Sorry. I thought you said ‘chili’.
BLTs have been requested for dinner tonight, based on the aroma of my breakfast.
Trash and recycling are out… and it wasn’t even 10:00 when I did it! 
Sunny now, partly cloudy this afternoon with a high of 71º Ferret Height. If the tide is in far enough, I may go for a paddle off of ‘our’ beach. ('Yakwife doesn’t 'yak on Sundays, because she doesn’t wan to be sore visiting patients on Mondays.)
Lucked out and scored some late season Colorado peaches yesterday. Looks like corn season is on the wane, though.
Trying to work up the energy to make spaghetti sauce for dinner. Bought some spicy Italian sausage yesterday for the purpose, but schlepping laundry has worn me out. Maybe a nap and then skeddys.
Another cool fall-ish day. Windows open to air out the barn for a nice change, although something’s got me sneezing and coughing.
I really need to obtain some big-ass planters. The ground at my rental home is so compacted and nutrient-poor, and I miss playing with dirt.
Having once done this (Other Shoe’s mother did a huge part of our packing for one of our many inter-rental moves, since we both worked full time) I’m on your son’s side. We were finding & discovering our own stuff for months.
“Oh, there’s my favorite tea mug. In a box with … pillowcases and a candle? Cool, cool, makes sense.”
Yeah, but I bet it was still pretty obvious what everyone was communicating. (“Go! GO! RUNNN!”)
Do you mind if I ask whereabouts “here” might be?
Just curious; feel free to disregard.
Thank you for teaching me a new phrase today!
Well, ya gots paids. That seems useful.
That does sound cool in an eerie sort of way.
Same, except I got lazy about breaking down my boxes - and a sometimes-inebriated me has been doing an awful lot of Amazon shopping lately 
- so I had better make sure my bin gets rolled out before tomorrow morning, too.
Been keeping up with y’all but didn’t have a chance to post yesterday. I had taken the day off - which is not a nothing request in this biz, since Fri & Sat are the busiest nights, tho my manager seemed OK with it - so that G.C. could come over. 
We got Chinese food, and got to have some leisurely time just hanging out together, in addition to, uh, the other stuff.
We sat outside watching the stars come out, and sharing a smoke while Monkey rambled nearby … t’was nice.
At one point I started laughing, and explained that I kept picturing my manager’s shit-eating grin when she said goodnight on Friday. (She knew precisely why I’d asked for the day off, and I know she’s gonna ask if I’d enjoyed my day, winky wink.)
He still had to leave sooner than I’d have liked. Boo.
Today? Back to the salt mines cheese tubs.
Central Colorado Mountains. Our home is at 11,200 feet in elevation. Many can’t even visit because of altitude sickness.
The first snow fall, is the last to melt.
swampy, my church must be doing something right, be cause the WBC picketed us this morning. There was a whole bunch of them.
I really like our interim pastor. This morning he happened to be wearing a stole with rainbow striping on it. So before the service started he went out an EXIT door located at the front right of the sancturary, from which he could look north across 29th street where the WBC was standing. He gave them a big wave. I wish I could have seen their reaction.
This was back in the day when casinos were mostly table games with some slots around the edges. And there were none of the mongo 12 foot tall slots we see nowadays. The overall effect of a big room with a silent but teeming crowd was cool. Not silent exactly, because you also had the percentage of folks who could sort of hear and who talked in that distinctive screechy way the HoH do. Sounded like a convention of Martians or something.
So did you? Enjoy that is? Enquiring minds want to know!
Seriously, congrats on taking and getting some excellent mental health time for yourself. You certainly deserve all of it and more where that came from.
Me too. Got me thinking about what’s for my dinner. I don’t have time or ingredients to do chili tonight, but maybe tomorrow. I wonder where I can get good restaurant chili in the meantime.
Which raises a question: Is there such a thing as good restaurant chili, rather than just familiar restaurant chili? What say the Mumper gourmet/gourmand brigade?
Your omelet sandwiches sound great. Have you ever considered melding that idea with a grilled cheese sandwich by frying the bread in the same pan before or better yet after so the bread gets all bacon-greasy? Maybe glue the folded omelet to the bread with another layer of cheese (and bacon!)?
