Friday Five!

Massive congratulations PB!

We are on holiday and I didn’t know it was Friday.  Isn’t that the best?!? 

1.  We are in Levi Finland and having an incredible time. Dumped snow the first 24 hours then cleared and been blue and sunny.  I forgot that powder snow looks like glitter in the sunlight and moonlight.

2.  Enjoyed sleigh rides pulled by huskies (who gave us kisses) and reindeer (soooo soft) and snowmobile (smelly fumes). 

3.  Last night we had a fantastic show from the Northern Lights.  Envious that PB and other Scots here see them from their own back gardens!  I guess I grew up in tropical paradise though.

4.  Our son has had a terrible cough for a few weeks now. It had started to ease off before we left but REALLY came on as soon as we left the house.  He’s single handedly kept us clear from other people. LOL.  He sounds awful and we will have him checked when we return.  But we’ve noticed it’s really “only” when inside and dry air.  Seems to like moist air as he doesn’t cough then.  At least my conscience is clear knowing I’m the “poorliest/most at risk” person in the room. 

5.  I’ve tried (our whole relationship) to convince my husband cold snowy holidays are just as good as warm and sunny.  He’s always said “impossible”.  Safe to say he is happily eating his words and now knows snow is magic and sunny and cold is spectacular in its own right. 

I’ve cried a bit each day, 95% just plain joy.  Yesterday we were deep in the forest with an elf who stopped the snowmobile on a track with lots of options.  He said Frazer would know the way to go. Frazer confidently shouted “this way”.  Sure enough, Santa’s secret cabin in the forest was down the path.  The kids screamed for Santa (as instructed).  We heard jingle bells and the most spectacular Santa appeared out the door.  Waved and said “Alice, Frazer, come in and say hello”.  I hope I never forget that moment.  Magic!  Shivers and a few happy tears as well.

Awesome!  . I've never known anyone do such amazing holidays as you do!   

Awesome!  . I've never known anyone do such amazing holidays as you do!   

I MUCH prefer DOING than HAVING.  I wouldn't have done the house extension if it was just me.  I would have paid off the mortgage and just lived the good life. 

I am glad(ish) that we did the extension.  When my parents were here for 4 months, there was space for everyone to have privacy.  And we have always intended for this to be our forever home.  And if I do leave this earth while my kids are still kids and at home, I know I've left them a wonderful place to grow up.

We're back to making memories with holidays and days out now that covid is mostly behind us.  We couldn't do much then anyways.

Happy Friday friends

1.) Playing in an orchestra day to raise funds for a local anti-poverty charity, so that should be good fun! 

2.) Need to get my husband a birthday present for next week.  He's asked for some new pants (of the under kind) from Marks and Sparks.  Exciting. LOL. 
.
3.) American Amber ale conditioning (all the rage in the craft breweries in the USA in the 90s , but still timeless), and White IPA in the fermenter.

4.) Can't wait for a long weekend, next weekend

5.) BBQ bacon burgers for dinner tonight.

Happy Friday!

Your partner sounds as exciting as mine when it comes to birthday gifts PB. I hope the band gig goes well and raises lots of money.

1. After a very stressful many weeks I'm finally ready to submit for ILR, hopefully by the end of the weekend.

2. GP kept putting the LIUK form at the bottom of their pile. It's not entirely correct (missing diagnoses that are relevant) but should hopefully be good enough. Really need to have my records reviewed heh. 10 weeks with no idea when/if they'd actually return it and their admin just saying patronisingly "you need to wait your turn".

3. Because I wasn't coping at all but my pain levels were too high for my usual distractions, I picked up a new craft and have been learning embroidery. I always hated cross stitch because progress from stitches to visible things was too slow, but embroidery is a lot of fun and a huge time sink while also good for fine motor control.

4. I hope house prices keep dropping. I know it's bad for people without much equity, but mortgage rates going up means more houses are out of our budget for now.

5. I hate DST and the loss of an hour but I'm so glad for lighter evenings.

Sent from my Pixel 6a using Tapatalk

Friday, Fri-yay!

