Working Wednesday, June 15, 2022

~ Jenny

This week I put together a cat thing. It’s one of those seductive multi-part climbing towers with scratch posts and a swingy thingy to belt at and it’s really great but it was a @#$%^&*%$ to put together. I hated it. I suffered. It was worse than writing a sex scene. Which I also had to do. Well, revise.

How did you suffer at work this week?

103 thoughts on “Working Wednesday, June 15, 2022”

  1. We have been dealing with a lot lot LOT of fraud at work. Yesterday we had to deal with a very nice lady who mailed off the price of a used car, in cash to an IRS scam. I group emailed my family at lunch in warning, and now I would like to put a little bit of my psa here.

    Most scams play on your fears and emotions. The players are very good at making a situation seem real, urgent and logical and they keep you in an emotional place for as long as they can.

    In this particular instance, they gained access to the lady’s computer and her online banking. They moved money from her savings to her checking and then called her, pretending to be the IRS, saying they sent her too much and she needed to return the money. They coached her in how to lie to the bank so we wouldn’t stop her. Sometimes they use fear of consequences, jail, etc. Or sometimes they appeal to kindness (Please, I made a mistake, I could lose my job, you have to help me). And then comes the request for money or gift cards.

    The best thing to do is pause and think. Whether they call pretending to be a loved one in jail, hospital, held for ransom, or a government agency threatening legal action, there is always time. Don’t use the numbers or links they give you. Look up your bank’s phone number separately, or the IRS website. Call your loved ones and check on them. Don’t wrap cash in tin foil and mail it.

    Oh, and that fiance who you have only met on Facebook is also a scam. Don’t send them money either. (Looking at you, Tammy. If that is your real name;P)

    Take care, friends. There is a lot of this going on and it sounds silly in the light of day, but when you are in it they make it feel so real. And talk to your elders about it too, because they are the preferred target.

    1. My mom got that grandson in jail in Mexico call and was sure it was him… until the guy called her Grandma, which is NOT what her grandkids call her. She’s VERY careful about that on every call now.

      1. Yeah, that one is classic. I told my family to leave me there. I probably deserved it.

        1. My grandson is ten. Although knowing him, it’s not impossible that he’d end up in jail in Mexico anyway.

      2. Someone I know in his 60’s who never had kids got that call and he righteously told them off for scamming.

        1. Ha. I had a lady who picked up the phone to a male voice saying “Hi grandma” she responded with, “Hi dear, glad to see you finally got that sex change operation”.

      1. Mostly the scams I get are attractive young Asian women texting me that they’re sorry they’re going to be late for our get-together. I’m really not their type but I try to let them down gently.

        1. And Debbie Reynolds is exactly who I was named after. Anyone named Tammy was born between 1960 and 1980, after which the name fell into disfavour.

          2. That song is lovely to sing at karaoke. Try for a lush tone, and the room comes to a standstill and they stand at the back.

      3. That song is lovely to sing at karaoke. Try for a lush tone, and the room comes to a standstill and they stand at the back.

    3. I got an email supposedly from a friend asking me to buy them some kind of gift card because they couldn’t get to the store. I wrote back and said, “But you work at the store!” (just to double check that it really wasn’t my friend, which I was pretty sure of.) Ha.

      1. Besides anybody who would ask that is not a friend.

        When Krissie asks for stuff, it’s beta reads and crochet patterns and recipes, not money. Who has friends who do that?

        1. Lots of poor people do, unfortunately. But also scammers are good at making up scenarios where friends who don’t normally need money ask for it

      2. One of my relatives fell for someone spoofing my mom’s address asking for an Amazon gift card. The email was misspelled (my mom does NOT misspell) and short (my mom is long-winded), so two clues right there….sigh.

    4. You know, once I got into the elderly category, the hits never stopped coming. I don’t even answer the phone any more unless I see the name of a person I know. I get so many calls from my old area code–I didn’t change my number when I moved three states over–and they’re all scams because I do no business and have no relatives in that area code. And then there’s Spam Alert. I’m pretty sure Spam Alert is in my frequent callers list.

      The part that breaks my heart is that they wouldn’t do this unless it was working. And that before we get to Trump, ripping off retirees for his Stop the Steal funds, none of which went to stopping anything.

