And we've past the summer solstice in the MMP

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

Yesterday was the first day of summer, but I guess it got lost among the Father’s Day stuff. Tropical storms, etc, are underway, too hot in many places, poison ivy flourishing - what’s not to love?? :rofl:

Maybe share a summer memory?

A big one from my childhood is tents. Not your typical camping tent, tho. Ours were whatever sheets and blankets we could salvage from the rag bag hung on the clotheslines, provided Mom wasn’t doing laundry. Otherwise, we’d have to use railings, fences, and lawn furniture to build our little retreats. Building them was a big deal, but I don’t recall what we did in them afterwards - probably just sat in the shade trying to stay cool.

And speaking of the last MMP - thanks for the book suggestion, nellie - I ordered it for Roxy!

Happy Moanday!!

2

First! It’s good to be juvenile!

Good Mornin’ Y’all! Up and caffeinatin’. YAWN ‘Tis 74 Amurrkin out and cloudy with a predicted high of 84 (BRRR!) and possibly rainy this afternoon. Or not. TWPTB are all willy-nilly today. I shall take care of some errands this mornin’ to include pickin’ up ‘scripts from the pharmacy and a trip to :astonished: Wally*World. :astonished: Tonight is men’s night over to the church house, thus steaks are marinatin’ and beer is chillin’. We shall head over there around fourish to do prep stuff for that. We shall squeeze in some requisite sloth as well.

I grew up in a small town. My area of said town included a community pool, rec center, library, and a drug store whose N.O,L. counter made the best burgers, grilled cheese sammiches, and lemon sours ever. Also there was a big open field behind where I lived. The pool, the rec center, goodies from the N.O,L. counter, Summer readin’ club at the liberry, and runnin’ wild in said open field comprised pretty much the daily Summer activities of my childhood. Then I became a teenager at which the point the pool, rec center, N.O,L. counter, and the requisite hooligan teenager things were the norm. Plus I have a Summer bday, so I got to do all that stuff and then get cake, ice cream, and presents. What could be better!

Now I need more caffeine and to feed rumbly tummy. Then, alas, alack, and bother of bothers, I suppose I shall purtify and don appropriate bein’ about the public attire. It’s just so hard to be me!

Happy Moanday Y’all!

3

Afternoon, mumpers! It’s a balmy 16C/62F here today and overcast. No rain predicted but there’s not a lot of blue sky in evidence either. Windows are open, hoodie is on!

My main summer memories are having the long 6-week holiday from school and spending most of my days out with the kids who lived on my street. We’d get our bikes and take off for most of the day, our parents never really knew where we were, they told us where we were not supposed to be :slight_smile: and left it at that. We were supposed to stay together as a group, and come back when it was time for dinner. Other than that, we had free rein to do whatever we wanted. A lot of it involved going to a local patch of what was pretty much wasteland and a few trees that extended from the top end of our street uphill to a housing estate and a large playground. We would haul ourselves and our bikes up there, spend our time playing around, building forts and dens, hiding and generally doing what kids do.

When we got too old for that kind of thing, I’d graduated to pretty much living in the local library so I spent an awful lot of my summer reading instead.

Busy week for me, got loads of work on as we are approaching the summer Board of Examiners meetings so massive amounts of marks to be checked, chased up, calculated and reported on. It never seems to end, but it does actually, on 19th July when we have a deadline to release our final batch of marks and results for continuing students. The final year students have to be done by early July so we have scrutiny meetings this week and the BoE meetings next week…oh joy, I get to attend all of them. Envy me!

4

ive posted it before but heres where i live and its supposed to be between 95 and 105F this week

5

Good morning, everyone.

Ah, summer memories. Yep, as a kid, I spent time with my neighborhood friends and we built forts, or commandeered tree forts, rode or bikes all over tarnation and back, fished, swam, rode horses, and played in sprinklers.

