Sorry folks, but I’ve had a lot going on this weekend, family things, and there was a lot of things I didn’t get done that I should have.
One of them was having a decent MMP for y’all. And for this lame excuse, I apologize. I hope to have something later on this week that I can drop in, and then we can all pretend that I posted it this morning.
That’s okay - as long as you’re here. During the week you can regale is with all sorts of minutia and we’ll pretend we read it this morning
and oh yeah - YAY! I’m First!
I understand completely. I’m so busy these days I don’t know if I’m coming or going.
Four weeks left until the semester’s over! Wait… that’s not a good thing.
Robin
I’m up and having coffee and newspapers. I had a strange dream last night. Well, not cat hockey strange or zombie apocalypse strange, but odd none the less. I dreamed I was married with a kid and a small squeaky dog. :dubious: Hockey tonight, laundry this morning.
Sean, anything will do for a MMP. This thing will get hijacked, sent to a chop shop, and rebuilt into a giant fighting ninja robot.
Oh, cool, we have an MMP!
You go and get your stuff done without breaking anything, Sean
Good morning, my friends, from a rather waterlogged Pacific Northwest. We’ve already broken the rainfall record for November, and the month is not even half over. Rivers are lakes, roads and houses are sliding into oblivion, now the wind wants to blow us away.
It snowed 3 feet in the mountain passes yesterday. This is a good thing, since that means the water stays up there rather than filling the rivers even more.
I know, everyone thinks this is how NW winters are, but that’s just a lie we’ve been telling tourists for many years. Karma can be a B**ch!
Several of the outlying towns are now islands. There are lots of power outages, and the wind hasn’t really gotten its full head of steam.
Three people have died. All were hunters, being swept away in swollen rivers. One of the firefighters from Hubby’s crew is overdue from his hunting trip, but the news said there are 20-30 hunters stranded, but ok, in the south part of the state. They dropped them food a couple days ago.
I’m staying cozy in my safe house on high ground.
P.S. My finger is much better. It’s still back, but it’s healing well underneath.
Now I’m going back to sleep!
So you’re going to make this the Tuesday Morning Post?
Here’s hoping that Mandy the Martian and Roundboy both say/do something extremely stupid today…
Just because I know y’all are waiting with bated breath, I now present Chapter 2 of Slacker Farmhands Gone Wild.
Friday, I was at home toiling away on my work-related project that I brought home for the weekend, when I hear a heavy diesel engine outside. That’s nothing new where I live, but to throttle down where it did was unusual. Someone parked a big green John Deere 4 wheel drive tractor and seed drill in my yard. :dubious:
I get up and go out to see who it was. Whoever it was hopped into a little white pickup truck which then used half of my yard to turn around before zipping out the north driveway. I know the bastards saw me, too.
I went to look, and the rig was definitely on my land, with maybe 5-6 feet of the drill hanging over into the cotton field. There were 2 possibilities of the owner. The first is that it belonged to Reggie, who rents the shed to store equipment, and therefore the presence of the equipment would be fine, and very temporary. The other choice would be that it all belonged to George Mac, who farms the cotton field that surrounds my place, and who has some of the laziest, slackiest hands on the face of this earth in his employ.
Saturday, everything was still sitting right where it was left, and that ruled out Reggie. I started snooping around, and the CB inside was still on. I clearly heard George Mac discussing problems harvesting a field, so that confirmed to me who owned the equipment. My twisted mind went in to overdrive trying to come up with a way to get his slackers in trouble, and make my point clear once and for all.
The first thought was to hide the tractor. I do know how to drive one, and I tried this. However, I couldn’t make the turn around the burned out pigpen that I needed without running over his cotton or snagging my junk pile, and I sure as hell didn’t want to damage anything belonging to either of us.
