(Old) So you want to be a star in the MMP

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
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We are not being graded or critiqued. Turning in completed blocks results only in getting a coupon for five dollars off on a purchase. There was one person month before last who did not finish, and nothing was said. As the only man in the class, I would be a bit embarrassed to show up with an unfinished block.

I left it a bit late this month because were pretty busy and just did not take the time to do a better job. I am more disappointed in my own work than any feed back I will get at class. I know I am capable of better.

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Good Mornin’ Y’all! Up and caffeinatin’. YAWN ‘Tis 64 Amurrkin out and clear with a predicted high of 90 and N.O.S. for the day. JDD and Partner are comin’ over later this mornin’ to hang with us out by the cee-mint pond. They are bringin’ sammich stuff so’s we can luncheon out there. We’ll also have chips and snacky stuff along with beerverages and strawberry lemonade. We haven’t gotten together for hang time in a while, so 'twill be nice!

Pilot and RealFish whatever it was that caused the reactions y’all had, I hope is much better now.

Nellie hope the tens unit gives ya some relief.

MetalMouse we get Cook Out on occasion. True it’s not the best, but it’s not the worst. Sometimes we get a gnawin’ and a cravin’ for it however. It’s also where red gets her stoner special.

JtC that’s what happens when you have a cat like GG, who is an internationally renowned star.

Now I need more caffeine and to feed rumbly tummy. Then, onward into the day! Rah,

Happy Sattidy Y’all!

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Today is the multi-year high school reunion that includes my graduating class. I had no intention of going anyway, but there have been multiple posts on FB about classmates who have died - many of them younger than I am. That’s a sobering way to start the day.

Stoopit FB…

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Afternoon, mumpers! It’s 24c/76f with a predicted high of 27c/81f which is far too hot for me. Allegedly it’s also partly cloudy, but not here 'cos I can’t see a single bit of cloud in the sky. Weather app says “You might think that one cloud looks like a gopher. I think it looks like a fucking asshat”. Again, no clouds in the sky but locally we have a weather warning for thunderstorms.

nellie I hope you can find some way of relieving your pain soon.

Pilot and RealFish hope you’ve got over whatever caused you have the reactions you did. Sounds worrying, all the same.

hippie another beautiful piece of work there!

JtC I deactivated my local NextDoor account because there was so much negativity and nastiness on there. From the stuff people were posting, you’d think there was some kind of crime every second in the area where I live. Anybody knocking on your door for any reason was up to no good, any single male sitting in the park was on the lookout for kids, delivery drivers going slowly up the road looking for the right house were actually scoping them all out for potential burglaries…I can do without that level of stupidity and paranoia. I loved NextDoor when it was all about someone not getting their bins emptied, and people wanting to know what time the local Asda closed!

I logged in yesterday intending to post something but work got in the way so you’ll have to imagine whatever gems of wit and humour you’ve missed :slight_smile: Work was busy, June is our most pressurised time as we head to the end of the academic session, and it’s our job to make sure all our students graduate, or get their results on time so they are ready to head to their next year of study, or they get pushed into the supplementary exams session in August. Results release day is two weeks away, so it’s all full-pelt to the finish line. I learned yesterday that my boss in my other dept has been off sick for a week, so my colleague over there is shouldering most of the work herself. Much as I sympathise, I have been in that unfortunate position more times than I care to contemplate. I’m very glad to be on secondment to a department where they get their marking done on time and the academic staff generally do what they’re asked, when they’re asked to do it.

Yesterday was busy, the evening passed by, and I was up early this morning for the gym. I got into the car park at 7.59am and left at 10.48am, pretty good going as I was 11 minutes away from getting a chunky parking fine. There’s a 3hr limit on the car park up there so I try to get in as late as possible before the first of the day’s classes starts. I had time on the way home to stop off at the pet store to get two 30L bags of cat litter so that the mogs have plenty to use. The foster cats do like to bury their business, and then kick all the rest of the litter out of the tray!

