Kevin's Watch

lorin wrote:I'M GETTING A FURNACE !!! (minus the 1000 deductible.) Thank you FEMA! One thing off my mind.

Yay!

lorin wrote:I'M GETTING A FURNACE !!! (minus the 1000 deductible.) Thank you FEMA! One thing off my mind.

Awesome!

Damelon wrote:Mani wasn't feeling himself for a couple of days. The house had messes here and there from him. So much so that I took yesterday afternoon off to pick up a bit after him. Then, I glance at the basement well window and see a nice round hole in it where it looks like the mower threw a stick through it. So this morning will be involved in replacing it.

I was thinking about going up to Wisconsin for the day as a scouting trip for a larger expedition next month, but I mislaid my main key ring. That is the one which has the key to my grandmother's old place on it. That I haven't found the keyring after a day and a half is starting to irritate me. In the time window that I lost it I wasn't doing anything other than cleaning up after Mani and fiddling around with the a new ham radio I had bought with the intention of using in the car, so it can't have gone far. But as a result of its loss, the run up north is off until next weekend.

you realize this post is gonna make every woman in the place wanna come up there and take care of you, right?

why does mani have the poos? you go fix the window, i'll find the keys!
you realize you're supposed to have a dupe keyring don't you? (and if you're like me you should probably have 2 dupes because you'll never remember the "safe place" you put the first dupe) AND i'm not even gonna go grammar nazi on you for that last passive sentence!

just gonna send /hugs

lucimay wrote: you realize this post is gonna make every woman in the place wanna come up there and take care of you, right?

why does mani have the poos? you go fix the window, i'll find the keys!
you realize you're supposed to have a dupe keyring don't you? (and if you're like me you should probably have 2 dupes because you'll never remember the "safe place" you put the first dupe) AND i'm not even gonna go grammar nazi on you for that last passive sentence!

just gonna send /hugs

Well, maybe your vibes allowed me to find the keys. They were downstairs on the bar, sitting on a copy of National Geographic, blending in with the cover picture. It must have been the 5th time I looked there. I left them right above a cleanup spot. I have dupes of the car and my house. They won't allow me to have them for the office and I only had one for up north.

I'm not sure what's wrong with Mani, since he isn't moping around. I think a change of food is in order...

Thanks for the hugs & shit…

Are you sure you don't want to give the shit back to luci, Damelon? Sounds like Mani's got enough for the both of you already. Hope the li'l guy feels better soon.

And you are absolutely right, they shoulda taught Magickmaker to parallel park in driver's ed. Alas, they did not. And her father didn't teach her either when he gave her the car. Bah.

lorin: Yay for the furnace!

Sarge: Yay for a/c!

good thing we got the a/c - it rained for five minutes so the humidity is right through the roof.

Well, I know I'm not around here much anymore. Life is so-so and then great and then it's kinda all over the place but heh.

I got a copy today of the fest dinner video off Romeo today, so wanted to say thanks to everyone that clapped for me <grin>. It was a lovely thing to watch/hear and made me wish I'd been there...but was probably good I wasn't as I probably would have got all blubbery and made a fool of myself. Anyway, that made a start to a wonderful day and then the weather here today was divine. It was warm verging on hot. Lovely after the long winter we've had. It's supposed to go pear-shaped tomorrow and resort to this miserable weather we've been having for what has felt like an entire year but, heh, I'll take the good stuff while I can get it!

Wow! That's a great sign---means it should be up on the SRD site soon (pending Steve's approval, of course)!!! I've been slightly worried, not really, but that's what I do...

cool lorin!
glad you got your "shit" back together Chicago!
good news sarge! (I can't stand the Patriots! We will so smash you in the playoffs!!!! )

I verbally accepted a promotion on Friday. Same department, different group - jury is out on whether I will get an upgrade to an office from my current Cubicle of Entropy.
Plus, I don't have to move away from Indy (yay!), though I will be traveling a little bit (probably 10-20%, more than the 1% travel I do today). I'm actually looking forward to the travel. It comes with a little more money, a benefits powerup, more workday schedule flexibility, and a whole lot less of the tedious project bull$#!t I have had to deal with over the past 3 years.

Woohoo! I feel like I'm out of career doldrums!

dw

danlo wrote:We will so smash you in the playoffs!!!!

Sadly, that's probably true. BTW, belated congratulations on the adoptions. Here's to retaining sanity!

Great news, dukkha. Sometimes a change of bossery does wonders.

Congrats, dw!

Sea -- of *course* we clapped for you!

Congrats DW! Yay for you Sea!

I'm tired. I worked hard today. Sorus witnessed me on my hands and knees scrubbing years of accumulated filth and floor wax off a section of the floor. It was disgusting. I needed to move the postal service and ups drop off bins to a location that did not have customer access since previously they had just been piling it on the floor where customers could get at it which is technically a violation of federal law. I spoke with Kin about it last week and so over the weekend he moved a shelving unit out from under the counter, Sorry about you losing some space, Sorus. Anyway, under the shelving unit was filthy. Simply filthy. I went to the hardware store and got a hard bristled scrub brush and some industrial floor wax remover and went to town. I got some on my hands. Unfortunately I had a cut on my finger and even though I washed my hands thoroughly after cleaning up the gunk, my cut swelled up and got all painful and gross towards the end of the day. I was in the break room looking in the first aid kit for a needle to lance it and drain it but couldn't find one. Russell asked what I was looking for and I told him and he came up with a thumb tack and thoughtfully sterilized it for me with his lighter. I then proceeded to thank him and then aggressively lanced it, cutting it a a bit further and squeezing to let the fresh blood wash all the chemical traces out of the cut. As I stood there bleeding and squeezing my injury over the sink, Russell looks at me and says, "You are effing tough as s--t! Aren't YOU?" In an awestruck voice. I laughed then gave him my best mischievous evil grin and said, "Yes I am, but only when I need to be." Needless to say, the cut looks a heck of a lot better and the end of my finger no longer looks like a half assed but bright red version of Aunt Marge's finger from the Harry Potter movies.

