For honeybees- remember in Murrica they ain’t actually a native species, they are basically farmed livestock. The bees that need protecting are all the bumbles and other native bees, which can actually have their numbers reduced by having too many honeybees around.
The coffee machine at irk isn’t actually an official one, it’s an expensive espresso machine that belonged to another staff member. There’s a tally sheet where you sign up and pay 20p a cup, which pays for the beans and an occasional service, and a few of us take turns to get milk. The official coffee, in the canteen, is over 10 times the price and it’s not even very good.
Clearly the situation is urgent to get a new one, but… it’s a big open plan office, and all the neighbouring office also used our machine, so anything available for general use would be used for maybe 50 cups a day, which would kill a basic domestic model and there’s no space for everyone to bring their own, unless it’s small enough to fit in a desk drawer (which my metal French press is). I can supply my own caffeination needs but I can’t bring enough for everyone..
Up, caffeinating, breakfasted and fixing to do KP. I’ll load the car and get Nelson settled in his car seat to head to to Sis’ this afternoon. They’ll leave in the morning. They’ll take Frankie with them so Dad gets his dog fix.
Good morning! Mrs Magill hit the farmers market this morning. I now have fresh peaches! We then went by out friend’s cafe and got a breakfast wrap which we split.
The laundry is moving and I’m catching up on The Dope.
Interesting. It sounded like he said it cooks in forty-five minutes, but I sure he said the more reasonable four or five minutes.
taters - Mrs Magill and I like Soma for the over the shoulder boulder holders, but you’ve got to shop their sales. They’re rather expensive otherwise. They also will fit you.
Nuts we have plenty of bumblebees in addition to the farmed honeybees. We also have carpenter bees, but fuck those guys.
67F when I got up, so opened some windows to get cool air into the apartment. It’s now 75F, so I’ll leave the windows open for awhile longer. No sign of our HVAC contractor.
Our fifth day with no newspaper delivery, despite calling them and complaining. The wife will call them again. I’m hoping the ‘rule of threes’ is just a wives’ tale.
I may have to make a trip to the grocery for a few things, but otherwise it looks like another uneventful day.
Absolutely recommended! My folks lived in Florida and we were blindly trying to figure stuff out and headed towards very bad decisions until we consulted an elder care attorney.
It’s disheartening to witness a lifetime of hard work and savings lost to very expensive often mediocre medical care in a nursing home.
I hope there are some good options for you all to keep your mom safe and stable.
Don’t forget the wasps and hornets! They are very important pollinators and most people just kill them on sight.
Dang about the espresso machine. That looks like quite the dilemma, I certainly wouldn’t want to bring my personal machine into that large of a group after the last nice one got broken, likely by over use.
Sometimes you just gotta take care of your self and make the others fend for themselves.
You can buy small apartment sized air conditioner units as long as you are able to vent them to the outside. I know that you shouldn’t have to do that but sometimes comfort is more important than principles. I really hope they get it fixed quickly.
Happy Saturday - it will get up to 93 ferrets (34 c) today, which is more ferrets than I prefer, and it’s quite humid to help everything feel even better.
One of my credit cards got stolen last night - my sister has a copy and dropped it. The thieves took quick advantage and hit two gas stations before Chase flagged it and texted me. Hopefully it won’t be difficult getting the charges waived. Updating the credit card number everywhere will be a pain but far better that than dealing with a ton of fraudulent charges.
I’m actually really impressed with Chase’s fraud detection. It’s never flagged anything on a road trip but picked these two up nearly immediately.
JtC thanks for the info about milkweed. I’m hoping to replace most of the bermuda grass with some type of clover and also some pollinator friendly and native plants like milkweed and Indian blanket.
Cookie scritches to beautiful Sadie. And in your shoes I’d be thinking about moving too - that places just seems to have constant problems year-round. Do you have family on the west coast? I seem to recall you talking about visiting family near where you currently are.
