Just got a call from SIL. Among other things, it looks like we’ll do Thanksgiving at our house this year. I hope turkeys go on sale early enough that I can thaw and smoke one. I’ll roast a second one, and share all leftovers with Daughter. We’ve still got a meal or two of last year’s birds left! Yum!
Quick drop-in as I’m juggling tasks today. Hullos and hugs all around! But @Taters, about the below:
I assume this has worked well for your pups? I agree with the super expensive assessment, but poor Ollie suffers terribly from Teh Itchies. He’s currently receiving monthly shots of something in addition to half a pill of Apoquel each day, and he still scratches a lot. All of this is quite costly, so if I could replace his food and actually address his allergies, it would be huge and more than worth the expense! I’d love to hear your experience with it.
You and me, both, sister! I am delighted to report it is fixed at last and all looks back to normal, so you shan’t hear of it again. 
What an ordeal! Knock on wood, I’m done with homeowner’s entropy for awhile…
More later if I can. 
Less broken things today, but the one(different) printer jammed. Had a bunch of left in building stuff. I did my Senior Day shoppong, now it’s naptime before hockey.
Stay warm and good luck!
You have an Otis.
< waves at FCD >
Umm, you are under the weather. Relax.
< board cracks slightly <
I hate you.
It was as you foretold - dog care will be mostly up to you!
I’m making “jambon beurre”, French ham and butter sandwiches for lunch. It was something we ate in France and I miss the simplicity of this sandwich. I have some fancy ham on hand, and a couple of little baguettes. I think I’ll make endive and apple salad to accompany them.
there was the turtle…
Started Typing: 1:02 PM ET
Clicked Reply: 2:37 PM ET
Last night I slept with the bedroom window open for the first time in a long time – and the first time since Bailey died. It was weird to go to bed knowing that I didn’t have to worry about her hearing/smelling something in the middle of the night and barking her head off, but I think I’m finally starting to be able to appreciate things like that. Acknowledging the related silver linings still makes me feel kinda guilty and kinda sad, but less than it used to. Progress/healing! 
Something in the office HVAC is not playing nice with my head today: my eyes are a little itchy, my nose is a little runny, and my sinuses are a little…um…sinus-y. I’m definitely not sick, just feeling kind of “meh.” My last meeting ends at 4pm, and I plan to head home shortly afterwards so I can get away from whatever’s bothering me. Tomorrow I’ll work from home; hopefully Monday’s environment will be back to “normal.”
Thanks to those who extended Yankees condolences. 
I’m always sad when there’s no more baseball in the year that I care about, but there’s no denying that the Blue Jays deserve the ALCS spot. The World Series is usually shown on network TV; I might watch some of those games, but I won’t give a hoot about who wins.
It’s a local, semi-pro chamber music chorale.They’re fully staffed for the current season, which recently started, but in May they’ll be performing Beethoven’s Ninth with an orchestra and they’re looking to bulk up all of the voice parts for that. If accepted, I might also be “on call” during the season. Then, if both the group and I have a good experience with Beethoven, I’ll see if they need any new altos next season.
I’m not at all sure whether I’ll actually enjoy performing this genre/with this group, but I’ve stepped away from jazz (after ~16 years) and am in a kind of musical limbo. I miss singing some classical repertoire, I miss harmonizing, and I know that the level of musicianship in this group is solid; I think it’s worth auditioning. I was classically trained in high school and college, and last took classical lessons 14 years ago to reinforce some “basics” as I got more into jazz, but since then my range has lowered from soprano to alto and I’ve definitely needed to dust off some technique. It’s entirely possible that I won’t be strong enough for this group, in which case I’ll get to decide whether I care enough about joining them to take regular voice lessons for a while (spoiler alert: not bloody likely).
The audition will be just me and the director, and is only supposed to last 15 minutes:
- vocalising
- an a capella excerpt of my choice (I’m singing “Heavenly Grass”)
- sight-reading (this is my biggest concern: I play the piano and read music, but my vocal sight-reading is on the weak side)
- the alto line of a provided chamber piece
Thanks for asking.
Ooooo, nice!
One of my direct reports has turned a watch-collecting hobby into a business; mostly Tag Heuer, but also other brands. He’s gotten a little name for himself related to the Tag Heuer items, and someone from the company actually contacted him earlier this year to arrange to buy a few rare watches from him to add to their museum. They’re also paying for him and his fiancée to go to Switzerland later this month and attend a museum event. Not a bad little side hustle!
YOU MAY NOT CONSOLE ME YOU IRRATIONAL GLOATING YANKEES-HATER!!1!
