TPBM 107 - Boruim, and CVII - the Year of the Consulship of Sura and Senico

Dies ist die Fortführung des Themas TPBM 106 - Australia's 911.

Dieses Thema wurde unter TPBM 108 - All factors considered, it's just 2**2 * 3**3 weitergeführt.

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TPBM 107 - Boruim, and CVII - the Year of the Consulship of Sura and Senico

1WholeHouseLibrary
Feb. 27, 2020, 1:09 pm

TPBM isn't prone to panic in an emergency.

2humouress
Bearbeitet: Feb. 28, 2020, 12:42 am

Never!

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=nR0lOtdvqyg

(From ‘Dads’ Army’)

TPBM is prepared for any emergency will enlighten us as to the titular consulship.

3abbottthomas
Feb. 28, 2020, 5:09 am

Not a lot to say. Senecio seems to have been a good egg, getting on with the emperors and being appointed consul twice, apparently an unusual honour.

Sura didn’t do much but did give Trajan a bath and a shave (in the absence of his bodyguard). The emperor reckoned that proved his loyalty given that Sura refrained from cutting his throat.

I am disappointed that Boruim wasn’t a mighty warrior from somewhere around the Black Sea instead of a typo for element no. 107.

TPBM relies - too much - on spell-checkers

4WholeHouseLibrary
Feb. 28, 2020, 11:09 am

Ewe bed eye dew!

TPBM is on good terms with his/her Thesaurus.

5morningwalker
Feb. 28, 2020, 12:12 pm

If you mean do I have a respectable rapport with my lexicon, then the answer is, yes.

TPBM is ready for lunch.

6WholeHouseLibrary
Mrz. 1, 2020, 4:56 pm

Had it a couple of hours ago, but thanks for the consideration.

TPBM votes early when the option is provided.

7abbottthomas
Mrz. 1, 2020, 6:27 pm

I've never gone for postal voting despite being warned that I might drop dead before polling day. If hat happened they would just have to get on without me. I do appreciate the personal statement of getting down to vote in person.

TPBM agrees with Ken Livingstone (former Labour Mayor of London) that if voting made any difference they would have banned it long ago.

8morningwalker
Mrz. 3, 2020, 10:15 am

Yes, and I think this November will tell how unreliable it really is (just like Nov. 2016).

TPBM has gotten a Real ID card.

9Darth-Heather
Mrz. 3, 2020, 2:55 pm

no, they don't offer them in my state so we got passports instead. Too many times we were held up in airport security because the security official wasn't familiar with our state licenses and thought they were forgeries.

TPBM needs to get a passport.

10WholeHouseLibrary
Mrz. 3, 2020, 6:09 pm

In short, no. I've had two U.S. passports (sequentially, not at the same time.) Let them both expire. Absolutely no plans nor interest to travel. MrsHouseLibrary had the travel bug, not me.
That being said, it'll be another couple of years before the Republic of Texas will consider granting me one, if I so wish. (Gotta live here at least half your life to qualify if you're a foreigner--from New Jersey, for example. I may still not qualify because I don't own any guns.)

I have a Real ID drivers license. I'll be testing it in October, maybe, if I fly north to attend a high school 50th reunion. I'm considering driving it, though. Maybe pick up a few classmates along the way.

TPBM is doubling down on the hand sanitizer, despite knowing that plain soap protects equally well.

11abbottthomas
Bearbeitet: Mrz. 3, 2020, 6:20 pm

This message has been deleted by its author......being about passports and not the Corona virus

12morningwalker
Mrz. 5, 2020, 8:33 am

I always have hand sanitizer in my car and use it faithfully after shopping. But, I have done that for years and it is not an action that came about from the current media hoopla.

TPBM knows we can't save everyone, and no one gets out alive.

132wonderY
Mrz. 5, 2020, 8:36 am

Most of us only have to die once.

TPBM is comforted by that thought.

14abbottthomas
Mrz. 5, 2020, 9:00 am

The best that you can hope for is to die in your sleep.

Hey! Lighten up guys!!

TPBM wonders if the premiere of the new James Bond film, No Time to Die would have been put off for so long if it had a different title.

15WholeHouseLibrary
Mrz. 8, 2020, 5:48 pm

I haven't given it a moment's thought, actually.
And now, I seem to be missing what you are implying. Sad. it's 4:30 (CDST) in the afternoon, and I still don't seem to have enough coffee in me.

I happen to have a strong preference for using military time (24-hour clock). The above time would be: 1630. Completely does away with having to type the awkward a.m./p.m. mess. MrsHouseLibrary was a uniquely intelligent woman (her primary attractions for me,) however, math and chemistry confounded her. The clock on my computer and the thermostats were set to use military time, since she rarely looked at them anyway. But when she did, it was always a challenge for her to subtract 12 from the hour designation. Funny that, but I never understood how she could instantly tell me the taxonomical name for any plant or animal.

TPBM would support my efforts to standardize time in the parsecs-per-fortnight format.

16bnielsen
Mrz. 9, 2020, 5:38 am

I'll go with the "blocks of 100 nanoseconds since 1600" (or was that 1601) idiotic timestamps from Microsoft. But that's for job security reasons. (Besides parsecs-per-fortnight is a velocity, but we could agree to use it on speed limit signs).

TPBM also takes the complicated way out.

17morningwalker
Mrz. 9, 2020, 9:17 am

Egad, No. I don't have a clue what you were talking about. Simple and logical work for me.

TPBM wonders why some of our other TPBM participants have wandered off.

18abbottthomas
Mrz. 9, 2020, 11:33 am

Self-isolating on account of the corona virus maybe? I'd have thought there was little chance of cross-infection on-line though.

TPBM has a better idea

19WholeHouseLibrary
Mrz. 9, 2020, 2:09 pm

Clearly not! I use velocity to measure time.

It's sort of a Rube Goldberg approach, kind of like eyeballing the sun's angle above the horizon, checking the clock, and cross referencing a fat book of tables to figure out what longitude you're at.

TPBM has another example.

20WholeHouseLibrary
Mrz. 13, 2020, 12:15 am

Does this fill the bill?

Sir Bedevere: There are ways of telling whether she is a witch.

Peasant 1: Are there? Oh well, tell us.

Sir Bedevere: Tell me. What do you do with witches?

Peasant 1: Burn them.

Sir Bedevere: And what do you burn, apart from witches?

Peasant 1: More witches.

Peasant 2: Wood.

Sir Bedevere: Good. Now, why do witches burn?

Peasant 3: ...because they're made of... wood?

Sir Bedevere: Good. So how do you tell whether she is made of wood?

Peasant 1: Build a bridge out of her.

Sir Bedevere: But can you not also build bridges out of stone?

Peasant 1: Oh yeah.

Sir Bedevere: Does wood sink in water?

Peasant 1: No, no, it floats!... It floats! Throw her into the pond!

Sir Bedevere: No, no. What else floats in water?

Peasant 1: Bread.

Peasant 2: Apples.

Peasant 3: Very small rocks.

Peasant 1: Cider.

Peasant 2: Gravy.

Peasant 3: Cherries.

Peasant 1: Mud.

Peasant 2: Churches.

Peasant 3: Lead! Lead!

King Arthur: A Duck.

Sir Bedevere: ...Exactly. So, logically...

Peasant 1: If she weighed the same as a duck... she's made of wood.

Sir Bedevere: And therefore...

Peasant 2: ...A witch!

TPBM concurs.

21humouress
Mrz. 13, 2020, 1:37 am

Nope; still confused.

TPBM will explain.

22abbottthomas
Bearbeitet: Mrz. 13, 2020, 7:35 am

Michael Palin has told how he visited the dementing Terry Jones and ran through Python sketches to try to stimulate him. Apparently Jones often laughed but only at the lines he had written himself.

He’d probably have enjoyed >20 WholeHouseLibrary:

TPBM fears the comfy chair.

//I’m glad we aren’t on our own in here, WHL//

23morningwalker
Mrz. 13, 2020, 2:15 pm

Fear it! I spend all day at work thinking about the time I can collapse into it in the evening and open my current book.

TPBM has stocked up for the pandemic.

24SomeGuyInVirginia
Mrz. 13, 2020, 7:07 pm

//What up b******, did I miss anything?//

I have, but so far the apocalypse has has been kind of disappointing. I thought there'd be zombies.

TPBM fought a stranger over toilet paper.

25AnnaClaire
Mrz. 15, 2020, 4:56 pm

Nope. My rule is that I restock as needed, and I probably have enough for the next week or so.

The person below me is entirely unconcerned.

26ulmannc
Mrz. 15, 2020, 5:52 pm

Yup. . . we go west young . . . . My wife went into the boonies and they had everything and no crowds. . . took an extra 15 minutes but so what. . we only shop once every 3 or 4 weeks except for milk. . .get it at a local dairy and it is Good - costs a bit more but it is GOOD! Besides it gives her a chance to pick up annuals for a song! TPBM gets something local that the big stores don't have!!

27WholeHouseLibrary
Mrz. 15, 2020, 11:38 pm

Dark pretzels.
I swear, they're like crack, only tastier.
I can only find them at Central Market and Whole Foods.
Okay, so I need to clarify ... the local stores are the big stores.
CM and WF (3 of them, including the flagship store in Austin) are all smaller than any of the HEB grocery stores within 10 miles of me.
I guess my answer should be: Quite the opposite, but hey, this is Texas.

TPBM had a nice quiet weekend of NOT getting barraged with constant updates about current calamities.

28SomeGuyInVirginia
Mrz. 16, 2020, 7:55 am

No, I find myself waking up at 2 in the morning to check the news and the Johns Hopkins sick map has become my mandala.

TPBM has already been tested.

//>27 WholeHouseLibrary: Costco is currently selling Sanders milk chocolate caramels encrusted in sea salt. Mike, they're that good. And they're on sale, so go out and get some.//

29bnielsen
Mrz. 16, 2020, 10:40 am

Nope. Covid-19 is hitting Denmark at the moment so the country is in a mild form for lock-down (mild form = we think it is rather strict, but recident Italians tell us we are crazy and should clam down completely). The count this morning says 62 in hospital, 10 in Intensive Care Units. That's up a factor 5 in 2 days. We don't want that to continue!

TPBM has something cheerful to say.

30SomeGuyInVirginia
Mrz. 16, 2020, 3:56 pm

Yes, tomorrow is another day. As the poet said. I can't keep but think that everyone is going to wake up in three weeks and wonder what the hell they were thinking

TPBM recently banged on someone's door.

31Darth-Heather
Mrz. 16, 2020, 4:18 pm

I did, actually. I saw a lot of white smoke coming out of my neighbor's barn, so I ran over to let him know. Turns out, he's making maple syrup in there. So, he already knew.

TPBM is ready for spring.

32abbottthomas
Mrz. 16, 2020, 6:00 pm

Well, there's talk here of the corona virus emergency being with us until next spring - 2021 that is. I think if it lasts into August I will just go out and mingle, breathing deeply the while and take my chances. We'll all be broke by then anyhow. I've got tickets for the Ring next January so I have to make that.

TPBM wants an opera box, I'll bet … and sleep through Wagner at the Met

33morningwalker
Mrz. 17, 2020, 10:09 am

I've never been to the opera.

//>24 SomeGuyInVirginia: Where ya been? On assignment?//

TPBM is still working despite the pandemic.

34Darth-Heather
Mrz. 17, 2020, 10:20 am

yep. there's no practical way to do chemistry from home. I mean, I could try it, but if something goes wrong then we might end up with a zombie apocalypse.

TPBM is looking on the bright side.

35WholeHouseLibrary
Mrz. 18, 2020, 12:35 pm

Damn! Now I've got the ending scene of The Life of Brian as an ear worm. Thanks. Thanks a lot.

TPBM has a cure for this sort of affliction.

36AnnaClaire
Mrz. 18, 2020, 1:15 pm

"You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."

The person below me has no idea.

372wonderY
Mrz. 18, 2020, 1:22 pm

Thanks for pointing that out so publicly. *standing in the corner and blushing*

TPBM is feeling all hot and sweaty.

38SomeGuyInVirginia
Mrz. 18, 2020, 6:11 pm

I am, but it's because I keep having to put on and take off my tyvek level 4 biohazard suit. Today is one week of working from home for me. I had cabin fever after 17 hours. I'm claustrophobic, put out with myself for having to do laundry and not wanting to do laundry, and the cat's looking at me all weird. I am not in my happy place.

//>33 morningwalker: Just been doing a little something for the Vatican. You're welcome. Go to see an opera, it's like church - transcendent, too long, and by the end your butt's sore.//

TPBM has organized an urban singing flash mob.

39SomeGuyInVirginia
Mrz. 18, 2020, 6:55 pm

//Okay guys, if we're ever going to rob the Louvre this is our big chance. Who's in?//

40Darth-Heather
Mrz. 19, 2020, 1:43 pm

not exactly, but I did go here:
WashYourLyrics
and printed out some posters with song lyrics to wash your hands along with to make sure you are doing the full 20 recommended seconds.

Now everyone at work has to sing along to "No Scrubs", "Stayin' Alive" or "I Will Survive" while they wash their hands. Since this is a laboratory, people wash their hands a lot...

TPBM is digging in the dirt.

41abbottthomas
Mrz. 20, 2020, 10:20 am

I will be over the weekend. Three sunny days forecast and excursions 'strongly advised against' for the aged so I'll be trying to get my garden ready for summer. The garden is unhelpful for these apocalyptic times, some sage, rosemary and thyme (no parsley) but nothing else edible. I really need some chickens, and a goat to milk.

TPBM is more self-sufficient

42morningwalker
Mrz. 20, 2020, 2:11 pm

Not really. I do have an herb garden and plant a few tomatoes and such each year, but my space where I planted has become overrun with milkweed, so I think this year I will just leave all the milkweed for the monarchs.

Well I am officially not supposed to be at work today but the compliance doesn't go into effect until tomorrow so I took a chance.

//>38 SomeGuyInVirginia: I think I might have to travel some distance to see an opera, but you make it sound so appealing!!//

TPBM will also be working from home or just not going to work after today.

43SomeGuyInVirginia
Mrz. 21, 2020, 2:19 am

I am working from home for the foreseeable future. I've come to the discovery that I'm not the kind of person who does well working from home. I like having lots of people around.

TPBM grows where they are planted.

44humouress
Mrz. 21, 2020, 6:28 am

Pretty much. I’m a SAHM and I enjoy my peaceful daytimes. But on the other hand, I’ve been transplanted so many times that I’ve lived on five different continents.

TPBM is looking forward to finishing all those half done home projects.

//>34 Darth-Heather: I would have answered : All those years of feeling guilty for being OCD? Hah!
Or, more seriously: Global pollution levels are down. (Some people suspect a Greta Tunberg conspiracy.) //

//>39 SomeGuyInVirginia: Sure, why not? Do we build in quarantine time?//

45karenmarie
Mrz. 21, 2020, 9:08 am

I won't have any excuse to NOT finish all those half-done projects, but will most likely focus on the more mundane closet cleaning and clearing out stuff we don't need/want/use any more.

TPBM has just found something in the kitchen with an expiration date of 2015 or earlier.

46WholeHouseLibrary
Mrz. 21, 2020, 9:58 am

Well, I just had breakfast. I got it as take-out from the coffee shop I normally eat at (and journal) every Saturday morning. It's not quite the same.

But if "a month or so ago" qualifies under "just" (in geological- and astrological- time, and certainly in parsecs per fortnight, it would), about a month ago I found an unopened bottle of ketchup (catsup, for some) that expired in February 2014. Clearly, when I've had a hamburger, I bought it at some fast food chain. And that's how it's going to be until they start selling buns in packages of two.

>43 SomeGuyInVirginia: Larry, hang in there. You can do this. I've been working from home since 2008, and for reasons beyond my control, entirely alone for that past almost year and a half. I've got this social distancing thing down to an art form. Put some classical music on low and keep the coffee at the ready. I always enjoyed collaborative efforts in programming projects--kept everyone on my team considering the bigger picture--but working on my own, I don't even notice the phone ringing.

TPBM is working his/her way through the honey-do list faster than ever.

47ulmannc
Mrz. 21, 2020, 10:30 am

Yup, next person please!

48abbottthomas
Mrz. 23, 2020, 6:46 am

Not an English thing, honey-do. If I’ve got it right it’s what we call nagging.

TPBM is coping with corona virus lock-down.

49karenmarie
Mrz. 23, 2020, 6:50 am

We're not officially in lock down but are self-quarantining as much as possible. We have 3 cases in our county here in NC USA. Lots of staying in, lots of hand washing, lots of reading. Husband is still going to work but we'll see how long that lasts.

TPBM is also coping with a coronavirus lock-down.

50morningwalker
Mrz. 25, 2020, 10:02 am

No. The business where I work got a waiver. My life is really no different than it usually is.

TPBM is also carrying on as usual.

51Darth-Heather
Mrz. 25, 2020, 10:39 am

yep, we are considered essential services, so it's business as usual for now. I don't have kids to homeschool, and am not very social normally, so little has changed so far.

TPBM is trying out a new hobby.

52SomeGuyInVirginia
Mrz. 26, 2020, 2:23 am

Yes, not freaking out. It's a process. And if I get one more gawddamn email from corporate reminding me how much that care for me I'm going to be trying out an ancillary new hobby, not throwing up.

TPBM has faced the enemy and won.

53WholeHouseLibrary
Mrz. 26, 2020, 2:51 am

For the past year and a half, every time I go to bed. The battle's far from over.

TPBM knows how to get a 32" (narrowest dimension, all doors and hardware removed) refrigerator through a 31-1/2" doorway.

54humouress
Mrz. 27, 2020, 6:51 am

Very carefully. You might have to take off the door frame first, though.

TPBM is enjoying the weather.

55karenmarie
Mrz. 27, 2020, 9:34 am

Not really, it's cold and overcast, and the pollen's out so I'm in.

TPBM has better weather than I do.

56abbottthomas
Mrz. 27, 2020, 5:17 pm

In the south-east of the UK we have had a few beautiful days to start our lock-down. Schools stopped at the end of the week which seems to have encouraged many to think "Holidays!!" - not at all the idea. Tomorrow pressure remains high but the air is coming down from the Arctic. Should still be good in the garden.

TPBM will give us their weather forecast.

57WholeHouseLibrary
Mrz. 27, 2020, 5:53 pm

“Weather forecast for tonight: dark. Continued dark overnight, with widely scattered light by morning.”
-- George Carlin

Tomorrow, we've got a 20% chance of rain in the morning. After that, sunny and in the high 70s.

Re, my >53 WholeHouseLibrary: ... I had to remove the stop moulding (the part the door rests against when it's closed) and the hinges from the door frame after removing every protruding piece from the dead refrigerator to get it out of my house. Only after that, could I get the new refrigerator in its proper place. I don't recall having to do all that to get the old refrigerator in the house when it was new.

Aside: According to my motion-sensor camera, I was visited by 21 deer last night. only one buck has lost its horns, and there are four very pregnant does. End-aside

I went grocery shopping for the first time in 2 weeks this morning because, well, I lost most everything that had been in my refrigerator, and now I could easily fill up the new one (because it's 9 cubic feet smaller.) It only took an hour and a half. Forty minutes waiting in a de-marked antisocially distant line (10 feet between you and the people in front and behind you), but a mere 4 feet from the people in the extension of the line that wrapped around at the end of the parking lot. Twenty minutes in the store not finding half of what was on my shopping list; another 20 to wait for the person in front of me to finish at the checkout and for me to checkout myself. Then another 3 minutes for that same person to finish whatever the hell she was doing and finally leave through the ONLY exit door. (I"m patient, but even I have my limits.) The rest was commute time.

TPBM is enjoying the relaxed pace, the mostly empty roads, etc., and secretly wishes things will remain like this for a long time after the craziness is over.

58humouress
Mrz. 27, 2020, 11:38 pm

I’m enjoying seeing the stars and pretty sunsets for the first time in Singapore in the 20+ years since I first moved here due to the reduced pollution (I assume). I love the reduced pollution.

Otherwise, much of a muchness so far since I’m a SAHM. The kids’ school closed a week early for deep cleaning but they’re on scheduled holidays for the next two weeks anyway and I don’t have to chauffeur them to all their activities since those have been cancelled.

TPBM is planning a barbecue. Why not?

59WholeHouseLibrary
Mrz. 28, 2020, 12:27 am

Actually, I had a big barbecue last Monday. I cooked steaks, chicken, pork chops, and hamburgers.
Funny that after my >43 SomeGuyInVirginia: response, I tossed out the unopened 6-year-expired bottle of ketchup and replaced it with a new one, not knowing that just days later the refrigerator would also expire.

All of the other cooked meat, I bagged up and had my meals prepared for the rest of the week. But, hamburgers don't have that kind of shelf life, so they were the last things I grilled and the first things I ate, mostly. There were 4 of them; my stomach has a capacity for not quite two. I quit when I got half way through the third. I had forgotten what ketchup tasted like.

TPBM. although under some form of keep-your-distance restriction, is actually relaxing. Concerned, yes, but relaxed.