I dropped that off at home, had a quick cup of tea and then went to get my hair cut, so that’s all my day’s chores done. I have some ironing to do, the t-shirt clear-out isn’t over yet, and there needs to be some roll-sucking but that will all be there tomorrow too. We usually head into town on Saturday for lunch at the Good Chinese Place but today is our local Pride festival so a bunch of roads are closed, a big chunk of the town is barriered off because the Pride festival has an outdoor stage with music and various other things going on which is ticket-only so even parking where I usually do and walking into town would require a significant diversion.

I don’t need anything in town, might as well stay out of the way while those that want to are partying the day away. They have gorgeous weather for it, and I hope everyone who attends has a fabulous day :slight_smile:

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metal mouse, granted, Cook Out isn’t fine dining, but for the price, they aren’t bad. Like swampy said, not the best, not the worst. However, they do make a mean milkshake.

Moooooom, I have to agree with you about white furniture (or pillows), is there a chance that you could recover them with your mad sewing skilz?

Up, caffeinating, breakfasted and fixing to do KP. The big plans for the day are some cleanup in the studio, a couple of online chores and a retreat to the patio with a cold one to watch some of the airshow.

I’ve just discovered that my left shift key is now requiring me to press hard on it to work. C’est le guerre! If it becomes a bigger issue, I’ll pull out the backup (yes, I keep a backup mouse and keyboard for times when I get klutzy with a beverage and drown one) and put an order in to da Jungle for a replacement.

Stay safe and healthy y’all!

206

Were I so inclined, I probably could. I have no such inclination at the moment, but come winter, I might consider making slipcovers for them. Or not. Dunno.

Just back from the boat and about to start cushion scrubbage. Envy me!!!

207

As to the two vinegars, blend a teaspoon of each and taste that. It’ll either be great, yuck, or “Meh, why bother?”

As to the elderly port, although port keeps a lot better than does ordinary wine, a closed, or especially open, bottle of elderly port needs to be tasted before being used. When it goes off, it tastes nasty not nice. It might be vinegar, but it won’t be usable vinegar.

Yes, it’s good when you get something new to think about your thinking about thinking about yourself in your own head. :grin:

Seriously, despite the proverb to the contrary, our inner life can be more placid when it’s a little less well-examined. Utter obliviousness to one’s internal state isn’t right either, but there’s a hefty excluded middle in there. Best of luck on your on-going journey to peace and calm.

Congrats on Hubs’ A1C!

I would be very leery of believing a temperature reading that’s way cool. Lotta ways for cold compresses or cold beverages to make skin or mouth temps locally wrong and unrepresentative of core temps for many minutes after.

Agree that loose long clothes work better in the desert; note traditional Arab & equatorial African garb.

OTOH, as between hiding from the sun and avoiding skin cancer, or losing a few grams of flesh every couple of months while being out in the glorious warm beams a LOT, I’ll take Door #2 every time. Moderated by sunscreen, not by clothing or indoors time. YMMV of course.

My meds haven’t been changed in years. But yes, one of them has a BP-lowering consequence and we had to adjust that down to the minimum dose to avoid it being too much. But that was years ago. This was apparently just one of those one-time “everything lined up wrong” events. Good suggestion though, thank you.



As to me …
Happy Saturday all! Thanks for the various well-wishes about my Thursday dental weirdness. I was over that and its consequences by the time I got up on Fri. Here on Sat it’s a distant memory.

Sunny, completely clear skies, sparkly water, and 85/29 here at 10am-ish. I had a productive admin & email hoeing-out this morning, Her Ladyship is up and just sheveled, so that’s next for me after I complete the vital task of posting this. Breakfasting shall follow immediately, then a haircut in early afternoon. Otherwise chillage is the order of the day. The action-packed days are simply exhilarating.

Cheers all!!

208

Good morning.

It’s currently 54 degrees and wet outside. The expected high will be 65F, with showers or light rainfall until the early evening. So much for yardwork!

