A few pictures from the neighborhood while trying out my new camera….which has so many features it’s frightening. The witching season is upon us.May I have this dance?The ghosts are ready for their big night. Better layer up – it’s cold out there.Some ghosts are shy….and have to be coaxed out.Come into the parlour….said the spider to the fly.and meet my sister. This guy jumped out at me from behind the post when I walked by…and scared me to half to death. Happy Halloween! This week’s puzzle.
What a lot of gory displays! We have always known about Halloween here, but not much was ever made of it until television was introduced in 1976. Even then it has taken a while for commercial interests to tuck into what is rapidly becoming a lucrative sideline for them. With the tightening of controls on the use of fireworks, Guy Fawkes on 5th November, has lost its appeal and Halloween is coming to the fore.
Some people in the neighbourhood go overboard with the decorating….I guess they’re still kids at heart. As a kid living in the country we went up and down the road to houses we knew and were always invited in so they could guess who we were, even though they already knew. You wouldn’t let your kid do that today. It’s strictly ring the doorbell, here’s your candy, next. We had homemade popcorn balls and fudge and candy apples, none of these miniature chocolate bars and bags of stale chips. It was fun! Now the kids can dress up at school, so you don’t see as many kids out on the street especially since the pandemic. My mothers newer suburb would get 100 kids, now there might be 30. It’s raining so it won’t be a good night for them.
I grew up in the country so we knew all the neighbours so we were spoiled with homemade popcorn balls and fudge. I always remembered the old lady who made the fudge. One year my mom let us go into town – we were thinking we were going to get more candy, but it was late and by then we got the dreaded apples.
Hallowe’en long lost its appeal to me. I much prefer an autumn October theme, both in my decor and my attitude, especially since the children have become adults. When they were little, we had loads of fun dreaming up costumes as story book characters to enact. One year, for example, Raggedy Ann and Andy were popular, since one was my daughter, the other my son. Often they were characters from Bible stories. By the time they were in high school, they became more “sophisticated” as historical figures or Star Wars actors.
Ah, the costumes…….always the best part! Most people just put a pumpkin or two out but there are a few people who got overboard with the automated figures which are very expensive, blow up stuff which I hate, and spooky music.
Oh they’re not mine Arlene…..I was walking through the neighbourhood trying out my new camera. It’s a rainy day today so not a good night for them. We’ve had so few trick or treaters the past few years (pandemic and weather) that sometimes I just turn out the lights.
The little guy who lived at the house where the guy popped out at you seemed to like being scared! He was maybe 7 or 8, the right age for Halloween. Alas we haven’t had too many spooks tonight because of the rain.
I saw some rather elaborate decorations on the houses in town. I swear one must have spent a thousand bucks! I used to love dressing up in costume and going to the street crawl downtown. That ended and I haven’t dressed up in ages – decades, perhaps.
I’m not sure yet either Ruth. It’s a Panasonic Lumix ZS60 with a 30X zoom lens and an optional old fashioned viewfinder for sunny days in addition to the regular 3 inch screen. The camera shop has not been very helpful, the online manual is 375 pages and I don’t have time right now to watch tutorials. So I asked the guy to just put it on the automatic setting last week when I bought it and he fiddled with the settings for a few minutes then said he didn’t know that camera. So when I went to the park on the weekend in that beautiful weather and took 77 pics they were crap even though it was a nice day. The owner told me over the phone it was on the wrong setting, but I haven’t tried it out since. When I went to go back to the shop for help a few days ago, the owner said he was Covid Positive (he had a mask on) and 3/4 of his employees were off sick, so we left real quick, as I had my mother with me. We both had masks on, but the week before when I bought it they must have been just starting to get sick, as he said he was on Day 4. That was a close call. I’ll give them a couple of weeks before I go back. There is so much illness around it’s better to stay home right now. My hairdresser cancelled the other day too. We just had our flu shots yesterday. I did not think the zoom was that clear at max. 30X but it could have been me, as it beeps when it’s focused and I’m not used to it yet and was a bit shaky. It was on sale at $360 at the camera shop when it’s normally $500 at Bestbuy, but by the time I added the tax (13% here), the memory card (40) and a carrying case it was $500. The camera shop is not known for it’s customer service – it’s for professional photographers, not amateurs like me!
PS. My old digital from 2005 is an Olympus and always took good pics but it’s only 3X zoom. My new cell phone is a cheap model with a horrible camera, so I still use my old Samsung for pics. I’ve been having problems transferring pics into Windows Photos with all 3 which the computer guy tells me is due to an upgrade by Windows….I can no longer put them in a folder, so have to put them in Photos and then drag them to folders which is a pain. Sometimes I hate technology….
