I just changed my caption on EveryBlock to “Block Captain Obvious, Rocket Surgeon” because I read two posts in a row where people should have called 911, and called 311 instead, later, after they got home. WTF?
Just had a shouting match with a particularly unpleasant housemate. Am now feeling very upset with myself.
Parasol? Was he a ginger?
Why, oh why, Microsoft, does an app page that works on IE8 and IE11, give weird GUI glitches in IE10? Like, “this checkbox changes to a radio button when I hover over this other radio button” weird glitches…
For what, poor judgmemt in roommate selection, or for allowing your behavior to sink down to his level?
ETA: that was intended as a response to GuanoLad’s post.
The latter. I also wish I was more articulate and had said something witty and yet damning, but alas I am no Oscar Wilde.
I don’t get to choose housemates, unfortunately.
A summary of the last three weeks:
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We had to have most of our basement floor torn out because we discovered that we had asbestos and had to have it removed.
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Once said basement was torn out and we were able to move back in (you can’t actually stay in the house while the asbestos is being removed), we discovered a large crack in our kitchen sink, which isn’t fixable and must now be replaced.
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My car’s air conditioner conked out. I got it fixed. It conked out again. It’s 99 degrees and the poor thing has more than 170,000 miles on it. At this point, since it’s no longer a simple question of refilling the coolant, fixing it will cost about 1/3 of its worth, so I’ll probably have to buy another one. I can’t have my kids sitting in heat like that for extended periods of time and I need to take them somewhere three hours away next weekend, so I’ll probably have to make a decision and get the damned car fairly quickly.
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Our clothes washer is leaking. In the only part of our basement that still has a floor. I haven’t been able to wash clothing for a week. See above re dead air conditioner in 99 degree heat. It’s fucking hot and I and the kids are sweating through our clothes every time we have to go somewhere. Hopefully it will be fixed today.
I am bleeding money the month and I hate it.
Bloody hell, just found out my father(estranged) has a brain tumor. He’s 82 almost 83 and just finished chemo for thyroid cancer, now this??? He survived childhood in occupied Belgium during WW 2 and Vietnam as a young man. I could drive 8 hours to see him …oh shit what to do??
I haven see him in person for over 40 years.
My husband does the exact same thing. “We need to start teaching our son at home when he’s back from school,” translates to, “Hey, overly - pound some more learning into his head.” Or, “we really need to get more organized,” translates to, “why the hell haven’t you made more suggestions on how to organize this heap?”
We both work full time. He happens to choose to spend his time playing video games and watching movies when we’re not working. I like to try to keep healthy by exercising, so we’re both someone “at fault,” but when I’m not doing that, I’m reflexively wandering through our hideously messy home (made messier by the fact that our basement floor had to be torn out, so all the basement stuff currently lives upstairs), tidying, picking up and getting vaguely growly.
If I tell him what to do specifically, he’ll do it. But I get tired of being the “do it” police. You see the mess, darn it. You know how to pick up. Do it and don’t say, “Well, just tell me what to do,” when I say I could really use some help.
**eenerms **-- Go see him. HUGS
It is, of course, illegal to drink beer on the subway here. One time I wrote a Facebook status asking why, when people drink in the subway, it’s always Pabst Blue Ribbon. One of my friends replied “Because it’s not real beer.”
I’m sorry that she cheated on you, but do you really think the proper response is to write a long rant about how she ruined your relationship, two families, etc., and then tagging as many people as Facebook will allow (multiple times, by the way) is the mature way to handle things?
It doesn’t make you sympathetic; it just makes you pathetic.
We are in the same (sweaty) boat! I’ve fixed my AC three times over the past five years, not gonna do it again. It’s a good thing my office is “very casual dress” because I arrived yesterday, after sitting on the freeway for an hour, looking like I’d just run a 5K. No point wearing makeup or doing anything more than brush my hair, that’s for sure.
My car has 175,000 miles and the stupid check engine light keeps going on and off. I’ve loved that car since the day I bought it (new in 2000) but it’s time to retire it.
My problem? I have narrowed my choices down to the Honda Civic and the Toyota Corolla. I’m a Toyota gal all the way, but I’m having such a hard time finding what I want - the base model, with manual transmission, in a not-ugly color. Toyota has apparently decided that manual drivers are the red-headed stepchildren of the car buying world. We don’t get many car choices, and we don’t get pretty colors. I could go with a four-door Yaris - but they don’t make it with a manual. I’d love the green or blue Corolla - no dice, can’t get it with a manual. And I’m getting attitude from dealers. I am not a weirdo, I’m just a middle aged lady who likes to drive stick. I actually stormed out of one dealership, they were so insulting (and they lied to me that they had a stick Corolla in stock just to get me in the door).
The Honda Civic, on the other hand - the first dealer I went to had six 2014’s with manual transmission on the lot, my choice of color, plus a really nice low-mileage 2013 on the used lot that’s just calling to me. And the salesperson was very pleasant and easy to deal with (although she didn’t know how to drive stick herself).
Did this just start? There are issues with an IE security update published on 7/8 that have several different problems. Microsoft has recognized it. You may want to research that, and need to uninstall those updates.