One would hope!
Bleh! 
My program supports a Navy command, and the October calendar we’ve been presenting during our weekly status meetings has both Columbus Day and the USN birthday noted. I added the latter, because sucking up (just a little) never hurt anyone.
Ooooo, that’s an even better one for me to note…thanks!
(My customer is SSP.)
Finally hauled our butts out to Costco. Picked out a couple of new frames for regular and sun glasses, then walked out $400 poorer. Make that an even half/G after a few groceries went through the scanner. Well, I needed to update the prescription and to have a spare set. At least there was very little wait.
I managed to slog through the misery of getting logged on to my wife’s TSP account and got her money redirected to a different bank account, which I thought would finish up things with that account. Then found out that her government retirement check is also going there. What a PITA.
Another sunny, mild day in MSP. There is apple tasting going on downstairs in a bit, so we may go check it out. The kitchen put out an Oktoberfest dinner which was surprisingly good. Pork chunks in a gravy served over spaetzle, and a rather odd Polish sausage en croute that actually worked very well.
Nice work if you can get it!
Speaking of irk, I was unable to connect to my desktop computer earlier this week. Our IT Support fixed it for me. Now another guy from the same company is asking my why I have to connect to my desktop computer. I told him that Easytrieve won’t run on the company-issued laptop, so I can only use it on my desktop… which I have to connect to on the server they want to discontinue. He suggest they just put Easytrieve on my company-issued laptop. 
I haven’t heard anything about hiring a college kid to convert my programs into something new-and-improved (Python keeps coming up here), and to teach me how to use them. If we absolutely have to lose Easytrieve, we can go back to manually editing the data like we did over 20 years ago. Of course, there were four people working the data then, and now there’s only me. So getting rid of my programs will be a bit time-consuming.
Last November I bought six tins of Riga Gold smoked sprats. They’re smaller than sardines. I ate a couple of tins, but they’re two servings each. One tin I ate out of hand. The second one, I mashed them up and made sprat-salad sandwiches. I’ve just eaten another tin. Yep. Two servings is a lot. I did give Goo one, and she ate it up.
And a good mid-afternoon all. I have managed to do almost nothing since my last missive (I did move from the computer to the living room for a bit and get some snackage done). Truly a RDOS day so far. In a couple of hours I’ll go coach the 6-7 year olds and then maybe a little gym time this evening, but sloth has been the order of the day. Up to 75F so would be a beautiful day to be outside if I could be bothered to do so. Did do some online stuff and reservations for a 2026 vacation, so haven’t been totally inert, but just not feeling much like doing anything today.
So let’s see if the Mumpers were a little more active than I have been…
FCM, yep, you have to be a Kroger member to get a lot of the deals. And mine ring up full price and then discount when you put in for the total (I always double-check). Enjoy walkies.
Pilot, my STL memories go back farther, to Whitey Herzog and Jack Clark, Willie McGee, Tommie Herr and Vince Coleman. Used to see 8-10 games a year in the left field bleachers (our chanted motto “Right Field Sucks”). Good times. Haven’t followed them much for several years, part of my overall ennui with baseball.
Yeah, that’s what I said 2-3 repairs ago…but I do hope your problems are over.
Oopsie, you’ll never forget Bailey, but you will learn to live life without him and apprecaite new things…but you’ll never forget.
Ok, back to sloth for another 90 minutes or so. Keep on keepin’ on.
Evenin’ all.
In the latest update of the shipping crap to Germany, my one-man-Latin-Drama friend has just discovered that everything needs to be in cardboard boxes. It does clearly say this on the website, and I had asked him about it several days ago, but he assured me that this wasn’t really the case and he’d cleared it with the company.
I therefore spent most of the day trying to track down the biggest delivery boxes I could find at irk to stuff it all in. Some of it is going to need repacking though, because there’s no way I’ll find boxes the same shape as the motley collection of luggage he found second hand while frantically packing. I’ve not found enough yet, as the guy from the mailroom is currently away, and the teenage temp replacement is unnervingly easily confused and didn’t seem to understand the ‘please save me some boxes’ request. Normal guy should be back next week, hopefully. I can wait until then. This pile o’ stuff’s been sat round over a year; it is even more in the way than it was, but it’s not critically urgent.
In ratty news, the fluffy chaos balls are definitely starting to get more interested in me, at least as the supplier of food, even if they do still freak out occasionally when I do something uncouth like breathe or twitch- having just ignored me walking past and sneezing. One of them actually crawled out allll the way onto my arm earlier, but then the other promptly bit my hand. It’s not aggressive, and it’s not breaking the skin, she just has no manners at all.
