USMB Coffee Shop IV

[Oddball]

Saturday morning!

Beware skulking figures clad in black.

Let the cartoon begin!

 

[Hossfly]

Cooling off in Texas

 

[Dajjal]

 

[Dajjal]

 

[Foxfyre]

 

[Dragonlady]

This past week is the first week I've cooked since before my surgery. I had 60 dinners in the freezer when I left for the hospital. I could barely close the freezer door. I was in hospital/rehab for two weeks and with time away at my daughter's, plus dinners out with friends, my 60 dinners lasted me nearly 3 months.

I'm now working on refilling the freezer. Not only does this cut down cooking time, but also dishes and cleaning up in the kitchen. Cooking trashes the kitchen and I hate doing dishes. In our family, if you cooked, you didn't do dishes. Now I have to do both. The cats have both refused to help.

The Landlord sent someone to "fix" the stairs. This is the most slipshod job I have ever seen. He's devaluing his own property. Not only does it look bad, it

begs a look underneath, which is frankly, scary.

Not only does it violate the Residential Tenancy Act, and the terms of his Royal bank mortgage, both of which require all repairs to be carried out in a "good and workmanlike manner", anyone looking at this would immediately lower the value of the property. Anyone looking at the work orders would lower the value of the property, by the cost of the repairs needed.

All the repairs stay with the property, long after I'm gone, and the work orders are now part of the permanent title records of his ownership. This place is now worth half what it was when he started last summer.

I'm wondering if he's lost his mind.

 

[Foxfyre]

This past week is the first week I've cooked since before my surgery. I had 60 dinners in the freezer when I left for the hospital. I could barely close the freezer door. I was in hospital/rehab for two weeks and with time away at my daughter's, plus dinners out with friends, my 60 dinners lasted me nearly 3 months.

I'm now working on refilling the freezer. Not only does this cut down cooking time, but also dishes and cleaning up in the kitchen. Cooking trashes the kitchen and I hate doing dishes. In our family, if you cooked, you didn't do dishes. Now I have to do both. The cats have both refused to help.

The Landlord sent someone to "fix" the stairs. This is the most slipshod job I have ever seen. He's devaluing his own property. Not only does it look bad, it View attachment 679415View attachment 679416begs a look underneath, which is frankly, scary.

Not only does it violate the Residential Tenancy Act, and the terms of his Royal bank mortgage, both of which require all repairs to be carried out in a "good and workmanlike manner", anyone looking at this would immediately lower the value of the property. Anyone looking at the work orders would lower the value of the property, by the cost of the repairs needed.

All the repairs stay with the property, long after I'm gone, and the work orders are now part of the permanent title records of his ownership. This place is now worth half what it was when he started last summer.

I'm wondering if he's lost his mind.

I'm lucky I guess. Hombre doesn't like to cook. Oh he'll make toast sometimes or scramble an egg along with fry a sausage patty but that's about it. (I discourage the sausage patties.) But I do like to cook most of the time--there are those days I don't and he goes out to bring something in--and he doesn't mind doing the dishes. Pretty good deal for me.

But re those stairs, maybe the guys that have more feel for carpentry and engineering could advise you. Hombre and I have both worked as safety inspectors and it's really hard to tell for us from the photos. It really depends on how well the staircase is attached to the brick wall and how securely the steps are attached to the supports.

 

[Hossfly]

 

[Montrovant]

I’m in New York with my lady this week. We’re staying with my mother and have seen my brothers and nephews a bit, as well as having a little visit with my aunt and cousins. Today we will head to the city and visit the 9/11 memorial. It’s been a pretty good trip (although hot), but today might be a bit difficult, as it’s the first time my mom will have been able to visit the memorial.

I haven’t been posting, but I do still come here and read most days.

 

[Dragonlady]

My favourite grocery store has lean ground beef on sale this week, just in time for "cooking week", so I bought 7 lbs. Shepherds Pie - 8 servings, 2 lbs: Meat Loaf - 6 servings, 2 lbs; Spaghetti Sauce - 8 servings, 2 lbs. and Lasagna - 8 servings, 1 lb.

Spaghetti sauce is done, as is the meat loaf. Today, I'm doing new potatoes, and veggies for the meat loaf dinners, and the lasagna sauce, which needs to spend the night in the fridge before I make spinach/ricotta filling, and put it all together tomorrow. I'm also baking hermit cookies today. I made soup, salad dressings, bean salad, and pancakes over the weekend, along with salmon dill pasta sauce, and lemon herb pork chops.

I have determined that it's not that I like cooking nearly as much I like EATING. I can't stomach premade food. It tastes like wallpaper paste. Knowing how to cook and being a good cook, condemns you to always doing your own cooking, because cheap and/or junk food tastes terrible, and leaves me constipated. Good, wholesome farm fresh food I cook myself tastes delicious, and keeps me healthy.

 

[Foxfyre]

I’m in New York with my lady this week. We’re staying with my mother and have seen my brothers and nephews a bit, as well as having a little visit with my aunt and cousins. Today we will head to the city and visit the 9/11 memorial. It’s been a pretty good trip (although hot), but today might be a bit difficult, as it’s the first time my mom will have been able to visit the memorial.

I haven’t been posting, but I do still come here and read most days.

Did you lose somebody on 9/11 Montro? I don't remember ever seeing anything about that. But yes, if you did, it is so good you will be with your mom on her first visit there.