1. First day back at work this week (like, actually commuting and stuff)! I like working from home in many ways, and can be rather introverted, but sometimes it's nice to interact with other people in person and not exclusively through a screen.

2. One of the anti-tip wheels of my powerchair came off, so I need to get it replaced. I have NO idea how that happened though. It looks like it might have been ripped clean off, but I feel that I would have noticed that happening when out and about. So, for now, a mystery.

3. Did a minor upgrade to my gaming rig while still working on doing a huge overhaul in the future. (ordered a new case; waiting for it to arrive so I can really get going) Transferred my game drive from an old mechanical drive to a shiny new SSD. Discovered that the old disk was starting to give up the ghost, so I'm glad I did it now and saved the data before it became unrecoverable.

4. Looking forward to a summer holiday visiting family. Got the all-clear to travel (in relation to medical things), so looking forward to booking the travel this weekend.

5. Five Guys for dinner!

Bonus - AND I got an Oreo milkshake.

1) Just got back from a road trip to Millerton, NY, home of Harney Teas (aka, the teas that are sold at the Royal Palaces in the UK). They have a very nice tea room (small, but good) and we had an excellent lunch. French Onion soup plus a side of crustini with some of their tea-flavored cheeses on top. Plus a pot of really good tea. Spent a lot of money over in the sales area, but am now good for tea for the rest of the calendar year, I think.

2) Was able to take that road trip because the daughter has the day off (Cesar Chavez Day is a state holiday in Calif). I took the day off as well. It was a nice drive - about 80 miles on good roads through the forest, each way. It's still winter up there (higher elevation than we are) with snow on the ground, but the roads were clear and it was a nice day to take a drive. I do enjoy the old-growth hardwood forests up here. (Hope I'm thinking that, still, when pollen season hits!) Too bad none of the farm stands are open yet - a lot of them are opening up this weekend, so we just missed them.

3) So we had lovely weather one day this week - Wednesday. Bright blue skies, puffy clouds. 60F. That night we had 50mph winds and snow squalls. Thursday started out in the 20Fs with a stiff breeze. Today it started out in the 40sF and clear, but is now overcast and due to rain all evening and night. Tomorrow it's to be 70F (!!!) and thunderstorms. Then Sunday back in the 40Fs, clear, and windy.    Eventually I will be able to get to my garden. I did check it last weekend and get the fences basically back up (the snow had taken them down) but it was too wet to do much. Hopefully Sunday will allow me to dig the trenches around the plot that I've needed to do and re-bury the fence by a few inches to keep the voles out. Don't dare work any of the growing areas, but if I can get the fence secured it'll be an easier time of it later on.

4) Yes on house prices. Apparently out west they are dropping in the USA, although they were already so high "dropping" is a relative term.  Not much change in them here.  If I'd bought two years ago I would have qualified for a $390,000 house. Now I'm at $259,000.  And the payment is higher.

5) There were dafffodils up on the roadside today! Good sign, that. We also saw a pair of bald eagles at very close (flying maybe 30ft above us) range! And a pond just full of Canada geese.

Friday, Fri-yay!


4. Looking forward to a summer holiday visiting family. Got the all-clear to travel (in relation to medical things), so looking forward to booking the travel this weekend.

5. Five Guys for dinner!

Bonus - AND I got an Oreo milkshake.

This makes me very happy! So glad you're cleared to see family.

I've ended up stuck on my anti-tippers a few times thanks to terrible roads around curb cuts, so it honestly may have been a jolt you didn't realise happened. I hope it's an easy replacement. (Mine double as a "jack" to lift the chair so I can take the wheels off and fold the chair into the car - I love it)

Sent from my Pixel 6a using Tapatalk

Fri-yay!

1.) Thanks for the bank holiday Good Friday .I enjoyed the day in the sunshine in the garden! 

2.) Have a mouse living in the chicken coop. It's the cutest thing! 

3.) Lighting up the smoker tomorrow for the first time in 2023. Smoked pulled pork here we come! 

4.) A year of change is afoot.  Should be okay! 

5.) Lots and lots of busy weekends ahead, so I shall enjoy this one in peace and quiet! 

