The Not Happy Thread

Having lived through the Australian bush fires last year, believe me when I say the post apocalyptic light show will eventually end, the rains will eventually fall, you will stop breathing in smoke and hacking up ash, and you will be OK.

This advice saved a bunch of folks during that terrible time : Make sure you have an evacuation plan, know what you'll take in the 2 minutes you have to pack up, know various routes out of where you are both by vehicle and on foot, have supplies so you can live a few days if cut off and keep up to date with warnings in your local area. Get to know your neighbours, help them out if you can, as you never know when you'll need their help.

Stay safe!

 

Thanks man. It hasn't been too bad recently until today; the fires aren't super close, but the wind sure does blow that smoke around. I'm sure it's nothing compared to what they've got down in So Cal or what you guys have gone through in Oz, but still...hoping for rain.

 

We could all use a little rain. Fires aside, everything is already burned up and dead down here.

 

Be careful how you measure success, if you must measure it at all.

 

Haven't been to one reunion. That's partly because they now don't have any idea on how to contact me, but even with the early reunions I didn't have much desire to go. I don't have any ill feelings toward anyone, it's I have no idea what we would talk about. And if I wanted to spend $50 to see classmates get drunk, I could build a time machine at that cost and go back to 1989 to see it happen when they were young.

 

I went to my ten year shortly before fleeing the country. My school schedule here hasn't permitted me to attend the ones following even if I'd wanted to. I'm ambivalent, but if there was one when I was going to be in town anyway I might go.

 

I obviously hope that doesn't happen, but yes everything in life can change so quickly. 2020 has shown that over and over again.

 

I know.

It's just sometimes...

 

True story: In the summer of 1999 I interviewed for the CIA. Full on Clandestine Services program, the real spooks going out there trying to recruit terrorists or FSB agents or whatever.

I failed miserably. I'm just not that personable guy who people want to talk to. Remember Spy Game? There's a scene in there where Robert Redford gives Brad Pitt five minutes to talk his way onto one of the balconies of a random apartment building. Probably one of the most realistic depictions of real "spy skills" ever filmed. It takes me ten minutes to work up the nerve to say "Good morning" to my wife most days.

But anyway, I applied to the CIA, went to my high school reunion, and may have kinda sorta blabbed that I'd done so. This was before the interview when they told us "Your cover starts now" and that we shouldn't talk about the job prospect. Since some of my friends knew I'd done something vaguely (very vaguely) spooky in the Marines, my disappearance from the country a year and a half later "to teach English" has, I'm told, been greeted with some skepticism in certain circles.

 

I have gnats (or something) in my house. I know I've killed a hundreds, but they're still here. I also know they can't live long, so they must still be hatching somewhere. I've taken out the trash. I've caught up on the dishes and bleached the sink drains. I've bleached everything in the bathroom. There's nothing moist or rotting anywhere to my knowledge, but they won't go away. I have a rag over my beer right now, because they have an affinity for my Michelob Ultra, and I think I drank one the other day. Argh.

 

We use an automatic insecticide sprayer whenever we get fruit flies. It takes about a week for it to knock them down. Also, make sure you put cleaner down your drains as they can breed off the rotting scraps on the other side of the plughole.

 

Fruit flies. That's probably what they are. What's an automatic insecticide sprayer? I have a dog and a six-year-old in the house, so I'm leery of any poison I can't keep off the surfaces they occupy and use.

 

When washing cloth face masks skip the fabric softener. I know some people claim they can't breath well with a mask on, they really wouldn't breath well with these. Between the Downy beads, Lysol laundry sanitizer, and the Bounce dryer sheets it's like snorting the entire laundry aisle at Walmart.

 

i had a not-so-smart moment with my mask. Someone suggested essential oils. well... i only had lavender and rosemary for a diffuser and both of those smell terrible after a while so i decided to spray my mask with perfume.

just about died.
had such a bad coughing and sneezing fit, people though that i indeed had the rona.

why did i think that was a good idea!?!?


so adding to your list of Mask Don'ts:

• perfume/cologne

 

Due to my occupation I have a registration with a particular professional body. Since last week Wednesday I have phoned them for specific information and the extension goes straight to voicemail. So I leave a message for them to return my call. Well its now been 5 working days and my calls have not been returned. I am seriously considering lodging a formal complaint as this is very bad customer service toward a member not to mention poor form for an Organisation who consider themselves to be a leader in our industry

 

Mr. Bellomo is aware of your concerns an' a representative will be sent to adjudicate them soon, if'n youse catch my drift.

 

Yeah, maybe I should engage his services

 

Phooey. If they're going to behave like that, I hope the thing is sitting there to this day.

 

Stake through the heart?

 

Not happy about my 90-year-old mother having to go into skilled nursing due to a couple of falls, and if that's not bad enough, she'll be on their quarantine wing for two weeks, with not even those pathetic "window visits" allowed. What makes it even more miserable is that this is going on in a city 1,200 miles from me, and I have to fly down there this next week to help my sisters and nieces pack up my mom's stuff from her independent living apartment--- and I won't be able to see Momma at all. Damn COVID.

If that wasn't enough to tangle my gut, the niece who has her POA (because she lives nearest) is horrible with communications. Oh, she texts, but she gives no info. You have to pry it out of her, and then she gets snippy because you're "texting her too much," or goes sarcastic on you because "you were told that. You should have known." Yeah, in a passing conversation last February before all hell broke loose worldwide.

I have the kind of family that gets along well because we don't have to see each other all the time. And now we girls are going to be working together--- theoretically--- dealing with my mom's stuff and I can see it ranging from sick tension to outright explosions.

If I didn't have a plane ticket I have to use or lose before December, I think I'd make up an excuse and not go. Trying to find out what's going on with my mom and make sense out of my niece's plans for her stuff has me so depressed I can't write. Thank heaven I've had house reno projects to do, or I would have gotten nothing done at all these past two weeks.

 

"dont focus on those debut authors. Focus on the already established authors. They're important and people actually KNOW them"

......even the "established" authors start out as debut authors. Like how are they supposed to become "established" if you dont view them as important? If we dont pay attention to them, how do they build an audience??

I've never understood this way of thinking and it bothers me that im being told to ignore those up and coming authors because they "arent as important" as say James Patterson.