Category: Family

Last night, our sweet Bella cat went in for her last vet visit. It was a rough decision, but we believe it was the right one.

Bella came to The Wife ten years ago as half of a bonded pair from Cat Depot. The Wife saw the pair when she was just visiting. She wanted to take them home, but she had a trip planned, and didn’t want to bring them home just to leave them. When she returned and found they were still there, she asked about adoption. Cat Depot decided to be a little bit outrageous in asking for $500 each. The Wife then wrote a letter and said she could not afford that amount, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t provide them with a loving home, and offered to take the pair for that amount. The shelter agreed, and Bella came into her life.

I met Bella as a sweet lovable cat when I started staying over at The Wife’s – The Girlfriend at the time. Bella loved people, and wanted to let you know that in no uncertain terms. She was a big Siamese who just wanted you to pay attention and give her love – and treats. The only time her sweetness evaporated was when we took her to the vet. Then she became enough of a ball of hiss and fury that we were encouraged to chemically sweeten her disposition.

When we moved to Ward Manor, Bella didn’t adapt well at first. She would get lost in the new house and start wailing that Siamese wail. Even more than four years later, she would do that if she lost her humans.

The last couple of years Bella developed diabetes and had to go on insulin. She took it like a champ. Hell, she took the days were The Wife had to test her blood hourly as if it was no big deal. Unfortunately, this weekend, that disease caught up with her and we were forced to make that hard decision.

Good night Bella, and thank you for being such a sweet cat.

Day Job Happenings – We’re trying to get into the groove of me going back into the office. The office itself is having some… issues. Primarily, internet issues. It’s like they didn’t expect us to need internet and now everyone is hogging what little bandwidth there is. On the brighter side, one of The Brother’s colleagues had a spare standing desk converter. So, I am now once again standing all day. I had to do some major moving and rerunning of cables. I’m sure when IT sees, I will get a stern talking to. Also, we were given orders to use standard email signatures (okay, understandable I guess) as well as standardized official photo avatars or none. I went with the “none” option. Which means my happy Gentleman Platypus avatar I’ve been using for more than a decade is on hiatus.

Birthday Happenings – Since we have a glut of April birthdays among the friend group, we had a joint dinner up at Mom’s place. This was a lot of fun as we get to see Shootin’ Buddy’s little tyke now up and running around. Also found out that Shootin’ Buddy and his partner are looking to get hitched later this year. Of which, I am extremely pleased to hear. We also got to meet another friend’s new-to-me SO. We had a very in-depth discussion around cats. Because of course we did.

Earworm Happenings – I have a habit where I will softly sing whatever song is in my head. Usually, The Wife will ask what I’m singing and then just go along her merry way. This recent bout she asked what I was singing. I told her “Diggy Diggy Hole”. When she asks if it’s about digging a hole, I proceed to tell her the words in my best “English professor reading rap lyrics” voice. All fine, but apparently it has become an earworm for The Wife – and she is not happy

I can’t believe it’s May already. Storm season is supposed to start next month, but we’ve also been seeing a lot of early storms that can get a little spicy.

So, it’s time to recheck storm preps and start supplementing the groceries with what we would need.

This is a good list of things to do when a hurricane approaches. It also lends itself to thinking what you will need to make sure you have on hand before the storm comes.

One thing to do is make sure all my batteries are charged up. This includes the myriad of AA and AAA. This was a mistake from last year. I’ve also gone in heavy on flashlights and lanterns that run on those kinds of batteries. As well as two handheld radios. All of which needs to be tested.

I also need to make sure I know where all my various power banks and smaller batteries are and make sure they are all charged up.

If things happen like last storm season, we need to make sure we have increased capacity for housing additional family. Extra water. Extra food. Extra stuff. Make sure I have enough variety.

Hopefully, we won’t need to break out any of it out. But we’ve been getting a lot more nasty storms here of late.

Office Happenings – The big upheaval for the Ward household is my returning to the office. This required some shifting of household chores and more careful planning of who needs which car. Of course, they warn us that my team should bring in all of our monitors and docks because it’s not likely we will have those when we get to the office. This is what happens when you make everyone return to the office quickly rather than orderly. In some kind of way, it’s the inverse of when my team was sent out on telework five years ago.

