The Worldly Chicks - Leg 3 Summer for some and Winter for others
 

Though I would save Happy the time and thought. To go back to the old thread click http://www.3fatchicks.com/forum/supp...continues.html.

Think thin - it'll come.

Good morning ladies,

Thank you Shad for setting up the new thread and doing the housekeeping. I am also happy to hear that you have pursued the retirement. The last few contracts it sounded as if the frustration of the job - the delays, things out of kilter and not set up properly and general lack of organization was getting to you. I hope your retirement is long and happy and healthy - with "just enough" - enough to meet your needs and a bit extra for an occasional treat along the way. What will you do with your time now? DON'T VOLUNTEER!!!! :rofl: Perhaps we need to firm up the commune plans although you would not be a happy bunny in our winters here. But you would like the scenic part of it.

Right now we are in the midst of a loud thunderstorm. It will give my plants a drink of water which is good. We are going up north today - I have a rheumatology appointment and since we are driving 90 minutes to Duluth we will hit the home improvement store and pick up a few things while we are there.

I worked the thrift store again yesterday - this time as a cashier. It was not worth having the store open. We had lots of traffic but they were mostly all browsers - very little in sales. We were going to close early and got a call from a fairly regular local in town. She SAID her son was going to come in and shop so we stayed open an extra 2 hours but he NEVER SHOWED UP. :mad: There were lots of families with kids who came in - the kids grabbed toys from the children's section and dragged them all over the store then then walked out and we are stuck picking up and putting away after them. They also dropped alot of clothes on the floor for some reason. We would have been better off being closed. I am tired and cranky - been at the store for 7 days straight - 4 to 6 hours each trying to get the book section rearranged. I finally gave up. Not my worries as I can't do most of it myself. The other lady is slapping stickers on the books upside down, they aren't sticking, easily peeled off, I can't spend my life straightening out things. Just let them be.

I also got tired of buying fruit from the store that rots after 2 days and gets moldy. So I bought expensive strawberries from a truck in town and oh my oh my - sooooo fresh and fragrant and deliciously sweet. NOTHING like store berries. I also got a box of Michigan blueberries and my Georgia peaches from the other truck on Monday. Yum yum yum. Worth every precious penny. Yesterday we grilled pork chops, had corn on the cob and I made a fresh fruit salad of the berries and peaches. We ate on the deck. Fantastic!!!

I suppose it's back to work for most of you lot. At least it will be a short week. Now half of us are retired - me, Ceejay and Shad. Surely that doesn't mean we are getting old! :rofl:

Anyway I hate to run but I must. DH wants to leave like 3 hours ago. :rolleyes:

Will catch up to personals later. Happy 3rd leg friends!

Hello!

Shad, thanks for setting up the new thread...cute title.... Also, congratulations on the decision to join the retirement world. You have worked long and hard for this.

Happy: I am glad you found some good fruit...it is hard to find these days especially in the grocery store. The thrift store is a labor of love for you....and I feel that it is a "love" that isn't giving back to you as much as it should.......how long do you think you will continue?

Hi to Ceejay! I saw your post on FB where you hosted on July 4th. It looked and sounded like a fun time!

Hi Laura! I hope today was a easy day...always hard to go back to work after a holiday.

Annie: I hope you are having a great vacation!

While I am having to log on and work a bit, I am enjoying my vacation.

Last night we went out to dinner with a young couple who are friends of ours. We went to Yellow Springs, which is a "hippie town" and dinner there (it was ok... a lot of vegetarian options for me) and then we drove up the road a bit to a place called "Young's Dairy) to play miniature golf and then a scoop of ice cream afterwards. We had a very nice time.

Today we slept in and then cleaned the workout room, and then picked up some retired friends and went to Plain City, which is Amish country, and ate at Der Dutchman....good food!

It was about an hour's drive both ways and it was nice to be in the car with them talking and laughing. They also had a gift shop...I did some shopping :D

Tomorrow is a "at home day" I have a hair appointment at noon and DH has a pedicure at the same time. I have TOPS tomorrow evening and afterwards we are meeting some friends of ours (I used to work with the wife at P&G and we have remained close friends) at a local place in town, "The General Denver" for dinner after my TOPS meeting.

Morning all.

Susie - Sounds like you're having a nice staycation. :) Your day trips sound fun. I decided I needed to make a list of some things I want to do in/around town and in the local area. One is canoeing in the lakes/lagoons in local forest preserve areas. Another is visiting the Chicago History Museum. Only been there once before and that was way back when it was called the Chicago Historical Society! I have other things on my list but they are not just for summer or this year, so I guess it's sort of a staycation/fun bucket list. One is for fall - going to a corn maze. == Good luck with your WI tonight at TOPS. :goodluck:

Happy - You sound frustrated with the thrift shop. I hope you get a break from that soon. I like your "DON'T VOLUNTEER" advice to Shad. :D Spoken from experience. :yes: == Your fruit purchases sound luscious. I bought some cherries and was disappointed in them. I'm going to try and buy more from our local farmers market, just to get fresher produce. == How did the rheumatology appointment go?

Shad - Thanks for setting up the new thread for us. Congrats on officially retiring! I hope you enjoy your retirement.

Ceejay - From FB posts, sounds like you enjoyed hosting the Fourth of July gathering.

Annie - Hope you're enjoying your vacation. :beach: == Received your card yesterday - thanks!
==

Thanks for all your birthday wishes. I worked yesterday, but it was quiet and not a bad day in the office.

Our garage door was installed yesterday. It looks nice and the color picks up the color in some of the bricks. We have to paint the overhead beam of the garage opening to match the new trim, and we also have to remove the caulk that sealed the old trim that was removed. Otherwise it looks nice. I'll have to go inside the garage with the door closed and see how much lighter it is now that we have windows along the top of the door.

We went out to eat for my birthday - Longhorn Steakhouse, which we had a gift card for that I won in the raffle last month. Yum.

While bf was digging out the gift card, he mentioned all the other gift cards we had in that drawer that we'd forgotten about. So many that we bought at the lab rescue auction, and others as well. We'll be using those in the coming weeks and months.

The certificate for soccer tickets I won just last month is essentially outdated now. I can see from the paperwork that they sent the certificate in April, but the event in which the raffle was held wasn't until June 3rd, so I would have had to send off a ticket request within a day or two of winning the raffle in order to meet the two week advance notice requesting tickets for a July game, in which there was only ONE at-home game, and that was July 1st!! And the certificate was only good for games April - July. :headache: I have the paperwork with me today and will call and see if they will extend it. Fingers :crossed:


Okay, enough of my rambling. Time to post. :wave:

Hi ladies,

Went to see a rheumatologist yesterday. She said what I have heard before - I have some indicators of R/A but they are most likely false positives because I don't have classic R/A symptoms of redness and swelling. It tends to attack hands and feet and from what she is seeing, I just have bed osteo (wear and tear) arthritis to contend with. She suggested a few options - Biofreeze, Capsasium (hot pepper warming cream), OTC pain meds and of course exercise and weight loss. She said my arthritic knee is pretty bad and I should strongly consider replacing it. The cortisone shot lasted about 2 months. The closest they will space them is 3 months out so I'm a ways out. When the knee "kinks" I can barely stand much less walk on it. I even took my cane with me yesterday. I'm not sure I have much choice but to do the other surgery. Just don't know where. I don't want to blow my summer away and if I do it in the dead of winter there is always the fear of sliding on the ice and snow and messing it up. I guess it's best to try and plan for October/November - late fall and before winter blows in. Which means I should go see the doctor now as surgery books up quickly. I'm still mulling it over... I just love to spend my $5,000 out of pocket deductibles on surgeries. And I need a new stove. :lol:

Since we were up in Duluth we stopped and joined Sam's Club (warehouse buying). Picked up some chicken parmesan meatballs we had as appetizers at a Humane Society event recently that we really liked. Found that they needed to be baked not fried in the pan as I did. We did pick up a cartful of items. Tried to keep the food at a minimum as the sizes are huge and I don't have another square inch of freezer space available. It's very easy to go overboard in those places but we controlled ourselves. Had the meatballs and a caprese (mozzerella & tomato and basil) salad and some fresh strawberries for dinner. Oh and some crusty French bread that is very hard to find in these parts. Afterwards we went to the casino for an hour as they had a promotion I was interested in. It was nice NOT to go to the thrift shop for a change. I thought I had the rest of the weekend to myself after bingo tonight but then I got an email from another volunteer who reminded me that I had agreed ( :^: ) to fill in for them on Friday. Bah - and we have dinner reservations at 5pm so I can't stay past 4 at the shop. Oh well...

Was reading the paper today and I was struck by the very casual attitude that girls have nowadays about having children. And to some degree the guys too. There was a birth announcement for a couple - of course not married - announcing the birth of their latest child - not yet named (and yes, that is what the birth announcement said). This baby joins its SEVEN siblings. 7. all with different last names. And all the young 20 something girls I deal with seem to be pregnant. They all have low end jobs (hairdresser, waitress, cabin cleaners, bartenders) - no insurance, no husbands. One girl is pregnant with her first and lives with her BF for whom this is his 3rd baby with his 3rd "girlfriend". How can you possibly parent kids with 4 different opinions in the mix and that's just the birth parents. There's also what - 8 grandparents (or more) also weighing in. :dizzy: WHAT is this world coming to???? Ok, that's my soapbox for the day.

Susie - I still like the "cause" I am working for - just wish people would be more reasonable. I don't think I will ever get away from it. Very similar to all the O/T that you put in at your job - you do it because it's the right thing to do. :^: A "hippie town" boy that sounds like fun! The last time I played mini golf I was wishing they had longer clubs as I felt I had to bend down enough to strain my back so I haven't been back since even though we have a couple of places in town. One which also has go carts which seem like fun too. Enjoy the rest of your staycation...

Hope the rest of you are also enjoying your week. We had bad storms and wind this morning and now it's getting hot and sunny. Would be a nice day on the lakes if they weren't so crowded. Perhaps next week.

Anyway have fun chicks. :beach: Do you have fun in winter Shad???

Good morning everyone,

Bingo was nuts last night. There are a lot of people in town this week and many of them came to bingo. One of the guys got sick and cancelled at the last minute and it was just me and D. Him with his gimpy leg and me with my gimpy knee - what a pair! Both of us were not sleeping well and we were commiserating about being tired. I said that if we didn't fall into a coma when we got home last night there WAS something wrong with both of us! :lol: I went to bed at 10:15 which is like you guys going to bed at 6pm ;) I checked the weather before I left yesterday and they said about a 10 percent chance of rain. So I drove to bingo. About an hour afterwards we noticed it really really dark in the north. I looked at the radar on my phone and there was a mass of red (bad storms) on the radar heading right at us. It rained like the floods several times. Then when I got home DH showed me a video of the hail that hit the deck :eek: I don't know if it hailed by us - we were far too busy to notice much more than it raining outside. More dinks on my poor old car :(

Today I have to work at the thrift shop from noon to 4. I am going in 90 minutes early to cover a worker who has to leave early and her partner will walk out the door if she has to spend even 20 minutes by herself. But then I have to leave an hour early as we have dinner reservations at a local farm / restaurant. My afternoon buddy G will be fine by herself for an hour.

