@Ignorant@sammydog01@tinamarie1974 You did, and it said August when I last saw the page. I miss the times Meh used to share “ohshit” reports. Bring them back!
@tinamarie1974 Thank you for asking. She had a serious bout with breast cancer 2 years ago. Six months and a total of 5 surgeries it’s deemed “monitor regularly, but not a current threat”. She never fully recovered from all that surgery and I haven’t been able to pry her out of the house since. She leaves for doctor appointments only, no diversions. She hasn’t driven in about 2-1/2 years. Thank goodness for Amazon Prime and grocery stores with home delivery. Lightened my load quite a bit once I no longer had to run out to the store several times a week.
@tinamarie1974 No foolin’. She lived about 2-1/2 hour drive from a major city with specialists, surgeons and suitable hospital facilities. It was absolutely brutal making numerous trips back there to transport my step dad to and from his treatments before he eventually passed. Fortunately my mom was well capable of taking care of him when he was at home. I have no idea how I would have taken care of mom, the animals and the farm if I hadn’t relocated her before being diagnosed.
@OldCatLady “Epic saga” seems to be a phrase which is pretty much interchangeable with “mom” in my recent life.
My biggest takeaway from the past 4 or 5 years: “All work and no play makes ruouttaurmind a dull boy.”
@OldCatLady I believe I never whined in here about the epic saga my last trip to TN became. Never one to miss an opportunity to kvetch and overshare…
TL;DR? A two and a half day favor for a recently departed friend wound up taking nearly 5 days, and was filled with gaffes, many detours and much extreme weather along the way.
In November a dear friend and mentor passed away. Somehow I managed to let myself be roped into coming to the aid of his wife. My friend bequeathed a number of his personal belongings, including 3 dozen firearms and several large taxidermy pieces among lots of other things, to his daughter who happens to live in… yup, Tennessee.
The widow begged me to rent a U-haul and transport the whole shebang to her late husband’s daughter. She was totally ignorant of all things firearms and had no idea how to arrange a freight shipment for the firearms or the taxidermy pieces which would have to be crated if sent by freight.
I left for TN at 6:30am on February 20th for what I believed would be a speedy two and a half day turnaround trip. My plan was to drive as far as I could manage, sleep in the truck for a few hours, and continue on my way.
I really burned up the miles that first day, eventually pulling into a very nice rest area just outside Ft. Smith, AR about 1AM. 1,150 miles covered. I imagined if I was able to keep up the pace I might even be able to shave half a day from my schedule.
This is when my first gaffe became dreadfully obvious. I’m so used to living in the desert where you can comfortably sleep in a tent or truck cab throughout the fall, winter and spring. I was woefully unprepared for my first sleep stop in AR. I brought a pillow and a blanket. Temperature was somewhere around 26 degrees that night and I nearly had to fend off frostbite.
Not to worry, I’d pop into a Walmart sometime the next day and buy a sleeping bag. Problem solved.
After continuing my way through AR I immediately ran into nearly constant construction, light rain and SO MUCH TRAFFIC! I reached my TN destination at dusk, unloaded the trailer and moved everything into the daughter’s garage. Back on the road at 7:30ish, heading to Nashville to drop off the trailer, then on my way by 9PM. SO far behind schedule.
That’s when the heavy rain started. I finally gave up and stopped somewhere between Nashville and Memphis, desperate for some much needed rest. It’s always surprising to me how exhausting driving is after many hours behind the wheel. I guess battling the rain didn’t help either.
By the next morning the rain had gotten so much worse. Just outside Memphis it was dumping so much rain I couldn’t make out the actual roadway, let alone lane lines and such.
Pull off I-40 in West Memphis and wait it out. For an hour or so I thought. After 3 hours the rain had actually gotten even heavier. Coming down so fast the truck bed was overflowing over the edges. It was coming down faster than the bed could drain it out. Finally after 4 hours the weather had eased enough I felt comfortable getting back on the road. So far behind schedule I kissed off the schedule entirely.
Just before Little Rock my mother phoned me in a panic. That was my next gaffe. I answered the phone. She was begging me to change course and head south through Dallas to eventually hook up with I-10. Apparently a huge snowstorm was heading quickly to northern NM and AZ, she figured south to I-10 would be a safe alternative.
She neglected to check the weather heading south. After diverting towards Dallas she called and told me I better get myself through Dallas with haste. Huge ice storm forecast for the Dal/FW region any time.
