My story is a very sweet one. A sleep deprived corporate lawyer finds herself stranded in her hometown during a pandemic lockdown, after she came home to celebrate her two friends finally opening an inn. Against her better judgement, she falls in love with the widowed town librarian. Together they learn the true meaning of Christmas. Sweet story....bu why did my friends think right now is a good time to open an inn?! And, why did I decide to travel to it?
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It's the Monday after a holiday weekend in the US, & even though we didn't do anything to celebrate here, yuck. Those are always worse, somehow. Thanks goddess for coffee! I accidentally ordered the wrong quantity of gummy candy with my Amazon order. Now, I have enough star mix to stock a grocery shelf & I'm okay with this, lol. Finally, a feel good animal story. I've mentioned the animal rescue I volunteer with & one of the best things they do is pull senior & sick or injured dogs from local shelters. Here is their new pup, Milton Bradley. **neglected but sweet dog ahead ** This is Saturday when he was rescued. And here he is a mere 24 hours later after receiving medical care & a spa day. The top one is a screenshot from a video & he is so happy. Congratulations little puppy. Your senior years will be filled with love, warmth, & treats. ❤ People related news is Pal's dad in still in the hospital. He's recovering from Cov...
What are you most looking forward to doing again, once the world's back to "normal" (if that happens)? Big or small, what are you dreaming of doing? Are there lockdown habits that you think you'll continue with, even when you no longer need to? I'm assuming most folks are wishing for physical reunions with friends and family, of course! But what else are you looking forward to? My small dream is a return to yoga classes. Just, being in the same room with people, laughing and sharing, being pushed by an instructor (physically and mentally), walking out with a glow... I miss it so much and, while yoga at home is fine, it's not the same. I miss the community, I guess. My big dream is the ability to travel again. Dang Pinterest knows it, too! It keeps shoving photos of gorgeous beaches, fancy-pants treehouses, and romantic European cities into my feed. As for future habits, I think wearing a mask when you're sick, which seemed so extra to me before, now just...
Good evening GT! It's true confession time. I'd like to know a thing or two about your secrets. What's something that people are surprised to find out about you? Is there something most people don't know, perhaps a secret talent or terrible habit? I've may have one or two of my own... And how's your Saturday night looking?
Happy Saturday, GT! What's on your vagenda this weekend? We're supposed to have unusually good weather today (50 degrees and sunny), so Homey and I are planning a nice, long walk this afternoon. Happily, we still have tons of leftovers from the week, so I don't have to cook dinner tonight and can be a bum, if needed. :) How about y'all?
Hey hey friends, what are you up to this evening? Eating? Drinking? Watching TV? Anybody watch The Witcher on Netflix? I got halfway through the first episode and I'm kinda meh on it. Does it get better? In a classic example of making my own problems, for like a week I've been trying to figure out how to post here and not getting anywhere. I assumed I'd have to comment and ask a mod. SURPRISE my computer crashed and I had to re-sign into everything here and forgot the password for my GT email address. In the process of resetting that, I checked the inbox and lo and behold, there was the invite from like 2 weeks ago! It had been waiting there for me all along!
Happy Fri., GT! Who here's taking advantage of some sales today? What are you looking for? And what else do you have planned for today? I was up too early today, womp, womp. So, I laid in bed and finished my book, which was nice. Now, I'm plopped down in the spare room's bed, settling in for a day of cheesy Christmas specials and online shopping. I started the new Dolly Parton Christmas special on Netflix yesterday. At first, I was like, This is so schmaltzy and old-fashioned! I'm going to watch anyway, because I love Dolly, but how corny. Cut to me, half an hour later, sobbing uncontrollably and looking at Homey, "Dolly Parton is a blessing to this earth!" Poor Homey, lol. Anywhoozles, how about you? Anyone putting up a tree today? Or maybe swimming through leftovers? Wherever you are, whatever you're doing, I hope you have a fantastic Friday!
Greetings friends! It's Thanksgiving in the US & almost the weekend for most everyone else. I hope your cooking, snacking, working, or lazing is going well. We're eating takeout & doing the lazing thing around here. Maybe a nap, too. Very exciting! :) This is the cutest, most indignant little turkey I've ever seen. 😂 Happy Thanksgiving! Chat away.