It might become a knife-and-fork meal, but with your skill and kitchen intuition I bet it’d be tres awesome.
As to me:
Not exactly. Us on-call folks are paid something for being available on each potential irkday. And nothing more if we actually irk. So the upside is stay home and get paid when luckily they don’t need you. The downside is do irk for no incremental pay when unluckily they do need you. It’s a good deal economically, but a mixed bag emotionally.
As mentioned in the last post, I got to bed at 2am. I sleep “in” by my standards, rolling out of bed at 7:45, having gotten ~5-1/2 hours of sleep. Gonna need a nap before leaving for irk at 5pm. As is my usual habit for hotel mornings, I brush teeth, comb hair, pull on my gym gear and head downstairs for coffee and leisurely breakfast. Looking outside it seems a pleasant day for exploring, but that nap will limit my radius of action.
Off to Doping and breakfast. But first a slow pot of coffee. During which time I eyeball the weather radar and see the same situation as yesterday is setting up again today: widespread rain and nascent thunderstorms along the coast from the Carolinas into VA, and all of it growing & sliding northwards towards first DC (Hi Moom!) then NYC. Ok.
Order then eat my standard bacon & eggs; nothing interesting on this place’s menu. But competent & filling. By now it’s 9am and I look outside to see it drizzling out of a dull gray sky. Probably not a lot of exploring today.
Now HQ chimes me. What monkeyshines are these? My flight home, that’s still 7+ hours in the future is cancelled. It appears the flight bringing the jet (and FO) to us won’t be coming. It would have arrived in the midst of the worst of the t-storms. Ok, great. Now I’m in limbo. And limbo in EWR is less good than limbo at home. How long until they come up with a new plan? At least the coffee is still good.
Turns out it’s 10 minutes. I and my 4 FAs are now to ride home on a different flight. HQ has a bad habit that when a cancellation occurs they won’t send you home (or to the next stop on your multi-day journey) ASAP. Instead they’ll send you on the next flight after the time of your disruption. Just in case they change their mind or something else goes wrong meantime. They love holding captives in hotels. Despite the fact we’re in NYC which is a fully staffed crew base with folks standing by to be called out on short notice, just as I do in MIA.
We’re now to leave EWR at 8pm to make a very tight connection elsewhere changing planes at 10:30-11pm, to then arrive in MIA at 1am to be in bed at home by 3am. If all that goes off as planned. Yeah right. Given the weather, some part of that plan is all but guaranteed to not work, and we’ll be stuck in EWR tonight or at the intermediate stop when we miss our connection. Which means get home on Mon. Having spent 2 days and 1 night for sure, and more likely 3 days and 2 nights, on the road doing absolutely nothing useful for exactly zero dollars. Just wasting precious seats riding around for the hell of it.
Today is Sun. Tomorrow Mon is my last on-call day. Tue is an off day and my final day as an employee. Wed is my birthday and my first day of retirement. A consequence of their plan to get me home at 1am on Mon is that the rest of Mon becomes a non-irk irkday. So the ill wind of cancellation has blown some good. Now this is it for sure. No more uncertainty on what’s my last irk versus what’s next to last.
I contact the lead FA to ensure he and his people are in the loop. He decides to join me for breakfast. A fine young guy with lots of interesting stuff in his life. We discuss HQ’s plan and both the best case (home at 3am) and most likely case (stuck someplace overnight) outcomes. I’m not having it and neither is he. Some civil disobedience is called for. We hatch a plan to depart on the next non-stop flight to Miami that leaves around 1pm, to get there around 4pm. He’s going to ask for permission, which is usually given. I’m not. I’m feeling pretty immune to sanction at this point.
Meanwhile, it’s raining heavily outside. We can feel the wheels falling off HQ’s official plan already. The airplane we’ll take at 1pm is already on the way up from MIA and the southbound crew working back are all New Yorkers just starting their trip, so the omens for our plan are excellent. The omens for theirs? Not so much. It’ll be fun to watch though. While balconatin’ with a cocktail and Her Ladyship immediately to hand.
