Quick, fill-in MMP

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
321

Hmmm. They are finally, after 6 years, rolling out a tuition reimbursement program for the administrative function, starting in January. This is tempting, very tempting. With my current job, I could go to school full-time, and do homework at my desk. I might stick around for that. In fact, I might be foolish to leave. I certainly can’t afford to go to school on my own right now. But they’ll pay up to $10,000/year for tuition and books.

rigs, I think caster sugar is what we would call baking or extra fine white sugar, not confectioners sugar or regular white sugar.

322

Taters stiff upper lip my English white behind!

It was cold. Damn cold! Still is cold!

Sure looks purty with the snow on the ground from last weekend though

323

The fancy term you’re looking for is “port” as in “number portability” or “I want to start service with you and port my existing number.”

Start with the new company. They initiate the process to pull the active number from your old company. If you do this backwards, you stand a fair chance of losing the number if your old company deactivates it.

324

The Sick. It is trying to get me. THIS IS NOT PERMITTED. I’m leaving for a week at Mom’s Saturday morning, regardless of health status. I’m on my second cup of hot limeade and am making chicken soup.

Truffles and hugs, please.

Back after next round of fluids.

GT

325

One word: Cold-Ease. They are The Cure for The Sick. I’ve been sucking on them all day and I swear by all that is MMP that The Sick is gone from my body.
I had that weird thing in my throat this morning that was saying, “Strep Alert!” and the start of a wet hacking cough and it’s all gone.

Look for them with the cough drops at the drug store. They come in cherry and citrus, but are very mildy flavored. No menthol ickiness, either.
*::: gratuitous hugs and truffles sent anyway, just 'cause. ::: *

326

Hugs and truffles to gt stat! Just don’t breathe your germy-germs on me; I cannot get sick! This is a rule and I have declared it to be so!

I got 59 minutes today. Even with leaving a little early, traffic still sucked. Ah well, I’m home now.

Dinner tonight will include rib-eye steaks. That was one my splurges at Costco the other day.

Nothing much exciting going on, just the usual running around like a chicken with my head cut off for the next several days.

I want a DO-NOTHING day. I NEED a DO-NOTHING day, dammit. MBG, gimme my DO-NOTHING day back.

327

WAAAAAAAAAAAA!

: looks around :

Woo. I’m awake now, thanks guys. : licks espresso off screen :

What a day!

328

Perhaps your lip is stiff due to the cold?
Send some winter my way-we seem to have misplaced it.

329

Home - looooooooong day. Highlight was buying a can opener at Ikea. Lowlight was leaving Bernie at Mom’s - she looked soooooo sad. But she’ll be spoiled.

Lots to do tomorrow, including packing. This time next week, we’ll be back home - that’s the target. :wink:

330

Three bowls of soup, lots of blankets, feel a bit better. I’m going to try the Cold-Ease in the morning.

Mika…you woke me up! :stuck_out_tongue:

Thanks for the good wishes. I’m going back to bed now…

GT

331

Hey y’all, we made it to Charleston, which is the halfway point between The VunderLair and Indiannoplace.

I had to fight the urge(s) to strangle Maddy, Loki, and VunderWife in turn along the way…

332

I’m Happy! - Someone who left the chorus shortly after I joined is returning! and she’s a Bass! YAY! :smiley: (that’s with a long A, not a short a like the fish)

Also, I came home to a message from The Guy! He’s going out of town next week, but after the New Year, we’re going to go see Night At The Museum. w00t! :smiley: :smiley:

Well we had another feeding frenzy: leftovers from yesterday - still yummy - plus:
a chocolate fountain with a variety of dippers - marshmallows, bananas, strawberries, poundcake, pretzels, and, of course, fingers :wink:
Also, one of our clients came by bearing gifts - cool pens with neopreme grips, calendars, pen-shaped staple removers, and envelope unzippers for all, plus two boxes of handmade chocolates from one of the best places in upstate NY (Krause’s) and a ginormous box filled with cookies, little cakes, candies, cheeses, and little sausages (like what you get from Swiss Colony). The only thing missing was the booze. Maybe next week for New Years they’ll let us have a little champagne. We also speculated as to whether or not they will let us go early tomorrow. The concensus is no, since it’s at the manager’s discretion, and in the past he hasn’t. :dubious: But we can hope

