Lighting candles for both your sleep and fair seas and following winds for your drive home (Boo is looking at you too, SC!!)
Good Mornin’ Y’all! Up and caffeinatin’. ‘Tis 65 Amurrkin out and cloudy with a DENSE FOG ADVISORY in effect this mornin’ and an afternoon high of 75 and maybe rain. Or not. TWPTB are in willy-nilly mode. Looks like tomorrow and Sunday will be rainy however. No big plans at all for the day. Fine by me. I shall engage in sloth and chillage the entire day. I get to do that. I am retired.
Sounds like most everyone had a good Turkey Day. Yay for that.
MOOOOOOM safe travels back to Merryelande! Behave yourself SC!
Now I need more caffeine and rumbly tummy wants to be fed. Then, onward into the day! Rah.
Happy Firday Y’all!
Happy Friday, mumpers! I am at irk and have been relatively productive so far which is a good thing. I had a chat with the boss this morning, we found a Thursday Night Problem and decided to leave it for today so I’ve been dealing with the now Friday Morning Problem and hopefully that means we will avoid having a Friday Afternoon Problem instead. Honestly, I can barely keep up with myself! Today is also payday for me so I have done the accounts and paid my debts, which always feels good.
@BippityBoppityBoo - congrats on the baby news! As for your tea question, my mum would never have anything but Yorkshire Gold in the house, apparently nothing else was good enough. One of my friends bought their “malty biscuit” tea, something to be tried once and never spoken of again…
Most of the time, we use tea bags because we drink different blends, but my favourite for loose leaf is always Whittard’s English Breakfast Tea.
moooom safe travels back home, hope the idiots stay off the roads and out of your way!
Right…back to irk…my lovely DJ friend has sent me his radio show that will go out on Saturday evening. We should all have been in Scotland at a music festival today so he’s doing a show with loads of bands that were at the festival in previous years, and some that we should have been seeing this weekend so I shall put that on and dream.
My sense of time is such a mess that I thought today was Monday and was wondering why we were still in the same MMP.
Feeling pretty lousy doesn’t help. I’m at least 95% sure that it’s the regular kennel cough at this time of year (call centers are kind of like grade school classrooms that way), and I’m not even sure I’m the one who brought this home (yes, DH has it too), since his current irk is at a thrift store.
I didn’t realize how low we’d gotten on kitty kibblez. Since it’s my last Blessed Day Off for a while (yay! 
got 4 days scheduled next week, huzzah!!) I thought I’d pop over to The Gettin’ Sto’ real quick, and just get that and maybe some simple work-snacks, when … it happened …
I remembered.
Today is Black Friday dah-dah-dunnnn!
I kinda wanna go out of morbid curiosity - see how bad it is at Wal-Mart.
(NARRATOR: it was pretty bad.)
One of the “joys” of working retail during the pandemic is … I don’t give a shit about crowds anymore. I’ve been exposed so much, over and over, for months. I always wear a mask - over my nose, thankyouverymuch - so if I am contagious, I’m doing my best to reduce spreading it.
Otherwise, I don’t have diddly squat on the agenda.
Well, okay, I need to start simmering that turkey carcass for soup … and my coffee table is a cluttered mess again … and my favorite jeans just refuse to wash themselves, so perhaps a load of laundry.
Plus my favorite group of ASF ratties (my “pretties” all white, with dark eyes, and a black spot somewhere be it on one shoulder, or a single black ear) are due to be moved into a clean tub.
Which means I gotta set up a clean tub for 'em.
I lied when I said I ain’t got diddly squat to do!
E.T.A. gonna sit on my butt and play Plants vs Zombies. Hmph.
PURPLE UPDATE: I have annihilated many zombies. I have also commenced simmering the turkey bones.
In doing so, I discovered I have no carrots, no celery, and was down to a lone, sad onion (who has already landed in the pot) so yeah, definitely gonna saddle up - that means putting on pants - and slip into the streams of seething masses that is a Wal-Mart on Black Friday.
I’d chicken out (HA!) and go to Meijer, but I doubt they’re any less crowded.
If it weren’t so cold out, I’d consider taking Pretzel with me as an emotional support beast.
Okay, not really.
But STILL. The social distancing achieved when people notice the serpent wrapped around your body. Imagine the spacing!
PURPLE UPDATE v 2.0 (the “where the heck is everyone?” edition)
Wal-Mart was … no different than any regular Friday at lunchtime. 
If anyone got trampled or something, they’d already scraped away the body & shoo’d off the TV crew.
Huh.
Sign of bad economy? Or people smartly staying home? (Or 50-50?)
Anyway, I got celery & carrots, and already shoved some into the soup pot. The ratties all got a post-Thanksgiving celebratory bit of celery and a carrot apiece.
I’m very socialist when it comes to my rodents.
I also got nonperishables for a donation drive at work.
Stoppit. I’m not that charitable - we get an extra 10% off.
But I did get name brand oatmeal packets, in the multi box of various flavors so the recipient kiddos can pick out their favorites.
