USMB Coffee Shop IV

[beautress]

Wow that reminds me of the highway between Glendo and Chugwater Wyoming in January, the windiest highway in the world. The wind is relentless in winter, which starts when school does and ends in June. You're lucky if it doesn't snow on the 4th of July, and sometimes it does. In 35 years that I lived in Casper, Wyoming, we had 2 snowbitten fourths of July.

 

[beautress]

I love it. That reminded me of this British ukelele orchestra doing the theme song of "The Good, Bad & Ugly". Not only is it really good music, it really underscore the wonderful sense of humor of the Brits:

Fabulous!

 

[beautress]

Bread at Albertsons yesterday--this is their cheapest store brand--was $1.67/loaf. Hombre bought a lot of coffee on line just before the worst of the inflation hit so I haven't priced coffee lately but I bet I have to grit my teeth to buy it when we do need it.

I was at Walmart's yesterday. Their GV sandwich bread was $1.00. My Mrs. Baird's was $3.78 a loaf. Great value bread went into the basket. Everything else had prices that were the stuff of fainting. My $75 groceries with dogfood had a take home price of $226. I was speechless the rest of the way home, only to find out I forgot to buy eggs. 40 hens, no eggs. I wonder what they took away from the layer feed that jumped from $9. to $17.95 overnight. No wonder cheap eggs are $4 a dozen lately.
I will not fret about food prices any more. I will not fret about food prices any more. I will not fret about food prices any more. I will not fret about food prices any more. Yeah, right.

 

[Foxfyre]

I was at Walmart's yesterday. Their GV sandwich bread was $1.00. My Mrs. Baird's was $3.78 a loaf. Great value bread went into the basket. Everything else had prices that were the stuff of fainting. My $75 groceries with dogfood had a take home price of $226. I was speechless the rest of the way home, only to find out I forgot to buy eggs. 40 hens, no eggs. I wonder what they took away from the layer feed that jumped from $9. to $17.95 overnight. No wonder cheap eggs are $4 a dozen lately.
I will not fret about food prices any more. I will not fret about food prices any more. I will not fret about food prices any more. I will not fret about food prices any more. Yeah, right.

Yep. I was out of pretty much everything when I went yesterday, and I have a really good instinct on how much a basket food of groceries will cost. My $150/worth of pre-inflation groceries were over $250. Well when we can't afford to eat, Hombre and I both still need to lose some weight.

 

[SFC Ollie]

Saturday morning!

Monsters lead such innnnteresting lives.

Let the cartoon begin!

Classic.

 

[beautress]

Classic.

I agree!!. I always laugh when Puddy Tat gets outmaneuvered by Tweety Bird. Mr. Oddball delivered a very funny one, and I enjoyed it very much!

 

[beautress]

Today, one of the 9 puppies I found had his eyes halfway unstuck. He's one of the blander tan ones with few white markings, but all of them resemble the Jack Russell Terriers said to have sired Miss Songie. However, she's huge compared to terriers, but their ears are unlike anyone elses, and all these puppies had ears like JRTs.
These resemble Songie's little ones, but she is a reddish tan color, all over with no spots. All her babies have markings like JRTerriers, but they will likely grow up to be at least 20-30" tall because songie is big, but her hair is about 1/4 inch long only. She's a real shorthair, and has a lovely, sweet disposition most of the time unless someone comes around, which is daily lately.