Nava - stick with Buffy. At least thru until Season 6 Episode 7. That’s the episode that reeled me in. It wasn’t until after Buffy, Angel, and Firefly were off the air that I discovered the latter - just in time for the release of Serenity. I saw the movie trailer and thought “Whedon doing SciFi? Yummy.” Then my friend told me about the series. So yeah, I’m a big Whedon fan.

As for carbonated brews of malt, hops, and other stuff - I’m more a hard cider/hard lemonade person. When I do drink beer, I like Molson Ice, but I have no clue if that’s an ale or a lager. The quote is from an ad series, I think for Molson Golden, that John Cleese did in the 80’s. I’m going to see if I can find the link anywhere - I’ll be back

btw - LiLi, if you’re still looking for [del]victims[/del] patients, I’ll take carrot cake with cream cheese frosting with my hugs.

333

Snakes beat Fayettville tonight 5-2, which puts us it 2nd place by one point. Whooo and Hooo! The road trip is planned; we almost got to go in one van, but then we had another person want to go - so we’re taking two vehicles. We’ll leave about noon and stop on the way somewhere for lunch, then come straight back after the game. I’m looking forward to it.

Now I want truffles - who brought that up?

334

Such goings-on in this thread!

I was visiting a friend at Yale yesterday and just got back. New Haven was a lot nicer than I’d been led to believe - sleepy little college town, at least what I got to see of it.

Tomorrow I’m planning to see some of the art museums in NYC. All I’ve seen so far is the Statue of Liberty.

Yawn. Must go beddy-bye. Hope The Sick does not linger long.

335

Haze how much longer will you be in town? If you’re looking for a cool place to hang in the evening and get a great cuppa, try the West Village - south of Washington Square Park, in and around NYU. Great coffee houses (my personal fave is Cafe Reggio) some great restaurants (if its still there, try Quantum Leap on West 3rd - you’d never know it was a vegetarian place) Lovely little shops and art galleries. And the best place in the city to people watch.

336

Thanks Taters and back atcha! After today the days will begin increasing in length, yay! We are having a white Christmas, I’m not sure just how deep the snow is, it drifted a lot in the wind. We are currently at 18 degrees F, who knows what the windchill is. It’s all purty out there, the spruce look like they belong with a gingerbread house, loaded and dripping white icing, the alders are rimed with hoar frost. Shadows stretched long and blue all day as the sun rolled across the horizon, and from my window I look out and see windows in every home bright with colorful, twinkling lights. Christmas in Kodiak is a brilliant affair, an effort to ward off the darkness.

I don’t have The Sick, but I do have The Stress. I have packages to my closest family members and best friends which are not going to arrive in time. le sigh, they will understand, but just once I would like to get through the season without procrastinating some errand or other until it was too late to get it done before the actual Day. Hopefully the girls and son-in-law will be happy enough to be getting ipods, and painted
ponies for the girls (it’s a tradition) so that they won’t complain too much, they are so spoiled!

More wrapping of gifts and baking of cookies tonight. The kids seem to have lost interest in those kinds of activities this year. It’s a little bittersweet after 24 years of having kids underfoot and wanting to help with everything to it being just the skiffman and I doing all the Christmassy things while the kids bop in and out. I wonder if they would notice if ol’ Dad and I just…didn’t…one year?

Tomorrow the sun will linger for a few brief moments longer, not enough to notice, but just knowing that we will be heading toward the long-day tilt of the earth makes me feel a little bit happier. 'Night all! (Or Nytol to the sickies)!