Thanks Joni. I have a cannon power shot A1200 it has a view finder but only 4x zoom and takes AA batteries. I love the view finder but find the zoom lacking and it goes through a lot of batteries. I also have a cannon power shot ELPH 160 with a 12X zoom. It doesn’t have a view finder so taking outdoor pictures is difficult but does have a rechargeable battery which I like. I know that some of my problem with picture taking is that at times I have hand tremors which makes for blurry picture That’s one reason I’m not sure if it would be worth it to buy a more expensive camera since I expect that at some point my tremors will get worse. I’ve had that problem with not being able to put pics in folders for over a year now…. I’m with you on hating technology.
I did think of tremors when you asked the question, but you’re photos are good regardless! If you have a 12X zoom I would think that would be good enough. I was very shaky trying to focus when using the zoom – as it seemed to be bouncing all over so it may need just some practice. But I read a review of a 30X zoom on a new cell phone camera and they said you lose details at the higher end. I guess then you have to go to a professional zoom lens. I’ll let you know when I use it a bit more. This time of year though there’s not much to take pictures of!
PS. Apparently the problem with putting pics in folders is due to a Microsoft security update when recognizing devices. My IT shop is going to research it for me and if he comes up with a solution I’ll let you know.
These are great shots Joni on your inaugural trip out with the camera. We have a house in the City that on a corner and they decorate their entire front yard with graves and bones and bodies, lots of blood. I wonder if they decorate it at night too? A lot of people are putting out those inflatables and someone in the City’s Facebook Forum had her inflatable turkey stolen last weekend. I would love to put out the scarecrows and pumpkins and hay bales. A house on the next block does this every year and they never have their harvest decor stolen. Earlier this year, people who have surveillance cameras, saw thieves come and take their hanging baskets off the hook and walk away with them. I hope you can get more walking/photo expeditions in before the snow flies.
I hate those inflatables. The house on the corner has 30 of them at Christmas, I counted one day as it was so overwhelming. Those automated Halloween figures are expensive although I did like the girl on the swing, it swung and sang lalalala when you got close to it, and the guy who jumped out at you had a sensor near the post when you walked past. They must spend a fortune. I never went over at night as it was raining, but they have lights and spooky music and a covered tent where they hand out the candy. I’m not sure why anyone would steal hanging baskets? That’s pretty desperate, unless they thought they could resell them and then who would buy them? I have two other WW done – one from today, A Walk in the Park and A Blaze of Glory for next week, to use up the rest of the tree pics. There were too many to put in one blog so I split them up. Watching the election results still….they may not have an answer for days…. I hope you are not still trying to catch up.
I decided to take your take your advice. I had to start on Halloween – that’s really far behind. I saw your post and commented and began scrolling up and thought “this is just too much” so every time I saw someone I always interact with, I read all their posts after one another … that helped, the photographers I follow … just “liked” except one. Did Dave’s from last Thursday – J.P. is next but may not make it tonight as I have all the comments from comments I made. It is never-ending when you are this far behind. I have looked at Reader on two different browsers and I think the photos in Reader are bigger than normal … something is off in them. My Wordless Wednesday yesterday displayed normally on my site, but in Reader, it seemed distorted and large to me. I thought Google Chrome had done something – I know I had not magnified my screen in any way. Switched to Firefox – same thing. I don’t know what they did – I edited yesterday’s post to shrink the photos and saved that and went to Reader and they were large again! That is what I did with the reflections post … I have two more posts coming up for Heritage Park. Lots of photos and maybe too many, so took away the reflections pics. I haven’t written the post yet, just have the photos.
I’m not sure….they might be a bit larger? It’s hard for me to tell as some of the tree park photos were vertical shots instead of horizontal. I don’t know how to resize photos in WP while editing, or even if it’s a function?
Hi Joni – no, I don’t mean your photos – I mean ALL of the photos in Reader. They are larger than normal, but not in the actual blog sites. I noticed it in my blog (which I follow in Reader to ensure I know it was published there as a few years ago it would publish then disappear or not publish at all). I thought to myself “why didn’t I make these smaller?” So I made them smaller then they were too small on the blog site. I went back to Reader – they were large again. I noticed the pictures for other people’s blogs in Reader only. Some people like Ally and Kate do not use Reader. Ally uses Feedly to get posts and Kate uses e-mail to get posts. The e-mail posts are fine. I have a few people that I get via e-mail. I tried Firefox and Chrome and in both the pictures are bigger. It’s strange. I load my photos, but just edit them on the screen by pulling the ‘handle” in on each side to make them smaller or larger.
