Come and tell me your dull and unexciting news 23: 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 22: Calmly through the day

Apologies that the prior thread filled up before I could create this one. Hopefully everyone will find it. Lurkers are of course welcome to unlurk.

Good luck with your sonography Prok. It's a really quick, easy scan.

I learned a new Britishism today - Lairy, as in "drunk and lairy". I'll admit it, I like the Dear Deidre agony aunt column in the Sun and that's where I saw it. It's like a window into life in the UK.

Glad you don't have to wait too long for your tests Prok and hope the results are quick and OK.

DD is working every day until GCSE results day on 25 August but loves the job and I think glad to be busy.

We are hoping to go to France to see MIL soon if we can get DS to come, otherwise will be just DH. I have finally managed to get CAHMS for DS and they are also will work with school and the LA.

Floof has ate a lot of king prawns and is trilling. He also loved it when DH put his cat nuts in a bowl and half went all over the floor. It saved him doing that himself and was food plus a cat game. DH also put some on top of the wardrobe for him and he took them one by one in his mouth and spread them out. He eats a lot but is growing fast. He is so proud of his tail, he always hangs it in front of him or down the side and shows it off.

I have 4 hospital appointments for September now.

@Prokupatuscrakedatus , I have totally done the conditioner left in hair thing (not the leave-in kind) and went to bed. Only discovered it in the morning when my hair was stiff like a cartoon character and there wasn't time to rinse it out before work. I put it into a french twist hair style. I highly recommend this method for people who want an easy updo that stays.

@mathanxiety I'm also looking for a 5g compatible phone for elderly parents. They need to upgrade to have service when they travel but they are really attached to their flip phones. I think they need to have the feel of "hanging up" if you know what I mean.

Interestingly, speaking of aging, kids today won't understand the "shift" key or "return" key on their keyboard. I remember taking typing lessons on a real typewriter and a shift literally means you are shifting up to allow the capital letters and numbers to strike the page. And return was the carriage return back to the starting point (and the ding! to tell you when you are close).

This weekend I will be baking a very strawberry cake for my strawberry loving dd. Any suggestions welcome. I'm thinking of making a strawberry puree and making a strawberry marble pound cake. And then masticate ? massicate? I get them mixed up- some strawberries in sugar for topping. I will not be chewing them for other people so whichever choice is me not doing that :-) Any strawberry suggestions?

@AllTheAll
I am sure you can't mean me 😀
My hair never grew long enough for any kind of "do".

I think you mean macerate All the cake sounds delicious!

DC2 has moved up at swim club and now trains 7hrs a week, including 8am on a Saturday morning, which is why I am up at this ridiculous time.

I’ve had my hair cut. This in itself is not exciting.

But, I had it cut by a curly hair specialist and it’s amazing. First time I’ve left a salon and not immediately gone home to re-wash and style my hair!

Welcome, @AllTheAll, and thanks for sharing your hair care hacks, device shopping, and baking news. My local bakery did a cake for my son's graduation party, which you can see if you look back a bit in the thread. My DD's favorite cake from there is a strawberry cake with vanilla custard. They also make one called a Strawberry Double Temptation, which is two layers of sponge cake, filled with cheesecake and strawberries. Topped with white buttercream. The men require some presence of chocolate.

Helena, I feel for you. When my DC were rowing, they often started practice a 6:00 AM. The lake was calmer then. It was a good day when DS got his driver's license.

Not much new here. DS and I did a shop at Wegman's, one of our favorite grocery stores. The men are grilling burgers for dinner, and we'll have mac and cheese. It's less than two weeks to my surgery, which I'm looking forward to now. My sciatica is getting worse, and it's like a burning sensation running down my leg. I'm a bit surprised I'm not crankier about it. I'll do a deck picture later.

Thanks MissConductUS, found the blueberry recipe and I'll be making that with a lemon glaze as someone suggested. Sometimes I find a lemon glaze to be too thin (lemon juice, icing sugar). I like to make warm lemon sauce with my gingerbread so may try that with this cake. I'll report back. Easy to find blueberries right now.

HelenaJustina - I love a clean house after holiday too. It just makes the leaving a bit more frantic to pack and clean and run last minute dishwasher. Also it makes coming back a bit more effort because my piles of things in progress are all put away and out of sight. Out of sight out of mind.