That storm overtook me somewhere outside FW. Bitter cold, icing windshield, black ice…
I finally succumbed to hunger and exhaustion and pulled off the road just north of Ranger, TX. 17 degrees that night, although my new sleeping bag made it somewhat bearable. When I woke about 4 hours later the doors on the truck were frozen shut. So much ice on the windshield I couldn’t see the semi parked 15 feet in front of me. I had to run the heater for half an hour before the doors would finally open and I could take care of my morning business before hitting the road again.
The “ice storm” in Dallas evolved into snowstorm while I was sleeping. I fought snow and black ice until almost I-10. Driving behind snow plows at 30 miles an hour was a serious test of my perseverance.
Shortly after merging onto I-10 the winds and dust started. Side wind trying to blow me off the road, dust so heavy I had to slow to 40mph. That persisted until just east of Tucson. As I headed north out of Tucson I started wondering “What’s next? Car trouble? Robot uprising? Then the zombie hordes?”
Gracefully, the journey north was uneventful. I pulled up to my house at 3:30AM. Just shy of five days after my departure at 6:30AM, February 20th. Over 5,000 miles traveled through five days to complete my 2-1/2 day, 3,800 mile favor for a lost friend.
It wasn’t all horrible. I listened through 5 audiobooks, and got to experience Bucee’s for the first time. So there’s that.
@OldCatLady@ruouttaurmind That’s much more “exciting” than my two worst road trips. The first was in January of 1999 or 2000 (not sure which), and began with a run from Houston to Dallas to pick up a load of Stuff. Then on to Atlanta to drop off my S.O. who was scheduled to be the toastmaster at a con. Then on to Charlotte, NC, for a brief snooze before hitting I-77 north, to pick up I-81 in Virginia, with an eventual destination of Boston. It was well after dark at this point, and traffic was sparse. There was a winter storm advisory for Virginia in effect, and when I got to I-81, the traffic was all in the right lane, and crawling along at a miserable 30 mph. I needed to be in Boston by a specific time, in order to unload and set up the stuff I was taking to Arisia (an SF con that’s been held every January for way too long). The left lane was solid, unbroken, freshly fallen snow. So I eased left, and started to pick up the pace. In about two minutes, I was sailing along at the dry-road speed limit (or maybe a bit more), breaking ground in that pristine left lane. All through the night, it was like that. I went very white-knuckle at that long descent to the bridge over the New River and the climb up the other side, but never lost my footing anywhere. The interesting part was that after about half an hour, I noticed that at a respectful distance behind me, I had collected a convoy of semis and utility trucks pacing me up the left lane. They stayed at that distance all the way to the Love’s just short of Winchester where I had to stop for fuel. From there on into Harrisburg, I was in morning rush traffic, and the number of vehicles in the ditches was impressive. But I made it to the other side of the city, and continued up 81 to Scranton. On that stretch, which was absolutely empty of other vehicles, the road was just lightly dusted with blowing snow, with excellent traction. When I pulled off in Scranton, the guy at the gas station nearest the exit ramp was watching me closely as I pulled in. He asked if I’d come up 81 very far. I said “All the way from I-77 in Virginia.” He said that the stretch from Harrisburg north was reported as being closed due to ice; I said it didn’t have any that I saw, and I never broke below 70 the whole way. I made it to Boston on schedule.
The second “fun run” was also on I-81, in February of a later year, on the tail end of one of the Snowpocalypse storms. I was in snow from Birmingham onward, and on the way up I-81 I passed six snowplows that were off the road in the ditch, most on their side or fully flipped. I could not even begin to count the number of big trucks off the road, with an entire long line of them against the median wall in one of the college towns along the way. I got to DC six hours ahead of schedule on that one because I opted to catnap in a truck stop in Knoxville instead of finding a motel, on the theory that a motel might get plowed in, but the truck stop’s driveways would be kept clear. Driving on the lightly gritted ice and snowpack was a bit of a challenge, but I made it, and as before, there was a convoy behind me carefully following my tire tracks.
Wonder what happens if you get it up on the ceiling above your opponent and use the remote to cut the power off?
Could be interesting, since it says the total weight is half a pound.
You have to put it on the surface that you want it to move around on; it will not run up to the wall and then climb it, or run up the wall and then cross to the ceiling.
July? Where am I? What year is it?
@blaineg omg!!! Clearly I am more tired than I thought
@ignorant @narfcake - can you edit the title to Aug?
