Short version: I quit my job and sold my house early winter 2021. Used the proceeds to buy my car and travel the country. I’ve ended up in Portland, OR. When I moved here, I was flush and I rented a way too expensive apartment in a high rise that I’ve been too lazy to move out of until now. Procrastination is a wonderful thing.
Oh, I have those, too. I was flossing in the morning before brushing and using the interdental brushes at night after brushing. My dentist said that wasn’t enough and urged me to get a water flosser. He said water flossers are better at cleaning gum pockets as well as tight spaces between teeth. If I’m going to be away for a night or two, though, I’ll take the brushes because they’re so much easier to pack. (I still use a flosser once a day even with the water flosser.)
J-Bats, you had a wonderful ‘get away from it all’ time and I’m a tad jealous,. hope things go well and you can do it again sometime. Great picture and hope the smaller living space gets the canine seal of approval.
Pilot, I usually travel with a group of friends, one of which is a travel agent, but nothing really planned for 2024, last year (between Antarctica and the Panama Canal cruises with a summer week in South Carolina) wore me down some. But I enjoy your adventures (would like to visit St. Martins someday just for the plane landing/taking off (for those who don’t know,the flights come over the beach there at a ridiculously low height and the takeoff blast blows people into the sea–great fun for airport geeks like me). We’ll see what happens.
shoe, ah, the ‘public’. Do take care, there are some folks walking round that are a danger to themselves and, more importantly, others like you. And good for standing up for each other, like my Mom used to say “I can yell at you, but nobody else can.” And yeah, back pain comes with age…and don’t I know it.
JtC, hope VBC is doing better tomorrow. Better safe than sorry.
Wendy’s provided the evening’s repast and have done approximately squat all night. Well, did fill out and turn in a form for a Class-action suit against Verizon, I could get up to $100 someday once all the court stuff is done…if I live that long. so I expect sometime around 2027 I’ll get a Paypal credit for, say, $11.37 or so. Still, only took about 5 minutes to fill out and submit, so pretty cheap anyway. And I did check on-l;ine that this is a legit suit and not some elaborate scam
Getting close to bed time so catch up with all tomorrow.
Really like the colors on you, and they remind me of a Betta Fish
You misspelled “and.”
Go big, or go home.
Srsly, a bouquet of all three IRL would make me fall over with joy.
I’ve never actually seen Calif. poppies in person. Just pictures. They make me swoon, and this coming from someone who doesn’t even like 
very much.
You’d need several shades of yellow, that insane-o-pants California Poppy orange, plus pink and red for the roses … oooooh! { twiddles fingers like Monty Burns }
Not directed at me, but 1a.) today I learned a thing existed, and 2b.) they’re in my Amazon cart.
Thank you!!
Coupla months ago, I had a possum in my kitchen (and, briefly, basement stairs). A broom had to be involved, although fortunately for all involved, the situation did not escalate further.
How’d things go with Mr. Rocky Racoon?
Ah, shit, my BFF wound up in Beaverton.
What scared me about this one was that it started out semi-normal. Other than kinda hittin’ on me & asking my name (and I have an on-the-spot alias for exactly situations like this; I do NOT give my real name to anyone I don’t know) he didn’t seem weird (and I, ah, speak fluent drunk-ese) and then suddenly, WHAM! so that brought Sweet Manager flying 'round the corner - I actually heard her literally drop what she was doing - and then “… it all happened so fast!” and then he was out the door.
… took him a minute or two to drive off, tho.
I’m assuming he was on his phone either boo-hoo’ing to his boys, or looking for whoever else is still open (crew was like, “Go to Taco Bell, asshole!” “Should we give them a heads up?” “Nah. It’s T.B. They got it.”)
We promptly locked the lobby when he left.
Which is another 
“Hey, I tried to come in, you lobby is locked!” “Yes, it is.” “WHYYYYYYY?”
