I got some tiles made for the front of the house so people will know the street number, and I can replace the hideous ones I hastily purchased when I moved in:
Also, the petunias, pansies, and wildflowers are going NUTS:
That’s all I got for tonight. Keep bitching amongst yourselves.
SiubhanDuinne
Tiles and flowers are all spectacularly beautiful!
TaMara (HFG)
I’ve been trying to find time to put this in a post, but haven’t had time, so enjoy it here in John’s fun thread.
Baud
Kristen Welker is really fluffing the Mexico deal on MSNBC.
sukabi
Nice. How are your birdy porch guests?
Need to check the kerning between the 1 and the 0.
Seriously looks good. ?
Amir Khalid
The house-number tile looks handsome. But your garden pix won’t load for me; and when I try to View Image, I am told the files can’t be displayed because errors.
rikyrah
House number looks great ?
The flowers are so beautiful ??????
Dan B
@Amir Khalid: The pics are loading fine for me. Samsung Galaxy 7.
Larkspurs are gorgeous. Perhaps these are not allowed in KL… probably would last two weeks in Malaysia.
NotMax
House number plaque would look nice attached to the riser of one of the porch steps.
Kent
OK, love the tiled numbers. I need those.
Are those a local product or something you bought online?
John Cole
@Kent: email me
Steeplejack
Slow evening here in Threadkill Lane. I was out most of the day, ending with a midafternoon lunch at Olive Garden. Came home, had a bit of a snooze and then watched the season 9 opener of Vera. Pretty good. Now getting caught up with the threads and trying to avoid Trump-related news.
Tomorrow I’m going to see Echo in the Canyon, the late ’60s music documentary. Looking forward to that. Haven’t read any reviews, so I’m going in clean.
Yesterday I saw Avengers: Endgame and thought it was pretty good, given the need to handle 900 characters and 37 different plot lines. Last week I saw Captain Marvel and thought that was excellent—much better than I expected. It gave me the motivation to push ahead with Endgame.
Might start watching Barry this weekend.
SiubhanDuinne
@Steeplejack:
Living the dream :-)
ETA: “Threadkill Lane” just cracks me up!
Steeplejack
@Baud:
I had to turn away. Reduced to watching My Lottery Dream Home reruns. I like it among the shelter shows because the people are not pretentious, unrealistic A-holes, mostly just average schmoes who lucked out.
Steeplejack
@SiubhanDuinne:
I’m not much of a food snob. It’s okay Italian in an area where the other choices are nothing and high-end. I took my friend to knee rehab, and it was a nice interlude before going home. And a celebration of hitting 120° of flexion!
Mary G
Much WOW, Cole!! Your thumb is bright green. Love the yellow petunias and larkspur. There is even a California poppy so we Left Coasters don’t feel left out. Tiles are beautiful
Another Scott
Twitter:
Yup.
(via RawStory)
Who’s next? Will he go after Trudeau in Canada again?
Cheers,
Scott.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Mary G: Is it even legal for folk from West(by God) Virginia to grow our state flower?
opiejeanne
@SiubhanDuinne: That’s close to the name of the farm my mom lived on down in the Missouri Ozarks: Thrailkill. I think my grandparents were renting the place from a doctor named Thrailkill. In 2005 his son and the son’s wife (she’s a distant cousin but so is almost everyone else in that area) took us on a tour of the area, but no one remembers where that house stood. They’re gone now so I’d have trouble finding most of the places they did show us. No street signs and the only paved road is the state highway. When we were there many of the houses still didn’t have indoor plumbing. To describe it asisolated is an understatement
Steve in the ATL
@Steeplejack: “Italian”
Just like the day we dropped off our daughter at the university of Arizona
opiejeanne
@?BillinGlendaleCA: Ha! We’ve had them come up as volunteers in our garden just outside Seattle. No idea where the seeds came from, we don’t see them in the ditches or in gardens here, but the most recent trip to SoCal a couple of weeks ago they were growing next to I-5 in Oregon. I wondered if THAT was legal in Oregon.
