BookWoman56

@Moose135, if there’s that much turmoil going on, you might be better off staying where you are rather than returning to your old company. Obviously you know way more about the situation there, but I’d be nervous about going to work for a place where the recruiter got laid off just after contacting me about an open position. Maybe there are a lot of layoffs just in that part of the company, or is the entire company going through some massive reorganization? Good luck with whatever you decide is best for you.

She had previously been in an assisted living facility, which she hated, until my oldest sister died and there was nobody in the same town to monitor how she was doing in the facility. I moved her from FL to my home in TX. Her nutrition is fine, and I give her the meds on schedule. But she would benefit from more social interaction, and it would be better for her to have staff who can assist more easily with her mobility problems. For me, it’s that I have done all that I can do without seriously damaging my own health, and I think she needs a more structured environment as her dementia worsens.

So glad you finally had a visit that didn't devolve into the usual nonsense. The situation with my mother is getting fairly bad, very quickly. I don't know if she had a mini-stroke, or if there was some oxygen deprivation going on while she was hospitalized a couple of months ago; they noted her oxygen saturation levels were dropping significantly when she went to sleep, at least for a while. She was on oxygen at the hospital and then at the skilled nursing facility, but not when she was discharged home. But the upshot is that in the space of three months, she's gone from wanting as much independence as possible, given her mobility issues, to demanding that I not leave her alone in her room, unless I'm working. She screamed at me this weekend, asking where I thought I was sneaking off to, when I had told her a few minutes earlier that I needed to go to the grocery store, and that my daughter would be at the house, not in the same room but within earshot. She was supposed to have a follow-up surgical procedure yesterday, and threw all kinds of screaming fits at the hospital, claiming that I was forcing her to have surgery she didn't want to have. She is this nonstop black hole of misery and determined that everybody around her must share in it. Six months ago, I really thought she'd live with me until she died, and while the situation had produced some constraints on my activities, it was bearable.Now, I've hit the point where I'm starting to look for a facility of some sort, assisted living or whatever. It will probably take through the end of the year to get all the paperwork done to qualify her for one and to find something suitable, but I'm at the end of my rope. My own health has taken some serious hits because of the stress in dealing with her; even my daughter has had some anxiety attacks and blood pressure spikes from all the tension and stress. Fundamentally, I can't babysit my mother 24/7, nor does she actually need that level of care. But every negative aspect of her personality has been amped up to 10, and I'm done with the drama and attention-seeking behavior.

It always stings a bit when you don't get an offer for a job you really want, especially when the interview went well. It's been almost 10 years ago now, but I had a fantastic interview for a job I really wanted at a university, to get a particular department started doing online courses. I'd been doing instructional design for both completely online and blended courses for a while prior to that, and so I felt fairly confident. During the interview, I asked them questions about aspects of their plans that they'd never even thought about up to that point, discussed the pros and cons of some software packages to do what they wanted, etc. They made it clear I was bringing up ideas and questions no previous applicant had. It was a group interview with about 6-8 people, and several of them made a point at the end of the interview to thank me because they felt they had learned critical information from my responses and my own questions of them. Based on their enthusiastic comments, I fully expected to get an offer but didn't. Turned out the university was downsizing a department that included instructional design/curriculum development, and so the job I'd interviewed for went to a staff member whose job was being eliminated. That's just the way it goes sometimes. In your case, you mentioned your company (or your part of the company?) is doing layoffs. My advice, based on my own experiences, is to do what you can to control your own destiny rather than just wait until getting laid off. If you have an offer you feel comfortable about, there's nothing wrong with taking it and seeing how things go. It may be something you like, or you may end up using it as resume fodder to gain leverage for your dream job. My own situation is a bit hectic right now; my new tech writer started on Monday, which as it turned out, I had to be out of office for that day. But I provided her with a lot of reading material to get started, and we touched base today. This happens to be the part of the year when I normally have two 300-400 page documents to do by the end of August, only this year there's an additional 100-150 page document to handle as well, so I'll be juggling those while training her. Fortunately, she's someone who should be able to dive right in. On the down side, my friend who took a job in our area based on my recommendation has decided very firmly that the second she hits the required one year in current position, she's going to start posting out for another position. The colleague who ended up being her manager is lazy as fuck; she has two open positions that she "can't fill" because she can't find anyone who's qualified but is completely willing to be a doormat. So my friend is stuck with extra work that should be done by one of these other two roles that have been empty for several months now.