The peaches I picked up on Monday are FABULOUS!!!! So juicy and peachy tasting. They are just ripening so I will have to do some canning come Sunday although I hope to keep half the box (about 10 pounds) fresh enough in the basement to eat that way. And the strawberries I got from the farm and the blueberries from Michigan at the peach truck are also incredible. Fruit from 3 states!! :lol: Thus proving everyone has something they make very well.

Very quiet in here - guess you all are busy. Nothing to catch up on since I was the last one out and first in so hope you all have a good weekend. Laura I am very sorry that your card will be late.

Happy Belated Birthday to you :^: :woo::celebrate::bday2you::celebrate::woo::hb:

Shad
Thanks for setting up the new thread. How's retirement/ I'm with happy don't volunteer. I like my freedom. :lol:

Susie
Yes, I did host my first event ever this year. We had a lot of fun. The street I live on had fireworks of its own and the city had them too. I like to take day trips.

Laura
Their is a place not far from here where Laura Ingalls (little house on the prairie) grew up. I want to go there one day. And to the Fantastic Caverns. I've been to Walnut Grove, MO which is not far from Ash Grove where my sis and bil have their house.

Happy
Looks like ya'll had some hail. Be thankful that you do not had RA, osteoarthritis is bad enough. Most of us women get that.

Hi Annie :wave:

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I didn't realize that when I moved to Missouri that I would be this busy, but I like it. Hosted my first family event on the fourth.
Decided not to go to Branson tonight. I still need to mow the front lawn. Sis text me this morning to tell me that we will go to Lowe's to look for a riding lawn mower. I don't mind mowing with the push mower but she doesn't want me to get to hot and end up with a heat stroke. I know to pace myself while outside, but I'm not going to argue about the riding lawn mower.
My piano doesn't have a music rest so I've been looking on line for one that will fit my piano. I may get a regular music stand. It's hard to read music when it's sitting on the left side of the piano.
I forgot to mention that nephew said that his wife is ready for him to come home. He said I like it here. I told him that he was welcome here anytime but he needed to be home with his family. I do want him to come and bring the boys. I love those little guys.

Oops, double-posted.

Morning all. Make that “Afternoon all”, since it will be by the time I post this.

Nothing much to report. We got our car back from the dealer the other night. The sunroof part still isn’t in, so we’ll be taking it back in whenever the part comes in. We were soooo ready to get rid of the loaner, which was a fancy sedan, but stank to the high heavens with a very strong petroleum/plastic/chemical kind of smell, NOT a nice “new car smell”. The extended warranty we bought will have almost have paid for itself after the work we had done.

Over the weekend I bought a couple items from a fb garage sale seller – an OttLite floor lamp and a wooden quilt rack. The lamp (for sewing/crafts) works perfectly, but there was a tiny piece of plastic that cracked off the plug that the seller had mentioned in her post. The seller had the piece taped to the plug, but it fell off in the parking lot of the seller when we picked it up. I went back to the parking lot yesterday after work and found the piece, so I’m happy to be able to just have the plug covered and nothing inside exposed. I’ll just use electrical tape to keep the piece in place. I’ll use the lamp when I sew – I always need extra light doing that. We’re using the quilt rack for our bedspread right now (which is actually quilted), since in the summer we don’t need it on the bed for warmth. I got great deals on both, so I’m happy with my purchases.

The mason came by last night to take another measurement of the stone he’s replacing and I was home alone, so it was a bit of a surprise to hear someone opening the front screen door. Of course I went right to my phone and found bf had texted me a few minutes prior telling me the guy was coming by. I really need to remember to switch my phone from silent to vibrate outside of the office so I see things like that right away!
==
Happy – I guess if the arthritic knee is feeling that bad, replacing it is certainly a serious consideration. How is the other/new knee feeling now that you’re getting close to being a year out from the surgery? It certainly makes sense to do sooner than later – why suffer longer than you need to?? == We have a Costco membership that we usually just use to buy gas because it’s always less expensive than anywhere else. And the occasional rotisserie chicken. We do need to think of them more often for other things, but like you, we don’t really need the giant quantities that they sell. == Re having children - way back when, it was an expected thing that married couples have kids (several) and not unmarried folks. I agree that now it’s very casual, even indiscriminate and not a thoughtful decision at all. This may be an awful comparison, but it’s sort of like people who get pets, realizing belatedly that pet ownership wasn’t right for them at that time, or ever. But kids can’t be returned…so they’re raised in chaos and often in poverty, or many end up being turned over to the grandparent(s). So sad, because bringing a human into this world is a serious decision. == So glad you’re enjoying your fruit. I received a box of chocolate dipped strawberries for my birthday and they are delicious. Unfortunately some will likely go to waste because they don’t hold well, and a dozen of them is a lot for two people to eat over just a few days. (But we’ll give it a go, LOL.)

Okay, I’m gonna post and then run out to lunch. Have a great weekend everyone!

Quick post as I need to get to bed. I just finished balancing the checkbook; even Staycations are cheap! We had a great week though and I'm glad we took it.

Yesterday we took my two nephews to lunch and Dave and Busters where they played games for about 2 hours. I had given them gift cards at Christmas with money on it to play games. They had gone one other time and used half the amount on the cards, so we took them back and spent that and a little more.

When we finished there we meet my brother & his partner, at Kings Island. We watching a show, which was very good; like a Circ De Sola show (I have no idea how if I spelled that correctly or not.) Right as we were coming out you could tell a big storm was coming so we headed to one of the restaurants that we could sit down and eat in and waited out the storm. Once it was over, the weather improved greatly, they got the rides going and blew the water of the seats and things.

A lot of people left the park and it was so easy to get on rides quickly. My brothers determined it as a good time for me to see if I would fit in the seats of some of the popular coasters (they have seats at the beginning of the ride that you can test). Not many people there so it wasn't embarrassing to try them and I did fit! and not tightly either...so I rode "The Banshee: and "Mystic Timbers" and it was so fun! I was so scared as I had not rode one is so long. I kept my eyes closes most of the time and screamed my head off. but it was GREAT!

Next time we go, I'm riding Vortex, and I still have the Racers and The Beast to ride. There is another one I want to ride that isn't a coaster but rather tall swing. It looks fun. My brother is having a great time getting me back on the rides...we rode them so much in our late teens and early 20's.

Laura: Glad to hear you got your car back. That loaner you had sounds awful! As for the visit from the Mason person; I would have been freaked out to hear that door open too!

Is your plank challenge still going?

Ceejay: When are you going to look for a riding mower? It is nice that your nephew will be going back home to be with is family. It sounds like he will be visiting you and let's hope he brings the boys.

I agree you need a music rest for the piano.

Happy: it sounds like you got a lot of wonderful fruit!

I can't keep my eyes open any longer, so I'll say good night and see you all later.

I am disappointed to say I had a .8 lb gain at TOPS. It wasn't a lot and I'm sure it had to do with I didn't exercise at all this week since we were running around so much and I also had that morning AM and evening PM commitment to work. I worked enough that they will be giving me back 8 hrs of my vacation back.

I'll get that gain off this week for sure! It's going to be a crazy work week but I'm committing to 30 min a day for a treadmill workout.

TTYL.

Happy Sunday chicks,

Another rainy day for us. Yesterday DH pointed out all the chip in our NEW DECK from the ice cube sized hail that hit on Thursday evening. Dinks in the new roof, dinks in all the decking. I asked him if we should call the insurance company and he said we might get some money but they would probably raise our rates disproportionately and it's not that bad so he opted to leave it. There are big pock marks all over everything in my opinion. :mad: This is the rainiest summer I can remember since being here. You can't stay outside past 7:30. The mosquitoes are small but ferocious.

Friday night we went to a small farm in our area. They have a creamery and hydroponic farm. They were hosting a chef's table on Fridays featuring the chef that we went to with the cooking classes. He is so good with flavors that we are willing to try things we might otherwise say :no: to. It was a 4 course tasting menu. Course one we selected a lamb kabob appetizer that had a wonderful pesto sauce. Course 2 was a salad of greens from the farm, black "forbidden rice" which I had seen on cooking channels but never tasted along with peeled fresh rhubarb and tomatoes with a very light vinaigrette. Course 3 I chose a pan roasted tilapia they raise on the farm while DH had 2 very tiny pork chops (enough for me but an appetizer for him). They were on the tough side and too small of a dinner portion he said. He was expecting the wonderful pork I get from the farmer's market. I said that there are different kinds of pigs and the 2 kinds they have at the FM farm are known for their succulence. But he said the accompanying flavors made up for the other 2 things. Both dishes had a side of roasted vegetables - asparagus, carrot, garlic scapes, and some greens. Very tasty. There was a choice of homemade gelato or a strawberry shortcake and a scoop of vanilla gelato for dessert. He had a scoop each of chocolate almond fudge and vanilla caramel. The chocolate had ribbons of fudge and almonds and was very rich and made the vanilla caramel (which had very little caramel in it) seem rather bland. I had a mint chocolate chip gelato (very refreshing after the meal) and a scoop of blackberry that was full of so many seeds it was kind of difficult to eat. They have a small store there with farm products as well as some other things like milk they partner with other farms. I bought a small container of ricotta gnochi. I have some strawberries to use up so we bought a small 1/2 cup of the plain vanilla gelato to go with that. Since the chocolate almond fudge gelato was so good I bought a pint of that too. Didn't pay attention to prices - and shame on me because I know that they are very pricey because I frequent them over the winter when they do farmers markets twice a month at the hospital. That tiny cup of gelato was $4 which was nothing when I looked at the bill and saw that pint of chocolate was TWELVE DOLLARS. 12 dollars for a pint of ice cream???? DH paid the bill so I didn't notice or I would have said to keep it. Then to add insult to injury - DH over tipped (substantially) on the bill which included not only the dinner but also the grocery items I bought. He over tipped by about $9. Then last night I decided to have some of that expensive chocolate gelato. The dish DH had for dessert was filled with ribbons of chocolate fudge and chunks of coconut and almond slivers. Apparently that was skimmed off the top of the pan because the only thing in the container was something that looked like a very light chocolate ice milk. No fudge, coconut or almonds :mad: I really feel ripped off. We are going there next week for a tour of the farm and pizza afterwards and I think I am going to say something. I don't mind paying extra for good clean food but I think that was outrageous. No wonder they don't have the price of the pint on the counter by the gelato stand. :mad: At least Chef's dinner was great! :^:

Last night I made some baked chicken wings and baked potatoes "Hassleback" style - you make cuts in the potato and insert things like butter, bacon bits, cheese, chives, etc. I made the potatoes in a small cast iron skillet (whole potatoes and I put a layer of crunched up foil on the bottom that I sat the potatoes on so they wouldn't stick to the pan). Served it with chilled radishes, celery and carrots I got from the farmer's market. I wasn't all that hungry so I only ate a little bit but DH and the cats (chicken only) sure did enjoy their meal.

Susie - it was great that they were able to dry the seats off the rides at the park and you benefitted from smaller queues waiting to get on the rides. How nice you could enjoy the roller coasters.

