We went to The Counter, a semi-fancy burger place, for lunch. Sadly, they weren’t what they used to be. The tables were sticky and the bathrooms smeared with greasy fingerprints. The burgers were good, but not superb like in the past.
And they added a mandatory 20% server charge to our tab. We won’t be back.
While I was in Walgreen’s I heard sirens of variou sorts and when I came out the police, an ambulance, and a firetruck were right outside the entrance. I could see a guy unresponsive on the sidewalk. Hope he will be okay.
With the diet I’ve been on I haven’t had ice cream in five months, and Coke only once.
I got a pre-rolled joint with bonus points and just learned that the goddamned thing is in a fucking sealed CHILD PROOF container that is going to take a goddamned child to open because my wrists just aren’t up to the press, twist and turn shit anymore.
BHurrah!
[checks dates]
Happy next birthday!
Try the A-gang solution: Hit it with a hammer. If that doesn’t fix it, get a bigger hammer.
None of us felt like cooking today, so supper was pseudo-gazpacho – a cup of salsa stirred into a tin of unheated Progresso tomato basil soup. Not bad. 
After it cools off a bit Lady SCAdian may roast some potatoes and yellow squash…
I was on my way to the pantry for a hammer, but then I noticed the neighbor kid on his bicycle. He was happy to open it for me cause his mom always tells him he needs to be nice to old people. Knowing that I might need him again, I didn’t shove him off the porch.
Speaking as a Mom, I’m sure your Mom is at least 10 times as excited and looking forward to seeing all of you.
When you look out the window and see the Mitten, be sure to wave to shoe and I. 
On walk to work saw 4 bunnies this morning. I had hoped to be out of there in time to walk home to take Hubs to preChemo appt but a lot of weird things cropped up so called Hubs and asked him to come pick me up a few minutes before we had planned to leave.
This appointment was at a different facility than we had ever been to. It was fantastic. Why, you might ask? I’ve always said Accounting is Accounting no matter where you work, debits are always on the left and credits are always on the right. What makes the job are the people i.e. who you work for and who you work with. Well, that goes for medical facilities as well. Every single person that we interacted with was not only pleasant but genuinely very ebullient. The receptionist was so welcoming. The intake nurse was so very cheerful. Then the tech or perhaps nurse who was following/charting the sorta experimental drug that Hubs is taking was so engaging. And the Hemotology Doc was his normal great self. On the way out there was a different receptionist and we were sent on our way with smiles and a very nice farewell. This location is a little closer and easier to get to than the hospital that we’ve seen this Doc at the last 3 appointments. He used to be at the Medical Center/Hospital that is in our City but earlier this year he was made the medical director of the downriver facilities of the Henry Ford Hospital system so he no longer has office hours in our City. I’m fine with this facility that we visited today.
Hubs dropped me back off at work and went to a diner to pick up a corned beef sandwich. He brought some of it to me; it was delish! Unfortunately Hubs didn’t enjoy it as much as the chemo screws with his taste buds. I introduced him to 3 of the guys I work with. I told him it would probably take me 1/2 hour to 45 minutes to complete my work then when I got home, we could go to the Fitness Center. Well an hour 45 later, I punched out. All kind of weird things happened yesterday and some today that my expertise was needed to explain/figure out. Picked up a lot of bark that had fallen off several trees on the walk home. I had brought a plastic bag with me to put them in. They make great tinder. Will save the bag to take to the cottage next month so we can enjoy a number of nice fires (and of course that means s’mores).
When I got home, I noticed that the garage door was open…meaning Hubs had opened it. The automatic opening of it has not worked for a number of years so physical effort has to be used to open, and lift it up overhead. This is the first time Hubs has been able to do this since February so the combination of meds is giving him some relief, at least enough for him to be able to do this, which ain’t easy, take it from me. So, the reason he opened it was so he could mow the backyard. Yay for Hubs to be able to do this. And while it did wear him down somewhat, he was still willing to go to the Fitness Center to do some PT on the NuStep; although he was too tired/worn out to do the exercises using the pulleys that the Dr of PT told him to do. We’ll go again on Friday.
Dropped off payment at the post office for the portion insurance wouldn’t pay for his PT that he had in April. Then went to the local Medical Facility/Hospital pharmacy to pick up the 'scrip that his PCP gave him a refill on. He was surprised to see that his Doc authorized 2 additional refills without having to call or go in. Thank goodness.
