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There is a strong possibility that we will be getting a dog today.
I had a phone interview yesterday with a woman who needs to rehome her dog and we're going for an in-person meeting this afternoon.
Suuuuuper excited.
I lack the presence of mind and composure to improvise something funny when suddenly confronted with unexpected circumstances.My favorite response to that is to keel over start hacking "anti..biotic.. resistant.. cough. cough.. tuberculosis....."
Not the only time I've made someone scream running away but definitely the most deserved!
It's more than ok if you take notes and practice in advance!
I could say many, many depressing things about the stupidity of the masses. All I'll say is, "I hate it."
So, most of us (in the U.S. at least) should have heard about the port workers strike... on the East Coast...
If we were at all concerned, we would have been paying attention and learned that:
(1) The strike was postponed until January, and
(2) toilet paper was very explicitly called out in numerous articles as something that would not be affected.
So as I started my monthly Costco trip this morning, I joked to GothBard, "I bet you I won't be able to get our toilet paper 'cause the hoarders will have been too stupid to NOT hoard it."
I had no idea how right I'd be.
It was my most-unpleasant Costco trip in years, as somehow people with enough sentience to hear, "port workers' strike" and "supply chain disruption" hadn't managed to hear, parse, nor pay attention to any subsequent news, nor the original location of the strike.
The toilet paper section was reduced to a shambles, with nothing left but a few sad pallets of Kirkland toilet paper being desperately grabbed by frantic-eyed people. The bottled water was similarly devastated. Instead of the usual somewhat-efficient-and-mostly-decent-to-each-other crowd, people were cutting each other off, parking their carts in the middle of the aisle (a personal hatred), trying to use coupons from other stores, etc.
It was a nightmare.
Because of a strike. On the opposite coast. That's already over.
*SIGH*
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It was my most-unpleasant Costco trip in years, as somehow people with enough sentience to hear, "port workers' strike" and "supply chain disruption" hadn't managed to hear, parse, nor pay attention to any subsequent news, nor the original location of the strike.
DUH! They were too busy running to secure their toilet paper supply. It could have been gone by the time they finish checking the news!
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But since they believe there will be a toilet paper shortage won't there actually BE a toilet paper shortage from everyone hoarding it and thus you SHOULD stock up on toilet paper because there WILL be a toilet paper shortage?
Its like Mage where peoples idea of an agreed on reality actually makes it happen...
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Nah, it just means it will take a few days for the supply chain to restock the stores.
And now I imagined Heath Ledger's Joker prancing away happily from an exploding supply center, which he blew up to maintain the chaos.
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We are picking up the dog Tuesday evening!
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Busy couple of weeks between my children's schools (son is in a great pre-k preschool that I absolutely love) getting into full swing, fundraiser season kicking off like CRAZY (why do they pack it all in the first few months?!), homecoming, community events for the kids (turns out being a parent volunteer involves you being asked to help with TONS of things with massive silent guilt applied if you can't/won't help with every little thing... *grumble-grumble entitled unemployed/trad moms grumble-grumble*), redoing EVERY bit of important registration information logged for my finances, address, and the like (long story that I don't really want to get into here), and ironing out a new general daily life/work schedule to make it all work.
On top of that, a game I bought EA for years ago launched last month that I loved and has only gotten WAY better as it went to full 1.0 release, Satisfactory, which has been sucking up an absolute metric beltload of my free time and it all added up to being more or less absent here which is, fine I guess, but certainly feels a bit weird. Anyone who enjoys designing factories, logistics and/or progression-building games should have a great time with it and this time around this one actually has a remarkably great plot hook that makes you want to keep plowing ahead with mysterious stuff to uncover, I'd highly recommend it. If games like Factorio or the like scratch an itch for you as a gamer it's a fantastically well-done addition to the genre that actually brings the 3rd dimension into things in a PROPER manner while also providing satisfying (heh) movement tech, combat, and exploration into the mix in near equal parts. Coffee Stain Studios put it out and like their other games, Deep Rock Galactic, Goat Sim, and Valhiem it's been an extraordinary new spin on the targeted niche it's aiming for, 8.5 Stars out of 10 so far.
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Setting Idea: The Green Compromise
When druids make a deal with rulers to keep the civilization in a comfortable check...
Well, I'm about to cook up the one undersized squash we got from the garden this year... We planted seven plants, but the squash bugs were horrible this year, and all of them died. Let's see how this goes.
We are picking up the dog Tuesday evening!
...and they texted me about an hour ago saying they had changed their minds and weren't giving us the dog after all.
No explanation.
Awwww... They want to keep it for themselves?
