Housekeeping note: Posting next week will be light, as I’ll be taking off on Wednesday to visit J.C. and Sammy in the U.P., where the cell coverage — with our carrier, anyway — is very very sketchy. As I recall, if you position your phone just so in a particular corner of the cottage, you can maybe conduct a short chat if you don’t mind getting your call dropped.
But that’s fine. I could use a little break. It’s very hot here.
Before I head out, though, I got a COVID test. Just to be sure. I went to the city of Detroit’s drive-through testing center, and besides the setting — the ruins of the state fairgrounds — it was an entirely pleasant experience. The whole thing ran like a Swiss watch.
It was sad to see the fairgrounds, though. I grew up in a state-fair town, and looked forward to it all summer, even as I knew that the arrival of the state fair meant summer was in its final stretch. But what a stretch — it was like the finale of a fireworks show, full of corn on the cob and Tom Thumb donuts and grandstand shows and barns full of blue-ribbon livestock and…so much more. Admittedly, the Michigan state fair was never a match for Ohio’s, but I was an adult by then. I took Kate a few times, and got to go through the Poultry, Rabbits and Pigeons building, among many others.
But the state subsidy was cut off during the financial crisis, and what remains of the state fair now meets in a horrible exurban convention center, while the O.G. fairgrounds slowly decay.
The test was…pretty much as expected. A swab goes a mile up your nose, and just at the point you’re knocking your shoes together and ready to scream, it comes out and you’re on your way. Hope to get the results before I roll north.
So I wish you a good weekend, and maybe you’ll be ready to read this: An oral-history retelling of the first Gathering of the Juggalos, 20 years ago this month. It was quite something, got the band banned from the Novi convention center, and sparked this recollection, among others:
We arrived that morning of the Gathering, our bus pulled in at like 7 or 8 in the morning. And we got down to the venue and the line was already 3.5 miles long. I thought we were going to get there and there would be 300 people, it was a pleasant surprise to see that I wasn’t the only one, and to see that wow, there’s people all over the world that are just like me. As different as we are, we have that common band, and it felt like a family.
It’s not like a family. It is a family. A dysfunctional one, but still.
susan said on July 23, 2020 at 9:36 pm
This is a response to Alex’s note of caution about the “Lincoln Project” and their people, at the end of the previous post. (Dead threaded!) Do not trust them, as clever as they are about trashing Trump. Listen to this, from On the Media podcast. The fact that the Democratic Party has donated millions of bucks to these people, who are not working for us, is shocking and maddening. Jeet Heer pointed out that the Lincoln Project does not broadcast these ads in the swing states that Dems need to win. They are aiming their “ads” to one person. And Dems love it! Hmmmmm. Democrat “leadership” is so…what? Naïve? Ignorant? Stupid? Set in their ways? Lazy? Unimaginative? Incompetent? We need younger and better Democrats running things. Damn.
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susan said on July 23, 2020 at 9:41 pm
Also, Colbert is on to the Lincoln Project people
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Sherri said on July 23, 2020 at 9:42 pm
I was trying to come up with a list of five words to repeat, to make a joke about my cognitive status, but I’ve got nothing beyond Fuck Trump and Fuck Republicans.
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beb said on July 24, 2020 at 12:05 am
Sherri I hear that the unspeakable-one-in-chief has decided to send his gestapo to your neck of the woods. I thought he was going to clean up Chicago. It must not have been “elite” for him.
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David C said on July 24, 2020 at 6:00 am
I went to the Michigan State Fair when I was in high school. It was always pretty bad.
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basset said on July 24, 2020 at 8:53 am
We go to fairs for the agricultural stuff, usually don’t even set foot on the midway. With that restriction, the Indiana and Ohio fairs are the best we’ve been to, with Kansas not far behind.
The Southern Illinois fair at Du Quoin is pretty good, and it’s the only place I know of where you can still see full-bodied stock cars on a dirt mile.
Kentucky’s fair is nothing special, probably would go if we lived around Louisville but we’re not making the drive from Nashville again. The Tennessee and Mississippi fairs wouldn’t make decent county fairs in the Midwest; the Wilson County fair outside Nashville is much better.