Have done a load of khakis and other clothes using warm water. There are still 4 more piles of laundry to do but they will have to wait for another day. I’m not a person who can do more than 2 loads per day and today has turned into a one load day.
Mowing the front yard will have to wait until tomorrow morning after work. Hopefully it won’t take more than an average amount of time to complete.
Big freaking burst of laughter!!! 
Ok, hope everyone’s over the Hump.
Evening all. Did try the Fuddruckers, the food was fine and being able to do my own fixin’s is a plus, but not all that much of a thrill. Then did something I haven’t done in 55+ years…I went miniature golfing. They have a lot of mini-golf courses down here (also a lot for grown-up golfers) so decided why the hell not. And surprisingly, I did pretty good, they didn’t have a scorecard or par numbers at the holes, so I made them all par 3’s, and ended up with a 1-under par 53 for the 18 holes. So I am moderately proud of myself.
Lots of young people at this place, the pool was very noisy a bit ago, but has quieted down substantially, so should get a nice night’s sleep. Still very humid (83F at 9:30pm) and my shirts are pretty sweat soaked, if this keeps up I may need to find a laundromat to dry them out.
JtC, glad you found a child to help with the child-proofing. I’m reminded of the old Groucho Marx quote: “Why a four-year-old child could understand this report. (aside to aide) Run out and find me a four-year-old child. I can’t make head nor tail out of it.” And glad NFand her hubs made for a nice day despite the FUBAR at the food handout.
Cat Glove, Hooray for Hubs improvement; just make sure he doesn’t try to go too hard and have a relapse… And glad the medical facility was staffed with people who mean to do well.
Cupcake, sorry that happened, hope whoever it was is ok.
Pilot, nice travel, but I think you’ll be happy to get home.
VanGo, both you and Cupcakes having alarms and excursions around you; take care now.
OK, getting close to 10pm and I have had a pretty full day, so all y’all take care.
Happy Hump Day!
It was cool this morning, but got hot, 88 degrees.
It’s been a messy two days. Nothing major, just little pissant stuff that gets on your nerves.
Like going to pick up a script and finding out that the drive thru is closed so you have to go in, but you are not dressed to be seen in public anywhere other than Walmart, so you have to go the next day.
Today was the GR’s first day of daycare.
Originally, I was told I couldn’t bring both of them because they have had problems with littermates in the past. That upset me because I was so looking forward to a dog free day. I told the daycare that I only wanted to bring them together once or twice and then alternate weeks, so they said to bring them both in.
I could tell they were scared when my son took them in, but the daycare said once they got in the back with the other dogs, they did great. They were very happy to see my son when we picked them up, and they were all over me in the truck.
They are worn out tonight, which is a good thing.
I had stuff planned for today, one of which was a long hot bubble bath.
None of that irked as my son got off irk at 330, and so after we took the pups to daycare, I went back to bed and slept most of the day.
He’s probably going to get off early again tonight, but he should be bringing me some goodies. Tonight is free dinner night and a Bar-B-Que place will cater their lunch. They are encouraged to take food home, and this time my son remembered to take some containers to put the food in.
Probably the one time he remembers to take containers, there won’t be many leftovers.
He just texted, he won’t get off until 5-530, so I can get some sleep.
Off to bed, will hopefully be able to respond to stuff tomorrow.
So a base Macho Truck ™? :d&r:
Moooooom, I took shots for retinopathy for a few years. Originally, I was taking them about every 8 weeks and tapered off to about once a year until about five years ago. They greatly helped with my vision to the point of not having to have them for a while, even though I still get checked out once a year. I’m with you on the jump to recipe button.
Hope that your bangs and bruises get better soonest vroooom and doggio.
rocker, my dog’s dental bill this year was higher than my last three years combined, so I know where you’re coming from.
:rant: I’ve come to the conclusion that anyone who qualifies for an AARP card (and I’m one of them) should be required to have supervision when using packaging materials. Yes, I handled the old people phones today. What took the cake was an iPhone8, in it’s original box (the phone was definitely used) wrapped in several yards of bubble wrap in a 12"X12"X6" box sealed with about 2 rolls of packing tape. It took me ~10 minutes to open it and 2 minutes to fully process it. Oy! :rant over:
I just folded the load of laundry that I ran when I got home, packed for the drive to Dad’s tomorrow and et a stoner supper (I didn’t want to have dishes to do). I’ll wait until 0900 to call the vision center to see if my new glasses are in before leaving. If they are, I’ll pick them up. If not, I’ll load the car, take Nelson for one last relief break before heading the little car north.
