Came and Got It

The motion detector that tells us when the little black pooshka arrives was displaying what seemed to be false positives.  The light would go on, we'd look outside, and no cats would be there.  After awhile, we realized that birds were flying down and helping themselves.  In this case, the cat food was being eaten by a catbird.  (And a rather defiant-looking one, too, wouldn't you say?)

My Monday

New role at work, in addition to the current tasks.  It's a slog, looking up the info and then plugging it in just so somewhere else.  But it beats unemployment!

Fourth night recently that my Widdle Baby Durl (TM pending) Good Queen Schwirley jumped in my lap while I was in the family room.  She kneaded the freshly-washed fleece blanket vigorously before settling down, and remained there for a good 15 minutes before I coughed and broke the spell.

Book of the Night:  Guadalcanal Diary

Easy Like Sunday

Nora waited until Pat got up, then appropriated her chair.  Good cat!

This afternoon's project

Loaves of babka, made with the recipe handed down from Pat's mother, plus some of our own ideas, like golden raisins and currants instead of plain raisins.

Saturday Evening Post

There are a few milkweed plants in our yard, which we're saving for monarch butterflies.  While we haven't yet seen any monarchs, they've attracted a number of bumblebees.

Missed Opportunity?

So there they are playing golf in the rain in Connecticut, in a tournament sponsored by Travelers Insurance, yet no one is carrying a red umbrella.

TIL: Fallen flags

(1) Saw a Facebook post with a comment that said Neil Young owns the Lionel Trains company.
(2) Googled "Neil Young and Lionel Trains", learned he was a minority owner in the late 90's and early 2000's.
(3) Another search result reported that in 2017 Young sold personal memorabilia, including some Lionel trains, for $300,000.
(4) One of those search results used the term fallen flags, the term for railroads that no longer exist.

Late in the afternoon

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potentilla_indica

Not as tasty as the true strawberry, but according to this, it is edible.

My Thursday

Drove to PetSmart this evening and took the long way to give my car some work.  In the mail today was a reminder from Toyota that it was time for my last pre-paid (they say "free", but who's kidding whom?) service.  I bought the Highlander in August 2018, and this is supposed to be the 2-year/24,000 mile service.  Mine has 8,800 or so, and according to the reminder, only 2,500 of it came in the past 12 months.  (Odds are, the vast majority were going to or returning from a hospital.)

So the trip today took me past a large family of Canada geese, including young who were mostly grown, but not quite.  Burbling internally about the father and mother gooses and their little gooselings (isn't English fun?), I stopped at the light next to the Wawa and put on my blinker to turn left onto Route 100.  During the red light, I fiddled with the radio, trying to find something on the satellite worth listening to.  Yes, it's another free period with Sirius XM, and I have to wonder how many subscriptions have cancelled because they don't drive to work anymore.

The light turned green, I turned left -- and found a bunch of orange cones blocking both lanes.  Oh right, there was an announcement that there would be some infrastructure improvement on 100.  I waited for the car behind me to pass, and followed it south in the single lane that *was* open.

One change in PetSmart:  the cat adoption cubicles are playing host to adoptable cats once more. 

A photo from the PetSmart parking lot:  guessing that the litter was left by two separate individuals, unless it was one person trying the prophylactic nicotine treatment against COVID-19.

Green and Yellow (and Green)

It doesn't feel like a pandemic from here

As long as I don't want to go anywhere except food shopping, life is pretty much the same as it was at the beginning of the year.  I still have the five-second commute and get my meals at home.  Occasionally a cat joins me in the office. 

Something new in the front yard

Western Salsify

Feeding the birds, and...

Easy Like Sunday

In the back yard

Traditional Friday Cat Blogging

The humans are outside, and at least two cats are curious.

At the end of a long, hard day

Goodbye, Aunt Jemima

Flavored corn syrup named for a slave-era symbol of servitude.  Going, gone.  

A few more wildflowers

Erigeron Annuus

But you may call her Daisy Fleabane.  This particular plant is the only one of its kind under the small tree next to the driveway in our front yard.

The Conditions that Prevail: My Monday

PTO from work today.  Drove Pat to her eye doctor.  Everyone wore masks, and they took our temperature at the door.  This time I couldn't accompany her in back for the exam.  Soon after she left, I was asked to leave the waiting room to make room for patients.

So I drove a quarter-mile and filled the tank of the Toyota with Costco gas for $2.049 a gallon, at least 20 cents cheaper than anyplace else I've seen in the area.  Didn't wear a mask there, either.

After her appointment, we drove to the Trexlertown credit union to cash a refund check I got a month ago from State Farm car insurance.  (Considering I hardly drive anymore, I'd think it would have been larger.)  But the line of cars in the drive-thru lane snaked around the building, and we abandoned the idea.  

I saw several flowering chicory plants in the ground across from the Auburn entrance onto Grange Road.  So is June 15 chicory coming out day?  It's as though it is their turn:  in early spring there was tiny blue creeping speedwell, followed by yellow wood sorrel, wood violets, phlox, clover (red and white), and now chicory.

Next stop was in Emmaus for a Wally Hog and a coke.  Three masked police officers were in line ahead of us.

Then we went to Home Depot on Lehigh Street, because Pat wants a garden with vegetables and some bloomin' plants.  But the parking lot looked like a Saturday morning instead of Monday, so crowded, Pat shrugged and said not to bother parking.  (I never have to be asked twice to leave Home Depot.)  It wasn't a waste of time, though, because along the edge of the property were many pretty purple thistles and one stalk of chicory flowers.

