When the 8:15 late air shows up at 8:45, it means more hours for me. 
FCM I hope you aren’t coming down with anything right before you are supposed to be leaving. I mean, I know that’s exactly when something like that is going to happen, but still!
After Mom got us four girls raised up enough to go to school, she went back to school herself and became a grade school teacher. She was really surprised that she didn’t get sick when she started teaching until she realized that she had been living with her own disease ridden plague monkeys all those years, so already had had everything.
What a fun picture surprise obi! I drove past my childhood home a couple of months ago. It has changed so much that I missed it the first time I went by because I was looking for the trees. It was rather depressing, TBH.
I picked up our produce boxes today. It looks like we got the last of the nice summer produce and now we are back to boring stuff. I’m not complaining, its still good stuff, its free and we will use a lot of it, but its not the lovely, fresh melons and squash we get earlier during the year. Hubs is taking our friend’s box to him and then I’ll put the food our friend doesn’t want in a box with the food we don’t want and take it all to where I used to work.
A friend and I will be having lunch after I drop the food off, and then I’m getting my Moderna booster. I hope it doesn’t knock me down like my second shot did. I actually have a chance to get the bottom layer of my needlework house done before the convention if I don’t waste a couple of days whining about how much my arm hurts.
Neat! I lived in Appleton when I was a wee child, while my dad was teaching at Lawrence. I have a soft spot for Wisconsin.
talky enjoy your day off! I hereby authorize you to listen to the podcast all day. 
Off for my botox injections in an hour or so. Nothing but fun around here. 
Discussing our old homesteads got me curious. First, before - this was the garden that my mom worked so hard on. The photo is from Easter 1962.
Many of the neighbors used to come take their family photos in front of the flowers.
This is from Google Street View:
No more flowers. Mom and Dad sold the place in 1979 and I expect it’s changed hands a few times - who knows when the flowers went away. What’s most striking to me is how small the neighborhood is - small houses, small yards, no room to park. This house was right around 1000 sq ft, and from 1965 when my last sister was born till 1973 when I enlisted, it was home to seven of us - 3 bedrooms, 1 bath upstairs, and a pseudo bedroom in the basement with a toilet and sink down there. I always wished for a room of my own, but I knew it wasn’t going to happen, and that’s the way it was. Mention shared bedrooms to people today, and some act as if you’re a child-abuser!!!
My parents raised 3 boys in a ~ 1100 square foot house with 3 bedrooms and one bath. We have a couple of closets in our present house bigger than the bedroom I grew up in, although I did get a room of my own when I hit puberty, being the oldest, and my 2 brothers shared a room in the later years.
I need to address something. Someone took exception to something I posted earlier, and I’d like to drone on about it for a bit more.
I have been very fortunate in a lot of things in my life, and very unfortunate in a lot of other things. A lot of the good things I’ve had, many other people never have access to. I do appreciate that.
I just don’t think I’m important enough in the grand scheme of things to have been ‘given’ those things. They just happened. Therefore I don’t believe there’s any entity that I should ‘thank’. If such an entity existed they would, by extension, have to also be responsible for giving all those other people all of the horrible things they’ve had to live with. I can’t get my mind around that.
Sorry.
I’ll keep my darker musings to myself in future.
Anyway, Instapots. We’ve had one for a couple of years and it works just fine, but I have to read, and re-read the book every time I use it, so it sits on the shelf most of the time. Also, I can’t make out what’s on the buttons even with my reading glasses on most of the time. 
When we get moved into the new house I’ll have another go at it though.
(When I misspelled ‘though’ auto-correct suggested ‘python’ 
I just tried to google map the house I grew up in. The address still exists, but there was nothing recognizable in that picture. Even the streets don’t look right. ::flummoxed::
Swampy, glad that your BP meds are working out for you. My BP has been high lately and the docs have me on a new med that seems to be ‘uneven’, so to speak. My BP will still be higher than we think it should a lot of the time, and then once in a while it’ll take a nose dive. Disconcerting.
Speaking of meds; I need to put on real clothes and go pick up some prescriptions.
Ta.
And now I’ve gone down the rabbit hole. I haven’t been using my multi-cooker so much in the few months, but the weather’s changing.
But people keep mentioning Mac and cheese, so that’s probably on the menu for Saturday.
This is the first time is almost a www that I’ve been able to catch up on all the MMP going ons. So I only retained food related items.
