Day.....eh....403

 Another day down the drain

    Honestly, I don't know where it went.  

    Yes, I did take a nap.  When I sat in my chair to read, it was 3-0 and the Cubs only had 2 hits.  When I woke up the Cubs still only had 2 hits, but it was 985 to 0.  

    I did a load of laundry, but it sat in the drier until just a few minutes ago.

    I had a meeting in the afternoon, but by then the day was pretty much over.

    I have no idea how time can pass so quickly here but so slowly in a meeting.

    Hopefully I can mow some time this week.  A couple of my neighbors have mowed twice, but my mower is still in the shop from winter storage.  I can see a bumper crop of highly invasive mustard grass, and my yard seems to be the only one that has it.  Go figure.

    The cuckoo is driving me cuckoo too.  It runs slow, so I move the weight around to speed it up.  Then  it moves too fast.  I move it again.  I am moving it distances that need to be measured by a neutron microscope, but it still is not keeping good time.  

    There  is a meteor shower for us the next few nights, so it is cloudy.  Again.  Every time there is a sky event, it is cloudy.

    And cold.  I am sitting in long pants, two shirts, and my freaking bathrobe because I am freezing.  

    I am in a winey mood.  And yes, that misspelling was intentional.

    Cheers.

    Stay safe.  Stay healthy.

Peace and Love

day....thief!!......402

 We had a thief in the house today

    We were shocked.  

    I picked up our little friend Sam from school today and brought her to our house until her mom could pick her up.

    Sam was not the thief.  Jen was not the thief.

    We had a person in who cleans.  They come every two weeks.  It is my treat to myself and relieves me of a chore that takes an ADD person like me 2 days to do.

    When she was getting ready to leave, she stopped in the den to say good bye.  We were chatting away and Corki got up and left the room.  Corki had been at the back door just five minutes before, so I figured she had to go out.

    I went to let her out and The Little Thief was sitting on the rug under  the nook table with a package of cookies she took out of our cleaner's purse!

    She didn't manage to get them open, but she was licking the package and nosing it back and forth.

    It got me thinking.....did I really finish the beef stick I left on the table in the basement today?  I thought I had a bite left, but when I came back there was nothing on the table.  Did I eat it, or not?

    The whole incident upset me so much I had to have a glass of wine.  Ok, two glasses.  But they are small glasses, so I may have to have a third.  You know, just to assuage the angst of having a thief in the house.

    Stay safe.  Stay healthy.

Peace and Love

day....son of a..&@@###!.........401

 I broke down and bought a new can opener last week

    I have been struggling to open Corki's green beans with the 2 can openers I had.  They would work for part of the can, not the rest.  It took forever to open a can.

    So I bought a $12.97 can opener, tagged "THE LAST CAN OPENER YOU WILL EVER NEED!"  And I tossed the old ones.

    How does my new buy work?

    You be the judge.

    The last can opener I will ever need is worth Shinola, to use a polite term.  In fact, I think it was made for left handers!  I opened one can two nights ago and it was fine.

    Tonight?

    As you can tell by the variety of tools, it did not go well.  I ended up using the screwdriver and hammer, punching out part of the lid, then taking the pliers and pulling like hell to get the lid open far enough to get the beans out.

    I probably, check that, I definitely said some bad word,s rhyming with hit, swell, ram and luck.  I am including lucking in that category.

    I was pissed.   My supper ended up cold,  my BP at 450, my patience stripped as much as a pole dancer at the Dirty 30.

    Every time I buy a product from a certain Asian country, it turns out to be a piece of crap.  Yet I can't find made in USA products that perform the same task, so I must be looking or shopping in the wrong place.

    Otherwise, it ruined a pretty darn good day!  

    Burgers on the grill, sunshine, no bills in the mail...... a pretty good day.

    Except for the damn can opener.

    Stay safe.  Stay healthy.

Peace and Love

day....king me!......400

 I have always wanted to be royalty of some sort

    A duke.  Like Ellington.

    Or a count.  Like Basie or Chocolate.

    But the best would be king, or even a consort.

    As you know, Prince Phillip recently died.  He was 99, so his death can not be what you would consider unexpected.  And while all deaths are sad, we need to remember the 99 years of happiness he brought to the world.

    I was reading about him and learned something about being a king.  His grandfather was from Denmark but in the 1860s he was adopted by Greece as the country's monarch!  And I don't mean butterfly!!

    So there is hope fror me.

    All I have to do is send resumes to countries like Monaco, Lichtenstein, Malta,  or other smaller nations and offer my services as king as long as they adopt me as their monarch.

    I always thought getting to be a king was hard.  In the early days, the kings were the leaders of the strongest armies, able to vanquish foes with lance and sword.  All they had to do was offer to be adopted!

    Think of the lives that would have saved.

    We don't have royalty in this country, despite what some politicians and billionaires think.  Well, we did have a king in Elvis, but he has left the building.  And the planet.

    But we don't have titles.  It's in the Constitution,   Article I, section 4, paragraph 5:  There shalt be no kings, dukes, or other titles of nobility  unless they be named Terry and are adopted by this country.

    Look it up.  

