(Old) Looking ahead in the MMP

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
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There’s something about Labor Day that makes me look at the months ahead - probably the numerous events and holidays. We’ve got the county fairs (successive weekends here in the tri-county area) at the end of the month, Halloween next month, Canadian Thanksgiving next month, 'Murrican Thanksgiving and Veterans day in November, Christmas/New Years to wrap things us. Plus FCD and Tobias have birthdays in November, and our 43rd anniversary in December. Oh, and the trek to Indianapolis in October, not an annual event, but it’s out there.

The frenzy of planning isn’t there any longer. Being grouchy geezers means we mostly don’t make a big deal about anything any more. And in the grand scheme of things, that’s pretty nice. So the main thing we look ahead to is avoiding retail establishments during the shopping frenzy that is December. Who’s with me??

Happy Moanday, and Happy Labor Day to those who are enjoying a day off!

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First again? Ha!

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Up, caffeinated, and sheveled. Off today. I was up at 0700, but didn’t get out of bed till 0730, because somebody was demanding snuggles and earwax. I need to put the new floormats in Carmen today. It’s currently 63 degrees Ferret Height(17.222 Centipedes).

< waves hand enthusiastically >

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Note to self:

When doing the clever trick of posting “First!” with details to follow on edit – don’t wander off to get more coffee and get distracted. Stick to the schedule or your post will get rejected. :slight_smile:

Live and learn…

5

We went to my grand niece’s wedding last evening. It was a nice ceremony and reception. It may, however, be the splitting point in my wife’s family. One of my wife’s siblings was not invited. He and his wife were very insulted by this and there has been a lot of talk that started when they realized that they were left out.

We have no idea why they were left out but it was obviously deliberate. We decided to stay out of it and not take sides. My BIL sent the grandmother of the bride a very nasty text during the reception last night.

I predict that this will cause a permanent rift. and things will be unpleasant from here on. It is sad.

6

Nice sunny day. Right now its 60.
Probably church lunch.
Then a cookout with people from our building. Last time I brought 3 bean salad which no one touched, this time chips and dip.
Med seem to be working as described, must take for 12 more days.

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Good Mornin’ Y’all! Up, caffeinated and fed even so no YAWN. ‘Tis 74 Amurrkin out and sunny with a predicted high of only 88 (with no heat index!) and becomin’ partly cloudy. We have no big plans for the day at all. I was busy most of yestiddy so that’s fine by me. We shall be RDOS sloths, as is our wont. Well, I am goin’ to make N.O.T. sallit and baked beans to go with the burgers for sup, so that will entail some amount of effort. That menu just seems right for Labor Day.

So, Hallowe’en, Canadian and Amurrkin Thanksgiving, Christmas, and all that stuff will be with us soon enough. Eh. We do not get caught up in the frenzy of it all anymore. We have earned the right to be grumpy old RDOS men and we revel in it!

Yanker you must edit immediately. When one had decided to be juvenile one must commit.

Hippie sorry for all the family drama. Sunflower and you are wise not stay out of it all. I prefer to take a “don’t know and don’t want to know” tact in these things.

Coppertone glad the med seems to be workin’. IMO, chips and dip are the perfect thing to take to a cookout. I’d be all up in 'em personally.

OK, I reckon I should consider gettin’ myself busy with kitchen stuff. Or not. I feel all willy-nilly right now.

Happy Moanday Y’all! Happy Labor Day to all my 'Murrkin friends!

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Hippie, if something as minor as not being invited to a wedding is enough to cause “a splitting point” in the family, the rift must have existed before it happened. I’m probably wrong, though. I’m seeing all this from a great distance.

Here in the USA, today is Labor Day, which a great many workers celebrate by doing no labor. It’s time for picnics, parades, and the like. Indianapolis Raceway Park is holding the National Hot Rod Association’s National Championship event. Thousands of loud cars and motorcycles go as fast as they can in a straight line for a quarter-mile, two at a time. They’ve been at it for two days already, and they wrap it up today. The champ in each class gets a trophy called a Wally. It’s a little statue of Wally Parks, who started the NHRA long ago.

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Hereabouts, Labor day mainly marks the end of the boating season for lots of boaters. The marina will soon be converting much of the parking lot to boat parking areas. It’s kinda sad - it generally stays nice enough on the water till maybe early November, but for some people, Labor day is The End Of Boating Season.

