Random Thoughts 14: I can see clearly now 2020 edition
- Thread starter Cybirdy
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I walked into a bar about 10 years ago and it was crowded. Found out it was a meeting of DTO (Down Town Omaha) which is a swingers club.
I didn't see anyone I would have wanted to swing with even if I was so inclined.
My wife had a cousin who had a profitable business selling wood shaving/chips for composting and bedding.
He has no face? Yeah, why I said I know I have to measure it and test things first. Not bomb drop it either.
IMO, when kids move out parents shouldn't get to dictate their holidays any more. Especially if their kids now have in-laws. It's even more complicated in our family, where nearly every one of our grandchildren has four sets of grandparents (and all of them have three sets).
I've seen far too many young couples start to hate the holidays and family get-togethers because of parents fighting over holiday time with them.
I'll be getting there first. I'll let you know how it goes.
Or maybe @BoxsterCy can inform both of us?
My family has been flexible for the most part. My in laws were the only ones that would conflict with anything. We did thanksgiving lunch and then Christmas Eve. Wife’s family would not budge on Christmas Eve at all so I went firm that we would hold thanksgiving lunch firm. They did lunch and supper so we rarely missed anybody going to lunch for mine and supper on hers.
Her family also had 3 Christmas Get togethers so we had that to schedule around also. My niece is running into conflict because her inlaws don’t understand why they can’t have their dec 23-25 Christmas get togethers with her attending all of them. I have mentioned that as our kids get older we will have some changes occur, wife cringes at that.
Maybe I have a weird holiday outlook because, with the exception of my first five years that we lived in Ft Worth and the GPs were near Kerrville & Houston, I've never even lived in the same state as my grandparents. For me as a child, the holidays were nearly always spent with just my nuclear family: my parents and my sisters. It was rare that we traveled back to Texas for Christmas, and NEVER for Thanksgiving. Most of our Texas trips were summer, because we always drove and it was 3 days each way back then (pre-interstates). Not enough break from school to do the whole trip at Christmas. With my own kids, once we left Pullman when the younger one was six weeks old, we were at least 2 days drive from grandparents (and they were 4 hours from each other), so we made our own holiday traditions with our little nuclear family of four. When my nuclear family changed to a blended family, we decided we were not going to do the tug of war thing over our kids, and that just carried over when they grew up, got married and had in-laws in addition to their two sets of parents.
For me, family gatherings should be a treat that participants are excited about instead of being guilted into "YOU MUST DO THIS VISIT ON THIS SPECIFIC DAY". Or at least they hopefully WILL be in the not too distant future. We tend to gather on different days - the Saturday after Thanksgiving, New Year's Eve, and July 4th instead of the more traditional specific "FAMILY" days.
For me, family gatherings should be a treat that participants are excited about instead of being guilted into "YOU MUST DO THIS VISIT ON THIS SPECIFIC DAY". Or at least they hopefully WILL be in the not too distant future. We tend to gather on different days - the Saturday after Thanksgiving, New Year's Eve, and July 4th instead of the more traditional specific "FAMILY" days.
Woke to the sound of screaming leaf blowers this morning. I am pretty sure these guys will end up with some serious hearing loss.
Glad I can toss all of that junk mail they target me with for hearing aids. Did take care of the audio input sensors over the years. My dad was wearing hearing aids before he was my age but that was directly related to 155mm cannon fire in WWII.
Glad I can toss all of that junk mail they target me with for hearing aids. Did take care of the audio input sensors over the years. My dad was wearing hearing aids before he was my age but that was directly related to 155mm cannon fire in WWII.
Getting more and more roundies up here in the Twin Cities. Seems lots of peeps just don't get them. Be it a single lane or multi-lane roundie the most prevalent take seems to be "I have the right-of-way", be they approaching or already in the roundie and regardless of what lane.
My grandparents were quite older. For some reason we never received presents from my moms side for anything, dads I did for one Christmas. The crapfest that was ended right there. There are just shy of 30 of us grandkids on my dads side. My grandpa died 21 years before I was born, and my dads mom was the meanest lady I knew. Well, we opened presents. My youngest sister who was there, got something bad, like a partially used bottle of perfume, I got an adult pair of dress socks (as a roughly 5-6 year old, still have them actually). Then the cousins after us got new bikes. Never went back to that crap.
Just make sure you have a thawed and completely dry (inside and out) turkey, or there may be issues.
We are having Thanksgiving and Christmas the weekend after this one. My three girls and their significant others. My two oldest are very concerned about me and the wife catching it. Middle daughter is a nazi when it comes to cleanliness, and she's a nurse at Hennepin County Hospital, so things should be good.
How long did you stay and look around?
Where’s that damn mailbag, there are some important questions out there? Or are they taking a turkey break until March?
So we got a new stove, fridge and dishwasher last Thursday. The old fridge and stove got hauled off, but they wouldn't touch the dishwasher.
My daughter and SIL came over Saturday to help install it. First, we couldn't get the old one out. Many special words were said during that time. Then we couldn't get the damn door open to the new DW, so thought it needed to have power to it for that.
The hose to the DW wasn't compatible with our drain hose, so daughter had to run to the store for a connector. Seemed to work okay.
Got the water hooked up with no leaks, and power to it, and opened the door. Guess where all the directions were? And the double connector hose?
Finally, after 5 hrs, we fired it up for a test run. No leaks and the water input line...BUT the drain hose leaked a bit.
I'm hoping right now that, with the new DW in place, we have enough slack to the drain hose that I can pull the connection through to the under-sink cabinet, and be able to work on it there. Otherwise, it's disconnect everything again and pull it back out to get at the hose.
Then we had to switch the door swings on the new fridge. Stymied again! We're going to need a socket and breaker bar to loosen the screws. We actually got the top hinge point loose, but the middle one ruined our socket driver -- we used a channel-locks on the handle of the driver, and now the handle turns, but not the head.
Not quitting yet, but it made for a long weekend (other than the ISU game).
My daughter and SIL came over Saturday to help install it. First, we couldn't get the old one out. Many special words were said during that time. Then we couldn't get the damn door open to the new DW, so thought it needed to have power to it for that.
The hose to the DW wasn't compatible with our drain hose, so daughter had to run to the store for a connector. Seemed to work okay.
Got the water hooked up with no leaks, and power to it, and opened the door. Guess where all the directions were? And the double connector hose?
Finally, after 5 hrs, we fired it up for a test run. No leaks and the water input line...BUT the drain hose leaked a bit.
I'm hoping right now that, with the new DW in place, we have enough slack to the drain hose that I can pull the connection through to the under-sink cabinet, and be able to work on it there. Otherwise, it's disconnect everything again and pull it back out to get at the hose.
Then we had to switch the door swings on the new fridge. Stymied again! We're going to need a socket and breaker bar to loosen the screws. We actually got the top hinge point loose, but the middle one ruined our socket driver -- we used a channel-locks on the handle of the driver, and now the handle turns, but not the head.
Not quitting yet, but it made for a long weekend (other than the ISU game).
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