ThresherK
@opiejeanne: Your family’s area sounds like the country of “One False Move”. I gotta watch that movie again; it’s been awhile.
Amir Khalid
@Dan B:
I’m on a Lenovo laptop with Win7 and the latestest Firefox.
Steve in the ATL
@?BillinGlendaleCA: technically legal, but you get put on a watch list
opiejeanne
@Steve in the ATL: my BIL has finally decided that Yuma is too damned hot, so he’s moving to Ames Iowa in July.
Steve in the ATL
@opiejeanne: what’s the over/under on when he decides Iowa is too damned cold? I’ll take February and the points.
Steve in the ATL
@Amir Khalid: do you ever miss the underscore in your nym? I get that sometimes you need a big change in your life.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@opiejeanne: I had them growing in my little garden here until my landlord pulled them out. I put in seeds last year and only one came up, it’s blooming now.
Mary G
@?BillinGlendaleCA: It’s in the wildflower mix Cole bought in VW, so guess it’s OK. Just gobsmacked it’s flourished there. The soil and weather couldn’t be much less like the Antelope Valley.
David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch
?Toronto beating Goliath in greatest upset since miracle on ice
Amir Khalid
@Steve in the ATL:
It’s kind of a fond memory, when I remember it, but I don’t really miss it. I only put it in because I was somehow under the impression that I mustn’t have a space in my nym. I took it out after I had learned better.
Steve in the ATL
@Amir Khalid: like when I grew out of “Steve N da ATL Yo”
Amir Khalid
@David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch:
As a Liverpool FC fan I’ve seen my share of miracles. The Miracles of Istanbul and Anfield (2005 and 2019 respectively) were especially sweet
Jim, Foolish Literalist
as with the Saudis, the Israelis, the Japanese, the North Koreans, Teresa May… I may be forgetting one… It’s obvious to the whole world that he is weak and easily manipulated
Major Major Major Major
Just finished the rough draft of a story for an anthology. 5,900 words about a space arborist. Phew!
opiejeanne
@ThresherK: I’ve never heard of that movie, but I will keep an eye out for it.
I realized there were no area maps that would help us before we left on the trip, so I printed out 9 pages of MapQuest and taped them together in a big square, then tried to fold it. MapQuest had some road names so we were able to find some things we were looking for, but the local mail carrier was our guide to my great grandfather’s farm (his daughter is my grandmother on Mom’s side of the family). It’s so difficult to find that when there was a kitchen fire the firefighters couldn’t find the place, and they all grew up around there. they spotted her while they were wandering around and she took them to the right place. It was gorgeous land but so far from anything. My great grandmother is buried on the farm, along with a number of other family members.
Relatives that are from there will tell you they got a good enough education, but when you see their posts online it’s appalling how poorly educated they are. None of them can spell, none seem to know the difference between your and you’re, and they use phrases like “it’s not like it used to was”. Everyone is a Southern Baptist of some flavor, the two predominant ones used to be Primitive Baptist (aka, Foot-Washin’ Baptist) and Free Will Baptists.
opiejeanne
@Steve in the ATL: Yeah, no. He lived in Alaska for nearly 30 years before deciding he wanted to be somewhere warm. The last ten years he was in Nome. He knows about cold. He grew up in San Bernardino so he thought he knew about heat, but Yuma is so much worse that it’s almost unbelievable.
eemom
One-oh-six.
It will be a Netflix series someday.
opiejeanne
@Major Major Major Major: Oooh! That sounds interesting.
Major Major Major Major
@opiejeanne: thanks, my gut says this one has pretty high potential!
ThresherK
@opiejeanne: The movie is from 1992 and you’ll recognize Bill Paxton and Billy Bob Thornton in it. Highly recommended.
Funny you should say this: “It’s so difficult to find that when there was a kitchen fire the firefighters couldn’t find the place”. It’s the kind of rural, non-signposted local geography which reminds me of the movie, the second half of which takes place in rural Arkansas.
JAFD
Your mail person says “Thank You.”
