Weekly Chat (Non-Osprey), 12 August 2018

HAPPY NEW WEEK!

I hope everyone has a peaceful, wonderful week. 

Wolf, Yellowstone National Park 
U.S. National Park Service, NPS/Jacob W. Frank
Photo labeled Public Domain (Copyright Free)

  • Annette, Lindy, and anyone interested: NASA will try again to launch the Delta IV-Heavy rocket that will take the Parker Solar Probe into space and send it on its way to the sun. The launch window opens tonight at 12:31 a.m. in California and 8:31 a.m. Sunday morning in the U.K. Watch the livestream HERE

    Also, the Perseid Meteor Shower peaks Sunday night. You can watch a NASA livestream on the NASA Meteor Watch Facebook page HERE. The shower is supposed to be really visible this year.  

  • Hi all!

    Diane: Thank you for starting us off with that handsome wolf!  Will try to stay up again for the launch and thanks for the info, especially re the Perseids which I'll pass on to the Arizona contingent.  Hope you're doing okay.

    Gillian:  I've taken the liberty of copying and pasting your post from last week's thread below(under Diane's telling us she was starting a new thread for this week).

     

    FROM GILLIAN LAST NIGHT

    Evening everyone.

    Lindybird, that's an impressive list of accomplishments in just 15 months but all useful life skills, well, maybe apart from milking a cow.  We have a field of cows behind our house and the calves are a delight.

    OG - funnily enough I went and sat in Dysart harbour today for a while. A Mediterranean gull was reported there earlier in the day. I should confess that was not the main reason for going. I had bought a huge cream cake and wanted to eat it before going home. Good that your OH  now has his hearing aids -should make a world of difference to him .

    I have 2 daughters, 4 grandchildren and just 2 wks ago my first great grandson was born. My partner has 1 son and 2 daughters and 2 grandchildren.  All live here in the village or in Kirkcaldy.

    Annette- it is indeed a strange name and that's a good idea to ask why that name was chosen.  There were a good few tents in the field next door and also in the orchard. Would be lovely for a few days with plenty freedom for the children. Glad that you took a tour of the village. It's looking very flowery this year because it's trying to get a gold award.  Fife is a great place to visit but Edinburgh is a must I think if you ever come to Scotland. Lots to do.

    Night everyone.

    END OF GILLIAN'S POST

     

    Gillian: Congrats on your first grandson (I guess it's safe to assume the other four are all girls. How wonderful you're all so close.  I have one daughter who's living with my granddaughter (and great-granddaughter, aged 7) in Prescott Valley, Arizona (an 8+ hour drive) and a grandson just up the road (well, an hour away) in Santa Maria.  My sister still lives in the UK with her husband (in Lincolnshire); her kids live near Milton Keynes.  I was there last September and again this April and my niece is coming over in a couple of weeks for a much needed vacation. l'll be meeting her in Santa Fe, New Mexico.  My husband and I live in Santa Barbara where we moved after we both retired about 13 years go. I do wish my sister and I weren't so far apart....

    Lindybird: Congrats on all those achievements  I can drive a car but can only float and flap around in the water.  Sat on a tractor once, but never even tried to milk a cow.

    OG:  Will be interested to hear how things go with the hearing aids.  How is J doing?  Is he feeling better since the anxiety attack (that could shake one's confidence).  We get cherries from Oregon and Washington here - I like the red ones  I remember wearing them as earrings when I was a kid!

    Have a good Sunday everyone.

  • Diane – Thank for wonderful Wolf.

    OG – MissJ’s weird book had crazy senseless poems with tongue-twistery words. If I am unfortunate to see it again (perhaps a library book & now returned?), I shall get you some quotes – to make your day LOL.

    Growing up on a farm, miles from anywhere, I did not have swimming lessons until I was 13 in a local town. As I was about to be sent to boarding school and my big sisters declared I had never been away from home, they proposed taking me to Victor Harbor for a week. Local swimming lessons terminated. Swimming at Victor not terribly safe. Hence I did not learn until my 20s when I managed 1 length of indoor pool bravely doing backstroke. Since pool chemicals disagreed with me, I gave up. Yes I live 1 mile from beach but I haven’t been in sea for, goodness me, perhaps 50 years. BTW the big sisters kind act taking me on holiday did have some benefit for them – meeting young lads also holidaying at Victor!

    Pat – When in Europe I carried a paper with name & address of where I was staying, so I could show it I got lost. My language skills do not cover much more than yes, no, thank you, where is toilet/bank. We visited Germany before Paris. OH was so cross with me for saying “danke” in Paris. I argued I had been acclimatised.

