"You gonna get another job?"...
- Thread starter Volpone
- Start date
Volpone
Zombie Hunter
Next year I'm gonna have to have a McDonald's Filet o' Fish and a Shamrock Shake for lunch on St. Patricks Day and a fish & chips with a Guinness at the pub for dinner.
I put in my notice yesterday. I'm so excited about the thought of fully retiring. I'll be able to spend time with my pets, write, make art, work on home improvement projects, and give more of my time and money to Charity--or one of the other girls at the Asian massage parlor if she's with someone. *rimshot*
I put in my notice yesterday. I'm so excited about the thought of fully retiring. I'll be able to spend time with my pets, write, make art, work on home improvement projects, and give more of my time and money to Charity--or one of the other girls at the Asian massage parlor if she's with someone. *rimshot*
Volpone
Zombie Hunter
Almost 4 years. My 2 weeks notice doesn't run out until April 5, but after today, the only day they had me scheduled for was Easter and the boss confirmed that we aren't working that night (the store is closed, so it seemed odd that they scheduled us). More later. I should get cleaned up, fix a cocktail and perhaps something to nosh on. Managed to retire younger than my Dad, but he had a wife and 2 kids, so I don't know how he did it. Now I can just go around and do the side quests. Cool.
Volpone
Zombie Hunter
"THE CIRCLE OF LIFE..."
Yeah, it's not beautiful and majestic and Disneyesque. It's fucking horrible. You have been warned. A week ago The Dog got a pair of groundhogs over a 2 day period. Managed to do it right around Trash Day. Brought them home. The problem is, I can't just throw them in the trash the day she gets them or she gets all upset. I have to let them lay in state in the yard for a few days. Luckily the weather has been cold so I was able to do it. She managed to get the second one open. Groundhogs have pretty tough hides, so they usually just go to waste if she kills one but she got this one open. And the way a dog gets to the tasty bits on a groundhog is through the asshole. The hide is weaker there so she pulls out their butthole and then starts pulling the guts out the opening.
At this point I have to put something over my hands and intervene, because if she eats the guts, the poop in them makes her puke up everything she's eaten. So I get to pull out the guts and throw them in the trash. Once this was done, she got to work on the bugger. Ate the hind legs and pelvis--bones and all. The stomach hadn't come out with the rest of the bowels so I had to collect that when she got it out. Then, over the next few days, the vultures came. The vultures pulled the hide off the upper body and ate all the meat off the skeleton. This turned out to be OK with The Dog and she proceeded to eat the skeleton. Once she'd eaten that, she got to work on peeling the hide away from the skull so she could eat that. In the end all that was left was the hide and the incisors.
Tomorrow is Trash Day so I was going to get rid of the carcasses, but of course I was working outside today and she took a new interest in them. Also, the vultures had started on the second one and got its butthole open so I had to stop and pull the guts out of it once she started working on it. Tonight she wanted to bring it in the house. I decided she might as well keep the hide and chew on that, since it really can't stink that much, but I was going to chuck the other one. Felt bad after the renewed interest, but caught a whiff after I tossed it off the back deck tonight and decided it had to go. She seems to be taking it relatively well.
This is my life. Nature works really well but it is also horrible and disgusting.
Yeah, it's not beautiful and majestic and Disneyesque. It's fucking horrible. You have been warned. A week ago The Dog got a pair of groundhogs over a 2 day period. Managed to do it right around Trash Day. Brought them home. The problem is, I can't just throw them in the trash the day she gets them or she gets all upset. I have to let them lay in state in the yard for a few days. Luckily the weather has been cold so I was able to do it. She managed to get the second one open. Groundhogs have pretty tough hides, so they usually just go to waste if she kills one but she got this one open. And the way a dog gets to the tasty bits on a groundhog is through the asshole. The hide is weaker there so she pulls out their butthole and then starts pulling the guts out the opening.
At this point I have to put something over my hands and intervene, because if she eats the guts, the poop in them makes her puke up everything she's eaten. So I get to pull out the guts and throw them in the trash. Once this was done, she got to work on the bugger. Ate the hind legs and pelvis--bones and all. The stomach hadn't come out with the rest of the bowels so I had to collect that when she got it out. Then, over the next few days, the vultures came. The vultures pulled the hide off the upper body and ate all the meat off the skeleton. This turned out to be OK with The Dog and she proceeded to eat the skeleton. Once she'd eaten that, she got to work on peeling the hide away from the skull so she could eat that. In the end all that was left was the hide and the incisors.
Tomorrow is Trash Day so I was going to get rid of the carcasses, but of course I was working outside today and she took a new interest in them. Also, the vultures had started on the second one and got its butthole open so I had to stop and pull the guts out of it once she started working on it. Tonight she wanted to bring it in the house. I decided she might as well keep the hide and chew on that, since it really can't stink that much, but I was going to chuck the other one. Felt bad after the renewed interest, but caught a whiff after I tossed it off the back deck tonight and decided it had to go. She seems to be taking it relatively well.
