On the plus side, today and Wednesday are the only days this week with significant chance of rain, so that’s calming down. (Just wish Allie and Buddy would do likewise!)
On the minus side, DH is sick. Not plague, he tested. His recurring sinus infection seems to be staging a comeback (and do you think he has the sense to see a doctor? Ha!).
In case I didn’t mention it enough last week/forget to mention it later, I am SO GLAD that today is both a federal and company holiday! The next federal holiday will be Presidents Day, but my company considers that one to be a “floater” (so are Juneteenth and Columbus Day) – meaning we can take the day off, but would have to use leave. After today there won’t be another paid corporate holiday until Memorial Day. 
Warning: Bougie Whining Ahead!
Brunch yesterday was actually disappointing. Pre-COVID, the Kennedy Center’s Roof Terrace Restaurant brunch was an awesome buffet that was set up in the restaurant’s kitchen: neither my friend nor I knew that when brunch returned, it changed to a fixed menu with table service. The same three appetizers are brought out to everyone (we accepted the fruit plate and the cheese/charcuterie board, but declined the shrimp cocktail), you choose from one of a handful of entrees, and then a restaurant-determined selection of mini desserts is brought out. The price is the same as the previous buffet. The food was OK (my friend got the cinnamon French toast and I had the steak frites), but we agreed that – combined with the limited options – it isn’t worth the cost anymore. It was always an indulgence, but the buffet felt worth it once or twice a year. Our next show there will be in July: there’s also a casual “KC Cafe” in the building, with things like pre-made sandwiches and salads, and we might try that. We like our Sunday matinees and plan to stick with them, but nearby pre-show food options are somewhat limited: there isn’t anything within walking distance of the Kennedy Center, and it doesn’t even have a Metro station. Which makes the brunch change a little extra disappointing – even if switching to table service does make sense in our post-COVID world.
Wicked itself, though, was awesome!! Not only was it my first time back at the Kennedy Center since before the pandemic, it was my first time back at any professional theater production. There is nothing like the start of an overture being played by a live orchestra. 
(I feel the same about the sound of a live orchestra tuning up before a classical performance!) It was really great. My friend and I had seen it 8 years ago, at a different venue, but it’s one of my favorites – I often listen to the cast recording on long drives – and we agreed that it was a wonderful choice for our first show in three years.
The show we’re going to in July will be a bit of a gamble: 1776 – another favorite – is usually performed by a company of mostly men and just two women, but its current incarnation features a female/trans/nonbinary cast. I read a positive review of the NYC production a few months ago, and I’m excited that it’s coming to DC. It might suck, though…and my friend, who isn’t familiar with the original, might not like it. Happily, she’s willing to take a chance with me.
My next “adventure” will be the indoor, 3-day jazz festival in Maryland that I go to every Presidents Day weekend. It’s not far from me at all, but I treat the weekend like a mini-vacation and splurge on a room in the hotel and a weekend pass (access to all of the main stage shows, plus a handful of the shows on the other stages). I actually performed at this festival in 2022, but given my current “it’s complicated” relationship with music I’ll be perfectly happy to just be a fan again this year. And the friend I was with yesterday is also going to be there all weekend – it’ll be her first time – so it’ll be great to hang out with her and introduce her to some of my jazz peeps.
Today’s adventure will be laundry. 
Not in terms of papers: almost all of my stuff is electronic (sorted and filed). The few hard copies I still get are tax-related, and after I file they get put in a folder in my home office for the requisite three years* and then shredded.
*Which I just looked up, after first typing “seven”…didn’t the recommendation used to be seven years??
HA! 
Woo hoo! 
Just tell us who we need to beat up for you… 
*rolls up sleeves*
‘Great minds’ and ll that. I went through the pile on the desk yesterday and pulled out all the recipes printed off’en the interwebs and all of my ‘important papers’ and took them downstairs and shoved them in the new homes in the file cabinet. What’s left is stuff that Wifey needs to deal with, mostly to do with real estate. Someday.
We do have a good shredder and it does get used.
I used to have a top secret clearance, 50 years ago, but it was because I worked with supposedly secret weapon systems. Not documents. Doesn’t matter now.
Heh. I once knew a young woman who named her socks, and knew without a doubt which sock was a right sock and which was a left. She was OCD in spades.
Hope everybody has a safe and productive week.
In other good news, the power people are reporting single-digit numbers of customers without power (the occasional one-customer outage is just normal), and for those who missed it, I got a text from the fosterer who took Little Miss and Tiny (my feline houseguests from a month ago). Little Miss has been adopted, so she has her slaves now, and Tiny will be up for adoption as soon as she’s spayed (she’s still not quite big enough for surgery).
