Month: June 2021

Weekend Blooms

Posted on by Markman
Some lilies from the garden are staring to bloom.

A pretty good, if low key, weekend was on tap. On Saturday night we went over to our couple friend’s house and played some games. One was one card game where you had to figure out which player was a werewolf, and we found that kind of weird, but then we played a game called “I Should Have Known That” and I rocked that one. My various knowledge of things came in helpful. They were very impressed with me answering all the questions correctly, like “how the f*ck did he know that!?” Heheh! We made a nice salad to bring over with the lettuce we obtained from our garden and the RI trip last week, and used up a lot of the fruits and vegetables we had lying around so it was a good use of getting through our stuff. We also picked up some takeout to bring over as the main dishes. We made the same salad again with the remainder the next day when one of LD’s friends came by a couple of hours on route back to her house from a NH drop off and I even grilled some salmon to go on top of it. In the meantime I discovered a new show called Cellmate Secrets on Lifetime (of all channels) but I’m finding it really good. Narrated by Angie Harmon, another celebrity crush of mine back in the L&O days, it looks at famous notorious criminals from a different angle, interviewing people who knew them in prison. I binged the first three episodes yesterday through On Demand. It seems to be getting better as the shows go on. Best one so far was the lady who let those two inmates escape from jail up in upstate New York a few years ago, but the Casey Anthony episode was pretty good too. Didn’t care too much for the Drew Peterson one. Apparently there’s three more shows to go.

Late in the afternoon we got a few more plants, bird seed, and a new plant stand for some of the hanging plants, which will look really nice on the patio. It has slots for 4 hanging plants all around at differing heights and was a breeze to assemble. Things look really nice which all the plant life in abundance all around the back patio and yard. I love just relaxing out there in the morning before the heat and stress of the day start up.

After I went out for a Wegman’s run to pick up some curbside groceries LD had a mason came by to check out the front steps to the house. It needs to be redone as it’s been crumbling for a while, plus she hates the look of them. We are discovering however that a job like this seems to be pretty pricey, so not sure what’s going to happen with those just yet.

It’s been really hot outside so that has limited a bit of what we can do, although we did sit outside yesterday afternoon late. I was thinking of doing a fire pit but in the end I was too tired and decided not to do one.

Some lilies from the garden are starting to bloom, including some of the ones we obtained from the garden club lady, as shown above. One of the fire lilies has also popped. If I can get a really good picture of those as more of them begin to open I’ll try to get a nice picture of those. The Stargazers are also going to open up soon as well, which are some of our favorites.

Of Mice and Men

Posted on by Markman
field mouse

The latest updates: Here’s a little field mouse we saw while checking out some plants yesterday afternoon. LD ended getting up a Dwarf Hummingbird Mint plant. We swung by the plant place after checking out some mail from her PP office. LD also finally got a new phone, same Samsung S20 FE. That phone really is great value for the money. She’ll like it. The big news of the day is my sister might have cancer of the uterus. Biopsy appointment in a couple weeks to see whatever next steps might be. My mom is still waiting for her results from the lump on her neck. When it rains it pours, as they say. I’m not even sure I should be mentioning those things on here. Just some more items to add onto the worry pile of my life. To keep my mind off things I’m still playing that Headlong Hunt game. I’ve somehow made it to level 35 of 37. Maddeningly good puzzles and provides me with a respite. The creator did a good job on the quality of the puzzles. Just hard enough. I took my car down to my Earth-1 mechanic for an overdue oil change and while there it appears I’ll be needing new brakes soon, so I made an appointment to get that done next Tuesday morning. Ended the day by watching 20/20 and cooking dinner.

Blue Mouthwash

Posted on by Markman
Moonstone beach again.

Had a dentist appointment yesterday morning early so the night before I kept waking up so as not to miss waking up on time, if you know what I mean. Everything checks out fine but he did prescribe me this mouthwash to use for my gums. While I was waiting at the pharmacy to pick it up their computers went down and I had to wait even longer for that to get back up before I could get my prescription. All in all I’d say that whole process took about an hour, something that usually only takes 10 minutes.

