We’re docked in Montevideo. Not sure if we’ll venture ashore or not. Breakfast first.
Afternoon, mumpers! It’s currently 13c/55f with no predicted change, and cloudy. Weather app says “I know you can’t see it, but there’s a fucking cloud. We’ll call the cloud “Alistair”. Alistair’s a fucking cockwomble!” It’s definitely cloudy out there and it’s been raining too, not much, just enough to show the ground’s wet.
I read much and retained little, still feeling ill so have done very little with my weekend. I managed to get the bedding changed and washed yesterday, did enough cooking that I don’t have to do more than reheat leftovers today, and have taken care of the mogs. Other than that, I’ve been laying on the sofa doing very little. I had my first cup of tea today about 1pm, a sure sign of desperate illness!
{{{{{Big hugs}}}}} to all who need/want them, hope to be better and back to normal posting again tomorrow!
Up, caffeinated, and sheveled. Off today. I shall clean, then sloth. Changing the sheets as a cat owner teaches you it is possible to simultaneously love a creature more than life itself, and wish to yeet it into the Sun.
priorities. And stay safe!
Where the Graf Spee was scuttled. Showing that much like sodium and water, “South Atlantic” and “von Spee” react badly when combined.
Yum! I tend to save the rinds for soup, but like to just eat them too.
I’m glad you got the tears out of your system shoe. Hugs anyway.
Up, caffeinating, breakfasted and fixing to do KP and irkweek meal prep. Chicken tortilla soup is in the crock, so’s all that will need to be done to it later in the day is deboning the leg quarters.
After all of that’s done, I’ll tackle printing pictures again. Perhaps after a good night’s sleep, there won’t be as many curse words. 
Stay safe and healthy y’all!
Good morning.
It’s 40 degrees F, and cloudy skies. We should see a high of 52F, and the cloudy skies should give way to partly cloudy by afternoon. They say it will be unseasonably warm for the next six weeks, with little precipitation.
swampy, sending my good wishes to Rosie.
boofae, I’m sorry you’re still feeling unwell. I hope you start feeling better soonest.
nellie, I’m glad the neighbors calmed down and you didn’t have to call 911.
missred, I have a love-hate relationship with printers. I keep switching back and forth between Canon and HP. My latest printer has decided something is wrong with one of the print cartridges. I rarely print, but it’s annoying AF when I need to print, and the printers start crapping out. This one is only a couple years old, so I’m really annoyed. The print cartridge has been used ONCE. So again, just really annoying.
JtC, sending you hugs, just because.
I went to Lowes and then to Home yesterday. I was unsuccessful in my mission, so I must continue the hunt, but it won’t be today. I got home yesterday, went back out to get dog food and some groceries, and then did a load of laundry, which I forgot about in the dryer, so now I’ll have to "unwrinkle those clothes.
I’ll do the rest of the laundry today, along with some roll-sucking and probably floor scrubbing. That’s about the extent of the plans.
Okay, I know there is more to address, but the puppies are restless and want to play. I don’t like keeping them penned up for long periods, but it’s hard just to let them wander because they are still into everything and anything that can be chewed to bits will suffer that fate. So for now, even when they’re out of the pen, they’re still confined to the kitchen great room area and only when supervised.
I love those pups, but I miss my mornings with Polar, who would lie next to me while in the den and follow me upstairs to work every morning, hanging out and occasionally poking his nose and showing his face during a Teams meeting. Ah, well, they’re pups. With time (probably a lot of it), they’ll calm down too. I do enjoy their snuggles and the silly things they do. Still no barking from Buster, though.
We’ve stayed aboard. We may hit a hot tub later. Or not. Chilling in the Skywalker Lounge at the top of the ship.
DH and I are getting along quite well with an Epson with the EcoTank feature. So far as we can tell, it’s more cost-efficient than cartridges, and the printer itself is easier to get along with than the last (as in the last EVER) HP we had. HP, IMO, does fine on laptops, but not so well on printers.
