Random 5 for October 12, 2025 – Bloggers, friends, road construction, detours, Maxine

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Moving on – We lost a beloved blogger this week. No, she didn’t die. She just moved on to doing something else. I will miss her. There are so few left that started around the same time I did. Some became book writers. Some moved to other platforms and some just disappeared into the ethernet. I am grateful she wrote us a goodbye post. Goodbye Ally Bean!

That’s what friends are for — I met up with a friend this week. We get together once a month to catch up, compare notes, grab lunch and recalibrate. I have my mahjong buddies, but we play more than chat, so dedicated talk time is appreciated. One of the things I love about my ‘hood is that friends are within walking distance. Meet ups are easy. Everyone is not only a text away but a two-minute walk. I also know that even the neighbors I don’t know well will help if we need it. It’s almost like living in a commune but without the kinky sex! 😊

Road construction – The interstate near me is getting widened from four to six lanes. The first order of business is to widen the bridges that go over it. For the last year, our local road has been closed as they rebuilt a nearby bridge. The detour hasn’t been too annoying, just a little longer timewise. The bridge is completed but they now must tie it in with the local roads. A major artery that our local road feeds in to is going to be closed for two weeks (they say) to do this. So, we have a detour on top of a detour. Our area is rural. There are no “blocks” but winding roads that wander hither and yon (sometimes more yon than hither!). Even housing developments are not square but full of circles and dead-end roads. Yesterday the beloved husband and I drove around to see how we can best navigate to points north and east. I made copious notes. I will be able to get to my Starbucks as that route hasn’t changed. Pizza may be a bit trickier. I’m hoping the weather allows the construction to finish on time! I don’t recommend anyone visiting in the next two weeks. I sure hope the delivery guys figure it out!

Oh no! The delivery guys! — We have almost daily deliveries. So far the local closure hasn’t dampened any of them. Chewy is dropping off a box here tomorrow. That will be the test!

As luck would have it – We are getting house guests this week. They are youngish and have GPS so I’m not too worried. We have house guests so rarely, what are the odds that they would plan a visit in the middle of a two-week road closure? I wish I was that lucky with the lottery.

So how was your week?

54 thoughts on “Random 5 for October 12, 2025 – Bloggers, friends, road construction, detours, Maxine”

  1. I, too, miss Ally already. Always fun – and a fun crowd there.

    So many bloggers have vanished. It’s nice when there’s a least a goodbye.

    Sometimes it seems like every road is confusing construction. We hope to be out of here before a couple of really big projects get started here. (other wise the traffic will be so terrible we’ll be stuck in space….but then again I’d end up having time to write more blog posts!)

    Hang in there ( and drink more coffee to get through tit all.

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  2. I’m chuckling at your road construction sign……… that’s the best I’ve seen! Good luck as you find alternate routes, hopefully your GPS will keep you from getting lost or stuck on a dead end street.

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  5. Road construction has become a way of life in the Denver metro area. From infrastructure improvements to water main replacements, you learn real quick how to navigate this way of life. May you not be too impacted and instead have a wonderful visit with your house guests.

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        • 🙂 Having redone my kitchen, bath and deck, I know time is elastic especially for contractors. My luck runs along the lines of a carpenter hurts his knee (out 1 week and PT twice a week after that), one carpenter’s wife leaves him (and cancels all our orders) so he has a breakdown and don’t have the supplies we need. They lose our kitchen sink (it floated around Texas for two weeks. I wonder if they ever found it.) Our deck guy went from working a full day to half days (this wasn’t a side gig for him but his job!) increasing the time from 3 weeks max (so he said) to 8 weeks. Sigh!

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  8. I would love to learn to play mahjong. That sign should be on the bridge at the end of my street. They have bene working on it over 2 years and will be for another 2.

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    • The full turnpike job (which this is a tiny part of) will take somewhere between 5 and 10 years. They are (and have been) widening the road to six lanes from Philadelphia to points north. Part of it is done but as they finish one section, they start the next road section and move up to the next bridge to widen. It’s choreographed. The finished part is wonderful. The road was old with narrow lanes. Wider and more lanes and a generous shoulder now!

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  9. I will miss Ally too! Don’t you and the cats go quitting too! It must be nice to have friends so close within walking distance. The older I get the more I hate having to always drive somewhere to meet someone. I tried to make some new nearby friends to go for coffee with by joining the local library book club, but they are such a strange group they don’t even know seem to know each others names despite meeting monthly for years, that I have given up on them. I find it’s harder to meet new friends as you get older – people seem entrenched in their ways and groups.

