Adorable!! 
Maybe some kids like soups, but not these two. Some of the other meals looked interesting, at least for me. But I decided on pulled poke sliders, cuke salad, and a pile of fruit. I know they like all of that.
I swear, it must have been geezer day at Food Lion! People moseying along, blocking aisles, not watching where they pushed their carts. EEEEESH! Then the lines were stooopit long - they had 4 registers open and 3 self-checkouts and all were backed up. I could have seen this the day before the football game, but the day after?? Still, I’m home and groceries are stowed.
Now I need to empty the dishwasher and find me some lunch.
All the geezers stayed away the last 3 days afraid of the party-shopping frenzy.
And younger people had their fridges & pantries filled to bursting with party food, so now comes the day for them to replenish the larder with normal stuff.
Morning, all. 0F when I got up this morning, which has clawed its way up to 8F at 1100. Supposed to be a wind chill tomorrow morning of -20F. It’s taken two years of me freezing my ass off when I take a shower in the morning to finally locate a very small (500W) ceramic element heater for that tiny bathroom. Received it yesterday and turned it on in there about an hour before my shower. The place was nice and toasty. And yes, I know to turn it off before running water in the sink.
The exercise session was fairly vigorous this morning. More cardio than usual. We’re being very religious about attending these sessions three times a week, which makes me happy.
Finally figured out how to transfer my Family Tree Maker database over to the new laptop. It wasn’t at all intuitive to me and after a number of failures, I decided I’d just go to the online chat help today. Then last night I somehow managed to stumble onto the right button to click and everything magically appeared. Still have a lot of photos to transfer before I can kick the old laptop loose, although they’re probably sitting in Prime Photo.
I made a batch of my extraordinarily good oatmeal/walnut/raisin cookies yesterday. I usually add in chopped dried apricots, but didn’t have any, so I put in dried sour cherries instead. A big improvement, IMO. Gives a little tartness to the sweet.
Tried a jar of store-bought pasta ala vodka sauce last night. Not bad at all, surprisingly. Can’t remember the brand name, though.
All terrific news!
I agree with the utility of not crossing the Darake Passage, except that that’s where I saw wanderig albatross 
Happy birthday, doggio!
Howdy!
Nice to hear from you, pilot and all of your fantastic news!!
Happy Birthday, doggio!!!
I’m trying to get stuff done today. Back later!
So we’ve gone from 1 loader for 3 cars to one for four cars, and now we started with one per 15ish or so, with 2 people sorting. This went on till unload and Smalls went down, and there were a few more people. Of course the District Head was there, and she did just the thing to get things rolling. She screamed at everybody. 
. I can only hope this is some sort of semi-rational thing to keep staffing at recession levels to avoid the unemployment insurance costs, and not some other unhinged thing.
And it only took 3 years. Minus the head wounds, of course.
I have received my birthday lacerations.
Congrats on you and BB!
Wait. First things first.
Happy Doggio Day!!! 
I hope you get your wish, especially as my mother will be in Iceland hoping to see the Northern lights, and I really hope she gets her wish. Glad things are working out with BB.
Man, that sounds good. I’m not a fan of apricots, so the cherries are literally the cherry on top.
Did something stupid to my back on Saturday, which meant I need to be careful doing any exercises. But not doing anything will make things worse.
Managed to finish most of my tax papers over the weekend. Seem to be missing one important one, so I’ll wait a couple days to see if it turns up in the mail. Also missing the form that I have to fill out for the Swiss taxes, but that doesn’t take long to complete, once I get it.
Well, at least you learned. Better late than never, right? We have a similar heater in our bathroom, and we’d gotten one for MIL’s bathroom, and yeah, what a difference!! It helps that we have a very small bathroom, too - all of 5’X8’.
Well, it looks like winter is returning tomorrow - threats of up to 6" of the evil white stuff before rain moves in on Weds and Thurs. Thankfully, we don’t have any place to go until Firday. Stoopit snow.
OK, time to head to Daughter’s till stoopit o’clock tonight. I’ll have my tablet, so I may be able to check in. Or not. Who knows?
I’m not either, but my wife likes the chewy little bastards. I don’t think they add anything to the cookie, personally.
Damn, kids… What the heck was up with last weekend?!
I had to have extended interactions with my ex to sort out lingering financial stuff. It all was fine, and they paid me some money they owed me, so like. No complaints. But it’s emotionally taxing to engage with them and getting them to do anything is like pulling teeth. So that just, ya know, wore me right the heck out first thing Saturday.