Anywhoo, we get to the office to find that we can’t even get into our assigned offices as we have not been granted access. WTF? It wasn’t until more than a half hour that we were able to get into our offices. The good news? We have actual offices, as well as docks and monitors. The bad? These aren’t our “final” offices, so we can’t lock the doors. Which, considering how things have gone walksies with everyone scrounging for stuff, means all my stuff gets schlepped to the office and back.

I miss my standing desk, my monitors, my bathroom, and mostly, I miss working with The Wife.

Tile Happenings – Mom is having to redo the bathrooms in her house. She also likes and trusts The Wife’s decor style / choices. So, after work, the three of us traipsed down to a local tile store to pick out the necessary floor, wall, and shower stall floor tiles. This could have been a long drawn-out process, but Mom managed to make selections fairly quickly. Of course, it would have helped if we knew how much she needed, but that information was not brought along. I also drove Mom’s Kia Carnival. This is a serious contender for second vehicle if/when The Wife and I start looking.

There was a new visitor to the backyard of Ward Manor.

It took me digging through a couple of my bird books and getting on the Audubon app before I found out what it was.

A loggerhead shrike.

It’s been a nifty new bird after being swarmed by grackles and red-winged blackbirds.

Kilt Happenings – I recently found some relatively inexpensive kilts in my size, so I ordered a few. These buckle up like the kilt I wore for the wedding last year, which makes them much more comfortable than the snap ones I normally get (e.g., 5.11 kilts). The only downside is that these have no pockets, unlike many of the utility-style kilts I have. So, I found a sporran. At this point, I’m going to be wearing kilts as daily work wear until they send me back to the office. And I’ve already told work that I can’t find where I’m not allowed to wear them – so jeans days will become kilt days.

Civilization Happenings – As most readers know, I play a lot of Civ. Mostly Civ 6, as I just can’t get my head around Civ 7’s major changes. Anywhoo, I had an unusual loss. In turn 2. When my initial settler was killed by a flood.

Tech Upgrades Happenings – The Wife and I looked at our budget and our future needs, and decided to do some tech upgrades. Mainly the big ones were our phones. We went to the Apple Store and upgraded our phones to 16’s. I really needed more space and we both wanted the satellite connectivity. Plus getting more of our stuff on USB-C. Plus wantsies. While we were there, we also upgraded The Wife’s watch. While researching which phone to get, we saw that there was a sale on newer Galaxy Tab 11 inch tablets. These would replace the ancient ones we use while doing the treadmills.

3D Printer Happenings – We are most likely going to rehome the 3D printer. Before that happens, the printer is going BRRR. For me, we found a print for the island from the USS Flagg. That sounds too cool if I’m going to turn a table into a carrier for my various mecha.

Easter Happenings – Ward Manor again hosted the family Easter dinner. In addition to all the setup such a dinner requires, we also hosted our grandniece for a sleepover. The little girl loves running around Ward Manor, exploring all the rooms, playing with the cats, and turning the lightsabers on and off. She’s been asking for another sleepover – the first one being when she and her mother stayed at our place during Milton.

The real fun part was on Easter morning, she looked out the window and said, “There’s a bunny!” At first, I thought she was seeing someone’s decorations, but lo and behold, there was a rabbit going between the houses. So, with some prompting from The Wife and MIL, the Grandniece proceeded to tell everyone she saw “The Easter Bunny’s Helper” all day.

It’s hard to believe that The Wife and I have lived here for four years. For me, I get this familiar dichotomy of feeling like it’s only been a short time, and at the same time, that I’ve always lived here.

So, back when Ian came through a couple of years ago, we pulled a bench we had in the garage up to our bedroom to make room for other things. We placed it under the big windows, and when the storm screens came down, the cats were very happy to have a place to sit and watch the backyard. We recently put in the third iteration of cat perch for the windows.

It turned out to be a bit higher, but it will be easier to maintain than the last two perches.

Last weekend, MIL put a new over the toilet cabinet up in her bathroom. This meant relocating this to our master bathroom.