This is my life. Nature works really well but it is also horrible and disgusting.
Volpone
Zombie Hunter
Mundane stuff with an OCD and/or weather bent:
Still have housecleaning, bookkeeping, and lawnmowing to cross off the weekend chores list. Then I've got another list of projects that went on the back burner because I was renovating a rental property and working a part time job.
One of those things, I'd like to bang out--cleaning the van and car interior--because then I could cross that off the list for quite some time BUT the weather was nice Monday with rain coming Tuesday--and windy all week. [shit, this is wandering all over] The Dog developed a limp over the weekend so I've been watching that. She still insists on her 2 daily patrols but she's fine with taking them slow and cutting them short. Clever girl. So I make up the extra time by staying outside in the yard with her, since the gravel driveway has grown up with weeds again and I can work on that while she celebrates her dead groundhogs and does other dog things.
I've got a long tin shed with two double garage doors and a single, off to the side of the driveway. So I've got two gravel strips wide enough for 2 cars and one wide enough for 1. I already banged out the single and I've been weeding the double that doesn't get driven on. The other one is trickier in that it has some weeds but the gravel isn't totally overgrown with them, so pulling them is near impossible. What I wound up doing is raking all the gravel up in 1 foot strips, pulling the weeds that are then exposed, and then moving on to rake another strip until the whole approach was piled up onto the main driveway.
I put emphasis on this because the wind would blow away a lot of the dirt mixed in with the gravel and then the rain would help wash the dirt down as well. I did take a break to do leak patching on the tin shed roof too. Granted, it didn't rain that hard last night and it's not that humid so everything could've evaporated but no puddles in the tin shed this morning and I've got the chunk of driveway I've been working done. Now an afternoon nap and a dog walk and then more weeding on the final 2 car approach. Sadly, that's taking so long that parts of it that I weeded are already growing up again so it looks like I'll have to rake all that up onto the main driveway like I did with the other one. Or I could just leave it and call it good. But again, I'm crazy that way.
Still have housecleaning, bookkeeping, and lawnmowing to cross off the weekend chores list. Then I've got another list of projects that went on the back burner because I was renovating a rental property and working a part time job.
One of those things, I'd like to bang out--cleaning the van and car interior--because then I could cross that off the list for quite some time BUT the weather was nice Monday with rain coming Tuesday--and windy all week. [shit, this is wandering all over] The Dog developed a limp over the weekend so I've been watching that. She still insists on her 2 daily patrols but she's fine with taking them slow and cutting them short. Clever girl. So I make up the extra time by staying outside in the yard with her, since the gravel driveway has grown up with weeds again and I can work on that while she celebrates her dead groundhogs and does other dog things.
I've got a long tin shed with two double garage doors and a single, off to the side of the driveway. So I've got two gravel strips wide enough for 2 cars and one wide enough for 1. I already banged out the single and I've been weeding the double that doesn't get driven on. The other one is trickier in that it has some weeds but the gravel isn't totally overgrown with them, so pulling them is near impossible. What I wound up doing is raking all the gravel up in 1 foot strips, pulling the weeds that are then exposed, and then moving on to rake another strip until the whole approach was piled up onto the main driveway.
I put emphasis on this because the wind would blow away a lot of the dirt mixed in with the gravel and then the rain would help wash the dirt down as well. I did take a break to do leak patching on the tin shed roof too. Granted, it didn't rain that hard last night and it's not that humid so everything could've evaporated but no puddles in the tin shed this morning and I've got the chunk of driveway I've been working done. Now an afternoon nap and a dog walk and then more weeding on the final 2 car approach. Sadly, that's taking so long that parts of it that I weeded are already growing up again so it looks like I'll have to rake all that up onto the main driveway like I did with the other one. Or I could just leave it and call it good. But again, I'm crazy that way.
Volpone
Zombie Hunter
Last night I got to bed at a reasonable hour and, of course, woke up around 2:20 and couldn't get back to sleep. I'd heard The Dog and thought she might want to go Out. She didn't so I proactively went to the bathroom since I was up and then laid awake for an hour and a half. I've got 3 things to do to beat insomnia. My relaxation exercises were failing so I decided to get up and write a journal entry. Getting the things I'm worrying about out on paper allows me to stop worrying about them and go to sleep. (Clearing my head of worries is part of the relaxation exercises.) Turns out my relaxation exercises to quiet my brain hadn't worked as well as I'd thought they had because, among the other things I was worrying about is what do I do with my Dad's safe if I outlive my brother.
