Day Job Happenings – We got word this week that the threat of a RIF has abated. So, for the foreseeable future, I will be gainfully employed at the .gov. My position is still under review to determine if I should be at the grade I’m currently at, but I can weather a loss of grade much better than I could weather the loss of job. Plus, there’s this inexorable relief – like a Sword of Damocles has been removed.
Fourth of July Happenings – For our Fourth this year, the plan was to have dinner over at BIL and SIL’s place. SIL has her granddaughter down for a couple of weeks. I was asked to smoke some ribs for the dinner. Small problem. Rain. Plenty of rain. I still gave it a go. Worked for a bit, and then fire went out. We ended up finishing the ribs off in the oven. Not my finest smoking work, but at least folks enjoyed them.
We also had The Wife’s Niece and our grandniece over for a “sleepover” as we were going to the zoo the next day. The grandniece was very interested in my Autobot Blaster toy. It’s rugged, so I didn’t care if she manhandled it.
Dinner was good because we got to see The Wife’s Nephew and his wife. We don’t get to see her very often due to everyone’s different schedules. She works at Apple, so she gets to field all the questions about “what iPhone should I get” and such. The Wife and I have discussed with MIL that she should get a new phone. Also, we think she should get an Apple Watch. The fall protection is a big reason, but also the phone locator. We’ve been discussing it for months. Nephew’s wife had her convinced over dinner. It was very amusing.
After dinner, we shot some fireworks off in the backyard. A pretty decent Fourth.
Zoo Happenings – Saturday the group of us traveled up to Tampa to go to ZooTampa. Since I have lived in Tampa for the better part of five decades, I will always think of it as Lowry Park Zoo. We managed to get into the park just as they were doing the macaw flights. Imagine four large parrots flying at head height around a large plaza. It was pretty neat.
Sometimes I forget how big, how loud, and how pungent some of the animals are.
Here’s a series that NatGeo did a few years ago.
I would highly recommend stopping through if you are in the Tampa Bay area.
House Happenings – Over the last year or so, we’ve gone through three different lawn companies. It’s always the same. They tell us they can do everything and then it just goes down to mowing and edging the lawn. We’re on our fourth company – this one run by a cousin of The Wife’s Niece’s SO. The cousin wants to break into our neighborhood – and he considers us family – so, his team has been taking care of all those little details we asked for. Like getting rid of some shrubbery the builder put in that makes it hard to make full use of our postage stamp of a driveway. I’m sure the HOA is going to get bitchy at some point, but we’ll deal with that when it comes along.