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Julie Robinson said on July 24, 2020 at 9:53 am
Summer in rural communities like the one where I grew up is all about the fair. You had the 4-H fair and the county fair, frequently combined into one, but split into two separate events in my county. If you advanced you went to the state fair, which was a huge deal for the country kids who hadn’t been out of town before. Mostly they slept with their animals in the barns, doesn’t that sound fun?
I also would visit my grandparents in Iowa every year for The Great Jones County Fair, as it is billed. I helped make pies for the Lions Club booth and then they gave me money and cut me loose to go crazy on the midway. It was freedom as I never had any other time. When Mom & Dad came to pick me up we solemnly judged the dairy cows, got our free chocolate milk while admiring the butter cow, and watched the horse racing. The racing was not immoral because it was sulky racing, in which the horse pulls a two wheeled cart piloted by a local farm worker. Whee! Big times for a kid!
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Dorothy said on July 24, 2020 at 10:19 am
Twenty-four hours ago I got a grim phone call from our son who had to let us know he tested positive for the virus. He had Drill two weekends ago and two of his soldiers tested positive within days of the end of Drill. We were together last weekend when our daughter visited for a long weekend, but he got tested before she arrived. So we knew we needed to mask up and keep distant. We ate in separate rooms, let them use the powder room while me, hubs and daughter went upstairs to those bathrooms. But our granddaughter didn’t keep her mask on the whole time. SO – here we are. My daughter-in-law got tested yesterday afternoon. The nurse said to her, before she did the test “You’re positive. No matter what this test says, if it comes back negative, it’s wrong.” How sobering is that?
I’m not putting anything on Facebook about this, for those of you friends with me there. Not for the time being, anyway.
We have appointments tomorrow morning to go to a drive through at a Rite-Aid location. None of us have symptoms. Well, actually, son has had a slight sore throat. But no temperatures for any of us. I ordered an infrared thermometer and a pulse oximeter yesterday and they’ll arrive today. 2020 can just end now, thanks very much.
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LAMary said on July 24, 2020 at 10:31 am
Oh, Dorothy. That’s bad news. I hope you all have as easy a time with this as possible. I get so angry at people the jerks online that say this is no big deal, it’s just another flu, or that it’s all fake. It’s very real, especially to your family now. You are all in my thoughts, Dorothy.
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Heather said on July 24, 2020 at 10:45 am
I highly recommend watching AOC’s full speech in response to Rep. Yahoo’s non-apology for getting aggressively in her face and calling her a “f**king b**ch.” It. Is. Perfect.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q3Xjv03Qrtc
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jcburns said on July 24, 2020 at 10:54 am
Representative Ocasio-Cortez showed restraint, intelligence, and, yes, passion in her remarks. I wish they’d go ahead and censure the Yahoo and force him to march out of the hall while his colleagues in unison turn their backs to him…but that’s just me.
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LAMary said on July 24, 2020 at 11:12 am
How have I missed this guy until now?
https://www.thecut.com/2020/05/who-is-jacob-wohl-failed-smears.html
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Peter said on July 24, 2020 at 11:39 am
LA Mary, the question isn’t how have you missed this guy; the bigger question is why Trump has missed this guy. He’s so spectacularly bad that he has Senior Advisor to the President written all over him. Really – isn’t he Stephen Miller with hair?
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Sherri said on July 24, 2020 at 11:43 am
Beb, it was inevitable that the stormtroopers would come to Seattle. Trump hates us. We, of course, would rather he send us testing supplies that were actually usuable, but like I said, he hates us.
Dorothy, I hope everything works out with your family and COVID, and that nobody suffers anything but the mildest of cases.
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Julie Robinson said on July 24, 2020 at 11:50 am
Dorothy, that’s some tough news to swallow. I’m praying for your whole family, both to battle the Covid and that no one else has been infected. We haven’t had any family gatherings at all and it’s getting harder and harder to wait.
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Deborah said on July 24, 2020 at 11:59 am
Dorothy, oh my, I certainly hope every thing turns out ok.
I was surprised how most people in Chicago wore masks. Not outside as much but still.
We’re back at uncle J’s, not a very long stay in Chicago, but it’s supposed to get hot this weekend there, so it was the right time to leave. Yesterday was uncle J’s 90th birthday and tomorrow they’re having a car parade with the great grandchildren and then ice cream outside, so that should be cute. Uncle J has the cognitive ability of about a 2 year old now, he’ll enjoy the hoopla. He still recognizes people but he can’t say their names. It’s sad but he had a good run for a long time. We have to try hard to keep anxiety away, he doesn’t have a clue there’s a pandemic, we don’t wear masks around him, but no hugs or kisses and we keep distances when we can.
