Yep. Less time to get stuff done! But it should be a light week. I hope.
El Jefe always lets us ‘go home’ at 15:00 the day before Thanksgiving and the day before Christmas. But since I start at 06:15, it doesn’t do me a lot of good. So I ‘leave’ early (usually working from home) and just stay logged on until three in case anything urgent pops up.
Happy Moanday, everyone! As long as we’re sharing frustrations, I’m irked at the eye clinic. The latest contact lens should have arrived there at least a week ago. Actually, the woman who orders them was supposed to call me first, but she never did, so I’m thinking it probably wasn’t even ordered. I called last week and left a VM. No response. I called again this a.m. and was told “Jackie was moved to billing.” The guy said he’d look into it and call me back. Still waiting.
A teeny, tiny confession that will show my annoying side: I love the title of this week’s MMP, but the fact the “a” isn’t “an” makes me wince. See? Annoying! I spent too many years grading essays. Just roll your eyes and point to my Time Out chair.
In happier news, Al Vacado has leaves! I’m ridiculously excited.
I’ve been thinking of Oopsie all morning. I hope the surgery is going smoothly.
@swampbear, what do you use to marinate the steaks for Men’s Night? You always say they’re marinatin’, and I’ve always wondered.
wordy, I hope your dad is OK. It does sound like a stroke. Does your mom remember that she asked for other sides before? I’d be tempted to just say, “These ARE the sides you wanted, Mom.” You’ve got too much to handle already.
I regret to remind you that the CHRISTMAS IN YOUR FACE season begins before Thanksgiving is over.
Dressing is my favorite dish of the whole meal. Always has been. I wasn’t going to make any this year, since it’s just me, but now I’m waffling.
shoe, hope you’re feeling less cranky or, failing, that, have something to kick.
Thanksgiving has been decided. Now my niece is hosting dinner so we’ll be staying home. Nothing against my niece, and she has the bigger house with more room. I can’t take my dogs with me to her house, so I’ll stay home.
My spoiled brats have never been left home alone. We keep saying we are going to try leaving them for a few minutes and see what they do. They flip out if I leave them home with my son, but he says they calm down after about 15 minutes.
I got my estimate from the lawn guy. $3000 to take down the tree, which is what I was expecting. A tree guy will be helping him, and he said the tree really needs to come down. It’s dying.
I don’t know why I thought trees live forever unless something specific kills them.
Cornbread for the stuffing is in the oven. Tomorrow I’ll make some turkey stock for the stuffing and gravy. Turkey pickup is Wednesday and will likely also be pie and cranberry sauce day.
The wife heard from her cardiologist. He wants her to do a stress test, which I’m pretty sure means doing a treadmill thing while hooked up to the ECG machine. Basically, “let’s see if you have a heart attack while doing this” scenario. He also prescribed a beta blocker for the rapid heartbeats. She’s feeling depressed over it all, and I feel bad for her.
Not to mention a month of the fake “war on Christmas” yammering from the right.
Must be a hell of a tree! We just had a Japanese cedar cut down, and it cost $1,200. A neighbour asked the tree guy about at least one of her very tall, very complex cedars, and he told her $1,800.
There’s probably a recipe for that [
dressing]
Hah. It’s been awhile since someone has spouted off to me about the “war on Christmas,” but I used to say something like, “Yeah, and then there’s the war on Hanukkah and Kwanzaa. And don’t even get me STARTED on the war on Winter Solstice!”
I really do like Christmas. While I love spending it with family, it’s not always possible, and I’ve come to enjoy it as a day of quiet contemplation. One year 5 different friends invited me for Christmas. I felt blessed to be invited, but I told each that I was going to one of the other’s. Luckily they didn’t compare notes. 
My sister is one of those “It’s Merry Christmas, not Happy Holidays!” whack jobs. I ignore her.
Just finished baking not quite 11 dozen chocolate chip cookies. Three dozen are bagged and ready to go to the car guys tomorrow. The rest are going into containers, hoping at least a few make it till Thanksgiving. But I live with a cookie monster.
OK, the costume was a loaner for a kid’s b-day party, but he hasn’t changed with regard to cookies. 
We’ve ordered our new HVAC - 0% interest for 18 months, and it’ll be installed on Wednesday - as in the day after tomorrow! They had the units in stock and a crew available. So, wow!
It’s been an interesting day for sure…
It is actually exactly 45 days between Canadian and American Thanksgiving. And I am visiting my son in Boston for the American one. Except for last year (Covid) we have done this for at least 10 years.
According to Google, wild turkeys can and do fly. They roost in trees, although they feed on the ground. Amusingly, I got as far as typing “Can wild” and the very first suggestion that came up was “Can wild turkeys fly?” I guess it is the season for it.
Have a good trip metal mouse!
{{{wordy}}}
Irked, came home, froze whilst walking the dog and et. Ready for KP now.
I’ll be leaving out Wednesday for Dad’s. I’ll make pierogi, golumpki and halusky in addition to pie and taking cookies and fruitcake for Dad. There will be enough food to freeze in individual portions for him for a while. I’ll come home Saturday and Sis will be in from Houston late that night on her way to spend a week with Dad.
Stay safe and healthy y’all!
Well, it’s big.
