Category: Family

Stock Up Happenings – With surgery looming, and the inevitable long recovery time, The Wife, MIL, and me ventured forth to stock up on yarn and crafting supplies. Well, they went to stock up. My goal was to assist and look for shelving or risers or such to help organize my growing collection of toys. Particularly since I have two more Alpha/Legioss coming in the fall/winter. I also had one other request, which we’ll get to later. We stopped in at Michaels, which resulted in a large quantity of yarn. The Wife’s being doing some of her projects in bigger yarn, and she seems to prefer the stuff at Michaels. She also tried one of the newer drive-through coffee places that have been popping up around Bradenton. Then we went down the road to Hobby Lobby, where more yarn was acquired – along with a bunch of other stuff. We have the same issue with Hobby Lobby that we do with 5.11. We go in for a specific thing and come out with a bunch more. After checkout was the real reason we needed to go to Hobby Lobby second – my favorite milk tea spot. We came out with good boba.

The secondary reason for my commenting on what is essentially a routine shopping trip – the acceleration of the shopping seasons. When we walked into Michaels, we ran smack into a large Halloween section with a variety of decorations and decor items. Okay. Kind of understandable. Even though it’s more than three months and a season change away. Then in Hobby Lobby and it was like fall colors were vomited on the first three rows. Are we already in Thanksgiving? Go a little further and the Christmas stuff was being lined up to be disgorged onto the shelves. Okay, even that hit my curmudgeon side.

Dinner Happenings – MIL wanted to take The Wife and me out for dinner to celebrate our birthdays, and she want the family along. After some back and forth, we finally settled on last weekend. Then, The Brother came down with something. And with surgery happening, we decided to meet with him at a later date. Then BIL came down with the flu, so he and his wife bowed out in an abundance of caution. So, we were left with MIL, The Wife, Wife’s Niece, Wife’s Nephew, and the Grandniece. We decided on trying a new Italian place across the main thoroughfare from Ward Manor’s subdivision.

The food was pretty good and we had a nice time enjoying everyone’s company. From there, we ended up taking Wife’s Niece and the Grandniece to our favorite ice cream spot. Nephew begged off because he’s not much into sweet stuff. Grandniece had one request – cookies and cream ice cream with lots of sprinkles. Which she got in a waffle cone. The ice cream shop recently moved into a new spot, and part of their decor is a church pew running down one side like a bench with some tables. I’m sure it sounded good and fit in with the “aesthetic image” of down home vintage. Except a pew really isn’t designed for table side. Which makes sitting in it while eating a sundae a bit challenging. Still, damn good ice cream.

Minor Tech Victories Happenings – Those who know me know that I’m a trackball person – and my favorite trackball is the Logitech MX Ergo. For the longest time, I used one at work and one at home. Then my home one was dying – because it was a first iteration, first run model. At the time, Logitech annoyed the Ward household, so I switched my home one to one of the newer Kensingtons. On the basis it was lower cost, and it was supposed to be competing with the MX Ergo. I was never really happy with it compared to the MX Ergo, and last week, it finally started acting up. Heck, I’ll go back to my Ergo. Well, the new one has some slight improvements. Such as not needing Logitech’s little dongle to connect. Which means I now have one trackball for both work and home computers! And one less thing needing a micro-USB.

Five Year Happenings – The Wife just celebrated five years at her current job. Which surprised both of us. Her work sent her a list of things she could claim as her five year reward. She went through the list and didn’t see anything that drew her immediate interest. So, she asked if I saw anything. We went back and forth and finally agreed on a new Pelican cooler.

Birthday Happenings – The Wife and I couldn’t celebrate our birthdays on our birthdays because of work and appointments. So, last weekend we planned to go out to this anime store up in St. Pete, then hit another one on the way back in Ellenton, and then maybe go out to dinner and ice cream. Yeah… plans kind of went sideways.

The first thing was The Wife and MIL had pedicure appointments that we forgot about. Okay, well, I can just go get my hair cut while they did that. I’ve been needing one for a while anyways. Then we get on the road to St. Pete. Travel time went from 40 minutes to 90 minutes. Um, what? Oh, there’s a really bad accident. If Pinellas traffic is going whompy, then I really don’t want to chance getting stuck in it up there. So, we’ll go to the shop in Ellenton. Yeah, we’re getting a little hungry. So, we stop in at the ramen shop first. It’s a good lunch place. The shop in Ellenton is more pop gothic (IYKYK) than anime shop, but it was interesting. By that time, we were getting a little tired. So, we ended up just getting ice cream at our favorite shop and headed home. Honestly, just being home is probably my favorite.

