One of the chorus girls went to the store for me - bought me ginger ale and raisin bread for toast. She also picked up my meds, which is good, because I took the last one of one of them yesterday. I think I’ll be okay by morning
That’s great, Rosie! I hope you feel better very soon.
I want to see Cinderella footage, Lieu. I bet she’s awesome!
Dinner was roast beast, NORT, (Not Our Rosie’s Taters) and steamed speargrass. Yum!
Mr Rebo is reclinin’ with his eyes at half mast. I will send him to bed very shortly.
G’night, Mumpers!
Hello peoples. Two more wake-ups and then I’ll be on vacation for two weeks. I am almost giddy about it even though we’re not going anywhere or doing anything. Well, I take that back…we will use two of those days to drive my son across the state and get him moved into his dorm.
I hope the case management duties mean a little more moolah for you, **Swampy, **and that you want to do it.
It’s about 82 outside about now. My commute sucked because there was some sort of accident that forced me to turn around and find another way home. I ended up getting home slightly later than usual. I had been planning on stopping at the store and gas station on the way home, but I ended up skipping all that. I just didn’t want to deal with it.
I don’t have any exciting news, I guess. Just another day of drudgery here in the PNW.
We head home to Merrylande tomorrow…
Aw. Aren’t friends wonderful, rosie? Hope you feel better soon.
Add me to the list of Cinderella’s fans, lieu.
I’ll bet if I leave now I can beat Bobbio to your front door, FCM. 
Had chicken, Libyan salad and rolls for dinner. It was yummy.
Went for walk and saw lots and lots of bats. More than a dozen without trying.
Tired and ready for sleepy-bye. But I’ma read for a while first. (The Lightning Thief; nephew gave the set to me for my birthday and Christmas and I haven’t made it through the first yet. Hoping to be done with the first one before he gets here on Friday (it’s a very fast read).
Happy Wednesday, all.
Hugs.
GT
I been really bad here haven’t I?
Hardly even skimmed today.
Good Mornin’ Y’all! Up and caffienatin’ YAWN 'Tis 78 Amurrkin out with a predicted high of around a hunnert. We have yet another heat advisory but also a forty percent chance of rain. Tomorrow and Sattidy promiser a bigger chance. I say come on rain and tboomers!
CatDude yes you have been bad. Go stand in the corner. 
Taters it would be more moolah. Also more responsibility but I can deal with that. Again, not holdin’ my breath but nice to be noticed and considered I guess.
Now I go to seek more caffiene and rumbly tummy wants brekkie. Then I must purtify for irk.
On the upside, I made up a lasagna last night and will bake it when I get home today. MMMMMMMM… lasagna!
Happy Thursday Y’all!
Happy Thursday! I just finished toast with homemade peach preserves (breathlessly anticipating the race between **gt **and BBBobbio) and I’m slurping down my caffeine as I surf.
swampy, I don’t think standing in the corner is appropriate. I think **CatDude **needs to write “I will post more” 100 times, then post it. No cut-n-paste allowed!
Speaking of moolah, today my last paycheck as well as my VSIP and my sold-back leave will appear magically in my bank account. I saw the statement yesterday - it’s a buttload of money, but about $5K less than I’d hoped. Stoopit withholdings. And unfortunately, with the two payouts, my gross for the year is now higher than it was last year, and I’ve still got 4 months of pension to add on top of that. We will be paying obscene taxes come April. With luck, I won’t have to write a check on top of the obscene amount they withheld.
But we’ll be able to achieve 2 of our goals. We will pay off 2 bills in their entirety. We could pay off the third if we dipped into savings a bit, but we’ve decided to hold off until my pension pay is stable. According to voices of experience, it could take a few months - **tarra **- are you stable yet? Anyway, once I feel comfortable with my retirement income, we may go ahead and yank the money out of savings to pay off the truck by the end of the year. Still it’s scary to think my last real pay has been deposited. 
On the happier side, I got an email back yesterday in response to one I sent on an educated guess to the guy who took me to my 8th grade graduation dance. He has an unusual, therefore googleable, name which happened to come up on a state of Maryland site. He works as an electrical engineer for the Public Service Commission and his work email was posted, so what the heck. I haven’t seen him since 1968 - 8th grade graduation - but I’d thought of him on and off thru the years. Anyway, he remembered me, and it turns out, he inspects power plants state-wide, so he’s been down hereabouts. I’m going to suggest he let me know when he’s down this end of the state again so we can do lunch. A reunion after 43 years… :eek:
We had some nice rain yesterday - glad I mowed when I did - and I’m thinking today will be studio day. I need to get everything moved away from the walls so I can paint. There’s a TV down there for company and it’s cooler. I just need to take a big mug of ice water, and I should be set. Good times!
Onward!!! After I read my comics, of course…
Up, caffeinated, off to irk. Gonna be 100 today.
MOOOOOOM now I’m tryin’ to remember who I took to my eight grade graduation dance. I’m sure it’s one of three girls but can’t remember which one. I was an eight grade playah! I do remember it was at the Elk’s club which was one of the classier places for such things and that we had a dinner buffet. I also remember I got a new suit to wear to the dance and the graduation. So I remember what I ate, I remember what I wore but I don’t remember who I took. Was it Nancy, Shirley or Terry? This may forever remain a mystery.
Maybe CatDude should write “I will post more” one hunnert times while standin’ in the corner wearin’ a dunce cap. That would learn him!
Heh, Polish inflections. Thanks for the well wishes and yes, I’ll try and post pics despite my technological shortcomings.
August… I can’t believe it’s still August.
Good morning!
We have a heat advisory here, too. Predicted high of 102°F with a heat index of 108°. ::wipes sweat off brow:: C’mon fall weather!
Two 1-1/2 hour meetings today, and one is training. Rah.
