soak up the sun

Oct. 19th, 2025 02:19 pm

Fog season

Oct. 22nd, 2025 07:19 am
susandennis: (Default)
[personal profile] susandennis
The part of the country I was raised in (Southeast) is so very different from where I have now lived twice as long (Northwest). But, I still kind of half expect early evening thunderstorms in hot weather and am always surprised and delighted by the early morning fog that greets most cooler days here. It's just so cozy and lovely. This morning it's rolling through so that even the part of the building just across the drive is shrouded.

I learned yesterday that they are trying to convince Hazel to move into assisted living. John is not dead yet but he's not ever going to move back to their apartment. She can't live there on her own - she has minor memory issues but mainly can't see shit. She can't work the telephone most of the time. She can turn on the TV but only to Netflix and if something screws with that, she's lost. She can't drive or figure out how to get a ride to anywhere and has had two major (stitches) falls since Labor Day. BUT denial is strong. She says the assisted living apartments are too small and she is claustrophobic. This is going to be a situation.

They are closing the pool down Monday-Thursday of next week to do work on the filters or something. Yesterday, I sent a note to the maintenance scheduler to ask if I could sneak in a swim Monday morning before they start and I just got the nicest note back saying they won't be closing the pool actually until about 9. So I can get easily get a Monday swim in before they do.

Bonny and I are having dinner in the dining room tonight. I rarely eat there so this will be a treat for me. She eats there a couple of times a week but rarely with me so this will be a treat for her. hahahah

Otherwise, the day looks normal. Puzzling, TV, knitting - the usual. My knee is 99% healed and I'm so grateful. It's such a relief.

Ok. Time to hit the pool while we still have this fog.


20251021_190142-COLLAGE

white and gold

Oct. 22nd, 2025 03:32 am
house_wren: glass birdie (Default)
[personal profile] house_wren
Yesterday I saw a great gathering of white pelicans on the big river.

I saw a golden eagle sitting in a field. Golden eagles are BIG!

I went on a long drive to visit a small town with a yarn shop. Result! The staff were friendly AND helpful, it was well organized, and it had the kind of yarns I like.

Assuming my joints will allow it, I'm going to make 'banana' socks, which is a tube sock (no heel) that uses ribbing and welts for shaping.

On the way home I took the smaller roads. The sunlight was hitting the trees on the hills in just the right angle to emphasize the colors. I passed by two one-room schoolhouses. They were white clapboard buildings, each with two front doors. Evidently the doors went into the cloakrooms, one for boys and one for girls.

There were one-room schools out in the country when I grew up. There was still one operating when I was in college; I knew the teacher. When it closed, and the kids rode a bus to the school in town.

I'm watching The Queen of Office, a comedy k-drama. Sometimes it is predictable, and sometime it surprises me in a way that makes me laugh out loud.

In-Person Meeting Day 1

Oct. 21st, 2025 10:58 pm
days_unfolding: (Default)
[personal profile] days_unfolding

Woke up with my alarm at 6 AM. I couldn’t remember why I was getting up so early for the longest time. Oh yeah, the in-person meeting. My stomach is upset, but I have to go, so that’s that.

The meeting went okay. My grand boss got a little teary because it’s her last annual meeting, and my glasses fogged up a little too. I did get a major dizzy spell during the morning and had to sit down and put my head down.

I loved the pants that I wore to the meeting, so I ordered a pair in navy.

Another dizzy spell. Sigh. I want to lie down.

Um. I got a like on Coffee Meets Bagel from a guy in Gainesboro, TN. I don’t think that will work geographically.

I stupidly left my Kizik shoes out, and one got chewed. Sigh. I ordered a new pair for my trip.

Napped and slept until 9 PM. Got the garbage out.

The BBC had an article about bacteria on your toothbrush. Ugh. They suggested soaking it in mouthwash.

It’s a zoo here. Gracie is barking at Oliver. Oliver is hissing. Lily has gotten out of the fray and went upstairs. Bella ate Gracie’s food. Fed us all.