Aside: I've got this social distancing down to an art form. For years, I've been a practitioner of extremely antisocial distancing. End-aside.

60ulmannc
Mrz. 28, 2020, 3:05 pm

I agree with you about the Keep-your distance thing. We went sort of early as it was pouring but the store has the most expensive produce and I'm afraid to say they raised the price a bit more. . . like $4 US/lb for snow peas. . . now come on. Apples and oranges were almost reasonable. Anyway, we're good for a while that small growers market that only opens every other Saturday until May will have stuff next Saturday. . . The prices are OK too.

TPBM has a local growewrs market that is already open for the season.

61SomeGuyInVirginia
Mrz. 29, 2020, 4:12 pm

Yes, the farmers markets are still all open as of, well, yesterday afternoon. They've been deemed essential in the district and in Virginia.

TPBM sees a pattern in at all.

62humouress
Mrz. 29, 2020, 6:11 pm

Well, some experts think that this could be the reset button for humanity and we’ll be more responsible after all this.

TPBM believes it.

63morningwalker
Mrz. 30, 2020, 10:41 am

That it's the reset, or that we will be more responsible? I don't know about the reset button, but I know that people will not be more responsible. It's just not in our nature.

TPBM was already aware of https://archive.org/web/web.php.

64karenmarie
Mrz. 30, 2020, 12:30 pm

Yes, I've used it several times for several different interests. Early LT pages are particularly fun to look at.

TPBM's favorite web browser is getting left behind and will soon be obsolete.

65WholeHouseLibrary
Mrz. 30, 2020, 1:47 pm

Not that I'm aware of.

I've been busy preparing for the eventual reopening of the dine-in part of my favorite coffee shop. They sponsor an Open Mic Night, and when (optimistically) it reopens, I'll be the new emcee. So, I figured I should open with a COVID-19--related tunes; "Don't Stand so Close to Me (The Police) for example. I'm writing new lyrics to John Sebastian's song "Welcome Back" ... Oh the coffee is hot, but their ice cream is not, welcome back, welcome back,welcome back.

TPBM can explain to this Luddite what TPAM is referring to.
If you can't, feel free to suggest additional song titles.

66Darth-Heather
Mrz. 30, 2020, 2:12 pm

maybe this will help:



TPBM can suggest a song to sing along with for 20-second handwashing.

67LolaWalser
Mrz. 30, 2020, 6:09 pm

"Roll me over in the clover" works for me... even past the 20'' mark. In general, I recommend rude songs for all your boring chores.

TPBM has tried singing in the rain and didn't like it.

68WholeHouseLibrary
Mrz. 30, 2020, 7:24 pm

Yeah, I have. It doesn't sound any better than when I'm not.

>66 Darth-Heather: Not sure what you're getting at. IE hasn't worked for me for years; can't get into a lot of commonly accessed sites. And MS has never come up with a reason why. My most recent attempt was maybe six months ago. I've been on FireFox since 2010, maybe.

TPBM isn't surprised anymore.

69Darth-Heather
Mrz. 31, 2020, 9:35 am

//>68 WholeHouseLibrary: just that browsers eventually do become obsolete. I'm glad Firefox has kept up so far. I don't like Google - it keeps trying to connect all my various email addresses. If I WANTED those things mixed together, I wouldn't have separate addresses! Microsoft is now pushing Edge with current updates; it installed itself and set itself as the default browser, which is obnoxious.//

70abbottthomas
Mrz. 31, 2020, 10:28 am

// inexplicably if I want to see a full screen video display from the BBC I have to leave Edge and go back to IE//

No, I can’t remember when I was last surprised by anything at all.

Something has recently startled TPBM.

71karenmarie
Apr. 1, 2020, 8:18 am

The various things that all of a sudden become panic-mode buying and can't be found at all.

Baking yeast seems to be one of the new ones.

TPBM has been watching cute cat or baby goat or other comforting videos.

72WholeHouseLibrary
Apr. 1, 2020, 12:31 pm

Who? Me? Not my style.
I've got maybe a dozen unfinished projects I'm working on. My ADD wants to do different things; my CDO refuses to allow that to happen until I reach a reasonable stopping point. It works for me.
Today, I'm going to do outdoor things because we're supposed to have rain starting tomorrow and every day for a week. I also have several dozen un-started projects, but they can wait until the second wave of this virus peaks (right around election day.)

TPBM is finding ways to cope.

73SomeGuyInVirginia
Apr. 2, 2020, 9:02 pm

No, I'm just trying to find ways to not get weird. That's my goal- not weird. I do get really frustrated with people who say they never thought they'd see a pandemic in their lifetime. What, did you miss the 80s? Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.

TPBM has been preparing for this moment their entire life.

74SomeGuyInVirginia
Apr. 2, 2020, 9:06 pm

>71 karenmarie:. Water. Toilet paper I can kind of understand, but water? Even in the zombie apocalypse the taps still work.

75abbottthomas
Bearbeitet: Apr. 3, 2020, 4:24 pm

If I had I would have a LOT more lavatory paper in my garage.

TPBM is really short of …………

//>74 SomeGuyInVirginia: You know, I think that is a major continuity error - the zombies would soon eat the workers at the water works and we would be catching rain water on leaves. Lots of 2 litre plastic bottles of spring water would be a comfort.//

76SomeGuyInVirginia
Bearbeitet: Apr. 5, 2020, 4:36 am

Well, tap water. It's just gone off. I can't reach anyone in the management office but that's par for the course. The place is under construction so I'm hoping it's just a few hours gap. I brushed my teeth about an hour ago, but talked myself out of a shower, which I'm now regretting quite a lot. If the property managers have had to shut the water off to work on the building or the pipes, the earliest I can reasonably expect take a shower is midnight. It's also unscheduled, which always bothers me.

//>75 abbottthomas: I think about London during the blitz a lot now. How people coped at night, what they did during the day, and how it all eventually ended. That picture of Londoners looking over the shelves of a bombed-out bookstore is everywhere in the States now. I've never been to London although my dad spent a lot of time there and loved the city. He also said if you want to get any decent food in London you're going to have to go to a curry place. But he was old-world Southern. A diet of rice, and spiced pork, thick gravies, groaning boards of fresh vegetables covered in butter, pepper and chili peppers. And okra, which is just vile. I don't get okra at all. It's available canned in the local grocery store. I blame those fecal feline mind-parasites. Still, southern cuisine is delicious.

I wish I hadn't said that about tap water. Undo!

ETA 4:46pm water main break. Damn zombies.//

TPBM lives somewhere that has been untouched by covid-19 and will rub it in.

77SomeGuyInVirginia
Bearbeitet: Apr. 5, 2020, 4:34 am

//This is what it's been like for me today. Had canned beans and sourdough pretzels for lunch. About 3 this afternoon at's zombies took out the water plant, and the water's been off since 3 and it's not even making a hiss when I turned turn the faucet so it'll be another couple of hours at least. Local water main break. Had Spam and sourdough pretzels for dinner. Drank a glass of box wine, Pinot noir. It makes me really sleepy. It's better than OTC sleep medication and not as good as Ambien. Called WTOP to see if they knew anything about the water, and they didn't.

Around 10 decided I had to have something like a shower so used personal wipes, then hosed myself off with a gallon jug of water. If the water is on tomorrow, I'm going to fill the jug back up.

Had another glass of boxed wine. Took my ropinirole so I don't get restless legs. It's 11 p.m. eastern US time, and I'm either going to watch something on the tube or read something trashy.

When the water went out this afternoon I was more anxious than angry or frustrated, which would have been my usual reaction. Things can sometimes seem terrible and when the taps ran dry it just seemed like part of a much larger, terrible inevitability. That being said, please remember that I catastrophize things. That's my superpower.

Tomorrow I'm going to write my representative, Don Beyer, and that little man who's the governor and demand that they give all illegals immediate and full citizenship. If I have to I'll spend the rest of my life reminding people of who bought them their food delivery, who checked them out of the grocery stores, who lined up behind Walmart for the slimmest chance to clean their house that day, and who took care of their kids. Remember who put themselves out there because they had to while we locked ourselves away because we could.

#boxwine
//

78WholeHouseLibrary
Apr. 5, 2020, 1:31 am

>76 SomeGuyInVirginia: I do, but only when I'm living in my head. I spend an inordinate amount of time there holding hands with, and smiling back at MrsHouseLibrary. And as much as I need that time there, I also know it's really not all that healthy for me in the long run. I try to keep it to a sprint.

TPBM is putting a dent in Mt. TBR.

79karenmarie
Apr. 5, 2020, 7:33 am

Hmmm. 15 out of the 35 books I've read so far this year were on my shelves before 1/1/20. Not as good a dent as I'd wish for, but my goal for the year is only 30 out of the 100 overall goal, so not bad.

TPBM has a better record so far this year, either in absolute numbers or %, of attacking their Mr. TBR.

80SomeGuyInVirginia
Apr. 5, 2020, 11:12 am

Nope, recently I find that my attention span doesn't extend past the 30-minute mark.

//>78 WholeHouseLibrary: That is a great love.//

//The water started coming back at 6:15 this morning. I know because I was checking all night long. I was so relieved I went back to bed and slept like a log for 2 1/2 hours.//

TPBM recently went all digital.

81humouress
Apr. 5, 2020, 4:32 pm

Nope; I don’t have faith in the infrastructure and security of all things digital. Having said which, I’ve been reading more e-books this year, partly because my SIL very kindly let me borrow on her library card. Shhh!

TPBM will tell us about their favourite Overdrive/ Libby (or other electronic) library.

//>76 SomeGuyInVirginia: Probably a good thing you didn’t shower. You’d have been standing there all soaped up and no way to rinse off so you’d have to have spent all day looking like the abominable snowsoapman. Glad your water is back now. //

82SomeGuyInVirginia
Apr. 7, 2020, 7:14 pm

I use them both and love them, but for some reason Libby audiobooks sound a little distorted after I've downloaded them. I'll have to check my download settings.

//Functional indoor plumbing ranks right up there with democracy and sliced bread.//

TPBM cuts their own hair.

83karenmarie
Apr. 7, 2020, 9:49 pm

I probably will be in May unless the curve flattens and my May 12th hair appointment is legal again. I anticipate our stay-at-home order will extend into May so am grateful that I have a good pair of scissors.

TPBM has discovered their local grocery-delivery service.

84WholeHouseLibrary
Apr. 7, 2020, 10:52 pm

I know of it, but even now, I have no desire to use it. My neighbor across the street has been using that service for over a year now. Loves it. Hasn't been in the store in all that time. I'm pretty picky, so I'll continue to practice antisocial distancing.

In the past week, I've gotten emails from 3 people I haven't heard from in years.
TPBM is also corresponding with drifted friends.

85morningwalker
Apr. 8, 2020, 9:04 am

Not really, except with one friend who is not working because of virus. He has time to read more now and he emails me his lengthy critiques and reviews of books, which I don't have time to respond to as I'd like, because I am still working.

TPBM is learning a new skill while home.

862wonderY
Apr. 8, 2020, 9:40 am

These damned Apps! I'm an old dog. Tired of having to learn new tricks.

TPBM has a squirrel sitting on a fence post staring them down.

87WholeHouseLibrary
Apr. 8, 2020, 12:28 pm

No. but I do have several ravenously hungry deer. They don't sit on the fence posts; they're not designed that way -- the fence or the deer. It's been raining here a lot, so I don't put corn in feed buckets as I usually would. My patio is shaped like a grand piano due to where the oak trees are, with the hinge side being my house. I've been pouring out a line of corn along what would be the keyboard side and around its corner, and another much smaller line at the opposite end. Must have put out a good 30 lbs of corn last night. They didn't leave a single kernel for the squirrels or doves. And even though they could lick grass and leaves to get water, they drank the 2 gallons of fresh water out of the bucket I use for that purpose. I'm expecting to see a record number of fawns this year. MrsHouseLibrary used to assign names to them all. I still address them by their names when I see them.

TPBM has seen hummingbirds this year already.

88karenmarie
Apr. 8, 2020, 1:04 pm

I have! Starting on April 4th. Most of them are still migrating north and it's only males so far.

TPBM has seen another interesting bird recently - either first of year or a lifer.

89SomeGuyInVirginia
Apr. 8, 2020, 3:30 pm

I'm working from home so all I see are pigeons and black birds when they buzz my balcony. And a cute family of sparrows. But Parker thinks that pigeons and black birds are great fun! Parker thinks everything is great fun! Sometimes I wish I were a cat!

TPBM knows what their spirit animal looks like.

90WholeHouseLibrary
Apr. 8, 2020, 4:21 pm

Are you kidding? The closest thing to that for me is gneiss.
Here's the Wiki description of it:
Gneiss is a common and widely distributed type of metamorphic rock. Gneiss is formed by high temperature and high-pressure metamorphic processes acting on formations composed of igneous or sedimentary rocks. (Fits me to a tee.)

I am a rock. TPBM might be an island. If not, can tell us what his/her patronus is. That's a Harry Potter reference if you've been living under me for the past 20 years.

91SomeGuyInVirginia
Apr. 9, 2020, 9:03 pm

I'm more of a peninsula, really. Or an archipelago. No, that's it! I'm totally an archipelago! My patronus is a winged monkey.

TPBM will tell us about their spirit animal.

93abbottthomas
Apr. 12, 2020, 6:31 am

I don’t understand this Patronus thing - the Harry Potter books didn’t grab me - but for a creature to fit the times I’ll take the tardigrade. Small (very), discreet, uncomplaining (apparently), they have survived all known mass extinction events. They can go without food for 30 years, cope with temperatures near absolute zero as well as managing 300deg F, can endure huge pressures but also the vacuum of outer space. They also look quite cute - who wouldn’t like a critter called a moss-piglet? They don’t know about string quartets and have never read P.G.Wodehouse but you can’t have everything.

TPBM has a helpful hint to mitigate cabin fever.

94SomeGuyInVirginia
Bearbeitet: Apr. 12, 2020, 12:00 pm

You need to starve a cold and feed a fever, so you should make a poultice out of several other cabins and drape it artfully over your chest two or three times a day to get the full effect.

TPBM relies on the ties that bind.

95WholeHouseLibrary
Apr. 12, 2020, 7:19 pm

Sounds too kinky to me.

>93 abbottthomas: A patronus is the "magical" equivalent of a spirit animal, in a sense. It's one that is created to protect you rather than something you project personality on in an anthropomorphic manner.

TPBM has found all of his/her Easter eggs.

96SomeGuyInVirginia
Apr. 13, 2020, 11:51 pm

Yes, because the number was zero. Frankly, if I found anything unexpected in the apartment I would be more likely to think that I'd beaten broken into, rather than I've been visited by a magical entity. Don't get me wrong, I love magical entities. But I'm in lockdown and I hope I know every damn thing that's in the apartment.

TPBM keeps score.

97humouress
Apr. 14, 2020, 12:20 am

Oh yeah.

That is to say I forget but I don’t forgive so I end up holding a grudge forever.

TPBM will recommend their current book (or not).

98abbottthomas
Apr. 14, 2020, 4:07 am

I’m reading John Le Carrė’s most recent book, Agent Running in the Field. I am not far into it but first impression is that it is an exercise in self-parody. I enjoy the author’s writing so I will press on regardless but it isn’t the old Leamas and Smiley.

TPBM never gives up on a book, once started.

99karenmarie
Apr. 14, 2020, 8:34 am

*shudder* Nope. I abandon books with glee. There are too many books and now that I'm almost 67, way too little time.

TPBM really never gives up on a book, once started.

100WholeHouseLibrary
Apr. 14, 2020, 10:25 am

i used to be that way, but The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin was too much of an ego trip and that's when I decided enough was enough. I'm sure there'll be an autobiography (written entirely by someone else, of course) about a certain character that I would be quite happy to learn had been struck by lightning on his golf course.

//It's a bad week for me. You don't want to know. Even with all the "me" time I've had for over a year now, there's no time to read.//

TPBM has taken up a new hobby.

101morningwalker
Apr. 14, 2020, 11:57 am

No, I don't have time for the ones I already have. Took a couple days off work to make it a long weekend and that was a big mistake, because now I want to be here less than I did before, if that is possible.

TPBM's philosophy is "This too shall pass."

102SomeGuyInVirginia
Apr. 14, 2020, 11:46 pm

Absolutely.

//>100 WholeHouseLibrary: I'm sorry, Mike, I know that you've been struggling recently, and I think of you often.//

TPBM will give us a song title to let us know how they're doing.

103humouress
Bearbeitet: Apr. 15, 2020, 1:35 am

Things Can Only Get Better: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Dl-ai9HuR60

(Alternatively, The Only Way is Up!: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=vjD3EVC1-zU)

TPBM has another song title for us.

104abbottthomas
Apr. 15, 2020, 5:07 am

The closing sequence of The Life of Brian keeps coming to mind but I really don’t want to go there.

TPBM whistles a happy tune.

105morningwalker
Apr. 15, 2020, 11:25 am

Sure, you know how to whistle don't you Steve?

TPBM can complete that quote.

106WholeHouseLibrary
Apr. 15, 2020, 1:49 pm

Something along the line of: you just put your lips together and ... blow.

TPBM can actually whistle. (I can't, even though I often try.)

107abbottthomas
Apr. 15, 2020, 3:59 pm

I can whistle, even tunefully, but I rarely do nowadays. Somehow it has gone out of fashion to the extent that it is seen as eccentric. In my youf, cor blimey, every errand boy would whistle as he plied his trade - no more, sad to say.

TPBM misses something else from the dear dead days beyond recall.

108SomeGuyInVirginia
Apr. 15, 2020, 9:27 pm

I miss privacy. I'm completely wired enter the Matrix, I know, but it was nice to be 16 and just disappear into the night. I suppose the question is do I miss privacy enough to give up Alexa, and Google pay, and my smart TV? I'm really not

TPBM has seen the promised land, and turned back.

109WholeHouseLibrary
Bearbeitet: Apr. 16, 2020, 11:05 am

Easy to do. When you look at it with an open but critical mindset, you realize it's an empty promise.

TPBM can cite an example.
Alternatively, TPBM will provide us with the lyrics of the 20-second hand washing song s/he uses.

//Not that you need the imagery, but when I shower after having done the grocery shopping, I sing Phil Och's "The Highwayman." Nine verses, my fastest time is still over seven minutes.//

110abbottthomas
Apr. 16, 2020, 5:03 pm

The chorus of The Gambler fits (in memoriam Kenny Rogers).

“You gotta know when to hold ‘em, know when to fold ‘em, know when to walk away, know when to run and you never count your money when you’re sitting at the table: there’ll be time enough for counting when the dealing is done.”

Not a bad philosophy of life when you come to think about it.

TPBM sings something else.

//I’ve washed my hands so much that my iPad no longer recognises my fingerprint.//

111karenmarie
Apr. 17, 2020, 8:57 am

I sing a modified version of the karenmarie hit "Brush, brush, brush, brush, brush your teeth" that was popular when my daughter was little.

Wash, wash, wash, wash, wash your hands,
Wash your hands,
Wash your hands.
Wash, wash, wash, wash, wash your hands,
Wash your hands,
Wash your hands, so that you stay safe.

Sung 3 times makes about 20-25 seconds.

TPBM makes up silly songs now and then.

112Darth-Heather
Apr. 17, 2020, 9:03 am

yes, I used Wash Your Lyrics to make posters for all of the sinks here in the lab.

Ladies in the restroom are singing along with No Scrubs by TLC.
Men in their restroom are singing along with Staying Alive by the Bee Gees.
Folks in the break room are singing along with We Will, We Will WASH You by Queen
and the main laboratory sink has Neil Diamond's revised lyrics to Sweet Caroline:
Hands, Washing Hands
Reaching Out
Don't Touch Me
I Won't Touch Youuuuuuu

TPBM sings another song.

113morningwalker
Apr. 17, 2020, 9:49 am

Yes.
Oh yeah I, touched that somethin. I think you understand that I, I gotta wash my hands. I gotta wash my hands. (Beatles)

TPBM has another.

114WholeHouseLibrary
Apr. 17, 2020, 1:30 pm

Well, it's not a hand-washing song, but in anticipation the eventual release from the "hunker down" orders, and whatever the new normal (which was the term that cancer patients had to wrap their heads around), might be, I'm writing new lyrics of a song that will be the first one done when Open Mic Night starts up again. It's John Sebastian's "Welcome Back". Just have 2 more lines to replace and it's done, but I'm not quite sure what to say yet.

TPBM has another hand-washing song, or perhaps, a had-washing sonnet.

115SomeGuyInVirginia
Apr. 17, 2020, 3:03 pm

'Tiny Bubbles' by Don Ho. It's also helps because you can't rush that song, and I have to get out of my head to croon it like I'm headlining the Boom Boom room at the Fontainebleau.

TPBM uses _____ as their hand washing ______.

116WholeHouseLibrary
Apr. 17, 2020, 10:38 pm

Germophobia, and incentive.

