Blanket Excuse

Once again, I offer my apologies for yet another unplanned hiatus from keeping up with the blog here at Casa IVG. Aside from a busy work schedule (what's new there?), late last week I succumbed yet again to one of the travelling bugs making their way through the area, and quite frankly, I'm fed up with spending about every other weekend sick with one thing or another! This one actually started hitting me on Thursday afternoon, you know, that odd feeling of 'I must be coming down with something' that vague and undefined sense that something is going awry somewhere in the body ... and by Friday morning it had hit me full force: slight fever, sneezing, coughing, chillls and aches. So I took a sick day from work and basically spent almost the entire day sleeping and feeling miserable in bed ... until I had to get up and move around a bit, in this case, downstairs to my comfy recliner, wrapped in my flannels, robe and plush fuzzy blanket. I watched a bit of TV before falling back to sleep for several hours, which is pretty much how I spent the entire weekend.

Finally Sunday night, I started to feel a bit better and actually had an appetite for more than juice and toast --well if you count grilled cheese sandwiches as real food-- and though I was a bit worn out today, whatever this latest thing was, it seems to have pretty much taken leave for this round, so I hope I'm back in the thick of things here at the blog again!

Things are gearing up quickly around here for the big Halloween festivities, and Fernymoss, bless his heart, worked like a demon yesterday putting up the first decorations outside in the garden, building the corn teepee and installing our seasonal friend the Punkin Dude out front with some of the pumpkins. Now that I'm feeling better, I'm going to have to get busy and pitch in on getting the rest together this week and next, when we'll be throwing our annual Halloween Monster Bash on the big night of the 31st.

Add to all that, we both have to find a time to take an hour or so out sometime this week to go vote (early voting has been underway here since late September) so we can spare ourselves the inevitable lines that will occur on November 4. Though voting at our precinct usually goes pretty quickly under normal circumstances, I somehow suspect that it will be crowded and busy this year and will soon overwhelm the tiny room used in the nearby Presbyterian Church just up the street. Besides, this year Iowa is making early voting so easy (not to mention giving everyone plenty of advance notice), that there's really no excuse for not doing one's civic duty....

Oh, and a quick update on that new version of The Nightmare Before Christmas I mentioned last week ... I had ordered it as a birthday gift for Fernymoss, and I did manage to rouse myself sufficiently to watch it Friday night, one small consolation to an otherwise miserable day. It is by far the most sparkling and colorful version I've ever seen of the film (short of the original theatrical release), and if the only one you have seen is the sad VHS version, you really should treat yourself to this remastered DVD. The sound (if you have a home theatre system) is crisp, clear and wonderful, and both of us were amazed at the level of detail the remastered images reveal ... we both swore that we saw things we'd never seen before in the VHS version. Besides, it's a perfect way to ring in the holiday season ... whichever one you prefer! And it will have you singing for days afterwards ... what more could you ask for this time of year?

Oh yeah, I took this photo as I worked one day last week, when Pepa made a mound of the blankets on the futon couch in my office (they were once nicely folded, but no more) and spend the afternoon snoozing away in her nest. Little did I know (at the time) that in a few short days I'd be wrapped up in my own cocoon sweating and chilling the bug away myself ... maybe she was foreshadowing where I'd end up at the end of the week?