This music video makes me happy whenever I play it, so I showed it to Krissie, and it made her happy, too. Here’s lookin’ at you, Argh.
What made you happy this week?
(Note: Huge apologies for getting so far behind on the comments that there were fourteen pending by the time I looked. Krissie and I kept talking, which is another thing that made me giddy with joy, so that Two Things for happiness this week.)
Visiting an old friend in Oxford – whizzing from one garden or nursery to another, round loads of Cotswold lanes in brilliant sunshine. And the AA came and mended my car for free, so
I didn’t have to spend half the holiday in a garage. (I wouldn’t have rung them, since I managed to get to my friend’s house despite the rattle, but she insisted. And though the AA man reckoned I needed a new car, which threw up the huge question of whether I can really afford to replace it, my local garage say they can keep it going. Yay!)
Got back to a ridiculous abundance of strawberries – I had to make jam in a hurry. I’m having a big bowl every night, with Greek yoghurt.
Also enjoying my new editing job, though it’s been extremely full on – editing text for four sales presentations. I’m resting up today before getting ready for another two old friends, due tomorrow. I’ve got the week off, and am really looking forward to it.
Stick with your local garage, though the day you WILL have to plan for is the day they tell you they can’t get replacement parts. That’s when I start looking for the next car.
Although sometimes they can improvise. When my father’s 19 year old truck’s gas tank rusted out, they could not get one anywhere, so they built one. I finally sold that truck several years after my father’s death when I just could not keep up with three vehicles, and the neighbor I sold it to kept it for years until his orthopedist said, after his third hip replacement, to get an automatic. It was still running fine at nearly 30. Happy memories.
Spenging yesterday’s afternoon at a nearby lake we had never been so far.
Sooo good! Pure happiness.
Getting all my potted elephant ear plants settled in summer spaces and foisting the two overflow pots onto neighbors and a pair of strangers just walking by. It’s the solstice!!
We bought new bowls for the cats. They’re shaped like cat heads, with the ears making handy places for me to hold and distribute three at a time. And they don’t slide, so the extra vigorous tongue action by my big boy kitty doesn’t have him chasing the bowl around the kitchen like he’s done before. They’re ridiculous, but they make me happy.
I’m working on a friend’s Christmas quilt, and wanted to make blocks that looked like presents. I figured out the math on those bad boys and it makes me happy to see how cute those little presents are!
And, it’s raining today. After yesterday’s unbearable heat and mugginess, I’m enjoying this respite.
Getting a good offer for the house. No more cleaning for viewings, yeah!
A walk along the river.
The tinking worked, so full steam ahead on the shawl I’m working on. I like it better now than when I set it aside in January.
Starting to step out and be a little social – I’ve met some interesting women through a couple of expat groups here, so we’ll see where that goes.
Anybody else think that Jennifer Nettles in this video looks like Jenny?
I’ll bet you both dance alike too 🙂 🙂
It’s probably the manic look in my eyes.
Or maybe she’s hypomanic, too. Crowds do that to us.
Issa good thing I checked my email. The dotter sent me a screenshot of reservations for 2 at 6 PM. Dining in somewhere. There’s no hint of where, perzactly, in either the screenshot nor the email. I am totally stoked.
Happiness is texting with friends. Happiness is a 3-way video call with friends.
Happiness is a new little girl puppy, who is also terror because it’s the first time I’m introducing a puppy to an adult dog. I’ve bit off more than I can chew.
Happiness is that right now, as of the minute before I started typing this, I’d completed my end-of-term grading and it’s ready for capture tomorrow. Hooray, halala, hadippa, olé, opa!
I did not add a plus sign to my name?! But I have one! Is it a placeholder for a space? And I’m in moderation.
Also, I watched one series of the Stanley Tucci Italian documentary on CNN. That made me happy.
I have no idea. We didn’t do it, I swear.
My screen name was changed to 7 a while ago, and I didn’t have any idea how it had happened either. But the savvy Jane told me you could just edit the screen name in the “NAME” box under the comment box the next time you post, and it will go right again. And it did!!
I tried already. It’s not letting me nice the cursor to the end of the field. Will try when in on the desktop.