My Dad used to be Postmaster of the small town where I lived when I was little. In those days in small towns, being Postmaster was a little like owning a McDonald's franchise--if you had a building and the equipment, you were the town Postmaster. Well when he retired and we moved to The Country, his safe no longer met the standards for a US Post Office safe. So now there's an Old West bank style safe sitting in a garage in rural Wisconsin. The combination used to be hidden in the garage but the last time I used it, it was showing some wear and tear and I don't know if it is readable anymore. I've copied it down a few times but I can't remember where. One place was on a previous laptop, so that's almost certainly lost. Anyway, even if I had the combination I'm not sure I could still open it. It's a bit tricky and I haven't opened it in years so I'm not sure I even remember the notation on the "cheat sheet".
So yeah. If that's the kind of thing I was thinking about, it's pretty safe to say my mind wasn't in a quiet, restful place.
So ultimately I wound up oversleeping by close to an hour. On the plus side, I had it in my head that it was Thursday, but it is only Wednesday. So I got that goin' for me, which is nice.
My Dad used to be Postmaster of the small town where I lived when I was little. In those days in small towns, being Postmaster was a little like owning a McDonald's franchise--if you had a building and the equipment, you were the town Postmaster. Well when he retired and we moved to The Country, his safe no longer met the standards for a US Post Office safe. So now there's an Old West bank style safe sitting in a garage in rural Wisconsin. The combination used to be hidden in the garage but the last time I used it, it was showing some wear and tear and I don't know if it is readable anymore. I've copied it down a few times but I can't remember where. One place was on a previous laptop, so that's almost certainly lost. Anyway, even if I had the combination I'm not sure I could still open it. It's a bit tricky and I haven't opened it in years so I'm not sure I even remember the notation on the "cheat sheet".
So yeah. If that's the kind of thing I was thinking about, it's pretty safe to say my mind wasn't in a quiet, restful place.
So ultimately I wound up oversleeping by close to an hour. On the plus side, I had it in my head that it was Thursday, but it is only Wednesday. So I got that goin' for me, which is nice.
Volpone
Zombie Hunter
OK. Up to a point in your life, you make plans and expect them to work; you're disappointed when they fail. But after, say, about 40, you just expect your plans to fail and are joyful and suspicious when they actually work. People under 40 are sad when you tell them this, but it is what it is.
I have a big long tin shed. Lean-to style. We'll say it's 60' long and 20' wide. The front is maybe 12 high and the back is around 8' high. 4x4 studs, we'll say 2x8 roof joists, and then something like 1x4s tying the studs and joists together. Interlocking galvanized steel skin is attached to it with sheet metal screws with integral rubber gaskets. At some point part of it collapsed and was rebuilt and another part had a big branch fall on it. I have no idea how old it is.
So the problem of this is entropy. And a variation on Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle. The wood rots. And sags. This stresses the joints--metal overlaps; spots where screws go through the roof and into the wood skeleton. Water gets in, wood rots, and the screws can no longer form a watertight seal. Add in expansion and contraction with temperature changes from the seasons and years of neglect and deferred maintenance and you get a leaky roof.
I've been here basically since the beginning of 2021 and I work on the leaks when I can and when I'm able. I had part of the shed rented out which made it hard to pursue leaks. And lack of time is always a problem. But now that I'm retired(?) and the space is opening up (I've still got a junker truck in 1 spot but that's going away soon), I've been working on the remaing leaks. I'll go in during/after rains with a piece of chalk and mark puddle locations and obvious leaks. Then when it dries up (and I have time) I'll measure out distances and try to locate the leaks on the roof. I always fail. There are always puddles. To make matters worse, getting up on the roof to fix leaky spots almost certainly creates new leaks in other spots. I've been convinced it is an impossible task.
But! Tonight! I got an unexpected--and unexpectedly heavy--rain so I popped out in the dark to inspect and there were only 2 very minor, tiny leaks. One of them is almost certainly because the trailing edge of the roof doesn't have a "drip edge" and doesn't overhang far enough, so the water curls under and runs down the back wall on the inside. The other *may* be a leaky sheet metal screw--there was no obvious drip inside on the roof--just a puddle on the floor.
And I'm just standing there in the shed in my robe and jammies in absolute joy that it is pouring out and the inside of the shed is almost totally dry.
Of course tomorrow the wind will probably come from a different direction and it will again leak like a sieve, but you take your victories where you can.
I have a big long tin shed. Lean-to style. We'll say it's 60' long and 20' wide. The front is maybe 12 high and the back is around 8' high. 4x4 studs, we'll say 2x8 roof joists, and then something like 1x4s tying the studs and joists together. Interlocking galvanized steel skin is attached to it with sheet metal screws with integral rubber gaskets. At some point part of it collapsed and was rebuilt and another part had a big branch fall on it. I have no idea how old it is.
So the problem of this is entropy. And a variation on Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle. The wood rots. And sags. This stresses the joints--metal overlaps; spots where screws go through the roof and into the wood skeleton. Water gets in, wood rots, and the screws can no longer form a watertight seal. Add in expansion and contraction with temperature changes from the seasons and years of neglect and deferred maintenance and you get a leaky roof.