      1. My 80+ yr old parents seem to have escaped most of the rampant scamming, possibly because they don’t subscribe to anything or go anywhere or talk to anybody, but my husband’s mother is CONSTANTLY getting mail, calls, texts, and emails that he has to run interference on. It’s such a good thing that he got financial power of attorney on her behalf after his father died. 🙁

        A good 80% of the calls coming into my cell phone are unidentified callers. I never pick them up. I don’t have voice mail. I’m like, f**k off. ‘Do Not Call’ registry is a joke.

      2. It’s so sad and it does work a ridiculous amount of the time. We have seen people dead certain that they have won publisher’s clearing house, in love with someone who isn’t real or terrified that the IRS is going to get them. And it is almost impossible to get through to them. Ugh. It breaks my heart especially when it’s an older lady. It makes them feel so vulnerable and alone.

        1. I had a co worker that bought into the whole meeting a guy online in another country and falling in love with him. She pulled money out of her 401K and sent to him after we ALL told her it was a scam.

          And never the twain did meet… but THEN she started asking to borrow money from us and I just could not.

          1. Co worker’s friend had an online girlfriend for 3 years, Co-worker & boyfriend couldn’t take it anymore and spent a couple of months investigating her. The only legitimate link she had on social media, was the aunt of his friend from art school, turned out she was cat fishing him

        2. My in-laws would have been victims if they had ever been called. We caught them one time giving their credit card number to someone calling to raise money for something or other. When Paul asked why they did it, they said they only authorized $50. He asked if that would stop a scammer and the thought had never occurred to either one of them. Fortunately, it was a legit charity. When you consider that my FIL was a cop, it’s astonishing to see him being so willfully naive. He’s worse now that my MIL is gone; she was a grounding influence on him.

    5. Until I retired, I worked for a credit union. We saw quite a bit of this type of fraud over the years. One member lost several thousand dollars because of one of these scams. You can only tell them over and over it’s a scam but they don’t want to believe it. In her case, she was told she had won a large sum of cash but needed to pay the taxes up front. She was told to keep it a secret until she received her lump sum pymt and absolutely refused to believe us when we told her whatever was going on was probably a scam. It wasn’t until she was out a lot of money that someone ( I don’t know who, my coworker was trying to help her) finally got her to open up that they figured out what was going on and stopped it. She came in afterwards and told my coworker that she (the coworker) had been right.

      1. Exactly this. My lady put $20,000.00 in cash in a box and gave it to UPS. Her husband knew about it, but said he didn’t understand and didn’t stop her. She is not old or infirm. Eventually something must have sunk in because she called the cops and tried to have the package stopped. Haven’t heard yet if it worked. I’m still sick about it.

        1. Thank goodness we still have a high street bank, when we get any kind of calls about bank accounts, my mum just say, okay, I’ll go sort it out at the branch and hangs up on them. She also got stopped sending money to a legitimate seller as the teller told her she must wait until she receives the goods before paying. Turned out to be very handy, she didn’t need the gadget, just the cable and the seller was decent about it and told her to send it back with £10 to cover expenses.

  2. I woke up at 5am… and have to log in to work at 6:30… soooo I’ve been cutting in paint so that I can hopefully roll on the paint when I get off work this afternoon.

    Oh… and it’s Hella HOT here with heat indexes between 105 and 110… in June.

  3. I scooped up the piles of paper in my “filing” and spread them across the giant dining room table and went through those suckers. I think I have a grip on what’s in there. I swear this won’t happen again, but it does. Most of my transactions are automated, so I’m OK, but paper, paper, paper!
    Then I went through some boxes my brother left when he moved, kitchen stuff, and sorted that out for donations. He was too busy. So much stuff around. Sheesh.
    Stealth book culling, magazine disposal. It’s not hoarding, it’s just stuff.
    Thank God for an excellent cat!

  4. I’m on holiday right now but not in vacation mode at all. There’re too many jellyfish (medusa) at the beach and the pool is rather small and overcrowded, so this doesn’t help.
    Also, both kids have asignment deadlines looming soon, so I couldn’t help myself and dove in to assist at least one of them with research. Found a couple of highly interesting books (which I have read by now, he hasn’t) and discovered that some sources are available online, yay. I’m very excited, he isn’t.
    To resist doing ds’s work for him, I’m happy to dive deeper into something he diesn’t need for the paper: medical care in medieval Munich. I do know far to little about my own town’s history! The famous Viktualienmarkt is situated on the grounds of a huge Hospitalcomplex founded in 1208 that grew to include lodging for orphans, mentally ill, a birthing place for unwed women and eventually a training facility for midwives. A topic verryyyy far from what ds should work on and isn’t which drives me crazy.
    I should stop watching the clips of Foil Arms and Hog, my beloved Irish comedians because I’m certain to evolve into their nightmare character, helicopter mom Anne Flanagan. Sometimes I even call my son “Oisin” (the poor son of Anne)…
    The clips are quite funny though…

