(Old) Another lost great idea in the MMP

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
181

:smiling_face_with_horns:

boofae That’s great exciting news about Blossom and Cherry! You are a truly great cat Mom! For Blossom and Cherry, and Muffin too. She’s been traumatized by losing her Mom but eventually with your patient care she’ll come around, may take months but she’ll get there.

Didn’t get to sleep until sometime around 2:30am because I was working on a spreadsheet of menus, related food and other things to pack for my Sis and my Ohio Wildflower Pilgrimage in a week and a half.

I woke up shortly after 7 so not the most restful but BF texted and said that we could hopefully plant the rest of the seeds this morning but had to finish before noon as she had acupuncture appointment this afternoon. So, I hustled as quickly as my old self could. Seems that getting ready takes 2-3 times as long as it did when i was in my 20’s/30’s; I don’t quite understand why. Had a half piece of toast with crunchy PB & half a banana on it then was out the door with my tube planters, 3 egg cartons and my 1-2-3-4. It was beautiful out, full sun and temps in mid 60s.

I had made 29 planters earlier in the week and had about a dozen that I had left at BF’s house. I planted seeds in all of them, all flowers that were planned out, some for flower garden and vegetable garden (marigolds are known to keep insects/bugs away from 'maters), some for the cemetary, some for my MIL’s 2 pots that have a great meaning for Hubs and some requested by daughter. I also planted 1 radish seed. I was able to be alert as BF gave me a delicious big mug of Maple Pecan Pie coffee and a homemade healthy muffin. She uses a recipe from a package from Trader Joes as a base then makes it more healthy by adding various other ingredients. She’s promised me the recipe; hope I get it soon. She showed me some seedlings that I planted 2 weeks ago (turnip and peas). She has grow lights and warming mats and covers them so they are in a greenhouse effect. Her daughter went back to Oregon last evening and due to her daughter’s migraine yesterday, they weren’t able to install her new outdoor greenhouse. So, I told her I would help her with that next week. Left with a dozen fresh eggs (her chickens are showing their joy with the warming up weather by amping up their laying that had gone down to almost nil during the cold temps) and some other food that she had picked up at Costco for me.

Daughter texted asking if I still had a honey hookup. Of course, have been buying from the same beekeeper for about a decade. Called her when I got home and talked about plans for meeting up Saturday at the HandsOff rally/march. Got her approval for sloppy joes for dinner Sunday when she comes over. Thanks to FCM for the idea.

Well, enough procrastination, need to get on household chores. TTYL.

182

I’m glad my VISA fraud department is on the ball, but DAMMIT I need to do the ETAs for FCD and me before our cruise and VISA keeps flagging the charge as fraudulent, even after I called them on it. The woman I got today had such a thick accent, I couldn’t follow her. So I’ll try again tomorrow to get them to permit the whopping charge of $13.45 to go thru. Twice. Dammit.

I swear, next step is to go to the British Embassy in DC and apply there. < headdesk >

183

I roll-chopped the lawns. 0.25 miles, 46:36.

184

Started Typing: 2:41 PM ET
Clicked Reply: 3:33 PM ET

I’ve been listening in on a program review all day (since 9am, with a 1-hour break for lunch): there have been some good nuggets and I’ve made some notes, but my brain is starting to turn to mush. :joy: I got a quick shout-out when they reviewed recent project management hires, so that was nice. The review won’t end until ~4pm…happily, I’m caught up on my access requests/training/etc. and have nothing else on my Thursday to-do list.

Today I did some “can only do when I work from home” stuff: I had a sandwich (lunch + dinner) and groceries delivered from Wegman’s, and I had the mobile groomer come give Bailey a bath. She has a vet tech appointment tomorrow for a Bordatella booster; I figured I’d take a nice clean doggy. :slight_smile: I also had a Bluetooth headset delivered today for when I’m in the office: work would have provided a wired headset for free, but the one I got was only $40 and I much prefer wireless. I’ll set it up and test it sometime tomorrow, then take it to the office on Monday and leave it there.

I wound up not going to Trader Joe’s after work yesterday: by the time I got that close to home, I decided that I didn’t want to stop. I’m still craving those mini ice cream cones, though, so I’ll probably go sometime this weekend.