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      • I hate groups unless it’s a subject that really interests you- it’s worse now as fewer people are volunteering for them in general so they are desperate for members and people get work dumped on them they didn’t sign up for with no thanks at the end. The last book sale I went to sponsored by the Optimist Club they were handing out membership forms at the door as their membership has dwindled so much.

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  10. What the odds indeed – you might have to go fetch the houseguests and have them follow you or leave a trail of bread crumbs. Construction is a pain, but soon it will be too cold to pour cement and here that is November 15th, so yay, no more orange barrel polka to deal with. I have had a few bloggers leave and one who has not blogged since COVID vaccinations came out. She and her husband were retired, (he newly retired) just before the pandemic, so they have kids in Oregon and Colorado and they go to visit them/the grandchildren a couple of times a year and travel a lot, but through all this, she still reads/comments on posts, not all of them, but most of them.

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  12. Always sad when we lose a blogger, and so many have just disappeared. Several I followed have passed away now, but a couple have posted reasons why they’re leaving.
    Road works are always on abundance here. No sooner has one lot finished, then another pops up less than a mile further down the road. We had two sets of lights in two bends today. They did close an entire road for 6 months pother than access. Did a lovely job of resurfacing and double yellow lining to stop parking and also put in some passing places. Another they closed for several months and the detour was 17 miles! We found a shortcut of 3 (but didn’t tell anybody).
    Enjoy your visitors.

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  13. It seems that the streets around here are constantly being worked on. We recently had our powerlines undergrounded and the project required coordination between several utilities… hahaha! The same ditches had to be dug twice.

    In addition to Ally, I’ve had three other bloggers that I follow leave the blogosphere. It’s sad to see them go, but I’m grateful they at least said good-bye.

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    • I am always grateful when they say goodbye. I had a blogger die a few years back and she had arranged for her sister to post a final essay. She had been ill so not a surprise but it allowed closure.

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  14. Am I missing something with that road sign? Is there a grammar problem? A joke? “Work starts here 5th January for 147 years.”

    I’ll miss Ally too. I’m glad you’re still here. You’re amazingly consistent.

    I love having friendly neighbors who get together and talk. We don’t do it as often as before, though.

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    • The joke is that construction takes forever! Work on this part of the project starts tomorrow. People here say that there used to be more parties. People have aged and no one wants the work. We do get together for dinner sometimes.

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  15. You mentioned Chewys. Just now 9 boxes of food from them (I counted) arrived for the same woman who has a cat and a dog and apparently panicked when she heard about this impending storm. I’ll tell ya. The media should be brought up on charges for scaring people half to death. Glad Ally is still with us. That would have been a first-class bummer, indeed.

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  16. There is road work on a stretch of Tamiami Trail (US 41) that runs by the front gate of our neighborhood. Adding turn lanes off the Trail and eventually resurfacing the highway too. Of course they started just as snowbirds are starting to migrate down here. Don’t know where the worker dudes were all summer but it will be a mess by November. So far so good because the major work is being done at night. Fingers crossed for them to get it done and thankful there is no roundabout being built. Your road work sounds more nightmarish than our road work! May the patience gods bless you with all the patience you need.
    It is very nice to have a neighborhood of friends that are there for one another. That is the case for us.
    Enjoy your company… they are young, they will be good 🙂

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    • They did some night work here pounding in the supports for the bridge but for the most part, only work week days. I’m hoping it only takes 2 weeks! I would expect most over 55 communities (ours is not but everyone seems to be over 55) would be friendlier. Our last neighborhood was not. Neighbors were nice enough but were very busy with kid stuff and vacations. No real commonalities.

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  18. The only thing related to roads happening around here is a considerable increase in the amount of traffic! People traveling into D.C. to protest something (there’s plenty to protest these days)? People heading the OTHER way to go to the mountains (where it’s nice and peaceful)? Not sure but getting out of our subdivision is increasingly difficult in the morning and afternoon. Sigh. Enjoy your company – good thing they have GPS to navigate the road closures around you!!

    Hugs, Pam

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  19. I’ll miss Ally’s posts too. I glanced back at a few old posts on SLTW recently and almost none of the people leaving comments a decade ago are still around. Their blogs are shuttered and they stopped commenting on SLTW. Even though I don’t post with the regularity that I did decades ago, I’m not closing shop yet.

    Good luck with the detours and your visitors!

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  20. We’ve had no end of road closures here – running months in many cases – as they redo the storm drain system. A good thing to do in the end, but it has been a pain.

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    • The next two weeks will be interesting because it will force people onto the winding country roads. Hopefully they will slow up! It’s only two weeks though. They have been pretty timely about the construction time estimates so far.

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