Day Job Happenings – I got some semi-sad news this week as one of my longtime mentors announced he was taking a promotion to another facility. This is a man who I’ve worked with for the better part of fifteen years, and who has helped me improve my career. Probably also saved it from prematurely exploding. He was the one who orchestrated my return when I took the ill-conceived promotion. I am happy that he’s going to be taking on new challenges and doing more of what he loves doing. It will be very strange not to have him around.
Tea Happenings – The Wife and I have decided to get into the loose tea game. We each have our own infusing mugs and I have one to go to the office. We also have a bunch of tea we picked up – mostly Earl Greys and Chais. I don’t think I’ll use them for the sweetened ice tea I take to the office. That’s just stuff Derek drinks to cut down on his soda consumption, and it’s just too expensive to use the “good” tea. So, now I’m getting used to having hot tea every morning and on the look out
Bird Feeder Happenings – For the last couple of years, we’ve had essentially three bird feeding “stations” or “areas.” We have a couple of small transparent bird feeders attached to a window on the side of the house, a small bird feeder right outside the back door, and usually two feeders on poles – and later the trellis – in the backyard. Since I went back to the office, the ones in the back yard have been neglected. Part of it was The Wife was quickly putting food into the feeders, and the ones in the back took a lot more time (unhooking, opening, clearing, filling). I finally saw a new feeder that looked easy to fill. Which is good because the ones at the windows mainly draw doves and grackles – and are essentially cat entertainment. The one in the backyard draws different birds and more for my watching entertainment.
Board Game Happenings – While The Wife, MIL, and Mom went out for pedicures, The Brother and I sat down to try out a board game. Skara Brae is a game where you are managing the ancient village and trying to make sure that your settlers are fed as well as trying to make their life a little better. It is a “resource management” game. Essentially, you’re gaining resources from cards and spending those resources. A lot of different types of resources, including “bad resources” that do nothing but clutter up your inventory. I found it to be very entertaining.
Hospital Happenings – Okay, the TLDR is everyone is okay. Last Thursday, The Wife sent a text of “I feel weird.” Okay, that piqued my interest. Especially after her TIA scare a couple of years ago. I went into our room and started asking. Chest pain, but not sharp. Shortness of breath. Okay, that could be residuals from Disney trip. But it also could be something worse. After some discussion, we hopped in the car and ran down to the freestanding ER. They did some tests and such, but couldn’t find anything. However, the doc there recommended The Wife be admitted to the hospital linked to the ER. A moment of lightness while that process was going on was the housekeeping person said my hat looked “very Indiana Jones.” Okay, not the usual response that I get, but it amused The Wife and me. The paramedic took a look at the file and told The Wife “I’m not seeing anything here of concern, but you said the magic words – chest pain. No way you’re getting out quickly with that.” Apparently The Wife and the paramedic chatted about meeting their respective spouses online. He was definitely the gregarious sort. We got her ensconced in a room about 90 minutes before visiting hours ended.
We don’t sleep well apart. It was a rough night for both of us. I showed back up as soon as visiting hours started. They said that they couldn’t see anything wrong, but they wanted an ultrasound to make sure the heart was working properly. As you can imagine, it was a lot of hurry up and wait. Although it was funny explaining to the ultrasound tech that our hairless cat got the same procedure every six months. By mid-afternoon, we were both ready to get out of there. I mean, about to tell the nurse to get the AMA papers ready. We got the final clearance. Essentially, it wasn’t anything cardio, but no good answers from that. So, we packed up The Wife into the Ward Wagon and got her back home. Needless to say, we weren’t really good about diet when we got back home.
No Concert Happenings – At the end of last year, Sabaton announced they were going to be doing a North America tour – including a Tampa stop. After talking with The Wife, we decided to do a work-cation in which we would go up and stay at a hotel, work from the hotel room, then I would go to the concert and we would go home. January came, and word came down that Sabaton was postponing due to one of their members having a medical issue. Shit happens, but we ended up having to eat the hotel costs. We decided to wait and see when the concert would be rescheduled. Then we got word last week that the Tampa show was cancelled. My guess is that they couldn’t get a place in the time frame. They added an Orlando show, but I’m thinking over if I want to do that. And my refund is going to probably take 14 to 21 days. Yay Ticketmaster.