Then yesterday I had a bit of a project, mounting a small, cheap smart tv with a wooden frame I’m building. The intent is to tune it permanently to the live jellyfish cam at the Aquarium of the Pacific as a sort of wall art/kitchen night light. That was all fine, but somewhere along the errand-running… I lost my glasses. I think they + their case fell out of my purse as I was swapping for my sunglasses in a parking lot. I called around to the places I went, but… I think they’re just gone. It’s fine, I have spares with good prescriptions, but I have been wearing those exact frames for six years… When they finally wore out a couple years ago, I used the model # to track down the exact same ones again. I loved them, I think they did a lot for my face. I’ve found a pair with a similar vibe and ordered them, but that’s, ya know. A hundred bucks and a sentimental object gone forever.
Then first thing this morning I start getting a bunch of notifications… Some troll farm had found my social media pages and was in the process of saying a bunch of hateful shit and reposing pre-transition photos that were still findable. It’s fortunate I happened to be online and could quickly respond - little harm done, I set everything to private (which I should have done ages ago anyway) and cleaned up the mess, but it still rattled me. Weirdly… It wasn’t anything they actually said/did? It’s kind of funny that they thought old pictures would bother me. Like, if I hated them, I would have deleted them. I was a really good-looking guy, it’s just kind of nostalgic. And insulting how I look now just doesn’t track, like. I’m no great beauty, but I get lots of positive attention from the kind of people that I’m actually interested in. What rattles me is that there are organized gangs emboldened to do this kind of thing. Trans public figures and trans folks who are very ‘active’ on social media have always had to deal with this shit, but like… I’m just some rando. I didn’t do anything that would draw attention, which means they’re actively searching for anyone visibly identified as LGB and particularly T with the aim of terrorizing them into… It doesn’t bear thinking about.
Anyway!! Little things, nothing earth-shaking, but boy do I feel way more worn-out than I should feel for a Monday. Love to all y’all, and happy birthday to Doggio! Pilot, tell us all about the cruises, please!
Started Typing: 1:54 AM ET
Clicked Reply: 3:16 PM ET
Happy birthday, doggio! 
It’s currently 42°F and mostly sunny, with an expected high of 44. Not bad at all.
I’d planned to go to the office this morning. A new member of my program’s leadership team joined the company today and had to get his corporate badge and pick up his laptop from our admin, and in my staffing manager role I’ve exchanged several emails with him and have talked with him on the phone a few times: the office isn’t far, so I figured I’d hotdesk for an hour or so, meet him in person, and be back home by lunchtime. But, last night I decided that wrangling two laptops with their associated peripherals, putting “grownup” clothes on, getting everything working at a random desk, etc., would be too much effort for too little reward. No reflection on the new guy. 
Our boss couldn’t go to the office today, either, but will be setting up a welcome lunch with all of the leads sometime soon. Meanwhile, we’ll “meet” him tomorrow morning at our daily tagup (videocams on).
Tomorrow afternoon there will definitely be snow, but – as usual – accumulation totals will be anyone’s guess: the Weather Channel says 1-3", but the Washington Post says 3-6". I have bananas and Gatorade Zero, and I remembered to bring the snow shovel in the house, so all I have to do is move the car to the end of the driveway sometime in the next 24 hours and I should be prepared for whatever. 
Wednesday will be cold again, with rain and a little more snow; I’ll have to play my mid-day tattoo removal appointment by ear (but needing to reschedule that wouldn’t be a big deal at all). Thursday there will be early rain but a forecasted high of 50, and I’m hoping that the combo will help dissipate whatever significant snow might remain: I have a late afternoon optometrist appointment that day, which shouldn’t be impacted. And Friday’s drive to MD for the jazz festival should also be fine. 
Does anyone remember the TV show Eureka (2006-2012)? Late yesterday I was scrolling through available shows on Amazon Prime, in case something new-to-me caught my eye, and I came across it. I’d never seen it before, but figured I’d give it a try: I like it! I’m only 3-4 episodes in, but if it stays this engaging I’ll be happy to have found a new show to binge-watch.
I’ll be hiding it under the sink in their powder room: one of them will find it the next time they need more toilet paper (I’ll also replace the roll if it’s looking low). I conferred with my nephew, and he agrees that it’s a good spot: they won’t find it while I’m there, but they’ll find it before he comes home for spring break. I’d love to see their reaction, but I’ll hear all about it from my nephew (and then from both of them after he gives me up). I’m actually pretty giggly about this little caper. 
