Coffee heat rising

Idle essays

Glorious Rain! Again!! Jury Duty! Again!!

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Glub!

This morning it’s raining magnificently…again. Storm after storm has hit California and bounced over the Sierras into Arizona. Hallelujah, brothers and sisters!

Haven’t seen rain like this in many years. Matter of fact…we haven’t see much rain, period, in years. Or at least so it seems. The reservoirs are now filled up, so the general low-level hysteria about the water situation will settle down a bit.

That’s probably not a good thing: a few rainstorms will not make a decades-old drought go away. This kind of weather would need to go on and on, to be a permanent fixture the way it was when I was a girl here. Back in the primeval period, we had rain like this every winter, come February, and it also rained in the summer time. In August, thunderstorms would roll in about 4 in the afternoon. They’d break the heat, dropping temps from the low hundreds to the mid- or low 80s. A 115-degree day was almost unheard-of; today they’re commonplace.

Too damn many people with too damn little care for the world around them. Oh well. That world is gone now. It won’t be back, at least not in our lifetimes. So might as well forget about it.

Meanwhile, with a flood pouring off the roof, I ran outside with buckets and plastic trash cans by way of gathering water for the plants that live indoors or under the eaves. When it rains this much, I tend to forget that about half the outdoor potted plants aren’t eligible for rainfall. 🙂

Already poured one scrub-bucketful of fresh rainwater on the calla lily, which was mightily peeved at not getting rained on in the last storms. Will scoop up a fair amount more for the rose bush on the east side, which probably will need to be transplanted into a bigger pot before the weather starts to get warm. The rest can go on the ficus, the potted palm, and the indoor greenery.

All of which provides a fine work-avoidance gambit.

But I must hurry. I have 15,000 more words to read between now and the day I have to show up (again!) for effing jury duty. That’s to read. Then I have to go back over the current chunk of 30,000 words and check — as fast as I can! — the edits I’ve made. Some stuff is going to get missed, partly because the job is mind-numbing and partly because it’s just too much to get through in under a week.

Can you believe it? Hauled down to the courthouse to waste another day (at least!) AGAIN! Every time I turn around, I get another summons. Usually it starts with the county. Then I get one from the city courts. Then I get another from the feds.

At least the federal courts are reasonably well organized. When you get down to the federal courthouse, you are already impaneled on a jury and you go straight to the judge’s courtroom for voir-dire.

At the county, you have to show up at 8 a.m. — if you don’t appear on time, they count that as not showing up at all and you can be charged with a crime. Then they park you in a waiting room where you sit. And sit. And sit. And sit. And sit. All day long. If you’re lucky, they may let you go around 4 p.m., but you’re told to expect to be there until 5:00.

They may haul you into a courtroom to be interviewed, but usually you’ll be discarded. Then, with any luck, you can go home. But maybe not. You may have to go back to the waiting room and sit.

It used to be that you had to sit there and listen to damned televisions blatting at you, since apparently the majority of Americans are comforted and soothed by the sound of TV sets blathering away. If you’ve brought the work that you can’t afford not to be doing, well…tough.

Now at least they have a quiet room — or they did, the last time I was there. Using it entails getting your computer past the security guards, an iffy proposition. So far I’ve managed to get in without having my work confiscated. But the paranoia grows more acute with each passing day. So we’ll see what happens when I try to carry my laptop in there next week.

To complicate  matters, they’ve moved the parking about a half-mile or so from the courthouse. So you’re supposed to find the parking structure (not easy in the mess that is downtown Phoenix — it’s a maze of one-way streets) and then hop a shuttle to the courthouse. Later, after the rain lets up, I’m going to drive downtown and try to find both the structure and the courthouse. Otherwise, trying to locate it at 7:30 in the morning will be a horror show.

You know, I wouldn’t mind being called if, like the feds, the county and the city could get their act together and not waste my time. But I really hate having a day ripped out of my schedule with no compensation and no consideration whatsoever.

One of my friends was called up. She was a political science Ph.D., and so powerfully opinionated that (believe it or not!) she made me look like an avatar of even-handed open-mindedness. Being who and what she was, she was thrilled to serve.

She was impaneled for a civil case. The judge told the selected jurors that he expected the case to last about three days and asked if that would be a hardship for anyone.

