Jynnan tonnix

When we bought our most recent car (a couple of years ago), the first dealer (or, rather, salesman at the dealership) that we went to totally tried to stiff us on the price. Luckily, Mr Jyn can spot games like that from a mile away. I don't do as well with the numbers side of it, but you could almost just look at him and know he was a sleazeball with his outdated, slick salesman demeanor. Ugh. Anyway, we ended up getting a Hyundai Tucson. Mostly because of the Hyundai warrantee, and Mr Jyn loves his Sonata, while I like a bigger vehicle that sits a little higher. My previous car was a Mazda 5, which I actually liked a lot better, but we ended up giving that to my daughter when both her and her husband's cars died at about the same time. But Mazda had discontinued that model a couple of years previously. The Tucson does drive well enough, and all, but the back/trunk area is not nearly as roomy as the Mazda, and since the new models were just coming out, we really wanted to get a deal on a leftover, but the only available color anywhere was black, and black cars just always remind me of Darth Vader.

Kind of off topic, but my eyes are a bit blurry from reading on my phone, and I totally read "Gracie" as "Oracle" (my eyes closed up the G, and linked the line with the dot in i). It confused me for a moment, then got me wondering how many people named Oracle ever existed. It almost does make for an interesting name...

We have always had both cats and plants. Some of the cats have been more destructive than others, but never to the point that more than the occasional plant has met it's actual doom. Last week, our almost two year old cat managed to pull down a big spider plant which had, to be fair, kind of teetering precariously on a bit of a jury-rigged plant stand (built up taller precisely to try to keep the cats from eating it) for the longest time, and scared the daylights out of himself. I decided it needed repotting, then discovered that the sheer weight of the individual plants in the pot had pulled them slowly up until the entire thing was, for all intents and purposes, just resting on top of the dirt in the pot! It is recovering now, thinned out and re-anchored, but still looking a bit flat. They are pretty resilient, though, and I have way too many baby spider plants in any case, because I can never bring myself to dispose of them when they break off for whatever reason. Same with jade plants. Ignore the renegade spoiler box. I accidentally stuck it in there trying to edit, and can't figure out how to make it go away.

I'm pretty sure I've seen "taxidermied" used in a couple of instances, but whether it's an approved term, I couldn't tell you.

That was a beautiful description, and makes me wish I had paid a bit more attention to it. I don't think we were going to be particularly near totality in any case, and didn't have eclipse glasses, so I stayed in the house. Actually, I wasn't even sure what time it was supposed to happen, and had just about forgotten about the whole thing until late afternoon, when it started looking kind of darkish outside. The only total eclipse I clearly remember seeing was way back when I was in high school, some 50 years ago, and we all had glasses and went out to look at it. There was another one somewhere along the lines, but it was cloudy that time (I don't recall where it was that we were stationed then), and a few partials, but I guess after the first few partials they kind of lose the fascination. I'd love to experience a total one again sometime, but I don't think we are due for another one in Connecticut for years.

I didn't feel it at all. I had a really rough night, so was taking a nap at the time, I guess. Mr. Jyn says he kind of felt it, but he was driving at the time, so couldn't really tell for sure. We went through a major earthquake (8.2) back in, I think it was 1992 or 1993 when we were stationed in Guam. Aftershocks for weeks afterwards! That was enough earth shaking to last me a lifetime. Back to opossums, we used to have a feral cat living under our porch, so, of course, a couple of possums moved in as well to take advantage of the free food. I do think they are actually pretty cute their own slightly nightmarish way (they do look a bit as though they might have been invented by Tim Burton). Mr. Jyn tells of one that lived in a tree outside his bedroom when he was three years old. Apparently he just loved it, and kept asking his parents for a "teddy in a tree". They did manage to find him a stuffed toy opossum, and it was his favorite toy for years. He's not quite so fond of them now, though.

It can be pretty fickle in Connecticut as well, but so far it is shaping up to be a pretty early spring. I just hope we don't get one of those late deep freezes that devastate the fruit trees by killing all the new buds just as they are about to bloom. We have a number of fruit trees which we planted when we moved here 11 years ago, and while we did finally get a real bumper crop from our apple trees last year, we have never managed to get anything from our nectarine (which is now a big and beautiful tree). So many years, it has bloomed beautifully, then either got hit with one of those late freezes, or we get a stretch of other bad weather which keeps all the pollinators away during the week or so that it blooms. And when it does set fruit, it has done beautifully for a few weeks before, inexplicably, all the fruit shrivels up and drops. A couple of years ago, we brought in a tree service to diagnose it, which they did, and treated it, and we had what looked as though it was going to be a great crop, until every last fruit (except for two) disappeared overnight. We had no clue what could have happened, but later learned that a family of opossums can and do strip trees of every trace of fruit overnight. I have no idea where they take it ..it seems it would be impossible for them to eat that much! Then last year, we had one of those late frosts again. It's just about to bloom now, so keep your fingers crossed! Sorry that turned out to be such a book! I'm just happy that this forum seems to still be alive and kicking!

She might have just been peeing... I doubt she would do that standing up. Not even so much for the impracticality as because that "pertaineth to a man". Regardless, it doesn't seem particularly "mahdest" or godly to interject random bathroom information into a post that has nothing to do with where you were.

Thank goodness, at least, that it took place in the middle of the night, and not at a rush hour, or even normal traffic time of day. My older son lives just outside Baltimore, and crosses that bridge regularly.

"I will love her profusely"? I am picturing a neverending shower of flower petals or something.

What's up with her hand? It looks so much like an AI generated hand that I actually stopped to count the fingers. Somehow, it wasn't even clear that there were five of them at first glance.

