XMU 35. A lot of some really good stuff, but damn I hate that band.
We’re supposed to get a new furniture thing delivered and they said they would start delivering to people at 4pm and not stop until they were done. By my estimation that means they’re arriving anywhere between 4pm and 11pm. 
It’s been a whirlwind since we arrived to the new place. We had a gas leak last Friday and the AC failed the next day. Just got the A/C installed today. Today I completely lost a work day since my new home office space is adjacent to the utility room where they were banging away.
Speaking of work, I’m writing a last minute federal grant concurrent with a longshot federal grant everyone insists upon, concurrent with revisions to a state award. They approved the award conditional upon revisions to the application. After working a couple days on narrative revisions, which were supposed to be due next Tuesday, they sent another email asking for budget revisions, to be due the 24th. So now I’ve got two different deadlines for the same application and a sinking feeling they didn’t want narrative revisions at all, just budget revisions.
Confirmed that today. “Sorry, we only need budget revisions. The system kicks out emails automatically, we have no control over what that says.”
Cool. That’s 48 hours I could have spent doing something else.
Speaking of, we applied for $190,000. They approved the award but said that because they received so many applications, they had to reduce everyone’s award. Rather than, I don’t know, giving money to the most competitive applicants, they are giving something to everyone. So we are getting $100,000.
It’s just felt like everything coming at me from all directions. All three projects are very cognitively demanding. Yesterday I went to work just to get my laptop charger and came home and decompressed for a few hours. Because it’s just so much to hold in my head.
Today, unable to use my home office, I spent most of the day unpacking. Installed a digital lock on the garage entrance door and it took way, way longer than necessary and I am exhausted
It also suddenly seems I’m very ill. And alone to deal with this delivery. Grand.
Unpacking is useful.
Hope the delivery is soon & smooth so you can relax !
Mini rant not really for myself, just an observation.
I was listening to sports radio and they had some correspondent named Ben Horney. I looked him up, and I’m pretty sure this is the guy.
If your last name is “Horney”, why in the fuck would you name your poor kid “Ben”?! I have one of those last names that also can be made fun of (not as bad as “Horney” but not much better), and I had to be really careful naming my kids. His parents were either really thoughtless or mean.
At least they didn’t name him “Dick”.
I did it! The new entertainment center is in. Thanks to the magic of Pepto Bismol.
No more watching floor TV!
TV now an appropriate distance from the floor!
It’s a process.
In these cases, I tell myself “Okay, if we can get the TV off the floor, then we can do the next five things!”
ps, if anyone’s betting on the World Cup, just check and see who I’m rooting for. Then put a grand down on the other team… (but i’ll admit that I was cheering for Belgium just because of some “loaded frites” we had in Brugge).
My Aunt was doing the ancestry thing and we found an ancestor named Harry Chester.
I don’t think some parents think these things through.
Even for my kid, I was thinking, does this Anglo first name work with our Italian AF last name? While most of his cousins have Italian first names, I think we gave him a pretty good Anglo one. And it’s alliterative (MVM) not in an obnoxious way. In a way that will look cool on monogrammed towels.
When we moved into this house (14 years ago, damn it has been a long time) we opted to get a rolling TV stand from Ikea. It is wide and sold, and has cabinets underneath to hold stuff. It was probably less than a half hour to build and then we put a TV on it.
That was great, but then we had other electronics, like a video game console, cable box, sound system, surge protector, and so on. They didn’t fit on the stand, which was perfect for a TV but not anything else. I wanted to do a shelf above the TV, but it is diagonal in a corner of the room, and would need a shelf shaped like a trapezoid that could go into a corner diagonally.
Doesn’t sound complicated. But I looked far and wide on web sites for shelves like that. And while I did find some, they were tiny knicknack-size shelves. Absolutely not useful.
I finally said, fuck it, I’m a grown-up, I know my way around tools. Went to the hardware store, bought a sturdy board, bought a couple of brackets and some wall anchors. Measured the corner, cut the board into the shape I wanted, mounted with the hardware, and my home-made electronics shelf has been great for over a decade. Took me less time to get the materials to build it and then built and install it then the time I wasted trying to find a product that did what I wanted.
That is just awful.
Could be worse. They could have named him Arya* Horney, Ivory* Horney, or Isreal* Horney!
* All are legitimate baby boy names found in a book of baby names.
I’ve also seen Aria as a name; short name for Arianna (as in Grande or Huffington). And also popular from the Game of Thrones character. That’s generally a girl’s name. (Same with Ivory.)
But “Israel”, the only people I’ve known with that name are guys (and in fact I have a coworker right now named Israel).