Actually, I'm not a germophobe at all. I kept myself quite clean for when MrsHouseLibrary was going through chemo, and later radiation treatments (come home, strip in the laundry room, run upstairs and shower to "The Highwayman", and don clean clothes before I would see her. And yeah, one time, I didn't realize the car parked in front of the house belonged to her sister. Made for an awkward conversation later. But overall, I am not concerned about germs in general.

TPBM is planning on continuing antisocial distancing by NOT going to any of the Lemmings rallies on Saturday.

117SomeGuyInVirginia
Apr. 19, 2020, 9:26 pm

Hello no I'm not leaving my apartment. I want to stay well, and more than that I want to not create a fuss.

TPBM has a body hidden away on the premises.

1182wonderY
Apr. 19, 2020, 10:47 pm

I had to think first - no; I’m pretty sure not. Wait. Let me check the basement.
All clear.

TPBM has noticed a few things around the house that didn’t bother them till this month.

119WholeHouseLibrary
Apr. 20, 2020, 11:36 am

Not me. I've become inured to stacks of unrelated papers that need to be sorted and either filed away or put into the recycling bin. Lots of stacks in several rooms. At least they're neat stacks.

I have a friend who has compulsively cleaned her kitchen several times a day for years. Now that she's home full time, her husband reports that the surface of their countertops are wearing thin.

TPBM is thinking of (planning, not recalling) a remodeling project.

120theretiredlibrarian
Apr. 20, 2020, 12:56 pm

Oh good lord no, we just completed remodeling a 115 year old house that went way over budget in money and time. My husband is instructed to slap me upside the head if I ever say, "Let's remodel an old house...it'll be fun!"
OTOH, he built a raised vegetable garden last month, and the soil arrived this morning, so we will be working on that.

TPBM has already started their garden this spring.

121morningwalker
Apr. 20, 2020, 1:06 pm

Not yet. Had to wait for the 6 inches of snow we got on Friday to melt. It's only going to be in the 30s again tomorrow so not looking good then either. One of these days...

TPBM loves the smell of soil in the spring.

122WholeHouseLibrary
Apr. 20, 2020, 2:36 pm

It's gotten to me not being able to small anything in the spring. Just over the past two years, I've developed allergies to certain tree pollen. Ironic, in that I have a degree in Forestry. But yeah, haven't been able to smell darn near anything since mid-December.

But, I hear that soil in the spring smells like napalm in the morning, only different.

TPBM gives large tips when getting food to-go (or delivered.)

123SomeGuyInVirginia
Apr. 20, 2020, 7:27 pm

If it's delivered then yeah. If I'm just swinging by the restaurant to pick it up then not at all.

TPBM isn't intimidated by a tips jar.

124humouress
Apr. 21, 2020, 11:28 pm

I grew up in a non-tipping culture and it always struck me as unfair, when visiting the States, that they hit you with the bill when your brain is sluggish after a good meal. At least back when it was 10% the multiplication was easy (but then you had to add it back). The tip jar used to freak me out - didn’t I just pay? What’s too little? What’s too much? These days, if I catch sight of one, I studiously ignore it.

TPBM will give us a (treatise on a) good rule of thumb about when/ where/ how much to tip.

125SomeGuyInVirginia
Apr. 22, 2020, 1:03 am

In a restaurant and if the service has been good then 20%. If there is a tip jar and I'm pretty certain that the person hasn't spit in my drink then whatever change I have left over from the bills. There's nothing more intimidating than a tip jar, unless you want to count a religious tribunal or a Twitter hate storm. But, if I order food and the person delivers it to my front door, then 10$ no questions asked. I also pay in cash if I can because there's no record of it. Mafia style. Of course, I haven't had food delivered since the virus took hold in Alexandria.

TPBM figures it different.

126abbottthomas
Apr. 22, 2020, 10:09 am

in the UK 12.5% seems to be the norm for the 'voluntary-service-charge-added-to-your-bill' and tip jars are certainly not ubiquitous. I quite liked Giles (restaurant critic) Coren's suggestion that the tip should never go on the credit card but rather be folding money in an amount between 10 - 20%.

TPBM wonders when they will get to dine in a restaurant again.

127karenmarie
Bearbeitet: Apr. 22, 2020, 10:37 am

Oh yes, I can't imagine feeling good about going into a restaurant any time soon. I miss eating out but not that much.

My husband simply MUST have a take out order when he runs errands on Saturdays, so in addition to his regular tip he's been making sure they don't give him the military discount, which puts another 10-15% back in their coffers.

TPBM is an extrovert who is going stark raving nuts without people around.

128morningwalker
Apr. 22, 2020, 10:47 am

Nope. My life is pretty much as it has always been, except mostly working half days (which is a plus). I do miss getting together with my family though.

TPBM often reflects on his/her life when the obituary of an old friend pops up in the paper.

129WholeHouseLibrary
Apr. 24, 2020, 3:04 pm

Not sure as to whether the reflection you mention is of the reader or subject of the obituary.
Regardless, it's a bit of both, don't you think? My reflection would be of my interactions with the old friend, and stories and pictures of said friend from times prior to our meeting that I've been privy to.
Such reflection brings both happy and sad feelings simultaneously.

TPBM has been keeping busy by _______________.

130ulmannc
Apr. 24, 2020, 3:46 pm

____ playing in my library (a separate building) and finding surprises as I proceed with "The Great Book Discovery". Had to move some non-book inventory that belongs to "she who must be obeyed."

TPBM either does or does not share the library with another being. Dogs, cats, birds, etc don't count

131WholeHouseLibrary
Apr. 24, 2020, 5:02 pm

As my moniker suggests, it would be difficult for me to not share my library area with anyone. That being said, I live alone now and it is highly unlikely that I'll have anyone sharing this place with me again. I'm not closed to the possibility, but I'm not looking either. It would have to be an extraordinary person, and no one gets that lucky twice.

TPBM has the books on the shelves ordered by _________________.

1322wonderY
Apr. 24, 2020, 5:35 pm

Shelves! What a great concept! Oh! I do have shelves behind all those piles on the floor.
To answer >130 ulmannc: as well … I'd like to share some of my library. I'm taking this opportunity to discard a mix of "Why did I ever want that?" and some really good stuff that I finally can live without.

Free to good homes:
http://www.librarything.com/topic/315195#7114510
read on either side of that post; most are still boxed by the front door.

TPBM will chide me for advertising in this space.

133abbottthomas
Bearbeitet: Apr. 24, 2020, 5:57 pm

Whoops!, Leapfrogged! I never chide. I need to know if your clearance has been successful - mind you, the lockdown has made me cling tighter to my stuff as replacement has become trickier. Now I shall answer >131 WholeHouseLibrary:

Behind me it's genre then author surname - poetry at the top, then all the editions of Slightly Foxed, humour, lots of P G Wodehouse, medical, book collecting, more Wodehouse and then fiction. In front, old Penguins at the top, then military history held up by a boxed set of Proust and below that Greek culture and mythology, opera and other music, medical history and memoirs, finally family history / genealogy. I can reach Chambers dictionary, Roget, Brewer, Larousse, etc. with my left hand.

TPBM has noticed that the preferred backdrop for on-line interviews of the locked down is a bookcase.

134humouress
Bearbeitet: Apr. 29, 2020, 2:23 am

Well, I don’t work so my calls have been with family who are usually sitting on the settee. But my husband has elected to sit on the wrong side of the desk so that his backdrop is the bookshelves rather than the rack I’ve created for wrapping paper.

TPBM has a decent exercise routine and is actually not gaining weight during the lockdown.

And to answer >131 WholeHouseLibrary: my books are split by genre; my largest two collections are fiction (fantasy) and fiction (other) which are ordered alphabetically by author, then cook books which are by DDC/ MDC. The rest (gardening, hobbies etc) are shelved by size DDC, two genres to a shelf on opposing sides.

135abbottthomas
Apr. 27, 2020, 6:32 pm

Nice weather has kept me in my garden rather than walking the almost empty streets but I do need to move more. Also I should be doing some regular work with weights however I have actually lost some weight since the lockdown started. This is a result of a rather healthier diet. Much nearer a vegetarian diet with little meat and more oily fish.

The Germans have a word, as they often do, to fit the times - coronaspeck - for the fat deposited during shut-in grazing.

TPBM has another useful Covid 19 neologism

136WholeHouseLibrary
Bearbeitet: Mai 16, 2020, 11:55 pm

Well I do, but it has a definite political lean to it, so I hesitate to reveal it.

Tell you what, we can be democratic (with a small d) about it. Poll closes on May 4, a week from today.

Wähle: Should WHL go all political on this COVID-19 nomenclature?

Aktueller Stand: Ja 5, Nein 1
Vote early, vote often, even if you're dead.

TPBM finds that notion ... quaint.

Edited to add: The polls are officially closed (almost 2 weeks ago. I forgot about it.)
With the tally being 5 yes and 1 no, you can peruse my long-winded explanation and see the hashtag thing in Post #186.

137SomeGuyInVirginia
Apr. 28, 2020, 8:45 am

Never waste a good crisis.

TPBM is reading less during the lockdown.

138karenmarie
Apr. 28, 2020, 9:16 am

I'm reading more but have started and stopped more books than usual. I've read 42 books so far this year compared to 38 last year, but it's hard to focus on anything more than mysteries and the occasional non political/religious/plague nonfiction book.

TPBM is reading more and in more genres during the lockdown.

139theretiredlibrarian
Apr. 28, 2020, 6:19 pm

I'm experiencing a slight uptick...I'm working from home, and the boss says reading and writing book reviews for the library blog counts. So I've read several juvenile fiction and YA books. But I've also re-read old favorites the last couple of weeks, and am about 1/4 through a local history book, which has been very interesting. So far this month:
2 Realistic Fiction (Juvenile novel); 1 Juvenile Historic Fiction; 1 YA Science Fiction graphic novel; 1 Science Fiction YA; 3 Adult Urban Fantasy; 1 Adult Non Fiction (local history)

TPBM will share their lockdown statistics.

140SomeGuyInVirginia
Apr. 28, 2020, 11:05 pm

Ack-ashully, I've been reading less in the lockdown. I work for a tech company so nothing counts. I have, however, been very very busy. I've also scrubed the bathroom within an inch of it's life.

TPBM lives in a religious or philosophical community. I mean the kind of community that prepares bread or pot brownies for the public, and not an academic enclave.

141abbottthomas
Apr. 30, 2020, 4:53 pm

Despite my assumed title I never have and don't think it would have suited me. Our current social distancing convinces me that silence and meditation, mindfulness or whatever are not my thing at all. The thought of dragging myself out for Prime, Nones or Matins is anathema. I could cope with some Gregorian Chant and I wouldn't mind bee-keeping. I quite like Cadfael's role in the Ellis Peters books but he had had an eventful life before entering the cloister and was always his own man.

TPBM sees themselves as a philosopher.

142WholeHouseLibrary
Apr. 30, 2020, 5:19 pm

Ummm, I think so, therefore I am so???? Yeah, maybe. Much to ponder there.

TPBM imagines a world with no hypothetical situations.

143SomeGuyInVirginia
Apr. 30, 2020, 8:56 pm

The mind oggles.

TPBM recently ate potato chips.

144WholeHouseLibrary
Apr. 30, 2020, 9:42 pm

Why, yes. Yes I have. A few with my turkey sandwich I had for lunch; and yesterday as well.

TPBM get their lunch meat from the deli counter rather than prepackaged stuff.

145Darth-Heather
Mai 1, 2020, 8:00 am

lord, no. I reported the deli at Market Basket to the state health inspector last year when I saw the kid at the counter wiping his runny nose on his food service gloves and then continuing to dig in the potato salad.

Deli was closed for a while. It's open now, but I can't get that mental image out of my mind.

TPBM has a better deli.

146SomeGuyInVirginia
Mai 2, 2020, 4:16 pm

DC is bereft of good delis. Frankly, I'm sort of shocked. And if you want to eat kosher, your choices are limited to one or two places in the entire city! What the hell?!

Sorry, I'm having Chinese food withdrawal. It's ugly, but it's not like coming off heroin. I'm guessing. I have Chinese noodles from Costco, and ramen, in quarantine. They'll be safe by next Friday. It's not pretty.

TPBM has deli delivered.

147WholeHouseLibrary
Bearbeitet: Mai 2, 2020, 8:51 pm

When I absolutely have to see my youngest son, yes.
He should have been an engineer; brilliant mind; but he got his ambition from my side of the gene pool, so he's been doing delivery (and other things) for a nationwide (yet not in the northeast) deli chain for the past 13 years. His next older brother did the same thing for a good 20 years, and it was lucrative enough that he bought a house six years ago. So, if I ever needed to talk to them, I'd order a turkey sandwich (awesomely delicious) and ask that one of them deliver it. And yeah, I tipped well.

TPBM has at some point in his/her life, worked in the food industry.

Edited to fix punctuation.

148rastaphrog
Mai 2, 2020, 10:14 pm

The bulk of the jobs I've held have been food related.

Been working in a supermarket since 1984.

In High School/college I worked...

At Nathans for two years
Worked for a company that made lunches for summer programs
Worked at a bakery for a summer
Worked in the dining hall for work study in college.

TPBM is trying to get outdoors as much as they can during the current "shut down".

149karenmarie
Mai 3, 2020, 9:11 am

It's now officially the Extremely Short Hammock Weather season here in central NC, so I'm taking advantage. Pollen mostly knocked down, mild and not-humid days. I've got the hammock on the porch and can watch my birdfeeders, read, nap, and etc.

TPBM is being rather more active than hanging out in the hammock.

150abbottthomas
Mai 3, 2020, 10:28 am

Despite a lot of blue skies it is too chilly in S.E. England to lie around in a hammock. I am moderately active in the garden, weeding, tidying up and preparing for the first time in many years to grow some food crops - tomatoes, spuds, lettuce, courgettes, runner beans, spring onions, strawberries and chillies. I fear a war of attrition with pigeons and slugs.

TPBM can tell me why a lot of people eat snails but nobody (?) eats slugs.

151SomeGuyInVirginia
Mai 3, 2020, 9:20 pm

Sure, because nobody's ever been able to make slugs cute. You can't eat something that's not darling, it's simple physics. Ditto baby birds. There's a reason why there are no baby birds in children's literature. They are, frankly, fucking frightening. If slugs or baby birds want to get on in this world, I think they need to make the effort to ensure their eyes are proportionate to their heads and they learn to smile.

TPBM is the boss of the rest of nature.

152humouress
Mai 4, 2020, 12:21 am

Well, yes. Obviously.

Going back to baby birds, there are loads of fluffy chicks in board books (possibly the fluff overcomes the eye issue?). I suspect you haven’t been keeping up with your reading. Slugs - you could have a point.

TPBM has something interesting on the menu.

153morningwalker
Mai 4, 2020, 2:01 pm

I just had a banana with peanut butter. I was told by a client that her doctor told her it was the perfect food to have everyday. I don't know about that, but it hit the spot.

TPBM has a food that always hits the spot.

154WholeHouseLibrary
Mai 4, 2020, 3:34 pm

Lemons.
As a kid, I'd slice them open, eat the pulp and spit out the seeds. After three of them, my teeth felt like a rasp, so I drank just water after that. And considering all the things I can't eat (red fruits and veggies, onion, garlic, peppers, several different herbs/spices), you'd think acidic citrus would be on the list as well, but no.
So, every night, I squeeze a lemon, and pour it over some crushed ice, and fill the rest of the 12-oz glass with water, then stir. Sometimes, I'll do that twice. Lemons (or sometimes apple cider vinegar--with the Mother--) is what I use in lieu of salad dressing, at least three times a week.

TPBM, same question as above: Your food that always hits the spot, please.

155Heather19
Mai 4, 2020, 8:39 pm

Do peppermints count? Eat them a bit obsessively, at least 5-6 per day, more if I'm at work (well, before pandemic). Otherwise I'd say ice cream sandwiches, yum!

TPBM has ridden a horse at least once.

1562wonderY
Bearbeitet: Mai 4, 2020, 9:14 pm

Yes, but she declined and deferred after that.

TPBM remembers being a ‘knightly rider of the knee.’

157WholeHouseLibrary
Mai 4, 2020, 10:19 pm

Did you mean: a knight that says "Ni"?
If so, no, I would never be so vulgar.
If not, I don't understand the reference, so maybe, possibly ...

TPBM knows of what 2wonderY refers to and can say whether it's a horse of a different color.

158bnielsen
Mai 5, 2020, 12:29 am

I guess it's a child riding on the knee of an adult. I don't remember that, but I do remember something of a ride on a rocking horse ending with a mild concussion.

TPBM will follow either the knightly or the horsey trail.

159humouress
Mai 5, 2020, 4:51 am

I volunteer with the Riding for the Disabled Association here. In the holidays we usually have training so occasionally volunteers are asked to substitute in for riders. I feel sorry for the horse (pony, really) if they get me - there's a substantial weight difference, I suspect, between me and the usual riders who are children for the most part. And I've taken a few riding lessons along with my primary schooler.

TPBM is enjoying the weather where they are.

160karenmarie
Mai 5, 2020, 8:17 am

Except for the dead of the nasty North Carolina summer, I always enjoy the weather. It is what it is.

TPBM can't imagine a summer without at least one visit to the beach.

161morningwalker
Mai 5, 2020, 8:36 am

No I can't. I haven't made it to the ocean in recent years, but get my fix from Lake Erie (almost as good, except you can't smell the salt air) which is only about 30 miles away.

TPBM had to cancel a planned vacation this year.

162WholeHouseLibrary
Mai 5, 2020, 12:44 pm

Not cancelled yet, and not a vacation, but I've still got reservations at a hotel in New Jersey where I'm supposed to be attending my high school class's 50th-year reunion. That's as far as I got with the planning. I planned for arriving a day early and leaving two days after it was over, and that's what my reservation covers. I couldn't book the actual weekend of the reunion because the contract for discounted block of rooms hadn't been signed yet. And it still hasn't been signed.The whole reunion has been put on hold, pending the outcome of the current medical crisis. So, I haven't booked a plane ticket or a rental car at this point, and I can cancel-without-penalty the hotel room.
I've been doing a lot of thumb twiddling in anticipation.

TPBM has got no particular place to go.

1632wonderY
Mai 5, 2020, 1:12 pm

I do, though. I'm missing al of spring and the outdoor work on my Kentucky ridgetop. But am tied to this d**n internet connection till my retirement gets processed. Who knew it was so complicated and tedious?

TPBM could have warned me.

164WholeHouseLibrary
Mai 5, 2020, 4:19 pm

Had I known, yeah sure.
When MrsHouseLibrary retired (31 years as an elementary school teacher and then librarian,) the process began in November 2014. It became official in June 2015. It also required two trips into Austin to meet with the folks who manage retirement in the TEA. We were lucky in that it's a 20-mile drive for us. For those who live in the western regions of the state, they either have to fly or drive two to three days to make those appointments. So, count your blessings.

TPBM might have decent weather, but doesn't know because all the blinds and curtains are closed.

165morningwalker
Mai 6, 2020, 9:03 am

Blinds are opened first thing in the morning and closed at dusk. It doesn't really matter though because through next Sunday the weather here is going to suck. Freezing temps overnight and mixed snow and rain. I mean, c'mon it's May for pete's sake!

TPBM has a rant they want to get off their chest.

166abbottthomas
Mai 6, 2020, 9:52 am

Where do I start? The way our media approach the Covid-19 statistics with daily international league tables, maybe. The mood is that it is a competition rather like the World Cup. The Germans are beating us!! We are worse than the Italians!! The sneaky foreigners are counting different from us! FFS it's a problem for the whole human race. Even countries like New Zealand that had the luck or judgement to lockdown early will have their lives changed and will be watching their backs for a long time hence. Ex-prime minister Teresa May didn't get much right but her recent comments about an international approach are spot on. On May 8th we are having a Bank Holiday, shifted from the usual celebration of Spring and/or International Workers Day to give us the opportunity to celebrate VE Day - our victory over the GERMANS! Put Out More Flags! Brexit winners rejoice!!

I shall spend the day listening to Beethoven.

Enough, enough, before I start on the POTUS.

The soapbox is free for TPBM.

167WholeHouseLibrary
Mai 6, 2020, 12:18 pm

Sometimes I say too much.
Today, I'll pass.

TPBM meditates during times like these.

168ulmannc
Mai 6, 2020, 7:37 pm

Yup. For some stupid reason I listened to the news yesterday. My version of meditation is no news and listen to classics or blue grass or jazz or anything that is NOT NEWS

TPBM has another way to meditate.

169bnielsen
Bearbeitet: Mai 7, 2020, 5:18 am

Currently drinking tea (Darjeeling) and listening to the neighbours lawn mower (making me think of Florian Schneider)

TPBM would prefer listening to something else.

170SomeGuyInVirginia
Bearbeitet: Mai 7, 2020, 11:55 pm

Like at, I think I'd rather listen to Beethoven.

TPBM is trying to make a neighbor stop doing something.

171WholeHouseLibrary
Mai 8, 2020, 1:18 am

Not me! I've got the best neighbor anyone could hope for. He's like Wilson, only not nearly as eccentric.
The whole family is absolutely terrific.

