janestclair

My cable bill is usually due on the 6th of the month. Today, it dawned on me that I never received a copy of the bill in the mail. I go over to the website for Cablevision/Optimum/Altice/whatever the hell they are now so I can pay online, and it's being a royal pain in the ass and taking forever to open. "Sorry, we can't load that information right now". I finally get the site to load in a different browser, only to see that my bill has gone up by something like $11. And I noticed I have fewer channels than I used to, on top of it. Such a load of bullshit. Maybe people wouldn't be cutting the cable in droves if they weren't such utter assholes. They already raised prices once in the last twelve months.

Mary, merry, and marry are 3 words with three different pronounciations. I think NJ is one of the few places for which that is a true statement. Dawn and Don are also different. My favorite interaction with someone from New England involved him looking for his "khakis". I was completely befuddled - this was not a person who would ever be caught dead in khaki pants. Turned out he was looking for his car keys. I don't have a particularly strong accent I don't think, except on a few words like coffee, chocolate, and talk. Then it's pretty obvious I was born and raised in central NJ.

That definitely contributes to me being a loud talker as well, although I hadn't thought of that part of it until you pointed it out. Good call. I say that word an awful lot as a science teacher. I feel like I say "dayta" most of the time though, and "datta "when it's followed up with another word, like "data table" or "data driven". Which makes no sense, but there you go.

I'm a bit of a loud talker, but I come by it honestly. Both my dad and a great aunt I spent a lot of time with growing up were very hard of hearing, so loud talking was a necessity. It comes in handy now that I'm a teacher. Even the kids in the back of my very large classroom can still hear me, and will be able to do so even through a mask when we finally go back face to face.

I'm glad I work in a public school and we don't have office parties or gift exchanges. I'm more than a little annoyed at the IRS. My dad still hasn't gotten his stimulus despite a letter saying it was mailed on May 15th. Today, I called and finally got through to a person, and they were completely useless. Basically, I was told he has to wait. Well, that's fine, but want to know if it actually got mailed out. Is it lost in the mail, or did the IRS never actually mail it out? He didn't have access to that information. Then, to add a wrinkle, the amount is $2400, according to the letter, except my mom died in January, so I asked about that. Is there a number I can call to get the check made out to the correct amount? He didn't know. So what, pray tell, is his purpose? My mother (who worked for the IRS for 30 some odd years) is probably rolling in her grave right about now.

Teaching remotely is a super pain in the ass. Obviously, there's no expectation of continuity of instruction, so that's a problem. I feel like I am doing more work than I would if we were in school planning and prepping all these activities my students can do at home, and then I have to grade their poorly handwritten and photographed assignments (no typing because they'd all just pass around the same document) and provide meaningful feedback, all while attempting to not go blind using my district issued laptop's miniscule screen with muddy resolution. Good times.

What monitor did you get? Now that I'm teaching from home for the foreseeable future, a bigger monitor is definitely needed or I'm going to go blind trying to decipher student's chicken scratch handwriting off blurry images of the worksheet they printed out.

One of the grocery strores near me sells a package of 3 peppers - red, yellow and green. I love all peppers, except green, which I find bitter. Oh, and the sad red peppers in frozen meals, though I find fresh ones delightful. Technically they are all the same, just different stages of ripened fruit. For me. it's finding mushrooms in things. I loathe mushrooms.

I snorted just thinking about it. My rewatch stalled out on Season 3. I just could not get past Hell Money. Hoping to have time to pick it back up during winter break, though I may just skip that episode or I'll never get any further.

My dad does that all the time. Sometimes it's the middle of a conversation we never even started at any point, and yet somehow he expects you to know what he's talking about. It is exhausting.

Cefdinir was the antibiotic I took after my wisdom tooth extraction. I didn't have any bad side effects, other than the fact that it was an uncoated generic pill that was the most bitter thing I ever put in my mouth. I could taste the bitterness all the way down my esophagus, and it made everything I ate taste like brussels sprouts. I like brussels sprouts, but not when I'm trying to eat mashed potatoes. It was so weird.

Thanks for validating what I thought. I wasn't sure if I was reacting that way because I honestly don't really like her in general. She's always rubbed me the wrong way because she has a very high opinion of herself and tries to show off. Good to know my perception of her wasn't affecting my reaction that's she's an asshole for asking. I also asked an AP colleague who knows her and he agreed as well.

Today a fellow teacher emailed me to ask if I could send her my materials to help her tutor a student in the subject for which I am the AP teacher at our school. She is tutoring a non-district student and being paid for her time, probably very well. There is usually only one AP teacher in a given subject in a school, and we make up all our own materials that fit the curricular requirements. It is not an easy course to prep for. Even if I use a pre-made worksheet I'm always tweaking it to fit my needs and those of my students. My course is the result of 14 years of careful thought and consideration, that I created for my own use to teach district students. Even I don't do private tutoring for out of district AP students because it's very difficult. It would be different if she was teaching another section of AP and wanted to look at my materials to get a feel for the course, and I would have no problem sharing to get her started. Or even if she asked for a particular worksheet on a particular topic. But she asked for access to my teacher drive, which would be all of my materials. If she doesn't have materials to tutor the kid, she shouldn't have agreed to tutor them. Plus, not for nothing, I don't think she has the content knowlege to do a good job regardless. Am I an asshole for thinking that she's an asshole for even asking? Obviously I said no.

