Yikes, that sounds not-fun, especially the mud bit. Glad you rescued your crew, so to speak.

I don't know what spatchcocking is, and I want to continue to believe it's a sport that Hobbits play in the autumn.

Mud will wash off, a thing to be proud of will last forever!

My niece (she's my BFF's daughter but I've known her all her life) (she's 23) is coming to stay with me for a week. We've taken every precaution possible and I think we'll be fine, but she needed to get away from her home situation for a while. She's been cooped up in their deep-woods rural home with no one but her mom and her (difficult) grandmother since March and it's getting tense. And I need help sorting out my cluttered and filthy home, so it's good for both of us. She's waiting to board the plane now, for her first-ever flight, and the flight is delayed. Now she's nervous. Thank goodness for cellphones.

First day after lockdown ended and I'm in my office. And some of my colleagues Will. Not. Wear. Masks (they think that if they're in their cubicles and aren't moving around it's fine. We are sharing central A/C). It's exhausting to keep as much distance as I can from them at all times.

That sounds beneficial all the way around, Zenkitty. I hope her flight goes well.

Ugh, Shir. I hate all of this!

Thanks, Jesse!

It's fun experiencing her first flight with her. She's much calmer than I expected!

Zenkitty, that sounds great. I hope it's a good thing for both of you.

Spatchcocking is when you remove the backbone of the chicken and it's cut to lay flat. this means the chicken cooks faster and more evenly

I did my open enrollment for benefits at work. It was fairly easy since everything carried over except the HSA. They changed the way the contribute to the HSA so now instead of a set amount depending on which insurance plan you have they match up to $400 or $399 depending on which literature you read. So I had to up my HSA contribution (actually this year I didn't contribute and regret that) to get the full match. I also realized I wasn't getting my full match on the 401k so I increased that.

Which means.. less money in my paycheck next year but I'm hoping overall it will be benefcial.

My car insurance double billing should be refunded this week, if it's not I'll send another email or maybe even call. I'm going to take that money and put it on a credit card and then in Nov I'll pay that one off.

And start taking the money I was using on that and rolling it over to a different one. When I get my fed tax return that will all go to paying off debt. I haven't been as aggressive as I could have been but I've been "rounding up" my minimum payments and I was making smaller extra payments on more than one but wised up and am now making larger extra payment on one to get that gone.

I have managed to watch almost all the Florida State Football games and I'm feeling conflicted because they spread covid! But football! and FSU has been improving so .. football!

Last night they beat #5 University of NC, after losing last week to #5 Notre Dame... and man.. there was not much social distancing going on in the game. I worry about Dad being in Tallahassee but I know he's doing the best he can.

I called Dad at half time because FSU almost shut UNC out and we were excitedly talking about the game. But then I made the mistake about commenting on a political ad -- in NC Cal Cunningham is running against Thom Tillis and Cummingham had an affair with a married woman. So far that's the only thing I know about Cunningham from the ads I've seen (from Tillis) --well he had an affair with a woman married to a solider who was injured--and of course the ads attack Cunningham's integrity and honesty. He lied about the affair! he was deceitful! How can any one trust him?

I mentioned that I think it kind of says something about Tillis that he is mainly running "my opponent had an affair" especially with the issues of affairs in the Republican party (ie Trump) . And Dad said something about how Democrats are ok with sexual immorality or something like that.. and I realized I swerved into We Do Not Talk About This for A Reason territory and corrected and got back into the Football Lane.

I really can't wait for the election to be over so I have to stop watching political ads.

Harrison has a new ad up because there is a third party candidate , Bledsoe, running for Senate and his last name puts him first on the ballot for Senate. It started off showing that and then moved into who he is and "Bill Bledsoe is too conservative for SC". Which is funny because in the same run of ads there was Graham's "Jaime Harrison is too liberal for South Carolina" ad.

Any minute now, I'm going to put on some warmer clothes and go stand in line for early voting at City Hall.. it's in the 40s, and when I drove past, there was a line of at least 50 people socially spaced around the corner.

(If Biden has a 'safe' state, it has to be MA, but I'm still proud of my Commonwealth.)