OMG! 
Very cool!
Heh…it looks like it belongs on her!
Oh, that’s not it at all: she has a few chronic health issues (including being prone to wicked UTIs), and her pain/energy levels vary daily. On top of which, right now she’s also dealing with a shoulder that’s getting replaced next month; the pain is affecting her sleep even more than usual. Something else is going on at the moment, though, because this morning she told me that she slept all day Saturday and yesterday and is tired again today, but it wasn’t just her shoulder and she doesn’t have an infection. If this keeps up she’ll call her primary doc.
Thank goodness.
If she’s anything like me with my kid brother, she’ll only show him mercy when she thinks no one else is looking.
Wow! Nice!
I still prefer Ragu for a basic marinara sauce (shut up I like it), but for something fancy like vodka sauce I’ve come to love Rao’s.
Dearest Moooom, how could you imply that mac-&-cheese isn’t healthy?!? It’s made of milk, butter, flour, water, and love! What could be more wholesome?
Happy Birthday, Doggio!
I dunno, hun, that last one would have me thoroughly disquieted, too.
I’m so sorry (and @Taters this goes for you, too) that the current political, ah, occurrences are impacting your life so deeply.
Please believe me when I say I’m on both y’all teams, but other than being quietly horrified, and standing on your sides, I don’t know what else to do right now.
Do keep checking in. Also, while I’m very sorry about the glasses, the Jellyfish TV project sounds really cool!
Speaking of jellyfish, a dear friend sent me a framed photo of same with some deep sentimental value, and I really need to get my life together hang it up.
'Xcept I can’t decide on a good place!
I have laundry cued up, just hafta, yanno, get UP (yes, I’m still in bed, yes I took a long-ass nap) and get that a-swishin’.
I’d really like to wash/replace the sheets, too, once I’m done lying in/on them.
Plus a zillion little projects. Clock needs a new battery. Been meaning to make a new toothbrush holder for awhile. Etc.
Your ideas are intriguing to me, and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter!
(IOW, how does one make a toothbrush holder??)
Afternoon all. Did go swimming after lunch, but the pool was so busy I only got a little (800 yards) in. So maybe after dinner I’ll give it another try. Day has brought sunshine and clear skies, albeit the temperature is about 53F as predicted, but rain is expected tomorrow.
Flyboy, hope the new pan lasts another 20-25 years (and that you do to, of course).
cookie, got a space heater in my ‘office’ where I spend most of my day at, so know what you mean about being toasty. And Cooooookkkkkiiieeeessssss!!!
doggio, nice that the Disrict person was so helpful…
Dicey, take care of yourself.
Niner, glad you got the money you were owed. I would be utterly helpless without my glasses (with them off I can’t read the screen i’m typing on at 8"), and hope your new frames meet your expectations. And Boo! (Not Our Boo) on he scumbags trolling your site. And unfortunately it does bear thinking about, lest it gets worse.
oopsie, I remember Eureka, I enjoyed the first season but they seemed to run out of ideas in later seasons…IMHO of course; YMMV. If you like that you might want to look for Warehouse 13, think of the place at the end of the movie in Raiders of the Lost Ark and take it from there. And ingenious hiding place.
And time to get back to slothage and then see how long it takes me to solve the Monday NT Times puzzles (usually not long, but they get increasingly tougher as the week goes on),
Yep, I liked it, and I’ll second metalmouse’s rec of Warehouse 13. They even did a couple of crossover eps.
Hippo burpday, Doggio!!
The back is barking today. Must do some stretching, and perhaps some sitting with a heating pad.
That one I actually watched back in the day…and yeah, I liked it. I’m not sure how I missed Eureka!
First off, happy birthday doggio!!!111!!!eleventyhundred!!!
I have four loveable misfits, er, cats, who allow me to live with them. Target, if she were human, would be a spicy Latina mom who keeps everyone in line with her chancla. Bethany is kinda flaky and would be a blonde stoner chick. Rooney is very even-tempered and would make an excellent therapy cat. Noob is about five minutes and one poor choice away from being shipped off to Abu Dhabi. He’s a sweetheart to people but miserable to the other cats. He thinks he’s still got game, you see, so he spends his time hassling who he thinks are his honeys. They’re not, but he thinks they are.
Not much else is happening in Robinland. The sprog is visiting his girlfriend and I’m just livin’ life.