Stay safe and healthy y’all!
Too late – if you’re in NYC you’ve already passed me.
Fuddrucker’s is one of my two favourite burger places, the other being Five Guys. We had one at one of the casinos, but it closed a few years ago. The best burgers in town are still at the SubVets clubhouse, though.
On some tech support calls I’ve done, I very much wanted to tell the caller “please go borrow a convenient eight-year-old and put him/her on the phone”. An eight-year-old would have been more competent and better at following directions.
There is an organization that provides the kind of day labor I am looking for so I’m checking them out. Obviously, renting a UHaul myself and using friends would be cheapest. Problem is that most of my friends are in the same age range and physical shape (nightmare) that I’m in. I’m going to check out what suzie suggests with the UHaul folks. If they don’t have the connections, I will call the organization I found. My friend is willing to float me some money to make this all happen.
This all came about because the greedy mgmt company demaded that I sign a lease and pay up within 72 hours of getting accepted so that I can “earn” some free rent. The trouble with that is that it ate up the money I was going to use to move into the “low income housing” in the first place. Now, the rent in this place isn’t exactly low, but it is lower than other similar units in this marketplace so getting free rent is very acceptable. But having to pay for the time that I am not able to use the apartment because all my moving-in money just disappeared is very, very frustrating. Not that the bldg management cares because not only did they get their money but, by getting the money, they can also declare another unit occupied, which looks good to investors. That I can’t afford to physically move in? Well, that’s my problem not theirs.
I hate corporate America. I’m ashamed of it. And I’m appalled that I haven’t found a way to not participate in it.
On the bright side, I’m no longer working for a giant soul-sucking company. Just a tiny one. And my days there are low stress. That, I like. And I found the perfect shower curtain. It’s the little things, right?
Shipping counter point: If it’s being shipped, it’s running through an automated system with 70Lbs. dumbbells and boxes of floor tile, and being handled by surly, underpaid, overworked drones. Packaging and tape keep it safe.
Up, caffeinated, and sheveled. Off to heave.
Good Mornin’ Y’all! Up and caffeinatin’. YAWN ‘Tis 77 Amurrkin out and partly cloudy with a predicted high of 97 and N.O.S. for the day. Gonna be a hawt one here in southwest Jawja! The big item on today’s agenda is funeralizin’ Tom. There will be a visitation from ten to eleven this mornin’, then the funeral at eleven, followed by the inurnment (for reals that’s what the technical term is) in the columbarium at the church house. Then the bereaved will be fed. The goal for us is to get through it all then go to the hog trough GC for today’s big feed. Needless to say it will be an afternoon/evenin’ of high sloth and general overall uselessness. On the plus side, since I’ll already be there, I can take care of candle duty.
Now I need more caffeine and to feed rumbly tummy. Then I suppose I must purtify for funeralizin’. On the plus side, I can wear comfy attire as I’ll be all garbed up in cassock and surplice, so no one will know.
Happy Thursday Y’all!
Morning all, up and on the second cup. It’s 85 here, and supposed to pass into the hundreds again (106 I think). Wx folks claim we’ll start downward after this and see a high of only 96 on Saturday. Not sure Only should go in the same sentence as 96 degrees, but whatever.
The poker game was great, but I did not win free glasses from my eye doc. In fact, he’s well ahead of me $$-wise at the moment. But there’s always next week, right? The good part is that it was loads of fun and it is a great group to hang out with. The bad news is that two of them play poker professionally. At least I can learn from the pros. I suspect the hourly rate for these lessons will be high, but after retirement it’s amazing how enthusiastic the wife is about “getting me out of the house”. Something tells me it also explains her willingness to move the boat closer to home, so my “man-cave” is more convenient. 
Today is rebuilding the final support beam on part of the roof. I’ve replaced three of the four, and yesterday finished putting up the temporary supports (to hold the whole mess up when removing the beam). All we need to do is pull down the old one and use the lessons of some old guy named Archimedes to wrestle the new one into place. After that it’s off to the range, to continue the learning curve with my (former) non-dominant eye. I’m gonna be dependent on it for at least 3 more months, so might as well get used to it.