One of the less talked about features about living in Central Florida is the impact of the space program. Sure, you can see it on the Space Coast around the Kennedy Center, but even on the other side of the state, the space program has added some unique color to my life. Case in point. Last week Space X sent up one of their rockets in the early morning, and due to atmospherics we got an amazing sight.
Orlando Happenings – Last weekend was the annual Disney trip. Some of The Wife’s coworkers do this marathon at Disney, and for the last few years, we have gone over to give her time to hang out with folks she normally only sees virtually. It’s also time for us to hit some of the Disney parks. This year, her boss, who is a dear friend to The Wife, was going to be flying in to Orlando from a conference out west. So, we offered to pick him up so he didn’t have to get a rideshare to the resort. At least that was the plan.
Thursday, The Wife and I packed up, ran a couple of errands, and went to Disney Springs to kill some time before Boss Of Wife (BOW) arrived. The Wife has been going back and forth on getting Magic Bands, so she wanted to see the selection there. I wanted to go to the Star Wars store to see if they had the Vader lightsaber because it wasn’t showing up on their online store. I was happy to find one in the case – and they had the pack with the blade and the stand. We had a pleasant walk around the complex and decided to head over to the airport early to beat commute traffic. That’s when the fun started. Anytime I have to go to an airport other than Tampa, it shows me how spoiled I am. Trying to find Orlando’s cell lot ended up with us in the economy lot. Then, BOW’s plane was delayed 90 minutes and there was even more uncertainty as to when he would actually get in. After going back and forth for a bit, he finally convinced us just to go to the hotel, and he would grab a rideshare to the resort. That going back and forth put us three minutes over the 10 minute grace period, and we had to hand over five bucks. Annoying, but that was on us. The transit back wasn’t bad traffic wise, but the GPS just wouldn’t find our resort. It would find the one next to it, but then default back to just finding Walt Disney World. Then, we had multiple instances of “take the next exit to your right” which would involve having the ability to swing across multiple lanes of solid traffic. Stress level increased. Then finding parking. Yeah, I was annoyed, tired, and stressed by the time we entered the hotel. We did end up meeting with BOW later that night to hash out plans and to hand over the shirts that The Wife made for him. She was pleasantly surprised when he showed up with a stuffed animal he picked up for her at the conference he’d attended. We finally crashed into bed much later than normal.
Friday’s events started with the adrenaline inducing sound of the smoke alarm going off. We learned that Derek cannot enjoy his normal scalding long showers without the steam causing issues. We managed to get things settled down, get dressed, grab a bite to eat before meeting up with BOW. From there, we hailed an Uber. Slight hilarity when we saw the same make, model, and color before we found our actual driver. Apparently, silver Toyota Siennas are popular. We were dropped off at Universal’s new Epic park. I was kind of meh when they asked if I wanted to go a few months ago. It was more, I’ll go if everyone else goes. We meet up with another Co-Worker of The Wife (CWW). At this point, we go through security. And of course, Derek takes forever because security gets antsy about my trauma shears. They take them and say I can pick them up after I leave. Then their sergeant proceeds to tell me that they have trained medical staff and paramedics, and yada yada yada. It was clearly his opinion that I didn’t need to have an IFAK while I was in his park. I kept polite and semi-obsiquious because I didn’t want to cause a scene, but in the back of my mind I’m thinking Dude, if I need a tourniquet, I’m not fucking waiting for your myriad of medical people. I need one RTFN. Which is why I keep that red bag in my backpack.
We made our way to the Harry Potter section, and I was very disappointed when we walked onto a facsimile of a Parisian street instead of Diagon Alley or something else. Before I could really get annoyed, we get herded into a hallway, which turned out to be a line for a ride. Of course, we didn’t realize it was a ride until we were well into it. It was just having to follow a mass of people that I originally thought was going deeper into the world. Anywhoo, we ended up on the Harry Potter and the Battle At The Ministry of Magic ride. Okay, it was neat seeing a bunch of stuff I’d seen in the movies, and the ride itself wasn’t bad. The storyline they were pushing made no fucking sense in canon, but the group enjoyed it well enough. From there we decided to go to the Super Mario world. Holy hell that was a very crowded and loud area. We did a look around, and then went to the “Dark World” section, which was based on old monster movies. BOW went on another ride while we rested. At that point, I was kinda done. Honestly, I wouldn’t go back to Epic unless there were strong extenuating circumstances.
