My computer and my car died in the same 24 hours. This week is tiring.

We made an offer on a house, and it was accepted. Also, because the markets freaked out due to omicron mortgage rates were like an 1/8th of a point lower yesterday than Friday, and we were able to lock that in for 60 days. If it drops more they make you split the difference.

So many steps, though! Arranged for home inspection which needed to be done this week. Trying to coordinate a conference call with a lawyer this afternoon. I told her any time would work and the. Suggested 1:30. Tim is holding off on an experiment, because it is hard to walk away when he is in the middle of something...

Sorry for rambling. In short: excited but stressed out.

Congrats, BG! It's a stressful process for sure but worth it ultimately.

Congratulations and good luck, BG!

1: Well, that sucks! Is this dead-dead, need to buy car and computer dead, or is there still hope for resurrections?

Thank you all.

And heebs, that's a bummer.

A house is like a box of chocolates, it's often rectangular and contains carbs wrapped in paper.

The car is probably the alternator or starter? We replaced the battery last week, and it was dead as of yesterday.

The computer is my work computer. IT has it, but they're handing it off to the Dell representative. Mostly I have things up in the cloud, but not the recommendation I was working on that is due tomorrow. It also wouldn't start. I think it's the alternator or starter?

That sounds like the alternator. Or I suppose it could be the starter. Or maybe you just need a good starting paragraph.

It's probably the alternator. Sorry. Big pain to get something fixed right now.

Good luck with it, BG! You've passed a big milestone in the process, so that's good even if it's not over yet (and you still have to physically move).

I am not doing super well for a bunch of reasons, but one puzzling thing is that my sister, who has been one of my closest confidants for over a decade, has suddenly stopped responding to my messages unless they're businessy/ transactional. I waited with maybe an excess of patience, reaching out every week or two and having one video call with her to talk about parental care (nominally), since about mid-September, before asking her if there was a reason for her lack of response, telling her I love her, that I hope she's okay and I'll respect her wishes if she doesn't want to have warm, casual conversations (of the kind we used to have regularly) right now. She hasn't responded at all. She replies within minutes whenever our parents message both of us.

It is really doing a number on me. Part of the issue is that all families generate schemas (schemata, if you must) for understanding one another, and a big one for her is that she's the one person with excellent social skills in an immediate family of mostly introverted weirdos. It plays very much against type for me to have a problem with her social behavior, and it would be a typical response for her to turn the focus back on me (not saying I'm sure she'd do this, just that it would be in line with past experience). But I'm struggling to find anything I've done, or am doing, that is blameworthy. And I guess the idea that she's being cluelessly shitty to me is the best-case scenario anyway... when we spoke over video it was mostly a normal conversation, but she also seemed to be in one of her darker moods, lashing out at our parents and other family members, not connecting with me much emotionally. I definitely felt better afterwards, because all of that was normal enough, lol. But it didn't reset our friendship at all, and I truly don't know what to do now, except keep on cautiously ignoring her back. (I could also call her, but honestly, I don't have zero pride or infinite appetite for being rebuffed and ignored, so I'm not terribly eager to do that -- and more to the point I'm not at my best anyway, so I don't want to make anyone deal with me if they truly don't want to.)

So sorry lk

Lk - so sorry to hear that. It sounds awful. My relationship with my sister has gotten better but is still strained, and she's hypersensitive to anything that might come across as criticism. (Like she heard me say to our mother "Stay Safe" and it sounded like she took that as my saying she wasn't doing a good job taking care of her. I have no good answers, only sympathy and a bit of empathy. Family is complicated.

I'm really sorry, lurid. That sounds terribly hard.

Could it be that she's having a personal or emotional/mental crisis that is unrelated to you? She might be capable of mustering just enough energy to respond to necessary messages but be unable to engage emotionally or have a fun chatty conversation with you.

That sounds very frustrating. The time something most similar to that happened to me, it was a close friend who turned out to be going through having a same-sex affair, getting divorced from her then husband, coming out, and moving in with a new partner. Once that all happened everything was great again. Which is to say, it might not be anything about you.

Thanks, all. To 15/16: yeah, on some level I've been hoping it's about me because the alternative makes me worry more. I hope she's getting as much support as she can from friends and other family.

Sympathies on the dumb machines, heebie.

lk, that sounds really stressful.

