Before and during

The guest bathroom began as brown, then in May last year I played with repainting it blue.  Eventually, I decided on "Vanilla Paste."

 

I never get tired...

 ... of looking at pictures of Rose Stephens's Great Tits.

Sunday report

 What happened today?  I'll tell you what happened today.

Watched the Playhouse 90 version of Judgment at Nuremberg.  That's the one where the natural gas sponsor forced CBS to silence the phrase "gas ovens".   Thinking of Newton Minow's famous 1961 speech, the show was the best of television combined with the vast wasteland of the rest of it.  Film of concentration camp horrors and opposing views of individual responsibility for it were followed by  immediate cuts to commercials for Kleenex products.  (If ever a show called for limited commercial interruption...)

BB stayed home while I shopped for supplies at Costco (tissues, paper towels, dishwasher pods) and resisted the Mexican Coca-Cola.  Picked up cleaning products at Dollar Tree.  Got the car washed, and as I prepared to pull out, said to the bar blocking the way, "Greetings, gate -- let's elevate."

Jack and Jennie arrived around 2:30 bearing Christmas dinner, either one dinner for a large family or dinner for 2 people for several weeks.  Either way, we appreciated it.  

Researched and ordered an air purifier from Blueair, which should arrive in a week.

Eyes are tired now, so time to close them and put on some audio-only entertainment.

Found while looking for something else

 Yeah, I noticed the two guys who were there instead of Tony Dow and Hugh Beaumont.  I'm far from the first.

So This Is Christmas

 Completely different from any year heretofore (if heretofore is the word I mean).  No dressing up, no big dinner, no decorations, and no presents.  No preparing for visitors, or driving somewhere to be a visitor.  Wouldn't want to do this every year, but in a way I like this a lot.  

BB made our favorite chicken-lemon-tomato-oregano pasta dish, filled the bird feeders and watched some BBC cozy mysteries.  I did some reading and made some chocolate chip cookies.  A few minutes ago, Good Queen Swirly looked up at me and said "Mew."  There is no part of "Mew" that I don't understand, so we had some good Quality Time together:

Still haven't quite gotten over Dial reducing the size of its Basic packs from 3 bars of soap for a dollar to 2 for a dollar.  All along I've been grafting the old slivers to a new bar, and if I do it right, I get the result seen below.  The old sliver has been used up and the embossed logo from the added bar is revealed.  

Now begins the winter vacation

 Another storm has hit the area, but thankfully it only brought rain and not snow.  Still, the winds are higher and the possibility of losing the electricity higher than the prior storm.  

The work week is over, and now begins a period of ten days without the need to log in and do work.  Although I will, since there was some work due today that there just wasn't time to finish.  Just not tomorrow.  

Ten days off, but in a pandemic-triggered self-quarantine, 25% of a quarantine in actual fact.  Point is, I'm not going to Tabby's Place, or to The Borgata, or really anyplace designed for fun.  What does that leave?  Chores and projects are no substitute for a purring tabby or a dealt four-of-a-kind with a kicker.  

But under the circumstances, they will have to do.  A man can play Fishdom only so long.  I haven't even re-installed the baseball game since installing the new hard drive on the laptop.  (Being let down by the '58 Pirates and the '68 Cardinals back-to-back has been a major factor in that indifferent state of mind.)

Ignoring the Twitterverse and Facebook will allow more time for reading improving books.  There's the Ernie Pyle collection from Apple books and Guadalcanal Diary from Amazon's Prime borrowing library; learning more about the everyday sacrifices of World War II troops will help force perspective on today's first world deprivation.  

So Happy Christmas to all, as a 19th-Century Moore likely stole from its true author, and to all a good night.

The ideal of the satisfied customer...

 ...and its diametric opposite, seen in the Wegmans parking lot tonight.

Walking back to my satisfactory Toyota, a glint on the asphalt parking lot caught my attention, and I was rewarded with a shiny dime at no more cost than bending the back and extending the arm.

Sorry, I've been listening to a Wodehouse audiobook and it's having an effect on my thoughts and speech.

TIL (the product of a Sunday in quarantine)

 édulcoré, édulcorée : Qui a perdu de son âpreté, de sa rudesse : Version édulcorée d'un film.

maître-chanteur, maître-chanteuse :  Personne qui pratique le chantage, qui fait chanter quelqu'un.

soustraite à la justice : Échapper à quelque chose, s'y dérober : Se soustraire à une punition.

jette son dévolu sur : choisir ; faire un choix définitif ; décider d'obtenir ; fixer son choix sur

tirer leur épingle du jeu : get out while the getting is good; signifie que l'on réussit à sauver sa cause, ses intérêts propres.

I did forget...

 ... to wear a mask in a store.  Fortunately, the store was Wally's Deli in Emmaus, where when I walked in, none of the 3 persons present had one on, either, and that included the 2 sandwich makers.  

So if I come down with the coronavirus in the near future, we know why.

Now, what else happened?  I did my job from 8:45 to 5:00, finishing the last thing on my must-do list just before logging off.  BB and I sent four Xmas cards; she had 3 and I sent one to someone from Tabby's Place who had sent one to me.  

Both feral cats were here for a meal tonight.  The little black pooshka was looking up through the back door instead of eating, so BB brought out a can of something else, plated it and warmed it up.  She handed it to me as I knelt by the door, and I placed it next to the pooshka.  As she bowed her head to eat, I sneaked a couple of strokes along the fur on her back, and she didn't recoil.

Spelling Bee took longer than usual, but we finished on the Genius level again.  I like to get about 10 words of more than four letters, including a pangram if possible, and let BB work on it while I'm doing my paying job.

