Morning al;. Slept right to 7am and after making the Sunday NY Times run, finally turned on the heat for the house…set it to 70F, last year I only had it at 68F, but hey, what’s a few dollars for a few degrees (guess I’ll find out in December). 56F now, heading to 72F so might not need too much heating. Got a notification in my mail that my Blue Cross/Blue Shield coverage is going up, but so is my retirement, so no reason to switch. Nothing much but tackleball on the agenda today, whether I watch it here or at the gym is still TBD.
I can handle raisins in my cookies just fine, but prefer chocolate chips.
Flyboy, the Titanic exhibition sounds interesting, it’s rather amazing when I see comparisons to contemporary cruise ships how ‘small’ it would be today. Hope the hand is doing better.
shoe, take care of yourself; know you got to work to make ends meet, but…take care of yourself, y’hear?
With JtC, it is always For Great Justice…
doggio, that channel on naval history looks intriguing, might have to bookmark it. Much thanks.
Feel better soon, VanGo.
FCM, saw my first porno in college (I suspect many of us did) and have seen the two classics of our age (Deep Throat and Debbie Does Dallas) but don’t think I ever spent a cent for anything like it after that. Happy Afghanning.
{{Coppertone}}
boo fae, you have the busiest Saturdays; take it easy today, you’ve earned it.
Taters, I’ve also had dreams about being in airports and something keeps delaying me getting to the plane, don’t know what it means but I’ve been in over 100 airports in my life, so guess it’s natural to dream of them on occasion.
Right. But I haven’t learned yet~I wrote the book on staying up too late reading or streaming and waking up stupid early and having to miserably grind through a day. Every day I say I’m not going to do that again and yet every night I do it. I’ve been a hopeless late night reader and night owl since I was 7, forty years of being a night nurse hasn’t helped.The brain injury bonked my sleep center out of whack, seemingly irrevocably so here I sit. Thank the heavens for coffee and friends who knit me afghans of many colors to snuggle under while drinking that coffee and enjoying the cat on my lap, who also likes afghans. She doesn’t seem to care about cookies, raisins or football unless I wake her up by shouting when we make a score. Then I get a short glare, a kitty sigh and she rearranges her pretty self and starts purring again. Getting up to get another cup of coffee is a more serious transgression requiring her to huff off for at least ten minutes. She comes back sooner in the fall and winter if the house is cool and my lap has warmed the afghan again. Of course right about then I have to get up again to pee because ….coffee. She forgives, so far. For all I know I’m on double secret probation with her too.
They had a reproduction of a 3rd Class cabin. It looked like it was about 10 feet wide, and had four bunks. Here’s a picture of it from the NY exhibition. IIRC, the price of a ticket was equal to a year’s pay for the average worker.
Since 1st Class suites had two rooms, I’ll post a Google search of images.
As for the hand, I’m always getting bruises and scrapes. At least this time I know how it happened.
Ariel had a choke episode yesterday. A bolus of food, in her case hay, gets stuck in the esophagus. The animal can still breathe, but is in distress. She was coughing and liquid hay was coming out of her nose. I called the vet who said keep her quiet for an hour, these things tend to pass on their own. I massaged her neck and it passed. She got a small hit of sedation which did nothing. She ate her soaked grain for dinner. She is okay, but I’m an exhausted mess today.
Started Typing: 9:51 AM ET
Clicked Reply: 10:33 AM ET
I am way behind; too much to even skim.
Late on Thursday, the government finally gave us a due date for the proposal I’ve been drafting for the past three months: it’s due the day before Thanksgiving. It’s only 10 pages, but getting consensus on the right approach has been a real struggle – including two long meetings last week – and there’s still a lot of writing to do, so combined with my regular day job I’m pretty slammed at the moment. I’ll be working today (I’ll log in after I post this), and it’s unlikely that I’ll be able to participate in the new MMP.
I took yesterday and Friday evening off: by the end of the workday on Friday my brain was hurting, and I needed to watch some TV and keep working on the Sesame Street Lego set I’d started Thursday evening (before learning about the due date). Yesterday I had a personal training session at 10am, after which I went to the grocery store then came home and showered and dressed; I was ready just in time for my “nephew” to arrive at 1pm. We headed out to a nearby brewery for lunch and a “bricks and brews” event, where a bunch of folks built the same custom-designed set but using different colors and available add-ons. It wound up being more fun than either of us expected, and it was awesome to get to spend some quality time with him. But I don’t know when I’ll do another one: he’s about to go live with his girlfriend in Texas for the next ~6 months, and I don’t have any friends who are into Lego enough. Anyway, apparently I still needed to play with bricks because last night I finished Sesame Street.
Here’s my custom bricks-and-brews set (my nephew and I split two soft pretzels during the event; I thought it was appropriate for my minifig to be holding a pretzel):
And here are the front and back of Sesame Street (soooo many little details; such a fun set to build!):
I’m not sure how many hours I’ll work today – my next deadline is 3pm on Wednesday, for one last big review before the proposal gets finalized, so I want to get as much done as possible while there are no distractions – but sometime this evening I’ll start building the London double-decker bus. It has more pieces and will take longer than Sesame Street: I’m hoping to be able to keep working on it next weekend, but I’ll have to see how this week’s proposal review goes. Anyway, the bus will be the last “regular” set I assemble for a month or so: I have three small/easy holiday sets to put together either on or the day after Thanksgiving, which is when I’ll start decorating for Christmas. In January, after the decorations get put away, I’ll start tackling the D.C. sets (White House, Capitol Building, Lincoln Memorial).
My life will be all work (and Lego) for a while. I hope everyone has a great week, yays/boos/hugs as needed, and I look forward to catching up again after Thanksgiving!