Now I need to log on and modify a file for our training exercise tomorrow (done).

I was looking for a straw and found my spare set of Zenni glasses. (My housekeeping style is "There appears to have been a struggle".) Now I need to start laundry because I want to wear the jeans tomorrow that I have on. And go to bed.

Media Post

Oct. 21st, 2025 08:49 pm
inchoatewords: a drawn caricature of the journal user, a brown-haired woman with glasses in a blue shirt, smiling at the viewer (Default)
[personal profile] inchoatewords
Movies: None.

Television/Streaming: Taskmaster, of course. Continued with season 2 of Farscape:
- "The Way We Weren't," which shows us Aeryn's past as a Peacekeeper and how Pilot was installed on Moya (against Moya's will; and I really felt for Pilot being constantly in pain due to the grafting)
- "Picture If You Will," where Chiana gets the painting that shows hers (and others') fates in it and they gets sucked in, all Maldis' doing.

Also continued with season 2 of Buffy:
- "Inca Mummy Girl," where the museum exhibit of same comes to life in the form of an attractive girl that somehow likes Xander (ugh at Xander doing that "talk slow and loudly to someone who is not a native English speaker," glad he abandons that quickly. Ugh at Cordelia for being a total bitch).
- "Reptile Boy," where Cordelia convinces Buffy to go to a frat party, where they end up in a basement dungeon as potential sacrifices to a snake-like god. All of the college guys look 30+ in this episode. I made a lot of snarky comments during this one, hah.

Books: I finished The Painted Bird, which was . . . something. I'll just copy and paste my Goodreads/Storygraph review:
I read Being There by this author many years ago. I didn't particularly care for it, as I recall it was too implausible. I understood it to an allegory but it still bugged me.

Fast forward to now and this book, which i didn't even realize was the same author at first. I think this is on the Goodreads Most Disturbing Books list, which might explain how it ended up on my tbr.

The Painted Bird is, indeed, disturbing. Anything anyone could possibly think of for a trigger/ content warning is here: assault, physical and sexual, including children; violence to animals, including bestiality; suicide; and that's just the ones I can recall as I type this.

Now, obviously many atrocities were perpetuated on people, both Jewish and non, during WWII. This book takes place in Poland, as the protagonist (implied to be the author himself, or based on his experiences) travels from village to village trying to remain safe as the Germans begin to round folks up and send them to the camps. The main character is dark haired and dark eyed and is called what is now considered a slur. Romani people were also rounded up back then, so the villagers' hatred of him is historical.

But the torture and the violence are so unrelenting that i had to stop halfway through and look up the author. And it seems that this book is actually fiction. In addition, there is some speculation about whether Kozinski actually wrote it.

I actually hated the main character by the end of this book. I know that all the evil and misery and such obviously have an effect on him, but I was glad to be done and I can't recommend this to anyone.


I also read a short story called "Death Row" by Frieda McFadden. A lot of folks on Goodreads were apparently confused by the "twist" ending, whereas I thought it was pretty evident what happened. The plot reminded me of asinine Reddit posts, where a person suspects their partner of something, usually cheating, and instead of actually talking to them and confirming this, they go right to Reddit and draw up divorce papers. I've never read anything else by this author and I think that's fine.

Video Games: Stardew Valley! We've gotten to Ginger Island now and are working on the quests and such there. I also just got the movie theatre opened.

(no subject)

Oct. 21st, 2025 10:55 am
greghousesgf: (Hugh Smile)
[personal profile] greghousesgf
My kitchen light is busted, I called the front desk to ask for them to have the maintenance guys come up and fix it and they didn't hang up the phone right after the conversation was over and I overheard one of them complaining about me complaining too much! I go "what?" and she was all "we'll send somebody up". All I wanted was to get my kitchen light fixed!