Not I.
It’s been gray all day here and intermittently rainy. Which I find pretty enervating. I’m still in my wakeup PJs and other than a small snack in early afternoon have eaten & done exactly zero. I’m much more bummed than annoyed about GF’s idjit friends. But their blow-up isn’t helpful to our cause. GF isn’t upset w me, but it can’t help but generate awkward moments and tradeoffs going forward.
Oh, shortly after my 0600 get-up I did reheat a load of clothes that had spent the night in the dryer and once de-wrinkled I put them away. So I can put that in the daily plus column.
Should’ve taken a nap in early afternoon; too late now. Will shevel & seek dinner sometime. Better be soon if I want to enjoy happy hour pricing on a mini-meal.
Howdy Y’all! I make some dang good soup if’n I do say so myself! We just had an early sup of soup and cornbread. We’ll have it again tomorrow. The rest of the soup is in pint containers and will go in da freezer for later consumption when it cools down a bit more. Outside of soup makeage, it’s been a lazy RDOS day. Been cloudy and dreary, and though not cold or even cool out, a good day for soup. Soup. I am obsessed with soup today. Beef/veggie/barley soup.
This post brought to you by soup.
Thank you. The big difference between your most unfortunate problems and mine is that my problem was a water line that I stupidly buried under a concrete patio that I poured without first ascertaining where the line ran. I made sure to run the repair entirely under dirt around the patio so it can be gotten to much more readily should another leak occur. Which is unlikely. We used good materials and protected the PEX line with conduit as well. Nothing else can fail that will be nearly as costly exciting as this one was! But again, my thanks for your good wishes!
Not so far. FCD takes care of feeding, cleaning up, most of the in/out adventures, and bedtime. He’ll also deal with all of the grooming. And he’ll be the primary handler for the training classes, but I need to learn the techniques and make sure Otis listens to me. I will accept walking the dog - I need the exercise and getting the dog out is a motivator to me. And we had a good walk today. According to the online map, we did a mile.
And the search for puppeh food can stop. He’s eating the stuff I bought. We figure his first few days here he was off his feed for reasons. But today he snarfed down all his food plus some carrots. So with luck, he’ll start adding weight to his bony frame. He’d lost about 3# from when he was picked up by animal control to when we took him to the vet. Pretty sure he’s got his appetite back. Yay!
And now, chillage time!
Sis and I hit two church lady resale shops (IOW, not just thrift, but antique and boutique stuff) where we both found some things for ourselves. After, we hit the grocery store. I picked up a half dozen bakery cookies for the maintenance guy that I’ll take to the office tomorrow. I’ll also take a package for a former resident of this apartment that arrived at my door while we were out. Now for chillage.
On typical fashion for us, after not seeing my wife since Sunday because I had rehearsal every night, today I got home just as she was leaving for her rehearsal.
I think tomorrow we may actually be in the house at the same time.
[quote=“Misnomer, post:147, topic:1023713”]
The audition will be just me and the director, and is only supposed to last 15 minutes:
* vocalising
* an *a capella* excerpt of my choice (I’m singing “[Heavenly Grass]( Heavenly Grass - Song of America Song of America )”)
* sight-reading (this is my biggest concern: I play the piano and read music, but my vocal sight-reading is on the weak side)
* the alto line of a provided chamber piece
[/quote]
Cool. Have fun!
Nobody ever feels confident in the sight reading. Except me and my wife, because we are sight reading nerds. Still more stressful in audition than rehearsal. I will say that counting is your friend; if nothing else, get the rhythm.
(I have no idea what I’m doing wrong with quotes.)
GAME ON!
And I’m up from naptime, having a Royal Hawaiian, Smoked Paprika Chicken with bacon cheddar potato rounds.
USN personnel on 04/11/00: “Our new ship is sinking! Wait, it came back up. Wait, our new ship is sinking again!”
{{{{Oopsie}}}}
The hurt does dull a bit, but the good memories remain(I love all the Gordie FB memories I get).
Like Spot, her love language is laceration.
I had soup for lunch.
Not unusual for shelter animals. Prison changes a man.
Training was easy. The usual food safety. I learned to cut pickles.
New smoke alarms in everyones apartment.
I came home, noticed it, went toward the bathroom. The door was almost closed ( I dont close it) and the toilet seat was up.
Really dude? You couldve put the seat down so I wouldnt have known.
Some leak in the building. Hot water was off for a bit.
But now the kitchen spickets are running weak.
Cucumber and tomato salad for sup.