OK, Plan B. There’s enough room in the weeds of his field to park everything off my land, and still be out of the cotton, so that’s what I did. Then, my twisted little mind hit on Plan C. Since the stuff was parked on my land, with or without my permission, I was responsible for it, and the idiots were stupid enough to leave the keys inside, as evidence by my having just moved it. If I could start it up, so could someone else. That old trashpicker still comes around and steals stuff when he can. I pocketed the key for ‘safekeeping’.
These slackers are the same clowns that decided they could mix pesticides and transload right next to my house last August, and who I carry a gentleman’s grudge against.
Since I have no clue of who works for George Mac, I’ll only turn over the key to him. That ought to get them in trouble right there.
Then, they’ll get the canned speech.
This is my land, and No Trespassing is posted in several places for a reason. You were trespassing.
Reggie and his guys can come and go as they please, because they pay me rent. George Mac doesn’t, and therefore you don’t have the same privileges.
Don’t EVER mix and transload next to my house again.
Don’t treat my yard as a place to off-road your pickup truck.
If for some reason you want to leave farm equipment here that cost more than my mortgage, knock on the door. I’ll say yes, but I’m assuming no liability for it.
George Mac is on of the nicest guys you’ll ever meet, and I’m trying my best not to mess things up between us, but I’m not going to be used as a doormat by his hired help.
We had our first fire of the season Sunday morning when the temps dropped to the lower 40s. Yeah for CBS Sunday morning, bacon and eggs and a cracklin fire! My Monday morning post was cut into 2 1/2 foot lengths, split and tossed on the andirons.
A lack of a significant MMP OP is excusable – I’m sure we’ve all had those sort of weekends. My weekend was filled with family favours. Specifically, the wife’s mother wanted me to put up some auctions for her to sell off some old silver-plated stuff – chafing dish, tea service, that sort of stuff. O what fun. And of course her brother, who apparently hasn’t yet figured out how to ship things by Canada Post, brings them over to us to ship because we do everything online. Hmpf. And of course there was laundry to do, a few movies to watch, and tech support for my dad who still hasn’t learned the concept of file folders in Windows.
This morning I visited my work-supermarket, and in the process of gathering a bit of fruit and a bottle of water for the day I decided that in the interest of holiday spirit, I’d get myself a nice carton of eggnog. Mmmm. Eggnog. So I head to the dairy section.
And there’s no eggnog.
None.
They weren’t sold out. There just wasn’t any.
Understand that this is a massive supermarket, about 3-4 times your average Price Chopper or Kroger or whatever. Its baked goods section is the size of a liquor store by itself. Their dairy section wasn’t huge but it was significant. They had numerous brands of your standard milks and creams, skim to whipping cream. They had organic milk in olde tyme squared glass bottles. They had flavoured coffee creamers. They had buttermilk, goat’s milk and non-dairy soy beverages in four flavours. They had kefir. Kefir, for Pete’s sake! But not a single available space assigned to eggnog anywhere! I am bitterly disappointed in them. The perennial holiday drink, and they haven’t a drop. sigh
I might have to console myself and find some mincemeat tarts.
Happy Monday, everyone!
I started my day bright and early by going to my librarian friend’s house to attempt to trap an outside cat she has been feeding. I don’t think she is the only one feeding this cat, because he didn’t get in the trap - usually if the trappin’ place is the only food source, the cat will be fairly easy to trap. This will be a challenge. I left the trap set and will check back at regular intervals.
I have two books to take to the post office for PaperbackSwap, and I have the Coach’s Show tonight. I also have to empty the litterboxes since tomorrow is trash day.
I let Magic sleep with me last night since Mr. SCL was at the river. Freak cat decided the best place to sleep was on top of my head. In looks and temperment this is the weirdest cat I have ever met. Sweet, but weird.
I envy you, DB - I don’t have hockey again until Friday. How many home games do ya’ll have?