You understand: she had two jobs. One was an adjunct teaching position at the Great Desert University. When you’re adjunct, if you don’t show up, you don’t get paid. There are no substitute teachers for courses taught by adjuncts, so your students lose out on the coursework for which they are paying through the schnozz. But three days, she figured she could finesse. So she made no objection.

The trial went on for over three weeks!

She lost three weeks worth of pay. She had to pay a friend, out of pocket, to cover her course, and even then her students had fallen way behind by the time she got back to work.

Teaching is not considered important enough that a judge will excuse you from jury duty. Interestingly, though, seeing to it that people pay their taxes on time is: my accountant friend has repeatedly gotten himself excused by stating, correctly, that he had to prepare clients’ tax returns on time.

One thing I did learn, by accident, is that if you ask to have your “service” rescheduled and you can finagle them to schedule you on the day before Christmas, you’re likely to get completely out of it. What happens is that lawyers do not want to show up at the courthouse on the day before a major holiday. So try to wangle an appointment right up against a Christmas, New Year’s, or the Fourth of July, and although you may have to show up, you’ll be sent home quickly.

Welp, enough with the ranting. Unfortunately, I’ve got to get to work!

Six Things That Have Turned Out Exceptionally Well

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The News of the World is not so great — you tune into Google News just to see what new signs of dementia are emanating from the White House — so one looks to a smaller scale in the search for things that have turned out well.

• The CRP V500 Call Blocker ordered up from Amazon a couple weeks ago. Damned if the thing doesn’t WORK, pretty much as advertised. The nuisance calls have fallen off to almost nil. The crooks who like to jangle your phone at 7:00 a.m.: blocked. The sh!theads that call at 9:00 p.m.: blocked.

The number of robocalls per day has dropped from about a half-dozen to one. As a reviewer at Amazon noted, nuisance incoming drops precipitously as you block those who do get through. The first day or two after the gadget came to live on my phone line, robocall harassment dropped from six or eight a day to two or three. Within another few days, it was down to one a day. That’s one helluva big improvement on six or eight interruptions a day, especially when you do the kind of high-focus, ditzy work I do.

Speaking of the which…

• Billing by the Word. Why did I never think of this before? It looks more and more like it’s true that when people hear “YY cents per word,” they imagine that sounds better than “X dollars per page.” This is so even when the YY cents works out to more, overall, than X dollars.

I just sent off the most incredibly mind-numbingly complicated piece of network theory to its Chinese authors — really, on the highest end of what I’m qualified to do. They didn’t even blink when I asked for a stiff fee expressed in pennies per word. The result: I’ll get paid something close to what my time and skills are worth. No more giving away hours of time for minimum wage. Or less.

Now I’m thinking there should be a way to convert this by-the-word approach to indexing. As a matter of fact, the latest would-be indexing client asked how much I would charge to index his academic tome “per word.”

Indexing is not normally calculated by the word; it’s charged by indexable printed page. You work from page proofs, unless you’re entering code in a Wyrd manuscript for machine indexing. I personally find that to be more work than just going through page proofs and…you know…reading the copy. And, oh, say thinking about where entries belong, how they should be ordered, who’s going to use the index, and why.

But it does occur to me that I could calculate an average number of words per page by pasting from PDF to Wyrd and figuring an average from, say, 10 pages. Or simply copying all the indexable pages into Wyrd and reading the total word count.

When you think about how you would do that so as to come up with the desired $4 to $6 a page, you come up with a per-word range of 1.05 to 1.75 cents per word. A typical 350-page academic tome would have something between 81,250 and 82,500 indexable words. That would create a range of about $800 to about $1200, which is what I’ve been getting with the existing page rates. It would even allow for pushing an estimate as high as $1445, for really complicated and abstruse horror shows.

Today, if I have time after getting through 10,000 words of the other client’s Great Novel of the 21st Century, I’ll update the business’s website to reflect a per-word system for indexing as well as for editing.

• The Countertop Oven Gambit. Now that has worked out well. The self-destructing wall oven is permanently turned off at the breaker, and any broiling, roasting, or toasting that needs to be done happens on the propane grill or in the little oven.

It works exceptionally well to make toast. REAL toast, not warm bread, not slabs of charcoal. It’s fast, clean, and out of the way.

