PWYC Saturday

[CathyS]

Hi!!

Dh just built all 5 bookcases and they are now being drilled to the wall under the big window in the bedroom. That wall is 25 1/2 feet, so there is a 6 inch gap at the right side looking towards that wall. The cat play tree with a platform at the top will be in front of the gap, so it won't be seen. The bottom of the window sill is right at the top of the bookcases and the wood of the windowsill is slightly darker. There are white blinds over that.

I had to move furniture around, and there was a lot of tumbleweeds under the bed. That was the only part that hadn't gotten vacuumed yesterday.

No idea what's for supper. Something BBQed. Steaks I think.

[LadyMaverick]

I had some hard boiled eggs that needed to be used. I made a batch of tuna salad and then decided to also make some potato salad using up the rest of the baked potatoes.

I just made our very first Airbnb reservation. It was easier than I expected. A couple weeks ago, DS9 noticed an underground house and started asking questions about them. He is intrigued by the concept of a house built inside of a hill. I found an underground house on Airbnb about an hour drive from here so I booked it for the first weekend in October. It is near a museum that will be a good field trip learning experience so I can count that day as a school day. The museum is free to visit on the first Monday of the month so this will be a win-win-win trip.

[Kathryn-in-Canada]

HUGE storm just blew through. Just 1/2" hail but still, that's really unusual for us to get hail. The storms seem to break on either side of us, they blow down the river but we're at a bend so they either follow the hills north of us, or continue to go south.

My poor tomato plants look sad. My petunias are even sadder.

I did get dressed. Didn't have any veggies for lunch so walked over to the store. When we stepped out of the building we saw the storm clouds but were delayed on the walk up because we kept running into people who wanted to chat.

On the way back we walked as fast as I could and still I had to jog the last short block (my limit) and then duck under the side of the small building and stay next to it until we were under the breezeway. We didn't have to change clothes and the big rain held off for another 20 - 30 minutes so I probably didn't have to jog. But when the rain came, it came and this thunder storm was slow moving so was over top us over 30 minutes. Again, unusual.

I had a salad and grapes for my lunch since it was well past 2 by the time I was eating, so I saved room for dinner. We'll have to time our walk to the pub carefully.

[Kathryn-in-Canada]

Harmony: I can't figure out how much of the GPS challenge is that it is a new interface and I'm trying to apply what I learned from our old one. The old one was instinctive. This one is definitely not. But it does a lot more, for instance it will tell me what is ahead (i.e. I can ask it what Fast Food places are up ahead.) And I can to that by voice.

I was disappointed I had to do all the programming on the unit itself using the touch screen instead of using the computer and just transferring it to the unit.

I eventually figured out how to ask for just a city. Or how to search for a street that it isn't in the city where you are now. That's one of the crazy things, it asks you for an address but doesn't want street or town. Then it searches near where you are now and says, "Can't find this address." Of course not, it is for the town I'm going to, not here. So going through three screens, one manages to change the town it is searching in (first getting the input screen for change town, then enter the town name, then confirm it got the Springfield you want because it ignores the state you enter on the same line as the town.)

Then once you change the town, you can ask for the address, again, but if it doesn't make sense to the unit, it will expand the search. Apparently the street I want in Fargo isn't in the system under that name because each time I searched for the address, it started to search both ND and MN and decided I wanted a street outside St. Paul, MN. Eventually, I used the map-enter function, looking at Google maps to see where it was, and finding the same spot on my unit's map. That means I couldn't do that entry without a device handy with Google maps.

This is a Garmin DriveAssist50 in case anyone wants to avoid buying this unit!

[lucylee]

I can't even think. Most of my day is in J&C...

I did go to dcousin's wedding tea. The one for the boy cousin who is marrying the former student of mine, who is 18 years older than he is.
I also made my apologies to her, and to my aunt and girl cousin (his grandmother & sister, who is hosting the wedding) re: our ballgame plans for that weekend. They were all more than understanding about it, so at least that eased my mind.

Talked to dmom, she is doing very well from the sound of things. Said her mouth was kinda sore, but she certainly sounded like she felt better than she did when the bad teeth were causing such pain. Did I tell y'all -- yesterday I got her filing done, so her kitchen table looks presentable again, and I cleared out all her phone messages (all 70 of them.) The voice mail was full and would not accept new messages. I also cleared her caller ID log, which she didn't exactly want me to do, but it's done now. I told her she was starting fresh!

Rode around some this morning -- drove dh around in the forest, etc, b/c he felt so bad and couldn't rest anywhere. He wanted a cherry slush, so we go that and rode around a long time, and he filled up the car for me before I went to the wedding shower. He did call to see where I was, about 15 min after it was over. I thought it was come and go, but everyone made it come and stay, LOL. And there was not a HUGE crowd there. Enough people, certainly, but not so I could just slip out the door easily, you know?

DH has just been miserable all week. Either his bp is too low or his heart rate is too high or he has shortness of breath. It's quite a balancing act with meds, and I don't think any of the doctors know exactly how much to prescribe for him b/c dh has such a sensitivity to changes in his meds. It makes it much more difficult for him to manage this condition.

