Sometimes if you are doing a roundup to start the daily there is always the chance somebody will start it while you are typing. No such worries when you have the international dateline to help you out!

RunnerKSA  see how even a TM run looks good relative to breaking Rule #1! Dentist = no fun. I hope the temporary crown installation goes well.

Jlynne 7" of snow! In early December!  Unless you are living at a ski resort I am pretty sure I would not be happy. All the TM at the Y were in use by 5:15? What, do they have like two TMs? Normally gyms are not anywhere near capacity at that hour.

tomwhite unless I was on my deathbed and it turned out that RedBull was the only way to save my miserable hide, I am pretty sure I would not be looking to buy a can. The stuff, in my view, is awful!

coastwalker now I know you are nowhere near a ski resort. That makes snow this early one thing: B-A-D. Nice cross training though with the shovel.

Dave59 where are you again? My mother had an apartment in West Palm Beach at a complex called Devonshire. They also had an "assisted living" (a.k.a. nursing home) called Bellaire. As to getting in the car for the sole purpose of getting the mail at the postbox, I have seen that too. I am just stunned. Then people wonder why they can no longer walk at some point. There is the use it or lose it issue that they somehow missed.

Tramps that is one odd hobby you have.  <-- Reminds me of this particular emoticon.

fatozzig our vet told us to brush our cats teeth. Really? Has anyone ever successfully brushed a cats teeth? By success I mean not only getting the teeth brushed but also avoided a people hospital visit for cat bites and claw scratches that were bone deep.

TammyinGP and anneb can you talk to my DW? I have wanted her to go the artificial tree route for years. Sigh. While I am gone she is planning to go with our friends to pick up a real one and get it installed in the family room. At least my only chore after that will be to put the lights on. Then, of course, to take them off, get the tree out of the house, return the tree stand to its normal resting place and help clean up all of the debris the tree will leave on its way out.  Why is this a good idea?

Holly S. where you live winter is no fun either. But still no snow is better than snow.

HopesMom that is pretty funny about the final. At least most of them will be happy to find out it is later rather than sooner.

dnaff I have never heard of a moratorium on adopting out pets. I guess I would have thought that even if 90% come back, at least that means 10% have a new home. But I can also see how the January/February influx can be a problem if you then fill the cages due to some of the adoptions.

Joe618 good luck with the Chicago marathon lottery.

tetsujin209 thank you for the "how to beat jet lag" advice. So far so good. I managed to hold out until 8pm local time. I was so fatigued from a lack of sleep that I managed to sleep until about 5am, which is what I was shooting for. I am still not quite right, a bit fuzzy headed, but I am not that bad either.

roachrunner why not add a TM to your stationary bike?

henrun I am surprised Costco was empty. So far bricks-and-mortar stores are having a good Christmas season.

If your today is before my today this time tomorrow you are hereby on your own to add to the roundup. 

I managed to sleep through the night and all in got around 9 hours of sleep. My head still feels like it is filled with cotton and that I can use a nap, but I am not falling down tired which is about as good as I can hope for. After I got up I went to the gym and did 10k on the TM. I have to say the pollution level here in Beijing is not as bad as I feared (that does not mean it is good). Today is a "blue sky" day and the sky is just a bit of a grey (coal dust I imagine) blue.  That is way better than when I last came to Beijing in December a couple of years ago.

Yesterday I mentioned the pool. I realize the odds of anybody seeing this picture of it on RA is pretty low, but here we go!

In other news, or rather non-news. I know we all have our preferred news sources and those that we dislike. Be glad you have both. Here nearly every news source is blocked. Among other places you cannot access: Facebook, YouTube, Google (anything, I cannot even get my Gmail), The New York Times, Bloomberg News, The Wall Street Journal, Duck Duck Go (web search), Yahoo search, etc. The list goes on and on. I had planned to do some work that also required me to read a few news articles, but that has now gone by the wayside. It is just impossible to search and then pull anything useful.

Hey, TwoCat, thanks!  It's tomorrow there so I'll jump in...so I guess I'm sitting here in the Eastern Time Zone watching "Tuesday Morning Football"?? !!

10K on the dread mill after flying 14+ hours...wow...That's really impressive.    Well done.    Saw the pool fine...wow, that's a pool??   Amazing. 

You getting no news??   Sorry...Vikings up on the Seahaks 14-7 near the end of the first half.  The maker of Twinkies wants to expand its portfolio with a new bet on wafers, cookies and sugar-free treats.  Oil prices rose, lifted by the prospect of longer production cuts by OPEC and its allies as well as evidence of improving economic conditions in China.    Happy to help.

 

Hey Steve - the candy store I'm working at for the holidays sells "reindeer food" for $3.00 a bag. And there's like 2 tablespoons of oatmeal and some decorating sprinkles in it. You should market yours!

 

 

Not yet. I've started getting protective with the recipe too.

Tom White, good luck at the Y.

Jay, I feel for ya with the snow.....from way far away.