Yesterday I finished building a support-rack for the new jerry cans in the truck. The new truck is gas, and DOT regs prohibit most types of gravity/check-valve aux tanks (as are done with diesels). So I’ve just gone with high-quality Wavian cans and a hand pump to boost the range if needed. I left the new can full of gas in the truck with the bed cover closed while driving around all day, and not a whiff of gas fumes. These things seal really well and are a safe alternative. Now I need to finish the other rack and paint them. For anyone wondering, it’s a royal PITA to hostle the truck+camper into most gas stations, and I prefer to have enough range for a full day’s travel during vacation trips. Easy to extend with diesel, but tougher to do with a gasoline engine.
Oh well – on to the day! Hope everyone has a good rest o’ week.
We’ve got at least 2 living in our yard. It appears the clover I planted in the lawn has made for a yummy bunny buffet. I don’t care, as long as they leave my ‘maters alone, tho I have so freekin’ many of them!!!
Not sure if I ever shared this tale here - but it’s not like I’m going to force anyone to read on…
Part of my degree requirements included an electrical engineering course in feedback systems. It was taught by a grad student whose favorite expression was “This is so simple, a child of 3 could do it.” He also like to refer to things as “a piece of cake.” Yeah, he was an ass, and even the EE majors thought so.
Anyway, the course final project required us to optimize something by changing certain values and running a program that created a graph of the results. As background, this was 1978, waaaaaaay predating PCs. In fact, you could still pick out the Computer Science majors by the boxes of punch cards they carried around campus! And getting access to the card punch terminals was nigh on to impossible.
Fortunately, for this project, my partner was a geeky kid who was adept on the actual computer terminals and he had access that I lacked. Still, getting a terminal often required coming in at stoopit o’clock in the middle of the night, as was the case right before this project was due. He and I were getting kinda punchy, and at one point, I suggested we change the target variable to pi, just because.
Well, the graph that generated was decidedly phallic and we were decidedly exhausted and that’s when inspiration struck. The next day, I bought a tablet of paper used in first grade when kids are learning to make their letters - you know - widely spaced lines with a dashed line in the center. I also got a box of crayons. This was, of course, to write a final report by “A Child of Three” that included the phallic graph. It also included a comment that we didn’t use “a piece of cake” but instead opted for pi. I was so proud of it!
Unfortunately, the reports were all turned in on the very last day, so I have no idea how he responded to my inspired creation. But I got a B in the class, thanks to my geeky project partner. I like to think the grad student took the hint, but I doubt it.
OMG, that could have come from my late FIL. A few years back, he sent a broken metal part to FCD to see if he could repair it. FIL carved a cavity in a piece of foam to fit the broken piece, wrapped it, put it in a box, covered the box in brown paper, then taped the crap out of it. Oh, yeah, and the box was a cube, maybe 3" on a side. The packaging materials weighed more than the little broken part! So, yeah, I agree with you!
We went to Fuddrucker’s once and all I can say is I was utterly unimpressed. I also don’t get the love for Five Guys - FCD loves the place by I find the burgers to be just ordinary. Maybe it’s me?
It appears the grandspawn have given their germs to FCD - I expect I may be next. So it goes with kids. Plans for today - um, dunno. Maybe a playground if the kids seem over their colds. No rain in the forecast and temps in mid-80s, so fingers crossed that I can let them run ragged for a while.
Tomorrow and Sat, I’ll be helping FCD at the school. He’s supposed to have volunteers coming on Sat to help pull the network and PA system wires thru the suspended ceiling. So two grubby work days ahead. Then on Sunday, he wants to go out in the boat, weather permitting. But first, I need to shower, dress, and wrangle the kids.
Happy Thursday!!
Mornin’ all. It’s pre-dawn in Mexico City as I get settled in Row 10 next to a slender young Latina. Slender being the only truly important consideration in seat-mates.