Some more Trump deposits on the way?  I'm OK with that.  Not that we need to buy anything, thankfully.  (Hey you, whoever you are who's stumbled onto this, whenever that is:  Save your money -- you're going to need it.  Don't commit to a guaranteed expense, like children or extended-payment consumer goods, without a reasonably-guaranteed source of income.  No item is as nice as the feeling of being debt-free.)

Took a quick look at indoor bicycles, but between the quarantine and the coming winter, it's a seller's market and that's not when I want to buy.

Prepared some pizza dough for tomorrow in the Hitachi bread machine.  That was a great buy, and it keeps on going.  It's so old the manual doesn't even have a website, which puts it prior to 2000 at the very least.  I don't use it to bake bread, just to make dough for cinnamon buns and pizza.  (And I'm looking at bagel recipes now.)

But I know it won't last forever, so for fun I looked for info on bread machines, and learned that the quarantine has made it a seller's market, and you know what I think of that.  Worst case, I can use the 20-year-old food processor or the 20-year-old stand mixer with its bread hook.  

I don't think I've mentioned what I read, so just because this was begun to chronicle (if chronicle is the word I mean -- thanks, Mr. Wodehouse) daily life during a pandemic, here goes:  subscriptions to the NY Times and Washington Post, plus The New Yorker.  Mornings, I use the iPad with Google News and Feedly to accumulate stories from other sources on subjects like golf, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, and Nebraska womens' volleyball.  Oh, and cats, too.

Afterward

 Last night I was using the snow thrower on the driveway.  Jerry from next door, a Canadian who has more experience with snow and a large, loud machine for the purpose, brought the latter to help me move the former.  

This morning before work, I was outside again with the machine and some fresh snow.  Less than an hour later, I was in my office at work when the township snowplow zoomed by and re-covered the sidewalk to a depth of several inches.  

After a 11:00 a.m. staff meeting held via WebEx, I fired up the snow machine one more time and cleared the sidewalk one more time.  There wasn't time for a meal before my 1:00 WebEx.  But after the 1:00 ended, I took a long warm shower and put on clean dry clothes, and life became that much better.

One more WebEx at 3:00, and soon enough it was 5:00 and time to log out.  Supper was another post-Thanksgiving meal of turkey, stuffing, and cranberry sauce.  

Then off to Wegmans for several dozen dollars of groceries.  The store was as empty as I've ever seen it.  Maybe a combination of pre-snowstorm stocking and post-storm reluctance to drive anywhere.

Good Queen Swirly was just meowing in the kitchen with a fuzzy toy in her mouth, like a good mother calling her kittens for a meal.

Both the little black pooshka and the big ol' creampuff made their way through the drifted snow to our deck for a warm meal and a warm place to rest. 

The Latest

 Snow continues.  The little black pooshka has come to eat and to take shelter in the little house on the covered deck.  Still, beneath its roof, strong cold wind is blowing snow over everything.

Work from 8:30 to 5:00, with breaks here and there.  Supper consisted of turkey, stuffing, corn and cranberry sauce taken from the freezer.  Afterward, I read Tweets, then watched the last hour of Topsy-Turvy on Peacock.  That was followed by some mindless Fishdom 2 while listening to radio broadcasts from 1948.  Today I learned that there was a CBS soap opera (although it was sponsored by Maxwell House, or was that a Procter & Gamble brand too?) named Wendy Warren and the News that lasted from 1947 to 1958.  

For the record...

 ...the snow has begun.

Monday post

 A coating of snow today, with a foot or more coming on Wednesday into Thursday.  I'm ready as I'll ever be, I suppose.

The little black pooshka left two dead mice on the deck in appreciation for her warm house and good food.  What a Good Cat!

Sunday post

 Another day of quarantine.  We solved the Spelling Bee early.  She got the first dozen words and I finished the job.  

I did some cleaning up in Nora's room, vacuuming the spilled litter and cleaning one of the two boxes, adding fresh litter.  

We went for a drive mid-afternoon, heading west on 222 until just short of Kutztown.  Work is beginning on the traffic circle near Maxatawny.  North to New Smithville, then back on Route 22 to Route 100.  We saw flocks of Canada geese and of sheep.  Stopped at Walmart for a short list of cat food and bird food, and found exactly 3 cans of the former and none of the latter.  BB stayed in the car; a sore leg, and yet another wave of Covid-19 kept her away from the public.

Now it's dark, BB is watching a Tivo'd episode of Morse, and I'm about to go back to reading Le Monde.  (I can do that now.  Didn't used to be able to.)  2002, subscribed to Champs-Elysees.  2011, trying to read French at the library, and frustration.  2015, streaming Europe 1 on the Altima radio.  Now, well-spoken and clearly enunciated French is no mystery anymore, and reading the newspaper beyond stories with U.S. subjects.  Haven't found a place to practice speaking, so conversation skills are still weak. 

History Rhymes

 The AP photographer had a good awareness of history.

Flowers in December

 We've had frost, and a foot of snow may hit us Wednesday, but the speedwell flowers continue to grow in our front yard.

From my office window

 

Just a camera phone on hand when the nuthatch showed up this afternoon, so it isn't much of an image, but it's the thought that counts for me.

First snow of the season

 That's about the peak of the... no, not a storm... not much of a snow shower, either... more like a snow drizzle.

Saturday Evening Post

 Blood pressure too high, unsteadiness, pressure at the back of her head... and a Saturday in the emergency room.

What this country needs...

 ...is a president who plays accordion.  Weird Al 2024?

As hoped

 I said I hoped my good girl Swirls would be my lap kitty, and she did it.  The red fleece blanket gives her a nice soft place to lie, and it protects my thighs in case she jumps off.  (There's one scar on my left thigh already.)

Wet Monday

 Pouring rain today, puddles forming where they usually don't, louder than usual while also darker than usual.  

Back and working after five days off.  Plowing through the pile that accumulated during that time.

