I see Jeff already spilled the beans about my Daylight Saving Time column. Let the debate begin.
I guess my befuddlement comes from all the “solutions” offered to settle this issue. Solutions imply problems, and honestly, I don’t see what the problem is. For my entire life, we’ve slipped back and forth between standard and daylight time with little more than yawning and grouchiness. Suddenly, it’s a “problem.” (And amusingly, it became a problem right about the time clocks started basically setting themselves.)
And I concede that not everyone adjusts easily. But to disrupt the very idea of standard time — standard in the generic sense — on a state-by-state basis just seems insane. There are lot of things that set my teeth on edge, but I am not advocating policy solutions for them.
Maybe more people need to spend a year in Iceland. That’s on my travel bucket list, and admittedly a long shot, because it’s kind of pointless, but I’d love to spend a winter month there. See how life is lived in near-darkness. I expect fairly happily. We could learn from that.
OK, since it’s Sunday, and a Sunday that truly lives up to its name — 81 degrees and extremely sunny — let’s be less-serious this late afternoon/early evening. (Which is still very SUNNY, because DST!)
“The Handmaid’s Tale” kicked off its fourth season this past week, and I for one am…unimpressed so far. Margaret Atwood’s original idea has been built out to the point it’s now collapsing on itself, and I fear the show runners are going to try to rescue it with slow-motion photography. Every time Elisabeth Moss walks purposely, she does so in slo-mo. Also: Moody lighting. Also: Torture, which I am totally not here for. (I’ve seen two Kathryn Bigelow movies, and I do not need to see any more.) They need to figure out how to get this story into port very soon, or I’m jumping overboard and swimming to a less torture-y beach.
This happened today:
That is, an impromptu lunch at a Mexican dive bar across from the notorious Zug Island, the scariest looking now-shut steel plant you ever saw. I gave up my menudo virginity and can report: Meh on menudo. A nice spicy broth, but the tripe left me cold. I kept thinking: I am eating stomach. I am putting stomach in my stomach. But as I said before, the day was glorious and breezy, and it was a fine day to see people outdoors and eat tacos (and menudo).
Those are my tragic arms, yes. I swear, there is muscle tone underneath all that slack flesh, but evidently this is how my stupid body has chosen to show its age. Sigh. But as we often say: Consider the alternative.
Into the week, then! Hope yours is great.
brian stouder said on May 2, 2021 at 8:37 pm
I loved the photo, and had to review it several times to see what the Proprietress might be referring to. It begins to feel like summertime is coming again (even if one cannot easily go to a motorcar race this year), and that (perfectly marvelous!) photo evokes smiles all around, imo
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Charlie said on May 2, 2021 at 8:41 pm
I think your arms look quite toned and muscular. Also the only time I really loved tripe was in Italy. Maybe on your European trip you can try again.
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Margaret said on May 2, 2021 at 8:52 pm
I loathe the time changes and see absolutely no purpose to them. We’ve done them for a long time, but it doesn’t mean we need to keep repeating it year after year when they don’t accomplish much of anything. I do live quite far north though so I don’t appreciate the dark evenings at 4 in the winter and sunlight until nearly 10 in the summer. I vote for Standard time all year round. I think your arms look great!
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beb said on May 2, 2021 at 10:36 pm
I responded to Nancy’s column at the end of the last thread. The TL:dr is that I like year-round standard time. DST screws with sunrise and sunset too much. Iceland doesn’t count in the debate because it is an extreme condition.
I despair of reporters today. One a shopping trip we ran into a terrible accident in the intersection of Moross and I-94. All we could tell was that a State Trooper car was demolished and near it and laying on its roof was a equally demolished jeep. All I could find on it was from Clickon Detroit where I learned that one car ran into the other, but who hit who was never explained. The officer was in critical condition, the driver in the jeep was not in life-threatening condition. But what happened, why did it happen and those other questions seems to have been skipped. It was lucky (I think) that they mentioned where it happened.
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nancy said on May 3, 2021 at 6:15 am
Maybe this will help.
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basset said on May 2, 2021 at 10:44 pm
I thought menudo was a hangover remedy?
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LAMary said on May 2, 2021 at 10:49 pm
Menudo was a Puerto Rican boy band.
