Saturday bliss.......

 

Lol, just to clarify, my dog doesn't wear costumes.  We tried on Halloween some years ago ~ it didn't go well.

I am on the last few days before my trip to Texas to visit my kids!  I am very excited to see them and my grandkids.  It won't be a long trip, 4 days ~ which is probably as long as any of us would want to be together 24/7.  This is because I will be staying in the house.  I didn't rend a car or reserve a hotel room.  I had a Southwest voucher that will expire in a few weeks, and there wasn't any other place I would want to go (OK, well Hawaii sounds pretty darn good, but the voucher wasn't quite that big 😁).  In the spirit of thriftiness, I asked if they were ok with me staying with them.  Of course they said yes, what else would they say?  This is why the trip is 4 nights.  Normally when I go to Texas I stay for at least a week, 10 days.  I sure will be happy when my family wants to come here to visit us!  It seems something always comes up 😔

Y'all ready for the next installment of Ms Loud????  The moon landing was a hoax!  And so, the Mars photos that came up on my phone are a hoax as well.  We did the 5 year old "No it wasn't" "Yes it was" thing back and forth a little.  Then she agreed to disagree.  In about 4 months (give or take) she will move to Montana.....and says that I will be taking her spot (which I don't want to do).  We will see what happens!  They may force the issue.  I will lose my view of the outside, and have to take over the ordering of the implant supplies, which to my eyes, looks rather complicated.  Not excited about that.  I'd rather stay where I am now, where I think my strengths lay.

Winter is loosening it's hold on New Mexico...although the mountains in the northern reaches did receive some snow this week.  We got zip.  The drought situation is worsening.  Our next option for moisture (well, more than a passing storm) will be our summer monsoon season.  Fire danger remains high.  I hope that the people walking/hiking/camping in our forests are careful.  One little spark....well, we've all seen the fires in California.  Yikes....

I am baking an orange pudding cake today, trying out a new recipe from Baked from Scratch magazine.  It's supposed to taste similar to those orange push up treats, which I really loved.  I hope it turns out good!

Enjoy your weekend!

Love, 365

Oh, Texas our Texas......

 

A "snow cowboy".....

Texas, as undoubtedly you have all seen, is having a really bad week.  At least by now they are finally experiencing above freezing temperatures.  I have a lot of family in Texas....my Mom is OK because the assisted living facility has a generator, so they didn't experience loss of power (thank God!), nor did they lose running water.  My two sons (who live in the same house ~ younger one lives in the apartment attached to it, a great arrangement during Covid) never lost power or water either.  My sister wasn't quite so lucky though.  Their pipes froze ~ and possibly their water pump.  They live in the country and have their own well...and have been without water for nearly a week.  They were warm though, since they had plenty of oak firewood and a wood stove in the living room.

Some of the photos and videos we've all seen on tv this past week are so awful.  I can't imagine my house with no power, no way to heat it, and no water.  Did you see the photo of the icicles coming down from the ceiling fan?  I know there were people who went from house to house depending on who had power.  I saw one photo on the morning news showing a tent set up in the living room in an effort to warm it with their own body heat.  Nowhere to go, the roads are icy.  My heart goes out to all of those people.

We were cold for sure, but here in NM, we do sometimes get some very cold weather.  We have water and power.  The only gripe I had was the snow we had every day, and having to drive to work every morning in it.  Yesterday was the worst.  We had snow start in the early morning and the city didn't send out the salt trucks until after nearly all of us had made it in to work.  My Rav4 did ok, I didn't slide around but for a tiny bit and made it in to work safe and sound.  I was a bit ticked off at my employers ~ really they should have given us a two hour delay, because by 10 am it was melting and much safer to drive on.

By Friday ~ today, haha ~ the snow is completely gone from the roads.  Romeo took the dog for a walk, and slipped and fell in the mud.  I asked if he was ok, and he said yeah, the only thing hurt was his dignity, haha.  It's very muddy and slushy, even though we are above freezing, the shady areas are still slick.

I hope all of you affected by the storm are doing better.  Stay warm everyone!  Help your neighbor....

Love, 365

Happy Valentines Day, everyone!

 

Happy Valentines Day, to all of you love birds........