Because. Do not question.
when i was in the first grade and walking to school in an early 1980s Indiana winter my inability to tie my shoes caught up with me in the worst possible way … I was walking across an old-fashioned gravel driveway but the part that broke the sidewalk up was frozen bare dirt,… and i started slipping … and in the act of trying to catch myself, i stepped on my untied shoelaces and skidded face-first into the driveway…
Cue much crying and stinging pain… walking the last 10 minutes to school in where the student safety patrol escorted me with the older kids making sure i arrived at the nurse’s office who was used to me being there for some reason once a month …the nurse took out the more visible pieces out of my face then dad took me to the er who numbed my face to remove the rest …and i missed yet another 2 days of school…
it wasn’t the first nor the last time i accidentally almost offed myself …
Napping with foot cramps(and big toe cramps 
) is not fun. But up, caffeinated, and sheveled. Off to heave.
Cool. and hope the finances sort out quickly.
Gonna have a cocktail by Princess Juliana airport?
I did always enjoy yeeting those types of people out the door.
I don’t blame you one bit.
You’ll fit in here fine. Welcome!
That would be cool. And love the hair color.
Woke waaaaaaay stoopit early for no apparent reason. But it gives me a chance to share this…
As we cruise along, there are a couple of Antarctica experts who make ship-wide announcements about what we’re seeing, history of the area, or whatever, in English. Then another man repeats the same in Spanish. Which is unremarkable, except that he sounds exactly like Father Guido Sarducci! FCD pointed that out and now I can’t unhear it! 
Today we’re heading back north with a slow pass around Deception Island along the way before crossing the Drake Passage again. It was calm on the way south, but I don’t know what the forecast is. We’ll be at sea tomorrow, stopping in the Falklands the next day. I expect today we’ll see more bergs and glaciers and maybe whales. It should be chill.
Happy Tuesday!
Good Mornin’ Y’all! Up and caffeinatin’. YAWN 'Tis 33 Amurrkin out and N.O.S. with a predicted high of 63 and N.O.S. for the day. It’s laundry day! I can hardly contain myself. There will also be the usual sloth. Sup shall be tacos 'n fixin’s with rice and refried beans. Fartfest to follow.
Now I need more caffeine and to feed rumbly tummy. Then, onward into the day! Rah.
Happy Tuesday Y’all!
Mornin’ all. Now 30-ish minutes post-sunrise on a crystal clear day. It’s 54/12 outside on the way to 72/22. I’ve sheveled and been caffinatin’ from the hotel “breakfast” area. After I’m done w y’all I need to finalize what clothing & accessories I’m taking to Sint Maarten, and retrieve them from the storage unit. then check out of this hotel and drag that little bit of stuff to my new digs and settle in there.
I have to say that sleeping 9 stress-free hours and turning on the light when I first wake up was a welcome change of pace. Even back when I was working and staying in hotels I often did my first bit of wake-up / get-up process in the bare minimum of light. And I was quiet, but not stressing about quiet.
Life is good.
When my late first wife and I lived deep down in the city she bought a Wrangler. They make awesome city “sports cars.” Can highly recommend for that mission.
Tiny wheelbase, tiny turning radius, lots of pick-up-and-go under 50mph, fun to stir the manual gearbox, fits easily in a 3/4ths sized parking space caused by some other jerk hogging a space and a half that nobody else can use, etc. She loved that car. As JtC said, a little lacking on creature comforts, but the modern ones have pretty good HVAC. We always worried a bit about somebody slicing the top to break in and ransack the car. We never had a problem, but making sure to never leave anything whatsoever visible anywhere inside helped.
Then we moved out to the far edge burbs where it was a 5-10 minute freeway drive to everything. The Jeep instantly went from awesome to inappropriate and was sold a few weeks later.
This. Congrats on a job well done. I guess that pic was you at the house you sold when the car was new? Or at one of your temporary stops on your peregrination?
Ima gonna do something similar here soon. I’ve already got the car, now I just need a set of destinations.
