Honeydew list

One of the down sides of retirement is the perception of some that TPP has plenty of time to keep entropy from increasing, although in the long term that's a losing proposition. So known affectionately as the "honeydew list", it's really the honey, DO list. A fairly significant list has appeared of little things that need my attention has been drafted, so rather than "wasting" time writing a blog TPP is attending to these many chores. It's mostly little things that are sort of falling apart, old houses are like that, and some garden chores that were forgotten.
The winterberry were quite handsome this year for a couple of weeks, then all the fruit disappeared. Since the bushes are low, it could have been a possum or perhaps a flock of cedar waxwings who have stripped fruited bushes before.  But if we want them to continue to look good an anti-bunny fence is needed (overlooked in the fall) or the bushes will be subjected to unwanted pruning. At least after the first below zero temperatures of the winter (and for all you metric people out there, zero is 32 degrees F below freezing and in these parts it means really cold), today will have a high in the mid-40s F melting all of the meager snow cover. 
The rest of the chores are technically more difficult. To tighten a loose newel post requires a hex bolt socket, and the one TPP owns is too large in outer diameter to fit into the countersunk hole where the bolt resides. This is what makes such repairs so annoying.  Now since the newel post was built this way, we must assume that sockets exist that fit into a hole of that diameter, so a-shopping we will go after double checking the parameters.  This should take no more than two or three trips to the hardware store.  Oh well, it will be a nice day for a walk.  But first TPP needs another cup of coffee, no need to rush into such things thoughtlessly.  After all honeydews are a fruit that needs to be ripe to be any good.

Grade exams or plant bulbs

This is not really much of a choice, but actually both have to be done.  The end of daylight savings time has provided the false sense of having some time to think about this.  The main problem with exams is that after all these years, how they are going to come out is pretty obvious.  The inattentive, the frequently absent, the crammers, the poorly disciplined, often all combined in a single person, don't really have a chance of doing well, but it still saddens TPP to be right so often although this is never known until the exams are graded.  Self-fulfilling prophecies are not allowed, so grading is done in the blind.  Yesterday was a damp cold day, and the reaction is almost always the same; cook something satisfyingly spicy, in this instance mulligatawny soup.  My version is a bit spicier than most because a home made garam masala is used in place of curry powder, and to cook the chicken and make the broth, a nice hot pimento pepper is used along with a clove studded onion.  Oh yes, quite yum, and then later to Hyde Park.  No actually later to see Argo, a quite tense, quite good movie actually, and then cocktails with friends.  Today promises to be a bit warmer, so finishing the bulb planting is almost a must do chore, as is the bloody exam grading.  What's the solution, why cook something else satisfyingly spicy for Sunday supper rather than deal with dirty exams, or dirt and exams.