The pictures are staying on my camera for now, cause I'm lazy, but I figured I should mention tonight's excellent collaborative dinner. pkdan brought and mashed potatoes with lots of garlic, willdevine arrived with some delicious dinner rolls, and iamjanjan amassed and assembled some excellent salad ingredients. It all went very well with the orange sherry roast chicken that my Crock-Pot spent the day cooking. I'll need to figure out a way to not turn a chicken into a falling-apart pile, as much entertainment value as that has. It came out so crisp the first time!

Evera also brought some mushrooms for gravy, so I turned them, the chicken juice from the crock, a little flour, and a dash of sherry into gravy that quite impressed me. I'll have to remember mushrooms in the future.

keeyoo even provided apple pie, without knowing it! (She makes damn fine pie, and we're lucky that Dan shared his.)

The house still smells good because I just put away the stock that I made from the chicken bones and such; it's been simmering since dinnertime. I'd already turned all of the stock from last month's chicken into fun things like chicken soup and spinach risotto.

Even though I didn't eat a huge amount tonight, I got full fast. I think my appetite hasn't quite caught up from the weekend. It better finish recovering, as I have two more big dinner nights coming up!

Before I went upstairs a little while ago, the TiVo switched back to Live TV, as it always does a while after you finish whatever you were last watching. I never watch "Jimmy Kimmel Live," but I'm glad I caught this Halloween clip. (Jimmy tests new Halloween candy on unsuspecting kids.) I'm still never going to watch the show, but I can appreciate the occasional gem.

Meantime, I'm off to sleep, but I'll be thinking about all my friends who are Veterans, my friends who are active service members, and all those who never came home. Thank you all.