    1. Dodo, Your research into medical care in medieval Munich is fascinating, especially the training facility for midwives. I just learned on NPR last week that in the USA at the time of the Constitution abortions occured as needed: women’s healthcare was between a woman and her midwife. It wasn’t until well into the 1800s when the AMA was formed that (male) doctors used the legal system to take over women’s healthcare, using abortion, then contraception, as reasons to denigrate midwives.

      I want to learn more about the difference between personal health providers, like midwives, compared to physicians, who sound more like theorists, in the medieval to early modern periods.

      Yes, Dodo, I was a teacher and I still pried too much into my son’s studies. Guilt remains. But, heck, the kid is okay.

      1. I’m still very much at the beginning of my research. I’ll need more than the wacky Wifi here at an Italian camping site. It’s crazy that I couldn’t find any titles yet about the Heiliggeistspital. But the State library will provide more, I’m sure. For this I will shamelessly use my son’s library card, it’s near enough his topic 😉
        Also, I’m positive that at home the dissertation about Balthasar Mansfeld that I’ve ordered will await me. Bathasar was one doctor whose notes were saved. He specialized in impoteny reviews it seems, plus also wrote about one leprosy viewing (my son’s topic, roughly).
        I’m excited 😀

      2. I still hope that my love of learning will rub of one day. Married to a teacher and working at a university. Leraning is living!!
        So far, ds is a well of knowledge for all things non-related to school… but still 🙂

    2. Medical care in medieval Munich or anywhere else! Yum! As if I needed more to read. Going on my list.

  5. I’m suffering because I’m sick and can’t muster the energy to write. 🙁 I’ve tested for Covid the last 3 days, and it keeps coming up negative, but I think I have it. I was exposed to someone last week.

    1. So sorry to hear it. People now test positive days late after getting symptoms, so you probably do unless you keep testing negative for like a week. Did you get a PCR?

      1. Well… it turns out I’m positive. 🙁 I have the worst sore throat that I’ve ever had. I feel like I swallowed razor blades. It is painful to swallow saliva. I took one Tylenol Cold in the middle of the night (a huge mistake) and it got caught in my throat. I had my husband rush me to the ED. After that ordeal was over, I asked the doctor if it was possible that my throat will swell up so much that I would stop breathing (don’t laugh, people, I was terrified. All I kept imagining was having to be intubated. I really scared myself) and she said it was highly unlikely (thank God). They gave me an injection of Motrin which helped the pain considerably. I hope today is a better day.

    3. My husband tested negative at home a few times before his PCR test came up positive. My hope is that if the rapid test is negative, maybe it’s less likely that you’re super contagious??

      1. Same happened to the crush last month when he got it. Unfortunately, negative with symptoms probably just means you haven’t gotten enough virus in your system yet to show up on the tests. Or so I’ve read 🙁

        Likewise, testing negative to get out of quarantine is confusing. Crush kept testing positive on days 10/11, though it got fainter each time. Apparently science is not agreed as to whether or not you are still contagious then if you are still positive on day 10 or later. “It’s a possible maybe.” 🙁

        On a related note, I’m supposed to go to a friend’s house this weekend and one of the invitees got exposed, so now she can’t go. SIGH. I swear I’m never going to meet the woman in person now. I wasn’t allowed to meet her when she lived five minutes away because of covid, she’s now moved away and now I still can’t meet her IRL due to covid. BLEAH.

        1. My brother kept testing positive on day 30. His doctor said they were seeing that more and more.

    4. A local radio personality (on NPR) was saying for a week that no, he did not have covid, just a scratchy throat, and he got a lot of ribbing because he was getting so annoyed that one day he took FOUR rapid tests, all negative. And guess what? Next day, he tested again, and it was positive. He had a mild case, fortunately, but a full week, maybe more, of negative tests first.