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ROGirl said on May 3, 2021 at 4:41 am
I bailed on the second season of “The Handmaid’s Tale” because torture.
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alex said on May 3, 2021 at 5:15 am
I was offered menudo once as a hangover remedy at a Mexican restaurant. I found it inedible. Poop soup is how I would describe it. Braised intestines.
No problem with getting rid of DST if every state does the same. And if Indiana stays on Eastern because I like my sunshiny summer evenings.
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Dexter Friend said on May 3, 2021 at 6:54 am
Working from 11:00 PM to 7:00 AM for years meant I dealt with impatient truck drivers wanting to get unloaded quickly. Their bills of lading always listed 7:00 AM as the start of the shift when they could get unloaded, and there was a dedicated forklift person right there at 7:00 to begin. But these people came from Pennsylvania and Michigan mostly, and they could not comprehend the fact that when their watch read 7, mine read 6, and I was busy as hell stocking machines and assembly lines. Sometimes a driver would walk right up to me with his bill in hand and point to his watch and yell how he wanted unloaded now, as in right fucking NOW. So that was a pain d’ass. Friday the old place closed forever; Eaton Corporation no longer has an Auburn, Indiana plant. I have been retired for over 18 years so all I can say is I wish the best for the last 84 people who hit the bricks today.
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alex said on May 3, 2021 at 6:57 am
Reflecting on the FBI raid on Giuliani’s house , not to mention the last four years, I found the words of our late and great MichaelJ quite prophetic while reflecting on this date in history, 2007. In that thread we were bantering about the GOP primary field, which included Giuliani, Romney and McCain, and that young upstart Dem from Illinois who was barely a blip in anyone’s consciousness yet.
Then there’s the matter of Rudeboy Giuliani managing to outrage even a staunch loyalist Bushie like Christine “Stop and Frisk” Todd Whitney by lying his ass off about air quality in the lower east side. Well, you know, those people didn’t vote for him anyway. Maybe he’d like to be Pretzeldent to hold off the lawsuits for a few years with spurious claims of executive privilege. Being a whackjob is one thing. Being a politically corrupt malfeasor of a mayor of the biggest city in America is another.
Anyway, if the so-called GOP base will support this guy, it pretty much proves there’s no morality in the moral majority, just a mindless obsession with domination of other people’s thoughts and actions. And shredding the American Constitution while they’re at it.
I’d vote for any decent dog of whatever color against any Republican so my opinion doesn’t count for much, but if Hagel doesn’t run, the Republicans don’t seem to have a candidate worth anything more than derision, indictment, or bankruptcy by class action civil suit for wrongful death.
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Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on May 3, 2021 at 7:53 am
I just don’t know that DST hurts as much as is argued, nor do I think it helps as much as is claimed. So I’m mildly indifferent to it. How to best set the lines between the zones, that’s an interesting question. We just finished redesigning district boundaries in our Scout council, from 10 districts (service areas within which the units, like packs and troops, relate and work together) down to 4. The interesting part of that is you have history with one set of boundaries, but when you step back from them, and look at school district borders which have changed a great deal since the districts were first set, as well as municipal and county lines, then at the patterns of social and economic activity which also have changed drastically, you see a way to draw the lines that makes a certain sense, but then we announced them and most of the pushback is just “you changed how we’ve always done it.” Oy. I’m ready to argue we should redraw state borders every 20-40 years just on general principle.
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Deborah said on May 3, 2021 at 8:25 am
People don’t like change, at all anymore it seems. Even though we’ve had DST my whole lifetime, at least ever since I can remember. I love it. I cross time zones constantly, but I’ll admit when I’m on a road trip calculating travel times between hotel stops it’s something I have to keep in mind, it’s not a big deal though. We’ve become a nation of princess and the pea types. Grievances and complaints abound as if everyone just turned 70, it’s crazy. And here I am complaining about this.
Google says DST started in 1918.
Beautiful weekend in Chicago, but rainy now and tomorrow too, my last couple of days here for awhile.
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Suzanne said on May 3, 2021 at 8:26 am
Your arms look great! Way better than my flabby upper arms.
I love the long summer evenings so I would say I am in favor of DST. I do want to beat myself in the head with a hammer every fall after listening to the never ending litanies of woe by people who fail to understand that DST has nothing to do with the early winter sunset. If I had $10 for every time I have explained that in the fall, we return to standard time & that sunset would be the same time in fall & winter if DST had never existed, I would be retired by now.