I only read in REader, so I’m not sure I’ve noticed. How do you know that Ally and Kate use something else? I do get notifications on my email address but I never click on them as I only read in Reader.
I had issues with Reader before with missing posts and I mentioned the problems in a post and Ally said she used Feedly and Kate said she used e-mail only. I just read Dave’s post and saw the pictures were bigger than usual – yet, on the site it is perfectly fine. My pictures are bigger in Reader too – it is everyone’s. You can toggle the notifications off so you don’t get duplicates … for some reason, some blogs I follow go there – maybe they are self-hosted? I am not sure. I go in and adjust them to just Reader and now some show up in my notifications area – I give up sometimes.
It is a pain to delete them in email as I’ve already read them in REader but I get confused with the toggling, which way is off. This week I followed a new blogger and the whole post showed up in Notifications! So I went into my email and d/c the subscription and it’s still showing up, so the person must have set it up that way. It’s kind of annoying, so I will unfollow I guess, as I don’t want whole posts showing up under Notifications. I came across that once before with someone else. I haven’t read Dave’s yet and won’t until tomorrow, so I will watch for the difference.
Yes, that happened to me with a couple of people too – I don’t know why that happens either – maybe some new feature on WordPress. For Comcast, I can filter certain e-mail addresses to go to specific files and I do that a lot, but I just looked on Gmail and not sure how you do that in Gmail. I have noticed it all through Reader, including my own post in Reader, but because Dave had a lot of pictures I noticed it more … but it is okay if you go to the actual blog site.
I had to do that because this was getting ridiculous. People posting daily or more than daily was making me behind. Tonight I will look for your new one and do JP’s from last week. I follow Anne, but it difficult to keep up as she posts daily. I followed another woman and she started on something called 22 days of Gratitude … 22 posts in a row, sometimes an extra post some days … I finally just “liked” and called it done.
thehomeplaceweb 
What a lot of gory displays! We have always known about Halloween here, but not much was ever made of it until television was introduced in 1976. Even then it has taken a while for commercial interests to tuck into what is rapidly becoming a lucrative sideline for them. With the tightening of controls on the use of fireworks, Guy Fawkes on 5th November, has lost its appeal and Halloween is coming to the fore.
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Some people in the neighbourhood go overboard with the decorating….I guess they’re still kids at heart. As a kid living in the country we went up and down the road to houses we knew and were always invited in so they could guess who we were, even though they already knew. You wouldn’t let your kid do that today. It’s strictly ring the doorbell, here’s your candy, next. We had homemade popcorn balls and fudge and candy apples, none of these miniature chocolate bars and bags of stale chips. It was fun! Now the kids can dress up at school, so you don’t see as many kids out on the street especially since the pandemic. My mothers newer suburb would get 100 kids, now there might be 30. It’s raining so it won’t be a good night for them.
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It sure was different when we were kids! I remember homemade goodies, too. Candy was my favorite, though.
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I grew up in the country so we knew all the neighbours so we were spoiled with homemade popcorn balls and fudge. I always remembered the old lady who made the fudge. One year my mom let us go into town – we were thinking we were going to get more candy, but it was late and by then we got the dreaded apples.
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Hallowe’en long lost its appeal to me. I much prefer an autumn October theme, both in my decor and my attitude, especially since the children have become adults. When they were little, we had loads of fun dreaming up costumes as story book characters to enact. One year, for example, Raggedy Ann and Andy were popular, since one was my daughter, the other my son. Often they were characters from Bible stories. By the time they were in high school, they became more “sophisticated” as historical figures or Star Wars actors.
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Ah, the costumes…….always the best part! Most people just put a pumpkin or two out but there are a few people who got overboard with the automated figures which are very expensive, blow up stuff which I hate, and spooky music.
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Not to mention those awful blown-up ghosts and false spider webbing stuff.
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Those are very cool decorations!
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Good for you for such enthusiastic decorating. We are “carve a jack-o-lantern and call it a day” kind of people.
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Oh they’re not mine Arlene…..I was walking through the neighbourhood trying out my new camera. It’s a rainy day today so not a good night for them. We’ve had so few trick or treaters the past few years (pandemic and weather) that sometimes I just turn out the lights.
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Nice choice of puzzle, Joni!
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I like to be seasonal!
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I like the puzzle too. I noticed in our neighborhood there are a lot more skeleton, gory type yard displays. My daughter said this too.
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The little guy who lived at the house where the guy popped out at you seemed to like being scared! He was maybe 7 or 8, the right age for Halloween. Alas we haven’t had too many spooks tonight because of the rain.
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I like all of these. It’s fun to decorate for Halloween especially when there are so many different ways to go about it. I like the shy ghost.