Irk has been another week of paddling like mad under the water to look serene on the surface. And not always that serene. On Sat I picked up a pre-dawn patrol flight that was supposed to have gone the previous evening but didn’t. Those were some unhappy campers let me tell you. We were supposed to ride home Sun pre-dawn but something went wrong with the crew that was supposed to work, so we worked instead of rode. Except for early morning thunderstorms & turbulence ops were normal. Got home in time to eat lunch, kiss Her Ladyship, eat leftovers dinner, & go to bed. On Mon another pre-dawn start. Smashed a bird on the first landing, cost an hour’s delay getting that checked out. Off we go for leg 2. Uneventful except the hour late consumed all our slack for getting lunch before leg 3. Bought a clamshell, and ate it during boarding. Leg 3 we pushed off as it started to rain, sat 30 minutes before ATC found airspace for both jets and thunderstorms. Zoom off to the northeast, where gathering storms portend trouble. Sure enough, airport closes and reopens before we get there. Some zigzag delays, but nothing major. Hotel is nice. Tue pre-dawn we try again. A few storms but mostly easy. On the way back to the northeast we left timely while the weather up there really crumps, major closures, backlogs, etc. We hold awhile 300 miles short of the destination, almost need to divert, but slip in OK albeit almost an hour late. Hotel was nice again. Then the airport closes again. At dinner our planned dawn patrol for tomorrow Wed is delayed to 4pm. Ouch! Oh well. At midnight the plan changes again, now we’re doing Wed’s dawn-patrol to MEX instead. A dawn patrol that was supposed to have gone last night, but for delays and storms. Oh well, more happy campers. But wait, there’s more. Having just worked 5 consecutive shifts of 3-4am wakeups, when we get to MEX at noon we’re supposed to immediately sleep until 10pm then go back to work, flying back from midnight until sunrise Thu. Yeah, right, that’s smart & safe. NOT! So first thing in the morning I call HQ and tell them that’s not happening. Find a night-shift crew to do that. They promise to fix it, and a bit to my surprise, within 2 hours it was fixed. Now we’ll lay over, wake up stupid-early pre-dawn Thu again, and ride home. 6 shifts all at roughly the same time of day. As it should be. Circadian safety crisis averted, we show up at our appointed pre-dawn time, as do 3 of 4 FAs. They’d gotten rousted from home at 3:30 am. We borrow a spare FA to permit us to board, and load the people. Departure time has come and long gone. Finally the last FA shows up, we swap out the spare, lock up, and go. For whatever reason he’d been notified much later than the others. Taxi out and the airport turns into a shambles. The weather here is fine, but the wind is shifting and just out of sight 50 miles away thunderstorms are filling in everywhere. Suddenly about half the departures need a different runway and a different flight path for the first 300 miles until they get in the clear. And the total flow rate in the air is now about 10% of the morning rush demand. Cue massive collective flail for ATC and massive individual flail for each crew as we all rejigger all the plans made by our respective HQs and by us over the last 3 hours. Meanwhile, nobody is taking off as we’re all furiously coordinating & reprogramming and … while more and more jets are pushing back here at sunrise and joining the not-moving queue to go. Looks like the crowd of cars leaving a major sporting event. Finally enough folks get their flail done we can all start to launch. Yaay, problems behind us. Not so fast: continuous lousy unavoidable turbulence for the next 90 minutes. Bouncy bouncy bouncy. Then a nice ride down, normal arrival, no issues w customs or hotel, lunch & martinis, then finally early bed for early getup Thu and here we are.
Just another week on the job.
Rat’s visit to Myrtle Beach sounds like fun. I haven’t been since the early 1980s. Be sure to find a tacky souvenir & post about it in the tacky souvenir thread.
Boo that sounds like an amazing journey; glad it worked well so far. It’ll be fun to hear your travelogue.
Good to hear that Mitten Hubs is doing better. Being helpless is real hard on the psyche; being able to do things, even silly things like mow means a lot.
Super stressed! With the upcoming trip to America, lots of things to worry about.
Tomorrow is the last day of my children’s school (and my part time job there) for the summer so I will have lots more time but I think I’ll waste too much of it.
SenBoy’s class has a school play tomorrow. They do the Alice in Wonderland, and he is the March Hare. He’s memorized all the lines and is ready! It will be exciting.
Morning, mumpers! It’s currently 13c/55f with a predicted high of 20c/68f and mostly sunny. Weather app says “Some people may say this fucking weather is great. I don’t fucking know, I’m probably inside.”
That is true, it’s close to 8am and I am in my hotel room in San Francisco, we have a late checkout and an evening flight to Arcata to look forward to. My life is best summed up as “another day, another plane!”
Today’s plan is to get up, sheveled and packed again, go out somewhere for food and then lurk in the hotel until it’s time to head to the airport.
Swampy I hope funeralising goes ok today and everyone gets to celebrate a life well lived.