Frumious I’m glad the exchange student was a success, and sorry your time is getting cut a bit short. Is it something you think you’d do again?
Well I’ve put off going out into the world long enough. Time to shower and get dressed and get out there.
I heard ‘four to five’. He said to preheat for ten minutes. That’s a bit long. It only takes three to five minutes to heat up. Anyway, The Spousal Unit liked her breakfast muffin.
We have portable a/c similar to this one. (I think ours is a Mitsubishi. Bought it maybe up to ten years ago, and I can’t find a picture of our unit.) If you click on the link, you will see pictures of the setup, which is like ours. The second picture down shows the vent in a sash window. In the third picture, you can see that the vent is in a sliding window. We only have one window (in the living room) that opens, and it’s a sliding window. So our exhaust vent is vertical.
ETA: While there is an internal reservoir to collect the condensation, and the a/c is supposed to turn off when it’s full, it never really worked on our specific one. Might be uneven floor or something. Anyway, you can put a hose on the back. I did that, and put it into a 5-gallon bucket.
Very very windy here - a transient boater is in the slip opposite us and he said as they were heading north in the bay, his wife was thrown from her seat twice by the rough waters. Undoubtedly small craft warnings are in effect.
A boat 2 slips down from us was sinking - something in one of the heads let water into the people tank. The marina folks pumped it out then pulled it out of the water. Someone isn’t happy today…
That would likely work, but we have very limited space here. Also, I’d rather they fix it than have me spend $300. Seems like they’ve got it running again, but for how long is anyone’s guess.
I only worked 2.5 days last week, but thanks to my former employee they were a very long and stressful 2.5 days. I slept terribly again last night; I’m beat. In good news, though, the gas, power, and water were turned on at the new house yesterday! While I was there I swept the dead flies out of the garage, turned on the a/c and set the thermostat to 73, and went around turning off the lights that had been left on. I also briefly turned on every faucet and tub/shower to get the air out of the pipes. And I confirmed that the doorbell works…I haven’t had a doorbell in 13 years!
I get the keys/my new lease starts tomorrow at noon. I’ll take a stepladder and some batteries with me, because the upstairs hall smoke detector started chirping while I was there. Husband BFF[1] will meet me at the new house at around 12:30 and help me put together some new shelving so there will be a place to put my 50+ Lego sets other than the floor, then we’ll come to my current place (less than 3 miles away) and start moving them. I’m hoping we won’t need more than 2 trips with 2 cars. The movers will be packing 90% of my stuff Thursday morning, but I’ll handle my Lego, jewelry, and a few other fragile/valuable things.
Today I started packing the Lego sets, and I’ve managed to break two of them already. The silver lining is that broken sets are easier to move. While I’d rather not break any of them, I don’t think I’ll mind having to do some reassembly; it’ll almost be like building them the first time. Luckily, I’ll have plenty of Lego stuff to do in June – between fixing things that break before/while they’re moved, putting together the Shelby Cobra set I bought on Tuesday, and putting together the sets that are being delivered in the next few days (I pre-ordered four sets that are being released on 06/01). I will definitely need the brick therapy next month!
It’s going to be another very stressful week: in addition to continuing to get a handle on the project I had to take over with no notice, I have a new hire starting on Monday, I meet FiOS at the new house between 3-5pm on Wednesday, and the movers come first thing Thursday morning. I’m low-key stressed about knowing that the moving truck will need to block the street at the new house during unloading on Thursday afternoon, so I won’t really exhale until the truck is gone. I’ll be happy once I can start unpacking on Friday, and even happier after my new couch gets delivered (a week from today). As for my current place, the final interior cleaning is scheduled for 06/12: I just have to also schedule a final gutter cleaning, and then I can tell my property manager that I’m ready for the move-out inspection.
Home. It was a successful boat day. I got all the curtains hung, tho I have no idea where some of my tiebacks disappeared to - I’m missing 5! Weird. But FCD got the electrical nonsense wrung out so tomorrow we should be able to get the mast installed.
