Come and tell me your dull and unexciting news 17: Calmly through the day

[MissConductUS]

I've started a new one. Please join us and share the boring and mundane things happening in your world. It will be calming for all.

Here is the link to the prior thread:

Come and tell me your dull and unexciting news 16: Calmly through the day

I did the 7-lakes-tour today - sitting in the sun on a boat with iced coffee doing nothing.

On the subject of knees: I managed to get my knee swell up to the size of a children's head by gently sliding of a pavement - stone sober coming out of church.

Sitting on a boat in the sun sounds lovely Prok

I have been really tired all day and just eaten 4 doughnuts and drank tea I will need to just eat veg for dinner. Finish arranging things for the holiday and meet ups.

DH is asleep. Silkiecat has been on her shelf for about 24 hours solid.

Hope nobody was injured, @ZZTopGuitarSolo.

We're gearing up for another thunderstorm, judging by the contortions the wind is blowing the trees into. I worry a little for my hummingbird feeder, which is strung on a twig in a tree just off my deck. I don't want to end up with sugar water blown everywhere.

We had an ant infestation in the house, flying ants and all. Never happened before.

Welcome, @Standrewsschool, and thanks for sharing your entomological news. Is the infestation now under control? I live in the woods (in a house of course) and we get ants every summer, but this year they haven't been bad at all. We had a really harsh winter, so perhaps that has something to do with it.

I'm waiting around for the boring dinner I have to attend tonight, then will be in meeting hell all day tomorrow, followed by another boring dinner.

Champagne, keep an eye on that knee. Orthopedic injuries are really slow to heal.

My new sofa is coming next week and my old one is not sold yet

I'm watching one of those programs where a family claims they have no idea why they have no money, and then the presenter points out it's because they buy new carpets every other month, or have 12 take aways a week. Or, in this family's case, buy 5 new outfits each every time they go to a wedding.

Squirrel, what program was it? I don't think I've ever seen a TV program like that in the US.

A week from today is DS's return to uni. That will be about eight hours in the car if traffic isn't too bad.

I'm dreading the food at dinner tonight.

@MissConductUS

Thank you for the welcome.

Yes, the ant situation seems to be under control. We’ve never had them in the house before, although have outside, and we’re also near woods.

Hope the food was better than expected.

You're most welcome, @Standrewsschool. I'm still waiting on dinner as I'm in New York and five hours behind your time in the UK.

Drinks are in 45 minutes, then dinner a half hour later. I do not drink, so I will skip most of the cocktail half hour.

It was on the BBC and called something like ‘shop well for less’. We have loads of programs along the same lines where a presenter points out to some hapless family that they’re squandering all their spare money on tat they don’t need, and ‘saves’ them spurious amounts of money by switching to a cheaper brand of cornflakes.

I love them, because I’m a very nosy person.

I tidied my front room.

I am now sitting in my lovely clean front room.

I might even get up in a minute & leave the clean & tidy front room to get a drink from the kitchen.

Welcome, @Snugglepumpkin, and thanks for sharing your domestic tidying bliss news. I don't think I have a front room, which must surely save the effort of tidying it. I am mostly concerned about DS's room, which on its good days looks like a bomb went off in it. I did some tidying in there recently and discovered two spoons among the clothes on the floor.

Squirrel, programs that appeal to the nosiness in all of us are legion. Judge Judy comes to mind. The fact that half of MN bases their knowledge of American society and customs on Judge Judy is one of the many interesting things I've learned here. One poster was shocked when I pointed out that most Americans (92%) have bank accounts, as no one on Judge Judy has them. So I must be lying.

@MissConductUS I like my dull & unexciting life so I don't like to think about my DSs room.

Heart rates & anxiety levels might raise so I doubt this topic belongs on this thread.

Thanks for the welcome :-)

We have a front room but DS and his indoor rabbit have nabbed it for themselves. Rabbit loves to eat the post as it arrives and leave bits of it everywhere, if a pile of things is left in there rabbit will redistribute them around the room. Then DS has about 150 soft toys in there, some of which are 4 foot. And he eats industrial quantities of fruit and throws the peel on the floor or even better puts it under the sofa or in the sofa along with all his socks.

I have to ask a very stupid question - what exactly is a front room?

I do know what a box room is (and its architectorial history) and the importance of en suites.

Modern flats here now sport this 'living landscapes' where kitchen, dining area and sitting room are all merged into one, instead of having seperate rooms you can use according to your families needs.

Morning all. We've had a busy few days here and DH and I are now worn out and planning a quiet day. He's back to work next week.

A friend came over for a cup of tea yesterday and commented on the big eucalyptus tree we have in our garden. She said that in Australia and New Zealand they're called gum trees, which I didn't know. Then I wondered why the selling platform Gumtree was called that, so looked it up and apparently it was originally set up in London as a local classified ads site to help people moving there from Australia, NZ and South Africa get themselves set up with accommodation and employment.

That's my dull (but actually I found it interesting) contribution for the morning

Thank you phlox I like this little pieces of information.

We have a front room ( think it's northern for lounge). When I was a child we had a front room - only to used on Sunday afternoons , Christmas & for visitors. We also had a "houseplace" which no-one else has ever heard of. It's either unique to the village my mum grew up on or she invented the word herself. Basically it was where we lived, ate & watched telly.

Iwandered Thank you - google did not help.

I still regret the 'Wohnküche' going out of fashion. A kitchen big enough for cooking, storing food and a housing a table large enough to be a proper sitting / work space. In the 60ties they turned kitchens into work stations for one.

This is a bit of a minefield, Prok There are many names for rooms in English domestic history. We tend to have a greater number of small rooms but historically people congregated in one room and often there was one left for 'best' which was kept very neat and tidy and Must! Not! Be! Used! except on special occasions, eg when visitors came.

I think there's probably still a bit of a hangover of that and the 'front room' is a relic of it, even if it's used more in everyday life now.

When I was growing up we had two downstairs rooms and we called them the living room and the sitting room. We spent most of our time in the cosy living-room and shifted over to the (bigger) sitting-room at Christmas time for a few weeks. The rest of the time we barely used that room. It now seems weird to me that we did that, but I suppose it partly meant my mum didn't have to keep cleaning two rooms all the time, just give a quick hoover, dust and polish to the one we didn't use.

Sorry for the essay but I find all this fascinating (not exciting, obviously)

Hilda Thank you - a room for good (die gute Stube) for Sundays and high visitors and definitely not for children to play in, that's a tradition I recognize, ties in with 'Wohnküche', the room you actually use.

Hi Prok - wonder if the 'Wohnkuche' idea spilled over to the Netherlands as this is exactly how my (Dutch) DH has organised our kitchen.
Massive work table in the kitchen also used for eating.
He also loves his tradition (interrupted by Covid) of inviting people to drop in and eat at the table on Sundays.

Front room is the room your front door opens onto or the nearest room to your front door, its another word for living room and normally has sofas, TV, coffee table, maybe a fireplace.

Sometimes we have open plan here which can combine living room / dining room / kitchen or 2 out of 3 but its controversial on the property board here - consensus is its good with small children so you can see them, not so great with teenagers and not so great for working from home if you don't have a separate office.

I don’t have a front door (it’s a slightly complicated story). But I do have a room at the front. Although it’s the only room downstairs besides the kitchen and bathroom.

I think my house is broken.