(Old) It's Time For A New MMP

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
241

Spot and I took a brief nap. Now we’re watching hockey, and having a Sazarac and Asian BBQ stifry.

Wolfpack won, and UNC and Incarnate Word lost. So at least the CFB part of my sports fandom gives me joy.
And The Canes just won!!!

Go Badgers :cheese_wedge:

In theory, M-F 18-20 hours a week. In practice 6 days, 35+ every week. It’s just enough to supply Spot with gin.

:weary_face:
{{{{shoe}}}}

That’s why I like my current job. I might hear Sam and Dave or Babymetal, but no Xmas. As opposed to the one job, where when I heard “Holly Jolly Christmas” for the 3rd time, I knew it was time for a cigarette break.

Nice. And right up the ally for all the musical Mumpers.

242

When I was working in retail, Bob Rivers and the Tales from the Crypt Christmas album during off time got me through with at least a little sanity intact. How many arrangements of “Winter Wonderland” even need to EXIST?

“Real” Christmas music is all well and good, but in reasonable doses. Retail workers get highly UNreasonable dosages.

243

In 2001, I bought a Rolex GMT Master II (black-and-red bezel) for $3,500, and negotiated no sales tax.. I also bought a Rolex Jubilee bracelet for $800 from another jeweller I’d found online. Today, we’ve been watching shows on the National Geographic channel, sponsored by Rolex. My wife said that if I die before her, she’s selling my Rolexes. Fair enough, I suppose. I said that they’re only an ‘investment’ when you sell them. Me, I just like wearing them. Anyway, I searched eBay for 2001 Rolex GMT Master II. Oh, my. Even without the Jubilee bracelet, they’re going for around $12K to $18K. :astonished_face: Non-date Subs seem to be going for about $10K. (I think I paid $2,200 for mine.) Nice to know; but as I said, I have no intention of selling them. In fact, I’d like to get the cheapest Rolex; a blue-dial Air-King.

244

I’ve got a coworker who does this. I think it is dangerous to not be able to hear the tools you’re using.

245

:pizza: PIZZA STORY TIME!

We had two pizzas tonight (diff. customers) that came out back to back, so they got nicknames:

  • Large deluxe, extra sauce, light cheese
  • Large deluxe, extra sauce, extra cheese

The first was nicknamed “Flat soup” and the other was “Flat stew.” Because that’s what they looked like, being made.

Yes, your weird-ass orders get affectionate nicknames back of house sometimes - how else are we gonna keep things straight?

(I have heard shouting: “How much longer, for that half black onion .. uh, it’s got onions and green olives … okay, large weird veggie thingamajig?” We just need to know how close to coming outta the oven, so we can route the line accordingly.)

“Flat stew” was a :angry_face_with_horns: to cook and slice. Messy, greasy. PITA to slice & bag.

“Flat soup” was, according to the Oven Masters, “no biggie.” Just looked a bit strange, not like our usual.

Fun :pizza: fact! Double-everything deluxe is called a “birthday cake” cuz that’s what it looks like going in. Pile that many toppings up .. “oh, and can you cook that a little extra?”

Honey, we’re gonna have to .. that much pepperoni grease and mushroom juice is gonna need some more time to cook if you don’t want a soggy crust.

Management just started customer rewards punch cards. Yay!

One lady called to check on her order, that she’d called in five minutes earlier. Yes, we already talked to you, your food is almost but not quite yet ready. (We got this. Honey, we ring thousands $$ a night, we can handle your one small deluxe, please calm down. It takes at least seven minutes from when we talk to you.)

She shows up, I get her rung up, ask if she’d like one of our new reward cards.

She looked at me with the concerned face of someone who’d been casually offered an envelope of anthrax, and whispered, “Do I need to download some .. app or something .. to my phone?”

I handed her a cardboard business card, with one stamp already on it, and explained that it’s paper and ink. Old skool.

