I'm so frustrated with myself. No clue when was the last time I've seen this thing (wallet of crochet hooks). Yesterday I searched every project bag, every bag of my yarn stash, every drawer, nook and cranny where I might have put it absent-mindedly. I just went through them all again today. I have memories of seeing it on the breakfast table, on my desk (where the cat tried to annihilate the decorative tassle on its zipper), and in a project bag. I've moved it somewhere. I want to start a new project but need a hook of unusual size that is in the wallet. I haven't been motivated to crochet in a while, and I caught a spark over the weekend by finishing up another project. Blegh. Fuck.

Thank you for reading my rant while I wallow in self-loathing.

P.S. This thing is neon fucking pink and bigger than a paperback book. I must have a forgotten project bag smushed into a closet or left out in the camper. I thought I accounted for all my half-started projects though.

On Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson (aka JBER aka "J-Bear"), a literal bear broke into a storage room and ransacked the MREs inside.

While not unusual to have bears encroaching onto base, it is unusual to have them breaking into buildings.

Another bear was discovered in the motor pool building... sitting in the front seat of a Humvee!

(...when you're a bear and you can't do drugs but you wanna go whee!)

Mine would be the time my dad rigged a harness and "hung" himself from the carport beam, dressed to look like a stuffed Halloween decoration. He would grab at the bigger kids and parents when they came up to the door for candy. Scared the living bejeezus out of them.

...The semi was headed west when its raised bed slammed into the overhead sign near mile marker 200 as it approached the I-64/I-295 split.

Virginia State Police said the crash happened shortly after 9:30 a.m.

"The cab continued on and then stopped, obviously, because it had separated from the bed of the tractor-trailer," Matt Demlein, a spokesperson for Virginia State Police, said. "We're still investigating as to what led up to it actually hitting the sign. It was empty at the time."

Troopers do not know why the bed was raised or how long it was up before the crash. But officials said the truck had stopped at a weigh station about a mile earlier, which is equipped with cameras...

This might fit better in the DIY group but here goes.

How do I know when it's time to have the septic system pumped out?

We had a new one installed 3 years ago. It was an upgrade in size. I'm not sure the capacity. It was negotiated to be done as part of our purchase contract, and the old owners didn't give us a copy of their contract with the installer. Just the inspector's report that plans were adequate for the number of bathrooms we have.

There are only 2 of us. We don't put that much water into the system. But we've been having a LOT of rain. Over 5" in the last week and a half, and over 9" since Jul 1. Our elevation is between 1 and 4 ft (not a typo), so the water table is very close to the surface here.

I'm getting periods of methane smell in the house off & on for about a month now. I've run water to make sure all the traps aren't empty. It's possible it could be coming from the vent stack for the washing machine, but it's not all the time.

So with not a lot of use put into the system, is 3 years too early to have it pumped out? How can we tell?

When I was a kid, it'd have to be Memorial Day. All the extended family would convene at the old family cemetery to decorate the graves. That isn't the weird thing... the weird thing was we treated it as a family reunion and picnicked together among the head stones.