And I’m on my tablet, so I can barely type. I’ll try to catch up more tomorrow - getting towards bedtime.
Done with the deck painting - oh my aching back!! It took twice as long as I’d expected, because once I was crawling around, I saw smaller spots that needed attention. I just dug thru some photo files and saw that we built that deck in 2013, so the paint has lasted 8 years without any attention. What’s more, there was something over 2 gallons left, and once I mixed it up, it was just fine - and the color is almost a perfect match, despite 8 years of sun and weather and crud!
I’m pretty sure I’ve got enough to give it a good coat of the same stuff in the spring, so that’s the plan. Fortunately, I can do that with a roller - no crawling around except for edging a couple of places. Overall, I’m pleased. And exhausted.
My throat is really sore - it feels raw, like when my sinuses are draining. maybe that’s what it is - maybe not Roxy’s fault after all? I may still blame her - that’s what kids are for, right? 
Supper will be a couple of hunks of used steak and a couple of salads. At the moment, FCD is trying to nap in the guest room - he wants to see if a different mattress is more comfortable. Poor guy is soooooo tired. I wish there was something I could do.
But for now, I’m going to chill.
Yeppers, it is. Grandkids too, of course.
I’m going through a wicked bout of fall allergies at the moment-could that be sneaking up on you as well? Mostly red, swollen, itchy, gooey allergy eyes, driving me nuts. Of course driving me nuts is a short trip.
Heading out to Tarjay to buy some anti-histamines and maybe some eye drops.
I’m feeling a little odd/guilty about something, and wondering what other folks thought.
I stopped for lunch at a Mexican fast food place (franchise, but relatively small) that I go to about once a month or so for tacos. One reason I go there is that they fry up the shells fresh in order.
Anyway, I bit into one of my tacos, and there was a small cylindrical piece of wood in it. No harm, but I brought it up with the woman behind the counter just in case. She theorized that it was a toothpick used to hold the tortilla in shape for frying.
As I was leaving, she, on her own initiative, asked to refund my lunch price. She was insistent, so I took it, but now I’m wondering if I should’ve refused harder. It was an accident, it won’t affect my future patronage, and I wasn’t hurt by it, so did I have any “right” to the refund?
On an unrelated note more appropriate to the title, I got those progressive lenses I asked about in another thread, and so far, I’m seeing better than I have for a long time. It’s been great!
Glad to hear about your lenses.
I’d guess your taco place genuinely felt bad about the toothpick/whatever and by accepting the refund you eased their worry. Win-win.
Go back sooner rather than later to keep them unworried 
They offered it, as a way to “make good” on their error, without your prompting. They undoubtedly made the offer as a way to make you feel more comfortable about returning there in the future. I’d wager that an experience like that does, indeed, lead a lot of people to say, “I’m never going back there again!” They had no way to know that you fully intend on coming back, and they’re trying to build goodwill. From that standpoint, you had the “right” to it.
They doubtlessly would have insisted harder.
That’s good news about Toby Moooooooom. I hope that your throat feels better soon.
No problem bumba. As a heathen who could be labeled as humanist, I tend to see good fortune as a combination of good people and a random crapshoot. Either way, I feel fortunate for both.
Irked, came home walked Nelson (he got to sniff buts with the Aussie two doors down and the boxer in the next building), et and am fixing to do KP before working on a project in the studio. Such excitement!
Stay safe and healthy y’all!
Once a waitperson tripped over a child running around and I ended up wearing a tray full of drinks. I wasn’t hurt, just wet and we were on the motorcycle, so I wasn’t wearing clothes that could easily be ruined. The only thing I asked for was for someone to hose me down because I didn’t want to feel sticky for the rest of the day.
The poor waitress apologized over and over, I kept telling her that it was all OK and then the manager got involved, comping our meals and giving gift cards. We really didn’t want them but we were hungry and figured that the only way to get him to leave us alone to eat was to accept.
That was many years ago and I still feel badly about that, I’m sure the poor waitress had to pay for everything.
I went to the pharmacy hoping to get a Moderna booster and learned that they haven’t been fully approved yet so I couldn’t get one. I could however get a third full shot as long as I signed off about co-morbidity. I’m going to wait for full approval and follow the guidance. I’m going to a convention filled with little old ladies, I’m betting the vaccination rate is pretty high.