I’ve had similar experiences, not necessarily having the first notification be from a collections agency, but several times my first statement from a hospital or other healthcare provider shows that my account is 90 days old or something, which is apparently how long it takes for the insurance paperwork to be processed, the insurance company to roll the dice on how much of the total amount they are going to pay, and then the healthcare provider to send a bill for the balance. Annoying as fuck.

I fell down the Bee Gees rabbit hole on YouTube this past weekend, and was reminded of something long forgotten. I much prefer their earlier, pre-disco songs, and infinitely prefer Robin Gibb’s natural singing voice to Barry Gibb’s falsetto. Watching some of the performances from the early years, Robin focused on conveying the emotions of the lyrics, while Barry seemed to be focused more on getting the best camera angles.

Having just gone through the process of hiring someone, who starts on Monday, I will tell you it’s probably a case of corporate not having finished various things yet. Or, as I told a colleague who’s about to start the hiring process, “However long you think it could possibly take for HR to get this done, add about 3-4 weeks to your estimate. “ For example, we are required to use HR-produced interview guides, which must be completed by each person conducting the interview, for each candidate who is interviewed. So in my case, I had a panel interview of me and two colleagues, and we interviewed 3 candidates. So that was 9 interview guides that had to be completed, and HR will not make an offer until they have that paperwork submitted. And then there’s the thing of the recruiter going on PTO for a week mid-process, etc. So, you may hear something on Monday, or it may be a few more days.

I agree completely, with one exception. And while I'm not a legal expert in any sense, I do have experience with the situation where someone is encouraging your child to commit suicide. Many years ago, when my bipolar daughter was in middle school, she realized she was bisexual and came out to a few friends. One of those so-called friends came from a religious fundamentalist family, and took it upon herself to try to convince my daughter that God thought of her as an abomination and she should kill herself. Over the course of a couple of months, she sent over 100 emails to my daughter, all of which were variations on that theme. And then turned her sights on another girl, which was the point at which my daughter lost her temper and eventually told me what was going on, and showed me the emails. Now, if my daughter had succumbed to the hatred and intolerance underlying those emails and killed herself, I would absolutely have been furious at the other girl. But even back then, I knew that if my daughter ever did commit suicide, and there were times she had pretty severe suicidal ideation and I was terrified of what would happen, it wouldn't be because of external forces but because of her own internal struggles with mental illness. All of this to say: I don't see that encouraging someone else to commit suicide, whether by text, skype, or in person, should be prosecuted as a crime. Should encouraging someone to keep living, even if staying alive is against that person's best interests (for example, someone with a terminal illness who is in great pain that cannot be effectively alleviated), also be a crime? If the argument is that encouraging someone to commit suicide is recklessly endangering that person's life, then what about encouraging someone to go swimming, skydiving, or bungee jumping when that person has minimal or no expertise in those activities? I can't get past the reaction of the two cops when they read the text messages. They were obviously morally outraged and decided to push the law to punish this girl, who was seriously fucked up herself, because they didn't approve of what she said. They even made some remark, that if it wasn't for Michelle Carter, then the boy would still be there. Based on what evidence? They completely disregarded the fact that this kid had tried to kill himself four other times, without any encouragement from her. For me, what it comes down to is that Conrad chose to end his life. Sure, he was influenced by Michelle, but at all times he could have simply chosen not to go through with the idea. Short of her being physically there and threatening to harm or kill him unless he continued to inhale the exhaust from the truck, Michelle had no way to force him to commit suicide. Was it a horrible thing to do, to send him texts encouraging him to die? Maybe so, although it seemed to me as if she had simply come to accept that Conrad was miserable being alive and wanted death, and was trying to support him in that decision. Yes, she wanted and craved attention and used the drama leading up and following Conrad's death to gain attention and sympathy. But I would take any odds whatsoever that absent Michelle, Conrad would have eventually killed himself within the next year anyway. I wouldn't want to see the parents in jail either, but my sympathies for them are pretty limited. The father admitted on camera that he beat Conrad and said he would do it again. I doubt he sees any connection between his own abuse of Conrad and Conrad's death. The mother seems a little less culpable, but she seized upon Michelle's actions as a convenient excuse for Conrad's death. It's a pretty serious case of denial and self-deception when your son has tried to commit suicide four times previously, and you blame his online GF when he carries through on the fifth attempt. Both parents are shirking any moral responsibility for their son's death, and while I know full well that sometimes kids are suicidal even with extremely understanding and supportive parents, Conrad's parents should be reflecting on what they could have done differently to get him help for his depression, rather than using someone who sent text messages, no matter what those text messages said, as a scapegoat.