  • Good Morning, and thank you to Diane for starting us off again, with the beautiful wolf. 

    Thanks to Annette, too, for repeating Gillians post, although I always check back to see if I've missed anything!  I should say that I'm not a great swimmer, and rarely go in properly when in The Canaries (it's freezing cold!) and I expect everyone is imaging me milking, sitting on a three legged stool, milking, whereas actually in a modern milking parlour you stand in a damp, concrete pit surrounded by cows legs, and you have to learn how to put the milking equipment onto the cow! Sometimes they kick out,  so you have to be wary.

    Nice to hear about your family, Gillian. 

  • Just broke off to watch the launch, which was dramatic and successful.  It was on the BBC, plus I had Dianes link to NASA on my screen. A tiny probe, about the size of a car, it's going to be out there for years, circling, and will break all records for the speed of a man made object!!  Wow!!

  • Thank you, DIANE!

    Bit of a panication on, here. All of a sudden, Elgin family and middle daughter are coming for a roast dinner, today. Arranged very quickly, they are bringing a leg of lamb with them... I'm very pleased, of course but have been doing a quick flip around bathrooms and other places. As you do. It does me no harm at all to have something going on that encourages me to get up and get on with things.

  • Diane – thanks once again for the new week – and special thanks for that wonderful Wolf!  We did see the launch – nothing very dramatic to watch, but history in the making.  Weather permitting, will watch out for the Perseids tonight.

    Annette – J is more settled again now – back to work at the end of this week and still hasn’t had the eye op – no wonder he has anxiety problems!  He seems to be taking a quiet weekend; he saw a colleague in town yesterday which I think helped him get “in gear” for the term ahead so I hope we shan’t have any last-minute panics.  Thank you for bringing Gillian’s post forward to the new week, although I had actually seen it as I always check the end of the previous week just in case.

    Gillian – nice to hear of Cows kept with Calves at heel and presumably feeding naturally – love that sound when they are suckling.  More farmers around here are keeping them the natural way – and I’m sure the cows and calves are all happier and healthier.  Did you see the Med Gull yesterday?  We sometimes get reports of them on the Solway but I have never knowingly seen one myself.  Can’t think of a better place to eat a Cream Cake – I assume you daren’t take it home because of your OH’s diet.  Congratulations on the first Great Grandchild!  How good to have them all nearby.

    AQ – Europe must be quite difficult for visitors – a small continent often seen as a single destination, but so many languages!  I used to confuse German vocabulary in my Gaelic lessons as the sentence construction seemed similar.

    Linda – milking when sat on a three-legged stool (with a mob cap and apron?) would be so romantic.  Some of the modern milking parlours are so full of technology now, but of course a kick from the back legs is not the only thing to watch out for behind a cow!

    Heather – I am sure the roast dinner will be good compensation for the need for panication; I know it’s usually all hands on deck when they come over for a meal!  Enjoy their visit!

    We have been having computer difficulties today – long story, but something new upset other things and because we are all networked, everything got multiplied and affected everything else.  As I write this, the two men are wittering on behind me about various settings and comparing who’s got what.  Now they want to interrogate my computer and printer together!  Uurghgh!

  • Goodness, Heather, that's short notice. Hope you enjoy their visit, and the lamb :-)

    We set to and gave the conservatory a good clean. My OH had already wiped down all the big roller blinds, which we've decided "will do" for a bit longer even though they've been up since 2003, which is a longer time than I thought! Then he cleaned the windows, and I did the windowsills and ornaments, and then we hoovered and mopped the floor, which involves moving all the various furniture and always takes longer than expected. Now it all looks much cleaner and tidier. See Bonnies Blog, below!

  • Bonnie's Blog:

    My mum and dad seemed to be bent on upsetting me this morning, moving stuff around,  but when I saw my dad getting hold of my crate, I wondered if we were going on a journey, as I used to sleep in there. However, he folded it up and put it in the garage!! I've been very, very good for several weeks now,  as since it got such hot weather,  they stopped fastening me into my crate at night so that I could choose a cool spot such as the kitchen floor if I wanted. And of course I have my lovely new cuddly bed to sleep in, too.

    So now there's lots more room in the conservatory, and I can still jump into Mums favourite reclining chair if I want, for a sleep or to watch the garden birds.....

  • OG - Sorry you're having technical probs. Glad that J is recovered, and hope he can soon get a date for his eye op.

    Good job that I grew up in the country, so that when I met and married a farmer, it wasn't too much of a culture (and smell) shock!