Good Quality Time this morning with my little buddy Nelson.  Over the weekend he was showing signs of Feline Hyperesthesia Syndrome.  I've seen that before at Tabby's Place with Max.  I hope Nelson doesn't mutilate his tail the way Max did.  Meds may be necessary.

Winnowed some of my YouTube watchlist over the weekend.  Watched The Front Page (1931) and half of Totie Returns! (1978).  Also some Yes, Minister (1980) on Amazon Prime.  Read some Please Don't Eat the Daisies (1957).  Ignored The Crown, The Queen, The Queen's Gambit, and pretty much everything else from this century except Dix Pour Cent.

Up at 7:15, showered and ready to work by 8:30, a bowl of Special K and 5 oz. grapefruit juice with seltzer at 11:00.  Will shut down at 5:00 and fill a few hours until bed.  Some of that time with Good Queen Swirly on my lap, I hope. 

No more leaves to rake, at last.  Speedwell is creeping through the lawn, showing tiny blue flowers even at this late date.  

Really?

Of course, I've known people who would call this a perfect description of their children.  

I feel 11 years old again!

 The town of Fucking, Austria is changing its name.  All the Fucking road signs were being stolen, and all the Fucking jokes have already been made.

My Tuesday

In mid-afternoon, the sun was mostly out, and PG and I walked a little way around the development, but there was a chilly breeze and her back was bothering her, so we turned around much sooner than usual.  

Still can't go much of anywhere else, so I worked, admittedly pacing myself.  A few minutes after 5:00, I walked away from the desk and keyboard, and lay down on the bed for some afternoon Quality Time with Nelson.  

PG went upstairs at 6:30, and I watched another episode of Episodes, then fell asleep during Stan Freberg Show #2, awakening halfway through #3.  Now LCI is replaying President Macron's address to the nation on the latest strategy and tactics to stop the spread of Covid-19.  

Another one bites the dust

 Everyone agrees -- it would be too much of a risk to have Thanksgiving dinner together this year.  Good thing I listened to all those World War II newscasts and have some perspective.  Rationing meat, sugar, *gasoline*... and under those rules for three years?  By next November, everyone will have been vaccinated and things will be back to normal, and 2020 will be just a bad memory.  

But not being able to visit Tabby's Place for Black Friday?  (Insert maximum-pout emoji here.)

What if the coronavirus mutates and the vaccine doesn't affect the new version?  That's happened with the flu vaccine... but we get the shot anyway.  

Forty years later

Maybe there’s no perky co-ed or fine Columbian, but you are, in fact, growing old. 

   -- Libby Cudmore, November 18, 2020 

Saturday Evening Post

 Standard weekend day, mostly.  PetSmart (returned food that none of the cats, indoor or outdoor, enjoyed.  The raccoon(s) ate it up.)  

Then Wegmans (returned beef stock whose cap had been opened by someone before we bought it).  Bread, milk for PG, orange juice (extra pulp), 2 boxes of Dove Bars, and fixings for cranberry mold; mandarin oranges, raspberry gelatin, lemon yogurt.  

Leftover pizza and Pepsi back home.  I napped while PG watched Vera.  

But then, a first:  GrubHub to deliver 2 orders of chicken croquettes from Trivet diner.  The driver delivered in record time, although if the graphic is any indication, he may have taken some heretofore unknown shortcuts.  That gray stuff isn't road as far as I know.

In fact, the delivery car pulled up in front of the house while the icon in the graphic was still halfway down Daniel Street.  

Here's where it gets slightly more interesting.  He handed me the bag containing dinner, and I checked the contents, only to find one order of chicken croquettes instead of two.  I phoned Trivet, and the guy who answered the phone determined it was their fault and told me he'd deliver the 2nd one himself.  Maybe fifteen minutes later, he arrived with the rest of the order, plus a slice of pumpkin pie on the house.

Guess that's it for another day during a pandemic.  PG's gone upstairs to play on her PC and you know where I am and what I'm doing.  Here's what I'm listening to.  Laying no odds or taking any bets on whether that link will still be valid when you click it, 10 or 25 or 100 years from now.  (You're here in 2120?  Cool!  I used to go back in time, too, and download out-of-copyright books or publicly available media like Life magazine or the weekly referenced in the title above.  Hope 2120 is better than this year.)

Black Friday

 The reason the little black pooshka was sitting so demurely was that she had rejected the food Pat offered, and she would appreciate something better, please.  And soon.  This is a look of a finicky cat.  But look at her -- how could anyone tell her no?  

Pretty Lady Cat

Finally

 The township leaf pickup came around this morning and the gutter is empty once more.

Difficult client broker today, and I don't deal well with difficult customers.  Haven't done anything to get myself fired yet, so that's one step better than the library.  I know how I want to handle this one, it's just a matter of doing it.

Don't look now...

 ... but Carl Bovis is posting pictures of tits again on Twitter.  And I must admit I enjoy looking at them.

November 17, 2020

Something I forgot

 Good Quality Time

Sunday post

 PG making pot roast, browning the meat in the Le Creuset, the lower floor full of the aroma of the Maillard Reaction.

Yesterday the house was scented with blueberry muffins topped with praline pecans.  PG said she liked them a lot.  

Lots and lots of leaves this fall.  I just don't remember that many leaves in past years, although there must have been just as many last year and the year before.  There are so many that even though the gutter out front is filled from end to end with maple and zelkova leaves, there was still a 15 x 15 area beneath the maple that was piled high, and I mowed it over and over again until they were chopped fine.  

We shopped at Giant yesterday and Wegmans today, and the paper products aisle in both stores is becoming bare once more.  If not for that and the dearth of cleaning products, and the masks everyone wears, it would look pretty normal.  The Wegmans lot this morning was jam-packed, as though people were stocking up for Thanksgiving, although that's still more than a week away.

