(Old) FA LA LA LA LA Decking The Halls In The MMP

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
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FCM, I’m sorry about MIL’s prognosis. While 92 is a pretty good run, end-of-life is always a tough time, and your family has endured so much loss lately. Hoping for the least difficult path forward for you and yours.

The road up to my community features two roundabouts. Between the roundabouts there are two stop signs, about 50 feet apart. I hate those stop signs with a passion. They’re so close together that the second one often surprises people, causing either abrupt stops or people simply blowing right through (and I confess to having done the latter once myself).
There are allegedly plans afoot to combine the two intersections into a single roundabout, and I for one will be thrilled if/when they do. I’ve never had any problem with the roundabouts.

Last night was the tree-lighting at which our ukulele club performed. It was an absolute blast! I didn’t screw up badly enough to be noticed, which was my goal, and people seemed to really enjoy it. Here’s a video. I’m the shiny-headed one in the back. Warning: bad amateur musicians! Listen at your own peril!

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I picked up the Christmas roast from Costco the other day. At about 4.75 pounds, it’s the smallest one I ever bought. It’s like three or four rib-eyes from the corner market. But that’s OK. We always have too many leftovers. (I know the words might not make sense in that order.) I’ll have to be careful not to over-cook it.

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There’s one nearby traffic circle that I despise. There’s landscaping in the center, and it’s hard to see traffic coming around the inside lane–aggravating if you’re trying to merge into that inside lane… I had a fender bender there when I was still driving. My insurance company told me that there are a lot of accidents there. I believe it because I walk past it often and have seen two accidents and heard innumerable angry horns honking. It’s also the place where I got hit (lightly) by a car because the driver was ticked off I’d activated the crosswalk lights. It’s Dante’s Seventh Traffic Circle of Hell.

Yeah, when it comes to traffic, the learning phase can be painful–literally. You’ve got your “I don’t need no stinkin’ lessons” bull-in-the-china-shop students; your distracted “Wait. Diverging what now?” students; your vaping “Hey, diamonds! I love diamonds!” students, and your fatalistic “Close your eyes and hope for the best” students. As we saw in the failed attempt at the metric system, we Americans are not good learners.

Greetings from all of us at Our Lady of the Perpetually Confused. We took dance lessons, but–Oof! Sorry! Was that your toe? Oh. Whose toe was it then?

My complex has many speed bumps, which do slow down traffic. An elderly hippie/Uber driver told me that if there’s a life after this one, he’s going to blow up all speed bumps one by one. Whenever I hear a random firecracker, I hope it’s Elmer fulfilling his oath.

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can you get a bike with a seat on the back, like Rerun would ride on, on the back of Lucy and Linus’ mom’s bike? (I know that most of you know who I’m talking about since we’re all of a similar age :smirk: )

Hubs put up the nativity set on the front lawn yesterday in front of the 3 bales of hay that the neighbor had at the curb after they took down the Halloween decorations. We have a 3’ Blessed Mother and 3’ St. Joseph, a manger with Baby Jesus and a lamb; oh, also a lighted up star with about 10 yellow bulbs that he’s attached to a tall 2"x4". Well, that’s what we had. I told him several years ago that Mary needs a donkey. He tried English Gardens for several years and on-line and they were always sold out. So, this year he started looking a little earlier and found one on Ebay. So, now we also have a donkey; it’s kinda small, about 18" high and 2’ long and is at repose but serves the purpose. We won’t have anything in the house because of the restrictions of the bone marrow transplant. He goes in the hospital Dec 14 with the transplant scheduled for Dec 21.

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And a good early afternoon all. Have replenished my diet soda supply through at least mid-January and saved .20 cents a gallon on my fill-up, so a good start. Then went on-line and got most of my Xmas shopping done in 7-8 minutes (Amazon Gift cards). Tried to get Chewy cards for the pets, but the Chewy.com site seemed more interested in selling ecards and the Kroger website wouldn’t take my order, so probably have to go to the store for them. After this and some videos, will check water (and probably shut it down for awhile) and get my swimming in (want to get to 2 miles for the week).

Pilot, those ‘after’ co-joinings must have been a hoot! :laughing:

Wheelie, your story is what bad planning is all about. Hoe they get it straightened out. And thanks for the video.

Cat Glove, sounds like a real nice setup; hope Pilot’sone-time neighbors don’t find it… :dizzy_face: :upside_down_face: :wink: :smile:

OK, enough dilly-dallying. Need to change and get over to the gym. Take care all.

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His is black, of course. As was the Caddy, and the Miata before that, and at least one other car he owned.

