Don't hurt yourself in the MMP!!!

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
121

Aw, crud, got a death in the fambly. Happens more often as y’all get older (I NEVER age). This time it’s the spousal unit’s uncle. Not unexpected, he had been fighting the Big C for years, but sooner than most prognosticated. I think he just decided he was done. Ain’t nothing wrong with that. I has been selected as a bearer of the pall, so I will have to focus on not dropping dear Unk - though he woulda thought that quite funny. We had a relationship where if we were not picking on each other then something was way wrong, but despite that (because of that?) he made me - the awkward teenage interloper dating his favorite niece - feel welcome from the first time we met. I always appreciated him for that. Now, 35+ years later, it’s my honor to see him off to the next realm. Sigh. Sometimes the circle of life is a bitch.

[sub] Tried to make a geometrical pun based on “circle of life”, but nope. “Bitch” is the right word.[/sub]

122

My mom is closing her business. For background, she’s a pediatrician who owns her own practice. She’s talking with a couple other practices in town to see if they’ll basically buy her. They get all of her patients (who are fiercely loyal to her) and her if they’ll pay off the remaining debt on her business. She’s still going to lose the money she personally invested, but if someone will buy her out for the price of her loans, she can make it work.

It really sucks for her. She’s put so much into the business just to get screwed over. The kicker: before the biller walked out, she put through payroll for everyone (good) and paid out the remaining vacation time to herself and the nurse practitioner. Vacation time that they hadn’t accrued yet. (My mom makes it all available at the beginning of the year, but they technically haven’t earned it all yet.) She tried to walk away with an extra $7k between the two of them. So now she’s looking into pressing charges for time card theft. That vacation time was not approved, so falsifying the time cards like that is theft.

The nurse practitioner walked out, too, because of the drama. The kicker… my mom paid for her schooling to become a NP with the guarantee that she would work for my mom for a certain number of years. But her quitting was the straw that broke the camel’s back. So this girl walks away with a free education… or so she thinks. My mom is reporting her time card theft to the licensing board, who haven’t finalized her license. This behavior could prevent her from ever working as a nurse practitioner.

If it weren’t my mom (and my) income on the line, I would pull up some popcorn and watch this burn. It’s not much money I’m losing each month, and I can rework my budget and/or go back to freelance editing in my spare time. I’ll make it work. I’m hoping my mom and her remaining staff can figure stuff out, too.

123

Dogbutler, I think you’re being too hard on the Cleaver.

124

Blurfage. I spent an hour and a half with HR this morning getting training on the ins and outs of FedHR. The site that administers USAJobs. I have one job on there and I need to be able to see the applications and resumes of the nine applicants. Still waiting on a verification code to get into the site. In the meantime I sent a quote for air travel and am having leftovers for lunch.

Blurf

125

Who are you, the ward-en?

126

Oh that one; I keep that one in my pants most of the time. :wink:

Actually, trying to ignore the joke, the most appropriate one would be the Russell because of the company’s connection to the fur trade. But clearly I am thinking this through on several different levels.

Serenata67 to you and mom. Closing or selling a business, even when all the books are on the plus side, is rarely easy or fun.

127

So we’ve been hosting two exchange students since last summer and we are now in the process of removing one of them from our house. “Oleksii” (I’ll put the name in quotes so it looks like a pseudonym) has been a tough kid to deal with from the get go, he requires far much more time and energy to deal with than the other three kids in our house combined, he lies, he has racist tendencies, he doesn’t listen, his English isn’t improving, and he’s not making the most of his time here. We’re are at a point where our hosting, our conversations, and our behavior modeling are not enough. He’s had a formal warning letter a couple weeks ago and that didn’t help. At one point last week, my wife (and God bless her on this, she is doing so much of the heavy lifting) was talking to him about trust and how he hid money his parents sent him in his room instead of putting it in the bank and he asked her if she would trust his father with her money if she was in Ukraine, instead of listening he was challenging her. The last straw came this week and we’re working with the agency to move him out.

We’ve been very sensitive to his culture in this regard: We know that there are problems in Ukraine, they’ve gotten their independence from Russia but there are still border skirmishes between the two, Russia is both an enemy and a “big brother” in regards to culture, food, language, and other things. He’s told me stories of gangsters there, if you ask questions, you are perceived as dumb because you don’t know what’s going on, and people don’t take care of each other there like we do here. His friends laughed at him when he posted a GoFundMe link on his Facebook wall. I am sympathetic to his situation but we’re now at an impasse. We don’t want to quit when there’s only about 4 months left in the program but it’s been too much.

128

I’m sorry, but the first name I thought of for you is Donovan.
It’s a convoluted, and somewhat not intentionally rude, leap, but there it is.
I see Intergalatic and my mind goes here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iab9YKocUcw

Anyway, we have been lax around here with monikers, and I’m sure somebody else will override me anyway.

I think you should not feel bad about your decision. There is only so much a person can do.

