Found out today there’s a “holiday” party for work tomorrow. We’re gonna close early and everything. Partying with a bunch of high schoolers sounds … odd, at my age, but hey - they’ve accepted me into their crew.
Might even be fun!
(Wow, I haven’t had the “what to wear” decisions in AGES!)
Add me to the couldn’t-sleep group. I took no painkillers yesterday, as I’d heard you shouldn’t do so before a neuro appointment for back pain, and I walked almost 5 miles in total. I think that plus pain was too much for my system, so I was itching a LOT, plus the ol’ lupus hand joint pain returned in force. I’m somewhat better today.
I got an estimate of my share of surgery expenses today. It said there’d be a 20% copay. Non, mon cherie, zees is why I have zee Medicare supplement. (No idea why the bad French accent.) It’s all straightened out, and I will owe $0. Yippee!
FCM, the Tobias photo gave me a grin. He’s cute AND a character!
Let me guess: she promised she’d feed him, she’d walk him. 
Bad-Ass Training, Part 2: shoe gets an A+.
Taters, I’m so envious of that thick hair! Do hair vitamins really work? Like you, I hate taking pills. I take my Rx’s, but vitamins and such are hit-or-miss. So sorry about Adam’s buckle break! Poor baby. How long will he need the cast?
wordy, hoping the side effects aren’t too hard on your poor, sweet mom. Also, when is your son’s surgery?
What is a brainscape? It sounds intriguing.
Coldest temperature: -40º in small town in Montana. Coldest wind chill: -60 in Wyoming (the day I went running and almost didn’t make it back home).
We had an encouraging meeting with our real estate person (who found us our present house 12 years ago). Looks like we may need to shorten our timeline for leaving Portland. She said the best time to sell is in the spring, and that we will likely get multiple offers, hopefully cash so we don’t have to jump through bank hoops. So we spent an hour figuring out when to get certain things done (painting, cleaning, floor refinish, etc.) and it looks like we may be heading out of here in the first part of May. Lots to do between then and now.
Have you started packing yet?
I bought Mrs. L.A. a nice pair of kitty slippers several years ago. She mentioned Monday (I think it was) that they were wearing out. So I ordered another pair. They arrived today while she was home between patients. She loves them. 
Bonus: The size I bought – which fits her – was $14 less than the other sizes. 
Evening all… Working my way through the Big Bowl O’Sallit for dinner. Back down to 26F heading for a low of 19F. Coldest I can ever remember being was walking to High School back in 1970, it was -4 with a wind chill of -28 and it was the longest mile I ever covered. Along with my brother we made it to a friends house (we usually met up and walked the rest of the way together). His mom took one look at us and took us all in by car (if you think my parents were bad for sending us out, we only had one car and my dad worked nights so wasn’t home yet). Don’t know if I ever warmed up that day.
Cookie, best of luck on the house-selling and movement.
Shoe, enjoy the time with the young’uns; they may be learning things from you that will come in useful later…
FCM, glad the State was just funnin’ you, because $14K is not all that funny…
Nut, still rooting for A Thing for you.
OK, salad need finishing and the Southwest Chief is approaching Fort Madison, Iowa on Virtual Railfan, so catch you all tomorrow.
baker, the coldest temp that I’ve ever been in was during the blizzard of ‘78 in northern Indiana (about 85 miles from where Moooooom was at Purdue). People were stranded all over the place. My school bus went into a ditch, Dad’s truck got stuck about 1/2 mile from friends’ 10 miles from home, my cousin Mike got stuck within walking distance from our house on his way home from work and stayed with us and people just kind of battened down the hatches until we could dig out. The winter before I moved to Tennessee (moved in '95), we went 18 days without getting above freezing. That’s what made me decide to get away from lake effects weather.
Digits are crossed for A Thing nut.
The apartment is clean, laundry is done and groceries are bought. When I came out of Kroger, there was a clear bag (like a gift type package) on my windshield that had a flyer for an internet provider, a heart shaped note pad and a pack of gum. It’s been forever since there’s been something like that on my car.
Wow, I’ve been more productive in the last hour than I have all week.