The State of Me:  Eight months of pandemic restrictions haven't weighed heavily on me.  I am happy to work from home.  I am happy I don't have to commute to work, that I only fill up the gas tank once a month, and that my car insurance payment has been reduced by a third.  I especially enjoy being with my wife and best friend 24/7.  

I miss going inside Tabby's Place and loving on cats.  I miss Diana's volleyball matches and I miss Nebraska's volleyball matches.  

A morning at Tabby's Place

 

A look back

 The Indian Blanket has no flowers now, but a few weeks ago they looked like this.  Just in the mood now to think of good things.  

Looking out my back door

 It's been warm and sunny all day.  Now in late afternoon, it's about time to fire up the Weber grill and get supper ready. #ifthisisntnice

Saturday evening post

We drove to Center Valley to the L.L. Bean to exchange a shirt Pat bought for me.  For the first time ever, a Bean shirt in my size, XL/Tall, was too big.  I tried on an XL/Regular and it fit the way I'd expected the XL/Tall to fit.  

Instead of going back to our area, I drove south on Route 309 toward Quakertown.  I intended to take the turnpike back home, just for a change.  But about a mile north of town, traffic stopped.  We could see multiple sets of emergency lights, but we thought that there would at least be one lane open.  Instead, cars ahead of us began making U-turns and heading back north.  We did, too.  

Bought apple pastries at Costco and put one in the Breville to toast it a little.  Instead, it burned.  When Pat and I reached in without using the wooden tongs, we got burned, too.

Where was I?

Where was I when I learned that Pennsylvania had finally been called for Joe Biden?  Lying on the couch, reading Google News on my iPad.  That was about 15 minutes after the call on CNN.  (I always knew that refreshing GN one more time would be the difference.)  

I brought up the NY Times app and showed Pat the front page.  She picked up the Tivo remote and turned the TV back on.

What do I think of it? Mr. Biden's own words, offered in a different context, described it pretty well.

Thursday update

 Life is normal around here, as long as we don't turn on the news or look at Twitter.  (Pat's able to do that, but for me, less so.)  We went for a walk in breezy but sunny 65-degree conditions just now.  Just the same, we know Indian Summer when we see it, and picked up some flannel sheets from L. L. Bean.  Also thinking about a storm door for the laundry room.  

There's been a recent rash of scam calls purporting to be from Apple.  All we can do is use caller ID and pick up only when we know the name on the screen.  

In mid-morning, a salesman rang the doorbell, looking to sell me a Medicare supplement.  Door-to-door cold calling... ugh.  What a way to make a living.  

Election report

Pat had an appointment this morning, and as we drove down Cetronia Road, we could see the church that's used as a polling station.  There were dozens of cars on the front lawn, and it looked like there were dozens more cars parked along the road across from the church.  First time we'd ever seen that many down there.  Looks like folks are taking this election mighty seriously.

"...with reservations."

 

Rabbit rabbit

 Rabbit rabbit

There he is again

 

After years of reading Mad magazine, it would not surprise me to learn that the cartoon on Herb Adderley's card was drawn by Jack Davis.  See for yourself.

I know his cartoons were on 1966 Topps baseball cards, and according to this, he did a lot of uncredited (but not unpaid) work like that over the years.

A fetching pose

 

Mid-week crisis?

 The remnants of a tropical storm are on the way, bringing heavy rain starting tomorrow.  As long as it's over by Friday morning, when I'm driving to Tabby's Place.  

Here comes the township leaf-sucker-upper.  Good thing I raked some more last night.

Awake early this morning, and couldn't get back to sleep because Pat and I had an early appointment.  Both of us had prescribed blood tests, and though we got there around 8:00, there was a waiting list and we didn't get out of there until 8:45.  Any time we spend together is good, so not a problem.

Warm wishes

 The furnace is blowing out cold air.  Pat has called UGI and they'll be over sometime today.  That's why we're paying for a service contract, I guess.

The repairman got here in early afternoon, and diagnosed the problem as a worn-out igniter.  He even had the replacement part in his truck, so we have heat once more.

Sunday night

 Raked leaves today.  They're out front in the street, awaiting another visit from the township's leaf-sucking machine.

No lemonade or grapefruit juice at Wal-Mart, leaving both Pat and me disappointed.

Could have logged in to the work laptop and gotten a head start on the waiting pile of work from last Friday, but, nah...

Doctor's appointment tomorrow morning at 8:30, but I forgot that I was supposed to get a blood test beforehand, so, nah...

There are still some chicory flowers growing at the corner of Cetronia Road and Grange Road.  I never get tired of seeing them.

Catching up

 Friday:  I had the day off, so we drove to Shoprite in Bethlehem just for a change.  I guess the days of 40-cent seltzer are gone.  We paid $7.99 for 12 bottles, not $4.80.  

Got a haircut, first one since July.  SuperCuts looks like any other strip mall hair salon, but they've got a few extra things.  Nice to be able to set up an appointment online and make sure your favorite is available.  I also appreciate the hot towel on the neck afterward.

Today's events:  took three bags of old receipts to the park down the road for the township shredding event.  Pat correctly remembered that the lines started out long and only got longer, so we got there before the 9:00 a.m. starting time and still were about 30th in line. 

The homeless cat we call Puffy stayed in the little house on our deck all day.  His face looked like he'd been in yet another fight, and we were concerned that he was badly injured, but when the little black pooshka arrived near sunset, he came out and ate alongside her.

And I made four loaves of babka.  Pat says it's light and fluffy, the way she likes it.  

I watched an inning or two of game 4 of the World Series before shutting it down.  

A puzzling question

Yes, I'm at home now.  Why do you ask?  

Oh, *now* I get it...