Yay for money, Moommm!
We golfed from 1 to 5:30 in that yesterday. Never have I been so whipped after a round as after that. Not only was it brutal on us but the course is burned up too, yellow grass, brown trees and dried up water hazards reeking of dead carp. A summer for the record books, to be sure.
Not to make you Texans jealous, but it’s raining here. And I’ve wasted all of the morning up till now goofing off on line. Time to put on some clothing and get to work in my studio. It’s a mess down there and I need to clean it up and get some paint on the walls.
So quit distracting me!!! Now!! I MEAN IT!!!
Good morning all! Yes, it’s early here in Albuquerque; today, I’m going to the MVD to get a new non-driver’s ID card. I hope. 
FCM - yes, my retirement check, the first one, came in for August (it’s actually covering the month of July :eek:). On July 1st I got an “interim” payment, and then about 2/3ds of the way thru July, they sent me the difference - they try to send -less- than what you should actually be getting in the interim payments to avoid over-paying. I was pleasantly surprised, as I’d heard horror stories, some people having to wait 6 months and longer - that is just insane!
It’s definitely monsoon season here - we had severe thunder storms and rain, as well as some pea-size hail yesterday afternoon. It rained really hard for a while too - I can see why they try to get people out of the arroyos; I imagine there were some that were raging streams yesterday afternoon. It’s hot too - I try to be back inside by noon! LOL
Hope everyone enjoys their Thursday.
Ugh. The internet said it got up to 114 yesterday. My friend from LA texted me to verify this, as apparently it made the news out there.
We’re gonna go pay rent and ask our landlords if we can have a dishwasher if we sign a new lease.
GT, what’s Libyan salad? I think we might have to try that.
Tuesday night, I used the used meat to make Berber Burgers. They were gooooooood!
Yesterday we had a half-day, mandatory, department-wide “fun” event, aka team building. Mandatory fun just makes me bristle. And team building should be banned. But, as one coworker said afterwards, it wasn’t as bad as it could have been. It was a sort of high-tech scavenger hunt with cell phones telling each team where to go and what to look for, and then we typed the answers to the questions back into the phone to earn points. The teams had to make some funny videos too, but others were nominated to do the acting on my team so I avoided embarrassment. As far as team building goes, it was ok. And fortunately, the humidity had broken so even though it was probably 85 and full sun, it wasn’t as uncomfortable out as it could have been. And I remembered sunscreen so I didn’t come home with a burn after spending two hours running around downtown. So… for mandatory fun it was ok. And I put in my appearance so if next year they do something really stupid, I can just happen to have a doctor’s appt planned for that day and have to miss out. 
And in the plus column, we actually didn’t hit bad traffic leaving downtown at 5pm. I was worried about that and planned to be outraged that they made us go downtown and leave right at rush hour. But I can save my outrage for something else.
I found out yesterday that a friend is getting married in 3 weeks after knowing the guy for 3 months. And he needs a green card. If this were a sitcom, everything would work out ok, but we’re worried that it’s going to turn into a giant disaster. Plus, none of her friends have met him yet. Is it just me or does this sound like a bad plan?
**tarra **- glad to hear the worst case scenarios I was warned about may be a tad extreme. One person said it could take up to 8 MONTHS to get retirement pay settled.
**taxi **- the green card is the big red flag in that story, IMHO. Sometimes short courtships work out fine - I speak from experience - but I expect most of the time, not so much. Sounds like your friend needs some serious pre-marital counseling. Too bad that’s not mandatory. It should be.
I transferred funds to pay off one debt - it should be done by tomorrow. I’ll need to take a check to the credit union in Dahlgren to pay off the car, since my pay is deposited into a different credit union. I can take care of that when I go over there to help my kid set up her classroom. I also transferred a chunk of change into savings - it was nice to see that balance jump up.
We normally do our daily purchases with debit cards, but I’m thinking we’ll change that approach a bit. Our credit union offers a rewards program - for every $5 spent via debit, you get 1 point, but you get 1 for 1 if you use your credit card. I just used a bunch of the points that had been accumulating for some time to get $200 in Lowe’s gift cards - free money, right? So I’m thinking we need to use the credit card for gas and groceries and other purchases instead of debit. And to keep up from running up a balance, I can just transfer funds from checking to the credit card. That way we get the points but we don’t pay the interest. Ingenious, yes?? Plus at the end of the year, we get an accounting of what we charged by category. Mostly it’s been piddly little purchases, but if we start using it, we’ll have a pretty good picture of our outlay.
Yes, genius! As long as we are diligent about paying it off… there’s the trick.
Anyway, instead of attacking the studio, I decided to clean the pantry. It was a adventure of discovery - like the container of corn meal I discovered with a Use By date of June 2005. I tossed it. I’ve also got a bunch of sugar-free gelatine with dates in 2007, but I figure since they’re sealed tightly, it shouldn’t be an issue, right?
I rearranged a few things to make it more logical and user friendly, plus made space for my peach jam. I doubt that **FCD **will notice, except that I moved the peanut butter, but I know, and that’s what matters. Next chore is to empty the dishwasher - at least that’s an easy one. I may dust, too. Still thinking about that. Plus I really hate dusting.
Did I also mention that she’s 37 and he’s 24? And has two kids in his home country?
We do what you’re thinking about doing with your credit cards. Buy all of our groceries, gas, etc., earn points, and pay it off every month. One tip that a friend gave me that I like is to set up an automatic payment each month for the minimum payment amount. That way you never forget and incur late payments or hurt your credit score. But it gives you the option to review the purchases before paying in full and dispute any if necessary. I’m doing that on my personal (not joint) credit card, and I feel like it protects me from accidentally missing a payment.
Nepotistic hiring of unqualified government contractors? :rolleyes: