Tuesday, July 30, 2019

#MicroblogMondays (on Tuesday): Annoying things


  • Not having much time on my laptop while I was at my parents' house = not much time blogging, or reading/commenting on others' blogs. 
  • Dealing with aging parents who are set in their ways & constantly bickering with each other, for two solid weeks (I think I made the right call in not staying an extra week, as my dad suggested...!).  (There WAS good stuff about our trip too, but it WAS exhausting, dealing with all the family tensions!) 
  • Enduring my parents' taste in TV programs (heavy on game shows & crime dramas, not to mention the soap opera "The Young & The Restless" -- and, perhaps worst of all, "Love Island"!!). Did I mention there are three TVs in the house (kitchen, living room & basement family room) -- often all playing at once, different programs, at top volume?? (even when nobody's actually watching) (Plus the radio in my parents' bedroom, which is often on & playing CBC Radio too, whether or not anyone is actually in there??) 
  • My parents have a fairly basic cable TV package & not-exactly-high speed Internet (although fibre optic phone, Internet & TV services will be arriving in their small rural town soon), so I wasn't able to keep up with "The Handmaid's Tale" while I was away. I have three episodes to catch up on before #11 airs here next Sunday. 
  • Arriving for lunch at the tearoom in a nearby town with my mother, sister & dh -- only to find a sign posted on the door advising it will be closing its doors at the end of August. :(  The current owner has tried for some time to find a buyer for the business, but no takers. The building and land have been sold, presumably for redevelopment.  We've been going to this place for years & years (more than 20, I am sure, because I can remember being there with my grandmother). The food is fabulous (breakfast & lunch menu -- soups, sandwiches, salads) and the desserts are to die for. We managed to get back for a second visit before we left.  
  • Trying to readjust after arriving home late yesterday afternoon (which is why this #MM post is coming on Tuesday, lol). Dh is happy to be back in our own space & has been full of chatter & things we need to do (stop by BIL's to pick up the keys, go grocery shopping & to the bookstore, empty the suitcases & return them to the storage locker downstairs, etc.)... while I am tired and feeling out of sorts and just want (NEED) some quiet time to readjust. 
  • The heat & humidity here is awful. :p 
  • The roadwork outside our building continues, with horribly congested traffic as a result. :p  
  • Condo owners' meeting next week about another (!) special levy, approved by the board of directors. This will be the second one since we moved here three years ago (the building is only about four years old).  The original property managers were completely inept -- they've since been ousted, but we're still paying for their mistakes and trying to get the building onto on a firm financial footing. 
  • Bloglovin has been on the fritz for the past 48 hours, on both laptop & phone app, which has been happening with greater frequency lately, it seems (and I'm not the only one who's noticed). I know it's usually quieter in blogland over the weekend than during the week, but this was unusually quiet, with only a handful of updates posted between Saturday night and Tuesday morning.  There have been a few more updates since then, but I know there should be more in my feed than what's there.  Grrrrr.... 
    • I know some of you use Feedly, so I downloaded that to my phone as an alternative/backup. (I also did a copy & paste of the blogs in my Bloglovin feed into a Word doc, so I at least have a record of what's there.)  Unfortunately, while it was easy to import my dearly departed Google Reader feed to Bloglovin, there doesn't seem to be an easy way to EXport my Bloglovin feed en masse to Feedly... I suppose I am going to have to do this one by one.  Did I mention I have more than 500 blogs on Bloglovin?? (albeit not all of them active)   
  • The number on the scale this morning. :(  
  • Too much to do, and not enough time or energy at the moment to do it all.  
You can find more of this week's #MicroblogMondays posts here

10 comments:

  1. Welcome home! Sorry that there were a bunch of annoying things to record, but sometimes it helps to get them off our chest. Also, heat and humidity would put me in a bad mood too.

    I often think you need to have a break after a family visit like you've had. I think it's more exhausting for the daughter - we take responsibility for the trip, and take on emotional labour too. I'm impressed you managed two weeks. Two weeks would have been about the limit for me, and my husband would have been climbing the walls.

    I have a lot of blogs on Feedly, but rarely manage to keep up even with my "Favourites." How on earth do you read 500 (give or take a few)?

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    1. I don't. ;) Quite a few in my list are older/inactive blogs. I keep them in there because a new post does sometimes pop up. Besides ALI-related blogs I follow others related to scrapbooking, politics/news, books & music. I don't even try to keep up with the news ones.. I just dip in now & then or if something really interesting catches my eye. The ALI ones are my priority & I think I manage to get to most of those posts, even if I don't comment on every one.

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  2. Wow! two weeks seems like a long time, the last time i spend 2 weeks with my parents we were in Dominican Republic, it was a WONDERFUL time but i needed to be home in my own space. I hate summer construction season, it feels like those hot and humid days are the worse for construction. what are bloglovin and feedly?

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    1. Bloglovin & Feedly are blog/feed readers... You add in all the blogs you read regularly & want to keep track of, open the site/app & all the latest posts are there. The blogrolls at the side of the page here help too, but I subscribe to some non-loss/infertility blogs too.

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  3. I do wonder if one day we will turn into that bickering couple who has noise on in every room in the house. At the moment, we are definitely NOT.

    I am with Feedly, but I still miss Google Reader every day :-(. Maybe I actually miss the DAYS of Google Reader.

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  4. Oh man, that's a lot of annoying things. I hope sharing about them helped ease the annoyance a little bit. What a shame about the tearoom closing. I went to their website and it looks like a special place. It's been hot here too, to the point where I haven't been doing much of anything during the peak heat of the day. I try to not let it but, I'll be honest, the heat puts me in a bad mood. I hope you get the downtime that you need. I always need some space and quiet after traveling, but especially after seeing my family.

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  5. I feel you on the aging parent thing - we are dealing with issues with my MIL and my husband's family. Makes me sort of happy that I'm done with all that (my parents have been gone for quite a while (1991 and 2013), and that the care of my parents was handled without a lot of drama.

    I use Feedly - it's reliable, and I suppose I had to do a lot of cutting/pasting of urls to load them all up, but I don't really remember it being terrible. I also don't have 500 blogs to follow, though...

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  6. Sorry to hear about the annoyances. I’m not very familiar with Bloglovin but my friend used this tutorial (https://xomisse.com/blog/export-specific-group-bloglovin/) to migrate from there to Feedly last year. Maybe it will still work for you?

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  7. I use feedly. It would probably be faster to add the blogs using a computer and then you can use the app on your phone to read them. I agree with Mali, 500 blogs seems like a huge number to keep up with! Though I just checked my feedly and I was following 620! 400 of those are inactive or unreachable now though apparently

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  8. I hope it helps getting everything off your chest... I don't think I'd survive two weeks with my family! I agree with others, you totally need a break, some decompression after that long, even if you love them lots. Good luck with the blog reader, 500 is so many! You're so good with that. And enjoy the Handmaid's Tale -- spoilers abound on the web so steer clear! The last few episodes have been particularly awesome...

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