Later in the afternoon I took my mom’s cat Hardy to the vet to get his nails trimmed. He was pretty good this time, got into the cage easily and was quiet the whole time, whereas he usually cries a bunch.

I started back around 3 o’clock and I can tell you that traffic is back to it’s awful pre-pandemic self.

We finally got around to setting up some more streaming services on the new tv. Prime video and HBO/Max are ready to go. It is nice to have so many options. This should increase our movie and series watches for entertainment.

I grilled up some burgers before nightfall. It was getting a little windy and it looked like it might rain, but it never did. Annoyingly the wind would ever so often blow out the burners so I had to relight it a few times. I hate when that happens. I did notice while I was waiting that one of those day lilies from the garden lady bloomed and nearby were Shiloh the baby bunny and what I think may be it’s mother Gracie. Nice to see them around.

Currently Reading: Hidden Valley Road: Inside the Mind of an American Family

Power Less and Powerless

Posted on by Markman

Woke up this morning noticing my phone’s connection to the WIFI network had disappeared. When I went over to the router I noticed there weren’t any lights on it. Then I noticed that nothing in the house seemed to work. The power to every light and appliance was gone. I went to the basement and reset all the switches but that lead to no avail, so it must have been a neighborhood outage. Thankfully it didn’t last long though and was back up within 10 minutes. Of course I had to reset the clocks on the oven and microwave but otherwise everything went back to usual. I couldn’t even brew a cup of coffee because the power was out and I was jonesin’ for some caffeine. I thought about hitting a Dunks but then the power came on making the trip unnecessary.

It was kind of too hot to really do much of anything today so this afternoon we watched a couple of old Booker episodes on Tubi on the TV. One episode was clearly based off of the movie Die Hard with Booker playing the Bruce Willis part. Kinda cheesy. We also finally moved the exercise bike into the basement as we got sick of it taking up too much room in the den for months and sometimes tripping against it. After that we made a run to Target to get some supplies and then drove around to 3 different Dunkins to get LD an iced tea. For some reason a bunch of the franchises here close before the late afternoon on Sundays and perhaps every day but I was able to finally find one that was open for drive thru service.

For dinner we finally tried out the Air flyer and made French fries from potatoes and zucchini chips. It’s actually not bad. We may end up getting one with a bigger capacity at some point but as of now we’re still experimenting with air frying. I was going to grill but we decided that would be better down tomorrow night so for this evening we just did the chicken in the Instant Pot thing we do.

Today I had a moment where I thought to myself that I had become somewhat of a failure, and so this day had a vibe of being a bit of a downer. I know its not true of course but sometimes I can’t help feeling that way. A few minutes of vulnerability I guess.

Birding Love and Moonstone Nights

Posted on by Markman
Checking out Moonstone

I had some interest from some folks for the image I took while we hiked the Nauset Trail a few days ago and if the image was available on other media and I’m happy to report that I’ve added it to my store, so if you like it, please check it out. The image above is from a walk we did yesterday going up to the beach in the area. We saw some guys fishing there as well with nets and it appeared that they caught some things. Anyways while we visiting yesterday we noticed all the various birds that were visiting the feeder as we chomped on freshly baked cookies and admired the amazing home and garden and koi pond! I’ll leave the identification of the birds shown here as an exercise to the readers.

Lately I’ve been watching this Going RV show constantly and I think it’s annoying LD. I do find these Class A’s so interesting though!

The Sun Rises and the Sun Sets

Posted on by Markman
Raw image from Eastham at dawn

A weird thing happened with the new tv yesterday. It appeared to lose the HDMI connection for no apparent reason. Eventually I was able to get it working again by reinserting the cable and reinitializing the setup for the FIOS. Also it strangely seemed like my phone would turn the cable box off even though I wasn’t using the phone. Something I’ll be keeping tabs on moving forward, otherwise everything else has been great so far. I’ve even got my YouTube subs and Tubi and Samsung accounts going. Still need to get Amazon Prime video and HBO Max up, just need to get the deets from LD. This stuff is probably old hat to most people but we were pretty late jumping into the smart tv bandwagon. It is nice to have all these other options besides just regular cable.

