(Old) An Air of Finality in the last 2024 MMP

And her weather sounds even dicier than mine, with power outages possible. Power outages where I am is one thing, lots of help and respite readily available. Much less so in the mountains in WV in a tiny town of barely a thousand. She might have relocated closer to medical care for her beloved husband well ahead of this storm warning.

Nat’l Weather Service:

… A High Impact Winter Storm Brings Heavy Snow and Significant Ice to the Area Sunday into Tuesday Morning

A high impact winter storm will bring a wintry mix of snow, sleet, and freezing rain across the area beginning midday Sunday into Tuesday morning. Significant snow and ice accumulations are expected across the forecast area, resulting in difficult to impossible travel conditions, with the potential for power outages. Very cold air moves in following this system for the remainder of the work week.

There is a carport cover at my residence and all but two residents have spots under it. Guess who doesn’t? But one place has been sold and for two or three days I will be parking in it’s space. When I found I could I went out and the whole set of car windows was glazed, so I sat in there for fifteen minutes to deice. It was too slick to try and scrape, I think that minimal pressure would have pushed my feet sideways.

It still hasn’t started snowing, I thought it would be by now and was getting my hopes up. But local weather bulletins say two in the morning now. Most places, even the churches, are supposed to be closed tomorrow. Our church is, but at ten there will be a pastoral message on YouTube. One thing our congregation is blessed with is two or three folks who are really tech savvy, so even on regular Sundays we livestream our service.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p2u2U9udFac This is last Sunday, if you scroll to about 1:10:45 you will see a woman in a purple shirt walking rather awkwardly up to the communtion rail. That’s me.

That actually sounds really nice: a good book, hot cocoa, and crispy buttered toast.

Sucks for all of us sitting around worrying, powerless to help, but … this is the correct answer.


Long Night wasn’t too bad. We weren’t terribly busy (actually kinda slow for a Saturday) and other than the bitter cold at the window (low 20s) things went pretty comfortably.

At least it wasn’t very windy.

I’ve had a few things go very slowly via USPS lately. Hell, my Secret Santa package moved at the speed of cold molasses.
I double-checked when I got home tonight, but definitely no deliveries.
Will look again Monday.


Monkey is being a butthead, howling & yeeting small objects, and demanding attention treats to be thrown.
The rats are banging their empty water bottles impatiently.

I just wanna sit & chill & have either a hot cuppa, or some soooooouuuuuuup, or both.

But there’s no rest for the wicked weary.

You could give Monkey a rat for a more interesting treat than usual. Should keep the little brat occupied. :slight_smile:

But it did get here, and was wonderful,

Woke during the night, like a lot of you.
Finally looks like next weekend it gets above freezing.
Party time!
Church in a bit. No cares on football today, I’m happy now.:purple_heart::football:

Oh yeah, speaking of football, there’s apparently a locally-important game today, something something Detroit Lions mumble mumble might go to playoffs.

I work open → close with S.M. who will at minimum be watching the scores on her phone & keeping us all updated.

Rats got fresh water & a big scoopful of birdseed mix apiece just now, plus a whole sheet of crumpled up newspaper to shred.

Monkey got a bunch of treats plus scritches & an appropriate amount of fawning over, so is now sitting by the side door singing me The Song of His People, over and over again.

Poor guy, not being allowed into the darkness at 4:30 in the morning with snow on the ground and windchills in the teens.

Poor Monkey, indeed.

Afternoon, mumpers! It’s currently 1c/34f with a predicted high of 6c/43f and cloudy. Weather app says “In my opinion, it’s sort of fucking cold and overcast, but not fucking really?” Well, it’s cold and grey out there so that sounds right.

Happy birthday, Red :birthday: :tada: :gift:

Happy Doperversary, flyboy

Let’s hope that if becomes when, and you get the job! Sounds like it would be a real feather in your cap :slight_smile:

Yay for solving the problem and not having to pay someone else a fortune to do it!

Good news, especially on the balance front! I bought my mum some Yaktrax many years ago when she started having balance issues, that was mainly down to being nervous and hesitant about walking in snowy or icy conditions. She’d damaged both hips and broken her wrist already due to falls, but she loved to walk every day and getting outside was good for her mentally so the Yaktrax were an excellent solution.