No more This Is What It's All About

Oct. 21st, 2025 08:47 am
susandennis: (Default)
[personal profile] susandennis
Finally, in the 9th inning last night, I had to mute every announcer. The TV guys had already pissed me off and now the radio guys were dragging out and repeating every minute, every single idiotic sports idiom ever uttered by anyone. The Mariners lost by one run but, honestly, by the last out, I was just relieved to get 5 months without having to hear another sports announcer. If you can't say something not stupid, shut the fuck up. And, also, I'm tired of baseball.

So all's well that ends well. hahahahaha

I played volleyball this morning and it was fun. My knee twinged a couple of times but not badly and it is fine now. In all the knee madness, I'd taken to no longer wearing the brace for my elbow tendinitis. I need to still wear it. So I'll put it back in my swim bag.

My across the hall neighbor, Jim, has been deteriorating mentally for a while now. Yesterday afternoon, I ran into him coming back from dinner and he had a carer!! Finally. And she's a good one. We have a solid program here of careers. You can hire them for an hour a day or 24/7. They will help with every day things or just be with you in case you need help and, in Jim's case, they will make sure he's ok inside his apartment and goes to get meals. There are a bunch that work here a lot. The one with him yesterday took care of Gail, who lived down the hall, when her husband died. Jim appeared to be very comfortable with him. So, whew. I don't have to worry about his burning down the place or turning up as a corpsicle.

Today is house cleaning day - yeah!!! And that's about it for action. Fine by me. The only thing on my list today is lunch x 4. Their lunch menu this week includes Chicken Teriyaki Bowl. And theirs is better than anyone else's in Issaquah. PLUS. it reheats from freezing beautifully. So I'm going to order up a bunch today for the freezer (and lunch). This will also help my monthly meal credit balance. I think I'll order that up now for pickup later and then... go get dressed.

20251020_191557-COLLAGE

(no subject)

Oct. 20th, 2025 07:05 pm
greghousesgf: (Horse)
[personal profile] greghousesgf
Power cuts suck. My legs fucking hurt.

Discombobulated

Oct. 20th, 2025 08:23 pm
days_unfolding: (Default)
[personal profile] days_unfolding

I forgot to put my hearing aids on. With it, I’m not. Dropped off the car to be fixed. I've heard that it's not a great place to buy a car, but they have a slick, well-organized operation in their service department.

It's COLD today (38F/3C this morning). I was toasty last night under the comforters though.

My neck is killing me. I was going to skip my massage until after my cruise, but maybe I need to squeeze it in. Okay, I booked for Saturday at 4:30. I'm wondering if I need to consult with a chiropractor.

The car is ready but I’m waiting until after my 1:00 meeting to pick it up. I'll go get it at 4 PM (done).

I'm a little nervous about our in-person meetings tomorrow and Wednesday. I'll be glad when they're over. I'm doing a last-minute survey and some notes for one and a presentation for the other. Must remember my hearing aids!

Gracie cracks me up. I was going "SSSSSSSSHHH," and she cocked her head like, "What is that noise?" Now I know how to shut her up :)

There was an accident right outside at the intersection. The people involved are okay, but the cars aren't. I heard it upstairs. My neighbor said that's because we have a "Yield" sign rather than a "Stop" sign.

The retirement place at which I was looking is indeed REALLY expensive. I found one in Bloomington that's more reasonable, but I'd really like to stay in Champaign-Urbana. There is one in Savoy (south of Champaign) that is worth checking out.

My hearing aids were dead as a doornail (how did that phrase come about?), so I told my choir director that I was staying home. That also will make it easier to get my things together for tomorrow and to sleep early.

And my glasses are missing again! I think that I need some of those dorky glasses chains to keep them on me. Found the glasses. They fell out of my pocket.

Fed us all and took the dogs out. Checked the weather to decide what to wear tomorrow. It’ll be cool.

I’m trying the “Coffee Meets Bagel” dating site for a hoot. I don’t expect much from it.

Ugh. The "work all hours" culture is back in Silicon Valley. They're calling it "996," a demanding 72-hour workweek, working from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., six days a week. But I used to work longer hours than that. I remember working every day for a month. I'm glad that I left that behind.