Laura - I love OTTlites - I have 2 of them and they give off great intense light for things like sewing and crafting. I just have desk models and they work for what I need them for. The bulbs can be quite pricey but they last forever. They are also supposed to be good for reading if you have issues or are compromised with vision like my Mom. My surgical knee is doing fine - thanks for asking. The numbness that was so intense is easing up - that's a wierd feeling and there is still some tenderness around the knee but I can see it improving. Still get aches once in a while - I think that comes from having old legs attached to it :rofl: My sister said since both body parts never heal the same way symmetrically - perhaps my second surgery will go way better than the first one. In any event, I will be much better prepared and my expectations are tempered. Hope you enjoy the chocolate covered strawberries - a dozen is alot to eat - especially since they tend to use the really big ones for dipping. And they lose a bit of their flavor when you refrigerate them. But I'll bet the chocolate is better tasting than the dipping stuff you can buy at the store in the produce section. Did you finish your plank challenge?

Ceejay - Walnut Grove - wasn't that the name of the town where Little House on the Prairie was set? It's been a long time since I saw the show. I'll say you need a music rack - how can you play the organ without something to hold up the sheet music? Unless you memorize everything ahead of time and I'm thinking that is impossible. We had this beautiful wooden music stand in the shop. It was bargain priced at $25 - just an exquisite piece in mint condition. Even at that low, low price one lady wanted to pay less for it. I said no - it had just come in and was a bargain at that price. Her grandson was with her and he was drooling over this stand. She told us about 9 times that he played in the local symphony from where ever they were from. I was secretly happy that he also told her several times about how well made this stand was and a real bargain at that price. In the end she paid full asking price and bought it for him. But looking at it - especially compared to DH's metal stand - I can appreciate just how fine this one was. I hope you can find something that works well for you. Isn't it interesting how you find yourself so busy now that you are retired? Maybe it's because we have more time to be able to choose what we want to do. I'm glad you are enjoying your life. That's funny that the nephew likes staying with you but as you say it's better if he is with his family.

Hello Shad and Annie :wave:

Morning,
Sis and bil came by Saturday to go shop for a riding mower. We went to Lowe's in Republic but they didn't carry that particular one. He said that the store in Springfield carried it so we went there. And bought it. The frame is plastic but I will try to be careful. It's to be delivered Saturday between noon and 5. They have to put it together.
Yesterday was church and afternoon time with bil and sis. Today is their 18th wedding anniversary. The organist wants us to get together to practice.
I'm going this afternoon to a music store in Springfield to see what is available for a music stand/rest. I'd like to have a newer keyboard. I appreciate this one but their is a couple of keys that doesn't work, That makes it hard when I'm practicing.
Told my sis yesterday that I would like to exchange my 4 poster bed frame in the smaller bedroom for the smaller frame out in the garage.
Will be working out side some more this week. Wish I had a power washer as I'm going to be washing off the siding and get rid of that brush pile from last fall.

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Happy
Yes Walnut Grove is where little house on the prairie originated. Laura Ingalls Wilder is from this area. It's not far from Ash Grove where my sis and bil have their house. Saw the turkey aggravating the deer on FB. I'd be happy to pay that price for a music stand.

Susie
Sounds like you had a fun vacation. And yeah for you fitting on the rides. You and Annie are inspiring me to be more active in my health.

Laura
Sounds like you found some good finds on FB garage sales. I see those for my area but have never looked to see what is available. Maybe they would have a music stand or rest.

Shad and Annie Hi :wave:

Annie - are you ok? You haven't posted in 10 days? :(

Ceejay - yes the music stand was a bargain but the shipping to send it to you with such an odd package would probably cost an arm and leg! :lol: Oh my - how can you possibly practice on a keyboard that has keys that don't work??? Perhaps it is worth the investment in a modest new one if you want to continue with this which would be a good thing. Yay on the new riding lawnmower. I didn't realize you had a large yard. In the summer heat, you will be glad not to be pushing a mower, even if it's a power mower.

We have some sun right now but that can change any minute. We have had far too much rain this summer. I guess that's better than dry and wildfire dangers. I was thinking that I might can some fruit cocktail instead of just peaches. Peaches, grapes, cherries and blueberries. I had to toss about 7 peaches from the box - good thing I checked them - they had soft spots and were starting to go bad - that can spread fast if you don't stay on top of it. I tried to use the self clean on my oven today (they don't recommend using oven cleaner). Got an error code - the lock won't set on the door so it won't start the cycle. Time for a new stove. There's just so many to choose from it's hard to decide on what's the best / most reliable. Not that we have alot to pick from - we have a few appliance places but Sears is closing in town. I just want something that we can call if we need service so I am hesitant to buy from a place like Best Buy. We might have to go to Duluth. DH is trying to sell our UTV / dune buggy. Says we don't use it enough - which is true. It's July 10 and we have yet to take the pontoon out - weather has not been cooperative. He put an ad in online and got some shakey results. Now some 26 year old is interested and said they are getting a loan. I hate selling by owner - I am distrustful of strangers and you never know if someone is going to rip you off. We do see her Facebook profile. DH would be driving 90 minutes to meet them halfway to deliver it and complete the sale. We will see. I do have some misgivings about selling it - we barely used it in 3 years. Comes out to about $1,000 a ride considering depreciation. He's selling it for half what we paid for it 3 years ago. Said that's what the going trade in rate would be. To me that was a big waste... :shrug: I still think we should keep it but it's his decision and the man cave is getting overcrowded anyway with the lawnmower, snow blower, his big workbench, the regular atv and other things so I guess he can use the room. I know, big time problems, right? boo hoo.

Anyway no one else has checked in so I guess I will go and get busy - I have a large to do list today.

Have a good day everyone.

Good Morning All

HEY HAPPY...I am fine, thanks for asking, just buried under mail and a load of emails. Good Lord.

This post will be short. Vacay was wonderful. Sun cooperated for the most part. I will try to post tomorrow. I have a 2:45 doc appt today so it is making me hustle through all the fires. Had to register for the Chicago bus. trip/meeting by today. Last day and since it was mandatory I couldn't decline going. Bleh as I will be gone fro Jacob's first day of school.

I will get in here early tomorrow and post....hopefully.

LAURA...glad you got your card and hope your birthday was awesome!!

Make it a great day all....love and hugs

Afternoon all.

Susie – Wow, Dave & Buster and then Kings Island – in one day??? That’s an action-packed day. :faint: Great NSV that you could go on the rides because you now fit in the seats! :bravo: Sounds like you’ll be at KI more now that you can enjoy the rides with your brother. How fun. == Re the plank challenge – I got through June 25th and stopped. I’m thinking of doing it again, but with a revamped, more gradual increasing of the plank time. Nothing as long as the 2 minutes that the YMCA challenge had. It’ll really just be a way to get me to do the planks regularly. I think I should include some other ab work in there too. == I hope work isn’t too insane for you this week!!

Happy – What a bummer that you’re getting all that rainy weather, and the hail damage on your deck, siding and roof. :mad: We had a lovely weather weekend, and then the rain (and storms) came overnight and this morning. I don’t mind rain on a back-to-work Monday. :D == The farm dinner sounds tasty, but I agree the farm store was a rip-off. == I got my OttLite for only $15. Everything works fine, and fingers :crossed: that the bulb lasts me a good long time. It was a woman selling her mom’s sewing stuff when the mom quit sewing. I looked at the website and the lamps can get pricey. I noticed there’s a wheel set that I can get so that the lamp can be moved around easily. Probably just a “nice to have” and not a need. == I’m glad your new knee is doing well, and knowing what to expect will hopefully make the 2nd surgery & recovery easier to get through. == Maybe better to just get rid of that ATV and not feel regrets every time you see it… out of sight, out of mind.

Ceejay – You’re going to be spoiled with a riding mower! :D And just think of the attachments you can get for it – something that will rake up the leaves and something that will aerate the lawn. You can start a side business, LOL. == I hope you found a music stand for the piano. == I’m pretty sure that on one of the family vacations we took when I was a kid, we visited the home of Laura Ingalls Wilder. I was a big fan of her books and then the TV series.

Annie – Glad you had good weather for your vacation. Any chance we’ll be able to meet up while you’re in Chicago? Even just a brief chat to say hello, since I’m pretty much around the corner and down the block from where you’ll be. Keep me posted.

==

I had a nice weekend, nothing exciting though. My mom’s monthly bill at her community includes a certain amount for food at the two restaurants, and she hasn’t gotten into the habit of having meals from there. So she was up against the monthly deadline with $$ to spend. I went over on Saturday and had lunch with her, and then she purchased a couple items to bring back to her unit. And she had me get food to bring back home (a sandwich for bf). I’d really like it if she’d just start buying the food for herself. She doesn’t cook much anymore, so this could be a really nice thing for her once she hits on a few menu items she likes. And the $$ on her bill are “use it or lose it”, so it’s just a waste of money if she doesn’t take advantage of it!!

I didn’t do much else on Saturday. BF took our old sedan to the tire place and it turns out the rear brakes needed work. It’s always something. :shrug: I went to Kohl’s to use the $10 reward I got for my birthday. I bought some undies – exciting stuff. :lol: Then over to Walmart for a couple things.

Having heard about the new series of “Twin Peaks”, I’m watching the original series that started in 1990. I never watched it when it was on originally The first season was short – 8 episodes – and I got through that over the past couple weeks. The 2nd is 22 and I just watched the 1st episode last night. Not sure I’ll want to continue – I’ve heard the 2nd season wasn’t as good as the first. But I’m curious about the new series, so that makes me want to plow through the old one, as well as the movie that came out back then…

On Sunday I got out and trimmed some boxwood shrubs out front. They’re overgrown, and they have bare spots at the back of them. I don’t know if they’re the type of shrub that will come back with new growth if I give them a severe trimming to the ground, so I might just remove those completely next spring. Maybe this fall I’ll cut them all the way back to the ground and if they come back next year, fine, and if not, I’ll dig out the roots and replace them with something tiny. Some people don’t like starting with a tiny shrub and will pay more for something that’s more mature, but I don’t mind at all, LOL. Less trimming to do - for a few years at least.

Found out I have a work dinner tomorrow after work that I really should go to. Bleh. And I’ll miss my aqua fit class. :mad:

That’s it for me. TTFN.

Good Morning Ladies....

I didn't make it in as early as intended. However it is what it is and I am going with that. We had really loud, strong thunder boomers last night. I got up with Bruno (Sam's dog) since I couldn't sleep anyway. For being a Great Dane/Boxer/Blue Healer mix he is one HUGE baby and fraidy cat...sorry Sunday, Meadow and crew. He sat on the floor next to me (on couch) with his head on my chest. This one really loud thunder struck and he leaped in his squat position onto my body. Bout knocked the wind out of me. Going to look for bruises later since I bruise so easy on this blood thinner. We had tornadoes across Indiana too. One in particular touched down just a few miles from C's parent's house. Near Grissom Air Force Base. He called them last night but that was just before the touch down. I will call them later when they have time to get up. A few miles south from his parents in Kokomo got 4 inches of rain and flooding. TV news showed the water as high as the fire hydrant. It is receding now tho.

Yesterday afternoon I had an appointment at the shoulder ortho. My left arm has been bothering me for about 6 mos. At first I thought it was heart related. Pain as a sign of an attack. Mentioned in the past months here. Anyway, I have reduced strength in that arm, especially when getting things down from shelves, lifting the boys, or sometimes just lifting my purse. Granted my purse can get heavy. I did downsize and stopped carrying things to drop the weight of it. Yeah I know, going from a 40 lbs purse to 35 lb is not much. lol. :) Doc thinks I may have a torn rotaror cuff. I have to call to schedule an MRI. Bleh, as we just got all our medical bills paid off. Get this taken care of next move is to see about my knee and maybe get a cortisone shot in it.

