I have been so flat-out busy getting my new business ready to open. Opening date is tentatively set for February 22. But it is going so much easier for me now that the new general manager I have hired has started work. Her name is Cindy and she is a list-maker like I am. She has hit the ground running so to speak, and is taking care of many things on our to-do lists. So perhaps my blog posting can get back to a regular schedule.

Yesterday was mostly a day at home that included laundry, a walk in the woods, and watching Downton Abbey on PBS.

Also, reading. I have some books on my Life Bucket List that I would like to read in my lifetime. One of those is the collected works of Jane Austen. Yes yes, I know. I should have read Jane Austen long ago. But I didn’t. I’ve seen a couple of live theater productions of Emma and Pride & Prejudice. So right now I am reading Sense and Sensibility. The first 6 pages or so were excruciatingly boring to me and I almost gave up. But I persevered and it is much better.

And on my walk yesterday I snapped another picture of the main creek on our property as the sun was starting to go down:

I just have to tell this story about my mom.

Last night the moon was full and she woke sometime during the middle of the night to find the moon shining fully into her bedroom window.

And she immediately spotted two Klu Klux Klan men outside her window. She clearly saw their white pointy hats in the moonlight and was very frightened.

Her first thought was: “Now what did Sam do?” (Sam is her husband.) Apparently she never knows what he will do next.

She was paralyzed with fear and trying to figure out how to get to her pistol which is stored somewhere in her room.

Her heart was pounding and her mind was racing over how to get away without the KKK men seeing her moving around in her room.

Finally, she calmed down and woke up fully.

And realized that the two” KKK men” in the window was actually the curtains on her window and the bright moonlight shining through made it look like those pointy KKK hats.

I went on vacation for awhile and finally just made it back to the office late this week. Every time I go on vacation I have perfectly good intentions of posting on this blog at least a few times. But then I get so caught up in my vacation and travelling that I simply don’t post. Sorry all!

We took our yearly vacation at Disney World in January. This time we stayed at the Beach Club resort again. We had stayed there last year and loved the location next to Epcot. Here is a view from our hotel balcony:

You can see the Boardwalk hotel and Swan hotel across the lake. The Beach Club has an actual sandy beach with sea gulls. I’m not sure how Disney convinced sea gulls to come that far inland and hang out at a fake beach but it sure contributed to the beach scenery.

As usual we simply exhausted ourselves at Disney World. We got up early and stayed up late. We walked miles. We ate good food and this time, we even made ample use of the fabulous hotel swimming pool which included a sandy bottom pool and fun!!! waterslide. The weather was sunny and quite warm the week we were there. My mom went with us this time. That is her first visit to Disney World since 1979. She loved it!

And yes, I will post a few vacation pictures this week once I get sort of caught up on a few things around here.

We have a few springs on our land which eventually form little streams. At some point they all meet up to form a small creek. Today Sidney and I took Max & Rocky along with my brother’s dog Ruby for a walk in the woods. We went down the old road until we got into a bottom area where a spring crosses the old road. Then we turned and walked a few yards to the larger stream. Here is the little spring that rushes down the hill:

 This little spring runs underground briefly past this fallen log and then emerges into a small pool before it goes back underground to meet up with the stream a few feet away. Here is the little pool it makes:

We climbed down the bank into the creek and walked for a little way. The water was icy cold but I couldn’t resist taking off my shoes and wading in it!

The dogs enjoyed cavorting in the shallow water. See those overhanging mossy areas above? Sometimes mink will have their burrows in there. When my dad was a kid growing up here, he said there were still bear dens along this stream and every once in awhile they would catch sight of one. Once when my dad and his friends were in high school and working on an old car in their shop building a bear actually wandered in to their open garage door. They all quickly jumped into the car they were working on and closed the doors. The only problem with that was the car was a complete project car and the floor and seats weren’t even installed back into the car. So their feet were standing right on the floor of the garage and if the bear had been enterprising and wanted to get them, all he would have to do was to crawl under the edge of the car. Luckily, the bear wandered away after a few tense minutes.

We’ve got the upstairs of my building cleaned out enough to assemble the basics for my office. Eventually we will need to repair the ceiling that is in poor shape due to years of water damage from roof leaks. But for right now, I have my desk and computer set up against the wall that borders the stairs. I elected to leave the old vintage wallpaper on the walls and simply hung a couple of prints from Ikea.

Note the lights hanging from the ceiling. My grandmother’s house had those same lights. There were no plug-ins in my grandmother’s house except on the light thing that hung from the ceiling. I believe that this upstairs room could have been used as living quarters a hundred years ago but not really used since then.

The wooden floors are just grand. I carefully oiled the floors with Danish oil. By hand. My arms ached for days! The front wall is made of brick with plaster over it.

My view out my office window of the main street here in Iuka:

The gazebo you see in the center of the photo is in a little park called Jaybird Park. During the spring and summer months there is a concert held in that gazebo each week. And farmer’s set up to sell their produce on Thursday mornings. At the far end of the street is City Hall, the police station, and fire station. The train tracks run alongside Jaybird park to the left.