I've got my clothes for tomorrow in the wash. When they're done, I'll go to sleep, although I also need to pack up my work laptop for tomorrow.

🔸

Oct. 20th, 2025 05:26 pm
vidwindow: (kaede)
[personal profile] vidwindow posting in [community profile] addme
Name: lise

Age:

30s

I mostly post about:

every day interactions, projects i’m working on, movies, mostly just my every day life! i’m probably going to start posting some photography too.

My hobbies are:

photography, cinema, writing, art in general, cooking, reading, watching obscure films & shorts, learning italian, thrifting, collecting vhs tapes

My fandoms are:

not really in fandoms much, but some of my media interests include: horror (halloween series, five nights at freddy’s, no i’m not a human, giallo films, killer7, deadly premonition, etc), speculative fiction (kathe koja especially), psychological thrillers, internet ephemera, weird niches in general. i’m really into things like mannequins, dolls, masks, and animatronics as well.

I'm looking to meet people who:

are artsy & weird! people who always have a project going (doesn’t have to art related - stem can be included here too), activists,

My posting schedule tends to be: just returned to dw (lifelong online journal-er though) sand i am fairly busy so it’ll most likely be weekly



When I add people, my dealbreakers are:

not really anything besides the obvious! just be respectful & tag warnings appropriately :)

Before adding me, you should know: i had a deadjournal since i was 11, i think that says everything about me hahaha

Is it memorex

Oct. 20th, 2025 08:04 am
susandennis: (Default)
[personal profile] susandennis
Saturday night, Eero had an update. All day yesterday, I had random issues. The TV was working. Apps would come up but half errored out when I clicked on a particular show. My phone kept telling me I had to sign into my wifi network. I rebooted everything but the cats. This morning, half the websites I generally go to were semi - broken. Not totally. But mostly.

And finally I get a news notification from the New York Times that Amazon reports issues with AWS. HA! Yes. It's not me!! Hilariously, when I click on the article, it errors out. Oh well. At least I don't have to get a new router. Hope they fix their shit soon.

The Mariners lost again last night which means they play tonight - the final final final - last game. Unless they win and then the Dodgers will be at them four games in a row starting Friday. I am coming to believe that baseball needs to be over by mid October at the latest.

My knee is much better. Lying on my side to sleep still makes it complain a bit but standing, walking, moving around is fine. I think I'll take it for a swim this morning and play volleyball tomorrow. Nothing else on the agenda really.

Hmmmm Flickr is also dependent on AWS... Ok, while Amazon fixes their cloud, I think I'll go swimming.

AWS outage

Oct. 20th, 2025 10:11 am
alierak: (Default)
[personal profile] alierak posting in [site community profile] dw_maintenance
DW is seeing some issues due to today's Amazon outage. For right now it looks like the site is loading, but it may be slow. Some of our processes like notifications and journal search don't appear to be running and can't be started due to rate limiting or capacity issues. DW could go down later if Amazon isn't able to improve things soon, but our services should return to normal when Amazon has cleared up the outage.

Edit: all services are running as of 16:12 CDT, but there is definitely still a backlog of notifications to get through.

Edit 2: and at 18:20 CDT everything's been running normally for about the last hour.

weekend update

Oct. 19th, 2025 11:13 pm
low_delta: (Default)
[personal profile] low_delta
Friday night was whisky night. A couple of friends in our regular whisky group haven't been able to make it to the past two or three meetings. John is a big fan of Talisker, which I featured at our last get-together, so I offered to bring them out. A couple others joined us. Small group, but that was fun. They were in Scotland last month, so we talked about touring distilleries there.

Saturday was warm again, and I mowed the lawn. In the evening we went to see the Violent Femmes. I had lost interest in seeing them because their shows were always so short. Like barely an hour when they were headliners. But for this one, they played their first and second albums all the way through, so I knew it would be long enough. Just two hours, including the 20-minute intermission, but it was good. Strange thing, though, was the couple in front of us who were seated and on their phones for at least half the show. And they weren't mindlessly scrolling Instagram or whatever, they were shopping. Like, how are you making up your mind about a product when you're at a concert? Is it really that easy to pick out a bra? Near the end of the show, "Gone Dadddy Gone" started, and the guy was dancing in his seat, and he finally got up. But the next one was a slow one. He remained standing, but was back on his phone, searching Amazon for a temporary heel lift.

