Monday Meeting of the Minds

[LadyMaverick]

I have no idea what the title means in relation to our forum today. LOL The "Meeting of the Minds" phrase just came to me when I reached the line to type the subject.

Make this Monday your own.

[LadyMaverick]

DGD6 has arrived and is her typical happy self. She asked for waffles for breakfast. I think I am out of them so .... Alexa, add waffles to the shopping list.

Next up -
** make pancakes for DGD6 or see if she would prefer cereal.
** Layout DS9 school work for the day

[CathyS]

Hi!

Hair is washed and now I hope I don't get called in to work for 10 because it might not be thoroughly dried. I can't stand using a hair dryer.

Sorted out my sock drawer and my under things drawer. They are both the drawers in my nightstand. It's so much easier to have them right where I sit to get dressed. Today's capsule outfit is black bottoms and a white top. So easy to get dressed for the day. I no longer wear t shirts and I stay to basic colors along with black and white. So nice, so easy and so fast. I have a large selection of hoodies and whatever doesn't get worn before April 1st is a goner!

I just have to finish making the bed to get ready to get out the door to stitching.

[LadyMaverick]

Back home from taking DGD6 to school. Usually, I just pull up to the front door of the school and DGD6 gets out and I pull away. However, today I noticed DGD6 was wiggling in the car seat while we were driving to school and I realized I forgot to tell her to go to the bathroom this morning. I knew DGD6 would immediately start socializing with her classmates and totally forget about going to the bathroom......until it was too late. So I parked the car and walked DGD6 into the school and held her backpack while she went to the bathroom. As I was standing there I chatted with several DFriends & teachers. As I was leaving the school and walking to my vehicle, I realized I hadn't brushed my hair this morning. EEEEEK!!! I was wearing my hair piled on top of my head and secured by a scrunchy. Messy. For sure.

[Kathryn-in-Canada]

Ds is asleep in apartment now while his apartment windows are replaced.

He was given the weekend to move all contents of his apartment 4' away from the windows PLUS leave a 4' path from the door to each window. Ignoring the fact that he had two 12-hour overnight shifts this weekend... in many of his rooms that's impossible without disassembling items (like his bed because there's not 4' between the foot of the bed and the wall, to leave the path from the door.)
The workmen have toured his apartment and he's set now, the bed will be tarped, and they'll work above other items that are built in but within the 4' zone.

This has me thinking about my own apartment. The windows, although double glazed, are 50 years old next year. I don't pay for heat or a/c so don't care about air leaks but the water leaks are starting to annoy me. The walls around the windows that leak are in terrible shape but were repaired last winter and rebubbled within months. I don't want to bother moving my furniture to have them done again until the windows are properly caulked on the outside so the moisture won't keep coming in and ruining the patches. At least the stages are here on the properly now but there are a lot of windows to re-caulk and they took over 2 months on the smaller building.

Windows will have to be replaced but it will be an exceptionally high cost and is not budgeted for in the next 2 years according to the building manager. On the other hand, I'm now paying in my rent increase for the penthouse windows that were done and the office windows. These are the 'test' windows before they replace the 1000s of windows in this building.

When my windows are to be replaced (I have 9 windows 4' x 5') at least we can be put up in the guest suite downstairs for sleeping and our apartment is large enough that we can be in other areas during the day. They will be working on stages outside so they will not be able to do more than 2 rooms at a time because of a shortage of stages to rent in the city.

This is in the future but time flies so it will be near future. The difficult things I'll have to move? My roll-top desk with all my computer stuff in it, including the networking for the whole apartment, the media centre with all its tech, the treadmill and exercise bike. Those are the worst. If they don't want the 4' path, I'll be OK, otherwise the filing cabinets will have to move as well. Oh, and the Grandfather clock, the wall clock and a large number of paintings.