TPBM should be so lucky.

172SomeGuyInVirginia
Mai 9, 2020, 6:31 pm

I should, and currently I am. I live in a an enormous apartment building just outside of Washington DC. I know that I am incredibly lucky because I really, truly, enjoy all of my neighbors and I appreciate the consideration they have for everyone else who lives around them. This is a great neighborhood.

TPBM will tell us of a lucky escape.

173WholeHouseLibrary
Mai 9, 2020, 7:40 pm

My divorce from ThiMs didn't quite cost me six digits. (Financially, not fingers.)
She got the money. I ended up with the house and the kids.
And if it hadn't gone down that way, a few years later, I might have not met MrsHouseLibrary.
Damn luckiest escape in the history of the world!

TPBM has another tale of derring-do with a fortunate outcome.

174morningwalker
Mai 11, 2020, 9:52 am

Yes. A tornado took my house into the sky and when it dropped I was in a strange land with a yellow...wait, that's someone else's tale. Nope, I got nothin.

TPBM can tell a good story.

175WholeHouseLibrary
Bearbeitet: Mai 13, 2020, 8:40 pm

Two days and no reply?!?!?
Fine!
I do not assess my own works. To do so would be egotistical and/or too self-critical.
Therefore, I submit the following for your consideration. (If this works, I'll be amazed. Haven't done any fancy html stuff in several years.)

Post #132 in Pets! What animals own you um, do you own?

Post #7 in The Invention of Cheese. Proceed with Caution. This thread will be rather gross.

Post #7 in Funny Christmas Stories

TPBM (and anyone else) may read any or all of them and render a verdict.

Just keep in mind, they are all off-the-top-of-my-head first drafts composed here on LT. I have revised them several times elsewhere. (See? there's that self-criticism thing again!)

Edited each link to take you to the specific post rather than just the top of the thread.

176humouress
Bearbeitet: Mai 14, 2020, 3:11 am

No comment. Too exhausted - and that’s after just the first one.

ETA: Thanks for the links WHL; that’s made my morning (now afternoon). I went on and read the whole Christmas thread too.

Awaiting the full book version of your memoirs now. Your parents’ house sounds lovely. Is it still in the family?

This is my more concise, fictionalised effort. The Cleanerbot Diaries after Martha Wells’s Murderbot

I’m currently listening to my neighbour practicing contemporary music (our tastes coincide) on the piano. They’re pretty good.

TPBM has recently splurged on something they’ve been coveting for a long time.

177abbottthomas
Mai 14, 2020, 6:16 pm

I have just had a pulse oximeter delivered. A pessimistic purchase but it may be useful if I have the misfortune to catch the bloody virus. Its only other use is in monitoring the effects of exercise at altitude. Me? Climbing in the Andes? Don't make me laugh!

TPBM enjoys high places, and the getting there.

178WholeHouseLibrary
Mai 14, 2020, 8:14 pm

I guess so. I have a strong preference to hiking in the mountains/foothills rather than swimming at the shore, or a lake, or a pool, even. Not afraid of bodies of water; it just doesn't appeal to me.

TPBM is more the beach bum type.

179Darth-Heather
Mai 15, 2020, 8:12 am

yes, the beach is my happy place. when i need to find my center, I go and sit on the sand, listen to the waves, smell the salt air, and watch the sky. Sometimes my senses all need cleansing.

TPBM knows the feeling.

180karenmarie
Mai 15, 2020, 8:40 am

Yes I do, although I haven't been to the beach in ... about 6 years. However, it will be there when I want/need/can get to it.

TPBM has made one of their favorite recipes recently.

181morningwalker
Mai 15, 2020, 8:46 am

Yes. I made herbed sourdough bread grilled cheese sandwiches with greens and garlic and a slice of tomato. Had it with good old tomato soup.

TPBM has made a favorite recently too.

182ulmannc
Mai 15, 2020, 10:48 am

// >178 WholeHouseLibrary: We're the same way. We used to be crazy hikers and attempted a few of the 14er's in Colorado as well as high stuff in Italy and eastern Switzerland and places in Wyoming, Montana, Canadian Rockies, etc.

Our primary criteria is to be able to get to the edge of snow limit so we can see the alpines blooming. We still like the white stuff, in fact "Heaven is sitting on top of a snow bank above 9000 ft on the 4th of July eating our lunch!"

These days we don't go as high between "arthur" . asthma, and other "old fart diseases" that slow us down and reduce our altitude ceiling! We have found a great place to look at alpines at close to sea level. . . the limestone barrens along the western shore of Newfoundland!"' //

183humouress
Mai 16, 2020, 12:14 pm

Yes, I made my mum’s curry. Living in Singapore it’s easy to buy curry but nothing like mum makes.

// >177 abbottthomas: My husband just got one of those, too. It just clips on a finger - no drawing blood *shudder*//

TPBM misses specific food that they can’t (easily) get.

184karenmarie
Mai 16, 2020, 2:47 pm

Food from our favorite restaurants since they aren't open for dining and I don't like spending beau coup bucks in order to bring home food that isn't as tasty after a 15-25 minute ride home as it would be in the restaurant.

At home I can make everything I've always made (so far).

TPBM is missing a key ingredient for a favorite recipe and can't get it.

185abbottthomas
Bearbeitet: Mai 16, 2020, 4:56 pm

//>136 WholeHouseLibrary: promised us a revelation of a politically leaning Covid 19 neologism if the vote went that way. I don’t think I’ve missed it. C’mon WHL - let’s have it.//

And for >184 karenmarie: - I have been after chipotle paste for weeks but two jars appeared in the last supermarket delivery.

TPBM is getting (too) used to food deliveries.

186WholeHouseLibrary
Mai 16, 2020, 11:49 pm

I haven't had food delivered. I've been getting a breakfast taco and large coffee from my favorite coffee shop every Saturday morning, and leave a tip that is about 4 times larger than the cost of the order. I never have it delivered because it, getting deer corn, and my once-every-3-weeks grocery foray to the are my sole excuses for getting out of the house.

There has been a tragedy in the family recently, and my Waco-based s-i-l spent Friday night here. So, we ordered some food from a seafood place, opting for curbside pick-up. I went to get it at the appointed time, and waited over 20 minutes after I notified them I had arrived. Four others who arrived after me got their orders and left. I flagged the runner down, and it was another 10 minutes before I got the bag of goods. I took it home, and there wasn't anything in the bag, which had my receipt stapled to it, that we had ordered.
I called the store and got put on hold to talk to the manager. After 4 rounds of hold music followed by a recording saying that my call was important to them, and please continue to hold, I got in the car with the bag of food, turned on Bluetooth and listened to 8 more iterations of my importance on the drive back to the store. The runner brought a delivery to another curbside customer, and I ambushed him on his way back, and he said he'd be right back with my order. He went inside.
Curbside is handled from the left side of the building. If you specified that you wanted to actually go into the store to pick up your food to go, you use the front door along with the customers who were dining in. (No social distancing or masks in the crowd waiting to get in there.) After a few minutes, I noticed the runner, bag in hand, running apparently from the front door to a customer carrying his own bag of food to his car. They had a quick talk and the customer gives the runner his bag. The runner then hurredly walks past me and gives the second bag to another curbside customer, and then returns to me with the bag he had done the sprint with. I checked the contents before I let him go. Dinner was hot, but 2 hours late.
So, my one experience of supporting chain restaurants during this pandemic has been a bust.
That experience, plus the only store in Austin that made actual flame-broiled hamburgers went belly-up this week (over 20 miles away, so it was a special treat to go south of the river when I'm in town, which is infrequent.) is enough. If they screw up this bad, I don't think I'll ever have it delivered.

And, from my #136 post, which, all factors considered, has not been on my mind (so thanks for the reminder), the tally as of this writing is: 5 yes, and 1 no. The ayes have it. Gotta love democracy in action! For your understanding:
The opinions stated here are my own. They are not to be debated on this thread. PM me if you feel the need/desire.
At the time I posted #136, the White House COVID-19 daily updates had been co-opted into free two-hour slots of political campaigning by the president.
To deflect attention from his own incompetence, lack of leadership, and utter disdain for anyone who doesn't kowtow to him, he constantly referred to COVID-19 as China virus. As it turns out, there are two strains of it, one of which came to the U.S. via Europe. It annoyed me because he used that term mainly as a phrase to rile up his base, which resulted in still-ongoing physical attacks and violence against citizens of our country who are of Asian descent.
And LT is pretty much all the social media I do. I don't have a FB account, I don't Zoom, or Tweet. or whatever else there might be. I filter out all the political email I get, I don't care who sends it. Gets permanently deleted before I have a chance to see it. If one does get through, I add the sender or some keyword to the parameter list. I have a text messaging app on my phone, though. So, whenever someone wants to get political with me, especially about COVID-19 (like a friend from college,) I remind him why everything was shut down, and IMO, why we will ultimately fail in this premature, non-science-based forced attempt to jump-start the economy. I append to my text messages: #Trump2020virus

TPBM can talk about anything they want.

187abbottthomas
Mai 17, 2020, 7:55 am

//Thanks WHL, worth the wait. Sorry about the other stuff.//

188humouress
Mai 18, 2020, 12:40 am

// Gosh WHL - you live intensely! //

189WholeHouseLibrary
Mai 18, 2020, 1:51 am

//We'll see just how intensely in a week or two. Saturday was the memorial for the 3-year-old grand-nephew at his parent's house. That part of the family is overbearing in their zealous religious fundamentalism. MrsHouseLibrary and I were/are atheists. There isn't a single sentence from them that doesn't have some sort of reference to god or jesus or whatever. Couldn't park at the house. Had to park 3 or 4 miles away and take a shuttle van to the house. The shuttle (depending on which lot you parked in) was run by any one of the 3 bible-banging churches they were active members in. My Waco-base s-i-l, the van driver and I were the only 3 who wore masks. And after a few minutes, she removed hers because she felt embarrassed about standing out like that. Other that me, virtually none of the 300+ attendees wore a mask or even attempted any social distancing. But all the chairs were crowded upon each other, and I had to wade through a sea of people in the house. Couldn't leave because the van was gone.
I fully expect that next week, if/when I can get that swab shoved in my nostril, I'll test positive. Meanwhile, get plenty of rest, exercise; drink lots of water; monitor my temperature; and get my groceries delivered. Had to warn my best-ever nextdoor neighbor because he works in a large nursing home in Austin that has had just one case of COVID-19 (sometime in February). //

190SomeGuyInVirginia
Bearbeitet: Mai 18, 2020, 7:26 pm

>185 abbottthomas: The opposite is true, I no longer order food. I became violently ill during the middle of March and my doctor's office told me to stop ordering food in. I've been ordering food in for the past 2 years. Did they expect me to starve?! Look, the only stove setting I understood was, 'For delivery ASAP.'

Now I cook everything. I'm not an imaginative cook, but I am an okay cook and as quickish study. I'm doing okay as far as supplies are concerned, because I'm one of those survivalists who has watched every zombie movie that's ever been made and I have been living for something like this all my life. Pls, I'm not a prepper. I just so happen to have a hundred pounds of rice stored away in the spare bedroom. That's all. It's really simple.

I've decided to order cooking equipment, including pots, a cast iron skillet for corn bread, Japanese and German knives, and one or two copper copper pots which, to me, seem to have been priced by a crazy person. After this is over, I promised myself two things; one. I'm going to learn how to cook, and two. I'm going to dance everywhere I go. Join me.

TPBM has been reincarnated, and will tell us what they've come back as.

191humouress
Mai 19, 2020, 12:55 am

Oddly enough, this time around I’ve come back as me.

I will join your dance SGiV.

TPBM is learning a (new) musical instrument.

192bnielsen
Mai 19, 2020, 3:31 am

I won't claim I learned it, but at least I watched it:

https://magpi.raspberrypi.org/articles/diy-midi-door

I'm not quite that desperate to try something new :-)

>190 SomeGuyInVirginia: "priced by a crazy person" LOL.
Good luck with the cooking. It is quite fun to experiment. Yesterday I cooked some hokkaido soup for dinner. Very easy to cook and very tasty. (Buy a stick blender if you don't already have one).

TPBM is teaching a (new) musical instrument.

193morningwalker
Mai 19, 2020, 8:30 am

Unfortunately I have no musical talent. My claim to fame is playing the recorder in 6th grade.

>192 bnielsen: I had to look up Hokkaido soup because I never heard of it. It sounds delicious.

>190 SomeGuyInVirginia: If you're cooking and dancing you can't go wrong. I know from experience you can do both at the same time. Wooden spoons make great microphones if you care to throw in a little singing too.

TPBM misses ____________ from normal days.

194WholeHouseLibrary
Mai 20, 2020, 10:16 am

MrsHouseLibrary, of course!

And, I'm going to have to switch to having my groceries delivered for now. I'm already missing going to the grocery store. It's been 3 weeks.

TPBM sings ______________ while parboiling his/her hands.

195Darth-Heather
Mai 20, 2020, 10:37 am

"hands.... washing hands...
reaching out...
don't touch me.... I won't touch youuuuuuu...
(sing it with me!) Sweet Caroline! (ba ba ba)
Good times never seemed so good (so good so good so good)
I've been inclined
to believe they never could"

Here in the lab we use Washyourlyrics.com to generate posters and hung them near all the sinks.

TPBM is washing right now.

196SomeGuyInVirginia
Mai 20, 2020, 9:54 pm

I have blisters on my fingers from washing clothes in a large plastic tub. I wash my hands all the time, and it really, really stings. Blisters on your fingertips are very painful. I'm just saying. I'm not washing now, but I did take a shower this morning and again later when I had to go to the lobby of my apartment building and pick up several packages I'd ordered. I simply will not cross my threshold without wearing gloves, a mask, carrying some kind of disinfectant, and clothes that I don't mind throwing in the back of the spare closet so they can quarantine for 10 days until I need them again.

TPBM will tell us something interesting about a person they're in lockdown with.

197karenmarie
Mai 22, 2020, 12:54 pm

My husband can't remember that there are tasty leftovers in the refrigerator, but he can remember every fact about every planet, the sun, asteroids, galaxies, black holes, and etc., he's ever heard. He loves anything to do with space.

TPBM has just found something that they thought they'd lost forever.

198WholeHouseLibrary
Bearbeitet: Mai 22, 2020, 3:36 pm

Pneumonia, actually.

It's been an ongoing thing with me for years until they created vaccines for it. Only hospitalized fir it twice, though. And a few years ago, I was given the second of a pair of vaccines that was supposed to prevent it entirely for the rest of my life. The first was a year earlier.

I will not write about the circumstances of why I ended up in close quarters this past Saturday morning with over 300 adults who acted as if there were no such thing as COVID-19. Suffice to say, I was the ONLY person wearing a mask (an N95 that I bought over 40 years ago.)

Mild symptoms, nothing that screamed of a pending calamity, but nagging nonetheless. Yesterday, I went to a standalone urgent care facility that offered tests for COVID-19. I'll get those results back Monday or Tuesday.
But, there was a rattling in my chest, and an x-ray was ordered. Yeah. Pneumonia. Thought I was done with that. Currently taking two different antibiotics.

TPBM is as fit as a fiddle, and can explain to me how that idiom came to connote healthiness.

ETA: karenmarie, your husband and I would get along just fine. I'm the same way.

199karenmarie
Mai 22, 2020, 3:39 pm

//WHL, I'm sorry that you've got pneumonia AFTER getting the pneumonia vaccine. I got the 2-year-1-year-apart vaccine in 2018 and 2019 and hope they're more effective than the ones you got. I also hope you don't have COVID-19.//

200bnielsen
Bearbeitet: Mai 23, 2020, 6:32 am

As part of the fight against COVID-19 Denmark offers citizens over 65 years of age the Pneumovax (23-valent pneumokok-vaccine) for free, The idea is to keep the number of pneumonia cases low. Citizens can also be tested to see if a previous vaccination is still providing protection. There's also another vaccine Prevenar and the recommendation is to get both of them. It only lowers the risk of getting pneumonia. And only with 20 - 30 percent. And to keep the protection the Pneumovax vaccination should be repeated every 5 to 10 years. Prevenar gives lifelong protection so it is not to be repeated.

So vaccination is Probably_a_good_idea (tm) but not a silver bullet.

I really hope the antibiotics will do the trick.

I'm fit as a fiddle or "rask som en havørn" as the Danish term is. And one of my friends is a violin maker. But "fit as fiddle" is so old a phrase that nobody knows where it originated. Probably just the words "fit" and "fiddle" having a similar sound?

TPBM plays second fiddle to something/somebody.

ETA: I read some more of the Danish information. There are two vaccines on the Danish market. One protects against 23 pneumonia bacteria and the other against 13. The plan is to get 75% of the population over 65 years vaccinated against pneumonia and against flu. People under 65 years can buy the vaccine shots if they want. I think they are about $60 each. And I should add that the pneumonia vaccines are aimed at the more dangerous variants of pneumonia bacteria, so they'll prevent 3 out of four of the dangerous cases.
ETA^2: I'm still a few years from 65, but for some reason information like this gets more interesting for each passing day.

201WholeHouseLibrary
Mai 24, 2020, 11:56 am

Everything and everyone.
I've got a distinct "helper" personality. I'd rather not be on stage, but glad to work in the stage crew.
I get much more satisfaction out of fixing up manuscripts than I do in my own writing process.
I tend to run toward the fire rather than away from it. (That's a metaphor, and not at all to be considered a fetish-like predilection toward arson -- or fire trucks.)

TPBM has ridden in an ambulance.

202morningwalker
Mai 26, 2020, 10:11 am

No and I hope I never need to. (knock on wood).

>201 WholeHouseLibrary: hope you get back your test results and they are good. Feel better soon!

TPBM knows how to operate an unusual piece of machinery.

203ulmannc
Mai 26, 2020, 10:21 am

Does maintaining an injector system for an orchid greenhouse count including the concentration calculations. . . problem is I have to remember how to change the concentration. Luckily "She Who Must Be Obeyed" only ask me to modify it once in 10 years so I guess she is happy!

TPBM know how to operate an unusual piece of machinery or something with a strange transmission and/or clutch. . . like 10 gears in one range in a pre WWII Autocar cab.

2042wonderY
Mai 26, 2020, 11:36 am

Mine is agricultural as well.

I operated a pea combine back in the day (and night) for Green Giant. They hired college students and Mexican seasonal workers every summer. The shifts were 12 hours and we rotated once from days to nights. Ate a lot of sand in our P&J sandwich lunches.



The main thing was to go slow enough that the wet remains passed through without building up and blocking the process. Then it was time to dig out with one of these:



TPBM has been down on the farm or has seen Paree.

205WholeHouseLibrary
Mai 26, 2020, 2:43 pm

My brother-in-law is a farmer. He's got a few years on me, but works the proverbial dawn-to-dusk schedule, and often longer than that. I've offered to help him on certain projects, but he thinks of me as a "city boy" and always refuses. He owns/leases about a thousand acres, much of which has been farmed for at least three generations. The town he's living in is in the process of condemning a good third of it to put in housing developments. So, yeah, I've been down on the farm. They're putting houses in the fields.

TPBM may opine freely.

206morningwalker
Bearbeitet: Mai 28, 2020, 10:14 am

I'm afraid to opine freely in this day and age because someone somewhere will misconstrue what I say and write about it on social media and it will get hundreds of negative comments and others will feel free to opine freely and it will just snowball out of control until the next person opines freely and social media swarms to him/her and then I will be forgotten.

TPBM sees some truth in what I say.

207WholeHouseLibrary
Mai 28, 2020, 10:33 am

I do. And I also see that if you don't speak freely, they get the best of you. The trick is to not blather.

"You are not entitled to your opinion, you are entitled to your informed opinion. If you are not informed on the subject, then your opinion counts for nothing."
- Harlan Ellison

TPBM will please talk about what's growing in their garden, or their grandkids (real or imaginary, I really don't care which) ... anything that doesn't veer the conversation off into politics.

208abbottthomas
Mai 28, 2020, 5:47 pm

I have sown tomato, lettuce, parsley, runner beans, courgettes, strawberries in pots and gro-bags: the seedlings are looking good but I am along way from eating anything. There are cuttings of mint, rosemary and - for decoration - penstemon. This is all well and good but there is a large camellia that is probably dying from an infestation with Honey Fungus, just like a large Acer and another two camellias last year. Honey fungus is regarded as the largest living organism with one covering 3.7 sq. miles in Oregon so mine is a baby.

TPBM will offer me some horticultural advice.

209SomeGuyInVirginia
Bearbeitet: Mai 29, 2020, 8:49 am

I got nothing. I'm still waiting for Amazon to reintroduce it's All-Clad brand 12-in skillet with lid ($120), that has been sold out for the past several days. I live in an apartment building in a high-rise. If I were going to grow anything it would be most excellent marijuana.

//>207 WholeHouseLibrary: I spent weeks out in public during the first half of March and shortly after became violently ill. I've often wondered if that were covid. You'd be doing us a service, Mike, if you kept us updated.//

TPBM will tell us 100 stories.