      1. Reading this makes me want to take to my bed and wave a white flag of surrender while crying.

  6. Not work related as I’m retired, but I’ve waited my whole adult life to get tickets to Antiques Roadshow. I got them this spring. But my chronic illness reared it’s ugly head and I didn’t feel well enough to go. Maybe in another life. *sigh*

  7. I’ve spent the week rewriting the ending of my third demon book. A former classmate from McD says the book is the best I’ve ever written but the ending was wrong. Then she cited a bunch of stuff you taught us (ending should mirror the beginning, ending should verify the HEA and the unchangeable nature of the protagonist’s character arc, ending should leave the romance reader feeling like justice was served) to prove her point.

    Turns out doing it right is much harder than doing it wrong.

    1. Okay, I’m pretty sure I said there are many roads to Oz and no “shoulds” so you don’t have to mirror the beginning or unchangeable nature (I don’t think that one’s mine), but justice being served maybe. Suggestions, they were suggestions.

      Was I really that much of a Nazi teacher? ARGH.

      2. I think it may be that we so love your books we regard any advice/suggestions as gospel.

        1. No, no, not gospel. Just things that float through my mind.
          Flotsam and jetsam and then some.

  8. I’m theoretically working on writing, resealing the back patio surface, dealing with my garden pond guy (there is a leak he hasn’t been able to track down), and getting a massage. We’ll see how much I get done.

    I’ve put together a ton of cat trees over my life. They are a pain. And much easier with two people.

    1. This one helpfully had directions that were only pictures for a tree that had, no lie, seventeen parts.
      Emily likes the bottom part. I put cat treats and her food in the middle part and she goes up there for that and then goes back to the bottom. She has no interest in the next two levels. I’ll have to put cat treats up there next.

      1. Jenny, I read somewhere that some cats are “grass cats” (prefer low places) and others are “tree cats” (prefer high places). If Emily keeps hanging out in the bottom part of the kitty structure, she might be a grass cat.

      2. It took my cats forever to make peace with the new cat tree, and even now they don’t use the higher parts much when it’s hot out. They like it well enough when the weather changes.

        1. Emily adores the bottom part. She will put up with the second level since that’s where I put her food. The top two levels? Please.
          And right now she’s sleeping beside me on the bed. I built you a skyscraper, cat, and you’re sleeping in the basement.

        1. She spends most of her time on the bottom level, behind the scratching ramp that she never uses. If she ever gets her ass out of the basement, I will take a picture.

  9. I “finished” my fourteenth manuscript on Saturday and have been taking a break. I love the beginning and don’t mind the middle but I struggled badly with the end, so I know there are changes coming. Aargh. Today my husband and I are heading out camping for five nights and will be off the grid so I am hoping that will recharge me.

  10. Oh, the cat condo. How lovely of you to create one, Jenny. And no matter how much grief and profanity it engendered, as long as your cat (cats?) appreciate it, it’s all worth it, right?

    My suffering this week was having to postpone a long-awaited (2+ years) trip to Stratford to see Richard III and Chicago. Because Covid. Not me, so really, my friend is in a worse place.

    2. A friend and I have tickets to Stratford in October, but for lighter fare. I’m shallow, she’s not, but I’m the cruise director and I need to laugh. Hope you can exchange tickets and see the shows soon, and of course that your friend gets well quickly.

  11. At work: I had to email like a hundred professors nagging them to get their grades in and offering them “help” if they need it, except I do not know HOW to help them because I don’t use that program. Every term this annoys me having to claim I’m here to “help” them. It’s so stoopid. Other than that, I do tedious lists, tedious emails, a shit ton of mailing addresses, telling people over and over and over again they can’t mail anything to China (HOURS A DAY OF THIS), and in another day or two I have to start churning out work letters.

    Outside of work: I’m now taking singing lessons and good lord, do I suck. I need to start practicing for a singing audition. And I have to memorize a “table speech” for my new side gig of doing murder mystery shows, which my brain is refusing to do because boring. I start rehearsals tonight for that stuff and I feel so unprepared.

    1. Oh god, I’m so effing tired of the emails. I’m at the point where I just want to refuse to do any work for the last hour of the day. I’m SO ROASTED.

  12. I thought I was going to get lots of work done this week, but then I got my second covid booster yesterday, and I wasn’t expecting how hard it would hit (fever, chills). The first booster wasn’t bad, brief headache/fatigue for a couple hours, so I thought all the rest would be equally mild. No such luck.

    Could be because the shot was on top of a bad allergy season (the “final straw” pushing me over the edge when a less stressed immune system wouldn’t be so irritated) or because I took precautions (extra hydration) with the first booster and didn’t this time because the first one was so mild, so I may have gotten dehydrated.

