Up, caffeinated, and sheveled. Off to heave.
< sees Spot stalking some thing >
< investigates >
< finds fossilized hornk >
I paid $125 to adopt a vomit hoarder.
I’ve had 2 Beemers almost head on crash into me because they decided that the opposite lane was faster for them.
Time for a reality check!
< checks reality >
Holy crap. Zero stars, would not recommend.
Annie and I checking in. She is resting comfortably on my lap. I am resting comfortably in my chair. Day two of training coming up.
Back in your working days, did you get many flights across time zones that messed with your circadian rhythms? Or did you just learn to adjust?
Of late, my PC has gotten weird. Many times when I click the mouse over buttons or maybe in this text box, I’ll get a pull-down menu. Sometimes it takes multiple moves and clicks for it to go away so I can do what I want to do. Is my machine possessed??? 
FCD wants some fresh local corn, so I’ll visit a local stand today, bracing myself for the price. I’m pretty sure the Amish get together and decide on prices every year because they all rise by the same amount. Not sure if the non-Amish are in cahoots with them, but it’s mighty suspicious! Regardless, I won’t be getting more than half a dozen ears. Our days of having just corn for supper are long past.
I also needed to run another errand, but at the moment, I don’t recall what it was. Surely I’ll remember as soon as I return to our driveway.
Today is supposed to be the last of the heatwave with a flood watch tonight and rain forecast from this evening thru tomorrow. Not that flooding is a concern in this neighborhood, until I see animals going by 2X2.
Speaking of this neighborhood, I believe I mentioned a house very close to here that went on the market for $1.2M. The price dropped by $51K a month later. No surprise there - it last sold in 2018 for around $600K - ain’t no way it’s doubled in value in 7 years. I do wonder if the owner or the agent set the selling price. But, this isn’t a million-dollar neighborhood, nice as the area is. And especially not for a house on the main county road across the street from a bar-n-grill and a beauty salon. Not that it affects me - still, I do follow such things.
FCD had a semi-rough night, but he did stay in our bed and once he fell asleep, the coughing seemed to subside. I’m hoping he’s at the end of this little adventure. I know it’s really serious because he hasn’t tried to do things at the boat. In fact, the one day he went there, between the cough and the heat, he mainly did a quick look-around then came home. I’m glad he sees the doc next week.
Anyway, onward! Happy Thursday and Happy Last Day of July!!
Afternoon, mumpers! It’s currently 18c/64f with a predicted high of 19c/65f, and cloudy. Weather app says “Every day should be a fucking party, but today should be a fucking inside party.” Not for us, we plan to be outside!
We went for a wander up to Alexanderplatz yesterday evening, had a couple of beers then came back and watched a film in our room. Today we slept late so we are off for lunch somewhere then anotherday of exploring.
Good Mornin’ Y’all! Up and caffeinatin’. YAWN ‘Tis 75 Amurrkin out and mostly clear with a predicted high of 93 and mostly sunny. We have a cool down comin’ next week with highs only in the 80s. BRR! We shall be bears who brunch at Eggs Up and then I shall deal with candle duty. We may ramble also, TBD.
Pilot welcome back!
Now I need more caffeine and I suppose I should purtify and don attire acceptable for bein’ amongst the great unwashed.
Happy Thursday Y’all!
Mornin’ all, and a happy Thu to everyone. Awoke earlier than expected in home time, and earlier yet in CR time. WTF? Balconatin’ & caffinatin’ in the pre-dawn warmth. Pre-dawn enough that there’s no visible glow in the east yet. Venus is well up, Jupiter is rising and the few stars not overwhelmed by our light pollution are sharp and clear. I forecast a lovely day. Hot though. NWS sez a high of 92/33. But at least it’s a bit sticky. 