Mom was on the phone with her Mom yesterday. A sample of the conversation:
Mom: “Nava’s got an appointment with the mechanic on the 20th, then on the 21st she’ll go up to her place, spend the night, pick up her stuff and drive to Switzerland on Wednesday”
Grandma: “are there planes to Switzerland?”
Mom: “yes, but she’s bringing her car”
Grandma: “are the planes very expensive? I saw an ad on the telly yesterday, cheap flights to Zurich, that’s in Switzerland you know”
Mom: “there’s cheap flights but she’s bringing her car”
Grandma: “those rental cars cost a bundle! Will Nava sell her car now that she’s going to Switzerland?”
Mom: “no, she’s bringing it to Switzerland”
Grandma: “oh, why would she do that? It’s very far, Switzerland! You have to go through France, they speak French in France. How much will Nava be paying for a rental? Or will she get a new car when she goes to Switzerland? Is she flying from Madrid?”
Since Grandma yells, I could actually hear both sides. Mom must have told Grandma I’m bringing my car over so many times that the car already feels like it’s been driving around the southern half of France.
My married bro also had to be explained in small detail that I am bringing my car, no I’m not leaving it here, who’s gonna take care of it if I leave it here and you know rentals are expensive… but at least he’d assimilate each detail once and only once.
Mom’s happy that we’ll be in the same time zone. I’ve already charged Lilbro with helping her the first few times with Skype.
Yes, I’m bringing my car to Switzerland when I move there next week, why do you ask?
But, didn’t you know there are some really cheap flights to Zurich? And honestly, rental cars can get very expensive. Oh, don’t forget to tell Gramma what you new car looks like so she’ll know when you come to visit.
ow. quit it. 
Drat. rosie stole my line.
I’m glad the finger’s healing up, picu.
Hmm. I was going to head off and do laundry, but my boss just phoned to ask me to come in at noon instead of two, because a co-worker is sick. Everyone at work’s been sick recently. I think my boss totally didn’t notice that I sound like Marge Simpson crossed with a frog. He’ll be all startled when I arrive. He’s a little oblivious.
At least this way I get to go home at eight instead of ten. I’ll wash clothes tomorrow.
sigh It’s going to be a long day. I spent my first 40 minutes of work standing outside waiting for the police to finish their investigation because we got robbed again this morning.
Did I mention it’s going to be a long day?
Good morning, all. Happy Monday, I think. It’s Monday, anyway; I’ll commit to that much.
No problem about the OP, Sean – we all have days/weeks/weekends like that. I’m sure that waiting will make your masterpiece that much more delicious. 
I’ve got nothing planned today except some work. Theoretically the sun is supposed to come out at some point today. Yesterday it was so dark and gloomy that it felt like night was falling at 3:00 in the afternoon. The animals all spent the day basically hibernating, and the humans weren’t far from it. We ended up watching several shows we’d recorded but not gotten around to, which was a nice peaceful way to spend the day. No fireplace, alas; it would have been the perfect day for a nice fire and a cup of hot chocolate.
Nava, I can hear that conversation now. The volume is similar to when Papa Tigs is talking to his mom. She won’t wear her hearing aid most of the time, and he has bad tinnitus that doesn’t respond well to a hearing aid, so their conversations consist of top volume, “What?” “What?” “What?” in increasing tones of annoyance. It’s hilarious! They’re both too stubborn to admit they can’t hear each other well, so they just get madder and madder about it. While I laugh at them both. Which probably doesn’t help, but hey, they’re asking for it.
Everyone have a good day, now!
Ugh. I’m currently having a live chat with a technician from HP, trying to fix my printer. It’s suddenly stopped printing anything off of my computer. I mentioned to the technician that it does print a test alignment sheet every time I turn it on (to illustrate that it’s not a problem with the printer itself) and somehow she latched onto this fact and we’ve been spending the last half hour fixing that. I don’t care! We can fix that another time! I just want my printer to print, dammit! Stop fixing the unimportant stuff! I need to get this fixed before class!