Saturday we went to Magic Kingdom. What I knew is that The Wife had booked a breakfast buffet. What I didn’t know was that it was a Winnie the Pooh themed breakfast buffet. The food was excellent, and we got pictures with some of the characters. From there, we walked around the park. We did the Monsters Inc show in Tomorrowland and rode It’s a Small World. The Wife and her coworkers split the cost of a photo package where we could get photos taken at several areas. If you can afford it, I would highly recommend it. We got lots of really good photos, and the photographers are really good at making things amusing. We also got a lot of compliments on our shirts that The Wife made for the team.
We met up with another co-worker of The Wife who was running in the marathons (aka Running Co-Worker, RCW) and RCW’s husband. The plan was to go to Hollywood Studios. Since this blog post is already going to be long, suffice to say that RCW insisted that we needed to go one way to Hollywood Studios, and we all followed because she was the Disney veteran. It turned out not to be the case and we spent an extra half-hour getting to Hollywood Studios and required me going through security twice more. As we walked into Hollywood Studios, I was tired and my feet hurt. I just wanted to get to Galaxy’s Edge, see some neat stuff, and go back to the hotel. RCW sort of made up for the inconvenience by getting me on the Millennium Falcon ride. That was truly awesome. And we got some decent photos. Not as many as I would have liked, but a few.
Sunday was our EPCOT day. The Wife and I love walking through the World Showcase. We met up with the rest of our party at Space 220, which is a restaurant with the conceit that you are eating at a space station. The food was good, the atmospherics were interesting, and the conversation was excellent. The Wife and I had a plan to “eat around the world” instead of drink around the world, but lunch was good enough that we sort of, didn’t.
I did find a ceramic parrot in Mexico, which was cool because I couldn’t find one last year and thought they’d been discontinued. So, I now have a pair hanging in the home office. We skipped Norway because it’s less Norway and now Frozen with a taste of Norway. We introduced BOW and CWW to the China film that Disney’s been using for at least the last 40 years. BOW got a grapefruit beer in Germany that he said was surprisingly good. I’m not a big drinker, so I’m taking his word for it. Japan was the normal “go through the big store and get my supply of Kit Kats.” This year they had orange, a cinnamon roll, and I think a dark chocolate (haven’t opened it yet). They also had macha, but I hate macha. BOW also got a purple sake drink he said was good, but too sweet. The Wife and I also took CWW through the Kawaii display, and she really enjoyed that. By that time, we were all flagging, so we agreed to go through England/Britain before heading back to the hotel.
Monday morning, we agreed to take BOW to the airport so he wouldn’t have to spend money on an Uber. It wasn’t a bad drive over, but again, reminded me how much I prefer TIA’s layout. Anywhoo, then it was make the trip across the state. We’ve had worse traffic coming back, but it was still annoying. What was more annoying was coming back to find the home offices without power. First thought was a breaker decided to die since we had one flipped. Electricians came out. Not the breaker. They went into the home offices and unplugged everything and then went one-by-one to find out which one was causing the breaker to flip. Turned out to be an old power adapter to a dock we haven’t used in a while. It looked like there was some melting and was drawing enough power to flip the breaker. So, a quick fix.
TLDR – We had fun, but some of our planning did not stand up to the rigors of the real world. We need to have better checklists and planning for our trips. We still had a lot fun. I also much prefer dealing with Disney security instead of Universal. The Disney folks always seem either appreciative or understanding of why I have an IFAK, while the vibe I got from Universal Security was “only ones.”
We had a flock, um flight, um maybe a half-dozen of a new bird floating in the pond. At first I thought they were the hooded mercasers from an earlier post. Yet, the more I looked, that didn’t sit right. So, I pulled out my handy-dandy guide and found them. Ring necked ducks.
Image from Wikipedia
One of the nice things about the pond in the back is the variety of birds, including those that come and go.
Night Startles Happenings – There is nothing like waking up in the middle of the night from a weird dream that you can’t remember but elevated your adrenaline, walking into the bathroom, hitting the tap light next to the toilet, and seeing this large gray blob in the middle of the toilet. Adrenaline spiked before I realized it was the ass-end of our hairless cat who was drinking out of the toilet. I may have woken The Wife with my yelling at the cat.