210WholeHouseLibrary
Mai 30, 2020, 1:13 am

No takers? Fine! I left links to four of them in >175 WholeHouseLibrary:. I've got maybe another 40 unfinished ones on my computer, so getting to 100 may take a while.

It's just past midnight now, so Saturday. I've neglected to mention that the COVID-19 test result came back NEGATIVE. And I took the last of the antibiotics Thursday evening. So, I mowed my front lawn yesterday morning. It took only 45 minutes for that pair of car batteries that power it to deplete. It rained the night before and the grass was a good 6" high. Pretty tough on the motor. I put it on the charger (takes 6 hours) and got out the weed wacker, and depleted the fully charged battery on that in 20 minutes. Had a big glass of water and slept for the next 5 hours, and did it all over again. I feel like crap, but can't sleep at this point. Still coughing up parts of my lungs, but I feel like I just might live.

TPBM will decide if what I just wrote counts as a story, or as memoir.

211karenmarie
Mai 30, 2020, 8:41 am

Definitely memoir, although you could juice it up and make it a stand-alone short story.

//we're watching the grass grow, almost literally, with the rain and heat//

Glad your Covid-19 test came back negative, although sorry you're still hacking up parts of your lungs.

TPBM is thinking of converting to a xeriscaped garden/yard.

212bnielsen
Mai 30, 2020, 4:14 pm

Quite the opposite. We moved into a smaller house two years ago and have been replacing stones of various kinds with topsoil.

TPBM has already converted to a xeriscaped garden/yard.

213WholeHouseLibrary
Mai 30, 2020, 10:18 pm

My yard hasn't decided yet.

Generally, I've got two outdoor projects going on (beside mowing the lawn). One is to get all the lawnmower-blade--attacking rocks up and out of the way, and fill the holes from dirt in the raised garden.
The other project is to get rid of the raised garden. There were over 10 dozen interlocking cinder blocks in a 4x16x4 rectangle. Now, 2 walls have been removed and several, but not all of the rock holes have been filled.
There's a very interesting dichotomy occurring as of late. The rocks are piled (dumped) underneath a fig tree in my back yard, awaiting the day they'll be made into another cairn in my yard. There are three and a half cairns already. That half-cairn used to be a full one, but since it was the first of them, I didn't level the ground beneath it and, well it's going to be replaced.
Add to that, we've gotten a lot of rain lately. That pile of rocks is settling out over time, and the edge of the garden was maybe 15 feet from it. With the alluvial fan from the erosion of the garden area, I expect that in another month's time, there's going to be a battle as to whether I'm going to xeriscape or have a much larger garden area with exceptional drainage.

TPBM isn't concerned with such matters.

214SomeGuyInVirginia
Mai 31, 2020, 4:59 am

On the homefront, my primary concern is downsizing. My next move will likely be into a larger place, but the move after that will most likely be into a much smaller place. So right now I'm winnowing the wheat from the chaff.

TPBM dated someone who went on to become famous.

215WholeHouseLibrary
Mai 31, 2020, 7:19 am

I'd use the word infamous.
I'm talking about ThiMs, my more-than 20-years ex.
Our divorce is still used locally as a case study in how not to comport one's self in front of the judiciary, nor the constabulary. Or in public. People still stop me on the street to ask questions about it. Well, not recently; I'm in quarantine with pneumonia, plus there's that other thing going around, so people are avoiding me as of late.

TPBM will enumerate how s/he is no more than a sixth degree acquaintance of Kevin Bacon.

216abbottthomas
Jun. 1, 2020, 5:08 am

In my childhood I was a friend of Anthony Furst who later, as Anton Furst, won an Oscar for art direction in Tim Burton’s Batman. He also worked with Stanley Kubrick on Full Metal Jacket.
I don’t know enough of Kevin Bacon’s filmography - apart from the superb Tremors - to fill in the remaining steps but with Burton and Kubrick there, I’ll surely make it in six.

TPBM has an alternative path.

217morningwalker
Jun. 1, 2020, 10:16 am

Well, I'd like to follow the yellow brick road, but will probably take the road less traveled because I'm a solitary sort of person.

TPBM is the life of the party.

218theretiredlibrarian
Jun. 2, 2020, 10:00 am

If by party you mean "stay at home and weed the flower bed and then go read a book", then sure, that's how I party hearty.

TPBM has been going bonkers during this shelter at home time (sadly, this includes Mr.Exiled)

219WholeHouseLibrary
Jun. 2, 2020, 1:35 pm

Not really. This is my "normal."
The exception to that is that is I truly miss my Saturday morning habit of getting breakfast and journaling in the coffee shop downtown, and Open Mic Night on Monday evenings. Have to admit that my yard is looking better over time now.

TPBM is whittling away at the to-do list.

2202wonderY
Jun. 2, 2020, 2:55 pm

Poking into long forgotten corners here and sorting/discarding. I found a box of teddy bears in the attic and brought them to grandbaby this weekend. I'm best grandma at the moment. She couldn't carry them all in her arms, but she certainly tried.

TPBM still has a favorite teddy.

221EMS_24
Bearbeitet: Jun. 3, 2020, 11:02 am

My first one, don't we love all our first one the most?
It's named Bunkie, (not related to 'bunkers' or Archie), its one of the main characters in Clowntje Rick. A newspaper 'comic' - drawings in a frame on each with the long text beneath, that was first published in the local newspaper in Gouda where my grandparents lived. When my brother and I where a few years older we (mostly my brother) had imagined a fictional world around Bunkie (and other cuddly toys). I still have the bear and of course his skin is almost bald and he misses an eye.

TPBM has another kind of animal as favorite cuddly toy

222WholeHouseLibrary
Jun. 4, 2020, 7:20 am

If I did, I don't recall what it may have been. Also, if I did, I'm sure my next-older brother probably threw it in the trash as soon as he noticed I liked it, but not before destroying it in some fashion. He was an angry kid.
Fortunately, he didn't interfere at all with me and my first real girlfriend, Barbara Puckle. (That's her real name, by the way.) My relationship with her became part of the family lore. I met her in Kindergarten, and we were inseparable until the middle of 2nd grade. I suspect that her parents and mine got together and decided that one of us was going to have to go to a different school. And since there were 5 of my siblings there (with 2 more to follow-- at the time) and several cousins, versus Barbara having just one older sister who was finishing up 8th grade, Barbara never came back from the winter break. I was told that she had a medical issue and it wouldn't be good for her if I to see her any time soon. So I didn't. And two years later, my folks sold the house and we moved to a town about 25 miles away. I never forgot her, though, and I had a chance sighting of her several years later. She happened to be standing out in front of her house when my aunt drove down her street to get to somewhere, and I was in the back seat of the car. Our eyes locked, and two blocks later, we were staring at each other. I don't know why I didn't shout at my aunt to stop the car. Regardless, I think she was the precursor to MrsHouseLibrary. They were both redheads (Barbara's was straight and more orange; Karrell's was a darker red and quite curly) and Karrell knew all about Barbara because, well, she was part of the family lore. And Karrell is even more so now than Barbara ever was.

TPBM preferred to cuddle up with a book rather than a stuffed toy.

223abbottthomas
Jun. 4, 2020, 1:22 pm

Yup, a book for me and under the bedclothes with a flashlight after lights out. I was told it would make me short-sighted but I was that already. I did have a soft toy called Twinkle but in the war years you had to make do with what was available and he was a spaniel shaped pyjama case with no body stuffing at all - just a midline zip for an easy laparotomy.

TPBM had a blue blanket

224SomeGuyInVirginia
Jun. 5, 2020, 11:16 pm

I did not have a blue blanket, but I did have a purple teddy bear. Actually only his arms and head were purple while his chest and back were white. I got him at a carnival shooting gallery when I was very young, either in Macon or Munich. To this day I confuse rural Georgia and Bavaria, even accounting for the differences in climate.

It was the kind of place where you scored points according to the ducks and stars you are able to shoot over with a rifle and my dad was going to win me a teddy bear. After a few tries I had an arm load of stuff but no teddy bear. I must have looked like a whipped puppy because the carney running the booth told my parents that he had a teddy bear that he spilled coffee on so wasn't able to give away, and would I prefer that? Yes sir, I sure would! So we handed me a perfectly wonderful teddy bear with a coffee stain on the white thatch of his chest. It's schmaltzy but the stain was right where a teddy bear's heart would be, which is also where a person's heart would be if you are pointing the place out on a diagram to a space alien. I carried that bear with me everywhere for the next several years. Truth to tell, he still may be buried in a box of assorted things I've got somewhere someplace. I hope so.

To this day I've always found a broad streak of kindness running through carnival workers and New Yorkers. Usually disparaged, certainly never to be provoked, but I've always felt comfortable around both.

TPBM reads cookbooks to relax.

225WholeHouseLibrary
Jun. 6, 2020, 12:08 am

No, I read them to prevent starvation and accidental botulism.

As a kid, I used to pick a random volume of the World Book Encyclopaedia, open to a random page, and start reading -- on a polar bear rug my father had bought during one of his several trips to Alaska and other points north. Mind you, it was already dead; he would never kill an animal. Mostly, it was because he couldn't handle the sight of blood. I've got a funny story about that, but not tonight.

TPBM is at odds with someone over some aspect of the pandemic versus getting the economy going.
(The stories I could tell you!)

226WholeHouseLibrary
Jun. 9, 2020, 12:48 am

Clearly, a touchy subject. Ah well, can't let this go unanswered...

Hell yeah, WHL! There's a whole lot of STOOPID here in Texas. It boggles the mind.

TPBM had a good day.

227abbottthomas
Jun. 9, 2020, 4:14 am

I had a ‘new normal’ good day - not at all the same as an old good day. I planted out some tomato plants and some strawberries, I updated our on-line grocery delivery order and I ploughed through an energy supplier’s automated phone system to get someone round to fix the central heating. Yup, that’s about it.

TPBM had a more exciting time.

228morningwalker
Jun. 9, 2020, 8:48 am

Not very exciting. I went to work, then picked up medication for my cat, then bought 10 bags of topsoil so I can move my peonies to a sunnier spot ( too many trees shading them and they didn't flower this year), walked with my friend and Bob the dog and finished watching a movie.

TPBM will give a synopsis of their day.

229SomeGuyInVirginia
Jun. 9, 2020, 11:20 am

Well, yesterday I got a letter from a collection agency! I've always paid all my bills early, and never let any bill go, so I really flipped right out when I got the letter in the mail. I don't have all the details because I quarantine all my mail for 10 days and I won't pick up the letter again until sometime next week, but apparently the company that I work for dropped the ball on transitioning my insurance and my old insurer billed me for a couple of items, and since I moved they were sending everything to the old address and, frankly, it never occurred to me to look at any of the forwarded mail from the insurance carrier since they weren't my insurer is anymore. Long story short, too late I know, my company's paying for the amount I owe to my old insurer, and I made sure that my credit isn't dinged. It isn't. Regardless of who's at fault, yesterday I paid the bill in full. I'll sort the details out later. It's pathetic, really. I'll tolerate any damage to my reputation, but anything that might possibly in any way affect my credit score ratchets up my panic level to 10.

TPBM lives in what's known as a tiny house, or knows someone who lives in a tiny house. I used to think that the idea of living in 500 square feet was ridiculous. Now all I think is, 'man, that must be really easy to clean.'

230WholeHouseLibrary
Jun. 9, 2020, 1:19 pm

I wish!
I've got what used to be a large house -- built in the mid-1970s, 4 bedrooms, large sunken living room with a huge fireplace... which was fine when my kids lived here. I'm here by myself now. I could be perfectly fine with one third the square footage.
That being said, MrsHouseLibrary was a clutterer. Not a hoarder, mind you. I've seen the TV shows; she was definitely not that. She took after her mother in a lot of respects, and one of them was to abhor empty square footage. Counter tops, table tops, shelves, floors, walls, protrusions of rocks that make up the chimney, even ceilings required some sort of adornment. And by some, I mean: by seeing all of the nick-nacks, one can surmise that there is a surface somewhere beneath them.
And I've been working on getting rid of stuff, but it's a slow process. In effect, I live in a tiny house, but the walls are still much farther away.

TPBM gets regular exercise.

231SomeGuyInVirginia
Jun. 9, 2020, 1:56 pm

Nyet! I don't leave my apartment to take out the trash without putting on a mask and gloves, and when I get back I wash my hair and take a shower. What's really ridiculous about the whole thing is that I think I may have contracted covid-19 back in March and was sick for several days but it passed quickly. I'd have gotten the test long ago, but I have questions about veracity of the results as well as what the information would be used for. Whatever the cause I was spectacularly ill for about 4 days in mid - late March. I'd get the test done but that would put me on way too many lists for me to feel comfortable. My property managers require that everyone diagnosed with the virus report themselves voluntarily. I get that, if they want to protect their maintenance workers, but it still feels a little 'ein volk' yellow star to me. I've often thought about running the stairs, however. Or what's more likely now, walking the stairs.

//>230 WholeHouseLibrary: this is a beautiful line. "I live in a tiny house, but the walls are still much farther away."//

Ok, TPBM hasn't chimed in a while but will now ring that bell.

232Darth-Heather
Jun. 9, 2020, 2:03 pm

Charlie says.... love my Good & Plenty!
Charlie says.... really rings the bell!
Charlie says... love my Good & Plenty!
Don't know any other candy that I love so well!

the only problem is that my husband can't stand licorice and won't even talk to me while I'm eating it.

TPBM has another favorite candy.

233ulmannc
Jun. 9, 2020, 5:37 pm

Goldenbergs(sp) Peanut Chews - they are bliss. . dark chocolate type. TPBM prefers the milk chocolate ones.

234SomeGuyInVirginia
Jun. 10, 2020, 1:41 pm

I much more prefer it, with the white-hot intensity of a thousand suns.

TPBM drinks coffee black.

235karenmarie
Jun. 10, 2020, 1:55 pm

Black no sugar. No flavored coffees either.

TPBM prefers dark roast coffee.

236ulmannc
Jun. 10, 2020, 7:22 pm

I only drink espresso but I do corrupt it with a bit of sugar. Is that a dark enough roast?
No latte's, foamy stuff, 90% sugar or as say "have a little coffee with your milk, foam, etc.
TPBM lives on French roast.

237WholeHouseLibrary
Jun. 10, 2020, 9:13 pm

I do not live on French roast.
I do not live on French toast.
I do not live on French fries.
I do not live in Versailles.
I do not know French, ulmannc,
My younger brother is the Franco maniac.

TPBM occasionally channels Dr. Seuss.

238humouress
Jun. 11, 2020, 2:38 am

I’ve been known to call my sons Things 1 & 2 but the phase has faded as they outgrew (sacrilege!) Seuss.

TPBM has a favourite childhood author whose books/ works they still read.

239karenmarie
Jun. 11, 2020, 9:56 am

//very good, WHL!//

240WholeHouseLibrary
Jun. 11, 2020, 11:39 am

// It's a gift ... and a curse.//

241SomeGuyInVirginia
Bearbeitet: Jun. 11, 2020, 5:02 pm

Ask! I'm sorry! I'm just trying to get my head around the whole black coffee thing! It's like a dare thing, right?

Anyway, I almost never re-read books, especially if I love them. I almost never return to the things that I loved which is probably why I am so sickeningly sentimental.

I do not see the past in me. That I do not see in me. The past is one vast open sea. Do you see that when me you see? //>240 WholeHouseLibrary: Mike, remember that you have been touched by the Gods. They have not made you mad. Which means that your story has not entered even the third act.//

Look, I still want to hear from people who drink black coffee. Because, frankly, I think that's just weird. And I want to know why people do it. Black coffee drinkers explain yourself.

242WholeHouseLibrary
Jun. 11, 2020, 5:58 pm

If you drink your coffee black, the caffeine isn't diluted by the sugar, fat and carbs.
I started drinking it straight when, where I worked, they started using non-dairy creamer. It was awful stuff; the gypsum in the sheetrock was a better substitute (and still is). And just sugar in the coffee is an abomination, so I just started drinking it black. No regrets. It's much better for you than adulterated coffee, and IMHO, tastes better, too. French Roast is fine, but I prefer a Breakfast Blend, or when I can get it: La Minita -- smooth as silk.

First verse of a song I dedicate to the baristas when I "sang" at Open Mic Night.
I've seen the light, oh the light I've seen.
I've seen the light of Saint Caffeine
When I'm running out of steam
I pray to you, Saint Caffeine.
-- John Gorka

TPBM can also attest to the wonderfulness of black coffee.

243abbottthomas
Bearbeitet: Jun. 11, 2020, 6:14 pm

This is difficult, Larry. WHL is right. I drink espressos every day and can't see why anyone would want to spoil them by adding milk, cow, soya, almond, none of the alternatives.

I have two cappuccinos a year in a cafe by the Lybian Sea in Crete. It used to be called 'Amnesia' and then they changed it to 'Anamnesia' which I suppose means that it is unforgettable. I choose the milky coffee there because it lasts longer and allows me time to wait for the abbess to complete her annual walk down the Gorge of the Dead. I used to accompany her but my knees can't cope any more.

TPBM drives themselves to deny the ravages of time.

244SomeGuyInVirginia
Bearbeitet: Jun. 11, 2020, 9:08 pm

>242 WholeHouseLibrary:. Mike, oh pls. This whole black coffee thing has just left me exhausted. If there were a saint of black coffee, I'm sure that they would have been most horribly martyred and I'm sure I would have secretly agreed with their oppressors. Joan of Arc wasn't murdered because she was God's vessel on Earth but because she was unceasingly annoying. "I am the saint of black coffee! And gluten-free crackers! And the reason why it takes people half hour to decide on a restaurant! Join me but you should know that it would be simpler to actually fly to France than decide on a French restaurant in North West DC. I'm only telling you this because Yelp is threatening to demonetized me. Otherwise, embrace the suck!"

No. When you're deciding on black coffee or white coffee, or the best steaks in Washington DC, you need to kick that silly vegan to the curb and have adults make the decision. Do you really want a Puritan to decide what you'll eat?

//>242 WholeHouseLibrary: and >243 abbottthomas:: when I lived on Capitol Hill I always used to stop at Union station to order a triple espresso on my way to work. Order a triple espresso and usually they throw in the fourth shot for free. Strategery, but not always.//

TPBM will tell us of a local attraction that should be included in LT's Index of the Damned. And if you drink black coffee, fine that's your thing. It's not my thing but my thing also includes me not telling you how to do your thing. Let us face your terrible life decisions together. Arm in arm, heathen, you and I.

245karenmarie
Jun. 12, 2020, 9:11 am

//I was raised to drink milk and sugar with a teensy bit of coffee and that was what I did until one day at work in the summer of 1971 - they were out of creamer. I tried black with sugar and it tasted awful. Then, desperate for coffee, I tried black no sugar and have never looked back. Larry - when I come to visit and sit on your balcony drinking coffee in the morning, you'll just have to suffer with my drinking it black no sugar. *smile*//

246SomeGuyInVirginia
Jun. 14, 2020, 9:49 am

//>245 karenmarie: That won't be suffering at all, just joy.//

>243 abbottthomas: Sorry at, I didn't answer the question. When I was young I worked very hard at looking young. Now that I'm middle-aged, eh, not so much. After 3 months of quarantine, I'd probably pop a vessel if I got on a treadmill at the gym.

TPBM regularly views rare books and manuscripts that libraries have digitized and put online.

247SomeGuyInVirginia
Jun. 15, 2020, 1:27 pm

Okay fine whatever. I'm more than happy to play with myself until somebody else jumps in. It's like the prom all over again. I mean play by myself.

I do not regularly look at rare books that have been digitized and published online. And I usually upbraid myself because of it. I mean, the Vatican is digitizing it's collection of books from the Index. If the pope is going to publish online the original notes from Fanny Hill, the least I can do is look at them.

TPBM watches cooking shows and actually tries the recipes. Okay

248karenmarie
Jun. 15, 2020, 2:02 pm

If you count youtube videos, then yes - I watch FoodWishes.com recipes with Chef John and have successfully made several. I made his fabulous Hungarian Sausage and Potato soup just yesterday and we're going to have it again tonight.

TPBM likes to read cookbooks.

249WholeHouseLibrary
Jun. 15, 2020, 2:43 pm

"Likes" is a funny word when it comes to me and cookbooks.
Being limited in the things I can safely digest, there aren't many ways I can prepare meals that I haven't done at least a thousand times already. Mostly I use a cookbook to keep me honest in the name I use here. The only two books I have in the kitchen is The Joy of Cooking and the phone book.

When my kids were young, their favorite TV shows were Sesame Street and Yan Can Cook. They didn't quite "get" Graham Kerr, but they wanted to try lots of things they saw other chefs make on these shows. Their frustration was only the timeline. They'd see the TV chef put something in the oven that was supposed to cook for a few hours and didn't understand how, just a few minutes later, the host could go the the same oven and pull out a fully-cooked meal; and that they weren't able to do the same. So, I explained it to them so they'd understand: We didn't have a Magic Chef oven.