    The MEN who wrote the Consitution knew what they were doing.  Except for allowing slavery, ignoring the rights of women and native Americans, and not realizing that life would change from a world of single shot muzzle loaders fired by  white men who believed it was ok for rich planters  to own other people, and a few thousand other changes that make up our world we live in now, they did ok.  And if you understood that sentence, you did better than me and I wrote it.

    So, if you don't hear from me again, I will have officially been adopted by another country and installed as their king. 

    Until tomorrow.

    Stay stafe.  Stay happy.  

Peace and Love

day....blah....4,686

 This was a loong day

And yes, the extra o is intentional to signify how long the day was.

It rained, as most of you know, almost all day.

It was cloudy.

It was chilly.

The Cubs lost.

I ate a bunch of junk food and was not hungry for supper, so we had plain spaghetti which did nothing to satisfy my hunger.  I did see a Facebook funny of a refrigerator with a sign that said:  You are not hungry, you are bored.

That sums up myself today.

I did sit down to read a book about 4 and Jackie woke me at 5.  I swear, if I ever finish this book it will be a miracle.  Dan and Linda, you will get it back eventually.

That's about it.  Boring day.  Cold day.  End of day.

Stay safe.  Stay warm and dry.  Stay healthy.

Peace and Love

day....bear alert!!.......398

 Sometimes things get lost in translation

    I took Corki in for a cut and trim today.  Now she looks and smells clean and is prettier than ever!

    See what I mean?

    Normally it takes about an hour, but today the groomer was running behind so I got to go get trimmed and run to the grocery store.

    But I had to stop because I saw a bear!  Really!!!  It was foraging at a garbage dump.  I am putting a picture at the end.

    After I dropped off the groceries, I went to get Corki.

    I have to cross UP railroad tracks out in the country.  (Yes, city folk...there is countrier country past my house!)  I hit the tracks at about 4 and there was a train blocking the crossing.  It was not moving. I waited, but it did not move.  It was a long train too.

    So I opted to go west to the next crossing.

    It, too, was blocked, probably the same train.

    So I said I will go west to the next crossing.  After about 5 minutes I realized I was nowhere near the railroad tracks and fast approaching Ashton.   I pulled over into the driveway of an abandoned house, and the red pickup truck that was behind me pulled up next to me.

    I rolled down my window.

    "I said to myself, this fella has no idea where he is going.  Do you?"  the driver asked. I admitted I didn't and told him where I was headed, but the crossings were blocked.  I asked if the dirt road I just passed went south across the tracks and he said yes, then gave me directions on how to get back to the road I wanted.

    We both laughed about it.

    I picked up Corki  and headed for home.  It was now about 4:30.  The train was still there!  Only now it was moving painfully slow, but I waited and it cleared the crossing.  As the gates went up and I pulled across, a saw another train coming and sure enough, I just got across and the gates came down.  

    Then I ordered supper.

    We have a menu for a local Mexican restaurant and we picked out what we wanted.  I wanted the tostado dinner, which came with 2 tostados, rice and beans.  Jackie wanted the taco fajita salad.  

    I called the restaurant and gave the order and the woman sounded confused.  So I asked. is this Restuarant A?  She said it was Restuarant B.  I called the wrong place!

    I called Restaurant A and told that lady I wanted the 2 tostado dinner and the taco fajita salad.

    I went to pick it up and my order was huge because while I wanted the 2 tostado dinner, she heard (and repeated back to me, now that I think about it) 2 tostado dinners.

    I stopped at Emily and John's and gave Camryn one of the dinners.  

    Supper was good.  The day was dreary but fine.  I am freezing because we turned the heat off when it hit 80 and I am too lazy to turn it on again.

    Such is life, eh?

    Stay healthy.  Stay happy.  Call the right restaurant.

    Peace and Love

    Oh, the bear!!!!

    A rare sighting of a bear foraging at a local dump! I think he was looking for a place to sleep. 

day.....retirement?.....397

I was in meetings for almost 5 hours  today 

    I am retired!  WTH??  This is my take it easy part of life because I am old and slowing down, mentally and physically.  Right?

Instead I serve on committees of two agencies that  award grants to various projects in the community.  Today was the first of two meetings for one group, and the other group met Tuesday.

    Plus I had a museum board meeting tonight.

    Thankfully, the meetings today were Zoomers.  That alone saved me time, which I needed for cooking supper.  I still have dishes to do and it is almost 9 p.m.  Also, one load of laundry to run.  And my column to finish.

    Thursday and Friday afternoons are my "relief" time, but that is also when I schedule things like doctor appointments or shopping excursions so Jackie doesn't have to sit home for a coouple of hours by herself.

    Tomorrow I take Corki in for a cut and curl.  Don't tell her though, she does not like getting groomed.  After I drop her off at the groomer, I am going to go get a haircut and a beverage at Cypress House.  Actually, I am getting mhy hair cut at the barber shop and then go to Cypress House.  Just to be clear.

    On the plus side, not that any of these are negatives, I was asked to be on another board and I said no.  I just can't take on anymore than I have on this ever more fragile plate.

    And trust me, I could never do all this if I was working.

    On the second plus side, the two committees usually only meet in April and May, so most of my work will be done in a week.

    But these past three weeks have been difficult with applications to read and evaluate and then meet to talk about.  Altogether I think it was about 50 applications..... that's a lot of reading, even for an old guy.

    Stay healthy.  Stay safe.  Donate to a charity.

Peace and Love