Vacation was sunny all days but one. Not bad. We used that day to run errands. All other days were outside by the kiddie pool in the backyard with the exceptions of Wednesday when we went to the water park. Yep I did it. Sam and I went down the enormous water slide. So fun we did it twice. We had a pretty huge crowd. My bro/sil, Sam's friend Meg and two girls then Sis, the boys and I. The boys went on all the slides in the kiddie area and also did the downspout sprays and gully washers. We were there about 5 hours and played hard. My SIL, bro and I went on the lazy river for about 2 hours. Lots of chatting and laughing. Now mind you it was a site as my bro is 6'5" and about 280/300. His large arse in the biggest tube looked hilarious. Let's just say not much of the tube was showing but kept him afloat. :) He is a real trooper for 67 years old. I am beginning to see age hit him in his movements and health. Kind of worries me, makes me sad. He still works full time at his job. He doesn't want to retire so go for it. He does enjoy life and he and my SIL keep busy. Probably the key to life.

Friday, Sam, the boys and I came downtown. Yep I don't like downtown but did it anyway. They had a farmer's market on the south half of the circle. I picked up zucchini, yellow squash (yellow), jalapenos and a large bag of popcorn for the boys. We took their wagon so we could haul them and our catch from the market. It was nice, clean and not overly crowded. A little too hot and muggy but made it through it alive. Stopped at Cheddar's for a very late lunch on the way home. Grilled salmon on a spinach/strawberry salad with strawberry vinaigrette. I ordered blue cheese dressing on the side as I like to dip my salad into it on occasion.

Tonight is AA workshop. We didn't have it last week due to the holiday. We are almost finished with this workshop. One gal has offered her home with a pool for our last get together rather than going out to eat. We told her she has to do nothing. We will do the food and clean. Anything to be poolside in my eyes. Oh yeah.

WOW...more thunder boomers just now. Sounds really loud here on the 16th floor.

Going to post and come back in a few for personals.

Good morning all,

Sunny now - rain tonight. Enjoy it while you can. Supposed to only be a high of 61 tomorrow. What is going on here??? I have not looked at the garden yet (or planted the last of the 5 items I bought last week. :^: Keep forgetting / other things get in the way. The hamster wheel is turning too fast. DH said the garden took a terrible beating with the hail last Thursday. I have to see if it's worth hanging on to. DH cleaned up the UTV yesterday - the buyers are supposed to come tonight to pick it up. I am still sad and quite a bit mad that we lost half the value in 3 short years where we barely used it. That was certaining a huge waste of money. I am fearful the same is true of the pontoon boat. :^: We have yet to take it out. Granted alot of it has to do with the weather being so bad this year. Can't go out / no fun on the lake in a downpour.

I got a call yesterday when I was out grocery shopping. They asked if I would fill in at the senior center for 2 days when the new girl goes to training. She wanted to do it tomorrow and Thursday. I said no to Wednesday - I have a hair appointment, then I need to prep for our Humane Society Board meeting that evening and I am meeting someone at 3pm ahead of time to prepare for the fundraiser I have to chair that involves somehow getting 44 people to beg on the street with pink buckets. :lol: So I agreed to this Thursday forgetting that I have to do bingo and that would put my day at getting up at 6am to be there by 8am. Working the phones until 4pm and then going upstairs (not enough time to go home and rest a bit) and then doing bingo until 9pm. I don't think I can hold up that long any more. :faint: I am working again at the center next Wednesday. I am working at the shop this morning but then taking the last 2 weeks of the month off since I will be busy getting the fund raiser going. We are running into a shortage of people to help out at the shop. But I would really like to take most of August off of everything. My partner at the shop and bingo is going on vacation for almost 3 weeks the end of August and that means I will have double duty responsibility so I think I will be selfish and take some time off myself. DH asked why I agreed to the senior center and I said I don't know, I did say I'd help (though my intention was not for a full day's work). I am a stupid sucker...

Annie - I always feel sorry for animals during storms. They follow their instincts for survival which say to RUN. RUN FAST. It's always been a pity to me that we can't seem to comfort them enough to make them understand that they truly are ok in our hands. Yikes by getting body slammed by Bruno though. How is Sassy during all this? You are a woman after my heart with a heavy purse with everything in it. I have been told over and over by various doctors and physical therapists that a heavy purse is not wise but I can't help myself. I try to make it smaller and I guess my version of just the "essentials" is more than most people's. My Mom's purse weighs about 3 ounces. :lol: But not only can you get rotator cuff problems but also tendonitis in the shoulder and arms. Best to get that taken care of. Mom has pretty much lost the use of her right arm because she has a bulge from the rotator cuff injury that can't be repaired at her age. I feel for you sister because she almost cries - she said the pain is awful and she can barely lift her arm. :( How nice that you had a great time at the water park and you were brave enough to go down the water slide! Your brother is right to some degree about keeping busy. It seems when people slow down or in the case of my Mom get progressively more homebound - when you have no purpose or distractions one tends to dwell on the sad side of life and it's bad for the mental and eventually physical side of life. It's good he's still working IF he enjoys his work and it's not just a drudge of the death march. Any word on C selling off his route? Did you wind up getting a new boss? Yum - grilled salmon on a Strawberry Spinach salad sounds yummy - I have all those ingredients at home - thanks for the menu idea!! Oh and my former partner at the Thrift Shop came to bingo last week. She decided to do low carb - maybe not full on keto - but she is loving it. Said it's been the most successful eating plan she's been on in years.

Laura - that's a bummer about your Mom not using her food allowance. I think people's taste buds diminish and food is not that interesting to them. But on the other hand I did realize when I was working that eating was a welcome respite from the drudge of the job so I looked FORWARD to coming in a bit early and picking up breakfast in the cafeteria and where to go for lunch that day was at least a 30 minute discussion. :rofl: I wondered with those programs that provide 2 meals as part of the package if people would take advantage of that. I get a 2 month menu from the senior center and really only about 1/3 of it appeals to me. The other third is "ok" and then there are some days like liver and onions day that I'd rather go hungry :p although they always have an alternate available. I looked at the menu where my sister's husband's aunt lives. They have a special of the day and then you can get a salad (vegetarian option) or a burger or chicken sandwich. It's a limited menu - something like that I can see people not getting excited about. Aunt J is more into the camaraderie of eating with her group of buddies than the food itself. Let me know what you think of the Twin Peaks series. It peaked my interest also but I have a bunch of movies tying up my cable recorder and I was mildly curious about joining Hulu to see The Handmaid's Tale. So many things, so little time :lol: Good for you for keeping up with the plank challenge. Keep working that core as long as you can.

Alright - somehow it got 30 minutes past when I was supposed to wrap this up and get in the shower. Now I have to hurry because one of the volunteers who thinks she runs the shop will open the doors 5 or 10 minutes before I have all the cash counted in the till just because people are milling at the door. Up to this point I have held out smacking her outright. Not her place. :mad:

Anyway - have a good day everyone. :wave:

Morning all.

Annie – Awww, poor Bruno. I can’t say I feel all that comfortable when storms like that come through. There are a lot of trees in our area and I worry about trees falling. And exploding. I’m sure I’ve mentioned the time that a tree at a home behind us & a few doors down got struck by lightning and the tree exploded and a piece of it flew across the street and hit a woman returning from a dog walk. She was critically injured. So anyway, storms are scary. I hope everything is okay with C’s parents. == I hope your shoulder is okay. I’ve had shoulder issues off and on in the past, no fun. I’m a heavy purse person too. When will we learn we don’t need to carry around so much??? And your knee now too??!! That’s just not fair. == That water park sounds fun. I’d sure like to float around on a lazy river for a couple hours… == Great that your brother is still working. I wouldn’t mind still working at that age, but I’d want to be doing something I really enjoyed or was really low stress. Both of which mean low pay I'm sure. Hopefully someday I can afford to take a job like that, haha.

Happy – I hope you can salvage some items from your garden. My tomatoes are doing alright, but the pepper plant is still tiny (though there’s a tiny pepper already). I think it’s because it’s being shaded too much by the tall flowers in the adjacent flower bed. I’m tempted to pull it out of that spot and plant it elsewhere, maybe just in a large planter. == I’m not surprised that the UTV lost so much value – I think “toys” are always like that. I’m sure if we were in the market for something like that, we’d be buying it used like we do our cars or the scooter or our and bicycles. I do hope you hang onto the pontoon boat and have many years of use out of it. == Re purses, my mother has also gone lighter – she wears a fanny pack. But I haven’t been able to cull down what I carry. Especially difficult now – when I wear my contact lenses, I carry around my big sunglass case, as well as the case with my reading glasses. I do, however, carry lighter weight purses, nylon, microfiber, etc. I looked at purses at Kohl’s the other day and all those vinyl bags are heavy! I’ll need to get online and shop for another nylon bag with a bunch of pockets – I love my pockets! == My mom’s community has a “grill” that has daily specials, but always a standard menu of sandwiches, burgers, wraps, etc. There’s also a nicer (white tablecloth) restaurant. There’s certainly something there she can eat, it’s just a matter of getting into the habit. == Re Twin Peaks – the 2nd season is less of the murder mystery and more subplots and trying to be a bit more comedic. Not sure I like that. I’ll give it a few more episodes. I’ve heard the Handmaid’s Tale is good. I read the book so long ago (and saw the movie), I can’t recall much.

Hellos to the rest of you! Hope you’re having a good week!
==
I requested a new keyboard for my computer here at work and got it yesterday. It’s a quieter one. I’m just glad to have a working space key again. I'll try not to break this one. :D :comp:

I’d started a Jonathan Kellerman book a couple days ago, but I gave myself permission to skip it & I returned it to the library. It was going to involve insects in the storyline and I hate insects, so that was it for that book. I’ll just skip to the next book in the series.

I’d accepted the work dinner invitation yesterday, but I declined today. I got it all goofed up in my head thinking it was with someone else I’ll be working closely with, but realized it was not and decided that I didn’t need to be there. I’ll go to my aqua fit class tonight instead. :swim:

That’s about it for all the excitement in my world, lol. Off to post. :comp:

Hump Day said the smiling camel! :)

Workshop was very nice. We got through about 4 pages of read. Probably a few more weeks and we will be done with workshop. Just depends on discussion and how windy others are with their shares. We may just go out to eat rather than the pool/cook out for our final workshop. It just depends on who wants to rush home from work and make a pitch in item for the cook out. Not me. I say we go out to eat. We are going to vote on it next week.

I hurried home from work to put together Mexican for salads, burritos etc for dinner. I used leftover chicken I had in the freezer (already chopped and cooked). Just heated it up and added taco spices. It was rather good easy and fast. Sam cleaned up the kitchen and got the coffee ready to brew for me this morning. Which I left my coffee in the car and will have to track out there to get it in a few. It is my bullet proof coffee otherwise I would just leave it and drink some from our kitchen. Coffee is in my yeti so it shall stay hot. Speaking of Yeti's, I think they keep things cold, colder longer that they do hot-hotter. IMO. Since it was a freebe from work I really cannot complain.

