Since the work on the addition is finished and we have our Certificate of Completion(!) the contractor will be picking up the permit box soon - that's the box that all the plans, forms and permits have to be in during construction. I decided collect all those papers from the box to store. We did that with the original construction of the house and some of those plans were really helpful in the addition.

So I wander out to the box and reach up to grab the papers - and saw the wasp nest just as one zapped my right hand. I have no idea what kind they were - I dropped the door, froze for a second in case more swarmed out, then headed back to the house.

I've got to restock my Benadryl cream and tablets - both are way past expiration, but they still seem to work. The sting is below the webbing between the thumb and first finger. My hand is swollen half again as big as it should be from the middle finger to the thumb, then down the wrist and about half way down my arm. It itches all the way to the elbow.

Mostly I've been icing it with my home made ice packs (1 part isopropyl alcohol to 3 parts water, double bagged in ziplock freezer bags). I can wrap my entire hand in one of the gallon size (1 pint mix in the gallon bags works great) and that relieves the pain better than anything else.

But this is on my right hand and I am extremely right handed. PITA.

Mostly old videos, but the themes of all of them fit this year.

I posted about Lucas the other day - the people I got him from called him Rascal or Kittiboi. But I got his records yesterday and his original name was Lucas. I can live with Lucas so rather than change his name for his medical records, I will stick with that.

Yesterday my husband and I went to the cat cafe to see the light gray female kitty. We didn't get to see her much since she kept running into the back room where all the litter boxes are kept (and guests are not usually allowed. Before they would let me adopt her, I needed to have his records which I didn't yet have, mostly to make sure that he had all his vaccinations and tests so he wouldn't expose her or her him.

The former owner brought over his records yesterday evening. After I went over his medical records I realized he had not been tested for FIV or Feline Leukemia, plus his vaccinations were due within a couple of weeks. This morning I called the vet's office I will be using for the cats (my current horse vet does not do cats except under extreme circumstances) and explained the situation. They worked me in and gave Lucas his vaccinations including against Feline Leukemia and tested him for FIV and FL - he was negative!

I took Lucas home, grabbed a quick lunch, drove to the cat cafe and picked up Maya, the light gray kitty. She is tiny! March 2019 when she last was seen by the vet, she weighed 7.9 pounds. I don't think she's gained any weight since then. Lucas weighs 12.3 pounds and I thought he was small - my last cat weighed about 10 pounds but the comparison I had was my husband's fluffy monster that weighed almost 20 pounds even though he was not fat.

Lucas had run under the bed so we set him up in the master bedroom and bath with food, water, and litter box. The first few hours Maya was here she hid, just like Lucas had his first day. Since about 8 o'clock, she has come out of her shell. She has explored the entire area we left open for her (master bedroom is Lucas' for now, studio, library, and living room have not been open for either cat. She even went upstairs to walk across my husband's keyboard.

Tomorrow evening we'll let Lucas out so they can meet. So far there has been no acknowledgement on either side that there are two cats in the house. Even after I went in to pet Lucas so he didn't feel abandoned, Maya sniffed my hands with his smell on them and didn't seem concerned. Lucas is just lounging on the bed, not even worried about being confined after two days with the house to himself.

We may give them the cat toys with refillable catnip before we let them see each other face to face.

It's been nearly a year since my 17.5 year old tabby point Siamese disappeared while my husband and I were in the UK. WE finally found his remains a month or more after we got back - he was just curled up as though he'd fallen asleep so our worst fear that he'd been taken by a coyote were not true.

I've been looking at cats on the local Humane Society website but since we still have to get the porch roof repaired, and the upstairs deck and downstairs screen porch rebuilt, I'd been delaying.

A friend had a plain dark tabby cat, neutered male about a year old, that her daughter adopted in Pensacola as possible barn cat. He is definitely not a barn cat. He's very gentle, and likes being indoors. The daughter brought him home for the summer - and she can't have a cat where she will be living this fall. The family is a dog family - they have several Labradors that get along with this cat, but the son's blue heeler makes out that she would love to eat a cat. The cat has been living on their screened porch.

Today I stopped by the Humane Society's local cat cafe. They serve coffee and other quick drinks and have a big window into a room full of cats. I'd been watching a pair of cats for months - they showed up months ago as three month old sisters, brown tabbies, but they have not been adopted since they need to go as a pair. We really only want two cats so they would have been great but...

My friend offered to bring over the dark tabby that her daughter had adopted. They really need to find a home for him before winter. He is a sweet cat, not very big but weighs about twice what I expected for his size. Beautiful green eyes. The daughter calls him Rascal but her mom calls him Kittiboi (she probably spells it KittyBoy, BTW). I'm not sure either name will stick if we keep him. ("IF" - HAH!)