As to all y’alls’ Tuesday …
Or it might be this strange hanky panky courtesy of our AI friends in the other thread:
@JaneDoe42 & @Johnny_L.A: Food portions are definitely out of sync with my body too. When GF & I go out, our norm now is to order a single salad and share it. Followed by a single entrée to share if we’re lots hungry, or a single appetizer to share if we’re less hungry. Pop a glass or two of wine each on top and everybody is happy except the restaurant owner.
On the trip I did a lot of overeating which somehow just isn’t fun anymore. Or rather it’s great fun in the doing, but I feel bloated and stupid just afterwards and for the next few hours. Just in time for the next meal. 
@scareyfaerie: Great trip report. It also sounds like you and ‘im indoors have developed a great traveling or entertainment MO. You do enough stuff together, but don’t need to be welded at the hip. Seems like the best of both worlds. If the grumpier / weaker / lazier person has a veto on activities, that gets old quickly. IOW, JtC should go to the next ‘rasslin + church event whether Hubs is up for it or not.
FCM You can sure praise Casey for coming all this way at all. But yeah, there’s a difference between cleaning a kitchen and keeping it non-grungy. I’m not much for cleaning, but any spillage or gunk transfer is wiped up as it happens, not in some weekly process.
Happy Birthday to you
Happy Birthday to you
Happy Birthday dear SWAMPY
Happy Birthday to you 
And many more!!!11!!!11!!11!!! [sound of hounds howling]
I got mine for my 60th. Truly a huge improvement for not much hassle. The change wasn’t obvious immediately, but a week later I found myself saying “What?” a LOT less often.
@Pullin: great trip & trip report!!
@Taters: IME roof work always has a surprise under the visible top layer. Best of luck. I hope they can move their damned debris trailer. Some kids you gotta watch ev’ry minute!
@FairyChatMom: The hair isn’t looking bad at all. Not quite what you wanted, but I bet in a day or three it’ll be growing on you. 
My ex-, HL, was originally Italian dark brown that had long since gone pure silver-gray. She kept it dyed dark brown. And put a strip of pink or dark brick red or bright turquoise in it. She got more compliments on that hair from younger people, mostly men, but many women as well. If you’re going to pay a salon for a coloring even once, get some serious color!!! in there somewhere.
@Chefguy : congrats on surviving the trip to Red Wing without a crash. Sounds harrowing. And there’s pie. 
@missred: In the edit window at upper left there’s a slide switch that says either A or M. If you switch to M it all works the old way except the font in the input box is different. And yes, quoting works the same as it ever did even in A mode. Looks slightly different but works the same.
Tax morons. Why are we always surrounded by morons? Except for the idjits of course.
In other words, you shall be known as Frumious. Or maybe Bandersnatch? 
This!!1!
That’s enough commenting for Tue. I’ll tackle Wednesday later today.
Yes, I’m that grandmother. Daughter posted this on FB:
They got themselves ready for bed. Tobias said “There’s two Roxy’s! I’m a little Roxy!”
Only 60F this morning! Wow! Smoky haze from Canada, though. Other than proximity to family, I really dislike living here. If my wife died tomorrow, I’d likely start making plans for moving back to Alaska to live out my days. But since she’s likely to outlive me, I’ll just have to deal with it.
Sadie is happy to have the window shades up so she can survey her empire and sit in the sunlight. She walks the window ledge, which is about twelve feet long and watches the goings-on of her subjects below.
Today is laundry day with it’s associated aggravations, so onward towards breakfast.
Mornin’ all.
It’s 63°F and mostly cloudy. Sunrise will occur in about 10 minutes. Our daytime high will top out at around 84°F, with a mixture of clouds and sun. There is a potential for lightning strikes in the Cascades and east of the Cascades, which could cause wildfires, so they’re watching that. We already have several blazes here in the PNW. Let’s hope there isn’t another one. I am a little surprised we’re not dealing with wildfire smoke in my area, but I’m not complaining.
Welcome home, Pilot.
FCM, those kiddos are adorable. I hope FCD’s health continues to improve.