Since we were so close, I took a shot and went a little further down the road to Downyflake Lane where there's another branch of the same credit union.  If anything, the wait was longer, with two lines, each containing more than a half-dozen cars.  Let's go home.

Back home, the internet is still spotty.  Ookla Speedtest is saying download speed is 5MB per second, instead of the 100MB we're paying for.  The first draft of this post was typed offline because I couldn't get online to Blogspot.

My IPad needs a security upgrade, which needs to wait until the internet is back up.

Around 2:00, both of us joined the cats in a refreshing nap.  Mine lasted until 3:00 and Pat got up from the couch at 3:45.

Two Good Cats and several Tiny Kittens

My Sunday

Pat & I went to the Bethlehem ShopRite, where we got a few things and I ssaw thiss sslightly missspelled ssign:

First time we'd gone for that kind of ride in almost exactly one year, since her broken leg last June 16.

Internet has been going in and out today, interrupting streaming and attempted blog posting.  But considering that a few hours ago, I was sure I'd be shopping tomorrow for a new laptop, I'm OK.  Don't know if there's a connection, but yesterday I left it on for the latest Windows 10 update, and today it wouldn't boot.  Turned it over and it was plenty warm.  After it cooled completely, tried again and this time it booted.  So now, before it shuts down again or before the internet cuts out again, here's a picture of Kit in the last light before sunset.  A minute later, it was too dark.

My Friday

Busy day at work.  Getting tired of so many emails with so many broken files that have to be fixed.  The money's good, but I'm glad to have Monday off.

Today, work.  Tomorrow, chores.  Wash the sheets, mow the lawn, do some weed whacking, vacuum the downstairs, clean some cat boxes.  It'd be nice to go off and so something fun.  No casinos, no IronPigs games, and Tabby's Place is still closed.

Pizza at home for supper.  Finally got into the six-pack of Pepsi in the basement refrigerator, after four days without a soda.

Two walks with Pat.  Ideal weather.  Makes me wish we could get up and go somewhere besides a supermarket or PetSmart.

Two rabbits in our yard tonight, and another across the street.

Watched Balthazar on Amazon Prime, with two stoppages due to Internet going down.  Began to watch CBS Reports on YouTube about D-Day plus 20 years with Ike and Cronkite, but 15 minutes in, the web went down one more time. 

Shrug...

Watched Home Town with Pat
Watched Nebraska-Florida 2017 volleyball championship
Listened to Rise and Fall of the Third Reich
Played many Strat games with the 1956 Dodgers
Took two walks with Pat
Enjoyed the sunshine
Saw a rabbit in the back yard

A Bunny By Bovis

A bunny by Bovis

My Monday

Lots of re-work on the job today due to other person's errors... including one of mine.
Two walks with Pat, even though her hip is painful today.
One solo walk around the entire development.
Beautiful day, sunny and mid-seventies.
Granddaughter Diana's GPA for the school year:  3.97.
Next-door neighbor Lori cut the forsythia branches that had been sticking into the sidewalk.
Ham salad, nacho chips and milk for lunch.
1 1/2 slices of pizza for supper.  Bowl of frosted flakes just now.
Both the pooshka and the creampuff dropped in for supper.
An excellent photo of a rabbit by Carl Bovis on Twitter.  The only thing of his I enjoy more are his pictures of tits.  Blue tits, great tits, bearded tits, doesn't matter, I just love to look at those tits.

My Sunday

Mowed lawn
Took yard waste to township (2 trips)
Made pizza for supper
Napped while listening to Sparks
Stripped bed, washed sheets
Hung sheets on line to dry
Enjoyed a Dove bar
Took 2 walks with Pat
Read New Yorker profile of Shirley Jackson
Watched 1st set of 2017 NCAA Women's Volleyball championship game

Saturday Recipe

If a guy reads step 5 without reading step 4...

Keep thinking, fella...

A modest proposal to increase hitting:  allow 3 outs per half-inning, unless the first two outs are strikeouts.  Can't argue that it would provide added incentive to make contact.  Also true, though, is that it rewards teams that use lots of hard throwers to avoid contact.

Hey, it's either this or listen to the staff meeting that's going on now.  (Thankfully they don't mandate web-cams to ensure people are paying attention.)

Devoted mates

The little black pooshka showed up a half-hour ago, but ignored the food set out for her and instead sat on one of the deck chairs.  A few minutes ago, she got down onto the deck and began to walk toward the steps.  Following her gaze, I saw the big ol' creampuff approaching.  They greeted each other, hers more enthusiastic than his (he lifted his left paw to fend her off), and then they both walked to the dishes of dry and wet food Pat placed outside the door, and they began to eat together.

Check-out at LVH

Another follow-up visit.  Good news.  The thyroid masses haven't grown larger.

Now it's the roses' turn to bloom

This one is in front of our house.

I didn't forget...

...just didn't have time to write it before bed.  Our little girl Miss Swirly has taken to jumping onto me in the rocker, and when I began to get up, she races down the hall to the living room.  Of course, I am expected to follow.

I sit on the sofa, and she dashes over and jumps on my lap.  I start brushing her, mainly on her cheeks and chin, while murmuring to her what a good cat she is.  In a couple of minutes, she begins to get overstimulated and jumps down and scratches the carpet before going off to do other things.


 - watched Portrait of a Lady on Fire Sunday night.  Usually it's difficult for me to sit through a two-hour movie without a break, but not this one.