I am completely recovered from both my vacation and my cold.
It's been a slow week, since my boss's daughter and her family are visiting and my boss has only been in very briefly on a couple of days - and not much is going on in my personal life, either.
As you can see by Itzl's concerned look, this group is for us to check in at to let people know we are alive, doing OK, and not affected by such things as heat, blizzards, floods, wild fires, hurricanes, tornadoes, power outages, or other such things that could keep us off DKos. It's also so we can find other Kossacks nearby for in-person checks when other methods of communication fail - a buddy system. Members come here to check in. If you're not here, or anywhere else on DKos, and there are adverse conditions in your area (floods, heatwaves, hurricanes, etc.), we and your buddy are going to check up on you. If you are going to be away from your computer for a day or a week, let us know here. We care!
IAN is a great group to join, and a good place to learn to write diaries. Drop one of us a PM to be added to the Itzl Alert Network anytime! We all share the publishing duties, and we welcome everyone who reads IAN to write diaries for the group! Every member is an editor, so anyone can take a turn when they have something to say, photos and music to share, a cause to promote or news!
Let's go over the orange decorative object and see what blather I've come up with this time.
In the course of the post-vacation replenishing of my groceries last weekend, I ran across a beer I'd never seen before: 10 Barrel Brewing's "Swill". Having very low resistance to bad jokes, I got a bottle of it.
The label said people either loved it or hated it. Firmly in the hated it camp, here - it tasted like oranges, and I don't like fruit beers. Ah, well, I can't say I wasn't warned.
It's been hot here - no more than is perfectly ordinary for the time of year, but still, .... The air conditioner in my bedroom would be more effective if the room didn't face west - I never turn it off except long enough to dump the waste water container, and it is usually after 11:00 before it's cool enough to actually sleep. My buddy downbuilding has an air conditioner just like mine and is having no problem - but he's got a 2-bedroom and his room faces east. My daughter isn't complaining of the heat, either, and her bedroom faces west, too - but she's on the east side of the complex and has a big tree right outside her window. I'm not really complaining (very hard), because once the room cools off, I sleep like a rock.
It's been a time for new books coming out. I do enjoy it when my favorite authors publish new books, and there were two last week: Ilona Andrews, Magic Breaks, and Michelle Sagara, Cast in Flame. One-sitting books, both of them - though if you haven't read the series they each belong to, they are bad places to start.
In my wanderings around Amazon, I found the Lord Peter Wimsey Cookbook. My local library has it - once I've looked it over, I will let you know what I think.
And I finally got through to my oldest and dearest that I really wanted more than Facebook from him. He promised an email a week - though I suspect they will be quite short. I can't call him - his health problems interfere with him talking.
I took myself out to dinner Friday night. At the "Original Dinerant". The place has house-made sodas (the rhubarb one was excellent), and the reuben sandwich and fries were wonderful. But the name was cute enough to make my teeth hurt. I may go back - the food really was very good - but not soon.