This is a good news kind of thing, because we are now having some decent steady rainfall after this horrible late fire season, one of the worst snowpack reports on record for this time of year, and yadda. (No, we don't get snow here; but our water comes from the mountains, and not much has happened up there so far.)
I hope the extreme cold and snow and everything is calming down in other sectors of the continent.
It's my baby's birthday today! She plans to buy textbooks, go play with the animals at the shelter, have some cake, etc.
The dog had a full weekend, and because he's not fond of rain, he is being a couch potato dog today, watching reruns from a few decades ago. We have never had a dog this spoiled. It's a little embarrassing. He has not, however, cried or barked once since the Dog Man went to work this morning -- proving that particular staple of the weekends is totally a trick to make the Dog Man pay attention to him. My husband is being emotionally manipulated; or as some might say, "trained." ;)
Wildlife news: My sweetie hung a kind of sack of seed from a tree, which has attracted all these tiny yellow finches that I never saw before. The yellow birds drop some of the offerings on the ground, which attracts bunches of little brown birds who peck around on the patio. Not happening right now, due to rain, but it's been quite the show!
What's happening at your place?
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Thank you for hosting again, Kathy! Hooray for rain!! And happy birthday to your daughter!
Mr. Q is back to school today, and E goes back tomorrow. We all spent the last part of last week panicking about how little holiday time we have left, but I confess that it's a little nice to be back to our usual routine. (Well, a slow-moving, cuddly version of normal, but we're pretty tired after the past few busy days.)
Thanks for hosting, kathy! Happy birthday to your daughter - that sounds like a lovely way to spend the day. I laughed at the couch-potato pup!
It's back to our regularly scheduled program here too, QWP. There's something okay about that after a busy holiday season.
AW: I'm having a ton of fun setting up my bullet journal. It's going to take awhile to find out what works and what doesn't, but I think I like it.
I love the regularly scheduled routine, and the return thereunto.
AW: My member who was missing yesterday was not really missing. He thought he had told someone he would be gone, but somewhere that message got lost.
W: It took a significant part of my day to ascertain that he was ok.
Whew, Esperanza!
Yay about the return to regularly scheduled programming.
Keep us posted on the journal, Sue.
What a relief that your member is okay, but what a scare, esperanza!
Sue, I'm excited for you, getting into bullet journaling! It took me a while to find my groove, and to figure out what was useful. (The original instructions I read didn't have a weekly planner, for example, and for some reason I thought I had to rigidly follow the original instructions. It helped me sometimes to poke around and see what others had done, although it was sometimes disheartening to look online and feel like everyone else's journals were so pretty, while mine is always so messy and pragmatic!)
My journal is definitely not artsy like some of the ones I've seen online. It's a bit intimidating, in the same way scrapbooking became less about memories and more about craft competitions. I'm just not a crafty person, so my book will be dull but functional, and that's okay!
That's the same as me! You should see my baby scrapbook (someone gave me a scrapbook, and it felt like a waste to also buy a photo album): I just used photo corners to arrange pictures like a photo album, and then stuck in a few other necessary items (I decided to stick my hospital bracelet and a few little things like that). Straight-ish lines, and everything in one place. And half of it is blank, because I never got around to putting anything more in it.
I had good intentions about photo albums, but mostly have boxes of old prints, followed by a lot of digital files once that became how one did photos...
Still damp today -- we got almost 2" of rain yesterday, a local record for that date! The terrible landslides are in the fire area a few hundred miles south, which got swamped in the storm.
I'm making ground beef stew, with mainly stuff sitting around that needed to be used. (Had to run out for celery and broth.) The rest of the kale ought to be edible, tucked into a stew. (Not a fan, even if it brags of being a "superfood.")
AW: it's actually warm enough here (in January, which is typically incredibly cold) that it's raining instead of snowing.
W: freezing rain. Gross.
Kathy, did rain seriously just take you guys from fires to landslides?
QWP, it seriously did in Southern California. Bad. Not up north, near where I live; it was gentler rain up here, and we had less scorched earth in the kind of difficult hillside / canyon terrain that leads to landslides. (The lack of vegetation means the soil doesn't have anchors.) They closed 30 miles of a major north/south route (Hwy 101) near the coast due to landslides -- the other major n/s highway (Hwy 5) is far inland, so people wanting to go to Los Angeles (and south) will have a much more difficult and much longer drive over a couple of mountain ranges, instead of the normal straight shot down the coast.