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LarrytheRed said on May 3, 2021 at 9:29 am
I’m with you. I hate menudo, but love posole. Pork over tripas every time.
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Peter said on May 3, 2021 at 9:29 am
Nancy, I don’t know about Iceland in the winter, but my bride is from far northern Ireland (still south of Iceland), and while summers there are warm and bright and the people are friendly, winter nights are long and gloomy, and pubs turn into their stereotypical selves.
You know, those Ingmar Bergman films weren’t created in a vacuum.
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Julie Robinson said on May 3, 2021 at 9:42 am
This little group is proof that someone is going to be unhappy no matter what decision is made about daylight vs. standard time. Personally, I like early morning sun so I can go garden before the heat builds up, but, whatever goes, I’ll adjust. And I definitely don’t want to spend a winter in Iceland, good God no. It’s been all I could do to get through winter in Indiana.
We had a beautiful weekend here too with that same rain now. We went to Foster Park, which usually has mass displays of tulips. Either they bloomed while we were gone, or the snow killed them off, but there weren’t too many left. Lots of other pretty flowers and sun, so we were still happy.
My secret for flabby upper arms? I wear sleeves.
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Dorothy said on May 3, 2021 at 9:52 am
Shall we all agree not to make ourselves feel bad about the way we look? I think Nancy’s arms look great. Julie you should not feel bad about wearing a sleeveless shirt in the summer months. I’m saying this from the perspective of someone who has put on about 15 lbs. since the pandemic hit and many of my clothes are unwearable or just tight. I am not happy about it. I wish I could fix it instantly. But I’m also seeing a lot of online stuff reminding us all that we should not be judgmental about our bodies or other people’s bodies. I’m not great at this yet, but it’s a work in progress. Please try not to apologize for the way something about you looks. None of us are perfect and each of us is deserving of love.
End of rant! Happy Monday!
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Icarus said on May 3, 2021 at 10:18 am
I wanted to wait for a new thread to share this bullshit blame the employee not the employer story
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/chicken-prices-rise-as-poultry-plants-struggle-to-find-workers-201846549.html
it should be titled “stimulus checks expose how little we pay our workers
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Icarus said on May 3, 2021 at 10:29 am
for what it’s worth a few years ago the day after DST started, my wife crashed our car into our daycare center’s wall. I wouldn’t blame DST so much as I blame the high idle on the minivan and that even though every one of the six parking spots was available, Nightingale had a favorite spot which she chose. Had she picked the one that faced the playground, they wouldn’t have closed the school for 3 days while repairing the door that wouldn’t open after the collision.
I do think we need to rethink Time Zones and DST. we don’t need DST anymore if we ever did at all. Most people don’t even realize it’s Saving and not Savings.
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/culture/article/131101-when-does-daylight-savings-time-end-november-3-science
we probably still need time zones but do we need so many?
https://qz.com/142199/the-us-needs-to-retire-daylight-savings-and-just-have-two-time-zones-one-hour-apart/
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JodiP said on May 3, 2021 at 10:34 am
I will echo Dorothy’s sentiments! I follow a few people on IG who help me counter all that conditioning. One is a comedian, Celeste Barber. Most of her stuff is send ups of influencers with bizarrely perfect bodies and imitaing their routines. She also does some live ads for a skincare/makeup company, which I usually skip. However, yesterday blew me away. She did a video with Turia Pitt. I had never heard of her. In 2001 during a 50K run, she got caught in a brush fire and sustained burns over 65% of her body. She has written books about this and does a lot of speaking about dealing with really bad stuff. I always appreciate people who help me stretch my definition of beautiful.
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ROGirl said on May 3, 2021 at 10:43 am
DST in Michigan is annoying. Keeping it all year round means it can still be dark after 9 am.
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Deborah said on May 3, 2021 at 10:47 am
Icarus, I read that link, it always irks me that people who start businesses don’t factor in being able to pay workers a living wage. If you can’t do that you shouldn’t be starting a business. And if the work involves danger, back breaking and/or disgusting stuff they should pay way more than just a barely living wage. When the business owners start making obscene amounts of $$$$ they should make sure their workers make more too, but they never do. It’s immoral. I keep reading about owners complaining that they can’t find workers now, cry me a river.