We leave the Midwest for NM on Sunday morning, a more direct route than the trip up here, but still no public restrooms or stores/restaurants. I have my handy Covid kit for spraying down the hotel rooms. We will try to get tested when we get back.
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Sherri said on July 24, 2020 at 12:09 pm
We’ve all heard how the new Postmaster is screwing up postal shipping and delivery, intentionally. Well guess what, seems like it’s not uniformly screwed up, but like everything else, if you’re important to Trump, you get better service, if you’re not, too bad for you.
https://twitter.com/SarahTaber_bww/status/1286661881558695936
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Brian stouder said on July 24, 2020 at 12:26 pm
Dorothy – what all the others said! These times are genuinely trying; one suspects they will become moreso before things get better
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Scout said on July 24, 2020 at 1:15 pm
Dorothy, echoing what others have said. I hope your son and d-i-l are the only ones to be positive and that they have no or mild symptoms. Please keep us all updated, because we truly do care.
My kids are middle aged, my grands are young adults and my great grandies are under the age of 2, so I don’t have any school age littles to worry about. However, I am passionate about making school on-line-only for the immediate future. People keep saying kids are at low risk, but how do we really know this, since they’ve all been at home since March? Who wants to let their child be the guinea pig to find out?
My youngest grandson joined the Navy when he graduated from HS this year. He leaves for boot camp in November and I am very concerned. I do not trust the system under Trump to keep him safe.
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basset said on July 24, 2020 at 3:04 pm
So sorry to hear that, Dorothy! Keep us informed, as Scout said we do care.
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Suzanne said on July 24, 2020 at 3:22 pm
Oh, Dorothy, how stressful for you! I sincerely hope everyone has mild symptoms and a quick recovery.
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beb said on July 24, 2020 at 4:35 pm
He called AOC both “disgusting” as well as a “f’ing bitch” so he was being pretty personal. I do like JC’s suggestion of being drumming out of the
corpHouse.LAMary “How have I missed this guy until now?” There are just so many of them you just can’t keep up.
Dorothy: Courage and good luck as you wait out this quarantine.
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LAMary said on July 24, 2020 at 5:40 pm
That guy is 20 years old and is a complete idiot but somehow he has the funds to attempt very stupid stuff. He claims he has an honorary law degree from Harvard. When questioned about that he said, “it’s just a turn of phrase.” When questioned about his ability to do these investigations he said “over the years” he acquired his skills. He was 19 when he said that.
https://tinyurl.com/y36zyuk2
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ROGirl said on July 24, 2020 at 5:43 pm
Dorothy, it’s awful news. Be strong, hoping for the best for you and your family.
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Sherri said on July 24, 2020 at 5:52 pm
It’s not just Hillary the NYTimes doesn’t like.
https://presswatchers.org/2020/07/the-new-york-times-has-a-misogyny-problem-too/
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Peter said on July 24, 2020 at 5:55 pm
Dorothy, I am so sorry to hear about your awful news. Hoping for the best.
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beb said on July 25, 2020 at 1:28 am
The New York Times has been awful for so long that it’s a wonder that anyone still subscribes to it.
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Suzanne said on July 25, 2020 at 8:28 am
Why COVID spreads
https://wpta21.com/2020/07/24/adams-county-food-inspector-says-she-disagrees-with-the-mask-mandate/
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Deborah said on July 25, 2020 at 8:35 am
Suzanne, Does that woman have any scientific credentials? Just because “she doesn’t believe in it”, wow, how irresponsible, no actually, how dangerous. Hard to believe. How do people like that get and keep their jobs?
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LAMary said on July 25, 2020 at 10:26 am
I think that people who believe the way to conduct their lives in a pandemic is to follow their own intuition are not really thinking this through. Either that or they are ignorant and selfish.
