Good Mornin’ Y’all! Up and caffeinatin’. YAWN ‘Tis 75 Amurrkin out and clear with a predicted high of 96 and mostly N.O.S. but with rain/tstorms/apocalypse possible late afternoon/early evenin’. We shall see. As I mentioned yestiddy, we shall be heathens this mornin’. OK, I’ll watch the service online, so maybe sorta like heathen adjacent. JDD and Partner will join us for N.O.L. and then we shall adjourn to the cee-mint pond for sloth and general overall silliness and merriment. We shall also make peach ice cream at some point. YUM!
doggio glad the contract looks favorable for everyone.
Now I need more caffeine and to feed rumbly tummy. Then some cook prep and cookin’ thereof must commence.
Now that would drive me bat-crap crazy! Then again, I don’t consider a meal to be an event so much as something that needs to be done. Sitting at a table for hours is not my idea of fun.
Dealt with a weird rumbly tummy overnight - not sick, but for 2 hours, I kept feeling like I needed the terlit, and those 2 hours fell from 1-3, dammit. And when I finally fell back to sleep, I still woke a couple of times before I gave up shortly after 6. I wonder if I’ll be able to sleep in after Higgs goes to her reward. She doesn’t fuss in the morning, but I think of her in her crate crossing her legs because she needs to pee… so I can’t stay abed. Dammit.
We’ll be heading back to the school today - duh! After the challenge of gathering and sorting all our tools and supplies, we’ll install the last 4 wifi/network switch boards in classrooms. We’ll probably have to order a few power supplies for the wifi units - no idea where they disappeared to. And if we have the energy, we’ll install the last speaker board in the hallway and pull its wire to the cabinet in the office.
When Daughter has her staff meeting next week, FCD will go to talk to the teachers about how they’ll want their classroom set up so he can make up cables from the switches to where they’ll be needed. He’s also going to make it clear that they’re not supposed to plug surge suppressors into other surge suppressors into extension cords - can you say fire hazard?? You would not believe the number of extension cords and surge suppressors we’ve accumulated from around the school, and there are only 8 classrooms!!
Sorry to go on and on about that but it’s what my life has been mostly. We’d love to find about $6K so we could get window-mounted heat/air units for the school, but I don’t see that happening. Needless to say, there’s no $30K to have a whole new HVAC installation for the school. Maybe if we manage to get the right ticket for Tuesday’s drawing…
Daughter has hired a science teacher and a math teacher, neither of whom have actual classroom experience but both seem to be really excited about teaching there. So FCD won’t be teaching science after all and Daughter will be doing some mentoring/monitoring till the new guys get settled in. Her #2 is going to be amazing - we were listening in as they planned for the year. Courtney is a short former Coast Guard officer married to a Coast Guard officer - she went thru the academy. They expect her size as well as being female is going to lead to some students not taking her seriously, and they’re in for a surprise! But she’s also far more professional militarily than her predecessor. It’s going to be an interesting year.
Well, FCD just got up, so I need to shower and dress for another day of fun. Happy Sunday!!
Up, caffeinated, and sheveled. Actually I’ve been up for a bit. Spot wanted cuddles. Then I twitched wrong, so he decided to gnaw on me, knock my glasses off the nightstand, and stick his paws in my water glass. But I elbowed him in the cranium when I was putting on socks, so I guess we’re even. Today shall be cleaning, day drinking, and catching up on 500 of naval history videos on YouTube.
doggio, I couldn’t say no to that black and white face. When you get to NashVega$ next year, hit me up and we’ll find some Celtic music and / or good beer.
Up, caffeinating, breakfasting and fixing to begin the cook prep day. Such are Sundays at CasaRoja.
Up and drinking strong black tea. Today I need to go to the gym and then to Home Depot for potting mix. I have three big empty potting tubs and want to plant some flowers for fall color. The trick is finding something that won’t be killed by late summer heat before they begin to bloom in the autumn. These tubs will be in the shade, too. Mums are popular, but they’re a bit dull - mauve, cream and yellow, I think, are the only colors they come in. I’ll have to do some research to see what’ll live until winter.
Afternoon, mumpers! It’s currently 16c/60f with no predicted change today, and with isolated showers. Weather app is unimpressed and says “Fucking rain. Again.” Too true, it’s been a pretty wet summer so far. There’s a bit of blue sky out there, I saw some sun earlier which was closely followed by a short downpour so the weather’s doing exactly what the app says it will.
