My deepest sympathies, Sonny; death is never easy, but it is especially difficult when it is someone who is still young. I hope you and your family are able to find peace about your loss in the coming months. I'm sure all of us in the Square don't mind if you post about it here; we might be slow lorises when it comes to reading or posting, but I think we are our own odd sort of family here.

In short, many for you and yours.

I'm so sorry to hear about your sudden loss, Sonny. I know it must have been quite a shock. I'll be praying for you and your family. May you all find peace and comfort. *hugs*

You and your family are in my thoughts during this difficult time, Sonny.

Rough times, Sonny. When you are around, hope to hear how you and yours are coming along after your brother's passing.

Glad to see other residents of Ditto Town feel nostalgic about the old days when 10 or more pages of posts would pass in a day.

*Gorse One-Eye looks thoughtful as he considers the quiet of Ditto Town Square. "People come. People go," he says to ceppault. Ceppault replies, "Indeed, my old friend. That's Ditto Town."*

*pops in briefly*

How're y'all doing?!

Sonny, continuing to think of you in this grief.

I'm sure glad summer is pretty much over and my favourite season is about to begin. Some summers I wonder how I am going to make it through. But I always do, so there's that.

*waves cheerily to all the denizens of the good ol' Town Square* And just for fun, and because I can never find a good spot to put this emoticon ...

*pops in briefly for a cup of tea with Gorse*

Watching Hurricane Michael make landfall as a category 4.

It is feeling like Fall here. Been too warmish for my tastes. The leaves are changing color.

Hey ceppault!

I've been watching the hurricane coverage as well.

It's rained here pretty much all month, leading to saturated ground and localized flooding. And now there's snow to the northwest of here, and we may get the season's first flakes tonight. This cold, wet weather isn't doing well for the fall colors, but I hope to still get a chance to take a trip out of town next week if it dries out and warms up a little.

ceppault, are you safe from Hurricane Michael right now? Admittedly, I don't know a lot about hurricanes since I live so far away from any coasts, but I thought hurricane season was over. This one seemed to come out of nowhere.

I took a weekend trip with an 1 1/2 hour drive to get home today. I got to watch the world basically go from perfect fall colors to a world that looked like it had been dusted with powdered sugar. And then, of course, after I got to drive in it, the snow almost immediately melted. I have a feeling we're going to have a very short fall.

But, I had a fun weekend with local NarniaWebbers and I got to enjoy one last beautiful fall weekend, so I'm satisfied. I heartily ditto Jo - autumn is simply the best time of the year. Oddly enough, I've found that I've been getting very nostalgic memories of coming home from school - as in, elementary through high school. I never thought that I'd think back to those days so wistfully! Autumn does strange things to me. Strange, wonderful things. *Sighs contentedly*

Merry December y'all, sure is quiet around these parts. Just popping in to say hello and share a few updates. I'm in South Korea these days, gonna be here until around July or so. If y'all ever get the chance to visit this country, I recommend it. It's absolutely beautiful. I've got so many pictures of the scenery alone. Maybe I'll share them here sometime.

Any who, I start taekwondo classes on Monday. The instructor says it takes about eight or nine months to earn your black belt, so hopefully I'll be heading back to the states with a new skill and a cool belt.

It snowed thanksgiving weekend, with was super cool. I built a pretty neat snowman, which then immediately melted.

How is everyone these days? I can't wait for these Netflix projects to really pick up some steam and get this place bumping again. Its recently been brought to my attention that this march will mark eleven years for me spent on NWeb, that's pretty much the most constant thing in my life other than my family, tbh. Crazy how time flies. Hope all is will with everyone and if we don't talk before the holidays then Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, New Years, and a good Festivus to all.

Merry December to you too, nerd! Glad to hear you're doing well - hopefully better than your snowman. I was curious so I looked up some pictures of South Korea, and wow, you weren't kidding. It looks gorgeous out there. I'll have to add that to my list of places to think about visiting if I ever leave the States.

Good luck with your black belt! I took martial arts classes when I was very young, but my parents stopped paying for them when I stopped practicing. I've considered taking up tai chi again, but that's one of the many things I've thought of doing but never got around to.

I reached the point last year where I'd been on NarniaWeb longer than I was alive before I joined. That... was a strange experience. I still vaguely remember a time in my life before then, but I think at this point, I've been on longer than I was in school. Which is appropriate, because I feel like I learned almost as much on NarniaWeb as I ever did in school.

I'm currently househunting, which would be an exciting prospect if I could find anything I liked. I'm a first time homebuyer, so I'm learning as I go the kinds of things I'm looking for. Being on a pretty tight budget makes things extra fun. But, my realtor was the youth pastor at my old church and is a close family friend, so having someone I trust show me houses is a huge relief.

* wanders in while procrastinating *

Sonny, how are you and your family doing? I hope you are have a good measure of joy this Christmastide.

Nerd, that is so cool about South Korea! It is quite a lovely place, but most of my time has been either in the heart of the capitol or down by Busan. We should compare notes some time.

Rya, good luck house hunting! Keep us updated, if you don't mind.

