On Saturday and Sunday, we visited a very talented neighbor, an author turned painter whose book was turned into a Hallmark TV movie. Her property covers 8 acres.

We bought two of her paintings and I could have taken home at least two more.

Her workshop is a restored barn with a loft that she uses as a living room. She calls it “magical”; I call it a spectacular example of master carpentry.

We also met a friend of hers who helped me with my purchases and who made a delighted fuss over Jett.

I did some cooking over the weekend, eggs and mycellium bacon and pasta for supper. We watched “I Want To Live” with Susan Hayward.

This morning we brought the truck to Berkshire Transmissions.

It’s a hot one, 90 degrees in the shade this afternoon. Ron did the lawn, front and back. He’s a better man than me, that’s for sure!

In the course of digging, I picked up a vexing rash.

Yesterday we finally brought the truck to Berkshire Transmissions. The owner, Mark, inspected the ailing part. Turns out Mark is something of a local auto repair legend. His shop is a mechanic’s cathedral, and I’m not kidding.

He gave us a couple of options and offered to do a repair today if we brought the truck in early. Unfortunately, I got very sick around 5 am and wasn’t nearly well enough to drive, safely or otherwise.

I made a big mistake last night and consumed several chocolate desserts: cupcakes and an ice cream bar. Horrible, horrible endless pain. Nothing worked, not vinegar, Tums, ginger, ice, Pepto. I stayed in bed belching and flatulating and sleeping until ten of three. Faithful, concerned Jett stayed with me for a while, waited until Ron let him out late, at around 9:30. This afternoon, Ron did a small grocery run before the news.

We made arrangements to bring the truck to Berkshire Transmissions for the day on Monday.

Meanwhile, had a nice text conversation yesterday with Peter about music influences. We got several errands done yesterday which was good because today was a wash. Checked in very briefly with Remedy, sounds like the inventory app is behaving. Connection and certificate problems still trouble MRS.

I’ve been losing sleep over this but as it turns out, the transition was a lot easier than I thought it would be.

It was easy to get back online, just needed to plug in and reconnect the Netgear and Spectrum hardware.

The Spectrum engineers were fantastic. Got me up and running, for both Internet and phones.

The most difficult part turned out to be enabling the new Assurant protection plan. Mine was easy. I ended up using Messenger to get the link to Ron’s phone.

Today an engineer at HP got my printer online. Better written directions would have helped; thank goodness for human tech support.

While this was going on, helped Ron with a transfer between banks.

Last night around 8 I did a run to Stop & Shop and Spirits. Splurged on a smallish bottle of good blended Scotch, Ron’s favorite in fact.

Ron fell last night getting ready for bed. He had an accident yesterday.

Sauteed reconstituted soy curls with onions, peppers and tomatoes plus spices. Tried my hand at soft tortillas with wheat flour but had trouble getting them thin enough to toast well on the stove as called for in the recipe. They do work in the toaster, though, as crackers, not tortillas.

Helped Ron with bill paying and got his Greylock card squared away with the help of a great person at Greylock. He can now use it with his new PIN!

Afterwards had a great time looking at tons of photos on his laptop.

Ordered a Korean Spice Viburnum from Home Depot and sunflower seeds from Burpee.

The lads from McCann put enough extra mulch on the hosta strip by the house that I finished covering the ground around the transplants without having to schlep from the back yard.

Jett hasn’t eaten breakfast, again. Wonder if one meal a day is enough for him.

SQL connectivity problem with MRS.

Made a freezer contents supper from dense, cylindrical rice cakes, broccoli, onions, peppers and squash seasoned with soy sauce, mirin and sesame oil.

That’s it, that’s what I did today: watered yesterday’s plantings. Tomorrow if I’m up to it, I’ll mulch.

I also pruned the North side of the big rhodie, something I discussed with our neighbor a year go. The plant looks 100% better.

Rained until late this afternoon. I’ve only done a couple of useful things today but I think Ron’s been productive, so that’s good.

He did 30 fetches with Jett, twice, made the bed and emptied the dishwasher.

I set up my meds for the week, finished yesterday’s transplanting to make the driveway garden more symmetrical, picked up a free tossed salad (gift card from donating blood) from Subway and helped Ron access one of his credit card accounts. That’s it.

I’ve been listening to the results of the UK local elections. It may mean the 100 year old hegemony of their two-party system is over; lucky ducks.

I finally called Spectrum today with the idea of cancelling. Instead, they offered me an excellent deal compared to T-Mobile, which wouldn’t budge on price, using the bullshit argument about better customer service, etc.

Of course I did this too late to cancel the T-Mobile contract for this month, thus wasting yet more money because of my stupidity.

Ron, thankfully, has been understanding and non-judgmental, which is more than I can say for myself.

We skipped Log Lunch. We did attend the Coral Reef exhibit at the Williams College theater and were delighted with it.

Ron worked on hoses and seems happy with the results.

I split the daylily clump in the front yard and transplanted half in the driveway garden. More work to do. Hoping for rain tomorrow, too tired to finish today. Feeling better tonight than I did this afternoon.

Ron has been wanting to cut the grass and he got it done today in one fell swoop.

I did two shops, one at BigY for a pizza special and another at S&S for coffee, bread, cheese and pie. Was able to use my Wellness card at both. Learned that you can pay with two cards at S&S.

Joe got me set up with a new VPN. I was confused for a while but it’s working beautifully and far superior to Zoho, which drove me nuts yesterday.

Fixed the contact page this evening. Hope Nicole likes it so that I can invoice her.

Jett was good tonight, just a few barks.

Rained today. Good, the plants needed it.

Today is Ron’s 80th. I gave him a Grateful Dead magazine bought for him some weeks ago. Threw it at him, in fact, because he tried to undo work I started earlier stripping the bed for laundry.

I got him set up to renew his driver’s license later today at the North Adams RMV. The online HP assistant helped me set up the printer for the new network so Ron could take the application with him.

Ron thought I needed to go with him because his license expired in 2026.

Sadly, Ron neglected to bring a form of payment to the Registry. Yes, I’d told him he needed that. Rather than going to the credit union’s North Adams branch for cash, he came all the way back here for a checkbook. Very aggravating, especially since he refuses to understand that he needs to set up his debit cards for use and won’t ask for help from the bank.

He did eventually get his license renewed.

I got the sheets changed.

Still in night clothes. Started an invoice for MRS and realized I’d forgotten one of Nicole’s requests, so have been working on MRS. Managed to crash the site and no idea why. Seems to be working now.

We are pretty broke right now because of property taxes and cost of heating oil. So, kind of a lousy birthday for Ron. We did have ice cream cones and lemon cake for dessert, and I heated up leftover stir fry and rice for supper.

Jett seems to have figured out that he needs to bark at us to be understood. At least he did that this morning when he wanted to take a leak. Smart dog.