Yesterday was busy, I had quite a lot to get through and managed to do everything on my list. Last night we opted for a night in, watched a couple of films and had some wine…thus was not in bed until 3am. I got up at a reasonable hour, fed the cats, cleaned the litter trays, gave Shadow his meds, and had a cup of tea. Then one of the girlies decided to have a party in the litter tray by my desk, so I cleaned that up (which necessitated the vacuum cleaner). 'im indoors was up by then, and the litter tray in the bedroom resembled a bombsite so that got cleaned and vacuumed around. Since I’d got the vacuum going, I decided to do the rest of the house so we’re all clean again.
I had to use the smaller vacuum cleaner because the big Shark doesn’t work properly now, the lift-away bit is fine but the base unit doesn’t pick up much. I have to schedule a video call with the service desk, which I’ve been putting off doing 'cos I Don Twanna! But I suppose I must.
So cleaning and critterage is done, I need to put some dye on my hair and that’s pretty much the only plan for today. 'im indoors is in charge of tonight’s dinner so I have no other responsibilities apart from cat-fussing, should any of the cats decide to come close enough for fuss.
doggio enjoy the 192hrs of sloth and day-drinking!
Morning all, got up at 4:30am to watch the USA in the Women’s World Cup (We lost in Penalty kicks so out of the tournament). So probably not a very active day as I try to avoid nappage. About a 40% chance of rain this afternoon, and then a 50-50 chance for most of the week, so youth soccer may get off to a soggy start. Heading for 94F today so summer is not over by a long shot.
It’s drink a little, read the Dope a little. Eat a bit, Dope a bit. Consider the menu awhile and Dope some more. Order the next item then go back to Doping. etc.
The time flies by when you’re in the company of good friends. Even if y’all are mostly imaginary.
Up, sheveled, just fed (eggs benedict that came unexpectedly with a side of ordinary bacon). About to check out from this fine establishment, pay the piper, arrange an uber to the airport, and commence my rather stupid day.
It’s 9am and I’ll be riding jets or waiting in airports from now until 4pm to catch up to where I was supposed to be. Then I’ll intercept the trailing bits of my originally planned irk day and actually irk from 4pm to 10pm, then home by midnight … again. We hope … again.
Once I’m settled on the jet in back I’ll probably return to badger y’all some more.
Cheers to all on this sunny warn Sunday in most of the USA!!
It’s 64F and cloudy, and partial clearing shall occur later this morning/early afternoon. The expected high is 82F. It rained intermittently for a good part of yesterday and overnight. So, we got a nice soak, but my lawn looks shaggy, and I need to get it mowed. Maybe it’ll dry out enough by this afternoon.
Yesterday was a day of complete sloth. I did clean up the kitchen, but that’s all I did. Sometimes one needs to relax. I also took a light nap. I could have napped some more, but forced myself to stay awake.
Laundry today, I think. It’s also trash TV night. I might take a trip to the nursery and the hardware store. Not sure yet.
The morning conversations so far:
“Get your foot out of my water.”
“I’m not giving you bananas if you act like an unhinged maniac.”
“Stop having a meltdown just because I took away your favorite breadcrumb.”
Woke up from a truly nasty bad dream, and now my head is filled with bad stuff. Absolutely could not fall back asleep, though I’d really have liked to - I’m still quite tired - but a lot of old, crappy memories got stirred up, so I’m having an early morning (for me - it’s not even 11 a.m. ferchrissakes, I should still be dead-ass asleep) smoke and gonna peruse Dope threads until my brain is suitably distracted from the demons that emerged from their murky depths.
It’s warm and humid and pretty “bleh” out there at the moment, with a decent chance of thunderstorms this evening. I have, in fact, decided to skip tonight’s DC jazz jam: partly for financial reasons, but also because of the impending storms – which could wind up missing the District entirely, but due to the jam session’s location I’d want to take Metro and I’m feeling too lazy to chance having to walk several blocks in the rain. Sloth FTW!