YAY!!! Saved at the last minute!!! #1 daughter’s mother-in-law just called and said that she has room in her luggage for all three of the kids presents, and will pick them up on her way to the airport tomorrow…Christmas is saved!!! Tra la la la la…etc!

337

It’s also called superfine sugar–it’s granulated, but in smaller bits than regular sugar.

gt, I hope you feel better!

I didn’t get any baking done today, and I’m leaving town tomorrow. That means no oreo truffles or mint chocolate popcorn (at least until after Christmas). It’s late and I’m not done packing yet. I’m going to need lots of coffee tomorrow.

338

MagicEyes is quite right, caster sugar is really just super-refined normal sugar. The grains are smaller so it makes a better mix, but you can just use ordinary granulated sugar if you sieve it first.

Yes, rigs, you can get all sorts of bottled lagers in the pub! On draught most of them will have various of Carling, Fosters, , Heiniken, Carlsberg, Kronenburg 1664, Stella and Grolsch. The bottled stuff comes from all over the place - since we have absorbed most of the mobile workforce of what was Eastern Europe, there’s a whole load of Polish, Russian, Baltic and Czech beers around as well but they’re all in bottles.

Last night we went to the dogtrack at Monmore Green to watch greyhound racing…I haven’t a clue about dogs and betting etc, but I got a win on the last race! Woohoo! Today I’m off to see the doting parent before we go on our separate hexmas expeditions - we’re both going to Scotland but not to the same bit. She’s off to Strathpeffer on Saturday and I’m going to Port Glasgow on Boxing Day. I’m hoping for a nice quiet drive this morning, it’s not looking very nice out there. Lotsa fog. I don’t like fog.

Swampy - I’m awake, thanks…and my head’s not suffering any nasty effects from the small amount of Theakston’s Best that was quaffed last night!

Happy Solstice Day!

339

No I don’t; my aunt does, but like Mom says “the only times your aunt sets foot in anything religion-related is to mock it or wear strange dresses.” It’s the same aunt who is divorced, hasn’t been to Mass since my cousin’s first-and-almost-only Communion, but does go out with all her local Semana Santa parades.

The information in the article itself isn’t completely inaccurate (although it’s Caganet, not Caganer, but that typo is as common as mixing up “effect” and “affect”, so the reporter probably got it that way from his source), but the title is misleading. What a surprise: the only reporter I know who never complains about the editor… is the editor.
rosie, does that translate to “find a place where you can rent Buffy, cos it sure ain’t worth it buying the first five seasons; watch those in FFWD except when some hunky shows up (at which point you can just lower the volume anyway) and get back to us once it starts getting good”?

Five seasons of no-good sounds like a tad much for moi, sorry.
Yesterday I was finally able to acquire BebiSaggs. Another local peculiarity: the town of Basel makes its own trashbags and it’s the only ones the trash guys will pick up. It’s a way to tax trash usage directly and by volume: if you use a ton of bags, you pay more. Makes sense actually, I think, but it took me a while to find them. Not every supermarket carries them, and those that do keep them hidden, you have to find the right cashier and ask her for the Saggs.

In the same trip, I got a plastic tray which now holds my Christmas decorations (the tray is red and so are a couple of the balls, so I used some rice paper to hide the tray and keep the balls in place), an oven tray (which means I can now heat things up in the oven or even roast something, I have some pimientos rellenos) and a pair of chocolate truffles that look like they could be a cause of Death By Chocolate. They’re now in my fridge, waiting to be eaten on Christmas Eve.

Or maybe I’ll eat them today and get fresher ones tomorrow… :smiley:

340

Rosie, I’m glad the long A bass singer is comin’ back. However, I think a
singing bass would add class to any chorus. :smiley:

I have been up a freakin’ hour! Then again, I went to bed at seven p.m. last night, so it ain’t like I couldn’t sleep. So, I’m caffiening up. It’s raining big time here too. I was gonna take the whole day off but I think I’ll go in for a while this morning just to get a couple things done while it’s quiet cause no one else in in the shop today.