Eclectic evening

 Just finished doing my best to confound whatever algorithm YouTube music uses to try to pigeonhole me.  Some Mel McDaniel and other 80's country hits from my radio days, some Sparks both from now and from nearly 50 years ago, then Clint Black playing drums on a live version of Josie (the lead singer's no Donald Fagen, let me tell you), and some of Steely Dan themselves -- as if you thought I could get through a set of music without them -- before wrapping up with Mary Shut the Garden Door, which will always remind me of driving home from Atlantic City.  ABBA on the way down, and in 2006-2008, Morph the Cat on the way home.  

Nope. I got nothin'.

 It's 15 days until the election, and Pat and I have already voted.  

I woke up around 8:00 and had Quality Time with Nelson before getting up and going to work.  

I worked several hours.  

I shut down the laptop and found Nelson waiting for me outside my office door.  I followed him down the hall to the bedroom, where we had some more Quality Time.

After supper, Good Queen Swirly climbed onto my lap in the family room.  She prefers the living room, and she'll have her chance there soon, but I've got nothing to say (but it's OK). 

Score

 Looking over Wikipedia for Emmy nominees, found something in 1962's awards for Stan Freberg, the Chun King Chow Mein Hour.

Really?  I'm no expert on Stan Freberg, but I have heard a number of his productions (any time I hear a reference to scallions, I have to respond, "Most folks call 'em green onions, but they're really scallions.") and this was completely new to me.  

Usually, a search reveals nothing, such as the search for a Phil Silvers vehicle from 1959 that also received an Emmy nomination.  Sixty years isn't enough to go into public domain, I get that.  The heart wants what it wants, though, and this time, I got what I wanted.

It's a terrible copy of a copy of a kinescope, but it exists, and that's good enough for me.  As soon as I type a few more words and insert a link, maybe two, I'm going back to watching it.  

Done

 Pat and I voted today.  There was a message on the township website announcing that a ballot box was now installed, so over lunch we went down there and dropped in our envelopes.  There were several others present for the same reason, perhaps with as much determination as the two of us to change the tenant of the White House.

Little beauty

 

Good Queen Swirly descends from her throne to grace Pat's lap.

Here 'tis

 

Outrageous

 

Hmpf.  A child, certainly one that young, shouldn't have received a live rabbit for Easter.  If the rabbit scratched him, he must not have known how to treat it.  The mother and father are to blame!

Down the rabbit hole

1.  LIFE magazine after FDR's death 

2.  Letters section about Joan Geisendorff, the pretty young girl on the cover a few issues prior

3.  In 2015, she revealed more about that photo shoot 

4.  The boy she was dating became her husband, and they shared 60 years of marriage before his death in 2010

5.  That same fellow (who later founded the company that became ARAMARK) worked for L.S. Ayres, a department store in Indianapolis. 

6.  Every city had one or more downtown department stores that were the place to shop for people of a certain age, and which tried and failed to adjust to the trend toward suburban shopping instead of downtown.  

A little longer to wait

 Pat and I took our completed ballots to the township office, because we'd seen that it was to be a site of a ballot collection box.  On the door was a sign with the message that the box wouldn't be in place until this Friday.  So that was a waste of time.

Also:  the one-way aisles are no more at Wal-Mart.  Still out of paper towels, though, and cleaning supplies are low.  

Then and now

 More World War II radio newscasts tonight.  A CBC newsman in May 1945 described the prices for scarce staples in Amsterdam and Apeldoorn, that wouldn't have been out of place now, 75 years later.  $4.00 for a loaf of bread?  That's what I'm paying at Wegmans.  But I saw a radio in a 1948 ad with a list price of $49.95, and plugging the numbers into a site devoted to conversion into 2020 dollars, learned that the small radio was going for the equivalent of $500 today.

The newscasts celebrated the meeting in Germany of U.S. and Soviet troops, and looked ahead to the end of the European war, then further ahead to fighting the Japs. Of course, I know that's a racist slur now.

So I switched the YouTube channel to one featuring European volleyball, and one of the courtside signs displayed the name Apeldoorn, and the screen had a graphic at top left with the team name abbreviations.

 

At our house, temporarily

 

My little buddy, Nelson

 Enjoying some Quality Time with me in the bedroom early one morning this week.  

But what good will it do then?

 

Seen on the highway

 Stopped at a red light, I looked to one side and saw a Hyundai Palisade.  Never heard of that one before.  It's an SUV... I wonder how those Palisades park?

Welcome to another volunteer

 There are goldenrods blooming all along the roads these days.  It doesn't exactly explain how this one found its way to the little patch of ground just outside our garage.  Nevertheless, it is good for the bees, and that's all the reason we need to let it grow. 

Suppertime for nearly everyone

 

There she is

 Pat and I were walking after supper this evening, following the curve around Hopewell and reaching the far corner of the development before turning around for home.  

We had almost made it to Quail when she saw something off to the right.  It was the little black pooshka, moving low and fast, crossing the street and apparently heading toward our house.  

We lost sight of her in the yard behind the corner house on Quail, but it wasn't surprising that she showed up soon after we got home.  

Returning to work

 Too busy catching up at work after Friday and Monday off to do much else, so here's a picture taken yesterday outside Dr. Braadt's office.  COVID-19 element:  I had to wait in the car while she received treatment inside.  But from the car I saw that one lone pink flower amid all that greenery.  

Heavy rain outside now.  Earlier, the big ol' creampuff faced off against the gray visitor cat.  I got a little bit of video in which nothing much happened.  The gray cat remained motionless while Puffy crept closer, growling.  I tapped on the window and the gray cat ran off.

Used xplorer2 to remove a few GB of duplicate photos.  About time I did that.

