54 thoughts on “Working Wednesday, August 25 2021”

  1. Just getting through the week until my angioplasty tomorrow, when I’ll be surrounding myself with all the previous good vibes. Thanks again for sending them.

  2. Last Friday was get the plumber to fix the shower day. He tried, but the shower faucet is 30 years old, so needs to be replaced. Rather than having him start the job then – and leave it half done until the new shower pieces showed up – I scheduled them to come back Monday. So Saturday and Sunday I spent clearing out the space in my bedroom that backs to the shower, since they’ll have to go through the wall to fix this.

    The call Monday was that the part was still being procured. I got the same call today. Crossing my fingers that Friday they’ll have it. The problem is that I’m insisting that the new faucet match the shower surround – gold tone – and apparently no one thinks that gold / brass is a cool color any more, so those pieces are hard to find. Sigh.

    In between, I did put some time into more satisfying activities. I made two more of the Nearly Insane quilt blocks (there are 100, so this will be a long term project), and I put together a baby quilt top that has llamas and sheep on it. And I practiced my quilting on some placemat panels, and then bound them.

    https://www.instagram.com/p/CTACdToHyTh/

    This coming weekend will probably involve yardwork, as an impressive limb fell to the deck last night. No storm involved, so we figure it was a fat squirrel jumping a little too hard. It is a pear tree, so not the sturdiest of branches. And I need to continue my ongoing fight against the grapevine.

    1. Nancy, you are slightly ahead of the curve as modern brass fixtures are now considered the newest and coolest. Some of the larger design stores such as Pottery Barn and West Elm now carry brass.

      1. Thanks! I’m glad to know that what was old is now new and stylish!

        I’ve actually read that young people are now ready to have nice linens and fine china. Maybe I can get the younger relatives to relieve me of my mother’s collection!

        1. I go to a lot of Estate Sales, and I always think the saddest thing for sale is “Momma’s Good China”. It’s all perfect. Never used? I don’t know, but it is just depressing.

        2. I’m quite on the fence about China. My mom asked me… almost a decade ago (gawd, that long?) And it was an emphatic no. I kind of regret it bc she had been collecting two sets for her daughters just to pass on.

          I found a set of the style she had on OfferUp, but I can’t tell if I really want it, or am temporarily enamored due to going to a tea shop for lunch.

          I balance between wanting nicer things, but then feeling weighed down by the amt of things I already own, the care the nice stuff would require, and putting the money towards other things.

          On the fence and struggling to get off. Ha

          1. We have a Miele dishwasher that is almost 10 years old and has a crystal/china cycle. I started by washing the Riedel crystal in it. There was no etching of the glass. In a year or so I washed the antique crystal – still no problem. Last year from Goodwill I bought two identical china plates with a gold rim – one went into the dishwasher, the other went into the cupboard. After a month of washing the one everyday, I compared them. They looked the same. The gold had not faded. So now about once a month I use my good china and everything gets washed in the dishwasher. Well, not the silver. It needs to be washed and dried by hand. But with only two people we aren’t talking about a lot of stuff. As technology improves, using good things is not as much of a problem as it once was. The Miele was spendy but I have used it daily, wash almost everything in it and have not had a single problem and it does a spectacular job. My neighbor has one that is 15 and is still going strong. I wonder if Miele will hear of this endorsement and reward me. Probably not

          2. Thanks, Jessie. Another Meile dishwasher owner. Love it. Especially the utensil pull out tray. 15+ years. I’ve never tried the china/crystal setting. So ingrained never to wash chinaware. I do wash the crystal. Only once were the everyday glasses etched, on pots and pans.

            Going to try with the china setting, love my china. Place settings for eight for both granddaughters. When Eatons went out of business, bought more on sale. I miss Eatons, great Canadian store. Any one in British Columbia would know Woodward’s, another very good store.

          3. Woodward’s went out of business too. I’ve heard some talk of The Bay closing stores so far haven’t seen that happen. The Bay was The Hudson Bay Company started in 1670. Come on! Can’t we have one department store still standing. Sheesh.

    2. My wife and I embarked on a whole bathroom remodel last month, and decided to go with brushed brass fixtures! It feels elegant (which we aren’t) and deliciously retro (we definitely are) at the same time! Good luck with your plumbing situation!

  3. Yesterday I made two batches of jam, saskatoon (serviceberry) and raspberry. I also took the first load of floor boards to the dump and then pulled up more last night. Now a large section of the floor is covered in blue underlay and, quite frankly, a terrifying amount of dirt, even after I’ve swept!

    I’ve done all the usual house chores like laundry and dishes and worked at the day job.

    Most of this week will be Destructo Girl time as I work on getting the flooring out of here.

