-32 here in sunny Montana which is better than the -40 of Friday. Never got above -10 yesterday. The pups are getting restive.
Remember the other day when it was 8º? It’s warmed up to 20º right now, and we should get up to freezing around 1300. An hour later and we should hit our high of 34º. It’s warming up! 
SWMBO had me order some more fire starters. For some reason, she uses two of them to start the fire, even though the wood we’re using is very dry and goes up easily. (Remember that custom 8’x5’x2’ wood stack cover she got me, and the frame I made for it? It was completely full, and we’ve burned through more than half of it since Thanksgiving.) I only use one starter, and she’s seen me start a fire with only one. But she thinks I’m some sort of fire-starting fiend, and she says she can’t start one with only one starter.
I’ll need to bring in some more wood (both into the house, and into the ‘staging area’ inside of the catio).
I’m starting to think about breakfast. I’m going to have a beef birria-and-cheese omelette.
The frittata is in the oven. We were going to take Daughter and family out for supper tonight, but they’re all down with a stomach bug. So I guess I need to cook tonight. Except I’ve been marinating a couple of steaks, so I guess that’s what we’ll eat.
Meanwhile, as the frittata bakes, I’m going to read.
My microwave just dinged~double bowl of thick cut rolled oats, then 
. In my religion it’s a sin to waste cake and I’m a devout girl.
Lunch will be leftover taco salad from last night. Supper will be leftover baked beans and turkey meatballs from two days ago. I’m thinking I’ll boost the vitamin and fiber of that with air fryer sweet potato fries. Another slice of cake with decaf tea might top off the evening.
Yay on Ace’s success at the dog park doggio. Maybe hanging out with other dogs is what he needs.
Enjoy your trip Mooooom.
My weather is the same as fishy’s. I called our weather hotline, which gave me the info that we were closed today. I plan on going out to the car in a bit to clear the snow off it and warm it up, although it wouldn’t surprise me if we are still home tomorrow. We’re supposed to have a heat wave around Wednesday and get above freezing.
Stay safe and healthy y’all!
Taco salads are a great way to disguise that you’re eating 20 tacos at a sitting. 
I’m fighting a bit of eye strain so reading and responding isn’t high priority at the moment. I did, however, wasn’t to share a few pics I took of our winter wonderland this morning.
I’m not much for organized religion but … uh, you takin’ memberships?
(… oh gawd, is this a cult?)
(Eff it. There’s cake.)
I love how you can combine “fries” with “boost the vitamin and fiber” without missing a beat.
So in your world, fries are nutritious. SOLD!!!
I will join your cult now, sweet lady; please take all my debt uh, money, yeah, that’s it; also you may have both of my snakes in gratitude, in return for endless cake & nutritious fries, but Monkey is mine foreverandever as long as I get to pet your beeyootiful 'Meezer sometimes.
(I would say, “You can pet my monkey” but that’s how rumors get started.)
I wonder if you’re onto something there. Perhaps he reallyREALLY needs to be part of a pack, and not a singleton?
{ whiny “Karen” voice }
“Excuse me, sir? Did you miss the “salad” part? Yeah, okay, soooooooooo if it’s a salad it’s healthy like, 
srsly OMG.”
{ /wKv }
@Beckdawrek you don’t have contact info for @VOW directly, do you? I know y’all are close …
@LSLGuy what happened to your friend’s mom is a living nightmare. To pull yourself out from hell, and then … shit … words fail me.
Hmm. When I look at Summary - VOW - Straight Dope Message Board I see
Last Post Nov 2, '23 Seen Nov 2, '23
Which I interpret as them last having posted on Nov 2 '23 and last interacted at all with the website (IOW read a page) also on Nov 2 '23.
If you see a different “last read” date, please edumacate me. I’m not claiming I’m right, just that we’re seeing different things.
Words fail me too. At least {{hugs}} don’t take words.
After my first wife died I was concerned for awhile that I too was in line to have some random health crisis or other disaster just as I was starting to get my feet under me again. Because, unlike Hollywood, Fate just hates a happy ending.
I imagine you felt the same after other Shoe died.
I thought today was Sunday because I have the day off due to the holiday, so I posted in the wrong thread.
Sorry about that.
Happy MLK Junior Day. I’m trying to seriously contemplate what I’m doing right and what I could be doing better. I feel like I dropped the ball this last couple of months, but in my defense, I’ve been sick most of that time. After a week of feeling like nothing could touch me, I am suddenly a ball of anxiety.
