Friday Five!

How's Jimmy now @Albatross ?

Oh PB. I hope your mom is better soon.

1.  I have a sore throat and am snotty.  Thank you children in school.  Been so long since I’ve had a cold it feels like man flu.

2.  I’m super impressed with the NHS home tests for parents to do twice per week.

3.  I’ve been trying to get tradespeople to quote for work around our home and it is soul destroying.  The few who come look rarely provide a quote! 

4.  Work is weird. Tons of restructuring ans everyone is full of uncertainty.  I only have 3 months left at least.

5.  Tuesday is supposed to be 21 and SUNNY!

How's Jimmy now @Albatross ?

He's fine... it's pretty typical of greyhounds to cry the Scream of Death for the most minor thing. 

1.  Finally Friday.  Looking forward to a short work-week next week, and then a week off.

2.  Booked a wee cottage with a garden and a 5-acre enclosed field for a weekend in June... just somewhere to get away for a wee break with Jimmy where we don't have to go up and down stairs all day long!

3. Really want a pizza tonight, but my fridge is full of food (spent £68 in Morrisons last night, plus 2 Hello Fresh meals left), so I can't really justify it.

4.  so sorry to hear about all of you who aren't feeling well, or are worried about someone that's ill. 

5.  I think it's wine o'clock.... time to log off!

He's fine... it's pretty typical of greyhounds to cry the Scream of Death for the most minor thing. 

Much drama! 

1) I've been up and around a lot this week, pretty much pain free. Nice. Had a nasty few days about 10 days after the first Moderna jab where my hip joints were extremely sore and the shoulder joint for the arm they stuck sounded like a cheese grater when I moved it. Also couldn't stand to have a shirtsleeve on that arm. Naproxen, rest, and time seems to have healed all. We both go in for the second round next week. Not looking forward to the few days after it at all,  since the Daughter had a really unpleasant experience with the first round, but then it's done. My guess is we'll be having annual booster shots to take care of the mutated versions as they develop over time. Ick, but thank God it can be done. A couple of days of yuck v. dead or long-term disabled.  I'll go with the yuck.

2) It's warm and very, very breezy today. Remnants of a nasty storm that hit the south yesterday pretty badly working it's way off the continent. Was just a light breeze, so I opened the windows the air the house out. Then the curtains were flapping horizontally and the shell wind chimes in the hallway were threatening to shatter, so I had to close the window again. Sun, then dark clouds, then sun, then dark clouds.  Better than dark, cold, and wet, though.

3) Have many seedlings started, but several got too leggy. Have transplanted the early wonder beets out to a grow box on the balcony, hoping they'll survive. The balcony is very sheltered on the side of the building away from the wind. We are due to hear which space in the allotment we get sometime this week and are ready to get after it out there. I'm running out of sunny windowsills and grow-light space. The Daughter planted some flower seeds (Cosmos?) that came up literally the next day! I've never seen that happen before. Have had to put bird netting over everything.

4) The Daughter got her driving license. It's nice to not have to do all the driving anymore. The increase in my car insurance was about $11 a month to add her to it.

5) The rate of Covid here is quite low, but plateaued. They are loosening restrictions quite a bit as about 35% of the people in NY state are now vaccinated. I do not think that's a particularly good idea, but the policymakers have to weigh people losing their homes/going hungry/ defunct businesses against the chance of them catching/spreading Covid. Glad I don't have to make the decisions. NYC has a much higher rate of infection (around 7%), which is unsurprising. I will not be surprised to see a reverse-course decision regarding reopening at some point in the not too distant future for them.  And then there are those idiots in Texas....  They never change.

Hope Jimmy is ok.

Margo, I think the shots (assuming you're talking Pfizer or Moderna) have a very good rate at keeping one from becoming seriously ill - somewhere above 95%. The Astro-zenica is about 75% effective, and the J&J is a bit less. I don't think Covid has all been around long enough for them to decide much about long-covid. There appear to be some reports of very small studies showing people who have long-Covid and then get the vaccines improve, but they are very small studies, not peer-reviewed (that I can tell), and all that.  Hopefully they'll know more in six months or a year. Hopefully, also, the vaccine will keep people from getting Covid in the first place, which would eliminate the long-hauler problem.

KF Hope you get over the kiddeflu soon.

PB - Hope your mum is ok soon.

Albatross, that sounds like a lovely vacation plan. (PS - Pizza never needs justification.     )

Thanks all for my Mom.  Things got real bad last weekend , Mom went into the ICU, and it was all very scary and I thought I was going to have to rush back to the US with a bad outcome. However, Mom pulled through great and is back home now. She was even pottering in the garden and hiding eggs for the grandkids. So much better news!

