(Old) “Oh shit! I see Monday!” - Spot‘s new MMP (told you I liked it)

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
81

Good morning, everyone.

It’s 44F and a little bit foggy outside. Morning fog will turn to afternoon cloudiness, and the high temperature will be 48F.

Well, I was unable to manifest success by buying a turkey. I shall now have to put it in the freezer. The control board and something else need replacing. I had to turn the stove off at the breaker because it’s too dangerous to leave it powered due to the constant current running through it. Sadly, I don’t have an ETA when they’ll fix it. The part(s) are due in on Thursday, but it’ll be longer before they can get back out to me. It’s still cheaper to fix the stove than buy a new one, so that’s what we’re doing. However, if it breaks down again, we’re done and buying a new one.

I can’t stomach eating out every day, so I bought a two-burner hotplate so we can at least cook some stuff at home. We’ve decided to go out for Thanksgiving because it’ll be easier for the dogs. We can put them in their kennels while we dine out and then return home to let them out in a couple of hours. We thought about just taking the whole shebang down to my son’s place, along with the dogs, but I think it would be too much. Maisie still refuses to pee while on the leash, so I don’t want her holding it for all those hours.

I loved the kitty pictures; I’ll have to get new pictures of the dogs sometime and post them. It’s difficult to get them to sit still together long enough for a picture.

VanGo, safe travels, and I hope you enjoy your stay with the family.

Seanette, I hope the car fix is easy and inexpensive.

FCM, I’m sending hugs to you and yours as you continue to watch the decline.

Another work day awaits. I told my boss I was thinking about burning up some admin leave on Wednesday. (I have two hours from Veteran’s Day, but I now have another two hours for Thanksgiving. ) I also have many comp and credit hours to burn, so I might turn tomorrow into a whole day off. I’ll have to see how today goes.

Today promises to be busy, but I hope I have no drama or fires.

Time for another cup of coffee. I hope you all have a peaceful and smooth day.

82

Gray rug, gray cat - any questions?? :rofl: OK, and the low light hides other stuff. After we make a mess of the dining room om Thursday, I’ll be pulling out the carpet cleaner.

Daughter is getting both carcasses from me - in fact, she has the one from the smoked bird, and she’ll leave on Thursday with the other one. My freezer is just tooooooo crammed to accept bags o’broth.

Happy travels, VanGo!! Come back with stories of all the crazies in the airports! :wink:

I’ve been to Food Lion. In fact, I got there before they opened! And I guess I must look older than I thought, because I got an “After you, miss” from a woman who got there before me. Good thing I don’t have ego issues about my looks. < snerk > Got the stuff on my list, then drove thru Wendy’s for biscuits and $1 Diet cokes for our breakfast. FCD was just finishing donning his attire when I got home - good timing!

MIL weirdness continues. All day yesterday, she obsessed about Jessica coming for her shower - I had to remind her at least 3 times that she’d come that morning. At bedtime, I had to help her get on and off the toilet - she could barely stand - and FCD got her settled in bed. But some time during the night, she got up and laid out her clothes as she usually does before Jessica comes. Neither of us heard her get out of bed. Scary to wonder if we’d have heard her if she’d fallen.

It’s a rainy morning - so glad I did the leaves yesterday. Today I’m going to mix up the dressing so tomorrow, Roxy can put it into muffin tins - what a great way to make individual servings! And apparently Tobias likes to dump and stir, so I’ll prep things for him to make green stuff. I suppose I can ready the broccoli and fart blossoms so all I have to do is cook them on Thursday. And I need to remember to pull the frozen smoked turkey and the pulled poke out to thaw starting tomorrow. I should make a list.

Apart from emptying the dishwasher, I don’t think I have much else to do.

Happy Tuesday!

83

today is a rainy day. this hasn’t happened in over a month. i have my whale rain boots on.

more furniture shuffling happened last night.

84

Morning all. Slept until near 8am today, have pilled myself and had a big bowl of cereal (bought a very big box of Rice Krispies so that’ll be my go-to for the next couple of weeks) and taken the garbage out, so a fairly active early morning for me. Nothing much on the agenda, need to get the Firday shopping list ready and check the digital coupons, but no big rush on that. Gym will be probably on the schedule as usual. The rain has departed the area for now but it is cooler (46F getting to 56F later) than yesterday.

Seanette, lily, thanks for the feedback, I’ll look into getting some, right now my Pepsi stock will get me to February so will just have to see how it goes.

