2020, Business, Family, Food, Gatherings, holidays, home, Seasons, Uncategorized

Happy Thanks-Carb-Giving

55 Comments

For the first time ever, it’s just me and YA today.  Even though it’s just the two of us, YA is determined that at least the food will be the same as always.   Normally all I ever bring to Thanksgiving dinner is my Sage Sourdough Stuffing (vegetarian) and sometimes a dessert.  With at least four or five other families, everything else is covered.

I did find some nice platter-sized paper plates and matching napkins along with a paper table covering at The Dollar Store, so we’ll have a festive table.  Here’s the final menu:

  • Sage Sourdough Stuffing
  • Scalloped Cheesy Potatoes
  • Mashed Potatoes w/ Vegetarian Gravy  (YA making)
  • Sweet Potato Casserole
  • Green Bean/French Fried Onion Casserole  (YA making)
  • Cranberry Sauce
  • Dinner Rolls
  • Cornbread
  • Pumpkin Gooey Butter Cake

Any plans for the day?  In a particularly difficult year, is there a way you are maintaining any gratitude?

2020, Automotive, Business, Fantasy, Technology, The Future, Uncategorized, Weather

Driving Dreams

58 Comments

For the most part, I love my car.  I love that she’s red, I love that she is a hybrid.  I love having a hatchback again.  I really like that she tells me when it’s time to change the oil, based on her internal workings and not an arbitrary date.  And she’s small.  No Intimida or Sherpa here; with a tank capacity of 8+ gallons, my monthly gas budget is about $30.

There is one frustrating thing though.  She feels the need to let me know when tire pressure has changed, with a big ding and a reminder every time I start the car once she has noticed a pressure issue.  This usually happens twice a year… when it first gets cold and then again in the late spring when it starts to get really warm.  I usually just drive down to the dealership; they top the tires off right away and I don’t even have to get out of the car. 

But this fall, the pressure notification has gone off TWICE.  When we had a couple of seriously cold days last month and the again this past weekend when it was warmer.  I will admit that I whined a bit to the service guy and he said that it was happening a lot this fall since the temperatures have fluctuated quite a bit.

While he was adjusting the air, I daydreamed about my fantasy car.  I’d like to have those little lights on the sideview mirrors that indicate when someone is coming upon alongside you.  I would love to have built-in GPS and a north/south/east/west display.  Heated seats would be nice.  Of course, my fantasy car would actually drive itself; of course that could only be supplanted by my ultimate fantasy car — a transporter.  “Beam me over, Scotty.”

Tell me about your fantasy transportation. 

2020, Family, home, Mysteries, Radio, Technology, Uncategorized

The Find

73 Comments

This past Saturday morning, right before Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me, Husband and I decided to do a Deep Clean on an alcove right off the kitchen. This corner houses a tall shelf unit full of large items like crock pots and cookbooks, and a small chest of drawers. I had accidentally shoved something behind the tall shelves, noticed when trying to retrieve it that it was pretty dusty back there, and realized that space hadn’t been deep cleaned since we moved in 4 ½ years ago (!).

Well, you know how this goes. In the process of clearing everything off, you find stuff you’d forgotten you had – which gets returned to its proper place or tossed. Stuff piles up in the rest of the house for a while, but you promise you’ll put everything back before day’s end, and you roll up your sleeves. And you swear you won’t let the cleaning lapse for this long again.

Then you move the furniture out so you can sweep and swipe and clean everything in sight, and vacuum out the cobwebs and dust fuzzies. As the small chest was being moved away from the wall, I heard a “thunk” as something dropped to the floor, and discovered… MY CAMERA, which has been A.W.O.L. for about a year. I don’t own a smart phone, and luckily I hadn’t bought a replacement. I am so happy to have it back!

So, for the first time since last December, I’m able to submit a blog post AND supply the photo.

What have you found that was lost?  

What cleaning or clearing project are you likely to accomplish during self-quarantine?

2020, History, home, Uncategorized

B-17 Fridge

61 Comments

We are extremely unhappy with our kitchen fridge. It is a GE brand fridge, with a top freezer and bottom refrigerator section. It is no frills, without an ice maker or water dispenser.  We have had it for about 10 years.

