Daniel, Taxes and Cooking - It'll Be a Busy Wednesday

My "nephew" Daniel is coming to town soon, and would love to meet for a meal. I'm all for it, but we'll have to see how schedules mix. He lives in Portland, Oregon, so I don't see him often. He grew up out here in the Frozen Wastelands, however, and still has relatives out here. His Grandmother is getting on in years and lives in the northern part of the Cities, and I'm sure he's coming out to see his Granny as well as his aunt and a few uncles and cousins. It's a large family. 

One hobby that Daniel and I share is a love of painting miniature 
molded figures. He's been working on a Red Dragon (not this 
particular image) and it's turning out really nicely. His Mom, 
my "sister", gave him an airbrush for a holiday gift a year or 
two ago and he's been using it regularly now. What a fun tool! 

Of course, at the same time that I saw his "Maybe we can catch dinner together" text, I also saw the reminder that I need to get the first half of our property taxes paid. *sigh* What's the old saying? "Death and taxes....?" I guess there's no relief from either of those. But it does seem that the early part of the year just piles them on. Or maybe that's because we've got the fence issues pounding down on us on top of everything else. And, maybe it's also magnified because yesterday was a day of rain, so DH couldn't get any yard work done. He decided to work on his AFS stuff instead, and discovered that somehow he had lost half of his data. Grumpy was even more grumpy at that finding, and had to start re-entering a bunch of data. 

Death and taxes are the only sure things in life ... sigh. 
As I recall, that was a very expensive bill for this year. 

And, of course, I'm still swimming without sound. Now, I expect most of you swim without sound, but I find my swims go smoother and a bit faster when I've got an audio book to listen to. BUT ... my Aftershokx headphones died late last week, and my replacement set hasn't arrived yet (although I was hoping they would arrive yesterday). Once they do show up, I need to get them charged up ASAP and get my current book downloaded. Then I can let them play for nine hours or so to get to where I left off when my last set of headphones died last week. 

I need to make a vegetable soup or a batch 
of chili today. I'm out of meals, and today is 
a kitchen day. I'll get it figured out quickly 
when I return from the pool. 

And, today is a kitchen day. I had the last of my roasted carrot soup last night - SO GOOD! I need to make another soup, I think. A vegetable soup, or maybe a chili. I've got ground beef in the freezer for chili, so I might do a quick defrost on that. But, I'm also very tempted to do a standard vegetable soup. Decisions, decisions. Maybe I'll make up my mind while I'm doing my boring, silent swim today - LOL. Have an excellent Wednesday and I'll be back tomorrow. Slava Ukraini and חיים למען ישראל.