This is a really, really busy news day! And some of the news is quite interesting. I'm proud of my senior Senator.
W: the entire city is coated in a very slippery layer of ice, and then tomorrow, the temperature is supposed to drop drastically. We might have a reasonable amount of winter driving experience here, but we are NOT used to ice. I think I'm going to hide at home tomorrow.
QWP, stay at home is definitely the best plan. Ice is what we usually get here (if anything), and it is absolutely impossible to manage in a vehicle.
W: After yesterday's search for the missing church member, a chunk of today was "help elderly members find contact info for potential caregivers and track down wheelchairs for loan" day. The husband is deteriorating, mentally and physically, by the hour. The wife is having a hard time keeping up. I need a boring day tomorrow, please.
AW: in between that, I managed to make significant progress on de-cluttering and de-Christmasing the house. Some layers of dust have been removed.
That sure sounds like a full couple of days, Esperanza.
Puerto Rico is under a tsunami warning.
My mom, stepdad, sister, brother-in-law, nephew, and niece are there.
AW: they've evacuated to the hills.
But wow the Caribbean islands really did not need this when they still don't have power after Maria. And I am anxious for my family
What, Liz???? No, PR doesn't need it, and I am anxious for your family, too. xoxoxo
kathy, sorry to hear about the mudslides, but glad you're not in the midst of it. And yes, busy news day yesterday - yay to your senior senator!!!
(((esperanza))) I hope you have a quieter day today.
(((Liz))) PR does not need more weather-related trouble. I do hope your family is safe. xoxoxo
QWP - when there's ice, it's best to stay put if you can.
If it's any indication, I've already raided the church refrigerator for a chocolate chip cookie, and it's just now 10 AM. I'm mostly tired, and I'm heading out to visit the declining member in a bit.
((Liz)) it sounds like PR has not suffered further, but oh, still what a sad situation.
Esperanza, a cookie in support of the good pastoral work is surely OK. Is it possible a local elder agency, or (since you mentioned declining cognition) the Alzheimer's association could help locat e some support for this family? Both kinds of organizations tend to keep potential resources at hand.
QWP, yeeks about the ice!
Pretty boring day around here. Clyde and his abundant energy went to play with his doggie friends. Working on a little of this, little of that.
Oh, my daughter got her textbooks, is working on summer internship applications and ramping up for the new semester beginning next week. I'm excited because she's taking *two* classes this semester which are my specialties! One of her textbooks is *excellent*; it is now in the 19th edition, and the lead author is a fabulous scholar, but the original author (current author's mentor, gone for many years) was the father of a good friend of mine. She was not expecting me to be so excited about a textbook, much less to know the provenance of said text. LOL
Annoyed with school: we just received a letter from the nurse, begging us to keep our children home if they're sick, or "just need an extra day of rest" after a cold. Yet, the class with the most days of perfect attendance. The nurse is right. But the school gets funding based on number of students. If too many of them are absent, it reduces the funding. Something (actually, many somethings) are wrong with the system.
oh good grief. The class with the most days of perfect attendance wins a pizza party.
An edit button would be fabulous, blogger.
Funding based in attendance is absolutely terrible. It really is important for kids to stay home when they're contagious, and there really aren't supports in place to do that properly. (On a firm believer that school funding should be tied solely to enrollment and student needs, with extra funding for schools in areas with high financial need, to add community supports. Not test scores, not teacher performance, not school attendance.)
Yes, yes, and yes, QWP.
W: yesterday, Mr. Q fell on the ice and bent his house key (he's fine). He then tried to unlock the garage door with the bent key (which he absolutely didn't need to do), and the key snapped off in the lock. He's now attempting to fix it. I told him that, if it's not fixed by morning, I'm calling a locksmith. He could have just come inside and pressed the garage door button, instead of attending to use a bent key. This is ridiculous.
AW: I got a deal on a pork rib roast, which I used to cook regularly when we lived on the west coast (and pork prices were low, thanked to people being freaked out by swine flu and not understanding what swine flu was). I made a meal that used to be a favourite standard during our childless west coast years: roasted rib roast with buttery balsamic pan sauce, soft polenta, veggies, and bread pudding with caramel sauce for dessert. (And we had the bread pudding with eggnog ice cream, which E and I made this morning.) The whole meal was heavenly.