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We are picking up the dog Tuesday evening!
...and they texted me about an hour ago saying they had changed their minds and weren't giving us the dog after all.
No explanation.
That's just f**ked up.
It needed to be said.
We are picking up the dog Tuesday evening!
...and they texted me about an hour ago saying they had changed their minds and weren't giving us the dog after all.
No explanation.
That's rubbish! Sorry to hear that.
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Went to renn faire
"Why did you buy both of the kids swords?
"Well, I wasn't getting one of them out of the renn faire without one, and wanted to give the other one a fighting chance. "
(they're wood. and not the good hickory practice swords just the cheap painted pine. fewer broken bones that way...)
So, it amuses/vexes me that every year in late September or early October, we have 2-3 days in a row of 90-100˚F weather, and everyone pretends this has never happened before. It's frustrating, to say the least. Not as bad as the whole, "There is water falling from the sky! Aaaaah!" that happens every November, but pretty darned bad.
However, this marks the 7th day of the heat wave, which really is unusually long -- I don't recall experiencing a "heat wave" that long since I was in fourth or fifth grade (so circa 1977-1978), but I know my parents suffered a couple while I was in grad school from 1991-1996. So, we're in what I'd call a "once every 20-30 years heat wave", and it's the second day to break 100 (my outdoor thermometer is reading 106˚F, but since it's in the side yard it's usually 3˚F hot in the mid afternoon, and sure enough, the local "official" weather station down the street is reading 102˚F), and again anything over 100 is a very rare event here.
And then we get to the issue: With most houses uninsulated, no air conditioning, houses not designed for nighttime air flow, and residents with no experience dealing with prolonged high heat, this is getting downright dangerous. I met new neighbor yesterday and he was a disturbing shade of pink from the heat.
Fortunately, it looks like it's going to break tomorrow.
I hope so... in spite of my best efforts the house is finally breaking 80˚F inside today, and I've been meticulous (some might even say obsessive-compulsive) about getting doors and windows and curtains open and shut at the correct time, and when we put in our solar panels the insulation guys took one look at the attic and said, "You're never going to use this, right?", and I said, "Right," so they put in 18" fiberglass insulation. I'm thankful for their excess now.
I am giving Saints Row 2 a try, but I don't think I'll play it for long. It might have been a decent game 10 years ago (it is 15 actually), but it is rough and cumbersome by current standards...
It feels like a worse Just Cause 2, with even more car driving bullcrap.
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... And now I'm wondering what distance an average person drives in a day. My father, bless his heart, insisted on spending hours in gridlock commuting to work downtown before he retired, even though we lived in the suburbs just over the bridge, so he didn't actually go that far. Which is to wonder, indirectly, if folks that mask up even when driving alone don't expect to be driving for long...Wow... I think that is so dependent on location and circumstance that I don't think there's a rational concept of "average distance" or even "average time" here. ...We like irrational and imaginary numbers here!
No we don't.
There is a strong possibility that we will be getting a dog today.
I had a phone interview yesterday with a woman who needs to rehome her dog and we're going for an in-person meeting this afternoon.
Suuuuuper excited.
Clearly!
We are picking up the dog Tuesday evening!
...and they texted me about an hour ago saying they had changed their minds and weren't giving us the dog after all.
No explanation.
...what?!?
I had a bunch of cat jokes ready! Not cool, adoption people, not cool!
I'm so sorry this must be a true shock.
We are picking up the dog Tuesday evening!
...and they texted me about an hour ago saying they had changed their minds and weren't giving us the dog after all.
No explanation....what?!?
I had a bunch of cat jokes ready! Not cool, adoption people, not cool!
I'm so sorry this must be a true shock.
It is, and it sucks, but it could be so much worse. One of my best friends and her wife had this happen last winter when they flew across the country to pick up the baby they were supposed to be adopting. A year later, they are still childless.
So I think this says a lot about my attitude towards other people in general:
My neighbors have taken the pediatrician-recommended approach of leaving their toddler alone to cry himself to sleep all night. This isn't my business, it doesn't impact me, so I have no say in the matter. People get to do their own thing as long as it's not abusive, and professionals with far more knowledge than I say that this is fine, so i consider it fine.
However...
...my neighbors also leave the toddler's window open all night, and once they decide they're going to go to him they immediately take him outside so that his noise won't disturb the rest of the family.
Suddenly they're subjecting the entire neighborhood to the sounds of a screaming toddler throughout the night every night. People are woken up in the morning by the cries of a child being carried around in the back yard. All of a sudden, that "mind your own business" philosophy has become my business because by choosing to open the windows and take the toddler outside, they're consciously choosing to inflict unnecessary noise on their neighbors.
