The Totally Radical Thread for Crotchety Old Bitches

Lol.

It was a decent turkey day with the folks. A bit chaotic but decent. My dad apparently needs to keep up his supplements otherwise he starts to get rather moody and very cranky.

My folks have started growing crops on their property to sell at local farmers markets and use as organic method for farming as they can manage because they only have the one chunk of property.

Happy turkey day!

I spent my Turkey Day with an upper respiratory and sinus infection.

On the bright side, doc says I need to add an extra day to my holiday weekend!

Well on my last patrol checking a car left on the lot. Turns out it was occupied by a pair of knuckleheads smoking pot in their car at the far end of our property. When i asked what they were up to after they rolled down a window and a large cloud of smoke with a suspiciously distinct odor billowed out, they replied leaving and I said have a good night. Problem solved.

Nice!

SIL & I are putting together a little bit of wall art for my parents' 40th wedding anniversary. Which was yesterday, but we're celebrating at Christmas when my younger brother and other SIL are in town. I've taken it as an excuse to buy some very expensive (and very beautiful) fountain pen ink for the lettering.

Meanwhile my younger brother is working on the logo for my older brother's car lot, which is opening on January 1st.

Getting kind of fed up with off the rack pants. Skinny people can get a decent pair of jeans for under $20, but if I can find a pair in my waist size for under $40, the rise and inseam will be way too big and there won't be nearly enough room in the seat and thigh.

5.11 "tactical" pants, affordable and yes they have the larger sizes plus POCKETS! Girl pants are no fun because designers seem to think that all girls have purses.

I don't, I have my old assault pack if I need to carry stuff around otherwise I like pockets.

Tacticool.

Rehearsals have just started for our end of year recital. My costume for one has a corset (admittedly cheap and not waist-reducing at all). I have to wear this corset for a couple of days beforehand to get used to acting in it. I am on the tail end of a cold which meant I did not wear the corset at all.

If anyone else was describing this situation TO me, I would have told them not to wear the fucking corset because 1) colds already restrict breathing and a corset (no matter how flimsy it was) would probably just make things worse, 2) they weren't used to the corset, and 3) our teacher gives us a pass to not wear corsets/heels if we are injured/sick.

Yet I put the corset on, cold, thinking it wouldn't be THAT bad because I was feeling great today, aside from the occasional sniffle. I ended up coughing more and too short of breath to get fully into character.

And now I understand why people sometimes don't follow their own advice. Oh well, I've got a few more days to sort things out while we work on the other scenes.

In light of recent events, despite how much I loathe Ohio State, my heart goes out them after that cocksucking,assfuck, less-than-human twatwaffle went on a stabbing spree.

edited 28th Nov '16 11:43:35 PM by MarkVonLewis

Was supposed to go to choir rehearsal last night: first rehearsal with our guest conductor, lots of important things to go over before the performances this weekend. ("Christmas at the Cathedral") I'm putting on my shoes to leave when the cat throws up. Twice. Like, emptied his little kitty stomach.

So not only did I want to clean that up ASAP, but a Good Pet Parent is gonna keep an eye on him, make sure he eats and that he keeps food down afterward. Which of course he did. Ate and napped and had his regular Evening Zoomies. But I missed choir rehearsal. (sigh)

Scion; Ahh pets driving us to insanity. You weren't by chance going to a choir practice that included members of the Grace University band as accompaniment were you?

Mark: Oh yay more good news for the year. -_-.

Lerad: Yikes. Yeah don't mess with your lungs. Hopefully you feel better soon.

Teuf: Not that I'm aware. We hire the Omaha Symphony Chamber Orchestra for this one.

Our director is head of Grace's music department, though. (Dr. Zielke. Great guy.)

Scion; Neat. My Mrs. is one of the non-student volunteers for the Grace University band. Playing the Euphonium.

And there's the last piece of the puzzle.

The other day, I checked my mailbox and found an issue of The Week, wrapped in a welcome message. Now, as a subscriber to Mental Floss and Wired (though I'm definitely canceling Wired when my subscription is up, since the special offer needed me to agree to auto-renewal at full price and I'm not digging it as much as I thought), I've gotten a lot of invitations to try The Week, but I have less than zero interest in a news magazine.

Particularly since the mystery issue was wrapped as my first issue of a subscription, I immediately opened their customer service site and logged into my account management for an account I should not have. That told me that my "subscription" was a single issue at $3.99, but no indication of how it was paid for.