After the show, as we drove north, we hit rain. There was lightning overhead. After an hour, when the storms had moved out over the lake, I went over to take photos of the lake. The storms had moved farther out than I expected, and I only got one shot where the lake was lit up by the lightning. I had my raincoat on but my camera was pretty wet. Seems to be fine. We ended up with 1.5" of rain. There was some wind because in the morning we had a lot of leaves in the back yard from the tree in the front yard.

Remember the trouble we had with the dryer last week? Today the washer decided it wasn't going to put any water in the tub. After a couple hours research and investigation, I decided it was probably the computer. That would cost $250 (plus shipping), and I think I could replace it without issues. But I'm not 100% certain that would fix it. The things are so complicated, it could be other issues. But most of those other issues should throw an error code? We believe it is nine years old. That would be likely to keep it going a few more years, but the dryer...

Cindy took the laundry to the laundromat. She brought it home wet because we had hoped that last weekend's efforts would have fixed the dryer, but it seems to be acting the same. It runs for a while, and then stops counting down. We open it up and the laundry is still wet but hot. I have no idea what could be causing this. The dryer is much older than the washer, but it is less complicated, so it ought to last longer, and has. But with both of them out of commission, we might just bite the bullet and buy new ones. Unfortunately, they're very expensive. So we need to think about it. Might call a repair person and figure out what it will take to fix them. They might know how simple or difficult the fix is, and have a guess of how long they'll be expected to last.

Checked-In to My Cruise

Oct. 19th, 2025 09:41 pm
days_unfolding: (Default)
[personal profile] days_unfolding

I'm looking at a retirement place in Urbana. The shuttle driver on Friday pointed it out, but said that he heard that it was expensive. It looks very good though. They have a pool and all sorts of classes and other amenities.

Gracie got me up at 7:30 AM. It’s windy and slightly rainy out.

The cruise is telling me that it’s time to check in.

Fed us all. Hey, Bella is eating dry food! Nap time. Oliver was on my lap, but the dogs were wrestling, and he noped out onto a laundry basket. Napped again after waiting for the dogs to settle down.

Ordered some food. Both Bella and Oliver were on my lap. I told them that it was a little crowded.

I was about to take my shower when I decided to check into my cruise. They want a picture of me, so I need to shower and put my face on. Then I couldn’t find my glasses and freaked out. I finally took off my vest to take a shower and found them in the wrong pocket of my vest. Whew. I think that I want another pair just in case. By the way, my nice glasses came, but I don’t want to wear them around the house.

Eeek! Just remembered to add granola to my grocery order.

After all that, the cruise software said that they didn’t like my picture and would take one when I board the cruise. I’m checked in for 11:30 AM-12 PM, but I’m waiting for a chat representative to ask about soft drink and WiFi packages. I've been waiting a long time, so I'll probably try again later or tomorrow. The check-in time is good because I want lunch on the ship.

Ordered dog food and laundry detergent from Costco.

It’s going to be cold tonight, and I don’t want to turn the heat on, so I’m washing my comforters.

My grocery order keeps saying “Searching for a delivery driver”. Crap. I want my food!

I’m thinking that I will wash just one comforter tonight and another tomorrow. I need to get up early to drop the car off. I hope that the groceries come while it’s drying. I think that I’ll post too while it’s drying. Oh, and I need to get the litter boxes changed.

Got my food. Lily goes nuts for apple turnovers, kind of like her sister Zara. I dropped the carrot cake and Gracie took off with it but wasn't able to get the plastic shell open. Whew.

Now I need to feed the critters, change litter boxes, and put my clothes in the dryer.

Page generated Oct. 22nd, 2025 06:25 pm
Powered by Dreamwidth Studios