Just some shots that look like Songie's babes: 4 of them are all tan, 3 of them have unique full-body tan spots mainly; one is dark brown with white ring around the neck. Most of them have white on the chest regardless of color except for the 4 tans ones, a couple of them are solid color, and the other 2 have white underneath side

They're still scooching around at my house. I better check all 9 of them if the first one opened his eyes an hour ago. Nope. Well, I hadn't named him yet, but "Peepers" seems a good name for him. I looked them over, but only Peepers can see, and he is actually walking on his paws now, and he's using sight to his advantage of getting the best station on mommie as she feeds them the whole time they're not sound asleep. Today, for the first time I took her to the store with me, and Miss Songie enjoyed the short trip, probably around an hour, and the first time she's been anywhere in the car for a couple of weeks. Peepers now has both eyes open. I looked at all of them, but didn't see any opening their eyes. When they're not nursing they tend to bobble around and suck on each other if they can't find their mommie. One likely sucked on Peeper's face, but I didn't see it. Either that or he IS the biggest of them all, judging from his plump baby fat around the middle. It's not excessive fat, but newborns sorta resemble little elongated blobs. All 9 of them have the same body type. Their ears look so funny, like all the newborn JR.Terriers I could find onlne like those above.^^^^

 

[Foxfyre]

Today, one of the 9 puppies I found had his eyes halfway unstuck. He's one of the blander tan ones with few white markings, but all of them resemble the Jack Russell Terriers said to have sired Miss Songie. However, she's huge compared to terriers, but their ears are unlike anyone elses, and all these puppies had ears like JRTs.
These resemble Songie's little ones, but she is a reddish tan color, all over with no spots. All her babies have markings like JRTerriers, but they will likely grow up to be at least 20-30" tall because songie is big, but her hair is about 1/4 inch long only. She's a real shorthair, and has a lovely, sweet disposition most of the time unless someone comes around, which is daily lately.

Just some shots that look like Songie's babes: 4 of them are all tan, 3 of them have unique full-body tan spots mainly; one is dark brown with white ring around the neck. Most of them have white on the chest regardless of color except for the 4 tans ones, a couple of them are solid color, and the other 2 have white underneath side
View attachment 717771View attachment 717793
View attachment 717787View attachment 717786
They're still scooching around at my house. I better check all 9 of them if the first one opened his eyes an hour ago. Nope. Well, I hadn't named him yet, but "Peepers" seems a good name for him. I looked them over, but only Peepers can see, and he is actually walking on his paws now, and he's using sight to his advantage of getting the best station on mommie as she feeds them the whole time they're not sound asleep. Today, for the first time I took her to the store with me, and Miss Songie enjoyed the short trip, probably around an hour, and the first time she's been anywhere in the car for a couple of weeks. Peepers now has both eyes open. I looked at all of them, but didn't see any opening their eyes. When they're not nursing they tend to bobble around and suck on each other if they can't find their mommie. One likely sucked on Peeper's face, but I didn't see it. Either that or he IS the biggest of them all, judging from his plump baby fat around the middle. It's not excessive fat, but newborns sorta resemble little elongated blobs. All 9 of them have the same body type. Their ears look so funny, like all the newborn JR.Terriers I could find onlne like those above.^^^^

How adorable!! Is the mama dog Foxhound? Bird dog? Do you know who the father is?

 

[Foxfyre]

Wow that reminds me of the highway between Glendo and Chugwater Wyoming in January, the windiest highway in the world. The wind is relentless in winter, which starts when school does and ends in June. You're lucky if it doesn't snow on the 4th of July, and sometimes it does. In 35 years that I lived in Casper, Wyoming, we had 2 snowbitten fourths of July.

As I recall Casper is roughly the same elevation as Albuquerque but probably more than 700 miles north of us so I can believe early summer snows would be possible there. We certainly had snowflakes now and then in late June when we lived up on the mountain but we were roughly at 7,500' there.

 

[beautress]

How adorable!! Is the mama dog Foxhound? Bird dog? Do you know who the father is?