Oh goodness, Kathryn, that sounds like a horrible gps! I have trouble sometimes with mapquest on my phone, but I think I will stick to it!

I am becoming sooo envious of LadyM & ds9 homeschooling...

Cathy, the bookcases sound GREAT!

Hope your dgs has an uneventful trip, Harmony! I know that is nerve-wracking, waiting on him to arrive safely.
Also sending lots of (((HUGS))) and good wishes that the UTI clears up quickly.

40 to a class -- yes -- that is awful! DH had classes like that a few times. I don't think I ever hit 40, but I know I had 35 at times. Class size really makes a big difference in how effective the teacher can be. I'm so glad dgs's class is small -- 12. And I think the all boys/all girls classes might work out very nicely. A junior high in our area tried that for a while. I'm not sure if they stuck with it more than a year or so or not. I don't think they did, but I don't know what reasons they gave for going back to the traditional co-ed classrooms.

I'm leaving out a lot of people I should respond to. Y'all please forgive me. I'll just wave all around to everyone.

[Harmony]

We just have the Garmin nuvi 57LM. It is much simpler than your version, Kathryn. This one is more complicated than the old Garmin Nuvi we had, a bit harder to use. It's ok, works for us.

Kitchen is half-way cleaned up. Everything got pretty messy around here. All the laundry is done and hanging or put away. I finished the bathroom.

Well, it's enough done. I've S2Rollers, and I finally got out of my nightgown and slippers. It looks like rain rolling in.

[Harriet]

Baking 3 layers for dd's cake. Using the soaked-towel-strips idea again for flat-topped layers. The strips with safety pins already in the correct places for my pans had stored nicely in my potholder drawer in a baggie. I just popped them out and used the same ones again.

She and I got in a grocery trip this morning. Hip/leg managed that trip much better. Was wondering - do you suppose grocery stores use nicer/thicker vinyl flooring over the concrete? Maybe that's part of it. Not that walking it felt great, but it hasn't bothered me to stand and cook and clean in the kitchen through the afternoon.

[Kathryn-in-Canada]

Mounting the GPS was the other issue because it has a camera. That's the DriveAssist part of the name - it warns you if traffic is stopped ahead and you aren't slowing down, or if you drift out of your lane. As well, not as important, if the traffic stopped at a light in front of you has started to move. But it means, to use that stuff you have to have it on the dash or higher. It came with a windshield mount which I've since learned is illegal in most of the US.

So I've bought a weighted dash mount which I pray is legal. Foolishly, I forgot to check after checking about the windshield.

More storms are around, I can hear thunder but it is sunny right now here. We got to and home from the pub during good weather, just the beginning drops when we walked up the driveway. The next big storm for us will be at 11:30 but there are 2 before then that will be showers.

Looking for recommendations for cell phone alerts to NOAA advisories.

Lucylee: does your ds have something like that on his phone so he won't drive into trouble while on the road?

This question is open to everyone (especially LadyM) but Lucylee's son spends a lot of time driving in storm country.

I've checked and neither my phone nor dh's has the WEA setting so we'll have to get an app. What we are looking for is one that keeps track of us while we are driving and sends a text if there's an alert for where we are.

Edited to add: I've just found a road trip NPR station mapping webpage (through Reddit, NPR shut down their official one) and have printed off all the stations we'll pass along the way. That will be a starting point for listening to news and hopefully local weather if it is important. I'll have US data on my phone so can check in with that when we aren't stopped.

We are doing the same eating plan as I did last trip - stop in the morning to buy fruit and a salad of some sort and just have that plus a protein bar. It means we don't have to stop for lunch each day (I can eat while we drive, dh doesn't eat lunch, and then we just stop places for walks or hikes or gas/pee breaks. But that means that we won't be stopping regularly at places to check email and update our location for a weather app.

[lucylee]

Yes -- ds has an app that gives weather warnings wherever he is. Several of the guys in the band do too, b/c he was talking about one night when they were driving in between storms. Couldn't stop b/c one was behind them, couldn't go too fast b/c one was ahead of them. This was NOT the kind of story that does a mother's heart any good. But at least I knew they stayed aware.
I'm not sure what he uses, but mine is just from a local news station here, but it will give you alerts at your current location, as well as (I think) two other locations -- like I could program home and college town, for instance, if he were still down there and I wanted to make sure he was aware of coming threats, even though I was 250 miles away.

He uses Google Maps, I think for his GPS. I use MapQuest, which he does not like, for some reason. I've always been fairly pleased with it. (I must admit it would have worked better for walking directions in New Orleans, if I had known I had a compass on my phone as well and could tell my north from south. It would have saved us about a million steps, and I might have gotten to eat those fancy pastries that start with a b which I cannot spell well enough to use spell check....)

[Ramblinrose]

Lucylee... you made it all the to New Orleans and didn't get to eat beignets... how sad