Initiated by the desire to do some basic purtification (1) I wound up getting the wherewithal to scoop the litter box, put away a bunch of clutter, gather up a couple trash bags worth of “Why the hell did I keep this?” and remember to pour Drano into the bathtub before my next shower instead of during.
(1) … which is silly, because I already heard there’ll be dodgeball. It’ll be that kind of party LOL
… so I guess, NOT wearing a dress?
Congrats on your last day Swampy! What are you going to do with all your free time? LOL!
Moooom, Toby is so cute!!!
As to cat litter, have you looked at Chewy? They have good prices AND someone else schleps that heavy litter to your home. We order a 32 lb deal that is split into 4 8lb bags.
Poor lil guy! He’s too young to understand what’s going on which is probably making the experience even more scary and stressful.
I apologize, I know that you didn’t mean that at all but I was trying to set you up as a straight man to a lame joke about how I couldn’t afford to buy a life so I settled for buying a kitten instead. I woke up in the middle of the night with the realization that I had worded it wrong and you were probably going to think that I was offended which was not my intention at all.
I hope the side effects are mild. Have I mentioned how much I admire how you have managed to shoulder all the shit that just keeps getting thrown at you.
Here’s praying that you have a mild case. Is it possible for you to stay home for a few days? No matter what you have, if you are sick you won’t do your best work. A few days rest could make a big difference in your productivity.
I think I’m officially in love with your little reddish dog, he is just too happy looking.
Horror stories like yours and your father’s are a big reason I am happy about my choice to cover my skin and wear big floppy hats at all times. I was all about masking because that meant it was acceptable to wear a sun protecting mask over my face. Ghost white people with thin blond hair probably shouldn’t choose to move to the desert.
HOLY COW!!! I can’t even imagine how cold that would be. It dips under freezing once in a while here but only for short periods of time. The way our home is built and positioned, we would have died if we had that TX winter last year. (North/South orientation so the sun travels overhead instead of beating against walls and windows as well as no windows on the East/West sides.)
I once had a job that required me to do inventory in walk in freezers and that was pretty cold but I could run out into the main building and stand under a heating vent to warm up so no risk of frostbite.
Hurray for good grades and fingers still crossed for your Thing Nut. I also just went over to a couple of sleeping cats and crossed their front legs for a little extra luck!
Party hearty shoe and good job running da Block! You da Boss! As to playing dodgeball, remember you are playing high schoolers. Age and treachery will overcome youth and enthusiasm every time. Use your team building skillz to get folks on your side and then accidentally kick the ball at them.
While I am aspiring to swampy level slothage skillz, I still did some stuff today.
Our housekeeper asked for cottage cheese for Christmas and we couldn’t find cultured buttermilk. (Buttermilk made with some sort of acid is too bitter for cottage cheese.) Hubs found cultured buttermilk a few weeks ago and today I started my first batch of cultured buttermilk ever. I won’t get caught short again and making it is one of those hobby things that really is cheaper than buying it.
Sanitizing the tools and work area took almost as long as the cooking part so I’ll try to plan to do my next batch when I’m doing something else that requires that level of sanitizing cause I’m pretty lazy.
Hubs went to town and did a bunch of small errands today and just barely got home and settled when his friend called him because the friend needed a ride to get food and ice. Friend doesn’t have a working fridge because a breaker blew. Friend bought a new breaker and knows how to replace one, but when he opened the breaker box there was water in it because friend’s roof leaks. Friend is now living out of an ice chest and has a fridge full of rotten food that he can’t physically do anything about. I am going to be so happy when he is in his new digs. I really REALLY hope he doesn’t get mad about something and leave.
I had to order a large washable rug to put in the laundry room. The catio door is in there and the rug we have in front of the door isn’t nearly wide enough to wipe his feet after he’s been out playing in his water fountain. All the cats got weighed on the first of the year. GG was 12.4 lbs. Today hubs noticed that it looked like he had been growing…13.6 lbs.
GG hasn’t gotten any smarter, today he jumped the baby gate again. Knowing that he forgets that cats know how to jump when he’s scared, I opened the gate for him. NSGC got mad that GG was in his room and scared GG so badly that GG trapped himself between the bedroom door and wall. Again.