Also the zipper broke on my lunchbox. Now I just move the zipper-pull to the center of the zipper, so that while it gapes on both sides, it doesn't gape quite as far as when the zipper-pull is all the way to either side. It's sad and lets all the cold air out.

That sounds like the alternator. Or I suppose it could be the starter.

It's the starter! It's the alternator! It's the starter! It's the alternator! It's the starter! It's the alternator! It's the starter! It's the alternator! It's the starter!

Clearly it must be the alternator.

If you put in a new battery and it started for a few days before stopping starting, it's almost certainly the alternator

Once, in an effort to emotionally support my sister, I guilted her into taking her car in for repairs.

Once I made a dumb joke and I couldn't tell whether Moby thought I was being serious or not.

There's no way we can know.

Thanksgiving was fine. Cassandane's parents came to visit. (Everyone was fully vaccinated except Atossa, who had had her first shot, and at least some adults had had their boosters.) We drove a couple hours south to see Cassandane's cousin in Richmond. A good time was had by all. The weekend was very eventful (travel complications for the in-laws, the kid had an age-inappropriate tantrum because she was so sad when her grandparents left, I got my booster and the kid got her second shot and we both had minor to moderate side effects, we went to a "friendsgiving" Sunday night, and more), but the really crazy thing was Monday morning.

I was taking Atossa to school by bike. I went straight through an intersection in a bike lane. Someone going the other way turned right without yielding. We went onto the hood of her car and broke her windshield. Atossa was screaming and I was pretty scared myself, but I'm pretty sure neither she nor I ever actually hit the ground. In fact, we're both almost fine. Atossa's leg is sore, but she bruised it in an unrelated fall Friday, so getting hit by the car aggravated an existing injury rather than causing a completely new one. I'm sore in a couple places, but it's mild enough that I wouldn't notice it if I wasn't paying more attention due to the obvious circumstances. We declined the ambulance ride to the ER. We took Atossa home to recover and monitor her for a bit, but ultimately brought her to school just a couple hours late. As scary as getting hit by a car on a bike sounds, we're probably a lot better off than if we had been on foot. The windshield broke our fall a lot better than the concrete would have.

Last night and this morning I've just been cracking myself up. "Well, the meeting this morning was frustrating, but I haven't been hit by a car yet today, so I've got that going for me." "Yesterday went as well as could be expected, considering the whole getting-hit-with-a-car thing!" We still aren't sure about certain follow-ups. We've had at least three emergency room trips since covid that all turned out to be false alarms. I don't exactly regret them under the circumstances, but all the same they were miserable experiences.

Holy shit! At least you weren't hit by two cars.

Jesus, glad you're both okay. Poor kid. I'm about ready to destroy all cars starting with heebie's. Everyone seemed particularly insane on the freeway Monday morning here too... seriously thinking about the ebike, if there are any to be had anywhere right now.

You don't have to worry about heebie's car or laptop doing any more damage now.

So we bought a new car for the first time in my life, and it was unsatisfactory and had to be returned. This took us three months to work out, but the dealer was actually pretty reasonable about it all -- the delay was just a function of getting another identical car in stock given the chip shortage.

We drove the lemon vehicle gently and only when necessary, and only put 1,400 miles on it. After we returned it (and after the problem was presumably fixed) we saw it listed on the web site -- accurately as a used car -- for about 10 percent more than we paid. (And we paid the price listed; the salesman scoffed at the idea of bargaining with us.)

Automobile inflation these days is just nuts.

Jesus, glad you're both okay. What happened with the sociopath driver?

"The booster shot side effects were so bad, it felt like I got hit by a car!"

30: $500 citation for the accident. Plus she'll have to replace her windshield. I'll probably be making an insurance claim for the damage to the bike but I'll bet it won't come to $200.

In her defense, she stopped and made the 911 call, so that puts her ahead of the driver involved in my wife's accident 5 years ago. And the sun was pretty much exactly in her eyes.

Jesus, Cyrus. Glad you and Atossa are okay. Do get checked out tho - if something turns up later you want it documented.

Yes, glad you're O.K. That's a lot for a kid to take in stride.

$500 citation for the accident

You can't even get a new alternator for that.

@2 presumably in Boston? What neighborhood?

Just saw that Dr. Oz is apparently running for the PA Senate seat? Specifically opposing the fascism of public health-based mandates. Ew.