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Heather said on July 25, 2020 at 10:45 am
Jacob Wohl is alternately hilarious and terrifying. Hilarious because he’s obviously as dumb as a rock, terrifying because some people apparently take him seriously. He’s obviously got some sort of financial backing from conservatives. I especially recall this tire fire of a “press conference,” during which he and a right-wing colleague claimed they had evidence that Robert Mueller had raped a woman. The fun included different spellings of a witness’s name in their own docs, an obviously doctored photo, an anonymous witness on speakerphone, and Wohl’s partner not knowing his fly was unzipped during the whole thing.
https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/fly-unzipped-jack-burkman-and-jacob-wohl-make-laughable-smear-claims-against-mueller/
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Jim said on July 25, 2020 at 11:28 am
Deborah: re the Adams County Food Inspector. It’s the rural Indiana way. All she has to be is either related to someone or of the right political affiliation. Alas, at the county level my state sees little need for credentials.
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Sherri said on July 25, 2020 at 12:38 pm
This is what half-assed, 50 states, 50 strategies, sort of mitigation has bought us. We have slowed the rate at which the cases double, but we are still seeing exponential growth.
From Twitter:
Worth noting that with exponential growth as we expect with infectious diseases, going from 1 mil to 2 mil is same as going from 2 mil to 4 mil.
Doubling.
So:
1 to 1 mil 99 days
1 to 2 mil 43 days
2 to 4 mil 43 days
And our mitigation strategies aren’t much better than they were back in April. Anyone who says that if we all just wore a mask for six weeks, we could go back to normal is delusional. Our underlying community spread is too high for that, we still don’t have the testing, tracing, and isolating support we need, and we still don’t have a coherent response.
Yes, wearing masks is really, really important. It will help slow things down. But we’re past the point that we can just wear masks or a few weeks and then return to normal.
If we get better at wearing masks, maybe we don’t hit 8 million in six weeks. But we will hit 8 million, and more.
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Dorothy said on July 25, 2020 at 1:34 pm
Thanks very much friends. We are just in a wait and see mode in the family. We had the tests done today. It was self administered! We only had to wait for two cars in front of us at the drive up window at Rite Aid (we had to register ahead of time, which I did Thursday afternoon). The young man in the store used the sliding box thinga-majig to give us our swabs. First I did it. You open the cellophane yourself, remove the swab, snap it at the perforation to shorten the swab stick, and then he said to put the swab in one nostril, swirl it around twice touching the top of the nasal passage, and then you held it there for 15 seconds. I sneezed as soon as I took the first one out – it tickled kind of. Using the same swab, you then repeated that step in the other nostril. He had given me a tube that had liquid in it, and I carefully put the swab in the tube, cotton side in first. I tightened the cap and put it back in the sliding box. Then Mike did it. All told I think it took 20 minutes. We will have results in an email within 3-7 business days, and if it’s positive we’ll also get a phone call. So I’ll have to answer all phone calls for the next week, being polite until I can discover if it’s those crooks calling about (1) the warranty on my car is expiring, (2) I won some crap via the Mariott Hotel line, (3) I’m in pain and a medical doctor referred me to them to give me some miracle cure, (4) my electric bill is too high and thy want to save me buckets of money!, (5) there are pending charges against me in some other state and the boogeyman is coming to get me unless I pay some outrageous sum of money – you get the point.
This test was not as bad as I was anticipating. In February I had surgery on a blood clot in my leg and the nurse had to swab the insides of my nose with large cotton swabs dripping with anesthetic. It left smoky grey rings of liquid around my nostrils, and some of it touched the space right about the center of my top lip. I looked in a mirror – it looked like Hitler’s moustache!
My granddaughter got a play camera for her birthday in March. It doesn’t take real pictures. She had lost it for awhile but found it yesterday. Today my son said she was ‘taking pictures’ of her parents when they were on the toilet this morning. I thought this was hilarious, so Mike and I took pictures of each other sitting on the powder room throne, lid down, pants up at our waists. Just silly pictures to tease them. They were a big hit! Laughs aren’t exactly rolling out of our mouths these days so we take them when we can.
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Dorothy said on July 25, 2020 at 1:42 pm
Oh – about masks – imagine if there had been a national mask mandate back in March/April and everyone wore them and the number of cases stayed very low, at this time we could be talking about how much safer it’s going to be to open schools again. But that didn’t happen, so now of course all of the teachers and most of the students and all of the parents are nervous wrecks about going back to the classrooms. It’s hard to believe this wasn’t realized from the get-go.
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LAMary said on July 25, 2020 at 2:07 pm
Dorothy, I get all those calls too. All day, every day. I probably miss some calls that aren’t junk because I don’t answer if I don’t recognize the number. I give my cell number on my job applications.