 

[Foxfyre]

My favourite grocery store has lean ground beef on sale this week, just in time for "cooking week", so I bought 7 lbs. Shepherds Pie - 8 servings, 2 lbs: Meat Loaf - 6 servings, 2 lbs; Spaghetti Sauce - 8 servings, 2 lbs. and Lasagna - 8 servings, 1 lb.

Spaghetti sauce is done, as is the meat loaf. Today, I'm doing new potatoes, and veggies for the meat loaf dinners, and the lasagna sauce, which needs to spend the night in the fridge before I make spinach/ricotta filling, and put it all together tomorrow. I'm also baking hermit cookies today. I made soup, salad dressings, bean salad, and pancakes over the weekend, along with salmon dill pasta sauce, and lemon herb pork chops.

I have determined that it's not that I like cooking nearly as much I like EATING. I can't stomach premade food. It tastes like wallpaper paste. Knowing how to cook and being a good cook, condemns you to always doing your own cooking, because cheap and/or junk food tastes terrible, and leaves me constipated. Good, wholesome farm fresh food I cook myself tastes delicious, and keeps me healthy.

I hear that. I feel my arteries hardening every time I eat fast food anywhere and that is really seldom these days. And you're right. Homemade with quality ingredients is so much better.

 

[Montrovant]

Did you lose somebody on 9/11 Montro? I don't remember ever seeing anything about that. But yes, if you did, it is so good you will be with your mom on her first visit there.

I did not. My mother was born and raised on Long Island and was on Long Island on 9/11. She had friends who worked in the city and only luck kept one from being in one of the towers that morning. I have a cousin that was working in a hospital in the city on 9/11, taking calls and trying to help people looking for missing loved ones. It was just emotional for my mother to go.

 

[Hossfly]

The Fisherman

 

[beautress]

Naughty no-nos are a lot funnier
when somebody else's dog did it!

​

 

[Hossfly]

Yesterday, Aug 10, Ft Worth had a string of 67 days of no rainfall broken. Today was another 102 day with high humidity so I broke out the pool for the ladies to cool down.

Later the cup was like........

 

[Coyote]

Hope everyone has a wonderful weekend. If anybody gets to go to Hawaii, Puerto Rico, or any of the ports that have an Oceanario area of lovely sea critters, I'd be so jealous ... My vicarious online trip to the tropics will just have to do for the time being:

View attachment 673429View attachment 673431View attachment 673432
View attachment 673438View attachment 673434View attachment 673435View attachment 673437
View attachment 673440View attachment 673441View attachment 673443View attachment 673447View attachment 673449View attachment 673445View attachment 673448​

I love those pictures! Years ago we used to have a salt water aquarium

 

[beautress]

Beautress, you would LOVE Northern Ontario. My father-in-law called it God's Country.

This is NOT our actual dock, but it looks enough like it that I could probably fool family members with this photograph. It's on Lake Vernon, just outside of Huntsville, about 50 miles from Algonquin Park.

View attachment 675747\\


The property on the other side of the bay was a small Marina, and there was no house to the left of the marina. The kids would start running at this end of the dock, and throw themselves off the end of the dock, swim back to this end of the dock and do it again.

The bay is very sheltered and the water is calm, most of the time. But if you went out past the point, into open water, it got real rough, real fast. Too rough for the canoe.

We don't get enough snow in Southern Ontario, to go out and play in the winter any more. I don't think my youngest has ever been sledding or toboganning. There's not enough snow to make it worthwhile to buy sleds where we live. The cottage is far enough north that we still got snow and lots of it. We kept our skiis and sleds at the cottage, which was winterized.

My grandkids were here for an overnight last night. We walked over to the Catholic schoolyard. The playground is a bit far for me to walk just yet, but the schoolyard is just two blocks away, and they have a playground and a soccer pitch. The back gate was locked. We started walking around to the "car gate", hoping to find it unlocked, but a guy with a nice dog tried to get in but couldn't. He said somebody had spray painted graffitti all over the school and the paved area behind it, and made a complete mess of the place. So now no one can use it after hours.

Thanks asshole!!!

You're right, Dragonlady, I do love that shared picture: It's so colorful and serene at the same time.

 

[beautress]

Yesterday, Aug 10, Ft Worth had a string of 67 days of no rainfall broken. Today was another 102 day with high humidity so I broke out the pool for the ladies to cool down.



View attachment 681019


Later the cup was like........


View attachment 681020

It's been like that here, too, except a few days ago, I drove to town and had 5 or 6 water droplets fall from the sky per minute, then it stopped and started, but mostly stopped before I got home. There wasn't one iota of droplets out here, though. And yesterday it said we'd get a break and that it would be a high of 97F, but before 5, it was 107F. They missed by about 10 degrees closer to hell.

 

[beautress]

I love those pictures! Years ago we used to have a salt water aquarium

Was it your dad's idea? My mom's brother, Uncle Wimpy, served in the Navy in WWII. By the time I was 10 years old, it was fun to go to Uncle Wimpy's and Aunt Mattie's house because every wall in the living room and dining room had rows and rows of tropical fish, each tank had a different species. There must have been a hundred tanks, all with different colored fish in each tank. They were so beautiful. *sigh.* After Aunt Mattie was gone, he moved to Australia and married a lady in Sydney he met in the war, and who was my mom's pen pal for at least 30 years before Uncle Wimpy decided to marry her, both were widowed. He passed away in Sydney 5 years later, but I know he was happy before he got lung cancer and passed, sometime in the mid 70s. Here's a modern one, but uncle Wimpy's aquariums were from wall to wall, floor to ceiling, and I don't think I'll find anything like what he had in his charming home.