Look at me a 70 year old, complaining again.
I made April a salad month and since the weather’s been better I’ve gotten out to take 10,000 step walks pretty much every day. Without really trying I lost about 5 lbs. I’ll gain it back in NM with LB’s delicious cooking though. Who cares.
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basset said on May 3, 2021 at 11:10 am
JeffTMMO, good to see that you have enough Scouts to make redistricting an issue… the troop where B Jr. made Eagle, maybe a mile and a half from our house at a church we don’t attend, got down to two Scouts before finding new life in the last year or so.
Eleven years ago the Nashville floodwaters were starting to go down and I was kicking in the side door to our house since the front was too warped to open. Rebuilt and we’re still in the same place, been trying to move for over two years now.
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David C said on May 3, 2021 at 11:23 am
Changing the time zones and/or DST would end up being a Chesterton’s Fence problem. Only when we change it will we find out why we set it up the way we did.
https://fs.blog/2020/03/chestertons-fence/
Do not remove a fence until you know why it was put up in the first place.
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Julie Robinson said on May 3, 2021 at 11:49 am
Ask me again after a year in Orlando; my arms will probably be free and flapping!
We drove past a restaurant yesterday with a sign that said now closed on Sundays, along with help wanted, help, help, help. Then we stopped at one of the few fast food places I’ll go to, where their sign said inside dining closed M-F. We waited forever for our food, couldn’t find a clean table, and when I asked someone if ours could be cleaned, she said it wasn’t her job. I don’t know what these places pay, but I’m betting not much.
A 4-H tour of a chicken processing plant left a big impression on me. The smell was terrible, and the workers were standing in puddles of water and chicken guts armed with sharp knives. I wondered how many injuries there were. Everyone had very sad expressions on their face.
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Sherri said on May 3, 2021 at 12:11 pm
Get rid of DST and time zones, and adopt UTC! Does it really matter what you call the time you start work 9 AM or 1600? It’s just a label.
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Deborah said on May 3, 2021 at 1:44 pm
David C, that Chesterton’s fence link was fantastic, I had never heard of that term before, or its meaning. This needs repeating. Thanks.
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Mark P said on May 3, 2021 at 2:55 pm
Sherri is right. Clock time is an arbitrary human construct. We can set it to whatever we want. New Yorkers can go to work at 0800 and Californians at 11:00. Who cares what numbers are showing on a clock?
I gained a little weight over the last year, but mainly because of bad knees and a sweet tooth. Then I had rotator cuff surgery, and a week later, torn tendon repair in my knee. I almost totally lost my appetite, and now I’ve dropped about eight pounds, despite not being able to walk further than across the room.
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Colleen said on May 3, 2021 at 3:13 pm
I’ve always liked DST, and changing clicks isn’t that big a deal….er…though there is a kitchen clock high above our pantry that has not been sprung forward yet…
Icarus and Deborah, I couldn’t agree more. Maybe you can’t find workers because you (the employer) pay crap. The problem isn’t that unemployment pays too much, it’s that you pay too little. And you should be embarrassed and ashamed. I don’t think people are inherently lazy, but they do need a little motivation. Am I going to be motivated to flip burgers and deal with rude people all day while being on my feet if the money I bring home isn’t going to be substantially better than unemployment? Hell no.
I have seen enough of these articles posted that I have to wonder if maybe we’ve reached some kind of tipping point where employers are going to have to reassess in order to find employees.
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kayak woman said on May 3, 2021 at 5:19 pm
Year-round DST in Michigan? No. I grew up in the UP and for a year or two the entire UP was moved to Central time. To match Wisconsin maybe? We were in the eastern UP and as others have noted, it did not get light until 9AM. There are some parts of the far western UP that have always been on Central time. I actually don’t mind the change or the early winter dark and I love the “midnight” sun. From our “sunset” beach on L. Superior, we can still see a bit of sunset at 11PM around the solstice.
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Sherri said on May 3, 2021 at 6:25 pm
There are things about this country that I will never understand.
A White Castle opened in Orlando, FL, and there was over a 4 hour wait to get in. For mediocre fast food burgers that will still be there a year from now.
