Hey. So how’s your week going? Mine’s OK, the usual roller coaster of I-don’t-have-time-for-this and Oops-forgot-I-have-to-do-that, but I’m maintaining. The incredibly detailed to-do list is working, for now. But messy.
So let’s just hop bunny-quick to the news. What is today’s outrage?
The president is mad at Twitter, yawn. Barack Obama has 106 million followers, Trump not quite 60 million. I’m sure that has nothing to do with his displeasure. Anyway, in a meeting with Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey yesterday:
A significant portion of the meeting focused on Trump’s concerns that Twitter quietly, and deliberately, has limited or removed some of his followers, according to a person with direct knowledge of the conversation who requested anonymity because it was private. Trump said he had heard from fellow conservatives who had lost followers for unclear reasons as well.
But Twitter long has explained that follower figures fluctuate as the company takes action to remove fraudulent spam accounts. In the meeting, Dorsey stressed that point, noting even he had lost followers as part of Twitter’s work to enforce its policies, according to the source, who described the meeting as cordial.
Looks like Dorsey took off the stupid hat he wears in recent pictures, but did not put on a tie:
Great meeting this afternoon at the @WhiteHouse with @Jack from @Twitter. Lots of subjects discussed regarding their platform, and the world of social media in general. Look forward to keeping an open dialogue! pic.twitter.com/QnZi579eFb
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 23, 2019
Well, I wouldn’t, either.
One of my favorite spots in Eastern Market is closing, because the area is changing quickly, and the new landlord appears to want more money from the deli than they’re willing to pay. The dispute is officially over a $50,000 floor repair; the landlord has spent $20 million buying buildings over the last couple of years, but is balking at a $50,000 repair on one of the market’s best-loved businesses. Anyway, I wrote a thing about it. Maybe you’d like to read it.
Finally, a story this weird could only come out of anti-vax land, or whatever you call it. Goopville, maybe:
This world is full of surprises, some of them involving anti-vaccine activists, sedated bears, and the small-scale production of literal fake news. A couple of weeks ago, I thought I was working on a quick, weird story about an anti-vaccine activist in Florida who was attempting to hold a rally in her hometown featuring a drugged bear. As it turns out, that’s not the story at all. Here, instead, is a story about someone who worked extremely hard to generate a news cycle involving a rally that they clearly have no intention of ever holding and a real activist who had no idea her name was being used. The bear also seems to be fake, and—despite my initial, hopeful understanding of the situation—is not named Ron.
Anyway, it’s funny. Me, I gotta run. Ciao!
Deborah said on April 24, 2019 at 9:45 am
What’s with Jack’s cap? I figured he was bald, but he seems to have a full head of hair.
Today is a travel day, first a walk, then a train, then a bus, then a plane, then a cab. Ugh.
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Deborah said on April 24, 2019 at 9:52 am
https://mobile.twitter.com/darth/status/1120800876384272384/photo/1
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alex said on April 24, 2019 at 11:06 am
While it gives me great pleasure to know that Trump’s vastly less popular on Twitter than Obama — and vain enough to pitch a public hissy about it in front of Twitter’s CEO — my joy is more than outweighed by my despair at the thought of 60 million people giving a shit what he has to say about anything.
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beb said on April 24, 2019 at 11:31 am
The odd thing about the report coming out of the presidential meeting about twitter is who leaked the story? From the photo it looks like a very small group — six people and a photographer. I’m sure there was no secretary taking notes because, you know how Trump feels about note-takers. It seems pretty easy to figure out who’s talking behind Trump’s back.
Also it appears that Trump was upset by the disappearance of nearly a half million followers which Twitter explains were bot that had banned. If there are that many bots in the system it kind of makes the whole system seem unreliable.
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Joe Kobiela said on April 24, 2019 at 11:49 am
Enjoyed the story on the Eastern market, would like to see a more in-depth story on the $50,000 seems kinda suspicious, why not set up a go fund me page or have a fund raiser? I’m betting the money could be raised for the repairs, hopefully they can remain open, the area sound pretty cool.
Pilot Joe
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JodiP said on April 24, 2019 at 12:16 pm
Deborah, great Twitter post!