And congrats to BG, sympathy to heebie (I find "the car suddenly won't start" very stressful), and lk, I'm sorry. My sister is the distanced version all the time (although I think the social skills run opposite), so I can imagine how it would feel to go from being very close to feeling a gulf opening.

35: No, the burbs. Outside of 128 even but within biking distance of the commuter rail. This has space for 1-2 offices in addition to the 3 bedrooms. I'll probably put the TV in the bigger "office" as a den and make the living room more formal. Since I'm going to be at home at least 3 days/week, space for an office is important.

Lots of conservation land and places to walk. You live by the train schedule, but it's faster to get Boston and Cambridge than where I am now.

I am also sad to learn that Trader Joe's has discontinued their Greek feta salad dressing as of 2 weeks ago. Their oyster crackers too. Those were more substantial than the saltine-like ones, but they've had production problems. Now, I need to find a creamy Greek dressing. When I google, I find vinaigrette-type ones.

36: And if he were black and tried to vote in PA with that address, he'd be exhibit A in the pillow-fucker video on stop the steal. He's a New Jersey resident.

49: Yeah, does he have plans to move?

41 to 40.

He has been registered to vote at his in-law's address, because you can do that kind of thing if ethics only apply to others.

Further anti public health garbage. A federal judge is staying Biden's vaccine mandate for healthcare workers. I think we have a state mandate for nursing homes, and several hospitals have mandated it here. Breyer declined to review a major health system's mandate, so it looks like the private ones will hold.

I am delighted to uncover Moby's real job: he writes questions for Coursera. This one just came up, for real, in a test that Ume was doing:

It is not necessary to report adverse events observed during a trial if authors are struggling with the word count limit

[]True / False[]

That's false. You have to create a supplemental section.

I still look at that question and think "There are going to be people who get that wrong"

We get adverse events reporting training every year.

Ah well; another illusion shattered.

How tight is the word limit anyway? That was the touch that seemed to elevate this above the mundane "nobody wants to hear bad news" level.

The word limit is a constant problem. Usually 3,000 or 4,000.

And people usually waste over 1,000 words reviewing the previous literature instead of letting me explain the regression models in glorious detail.

||

I am having panic attacks as I listen to Barrett's questions about why having the right to terminate parental rights in less than 48 hours should make the need for abortion obsolete.

So very angry at RBG and everybody who prevented Garland from getting on the Court even if he is meh.

Apparently the minivan is fixed! It was just corroded terminal connectors and wiring? They said the alternator and starter were fine.

Everything's coming up milhouse!

Except the supreme court!

Update: the kid has an appointment with her doctor at 3 today, just to make sure that certain aches and pains really are minor. Our only path so far to getting her an x-ray is taking her to an emergency room, which we really hope to avoid, so we're hoping her doctor says it's not needed. I just got the police report and found three errors in it, but none relating to the substance of the accident. I'm trying to schedule an appointment with my doctor as well just in case, but nothing so definite yet.

56: Good idea. Especially if you find you have a mild concussion and need to take a day or 2 off work.

56: Atossa's doctor says she's fine. She's amazed by the story, but based on the office evaluation she doesn't think an x-ray or anything else is needed, nor further treatment besides general taking-it-easy stuff. I've decided that I don't need to copy-edit the police report; as annoying as it is that he got our names wrong and a couple other things, there's no real question who it refers to.

taking-it-easy

"It-easy" is my name for xanax.

Congrats on the house, BG! And well done for securing and locking in a lower mortgage rate.

this birthday party is hilarious. Ace's friend is having her 9th birthday party at a dive bar.

there's karaoke. Mostly old men singing country songs and 3rd graders singing pop songs.

Now I feel stupid for using the Children's Museum.

it felt like it violated a whole bunch of norms that I didn't even know I held. A weeknight! 2 days advance notice! A tejano bar in the sticks! what.

Half-tejano, half-cowboy, I should say. There are some serious old white guys belting out some country gold.

I've never heard the song "Bandy the Rodeo Clown" before. I'm growing.

This is amazing. Keep liveblogging!

Ace and her 3 best friends are knocking it out. At first they were total giggle fritzes on the stage, but now they've developed some stage presence.

Then karaoke guy got the whole bar to sing happy birthday to the birthday girl. Who was in the bathroom while we sang.

The other funny thing is that we came directly from the menorah lighting on the town square - for some reason the big gathering was held on the 4th day?! - and so we brought a bunch of chabad and dreidel shwag to the party.

omg. This kid is belting out Journey. THERE IS NO SOUTH DETROIT!!