Given Mrs. JestJack’s concerns about the potential fire hazards associated with the things, it gets unplugged after each use. It now resides in the garage, on a work table lined with ceramic flooring tiles. It seems to be pretty well insulated — doesn’t ever get hot underneath the thing — but I’m careful not to put any paper products near it and also to be sure it’s left unplugged. Although I have yet to get around to installing another smoke alarm out there, that’s high on the list of priorities. In lieu of an alarm, I’m careful to leave the door open between the kitchen and the garage, and not to wander off while bread is toasting or cheese is melting.

• The Weather, For a Change. It’s raining again, lhudly sing huzzah. We’ve had so much rain this winter, I’ve been able to turn off the irrigation system altogether, thereby cutting the city’s water gouge in half.

Just now we’re getting the tail end of the storm that’s hovering over Southern California. The drought is officially broken in that state, reservoirs full and streams running again. Whether that’s the case here remains to be seen — our drought has run longer than 10 years. However, the kind of soft rain we’re having now is crucial: it recharges the groundwater, because it doesn’t run off to the Gulf of California the way a hard rain does.

We should have wildflowers this spring. Real wildflowers. For the first time in years!

• Shopping Less at Costco. Not allowing myself to be dragooned back to Citibank’s obnoxious Visa card has worked to surprisingly good effect. Because it’s a little bit of a hassle to charge up goods on the credit union’s Visa card or debit card — you have to produce your official Costco card as well as a second piece of plastic, and now you have two statements to hassle with instead of just one AMEX bill — I’ve taken to shopping in grocery stores and on Amazon in preference to Costco.

That means I’m spending a lot less, overall, each month.

Yesterday’s bills came in on budget, in theory: about $1200, right around what I’ve always figured for routine spending. But… The actual routine spending was a lot less than that. The $1200 tab included a $235 HVAC service/repair bill, $200 for a pair of shoes I didn’t need and shouldn’t have bought, and $150 for the dentist.

So that means I spent $585 less than I used to spend routinely! Mostly by staying out of Costco.

• The Wash Machine Gambit. I love, love, love and worship the new Speed Queen washer. Oh, my GOSH what a difference between this marvelous old-fashioned machine and the accursed HE, low-water contraption. It works, it actually gets the clothes clean,  it never tangles anything into a braid, and it does the job in 30 minutes flat.

It’s a miracle.

Taking a Break from the First-World Problems…

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And now for a cuppa coffee (or two) out in the Leafy Bower, courtesy of some very balmy weather. It rained a little yesterday, out of a warm sky. Today is gorgeous, a few high mares-tailish clouds keeping the glare down, perfect for yard-loafing.

Yes, it’s absolutely true, you’re right: I should not make up another pot of coffee, not at the absurd prices I’m paying. If I indulge myself with a third & fourth mug of the perfect elixir (one French press pot holds two mugsful), it doesn’t take too long to go through a pound of beans.

First-World problem.

In that vein, I happened to notice, as I was entering this week’s receipts into the budget spreadsheet, that the last time I bought a pound of the same dark-roast coffee, the charge was two dollars less. So, either The Little Guy (the shop’s proprietor) has jacked up the price by 12% or our friend the tip-begging counter clerk quietly inflated the bill. So I think we’ll be buying coffee somewhere else after this.

First-World problem.

Do you own a Cuisinart food processor? Did you know that  in some models the ultra-sharp blade has been recalled? Mine, which I use once every eight or ten days to concoct dog food, is one of the affected models. Since these things are known to fall apart and install ultra-sharp, mouth-slashing metal shards in the food, you might want to check your model number.

One of the tasks of the day was to call the number on the page at that link (the supposed form you can fill out is nonexistent). So after more hours, starting at 7 a.m., than I wish to reckon laboring over Chicana/Latina postmodern feminist theory, along about 10:30 I finally got around to that.

First-World problem.

This morning I read and tried to render more or less literate an essay by a junior-level tenure-track type who argued…  oh, God, it defies belief. This woman dragged a fussy baby to an academic conference. When the poor little infant made, as unhappy infants tend to do, a distracting racket, she was asked to take the baby out of the meeting room. She interpreted this outrage as clear and present evidence of White (always capitalized) privilege and anti-feminist, anti-Latina hegemonic discrimination.

It’s all about me, hm? Never seems to have occurred to her that maybe the woman giving the speech would have liked to be heard. Or that maybe, just maybe some people at the meeting would have liked to be able to hear the speaker.