Lightsaber Happenings – During our last trip to Disney back in February, I picked up a Darth Vader lightsaber for my collection. My original idea for where to place it would have narrowed the entryway into part of the house where the home offices are at to just the other side of reasonable. So, The Wife suggested hanging it above the closet door where I mounted the two Luke Skywalker lightsabers. Finally got around to it. When we hung it, I didn’t consider the RGB color scheme, but it kind of turned out interesting.

Writing Happenings – Finally finished the fourth installment of the Irregulars Universe. It will be on an upcoming Monday Fiction. Now, I need to get back to the second volume of I Want To Serve. That one’s going to need a rewrite as my original plan kind of fell apart. Trying to figure out how much of the backstory and world building to put in without info dumping. And figure out how to write decent endings.

All of my series now have pages with illustrations. As well as categories to search. I’m still debating to do with my Avalon series. As well as the other half-dozen ideas in the hopper.

Fourth of July Happenings – Yeah, we celebrated by not celebrating. The Wife’s recovery is going well, but it does leave her tired. And I didn’t want to do much over the long weekend. Yeah, we’re homebodies who prefer our own company. I half-expected the locals to tamp down their private shows because of the local burn-bans due to drought. Apparently not. Though, they didn’t seem to go on into the night like they have in the past.

Keyboard Happenings – So, when we relax, it’s usually MIL and The Wife crocheting while I play/work on my laptop. I kept my laptop on a large lap desk, but there were some drawbacks. The biggest was having to lift and move my, admittedly, heavy laptop. After a day of “resting,” my lower back let me know it didn’t like how often I had to do that. So, when we got this rolling, adjustable table for The Wife to work while sitting on the couch, I figured I could use it on the weekends for my laptop. And it works – sort of. The problem is that I essentially have to either stretch out my arms to use the keyboard, or sort of balance my laptop on the edge of the table. I essentially traded a sore back for sore shoulders. Then I remembered I had an old Logitech Pebble Bluetooth keyboard I used for my work laptop until I swapped it out for something lighter. Problem solved!

Duckling Happenings – Now that the first batch of ducklings are looking more like full grown ducks, we find another mama mallard bringing around another eight small ducklings. Haven’t seen any from the whistling ducks or the other birds, but it’s been a treat to see them this season. I really need to do some more Birds of Ward Manor posts.

Masterpiece Happenings – I was successfully targeted by some ads for the Masterpiece streaming service add-on for Prime. TBH, I tend to like British dramas. A recent question at work was “If you had only one show to watch for the rest of your life, what would it be?” Much to my teammates’ surprise, my answer was Downton Abbey. Anywhoo, one of the reasons I wanted to get the add-on was a new-ish series of the Count of Monte Cristo. The Wife was completely unaware of this story, and she has enjoyed it quite a bit.

Doctor Firing Happenings – I’m now looking for a new primary care doc. It’s one thing when I’m waiting a half-hour or so for the doc to come into the room. It’s a small practice, I can understand getting backed up depending on the patients’ needs. The frequency was enough that it was already pegging my “maybe-I-should-take-my-business-elsewhere” feelings. Then they left me in the waiting room for an hour and called everyone else – including people who had appointments after me. When I hit the hour mark and they called another patient, I got up and walked out. I fired my doctor. Fortunately, I don’t have any major chronic conditions that need constant monitoring, so I can take a month or so and do my research.

That Lasted A While Happenings – I’ve used these Zojirushi water boilers for years. Originally to make hot tea, then as I moved in with The Wife, we’ve found a myarid of uses. When I first got them, they recommended these little packets to do monthly cleaning. Where I live has very hard water – and I use the boiler a lot. So, I was cleaning the boilers monthly like clockwork. Except those packets were approximately a buck a piece. Then I read that it was essentially citric acid. Really? I bought a huge bag when I first moved down around eight years ago. It was maybe $25. This week I finally had to buy another bag. Lesson learned.

Rehabilitation Happenings – The Wife started her PT last week. They are pleased with her progress considering she’s a month post surgery. More exercises to do at home – which she is pretty diligent about. And she’s using the elliptical bike in short intervals. The trick is getting her to slow down and not push herself so hard she does herself a mischief. Of course, all this new activity has brought on new and exciting pain. We’re doing the best we can to support her as she continues through her knee replacement journey.

