She’s already getting quite good at weaponizing cuteness. 
Hope everyone is enjoying their Saturday. It’s cold and overcast here, so a bit of a dreary day. A lot has gone on this week so I’ve struggled to keep up and am only halfway through the thread at the moment.
I am (probably) buying a house! Eeeeek! I’ve been watching Zillow for several years now and this is the first house I even wanted to look at - and it’s dang nearly everything I’ve been wanting. I’m trying not to get my hopes up too much until after inspections are done on Tuesday. It’s a ~75 year old house so I’m sure there will be pages and pages of things found, but the big items like new roof, plumbing and HVAC have all been done fairly recently.
I moved into my current rental exactly 5 years ago as part of getting divorced. I’ve been reluctant to leave but as the week has gone on I’ve begun to realize that a move might actually be the best thing for me right now. I need to make some big lifestyle changes but have been struggling mightily with inertia. This might be the kick and disruption I need. We shall see…
swampy, I’m watching my baby grandson while the older kids go to a family gathering, so I have a huge tv to watch collitsch football with, so I’m watching your dawgs, cheering them on from afar, way far afar, from the land of ice, snow and single digit wind chills.
I hope they are gone at the party long enough so I can watch the whole thing.
The rest of you handegg fans, feel free to tell me your team to cheer for-I’ve got a 75 inch tv remote and I know how to use it!
Conga-rats!
WOOF! WOOF! WOOF! Y’all! My DAWGS destroyed the Crimson Trickle 28-7. BBBoo I am sure they heard you all the way from Nebraska. I am a happy bear! 
DAWGS will get a first round bye in the playoffs. The Pachyderms may be out of the playoffs. The state of Alabammy will be in mournin’. OYKW says I won’t need double sooper sekrete extra speshul confession tomorrow. He did say I got a little obnoxious with the barkin’. Hey, DAWG fans bark. Deal. WOOF! WOOF! WOOF!
In other news, I was very domesticated today. The cake, slaw, slow cooker bbq (OK, it’s not really bbq), and chikin ‘n dumplin’s got made. We et chikin ‘n dumplin’s for lunch. I even managed nappage before the game so as to keep my RDOS cred.
red hope the shower happened. I know that would feel soooooo good!
Nettie that is one keeyoote kitteh!
Evening all. Soccer was coached/refereed and some gym time was added on so I am fairly healthy today. Just finished my big bowl of pasta with a Little Debbie Apple Pie as dessert so belly is happy with me again. Watched some of the afternoon tackleball while tread-milling and cycling, may turn on the OSU-IU game (I lived in both states so not playing favorites) a little later. Temperature is down to 36F but only going to 34F according to the Weather Wizards, so will just plan on staying inside the rest of the night and catch up on my internettin’.
FCM, I’m holding right around 202lbs, which is about 100lbs less that I was in 2022 when I started this exercise and taking care of myself stuff. Going to Texas Roadhouse Tomorrow so it might be a bit tough keeping it there..
My only hands-on (in a manner of speaking) with a bidet toilet was at a hotel in Peking of all places, while I was on vacation. Had all the controls and settings and I have to admit, it was…a nice feeling. And my Niece has passed 30 and the nephews are not far behind, so I know what you mean.
Nah, they are split into age groups and have a set time to practice (we haven;t drawn up teams yet). For example, the U12’s I worked with had the gym from 8am-1pm for three separate sessions, so bever more than about 20 kids at a time.
Nettie, wonderful photo and a unique and gorgeous name.
lily, think you are wise to wait until you and lovely wife have time to devote to your feline overlords.
52, I hope the house-buying goes as planned and works out well for you. Make sure you go over the inspections closely and get stuff in order before closing. Good wishes.
Yep. If they miss the playoffs they’ll be calling for the coach’s head…again. Not my circus, not my monkeys.
And time to get back to the more slothful parts of the internet (You Tube mostly) and I’ll catch up with y’all later.
Up from naptime, watching hockey and having a Sazarac. Dinner tonight is the usual Asian BBQ stir fry. Roomie accidentally locked Spot in the coat closet, so now I have a slightly traumatized tuxedo.
< crosses fingers for a positive outcome on all three >
< skritches >
Roll Back Tide!
Congrats?
I’ve mentioned before that when I make meatloaf, I use two pounds of ground beef and a pound of pork. I make two loaves. I cook one, and wrap the other in cling film, freeze it, wrap it again, and then put it into a gallon zip-top bag (expelling as much air as I can).
I thawed the frozen loaf yesterday and this morning, and made it for diner tonight (topped with tomato sauce, as usual). We had leftover mashed Yukon Gold potatoes and giblet gravy to go with it.
Good luck!
Today’s not-very-workplace-appropriate stories, courtesy of my workplace.
Also, me as the starring showplace.
Number One
It’s cold as fuxk today, and I did not wanna go outside. I’ll admit, I did a bad thing.
