Get Ahead Monday PWYC

[CathyS]

LadyM today they brought a machine to gather the spread out stuff to make it into long lines of dried whatever-it-is. (Dh says alfalfa) I guess they will come back at another time to make it into bales and remove them.

It has started to rain. Hopefully this will bring the heat down. This morning was brutal.

I took a trunk full of books to the thrift store this morning. All 4 bags I got when I bought all those books a couple of weeks ago were all refilled with the donations. Felt good to empty my trunk. Back seat is also empty.

I also dusted most of the living room this morning before I went to the Monday morning group.

Dh has finally figured out about having all the doors and windows closed keeps the hot air out and the cool air in. He hasn't put on any of the fans today and says he is comfortable.

[Nancy]

Did a bit more research and they are eliminating cable boxes and TV is changing I am glad I have been to trying to wean myself off from that.
It is good that I have the Chromebook, that is one thing they use.
Had lunch and a quick update on news was interesting till it wasn't like 3 min. in LOL!
Cleaned up after lunch.
It is windy here now out side glad I've already walked ddoggo.
Got some of the silk flowers out of there living room down from 5 to 4 one is on the floor.
One more can go in the other bed room.
I need to dust.
Proofers heading to do that now...
Dusted the Liv. room.
Skippable / TV stuff...
Called the cable co. got some info. not really much help but felt like I needed to do that.
A some point they are going to change over to internet tv not required at this time.
My music is not going to be on new tv & they cannot understand why it's on the old one! LOL!

[Kathryn-in-Canada]

We are settled in at the cottage, we got up here yesterday around 2.

It was a scramble to get off, it took 30 minutes to pick up my prescription (the old pharmacist has retired and the new crew are awful.) We took two detours on the way up, one to try a slightly different route that was interesting, and then we went to actually find the nearest hospital (45 minutes away) and confirm where the ER door was so if there was an emergency we wouldn't have to find it for the first time (it isn't visible from the road.) The car then said it was 10 minutes faster to drive on to the cottage through a back-way than go back to the main road. We headed out and I had dh stop because it made no sense. The car said it was 62 minutes to get to the cottage on backroads, 72 on the main road, but the hospital is only 45 minutes from the cottage so I couldn't figure out what the car was thinking. I double checked the highway wasn't closed due to an accident, it wasn't, so we turned the car around and the moment we started driving again, the car showed we'd be at the cottage in 45 minutes.

Sigh.... the car mapping fails often which doesn't matter on a regular car but this car uses it to calculate everything from route to take to how much battery we have and if we have to stop to charge along the way. It also uses the mapping for cruise control, taking the speed limit from the maps, overriding what we set it at. The mapping is wrong and the speed limit of the roads is 33% faster than the car thinks it is. So the cruise control doesn't work well around here.

Anyway, arrived safely, having stopped to buy ice cream for desserts while we are here.

Dh brought in the cooler and the insulated bag, opened the fridge and discovered it wasn't working. So we scrambles, first to figure out what the problem was (no breaker had tripped), what the damage was, and finally what to do with the things we had brought up. That one was easy, I walked it over to the lodge and that fridge was empty. When I got back dh had the fridge running off an extension cord so it was only the outlet that had blown. He carried the food back to the lodge and I unloaded the rest of the car. Then we called the person who's overseeing the property and she said it happened to her once while staying here, turns out the ground-fault interrupt outlet in the bathroom tripped and when I reset that, the fridge outlet started to work again. There was a bad storm here and I guess there was a power surge that flipped the bathroom (and thus fridge) outlet.

The storm was on Friday but there was still some ice in the frozen jug in the freezer so, while things were defrosted, almost all could be refrozen except a meatloaf and the full box of chicken nuggets I had for the grandkids when they come next time. We ate the burgers (cooked really well to be safe.)

In the fridge, we haven't lost anything except maybe some soft cheese. The rest were condiments and pickles or packaged drinks. So we were really lucky.

Slept well last night and despite the heat am having a pretty decent day. The cottage is still cool (it won't be tomorrow!) The porch is a degree or two cooler than outside in the shade and the sun is off it now but the breeze is still steady.

I've spent the day on the phone with the kids making arrangements for when I'm needed to babysit and when they'll be coming up here. And then updating the family calendar and my bullet journal to reflect these commitments. To have time for dh to invite a friend up, we are kidnapping dgs3 for a week. If he's unhappy, I'll take him home but his mom thinks he'll be fine because he loves being with us so much. The friend has been warned that I'll be less of a hostess because of Nanny duties. The friend is amazing with children so I don't anticipate an issue with him being here as dgs is amazing with adults.

Tonight's dinner will be on the bbq to reduce the heat in cottage.

I just remembered I should be checking the plants and watering them if necessary. I checked them yesterday and they were fine and it rained last night but I don't want them to die on my watch. The lettuce still hasn't come up properly so that has been a failed attempt at gardening.

[lucylee]

Hello to everyone!
I don't know that I have "gotten ahead" with anything, but I must say I have caught up!
* washed the dishes that have probably been in the sink for 10 days. Not a LOT of dishes, but enough to make me feel guilty.
* cut watermelon I bought Saturday
* threw watermelon into the pasture because it just didn't "look" right. It didn't taste really awful, but I thought it was just not worth cubing it and putting in the refrigerator
* watered the new shrub, hydrangea, and gardenia that were really showing the effects of this heat wave (It's "only" 86 degrees right now, but "feels like" 93.
* washed two loads of clothes, and folded two others
* put away some of the funeral stuff that was sitting on the coffee table and kitchen counter. I just put it on the dining table, so it's still in sight , but not taking up useful space anymore.
OH -- and I can't forget -- played half a dozen games of UNO with dgd, and two rounds of Family Feud. (We bought this game at his request when ds was just beginning to read. I remember the clerk at Toys R Us was amazed that a child his age wanted that game.)

