I just wanted to give this a +1. My wife and I just got back from two weeks in England and Scotland. We didn’t drive anywhere, but each of us nearly got creamed by a car in the first couple of days by starting to step off the curb looking the wrong way. I’m not sure I ever got used to the driving-on-the-left thing, but I did learn pretty quickly to look in both directions multiple times before crossing a street.
Just lie; ‘the previous owner must have been crazy; loads of stuff was just hot glued to the walls when I moved in.’
I’ll point out as I did above that one-way streets are common in every large city in the world. And half of them carry traffic coming the way the locals don’t expect.
If you’re in a city, even in your home state or province or whatever, look both ways; one-way streets are not obvious - they’re insidious. And they’re common.
Just four weeks until the election and you can watch a YouTube video without being pummeled by negative political ads.
I never thought of this one!
Yes I’ll blame it on the previous owner. 
Who was/is at times crazy.
That’s good to know. Hopefully I can find someone this coming year to scrape and paint.
Cousins were very gracious about us leaving them and hiring someone experienced to sell our old place, so I’m grateful for that.
But they are going to post the listing soon and there’s a bunch of shit that cousin told us he did that did not happen, including a broken drawer that wasn’t even broken previously, and a bunch of paint supplies were left in the house.
So instead of the date night my husband and I were supposed to have, we’ll be in a last minute scramble to get the place presentable before the cameras come in.
Not happy about this.
There is no inherently difficult process that can’t be further f-ed up by sufficiently incompetent “help”.
Which pretty much seems to be the story of your life of late. Whether schools, cow-orkers, house sales, furniture buys, etc., you’re / they’re perpetually in a mess. I know folks for whom the saying “If not for bad luck they’d have no luck at all.” applies. Sucks to be them, and at least recently it sucks to be you in many ways.
And I mean that with all sympathy, not as a sly accusation that you’re a cause of your misfortunes. Sometimes the universe just gangs up on somebody. Wish it wasn’t you now.
Time for my fresh rant.
Was driving away from a parking space today and heard the tell-tale click click click of something stuck in a tire.
Stopped to look and got lucky … sorta. Without having to move the car I quickly found it. That was the good news.
The ungood news is it wasn’t a pebble wedged in a rain groove. It was a 3/8" hex head sheet metal screw embedded in the tread of one rear tire kinda near the sidewall.
Yep, not pluggable; must replace. Both rear tires are about halfway through their tread life. Gotta buy two kinda pricy tires ~15K miles early to offset the harm of a ~20 cent screw. Bastards.
Sometimes it feels that way and sometimes I feel like this is fine and I’m really lucky.
Today we had an all-staff where the ice breaker was “Share your Autumn personality” and I had to bite my tongue so hard to not say, “neurotic.”
Let’s just say October isn’t looking great by that measure.
I have to wonder if the media’s rape coverage cycles every Fall. The Kavanaugh hearings were in October too and it’s terrible timing. Now this horrible story coming out of Cornell, and you know everyone’s talking about it at my job. It’s what we do. And one of the challenges of my job is that you can just be going to do something innocuous like make a photocopy and stumble into a discussion about some truly horrific shit. And you feel incredibly awkward about saying, “Hey, can we not talk about what we do for a living?”
But I might actually prefer that to my co-worker’s play-by-play of her children’s hockey team. Today she changed it up by talking about homecoming. She’s either bragging about her kids, who are clearly the popular kids I hated in high school, or she’s complaining about how spoiled they are. Okay, but like, you did that.
Sounds awful.
What is an “autumn personality”?
No idea. People gave answers like “colorful” and “pumpkin spice” which is not really a personality so IDK.
As are scooters, motorbikes, electric bikes and regular bikes that seem to come at speed out of nowhere and anywhere. It’s all of those that I worry about getting creamed by when I am in a big city, particularly in Europe since there’s so damn many of them.
Years ago, right when we were opening up, a very SHRILLLLLL gal decided, while we were blinking ourselves into opening duties, to scream-ask:
“WHAT ARE YOUR GOALS?!?”
Didn’t miss a beat.
“To never be asked that again.”
Sometime overnight I developed really bad stomach pain. It’s radiating down my back. I’m feeling pretty flushed, too. It’s not quite gall bladder attack bad (I don’t even have one anymore) but it’s reminiscent. Not a great sign.
Called in sick. Because of the joys of living in a townhouse, I had to take three arduous trips up and down our stairs in order to gather all the things I needed just to spend the morning in bed. I wouldn’t have had to take three trips if I didn’t keep forgetting shit, but anyway.
And of course now that I’m lying here all I can think about is what tasks need doing that I can reasonably get done. What can I accomplish with a cell phone? I can’t think of much. I have such a hard time sometimes with simply resting. I’m so mad I’m losing my morning.
Don’t you always look both ways? That was drilled into me as a child long ago. If it’s a street I know is one-way I may only glance downstream, but having accidentally driven the wrong way on such a street myself, I always check.
Plus, of course, a one-way street could have traffic for either direction.
I do. You do. Many people do.
But several people upthread are talking about themselves only looking in the usual direction and being surprised by traffic coming the other way. Which surprises me a lot and disturbs me a little. Hence my comments.
Same thing with you as a driver turning right or even left. Cars and peds and bikes can come from nearly every direction.
Took my car to the mechanic this morning for a scheduled oil change.
Alerted by said garage that car is ready for pick up.
Go to garage and pick up car. Do not see an oil sticker change on my windshield but the computer has been reset to indicate an oil change had been completed.
Car has not had an oil change but has been inspected instead LOL!
I do have an inspection sticker. Hmmmm …
Which is fine as it is due by the end of November but WTF?
Had to leave car at the garage and walk back to work awaiting oil change procedure.
Mechanic calls and states that the same thing happened to another customer who came in today. Apparently their computer is glitching and handing out random inspection appointments.
My issue is the bit of a walk involved between where I work and the garage. Not a huge deal but with relentless back pain it creates an issue.
Thankfully one of my coworkers will drive me over to pick up the fully serviced vehicle! 
Oh, man. Remember how we have to clean and stain our deck or get fined by the HOA?
The guy came out to give us a quote today. He said it’s in perfect condition, it’s illogical to do it, and he can’t get to it until Spring. He gave me his number to have them call. Nice guy, but I’m not sure how this will go over with HOA.
Also this means I have to clean the fucking thing myself. Then I can send them a picture and say, “See? It’s fine.”
Like I need another fucking thing to do.
That is bizarre, I wonder if your previous owner was getting notices from the HOA, and the previous owner did correct the “violation” but the HOA is unaware thus they’re still sending notices.
Getting closer to resolving our door situation , spouse has been in touch with the installation company directly, they agreed to reinstall it correctly, reordered trim package and stuff and assigned two installers to do the job. Great!
Then last night he gets a call from some ditz at corporate whose role in all this is a mystery. They are all hey you I been trying to get the time to call you and now I am. Cue giggles and apologies with stories about their day and more giggles and inane small talk interspersed with promises of “working on it” but didn’t have a clue what that was, didn’t know what the installation company was doing, didn’t offer any information whatsoever about the next steps or anything at all. They thought it was a kick plate needing a polish o some shit, ditz had no notes on our project and it was not the first time they had been in contact. Truly bewildering to listen to. I told him if they call again, don’t answer the fucking call.