Worlds best pancakes for breakfast, with a side of sausages. Maybe a walk later, since yesterdays winds have subsided. Yesterday’s beef stew was excellent and will be today’s dinner as well.
Breakfast today was two slices of fried SPAM® on one slice of margarined toast, with two jumbo over-easy eggs on top. Bonus: One of the eggs had a double yolk.
Mrs. L.A. rearranged her bedroom. That new chair she bought is still ‘just too bloody big.’
SWMBO ordained that the wood stack cover and frame be moved away from the house so as to keep moisture from building up behind it. I did that. She also noted that the long extension cord must be brought inside. Did that too. I even wiped it down as I was pulling it in to get the water, debris, and algae off of it.
Her Devoutness decided we were going to skip church today. We should go on tiring outings more often!
Sleep was intermittent but still quite restorative.
Main agenda item for today is to procure kibble for Monkey. I poured out the very last of his bag last night (shhh! don’t tell him!) so I’ll hafta { sigh } put on pants, and head out for that.
I don’t usually allow mission-critical household supplies to run out, but … remember I got taken in by a damn scam last week?
Well, I had to cancel my debit card, and since I’m too stubborn to change banks to anything with a local branch (I’ve been with this one for 20+ years, and until now never needed to darken a brick-and-mortar location since moving to Mich but the nearest is 100+ miles away) until the damn replacement shows up, I have (some) money but no way to access it, other than being able to thankfully pay a few bills that had my stored bank account info, or the ability to simply accept accnt/routing.
I was really starting to fret yesterday about his food, but once again, the cavalry arrived at the last minute, this time in the form of our cash tip money being payed out right before I left for the night. (It’s an event with rather unpredictable timing, and so always a surprise, albeit a pleasant one.)
I guess we raked in a lot of tips during the Fightapalooza night? … cuz I wasn’t expecting the next installment so soon, though I certainly did the opposite of complain!
So in a last-minute upgrade to my life, I have enough cash to get kibble for him & some smoke for me, since I was really scraping the bottom of the barrel on that stuff and, well, like I said, mission-critical household supplies!
… I think a long, relaxing, non-rushed shower may be in order for today, as well.
You were in ezzactly the right line of work!
I’m sure countless patients appreciated your ability to help them in the wee hours.
I might be your cat.
I enjoy snuggles & colorful things, am relatively neutral on cookies although an occasional chocolate crinkle is nice, don’t really care about sports in general unless they impact my life directly (Superb Owl night is historically insane-o-pants busy) am deeply suspicious of raisins & the people who eat them, and have come close to murdering those who awaken me from my slumber.
I am so glad for both of you that she’s recovering. “Liquid hay coming out the nose” sounds … unpleasant.
Also not a thing I thought could happen to any living creature!
Heh, well done.
Also well done!
Thank you, I will try this.
… oh, look (listen?) an opportunity has just started up. How fortuitous.
Home from church.
Afraid to look at fb scores in case my team is not winning.
The tree in front of my window has shed its leaves! Its light in here!
And I can see out; its only a parking lot but still.
The Texas Roadhouse has been visited and my belly is quite full, albeit in a great display of self-control I only ate 3 rolls instead of the 4 they gave me…still probably head over to the gym in a bit to ‘guilt’ off some of those calories. Nearing 70F and the heater is quite for now, hopefully will stay than way for a bit longer.
BBBoo, I’m finding myself staying up later, mostly since I’ve been going to the gym in the evenings and not getting home until near 9pm, so far my body has been letting me stay abed until 7am or so, so it works out. For 20+ years I was getting up at 5:15am to go to work and heading to be by 9:30pm at the latest, so some adjustment was necessary.
wet one, had to be scary for both Ariel and you, glad she’s doing well and you need a good rest.
Oopsie, so it’s due the day before Thanksgiving…any bet on when it is read and you get any feedback on it (I’d estimate 15-20 Jan at the earliest). And come back to us when you can…we’ll keep the light on for you… And your lego-mania is always fun to see; good luck with the double-decker.
shoe, hope the banking woes get better quickly.
And guess I’ll change and mosey over to the gym and watch tackleball there while pedaling to nowhere. Take care all.
I was thinking about ticket prices on Titanic vs. today. Based on a quick search and quick calculations. a First Class suite on Queen Mary 2 costs about half of that on Titanic, and the cheapest birth costs about half as well.
I love an oatmeal/raisin/walnut cookie, and use a recipe which purports to be the Mrs. Fields oatmeal cookie recipe. Except it wasn’t very oat-y, so I double the oats and cut back on the flour, and now it’s perfect.
I’m trying a new cookie recipe right now. They’re brown sugar pecan cookies, and the dough is chilling in the fridge as I type. In about 15 minutes they’ll be ready to bake. Mr brown and I both love pecans, so I’m hoping this is a good recipe. I liked making the dough because it uses melted butter rather than room temp butter, so I didn’t have to remember to get the butter out hours ahead of time.
Not quite 4 p.m. and I’m still in my bathrobe derping on my phone, and snuggling with a sleepy house panther, so clearly the whole “chill on your day off” message sank in.
He was soooo mellow I was able to trim several of his daggers claws, so that counts as productivity, yes?
Yesterday, the neighbor’s dog escaped and it ran into our back yard. The neighbor came running over to get her dog and took the silly pup back to it’s new home.
This morning I found a broken kitchen whisk in the hallway. I have never seen it before and none of my kitchen whisks are missing the handle anyhow. I looked at it for a very long time before throwing it in the garbage. Even if it wasn’t broken, I don’t think I’d want to use it anyhow.