Why haven’t we gotten more puppy pictures lately? (pleading look)
Started Typing: 8:26 AM ET
Clicked Reply: 9:50 AM ET
Morning, all! It’s currently 34°F, but sunny and supposed to warm up to an acceptable 51. And this week should be mostly sunny with highs in the upper 40s/low-to-mid 50s (mid-60s on Saturday!), which is perfectly cromulent for this time of year. I know that winter is far from over, but the 10-day forecast is free of snow and mostly free of below-freezing overnights…I’ll take it!
My resolve to quit my volunteer gig at the end of the year stands, but that’s still a ways off: meanwhile, it’s nearly time for this year’s events to start (I coordinate the staffing of membership tables at community events) and those are actually my favorite part. They can be time-consuming, the weather can be challenging, and sometimes the POCs are frustratingly disorganized, but on the whole I like being at events and engaging with the general public about our organization. There hasn’t been one since October, and the first one of the year is a week from today (indoors). Things start slowly, with 1-2 events a month through April, then May will provide a break before the June rush (when there seem to be events every weekend). Anyway, I’m looking forward to next Sunday’s event and the inaugural use of the wagon I bought last fall.
Today has been/will be on the quiet side. I still have a little volunteer-related stuff to do (some “your membership recently expired/expires this month” emails to send), but I’m definitely doing some putzing in between short bursts of productivity. I should wrap everything up well before lunchtime, and will take a shower before migrating to the living room for lunch and the remainder of the day. Sometimes I shower first thing, but sometimes I’d rather be lazy/stay grungy while doing computer stuff in the morning. Ah, the joys of living alone… 
I know what each of those words means individually, but I can’t parse that sentence (“stuck with”? “just wanted two”?)… 
I might have to look for those the next time I’m at the store. Usually when I make whomp biscuits they’re actually whomp croissants, but I luuurve biscuits! Even Bisquick biscuits, which I haven’t made in forever because I only get a gnawin’ and a cravin’ for them once a year or so and I’m not buying a box just for that. But whenever I allow myself to DoorDash a chicken pot pie from KFC, I definitely also get a biscuit (or two).
How did it wind up going? 
I’ve seen a few of their shows over the years, and they’re (almost) always like that. I imagine a Beatles show would be even more so, though!
I say “almost” because when my ex and I went to Vegas 16 years ago I got us tickets to the “sexy” Cirque show, and it wasn’t. The acrobatics were still super impressive, but I felt that the theme of the show fell pretty flat. It’s the only time Cirque has disappointed.
Exhibit #44578397 of Why Misnomer No Longer Rents Apartments.
(But seriously, I’m glad you didn’t have to call emergency services!!)
I have a Canon Pixma priner/scanner, and replacing the ink is easy peasy: I never have to reset anything, the printer just whirs for a few seconds the next time I go to print.
Were you perhaps dreaming of Christmas trees? 
That has never occurred to me! 
I have portable power supplies (which I keep charged), battery-powered lanterns, and many flashlights, and if a forecast is dire enough I’ll lay in extra batteries and water, etc., but the laundry thing is a great idea!
Ugh. Hoping you feel better very soon, and return to your regular tea-drinking schedule.
Fir any one who might be interested in our Mumper food promotion of the week, frozen Pillsbury biscuits, I posted a picture of the package to Seanette’s hubby’s Facebook messenger because I still haven’t figured out how to post images here. Maybe she can post it here~perhaps with a kitty picture or two while she’s at it.
ETA: just sent it to shoe’s FB too. We’ll see who gets to it first. Same deal, shoe, throw in a kitty pic or two to set our hearts a flutter.
They all did a great job. We did eat close to 9, but overlygirl made and steamed the dumplings herself. I was very impressed. As an appetizer to the dumplings, the kids, found all the frozen appetizers and heated them up. The husband was in charge of sauces. So in addition to pork dumplings, we had spanakopita with dill sauce and fried shrimp with Thai chili sauce.
Overlyboy was sort of in and out most of the time because he had some high school senior fun to attend to, which was fine. It was a nice night. After overlyboy returned, we were all up chatting until almost midnight.