TPBM never measures ingredients.

250theretiredlibrarian
Jun. 15, 2020, 8:05 pm

Depends...some things I measure every grain of salt, and others it's just "til it looks or tastes right". Deviled eggs, and soup fall under that category. Anything I bake, I measure everything.

TPBM has baked something delicious recently.

251morningwalker
Jun. 16, 2020, 10:05 am

I thought so. It was slices of zucchini, yellow squash and tomatoes, alternately placed for appearance and flavor, with garlic, spices and parmesan cheese sprinkled generously on top.

TPBM gets ideas from Pinterest.

252Darth-Heather
Jun. 16, 2020, 1:06 pm

yeah, i looked there when I wanted to make a charcuterie for a dinner party. I can make stuff that tastes good, but it's much harder to make stuff that looks good.

Ended up with this:


It was all tasty but looks nothing like the pinterest photo.... sigh.

TPBM cooks with gas.

253karenmarie
Jun. 16, 2020, 1:11 pm

I do. Propane, not natural gas. Works quite well.

//Gorgeous, Darth-Heather. Your guests were lucky.//

TPBM is still hunkered down for the pandemic, not coming out for any more than groceries, pharmacy items, bank, and/or gas for their car.

254SomeGuyInVirginia
Bearbeitet: Jun. 16, 2020, 2:48 pm

I am, and it's getting on my nerves. I'm watching these cooking shows where somebody from northern Idaho, where there is no virus, runs off to their local Walmart and farm fresh butchers and comes back with milk, and fresh butter, and new-laid eggs, a quarter ton of flour, fresh vegetables, and all the crap that I don't have access to unless I'm okay with the assumption that whatever I pick up may kill me.

//>252 Darth-Heather: Darth! That's flipping gorgeous! would it seem wrong if I posted that I would slap an old lady to get at those pickle?!//

TPBM calls the caterers.

255Darth-Heather
Bearbeitet: Jun. 16, 2020, 3:19 pm

//>253 karenmarie:, >254 SomeGuyInVirginia: thanks you guys. At least it was fun to do, even if it isn't as fancy as the pinterest ones which are artistically arranged with bows and rosemary sprigs and edible flowers and other stuff I wouldn't have room for. Maybe I need a bigger tray...

Larry, I don't recommend slapping the old lady. My mom won't slap you back, but she will make you stand in the corner and think about what you've done which is brutal... :D plus there's always plenty of pickles - i think i had four more kinds that didn't even get opened //

256Darth-Heather
Jun. 16, 2020, 3:20 pm

Newp, I can cater any kind of party up to about 50 people.

It must be nice to call caterers though, and not have to do dishes after.

TPBM is feeding the fishes.

257WholeHouseLibrary
Jun. 16, 2020, 5:38 pm

No, you must be thinking of Luca Brasi.

// Larry, were she still alive and you went to slap my mother, it'd be the last thing you attempt--and fail at. When I was a proverbial knee-high, she had a reputation in our neighborhood as having no tolerance for anyone getting out of line. Twas many the child who went home with big welts on the side of their faces from where her long, bony fingers made contact. It was a different time. Nowadays, she'd get arrested. Back then, the kids would get swatted by their own parents as well. the called her: The Five Fingers of Death.

TPBM didn't have to look up who I was referring to in my response.

258SomeGuyInVirginia
Bearbeitet: Jun. 17, 2020, 1:26 am

I didn't, but maybe I should have? I'm thinking Fu Manchu? Def some kind of villain.

//>255 Darth-Heather: and >257 WholeHouseLibrary: good Lord, I would never slap an old lady. That's a southern colloquialism that roughly translates out to, "This is so good that I would willingly undertake the unthinkable to obtain it." I grew up in the south where the etiquette surrounding in-person greetings was rigid and inflexible. My dad taught me the hack to it- anyone who was even one minute older than I was sir or ma'am. Race, position in society, a history of regrettable life choices, none of that mattered.
One minute older = sir or ma'am. In my whole life I've raised my voice to one senior and not called het ma'am and that was when I was living on Capitol Hill in the district. I had to actually alter my DNA to be able to confront her.//

Yes, corporal punishment was prevalent when I grew up. And I hated it so very much that, to this day, the only thing I'll raise a hand to are spiders and snakes. I look at spanking the same way that I look at sport hunting. I'm not going to say that a person should or should not engage, but I won't and do realize that you're going to look stupid in both scenarios.//

TPBM recently wrote a book review.

259karenmarie
Jun. 17, 2020, 9:35 am

I did, on my 75ers thread, for Pride and Prejudice, but didn't post it to the works page. I rarely do that any more, usually just for ER books.

TPBM participates in the Early Reviewers program and has gotten some excellent books.

260humouress
Jun. 17, 2020, 4:19 pm

I do although I don’t often request books since I’m very bad at actually reading them; I only qualify for e-books but I prefer holding the real thing in my hands. Recently, though, I’ve been reading more e-books and I requested Esme’s Gift which is the second book in a trilogy. The publisher kindly sent me Esme’s Wish as well, which is the first book. I really liked both of them and enjoyed inhabiting the world that they’re set in. I’m looking forward to the third book ow, whenever it’s released.

TPBM has recently taken up an old hobby again.

261abbottthomas
Jun. 17, 2020, 6:41 pm

Being at home all the time, I have taken to growing vegetables again having not bothered for decades. It's a modest effort. In a small garden surrounded by trees, harbouring honey fungus and with a large mollusc population, I can't be ambitious but courgettes, cucumbers and tomatoes are springing up in grobags and I have some runner beans in large pots. Lettuces and parsley together with sage, mint, rosemary and thyme make up the rest of the edible plants.

TBPM can offer advice about honey fungus and/or slugs

>257 WholeHouseLibrary: // The Godfather, of course. A Sicilian message that would go on the barbecue - or was the fish old and stinky?//

2622wonderY
Jun. 17, 2020, 6:53 pm

At one time I had slugs so big and numerous that you could hear them chewing after dark. I found the best tool was a spray bottle full of ammonia. You prowl with a flashlight and douse them. Their deaths are silent. The shrubbery might be shocked by the ammonia but soon recovers. It’s nitrogen fertilizer after all.

TPBM feels for the poor slugs.

263WholeHouseLibrary
Jun. 18, 2020, 10:10 am

Only in the sense that in the mollusc economy, they can't seem to even to be able to afford to rent a shell to live in, sure.
When I was young and had lots of energy, and still living in Bloomfield, New Jersey, the property I owned had a hill running across the middle of it. I got an idea in my head, and for the next couple of weeks, I dug out that hill and created a 3-sectioned terraced garden area using 10' long 6x6" cants and big old dock spikes. And I have to admit, it looked pretty damn good when I got done. All of the excess dirt (3.5 cubic yards) and surprisingly few rocks that almost, but not quite, qualified as boulders ended up in my elderly nextdoor neighbor's yard where, by addressing the erosion problem, I gave her access to a part of her yard that she hadn't seen in a good twenty years.
We owned the house for six years before moving to Texas, and that garden project was done during the second year, so we had a few a few good years of growing lots of different veggies and herbs -- most of which I couldn't eat.
But our main crop seemed to be slugs. No idea where they came from, but I'd only see them at night, and each night I'd fill half of a 5-gallon plastic bucket with these slimy things and deposit them in a dumpster behind some stores in a strip mall a mile from the house. And the next night, I'd do it again -- for weeks!
And somehow, my second-born ate one, I'm told. He as still in diapers so at most not much older than 2 years old (my son, not the slug,) and my wife (ThiMs) had the two boys in the back yard. Thing 2 reached over the edge of the corner of the retaining wall corner, grabbed one of those slimy things, sat back and put it in his mouth. To this day, he remains the boldest of my kids. The other two will think for a while about how to approach an issue, but he just jumps right in and figures his way out. He says slugs taste a lot not like chicken.

The strangest thing TPBM has ever eaten is/was ________________.

264theretiredlibrarian
Jun. 18, 2020, 12:52 pm

Probably dried squid, or some bottled fermented milk concoction. Both in Japan in the early 1970s. Neither sound at all appealing now.

TPBM will try anything once.

265WholeHouseLibrary
Bearbeitet: Jun. 19, 2020, 6:14 pm

No. I'm not going inject myself with bleach, for example.

TPBM has got big plans for the weekend -- that doesn't involve anyone else.

// As for me, I'm going to be dusting off all my books and bookshelves, and have to wear my 40+-year-old N95 mask when I do it. I still haven't quite recovered from pneumonia yet.//

266abbottthomas
Jun. 19, 2020, 6:20 pm

Big plans? I don't have big plans any more. I'm a bit pushed to find little ones. The big event this week has been a cystoscopy. Tomorrow we will have a family Zoom to mark my daughter's birthday (she's in California) and the abbess and I will split a bottle of English fizz. But no secret solitary vices,

TPBM is getting outside more alcohol than is prudent in lockdown.

267humouress
Jun. 20, 2020, 12:49 am

Not as much as I could if I wanted too. It does sound like an idea though. My sister (a continent away) and I did do a FaceTime cocktail night the other week. My husband’s idea of mixing a cocktail is to add juice or something fizzy to rum or gin. I’ve bought him loads of cocktail recipe books but he hasn’t taken the hint and since he’s in charge of pouring drinks (it’s safer that way - I’d add far too much alcohol) that’s what I usually get. In the course of my mixing we discovered that our Fijian fresh coconut rum had gone off, which just goes to show that we should really be drinking more. (I’m sure that’s what it means.)

TPBM will tell us of some exotic purchase that did (or did not) spectacularly live up to its hype.

268theretiredlibrarian
Jun. 22, 2020, 11:14 am

Last month, perusing Pinterest, I found a recipe for to soak watermelon in tequila; supposed to be "margarita" like. We were having a family BBQ. So I sent my husband to the liquor store for some tequila. He purchased Corozon Tequila de Agave Blanco, for which he paid $50 for 750 ML. The watermelon margarita was quite disappointing. It is now bagged up in the freezer, and for 4th of July, I'm again looking for ways to salvage the drunk watermelon. Because $50 tequila.

TPBM is not at all appalled at the cost of this booze.

2692wonderY
Jun. 22, 2020, 11:35 am

It's only money.

That said, I'm so tight, I won't toss the bottle of Tullamore Dew that I bought on the appreciation of this ad: No Irish Need Apply.
The whisky is not to my taste. Emphatically.

TPBM would take that bottle off my hands.

270Darth-Heather
Bearbeitet: Jun. 22, 2020, 12:38 pm

I tried whisky once. Have you ever been up on a ladder, spraying a hornet's nest with 50 food Raid, and getting some in your mouth because you are screaming? Whisky tastes like that, like hornet spray and fear. No thanks.

//>268 theretiredlibrarian: I think you could blend the watermelon with some strawberries and other fruit to make a frozen tropical fruit salad sort of daquiri? Maybe add some Triple Sec to brighten up the flavor. I haven't had good luck with expensive tequilas either - they are so strong-flavored.//

TPBM has a better idea.

271WholeHouseLibrary
Bearbeitet: Jun. 22, 2020, 12:58 pm

Ha! I was preempted by a simil-post!

Maybe, but I already have plenty of hand sanitizer. And, that's all I'd use it as.

Maybe not scream while spraying? Wait until there's a slight wind in a favorable direction before hitting the nest with Raid?
In 1961, my folks bought a house that had a barn near the back end of the property.
The barn had a hornet nest on the front side; huge! It was more than 3 feet long. One of my brothers took it out with a baseball. He's still got pictures of it.

// In >265 WholeHouseLibrary:, I had big plans for the weekend. Didn't happen. Instead, I had to dig out 3 dozen cinder blocks from what used to be a raised garden and put them at the end of my driveway for someone to haul away. It's not like I didn't need the exercise... but they never showed up. Said they got delayed and would be here sometime today. So, the book dusting can wait.//

TPBM celebrated Father's Day by ________________________.

272SomeGuyInVirginia
Jun. 22, 2020, 11:06 pm

I gave a shout out to the old man, dead lo these many years. OK fine whatever, lo this year and a half.

TPBM recently recommended a book to a friend and insisted that they read it.

273morningwalker
Jun. 24, 2020, 10:47 am

No. I hate to be pushy. I might recommend but I never insist.

TPBM watches TikToks.

274WholeHouseLibrary
Jun. 24, 2020, 11:14 am

No idea what you're talking about.

TPBM can explain (what TikToKs is; everyone here knows I'm a bit of a Luddite.)

275ulmannc
Jun. 24, 2020, 7:40 pm

276humouress
Jun. 25, 2020, 12:28 am

Well, kind of. My 11 year old watches them and has introduced his older brother to them. I get the impression they're short videos (a couple of minutes at most) of things that he finds hilarious and I don't understand the attraction of at all.

TPBM can introduce me to parental controls (on electronic devices) that actually work because the kids can't find loopholes.

277abbottthomas
Jun. 25, 2020, 3:30 am

I can only come up with a locked cupboard. Maybe there are apps called something like HomeJammer or Confiscator - who knows?

TPBM can be more helpful to >276 humouress:

278SomeGuyInVirginia
Jun. 26, 2020, 4:01 am

Yes, take a hammer to it (the device not the child.)

TPBM thinks the kid will just go next door.

279WholeHouseLibrary
Jun. 29, 2020, 12:13 am

More likely, said offspring will shuffle off tho the kitchen and watch the same thing on the refrigerator.

// Back in March, my large 7-year-old refrigerator became overly unreliable a mere 3 weeks after the extended warranty expired. They hadn't sent another renewal notice, either. Up until then, it was a a great machine. Big freezer compartment in the bottom -- held a 30-lb turkey with plenty of room to spare -- French doors above, water and ice dispenser on the left door; a door-within-a-door on the right. After MrsHouseLibrary died, it became mostly empty. Note: that was not meant as a metaphor for my life; I simply didn't need more than two shelves to store everything.
Regardless, the governor issued the Stay-at-Home order the following day, and coincidentally, the cost of having someone come to the house to diagnose and then fix the problem was slightly less than half of what I paid for the damn thing.
So, I saved myself over $500 by buying a new, smaller refrigerator. My criteria was that it had to have an external water and ice dispenser, should be smaller than the one it was replacing, and absolutely had to be a different brand. There was only one that filled the bill. It's a side-by-side; top-to bottom freezer on the left, fridge on the right. Can't put even a 10-lb turkey in it. It's a bit noisier than the original -- which had a linear compressor in it. (It worked the same way as the automatic transmission in your car does.) But that's okay because it works.//

TPBM has noticed that I'm slowly fulfilling my promise to write a hundred stories for you.

280abbottthomas
Jul. 2, 2020, 2:34 pm

I noticed. I haven't kept count though so if it turns out that there are only 99 I won't be able to complain.

Fridges are another of the marked differences between the US and the UK. OK, you can buy big American jobs and top end kitchen designers often use them but more common are much smaller units. Ours has one door for the fridge topped with a small freezer compartment - 10lb turkey? I'd be pushed to get a 3lb chicken in without dismembering it. To get through our lockdown I had to buy another tiny freezer (2ft x 2ftx 2ft) to go in the garage. Was your old fridge connected to the internet? If not, its planned obsolescence was amazingly well organised.

TPBM is as impressed as I am by WHL's linear compressor

2812wonderY
Bearbeitet: Jul. 2, 2020, 4:15 pm

Not a bit, but I can fake it.

The important feature in a fridge, for me, has always been that it stand flush with the cabinets. I bought my second one last year. It's got four (!) doors. French doors at the top for the lighted refrigerator part, Two cabinet doors below for the freezer. There is a wall down the middle of the freezer section, so a 10 lb. turkey won't fit, and wire bins that pull out. The only disconcerting part is that the front of the box is not steel. Magnets on the sides only.

TPBM has a deluxe refrigerator magnet collection. (I had to divest.)

282WholeHouseLibrary
Jul. 2, 2020, 7:03 pm

There was a time ... so many magnets, it was in danger of imploding to a point of singularity. As it was, time and space bent around it. I asked it if its light really went off when the door was closed. In the process of opening and closing the door to verify, it had to perform the test with successively greater speeds. The increasing centripetal force caused the magnets to fly off, thus saving Earth from becoming a second sun in this solar system.

You're welcome.

TPBM has also, at least is some small way, saved the world.

283humouress
Jul. 2, 2020, 8:24 pm

Thank you.

Yes. That is to say, I must have. I do have super powers; I just haven’t discovered the precise nature of them yet.

TPBM does know what their super power(s) is (are)and will relate an anecdote demonstrating them.

//>277 abbottthomas: I have a safe for the purpose but am unable to get my hands on their devices. They learned.

>278 SomeGuyInVirginia: Could work (either way). If we weren’t in lockdown I’m sure they’d try the neighbours.

>279 WholeHouseLibrary: Probably. //

//>281 2wonderY: What are French doors vs cabinet doors on a fridge?//

2842wonderY
Jul. 2, 2020, 9:44 pm

//>283 humouress: The difference is what lies behind the doors. In the top, I can open the left door and still reach items on the right. In the bottom, only the equal space is open for access. See my note about the interior wall.//

285bnielsen
Bearbeitet: Jul. 3, 2020, 2:24 am

My super power is to cause failures especially in computer systems. Curiosity killed the cat, so maybe it's a cat power?
An example: Transfering money from one bank to another allows you to include a message like this " ' %20 &'æøåתר\
For some reason this may cause an error.

TPBM is appalled that someone might do stuff like that to defenceless web pages.

286WholeHouseLibrary
Jul. 3, 2020, 4:17 am

Heck no! That's the sort of stuff a good QA team tests for all the time.
For the better part of 30 years, I wrote code (either new programs, or other people's buggy programs that I fixed) that no QA analyst could break. Not even once.

TPBM is a stickler about getting things right the first time.

287karenmarie
Jul. 4, 2020, 11:12 am

Yes, but being a stickler about it doesn't always cause it to be so. Failures abound, but I persevere.

TPBM can't believe that it's only July.

288morningwalker
Jul. 6, 2020, 10:14 am

What! I can't believe that it is already July and I haven't seen certain family members since Christmas. Was feeling sad over the weekend missing them.

TPBM has also not seen someone dear to them due to the pandemic.

2892wonderY
Jul. 6, 2020, 10:22 am

Yeah. Can't visit the older grandkids, because they aren't social distancing. I can at least visit with the soon to be 2YO, who is crazy cute and very willful.

TPBM knows of a two year old that is not willful.

290WholeHouseLibrary
Jul. 6, 2020, 1:41 pm

I have to say that none of my three sons ever went through a "Terrible Two" stage. Not sure why. Despite all of her shortcomings, ThiMs was a very good mother while the boys were young. It wasn't until they got old enough to verbalize their wishes/desires for/against something she had planned for them or wanted them to do that she displayed her natural personality to them.

And, not to be political, but I've observed an awfully large number of middle-aged people who seem to be reverting to their Terrible Twos regarding how to best comport themselves in these highly charged times.

TPBM has learned a new skill in the past couple of months.

291Heather19
Jul. 6, 2020, 9:37 pm

Hmm, not really. Unless social distancing could count as a skill. Oh, I've become very skilled at breathing through my mouth when wearing a mask (because breathing through my nose leads to fogged glasses).

TPBM owns some kinda of non-phone camera.

292karenmarie
Jul. 6, 2020, 9:39 pm

A very nice Canon 35mm film camera body stripped of lenses (given to daughter for her digital Canon 35mm camera) and one or two cheap 35mm digital cameras, none of which get used.

TPBM keeps too many photos on their cell phone.

293WholeHouseLibrary
Jul. 7, 2020, 2:49 am

Yeah, mostly of geocaches in situ and supporting location-related. The only ones I don't take pictures of are the ones called LPCs or skirt caches.
And I've taken several other pictures. When I get a mind to, I'll go through and delete them, except the "keepers", like one of the clouds affected by the Saharan dust. And the twin fawns -- Thing One and Thing Two. Cute little fellas -- have heads like chihuahuas.

The Person Below Me (just felt like spelling it out...) has scrapbooks and or photo albums filled with pictures from vacations and places visited.

//MrsHouseLibrary was constantly working on them. When she felt she she was going to be finishing one soon, she'd plan another trip somewhere. Our 2014 family reunion trip to Ireland fills 4 very large photo albums. There might be 10 pictures with one or both of us in it. I took maybe 200 pictures, one of which is the wallpaper on my computer. It's mostly black, but centered in it is a wrought iron spiral staircase with a diffused sunlight filling the window behind it. To either side are tall shelves of large leather-bound books, in the Trinity College library in Dublin. She took over 3,000 pictures mostly of animals and vistas filled with hundreds of different shades of green pastures.//

294humouress
Jul. 8, 2020, 2:15 am

//>293 WholeHouseLibrary: Ooh; can we see?//

2952wonderY
Jul. 8, 2020, 6:01 am

Funny you should ask, WHL. I've just been playing with an album that my grandfather, Joe, put together in the teens or 20s. I need to check with a cousin for more specifics. Joe travelled out west with his two best friends, Julius and Henry, when they were young studs.

