Queen Mediocretia of Suburbia

Putting the TMI in absentminded

Month: July 2025

  • Weekly Paint Progress: 7/31/2025

    This week the Dog Bank ’25 plummeted from this: … to this. YES that is awful. Here’s what happened. I discovered too late I didn’t have the size canvas I wanted, so I took a painted canvas and put gesso over it, which is like Elmer’s glue that covers up the old paint. Somehow, this…

  • The new air conditioner has captured Gary’s heart

    I went in to work today because the new air conditioner / heater / water heater / air “scrubber” / humidifer / dehumidifer / thermostat / atom splitter was to be installed today. Gary stayed home and dealt with the details. He called at two. “What’s up? Is the air conditioner done?” I said. “It’s…

  • Competitive weight loss

    I don’t know what I did to break my six-week weight loss plateau, but another five pounds left, seemingly overnight, as is its wont on this weight loss medication. That makes a total of 35 pounds since February. (It’s so odd. You’ll spend one night with your fat just popping and pulsing under your skin.…

  • For St. Louis

    This is a darling tale per NPR of retirees building a scale model of the famous stainless steel excursion ship The Admiral. There’s a link in it to the audio file if you’d rather listen.

  • TWIL: Three Vaccines

    Last time I checked there were two COVID-19 vaccines: Pfizer or Moderna. Now evidently there are three: they added one by a new company: Novavax. I was all excited, because it uses an interesting strategy. It’s not a dead virus vaccine, nor a live virus vaccine, it’s a decoy vaccine. They make a copy of…

  • Hair Not

    Well, I’ve got this colonoscopy coming up in a week and a half and I considered which wig shall be my assigned colonoscopy wig. Then it occurred to me that there are probably rules for these things. Evidently there are. “Leave your wig at home.” Somehow I never considered that. I thought, at worst, a…

  • Hubris

    I was having lunch with a new friend Thursday. The conversation came around to COBRA insurance then to drug prices then to MS then to MY MS. And then to how well I’m doing with my MS. That part, frankly, took at least ten minutes. It took so long that we ran out of time…

  • Weekly Paint Progress: 7/24/2025

    This week Dog Bank ’25 started with this compilation as the reference document.

  • Review: Schitt’s Creek Season One

    I know, I’m late to this one too. And I understand why. Every character was awful in the first few episodes. That’s why I’ve given up before. Somewhere around episode five, though, people begin being minimally nice to each other. The characters redeemed themselves enough by the very end of Season One that Gary will…

  • Cat progress

    Okay. Gary and I recently decided to replace the HVAC in the house. Because … The current one was “CONTAMINATED” by the dust from the back door / handrail / bathroom ceiling home repairs. It has been almost twenty years since the original builder’s one was replaced, so we’re due. And, might as well get…