Today the husband unit and I are taking our dishwasher apart. It hasn’t been cleaning well so we poked around a bit and realized the whole bottom is a filter that needs taking apart and cleaning. We realized this after 11 years of owning the blasted thing. It’s gonna be super gross. Guess this is why you read the manual. We bought it when overlygirl was 3 and she managed to break it with her tiny little butt a couple of times. But we’ve got no excuses.
So that’s why that picture showed up in FB Messenger. How about a link to Pillsbury’s page about the product?
And now I need the garlic cheddar version next time I go grocery shopping.
As for kitty pictures, @Bob_Blaylock would be the person to request any competent photography from.
Morning all. I have made the Sunday NY Times run and successfully grabbed the last one at Kroger, so I have my reading material for today (and the next several days). Slathered myself in the anti-itch stuff last night and it actually worked pretty well, took about an hour or so to kick in then I slept without any issues. Still, probably will set up an appointment with the Doctor, besides the itch I just found a little black spot (little as in about 1/3 the size of a penny) on my lower right side torso and since I never remembered it before, best to have it checked out. 50F now and that’s as hot as it’ll get, as rain is due to start anytime now and looks to continue most of the day, so except for getting to Longhorn for dinner and maybe 90 minutes at the gym, indoors slothage is my prediction.
I have a basic black and white Brother Laser printer, it meets my needs and outside of being a PITA to shut off sometimes it works well.
nellie, glad you’re starting to feel better. And sounds like you would have been a great psychiatrist, you ought to be billing some of those folks… Hope those upstairs guys finally move out (or at least one of them does).
talkie, good on ya for learning things (about yourself, most importantly). It’ll help, I am sure. And bonding over taking a dishwasher apart is in some marriage manual somewhere (or ought to be),
Wheelie, you may yet talk me into going to Vegas this year; never saw one of the Cirque du Soleil shows and sounds like I’ve been missing something. Still haven’t made any travel plans for 2024, between Antarctica and the Panama Canal I guess I got vacationed-out last year. We’ll see,.
swampy, stay dry, looks like you are getting the same all-day rain I have.
flyboy, dark place; I prefer to see my food clearly… 
((shoe)). Just because. Glad you are feeling better.
Nettie, hadn’t heard of the California storm, hope it’s not too severe.
FCM, yeah, especially since you have a tour scheduled, an early day is likely. Hope the Customs line moves as fast as mine did in Miami. Enjoy your last day on-board.
Need a chauffeur?
Feel better soon, boo fae.
Taters, a little jealous of you and the pups; not the hard work to take care of them, I am too set in my ways now to adapt, but having a dog to play with..(need to check if shelters around here need a volunteer).
Oopsie, hope the events go well.
Whew! Think I’m caught up, you people are prolific posters. Have a good Sunday all.
Well, I guess that question has been settled! Thank you.
Short answer? I didn’t think about it (traumatic brain injury strikes again. That keeps better track of what I can’t do than what I can, especially later in the day after cognitive fatigue sets in). Links I can usually do, if I remember them as an option.
If those garlic cheese bikkies are even remotely close to Red Lobster’s cheese biscuits, I wouldn’t dare bring them home. I’d eat all 12 in one sitting.
Still in L.A. Rain was predicted for last night. It was a brief shower. Rain is predicted for today but the sun is halfway out. My niece and I are planning to do some day drinking. Dinner tonight is fettuccine Alfredo with shrimp, sallit, and hush puppies.
IIRC our nellie was a high school teacher, which is very much requires wicked good psychiatry skills if you do it right.
A nice, sunny day for a drive. Headed to WI to visit youngest son and his daughters later today. We have a late birthday card for the youngest, who is nine.
Breakfast of savory oatmeal with a fried egg on top and a banana on the side.
I seem to have less and less to say as the days go by, but it’ a pretty boring life at this point.
I’m a little pressed for time this morning as we are going to visit cousin and cousin’s baby. Yesterday was a cousin day, too, as we all got haircuts from the best hair stylist I know. My husband has a lot of cousins, and they have young kids, so just gaggles of cousins.