He seems to be settling in, which is kind of bad news. I'd planned to introduce our two new cats at the same time so neither would feel as though they 'owned' the space. I may have to go back to the cat cafe tomorrow and adopt the light gray tabby female they have. She is equally relaxed, used to people since she has been in the cafe's cat room for months where they let people come in and meet the cats. Or there a tuxedo male with medium length hair that might work...

If I get another cat right away, Kittiboi will not have time to claim the place completely, I hope.

My husband has not met the new cat yet.

I'll post pics as soon as possible.

One of the Africam locations (now on YouTube) is a place called Rosie's Pan, a little pond created I think by daming up a natural spring. It was just past dawn when I turned to the channel and the camera operator had zoomed in on a gray heron. At first I thought the heron was standing still but he was oh so slowly moving - the water was so clear you could see his feet under the water moving in slow motion.

He worked his way across the pond, his eyes not moving from something on the other side. He got a bit away from a clump of reeds, then struck - and caught himself a big frong. Right now he's still beating up the frog getting it ready to swallow. Oh - the frog is history now.

I'd seen the heron there before and he always left disappointed. I didn't think there were any fish or other aquatic life in the pond. Now I know why he checks it out most mornings!

I need to put two tiles at my sink, and two or three on the window sill above the sink. At the sink the underlying material is the ceramic sink material and a strip of the cement board used for tile. On the window sill the underlying material is drywall.

The job is too small for any of the tile people I have contacted. Well, I did have one guy that was going to do it but he has not returned calls for a month and now his phone is disconnected. He had done a slightly larger project and I had planned for both to be done at the same time, but that did not work out. He promised to come back to do this part but now I have no way to locate him.

I know the small containers of pre-mixed tile adhesive are not appropriate for a wet or damp location. I also know that epoxy grout is sold, but not in the very small amount I need. So I am wondering if I can just use epoxy adhesive to glue the tile down. I figure epoxy is water proof (or at least resistant) and should hold up to being at the sink.

I'm looking at PC Products PC-11 Paste Epoxy - it can be used to reattach tile on swimming pools as well as repairs in a marine environment. https://www.pcepoxy.com/products/permanent-repair/pc-11-paste-epoxy/

One advantage is that it comes in smaller sizes than tile adhesive materials do, as small as 1/2 pound or even smaller. I'd need about one pound to do both projects.

I've posted responses before about the major problems with deliveries by the local post office for my area. It's so bad, the local paper has written about it:



It has not gotten better since that article was written.

June 11, 2020, I sent a certified letter, signature required. I just got the letter back as "unclaimed to forward" - the part that really pisses me off is that the building where the letter was to be delivered is two fucking building down the same side of the street from the post office.

On 6/12/20 there is a note about "tree work" - yes the company had trees taken out to enlarge their parking lot. There is some undecipherable note dated 6/16. Then nothing until a note "LN 8-7-20" I'd guess when they decided that they would not bother any more attempts at delivery.

So I paid over four dollars for the post office to store a CERTIFIED business letter for almost two months. Future legal documents will be sent via FedEx. This post office has demonstrated that they can't do it at all.

I do not trust this post office to deliver mail. I've had a box at that location for over forty years. When they "lose" Amazon or other packages, they make no attempt to locate them, they just tell me to have another of whatever it was sent. That means medications and medical supplies have to be re-sent and Amazon has to eat the loss. I seriously believe that there are known thieves working in the building and that their managers do not care to have them charged with theft.

Since they are incapable of delivering mail, I cannot trust them with a ballot. I would not be surprised if they lost a truckload of mail in ballots this year.

I have an old Lenovo Android tablet that has been my e reader for about a year now. Suddenly it will not connect to the WiFi on my modem. (That is a whole other problem that will be discussed tomorrow with my internet provider.)

I figured that I can probably sync the books I have paid for from Amazon with Kindle on my computer (where I have not had Kindle, but will install it in a few minutes, after it finishes downloading). Amazon only talks about transferring Kindle files to their devices - is it as easy as that with non-Amazon devices? All they say to do is to hook up the Kindle device via USB, and transfer the files into the correct folder on the tablet or whatever.

I've tried that, put the files into the folder on the Andriod tablet where the other book files were, but the ones that had not been previously downloaded on the Android tablet do not show in the Kindle library.

If I can't figure out how to do this or how to get the tablet to connect to the WiFi, it may be the end for my tablet.