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.

As we roll into Valentine’s Day, and with Easter looming- it’s time for my annual PSA- these kill cats. Period, full stop. Lily pollen is insanely toxic and will destroy their kidneys in 18 hours. If you have cats- THROW LILIES AWAY. 1/

Not quite sure how this rating works, but...

Sad, but good for Marc for doing this.

So far Mercury Retrograde has worked in my favor: long-delayed LTC payments came, J’s out of network dental claim finally processed, remaining subscription cancel $ refunded, company who was reimbursing me $25/mo for amt I had paid to a solar program decided to give me the remaining $$$$ balance.

This is weird: went to look at an Amazon listing I saved for later. Although in the list it shows it has over 1K reviews when I go to the actual listing I cannot see the reviews! Plus most searches give me a grid of options but now no prices on them. Did they just "improve" something?

Got to remember to trim the height on this yew in the spring. It was bent over almost to the ground under the weight of snow and ice. Knocked off what I could and tied it more upright with some rope.

Apparently the CVS overlords forced their minions to work today - I just got a text that my Rx is now ready to pick up...

One of these things is not like the others.

Riley frequently balances on top of this chainsaw carved eagle when I object to him trying to grab cables on the table next to it.

In good news, Miss Zoe's calcium levels are now normal after 4 wks of Fosamax so we will continue. Fortunately she is the most compliant of the 4 cats and the fast-administer-flush-wait 30 min to feed only happens once a week. She also seems to be gaining weight, which was the precipitating symptom.

No reason - just time for a cat.

The hospice agency which was very interested in taking on my wife (and has been doing a good job since Sept) has now figured out they can’t bill Medicare bc her primary Pt A is my BCBS. They admit their mistake so won’t bill me - but I will have a deductible & copay w BCBS + prob another eval :-(

Taking advantage of physics with warmer weather the next few days: repeatedly stuck a shovel into all the snowbanks to increase the surface area exposed to warmer air to speed up melting.

Gratitude for small wins in the budgeting dept: my electric bill this month is less than last year's because I am now opted in to the lower winter "heat pump" rate even though I only use the heat pumps in summer for AC (when the rate isn't lower - oh well)

Without naming your job, tell me something you say over and over again at work. “Have you included a backup and recovery plan for this?”

A micro-advantage of working at a grad school with lots of international students: the dining hall has nonAmerican standard to-go packets, like Tajin Clasico and Sriracha!

I hope I have now run thru this winter’s utility issues: last wk was a public main water break; today I was smelling gas at my outside meter. Fortunately, both were quickly/easily resolved - there was a loose screw on the (2-yr-old) meter. If electricity is next I have various batteries charged.

While it's been nice to have reliable snow removal, the bill for the past weekend was too much ($750 for an alleged 23", though published reports are only 15") - my neighbors have offered to do it, so I canceled the pricy service.

Somehow in the past few days I have had the mental spoons to cook several casseroles, and yesterday acquired 4 2-cup silicone squares for freezing them into individual servings rather than increase my # of glass containers. After dividing & freezing this I’ll have 13 servings of 4 different meals!

I didn’t stock up on water before the incoming storm bc I have never had a freezing pipe problem - but didn’t take into account the possibility of the town pipes breaking! Neighbors grabbed me some gallons, water is again flowing so won’t need to melt incoming snow to flush ;-)

One unexpected good side effect of clearing out all the old spices is that the compost bin still smells pleasant after pickup!

@musicologyduck.bsky.social you are not just a meme, you are now allegorical.

Work announced a new free health benefit: 9amHealth. It seems to be a health coaching service for hi BP/cholesterol/H1C/obesity. Searches seem to show Amazon offers to their employees. I signed up to check out - they immediately sent a Quest blood panel order & said a cellular scale is coming 1/

This is my regular reminded that if your clothes are full of tear gas and/or pepper spray, air them for a day if at all possible and then wash them twice ON COLD. If you come home and throw them in on hot right away you will kinda gas your laundry room. <3 #Minneapolis #StPaul #FuckICE

I was getting hung up on trying to sort out my wife’s bedroom (despite knowing logically she won’t ever need many of the clothes), so instead I started tackling her spice rack - most of which had expired 2020 abd before - newest expired 2023. Penzey’s has a gift card deal this weekend to start over.

The @americanredcross.bsky.social donation points redemption store opened this morning, and has apparently overwhelmed their servers with the traffic - app keeps saying "technical difficulties".

Cats are ensuring I take it easy after platelet/plasma donation.

My cat is getting texts now, for a Rx of the drug I decided against taking for osteoporosis - she's getting it to lower the calcium in her blood. And Wegmans had the best GoodRx price.

Pre-orders for the VALENTINE'S DAY KOBOLD HEART HOARDS are OPEN!! It's $25 for 10 hearts from my Big Heart Stash that I've been making for the past few weeks with various other goodies available as add-ons. I'm going to talk a little bit about the project in thread. nora.jewelry/products/kob...