They went from Milwaukee to North Dakota, where they worked on a wheat farm for a season. Then they went on to California, to the Los Angeles area, and took pictures on the beach. They stayed long enough for Joe to work as a tram conductor on the Redondo Beach line. This is work he continued later in the Milwaukee area.

It seems their girlfriends joined them at one point, as Francis and Elsie appear in some California pictures as well as featuring in the Wisconsin side of the album.

Some of the photos are downright melodrama material. His brother, Oscar, poses with an unnamed coquette. Joe peers our from behind a screen of palm fronds. The best one has the boys dressed in women's wear and Joe is cradling a bundle he titles "My first."

Several photos have been demolished; word is that Elsie, my grandmother, objected to some of the photos where Joe posed with other ladies.

My grandfather died when my dad was a young teen, so there are few stories I heard about him. Finding this album was a great treasure.

TPBM will tell about another trip Out West.

296WholeHouseLibrary
Jul. 8, 2020, 3:42 pm

// FYI, I just added that Trinity College picture to my gallery.//

297bnielsen
Jul. 8, 2020, 6:00 pm

// The Shelves goes ever on and on
// Up from the shelf where they began :-)

// First thought: Nice wrought iron spiral staircase! Second thought: But without it we could have more books :-)

I travelled West two days ago to Skive and brought back a modest amount of books (15). After reading them I'll return most of them to the local second hand shop.

TPBM will tell about another trip Out West.

298humouress
Jul. 9, 2020, 2:15 am

Over the December/ January holidays we visited the west coast of America (Seattle) and then went on to Hawai’i - although, since we live in Singapore, we actually flew eastwards. If we had been visiting the east coast, we would have flipped a coin.

We visited the Space Needle, the Chihuly museum and underground Seattle - back in the day, they decided to drop a cliff on the lower part of town because the tide kept flooding it. This was my first trip to Seattle but third to Hawai’i - I wanted to take the kids and show them that there actually are stars in the night sky. They liked the big island but they fell in love with Oahu; (partly because they love Hawai’i Five 0 and) we visited the ranch where Jurassic Park, Skull Island and so on were filmed. And, of course, like any good LTer, I raided bookshops in Seattle and Honolulu.

And we loved the holiday and are grateful we got to go; the week we came back was the week covid first came to Singapore with conference guests ... and then the whole world shut down. Of course, now we can see a few more stars in the Singapore sky since there’s less pollution - so there’s always an up side.

TPBM will tell of a favourite trip (no, not that kind).

299morningwalker
Jul. 9, 2020, 10:21 am

Oh, okay then. Never mind.

TPBM enjoys outdoor activities.

300abbottthomas
Bearbeitet: Jul. 9, 2020, 11:57 am

Depends on the weather. And I don't do anything that involves running.

TPBM grits their teeth, narrows their eyes and heads into the storm.

301Darth-Heather
Jul. 9, 2020, 12:10 pm

yes! then once I make it to my car and load up the groceries, I give a victory shout of "wow it's coming down in buckets today!"

TPBM is cheering for something today.

3022wonderY
Jul. 9, 2020, 4:03 pm

Yes. The good news keeps pouring in.
Sister got a job.
I finally am submitting final retirement paperwork today.
Preparing for closing on a new-to-me house near the grandchild. (Had to wire a chunk of money, and watch out for the pirates!)
The Supreme Court.

TPBM needs some cheering up.

303WholeHouseLibrary
Jul. 12, 2020, 2:40 pm

It's hard to say -- both whether I need some, and whether it'd work.
I've had this underlying tendency all my life to be quiet and withdrawn, bashful, introverted.
My maternal grandmother called it Irish melancholy -- Why are we here on this earth if not to suffer?
And yet, in the pre-COVID days, I could hide all of that and be the witty, jovial one at a gathering; pick up a guitar and belt out a tune, and in the past several years, Open Mic Night, which if/when it ever starts up again, I'll be the emcee of. Mind you, there weren't that many parties, and I've never imbibed, so anything I did like that, I did completely sober. And I both enjoy it and hate doing it at the same time.
Bicameral dichotomies are nothing to be trifled with.

TPBM has their act together.

304morningwalker
Jul. 13, 2020, 8:57 am

Whoever told you that doesn't know me at all. But thanks for thinking it's true.

>302 2wonderY: Congratulations all around!!

TPBM is celebrating something too.

305karenmarie
Jul. 13, 2020, 9:02 am

Still haven't caught Covid-19. A small victory that I celebrate every day. Of course pretending that we're still in lockdown except for essential services makes it far likelier that I'll continue to stay safe. And I'm saving money on haircuts and getting mani/pedis.

TPBM hasn't gotten a haircut yet.

306WholeHouseLibrary
Jul. 13, 2020, 10:34 am

That would be me. It's longer than it's ever been and is bugging bejeebus out of me. But Thursday, that's going to change. I'm going to go to the barber shop. My hair is still unusually thick, especially for someone in their late-60s. They cut it and then thin it out. it's a risk that I'm willing to accept, but you better believe that when I get home afterward, the clothes are going directly into the washer, and I'll be taking a scalding shower immediately after.
It'll be the middle of the month, so I'm due for one anyway -- the shower, I mean. And with the temperatures being over 100 for the past week -- supposed to hit 107 today -- I won't have to use the hot water. Even at 9:30 in the morning, the water from the cold tap 91°.

TPBM prefer would prefer to deal with the heat than the cold.

3072wonderY
Jul. 13, 2020, 10:59 am

Yes! Resoundingly. I recall buying my first down jacket as a college student and realizing just how cold I'd been all my youth. Before that comparison, it was just a fact of life. We lived in a drafty old barn of a house, and there were heat registers that we camped on through the winter, when we could get away with it. But not enough to go around with all the siblings. And playing in the snow was always accompanied with wet and frigid extremities. Misery!

This is the first year the heat has been any issue, and I don't have air conditioning. The roof fan motor died and I failed to get it replaced soon enough. Have I mentioned this up thread? Might have.

I work hard outside through the summer months on my little acreage, and it keeps me youthful.

TPBM has seen more wild animals this year...

308WholeHouseLibrary
Jul. 15, 2020, 2:47 pm

If you measure by quantity, no; but by variety, yes mostly.
There are still almost two dozen deer in my yard every night. There were seven pregnant does over the winter but I've seen only three fawns -- two are twins -- and the other, older one, I've seen only twice. Not sure what happened to the rest. The twins are small enough that their heads look more like they're distant relatives of chihuahuas. There have also been a number of coyote sightings, and one of them is huge compared to the others -- longer body length, longer legs, much more mass to it. It may explain why I haven't seen any opossum or rabbits this year. And yet, the neighborhood feral black-and-white cat persists. We also have a few families of foxes in this, and nearby neighborhoods.
As I write this, there are three hummingbirds at the feeder. I stopped putting out bird seed years ago because, by day, the squirrels ate most of it, keeping the birds from getting at it, and at night, the deer would spill whatever seed was left out and lick it off the ground. It was like crack to them. Beyond that, there are still various smaller birds that apparently nest nearby -- wrens, titmice, others that I have no idea what species they are, plus an occasional woodpecker. If I want to see a heron, I can walk to the loop at the far end of the hike and bile trail that runs next to my house. There's a loop there because of a creek down a steep embankment cutting off any extension of the trail.
And the best thing about all this wildlife is: they're not in my house. I replace the water in the feed bowls every morning, mostly because they suck them dry overnight, but if there's any left, I dump the water to kill off any mosquito larvae, let the bowls completely dry (just to be sure), and fill them up again.

TPBM needs a haircut.

309abbottthomas
Jul. 15, 2020, 5:21 pm

Yup! I think that hair-length-wise I have re-set and am in no hurry to meet my barber.

The Abbess rushed out ASAP to see her hairdresser after The Fourth of July and was a bit put out by being told that she had, for some time, been getting colour applied to all her hair rather than just the highlights she had thought she was getting.

TPBM is relaxed about hair-dye

3102wonderY
Jul. 15, 2020, 5:36 pm

I'm violently against it! Doesn't stop all of my descendants, including the males, from pinking, bluing and greening.

TPBM thinks there are worse things.

311WholeHouseLibrary
Jul. 15, 2020, 9:32 pm

Sure! All of them together on a same head.

My opinion only, and it doesn't count for anything, but with rare exception, I think people look best in their natural hair color(s).

TPBM knows which is the most-struck key on a computer keyboard.

312humouress
Jul. 16, 2020, 4:40 am

The delete key?

TPBM knows how to keep dogs happy during thunderstorms.

313karenmarie
Jul. 16, 2020, 7:41 am

My sister and her husband go to the middle room of the house with the dogs, close all the doors, give the dogs some kind of medication, and put something on the TV that will divert them or drown out the sound. They do the same thing during fireworks. I think they have some kind of dog anxiety jackets, too.

TPBM has heard an an extraordinary amount of fireworks this summer, up to and including M80s.

3142wonderY
Jul. 16, 2020, 8:42 am

///>311 WholeHouseLibrary: They've done that; for events like the Rainbow Parade. I don't like the dyes, but I always permitted it in my girls, as a temporary personal expression. The younger wore a peacock blue mohawk 8 or 10 inches proud in her freshman year at high school. It's really the tattoos that made me cry.///

315bnielsen
Jul. 17, 2020, 6:16 am

# >311 WholeHouseLibrary: On my keyboard it's Esc since I had a pile of books creep onto the upperleft of the keyboard by night, so it must have been eight hours of ESC ESC ESC ...

316WholeHouseLibrary
Jul. 17, 2020, 2:12 pm

In my neighborhood, not too much. Most of my neighbors are empty nesters, so they've grown out of the impulse to burn down the neighborhood by shooting off miniature sticks of dynamite to watch as embers fall and ignite the tinder-dry grass. Other neighborhoods, though, equating fireworks to rock concerts, there were four Woodstocks going on all night and for few days on either side.
The deer all camped out in my yard while this was going on. It's a tradition with them.

> 312, >314 2wonderY:, Okay, so I guess it depends on what your input device is. Mine is a Windows-based laptop, others have Apples, and others use whatever flavor of smart-ish phone they have. Hadn't considered that.
My >311 WholeHouseLibrary: post has 240 characters in it (including spaces.) I must have hit the Backspace key (same thing as Delete on Apple computers) over 200 times because of not striking a key hard enough and not seeing it until a few words later, or bumping against the Caps Lock key while typing an a. As I get older, I find I have to look at the keyboard more than the screen when I type.

The last time TPBM got a hand-written letter in the mail was __________________.

//I got one the other day regarding MrsHouseLibrary. It's a keeper.//

317Heather19
Bearbeitet: Jul. 17, 2020, 11:32 pm

Hmm, I believe... Wait, do cards count as letters? If yes, a few weeks ago, late birthday cards. If no, I think the most recent *letter* was around September of last year. Fun fact: It was sent from Canada (to Arizona) and took almost *three months* to get here according to the postage date.

TPBM has had some form of peanut butter in the past week.

318karenmarie
Jul. 18, 2020, 9:34 am

Oh yes. A peanuts-and-salt crunchy peanut butter sandwich on whole wheat bread with Simply Fruit Raspberry spread.

TPBM prefers creamy peanut butter.

319rastaphrog
Jul. 19, 2020, 9:02 am

Most definitely. What goes with it depends on my mood and whats available.

TPBM prefers marmalade over jelly or jam.

320SomeGuyInVirginia
Jul. 20, 2020, 9:46 pm

You could prefer marmalade over jelly or jam but that would just make you a monster. It's always about jelly and jam. Fats Waller never wrote no rag about no marmalade. And he could have if he had wanted to. Considered the joy that he bought to his public with the song Sweet pickle rag. Fats was not above up any condiments and often included them in his work. In fact, by 1936 public sentiment against marmalade had become so strong on the issue of marmalade in popular music That at any time where it might have been mentioned, it was mentioned in the same way that Calvinism was, and uncomfortable wooden chairs, thin gruel, early morning calisthenics, and a rather ghastly rondeley called Which of us is the Greatest Sinner Now, eh?

TPBM dances where is Masters send him.

321WholeHouseLibrary
Jul. 21, 2020, 2:07 pm

Not me. After the motorcycle accident in '73, my focus was on learning on how to walk again. It progressed to getting up and down stairs, ladders, uneven ground, and slopes. There are things that leg still can't do, and dancing wasn't a practical priority for me. ThiMs didn't like to dance, and MrsHouseLibrary, despite having had several years of ballet lessons, wasn't comfortable being out on a dance floor -- another of our compatibilities.

// Hey there SGiV! Where've ya been? It's been almost a month now.

TPBM rejoices in the return of SomeGuyInVirginia (but not as much as I do!)

322abbottthomas
Jul. 21, 2020, 4:01 pm

Since the Covid lockdown I have been finding it increasingly difficult to relate to the passage of time. One day is so much like another. But now you come to mention it SGIV has been absent since the end of June so his return is very welcome. There are too many bad reasons for people to disappear from view So let’s rejoice with loud fal-la!

TPBM will sing along.

323abbottthomas
Jul. 24, 2020, 11:29 am

Sorry! I forgot. Singing has become socially unacceptable since Covid-19.

TPBM will hum, cheerfully but quietly, and preferably into the crook of their elbow

324WholeHouseLibrary
Jul. 24, 2020, 8:38 pm

You have no idea how often I got that request at Open Mic Night!

TPBM has seen Comet Neowise.

3252wonderY
Jul. 24, 2020, 9:09 pm

I looked, but I think it was hiding behind my ridgetop. I did spend some time gazing admiringly at my magnificent night sky and witnessed a long leisurely meteor streak across half of the sky,

TPBM can tell me whether Neowise's tail is visible to the eye.

326humouress
Jul. 24, 2020, 11:27 pm

Sorry, I can't - although googling tells me it's unlikely. I am rejoicing in the return of stars to the Singapore night sky as pollution levels drop. Or, rather, dropped; sadly the stars are starting to disappear again as lockdowns around the world are curtailed/ lifted/ ignored.

TPBM can provide us with a picture of Comet Neowise.

327WholeHouseLibrary
Jul. 27, 2020, 11:04 am

Here you go.

>

328WholeHouseLibrary
Jul. 29, 2020, 9:16 am

Oops! Forgot to add the next challenge!

TPBM could have done better.

329karenmarie
Jul. 29, 2020, 10:03 am

No, afraid not. The last comet I was interested in was Halle-Bop and my husband and then-2-year old daughter watched it as many nights as it was visible for us. I watched it a few times, but the lasting impact is that I still always make one buttermillk biscuit shaped like a comet with the last leftover bits of dough and call it Halle-Bop.

TPBM has made pancakes in special funny shapes.

3302wonderY
Jul. 29, 2020, 11:26 am

I cheated with this old Aunt Jemima mold.


But it's a poor design, and you can see difficulties, especially with the swan's neck.

TPBM can tell me how to find the url of an image in Microsoft Edge. Grrr!

331WholeHouseLibrary
Jul. 29, 2020, 12:34 pm

Not me! I use FireFox because it's fairly intuitive and it works.
I've had all sorts of issues with MS and Google browsers, I've sworn off (and at) them. With their default access permissions, there are still several common, general access sites I can't get to. And Google is just crap, although I quite like Google Earth.

Perhaps TPBM can help 2wonderY.

332SomeGuyInVirginia
Jul. 29, 2020, 7:09 pm

Oi. I can, I have an Adobe creative suite subscription. There has to be a way that I can clean up that outline of a squirrel to make it more squirrel-like. And I shall. Rose I'mma make you a squirrel girl! Squuuiiirrreellllll.

TPBM creates seems.

333WholeHouseLibrary
Jul. 30, 2020, 12:02 pm

//The interpretation of meaningless data has been attempted.//

334bnielsen
Jul. 31, 2020, 3:44 am

// >330 2wonderY: I try to keep mold away from food stuff ;-) Joke aside, I have made pancakes in funny shapes, but always by mistake!

335Beggarnews09
Jul. 31, 2020, 4:43 am

Dieser Benutzer wurde wegen Spammens entfernt.

336karenmarie
Jul. 31, 2020, 10:28 am

Back to >330 2wonderY:: I use Firefox AND Edge, will save you all the gory details of why. However, in Edge I hover over the image I want the URL for, right click on my mouse, left click on the 'Copy image link' option and then can paste it wherever I want it.

TPBM had pancakes or waffles for breakfast recently.

337rastaphrog
Aug. 1, 2020, 9:28 am

Well, I had pancakes and sausage at what's considered breakfast time, but as I work nights, it was my dinner.

TPBM recently tried a new food.

338WholeHouseLibrary
Bearbeitet: Aug. 1, 2020, 11:45 am

Jicama. It's a tuber; kind of like a potato, kind of like a turnip. Relatively bland and low carb, so healthy overall. You have to peel them because the outer skin is toxic.
I tried one over 10 years ago, when I was diagnosed with diabetes, so I made changes to my diet, among other things. I didn't recall why I never bought a second one, so about six weeks ago, I bought another. Still bland as all get-out.
When I make a salad, I usually chop up a carrot into chunks and put them in a small blender rather than spend ten minutes making thin slices of it. So, I added some jicama to it. Slimy. That's why it took ten years before I bought a second one. The peeler, the knife, the cutting board, the three parts of that little blender, the salad bowl, the fork, my fingers ... took a lot of dish washing detergent to get them feeling clean again.

TPBM has the knife-handling skills of a culinary chef, or if not, could make a knife in a Forged in Fire competition that could qualify for their second round of testing.

339abbottthomas
Aug. 1, 2020, 5:38 pm

As with many aspects of life, I may not have the knowledge or skills but I do have a book about it. Knife Skills Illustrated by Peter Hertzmann. No books on blacksmithing though. I’m sure there is something on You Tube.

TPBM can confidently and rapidly slice an onion without including any bits of finger tip.

340WholeHouseLibrary
Aug. 3, 2020, 12:03 pm

In a word, no. And that applies to any vegetative matter. It's the issue I have with my right hand; can't grip well enough to be anything other than extremely cautious while doing it. And, I have no reason to use an onion in anything I cook.

I've been working on my baking skills again. Not necessarily a good use of my time considering I'm diabetic, but I used to bake all the time since I was very young. Currently (over the past two months) am trying to perfect my hard roll skills. Still coming out way to hard--need to adjust the humidity down inside the oven--but the bigger issues I have involve poppy seeds. Specifically, the even distribution thereof and their adhesion to the bread itself.

TPBM may be able to help me.

341WholeHouseLibrary
Aug. 7, 2020, 8:55 am

Or maybe not. Seriously, almost four days, and no one even as much as suggested an egg was coating.
That's all I've been able to come up with. And, I've learned that, depending on the coloration and albedo one wishes, there are at least a dozen ways to prepare such a concoction. Choices ... too damn many choices.
I've got a tele-med appointment at 10, but after that, I'm gonna raise me some dough.

TPBM's big plans for the weekend are __________________.

342karenmarie
Bearbeitet: Aug. 7, 2020, 9:09 am

same old same old. Bill runs errands and brings home take out food for lunch from one of three restaurants in our small town that he's willing to eat food from on Saturday. Reading, puttering, some housework but not much, watching The Mentalist, which we are seriously addicted to. I'll make brekkie Sunday morning, probably sausage and pancakes, and possibly make chili for dinner.

//egg wash with a bit of water works well with poppy and sesame seeds. I recently made some brioche hamburger buns with sesame seeds.//

TPBM's plans are a tad more exciting.

343bnielsen
Aug. 7, 2020, 10:17 am

Local temperatures around 30 deg C for Friday, Saturday, Sunday, so the big plan is not to melt.

TPBM's big plan is to melt softly and slowly.

344LucasColeman
Aug. 7, 2020, 10:39 am

Dieser Benutzer wurde wegen Spammens entfernt.

345bnielsen
Aug. 7, 2020, 1:26 pm

// Ah the person above has melted hard and quickly as spam :-)

346WholeHouseLibrary
Aug. 7, 2020, 2:57 pm

That's only 86 degrees Fahrenheit. That's considered Arctic temperatures here in central Texas at this time of year. It's so hot and dry here, a dropped ice cube evaporates before it hits the ground.

Had a very good-news kind of tele-visit with my endocrinologist earlier today. Happy to report I'm at a new 10-year low in my weight, and in my A1C. In medical terms, I'm considered pre-diabetic again.
On the downside, I have to start a new prescription to get my thyroid back in balance. Long story short, I might actually start sleeping for more than 15 minutes at a time. It's been years!

TPBM has no trouble with sleeping through the night.

347abbottthomas
Bearbeitet: Aug. 7, 2020, 4:32 pm

Well, it happens very occasionally but usually I get up once a night to pee (since we are discussing medical history!) I get back to sleep promptly unless I start thinking about all the stuff in my house which will have to be disposed of after my demise - of course I really mean the books. If I were Jeff Bezos I would build a pyramid in the Arizona desert that would house the lot but as it is .....

TPBM has worked out a strategy for such an eventuality.

