. . . FINALLY . . .

The fires are not completely out here in Northern California, but moving closer to that -- at least for now. The three days of rain have succeeded in a major assist.

Of course, there are thousands of other concerns as well related to this horrible event. Thousands of folks who like most of us usually enjoyed Thanksgiving around a well-set table and the warmth and comfort of friends and family were forced to spend this holiday at shelters and even tent cities.

The rains began here on Wednesday, the 21st of November. They lasted through Friday, but today, Saturday, it is bright and sunny -- at least in Healdsburg.

It is predicted that we will receive more rain next week beginning on Tuesday -- what a real "Thanksgiving"! We have an amazing gardener -- he showed up today along with the sun. We have had the same person -- Rafael --  for almost twenty years and he has only missed one week and that due to a heart attack.

Speaking of Thanksgiving, we had a great time spent with some of our loved ones (Gail, Dino and me) and enjoyed the complete dinner traditionally served on that day.

As a matter of fact, we had the exact same dinner last night as well substituting corn for green beans and adding a small dinner roll and cranberry sauce for Gail.

And guess what -- it was sooo good the last two nights we will repeat it once more tonight -- but that will be it for this year.

Helping the traditional day's activities, we watched part of three NFL games -- speeding through each so that we saw all the action plays in about an hour per game instead of the usual three hours per game. What a deal -- and we napped later in the afternoon . . .

This year it happened that while perusing the "Nextdoor" app for Healdsburg I came across an ad for gutter cleaning (which we really needed) and by the way putting up Christmas lights was available too.

We felt lucky that we got our gutters cleaned out just one day before the rain came. And the lights are up and on too.


We had the outline of the roof lighted along the gutter lines and when I took this picture at dusk, the full moon appeared off in the western sky. We have taken to turning off the lights when we retire and then they come back on the next evening at dusk. So far, so good -- no burnt out bulbs . . .

We have a few more decorations to put up in the coming days but who knows we may just be "okay" with the new lights . . .

And we haven't just been doing "nothing" in terms of puzzles -- we finished the one off to the right on Monday the 19th.

Besides being varied and fun-to-do, there were many nostalgic symbols displayed which made it interesting to do.

However, Gail hates to take down a puzzle after struggling to complete it -- so what we do after a day or so is to carefully slide it onto another board and start a new puzzle.

And that is what we have done -- one that is very similar to the above -- a lot of variations and color and interesting to work on.

What is currently on-our-nightstand you might ask -- the book off to the left -- "Becoming" by Michelle Obama.

We have been reading in that book for three nights and are enjoying it a lot.

The pages are full, smallish type and interesting. The details about a city that I know somewhat is good.

I grew up in the Chicago suburbs, and even though I never lived in the city, I have some sense of living there.

Michelle describes city living well, especially the city on the South side as she saw it and I have only read about it.

This book will take "some time" to read and that is a good thing because it is well written -- I am always amazed when a writer can remember so much detail of things that happened years

before. We look forward each night to read and learn from this book. I'll most likely reference it again.

Lastly, and this is so often the case these days, I am finding out way after the fact about someone in our tree:

My paternal first cousin, Leslie passed away earlier this year -- March. He was 86 years old.

I'm not sure if I ever really met Leslie, but I sure did hear about some of his life, that is for sure. He is the son of my father's brother, Lloyd Jr.

One of the things that I always heard was that he was a champion swimmer in high school and was maybe destined for bigger things in that arena. But as sometimes happens that did not occur.

Just in doing research over the years I have gleaned some facts about Leslie, one being that he had joined the Marines after High School and that he married while in the service and had at least one son, Robert Hiles.

Robert Hiles, also my paternal first cousin but one time removed, has four children, my first cousins two times removed. I have been in contact over the years with two of Leslie's granddaughters.

Thinking about how it would be that I would have heard earlier about Leslie's passing, I'm not sure how it would happen since his grandkids were not in touch with him for years and so I found out while searching "Hiles" records in newspapers. Sad, in a way, for sure.

And that is a bit of our week, hope to see you all "in a few"!👫