A late Air made for some decent hours today. I topped up Carmen’s tank on the way home. Now it’s naptime, after Spot and I have had our respective dry, flavorless bits.
Although it would be a hoot to watch the Vice Chancellor sneak around in black pajamas, and blowing up expensive tents on the lawn.
Exactly why I won’t buy him Legos, or a chainsaw.
< crosses fingers anyways >
So it randomly spits out Corporate Speak phrases, and schedules multiple meetings at the same time?
Maybe you’ll get lucky, and it will be a quiet 4th, Taters. At least it’s not a 3 day weekend this year.
The travel gods were good to me yesterday.
My pre-arranged Uber was right on time, there was no line to check my bag, and no line at TSA. Had time for a nice leisurely breakfast.
Boarding went quickly. We pulled back from the gate 5 minutes early, and landed 25 minutes early. I had an aisle seat with nobody in the middle.
After the shortest walk ever from my gate to baggage claim, the belt roared to life almost immediately. I retrieved my bags and strolled outside. Just as I reached for my phone to text my buddy with the door number, I watched him pull up right in front of me. Amazing!
After chilling in the hotel room for a couple hours, we made the half-mile walk down to the original Billy Goat, where we met with my good friend from high school and enjoyed some famous cheezborgers, cheeps, and of course, beer.
Just finished breaking fast at a great little diner around the corner, and we’re about to stroll down to the subway station and head to Wrigley. The trip is off to a fine start!
Just turn on NBC tonight and there will be 3 hrs of said tight, skimpy spandex. It starts at 7pm EDT; not sure about PDT.
Also, even better to watch if you’re into watching male bods in extremely skimpy speedos twist and spin in the air with their toes pointed is to watch the diving trials. I’ve dvr’d them and hope to watch later today.
This is what Mom always bought when we were growing up and I agree that B&M were very delish! I haven’t seen them in the grocery store in ages.
swampie glad to hear you’re feeling better!
We don’t have deer; we have squirrels and chipmunks. Recently I caught a chipmunk knocking a bloom off a tiger lily then eating the petals. And we can tell when the squirrels have been digging for bulbs.
Although not working today, have received 2 calls from the Manager. I need to go pay for the storage rental, pick up circular from Kroger, water the garden, plant some more flowers, wash dishes, workout on NuStep and I’d like to go to the pool but not sure if I’ll be able to make time.
Unfortunately because of her near-blindness, Alexa is pretty much a necessity for her. Her fixation on time is probably part of her mental decline. FCD was saying yesterday at her sister’s house, it was overcast, and MIL was worried that it would snow and delay their flight. I believe it was in the 90s in Indianapolis all week.
Then there’s Costco. MIL was talking about the cookies they had on the plane, and her sister said “They sell those at Costco!!” Well, there are now THREE FREEKIN’ BOXES of those cookies in my pantry. Last time she visited her sister, she came back with three bags of croutons, two of which are still unopened, one of which is only half empty - this was from her visit over Christmas/January.
Anyway, I’m back from my neurologist visit. She’s taking me off one med and putting me on the other morning and evening. I was concerned about the dosage, but she said it’s not known to have adverse side effects, so if my seizure was a one-time thing, I’m not doing myself any damage taking these meds. So that’s good to know. I go back to see her in 2 months.
FCD is napping - he has to leave in a couple of hours for his dermatologist appt. MIL’s nurse is coming later this afternoon. Her aide called out today, so no shower till Firday unless she wants me to help her have one tonight.
While we were driving to my appointment, FCD was telling me about all the family drama he was subjected to all week, including AuntB asking if he’d be the executor for their wills since they don’t trust any of their 3 kids. I can’t believe he agreed!! So there’s potential drama in the offing. I thought my family was messed up, but his cousins really take the cake…
I think I’m going to plop down in the recliner and read for a while. MIL is asleep and the nurse won’t get here till 3:30 or so. It’s quiet time for a bit.
Started Typing: 12:36 PM ET
Clicked Reply: 12:59 PM ET
Today isn’t a corporate holiday, but I’ll be logging off work at 2pm to go to the dentist and will be taking the rest of the day off. On the way home I’ll stop at the grocery store for bananas, and I have a volunteer-related meeting at 6pm – the first transition meeting with the new co-chairs – but I should get a nice hour or two to myself in between. And the meeting won’t last more than an hour, because that’s all the time Google Meet will give me with a free account.
