I knew it was opening soon, but I forgot it was that soon! Thanks!
Got a shopin’ list going (green Acres reverence) for Trader Joe’s, Costco (only a block of Tillamook cheddar on the list), and the supermarket. Mrs. L.A. wants to have ‘dinner’ in Bellingham today, so I’ll be making the drive twice.
Started Typing: 11:43 AM ET
Clicked Reply: 12:28 PM ET
Happy Saturday/end of May! I have lunch from Panera being delivered sometime in the next 20-30 min…it’s suddenly windy and getting a little darker outside, so I hope either the impending rain isn’t heavy or the driver is able to beat it. It wasn’t supposed to rain until this afternoon, if at all. I try not to ask others to drive in bad weather, but c’est la vie. My only real “rule” is that I won’t order delivery in conditions I wouldn’t be willing to tackle myself.
Bailey looks (and smells) so good after yesterday’s bath! They also removed a lot of excess fur, trimmed her nails, and trimmed the fur in her footpads (to help with her grip). She’s always a cute doggy, but even more so right after all of that. And she’s nice and soft, which actually annoys her because I pet and hug her more than usual. 
The 90-minute grooming session did take a toll on her hips/back legs: she had a little trouble remaining standing while eating her dinner, but she finished it all and is back to her normal self today.
I have absolutely no plans for the rest of the day, which is fine by me. After the food gets here I’ll settle in on the couch for the remainder of the day: there will be more reading of Guards! Guards!, and my fair share of boob-tube watching.
(12:12pm update: the food arrived before any significant rain started! Yay!)
I never got the pangram (which I totally should have), and I quit when I was still 15 points away from Genius. 
Ah, well.
Ha! 
Ooooo, maybe I’ll watch that today! It doesn’t seem to be streaming anywhere, but I have it on DVD; plus, I re-watch it often enough that I’d be willing to buy it on iTunes or Amazon.
Baby steps are still steps. 
Cute!
Laundry day. We got up early enough to snag three washers, so it went pretty quickly. The wife managed to splatter bleach all over her pants, because SHE NEVER PUTS THE CAP BACK ON ANYTHING!!! :: pantpantpant:: I hope this is a lesson, but it’s unlikely she’ll ever break a seven decade habit. I learned after many early mishaps to first check anything I need to pick up that she’s handled.
Most puzzles done, except for the NYT, which is giving me a bit of trouble.
Mid-80s today with high altitude smoke from the Canada fires. If we made them a state, we could rake the forests to prevent this, I’m sure. Got the shades closed and the AC and air purifiers on to help filter the air.
Seems it was not immediately seeable. I admit to looking at the clues on occasion when I’m stuck. It’s aggravating when I miss a simple word. Today, I got up to 45 words or so before hitting a block. It wouldn’t accept “alleve” as a valid word. WTF?
Just built a yummy (I hope) chickie-grape-apple-pecan salad. I only had a tiny bit of tarragon - must go to Teeter or WalMart and get another jar. No one else has any. Dammit.
Kitchen is more or less tidied, dirty dishes are in the dishwasher and I ran a rinse cycle. What to do now?? What to do… Is that my recliner I hear beckoning me???
ETA: I checked the historical weather records for the places we’ll be visiting. Looks like the coldest will be low 40s at night, and we might see 70s at a couple of ports in the daytime. Maybe we won’t need the mega-warm garments - just layers.
Did go get that for breakfast. Tres yummy! Or should I say ¡Muy yummy! ?
Turns out I’d forgotten a few steps. Toasted EM, smashed avocado, grilled tomato slice, chorizo patty, poached egg, spiced up Hollandaise, grated cotija, then the fresh jalapeño hat. A bit elaborate to make at home. At least for lazybones me.
$9 for a pint of heavy cream? Yowza. I get that corner markets are not noted for being economical, but that’s beyond wacky. Around here at the ordinary groc store that’d be on the order of $4, maaaybe $4.50.
That sounds so much like a male failing, not a female failing, that I’m amazed to hear this. Have you ever learned what in her psyche causes this? Terminal ADHD and she’s already forgotten what’s she’s doing by the time she sets the container down? Fear of getting the cap too tight to remove next time? A strong desire to evaporate most of the liquid and thicken the [whatever] in the container?