I hit my vape in the kitchen.
Heard Alternate Manager go, “Shoe, that was about as subtle as fuck. Heard you cough, looked over, and it looked like Puff The Magic Dragon was following you.”
That is an absolute direct quote.
Lesson learned.
Go to the walk-in next time, dummy.
Number Two
Okay, this one was fun.
We prep deluxe pizzas, but mediums are done two at a time & then (theoretically 
) kept up .. take one out, get the replacement set up.
I dunno, my brain went fuzzy, but right as I was cut for break, I hear, “Why do we have FOUR medium extras?!?”
Me, being an idiot: “Because I can’t count to three.”
“WE ONLY NEED TWO.”
… come back from break, and guess who used up ALL the mediums?
“I leave you people alone for 29 minutes … “
We gave each other (good natured) shit for the rest of the night about that one.
Also, I’ll be busy listening to anything that doesn’t involve a certain red-nosed reindeer, or friggin’ Jingle Bell Rock.
Good Mornin’ Y’all!! Up and caffeinatin’. YAWN ‘Tis 49 Amurrkin out and cloudy with a predicted high of 54 and cloudy with rain later this mornin’ and then just cloudy from mid-afternoon on. Or it might just rain all day. TWPTB are once again all willy-nilly. The big item on the agenda is deheathenization, in which I have verger duty, followed by first Sunday brunch. We get to eat good today. The rest of the day will be spent in high RDOS inactivities.
52 conga rats on the possible home purchase. Hope the process goes as smoothly as it can.
FlyBoy I use a combo of ground beast and snausage when I make beastloaf. I also do one to eat now and one to freeze. I would prefer to use hot snausage, but use a medium hot in deference to the other household occupant.
MetalMouse I admire your dedication to the yoots. I can’t imagine dealin’ with that many of ‘em at one time even with lots of help. Ten to twelve acolytes is my limit. Also Duke might have helped Alabammy out last night. We shall see later today when the final rankin’s come out. Looks like the Ohio State-Indiana game was a wild one!
Shoe good stories! I feel sorry for folks who have to endure endless deplorable holiday music on the job.
Now I need more caffeine and to feed rumbly tummy. Then purtification for deheathenization must commence.
Happy Sunday Y’all!
Up, caffeinated, and sheveled. Off today. Morning cleaning and afternoon sloth, handegg, and hockey on the agenda. It’s currently 31 degrees Ferret Height(-0.556 Centipedes) and foggy out. A good morning to stay in and drink coffee with the cat.
Morning, mumpers! It’s currently 8c/47f with a predicted high of 9c/48f and cloudy. Weather app says “If this weather was a fucking soup, it would be broccoli fart chowder with fucking corn and bacon.”
That is definitely something to look forward to - feeling all fresh and clean after a good shower makes you feel so much better.
I wasn’t expecting much but it was actually quite well done. It’s Predator: Killer of Killers, ‘im indoors chose it and whilst a lot of his movie choices are pretty awful, this one was not so bad.
That’s an interesting collection, what’s he building?
After all the work drama and trauma you’ve been through recently, I think you deserve a bit of peace and quiet. A drive to take your son out for lunch sounds like a great plan too! I hope your retirement package gets sorted out soon, that can’t be good for your stress levels either.
If there’s a tree, it will get a kitty in it somehow or other! I used to have a tree that we attached to a hook in the ceiling with some fishing line. At least that way the cats could climb it and it wouldn’t fall over. Much amusement, minimal damage!
nettie Kasya is beautiful. I’m glad you finally decided on a name that suits all of you.
How exciting for you! I hope you get the house of your dreams
Lily keeping our fingers and paws crossed for you and the lovely wife, hope everything works in your favour.
Sounds delicious! I haven’t made meatloaf for ages, I should put that on my list of things to do over the xmas break.
shoe great stories! I also sympathise with the endless round of forced jollity tunes. A few hours of that in the pet store yesterday was quite enough for me.
Yesterday I went over to the pet store at the big shopping centre and was pleasantly surprised to find a parking space in the small car park I wanted to be in. I went a bit earlier than usual so that I’d got time to go to one of the homeware stores nearby. My plan was to find little xmas trinkets for folks at work, something different from buying them chocolate especially as my diabetic minion can’t have any. The store had some very nice xmas tree ornaments so I picked up some of those. Also got a couple of hand-painted cups and glasses as gifts for friends so it was time well spent. Then I had enough time left to grab a big cup of tea from Costalot before going to do my stint at the pet store.
It wasn’t very busy but we got to talk to nice people, pet some cute doggies, and chat to some of the new members of staff. I’d originally said I’d be there for 2hrs but ended up more like 3hrs, then helped Di pack stuff up and load it into her car, then went back to get some cat litter and a box of food for Muffin.