I have rewatched the movie a few times over the years specifically to see that scene. The monologue, and especially the way Hauer delivered it, completely emphasized the Frankenstein elements of Blade Runner: that the replicant/monster had greater philosophical insight, self-reflection, and sense of wonder than the humans who created them. I've seen him in a few other roles, but another that stands out is The Hitcher. He was scary as fuck in that. Overall, though, Hauer was just one of those actors who had huge screen presence. I don't mean that he was chewing scenery or anything; he could be standing completely still and your eyes would still be drawn to him. I'm glad that he was able to work until almost the end, but wish he was still around for other roles.

No, it’s not rude. Recruiters are used to people wanting a couple of days to think over an offer, which any applicant might do regardless of other possible offers. In any event, I hope you get the offer for your dream job.

I’ll admit to having a soft spot for Mary Higgins Clark, as I met her when she was one of the authors for a large book fair for which I was the author liaison. We were able to talk for a bit, and she told me about her life. She started writing mysteries primarily because her husband died, leaving her with children to raise and not much money. She had done some writing previously but mostly freelance articles. One thing she mentioned has stuck with me. She started attending murder trials as research for her murder mysteries, and recounted how the husband of one victim knew something horrible had happened. He came home and found his wife’s feminine hygiene products in plain sight in the bedroom or bathroom. In all their years of marriage, she had never left those where he could see them. Very different era, obviously, but MHC said for her it was a vivid example of how violence interrupts people’s established routines. She didn’t really hit it big financially until her kids were essentially grown, and commented how they would sometimes kid her about how nice it would have been to have those financial perks when they were growing up. From everything she said, she came from an environment where people didn’t discuss sex and violence explicitly, and she wouldn’t be comfortable writing gory details. All that said, though, her later books are very formulaic. I can’t remember the last one that I read, but at least her books aren’t filled with grammar mistakes and typos; however, they’re definitely tame and predictable. In person, she was extremely nice and easy to talk to, very down to earth.

No photos, but I prefer farfalle to spaghetti for marinara or tomato-based meat sauces. It's already pretty much bite-sized, although mini farfalle is also available if you want very small bites. The advantage to me is that the sauce seems to stay on it better than on spaghetti noodles, and there's no need to twirl strands of spaghetti or cut it into manageable bites when serving to kids.

Your dad's entitled to his opinion. But you're entitled to ignore his opinion and make your own choices.

In the upper classes, women might marry a little later, but among other classes, especially in rural areas, getting married around age 15 was pretty common. My great grandmother was married at 15 and had her first child at 16. She grew up on a farm and in a setting where girls were taught domestic skills and had farming chores in preparation for that kind of responsibility by their mid teens. Reading about that sort of thing may seem odd given current sensibilities, but in novels set in the 18th and 19th centuries, for example, it would be normal for girls to be married that young, although less common among the upper class. In those cases, though, the expectation was that daughters, no matter what their age, married the man their fathers told them to marry.

Yes, many banks chose to make risky investments at that time, although what most people don't realize is that there was a push from the federal level to loosen up lending requirements for mortgages, so that people with low incomes/less than stellar credit could more easily qualify for mortgages. With the current restrictions in place on mortgages, it's much more difficult for people with low incomes and lower credit scores to get mortgages. I'm personally unsure that making it harder for people with lower credit to get mortgages is the best answer in the long run, as those people still need housing and so are often forced to rent properties where they essentially are only enriching their landlords, rather than building any equity. But the topic of affordable housing is a bit tangential to the show under discussion here, other than just that it seems like some of the hoarders are going to face the necessity of finding a different housing solution because they've damaged the property or hoarding has taken over their lives to the point that they can no longer pay for their housing. My original point was that I don't feel sorry for someone, subprime mortgage or not, who has a property and then proceeds to devalue it by hoarding. If I owned a property and rented it out to someone who turned out to be a hoarder, and that person was hoarding at the level on the show, I'd probably give the hoarder a deadline to get the stuff out of the property or face eviction. With many of the properties shown, the interiors of the house have been damaged (fire hazards, rodents out of control, etc.,) and often the hoarding has spilled over to the exterior of the property. Most leases have clauses in them allowing eviction if someone causes significant damage to the property. Similarly, if I'm a bank holding a mortgage on a hoarder property and the hoarder quits paying the mortgage, I see no reason to make an exception to foreclosing on the property and salvaging what is left of the investment. I do feel sorry for some of the hoarders; in particular, there was one woman who grew up more or less wealthy but whose mental condition had deteriorated badly to the point where it seemed she couldn't comprehend that she needed to choose what possessions to keep rather than lose everything because she could no longer afford the property she was in. But for many of these people, it's hard to feel any sympathy for them because they seem to be extremely unpleasant people. And there is part of me that feels with many hoarders, they've already had time to deal with their hoarding. It's not like somebody has a normally organized house and wakes up one day, determined to become a hoarder and fill the house with junk in 24 hours. I could understand it to some extent if the person lived alone, but FFS, some of these episodes show hoarders who have spouses living in the same environment. Even if the hoarder has some mental illness, why did the spouse go along with it until it hits the level that outside agencies and so forth have to intervene? Is it just inertia on the part of the non-hoarder spouse, or are they too afraid of how the hoarder spouse will react to any efforts to stop the hoarding and get rid of the junk?