On other notes, Sorus, if you read this, remind me tomorrow because now that I am in our store's system I think I can approve vacation requests. When I get in tomorrow, 11:30, make me check right away. At the very least I can take you off the schedule and put in paid days and I will handle any "objections" to your days off.

On other silly notes, On Friday, Russell was talking about giving his girl a promise ring and talked about where he was taking her for dinner. I said, "OH NO NO NO, seriously, NO. You need someplace much more romantic and cool and about the same price range." Then I introduced him to SF's famous Belden Place, set up like a Parisian street with fabulous restaurants etc. He apparently took my advice and so when he got in today he came up to me and told me I was SOOOO right, dinner was awesome, she was totally impressed with the whole date and how romantic it was and she majorly LOVED it as did he. We high fived and I told him, "You need any courtship advice, don't listen to these yahoos, come talk to me and I'll hook you up with the honest girl opinion." He was happy and said he would since according to him I've already more than proved my romance advice is awesome. HAHAHAHAHA! Now if I could just figure out how to have a relationship and still retain the level of independence I need I would be all set.

aliantha wrote:And you are absolutely right, they shoulda taught Magickmaker to parallel park in driver's ed. Alas, they did not. And her father didn't teach her either when he gave her the car. Bah.

Yeah, I was gonna ask about that...parallel parking is one of the requirements to get your license here.

--A

In the course she took, they taught her just enough to get her through the licensing test. For this, I paid however many hundreds of dollars....

OTOH, she successfully parallel parked her own car last night, whoo hoo!

Odd, that. Here, the test includes three maneuvres, out of four possible ones: Reversing round a corner, three-point-turn, parallel parking, and reverse parking. Most tests skip the reverse parking (probably because it'd mean finding a car park to do it in) and do all the others.

But then I've always had the impression that it's pretty easy to be allowed to drive in the US.

Magickmaker said all she had to do was to back out of the parking spot at the DMV, drive some city streets to a traffic circle (a.k.a. a roundabout) and successfully negotiate that, then drive back to the DMV, find a parking spot and park. Her instructor told her that if she was unlucky, all the angle parking spaces would be gone and she'd have to parallel park with the DMV guy in the car. But the DMV guy must have needed to use the john or something -- he just said, "Okay, you passed, come inside after you've parked the car," and got out.

Here in Florida, Beorn doesn't even need to take a driving test at the DDL (Division of Driver Licenses). When he took Driver's Ed in high school (summer course), they administered the written test for his restricted drivers license (Florida version of a learner's permit, which is valid until he turns 25, I think) and issued him a slip of paper showing he passed. He took that paper to the DDL. They charged him the application fee, took his photo, and issued him a restricted license.

At the end of the Driver's Ed course, his instructor gave the students a driving test. Same deal. Beorn passed the course and was issued a certificate which has no expiration date saying he passed Driver's Ed, including the driving test. All he needs to do is bring that to the DDL, have his photo taken, pay the driver's license application fee, and he will receive his regular driver's license.

Since no insurance is required for a restricted license (the licensed adult in the car with the learner is held financially responsible in case of any accidents), and it doesn't look like Beorn will own a car any time soon, as keeper of the filing system here I need to be sure I keep track of where that certificate is filed. Unless Beorn buys himself a car before his restricted license expires, I don't see him getting a regular driver's license before then...

Menolly, you are lucky that Florida still includes practical driving instruction in drivers' ed courses. In Virginia, students get nothing but classroom instruction. They get a certificate at the end of the class that says the passed, but they still have to take the written test at the DMV to get a learner's permit. The learner's permit is good for 5 years, and the fee doubles as the driver's license fee -- in other words, if you get your license before your permit expires, you don't have to pay again for the license.

Anyway. For students under 19 (I think) to get a license, they must have X number of hours of instruction from their parents *and* they must complete a driver training course from a private provider. Then there is some other hoopla involving going before a judge to pick up your license. The idea is to set the bar for obtaining a license so high that high schoolers will stay off the roads and not get killed.

Once the kids turn 19 or 20 (I forget which), all that rigamarole goes away. Go in, pass the written and driving tests, and boom, walk out with your license.

Interestingly, I saw a study recently that showed an uptick in accidents among older teen drivers, with a corresponding drop in accidents among younger drivers. In other words, it's not so much the age of the driver, but the experience level that matters.

danlo wrote:Wow! That's a great sign---means it should be up on the SRD site soon (pending Steve's approval, of course)!!! I've been slightly worried, not really, but that's what I do...

To the best of my knowledge, he has a copy, but that's all I know.

Cameraman Jenn wrote:On other notes, Sorus, if you read this, remind me tomorrow because now that I am in our store's system I think I can approve vacation requests. When I get in tomorrow, 11:30, make me check right away. At the very least I can take you off the schedule and put in paid days and I will handle any "objections" to your days off.

Thanks, Jenn - but I don't expect you to pull any strings for me. If I had known things weren't going to change immediately I would have pushed for it myself, but I took the safe route and that's my problem.

So, funny story. I'd been sponsoring this cat at the SPCA for the last couple of weeks, and I got permission to adopt him yesterday. Even though he'd been there for a while, I had this sense of urgency, and got there right after they opened today. I got to meet him and he was an awesome cat, but he wouldn't have worked with my living situation. I'd been there for about an hour when someone came in and adopted him. Life is weird. I'm glad I got there in time to meet him and I'm glad he got a home.