I watched (live) baseball on TV last night, for the first time all season! Yay! It’s hard to be a Yankees fan if you live outside the NYC area and don’t have cable (no, MLB TV doesn’t help), but happily there’s a decent number of Yankees games I can watch on Max, Amazon Prime, and/or Apple TV+. It’s my first full season since dropping cable, and I kind of forgot about those options until earlier this week. The game was great, but the news of Willie Mays’s death was sad.
Ack, I gotta get back to work…one more hour to go! There’s just enough time for a few replies first:
Thank you!
I kind of figure that’s the case with any Serious Drug…and I know gabapentin is a Serious Drug, because (a) it’s what I was given post-op and (b) I have to pick up Bailey’s refills in person and sign for them each time.
Only because you don’t know that I’ve spent the last four years actively volunteering with my local NAACP branch, including being the Membership Committee chair for the last 1.5 years. I better know this stuff! LOL!
That actually made me laugh! But I totally get how/why you don’t know. Heh.
They teach me things back~about Ramadan and fasting or Ukrainian pastries, it’s a great deal for me!
Not a Luddite either (I mean we’re here, aren’t we?) but I will cop to being a grumpy old woman who can’t figure out all these new dangled inventions. Heck, my ‘new’ used car, the 2013 Suburu Outback, is so new-dangled I’m constantly pulling out the manual to figure out how to do something. Last night it was how to turn on just the fan without the AC so I could have ventilation without having to leave the windows down in a rainstorm. The day before is was how to regulate the speed of the intermittent windshield wipers. Sheesh. My next new fangled mystery is how to use the radio/CD player. Manual, here I come.
Please do, can hardly wait!
Good idea, especially the popcorn and staying out of the way.
Would have been my choice too. Laundry can wait, loved ones can’t.
…Lady’s Talking Watch with Jumbo Numbers for Bind, Seniors,Visually impaired,or Elderly TIMEURE-2210 https://a.co/d/0dfa2Vrz…
It might, repeat might localize the time announcement closer to her and farther from your ears. I had several home nursing clients who used them. Slap a pretty replacement watch band* on it and hopefully it’ll get slightly quieter around your place.
*fabric or leather-whatever you do, don’t get one of those stretchy metal bands. I lost count of the fragile elderly nursing clients whose delicate paper thin skin got torn by those. Happens.every.single.time.
Our shoe turned me onto them being available in cans and looking into it I found them in two of my local grocery stores. It’ll be a fun treat if I can enjoy them again after all these years.
I grew up in Iowa but my birth mother was a war bride who grew up in Portland, Maine and was brought to Iowa. Her mother, my putative biological grandmother (who I only met twice [mercifully] was a cruel, mean single mother bitch who put her own children in and out of a harsh orphanage every couple of years) worked at B &M making those beans in the cute brown glass bean pot jars, so that’s what we ate all through my Iowa childhood 1,400 miles away from the cast iron bean pots in the B & M factory in Maine.
If you ever see B & M brown bread in a can, buy it and try it-it’s delicious too! Sadly, it’s even more rare than finding the baked beans.
Yup. She’s desperately clinging to whatever she can remember how to do in hopes it will help her make sense of her world. What she has is a vague but cruelly persistent sense that things are slipping away from her and she’s grasping at any life raft as much as she can. Then since she has next to no short term memory she gets unsettled again a few minutes later and grasps at that futile attempt to make sense of things again. No amount or frequency of reminders or explanations will make any difference.
Ugh, it is far too warm out there – imma be sweatin’ like a whore in church today.
@LSLGuy and @JaneDoe42 I’m absolutely not ignoring you, but some … obstacles came up recently and I’ve had to back-burner our convo. Please accept my humblest apologies.
First mission accomplished. I rode the R1 down to Trader Joe’s for some of those pickles we like… and two tins of smoked sardines, two tins of grilled sardines, two tins of anchovies, and two tins of lightly-smoked mussels. My fuel light came on just before I got to TJ’s.I’m sure I could have made it to the Lummi 76 station, which has the cheapest gas ($3.699) But this is the first time I needed fuel since I picked the bike up. Better safe than sorry. I didn’t check the mileage, but I know it was over 150, which rings a bell. Anyway, I spent a lot on fuel. I think regular was $4.399 or so in town, and the R1 needs minimum 91 octane.