Raw image from Eastham at sunset

LD’s old boss invited us down to RI to see her new house so that’s what going on this afternoon. It’s close to Narragansett so I’m expected to intake some great sea air and grab some lunch by the water.

Crossing the Salt Pond

Posted on by Markman
Wooden bridge along the Salt Pond

Here’s a shot from our walk the other day along what’s now called the Nauset Marsh Trail, a 1.3 mile loop essentially that crosses a salt pond (not too ponds around that contain salt water, right?) and passes through a salt marsh, then meanders into a forest of cedar trees and bayberry. We did get bit a couple of times by bugs here but overall it wasn’t too bad. These photos I take never tell you of the bugs!

Back on the home front I harvested more lettuce as somehow it all grew back real quick since I picked it last time just under a week and a half ago. The little rain we have had up here has made the rear lawn rather unkempt so I plan to mow that down tomorrow and do some neatening up in general. I’ll check on all the various gardens we have as well and see what’s next to pop.

Some Shots from Nauset

Posted on by Markman
Nauset at Sunrise

Here’s a couple of pics from our little getaway at the cottage. I’ll post more as the days go on. The lighthouse shot was from when we both got up at 4:30 am to catch the sunrise over the cliff across the street. I haven’t processed those pix yet but while we were there we saw the cutest bunnies and actually a toad in the yard (I haven’t seen a toad in the wild in many years, and especially not in a yard!) It was a relaxing little trip and the cottage was just so cute, will definitely stay there again. LD twisted her ankle on the beach (a little tweak) so we had to turn the activities down a little bit but since this trip was all about relaxing it wasn’t a big deal. One place we discovered for meals is a place called Mac’s. Very impressed, probably will be our main go to moving forward and of course as always, we visited the Chocolate Sparrow every day. Before leaving we hiked around the Great Salt Pond which travels through salt marsh and into cedar forests. Later in the day we spotted a young coyote in the marsh grasses over at First Encounter Beach. Basically we didn’t want to leave but we were starting to miss Carson a bit (I know I was) and I think he missed us too. So it’s nice to be back but it was nice to get away too. We will return!

Happy Life

Posted on by Markman
One of my happy places

Can’t wait to return to one of our happy places in a few days. To help in my cooking endeavors I purchased a new Calphelon pot, this morning and now that’s a true sign of adulting. I also got around and purchased a new smart tv, not just for the upgraded picture and options, but also so I could stream from my phone or PC directly to it, in true nerd geek fashion. I spent the afternoon setting that up after giving the front lawn a good mow. There’s still some things I need to get running like the voice stuff, using my cell to operate it and select apps, but the basic functionality is good to go.

I was surprised to see the first set of day lilies we planted from the garden lady are starting to bud for blooms. She said that wouldn’t happen until next year. Then again, they are hardy little fellows so I’m not totally surprised. I’ll be interested to see what color they are. I figured they’d just be the boring orange ones but the lady said no, so we’ll see.

My Car Can Understand Conversation

Posted on by Markman

Finally went ahead and started using my car’s voice commands. This isn’t through the phone, the car actually has built in voice recognition but I never enabled it until today. However, while I was messing around with that, I had the idea to use my Sirius App through the Bluetooth to be able to listen to all the many more channels that the app has as opposed to get the radio stuff that I have. It works! I suppose I could use Spotify in the same way but I haven’t tried that yet. Anyways, back to the voice thing – I was unaware that I could actually make dinner reservations and typing emails through the system with voice dictation, and again, this is not using Google. So that’s pretty cool. Might be cool to dictate text messages replies without having to pick up the phone. Not sure I would ever use it in that way, mostly just things like “Call Ladydoc Mobile” instead of the just hitting the hotkey on the panel as I have it now but still kind of fun to play around with.

I’m stuck on Level 17 of that Headlong Hunt game I posted the other day and it’s driving me bananas! I could skip ahead but what’s the fun in that?

