It’s hot today, again, just like it’s been for the past week and will be for another few days at least. I just went out to do a bit of grocery shopping. In an air conditioned car. In an air conditioned store. And got back home to an air conditioned house. And I’m sweating like a pig. I have a guy coming by next week to do some gardening and lawn mowing and I will probably sweat like a pig while he happily whistles to himself. Moral: Do not get old. Do everything possible to stay young. Trust me, it’s worth it.
I woke up this morning to a familiar itching sensation on the insides of my wrists and forearms.
Last Thursday I was quite busy clearing the remnants of hundreds of small vines that crisscrossed a patch of yard that the landscapers had cleared out. I was getting ready to rake and seed.
I know there was some poison ivy in there, so I wore gloves and washed up thoroughly with dish soap afterwards.
But of course, that’s never enough. Poison ivy is potent stuff.
They say the medicated creams work wonders–without the medication it takes two weeks to clear up, but with the medication it only takes 14 days :smack:.
But on a positive note, if I had to rate the quality of an itch, I would put “poison ivy” a few notches above “insect bite” and “generic allergic reaction” and several notches above “fiberglas insulation”. It truly is a pleasant itch to scratch.
Bugger it, I think my computer is becoming unstable. A few days ago it BSOD with a memory management error. Today it was a “System thread exception not handled” error. I ran CCleaner Friday. Today I’ve updated the graphics driver (reportedly the most common cause of today’s error) and also ran “chkdsk /f/r”. No report came out of that, so I hope these two combined fix things for me. I bought it last April and for most of the year after it it worked without a hitch. Now it’s giving me BSODs every week or so, and I find that a bit disconcerting.
At my age, I barely remember being young. They say growing old beats the alternative. There are days when I’m not so sure of this.
I was once prescribed a very powerful antibiotic. It had the side effect of making me itch all over, especially my forearms. I scratched them so much, I scratched off almost all the hair follicles. They don’t grow back.
It pisses me off how much people, (like employment agencies in particular, but other organasations too), use text messaging as the start of a conversation. If you’ve got a set of questions that are going to require a bit of back and forth FUCKING CALL ME!!!. We don’t all have a plan with free texts, and in the time it takes to have 10 back and forth texts you could have asked it all in one fucking phone call.
Mini-rant 1:
I live in St. Louis, Missouri. And I am so fucking tired of Stanley Cup sightings. So, so tired. Look! They’re eating toasted rav out of the Stanley Cup! Oh! Now it’s margaritas! Now, beer! Hahahahah…so many goddamn things you can put in the fucking Stanley Cup - babies, too!
How motherfucking adorable and amazing.
Yes, I like the Blues. It was amazing to win the Cup. But for fuck’s sake, please stop showing us all the shit you can put in it. They don’t all deserve a photo op.
Mini-rant 2:
I got sun poisoning for the first time in YEARS yesterday. Swollen face, dizziness, fever & chills. I woke up feeling like I’d been hit by a truck. And of course, taking a shower makes me feel like my skin is coming off. So that was fun. And it was entirely my fault - I completely forgot to put sunscreen on when gong to a friend’s house to swim.
Yawn
Yeah, once you’ve won it a few more times y’all will be able to enjoy it with dignity.
I thought I was the only one!!! I got an unlimited smartphone plan way back in the day, and didn’t see the point in getting a texting plan at the time because everyone I associated with would either email or call. Now it seems like every financial institution, medical office, or charity that gets its paws on my mobile number feels the need to text me. >.<
Anti-rant: my ‘new’ computer (actually a refurbished model) has been up and running for a week with no problems. Our resident IT guy, still disgusted at how corporate IT has handled the whole situation, has instructed me to stash my old computer somewhere safe and to take my time getting the loaner over to the shipping department so it can be returned.
So, I’m driving home from work tonight during moderately heavy traffic on a 2 lane highway. Because I always watch my mirrors, I could see Mr. Speedy McAsshole wasn’t happy with the speed (we were moving about 50) and started cutting in and out of traffic, tailgating and just being an aggressive idiot. He cut me off in the right lane and started tailgating the person in front of me. When he couldn’t get that person to speed up (probably because of the cars in front of them), he cut in right behind the SUV slowly passing me in the left lane.