I’ve had this shelving unit for more than twenty years now. Mom bought it and a dry sink for me when I moved into my old Tampa house. And since we had the “hanging kit” out, we decided to hang up a couple of things in the master bedroom.

The wedding picture and the “Love You” was there previously, but The Wife picked up the cow pic a few weeks ago, and I got my starship comparison a few months ago. The plan is to get something below mine to even things out. Probably a little sign or something that I can attach some of my patches to.

We are also still in the process of turning the upstairs living room (aka “the loft”) into a craft/hobby room. It will mostly be so we can pull a lot of The Wife’s crafting machines/printers out of her room and get some more space for supplies. We put in a new desk/table a couple of weeks ago so she could set up her new heat press.

Last weekend, The Wife and her SIL used it to make some t-shirts for SIL’s workplace. They were both very impressed by the speed and efficiency over The Wife’s older press. While they were doing that, I was putting together a new bookcase that will most likely hold very few books.

It went together pretty decently, but I’m not going to say it was easy. I will say that picking up the set of allen wrench drill bits and allen wrench screwdrivers made it a hell of a lot easier. So much easier than the desk/table in the lower right where I didn’t have those tools and had to use that crappy little one that came with the kit.

Next will be setting up a workstation for The Wife to plug in her laptop on the desk so she can better control all of her printers/machines. Then drag out and find places for her Cricuts and printers. Then she should have plenty of space for her various crafting endeavors. I’ll post when we finally get everything set up.

But what about my hobbies? My biggest hobby right now is writing. For that I just need a chair and a power source. Which I will have. I’ve also decided to repurpose my old laptop into a writing laptop. As in, no games, and minimal other apps than what I need for writing.

The reason there wasn’t a Monday Links post was that The Wife and I did our now-annual pilgrimage to North America’s oldest city. It’s where we honeymooned and it’s one of our favorite places. We tried something different this year by going during the week instead of going on the weekend.

Monday started with taking our hairless Boo to the kitty cardiologist. The cat is doing well without any degradation. Plus, there may be a drug therapy to help his heart. We’re hopeful. Upon discussion with The Wife, we stopped at 5.11 so I could pick up a new backpack. The sling bag is good for short trips out to stores or errands. For long days walking around, I have found that my lower back dislikes the sling bag. So, I figured trying out a smaller backpack.

We went to the fort, which was in the midst of an invasion of school-age children. There were also some new displays compared to last year. From there, we hoofed it over to the Oldest House. Touring the exhibits, I explained the difference between matchlock and flintlock. Then back down St. Georges to enjoy all the shops. And yes, I procured a new hat. We need a new hat rack. We also found that some of the shops we normally visit aren’t open during the early part of the week.

We also found the B&B we stay at has an outdoor cat that is the spitting image of our big orange cat.

In short, we had a lot of fun, came home with some new souvenirs, and generally considered a good trip.

Day Job Happenings – We’re still in a holding pattern. We know that Reductions In Force (RIFs) are happening, but the timeline is a bit…opaque, shall we say? Similarly, while a large segment of my division’s workforce has returned to office, I am in a portion without a current RTO date. The Wife and I are a little concerned that I’ll get an RTO – which necessitates getting a car – and then getting RIF’d a few months later. On the plus side, we received some additional revenue, so our last major debt, other than the houses is now paid off.

Musical Happenings – Back in November, I saw that the Sarasota Orchestra was going to be playing Gustav Holst’s “The Planets.” This is one of my favorite pieces of classical music. So, I picked up tickets for their matinee. Weekend before last, The Wife and I made the trek down. It was amazing to hear that played live. One thing that hit me while I was playing it live was the intricacies of the orchestra. Yes, I’ve seen it on television, but for some reason, the synchronicity of the various sections and the way that they came together was more on display in a live setting.

Sourdough Happenings – The Wife decided to join the sourdough bandwagon and try her hand at a starter. Because we need to anthropomorphize everything, she christened her starter “Doughlene.” Something about feeding it and keeping it alive means it must have a name. The Brother was kind enough to lend us some cookware he wasn’t using. We shall see what arises over the next few weeks. (See what I did there)