What did Ace and her friends sing?

More new to me songs: "I'm just a ghost in this house" 🎶

DON'T STOP BELIEVIN'! (Journey, CA. 1981).

Most recently, "Sunflower". I'll have to have her remind me of what else.

And no one seems to care if the nerdy white lady hangs out on her phone in the corner. Although I did facetime Jammies in for one of her songs.

I'm with 53 although I couldn't have borne actually listening to the oral argument. I'm struggling to process it. What is there to even say?

Most recently, "Sunflower".

I have to confess, I'm not all that familiar with Journey's more recent oeuvre.

But can anyone beat "Just a small town girl/Livin' in a lonely world"? (DON'T STOP BELIEVIN'!)

70: Those years in Ann Arbor really left a mark. AJ's friends all scream WINDSOR over South Detroit.

home now. Stayed way past bedtime because it was such a strange, fun night.

THERE IS NO SOUTH DETROIT!!

My ex-brother-in-law claims to be from there. Says its called actually called "Windsor, Ontario".

Ah, pwned by 78

Good lord, this week. I just would like to vent. I spent four hours on the phone with the IRS today. I did not budget four hours to spend on the phone. Everyone on the phone was totally nice and helpful and great, but the system is just insanely understaffed. I assume that's the bottleneck, at least.

I got a letter saying I needed to verify my identity within 60 days, with a specific number to call. Every day I'd call, and get an outgoing message saying that the volume of calls was too high, call back tomorrow, goodbye.

Finally called the regular help line at 1 pm today. After an insane phone tree, I get to the right spot, and they ask if I'd like to leave a call back number. Sure! They call me back around 1:45. A very nice woman tells me that I qualify for an alternate form of ID verification, since I'm reporting that I can't get through. I just need to get 3 forms of ID for me and for Jammies, and all these documents (which I already had gathered), and fax stuff in. Great.

But then at the last minute she says, "OR I could patch you through to the number that you can't get in to, and you could just do this over the phone." I felt like I couldn't turn that down, and then once I was connected and in the system, I felt like I couldn't walk away from the process because I'd be doomed to locating a fax machine.

SO. Hold music plays during my office hours. Periodically I have to kick everyone out and talk to someone for 5-10 minutes. It comes time for me to get the kids. So I need to have everything available in the car? I grab documents, download items to my loaner-computer desktop, and head out.

Driving home, I have to pull over now and then to look at various tax return documents and answer questions. All of this makes me too late to get the kid to the lesson on time, which feels very stressful. The teacher is very gracious with me being 20 minutes late. Everyone in this story is kind and gracious.

Then I have to get myself to a city commission meeting, where I'm zooming in. There is a train stopped at the tracks near our house. The big citywide Christmas festival starts today, and traffic was unreal. Etc. Etc.

Finally, I'm here. The main lawyer for the committee doesn't show up. So the meeting is cancelled.

I've just been feeling very harried since 1 pm. It's fine. IT'S FINE.

My work computer is still broken but the minivan is fixed, at least. And at least I got to hear country gold and Tejano karaoke last night with my eight year old. (Whose trust I deeply violated when I facetimed Jammies in to watch, and she's hurt and angry with me, and I'm realizing that I really should not have done that. I feel terrible. Also fuck I talk about my kids a lot online in ways that might make them really upset.)

That sucks. It's been a stressful week here, but I was at least able to bill for most of the stress.

It's all so trivial in the grand scheme of things! And yet!

That's the spirit.

Not starting a militia every time you get run through the phone mill by the IRS now counts as saintly patience.

Earlier this week, I was thinking I went prematurely jowled. But it went away, so now I think I had swollen lymph nodes.

Also, my ear kind of hurts.

I think it's your alternator.

My seat belt sensor is broken, so if I have a passenger, it beeps for the whole trip unless I make everyone ride in the backseat.

I sometimes have dreams where I'm trying to drive from the back seat. It's stressful. Usually there is no driver's seat.

The driver's seat sensor works.

I wish, instead of hanging up on you, the IRS phone line would let you set up an appointment at least. That way they could space it out however they wanted.

unless I make everyone ride in the backseat.

90 is basically Moby channelling my Dad: 'Don't make me stop this car! don't make me come back there!'

