How was your day?

Started by Ulrich, December 21, 2013, 13:44:09

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How was your day?

great
0 (0%)
okay
4 (100%)
not okay
0 (0%)
bad
0 (0%)
too bad
0 (0%)

Total Members Voted: 4

Voting closed: December 24, 2013, 13:44:09

Ulrich

Thank you both for your kind posts!  :smth023
It must be really hard for the close relatives (they already lost the father years ago).  :1f62a:
The holy city breathed like a dying man...

Ulrich

Stormy wind and lots of snow tonight, thus I had to clear the driveway from tons of snow...
Result: driveway clear
2 sweaty t-shirts
1 sweaty jumper
1 wet pair of boots
1 wet me...
drinking lots of water & coffee now...
The holy city breathed like a dying man...

SueC

It's funny you should say that, @Ulrich, because I had an email from a 75-year-old lady in Sweden today who told me that after thinking they weren't going to have a real winter, suddenly they have tonnes of snow!  This lady also happened to have written some fabulous children's books in the 1970s and she was my Shakespeare when I was in primary school.  I read her books to tatters.  I still read them sometimes - she wrote a long series, which was translated into German.  And she's been sending me Christmas cards for the last five years or so, which if you went and told my younger self that it was going to happen, I would never have believed.  But there you go.

I notice the voting for this has closed.  I would have voted "great" despite the fact that it was humid and horrible again with thunderstorms brewing but not actually making lightning and rain (yet?) and despite the fact that I spent a lot of it scrubbing the house before the long weekend.  I actually felt like scrubbing the floor, and this is such a rare phenomenon that I decided to exploit it to the full.  The floor now sparkles, and smells of natural lavender oil (used in hot water to mop instead of cleaning products).

Three lovely guests arrived for the weekend and I made Spaghetti Marinara for all of us.  We had apple/blueberry strudel with custard and cream for afters.  It's the start of apple harvest for us so I'm planning on making another strudel tomorrow, since it uses up 1.5 kg of apples in one hit.  We've got a Granny Smith apple tree and a Sundowner yielding like mad this year, and a small Cox' Orange Pippin, and two little espaliered trees - a Lady Williams and a Jonathan.

We also have a pear tree yielding for the first time and it's festooned with pears!  Tomorrow night, one of our guests is making us a traditional Chinese dessert that involves pears, ginger and rice, which is apparently a really festive dish, so I'm looking forward to that.

After dinner, we had a walk in the bushland to stargaze, and everyone oohed and aahed over the clarity of the Milky Way in our remote location, and the fact that you can't hear any engines at night (very occasionally you can hear a distant train if the wind comes from a particular direction).  We did hear a lot of crickets!  When we got back to the house, there was a motorbike frog trying to get into the front guest room through the French door, which has an insect curtain that these frogs have been trying to slip under!  He was a cute one, and had his picture taken by the guests, but I don't think anyone kissed him. :yum:  So I suppose we will never know now if he was really a prince.  :angel

Spot the frog:



These guys change colour to camouflage themselves.  They're green and gold amongst foliage, but look what happens when they sneak into your greenhouse:



Trying to blend in there is a different proposition.
SueC is time travelling

Ulrich

Quote from: SueC on February 28, 2020, 16:03:17This lady also happened to have written some fabulous children's books in the 1970s and she was my Shakespeare when I was in primary school.  I read her books to tatters.  I still read them sometimes - she wrote a long series, which was translated into German.  And she's been sending me Christmas cards for the last five years or so, which if you went and told my younger self that it was going to happen, I would never have believed.  But there you go.

I know this feeling. Sometimes I had to pinch myself (wondering if I were dreaming)...
But still: I want more. Why? Because it's never enough!

Quote from: SueC on February 28, 2020, 16:03:17I notice the voting for this has closed.

Yeah, I chose to revive an old topic - on second thought I should've just posted into the "What's on your mind?" thread as usual. Sorry!
The holy city breathed like a dying man...

SueC

I don't think apologies are necessary - people can still "vote" by stating how they would have voted!  :)

Would you like a special award for your Cure pun?  :angel
SueC is time travelling

Ulrich

After a bit of rain in the morning, we got "blue skies and golden sunshine" (as David Lynch likes to say on his daily LA weather updates on yt).
The holy city breathed like a dying man...

Ulrich

My day was okay (so far), I managed to change my bed sheets (necessary after some hot nights with sweat) and mowed the lawn...
The holy city breathed like a dying man...

SueC

Quote from: Ulrich on August 24, 2020, 17:33:28My day was okay (so far), I managed to change my bed sheets (necessary after some hot nights with sweat) and mowed the lawn...

Got a fan for keeping the air circulating in your bedroom?

