BookWoman56

I wish he had refused in the end to come back for the final season. His performance that last season was atrocious; he couldn't have appeared any more completely disengaged from the show. He showed up to say his lines, and that was about it.

I hated the HIMYM finale because it did one of my least favorite things on shows: spend years showing the audience how toxic character A and character B are in a romantic relationship, break them up, and then reunite them at the last minute despite them still having the characteristics that made them toxic for each other originally. I'd have had much more respect for the show if they had left Barney and Robin married, left the mother still alive, and had the end focus on Ted explaining to his kids that while he was obsessed with Robin for a long time, he ultimately found that they weren't a good couple and were much better as friends, and that he and the mother were a much better couple. Lesson being, just because you have the hots for someone and/or are obsessed with them doesn't mean you're going to have a good relationship.

The shellfish thing is a trigger for me. A friend ended up in the ER and was extremely sick for a couple of days because some "George" thought it would be funny to disregard her statement that she couldn't eat shellfish, and gave her something that had shellfish in it. In her case, it was being allergic to shellfish, not a personal preference based on religious beliefs. While I can see that the action on a TV show might seem humorous because you can laugh at how terrible George is, that sort of shit in real life speaks to someone who has zero regard for other people.

If he did that intentionally and knowing that the woman observed dietary laws, then George can go fuck right off. That's not only not amusing; it's disgusting and inexcusable.

For at least a month, do only things that make you feel good. Read, binge on Netflix, whatever. You need a mental health break from your toxic work environment to recharge your batteries. In terms of looking for another job, you have some time before getting a new job becomes critical. Right now it seems that a lot of companies are on pause for hiring, but I suspect that will change in a few months, likely after the end of this year. You can worry about the job market after you've given yourself sufficient time to recuperate and relax. Given the horrible boss you have right now, though, before you start a job search again, figure out what red flags you need to look for in job descriptions and interviews. You don't want to escape from your current job hell only to get sucked into another one just as bad.

That was my first thought as well. I work with a lot of non-native English speakers and their writing has similar issues.

I remember watching this as a kid; the standard lineup we had for afternoon soaps was Days of Our Lives, The Doctors, and Another World. I remember some aspects of it fairly well, but also as a springboard for several actors who went on to bigger roles.

One of the very few benefits of the Covid situation is that many graduation ceremonies have moved to online only. For example, my daughter received her undergrad degree at the end of May and her graduation ceremony was live-streamed rather than in person. She didn't opt to have her name read aloud, but for any students who did, their families could have made all the noise they wanted to without disturbing anyone else in their own homes.

@bilgistic, even if this particular gig doesn't translate into an immediate FTE position or an extension on your contract, it gives you current experience in dealing with regulatory filings. Given where you are, there's a ton of both large and small places (banks, investment companies, etc.) that have regulatory paperwork that has to be done quarterly or annually. So I'm hopeful you can use this experience as a springboard into a FTE position with benefits, etc., that will be a good fit for you. There's also a good possibility that at the end of the project, your project managers will take a look at your performance and that of the other two temps, and decide to hire one of you full-time; that's pretty common when a company brings in several temps for a project.

Good for the daughter for insisting on a college away from the parent(s). If that comment by the parent is typical, then the daughter needs to get away so she can make her own decisions. Not that helicopter/overly controlling parents are entirely new, though; a few decades ago I taught freshman English at a few universities, and almost invariably the students who bombed were the ones whose parents had controlled every single aspect of their lives until they went away to college. The students had never had the freedom to make their own choices and mistakes when the stakes were small, and so they were not prepared to make decisions and deal with mistakes when the stakes were higher. Parents who had insisted their high school kids could never stay up late at home, could not hang out with friends not personally vetted by the parents, etc., ended up with their kids becoming college freshmen who often completely went wild once away from home. All too often, those freshmen didn't realize you can't generally party 6 nights a week and still pass your classes. So my pet peeve is parents who delude themselves that the day their kid turns 18, despite having zero freedom and corresponding responsibility prior to that, the kid is going to wake up on their 18th birthday with fully formed adult sensibilities. These days, it seems like those same types of parents are expecting to control their kids' lives until they're 21 or something. They're not doing themselves or their kids any favors.

I wouldn't object to a physical compliment if it were included as part of a message, but when it's the entirety of a message, to me that signals that the person hasn't bothered to read the profile and instead looked only at the photos. And I have zero interest in someone who is going to ignore my interests. Again, I'm not currently looking for a relationship but in the past I've found, for example, if a potential date has no interest in reading, then it's just not going to work at all. I once dated a guy who was a model; super attractive, nice guy, but we just had very little in common. While I fully understand that people can be drawn to others because of physical appearance, my own experience is that I have to find the person at least somewhat intellectually compatible for there to be any chance at all for the relationship to work.

