days_unfolding

Bella is being obnoxious again. She was going after one of the irises, after leaving them alone up to now. I hussled her back inside the house.

I didn’t get to bed early. I was mucking around on the Internet. I think that Bella wants me to go to bed, so okay. The girl loves her sleep.

I bought an external hard drive to clean off my home laptop. (Yes, I have a smaller one just for traveling.) I don’t need 1TB storage but there are few smaller ones. I bought an ultra portable one so that I can pull files off of both laptops. And store pictures on it.

Woke up at 7 AM. Yay. I was out with Bella for an hour but she finally pooped outside. I told her that she was a good girl.

It’s going to be hot today.

Aargh. Bella ate Lily’s food. She is fast! And Oliver snatched a little of Zara’s food. Well, we’re all (mostly) fed. Nap time. I’m sharing my bed with a Munchie Bone.

Had a nice nap. Bella is still asleep. Now she’s up. Put clothes in the dryer, but I have clothes to wear outside. Made an emergency Walmart order because we’re almost out of cat food. They said that the cat food might be low in stock. I want to go there to get a rosemary plant, so I’ll pick up some extra individual cans. And I placed a backup Chewy order.

Had lunch. Bella, Oliver, and Lily wanted my food. Nice to be the center of attention.

I really want to go back to sleep, but I need to shower and take Bella out. Bella clearly wants to nap—she slept during my shower—so I’m not going to argue.

I added a rosemary plant and individual cans of cat food to my Walmart order.

Napped an extra hour than I had planned. Fed us all. I had a dilemma because Bella clearly needed to go outside, but I didn’t want her out when the Walmart order got here. So I hussled her out and in. Texting the driver to close the gate is working well. I just got the signs but no way to hang them on the gate. I’ll have to drill holes in them.

The rosemary plant that they gave me kind of looks pathetic, but it’ll bounce back. I just watered it.

I’m not feeling like starting the kitchen now. Maybe I’ll just go to bed. I guess that I'll transfer stuff to my new purse and crash.

Now I'm wondering if I really want to hike in 93 degree F heat. If it makes my plants wilt, it will likely make me wilt too. Plus they're predicting rain at 5 PM. Hmm. Maybe I'll open the door and step outside and see how it feels. After I feed the hungry cats.

Zara cracks me up. She stays wherever she's hanging out until I get close to feeding them in my morning routine. Then she appears. Economy of motion :)

I went outside and stood in the sun for a couple of minutes while I watered the plants, and I think that's a nope for hiking. Even 80s F would be a lot better, although they're predicting 90s for a long time to come. If there's a day with cloud cover, I'd go, but it's sunny out. I have plenty of things to do at home.

Had a nice nap with Mimi. I got up when the alarm went off, so I'm catching up on my sleep.

Had a bite to eat. It's nice and cool in here. I checked the average high temperatures for Lincoln in July, and it's in the 80s F, not 90s, so I should be able to wait out the heat wave. Although right now, the forecasters are predicting temps in the 90s next weekend too.

Took a nice cool shower and shaved my legs. I'm ready to wear dresses next week (with temps in the 90s, that sounds like a good idea). Resting for a moment before I take out the garbage. Weeded the beet patch. Took out some of the garbage. My back is spasming out. Finished the garbage.

Read a retirement article that recommended Gulfport, MS. It seemed lackluster online, and if its advertising seems lackluster, I don't hold out much hope for the city. It is close to New Orleans though, which I love. I don't like the trend line of COVID cases in Tennessee, so I'm kind of assuming that I won't be able to go there in the fall.

The girls seem to be wondering what I'm doing in the kitchen. "Mommy, there's so much more room to run and raise havoc!"

Checked on when I planted the beets, and it's been a month. Two to four more weeks to go.

Googled someone with whom I used to work on whom I had had a crush. A very long time ago....

Just ate soup because I don't feel like cooking. I think that I'm done decluttering for the night, but I'm mulling over setting up the new monitor. Done. It's indeed a screamin' machine (very fast). I'm very happy with it. Although it copied my desktop wallpaper from my laptop, which borders on a little creepy. Want a picture of the Smokies anyway.

My next step is to get a Windows recovery disk to have handy when I partition the disk and set up the dual boot. Hot damn. I'm creating a Windows recovery flash drive right now without resorting to eBay. I just need to get a second one for Ubuntu.

I don't know where Zara is. She's here somewhere, but she picked a good hiding spot. Found her. She went under the bathroom sink and couldn't get the door open. She doesn't meow, but I heard some scratching, and there she was.