The look of relief on her face …

“… here’s your pizza, have a good night.”

Jeebus, lady, it’s a punch card, not a rabid raccoon.

246

“Oh, gee, we need sausage from the walk-in.”

“No, we don’t.” :christmas_tree::musical_notes:

“We. Need. Sausage. From. Far. Away.”

247

Yep, you will. I woulda loved to hear that locker room conversation. It was like a different team come out than went in. Lots of nitpicking little flags and penalties but at least no player from either team was hurt.

For @Kitten_Mitten, yes our running back is still out, Jamal Rule didn’t play. Haven’t heard any worrying scuttlebutt about it being gruesome or long term. Thanks for remembering that

248

Good Mornin’ Y’all! Up and caffeinatin’. YAWN ‘Tis 71 Amurrkin out and cloudy with a predicted high of 79 with rain startin’ up in a couple of hours and hangin’ around all day. The big item on today’s agenda is deheathenization in which I have Verger duty. It’s also first Sunday brunch afterward. The cabbage casserole will be baked in a little while and the shredded poke will get warmed up. I also have my group this afternoon which I must attend since I didn’t last week. No nappage will be achieved today. Oh the humanity!

shoe but are you sure that little punch card is not full of robots that will steal all of her PII? Them things is tricky you know!

doggio glad your Wolfpack won and your traditional and irrational rivals lost.

BBBoo glad your Huskers won.

Now I need more caffeine and to feed rumbly tummy. Then purtification for deheathenization and the cookin’/warmin’ up of stuff shall commence.

Happy Sunday Y’all!

249

Mornin’

Tis overcast and gloomy up here today. No real plans for the day.

For the retail muzac hell situation- the airport coffee shop I used to irk in had a grand total of 20 songs. 10 on loop 24 hours a day January - November, which were all off film soundtracks (maybe some sort of deal connected with inflight entertainment?) and 10 of which were Christmas ones, on loop 24 hours a day through December. It’s been over a decade, but I still twitch if I hear ‘12 days of Christmas’.

Haveta admit, I’m with the random pizza lady on the no loyalty apps, if not the demand for pizza in 5 minutes. Gimme an old skool bit of card.

250

Up, caffeinated, and sheveled. Off today. The usual cleaning will commence shortly, followed by pro handegg and F1. It’s currently 58 degrees Ferret Height(14.444 Centipedes) and raining.

Spot is quite snuggly, when he’s not being an absolute menace to society.

Pizza Shop Nanobots stole my DNA - The Weekly World New

And if they have the leftovers cold the next morning, it becomes “gazpacho disk”

When Starbucks first came out with their bottled coffee, we got a shipment right after the holidays. Some guy had like 50 bottles in his cart, and it was making a sleighbell like shi shi shi shi noise. It was all I could do to not start screaming and crying at the register.

251

Good afternoon!

Had breakfast (banana and peanut butter), then made blueberry cake and put it in the oven. Then I made chocolate chip cookie dough (with pecans, oatmeal and coconut), which got put in the fridge, then made an orange cake, to which I added 2 TBS of black sesame seeds (bought by mistake), which looks rather Halloween-like and put that in the oven as the blueberry cake was out. Made lunch and am now chilling in the conservatory before I start the afternoon shift.

Afternoon shift will include making roasted tomato soup, cleaning the bathroom sinks, and cleanup from making roasted tomato soup. And there will be laundry, but that’s hubby’s responsibility.

Glad the restaurant came through.

That sounds idyllic. Enjoy!

My parents had turkey and dressing on Friday. Because they realized they should cook the rest of the turkey that was in their freezer from last year. For that reason I should probably use up the cranberries in the freezer. Not sure if they’re from 2025 or 2024. At least we don’t have regular power outages, so we know everything has stayed frozen. Maybe next weekend will be cool enough to thinkg about pumpkin pie. Mmm, pie.