Only tangentially related to the anti-vax story, because of the woo-woo factor: I attended a training on “Energy and resiliency” to get credit for a discount on my insurance co-pays. I knew we were in trouble when the presenter started with “Oh, there are a lot of devices here! [in my work, we all bring laptops and cell phones to meetings] I have wi-fi sensitivity, so if you could turn off your devices that would be great.” She went on to explain she puts tinfoil around her wifi router at home and was wearing a scarf which protected her from wifi emissions. It’s an hour of my life I will never get back. I can’t believe our EAP company has her as a resource.
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Julie Robinson said on April 24, 2019 at 12:36 pm
Wifi sensitivity?!?! She doesn’t seem very resilient to me.
Wow, the Eastern Market guy comes off as very Trumpian.
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Deborah said on April 24, 2019 at 12:39 pm
Jodi, reminds me of Jimmy’s brother in Better Call Saul. There’s a character in Santa Fe who claims to have that sensitivity, he drives his neighbors crazy, lives a couple of blocks from our place. He has been in the newspaper because he’s so crotchety about it.
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Suzanne said on April 24, 2019 at 1:27 pm
Wi-Fi sensitivity?? I never heard of such a thing.
More and more, this quote from Lewis Carroll seems appropriate:
‘But I don’t want to go among mad people,’ Alice remarked.
‘Oh, you can’t help that,’ said the Cat: ‘we’re all mad here. I’m mad. You’re mad.’
‘How do you know I’m mad?’ said Alice.
‘You must be,’ said the Cat, ‘or you wouldn’t have come here.’
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Jakash said on April 24, 2019 at 1:29 pm
Swell article about the schmuck, NN. “Silicon Valley breeds schmucks like stagnant water breeds mosquitoes.” That piquant observation should lead the Wikipedia entry about Silicon Valley, and one could do no better than “Schmucks, ascendant” for the title of a book about Il Douche’s reign.
It would be wonderful if the guy would somehow take it to heart, but I fear that a key part of being a schmuck is engaging in almost no self-reflection. Nobody with an ounce of self-awareness could post such a cigar selfie without wondering whether it made them look like a schmuck, rather than the ’50s Havana mover-and-shaker he fancies himself as, alas. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar — but not this time. Trying to save that deli is certainly worth a shot, though.
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JodiP said on April 24, 2019 at 1:32 pm
Yikes, in the newspaper? That’s a whole ‘nother level of disturbance. Suzanne, I’d never heard of it either, but it just smelled! I did a bit of research later, and the WHO has declared it’s not a thing.
I think I won’t go to anything more trainings related to self-care–and not because this woman was so wacked. I almost never learn anything new, and I have a natural tendency to forget about work and the people I support. In the caring professions, having stuff outside of your job is really important. I also don’t hang out with other social workers that much.
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Heather said on April 24, 2019 at 2:24 pm
I hate to tell the wifi sensitivity lady this but there are all sort of energies zooming around us at all times. TV, radio, phone, cell signals, satellite. Good luck with the tinfoil though.
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Sherri said on April 24, 2019 at 3:07 pm
Heather, not to mention the electromagnetic radiation generated by that big yellow ball in the sky!
Tinfoil around the WiFi router is a particularly strange response. Why have a router at all? Or if you need one occasionally, why not just unplug it the rest of the time?
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Deborah said on April 24, 2019 at 4:44 pm
Someone LB knows in Santa Fe has what’s called a Wine Enhancer. It’s some resin contraption with bits of metal (copper?) embedded in it. This person believes that if you put a bottle of wine near it it will make the wine taste better. Stuff people believe.
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David C. said on April 24, 2019 at 6:17 pm
Some people just never feel well. They’re usually the ones who die at age 95 and everybody says “They always enjoyed poor health”. They read some crackpot things on the internet about wi-fi, magnetic fields from house wiring, or whatever. So they wear put foil around their routers, or rip the wiring out of their bedrooms. They may feel better, but it’s all placebo effect. Now the big thing seems to be CBD oil. Whatever you have, they say it’s good for it. It may be good for something, but usually things that are good for everything are good for nothing. I guess I’ll wait for the double blind tests to fork out and smear it on everything.