I don't usually share really personal stuff, but this time, I need to. Last night I found out that my best friend of 26 years has been diagnosed with a rare and aggressive cancer. She’s only 30. I’m devastated. My parents are devastated, and I don't know how to tell my grandparents. I couldn’t sleep much last night, and I’ve been crying on an off since I found out. My eyes are sore and my head hurts. I feel like there is a huge weight sitting on my chest and I find myself having to remind myself to breath. My stomach is in knots. I can’t believe this is happening. She lives in another state with her husband, and none of her family live there. I want nothing more than to be able to go see her, but with Covid that’s not an option. I’m doing my best to keep it together, and I just want to say how much I appreciate this community. Being able to be on here and interact with you all in a low stakes way is helping to keep me from just burying myself under the covers and isolating ...
OK, folks. Most of us have been mostly trapped mostly at home for mostly the past nine months (I am tempted to refer to this period as our "confinement"). Early on, many of us set up home offices. How's yours holding up? How much does it look now like it did then? Mine's been seriously re-arranged and partly re-equipped, but that's to be expected. Like what we do in them, home offices are works in progress. What's the latest with yours? Mine's only slightly neat-ish at the moment because I've sloughed the papers off it and into my briefcase...
I just spent a ridiculous amount of money for me at the Society6 Black Friday sale and now I'm here to wile everyone else into my folly. What's new and hot that you're loving lately, GT? Or what have you been looking for that you'd love recommendations on? This time of year, with so many sales happening for Black Friday/Small Business Saturday/Cyber Monday I also really like sharing anything we're looking for or looking for deals on, since it can be super helpful to have extra eyes catching stuff when there's so many different places to look. Also please feel free to share small businesses you love (especially your own!) who are doing sales/deals online they normally wouldn't this year with the current nonsense. I do recommend the Society6 sale; throughout the year I buy art from local artists and Etsy directly, but there are a few people that only sell through there that I love and cyber week they do 50% plus free shipping which is as cheap as they ever ...
Happy Tue., GT! How are you feeling after yesterday's advancements (Michigan and Murphy)? And what's your day looking like? I slept really well last night, praise Jeebus. I've got a ton of work to catch up on today and tomorrow but I'm hoping to do that so I can rest up Th. - Sun. We're approaching the final push of the term and I need to get myself into that headspace. How about y'all?
Though whether you're eating turkey, tofurkey, or ham, let's be real- Thanksgiving is all about the sides. What are you serving this Thanksgiving? Or if you don't celebrate Thanksgiving, what are your favorite holiday dishes? Bourbon sweet potato casserole with streusel topping (Finding this was a master stroke, my dad is famous for it now) Indian pudding (I'm trying my hand at this for the first time!) Stuffing - Mexador's great-grandmother's recipe, loaded with ground sausage and enough thyme to smell a mile away. I sometimes tease Mexador about it needing raisins and I swear one of these days he'll divorce me XD Corn custard - Affectionately known throughout the family as "Dead Grandpa's corn custard" after the church funeral my mom's family picked the recipe up at Mashed potatoes - we still have some garlic hanging around from our CSA so we're going to do roasted garlic potatoes Cranberry sauce - I'm glad to have something...
Good Morning! I woke up like this, even without coffee, because my best friend WON A MOTHER FRAPPING EMMY LAST NIGHT! If you're thinking, "Wait, a second. The emmys weren't last night," you're not wrong. It was a regional emmy for Chicago/Midwest, but it still counts! She receives a statue & everything. I'm so proud of her. Technically, I should credit her bro & his best friend as they wrote & produced the PSA about #staying home, but she did the voice over. So, if you're in Chicago/Wisconsin & have heard a really kind voice imploring you to stay home & be safe, that's my bestie! So, that's my big news! Less exciting but maybe helpful, we picked up a grocery order yesterday & everything was still stocked. Hopefully, your stores are also hanging in there while those of us in the states prepare for Thanksgiving. Now, your turn. How's Monday looking for you? Chat away! I'll be here doing this for a while longer, haha.