And craving sugar. I’m still doing the cutting back on sugar thing. I’m not sure if what I’m going through is related or not. I just got really anxious all of a sudden. But I’m going to try not to dwell on it.
Now that’s really interesting. Thank you.
You’re totally right it says what you say it does on @VOW’s pop-up card when I look at it too; so this isn’t a theming difference. But if you click through the pop-up to their user profile page, it says what I showed, and there is no entry for “Read”.
Which now has me wondering what “read 15D” in their case means. I bet that does not mean “last read date was 15 days ago” although that sure seems like that’s what it ought to mean.
Clicking my icon says “Read 5mon (12d recently)” and yours says “Read 65d (3d recently)”. I clicked @purplehorseshoe’s icon just because she’s the nearest poster to us in this thread and hers says “Read 63d (4d recently)”
I haven’t missed a day on the Dope in probably 2 months. You’re here nearly every day too. So’s Shoe.
So now I wonder what the heck that “read [whatever]” is trying to tell us. I conclude it is not “time interval since last SDMB reading”
Going to my summary page it says “5 mon read time” and “12d recent read time”.
Which suggests maybe it tracks our time on the site and I have 12x24h = 288h of reading time “recently” whatever “recently” means, and 5x30x24 = 3,600 hours of reading time since the Beginning (probably the beginning of Discourse, not of my membership).
All of which is to suggest (If I interpret all this stuff rightly) that @VOW has 15days x 24 hours worth of cumulative read time since we began hosting on Discourse. They do not have any entry or even heading for “recent read time”. Suggesting they have not been here since however long Discourse thinks “recently” is.
Afternoon all. Still cooped up in my house, I don’t have the amount of snow that Real Fish has about 100 miles north of me, but what has fallen seems to be lying on the roads (the grass is still visible) and while I trust my driving in snow (learned to drive in N. Ohio), I’m not so sure of my fellow Ali-bamians…might venture out a little this afternoon, we’ll see. Three loads of laundry are washed and dried and waiting to be sorted, which I’ll get to…sometime.
Following the Pilot/Flyboy discussion, looked at my profile and if you hold the arrow on the boldface stats you get a little explanatory popup.The larger date (in my case, 3Mon read time) says “read time: all time” and the smaller one (5d) shows “read time in last 60 days”
shoe, not a wall o’text…it was on-point, it was relevant to the subject, and it was an interesting read. Most folks (none of whom are Mumpers) only aspire to be that literate.
TimeLord (just made that up), I had the same adventure last February, but it is highly expensive and time-consuming.
Started Typing: 11:57 AM ET
Clicked Reply: 1:29 PM ET
As of yesterday it wasn’t supposed to snow here until this evening, but I woke to a thin layer of white stuff and a forecast for more/steady snow starting at around 1pm…so, I changed “working in the proposal center” to “working from home.” I live very close to that office, but I don’t like to take my RWD car out in any snow if I don’t have to; being in person was a nice-to-have, and far from critical. Turns out I chose wisely, because it started snowing again at around 11:30am. I’d actually been looking forward to the change of scenery – and other proposal team members being around – but oh well. I’m definitely happier to be home with Bailey, in sweats and thick socks, with both the oil heater and humidifier running in my home office (this corner room gets chilly when the outside temps dip and there’s any kind of breeze; today’s high will only be 31°F). I even remembered to grab the snow shovel out of the laundry room* this morning and bring it into the house. And I truly have no complaints compared to the weather some of y’all are having!
*The laundry room is an extension, connected to the heat and AC but with no access from within the house. I have to walk a few steps outside/across the patio to get to it. When enough snow falls I have to shovel a path to it, which would be challenging to do if the shovel were inside it. 
It’s been so long since we’ve gotten any real snow that I forgot how quiet it gets outside, with no construction sounds (there is always a house being torn down/replaced in my 'hood; the one catty-corner to mine is currently in progress), far less road traffic, and far fewer people walking their dogs (which means no barking from Bailey). Adding to the preternatural quiet is the lack of constant notification sounds from my two work laptops: my customer laptop isn’t even on (all of today’s work is being done via my corporate laptop), and the only other person on my program who’s working today is my boss. I’ve responded to a few messages from him, but otherwise Outlook and Teams are hushed. Usually I prefer no background music/sounds unless I’m really focused on some writing or editing, because the everyday notifications and chats and meetings provide enough noise, but the quiet is becoming distracting. I think I’ll turn the radio on… The local '70s/'80s station is playing The Police (and now Boston). Much better.