129

well fcm at least it wasn’t a weeks/month long hassle like you thought it was going to be

And my cousin whos dad of the oft mentioned nephew drives about 1-2 hours or so to work in la at night isn’t so bad because he goes to work between 10 am and 4 am and gets off about 1-2 pm… its the traffic back home he hates but since hes a delivery supervisor for a commercial bread company that services resturants chain places like olive garden and fast food joints he fills in for drivers who are out … and a single “route” can have 60 stops and g0 300 miles its nuts ……

130

erm 10 pm

131

doggio, your pub looks like fun.

I’m sorry about your uncle doc. Hugs to you and your wife.

It was 73F when I got off irk this afternoon and is supposed to get down to 24F tonight. :eek: There was a tornado in my old town last night that touched down around a plant where I used to work. Methinks the weather has been drinking. :stuck_out_tongue: Right now, the rain that started once I walked Nelson has died down a bit, but for a while, it was pouring with wind.

One more day. :slight_smile: I’m looking forward to the weekend.

132

lol dog if that place dosent put fish and chips on the menu …well somethings off they came and fixed the heater… although im iffy on the quality cause the gas company guy was visibly allergic to cats… so he did it in a hurry ……
Cousin is pulling a stunt …trying to show how much we need to buy a car by staying ta her boyfriends for two days , …… Actually we don’t really need a car she just wants one os she can drive it her self and him around for 90 percent of the time ……

so might be fireworks if she shows back up tonight …….

133

Winter is coming!

Not as bad as Westeros, but still… TWTB are predicting rain and temps in the 30s and 40s for tomorrow and Saturday, and then snow from Sun through Wed. Wifey sent me to the store to buy ‘stuff’ in case we can’t get out for a few days. It’ll have to get a lot worse than they’re predicting for us to not be able to go anywhere, but we may not want to go anywhere.

Our Hummer feeder was frozen solid this morning, too. Did what Johnny did and brought it in and thawed it out. When I took it back out my friend was sitting up on a branch and not moving. I was afraid she had frozen there, but when I walked out to check she was moving her head so I guess she was just chilling.

Toosday was discount day for ye olde pharts at the kroger sto, and they had Instant Pots on sale, so I went down there and got a 6 qt one. Withe the sale and the discount and an in-store coupon it cost me $62. :smiley:
Last night we pressure cooked some boneless pork ribs in it, in some beer. (Newcastle Brown Ale. It’s all I had :frowning: ) Now I have to scout out a bunch of recipes. Wifey was gonna get an instant pot cook book, but I don’t think she’s ordered it yet.
What’s funny is, I have a pressure cooker put away in the cabinet somewhere. ** Wifey ** won’t let me use it cause she’s afraid it’ll blow up.

Well, that’s about enough outta me.

134

Walter White, I don’t remember who gave that to me, but my dear wife is Mrs. White when I refer to her on line since then, she would give me a quizzical look if she saw this…

We’ve owned the house for 20 years and have 18 months until it’s paid off, the Little Whites are out of the house and off the payroll, so we decided to redo the powder room and the master bedroom bathroom…after shopping around, we fell for a LOWE interest rate loan offered by one of the Big Box hardware store that will go unmentioned…

So, signed the contract at the end of June, they sent over the contractors, good guys, they took measurements, talked timeline, they said they could start at the end of September, we said, great, we have 12 people in for the Thanksgiving week, we NEED the 2 and a half baths, oh, no problem, we were assured, easy peasy…

September rolls around, we call the Big Box Hardware Store (hereafter referred to randomly as, I don’t know, let’s call it, “LOWES”, that’s a nice name), they inform us the contractors on our job quit the company, no problem, they got a new guy, schedule looks the same…he shows up for the walk around, the measurement, he say powder room is doable by Thanksgiving, no way on the master bedroom…

Now, let’s understand, I had COMPLETELY demo’d the powder room myself with the intention of redoing it so it was nonfunctional at that point, but, no, Mrs. White listened to the siren song of the PSI at LOWES, honey, you’re old, let’s get it done right, OK, OK, I get it, fine…DEAR…

October rolls around, they deliver lots of stuff to my garage, and the contractor starts…only to point out a day into the powder room that stuff needed was actually not delivered…awesome…(for the record, the contractor in this story is a good guy, he’s sincerely trying to do his best and throughout this whole process has saved me money)…

Then the PSI informs us that two out the three tiles we ordered in June for the master bedroom bathroom have been discontinued, so need to pick out new ones there…oh, and the chair rail you ordered, gone, psych…(The PSI is actually really nice and helpful, just another pawn in this whole story)…so I’m scrambling around for the parts for the powder room while we’re redesigning the upstairs bathroom…

Meanwhile, we’re making payments…

Power room was functionally done by Thanksgiving, except the replacement window that was ordered in June SOMEHOW SLIPPED BETWEEN THE CRACKS AND WAS NEVER ORDERED…so, that’s still undone…:smack:…oh, they told us today that it just shipped…awesome…

So, contractor finally started on Monday upstairs, since he was a fill-in, they haven’t been riding him on his schedule, honestly, we pushed him out through Christmas as we didn’t want to deal with it during the holidays, and since then, every day, I’m getting texts, hey, I don’t see the Schluter part that was supposed to be delivered, hey, um, that thing they sold you won’t fit, hey, where is the floor tile, LOWES never delivered that…even though we ordered it in JUNE!!!