Well, the roofing crew is done. However, gutter folks come today, so the trailer remains (albeit on one side of the driveway), along with the port-a-potty. When I was first informed about the gutter folks coming today, I thought it was just for pictures, but the fact that the crew left behind the trailer and other stuff led me to believe the gutters are happening today. I’ll be glad when all this is over, I’m ready to have my house and yard to myself.
While working on the roof yesterday, they found a completely rotted fascia board, but rather than bother me with that and charge me, the super told them to get a new board, and they replaced it free of charge. I was also told they did that partly because I had been so kind in providing cold drinks and snacks for them each day. I expressed appreciation for that, but on the other hand, I’m paying a ridiculous sum for this roof, so the least the company could do is replace the board with no cost to me. I didn’t say that, of course, but it’s how I felt.
At any rate, the gutter people are expected to arrive between 8:00 and 10:00 this morning.
In the meantime, it looks like I’m stuck at home for another day. If I really need to go, I can take my husband’s car, but I hate driving it. Until yesterday, I hadn’t driven his car for probably a good six years. I think part of that stems from trying to back it out of the garage door. His bay is very tight on either side, with mere inches to spare on either side of the bay doorframe for the mirrors.
Well, I should get going. I need to give my poor posies a drink. I didn’t have the opportunity to do it yesterday because the roofers arrived much earlier than expected. I was able to water the posies on my front porch, but couldn’t get to the back. They’re fine. They had been watered the day before, but it was pretty warm here, so they will need water today. The birds also need fresh water in their bath and drinking dish.
But first, time for one more cup of coffee. Take care, everyone.
Good morning all. Have broken fast with a big bowl of Cereal and an apple, so that should hold me for awhile. Only activity today is about 5pm this afternoon, they are having an ‘open house’ at all the schools and I volunteered to assist at one to represent AYSO soccer. Also need to get a message out to the U8 soccer parents and players so we can start getting organized. 80F now and ‘only’ getting to 93F, with a 1-in-4 chance of rain.
FCM, happy corn shopping. I seldom get corn because it’s just too much bother to clean and cook, and all the little strings of plant get stuck in my teeth. Hope Ol’Stubborn (FCD) does whatever the doctor orders. And great Pic!!!
boo fae keep enjoying the wanderings.
Cookie, glad you are cooling down. Send some of it my way.
Taters, gutters shouldn’t take as long as the roof, and once they are done you shouldn’t have to worry about either for awhile. Hope the posies are happy now.
Pilot, I try not to overeat anymore, mostly by avoiding stuff I have no control over (cookies, potato chips, 5Guys fries), but once in a while I do go overboard. Weight has been steady at about 207lbs since I got back from my trip so guess I’m doing something right.
And onward into the day. Have a good one all.
As to Wed:
That’s gonna be lots of fun. Really, not sarcastically. But I now better understand your initial anxiety. Hooray for fun!
Yaay! let the adventure (and the paychecks) begin. Sorry about the damned tooth.
Folks worry far too much about that stuff. Were one’s friends or officemates routinely having GI issues after a get-together? If not, then there wasn’t / isn’t a real problem, just an imagined problem. Now some folks have stomachs that go wonky at the slightest hint of unhealthful food. Or that believe they go wonky. Those folks need to be extra careful.
This. I too can ignore even a noxious noise from my phone that’s sitting next to me. One tap on the “silence! dammit” button and I’ve forgotten it ever happened. If I have to walk across the room to silence it, I’ll stay interrupted long enough to do [whatever]. If only I can remember which [whatever] I was supposed to do.
Yep. Lots of people have persuaded themselves that $20/lb chicken just has to be healthier than $3.00/lb chicken, and that difference is essential to them surviving past next week. Idjits.
You’re going to have a lot of that. Being able to hear the microwave beep that happy “I’m done” noise from farther than 5 feet away was/is an amazing experience.
More like “You’re a miracle worker”. Or at least that’s the impression you want TPTB to get.