As a really young child, summer meant spending a week or two at Grandma’s house in Oregon. Mainly I remember going fishing and camping with them. As I got older, summer meant doing all that was described above with breaks for summer camp and fishing and camping trips with friends.

As I became a teenager, summertime meant summer jobs so I could buy school clothes. That actually started by the time I was around 12. I wanted certain styles and brands and my mother stated if I wanted them, I could buy them, but she wasn’t (nor could she afford) going to buy them. So, that’s what I did. I still managed to have summer fun and still managed a week or two at a summer camp, even with my jobs.

Ah, hazy, lazy days of youth! But, chores always came first! We had to clean our rooms or weed the gardens before we were cut loose to play.

Speaking of summer, it’s gonna be a hot one today. The expected high is 90, which I know we’ll meet. It got darn near close to that yesterday. I don’t have AC, so it’s going to be uncomfortable, especially since my WFH office is upstairs.

We had a wonderful time with the kids and grandkids yesterday. Adam is just one sunny boy and such a strong guy. As soon as he saw me yesterday he crawled to me and put his arms up to be picked up. Zoe was playing shy girl, but she warmed up once there was some pool and splash pad time.

I really just want to take today off, but I need to square my timecard away since they did that last minute federal holiday thing and find out whether I am claiming premium holiday pay, OT or both since I had to work on what should have been my in lieu of day. It’s not a big deal. They should have just waited until next year for it to go into effect, but it’s just a little bit of an administrative headache. Sending out instructions at the end of the day on Thursday is not the way to handle it when many people have maxi flex or alternative work schedules and don’t work on Fridays. I dunno, depending on how things go, I may still ask to take some leave today. The thought of working in that heat does not excite me in the least.

Picked up some Rimadyl for Polar yesterday. Holy crap that stuff is expensive! Fifty one dollars for 20 tablets! That’s just craziness! He’s been on Dasiquin for a few months now, and while it helps some, it’s obvious that’s he’s struggling with some pain, so I asked to put him on Rimadyl. I gave him a tab yesterday and just a bit ago this morning. I am hoping I don’t have to give it to him everyday, but I’m out of the Dasiquin (it’s coming in the mail), and he needs some relief.

Well, I supposed I should get another cup of coffee and peruse the news some more.

6

Apart from our tent-building, we’d bike, skate (who else here used skate keys??) go to the local elementary school playground, taking sheets of waxed paper to wax up the old metal sliding boards - holy crap, did they get hot!!! There was a playground a few blocks away that was run by the county rec dept and they’d have activities - the one I remember most vividly was a crazy hat contest. Another elementary school a bit farther away was used by the rec people for, among other things, painting classes.

I took a couple, but didn’t really learn much. The teachers there had a tendency to finish your works for you. I remember wanting to paint a gold bowl full of white lilies. Instead of teaching me how, the teacher took the brush from me and changed the lilies to assorted colors. I think that was the last time I went there.

There was a pool less than a mile away and when we had enough cash, we’d go there for the day. Most vivid memory of that was the summer I Can’t Get No Satisfaction came out - it was played over and over and over on the jukebox. To this day, when I hear that song, I can see the pool full of kids!

And I did a lot of reading. We were required to turn in 6 book reports at the beginning of the school year. The nuns apparently didn’t believe in summer vacation! And, of course, there was the ice cream truck - Good Humor popsicles for a nickel. That was a lot of money to a kid in the mid-60s. Good times!

As for today, I’ve finally showered and dressed, tidied the kitchen, loaded the bread maker to mix up some pizza dough for my daughter, removed the masking tape from the chalkboard area and touched up the bits of paint that got pulled off, and I reinstalled both doorknobs. Last night, I finished putting the last of the hexagons together, so now I’m going to figure out how to edge the stupid thing. I have to figure out what size hook was used so I don’t screw up the gauge - I think it was E, I hope it wasn’t D - that’s just too small to deal with, especially with my eyes! :stuck_out_tongue:

7

It’s drippy outside and inside. Currently waiting for the plumber to deal with the inside drippiness (bathtub faucet) but outside will have to take care of itself, I guess.

