Minor progress, a new door, and a warm trip

I'm  not sure why I have written a blog post in a while, plenty has happened since my last post, but perhaps none of it's "blogworthy", not like that has ever stopped me in the past. On the home front, slow progress has been made in the downstairs bathroom. The walls have been painted twice, as has the ceiling. We still need to pick out a mirror to replace the old medicine cabinet, and I need to paint the trim. I've decided that I'm going to redo the molding around the floor, and repair the old tile the best I can. We discussed replacing the floor tiles, but that would probably have to be extended into the kitchen so that will have to wait. For some reason, the door no longer shuts, which is an unfortunate problem for a bathroom, so I'll have to look into that

This is what a broken thermostat looks like. Felt the need to
insert a picture of it for some reason. 

The thermostat suddenly lost it's mind sometime over the summer, and as the colder weather moved in, we had a problem with the heat coming on randomly.  I learned two things during it's replacement. First, doing so is incredibly easy. Do not hesitate to do so if the need arises, just carefully follow the advice about tieing off the wires so they don't fall down into the wall. Second, the complexity and corresponding price of thermostats, is amazing. You can pay $30 or $300 for something that essentially does the same thing. I chose near the bottom, getting a basic electronic version that has a timer and can adjust the heat for the time of day, and day of the week. After thinking about it, I couldn't think of a good reason why I would want to adjust the heat using my phone, Alexa, or while a thousand my away., although some of those fancy ones look really cool.

The new door. The old one is loaded in their truck for a trip
to the dump. 

The garage door was installed. It looks terrific and almost immediately one of our neighbors complimented it. It made me realize that the neighbors were probably sick of looking into our garage, even through I had gotten used to it. A side benefit which I had not thought about, it that I no longer have to lock up everything of value in the garage. Also, it's really nice to see how clean the garage stays when the door is shut. No longer do we have leaves blowing in, and a thin layer of dust accumulating on everything. One thing of interest is that they no longer install an outside keypad, unless you pay for and order it. The control pad inside the garage hooks up to your wifi and they have an app for your phone (of course), that controls your door. One remote is standard, as most cars have garage door openers as regular equipment. I easily programmed the Toyota,  but the Dodge is giving me fits.

Bread.

We finished our fall baking. Each year we make 8 large loaves of bread and around 15 tins of cinnamon buns to be given away to our closest friends and families. After about 30 years of doing this it has gotten almost routine, which encourages errors of course but this batch looks quite good. We did a much better job controlling the heat this year with our new oven, and avoided placing the bread on the bottom rack, where they had a tenancy to burn They are all in the freezer and will be distributed next month.

Cinnamon Buns

The first and last time
 I wore this tie.

We had a beautiful but brief trip to southern Florida in the middle of October to attend a wedding. It was nice to escape the wet and dreary fall we have been having here in NY. We had a late flight into Fort Lauderdale, arriving at around 11 PM.  After baggage and getting the rental car, followed by a 50 minute drive to the hotel in Palm Beach, we finally got to bed around 130 AM, late for us old folks. The wedding was on the beach Saturday and weather was perfect. Certainly it was warm, but a nice breeze off the water kept the sweating to a minimum despite the buttoned up shirt and tie. No sport coat, thank God. The tie was linen, with a floral design, and was very admired by one of the local fireman that had arrived to honor the couple with a local fire rig. He asked for it, and I happily gave it to him. I wasn't being all that generous, it only cost me $8 bucks but both he and I have a great story. He said his wife would love it. Hope that works well for him.

I mentioned the lousy weather we've been having this fall. It's been wet and cool but not cold. This combined to delay the leaves falling from the trees, and they're only just now finishing up. This of course has delayed the annual leaf clean up and I hope to get them in before the snow falls. Unfortunately, it's looking like real cold air is arriving this week, and with it some snow, so I'd best get going on that.