The main streets here are cleared, but not the smaller streets, including the ones where I live, which are still full of ice. Arrrgh! It takes a long time to try to walk on the streets without slipping on the ice, especially when it’s really dark out. I have half a mind to go to the store and buy 10 bags of salt and throw them all over the road.
Oh, I HATE it when people give me sweet stuff as gifts.
A few months ago I did a BIG favor for my next door neighbor – I went to the hospital with her for what was supposed to be a minor procedure but there were complications and it took hours and she had to admitted then transferred to another hospital…
And 3 times since then she has dropped off a big bag full of stuff for me – mostly organic chocolate and health food candy bars -dozens of them.
The thing is, I really work to limit my intake of unhealthy foods, especially sweets. So when I have my sweet treats, I really want to eat whatever very specific item I’ve been craving, not some random candy bar. I’m regifting most of this as stocking stuffers.
And I now have a huge bag of homemade cookies with extra powdered sugar poured directly into the bag to make them extra sweet and extra unhealthy and extra tempting.
This was the official gift from MY YOGA STUDIO!!! Guess they want to pick up business for next year. Actually those 20 and 30 something yogi girls can pretty much eat whatever they want without gaining any ounce as evidenced by the hot chocolate and peppermint sticks and chocolate cookies that they leave out for after class consumption during December but please remember we aren’t all 30.
I don’t think the distinction has anything to do with what you know, just how you go about dealing with it. A Grammar Nazi is someone who thinks they get to force you to have good grammar. That a lot of them don’t know grammar as well as they should is just a side effect of being too caught up in correcting people.
I used to frequently get alcohol as gifts as a token of appreciation.
I don’t drink. I never have. And they all knew that.
From what I understood when our company went through changes a few years back, a lot of it has to do with accounting. My company will pay out unused PTO time if I leave (barring some termination reasons, I think). If they let me have 400 hours, that would mean they’d be paying me 10 weeks of pay in a lump sum in I leave. That looks bad on the books, so they put in harder cutoffs.
Personally, I’ve gotten a lot better at taking PTO over the years, but there are several reasons why it’s been more difficult than it would seem.
First, I’m lucky enough to be in a job where I can work from home, and my bosses have no problem letting me do so if I need to. Plus, after I rotate through night oncall, we get a comp off day before going back to normal day work. So I generally don’t have to take PTO for work around the house or other mundane tasks.
The oncall schedule itself tends to make PTO a little harder to take as well. We do a week of backup oncall, a week of day oncall, and a week of night oncall, and depending on how busy those are, it can compress all the other shit I have on my plate into the weeks between those periods. It’s not so much that I’m indispensable to the company so much as it is that there can be projects with my name on them with deadlines that don’t move because I take a week of PTO.
And, of course, I’m a tech guy in a tech field whose first few jobs were all at tech startups with all the corporate culture that surrounds white and nerdy geeks at tech startups. While the company I’m now with is no startup, a lot of those sort of attitudes are still around.
Anyone want a Maine Coon cat? Miss Lucy managed to get herself locked in our bedroom while we were out. She peed on two pillows, a feather bed and my husband’s favorite comforter. Fuking beast. Ugh. It’s a good thing she’s very beautiful! She’s staring at me right now not in the least repentant.
Holy crap, I am surrounded by morons who can barely construct a cohesive sentence. This house needs an enema.
We had a Christmas buffet, which included non-alcoholic (they said) mulled wine; I was part of a group which left early. Next day I got a gift, which I understand everybody in my team got.
…“Christmas brandy”. “Like yesterday’s mulled wine, but with alcohol”. 21% by volume, IIRC.
Boss: you’ll have to check it in.
Me: hell no, I’m not taking it home
Boss: I thought you didn’t drink?
Me: I don’t. And the only person in my family who does, should not. The chicken gonna taste damn good cooked in this, though.
‘They always give me bath salts,’ complained Nobby. ‘And bath soap and bubble bath and herbal bath lumps and tons of bath stuff and I can’t think why, ‘cos it’s not as if I hardly every has a bath. You’d think they’d take the hint, wouldn’t you?’
Why is my fucked-up immune system so good at going Ballistic Red Alert over a single cat hair, but so shitty at fighting off cough and flu?
Is it my imagination or have car commercials taken over the Christmas ad season? I’m sick to death of those fucking Toyota and Honda ads, which are relentless, not to mention Ford using children to ask Santa for a new pickup. It’s not cute, and buying a car you can’t afford is a really stupid idea. And do they really need to put a disclaimer to the effect that “cars can’t ski-board” on that one stupid ad?
Seems like there have always been lots of car ads around this time, because I always wonder who can afford a Lexus or Mercedes at Christmas! Those and the charity ads seem to be the ones we get each year.
So IKEA wants 70 bucks to ship me my bed.
70 bucks.
If you factor in the industrial area, I’m literally three blocks away from the edge of the closest residential area they could possibly ship to. In real terms, I’m 4km away from the shop and the closest they’re gonna get is like 3.5.
70 bucks.
Fuck you guys.
Speaking of ads – Massachusetts is pushing Season lottery tickets for Christmas presents with the slogan: Happy to give, happy to get.
Which seems grammatically awkward to me, but never mind that.
What irks me is that they demonstrate this theme by having the recipients burst into gales of laughter at receiving the gift.
Say what? Yeah, okay, generally you’re happy when you’re laughing, but don’t believe people generally burst into laughter on getting a present they like. Smile, yes. Say various happy things, yes. Squeal, hug, things like that, sure. Laugh? Not so much.
In fact, if I gave someone a present and they burst into laughter I’d think I’d gone terribly wrong, you know, like giving a pair of ice skates to the guy in a wheel chair or a set of watercolors to a blind girl. The reaction reads to me like “Wow, what an incredibly stupid thing to give me! Hey, people, look what this idiot thought I’d like to have!”
Doesn’t anyone just sell the v-rack for a roaster these days? I don’t want a whole new roaster; I just need a v-rack. I guess I’m going to have to buy a complete set, but the search for a freaking rack cost me three hours and five stores yesterday.
You mean like this one?
Dear Jehovah’s Witnesses,
I like a sweet old lady as much as the next guy. Her sharing a name with my ex-wife is no fault of hers. But if you’re going to send a sweet old lady to my house, please make sure her shit is tight. Not even knowing the context of the verse she’s pushing at me? Thinking “godhead” is a purely Trinitarian term? I don’t want to pwn sweet old ladies, especially by accident. I ended up confusing the poor dear, and that makes me sad. So next time, please send me either a cocksure young snot like the Saints do, or a well-trained battleax who can hang with me.
Cordially,
andros, humanist Buddhist atheist and Biblical scholar
(ETA: Ok, I grok that some traditions do not use the term “godhead” in the same way other do, but c’mon, she should at least be able to roll with it.)
.
Found out a little while ago that someone I thought was a friend had erased me from his list of Facebook friends. Found out today that his sister had erased me too. WTF? 
Am I revolting to that family or something?
The JWs once went to my maternal grandpa’s house. He welcomed them in and had a two-hour conversation about comparative religions. And that’s how they discovered they had found the Lutheran pastor’s home.
They never came back to his house after that, either.
Did they just defriend you or completely block you? It’s not uncommon for people to undergo “spring cleanings” of their Facebook lists, defriending people with whom they don’t often talk or associate, in order to have a less cluttered news feed.