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I saw some rather elaborate decorations on the houses in town. I swear one must have spent a thousand bucks! I used to love dressing up in costume and going to the street crawl downtown. That ended and I haven’t dressed up in ages – decades, perhaps.
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Nice pictures Joni. How are you liking the new camera. I’ve been thinking about upgrading but not sure if I want to spend the money.
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I’m not sure yet either Ruth. It’s a Panasonic Lumix ZS60 with a 30X zoom lens and an optional old fashioned viewfinder for sunny days in addition to the regular 3 inch screen. The camera shop has not been very helpful, the online manual is 375 pages and I don’t have time right now to watch tutorials. So I asked the guy to just put it on the automatic setting last week when I bought it and he fiddled with the settings for a few minutes then said he didn’t know that camera. So when I went to the park on the weekend in that beautiful weather and took 77 pics they were crap even though it was a nice day. The owner told me over the phone it was on the wrong setting, but I haven’t tried it out since. When I went to go back to the shop for help a few days ago, the owner said he was Covid Positive (he had a mask on) and 3/4 of his employees were off sick, so we left real quick, as I had my mother with me. We both had masks on, but the week before when I bought it they must have been just starting to get sick, as he said he was on Day 4. That was a close call. I’ll give them a couple of weeks before I go back. There is so much illness around it’s better to stay home right now. My hairdresser cancelled the other day too. We just had our flu shots yesterday. I did not think the zoom was that clear at max. 30X but it could have been me, as it beeps when it’s focused and I’m not used to it yet and was a bit shaky. It was on sale at $360 at the camera shop when it’s normally $500 at Bestbuy, but by the time I added the tax (13% here), the memory card (40) and a carrying case it was $500. The camera shop is not known for it’s customer service – it’s for professional photographers, not amateurs like me!
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PS. My old digital from 2005 is an Olympus and always took good pics but it’s only 3X zoom. My new cell phone is a cheap model with a horrible camera, so I still use my old Samsung for pics. I’ve been having problems transferring pics into Windows Photos with all 3 which the computer guy tells me is due to an upgrade by Windows….I can no longer put them in a folder, so have to put them in Photos and then drag them to folders which is a pain. Sometimes I hate technology….
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Thanks Joni. I have a cannon power shot A1200 it has a view finder but only 4x zoom and takes AA batteries. I love the view finder but find the zoom lacking and it goes through a lot of batteries. I also have a cannon power shot ELPH 160 with a 12X zoom. It doesn’t have a view finder so taking outdoor pictures is difficult but does have a rechargeable battery which I like. I know that some of my problem with picture taking is that at times I have hand tremors which makes for blurry picture That’s one reason I’m not sure if it would be worth it to buy a more expensive camera since I expect that at some point my tremors will get worse. I’ve had that problem with not being able to put pics in folders for over a year now…. I’m with you on hating technology.
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I did think of tremors when you asked the question, but you’re photos are good regardless! If you have a 12X zoom I would think that would be good enough. I was very shaky trying to focus when using the zoom – as it seemed to be bouncing all over so it may need just some practice. But I read a review of a 30X zoom on a new cell phone camera and they said you lose details at the higher end. I guess then you have to go to a professional zoom lens. I’ll let you know when I use it a bit more. This time of year though there’s not much to take pictures of!
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Thankfully with digital cameras I can take lots of photos and keep/use the ones that do come out good and delete the ones that don’t.
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PS. Apparently the problem with putting pics in folders is due to a Microsoft security update when recognizing devices. My IT shop is going to research it for me and if he comes up with a solution I’ll let you know.
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These are great shots Joni on your inaugural trip out with the camera. We have a house in the City that on a corner and they decorate their entire front yard with graves and bones and bodies, lots of blood. I wonder if they decorate it at night too? A lot of people are putting out those inflatables and someone in the City’s Facebook Forum had her inflatable turkey stolen last weekend. I would love to put out the scarecrows and pumpkins and hay bales. A house on the next block does this every year and they never have their harvest decor stolen. Earlier this year, people who have surveillance cameras, saw thieves come and take their hanging baskets off the hook and walk away with them. I hope you can get more walking/photo expeditions in before the snow flies.
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I hate those inflatables. The house on the corner has 30 of them at Christmas, I counted one day as it was so overwhelming. Those automated Halloween figures are expensive although I did like the girl on the swing, it swung and sang lalalala when you got close to it, and the guy who jumped out at you had a sensor near the post when you walked past. They must spend a fortune. I never went over at night as it was raining, but they have lights and spooky music and a covered tent where they hand out the candy. I’m not sure why anyone would steal hanging baskets? That’s pretty desperate, unless they thought they could resell them and then who would buy them? I have two other WW done – one from today, A Walk in the Park and A Blaze of Glory for next week, to use up the rest of the tree pics. There were too many to put in one blog so I split them up. Watching the election results still….they may not have an answer for days…. I hope you are not still trying to catch up.