8

Happy Moonday!

It’s a sunshiny 79 degrees outside, supposed to get up to 92, feels like 101, today.
Very muggy and icky outside, all the dogs were moving in slow motion this morning.
I should go back out later today to mail my taxes, but I probably won’t.

Got home and went to feed the outdoor cat. I usually pull the door behind me, this morning I didn’t, so Echo burst out the screen door in pursuit of the cat. Then before I could grab the door, Ripple charged out behind her.
Bad dogs, but they didn’t go far. Outdoor cat ran under the porch and that’s all the further the brats went. Poor kitty is terrified, I’m sure.

This time of summer would be the water balloon battles. Boys against the girls. They were much better at it than we were. Sometimes the oldest boy in the neighborhood would join the us, then we would slaughter the boys.

Shit ton of stuff to do today. All of it annoying. Lots of phone calls to straighten out screwups that I didn’t cause. Bill that I paid, the money taken from my account, but not applied to the bill. Getting my son’s health insurance straightened out. Refinancing the house. Taxes are done, but need to be mailed in. My son finally got a job and he needs to sign up for all his benefits, which means I will be doing most of the irk on that.
All of these are things I have been irking on, but trying to get straight answers and figuring out the websites? I cuss. A lot. Not at the people I’m talking to. It’s not their fault the websites are shit and the systems are screwed up.

I had a skate key, wore it on a cord around my neck.

9

Morning Mumpers! I’m kinda sore today. A friend is putting in a sort of sunken patio in his lawn, and yesterday we put in the retaining wall. It was only about 20 feet of 6x6’s laid into the ground, but that involved a lot of work with a mattock and shovels. My hammies are sore. Who put the ground so far down?

Oh summer memories! Up until 6th grade we had a huge forest behind the house, I remember cutting a pathway through a big patch of cat briar leading to where the creek had a natural bride across, basically a tree had grown sideways and made a little pond. That creek also had a frog pond and we’d try to dam it up, or crawl through the culvert under the street. Mom had a bell on the porch to ring when it was time to come back for dinner.

One year a big tree got hit by lightning. The top got lopped off and the rest of the tree had 3 strips of bark stripped off vertically down. That was very cool to 10 year old me.

Supposed to get mid 80’s here today with high humidity. Yuck.

Now onward. It seems the glass has come in for my cabinet, so all of that furniture can get delivered to the client this week.

Stay safe, all.

10

Morning all. Still a bit sore from my weekend exertions (yard did get mowed before dark), so taking it easy this morning. Rain and possibly tunder-boomers expected this afternoon. Need to go do a few things prior to my mini-vacation starting tomorrow.

SARI!!! {{a gentle tacklehug}}. Long time! Glad to know Ripple and Echo are still trying to drive you crazy.

Taters, time with the grandkids is always special.

My memories of summer were going swimming (strange at it may seem, I haven’t been swimming for many years now) and the summer vacation. Brother and i were lucky in that our uncle liked to travel and once we were old enough he took us along, so we saw a lot of the Western USA as kids that our parents couldn’t afford (not that they were remiss-we went to Washington DC and Niagara Falls as a family). Really have missed the traveling, so looking forward to the short Vicksburg-Corinth-Clarksville trip ending with a meetup with red and Wizard. Also want to get away for a week or so in July–any ideas?

OK, need to clean up and get at the to-do list for today. All y’all take care.

11

Plumber has come & gone. Bathtub faucet seems to be drip-less, which means I have to - gasp - refill a water bowl for the cats all by myself!
Oh, noes! What a bother, woe is me.

Guy was nice, after an initial WTF moment. Walking in, he asked, “Are you a doctor?”

Me: …

Me: “Um. No?”

(I’ve never been asked that in my whole entire life.)