Dave59, hopefully you'll inspire someone to put down the fork and put on the Hokas.

Tammy, A few years ago I finally convinced DW to go with a natural tree. We'd planted a boat load for a wind block and they have started to need some thinning.

Holly, glad y'all are feeling better. Get one of them med masks next time he goes to the treatment place.

 

We have high ceilings, so we'd get a 10-footer ever year (expensive!).  It'd take forever to decorate (and it didn't help that during those years The Hub was still drinking), plus we'd decorate every flat surface in the house.  It'd take me at least a day to take everything down and put it away.  Yesterday we found a box of lights - half of which don't work - and I strung them on my house plants.  I'm thinking I might like to do a little bit more, but neither one of us has the gumption to dig through boxes in the attic, which is why we ended up with a box of half-working lights . . .   . . . we suck . . . 

The sister in law and I found lights at Dad's that had never been out of the box and they started crinkling into dust simply handling them.

KSA, sorry to hear about the $$$crown$$$$.

MikeE, good luck with work. 9 more years (at the most) for me. tick-tock baby.

Falcon Fixer, fingers crossed.!!!!

MTA: DW and I had an minor argument over garland for the tree. I got shut down with "Silly String isn't the answer to everything!"

3 miles on the mill..

Good morning again!   Got outside in the cold (but no wind or wet stuff) for 3.5 miles and now running late.  Oh well.   Yeah, Steve, crowns are quite expensive and I doubt insurance will cover much - if any.  Old teeth.....

I have a women lawyer event after work followed by a Vandy basketball game, so it will be a long day.      Catch y'all later.  Get a good start to the day and pick it up from there.

 

roachrunner why not add a TM to your stationary bike? 

Not sure what you mean, but we do have a TM in the basement although I don't like running on it unless there's no other choice since it's in a claustrophobic environment and has a relatively short belt compared to the ones at the gym.

My favorite Christmas decorating days by far were when my DS was young and putting up the outside lights was a big annual event that always took place the day after Thanksgiving. We'd get out the strings of lights and then test them together, even tracing to find the bad bulb in those $#@% series-wired mini-light strings. Then, outside, he'd tell me which colors went on which bushes and trees until he'd finally get tired and go inside, leaving me to do the rest! It's hard to believe that one of the small trees that we used to string lights on is now a tall mature tree that I can't even reach the bottom branch on!

These days we do put up our artificial tree the weekend before Christmas and take it all down on New Year's Day. We have an eclectic set of ornaments, many of which have stories attached.

No workouts today as I'm expecting some workers to arrive shortly to finish our furnace installation. It could get chilly in here depending on how long everything is shut down while they work...

Great start for  the daily Twocat.  I vote  you stay in a foreign time zone and do this more often.

Still battling a cold and it seems my lungs are always the last to heal.  Since I pretty much need my lungs to run.....another yoga day.  Though I am learning a few new poses and can feel my balance returning to normal.  ( vertigo now behind me, it was a dizzy 3 weeks)

I am bombarded with Giving Tuesday ideas.  How do you even decide?  So many worthy causes.

I have a food pantry shift from noon til 3, then Thanksgiving leftovers become turkey enchiladas.  And after that I will be enjoying" Life Undercover" by Amaryllis Fox.  I've just started it and am really enjoying her story of her CIA work.

Thanks for the great recap, 2Kitty!  And it's easy to forget how blessed we are to live in this country.  Sweet dreams ~~

No snow here, but it keeps trying to rain, even though it's not supposed to until Thursday.

I got my butt outta bed this morning and hit the gym for 40 min on the elliptical and 30+/- min of core.

Yesterday took Hurricane Ziggy (that's Ziggy's new name) to the vet for a Super Senior check up.  The vet doesn't recommend putting him under anesthesia at his age (almost 18) for a teeth cleaning, which is fine by me.  Saves us about $300.  However, we now have some medicine stuff that we squirt on and mix into his canned food 2x a day to hopefully kill some of the nastiness in his mouth.  She also thought she felt a mass in his stomach and is worried about his thyroid.  We're not going to go to any extra measures for him.  As I told her, he's happy, he eats, he sleeps - he's old.  We're just gonna keep a close eye on him and let him continue to age gracefully.  He's definitely lost his filter, though, and if he was a human, he'd be one of "those" old people.  Hurricane Ziggy!

Okay - Gotta get to it.  Enjoy ~~

Afternoon folks and sleep well, TwoCat.   Yeah, I've been on some new-culture business dinners that extend and extend...not a life style to which I aspire.   

Busy day here (nothing new).  I should just "ditto" Anne's weather report each day, because we usually have the same, as we do today.    I'll get out after work for seven miles, I hope. 

[Baseball note to AnneB:   Addison Russell released by the Cubs yesterday.  Great talent undermined by poor behavior]

Hoping MikeE's work day is going better than he feared. 

Stay simple, Hope'smama!!

See ya!