Takings weren’t great, we collected just short of £105 which has to go through the tills as part of the Santa Paws appeal. We will get half of it back again but not until January but since we were in store for more than 7hrs, we will also get a £500 Lifeline voucher. Same deal next weekend but I’ll be going in the morning instead. The store manager’s wife (who is a professional baker) will be making cakes for us to sell next weekend and they always go down well.
JtC, I think perhaps Bast decided we needed a little boost and delivered for us. There’s a cat called Ollie at Little Paws HQ who has been having chemo and that’s making him feel very poorly. He’s had meds to stop him feeling sick, and other meds to stimulate his appetite (side effect is that it makes him feel sick), and he’s been off his food for a couple of days now. Di had to phone home to ask which flavour of a particular brand of food to get for one of the other oldies, and saw a message from her husband saying that Ollie had eaten almost two pouches of food!
There’s not just fog, there’s a FREEZING FOG ADVISORY.
Chaos. Pure and utter chaos. And that’s only with the wood he doesn’t eat. Not kidding - that idiot dog eats wood and sawdust! Guess he thinks he needs extra fiber?
Here, too. I’ve never see such a thing before! Does that mean chunks of fog will be falling from the sky?? On the plus side, we are promised sun and low 40s later today.
Meeting with Daughter and SIL yesterday was very encouraging. They’ve set things up so that all their pay is dumped into one account, rather than the 2 they used before. That account will then pay their bills as well as disburse to savings and separate “Fun Money” accounts for each of them. When fun money is gone, so is fun spending. Meanwhile, their bill-paying account will have a bit of a slush fund built in.
In addition, we combined what we just loaned them with what they’re paying us back for their car, and based on what they budgeted, their car will be paid off almost 3 years earlier than originally planned, which is good for us. And it might even be earlier because if either of them get a raise, part of it will go against what they owe us. So they’ve made us a priority. They requested a monthly review with us, at least until they feel comfortable with their new lifestyle.
I feel good knowing they recognize their problem tendencies as well as their responsibilities. And I think they were embarrassed enough having to come to us that they’ll stick to the agreement. And they can’t go to his mother because she’s having to help her husband raise his grands (lots of drama there…) Anyway, I’m glad we were able to help them and I’m glad they’re finally being adult about, well, adulthood.
Last night I was a freekin’ genius!! FCD’s VERY expensive laptop died. He tried to restart it and it immediately died again, then nothing. Luckily, we have a good computer repair place nearby. And he has a tablet now, so he could continue scrolling. But after a bit, the very first step in computer troubleshooting occurred to me, and I asked if it had come unplugged. Yep, the connection to the transformer worked its way loose. Go me!! He’s back up and running and we were spared an extremely embarrassing trip to the repair place.
May I say I hate HATE HATE all the freekin’ digital assistants being forced upon us!!! My latest phone update included Gemini, and it took me for-freekin’-ever too figure out how to disable the damned thing. It wouldn’t have been as bad if it just existed in the background, but it popped up when I’d hit the power button, and I couldn’t figure out how to do a restart. Plus it was listening to me and my words would appear on the screen!!! 
Since it wasn’t a separate app, I couldn’t delete it, but it has been disabled. For now. I dread the next software update. At least when I was setting up the tablet, I had the option to not have it installed. I’m OK with Alexa, but the rest needs to leave me alone!!!
< deep cleansing breath >
Not sure what the plans for today are. My sweetie is still sleeping, so I’m about to turn Hurricane Otis loose. And so it begins.
Happy Sunday!
Our hosts for Thanksgiving had sent us home with various leftovers, including half a pumpkin pie. Last night, we polished off the last of the pie..
Outside, it’s 28 degrees F, and snow is falling. The weather service says the snow will stop at 10:30 am. Maybe.
Our Alexa “smart” speaker asked if I wanted it to add AI to itself. No. Egad, the thought of that thing pestering me nonstop, to buy this and that!
So… ‘frog’?
Dont give the cat coffee!
Good morning.
It’s 48°F and raining outside. It’s been raining all night. Rain, some of it very heavy, is expected to continue throughout the day but will let up a little in the afternoon. The expected daytime high is 54°F. We have flood watches in several counties, which may turn into warnings as the first of several atmospheric rivers moves in this week.
52, congrats! I hope the process goes smoothly for you.
Lily, I am hoping for good outcomes all around for you, your lovely wife, and a possible kitty.
FCM, I’m glad the meeting with your daughter and SiL went well. I hope they can stick to their financial plan, too.
Freezing fog used to be a regular thing for us in the fall and winter. Freezing fog translates to black ice on the road, especially when it’s dark. It makes commutes so “fun” and “interesting”. It’s been far too warm here for that, but I expect it’ll make a showing in January and February.
I need to do some laundry today, and that’s about it.
Okay, time to finish my coffee and get that dishwasher loaded. You all take care.