Now, since my Wired account has my card on file, I thought that somebody thought it was good marketing to help themselves to subscribers' info to "gift" trial issues of what they want to push. I was furious, and while I couldn't prove that was the case, my message to customer service said that if it turned out to be the case, I would be immediately canceling my subscription to Wired and demanding a refund of both the Wired subscription and the spontaneous The Week.

Well, meanwhile, I've had the November/December issue of Mental Floss sitting around for over a month unread, and in small letters on the cover, it says "the farewell issue". I finally picked it up, and it means exactly what you'd think it means. This is the last issue of Mental Floss as a print magazine. Now, since I'm already a bit peeved at the publisher for dropping a The Week on me out of nowhere with no explanation, I suddenly wonder what's going to happen to the remainder of my abruptly canceled subscription. I think my one-year started in April. So I just went to Mental Floss customer service to find out what they're going to do about the balance, and there's the information I needed to have the other day: "If you're a subscriber, the remaining issues in your subscription will be fulfilled by The Week, our award-winning sister publication..."

So. I paid for it, but I didn't pay for it. Well, now that that's sorted, I guess I should give it a chance, since I'm going to be getting more in the next few weeks.

That Mental Floss issue may have even come in a bag with a card explaining what was going on, but I would've just assumed it was advertising and tossed it.

And that is why I've given up on dead tree media. The last Wired I bought was in 2004. Maximum PC has gone down in quality (I miss PC Accelerator) and PC Gamer is crap.

Ah, 3 months at a new job: a B 2 B firm doing reports and stuff for clients. No more angry cell customers screaming in my ear. Thankfully I left before the Samsung "We love the smell of burning things" Note 7hit.

The content in Wired is okay, but not quite what I'm looking for, and not only is it 50% ads and branded content, all those ads are super deluxe luxury items that make me feel a little unwelcome.

It's entirely possible this final issue of Mental Floss came in a bag with a card explaining what was going on and I just tossed it without looking at it because "oh, another ad for The Week. Not interested."

Meanwhile, I've been subscribed to the feed for the digital version of Mental Floss and it's really not great. Multiple sponsored posts by Amazon every day, interactive quizzes I have no interest in, and hardly any of the articles have topics that get me interested in reading. Now, if they were in the print magazine, I'd probably read them and get a little out of them because I read magazines cover to cover. But as a stream of half a dozen individual articles a day in an RSS feed, I don't have time for that. I followed Cracked for years, but eventually I realized that more than half of the articles didn't interest me, they were moving to more videos and less articles, and I didn't have time to keep up with everything I didn't definitely not want to see, so I dropped it.

I would probably really enjoy a bimonthly digital issue of all the articles both of those sites generate (and Cracked makes a lot of good videos, and Mental Floss makes interesting videos), but the format they want to present it in now is not one I have an interest in engaging with their content in.

Teuf: Hey! So she knows Jeff James? Took a bunch of his classes back when I was a student there. Small world. (Small city!)

Loooong rehearsal last night. 6:30PM to 10PM. Well, the Symphony only practiced from 7 to 9:30, because they're union and paid and on the clock. But not us. Nooooo. We were there early, and we went through a couple a cappella pieces after they'd left.

(Honestly, this is normal. Happens every year. But I feel obliged to complain. And to take a nap.)

T Paradox:

Personally, I just prefer print to video. You can put an article down & pick it up much easier than stopping & starting a recording. You can skim it if you're looking for reasons to read the whole thing. And somehow listening to someone talk isn't as relaxing/engaging as reading the printed word. (I was never an aural learner.)

edited 30th Nov '16 7:18:53 AM by scionofgrace

Scion; She does indeed know Jeff James.

Now it would be a small city if you ever met me at either the Millard or Abrams branch libraries when i worked there or were friends with one of the people who did.

My friend Emmy who moved to AZ I think it was joked it was the 4 degrees of separation with me. Turns out I work with one of her friends from New Millennium at my current job.

Teuf: Nice! That kind of stuff always cracks me up.

Wait. Abrams branch? You mean Abrahams, the one on 90th?

edited 30th Nov '16 1:39:21 PM by scionofgrace

Exactly. To watch a video, everything has to stop for at least five minutes. I have to put on headphones or be in a private space.

Scion: Oops dropped the h and an a. Yeah that one. I worked there for at least three years before my current job.

I also did some work at the Millard Branch.

edited 30th Nov '16 3:38:18 PM by TuefelHundenIV

Teuf: Well, I doubt we've met, but that was our neighborhood library when I was in junior high & high school. Always brings to mind that distinctive smell it has, not sure what it was. And the giant dandelion in the entrance, of course.