Regarding the email, I generally don’t pay attention to whether someone is on PTO or not. For the most part, any email I send to someone is information that person will need to have, whether it’s today or when they get back to work. I am absolutely not going to delay sending an email until the person is back in the office. Now, if it’s the rare email where I am requesting someone to take an action, and the action needs to occur before the person is due back, I will direct the email to an appropriate backup person and copy the original person as an FYI. Maybe I’m missing something here, but when I am on PTO, my auto reply states how long I will be out of office and a designated person if there’s something urgent, and otherwise, I will respond when I am back in the office . Nobody forces me to read work emails on my days off. If supervisors are insisting you reply to emails while you are on vacation or whatever, that’s something you should discuss to set expectations that you will respond when you are back at work. I realize, though, that assumes you have a reasonable supervisor/manager. ETA: If you are being forced to attend meetings and reply to emails, then you are not really off work. Your manager is just pretending you are.

Not sure this is the right thread, but robot vacuum cleaners with wi-fi are gadgets, right? I finally broke down and bought a Roomba. It’s still teaching itself how to maneuver around my first floor, but I definitely see the advantages of maintenance vacuuming instead of letting the dog and cat fur pile up, especially under the couch and so forth. I really like being able to schedule cleanings, and being able to control the device itself using my phone. Now I’m considering getting the robot mopping device, the iRobot Braava jet. I love having tile floors, but mine are fairly light and really show any spills or whatever, that the vacuum will not get. For various reasons, time is always pretty tight, and I would like to cut down on any cleaning activities that can be done more efficiently by an automated process. Plus, downstairs is around 1800sf of mostly tile, which is a lot to mop by hand. Does anyone have any experience using the Braava? Any recommendations as to which model? It looks like a robot version of a swiffer.

Be very careful of mosquitoes. My father worked in the yard a lot, and roughly 6 years ago died of West Nile virus, almost certainly infected by a mosquito bite. Elderly people are much more vulnerable to it, but it’s not good for any age.

But that assumes that the person does in fact pay back the loan. IIRC, the situation that started this discussion was a property where the hoarder flatly refused to make the mortgage payments. And full disclosure here, I work for an extremely large bank; spent about 2.5 years in the part of the bank that deals with customers defaulting on their mortgages. When people take out a mortgage, the property is the collateral on that mortgage. So when people refuse to make their mortgage payments for long periods of time, they should not be surprised that the bank forecloses on the property and tries to recoup the money they lent. I don’t see anything inherently wrong in doing so. Most banks will try to work with customers who are going through temporary financial problems, but many people just no longer have the income to make the payments. So what is the bank supposed to do, just write off the loan as a bad investment? They have a legal obligation in many cases to try to recover the loan amount, typically by foreclosing and then repairing structural problems, then selling the property to recoup what they can. Recovering that money is what enables them to keep loaning money to other people who want to buy a house, expand their business, etc. I sympathize with people whose circumstances change and they lose their house. But it’s not the bank’s fault that someone loses their job, etc. With a hoarder house, if the bank forecloses, they will either have to sell the house as is and probably take a loss, depending on the market, or spend the money to rehab the house and hope they break even.