There are two traffic circles on rt 234, and some over in Calvert County, but I don’t recall the name of the road. I like 'em fine, and people here seem to have figured out how they work Of course, there are always folks like the morons who got all pissy that I was doing 30 in a 30 zone (no shoulders, bendy, climby road) and passed in a no passing zone. I figure if you do the speed limit thru that little stretch, you might take 30 seconds longer than if you rode thru at 50+. Apparently those idiots needed those 30 seconds…

We have a treadmill and a recumbent stationary bike in the basement, both facing the TV - that’s gonna be my gym.

MIL didn’t eat this morning, and she nearly fell 3 times when we went shopping. Thankfully, one of the clerks at Food Lion brought out a chair so she could sit while we checked out. And I would up half-supporting her much of the time. I did drive thru McD’s to get her an egg mcmuffin, so she finally did eat some, tho only half of it. As soon as we got to her apartment, she crawled into bed. I was putting her groceries away when FCD showed up - he and his brother were moving some more stuff.

Plan for tomorrow - Daughter’s whole crew are coming over here. The kids will stay and play while Daughter and SIL help FCD move the bed, a headboard, 2 recliners, and a chest of drawers. There will be some more stuff that has to go from MIL’s to BIL’s, and they should get all that done fairly quickly. Then they’ll come back here for lunch.

Meanwhile, it’s raining and FCD and I are going out for supper, just because. Not sure where, but I don’t have to cook, so I don’t care!

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Howdy Y’all! Stuff got did and we bears brunched. Nappage and day drinkin’ were also accomplished. All in all a good day. Now 'tis rainy(ish) out and looks like it will be tomorrow and Sunday. Happy to be inside and dry. Netflix and chill shall commence shortly.

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The second round of Chex mix is in the oven. We generally go through about three iterations of this before burning out for another year.

Picked up a pork shoulder for the before-Christmas dinner with relatives. Making a green chili stew and cornbread for that herd, and there was a killer deal on pork shoulder roasts at a local grocer.

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{{{FCM}}}, I’m so sorry to hear what your family is going through. I can’t imagine how difficult that must be for her as well - we take for granted all the stuff we can do for ourselves until all of a sudden we can’t. I’m wishing all of you peace - you’ve had a craptastic year.

Today has been damage control central. This will be the first time ever in the more than 15 years I’ve worked here that I will need to complain to my boss’s boss about my manager. I feel like an asshole, but it’s become really obvious to me that my boss is not filtering things up to her boss, leaving my entire team in burnout mode and I’m worried that someone is either going to have a mental breakdown or leave or both. Since I want approximately NONE of that to happen, now I’ve got to go above her head, which will be fun.

Of course, as soon as I wrote that I just learned that two more of our leaders left the company. One of them rubbed everybody the wrong way every time they opened their mouth; the other one had a wealth of knowledge, so…net neutral? Either way it’s hard for morale when they’re laying people off left and right.

In the meantime, the weather - chilly, grey, rainy. I’m going to put up my tree tonight, I think, though overlygirl bailed on me, and she’s normally my Christmas expert. I think she’s going to spend the night at a friend’s house. Which is fine - I can put up the tree and eat cookies while I stare at pretty lights and relax.

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I liked your song wheelie.

Got stuff done today. I had to meet with the new manager of my complex to try to get things straightened out. When My lease was up in late July, I had to go through corporate to get a new one signed, since, for the second year in a row, we had no manager. Things were fine until this month. All of a sudden, there’s $200 more dollars tacked on to my rent. I suspected what it was (they had me down as month-to-month), and called her. We have to wait until Monday and she can talk to corporate to get it settled and I can pay rent, but, dang.

Now just chilling with a salad and provolone cheeseburger on flatbread.

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Evening all. Got the swimming and sauna in, also got air in the tires so the on-board computer will stop nagging me for awhile, and bought the Xmas Chewy Gift Cards at Kroger, where I got 4x bonus points for them, which equated, along with my other purchases, to a $1.00/gallon discount on gas next time I fill up, so win-win IMHO. Turned off the water for the evening, so will have to carefully manage my bathroom trips. It’s a very slow leak, between 10:30am and 5:00pm I used (according to the meter) 14.25 gallons, but outside of flushing my toilet twice, that was the only use I made during that time, so it’s a very slow, small leak right now. Just hope the leak detection guy can find it next week.

FCM, sounds like you’re doing your very best for MIL, but if she is determined to go, going to be a tough road. Hugs for all your efforts. Enjoy dinner!!

