Megameter Monday

megameter ~ instrument for determining longitude by observing stars

When the grandbaby was over for a swim on the weekend, she showed off her toenails which had been painted a sea-green. So yesterday I thought “why not?” and pulled out my various bottles of nail polish. After much deliberation I chose a bright red and proceeded to paint my toenails . . . and part of my toes.

To be fair, the nail polish was a little on the drippy side, but I honestly can’t remember ever making such a mess of nail polish before. I did manage to clean it up enough that it didn’t look like I dipped my toes in blood, but it took some doing. Guess I’m a little out of practice.

I now understand where the expression “it’s muggy outside” came from. It’s an accurate description of hot, humid weather. You step outside and it feels like you’ve been mugged. We had a heat warning in effect all of last week and it’s continuing on into this week too. I have now fully embraced the whole ‘close up the windows and turn on the central air’. Even when there’s not a lot of difference in the temperature, there’s a huge difference in the humidity.

It’s a good think my gardens are pretty low maintenance, I haven’t had to brave the heat to do much to them. But the beans, peas, and tomatoes all have blossoms on them, so pretty soon I’ll have to be getting out there with my basket to pick beans.

Meanwhile, this year’s bumper crop from my neighbour has been leaf lettuce. Every few days there’s a knock on my door and another bag of lettuce is handed over. It’s really good lettuce too, and perfect for wraps.

Speaking of sharing, the daughter had some Amish Friendship Bread starter that she shared with me a few weeks ago. I dutifully did the mushing and the adding, and at the appropriate time I divided it. And then I figured, why not give the recipients a taste of what they’ll end up with and made three mini loaves to include with the starter and instructions when I passed it along.

Well, serves me right for not reading the instructions. One of the ingredients was pudding mix, which I don’t keep in my cupboard. So halfway through mixing the dough it was off to the store I went, stood in line to get in, stood in line to check out, then came home and finished my bread. Oh, the things we do to get rid of that Amish starter. LOL

Yesterday morning I decided to have my morning coffee out on the deck. It was already starting to warm up, but the neighbourhood was quiet and I could hear the bells from one of the churches playing hymns.

What a peaceful start to the week – I hope it keeps up.

Moslings Monday

moslings ~ thin strips taken off when dressing skins

Hot enough for you out there? It’s so hot here I caught a couple of hobbits trying to throw a ring into my back yard. ;-)

Seriously though, it’s been insanely hot for the last few weeks, and really dry (in spite of the high humidity). There’s a fire ban in effect, which means no outdoor fires, and the water in Lake Ontario is down 11 inches from last year. If anyone in this area has a green lawn, you can be sure it’s been spray painted.

However, we have been adding water to our pond on a regular basis to keep this guy happy:

I had big plans for last week. I was going to get the transcripts done by Monday and then spend the rest of the week catching up on things I’ve let go this last month, including my writing. But if you know me at all, you should know that things seldom work out the way I would like them to.

I was pretty much on target with the transcripts, despite the break for the aquarium last Saturday, but then ... somehow we ended up hosting a lunch time barbeque for some of the hubby’s family on Monday. And everyone had so much fun they came back to have Chinese take-out for dinner.

So ... during my breaks from transcribing on Sunday I gave the house a thorough cleaning - at least the areas most likely to be seen by family. The dining room carpet was literally grey with cat hair, it had been that long since I’d taken the time to vacuum. I must say, it was pretty impressive, the amount I got accomplished in so short a time - both transcribing and cleaning. :-D

And while it would have been nice to just relax between lunch and dinner on Monday, I used the time to get all but the last two minutes of my last transcript done. And when I returned to my office after everyone was gone again to finish it, I discovered someone had shut off my work computer. I can only assume it was one of the visiting kids who thought they were turning it on (I had the monitor turned off but left the programs running in anticipation of returning to them later). *sigh*

However, all’s well that ends well. I didn’t lose too much of my work, although I was up rather late finishing up. We had a nice visit with family and the transcripts are finished. This batch at least, I’ll be getting another batch in September so you can expect the whining to start up again then.

