Unshelved by Bill Barnes and Gene Ambaum
comic strip overdue media

Thursday, June 14, 2012

Spent some time with a friend and his family

who gave me a ride home from work (with a quick stop at Kroger for bread). It was nice to see them. Since neither of us have a car (he had borrowed one for the day), it makes it hard to get together much, and both of us stay pretty busy, but we usually text at least every other day. In fact, he's the main person (okay, the only person) I text. :) He and his wife just celebrated their ninth anniversary, and have two rowdy (especially the youngest) children. More power to them, they seem like great parents, but they have more guts than I do in that regard. :)

I've washed dishes, straightened up the kitchen, taken out the trash (the recyclables outside are full to the brim, so that will have to wait until tomorrow), and put away a few things I had on the loveseat. Tomorrow I need to call the leasing office and ask maintenance to have a look at my commode, as it seems to have a slow leak if you don't jiggle the handle a bit each time. It's probably time for the guts to be replaced again. I go through them fairly quickly for some reason. I promise, I'm not mega-flushing or anything.

I need to water the plants, which are doing well, but I think they're overdue for that--I normally do it on Saturdays at home, Mondays at work. The ones at work are flourishing. The shamrocks are growing like weeds (the purple one gets lots of oohs and ahs at work, it's so big), the violet is blooming (finally), the Christmas cactus isn't but it's very healthy. I did come in Monday to find the rose withered in places. I don't know why; it takes quite a bit of water but I gave it some extra towards the end of the week. I cut the withered pieces away and left the new growth, which was doing fine. I've never been able to keep miniature roses alive indoors, for some reason, but I'm going to give it a try.

Outside, the apartments have replaced the rather scrubby yew shrubs with holly ones, full of berries. I think they'll be a delight come winter when the berries are red. It makes for a nice change. I was saddened when I went into work the other day and they were cutting down a crabapple to get to the gutters and roof near the portico. They're working on the roof of the hospital, and likely will till November, replacing the whole thing. I'm getting somewhat used to the high-pitched sawing sounds, and the hammering, but there's something that causes a vibration that makes the walls shake that just gets under my skin. I've been wearing my headphones when I can and listening to music. Unfortunately, since a lot of my morning is spent on the phone, that's not always possible.

I'm feeling better about my work in regards to the referrals. I'm busy trying to get a handle on three very large clinic days next week, so I'm not doing them at the last minute. 'Course, I did that last week, too, and look how stressed I was Friday and Monday. :)

I'm listening to the Celtic music channel on cable. I'm seriously considering removing the TV package from my cable bill and relying on Netflix for entertainment. It would mean not seeing 'Doctor Who' as it comes out, but all the other seasons are on Netflix and I expect I could watch it after the new season ends. I'm bad about DVR'ing it anyway and then not getting around to watching it, especially as it comes on at a time on Saturday when I'm likely on my way home on the bus. We'll see. It seems silly to pay $75 a month for a service I rarely use. That's $900 a year. I'd still keep the Internet service, though, because, well, one, broadband service is important to me and I use it a lot, two, my Vonage phone piggy-backs on it, and three, that's how you watch those shows on Netflix. :) But it really would half my cable bill entirely. I only spend $16 a month for Netflix in comparison, and that's about $8 for the streaming bit, as I also have the DVD-by-mail subscription. I also have a trial going of Amazon Prime, which includes streaming video, which comes out to be about $6 a month. I'm trying to decide if I'm going to keep it. It also includes borrowing Kindle books and free two-day shipping. We'll see.

Okay, I think I'm going to go read. Or maybe play Ninja Chicken. No, read. :) Good night if I don't write again this evening.

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