Today started with 61 Ferrets, on the way to low 80s. I’ll be heading out shortly to pick up some meds and see if Food Lion has some of the shrimp that’s advertised on sale. Exciting, huh?

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Morning all. Performed my Labor for the Day by getting my bedsheets into the washing machine (and shortly into the dryer). Have a couple stops to make (Kroger, drop off stuff at the thrift store, buy fat-free cheese slices at Wal-Mart (also drop off plastic bag collection), and get my Jersey Mike’s sammich, so that will be enough for the day’s activities. Gym is only open until 4pm so may or may not make it over there. No change in the weather, 79F now heading to 91F and slim chance of precipitation.

Labor Day usually marks when Fall starts in my head, but with school already running and soccer having finished it’s second week, a lot of the stuff I’ll do for the next couple months are pretty much locked in. Not one for fairs and I’ll get the candy for Halloween and stuff for the soccer kids, so have a few duties. And concur with FCM that shopping the last 2 months of the year are not the best things.

Hippie, getting along with family is an art, and it gets more complex the larger the family is. Glad you and the missus are not in the line of fire.

Coppertone, glad the meds are helping.

Knots, I have to wear hearing aids now, being among hundreds of very loud internal combustion machines designed to be loud is not on my to-do list…

And onward into the day. Need to get sheets and pillowcases into the dryer and then prepare for the errand run. Have a good week all.

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It is a quiet Labor Day here. There was a BBQ across the street yesterday, so Hubs got a free feed - along with being grilled about my shoulder. Harry’s GDIL brought a vegan dessert dish that totally WOWED everyone, but Hubs didn’t think to ask for a little to put back for me. The jerk.

The highway is pretty quiet and traffic is very light. I can see the effect of high gas prices just by watching the traffic.

Metalmouse, I don’t know if you’ve ever mentioned your local besides Alabama, so this is the shortest list of traffic cams I could find for you.

Alabama traffic cams: Alabama Traffic Cameras

It looks like they are sorted by counties? The few I clicked were only static pics, but I suspect that if you poke around you can find the real-time versions very easily.

From last week to @purplehorseshoe :

I thought most of those crops were produced by grafting.. ?

Yes and the gene line is patented, so is owned by a large company somewhere. There are two issues involved…one is for the sort of person who believes they could be self sufficient if only they had time (no job for money) and now cannot grow their own grapes or watermelons or whatever.

There is also the mono-culture issue. We are in big danger of losing both bananas and bleu cheeses because there is only one gene line and it is getting old and tired.

I know these are small things to worry about. Who cares about bananas when the there are more important issues…like where your hamburger came from. But I was raised to question everything and I do.

There is a marina at the lake and I saw a bunch of boats out on the water. There was also a large parking area that already had a few boats sitting on trailers.

Is it harder on a boat to leave it in the water or to take it out or does size once again matter?

So Hubs is out for a ride and my plans include such exciting things as doing laundry and stitching. I’m back up to twenty minutes of TC and I think I’ll start doing those stretching exercises twice a day instead of increasing the time of a single routine. I’m not building muscle, I’m building flexibility and mobility and think that short amounts frequently is probably better than a longer single workout.

But first another cup of coffee while I consider ruining my day by checking the news. Stay safe out there folks!

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Whether or not the water at the marina freezes is the issue. We’ll be winterizing our boat - draining all the water lines and putting in antifreeze (a type that’s safe to empty into the river come spring) and closing all the thru-hull valves. In places where the likelihood of ice forming on the water, some people/marinas will deploy bubblers under docks to keep the water moving.

Also, the marinas will turn off the water to the docks to prevent the supply lines from freezing and splitting. Our marina has several freeze-proof faucets on land near the docks that the live-aboard folks use to fill their water tanks with hoses. Last year, our hose was borrowed by a couple that lives farther down our dock.

Size isn’t the issue as long as you prepare properly. And for some people, coming out of the water gives them several months to do maintenance, including painting the hull, tho that’s generally done in the spring right before going back in the water.

We’ve done both staying in and coming out. This year, we’ll stay in.

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That didn’t sound like “borrowing” to me.

