Author: Peg

Had to look at the nice picture to eliminate the lingering unpleasantness of the day.

And what is unpleasant? Well, the food at the asylum. 

But what is really unpleasant is my email service. Crapped out again. I decided that twice in one week is too much. I have begun the task of moving maybe 100 email addresses to Gmail. 1Password is a help if an email address was the login. And my old emails also help. Any that I don’t find are most likely not that important. But, it is a huge pain in the tush. 

The same service that has messed up my emails hosts the blog and I can not get to the “Control Panel” to download a copy of the blog. I must say that I have been very remiss in downloading it and if it goes down all is lost. Needless to say, I am considering moving to a new hosting service. But, I have to have something to actually move. 

On this menu you will find barley, quinoa, bulgur, rice masquerading as dessert and buttery parsnips.  You will not find anything from the meat department. Surely they can do better than this.

Lazy day today. The Supreme Court continues to destroy the country. Today they made it impossible for the Feds to do much of anything about air quality and climate change. We are no longer the UNITED States. We are THE States. Now, let us see how well that works. As I recall we tried that in 1777. We are doomed. And let us eat buttery parsnips.

I could see the smoke around 5:30am from my bed. It was a house fire. Nobody was hurt. But, it didn’t help the house any.

This was last night’s beer. The beer was fine but the can was outstanding.  If you don’t live in the DC area you don’t know about the Surrender Dorothy CSX bridge graffiti. The Mormon Temple is visible as is the bridge from the Capital Beltway. (Which I drove around every day en route to work for decades.)

Just go read about Surrender Dorothy and also Surrender Donald in Wikipedia, they tell the story better than I will. 

(Not sure, but I suspect the blog has been moved to new servers.)

A neighbor came over for a little quick lesson in folding cranes. We had a good time and have agreed to meet every couple of weeks to fold. 

That was about the high light of the day. Well, the DC Gay Men’s Chorus will be performing here at The Asylum tonight. Not the entire group I am sure. And, I presume they will do a “tame” performance. Still, pretty cool alternative to bingo. 

The English bumble bees didn’t look like our Virginia bumble bees.

On the last day of the tour, we went to Upton Wold. We were shown around the estate by the owner Ian Bond. Sort of an eccentric wealthy old robber baron type. He was absolutely charming in an arrogant old-school manner.

I was pretty tired of English gardens by this time. But I rather enjoyed the 3 or 4 hours we spend wandering around his lands. Described as “as far as the eye can see”. 

A small herd of Scottish Hairy Cows AKA Coos live on the estate. For decoration.  It’s good to be rich.

Speaking of rich. Out on my fitness walk this morning. I realized that “exercise” is a luxury item. Most of the world’s population is too busy trying to just stay alive to have the luxury of going out for “exercise”. Just living is exercise enough.

I rather liked this sign. Thinking about having a tee-shirt made with that on it. 

Had a lovely restful day. I did my “fitness” walk before 7:00 am. That works a lot better than trying to do it after it gets hot.

So, what did I do? Had a nice al fresco breakfast with friends. Culled photos. Read. Folded some butterflies. Napped. And finally messed around post-processing a photo from my visit to Hidcote Manor. 

Trying hard not to complain about The Asylum’s food. It is simply dreadful. But, it’s nice to spend time with my friends. Don’t know what I would do if I didn’t have friends. Cook, I suppose.

 

After cleaning up the electronic mess, I put the macro lens on the camera and went on the little bee quest. This isn’t the “best” image – the bee should be in better focus – but – I like the little hoverfly.

And what was the electronic mess? Most of my emails vanished yesterday. I discovered it last night. I thought Google had changed some rules and it wasn’t accepting my forwarded traffic. Wrong, my email service wasn’t getting the messages. It was late and I was tired. I told myself I would get a good night’s sleep and attack the problem in the morning. Well, I did not get a “good night’s sleep”. 

Morning came. I messed around with the problem. Finally had to “chat” with someone in India. After much discussion, the chat person decided that Spam Assassin was incorrectly set up. And this was my fault? I don’t think so.  Anyhow, about 24 hours of traffic vanished. Spam Assassin assassinated all of my incoming emails. But, everything seems to be OK now. 

I am thinking that it might be time to simplify my email life. Just change everything to Gmail. It all ends up in Gmail anyhow. 

Simplification seems to be important as one ages. 

And, when I was chatting with someone in India, they told me that this very blog was going to be moved to a new server soon. So, I am expecting problems. 

Ain’t technology grand. To err is human, it takes a computer to really mess things up!

The Asylum works really hard to be welcoming to the LGBTQ+ community. Part of it is enlightened self-interest.  Elderly LGBT individuals in this area are some of the original DINKs. They have money and no kids to take care of them. Part of it is just plain doing the right thing. 

Today we had a little Pride Parade. Above is retired Reverend Madeline. She is happily showing off her WWJD rainbow bracelet. 

Carlton picked up pennies. Well actually, he would cheerfully pick up quarters. But mostly one finds pennies. He would sometimes endanger life and limb stopping mid-street to bend down for a penny. But as I wander around, any time I see a penny, I pick it up (sometimes endangering life and limb myself). I figure that penny is just Carlton’s way of saying Howdy. And,  he is checking to see if I am paying attention to the cash register.

As for the dollar bill butterfly, I am getting interested in folding butterflies again.

A fellow inmate here at The Asylum expressed an interest in making cranes. Figured that I should fold a few before I offered to teach. 

Major activity today was all manner of accounting and bookkeeping. Also reviewed my 2021 taxes before the CPA files them. And rearranged the deck chairs on the Titanic – AKA – my investment portfolios. 

So, except for folding a few cranes, I did adult stuff today.

Exactly seven years ago, I signed on the dotted line and wrote the large check for the Old Bat Cave. June 24, 2015.  I am not the happiest camper here. But, I am glad that the deed is done. And that I didn’t have to worry every year “is this the year that I move to an old folks home? 

But most importantly, if I hadn’t moved in when I did I would have missed 7 years with the very best friends that any old woman could ever have. 

Grateful that Carlton didn’t ask me to take care of his collection of “musical” washboards. They did not make the trip to The Asylum.

Folded some paper and stuck them on poster board. My “artistic” contribution to Pride Month. I decided, at this late point in my life, to start an origami diary. A dead tree and pencil diary. We’ll see what comes of it. I should have started it when I started doing origami “seriously”.

Went for a walk. Took a picture. Also processed all of the mail. The only thing that is still outstanding is reviewing my tax return. That will be done by Monday. Hopefully sooner.

And I culled photos.  I will be finished culling and cataloging photos the day I die and not one day sooner.

Apparently, the chef learned about kelp as a menu item at a seminar last week. That doesn’t bode well. But, I made any batch of awesome grilled veggies for lunch today. So, I don’t have to eat kelp.

I didn’t accomplish much today. But, that’s OK. I voted. And not for the “old white guy”. Did yoga class. Took pictures. Did very little origami. 

Maybe I’ll accomplish more tomorrow. Or not.

Made a nice lunch out of some of the veggies from yesterday’s trek to the farm market. 

And, I don’t need a new crown. I just got the old one (and I do mean old, it is 40 years old) glued back in place. 

Also, checked on my investments. Ugly. Very ugly. 

It’s time to wade through a month’s worth of photographs. When I was in London, it was like maybe the Rose Bowl Parade. Except the floats didn’t move. You had to move around to see them.