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Speaking of cat logic, Mephisto continues to live the Freehold life:
Morrigan: Has taken to launching herself at the wheel to hit it halfway up, ride it down 'til she has a good head start, then sprinting to see how fast she can go. Girl loves her wheel.
Lenore: Understands the wheel and that her moving on it makes us happy for some reason. So if Impus Major comes into the dining room and she's nearby, she'll waddle over to the wheel and walk on it for two or three rotations; just enough to get praise and pets, and no more.
Mephisto: Has decided it's great fun. If Impus Major is nearby, he'll sit on it and yowl at him until Impus Major starts manually turning the wheel for him. If Impus Major stops, he stops. The wheel is obviously all about making the humans work to serve him.
Mephisto remembers being worshipped in ancient Egypt.
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My brother's behavior brings up a fundamental moral question:
But beyond that is Americans' worship of money beyond all other considerations. "This $15 item was made from organically grown crops and manufactured by workers who received a fair wage for their labor. This identical $10 item was made by strip mining and slave labor." "Oh, I'll take the $10 item. I'd be a fool to do otherwise!"
And it's so utterly prevalent. "Well, yeah, I'd end up kicking this family out of their house just before Christmas, but I'd make money so I'd be a fool to do otherwise! It's 'just good business'!" Perhaps the three vilest words in the English language.
I know some countries are even worse; in Russia if you let someone else take advantage of you you deserved it. They go out of their way to punish the gullible.
But I'd like to live somewhere where amoral mercantilism isn't the expected status quo. I'm hoping Western Europe is better than the U.S. We'll see...
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Yeah, I absolutely need to be out of any kind of financial relationship with my brother. I pointed out the amorality of evicting long-term tenants just to preserve our tax basis and he took offense.
Being a landlord and morality are apparently mutually exclusive.
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My brother's behavior brings up a fundamental moral question:
** spoiler omitted **
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** spoiler omitted **My brother's behavior brings up a fundamental moral question:
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I am so disillusioned that I do not believe that anything I do in the U.S. will make any difference in stopping its decline, so I want to move somewhere less doomed.
EDIT: I mean, at this point our country is openly murdering people with no evidence provided and 40% of the population feels this is perfectly OK. I can't think of a better measurement of a lost society.
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** spoiler omitted **** spoiler omitted **My brother's behavior brings up a fundamental moral question:
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The decision is ultimately yours, and I know that you have been considering this for some time, and speaking seriously with friends and family. All this means is that I will have to drill through the earth's crust and sail the undersea of magma and nickel(i think it's nickel) to erupt on the other side of the earth like Rocksteady to abscond with GothBard(whom I am incredibly proud of for her protesting). Your decision is just that, and must be respected, although I would prefer you stay.
** spoiler omitted **** spoiler omitted **** spoiler omitted **My brother's behavior brings up a fundamental moral question:
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Well, I don't think I have to spoiler this:
(1) We originally planned to retire to Scotland after our trip there together in 1997.(2) We're not planning on moving until after I retire in 2035, so things can change drastically before then. (And sorry, Scotland, but Brexit pretty much put you off our list of desirable locales.)
I'm minorly OCD. I plan everything over the course of years...
Brexit aside, another good reason not to move to the UK is the man who's very likely to be our next Prime Minister, and what he's very likely to do when he's in.
The Republic of Ireland might be worth looking at for emigration purposes, on the other hand.
** spoiler omitted **
The Republic of Ireland might be worth looking at for emigration purposes, on the other hand.
Ireland has the definite advantage that its residents speak something nearly resembling English and they have a HUGE tech sector (both my and GothBard's companies have facilities there). But if our retirement is going to be spent with a lot of time taking the train between countries, Ireland's distinct lack of rail access is a negative.
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You wonder whether hospice nurses have sick senses of humor, are clueless to popular culture, or a little from column A and a little from column B.
Apparently for my mother, "It's morphine time!"
Glad I went up when I did.
EDIT: And no, I have no idea how my icon got sm*rfified, but I am delighted.
Morphine time
Oh, s morphine time.
Smurf, smorph. Same, same.
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EDIT: And no, I have no idea how my icon got sm*^fified, but I am delighted.
Gary always did say there were hidden triggers beyond just using the Sm-word.
Rest his crazy soul.
I cannot seem to get the forums to display posts relative to my current non-US timezone.
I've changed my settings in my account to Asia/Shanghai. It's still displaying forum post times on US times.
I feel like I'm doing something wrong but can't figure out what.
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SQUEAK.*
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And there we go. My mother passed away just before 9 pm last night. And in typical family fashion, my brother texted me the news, then I Discorded it to my family. Actually talk to one another? Never!
