Conversate More

A few years ago, back when the brazers were still working on the lines, one of the temps came over to my brazing stand and said, "I've been watching you, and all you do is work, work, work.  You need to step around the line and conversate more!" 

I replied, "I don't get paid to conversate.  I get paid to make parts."  What I didn't say -- at least out loud-- was, "What could you and I possibly have to conversate about?  We likely don't know the same people.  We certainly don't have the same interests, so what do you want to talk about?  

Do you want to discuss the episode of Secrets Of The Dead I watched the other day in which Phillipa Langley -- you know, she's the one who found Richard III in that car park in Leicester back in 2012, and we can conversate about that one, too --uncovered evidence that solved the mystery of the princes in the tower?  

Or would you rather discuss how many times the movie Air Force One defies the laws of physics, and and exactly how it does so?  Or hypothesize about how different history would be if just one of Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon's sons had lived?  Or how it would be literally impossible to explore new worlds without violating the Prime Directive?  

Oh, I know!  We can discuss wind shear and it's negative effect on hurricane formation, or how El Niño and La Niña influence weather patterns!

No?  Then we have nothing to talk about, because I couldn't care less who is sleeping with who or what celebrities are up to, so if you don't mind, I'm going to get back to my work, work, work now. "

In other news, lookit!  The birds are starting to find the new feeder!

That's good, because it won't be long before they'll be needing that extra feed.  It was chilly enough this morning that I was able to light the first fire in my little fire box. 

It warmed up pretty quickly, but that fire sure was cozy there for a minute. 

On a similar note, someone posted this on Facebook today and boy, I felt it to the depths of my soul.  

I do this all the time.  I can't seem to relax, because I know I have soooo much stuff I need to get done, and I can't seem to get my act together enough to get any of it done.  I don't have any family in the area to help me out, and I certainly don't have any friends who'd even show up to offer moral support, so everything falls on me. 

Then I look at my list -- which is getting longer by the day -- and see how much is on it, and get overwhelmed and can't do anything.  So I sit around and knit, and berate myself for being such a numpty.  

And believe me when I tell you that numpty is actually much kinder than what I really call myself. 

But, as is my custom, in the middle of all my bouts of self-denigration, I managed to get most of the bricks behind my wood stove painted. 

I still have to do the ones in the back corner, but I didn't quite feel up to getting down on my hands and knees and crawling back there.  I also noticed that the ones in the upper right are whiter than the rest.  I'm not sure why, because I didn't go over them or anything.  I wonder if it's because I sponged them instead of brushing them.  That's how I started out, but decided it was taking too much time.  Maybe tomorrow I'll start sponging a second coat on the rest of the bricks, but even as they are, it makes that corner so much less dark and gloomy than it was before. 

As far as Thanksgiving prep goes,  I got my turkey out of the deep freeze and put it into the fridge to start thawing.  Then I made two pies and put them into the freezer.  One was a banana cream pie, made with sugar free pudding mix.  I was going to make Cody his cream cheese pie, but decided he didn't need all that sugar, either, so I made the second pie with sugar free cheesecake pudding mix.  

I'm debating on whether to go ahead and make the pumpkin pie tomorrow, or to wait until Thursday to do it.  I think I'll wait on that one.  

I had bought the canned cranberry jelly to serve, but when I was in the store yesterday, I saw bags of fresh cranberries and bought one on impulse, so I guess we're getting both.  Ah, well, Cody and Bren will have lots of leftovers to take home, then. 

And finally, today is my bloggiversary.  Can you believe it was 19 years ago that I wrote my very first blog post?   So much has changed.  I've lost readers, and gained new ones, and I'm grateful for every one of you who've stuck with me through the years.  

So, while I was looking for something else, I found and old draft of a post that had never gotten published.  I'd written this back in 2019, and don't know why I never posted it.  Anyway, here it is for your enjoyment.

The plant has this notice up, asking for people who want to train to braze. I don't know why. Even the ones they do train they don't let them braze. Eh, who knows. 

 A few weeks ago, Stalker was training one guy on an empty sub-brazing stand. He hasn't brazed since. He now works on line 1 putting on flo-rators. But that's beside the point. 

He was over there training, and one of my coworkers said, "He looks like Buh-Lak-Ay from the Substitute Teacher." 

Now, if you don't know what that is, it's a comedy sketch by Key and Peele which you can look up on YouTube if you're interested. I'm not going to share it here, because it does have some language and I want to maintain my G rating for my blog. 

We have no idea what that guy's real name is, but ever since then, we've called him Buh-Lak-Ay. 

Now, we're over there treating him like he's some sort of celebrity. "Hey! I saw Buh-Lak-Ay in the break room!" "I saw Buh-Lak-Ay coming out of the restroom!" "I saw Buh-Lak-Ay over on line 1!" He's just an ordinary guy, but here we are, totally fan-girling over him. 

And he has no idea.