252

No biggie - just fit a plow blade to the front of your car… or the back if you back out. You’re welcome. :rofl:

Aw, man, awful news from BBBobbio! :cry: I know his wife has had health issues for years…

Heh - Interesting question. Maybe it’s a regional thing. Maybe it’s a departmental thing or a boss thing. Until these posts, I’d never heard it put any other way.

I feel so sorry for the employees in the Cracker Barrel store. Not only is the place half-Christmas already, but there were carols playing!!! I’m assuming some butthead of a customer hit a Play button on the display. If management was responsible, they should be flogged!!!

Me, too. A cup of water and a packet of gravy mix. Boil for 1 minute. :wink:

Starting with 57 Ferrets, not getting much warmer, and continuing rain on and off. So another indoor day. We will, finally, take Otis to the DIY dog bathing place. And I will make the N.O.T. soup to take on our trip. Not that Aunt B needs help cooking, but because I feared sentient spuds in the pantry if I didn’t cook them up right away. I should probably email her to let her know so if she’s planning meals, she can adjust.

And I need to call my mom today. I meant to yesterday but the lazies bumped a perfectly good intention out of my brain. Plus I can start packing. I don’t know if we should do 2 totes or one big suitcase. I’m thinking our totes are too small for 4 days of changes. We did get the Otis food packed yesterday at least.

Speaking of whom, I need to let him out of jail. So, Happy Sunday!!

253

Afternoon, mumpers! It’s currently 19c/65f with no predicted change, and cloudy. Weather app says “You may feel like fucking walking around in your yard naked. Your elderly neighbour fucking wishes you wouldn’t.”

Moooom I’m sorry about the family drama, and I think you’re right that she does not want to be told about reality. I also think that most of us, were we in her position, would be busy making plans or at least getting a decent picture of what we have, or would need.

shoe - mine’s very simple. Brown some mince and onion in a pan (I also added a carrot, some mushrooms and potato), add garlic and ginger, throw in some bell pepper (I used red, yellow and green from a bag out of the freezer), add curry powder (I used premixed hot curry powder), tomato paste, 2 beef stock cubes, 450ml of water, and the juice of half a lemon. Let it simmer uncovered for about 20 minutes, stir in some frozen peas, let it cook for another 5 minutes until the peas are done. You can adjust it to taste, I add black pepper to mine and also sometimes throw in some cumin and garam masala for extra spiciness.

WetOne well done on doing The Thing - I don’t blame you for paying extra for installation etc, it’s too much to deal with when you can have some young techy whizz do it for you.

swampy thank you for the update on Mrs BBBobbio, I am sorry to hear about his wife and will be keeping him in my thoughts.

Yesterday was busy, productive and fun. I was out of the house for a lot of it so the mogs were left to their own devices (usually sleeping). I had to get more cat litter, and fill the car’s petrol tank. Then came home for a quick lunch before heading off to do the bucket collection for Little Paws. We raised just over £220 which isn’t bad, and will go towards the vet bills. Afterwards, I popped into the shop to get a couple of things, and then took the collection buckets over to LPHQ. Then I had enough time to stop off at home to feed the mogs and change litter trays before heading out again to collect 'im indoors from the station.

We discussed dinner options and decided to walk halfway into town and have curry at the Clarendon Hotel 'cos they have a Nepalese menu with some very yummy options. In scandalous news, most of the bar’s handpulls weren’t on, so we had to settle for the one draft IPA they’d got. Stuffed with curry, we walked the rest of the way up to KK’s and caught the end of the support band (Grand Slam). The place was heaving! They open it up in sections according to how many tickets they’ve sold, and it’s rare to see it fully open as it was last night. Capacity is around 3,500 and it was bursting at the seams. Magnum did an amazing performance although Bob Catley’s voice isn’t what it used to be but that’s hardly surprising since he’s 79. We were able to locate our favourite barmaid too, and made sure we got drinks from her.

