Do-Nothing Day

It isn't quite accurate to say it was a "do nothing" day. We did go to the grocery store, and we bought the place out. There are no good shopping options without driving a significant distance from next week's destination in Death Valley, and so we needed to stock up to get us through the end of this week and next week. As it is, we'll probably make another short trip on our last day here in Pahrump. When we got home, we put the groceries away and then headed over to Carl's, Jr., to get hamburgers. I haven't had a fast food hamburger since last July, and I had a powerful need for one. Now, I think I have it out of my system. The rest of the day was spent just lazing around for the most part.

Before we left to get groceries, I stitched the day's inchy. This one was hard. I've had some success at my nemesis, the bullion stitch, but yesterday's gave me no end of grief. 

So there it is, for better or worse. I'm just thankful it's finished. Today's has been posted, and it'll be an easier one today.

We tried getting Smitty out for a walk yesterday. Mike harnessed him up and carried him outside, and then held him, turning in all directions so that Smitty could see there were no woofies and no strange Mans. (We dislike strange Mans as much as we dislike woofies.) Even with that precautionary look around, Smitty wasted no time hopping back up on the step and pawing at the door. Is that a look that says, "Puh-leeeeze let me in!" or what?

Okay, and I was in the middle of making some lemon pudding cakes. It took me two tries to get this right. They aren't difficult to make, but sometimes baking in a combination convection/microwave is tricky. The first two I made weren't baked long enough. There's a longer story associated with this, but I'll skip it for being too painful to tell. Instead, I'll just say I started over again and had better luck with my second try. When I took them out of their ramekins, they looked like this:

We had them for dessert last night along with some blueberries and a dollop of whipped cream, and they were yummy.

You can find the recipe for these right here. The recipe makes four, but I cut it in half and make just the two.

Mike has been itching to fly his drone, but it has been too windy the past couple of days. Finally, the wind died down yesterday afternoon, and he was able to get out for a little fly-around time. Our space backs onto the desert. As he zooms in closer to the park, you can see our rig, fifth from the right. (Be sure to count the smaller rig to the extreme right as you count over five.) There are two pools at this park, a restaurant, and a winery with associated vineyards. If you can't see the video, then click right here.

Okay, so now you've seen our little home away from home for the past two weeks. We're here until Monday when we'll move along about two hours west to Death Valley National Park.

Before I finish off today, I want to direct you to Darlene's post at her Creative Latitude blog. Darlene and I have communicated about the issue of "no-reply" blogging. *All* of you, no matter how long you've been using Google and Blogger have reverted to "no-reply" when you leave a comment on my blog, and (one assumes) anyone else's blog. For the most part, I've been able to accommodate your status and reply anyway by changing your email to the correct one. Most of you are already in my "address book," and so I know your emails by simply starting to type your name. Some of you are either new, or don't often leave comments. For you, I've been going to the comments page of my blog, and looking up your email by clicking on your profile. As you might guess, it takes a bit of effort to do that when there are multiple no-reply comments. 

So getting back to Darlene's post (link above), she's run an experiment with another blogger. You'll need to go to your settings, and first uncheck the appropriate box that shows your email. Save. Then recheck the box and save again. This will take care of the problem, and I encourage you to do it regardless of how long you've been blogging and/or using Google. I have no idea why this happened, but I'm guessing it has something to do with unintended consequences of changes to Google and/or Blogger. Please read Darlene's post and do what she says. It'll make all our lives easier.

Today I'll get busy sewing together the mini snowflake quilt. I don't know if I'll get the whole quilt top finished today, but I'm going to try.