Prime Day Happenings – Between the slew of medical bills and rehab equipment expenses, we didn’t really have the play in the budget to really participate in Prime Day. It also didn’t help that Amazon pushed it up, which meant The Wife and I didn’t have the normal birthday monies to supplement our spending. We did purchase two things. First, we bought a new Vornado tower fan for The Wife’s side of the room. It was highly recommended and half-off. However, whoever decided the format and layout of the “quick instructions” should be fired. Really, we’re going to show black pieces being assembled on a black, glossy piece of paper. At least it was intuitive. The other thing we bought was some Bath and Bodyworks gift cards because they were selling $50 cards for $40. At Ward Manor, that’s called prepaying of consumables.

Family Happenings – The Brother came down last weekend, which is the first time we’ve talked in person for about a month. Normally, we try to have dinner once a week, but with The Wife’s recovery, that just wasn’t happening. It was good to see him and visit for a couple of hours. We also got to have lunch with BIL and SIL and have a nice visit. BIL is also going through the process of having both knees done, so there’s a lot of comparisons between the sibilings’ journeys. And on top of it all, The Wife’s Niece and the Grandniece made a surprise visit because they had a party in the area. Which the Grandniece spent a good deal of time on her tablet. I may have to do some hiding of that except for special blocks.

Sleepless Happenings – Our two older male cats have decided that nighttime is the right time for fighting. It seems like every night last week we were woken up by their war cries. Which involves me getting up, grabbing the air can, and running one of them downstairs. Then they decide to fight over the cat flap to the back porch. If they were capable of learning, they would have learned a bunch of new words unfit for polite

Toy Happenings – My preorder for the Takara Tomy Legioss finally showed up. So, of course, I wanted to compare this one to the Toynami Alpha’s I picked up more than twenty years ago. Except when I pulled out my Shadow Alpha, it fell apart in my hands. The Blue Alpha had parts fall off. WTF? Turns out, it’s a known issue with those Toynami Alphas. What I found amusing is when I pulled out my Toyanmi Alphas, The Wife commented that she didn’t realize those were toys. Anywhoo, I did take some photos.

Testing Happenings – The Wife’s Niece came over to take a test for a certification for her job. While she was doing that, we entertained the Grandniece. The Wife and MIL took the little girl to Five Below, which was a first non-grocery, non-medical expedition for The Wife. On another note, because of issues with prior tests, we decided to set The Niece up with a whole different workstation set up. Which is good, because that let me start putting together the components for the next Happening. And she said it helped – which was good because she passed.

Home Office Happenings – Based on discussions with the physical therapist, The Wife and I decided she needed to be able to go from standing to sitting. Yeah, a standing desk would be best, but that’s going to have to hold for a bit. Technically, the rolling table we bought last week is height adjustable, but not easily adjustable. Instead, we decided to set up a second workstation on the craft table since that’s the right height for The Wife.

Home Gym Happenings – Sunday morning, The Wife’s nephew came over for breakfast followed by assembling the elliptical bike we bought a couple of months ago. A couple of hours of working in the heat of the garage and we have a working home gym. Let’s just say I’m very glad I had someone helping – particularly someone who is a couple of decades younger.

We now have a fully functioning treadmill and elliptical bike. And the nephew saw the use of this electric cardboard cutter The Wife bought several months back when I turned the huge box into a stack of small cardboard squares.

Knee Happenings – While The Wife continues to rehab, her brother went under the knife for his knee replacement. Then, my aunt managed to do herself a nasty mischief on her knee. So, I’ve three households dealing with knee issues. If I was superstitious, I would be worrying if I was going to join the fun. I have a feeling that dealing with these is going to dominate my summer.

Anywhoo, The Wife’s co-workers sent her a get-well gift. Well, a couple, but we ate the cookies before taking any pictures.

The Wife has also returned to work, but sitting at the desk is a bit rough on her. So, we picked up this rolling table that she can use to work on the couch. It’s a good thing we have those portable monitors and peripherals we picked up for travel.

Surplus Paper Happenings – With The Wife being laid up and us needing the bulk items we get from Sam’s, we decided to use the delivery option. We keep a list of what we need on the fridge, so I called them out while The Wife used her app. Some of the stuff came the same day, while the rest came the next day. Walked out and was puzzled to see two cases of paper towels. We didn’t order paper towels – or did we? Asked The Wife, and she gave me that look of I may have made an error. Yeah. She ordered that instead by mistake instead of the toilet paper. So, we have plenty of paper towel going into storm season. Enough that I can unload some onto The Brother to stock his place.