White Castle could have done some good with this, by requiring either proof of vaccination or a shot before you got your shitty burger.
Speaking of vaccination, I get my second shot tomorrow! Yippee!
My fully vaccinated daughter was very happy to be able to return to sparring at her karate dojo this past weekend. She gets to hit people again! This makes her happy. I may have bequeathed her some shitty genetics when it comes to depression, but at least I’ve also shown her how to deal with it. As the pandemic wore her down, she started seeing her therapist again, she joined a gym and has started working with a trainer, and saw her doctor to start a trial of meds. I’m proud of her.
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Deborah said on May 3, 2021 at 6:34 pm
Here’s a link to an interview that Anand Giridharadas did with the Ikea guy who did that hilarious Tik Tok about crappy customers that went viral. https://the.ink/p/scottseiss
It’s in keeping with what we’ve been talking about, underpaying and treating workers poorly.
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Julie Robinson said on May 3, 2021 at 7:05 pm
We had lots of customer service issues at IKEA last week, mostly almost zero workers (sorry! co-workers) on the floor. You know, when you have to have the person order the stuff for pickup–no one could be found. No tags with prices or sizes, which increasingly are not found online either. Also, being out of half of what we wanted. We love the prices and the designs, but it was the first time I ever hated going to IKEA.
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Suzanne said on May 3, 2021 at 7:23 pm
Bill & Melinda Gates have moved to Splitsville.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/03/business/bill-melinda-gates-divorce.html
He must have activated her microchip and made her file
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Deborah said on May 3, 2021 at 7:40 pm
I don’t know why I never expected Bill and Melinda Gates to get divorced but this floored me.
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LAMary said on May 3, 2021 at 10:26 pm
My employment saga continues. I’ve been in the one month temp position for nine months. The company posted a permanent, similar position and I applied and interviewed. Heard nothing but saw the posting was still up. Today I was included in an email between three people discussing a recruiting plan for a very specialized position. I didn’t know one of the participants. That person casually mentioned she couldn’t wait until Andrea could help with her hires. That she was happy Andrea accepted but of course she would. Swell. She also mentioned Andrea already works for the company. So being an HR person I looked for Andrea in the HR data base. Fucking daughter of my boss. Said boss just got a promotion. I called my immediate supervisor. She said she was unaware, but would ask her one up. He called me, all apologies. Tells me I’m on payroll until May 21.Boss who hired her kid? She’s on vacation. The good news? I interviewed for a job on the phone on my lunch break. Fingers crossed for that job, recruiting behavioral techs for Autistic kids. 100% remote.
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Dexter Friend said on May 4, 2021 at 12:20 am
J-Lo leaves A-Rod, who cares, Kim and Kanye split, boring. But Bill and Melinda quit because she wants “more equality”? I read the empire is worth $148B and Bill himself is worth $124B of that figure. The foundation thrives and will stay intact, but they are ending the marriage to “grow in separate ways”. They’ve gone about as far as they could go.
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Sherri said on May 4, 2021 at 12:57 am
Maybe Melinda decided she’d gone about as far as she could go in teaching Bill how to be a human, and now that the kids were grown, she was ready to move on. Seriously, I know he’s rehabilitated his image, but that doesn’t mean the asshole isn’t still there, just that he’s learned how to present more smoothly.
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alex said on May 4, 2021 at 7:36 am
The owner of a restaurant that I frequent chatted me up on the street yesterday, blaming Biden and Harris for the fact that his kitchen staff has been decimated by factories willing to pay $15 an hour to anyone with a pulse. He blames the economic stimulus given to small business (never mind that this happened under Trump) and says that businesses are in a “use it or lose it” predicament and that it’s all going to come crashing down after the money’s spent.
Who knows what revelations will come out of the Gates divorce. Maybe he’s a skirt chaser who has managed to keep it hushed and she’s tired of putting up with it. He’s not an attractive man but I don’t doubt that there are plenty of lovely young opportunists throwing themselves at him daily. It’s a rough life having all that money.