I'm so glad you're going to try the blueberry bread recipe, All. Let us know how it turns out. I think the lemon glaze will be delicious, as it will accent the other citrus flavor in the cake. Sorry you have to faff with the American baking measures.

A lot of the flowers in the large planters are dead or close to it. I did spot a butterfly on the flowers in the planter that sits on the railing.

Miss Mine are all gone to seed, too, and I'll have to think about autumn and next spring. But the chilies and tomatoes are ripening lovely.

They changed my sono to an MRT, as the appointment could be had earlier. I'll have to go without food after 6 am.

A good week to all of you!

Wishing you all the very best for tomorrow Prok.

Hard to believe the weekend is over again.
The weather was great and we had two birthday parties for DS and DD as well as my catch up with my cousin.

Good luck Prok hope it goes smoothly.

We took the DC to the big smoke for the day. We we walked nine and a half miles, had a trip on the river, went to Tate Modern, Mass and Vespers at W. Cathedral amongst other things. Great fun landmark spotting but we’re all shattered. In dull news, this meant that I didn’t change the beds and will have to do this tomorrow instead.

That's good news, Prok; the MRT will give them a better picture of what's going on than the sonography would have.

Helena, I have just googled "the big smoke" and discovered the origin of the term as a reference to London, so thanks for adding to my British lexicon. I hope to visit the big smoke someday. When DH lived in London, he attended services at W Cathedral.

We've just had our weekly family zoom call. DD and MIL are fine. DS is driving up to his old uni on Tuesday to see some friends who are coming back this fall and will stop on the way up to have lunch with DD. He won't be back until next Saturday, so we're back to being empty nesters for most of the week.

We're having grilled filet steaks and chicken for dinner, with sweet corn and pasta salad, so a nice summer dinner.

Just made a beef stew in my slow cooker. Really lazy, everything had been chopped before I bought it. Trying to eat loads of red meat as getting low on iron.

Welcome, @Flatmountains , and thanks for sharing your cooking and mineral deficiency news. DH make beef burgundy at times but we haven't had it in ages.

Do you have the stew with rice or noodles or do you include potatoes to provide a starch?

None of the above, which surprised me. Just meat and vegetables. No energy to make more of an effort.

We celebrated a DD's birthday today with Italian beef sandwiches and tiramisu. I discovered I had run out of the alcohol necessary for my tiramisu recipe so had to nip to the liquor store for some. I decided on a cream sherry instead of Marsala as I thought the last Marsala I bought tasted a little like sweetened fish sauce, or sherry that someone had dropped an anchovy into.

We ate out on the deck. I lit the citronella candles but DS still got a few mosquito bites. This year we had no intrusions from locusts.

Got an eye hospital appointment today. When I had my post-cataract eye test at the opticians, the OCT scan showed some oedema behind my left eye, so they referred me back. I hope I'll only need drops or similar to reduce it.

Sue All the best.

My MRT has been rescheduled for Wednesday, the machine didn't function. I was already in the waiting area. Lots of hectic work for the admin staff, phoning and mailing patients to reschedule.

Thanks Prok. The scan showed no change from my pre-op assessment, so everyone's quite happy. I stopped off at the optician on my way home, and chose 3 pairs of glasses. Now my prescription is much lower, I can choose from a larger range of frames.

Prok, it's always chaos in radiology when a piece of equipment breaks down. It's even worse when the scan is considered an emergency instead of routine/diagnostic.

That's great news, Sue. Edema is par for the course when you get older.

We finally got a bit of rain here today. I have off-site training tomorrow and Wednesday, so I won't be on MN much.

I am off site. The training has been good and we've had a lovely buffet lunch. One could hardly ask for more.

Trying to catch up. Just wanted to say hello as have been AWOL.

Evening all,
Lovely to hear everyone's calming news, life is a little fraught at the moment and 10 minutes on Mumsnet (avoiding the shouty threads) is bliss.
My dull news is that I made a quiche with duck eggs for tea, it was great and my pastry (which is a hit & miss affair) was good.
Also we're going to Caernarfon this weekend and I'm determined to go crabbing.