What A Trip!

Because it's hard to coordinate schedules between multiple families, Hubby Tony and I did not travel to see our California kids and grandkids for either Thanksgiving or Christmas. However, we just shifted our trip to January.

Tonight we returned from 12 fantastic days away. Now that the grands are in school it's harder to plan weekday activities with them, so we spent a long weekend at each household, and planned activities for me and Tony during the work week. 

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My sense of adventure adventure started on the flight from St. Louis to San Jose, when I figured out that as a Southwest Airlines Rapid Reward Member I could now get free WiFi on the plane. I felt like a big shot returning texts and emails that popped up on my tablet while I was reading my e-book. The feature worked better on some flight segments than others, so I was glad I didn't need to rely on it to get things done.

Five years ago: Ternary

What's Your Life's Movie Title?

Mine would be The Starry Guardian From the Abyss (which I would absolutely go to the movie theater to see). How about you?

Source

Five years ago: Good For Animals And People Too

Better To Be Safe Than Sorry?

I try not to respond to texts from people I don't know, but just the day before it showed up I had spoken to someone who is in sales and said she visits St. Louis once a year.

Phone number deleted for privacy

However, I put her in my phone as a contact, so if the text was from her, her name should have popped up. I checked the area code the text came from, and it wasn't even close to where she lived.

I know that if it was a spam text any type of engagement back would verify my phone number was active, so I just deleted it. It felt impolite to not respond, but I figured it was better to be safe than sorry.

Five years ago: Welcome To The Future

January Collection Of Randomness From My Camera Roll

It's time to showcase some more of the offbeat photos that have been hanging out on my photo app.

I liked this funny take on the universal restroom symbol.  Wonder if the Braille lettering is standard issue or if it's also humorous?

Even though stealing something from a gift shop was the last thing on my mind, this sign made me stop and think. Do you think it would deter a real criminal?

The Botanical Garden Arboretum found a way to make their hand dryer a decorative element in the bathroom by shrink-wrapping it. 

One of the restaurants we went to in Greece had packaged eating utensils. I've never seen that for reusable items.

This is the extra toilet paper roll holder at the vet office we take our foster cats to. I thought it was pretty appropriate. 

Five years ago today: Scarf Up

I'm Having A Moment!

You may remember that back in 2025, Dictionary.com named 6-7 (six-seven) its Word of the Year. 

This morning I was talking with Son Tony and family. Because today is my natal day, the topic of how old I was came up. When I said I was 67, the kids all broke out in a cacophony of "6-7" that went on until they ran out of steam.

Hooray For Me!

Hubby Tony and I have a newspaper subscription that includes the e-edition six days a week and one physical paper on Sunday. Recently the company discontinued the printed Monday edition, but includes those puzzles with the Sunday ones. I've been enjoying the extra crossword and word puzzles, which last me for days.

Even though I am better at putting together words than I am at anything to do with numbers, I even occasionally take a stab at completing the Sudoku. If you're not familiar with the puzzle, the goal is to fill a 9x9 grid with the numbers 1-9, ensuring each number appears only once in every row, column, and 3x3 box. The Monday puzzle has a difficulty of one star, but I usually only get halfway before my faulty logic trips me up.

Today, for the first time in history I actually completed an entire puzzle!

 Five years ago: Twice Ten

Refrigerator Refresh

This morning the refrigerator was looking pretty empty, and before I went to the store for a big shopping trip I did one of my least favorite chores--cleaning the refrigerator.

I tend to go months between cleanings because of the way the refrigerator fits snugly between the cabinets and the wall. Unless the entire unit is pulled out a couple of feet, the door doesn't open wide enough to allow the shelves or produce bins to come out.

I started with the produce bins. Each contained a handful of items, which I temporarily moved to a shelf. The bottom was full of vegetable and fruit detritus, which I dumped in the trash. I scrubbed the bins in a sink of soapy water to remove the mystery blobs stuck on the sides, then Hubby Tony dried them for me. Before I put the bins back I swept out the onion peels that had fallen to the bottom of the fridge and gave it a wipe.

