Yeah. I’m feeling WAY better (yesterday’s rest was very helpful) and I’m most likely working the drive window - again - tonight. Which is fine; it’s the easiest role for me, both physically and mentally.
Ironic, considering 1a.) I don’t much like people, and 2b.) I suck at math.
But ten-second interactions, where I can actively help people, plus a register that does most of the math homework for me? Pssshhh.
Example: harried looking woman comes up my line. Confirms name, pays, but she’s very abrupt. I see children? chimpanzees? clambering the back seat.
I’ll lean out and in my best Southern syrupy voice, coo out, “You want some paper plates, hon, so you don’t have to do the dishes tonight?”
I LOVE seeing the look of relief and gratitude on their faces. They’re almost always, like, OMG YES PLZ.
One time I offered parmesan and red pepper flake packets to a guy picking up an order his girlfriend? babymomma? wife? called in. He looked at me bug-eyed and said, “Oh, man, she woulda killed me if I forgot. THANK YOU MA’AM!”
You are welcome. Have a great night, and be safe out there. (My standard sign-off since Covid started.)
Hi all. I feel better today. I am watching two football games. One on the porch so I am back and forth watching the Ga/Gnats games and Ohio/Michigan. I stripped the bed and am doing laundry. Blankets and mattress cover too. I think I’ll put some beers in the freezer and partake of a few. It’s 80F and sunny and Hot.
I need to scrub my bathroom and clean the floor in the cat room. I’ve been getting ants in her cat food. It’s the only place in the house with ants so I ordered some ant killer I’m going to spray along the edges of the walls. I don’t know how they are getting in. Fu#$()g ants.
I have four volunteer tomato plants that came up in the garden spot. I don’t know if I’ll leave them or till it up. I have some other stuff I want to plant. I have radishes and carrots in the big raised bed. I also have a lot of weeding to do but it needs to cool off a smidge before I get out there. I have some caladiums I need to get into the ground too. Hope it cools off soon.
I had some leftovers for lunch. I’m thinking I’ll turn the turkey into soup. I hate for it to go to waste.
A bit late with this advice, but a safer-around-pets option is boric acid/jelly straws.
Allow me to explain.
Boric acid is a cheap, white powder that kills insects. You mix a bit of boric acid with jelly (mint jelly is supposed to be the best) and snip a few drinking straws into segments. Use a toothpick to stuff the boric/jelly mix into each end, then tape the segments wherever you see ants.
The beauty of this is you can put them where critters (and kids) can’t get to them.
The ants will dutifully march the poison jelly back to the nest, and eventually feed it to the queen.
I’m not gonna lie, it takes a while for them to fully disappear. But it’s cheap and safe.
Y’all will be relieved to know that Monkey got some catnip. It’s warm enough to let him out today, so as long as he was rolling around on the driveway like an idiot anyway …
Then he got the munchies and started howling at me, so he got some gooshy-food, too.
Dumped the litter box and tossed a month-old container of milk (!!) so to avoid risking forgetting, I just dragged the damn bin out to the curb now. A day ahead beats hanging onto a full bin for a week, ammirite?
I made a trip up the lake to drop off some new pieces at the gift store, and got some potentially good news. The dude who runs the store had mentioned the possibility of me providing bread serving trays to a restaurant, and that may happen…something like 75 of these things at a decent price. That’d keep the wolves from the door for a while. And he’s in talks with Bloomingdales about getting some of our stuff there.
Laundry is finally done - FIVE LOADS!! Supper will be chicken teriyaki over rice and broccoli on the side.
I’ve been making the base parts of the finger puppets - after I have a bunch, I’ll make them into whatever critters - mice, elephants, frogs, monsters - I’ll figure it out as I go along.
Howdy Y’all! Been a very slothful, lazy day at da cave. Slothful as in laid up in bed watchin’ tackleball (like Butters we were keepin’ an eye on both the Dawgs/Gnats (the gnats got swatted good!), and the OSU/Michigan game). On top of that the South Keerliner Chikins beat the Clemson Kitties. Been a right fun day of kolledge tackleball. We have supped and now continue chillage, sloth, and general overall uselessness.