The  plastic edging on the glass refrigerator shelves cracked and we had to replace the shelving. That was not cheap. The fan for the freezer burned out once already, and was also replaced.  A couple of months ago it started making a horrendous noise every time the motor runs. It is so loud it is hard to hold a conversation in the kitchen, and it seems to run all the time.  It wakes me up at night. I manually defrosted the freezer the other day, and that helped for a day or two before it started with the noise again.  I refuse to throw any more money at it.

My father never liked loud noises or cramped spaces. I attribute that to his time as a gunner in a B-17 when he was stationed in England during the Second World War.  He would have found the noises from this fridge disturbing.  He also hated throwing money at appliance repair. We went to our main appliance store a couple of weeks ago and found an LG fridge that fit in our kitchen space. It has a double fridge door with the freezer section at the bottom.  I was shocked to find that it will take two months to get it. This was true for all the models and brands we looked at. I guess Covid has slowed manufacturing.  We are keeping our fingers crossed that the current fridge lasts until the new one arrives.  I will think pleasant thoughts about my dad to counter the annoyance when the Flying Fortress in the kitchen roars.

What appliance or machinery woes have you had?

Gatherings, History, Music, Songs, Uncategorized

A Winner

72 Comments

It was on this day in 1934 that Ella Fitzgerald headed to the Apollo Theatre in New York for Amateur Night.  It was a weekly event that had only been started earlier that year and to get onto stage, your name had to be drawn from a hat.  Ella was just 15 and had gone on a bet with two friends.  She had intended to dance, but the act preceding her was a dance duo; she didn’t think her dancing would measure up, so on the spot she decided to sing instead.  She sang “The Object of My Affection” and brought the house down. 

Within a year she joined Chick Webb’s band with whom she scored her first big hit “A Tisket A Tasket”.  The rest is jazz history.      

Have you ever won a drawing?

Family, holidays, home, Movies, Music, TV, Uncategorized

Holding The Line

37 Comments

In my world/head, I don’t play holiday music or turn on holiday movies until the day after Thanksgiving, although every few years I might listen to holiday music in the car on the way home from Thanksgiving dinner.  This rule is mostly just to keep the Christmas/Solstice season within some kind of boundaries.  I think 5-6 weeks is plenty of celebration – no need for it to spill out into October and early November. 

So I was surprised to come home from picking up pizza yesterday to hear holiday music playing.  Loudly.  As we sat down to our pizza, I gave YA grief about playing Christmas songs.  Without missing a beat, she said “oh please – you’ve been doing holiday stuff since March”.   I have to admit that she is correct.  In the spring, when we all thought covid would be history by this time, I was expecting to be extremely busy at work, with all my spring programs bumping into the fall.  Since this was my mindset, I figured I should get all my Solstice stuff done early, so I wouldn’t be stressing out about it in October and November.  I did all my cards, my egg ornaments and my calendars in the spring.  I also worked on the family gift throughout the summer.  The last week I’ve done what I consider my “last-minute” stuff: the newsletter, wrapping, labels, cookie selection, etc. 

I consider all this holiday prep, but not holiday celebration.  No music or movies for me yet.  But I’m all ready for next Friday…. all my holidays movies are in a separate bin so I can get to them fast and YA’s “Alexa” will be on call every day (and I’ve finally figured out how to get her to play Radio Heartland). 

Will you be celebrating this year?  When will you start?

Family, Fantasy, Media, News, pets, Uncategorized

The Millie News

31 Comments

Out tortoiseshell cat, Millie, was recently  diagnosed with what is probably lymphoma. It could possibly be a form of leukemia, but we would need to do a bone marrow test to find out, and the treatment is the same in either case. She gets a smear of prednisone cream in her ear every day, which we will gradually reduce to a maintenance dose every other day in a week or so.  She is rallying, and is almost back to her pre-cancer goofy self.

Our children are real cat lovers, and insist I give regular news updates regarding her condition  and prognosis. It feels some days as though I am running an official Millie news network. I could call it MNN.

I myself have been consumed with the news of late, and go to my regular news sources. NPR, CNN, Reuters, and MSNBC too frequently  for my own mental health. I am alarmed  by 45’s plan to start his own news service, which I can’t imagine being at all reasonable or accurate. I doubt I would ever look at it.