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David C said on July 25, 2020 at 2:20 pm
Our phone is set up so only calls from approved numbers get through. We tried blocking numbers but it was impossible to keep up and as far as we could tell it never helped decrease the number of unwanted calls. It’s a bit of a pain to find out the numbers of people who will be calling us for legitimate reasons like your Covid test calls and I’m sure we miss some legitimate calls but we’ve been doing this for over five years and none of the calls we might have missed have come around to do us any harm. We just got sick of answering unwanted calls and having our voice mail boxes full of junk calls. It’s an imperfect solution but it works for us.
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LAMary said on July 25, 2020 at 2:24 pm
The number of junk calls has increased since the lock down. I guess they figure more people are home answering their phones.
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Julie Robinson said on July 25, 2020 at 3:14 pm
When we moved to the apartment we finally ditched the land line. We’d been hanging on to it for years just so we could each pick up a phone when the kids would call. And you know what? Putting a cell phone on speaker in between us works just fine and dandy. On the cell I only answer a number if I recognize the number. Anyone else better leave me a message or they get blocked. It’s made my life much more peaceful.
We spent the day so far going through boxes from my mom’s storage units. She has to curate every single item, so we decided to start without her and ditch all the old newspapers, magazines, receipts, and general crap. There are a few gems in with the detritus, and somewhere there are some stock certificates. The company is requiring the paper certificates, or we have to go through a big long process of declaring them lost. Has anyone ever done this? It doesn’t sound fun.
The real trick will be taping the boxes back up so they look like they’ve been in storage for five years.
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Deborah said on July 25, 2020 at 3:24 pm
Because my cell has a Chicago 312 area code, I get robo calls around 8 in the morning when I’m in NM ( mountain time) it makes we furious. I probably get 6 to 8 robo calls a day, some leave messages in Chinese.
Today at uncle J’s I made tuna salad, egg salad and fried bacon to sprinkle on various things for our road trip. I bought lettuce to make wraps, and avacado. We got Sliced roast turkey and Roast beef, the deli kind, not packaged. I think we’re going to eat just fine. All that stuff works with my low carb program.
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basset said on July 25, 2020 at 3:33 pm
I’ll turn 65 in September so the Medicare-related junk calls and paper mail are running full flow right now. But, y’know, the envelope says it’s Official Business and Deliver to Addressee Only so I need to read it, right?
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4dbirds said on July 25, 2020 at 3:49 pm
Dorothy, I hope your son and DIL have mild cases and the rest of you test negative. It is scary and I don’t see how we are getting out of this with everyone flouting common sense.
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4dbirds said on July 25, 2020 at 4:06 pm
Bassett,
I too have been on the Medicare direct mail list too. Thank goodness my HR is up on what is best for Federal Employees. Since I can carry my health benefits in retirement, I am signing up for A, and also for B. That way I have coverage that will give me minimal out of pocket expenses. I’m not sure about prescription just yet. I’m still working and am trying to hold out until I’m 70. I am also eligible for free medications and healthcare from the VA and might go that route. Whatever works best for our family.
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Dexter Friend said on July 26, 2020 at 4:02 am
I visit my wife every day in the rehab hospital. I wear two masks, sanitize at the door coming and going, wash my hands everytime I touch anything, and hope for the best. Yes, she’s been sick over a month now. Time is short on her maximum allowed days in rehab, and her knee is now on a wound vac machine. Tuesday she sees the surgeon and wound care doctors again. Her right knee was the bad one, so she had it replaced like 4 years ago, and everything went so smoothly, she decided, why, let’s do the other one. I have no idea why the left knee replacement was such a horrible disaster…repeated surgeries, blood transfusions, now all we have is hope that this thing ends well. At least my family has stopped trying to convince me to have my bad hip replaced. After my wife’s ordeal, no fucking way will I consent to do it as elective surgery. If something snaps and I have to, OK.
Dorothy, I am sad to read of your family’s contracting The Bug. Best wishes.
A friend has a 23 year old daughter who recovered from Covid 19 early on. She posted on YouTube about her concern about her rapidly escalating cravings for alcoholic beverages. Her words could have been my exact story. I told her about young people’s AA, called ICYPAA, shared about my cravings progression, and told her how I was able to stop alcohol abusive drinking. So with all the concerns for my wife’s health and my trying to avoid Covid 19, maybe I did a little bit of good. The kid’s smart, NYU grad…I hope she finds a way somehow to either quit or manage the booze.