First-World problem. With a vengeance.

Meanwhile, the lead author on the latest Chinese magnum opus e-mailed asking if I would please re-issue my statement with just her name and institution on it, since it’s her grant that’s funding the research and Nanyang Tech has to pay just her, not her and her co-author. No problem.

Does China have First-World problems? Hmmm… If you’re at Nanyang Tech, no doubt. It’s in Singapore, not China. As for her young co-author, recently escaped from that august institution with a Ph.D. in hand, now ensconced at what sounds very much like the equivalent of Yankton State College? Maybe not so much.

First-World problem. Qualified.

Yesterday I actually succeeded in getting through another 10,000 words of the client’s 89,000-word F&SF novel. Finished along about 8:30 or 9:00 p.m., in spite of not getting started before about 1:30 or 2:00 — thanks to church & grocery-store run.

It’s Monday, so I needed to deposit the (very nice!) check said client had mailed me, which didn’t arrive until Friday evening. In knee-jerk fashion, I put “drive to credit union, deposit check” on the to-do list. Finishing the Latina feminist rant and the very cheering and interesting artist’s statement for the Latina feminist journal (some people really are outstandingly wonderful…), there was nothing more for it but to haul myself to my feet and get dressed and drive to the credit union and…ugh.

I…do…not…want…to…drive…to…the…credit union. So much so that one delaying tactic entailed cleaning the bathroom and scrubbing the toilet. That’s how much I didn’t want to drive to the credit union.

But it was a useful delaying tactic, because while I was applying Clorox toilet bowl cleaner to the john in the middle bathroom, it occurred to me that I could avoid driving to the credit union by…yes…by electronically depositing the check. There’s a unique idea…

As usual, scanning the thing correctly was a bit of a hassle. But the CU has hugely upgraded its magical-digital-deposit function, so once a check is scanned, it takes all of about 30 seconds to deposit it.

First-World problem, on steroids.

This left me with having to actually sit down and…you know…work for that check the guy sent. I’d like to get through another 10,000 words today — unlikely, since it’s 2:30 now and my enthusiasm for work isn’t any better than it was an hour or two ago, when I sat down to this little squib.

Emptied the dishwasher, reloaded the dishwasher, cleaned the kitchen, scrubbed the tile countertops, put a load of laundry in the washer.

First-World Problem.

Cleaned up the back yard; hauled the dog shit and trash out to the garbage.

World-Wide problem.

Sprayed the weeds in the alley. Pissed because the young pups who moved into Sally’s house won’t do that, which means that by mid-summer yet another fire hazard will be piled up along their alley fence. Is there some part of “Fourth of July fireworks will set fire to that damn grass” that they can’t understand? Realized the rubber-tree plant is dying and will soon have to be replaced with something. Would like to haul the potted palm around to the west side but can’t budge it; need Mexican laborer to cart it over and put it in place. Hope to God Gerardo is here legally. Think he is. Better be.

World-Wide problem.

And, in the Annals of the Floored and Flabbergasted, every morning we awake to find we still have a grandstanding, egotistical, clown for a president… Every. single. day, some new antic!

World-Wide problem

Update!! to the Monday Mumblings…

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Keyboards, eh? GRRRRR!

Hallelujah! The dentist announced that (in his august opinion) I do NOT need the two (2!!!) new crowns I expected to have to pay for.

It’s a freaking miracle. I went in there braced to be told I need at least one root canal and crown, or (I figured) two.

But no. He thinks the attention-getting phenomena (biting down on a seed or a piece of crunchy salt will lift you right out of your chair!) are caused by my endless jaw-clenching. He says I need to remember to wear the mouth guard at night, and I should probably use it any time I’m working with a keyboard.

Yeah. He reports that keyboarding is one of the activities most directly related to bruxism.

Are you surprised? 😀

Anyway, that’s two grand that is not about to leap out of my pocket and into Dr. D’s.

By the way, if you grind or clench, I learned something I hadn’t  heard before: you can ease the night-time bruxing — when you grid or clench in your sleep — by applying warm packs to the sides of your jaw (where the joint is, in front of the ear) and then just sort of gently stretching the muscles by opening and closing and by moving the jaw back and forth. The dental wonder-technician said this helps more than you would expect.