I wound up spending over four hours at the dealership, and had possibly the worst service guy ever. I really hope he’s just new.
At the 2.5-hour mark I got the “maintenance assessment” text message, and declined their recommendations that I get an alignment and balance the tires because I’d just had both done 3 months ago. Granted that was also 4000 miles ago, but I wasn’t prepared to repeat those expensive items so soon (or to wait there for much longer). No one ever came out to talk to me about the recommendations, or to ask why I’d declined them.
At the 3-hour mark I texted my service guy to ask for an updated completion timeframe…and, magically, the car was done! The oil change and recall fix were covered, so I didn’t owe anything, and after a quick checkout with the cashier I was told to wait at the curb and someone would bring my car up.
After 10 minutes I texted the service guy, asking if he knew where my car was. “It might still be getting washed; I’ll check on it.”
*crickets*
After 10 more minutes, I went back to the cashier and asked if she could find out where my car was. Turns out she had “misfiled” it.
Someone finally brought my car out, and I discovered that all of my radio presets had been wiped…annoying, but nothing compared to also discovering that I couldn’t turn the heat/ac fan all the way off! And the service guy had no idea what the issue was! He had to go ask someone: turns out the recall fix was more like a complete system update, and acted like a reset — and, for some reason, brand-spanking-new BMWs need to be driven for a little while before the system “settles”/fully resets. (When I bought my car it had been driven from another dealership to the dealership I bought it from [~30 miles], so I never drove it from “zero.”) It’s fine now.
I left very annoyed by the overall lack of customer service, and by my service guy’s lack of knowledge. Even though the location of this dealership is way more convenient, I’ll be going back to the one that’s near work while the car is still under warranty.
I skipped putting gas in the car but I couldn’t skip the grocery store, and it was nearly 3:30pm by the time I got home. I’d left the house at 9:45am. *sigh*
I’ve been home for almost three hours now, and I’m mostly over it…I appreciate y’all letting me get the last of my venting/ranting out.
Evening all. Treated the family to breakfast at Bob Evans, had pancakes and bacon with Orange Juice and 8 hours later I’m still not hungry. Then do my usual wander-about, most of it at the St. Louis Science Center. They had a Jane Goodall traveling exhibit (I heard her speak once many years ago and am a fan) and saw an IMAX films on caves (mostly underwater ones) and put up numerous arches made of styrofoam blocks (mostly helping kids who weren’t tall enough to hold up a 7-ft high construction). Then filled up my tank (gas in Missouri is $3.05 for standard gas vs. $3.76 in Illinois. Am now resting at Brother’s (they were decorating their church for Advent/Christmas) before heading back and start organizing for the voyage home.
Oopsie, sounds like a strongly worded message to that dealership wouldn’t be a bad idea…not the best customer service.
VanGo, hope the deals go through for you.
shoe, you are good people (ref the lady and the plates). May you be able to get as stoned as Monkey…
FCM, you sorta knew them coming up near you would be a trial, hope it works out.
Happy anniversary to Allie, Nettie; and how’s that chilled beer…
OK, I’'ll hopefully be back home by 4pm tomorrow and will update you on my travels, so all y’all take care.
It spit rain much of the day, so the dog park was a no-go. I did take Nelson with me to the post office to drop off a card in the mailbox though, so he had a car ride.
All of the Thanksgiving leftovers that I brought home are now gone. Tomorrow’s Sunday dinner will definitely be lighter and healthier. I got a good deal on some plant based meatballs, so I decided to make a vegan Italian wedding soup (I know, I know…it’s not really Italian, but a creation by corporate food giants to sell us soup, but I like it).
I’ll play some more in the studio, then hit the hay. Such excitement!
As I mentioned in another thread, we gave cutting up the turkey into sections and cooking it that way a try this year. Worked out pretty good actually. Everything cooked much more evenly, didn’t take as long, and the leftovers went into the fridge as is. It got a lot of the tidying up process done ahead of time.
Glad your games worked out~mine did too! Nebraska beat Iowa when it was too much to hope for! Feels great to end the season on a positive note.