Plumber: Well, I saw all the mice, and I thought … ?

Me: :no_mouth:
(Inner me is thinking, “What, do you think doctors keep mice at home, for … in-house experiments?”)

I explained that I breed them because I have a couple of snakes to feed, and he unexpectedly goes, “Oh, I love snakes!”

Me: :slight_smile: (“Really? Cuz … boy have you wandered into the right house.”)

After he finished the faucet, I gleefully showed off Charm and Pretzel.
He was so happy to hold each one, and took selfies with both.
I was so happy to have a visitor that wasn’t all, “Ahh, eeek, ack, snakes!” and who was genuinely enthusiastic about meeting each snake.

12

Right now one of my clearest childhood memories is playing go fish in the backyard in the light of the full moon with my mom and sister one summer after the power had been out for several days. It was freaking magical.

Even more so was waking up to the AC kicking on two days later when the power was restored. I keep reminding myself of that because our power has been out since Saturday afternoon. We’ve been having all our meals outside, spending the day at the pool and sleeping in a pile on the floor in the basement, where it’s cooler.

Hopefully the kids will remember this as fondly as I remembered the same thing when I was a kid. But having spent the last few days sweating all over each other I can understand my mom’s crabbiness.

13

My mom had a bell, too. She refused to yell for us, and we knew we’d better get our buns in gear when she rang it!

{{{sari}}} Welcome home!!! What’s your young 'un doing for a living? Will he be able to support you in luxury in your dotage? :wink:

Since my last post, I’ve made and frozen the pizza dough my daughter requested and started working on the edging around the hex-lap-robe-from-hell. I tried watching several things on TV, but even with Netflx, Prime, and Hulu, I couldn’t find anything that interested me. How sad is that?? Oh, and the pack-and-play for Babby 2.0 has been delivered. I should probably open it and make sure it has all its parts.

At the moment, I’ve got a loaf of Italian herb bread starting in the bread machine - I’ll finish it in the oven. And I’ve set the timer for when the lasagna has to go in. Last big chore is to clear the dining room table so we can eat, but there’s time for that. For now, I’m going to get back to the aforementioned hex from hell.

14

Afternoon all.

BBbooo I don’t think I got round to the grandbabby 'grats last week- so yay for new grandbabby!

Shoe, if you ever call that guy in again, stick a fake human ear to the back of one of the meeces, I dare ya.

I read, but did not retain the rest.

It’s gloomy and rainy over here. Irk was… acceptable. Bit dull.

I’m starting to get ready to move again, which is only 3 weeks away now. As I’ll be moving again before September (to a place yet to be determined, near new skool), the plan is to stash everything not needed in the meantime in someone’s garage, and attempt a minimalist existence for the summer. Despite living out of a backpack for a year, twice, I’m not very good at the minimalism.

I’ll be very glad to get out of this place though. The new guy- believe it or not, I still don’t even know his name after several months in the same house- is yucky in the kitchen, and I’m pretty used to manky housemates. He just dumps everything in the sink, vaguely rinses it before using it again, then dumps it back in the sink afterwards. Today he’s apparently poured tuna juice in there, as well as all over the counters. He also appears to have a bowl of pet mould. I’m considering sticking googly eyes on it and getting it a name tag.

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Why, thank you! He’s gorgeous, healthy and his big sister is fascinated by him, slightly to his potential peril. I mostly spend big chunks of a day utterly devoted to her so she doesn’t feel pushed aside or relegated to less favored status-it’s working so far. I sneak in a cuddle with baby Sorenson after Harriet is tucked into bed or her dad has taken her with him to the store.

:crossed_fingers:t3::crossed_fingers:t3::crossed_fingers:t3:On finding a lovely new place to live soon, with windows on a lovely back garden and no pet moulds, near fun shops, food places and nature-loving trails and reserves. Friendly pubs a stroll away and reliable public transit out of sight til you need it.

