Another “car picnic” meal, this time a thigh & a roll from a local fried chicken shack. Gotta support those local biz’s!
I was waiting for my laundry at the House O’Suds - hey! a second small local biz 
- and now have two basketfuls of clean stuff to put away.
The chicken was delicious: salty, crunchy, and so freshly hot outta the fryer that it was still steaming as I was finishing it.
Chilly mornings all week this week, with temps flirting with 32. But sunshine! We put up our front porch Christmas lights to give the dark some brightness, so we’ve done our bit. Most of those on this block are Scrooges when it comes to lighting, for some reason. Would it kill ya to try to cheer things up a bit? Turkey pot pie for dinner tonight!
I got the delivery of wine that I ordered - it was an introductory variety pack. ALL DRY! 
I do not like dry wine, so I’ll give the reds to my mom and use the whites for cooking. And I’ll end my membership. I don’t like drinking vinegar.
Supper was good. I’ve got most of a chicken to pick over for soup/pot pie/chickie salad… but tomorrow, not today.
And I set up my new mortgage account with automatic payment. That’s a lot of adulting for one evening! Time for chillage.
Did I mention that I started making Christmas cookies today? Well, I did. First batches are called “Orange Nut Crisps”. Basically sugar, flour, butter, egg yolk, lemon zest, orange zest, rolled into small balls, dipped in egg white and rolled in chopped walnuts. Flatten and bake.
Shoot, pulley, this year, getting releast may not make much of a difference in your social life.
I kind of like Captain for nellie.
Mooooooom, when I was a kid, my dad picked up a schoolroom blackboard somewhere and mounted it on our dining room wall. It survived about a decade and a half of being continually used by us kids before we had all left home. Mom took the opportunity then to redecorate, including changing the wall paper and the chalkboard never went back up. RoxStar should love her easel.
Irked, paid the rent, walked Nelson and et supper. Now for KP and chillage.
Stay safe and healthy y’all!
I’ve folded and put away a respectable amount of laundry … at least a solid 1/2 of it. Hell, I may even have the rest put away tonight, but I don’t wanna paint myself into a corner.
Speaking of “paint” I think imma go blonde tonight. Why not? Who cares? Worst come to worst, I’ll wear a hat.
Speaking of “paint” v 2.0 - I haz a fun little project to keep me busy tomorrow.
I got a couple of super see through WHITE T-shirts at work, and imma tie-dye them to add a bit of color (and cover up my bra straps, jeebus!) plus I have some white cotton masks that could use a lil jazzing up.
I sell weed. Tie dye is a standard corporate look for me!
In the meantime, there’s a Cornish hen (on top of the usual root veggie mix: red skinned N.O.T. with onions and garlic ah shit, I forgot the carrots!) roasting in the oven.
ETA I added baby carrots quickly. You’ll all be relieved to learn this, I’m sure.
We blondes do have more fun sometimes. 
Up, caffeinated, and sheveled. Off to sort.
mmmmm. Dad and i used to have those when Mom worked on a holiday.
I’m so glad to be home, sweet home! The train ride was fine, even though we had to wait about 20 minutes for a BN train to go by. Fun fact: Amtrak uses the tracks of other railroads, so freight trains have the right of way.
I have a confession to make. Maybe I’m not such a nice person after all. I mean, I try to be, I think I am, but then there’s this: just before we hit Tacoma, the conductor announced a lot of people would be boarding the train there. I am not sure what to do with this information: sing a welcome song? Draw my cutlass? Usually I put my stuff elsewhere to free up the seat next to me and try to look like I won’t try to harvest a seat mate’s kidneys, but dang, COVID! and I’m SO high-risk. So…I feigned sleep. I did. I thought people would choose other seats first, which they did. Once we were rolling again, I sat up and looked around, and the guy across the aisle, who feigned being wide awake, still had no seat mate, so hopefully I didn’t mess up.