The Jeep is on the street, and the Prius is in the driveway. Next up: Going to the hardware store for some epoxy and car wash, and then back home to wash the Seca II fairing (and the old, dented, fuel tank). Maybe I’ll get to mending the crack today.
Indeed it was but as I remember it outrageously priced, as Amazon so often does with niche food items.
B & M brown bread in a can would be a great prepper supply if it was $4-5 a can. Shelf stable, calorically dense, much better than no bread at all, but not at $8.50 for a 16oz can before tax or shipping.
Hi folks - A warm sunny mid afternoon here on Wed as I begin to pick through the 50+ posts since yesterday afternoon. Ouch!
As to me since ~24 hours ago …
Did take the free not-uber to Calaveras Cantina for 'ritas and craft tacos for Tue dinner.
Had a 40-something woman sit down next to me at the bar, which was novel. We talked for probably 45 minutes as I wrapped up my meal then she did her whole drink, app, and entrée cycle. She reminded me a bunch of a stereotypical flight attendant. Not bad looking, barely getting by on the money she makes, not real bright, no kids, vague about former relationships with men, adulting is way too hard, still semi-attached to her parents who live halfway across the country etc. But she did have a small dog that ruled her daily life. Pleasant enough, but very little there there. An instructive tale about dating as a middle-aged or older man. (Or equally woman for that matter).
Once we’d finished our yak I walked directly home, successfully resisting the temptation to stop by the cigar spot on the way home. The fact it’s the very last recreational spot before home, and they don’t serve food, makes it an especially attractive nuisance.
Today was up early, balconate until sunrise while watching mama duck tow her teens around her pond, go back inside with the sun, fillibuster too long around the 'net, then quick shevel and feed, then dash off to the dermatologist so he could take a big divot out of my forehead. That went nominally, taking just over 2 hours total.
Then off to the nearby favorite local Mom’n’Pop burger joint Charm City Burgers for lunch. Not quite as exciting as Teela’s tri-tip burgers, but still yummy. I’m fond of their double volcano w grilled onions. which I eat with a knife and fork while skipping all the bun to have carb capacity for a few more of their great fries. The Italian sausage burger and the lamb burger are also just super.
Suitably calorificated I went home to put away a couple loose ends before the housecleaners arrived. I’m now balconatin’ after they’d chased me from room to room for a bit. They should be done soon. Hooray for clean!
The remainder of my day is TBD. The surgery was no big deal, maybe a 1/4" x 1-1/4" gash now stitched closed, but the rest of those sorts of days are usually kinda low energy. The site stings a bit as their anesthetic wears off and my regular acetaminophen tries valiantly but inadequately to make up the difference. Nothing more than a nuisance, and microscopically small potatoes vs. the painful medical challenges other Mumpers face every day. Might nap in my newly changed clean sheets.
Tomorrow at ~9am I leave to pick up BB at her house. Hard to think of much else. . Been waay to long since we were last together; the 3rd will be 17 days ago come tomorrow.
As to y’all …
Those are so great. The workmanship just shines.
Me too. Pretty, but scary. Brrrrr!!1!
Not so much traffic, but parking. Some parts have plenty, many parts don’t. So the folks who don’t live within walking distance become reluctant to come down if parking is a hassle. And this being a frankly tony area, lots of dolled up ladies in expensive outfits and tall shoes don’t want to walk even 4 blocks from venue to venue.
Anything that brings more people to spend at the venues and ideally more than one venue per night is a winner for the venues themselves, the Chamber of Commerce, and the City Council. Works for me.
Read your sentence in teh context of your earlier post and hoped it would go somewhere more exciting for you than Legos. Oh well, maybe tomorrow he’ll call and your date will be on. Fingers crossed for you!
Thanks for straightening my Juneteenth screw–up. There’s simplifying and then there’s misinformation; I’d crossed the line and ended up in the next county.
Sorry to hear the TiVo bricked, but the new toys out there are amazing.
With the exception of e.g. Oscar Mayer and Hormel, almost all bacon (and ham) brands are more local than we might expect. Wright is not a name I recognize even from my time in Missouri; it’s certainly not available here in SoFL.
I have two faves.
Smithfield applewood smoked thick cut is the basic one. It also comes in a smaller 24oz packages so you don’t have to commit to a ton of it when you buy some. At the rate I eat bacon, the common 48oz package is a year’s supply. Strip bacon freezes great but IME thaws badly.
