We went to the pet store to pickup dog food and we ended up with a new kitten! I always go over to see where the shelter kitties on display are, even though my DH put his foot down about us having three cats. Well, there was an 11-week-year-old black kitten. lounging on his little bed and as soon as we said hi, he started kneading his paws in the air with great enthusiasm. Mr. "Three Cats Is Too Many" fell in love and now we get to go pick up our new guy later in the week and bring him home!!!!!

Hi all. I'm back from Helsinki. It got cold while I was gone, and now if I'm making a lap, the cat is on it Anyway, thanks for the recommendations upthread. I didn't make it to Tallinn, but I did go to Suomenlinna, an island a bit closer to Helsinki. I visited a ton of churches, museums, shops, restaurants, and even met up with a distant family member (her great-grandmother was a sister to one of my great-grandmothers, I believe).

now we get to go pick up our new guy later in the week and bring him home!!!!!

Yay new kitties!

That's so cool, Calli!

Yay new kitty!

Mmm, cake.

Sophia, is creamed tuna different from tuna salad?

Kitten!!!

Zucchini waffles?? I'm torn between intrigued and grossed out...

Have you had zucchini bread? It was like that. You don't taste the zucchini.

Gud, if you don't get the kids to help you cook, et cetera, they're not learning important life skills. (Ideally, your wife should be doing that as well -- why isn't she?) Yes, it's sometimes more work to get the kids to "help" but they're going to end up with pink underwear at college the first time they do laundry on their own -- or worse than that.

(Hive mind: what Britcom had the Chore Wheel?)

Yay, kitten!

YAY new cat!

I'm text banking for a candidate in MS tonight.

ANNND the new foster and my dog are actually playing. it is the first time I have ever seen my dog play like this.

KITTEN!!

Pulled both ACs, only thought I was gonna die once (next year, getting another human to help, seriously) and then replaced the teetering rolling rack in the closet with 3 new rods(I love my mitre saw, even if for not mitreing) and now I can fit both ACs in the closet in the off-season! And I need to go through the clothes I transferred. Uhg. Some can be donated, some need to become rags.

Also tambourined at the marathon for 3 hrs. Still kinda feeling that & the ac lifts.

Sara have you ever thought about doing a more permanent install of the AC units? Mine in NYC stayed in year-round and wind and weather did not come in.

You guys, I have a kind of amazing story. This part is *not* the amazing part, but it is pretty damn great: I went hiking yesterday with a group called Fat Girls Hiking, which is a body-positive group whose goal is to make hiking a positive, comfortable experience for fat folks (and other marginalized groups, like POC, queer people, trans people, and disabled people) who may not have felt welcomed in typical outdoors/hiking communities. The state park we hiked at was about an hour north of Cincinnati, and the hike was a fairly easy 3.5-mile hike with very little elevation gain. It was a great time.

BUT! This was the amazing thing. We missed a trail turnoff and accidentally found a small cemetery that was clearly very old -- the dates on the headstones were all from the 1800s, and some headstones seemed to have emblems indicating that the individual was a Civil War veteran.

So tonight I googled the name of the cemetery. It turns out that it's an African American cemetery, and some of the people interred there are former slaves, and some of them are indeed African American Civil War veterans. It was nifty to stumble on an old cemetery, but to find out its history is really fascinating. I want to see if I can find out more about it.