We were supposed to visit our friends in the country today, but they canceled yesterday because one of them had stomach issues, and they weren’t sure she’d feel 100% today. They asked if we were available on July 15th because they were booked until then. I told them that would probably work, but something keeps niggling at me about that date, so I feel we’ll cancel. We’ll see.

I wish they had notified me earlier because the vet called with an appointment for today for Polar instead of tomorrow. Unfortunately, I didn’t know our friend would cancel then, so I kept the Sunday day admission.

Pilot, glad the dental weirdness sorted itself out. Maybe eat a little more in the days before your next encounter with the dental anesthetic.

nellie, I am sorry you’re in so much pain. I am back in Oly town on Monday; if you need a ride for whatever reason, I’m your gal. I genuinely mean it. PM me if that’s the case.

I must take my vacuum cleaner apart and see why the hose part isn’t sucking. Damn it. Since the weather is crappy and I need to vacuum my stairs, I guess I’ll get the vacuum taken apart today. I hope I can fix it. Something is stuck at the base where I can’t get to it without taking it entirely apart. Fun times.

Well, speaking of chores, I got a late start today, so I best get going.

209

WHEW!! Nine cushions scrubbed and drying in the sun, or what sun will move over them as it clears the trees. There’s a pic on FB but I’m not going to post it here - waaaaaaaay too mundane. After a short breather, I need to tidy the kitchen and commence to rollsuck. And it’s not even noon yet!

Minor fright this morning - FCD went to fill his car and didn’t have his VISA. He’d given it to me to pay for the fuel at the marina and apparently I’d stuck it in my back pocket and forgot about it. He used my car to gas up and when I got home, I found his card. So that was a relief.

I should finish my chores so I can chill.

210

Good idea to avoid undereating in general. The whole problematic dental procedure was unplanned though; it arose during the expected exam. So no prior planning was possible. As we all know, proper prior planning prevents piss-poor performance. We now have fresh evidence the converse is also true.

211

So the heaving was OK, but the air didn’t make it till after the drivers(and everyone but management) left. When we were doing cleanup, ther was a box leaking a bit of powder, so we opened it up. Cardboard tbes of some sort of redish clay like stufff(fireworks, dynamite? Depends on how unstable Josh from Louisiana is Although the “place toward audience” sticker on the top of the inner pack had a “Front Towards Enemy” vibe to it). We let Hazardous Ken handle it. No boom.
“No boom today. Boom tomorrrow, there’s always a boom tomorrow” - Susan Ivanova
:bomb:

Glad to hear. And hope you’re over the weird spell thing from the grocery store.

Atleastitwasn’tlikethetimemyspacebarstoppedworking.

212

Happy Saturnday! I’m “icing” my knee. My plan is to keep rotating the cold packs, as they help only as long as they’re on. (They’re not frozen, so I won’t get frostbite.

Ms. Dog is here, so I do have to get up every so often. Her person didn’t bring any dog toys, so I got some via Instacart to keep here. It was like Christmas! As I type this, she’s hidden a toy under her blanket and pretending she doesn’t know where it is so she can “find” it. She also likes to roll a tennis ball to the end table and hit it with her nose so it comes out the other side,.

JtC, MANY thanks for the kind offer! Cannabis gives me anxiety attacks. I had a commercial grower boyfriend who gave me some that wouldn’t make me anxious, but it lowered my BP like I was Pilot after the rinse. I tried CBD capsules for post-op eye pain, and it didn’t do much. Maybe I took too small a dose? At $10 a pop, I didn’t want to take more than that.

Ms. Dog tired herself out and is now napping with Fettucini, the long, skinny dog-shaped toy I got her. Time to change cold packs! More later.

213

Hope that package wasn’t part of what came in or was going out by air.

I’ve replaced more keyboards for that than all other causes combined. Tres annoying.