16

I had a skate key, too.

shoe: did he have a ring on his left hand, 4th finger?

My grandparents had a cottage on a lake so we went there every weekend starting mid-May through September as long as the weather wasn’t nippy. All my aunts, uncles and cousins would come as well so we swam, water skiied, made sand cakes and decorated them with wildflowers, my favorites were the Queen Anne’s Lace, went for walks to the babbling brook, hunted mushrooms with my Babcia, accompanied my Dziadzia fishing occasionally, went for motorboat rides, rowed around in the rowboat, played badminton, caught butterflies on the empty lot next to the cottage, competed to see who could swing the highest on the swings without falling off, weinie roasts for dinner then watermelon and somemores.

Went in early and worked for 2 hrs catching up on some tasks left over from Friday, then vacated the office as it’s my jobshare partner’s day to work. Went in the Fitness Center and did a longer workout than I’ve done in a month, NuStep, leg press, crunches, bicep curls, and triceps. Would have liked to have done lat pull downs but decided not to overdo.

On Friday when I was at the Office Assistant‘s work station, I noticed she had a big box of bags of pinto beans on the floor. I asked her WTHeck. She said that one of the divisions had ordered them and thought they’d ordered several boxes of 12 bags each but it turned out there were 24 bags in each box so they received double of what they wanted. So, she was trying to offload them to anyone who wanted them. I took one bag for myself then texted 4 friends and our daughter to see if anyone wanted some. Two takers responded in the affirmative. So, after my workout, I called one of them to see if she was home so I could swing by and drop them off. The first thing out of her mouth was Will you take some eggs? She has chickens and now that it is hot, they are laying like nobody’s business and she has oodles. So, we exchanged then went to the Taco Hut where we ordered the crack Carne Asada fries, except we get it on corn chips rather than on fries. This stuff is like crack, so delicious. Went back to her house and sat out on a blanket on the lawn under the shade of a tree and just enjoyed a little time eating and relaxing.

17

BBBoo, you obviously understand the impact of a new baby on the firstborn. Good job giving Harriet a lot of attention! How do I know the importance of doing so? I was firstborn, 3-1/2 years old when my sister was born and I distinctly remember blocking her when she was crawling around so she was trapped under a chair. I believe it was because of all the attention she was getting and I was sad.

18

Grandchildren? I want one, too…

sari’s back! Yay!!

Good idea. :smiley:

19

Logged onto irk at 0600 today. I irked for about an hour and a half, and then my virtual desktop froze. Seconds later, it went black as Microsoft Remote Desktop lost the connection. I was still connected to VPN,m so this was a new one. Over two hours later, the problem was resolved. My computer was off. How? No idea. But I finally got a call from IT, got the clue, and asked a cow-orker to check it out. How could I be connected to VPN when my computer was off, when I’ve never been able to connect before when it was off? I don’t know. Must have something to do with the move to the new building.

20

Afternoon all. Actually accomplished things today, had my Sunday dinner (Longhorn Steak House) today, then picked up my usual Jersey Mike’s sammich for dinner, then got out cash for the trip. Came home and decided I might as well see if I could get my “Star ID” driver’s license, since that is going to be a requirement…someday. Turned out it was a half-hour wait but no problem in getting it (in the mail in a couple of weeks). Couldn’t find my SSN card, even though I seldom if ever need it I just feel more comfortable with it, so I ordered a new one on-line. So I have been active and productive.

Stormy outside now, so I think I’ll stay in and try to figure out the Garmin GPS for my travels. First leg isn’t hard, I-65S to I20W to Vicksburg–think I can remember that), but some of the others will require state and back roads.

Flyboy, I think the computers are planning to take over…

Cat Glove, eggs for pinto beans? Think you came out ahead, IMHO.

Nut, good luck on the move.

Shoe, you forgot the most important part of the story…did you get his phone number??

OK, back to soccer and figuring out the whys and wherefores of GPS. All y’all take care.