Called it!

I did get the white chocolate bark made yesterday. Really easy with only 3 ingredients. The time consuming part was cutting up the pistachios, but at least I bought a package already shelled. It's just white chocolate, dried cranberries and pistachios. Tastes yummy and looks festive with the red and green on the white bark.

I did not attempt to make the rosettes yet. At noon dh decided that was a good time to drive into town to get our grocery shopping done. He was a total grouchy ass all day yesterday and by the time we got back and I was yelled at because I was putting the groceries away too slow as he was bringing in the bags from the car/garage - and OMG - the counter was full of the bags he already brought in, plus I had my baking stuff out (I had just started chopping the nuts when he wanted to leave). I said just set the last 3 bags down on the floor, I'll get to them. Oh no, can't do that! I said I'm sorry, I'm basically working with one arm here (and my left one at that) so I'm a little slow. My elbow has been bothering me again the past few days.

So, I wasn't in the mood to try to make rosettes. The rosettes are a good memory of my grandma. I didn't feel like being grumpy while making them. I got the chocolate bark finished up and chilled and then broken into pieces and back in the fridge. And then I went and took a nap.

Kitty was on full on energy mode last night. Usually he will go to bed with me and settle down after a few minutes. Not last night and all of a sudden he jumped up on the bed flying over me at full speed and I hear a huge crash. He ran right across the bed and onto dh's nightstand at full speed. Knocked off the lamp and clock. I can't believe the lamp didn't break. It's large and a glass base. So, kitty ended up staying upstairs in his crate the rest of the night.

Last evening I watched a Christmas movie. One of those cheesy Hallmark type that are all the same and are all good, LOL. In between listening to dh bitch about everything under the sun, including the fact that the temp had warmed up to just above freezing so now the snow was rain. Seriously - bitch about something you can control. 

Several months ago we went to a community meeting about a possible new (volunteer) fire station being added, about 5 miles past us. We are serviced by the town's volunteer fire dept, which is 10 miles out. This new station would only serve homes within a 5 mile driving distance of it and due to the fact that most of the property in this 5 mile area is farmland, it's not going to serve a whole lot of people. There was a lot of conditions that had to be met for them to create a new fire station. One of them being 40% of the property owners in the 5 mile area had to vote and agree on it. We were just a tad outside their 5 mile driving distance, but within 5 mile radius. So, the 3 of on our street went to the meeting to see what's up. The stupid part was the 3 of us homeowners were pretty much the only property owners at this meeting! The rest were people on the town volunteer fire dept. There were 3 property owners there who live within this 5 mile area and one of them is the district fire warden for the whole area, LOL. So, ya of course she is behind all this.

From the get go dh was convinced the only reason they are pushing for this is because they want to start subdividing some of all this pasture land. This one family owns the most of it, spread out between the mom and her 2 sons. Another owner is this uber rich guy with some 15,000 sf house back up as you start up the mountains, who doesn't even live there most of the time. Just has a full time caretaker. Apparently there is a rule/law that they can't subdivide any property in this county unless it's within like 5 or 10 miles of a fire station..........

But at the meeting, of course they tried to sell it as it's a benefit, blah blah. It's going to raise our property taxes at least $100 a year to fund this. It's all volunteer, obviously would be volunteers from those that live with in this 5 mile area...who??!! 80% of the owners are older/retired types. The younger owners all work. Well, we have so and so to be the "chief" or whatever he would be. And we need people to sign up to be volunteers. And the town fire dept would of course also be dispatched out to a fire to help. Oh...ok...this guy has a full time job OUTSIDE of our county, so as long as we have a fire happen at night or on the weekends they'd be available to put it out.

After the meeting we were chatting with the lady that owns most of the land. DH brought up his concern that this was really for property owners so they could start subdividing. She was like oh no. We have no intention of subdividing. I remember what went through my mind at the time (while I'm smiling and nodding at her) was sure... you don't today, or even tomorrow, but you probably do 6 months from now. DH expressed his concerns to our other 2 neighbors (who were all for this) that we're going to be paying for service we aren't really going to get and that he felt the only reason they wanted this was so they could subdivide. Oh no, that's not it!

DH watches our our weekly county council meetings online. Guess what one of the topics was last week? This lady had gone to court and got a court order bypassing the county rule/law and the judge agreed she could subdivide her property. Yep, dh usually reads stuff pretty well. Well, hopefully, that put to rest the fire dept plan. I really don't need my already super high property taxes even higher just so they can subdivide their property! Basically our position is we don't support adding a volunteer fire dept that is going to do us no good and have to pay for it at the same time.