348WholeHouseLibrary
Aug. 10, 2020, 12:26 pm

That depends. After MrsHouseLibrary died, my goal was to get rid of 90% of everything in this -way-too-big-for-just-one-person house, and buy a much smaller single-story house, preferably in the same neighborhood. The latter is possible. I've been thwarted from the possessions-relocations effort by a lack of interested receivers. Lots of her family-related heirloom-type items ... no one really wants or has room for. Karrell was the youngest of her siblings, and they're of the same frame of mind that I am -- beyond time to start downsizing. And none of our children (all in their 30/40s) want any of it.
It's been more than a year now that I've brought anything to Goodwill, and now with the pandemic, it's not worth my effort. And I've stopped trying to sell stuff because I don't like to haggle. I set a firm price, say it's non-negotiable, and still get hassled.
Mostly, it's the paperwork that's bogging me down. Once I'm gone, there's easily two tons (no exaggeration) of tax information, bills, medical history that can get shredded the next day. So, I'm trying to sort out what should stay and what can go. My heirs shouldn't have to sift through all of this.

TPBM keeps everything up to date, and is neat as the proverbial pin.

349humouress
Aug. 13, 2020, 12:43 am

Pfft!

I have ambitions though.

TPBM actually is.

350Darth-Heather
Aug. 13, 2020, 10:14 am

I wasn't always, but after several years at a job involving testing wastewater for various types of bacteria, I've learned some better habits.

I definitely don't bite my nails anymore...

TPBM is straight as an arrow.

351abbottthomas
Aug. 13, 2020, 3:07 pm

I try.

TPBM succeeds.

352morningwalker
Aug. 14, 2020, 10:29 am

No, what fun would that be?

TPBM has a favorite line from a movie and will share it.

353WholeHouseLibrary
Bearbeitet: Aug. 14, 2020, 10:46 am

Several. I tend to use "I'll be there." a lot. (Tom Joad, Grapes of Wrath)
MrsHouseLibrary loved watching Hot Fuzz (Simon Pegg, Nick Frost). There's a scene where they come upon robed characters in their enclave chanting the last few words of every sentence the speaker says. So it became a thing with us to chant "the greater good" anytime we heard it. Didn't matter if it was on TV or in a store or wherever. Just another of those thousand things I still love about her.

TPBM had discovered some latent talent. (OOH! Same letters, different order. I wonder if there's a word for that!)

354abbottthomas
Aug. 16, 2020, 6:13 pm

Since the lockdown I have been growing edible plants, mostly in Gro-bags. Horticulture was certainly latent but I'm not sure it is (yet) a talent. I am not very happy with the runner beans and my tomatoes are resolutely green with occasional blossom-end rot. The courgettes (or zucchini if you prefer) are, however, a triumph!

TPBM can help me with a recipe or two which will keep me eating courgettes as fast as they grow

355ulmannc
Aug. 16, 2020, 7:46 pm

I do not have one but TPBM will find one and become a millionaire. How many ways can you prepare a baseball bat or cricket bat depending on which side of the pond you reside?

3562wonderY
Aug. 16, 2020, 9:01 pm

Pinterest keeps suggesting garlic and cheese bake. I just processed a bunch as relish or chow-chow. I’ll let you know how it turns out.

TPBM will explain the bat segue.

357morningwalker
Aug. 17, 2020, 10:31 am

You're kidding right? You're asking me something about sports? Sorry I can't help you.

TPBM thinks the spelling of segue is odd and has another word they think is oddly spelled, or can answer the bat segue by >355 ulmannc:.

358WholeHouseLibrary
Aug. 17, 2020, 12:51 pm

Ummm ... linseed oil? That's my best guess. They serve the same function for different sports, but one is a better instrument for fraternity-hazing rituals, I'm told.

As for words, I find it curious that people fumble with certain ones that are pronounced exactly as they are spelled. For example: Shpadoinkle.

TPBM may (or may not) be able to provide another example.

359ulmannc
Aug. 17, 2020, 1:36 pm

>354 abbottthomas: >356 2wonderY: Where I live zucchinis that exceed 24 inches in length are considered a baseball bat. I did see one silly kid try to hit a baseball with one and it appeared to explode in many pieces! I'm sure if one tried to use a large one to hit a cricket ball, a similar "event would occur!! A local name for a monster zucchini.

360Darth-Heather
Aug. 17, 2020, 3:12 pm

>358 WholeHouseLibrary: yes, my last name.

"Last name?" "Marmorstein."
"Can you repeat that?" "Mar. Mor. Steen."
"Please spell that for me." "MARMORSTEIN"
"Oh, it's spelled just like it sounds." "yes, we get that a lot."

I guess it makes sense when you see and hear it together.

TPBM keeps it simple.

361bnielsen
Aug. 17, 2020, 5:37 pm

Ah like: Ovuvuevuevue Enyetuenwuevue Ugbemugbem Osas

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W85F-UmnbF4

TPBM knows someone with a taxing name.

362WholeHouseLibrary
Aug. 17, 2020, 6:09 pm

You mean my friend, Keogh Efile Roth?

Really, toward the end, that fellow in the video looked like he was about to punch out the lights of the guy with the camera.

TPBM is in anxious anticipation of __________________.

363morningwalker
Aug. 18, 2020, 10:30 am

I was in anxious anticipation yesterday because our library re-opened the physical building, and while everything is different, and I was never in danger of running out of books, ebooks or audio books to read, it was wonderful to once again browse amongst the stacks.

TPBM likes sushi.

364theretiredlibrarian
Aug. 18, 2020, 6:09 pm

I love sushi. There are a few I won't eat, but not many.

TPBM will tell us of the type of food they enjoy.

365ulmannc
Aug. 18, 2020, 8:17 pm

Oysters! Preferably from Chincoteague VA.

TPBM has a favorite place for them!

366WholeHouseLibrary
Aug. 19, 2020, 12:26 am

Generally, in their natural habitat. Pretty sure it's safe for me to eat an oyster, as all my dietary restrictions seem to be plant-based, but really, to me oysters are sea snails with bigger homes. Completely unappealing to me.

TPBM is an accomplished fisherperson.

367theretiredlibrarian
Aug. 19, 2020, 5:34 pm

I've gone fishing out of Port Aransas several times, and have caught several nice sized red snappers, and once a pretty big kingfish. However, my try at trout fishing last year was unsuccessful.

TPBM will tell their fish story.

368WholeHouseLibrary
Bearbeitet: Aug. 23, 2020, 1:37 am

The only interaction-with-fish story I have is somewhere here on LibraryThing in the first of my four I am not a pet Person essays. Look it up if you wish.

That being said, when I was seven or eight, my folks took the family (seven siblings at that point) on vacation. Apparently, that year, they did it on the cheap side because we spent a week at my maternal grandmother's cousin's house in Rifton, NY. We called her Aunt Annie, and she was the last one-room schoolteachers in the state; and now there's a high school named after her. When she retired, she had been teaching music, and was a pretty decent artist, preferring oil paint as her medium. The one thing I remember about that old wooden house was the the etched window pane in the front door. The lettering at the bottom read Niagara Falls, and above it was a woman in perhaps 1890s dress with a parasol and the falls in the background.

Rifton is a small town midway between New Palts and Kingston, the latter of which is where my mother's family lived for generations, and coincidentally where my father's mother's family of from. I'm pretty sure they didn't know each other, but that's a story for another time.

The New York State Thruway passes high over a river in the southern part of Rifton, and it was there that my father took us to go fishing. It didn't make sense to me. My father always fainted at the sight of blood. (Another long story I could tell you...) Regardless, there we were with fishing poles in the shade of the New York Thruway. Maybe a hundred yards west of us was a wooden covered bridge which was only open to pedestrian traffic, named Perrine's Bridge.My father took a photograph of my mother sitting on the ground with Perrine's Bridge filling the background. He used a Kodak Brownie camera. Many years later, I actually met Brownie; that was his nickname; it's really Lane Knight.

My father took thousands of pictures -- black and white, color, Polaroids, slides. When they sold the house in New Jersey to retire in Florida in late 1983, they gave several mementos to each of the siblings. I ended up with (among other things) a large cardboard box full of the pictures, slides, and negatives that my father had taken. And they also gave me two framed paintings done by Aunt Annie, one of which was Perrine's Bridge from the same perspective which my father had photographed my mother. Not sure why they chose to give those paintings to me. My younger brother and a sister were the artists among my siblings. Now, the photos, I understand. They gave them to me because at the time, I always carried an SLR camera and several lenses and filters everywhere I went; even used it for astrophotography. And it was several years later, after I moved to Texas, that I finally went through that box and made piles of relevant photos for each of my siblings, and mailed them off to each of them. In that large box, was the photo of my mother with Perrine's Bridge in the background. So, I stuck it in the corner of the painting frame, which has been hanging on a wall in my bedroom for over thirty years now.

In 2007, I took Karrell on a 3-week tour of my life -- the house my folks had when I was born, the house we move to when I was nine, schools, the neighborhoods, relatives, then up to the Adirondacks where I went to college, other places (a cousin's house where I spent many summers canoeing on the Delaware River), and finally two weeks in New York City. On our way back from the Adirondacks, I got of the Thruway and managed to find Perrine's Bridge.

So now, on my bedroom wall is the painting of Perrine's Bridge with the black and white photo of my mother with the bridge in the background, tucked into one corner. And in the other corner of the painting, is a color picture of MrsHouseLibrary sitting exactly the same way, but showing the photo of my mother, with the bridge in the background.

And that's my fish story. It was ~THAT~ big.

//This was my second time writing that story. I had a much better version three days ago, but I accidentally deleted it. Doh!//

TPBM never does anything that stupid.

369karenmarie
Aug. 23, 2020, 10:26 am

What, accidentally delete stuff? I've gotten better over the years but still occasionally delete something before saving the latest and greatest.

TPBM is still looking for a book they misplaced.

370ulmannc
Aug. 23, 2020, 11:21 am

Book or keys or a sock or a . . .

TPBM has a (dog, cat, etc) that hides things and I (do/do not know) where they are hidden

3712wonderY
Aug. 23, 2020, 12:11 pm

Nobody to blame besides myself. I keep a scribbled list of items lost posted on the bathroom mirror. Requests to my long deceased uncle will often enough surface the item. It’s his specialty in my family.

TPBM posts other kinds of notes on mirrors.

372humouress
Aug. 23, 2020, 3:16 pm

I’ve given up posting notes anywhere. They usually end up obscuring that surface before anything gets actioned, thereby making posting them redundant.

TPBM is watching the PSG/ Bayern Munich match.

373WholeHouseLibrary
Bearbeitet: Aug. 23, 2020, 7:36 pm

I'm not even remotely aware of what you're talking about. After "Huh?", my first thought that it was some sort of self-striking incendiary device. Really. But I'm pretty sure I'm wrong.

TPBM can clear up this mystery for me.

// Edited to fix a typo.//

374abbottthomas
Aug. 23, 2020, 5:01 pm

Of course I should have been, but I was making a leek pie. This is the Champions League Final between a top German, and a top French side, the Brits already knocked out - soccer, do I need to say?

My big difficulty with a match like this is deciding who to support. I was born in WW2 and brought up to regard the Boche as the enemy but on the other hand the French are, as everyone knows, cheese-eating surrender monkeys. German music is better than French, French literature is better than German (sorry Goethe!). My great-grandfather was German but he didn't like their politics so escaped to the USA.

TPBM knows where they come from and has no problem with knowing who to support.

375WholeHouseLibrary
Aug. 23, 2020, 7:55 pm

I do! New Jersey, and uncharacteristically proud of it. Being wedged between Philadelphia and New York City, we've gotten used to taking a lot of smack talk, and are often self-depreciating. Or maybe it's because we'll tell you in no uncertain terms exactly where you stand with us. Regardless, we have a lot of empathy for underdogs. Take the '66 Mets, for example ... please.

That being said, I very much like where I live; it's just the management that's pretty messed up -- plus too many folks that I'm sure have spent way too much time in the hot sun.

TPBM can relate.

376ulmannc
Aug. 24, 2020, 9:42 am

Sure can! Let's not forget the '64 Phillies. I was in VT right up on the border on vacation with my parents and the only radio station I could get was a French one from Montreal. I learned french numbers real quick and the Phillies were always on the low end of the score. Ouch.

I do like where I live and I know I have been out in the sun too much for too many BAD Phillies games but at least they won the World Series once in my lifetime!

TPBM has celebrated a sports world championship.

377karenmarie
Aug. 24, 2020, 9:59 am

US Women’s World Cup FIFA soccer comes to mind. 2015 AND 2019. I really prefer watching the women to the men.

//>374 abbottthomas: True belly-laugh moment with ‘cheese-eating surrender monkeys’, abbottthomas. Thank you.//

TPBM is in a reading slump.

378WholeHouseLibrary
Aug. 26, 2020, 10:24 am

Guilty, as charged. I haven't read a book (for the pleasure of reading) in probably four years now.
That being said, I've edited five, and currently working on a sixth. I still journal, but not consistently, and at some point very soon, I'm going to have to commit to the final draft of The Story Behind the Story Behind the Monument, which you'll be able to read for yourself shortly thereafter.
And, I've no need, want, nor desire to buy any more books. There's over a thousand I've yet to read already in my house. They call to me, but I do not respond.
It's not a slump as much as it is the bottom of a sheer cliff.

TPBM loses all self-control in bookstores.

379abbottthomas
Bearbeitet: Aug. 26, 2020, 2:41 pm

Well, not all self-control. I would never take my clothes off, neck a bottle of Malbec, sing the Lord Chancellor's nightmare song from Iolanthe or make advances to the person behind the counter but I suppose I am a little less inhibited than normal - I think it's the smell of old books....

TBPM draws the line differently.

380WholeHouseLibrary
Aug. 28, 2020, 2:47 pm

I can't draw at all, freehand -- not a clean line on the page.
Give me a draft board, rulers. triangles, a few .000 pens, and a protractor, and I can create orthographic projections I'd be proud to hang on a wall.
Before I moved to Texas, I owned a house in New Jersey that ThiMs and I decided to renovate. Had to hire a contractor to do most of it, but I also did a lot of the work myself. The contractor handled the permits and such, but the building inspector wanted to see plans because we were removing two walls in the living room, tearing off the house-width front porch, pushing out the foundation ... a LOT of work. So I stayed up all night to make six drawings depicting exposed studs, some new plumbing, where the electrical wires were being rerouted, where the new windows were going to be .... I got a call from the building inspector. He'd never seen that kind of detail before, and couldn't find a single thing I overlooked.

TPBM is partial to the _________________ style of art.

381ulmannc
Aug. 28, 2020, 3:02 pm

Does an artist count? I'm a Charles Marion Russell nut. I call it "western art". TPBM knows styles of art that >380 WholeHouseLibrary: is talking about. I just know I love Charlie Russell, his painting, his sketches, his writing, his sculptures, and the like.

382SomeGuyInVirginia
Aug. 29, 2020, 7:05 pm

>380 WholeHouseLibrary: Big. Big art is for museums, and that's classy. Show me a canvas that dwarfs the couch and I'm happy.

TPBM already knew that you can't wash fruit in the dishwasher, even the kind with a rind on it which is just counterintuitive but you can't.

383WholeHouseLibrary
Aug. 29, 2020, 8:26 pm

I wasn't aware that you couldn't, but I never considered doing it either.
After MrsHouseLibrary died, my dishwasher has become a big drying rack. Once every six months or so, I'll stop washing things by hand, let the dishwasher accumulate maybe half a load or more, and fire it up. just to maintain it in working order.
Most of the time, I put the coffeemaker parts in the top to dry after I've rinsed them out, and pots and pans go in the bottom as needed after they've been washed.
Can't leave anything out. I've got microbe-sized ants that seem to be unaffected by anything I've used on them (other than my thumb) -- ant spray, acetone, WD-40, turpentine .... So, I keep my counters spotless, but they always mount a raid and find something when my back is turned.

SGiV, you've got astounding art museums available to you. We've got a few that are a mix of great old paintings and myopic modern stuff. But, you have to go to Dallas to see epic-sized paintings -- Fredrick Church's The Iceberg, for example. Awesome!

Yeah, I'm a big fan of the Hudson River School style -- massive landscapes, teeny, tiny people.

TPBM is looking forward to autumn. (I always do -- it's the only time I can get Macintosh apples.)

384karenmarie
Aug. 30, 2020, 10:06 am

Autumn is my favorite season, hands down, and I'm already getting excited at seeing a few yellow leaves on the trees and changing sun angles.

TPBM has bird feeders and enjoys watching the antics of the birds that come to them.

385Heather19
Aug. 31, 2020, 1:10 am

I do not have bird feeders, but there is a tree right outside our front window that almost always has birds fluttering around. Unfortunately I believe bird feeders are one of the many many things we aren't allowed to hang outside (live in an apartment).

TPBM knows that dire wolves were real at one point and not just some Game of Thrones creation.

386WholeHouseLibrary
Aug. 31, 2020, 2:44 am

I was not aware -- of the actual creature; nor of that throne game. Is it some kind of strategy game, akin to chess, perhaps?

TPBM can tell me where to find the rules for said game. So far, I've only found references to some cheesy TV show.

387morningwalker
Aug. 31, 2020, 9:50 am

I think what >385 Heather19: is referring to is the cheesy TV show, which I believe is based on a series of books. I didn't watch it or read the books so not sure, but kind of sure.

//>383 WholeHouseLibrary: Try putting bay leaves anywhere you think they may be entering. It works for me.//

TPBM has plans for Labor Day weekend.

388theretiredlibrarian
Sept. 1, 2020, 4:49 pm

Our new patio is at long last completed, and we are hosting a BBQ to break it in on Saturday. So far, we have about 20 friends and family committed to coming.

TPBM has begun fall planting of flowers or veg garden.

389SomeGuyInVirginia
Sept. 1, 2020, 9:28 pm

Does using the guest bathroom to grow pot for purely scientific reasons count? Asking for a friend.

TPBM uses heirloom seeds.

390karenmarie
Bearbeitet: Sept. 2, 2020, 9:20 pm

Not this year, but I have in the other years. I wish I'd taken a picture of 60 heirloom tomatoes germinating in the master bathroom on shelves laid across the jucuzzi, each in its own Luigi's Lemon Ice container. And not from a seed, but we do have an heirloom apple tree in our yard - Magnum Bonum.

TPBM already knew that every apple on a tree is the same regardless of pollination; it's the tree that the cutting comes from that determines the variety.

391humouress
Sept. 3, 2020, 2:09 am

Well I assumed so - but now you've got me thinking.

TPBM is planning a staycation.

392WholeHouseLibrary
Bearbeitet: Sept. 3, 2020, 3:23 am

Planning?!?! Hell, I've been LIVING IT for years already!

TPBM longs to visit the far flung Islets of Langerhans.

393rastaphrog
Sept. 3, 2020, 4:34 am

I can't really think of any reason why I would, and I definitely wouldn't want to be adrift off them.

TPBM wants to visit Freedonia.

394abbottthomas
Bearbeitet: Sept. 3, 2020, 5:07 am

Diese Nachricht wurde vom Autor gelöscht.

395morningwalker
Sept. 3, 2020, 9:12 am

Well I probably won't make it to Freedonia but Fredonia is only a few miles from me. I probably won't go because it's pretty much just a cross roads and not much to do or see. Last time I was there it was to have breakfast in a dumpy little trolley car diner that was always full because it was the only game in town.

TPBM wonders what >394 abbottthomas: deleted.

396WholeHouseLibrary
Sept. 3, 2020, 1:27 pm

Not me. I trust his judgement. Whatever it was, I'm not going to lose any sleep in needless speculation.

TPBM writes a review for each book s/he reads.

397abbottthomas
Sept. 3, 2020, 6:57 pm

I wish I had, but when I looked I found that I have written 122 reviews of more than 4000 works - pathetic! I list opera programmes and for a lot of those I have written a note about the performance I saw and entered it in the Comments field but that won't add up to more than 100 more.

I appreciate your confidence, WHL. I was in >394 abbottthomas: writing about my wanderings on the shores of your Islets but got leapfrogged. I'm glad to say that I have a good relationship with said Isles - they cause me no trouble at all.

TPBM worries about their weight.

398WholeHouseLibrary
Sept. 3, 2020, 7:08 pm

I used to. I believe I posted somewhere above that thanks to a lifestyle change due to COVID-19 -- that being antisocial distancing and a once-every-3-week trip to the grocery store, I'm still driving my weight down to numbers lower than I've seen in ten years. Slowly, but surely.

TPBM will respond to this post.

3992wonderY
Sept. 3, 2020, 8:10 pm

I found a way to be happy about my weight. I exchanged one bathroom scale for another that reads 10 pounds less. 😊 Honest, they adjust to zero in just the exact same way.

TPBM refrains from all sweets except for ________.

400WholeHouseLibrary
Sept. 3, 2020, 8:13 pm

memories of MrsHouseLibrary. It's no wonder I became diabetic.

Continued in the next thread, which is already in progress.
Dieses Thema wurde unter TPBM 108 - All factors considered, it's just 2**2 * 3**3 weitergeführt.