There’s a vine that likes to climb up one side of my house: it’s the side that I hardly ever see/go into, on the other side of the fence from my back yard, and there’s a cycle of me pulling the vine down but then ignoring it until I can see the top of it from my patio (which means it’s over the roofline). Lately I’ve been seeing it whenever I take Bailey out back, and while lunch was in the oven yesterday I suddenly got motivated to take care of it: I grabbed the big hedge clippers, and put on some gloves that velcro around my wrists. At one point I was loosely holding the clippers in my left hand and pulling a stubborn bit of vine down with my right hand, and the vine gave way suddenly and my hand hit the top of one of the (sharp, pointy) clippers. If you draw a straight line down the middle of your thumb from the tip to your wrist, the bit just above where your wrist starts is the spot that hit the clippers. I am so glad I was wearing gloves!!! When I removed the glove on that hand there was a touch of swelling (which is already gone) and some redness, but really just a small scrape; if I hadn’t been wearing gloves, there definitely would have been a puncture (and probably a nasty one). Today the spot doesn’t look like much at all, and is only sore if I touch it, but I wonder if it might eventually bruise.
Yesterday I binge-watched the entire 7-episode season of Hijack, the new Idris Elba show on AppleTV+. I didn’t expect a show about a plane hijack to keep my interest for more than an episode or two – I checked it out mostly because I like looking at Idris – but I found it compelling and entertaining. And I was surprised at how many of the other actors I recognized!
In other news, today is my 5-year work anniversary. All things considered I like working for this company, and have no plans to leave any time soon*. I think seven years is when I’ll get another bump in how much leave I earn every pay period, but they did give me a $100 service award. Among other options, our awards can be turned into Amazon gift cards: in the next month I have two birthday gifts and a wedding present to buy, so this will definitely help (yay!).
*I’ll be pretty stressed at around this time next year, when my current program’s contract will be up for recompete. That means submitting a proposal to the government to try and win another 5-year contract, but other companies will also be submitting proposals and trying to take the work away from us (like we took the work away from someone else years ago). There’s no reason to think our customer is unhappy, but there are never any guarantees with recompetes; and if we don’t win it, nontechnical project managers aren’t exactly in high demand. I like to think I’d be able to find another program to go to without having to leave the company – I have a network, plus there are benefits to working for one of the largest defense contractors in the US – but there’s going to be a lot of nail-biting while we wait for the proposal award decision. (And a lot of “hey, I’m not sure if I’m actually going to need a job in three months, but just in case: could we talk??”)
*snerk*
I’m so glad no one has ever said that to me. I would miss bananas.
It’s raining. I’ve shut off Coolio and Unnamed Fan so I can listen to the pitter-patter.
Monkey had the zoomies earlier. He kept tear-assing straight across the house and then, just when it looked like he was gonna go ass over teakettle down the basement steps, would leap up and smack his front paw against the doorframe.
Then he’d gallop off the other way.
It looked for all the world like he was playing “tag” with the door frame. (“TAG! You’re it!”)
Soooo … not complete sloth, then.
I believe Dr. Swampy would prescribe additional practice.
Short day at school, since Eric showed up and he talks waaaaay too much to get work done. But we finished the network connections, etc, to the classrooms. Plus we made up a printer cable for the tower, and got all our tools and supplies organized. In a little bit, we’ll go pick up MIL, then meet Daughter and her spawn and go to see the Giant Rubber Duck in Leonardtown. BIL was supposed to take MIL yesterday, but he’s so terrified of driving to new places, that the thought of going 2 blocks to the parking lot where the shuttle stopped totally freaked him out. He’s too damaged to function normally.
Anyway, we’ll go see the duck and maybe check out the vendor booths. It’ll make a nice break.
Idris Elba is an amazing actor. His portrayal of Stringer Bell in “The Wire” was amazing. For a proper British gentleman to be able to absolutely nail the persona of an up from the streets drug dealer in such a convincing manor fooled me completely until I saw an interview with him years later.
Howdy Y’all! This has been a day of high silliness and general overall hilarity. We all needed that apparently. We et a big N.O.L., slothed at the cee-mint pond for a while whilst sippin’ beerverages, came back inside and made and et ice cream. JDD and Partner have left for their place and it looks like rain in the distance. Good to be inside, showered and in the a/c as 'tis waaaaaay hawt outside. Oh, and the biiiiiig trash can has been hauled all the way down to the road for pickup tomorrow. That was today’s big item of productivity.
Q’uiteh (I think that’s the way you spell it) is a pretty cat cookie.
It was a day of sloth and messing around in the studio. I made a pot of Italian style veggie soup for Sunday dinner and it’s good. Just winding down before the irk week begins.
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