I’ve thought about renting a mini-RV along about May and spending the whole summer going to every MLB ballpark in the country for a game or 3. Along with hangin’ in the relevant city a few days. Like J-Bats, I find suburbia is kinda bland; I need some urban activity. Sometimes I’d sleep in the RV, sometimes I’d stay at a hotel with it. That’s all the detailed my “plans” have gotten. Done right, that might take two summers to complete. OK.
I wonder if there are any organized tour groups / caravans of similar baseball pilgrims? That might be a fun group to hook up with. I haven’t looked, but if anyone happens to have heard of such a thing I’m all ears.
Onwards into the day! Cheers all!
Good morning!
It’s 52F and cloudy, with an expected high of 59F for the day. There is a chance for rain showers later in the morning, but it’ll be relatively dry.
Welcome, Internet Legend.
fishy, I like the hair and I’m glad you to hear there has been a little improvement with your Dad.
Yesterday was filled with petty workplace turf war drama, and I was caught in the middle. I was pretty much over it the first hour in. I won’t go into it here; it’s stupid and petty. I’m only peripherally involved in this particular incident, and I plan to nip this in the bud by contacting the PD offline. She was on the road for much of the day yesterday, but she should be back today. To be fair to the person who came in hot, she has a point, and the other individual causing the strife has a problem with control and stepping into MY territory, too. I kind of let it go because I’ve got bigger mountains to climb and taller swords to die on, but yesterday was ridiculous, and this PD’s actions have caused a lot of wasted hours. I did respond via email outlining my program’s responsibilities and my role. Only one PD was smart enough to catch what I was addressing.
Welp, it’s almost breakfast time for the pups and I need to get that kitchen tidied.
Good morning, all.
Across the street from us lives a family who have two little boys. Except wait, that was a few years ago and now the little boys have shot up to become what appears to be basketball players or fullbacks in high school or even college.
And now one of the boys appears to be a chick magnet. He sits in the family SUV in the driveway and holds speakerphone conversations with girls, and the girls’ sides of the conversations are easily audible to neighbors, even with all the car’s windows rolled up. And most of then seem to be weepy breakup sessions.
My bedroom is right across the street from their driveway, so I get to hear two or three of these breakup sessions per month. I’d close my window, but I’m trying to get cool air in. At least the conversations don’t last too long. He must go through a new girl every other month or so.
Huh. That sounded like a mini-rant. It isn’t; I find it mildly amusing to think that one of those little boys is now juggling girlfriends.
Yes, very similar!
Morning all. Got my 8 hours of beauty sleep (still needs lots of work there) and have broken fast, so not much else on the agenda except some gym time later in the afternoon. Supposed to get to 60F today with a 1-in-4 chance of rain, so we’ll see what the day delivers.
Been somewhat itchy the last couple of weeks, mostly the arms and legs, not sure if it’s the clothes/bedding or something else, otherwise I am feeling just fine. The head cold that was starting last week seems to have pretty much disappeared, with an occasional cough every hour or so.
FCM, hope the passage to the Falklands is smooth.
shady, that had to sting. I can remember breaking my arms 3 times in 18 months when I was young, once falling off a sliding board, then sliding on ice at recess and lastly tripping over a rope around the yard where we were planting grass. Amazing sometimes that any of us lived to adulthood…
Pilot, I think someone else on the Straight Dope (not a Mumper, IIRC) did the baseball thing awhile ago. I’m a Virtual Raifan member, maybe I just need to get up and go visit as many of those sites as I can this summer (they are pretty widely scattered around the country). Thanks for the idea.
Taters, there is no drama like office drama. Hope it all gets worked out more or less peacefully.
lucky, you could always put a speaker out the window and play “Breaking up is Hard to Do” every time…just sayin’., 
OK, onward into the day. Take care all.
Good morning. I truly intend to rest today after this crazy month. I spent the morning playing Dorfromantik, which is easy to learn but hard to master. There will be some laundry and shoveling but a whole lot of chilling the fuck out as well.