And that is where I condemn them. A choice to negatively impact others.
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They make some pretty good coyote calls cheap.... If the coyotes can't tell the difference either can your neighbors.
Well, *this* week the "windows open at night" thing was a necessity for everyone, so I'd've accepted that as a "necessary exception due to circumstances beyond their control", so that was a much broader, "in general, this isn't OK" statement. But the whole, "We're going to take the screaming toddler outside so he disturbs the neighbors instead of his own family members" is the one that really gets to me.
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Just heard about Milton. Everyone in FL please be safe.
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I feel bad when a fantastic-sounding session is completely inappropriate for me and I turn it off and they think they did something wrong.
Ironically, the session is focused on silencing your inner critic to gain self-confidence. This is critically important for so many people, especially women in tech (the target audience for the session), but as I told GothBard, "My inner critic died a painful, slow death when the fish pants arrived..."
I've been described by my peers as arrogant, cocky, and condescending. I've NEVER once been considered, "Excessively self-critical."
So I love the idea of the session, I think it's important, and I'm glad they're putting it on for Global Megacorporation employees. But I'm not even remotely in the target audience, so I'd be wasting my time and (possibly) someone else's space, so I left.
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*15 years ago; at an orientation*
ANNOUNCEMENT: There will be a seminar on Impostor Syndrome later today.
ME (unfortunately out loud): Is that where you think everyone is an impostor? Because, like, I'm pretty sure I have that. And you all are.
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The Dog has decided that either no one is allowed to bother me in her room, or that this is her room and no one but me is allowed in it.
I'd say she barks at the rest of the family like they're strangers, but she LOVES strangers.
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Maybe they're all impostors?
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First time fighting with LARP swords today. They're sticky, which is rather disconcerting.
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Maybe they’re impasto?
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Maybe they’re impasto?
I'm just going to sit back and smile at these all day...
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*15 years ago; at an orientation*
ANNOUNCEMENT: There will be a seminar on Impostor Syndrome later today.
ME (unfortunately out loud): Is that where you think everyone is an impostor? Because, like, I'm pretty sure I have that. And you all are.
My favorite take on it has always been "Are you even good enough to have impostor syndrome?"
And there we go.
Yesterday: "I am irritated when people don't consider how their noisemaking impacts others."
This Morning at 6:00 am: A "power walker" doing his morning rounds while talking on his phone in the typical clueless, "If I don't yell, the person at the other end won't be able to hear me." His voice was quite literally echoing down the empty street. I think full-throated singing would have been quieter.
My favorite take on it has always been "Are you even good enough to have impostor syndrome?"*15 years ago; at an orientation*
ANNOUNCEMENT: There will be a seminar on Impostor Syndrome later today.
ME (unfortunately out loud): Is that where you think everyone is an impostor? Because, like, I'm pretty sure I have that. And you all are.
A friend: "Impostor Syndrome? Pfft. Humblebrag much?"
Speaking of just how easy it is to be a decent human being:
I was taking out the trash and I heard a quiet voice. A woman two houses away was walking her dog towards me while talking on the phone. She was speaking so quietly that the only reason I heard her was due to the lack of any other background noise. When she saw me come out, she smiled broadly and interrupted her phone call to say a cheerful, "Good morning!" As she walked past the next house, she spotted a cat and said, "Oh, what a pretty kitty!" and her dog didn't react at all because she hadn't trained it to chase cats.
I was very pleased with the encounter, and I'm happy she's my neighbor (well, within a couple of miles neighbor, I'm sure). And all she did was be cognizant that other people might be sleeping, interrupt her call to interact with people she met on her walk, and train her dog to be well-behaved around people and cats.
Not hard, and yet I really, really appreciated her for it.
EDIT: And she can now name at least one person who's pleased with her.
“Oh, you’re a people pleaser? Name five people who are pleased with you.”
Just five? Do they need to be ranked? Tiered?
Amused WFH apocalypse: The heat wave has broken so it's extremely pleasant today and everyone has their windows open. New neighbor, GothBard, and back yard neighbor are all in meetings right now, and all of them have them on speakerphone. Walking outside, it's like a scene right out of Fallout, with a cacophony of disembodied voices yammering on about topics completely unrelated to you.
And I'm betting all three parties are grumbling and wishing the other two parties would shut the h*** up so they can have their meetings in peace.
-----
Fair disclaimer: While I wear headphones for my meetings, I'm only in around 3 meetings a week so it hardly counts. And when I'm doing video editing I use my speakers, but they're set so low I can't even make out what I'm saying from the next room. And I don't mumble THAT much...