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Sherri said on April 24, 2019 at 6:22 pm
Just putting the bottle of wine near it? I’ve hear of putting copper *in* wine to enhance it, which at least has a mechanism – the sulfur compounds in the wine react with the copper.
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LAMary said on April 24, 2019 at 7:34 pm
My experience with EAPs has not been any better.
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beb said on April 24, 2019 at 7:41 pm
I heard about wi-fi sensiitivity several years ago. The stories came from Great Britain, as I recall. No one could find any proof that it existed.
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Deborah said on April 24, 2019 at 11:52 pm
Yeah Sherri, as far as I understand from hearing this from LB, the copper or whatever is embedded in resin, so the wine is put near it. Maybe LB can step in and explain it better. And also the guy who has this gizmo couldn’t be nicer, so I shouldn’t be disparaging his wine enhancer.
I’m back in Chicago for two days and wouldn’t you know we got an email from our buildings trust manager today that the schedule for completion of the plumbing has changed again. Now they won’t be done until the end of the first week of June in which time we will have no kitchen access. I was going to spend about 3 weeks in Chicago from mid May until the end of the first week in June which I was really looking forward to because that’s Chicago weather at its finest but now I’m going to stay in NM from May 2 through Sept 3. I’m not complaining because I love NM too, it’s just a change in plans that I have to wrap my head around. This way all of the plumbing improvements that will effect our tier in the building will be done instead of having to extend our kitchen phase until next January like they had thought might have to happen. Did I tell you that they broke 2 big pieces of our bathroom travertine marble in trying to remove them to get to the pipes behind? Yeah, this has not been fun. But the good news is that with this plumbing update it raises the value of our unit considerably. Not that we’re going to flip it or anything.
On to a much needed haircut tomorrow, and then an eye dr appt and a teeth cleaning.
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Andrea said on April 25, 2019 at 9:45 am
Enjoyed the article about the Eastern Market, Nancy. Hope the attention you draw will be helpful in preserving the deli.
I also loved this article today — it is a mash up of two of my passions: journalism and youth at risk. Hope the student journalists get to publish their story, and the teacher does not lose her job. Kudos to the brave young woman who is allowing her story to be told. https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2019/04/25/free-speech-isnt-free-is-it-sensitive-story-could-cost-high-school-journalism-teacher-her-job/?utm_term=.1b14564094eb
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Deborah said on April 25, 2019 at 9:52 am
I’m waiting to leave for my haircut in our place that has no flushable toilet since 8am until 4pm today and tomorrow. In the meantime I’ve been perusing this cool book that one of my husband’s former students had published through kick starter. Her name is Virginia Duran, she lives in Spain, she’s a world traveler and does wonderful sketches. Here’s a link to the kick starter which has been over for awhile as the book is available now, but she is going to be doing more in the future https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/architectour/architectour-the-ultimate-guide-for-the-urban-expl/. My husband said she wasn’t such a good designer in class but she always did beautiful drawings and has a passion for architecture, she certainly found her niche. She also has an interesting blog about architecture. We got a custom book from her with a cute sketch in the front, of my husband and me exploring London.
If you’re interested the book can be purchased here https://architectourguide.com/products/london-guide, it’s very well done.
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JodiP said on April 25, 2019 at 9:58 am
By coincidence, this article on essential oils popped up. It boggles my mind that this is a multi-billion dollar business and they are just *now* doing research. Of course, essential oils was mentioned in the training as well.
I had heard in the podcast ScienceVS that essential oils kinda have an effect. In one study, if subjects were told lavendar is calming, they experienced that. If they were told it was energizing, they felt that. I love herbal scents and used to use a lavendar pillow to help me sleep, but I assumed it was an operant conditioning effect, not because there was something sleep-inducing in lavendar.
Are people familiar with Adam Ruins Everyting? He has a TV show, and a podcast. I have been mining the ‘cast archives for cool content. Today, I listened to the former Prinicipal Deputy Commissioner of the FDA talk about his work in shining a light on supplements. He later became Sec’y for the MD Dept. of Health, where they turned the typical hospital payment method on its head. Hospitals are given a global budget. If the hospital keeps people out by doing preventative care, they get to keep the difference. It’s episode #26 on the pod if you are interested.
