Yes, I'm bored

So right now the museum is mine, all mine. And now I'm bored. I worked well this morning but now I'm out of ambition on projects especially since I have a 1/2 hour left in the day. So I'll blog and fill some time.

In case you are curious, our snow content: about 10 inches but we've had some for quite a while now. We got our first snow December 1 and it hasn't gone away yet. Today for the first time in several weeks we're above 30 and ice is finally melting off of roofs and trees.

Earlier I heard several thumps in the museum.

Now there are many sounds you don't want to hear in a museum. For example, "Whoops," 'Uh,oh," and my favorite "Ummm, what does this go to?" Of the non-spoken, mysterious thumps coming from elsewhere in the museum are just as bad. This time it was just the huge (5 foot +) icicles that were hanging from the roof falling onto the porch. They were huge! Since they were hanging from the second floor, there was no way to know them down without a ladder and/or cherry-picker. And I'm glad they fell and didn't hurt anyone. Or the museum.

Matt and I have our Christmas shopping pretty much done. Just a couple of other small gifts.
I started cookie baking. I have the doods done and the cream cheese cookies done. The cream cheese cookies are very good. (Not that I tried one;) There is no leavening agent or even an egg in them. It's basically a cream cheese shortbread rolled in sprinkles. The recipe has you roll it into tubes and refrigerate overnight then slice. As I was slicing, I remembered making petticoat tails and trying to slice those darn things as warm dough in a boiling hot kitchen. It never worked well but they sure did taste ok. It was better as dough in my opinion but I usually prefer dough over the finished cookie. I don't know why. It doesn't work for other things. I don't prefer raw eggs over scrambled or raw potatoes over mashed but I do prefer raw spinach over cooked. Yuck:)

And on that note....

We live in a small town. Let me tell you what happened. Matt works at the bank and last week a customer brought in a letter for the bank president to see. The letter was sent from Galena to N.Y. in 1848 and had been lost behind a desk in Dixon, Il until 1987 when it was found and opened. If you were ever curious what happened to lost mail, it is behind a desk in Dixon, Il, the Petunia capital of the world and birthplace of Ronald Regan. Anyhow, Matt mentioned the letter, I asked if we could have a copy of it just for the information, Matt asked the owner, and last night when I went home, the letter was lying on our table. It's been framed so no worries about whatever might be on the table. So today I took the letter to the museum, scanned it, and transcribed it. Very cool. It describes a double murder suicide that happened in Galena in October, 1848, the election of the president, and general work stuff. But it is still cool. So tonight, I'm taking the letter back home and Matt will take it to the bank.
And I have a topic for our next newsletter that I should be working on but I ran out of ambition.....