The mail brought a Happy Birthday mailing for late MIL - a free hearing screening!! So that got recycled. Nothing else going on. Time for chillage, I guess.
I bought chicken beasts to make chicken Florentine tonight. They’re thick, so I’ll cut them in half. If I make all of them, that would be eight portions. That’s kind of a lot, and I only bought one pound of fresh baby spinach. But I may as well. I’ll roast some Brussels sprouts for a side. Unfortunately, the supermarket only had frozen petite ones. They’ll work. The girls (well, Goo) have wheat grass to nibble on. Mia Moglie has a piece of tiramisu in the fridge, but she hasn’t discovered it yet. I also got some country-style pork ribs from the BIBIR bin.
It. Was. A. Day. I was on the Irreg belt again. Apart from there being a lot of bix things, Unload kept turning off the Irreg belt for…reasons? Which mean instead of a stead flow of things, so we could fill the trains and move stuff around, there were long pauses, followed by tsunamis of stuff. Which mean we had to stop the belt to sort and load, which backed things up more. Plus they kept pulling the guys who were supposed to scan and tag the boxes so we could just sort them and sent them to work the Sort Aisle. Which meant I had to scan them all, which slowed things down more. So there were a lot of boxes still on the belt when the drivers left. And apparently it was like that buildingwide. It’s was 10:45 before I got to go to the 200 Slide to work the damages and sch, and to describe what whoever was over there instead of me was “An attempt was made.” So it was 1:45 by the time I wrapped up all that up. And I had to stop at the ABC stoe and buy gin, because somebody guzzled it last night celebrating. Plus a stop at Total Wine for vermouth, and fighting my was in and out of North Hills on a Saturday meant I got home at 2:45. And I got a 2 minute Divine Feline Stare of Utter Disappointment, before Spot decided that worship from his follower was better than sulking alone. at this point I’m gonna skip the nap, finish the laundry, have a couple of beerverages, and turn in early, so I can carpe some diem early in the a.m.
You only have 3 toes?
Last time I wore shorts, someone started screaming that “the becons are lit”, and that “Gondor calls for aid.”
I have a spare walker, if you need to thrash a whippersnapper.
QFT. I have a designated “bee-bat.” It’s a chunk of 1x4 carved a crude handle into something that looks kinda like a cricket bat. Very satisfying.
I made it back from visiting my folks in Maine after the Boston trip about 10 minutes late to grab Ms Peach from the kennel. Is hard to time a 7 1/2 hour trip+ dropping off the rental car to the minute. She’s going to be mad at me on Monday.
We went to a nursery and I don’t know what I stepped in as I reached behind some potted evergreens to check a price tag, but my shoes and car mat are now drying outside before I attack them with Lysol and a soapy scrubber–YUCK! On the bright side, we now have a cute whirlygig of a size that won’t look stupid in our postage-stamp-sized backyard.
Wow! Just got a really pleasant shock from a video my son sent me. His kids are heavily involved in band/orchestra/jazz, etc. His daughter, who is graduating this year, is part of the Basie Jazz Combo and they performed at a recent concert. She sang the old Nat King Cole standard “Orange-Colored Sky” and absolutely nailed it. Hit the tremolo right where it was needed and she has just a beautiful alto voice. It was on FB, and I don’t think I can link to it here, right?
former employee they were a very long and stressful 2.5 days. I slept terribly again last night; I’m beat. In good news, though, the gas, power, and water were turned on at the new house yesterday! While I was there I swept the dead flies out of the garage, turned on the a/c and set the thermostat to 73, and went around turning off the lights that had been left on. I also briefly turned on every faucet and tub/shower to get the air out of the pipes. And I confirmed that the doorbell works…I haven’t had a doorbell in 13 years!
While I’d rather not break any of them, I don’t think I’ll mind having to do some reassembly; it’ll almost be like building them the first time. Luckily, I’ll have plenty of Lego stuff to do in June – between fixing things that break before/while they’re moved, putting together the 