I'm not actively looking to date anyone even casually, much less for a serious relationship, but should I decide to do so using an online dating site, anyone whose first message is entirely about appearances without even a token mention of substantive things in my profile will be a hard pass. How hard is it to acknowledge at least one of a person's stated interests and try to establish rapport around that shared interest or ask intelligent questions about it?

I was never a fan of the Hannah Montana series but my daughter was of the age that the show was marketed to, and she didn't like it either. However, both of us like Miley Cyrus as a performer now that she's shed the fake persona from the show. My probably unpopular opinion is that given her parents pimped her out to Disney for years and years, nobody should be surprised that she chose to veer off in a completely different direction once she turned 18. I'd frankly be more concerned about her if she'd retained the Hannah Montana persona. JoJo Siwa seems to have a talent for marketing stuff to young girls. I'm not sure how much her parents are pushing her into those activities, versus her wanting to do it. But it makes my head hurt just to look at how tight her ponytail is pulled. I have seen somewhere recently a video or photos of her trying out a normal hairstyle, without the OTT hair bows and stuff. My guess is she's hanging on to her more familiar style for financial reasons, but have no idea what she will do once she turns 18.

In reality, it's more that she's being disrespectful to you. She's not respecting your authority to raise your child as you see fit. It would be different if you were blatantly endangering your child or showing yourself to be an unfit parent, but that's not the case.

First, hell no to the idea of force feeding meals to your son, who per his doctor is an acceptable weight for his age/height. That kind of food manipulation can easily result in a kid having problems later on. Second, despite the mix of generational and cultural differences, this is your child, not your mother's, and you need to let her know that you are making the decisions about your child's health, in consultation with his doctor, and that he's fine. I know you feel compelled to be polite and respectful when talking to your mother, but you can firmly say that you're not going to force feed your child, that he's fine per his doctor, and that's the end of the discussion. If she persists, shut her down and change the topic. If you don't establish and maintain boundaries around this topic, you'll be getting unwanted parenting advice at least until your son is old enough to leave home.

Monday through Friday, when I wake up around 8:15 and start working around 8:30: 8:30: Dogs want to go outside to pee. 9:30: Dogs want breakfast. 9:45: Dogs want to go outside again to poop. Rest of day: Dogs sleep in various places, with occasional short trips outside for bio breaks, and play with each other unsupervised. Saturday and Sunday, when I could in theory sleep late: 7:00: Dogs want to go outside to pee. 7:30: Dogs decide it's time to play on my bed for the next hour or two.

I really enjoyed the Charlaine Harris books upon which this series was based. But I could not make it more than 15 minutes into the pilot episode before bailing on the show. I read the various synopses of each episode in the series and damn, it looks like they kept the main characters from the book but changed them up so much and threw in random plot devices to the point where it feels unrecognizable. I understand when a show has to depart from the source material to amp up the drama and so forth. But this just seemed like throwing plot twists against the wall in a desperate hope that something would stick. One sticking point I couldn't get past was the casting of Manfred. In the books, he has a slight build and multiple piercings and tattoos. He has the piercings and so forth as part of his working persona; they're on his body to make him look extraordinary, so that his clients feel that yes, he is different and is a real psychic. Nothing against the actor chosen for the show, but he looks perfectly interchangeable with any other main character; reasonably attractive but there's nothing about his appearance that demands attention.

I know that I'm extremely lucky to have my job during this pandemic that has cost so many people their lives, health, and/or livelihoods. That said, though, FFS mainstream media and social media need to stop the barrage of stories which boil down to, "Now that you're at home with nothing to do, here's a gazillion ideas for what you can do with your greatly increased free time." Many people are in the same situation I am; I already worked from home full-time pre-Covid and will continue to do so post-Covid. My work expectations have not changed in the slightest. Bottom line is no, I don't have more free time than I used to; I'd argue less in fact because some services I used to take for granted are no longer available or if available, take a bit longer, such as going to the grocery store. As far as the media is concerned, there are groups of people who are working directly with pandemic victims (healthcare workers, etc.), people who have been laid off, and people who are newly working from home and in the company of spouses and children. Nobody else exists. Again, I realize I'm very lucky in the giant scheme of things. But I am so tired of seeing these articles hit my news feed or social media feeds that are telling me I now have time to learn how to make banana bread/ completely reorganize my kitchen/build a gazebo. Not going to happen.

I remember Shirley Knight mainly from her role on Thirtysomething as Hope's mother; the characters had a tense relationship at times. Even though I don't remember the dialogue verbatim, there was a scene in one episode of the first season, during which Hope's parents are visiting, in which Shirley Knight gave a short speech regarding how Hope's experience right now with her infant daughter is so positive, but the day will come when her daughter pushes her away, just as Hope has been doing to her. I remember it vividly because the scene made my own mother cry. Knight infused that character with depth when it would have been so easy for the character to be nothing other than a stereotype.