Thanks all for my Mom.  Things got real bad last weekend , Mom went into the ICU, and it was all very scary and I thought I was going to have to rush back to the US with a bad outcome. However, Mom pulled through great and is back home now. She was even pottering in the garden and hiding eggs for the grandkids. So much better news!

Awesome! You must be so relieved! 

Very!!  Just FaceTimed her and she’s looking so much better!

Very!!  Just FaceTimed her and she’s looking so much better!

So wonderful to hear this update!  We now turn our attention to durhamlad’s son. 

Can we all request for us and our families to stay healthy for a bit!  The worry is doing me in. 

So wonderful to hear this update!  We now turn our attention to durhamlad’s son. 

Can we all request for us and our families to stay healthy for a bit!  The worry is doing me in. 

I know! I hope he’s getting better and stronger. So worrying. 

Friyay!

It’s been a mentally exhausting week. I’ve been very affected by Durhamlads news on Jeffrey. Really reinforces that while restrictions are easing - this is NOWHERE near over

1.  Looked at my GP practice website and it said that if you live with someone who is immunocompromised to send a message as we can get the vaccine. So I did!  We shall see what happens. I don’t mind waiting my turn, but if my turn is now....   

2.  My mom said they expect this will all be over and they can visiting in the fall.  My husband and I burst out laughing hysterically and informed them they are living in an alternative reality in Florida!

3.  We’ve been SPENDING this week. We don’t ever spend. Bought new bedroom furniture which I look forward to receiving in a couple of months.  We have also APPOINTED A BUILDER and our extension commences on November 15!  Look for an annoying amount of updates and photos from me. Will have been 6 years in the making.  We won’t quite be doubling the size of the house but it won’t be far off!

4.  Currently sussing out a new front door. Our door must have been a “bargain bin” find for the previous owner. SO drafty and the frame colours don’t match the house inside OR outside. We have our “inspiration door” which, of course, is an American door. My husband found someone who can make the glass insert to give to a joiner to creat the door. £10,000 for JUST the glass. So we are now getting a quote for the ORIGINAL inspiration door and finding out how much it would cost all in to ship here. It’ll be fun to see if we can do it for our budget. We think we might be able to! 

5.  My husband has been off all week. It’s been LOVELY to see him and our daughter bonding.  They are often oil and vinegar. They’ve also ticked off MANY house projects!  Hence the spending!

KFDancer, I'm so excited you're finally getting going on the extension!! Whoot!!

Just spit out my coffee on your Mom's comment!

Friday!

1.)  Uggh, snow, had to scrape the car this morning to head into the office this morning (working from home, but had to go onsite for something). Keeps alternating right now between heavy snow and bright blue skies.  -5C forecast tomorrow night. Brrr. 

2.) Got my husband a smoker for his birthday as he's really getting into proper BBQ food. Pulled pork for dinner tomorrow night, Carolina style, here we come! 

3.) Have a 60 minute IPA to bottle up.  Must admit, not my best work, but that won't stop us drinking it. 

4.) Still recording

5.) Been using the Peloton app (my own bike) for several months now and it's been pretty great. Does anyone else use it or have an actual Pelton bike? Feeling stronger, because I have been missing the gym loads since Covid started. 

Friday.

1) We've had lovely weather here this week. Blue skies, almost made it to 70F yesterday.  Chilly and rain is returning on Sunday for a while, but for now it's been unseasonably warmer all week. The Daughter and I have been having a nice  short walk every evening around sundown. It's jeans-and-t-shirt weather. Saw a bald eagle fly over us last evening. Have never actually seen one of those in the wild before.    The robins are back en masse.  I've tried to go to the allotment every day, early in the morning before the sun gets too intense. I have the frame built for a raised bed (nothing extravagant, 3'x12'x.5') and am having to use a wheelbarrow to go a few hundred yards up a slight hill to the free compost heap to get filler to put into the bed. The soil here is very much clay, so I've decided to try the "no till" method where you just pile lots of organic material up on top of the soil and plant directly in it instead of shoveling over the soil. I am very thankful that the compost the city provides is at the top of the little hill, and not the bottom of the hill below us. I can only manage about three barrows-full a day, if I pace myself. But every day the bed gets a bit closer to being ready to plant. The rains are due to start in on Sunday again, so I'm hoping I can get this done in the next two days.I think it'll need at least 9 more barrows-full between today and tomorrow, so I might be able to do it. I want to get the onion sets and leeks in. I can have the Daughter plant them at one end of the bed while I finish the other end.  It's been so long since I've been able to be out in the fresh air and sun, doing any sort of physical work. . It's nice to be outside. I've built the bed on top of a thick layer of straw, so I would assume that the rain will cause some "deflation" in the bed height as the compost works down into the gaps in the straw. So I'll need to top it up. I can do that a shovel at a time after the onions come up if needs must, but I want to get them started ASAP.  Last frost date here is officially 10 May, but old-timers here have said that in recent years it's been late April as the climate has warmed a bit.  Also need to get a bunch of red clover in on the part of the plot I'm not going to be planting in until it's proper summer.... Then I'll just need to check for weeds every few days, for a while.