@tinamarie1974 sure thing.
@Ignorant danke
@Ignorant @tinamarie1974 Maybe you needed to ask if he would do it, not if he could?
@sammydog01 @tinamarie1974 I did it…but guess I didn’t hit save
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
@Ignorant @sammydog01 I totally saw it say August earlier
@Ignorant @tinamarie1974 It did for a while. Maybe it’s mediocrebot acting up?
@Ignorant @sammydog01 @tinamarie1974 You did, and it said August when I last saw the page. I miss the times Meh used to share “ohshit” reports. Bring them back!
@sammydog01 @tinamarie1974 ok good, it’s not me for once.
I’ve changed it 3 times now. If it changes back again then it wasn’t meant to be.
@Ignorant @sammydog01 sorry for causing so much trouble!!!
@tinamarie1974 I’ll let it slide just this one time.
@Ignorant @sammydog01 @tinamarie1974
It’s haunted, just like @mossygreen’s “It’” topic!
@Ignorant @Kyeh @sammydog01 @tinamarie1974 OH GOD IT’S SPREADING.
@Ignorant @Kyeh @sammydog01 @tinamarie1974 It’s going to be like the end of Ghostwatch here eventually. [The end of Ghostwatch is actually kind of stupid, but that doesn’t invalidate my point. May prove it…]
https://archive.org/details/Ghostwatch
@Ignorant @mossygreen @sammydog01 @tinamarie1974
Craig Charles! Lister from Red Dwarf! I thought I recognized him …
(I didn’t watch the whole thing, just the last few minutes.)
@Ignorant @Kyeh @mossygreen @tinamarie1974 NOOO I’M TURNING MY ROUTER OFF.
@Ignorant @Kyeh @mossygreen @sammydog01 @tinamarie1974 And now it’s August again.
@blaineg @Ignorant @Kyeh @mossygreen @sammydog01 @tinamarie1974
Again???
- OK but what is the year?
@blaineg @Ignorant @Kidsandliz @Kyeh @mossygreen @sammydog01 @tinamarie1974
I don’t care what year, just remind me that last week was real, not a dream. Can we install a Groundhog Week application please?
@blaineg @Ignorant @Kidsandliz @Kyeh @mossygreen @OldCatLady @sammydog01 @tinamarie1974
/image twilight zone
@blaineg @Ignorant @Kidsandliz @mossygreen @sammydog01 @tinamarie1974 @OldCatLady
I would be fine with last week (or actually week before last) being a dream
. It was a crappy week!
@tinamarie1974 Definitely August, sugar pop. Barreling towards September with haste.
@ruouttaurmind yeah, it has been one of those weeks
Also, how ya doin? Haven’t seen you around so much lately!
@tinamarie1974 I lurk semi-frequently, post very seldom. Very little free time on my hands these days.
I miss all you characters, hope everyone is doing well.
@ruouttaurmind just my usual level of crazy over here! How is your mama?
@tinamarie1974 Thank you for asking. She had a serious bout with breast cancer 2 years ago. Six months and a total of 5 surgeries it’s deemed “monitor regularly, but not a current threat”. She never fully recovered from all that surgery and I haven’t been able to pry her out of the house since. She leaves for doctor appointments only, no diversions. She hasn’t driven in about 2-1/2 years. Thank goodness for Amazon Prime and grocery stores with home delivery. Lightened my load quite a bit once I no longer had to run out to the store several times a week.
Oh @ruouttaurmind I am so sorry, but am happy to hear she is not currently at risk. Hope things continue to improve and that she gets out eventually
Thank goodness you moved her closer when you did
@ruouttaurmind @tinamarie1974 And what an epic saga THAT was.
@tinamarie1974 No foolin’. She lived about 2-1/2 hour drive from a major city with specialists, surgeons and suitable hospital facilities. It was absolutely brutal making numerous trips back there to transport my step dad to and from his treatments before he eventually passed. Fortunately my mom was well capable of taking care of him when he was at home. I have no idea how I would have taken care of mom, the animals and the farm if I hadn’t relocated her before being diagnosed.
@OldCatLady “Epic saga” seems to be a phrase which is pretty much interchangeable with “mom” in my recent life.
My biggest takeaway from the past 4 or 5 years: “All work and no play makes ruouttaurmind a dull boy.”
@OldCatLady I believe I never whined in here about the epic saga my last trip to TN became. Never one to miss an opportunity to kvetch and overshare…
TL;DR? A two and a half day favor for a recently departed friend wound up taking nearly 5 days, and was filled with gaffes, many detours and much extreme weather along the way.
