mattie g

I've always felt the same. We had a super small porch (and small house, to be fair) when I was growing up, but I loved sitting on it. I've also ALWAYS wanted a big Victorian wraparound porch like you describe. We have a small deck and a patio out back, but we've been talking about a front porch for a long time. We live on a cul-de-sac with a bunch of other younger families, so it'll be great to sit on the porch while the kids play. It'll be a deep and fairly wide deck, so missus g is planning on some nice, big furniture out there. Also, the front of the house faces NNE, so we'll be out of the prevailing wind (so important in winter) and won't get roasted by the blazing late-afternoon sun in the summer. Pretty good deal all around. I also want to add a place for a TV out there that will just be connected via a FireTV - probably something small enough to move out there whenever the mood strikes to watch something, then bring inside in the evening.

Potted up three each of all my tomato seedlings and four of my jalapeños. Finally transplanted into bigger pots my indoor basil, cilantro, and parsley. These are more of an experiment/practice since I’d like to be able to have fresh herbs all winter long. Need to make some room on the heating mats before I can start anything else, so I can already foresee picking up a couple more mats and another lamp to keep up with everything.

In the planning stages for putting a big front porch on the house. We’re not going half-assed on this one - doing it all up. Pretty sure we’ve found the contractor to do the work, so the constant back-and-forth has begun. Hoping to have it done by the beginning of May.

Couldn’t care less, if I’m honest, my man.

But the price of copper would increase because of stimulus and an expected increase in post-pandemic construction, right? Except for stimulus, what does that have to do with the election?

I come into banter to get away from our shite winter weather. Thanks for reminding us how crap we are, everyone.

No sh*t, right? We go down there and play in truly awful conditions and facilities and get batteries and bags of piss thrown at us, so forgive me if my heart doesn’t bleed for you for you have to deal with some snow.

I’ll never forget watching this game:

That’s fantastic. This is really what should happen.

My wife was a PLD for ACQ PM before and just after my daughter was born about 8 years ago!

Are you at DAU, by chance? Feel free not to answer if you don't want to!

This sounds incredibly familiar. I worked for DoD for almost 10 years, and am potentially moving back onto another project there if we win a recent bid. As it stands, I work with another organization that had steadfastly refused to do any of its administrative business on the unclass side. Never really understood that, but COVID turned that all on its head and our team was the first in that organization to prove that it was possible to continue working at nearly full capacity when we were asked to telework. Now that we have the infrastructure set up, we're more productive than ever before, and there's a push to move a lot of what we do on a regular basis onto the unclass side. Of course, now the organization is pushing to bring people back into the office, but luckily our client understands that our team is killing it while working remotely so they're in no rush to try to bring us back. Like others, I don't mind going into the office, but our developers have been 100% telework for a year and have absolutely no need to be in the office. As a PM, it makes sense to go in, but there's really no need to be in the office every day anymore. Give me a desk I can hotel at a couple/few days a week and let me telework the rest of the time. Much better work/life balance and is a sweetener for any potential candidates to work for your organization. We definitely see this in tech - you need to do everything you can to get the best candidates - and allowing work from home is a huge factor in enticing them to work for you.

Same here. We stopped ordering out until the middle of last summer, but as our comfort levels have lifted we’ve found ourselves ordering almost as much as before. We’ll probably eat outside here and there once my wife is fully vaccinated. We have no compelling desire to accelerate that timeline, but we’re looking forward to it!

My allergies are kicking in, too. Pretty sure it's maple pollen that causes me issues, as those are the first to start dumping pollen, and my allergies usually ease up once they leaf out.

I get my second Pfizer shot this morning, and the wife is looking likely to be getting her first early next week. With quite a few of our friends already having gotten the first or second shots, you can just feel the weight lifting from among our group! Edit: Despite this, we'll still mask up just as we have been and refrain from going out to eat, going into large groups, etc. even if local governments lift restrictions. We feel it's the right thing to do, both for us and for everyone else to get to the finish line.

This is a great way to go about it. It takes a *lot* of internal coordination, but if you have the right people running the show with support from up top, then you can certainly make it work.

There's also kudzu, which does much the same thing in creating huge canopies.

They're actually coming along really nicely. Nearly every pepper and tomato seed germinated, so I had to snip some seedlings yesterday to give the others room to grow. The only issue I'm running into now is that I'm getting some purpling of the leaves, so after some research it seems I may need to add magnesium and/or phosphorus to help them out. I'll probably need to pot up pretty soon, too, but I'd like to get them a little bigger and stronger before doing that - maybe shoot to do it next weekend. I need to get my lettuce, spinach, and basil seeds going soon, with cucumbers and cantaloupe in the next week or two. Lots happening! How's things on your end?

That's awesome! We had a Meyer lemon for a few years, but despite thriving most of the time - producing a tree full of flowers and starting to produce multiple lemons, it really suffered indoors due to a really bad infestation of citrus scale that I couldn't get rid of. It was really disappointing to have to ultimately dispose of the tree.

Not “we.”

Congrats, Binghamton.

To each their own and all, but come on...

I've definitely had times when local restaurants added Old Bay to their fries - almost all from quite a few years ago when I lived in the District. I've *never* been happy about it!

There's a March obs thread...

Old Bay is good for crabs and that's about it. Nasty on most anything else.