I don't tend to have big things in front of the windows because 1) they aren't UV coated so the sun is killing my furniture, 2) I have to move everything out at least annually for them to service the radiators and 3) I'm often having to move them out so the workmen can repair after major leaks damage my walls or ceilings. BUT I do have a ton of things within 4' of the windows. Since that amounts to almost 1/3 of any room I have with a window in it, when the time comes, it will be a big deal. Thankfully, the waterbed is not within 4' of either bedroom window or the door. My two dressers will have to be moved, but the bed won't have to be drained and moved.

It occurs to me that I can't get the walls patched now until our refugees arrive and the extra love-seat is removed from my living room. At the moment there is no path to the holes in that wall.

[blessedw2]

is it okay if I lost my mind (so I may not be able to have a meeting of the Minds )

hi all

to do:
kitchen dailies

[DeeClutter]

Dh just let DS-A & ddil in so they can get their motorhome. Took over a bag of mini bagels. Realized I have nothing but the microwave to cook them -not a good plan. DGS5 will love them.

In for another hot one today, Have doors open right now, but it won't be long till we need AC.

Slept till 10:30 last night & got up & felt little strange. Took BS & it was 59 already. Took again after 3am & it was 67. Had a small snack both times & it was all the way up to 72 this morning. Didn't sleep from 12:30 till well after 3:30. Slept till dh was up before 6 and went back in to the bed and slept till 8.

Tonight is pot luck -might be the last for this year. Bought an apple pie yesterday. So tonight will be easy. Want to get it cut into small slices however before we go down.

Praying for your dd, LadyM. BTW, think you made the right decision by going back to homeschooling DS9. We'll also pray that you'll find where you misplaced your mind, Blessedw2.

[BookSaver]

Good morning, villagers ~
LTNS as my schedule has slowed down a teensy bit but still a lot going on.

Two weekends ago I was extremely busy in a good way. Spent several hours on the Friday with my younger sister, and had a good day working at the library on Saturday. That Sunday morning I drove an hour over to visit my older sister in the nursing home where she lives. DMom and DyoungerSis met me there. It was wonderful to see for myself that DMom is looking well, because when we talk on the phone she is always cheerful and won't complain when she is in pain. Later that Sunday afternoon DH and I went to TheBigCity to see the Wonder Woman movie and we thought it was fun.

This past weekend was quiet and restful, a very nice break.

Between weekends, my days still feel as if I'm never going to get caught up ... but I'm seeing tiny bits of progress.

For the next month I'm going to concentrate on doing a major reorganization of the kitchen.
* There is a small storage cabinet that needs to be inspected. In theory, it holds baking pans for the holidays.
* Another cabinet has a set of stoneware plates that I rarely use but want to keep. However, they don't need to be in prime cabinet space. I'll box them up for long-term storage, and use that high shelf for things I use more often.

* Another cupboard has a set of plastic freezer-to-microwave dishes with lids in a nice rotating caddy. I'm going to put them in the donate box because they have weird corners that are difficult to clean. They'll work fine for someone who has a dishwasher. Probably will find other food storage containers that can go, too. You know, it's the same rule that people say for clothes -- we constantly use our favorite 20% and therefore do not need so many items.

* We have way too many drinking glasses.

* My microwave is dying and I've decided to replace it and the toaster with a small toaster oven.
* No microwave will mean being able to get rid of a few more dishes. I've been gradually replacing plastic microwave dishes with glass ones anyway but I'm sure there are still a few plastic ones hiding in the back of the cupboards. I can donate anything that will not work in a toaster oven.

* An overabundance of dish towels requires a sunny day to inspect which ones are nice enough to keep in the kitchen drawer and which are stained badly enough to rotate out to the rag bag for other cleaning jobs. Then the worst of the rags can rotate down to being disposables. That will delay the need to buy paper towels.

* Might try the kitchen table in a different location. An island with cupboards would be more helpful than the table, but I am unwilling to buy an island now because I really want to renovate the whole kitchen.