W: I remember this being a relatively simple meal to make. I don't remember it taking this many hours. I certainly don't remember it all involving so much whisking and standing at the stove. This always happens when I make a favourite meal that I always made before I had a kid. (I remember, when E was a baby, deciding that I was healed up and strong enough to make a "quick" eggplant and tomato gratin, which had previously been a quick weeknight favourite. That's how I discovered it involved a solid hour of active prep, before it baked. So many steps. How did I used to have so much time and energy?)
Oy, Esperanza. Seriously, stay home if you're ill but Pizza Party for the class with perfect attendance???
QWP, glad the meal turned out great! But yeah, this is why simpler things work better, overall.
QWP, that is an impressive meal. This week alone, I have failed to cook rice correctly (rice!?! It is my Achilles heel) and tonight have slightly undercooked veggies in the chicken pot pie (which felt like it took forever)
Broken key update: Mr. Q spent the entire evening fighting with the lock, and has admitted defeat. I'll call a locksmith in the morning. (He says he was worried that it would cost hundreds of dollars, and I pointed out to him that the doorknob in question cost us less than $100, and so obviously if it costs more, which it won't, I'll drive to the hardware store and buy a new doorknob instead.)
W: oh my goodness, the messy kitchen aftermath. HOW did I regularly make this meal, in the past? (And I even skipped the usual roasted beets with braised beet greens!) I made this regularly in a tiny basement suite kitchen, without a dishwasher!
Oh my goodness, the locksmith was going to charge us more than we paid for the lock itself! I wish we'd known that last night, when Mr. Q was taking repeated trips to the hardware store.
I'm okay with this. I'm now not spending my day waiting around for a repair person.
Lament of the introvert: I have a chunky meeting/retreat overnight Friday-Saturday, at a retreat center 3 hours away. I was so looking forward to the drive there and back, all by myself. Then an older colleague emailed and asked if I wanted to share a ride with her. I felt bad at the thought of her driving all that way alone, so I said yes. Bye bye alone time. I do get a single room, so there's that, at least.
esperanza, I echo what QWP said about school funding. Sheesh. In other news, finding a chocolate chip cookie in the church kitchen is awesome!! I went looking the other day, alas, nothing.
QWP, sorry about the broken key/garage situation. I'm glad Mr. Q's fall wasn't worse, though. Yay on the roast dinner!! A delicious *and* eye-opening meal, right? :)
W: I'm still thinking about a major announcement yesterday from our national church office. Basically, they are drawing new boundaries for church governance and our little corner of Canada ended up in an area larger than Europe. And we're smack dab in the middle. We may as well be on the moon. So, no resource people handy, ever. It just means we become a bit more congregational in our day to day life, which is okay.
AW: My little church will be fine.
Yikes about the broken key / lock saga, QWP.
Esperanza, sorry about the loss of alone time...
Sue, I'm not exactly sure what that means, except that it sounds really isolating. Isn't there some way to compensate for you being in the middle of such a large area?
kathy, it means we're very isolated. Right now, our nearest administrative office is a full day's drive away (8 hours). The new boundary determinations will place our admin office at least 11, but more likely 13 hours from here. And there are points west of us who add 4, 5, and 6 hours onto that! So, basically, for an annual meeting, folks at the western most part of our region will drive two days *each way* for a three day meeting.
Regular day to day functioning won't change much, but the requirement to meet annually is going to be a challenge.
I keep thinking there's got to be a technology answer here...
I'm sorry -- 8-11-18 hour drives for doing administrative things with the regional mothership?? There'd better be a tech solution for that, plus it wouldn't hurt if the admin people traveled to closer sub-regional locations periodically. (They serve you and your congregations, right?)
