Time just disappears now with all the extra family members around. Yesterday was fairly low-key because so many people were tired and jet-lagged. In the afternoon we walked all the children over to the school playground (the only nearby playground in this suburb, possibly the only playground in this suburb - this area does not do public open space ( Read more... )

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Great excitement and many preparations happening here today - one set of cousins is arriving this afternoon (after about a 28 hour trip) and the others (just one with his mother) will be arriving sometime in the early hours of tomorrow (Monday) morning. My daughter and son in law have been busy all morning rearranging the house to allow for an ( Read more... )

I woke up fairly early this morning (half an hour before the alarm) and with a slight headache, so I was really tempted to not go out for some early exercise. However, I made myself go, and I even did some running, which was what I had planned last night. I did a "fake parkrun", i.e. I covered 5 km, because I miss going to a real parkrun. The ( Read more... )

It's a lovely mild day today, with the temperature down to 62F/17C this morning. This means my basement has cooled down to 25.5C/78F (from 27C/81F yesterday), which is much more comfortable. Even so, I'm sitting here with a fan blowing on me for extra comfort ( Read more... )

I made the necessary change to the one form and sent it off this morning after yet another trip to the local library to use their scanner ( Read more... )

My daughter has suggested that I could move to Connecticut since there's nothing really in Maryland to keep me there apart from memories of my life there with S. My daughter wants to build an in-law apartment adjoining their house (and my son in law is in agreement with this, probably because it's been so difficult for his family having his mother ( Read more... )

I went back to the library this morning and finally got all my forms printed, signed, scanned, and emailed back to S's employer. When I was getting a guest pass I asked whether their outage yesterday was because of the Crowdstrike thing and they said it was. They were able to carry on in a limited way for the morning but were back to full ( Read more... )

Late yesterday afternoon there was a phone call which I didn't answer, but the caller left a message and it turned out to be someone from a financial advisory firm calling in response to an online form I filled and submitted on the weekend. My daughter called them back this morning (because I have a lot of trouble hearing on the phone) and we have ( Read more... )

Today I successfully made my first ever loaf of gluten free sourdough bread using the gluten free starter I've been assiduously feeding for the last two weeks. I had no idea how it was going to turn out because the process is fairly different from the usual sourdough bread I make at home and the dough was very different to work with. The dough didn ( Read more... )