I'm going to eat with DS and dgrands tonight. We're trying out a new fast food chicken place that just came to Next Town. While we are over there, I'm going to ask him to go by the expensive tombstone place and see what they look like, so he can compare to the cheap place.
Dove, I don't think there's much chance they would come down to meet the cheap place -- they are aware of this place, and they just think they have a better product. The lady told me that they sold stone to the cheap place at wholesale, but they no longer do that.
I told her that "everybody" in my family goes up there, so no matter how much I let her know that I liked their product, DS says I don't "owe" them anything; that they probably expect that a lot of people will shop there and never return.

Waving to everyone -- I must go s2s -- I'm still wearing the clothes I had on yesterday, and I need to be a bit more presentable before we go eat.

[Lady Maverick]

Silently doing the Happy Happy Dance.
DS15 has decided to cut his long wild hair. The length of his hair is below his shoulders and poofs out to almost shoulder width below his hat. I have been holding my words and not expressing my opinion. My only requirement is that DS15 hair be clean. That hasn't been an issue because DS15 always takes one shower and usually takes two showers a day and frequently washes his hair. ANYWAY....there is a lot of hair involved in his decision to cut it. DS15 just arrived home from work and announced his decision. One of his friends has also decided to cut his long hair so they just left to get haircuts.
When they get back from haircuts then we will leave for volleyball games.

I made a pot of my favorite soup. Soup in the hot summertime isn't usually a dish I want. However, I like having hearty & filling food that makes my body feel good. Win! Win!

[Twins' Mom]

My day shows the results of no planning! I've felt off all day. Dfriend M checked in this afternoon about walking ddogs together and then a glass of wine in her shaded backyard. She doesn't have the view we have but she has shade this time of the year and it's glorious. We got to catch up, her dh came out also to talk, and I was glad that she checked in this afternoon.

I got a Publix Cobb salad and beefed it up tongiht with a second boiled egg and more dark green lettuce because it's all iceburg. It was delicious - it has a pouch of avocado to add and I used our olive oil and balsamic vinegar dressing.

I could go back upstairs to genealogy but I think I'll get my iPad and read right now.

[Nancy]

I am researching how to get tv with out cable ahead of the turn in your converter box or what ever it's called.
The gal said it would be an adtl. charge so nope not going that route.
Hoping to do it without a fire stick.

I have rested a bit and learned about tv's after the fact I did okay.
other choice might be a Sony, acceptable Hisence, was okay for a non gamer like me but I was not familiar with that brand
at the time not a high end one but okay according to the yt I saw.

That is what I was thinking about when I was out in the yard watering, I pulled a few too tall volunteer plants.
By the deck I need shorter ones there.

[Kathryn-in-Canada]

Nancy: where you are in the mountains do you get many tv stations over-the-air (i.e. with an antenna.)

We haven't had any form of cable for about 3 decades (except for about 9 months when we had it because the cable install guy was dyslexic and connected 1605 instead 1602 and when 1602 didn't get cable after his connection, he assumed the wire was bad and ran a whole new cable from their house, across the road, and across my side yard to the cable box. But he never disconnected the cable he had attached. Another installer later figured out the error and left a note in my door that it would be disconnected if I didn't start paying, I just played dumb when they called to follow up and said I didn't have any TVs connected to cable because I rabbit ears.

That wasn't quite true. I had bought a fancy, powered antenna to feed into our in-house wiring to get rid of the rabbit ears on the individual TVs but I did the install in the wrong order, connecting the TV to the wall outlet and turning on the TV first before disconnecting the cable company input in the basement and attaching the antenna's cable feed into my household wiring. That's when I found out I had a live cable connection from the provider, so I took the fancy antenna back to the store! By the time it was worked out, we had an antenna tower for internet so I ended up putting an antenna on that, and feeding that into our household system.

Now we just use streaming. Amazon Prime offers a few channels of TV as does Youtube. Some stations in Canada also stream (but not all for free.) So we have more things to watch than we could ever get through. We currently pay for Prime (with commercials), Apple+ TV, and have a premium Youtube account because dh got tired of the commercials when we'd watch Stephen Colbert's segments but it gives me a lot of old TV shows like Dick Van Dyke. We had Netflix and we'll get that back when we get tired of Apple+ TV.

If the internet goes out, we still have rabbit ears so can watch the news use that and have about 70 Dvds we could watch.

Or we could just read.

[Kathryn-in-Canada]

Yesterday when I was leaving I remembered there is a Stuff Swap this week at the apartment building and I hadn't found anyone to cover for me.

I sent a note to the Residents' Association board looking for someone to take it over. I had six immediate regrets from others so put it up on the Facebook group. There's now 5 people going to handle it. As I said to dh, the time I spend chatting with people and building relationships really pays off when I can put out an appeal and get immediate response from the residents in general. This exchange is one of my 'babies' in that I was the one that started doing it monthly and it has been really embraced by the residents and got the association several new members as well as people drop in and chat while perusing the stuff that's there for the taking. (You just leave stuff you don't want anymore and/or take something that interests you and the leftovers get taken to a thrift store.)

Dd emailed to say she may have to change her week up at the cottage because of booking educational help for dgs7 (who thinks he knows everything so he doesn't work at all at school.)

[CathyS]

There was a free swim at the local public pool tonight because of the heat, so we went. There were young children and teens, which we normally avoid, and they were screeching "Marco" "Polo" so we left as soon as dh had enough time to bring down his "inner" heat.

I think we'll have a good night's sleep here.

Dh watered the garden twice today. He never used to do this until yesterday. I'll see how many more times he does this before I bring it up.