That's the Way It Crumbles, Cookie-Wise

[Nancy Hart]

Made a quick run to the new Kroger just for a few groceries and came back with 2 pairs of shoes. They only carry about a dozen different women's shoes, but two were what I usually look for and can't find---something in between $100 athletic shoes and $12.95 canvas sneakers with paper thin soles. Something similar (maybe?) are about the same price on Amazon, if shipping were free, but you get to try them on at Kroger. One was size 7.5; the other, 8.5. If you put them toe-to-heel together, they are exactly the same length.

 

[Sheryl]

Kind of like clothes. I think it sometimes depends on the country where they are made. I have worn the same brand and the same size bras for 25 years or more. I recently ordered some online. They used to be made in America. These were made in Sri Lanka. The cup was way too small. The fabric was also not the quality it used to be.

 

[Nancy Hart]

Kind of like clothes. I think it sometimes depends on the country where they are made. I have worn the same brand and the same size bras for 25 years or more. I recently ordered some online. They used to be made in America. These were made in Sri Lanka. The cup was way too small. The fabric was also not the quality it used to be.

Even when clothes were made in the US there were problems. Sometime after I left Ohio women's sizes changed. I wore a 12 in Ohio and all the sudden I wore a 10 or an 8 in higher end clothing in Georgia. I thought it might be a Southern thing. But no, it was called "vanity sizing," and was all over.

"In the early 1980s, manufacturers realized the smaller the size tag, the more clothes a woman would buy, so a 1958 size 12 became a 1980s size 6. If a woman fits in a “smaller size” at a particular store, it tends to cause her to purchase clothing from that store more often. The ‘80s version of vanity sizing wouldn’t be so bad if it were still “the standard”, but it’s not.

LINK (original reference: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...urdity-of-womens-clothing-sizes-in-one-chart/)

I noticed at the new Kroger they've changed "Plus" sizes of women's clothing to "Extended" sizes.

 

[Nancy Hart]

 

[Nancy Hart]

Stumbled across a pair of collapsible, height adjustable, steel sawhorses in the basement that I bought YEARS ago from Home Depot. They were never very good as sawhorses because they are wobbly endways---especially one of them.

Also found a 6' long light-weight 2" x 10.5" board. I think a friend gave it to me years ago. Together with the horses they made a perfect short scaffold to fit this 7' x 7' bathroom. Without it I couldn't get close enough to cut in paint around the ceiling in the corners. I wish I'd found these things sooner. Maneuvering a step ladder to paint a small room with a 3' door that swings in has been a challenge.

 

[Axel Slingerland]

You stand on a 10.5" board set on wobbly sawhorses? That's very Brave. I couldn't do that, because I'm wobbly too...

 

[Nancy Hart]

You stand on a 10.5" board set on wobbly sawhorses? That's very Brave. I couldn't do that, because I'm wobbly too...

I only needed the scaffold to be 30" off the floor. Used the less wobbly saw horse and the vanity for two walls. I could get my nose right up in the corner of the ceiling and cut in that paint as straight as an arrow.

 

[Axel Slingerland]

I worked at the Lake Yellowstone Hotel as a painter when I was 21. It was kind of like the way they paint the Golden Gate Bridge. I'd start at one end and paint my way down to the other end, change floors and do it again until I had done them all, then go back and start over. By the time summer was over, after starting on May 1st, when the park first opened, I had painted the interior hallways of the hotel six times. There were 296 rooms on three floors, just to show how big it was. Compared to the Old Faithful Inn, which is a huge rustic log cabin style building, that hotel was almost boring.

Old Faithful, The Old Faithful Inn and Snow Lodge

The Lake Yellowstone Hotel

Both of them are beautiful, old school buildings, but The Old Faithful Inn is by far my favorite old hotel, since I love log cabins and the OFI is the biggest one I ever saw. The lobby has an 85' ceiling.

Edit: Typos and Omissions.

 

[Nancy Hart]

@Axel Slingerland:
Lake Yellowstone Hotel is beautiful. What a great summer job. Did you stay the night in the park? In the hotel? Did you have time to enjoy the place on weekends? A dream of some of the kids in high school was to get a summer job at Yellowstone. Nobody I know ever made it.