And to top it off, our LOWES direct contact is someone who sits in a cubicle about 700 miles from us, every day my phone calls are, “Hey, Mark, it’s me…again…The contractor has said he’s not coming back for two weeks because YOU CAN’T DELIVER THE THINGS WE ORDERED IN JUNE UNTIL THEN!!!”

The reason we chose LOWES was for the convenience, the one-stop-shop, the great financing we qualified for, today when I was on the phone with Mark, I asked, “What do you offer when I have to be the GC on a job that was supposed to be done last year?”…crickets…

Oh, and LOWES has since discontinued the PSI/PSE program, so the one corporate contact consumers have with the store, the person who helped them pick out and design the rooms are going to be laid off…spectacular…

TL/DR…Walter White…don’t ever choose LOWES for anything other than light bulbs…

135

Walter White, never even considered That Place (or it’s brother) for the job. Had several local contractors in, got their estimates and went through my Credit Union to finance. Sometimes I wished it could have moved faster, but nothing like that fuster cluck.

Bumba, it was 70F when I got out of my car to go to my soccer meeting at 6:30. By 8pm, after 20 minutes of rain, it was 59F and is still going down. Low tonight is 31F. Yoicks!

Shady, not always sure I interpret your postings fully, but it sounds like life is interesting for you and yours. Take care.

IG (pending your MMP naming), sounds like the kid had problems before he even got here, and that’s a tough way to absorb another culture. Do what you need to do for your own well-being.

Juliet, sounds like your Mom reposed her trust into people that did not deserve it. Hope she can recover the dough the two stole (and that what is was, theft). Hope things work out for her and you.

Spidey, flytrap, ruble, I’m trying to think of another pun, but I seem to have hit a Wall-y…

Doc, condolences on your loss.

We haven’t heard from FCM since this morning…could she actually be doing something without us!?!?!

All y’all have a good night.

136

I won’t go into more than this and skip the hugs for now. Or I will – I’ll read them tomorrow; I’m in a bit of a mood.

A coworker, one of the best kind, got --------- well, that certain manager I’ve mentioned a time or 17 was mad at her for not backing up her abuses and set her up and got her fired early this week. It seems as how she then went home and committed suicide. It wasn’t the only bump in her life but she got yelled at and treated in such a manner that no one should have to suffer through. I am not angry, surprised or anything right now. Just sad and glad my life is in such a place that I can go on. And I’m feeling I may just need to move along some time soon. This is the second body I can lay on this particular “sound-management-practice-following manager” and given the size and diversity of our workforce I am not sure I want to be around for #3 and beyond.

And the jungle is that much darker for our loss.

137

CANES WIN!(even if the did give me angina in the process)

Speaking as an Irish Pub person/hockey fan hanging in an Englsih Pub/Football place, yes it is…:slight_smile:

Fish and chips, donner kebob ,and double burger on the menu. and all get 5 stars.

Sorry for your loss, **Doc[b/].

Walter White ,:eek: Glad I rent.

138

**MetalMouse ** - I had baby duty last night, and when 8daughter got home from school, I crashed. Yep, it was a busy day.

ruble - How tragic!! There are no words.

I’m awake and abed, about to kill some time playing a few games before starting my day. It sounds like rain on the roof, and I recall a nasty forecast. At least I can stay home.

Happy Firday!!!

139

Good Mornin’ Y’all! Up and caffeinatin’. YAWN ‘Tis 64 Amurrkin out and cloudy (well, dark) with a predicted high of 65 and cloudy for the day. This after a high of eighty Amurrkin yestiddy. This mornin’ I shall head over to the church to haul the biiiiiiiiiiiig trash cans back to where they stay, turn the ice machine back on, and perform candle duty. All that shouldn’t take long. After that, I shall go by :eek:Wally Jr.:eek: for a few items and head back to da cave. We shall sup upon majik intartoobz pizza tonight.

I have read all but comprehended little, so, yays, boos, hugs, trouts, chitlins, smooches, and how you doin’s all around as needed.

Now I need more caffeine and to feed rumbly tummy. Then, bother of bothers, I must purtify and don appropriate goin’ about the public attire.

Happy Firday Y’all!

140

Up mainly for reals now. Critters have been tended to and I have breakfasted.

It’s overcast and dreary out there and we’re promised a cloudy and mild day followed by plummeting temps tonight and below freezing by morning. I need to do some engineering work for **FCD **today, tend to Roxy, and the usual responsible adult household stuff… ONWARD!!!