Snoopy postage stamps are available - sort of

 I tried to get the Snoopy stamps before the raise in price of stamps in January. Tried several post offices - they were out. Went online and worked my way through the ordering system of the US Post Office. Then waited 3 weeks. They never arrived. Hmmm. I also didn't get an email saying that I had ordered them. Hmmm. 

So, I went back online, ordered them again, and discovered that there was one more step of the ordering process that I evidently had missed the first time. Completed that last step and now I'm waiting for my order to arrive. 

By mail. 

No mail service yesterday. (Thanksgiving got in the way)  

 Maybe it'll come today. Or tomorrow

Zoom backgrounds

 I was always envious that one of my friends would zoom (is Zoom a verb now?) on her back porch with a beautiful view, until a few months ago when I realized Ive been seeing that very same view from the very same position and came to the conclusion that she had some sort of picture for her background. (envy) 

I also envy those who use a photograph of themselves on zoom calls, instead of video of themselves sitting around in pajamas - or something. 

Life in the early 1950s

 There were NO ticks in the Pennsylvania mountains where I roamed. Mom would put a peanut butter sandwich in a bag and I'd walk up the mountain through woods and pastures until the sun was overhead. Which meant that I usually ate my lunch sitting on a rock in the middle of a sheep pasture. I also knew that sun-overhead meant that I had to turn around and hike back down the hill in order to get home in time for dinner. 

(I never made it up to the top of that hill.) 

I was in second or third grade and we lived in the Poconos of Pennsylvania, and I went to a two-room school one block away. 

But nowadays children aren't allowed to roam like that and there are ticks all up and down the east coast and have spread to the rest of the country.

Having a hot Halloween (candy) time

 I only buy Halloween candy that I like to eat. M&Ms are good. This time I bought a variety bag of them - and nobody came to my house. (Turns out they everybody and their next of kin went to the neighborhood haunted house, instead.) So now I get to try some of the newer varieties of M&Ms that I have never had before. 

I love to tear the top off these small, single serving bags and warm the candies in the microwave until the chocolate melts inside that candy coating, and the coating cracks. Yummy!  So -- this time I put one of those purple single serving bags into the microwave. The Fudge Brownie ones. Accidentally heated it for one minute. (Usual time to heat that small amount is 30 seconds or less.) 

Suddenly smelled smoke.  Pulled the bag out and it smelled smoky and burnt.  Tossed it into the trash, but had a thought -- it was still hot. Would it set my trash on fire?  Took it back out of the trash. Hot Hot Hot !!!  Put it into the sink and ran water over it. Still hot and smoking and sizzling. Turned it over (with a fork) to cool the other side.  It sizzled for several minutes. When I peeked inside - everything was melted together and was black, not chocolatey brown. 

I'll never heat up (or eat) the Fudge Brownie M&Ms again. 

The Ogress and the Orphans

 Just finished reading Kelly Barnhill's The Ogress and the Orphans. Chapel Hill, NC: Algonquin, 2022.

(So much better written than her 2017 Newbery Award book, THE GIRL WHO DRANK THE MOON, which seemed as if it were several different books mooshed together. 

This is the one that should have - or will - get the Newbery.)