It's Friday, but it feels like Saturday and my entire sense of time is still off from DST.

All I have this week is to rejoice that my ILR application is submitted, super priority slot and all - and the closest place even had a free biometrics appointment. So this part of the journey is almost over, finally. Just need to finish scanning and uploading everything in the next 2 weeks.



Sent from my Pixel 6a using Tapatalk

Congrats on the next step.

1) My Friday five is on a Monday. We went on holiday down to NJ over the weekend to see the cherry blossoms. There's a park down there that has 5,000 cherry trees and they are all in top form right now. It was beautiful blue skies and cherry blossoms everywhere. Had a nice walk under the trees.

2)  We toured all the revolutionary war sites around Morristown and just kind of took it easy. Bought postcards and little touristy trinkets.

3) Visited some graveyards to tend to ancestor's stones and plant flower bulbs.  Was pleased to see that those we'd planted last fall had come up and were about to bloom. I wasn't sure how they were going to do, with the winter we've had. (But probably winter there wasn't as bad. They are at least one "zone" higher in growing season than we are - possibly two.)

4) We also found a good pizza place out in Denville - "Jimmy Tomato's" that makes a  nice chicken tadoori pizza. Once you get half the peppers off of it.   Run by an Indian family. I ~love~ finding small restaurants in strip malls, they almost uniformly are good. Especially if run by immigrants.

5) Today it is just above freezing here at home. When it warms up enough I need to go do a massive amount of work at the garden. It's almost time to put the cold weather stuff out - although they say it'll be 80F on Friday! 

3.) Lighting up the smoker tomorrow for the first time in 2023. Smoked pulled pork here we come! 

I was in TX for Easter, and my BIL smoked a couple of briskets.... SO GOOD!!!

I was in TX for Easter, and my BIL smoked a couple of briskets.... SO GOOD!!!

Nothing quite like a Texas-style smoked brisket!

Glad to hear you had a safe trip, and are home again.

Happy Friday!

1.) Bank holiday weekend. Yay.  Two in a row! 

2.) Garden is taking off, despite the cold and gross weather we've been having. Yay spring! 

3.) Performing a concert tomorrow night in the Cathedral.  Should be lovely. 

4.) Got beers to package up and ship off to yet another homebrew competition 

5.) Hubby and I got an upgraded turntable last weekend and it's epic.   

Another turntable fanatic, huh? Coolies. I've been schlepping something like 600 LP albums around the world for years now, because there is nothing that quite sounds the same. 

1) Just back from lunch. There's a hole-in-the-wall Chinese place (the photos and descriptions on the wall are in Chinese) where we like to go. They have lunch until 3pm, but almost nobody is ever in there when we go in. Just the staff, having a sit-down lunch. So the both of us are now stuffed, for $20 (and that included the tip). So happy to have that so close!

2) Spent the morning tidying up, forking over, and planting in our hillside garden plot. Got a lot of flower seeds in, and a lot of grass and weeds out. Still more to do, but it's early days yet. The soil in some of the beds is still way too damp to do much work in.  After I rest up from my beef lo mein excess, I need to go back out to work on the other plot, which is in a flat area not too far from the river. Soil is much different there, sandy and well-draining as opposed to the clay and waterlogged of the hillside plot.  Have quite a lot of onion starts that I need to get in before the rain hits tonight. Apparently, from all reports, it's going to rain for the next 7 to 10 days, on and off.

3) Made blueberry drop biscuits for breakfast. So easy and yummy. (Two cups flour, some grated butter, some salt, some baking soda, a pinch of sugar, and frozen blueberries. 375F oven for about 20 minutes.)

4) Been a week since I retired (again) and I'm still having nightmares about my job.  Not having done some task or other. Hopefully that will end soon!

5) About a month until we have to do the epic 3,000 mile drive. I wish I could say I was looking forward to a grand adventure, but all I can think about is how my back is going to feel after 10 to 12 hours a day of driving. 

Another turntable fanatic, huh? Coolies. I've been schlepping something like 600 LP albums around the world for years now, because there is nothing that quite sounds the same. 

Totally!! I've been collecting records since I was teenager and my husband is totally sucked in too.