The outside of my building currently looks like this:

The inside is a major mess although we have managed to get most of the heavy cleaning done on all three floors. The window you see in the photo above is the main floor. The four smaller windows above that is the upstairs where I will have my office. And on the lowest level, the basement opens out into the back alley behind this row of buildings in downtown.

The old Phillips Hardware sign is still visible on the building for now. My new sign will have to just sit on top of it. We didn’t want to paint over it because this is a historic building. It has been in the same family since it was built in the late 1800′s and has been a hardware store since it opened for business way back then. It only ceased to be a hardware store in March of 2011.

I would like to get something done to replace the aluminum awning that graces the front of the building but that may have to wait because we just discovered that the furnace/air-conditioning system for the main floor needs to be replaced. And it isn’t cheap! I still don’t know exactly how I am going to heat and cool my office area. There is currently no air-conditioner or heating of any kind on the upper floor.

I ended up taking all of the holidays off from blogging, tweeting, and Facebooking. I spent the time with my family. And working on my new business. And wow, is there a great deal of work to be done on the new business. Taking a building that is well over 100 years old and renovating it takes months of hard work.

I am a bit mad at myself for not meeting up with a couple of my friends who were in town here for the holidays. They were flat out busy the same as me. And it seemed that each time I was available, they weren’t and vice versa. We’ll just have to meet up another time!

About the picture above: friends of ours are boarding their horse on our property. We have the horse in the pasture with our two miniature donkeys. The horse and donkeys are now great friends with each other and never really leave each others’ sides. Notice how huge the horse looks next to the little donkey. Oh, and the horse will be having a foal in about March so stay tuned for photos of a wee baby horse.

You know which restaurant I miss sometimes? Steak and Ale.

Remember them? They had such a cozy, British pub feel to the inside of their restaurant. We passed an old Steak and Ale location this morning that had been closed down for years now. The building was falling apart.

I don’t know of any comparable steak houses right now that have that old world appeal in food and feel. The steak houses that we seem to frequent now all have a Texas and western vibe to them.

And Bennigans. That was another restaurant that I liked to go to back in the late 80′s. They had the first fried cheesesticks I ever tried. But alas, they went the way of Steak and Ale. They were both owned by the same company and sold a few times to different corporate conglomerates. Maybe that is what led to their downfall. Corporate mismanagement.

Do you have any restaurants that were favorites but are now closed and gone?

The latest news on my new business venture is that the logo design is complete. Thanks to Jon Hebert of Northlinx Web & Graphics for his design prowess.

Now that the logo is done, I have lots more work to do. Like setting up a website, Twitter page, and Facebook page. Ordering a sign for the business and other items that need the logo.

So without further ado, here is the logo for my new shop:

 The name for my business came from the creek that runs near my home in Iuka. It is the creek that we played in as children. I always thought it had a sort of mystical sounding name. So I named my business after Pennywinkle Creek. And as for the Station part of the name: Iuka is an old railroad town which was founded back before the Civil War. The train still runs right through old downtown Iuka where my store is to be located. So I thought it fitting to name my business partly after a train station.

Projected opening for my new business is February 2012.

Last night we were driving to have dinner at a restaurant we love on the seawall in Galveston. We drove down Broadway which is the main drag through the heart of Galveston and where many of the historic homes are lined up.

Christmas decorations are now in full-swing everywhere we go, including along Broadway. We oohed and aahed at some of the fine displays of electrical waste. The Bishop’s Palace looked especially lovely lit up in the foggy night even though it wasn’t decorated with twinkling Christmas lights.

But the one house that I loved the best and appreciated the most had the simplest of decorations. I didn’t have time to take a picture. It probably wouldn’t have turned out well anyway since it was nighttime and fog was blanketing the island for a second evening in a row. That house was a beautiful old wooden home from over a hundred years ago. It was two stories tall and painted a cream color. And on every window outside the home owners had placed an evergreen wreath with a simple red bow.

That’s it.

Just a wreath on every window. It looked perfectly beautiful and I enjoyed it far better than all the garish Christmas lights at the surrounding houses. It brought to mind a traditional Christmas like Currier & Ives would have illustrated. I’m such a sucker for those Currier & Ives pictures. And yet I have none in my possession right now. I once owned a very large old illustrated book by that company. But alas, it burned up in our house fire of 2006.

 A background note about that big Currier & Ives book I once owned: about 20-something years ago I accompanied my maternal grandmother and step-grandfather to an auction. During the auction, they auctioned off boxes of household goods and lots of antiques. I was a college student at the time and did not have much money at all. But a box of curtains came up for auction and I needed some for my apartment. So I bid on them. And I got the box for a mere $5. And way in the bottom was a very large book of Currier & Ives lithographs.

I loved that big book. And I never bothered to look up the value of it until just now. And believe me, it was far more than the $5 I paid for that box at auction. Perhaps someday I will replace it. But for now, I’ll just admire the Currier & Ives Christmas pictures on-line and drive about the countryside looking for the perfect Currier & Ives setting.