After my little escapade in the hospital, I thought I was going to have to limit my veg gardening this year to just the lettuces in a grow-bag on my deck, but the four tomatoes that were terribly spindly when I planted them up to their necks in compost a week ago (at least two weeks later than ideal, so they’ll be late but better than nothing) are now all fat and sassy, and the butternut seeds I saved from a squash I bought at the grocery store (not the best way to get them, but what the heck, I’ve got more garden space than money for seeds) have sprouted abundantly, and the two banana peppers I overwintered (one of which I thought was dead, but it resurrected itself) are thriving, along with the potatoes in a big pot that I’d forgotten about. All of which makes me happy, along with feeling well enough to stroll out to the garden to look at the growing things. Oh, and a feral cat that I thought had disappeared has been hanging out in the garden, guarding it from critters (and getting well-fed by me in return), which makes me doubly happy.
Play rehearsal for both plays is going well. I can still do karaoke at least for an hour and a half, since rehearsal is now starting towards the last hour of karaoke. (My friends aren’t back, but oh well, what can you do.) One play is next Saturday, so that will be fun. And my playwright friend got into another play, so that’ll be the next one on tap 🙂
I also went back to the gym yesterday for the first time since you know when, so there’s that. And the weather was 109 the last few days, so it’s finally chilling out a wee bit.
Yesterday I exploded one of my storage things and decluttered a sizable bag of costume-type supplies, to pass on to contacts in the ballroom community; decluttered a box of miscellaneous craft-type supplies, to pass on to my sister for the kids’ programs at her church; selected a few things requested by Mumsie for a project she’s doing, and got those ready to mail; reorganized the storage drawers and put them back in the furniture they belong to. Two are now entirely empty. There is still one decluttering project to do before a friend is due to visit over July 4 weekend, but progress makes me happy.
Today I spotted the hooded oriole again in the neighbor’s palm tree. Beheaded all the torn-out sunflowers and tossed the seed heads into the backyard wilderness; tidied up front and back, resulting in a full green-waste bin and much less embarrassing yard; watered everything. The native grapevines, golden currants, wisteria, arbutus, and rose are all fruiting.
Have written 6000 words on the novella-in-progress over the past two days. Plus, after four hot days our weather moderated. All this makes me happy. 🙂
I’m visiting my grands who I haven’t seen since end of Feb2020. And my adorable pandemic borne grand for the first time !!
Had an extra day off this week, and was extra lazy. Kittens were sleeping on me, so I couldn’t get up. Also feeling thankful for all the regular, normal things in my life.
Finding The Art of Crime, Season 3 is available on the MHZ Channel.
OMG THANK YOU!!!
I took a whole truckload of yard waste – dead branches, an entire dead tree, the busted up wooden ends of a bench – to the burn pile at the dump and my yard is much cleaner. Normally I would just take the things like the dead branches out and dump them in the bush but it’s been so wet I was afraid of getting stuck.
I did the final exam for the academic portion of my course and passed.
My brain is finally getting back to normal after the last few weeks. It’s not there completely but I had a good sleep last night and that helped.
Happiness is getting a haircut. I no longer look like a muppet. Also getting my bed frame assembled. It’s shiny brass, which makes me smile.
The return of the sun starting tomorrow will make me very happy indeed. Thanks be for shift work or I’d never see the sun this time of year.
Happiness is reading Wyrd Sisters with my eleven year old son (I do all the voices). Happiness is also my fifteen year old son telling me he thinks his parents are doing okay at this parenting thing.
I am very happy to have gotten my second vaccine. Less thrilled about the reaction which has kept me in bed for the last 36 hours but worth it.
I picked up a bouquet of local flowers at a market stand and dropped them off at a friend’s. Her mother had been hospitalized recently and I expected she had died, which turned out to be correct. We had a nice chat and she showed me her garden.
This is the third screen name on this site to develop internal plus signs. It must be either a new smartphone habit, or something from wordpress.
Correction — actually SIX screen names — anyone with several words in the screen name now has pluses where the spaces were. Must be a feature rather than a bug. (No matter how much it bugs all of you!)
You’ve made me curious . . . .
This was an experiment; I inserted forced spaces between ANN and TESTING and A and THEORY. It seems to have worked, but it did trigger the Waiting for Moderation message.
Mine had the plus signs as well, I just deleted them and figured that was why my previous comments had needed to be approved. Internet gremlins are at it again.
And apparently they came back!
I have no idea why this is happening but I’m sure it’s my fault (it’s been that kind of week) so I’m sorry.
Are you all on the same kind of phone? Because if not, it’s probably WordPress.