My mother’s vascular dementia made it problematic at times for me to comply with her wishes/whims, even without a pandemic. I would just tell her that I couldn’t do XYZ today, but maybe in a few days. Typically she would forget what she had wanted me to do. With your father, can you just tell him you have to wait a few days, and will get all his snacks at once? That is, don’t tell him it’s “unwise” to go; tell him that you have to follow the city/county guidelines. That said, dementia is very difficult to deal with and there will be times when there’s no reasoning with the person.

I’m lucky in that one of the reasons I bought my current house is that it has a dedicated office, so when I am through work I just leave the room and push work out of my mind. Previously I used a corner of my bedroom as my “office,” but still made a point of logging off at the end of the work day. It takes an effort initially to resist the temptation to check your work email outside of work hours, but it pays off to set boundaries. For me, the trick was asking myself if I would be willing to drive to the regular worksite to check email, and 99% of the time, the answer was hell, no.

I was already working from home full-time, so there's not much change for me. Several of my colleagues already worked from home as well, but there are a few adjusting to working from home and in some cases, working from home while home-schooling their children. Fortunately, my area has been pretty sensible about this, and we've been told flatly that if we need to adjust our working hours to deal with kids, errands, or whatever, not to worry about it. There's still the expectation that you will dial into most of your required meetings, but if you need to take off a few hours during the normal work hours to deal with your kids or whatever, you can just put the hours in at night or early morning, or on the weekend. That ability to alter work schedules also ties in with the direction that if you don't absolutely need to be online using the VPN, then disconnect. I work for a very large financial services company, and the last I heard, we had ~150,000 employees using our VPN during peak hours, compared to ~60,000 pre-pandemic. Since I'm more of a night owl anyway, I'm routinely logging off in the afternoon and then logging back in around 6pm and working until 10 or so. The other change I've seen is that during almost every call, there's a point at which someone's dogs start barking, so we've all had the experience of having to apologize for the dogs or putting ourselves on mute, or both. The longer this goes on, though, the more I'm hearing people just giving a general disclaimer at the beginning of a call, that their dog(s) may decide to start barking. I am slightly paranoid that I'm going to forget to put myself on mute before exclaiming, "Just leave the fucking cat alone," to one of my dogs.

Right now, panic buyers and the corresponding sellers who engage in price gouging are a major peeve. My DIL is from Hong Kong, and still has some immediate family members there, including her mother who is not in the best of health. I'm not sure what the authorities are telling people in Hong Kong about precautions for coronavirus, but my DIL's family there ordered some surgical masks. Unfortunately, the ones they received were manufactured in mainland China and showed unmistakable signs of having been previously used and just put into new packaging. My DIL and son assumed they could buy some here in San Antonio and ship them to Hong Kong, but that's been a major challenge. Several of the stores they have gone to have been completely sold out, and the sales clerks have told them that in many cases, one or two individuals have come in and bought up several cases of the surgical masks at once, so there's no stock left. WTF? Yes, admittedly here in San Antonio, in fact less than 5 miles from my house, we have some US citizens who were airlifted from Wuhan and I believe, now some additional people who were airlifted from one of the cruise ships. To date, there is one confirmed case of coronavirus here in SA, and that person is hospitalized in quarantine conditions; the refugees who are still waiting out the quarantine are in confined quarters at the air force base. Here, as with other places, the general public is in more danger from just normal flu than from this virus, yet obviously there are people doing panic buying of surgical masks and other items. As for the price gouging, I looked online for surgical masks about a week ago, and many online sources are sold out, but the ones who are not are often charging outrageous prices. I realize there's a shortage because the US tends to import these items from China, and apparently the US government didn't listen to the sole manufacturer in TX who's been telling them for years that if a pandemic occurs, his company doesn't have the capacity to meet the demand that would occur.

My preference on IMs at work is that if I need to reach out to someone with whom I don’t already have a working relationship, I will email first, describe what is needed and why, and ask for that person’s assistance. After that person responds, then there may be an IM or two for clarification. For people with whom I already have an established working relationship, my typical IM is “Hi, so-and-so. Do you have a few minutes to chat about XYZ?” If it’s a topic that will require more than 5-10 minutes, I generally set up a phone call via a meeting invitation, with the topic clearly stated. I hate getting the open-ended IM of just “Hi” unless it’s one of maybe three colleagues who might be messaging me just for casual conversation. If you need me to do something, just spell it out up front instead of going through the nonsense of telling me hi, then saying you need a favor or something, then telling me what it is. There’s a way to be both polite and concise.

@Bastet, I encountered similar challenges when doing a biographical sketch for each of my parents for their respective 75th birthdays. Each bio sketch pamphlet was around 8-10 pages, with photos spanning their lives. One thing I learned while doing that was to consult with them and their siblings to put some damn captions on the various photos, especially the older ones with people I didn’t recognize. That effort has paid off now as I’m going through old photo albums in my mother’s belongings. I would not have a clue who some of these extended family members and friends were without the captions added 15 or so years ago.