Doesn’t that burn?
::d&r::
You should have read the toothpaste thread by [spoofe? Spoof-bo-diddly?] from many years ago.
Started Typing: 12:48 PM ET
Clicked Reply: 1:36 PM ET
I just scheduled a “touch up” visit from my pest control company. Over the past few weeks I’ve seen evidence of rodent activity in the kitchen a couple of times, but I thought it was under control until I walked into the living room this morning: I’d been keeping a resealable bag of sugar-free chocolate on the coffee table, and this morning there were tiny shredded pieces of bag all over the table and the couch! (There were no holes in the bag, but I still threw it away.) Occasional nocturnal visitors in the kitchen are one thing, but my living room/coffee table/couch? NOPE. Orkin comes every two months and their next visit would be sometime this month anyway, but I bumped it up to this coming Friday (the next available date). Hopefully they just need to refresh the bait stations in the crawlspace under the house. The sheer audacity of these critters! 
Yesterday’s Lego expo was fun; I’m glad I went. It was good to see my friend from work: we met 7 years ago when I joined the company as a proposal manager, but now I only see her if I need to be in the proposal center for something when she happens to be there. It was also nice to get to know her husband, who’s a big Lego fan. He bears more than a passing resemblance to George Lucas (20-30 years ago), and two guys at the expo asked him to pose for a photo with them. Heh. My friend said it happens to him all the time. It was nice to see the variety of builds; some of them were insane. We only stayed for a few hours, so I was able to go to the grocery store on the way home and still walk in my front door at around 2:30pm. The rest of the day/evening was spent practicing to be an RDOS (I have ~13 more years to get it right!). Amazingly, I did not buy/bring home a single Lego! 
This week is very busy work-wise, but I’m able to post right now because a few things I need to do today are on hold while I wait for my great-grandboss (my boss’s boss’s boss) to send an email announcing the pilot of this workflow I’ve been developing. I don’t expect to be able to post much (if at all) for the next few days, though: tomorrow I have back-to-back meetings from 9am-4pm, Wednesday after lunch I’ll be driving to DC for a 3-hour customer meeting, and Thursday morning I have an 8:30 meeting at a location that will be kind of a crappy commute (I’ll need to leave the house NLT 7am). That will also be a 3-hour meeting, and afterwards I have to go to the office because I’m giving some training in the afternoon. I might finally get some downtime later that day, but I won’t get to work from home until Friday.
Rut-roh…sounds like GF might be “not so much”? 
The best part of owning a cat is that it’s pretty much guaranteed to discourage mice from moving in. We had zero mice issues in Portland until our cat died. They wasted no time in showing up. Then we got our next cat and POOF! Ants? Different story.
The nice man at the plant nursery told me all about Ajuga. It sounds like what we want/need. Now to find out what it would cost to have them plant it.
This is not my regular haunt but I had to go somewhere to share that today is a particularly good dolphin day. I’ve seen about 30 from my beach chair. No whales yet. I will inform if the situation changes.
Not exactly. Part of “new beginnings” is sort of new year’s resolutions for various personal changes to reduce sloth and improve useful life-affirming health-affirming behaviors.
But I’m really struggling with the same problem I had with BB before GF. Each month I have 30 days for her and she has 4-8 days for me. But I’m supposed to be exclusive when I have little else in the way of evening recreation the other 22-26 days that I really enjoy except chasing women.
She’s legitimately super busy with her transitional family stuff. That’s legitimately more important to her. And that is temporary on a scale of months, but not days. Unless Mom or Dad has a stroke; then she’ll be dealing with that for years. While I wait. The last month has been awful and this and the next one is now shaping up the same way.
I just learned I have to go to the SF Bay Area in late Sept for a 2-hour memorial service for my late aunt and uncle, the last of the generation before me. Of course I had no hand in picking the date. Yesterday, so wife’s death anniversary, I asked GF if she wanted a week’s vacation in SFBA with me, & a chance to meet my very few cousins. She was delighted! All for it! Hooray! Some good news in my gloom. Such fun.
Until we got to details and she’d already reserved that weekend for a trip to some amusement park in Orlando with her grrlz posse. They have tickets, hotels, etc., all nonrefundable and non-transferable. She’s stuck doing that with them, not SF with me.
Now I get to go to SF alone. And even if I tried to make the shortest possible trip to be back here for her she’s already gone for a bunch of days. So another week without her or anyone else. I can’t be angry, but I can be very disappointed. I needed that emotional whipsaw like a hole in the belly.