It was nice to not have to commute this morning (and to know that I’ll be in my LR five minutes after I log off today), but mostly I’m grateful to be wearing flip-flops! I got some nasty blisters on both feet when I went to the Supreme Court last week, and the one on my left heel is healing the slowest. I applied several layers of extra-cushioned Band-Aids on Mon-Wed, but it was still pretty sore by the end of each day. I’m hoping it’ll be better by Monday.

When my mom died I was her executor, and had her mail forwarded to my address: 9 years later I still get mail addressed to her from the Smithsonian and the local public television station.

Also, I worked for Miracle Ear one summer when I was in college: they had some space on the top floor of Montgomery Ward (near the photo studio), and I was part receptionist and part telemarketer. The audiologists were a father and son. :slight_smile:

Yay!

Muffin will definitely come around. :slight_smile:

Yeah…I’m with Mrs. W about the fur thing!

I didn’t get my cat’s ashes when she died in 2004 – I didn’t want/think to ask for them – and for a long time I thought I wouldn’t want Bailey’s, but these days I think I would like them. I figure I’ll put them in the LR next to my Mom’s picture. The paw print idea might be nice, too.

185

Afternoon all. Handyman was here and prepped the wall for painting, but will have to come back tomorrow to finish it. Paid him half of what owe him for his work so far. Tiel guy hasn’t called or texted (I texted him about 2pm), so tomorrow I’ll try someone else for what should be about an hour’s job or so. Now need to start getting ready for soccer coaching, it’s 85F outside so probably will take some water with me and give the kids some extra breaks too.

cookie, not a big bagel fancier, but glad you found a reliable source.

FCM, looking forward to the ‘after’ pictures in a little while… And I had no problem with my ETA payment, you’d think the couple thou’ you paid for the trip itself would be the first thing they’d look at.

Wheelie, I agree with Mrs. W, that is a bit creepy but fortunately easily remedied. And a sweet use of Chloe’s ashes.

Cat Glove, I imagine you’ll be sleeping in tomorrow. And yay! for the eggs-cellant reward for the planting help you provided.

Flyboy, need to do some measurements someday, think I mow at least that much too.

Oopsie, yeah, sat in a lot of Program Reviews in my day, since I was leading many of them I had to pay attention, but tough to keep you attention on them for 3-4 hours at a stretch.

Time tochange into coaching gear and get ready for soccer with the 9-year olds. Catch y’all this evening.

186

I have a WoofTrax app on my phone, to see how far I walk and to (somehow) raise money for an animal shelter. :wink:

187

Are there any grief hotlines in your area? Sometimes just talking to someone about confused pain helps a bunch.

Be kind to yourself, he would want that.

And did you give him a loud smooch right between the ears? According to GG, that is a fate worse than death.

I was honestly pretty proud of myself for thinking about all that while drunk. I even typed up individual itineraries and left them on my desktop to read over before finalizing things. My only regret is not being able to sit them next to crying children, but traveling steerage almost guarantees crying babies on the plane.

Oh hurray, nose booping must make you smile so hard! And belly rubs are something special too!

Poor Muffin is so scared that she’s missing out on all of the fun parts of living with you and 'im indoors but I’m sure you will convince her of the error in her ways.

So eventually, they will work MusicMan into finding a different job and won’t have a clue as to why they can’t keep workers. That really sucks.

I don’t usually shop Goodwill, I don’t like their hiring practices but lately I’ve been thinking that I need a cast iron dutch oven. But because I’ve managed to live almost 70 years without owning such a thing, I don’t really need it enough to pay full price.

I went into the Goodwill in Logan to look for one and noticed that they had bags of those fancy yogurt jars, 6 fer five bucks. I just grabbed a pile of over-priced kids books and left to probably never go back.

It has been a dreary, rainy day here as well. At we got the tornado warnings at threeish and slept through them. I need ot check my phone and find out why it didn’t go ogg. Now we are under flood watch and the creeks are rising. The river is also high, but isn’t raising like it did last month.

It triggered my food insecurities so much that we went to Aldi’s and bought about a hundred pounds of meet, ten lbs of assorted cheeses and ten containers of mixed nuts. Hubs eats them all the time.

Then we went to Kroger and stocked up on rice, beans, flour and cornmeal. I’ve already filled our third pantry closet with such things and corn starch, baking powder, salt and baking soda.

I honestly do not know where my food hoarding tendencies came from, I never missed a meal as a kid and the only times I missed meals as an adult was when I made the choice between buying a burrito for lunch or a pack of cigarettes and usually picked the smokes.

