Friday Follies

Friday didn’t start off too well. First of all, it was raining. Then, when I made my morning cup of coffee with the Keurig, it only filled up about 1/3 of the cup. WTF? But, I drank it anyway. It tasted like expresso.

I drove to work in the rain. I started working in our ERP system and it abruptly kicked me out. WTF? So, I tried again. Same thing. I emailed the ERP team with the error message and the new guy (the only one I don’t know) sent me a message back that I must be doing something wrong. I should log off and log back in, then try again. So, I did. It seemed to be working, but then it happened again. I sent another email. He replied I should try again, but this time save more frequently, so I don’t lose what I’d done. Same thing happened again! This time my email was terse. Then Rob (somebody I know) emailed back that the cache in the server was corrupt and give them 10 minutes to fix it. Thanks, new guy!!!

I made the mistake of reminding Vicky yesterday that the building picnic was today. When I got to work, I found out it was next week! Worse yet, Vicky had brought no lunch, because of me! So, we went to Time Out and got the fish and chips. They were out of malt vinegar. Dan, the owner, came to the table to say hi and I kiddingly complained. After all, it’s not fish and chips without malt vinegar. He said he would personally pick some up for me. Nice, but too late to save today’s lunch.

On the plus side, as we were leaving, April (the bartender) said, “Goodbye, John,” Nancy (one of the waitresses) yelled from across the crowded room, “Have a good weekend, John!” and, as we were getting into the truck, Mandy (our waitress today) ran out the door into the parking lot and said, “Goodbye, John! See you later!” Vicky said, “All that, and the owner’s going to personally buy you more malt vinegar? What are you, some kind of rock star?” I laughed and said, “No, they just like me!”

Sidebar: The day was looking up.

The sun came out briefly in the afternoon, but it was too wet to walk outside.

Finally it was five o’clock and I headed home. I promptly got stopped by a long train on Levan. Fred’s truck was about three cars behind me. I quickly sent a text to my boss not to come this way. She replied, “Thanks!”

When I got home, I changed clothes and then went out back. I collected armfuls of branches I saved for Margaret. She is making a rustic arbor out of branches and I have a massage appointment in the morning. 

I carried them out front to the truck (I left it in the driveway). When I came around the corner of the sidewalk, a panicked bird flew right in front of my face! Where the hell did that bird come from? I looked up and saw she had built a nest on the inner curve of the front downspout! 

I loaded the branches into the truck bed and then went and got my camera to get a shot of the bird's nest. Since I was out there, I took some other pictures for you:

Weird spot for  nest!

Lily of the Valley are in bloom

So are the iris on the south side of the garage

Hard to see, but the darker grass is where the ruts were.

Maybe a better angle of the tell-tale grass

Inside, I attended to the Keurig. I remember the last time I was at Jake and Carla’s, he was saying he periodically runs the cup holder (avoiding the two sharp needle thingies) through the dishwasher, then runs a tank of vinegar and water through the machine to clean it out and prevent calcium build-up. I told him I’d never washed mine since I bought it. So, tonight I did.

I didn’t have enough dishes in the dish washer to run, though. So, I carefully hand-washed it and then soaked it in vinegar water. I washed everything I could get to on the machine, then I reassembled it. I ran two tankful’s of vinegar water through it until it was consistently filling the cup like it should. Then I rinsed out the tank and ran two more tankful’s of straight water through it to get the vinegar out of it.

Sidebar: The whole house smelled like a pickle.

I spent some time on the computer and then made my dinner. I warmed up the last two brats and the last ear of sweet corn. It was good.

I watched a movie and then went to bed.