Wandering about the yard

 Truthfully, it was either this, or do some chores, or fall asleep in the chair.  But even though a macro lens would have worked better, I'm still OK with this picture. 

Day of rest

 Didn't leave the yard all day.  Gray, not conducive to ambition.  The wild purple asters down the road will have to wait.

Did some reading, the Sunday Times, and the New Yorker, as well as setting aside articles for later.  But what if there are more things that happen later?  Then today's set-asides will join other unread set-aside articles, saved with the best of intentions.  The New Yorker did a story on sugar in 2006, and I was so impressed I saved "The Search for Sweet."  Fourteen years later, there's another long-form story on the continuing search (and re-search) for something to take the place of sugar.    

So then, what did I do today?

• Used the 20-year-old Hitachi bread maker to prepare some dough for cinnamon buns
• Used the same bread maker to prepare some pizza dough for future Friday suppers
• Used the 20-year-old Kitchen-Aid food processor to prepare seven half-cup servings of pizza sauce
• Helped Pat win this weekend's tourney in WordScapes (filled in for maybe 20 minutes while she made a pit stop)
• Used the renewed Weber grill for a ribeye steak while Pat sliced and baked potatoes

Dot Dot Dot

 My day:  Nelson woke me at 8:30 or so by jumping on the bed and making noise.  Of course I loved on him right away.  Then before getting out of bed, I had looked at Facebook and donated to a fund-raiser for No Kill Lehigh Valley.  There are too few good guys around, and the Lehigh Valley and NKLV lost one recently...

I read a story in today's Times and immediately imagined how Paul Harvey would have done it -- A medal ceremony for service in Cambodia... clearing land mines... there were an estimated five *million* mines laid during the civil strife in the Eighties and Nineties, and many, a great many, of them still in the ground... thousands of injuries, including some 25,000 requiring amputations, have been recorded recent years.  But Magawa has worked diligently to help clear a million and a half square feet of land over the past four years, and for his service he was awarded a gold medal... And Magawa... is only five years old.  A five-year-old -- African giant pouched rat.  

These are good days.  Pat and I are healthy, although she's having pain in her sacroiliac that her chiropractor is treating, but there's been no recurrence of cancer, or kidney stones, or vertigo, or high blood pressure.  We also have enough money to get by, and on days off from work like today, we have time to get out and enjoy it, although not quite as much as if there were no pandemic.  

Pat & I picked up a few things at Giant, enough to trigger the $10-off-$50 coupon received in the mail, and at home I first baked some pecan chocolate chip cookies, then a pizza for supper.  Nestle was making what they called Artisan brand chips along with their Toll House morsels, and I liked them as much or more than the 60% cacao brand from Ghirardelli.  But as soon as they came out, Ghirardelli dropped their prices, and whether it was that, or people not willing to switch, or a combination of things, the Nestle chips were discontinued at Giant, and then at Wal-Mart.  So the good news was that I picked up several bags at a discount, but the bad news is that they're the last ones I'll be able to buy...

Still getting the downstairs laptop back to where it was before I re-installed Windows on the new SSD.  After trying numerous programs for photo management, I've gone back to 2010's Windows Photo Gallery.  It hasn't been supported for years, and isn't even on the Microsoft website for download anymore, but I couldn't find another program that helps prepare photos with the usual crop and touch-up prior to opening them in a full-featured editing program, while also letting me tag photos.  FastStone, I'm learning, is very good at much of what I want, (tonight I learned how to use the drop shadow feature shown on the photo posted earlier today) but tagging is not available. More than once, someone from Tabby's Place has asked for a copy of one of my cat photos, so the tags are invaluable for making that search simple.  Other programs had too much learning curve, not enough intuitive.  

So it's back to Photo Gallery, the one I know, with its simple Control-T tagger.  When Microsoft replaced it with Photos, they kept much of Photo Gallery's features, except that copies of the photo being edited could no longer be saved in lossless TIFF format.  I had it down to a system; open up the original photo, use Crop on it and save a copy as a TIFF.  Then open the TIFF and tinker with color and light as needed, and re-save that as another TIFF.  Then open in GIMP for the heavy-duty Photoshopping, save that TIFF, re-size it to web dimensions and open that one in Paint.Net.  Why one more tool?  Because Paint.Net lets you see how large the file is going to be when you save it as a JPEG, while the other two programs don't.  

End of summer

  
 The front and south side of our house are landscaped,  and the back yard has an area that used to be. But over the past several years, it's reverted to nature, and some unexpected (and nice) growth has appeared.  This butterfly bush is part of the original landscaping, though, and still serves its purpose.  Not many butterflies or moths visit our yard, but when they do, this is the most likely place to find them.

American Shorthair Beauty

 

The big ol' creampuff, from a safe distance

Taken with the zoom all the way out.  If I'd approached the feral to get a closer shot, he would have run for cover. 

A rose of autumn

 

What is it?

 This fell to the floor of the deck as I was taking apart the Weber grill.  The exploded view didn't show a part like this, but then where did it come from?  Well, I'm uploading a picture and then using Google Images.

(A minute later)

Google Images doesn't help, either.  It takes a wild guess that it's some kind of "memorial."

Would this work?  (EDIT 9/23: Yes.  The Ace hardware store down the road has these 1/4" plastic rivets for 29 cents apiece, and the Weber took 3 of them.)

And *that's* done

 ADATA SSD arrived about 5:00, and now it's 6:30 and the installation went as smoothly as it does on the YouTube instructional videos.  Now to re-install some software.

To-do list, Weber Genesis 1000 version

1-Remove cooking grates and flavorizer bars

2-Remove control knobs and panel

3-Remove manifold assembly

4-Remove burner assembly and igniter

5-Install burner tubes and igniter kit

6-Reinstall manifold and valve assembly, panel and control knobs

7-Turn on gas and check for leaks

8-Reinstall flavorizer bars and cooking grates

Note: The burner kit and igniter kit include installation instructions.