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Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on May 4, 2021 at 8:24 am
I’ve had three conversations in last month with small business people in this county, all of whom blamed stimulus payments & unemployment for the fact that they can’t fill or keep front-line employees. Now, I’m on our county Job & Family Services (think “welfare office” as it once was, still is called) Planning Committee, and we talk often about the “benefits cliff” and how we can build a benefits bridge. So I engage, cautiously but more directly than most might, on the subject — and always run into exactly what Alex says: they’re indignant that people or market forces expect them to pay more than $10 an hour. Reply cycle one: I can’t make any money at that compensation rate. Usual query: what if you raise pay a bit? Reply cycle two: If I raise prices, I’ll lose market share. Usual query: aren’t your competitors facing the same hiring issues? This is where the standard first two rounds squirt off into a variety of non-sequiturial directions: ethnic businesses hire family and immigrants for less than minimum wage; people who get priced out of my product will change purchasing to something online at home; or saying they’ll be fine but these people need to get out and get to work for the good of their souls or moral fiber or whathaveyou.
And some of this is what I sadly saw with my dad: they’re usually older people/owners who just have a psychological barrier with $10 an hour. It’s just more money than they can imagine a skills-free worker earning. It’s what they think a welder or plumber or psychologist should earn, but not a cashier or clerk.
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Suzanne said on May 4, 2021 at 9:00 am
LAMary, your employment situation plays out day after day after day and it’s why I get so utterly incensed with people who have the “just go get a job” mentality. When our daughter was near the end of her education, she had an internship (unpaid, of course) with an arts organization. They had a job opening which would have been perfect for her to transition from school to work. She applied. She happened to talk to the CEO of the organization a few days later and he told her how happy he was that she had applied, said he had heard good things about her work, and that they liked hiring from the inside.
Did she get an interview? No. Just a standard generic email a few weeks later about how they appreciated her application but that her skills didn’t fit their needs.
Do employers hire the workers they need and pay them what they are worth? Not on your life.
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Heather said on May 4, 2021 at 9:15 am
I was living in Seattle when Bill and Amanda Gates got engaged and it was big news. Like one of the local stations had an actual in-the-field segment on it. I thought it was ridiculous then. The other day I saw a tweet that suggested the announcement was meant to calm the stock market, which also shows how insane our system is.
I went camping in a state park a bit north of Milwaukee over the weekend and it was great, so relaxing. A bit cold on Friday night but it really warmed up over the course of Saturday. So nice not to look at screens for a few days. I think I saw a bald eagle too.
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basset said on May 4, 2021 at 9:46 am
A camera guy I once worked with in Nashville got arrested by private security while trying to cover the Gates wedding, sued, and won big:
https://www.davislevin.com/blog/2013/may/bill-gates-journalist-settle-suit-over-wedding-a/
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Connie said on May 4, 2021 at 10:58 am
Do you live in a political bubble?
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/04/30/opinion/politics/bubble-politics.html
I already knew that I lived in the red.
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alex said on May 4, 2021 at 11:28 am
Kettle Moraine by any chance, Heather? I used to love camping there, although we had a couple of memorable washouts. This was back in the day before radar weather and extended forecasts. One time a friend and I pitched our tent on a hillside and found ourselves in the path of a waterfall, essentially, although it was passing underneath the tent rather than through it.
Was gonna throw in a joke about the Bong Recreation Area, but that’s south of Milwaukee.
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Julie Robinson said on May 4, 2021 at 11:41 am
LAMary, again I wish you luck in your employment saga. What totally inadequate words, I know. Wish I knew better ones.
Sherri, did you know Bill Gates? Your comment sounded as if it came from personal experience.
So, does anyone else go through their credit card bill every month with a fine tooth comb? Or is it just me, Ms. Anal Used to work in Finance. Well, today I found justification, a double charge on an item that was ordered online and picked up at the store. It took about half an hour to resolve, and I’m rubbing my hands together with glee. Please, someone tell me they relate!
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Sherri said on May 4, 2021 at 12:13 pm
There are no skills-free jobs, just jobs that require skills that some people don’t think are important or difficult to learn. Maybe if they treated their workers as skilled workers and paid them accordingly, they would be able to hire *and retain* them.
No, I don’t know Bill Gates personally, just know plenty of people who have dealt with him at Microsoft.
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Jenine said on May 4, 2021 at 12:39 pm
@Sherri: Congrats on dose #2! Today is two weeks after my second – yahoooo!