Happy Sun., GT! You ready to talk books?! I was thinking, with Thanksgiving coming up, it'd be nice to do talk about favorite cookbooks, in addition to our regular reading. So, has anyone found any cookbooks recently that they love? Or, what's an old favorite that you rely on, time and again? I don't know about y'all but COVID has just about drained all my cooking creativity. Sigh. Anyone know of a cookbook to solve that? :D And, as always, please let us know: 1) What book did you most recently finish? 2) What book are you currently reading? 3) What's next on your "to be read" list? 4) Are you looking for any book recommendations? Do you have any recs for the rest of the readers here? (Cookbook or otherwise :D)
Good Saturday Evening GT! Isn't it lovely to have a new home? I'm so happy to see so many familiar folks & looking forward to more finding their way here. This post may look a little rough since I'm new to this format. I'm sure we'll all get more polished as we get used to this new space. How's your Saturday night looking? Tonight I am sending all my best wishes to these mental giants. I hope they are successful in this very well thought out grassroots campaign. Go get 'em fellas!
Hello everyone! I hope this day is finding you well and in good spirits. Over the last couple days I’ve noticed a few people asking about some of our old GT weekly posts like GroupDrink, Fuck it Friday, and SNAS. I was wondering what everyones ideas are for keeping those posts going? I’m not sure if the original hosts are planning to keep them going, or if we’d like to have someone else take those over or even come up with some new weekly traditions. What are y’alls ideas? Are there any posts you’d like to see? Are there any you’d like to host? Please share your thoughts and ideas! P.S. Please know that I will likely be responding to your brilliant ideas and thoughts with lots of gifs today.
Happy Saturday, GT! It's our inaugural Weekend Vagenda post on the new and improved GT! Another thank you and round of applause for VB and others who've helped put this whole thing together. You all are actually amazing and I squealed yesterday when I saw our little "GT" logo on my tab. Everything looks so good and seems to be running so well. Y'all are actual superstars! Thank you again for all your efforts! 💖💖💖 Ok, as for OT stuff: I am officially on Thanksgiving break today! I have some grading to catch up on but it shouldn't be too bad. I'll do that Mon. and Tue. Today, I am determined to clean house. We haven't done our floors in ... well, let's just say, it's been multiple months. Yikes. (And if you're inclined to offer me some grace on that, it's definitely more on the "I'm a trash person" side of "multiple months," lol). I'm thinking a deep clean of the kitchen + kitchen floor today, then tomo...
I know some of us (me included) have been having trouble getting automatically logged out of Disqus all the time. It also prevented us from posting photos. But we have a solution- Praise be to the gurus on Backtalk! CestLaVie said they didn't come up with it, but they shared it with us so I'll give them credit anyway. Edit: Proper credit to CTSenVy for fixing this! These options are in your iPhone settings, scroll down to where the apps are. This works for Chrome as well, switch on Allow Cross-Website Tracking. Now go forth and share your Fur Face Friday Fotos!
Come join the Fur Face Friday at https://backtalkvillage.blogspot.com/2020/11/fur-face-friday.html And a reminder that we are in need of some additional Snout Selectors to fill out the Fur Face Friday ranks. If you're interested or have questions about Selecting, leave a comment here and one of us will be in touch.
Good morning, GT! How are y'all today? How's your weekend looking? I have a couple of classes, a few conferences, two papers to grade, and then I'm on Thanksgiving break, officially! The plan for the afternoon is to pick up groceries from the co-op, spend some quality time in the kitchen choppin' veggies and listening to podcasts, and make a couple of veggie pot pies (YUMMMM). Tonight, one of my besties and I are going to Netflix Party Ratched. Should be good! COVID is spreading like wildfire in our area, so I'm really trying to lean into "stuck at home hygge" this year. Pot pie and Netflix Parties will be my life until the weather changes 😂ðŸ˜ðŸ˜ðŸ˜. Anywhoozles, how about y'all?