Well, that seemed to be his plan because the car following the SUV had allowed over a car length of space between to accommodate the “invisible” trailer the SUV was pulling. The trailer wasn’t invisible to me, but Mr. Speedy McAsshole crashed hard into it, effectively blocking both lanes of traffic with his disabled truck and the disabled trailer.
Yeah, nobody was hurt, but I was stuck forever waiting for traffic to get cleared (I did tell Officer Friendly what I had seen) and I had a husband and critters waiting at home. I was so grumpy that it took TWO cat cuddling sessions to become civilized and happy again.
Rescue Mobile update: The machine itself performed flawlessly. My BB’s plan to sleep in the reclining passenger seat did not work as hoped. He was comfortable enough, just couldn’t sleep because he was up all night listening to the cats and hoping none of them would start having problems. They didn’t, but i would have had a hard time sleeping in that environment as well. We don’t think he will sleep better in a motel because they he will be up all night worrying about his load or checking on them.
The trip itself worked out very well when looking at the results. Jerome is a remote town in on the side of a mountain. It used to be a mining town, but has moved on to being very confused if it is an artist community or biker hangout. Many folks drive up to Jerome to enjoy the scenery and the picturesque (wow, spelled that right the first time too!) town.
About 10 years ago, the people of Jerome saw they had too many stray cats and made the choice to do something about the problem. They did this with a massive spay/neuter campaign which included doing TNR on all the strays. Every year, they go back out and set traps, but usually only trap lost house cats. Owning a cat in Jerome includes licensing, and the license fee for an intact cat is prohibitive. Hurray Jerome!!!
Do to the no intact cat thing, and the distance from anywhere else, Jerome tends to run out of cats and needs replacements. Events where rescue agencies show up with already fixed cats available for adoption are very well attended.
Over half of the cats had been reserved, and most of them were snatched up almost as soon as they were put out. The others have already been adopted.
It was a very successful mission!
Love the story, flatlined. I see those Speedy McAssholes all the time and always hope they’ll get Instant Karma’ed in the face. And YOU got to see it first-hand!
Can you elaborate on how Mr. McAsshole felt? I want to hear he suffered…
I’m afraid I can’t tell you anything about Mr. Speedy McAsshole’s physical suffering, digs, but I don’t think there was much. His truck didn’t have side airbags, so no broken glasses or bloody noses. He seemed just fine physically.
However…due to the wait for the tow trucks to get the SUV and truck which were now both attached to the trailer off the road, Officer Friendly and his friends had plenty of bored and crabby people lining up to tell them what they had seen and several dash cam memory cards were copied. The only person there who didn’t get to an Officer Friendly was Mr. Speedy McAsshole. For some reason, he seemed to get Officer Majorly Pissed Off. I didn’t have to stay around and see how many tickets were written, but OMPO’s was sure doing a whole lot of writing.
I was walking across a parking lot this afternoon and this … lovely … lady came charging down the lane at a high rate of speed. She saw me, because she tapped her brake, but then she swerved around me and sped off. She could have hit me without a thought.
Did anybody offer him spare pens? 
As for my gripe of the season:
(copied from my Facebook post about this)
Gotta love Sacramento Regional Transit at times. The train car I rode in this evening did not have openable windows, the air conditioning was solidly down with temperatures over 90, the seats in that model are painful, and I’m not sure the emergency exits, if any, can be reached by anyone under 6 feet tall.
Amazing how the train air conditioning is always VERY powerful in January, especially in the morning, and totally undetectable in July.
Yesterday’s supermarket encounter:
I was at the checkout, merrily placing my items onto the conveyor belt. All of a sudden, new items appeared, right against mine. The woman behind me was merrily placing her own items onto the belt, even though I still had half a cart left. There was now no more room for my stuff on the belt. I gently pointed this out to her, but she continued to put new items on the belt. I finally had to actually push her shit back to make room for mine. As the belt started to move forward I continued to push her shit back until all of mine was on the belt. Some of her precious items wound up on the floor. She was not amused. I was. So was the cashier.
So I’m renovating my kitchen and I think I’ve become the crazy customer.
It’s a small NYC galley kitchen, open to to living room, separated by a bar counter.
The kitchen is not only small it’s very narrow. Which gives me huge issues with modern appliances. Because they are huge. And deep. The fridge that came with the place when I purchased it was a smaller unit. And much older. It was about 24” deep.
