The pumpkin is out front. I think the squirrel's random mess looked better than my attempt to duplicate it. The fake jack o' lantern is out too. I guess that we are more or less ready and it is just a little after noon.

I honestly do not know if I will be able to put the pumpkin out front and if I do how long it will last. The squirrel has already been back to it several times. We were able to catch it in the act once. The quality of the picture is not very good. We took it with a telephoto lens from inside the house through a double pane window. So to make up for the lack of visual quality, I gussied up the picture.

It was just barely light this morning when I looked out to check on the pumpkin. The little fellow had been and gone. It was after the seeds and pulp.

The pumpkin does look scary. If I take it to the front of the house, I wonder if I can artfully enough arrange the shreds, strings, and remaining seeds. I also wonder if I do that, will the squirrels leave it alone? I am going to give this some serious thought because it does appeal to my off-center sense of humor.

If I can pull it off, pictures will follow.

I am still congratulating myself. Yesterday I successfully covered a papier-mâché box with fabric and lined it with decorative paper. This is the first time I have covered a box and feel extremely successful with it. I used a delightfully antique looking fabric print. It was wonderful and to think that was the way it came right off the bolt. Thursday I went to a local art store for some papers. I selected several Italian papers. For this box, I used a design of lemons because the color of the lemons echoes the color of the fabric. I will eventually post a picture of the box. I think I am going to work on the pumpkin first.

It has been a rainy day. One little squirrel has been extremely busy. As I prepared dinner, I looked out to see it sitting on top of one of the pumpkins. We had four pumpkins out on the garden wall; three of them were for us to eat. Fortunately, the squirrel chose the one pumpkin that was not for food. We are not certain what the squirrel was after. It probably did not eat the flesh but shredded it and spit it out. It may have been eating the seeds and pulp but there is still a lot of it there.

When Roger went outside to bring in the three food pumpkins, the squirrel very reluctantly left. After dinner I went out to take a picture of the pumpkin and shreds. By that time it was dark and the squirrel was no where to be seen.

Monday the Qwest lineman did come out. He said that our connectivity level is very low; he also said that a few years back Qwest modified the lines in our area. Apparently the connections are sealed some way to protect them from rain and snow. I guess that Qwest got tired of sending people out to check the lines when they got wet. The bad thing about this is that it is very difficult and sometimes impossible to make changes in the connections.

In our case, apparently the line carrying our DSL goes in and out of several branches. He wanted to give us a more direct line which was supposed to increase our connectivity. If he was not successful, he would have to turn it over to the DSL people; he just does line maintenance. By the time he left he said that he had doubled our level of connectivity but that was still half of what we were supposed to have and that he would turn it over to DSL.

Intermittently, we do have better connectivity but generally, it is the same low previous level. :-( To this point, it appears that no one from DSL has looked into it; certainly, no one has contacted us.

Someone finally replied to a message that we left with EarthLink. A very nice, hopefully helpful woman said that she had been out of her office for a few days. She acknowledged that there have been problems between EarthLink and Qwest and that she would try to check with Qwest about improving our service. We actually have no evidence that anything has happened or improved.

The new modem arrived yesterday. It is still in its box and we are wondering whether or not to open it until the issues between EarthLink and Qwest have been resolved.

Meanwhile, it is Thursday and that means it is time to work on the laundry. I wonder what is going to be sucked into a wormhole today.

Yesterday we went celebrate the 90th birthday of a friend of ours. It was a delightful afternoon. He is looking quite well and seemed to enjoy himself and all the friends and relatives who came. It was also a good opportunity for us to renew some old, very old friendships. It was a powerful reminder to us of how wonderful life is and how many good things are in it.

It seemed especially good to me to walk this morning.

At last we have been able to talk with a person rather than recordings at Qwest, our telephone company. We found out some disturbing information. Because we do not have service via fiber optic cable, our service is being downgraded. At this point, we have no choice; residential DSL service in our area is primarily through standard wire telephone lines. Qwest tells us that our telephone line which is entirely above ground and has been so for 30 years is not the problem. Someone came out to tell us that but did not visually inspect the line. He did say that for some inexplicable reason, at this point, we have a low connectivity level. Qwest will send someone out on Monday to try to find out why that is and maybe repair it. I suspect that Qwest will tell us there is nothing they can do about it because we are far enough out on their main line that they cannot reasonably maintain connectivity levels.

Please note that I have said this on Sunday 25 October 2009 before Qwest has "inspected" the problem.

EarthLink says that their modem is not the problem. We took the modem around to all the telephone jacks in the house and told EarthLink that the same problems exist at each one. EarthLink told us to set up the modem on a shorter wire which we did at great difficulty. Service is improved but not as good as promised. They have finally decided that we could have a new modem. I am not certain if we are being charged for it or if it is included in our monthly service charge. We could have paid more than 10 USD to have it shipped and arrive by mid-week next week or use EarthLink's standard shipping option without additional shipping charge and it will arrive at the end of next week.

I am so fed up with both Qwest and EarthLink. At the moment our internet access and connectivity are adequate and I am happy about that.

Yesterday while there was little else to do, I watched the birds with Mooch the cat. We had finished the winter preparatory yardwork with the exception of raking the leaves. The birds and squirrels were having a good time in the yard and garden. We had the usual assortment of birds for this time of year. By now, most of the western hemisphere robins have left our area but some generally will winter over here if they have an adequate food source. We see the occasional robin now and think that it is probably going to winter here. In the afternoon, Ben finished raking up the leaves. I still have to check the gardens to be certain the plants are adequately covered for the winter. For all practical purposes, we have no more yardwork until the winter snow flies and we must shovel.