The visit to the ortho for my shoulder resulted in he THINKS I may have a torn rotaror cuff. Lovely. Going for an MRI on Friday the 21st. Will know the next steps from the MRI. He did say there is not much if any arthritis in my shoulder from the x-rays he took. More to come about all that after the 21st.

HAPPY...you and your volunteering, my word girl I am glad you are taking time off from it in August to do some HAPPY stuff rather than everybody else stuff. Make it all about you. You deserve it and NEED it. After this week you will sleep really well or toss and turn. No in betweens for you. Did DH ever catch that muskie? The storms..Sassy could care less about them, just don't interrupt her sleep for anything. She is one cranky beeeeaccch when you try to wake her and take her out to potty. Just like an old woman (me). C sleeps in on Wednesdays and so does Sassy. Had to pick her up and carry her to the back door to go out and potty. She would not just run to the door like normal. Lazy she is. Anyway when she came back in she ran straight to the bedroom waiting on me to lift her onto the bed. :) Spoiled! C is not selling his route at this time. The first guy backed out and the second guy didn't offer C to drive the route for him. He just cannot do nothing to make money. So back to just do a good job C and quit complaining. You have a job, blessed. They still have not announced the new boss yet. I think they are dickering about $$ at the moment. Well that is the rumor out there. Have you decided to sell the boat yet? Or giving it a few more years? C wanted to get a boat but I told him negative sir. Our weather is not good enough, his work schedule is too busy and we only have weekends even if he didn't work as much. To me it is not worth the $$ to invest in a boat at this time. My purse is not the cause of the arm ache but sure it wasn't helping. I did switch to a backpack type of purse so now I don't have to carry it on my arm/shoulder. I actually like it when going to the grocery or like the farmer's market the other day. May have to downsize from this medium size to small.

LAURA...Great news. I can do planks in the pool. hahahahhaha. Yeah no weight required. Sam laughed at me when I did it the other day in the boy's lil pool. So I officially did planks. bah. Yes, my brother is still working because he actually likes his job. He is a quality control manager. He does get involved and does hands on projects with his "people". So he is a manager and a worker too. He turned 67 in February and I turned 57 in June. That is how we keep track of each other's ages. 10 year spread. I told him it is 10 years and 4 mos spread. :) I could probably use a new keyboard too. This one is about 3 years old but all works so I will just keep pecking on it till something blows. I just want a new one cause it will be all clean and shiny. Glad you got to go to your aqua class rather than the work dinner. Are you still enjoying it as much? OH, the CHI trip. I have to be there at 10:30 CT on the 25th. Class is till 5 then have a mandatory dinner with everyone that night. Class is from 8 to 12:30 CT on the 26th. How about we meet up around 12:45 CT for a glass of tea or something or a quick hello. I can head home after that. Let me know if that would work for you.

CEEG...Did you get your riding mower? Any attachments? How about your music stand? The 4th of July party at your crib sounded very nice. I listened to the nephews playing guitars and singing. Very nice.

SUSIE...has your world slowed down? Or is this the week the new president is in? King's Island was a great success, fitting into the seats should of made you very happy and what a great NSV.

SHADDIE...hey girl, how are you feeling? How much hair has grown in? 1/2 inch yet? Congrats on retirement. I have about 10 more years. What is on the bucket list for retirement? How is the garden doing? Get all the hedges out?

Hello to all. Gotta get busy, still catching up.

Hugs

Hi girls,

Yikes, my internet is slow and getting slower. Took forever to log in. Didn't sell the UTV after all. Buyers started dicking around with the price. What part of "firm" don't you understand even after it's been explained to you 3 times? People want ultimate value for THEIR dollar even if they screw you in the process. So we will try again other routes. I did manage to cut my volunteer at the office tomorrow to a half day. Talked to my bingo partner and realized that he needs me as we will be super busy. The woman who asked me said she will find someone or have the OTHER LADY THEY JUST HIRED sit and watch the phones. Duh :chin: Got 2 paid people - think they'd cover for each other???? Oh well. I probably will continue the thrift shop in August - just not the next 2 weeks. I forgot my friend signed up and she is doing this to help me out so I kinda have to do it. BUT am taking the next 2 weeks "off". To work on the fundraiser. :^: so not much of an "off" :lol:

Annie bummer on the rotater cuff. I think that is becoming a more common wear and tear injury because we put so much of a demand on it. Get it fixed now - my Mom has that problem and it's too late for her to have surgery and she suffers greatly from it. Did I mention that the sides of my elbows constantly hurt / are tender if you squeeze them? The rheumatologist said that (as well as up near the rotator cuff ) that is tendonitis from over use of the tendon in that area. So I guess there's alot to be said about us putting stress on certain areas of the body. It's a pistol of a recovery (rotator cuff) from what I understand simply because you have to really limit use of the area while recovering and that's like not flexing a finger when you have a bandage on it. But take care of things while you still can. I know though, bye bye paycheck :angel: Ha ha with Sassy the sleep sack - Nina is like that too when SHE decides to lay down and sleep. Nothing moves her. I have a Yeti cooler that I won and I put ice in it to keep some spare fruit and drinks cold. I also had DH buy a small bag of ice and put it in a regular cooler - I was going to use it later. The small bag of ice lasted less than 24 hours while the Yeti keeps ice cubes for at least 4 days. They are definitely worth the high price. I don't know about keeping foods hot - I guess the insulation is such that it would. Usually I rely on the drink container (I use a Thermos brand) and it keeps hot for 12 hours, cold for 24. And that works as stated. Too bad you aren't doing the pool thing for your last workshop of the season. Will you miss those sessions? Something to take their place?

Laura - I smiled about your new quiet keyboard. My thought was that you can now post in secret at work: :comp: :rofl: I hope you and Annie can meet up. Good deal that you got to skip the dinner you didn't want/need to go to. How was aqua class? Hah also but maybe not really - that you could not read the book that had bugs in it. I can understand it - I'd be jumpy and scratching all the time I was reading it. :lol:

Hello to the rest. I have to go get cleaned up and off to get my hair done. DH just announced we are supposed to get thunderstorms about the time I get finished. That might alter my plans for what I was going to do afterwards. I am not all that prepared for my meetings later today. But then again we have board members skipping tonight's meeting for cheesy excuses. We only meet twice a year - you think people would make that a priority? Why are you on the board??? I don't know. I guess my expectations are too high. :rolleyes:

Anyway have a good day ladies. Hello to the rest of the chicks.

I haven't been using the laptop but decided to today. It's crazy.
Not sure who asked but yes we did get the riding lawn mower. It's only a 30 inch cut which is all I need. It's supposed to be delivered Saturday. Can't wait for that. I also went down to the music store in Springfield and bought black metal music stand. They didn't have the holder. Also bought an adjustable piano bench. The organ bench was to high and a regular dining chair was to low. I can now see the music book.
I did get the garage cleaned out also. I'm still curious as to why the nephew says the boat is his friend and that he was supposed to come and get it. That doesn't make since to me when he tells me that his friend lives in Kansas City, MO. In my opinion I think it's his and he doesn't want his wife to know. We put it out in the shed. I bet it stays there!!!!!

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Annie
Poor Bruno. I know I jump when we have those loud boomers. I can only imagine how the dogs would react. Hope the shoulder is not giving you to much problem today. I chose the song the nephews were playing because of the way the were stomping heir feet.

Happy
Good for you in saying no to helping train at the senior citizen center. Hail can certainly do some damage.

Laura
Don't blame you for returning the book to the Library. I don't like bugs either. Has your mom gotten settle in?

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Going to get this posted. I'm tired of dealing with this thing jumping sizes on me while I'm typing.

Everyone have a good day.

Good morning ladies,

Quick post for me. I am off to the senior center shortly. Got a call when I was out yesterday. I stopped at the center Tuesday told the girl who wants me to fill in for her that I could not work all day today because with bingo tonight that would mean I'd be there from 8am to 9pm which was too long. I could do the morning but needed her to find a fill in for 12:30 to 4pm. Seemed simple enough, no??? Guess not as I got a call from the other lady who volunteers to answer phones. Just when was it that I was working and when did they need her? She is a competent lady so I know the screw up in the message came from the girl who we are filling in for. This girl is getting PAID to answer phones and take messages. And she can't get this straight. And DH wonders why I'm crabby :rolleyes: I could not get a hold of the other lady because I was out so I hope she does not travel a far distance to show up this morning because she is responsible enough to do that. She said on her message that she'd leave her home number but she didn't so I had no way to get a hold of her. I went to the Humane Society Board meeting last night. That too was a joke sadly. They don't get the paperwork out ahead of time and the people who did some of the financial reports were not there to answer questions. We only meet twice a year - how HARD is it to not attend???? Particularly when they are scheduling meetings in advance they try to accomodate a date all can make it? There are also some underlying tensions / people issues there as well as at the shop. And yet the world turns... :spin:

Got my hair done yesterday. It's shorter, has layers that I can scrunch and fluff so less work with the blow dryer. Still blonde on top but the bottom is now a sort of dark purple tint. The stylist who returned from maternity leave suggested it. She has the HAPPIEST baby ever - such a big no tooth drooly grin. You just want to squeeze him. ♥

I need to hop in the shower so apologies for no personals right now. Depends on how much time I have when I get home today and before bingo. If not I will do a full report tomorrow when I think I am home ALL DAY :dancer: !!!

Have a good one ladies.

Good Morning All....one more wake up and it is the weekend. Nothing planned as such, thank heavens. Meeting on Sat morning and church on Sunday. Bout it. May get the car washed since we are in for a string of nice days. Sheesh for likes of me I cannot even remember what I fixed for dinner. Wow, that is the first sign they say, of what who knows. Sis and I did go to our pedicure appt. I got a very nice bright pinkish/orange color this time. Nice to look down at my toes to brighten up my day. :) Came home and watched some of the EPSY awards. (Sports awards) Peyton Manning hosted, he did a wonderfully fantastic job. I had to turn it off at 9:30, couldn't keep my eyes open.

When to my primary care doc for my 6 mos check up. She is in agreement that I either never had Hep C or a miracle occurred. My BP was 112/78 and my weight was 168, it was 167 at home that morning. Just a few more lbs and I will be at my final goal of 159/160. Taking it slow and easy. As long as I have to work at it I am not at goal, maintaining or headed in the wrong direction. I am in size 8 pants this morning. Just depends on the brand whether I wear a size 8 or 10, but heck I am happy with both. A gal here at work that dresses very cute/hip and has nice clothes is giving me her size 10's as soon as she goes through her closet. She has gained and canot wear them. Looking forward to that.

CEEG...I used to use the riding mower when I was married the first time. I really enjoyed it as it was me time and no one could bother me. We had two acres to cut so it took a bit of time. Have fun with that. Glad you are getting your music stand/bench so you can enjoy playing much more.