I've been here basically since the beginning of 2021 and I work on the leaks when I can and when I'm able. I had part of the shed rented out which made it hard to pursue leaks. And lack of time is always a problem. But now that I'm retired(?) and the space is opening up (I've still got a junker truck in 1 spot but that's going away soon), I've been working on the remaing leaks. I'll go in during/after rains with a piece of chalk and mark puddle locations and obvious leaks. Then when it dries up (and I have time) I'll measure out distances and try to locate the leaks on the roof. I always fail. There are always puddles. To make matters worse, getting up on the roof to fix leaky spots almost certainly creates new leaks in other spots. I've been convinced it is an impossible task.
But! Tonight! I got an unexpected--and unexpectedly heavy--rain so I popped out in the dark to inspect and there were only 2 very minor, tiny leaks. One of them is almost certainly because the trailing edge of the roof doesn't have a "drip edge" and doesn't overhang far enough, so the water curls under and runs down the back wall on the inside. The other *may* be a leaky sheet metal screw--there was no obvious drip inside on the roof--just a puddle on the floor.
And I'm just standing there in the shed in my robe and jammies in absolute joy that it is pouring out and the inside of the shed is almost totally dry.
Of course tomorrow the wind will probably come from a different direction and it will again leak like a sieve, but you take your victories where you can.
Volpone
Zombie Hunter
I planned to go to Church for Easter (for the first time in recent memory)--and then the nearby Asian buffet. But then Story Television was showing back-to-back 2 hour Life of Jesus documentaries and now it's after 1am. And I bought prime rib to make for Easter Dinner.
On a related topic, fucking supermarket. First off, they don't have any rational amount of prime rib for someone who lives alone so I literally have something like 8# of beef in the fridge. Secondly, they have some kind of kinky pricing thing going where it costs $137 BUT! if you have the club card--that the cashier will literally just hand to you because they know how sick everyone is of getting spam--it's only $64. So yeah, I did just by $64 worth of meat, but it will be amazing and I shall live like a king for some time now.
On a related-related topic, this works amazing: https://www.allrecipes.com/recipe/221958/chef-johns-perfect-prime-rib/
On a related topic, fucking supermarket. First off, they don't have any rational amount of prime rib for someone who lives alone so I literally have something like 8# of beef in the fridge. Secondly, they have some kind of kinky pricing thing going where it costs $137 BUT! if you have the club card--that the cashier will literally just hand to you because they know how sick everyone is of getting spam--it's only $64. So yeah, I did just by $64 worth of meat, but it will be amazing and I shall live like a king for some time now.
On a related-related topic, this works amazing: https://www.allrecipes.com/recipe/221958/chef-johns-perfect-prime-rib/
Volpone
Zombie Hunter
Today's not Facebook Facebook wrap-up: Actually made it to church. Got to bed late with too much to drink but still managed to wake up with enough time to dress, walk The Dog, and go to church. Got the prime rib going. A couple points on that: Read the recipe all the way through the night before because if you have to hit the ground running and not actually start cooking until afternoon, you're going to skim it and miss important points. Instead of mixing the herbs, pepper, and butter into a paste that is easy to spread onto the meat I just did the best I could to get the butter basically distributed. Second point is, as one person I usually have a fairly small hunk of meat, so it only cooks at 500 degrees a relatively short time. Since the smallest hunk of meat I could get was over 8#, it had to cook for 40 minutes. Good thing it was warm because beef and butter cooking at 500 degrees for 40 minutes smokes like a bastard so I had to turn on all fans and open all windows. But I got 'er dun and it turned out OK. (Obviously you have to start carving from the ends so the first hunk was closer to medium than medium rare.)
I'm so glad I don't cook for a living anymore though. Because the logistics of getting even 1 order all ready at the same time is a headache. Since it was time to walk The Dog again when the beef was done, I was able to bake a potato while she was getting walked. I took the easy route with frozen asparagus that you just chuck in the microwave. So when the potato was done, I carved off a hunk of beef, threw a couple dinner rolls and the potato on a plate, added salt, pepper and butter where appropriate, and got to work on loaded baked potato fixin's and au jus while the asparagus was nuking. It turned out pretty good.
My neighbor has a couple groundhogs living under her barn that have become a source of interest for The Dog to the point that she'll actually chill out in the yard, guarding, and cuts her patrols by about 1/3 to have time to sit in the yard. I've been using that time to clean weeds out of my gravel driveway and I've gotten OCD about it and started raking up the gravel down to dirt so I can remove as much soil weeds can grow in and as many weeds as possible. This also gives wind and rain a chance to wash dirt out of the gravel before I rake it back into place. It is more tiring than I realize. While I was working on this, I realized The Dog had actually gotten one of the groundhogs that have been digging up the neighbor's barn. It must have ventured into my yard where The Assassin finished it off.