I think I may have caught about 10 minutes or less of this episode. It was a large house next to water, and the husband was an ass who made snide comments about everything. If it’s the same one, then Hilary ran into the septic tank issue where if they added another bathroom, they would have to get a larger septic tank. That was the point at which I quit watching; I had missed the beginning and didn’t know what was driving the need to renovate. But the husband was obnoxious enough for me to start hoping that Hilary would find a ton of structural problems and then there would be no budget for whatever the hell he wanted.

This is more or less what happened in my old position a few years ago, before I transferred to the area I'm in now. My manager thought our lead tech writer could do no wrong; this was someone he had hired with minimal qualifications to be a tech writer, and then proceeded to promote him to the highest tech writer level available (a TW4) a few months before I left. The manager put this guy in charge of the SharePoint site not just for our team, but for the entire area overseen by the person our manager reported to. This was done despite this tech writer having had only the slightest bit of training into how to be an admin for a SP site. Not surprisingly, the tech writer fucked things up royally; accidentally deleted the entire SP site that everybody who reported to my manager's boss used, and it was a week before the site could be restored. During that time, a fuckton of work came to a screeching halt. The result was that this tech writer made my manager look really bad for having recommended him for this position. In the meantime, I was offered a TW4 job in another area of the company. As soon as I accepted, this manager got on the phone to his former protege, and told him, "BookWoman56 has accepted a TW4 position in another area, so that means her current TW3 slot will be open, and I strongly encourage you to apply for it." So yeah, as soon as this person made the manager look bad, all bets were off and the manager essentially told him to accept a demotion or get fired. @hoosier80, I know your work environment is completely insane, but maybe your boss will get tired of the fuck-ups, especially if they are high profile enough to make him look bad, and cut his losses.

I absolutely covet the library/study that Hannibal Lecter had on the Hannibal series. It's my ideal combination of a study with lots of space, some seating for work or reading, and an open library accessible by a ladder. It looks incredibly calm and peaceful. ETA: View of the library/study from a different angle.

You're a grown-ass woman; your parents can't "force" you to do anything without you allowing them to do so. Sorry if that comes across as harsh, but you seem to be at an age where I've seen a lot of younger adults have issues about making their own decisions. From someone who's been through other instances where my choices/preferences didn't align with those of my parents, I'll say this: You need to decide what matters more to you, being comfortable with how various people address you or catering to the expectations of people that you interact with F2F only on special occasions. As long as your parents feel they can pressure you to behave in certain ways and you cave in to that pressure, they will continue to foist their decisions on your life. That unfortunate aspect of parenting seems to be present across all cultures, albeit not true of all parents.

If you're uncomfortable with being called by a particular title, then just ask them to call you by whatever title/name you do feel comfortable with. It's not the end of the world if you decide that you're not comfortable with some aspect of your parents/extended family's cultural norms and instead implement your own custom. My paternal grandmother, for example, decided when my oldest sister was born that she didn't want to be addressed as "grandmother" or anything similar, so all of my siblings and I grew up addressing my grandmother and grandfather by their first names, because that was their preference. My great-grandparents (that grandmother's parents) preferred to be addressed by a combination of their role and surname, so it was "Grandma ABC" and so forth, but if they had any issues with us addressing my grandmother by her first name, they got over it. My daughter's friends are all college age, and so for the past few years, I've asked them to address me by my first name. Prior to that, there was sometimes a bit of awkwardness as they might address me as "Ms. ABC," and I would have to explain that my daughter and I don't share the same surname, so it was actually "Ms. DEF." But frankly, I'd say 95% of the time, they didn't address me directly by name/title, and would refer to me in the third person (when needed) as "XYZ's mom" rather than my own name. I'm currently trying to get my grandson, whose mother is from Hong Kong, to call me by my first name. Right now he doesn't call me "grandmother" either, although he does call my mother "grandmother."

I'd assume she and her husband just spent an insane amount of time in the waiting room of the ER, before getting whatever treatment was needed or maybe just being there to see how a family member was doing, and then realized they needed groceries. The last few times I've gone to an ER either as a patient or to accompany my mother, it's taken at least 4-5 hours to make it through the process, and a couple of times even longer. Maybe she was simply trying to make it clear that they didn't show up that late just because they couldn't be bothered to go at a regular time, but instead had been dealing with a situation that prevented them from shopping for groceries. That said, though, in their position I'd have been more inclined to run in just for a few necessities for the night, and then do the major shopping the next day during normal business hours. However, I'm glad the grocery stores near me don't close until 1am and in some cases are open 24/7. I much prefer to do my shopping late at night so the stores are less crowded.