Susan Dennis

I tried a new place today that was really neat. The food was fabulous. The place was cool. But... there was a screecher. A child - about 12 months old. His mother was playing on her iPad His father was just staring into space. The kid was screeching. Not continually. Sporadically. Ear piercing.

Then, in walks a couple and I notice that the woman is someone I've worked with more than once. And not that happily. You know the tone and facial expressing that Seinfield always greeted Newman? That's how I feel about this woman. She didn't see me. Thankfully.

As I finished my meal a cute gay couple took the table next to me. They order coffee. The guy on my side asks if they have soy. Nope. Then orders cream. When the waitress comes back they inquire as to which things are gluten free (None)... No dairy, no gluten and then his partner says that they are vegetarian. Why don't they just pop a carrot and call it a day????

But, they were cute. Cute with issues. And both of them flinched every time the screecher went off.

Down the street from the restaurant is the Ballard farmers market. So I wandered around there for a bit. There was a lovely breeze and it wasn't crowded yet. Just nice.

Then on to the good pet food store (Mud Bay) where I got wet food and, now that I have that sorted - they like anything with chicken and beef any it, not so much turkey and fish - time to find a good dry food.  They nice sales guy loaded me up with 10... TEN!... different samples and the samples are quite generous.  Very very nice.

Then back towards home with a stop at the Goodwill to drop off my latest bags full and now home to the baseball game.

My back and arms know they did something unusual yesterday. But, my casual game carpal tunnel arm issues are all gone which is nice.

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A good brunch spoiled nearly.  People, there are plenty of child friendly restaurants.  This one doesn't even have high chairs... that's a clue, fyi.

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today's basket

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Save this for future reference... 

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trying out a new, to me, place

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I feel out of love with Glee season before last but... I loved The Glee Project.  And tonight I'm watching the first episode of the second year of The Glee Project and I still love it!  These kids are amazing.

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I am totally getting my baseball money's worth today.  The Mariners have been ahead and behind and ahead again and behind again and then ahead and then behind.... and are now 10-8 ahead of the white sox in the 12th.

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***+Bill Schubert you can come to seattle and get yours... now!  just a thot

This is Ann working hard. The dude behind her with the shovel full of mulch is Jeff, my lawyer and our condo association president. It was a good morning but crap, yard work is hard! Tija who lives on the floor above ours and who owns the gym across the street was the head of our group which was one out of four. One group did alley cleanup, one group did graffiti removal, one group did drain unclogging and painting (a stencil that says to keep the drain clean for the fish). Our group did the median in front of our building.

There were 25 guys from the construction crew building the building outside my terrace which I thought was very cool. They were good guys, too. Really into it. A couple brought their kids to help and the kids did a great job.

It was fun and our median really does look really nice - cared for.

But, wow. I was not designed for manual labor. Whew. I dragged myself into the shower and then took me to Denny's. I had the most delicious sandwich. The service was slow which suited me fine because I was reading a particularly entertaining book. On the way home, my car swung into the drive thru at McDonald's and I was forced to get a chocolate milk shake.

I got home, turned on the ballgame and Ichiro - leading off - opened up the game with a nice little home run.

Nice.

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today's basket

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Having lunch then home to put my feet up and do nothing... Well, I'll watch the ballgame and knit but nothing else.

I so appreciate the work of community organizers. Not in the 'how can I help?' way but in the 'I support you with my thoughts' way. Usually. But today, I'm going to glove up and join in. My neighbor is on the city committee that you have to go to to make exterior changes to anything in the historical district we live in.

As part of that work, she's involved in the annual neighborhood cleanup. Trash pickup, graffiti paint over, median weeding, etc. A lot of people work hard to get this organized. We get gloves and tools and t-shirts and 3 hours to do our assigned tasks.

Ann's coming down the hall to pick me up in 30 minutes. Ordinarily, I'd be begging off because I have swim class but I couldn't quite pull that off this time plus I owe Ann for her patient and kind hauling me home from surgery and back for the appointment the day after.

So... I'm off to do my civic duty today.

I'm not sure what's happening after that. My options are open. But, no brunch today.

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A no hitter is a lot easier to feel good about when it's not against the Mariners.  Just sayin'

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I just found this and love it. Simple and works perfectly. Now my pictures go to G+ and Flickr automagically and then I can pick how I want to use them from where later.  Kewel.

I almost always use my phone for pictures. The shots get automagically uploaded to Google+ and I upload them myself to Flickr. I've never gotten used to Picasa's (G+)'s organization so I still send to Flickr.

Also for no good reason, I mostly use Flickr for LJ and Picasa for G+.

BUT... Google bought Picnic and their replacement editing software isn't nearly as good. So my G+ photos end up turning out much better than my Flickr ones... I probably see a change to my process in the future.

The other day I took a bunch of pictures of the May group shot. I uploaded what I thought were the best ones. I enhanced the best of those. I ended up totally using the wrong photo! I rearranged the bears mid shoot because one was hiding.

One of my G+ friends asked the monthly shot which I'd forgotten to post to G+. I went to get one of them and happened to count - since the total was of such interest here... I counted 18!! not the 17!! Here's the all-bear version. Below it is the old version with the hidden bear.





And... whoa! I just used the new add image function of LJ and it makes using photos from G+ much easier. Hmmmmm

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Many of the Bears of May are from the yarn that +Dave Bennett sent to me.  The Red bears are and the white ones and the green ones and that green and brown one and the turquoise one...  Ok so MOST of these are thanks to Dave... Thank you, Dave!!