Anyway, after raking, I decided to finish wiping down countertops but first I'd read e-mails. If I were 30, stopping to read e-mails would've given my body a chance to rest and recover from weeding and raking gravel. But being over 50 it just gave my body a chance to realize how utterly spent it is and how desperately it needs sleep. I may still try to get it done, since I already got a start on Friday and then all I need to do ("all" HA!) is bookkeeping before being done with weekend chores.
Well, should get going. The Cat wanted to go Out when I came in and when I went to see if he was ready to come In, The Dog wanted to go back Out, so of course he wanted to stay Out as well. Never a dull moment.
I'm so glad I don't cook for a living anymore though. Because the logistics of getting even 1 order all ready at the same time is a headache. Since it was time to walk The Dog again when the beef was done, I was able to bake a potato while she was getting walked. I took the easy route with frozen asparagus that you just chuck in the microwave. So when the potato was done, I carved off a hunk of beef, threw a couple dinner rolls and the potato on a plate, added salt, pepper and butter where appropriate, and got to work on loaded baked potato fixin's and au jus while the asparagus was nuking. It turned out pretty good.
My neighbor has a couple groundhogs living under her barn that have become a source of interest for The Dog to the point that she'll actually chill out in the yard, guarding, and cuts her patrols by about 1/3 to have time to sit in the yard. I've been using that time to clean weeds out of my gravel driveway and I've gotten OCD about it and started raking up the gravel down to dirt so I can remove as much soil weeds can grow in and as many weeds as possible. This also gives wind and rain a chance to wash dirt out of the gravel before I rake it back into place. It is more tiring than I realize. While I was working on this, I realized The Dog had actually gotten one of the groundhogs that have been digging up the neighbor's barn. It must have ventured into my yard where The Assassin finished it off.
Anyway, after raking, I decided to finish wiping down countertops but first I'd read e-mails. If I were 30, stopping to read e-mails would've given my body a chance to rest and recover from weeding and raking gravel. But being over 50 it just gave my body a chance to realize how utterly spent it is and how desperately it needs sleep. I may still try to get it done, since I already got a start on Friday and then all I need to do ("all" HA!) is bookkeeping before being done with weekend chores.
Well, should get going. The Cat wanted to go Out when I came in and when I went to see if he was ready to come In, The Dog wanted to go back Out, so of course he wanted to stay Out as well. Never a dull moment.
Volpone
Zombie Hunter
Made prime rib with a loaded baked potato, asparagus, King's Hawaiian dinner rolls, and a beer for Easter dinner. Took a picture of it. Decided to briefly halt my vendetta war with Facebook to post it. Opened same and was treated to 14 consecutive ads, video and group suggestions before getting to the same 4 posts they show me over and over and over, ad nauseum. So yeah, I didn't upload the picture. I deleted more content. At this point I have no posts before 2022 and no "likes" before mid 2023. So far I've left comments I've made and group posts. The irony is that the algorithm that drives me away apparently effectively lures the majority of people to spend more time there. :/
Lanzman
No-one of consequence
Umm . . . you know you can cut prime rib before you cook it, right? Slice off one section, cook that, freeze the rest for another day?
Anyway. We usually do prime rib for Christmas dinner. There's three of us, so I get one with three bones (ribs). Rub it down with EVO, then salt and pepper to taste. Also put some cloves of garlic into the meat itself by making small slits with a sharp knife and poking the cloves down in. Bake in oven like this: 15 min at 500 to put a sear on the outside, then something like 10 min per pound at 350 to cook to appropriate internal temperature. ALWAYS use a meat thermometer. Pull it out when done, let it rest for ten-fifteen minutes, then star a-carvin'. Om nom nom.
Asparagus as a side, yeah. Easy to cook. Baked potatoes, also do that. We usually put them in with the roast at the appropriate time. So good.
Anyway. We usually do prime rib for Christmas dinner. There's three of us, so I get one with three bones (ribs). Rub it down with EVO, then salt and pepper to taste. Also put some cloves of garlic into the meat itself by making small slits with a sharp knife and poking the cloves down in. Bake in oven like this: 15 min at 500 to put a sear on the outside, then something like 10 min per pound at 350 to cook to appropriate internal temperature. ALWAYS use a meat thermometer. Pull it out when done, let it rest for ten-fifteen minutes, then star a-carvin'. Om nom nom.
Asparagus as a side, yeah. Easy to cook. Baked potatoes, also do that. We usually put them in with the roast at the appropriate time. So good.
Volpone
Zombie Hunter
Huh. It pains me to say it, but it didn't occur to me to just cut it down to manageable sizes. I guess because the other typical feast meat, turkey...it would be problematic to roast 1/2 a turkey. I mean, you could butcher it akin to buying it that way from the store, but somehow that wouldn't be the same for Thanksgiving. But yeah, two 4# hunks of prime rib (or some other division) makes a lot more sense.