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LAMary said on May 4, 2021 at 12:57 pm
I can relate on the double charge thing. More than once when I’ve seen a weird item on a credit card bill or my online banking site and I’ve questioned it I got money back. I would rather my bank or Citibank or whomever think I was a crank than eat some charge that wasn’t mine.
So, two employers have shown interest now. One job would want me to start tomorrow and my Jiminy Cricket on my shoulder tells me I need to finish this job and not burn bridges. On the other hand, it pays about 30% more than I’m making now and while it’s only a two month gig, it would give me some cushion to get me through another job search. In any case it’s nice to know I’m not being discarded as a clueless geezer bitch.
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Deborah said on May 4, 2021 at 1:24 pm
This guy is definitely on the spectrum http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1120657-1,00.html this piece is old and long but talks about Gates as a kid and what an overly competitive asshole he was. Judging from the way he treated his mother, one can just imagine how he treated his wife. No wonder she’s high tailing it out of there.
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Sherri said on May 4, 2021 at 1:55 pm
Gates is incredibly smart, but an asshole. Same was true of Steve Jobs. Again, I didn’t know him personally, but know lots of people who did. And I’m not just talking about their ruthlessness in business, but of how they treated people in their companies. Note that I wasn’t hearing people complain about either; such was the cult around both.
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Julie Robinson said on May 4, 2021 at 2:49 pm
Our double charge was $70, so it was nothing to sneeze at.
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LAMary said on May 4, 2021 at 3:02 pm
Gates and Jobs may have both been assholes but Jobs was worse, I think. At least Gates had a social conscience or possibly knew he should have a social conscience so he hired people to act on that for him. Jobs was missing that knowledge.
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Heather said on May 4, 2021 at 3:20 pm
Alex, no, it was Kohler-Andrae State Park, about 2 hours north of Chicago and right on the lake. They had a great dune hiking path and a marsh area to explore. I heard some crazy bird sounds and may have even seen a bald eagle–too high up to know for sure, but there are some there, apparently.
It was completely full, which surprised me for late April/early May, but then I’m a newbie to camping culture. It was really cold the first night, enough that I wished I had another covering for my sleeping bag. But on Saturday it got into the 80s.
Also: It’s Melinda Gates, not Amanda, as I said in my earlier post, oops.
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David C said on May 4, 2021 at 4:45 pm
Kohler-Andrae is really nice. It’s one of the few parks with a sandy-ish beach on Wisconsin side of the lake. Living on the Michigan side of the lake spoiled my for sandy beaches. It was nice to find one here.
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basset said on May 4, 2021 at 5:19 pm
I am so thankful, and so relieved, that we have good medical insurance. One of Mrs. B’s meds was about to run out; we ordered more yesterday and there was some holdup with insurance. Called the pharmacy to see if the med was there and what the copay/coinsurance would be. Insurance wasn’t covering it, a pharmacist told us, and a three months’ supply would run us thirteen thousand dollars. I about fainted.
Got it worked out, we’re good now.
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alex said on May 4, 2021 at 5:55 pm
Was just enjoying the comments in Adios, Rafael from this date in 2016. How innocent we were, yet how wise.
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Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on May 4, 2021 at 7:20 pm
This lady is one of my oldest friends, and a truly calming presence in any situation; she taught me how to meditate over thirty years ago — was a long-time newspaper reporter and columnist not unlike our host, but left the ink racket to do her three year, three month silent retreat to become a lama, ordained in her Tibetan tradition. Anyhow, I thought these pictures might be a calming presence for anyone looking for some of that! We all need a little.
https://www.newarkadvocate.com/picture-gallery/news/local/2021/05/04/newark-woman-helps-ease-pandemic-anxiety-meditation-classes/7311669002/
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Deborah said on May 4, 2021 at 9:08 pm
The most I ever encountered possibly paying for medicine sans insurance was $800, I can’t imagine encountering a $13,000 possibility. I would have died, never mind fainting. The $800 turned into about $60, a year later but it took an intervention by the Dr. This is for the med that’s going to make my face look horrible for a month, which I’ve put off until after we have company in NM until the middle of May. Then I’ll be wearing hats religiously.
Next time I comment we’ll be on the road, first night in Sioux City, IA. Goodbye Chicago for awhile, it’s been a great 4 months.
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