Point of order. I’ve heard Whamageddon can only occur between American Thanksgiving and Christmas
I am English; your Armerican festivisties mean nothing to us.
As soon as Halloween is over on this side of the pond, the Christmas flood swamps the shops unimpeded.
As it does here, I just choose to ignore it.
It ended “Last Christmas”, of course.
Your post rang home because my uncle died when he was 30 for drug-related reasons, and during the funeral it was a similar fire-and-brimstone lecture; the pastor, who did not know my uncle, all but stated he was going to hell. I felt bad for my grandmother.
Just made my son do homework like the cruel mother I am. His executive function is so bad, you guys. He couldn’t make it through writing one word without getting distracted, writing something that wasn’t correct (on purpose) or dropping his pencil. I know why he’s doing it; he finds the task daunting and doesn’t know how to deal. I think I get like a B- for how I handled that. But I’m not sure what would earn an A.
He did get diagnosed with ADHD, plus some additional executive function deficits in memory, inhibition and strategic planning that are more severe than ADHD would explain. We’ve got a long road ahead.
A follow up on my post regarding the cabin air filter change on our Mazda CX-50. Turns out that Mazda got it right. On other cars I had to actually remove the glove box (and in some cases, remove screws and other trim pieces) to access the filter. On the CX-50, all that you need to do is open the glove box, pop out a little panel in the back, and voila, there is the filter. Extremely easy.
So an anti-rant. Sorry. Back to our regularly scheduled rants.
Did I mention that the La Nina cycle was bringing us lots of snow? Yes, I believe I did. I’ll just mention here that the forecast for the next couple of days is, respectively, snow, and then, more snow. The snow forecast is now an actual colour-coded weather alert – “yellow”, on a scale that goes from yellow to orange to red.
I may have to declare a state of emergency. There’s lots of food, but the Caesar mix and rum supply is running desperately low. In a worst-case scenario, I may have to subsist on vodka martinis until this hellish weather blows over.
Like a caveman!
That line reminded me of a bit that W.C. Fields used to do in his unique vocal style. It went something like this:
Aaah yes, I remember we once were on a trip through Borneo and lost our corkscrew. We had to subsist for several weeks on food and water. Horrible!
Well, the forecast has changed. We got the expected snow today (Snowplow Guy was just here) but a warm front is coming through tomorrow.
If “warm front” makes you think of balmy tropical weather, no. Depending on time of day and exact location we may get (a) wet snow, (b) rain, (c) ice pellets, or (d) best of all, freezing rain! And possibly all four, at different times. OTOH, since I’m somewhat farther north than the YYZ airport primary forecast area, maybe just another shitload of plain snow.
I put myself for being an idiot. I recently, on the advice of my doctor, signed up for my insurance company’s Livongo program, which provided me with a glucometer and supplies so I could start monitoring my blood sugar. When I opened the box and read the instructions, I noted that there seemed to be a shortage of the promised lancets and test strips. So today I called customer service to see if I could order more lancets, which I was low on. During the course of the conversation I was assured that the package should have included more than one packet of 25 lancets and more than one bottle of 50 test strips. I checked the box again and found that under the top section there was a zippered pouch which contained additional pouches of lancets and two more bottles of test strips.
I had thought that the box was too big for what had been in it, but in these days of excessive packing materials I had assumed this was another case of this. I’m just glad I hadn’t thrown the box out after removing what I had thought was all the contents.
Stupid eye doctor’s office. They schedule the next year’s appointment when you visit, but don’t schedule it with you…they just add it to their calendar and then tell you about it near the scheduled appointment date. If they had worked with me to schedule, it would not have been for their selected date and time, since I’m never available then. And the next possible appointment is at another unworkable time six weeks later.
I already was considering a change, and I believe this is the motivation I need.