Happiness is reprogramming my brother’s iPhone to live with his sbcglobal.net email — sbcglobal was swallowed by AT&T, and in turn AT&T’s mail, including all the domains previously swallowed, is now managed by Yahoo mail. This means that the outgoing server is Yahoo’s SMTP . . . not intuitive and requires lots of entries and passwords made on a tiny, tiny screen keyboard — I have to use my little finger to hope to land on the correct key . . . and all within the time frame before the iPhone screen goes dark and requires another login at the main screen. Success, however, is VERY satisfactory!
Happiness is a very happy lunch with my cousin, at our favorite Chinese restaurant, on a day which, while hot, wasn’t the hottest day this week. And her sister is thinking about visiting again in August. This cousin, whose father was an attorney, was fascinated at the depositions of the Missing Will, et al. (“Wow! — how scandalous!”) since the youngest people involved were the grandparents of her aunt, my grandmother.
Happiness is the Family History Library open again, though reservations are required because they have a limit on the head count. But I did get there, and will be getting back again.
Happiness was a presentation on the ERA with some interesting new information — apparently the National Archivist accepted the ratifications of Nevada and Illinois, but the last one, Virginia, he accepted the OLC memo from the Department of Justice (Bill Barr) to decline to complete the enrollment and accept the amendment. Court case proceeding to the DC Appeals Court. We’ll see. But I am happy that this one’s progressing.
I’m eagerly anticipating THE WITNESS FOR THE DEAD, which should show up late Monday evening (apparently it’s Tuesday . . . somewhere). I liked the sneak peek.
And I’m naughtily amused that no publisher is willing to offer the former guy a book contract because . . . there aren’t enough fact checkers in the universe to copyedit any manuscript he’d produce, with or without a ghost writer. No matter how jealous he is of the Obama $65 million advance (which I think will probably earn out in reasonable time; they can write).
“They Won’t Ask Trump to Write a Book”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g8Bd6GQOKGY
As if, he can’t even write a blog.
I think with him, the word “write” should always be encased in quotation marks.
Happiness today is, despite having retired from a fairly techie position 10 years ago, I totally understood what Ann was doing with her brother’s iPhone! 🙂
What a joyful video! I’ve never heard of Jennifer Nettles. I know Sara Bareilles from The Sing-Off. And you can never go wrong with “Come on Eileen.”
If you want to feel good, watch 1 Million Dance Studio. Amazing dancers having an amazing time!
Nettles sings with Sugarland, but she has a lot of solos. Go to YouTube and find her “Let It Go” duet with Menzel. It’s wonderful.
What a wonderful video. They are obviously having a wonderful time, and their joy comes through in the music. (Ironically, not a song I ever particularly liked, although I love this version of it.) I could watch this a hundred times.
Happiness was getting the first advance copy of my next Llewellyn book (The Eclectic Witch’s Book of Shadows), which won’t be out until early September. It’s a HARDCOVER (my first), and fully illustrated, and possibly the prettiest book ever made. Not that I’m at all biased. And then more happiness when I shared it online and people seemed to love it.
More happiness was getting together with part of the witchy gang for Summer Solstice. We had a couple of folks who could make it because of Father’s Day weekend or work, but we still had a wonderful simple ritual, a fire in the fire pit, and lovely feast. Bliss.
Also, two of my four rescue cats, Koshka and his sister Ember, turned theoretical four today (they came from a 25-cat hoarding situation, so no one knew their exact birth date…I just picked one that was close to the vet’s estimate of their ages as 5-6 months old at the time). After such a rough start, they still turned out to be wonderful cats, and I’m grateful that they all get along.
Our west coast daughter arrives Thursday for our first in-person visit since Christmas 2019. I am ecstatically and frantically clearing the guest bedroom of online shipping boxes.
I’m in a 1- bedroom cottage on Deer Isle in Maine looking west across the water to islands in Penobscot Bay. The Camden Hills provide a backdrop. I feel like it’s my duty to stay on the deck, staring at the scene—which, although it appears to me to change constantly, stays, in truth, pretty much the same. Add or subtract light, wash the sky with reds for the setting sun, fade everything out with the mist.
I reread The Drawing of the Dark. Have other stuff to fill in any empty corners.
Art of Crime, Season 4 has a new episode July 13th.
Ooooh. I saw Season Three, still so good. Weird but good. And Four is two of my favorite artists, Van Gogh and Lautrec. Can’t wait.