--------------------------------------------------------------------

And that's what I did today. After that, I did this:

Placeholder for photo of pork chops on the freshly-updated Weber grill.  Pictures taken before, during and after are still on the phone and I'm unable to download them yet.  Probably has something to do with what I'm doing with the new Dell upstairs.  Well, tomorrow I'll attempt changing out the HDD on this laptop for an ADATA that's due to arrive during the day.  Then we'll see about getting the photo download working again.

Say what?

 Just heard an NPR story introduced about a group that provides children-free meals.  OK, maybe the hyphen doesn't belong between those two words, but it creates a more intriguing mental picture.

What a difference a day makes, amirite?

 Last night, I was frustrated, fussing with a computer. Tonight, I'm just enjoying it.

The Crucial drive can't be used for cloning the laptop hard drive?  So just use the included adapter and install it in the new Dell.  And that ADATA Swordfish HDD that wasn't recognized yesterday?  Why, I did the same thing today and got a different result.  Go figure!  Well, actually, there were some differences; I removed the stick from the PCIe adapter, looked at it, blew on it, waved it around in the air while muttering vague oaths, then re-inserted it and re-booted.  And there it was:  Disk Management showed a Disc 0, a Disc 1, a Disc 2, *and* a Disc 3.

Disc 3 is the boot disk, Hyrix 250 GB (C:)

Disc 2 is the 1 TB ADATA Swordfish (S:)

Disc 1 is the 1 TB Crucial MX500  (F:)

Disc 0 is a 3.5" 1 TB Seagate Barracuda (D:) that came with the new Dell.

Having no crises to deal with, I watched another episode of Dix Pour Cent, mostly in version originale, wearing the new Sennheisers.  Pretty soon I'll start concerning myself with moving Dropbox and Onedrive off the Hyrix and onto one of the big drives.

And this weekend?  Spruce up the Weber with the tubes and the new starter.  

Six or seven hours later

 After hours of reading and trying and failing and learning, I can say that while it's true that insanity consists of doing the same thing and expecting different results, it's also true that trying different things and getting the same results again and again (and again) isn't much better for one's mental health.

The new SSD is still empty.  The Acronis for Crucial has been uninstalled after yet another result of "you don't have a Crucial drive installed" and Macrium has been uninstalled after yet another result of "Error 9" while trying to clone the HDD to the SSD.  

To be completely honest, Macrium worked one time over those hours.  That was when I was cloning everything but the part of the HD that contains Windows boot information, and with that I learned that I am never going to be able to accomplish what I set out to do originally; that is, clone the old hard drive before it craps out and replace it with a bright new SSD as the new boot drive.  Cloning doesn't work when the source isn't 100% free of bad sectors.  

Oh well, I can still find another use for the Crucial drive.  Because I'm going to have to.

Back to work

 Same job as ever.  At least the workload is manageable now.

First Pat introduced me to Wordscapes, and we both now play the Spelling Bee puzzle in the Times.  It's a good feeling to come up with a high-scoring word, like "illogical" or "ratatat."  

Book in progress:  Guadalcanal Diary, a couple of pages at a time.  Can't concentrate on reading the way I used to.  Doesn't stop me from buying them, though.

The new Dell is working properly so far.  After a day or two of wrestling with the sound, I deleted the Creative Sound Blaster Z software and went with Microsoft's generic High Definition Audio Device drivers.  I also stopped trying to feed the sound through the Bose, which I think was too much to ask without an amp.  The TaoTronics sound bar from Amazon sounded terrible when I first got it, but now with different drivers, it's perfectly good.

Amazon's going to think I received another windfall $1,200 from the president.  I've ordered a set of Sennheiser headphones for upstairs, a 1 TB Adata SSD and a PCIe adapter for the new Dell, and 1 TB 2.5" Crucial SATA SSD for the Dell laptop downstairs.  

That last purchase wasn't planned, but after two boots in the past week or so that produced "hard drive not found" errors, and one more from over the weekend that resulted in what resembled a CHKDSK with error repairs that took several minutes, I read the writing on the wall and went back to Amazon once more.  The Crucial drive arrives tomorrow, and I'll put it in the enclosure and clone what's left of the original hard drive with the included Acronis software.  Then, swap out the old for the new.

Glorious

 A volunteer has appeared on the island.  The morning glories on the side of the house (destroyed during the landscaping project) were white.  No way of knowing where these lovely blue ones came from.

Vacation Day #4 of 4

 Wednesday, they said it'd be here Thursday.  

Thursday, they said it'd be here Saturday.

Today, here it is.

Upon further review

 (1) I didn't read the messages from FedEx correctly.  The shipment from Weber won't be here 9/10.

(2) After waiting and waiting, and all the while periodically checking the FedEx tracking link, a minute ago I saw that the delivery date for the Dell has been changed to Saturday 9/12. 

Maybe just as well.  There's new technology and new terms to learn, such as "M.2 PCIe to PCIe 3.0 x4 Adapter (Support M.2 PCIe 2280, 2260, 2242)"  Bozhe Moi!  My understanding is that SSD is better than a hard drive with spinning discs, and that using SSD with PCIe is better than SSD-SATA,  The new Dell only has one place for an SSD stick, and that's already spoken for as the boot drive.  

Day #2 of 4

 Tomorrow, both the Weber grill parts and the new Dell are scheduled to arrive.  A good way to spend a rainy day.

Today, we went to the Shoprite in Bethlehem and picked up some fresh almond extract and ground cloves so I could bake zucchini muffins.

On the way home, we stopped at the Sunoco on Airport Road that sells gasoline without ethanol, which goes in both our mower and our snowblower.  While the man pumped the gas into the can, I saw at least a half-dozen spotted lanternflies near the pump.