Talkie, sounds like a workplace with a fair degree of chaos; I can relate to not wanting to go over the bosses head, but if it is negatively affecting your team, don’t know what else you can do. Hope the situation improves.

red, hope the rent stuff gets worked out for you.

OK, time for internettin’ and You Tubin’ and maybe even some readin’. Have a good night all.

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We didn’t go out after all. It was rainy and ick out so we snarfed down some leftovers. Chillage since then. It’s still raining. I think we made the right choice.

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Finally got my carne asada. It was good, but in reality it’s just meet and guac and cabbage on a tortilla. I always have trouble with the onions. They don’t cut, and they’re a bit stringy on my teeth. But I had carne asada, dammit!

In sad news, our favourite Greek restaurant is closing at the end of the month. :frowning:

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I never met a cuisine I ddn’t like, but I really enjoy Greek food. That’s too bad.

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Hi folks: 8:30pm-ish, well after dark on an unusually warm (80/27) evening.

Had a quiet morning at home after a kinda crappy-sleep night. Once Her Ladyship was up we had breakfast then spent 45-ish minutes practicing the dancing we had learned. Don’t have to rearrange too much furniture to clear a spot in the living room big enough for two small-ish people to zig about.

Then she was off to Library volunteering and I was off for Big Boy lunch which went well and wasn’t excessively stupid by the end. The world
s problems have duly been solved again, although once again, just like Swampy & his church pals, the idjits in DC refuse to listen to us.

Her Ladyship and I separately killed a couple errands after our respective events and reconvened at home. Walked to happy hour at a local eatery in a shopping district and the crowds were out in force on this lovely night. She had sliders & a froufrou cocktail and I had just a Caesar salad & water to offset / accompany the wine, meat, starch, no veg lunch earlier.

Walked home and now letting food settle a bit before re-attacking at least some dancing practice. I am a slow learner, or at least I’m prone to losing focus then gosh knows what happens next. It’s damned hard work counting to 4 and moving body parts. And more than once even. Who knew?!?! :crazy_face:

Won’t be up late, that’s for sure.

Wheelie: I was living in Sunrise Manor when Lake Las Vegas was first built in the late 80s to early 1990s. At that time my late first wife and I were both reasonably successful business folks in Vegas and almost bought one of the Big Boy waterfront lots there. That whole development crashed a couple years later and almost fell completely apart. We avoided that trap (Whew!) and ended up leaving Vegas altogether a couple years later. Flying in and out over the decades I’ve watched it slowly achieve by now in 2023 the size & style they were advertising was a sure thing one-way bet by 1995. Oops.

But it is pretty in a deserty way. Looks like a pleasant and comfortable area now no matter where within it one lives.

Wordy: Once the company is in massive layoff mode, it’s total chaos all up and down the food chain. I sincerely hope you get a good result from your grandboss, but I’d not bet on that happening. I hope you’re polishing your resume and networking efforts right now.

The good folks leave early and the dregs stay to the end. You wanna be in that first wave, not the last one. BTDT, got the scars to prove it.

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How much faith do you have in humanity?
I look both ways at a roundabout.
I don’t mind them, or speed bumps. both of which are better than the now removed US 1/I-440 overpass over Western blvd. It was built in the 1960s with 2 lanes, and the exit ramp to Western in the right lane had no extra run off, so you had to jam on your brakes from 55(if you were going the speed lit) to slow down to 25 to get on it. At the same spot the left lane was the on ramp from Western, and people didn’t know how to speed up to 55 on that.
Up, caffeinated, and sheveled. Off to heave. I did salmon, wild rice blend, and 'shrooms for dinner tonight.

Maybe it wasn’t Don Ho, but that was entertaining. thanks for sharing. :slight_smile:

Wordy, looks like your workplace is buring through managers like Kirk burned through Redshirts. And as far as the bad boss, if they aren’t passing though info to them, they will blame you for screwups to save their own skin. You id the right thing.

{{{{FairyChats}}}}. I don’t blame MiL, at some point it shifts from “I want to live and enjoy.” to “I can prolong my suffering by 6 months if I want”. It still sucks mightily for you and FCD, though.

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The second part of your sentence makes me forgive you for the first part!

I have been conditioned to hate roundabouts by the ones I’m forced to use every time I want to leave the lakes. They are too small. Trucks pulling one trailer have to slow way down, trucks with two trailers almost stall out trying to get around and a triple (yes, they are legal in this stoopid state) would lap itself. Oh, no it wouldn’t because it is a narrow single lane so a tow truck or seven would have to be called. Traffic gets backed up all the way to the Lakes at times because everyone is waiting for the semi’s to get themselves sorted or pulled off the island.

