Party Time! [DOT 4/6/22]

4/6/22 MegMegMcGee 25

“The beans!” I exclaimed, realizing I’d left a catering tray of leftover baked beans in my Mini Cooper for 3.5 hours while I went to have ‘one quick drink’ with my favorite aunt and uncle.

My car smells DELICIOUS!

Think I can still eat those beans? J/K, I already did. I’ll let you know later if it was a good idea.

So that was the first grad party for my little cousin.

Today’s party is a neighborhood party for 3 of the kids on my street. This one will be more fun, the kids are cooler (sorry cuz) and I don’t have to drive anywhere.

What’s on your weekend agenda?

Ukraine Updates!

Russia-Ukraine war latest: Ukrainians push back in Sievierodonetsk; Africans are victims of the war, Putin told – live
https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2022/jun/04/russia-ukraine-war-latest-ukrainians-fight-back-sievierodonetsk-putin-macron-africans-victims-food-shortages-zelenskiy-eu

#JFC

Ah, the home state. Never failing to be an embarrassment.

Stonks(ish).

Coinbase, founded in San Francisco, is rescinding already-accepted job offers — by email
https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Coinbase-rescinds-accepted-job-offers-17217989.php

Like he couldn’t have waited 1 more minute? WTF.

Disneyland Paris apologizes after worker ruins wedding proposal, gets booed
https://www.sfgate.com/disneyland/article/Disneyland-Paris-employee-ruins-proposal-17218705.php

Listen to Jorts!

Have a great weekend!

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25 Comments

  1. Re: Jorts and sleeping in: But be on the lookout for pesky puppies:

    Faithful Hound and I have been abandoned for the weekend. I missed last night’s NOT but my favorite place to go is beach house rentals. I’ve been to many up and down the eastern seaboard. I’m also a fan of (limited) separate vacations, so is Better Half within reason, so he’s off on Fire Island for a little R&R with his cronies while I am swamped with work. Not to worry, though: I am a Lowly Freelancer and I bill by the hour. “Please, sir, may I have another (project),” is my motto. I’m going to go into this in more detail during the upcoming Brain Drain. Forewarned is forearmed.

  2. hahahahahahahaha….the gubment here passed a law that houses must be at least  *insert how effecient* to be legally rentable

    now as per usual..thats a law largely screwing over the poor

    but

    i did just get a letter from my landlord asking me to pretty please not complain too hard when the gubment turns up to check

    now..i’m a reasonable guy…so i’m thinking

    go get fucked

    not like im planning to stay here anyways…

    i figure my landlord owes me money for providing me with such a shitty house  and i intend to sing to the high heavens about it the momement the gubment comes a knocking

    (which at gubment speed…will be about two hundred and fifty six years from now…..under rutte 54.some…)

    (its a little known fact…but our little dutchyland is in fact a dictatorship stuck in a rutte for a while now….we tried voting him out….but it didnt work as apparently politicians can vote themselves back in over here…i mean…how does that work?)

    • Maybe an appeal to his Most Gracious Majesty King Willem-Alexander? Doesn’t he have multiple royal palaces? Your town may have one. The Netherlands being on the small side, they can’t be more than 20 miles (however many kilometers that is) from each other, and surely he and his family can’t use them all. Plus, doesn’t he have a side gig as a KLM pilot, a latter-day “Flying Dutchman”, that keeps him out of the country during his shifts? Maybe he would grant you a grace and favour residence, and your rent would be 17 Dutch guilders plus 10% of your tulip crop per annum.

        • I will remit 1 (one) Dutch guilder via International Money Transfer. I will have it delivered via messenger boy to the purser of the SS Rotterdam, which departs from Pier 18, New York, on Tuesday, 7th June. According to my latest copy of The Shipping Times, it is expected to arrive at the Amsterdam docks the afternoon of Thursday, 16th June. You may retrieve it there.

  3. I have been lucky enough to call lake Ontario my “second home.” My grandfather bought the first, and smallest parcel right across the street from Ontario Lake in Sawyers Bay, New York, quite a bit before I was born and I pretty much spent my summers there. Not a traditional summer camp or rich persons cabin (that’s Henderson or Sackets Harbor) but still, amazingly lucky to be able to spend summers playing baseball, basketball or football and then jumping in the lake, or whatever. My grampa had to sell his tiny camp a few years ago, but luckily we have family and friends circled around that camp and they let us set up a camper and still visit whenever we want, actually going over there later today.

        • You would rather not souviens? Part of its charme, for me, is I don’t pay taxes there and don’t pay attention to its provincial government, since the US has always had a strict blockade on any Canadian news whatsoever (except for hockey).

          The Quebeckers/Québécoise I know sure do complain a lot. I once made the mistake of telling a distant relative, who did her university training in the US, “Well, you’re perfectly fluent in English, why don’t you go to Ontario or BC, you can move around the country, can’t you? It can’t be that different.” And she said, wisely, “Why don’t you move to Tuscaloosa, Alabama, or rural Wyoming, it can’t be that different from New York, right?”

          She, like a lot of people, is in internal exile. So am I. I wouldn’t live in 90% of New York State, and probably at least 95% of the country. Ironically, as the Grim Reaper draws ever closer, and we consider retirement, I’m almost sure we’re going to leave New York but we’ll go abroad, to Mediterranean Europe. Why buy a house on a lake two hours from Manhattan when it’s so much more fun to uproot yourself entirely and move to a place where you aren’t a citizen, you know no one, and the people you do know are 5,000 miles and an expensive international flight away? Still, this is our plan. When our episode of House Hunters International airs I’ll be sure to let all of you know.