I’m taking my mom to get her stiches out tomorrow. She seems to be doing pretty well so that’s a relief, but still lacking a little bit of function, which I suppose is natural but maybe these Carpel Tunnel kind of operations aren’t all they’re made out to be. Anyways I spent the day with her today and it was a hot one.

Finally we do see the little bunny Shiloh now and then hopping around the yard, even if there’s a chance that he went to town on the phlox plantings in the new rock garden area. (At least we assume it’s Shiloh although who really knows). Hey, he’s a growing boy and needs his nutrients! Still cute and not fully grown yet, but we’re happy to see him happy and doing well.

A Hot Saturday BBQ

Posted on by Markman

What have I been up to lately? Not a whole hell of a lot.

We had some friends over last night for a BBQ. I had to run to the grocery store a couple of times to get some needed ingredients. LD made a special salad dressing from scratch and also a vodka/strawberry lemonade drink. I picked the lettuce we’ve been growing and used that in the salad. Just burgers and dogs and some corn cobs, pretty basic. Thankfully everything came out great and I was complimented on my grilling expertise, which has gotten better and better with time. After all the eating, I lit the firepit and we had smores. It was a hot day but actually it wasn’t all that bad as there was a breeze and the patio is generally shady in the late afternoon. In the supermarket I saw some Del’s Lemonade Shandy Beer which I’d never seen before so I bought some and decided to try it, and I actually like it!

My microSD card came the other day and I inserted it into my phone, now rocking another 512GB on top of the 128GB I have internally. That should last me for a while. My grill cleaner also came yesterday so today I went ahead and gave the grill a deep cleaning. Strangely even though I ordered it from Amazon, it came from the Home Depot, which I thought was a little weird. If you’re interested it’s a grill cleaner by the makers of Simple Green. Anyways, the grill has never been deep cleaned since we got it, plus I wanted to get rid of the built up grease on the underside of the lid which made it look like peeling paint. I removed all the grates and flavorizer bars and gave them a good spray and scrub down. LD helped as well! We also picked up some more day lilies from the garden lady this morning. At this point we’ll have so many! Late in the afternoon we soaked the bulbs in a pail of water for a few hours before putting them into the ground, as per the garden lady instructions.

Gametime: Headlong Hunt.

A Little History

Posted on by Markman
Carson
Oh, Hello Carson!

I see that according to my records, this website is going to be 20 years old in November. Now mind you, that’s just this website with this URL. I started blogging a few years earlier, first on Geocities in 1998 (!), and then through my ISP at the time. I can remember I would have to code the HTML and then upload it through FTP, and then check it. If there was a mistake or an update I’d have to re-edit the HTML, re upload the file through FTP and check it again. It made archiving a real pain. Nowadays it’s all automated and I can just focus on the content. I wish I could find the Geocities HTML. It was so terrible but I was teaching myself how to make web pages. I think it does exist on an old Zip Disk somewhere (remember those?) but even if I could find it, I’ve no way to read it. The old ISP one can be found on the Internet Archive WayBack Machine in bits and pieces.

Over the rainy long weekend we went over to LD’s old landlady for a little inside BBQ, we picked up the air fryer (haven’t tried it out yet though), we got through just about everything we had ever DVR’d including finally finishing every season of 21 Jump Street, went to the Sanctuary to drop off some carrots and apples for the animals, and did a shitload of meal prep. I also finally got around to setting up the SmartTV but when I turned it on the screen was all cracked. Going to have to figure out a way to return that since it’s been a while, plus after seeing this one I think I want to get a better and slightly bigger one.

Everything in the garden appears to be doing well, and today I noticed the lupines are starting to blossom. I see LD also obtained some more blub plants from the gardening club lady today while I was over at Earth-1. We’ll put those in tomorrow. I also ordered some Simple Green grill cleaner because I want to do a deep clean soon on the outdoor grill and a 512GB microSD card for my phone to store all the wonderful cell photos I plan on taking with this new device.

A few weeks back in Marshfield by the beach I happened upon a Little Library which had a book written by Anderson Cooper and Gloria Vanderbilt. That’s now next on my reading list.