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I decided to take your take your advice. I had to start on Halloween – that’s really far behind. I saw your post and commented and began scrolling up and thought “this is just too much” so every time I saw someone I always interact with, I read all their posts after one another … that helped, the photographers I follow … just “liked” except one. Did Dave’s from last Thursday – J.P. is next but may not make it tonight as I have all the comments from comments I made. It is never-ending when you are this far behind. I have looked at Reader on two different browsers and I think the photos in Reader are bigger than normal … something is off in them. My Wordless Wednesday yesterday displayed normally on my site, but in Reader, it seemed distorted and large to me. I thought Google Chrome had done something – I know I had not magnified my screen in any way. Switched to Firefox – same thing. I don’t know what they did – I edited yesterday’s post to shrink the photos and saved that and went to Reader and they were large again! That is what I did with the reflections post … I have two more posts coming up for Heritage Park. Lots of photos and maybe too many, so took away the reflections pics. I haven’t written the post yet, just have the photos.
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I’m not sure….they might be a bit larger? It’s hard for me to tell as some of the tree park photos were vertical shots instead of horizontal. I don’t know how to resize photos in WP while editing, or even if it’s a function?
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Hi Joni – no, I don’t mean your photos – I mean ALL of the photos in Reader. They are larger than normal, but not in the actual blog sites. I noticed it in my blog (which I follow in Reader to ensure I know it was published there as a few years ago it would publish then disappear or not publish at all). I thought to myself “why didn’t I make these smaller?” So I made them smaller then they were too small on the blog site. I went back to Reader – they were large again. I noticed the pictures for other people’s blogs in Reader only. Some people like Ally and Kate do not use Reader. Ally uses Feedly to get posts and Kate uses e-mail to get posts. The e-mail posts are fine. I have a few people that I get via e-mail. I tried Firefox and Chrome and in both the pictures are bigger. It’s strange. I load my photos, but just edit them on the screen by pulling the ‘handle” in on each side to make them smaller or larger.
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I only read in REader, so I’m not sure I’ve noticed. How do you know that Ally and Kate use something else? I do get notifications on my email address but I never click on them as I only read in Reader.
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I had issues with Reader before with missing posts and I mentioned the problems in a post and Ally said she used Feedly and Kate said she used e-mail only. I just read Dave’s post and saw the pictures were bigger than usual – yet, on the site it is perfectly fine. My pictures are bigger in Reader too – it is everyone’s. You can toggle the notifications off so you don’t get duplicates … for some reason, some blogs I follow go there – maybe they are self-hosted? I am not sure. I go in and adjust them to just Reader and now some show up in my notifications area – I give up sometimes.
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It is a pain to delete them in email as I’ve already read them in REader but I get confused with the toggling, which way is off. This week I followed a new blogger and the whole post showed up in Notifications! So I went into my email and d/c the subscription and it’s still showing up, so the person must have set it up that way. It’s kind of annoying, so I will unfollow I guess, as I don’t want whole posts showing up under Notifications. I came across that once before with someone else. I haven’t read Dave’s yet and won’t until tomorrow, so I will watch for the difference.
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Yes, that happened to me with a couple of people too – I don’t know why that happens either – maybe some new feature on WordPress. For Comcast, I can filter certain e-mail addresses to go to specific files and I do that a lot, but I just looked on Gmail and not sure how you do that in Gmail. I have noticed it all through Reader, including my own post in Reader, but because Dave had a lot of pictures I noticed it more … but it is okay if you go to the actual blog site.
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PS. You made it through another work week!
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Thank goodness – lately by Monday night I’m already frustrated!
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That’s a good plan….that way you’re caught up with the bloggers you read most.
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I had to do that because this was getting ridiculous. People posting daily or more than daily was making me behind. Tonight I will look for your new one and do JP’s from last week. I follow Anne, but it difficult to keep up as she posts daily. I followed another woman and she started on something called 22 days of Gratitude … 22 posts in a row, sometimes an extra post some days … I finally just “liked” and called it done.
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I have lost my Halloween spirit (if that’s a thing). It has turned into another retail extravaganza. Maybe I will get it back if I have grandchildren.
And I hate learning new tech.
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Yes, some people spend a fortune on those automated decorations. Christmas is bad enough. I didn’t see too many kids out as it was a rainy night.
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