate large goblets, chalice-like cups, and small goblets, also for $10. They were quite tarnished, but a little silver polish revealed real beauty underneath. The chalice shaped cups I will use for gifts, perhaps as prizes in the upcoming chili cookoff this winter.

We had lunch up at Whidbey General and then I stayed on for NEKK (North End Koffee Klatch) while J & P went up to Oak Harbor to find some materials for a project. We had 8 people at NEKK, and the conversation was far-ranging and excellent. I even got an invitation to go horseback riding with one of the women! I haven't been riding for years and I snapped up the chance.

That evening, J & P & I went over to my favorite Mexican restaurant for supper, then came home and watched "Snow Cake" with Alan Rickman (yummo! also), which was a good movie and quite poignant.

They left this morning, I scurried around and got ready for the afternoon Solidarity Sunday church service, did some laundry, and at 3, went over to set up for the service. My friend A was the speaker and she was great. We had lots of visitors who were quite enthusiastic and promised to return.

After the service, we had a special congregational meeting to vote on accepting the funding from the UUA's "first home" Veatch Fund and got updated on the progress of the building: foundation is poured, trenching is done for the ground source heat pump, electricity will go in tomorrow. Upcoming is the sanding and varnishing of the overhead, indoor trusses which will be a focal point of the great room, which will serve as our sanctuary. We're planning on a lot of sweat equity, and the trusses will be our first project.

Note to Kim: we have been planning to make this building as green as possible, with the funds we have. We'll have a ground source heat pump, SIPs, Hardiplank siding, eventually some solar when the technology is quicker to pay for itself. All the features of the building have been selected with greenness in mind.

So it's been a good few days. Tomorrow I am attending an all day seminar with Brian Swimme at the Whidbey Institute, focusing on Hope. I'm looking forward to it!

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