She's a combination of Jack Russell Terrier, some kind of very beautiful larger hound. She had palest of blue eyes when I took her away from her mommie. Two months later, they were a beautiful shade of medium brown, and two months after that, a little blue spot appeared on her lower left iris, and it is there to this day. All brown except for a 1/15th spot of palest blue. The puppy that opened its eye a couple of hours ago has dark eyes, but it may take a couple of more days for him to have a more certain color than just "dark."
She is bigger and stronger than her mother was. And from the difference in color, spots, neck rings, and white chests, tippy tails of dark or white, but in half of them their feet are white, and their mother has a couple of white toes, not like the father. I don't know what kind of dog their father is, but he is dark red orange, has the neck ring, white chest, and all white feet. He has hair that is about 3/4" long, and it is wavy in the areas where the red runs a boundary with the white patches. The dad is "Red, and I can't remember the type of dog, except that he may be useful in herding cows. He's an inch shorter than Miss Songie, but is a very beautiful dog in every way. He very much enjoys running distances in no time, so whatever he is, he's almost as active as Jack Russels are, and kind of looks like a spaniel, except shorter hair, and super active when outdoors. He has this strange habit of hugging me, until I finally put my foot down about his jumping up and digging in with his front toenails. He's doing less of it, and is gentler than the oaf that he was at first. I really need to ban his jumping up on people behavior. Peepers still has his eyes open. I just noticed that Ring-ring, also a male, has shiny places where the slits were, so he's trying to open his eyes, too. None of the girls are, though, even the 2 biggest girl dogs.

 

[Foxfyre]

She's a combination of Jack Russell Terrier, some kind of very beautiful larger hound. She had palest of blue eyes when I took her away from her mommie. Two months later, they were a beautiful shade of medium brown, and two months after that, a little blue spot appeared on her lower left iris, and it is there to this day. All brown except for a 1/15th spot of palest blue. The puppy that opened its eye a couple of hours ago has dark eyes, but it may take a couple of more days for him to have a more certain color than just "dark."
She is bigger and stronger than her mother was. And from the difference in color, spots, neck rings, and white chests, tippy tails of dark or white, but in half of them their feet are white, and their mother has a couple of white toes, not like the father. I don't know what kind of dog their father is, but he is dark red orange, has the neck ring, white chest, and all white feet. He has hair that is about 3/4" long, and it is wavy in the areas where the red runs a boundary with the white patches. The dad is "Red, and I can't remember the type of dog, except that he may be useful in herding cows. He's an inch shorter than Miss Songie, but is a very beautiful dog in every way. He very much enjoys running distances in no time, so whatever he is, he's almost as active as Jack Russels are, and kind of looks like a spaniel, except shorter hair, and super active when outdoors. He has this strange habit of hugging me, until I finally put my foot down about his jumping up and digging in with his front toenails. He's doing less of it, and is gentler than the oaf that he was at first. I really need to ban his jumping up on people behavior. Peepers still has his eyes open. I just noticed that Ring-ring, also a male, has shiny places where the slits were, so he's trying to open his eyes, too. None of the girls are, though, even the 2 biggest girl dogs.

Father sounds like a border collie mix maybe?

 

[Dragonlady]

Back from Toronto and what a great weekend it was. The picture on the left faces west from my friend’s condo. I used to work in the Weston Building - 6 sided white building in the centre of the picture, and in the tall white building behind it. The red brick building on the left is where the law firm helping me with my case is located. The entrance to the subway is in the Weston Building.

The picture on the right is the view out the breakfast nook window to the east - looking out over the Rosedale Ravine.

At one point we were driving back to the condo after the skating ended. I had been checking my phone and When I looked up I said “This all looks so familiar but I have no idea where we are. Where are we?” Avenue Road was the reply.

I lived at Avenue Road and Lawrence from 1980 to 1984 when I married my husband. Everything was familiar because for 4 years, this was my route home from downtown. So much has changed in 40 years, but there’s enough that is unchanged that I still recognized it.

When I went to Nevrens Sewing Supply it was literally boarded shut. It was a 50 year fixture in the Fashion District. Students at Ryerson’s fashion design program were sent to Nevrens for interfacings and other supplies after their first freshman class. I’ve never shopped anywhere else for pattern paper, interfacings etc.

The Fashion District used to be home to 25,000 garment union workers, who manufactured clothing for Canadian retailers. Today they are all gone. The factories are now chi chi high priced lofts.