Speaking of cousins, I’d like to register my formal annoyance that other cousin’s wedding invitations include a request to wear “all black” because I already bought the dress I intended to wear, had it taken in and hemmed, in fact a couple years ago, I bought three dresses with intent to use them for future family weddings, which are usually black tie. And now I don’t have a ton of wiggle room in the budget to just run out and buy another dress. I wish my husband’s family wasn’t so damned fancy. We call it the “[Surname] tax.”
Anyway I gotta go, husband is annoyed I am behind schedule. See how he likes it.
He’s been on the calculator all day, so I think it was a good call. He’s still annoyed when he gets overflow errors, but he’s wanting to do calculations like “googolplex raised to the googolplex power” and it’s kind of frustrating because there is no place that can be represented, that I know of, and it’s hard for him to understand that at his age. I just keep saying, “That number is too big to fit anywhere.”
We worked on basic arithmetic today, using a writing pad, for 2-4 digit numbers. He followed the simple addition problems but not the ones where you have to carry the one, and it’s really not what he’s interested in right now. He just wants to use the calculator for everything. The challenge is that, while he does understand math, he’s mostly using math as a means to an end, that end being “more numbers.”
I’m glad you finally realized how great you are. I was still pretty full of myself until I went to a very selective university, where I was never again the smartest person in the room. My classmates humbled the hell out of me.
I mean, I went there…
Dinner has been consumed, used a Gift Card from Xmas to pay for it (the waitress got 25% tip in cash) and came on home in the rain, which looks to be staying around for awhile. Once dinner has settled comfortably I’ll probably head over to the gym for some pedaling and sweating. Otherwise nothing much else on the agenda.
BBBoo, truth about nellie, I forgot that.
wet one, if you’re in Louisiana/Lower Alabama, you might escape the rain; most of it is north of the Gulf Coast now.
Cookie, you say enough. Have a good time with youngest.
Depending on their ages, you could even call it a “giggle” of cousins. And good luck at finding an appropriate dress, I’d be hard-pressed to even find a tie these days.
Wait a couple of years when he learns about exponents and raising things to the (Nth) power… 
OK, need to do a little more Internetting while digestion runs its course. Good afternoons all.
Hi folks - Mid afternoon on Sun, my last full day here. Since yesterday late morning y’all have added 70 posts! Every one of which I’ve read. Keepin’ up is hard work.
As to me:
Spent much of Sat day soaking up UV, seawater, and beer.
Did set up to go on a late afternoon-through-sunset coastal horseride, champagne, toasted marshmallows, & yak session. Seaside Nature Park St Maarten – Care for Nature, Care for Sint Maarten. It was just me, a couple about my age from NJ who were not married but had been together for a few years after unshared kids and earlier marriages, plus a pair of 20-something sisters from DC who came down here for one of their 26th birthdays. So much young-people enthusiasm; it was great.
Anyhow, lots of pics of us on the bluffs on horseback late afternoon then drinking and yakking as the sun sinks into the sea, the glorious stars and Jupiter come out, then finally we wander the horses home in the dark including a short horse-wade in the sea. Followed by a stop at the horse stable’s bar.
The guide was, of all things, a 30-ish Netherlands native who’d been a cowboy in his native country, came here following a nurse GF who ended up hating island life, while he’s loving it here being a horseman. So she’s long gone back to home and he’s still here. He recognizes the island horseman life is a dead end and is probably going back to the Netherlands soon to resume his horse-centric career there. He spend the whole tour riding backwards on his horse shouting tour info and horsemanship guidance to us noobs in that silly Netherlander-accented English. English and Dutch have a LOT in common and sound a lot alike. But either is gibberish in the other language; plausible gibberish, but gibberish nonetheless. Such fun for deaf me to decode while my hearing aids are back in my room to keep them safe from seawater immersion.
After all that I and the Youngster Sisters cab into the nightclub district of another town where I should have been staying all along. AlI have with me is the clothes I’m wearing, a mesh backpack with some sunscreen and a spare shirt, my rapidly-discharging phone, and my rapidly cash-exhausting wallet. We part company when I jump out of the cab.
I smell a big night coming, so I grab a hotel room nearby. Taxis are very hard to find after sunset, and essentially impossible after 10pm and it’s already nearly 9pm, so planning to sleep locally sounds smart. Fortunately they did not want my passport which was back in my room at the other hotel.
