I have been wanting to get one tomato plant but places available weren’t convenient to stop - so am happy that the food pantry was giving them away this morning!

I haven’t attended many live shows since post-lockdown, so prices I’m seeing now don’t encourage me to do so - $50 for a local original play, $190+ for Indigo Girls at a former movie theatre. (Both are thru TicketBastard). Guess I’ll stick w the real local venues ($20 for Burren shows, $35 @ Passim)

When no email is incoming and you can't even load your ISP's server & core status pages it's a good bet they have an outage - but since they don't show up on Down Detector (and my website is still reachable) I called to check - yup.

Well, that’s worked out: I sold J’s never-used ebike to a nice lesbian couple. I wasn’t sure how I was going to handle their four $100 bills, but the estimate I just got from the arborist is about an hour’s work @$365/hr and he’d love cash :-)

The String Queens "Troubled Liberty / Wade in the Water" 🎶👑🎻

I’m never going to be an “on the stand 30 min away at 6am” birder, but I did get there by 9am and got 2 lifers. I only figured to hear the Rail, but it actually flew low from on side of the path to the other in front of me!

Half an inch of rain in 30 minutes. Good because we are in a drought, but so much at once rolls off before it can sink into the dey soil.

i think something from a tiny island in the mid-Pacific is a bit not quite reasonable. Anthropeum.com · Jun 18 2026 🟦🟩🟦🟩🟩🟩🟥🟥🟩🟩 69,510 · top 19% of players today!

I only get Apple TV when there's something specific I want to watch, like Murderbot. No announcement on when season 2 will drop. Prime is offering 2 mos @ $5.99/mo - I see folks raving about Widow's Bay, but unclear if the comedic elements would outweigh my distaste for horror - ???

Sigh - work asked us to fill out a questionnaire about stuff to help them look for a new CIO - 6 open-ended questions, but then to have a "conversation" with an "AI assistant" :-(

If this works on my phone I may try this with Joann - though her short term memory is nonfunctional she can still answer questions like "what's that carving on the folding seats in British cathedrals?" (answer: misericord)

They've discovered the cop slide. www.threads.com/@stuart.g.p/...

I think I'm encountering the "wasn't taught to read analytically" problem with the person who has taken over one of my tasks that requires paying attention to details to do correctly - specifically missing "use the current year - the example statement contains an example year."

Hi Team! Just a heads up that there is a website purporting to sell gift cards to local businesses (including PSB) but really just sells prepaid Visa cards. For a service fee. And a % of the amount. So be aware. A $50 gift card from PSB costs $50 & if you're paying more someone is grifting

The front yard robin’s eggs have hatched - right after this a parent arrived with food.

Got the signs up in my front yard native plant beds.

Ooo! The Eastern Screech Owl detected in my yard the night of May 30-31 was back last night, calling repeatedly from 12:40-1:10AM. Probably hunting rabbits in the unmowed area in back, but I can hope they might also be considering choosing one of the tree cavities.

Attended a fun party this weekend organized by a friend with lots of musician friends. We played 4 pre-chosen cover songs for fun, had a Mexican buffet dinner, then played a music-related game (teams name songs using a specific word). Partial video clip of one song:

Neighborhood red fox decided to chill out in my back yard yesterday.

Zoe does not approve of harp crescendos, but I told her she was free to go to another room while I watched this celebration of life video for a friend’s husband (who I just learned was born inly a few months before me )

Now we come to the time where I play “did I plant that in the new raised bed, or is it an invasive?” I do know which clumps I transplanted or grew from winter sowing jugs, but am second-guessing some the apps id as not something I expected. At least the plot’s prior milkweed survived.

Last week I was slightly concerned I had gone TMI at the start of a work HR meeting when asked how my family was doing - but today they said they have given me a $1500 grant from some mysterious fund for helping staff ?!?

This is a cat checkpoint: show the most recent cat photo on your phone. *BOOP* you’re it

I think it’s safe to say the overnight high migration has dumped one or more Tennessee warblers on my yard

I'm checking out a new therapist. I'm ok w some flakiness, but she forgot to tell me we weren't meeting last week until the day of, & the invoice she just sent for today's session doesn't show I paid the last invoice. I don't need to keep track of yet another person's responsibilities. We'll see...

