I just took a Survey Monkey survey where one of the questions was:
Have you ever had a fatal heart attack?
- Yes
- No
0 voters
Well, of course! Can’t have any revenants mucking up their surveys.
When this thread first opened, I read it - trying to think when I last really smiled. That’s kind of sad, I know.
Last night, though, I watched the new episode of Great British Bake Off and realized halfway through that I had a stupid smile on my face. I needed that little bit of kind competition and silliness of Noel and Matt.
I’ve always enjoyed the show. My girlfriend and I binged it last year. I was always impressed with the kindness and the helpfulness the contestants showed toward each other.
Hope you find more things to smile about soon.
These are excellent. I do notice they are becoming more elaborate. What fun they are!
Last night I finished watching The Boys for the second time, and I laugh just thinking about the scene with Deep and the lobster.
That totally cracked me up!
Here’s my contribution:
https://twitter.com/outspanned/status/1440279968554967057
You’ll have to click through for the image. 
That totally quacked me up!
So we’ve always made a point to my three-year old daughter to distinguish between being naughty (e.g. deliberately pushing her bowl onto the floor) from mistakes (e.g. accidentally tipping over onto the floor). The upshot of this is she now refers to all naughty incidents as “mistakes”. She will walk in from a neighboring room looking sheepish, take a big sigh and then say “there’s been a mistake in the living room” or when coming back from nursery school “there was a mistake in the play house”
It always raises a smile before I have to go into the next room and see what manner of shenanigans now needs clearing up 
.
So a couple months ago, I decided to give crocheting a go again after having tried and failed many times. And I actually did pretty much get the hang of it. Like, I’m not great at it and that first project was hilariously awful, but I had yarn and made it into (sort of) cloth.
I told a friend about it and she told me that she, too, had tried and failed many times to crochet and would like to learn.
So the thing about crocheting is that the first couple rows are really the hardest part. If you don’t know what you’re doing, it’s really fiddly counting the stitches and figuring out what counts as one stitch and what part of the stitch you’re supposed to use and so forth. And now that I’ve made exactly two things and am working on a very wonky blanket, I sorta-kinda can do that part. So that’s what I did: the first few rows. Once you’re past that, there are big obvious gaps (hers is a cat-sized granny stripe blanket. Mine is a person-size granny ripple.) so once you know the stitch, it’s easy to figure out where it’s supposed to go. That way, you can learn the stitches without it all ending up a knotted mess.
Sent her a message today asking if I could come over tonight or this weekend and she said she wanted to hang out with my dog, so she and her son (who is like… 22? and also a friend) were coming over here instead. They brought Chinese food. She and I worked on crochet while he tried (fruitlessly… oh well) to make friends with my cats.
It’s been a crappy week, so a good evening with good friends was much-needed. My dog was just over the moon thrilled to have company. And as a bonus, I did sort of a tornado-clean when I realized I was going to have people over here instead of the other way around, so my house is pretty tidy, which always feels nice.
Watching Teddy dig a hole so deep, all you could see was his butt and his tail. He was barking, as always, and you almost couldn’t hear it, he was so deep.
Amusing.
I love those trunks!!
Tonight I went over to Berkeley for some good music. It was the Berkeley Old Time Music Convention and that was a smiles filled evening.
I smile every trip to the garage because I see my new Jamis Hudson bicycle, coral with black accents and gnarly tires. It fits like a glove and rolls like a dream, every ride it raises my spirits.
The dog park is about a mile from my house, and I walk my dog Nash to it daily. The park has had its share of erosion problems. There’s a concrete platform that has a water pump to fill up drinking buckets and the occasional toddler pool. A hole about 3 feet across had developed on the side of the platform, and had completely filled with mud after a steady rain. When we arrived, a Dalmation pup was bathing in it, having the time of its life.
I laughed and said “I hope you don’t jump n my lap.”
This video made me smile when my girlfriend shared it with me this morning. Reminded me of some of the characters we had in the horse barn.
Dear god, we are in France. With Covid layered on brexit it was almost impossibly daunting, but we’re here! Tomorrow we have to arrange a pharmacy appointment for our return testing, but you know what? I’m even looking forward to that. Docking, driving away from the port, being here- I have a pretty big grin, I can tell you.
j
I was in a checkout line dutifully waiting my turn. As she was leaving the checkout a lady 2 people ahead of me turned around and yelled at me.
Did I miss something? That was smileworthy?
Sorry, I left out the punch line. She yelled out that she loved me repeatedly. Age has left me with a forlong expression and it was the end of a long day. she was probably just trying to get a rise out of a tired old soul. I was completely taken by surprise when I realized she was talking to me. I smiled and said thanks. Everybody had a laugh.
Ixnay on the ubmarinesay.