I went camping once. With a 150lbs Sheppard mix that was afriad of noise. And the drunks up the beach spent 8 hours setting off fireworks. :smack: I also hate camping.
So you’re saying my Donner puns eat at you?
My sister-in-law’s parents had an apartment at the beach, the family went there every summer. Every year the father would wax poetic about the beauties of camping, but it never happened.
So, the first time Bro and SiL were going on vacation, they went camping. Not real camping, with a tent in somebody’s field, or properly organized camping, with an RV in a camping area. Nooooo, they chose the worst option: a too-small tent borrowed from someone who had put it away wet, in a camping area.
No more camping. Bro would have been happy in a tent on somebody’s field, but not like that; SiL… she’s one of the pickiest people I know when it comes to accomodations, I could have told her it was a bad idea before they even left. She wouldn’t have listened, which is why I didn’t say anything.
So the apartment building is having power issues, possibly caused by a cable contractor working in the middle of the night. Good (?) Morning MMP.
Morning, mumpers! I was quite sure I posted something here yesterday but apparently I didn’t. I’m now not sure if the hamsters scoffed my post or whether it was indeed a fig roll of my imagination. Who knows?
Anyway, clearly I missed Monday entirely! I got to spend an hour with a photocopier engineer finding out just how many ways our fancy new machine can go wrong and all the places it can find to hide a scrap of paper whilst blithely telling you it’s jammed somewhere in the vast innards of the beast. After that I spent a bit of time trying to work out what my exams officer has or hasn’t done, and why the student record system is telling me a particular person needs to resit an exam he’s already passed when he actually needs to resubmit an essay. Now I have to work out why the same record system is telling me a second year student needs to resit an exam for a module that never had an exam in the first place. And I don’t even want to go anywhere the final year odds and sods.
Ho hum. Why can’t I have six-week summer holidays like we did when I was a kid? Running around doing what we liked, being out of the house all day with only a vague message to our parents about where we were going and who with. That was back in the days when our parents trusted us to keep ourselves safe and be sensible, stay together with our friends, go where we said we were going, and be back roughly when we said we’d be back. Who on earth thought goign to work was a better idea?
As perhaps predicted by my itty-bitty typo, I did bed Mel, for all the good it did. Because, as usual, the alarm went off way too early. But I’m up, fed, caffeinating, and I’ve got two full baskets of dirty clothes sitting next to the stairwell. Once it brightens a tad more, I’m going to start washing clothes. I’m hoping to get 3 loads out today. We shall see.
Some time today I’ll watch the last episode of *Bloodline *- at least the last ep of the first season. I haven’t decided if I like the show or not, but it sure is addictive. It’s hard to find a character to sympathize with - they’re all pretty screwed up in a variety of ways. And all the flashbacks and dreams have made it a challenge to separate exactly what’s going on, what went on, and who’s more messed up. It’s on Netflix, if you’re up to the challenge.
Beyond that, dunno what the day will bring. It’s supposed to be sunny and hot. The yard needs to be mowed, but not in the heat, and especially not when I’ll have clothes on the line. Maybe I can do the push mowing tomorrow morning… for now, I’m just going to surf a bit before cramming a load of jeans into the washer.
Happy Tuesday!
My father used to tell me the greatest advice he had learned in his life was this:
Don’t get old, it is horrible.
Up, caffeinated, off to work.
Good Mornin’ Y’all! Up and caffeinatin’. YAWN ‘Tis 73 Amurrkin out with a predicted high of 93 for the day with maybe rain/tstorms/apocalypse late afternoon and early evenin’.
Today I re-join the real world. ICK! Ok, not so ick. I’m ready to get back to irk, even though I did some irk whilst I’ve been away. Can’t wait to see what the day brings.
Ok, that’s all I got for now. I need more caffeine and to feed rumbly tummy. Then, alas and alack, purtification for irk must commence. Back to wearin’ grown up clothes.
Happy Tuesday Y’all!
Like all of you, I was thrown out of the house after breakfast and told to either come back for lunch or call from where-ever I was eating lunch. Or I took a lunch with me. Depended on what the pack of kids were going to do that day.
And we were a pack of kids. The school was nearby, so we’d sometimes ride over there and play on the playground and look in the windows of the closed school. It still had that weird school-smell.
We would also go out to play for a few hours after dinner and had to be home right after the lights went on. Growing up in a small town has its benefits.
My stepfather was a farm boy, and grew our own corn and peaches. Tomatoes, too, but I’ve never cared for raw tomatoes (though I will admit that they *tasted *FABULOUS; it’s a texture thing for me).
Our big summer treat was when he’d make homemade ice cream, then top it with the strawberries from our garden that survived us kids playing outside, or with peaches. This man could hardly make a peanut butter sandwich, but he made homemade ice cream! 