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Suzanne said on April 25, 2019 at 1:33 pm
Ah yes! Essential oils which are ubiquitous. They may have some use, but it seems that people think they will cure everything from anxiety to acne. If I spray some lavender spray on my pillow before bed, yes, I sleep better because my pillow doesn’t stink but smells fresh and sweet.
Bottom line is that somebody(s) is making a bunch of money selling their healing prospects, whether it works or not.
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Jakash said on April 25, 2019 at 1:45 pm
I imagine that Joe Biden thinks that if it hadn’t been for the family tragedy that occurred in the midst of the last go-round, he’d be president right now. I believe that he’s wrong about that. Regardless, it has to be tough to think that, while witnessing the absurd, almost unbelievable political nightmare that the country has descended into since then, and not want to be part of the solution. Alas, there are reasons why his two previous presidential campaigns fizzled badly. (Wikipedia says he “garnered slightly less than one percent of the state delegates” in Iowa in 2008 before withdrawing.)
Making a case for a 76-year-old, 2-time-loser, gaffe-prone white guy to be the nominee would have been pretty tough under any circumstances. Doing it in the political climate of 2019, when a fair part of your reputation is as a “handsy” (rather than “folksy”) grandpa who “mishandled” the Clarence Thomas / Anita Hill hearings, and while there are quite a number of interesting candidates who aren’t old white guys, seems very unlikely to be successful.
I’d say he missed his chance, but then, I don’t think there was ever a time that he really *had* a chance. Of course, I was quite confident that our current Maximum Leader would never make it past New Hampshire, so there’s that…
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Jakash said on April 25, 2019 at 1:52 pm
“Breaking: Joe Biden enters the race and is already polling higher than She’s Too Ambitious, She’s Just Not Likable, She Lacks Experience, and I’d Vote For A Woman But Not That Woman.”
https://twitter.com/OhNoSheTwitnt/status/1121386780740210689
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Scout said on April 25, 2019 at 2:30 pm
I’m not saying it *was* the essentials oils and I’m not saying it *wasn’t*, but we just had two cats die under very mysterious circumstances. Their deaths totally devastated both my wife and me. We no longer diffuse them in our home because any benefit they may have for us are not worth any potential risks to our beloved fur kids. We use Young Living, supposedly the very purest, no-chemical stuff. I’m super hinky about it now.
We have an acquaintance who, although being educated (a teacher), is absolutely convinced that the government is poisoning us with chemtrails. She runs workshops to build these copper tube thingies with crystals in them to attract the bad mojo which are to be placed in all the corners of your outdoor space. She finally unfriended me on FB because I kept questioning all the stupid shit from dubious whack sources she’d post.
I also know more than few anti-vaxxers who insist their babies got ‘deathly ill’ with fever after their MMR injections. Those children are alive and not on any spectrum as we speak. As I recall from 4 decades ago when my kids were little and getting those vaccinations, yes, they could get a little feverish afterwards. The overwrought exaggerations of this community are f*cking dangerous.
I’m good with natural health and wellness for regular maintenance, but sometimes there is no substitute for medical science and common sense, which, I realize isn’t actually common after all. All we need to do to prove that theory is remember the vicious, lying, criminal buffoon squatting fat and happy in our WH, watching tv, screwing around on Twitter and golfing at his self dealing country club every weekend.
We could do worse than Uncle Joe. I’m looking at you, Tulsi and Bernie. They are at the absolute bottom of the heap for me, while Kamala, Elizabeth and Pete are at the top.
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Deborah said on April 25, 2019 at 3:28 pm
Our landlady in Santa Fe, is a little woo woo, she used to be a pharmacist but after she retired from that she became a practitioner for a healing “technique” that involves tapping with her fingers in a specified pattern on the place where you’re having pain. She actually has clients who pay her to do it. She keeps offering to do it for LB’s hip and my spine, we keep politely declining. I did let her do it on my back a couple of years ago when I wrenched it picking up some firewood. I felt nothing different as I recall. Now unfortunately we think she is going into dementia, and we’re worried about maybe having to move out of our apartment there before we find a suitable alternative.