Slowly but surely, the businesses who supplied the factories have all closed. The pandemic accelerated the process. Nevrens owners retired and sold the business. The new owners seemed to be expanding and buying out inventory as other suppliers closed one by one.

The button store was gone last year. In addition to Nevrens, all but one beading supply stores is gone - there used to be 4 or 5 in one block. The ribbon store is also gone. This breaks my heart.

 

[beautress]

How adorable!! Is the mama dog Foxhound? Bird dog? Do you know who the father is?

Someone told me, but I'm not sure I recall, though it may have been some kind of large, hound-like dog, although Song has a strawberry blonde color about her. Someone guessed it might have been a golden lab retriever, though nothing about her except her excellent disposition reminds me of a lab.

 

[Dragonlady]

Beautress those puppies are a complete cuteness overload. But 9 of them!!!! Holy cow, but you'll be overrun soon.

Foxfyre, you're right. No greater love doth a mother have for her daughter than to babysit her snake.

Rosemary got out of her tank. I went to look in on her sleeping in her log and she wasn't there!!! I put water in her dish last night when I got home. The latched opening in the top of the tank I used to put the water in, was unlatched.

And the cats were acting strangely. They're cats so that's not unusual, but this was different. I put one cat outside, and the other cat in the bathroom, once I checked it thoroughly. Just as I was starting to panic thinking she might have gotten out of the apartment, I walked into the kitchen and saw her head poking out from behind the litter box heading into the sewing room.

Watching Swamp People pays off. Using my right hand to distract her, I grabbed her with my left hand behind the head, then kept her from wrapping round my arm, by using my right hand to grab her body. She was not happy about going back in the tank but I lowered her in and let her go. She's now testing every inch of that tank looking for a way out again.

The opening in the top of the tank is now securely latched and there's a rock sittiing on it.

 

[beautress]

Back from Toronto and what a great weekend it was. The picture on the left faces west from my friend’s condo. I used to work in the Weston Building - 6 sided white building in the centre of the picture, and in the tall white building behind it. The red brick building on the left is where the law firm helping me with my case is located. The entrance to the subway is in the Weston Building.

The picture on the right is the view out the breakfast nook window to the east - looking out over the Rosedale Ravine.

At one point we were driving back to the condo after the skating ended. I had been checking my phone and When I looked up I said “This all looks so familiar but I have no idea where we are. Where are we?” Avenue Road was the reply.

I lived at Avenue Road and Lawrence from 1980 to 1984 when I married my husband. Everything was familiar because for 4 years, this was my route home from downtown. So much has changed in 40 years, but there’s enough that is unchanged that I still recognized it.

When I went to Nevrens Sewing Supply it was literally boarded shut. It was a 50 year fixture in the Fashion District. Students at Ryerson’s fashion design program were sent to Nevrens for interfacings and other supplies after their first freshman class. I’ve never shopped anywhere else for pattern paper, interfacings etc.

The Fashion District used to be home to 25,000 garment union workers, who manufactured clothing for Canadian retailers. Today they are all gone. The factories are now chi chi high priced lofts.

Slowly but surely, the businesses who supplied the factories have all closed. The pandemic accelerated the process. Nevrens owners retired and sold the business. The new owners seemed to be expanding and buying out inventory as other suppliers closed one by one.

The button store was gone last year. In addition to Nevrens, all but one beading supply stores is gone - there used to be 4 or 5 in one block. The ribbon store is also gone. This breaks my heart.