    My dogs and cats are so confused. This is very stressful for them.

    1. Hopefully none of them make the exploration under the floor! My dad had to fish a cat out from behind drywall after an exploration wasn’t completed before the carpenters sealed up the opening.

      1. When we reno’d the last time and had people in doing the work I nearly wound up with a cat in the ductwork. We have a large vent in the hallway and, even after telling the guys 14 times to make sure the cover stayed in place, I came upstairs to find a cat investigating the open vent.

        Fortunately, so far we do not need to lift up any of the subfloor. That might change next week but so far so good.

  4. Sitting by the pool working on my Christmas story, which just doesn’t feel right to this Jersey girl (the hot weather and Christmas, not the story. LOL) I was listening to Christmas music and my son thought I was crazy. Sent my newsletter out yesterday, bought cute apple-shaped magnetic chip clips as promotional material for next week’s release, and still looking for Booksprout ARC reviewers. Any takers?

    1. Think Australia, their Christmas is in Summer, my Australian exchange teacher had BBQs by the pool

      1. Christmas in the heat is making me ponder Hallmark Holiday movies. There aren’t many that don’t include snow. They should make Hallmark movies with Christmas BBQs by the pool. 🙂

  5. Finally bit the bullet and bought a new phone. Halfway through the transfer from the old phone the battery died (again) and I had to start over. Sigh.

    I liked the old phone and it lasted well – I’m right at 5 years with it – but the new phone has a far better camera and I love to take pictures so I can’t wait for it to get sinked up. Should that be synched? Yes, nothing to do with a basin for putting water in and everything to do with transferring data.

    Other than that I’ve been working on the cray-cray dog and feeling only a little successful. I know I said I was going to give up, but I can’t bring myself to do that.

    My actual work is good, hanging out with the fuzz is entertaining, but I have been wondering when I’m going to start writing again.

    I’m feeling upbeat today so maybe I’ll do the dishes when I get home.

  6. This week has been about author stuff. Working on next book and trying to get more print books out.

    Also want to revamp my author blog and thinking of turning on comments, which I haven’t done in forever. If anyone has experience with comment moderation in Squarespace (how well it works, if it needs third-party help, etc), I’d appreciate thoughts as I try to decide if it’s worth it or is something I can manage easily.

    As for pets, can relate on the bath thing since every week is shower week for our pup. She’s really very good about it, though, so we’re lucky. Plus, she’s small so that helps. For my bigger dogs, while they bathed less often, it was much more work. Hats off to you taking on the group all in one week:)

  7. Still unpacking, but bought 4 Gnedby CD bookcases from Ikea and put them together so DH can start with his cds. That one’s not my job. Unfortunately, Ikea is having supply chain problems like everyone else, so the two bookcases we wanted are on backorder, which is slowing down my process. Don’t they realize I’m on a mission?

    1. I know this is dumb, I know Ikea STARTED internationally, but my first thought was “oh. They have Ikea in Portugal!”. XD

  8. Did the usual house and garden work. But, also got a big crock of ‘pickle barrel’ pickles going. They” be ready in 2-3 days.

    Pixie is letting me comb her out a bit. She really needs it!

    And a Board of Election meeting tonight; it’ll be long, I’m sure.

  9. I’m ploughing on. Sticking to six hours a day and four days a week, which is better. Work’s quite varied, since I’ve been making corrections to InDesign layouts for batches 1 & 2 plus editing batch 3 and chasing the author to write more for batch 4. I like working with pictures (of course).

    Still waiting for my first invoice to be paid. I know the Penguin accounts department (DK’s a subsidiary) is super-efficient, and sure enough it turned out to be an internal DK snafu. They’ve promised it in another ten days.

    I’m starting to sort out the garden. Hope to have one gardening day this weekend, at least – I’ve got a friend coming to stay for the rest of it. Fear I may not manage to paint the shed this summer – unless we have an Indian one, and work miraculously slacks off.

  10. This week a beautiful yellow sailboat with two red sails came in and moored overnight probably seeking shelter from Henri. At first glance it looked like I picture a Chinese junk would resemble. Gone first thing next morning. Henri fizzled out.

    Today I made a strombolli had neither pepperoni or spinach so used what I had thin sliced ham, sauteed zucchini, onions and garlic with red pepper flakes and oregano with mozzarella. It’s the end of summer trying to come with something different.

  11. I’ve got a new novella set up to launch September 1; have sorted out a bag of decent clothes to take to Goodwill (so I can justify a couple new pieces); and otherwise, mostly Day Job.

    But I have made some progress (about 6K new words and a good solid read-through edit) on the novel that put its hand up to be worked on next. Started this one last September. It’s got a bit of a dark storyline and for quite a while I kept dodging it, but apparently ye olde brain can handle it now.

