Thanksgiving is behind us, and we enjoyed a wonderful day with Karean and her family in Easton. This was our two-year anniversary of Friendsgiving, which was just as warm and welcoming and hilarious as 2016. We laughed and drank and ate, and even though there was someone important missing, we filled the house with love.

The rest of our holiday weekend was pretty quiet, and that was good. We took in the matinee showing of the new Fantastic Beasts movie (verdict: not as good as the first; too rushed, not enough time with our characters. Visually pretty. The way the story was left made Finn nervous.) and spent the rest of the day lazing around the house. Saturday was project day at the house and then we made an abbreviated but delicious Thanksgiving meal and had the Gebler clan over for dinner.

After a busy couple of days of fabrication, the shelving I’m building for Jen is nearly complete. Finn and I did some scouting for wall anchors and found an excellent product that only required a 7/32″ hole, and so all four brackets are firmly mounted to the wall. Before I put them in for good, I lopped about 1/4″ off their ends with the angle grinder and beveled the edges.

Meanwhile, Finn filled the nail holes with putty and I showed her how to use the random orbital sander to smooth the whole thing out. Later in the day I routed channels out on the back for the brackets. On Sunday afternoon both shelves got a coat of white paint outside, while the weather was 60˚.

Also, Brian stopped by on Friday morning to look things over in the bathroom and visit with us for a little while; his tile estimate is roughly $500 less than the quote I got locally, which is excellent news. He’s thinking he can get started as soon as the order comes in, which means we might be showered up by Christmas. I can’t think of a better present than that.