Thursday This n That

You know me.  I love baseball.  But I swear if the players don't knock this horse shit off, I'm done with it.  I loved football more and I quit that without too much pain.  I don't even miss it anymore.  Next up, golf.  All this COVID crap has shown me I can live without sports.

The guinea fowl now wait for Hubs to do his morning 'feed the critters' thing.  They are his faithful subjects.  I have three of them named now - Harry and Henry (previously Harriet and Henrietta, but then I learned they were males) and Pie (short for Piebald - also male).  Henry's light, Harry's dark, and Pie has white on his breast.  They travel together and have enough differences (all guineas pretty much look the same) that I can tell who they are.  There's also a trio of nearly identical guineas - all the same dark shade of gray.  Two males and a female.  And the female limps, so I know when it's THAT particular trio.  I think I'll name them Bing, Bob, and Dorothy.  They're off on the road to Morocco.  ;o)

I think that's Dorothy.  (Smaller wattles is the key to gender identification in guinea fowl, I guess.)

I've been distracting myself with playing free online poker again.  No worries, though.  I can only play for ten minutes at a time before my computer starts to whine from the overload.  Then I learned I can play free slots at the same site without the drain on my system.  Totally mindless entertainment.  I went through 250K chips yesterday, though, so now I have to wait and build my acct back up again.

I don't know about you, but I'm sick of virtue signaling.  Then again, I'm pretty much sick of everything right now.  Like I've seen on FB, I think we need to turn 2020 off and back on again, and see if that fixes the problem.  We need some sort of reset on this year.

Tropical Depression Cristobal was a non-event here.  We got like an inch of steady rain overnight.  :yawn:  Right now, we're getting more wind from some thing blowing out of Oklahoma than we did with big, scary Cristobal.

On a walk last night, we saw a squirrel that was dead in the road.  Flat... and more than that, it's spine was laying about 3 feet away from it.  Which I thought was cool.  Owl was grossed out.  On the way back, we had to pass the squirrel again.  I had Owl walk as far away as possible and look into the field as she passed it.  I took a better look.  The animals had definitely been busy on the carcass.  I won't gross you out, too, but I still thought it was pretty interesting.  I'm weird that way.  For years, I had a cat skull one of my brothers found long ago.  Not sure where it went.  Lost to one of my many moves, no doubt.

Okay, on that note, I should probably wander off somewhere and let you enjoy your day.  Have a good one!  And tell me what's going on with your this n thats today.

Updated to add:  I woke up this morning to learn that A&E cancelled Live PD.  Those fuckers.  I'm beyond pissed.

Thursday This n That

I saw a commercial the other day for some kind of old people product wherein the lady laments that she's on a fixed income.  This phrase has irritated me since my long ago telephone fundraising days.  I mean, the majority of people have incomes that are fixed - as in they don't change from one paycheck to the next - so I've never been exactly sure why anyone thinks that's a thing to lament.  You know how much money you'll have, so you can budget accordingly.  You want to lament something?  Lament having a non-fixed income where you're not sure how much money you'll be getting and whether you'll have enough to pay bills when your next check drops.  Non-fixed income is why I have never been good at working on commission.  When I have to worry about making enough money to not eat dogfood, I get all tense and weird and can't sell shit.  And buyers can smell the desperation. 

For the record, working on royalties is like working on commission.  Except I'm worrying about where I'll come up with editing funds and not whether I'll be eating dogfood.  Hubs makes sure I don't have to eat dogfood.

Dogfood really should be one word.

Why are some things compound words and other things aren't?  Who makes the rules for that stuff?

Speaking of words, I refuse to put apostrophes in words that didn't use to have apostrophes.  Hallowe'en?  Oh, hell no.  Hawai'i?  Don't get me started. My blog editor is red-squiggling the hell out of those words with the apostrophes.

Oh, yeah, almost forgot.  Happy Halloween!

You know, I didn't really care who won the World Series.  I mean, I was leaning more toward Houston because of leftist DC, but I don't really like the Astros either.  Then the Nats fans had the gall to boo the President.  Then I was really rooting for the Astros. Not sure who won because I went to bed before the end of the final game.  :shrug:

When I'm out and about in the world, I literally don't notice anything about you - your skin color, your eye color, what you wear, tats, piercings, etc. - unless you give me a reason to notice you.  And usually the reason I notice you isn't a good one - you're loud, you're obnoxious, you're standing and talking in the middle of a grocery aisle leaving no room to pass on either side, your kids are running amok. I'd rather have good reasons to notice you - your cute and respectful children, a happy smile turned my way, a cheerful word - but it's your choice.  If you're old or look lost, I'll help you.  Unless you seem like a shit, then you're on your own.

