Weekly Chat (Non-Osprey), 6 January 2019

HAPPY NEW WEEK!

I hope everyone has a wonderful week. 

  • Diane: Thank you!   I've been watching/listening to the rain, which is bucketing down here.  Wonderful for us, but there's some  concern about the areas that burned so badly over the past year or so.

    If anyone is interested in following PatO's cruise schedule (and the vessel itself), there are a couple of links in Saturday's posts.

    It's red wine weather so I have a small glass with some lovely English cheddar and crackers at hand.  Think OH will have pasta and sausages tonight - I'll probably check out a spinach and feta concoction lurking in the freezer...

    Hope UK folks aren't getting too much aggro from the Beast from the East (the weather, not Vladimir); meanwhile, the Pest from the West (not the weather) is still creating havoc here with demands for his wall.  Maybe we could distract him with a Lego kit.....

    AQ: Hope your cooler days will continue....and that your bus schedules are back to normal.

  • Annette: I know you need the rain badly, but I hope you'll stay safe. Those burned areas are so vulnerable to mudslides. I can't comment on our government shutdown, because if I get started I won't shut up. And I'll use sweary words. 

    Heron77: The last time we heard from you, you were suffering from pain. I think you mentioned that it might be sciatica. I hope you didnae get seriously hurt and you're feeling much better now.  (I learned the word "didnae" from you. Relaxed) Take care of yourself, and I hope you didn't have to miss work. 

    I hope all the UK folks are all safe from the Beast from the East storm. 

  • Diane: NBC had a segment filmed in Crawfordsville on this evening's news that talked about the dearth of child care options for employees.  We had some really heavy rain, but all seems to be well at this point.  More to come in the next week or so....

  • ANNETTE - Rain? what is that? BTW I think Lego would be too difficult.

    It is pleasantly cool today. So why don't I feel like attacking my chores? Of course, it is Sunday and once upon a time we didn't do housework on Sunday. That's my excuse. <grin>

  • Thank you DIANE - 

    Sorry everyone for not responding to posts. They did my dominant hand so apart from pain in plastered hand I'm not very skilled at using the other one! Anyway, onwards and upwards. Plaster may be off by the end of the week.

    Take care all

  •  I had to sign in again to get in.  Sorry you're having to put up with your painful & awkward hand, Heather - hope it's not for long. It sounds difficult to cope with.

    Diane, thanks for starting us off. We're having no weather problems, in fact there's no wind and it's quite mild. I think that the reports of the return of The Beast were exaggerated, although it will get colder midweek for most of us.

    Went for a walk with Bonnie - she was alright to begin with but then decided to chase a goose which was floating around near the shore. Of course, it just paddled farther out and watched disdainfully as she floundered around in the weedy, dirty shallows! - Had to be towelled down when we returned to the car. Now she's sleeping it off and drying out.

  • AQ:  :-))   Indeed.   Re Sundays, for some reason I'm doing laundry today and will likely zoom around waving the vacuum cleaner (a cat's lick and a promise as my Mom would say; but that's all the house seems to have got these last few months).  :-(  

    Heather:  Gosh, hope you can at least lift food to your mouth - and you can drink wine through a straw (so they tell me).

    Lindybird: Does Bonnie have to be washed after a caper in the shallows?  It sounds smelly.  :-)

    We are going to local friends this pm to raise a glass on their 50th Wedding Anniversary, then home before another round of rain is due.

    Take care all

  • ANNETTE- managing fork to mouth lol just about!  Straw sounds good but unless a screwtop can't work out how to open bottle with one hand.....

  • Annette: Thanks for mentioning that national news segment about my area. I hadn't seen it. Wow. First, the news coverage focused on our few well-paid professionals and not the working people (mostly low-income) who are hit hardest by the lack of available child care. Most importantly, that segment doesn't begin to reflect this area's many critical issues: scarcity of life-sustaining jobs, brutally low incomes, poverty, wildly expensive health insurance that most can't afford, inadequate healthcare, the absence of mental health treatment for those who can't pay high fees, declining life expectancy and quality of life, and a lack of even basic services (no Planned Parenthood, no mass transit, no addiction treatment to respond to our opioid/meth crisis...etc.). This is rural America and it's also the Rust Belt. Neither the mainstream media nor the federal/state politicians care about our people here.

  • That's grim, Heather -you might have to drink milk instead......  Annette, sorry to have just heard a report about mud slides in California, do hope no lives are lost.

    Bonnie was not too smelly, so had her feet washed and was towelled down.  She didn't like the look of all my boxes of Christmas decs piled up in the hall, maybe she thinks we're going on holiday again.

    Now that I've emptied all the surfaces, it shows up all the dust which has accumulated <sigh> So I know what I'll be doing tomorrow. :-(