Bag Happenings – We were coming back from someplace and I noticed the strap on my sling bag was starting to fray. I’ve been thinking I should really switch from a sling to a straight backpack. Not to carry more stuff, but to help with my back and shoulders. On Valentines Day, we went down to 5.11 and found two backpacks that I liked. I really couldn’t decide, but with them both on sale, we ended up bringing them both home. One is replacing the sling bag. The issue is that with the sling bag, all of my stuff was right there without having to dig down. With a backpack, somethings are going to have to be at the bottom. Thankfully, the new pack uses a bunch of “hook and loop” (i.e., velcro). So, I’m arranging my stuff into velcro-backed pouches. So, this one is going to be kind of a bag of bags. The trick is to make things I need frequently easily accessible.The other bag is replacing my work backpack. I love my Maxpedition backpacks, but they are clearly tactical. This one looks more like a regular backpack.
Cold Happenings Cont’d – Apparently Derek has a hard time with the cold, and I felt kind of crappy all last week. The Wife and I had a long talk with our budget, and I did end up getting my new coat. Which performed really well on its test run from the house to the mail kiosk. Particularly against the biting wind. I’ve also noticed when I’m feeling cold and not well, my willpower plummets. I didn’t even bother getting on the scale this week.
Cat Injury Happenings – Early last week, The Wife and MIL noticed Freya, our youngest cat, was favoring her eye. A trip to the vet revealed she somehow managed to get a cut on her eye. This resulted in us having to give the cat eye treatments – which she didn’t like one bit. There was much chasing and trapping to give her treatments. It was somewhat ameliorated with offerings of her favorite treats, but Freya still was none too pleased with us.
Board Game Happenings – Mom and The Brother came down over the weekend. Mom, The Wife, and MIL went over to a nearby place for pedicures. While they were doing that, The Brother and I did some work on the NAS and then played a couple of board games. The one that was interesting was Sky Team, at least in terms of concept.
Book Happenings – I decided that it was a good idea for me to keep some physical entertainment media on hand. The Wife needed to pick up some things on Amazon, and needed something to close the same-day gap. Huh, Zahn’s Thrawn trilogy is in the same day store.
Cancellation Happenings – I was expecting that the top entry in this week’s happenings were The Wife’s and my adventures going to see Penn & Teller. Unfortunately, a few days before, my ticket vendor informed me the show had been rescheduled to the end of April. Well, darn, but okay. Then a couple of days later, I’m perusing FB and the top article is that Sabaton is postponing their North American tour due to health issues with one of the band members. The tour I have a ticket for and a hotel stay booked because it’s in the middle of the week. The hotel stay that is non-refundable. The Wife is working on seeing if they will let us rebook for the when Sabaton is coming – assuming the new date doesn’t fall on when we already have things scheduled. Stupid event clusters.
Veggie Tray Happenings – Since Ward Manor is on diet mode, we’ve been picking up a veggie tray for the weekends to snack on instead of chips, dips, chains, whips. Anywhoo, I got it into my head that maybe we should get a refillable veggie tray and just get the stuff we like. Because the veggie trays inevitably have at least one thing that no one wants. The Wife finds one she likes, and we order. Amazon tells us it was delivered, but it was after we went to bed, so we never went out to check. Yeah, no it wasn’t there. Go to the pic. That’s not our door. Well, fuck. Ask about it on FB. Crickets. Finally, I contact Amazon. They helpfully agreed to send out a replacement. Later that day, The Wife runs into the neighbor and finds out he has it. Just picked up the package off his stoop without looking at the label. Understandable. And now we have two.
Grandniece Happenings – The Wife’s niece wanted to go out to celebrate a recent life event, so we agreed to take the grandniece for a sleepover. This started with breakfast at Cracker Barrel for the family before taking the grandniece for her first trip to Hobby Lobby. It was like trying to corral a gas particle. She kept bouncing from shiny object to shiny object. From there, we took her to Five Below, because that is her favorite store. The only issue is the local Five Below is in a shopping complex that is notorious for bad parking. As in, you grab whatever spot you can find and just hope it is in the general vicinity of the stores you want to patronize. At any rate, we got the little tyke back to the Manor, and she went through her normal run of wanting us to build her new toys, do her arts and crafts, and wanting to go upstairs to play and look at all of my toys. There was a bit of pain when she asked to use some of my GI Joe Classified figures to do a “puppet show.” Overall, she had fun and we enjoyed having her.