    Either way, today is a listen to books/radio in bed day, work tomorrow. And still no regrets about getting the shot (just wish I’d hydrated better yesterday).

  13. This past weekend I went on a quilt retreat. My group is doing a UFO challenge. We told each other what we are planning to get done by Halloween. I had five projects that weren’t quite tops yet, so said I’d get them at least to the top stage by then.

    For one project, I had twelve log cabin squares done. I put them together and put some borders around them. That one is done.

    For a second, the sampler blocks were done and put together – but I felt the project needed a border. After lots of discussion about color, etc, that one is done too.

    The third picture is not yet a top – it is still missing a final border. But it is much farther along than when I started the weekend (with all the stars as separate pieces). I was wondering what had stopped me on this one. Turns out I had made the stars right before I broke my ankle. I’m guessing I tidied up and put all the pieces in a box. It’s nice to get back to it.

    https://www.instagram.com/p/Ce09QYxOMaK/

    I also introduced my group to the concept of “bonus” projects. Those two quilts from last week count as bonuses toward my UFO challenge. They were definitely UFOs, just not on my declared list. And they’re definitely done now. I’ll probably pack them up with me when I go to visit family next week. I’m sure there will be someone to lay claim to them.

      1. Thanks. They were fussy cut from a striped fabric to make the repeating pattern. It was a neat technique.

  14. Back when we lived in the Big Old Apartment, we had two pieces of cat-specific furniture (on top of all the human furniture that they, naturally, claimed): one was a simple thing with an elevated platform between two scratching trees (made to look like palm trees, with floppy green fronds and everything) that had a hammock under the platform. My little black cat LOVED it. The other was a simple ‘cave’ box on a lounging shelf, but it mounted over a door, and it had its own spiral staircase beside the door, and our other cat LOVED it. Sigh, I miss my kitties.

    This is Day 3 of Day Job Hell Week and it hasn’t been so bad so far, mostly because the attorneys have been working at the bleeding edge of the last minute. (I can’t do much till they finish their part.) The thing that had to go out yesterday went out; final docs at 4:20, and I had time to properly do the checklist on it, but we didn’t have time to go through our double-checking procedure. The thing that has to go out today? We’ll see. As of 6:30 last night a final draft wasn’t ready.

    Oh, and I went to the Actual Office yesterday where I accomplished sending out several stacks of original patents etc that had come in since we remoted, so I’m all caught up there and don’t have to go back till sometime in July.

    Also, between last Friday afternoon and this morning I’ve written 18300 words of a new novel, which feels great. 🙂

    On the downside, I am blaming yesterday’s 2+ hours sitting in traffic for this morning’s cough. Smog, ugh.

  15. My Mac has been giving me fits; I finally broke down and called Apple Care. Turns out if you don’t update, to the point that you are not one but two operating systems behind, your Mac will eventually turn on you. Once that got resolved, smooth sailing, though the pinks of the Monterey OS are a bit disconcerting after the calm of Mojave. And I learned they call that colorful wheel of death a “beach ball.” Always happy at Apple.
    The next day I had my car worked on, so those problems should also be gone. The actual freelance work is going fine, thankfully. Company coming soon, so I need to clean, or at least consolidate the mess.

  16. I had my quarterly medical appointment yesterday. No issues that aren’t being addressed separately by my urologist (an upcoming prostate biopsy). My PCP said, “You are officially no longer a diabetic!” based on my A1c of 5.2 after no diabetic meds for three months. Then she quickly backed off lest I think it safe to eat sugar covered starch. I told her that I understood Type II is like being an alcoholic in some ways. One family size bag of Doritos with cheese dip is too many; fifty bags and jars of dip wouldn’t be enough. The diet? I’m working on it.

    I’m also working on the hydroponic gardening. Twelve units and no plans to ever add to that. I’ve named all twelve and the three reservoirs that irrigate them. I also figured out a plan to add reservoirs, but that will cost. Better for me to check all levels daily and add water as necessary. There should be some effort involved, besides wielding scissors to prune the kudzu. I mean herbs.

    I’ve harvested and eaten all the heirloom lettuce. I have twelve Romaine lettuce plants germinating, so three weeks until my next salad. I harvested the last tiny yellow tomato from the Ranches, ripped out the old plant and substituted a red sweet pepper plant. I don’t seem to have any sweet peppers, but I have at least three planted. When the last pepper ripens on the chili plant, I’ll rip that sucker out and try another sweet pepper. The purple chilis and the other red chili are going crazy, so hot peppers will not be a problem. Sheba (the bucket) is hosting my sole heirloom cherry tomato pod, but so far, no sign of germination. I’m working on it.