We do need to figure out what to do about this, though. We don’t like them fighting, we don’t like cleaning up hunks of fur and we worry about what is going to happen when GG realizes that he’s much bigger than NSGC. We loves our NSGC too.
Down to -6 here at 9:30, so who knows what it’ll get to. Looks to be no cloud cover, so it’s prolly gonna get frickin cold.
shoe Nice productivness. More than I did today. Have fun at the partaaay!
I threw away a whole huge pile of Cin’s old toys yesterday. Well I’d bagged them up the day he went, but just got to actually tossing them in a dumpster yesterday.
I’m feeling way better than I was this morning. I still feel like I can’t breathe enough when I’m lying down, but other than that, I’m OK. Prolly won’t help the sleeping tonight.
Nut Various things crossed for your Thing.
unknown I really do appreciate the GG updates, his escapades always give me a laugh. I’m a little fuzzy, though, on cats. What are the whole cats of characters? pun intended. Pics requested.
So no work tomorrow due to the snow. But a double today due to the ice. So I ended up with a regular paycheck, even with all the disruptions.
Actual temp: 5 degrees
Windchill: -5
Both in N.C.
Reminds me of the one summer day at my highschool job where they had me alternate between working in the ice cream freezer(-5F) and frching carts out of the parking lot(100F, 110 Heat Index). That was a swing
For anyone who might need cheering up: In England, volunteers lured a runaway dog off dangerous mud flats by hanging freshly-cooked sausages from drones. Flying sausages? Hey, when you’re out of options, don’t knock wurst.
Oh, that’s just wrong. The pun, I mean. Yay for doggie rescue.
I somehow missed that Pixel is gone. I am sorry you’re without your cuddle buddy, especially while you have the plague.
Guess I shouldn’t read the MMP before breakfast. Now I want sausages. Good thing we’re having sausages for lunch.
Got a hair appointment today, including color, so that’ll take some time. I bought dried chiles to make enchilada sause from scratch, so I’ll do that after my appointment. And take a walk, probably.
So maybe, breakfast first?
Happy Saturday!
My stylist lost her salon during all of this. I haven’t had a proper cut since the before times. My hair got down to my waist and I lost my patience with it and grabbed the scissors. I now have what I like to call an asymmetrical bob.
While not quite that extreme, when I was a teen, I worked at my dad’s office. When the regular courier was on vacation, I did his route, which involved going to various companies in downtown Baltimore… in the summer… in the heat and humidity. So I’d be going from steamy outdoors up and down elevators to icy air conditioned offices. It was, shall we say, unpleasant. All for $2.00/hr, which was higher than min wage way back then.
Unknown - I gave Chewy a try, so we’ll see how it goes. I’m not on autoship, tho, till I decide whether I like their stuff or not.
It was a frosty 18° when I checked this morning. East of us folks are promised snow, but we should just get overcast cold. FCD wanted to go to the boat, but that’s east of here, so no. We’re going to hibernate.
He didn’t want to go out for breakfast - he must really be hurting. But that’s fine - we’ve had breakfast here and a day of semi-chillage has begun. I think I’m going to give the bathrooms a good cleaning instead of the quick cleanings they’ve been getting of late. So that’s some fun ahead for me. rah. As for the rest - we’ll wing it.
Happy Saturday!
Good Mornin’ Y’all! Up and caffeinatin’. YAWN ‘Tis 36 Amurrkin out and cloudy with a predicted high of 45 and cloudy for the day. I shall go and do the things I did not do over to the church house this mornin’. Beyond that much sloth shall ensue. I yanked some chili outta da freezer. That, some fixin’s and cornbread shall comprise sup.
nuts appropriate/inappropriate appendages remain crossed for A Thing.
shoe enjoy the partay today!
cookie hope all goes smooth with the house sellin’/buyin’/relocation stuff.
unknown I, too, enjoy readin’ about the antics of GG. He has kinda become the MMP cat.
Now I need more caffeine and to feed rumbly tummy. Then, alas, alack, and oh so much bother, I suppose I must purtify and don appropriate bein’ about the public attire. Woe!