HAPPY...If surgery is required on the rotarer cuff it is be done by laparoscope and not invasive. At least that is what the ortho doc told me. I am not really worried about it. Doc said my should may just require a cortisone shot. Wouldn't that be wonderful. Maybe, might just want it fixed to move on to the next old age BS that is dished my way. :( Too bad about selling the ATV but I don't blame you on not giving it away. My thought is to price it higher than I want then when they want to deal you can get your real price. People are silly. Life is all a game. Yes I will miss the workshop sessions but also on the other hand glad I am not committed to going every Tuesday. I tell you I am lazy when it comes to doing things once I am home from work. If I could go straight to an occasion after work, I am fine, but once home forget it. Especially after getting up every day at 5. I am always glad once I go and get there. I put ice water in my Yeti cup yesterday at about 11:00 and still had a bit of ice this morning in it. Good cups but Walmart sells similar for about 11 bucks that my son swears are just as good. Today is your busy day. You need bullet proof coffee to keep you going. May the force be with you.

Best get busy, make it a great day/night. Hello to all you sweet ladies.

Morning
Not much has happened since my last post. Nephew had a ball game last night and spent the night with me. He said he got his with a line drive ball (below the belt) He was alright this morning. Made head way in the office yesterday. Maybe this afternoon I can finish. Found my old Metabolic Research Centers diet plan and am using that this week. I can already tell a difference.
Found some asparagus volunteer in the flower bed earlier this spring and it is really taking off. I'm going to stake it or get a tomato cage for it. I want to see what it does.

----------------
Annie
I know I will enjoy the riding mower. Sis said she would help me in the yard Saturday. I do want them to help me with the round flower bed in the front. It needs some work. Lets hope that the cortisone injection is all you need for now.

Happy
People will try to chew down the original price of any thing that a single person tries to sell. Don't blame you saying no.
Have a good day.

Laura, Shad and Susie :wave:

Afternoon all.

Ceejay – It’ll be fun to do the lawn on the riding mower. You’ll probably be able to do all the mowing in one session now. == Sounds like you’re all set with the new bench and music stand for your piano. == The boat-hiding story is interesting…I hope it doesn’t end up being a point of contention between the nephew and his wife. == My mom’s doing alright, but I can’t say she’s really settled in. She needs to buy some furniture for her living room, and she has a lot of framed pictures sitting around that need to be hung on the walls. I’m not going to get on her case about it until the 1-year mark… ;)

Happy – Your volunteer work sounds rather frustrating lately. I hope you enjoy your day at home tomorrow! == Bummer the sale of the ATV didn’t work out. I agree with Annie – maybe adjust the pricing - or your mindset about how much you have to get out of it…

Annie - Awesome that you are so close to your goal weight!! :carrot: How nice to be getting some clothes from your co-worker. == I hope you can get relief from your shoulder issue with just a cortisone shot. Didn’t Michelle have a shoulder surgery – I recall the recovery being a major PITA. == I’ve done planks in the pool in my aqua class. I like those better, lol. == I can do 12:45 on July 26th. Wednesday. I’ll block It out on my calendar.

Hellos to the rest of you. Shad, how’s your retirement going? I take it you survived S’s birthday party?? Susie, I hope this week at work wasn’t too over the top busy for you. Are you still doing work from home days on Thursdays??

==

I’m eating an apple, not too enthusiastically. I cored it and then chopped it into small pieces and of course that’s when I decided I didn’t want to eat the peel. So here I am slicing off the peel from little chunks of apple. I’m tempted to just toss it out because I’m not enjoying it, but I didn’t bring much for lunch – a packet of tuna with some miracle whip on a single slice of wheat bread along with some baby carrots – and I don’t want to be starving in another hour. So I’ll eat the apple.

I didn’t go to aqua fit the other night. Bf and I went out for dinner to celebrate the 30th anniversary of our first date. :cheers: Last night’s dinner was leftovers. The side of pasta that came with my entrée from a restaurant meal we had over the weekend was enough for a meal for both bf and I! Okay, almost enough – I did get a bit hungry before bedtime. Ate some cheese and crackers.

Last night I did another one of the stretch routines from the dvd I borrowed from the library. Another good one. I might just have to purchase that dvd.

The official decision about our office making a move came out today - we'll be moving in November of next year. Just to a building kitty corner from ours, so not a big change to my commute. Except for each person’s “desk files”, most of our records are now electronic, so you'd think we wouldn't have much to move....but we do have a bunch of file drawers filled with stuff that’s rarely or never looked at. Hopefully it’s only a matter of either boxing and storing it offsite or heaving it into a dumpster. I have a lot of paper in my cubicle, but I’m not terribly attached to it. It won't be an issue to dump the excess well before I pack up my workspace.

Nothing much else to report, so I’ll get this posted. Have a good day everyone.

Blessed Friday all ya'll...hehe.

Last night's dinner was homemade KETO cheddar bay biscuits (Red Lobster style). They turned out magnificent. C and Sam both said they were pretty darn close to the real thing. I think they need just a bit more garlic powder. Also fixed Keto chicken salad. Both C and S would be straight keto if they just ate the chicken salad, but they cannot give up the bread that goes with. :) Also had a tomato/mozzarella salad on the side. I ate one of the biscuits and felt guilty, but it only had 2 net carbs if you make 6 biscuits with the recipe. I made 7, and they were still pretty nice in size.

Woke up to a poo fest. Bruno had the poo's overnight in his room/toy room/C'dvd room. OMGosh the stench. Sam was already up dealing with it. Had to throw his oversize bed away. His blanket wasn't too awful bad so it went straight to the washing machine. She got the mess cleaned up pretty well. Put some oxy clean for pets on the stains and closed the door. Thank goodness we have a carpet cleaner. That is next. She then went out in the back yard and gave Bruno a bath. All before 6:30 am. I left late for work as it was just too chaotic. Made us bullet proof coffee and ice water to get the day started. On to work for me. I can't wait till we have enough saved to rip out the carpet everywhere and put in wood/laminate floors. Kind of the last thing to get done and $$ saved towards.

HAPPY...DH is a hoot on FB with all his snarky answers to pets at the commune. I sat laughing at them last night. C said what is so funny? You wouldn't get it C. I would have to explain too much. lol. Hope you get to enjoy your day off from volunteering. You do know that when you start to dread going to do your volunteering or all the extra stuff you have to do, it is time to stop volunteering at that place. IMO. How you liking your hair? Wish I could be happy scrunching and going with my hair.

LAURA...ok great, where do you want to meet. What is around 10 S. Wacker? Don't make it too hard, remember blonde. lol. Happy 30th anniversary. Did you ever think that you would be with BF that long when it all started out? Probably so once you bought the house. wink wink. Is the move going to put you into a better/updated building or is your company going to revamp it?

CEEG...you sis is so sweet and her DH too, both so kind. Glad I got to meet them and you. Yard work on a riding mower sound fun to me. Hope you can get your flower bed just the way you want it. Hmmm, hidden boat that the nephew has sounds interesting. My ex used to say/do things like that when really it was all him.

Best get busy, short day for me I decided. :)

Everyone have a wonderful day/weekend. Make it awesome!

Hi all,

Went to the office yesterday to work. Office doors were locked (I don't have a key), but the upstairs was opened. Eventually one of the workers came in but she left her key on her desk IN THE LOCKED OFFICE. Had to call around, finally one girl drove in (in her pjs) and she has lots of trouble with her car - had to find a jump before she could drive in and then had to sit there with the car running while we opened up because no guarantee her car would start again if she shut it off. All in all, we sat there 45 minutes before we could start work. Was ok, we had coffee and talked to the yoga teacher and the bus driver and I got a 45 minute reprieve from answering the phones. :lol: I only worked a half day, picked up lunch and we ate. I did a few things around the house - wanted to take a short nap before bingo but that didn't happen. Bingo was very busy. We gave away all our prize pots including the jackpot at $944 so my buddy was mad because we lost about $550 for the night. :( They tried doing a meat raffle for something a little different. Had 2 meat bundles. I bought extra chances because they were having a hard time selling them all and won 2 boneless ribeye steaks and a pound of ground beef. Nachos and fajitas or just grilled steaks and nachos this weekend. They worked on getting a liquor license so they could sell beer and wine at bingo. Bought beer and were all ready to serve it yesterday except OOPS - when they called the director to get the prices, they realized that only one person has a server's license (and one licensed person must be present to sell) and that person was not present. So no beer last night. Whew. They asked me if I would be willing to take the test and get licensed since I am there at bingo all the time. Ok then. :D When we were getting ready to leave - I was bemoaning the fact that it's getting too dark for me to drive around 9 when we finish. I was getting ready to drive off and I noticed 2 ladies waiting for their ride pick up. It was cool yesterday - all day was gray and kind of windy - felt like an autumn day. It was cool at night and they just had t-shirts on. It's very dead and quiet by the senior center at night - even with the county sheriff's office across the parking lot. I don't like anyone waiting alone so I sat there a minute and debated about the growing darkness for driving vs them waiting. So I pulled up and asked if they wanted to wait in my car for their ride. They were very grateful - especially when I turned the car heater on full blast! :lol: Took their ride about 20 minutes to show up - they said he drives really slow and they should have accepted a ride from one of the other bingo guests. :lol: God was with me on the way home - the entire 6 miles the streets were empty (on my side) and I was able to drive at 40 miles per hour - my biggest concern at night was deer running out into the road. Since I had cataract surgery my eyes are even more sensitive to oncoming headlights and in the Avalon I am lower to the ground than the SUV so they are even more in my eyes. There was a fair amount of traffic in the opposite direction. I cursed their bright lights and tried to avert my eyes to the right side lane marker so as not to be too distracted. Next week my "Uber driver" will start taking me to bingo again. Seems too early for it to get dark. Summer - at least what we are calling summer up here this year - is flying by too quickly. I am looking forward to the next couple of weeks with minimal outside activities.

Annie - bummer that Bruno was so sick. Do you think it was the heat? Meadow is having a pukefest herself lately and it's frustrating DH who does the carpet cleaning. I think it's because we fed her seafood and I think she is sensitive to it. Thing is, it takes several days for her system to settle down. Poor thing. I hope Bruno is better too. A shame you had to toss his big bed - I can imagine how expensive one that fit his size would be. Like a twin mattress almost :lol: So do you think bullet proof coffee is more effective than straight java? As much as I love butter, I can't get over the hump of putting butter into my coffee but then again - cream is unchurned butter, isn't it? :dizzy: What is keto biscuits? Or what are they made from? I would have a hard time stopping at just one so good for you. I really like my volunteer work - I'm just frustrated at people. There are no expectations any more - or should I say a standard of accountability / responsibility. That's what frustrates me. I have never noticed just how old school I truly am. :dizzy: Wow - I just looked at a map of 10 s Wacker. I guess I have not been downtown in 20 years :eek: Just like Las Vegas, I would not recognize the place any more. So even I'd get lost down there. But I do hope you find a convenient place to meet Laura. And that your meeting at work is somewhat productive. Is it a day in day out trip? That would be tiring.

Laura - happy anniversary - gosh that's a long time. Do you feel that time has flown by also? What is the reason to move office space? Probably a financial one no doubt. Good that it is not across town where you'd have to add a bus trip to the train commute. I have one fix for making a plain apple better - add peanut butter :rofl: I have gotten so used to that that eating a plain apple is as you say - quite boring.

Ceejay - sounds like your nephew might like having 2 lives - he wants to be with family but it also sounds as if he might enjoy a bit of time away staying at your place. It is helpful however to you to have some extra hands around the house. Are you getting excited about your new mower coming? Is it an automatic? I was wondering - isn't it going to be awkward to have the music stand to the side of the organ / piano? Wouldn't you want one that sat on the ledge of the organ directly in front of you? Or have I gotten this all mixed up?