But yeah. I sit here and gloat because I'm not important enough to be in a ton of meetings.
Almost all of my meetings are outside by default.
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The local babies and toddlers' supplies shop has a Halloween-themed window display, prominently featuring a (fake) blood-spattered neat cleaver. I wonder why.
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The local babies and toddlers' supplies shop has a Halloween-themed window display, prominently featuring a (fake) blood-spattered meat cleaver. I wonder why.
"Serving suggestion"
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Aaaaand, cue another episode of "NobodysHome's Frustration with People Talking About the Absolutely-Normal Weather".
Last week, we had our annual heat wave. I've lived in or visited the Bay Area regularly for my entire 57-year lifespan, and every single year in all that time, we've had a 90°F+ heat wave lasting 3-7 days somewhere between late August and late November, but almost always the last week of September or the first week of October. So when locals who have lived here for decades say, "Wow! It's unusually hot for this time of year!" it incenses me. Because no, no it's not. If you want to gripe about the weather, say, "I hate the heat waves that always hit this time of year," or even, "Wow! This year's heat wave was unusually bad." (Which it was.)
Don't pretend the things don't happen. It's frustrating to paladins.
So of course, after the heat wave winter starts. We don't get an autumn. The temperature drops precipitously, with daily highs going from the 90s to the 60s in only a day or two, and we're unlikely to see 75 again until April or May of next year.
And you know where this is going.
Long-time residents who I know have been here for 20+ years saying, "Wow! The weather sure is wild! Last week it was 95! This week it's 62. What's it' going to do next?"
Um. Just sit there. Like. It. Always. Does.
The moral of the story: Don't talk to NobodysHome about the weather if you're going to pretend that our normal weather is somehow unusual this year.
Speaking of just how easy it is to be a decent human being:
I was taking out the trash and I heard a quiet voice. A woman two houses away was walking her dog towards me while talking on the phone. She was speaking so quietly that the only reason I heard her was due to the lack of any other background noise. When she saw me come out, she smiled broadly and interrupted her phone call to say a cheerful, "Good morning!" As she walked past the next house, she spotted a cat and said, "Oh, what a pretty kitty!" and her dog didn't react at all because she hadn't trained it to chase cats.
I was very pleased with the encounter, and I'm happy she's my neighbor (well, within a couple of miles neighbor, I'm sure). And all she did was be cognizant that other people might be sleeping, interrupt her call to interact with people she met on her walk, and train her dog to be well-behaved around people and cats.
Not hard, and yet I really, really appreciated her for it.
EDIT: And she can now name at least one person who's pleased with her.
i don't think you train dogs to chase cats...other way around.
...her dog didn't react at all because she hadn't trained it to chase cats.i don't think you train dogs to chase cats...other way around.
In my lifetime of cat ownership and relationships with dozens of dogs, I've never met a dog that instinctively aggressively chased cats without the owner's encouragement. "There it is! Get the kitty! Go get the kitty!"
In my experience, a "normal" dog will trot over curiously to try to sniff the unfamiliar creature. Only a human-trained dog will bark and take off at a full run trying to catch the cat. LM's been around a lot more dogs than I have; I'd be interested in her take.
EDIT: Admittedly, my experience is with labradors, retrievers, border collies, corgis, and a rottweiler. Not exactly a "murderer's row" in the dog breed world. Both cats I knew who were killed by aggressive dogs were killed by pit bulls whose owners had trained them to be so aggressive they had to be put down because they posed a danger to humans as well.
New catch phrase:
"I don't care
enough to repair."
...her dog didn't react at all because she hadn't trained it to chase cats.i don't think you train dogs to chase cats...other way around.In my lifetime of cat ownership and relationships with dozens of dogs, I've never met a dog that instinctively aggressively chased cats without the owner's encouragement. "There it is! Get the kitty! Go get the kitty!"
In my experience, a "normal" dog will trot over curiously to try to sniff the unfamiliar creature. Only a human-trained dog will bark and take off at a full run trying to catch the cat. LM's been around a lot more dogs than I have; I'd be interested in her take.
EDIT: Admittedly, my experience is with labradors, retrievers, border collies, corgis, and a rottweiler. Not exactly a "murderer's row" in the dog breed world. Both cats I knew who were killed by aggressive dogs were killed by pit bulls whose owners had trained them to be so aggressive they had to be put down because they posed a danger to humans as well.
Wow. That's weird to me.
Dogs will chase cats without provocation regardless of breed in most cases I have seen.