When I’d visit my dad’s, I spent a lot of time on my own once I was too old for day camp. This suited me fine – dad had a pool, and my stepmother had lots of books, and there was a library within easy bicycling distance. I was a trustworthy kid, so they never worried. I think the worst thing I ever did was to get suntan oil on one of the library books.
I did attend a two-week arts camp every year, which was a lot of fun, but at the end of the two weeks this introvert was very happy to go back to hanging out by the pool in the back yard. My cousin would sometimes come over, too. These days, a 13-year-old and an 11-year-old spending all day at home alone by the pool would be child abuse.
Blurf.
That’s the one!
Happy Toosday!
It’s cool but humid outside and my back yard is slowly becoming a jungle. As soon as I am up to it I’ll get out there and start some trimming.
I hate camping too, that was our family vacations when I was a teen. Such joy, to drive from site to site everyday. We didn’t do different states though, everything was along Skyline Drive.
I have things I need to do today, maybe they will get done, maybe they won’t.
We rarely had family vacations when I was a kid. It was never a priority in my parents’ budget. We’d do day trips, which were plentiful from Baltimore. There was Gettysburg, Philly, Annapolis, DC, and back in the 60s, parking wasn’t the idiocy it is now. When I was about middle-school age, we had a 3 or 4 day stay in Ocean City, MD - first time I stayed in a motel!! WOOOOOO! And when I was in high school, we went to the ocean for a whole week. Oh, I forgot - we went to the World’s Fair in NYC in 1964 - that was my first hotel stay.
Camping would never have happened - Dad might have been up for it, but not Mom. We made a few trips to Wheeling, WV and Easton, PA to visit/stay with relatives, but I don’t count those as vacations. Never went to summer came, either - again, because of finances. As I think back, we were probably on the way low end of middle class. My folks did have a mortgage, so we weren’t poverty-stricken, but after the food/clothing/shelter thing, there wasn’t much left over.
On the other hand, I don’t think any of my friends had grandparents with riverfront property, so at least we got the illusion of vacations every Sunday. 
Oh, and I still have never been camping. We have a camper, but it’s been sitting in the garage for 2 years.
rainy dreary blurfage
Morning!
I’ve had a strange morning and it’s only 8:40 am. First of all, I got woken up out of REM sleep, which normally I hate. This morning it wasn’t as bad, because I was dreaming that I was lost in NYC, trying to find the train to come back upstate. I’d gotten part of the way and was trying to get to Penn Station? and from there, I guess, take the train up north. I was really lost, though, and for some reason I was walking.
Then when I was leaving the house for the second day in a row the garden spider that lives out front had spun her web directly across the door. It’s like she’s thinking, “I only need to catch her and then bite her a few hundred times and she’s MINE, MINE!” Overachiever!
Then I got to my car and discovered a tiny spider had taken up residence in it and had spun a web directly across my dash. NO, NO, NO, NO! I am a live and let live person with spiders but I don’t want to ever see you in the house or in my car, if I do, you are dead. D-E-D dead.
I made it here without being et, but heavens!
We did go on family vacations. When I was young my parents took me everywhere. They were travelers and we went all over the Eastern seaboard. That was how we went to the Gran Ol’ Opry! And then Florida of course.
Just before 9AM, I hung the last pair of socks on the lines. I have space for maybe one more pair, but no need. In a few hours, I’ll be taking it all down, but for now, I’m done. I think I’ll run to the convenience store to fill the truck and get me a treat. I deserve it, dammit!
Just got done with a one hour conference call. Yep, I am back at irk! I need a treat too. Maybe a MickeyD’s strawberry/lemonade. MMMMMMMMM…
The only family vacations we usually went on were to my grandparents’ house that I mentioned earlier in this thread, except for the few times we rented a cottage. My family was far from rich, and we couldn’t afford to go anywhere special.
My dad and sister and I are planning a trip for later this month, though. We’ll see how it goes. It kind of worries me. In addition to all the things that could possibly go wrong before and during the trip, my dad has a hair-trigger temper and my sister has hair-trigger anxiety, and they can set each other off for long periods of time.
OH! Well that sounds like fun. Seriously, why in the world would you agree to this???
Other than our cottage, we didn’t have family summer vacations. My dad was a mason contractor so summer was his busy time. Mom and Dad usually did winter vacations. They had friends who owned a house in Mexico (back in the 60s when you could drive to Mexico with no worry).
Yesterday it was 89 and humid. Stroms moved in and now it’s 63 and windy. My kind of weather. Of course it brings with it a migraine for me, but I have drugs. MWAAAH!
Lunch is leftover chicken salad. I love the Silver Palate’s chicken salad recipe so I made a batch over the weekend. Chicken breast shreds (roasted in my oven), sour cream, mayo, salt, pepper, and a bit of tarragon. NUMMIES.
Just took some pics of my lilies and the monster wisteria on my fence. You can see them on FB if you’re interested. Purty!!
I put $40 of gas in the truck and picked up a couple of cans of dog food at the dollar store. Go me!