I think I’m caught up now. Just to respond to a few posts when I really want to respond to them all…
Obi, FCM, love the photos of childhood homes. My childhood home was small for 6 people, but what amazes me is we had but one bathroom. My mom’s friend who had 16 kids only had one bathroom, too. Boggles my mind.
Bumba, you could substitute appreciation for gratitude, like appreciating a comfy bed or a good steak or a warm house. Or you could express gratitude to people, as I do toward the people who donated their corneas, or to a spouse who’s seen you through hard times or a teacher who instilled a love of reading or science or whatever.
FCM, yay for Toby getting himself oriented the right way! My son managed to turn himself the wrong way when I was 8 months’ pregnant–it felt like a seismic shift–and couldn’t reverse himself, so Toby gets applause for his feat.
nameless, the waitress might not have had to pay for the meal, etc. When the waiter left the requested box and took my plate by mistake, he insisted on bringing me a full replacement meal and assured me management wouldn’t take the cost from his check, as mistakes are inevitable (and some customers get huffy through no fault of the wait staff).
Leaper, I don’t think the manager would have wanted you to feel bad. You did just right, and they feel they made up for a minor error.
Off to the gym.
If it makes you feel any better, I’ve worked a lot of those kinds of jobs, and been in similar situations. Unless it’s a case of egregious negligence (and tripping over somebody’s runaround kid isn’t one of those) then it does not come direcrly out of the employee paycheck.
I hereby absolve you of feeling bad about the situation.
{ scrolls up a lot }
That “someone [who] took exception” was me.
And you know what? I was cranky, and in a hurry to finish posting, and wound up just … not expressing myself very well in that moment.
My point - that I admittedly made poorly - was that all those lovely things (water, food, roads, internet) don’t “just happen.”
They’re the result of a lot of people working hard, and a lot of complex interconnected systems working in tandem, and frankly, there’s a lot of ways things can go badly (see ex. “end of the world as we know it”) but they haven’t gone badly, and hopefully won’t any time soon.
And for all that, I feel grateful.
I’m about as atheist-y (is too a word!) as you can get. But I still feel gratitude for things like cold A/C in the summertime, even if there’s no omniscient entity in charge.
Just lots of people doing their jobs.
Without them, no cold A/C for me. Or heat in winter!
ETA: Nellie put it better. “Appreciation” vs. “Gratitude.”
(“Onnnnn pay-per-view tooooniiiiight at elevvvennnn!”)
There was way too much used steak, so tomorrow, the leftovers will become veggie-beef soup. I think I’ll also whip up a batch of chocolate chip cookies to take to FL. I have to fetch Roxy after school, but I can get that stuff done before then.
Meanwhile, I’m freezing! It’s crazy - it was a lovely, mild day and I’m wearing sweatpants and a fleece cardigan. But I’ve been cold since coming in from painting. Dammit, I don’t have time to be sick!! 
Maybe a hot shower will help. I’ll load the dishwasher, then give it a try.
Thank you nellie and shoe. All blame belongs to the parents of the kid, not the poor waitress. She did seem to expect me to yell at her, but I thought it was funny. All up to the point of thinking the innocent young lady was being punished financially for something not her fault.
So, Leaper, if its OK for me to get free dinners and drinks for a staff member’s mistake (even thought it wasn’t their fault), its OK for you to get a couple of free tacos.
Hubs has expressed a desire for fajitas and I got a bag of pinto beans last week in a produce box, so I guess I should get started picking and sorting so we can do them tomorrow. There was a bag of tortillas in today’s box so we can use the left over beans for burritos. There WILL be left over beans, it not worth the time to make a small batch.
We don’t have an Instapot but I’m hearing many good things and it seems that almost every time I look for a recipe, there are IP instructions as well. There probably is one in my future, anyone have any recommendations?
I forgot to thank you for this and I apologize. I appreciate you taking the time to type it out for me and fully intend to try it soon. I got some more ripe tomatoes today so I’m going to leave them until I absolutely must pick.
I have the Viva and IMO a 6qt is fine for two, especially if you don’t mind having leftovers. I’m considering buying an air fryer lid for mine. What I wish I could find is a model with a numeric keypad instead of having to hit a plus or minus a zillion times to set cook time.
in case anyone missed the thread i started on it wild kitties :
here’s the direct webcam page: