Heh. I know that one. I drove down to a river and went for a swim on Sunday. It was 86 degrees outside, despite lows in the upper 30’s and low 40’s for the previous week or two. The water was… well, the technical term is “fucking cold”.
Fucking Silva compasses.
I’m currently taking a compass/map reading and wilderness navigation course. Naturally, we need a good compass. So I went to our local outdoor shop and plopped down $60 for a Silva Ranger. Supposedly top-of-the-line stuff. First day using it and I notice that the bezel is loose in the housing, making it swing 2-3 degrees back and forth. I was pissed. Took it back to the store, guy tried to tell me that they are “adjustable” and promptly started fiddling with the declination screw :rolleyes:.
Finally he admits it is actually a faulty compass. Tries to replace it, but I tell him that I want to hold the new one in my hand before buying it. He takes it out of the package. Bezel is loose. Tries another one. Bezel is loose. He claims that it must be a bad batch, because he’s carried one for several years and his works great. He reaches into a battered backpack behind the counter and pulls out a grimy, dirt covered Silva Ranger.
Bezel is loose.
Fuck it. Got my money back, but now I have no compass. Every single online review says the Ranger is the best you can buy. I don’t understand that, it’s clearly unsafe for reliable wilderness navigation.
Might get a Suunto mc-2g, that seems to be the second best.
I’ve got the maintenance plan with my gas company, mainly because that way they remind me to get it checked yearly.
I got the new heater in April, a year I didn’t happen to be under contract at that time. They call me every April, and catch me away every time, “I’ll give you a call in the summer”.
Getting set up with them during the regular year is like you describe. For July and the first half of August? I can pick day and time. This year I got a next-day, 8am slot.
Maybe you could try calling during the kind of period when everybody is away on vacation, if you happen not to be.
My husband’s father and stepmother are the biggest trainwrecks I know… Last week, Stepmom apparently tried to commit suicide by overdose - some kind of narcotic, AFAIK. Turns out, this was her second attempt - first was in June. Father-in-law reacts by being an even bigger jackass than usual - we were there this weekend trying to help, if that were possible, or at least to try to keep FIL on an even keel (i.e. not in jail, eating properly, taking care of himself.) Instead of visiting with his wife in the hospital, or his son and granddaughters, he decided that this was the perfect weekend to burn leaves, fiddle with the tractor, etc. Oh, and to drink copiously - like grab a beer before breakfast, and continue drinking all day. (Did I mention that he’s an insulin-dependent diabetic? Yeah. Drinks like he has a death wish, too.)
So, we offer to help him go through the house and make sure that all medications are sorted, necessary but dangerous stuff secured, unnecessary stuff tossed… “No, there’s nothing here.” Yeah, nothing except every goddamned medication that has been brought into that house in over 30 years! Seriously, just opening a couple of cabinets revealed everything from 20-year-old+ bottles of Sinutab to a box of tranquilizers (maybe doctor’s samples - blister packs in a box) with a safety/side effects insert copyrighted 1981! Half-bottles of antibiotics, shit-tons of OTC meds labeled “PM,” (Tylenol, etc.), the World’s Oldest Bottles of hydrogen peroxide, castor oil, aspirin, and so forth. But no, there’s nothing there that could possibly be dangerous to a suicidal woman, right? And all that stuff is so freaking useful! No mention, either of all the medicines that Granddaddy C had when he was under hospice care last year - morphine and who knows what else. Yay.
Also, we found out that FIL had a fender-bender two weeks ago, and MIL backed into someone 3 weeks ago. I wonder if her pill habit or his drinking played a role? Gosh…
Of course, MIL was still in the hospital when we (gladly) left yesterday, because she’s convinced that ripping out her IVs and cussing at the staff will certainly convince them to let her go home! From what I gather, she’s gonna be even more unhappy today or tomorrow, when she learns that she will be committed for inpatient psych/addiction treatment. I wish FIL could get an adjoining bed…
Honestly, I’m not even half as fed up with them as their son is, either: He is a far nicer person than I am, but he stated yesterday that he wishes that those two would just go ahead and make a clean job of their deaths, instead of all of this drama and slow suicide… I can’t argue, either. Especially since Tony’s an only child, and we are stuck dealing with whatever crap they involve themselves in… (Did I rant about FIL getting arrested for drunk & disorderly/assault against his equally trashy brother last December while their father was literally on his deathbed? Or about FIL having shoulder surgery this past spring after getting into a drunken brawl with his “buddy” over a friendly game of pool? Or more minor stuff - like, I’ve never found actual nutritious food at their house. It’s all chocolate milk, candies, Little Debbie cakes, chips, sodas, and beer. No fruit, no vegetables, no whole grains, or beans, or lean protein, or anything with a basic resemblance to what either of them should be eating. Yeah, have a beer to nerve yourself for your insulin shot, FIL. Brilliant. I figure his next crisis will be blindness or foot amputation…)
I have some songs in an iTues playlist that I’d like to order in a certain way. Can’t I just click and move them around?
No, of course you can’t just move them around to put them in a certain order! Don’t be ridiculous! Well, it’s true you could do that before, but not now that we’ve “improved” and updated the software. Now you have to fiddle around with various columns and little tick marks to accomplish the same thing in a more tedious manner. Oh, and is it a playlist or a “smart playlist”? It makes a difference.
Apple made themselves into a big thing by revolutionizing the human / machine interface. They felt that things should be intuitive. Now they’re just as bad as any other system.
This reminds me of a joke my friend from Moscow used to tell about things under the Soviet system: After many years, a Russian guy has saved enough money to buy a car. He goes down to the Bureau of Cars and pays his money. The clerk says, “OK, your car will be read 30 years from today.”
“Morning or afternoon?”
The clerk asks, “What difference does that make?”
“The plumber is coming in the morning.”
The keyboard issue stems from being attached to a Vista box circa 2008. It needs to be nuked from orbit. It’s buffer fills up and the system gets laggy, to the point the keyboard forgets what it is doing for half of the words. You know it’s bad when most of what you hear is the hard drive thrashing.
My feet are cold despite socks and boots. My hands are cold despite mittens. All the heat in my body seems to be concentrated in my sweaty torso. Can I divorce my body, please?
Aw crap. I just went into the food cupboard in the kitchen to see if I had any baking powder, and the cuboard’s full of mouse crap! They’ve chewed into the bags of rice and pasta I had in there, and crapped all over what they haven’t managed to get into. I haven’t been in the house much the last week, and haven’t done any cooking further than heating frozen stuff, so I suppose they just took the opportunity to sneak in.
I don’t have anything major against mice- I have pet mice, all present and accounted for in their upstairs tank (I’m not accusing them of anything), but I really don’t think it’s OK for them to have guests over without letting me know, especially ones with such appalling manners.
I had things to do today, I don’t want to have to spend the day chucking food out and trying to clean everything.
Bollocks.
Fucking pantry moths are all over our kitchen. Spent last weekend cleaning and throwing away everything and setting pheromone traps. Now we have to restock, and the damn moths have filled four traps so far, with no end in sight? Where the fuck are they hiding?
Pet food? Bird seed? A misplaced and hidden box of cereal or rice? Look for anything that is remotely like grain.
Everything like that is gone, and all the canned goods have been washed. the dog food is in an airtight container, in the mudroom away from the pantry, and the container was scoured last weekend.
Hey, maybe we should just open a wildlife reserve together? I’ve got all three species of UK clothes moth living in the house too!
I am aware of the fact you need to run your siren and lights as you drive your big red firetruck to accidents. However, I am pretty sure it is bad form to honk out “Shave and a Haircut” at the same time.
It is sort of my fault. I see that my 2011 inspection was done on September 27. I forget when I called last year, but it was probably only two weeks in advance.
Still, I doubt too many folks are running their heating systems yet this season. We haven’t been close to a frost in our area. So I wouldn’t think there have been many emergency calls.
Sometimes a moment of illumination can come in a prayer. Sometimes in a moment of thought. Sometimes it comes from the words of another, quietly contemplated in a moment of self-honesty.
And sometimes, like last night, it comes in a 90 second dream so profound, so distressing, so honest that it shows you the entire gordian knot of your psyche. All the pain, the confusion, the emptiness. How you are what you are, why you feel what you feel, why you are where you are in your life.
What it doesn’t show is how to resolve that knot. Only that it is.
Probably not many emergency calls, but this is the time of year when everyone (including you) starts thinking about getting their furnace checked up for the winter. If you put a reminder on your calendar to call in late August or early September, I’d be willing to bet you could get an appointment right away.
Freeze everything for at least 48 hours. I put all flour, grains, whatever in the freezer for 48 hours when they enter the house. I keep the flour and rice and stuff like that in the freezer.
That was very movingly written.
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I’ve merged the two minirant threads into one.
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