* Seasonal task = inventory baking ingredients and check expiration dates. I haven't baked any sweets all summer. Family holiday parties will be happening soon.
* Must clear everything out of the coat closet -- which isn't in the kitchen but next to it and definitely needs to be done before cold weather arrives.

I have a few DPCs to make this morning but businesses aren't open yet. I'll drink more water and start a load of laundry before I call anyone.

[Kathryn-in-Canada]

When I read today's title I thought it said Messing of the Minds.

I wondered why we should be messing with each other!

Booksaver (edited I originally said Blessed), I can't imagine not having a microwave. I haven't got to the point where I can pre-plan my meal timing. Instead, for lunch, I often grab a single serving of some supper that was leftover, defrost and then heat it up. Possible within the toaster oven, just not in minutes. And on hot days, the microwave is so much cooler (although when in the house, I did move the toaster oven outside in order to cook things in the 'oven' without having to have the heat inside.)

You are definitely right about only using about 20% of our things regularly. I got rid of about 30% of our stuff when I moved and there's still more that could be culled. Some, though, like my mother's 3 tiered cake pans, I keep more for nostalgia than use. Not sure I've ever used them but my sister's wedding cake was made with them, as was my mother's.

When we moved, I treated myself to a new Corelle pattern and chose to buy only 8 instead of 12 of the pieces. That means we use all the plates now. And if I need more, I pull out the bone china, which means it gets used more often.

[Kathryn-in-Canada]

I'm awake and have had my tea and chocolate.

I took pictures of the view because it is pretty in the humidity (sort of a soft filter effect.)

The dishwasher is empty but things aren't put away. I did water the tomatoes. It is another feels like 100+ day. Full sun too so the a/c is running hard.

Just watched "emergency theater", as we now call it when emergency vehicles go through the intersection below. In this case one eastbound and one westbound fire truck and one north bound ambulance all siren and lights through the intersection onto the bridge. The ambulance and one truck missed the island ramp so ended up in Quebec and turned around to come back to the island. The other truck went straight to the island but by the time it got there, the first truck was now exiting the island (using the on-ramp to the because they can't get under the bridge to the off-the-island ramp.) It too turned around and came back to the city without lights and siren (once it got off the island, it needed the lights to make the illegal exit off the island.)

It will be another false call - there is a standing wave in the rapids off the island and surfers like to practice there. And 'do-gooders' call in emergency reports of someone in the rapids. This happens almost daily in the summer. The only weird part is it is usually doing rush hour when drivers are stuck on the bridge and see someone in the water. And today only 3 vehicles responded, it is normally 5 (2 trucks, ambulance, police and the water rescue boat.)

My tax dollars at work.

The worst part for me is the standing wave is on the other side of the island so I can't watch the surfers. That would be more interesting than watching the emergency vehicles play Keystone Cops.

My computer is not working well again. It won't connect to my external monitor.

And poor dh has been in a panic because our backup system failed. The hard drive itself seems fine but we can no longer write to the system. Nor can we backup to an external drive the data. And the last external backup (2 week old) is now corrupted. The file format is something proprietary so we can't just connect the USB backup drive to our computers and read the data. So he's looking for something that will allow us to do that. In the meantime, we have only one backup of the business but that is unreadable by us, plus our current computers (and mine's acting up but my data isn't as important.)

We work on the theory that "one is none" and so with 2 of the 3 sources of our data unreadable, we are in a none situation at the moment.

I'll do another backup of the photos off my computer today just in case. That takes hours and hours (there are 19 years of digital photos) but it is important to keep that data and, since the photos are on the backup system, I don't include them in my backups to my USB drive, instead copying the new ones to the network backup once a month.

I'm considering getting BackBlaze and maybe I will. I'm pretty sure we can't do cloud storage due to government regulations about the security of our business data. It is fine for personal things like the photos but not for our business files which fall under legislation, hence a very complex backup system here, one network backup drive, one external back up of it each week or two, stored in the fire safe and an annual backup stored at the bank.