Anyhow, we finish our breakfasts, head upstairs, get sheveled, and go back down for the van to the airport. It’s still raining lightly. It’s a balmy 75/24 but humid. Lots of people wandering around downtown in shorts & windbreakers or with umbrellas. But for the clothing the ambience makes you think it’s 40F/10C outside. Something about Northeast cities and the masonry construction always looks frigid to me on a gray dismal day no matter the thermometer or the calendar. Interesting to see one last time, but happy to contemplate leaving.
Get to the airport, scan my badge to bypass security for the last time, and head into the gate area. Newark’s new terminal opened a few months ago and is very pretty. I’ve not been here since before the move. Spacious and uncrowded and clean. Utterly unlike the old one.
Speaking of which, outside the windows I see the terminal where I started 34 years ago being demolished. Today’s Sunday so there’s nothing moving; just a gaggle of hungry blue dinosaur-looking machines sleeping there with their beaks on the ground. Our old and cramped gate area rotunda is still intact but the jet bridges have been peeled off the building. Piles of rubble sit where the airplanes used to. Won’t be long now and it’ll all be a rubble pile, followed by a vacant lot, and soon after that a big hole in the ground. 3 (or this being NYC/NJ, 5) years later another new terminal will open there. The moving finger writes and having writ …
Wander around the terminal seeing the sights. Utterly familiar in style and ambience, but not a place I’ve ever seen before. See a Mom chasing a toddler, move to obstruct the miniature fleeing, and smile at both. Get smiles & thanks back, and think how my outfit makes me “safe”; in civvies interacting with little kids like that is fraught with risk of misunderstandings. Another last.
The working crew shows up about as scheduled. I board ahead of everybody else for the last time. And meet all of them as peers and instant friends for the last time. Get offered and accept my extra crew-only snax and bottle of water for the last time.
Settle in my middle seat in an exit row and await my seatmates. Large or small? Turns out to be one tall and meaty but not fat Latino man and a slender South Asian woman. OK, not great in terms of personal space.
Right now we’re airborne, approaching the Georgia/Florida border. The miracle of inflight Wi-Fi continues to deliver. I’ve had one last cup of speshul airline coffee. It’s an acquired taste, but one I’ll miss. I’ll travel in retirement of course, but just like office coffee, it’s part of the whole occupational ambience. Your stomach knows things about your job your head may never recognize.
Nothing left now but to finish sitting here until they take me to the gate then walk to the car and drive home in late Sunday afternoon relative non-traffic. When I first moved here almost 10 years ago I wondered whether they’d complete the various freeway improvements in progress along my 45-mile run before I retired. Turns out the answer is “no.” As I predicted then, but had always hoped for otherwise; a cone-free lane-closure-free drive would be a relaxing experience.
The end of an era. The start of a new chapter.
I did have that very nice New Orleans and back on Fri as my last actual irk with my last actual crew. Better that than this.
In all this silly ride to EWR & back is a metaphor for the whole thing. Lots of time, lots of miles, strange new sights and sounds and smells, and many, many unplanned zigs and zags along the way. Not a lot to show for it except experiences. But always interesting.
Cheers all. See you tomorrow in the new MMP. I think I’ll give it a rest for the remainder of today / tonight. Like the name of that long gone but not forgotten SDMB poster @BellRungBookShut-CandleSnuffed.
I’ve located the latest hole the squirrels have made into my abode. Need a day with no rain to pull off a clapboard and replace and paint. Meanwhile, they are in the wall. I’d actually be willing to share the house if they didn’t scrabble around so much. Stupid bastards, just come in and take a nap.
pilot You seem to have a very chill outlook on life, I envy that.
shoe Hope you enjoyed your day off.
Nope. I like it on regular toast. FWIW, I cook bacon in a 12-inch cast-iron pan in a 375º oven.
So much for dinner. SWMBO is hungry now. A quatah ta tree, and the bacon’t almost done.
I live on top of a rock (seriously, there are rock outcroppings in the side yard of my apartment building), so even though I’m allowed to plant, I do so in pots.
Messed around in the studio today and then made sopa albondigas for Sunday dinner. Yum!