2) The Daughter has met with a local nonprofit organization and will go back in a week for an orientation meeting to see if they've approved her application to volunteer with them. It's unpaid, but it would get her out of the house a bit, help her meet people here, etc. And it won't look bad on her resume.  She's also applied to grad school here and is waiting to hear. She had applied for several government jobs, but although rated very highly on a few of them she's lost out to military veterans, who get bonus points on the civil service scores for having been in the military previously. It's fair, but depressing for her.

3) The hamster had an impacted scent gland on his stomach that was starting to get infected. You haven't lived until you've had to try to get the scab and gunk out of hamster's impacted stomach scent gland. They do not appreciate your assistance at all and do not like having warm salt water put on their stomachs. Nor having their stomach rubbed with it.  He was doing everything short of spitting at me. He was definitely cussing a blue streak in hamsterese. But it's fixed and the swelling is going down. And he's already forgotten that I did that to him.  The Daughter still smells oddly from the Covid shot and the hamster won't have anything to do with her right now, which is sad as they were bestie-bestie buddies. Once her vaccine funk goes away I imagine he'll be happier with her again. (He's old and almost blind now, so he relies heavily on his sense of smell.)

4) We went to the local plant nursery yesterday and the Daughter bought some pansies and johnny jump-ups and planted them in containers that fit onto the rails out on our balcony. They look very nice there - they only get the morning sun, so they should be quite happy. The birds are not happy that I took down their hanging feeder and replaced it with a hanging bird bath when we put the planters up on the rails. Had one come zooming in to land, while I was tidying up out there, who seemed very surprised to have splashed at touchdown rather than landing in a pile of seeds. Gave an indignant squawk and flew over to a nearby tree and scolded me for quite some time.  (They have other food stations at the other end of the balcony.)

5) The Daughter was on the balcony and heard our neighbor talking on her phone out there yesterday. Said neighbor had several people over a couple of days ago and now a few of them have tested positive. So the neighbor was going in to be tested as well. Apparently she phoned her employer and the employer "didn't care one way or the other" and expected her at work the next day. She works with children.  We've a number of flats in the building and we all share a common close, and all those infected people will have passed through the close when they were coming and going. Of course, the neighbor is at the very top of the stairs. So people wonder how this is still spreading?

Nan, should your daughter be going out to volunteer in person?  It's not essential work (she isn't doing it for income to live on), and as you've just noted in your #5, the risk of exposure to Covid is strong.  Vaccination (if she's had it) isn't a guarantee that she can't contract and/or transmit the virus.  It doesn't sound like the most socially responsible thing, to me.

PB, we've been looking at various smokers, trying to decide how much we want to spend, and which type to go with.  Can I ask which one you got for your husband?  (Also, yay for recording music!  I would eventually like to learn how to home-produce a song, and now I've recently come up with a lyrical theme for my first project, so now I have to just figure out how to begin.)

KF, I'm gonna need to see what your inspiration door looks like.  Pic, please?

I have five, probably... let's try this:

1.  After bringing Campervan in for an MOT we knew he'd fail ages ago, the works have been completed, and we finally saw on the MOT-checker today that his MOT is good.  We never got an estimate from the garage that was doing the work, and knowing what he needed, we were expecting a bill around £1000, maybe a bit more.  Phone call just came in... it's £542.  "Relieved" doesn't begin to describe how we feel.  Yay, Campervan!

2.  Before we moved house, when I had an oven, there was a dish I used to make that my husband really liked.  We called it "chicken something" because when he asked what we were having for dinner the first time I made it for him, I wasn't sure yet, but I knew I was going to be using chicken.  It became chicken enchiladas in red enchilada sauce (which we call "awesome sauce" because the first time I was making it, I was just kind of winging it and I got a flavour that was perfect and exclaimed "awesome!"), with oven chips, because my husband is British and he must have chips with his meal.  *eyeroll*  Aaaanyway, I found a way to get this meal back into our rotation recently, and now we've had it twice, and it's so good to have it back.  I missed awesome sauce... and all the rest.  But mostly the awesome sauce.

3.  I'm getting my second Pfizer jab tomorrow.  I'm a little worried about my reaction, as I've seen that the second dose often has a stronger reaction and nausea might be part of it... I can tolerate a lot of things (that don't impair my lung function), but I do not like nausea.  Anyway.  I will just have to get through it.  I need the protection.

4.  Workers at my husband's office went on strike over the lack of covid protection.  I don't know how effective it will be.

5.  Covid is bullsh!t, and my heart goes out to everybody who has been hurt by this virus.