Which is why I like dogs better…

Nettie, Happy Adoption Day, it was Allie’s good fortune to be adopted by you.

boo fae, safe travels north and I love some of the names of places in England (Tebay or Annadale Water), not that we in the US of A lack for odd names for towns, but the English seem to have a flair for it (one of my good friends on-line lived in Biggleswade and I don’t know how more English you can get than that).

swampy, my laundry is piling up nicely, trying to avoid it until December rolls around, but it’s going to be close.

Taters, sad news on the oven, hope the repair is long-lasting.

FCM, enjoy the day with the kids.

And that’s all for the morning missive. More later as life goes on. Have a good 2sDay, folks.

85

They have their own annoying habits, including chewing (usually by puppies, but I’ve met adult dogs who had not yet outgrown this). They’re lovable, sure, but not angels. :slight_smile:

86

Off to take 2 bus’s to another interview. Sigh. Thankfully its nice out.
Starting Thurs we get cold and snow.

87

Trying to get organized for the next few days. Notes notes notes! The rough one is working out the stove and oven schedule for Thurs. I asked Daughter if she planned to make the potatoes here or at her house. She said “Yes”- um, ok… :smile: she’ll bring them here ready to ingest. So that makes it a tad easier on me.

Menu has been pared down. Turkey, smashed spuds and gravy, broccoli, stuffin’ muffins, strawberries and grapes, green stuff (excessively sweet pistachio pudding “salad”) then chocolate-cherry cake and/or DIY sundaes for dessert. I took out the fart blossoms, the sweet potato casserole, punkin pie, and cranberry jelly. More space on the table, fewer leftovers, less potential waste. I think it’s all worked out.

Except if there will be 6 or 7 at the table…

88

16F this morning when I got up :grimacing:, and we won’t bottom out until later this week. Nice, sunny skies though. I dug out my knit hat and some mittens in case I take a walk later.

Breakfast burritos this morning. Have to hit the grocery for a few items; we seem to make a lot of trips there during any given week.

I think the wife will make her cranberry sauce today so it can meld for a day in the fridge.

89

OMG!!! I was just looking at the 10-day (plus some) forecast for this area. Starting Saturday, we’ll have at least a week anna half of highs in the low 40s and lows in the freekin’ 20s!!! What-the-ever-lovin’ heck is that about??? We’re promised mid-60s today and 50s thru Firday. Winter is not supposed to charge in and kick us in the butt like that. Dammit.

90

The job down the street doesn’t want me. I should give up.

91

Aside from the obviously daft name we give to places, a favourite for a long time was Prittlewell

I don’t think I’ve ever cooked a big meal without a time-plan! My mum always said it was the one sensible thing our Home Ec teacher drummed into us :slight_smile:

Finally about to log off from irk after this afternoon’s meeting about language papers became a right dog’s breakfast. I think everything’s fine now, but I’m bailing out and dumping it all on the ADHD squirrel. She always says we don’t make enough use of her, so this will be a test of her mettle.

92

i will head to bassetts turkey tomorrow. it looks like bad weather for thursday, and i may just stay home rather than deal with it.

jtc, on the self hair cut thing. during the pandemic i got clippers from amazon and then looked at a bunch of you tube videos. i found that it was tons easier than i thought. the clippers keep things very neat. the only thing i used scissors for was a bit of tidying. i found that 1.5-2 inches on the top, going to 3/4 to 1/2 at the bottom was the perfect thing.

for me the difficult bit was dealing with which way i go in the mirror.

93

Went to WalMart this morning. Just the normal amount of people and as always, everyone there was nice.

94
  • I now have the latest iOS on my iPhone.
  • Easytrieve still isn’t working on the StinkPad, and I haven’t heard from the IT guy today. I have a suspicion the StinkPad and the desktop PC are synching with each other, so Easytrieve knows it’s already been installed.
  • A hotel in Hawaii became a member of our company. I looked them up, and found other members in their trade group. I’ve emailed all 11 of the other members (in addition to the new one, last week) to ask if they would like to send us their monthly accounts receivable data. Now I need to put notes into our system.
  • Avocado toast for breakfast.
  • I just found out it’s Tuesday. I thought it was Wednesday. At least tomorrow will be a short day.
95

Love and good wishes to all, whether parading, pub-hopping, looking for work, being scratched by animals, cooking turkeys, etc.