Anyway, a few other things (in no particular order): The Dog cuts her patrols short so she can spend more time staking out the neighbor's barn in hopes that the other groundhog will be stupid enough to cross the fenceline so I've been working on getting the weeds out of my gravel (in an insane OCD way). Today I finished raking the last gravel off one of the 2 car door approaches and weeding it. Supposed to get some wind and/or rain the next few days which will (hopefully) clean dirt out of the gravel. Then I'll rake it back into place. I'm getting too old for that kind of physical activity. The other aspect of The Dog's quest is that she cuts her patrols short--but covers the same ground--so I spend 40 minutes, twice a day, trudging across uneven fields and up and down hillsides as fast as I can move, which I am also getting too old for. So right now I should be tackling 9 days of deferred bookkeeping, but I kind of don't want to.
Shit, now I remember the whole point of making a post: The neighbor will often make me a bowl of chili or save me a slice of cake so I feel a little bad that I didn't think to offer her a slice of prime rib and now I'm torn between whether it is too late or I'm just so cheap and greedy that I want all the meat for myself, Precious, yess... tasssty meat *gollum*!
Anyway, a few other things (in no particular order): The Dog cuts her patrols short so she can spend more time staking out the neighbor's barn in hopes that the other groundhog will be stupid enough to cross the fenceline so I've been working on getting the weeds out of my gravel (in an insane OCD way). Today I finished raking the last gravel off one of the 2 car door approaches and weeding it. Supposed to get some wind and/or rain the next few days which will (hopefully) clean dirt out of the gravel. Then I'll rake it back into place. I'm getting too old for that kind of physical activity. The other aspect of The Dog's quest is that she cuts her patrols short--but covers the same ground--so I spend 40 minutes, twice a day, trudging across uneven fields and up and down hillsides as fast as I can move, which I am also getting too old for. So right now I should be tackling 9 days of deferred bookkeeping, but I kind of don't want to.
Shit, now I remember the whole point of making a post: The neighbor will often make me a bowl of chili or save me a slice of cake so I feel a little bad that I didn't think to offer her a slice of prime rib and now I'm torn between whether it is too late or I'm just so cheap and greedy that I want all the meat for myself, Precious, yess... tasssty meat *gollum*!
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Volpone
Zombie Hunter
Well, shit. Brave has started shitting its pants randomly and rebooting hasn't fixed it. I may need to get a Windows 11 computer. (Firefox still works, but every time it opens a new window it says "HEY! THERE'S A NEWER VERSION! WOULD'YA LIKE TO UPDATE? WELL? WOULD'YA? WOULD'YA?!" (Newer versions do not support Windows 7.)
Volpone
Zombie Hunter
In an interesting place tonight. Lots of ground to cover. Don't know where this will go or if it will come together, so we'll get the thread title part out of the way first: Today "I did nothing. I did absolutely nothing, and it was everything that I thought it could be."
Saturday morning I got an e-mail that confirmed that I am currently retired. Around that time I also checked my page with the property manager to confirm that all my rents came in for the month. I did some of the weekend chores Saturday, but today, I made a Day of Rest. Despite going to bed relatively early--and having some WHACKY dreams I may or may not try to relate elsewhere--I managed to sleep too late to make church. BUT! I still made the effort. Out the door to walk The Dog by 9:58. To make church, she'd have to decide to cut her walk short by 25%. As it turned out, she took a 30 minute walk, leaving me time to fart around in the yard for 15 minutes with her and still make church.
When the 'Rona hit, they stopped getting the monthly missal booklet for the church service. Now they've got big ugly screens that project song lyrics for the service, but I see that they did get a yearly service book. I don't like it. Mostly. It's supposed to cover everything the old booklets did, but it's a lot clunkier and divided into sections and a bit like those old "Choose Your Own Adventure" books: "2nd Sunday of Easter. Blessing (Turn to page 12)" And each week's section has an awful Chick Tract looking illustration of a sucky Jesus doing whatever the week's Gospel is supposed to be. BUT! At the end are a bunch of prayers. Like, the Rosary, a couple St. Michael prayers, a guardian angel prayer, a bunch of the litanies. Stuff that is downplayed in the modern Church. Oh, and ahead of that is the songs section, which has all the old songs my old German priest was so fond of. I could hear him singing them as I read the words.
And that's something I'm wrestling with right now: Something that we, for lack of a better word, call "magic." Or "miracles." There's the passage where Jesus visits Nazareth and he has no power there because everyone's just like, "Isn't that Joseph's kid? Why's he think he's such a big-shot?" and he can't do any big miracles because no one believes. I've seen unexplainable things happen because of the power of prayer and I'm intrigued by these old prayers that are neglected nowdays; whether they have any power that isn't being used.