Anyway, I think you've heard more than enough out of me.  What's the this-n-that for you today?

Thursday This n That

I spent most of yesterday doing spreadsheets, so I was kind of a toad.  I stopped for a while to take a walk.  Then I stopped for lunch and a nap.  Then I took a break to watch some of The Chase and do dinner.  I finished up after dinner.  It's days like that that show me what I could do writing-wise if I put my mind to it.  Of course, spreadsheets use an entirely different part of the brain, but it's the endurance I need to work on overall.

Yesterday, I was thinking about NaNo again.  I even went to the site and logged in a book called No Freakin' Clue.  LOL.  And then I looked at the last time I did NaNo.  It was kind of shocking. More about that tomorrow.

There's a dog at the animal rescue I really want.  His name is Theo and he looks like a super cool dog.  But right now, I've got all I can handle with Geriatric Cat.  I'll just settle for rooting for Theo to find a nice home.  It's what I do.

For some reason, the fish aren't biting.  The local reports are that fishing is slow.  Some dudes we talked to out at the lake said fishing was slow.  At least it's not just me.

The World Series is going on right now.  I predicted the Astros in 5, but since the Nationals took the first game, I'm glad I didn't actually put any money on that prediction.  As of typing this post so its ready for you now, the second game was tied 2-2.  Maybe the Nationals just want it more.  Since the Yankees aren't in it, I don't really care who wins.  (Update: The Nats won game 2, too.  Whomped 'em.  So much for me predicting the future.  Of course, if I could do that, I'd be rich.)

Still no eagle sightings.

Okay, time to get your day started.  Go have some coffee or something.  I know I will.  And leave a little this n that on your way.  ;o)

Sunday Update - Week 41

Helloooo.

It's early Sunday morning after I stayed up late watching the Yankees shut out the Astros and reading.  Yeah, staying up late is definitely not a guarantee I'm going to sleep in.  At all.

I wrote some this week.  It's gonna be a short story.  I know I don't do short stories, but this kind of hit me, so I started writing it.  We'll see how it goes.

No editing.  No marketing.

I read 4 books last week.  Yay.  And I picked up a paperback I purchased a couple months ago that I'm about halfway through as of last night.  Good stuff.  I hope the end doesn't disappoint.

No baking, but I bought a bag of Granny Smith apples.  I plan on making Romanian Apple Cake.  And maybe apple bread.  Or apple crisp.  Who knows.  I just feel like making stuff with apples.

Did 5 out of 7 days of activity.  Mostly walking again, and one uneventful fishing trip, but I also got some yardwork in yesterday.  Yay!  And I'm at 179.6 lbs, so I'm counting that as a win.

Yesterday.  It was finally cold enough to not have to worry about getting drilled by oak mites, so I went out with the idea of weeding the flower beds.  Problem with that is that the beds are now so full of leaves that weeding them would be antithetical to winterizing them, so I left the leaves and pulled the tall weeds.  I'll get the rest of the weeds in the spring.  The beds that don't accumulate leaves got weeded better.  Then I went into the woods.  Just to look around and take some measure of how much needs to be done this winter.  As I was walking the trails, I came across a problem - a vine that we'd cut off at its base year before last had finally decayed enough to drop out of the tree, right across one of our dogwoods.  Had the poor thing bent so the top was touching the ground.  I trudged back up the hill, grabbed the limb saw and went back to rescue the dogwood.  Fingers crossed it isn't too damaged.  After I did that, I finished my tour.  Loads of fresh deadfall to move once it gets cold and stays cold.  Yay. 

All the rain - we got four more inches this week - means the wet weather stream at the back of our property is running.  It's really pretty and peaceful down there right now with the stream gently burbling downhill toward the lake.

The vacant lot to the north got obliterated.  They had some guy come in and strip off the top layer of brush, then knock over some small trees.  Later, they had some other guy with a backhoe come in and dig and knock over more trees to make room for their house.  Of course, they're drawing a bit of attention from people in the nosy Nellies in the neighborhood who feel they need to add their two cents.  Bleh.  They're not bothering anyone and it's their land, so everyone needs to leave them alone.  We're really the only ones who'll be effected by this and we're fine with it.  Sheesh.  Yesterday the guy brought his little girl with him while he measured stuff - we think for the foundation - and it was nice watching her investigating rocks and exploring in all the dirt.  Reminded me of me.  Man, I'd give my eyeteeth to wander around in there, looking for cool rocks.  Lucky kid. 

A family member had minor surgery this week.  Made it through fine, last I heard.  I'll know more today or tomorrow, but I don't expect the outlook to change.

Other than that, it's pretty much business as usual here.  I need to make plans to go fishing now that the temps are dropping and the fish are biting.  What was on your plate last week?