  12. This week was a family reunion here in Maine. People came from the West, and we had about 25 total. It was great, and I am exhausted, and my back in killing me. It was worth it! But I decided to take the rest of the week off so I could have some actual time off, versus all the feeding and setting up the tent and tables and chairs, blah blah blah.
    Everyone else went out to dinner (no cooking!) and I am happily home with the internet for a while.

  13. I did a couple of hours of chaos clearance in the garden. Many, many hours to go, but it was a good start.

    And yesterday I worked out how to make my own photos into jigsaws on thejigsawpuzzles.com. That’s pretty cool. Doing jigsaws will be a great reminder of all the holidays and how much I enjoyed them. I tend to be bad at remembering fun things, so I’m looking forward to this.

  14. I enrolled a sketching and watercolor course and I’m very pleased with it so far. Lots of techniques and skills being taught.

  15. I spent the past five days working at the new job. I’ve been put in the quarantine team, so it’s a bit full on and my brain hasn’t really had much capacity for other things outside that. I’ll have to make soup or something today so that I feel like I’ve done something creative adjacent for the week. It’s wonderful to be working again though.

  16. More than anything else this week, I worked on my blog. Which is mostly about my diet and food, and enduring… stuff. Stuff like diets and foods.

    The posts this week were about beef, chicken, tuna, and pork. When I get home, I have a post all set for eggs. Exciting, innit?

    Okay, there is nothing particularly exciting about scrambling eggs with cheese and onions and serving them with bacon and wheat bread. The bread wasn’t even toasted! I’ll even admit that these are the type of posts I used to make on FaceBook, when I had an account. I suspect I only post about food so Mary Anne in Kentucky can read the diet posts while eating ice cream.

  17. I found out today someone in the play definitely has Covid. So my work today was figuring out where to get tested ASAP.

    No symptoms so far, but it’s day 3. So far they aren’t canceling the play for one diagnosis, but I guess we’ll see how the rest of us come out.

    1. Oh, good luck Jennifer! I really hope you don’t have it, the symptoms checks I’ve been doing with people have made it sound truly awful.

  18. My 13yo watched all four Hunger Games movies today and I didn’t even make her read the books first.
    So, homeschooling is going well. She’s happy right?

    That’s all I got.

    Hope all is well at the vet. Is Hairy McClary an international thing? (Rumpus at the Vet word association and now I’m thinking John Cleese and Word Association Football and well, this was a pointless post and a sign I should go to bed).

  19. I finished knitting the body of a summery knitted sweater, made entirely in lace on tiny US2 needles. It is really pretty and utilises a different colour palette than I normally wear. I am now stuck on what to do about the sleeves, or whether to add sleeves at all – so I have put it on a hanger in my living room where I can stare at it multiple times a day and contemplate how I want to finish it. (You can see it here, though it is still a work in progress: https://knitigatingcircumstances.com/2021/08/22/myrtle-meanders-along/). In the meantime, I have driven into London for the first time since before the pandemic. (It’s only an hour away, but I’ve been super cautious.) It was fun to get out and about, but it felt very strange to be in a crowded space. It will be a while before I get over my caution about people and crowds.

    1. That would look really great over a plain blouse. Maybe just leave it as a vest? (I hate doing sleeves.)

      1. I’ve really been considering this. I once wrote a blog post called “Do you love your husband enough to knit the sleeves?” So, I’m with you on the sleeve hate.

  20. I am editing sterling prose: “You can’t manage what you can’t measure, and Product X lets you do both.”

    My delete key is getting a workout.

  21. I wasted an enormous amount of time yesterday trying to figure out whether my c-pap machine has been recalled or not. The model number was not listed on either the list of the recalled or the continue to use lists and I still can’t locate the serial number. Time to go back to the telephone…..

  22. Sorting through the books, two and a half books to the Delta Hospice. Still many, many books to sort. The pile of clothing, etc is growing. Told the volunteer I had clothes too but I had to wash and iron before I donated them. She was so thankful I was doing that first. I was shocked to hear the state of some clothing donations. She said some are truly awful and gag worthy. Really, people.

    Yesterday took the granddaughters to the PNE. We all wore masks most of the time. Big package of wipes to constantly wipe and clean our hands and toilet seats. Super Dogs show is our favourite. It was held outside again this year. Many wore masks and many, many did not. Still being cautious as there are more Covid D cases. Back to wearing masks in many places. Brother-in-law double vaccinated got Covid D, he was quite sick for three days and thankfully that was all, didn’t need to go to the hospital. His daughter also double vaccinated, not as sick and doing well too.

    1. Gave away 2 1/2 boxes full of books, but you knew that. Sometimes I worry about my brain thinking and fingers typing.

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