Also, apparently my dad wanted to give me a name that was intentionally bad combined with my last name, and my mom put a stop to that, thankfully. But then “thoughtless and mean” could describe my dad to an extent (especially when I was a kid, he’s a lot more mellow now).
It wouldn’t be amusing if I was just making it up, but “Arya” in all seriousness (and spelled that way) is really listed as a potential boy’s name.
Likewise “Isreal”, a legitimate alternate spelling of “Israel”! 
That’s incredible! I lack that skill. I’ve always wanted to build things.
But then I think about how long it took me to install an electronic door lock. (This is the third one I’ve installed and they don’t usually take that long. The problem is they don’t give you enough space to fit the internal wiring.)
Anyway it’s done so I will no longer be fumbling with my keys in the garage while carrying seven things and having a six-year-old behind me complaining I’m going too slow.
He’ll be complaining about something different.
From researching (which means 5 seconds in Google leading to a Wikipedia page, not going to pretend to be some scholar here) it looks like a gender neutral name of Persian origin. So yeah, it can be a guy’s name.
I didn’t even catch the different spelling, but even the original spelling when pronounced would sound like “Is Real Horny”.
Chalk it up to screwing around in my garage in a kid, and maybe a little bit picked up from 7th grade shop class. 
No band saw though, I used a circular table saw.
It must feel great. And yes, complaining is a kid’s job! (My kids are experts.)
I find that I’m increasingly incapable of doing work around the house. It’s a combination of loss of physical dexterity and balance due to aging (I’ve long since given up trying to get up on a ladder) and just general lack of confidence. It’s like, faced with any mechanical task, I immediately think “I wonder what horrible thing can go wrong here – and probably will!”. I think it signals the days of home ownership rapidly coming to an end. I need to be someplace where young’uns do that stuff for me.
Probably. It used to be standard for people to live with younger relatives who could do all that stuff, but at least in Canada/US we don’t see that very often.
I helped move my mom into a senior living facility. But that place is pretty awesome. She has a real apartment, her rent pays for 3 meals a day (served by a Cordon Bleu trained chef), they go out on regular trips in a bus, have a hair/nail salon in the building, do movie nights and dances and parties and other activities multiple times a week. I’m kind of jealous. And medical staff around to respond to emergencies too. But it has the vibe of an upscale apartment building.
That sounds absolutely lovely! I’m probably ready for something like that, but I doubt I could afford anything that upscale. But it’s time to start taking action, and the declutter, cleanup, and sale of the house needs to be part of the plan. Very sad, because I really liked it here all these many years, and the formerly barren neighbourhood when I first bought this house has exploded into one of bountiful amenities.
It’s a bit less than $3,000 (US) a month, which sounds expensive but it includes all utilities, 3 good meals a day (you pick from a menu at a sit-down restaurant in the building, it’s not a cafeteria), someone cleans your apartment once a week, and all the previously-mentioned activities. (The hair/nail salon price isn’t included, you have to pay to use it, but it’s a reasonable price.)
I am led to believe that’s not typical though. Most places cost a lot more and aren’t nearly as nice. We just got very lucky finding this place. It’s also only 10 minutes away from me, so it’s easy for me to come visit and do things for my mom and take her places.
Would that my 86-year-old grandfather were as wise as you! He’s still getting up on the damned roof.
Losing independence looks tough. I’ve noticed the elders in my life have become more anxious as they age. When is was in my MSW program, I interned for a “continuum of care retirement facility” that was made for rich Jewish people. The retirement center part gave people everything they needed and more. They were really involved in clubs and activities. And the hospital/nursing home was attached to that facility (and where I worked.)
It was always hard for them when they transferred to the hospital setting though. Especially when they realized they weren’t going back. Some became very depressed.
It’s heavy stuff but I’m glad I had the experience. I used to help feed this lady with Wernicke’s aphasia and dementia. She would talk and talk and talk and very little of it made any sense. One day she was nattering on and said something about someone’s so-and-so being goya, I said, “Hey, I’m goya.”
She looked at me fiercely and said, “Don’t even joke about that!”
My mom has a slightly older friend who is exhibiting this. Her friend is in the process of decluttering and moving to a smaller, more manageable place that’s in much better shape than her house. This friend has also somehow gotten it into her head that some neighbors are going to take her in and care for her as she ages. 
My mom is pretty chill, except for when I have to travel for work. I have a trip coming up in August that I haven’t told her about yet because I don’t want to deal with the drama.
Ok what am I missing here? What’s the problem with the name Ben? I don’t see the pun in “Ben Horney.” Now if it was Dick or Randy, that’d be obvious.