Me, too :frowning: I thought we would have heard something from her by now. Sadly I’m not friends with her on farcebook, I wish I was so that I could at least look for updates.

Not this time. The professional forecasters on the Beeb were talking about all the dire weather we’ll get when warm and cold air collide, and the mess of trailing fronts get together. Allegedly, it’s not happening over Norn Iron and is waiting until it hits us instead. Basically, the weather’s going in the wrong direction to affect them :slight_smile:

We did get out last night, sadly our friends from further north decided not to make the journey as the weather forecast wasn’t good. We went out for food first at a place across the road from the venue and had some very good curry (lamb keema for me, and chicken saag for 'im indoors, both with naan bread). Then we went to the gig - had a fun night, saw some friends and watched three excellent bands and one that used to be very good but for various reasons is now just above mediocre. However, fun was had and we came home to a bit of snow.

The snow’s melting now, and we may instead get some rain later, hopefully not the freezing variety. I have no plans for the day apart from some slothage and lots of tea-drinking. I should be taking 'im indoors to the station later but first of all, we need to find out if trains are running. I heard from a friend further north that they have no buses or trams running in her city, so we’ll have to wait and see what happens to rail services. The route he needs runs north to south, so we will check the rail app later to see what we need to do. He might need to travel into Big City Station and get a connecting service from there, who knows?

Good Mornin’ Y’all! Up and caffeinatin’. YAWN ‘Tis 37 Amurrkin out and cloudy with a predicted high of 57 and cloudy. TWPTB say tomorrow will be rainy. We shall see. I didn’t post again yestiddy cause we decided to buy Wicked last night. It was after ten p.m. when it was over and beddy bye time. I see a bazillion posts which I will get to at some point, but not now. The Epiphany partay was fun with lots of nummy numnums to num on. The idea was heavy horse ovaries. Someone brought a squish casserole. Weird. However it too was nummy. I made the executive decision not to deheathenate this mornin. OYKW is asleep as I post so he obviously agrees with the decision. Any need to feed will be via forage. We have plenty of sammich makin’s and so forth. My intention is to stay in da cave.

Now I need more caffeine and to feed rumbly tummy. Then, onward into the day! Rah.

Happy Sunday Y’all!

Kinda hard to dance when lying down on a gurney… :stuck_out_tongue:

I didn’t wake at 4:30 today - it was 3:30, dammit. But I fell back to sleep by about 4:30 till 6-ish. We both got showered and dressed and decided we wanted Cracker Barrel for breakfast. We found out our favorite waitress there is now a manager, which explains why we haven’t seen her of late. But good for her!

It was 16-freekin’-degrees when we left the house. I do not like. Nasty ice and snow and sleet and overall ick forecast starting tonight and into all day tomorrow. I’m hoping Daughter can work from home - she has a long commute mostly on country roads - not a good place to slide into a ditch. I expect Roxy’s school will be closed, too.

We have an appointment at 9:30 tomorrow in Leonardtown to have MIL’s name removed from our joint bank account. Then all that will remain is for FCD to go to the other credit union and close out MIL’s account. No biggie - it has all of $5.05 balance.

He’s still beating himself up about not being able to do more for his parents. He just won’t accept that neither he nor anyone else could have done anything. They were in their 90s and even if they’d not had all the health problems, no one could reverse time. And he refuses to consider counseling, so I just don’t know what to do. His intellect accepts reality, but his emotions won’t, and now he’s fretting about is brother on top of that.

Maybe I’m just cold-hearted, but I see his parents’ deaths as perfectly natural and expected, and I don’t think he bears any responsibility for his brother, especially since he’s got caseworkers to deal with him. We manage his inheritance money and he has plenty otherwise so I don’t concern myself much. Maybe it would be different if we were talking about my mother or my brother. Dunno.

Anyway, no plans for today. Maybe Daughter will come over with the kids. I’m about halfway thru my book and if I don’t doze, I might be able to finish it. That’s pretty much all.

Happy Sunday!

Good morning! Happy Birthday, Red!!