In November a dear friend and mentor passed away. Somehow I managed to let myself be roped into coming to the aid of his wife. My friend bequeathed a number of his personal belongings, including 3 dozen firearms and several large taxidermy pieces among lots of other things, to his daughter who happens to live in… yup, Tennessee.
The widow begged me to rent a U-haul and transport the whole shebang to her late husband’s daughter. She was totally ignorant of all things firearms and had no idea how to arrange a freight shipment for the firearms or the taxidermy pieces which would have to be crated if sent by freight.
I left for TN at 6:30am on February 20th for what I believed would be a speedy two and a half day turnaround trip. My plan was to drive as far as I could manage, sleep in the truck for a few hours, and continue on my way.
I really burned up the miles that first day, eventually pulling into a very nice rest area just outside Ft. Smith, AR about 1AM. 1,150 miles covered. I imagined if I was able to keep up the pace I might even be able to shave half a day from my schedule.
This is when my first gaffe became dreadfully obvious. I’m so used to living in the desert where you can comfortably sleep in a tent or truck cab throughout the fall, winter and spring. I was woefully unprepared for my first sleep stop in AR. I brought a pillow and a blanket. Temperature was somewhere around 26 degrees that night and I nearly had to fend off frostbite.
Not to worry, I’d pop into a Walmart sometime the next day and buy a sleeping bag. Problem solved.
After continuing my way through AR I immediately ran into nearly constant construction, light rain and SO MUCH TRAFFIC! I reached my TN destination at dusk, unloaded the trailer and moved everything into the daughter’s garage. Back on the road at 7:30ish, heading to Nashville to drop off the trailer, then on my way by 9PM. SO far behind schedule.
That’s when the heavy rain started. I finally gave up and stopped somewhere between Nashville and Memphis, desperate for some much needed rest. It’s always surprising to me how exhausting driving is after many hours behind the wheel. I guess battling the rain didn’t help either.
By the next morning the rain had gotten so much worse. Just outside Memphis it was dumping so much rain I couldn’t make out the actual roadway, let alone lane lines and such.
Pull off I-40 in West Memphis and wait it out. For an hour or so I thought. After 3 hours the rain had actually gotten even heavier. Coming down so fast the truck bed was overflowing over the edges. It was coming down faster than the bed could drain it out. Finally after 4 hours the weather had eased enough I felt comfortable getting back on the road. So far behind schedule I kissed off the schedule entirely.
Just before Little Rock my mother phoned me in a panic. That was my next gaffe. I answered the phone. She was begging me to change course and head south through Dallas to eventually hook up with I-10. Apparently a huge snowstorm was heading quickly to northern NM and AZ, she figured south to I-10 would be a safe alternative.
She neglected to check the weather heading south. After diverting towards Dallas she called and told me I better get myself through Dallas with haste. Huge ice storm forecast for the Dal/FW region any time.
That storm overtook me somewhere outside FW. Bitter cold, icing windshield, black ice…
I finally succumbed to hunger and exhaustion and pulled off the road just north of Ranger, TX. 17 degrees that night, although my new sleeping bag made it somewhat bearable. When I woke about 4 hours later the doors on the truck were frozen shut. So much ice on the windshield I couldn’t see the semi parked 15 feet in front of me. I had to run the heater for half an hour before the doors would finally open and I could take care of my morning business before hitting the road again.
The “ice storm” in Dallas evolved into snowstorm while I was sleeping. I fought snow and black ice until almost I-10. Driving behind snow plows at 30 miles an hour was a serious test of my perseverance.
Shortly after merging onto I-10 the winds and dust started. Side wind trying to blow me off the road, dust so heavy I had to slow to 40mph. That persisted until just east of Tucson. As I headed north out of Tucson I started wondering “What’s next? Car trouble? Robot uprising? Then the zombie hordes?”
Gracefully, the journey north was uneventful. I pulled up to my house at 3:30AM. Just shy of five days after my departure at 6:30AM, February 20th. Over 5,000 miles traveled through five days to complete my 2-1/2 day, 3,800 mile favor for a lost friend.
It wasn’t all horrible. I listened through 5 audiobooks, and got to experience Bucee’s for the first time. So there’s that.