I said I thought a glass of wine would do the trick. She laughed and said, “That, too!”

Image: DepositPhotos, © Krisdog.

Overworked and…over-rained.

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Stupidly busy all day long on stupid little busy-work chores. Meanwhile, the sky has clabbered up and it’s starting to pour rain again. And mean-meanwhile, in about 20 minutes I have to schlep to the dentist’s office.

Yay. I can hardly wait. Two teeth appear to be cracked. That’s two root canals, two crowns, two thousand dollah. Happy day.

Have tried to gut it out as long as I could, because sometimes these little aches and pains pass. But it hurts so much to chew on that side I can hardly eat.

Which…uhm…could be a GOOD thing. 😀

The monthly car payment of almost $400 a month has me so broke I can’t afford to buy decent food, so am subsisting mostly on pasta, bread, and beans, unless I can find a smokin’ deal on some meat.

Which happened the other day: stumbled into the Safeway right after they’d put the “Get RID of It” meat out and nailed two beautiful steaks, each of which provides enough for three of my meals: meat for six dinners for the price of two steaks. On sale: 30% off the already marked-down price. w00t!

At any rate, the Po’Folks diet tends to make one balloon up like a blimp. Of course on lots of starch, I’m madly gaining weight. Four and a half more years of this, and I’ll have a roaring case of diabetes.

Tried the vinegar and baking soda technique on the bathtub drain, along with vigorous plunging (after sealing up the overflow drain and the sink drain). That not only didn’t help, it seems to have made things worse.

Found a guy in town who says he can unclog a bathtub drain for $59. He has endless RAVE reviews on Yelp and almost no negative reviews. We shall see if he can do what he says he can do. He’ll come over tomorrow ayem.

Called WonderAccountant’s plumber but he hasn’t called me back. This situation is starting to look grave, so decided to accelerate the workman waltz a bit.

Finished the last of over a dozen articles for a sociology book late last night. As Tina was sending me her edits and I was sending her mine, what should come in but another Chinese math paper.

Piece of cake: got through that this morning, though haven’t had time for a second read-through. Whenever I get back from the dentist and dry the rain off my self. I guess.

Cooked up some dog food. Very, very tired of scrubbing up. Cooking and grinding up chicken is a messy, greasy job that makes a greasy mess of your counter top and a big pan and everything you touch. So you end up scrubbing and scrubbing and then scouring a sticky pan.

Revamped the Copyeditor’s Desk’s billing method, changing from per-page to per-word. This will eliminate some headaches and regularize our charges in a way that makes sense. PITA: in addition to coming up with a new rate sheet, I had to update the website, too.

Haven’t cleaned the house in over a week, so the floors are festooned with dog dunes. So had to sweep up all that.

The heated throw that I use to keep me and the dogs warm at night seems to be out of sorts. Last night I’m laying there and I feel these little {ping}s on my feet. Like static shocks from a doorknob, only milder. I think it’s old-lady tingling, though it doesn’t feel like tingling. Eventually I realize the dogs have moved away from that part of the throw. I unplug it. And the {ping}s stop. Hmmm…

So the electric throw is off the bed. An extra blanket is on the bed. And two heating pads are in position, to be turned on just before sack-time so as to warm up the sheets and a nightshirt.

Oh, ugh! How can I say how much I don’t want to go out in this WEATHER????? You think Seattle and DC drivers go crazy in snow? You ain’t seen nuttin’ till you’ve seen a homicidal Arizona cowboy driver in the rain. Water falling out of the sky! They just do not know what on earth to make of it. The tourists, who swarm the roads (to the cowboys’ chronic annoyance) at this time of year, are terrified because the cowboys are running amok, so the frightened, confused tourists all slow down, cringing their way down the road to the ever more extravagant rage of the locals.

After the dentist (assuming I survive), I’ve GOT to go by a grocery store. It’ll be after 5:00 before I get back…and that’s if I’m lucky and don’t get stuck in a traffic jam or hit by a hydroplaning fellow motorist myself. Realistically, the ETA is closer to 6:00 p.m. Oh damn oh hell.

Welp: time to go. The sky just let loose: it’s pouring. Naturally. Oh well. My car will get washed, anyway…

Weekend Frenzies

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It’s gonna be a very busy weekend. And a lot of fun, one expects.