Hair’s been cut, car’s been washed and chillage by the pool ensues. Our building has residents of all ages, and of course the older folks have adult kids and young or teen grandkids, while the younger residents may have little kids. Quite a cross-section here on a sunny Saturday. Lively, but not frenetic or noxious.

214

Howdy Y’all! Quality cee-mint pond time was indeed quality today. Lots of silliness ensues when the four of us get together. We ate, we drank, we laughed, we lounged both in and out of the water. A good time was had by all and they left around four. We have since showered and are enjoyin’ bein’ inside in the a/c. There is also B&J’s chawklit chunky brownie (or whatever it’s called) ice cream to be et up!

215

‘Ello, all! Hope your day is going wonderfully. Mine has been pretty darn good. No walking today because I actually slept in fairly late, kinda. I woke up at 5:30, then fell back to sleep around 8 for another couple of hours. I’ve been really good about making sure I’m eating my meals, so breakfast was yogurt and a banana, then it was board games, board games, board games! Followed by even more board games later tonight, I think. I also did a little catching up for my gaming convention that starts on Wednesday. I’m feeling like there’ progress, which is the best part of life.

Thanks, everyone, for your concern about my grocery store incident yesterday. I also think I may have figured out what happened. Based on my reading, and the input of a lot of friends who’ve been through it, I may have had my first hot flash. I’ve messaged my doctor to be on the safe side, see how she wants to handle it, but if that IS what it is, I feel so much more at ease about it. I knew it would be coming soon - 50 next March. I just really didn’t know what to expect with it. Now I’m trying to decide if my gummies will help or hurt.

I got a new water bottle in the mail yesterday. I still need to bling it out (I have more stickers than sense), but I’ve been drinking out of it today and have gotten through close to 64 ounces. So go me! (Yep, I’m trying to do my own cheerleading lately.)

JtC, I wish it more than THC was legal here. I don’t smoke it, but have been wondering if that might help my breathing when it gets bad. The gummies sort of help me sleep, but I’ve been told that marijuana is a bronchodilator which would help rather than hurt my asthma. Then again, the first (and last) time I smoked, I got the worst headache.

BooFae, it does sound like a busy day yesterday! Taking care of all the grading stuff is one of the most frustrating parts of academic life, at least from what my teacher friends said. Speaking of grading, CtE’s report card came in the other day. I think their English teacher bumped them up to the lowest D possible. She knows that CtE had a really rough year ibn general and that they DO know their stuff. At least it means that they don’t have to do credit recovery.

red, I’ve been hearing them overhead, but I don’t think I can see them from where I am. I’ve had several other local friends commenting about them on FB though.

pilot, I’ve been examining myself far too much (wait, that didn’t come out the way I meant it!). I’m trying to just take a look at why I’m feeling something and then let it move on. I have a Self-Care checklist that is weekly and one of the things it asks is what I plan on releasing. I said “painful feelings”, and for embrace, I said, “myself”. The third one that it asks is what I’ll avoid, and that was friends that are hurting me. And so far, I’ve been good with all of them.

As for the temperature reading, mine is usually low in general - around 97.6 on my thermometer at home. So the 94.5 may have been from drinking the mango that I’d had earlier, but I don’t think it was all of it. Either way, the important thing was that I felt better after a couple hours sleep!

taters, I hope your friend is feeling better. I hope that you’re just confusing some dates though, so you an get together with them next month.

I took my vacuum apart but it didn’t help. I think I blew the motor in mine. I hope yours is a MUCH easier fix!

FCM, I had something similar happen with my debit card not too long ago. I’d used it and given it to CtE to put back in my wallet. They slid it in the wrong place, which I didn’t notice until after I’d torn the van apart trying to find it. I’m glad FCD was able to get gassed and that you found his where you’d forgotten it. Good things all the way around!

I parodied this this morning in a message to CtE. They wanted to know if we were walking, so I replied. “No walking today. Walking tomorrow, there’s always walking tomorrow.” They didn’t get it, but it kept me amused!