I am feeling sorry for myself, lying in bed with a cold and a bandage on my wrist recovering from an angiogram. Going to have to replace one of my heart valves. I am not looking forward to this but the alternative is rather worse. The thing that really worries me is that they don't want to do the operation without me producing symptoms even though the valve is, I'm told, severely occluded. Terror will of course mimic all the symptoms I could possibly want -- or not want.

In the meantime I have to dictate things because I'm not supposed to be straining my wrist in anyway for the next 48 hours. This also is a pain. On the other hand the sort of opening up the wounded my wrist to let adultery bleed out is disconcerting. I think I will leave adultery it's a typo for a Daughtery no fuck you bag it's an artery.

Oh no, Nworbie. That sounds awful. The last bit is funny, though.

Sorry, Heebie and NW. Those both sound worse than getting hit by a car. (No, I'm not done yet, sorry.)

95.1: Taste care of yourself and best wishes for the replacement.

Thanks. The NHS is weird at the moment. A huge penumbra of dysfunction and a little core of competence and compassion. But you have to get into the hospital somehow, and that takes a lot of hassling, in my experience.

Perhaps we should rename the voicemail systems deaf panels.

Have you tried making it so that you get charged some amount that neither you nor anyone you can talk to will know for several months?

95: Good luck, NW! I don't suppose you'll be able to liveblog the operation, but keep us posted.

82: I had a rough time with my father's estate and the IRS, but in fairness to the IRS, my father decided not to file tax returns for the last 13 years of his life, so I probably can't blame the bureaucracy.

A valve is like a box of chocolates, blood doesn't go through easily if it's working well.

I'm not a confectioner, so I may be wrong.

And visiting a confectionery is out of network on my insurance.

I took a post down right now because I used the word "spazzy" throughout, and it occurred to me that it is a pejorative and I should phase it out. I'm trying to think of a synonym. I am trying to describe a type of concentration where you have a ton of energy for wildly throwing ideas at the wall and have no idea what will stick.

Well, it's back up. It's clunkier but at least not insulting to anyone.

Idea-throwy?

That's kinda where I landed with it, yes.

It's a good metaphor.

Huh, yeah that's a word that I have only ever used to refer to a certain kind of teenage math nerd (especially the ones who play bughouse), but agree it should probably be phased out, and also agree that I don't know a good replacement word.

There's an interesting phenomenon here related to globalization and social media, where it used to be that there were just big differences in what words were considered offensive in different countries let alone different languages. But now, if a word is a slur in the UK or Canada, we're also not going to use it in the US. Which is mostly fine especially within flavors of English, but causes big problems when you start applying it to different languages (you can't really declare the word for Black in all Romance languages to be offensive, or fire people for using the most common word in spoken Mandarin if they're speaking Mandarin, but this is causing big clashes).

||

Home Inspection went well! The inspector even said it was a great house (meaning well maintained).

|>

Werdna - Sorry to hear about the health challenges. Take care.

Yes. It's finding phrases like "the prognosis is dismal" in the literature that casts a pall over the day, even if it's not strictly applicable to my condition.

Seems extraordinarily unlikely but just in case somebody needs to know, NMM Bob Dole

We're all still creeped out by his Viagra commercial even he was only 108.

95. If it's any comfort I had a replacement valve 25 years ago and it's given me no problems since. I'm on anticoagulants for life, but that will depend on the type of valve they give you. I was on my feet the next day and I would have gone home the one after except they couldn't stabilise my INR. "Your trouble is, you're a resistant rat," said the consultant, referring to the heroic doses of Warfarin I was, and am, taking. But ultimately it was no more disturbing than a tonsillectomy.

But anyway, best of luck, and hope you're out quickly.

Thanks Chris. It is a comfort.

nw - much sympathy, heart troubles are really quite distressing. hope you can get it successfully resolved soon.

So we are finally relocating next week - not all the way to North Knifecrimea but to, and I am not kidding here, a heavily fortified location just south of the Wall. Out in the country, lots of room for our direterrier to run around. Big move, but we are looking forward to it.

So we are finally relocating next week - not all the way to North Knifecrimea but to, and I am not kidding here, a heavily fortified location just south of the Wall. Out in the country, lots of room for our direterrier to run around. Big move, but we are looking forward to it.

Will a direterrier be sufficient to fight off the inevitable rievers?

We will *be* the inevitable reivers.

123: Maybe you'll kil the las wyld pig on the Bundel Downs.