In happier news, we’re having dinner tonight, then going home separately. She’ll be staying with me from Tue dinner through Thu breakfast and again Fri post-dinner through Sun breakfast. So at least part of all 7 consecutive days starting tonight.
Somewhere in there I need to tell her what I’m thinking. I can’t just sit in silence fuming night after night. I don’t want to lose her, but I’m not real sure I can stand the status quo another month. Much less another 6. Or will it be 12? No way to know. And she’ll definitely be gone ~4 of the next ~6 weeks, all travel with her GFs. I don’t want anyone else. I just want / need a lot more of her.
An ugly problem.
Aren’t you glad you asked?
Yeah, I remember that from having my cat Smokey (funnily enough, today is actually the 21st anniversary of her death). Most of my adult life I’ve had no rodent issues, but this house is challenging; I had to hire Orkin a few years ago. The guy can’t even figure out how the mice get inside! I think he might have forgotton to refresh the bait in June…and/or, I figure that all of the recent heat/humidity/rain could be driving critters indoors even more than usual.
Nice! 
Yep. 
I agree that you should definitely talk with GF. I don’t think either of you was looking/expecting to really connect with someone, and she already had her life and her posse. And what sounds like long-standing, regular plans – which, frankly, if it were me, I wouldn’t be willing to change much for a relationship that’s relatively new/maybe not all that serious. If your feelings are getting kinda serious, though…? She can’t do anything about her folks, but if you tell her what’s going on she might just be willing to start limiting posse time in favor of pilot time. 
(And if not? Well, then you’ll have some further talking to do/decisions to make. )
Better driveling than sniveling!
What’s that? Do you add shredded cheese to it?
Sounds great, except for the beach part.
79 ferrets (26 centipedes), and we’re supposed to get three more this afternoon; 81 with the heat index. “Widespread” haze through tomorrow, I suppose because Canada’s burning down again. No more Frank Lloyd Wright weather (falling water – get it 
) for the rest of the week.
More not-much-of-anything today – looks like the high point will be standing in the rain locker after I finish on the computer. RDOS forever!
Must be noon on the first Monday of the month.
The tsunami warning test is echoing through the bay.
Your comments make complete sense. I wouldn’t ever ask her to change her pre-existing plans.
At the same time, the relationship is a little farther down-track than I might have shared. We’re making serious noises about long-term co-habiting as soon as her logistics with her parents and her divorce settle down. Probably give up both our current residences for a jointly leased larger apartment. But start with some “practice runs” where I go there or she comes here for a couple weeks at a crack, swapping back and forth. She is seemingly as fired up for me as I am for her. Her taking the next 7 days to be with me (less a couple of medical and legal appointments) is as much about assuaging her loneliness and unhappiness and overwhelmedness as it is about assuaging mine.
The fundamental difference is her life has lots of obligations and mine has zero. Many of those obligations are supposed to be going away. She’s working diligently to make them go away. She wants a low-obligation life akin to mine. But she’s not there yet. Her many obligations keep her busy and un-bored. My lack of obligations keep me un-busy and bored. We’re a bad fit on just that one dimension. But it’s a crucial one.
Yes, I am. Something was gnawing at you and now we know what it is. First step is the most important and you’ve done it.
ETA: meant that reply to LSL, not sure how it ended up to Misnomer, but I agree with her wise take on it as well.
Happy Monday everyone!
I hope your new beginning works out just how you want it to, pilot! A random disco party sounds like a great start.
I’m sorry that you know this. It’s impossible to know just how awful it is if you haven’t experienced it for yourself.
It’s super annoying that it took all those years to find such a simple fix, even after several sets of trained eyes had looked at my blood work so often.
I hope Annie likes having her chair back, its always nice to have a fuzzbutt in petting reach.
I’m so happy you are liking your new ears, swampy. I know they were a game changer for hubs.
Mint was my first thought. It’s pretty and it smells good, but it takes over in no time at all. I had almost complete control over all water going to my plants back in AZ. For the most part, if I didn’t water, nothing grew. Except catnip, I did battle with that mistake for years.
Its always good when one of our senior pets wants to play, but please tell us that she ate a good breakfast as well.
Doing the same thing over and over while expecting different results is a pretty good definition of insanity.
I’ve been taking care of administrative minutia today with much procrastinating in between. Of course, that means the sheets have been changed, old sheets washed and put away, clothing is sloshing around now and the towels will et washed as well.