I just finished a yummy lunch of a banana and Lean Cuisine cheese pizza: time to eat some cookies, and return to proposal land…which actually pulled me in a few times since I started this post, hence the really long time it’s taken to write not much at all.
I hope everyone stays warm and dry and safe today!
Your ideas are intriguing to me and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.
Ok, I got a piece glued up, now must wait for the glue to set before siccing the CNC back on it. I think that’s just about enough of this nonsense for today.
No one else is working in the building, so I’m going home. Might needs to stop at the likker sto on the way.
Quoting myself from this morning for context:
Welp, it’s nearly 2 pm and although I’m fed & sheveled, I’ve taken no action yet. I had 3 retails, 2 docs, & 2 banks to visit. Somewhere upthread somebody mentioned this being a 3-day weekend so at least I didn’t waste time going to closed docs and banks. One of the many advantages of procrastination: you might learn a good reason to not do [whatever].
The retail should be normal and I’m about to launch off into the kinda-cloudy warmth to get that stuff done.
I didn’t mention it earlier, but … Hey TrueFish: are you sure you didn’t move to Canada or Massachusetts recently? Those are not pix I associate with Nashville.
Wordy: staying home sounds like a great decision. Cozy is good. Quiet is even better.
Metalmouse thanks for the tips. Now we know Discourse “recently” = 60 days.
After hours of effort, the temperature has clawed its way all the way up to 1F, a not-so-large improvement on -4F. But it’s sunny, so that’s a plus. I don’t think we manage to get back to the 20s until next Monday. I do sorta feel sorry for the poor shlubs that have to leave their cars in parking lots all day. I had a remote starter on one of my cars in Anchorage, and it sure made for a good end to a winter’s day.
Made a meatloaf yesterday and had cold meatloaf sandwiches for lunch. Mayo, sriracha, salt and sweet pickles. Good stuff. Also baked a batch of my oatmeal/walnut/raisin/apricot cookies on Saturday. Shared some with the staff downstairs. I think they’re probably trained to smile and tell you how wonderful you are for thinking of them. But they really are quite good, and I wanted to try out the vanilla bean paste that I ordered.
Now: to go exercise or not to go exercise? This will take some serious thought. . .zzzzzzzzzzzzz.
Temp’s up to 28º Ferret Height.
I finally adjusted the thermostat on the water heater. This involved loosening the earthquake strap so that I could get the owner’s manual off the side of it. Manuel says the unit was factory preset to 120 Ferrets, which isn’t quite hot enough. At the risk of being scalded, I like it scalding. You can cool it down with the cold tap, but you can’t make it any hotter. There are no markings on the two thermostats. One’s screwdriver slot was at 12 o’clock and I set it to 2 o’clock. The other one was set to 3 o’clock and I set it to about 5 o’clock. I’ll give it some time to heat, and then try it out.
Next up: Finishing this cuppa joe and then getting some more firewood off the stack.
You’re in!
You’re the Inaugural Charter Member! An even more coveted appellation than DAR Charter Member or Phi Beta Kappa [or should be, neither of which I am remotely eligible for, although I am an admiral in the Nebraska Navy].
She would be delighted to submit to your worship, although to outward appearances it will appear to be that she deigns to submit to your admiration, deserved as it is.
shoe nailed it on this one since the encore (sounds sooo much better than leftover) taco salad came from my daughter’s gluten free, near paleo kitchen, so not fried tortilla, only crisped in oven, drained spiced ground beef, dark green lettuces, tomatoes and scallions, a mere modicum of shredded cheese, salsa and Greek yoghurt instead of sour cream. I’ve almost talked myself out of eating it.
I can redeem it with the afore-mentioned burnt sugar gluten free/egg free* cake I was sent home with. (*darling 2 year old grandson is severely epipen allergic to egg, combined with his mother’s celiac makes for very interesting dessert celebrations)
Looks like @Chronos has been not only aptly Mumper nicknamed but metal mouse has set a new record in doing so. metal mouse this 
is yours for winning the Mumper nicknaming biathlon (speed and accuracy).
You are now the east coast rep~we are sure you will do the faith/cult/secret organization proud. We’re leaving it up to you to build the Lego tabernacle to 
for the pilgrimages of the worshipping hordes.