I'm listening to dozens of tiny birds, mostly sparrows and finches.....Romeo threw bird seed out on the snow, and they have congregated to take advantage of the bounty.  It is very cold today ~ 13 degrees.  We also had a snow thunderstorm yesterday evening, complete with a lot of lightening.  We don't usually have those kinds of storms.  I was driving home and  saw a few spectacular lightening bolts, one of which produced a huge boom! afterward.  I arrived home minutes before the the blizzard, which was short lived, until about 2 or 3 in the morning, when it started to snow again.  At least, I assume the weather channel was correct, because I was sound asleep.  😴

The result of this 3-4 inches (don't forget the bitter cold and wind) of snow is that I have a morning off from church, as it was cancelled due to the terrible driving conditions.  I have yet to hear a snow plow, but I'm hoping to hear them this afternoon....or that my employers will cancel tomorrow's work day.  I'm sure that the roads are very icy.  I grew up in Texas, where snow is as rare as hen's teeth (to continue my birdy theme today 😁).  I don't enjoy driving in snow and ice, mostly because I have little experience.....and given how people around here drive in it, neither do they.

Romeo did bring me flowers and chocolate yesterday, even though I didn't ask ~ usually I would tell him not to spend the silly amounts of money on flowers that die in less than a week.  He was thrifty, which made me so happy.....even if that sounds weird.  He doesn't need to do these things, because he shows his love every day in all the little things he does.  I am so lucky!  

 

Have a wonderful Valentines Day!

Love, 365

TGIF everybody!

 

                                I'm just waiting for that right moment to post this on FB.....Lol

It has been a looooong week.  I don't know why it seemed so long!  By 3 pm I was so ready to go home, but still 2 hours left to go.  Do you have work days like that?  It's so annoying.  Maybe I'm not busy enough :-)

In January of last year (I think I wrote a post about it) while playing doubles, one of the players ran in front of me, resulting in my tripping over their feet and falling.  I broke my left arm.  Then, just as the orthopedist gave me the go ahead to go back, everything was shut down.  I suppose that was mid March.  I had actually put my membership on hold a week before, which is a six month deal.  But, they kept allowing us to keep the membership on hold due to the ongoing pandemic.  Nice, huh?  The last part of January I had a reminder to decide what to do with the membership.  I was paying a LOT for that membership.  Romeo said he wasn't going back, he would just continue with home work-outs and if he wanted to go to the gym, he'd go to Planet Fitness, which is usually around $10 a month.  So it was up to me if I wanted to keep going.  The kicker is that this gym is the only one in town that has racquetball courts, ergo, if you want to play racquetball, you must pay!  Once upon a time there were multiple gyms that had courts, but it seems that it is not as popular as it once was, and eventually they all removed those courts to make room for other gym activities or closed all together.  

It is a competitive and active sport.  I have been playing off and on for over 20 years.  I would love to keep playing, but after a lot of thought I decided to cancel.  It's just too much money!  We could take a nice yearly vacation with the money I was paying.  Now that Romeo is retired, and given the financial goals I have in mind, it just doesn't fit so well anymore.  So, when I called Michelle at the club and informed her of my decision, she "reminded" me that I would have to pay for that last month of membership.  What kind of bull shit is this????  And sure enough, on the 4th of the month, a big ol' withdrawal was ripped out of our account.  So, I figure, it's paid for, I might as well go, especially since I've had my two vaccines.  

So I go to Wednesday night racquetball, the first time in over a year.  It took a bit to get the feel of it again...you know?  It was so fun.  I had a blast, and ended up playing for 2 hours.  

The next day I could hardly move my right arm, haha.  I had, as I usually do, over done it just a little bit.  And my right knee was wonky.  The knee is ok now, but the arm is still very sore.  I think I need to add a better weight lifting routine, because I obviously wasn't strengthening those muscles at all.   I hope it's all back to normal for next week  :-)

Love, 365

Fast!~~~~~~~~~

 

After my last arm jab, I stopped on my out of the store to buy myself a few flowers..........

My computer came!!!  And I tell you what, when I turn it on, it is ON!  No waiting for 5-10 minutes!  Updates?  Well, that took a little longer.  Getting help from Apple so I could transfer my info from one to the other?  Extremely painful.