Down at the church, a lively and much beloved minister is getting married this weekend…to one of the choir members. With a beautiful tenor voice and a noticeable understanding of classical singing, he’s on the chamber choir. (Yes, Virginia: Episcopalians, despite being a dime short of RC, do ordain women priests!) Well, naturally we’re all excited about singing at their wedding…which will take place during the beautiful Evensong service…complete with bagpipes and kilts!

It is going to be a grand party. Over 400 people are expected.

As for me: I have nothing to wear. My only decent skirt is black, not something one can wear to a wedding. This would be the disadvantage of living in Costco jeans… 😉

I dropped by Nordstrom’s Rack yesterday. They had exactly NOTHING. Far as I could tell, the only skirt in the entire store was an ugly straight, short burgundy-red corduroy item. Better the jeans than that thing…

This afternoon I’ll be on the far west side for the monthly meeting of our writers’ group. It should break up early enough that I could go by my favorite shop in Old Glendale, the Garden Shop. It has wonderful, unique clothes — some of them made in the US. They’re kind of expensive, but you really can’t lose with that place.

But…except…yeah: what you lose is a ton of cash out of your budget…

So I tried on a very old, once very pretty hippy-dippy outfit that I got long, long ago in Tucson, while I was still married. I think it may even have been before my son was born.

It’s still pretty enough. But it wants to highlight the paunch. That’s the first thing you see when you look at me in said outfit. The elastic in the waist — which I believe I’ve changed out once or twice — is shot, so I have to pin the skirt on both sides to make it stay up. That would be OK, because the long, flowing top covers the waist…but…not the paunch.

Lo! What should I find in the closet but a shirtwaist-style dress with a loose, billowy skirt that does disguise the paunch. It looks OK with the flat chest, and it looks just fine with a pair of knitted knockers pinned into a cami.

Trouble is, it’s Army green. Not exactly festive. So I’m standing there thinking…well…if I put enough jewelry on, I could get away with it. Fortunately I’m old, so most people can’t see me. Old people by and large are invisible, unless we’re making some kind of a fuss.

Then I remembered that a year or so ago I’d bought a hand-screened silk scarf at the Garden Shop, and it has a lot of green in it. Dig it out of the closet, swing it around my neck Isadora Duncan-style, and voila! It works.

The dress is sleeveless, which means I’ll be cold walking in from the car (it’s about to rain today and probably will be chilly all day tomorrow). But that’s good, because with 400 people in the church, it is going to be freaking hot in the choir loft. Especially under a robe and surplice.

In 20 minutes I have to drive across the Valley to the monthly meeting of the writer’s group I took up with.

I’ve developed quite the flinch reflex about that. It was on the way out there — a 40-minute drive — that I had the fainting spell that scared me back to the cardiologist’s precincts…and that could’ve killed me and one of my fellow lunatic drivers. And it was on the way back — same trip — that the Dog Chariot died in the middle of the intersection and I spent 5 hours waiting for the tow truck to show up…about three of them in the company of a pair of tweaking drug addicts.

Really, the meeting place is just on the far a very bad part of town — everything west of 19th Avenue out to Sun City and Waddell is questionable. And I don’t like to drive through those districts. New car and automatically locking doors notwithstanding. Now that it’s been brought forcefully to my attention that I could get stuck for hours in unpleasant circumstances, I like driving out there even less.

BUT… I do enjoy those people. They’re very nice, and it’s an exceptionally good amateur scribblers’ groups (most are pretty ludicrous). And one of my friends shows up to every meeting, so I do enjoy seeing him.

test-2-smoking-cover-lo-resAnd…this next book I’m about to emit is something that WILL sell to that audience. It’s a natural for them.

In fact, today they’re critiquing cover copy of members’ books. So I’m taking something I tossed together yesterday to get their feedback. Whilst having it copied, it occurred to me to put the table of contents on the back side of the copy: Instant ad!

What I really should do is join a group here in town or in Scottsdale. It would be closer and probably would have a larger membership.

But then what? Am I going to abandon all my new pals out on the West Side?

Likely not. Then I’d have yet another meeting to have to go to.

Which probably would be a good thing. Really. I need to get out of the garret. I spend way, way, way too much time in the company of dogs. And myself.

Four minutes to blast-off. No time to proofread this thing: my apologies for the usual flood of typos! And a happy, well-dressed, entertaining weekend to you!

🙂