Howdy Y’all! Got deheathenization and a loooooong meetin’ (hour and a half) out of the way. Then it was back to da cave for some N.O.L. of leftovers and nappage. I have also had a beerverage or two and the biiiiiig trash can has been hauled all the way down to the road for pickup tomorrow. Now we chillax as is our wont.
I did chug half a small chalice of wine after Communion.
MetalMouse Perhaps I shouldn’t, but I still have a little smile on my face from the Texas-Bama game. I am sure that Tuscaloosa, at least, was draped in black this mornin’.
shoe glad you had a nice time with GC. Nuttin’ wrong with entertainin’ gentleman company. I always enjoyed it!.
CupCakes whatever y’all are doin’, keep it up! I am now in love with your interim Pastor.
Pilot glad you were able to make your escape way earlier than the plan.
Mazel tov, and welcome to the next good thing.
Welcome to retirement, it is wonderful.
“Oh, no thank you Barky Mom, it’s just fine. I can do it, no problem.” Oh, yeah, you are so lucky you aren’t a rl friend of mine, I’d be throwing a full on toddler tantrum at this point. (Well, except for the throwing myself on the floor part, I don’t bounce nearly as well as I used to.)
Silly pups!
Do you get a lot of wind? If so, do the chips blow around? I’ve been thinking about having a load spread in our front yard but we have big winds.
Oh, I grumble at hubs when he does that, skin cancer is a thing!
That sounds very nice and I’m glad you managed to get a “me” day in. You deserve it.
Go you and church! You should be very proud. I think I’m a little in love with your interim pastor. In a totally platonic way of course!
So, disaster almost struck today. Last year, I made reservations in Waco for next April as well reservations for the half way points in the drive because I’m going to drive different routes. Today I got an email that the hotel had been sold to new owners who had totally upgraded the entire property. As a result, they were still willing to honor my reservations at a new, much higher rate. Bastids.
Of course I wasn’t going to pay them more money and not know if they were going to jack the rates up even more when I got there, so I cancelled and then had to fight with them because their new rules were no refunds. Happily I keep conformation emails in a trip folder so we went back and forth over that until they realized that if they don’t refund my money, I’d do a charge back which would cost them more so they said they did a charge back. We will be watching for it and if it doesn’t show up in three days we will be contacting our credit union.
There were no more rooms anywhere in Waco so I bit the bullet and made reservations in Dallas. (Pray for me) The limited available rooms in downtown started at five and a half a night, but I was able to find a room at the Embassy Suites in Dallas Park that I can somewhat afford. (shoe, please tell me if I’m in a horrible area, I can still cancel, but I would need to act fast because things are selling out.)
It is a suite which means I will have a spare pull out couch in the sitting room if anyone suddenly realizes that they really want to see the eclipse and everything is sold out. I would be uncomfortable offering this to a stranger, but while Mumpers are a strange bunch, for the most part, you are mostly harmless.
Dragon’s lair is much better.
Today was rain on and off with storms here and there. Very interesting clouds. Except for the bit of painting, it was a chair day with you tube surfing.
https://cottonbureau.imgix.net/products/originals/26363_m86c.png?auto=format&bg=FFF&fit=max&ixlib=php-3.0.0&w=1200
(Packers 38 Bears 20)
I cleaned, I laundered, I cleaned Spot’s litter box. I watched 7 hours of handegg. Spot has spend the afternoon unconscious on the couch. Having a Wisconsin Old Fashioned.
< cluches pearls in joy for shoe >
Congrats and enjoy!
Unless you are a bowl of petunias.
Evening all. Made it over to the Golden Corral around 11:15AM, but they did not have the Pot Roast or the Meatloaf out (and still didn’t when I left an hour later), so managed with soup/salad/bacon/rice/brownie for my meal. May have to take them off the Sunday Dinner list. Did pick up enough Diet Pepsi/Pepsi Zero to get me to my November vacation, so guess I did accomplish something.