    I thought I would work up a blog post about terminology regarding hydroponic indoor countertop units, since the different manufacturers can’t seem to agree to use common terms. I’m working on it.

    I yam a happy camper, because I yam working on it. 🙂

  17. Going to Doc for blood test results. All good except need to get sugar level down further. Returning tops and keeping smaller size, yeah, submitting a short story to a contest before midnight, having dinner with son, dil, h, and going to a movie. Older sister has been scammed twice. Second time was close to loosing a lot of money. Niece gets a notice if Sister is taking money out of account. Terrible people scammers.

    1. My mom got scammed and fell for it despite people at two separate stores warning her that the big gift cards purchases were scams. Then she called me.
      Since he had also gotten into her bank account we ended up spending weeks on protecting her many bank accounts ( she puts some here, some there ) … she could afford what she lost but oh the time and stress…
      And now she won’t pick up the phone if she doesn’t know who called and that has its own problems .

      It’s amazing how GOOD they are at it

  18. I’m actively working on keeping the puppy from killing herself. She has now decided that aluminum cans are Hannah toys, probably because yummy things like creamy soups and cat food come in them. She does not appear to have actually eaten any pieces but for now they are all going in the garbage (the recycling bin doesn’t have a lid and we haven’t had time to get the doors put back on the closet it lives in). She is a menace and I have to be on her all day. But, I knew what I was signing up for when we got a German Shepherd puppy. Rodeo, this is not my first. Still, she does take up a lot of time.

    1. I sympathize. I have a 10-week-old black lab puppy and, though this is not my first rodeo either, I had forgotten just how much effort was required and how persistent a puppy can be. And let’s not even mention those little sharp teeth. I bought a kid’s wading plastic wading pool and filled it with empty plastic bottles. She has a blast chasing them around and around. It’s crazy noisy, but at least it keeps her busy.

      1. Fortunately, she still loves plastic bottles. I take the lids off and she goes to town. My work productivity suffers because I can’t hear through the racket but it keeps her out of trouble.

        Tonight she destroyed an attachment for the Shopvac and last night it was an almost full bottle of ketchup. Amazingly, she did not actually manage to puncture the bottle of ketchup, just pried off the lid – all of it including the part that screws on not just the lid flap – and chewed on the top of the bottle where the yummy stuff was. There were only two little dots of ketchup on a dog bed so my office didn’t look like a crime scene. I had run to town and was gone less than 15 minutes.

  19. Paid work is going fine, but I am yet again in limbo land with the Continuing Education department of National Association of Social Workers. As I believe I have moaned previously, their application form says takes 4-6 weeks to approve, I submitted more than 7 weeks in advance of our expiration. It took TWENTY ONE weeks, with repeated follow ups, for the gate keeper to even review to see if all the forms they wanted were there (they wanted signatures, but not scanned forms……. so I had to re-do three of them and “typed signature” them). I swear the only reason she finally did the first step is because one of our ex board members lives in DC and WENT there in person. I had the re-done forms emailed by Saturday, so in her in box for Monday morning, and asked that she acknowledge receipt of requested forms ……. it is now almost 2pm on Wednesday……waiting……..

  20. Well done you on the cat thing. And the scene revision. Covering your bases with pets and prose this week:)

    I made some progress on my WIP but not as much as I had planned. Instead I filled my time with distractions. Some house related musts and some more fun–like watching the family of raccoon theatrics in my tree or watching flowers bloom in my garden which got some pics on Insta. The house reno stuff did not get pics. Nobody needs to see that:)

  21. I spent Sunday painting the inside of my new shed with horrendously toxic wood preserver, supplied by Paul, who built it. He wants me to do the outside, too, but I ran out after doing the front. Couldn’t find more on a Sunday, and haven’t had time to look on the industrial estate since then. But I’ve put everything back inside, after leaving it to dry for 24 hours.

    I then had to prepare for my first flower photography session yesterday at the spinal injuries unit of the local hospital. Most of which was redundant, since an unscheduled advanced wheelchair training meant no takers for photography, or for painting with the other artist there. I’ve got another trial session at the end of next week. I’m not sure whether it’s going to work – it’ll depend if anyone’s keen. I agreed to do this back in February, but now it’s finally happening, I’m really wanting to get on with personal projects instead.

