Random 5 for January 7 – Promotions, gym, flowers, weather, blogging

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You can do better than that! – My birthday is in a few weeks and I’ve started getting birthday promotions from retailers. This week I received two from my healthcare company. One was to wish me a happy birthday and give me a tip on healthy living (no discount, no present, not even a tip I didn’t already know) and the other was an anniversary celebration of six years with them. That brought another healthy tip. Seriously?

Scene from the gym – The new gym has a locker room with lockers. You have to bring your own lock. On my first day I asked another woman if there have been issues with theft. She told me (in a New York accent) that she’s from the city and doesn’t trust anyone. She locked up her stuff. This week I came in when she was getting ready to leave. She had a magnifying glass on her lock so she could unlock the combination. She looked like Mr. Magoo. Way too much work for me. I would go old school with a key that I could put on an elastic wrist band.

Bummer! – We’d have record-breaking temperatures over the past few weeks. I realized that there will be no blue hydrangea flowers this year. Those buds are temperamental and freeze out below 20 degrees even in protected areas. Maybe this will be the year to replace them with something sturdier.

Note to Mother Nature – Enough with the cold and snow!

Note to bloggers and readers – For the past few years I’ve been posting four times a week. I’m cutting back to three. I’ll keep Random 5 on Sundays and Sassy Cats on Fridays with one essay midweek. There may be an emergency fourth posting in weeks where I run into stupid people who need a good flogging blogging! Also, for bloggers, the reader on WordPress hasn’t been working. Not sure what happened but now I rely on email messages when you post something new and it’s easy to miss. Hopefully this will all be temporary.

So how was your week?

 

73 thoughts on “Random 5 for January 7 – Promotions, gym, flowers, weather, blogging”

  2. My first thought is to be impressed that you even get outside to GO to the gym in the cold you’ve been experiencing. And it’s only January! I hope that maybe you’ve experienced the worst of it! I hope your beautiful hydrangeas aren’t seriously damaged. We finally had to take ours out because the drought just made them impossible, and I will always miss them!

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    • Hydrangeas do love water. Even here I have to water them during any dry spell. Our coldest spell usually lasts through January. This morning it was back to my Michelin jacket again. By March it will be better — not warm but better.

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  3. All the plants around here are doing their best to guilt trip their owners…”so limp, so sad, so bedraggled you gardeners – should be charged with neglecting dependents…” Hopefully the next cold blast will hold off until the weekend so I can rewrap/water those floozy palms. (Toddler herding a few more days…oh, my knees). It may be 68 tomorrow.
    I hate those company birthday mailings….like if you don’t ever get invited to dinner/lunch/coffee at my house, don’t call me by my first name and don’t send birthday greetings.
    I’m with you on the locker key locks. Never really good at combination locks…and those ones at the post office box (UGH I think those are designed to fail to open no matter how hard you try or how accurate you are.)
    Happy start of another year on the 14th. (I’ll probably forget, so saying it now…also sliding on blog postings..there just so much time…)
    Cheers ahead of time!

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  4. I stopped using gym lockers when I retired because I no longer shower at the gym (I used to go to the gym directly after work). But I think women tend to use lockers more regardless of whether they change or shower, i.e. locking up purses. – Marty

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    • I was going to ask where you parked your purse! 🙂 I’ve been locking some things in the car and not taking other things along but I’m using the lockers for coat storage. My gym doesn’t have a coat rack. I neither shower nor change there but there are a couple of working women who do.

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  5. The flogging/blogging cracked me up! I love hydrangeas, and we can’t have them here in Arizona. The other day the gardener had an HGTV show on about renting a place in Utrecht, Netherlands. There was a garden with the most gorgeous of what looked to be hydrangeas, but only a few were blue (and none white or pale pink, the colors I’ve seen on the east coast and Michigan). Most of these were brilliant shades of pink and purple and red. Have you ever seen those before?

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  6. We’ve been suffering the same frigid fate here in the frozen tundra. My husband said to me yesterday, “Yeah, I’m ready for winter to be over.” I reminded him we have a ways to go. I then told him that when we lived in Florida, I was ready for summer to be over by mid-June, because 90’s start by the end of April.

    Happy Monday!

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  7. Hope it warms up for you soon and your hydrangeas do OK with the weather. I love your blog posts and will enjoy whatever you post. Glad you are keeping the sassy cats and random 5 🙂 Wishing you just enough stupid people to act as blog fodder, but not so many that they wreck your days!

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  8. You just gave my hydrangeas an excuse for not blooming. I thought I was doing something wrong, because they haven’t even tried to bloom for the three years we have been here. This year I plan to enjoy the green leaves and not try to talk it into blooming.

    I was surprised to read that your blog reader is not working. Mine is fine, but it no longer sends me email notices. ?????

    Happy birthday when appropriate!

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  11. I just had my early January birthday and I’m glad to be done with it… bah. My husband made me “my” caramelized oranges cheesecake but, other than that, it’s hard to get too excited at my age.

    I’m amazed that you can pound out four posts a week… I struggle with one sometimes. I know you say that you’ll cut back to three posts but, judging from all the stupid people out there, you’ll have plenty of fodder for a fourth post. They are a public service after all.