Tea Happenings – When I go to the office, I generally take a large bottle of sweet tea. It’s a bit of a process to make them all on the weekend, so I went looking for a better process. We are experimenting with one of those ice tea brewers and some loose leaf teas. I wanted to go to loose leaf because while I like the bagged tea just fine, I want to be able to switch blends or try some of the boutique blends we run across. So, we’re experimenting with properly brewing my normal Earl Grey and]]s well as chai tea.
Cold Happenings – This past week has been the coldest temperatures in this area for a long time. Enough that the local electric cooperative was sending emails asking everyone to conserve electricity to only essential stuff and bundle up. There were flurries reported in Bradenton to our south. For natives, we were kind of at a loss as to how to properly prepare. The FB page for the neighborhood was kind of like – hey, all you Yankees who came down over the last couple of years, do you remember all that advice we gave you about hurricanes? Now’s the time to repay the favor. I broke out pretty much all my cold weather gear. I also lusted after one of 5.11’s jackets, but I don’t have the spare three hundred to buy. And it won’t come in until well after the current cold spell. I’ll look when they do their next outlet sale on jackets to see if I can pick one up on the cheap.
The real fun was dealing with our backflow preventer outside. We ordered an insulated cover. It was supposed to be here Saturday before all the really bad weather. Then Amazon said it wasn’t going to be here until Tuesday. So, we grabbed an old blanket that was already on its way out, wrapped the pipes and duct taped it down hard – while standing in the frigid temperature with even colder wind. Then the cover showed up on Sunday. Which meant cutting the duct taped blanket free, putting the cover over the pipes, and zip tying the cover – while standing in frigid temperature and nastier wind. I have the jacket I bought for going to Idaho in ’24, and while it’s warm, it’s very short – which doesn’t help against the wind. We rushed hard to get back in, which resulted in me accidentally tossing my cheap Gerber box cutter knife into the trash with the blanket. Eh, I can pick one up for less than twenty bucks, so I wasn’t going to go digging in the trash.
Japanese Happenings – For the last year, I’ve been doing Japanese lessons on Duolingo. Am I conversant? No. Do I understand more when watching subtitled anime? Yes. Am I going to keep doing it? Yes. It’s fun and it helps me understand. I still wish it were easier.
Computer Locking Happenings – I have an Excel workbook that I use for blog-related stuff. Keeping track of the Metal Tuesday songs and anime recommendations for instance. Well, I came into my home office this week and found that my workbook suddenly had four new tabs. And charts. I was glad to see that none of the other worksheets were deleted or edited. Of course, this means one of the clowder (we have a couple of suspects) got up on my desk and walked across the keyboard. Which I never thought about before because the desk used to be raised to standing level and inaccessible. Now, I just need to start locking the computer when I’m done. Stupid cats.
Battery Station Happenings – We now have all three OStations up and running. Plus another bay. Plus sorted out battery caddies for all my rechargeables and “one-shots”. Then, The Wife helpfully added some labels.
Weight Happenings – I still haven’t fully recovered from the damage I did over the holidays. On the plus side – or minus side – I was down a couple of pounds. So, I’m holding at 272, which means 22 lbs until I hit my next tollgate.
This is what happens when we have a cold day and the doors get thrown open while Derek is upstairs in his office with the space heater running.
Conversation Happenings 2 –
The two dominant males in the clowder have been circling each other for the last couple of weeks. It’s seems like every other day we’re hearing their war cries before the fur starts flying. From one of their latest bouts:
Me: You two assholes are why we’re having to buy canned air by the case.
Canned air is about the only thing that will break them up when they’re in their war cry phase. When the fur starts flying? It sometimes helps.
Unusual Lighting Happenings – We recently added UV light to the HVAC to help keep the handler cleaner. The side effect is that coming out in the morning the vent has an eerie glow. It’s like the aliens are living in the handler closet.
Storage Shifting Happenings – Over the long weekend, The Wife and I, along with BIL and SIL, unloaded the old storage unit and moved it all over to the new storage. Good thing too, because the old storage place is too close to the really good ice cream place. Anywhoo, the shifting of stuff between the storage units resulted in finding things we forgot we had put in storage, and the need to re-organize and repack stuff. We also pulled a bunch of stuff out of the garage and donated it. There’s still a bunch of shifting that still needs to be completed. And purging.