Sounds like you have some really neat stores, and it's sad to see a great store go. Do you quilt, embroider, crochet or do ceramics/pottery? You can make jewelry out of just about any craft, and you can make your own beads of clay and decoupage. Glassmaking would be a good hobby, but a little dangerous for anyone who got as clumsy as me in the last 10 years. With glass, you can make stained glass in colors and shapes you like, but what a time glutton you'd have on your hands, to learn such a skill. OTOH, if you want to make a living I can see you designing wonderful things that people would pay a fortune for. Stained glass makes beautiful oval set-ins on a wooden door, porthole window, etc. But it's heavy, it's tricky, and you really need a superior teacher to learn the craft. And if you manufactured beads, you'd likely be a successful entrepreneur at it. One of the best quilt shows I've ever seen was at Toronto in the fall of 2006 when we took the former Orient Express from Toronto to Vancouver and had the sheer joy of watching geese along the fields by the train tracks teaching their goslings how to fly. The historian on the train we took explained everything about Canada which we'd never heard of before, and we took bus trips in the daytime at Ottawa, and beheld the awesome Lake Louise and found a store that sold amazing Jasper beads in a town by the same name along the tracks, while we took a day bus to visit the 7 glaciers you are supposed to see from beautiful Lake Louise. I did fall in love with glacier blue, and it's become my favorite color as a result of our 9-day trip across the Canadian lands, east to west. I am currently crocheting a glacier blue dishrag for my kitchen, from lightweight cotton yarn. When we got home, I spent a year collecting a set of Lenox China that featured glacier blue and lovely flowers. It took a year and a half to collect a full set, but I never did find a teapot in the set that I could afford. They started at around $700. on a good day, but I never did find an adopt-a-teapot price. <giggle> I did find 12 of everything else, but my husband was not comfortable with entertaining, so there it sits in the glassed-in buffet. I could stare at the colors all day sometimes, if I wern't so busy with crocheting things other people would never spend 30 hours on making 1 lace dishrag. But I would!

 

[beautress]

Father sounds like a border collie mix maybe?
View attachment 717880

I'm gonna faint. Except for Red's dark red show-stopping coat, that looks like him very much. It's odd how the puppies all have ears like a Jack Russell Terrier, but a full half of them have some of the markings like your border collie pic, without the longish hair.

They're all trim as their short-haired mother, Songie. The puppies are drama queens, both boy and girls. A lot of them are males, but there are at least 3 girl doggies. Their mother has made them plump, but plump seems to come before growth. Thanks for letting me know his breed. The woman who gave him to me didn't mention his breed, but he was the last one, and she was eager to get him a new home. He's the happy-go-luckiest dog I've ever been blessed with. Watching them nurse is like watching a bull riding contest at a rodeo. Poor Miss Song. They yank her "equipment" around a lot, and she falls asleep as if it didn't matter that they were brutish ruffians.

 

[beautress]

Well, gotta run down to good will and see if I can find another cheapie quilt. This one needs to be laundered after a week and a half of overuse. the puppies will still need their soft bed, and their mommie is guaranteed to chew up the foam inner core if I don't' sew the around edges of the little foam mattress make-do bed so she can't do that. She ate both my couch cushions and the love seat good and proper, and when I went into another room to get the quilt sewn to cover the make-do mattress, I found a few little tufts the obsessive Miss Songie tore out in my short absence. It's a good thing I only spent 4 minutes away. Another few minutes, and that cushion would be a sea of tufts. Everybody has faults, and Miss Songie's is eating cushions and sundry carved wood dining room chairs.

 

[beautress]

As I recall Casper is roughly the same elevation as Albuquerque but probably more than 700 miles north of us so I can believe early summer snows would be possible there. We certainly had snowflakes now and then in late June when we lived up on the mountain but we were roughly at 7,500' there.

Well, some people are allergic to freon that is said to be in natural chill country, and I may be one of them. It was so cold, I'd get bronchitis, pneumonia or pleurisy every year in cold weather. There's what seems to be a good tv show on Alaska, but I can't bear to watch snowy movies or even skits filmed in icy weather because of being sick all the time when the thermometer dropped below 50 all the way down to minus 40 in any given January there. That does not exclude similar chills in other months. Brr-r--r-r-r. I guess that's what I get for living my childhood and school years mainly in subtropical Houston, where we frequently wore shorts on Christmas day because it didn't get cold until the week after Christmas.
Have to get ready for my spare quilt hunt. See ya!