Rabbit count:  one, in Lori's back yard.

Almost

 The sedum flowers are turning pink and attracting insects, as yesterday's photo shows.  Today I counted at least six different types on the plant in our back yard.  One, a large bumblebee, bumbled into a spider web, from where the resident spider took dead aim on it.  The bee struggled free and flew away, and the spider retreated back beneath sedum leaves.

Genuine Vacation Day: #1 of 4

 The days off from the long weekend are past, and now come the four days that are really days off from work.

I phoned Waste Management today because they service our neighborhood, and they have another service for picking up hazardous materials.  Since we have more than two dozen paint cans in the basement, this sounds ideal.  The web site claimed we are eligible, but the customer service rep said they only pick up in Lower Macungie township, and not where we live in Upper Macungie.  Do I want to fight this to the Supreme Court?  Nah.  

I also called Overhead Door because on one of the new openers, one of the two light sockets isn't working.  The woman on the other end of the line actually asked whether I'd put a working bulb in the socket.  After I reassured her, she said she'd put in a ticket.

But that doesn't affect the operation of the opener itself, and yesterday with Pat's help I programmed both cars using Homelink, so we can use their built-in remote buttons instead of the separate remotes.  

The big task this week, after the usual chores, is refreshing the Weber Genesis 1000 grill we bought in 1998.  Some parts are rusted, and the flame isn't coming up like it did for the past 21 years, so it was time to head to Google and YouTube.  Voices of experience say it can be done, and at much less cost than buying a new one.  I ordered some parts, and cleaned up some others.

Soap and water on some pieces, WD-40 and oven cleaner on others.  Scrub with steel wool, a wire brush, or both, and rinse with clear water.  That's good enough for me, although some men go farther...

Besides that, Pat cleaned up the house for the little black pooshka and got it all set for the coming cold weather.  Yesterday, we got some plastic drainpipe and just need to install it.  It's good to have a big chunk of time to accomplish all these jobs.  Retirement sounds tempting under those conditions, but what do I do in six months when the basement is cleaned out and all the photos are tagged?  (Plus, the pay isn't nearly as good as what I'm making now.)

Seen on sedum

 

Friday night pizza

 

Latency Latency Latency BuzzBuzzBuzz

 In 2011, we sprang for a high-powered PC, a Dell XPS.  I was still cat blogging and processing lots of photos and video for Tabby's Place, and I used that to justify the top-of-the-line Intel CPU and the extra RAM.  

In addition, I ordered twin hard drives with one of those what-you-call RAID setups so there would always be a backup.  I recall that came in handy after a year or so, when one of the hard drives conked out, and all I had to do was buy another HD and re-RAID it.  

Let's skip over the next five or six years.  Somewhere in there Windows 10 came out and I installed it.  I got a job and had less time to do photos and video.  Pat's games in 2011 worked great, but by 2019 the newer games weren't as nice on it.  So we got her a 2019 Dell, one with fewer bells and whistles, but was plenty good enough for her games.  

The XPS went into retirement for awhile, until the COVID quarantine and I dusted it off to keep me company in the home Cigna office.  There was streaming entertainment, whether it was pop music, atmospheric music, or classical music, coming from all over the world and in several languages.  A patch cord fed the sounds through our 2010 Bose Wave, putting some more old technology back to work.

Then (and there's always one of those, isn't there?) after yet another Windows 10 upgrade, a sporadic buzzing began to appear in the audio.  Streaming music was impossible to listen to, and the spoken word not much better.  

That led, of course, to Googling and reading and testing theories, along with switching out hardware and upgrading software.  The result, several days later, is ... no change.  Streaming music buzzes, music on the hard drive buzzes, it buzzes with the Sound Blaster Z, it buzzes with the Sound Blaster 880, it buzzes after refreshing the thermal paste on the CPU, it just won't stop buzzing.  

I've learned a few things, of course, you don't learn much when everything goes right.  There's a piece of free software that told me the problem is in storport.sys, and several bookmarked articles that advised how to fix it, of which none worked.  

Change the name of the file to storport.old and let Windows re-load it?  Windows won't let me rename the file and won't tell me how to get the permission to do so.  

No, what you need to do is disable some setting in the BIOS that throttles the CPU!  Oh really?  The CPU throttle kicks in when heat is building up to a level unsafe for its health.  You really don't want to disable CPU throttling.  And on it goes.

Maybe it's time to haul out the 2002 Sony portable CD player in the drawer under the night table and see whether it still works...

Peeking Schwirley

 

A third guest at supper

 Off to the right, the little black pooshka watched the raccoon from the safety of a chair.  Beneath her was her scruffy big ol' creampuff boyfriend.

Nice

 It was a beautiful day Sunday.  

Tell me, when the weather is absolutely perfect, why is it merely called "fair" weather?  I mean, not even "fair to good"?  "Good to excellent" wasn't strong enough to describe what we had over the weekend. I'd go with "well nigh perfect."  

So on Sunday, I was mowing the lawn, carefully going around a little yellow flower between the landscaping island and the shed, and Pat was picking up sticks that had been pruned from our trees during the recent storm.  

On one lap around the yard, I saw her sitting on the Jarrah chair under the cherry tree, and I stopped the mower and joined her.  I put my arm around her, and she rested her head on my shoulder.  For perhaps fifteen minutes we sat there and enjoyed the present moment.  It was a moment that put me in mind of the declaimed verse in Once in a Lifetime:  "And you may find yourself in a beautiful house... with a beautiful wife (not to mention "Behind the wheel of a large automobile" from time to time)."  

Or in fewer words, "If this isn't nice..."

Roadside flower

 Actually, more like sidewalk-side, in the yard next door to us.