Are there other transit options than driving the whole way for meetings? I just know nothing about the geography, but requiring a 2 day drive is kind of insane. If there are trains or planes within a more reasonable driving distance, the cost of that transit should be compensated. IMO. (But, maybe that's not do-able in this large area...) xoxo
Sue, our regional area is about 8 hours from north to south and 5 hours east to west. So, not quite as large. The administrative offices are kinda sorta in the middle, definitely the middle population wise. (Geographic middle would be desert and cacti. We meet three times/year, and ostensibly move the meetings to different parts of the region. But those on the edges are still isolated (and not just geographically; they're easier for the majority to forget, because they can't participate in the day-to-day operations/committee meetings as much). It's horribly unfair. The alternative, which has been proposed in numerous iterations over the years is to split. But then there is a budget problem, because you'd essentially be duplicating administrative staff, and who has money, or wants to spend money, on that? Sigh. Church World.
W: a good internet friend is in the midst of getting horrifying health news. Fireplacing cancer.
Hugs about the friend's horrifying cancer news, esperanza.
Sue, I'm presuming that it's still cheaper to drive for two days than to fly, for those in the more remote areas, right? And train is limited, expensive, and non-ideal (at least it is in my part of the country). There are group video chat options that work really well for this sort of thing. I'm not sure what my church now uses instead of Google Hangouts (it used to be the best one, but then they did something weird to the service), but we've switched mostly to video conferences for this sort of thing. It saves so much time and money, for spread-out regions. I'll bet your denomination could even access whatever web platform my local university uses (Mr. Q took a synchronous online night class, which used a video chat platform that I think is intended for institutional use.)
Whiiine: it went from just-barely melting with freezing rain on Tuesday, to nearly -40 with the windchill today, and yesterday we had chilly weather with light, powdery snow. All of that together means treacherous ice everywhere, frequently hidden by a light dusting of snow, and it's so cold out that you need to had your face mostly covered in order to walk around. And it's terrifying to drive. E and I left EARLY for school, and slowly waddled like penguins the whole way there. I kept having to choose between covering my face with my scarf, which caused my glasses to fog up, or uncovering my face, which kept my vision clear but increased the risk of frostbite on my face. (Going without glasses isn't an option.)
Aaack! The cold!
The wind is crazy here as your air heads our way, QWP. 40 miles per hour gusts. It's like the hurricane without the rain. Thankfully, no frostbite predicted.
45, y'all. I really don't need further confirmation that he's a racist. I've pretty much got that.
Oh wow, I just went and found his recent comments. I shouldn't be surprised by anything he has said, but that's literally Nazi ideology. (And I don't say those words lightly -- I'm an expert in that particular history!)
OMG. Yes, Esperanza and QWP. And this time, at least, it seems to be so openly stated, and seems to be on every news outlet. Hoping for a good high-level cluesticking here. please please please please.
The scary thing is that I know that a significant percentage of his supporters would have no problem with him saying that.
This seems to maybe be a tipping point, knock wood.
Family in PR is fine, shell -shocked by the Maria devastation.
Hugs for everyone.
Esperanza, the average daily attendance is something that I was talking about with the DoED today in relation to a program I’m involved in developing an online portal for. Most schools only need to sample attendance, and testing days are usually the days they choose to sample.
LIz, I'm thinking this may be a state level idiocy, of which we have plenty. But I'm not sure.
esperanza, there is no passenger train service through my part of the region, unfortunately. It goes WAY north of us and would add another day to the journey. To fly is a matter of too much money, which will no longer be reimbursed by the mothership, even in part. Up to now, they've reimbursed car travel at 16 cents per kilometer, which never covers the cost of gasoline, but at least it was something.
I'm so sorry to hear about your friend, esperanza. xoxoxo
QWP, sorry about the bitter cold (Wow - is that the MOST Canadian thing I've ever said, or what???). We're back to -30-ish today, so solidarity.
And 45. For fireplace sake, will someone please get him out of office??? Now would be good.
W: I came home yesterday afternoon with the worst migraine I've had in years. I figure it's been about six years since I had to stop to determine whether it was migraine or I was having a stroke (managed to do the smile test). So, yay that it's been that long, but good heavens that was awful. I had to stay at the church until I felt well enough to drive the short distance home, but I had water, advil, and a triptan to get recovery started, so that was good.
Better this morning, but still have that groggy feeling.
Ouchy, Sue. I remember when those were a regular occurrence (took me 4 tries to spell that correctly) for you. I'm so sorry it reappeared.
45 can take with him: people who are more offended at the word he used than they are at him essentially saying people with brown skin should not be welcome in our country. *That* is the offensive part.