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alex said on July 26, 2020 at 9:31 am
Deborah, my cell still has a 773 area code and I get bombarded with robocalls about needing to renew my nonexistent car warranty. I also get screechy fax robocalls a fair part of the time and I suspect it’s because I ported the number from one I’d formerly used for a fax machine 20-some odd years ago.
Dorothy, here’s wishing you and your family the best.
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ROGirl said on July 26, 2020 at 9:50 am
I get those car warranty robocalls and always block the numbers. They don’t stop.
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JodiP said on July 26, 2020 at 10:00 am
Dorothy, I hope your test results are negative, and that your son and DIL have mild cases. So scary!
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Icarus said on July 26, 2020 at 10:11 am
Julie Robinson @ 39…
I had to do that a few years ago. My grandmother had some stock certificates and the company kept sending letters. I guess they want that off their books. My family is so lame, inept and not savvy when it comes to stuff like this so it eventually fell to me.
Couldn’t find the originals that my hoarder mom had for years so I checked the lost certificates box. They skim a portion off the payout for that. Either way, you need a Medallion from you bank (think notary on steroids). This was easy for me to get at Chase (I probably went to Deborah’s branch next to Marianos).
Don’t know how many siblings you have, but you and they also have to fill out an affidavit stating there are no other interested parties.
Hope this helps.
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Julie Robinson said on July 26, 2020 at 10:43 am
Thanks, Icarus, it’s been a year since we talked to them but some of that sounds familiar. I remember contacting her bank and they can do the Medallion thing. As for siblings, it’s just me now, so while I’m her sole heir, I’m also on the hook for all these chores.
Dexter, I’m so sorry that your wife is having such a rough time. Before she died my sister had a couple of similar rehab experiences, only she was many, many miles from any of us, so we couldn’t get there every day like you can. I’m sure your visits help her. Does she have internet, or could you download movies and such on a tablet for her to watch? Jeri never had internet, but I sent her a Kindle with hundreds of books and lots of music, and that helped her stay sane.
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LAMary said on July 26, 2020 at 11:20 am
https://tinyurl.com/yxuseem4
NYT What to Cook This Week comes through with a recipe for a crispy tofu sandwich.
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nancy said on July 26, 2020 at 11:50 am
Stop posting this recipe, people! (You’re the second to do it, Mary.) Not only does it call for 1.5 cups of pickle juice, which is ridiculous, it requires TWO rounds of frying, which is even more ridiculous. This was the first recipe I found, and nope’d it on first reading.
I consider myself a decent intermediate-level cook/baker, but I know my limits. Some things are best left to the experts, like Chinese food and double-fried tofu sandwiches calling for 1.5 cups of pickle juice. The ones I made were good enough, and that’s my new goal in some of this stuff: Good enough.
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Brian stouder said on July 26, 2020 at 12:23 pm
So, I decided to mow our yard today. Got the front yard done, and then headed for the back. Just beyond our backyard, literally, is the channel 15 (WANE-TV) studio and tower and satellite dishes. So I’m rolling toward the fence, and what do I see? (insert picture here, if I knew how!) Some idiot spray painted “DEFUND THE POLICE” and “DEFUND THE MEDIA” onto the side of the building (in 2′ all cap letters and black spray paint) and “END WHITE HATE” onto one of WANE’s marked news vehicles. Leaving aside the ignorance of “defunding” a private business/news operation, it got our attention that the person(s) who did this were also within spittin’ distance of our home….indeed, they may have trespassed directly across our yard….so there’s that. (We are currently trying to contact WANE)
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LAMary said on July 26, 2020 at 12:33 pm
Sorry. I thought it was a pain in the ass recipe too. I would have fed exed you the pickle juice, dry ice and all that.