 

[Nancy Hart]

I chose blue for the color of the upper walls in the bathroom because no other room in the house is blue. That's because I don't like blue. I still remember the first kitchen paint in our house in Ohio. It was high gloss enamel blue, back when I was not tall enough to reach the light switches. I figured it's time for an adjustment of my attitude about the color blue. I picked a color called Windy Blue. This picture from the Sherwin-Williams website shows that color.



Right out of the can still wet, it was perfect, but it dried on the walls WAY darker. Nothing like that picture. Dark paint makes a room look even smaller. Blue came at you from all sides and caused a claustrophobic attack. I covered it with one coat of left-over white primer from the last paint job ASAP. Mixed 1 cup of that blue with a half-gallon of white paint, added a touch of black acrylic from a bottle of artist's paint to tone the blue down. Now it's lighter than the lightest blue on the SW color charts. More like an off-white with a hint of bluish-gray.

 

[Joe Riley]

How to use paint samples correctly – get the right paint color every time

 

[Joe Riley]

Our 8x10 bathroom was once a bedroom, before indoor plumbing. We have a clawfoot tub, original. When we moved in, back in 77', the walls were all white....but not 'all right'. We painted it "Laser Blue". Years later, when I went to buy another gallon, it had been renamed "River Romance"... UGH!

We put up some R, W & B thin striped, self adhesive wallpaper, on the upper section, 3//4 of the way around. We had a plastic, "brass" colored clock with an eagle on top, that I lightly sprayed with black paint to tone down the "brass" color and age it some. It is our patriotic Room. The picture with the clock is our "log cabin" room.

a close match

 

[Nancy Hart]

How to use paint samples correctly – get the right paint color every time

I think it is even more complicated than what they describe. When you paint one wall it's one thing. But when you paint the opposite wall, the color gets intensified. I splattered paint on most of one wall (without cutting in) because I suspected I wasn't going to like it. It wasn't too bad when the opposite wall was still white. It just kept getting worse the more walls that were painted. There may be something about blue. Blue always fades outdoors---on cars and houses.

 

[Nancy Hart]

Our 8x10 bathroom was once a bedroom, before indoor plumbing. We have a clawfoot tub, original. When we moved in, back in 77', the walls were all white....but not 'all right'. We painted it "Laser Blue". Years later, when I went to buy another gallon, it had been renamed "River Romance"... UGH!

We put up some R, W & B thin striped, self adhesive wallpaper, on the upper section, 3//4 of the way around. We had a plastic, "brass" colored clock with an eagle on top, that I lightly sprayed with black paint to tone down the "brass" color and age it some. It is our patriotic Room. The picture with the clock is our "log cabin" room.

View attachment 641 View attachment 643
a close match

This (my) bathroom was once part of a porch before indoor plumbing. The other bathroom is carved out from the crawl space under the roof upstairs with a sloping ceiling. I think it had a clawfoot tub also. It is about 12' x 7' and worked out well after a remodel. That is even darker blue than our kitchen in Ohio. The poinsettias are a nice touch.

 

[Joe Riley]

The colors change with the light, during the day. How much light you get in a room, adds to the equation. The names of the colors help sell paint. I was sold on the name Laser Blue! "Where no paint has gone before"!

 

[Nancy Hart]

One year ago I laid out 2.5 pallets of St. Augustine sod in a rectangle in the back yard.

6/17/24

It slowly began turning yellow. By the end of summer, it looked like it was all going to die.

10/31/24


Then the grass went into its normal winter dormant stage. (Or did it all die?)

3/29/25


6/3/25

The other half pallet was cut up in little chunks and sprigged everywhere else. Those sprigs are competing with weeds, but I think the grass will eventually win. It looks like laying down the sod was at least as good as sprigging that area would have been. Fingers crossed it doesn't take another downturn this summer.

 

[Nancy Hart]

I knew something was wrong. These bluebirds just weren't behaving normally. It had been long enough for the second brood to leave the nest. I clean the house out after every brood, because it is usually a mess all over the insides. Would draw flies. Small insects crawling in the bottom, possibly lice or mites, and trash from pin feathers. As it turned out I need not have bothered.

The box was clean. The nest was tall. I removed it with a square trowel. Buried about halfway down were 5 unhatched eggs. They had all been viable up to the same stage of development. Something must have happened suddenly about a week to 10 days after incubation started. The weather was perfect throughout. I'm guessing something happened to the female.