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I was just listening to a real radio station and when they played a song I didn't like, I went to look for the thumbs down button so it would skip to the next one ....  Me thinks I've been Pandoring a bit too much.

I rarely get any snail mail but today bought two great treats.

One was a note from my doctor (I have him partially but not totally trained on email) saying that my uric acid levels were way down so the new blood pressure stuff not only replaces 2 pills with 1, cost way less than the 2, reduces my blood pressure more effectively but also now fixes my gout!! Very very nice. I had pretty much guessed it since all my toe pain disappeared shortly after I started taking it but it's very nice that now the doctor is happy, too.

But, even funner, was a hand written note from one of my swim buddies! Madeline was one of the first people who introduced herself to me way back when I first started. She's a very cute retired teacher. At one point another person who had to stop taking the class asked her to get my email address. So I gave Madeline one of my cards that has my name, addresses, phone, etc.

I looked for her before my eye surgery but I kept missing her (she's a gardener so sometimes pool time loses out to garden time). Plus I quit going to the Thursday class. And she's not wild about the Tuesday teacher. So I haven't seen her in maybe 2 months.

She sent a card saying how much they miss me and please won't I come back!! Isn't that the cutest?! She also included her phone number. I'm guessing she's out in the garden cause I got her machine.

I'll try her again later. But so fun to have my own little Sally Fields moment.

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today's basket

So all this week and lots of last week I have had nothing to do, really, except a little work and enough time to injure my arm playing a mindless computer game.

Next week, of course, is now beginning to look like two weeks crammed into one. There will be pool time come hell or high water but also... after weeks now, Sheri (the interior designer) finally got a fix for an issue with the new desk. And she's lined up Jeff the carpenter to come fix it and fix the access to the cables under the desk (which was a design idea gone wrong. fixable but you need a saw and I don't have one). She wants to come with him to do that next week.

The boss just booked a 2 hour meeting for the new 401K plan. Fortunately, there's an online attendance option so I don't have to actually go anywhere. That, however, makes 3 work meetings next week which is pretty much 2.5 over my meeting tolerance level.

Tuesday, Chef Anita will be here all day cooking.

And I just got word that the 2nd project is cranking up and will likely be full speed (all the work I want) next week.

I need to find those hatches to batten down!

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Ok, I clicked on every single one of these. I am too old for Speak ad Spell but the rest were right in my wheelhouse. Fun.

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Amazing art with cooking strainers. Wow.

Last night I noticed my forearm and shoulder on my right side felt weird. Not exactly sprained weird but more like heart attack weird - except it was on the wrong side. When I moved my arm a certain way, it was pretty painful.

And it got worse. It woke me up a couple of times last night. I figured it was some fatal something caused by my lack of swimming for the past week and a half (yeah, I made some leaps there).

Work was too busy to worry about it and, fortunately, it didn't hurt to work on the work computer.

Then I got a break. I had to stop work while I waited for a reply from someone. So, as I am wont to when I get some spare minutes, I moved over to this laptop and started playing the casual game I've been playing now for a few weeks.

OUCH!

Yep, you got it. I have injured my arm playing a stupid match 3 game on the stupid computer!!

At least I know the fix.

Regular typing like this does not seem to bother it. Nor does knitting. Probably solitaire or free cell is fine, too. No more Veusvla for me!

But I am going back to the pool on Monday. I've had enough of this dry dock. I'd actually go to my good class tomorrow but I promised (my neighbor) Ann I'd help with the neighborhood cleanup. She helped organize it and made sure that it included out block so I figure one more miss won't kill me.

Monday, for sure, surf will be up and I'll be in it!

I'm still waiting for a work response so I can finish up one job. Then I plan to watch this week's This Week in Google which TiVo has ponied up for me while get started on my next bear.

The baseball game is at 5 tonight. Living on the west coast rocks for many reasons but one of the top on my list is early baseball start times. I remember well those years when I was a Braves fan on the east coast and they would play the Dodgers in a game that started at 10 fucking pm That's no way to live. Honestly.

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I am totally hooked on TLC's show On The Fly. It think it just makes me more grateful when I have a stress free trip.

I was talking with my cute doctor on Tuesday about how amazing the cataract surgery was and he told me he has a friend who does this (cataract surgery) in third world countries.  My cataract was nowhere near severe and my eyesight improved so dramatically.  I cannot imagine what it must be like for someone blinded by cataracts to have a 20 minute procedure and be able to see as clearly as I can.  Freaky.  Amazing.

I got a peek at the first bill.  Well, I can see the insurance claim - $5K for the surgical joint.  There is still the doctor bill and the anesthesiologist tab.   I'm on the tab, I think, for 20% of the total of all of it.  Honestly, that is such a small price to pay for what I got.

In other news, my brother's house closing is in less than 2 weeks!  I know he's so relieved to get out from under.  He says that they will clear enough to pay off the mortgage, pay my small loan back and still have some bucks left over. I'm so delighted for him.  I also love that he calculated how much my loan would have netted me on the open market over the life of the loan using Dow Jones numbers.  He figures I would have lost $212.  Instead, he's paying me 4% over prime so I'll make $119.  Sweet deal for moi.  As he points out, he is a good investment and I totally agree.

Work has been very slow this afternoon so I've just been piddling around.  But I just heard the bug alert go off so now it's time to get busy!

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Massive productivity at the Sleep Factory today

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ohhh I LOVE the new Local thingie on G+. It just landed in my left hand bar. I did a quick search for brunch and found a place I've never hear of that sounds wonderful - look for the review on Sunday!