Life has been...busy, to say the least. I ended up never getting any herbs in this year ( ), however my dad planted fifteen (no, I am not exaggerating) tomato plants and nothing else, so no one was lacking in tomatoes, at least. I was probably going out to pick between 5-8 pounds a week just to give away, and my parents were doing the same. It was rather ridiculous. He has promised to plant fewer tomatoes next year, but he is already playing around with a trellissing idea, which I actually think will be fairly promising. A local restaurant did similar a few years ago, and theirs seems to hold up quite well.

Otherwise, it has been mainly work, work, and more work. The smoke from the awful fires has cleared, which is very nice (if you're wondering, this is a comparative of what it looked like over the nearby port), however, mud after fires is also quite dangerous, as it ends up creating mammoth mudslides, among other things. But, at least you can go outside without a mask, and the fires are out.

Despite the fact that I don't get a break this year (yay, me), I'm quite looking forward to winter break. It's been one of those months where everyone knows what they need to do but they're all being cantankerous donkeys about every little detail, so nothing gets done. I'm hoping most of them being off for a week or two or three will help reset some of that. I'm just glad I get to avoid attending an end-of-year wedding.

Does anyone have any particularly fun or special plans for the various holidays? Beyond making unhealthy foods (yay, doughnuts!), I've not given it much thought yet.

Hiiiiii...... myself Minna I’m an Indian. I joined in this website to improve my fluency in English. Please help me when I would do mistakes in my post. Once again hello to all my frnds in the thread. thank you.

I’m intrested to be a pharmacist. I would like to hear Music in my spare times. I like to cook, but I haven’t cooked yet .I probably love Jesus than anything in this world. I’m very big fan of my mom. I would read horrible stories in my spare times too. My Big dream is to go to USA once in my life time.
I’m the boarding student in my college life (11&12grades) .One of the happiest moment is when I come home from my boarding college.

A hearty welcome to you, Minna. It's really good to have you here.

That's cool you would like to be a pharmacist! We have had a bit to do with pharmacists (here in Canada) over the decades and we have always found them very helpful, knowledge, and informative. All the best to you in this venture!

Music is wonderful, isn't it?! One of my top loves. Do you play an instrument?

I hope you can get to the USA at some point. (And just for the record, Canada's quite nice too. )

There are other followers of Jesus here on NarniaWeb too. You are certainly not alone in that.

Btw, your English is quite good. Keep practicing and you will feel even more comfortable with it. It takes a lot of courage to join a forum to post in what is not your native tongue. Way to go!

Welcome to NarniaWeb, Minna! It's great to meet you. Good luck in becoming a pharmacist! I get bad headaches and am on a few medications, so I know how important pharmacists are for our world.

I can imagine how happy you must've been coming home from boarding college! I've never been away from home for more than a few weeks, and even then it was so good to be home again! How many more years of school do you have?

Speaking of home, Lady A asked for an update on my house search, and... I'm actually in the process of buying one! I still have to get an internet provider, but other than that, pretty much I just have to get everything packed and wait for the closing date to come. It's still not quite real, but at the same time I'm looking forward to it. It's going to make my commute shorter but at the same time it's not very far away from my friends and family. It's a small little townhouse, but since I don't have a roommate, it's the perfect size for me.

Oh wow, Lady A, um... was canning all those extra tomatoes a viable option?? I suppose if you're going to have too much of something, tomatoes are better than, say, cantaloupe. At least tomatoes are versatile.

Yikes, sorry to hear you didn't get a break. I didn't get much of one, either, what with having basically no vacation time by the end of the year (yay headaches for swallowing up all my paid time off). But hopefully things at least slowed down for you a bit. My job slowed down considerably - to the point where trying to scrounge up enough work to last 8 hours was a bit of a nightmare.

We didn't do a whole lot special for the holidays this year aside from the typical Christmas/New Years festivities. Admittedly, it's kind of nice to be able to relax a bit and not have to worry about details. It helps that the only kids in the family are 6 and 2 and really only care about presents, so they're rather easy to please. (One of my favorite memories from this Christmas was my 2-year-old niece, who hasn't really cared about presents in previous years, opening a book this year, seeing it had a dinosaur on it, and immediately shouting, "I LOVE IT!" I think she was imitating her mom, but it was adorable nonetheless.)

Hi Minna, and welcome to the forum! I hope you find a nice spot here on the forum with us.

I'm glad the house hunt is going well, Rya.

As far as the tomatoes go, we actually did a chunk of canning, and freezing, and sauces, and salsas, and...yeah. What was the pilgrims' poem about pumpkin? "Pumpkin at morning, pumpkin at noon, if it were not for pumpkin, we should be undoon." That was us, except with tomato.

I did end up taking a little time off for the holidays, and was able to see one of my friends and her family, which I greatly enjoyed. It was over all too quickly, though, and then everything was back to normal. We're actually understaffed right now, so I'm hoping we can bring a few more people on. We've had a couple leads (thank G-d), but nothing concrete, yet.

Rya, that story about your niece is super cute. Little people are so entertaining!