(Having once waybackwhen spent a summer delivering the mail, very grateful for clear conspicuous house numbers I was.)
Major Major Major Major
I got dinner at a Japanese place that had some very clever branding on the ramen: https://www.instagram.com/p/BybwU_ch2Y2/?igshid=d55mnqt7py88
SiubhanDuinne
@David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch:
This is lovely. I’m in a sports bar and there are a bunch of guys who keep singing “Oh, Canada,” but those are the only words they know, so I’m trying to teach them the rest :-) ??
?BillinGlendaleCA
@opiejeanne: Won’t help you in Misery, but on the west coast UCSB’s Framefinder*(a collection of aerial photos) is pretty helpful for historical stuff post the late 20’s. I was just using it to attempt to find the location of a picture with a Bekins storage building, a Thriftymart grocery store and a Baskin-Robbins.
*Certified time sink.
divF
@Major Major Major Major:
Does your arborist have assistants named Huey, Louie, and Dewey :-) ?
I’m into the final countdown for retirement on June 27. First pass on all the paperwork is in, including signing up for Social Security. All I have left is to write a 15-page historical summary of my field for the last 60 years by the end of the month.
Since I am a scientist, I will be continuing to do research, just won’t have to raise my salary from grants. My colleagues refer to this as perpetual sabbatical.
Steve in the ATL
@SiubhanDuinne:
[skeptical expression on face]
Major Major Major Major
@divF: almost-congrats!
Tehanu
Love the tiles, and the flowers look great. I missed my chance to comment on your dad pic the other day so let me just say I’m glad he seems to be doing well.
Steeplejack
@opiejeanne:
That hits home. Word came last week that my uncle died in Tennessee. It was slightly unexpected, but he was 84 and had had health problems for quite a while. He had a good life, I think, although I didn’t really know much about him. He was the sibling (of my mother and her sister) who ended up inheriting the old family farm in rural Montgomery County, because he stayed behind and ran it before and after their parents died. (Both my mother and her sister moved away.)
That farm was a great place to visit as a kid. It was either 200 or 400 acres and had a lot of woods in addition to the fields. And it had a big creek on one boundary and a “branch” that ran through the woods. My brothers, my cousins and I had a lot of great times there, wandering the woods, exploring, swimming in the creek, picking blackberries, etc. Somehow I got to spend most of one summer there alone with my grandparents. I don’t remember how that came about.
Later on my uncle managed the place from his home in town (Clarksville), and at some point it stopped being a working farm. The old farmhouse burned down, and the place got overgrown. I haven’t been there in decades. But it was as you said: no street signs, set back from the two-lane state road by a long, winding dirt-and-gravel lane. You had to know where you were going to get there. I could probably orient myself on the farm if I got to the site of the old house, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it had changed beyond recognition.
The farmhouse had electricity (and a party-line telephone), but the extent of the indoor plumbing was a big hand pump in the kitchen drawing water from a well in the side yard. Heat provided by a fireplace in the small living/dining room and, when you went to bed, multiple quilts piled on top of you. Outhouse out back.
My uncle married somewhat late in life, so his wife is younger (maybe early 60s?), and they had two sons who must be in their early 30s now. Clarksville has expanded so much that the place is no longer far out of town. I assume they’ll sell the place and it will be divided up into farmettes and houses with acreage. End of an era.
I thought about going back for a final visit but dismissed the idea after about two minutes. I’ve got the good memories.
divF
@Major Major Major Major: Thanks !
It occurs to me that, as a Noo Yawker, you will be our jackal-on-the-spot for World Pride. I hope you will report back to the rest of us. I have friends who are making the trip, Dog knows how they can do it. I can’t even stand the mob scene in San Francisco, so I just stay in the East Bay and feed exhausted parade-goers after they get back.
JoyceH
LOL! A friend has been getting after me for not having a photo on my Amazon Author Page – so I just put up a picture of my dog in a witch’s hat. Turns out it also shows up on the book page – you scroll down to the “about the author” bit, and there’s Jazzy in her pointy hat. It’s justsocute!