We celebrated more-or-less-Thanksgiving with my side of the family already, and exchanged gifts since we only see each other once a year. We went to an Indian restaurant we all like. My mother cooks an incredibly great Thanksgiving meal, but in the last couple of years has not wanted to make the effort. Therefore, we can visit when it’s convenient and not fight the Thanksgiving airport mobs. I’ve only not been with my mother at Thanksgiving or -ish once in my life, when I was teaching internationally and couldn’t come back to the US for a weekend. This year, although we’re free on Thanksgiving, we have some appointments over the week that will preclude our getting to Thanksgiving with my lovely wife’s family, and our friend who would be the other option is in chemo and immunosuppressed. So Denny’s it is! Hurray!

96

The other day Eraser (who is very cranky around the other females) was chasing Chihiro, and caught her just as she reached my bare feet. Fortunately, the Coumadin clinic do a really good job of controllng my dosage, so the bleeding stopped quickly and I just have a few three-inch scratches on one foot and a couple smaller ones on the other.

Two words: Dog breath…

He has a big fluffy tail just like our Susu has.

97

Hey, that’s a good idea. I went a little crazy at Aldi’s and got three kinds of stuffing mixes. I could make them into muffins and freeze some of them.

Not that you need to answer here, but has anyone given you any advice on things you could say or do differently?

Mis en place! That’s what my Chef always taught us.

Ok, I went to school this morning and ended up leaving after only two hours. My knee is all pissy today and I had a hard time making it down the stairs. And I met a woman who sorta does the same job that I do. She was trying to be helpful, but she was definitely not and she was trying to tell me what to do, but even though we’re both Intervention Specialists, our jobs are not exactly the same. But, I left early because it was the last day before a holiday break and the schedule was off.

It was fine with me and I managed to find my way to Five Below where I bought some frivolities. I’m wishing I had time for a nap, but I’m waiting for MusicMan to get home from work and then I have an appointment with my therapist.

98

I have been hired places and did not work so all the other chains are notified.

99

Sticky - my mom made stuffing balls, and whike looking on line for recipes, I came across the muffins. Sheer genius, says I! Tomorrow I can have Roxy grease the tins then load each cup. And all leftovers will go home with Daughter because I do not like stuffing/dressing/whatever. Win all around!

MIL has ben sleeping in her chair since eating her 3 bites of toast. She won’t lie down, she won’t recline the chair, so she sleeps all bent over. Stubborn to the last.

100

Started Typing: 1:58 PM ET
Clicked Reply: 3:35 PM ET

Happy Thanksgiving Eve Eve!

In keeping with this week’s theme, here’s my former cat:

This was taken shortly before she died. She’s sitting on a comforter on my bedroom floor, because she wasn’t able to get on the bed anymore. I used to lie down there next to her. It took four years before I was ready for another animal.

Work has been insane. It’s pretty much all I’ve done for the past 1.5 weeks, including over the weekend. Some of my “real” job duties have had to take a back seat to this :face_with_symbols_over_mouth: proposal because the two guys who are effectively running it don’t know what they’re doing…which I can say because I was a proposal writer for 7 years and a proposal manager for 3 years (including 1.5 years at this company). A 10-page volume has taken 3 months and required major rewrites after every review: proposal writing is supposed to be incremental, not “back to the drawing board” after each review. The proposal manager – who’s actually the VP in charge of proposal management and used to be my boss – is just as frustrated as I am. One last review is happening today, and I’m supposed to be done with any final updates by 2pm tomorrow. :crossed_fingers: This proposal is now affecting my mental health; I need to be done with it as soon as possible. The more senior guy is condescending, hyperdefensive, and ill-tempered in addition to being incompetent (the less senior one is just incompetent), and unfortunately is also leading the proposal for my program’s recompete: I’m already on board to write part of that one, so I’ll remain polite and professional until it’s done (because I want us to win the new contract/want to keep my job), but after that I will refuse to provide any significant support to another one of his proposals.

What’s been helping to keep me sane has actually been Lego. Building sets has become a kind of therapy…pricey, but cheaper than actual therapy! :joy: Since I posted the London Bus on Thursday, I completed two holiday sets:

And on Saturday I ordered a Chewbacca set, because stupid Lego offered a stupid “gift with purchase” that stupid me couldn’t resist. :grin: (A cute li’l record player that looks just like the one I have!) They’re supposed to arrive tomorrow, so I’ll have more therapy for the long weekend/while recovering from this proposal. And I get to spend Thanksgiving with my BFFs, their son, and Wife BFF’s godmother (who I’ve known for years and will be picking up from her retirement community), which will greatly improve my frame of mind; doing my Christmas decorating on Friday will also help.

Those are awesome!!

OMG! That is so cool! :smiley: I hope you have a blast!

Going to Denny’s on Thanksgiving should not be underrated. :slight_smile: