I spent the morning trying to get organized on this massive grant application. The page limit is 50 pages but that includes ALL attachments which take up so much space. The time period I have to coordinate all this is ridiculous. This is due in three weeks.
Using Claude I made three or four different planning documents including a spreadsheet with all 46 required items cross referenced to the scoring rubric, a narrative review document, and a page budget (showing how many pages for each section.)
Is this progress? Now that I know exactly what’s required, I can’t say I feel less overwhelmed.
I’m in a situation where I have about 40 things to do and I’m not able to really move forward on any of it until Wednesday’s committee meeting.
Hopefully I’ll be able to get something useful done after lunch.
That sounds maddening. It’s not the first time I’ve heard or experienced some customer service rep saying, “upon delivery, they’ll do XYZ” and then the delivery people swear they had no idea we needed XYZ and it’s a whole fucking thing. Most recently, the moving company we used this summer promised the crew would have wardrobe boxes, they did not (“that’s not standard with local moves”) and we had to make several trips with our car to move our clothing.
This is likely due to the PDF. Some have forms (a bit like a website) and any browser, or for that matter PDF viewer should allow you to fill it out. As to browsers that actually allow you to edit a PDF file, Firefox does.
It took me several days to not feel like I was looking through a fishbowl when I first got bifocals. Then all of a sudden it clicked and I never had any issues again. My sister never could adjust to bifocals and had to go back to reading glasses.
So, where can I put a post that ends with an ANTI-RANT?
I’ve been driving my mom’s boat-of-a-car for ten years (it’s how we finally got a nonagenarian to stop driving). But it’s so clunky and “luxurious” (and BORING) that every time I get in it, another piece of my soul withers.
So I’ve been watching every used manual “hot (or even warm) hatch” ramp up in price over the last decade, and so I kept driving the OLD-mobile.
Until last week! I happened upon a 2018 Mazda3 that was low-mileage… but affordable due to some hail damage.
(And the seller bought Mom’s car to give to his kid!)
Well, I quickly realized that I’d gladly trade aesthetics for a 2.5 liter engine, a stiff suspension, 40 mpg hwy, and a stick shift!
.
Even though the car’s small, what really sold me was a guy on Reddit who regularly slides a couple of full-size bikes in the back. So I tried it, and it was easy-peasy, without taking a wheel off.
I did talk to one local restaurant chain about this. They said the volume is set by corporate, and both customers and staff in the restaurant dislike it. Corporate doesn’t have to experience it. On their website, you can give specific feedback about an individual restaurant, but there is conveniently no way to give general feedback about cross-chain policies.
Doesn’t work for me, but then, I’m not a party-goer. I seem to notice obnoxious music much more at my closest supermarket than at other places, and there is none at all at my favourite deli. The really super upscale place in the Big City does have background music, but it is (naturally) refined classical music, apparently in the hope that it will inspire the shopper to buy more truffles and caviar along with the ready-to-roast pre-marinated Chateaubriand (and no, I’m not kidding).
But at my local supermarket I just find it supremely annoying, probably because that’s where I do my general shopping for large quantities of commodity items and tend to get most frustrated and exhausted. The place is also freaking huge. So I struggle around hanging onto the shopping cart, hot and exhausted despite the actual coolness of the store, and I can only think “why is some woman shrieking through the speakers to the accompaniment of bongo drums and trumpets? Is this supposed to make shopping a better experience?”
Have I mentioned how loud my son is? His default is about 7/10, with gusts to 11.
And right now since we have no furniture on the ground floor, his shrill voice echoes off the vaulted ceilings. I’m told furniture will dampen the sound. So we’ll see in 6-8 weeks.
I went to run errands today. I’m not much of an errand runner. But I needed some towels and bath mats for the new bathroom. I’m tired of crappy Amazon towels.
So after getting keys made (another errand I had to do for the new place), I went to the Container Store which has giant banners that say, “Bed Bath and Beyond” but there were in fact no bathroom goods. So I drove 15 more minutes to go to Home Goods. I got some nice navy towels but for some reason they don’t sell navy bath mats. Okay. Went to Kohl’s, finally found some slate greyish blue mats that may or may not match.
So that took, what, 3 hours?
The level of inconvenient this is compared to just ordering stuff online is wild. I know people used to do this all the time. But Jesus.
What is this “background music” you speak of? For me, every note of music in public is foreground music, and very distracting.
Imagine trying to follow the conversation at a restaurant when your brain is going "If you want it, here it is… Man, I wonder how many people here think this is a Beatles song? Paul McCartney really did all the heavy lifting on this. Was it the first Badfinger song I ever heard? I should check, okay, maybe after I get home… come and get it… Shame what happened to the band. When was Pete Ham’s suicide? Oh, and the drummer ‘unlived’ himself, too… …Sorry, honey, what did you say?"
Once you know the brand of towels that has the quality that you are looking for Kohls will ship them to your doorstep for a small charge. They have a generous return window and relatively pleasant human beings to deal with at their stores if you have to return something. Their on line sales are really good and once you find what size you in the brands you like I find I can buy all my clothes there, with the exception of the rare special occasion outfit.
I worked at Toys R Us for 2 1/2 years starting in '95, and even then people would complain about the music. And we had to reply, in all honesty, that we had zero control over any of it, which was true. This is a situation and complaint that has been around for generations, and is nothing new.
I’m so tired of trying to plan events around my oldest stepdaughter and her kids. They are so unreliable and communication is next to impossible. The latest is that we are trying to get together for her and my stepson’s birthdays, which were last month. We thought it would be fun to try to do an escape room together.
She works an overnight shift, and has a free weekend every other weekend. We were going to do this two weeks ago but then she decided to cover a double shift for double pay on her off-weekend, so now we are trying for this weekend.
Yesterday I sent stepson and stepdaughter a link to the escape room place and told them to pick a room and a time on Sunday, and I’d book it. She didn’t reply until 9pm and then basically bitched about how this was all going to interfere with her sleep schedule. So we’re tentatively planning for 6pm tonight, but I still have no idea if she is OK with the time or if her son and his girlfriend will be joining us. And I’m predicting that this is all going to turn out to be a no-go again. Argh…