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David C said on July 26, 2020 at 12:58 pm
Good enough reminds me of that stupid Charles Osgood poem “Pretty good”. The last line is “Pretty good is pretty bad”. You know what? Fuck you Charles Osgood. Pretty good is just fine most of the time. If we lived our lives according to the tenets of that stupid poem, most of us would have already committed suicide from the shame of it all.
http://holyjoe.org/poetry/osgood1.htm
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tajalli said on July 26, 2020 at 1:42 pm
Here’s my own Tofu Crispies recipe, no pickle juice or double whatnot involved, only simple home ingredients. 2-4 slices per person
firm tofu – one block sliced crosswise into 8 pieces
shoyu/tamari/soy sauce (San-J wheat-free is great)
good-tasting nutritional yeast flakes from health food store
olive oil for sauteing
Pour olive oil into a medium saute pan that will hold all eight pieces, allowing for a tiny space between each. The oil should cover the entire surface of the pan.
Place the tofu slices on a clean dishtowel and pat or lightly press to remove moisture without squashing the slices.
Pour an excess of shoyu into a small bowl; pour an excess of nutritional yeast into another small bowl. Dip a tofu slice into shoyu, shake drops off, and then dredge each side in nutritional yeast.
Place slice in saute pan. Repeat until until all slices are prepared. Warm oil on medium low and saute until bottom of slices are light golden brown. Flip over with spatula and brown other side.
Place cooked slices on paper towels to remove excess oil (or not, depending on your tastes).
Serve on a bed of lightly steamed spinach/greens or with whatever side dish/salad you prefer.
After you get handy with the dipping and dredging process, you will be able to warm the oil while prepping the slices.
I return the balance of the nutritional yeast to its bag and put the remaining shoyu in a little pouring bottle, not the stock bottle – Kikkomon has nice 5oz bottles for this purpose. I also use the nutritional yeast on popcorn or add it to homemade soups once in the individual serving bowl (don’t cook it); the surplus shoyu is nice on steamed veggies.
PS: mostly I just enjoy reading the conversations and appreciate the various links and perspectives. Dorothy, I’m rooting for your family’s well-being.
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Brian stouder said on July 26, 2020 at 2:44 pm
Correction: the idiot (s) scrawled “DEFUND POLITICIANS” (not the police)
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Sherri said on July 26, 2020 at 3:30 pm
That Osgood pretty good/pretty bad story reminds me of an interaction I had with my friend Randy, better known to the world from The Last Lecture. He was going on and on about how the good was the enemy of the best, and how we too often settled for good instead of working to get better. Eventually he wound down, and I told him he had the quote backwards, that Voltaire had actually said the best was the enemy of the good. To Randy’s credit, he had a good sense of humor about himself, and said, you mean, I’ve based my entire philosophy of life on a misquote?!!
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Sherri said on July 26, 2020 at 3:52 pm
These people really aren’t capable of functioning in society.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/controversial-u-s-ambassador-to-iceland-wants-firearm-security-for-reykjavik-post/
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JodiP said on July 26, 2020 at 4:32 pm
Oh my, that story about that ambassador! Demanding to carry a gun is just frosting on the cake.
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David C said on July 26, 2020 at 4:54 pm
Ambassador to Iceland has to be one of the best gigs a donor can get. Go to parties, eat a lot of fish, watch a volcano erupt, and let the deputy, who knows how to actually do the job, do the job. Another thing, if we pay dermatologists enough to make a campaign contribution large enough to be an ambassador we’re paying them too much.
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Dorothy said on July 26, 2020 at 6:47 pm
You guys really are the best! Thanks for so, so many good wishes. We’re hanging in there. I’ll be most anxious to get our test results. An email they sent last night said we’ll get results within 2-7 business days. Our daughter is taking a rapid test tomorrow. I had a Zoom gathering of my quilt guild friends today and I heard the secretary of the organization has had Covid for about 10 days so far. She’s not feeling great but still at home. She’s much younger than me. I’m starting to feel like I’m going to hear more and more about people in my own circle of friends, family, co-workers who have it.
I’m a skimmer of Twitter and sometimes some of the trends mystify me. Anyone know what is going on with the “I have a joke to share, but …..”. What’s the origin of it? Some of them are really funny. Some of them you have to think about for 2-3 seconds and then it’s clear.
I am reading “The Power” by Naomi Alderman. Anyone else read it? And my daughter-in-law loved “The Gown”, a novel having to do with the real-life creation of the Queen’s wedding gown in 1947. She finished it in 48 hours. They had a copy of it at our Half Price Books so my neighbor picked it up for me yesterday. I started knitting a sweater for my daughter yesterday so I have lots to take my mind off of the ‘what ifs’ that threaten to overtake my brain.
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