Put the top half of the nest back the way it was. Two adult bluebirds came back almost immediately and checked out the house. They may decide to abandon it now. We'll find out soon. I do think this is a new female. She is smaller and more brightly colored. I swear I saw another female just 2 days earlier. They are able to fluff up their feathers and look completely different at times.

Meanwhile back at the ranch, the Eastern Phoebes have 4 eggs in their nest above the outdoor light fixture on the porch. Phoebe perched on the mailbox chirping away at me while I took this picture Sunday.

 

[Joe Riley]

I knew something was wrong. These bluebirds just weren't behaving normally. It had been long enough for the second brood to leave the nest. I clean the house out after every brood, because it is usually a mess all over the insides. Would draw flies. Small insects crawling in the bottom, possibly lice or mites, and trash from pin feathers. As it turned out I need not have bothered.

The box was clean. The nest was tall. I removed it with a square trowel. Buried about halfway down were 5 unhatched eggs. They had all been viable up to the same stage of development. Something must have happened suddenly about a week to 10 days after incubation started. The weather was perfect throughout. I'm guessing something happened to the female.

Put the top half of the nest back the way it was. Two adult bluebirds came back almost immediately and checked out the house. They may decide to abandon it now. We'll find out soon. I do think this is a new female. She is smaller and more brightly colored. I swear I saw another female just 2 days earlier. They are able to fluff up their feathers and look completely different at times.

Meanwhile back at the ranch, the Eastern Phoebes have 4 eggs in their nest above the outdoor light fixture on the porch. Phoebe perched on the mailbox chirping away at me while I took this picture Sunday.

View attachment 664

You are correct......the females are able to fluff up their feathers and look completely different at times.

 

[Nancy Hart]

Update: The bluebirds were going in and out of the birdhouse this morning. My tinkering with it must not have bothered them.

I think I solved the mystery of why the TV goes out during rain. There is a free app on Google Play called SatFinder Lite that superimposes the locations of all the TV satellites on top of the view of the sky at your house from your phone. It shows any obstructions to the line of sight. It showed 2 limbs in my cedar tree that could be interfering and nothing else. I didn't believe it at first. Cut the end off of the lowest limb and the TV reception came back instantly. After it stopped raining and everything dried out the reception was back in the mid 90% range. The other limb is likely hanging low due to the weight of the water. I can't reach that one.

This is great news because it's not any of the neighbor's trees across the street causing the problem. I wandered all around the yard looking for a better position for the dish, and it's right in front of the front porch. No trees would ever grow enough to obstruct the view there. I looked up the city/county code for dishes in the front yard out of curiosity. There is a restriction, but I don't think it applies because my house was built before the building codes. I will move the dish regardless and wait for the dish code police to arrest me. I doubt there is any jail time involved. Adding this job near the top of the to-do list.

I would ditch the satellite TV, but whenever I start looking at the other options it's too confusing. They claim DirecTv is phasing out satellite TV and won't launch any new ones. Maybe the satellite will outlast me.

 

[Joe Riley]

Update: The bluebirds were going in and out of the birdhouse this morning. My tinkering with it must not have bothered them.

I think I solved the mystery of why the TV goes out during rain. There is a free app on Google Play called SatFinder Lite that superimposes the locations of all the TV satellites on top of the view of the sky at your house from your phone. It shows any obstructions to the line of sight. It showed 2 limbs in my cedar tree that could be interfering and nothing else. I didn't believe it at first. Cut the end off of the lowest limb and the TV reception came back instantly. After it stopped raining and everything dried out the reception was back in the mid 90% range. The other limb is likely hanging low due to the weight of the water. I can't reach that one.

This is great news because it's not any of the neighbor's trees across the street causing the problem. I wandered all around the yard looking for a better position for the dish, and it's right in front of the front porch. No trees would ever grow enough to obstruct the view there. I looked up the city/county code for dishes in the front yard out of curiosity. There is a restriction, but I don't think it applies because my house was built before the building codes. I will move the dish regardless and wait for the dish code police to arrest me. I doubt there is any jail time involved. Adding this job near the top of the to-do list.

I would ditch the satellite TV, but whenever I start looking at the other options it's too confusing. They claim DirecTv is phasing out satellite TV and won't launch any new ones. Maybe the satellite will outlast me.

Don't go out on a limb by ticking off the DC Police!