Here’s something I never thought I’d type: Mom’s death certificates were just delivered! Yay! I’ll put one in tomorrow’s mail. Sometimes the USPS randomly takes its damn time, but hopefully my cousin – 250 miles away – will get it by the end of the week.
(For those wondering why I didn’t simply have a death certificate sent directly to my cousin: it wasn’t allowed. At least with this service, certified documents can only be mailed to the home address of the person requesting them – and, only certain people are allowed to make the request in the first place. And yeah, they check/confirm that info.)
I’m not a pumpkin fan, so the whole pumpkin spice thing gets largely ignored by me every year. The only time I’m annoyed by it is when “normal” flavors of things aren’t available/easy to find because the focus is on pumpkin spice. I don’t hate pumpkin pie, but for me there’s just no point in eating any…plus, I’m always disappointed that it isn’t sweet potato pie.
Today is a federal holiday but not a company holiday, so work is nice and quiet because our customer is off. And the program manager (my boss) cancelled this morning’s senior management tagup because a few folks took the day off, so I haven’t had any meetings yet. I have a weekly tagup with one of my direct reports this afternoon, but otherwise I’m hoping the day stays like this… 
Yesterday afternoon’s bon voyage party for the friend who’s about to spend 5-6 months singing on cruise ships was nice, but I didn’t stay long (nor did I need to). I ate some chili, chatted with a few folks, had a slice of cake, and left while it was still light outside. Metro took longer than their “trip planner” estimated: it probably would have taken twice as long to get home (the later it gets, the longer the wait times between trains), but luckily a mutual friend who lives near me also attended the party – and was also ready to leave soon-ish – and gave me a ride back to my car.
The rest of the evening was spent slothing on the couch with Bailey. Before heading to the party yesterday I finished re-watching all five seasons of The Wire, which had been dominating my TV time, so I was finally free to catch up on my TiVo recordings: I watched the new episode of Shark Tank (love that show!), decided that I wasn’t willing to give Snake Oil a second chance (and cancelled the season pass), and tried to watch the new episode of LEGO Masters but there had been a sports-related broadcast delay and TiVo wound up recording the end of a cooking show. I still have the PBS American Experience episode on Max Roach to watch, but after trying to watch the LEGO show I decided to switch to streaming and finally started watching S3 of Only Murders in the Building, which started two months ago. I like to wait until entire seasons are available, so I can binge-watch on my own schedule. 
A few other seasons recently ended/became available: now I can also watch S3 of Lupin, S2 of Welcome to Wrexham, and S1 of Strange Planet (though I have a feeling I won’t enjoy the animated version nearly as much as the webcomic).
Catching up on a few replies to the old thread before diving into this one…
Oh, I wear socks in bed year-round. 
I can’t sleep if my feet are cold, and without socks they’re always cold. I need a dark/quiet/cool room, socks, warmth from the waist down (but I can’t sleep in any kind of PJ bottoms), and a fan for the waist up (but I can’t sleep without a top). It wasn’t this complicated the last time I regularly shared a bed with someone (~10 years ago)…I imagine that I’d be quite challenging to (literally) sleep with these days!
https://i.ibb.co/6yTbRZp/Spores-Molds-and-Fungus.jpg
I need to pretend that I never clicked on that link… 
Giant is evil that way, too: they put “need to sell soon” bakery items on the way to the fruits/vegetables.
My ex was always cold while I was always warm, and he teleworked for a company on the west coast so he’d stay up until 3-4am – and not get out of bed until 12-1pm – while I kept more “normal” night-owl hours. For us, the schedule thing was much more challenging than the thermostat thing. Granted his situation was a little extreme, but I don’t think I’d be very compatible with either an early-bird or someone on a west-coast schedule. I actually have that in mind for if I ever wade back into the dating world.
Sooooo cuuuuute!
That’s how I am with my brother. I’m only 19 months older but our personalities are completely different, we experienced our childhoods/parents very differently, and we simply have very little in common. We only see each other at funerals, weddings, our dad’s birthday, Father’s Day, and Christmas. Every now and then a relative or old friend will ask how he’s doing, and they’re always surprised when I shrug and say, “I think he’s fine.” I have several friends who don’t even know that I have a brother, just because I never mention him. Like you said, though, there’s no animosity.
Same! My whole thing about remembering to preheat the oven (for the stuffed chicken boobies) is really just about thinking about dinner early enough. I generally don’t think about any of my meals until pretty much I’m ready to eat, which is why I so often turn to whatever’s fastest. (I still haven’t made either flavor of chicken boob yet…heh.) Get this: there are people who spend a chunk of every Sunday doing meal prep/planning for the entire week! 
Nice!