I feel ya, eenerms. My father is going through cancer treatment (prostate, so he’ll probably die of something else anyway, but boy does my mother enjoy throwing around the C-word**) but the way that he and my mother have treated me over the years – culminating in an enormous blowout because gasp I started dating a black guy with a couple of priors – means we’re almost completely estranged. My mother texted me a picture this morning of him being prepped for surgery (radiation treatment, I think?) and I just don’t know what to do, either.
** sorry, LavenderBlue, I don’t mean to minimize what your friend (and her kids, and you) are going through
I just wandered in here to bitch about the fact that my sleep was unbroken all night, but only because I collapsed about 1 a.m. after an exhausting (productive, but exhausting) day, and I’m TIRED dammit. But most of you have way bigger problems than I do at the moment.
Also, I [del]may[/del] will be moving soon. Looking for a new place sucks … almost as much as the packing and moving part …
I don’t understand myself right now. It is no secret to those around me that I do not like my job. I am a corporate engineer who cannot travel (five month old baby so more of a will not at this point) so I have been moved into a sort of glorified secretary position. It is boring and I feel like everything I do is busy work. I can’t seem to get myself to care about work anymore and I’ve started being a pretty terrible employee. I see that I’m slacking off and not pulling my weight but I can’t seem to make myself do better. What is wrong with me?!
This. This is what’s wrong. 
Cut yourself some slack. You don’t need more work, you need more sleep.
My favorite “we need to” project lately? Tony was frustrated because he slept quite late one day. Therefore, “we” need to start going to sleep earlier. Apparently, I’m supposed to start enforcing a bedtime for a 45-year-old man?
And I completely understand the frustration with playing the “do it” police. Tony keeps telling me the same thing: “I’ll be glad to help, just tell me what needs to be done.” If I try that, well, his shoulder hurts, or his back hurts, he can’t do X, Y, or Z that need doing. Or he has to ask me 123,619 stupid, stupid questions regarding the thing that he’s attempting; and it takes longer to answer the questions than to just do it myself. (Honestly, I sent him and the Boy to pick up five items from the grocery store and the farm supply store the other day. Complete list, including brand names where applicable, and sale prices. Even had notes on the list regarding methods of payment - “Use Visa gift card to pay for dog food at Tractor Supply. There’s enough on that card to buy 18# bag of 4Health Chicken & Rice.” That sort of thing. Between the two of them, they returned home with exactly one of the correct product, and used exactly zero of the “correct” methods of payment. (I was trying to preserve the money in the checking account to pay the car insurance. Instead, I had to wait a week to pay that bill, because the two of them together couldn’t bother reading a list.) And between the two of them, they managed to call me 11 times during their epic trek to buy dog food, milk, cereal, bread, pick up a prescription, and put gas in the truck.
Unrelated mini-rant: I went to a meeting last night at my daughter’s school. She has been nominated for a needs-based scholarship program, and last night’s meeting was to explain the program and receive the forms needed for application - nomination is the first stage, we fill out some forms, get three recommendations, and then ten kids are chosen for the interview process. Five will ultimately be enrolled in the program. I’m a little miffed that the standards expected of poor kids are so low: Maintain a 2.5 GPA, don’t get arrested. Seriously? I know that poverty adds some extra challenges, but that just seems like such a low bar to set! (Mind you, I’m not going to throw out the baby with the bath water - nor even the proverbial can of green peas. If she’s accepted into this scholarship program, this will mean up to $20,000 toward my daughter’s education, and I want her to be able to get a degree without amassing a lot of student loan debt. But still, I think the standard for my poor kid should be higher. I expect more from her!)
Well, I called him and we talked a bit. I probably will go see him but he wants to get things sorted with his doctor. His wife does not like his first family and we aren’t welcome.
Something I did that I feel worked out pretty well is to email the dealerships around you up to as far away as you are willing to drive to go get the car. Tell them you are going to be buying a car in the next two weeks. Tell them precisely what you want. Tell them you are emailing other dealerships and whoever gives you the best price gets your business. I also told them that I would be financing the car, and that if they could get me a better rate than I’d already been offered that I would finance it through them.
I did this and got a really good deal on my car and on the financing.
IIRC, I used fightingchance.com and paid a bit for all the info I needed on what would be a good price for my car and it really helped me a lot.
ETA: I did not go to a dealership at all in this process. I only communicated via email. I avoided all the dealer BS this way. The only time you should go to a dealer, IMO, is to test drive a car to see what you want. The only time I stepped foot into the dealership that sold me the car was to sign paperwork and drive away. Took me about an hour. (And that includes wrasslin’ with the finance dude over the warranty he wanted me to buy.)
Thanks Ms. Impaler! I went through the auto buying service at my credit union. I have been communicating with various dealers through email, making appointments for test drives, etc., and one dealership flat-out lied, saying they had exactly what I wanted. Apparently they thought they could sell me whatever they wanted to sell me once I got there. Silly, silly people. 
I have another appointment tomorrow for a test drive, and then I’ll have to decide what I want. I’m paying cash (thanks late in-laws!) so when I’m ready to buy I’ll just have to go get a cashier’s check. I’m just mildly pissed at Toyota, for giving us stick drivers fewer and fewer choices. I want to keep buying Toyota, but they’re making it difficult, and Honda is trying to make it easy what with their pretty colored cars with nifty stick shifts, and non-jerky salespeople. :o
I hate this process so much, it’s one of the reasons I’m driving a 14 year old car! I’m mystified by people who get a new car every few years. How can they stand this?