Thank you, but I’m really all over it now. If I hadn’t been having a drunken pity party, you folks probably would never have heard about it cause it really isn’t that important to me.

I am so happy for you! Good fresh bread always makes for a happy time.

Hurray! It was so smart of you to do a test piece first, now you know how to do it right with the expensive fabric. (which I think is super fitting for the purpose, very cute)

As would the Lemurs. He put 49% tariffs on Madagascar. TF do we even import from them? Coffee, silk, cocoa and tropical fruits. The US isn’t that important to them, they import more from anywhere but the us and sell more to anywhere but the us.

This has got personal, the man is fucking with my thread supply.

What a lovely way to remember such a beautiful kitty girl.

I know just what you mean, it takes longer and I’m not as high maintenance as I was back then. I used to take the time to assemble an outfit and check front and back before going out and now I just grab whatever is in front of the closet (I put the clean clothes in the back) and call it good.

:rofl:

Both very worthy causes, but still…the amount of waste involved has to cost a staggering amount of money so I guess they must think it is worth it.

188

Apparently the problem is where the money is being charged, not how much. I think I’ll call the Fraud Dept directly and see what they can do to keep it from being flagged as fraud. Or I’ll try the Mastercard from the other credit union. Or maybe my debit card? Must consider the possibilities.

Nothing on the agenda for this evening apart from my requisite bike ride. And sone BritBox later. Standard RDOS. :wink:

189

I have one credit card that is hyper sensitive to retail charges from a long way from home. they can’t seem to learn I used to travel for a living and still travel a lot.

The kicker: The card (from a major US national bank) is airline affiliated and is marketed specifically at frequent travelers. :man_facepalming:

And yes, the entire fraud department is in Bangalore and has a) very thick accents, and b) very low internet bandwidth for their VOIP phones, so calls drop often and the audio fidelity is horrid.

Can you tell I’m impressed?

190

Howdy Y’all! We got the mower assembled, but I didn’t try it out today. Just not motivated to do so. Maybe future bear will do so tomorrow. Maybe he is not that much of a RDOS. Nah. He’s probably as useless as present bear. Did manage to make sup, so there’s that.

191

Church dinner was stuffed pepper or pulled pork, cabbage and noodles ( not enough) and salad.
It was so warm today I wore my black leggings.
My back is still bothering me.
I have some chips and dip for snacking later.

192

Ref my post above, I have no idea how that snip from boofae got in there. It doesn’t belong and now too late for me to fix.

193

I rode my own horse today!!!11! Just walkies but it was so good to be with her. I mounted with no problem. First try for dismounting didn’t work, but second time was perfect. Those PT exercises have helped the formerly weak muscles.

My former FIL died on Saturday and the wake is tomorrow afternoon. I am good friends with my former sister in law and her wife. But I don’t know if I can go to the visitation. It’s too much sadness. My ex will be there but that doesn’t enter into it. It’s all so weird. I got along great with my in laws and remained in contact after the divorce.

194

Present bear put the mower together! Not so useless after all, LOL!

Well of course! They know that folks who travel to foreign lands are obviously up to no good and need to be monitored closely.

Most of our available cash is in the AZ state credit union. They used to freak out every time I tried to buy gas out of state but let some out of country scammers run up over twenty grand in charges almost over night. They took care of it the next day, but really?

So I took myself to the Rec Center and bobbed around in the water for a while. (They did have flotation belts but I’m pretty fat and float well enough that I don’t need one to keep my head above water.)

My ankle and wrist don’t hurt as long as i’m careful but my shoulder hasn’t gotten over the fall yet. Stoopid shoulder has already been x-rayed and MRI’d (I hate getting them, it always makes my back hurt), it is just yelling because it feels ignored or something.)

Hubs has been fretting about my no-mow zone because it looks unkempt. He wants to put landscape cloth down and then get a couple of stock water troughs for me to use as raised planters for my wildflowers. That kinda defeats the purpose so I’m going to make the area between the back of the shed and the fence into a wildflower no-mow zone instead.

I do not know what happened to turn him so house proud here when he used to argue with me over planting a couple of tomato plants. We had blow up fights at each house we owned over his chain saw approach to landscaping and now he’s debating which color of bark he wants to use for mulch.

I’m not complaining mind you, I’m just wondering why it didn’t happen sooner.