I chew gum when I have a sore throat. I shouldn't because I did have TMJ issues last year, but actual mentholated throat lozenges make me nauseated. The gum keeps my mouth moistened and has a cooling effect. My thermostat is screwy and it's making me crazy. Why does it keep setting itself to 85 degrees? I feel like I'm suffocating.

I didn't think that was awful, but I wouldn't buy it again. On the other hand, I could bathe in the Wegmans cilantro jalapeno hummus it's so good.

I have an appointment for Thursday to take my car in for an oil change. I made the appointment last Thursday. So far I have gotten three emails and one text message reminding me of my appointment that is still 4 days away. I know there will be more reminders between then and now. Then, after I have the oil changed and pick it up, I will get no less than 3 emails, one telling me my car is ready (usually I've been driving home for at least 15 minutes when I get that one), one thanking me for using MazdaDealer, and one to do a survey. Related to that peeve is that I am peeved with myself. I wasn't paying attention on Thursday (because I was looking at my mileage and thinking about how I needed to make an oil change appointment) and I backed into my garage door while it was still opening. It should've been open by that point but yeah. I'm an idiot. I will also need touch up paint at the dealer. There's a dent too, not a big one, and I don't particularly care about it, but I don't want the paint chip to rust. Bah.

That's the worst kind of appointment to be kept waiting for. Ugh. A lot of people (myself included) have anxiety about that particular visit. To be kept waiting in the exam room? Fuck that.

I worked in a doctor's office for a few years as a medical assistant. Most appointment slots were double or triple booked, though I would double book an office visit with something that took a minute or two like a wound redressing or if a patient was a known, serial no-show. Part of my job was keeping the rooms moving. I don't think anyone ever waited more than 20 minutes unless there was a patient that took an inordinately long time with their appointment because of a complex issue. We used to have this one elderly woman who always wanted the first appointment in the morning at 8am. She would then proceed to show up at 7:30, before any of us had even arrived to open the office, and then complain that she had to wait in her car. She would do this every time she had an appointment. Had she shown up at her actual appointment time, her wait would've been less than 5 minutes. Keeping you waiting over an hour past your appointment time is ridiculous. There is only one doctor I'll wait that long for, and it's my neurologist because she actually listens to me, which is a rarity. I actually have an appointment with her Monday at 11am. Between waiting and the actual procedure, I'm sure I'll not be out of there before 1pm. Every other neurologist I've seen has been a raging, arrogant asshole, to the point where I thought it might've been a prerequisite for choosing that specialty.

Speaking as someone raised on homemade sauce, Rao's is absolutely the best jarred sauce you can buy. It's a little expensive for jarred sauce, but absolutely worth it if you don't feel like making your own.

The Magnum pints with cherry ice cream are divine too.

Mosquitoes love me no matter what I do. I could be outside with a group of people, none of whom get bitten and I get eaten alive, even on areas that are covered.

That's ridiculous. I pay about that for a house in NJ, a state not known for things being at all cheap. Like Penney's? My paerents always called it that so for the longest time I thought that's what it was actually called.

Siri definitely listens in. After I had a car accident, I had all kinds of ads on my phone about attorneys and such, despite the fact that I had never done any searching about anything to do with a car accident, except on my desktop. I'm not logged into anything on my phone like Google or whatever, so it had to be Siri. I have since shut her off because that's creepy shit. The targeted ads are sometimes dumb though. After I bought a Mazda (both the first time, and after the aforementioned accident), all the ads wrere for Mazdas. I just bought one...I'm not getting another.

We had an exceptionally long 5-day Memorial Day weekend this year. How did I celebrate the first Memorial Day in years with absolutely fantastic weather? I was sick. For all of it. I absolutely figures. I don't know how my immune system always knows when a vacation is coming, but it does. Starting to feel more human today, and of course it's gray and rainy. Plus, since I was laid up in bed all weekend feeling like death warmed over, I got nothing accomplished. I can't start anything now either, because I have a eye doctor appointment in a little bit. Bah.

I will definitely look into this. There's so many different conditions listed on the pre-certification form, and the condition I'm getting it for has the highest amount of hoops to jump through to get it covered. It's bullshit. I mean honestly, why would I (or anyone) willingly be getting 9 injections into my legs every 12 weeks, of what I'm fairly sure is the most potent toxin known to man, if it wasn't actually helping? Insurance companies should not be making treatment decisions. Also bullshit. What good is insurance that you can't afford to fucking use? Why is healthcare in this country so fucked? It makes me rage.