Argh - while I appreciate the neighbor coming to whack/mow my front yard, I need to get more fencing to put around things I plant at the curb, because he cut down the hostas I transplanted there :-(

After following @maryrobinettekowal.com 's cat Elsie & their friend Flounder I finally bit the bullet for some @fluentpet.bsky.social buttons for a great price (plus RC gift cards) from Chewy. I'm hoping Zoe at least will be interested.

Someone has claimed a home in the front yard cherry tree. #birds

A warbler-ful morning in my backyard (stats from my Birdweather PUC detector)

A sad day: the phone # I've had at work for nearly 46 years is being terminated to save $ (at this point it was only a "soft phone" on my PC) as they are paying me a stipend towards my Cell account after stopping their direct payment of that - and at least I got to retain that #.

One of the MN birding trip guides does such a good barred owl imitation that a real one came to check him out.

Seven #lifers so far this week on my Minnesota trip:

Hoping I can lift the 20-lb carryon into the overhead bin.

Safety tip: if you live alone & have a discreet place to attach it get a key lockbox (like realtors use) and ask your local fire dept to put it on the list they usually keep for access info to certain addresses. If you need assistance this can prevent them needing to break your door lock to get in!

I have turned off Outlook mail and Teams messaging in my phone for vacation.

Arrgh - I was excited to see this will be available as an ebook... until I saw it will only be accessible via a specific Princeton U. app :-( I already have 4 different ebook apps and not inclined to add another just to access one book.

Samantha of Frenchy & the Punk has been diagnosed with stage 2 breast cancer, and there's a GFM to help with expenses since their income would have been from now-cancelled shows: gofund.me/d58b25ca2

Nice thing: twice this week I've been approached by passers-by as I entered/left my car in the driveway to say how much joy our blossoming cherry tree gives them - got it as an Arnold Arboretum member perk ~10 yrs ago.

Prepping for my trip to MN at end of month. Getting some azelastine nasal spray (Amazon said it was Rx, but CVS is selling OTC) for flying in addition to H1 antihistamines to hopefully ward off any Covid infection (did my 6-month vax 3 wks ago)

After 8-10 trips hauling soil in 5-gal buckets from a bed someone is removing to my new raised beds I decided today to take advantage of a sale that will deliver 7 1cu-ft bags directly to my house for $40 & end my bucket lugging so I can start planting.

Fun thought: I have a new hard sided carryon roller (1st hard for me) that needs personalization for identification AND I have many stickers from @dansinker.com & others needing somewhere to be stuck...

After an unexpected 5-figure tax refund (from itemizing my wife’s care costs) I’m temporarily feeling not quite as pinched for $. But now I’m tempted to buy some fun gadgets: I did order a Birdweather PUC but am wondering if I really need/would use this tiny e-reader www.xteink.com/products/xte...

Randomly decided to watch the Artemis launch. And I am not the only person with Challenger PTS…

Finished tax returns. Though I usually don’t bother with add-on offers, I opted in for the FreeTaxUSA “audit defense” because due to my wife’s memory care costs this year’s itemized deductions resulted in a 20X larger refund & I feel that could make me stand out if there’s any IRS audit staff left.

Just loaded some more #Hugo nominations on my ballot - noms ending soon if you still have slots!

Oy - temperature inside the office has been climbing all week - today it's 82F (outside temp is 42F). But I know better than to report it to Operations as that would result in being too cold for the fix.

Preparing my US Federal tax return is looking scary because it seems clear I can deduct ALL of my wife's memory care facility costs (less the LTC reimbursement)- which makes the refund 20 times last year's! Scary because that seems like audit territory if I'm doing it wrong.

Normally I ignore the ads popping up beside the newspaper site I'm reading, but today it was useful: my bank where I just rolled over 2 CDs for 4% was advertising 4.1% now, and I was still within the grace period so able to change both to get that extra 0.1% :-)

Restarting the front yard garden after it had turned to mostly weeds interspersed with milkweed (which was good). Last spring it took 8 bags to fill one 4-ft sq in back but someone is deconstructing a deep raised bed full of good soil. Got 3 buckets tonight - gonna take many more trips, but free!

Some days I get really tired of other IT people misreading/dismissing my issue diagnoses which usually prove to be correct.