What news services do you follow or not follow? What kind of news service would you start if money was no object?

2020, books, Fantasy, Media, Movies, TV, Uncategorized

Mrs Pollifax: Spy

34 Comments

I just saw a headline (yes, big enough to warrant a headline) that the tv series Friends is doing a reunion show in the spring.  I never saw an entire episode of Friends when it was originally airing – the bits I did see didn’t make me want to tune in.  But between what other people talk about and all the various commercials, I know enough that I’m thinking an enjoyable reunion show almost 20 years after the fact will be hard to pull off.  I’m sure I’ll be passing.

But there are a few bits of entertainment that I would like to have seen more of —  Mrs. Polifax, Spy for one.  There are boatloads of Mrs Pollifax books by Dorothy Gilman but just two movies.  The first one came out in 1971 with Rosalind Russell and Darren McGavin.  It’s clever and a bit silly, but just what I need every now and then.  Rosalind Russell was perfect but a follow-up was never made.  Then in 1999 Angela Lansbury starred in The Unexpected Mrs. Pollifax.  Good enough to waste a couple of hours on a Saturday afternoon but that was about it; she was too old for the part and the movie took itself much too seriously.  It really just felt like an episode of Murder She Wrote. 

The 1971 version is currently available on Amazon Prime and I will admit that I’ve watched it several times since March.  I wish that Rosalind Russell had made a few more of them!

Anything that you would have like to see more of (or read more of)?

2020, Family, home, Kids, Technology, Uncategorized, work

Doin’ the dishes

36 Comments

Dirty dishes have always been a contentious issue between YA and me.   She has a much higher tolerance for dishes in the sink than I do; particularly I don’t like coming down in the morning to dirty dishes.  For several years, if YA leaves dishes in the sink overnight, then when I come down in the morning, I yell up the stairs and she has to come down and do them.  This is no fun for anybody but it does work pretty well as a dish pile-up deterrent.  Of course it doesn’t do anything about dishes that accumulate during the day.

When I started working from home back in March, I was assuming (like many others) that covid would have run its course by the fall.  I decided that as my gift to household peace, I would just do all the dishes during shelter-in-place.  Fretting about dishes just didn’t seem like a good vibe to add to an already bad scenario.  I’ve had a couple of times said to YA that I didn’t want to feel taken advantage of and every now and then she does belly up to the sink on her own, but for the most part, I’ve washed every single dish that has been dirtied here since March 15. 

Now that covid hasn’t gone away and we are all still sheltering-in-place, I’m thinking maybe I need to re-negotiate my dish-pan hands situation.

Any suggestions??

Business, Family, Food, Medicine, Uncategorized

Bag Lady

19 Comments

Yesterday morning I stopped by the pharmacy to pick up a prescription refill.  As the pharmacist was checking me out, I said “I don’t need any of the paperwork and I don’t need a bag.”  As I just dump the bag and the paperwork as soon as I get home, it seems a waste.   In any other setting, if I just have a few items, I pass on the bag as well.  Usually the receipt too.  I just don’t need more bags of any kind at my house.

Well, the pharmacist put the prescription right into a little bag, although she didn’t print out all the paperwork about the drug.  Probably 25% of the time, even though I have said no bag, I get a bag anyway.  It is so automatic.  I didn’t make a fuss… what good would come of it … just dropped the bag into the trash on the way out of the store.  But I was thinking about how many things we all do almost automatically.

Then YA and I took a big shopping trip to Target.  We had a couple of non-food items that we looked for first, so ended up at the END of the food area (dairy) first, instead of the beginning (produce).  Even though I’ve shopped here many times and we had a list, it was extremely disconcerting to be going “backwards”.  We ended up backtracking at least 3 times when we realized we had missed something.  I’m guessing that I would have this reaction in any grocery store that I’ve shopped at repeatedly.  I didn’t intend to internalize a direction when I shop for groceries, but clearly I have.  Part of me thinks that I should do something about this; how dare the grocery industry mess with my mind.  Another part of me thinks it’s probably too late!

Anything you do without much thinking?