Yesterday I had a meeting with Always Late, who was… um, twenty minutes late for the meeting. But it was a good meeting. We both ended up crying a little, because I told her how incredibly impressed I was with the impact she’s made here (100% true), and she told me she was sorry she’s always doing grant reporting last minute, and we agreed it’s going to be easier when I can just pull the data myself. Despite the frustrations I’ve had with this person, she wears so many hats it’s crazy, and her lateness is a function of being pulled in twenty directions at once, not one of incompetence. It’s hard to imagine anyone who’s made a greater impact in the last year than she has. We’re in the middle of massive restructuring by her own design and in my opinion the changes she’s implementing are brilliant. She confessed to me she’s worried that she doesn’t fit in here, and I get that, she rubs some people the wrong way because she has a dominant personality. She’s not nicey nicey to everyone and I think she doesn’t know how to connect with certain people. But I think she’s exactly what was needed for this role - someone who can respond to crisis after crisis while at the same time creating long-term positive change in systems and processes so that the crises stop happening.
I just get so angry because I get so anxious about getting reporting in on time. So I need to work on that in myself. Mostly because I can’t go on with this much stress.
Afternoon, mumpers! It’s currently 6c/44f with a predicted high of 7c/45f, and partly cloudy. Weather app says “It’s a beautiful fucking day in the neighbourhood except it really fucking isn’t, is it?” I have no idea - I went outside this morning in slight drizzle to put an extra bag of rubbish in the biiiiiiiig bin, and haven’t been out since.
Moooom have fun waving at the Falklands and the pingwings!
Pilot that sounds like a fun kind of trip if it’s your kind of sport 
Taters sounds like good drama to be clear of, doesn’t it? I dislike office drama, I haven’t got the patience for it and am far more likely to start banging heads together.
Spicey I’m glad you had a productive meeting with Always Late, and managed to get some positive stuff out of it. It’s a good feeling!
Real Fish love the hair colours! I use Ultra Violet on mine - pic for colour purposes only, it and I do not resemble each other in any way
Welcome, Legend, you’ve posted in here and that’s enough to make you a regular!
Nothing exciting in my day, I have finished four of my six forms and asked a couple of colleagues to sense-check them for me. I started off by mapping it all out on paper so I have a plan for what I needed to do, that’s helped a lot. Just transferred most of it to MS Forms and sorted out all the branching, then I realised one of the programmes now had a form but didn’t have any information online so I’ve had to go and create that as well. Typically it is the programme that has the greatest number of available options in the greatest number of departments. Ho hum.
Short heave, made up for by the annual compliance training, learning things like “don’t lick leaking hazmat packages” and “dogbutler is no longer allowed to do forklift jousting while waiting for the late Air.” I did my Aldi for various chicken bits, so now my refrigerator is fowl.
I dislike drama of any kind, but I’m sick of the bitching, so I need to do something about it. It energy and time that could devoted to actual productivity.
Three and a half hour commute to nowhere
I woke up at 0300, which is always a joy. 
By 0410 I decided to just get up. I left the house at 0500, about 10-15 minutes early.
There was a fatal crash down in Marysville that closed the entire southbound freeway. It’s still closed, and there’s no estimate of when it will reopen. I heard about it on the radio, so I turned on Waze for an alternate route. 1.2 miles from the detour, traffic came to a halt. There’s been a collision at the Stillaguamish River. (When I got to it I saw two cars; the front one with both ends smashed so I assume there were at least three cars involved.) It took an hour and a half to turn around.
So three and a half hours later I’m back home and logged into irk.
I just looked to see what happened this morning.
Washington State Patrol Trooper Kelsey Harding said a motorcycle, Jeep and a semi-truck were involved. She said the motorcycle was speeding when it hit the Jeep. When the Jeep pulled over, the semi hit the motorcycle and its rider. …
To make matters worse, at 6 a.m., a crash closed both directions of SR 531 at Third Avenue Northeast in Arlington.
SR 531 is the route that was being used as a detour. Waze told me the detour (where I turned around after an hour and a half of sitting) was 530. The radio suggested using SR 9.