Just because you’re eating from a food pantry doesn’t mean your kids shouldn’t have the fun of picking what they like.
Oooo, Scottish music festival. I’m dreaming too.
Like a good Mumper I looked that up. Now I’m dreaming about Whittard Tea too. I dearly love tea with rose petals and they have several. I’m thinking I perhaps need to give myself an early holiday or Birthday present, tiptoeing amongst the various rose petal blends. Self indulgent I know.
Until I read this I was thinking the very thing. Alley-oops.
Just found out my Keurig coffee maker has died. Deepening sadness. It was a gift from my just-found-each-other-again sister and it’s not in my foreseeable budget to replace it. Sigh. If it was going to do it, why did it have to do it on the very first cup of a cold Midwestern morning? Following scareyfaerie’s inspiration I scrambled and made myself a good stiff cup of Irish breakfast tea. Granted I used the microwave to boil the water, but tea is tea, as long as it ain’t instant. As Scarlett O’Hara would say, “Tomorrow is another day”. I’ll gird my loins and deal with the Keurig issue tomorrow. 2020 sucketh.
I owned two Keurig brand coffeemakers sequentially and both of them died. Then I bought a Mr. Coffee version and it’s been going strong for years. Just looked it up on amazon-- dang! Those things are expensive when new! $90-ish. Mine was nowhere near that when I bought it, or I never would have. Anyhoo, I’d avoid the Keurig brand in the future.
Here’s some on ebay:
Their Earl Grey (my favorite flavor, normally I just drink plain black Lipton) has BLUE FLOWER PETALS in it 
how utterly fancy.
Sadly I have severe PTSD level snake phobia so warn me before you do that. I know you don’t want to inadvertently send me screaming and panicking in the absolute other direction. Rationally I know snakes are people just like me, but PTSD is no respector of reason.
You are sooooo my kinda girl. And mommas’ hearts need to be able to put a choice of loved kid food in front of their kids. You’re helping two sets of hearts when you (and nellie’s Little Food Pantry devoted and thoughtful &reliable refilling) do that. Lofting extra +++ karma your way.
Twining’s Irish breakfast has long been my favourite tea.
I think Keurig is overrated and too full of themselves, so I agree, I’ll avoid paying their premium when I scout out a replacement. Boo does have to be able to stagger out to the cold kitchen in the morning and just push the ‘brew’ button. It does look like the K-cup brewers all took a big $$ leap up 2 or 3 years ago. It is like it is a price-fixing cabal now.
Saw that tea on their website. It’s on my short list to consider-I like lavender next best! Earl Grey/Lady Grey rule too.
We’ve had a Keurig for about 10 years with no problems at all, and know lots of people don’t get that much lifetime with theirs, and I know at least a couple of folks who had problems left their Keurig’s on all the time. We don’t; our machine shuts off after 1 hour of no use. Just wondering if that’s the reason ours has gone on and on. Or maybe we are just really lucky? Anyway, I love the thing.
My Mr. Coffee Keurig is the kind where you pour in a cup of water and get a cup of coffee. There isn’t a reservoir full of water that sits there all the time.
Mine was too. Turns off after heating and pumping the one cup. My electrical wiring in a ca. 1880 kitchen would not be kind or prudent with the other. I dislike reality when it comes home to roost.
Bringing a swarm of bees has a similar effect 
TGIF.
It means it’s a whole 'nother week before I have to attempt to teach the Friday class again. I almost lost my voice trying to yell over them today- so frustrating, it’s just 3 of them that are so disruptive you can’t actually teach anything- and one of them is OK if the other 2 aren’t there, but feels the need to show off to them. Bleh. I wound up covering someone else’s class today as well, and really enjoyed it- they were all interested and involved- shame I can’t swap classes, but I don’t think I can, because no-one else wants to deal with that lot either.
I am a bit annoyed that I was fobbed off with that group as a first Proper Teaching experience, with no qualifications, midway through the course- everyone knew how hard they are.
I actually don’t drink much tea- I tend to go for Yorkshire tea when I do, but I tend to stick with my crippling coffee addiction and chocolate for my hot drink needs. I probably should lose my Lancastrian card for that.
FWIW and apropos of nothing, my favorite tea is Barry’s Gold:
Don’t care for Yorkshire Gold, or PG Tips. I’ve tried some others, too, but Barry’s is it for me. Barry’s in the green box is also good. For loose tea, Halmari Gold English Breakfast.
Boo, get yourself one of these. Wifey bought 2 of them (red ones) last year when they were ~$20 and we have one at the little house. She donated the other one to the Cultural Center for the art lab that she was spending so much time in.
We have a more expensive Keurig at the ‘big house’, that has survived so far. Our previous Keurig died, but we got our present one on sale.
We had a nice dinner last night, with the requisite leftovers. Today we attack the leaves all over the yard. Nothing else on the agenda.
Happy weekend everybody!
Thank you for the coffee recommendation. I second staying away from bossy boots big name brands. I don’t need to shell out to inflate their egos and bottom line.