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Dave said on April 25, 2019 at 4:09 pm
What do you do when it’s someone in your own family who believes all the whacky things that you don’t believe and that no one else (his siblings) believes. Our oldest son and his wife are adamant anti-vaccers, it upsets us no end and now they’re expecting their third child this October. We can’t understand how he got this way, he and his wife are both college-educated and reasonably successful. They did have a group of friends that had similar beliefs but a rift has developed between them. We’re hoping that might bring them back around to some more sensible behavior.
Our son also turns off his router every night, even though they live in a townhouse in Northern Virginia and there’s easily a minimum of twenty other routers I can pick up the signals of every time we’re there. He thinks the LED bulbs are shooting out radiation and the smart electric meters are killing us, too.
We’ve had one rather bad conversation about it so we don’t say anything but it upsets us and we’ve no options. We have no idea how he (and she) got this way and it almost shames me to post it but it makes me crazy thinking about it.
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Dexter Friend said on April 25, 2019 at 4:28 pm
Intruding for a sec…today is the 5 year anniversary since the Flint water supply was declared unfit for the planet. I can get Ann Arbor (Michigan NPR) radio and at 3:00 they had a special broadcast about the ongoing problems; fights are still being held trying to get the lead-lined pipes replaced.
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JodiP said on April 25, 2019 at 4:36 pm
Dave, that’s so hard, especially when it concerns the health of your grandkids. Being highly educated is no guarantee of smarts, that’s for sure.
There’s a tendency that only poorly educated folks fall for this stuff, but nope. Same with politics–we all know there are tons of well-educted folks voting Republican, mostly because it’s usually in their self-interest.
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Heather said on April 25, 2019 at 5:48 pm
Deborah, I’ve heard of tapping but mostly for things like anxiety. I guess it’s supposed to be a bit like acupuncture in that it stimulates various pressure points.
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David C. said on April 25, 2019 at 6:11 pm
I live with it too, Dave. It’s my wife. She’s self-diagnosed with just about every malady known to crackpot medicine. Gluten intolerance, glutamate intolerance, histamine intolerance, adrenal fatigue, on and on. If I’m sore from riding my bike 40 miles, she tells me I need to get gluten out of my diet because my fuel of choice is PB&J sandwiches. No, I’m sore because I rode my bike 40 miles. She goes to the doctor with her latest self-diagnosis and gets upset when the doctor tells her it isn’t a thing. Now she won’t go to the doctor because she says they’re stupid and aren’t up on the latest “research”. “It all makes sense to me”, she says about whatever she’s just read. She’s a smart person, but somehow they know how to bamboozle people. It gets incredibly frustrating sometimes.
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LAMary said on April 25, 2019 at 6:45 pm
I know it’s been discussed here before. I bet most gluten intolerant people are self diagnosed. I self diagnosed my lactose intolerance but I had very credible evidence. It wasn’t that I felt better if I didn’t drink milk. It’s that I did have vicious cramps and diarrhea if drank milk. Two of my siblings have the same problem and for all of us it started in our late forties. Trust, I would not give up ice cream if this wasn’t a real thing.
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Heather said on April 26, 2019 at 10:35 am
This is a good essay explaining why so many women turn to wellness and alternative therapies: often, it’s because mainstream medicine fails them.
https://qz.com/1006387/women-are-flocking-to-wellness-because-traditional-medicine-still-doesnt-take-them-seriously/
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Sherri said on April 26, 2019 at 10:58 am
Around here at least, most of the essential oils people I encounter are LDS women involved in one of the MLMs selling them.
Alexandra Petri nails the whole electability discussion: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/04/25/you-have-think-about-electability/
Finally, I’m almost done with the two year adaptive leadership program I’ve been in. Yesterday was our penultimate class day, and we had to develop out individual purpose statement. Here was mine: I push against the status quo, so that others don’t have to push as hard.
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Little Bird said on April 26, 2019 at 12:56 pm
http://webbspunideas.blogspot.com/2007/10/catania-wine-enhancer-magic-or-hoax.html?m=1
So this link had an image very similar to the wine enhancer my friend has.