Meanwhile, instead, at the end, they read the same announcements they read at the end of last week's Mass. THEN! For added fun! They rounded up all the children, handed them roses, and had anyone who'd had an anniversary or birthday stand up so kids could wander around and hand them roses. And it went exactly as smoothly and painlessly as you'd think it would. Fuck this touchy feely shit. Release the Old Magick: "St. Magoo, Pray for us, Sister Mary Motorcycle, Pray for us, All you Holy Brothers and Sisters, ride with us, ... "
So after the morning dog walk, church, Sunday brunch (at home because I'm still not 100% trusting my cash flow structure--but it was excellent--waffles. eggs, hash browns, toast, milk, OJ, coffee), Internet fuckery, and a nap, I took New Dog to the first park I took Old Dog to when I moved here. I hadn't taken her initially because I wasn't sure of her off-leash control, but actually she's better off-leash than Old Dog. Also, she's not that excited to ride in cars. But she seemed to enjoy it and it was a good time.
Got home, farted around in the yard a bit before heading in to make dinner. Channel surfing for something to watch with dinner. Ordinarily it would be "Sell This House" reruns, but CBS decided to rebrand Dabl from a "lifestyle" network to a UPN black girl comedy rerun network. And that's their prerogative, but a 2004 episode of "Sister, Sister" just doesn't do anything for me. My backup would be RetroTV for "Dr. Who," but it was a late 5th Doctor episode and at this point I've gotten so anything after K-9 shows up is skip-able. (There are exceptions. The one after K-9, "Image of the Fendahl," is quite good. The e-space vampire serial... But all in all, once John Nathan-Turner takes over as producer it goes into a death spiral IMO). Next choice would be Story Television, but they were doing women "Biography" and Farah Fawcett's cancer and Dana "Different Strokes" Plato's decent into shittiness and an early death isn't exactly great dinner fare, so I channel surfed. And the CW had "13, Going on 30," the Jennifer Garner version of "Big." It's cheesy and corny, but Garner really sells it and Ruffalo is likable as the romantic interest and the message really resonated for me right now.
And now for something completely different.
I don't know if other people have this, but for me, I've had waaay too many times where I looked at what was in front of me and, whether it was desirable to me or not, I could see that everything in my life before that point had put me into the place where I was the perfect person for what was required of me. Shit, I can't even remember the latest one. I know I had it just happen recently, but I forget it. But the Iraq war. My (short lived) Dream Grown-Up Job. My pets. This house. "I love it when a plan comes together." I'm usually a lot more cynical than Hannibal Smith and will usually say something more along the lines of "Fuck it, why not? Fuck it. Fuck it." Or "Well, this went *exactly* the way I planned it," but the sentiment is there.
OK. That didn't totally suck. Although it should probably have some kind of wrap-up: And that's another night on Walton's Mountain. The Cat is in and farting around in the basement. The Dog is snoring peacefully in the guest bedroom, and I've had at least 1 too many cocktails for the evening. All is well. Good night.
Saturday morning I got an e-mail that confirmed that I am currently retired. Around that time I also checked my page with the property manager to confirm that all my rents came in for the month. I did some of the weekend chores Saturday, but today, I made a Day of Rest. Despite going to bed relatively early--and having some WHACKY dreams I may or may not try to relate elsewhere--I managed to sleep too late to make church. BUT! I still made the effort. Out the door to walk The Dog by 9:58. To make church, she'd have to decide to cut her walk short by 25%. As it turned out, she took a 30 minute walk, leaving me time to fart around in the yard for 15 minutes with her and still make church.
When the 'Rona hit, they stopped getting the monthly missal booklet for the church service. Now they've got big ugly screens that project song lyrics for the service, but I see that they did get a yearly service book. I don't like it. Mostly. It's supposed to cover everything the old booklets did, but it's a lot clunkier and divided into sections and a bit like those old "Choose Your Own Adventure" books: "2nd Sunday of Easter. Blessing (Turn to page 12)" And each week's section has an awful Chick Tract looking illustration of a sucky Jesus doing whatever the week's Gospel is supposed to be. BUT! At the end are a bunch of prayers. Like, the Rosary, a couple St. Michael prayers, a guardian angel prayer, a bunch of the litanies. Stuff that is downplayed in the modern Church. Oh, and ahead of that is the songs section, which has all the old songs my old German priest was so fond of. I could hear him singing them as I read the words.
And that's something I'm wrestling with right now: Something that we, for lack of a better word, call "magic." Or "miracles." There's the passage where Jesus visits Nazareth and he has no power there because everyone's just like, "Isn't that Joseph's kid? Why's he think he's such a big-shot?" and he can't do any big miracles because no one believes. I've seen unexplainable things happen because of the power of prayer and I'm intrigued by these old prayers that are neglected nowdays; whether they have any power that isn't being used.