At some point, I’ll have to bust out my iron and deal with the linen place-mats and napkins, but I hate ironing so much that it will inspire me to finish up the administrative stuff that isn’t at all bad and not really time consuming when I sit myself down and force myself to deal with it.
I’m not sure what I’m going to do about dinner tonight. I opened the freezer and a package of chicken thighs fell out, so they are in the slow cooker to be shredded. Maybe they will turn into chicken salad or maybe they will be tacos, I haven’t decided yet. I have ruled soup out, I’m feeling too lazy to make the noodles today and it’s not really soup weather anyhow.
After I retired, I kept setting my alarm just so I could enjoy the feeling of shutting it off and going back to sleep. Now I’ll set it if I need to be sure to be up for something but otherwise I let my body tell me when its time to get up.
To paraphrase pilot’s dad, you never get used to it, you just get used to feeling like crap in the mornings.
Sorry about the aphids, I used to have a terrible time with them killing my milkweed. I haven’t seen any here, but there are a bunch of other things eating my garden to worry about instead.
May I suggest you wait until after you move to get your gimp tag? Mine says that it is from AZ and I have been told to get it changed. That might just be petty harassment because I was at a protest, but its still a bother and is a form I have on my stack to deal with today.
There’s no hate quite like Christian hate.
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I’m fairly sure she didn’t even notice. You aren’t the sort of customer to make a fuss or stand out, so easily forgotten.
You really do. Leaving things the way they are isn’t fair to either of you. I hope things work out how you want them to.
Our Harry and David peaches arrived today! Happy dances all around. We really miss Oregon peaches (and all of their produce, really). We used to can local Willamette Valley peaches every year, usually about 20 quarts or more to hold us over the winter. Anyway, looking forward to eating these.
harry and david is good stuff!
i have tomorrow off for readcation. “for duck’s sake” will be the planned activity for tomorrow. i am pondering what snacks to gather.
groan
This prompted me to take a closer look at my tomato plants. They have holes, but I don’t see any movement, so I just dusted them with food grade diatomaceous earth. Hope it helpts.
I was curious about the church, because I’m not familiar with the name. I should know better. I would be bothered with the connection as well.
I was thinking of you this morning. My friend shared a picture of her and her daughter standing in front of some of the 85 million Lego Blocks at Legoland Shanghai. I think the cherry tree is smaller than the one in Legoland Japan, but it’s still very impresive.
Sounds like a good way to measure a day. “Today’s day was a 30 dolphin day.” Thanks for sharing!
Yes. Can’t help much, but it probably helps just to “talk” about the situation before talking to GF. Hope is always good. It’s the last to go.
I think I’ve used the SNOOZE button about 2 or 3 times after I got my first alarm clock in 6th grade. Decided I didn’t like it. After we got married I soon discovered that hubby is a 3x SNOOZE button kind of guy. Since then I’ve been getting up before him (works well for him) and I still don’t use the SNOOZE button.
Enjoy!
Hubby’s aunt had a stroke last week and has officially entered hospice. She’s the last of her generation on that side of the family.
My boss came back from vacation so I told her about my upcoming surgery. And I was hoping to talk to my neighbors about them taking care of the plants while we’re gone, but they asked us to take care of their plants this week, and then they’re going away again! Not sure what we’re going to do about the plants, but we’ll figure something out.
Should call it a day - getting close to bedtime.
I’m glad you shared!
(There’s the “Today in Nature…” thread, if we’re { sniff } not good enuff for ya.)
Me, too.
Thus, I do not own one, nor anything that might require one.
I’ve occasionally come into work (at my current job) wearing a seriously rumpled shirt. My defense? “That’s how you know it’s clean - I fished it outta the dryer.”
I luv this.
Whelp, I gotta call my dad. Might be interesting (last time we got into a hyoooooge argument) but sometimes we get along.
Mom’s out in Ye Olde Country, so he’s playing bachelor. Sadly, the man has zero hobbies or interests (besides absolutely endless doctor appointments) so conversations are … interesting.
Or not.
I would be here every day if I could.
Ahhhhh, gotcha. Yeah, that’s a toughie. Sorry. 
Awwww, thanks…and wow, that place – and that tree – look amazing!!
That’s me, too. But when I moved in with my ex, who worked for a west coast company from our east coast home and therefore kept much later weekday hours than me, I was amazed at how quickly I was able to break that habit (as soon as it might have been rude). Then when I moved out a year later I went back to my old ways, and have been happily abusing my snooze button ever since.