Musings
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Meme Monday – Happy Birthday Edition!
Today is my daughter Maya’s 25th birthday! That is somewhat shocking to me, I remember 25 very well. Actually, 25 is when my biological clock started ticking, and I started really wanting a baby. Before that, I was more hypothetical about it. But Ted and I were dating still, had just recently gotten engaged, and I was just graduating from college, into a recession. So it was 5 more years before we had Maya. Anyway, this is her 2nd COVID birthday. She went out yesterday with some friends, and sat in the park and had a lovely time while socially distant. It was almost 80 degrees, so pretty perfect weather…
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Wordless Wednesday
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Meme Monday
Today’s meme Monday is a two-for. The silly meme above, and the old school meme below, which is questions asked by AllyBean on her blog. Q1 – What’s your favorite movie? Oh gosh, so many. Maya would say, ‘Out of Africa’, because I sometimes like to watch that movie on my birthday. Such a gorgeous movie. Ted would say, ‘Flashdance’, because gosh, I love that movie, god help me. I just do. I might throw ‘Babette’s Feast’ in there, because it is lovely indeed, and I don’t get tired of ‘Sleepless in Seattle’ for some odd reason. Q2 – When trying to buy shoes, what’s your biggest problem? Arthritis. I have arthritis…
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(Nearly) Wordless Wednesday
My personal barometer on when COVID-19 is largely behind us. This newspaper vending kiosk was last loaded with a new paper a year ago, on March 16, 2020, which is the day that the Bay Area went into lockdown. Since that time, there have not been enough people riding BART (our local mass transit) to justify the labor, I assume, of consistently replacing the papers with new ones. I do see current newspapers in front of the grocery store, so I know it’s not everywhere. What about you? Do you have a small local barometer that you keep track of?
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Meme Monday – Beware the Ides of March
My current job, with which I will celebrate my 5 year anniversary in June, has a bonus program, where we get quarterly bonuses. I love that. They withhold a portion of each bonus for an annual retention bonus, so the March bonus is the best one of the year. We get this bonus on the Ides of March, so I now love this date. I put most of the bonus in savings, but spent some as well. I bought us some new bath towels, which have gotten expensive in the period since I last bought towels, though maybe they were expensive then, too, and I’ve just blacked it out. I…
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Daylight Saving Time
Here we are again, Daylight Saving Time begins tomorrow. Sigh. What that means specifically for me is that I will once again have to wait for the sun to come up in the mornings before Mulder and I go for our walk for a little while, until Earth tilts enough that it gets light earlier again. Of course it also means being confused and discombobulated for a few days, maybe a week, and the dog being confused about meal times, all of that. Mostly I like Daylight Saving, and prefer the lighter evenings. California voters passed a resolution in 2018 to stay on DST all year, but it hasn’t made…
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Meme Monday – Random Stuff
Today’s post is not really related to the meme at all. I’m not feeling stupid, except perhaps sometimes when I am playing my wordscapes game on my phone and the word I can’t manage to come up with is something like BANK or HER. In fact, today’s post has no theme, just hey, what’s going on in J’s life. Happy to say that we filed our taxes, and we have finally gotten our withholding just about right. We owe $50 to Federal, and we’re getting $70 back from California, so that’s a gain of $20 for us. Yay! I received a text from my credit card company the other day,…
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Meme Monday
Not actually a meme…it’s a book apparently. But it made me laugh, to think of poor stick man and everything happening to him on the same day. I think we can all relate, and feel like we’ve had days like this. I don’t feel like I have a lot to say today. We’ve had some rain, though not enough. Seems like the Sierras are getting snow, which is the most important thing. Our shower door broke, so we had to buy a new one. Luckily it is not so broken that we can’t use the shower in the mean time, as it will not be delivered until early March. I…
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Meme Monday – I have nothing today
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Meme Monday – Convenience Food Edition
My mom was big on raising us to be self sufficient. I think it was her number one priority as a parent. Perhaps because she was 6 when her father died, and her family was thrown into chaos. My Grandma married my Grandfather just before graduating from High School, had my mom a year later, and my uncle 5 years after that. She was in no way prepared to support a family. She ended up losing her children (temporarily, thankfully), my mother to a convent, my uncle to a foster home. When she married my Grandpa, she got her children back. But my mom had learned a lesson, to make…
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How I read now
Where do you find out about books? Recommendations from friends and family? New York Times Review of Books? Browsing the bookstore or library? Do you insist on a physical copy, or do you use a kindle app or some such? What about audio books? Personally, I love a physical book, and I have become quite enamored with audio books. I’m not really fond of the e-reader, though I think it’s great if you travel, or commute via public transportation, or if you have arthritis or something that makes holding a book uncomfortable. Anyway, here are some books I have read recently, or will read soonish, and how I came to…
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Meme Monday
The attempted coup last week was in no way funny. However, I am going to post a bunch of memes/cartoons that I saw online anyway. What I really want to say, however, is screw these assholes. I would add, “And the horse they rode in on” but I like horses, so I will omit that part of the phrase. I have some Republican friends that I love and adore. Thoughtful people who know better and do condemn the President, and do not think it was an Antifa hoax. This post is not about them. I have some Republican acquaintances, people I went to school with or worked with at some…
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Meme Monday – Birthday and Politics
I hope you all had a lovely New Year. We did…I had a four day weekend, to celebrate my birthday on Thursday, and then the New Year on Friday. Thursday, Ted and Maya both had asked for the day off but could not get the day off. She had to work in the morning, and he had to work in the afternoon. So in the morning, Ted and I went for a nice walk with Mulder, then we came home and took showers and so on, and he started work. Maya only had to work a half day, so once she was finished we went to our outdoor mall and…
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Meme Monday – New Year Version
I’ve been saving this one, and I know in some ways it may feel true. Especially the first few months are bound to be desperate ones as far as this damn virus is concerned. I do hope that things get better as the year goes on, as the vaccine comes available, as we have a more sane administration, as hopefully people can behave after the surge that is bound to happen after Christmas and New Year celebrations. Here’s another meme, while we are bidding farewell to the year that has almost ended. Such a year. From it, I hope that we have learned a few things. Wash your hands Black…
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Meyer Lemon Cheesecake
I decided to make a cheesecake for our Christmas dinner. I’m not much of a baker, but I do like cheesecake, and I remember Maya talking once about how much she loves Meyer lemon cheesecake, which she has had once or twice at local restaurants. So I looked around online and found a couple of recipes, but I didn’t love any of them. I was talking to my neighbor, Barbara, about it, and she told me she has a cheesecake recipe that she loves, that came with her Oster brand mixer that she got back in 1972. It’s not really lemony flavored, but it does have some lemon in it.…