The other is a shrink-wrapped 48oz blob of end-cuts and odd lots from an outfit called Mariah Foods. All the cites I was able to dig up were to grocery delivery services that won’t show the product until after you create an account and arrange a delivery from a location local to them. Greedy e-commerce is really destroying the internet as a universal reference book.
That stuff is very flavorful and ideal if you’re going to be chopping it up as an ingredient rather than serving it as rashers. It also subdivides into small freezeable hunks well and, unlike rashers, defrosts well too.
Splitting the sheets?
I swam and played water polo 2 years at the high school varsity level and 1 year at the HS JV level. I was/am too small of stature and slight of build to be competitive at the college level, and especially not in the aquatics powerhouse area of SoCal. So my aquatic career was brief but successful enough within its small county-wide collection of a 15-20ish high schools.
But yeah, I looked Mahvelous all toned and wet and skimpy and tan and 17. As did my teammates. The fooball guys claimed to get all the wimmin; they was wrong. There was a beach-centric ladies contingent that preferred the swimmers. Well, most of the swimmers; I got picked last or not at all when the ladies were choosing; something to do with a caustic personality. “Look but don’t touch” seemed to be their mantra for me. Sigh.
The easy way to explain it is “ice hockey played in a swimming pool with a volleyball: No sticks, no protective gear, but just as much fighting. With a decent chance of drowning being drowned by an opponent.”
My personality as a yut was ideally suited to that game. I got better. Slowly.
[Peek at my hole cards.]
Fold.
Hooray for their return!!
Ouch! As to time the obsession here’s my pet theory and worth what you’re paying for it.
We’re all used to having a sense of time passage. Even if we haven’t looked at a clock in 3 or 5 hours we have a decent qualitative idea that “It’s about 2pm”, or “it’s late afternoon”, etc. Imagine not having that. You literally have no idea if you just ate dinner or if breakfast will be any minute now. Should I be sleepy now? If I am sleepy now, will I be napping or is this my overnight rest coming up? etc. That sounds very disorienting to me.
You’re surely right she doesn’t actually need the precise clock reading. But that’s the only answer Alexa knows how to give.
I wonder what would happen if you killed Alexa and answered her yourself with “Mid morning”, “time for lunch”, “late afternoon”, “almost bedtime”, etc.?
Ugh! I’m sorry you’re dealing with this.
One of my bros isn’t a spender at all, but he also isn’t much of an earner. And he utterly sucks at all manner of administration. So the wolf is always circling his door. I’m not joined at the hip to him like you seem to be with sad-sack sis. So although I hear about the fallout from time to time, and dig in to help now and again, I’m able to separate “doing a good deed” from “preventing you from making me bankrupt.” Sounds you’re chained a lot closer to her than I am to him.
Yeah.
Newport Beach.
Carlsbad is truly lovely. Carlsbad in the 90s and 2000s was like much of Orange County and especially Newport back in the 1960s and early 1970s when I was a kid there. Not too crowded, plenty of open space, and all shiny new.
Given the likely ratio of batter to shrimp, she probably just likes deep fried flour. Not that your employer is a cheap-ass ripoff outfit, merely that for most deep-fried things, the attraction for most people isn’t the thing inside, but rather the coating.
I hope you got a good night’s sleep. It sounded like you really needed it. You certainly deserve it.
[I’m now caught up on Tue, and starting on Wed. At 4pm after a brief rainshower chased me indoors]
Yaay for improvement!! And just a tad of caution.
Hooray. Hope the show goes well for all. But especially for you.
That’s much better than my experience back in St. Louis.
We got 3 consecutive weeks of two large paper shopping bags of turnips. And nothing else. A month later it was 3 consecutive weeks of two large shopping bags of basil. And nothing else.
They were fine turnips and excellent basil. But that was a 2-years’ supply of each for our two people. IOW, useless and wasted.
Shame about your popcorn.
Kind of like going to see Gallagher perform. Not wise to sit in the front row center. Unless you like bass-o-matic sprayed all over you. Good luck!
That’s for sure. Hoo-ooo-ooo-ray!
*FCM**: Congrats on improved meds with no side effects. Here's hoping!! And an overall productive day for all at stately FairChat Manor.