I absolutely LOVE that. I actually looked up YouTube videos a while ago, specifically searching for really good “orchestra warming up & getting tuned” audio.
The warm-up is often my favorite part of the performance. It’s audio chaos; everyone is practicing little drips and drabs of their most difficult notes, so among the cacophony you get “previews” of the music to come.
Then the conductor gives a signal, and everyone winds down until there’s just one less-observant woodwind still tootling. Then, that oboe gives that clear “A” note, and everyone starts their tuning. Absolutely LOVE it!
It’s generally three, but in special circumstances, it’s seven, according to the IRS. Other time requirements may apply if you’ve failed to file a return or committed fraud.
We finally went through our pantry shelves and reorganized. We had no idea what was actually in there.
The wife really needs to get rid of paper. The computer desktop is buried (it’s six feet long), the floor is covered, and there are bins full of it. She prints nearly everything she sees on the internet that strikes her fancy, even though I’ve tried to point out that it’s always going to be there. It then gets deposited in a paper pile, the logic of which is only known to her. Now that it’s tax prep season, half the dining table is also buried under paper. We dumped a shitload of paper when we left Anchorage (including her tax returns that went back to the 70s) and another shitload when we left Portland, and still it overwhelms us.
We are pretty good about keeping up with the paperwork but I have a drawer full of thread that needs to be sorted and put away properly.
I was planning on getting my hair cut today, but the low clouds are so thick that I can’t see the mountain a mile away and I just don’t feel like driving in it. It seems like a good day to strip the beds and vacuum the mattress on the cats’ bed.
I’ve been seeing a tiny bird at the feeders and didn’t think it was a finch (too small) despite having similar colors. Today I was out refilling the feeders and got a good enough look at one to be able to identify a new bird. He was a Ruby-crowned kinglet and didn’t seem pleased that I was bothering his breakfast. In my yard, they like suet, humming bird syrup and regular birdseed. I haven’t seen them on the finch sock, but they might be too small to be able to shove their way in.
I think I’m changing my mind about getting chickens. Someone told me that free range chickens are every predator’s favorite dinner and it would be super upsetting to watch one of my pets in my own fenced in backyard get killed by a hawk or coyote. I wasn’t super thrilled when I saw a hawk take a dove and I never get to pet the doves.
JtheC a while ago, I had the privilege of holding a kinglet that had bonked itself in my yard.
I warmed it up, and tucked it in a protected nook of my yard, inside a small box with a tiny dish of water & the smallest seeds I could scavenge from the rattie food.
Checked a few times; at first it was dazed and just wanted to fluff up and rest. Last check, it had regained strength and flown away.
To hold a bird that’s so small and lightweight (really, all you can feel are the feet - they’re virtually weightless at that size, there’s no sense of holding something with substance) is truly humbling.
This thread is making me feel anxious. Now, back in the olden days, when a task made me anxious, that spurred me to start it; since the pandemic hit, I just get paralyzed and stay anxious.
We have boxes of paperwork from my brother-in-law’s and father-in-law’s estates on top of the boxes of our own stuff that I put away to deal with “later”; most of it can no doubt just be recycled, but some should be shredded. If history is any indication, it’s also likely there’s at least one document on the order of importance of a birth or death certificate or title to a car nestled between old receipts and junk mail, so I have to look at all of it.
I retired this summer, and I was sure I’d get better at tackling the chaos, but I haven’t. My doctor assures me that I’m acting more like someone under stress than someone in the early stages of Alzheimer’s (another anxiety), so I suspect I just need to somehow remind myself how I used to do tasks and dive in.
Same. I have some Very Serious Tasks that need to be handled.
Just thinking about each one makes me emotionally shut down.
Due to this week’s topic, I finally finished going through my chicken recipes. Got rid of another 20 pieces of paper, and selected a chicken stew recipe to cook this weekend.
After staying up too late the last few nights, tonight we’re going to bed early. Such excitement on a Moanday!
Exactly!! LOL!
Right now, yes…and maybe it’s even been three for a while…but back in the day, wasn’t seven the conventional wisdom at one point? Like, decades ago?
Yeah, my wife thought the same thing, and she has an MBA in finance. I had to prove her wrong. That was quite a number of years ago, so it’s been in effect for awhile.
So weird…I wonder where your wife and I got seven from! 
Howdy Y’all! We have slothed, napped, and have been overall useless thus far. In a little while we shall head over to the church house to do prep stuff. Thus it has been in swampland.
Pearl hope everything settles down at irk and you are able to keep your gig. If not, hope an even better one comes along soonest.