A single roofer came and futzed around with the roof but no nails were pounded and there still is a stack of shingles in the back yard wrapped in bundles. No clue as to what is happening. Do not have a good feeling about this but it isn’t like I can clamber up a ladder and check their work.
Turned out to be a do-nothing day. Pulled on jeans under my flannel nightshirt and declared that was enough ambition for the day. Read, drank coffee, read some more and watched an early season of Call The Midwife, favorite books of mine turned into a very favorite BBC series. Make that watching, still have at least 9 seasons to watch. With luck I’ll make a dent in another season tonight.
Welp, I went and did it. Whacked up some cabbage, packed it in a container with some salt, let it rot for week or so and WHAM! Sauerkraut!!! Next up, find some spareribs and see if I can make some potato dumplings to go with said sauerkraut. I used to buy Panni dumpling mix but for whatever reason it’s gotten stupid expensive, if you can find it. So I guess I’ll try making my own.
I left a review for a hotel where we stayed Friday at a casino in Las Vegas. Spoilering because it’s long.
Summary
Check-in was quick and friendly, and parking was convenient. The room had a nice view of the city lights. Downstairs, things started going downhill when we went downstairs to look for something to eat. We were told buffets have become scarce in Las Vegas due to COVID, and the buffet had been replaced with a food court.
There are like three restaurants on the casino level. One looked promising, only their electronic menu was only showing pages of breakfast offerings and we wanted dinner. The next place had us at ‘escargots’, but at 5:30 in the afternoon they said we couldn’t get a reservation. We ended up at the Mexican restaurant. My surf & turf was very good, but my wife’s chile relleno was inedible. You’d think our server might notice, and offer to have something more palatable prepared. But after checking back one time after bringing our plates, he pretty much disappeared. So we had a poor dining experience.
After being on the road for four days, we needed to do some laundry. Strangely, a modern hotel only has coin-operated laundry machines. My wife had to go to a cashier to use her ATM card in exchange for a roll of quarters. What a pain. First, she had to get a minimum of $20. They needed her to present her ID. (You’d think her PIN would be sufficient, as it is everywhere else.) There was a $3.25 fee to use her own money to spend in the hotel. I think they might have pulled an Experian personal credit report on her too, but I was too busy watching my wife become angry to notice. I guess the hotel and casino are in bad financial shape if they have to extort fees from their guests.
When we went to the tiny laundry room, we saw three washing machines. Two were broken. There was a vending machine on the wall where you could buy detergent, softener, and bleach. Unfortunately, none of the slots were identified. It was a white box with four places to put money. But hey, it’s in a casino. I guess that’s why they call it ‘gambling’.
Back upstairs, we noticed that there was no coffee maker in the room. The casino where we stayed the other day had one in the room. The two other hotels each had one in the room. Boulder Station is like ‘We have a Starbucks.’ Now, my rule is this: Never get up before coffee. If you HAVE to get up before coffee, have coffee first. Complimentary coffee is the norm, in our experience. Come on. It’s coffee. We found out we could RENT a coffee maker for $5 per day. As I said earlier, the hotel must be in poor financial shape if they have to resort to charging for things that even budget hotels provide free of charge.
There were two of us staying. There was only one towel in the bathroom. For two people. There was no clock in the room. (One was brought up.) Wi-Fi was a pain to join. Apparently the Gideons were unable to leave a bible in the room. Security IS pretty tight.
A final indignity: We had a long drive, so we were both tired. In the bathroom, I decided to do sitting down what I would normally do standing up. The toilet was very low. Not a HUGE problem, but the water was kind of high. When I sat down, well… Anyone for tea? Good thing it was unused water at that point.
I think I may need to cook a turkey breast. My friends have become turkey smokers…it’s just not the same. I want that turkey roasted juices to make gravy from. I had to make gravy from a roux and chicken broth, tried to do something to pair with the spice rub they’d done on the bird…was pretty good, but not quite right.
Morty Good on ya with the sauerkraut, not my thing, but you do you.
Boo Hoping the roofing continues apace and they finish before any shite weather arrives.
shoe Best wishes for a good evening at the drive through. And more stories of being a sickly (passive-aggressive) sweet southern lady, please.
flyboy After reading your review…snerk. Very well ranted. I’d be unhappy too.
