all that's past is prologue...

This is Winston. He's the image for this post because he can quite often be a bag of d*cks. He pees on the orchid stand, chases the cats, and barks at sunbeams. Brutus, sweetly sleeping beside him in this particular picture, can also be a d*ck, especially when he barks his tiny, fast becoming-blind-and-deaf head off because he thinks the other dogs need to go outside. (but in general, they are Good Boys and I love them). These two serve as a reminder that living beings are complex. No one (with a few exceptions I won't go into here) is completely horrible pond scum, and also no one is absolutely perfect in every way. And, in my main point — people are going to have different views and will be passionate about them. Just because they don't agree with you does not make them terrible people. I know people are down on social media, but I generally like it, except for the small point that it has a  tendency to make us all didactic monsters. If you don't agree with someone, i...

I've been just slightly off this weekend and can't suss how to get back on track. Maybe it was Friday, where for any number of reasons we didn't get to have our usual date while B was at circus. Or B's back still hurting from a freak circus accident two weeks again, so heading in to Tria Urgent Care and being told there was not a ton that could be done besides time and rest, and figuring out her class and performance schedule in light of that. Or saying goodbye forever to a friend who used to be important to me and is now...not. Or the (horrible) weather. Or not being quite on point for yoga. Or being behind in work. or some weird health things. Or being really behind in the houses, especially yard work, and the weather this weekend not making it easy to catch up. The spring storm on April 1 really did a number on the pool, and it's either going to be really expensive to fix, or an insurance claim that potentially causes them to drop us (plus the damage to the tree...

So you might know that you can often find us at Solo Vino on Friday nights for the free wine tastings (and if not there, at Dabbler Depot...and sometimes both.) But this week, they started a first Thursday spirits tasting with Katie; my meeting got postponed, and Patrick's is later tonight, so we headed off to it. Clearly, the best decision we made all day. The featured spirits were from Liba, a "nomadic" distillery (as far as I can tell, that means some folks that met working at a distillery and decided to travel the work making alcohol from local influences.) So it was an Austrian gin (with juniper and lemons from an Italian market just over the border), and a Louisiana rum  with some spicy southern influences. We tried the spirits straight, and then tried a number of cocktails: an apple gin fizz, a martini, a rum old-fashioned, and a pineapple daiquiri.  And this is what I love about tastings at Solo Vino. You get some free booze, and of course that's great. You me...

This desk ("the responsibility desk," a term I nabbed from a long-ago boyfriend) does not look like much of a big deal. But it represents several days of cleaning things out. Emptying drawers, looking through (and then discarding) old cards, tossing old receipts, etc. Cataloging gift cards: checking balances, noting the amounts, filing alphabetically. We have enough to eat and shop on gift cards (as long as we don't spend over $30, which seems to be the average balance, and go places that we don't normally go) for the next year. Throwing away unused gift cards where places had closed (sob, Heyday and Chinook Book).  Recycling several bags of paper. Doing the same with coupons and punch cards and points cards. I sent Patrick off to lunch with a punch card for the Naughty Greek today, and am bringing dessert to an event with a combination of Nothing Bundt Cakes lunch cards, coupons, and a gift card. I transferred 20,000 miles from my old Skymiles number to my new one. C...

If you have ever stood in our pool on a hot day and eaten big plump berries directly from our serviceberry tree, I have some bad news for you. The tree, which already had some issues, was substantially damaged from the snow this weekend. This was it before: This was some of the damage: And unfortunately, we had to go over and cut a lot of it down today (I think there's one more large trunk that needs to go, but maybe not.) So this is it now: There's other damage too, the bunnies really did a number on the lilacs and rhododendrons (though even they did not touch the horrible franken-lilac that I hate): And a huge section of the bluestone collapsed into the pool, still assessing damage there. At least the magnolias made it, though I would rather see white blossoms on them than white snow: Honestly there's soooo much to do in the yard over there to make it nice for folks that I don't even know where to start. Anyone want to help plan or plant? (or have any screamingly good...