I happened to get a person who lives in India.  I am very familiar with the Indian accent.  And this guys accent was very vibrant.  So, at first I spent most of my time asking for him to repeat, please?   And it didn't take very long for his irritation to be dealing with such an idiot (as I'm sure he thought of me) to show.  At the end he asked if there was anything else, and I might have mentioned that he could certainly be a bit more patient with people.  He said thank you, but I think that's the standard issue reply when phone support receives a complaint.  It was wretched.  If you've had this experience then I think you know that I was never so tempted to say "Look, I'm not stupid, but this is going to take a few minutes, asshole".  I was never so glad to get off of the phone, and was so hoping I would not have to call back.  My photos are there, so I'm good to go.  Now I wait for the box to ship my old computer back, for which I will receive $130.  Not much.  But what else would I do with it?  They don't make very good paper weights.  First I will have to restore it to factory reset, but I know how to do that, because last year the computer just froze and nothing would bring it back.  Luckily I had backups.

So, for now, I have the latest and greatest ~ although by no means the most expensive.  I could have easily spend 2 to 4 times as much.  But really, now that I'm not in school, what's the point?  I do a little blogging, a little research and shopping, and that's about it.  It'll be passé in 6 months if that long.  But I am so happy that I have speed again ~ vroom vroom! 😀

**********

I forgot to mention yesterday that Ms Loud mentioned to me that the pedophile ring (QAnon) killed Tom Hanks.  Oh, yeah, he's dead ~ didn't you know?  I swear.  

Love, 365

Yeah, I'm still here!......

 

Someone posted this beautiful photo of Camel Rock....I think it's an older photo because it no longer looks as good as this one.  You know........time.  Water.  Erosion.  People.  But it is a really cool photo!

I received my second Covid vaccine (Moderna) on Tuesday.  In fact there were 5 people in the office who got their second shot this week.  One went home at 1 pm, with a fever and nauseau ~ this was on Tuesday.  Two people called in sick yesterday, with fever.  One was a dental assistant to our busiest dentist, of course.  The other was our office manager.  All of them complained of fever and chills.  For me, all I had was a sore arm, and a little tiredness.  The other dentist complained that food tasted funny.  He is so funny, always having to jump on board with some complaint or other ~ not wanting to be left out and all.  :-)  So for all of you who are younger than 50 may experience these symptoms, which is apparently common.  In retrospect I think it was a mistake for us to have our shots early in the week.  We had to reschedule about 15 patients when these folks went home......

Not really believing that New Year's resolutions are a good thing ~ I did promise myself that I would use my handy kitchen gadgets more often.  Romeo is a little worried about using the Instant Pot because of the pressure cooker aspect.  This past weekend I decided to make lasagna in it, and it was really really good.  The recipe used so many time savers ~ no-boil lasagna noodles and meat sauce from a jar. Add all that luscious cheese ~ mozzarella,  fresh parmesan and ricotta....yum yum.   It was fairly quick to put together.  I also used the IP to hard boil eggs and make egg salad, one of our favorites.  

And here is where we delve into the demented mind of conspiracy theorists.

~QAnon: At its heart, QAnon is a wide-ranging, completely unfounded theory that says that President Trump is waging a secret war against elite Satan-worshipping paedophiles in government, business and the media. 

Ms Loud ~ no holds barred conspiracy believer ~ spouted all of the pedophile theories to me on Monday.  That these people bleed these captured children and drink their blood.  It is one of the weirdest things I've heard in awhile.  She believes that former Pres. Trump removed the U.S. from some sort of global committee and that there are millions of dollar in gold that have been transported back to the USA from a vault in the Vatican.  Which somehow is all part of the same conspiracy.  ......Monday is the day I decided to put in for a vacation day on Thursday (which is why I'm off today).  

Yesterday she went on and on about how the Covid vaccine is not approved by the FDA (which I suppose is technically true, although they did release it on emergency use authorization which could be interpreted as NOT approval).  How it is not a true vaccine.  And on and on.  I was never so glad to clock out at the end of the day yesterday and go home.

I don't know why I just can't let it go.  There is no convincing her of the truth.  She will stubbornly believe all of this nonsense, and backs it up with posts from one of the social media sites ~ I can't remember the name, but I know it's not FB.  Some days I can just ignore her and bury myself in a task, and other days I just do a slow burn.  And I'm completely baffled as to why people believe - whole heartedly! - in this stuff.  Sigh.

Love, 365