Hello to Shad and Susie :wave:

I am sort of sleepy - didn't get enough rest - woke up early with the sniffles - this past week I have sat next to 2 people who said they had colds and I am hoping I don't pick that up. Nothing worse than a summer cold. I have some laundry and clean up to do and my peaches are at about the last day for me to do something before I have to toss them so I am hoping to get the fruit cocktail canned like I wanted to. Don't know if we will go out to dinner tonight - we usually do on Friday but I have 2 refrigerators full of food and DH is going to mow today which means he will be busy and tired tonight. Maybe I just just plan on grilling steaks and a baked potato. Anyway - have a good weekend everyone.

Afternoon all. Happy Friday. Happy payday for me. :)

Annie – Yum, those cheddar bay biscuits! What kind of “flour’ does the KETO recipe call for? == Poor Bruno, and what a thing for you and the family to wake up to! I hope it was a one-time deal and he’s feeling okay. I like Happy’s idea for a new dog bed – a mattress. Maybe a crib-sized one?? :D == What’s in the 10 s wacker building? I do know it’s where the Chicago Mercantile Exchange is located, and I know there’s a Chase Bank in there. Neither are helpful for our purposes, so I’ll have to pop in there and check it out. == Our current building and offices are nice, so I think it’s about getting a good deal on a new lease. The new digs are being revamped as to the public spaces/amenities, and of course our office space will be customized for us. I hear rumors about smaller cubes with shorter walls, fewer offices, more natural light, etc., but we’ll learn more about the plan at our next all-employee meeting (next month). I prefer to hear it from the horse's mouth, hehe.

Happy – Congrats on winning the meat raffle. But now your fridge will be really full - you better stay home and use up the food you have on hand. :chef: We had a bunch of leftovers in the fridge and ate most of them this week. Time to start again this weekend – we eat out way too much over the weekend. :shrug: == Nice of you to let the bingo folks wait for their ride in your car. :) Yeh, I’d say the reason for the new space is certainly more financial than anything else. == Yeh, I wished I had peanut butter or some caramel dip for that apple. Apples have never been my favorite fruit…and now I think I don’t like the tart, very firm/crispy ones as much as I used to. But the soft, mushy ones are yuck. I’m just not much of an apple person I guess. == I hope you didn’t catch anything from the sickies!!

Hellos to the rest of you!! Have a great weekend.

==
So many annoying things we didn’t have to deal with 20 years ago. Lately, for me, it’s been my cell phone. All the space-hogging apps!! It’s a problem. And there are so many apps that can’t be removed or saved to the memory card we added – just because AT&T or Samsung won’t let it be done. :mad: And for those that can be moved to the memory card, they move back to the cell phone storage after being updated!! :tantrum: And these apps are constantly being updated. So bf says to turn off the setting which allows automatic updates. Now when I decide to update the app, I will (once again) move it to the memory card. I’ve tried to figure out how to set the memory card as the default location in which to install the apps, but I was unsuccessful. So this manual process will continue.

The paycheck is a bit smaller today thanks to the income tax rate increase that came into effect 7/1 for Illinois. If I thought the $$$ were going to be used responsibly, I wouldn’t be quite as disgruntled. But this is a corruption tax, as well as all of us paying the price now for previous administrations kicking the can down the road for decades as to funding our state’s pension obligations. And the tax increase really isn’t going to get very far in resolving any of our financial issues. I think it just held off the credit rating agencies from reducing our ratings to junk bond status. Okay, time to stop!!

Bf phoned this morning to tell me that the masons showed up this morning and began jackhammering the old limestone block out from the stoop – no advance notice whatsoever. What a rude awakening he had! But he did say they did a nice job. For the money they want, it better be a good job!

I finally decided on a new dentist and made an appointment. They had an opening on Monday evening, so that’s good. Close to home (next ‘burb over), they accept my insurance, and have good hours.

I have to go see my allergist because he won’t renew my prescription. So I think I’ll pick out a Friday, make an early morning appointment and then plan some “me time” after that. My work calendar is still clear for the next two Fridays, so I’m going to make an appointment quick and schedule a vacation day before it gets filled.

No plans this weekend!! Might try to finally finish digging out that one garden bed. Not sure how wet the soil is – we had an awful lot of rain the other night, and it was very humid for several days this week. Oh, need to upright my double shepherd’s hook – it fell over and ended up landing against the fence the other night. No damage to the fence or the planters. Glad it didn’t fall the other way – the planters would have crashed to the ground and it would have been a big mess.

Okay, that’s it for me. Everyone have a safe and happy weekend.

Hi all,
I'm still here, just been awfully busy since I came back from Adelaide. I have been reading the posts but not replying to anything.

Not much to yap on about, better go and rescue my stewed apples before they burn. Back later. Just wanted to let you know I am alive and kicking - well digging and painting mostly.

Good morning ladies,

Quick hi yah from me. We are taking the ATV out for a ride and going to Sunday breakfast. Might as well use the thing. Yesterday we went on a farm tour to a local place - we had the chef's table dinner there last week and I often buy things from her twice a month farmer's market here in town. Boy that was amazing. They have chickens, ducks, lambs, cows, turkeys, in ground vegetables, tented vegetables, a hydroponics greenhouse and tilapia (fresh fish). Everything is geared to sustainable. The fish generate nutrients for the hydroponic garden, the chicken manure not only fertilizes but creates nutrients for the grasses the livestock feed on. It was really fasinating. AND they do it all with only 4 people!!!! :faint: :faint: :faint: Oh and they give music concerts, comb the wool from the lambs and make yarn, run a creamery for milk and cheese, have a berry farm AND they have a cafe open 6 days a week where they sell breakfast and lunch and wood fired pizzas and have a homemade gelato bar with at least 6 flavors. I am astounded. It was really interesting.

Ok just realized I have to get ready to leave in 30 minutes. Back later today.

LAURA...we received the new agenda over the weekend for our meeting in CHI.

Looks like we will not be done until 2:30 CST. Do you still want to meet for a minute to say HI or take a pass on this time? I am game for whatever we decide.

8:30am -2:30pm Day Two Session:
• Welcome
• Managing Opportunities, continued (Updating Opportunity, Proposal Letter, CEI)
• Break (15 min)
• Managing Opportunities, continued (Application Package, Workbook, CRE Comparison Tool)
• Viewing Reports and Dashboards
• Break/Lunch (15 min)
• Working in Salesforce Production (PRD)
• Mobile functionality review


Let me know>Annie

Here is the recipe for Cheddar Bay Biscuits. If I say KETO biscuits, I just mean it is keto friendly and I can eat.

Zesty Cheddar Biscuits
Yield: 6 biscuits I made 7. Two net carbs per biscuit. Quite Yummy!
Ingredients

3 eggs
1/3 cup of coconut flour
6 oz sharp cheddar cheese
1/3 cup butter, melted (1 tablespoon reserved for brushing after)
1 teaspoon of garlic powder
1 teaspoon of chopped green onion
1/4 teaspoon baking powder
pinch of salt and pepper
Instructions

Preheat oven to 400 degrees F.
In a mixing bowl, combine coconut flour, baking powder, garlic powder, salt and pepper.
In a separate bowl, whisk together eggs and butter until evenly distributed.
Slowly incorporate the wet ingredients into the dry and mix until there are no lumps.
Fold in the cheese and green onion.
Drop spoonfuls of the batter onto a greased cookie sheet.
Bake for about 13 minutes until the edges of the biscuits are brown and the tops are golden.
Brush top with additional melted butter out of the oven.
Cool for at least a half hour. These will get even more dense if they are left on the counter for a couple of hours.

OK let's see. Nothing really too exciting on the weekend. Meeting and church. The rest of the weekend was mostly chores. Cleaning, laundry, cooking. I did spend some time out in the yard yesterday killing weeds and giving away decorative stone we no longer need. I posted it as free on our neighborhood site and boom they were gone, all 50-60 of them in an hour. lol. Adios that mess of stone stacked on the side of the house.

Samantha going to be in a marathon with our church. She is gearing up now. I get her up when I get up and she runs. She made it 2.11 miles today. On her walk days, I am trying to walk with her. I have only made it one day because of rain coming in about the time we are to go. This is her second week of practice. I think the marathon is in October. Half marathon that is. She is trying to get sponsors as the $$ will got to countries that need fresh water sources installed. Kind of proud of her for doing this.

Will come back for personals. Monday morning Mess,

Good morning ladies,

Just realized reading Annie's post that it's Monday - not still the weekend. :dizzy:

Anne - that's great that you got rid of that stone. I'm sure someone would be delighted to have it. DH is trying to find more of a 12 by 12 stone they put in when they built the house (15 years ago). It's typical square BUT he wants it in the dark charcoal color we have - all they have now is the standard "cement gray". So a find like you gave away would be fantastic to someone I'm sure. Thank you for the biscuit recipe - coconut flour - ah that makes it keto. I have some of that may give it a try. Haven't had those buns in ages. Yay for Sam for the marathon training - great cause and running will tighten up her body. I hope you can meet up with Laura after your conference. So you are driving back home then? Eek through Chicago traffic :eek:

Shad - good to hear from you - glad you are out being busy and living life and not stuck in some queue waiting to hear more on your pension :rofl: Halfway through winter for you - making plans for the spring plantings?

Laura - ugh on the tax increase. Our state tax is staggered like federal so I think we still pay more on average. BUT you have all those ridiculous added taxes and fees for things like beverages and such so you are really getting hit up hard. :( How did the masonry come out or are they still working on it? Good luck at the dentist today. Did your shepard's hook fall over because of the weight of plant baskets?

I need to jump in the shower and get ready. We are going stove shopping and will stop at Sam's Club and get some more of that chia/sunflower/coconut snack mix. Even DH likes it - nice and crunchy and not too bad for you. But it's a ridiculous shipping cost for both Sam's and Amazon so I will pick up a few bags while we are up there. Yesterday we went for an ATV ride and got breakfast. I drove the ATV for the first time (we got it in 2014) :rofl: There were a few hair raising moments. DH decided to let me drive on a very rugged trail. A few times I thought we were going to tip over. But we didn't. It's alot like learning how to drive a car. You just have to get in there and do it. I'm sure he watched me and the road more than looking out the side and into the woods like he wanted to :lol: Afterwards we just puttered at home. I did cleaning and such and he sanded some of the hail chinks out of the deck and restained the stairs.

Hello Susie - hope you had a good weekend. I'm off to get ready. Enjoy the day. :D

HAPPY...I believe Bruno is all better now. I really think he just ate too much and then was upset from the thunderstorms so he just crapped himself. Don't think it was heat related. Sometimes we forget to watch both dogs and he tends to eat Sassy's food and vice versa. Bruno eats all of his 3 bowls a day, normally but Sassy eats on one bowl for days. If we leave her food down, Bruno scarfs it up in about 15 seconds. He must think it is appetizers. Sassy will sneak over when B is not watching and grab a few of his kibbles. BPC-bullet proof coffee, yes indeed I think it is better than regular java. All of it tastes the same to me, but the benefit I get from it is the energy it gives me for the most part of the day and I am NEVER hungry. Usually short term fasting. Dinner to dinner, with no snacking. Sometimes I will eat a small salad at lunch just to get thing moving. The CHI business trip is a two day-er. Staying over on the 25th coming home after 2:30 on the 26th. We will be staying at the Kimpton Gray hotel. I still need to google it as I know nothing about it. The farm tour sounded like fun. I really enjoy things like that. Let's just say you had me at "cheese". lol. Glad you made it through your ATV driving experience all in one piece. Pretty brave on your part. Kudos.