Battery Happenings – Since we’re in the start of storm season, and because I wanted to do some re-org, I went through and ran all of my rechargeable AA and AAA through my big Olight Ostations. The plan was to find any that were disposing of any showing as bad and determining how many more I needed to fill the small downstairs battery organizer and the two larger upstairs organizers. The good news is that I only need a pack of AAA and no AA. The bad news is that I don’t need to buy any more batteries. I’m still going to look on Prime Day to see if the Ecoflow Rivers go on sale. We got a lot of use out of the ones we have these past couple of weeks to run some rehab equipment for The Wife.

GTA Happenings – Around Ward Manor, we’re early to bed, early to rise folks. As in, it’s not unusual for us to see the overnight Amazon folks dropping off our packages. So, when the doorbell rang at zero-dark early, my first thought was “Amazon usually doesn’t do that.” Looking on our camera, I see the beam of a flashlight in the lawn. That tells me law enforcement. Yup. Car stolen from across the street, and the deputies from MCSO wanted to know if we had camera footage. Well, sort of. One of my cameras could see, but it was too far to trigger the recording feature. So, I have a picture of the car zero-dark early -1 and the car gone when the deputy triggered the camera to knock on the door. So, now we’re on heightened alert at Ward Manor and making sure the cameras have fresh batteries. Major crime is low to non-existent in Ward Manor’s AO, but it also comes in spurts. And if I see someone stealing the Ward Wagon or the Wardmobile, what will I do? Call the cops and maybe yell something over the camera’s loudspeaker. What I won’t do is go down and confront them unless they try to breach the walls of Ward Manor. At that point, things might get loud.

Recovery Happenings – The Wife’s recovery from knee replacement goes apace. She’s been walking more on her own without aid of cane or walker. She goes out two or three times and walks up and down our street – or at least part of it. It helps that she can have a bit of a stubborn streak, which pushes her to do more and more.

Day Job Happenings – I, unfortunately, needed to go back to work. We have a few major projects going on outside of my normal duties that I’ve been dragged into. The “perks” of being good at your job, I guess. The day job has given me an RA to work from home while The Wife recovers. Which, with gas prices, is helping. Particularly since we’ve needed to purchase a bunch of stuff we weren’t expecting. One thing I picked up was a Soundcore Select 4 Go portable Bluetooth speaker. Why? Because I’m working upstairs while The Wife is recovering downstairs. We have Echoes so she can call me if she needs me. However, that means I can’t use my normal headphones. And the Echoes suck for spoken word. The Soundcore is pretty decent for listening to podcasts and audiobooks, and for listening to the band I’m currently binging (don’t worry, it will show up on Metal Tuesday – might have to do a full month of them).

Grandniece Happenings – The Wife’s niece is working on a certification, and needs to use The Wife’s office and computer. Which means The Grandniece tags along. She is a ball of energy. I tried burning off some of that by taking her to the local playground. She complains that I make her walk the two blocks to the playground, but it’s all part of my nefarious plan to burn energy. The Grandniece also got to get a close look at some of the wildlife as we had a sandhill crane hang around for most of the day. The bird is bigger than she is, but she was fascinated by it. On another note, the grandniece, being a child of the twenty-first century, is always wanting to play with our phones or tablets. Since Amazon was running specials leading up to their Prime Days, we scored an Amazon Kids Fire Tablet for her to play with. I intend to let her play with it with limits on screen time. She was already annoyed when I put it away because we were eating dinner and wouldn’t give it back. It’s going to be a learning process.

Sandwich Happenings – One of the big discussions we have is lunch on the weekends. Generally we want something easy to put together and doesn’t take long. Anywhoo, we were in Hobby Lobby doing yarn stocking up before The Wife’s surgery and I saw a Hello Kitty sandwich press. It reminded me of an old sandwich press that Mom had back when I was in my teens. Hrm…. I checked on Amazon and got an updated version. So far, it’s been good for weekends or when I don’t have a lunch ready.

Art Happenings – During our various trips to Hobby Lobby to mainly get yarn, we ended up with a couple of “artistic” Star Wars wall pictures. It took us a bit to figure out exactly where we were going to put them. Finally found places upstairs for them. Well, one is technically upstairs, but it’s in the stairwell.

Surgery Happenings – On Monday, The Wife went in to have the first of her knees replaced. We were impressed with the kindness and professionalism of the nurses at the hospital. They explained how things should flow, provided helpful advice, and worked diligently to get us home expeditiously. The nice thing about knee replacement is it’s now same-day surgery. Okay, it was a long day, but we were home that afternoon. And I got to watch a bunch of anime while waiting.