@missred: Poor Nelson!
jtc, perhaps a neighbour has a goat you could borrow for your vines. i believe gg and jolene would enjoy watching a goat or two.
the office is less arctic today. the outside forecast has storms later with break in the heat wave after.
fairy chat mom, what a delightful picture! tobias and roxy are lovely siblings.
As to today to date (~10am) and I’ll be all caught up w y’all. For a few minutes at least …
Yup. it sux.
Seriously, thanks to everyone for the "welcome home"s. It does have advantages. As of now the laundry is put away and Da Jungle took care of some errands that built up. So other than timezone issues, I’m home and dry as the Brits might say.
I never worked to Europe or Asia, so I avoided the worst of it.
About half my career I lived in & worked from the Central time zone and mostly stayed in the range of Eastern to Mountain, with some forays aaaaallll the way to the Pacific zone. So plus/minus one hour really doesn’t lead to jet lag. The other half career I was living and working in Eastern, with forays +/- 2 hours in either direction.
By far the larger issue for us was some workdays started at 5am and ran until dinner time, while others started at 7pm and ran until 4am. Or worse yet, started at 11pm and worked until 7am.
Typically any single 3 or 4 day trip stayed mostly mornings, afternoons, or evenings, not a mix. But also typically each workday started earlier than the last. So we lived in a world of 22-hour days. Then you’d come home, have a couple days of normalcy, then launch off again on a different pattern with a different start time.
I don’t know how the people that work to/from Europe do it. Although my Dad did Europe for years and he once commented that there was a saying in European ops: “You never get used to transatlantic timezone problems. You just forget what feeling normal is like.”
Good luck getting FCD through the day and healthy again! I tells ya’, that boy seems like work
And boy do you have cute grandkids!
@Taters: Congrats on the roof work drawing to a close!! Doggies (and you) will be sooo happy when the noise & commotion is gone.
A fine thing for a Thu. Off your lead I will do similar. Thank you!
Hooray: I caught up!
I know a couple folks didn’t get a shout-out. That’s not 'cuz I don’t love you; just didn’t find a good spot to stick my spoon into your sauce.
I decided to hit the non-Amish market since it’s closer and, frankly, easier in and out. And boy did I score! Half a dozen ears of sweet corn, a cantaloupe the size of a bowling ball, and 4 peaches still fuzzy from the tree - $4!! They had a variety of ‘maters, some grapes, assorted squash, N.O.T, cabbage, onions, and probably other stuff I can’t remember. I should have gone there before hitting Food Lion. But I won’t make the same mistake next shopping day/ The melon needs a couple of days, but the corn will be the highlight of tonight’s supper. YUM!!
I’m charging the battery for the weed whacker ahead of a little bit of whacking in the yard. Since rain is due tonight, I don’t want to leave it for the weekend. Apart from that, no real agenda for today. It’s too hot for real yard work, and I’m pretty much caught up on house chores, tho I suppose I could give the terlits a scrub. Maybe.
PSA For All MMPers Frustrated With The New Edit Box
In the edit box to the left of the the [B] for bold you’ll see a left/right slide switch that says either M↓ or A. If it says A, click it and it’ll switch to saying M↓.
That’s it; you’re done. Now it works just like it did last week. The only difference is the font on the input box is old-fashioned DOS looking. The font on the preview and on your actual post is the same as it ever was.
Ha! It works just like you said! Thank you!
My student’s father was using the weed whacker yesterday and kicked a rock back, which broke his car’s side window! Be careful!
Yeah, I didn’t get the memo! I should have picked someplace closer.
I’m working on my remodeling project. The first part is easy, tearing things down is easier to putting stuff back together.
It’s been a busy week doing this.
“Frumious” sounds good too!
Okay, I forgot to mention that our good friend, who often stays with us, was supposed to come down and stay with us for a week-plus. First we thought that would still happen, because Izzy wasn’t supposed to be here until two or three days later. Then her arrival was moved up, and she’ll be in the formerly-guest room a day before Friend was going to arrive. Mr. Rilch was putting off telling him, but last night, Friend was texting me, all excited, can’t wait, and I was like, “Uh, you better talk to Mr. Rilch…We have big news…No, we didn’t win the lottery…” Finally, after we’d worked out a time for him to call, I texted the flag-of-Italy emoji. And then he thought we were going to Italy. Well, he knows now! And he’s cool with it, excited for us. We still have to make a date to meet his new ladyfriend, though.