Big night ensues: eating and dancing at a beachfront disco until stupid late: Roxxy Beach | Sint Maarten’s premier beach restaurant, followed by some indoor clubbing nearby. Dancing in the sand is a great thing.
Awoke today, had beachy French breakfast of buckwheat crepes with yummy savory stuff inside, and recharged my dead phone from their shared charger cords while eating. Soaked up more UV back at my new hotel’s beach, then intended to do the premier zipline place near this town, but after checking out and cabbing there found it was closed today. Ouch!
Fortunately the closed zipline place was more or less on the way to my main hotel, so I continued taxi-ing to there. Got fresh clothes and have been dining & yakking beachfront ever since.
Would like to have a major climactic event here, as this is my last night on the island, but Sun night is not the big night on the island; nearly everything is closed. The hotel’s fancy eatery / drinkery may have to do and should fill the bill.
Have set up to do zipline etc Rockland Estate, St Maarten | Rainforest Adventure first thing on Mon, then hustle back to hotel, change, and go to airport.
As to y’all …
Ouch! Hope you can arrange some “blessed relief” soon. 
:leer:
My condolences. Back in the day my late Mom could not sleep unless Limbaugh or Hannity was force-feeding fear and hate into her subconscious the whole time. Scary shit indeed.
The good news is soon you can leave and never return.
Just another 27 writeups and management will harrumph very loudly in his general direction. Shame they can’t just can his sorry ass as it so richly deserves.
Yeah, there is that. I really got a lot of value out of this book: Amazon.com: Younger Next Year.
His major point is that we each face the choice between remaining vigorous followed by a brief decline and death, or becoming physically and mentally infirm decades or more before we finally die. As he said, “Most people rust out, not wear out”.
Setting aside the unfortunates who suffer traumatic accident (e.g. Boo) or those with severe degenerative diseases, most of us get to choose: rust out early and long, or wear out late and quickly. The good news is we get to choose. The bad news is we have to choose, and live with the consequences of our choices.
This. So much this. {{Hugs}}.
A lot of swine have benefitted from my cast pearls, faux though they may sometimes have been. Eventually the heartfelt but pro forma thanks ring hollow and then it’s time to move on with pride for a job well done.
For the last 5-ish years I’ve had a Microsoft Surface Pro tablet w TypePad cover as my only PC. All the portability of an iPad with none of the petty annoyances of not having a real PC with a real keyboard and real Windows. Can highly recommend.
High spec models can be had refurb from Microsoft directly or via Amazon for very little money and can do any/everything a full sized PC can do. I paid $300 for this one: Intel I7 dual core 8-hyperthread CPU, 16GB RAM, 500GB SSD, 64bit Win10 Pro.
Next time you’re ready for a tech refresh give it a thought. I bet you’d love it.
swampy Best of luck to Rose; we’ll be pulling for her.
Flyboy sounds like the bike is coming together; time to update the motorcyle thread with your progress?
Rock on kiddo!! Sooo good to hear.
This. It seems to have snuck up on you suddenly. We’re all here to commiserate if that’s of value to you. If not, know we’re still here.
Letting them do it, and suck at it, is part of letting them learn to do it and not suck at it.
You’ll eat late 2x/week for a few months in exchange for not lifting a finger 2x/week for many years. Sounds like a winning plan it it doesn’t drive you (IOW me) nuts first. Good luck!! Seriously, not snarkily.
As we said back in grade school: “Takes one to know one.” 
Back when I lived in LV and got to their shows, including the very original when they first came to LV, that was always about the words I’d use. Very well said Sir! Simply magic.
Been far too long since I’ve seen one of their shows. Will fix soon. Do you have any out-of-town work or other things planned for Feb or Mar yet? I need to set up my plans for the next event and LV is sounding fun. I’d probably be there for a week, but would probably bug you for 24-36 hours max.
Pleeeease be sure to share the title, etc., with the rest of us. Even if it’s an official church publication w imprimatur and everything, us heathens can usually come by a copy.
ETA: Hit Send too soon. More long-winded BS responses to your various pearls to follow …