Meanwhile, instead, at the end, they read the same announcements they read at the end of last week's Mass. THEN! For added fun! They rounded up all the children, handed them roses, and had anyone who'd had an anniversary or birthday stand up so kids could wander around and hand them roses. And it went exactly as smoothly and painlessly as you'd think it would. Fuck this touchy feely shit. Release the Old Magick: "St. Magoo, Pray for us, Sister Mary Motorcycle, Pray for us, All you Holy Brothers and Sisters, ride with us, ... "
So after the morning dog walk, church, Sunday brunch (at home because I'm still not 100% trusting my cash flow structure--but it was excellent--waffles. eggs, hash browns, toast, milk, OJ, coffee), Internet fuckery, and a nap, I took New Dog to the first park I took Old Dog to when I moved here. I hadn't taken her initially because I wasn't sure of her off-leash control, but actually she's better off-leash than Old Dog. Also, she's not that excited to ride in cars. But she seemed to enjoy it and it was a good time.
Got home, farted around in the yard a bit before heading in to make dinner. Channel surfing for something to watch with dinner. Ordinarily it would be "Sell This House" reruns, but CBS decided to rebrand Dabl from a "lifestyle" network to a UPN black girl comedy rerun network. And that's their prerogative, but a 2004 episode of "Sister, Sister" just doesn't do anything for me. My backup would be RetroTV for "Dr. Who," but it was a late 5th Doctor episode and at this point I've gotten so anything after K-9 shows up is skip-able. (There are exceptions. The one after K-9, "Image of the Fendahl," is quite good. The e-space vampire serial... But all in all, once John Nathan-Turner takes over as producer it goes into a death spiral IMO). Next choice would be Story Television, but they were doing women "Biography" and Farah Fawcett's cancer and Dana "Different Strokes" Plato's decent into shittiness and an early death isn't exactly great dinner fare, so I channel surfed. And the CW had "13, Going on 30," the Jennifer Garner version of "Big." It's cheesy and corny, but Garner really sells it and Ruffalo is likable as the romantic interest and the message really resonated for me right now.
And now for something completely different.
I don't know if other people have this, but for me, I've had waaay too many times where I looked at what was in front of me and, whether it was desirable to me or not, I could see that everything in my life before that point had put me into the place where I was the perfect person for what was required of me. Shit, I can't even remember the latest one. I know I had it just happen recently, but I forget it. But the Iraq war. My (short lived) Dream Grown-Up Job. My pets. This house. "I love it when a plan comes together." I'm usually a lot more cynical than Hannibal Smith and will usually say something more along the lines of "Fuck it, why not? Fuck it. Fuck it." Or "Well, this went *exactly* the way I planned it," but the sentiment is there.
OK. That didn't totally suck. Although it should probably have some kind of wrap-up: And that's another night on Walton's Mountain. The Cat is in and farting around in the basement. The Dog is snoring peacefully in the guest bedroom, and I've had at least 1 too many cocktails for the evening. All is well. Good night.
Volpone
Zombie Hunter
Of course this month I'm thinking I can FINALLY start paying down some of the principal from the HELOC that financed the last rental and I get an e-mail from my tax preparer. Between state taxes and his fees that'll just about gobble up any extra I had set aside for the HELOC and I get to pay basically interest only again. :garamet:
On an unrelated note, I am happy I am not rich enough to own a Lear jet. Because as it is, I drove a little under 50 miles to see the total eclipse of the sun. BUT it would've been conceivable to fly up and see it in Nova Scotia, definitively proving that Carly Simon song is about me. But that would've cost a lot.
On an unrelated note, I am happy I am not rich enough to own a Lear jet. Because as it is, I drove a little under 50 miles to see the total eclipse of the sun. BUT it would've been conceivable to fly up and see it in Nova Scotia, definitively proving that Carly Simon song is about me. But that would've cost a lot.
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When this forum was down earlier today I decided to go to WF and see if they had a thread about TK being down. They didn't but I did see Volpone's thread telling the truth about many poor people are poor for a reason. Namely, their own bad decisions. Predictably none of the left wing posters argued about facts and instead they all bitched about landlords who provide housing and claiming they were fascists and how capitalism needed to be overthrown.
None of them, who confessed to being poor, took accountability on how their own decisions and actions led them to 40-60 years old and not worth a nickel. I guess that question got glossed over. Anyway, it was equally clear they had no idea that the policies the left has supported for decades (NIMBYism, excessive zoning laws, hugely excessive fees and slowly approval processes, demands to only allow construction if special interests get kickbacks, massive over regulation of just about everything) all contribute to a housing shortage and thus higher prices. They will never learn so fuck 'en.
None of them, who confessed to being poor, took accountability on how their own decisions and actions led them to 40-60 years old and not worth a nickel. I guess that question got glossed over. Anyway, it was equally clear they had no idea that the policies the left has supported for decades (NIMBYism, excessive zoning laws, hugely excessive fees and slowly approval processes, demands to only allow construction if special interests get kickbacks, massive over regulation of just about everything) all contribute to a housing shortage and thus higher prices. They will never learn so fuck 'en.
Book keeping and tax time really are a hassle. That and I am going back and forth with the city housing commission because one of the leases is up and I want to raise rent on that unit which has a section 8 tenant in it.