I can’t begin to imagine how it could possibly do anything to wine. It’s crazy what people believe out here.
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Scout said on April 26, 2019 at 1:04 pm
Heather @34 – excellent link. After a whole year of being jerked around by a plethora of distracted specialists with office staff that never, ever followed up, my Mom, who has been ill with with parathyroidism (a side effect of which is osteoporosis), FINALLY had a parathyroidectomy last week. While the physical symptoms she was living with were bad enough, the psychological stress she went through was almost as bad. Women, and especially women of her age group are very much ignored and dismissed. I finally had to take over calling daily to get things like test results and referrals, and even then, it took weeks and sometimes months to get a response. US health care is a bad JOKE.
Sherri @35 – Alexandra Petri is spot on, as usual. I love how she distills things down to the crux of the biscuit. She’s absolutely correct that as long as the EC exists, all the woke people in this country will never overcome the ‘economically anxious’. Obama was one huge exception because he was a once in a lifetime charismatic who was able to ride the Bush/Cheney disaster into office.
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LAMary said on April 26, 2019 at 10:37 pm
I’m almost afraid to say it but I got a job. I started today. I’m working for the two guys who hired me 18 years ago to be a nurse recruiter for a search firm. They remembered me and offered me a job as soon as I contacted them.
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Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on April 26, 2019 at 10:40 pm
Huzzah, Mary!
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Deborah said on April 26, 2019 at 10:41 pm
Congratulations LA Mary!
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LAMary said on April 27, 2019 at 12:36 am
I can’t get past the absurdity of the President of the United States being concerned about how many followers he has on something called Twitter. Then again I’m also stuck on how many grown women post photos of themselves using the Instagram filter that gives them big eyes and no lower eyelids. It’s stupid with or without the kitty ears.
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Sherri said on April 27, 2019 at 2:17 am
Great news, LAMary!
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Suzanne said on April 27, 2019 at 7:15 am
Good news, LAMary!!
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Julie Robinson said on April 27, 2019 at 8:42 am
Congratulations, Mary! I’ve been thinking of you but hesitant to ask. May this be the last time you have to go job hunting.
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alex said on April 27, 2019 at 9:03 am
Yay Mary!
We’re mostly an older audience here and know this already, but I cannot stress enough to young people how important it is to leave every job on good terms and resist any temptation to burn bridges, even if you’re being arbitrarily laid off. You never know when you might need a job again.
Today heading out for some plant shopping at our fave greenhouse, even though they’re calling for fucking snow again tonight. We like to buy early because this place usually sells out of its stuff by Mother’s Day, and they have the best veggies and annuals. We bought some asparagus there last year and it’s looking quite impressive already even though it’s supposed to take several years to establish. Must be the loamy soil where we planted it. Gonna get some more.
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basset said on April 27, 2019 at 9:33 am
Way to go, Mary!
Mrs. B and I did some plant shopping yesterday as well, got holly bushes, tomatoes, and some flowers I forget the names of. Local grower had a “native plant festival” so we went out there, free beer and rides in a mule-drawn wagon, gotta love that.
Meanwhile, it’s another good day to avoid downtown Nashville. The Music City Marathon and the last day of the NFL draft are all going on down there, and parking in at least one pay lot is up to $105. I’ve seen it at $35 just on a regular day, we must really be a big city now.
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ROGirl said on April 27, 2019 at 11:24 am
Very welcome news, LA Mary. Congrats.
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Deborah said on April 27, 2019 at 12:30 pm
It’s snowing in Chicago right now. But ha ha take that Chicago weather, we’re going to Charlotte NC this afternoon. Now that I’ve said that the weather will exact its revenge and make our flight delayed or canceled.
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Joe Kobiela said on April 27, 2019 at 12:36 pm
Deborah,
Current Charlotte weather,
Calm winds, clear sky’s, 68 degrees,
Good luck,
Enjoy the south
Pilot Joe
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Julie Robinson said on April 27, 2019 at 1:08 pm
Alex, spill–where do you go for good plants? I won’t be any competition for you this year since I’m heading down to Orlando over Mother’s Day and will be planting late. Around here the last frost is supposed to be mid-May, and with all the cold we’ve had, this could very well be the year the frost wins.