@OldCatLady @ruouttaurmind That’s much more “exciting” than my two worst road trips. The first was in January of 1999 or 2000 (not sure which), and began with a run from Houston to Dallas to pick up a load of Stuff. Then on to Atlanta to drop off my S.O. who was scheduled to be the toastmaster at a con. Then on to Charlotte, NC, for a brief snooze before hitting I-77 north, to pick up I-81 in Virginia, with an eventual destination of Boston. It was well after dark at this point, and traffic was sparse. There was a winter storm advisory for Virginia in effect, and when I got to I-81, the traffic was all in the right lane, and crawling along at a miserable 30 mph. I needed to be in Boston by a specific time, in order to unload and set up the stuff I was taking to Arisia (an SF con that’s been held every January for way too long). The left lane was solid, unbroken, freshly fallen snow. So I eased left, and started to pick up the pace. In about two minutes, I was sailing along at the dry-road speed limit (or maybe a bit more), breaking ground in that pristine left lane. All through the night, it was like that. I went very white-knuckle at that long descent to the bridge over the New River and the climb up the other side, but never lost my footing anywhere. The interesting part was that after about half an hour, I noticed that at a respectful distance behind me, I had collected a convoy of semis and utility trucks pacing me up the left lane. They stayed at that distance all the way to the Love’s just short of Winchester where I had to stop for fuel. From there on into Harrisburg, I was in morning rush traffic, and the number of vehicles in the ditches was impressive. But I made it to the other side of the city, and continued up 81 to Scranton. On that stretch, which was absolutely empty of other vehicles, the road was just lightly dusted with blowing snow, with excellent traction. When I pulled off in Scranton, the guy at the gas station nearest the exit ramp was watching me closely as I pulled in. He asked if I’d come up 81 very far. I said “All the way from I-77 in Virginia.” He said that the stretch from Harrisburg north was reported as being closed due to ice; I said it didn’t have any that I saw, and I never broke below 70 the whole way. I made it to Boston on schedule.
The second “fun run” was also on I-81, in February of a later year, on the tail end of one of the Snowpocalypse storms. I was in snow from Birmingham onward, and on the way up I-81 I passed six snowplows that were off the road in the ditch, most on their side or fully flipped. I could not even begin to count the number of big trucks off the road, with an entire long line of them against the median wall in one of the college towns along the way. I got to DC six hours ahead of schedule on that one because I opted to catnap in a truck stop in Knoxville instead of finding a motel, on the theory that a motel might get plowed in, but the truck stop’s driveways would be kept clear. Driving on the lightly gritted ice and snowpack was a bit of a challenge, but I made it, and as before, there was a convoy behind me carefully following my tire tracks.
Fun times…
Barnes and Noble is having their book haul deal, 50% off hundreds of hardcover books.
Colour pop is also having up to 50% off on a lot of their items.
Your kids’ cars can have you climbing the walls too!
Now on Morning Save:
Available in both Blue and Red. Buy one of each! See which one wins the race up and over the walls and ceiling to predict the November elections!
Get your children and grands interested in politics, unless you love them.
I’m sure there are some Meh staffers who have tried these out and can give us their recommendations.
Wonder what happens if you get it up on the ceiling above your opponent and use the remote to cut the power off?
Could be interesting, since it says the total weight is half a pound.
You have to put it on the surface that you want it to move around on; it will not run up to the wall and then climb it, or run up the wall and then cross to the ceiling.
Resident Evil Humble Bundle:
https://www.humblebundle.com/games/resident-evil-decades-horror?utm_campaign=07_0562&utm_medium=paid&utm_source=facebook&utm_content=2022_residentevildecadeshorror_msrp&utm_term=2022_residentevildecadeshorror_game_bundle&fbclid=PAAabkvuL5lO5fR7YubVKFMjvtUiBQKp5TReQHwLKGubM6mfs8Iv6CVvuXpJM
Doom 64 for free:
https://store.epicgames.com/en-US/p/doom-64
@RiotDemon And if folks aren’t familiar with Epic, free games every week. Sometimes meh, sometimes great.
The Leatherman Tread multitool bracelet is being closed out for $60, down from $150. Stainless only, black is out of stock.
https://www.leatherman.com/tread-425.html
@blaineg I found a watch adapter on Ebay for $12. Some places want up to $60, which is silly.
@blaineg 60% off Tread watches and parts too.
https://www.leatherman.com/search?q=tread&search-button=&lang=default
@blaineg Oh, just noticed there’s a slimmer Tread LT, same price.
@blaineg Wow, those are cool.