Instead of taking out the shelves I moved the items on each and gave everything a cleaning lick and a prayer-just enough to get by. I did the same on the walls and door bins, marveling at how much 'ick' had accumulated.

Ordinarily Part Two of the job would be tackling the freezer, but today there was too much food in there. And my attempt at Part Three (cleaning the coils and underneath) wouldn't win any awards since I only took off the front plate and cleaned what I could from there. However, I am calling the job good enough done.

Needpix

How about you-how often do you clean your refrigerator?

Five years ago today: Rack Receptacles

It Lasted Forty-Five Years

Hubby Tony and I try to follow the tradition of removing our Christmas decorations after Epiphany (which celebrates the visit of the three Wise Men to Jesus). The actual feast day is January 6th, but in the United States the Catholic church has moved the observance to the first Sunday after January 1st.Because of our schedules this year, we chose to put everything away on Sunday.  

I enjoy reminiscing over all the ornaments when I put them on the tree, and again when I take them off. A couple actually go back to 1980, the year we got married. Tony was only a couple of years into his career job, and I was still in college.

To save money Tony went with a friend out to the friend's parents farm to get a tree. They underestimated how tall the tree was; our living room had ten-foot ceilings and the tree reached to the top. We had to use fishing line attached to the wall to keep it from toppling over. A tree like that needed a lot of ornaments, which we hadn't acquired yet. I improvised by cutting pictures out of magazines and gluing them to card stock. There may have even been a paper chain draped around the branches.

Most of those first year ornaments are long gone, but one that had survived was made by sticking adhesive letters on a large blue glass orb. As you can imagine it looked a little ragged, but held a lot of memories. This year when I took it off the tree it hit against another ornament, which cracked a large hole into the side.

Can you see the hole by my thumb?

It was sad to scoop up the shards of glass and throw everything away. I wondered if there was some type of superstition about breaking a personalized ornament, but according to the Internet I think I'm safe.

Five years ago today: A Yam Is Not Always A Yam

Contact List Competence

Over the last decade I've held several service positions for a fellowship. My newest one started four days ago. As the Communications person I will be quarterbacking communications to other members in Missouri, and eventually reviving a dormant newsletter.

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The fellowship has a Google Workspace account for non-profits which will allow me to send out messages via a mail merge. (If I decide to get fancy with it I can set up an even add the person's name.) For the past few days I've been working on coming up with a solid contact list. The information is in one of four places, but one of those places actually has three different categories. And there's some overlap in the categories. 

I started out trying to put everything into a Excel spreadsheet and only confused myself. Next I tried Google Sheets, but since I don't know much about its commands I got angry and had to walk away. Eventually I sent an email to the person who did the job last year, then went out for a walk. 

Along the way another possible way to put together the list occurred to me. Back at home I manipulated the information I had and uploaded it into Google Contacts. then added categories so I can send out messages to some or all of them. I composed and sent a test message to everyone on my list by category. 

When it showed up in my personal inbox I was so excited I jumped up and started dancing around! 

It didn't take me long to realize that anyone who was in more than one category would have received the message more than once, so I started cleaning up the list. And I've already gotten a few automated responses that some of the addresses are not valid, so that's still more work to do.

Five years ago today: Thank God Its Monday

Neighborly

Earlier in the year a cork board with a bunch of push pins appeared on the wall next to the door leading out to the garage. At the top of the board there was a piece of paper that announced it was a "Community Posting Board". At the bottom of the board was a "Let's Go Blues" poster (for the NHL hockey team). Based on the fact that the downstairs neighbor had just retired, he seems to be a huge hockey fan, and the board had some fade lines showing where previous things had been tacked on I suspected he was the installer, but I thought it was a handy thing to have there.

I may have been one of the few in the building who thought that, because the board hasn't gotten much use. Over the months a couple of business cards were pinned there. One day I found a grocery store receipt laying on the floor and stuck it on. Eventually a calendar showed up. 

December's page had a nice generic snowy landscape. This morning I was taking the trash down to the garage and noticed that the calendar was still showing the old month. Even though I wasn't the "owner" I went ahead and changed the page. January has a large eagle perched on a snow bank with icy water in the background. I'm going to enjoy seeing it for the next month.