Besides, my hubby just had a load of dirt delivered so he can reseed the front lawn. At some point we’ll be putting the house on the market and he wants to beef up the curb appeal. Only all our neighbors have been letting their places go to pot, so I’m not sure what good it will do. And I’m afraid he’s going to hurt his back again. He’s lost a lot of weight and exercises regularly, but his back is always tetchy.
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LAMary said on April 27, 2019 at 2:11 pm
The two guys who hired me left the company where we all worked a couple of years before I did. The owner and his wife ran the place and their ethics became more and more questionable. I left because I was asked to do something that was illegal and personally repugnant. When I left the owner tried to sue me and failed. I’m sure these two guys knew about the very sketchy things the owner was doing and they either got tired of it or decided they could just open their own company and make a lot of money, which they do. I doubt they’re doing the sort of stuff the old boss was doing.
And thank you all very much for the good wishes. It’s so nice to know that people were concerned about me. I will say to anyone who is my age (66) or even a little younger that it sucks bigtime to look for a job at this age. It really wears you down getting rejected over and over because someone has figured out how old you are.
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Andrea said on April 27, 2019 at 4:59 pm
@ Deborah, my flight back to Chicago was cancelled today. I am stuck in Phoenix until Monday now. I cannot f-ing believe that I have a flight cancelled due to snow on April 27th. Insane.
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Deborah said on April 27, 2019 at 5:36 pm
We just arrived in Charlotte, about 1/2 hour late due to de-icing. Hard to believe. Two years ago around this same time of year, LB went to Chicago to help out when I had my spine surgery. When she flew back to NM, there was a blanket of snow over Santa Fe, so it can happen lots of places.
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LAMary said on April 27, 2019 at 5:43 pm
My sons are driving to Denver to visit their uncle, do some errands and housekeeping for him and help him clear some stuff out of his house. I told them there’s a good chance they’ll get some snow going over the Rockies and they doubted me. One of them said, “But it will be ok when we get over the hills…” They have no idea.
I just read that there’s a shooter in a synagogue near San Diego. One dead, several injured.
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Dexter Friend said on April 27, 2019 at 6:16 pm
Tigers-Sox baseball cancelled, snowstorm. ~ A local guy I call “Tall Tree” speed-walks all over town, always wearing a reflective vest. He’s very tall with disproportionately long legs; he walks a mile-a-minute. He’s also on the spectrum, I would assume. He walks the aisles at Walmart a lot, speaking to spirits or demons in an extremely LOUD voice. He startled the shit outta me yesterday. He was standing behind a post in the store by the register I was checking out at, and as soon as my business was concluded and the very weird clerk handed my receipt to me, Tall Tree began conversing to the weird clerk, “I AM IN TUNE WITH THE EARTH, YES…I CAN FEEL THE VIBRATIONS OF THE EARTH AND I CAN FEEL THE EARTH SPINNING; I KNOW WHERE WE ARE IN SPACE AT ALL TIMES, WHAT DEGREES AWAY FROM AND FROM WHAT DISTANCE WE ARE FROM PLUTO…” Holy shit, man! Tone your shit down a peg!
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Dave said on April 27, 2019 at 7:41 pm
According to a Google search, it’s 4. 67 billion miles to Pluto, Dexter.
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LAMary said on April 27, 2019 at 8:42 pm
Oliver North quit as president of the NRA. Apparently he thinks they are doing some sketchy bookkeeping. He would know. The things he did back in the 80s, according to Fawn Hall, were done “above the law.” Maybe the NRA spending 200k on clothes for Wayne La Pierre is not as heroic as selling weapons to the Ayatollah and then sending the proceeds to Nicaragua.