Running around all day trying to cram in work before I have to pick my son up from school, dealing with IT problems rather than actual work, now sitting in 35F weather in the fucking pouring rain waiting to pick up my son, so I can take him to social skills group and spend the evening at some restaurant by myself editing the massive document my husband wrote to give to my son’s IEP team (he is a brilliant man, but exceptionally verbose in writing, and I am frequently his editor.)
The rain is the worst part.
I hate rain too.
I am looking forward to some warmer temperatures and some rain so it will melt the accumulated snow mounds everywhere since last week’s 8 inches of snow.
Where I park behind my work building I need to shimmy my car in between a dumpster and a mound of snow.
Everytime I back up too far one of my exhaust pipes gets full of snow.
I am tired of cleaning it out with my back scratcher. 
Now my feet are wet! And cold! 
I keep one or two spare pairs of socks in the back of my car for exactly this kind of emergency.
Good luck with the kid’s group thing tonight - I hope it helps!
I’m getting pretty tired of the lottery player who plays through the local corner store.
It’s happened a few times. All I want are some quick things, and this guy is at the counter, having the clerk check all his tickets. Some win, most lose, but in spite of the fact that he can check them himself at the self-serve kiosk, he insists that the clerk check all of them.
I wait, with nothing more fancy than a Coke and some chips. The woman behind me has a couple of kids, for whom she is buying a treat. The guy in front just wants a loaf of bread. The guy six people back in line just wants a pack of smokes. And we’re all waiting for this lottery player to have forty-eight or sixty or ninety-six tickets checked.
And then, after ten minutes of waiting, this asshole turns around and declares, “Woo-hoo! I won ten bucks!” Which he proceeds to pour back into the lottery—now, he has to fill out a whole new slip, because he wants new numbers. Meanwhile, the lineup to actually purchase stuff is twelve people deep.
I get that the corner store makes money off selling lottery tickets. But fercrissake, there’s gotta be a limit. Check your tickets at the self-serve kiosk, and only bring winning ones forward to be paid off. Don’t make the poor clerk go through the hoops needed to tell you that your thirty-six tickets lost, when a dozen of us are waiting to transact actual business and, y’know, buy stuff.
At some of our local grocery stores, the lottery terminal is at the customer service desk. Where they have a separate line for all lottery business and the other customers with other needs are served first. There’s often enough workers to put one on lottery duty, but when there’s not, that’s the position that gets cut.
Not so practical at a one-person corner store. But heck yeah, that’s infuriating. I’ve sat behind somebody like that, but with a dozen tickets, not a stack.
If I was your store owner, it’d be “We’ll check and redeem up to 5 tickets then you can go to the back of the line. Wanna buy more tickets? Go to the back of the line again.”
That particular player will grumble, but he’s not going anywhere else. If he could, he already would be.
When Powerball gets stoopid large, like > ½B, I’ll sometimes invest $2 in the fantasy of ending up like Scrooge McDuck & bathing in a tub swimming pool filled with gold coins. Some of my rules are never buy a ticket locally & never wait in line which keeps my annual spend small enough to be considered an investment in fantasy rather than wasted money. I’ve learned that despite Powerball being available in almost every state lottery tickets are state by state & that the bar code scanners don’t work on out of state tickets.
Now I’m only buying single-digit # of tickets per year but one must go on the website & manually look up to see if I’ve won anything. I recently did very well on a ticket, I got two of the winning numbers, which, of course is the same payout as what I usually get…not a single # on my ticket matching what was pulled for a whopping payout of $bupkiss
I get together with a group for a long weekend once or twice a year. Evening entertainment includes taking over the hotel lobby & bullshitting, shmoozing, socializing, including playing Left-Right-Center. Most of the games require you to ante up, three whole quarters so losing sets one back a whopping 75¢! 
However, the last night we up the ante & it’s three $2 scratch-tix. I won the scratch-off game one year; 60-some tickets; which got me $42. Now I had fun with others but the return on my time investment of scratching so many was hardly worth it.