I enjoy this brand of kombucha (though I prefer the "trilogy" flavor). But it's still on the expensive side as far as I am concerned, so I don't get it too often. And I am pretty sure that our income is significantly higher than the Rods'.

My hair has gone through various stages of curliness ...it was riotously curly when I was little, but calmed down to slightly wavy, then got curlier again after I hit puberty. I hated it then, because, of course, back in the early 70s we all wanted Marcia Brady hair, and if there were any products or techniques for playing up one's curls, I was not aware of them. It would behave pretty well in the summer. Humidity seemed to bring out the curl more, but it just stuck out in weird directions in the winter. My pregnancy hair was always full, lush and curly, then thinned out and got almost stick straight afterwards for some six months before starting to return to status quo, which was how I learned to actually appreciate how low-maintenance curls actually are. So I enjoyed them after that, and menopause seemed to bring the curl out even more. That, combined with the fact that there now are all sorts of curly products & techniques means that in my mid 60s, I finally have hair that I really like!

We had a lovely snowfall here in CT. It was a good day for snuggling down in front of a nice fire.

I'm sure that in her mind, she is only doing all she can to further emphasize what a supremely wonderful job her creator did when He blessed her with such perfect features. Can't be taking that sort of thing for granted, now, can we?

Big mess in this neck of the woods with a major wind/ rainstorm and the town dam giving way and taking the local electrical substation offline. Melted all the snow that was still on the ground from Monday, too, so it's very wet. Mandatory evacuations in certain areas due to flash flooding. Luckily, we live near the top of a good size hill, so that sort of thing doesn't really affect us. We were just talking the other day, though, about how we are lucky that our small-town electric company is always so good about getting lost power back (as opposed to most of the rest of Connecticut and surrounding states), but it could be a while this time. We have not lost power for more than a couple of hours in the 11 years we have lived here, but it's been out for some 9 hours now, and they don't know how long it will take to clean up the substation and get it back up and running. They should be able to divert power from somewhere else at some point, though. Luckily, we have two propane fireplaces and a propane stove, though, so we can stay reasonably comfortable for the time being.

So did I! It sounded (looked) as though she was referring to God's granddad, which I found quite a diverting scenario.

Wait, what? There's actually a Jackson? In the Duggar family? I may be losing my marbles, but I honestly cannot even recall that name having been mentioned. Granted, I have never actually watched the show, and it's been some time before all the names came up in any sort of order, but if you asked me to name all the Duggars, Jackson would not have sprung to mind.

It's probably true, just as in mainstream culture, that the bride's family tends to have greater input into the wedding plans, but even so, Jill's relative silence kind of makes me feel that she is being somewhat relegated to the back burner. Her natural way of dealing with pretty much everything as far as we have seen, is to take charge and wail long and loud about satanic influences when things are not aligned with her standards. My thinking is that somehow, something has either been said outright, or that Jill has somehow managed to come to the unaided conclusion that her interference might jeopardize Tim's courtship. Which doesn't really add up, given everything we have learned about her thus far. My other thought is that since there has got to be some simmering disapproval of Heidi's family on Mahmo's side, and given that Timmy is likely in the throes of feelings unlike any he has had to deal with thus far, it just might be possible that those feelings might lead him to be more accepting of whatever "fundie light" philosophies he might be picking up from the family of his beloved. It may not add up to anything like clearer thinking, but it might be a step toward breaking loose of the Rod family cult.

I know what you mean about "love on". That one has always sounded vaguely creepy to me. I guess it's just supposed to imply showing affection, whether physical otherwise, but it always sounds so overwhelmingly touchy-feely.

My mom would have been 89 in February. Her last couple of years had been pretty rough on her, since there was so much she could not do for herself anymore. And the last few weeks she was pretty much bedridden. The last week, she was pretty much unconscious. It was so difficult seeing her that way, and knowing there was nothing anyone could do to make it easier for her. I'm sure she was probably more cognizant than we could see or tell, and I'm not a natural nurse, but I'm glad that we were able to keep her at home until the end.

We have a 19 year old cat as well, and while she is doing remarkably well for her age, she is at the point that you just know her time is limited. Hopefully she keeps on keeping on for a while! We lost my mom back in August, so I'm feeling about done with losses right now.

Best of belated wishes here as well....I mostly only end up coming here when I babysit my grandson, and have some spare time while he is napping. Today, he did not nap until about 10 minutes before I left, so I'm catching up at home after dinner. In sad news, my little fur baby ,Pippin, crossed the Rainbow Bridge on Monday...He was a little less than a month from turning 15, and had been declining over the past year or so, with heart disease and some other issues, which we were pretty much treating as a hospice situation due to his age, but he started having some seizures over the weekend, and the vet said all indications pointed to a brain tumor which was likely to severely cut into his quality of life from here on in, so it seemed the kindest thing to do was let him go. This photo was from only about sometime toward the end of August, so he was still a strikingly pretty little piece of fluff...even when I was at the vet's the other day, he was getting oohs and aahs over how cute he was. But he really was beginning to suffer.😢

This does strike me as having a lot of truth to it. The thing that puzzles me about Jill ( and one of the things which has always appealed to me about her) is that bohemian streak she seems to have. That just suggests a bit of a rebellious nature, which she has not really otherwise displayed when it comes to her upbringing, at least. Maybe she reminds me a little of myself. I was always the goody-two-shoes in some ways, being too timid to overtly display any rebellion, but internally, seething at the notion of having to conform.

I have a couple of small wine signs as well. It does strike me, and I'm not entirely sure what to make of it, that there are more mentions of coffee there than anything extolling Jesus. The most overtly religious sign(s) might say "blessed", but that's practically secular. I can't help but see that as a step in the right direction...