If you’d said this was a recent development I’d blame creeping arthritis; my late aged MIL developed that habit as her hands degraded into near uselessness. Lots of caps sitting on, but not screwed to, bottles and jars. “Heck, Mom, why don’t you simply throw the caps away when you first unseal the jar? That way you (me really) won’t be fooled into thinking there’s a cap closed onto the bottle?”
But you say ChefWife has been this way since her youth.
My memory is that Trader Joe’s sells handy little cartons of shelf stable heavy whipping cream that might be handy for you to have in stock and the price is reasonable. Here’s hoping they don’t do that only at holiday time, like Thanksgiving. I think my TJ’s stocks it over with the baking staples like sugar, flour, etc.
Well, at least the last 30+ years. Bottles (not tightly closed, so when you pick it up there’s a good chance of breakage), bags (chips, cookies, etc., all getting stale) cupboard doors (left ajar or open). And then there is the propensity to save even the tiniest amounts of food because waste, doncha know. Most of it sits in the fridge until it’s a science experiment and then I throw it out. Still, as faults go, all of this is minor and she’s the love of my life, so I mostly bear it in martyred silence.
All good. I’m certainly familiar with changing the changeable, bearing the unchangeable, and trying very hard to have the wisdom to know the difference.
So I was split sorting and loading in 128 most of the sort. It wasn’t bad, so either people are buying less, or maybe they figured out that letting 1000 pieces pile up in the unit and jam the belt before bringing in loaders isn’t the best thing in the world. I finished up loading 200 Middle Red, then did the last damages. Which included some fool’s 95lbs. of personal stuff that they decided to ship in a used Home Depot box.(shipping your stuff in wet TP and with a lit stick of dynamite would cause less damages than using a Home Despot box, or having them ship you stuff). Anyways, laundry is drying, and I’ve had my bacon, eggs, and gin&tonic(brunch without alcohol is just a sad, late breakfast). Naptime!
Glad you survived all that. {{{{shoe}}}}
Are you gonna MST3K the sermon? 
HAPY BIRTHDAY WET ONE!!!
Darkwing?
I got some at Trader Joe’s for $3.99. I had to go to the supermarket on the way home, and they had it for $3.49 to $4.99 (for the non-organic) for store brand, Lucerne, and Edaleen (local) Dairy. I also got pie crusts and some more deli turkey.
I’ve never heard of that; but heavy cream lasts long enough that I almost always use it up before it goes off.
One of Wifey, RN’s patients gave her a (frozen) package of Nathan’s skinless beef hot dogs, plus buns and hamburger buns – and fresh rhubarb (hence the pie crusts). I bought 3.89 pounds of Costco Dinner Franks when I was there for the 5-pound block of Tillamook medium cheddar, and made three, 1-gallon bag, parcels (5, 5, and 4) and put them in the freezer. I also bought a very large bottle of Costco London Dry Gin, and $60 worth of petrol ($3.899/gallon).
The supermarket yielded another dozen eggs, two packs of Carb Balance whole-wheat tortillas, and, much to Goo’s delight, kitty grass (wheat grass).
This morning I forgot to say “Happy birthday, peedin!” 
The weather has been mercurial. Forecasts of “scattered thunderstorms possible” usually result in nothing much at all happening, but today there have actually been scattered — and brief — storms. One more might roll through before the evening, but radar seems to show it tracking a bit north of me.
Thanks to doggio, I just finished watching Real Genius for the zillionth time. I still love it. Now I’m watching the second episode of the new Netflix show Dept. Q while I debate taking a nap.
Oh, I look at the two-letter hints all of the time. And yes, I also get annoyed when I look at the answers the next day and I’ve missed obvious words. I haven’t started today’s yet: sometime in the next couple hours I’ll play Connections, then move on to the Bee. For some reason that’s the game order I’ve come to prefer.
But I’m not surprised it wouldn’t take“alleve”: I’m not aware of that being a word. Are you maybe thinking of the word “alleviate”? Or the brand name Aleve?
Whenever I need something from Home Depot I go there, but now I know to resist the urge to ever order from them!
The chicken salad does sound yummy, fcm.
We just had a cloudburst go through.
The usual shopping trip. This time I found sheets for 30 dollars. Much better than the 50 dollar set. T shirt material.
The nice barista at Starbucks gave me a cake pop with the banana bread I ordered. Saw it when I got home. Yummy!
Well, blow me down! Alleve isn’t a word! I guess I assumed it was the root word for alleviate. 