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Dexter Friend said on April 28, 2019 at 1:43 am
LAMary: Trump and Pompeo want to enforce heavy sanctions on any nation that buys Iranian oil, in essence, he wants to stop Iran from selling a single barrel to Japan or China, mostly, but also every single other nation or territory. So, what this does in shrink the supply radically and the old supply & demand kicks in and we know what that means. Here’s a report I heard the first day the report was aired: Cal gasoline pumps will jump to $6 by June 1, US midwest to $4. Then corrections followed on Day 2, and predictions ascended to a projected $6.50 for Golden State drivers, and just under $5 for midwesterners. Before, the speculators were a little off, so we shall see. Our Ohio gasoline tax, approved, signed into law, is 11 cents, but I heard in 3 increments of a few pennies each time. So we wouldn’t notice, doncha know? Just in time for previous Ford Motor Company loyal buyers to Waze their phones to the nearest Hyundai dealers, as Ford is done forever with car production. They just gave all that business to the foreign based corporations , cavalierly spouting they will kick ass selling electric and battery electric vehicles (BEV), pure electric vehicles, only-electric vehicles or all-electric vehicles, but nothing smaller than the Escape line.
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alex said on April 28, 2019 at 9:03 am
Julie, we go to C&K Greenhouse (formerly known as Sell’s Greenhouse) in Steuben County near Clear Lake. A friend who lives up there turned us on to it many years ago. One time while visiting Nancy, we went to the Eastern Market in Detroit and I was surprised to see a vendor there called Sell’s Greenhouse, so I inquired and these people were relatives of the Indiana Sell family with a big farm near Ypsilanti and they supplied some of the Indiana family’s goods.
C&K (Craig and Kelly) are the young couple who took over the Indiana greenhouse when the Sells decided to retire two years ago and they’ve done a great job learning the business and even expanding the offerings.
We came home with six flats of begonias, two flats of marigolds, a flat of coleus, several mixed flats of flowers and mixed flats of tomatoes and pepper plants and bunches of asparagus and candy onion starts. We’ve got them set up temporarily in our three-season room until a few weeks from now.
We love going up there just for the road trip and spring sightseeing. And we’ll probably go back for more to round things out once we have everything planted.
We have also been going to the Botanical Gardens’ Mother’s Day Sale at McMillen Park for years, but may take a pass this year because it has become so overrun with people that it’s no longer a fun shopping experience and everything’s so picked over that we can never find what we want. They used to have about a hundred varieties of rosemary, for example, but if you get there any later than Friday night you’re likely to find not a single rosemary plant of any sort. If we do go, it will only be for dahlia bulbs because we forgot to bring ours inside last fall, and nobody else seems to buy any of those.
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Julie Robinson said on April 28, 2019 at 10:01 am
Thanks, Alex, I’ll have to take a drive next year. I’m not going to ask hubby to take care of plants while I’m gone.
We went to that plant sale one year, Friday morning, and never even got out of the car after seeing about 300 people waiting to get in. Have had some luck at the Master Gardener sale over at the Extension office, but also longish lines.
I’m itching to get out and play in the dirt.
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Sherri said on April 28, 2019 at 10:22 am
Read this Jane Mayer article about Joe Biden and the way he handled the Clarence Thomas hearings to understand why I’m so negative on Biden. It’s not just the way he treats women, it’s his entire attitude towards power. He holds bipartisanship as a virtue; he would believe that he could just have a friendship with McConnell and everything would work out, just like with his buddy Strom Thurmond.
For him, the powerful always get the benefit of the doubt.
https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/what-joe-biden-hasnt-owned-up-to-about-anita-hill
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susan said on April 28, 2019 at 10:44 am
And read what Charles P. Pierce has to say about Biden and his buddy, Strom Thurmond.
Speaking of being tone deaf and morally blind…oh, we weren’t speaking of those? Biden would like to keep it that way. He really is a repugnant fool.
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alex said on April 28, 2019 at 10:45 am
Biden’s just an old-school film-flammy retail politician a lot like John Kasich, who by the way couldn’t get nominated either despite supposedly being milquetoasty enough to mollify moderates and independents and even have crossover appeal while still toeing his respective party line. It’s because of pols like the both of them that people found an uninhibited ass like Trump such a refreshing change.
Remember when everyone thought Kasich and Jeb Bush would save the GOP from the teabaggers? I predict Biden will be just as effective at saving the Dems from the progressives. All the talk about Biden’s current polling will be meaningless a year from now.
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