Happy Birthday, Shoe!!!
Dicey, I was somewhat surprised to learn that not all whiskey comes with a screw-off cap.
Just don’t pat anybody on the butt. You’ll do fine.
2gig, that sounds nice, and should be fun. Enjoy.
We must be related. 
Later.
I finally caught up on reading the posts. Except for walking Ms. Dog and listening to her person’s problems, I was on the phone literally every minute yesterday. My sister-in-law called. My brother and I had talked about the need for a bigger dose of her anxiety meds, and he apparently used me for backup when talking to her about it, which is fine; I just wasn’t prepared to get a call. She really has issues. Anyway, it was a long call. An old friend called to vent. Then my sister called. Then my nephew–the one with severe OCD–called and talked for 3 hours. His mom, his therapist, and I are his only real contacts with the outside world, so I never try to rush him. All God’s children got problems. I had no chance to eat dinner until 11 PM.
The knee pain is worse, and now I have a big lump adjacent to the kneecap, but the docs told me to walk on it, so I’m walking, dammit. Well, limping, but close enough. I didn’t have the lump then, but AIUI, walking increases blood flow, which is good. I see knee doc tomorrow.
Yesterday, I was walking Ms. Dog, who was ever-alert in her selfless bid to rid the world of tree rats, when something fell from high up a Ponderosa pine next to us. It was an apple! A partially eaten Granny Smith, to be precise. Apparently a squirrel had dropped it. Considering relative size, getting it up that tree must have been like pushing a VW with your teeth. It was gone when we came back, so it looks like Sisyphus really liked that apple.
Star talk is making me miss Wyoming. Zero light pollution at our country home. I used to love star-gazing while my dog and I ran in the morning. Lots of light pollution here.
I suffer from some social shyness. I hate going to parties where I know few people. But presentations don’t bother me a bit. They used to: my first day teaching freshman comp, my hands were shaking so hard I could barely hand out the syllabus. But between teaching and a job where I gave a lot of speeches I got to relax and enjoy them.
VanGo and others, so sorry about the smoke. It’s been a part of my Augusts for a long time. It gives a vaguely apocalyptic, other-worldly feel to the outdoors, doesn’t it. I hope it clears up soon. June is way too early for that.
Hippie, I’ve told the Sister Corona story to several people, and they all thought it was hysterical. My sister laughed so hard, she choked. Thanks for the great story! You brought laughter to a lot of people.
Bumba, any chance you could get the ablation sooner, or is that not something you want?
You can see where you went wrong there, can’t you?
Real Fish, so great that CtE is stepping up. I wouldn’t attribute it solely to being a senior. You’d be surprised how many seniors are still completely egocentric. Also, hope your hub’s trip to see your MIL goes well.
TokyoBayer, thanks so much for those wonderful photos and info on sailing and sailboats! I learned a lot and can see the appeal.
Happy Birthday to Shoe!
We’re glad we met you!
You’re really beloved
By the whole Mumper crew!
And many mooooorrrrre! 
Pilot, I hope your sinusitis subsides soon. It’s really dragging on. Also, good luck at the wedding.
MetalMouse, I’m envious of your workouts! Good for you!
Nellie dear lady, one of god’s children who’s got problems is you. Please ensure Nellie gets some care and feeding and attention from Nellie too. Care and feeding from others is nice too , but you getting some from Nellie is the big one.
The wedding is June 2024. This is our first touch of planning the wedding.
Probably not the last, but these are highly capable adults, so I doubt we’ll be too roped into repeat performances before the Big Event next year after I’ve retired and our time is wholly our own.
Got my vacation approved for Monday (International June the 12th Day), and I already have the following Monday (Juneteenth floating holiday) and the last week of the month off. The office will be closed for the 3rd and 4th of July. It’s going to be a short month!
And what is this miraculous event about? The wiki page for Jun 12 (of course every day of the year has its own wiki page 
) is uninformative:
Per one of my other favorite sites / cites (see Holidays worldwide - timeanddate.com and scroll down a bit) the 12th is Kamehameha Day (observed) in the USA, Democracy Day in Nigeria, Peace Day in Kosovo, and in a sinister turn of events, Russia Day in Russia.
Not sure which one to celebrate but I know which one not to.
IME “short” months can be good if you mean short on required labor. Not so good if you mean short of desired / required cashflow. When it’s both there’s a savory yin / yang thing going on there.
Every year, all over the world, June the 12th occurs on that day.
Ah, got it. A special day indeed. 
I’m a fan of the site I cited precisely because it doesn’t matter what day of the year it is, there’s always some fun quirky holiday you can celebrate. Sometimes it’s fun to learn a bit about the holiday and try to make a silly decoration or bad attempt at a traditional holiday dish.
More often it’s enough (at least for lazy me) to simply raise the first glass of the afternoon / evening and solemnly intone “To King Kamehameha Day! Long may he Reign in our memories!” Cheers! Sluuurp!
I know, right? This year my birthday falls on International June the 12th Day.
Well that does it. We’ll have to name next week’s MMP
Flyboy’s Birthday in the MMP
Hey y’all! Listin up: Whichever of us starts it needs to remember. Of course if somebody has a more clever title than my basic suggestion, by all means us.
Congrats and best wishes for a fun day with SWMBO. Another orbit successfully completed.
Not International June the 12th Day MMP?
Wow, coincidentally my birthday falls on International June the 11th day, Happy birthday, birthday neighbor.
The smoke seems to have lessened, I may go outside for a bit. It’s chilly, I guess this is a bit like the Krakatoa summer. It really should have been warmer today, but the smoke kept the sun away.
Too late. Your cover is blown, buddy!