Then decided late to go to the Huntsville Minor League Soccer game at 6pm. Hadn’t bought my ticket (I hate giving Ticketmaster that huge chunk of money) so I was walking up to the ticket office when this guy asked if I wanted a free seat. Turns out he was part of a Hispanic group the team was honoring and a couple of his folks he had tickets for were no shows, so he offered one to me. I tried to pay him but he said he got them from the team for his group at no cost, so I gratefully accepted his generosity. I also got a T-shirt and was able to stand on the field with the Hispanic group (me, a German-Irish guy) while they were recognized. Weather was perfect and the crowd was loud, the only bad thing was Huntsville losing 1-2 in literally the last minute. So quite an pleasant early evening out.
Now home and thinking about bedtime.
Pilot, you will have a story for the grandkids someday of "Grandpa’s last work day. Should bore them to death sufficiently… 
(I found it fascinating, but I’m old). Welcome to the world of retirement.
Shoe, glad you could ‘relax’ with GC.
Cupcakes, not a churchgoer, but anyplace that gets picketed by the WBC must be doing something right. And kudos to interim pastor.
Swampy, smile all you want, not a major fan (born in Ohio so to me beating Michigan is the big thing).
JtC, presume this is for the eclipse. I’m within driving range (2-3 hours) so I can go to a place, watch, and still be home the same day (I hope), Glad you were able to get them to do the right thing.
OK, need to finish the evening’s internettin’ and head off to bed. All y’all take care and I’ll catch you on the next MMP.
Happy Sunday!
Busy morning. We covered up the back seat the best we could and went to the new house.
Seller friend met us there.
He helped my son put the lawn mower together. My son told me he didn’t need help, but yes, he did. It took two of them to snap something on.
My son got half the back yard mowed before the battery died.
I fucked a number of things up,
I ordered a 9x12 rug for the dining room and it is too big, unless I don’t mind if the rug covers the entire room.
I totally fucked up with the dishwasher. The dishwasher is the standard 24 inches. The place where it needs to go, there are two cabinets that are 18 inches. I thought one was 18 inches and one was 24, we could take out the 24, slide the 18 over and then put in the dishwasher.
The appliances are coming tomorrow morning, so it’s kind of late to cancel the dishwasher. I could get an 18-inch dishwasher, but I don’t know how happy I’d be with it. So, I am trying to find a 12-inch cabinet that matches the current cabinetry.
Seller friend said they got them at Lowes. I can find the style, but not the color.
We stopped at Sonic on the way home. They are so expensive!
Then we stopped at CVS, and my prescriptions still weren’t ready. The doctor called them in on Friday, I know because I got a notice from CVS that they had received the order. They are ready now, so we will get them tomorrow.
Two of the scripts I’m taking can cause sedation. That may be why I keep falling asleep at the keyboard. I don’t feel sleepy when I’m up and doing something, but if I sit down and start to read, I fall asleep.
Happy new chaptering, Pilot
Your final days certainly seemed challenging.
Oh yes, I am sorry for being so unclear. I’ve wanted to see a total eclipse all of my life, but work kept getting in the way. I’m fairly sure this is the last one I will be able to enjoy. I’m jealous of you, but I might still have a room reserved for the 8th in case traffic gets really bad.
Waco would have had almost another full minute of totality but Dallas is closer. I’m really hoping I will be able to go out to the parking lot and stage my watching site by my car. I have a little car, so will have room in the parking spot.
There’s a town in Illinois named Carbondale that is smack dab in the middle of totality for 2024, and also was in 2017, That would make it almost too easy.
Great narrative.
Me, too. I really should’ve dealt with Monkey’s 
box so that could be whisked away as well, but I am way too pooped myself!
Oh, yeah, all y’all talking football … the Cowboys smoked N.Y. 40 zip tonight. My manager was at the window with a customer and I kinda half-overheard her talkin’ 'bout the Boys in her deep East Tx drawl, and when she came back, she had the biggest grin.
“Cowboys are ABSOLUTELY WHUPPIN’ butt, forty nothin’.”
Me: “Who are they playing?”
Her: “I dunno. Who cares?”
If I’m googling correctly, you’re at the intersection of 635 (LBJ) and 75 (Central Exwy) in which case … you’re fine, hun. Expect lots of concrete; it’s a highly developed area. But it’s not ghetto or whatever.
What fun!
Up, caffeinated, and sheveled. Off to heave. See y’all in the next MMP