I have no space to put a standard sized fridge that doesn’t look aesthetically horrid. I have looked at several renovations in my building of kitchens with the exact same footprint and the fridge always makes them look horrendous. So I did lots of research and found one that was less than 27” deep. French door style, wider than the old one. Ridiculously expensive( $2200) but I bought it without a second thought. Frankly, if I could’ve found a 4K fridge that was 25” deep I probably would’ve bought it.
Contractor did the demo and we discovered a gas pipe just to the left of the old, narrower fridge. I called the contractor and told him to adjust the cabinets so the new fridge could sit against the wall next to the gas pipe.
He forgot. I failed to put it in writing. The cutout for the fridge is positioned in front of the gas pipe Because of water lines, etc, ( which clear the pipe) the fridge is never going to be completely flush. But that gas pipe is costing between one and two inches.
So I’m making them redo the cabinetry. Even though it doesn’t look that bad in front of the pipe. Because I want that extra inch or so of space, and if I agree to put it in front it will piss me off every time I look at it.
I am in good customer in that I’m going to help pay for the change. But they’ll need to eat some of it, too. The contractor has admitted remembering our conversation but forgetting at the critical time, when he was doing the layout. That’s one reason I like the guy, he seems incapable of lying to cover his ass.
And we only need to remake a few pieces. And they are being good about it.
But they screwed up literally the one thing that I’m absolutely inflexible about. And I’m remaining inflexible. I made it clear from day one that low profile appliances were my highest priority.
So I’m crazy. But the kitchen is going to look awesome
Every year the same waltz…
There’s these forms I have to fill via web every quarter, indicating how much business I’ve done with any entity for which the amount exceeds a certain value. Then there’s the yearly form which hellooooo, anybody who isn’t braindead is going to just copy the same info already filled up in the quarterlies. But in any case, I’ve got the data for any quarter on the first day of the next quarter, and the data for a year on January 1st of the next year. Are the respective forms available on Jan1, Apr1, Jul1 and Oct1? Of course not! The quarterlies take one month to be opened, I usually just fill them the next time I need to do quarterlies so for example my 4th quarter gets submtited on Apr1 instead of Jan1, because on Apr1 it’s available and on Jan1 fugedaboutit.
When does the yearly form become available? Sometime during July, several days after I’ve filled my yearly income tax, when my government realizes they need to give me back 1/3 to 1/2 of the money I’ve been giving them throughout the year and they go into conniptions. Suddenly “oh gosh, there’s this form you haven’t filled! Thou shalt not be paid until thou art in compliance!”
And the fucking form has been updated and isn’t accepting the same Tax IDs its smaller sisters were happy to accept. AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARGH * several thousand euros these fucks owe me. At least their email address does work 
and they’re usually pretty decent about responding, but seriously… you already have this information, you bureaucratic shit-stained worker-fuckers, at least you could do us the kindness of having an excuse which doesn’t spit back “tax ID not valid”!
Went to look at a 2018 Rogue SV at a car dealership that was on sale for $15,800. After the test drive the sales dude asked how we wanted to finance it, and we told him that we would pay cash in two days when the money was available. He started talking about having his finance guy talk to us about all the options available waitrightherewhileIgogethim…and we said it wasn’t necessary because we only wanted to make ONE payment and be done with it. He then leaned in real close and said “I can see how bad you want this car, how you really want to take it home today. Let’s talk with the finance guy and see how we can make it possible for you, o.k.?”
I turned to My Beloved and said “Gee honey, if we add a couple of thousand more to the final price we can take this car home a day and a half sooner!” We both rolled our eyes, walked out and then drove to our back-up plan-a Hertz dealership with the same year and model car for about a hundred bucks more. Hertz didn’t hassle us about financing, the add on fees were much lower, and they threw in a 4 year maintenance plan that included a free replacement key fob every year if needed.
You’re done, you’re happy - but:
When we bought the last car, we got an extra $1,000 off for using dealer financing. No penalty for early payment, so we sent in all the cash on the first payment - probably about $100 or so interest.
It is generally understood that dealer financing isn’t there to benefit the consumer, otherwise they wouldn’t push it so hard. If you somehow got a better deal using it, you were lucky.
It’s not just St. Louis. The Stanley Cup recently made an appearance in Saskatchewan to great acclaim because two of the Blues players are from there. No doubt they put stuff in it there, too. 