Afterwards we decided against going to the Giff as it would be packed, so we strolled up to the Posada which was not at all packed. Had a pleasant couple of hours in there, random conversations with people, and the barmaid said at one point that she was surprised we hadn’t slapped her for some of her comments :rofl: Left there just after 1am, got a cab home and I went off to bed after making sure the cats got their treats.

No big plans for today, just a bit of domestic drudgery and some sofa time today. Dinner will be leftovers from Friday night that we could have had yesterday if we hadn’t gone out for curry instead.

254

I was thinking more along the lines of bacon grease, flour, milk, salt, and pepper. :wink: But I won’t make any for the leftovers, because I always make too much.

255

Good morning! Flyboy, perhaps you can explain “watch winder.” I’m old enough to remember winding watches. I remember self-winding watches and jokes about people who didn’t move enough to keep a self-winding watch wound. My dad had a Cricket mechanical alarm watch. I remember the Accutron watch that supposedly kept perfect time based on the vibration of a quartz part.

All that seems ho-hum compared to watches of today. My watch has alarms to remind me (with a little sound clip from Dire Straits’ Money For Nothing) several times a day to take my pills. It reminds me weekly that it’s time for Monday Morning Post and Science Friday. If I sit for too long, it nags me to get up and move around. Of course, it’s Bluetoothed into my hearing aids, so it’s inescapable.

Well, today we have a birthday brunch at noon at Nephew’s house. Woo-hoo!

The Weather Channel says we’re in for “abundant sunshine” and a high of 70F.

Okay, I have to go take a shower/shampoo/shave. Go forth and be wonderful.

256

That all sounds very straightforward, except you threw me at “lemon juice.” Wasn’t expecting that ingredient.

But thank you for the detailed response! I’ll have to try it sometime, it sounds tasty.

ETA just realized that “sounds” and “tasty” as reactions to visually reading electronic text is a really weird sensory mixture.

Holy socks, Batman! That’s a lotta homemade food! Are you feeding a small army?

I gotta remember to share this one tonight.

That’s a crime against humanity.

… and handsome!

Beautiful phrasing. Imma borrow/steal this one.

Oh, my goodness, you poor sweet dears. My condolences on your heinous suffering.

:wink:

{ rolls over and goes back to sleep }

257

Here is an example. Mine is similar, but not gold-plated. An automatic watch winder rotates and revolves automatic watches to keep them wound. I have my GMT Master II, Submariner, 1974/1975 Seiko Bell-Matic, and ‘custom Seiko’ on it.

I have dad’s Vulcain Cricket. The image has this story with it:

True story: When I was 3 and 4, we were living in Japan. The house wasn’t ‘great’, and dad was doing some wiring on a ceiling light. At the time, dad wore a Vulcain ‘Cricket’ watch. This was an alarm watch that, in the days of mechanical movements, made the alarm by whacking a hammer against the inside of the case. The Cricket had a resonator on the watch back that made the alarm louder. Dad had his hands all up in the wiring. Just as he finished, his alarm went off. ‘BZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ!!!’ He thought he was being electrocuted and fell off of the stool.

The Cricket is put away with his original Bell-Matic (the one I wear is a duplicate) and his 1953 gold-tone Zodiac.

258

Good morning all. Went to bed last night after being up for 17 hours without nappage so expected to sleep long and well. Kidneys said ‘not so fast, bub’, and got me up at 2am and 6am. Finally did arise and got my Sunday NY Times as is my tradition (and also got a pecan sticky bun, because sometimes you just have to thumb your nose at the calorie count). Will head out to Logan’s Roadhouse in a couple hours and then probably to the gym to do penance for the treat. Weather is back down to 25% chance of rain, so while very cloudly we might escape all the predicted precipitation that was supposed to hit us this weekend. At least it did cool us down, temperature is 70F heading only to 78F.