From my dad. Or my husband. Possibly even my mother…
Woke to a gray day in Western Mitten State. Let Monkey out earlier (“Might as well, before it starts raining!”) which was good planning.
It’s now very drippy. I braved the rain (hey, I ain’t made of sugar) to take out a bag of cat poop plus some leftovers & retrieved the big bin back from the curb.
Startled Mr. Bachelor Tom Turkey out from under my car on the way back, so as he was cruising the fence as if he has no idea how to hop/fly over the damn thing, like he does ALL the TIME I tossed out some more corn for him.
I still see the local Turkey Parade™ on occasion, but now it’s more likely to see Mr. Bachelor Tom in my yard in the early parts of the day, and/or the pair of cottontails in the night when I get home. The bunnies barely hop away from me anymore - I just gently say, “Hi Bun-Bun!” and move quietly towards my door.
… to be immediately greeted by a howling cat named Monkey.
I haz a weird life sometimes.
Martin Luther King Day. Is it the only federal holiday retailers don’t use as an excuse to have big sales? I wonder what Dr. King would think about how things have changed since he left us. Some things would make him happy, but some of the fundamental changes he hoped for never happened. Wyoming was one of the very last states to recognize MLK Day. One legislator said it was because “we hardly have any Black people here.” Yes, I wanted to smack her, I refrained in consideration of passive resistance.
I have a small pile of papers on my desk that I need to address. I have a desk drawer for monthly receipts for things like medical bills and an upholstered box that looks like an ottoman for annual files, warranties, etc. My problem arises when I have a paper that doesn’t fit any of the current categories and is unlikely to be WORTHY of a category (There won’t be other papers like it.) but needs to be saved for awhile. Hence the small pile.
Thank you all for your concern and good wishes about my eye. I’ve been posting about it too much, I think. I’ve been fighting to keep/improve my vision for over 30 years. It’s been a rollercoaster, but I’ve been on this ride long enough to know where all the dips and tunnels are. I30 years ago, my uncorrected vision was 20/2200 (L.) and 20/2900 (R.). I’m really grateful I have the much improved vision I do now.
Any of you have any experience with knee injuries? This isn’t a joint issue. I apparently pulled a ligament or something a couple weeks ago. The knee isn’t swollen or red or anything. The pain is sharp and runs along the left side of the patella and into the shin on my right leg. I tried icing it and taking NSAIDs, but it’s gotten worse. Of course, I haven’t been resting it, but that’s impossible when you have to go places and have no car. Also, it’s no better in the morning after resting it during sleep. Any ideas? I’d rather not go to a doc. Besides, it’d take months to get in anywhere.
shoe, what a cool photo! And what a ministering angel you are! Some years ago, a swallow flew into our picture window despite the stickers I’d put on there. It was very obviously dead in that x’s-for-eyes cartoonish way. I went out to remove it before my tender-hearted daughter saw it. Too late. She was starting to cry when the bird opened one eye, then the other. A minute later, its legs twitched. Eventually it got up, reeled the length of our 25-foot porch, and teetered on the edge for several minutes before flying, off-kilter but alive. I like to think it had quite the story to tell.
Also, shoe, is everything straightened out with your drivers license now? Hopefully you don’t have that hanging over your head now.
JtC, I didn’t think about predators. That’s enough reason right there.
I save all of 'em. I should throw some away, but I don’t trust the IRS, especially since they screwed up and put me through such hell a couple years ago. That place is a huge mess, even more so after funding was cut. Will they guarantee I won’t need any of the documentation older than three years (except for those special circumstances)?
How precious and wonderful. Both of you were very lucky that day!
You don’t have to do it all at once. Open a random box and grab a big handful of paper then sort while watching the news or something. When you are done with your handful, you are done for the day. No need to rush or stress, if it has been there that long, it won’t hurt to let it wait a little longer.
I thought our 6 ft wooden privacy fence would protect them because I’ve never seen a coyote or bobcat out there. Once my friend mentioned the predator’s, I realized that I probably haven’t seen any in our yard because they haven’t had any reason to be in it…like chickens pecking around in the clover. I’m going to think about it a little more, but I think I’ve been talked out of another bad idea.
We keep all of our tax stuff as well. We have room for a file cabinet and our taxes aren’t complicated, so 35 years hasn’t even filled two drawers. We have a few choice words for the IRS as well.
A lady on Nextdoor posted that her daughter had Girl Scout cookies, so I went over and got a couple of boxes. (which have shrunk instead of going up in price) I seem to remember Girl Scout cookies being a spring or summer thing, or have they always been in the winter and I’m just losing what is left of my mind?