 

[Foxfyre]

I'm gonna faint. Except for Red's dark red show-stopping coat, that looks like him very much. It's odd how the puppies all have ears like a Jack Russell Terrier, but a full half of them have some of the markings like your border collie pic, without the longish hair.

They're all trim as their short-haired mother, Songie. The puppies are drama queens, both boy and girls. A lot of them are males, but there are at least 3 girl doggies. Their mother has made them plump, but plump seems to come before growth. Thanks for letting me know his breed. The woman who gave him to me didn't mention his breed, but he was the last one, and she was eager to get him a new home. He's the happy-go-luckiest dog I've ever been blessed with. Watching them nurse is like watching a bull riding contest at a rodeo. Poor Miss Song. They yank her "equipment" around a lot, and she falls asleep as if it didn't matter that they were brutish ruffians.

Border Collies are indeed a wonderful breed. Working dogs and need lots of running room, but loyal, gentle, great fur friends.

 

[Dragonlady]

Sounds like you have some really neat stores, and it's sad to see a great store go. Do you quilt, embroider, crochet or do ceramics/pottery? You can make jewelry out of just about any craft, and you can make your own beads of clay and decoupage. Glassmaking would be a good hobby, but a little dangerous for anyone who got as clumsy as me in the last 10 years. With glass, you can make stained glass in colors and shapes you like, but what a time glutton you'd have on your hands, to learn such a skill. OTOH, if you want to make a living I can see you designing wonderful things that people would pay a fortune for. Stained glass makes beautiful oval set-ins on a wooden door, porthole window, etc. But it's heavy, it's tricky, and you really need a superior teacher to learn the craft. And if you manufactured beads, you'd likely be a successful entrepreneur at it. One of the best quilt shows I've ever seen was at Toronto in the fall of 2006 when we took the former Orient Express from Toronto to Vancouver and had the sheer joy of watching geese along the fields by the train tracks teaching their goslings how to fly. The historian on the train we took explained everything about Canada which we'd never heard of before, and we took bus trips in the daytime at Ottawa, and beheld the awesome Lake Louise and found a store that sold amazing Jasper beads in a town by the same name along the tracks, while we took a day bus to visit the 7 glaciers you are supposed to see from beautiful Lake Louise. I did fall in love with glacier blue, and it's become my favorite color as a result of our 9-day trip across the Canadian lands, east to west. I am currently crocheting a glacier blue dishrag for my kitchen, from lightweight cotton yarn. When we got home, I spent a year collecting a set of Lenox China that featured glacier blue and lovely flowers. It took a year and a half to collect a full set, but I never did find a teapot in the set that I could afford. They started at around $700. on a good day, but I never did find an adopt-a-teapot price. <giggle> I did find 12 of everything else, but my husband was not comfortable with entertaining, so there it sits in the glassed-in buffet. I could stare at the colors all day sometimes, if I wern't so busy with crocheting things other people would never spend 30 hours on making 1 lace dishrag. But I would!

I knit, crochet and sew. I also design skating and athletic clothing for children, and I use beads and stones in making them. I don't have enough time to finish all the stuff I'm working on now, much less make beads or stained glass. I'm always happiest when people want to stone their own dresses. I've had to give up the fine lace crochet, because the arthritis is in my hands. The last time I crocheted Christmas doilies, my hands ached for days after I finished.

On Sunday, I took my friend out for a nice brunch. There was always lots of restaurants and stores and a very busy business district at Yonge & St. Clair. I lived down by the Lakeshore, so in the morning, when everyone was heading south on the subway, I was going north. Getting a seat wasn't a problem.

All of the stores, restaurants and shops along the east side of Yonge Street, are gone, being replaced by 70 storey office towers. I looked around at all of the two and three storey buildings along the street, and thought about all of the air rights changing hands. I won't recognize the place soon.