I did find it amusing that when they brought me back to help get The Wife, one of the nurses commented on my T-shirt. “Oh, how nice, it says ‘Peaceful’.” Look down. Um, yeah, it’s the logo for Serenity. Apparently, the nurse was not a Browncoat.

Recovery Happenings – Once we got home, we got The Wife ensconced in the bedroom with her leg elevated and iced. She was diligent with doing her PT exercises and taking her meds. She was also diligent with doing her “laps” around the second floor loft when she had to get up. She pushed herself a lot more than I think I would have.

The next morning the home health nurse came by and checked everything. We finally got a look at the scar.

I was happy when the home health nurse thanked me for helping with The Wife, because the nurse saw so many husbands who refused to help their wives post-surgery. The PT came later and ran her through some exercises. She’s working hard, but it’s been rough.

Civ 7 Happenings – With the latest updates, I’m trying out the game again. I think this is a case of playing until I just get used to it. Fortunately, it’s also on Apple Arcade, so I’ve also been playing on my iPad. I hate feeling so lost as there are so many new concepts and how things work, but I’m hoping I’ll pick it up. I may switch back and forth for a while.

Grandniece Happenings – The Wife’s Niece needed to test for a certification last weekend, so we let the Grandniece sleep over Friday night. The little girl loves running around the house, going into my office to play with some of my less-collectible collectibles, and other activities. Last weekend, we introduced her to Candy Land, which she enjoyed. And which led The Wife and I to look on Amazon for other classic board games in her age range, such as Chutes and Ladders, Sorry, and Trouble. We also took her down to the neighborhood pool. Now, I like swimming. I like swimming in a pool. What I hate is the slathering of sunscreen in hopes I will avoid the dreaded burns. The Grandniece enjoyed the pool, but I was certainly feeling it the next day.

Movie Happenings – I posted my “mildly useful review” yesterday, but this is more ranting. I understand the old part of starting the previews at the movie start time, particularly before assigned seating, online ticket orders, and purchasing snacks on an app. These days, I don’t know why they need to spend a half-hour showing me previews and commercials to the point I almost forget what movie I’m there to see.

Still, this continued my streak of seeing every Star Wars film in the theater in the first run.

Houseguest Happenings – Mom has departed for the Great White North to escape the Florida summer and to visit her family. So, of course, her house decided to give her a going away gift in the form of a blown compressor on the HVAC. They’re borrowing one of the portable AC’s we have, but The Brother decided to decamp from Mom’s place and take up temporary residence at Ward Manor.

Home Office Happenings – The Wife wants to redo her office now that we’ve decompressed a lot of her craft stuff out to the loft space. One of the big items is making it so her personal laptop and her work laptop run on the same set of monitors and peripherals. We also have one of those wide curved monitors we meant to use for another project. The Wife spent some time this week “test driving” the curved monitor to make sure she liked working on it. The Brother was nice enough to do some research on KVM switches. The plan is to give The Wife the full “control room” feel of big monitor in the center flanked by secondary monitors. I’m trying to convince her to use the laptop monitors as additional “low use” monitors, but she’s not convinced. We shall see what the final configuration is.

Passport Happenings – The Wife and I have received our new passports and passport cards. We have some plans in the works that will require them. Plus it’s nice in case The Wife’s work decides to send her to one of their non-US offices. Small chance, but non-zero.

Recovery Happenings – Overall, I’m pleased with my surgery recovery. Not a lot of discomfort, and I know I’m healing up. I just get frustrated when I get winded from doing my normal chores or not being able to stand at my desk like I normally do. And it doesn’t help that I’ve been snacking more. A lot more. Anywhoo, my fatigue was bad enough that The Wife and I cancelled plans to go up and see a musical in Tampa. Fortunately, the Straz was nice enough to refund our tickets. Which is good because Hamilton is coming in the fall, and The Wife would really like to see the show in person again.

Hat Happenings – The bad part of accumulating Stetson hats is where to put them. I had been hanging them on an old hat/coat rack we kept by the front door. Which was, to put it nicely, non-optimal. After going back and forth, The Wife and I decided to put up some hat hangers at the top of the stairs. That would make it easy for me to grab and put away my hats as I come and go. And I have one more spot for a new hat. Which will most likely be acquired during our next anniversary trip to St. Augustine.

Bird Happenings – After several months, the Nanday Parakeets returned to the feeders of Ward Manor. We’ve heard them around the neighborhood. You can’t mistake the parakeets’ screeching call. We also managed to spy some ducklings.