Got to my station and summoned an Uber, and here I am.
shoe, let us know how the blonde thing works out. When I was little, Clairol had a tag line, “Is it true blondes have more fun?” You seem to make some fun wherever you go, so let us know if going blonde shoves the lever to “Dangerously fun.”
Red, I’ve always loved your name, but despite knowing the “misread” part, I always imagine you as a ginger. I need to update my imagination.
Boo, 5 days and counting!
As far as MMP names go, some do have more than one. I tend to call @The_Stainless_Steel_Rat “rodent”, for example, and @swampbear is also “Ursine One” or variants.
Irk was not loathsome today as far as callers went, but QA is about to cause a mutiny. They’re suddenly shifting standards and getting VERY hair-splitty to find reasons to ding agents on call scores (I polled other members of my team and consensus was that I’m not just having a paranoid day, they agree with my opinion of the pattern), including one person (not me) who managed what’s called an “autofail” (see note below) for an oops that would normally be 15 points off maximum. Granted, this is bad enough when a passing score is 90, perfect is 100.
Turns out the item triggering the autofail was recently tightened up on. Would have been nice if that had actually been ANNOUNCED, rather than someone finding out by stepping on the figurative landmine. My sup is pissed (she actually used that word in a team meeting) and is making protest noises. We shall see.
Note: autofail - screw up ONE detail, and that call scores ZERO no matter how well you did on the rest. This is usually reserved for such blunders as failing to notice/ask a security question on an account.
Evening all (and where did the evening go to?). Not much activity, and the temperature outside is 27F heading down to 20F, so staying inside is guaranteed. Be interesting to see what my gas bill (have gas heating/electric AC) is come the 20th.
Nettie, sounds like someone in authority (cue pointy-haired boss picture) decided to tighten things up and. like many hierarchies, simply proclaimed it on high and figured someone would let it trickle down to the peons. Hope supervisor can get the autofail reversed or at least get a SOP out everyone can refer to.
Nellie, you are a nice person–but you are also an intelligent one who can see risks, not only to you but others, and did what you felt necessary to protect yourself. Heck, riding the train even masked as you were was something of a risk. You did the practical thing, IMHO.
Oh, and 50F may be wonderful to walk in, but it’s 29F right now. It is supposed to reach 52F tomorrow so maybe…
OK, couple more things here on the internet and a little bit o’readin’ and then off to bed.
rodent, this is apparently coming from offsite levels of upstream. Even grandboss apparently couldn’t successfully fight this one, and she’s no pushover (with great-grandboss working remotely due to age and health concerns, grandboss is currently the highest-ranking person in the building). The particular thing that got dinged would be relatively minor under normal conditions, but suddenly, with ZERO warning, it’s a total fail. Ugh.
Anyone who worries about whether or not they’re a nice person, or who thinks they might possibly not be a nice person just because they protected themselves … does not have to worry.
It’s the people who assume they’re nice, and who blunder on through without a thought for others, who are not-nice people.
You, my dear nellie are a very nice person.
Not so fast-if you are signing up for the SBMB secret Holiday exchange, those wines might have a good home you could send them to. Dry wines deserve good homes too.
Be still my quivering heart! Going to be 5 loooooonngg days. I’m sure it was 99 times harder for me but I sure hope she launches herself at me for a hug when I come through the door Sunday.
This is one of my life-long pet peeves, whether at work, in the family or with friends. It’s one of the worst ‘gotcha’ there is. Incredibly anxiety provoking and exhausting.
I have absolutely no doubt that if there was someone needing a seat and the one next to you was open, you would make them feel welcome. If no one was riding standing up in your car, then you should keep that space open given your health realities.
As usual shoe said it much better than I did. Only nice people care if they are nice people.
Took nine words to say what I rambled over forever. You may think I said it better, but imma borrow/steal your wording.
Sometimes (especially when someone is hurting) the pithy, punchy, bumper-sticker phrases hit home the best.