Good evening everyone! I thought it might be nice to see how an evening OT goes around these parts. My day was very busy with meetings, paperwork, and client sessions. It didn't help that I didn't get a great nights sleep so I'm hoping to get to bed early tonight. I'm also a bit annoyed because one of the orders I was waiting on was damaged in transit, and it looks like another one is lost or really late. Cosmo's BarkBox was also supposed to be delivered today, but I doubt that will happen. Anyway, enough of my complaints. How are you doing? How was your day? Btw, it's technically not evening yet here in SoCal but it feels like it to me.
I've gone most of this year without being sick--largely, I'd guess, because I've had very little contact with other people--but last night I started to feel unwell, and today I'm just dragging . I have my fingers crossed that this is just a cold, and that's very likely, because I still have very limited contact with people. But feeling unwell at all these days is enough to scare the pants off one's person. But my oximeter says my levels are OK, so. Anyone else here had a mild cold lately and been scared out of their wits?
I don’t know whether to laugh or cry at how appropriate this is for the year we have been through. Let’s send that tree all our love. Also, owl! https://www.huffpost.com/entry/rockefeller-christmas-tree-2020_n_5fb5623ec5b66cd4ad413200
Morning yall! I'm hoping this is the last of the major blog updates as now that Disqus is here it seems to have helped clean a lot of things up! I'm still working on adding in comment counts and tidying some things up (if you see random side fonts, image display etc change you are probably not crazy), but the big stuff seems to mostly have settled out so far. A big thanks to everyone for feedback and encouragement and esp to Its Ginaaa for the logo creation! I'm also going to work on putting together a how to use/best tips post on how to tweak accounts in the next few days so please feel free to share the stuff you've found is working best. I love and appreciate everyone switching technologies and learning new stuff to continue to be here so much. In other practical items, I do think one of the nicest things about having our own setup is that well, we have our own setup. There are some things we are restricted on due to technology or options, but we do have a wealth ...
Good morning! It's Wednesday so congratulations on making it halfway through the week. :) This place is really looking great. Again, huge thank you to Violet who has made it feel like home. <3 I'm still feeling my way around, but I think I like it better than kinja. Here's a strange development for me. For the first time in almost 20 years, I think I want to decorate a Christmas tree!?! What is happening, lol. 2020 is weird, y'all! I'm pretty sure it's thanks to a combo of therapy & being grateful Pal's parents are recovering from Covid. Maybe a dash of Dolly's many projects as well. :) So, how are you doing? Share away. Quick tip, if you're using your phone to make a post, scroll right for more options! I was stumped for a second.
Hello? Is this thing on? ;) Happy Tue. everyone! How's your day looking? I just did a yoga video. I was hoping to have time to shower before conferencing with students but it looks like I'm outta luck on that front. Happily, I have time to make coffee, anyway. Is anyone else having GT ghost limb experiences? Like, you keep clicking into it out of habit but there's nothing there? Sigh. What a bummer. Anyway, how are y'all?
Hey yall - Putting a post up here to keep everyone abreast of stuff we're working on, and so that we can grab any feedback as you guys are coming through here, since one of the beauties of this new site is that we get to design it and make choices together from the ground up (and hopefully blogspot is a kinder master than kinja). My plans for the day are the following: 1) Finalize a theme. Those of you may noticed that I've got a basic theme up so far and tweaked it a bit (I've realized I'm so old now that I need large font on all my websites 😅), but I'm totally open to any feed back about look/feel. Its fairly easy to change fonts, colors, and back ground images. Still working on figuring out header logo, and a better way to have popular/recent articles scroll at the bottom. Please note that if your suggestion is not implemented it is not a reflection on the quality of your suggestion but rather on the quality of the admin's ability to do it haha. 2) Inst...
Hello everyone! Nice new digs we have here. I first want to say thank you to Violet for being so wonderful and setting this up! I know so many of us appreciate all the effort people are putting in to keep our little community going. Anyway, I'm just testing things out and thought an OT would be a good option. Talk about whatever you'd like.
Hello World! Working on giving this a go. Please feel free to say hi or use this as your own test comments/feedback etc, with the disclaimer that this is my very first day on this blog website