A silver? maple between 70 and 100 years old.
It has a double trunk.
I think a good bit of the expense is that I live in the city, in a duplex, so you can’t just cut down a tree.
There’s not a lot of space to work in, and lots of stuff (fences, sheds, cars, houses, power lines) to damage if you do something wrong. There will be a six-man crew and cherry pickers.
Then there are the dump fees for disposing of everything. And cutting everything up to the appropriate size for the dump to take it, nothing can be more than 4 inches in diameter. It would be great if I had some land where it could just be dumped.
I’ll have to check with a friend if he wants some of it for firewood.
We had a triple-trunk maple cut down… three years ago? Four? Same guy did it. I think that one cost around $800. They didn’t have a cherry-picker. They just climbed the tree and cut their way down. I think there were four guys. There was a 10x50 travel trailer that had been built onto the house in the '70s. We had to have that demoloshed before they could come out. That was expensive, but it wasn’t part of the cost of felling the tree because we were demolishing it anyway. Just a timing thing.
We’re rural-ish. Not out in the sticks, but no sidewalks. The crew shredded the branches and took them away as part of the cost. The tree and the branches they didn’t shred were cut into 16-inch chunks and left in the yard. I cut it up for firewood. Actually, the very large pieces (a couple of feet across), I just finished splitting a few months ago. We still have enough of the maple to last through Winter, then there’s the cedar that was damaged in the storms in January and February. Three-seventy-five for that one, and they felt bad about charging so much because it only took them about half an hour. (I’d already chunked and split the tops that fell.) And now I have a big pile of wood from the tree that was cut down last week. I have a lot of chopping to do, but there are still logs from the storm-damaged tree to get through. Whew!
Howdy Y’all! We’re home from men’s night. Good crowd on hand as as usual 'twas fun. We bugged out a little early just cause. Hey, we did set up, so clean up is someone else’s job.
Nellie I like to marinate steaks in Dale’s Seasoning. So yum!
{{{Wordy}}} dealin’ with agin’ parents is tough.
MetalMouse safe travels. Safe travels to all you other travellers as well.
Die appropriate/inappropriate appendages crossed for negative results.
Someone posted on Facebook:
Since “Thanksgiving” is now a loaded term, I am switching to “Winter Harvest Festival” as my idiom of choice.
I replied, ‘Why is ‘Thanksgiving’ a loaded term? Isn’t a Winter harvest festival a festival to give thanks for the harvest?’ and got dumped on a little. I haven’t replied.
I don’t know the number of Black men (primarily) that have been killed by cops and White Nationalists. We’ve just been through four years of the greatest danger to the United States since Jefferson Davis. Kyle Rittenhouse was acquitted. I haven’t seen how the trial of the three men who gunned down a jogger in Atlanta is going. Texas has outlawed a woman’s right to choose, and other states want to. Climate change is causing disasters, yet no one will do anything about it – and if they try, they are pilloried by a large segment of the U.S. population. We’re in the middle of a worldwide pandemic, and my fellow Americans are too stupid to be vaccinated or wear a mask. Democracy is under assault by people who are supposed to be conservative – you know, people who are supposed to be opposed to anything that changes the Constitution. Racism is now undisguised in this country. The rich are getting richer, while everyone else is getting poorer.
Frankly, I’m facing outrage overload. So please forgive me if I didn’t know that ‘Thanksgiving’ is a taboo word now.
wow big difference in price
I was expecting $3000 though, that is what my neighbor is paying to have hers cut down
But I think a lot of has to do with the tight area to work in
I have so much iced tea at work that I haven’t had a hot cuppa in a good long while.
But tonight was a mostly-cold supper (bread, cheese, tomatoes, roasted garlic) and a nice, hit cup of tea seemed like just the thing!
Man, it’s barely 8 p.m. and I already wanna go to bed.
Evening all. Managed to tidy up a bit and get a 45-minute nap in this afternoon. Ate out so that I’m not leaving any dirty dishes when I leave. Still need to pack but I have made my list (always make a list) and shouldn’t take me too long, will do it before heading off to bed. Also want to get a list of about 6-8 passwords for the laptop, since some of them have changed since I last used it (about 5 months ago). Except for stopping on the way out of town for gas, the car is set. So all I have to do is get up when the alarm buzzes (and I’m pretty well Pavlovian-trained for that).
flyboy, just a note; I share many of your frustrations, but we do tend to keep the politics on a ‘low boil’ here in the MMP; it seems to work out. And never heard of Thanksgiving being a loaded term.
FCM, that’s a cute picture.
Cookie, stress tests are not fun…but then I guess they’re not designed to be. Hope the Mrs. come through well.
nellie, keep after those eye people.
Dicey, fingers crossed that the tests are negative.
talky, hope Dad-unit recovers; agree with several others, it sounds like a mild stroke.
quietly, enjoy the Mega-Campout.
OK, finish up my list and head out to Pack. If I don’t get back with you for a couple of days, then either my password doesn’t work or the Wi-Fi in Missouri and Kansas stinks.
When I lived in the Santa Cruz mountains, the tree guys would pay us for redwoods except the ones close to then house. Those we would have to pay them to take. Close quarters makes things much harder to remove trees safely.
No comment. 
Safe travels!