Nellie, I hope the icing continues to work. I do something similar when I have my headaches. I really hope that you can find something that will let you feel better without having to ice yourself all the time. Ms. Dog sounds like she’s having a blast today.

Now I’m off to see what BFF and Hubby are up to. I hear them laughing at something in the other room, but I wanted to get a bit of my online stuff done before going back out to join them. Have a great night/morning/afternoon, all!

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And a good early evening to all. Only three games today, but one was as a center referee on a very competitive U12 boys game (must have done ok, both teams and both sets of parents were mad at me) and then finished it off as an assistant ref for a girls U14 game–which meant trying to keep up with 13 year old atheletes over 50+ yards of field for 60 minutes…not easy. So fed myself at Subway and am now back in the room recuperating since I signed up for two more games tomorrow morning before heading home. So need to get organized here and be ready for an early checkout tomorrow. And red, I normally work with U10 and U12 teams as a referee, occasionally I’ll work an U14 if needed, but that’s too much field and speed for me these days.

red, doggio, my spacebar is behaving on my home computer, but my problem is a sticking backspace key; hit it and it’ll sometimes delete three lines of writing.

FCM, glad card was recovered and cushioned cleaned.

{{{nellie}}}; hope the pain abates soon.

In regards to the long clothes in hot weather, I agree, having lived in Abu Dhabi for 4 years, that the Arabs know something about dealing with heat. Never wore one of their robes but the more you think about them, the more sense they make.

boo fae, 81F here in June in N. Ali-bama is called a 'cooling period and in swampy’s neighborhood it’s considered late autumn…

Sensei, I’m taking a lower-my-BP medicine (1 pill a day) and so far so good. Check it nearly daily with a home wrist BP monitor. Hope it beahves better than your meds did.

Real Fish, Glad Hubby’s doing better, now you look after yourself, too!!

OK, that’s all for now, will be up early tomorrow for packout and then traveling home, so will try to post something when I get back tomorrow afternoon sometime. Meanwhile all y’all take care.

217

We just loaded all the nice, clean cushions in my car. Tomorrow, we’ll put them back where they belong. Then I’ll clean the wood surfaces in the V-berth and our cabin while FCD gets both terlits working and starts flushing the antifreeze out of the water system. It shouldn’t be too hard a day. And having committed that to writing, something will happen to make us work harder than we should. Because that’s how it goes…

For now, tho, chillage to the max.

218

I ate like someone from Winterfell for supper. I made two recipes from the GOT cookbook. One was onions in gravy, and one was corn fritters. The beefstock I used I’d rendered myself so it was meaty without having salt added.

219

At least I have two shift keys. :stuck_out_tongue:

nellie, MsDog is lucky to have a bonus human looking out for her. Nelson likes his (mini) tennis balls when he’s entertaining himself (for example, when I’m working in the studio).

fishy, I’ve watched the air show on and off all day, either from my patio or the dog park. I’ll likely head out again in a bit with a cold one to watch the end of the day maneuvers.

Nelson had a good time at the dog park playing with his chiweenie buddy Jack, puggle bud Tater Tot and a couple of others who showed up. I got a few things around the studio and housekeeping tasks done between hanging out on the patio, so it’s been a pretty restful day.

220

Her person came and collected Ms. Dog. The Pride march went well, she said. About 10 whacko far-right members counter-protested, but everyone ignored them. Then 3 Proud Boys showed up and started screaming hate in the faces of the marchers, but the cops hustled them out of there. Lots of families with kids watched the parade.

The very first text I ever sent was to my daughter: “HelpIcan’tfindthespacebar!”

Real Fish, I hope that was only a hot flash. It sounds like one. In the words of Dave Barry,

This bodily change is called ‘menopause’, from the ancient Greek words meno (meaning your skin sometimes gets so hot) and pause (meaning “that it melts tuperware”).

So there’s school on Saturday afternoons, or is this a special class of some kind?