Connections was very easy today.
Jack is Old and Enjoying It - a ramble.
I have officially begun to enjoy being old.
Here’s the thing … as you may know, I work in doggy daycare and boarding, a job I love but it’s not very monetarily rewarding, but that’s not what I’m on about. I am the oldest person at work by far. A few of the leads I think may be in their early thirties, but for the most part the kids I work with range in age from about 18 to about 27. They’re good people but they are very much kids with kids troubles and kid issues and kid experiences so I am basically the font of information at the place. I whip off references left and right that no one gets but I just find that funny. However, I am also the go-to guy when someone needs to know something about anything. I am the problem solver. And more often than not I am the company therapist. I have talked a number of these kids down from different situations - upset over a dog scuffle, worried about being late, getting yelled at by pet parents, etc. etc. I can’t remember the number of times I’ve said, “Hey, don’t worry about it. Take a deep breath. No one died. Everything is OK.”
It’s difficult to explain because I’ve always felt younger than I am so I’ve always sort of acted that way - not immature, but not really conforming to what’s expected of middle-age people - not that I’m about to go out and buy khaki shorts, a bunch of polo shirts and a weave belt, but being the one person at work who doesn’t seem to panic when shit goes sideways is novel for me. I feel good about myself and at the same time I’m pretty ambivalent about how anyone else feels about me. I used to search for validation like nobody’s business (I still do, but I’m dialing it back).
TL;DR - I’m finally realizing that all the experiences that I’ve had over the years has actually added up to a knowledge base and I can handle pretty much anything they throw at me and I can lead the young’uns along the way. And I’m having a great time doing it.
Unless they all talk shit about me behind my back - in which case, fuck those little bastards.
Excellent news, I’m so happy I was wrong!
Actually, I might be able to get used to this. When I got up, the first thing I noticed was how light it was and how smudgy and dinged up our walls look. New paint has always been on my list of things to have done, it has just moved to the top of the list. Next I noticed how bad the kitchen floor looked so after coffee and a few bowls on the porch, I started pulling out the broom and mop.
No lifting or bending said Hubs as he did it for me. He finished mixing peat moss and top soil (which seems to be what makes my plants grow nowadays) and filled my grow bags and watered them for me.
We went out for a nice country drive so I could admire the forest HOLY COW, guys it is even more beautiful than it was two days ago. The colors are amazing and there is so much more depth and texture visible now. There are also a lot of little flowers growing on the forest floor and sides of the road that I hadn’t seen before.
Not wanting to mess up the nice clean kitchen, we voted for an early Mexican and a different place a few towns over. I think we’ve found our new fav place. The menu had a welcoming paragraph that stared out with “Welcome, blah, blah, blah, for those who are not familiar with Mexican food, it is not all spicy and if you have any questions, please ask your waiter. For those who do like spices, please tell your waiter and we will be happy to raise the heat level to your taste.”
The food was cooked very well and did have a small amount of heat. I had the shrimp tacos with cheese sauce and the shrimp were tender and all of the grilled veggies were done perfectly.
We will go back during the week and try their lunch menu, we’ve gotten out of the habit of going out when working folks do.
Soapbox time. Find the retention schedules for all of your documents. Here is what the IRS has to say about it.
What I will say is if you do not have to keep your records do not keep them unless they are of emotional importance. If the IRS suddenly demands all of your financial data from ten years ago and you disposed of it according to schedule, they are not allowed to act on their complaint. But, if you still have all of that data, you are now required to turn it over to them.
Anyone looking for a trend has a much better chance of finding one with more data.
If Sheriff Arpiao had shredded all of the traffic stop documentation on time instead of keeping it for half a century longer than he should have, the folks looking for racial profiling wouldn’t have been able to go back past five years. As it was, the taxpayers paid out the butt for that lawsuit.
That was one of the worse parts of living in AZ. The constant threat of death by AC. I’m slowly getting out of the habit of bringing a jacket to put on inside stores or restaurants, it is so nice.
You are going to be SO happy! Hubs knocked the lens out of the right side of my glasses and being able to see clearly without glass involved is wonderful. I can tell that I’m still somewhat nearsighted, but the trees still have leaves and now they have little flowers on the ground under them.
Damnit! I don’t think its retribution, I think they like him and want to keep him making money even though he’s on light duty. At least I like to think that way, I could be very wrong.
