Those of us in my office today only have to work half a day, but I brought in 2 dozen muffins as a treat anyway. Half are cranberry-almond, the other half are apple pecan spice. Yay for Mark Bittman's super easy muffin recipe...

Went to the county fair yesterday, and on the wall in the quilt competition was an image of Obama walking away from a dripped mic, and the words "We miss you". So unexpected and cool. (It didn't win.)

I love quilters.

I would tell people to leave early today, but not sure what to do about the one non-exempt person who technically reports to my boss.

My office has a summertime goodie - staff can choose to come in late Monday or leave early on Friday. As a result, with people taking the entire day off and the weekly late arrivals, it is quiet here. And it gets REALLY quiet on Friday afternoons. Some people, somehow, have figured out how to come in late on Monday AND leave early Friday ... wish I knew their secret.

It has been fairly quiet, but that has caused me to grumble at my phone for interrupting my slackitude.

Because of the holiday, no dentist appt until weds. Only one dentist in office today, a morning procedure got complicated & mine will probably end up complicated too. So. Advil seems to make a dent and I've always got the pain meds from surgery if it gets to the point I can't sleep.

And I think Loki needs a tooth pulled too. So the cats have a general checkup appt for next Tuesday. With the vet.

I'm working from home today, but only a half day, and I am totally slacking. Only doing what will make Wednesday easier, really. It would be easier to do all this from the office, frankly, but that is not an option today, so I am taking full of advantage of not even getting dressed (always a difficulty on Mondays Weekdays days that end in y

The city assessed our neighborhood's sidewalks for repair (at homeowner expense, which would be fine *if* the city didn't also require us to use only contractors on their approved list, which is fucking shady as hell [because if the sidewalk is our property, shouldn't we be able to pick the contractor we want? and does that make me a Libertarian? shit]), and the contractor has gotten to our house today and apparently tearing up a sidewalk creates a funky awful smell. It's just concrete. How weird.

Maybe there's something "interesting" under the concrete? [eta causing the smell]

From the perspective of the city, they probably don't want homeowners DIY-ing their sidewalk repairs to save money (or using "my cousin's friend Bob who knows a concrete guy") and risk fucking up something important underground.

An apartment building near me at one point had, um, less experience people hooking up the new gas stoves. One evening, there was an explosion ... in an unoccupied apartment. Took out part of that apartment's wall and a bunch of windows around it, but no injuries.

They switched contractors after that.