Out-of-town executor and squabbling local adult children. Doubtless with at least some spouses who’ll want to put their oar in the pot to stir too. Best of luck w that one. I hope you really enjoy saying “I told you sooo-oo!”; you’ll be doing it a lot. (That’s a joke; I know you’re far too nice to do that petty shit to FCD or anyone else. But the thought will occur. )
None necessary. We’re good at patience. Just like vultures.
Yaay!! The rest of the day is just details
Shame about high-priced gas, but as between 3 gallons and 30 in some other vehicle, you got off (comparatively) lightly.
Gas prices around here aren’t too beastly, but the difference between 87 & 91 at the very same station can be up to $1.00/gallon. Last I checked a month-ish ago (and all on the same day), the spread between cheapest and most expensive gas at the stations within about 5 miles of here was $1.30/gallon for 91.
It doesn’t make sense to chase a nickel per gallon savings, but for $1.30 gallon, at least some driving out of the way is well-rewarded.
I did it; I’m caught up! Just 3 hours spent. Yaay and/or sympathy to everyone not mentioned explicitly.
Time now to decide on dinner and evening entertainment.
No joy on the specific epoxy recommended to me in the FQ (sticker) thread. I ordered it from Da Jungle, along with 1-inch fibreglass cloth and some (too many) epoxy brushes. I decided to take another ride… down to the liquor store for a bottle of Evan Williams Bottled in Bond 100 proof whiskey, and a big bottle of white Bacardi rum.
Yes, we still have a liquor store, even though we haven’t had to buy spirits at a state-designated liquor store in over a dozen years. The corner market could have started selling spirits, but the liquor store down the beach was well-established and the two businesses agreed not to encroach on each other’s business. (Though the liquor store always sold some beer and wine.)
Howdy Y’all! Twuck got new oil, provisions were procured and stowed and then I made N.O.L. instead of sup. We et, loaded up the dishwasher and then nappage was accomplished. OYKW day drank and I sipped upon a Poopsie Zero, as I decided to give it another day just as a precaution. 'Tis hawt and windy out so glad to be inside in the a/c.
Sticky_Buns OYKW and I are the ones who drink around the yahd. OK, at the cee-mint pond but the yahd is right there.
Wheelie yay for an easy trip and meetin’ up with old friends!
MOOOOOOM hope the new meds do better. FCD must really love his aunt. Or drama. OK, it’s more like he’s a good guy and couldn’t say no to her.
flyboy I was reading your tribulations with the faring. Do you have any way of finding out what sort of plastic it is? A solvent joint would be better than a glue. I’m sure it’s not PVC, but something equivalent to that than adhesive. I’ve got various ones that do plexiglass, lexan, and other odd plastics. Can’t ever have too many little brushes, IMHO. Either way, you got some booze and a ride, so good there.
B&M was always the beans we had when I was a kid…growing up in southern Maine, kinda makes sense. Last time I had some, they didn’t taste the same. The ones that come closest to what I remember are Bush’s vegetarian. And I do miss the brown bread in a can. A thanksgiving staple, until I left New England.
Downstairs AC in the window. AC is one of the best things around. It’s the opposite of heat, which up here in NY is also one of the best things around.
I’ve never lived in a state with state-run booze stores, although some of my states had done that in the past when first I moved to them. And some benighted adjacent states still did. Strange concept for the late 20th century, much less in 2024.
Despite FL not having had state-sponsored stores ever that I know of, we have “liquor stores” that sell booze, wine, and beer, but with the emphasis on booze. Which is just like our native SoCal was back in the day.
And we have the wine supermarkets which also do plenty of booze & beer, but lead with their mongo wine selection. The typical groc store has beer & wine, plus the basic mixers, but not booze.
Upstate NY, we can get beer at a corner store/gas station or a grocery. Liquor and wine are only at liquor stores, but they are not state run. There’s currently a bit of a drive to get wine available at grocery stores, but it is getting serious pushback from the liquor stores.
– but I should get a nice hour or two to myself in between. And the meeting won’t last more than an hour, because that’s all the time Google Meet will give me with a free account. 
Yay! It’s hard to be a Yankees fan if you live outside the NYC area and don’t have cable (no, MLB TV doesn’t help), but happily there’s a decent number of Yankees games I can watch on Max, Amazon Prime, and/or Apple TV+. It’s my first full season since dropping cable, and I kind of forgot about those options until earlier this week. The game was great, but the news of Willie Mays’s death was sad.
popcorn and staying out of the way.
. Been waay to long since we were last together; the 3rd will be 17 days ago come tomorrow.
)