HURRAY!!! What a good girl she was for you.

Dang about the death. I’m sorry for the sadness.

195

This made my evening~goofy big smile on my face, my grand daughter is wondering about me…but then I think she always does.

196

I really should have called them buoyancy belts. The point is to keep your legs off the pool bottom. Thus allowing VERY low to no impact water exercise.

Perhaps it’s because relatives or old-time friends might come by.
Didn’t happen sooner because he really didn’t care what the people in AZ or wherever thought because he didn’t care if they judged him; their opinion didn’t matter.

197

Where I used to live, the best sushi in town was at the V-Twin shop (now gone). Their motto was Eat Japanese, ride American.

That sister knows what’s in the will, she will just contest it til kingdom come.

Awwww… it sounds like Cherry and Blossom are beginning to realize that they’re home, BooFae. :slight_smile:

If you ever wander towards Chattanooga, check out Lodge Cast Iron. Their shop has reasonably priced cast iron ware, plus the museum and their cornbread festival is fun.

Yay!

Weird day. On Thursdays, I pretty much have to hit the deck running at irk to get stuff done on schedule (don’t worry, the afternoon is pretty chill most of the time). I came in and my drop off rack for product was in the department next door with a metric shit ton of their stuff on it. My product wasn’t found until about a half hour’s Easter egg hunt was done. I messaged my boss so’s she would know why reports were late.

Once I got rolling, we were evacuated to the storm shelter for ~30 minutes. That was only the second time in my nearly 20 years there for that. I did manage to get most things done, although programming had to be saved for next week. Now for the weekend!

Stay safe and healthy y’all!

198

I’ve several times tried to talk her into a Jolene themed Lodge cast iron skillet for corn bread, to no avail. I’m sure her kitchen needs one hanging on the wall. Maybe third times the charm.

Plus of course they have 37 sizes and types of cast iron Dutch ovens, starting at $40. Enameled is of course more expensive.

199

Hello, beloved friends. I’m here. I’ve just been busy with humans and canines.

Mr. Max and his person are moving. The MRI (not sure if I mentioned this or not) showed she’d had a stroke–when, they don’t know, but I’m guessing maybe at the time she lost her vision in one eye for some hours. Her daughter and SIL got alarmed (understandably) and told her to move in with them. They live north of here. She moved here because it wasn’t working out before, but she doesn’t feel she has a choice now. Her SIL is a personal injury lawyer, the kind who advertises on TV, and they’re quite wealthy, but they charge her quite a bit of rent. I don’t think she wants to go, but she feels she has no choice. At least they’re OK with her taking her dog with her.

I figured out who Mr. Max reminds me of: Charles II, minus the huge honker and signs of inbreeding. That’s when he’s dry. When wet, he looks like a bedraggled Tiny Tim, minus the ukulele.

Today I took Ms. Dog for a long walk. She came within 6 INCHES of a duck! I pulled her back and the duck took off at the very last second.

This is the stuff I think about so I DON’T think about the reality that’s staring us all in the face. Bad times are coming, bad, bad times. I’m being neither pessimistic nor dramatic. Anyone who doesn’t see that is either getting all their news from Fox or is desperately doing an ostrich impression.

I have a friend in Vietnam. She lives in Ho Chi Minh City with her mother. She came to the US for college, which is how I know her, and has been teaching English to kids and adults. Nobody can afford to send their kids to her any more, so she’s just teaching adults, and not many of them. Her dog got depressed without the kids, so she had to get her dog a dog. She said many tens of thousands of people have been laid off there already. With the tariffs, that will increase. Vietnam will not be able to afford US goods (or much else), so expect our $16 billion in exports to Vietnam to dry up. And that’s just one country. This is insanity. It’s murder-suicide.

Jack, I’m so sorry about your BIL. I hope Bob provides some comfort.

I’ve actually read all the posts I missed. I just can’t remember what I read, other than hippie and Boo met up, and MetalMouse did his braunschweiger run. Hugs to all.

200

Mrs. L.A. has been flying a 3-foot by 5-foot Ukrainian flag to show support for Ukraine. I bought an American flag in the same size, a 2-foot by 3-foot Canadian flag, and a 2-food by 3-foot Mexican flag. Mi Esposa has decided it’s time to fly the Mexican flag. She’s washing it now. (She likes to wash things before using them.)