    • paying for bloodwork?

      you know….i dont think the hospital has ever billed me for stabbing me…..pretty sure they do that shit for shits and giggles here

      getting a nurse to asplain to me how i should wrap up my broken toe myself cost me a couple hunnerd….yeah….counseling is not covered by insurance..least not mine

      lessons learnt

      no asky the staff….it counts as counceling

      ill ask doctor google next time

      aaaaand get told i have cancer probably

      • They do it here, because we have the bestest world-class health care system in the world by world health care standards, just ask any world-class “non-profit” hospital chain executive. It’s usually per vial of blood taken, though, or maybe by test performed. Believe me. However, despite the “non-profit” pseudonym, it’s not a free-for-all, that would be–I hesitate to even use the term, so odious and un-American is it–socialism.

        This leads to hilarious bills like I have gotten, as a possessor of really good private-sector health insurance (through Better Half, and he gets it as part of his compensation):

        Blood work (medical coding euphemism; little/no explanation of tests performed): $792.38.

        Plan discount: $614.33.

        Plan coverage: $151.45.

        Patient co-pay: $26.60.

         

         

        • oof!

          i get bills like…x- ray $45

          getting all taped up…free

          asking how to do it myself…$380

          that one was a shocker..

          that also maxed out my own risk tho…..so if i get hit by a truck now…i am getting treated for freeeeee! weeeee!

        • A few years ago I had some spotting and the OBGYN was like “I’m pretty sure it’s just that the IUD made your uterine lining a little too thin, but before we go that route* I’ll need to get a swab and check to make sure there’s no bacterial or fungal issues happening.” Despite me having zero symptoms of that. “And we need to do an ultrasound to make sure there’s no cysts or the IUD didn’t shift around.”

          Anyways, the point of this too-much-information story is that single damn swab was used for 14 different tests and I got a bill (with my good insurance) for close to $600. SHOCKER it came back negative for all those things. The ultrasound was one of the insert kinds and cost around $200 after insurance. Also everything looked normal there.

          *the fix was 2 months of estrogen-only birth control pills to reboot things with the uterine lining. $5 at CVS. I was so pissed. Like why couldn’t we have tried that first?? And I was mad at myself because I didn’t think to ask hey are these swab tests expensive?

          • This is so true, and over the last 13 months or so has happened to me innumerable times. I’ve been passed along to innumerable doctors and specialists and once one of them said to me, “Well, this is probably nothing, but we’re doctors and we always want to be as sure as we can be, so just in case I want to schedule an appointment for you to see Dr. X…” I said, because I like this doctor and was friendly with her, “And you like the prompt payments from my decent private insurance, and if I were on Medicaid I’d be shipped off to a city hospital and would be dead within a week of something I contracted there.” “That’s not true. What we’re really trying to do is keep you from becoming sick and/or dying from something preventable, and also having your heirs sue us for medical malpractice.”

  7. Peter Navarro was arrested on contempt of Congress charges related to a 1/6 subpoena, complaining that he was treated like any other arrested person.

    Navarro has been adored by the DC press despite being an absolute hack for years. He’s been given appearances on Meet The Press, op ed space in the NY Times, interviews on broadcast and cable news, despite being repeatedly broadly and openly unreliable on the air. It’s another sign of how much open contempt the DC press has for their audiences.

     

    • Gohmert hilariously complaining about Navarro’s treatment, “If you’re a Republican, you can’t even lie to Congress or lie to an FBI agent or they’re coming after you” 

  8. Oh, hey. Did I ever mention that I got back from Spain? Can’t remember anymore, but, yeah, I did – two weeks ago now. Of course, I came back to the rather unpleasant news that I didn’t have nearly enough PTO to cover the trip as I thought I did because we use two different systems for it – one to grant it and another one to calculate it – that show two different amounts and don’t even fucking communicate with each other, so I basically didn’t get paid for four days. (They did graciously use my two Floating Holidays, though, which I was planning to save for the end of the year.) And since the missing pay corresponds roughly to my lodging and a handful of meals in the town where I was, I had to start picking up overtime and extra hours to start making up the difference, which I figure I’ll have to do most of this month as well. Fortunately, though, we seem to be heading into the magical time at work when people are trying to take time off and there’s a staffing shortage damn near everyday, so the necessary hours can almost be plucked as though from the Giving Tree.

    (Speaking of which, I was out of stamps, so I stopped by the post office today and picked up these delightful little ones.)

    Also, a request to translate some Ecuadorian vital statistics documents just dropped into my lap yesterday afternoon, and they need ’em by Friday. So, between that and the translation exam prep course that I’m trying to finish with a two-week extension (by translating a handful of short passages), I’ll probably be living up to my old GT handle once again. See you in another couple of weeks, then.

  9. Yeah, but as one of my co-workers implicitly reminded me by asking to reach out to me over text this past week, it’s not like we’re in a fucking union or something.

    • I think it’s the accrual system. When I first started working, say I got two weeks of vacation per year. That started on January 1st, and if I took two weeks in mid-January and then I quit on February 1st their loss, not mine. Now, because the screws turn ever tighter on the workforce, there’s accrual. So say you get 24 days “PTO” (sick/vacation/personal) per year. On January 1 you have nothing. On February 1 you have 2 days. Depending on how finely this time is distributed and divided, on February 15th you might have 3 days. On March 7th you might have 4.5 days. Your company works like that I assume.

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