A little eco-tip that's also kind to your skin:  If you're sweating into your sheets, it's often enough to just put them on a rinse cycle with a good shake of (real) lavender oil - that way you don't have detergent residues, and the sheets smell wonderful - and you're only using half the water, and no unnecessary detergent - plus your sheets are on the line in around 15 minutes.  Detergents are really only necessary if your fabrics are greasy and/or dirty/stained, or you're ill with some contagious pathogen.  So, they're often unnecessary for washing your sheets or your bath towels.   :)

My day was great - the house got really clean thanks to my finding a burst of energy, and meanwhile the machinery wizards were doing a fabulous job draining the "swamp" that's been between the house and what remained of the old driveway.  They enlarged our hand-dug drainage pond (which I can now plant out with reeds all around to make more frog habitat) and installed an overflow pipe hooked up directly to the main drain they made alongside where they're going to make the built-up driveway next day.  The drain looks the part, unlike the previous one put in ten years ago, and doesn't just funnel the water into the crossover to make a lake there which you have to slosh through opening the front gate... and they've brought in limestone as a foundation for the previously sandy crossover, and for the missing section where ten years ago the previous contractors ran out of material.

Because they've scraped away the topsoil layer where they're going to build up the roadway, and therefore had piles and piles of this stuff they needed to get rid of, they are not only solving our driveway issue, but our paddock gateway erosion problems that got bad over the last three years of drought...horses and cattle congregate near gateways, which destroys the turf there, exposing the sandy soil below, which then gets blown away by the ferocious winds here, leaving deep holes that expose fenceposts and fill with water in the winter.  Well, guess where they put all the excess and very muddy topsoil?  In the hollows that had been blown out near the gateways.  Because it's not just pure sand, it won't blow away as easily - and we're topping it with gravel and / or woodchips.   :smth023

It would have taken me 20 years to do that with a wheelbarrow.   :1f635:

In a lovely little twist, the contractor's son, whom I didn't meet until the first workday today, turned out to be someone who was in my English class 15 years ago.   :cool   I didn't recognise him - boys change so much - but he recognised me.  I had to double take when he told me who he was, because at 15 he was blonde and shaggy and impish and shorter than me and a little tubby, and now he's long and lean and towering, with a shaved head and a ZZ Top beard featuring a dark main beard and a blonde moustache!  :lol:  My brain started doing excavations and I remembered some of the books he'd read and reviewed for class, and also his music presentation, on Metallica!  He's got a couple of littlies now and plays them guitar and they dance.   :happy

And my friend Eileen arrived late in the afternoon in the middle of my trying to make a bonfire that ultimately failed.  Conditions aren't right and I would have needed serious amounts of accelerant to make this one go.  Now all we've got to show for it is a semi-burnt giant crow's nest, which we'll have to shove over and compact and try to burn closer to summer.  But - there's a hollow beneath it and it would have been nice if it had burnt, and we could have heaped excess topsoil into the hollow next day... so I was wearing full fire regalia with yellow protective jacket and helmet and goggles and gloves when my friend got here, because I'm really nervous working with liquid accelerants - I've seen too many burns from accidents.  And then the bonfire flopped, bwahahahaha.  :lol:
SueC is time travelling

Ulrich

Quote from: SueC on August 25, 2020, 00:27:54A little eco-tip that's also kind to your skin

Thanks for the "life hack" (I think that's what they call it on the net)!  :-D
The holy city breathed like a dying man...

SueC

You're welcome.  I mean, less work, less cost, friendlier to skin and environment - what's not to like?  :)
SueC is time travelling

Ulrich

After a day apparently sent directly from hell (pain in the hip, people talkin' bullshit, receiving an email with unfinished sentences), this one today is much improved.  :happy
(Well it's only mid-day, but I think it'll be positive.)
The holy city breathed like a dying man...

Ulrich

Well I was sitting here with not much to do, planning to go out, but something made me stay... and then I read it: a live stream was announced by The Damned on FB, that was only minutes away when I saw it, so of course I tuned in.

An empty stage with five chairs on it. Some guy announced Don Letts, who took one chair. He then announced the original four members of the band to sit down with him and answer questions from the journalists present. (All within distance etc.)

I'd heard rumours already about the original line-up getting back together. Indeed this is happening. Hopefully in July 2021 live shows will be back to "normal" a bit, because they're planning one last tour.

Quote from: undefinedTHE DAMNED original line-up will reunite for a UK tour in 2021. Founding members Dave Vanian, Rat Scabies, Captain Sensible and Brian James will play four shows next July, tickets are on sale this Friday 23 Oct from aegp.uk/Damned2021Tour

Being there "live" when the press conference happened, of course "made my day".  :cool
The holy city breathed like a dying man...

SueC

Quote from: Ulrich on September 24, 2020, 13:13:10After a day apparently sent directly from hell (pain in the hip, people talkin' bullshit, receiving an email with unfinished sentences), this one today is much improved.  :happy
(Well it's only mid-day, but I think it'll be positive.)

I know this was last month, but I just wanted you to know how much that description made Brett laugh in sympathy.  One of the funniest things I've ever seen is him miming bashing his own head in exasperation while being ultra-polite to a client on the telephone!  :lol:
SueC is time travelling

Ulrich

Snow, snow, snow... my day was filled with snow, it just didn't stop snowing (+wind)... I went out to move snow away several times, an hour later it looked just the same: white.  :unamused:
The holy city breathed like a dying man...

Ulrich

After a rather stressful day yesterday (work to be done + driveway to be cleared of snow), today was rather successful, the snow in the morning was very light to shovel and work went well (even a bit faster than planned).  :cool
The holy city breathed like a dying man...