Ha! We fixed the test-sheet issue! Now we get to fix the real problem, hopefully- but the flow of conversation is weird:
Monica: but I really still need to be able to print actual documents off of my computer.
Keira: Okay.
Keira: let me assist you with this issue also.
Monica: okay. (waits patiently for “Kiera” to tell her what to do)
Keira: Let us resolve the issue.
Monica: okay.
Also, after I gave her some information:
Kiera: Thank you
Monica: You’re welcome.
Kiera: My pleasure.
It almost feels like I’m talking to an automated person, only she know slightly more than that…I’m confused. I just want to print!
Also, she takes forever to respond- thus the time to type up a post. Hopefully this will go better…
Happy Monday, everyone!
My weekend was fairly relaxing. I think I spent around 10 hours working on a crochet project, in front of the Food Network. Doesn’t get any better.
Haven’t posted to the MMP in a while, but I thought I had to because I thought of two MMP’s when I was working on dinner last night.
I was making brussels sprouts, which will now and forever be known as “Fart Blossoms”, tm Swampbear.
I was listening to Rachael Ray while I was cooking, and she said something about “dropping in the taters”. I immediately thought - N.O.T! (Not our Taters)
Susan
Hi all. I certainly understand about busy weekends. This past weekend was 4 week until the wedding! :eek:
I got stuff to make a centerpiece this weekend. It’s a cool idea that I found online: place a long mirror on the table. Scatter candles of various heights on it. Sprinkle larger-grained salt around that as “snow.” Light the candles, which will sparkle off the snow and the mirrow. Cool, huh? I’m going to pick up the mirror and the salt there so I don’t have to ship it or travel with it, but I got everything else here. All white candles and some silver ribbon that we can wrap around some of them. Should be nice.
I also got most of the favors that we’ll give out. I’m getting different Christmas ornaments for everyone who’ll be there. Something that made me think of each person. That way, it’s something that they’ll probably actually keep, and something that they’ll put on the tree every year and, hopefully, have fond memories of the wedding while they’re putting it up.
We tried to find a tux for Keith, but it’s harder than it sounds. One of the major formal wear chains was just totally unhelpful. They didn’t have anything in stock, and when I asked if they could order stuff or get it from another store, the girl was like “Um… I don’t know.” Great. I bet the store owner/manager is SOOOOO glad they hired you.
We also looked at an upscale department store… which wanted $600 for the jacket and pants alone. Yeah… not quite. My gown didn’t cost that much!
So we went to a small, local chain. They have a big warehouse near here that sells used tuxes. (Yeah, it sounds kinda gross, but if you rent one, you’re wearing a used tux anyway… so might as well buy a used one as to rent a used one.) But the warehouse is closed on Sundays. So now we have to wait until next weekend… three weeks from the big day. Yeah, I’m a little stressed about this.
And I still have to find somewhere out there to press the dress after it gets shipped out there. Not really a big deal, but there won’t be much time between when we get there and the wedding so I need someplace that can do it fast.
And I haven’t talked to a florist about my bouquet or Keith’s whatchacallit.
And I haven’t made an appointment at a hairdresser.
At least Keith’s sister is doing my makeup so that’s taken care of. She’s like a manager at a cosmetics counter at a dept store so she’s good at that kind of thing. Which is good because I’m not!
The gown’s almost done being altered. Tomorrow night I’ll go for a final fitting. Whew.
For a really small wedding that wasn’t supposed to be stressful, I’m getting awfully stressed.
Wddings are like that. Take a couple of deep breaths and have some chocolate.
Hi, susan! Are you on chowhound? I hang out there a lot. There’s a whole bunch of people experimenting with a Bittman (I think) no-knead bread recipe, with a really wet dough and a 20 hour rise. It looks very interesting.
I should organize my dinner and then scoot off to work.
Did anyone see Iron Chef America last night with Rachel Ray and Giada de Laurentis? It was pretty funny really.