Major Major Major Major
@divF:
Oh god help us it is going to be a disaster
divF
@Major Major Major Major: I have this image of SFPride but on the scale of the NYC Marathon route.
At least NYC has a real subway system.
Tamie
Longtime lurker here but I have a funny story about the tile numbers. I rented half of a duplex for many years before I bought a house nearby. A local shop owner came by and said she had a special order for a tile house number that happened to be the same number as my rented house. The requester never showed to claim it so she offered it for half price. I bought it even though I didn’t own the property. I still see it as I go by my old home. Just a story.
Major Major Major Major
@divF: I sort of was accidentally in NYC for pride last year and it wasn’t that horrible, but they say this year is going to have like five million visitors.
opiejeanne
@ThresherK: I have some photos of the area.
The school my grandmother attended in Flint Springs
James E Powell
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
For about 41.5% of American voters, it’s not obvious or even understood.
NotMax
@Major Major Major Major
Bruce Dern calling on line 1, very long distance.
;)
Steeplejack
@Tamie:
Cool.
opiejeanne
@Steeplejack:
I understand that completely.
I never lived in Missouri but I visited KC and Independence every other summer when I was a kid. I didn’t visit the Macks Creek area until I was 19 but it made a huge impression. Visited some distant cousins with my parents, aunt and uncle, and grandmother. Elderly couple, very nice. They had a three-legged dog who lost it somehow, went missing for about 7 weeks and came home without the leg. The farm was set in an area so green, so lush, it was like a dream to me. I grew up in SoCal and this was a different world. The old farmhouse had two kitchens, one in a back porch area and one inside. There was a pump for the sink in the summer kitchen. They had a joke sign in the bathroom that said there was a nickel charge for using the facilities. I knew it was a joke, but I heard the old guy, Emil, tell my mom that they’d put in the bathroom a couple of years ago. That was in 1969. I know that the area didn’t get electricity until about ten years earlier.
opiejeanne
@Tamie: Hi Tamie!
Are you from the SF Bay Area?
Steeplejack
@opiejeanne:
I think the farm got electricity sometime in the 1940s. I remember my mom saying that it was a big deal when they got a battery-powered radio, also sometime in the ’40s, because then they were able to listen to news and the latest music.
I was a freshman in college in 1969. They closed the dorms for Christmas break, and my family was living on Okinawa, so I went to stay at the grandparents’ farm. The thing I remember most is that, when I went to bed in a rarely used front room with a swaybacked bed and an old, out-of-tune piano, I turned out the little lamp and I literally could not see my hand in front of my face. The room had a window, but there was no light coming in from outside. I lay in bed and passed my hand back and forth in front of my face, marveling at the blackness. No ambient light coming from anywhere.
Aleta
Nice.
The colors out front go with those gorgeous dishes inside now. I like that.
J R in WV
@JoyceH:
That’s all so cute!!
I bought your book the other day, haven’t started it yet, also got Neal Stephenson’s “Fall” which printed is some 800 pages. There’s a novel inside the novel, biblical sorts of mythology. I’m enjoying it, and always love how long it takes me to read his stuff. I’m so fast a reader lost of novels only take an afternoon.
I’m not a huge British Regency fan, but I like Fantasy/magic so will give it a whirl.
We have the coolest Jackals here!
J R in WV
@opiejeanne:
I love that school photo. Wife said, “But it WAS a school!” which is true.
My first full time job after I got out of the Navy, my foreman told us his first job after he got out of the Army after WW II ended was running tiny power lines into farms in rural WV working for the government Rural Electrification Program.
One more thing liberals brought to rural America that the RWNJs deliberately forgot, along with clean water, safer food, paved roads and lead free gasoline. OH, yeah, schools.
My great Aunt Mae taught at a country school, and I have her picture of the new school building at the mouth of Butcher Hollow. It’s a hand hewn squared log building with dovetailed joints at the corners, built by the parents of the students. Very good looking, almost cabinetry level woodworking, they did their best, which was very good. Hand tools almost certainly in the early 1900s in rural Kentucky.