Tag Archives: honey do

holidays, Military

Celebrating my veteran in Germany…

Featured photo was taken last night, after I lit the holiday season’s first fire.

Happy Veterans Day, y’all. Bill is home today, and we slept in, which was easy to do. We are experiencing good sleeping weather. It’s cool, damp, and foggy today.

Today, I did something I’ve never done before. I “bled” the heaters. Our house is heated by oil that comes from tanks that have to be filled every year. Our previous house was also heated that way. The first house we lived in here in Germany was heated by gas. Our landlord has said he wants to install a heat pump in this house, but that will entail a lot of messy construction. So, for that reason, he seems to be holding off on that plan.

I noticed my office was chilly, so I asked Bill to bleed the heater for me. He brought up the key, and opened the valve. I decided to try it on a few of the other radiators in the house. It’s kind of interesting to hear the hiss of steam as the air is let out of the radiators.

This is kind of what they look like… The one I broke looks a little different. Fortunately, they’re cheap.

Unfortunately, the key broke, so I just ordered a new one, along with a rubber O ring for the drain in our downstairs bathroom. The one it currently has dry-rotted some time ago, and is no longer effective. Hopefully, the little odds and ends I ordered will work and make the house function better.

We’re still waiting on the art we brought in to be framed. Maybe we’ll get an update on the status of that sometime before the weekend.

Bill has gone to pick up some food and other non-edible stuff we need. When he gets back, I expect we’ll enjoy a quiet afternoon and a peaceful dinner. Then, tomorrow, he’ll go back to work. Monday, he’s off to Istanbul for the work week. He found out yesterday that next month, he’s got to go to Slovenia. 🤨

I actually wouldn’t mind going with him to Slovenia. It’s a very beautiful country. But, he’s going to be very busy working, so it’s probably just as well that I stay home and do my usual Christmas shopping and such.

It’s crazy how fast 2026 has flown by… it seems like the time has passed even faster than usual!

A wedding day pic of me and my veteran… and our wedding anniversary happens to be in five days! Of course, Bill will be traveling that day.

Anyway… if there’s a veteran in your house, or you are one, yourself, I wish you a very happy and healthy Veterans Day. I am truly blessed to have mine in my life.

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Sundays

A weekend of honey dos…

I mentioned in my main blog that we didn’t really do much this weekend in terms of “travel.” Bill and I have a big, expensive, Nordic trip scheduled for next month that has eaten up a lot of our disposable income. We also have a U.S. holiday coming up this weekend during which we’re hoping to do a few day trips from the Wiesbaden area. Plus, we had some chores that needed to be done in the backyard.

I had been contemplating planning a dog friendly trip for the holiday weekend, but then I realized how much we’re spending to visit Norway, Sweden, Finland, Latvia, Estonia, and Denmark next month. Then I remembered that we were denied the opportunity to see a lot of our local environs due to the COVID pandemic.

There are quite a few somewhat local places I’d like to visit, and Bill has some leave time he needs to take, anyway. So he’s going to take a few days off this week and next and we’re going to try to explore. He also needs to go see Dr. Blair again for a tooth repair, so that might get done this week or next. It sucks getting old! ETA: as I’m writing this, Bill says he has an appointment for tomorrow at 2:15PM. Guess he’ll take the ICE train. I think it takes about an hour to go from Frankfurt to Stuttgart on the train.

As for what we did this weekend… well, we tried Galliano liqueur for the first time and Bill made us a round of Harvey Wallbangers. It’s not a bad cocktail, but I probably wouldn’t order it at a bar. Maybe I’ll try one on Regent Splendor next month. 😉 Ours were missing cocktail cherries, because we didn’t have any on hand. Bill also shaved his beard and left tiny hairs all over the bathroom. I cleaned that up.

Bill went to the local “bee bomb” vending machine and bought six more capsules of seeds. We planted them in some empty planters we had. With luck, they’ll sprout and bloom, and we’ll have pretty wildflowers that will also feed the bees. I’ve never particularly been a big fan of bees, but I know they are essential to life. I read some sad stories in summers passing about bees not having enough to eat. So I’m hoping we can do our part in helping them out. I already started some bee bombs a couple of weeks ago, and we have some pretty good sprouts already going now. If you look at the featured photo, you can see the capsules of seeds in the background.

I pulled some ivy vines down off our garage and gave the patio furniture another layer of teak oil. Bill charged up my car’s battery, which I’m sure will be dead in a month. I really need to drive my car more.

Bill gathered more old clothes for the bins by the grocery store. I need to do another round of that myself. I have tons of clothes that won’t fit in my dresser, and some others that won’t fit me. 🙂

I did more yardwork, though I can hardly call it work, since we have a robot to mow our tiny backyard. I do have to use the weed whacker, though. I didn’t do much yard work yesterday because it was Sunday. We aren’t supposed to make a lot of noise on Sundays. It probably would have been okay, though. Our neighborhood is pretty chill about that kind of stuff. I wouldn’t dare use power tools on Sunday in Baden-Württemberg. That would be sure to earn me a good tongue lashing from a neighbor or the Polizei. In Hessen, it’s probably cool.

I spent some time moving more of my massive music collection from my old computer to the new one. It’s a very tedious and annoying undertaking reminiscent of when I moved this blog from Blogspot to WordPress and had to reformat a bunch of old posts… some of which are still not properly formatted.

And we also enjoyed some barbecue… spareribs last night and chicken on Saturday. It was quite yummy!

I did think wistfully about going out somewhere fun, but I really have fun with Bill wherever we are. It’s so nice to have him home again. This will be a short work week for him, so I’m hoping to have some good content later this week. We won’t be doing the “honey do” stuff this weekend… although we might do the “honey do me” stuff. 😉

I’m kidding about that… sorta. 😀

I would like to do a dog friendly trip soon. Maybe we’ll do one to pick up a new friend for Noyzi… We’ll see what the future holds.

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