Oh goodness, I'm sorry about that awful migraine, and about the return of the cold weather. (We are very, very Canadian. 100 sorries a minute here.)
W: E still hasn't fully shaken that flu from December. There's a lingering cough left, off and on (clearly the flu has flared up her asthma, made worse by the fact that it's January and the outside world is the ice planet Hoth). Mostly, it's only meant night coughing, but yesterday she ate a single popcorn and that must have scratched her throat or something, because she coughed persistently from then until bedtime. (At the worst point, it was too soon to use her inhaler, because apparently she coughed a couple of times during preschool and insisted that she needed her puffer? And since she was being enough air, I didn't want to go over the prescribed dose, especially because of how anxious and hyper it made her a bedtime a few days ago.)
(Don't worry, I've booked her in with her doctor!) I guess my real whine is "it's always hard to know if it's going to be a bad call for me to take my kid to school today, although I definitely am taking her."
Also, we've now hit the point where it's so cold that we're going to drive to school, even though it's only a four-minute walk.
I'm feeling really whiney about the weather, apparently.
Oh, Sue. I'm sorry about the headache, and also the incredible freezing weather.
QWP, hope E is better, too.
Bleah, headache and shoulder/neck aches this morning, but that settled down, yay!
OK, I just got one of the best emails to a legal listserve ever -- it was a response to somebody's very abbreviated report about something, and an actual law professor commented that the author only missed a haiku by 2 syllables! Maybe you had to have been there, but it tickled me.
Daughter felt stressy this morning; had a lot of it worked out by late afternoon, yay! She starts class again Tuesday; is working on summer internship applications at the moment. There are very few legal intern positions available for right after first year; and most people do more pedestrian jobs that summer. I personally worked as a Kelly Girl, typing and such for a bank -- which is not where I ended up in life.
W: I leave for 24 hours, and Mini is sick when I get back home. Headache and stuffy head, excessive sneezing. No fever. I suppose it's a virus. She has a school holiday on Monday, and they're predicting an ice storm for Tuesday (this would be our 3rd weather day of the school year; usually we have zero), so maybe she'll be ready to return to school on Wednesday.
W: friend with likely fireplacing cancer is being jacked around by a doctor who keeps telling her it looks like "nothing," and then tests reveal worse and worse and worse news. This is not the oncologist, but someone else doing initial testing. Watching it unfold in almost real-time is really painful, but I know she needs the support. So thanks to you pixies, in turn, for being her for me to whine that to.
Whine away, esperanza! What a terrifying ordeal for your friend.
(And ice storm forecasts? Yikes! We had one this week, and I am not okay with ice storms.)
Esperanza! Hope Mini is better, but an ice storm, too?
And that is fireplaced up, about this person (not the oncologist!) telling her everything is nothing, but then she keeps getting terrifying reports. Sending lots of love. Hope it gets straight soon; but a long weekend is not the time to think it will get straight. xoxo
(((Esperanza))) may your friend pull through. I know you will be beside her pulling with her.
I hope Mini is ready to go back to school after the ice storm (ice storm! Yikes)
MM may have a bladder infection. I'm hopeful we can nip that in the bud with copious amounts of water. If he's still experiencing symptoms by lunchtime, I will go buy cranberry juice.
Knocking wood that you can banish that possible UTI, Liz.
Ew, yes, let's say adios to the possible UTI.
This is typical of winter here: rain in the forecast, temperature hovering 32-34. If they miss the forecast by even a degree, it makes a huge difference. And even a little bit of freezing rain or sleet makes a horrible mess of the roads, so school would definitely be canceled.
You know who likes smelly used wool socks left on the floor? Yes, he does, the Amazing Clyde! Big honking holes in 2 socks, from separate pairs, natch. I'm being so virtuous by not saying "told you so" out loud.
Some people just need to learn the hard way.
Fingers crossed for no freezing, Esperanza.
I'll be putting up a new post once I'm home today! I'm at piano lessons right now, and can only comment but can't post from my phone (apparently on my phone I'm logged in on my other account, which isn't an administrator). Keep whining!
I've turned off Javascript on my phone, due to a pop-up ad issue, so can't comment from there at all anymore, just in case anyone wonders why I've been so quiet. I don't visit from my work computer, obviously.
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