Doggio’s video almost looks like ours, but it has signs and stuff. Ours don’t have signs because the semi’s keep knocking them over.

The ones on the way to Cottonwood probably wouldn’t piss me off so much if I hadn’t been running late because of a couple of stranded semi’s.

And this is the other problem with them. Folks out this way are not used to them and don’t know how to use them. Left to myself, I have no problem at all with them unless they are back to back, but when other people are using them accidents and near misses happen all the time. Not to mention that the Junction is very heavily traveled by country and world travelers and nobody drives the same way the natives do.

So…changing subject.

Last week I got a Betty Crocker recipe for Russian Tea Cookies from the interwebz and started doubting myself because it wasn’t coming out right. I kept going because I’m not a good enough baker to trust myself over a recipe…and they were a total mess that ended up going straight in the garbage.

I was very disappointed but knew that I had followed the recipe to the letter so found other recipes that all said the same thing, except to use half a pound of butter instead of an entire pound. No wonder they all melted.

Today’s cookies were wonderful, just how I remember Grandma making them. Except for the part that hers were nice even round balls and mine…were not. I know enough about baking to know that overhandling short bread is bad so just scooped them out and plopped them in the sugar bowl without shaping them with my hands.

I love them so much that I’m going to keep a few for myself. The others are getting packaged up to send to Mom, Secret Santa and a Mumper who agreed to take my leftover cookies off my hands.

I was kinda rushing to get things done so I could ship to Mom and Mumper, but then hubs reminded me that today was December 1st which means the post office is going to their shorter winter hours and they close will at noon on Fridays until after the big mailing of packages season is over. I’m sure not looking forward to the line on Monday, LOL!

She actually looks like the sort of dog that could bounce herself right over a three foot fence, maybe just tie the tree to the roof to help keep it upright?

Probably because the PT is forcing the fluids to get out and circulate instead of just hanging around in your feet.

(Everyone in my TC class says that doing TC helps more than PT did, you might look into that as well.

What a PITA! I’m so sorry you are dealing with more water issues, you just ain’t got time for that!

I’m concerned that soon shoe won’t be able to eat pizza and that would be a shame because pizza is so good. (Back before pee tests, I got a job at a burger stand and it took years before I would eat French Fries again. The grease gets into your hair and just holds the smell into a fog around your face all day long.)

You totally rocked it!!!

Everyone looked like they were having a great time, I’m so happy you did as well.

This is me being super nosy, you don’t need to share if you don’t want to…but why would decorating be an issue? Dust?

He will be going to the hospital on my birthday so I’ll wake up with a prayer for him. I so hope everything works out as hoped.

Can you maybe tempt her with protein drinks? Or just milk shakes?

You are a good DIL.

What a pain. I sure hope your manager sticks around because I’m sure that’s not the only ball corp has dropped.

Oh gawd, yes, this!

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They’ve been dropping roundabouts out on county roads around here. They’ve also added one near the town pool and the Expo Center, which was an improvement over the twin stops about 100 feet apart.

In my last town, they redid the town square to a roundabout and the only thing it did was moved parking from around the statue of General Hatton to the sides and harder to access (the pic is from before).

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I’m so glad you mentioned this. I’ve been meaning to contact my honey source and whenever I think of it, I haven’t had time to make the contact. I just did and my order totalled $100; mostly for Christmas gifts. I’ll pick up on Monday.

I agree; see above. :honey_pot:

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I went to the local diner on my break today for a reason. (Hot turkey sammich, the one that’s a mess of gravy.)

… and speaking of, that was an INTERESTING moment.

The woman taking my order seemed so damn familiar, to the point that we both finally did that “Do I know you?” face at the same time.

I knew her voice but just couldn’t place her fa---- OMG.

Right as she did the same thing.

Back up a sec: I used to work at that BBQ joint, the one that’s now shut down, the one that turned into an absolute hellhole because the G.M. was a :rage:
The day I walked, three other people quit. One had explicitly told me that I was the only reason she still came in to work there.

Guess who it was.

I didn’t recognize her because she’s so much healthier and happier … and probably, same on her part, but I also chopped off my hair since the last time she saw me.

Big hugz ensued - and some quick dishing dirt - and it was so good to see her seeming so much happier.

She was the one who came to the BBQ back when I was managing, on prom night, her night off, because she wanted to show off her dress, and even though there was a lot going on that night, I could tell it meant a lot that I took a few minutes to step away and coo over her - admittedly, gorgeous - dress.
I found out later that her mother had passed not long before, and since everyone there already called me “Mom” …

Okay, someone is chopping onions. I need a minute.