Are WFH medical billing jobs no longer a thing? I had a friend who paid her bills that way for years. I know she had to take some classes yearly to keep up with the coding, but she seemed to like the flexible schedule.
Fingers crossed that it helps.
I am so sorry. I have no words of wisdom because everyone’s so different. I can remember a few months when just seeing a picture of “The Pet of the Week” up for adoption in the paper would make me so sad I’d cry. And then reading next week that the pet had been adopted to a wonderful family would make me so happy I would cry.
I spent almost two years crying and sweating.
Agreed. That’s why I’m so happy to have found good Mexican in West Virginia. There are many good and skilled cooks in the Appalachians, but their skills don’t include heavy use of Mexican spices. They can make a cinnamon-allspice apple roll that’ll knock your socks right off, though!
I often wonder if they know how lucky they are to have us as slaves. Hubs just swept my room for me because GG was under the loveseat and we can’t use the stick vacuum when he’s in his “safe spot”.
Our woodpecker was going after a heat-treated piece of wood. No insects involved. I wonder if wrapping the joist with foil would make a difference? Not that I know anything about them, I just like seeing them at the feeder.
And a very handsome elbow it is! Cute truck, I love the bubblers.
When Hubs was in the Leathernecks, they loved to ride in parades. It took me no time at all to figure out that the best thing to do was to have him drop me off at the grandstand so I could take pictures
(And listen to the organizers argue over where to put the horses and Harley’s. Do the horses go first to get them out of the parade and out of range of the noisy bikes, or do the horses wait so the pretty motorcycles don’t have to dodge horse poop.)
I like them just fine, but I want this one to go away. All the trees around here and he picks my porch… Stoopit bird.
The chickie-etc salad is good. We’ll be eating off it for a few days. I had a medium salad with it - mixed greens, grape tomatoes, cucumber. Not bad.
I texted with our house-sitter - she’s not bringing her cats after all, so yay! Less stressful for Ziva.
And now that we don’t need to dress for dogsledding across the frozen tundra, I feel better about what we need to take. I also saw that the cruise line will pick up your luggage from home and get it to the ship so you don’t have to worry about it. And do the same in reverse. And it would only cost just a hair over $2100. 
So that ain’t happening. Unless a BIG chunk of cash appears on our porch in the next 2 weeks. As FCD put it “It seems a little extravagant.” Um DUH!
Sun is shining. All threats of rain are well out into the Atlantic. And so our Saturday winds down.
46 for a low tonight; 83 Tuesday for a high.
Roller coaster.
The maintenance guys will sadly turn the heat off in the building.
Once they turn the A/C on, I will be wearing sweats all summer.
Church tomorrow.
Mornin’ one and all.
It’s 58°F and mostly sunny. Rain showers are expected this afternoon, and our expected high temperature is only going to be around 65°F.
JtC, I’m so glad everything is looking good with the vision.
Johnny, I’m glad the procedure went well.
Shoe, I’m glad you checked in. I hope today is a much better day.
Happy Birthday, Peedin!
I was busy most of yesterday. I obtained soil and checked out some other hardware and nursery stores.
Afternoon all. Back from the refereeing duties, the first two teams wanted to play a little extra time, so we had a 75 minute game instead of a 50 minute one (with ample breaks for the kids and the ref…). Second game was slightly delayed since they had a car show on the field until 1pm and we had to wait until all of them were driven off the fields, but we finally did play and they wanted to play some extra time, so all in all I got a fair amount of exercise in. Then used the massive number of Kroger points I had accumulated this month to fill my gas tank with 23 gallons of gas for the munificent sum of $8.72. Right back to the 1970’s, I was. Am now in rest mode and contemplating nuking a big bowl of Pasta here in a bit. Rest of the day will be relaxing I think.
And time to open the Secret Scrolls…
J-Bats, so you are the éminence grise of the place; You’ve earned it by living life full-out, all the bad and the good. Be well.
JtC, so happy to hear that the eyesight has improved so much. As for the papers, i don’t disagree with you, I probably don’t need my monthly water bill from 2016 anymore, but right now going through all of that and gettng rid of it doesn’t appeal to me much. Don’t think anyone would find anything too incriminating there. Probabl in a few years when I sell the house and move to a smaller apartment, the record-keeping will get purged.
And that’s all the inspiration I have after the day’s perspiration. Maybe more after dinner.