Hello's to the rest of you, geez I am a busy beaver today. Hugs all.

Morning all. Happy Monday. Lovely day here, a bit cooler.

Shad – Glad all is well and you’re keeping busy. Enjoy! How's Sunday the cat doing these days?

Happy – The farm tour sounded interesting! I can’t say I’ve had much exposure to anything like that except maybe the farm-in-the-zoo at Lincoln Park Zoo, eons ago, LOL. BTW, Chicago has a really big hydroponic farm in Bedford Park. Probably the way it will be going forward if farmland keeps getting bought up by developers… == The county’s beverage tax was challenged in court, so we’ve escaped that for the time being. So crazy – 1 cent per ounce! The greed is unbelievable. == Nice you got out on the ATV and were in the driver’s seat! :bike: Enjoy it some before you sell it – or maybe you’ll decide to keep it after all. == The masons actually finished very quickly, and they did a beautiful job. I’ll have to take a photo of our pristine new limestone sill block. Now I’m anxious to get the new entry door installed. -- The hanging planters on the shepherd’s hook were very heavy with water because of all the rain we’d gotten that one night last week. I took them off the hooks to let them dry out a bit. But I think part of the reason the hook fell over was that I had it stuck in the ground where there was a lot of mulch on top of the soil and the mulch wasn’t as stable of a surface to put it in as dirt. I might push away the mulch and re-insert the hook to ensure it’s in stable ground before I hang the planters back up. == Have fun stove shopping. I imagine at some point bf and I will take my mom to Abt (that awesome electronics/appliance store) to shop for her new stove.

Annie - Re next week, I know you’ll really want to get on the road back to Indy ASAP after your Day 2 ends, so I understand and leave it up to you. I see they’re only giving you a 15 min. lunch - isn’t that grand. But they’ll probably try to get you out of there earlier if they can... I can certainly duck out of the office around 2:30 for a short time, or whatever time you end up getting let out of there (you can text me). Let me know. We can meet by the WF ATMs in the building lobby for a quick hello, LOL. == Great you got rid of the unwanted rock!! I like seeing things being re-used by someone else. I gave away more day lilies this weekend. == Good for Sam doing the half marathon. Has she done any running in the past? I hope you get more opportunities to walk with her.

Ceejay – So did the riding mower get delivered and get assembled and did you take it for a test drive yet? :bike:

Susie – Miss you!! Saw on FB you went to a ballgame – hope you enjoyed it.

==

My weekend was fine. Didn’t start off that great. Took mom shopping Saturday morning. That certainly challenged my patience, temper, and sanity. First off, I think she was trying to scam Walgreens on their points program with some coupon about redeeming 35,000 points for a purchase (some reading glasses she wanted to buy). The coupon didn’t work. I highly doubt she even has that many points, and she admitted to me that she didn’t even know how many points she had. As she gets older I think she wants to be bolder about trying to get away with stuff like that. At least it wasn’t a waste of a trip – I found a sunglass clip to fit my new eyeglasses.

Our next stop was to Aldi where she proceeded to stock up on a LOT of canned goods, 2 bags of oranges, 3 loaves of cinnamon raisin bread, a package of sandwich thins, a loaf of multi-grain bread, and a half dozen boxes of graham crackers. I honestly think she has no intention of ever using her community’s shuttle bus transportation system to shop for only a little at a time. Oh, and at Walmart, while I stopped briefly at the bakery to ask about rye bread (at her request - after buying all that bread at Aldi!!) she disappeared (supposedly she was just going to buy frozen dinners) and I looked all over the place for her. After a while, I used the restroom, picked up a few things of my own, and finally decided to look outside for her. Of course that was where she was, along with probably at least a dozen frozen dinners. Not that she bothered to tell me where she would be, or even come back to look for me after it had been a while. I was so ticked off. We drove home in silence. I hauled all her groceries up to her apartment, and the only satisfaction I had was that her neighbor jokingly asked if she was shopping for two. :D

I’ve decided I won’t go shopping with her anymore. If she doesn’t want to give me a list and let me shop for her by myself, then so be it. I emailed my sister to tell her she bought a crapload and shouldn’t need to shop anytime soon. I also advised her to check mom’s cabinets, fridge and freezer before taking her shopping again. My sister came back with a perfectly serious response that it was nice I spent time with her and “oh well, I guess she likes to stock up”. Aaargh. I would have liked a bit of commiseration. Oh well, I’ll get over it. I’ll probably continue to take her shopping, but I might just drop her off at a store and wait in the car for her and threaten to just have her paged (she'd hate that) if she isn’t done in the allotted time. :D

Later in the afternoon, I did some more digging in the flower bed I’m removing. I ended up with about 6-7 more grocery bags full of daylilies. I messaged the woman who had taken them before and she was at the house in a flash to pick them up from the curb. Nice to know they will go to good use. I’m getting close to being done clearing the flower bed. Yay for that.

Yesterday I had to pull out all the weeds alongside the house that I’d killed with weed killer spray a week or so ago. I’ll get out there with the sprayer again before anything growing (nothing much as of yesterday) starts to get tall. I don’t want to have to pull weeds after I’ve killed them!! It should be either/or, right?

Other than that, I spent time on the weekend doing laundry, reading, and watching more “Twin Peaks”. I’m now on episode 12 of 22 of the 2nd season. I’m more than ready to finish that season and move on to the two movies that were made after the original tv show ended, and I’m interested in seeing the new tv series that started a few weeks ago.

Okay, I have to stop rambling and get to work. I’ll probably get a lot done today because the admin is mad at me about something and isn’t talking my ear off like she usually does. :D

Hi Everyone. Last week was just crazy at work. I think it will always be that way. Just some days more than over.

I was dealing with a sinus infection too and after all of those antibodics, you can guess what happened after that. Called and got meds for that too. I think I am getting back to myself

Weight has held steady the past two weeks with vacation and with sickness I will take it. I got back to daily 45 min exercise on Saturday.

I have read the posts and I wont remember all I read but will make a few comments on what I read.

Happy, sounds like you got a cute hair cut!

Annie: size 8 or 10 is awesome! And how nice you have someone who has some clothes you might like. I wanted to tell you I was looking for some apps the other day and say one for the Keto(spelling) way of eating. I have an android phone. I thought you might be interested in it.

Ceejay: have you used the new riding mower yet?

Laura: I hope you and Annie get to meet up. Please get a picture if you do.

Shad: sounds like you are still staying busy. Is your hair getting any longer?

See you all tomorrow!

The inventor of auto-correct has died...may he restaurant in peace. bahahaha.

Put my leftovers in saran wrap but my plans were foiled. :)

Will come back in a bit.

Ok made it back...howdie all....

Last night was leftovers. Sam had momma Annie's fried rice, C had pizza, I had Keto pizza. The kids had chicken fries, like chicken nuggets only in the the shape of fries. Sam colored my hair. Wow 4 weeks sure do fly by fast. I have an appt on Thursday evening for hair cut. Short hair sure does grow fast. I have to trim around my ears at least twice between cuts. Otherwise it gets unruly and I cannot do a thing with the sides. Oh the struggles. Speaking of hair. I read on one of my keto sites that many are saying their gray/white hair is coming in with color roots. So I had Sam check mine and sure enough my white hair in the front had splotches of brown colored roots coming in. Isn't that something? Too sporadic that I still have to color it. :)

Today is fast day. Only because I have an AA meeting at lunch time then followed by my Tuesday CC. I am down to 166. Only 7 lbs to my final goal. Anything after that will make my face and neck look hideous. I am ok at 159. My total WL is now 28 lbs. since starting KETO. Would you believe I am down 57 lbs since I started here at WF almost 3 yrs ago (Sept will be 3 yrs)? I only want to lose 25 at that time. I really should start exercising....rrrrriiiigggghhhhtttt. I have very fluffy batwings and a fine apron belly. Hmmm, maybe I won't dwell on that and consider those my trophy spots. hahahaha. I would have to save up about 10K to get them removed. Nope not happening. Guess I should play the lottery.

SUSIE...glad to hear your weight has held for the past two weeks. Onward and Upward. Kick some butt girl. Sinus infections are the worst especially when it gives face pain and terrible headaches. Feel better. Thanks for the apps suggestions. The 3 keto sights I am a member of has lots of that information. I am just not an app user much.

LAURA...yep I would like to head on home but want to at least get together for a minute, say hi and snap a quick picture. I will text you on Wed the 26th a time when I know it so we can meet for a minute. Sound good? Cherish your momma. Just saying. Laugh at her antics that annoy you. It will help you get through them without anger. I wonder if the lady that is getting your day lillies is planting them or selling them? The wildflowers that we planted in place of a garden all came up weeds about 4 foot high and no blooms. Just flowering weeds and grass. I think we got screwed on the seeds. SO I sprayed it all with weed and grass killer. Waiting on it to die and pull. Bleh. Wonder what the admin is mad about? She needs to find her joy and not let things/people steal it. Life is too short.

Hello all.

Susie – Sorry you were dealing with a sinus infection last week. I hope it’s gone now. Between that and the craziness at work, it’s fabulous your weight's stayed steady. Good job!

Annie – Okay, looking forward to meeting up with you next week, even if it’s just for a quick hello. :) == Yeh the 4 weeks between touch-ups sure go by fast. My hair’s texture seems to have changed. I wonder if the amount of gray I have has increased and that’s why it seems different. It’s always something. Maybe I need to get on that Keto plan to try and reverse the gray… Your WL has been amazing!! You go girl!! And I can’t believe you’re going on 3 years at WF. Time is sure flying by. == Good advice with mom's antics. I better learn to laugh about it because gritting my teeth & getting the BP up is not a good thing for my health! == I think the woman who took the day lilies said her mom uses them to plant at the church or something. Maybe with the next batch I dig, I’ll see if I can sell them. == As for the wildflowers – one person’s weed is another person’s flower… And I guess not all wildflowers are as pretty or colorful as all the ones at the garden center. My mishmash garden bed has some very tall stuff growing in it, including milkweed and what I think turns out to be goldenrod late in the season. Nope, didn't plant those, but they took up residence anyway. Both tower over the phlox, which I consider to be tall flowers. I like the idea of attracting butterflies, but there’s just too much crammed in there. This year I’m letting it all grow, next year – maybe not.

Hellos to the rest of you! :wave:
==
My dental appointment after work went well. No new issues, everything looks good… however, one old issue is that the first filling I ever got, a silver/amalgam on in a molar in the back, is failing. Because those fillings don’t bond well to the tooth like the “modern” filling materials, it’s allowed bacteria into the cavity and I guess there’s some decay in there now. So it has to be removed and replaced with a new filling. Oh well. I do like my new hygienist and dentist.

I made an appointment for the allergist for next Friday. It’s an early morning appointment and I’ll take a vacation day and plan something summery to do.

That’s about it for me, so I’ll get this posted.