Happy Sattidy Y’all!
shoe, this party sounds like your best jeans and hoodie combo with the good sneakers may be called for.
unknown, Nelson is a happy little guy, though a bit feisty. I’m loving on GG vicariously, given that it’s been quite a few years since I’ve had a cat, let alone a kitten.
I spent a couple of years as an inventory lead for a restaurant supply place, where I could be in the freezer (-10F), the cooler (35F-42F depending on the zone or the dry warehouse (temp depended on the temp outside, as it wasn’t heated / cooled) at any given time. I had a freezer suit for excursions into the freezer, but tended to wear just a heavy coat and gloves if I was going to be in there less than 10 minutes. No wonder that I always had a cold when I worked there.
sunny, I was searching for a new stylist when the pandemic hit. Last spring, when Sis stopped on the way to Dad’s, we did what we did as broke high school students: put a chair in the yard and cut each other’s hair. She did a good job on mine and I did a reasonable one on hers. A couple of months ago, I got brave and tried out a barber around the corner. He cut it waaaaaaaaaayyyyy too short. It’s just now beginning to grow out to an acceptable length.
Mooooooom, another vote for Chewy. I buy Nelson’s food, flea collars and a few other things from them. It’s nice not having to lug a heavy bag of kibble 200’ from car to door.
Up, caffeinating, breakfasted and prepping for a day of (mostly) sloth. I need to pick up some prescriptions and go to Mount Juliet for an office chair from Marketplace (I have a bad wheel on one that is too big for the studio and has no lumbar support). It’s cold enough that I won’t take Nelson with me.
Stay safe and healthy y’all!
Morning all. Soccer is still on, but the local schools may be going back to on-line teaching next week, so this may be the last session. Been a lot of reported cases lately, maybe just as well I’m such a homebody. Will wear a mask today.
20F and only getting to 40F today.
doggio, FCM, had the same thing while working in the UAE. I’d come out of the nice AC house into 105F and humid (we were on the Arabian Sea) and my glasses would fog over in an instant. Had to clean them before proceeding.
At least you gave us good links…
OK, need to instant breakfast and get ready for soccer. All y’all take care.
Good morning everyone.
It’s 32 degrees and very foggy outside.
Wow, some of you have endured some extreme cold! I think the coldest I ever endured was slightly less than a week of -5 degrees. I was a kid and it didn’t really bother me too much; there was snow and I played hard in it. This was back in the 70s and it rarely gets that cold here anymore.
Thanks for the good wishes/commiseration re: Adam. He acts like it doesn’t even bother him, although he gets a little cranky because he can’t be as mobile as he wants to be. This is a kid where even now, a lot of stuff comes easily to him, so when he has to struggle with something, he becomes impatient.
I got my hair done did. It’s a little shorter than I’d like, but it’ll grow. nellie, I am just talking about multi-vitamins, really. I’ve never tried vitamins for hair because I never really needed it. I think that prenatal vitamins must make one’s hair grow like crazy though; I went from just above the shoulder to the top of the butt in six months when I was pregnant with both kids. I am not taking prenatal vitamins, lol! I’ve heard about taking keratin supplements, but I don’t know how effective they are. I figure taking multi-vitamins can only help, and it’s something I should be doing anyway.
Have fun at the party, shoe!
I’m off to the park as soon as it’s daylight. I can get some steps in and then come and take care of stuff around the house. I was thinking about driving up to Dania Furniture today, but I think I’ll wait until tomorrow. There’s a couch there that interests me, but I’m not sure about the color and I want to see it in person.
After I got my hair cut yesterday, I went over to Office Depot to check out desks for our den. I didn’t like a single one of them and they all looked and felt cheap. I don’t mind paying less, but I don’t want stuff peeling, buckling, or breaking within a year either. After that, I went over to Home Goods because I want a shelf or combo shelf/cabinet to put next to my desk upstairs. Holy crap, that stuff was flimsy as hell. I shouldn’t have been surprised because it was fairly inexpensive, but still just not good.
Well, I should finish my coffee and get some fuel into me too. I hope everyone has a good day and stays warm.