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  13. Quality over quantity…a good thing.

    Supposed to get warmer. Hope so. This Eskimo wear in not my best look. I look as if I’m hiding something.

    Will meditate on your pond since, that means spring is here…well…in three months…four? Like Dorothy headed for the Emerald City…first we have to get through that poppy field…sigh

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  15. The week has been warm, and I am contemplating getting a third cold in three months. Meanwhile, that last cold I got is apparently a really amazing virus and is going around town. Not from me, necessarily, but from everyone who had it. So many postings on Facebook about bronchitis, steroids, and codeine cough syrup!

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  16. Oh my week is just been ducky! So over the cold temps….so over being sick….on a high note, Daisy had her yearly check up and is doing just fine. (She needs to lose maybe a 1/2 pound – but anyone who lives in this house, seems to need to lose weight!)

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    • Glad you are feeling better. A half pound isn’t bad. Hazel has lost some but has plateaued at 15 lbs. The vet will be happy but she should lose another 3. I don’t think it’s going to happen. She’s eating a normal serving for an adult cat and her weight won’t budge. Maybe slow metabolism. Can’t get her to the gym! 🙂

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  19. Bit of a stressful week what with the dog and uncertainty as to when Mum’s coming out of hospital. Cryptic text message from Sis had a worried brother on the phone, so I was able to put his mind at rest as I’d actually talked to the hospital doctor that day. Bro in NZ and I chat via skype or phone so he’s aware of what’s going on (or not). Mum’s doing OK and is ready for discharge, just a question of when they can arrange it. Maggie doing OK too now.
    Birthday coming up huh? Maggie’s is the 17th.

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      • It’s so much worse for Bro. Even though it’s 7 and a half hours plus for us to visit, at least we could. He’s rung and spoken to Mum a few times, but she doesn’t usually know who he is, and if she does, wants to know when he’s coming to visit. Naturally he finds it upsetting and that’s when he calls me . We’re really close so we have a long chat and I can fill him in. We both just want Mum to feel safe and settled back in the home so that she’s not so anxious or more confused than she normally is, bless her.

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  20. Happy Birthday and many good wishes for sunshine and useable tips for healthy living. Your post is hilarious as usual. I am seeing your fellow gymnast trying to open her locker with a magnifying glass! 🤣

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  21. Laughed out loud at this: there may be an emergency fourth posting in weeks where I run into stupid people who need a good flogging blogging! — STUPID people is right!

    The weather has brought out the bad drivers — gah!

    Cheers to you! MJ

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  22. My gym always keeps the bolt cutters handy for their lockers. It could be because people forget their combinations or lose their keys in the pool.

    Or for the one woman in a hurry who put her combination lock on backwards and then couldn’t see the dial to get the combination right and open the lock.

    So embarrassing for the poor creature, to soaking wet and stuck standing around while the bolt cutters were fetched and all the women sniggered.

    I’ll never do that again.

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    • 🙂 I have been locking my stuff in my car although with the temps low in the mornings, I am going to find a padlock. I felt sorry for the woman as she chose the bottom locker and the lighting wasn’t bright. Then again, she’s been going there longer than me and should know better. Most of the lockers are empty so you can pick one at eye level. Back about 30 years ago I was a rabid racquetball player. That gym had keys in lockers so you put your stuff in and took the key. Guess that’s not considered safe these days. It’s good to know that they probably have bolt cutters.

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      • My gym used to have keys. But then there were thefts and a fellow volleyball player got her wedding ring stolen. Even though the signs warned you not to put valuables in the lockers, the volleyball player won her case against the gym because they hadn’t notified the members that there were thefts and that an ex-staff member might have taken a master key. She was reimbursed for her ring, and after that, the keys were removed. I only use the lockers there when I’m doing laps, though.

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  23. Our laundry room pipes froze overnight when it dropped to 0 degrees. ZERO. Zero here in central Virginia and 21 in Anchorage, Alaska. Eh, I guess it’s okay. I’ll just be that much more THANKFUL when spring rolls around.

    Too bad about your hydrangeas. The pale blue variety is such an interesting flower. The color is like a mid-Century designer’s color.

    Too bad about the (temporary, I’m sure) wordpress problem. The sidebar font changes color on the mobile version of my blog, making the sidebar hard to read. There’s always something!

    Heehee, a “floggin’!”

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    • We didn’t hit 0 but it was in the low single digits here this morning. I am sad about the hydrangeas. I’ve had years (last year was one) where it was a hedge of blue blooms. So beautiful but it seems that’s happening less and less. I’ve send an email to the happiness engineers. It’s happened before but usually clears in a day. Today is the third day I can’t use it. Accessing blogs by email is tedious! I’m ready for spring!

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  24. I had a good week ~> I quit smoking!

    Before my last cigarette (on NYE), I smoked a few cigarettes a day and always outside. This cold weather has helped me “curb the urge” to head out and light up.

    Now I’m ready for the temps to rebound!

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    • We’re looking at bumping around 50. That will make me happy. We have had low single digits and I’ve had to make sure the pond has an open hole. I use a bubbler and a small heater (just heats a very small hole) but I’ve been getting an ice cap on the bubbler so it’s buckets of hot water.

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