===========================
Okay, The Story of the Flower. I read this many years ago, and it was old then*. I’ve modernized it a bit, but the message is timeless.
So there’s this middle-aged couple, call them Tom and Sara. Their kids are grown and out of the house, and they have gradually become lazy slobs. They barely clean, nothing’s organized, the outside looks like a scrapyard. Then one day, Tom is in the back yard, smoking and drinking a beer. He’s about to toss the empty can into the heap of empty cans when he sees a bright color in the grass. Gets up to look, and it’s a beautiful flower, happily growing in the midst of the hoard.
So Tom thinks, this flower should be given a chance to thrive. He starts clearing weeds from around it, and of course he can’t go very far with that before random junk is in the way, so he starts collecting and sorting the junk, and creates a clear spot in the middle of the yard, getting bigger as time goes on.
Meanwhile, Sara is in the living room, watching TV and surfing the net. Then she notices it’s time for Friends reruns, and Tom hasn’t come in to watch. She goes outside, “Ooh, what a beautiful flower! And good job on the yard!” She goes back in, but wants to take another look from the kitchen window. Except, the window is so grungy, she can’t even see out. She makes a clear spot, but if she can make a clear spot, she can clean the entire window, right? And once she’s done that, sunlight comes streaming through the window and shows how gross the kitchen really is. So she sets about cleaning it.
Then Tom comes in and admires the kitchen, and Sara goes outside and admires the yard. And they’re both too tired to make dinner, so they order a pizza. However, because the kitchen is now spotless, they can eat off clean plates, and drink out of clean tumblers. And they’re sure to put the pizza box directly into the trash!
Then the next day, they want to see the flower again, but coming back into the disastrous (except for the kitchen) house is kind of a downer. The next few days are spent decluttering. And when they’ve subtracted all the clutter, the shabby walls and grotty carpet are still ruining the effect, so now they have to paint and deep-clean and so forth. And when all this is done, now the grown kids want to visit and bring their kids. So the house can be a home again, and all because of one flower.
Which is kind of what’s happening here. It was about time we gave the guest room a deep clean, and I hadn’t known the mattress pad was so raggedy, and I’ve been saying for over a year that we need another set of sheets for that bed and now we have them. And, while we were emptying the closet, Mr. Rilch found something he’d bought in January and planned to give me for my birthday, but forgot about. I tried to post a photo, using that up-arrow icon in the toolbar, but was told “You can’t embed media items in a post.” So how can I post a photo? We were kind of in a rut before this, and a lot of things will probably change. Like, we’ll be getting to know parents of Izzy’s classmates, and hopefully some lasting friendships will spring from that!
*My paternal grandfather was an elementary school principal, so there were all these between-the-wars era “readers” and grammar books and so forth in that house.
Same as always. Post the photo to a photo sharing site then paste the url of the picture on that site into your post here. Put the url on a line by itself and it’ll preview in the thread here. Otherwise it’ll appear here only as a clickable link.
Imgur is a common choice if you don’t already have a photo site you use.
We’ll try this.
I have to wonder how long before they rebel against matching clothes. 
(says red, whose mother loooooooved putting four daughters in sister dresses. Poor baby Sis, she never got out of those damn things, given that she got all of our hand-me-downs).
Up, caffeinating, breakfasted and fixing to do KP. I have some stuff I didn’t get to yesterday that I’ll do today, plus what I slated for today. Nelson seems to be feeling a bit better. I’ll be glad when he’s done with antibiotics.
Stay safe and healthy y’all!
Well, I tried signing up for Imgur, but they don’t like any of the usernames I tried. Grrr.