As well as the whole house cleaning thing, one of the other things I let slide over the past few weeks was exercise. I stopped going to the gym, and then last week I didn’t even ride the bike - by doing so I had two extra hours in the morning for transcribing. One of my legs starting hurting ‘cause I’d been blowing off my exercise routine, now it’s hurting because I’ve started back up again. So this week I’ll be getting back into the saddle, so to speak.

And, because last week the daughter was on vacation and didn’t need me for babysitting, naturally I came down with a cold. It started out as a bit of a sore throat, accompanied by sniffles last weekend but I figured it was just because of where the fan in my office was positioned, pretty much blowing right in my face. But by Wednesday, it was a full blown cold.

So Wednesday I was miserable, and Thursday I was feeling all muzzy-headed from the cold medication and spent the day reading. Which means, I really didn’t get the things I’d planned on doing ... done.

But I read a good book, and I got to relax without feeling guilty. I might have wished for the weather to be a little cooler, but we can’t have everything and at least I was able to sit at the end of the house where the air conditioner was. :-D

Hopefully this week I’ll be able to get a start on that whole getting organized thing.

Metaphysis Monday

metaphysis ~ change in form; metamorphosis

Well, I'm finally on the new medication, and not a moment too soon. Last week the tiredness and lack of focus reached epic proportions. It was very frustrating. But I saw the nurse practitioner on Friday and the first thing she told me was my blood sugar was up. Gee, do you think?

But it meant she had a green light to prescribe the new medication and went over all the side effects with me. Several of them are the same as I experience with Diabetes anyway and so far I haven't really experienced any others, but I'm starting out on a low dose so that may change next month when they put me on the full dose. And many people don't experience any side effects at all, so maybe I'll be one of the lucky ones.

In the meantime, even after only two doses my glucose level has come down. I'm hoping it'll continue to come down so I can be back to normal. Well, as normal as I ever am. ;-)

Summer has definitely arrived. We've even had the air conditioners on a couple of times. And yesterday it was so hot I skipped my workout on the bike. I didn't know if I was feeling slightly queasy from the new medication or the heat, but it seemed like a good excuse to be lazy.

After a cool week last week we had a jump in temperature early Saturday morning and it's supposed to stay that way for the foreseeable future. Heat I'm okay with, it's the humidity that bothers me and it's been very damp here.

And apparently the magic bubble that protects our town from snow in the winter is also protecting us from the thunderstorms we should be having with these wild fluctuations in temperature. But no, I watched the radar images on the Weather Network and the storms pass north of us and south of us but leave a swath in the middle where we are. Not fair!

Sad to say my coyote friends seem to have moved on. We've only heard them once in the last several days and at suppertime last night we saw some black squirrels playing chase out by the pond. The squirrels had been making themselves scarce the last few weeks. We could have days go by without seeing one. I saw a couple of grey squirrels yesterday too. They wouldn't be so brave if the coyotes were still around.

And another sign the coyotes have gone was these little guys:

It's been a long time since a rabbit ventured into our backyard. But believe it or not, I've never seen two at once. These guys must be young still because they were having a ball playing chase and hopping straight up into the air. Of course then one of them had to spoil it all by helping himself to the buds off one of my roses, but they slipped under the fence into my next door neighbour's garden like it was a story from Peter Cottontail.

This week is probably not going to be a productive one, but it will be busy.

First we have my sister coming to visit today, and spending the night. She may or may not be accompanied by a couple of her grandkids. We're supposed to go to the movies tonight and then she's leaving on Tuesday.

Then Wednesday is an even I'm sure everyone has been looking forward to. The premiere of Sharknado 3: Oh Hell No!



Space Channel has been running all kinds of shark movies, including the Mega Shark series. And in a scene that could have been taken right from Jaws, just a couple of days ago a surfer was attacked by a great white shark. Because this was part of a competition, they whole thing was caught on tape. You can see the video and read the article HERE.

Thursday I'm taking the day off (whether I deserve it or not) and heading off to the casino. Just one of those things I gotta do. ;-)

And then, to nicely round off my week, on Saturday night we have a new disaster of a movie, Lavalantula!



Can't wait until Saturday to see this gem? No problem! Just got to YouTube and type Lavalantula in the search bar and you'll get several options for the entire movie.

You can thank me later. ;-)