I STILL don’t know which of my rattie groups has the squeaky “week! weeeeek!” babies. They don’t breed much in winter - who had pups, dammit?!
I feel beyond ridiculous, alternating between sneaking into their room oh-so-stealthily, and muttering, “Fuck it! I don’t care, anyway! Hmph!”
Spoiler alert: I care. But maybe, if I tell them I don’t …
Have you considered that perhaps there are no babies and that whoever you got the ratties from slipped in those dreaded ventriloquist dwarf African soft furred rats instead?
Maybe set up a motion activated night vision camera to catch them at it?
Thanks for telling me I’m a nice person. I really don’t feel good about possuming. I should maybe add that on this train, there were no passengers in Business Class, so I think that would’ve been an overflow option. I don’t think they let people stand in the aisles, but I absolutely would have welcomed someone had there been no other room. I’ve met some wonderful people on trains.
I was nervous about riding the train in the first place and only did so because I had no other options. Amtrak makes everyone wear masks, but there isn’t 6 feet on all sides, and passengers can remove masks to eat and drink. I thought of postponing the appointment until after the vaccine, but all my other docs have been breathing down my neck about getting a rheumatologist.
I had a nice surprise tonight. My downstairs neighbor–the one who’s been my friend and who’s moving–left me a card and some gifts outside my door, just because. Now there’s a nice person!
shoe, I keep imagining you tiptoeing into the rattie room to try to sneak up on them, and it cracks me up every time to imagine what they’re thinking. I probably saw too many cartoons as a kid.
nettie, what a rotten, foolish way to run a business. I hope management sees the error of their ways pronto.
Good morning. I hope we’re all doing good, this morning.
Nellie, I think you did fine!
Purp, that dinner you made sounds wonderful!
Nettie, I used to work at a call center. They sometimes went off the rails, with ‘new rules’. They were sometimes rules that only they knew about, because, apparently, updating the CSRs would be just entirely too much work. Ugh.
MetalMouse, that’s a bit too cool for your area, isn’t it? I have no idea. I’ve lived in Indiana all my life. Stay warm, and cozy!
Boo, are we down to four days, yet? Imagine the joy when that day arrives!
I didn’t get much sleep last night. I won’t get a chance for a nap today, either. The Fix-It Guy will be here around 10am, to build me an awning over the back door. I’ve got more laundry to fold, and put away. At least I got the dishes all put away, and the floors vacuumed, this morning. I even polished the kitchen table, as well. I think I’ll make a big batch of Cowboy Beans. It just sounds good. Plus, I’ll be able to freeze most of them, for my husband’s OTR meals, that he’ll take with him.
I’m trying to get a grocery list put together, but, there’s really not much that I’ll need, this week. Good thing, since the car/hovel insurance is due, as is the electric bill. Always something!
It’s going to be a decent day around these parts, today. Sunny, and warmer, with a high of 45*. Not bad, considering it’s currently 20*, with a ‘Feels like’ temperature of 13*. I should fill the birdfeeders, at some point. They would probably appreciate some seed. I need to put that on my ‘To Do List’. Joy.
Have a nice day, folks.
I quit doing the various exchanges some time back when they ceased to be fun and became a chore. So my mom will get the reds and I’ll find some recipes to use up the whites.
Woke around 4, dammit. FCD had a bad night so he got up early too, which is why I was showered and dressed in proper goin’-to-town clothes shortly after 5. I’m making a run to WalMart and Aldi this morning. No other plans for the day - maybe I’ll start recovering the dining room chair seats. I should have gotten that done weeks ago. We shall see. Or I can continue working in the basement.
FedEx is insane. I was notified that my treadmill is being shipped from some place in CA and it’s supposedly due to arrive tomorrow. Yeah, right. Especially considering the local FedEx hub - they’re pretty bad about delivering when promised. I’m still figuring on next week.
And so it goes. Happy Wednesday!