I slept okay last night, and wasn’t in any rush to get out of bed this morning. Eventually I did though, and drove around campus for a bit. I stopped at Green’s View before going to see the goats, but they were in the barn. I returned to the cottage, read, napped, ate, read some more, then went back to see the goats again. This time they were out, and accompanied by the farm director. I chatted with her for a long while. She said that the dwarf goats were for therapy.

I went back to the cottage and chilled some more before finally deciding to leave a little before six. I took the back way home, on curvy back roads. Here at the house it isn’t too cold now, but will be later this week.

Luke turns eight months old today. Liz says he is doing very well in Michigan.

Today felt like a bit of a bust. I started out by trying to acquire a new tank of propane. I paid for one at the close Dollar General, but it turned out that none of their cylinders had gas in them. So on to the next DG. I checked before going in and they did have some full ones. Unfortunately the woman working there couldn’t find the key. After a little wait and a call to the store manager she realized that it was on her key chain after all. I exchanged my tank and bought a second one in order to avoid future issues.

Back at the farm I started messing with the man lift. I could get it started but then it would shut down when I tried to do anything. Confused, I took the drastic step of reading the manual. Empowered with my new knowledge I was able to get it operational. My maiden voyage up was not pleasant. I was hoping that it would be better for me than a ladder. It was not. I could barely function. I moved it around to the front of the house so that my dad could do some work, but it wouldn’t rotate the way I needed it to, so I moved it again to the back. By then it was getting pretty close to time for our Thanksgiving dinner. My mother and Lauren arrived first and we set up chairs and a folding table out back in the sun. There was a lot of food to put out. We ate and talked. Luke seemed a little bored.

After lunch I put paint samples on the French doors. Liz chose a light green. Everybody toured the house then left. I set up scaffolding in the kitchen so we can work on some trim tomorrow then went into town. Aldi was closed today and Kroger closed just as I arrived. I sat in their parking lot for a long time doing a lot of research on my phone. That was actually pretty productive.

Now I’m back at the farm. Not feeling too good. Tomorrow is supposed to be colder so we probably won’t paint. Yesterday’s painting looks like garbage. Very thin in spots, and discolored because of the freeze. Saturday is supposed to be warmer.

I started the day with a 6am trip to Home Depot. I wanted to get some heavy duty plastic tubs, but despite the app saying that they had 392 of the size that I wanted in stock, I couldn’t find any. So I bought more cardboard boxes in all three sizes at a much cheaper price. Fortunately I was out early enough to beat traffic. I spent most of the day putting things in boxes. It turns out that we (and by that I mean Liz and Luke) have a lot more stuff than I realized. The kitchen items in particular took a while of tedious wrapping and boxing. I made good progress though. I think I am done packing until Sunday, when I hope to come up with a trailer and haul a lot of stuff down to the farm. Tonight I’m staying at the condo again as I need to go by the bank in the morning, and will also watch Luke while Liz has a meeting.

The Little Man did pretty well today. He napped great and didn’t fuss much. My mother came over to watch him for a few hours while I packed and he behaved well for her too. He ate peas and peaches as well as oatmeal. I read to him a bit and he played on the floor a lot.