I put air in my tires, only to find that I need to buy new front tires because the treads have worn down. Well, I guess that it's better to find that out before I go out of town. Walmart's auto care is closed, but Google claims another tire place in Lincoln is open.

Back with the monitor. I had to follow twisty, turny country highways to get there, but I found the place. Nice day for a drive. I like to look at wind farms. I always stress when I drive somewhere I don't know though.

I'm having a bite to eat, and then I'll go run errands. Went to Ace Hardware to get a fruit-fly trap, but they didn't have one. Dropped junk off at Goodwill. Bought soda. Got Zara's meds. Picked up odds and ends at Walmart, including sunscreen and mosquito repellant. Oh, and a flash drive for Ubuntu. And a couple of bras, including a strapless one for my tank top dresses. (Google Home doesn't understand the word "bra". It kept on adding "bread" to the shopping list.) Far out. Now I'm cooling off, and then it's nap time.

I was wondering where I could get rid of the screwed up monitor, and Goodwill says that they'll take computers. Excellent.

Went looking for Zara, and she's napping under the sink again. I left the door open a crack so that she can get out.

Lay down for a couple of hours and slept for five hours. I must have needed it. Got us all fed. Now it's back to sleep.

I've been feeling kind of dizzy this morning. I decided to go to the credit union on Monday and take a longer nap now.

Ran out and ran errands. Picked up soda and milk. It was my inaugural run of my cloth mask. I found that it's tougher to breathe through than the disposable masks, plus sweat pools underneath it. I was cranky during my errands, which might have had something to do with the mask. I kept on thinking that people who weren't wearing masks were assholes, which doesn't help. Now I'm sitting here, cooling off. 86 degrees F right now.

On more positive news, my beets are coming up! I'll take a picture of the garden, but the beets probably won't show up because they're very tiny.

Back row: Cherry tomato, regular tomato, cherry tomato. Front row: empty pot, basil, chives, oregano. The patch of dirt in a grow bag is the beets.

My Italian teacher had to cancel my lesson. I missed the e-mail because it went into my junk folder. Bah. No lesson next week because she canceled all her lessons. Maybe she's moving back to Italy? So my next lesson is in two weeks.

I never heard from the monitor seller, so I just opened a return request. I found a monitor on Amazon that would work, and it probably would be better packed.

I checked travel restrictions in Tennessee, and there are no restrictions. I might see if I can take a trip during the fall. It's supposed to be very pretty in the fall. I'd probably break up the trip down because I want to be well-rested when I get there. Maybe the trip up too? There's a Motel 6 in Lexington, Kentucky just off the highway to stop there. I looked into Motel 6's and Best Westerns in Knoxville and Chattanooga in case I don't feel comfortable staying in Airbnbs. The Best Westerns have a fridge and microwave.

Decided to use the FitDesk before making dinner. I brought out my laptop, but I find myself stopping when I type. I'll post this while I'm pedaling.

Added: Made HelloFresh shrimp with zucchini ribbons and rice. Pretty good. I've yet to have a bad meal with HelloFresh. Need to clean up the kitchen and crash.

There's been a "strong increase" in COVID-19 cases in Tennessee according to Fortune, so maybe not.

The no OS computer that I was looking at had no video card. Forget that. I can get a computer that's exactly what I want with Windows 10 installed, so maybe I should just get that. I'll sleep on it. Actually there's one with an enormous SSD drive with Windows installed, and you can get it with dual monitors, which would be very helpful. I'd need to add the 1TB drive. Hmm, if I get an enormous SSD drive, maybe I won't need the extra drive. Windows takes 20 GB, and Ubuntu takes 3 GB.

HelloFresh says that there is a delivery delay. That's actually a good thing. I can catch up!

There was a massive Comcast outage that impacted me. I lost a bunch of time to it, but now it's back up. Bah. At least, I didn't have go into the library and get my temperature taken first.

I'm enrolled in the two Computer Science classes for the fall.

I bought another Python book. And books about Excel macros and Visual Basic in Excel. I'm going to have quite a library. And I just bought the textbook for one of my classes in the fall. And a book on Ubuntu....

I think all this programming is coming up because I said that I was bored. Be careful what you ask for....

If I'm working late and haven't fed the cats yet, Zara comes to the door of my office room and stares at me. Okay, I can take a hint. For creatures without a common vocabulary, they sure can communicate well.

Local storm is, well, storming.

I'm going to study some Italian and then go to sleep.

Added: I bought a Windows desktop with the specs that I want (16 GB, SSD drive, 1 TB HDD). I'll just need to partition the SSD drive and install Linux.

Oh, and I was able to make an online rent payment by entering the check information each time. It's just when I try to access saved information that it barfs.