A Good Friday and End to the Week

Just as fast as our recent cold weather spell seemed to arrive, it's now gone and our temp today was up to 32°.  No noticeable melting occurred but the fact that rain and snow and ice were predicted (never materialized) kinda kept us on our toes.

It was very dark and gray all day.  At 3:45 p.m. it looked as if Mother Nature was setting daylight on the lowest dimmer switch.  Well, only one more day before we start gaining minutes (technically anyway) of daylight each day.  Makes one look forward to the usually lighter and brighter days we get in January.

I wrapped presents yesterday afternoon and placed them under our little tree.

This is the third year we've had our artificial Christmas tree (best decision I ever made) and I still keep thinking about adding water to the stand so it doesn't dry out.  (Some of us apparently are slower learners than others.)

My plan was to attack the pantry today, do some rearranging, wipe down the shelves and make note of anything we might be short of to make it through the remainder of the winter.  Didn't get to it.  I did manage to get the top of my desk cleared which feels really good.  Happily, I didn't find anything such as an overdue bill I had neglected to pay.

Early this morning, all the tins of the various Christmas cookies were brought out to the kitchen counter from the pantry, and I made up five plates to be given away as a holiday thank you or "just because."

Speaking of goodies of the unbaked kind, I'm a lover of pears and I've been eyeing them in our co-op for a while now but have hesitated buying any because we have plenty of our own apples in the root cellar which should be eaten as our fresh fruit.

However, a friend stopped by today to share with us (yippee!) part of a box of pears she had received as a Christmas gift.  They look like "real" pears, not hybridized for cosmetic purposes.  I can't wait to taste them.  On the last piece of property we owned in Illinois before moving up here, we had two old, old pear trees.  One bore luscious, juicy fruit we ate almost right off the tree and the other one produced a harder pear that turned out delicious when I canned them in a light syrup for a good, simple dessert.  Yep, I really like pears.

Enough jabbering on for this post.  Seems like it will be a good night to get all ready for bed and then spend some time on the couch knitting.  Of course, an open wood fire will add to the relaxing ambience.  Cozy, cozy, cozy.  A good Friday, a good end to the week.