And into the scroll I go…

There’s a terrible joke somewhere in there, but my brain isn’t braining well enough to come up with it.

flyboy, uh, maybe don’t show your wife those prices… :scream: :wink: :grinning_face:

I think you are quite right, does management take any notice of this?

shoe, thanks for the pizza stories, I still say you should sent the best ones to the Not Always Right website.

swampy, enjoy the Vergering and the brunching afterwards.

As for the music for the season, I still remember hearing Christmas carols being played in a Mall…in Abu Dhabi, which is 95% Muslim…

I get points from Jersey Mike’s on my cell phone number, don’t know if that counts or not, but haven’t gotten to many ads because of it.

FCM, happy Otis-bathing!

boo fae, you have the best Saturdays.

Knots, so far I’ve managed with a basic $19.99 Timex from the Mart of Wal for my wrist-watching needs. My car does all the nagging I’m willing to tolerate at this time…enjoy the brunching.

And onward into the day. Have a good one all.

259

I had to run to Food Lion for milk because someone had a bowl of cereal for breakfast and I need milk for the soup. I grabbed a bottle with a sell by date of Oct 18 - we get home on the 9th. So it should still be good, right? :grin:

After I have lunch, I’ll build the soup, tho I need to modify it. Usually, the chunks o’spuds are cooked in chicken stock/broth. But I baked them yesterday in order to harvest the skins for supper. However, my soup also includes onions and carrots, so I’ll cook them in the broth, then add the semi-chunky spuds and warm it thru before adding the milk/flour mixture to thicken it all. It shouldn’t taste too very different. I hope.

FCD and I were discussing the suitcase/tote dilemma. We decided we’d lay out the clothes we plan to take and decide which way to go. Since it’s not supposed to be hot or any other sort of icky weather, I’m thinking 2 pairs of jeans will work, plus clean shirts for each day. And 4 changes of unders/socks. Plus meds and toiletries - sounds like a tote will be just the thing.

We’re also taking some Diet Coke because I don’t know if AuntB buys it and we do drink a fair bit. We’ve also got a package of some of MIL’s things that FCD wants to give to his aunt. That pretty much covers our list… at least the list so far. And my tablet. And a charger. And my knitting…

We plan to take Otis around 4 to the DIY wash. That should minimize how much crud he can accumulate before tomorrow. At least that’s the theory.

My houseplants are watered, I’ll lock all the windows tonight, except maybe the little ones in the stairwell and bathroom for a little fresh air. We’ll turn off and empty the dog’s water fountain. I’m sure I’ll forget something.

Looking at this as a dress rehearsal for our cruise.

260

Good morning. Yesterday was a busy day. It didn’t help that I didn’t sleep well the night before. I woke up for a potty emergency at three and couldn’t go back to sleep for a couple of hours. Possible TMI - Every time my top touches anything, it’s like electricity.

We had a wedding shower for our Band Director, which was really nice. After the toast, the couple asked for wedding and marriage advice. I gave my standard advice about not trying to have a “perfect day,” because that ain’t gonna happen. Instead just make sure it’s a good day.

After the shower, we hit the Men’s barbecue sale at church, we picked up about ten pounds of meat, brought it home, chopped it up, and vacuum sealed it for later consumption. We are set for barbecue for a year.

Today, will be relaxing with the fam, watching handegg. I’ve got a pound of pre-plague ground beef (Costco + vacuum sealer FTW!!), and I’ll be making a mousaka for dinner. I just need to get my MIL to remember to put it in the oven for 30 minutes while we’re at Sunday evening yoga.

Irrational? Irrational!!?? There is nothing irrational about hating Carolina.

I made my first gravy about fifteen years ago for Christmas[1] dinner. Mrs Magill was late returning from her day after Christmas sale shopping. I looked at the pan with the fat and the flour and the beef stock, and said to myself, “Gravy is not a big, hairy spider. Gravy will not tie me up and throw me in the basement.” The gravy turned out fine.

  1. Boxing day, really ↩︎

Summarize your work in the MMP