  22. In aid of our reno, bookshelves in book and living rooms are empty. *weep* Books are boxed and marked “keep” and “donate.” All Crusies are “keep.” (Sure would like to add to that box, hint hint.) Still on the shelves are decor tchotchkes. Making decisions on those. Teal ware will stay as will honey pot and bunny collections, but the flower frogs need culling. Just about all papers in files are OUT.

    1. My first thought, Thea, was why would any one need to collect bunnies and flower frogs. Then I thought why would anyone need 44 vintage and antique copper molds (I have only made molded deserts three times in my life) or 20 art nouveau silver-lidded cigar jars (I have never smoked, nor has my husband). So in retrospect, enjoy your bunnies and flower frogs. At least they don’t need polishing.

      1. I also have hundreds of colors of DMC embroidery thread. I stopped embroidering about 25 years ago when I took up sculpting instead. No. I am not going to get rid of any of them. Who knows, I may go back to it someday.

    2. I now have two finished novels and we’re 10,000 words into a third.
      I envision Crusies raining down on bookstores in 2023.

          2. Yep. Actually, she’s a supporting player in You Again when she’s fifteen, and then Haunting Alice when she’s thirty.
            There’s also a novella started called Spooky Alice from when she was about fourteen.

  23. It’s my second a day back from vacation, so still working my way through the inbox. Not feeling very motivated, but I’ll perk up.

    Watching all the flooding in Yellowstone and checking in on my friends there. It is so painful to watch!

    1. I’m setting up DH to live in the basement for the next ten days. Yep Covid positive. And doing all the cooking and cleaning and about to order chicken soup for DS who is also Covid positive. And take a test to make sure I don’t have it because the first two tests didn’t have enough test liquid to be accurate.

      1. I am negative. For now. And in a textbook case of being a Jewish mom I sent my son a literal gallon of chicken soup with matzah balls and a challah.

  24. The election is over. Yay! I thought after this week’s 3 meetings I’d get a bit of a break but I’m now picking up rallies and marches and celebrations.

    Local county council voted a resolution asking the state legislature to eliminate no excuse mail in ballots and drop boxes, because, you know, the possibility of fraud. And ‘2000 Mules’. And, no, they don’t believe that the election was stolen but there were instances of, you know, fraud. No evidence of, you know, fraud but fraud. It’ll be a fun election board meeting on Wednesday.

  25. I sorta/almost fell for a scam today myself. I was in a hurry and needed to check an Amazon order. I typed “amazon” into the search box on my phone and clicked the first link that came up. It asked for my password, which I wasn’t sure about, then for my address which I put in, and then for my credit card info, at which point I wised up and shut it down. Turns out the first link was a fake ad for Amazon. I reported it, and luckily I had put in an old, wrong password, so I should probably be okay. I feel like an idiot though.

  26. My work continues to be hell on earth, although training a new staff member for the past week has been fun. We have been doing mostly early shifts, and while getting up at 3:30am is not my favourite thing in the world, we have successfully avoided hell time (4-8pm) until tonight. It’s good that she’s now seen what it’s really like every night, but my gods it was bad. Delays and cancellations and confiscated cabin bags. Good learning, but not in any way fun.

    I ruined at least one woman’s night, although not on purpose. When she asked to move to my flight it was full, so I said no and she left. A seat opened up and I was told to fill it with the next person to ask, so I did. And then she came back, justifiably upset that I hadn’t put her on the flight instead, but I didn’t have any of her details and she wasn’t in sight when it happened. I tried to explain that, but she wasn’t having a bar of it. I get why she was mad, and I feel bad about it, but things change literally minute by minute in that sort of situation and we don’t have time to do anything that isn’t directly in front of us.

    Anyway. My job sucks right now.

    1. And I’ve just found an extra two stitches on one side of the dog jumper because I missed the rib in the third row of the belly panel. If I frog back to fix it so the sides are even, I’ll be ripping out three inches of knitting and I honestly don’t know if I can handle that right now. Argh.

  27. Concerning Alice you said:

    “Yep. Actually, she’s a supporting player in You Again when she’s fifteen, and then Haunting Alice when she’s thirty.
    There’s also a novella started called Spooky Alice from when she was about fourteen.”

    Maybe This Time is my favorite of your books and any one of these would make me so happy. All three would be ecstasy!

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