And all in all emotionally I'm exactly where I expected to me: Relieved that she's out of that state, a bit sad, a lot melancholy, and surprisingly physically tired; all I want to do is take the day off work and nap all day. But I'm sure I'll get bored and I've already done my turn-ins for the year so it's mostly just watching training so I might as well "go in".
I'm really glad older brother has the nightmare of dealing with all the post-death paperwork, though. I remember when my father died the paperwork was ginormous, and it was only because my mother was retired that she could deal with it all.
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*hugs*
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Condolences, all things considered.
Similar happened with my maternal grandfather. He was in and out of consciousness after we got the news he was in the hospital and terminal, and we were in the RV and heading on the two-day trip from Tennessee to Texas.
He passed minutes after Mom spoke to him on the phone. We all were pretty convinced he was just waiting to hear from her as she was the only one of his five kids who lived out of state and thus wasn't yet in the room with him.
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Oh, it's still highly, highly illegal and they "monitor" such things "very carefully", but I wouldn't be surprised if the hospice nurse didn't give her the maximum morphine dose allowed by law to help her on her way.
And if she did, bless her forever.
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And speaking of ancient old ladies, now that the fireplace is on every morning in the living room, Nefret would rather sit in front of it than go out to the studio. Which is a major problem because the kittens love her medicated food more than anything else in the world, so she needs to eat in solitude.
Hopefully later this morning she'll acquiesce to being moved away from the fireplace and into a place where she can be alone with her food.
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The forum blocks me from posting:
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And there we go. My mother passed away just before 9 pm last night. And in typical family fashion, my brother texted me the news, then I Discorded it to my family. Actually talk to one another? Never!
And all in all emotionally I'm exactly where I expected to me: Relieved that she's out of that state, a bit sad, a lot melancholy, and surprisingly physically tired; all I want to do is take the day off work and nap all day. But I'm sure I'll get bored and I've already done my turn-ins for the year so it's mostly just watching training so I might as well "go in".
I'm really glad older brother has the nightmare of dealing with all the post-death paperwork, though. I remember when my father died the paperwork was ginormous, and it was only because my mother was retired that she could deal with it all.
I'm so sorry.
This really reminds me of how it felt when my father passed. He hadn't woken up in a month, and my sister and I took him off life support after doctors said he'd never speak or sit up again if he did wake up. We knew his death was coming well in advance, and accepted he was gone once it was clear his coma was permanent. When he did die, it just felt like any ambiguity was over and we could move forward with processing things, and I felt more like I needed a rest after a long day at work than anything else.
Don't get me started on the paperwork. My uncle died in Texas last year, my mother is his next of kin, and the state still hasn't appointed her executor of the state, yet.
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......and I felt more like I needed a rest after a long day at work than anything else....
Exactly. I slept hard, and still only took a half day at work.
Don't get me started on the paperwork. My uncle died in Texas last year, my mother is his next of kin, and the state still hasn't appointed her executor of the state, yet.
OK. You beat me so far. So far our worst has been the crematorium demanding her will before they'd cremate her. Do I really want to know the story of the renegade corpse-burner who cremated their relative against their will? Nope.
But Texas government is utterly legendary in it's, "Nope," approach to all requests, so I'm sorry. That's horrific and unlikely to improve. Because Texas.
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Sorry about your mom, she sounded like an awesome person!
Hopefully your brother has a miserable time with the house.
We got 13 inches of extremely heavy snow Saturday-Sunday so I've been working (by 7 am Tuesday morning I was already on overtime). Today I was cleaning up parking lots and garages with a mini bobcat, tomorrow I have one more parking lot and then I'll be driving a dump truck and hauling snow out of downtown.
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Monday morning I was almost done with my third trip through my list as I was approaching 24 hours without sleep, one of my customers came out as I was shoveling the last inch of snow that had fallen from the driveway and said "Oh, I thought you were my Uber!" And it took me half a minute and looking back at my work truck before I realized I wasn't and said "No, I guess I'm not!".
So, normally as I tell my manager, I don't "idle" well at work. If I'm at work, I want to be doing something work-related. But I handed off my last 2025 project the day before Thanksgiving break and after the most recent reorg they're trying to "find a new direction" for our department (in other words, "Can we get AI to do your jobs so we can lay you all off?"), so I have no 2026 projects to start on.
So I have end-of-year paperwork to take care of (I actually *gasp* clean my hard drive and delete all my old files and emails at the end of every year), an AI training course to complete (of course), and I can keep myself busy today and maybe Monday. And I find that if I have to spend 4 days at work doing absolutely nothing work-related because I'm out of stuff to do and upper management can't figure out my new role, I'm just not particularly concerned at this moment.
Ah, well, at least this year I took my manager's advice and have a full 2-week break for Christmas. By the time the new year starts, maybe I'll have a better attitude, or maybe upper management will have figured out what my new job is...