Howdy Y’all! Provisions got procured and I did manage to motivate and accomplish mowage. A shower, nappage, and day drinkin’ were also accomplished. Neither one of us felt much like eatin’, so we put the BLT’s and fries off until tomorrow. Allegedly, rain and tstorms are on the way overnight. We shall see.
I thought I’d boil some artichokes for dinner, but it’s too hot. We’re having SPAM® instead.
hippo birdies two ewe, dearest delectable shoe, hippo birdies two ewe!!
metal mouse, on your way home from Knoxville, you could catch the last day of The Great Tennessee Air Show. I won’t be buying tickets, since I can see most of it from my patio.
Happy birthday shoe!
When I took Nelson out this morning, he alerted to a critter over by the fence. I’m glad that he was leashed, given that said critter was a skunk. I found out that the Belgian malinois two doors down (he gets let out unsupervised) got sprayed.
I flashed (and chuckled thinking about nellie’s reaction to the term) most of the day, then handled some mop up for the lead.
Stay safe and healthy y’all!
Evening all. Swimming and Sauna have been completed, more Star Trek: Strange New Worlds watched (I just may have to subscribe to Paramount+ for this…), and ham and cheese on rye made for dinner. Still need to do my packing, but since check-in for the soccer tournament isn’t until 4pm tomorrow and it’s only a 3.5 hour drive up there, I have plenty of time to futz around tomorrow morning.
Pilot, enjoy the trip and planning and hope Her Ladyship’s notions don’t cause you stress.
Oopsie, you have a right to be concerned if critical things are not being communicated 3 days from the festival. Know it’s probably volunteers working this and they may be a bit overwhelmed, but you need to set schedules and due/do dates. Enjoy the working woking…(old guy joke)
nellie, you ought to charge an hourly rate for listening to all those folks; either that or eat sammiches like I do for dinner… Hope the knee gets to feeling better and heck, reading the miles you walk makes me feel that I’m not exercising enough.
We’d make a good pair; I’ve never been good at larger social settings (even with friends) but have no trouble speaking to them as a presenter.
That piqued my curiousity, so I Goggled and June the 12th is also (in the USA): National Red Rose Day, National Loving Day (celebrating Loving Vs Virginia (which outlawed bans on interracial marriage), International Falafel Day, National Peanut Butter Cookie day, and Superman Day. I’m sure there are others out there too.
OK, need to finish the last two episodes of my binge-watch and then start locating stuff for the trip. All y’all have a good night/morning.
Tobias has gone home. Roxy rode her first roller coasters today, and bumper cars, and othed stuff. She was draggy when they stopped to pick Tobias.
So it’s nice and quiet now. 12 hours of toddler is a lot!
Indeed!
Happy Birthday shoe. I hope you were able to have some birthday cake or at least a nice cupcake!
I’ve been watching you guys but just never really could muster the time to post because the weather has been perfect to sit on the porch and stitch.
Sitting out there, listening to the birds and the water feature (kitty water fountain) and smelling the flowers just makes things wonderful. When I look up, I can watch the butterflies flitting around the clover and the bees all the way over there drinking out of their water bowl.
I never wanted to be a star, I wanted to be an astronaut and go to the stars. Mom and I had a conversation about it which dashed my dreams. Mom remembers telling me that I couldn’t be an astronaut because I was a girl. I don’t remember that at all, I remember her telling me that all of the astronauts had been USAF fighter pilots and fighter pilots had to have perfect vision. Seeing as how I started wearing glasses when I was in the third grade…that dream went away.
I’ve never had a whiskey smelling kitchen, but I’m always pretty happy when I have a mead smelling kitchen.
When we bought this place, we…well I made plans that included pyracantha along the back fence. Well, the world ended shortly thereafter and we got older. We had to pay a whole lot of money to have the mulberry tree planted because we couldn’t dig the hole ourselves, which didn’t make us very happy. The tree does, though.
I bought some big planters and cut most of the bottom out of one and yesterday we filled it with dirt and planted a pyracantha in the pot so the roots can grow down into the dirt. If it thrives, we will “plant” more that way.
Today was a surplus produce day and wow, I sure do love summer. We got a big box full of tomatoes, summer squash and baby potatoes. We also got TWO small watermelons. Watermelon is my favorite fruit, but low carb hubs will only eat a bite or two. I was thinking about juicing one for a watermelon and rum cocktail while admiring my fuchsia like Nellie, but then NF told me that her hubs was having more tummy issues and was pretty only much eating scrambled eggs.
Sadly he is also lactose intolerant so I can’t offer to make them some tummy soothing Greek yogurt. I spent half an hour or so (chopping and processing food) asking myself how much I liked NF because I was really intrigued about the cocktail but I decided that I liked NF more than a fancy drink so the second watermelon went in her bag for tomorrow.
I noticed that our compost bin was starting to draw flies because there was too much “green” stuff in there, so I went to the local feed and grain store to get some straw. They let people have the fallen straw and hay if they bring their own bags, so I came prepared.
When I got there, I saw that there were other people sweeping and bagging and I just wasn’t in the mood, so I asked to buy a bag of chopped straw. The sweet young lady helping me really wanted me to buy a bale of straw because I would get more straw AND it would cost less. I fondly remember being able to huck bales of hay around, but those days are long gone.
A lady who was moving had borrowed our humane trap because she wanted to bring her ferals with her came back with the trap and I gave her tomatoes and summer squash and potatoes. My Tai Chi instructor (who will now be known as TC) has asked me to pick up a box for her, so I put some of my stuff in her box, and I made up a bag for NF.
I’m really happy that I was able to share everything, it hurts my heart to put perfectly good food in the compost bin.