Not too much going on here today that I know of. My new office chair that I use in the kitchen appears to have a lean to the left after a month or so. It’s a bit heavy to pickup, so I’m hoping that MusicMan can help me inspect it.

Then maybe off to the place at the mall to remove my Christmas stuff and make room for my art at the other store. Or maybe just a nap or two!

Up, caffeinated, and sheveled. Off today. I shall do the usual morning cleaning, followed by early afternoon handegg and late afternoon hockey. I have to flip my mattress today, and spot is on it. Which means I should have dumped more Jameson in my coffee this morning. No Snowmageddon or Icepocalypse is predicted here, but ya never know.

Entire shoe menagerie: “ATTICA! ATTICA! ATTICA!”

Mitten State Thunderdome!

:champagne: :birthday: :partying_face:HAPPY BIRTHDAY red!!!:partying_face::birthday::champagne:
I do hope Nelson gives you your presents on the outside. :wink:

:birthday: :partying_face: :confetti_ball:
Happy RedDay!
:partying_face: :birthday: :confetti_ball:

Thank you all for the birthday wishes!

The plans for the day are mostly staying in, but Penny’s dad will be here this afternoon and we’ll go around the corner to the Salvadoran / Italian place for dinner. They do good Italian, but great Salvadoran food, so sometimes it’s hard to decide which side of the menu to select from.

It’s some nastyish weather outside, 34F and raining. I dread the temp drop tonight when everything will freeze up. Tomorrow is supposed to be totally winter weather. I’ll have to check our weather hotline for irk to see if we start late or don’t go in Tuesday.

Stay safe and healthy y’all!

While I understood ezzactly what you meant, any non-Mumper would be forgiven for thinking you’d had a stroke.

I dunno.

100% of my experience (both personally & from knowing others who did this) is that it’s a shitload more stress & longer hours for a very marginally amount of more pay.

Hopefully her corporate overlords are reasonable people & her experience will be better than all of ours.

For whatever it’s worth - and it’s not like this will help your husband - but I fully agree with every word here that you posted.

You’ve used “cold hearted” to half-describe yourself before.
To me all of ^^ seems practical, unsentimental, and pragmatic.

Hah!


Hippo burpday, red!

… did anyone bring cake?


I clicked the heat off when I went to bed (I sleep better that way - a whole 5 hrs before bio-break, instead of the usual 4!) so the house was a “toasty” 59-60 F when I got up.

… except I forgot Charm’s little heater pad is on the fritz, and I had moved her tank to right in front of a heating vent while I deal with replacing it.

So she spent a few hours overnight very cold. Shit, shit, shit. I hope she’s okay. I’m running the heat now, and will check back on her in a bit once she’s had a chance to absorb some warmth.

Shit, shit, shit.


Meanwhile, I’d like to scrounge up some sort of breakfast, and after dealing with all that, maybe hopefully still get a few more hours nappage before a full shift again.

I agree with every word of it too! I’d add realistic and sensible to the list, after removing hard-hearted. Money could not buy the loving, devoted, patient care the Fairy Chats gave FIL and MIL, for years.

And I hope Pretzel is ok. I understand being a heat-seeking creature. Heaven knows I am!

I have a side of the family like that- my uncle, 10 years older than my Dad, married twice; shotgun style at age 18, resulting in 3 kids then again in his early 50s after a divorce, resulting in another 2 offspring.

Wifey #2 was actually around 6 months younger than the cause of marriage #1; Wifey #2 was a divorcee in her 30s, it wasn’t actually dodgy, just weird when you spell it out like that.

His second child, my cousin if you’re keeping track, had kids early, one of whom also had kids pretty young. Her oldest, 5 years older than me, gained a newborn uncle (OK, half-uncle if you want to be precise) when he was around 12. My uncle became a great-grandfather when his youngest child was about 16.

I have only 9 cousins (or 11, depending on who you include), but they were born over a 40ish year span and cover a hell of a lot of generational confusion.

Anyway, we had about 3 measly flakes of snow, so school’s not gonna be cancelled tomorrow.

Is Charm a fish in water? Water retains heat longer than the air does.

IIRC charm is a lil python. Hopefully an OK one.