I don’t know if the lake freezes or not. Its a lot of water and it is very deep, but it does freeze up the sides of the river. We’ll have to make it a point to go and look again in the winter. I’ll report back on the ice and if there are boats in it. Some of them are pretty big and the houseboat looked like it hadn’t left the dock for years. Of course, I know very little about boats so it might have been out yesterday…

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I’ve had my dry, flavorless bits, and Spot has had a second round of cuddles and earwax.

Size isn’t an issue( and she was a nightclub at one point, so a whole lot of floozy-ing was going on.

Did you up and get irked at the slacker Yesterday’s shoe?

I have a feeling things were quietly unpleasant long before the wedding snub. Sorry you and the wife will be stuck in it.

Now I got a gnawin’ and a cravin’ for a can of that.
< add to list >
Yay for meds working.

swampy: putting the harrumph in HalloHaunuThanksChristKwaanzavus since 2010.

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Mornin’ everyone.

It’s 60F and cloudy. The forecast calls for cloudy to mostly cloudy skies all day, with a daytime high of 70F.

Hippie, yup, I suspect something was brewing before the invite debacle.

I agree; it seems that Labor Day marks the beginning of a very busy season. When I was still an active Federal employee, that meant a day or two off every month for holidays, too. It also meant a solid three months of use-it-or-lose leave, which I would use by taking the first Friday of every pay period off (the second was my RDO), and a week or so around Christmas, along with some extra days here and there. Now, it means Christmas is just around the corner. I’ve already received Christmas ads.

I need to go out and buy a file cabinet. I want a two-drawer lateral file cabinet that is preassembled. I’m so sick of putting stuff together. The upstairs office will be mine, and the downstairs den will house both my husband’s computers, a racing chair, and VR stuff.

I looked online for assembled stuff, but it mostly meant they’d charge you two hundred bucks to put it together. Um, no. Not doing that. I would like a cabinet that matches or at least coordinates with my desk, so I’ll go out to various places today to see if I can find something. If I can’t, well, damn it, it looks like I’ll be putting stuff together. The desk I ordered is the same desk I ordered for myself six years ago, and we’ll have to put that together.

I’m looking forward to finally having my own space, although I’ll kind of miss the cozy morning time in the den. But the space will be all mine.

I have an HOA meeting tomorrow evening, but it will be done via Google Meet. I no longer have a camera (my computers are all desktops). So, I suppose I should pick up a cheapie camera to mount on my monitor. I don’t know how many people will actually show up for the meeting, but the agenda includes topics on spending HOA money and addressing everyone parking in the cul-de-sac and on the street. I don’t expect that will be resolved. It’s an ongoing thing, and it’s only becoming worse.

I guess I could do the meeting over the phone, too. Something to think about.

That’s pretty much it for today, but tomorrow we’re supposed to take the bikes out. The weather forecast looks pretty good, too.

Alright, I guess I’d better get the day started. Please take care of yourselves.

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I heard a lot of sirens a bit after 19 o’clock last night. This morning, I read this:

The Whatcom County Sheriff’s Office (WCSO) reported at 10pm they were currently investigating a shooting that occurred at approximately 7:15pm in the 7800 block of Birch Bay Drive. They reported the shooting involved members of 2 motorcycle gangs.

The Farcebook post from Bellingham Metro News said the shooting occurred ‘near Bay Breeze.’ ‘Near’ being relative, I guess. According to the map in the link, the shooting was about a block south of there in Jacobs Landing.

Some rain this morning, and I’ve heard a couple of nice thunderclaps.

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They used it to fill their water tanks, then they coiled it up by our pedestal. Not a biggie. Plus they both work at the marina, so it truly was no big deal.

Stooopit Weis was out of cases of Diet Coke - I’ll try again tomorrow. But I got the shrimps (supper tonight) and my meds, so it wasn’t a wasted trip. I did forget the stoopit radishes. Dammit.

OK, out to the shop to see if FCD needs my help. Then, who knows…

18

It’s raining so hard now, it’s bouncing off of the street.

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“Looking ahead” is a title that really resonates with me, though not necessarily in a good way. A real estate agent is coming by this week, this house is being prepped for sale, and huge amounts of my possessions are disappearing either to purchasers or to a dumpster. It’s all very stressful. I have no problems whatsoever that a million dollars or so wouldn’t solve.

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Labor Day to me is the beginning of the new year. Growing up, school started the day after Labor Day. I like planning for all the upcoming events, even though I don’t care about anything but Thanksgiving and Christmas.