This Happened

[mimekiller]

So long story short on Saturday night I was picked up at my house at one am by a chica who took us to the bar, we had two drinks before closing, she wanted to roll out of town to get food, we got pulled over, she blew a astounding 1.4, and I blew a .01 so I drove her car back to my place and picked her up at jail and took her back. so I'm cool but shes fucked haha

[Phoebe]

So much crazy stuff going on here, it's incredible. This was supposed to be a quiet weekend. Quiet week. Quiet month. Instead it's mayhem, but the good news is I have no time for feeling sad because other people's problems are way worse. I have no problems - well, besides the gas leak I am totally on my own to solve, because... grrr. Just mayhem to suppress with some order, somehow!

[mimekiller]

So Blue Apron sends me all these hey heres 20 dollars off a purchase emails and i've been using them for 2 weeks because they stack on each other? So I've been getting boxes for 60 dollars off? I'm using coupons being sent to me to two different emails but still it seems like something I'm going to go to jail for or something that Blue Apron should fix because why should I be getting 5 dollar boxes for now going on 3 weeks just with coupons that stack on each other. Seems silly. Kyle am I going to jail? Isn't the onus on BLUE APRON or me for properly using a digital coupon?

[Phoebe]

Shit morning from hell, but:
I am not detained in a holding facility!
Have not been swallowed by a snake!
The clothes I'm wearing are clean.
The musicians are at least good at what they do and have practiced a lot.
I may get a two-day period to decompress soon.
Needed.

[Phoebe]

Shit morning from hell, but:
I am not detained in a holding facility!
Have not been swallowed by a snake!
The clothes I'm wearing are clean.
The musicians are at least good at what they do and have practiced a lot.
I may get a two-day period to decompress soon.
Needed.

[Mike]

Look, there's a balance here. You absolutely should acknowledge the good in your life and be grateful for it, but also remember that your problems are still significant and should also be properly acknowledged. Don't belittle your own issues (or others') with refrains of "it could be worse." Well, of course it could be worse. Doesn't mean it doesn't still suck.

[Phoebe]

Today has been a pretty decent day. The palpable sense of failure hanging over everything like a wispy cloud... There but easier to ignore today.

[akiva]

[Phoebe]

I wish you well with it, that's all I can say. I wish it was the kind of thing one could just up and decide to beat back, at least temporarily, but I know that's not how it goes. Music really does make the living sometimes, music is a great solace.

[akiva]

Thanks.

[Phoebe]

You know how Google is always like, give us your phone number so you don't get locked out of your account! Sometimes I ignore them. I had an account I was using for a specific purpose, and then I neglected that purpose for a while, and then a few years later I went back and magically the password was still in my cell phone so it was okay. Now I have a new phone and no password and can't remember the password from that far back, and don't have the book where I wrote them. I'm... so mad at myself. How could I let this happen? This has been a horrible, horrible week for OCD and this particular error definitely is a mirror reflecting the interior currents. I feel a completely imaginary sensation of shaky itching all over my body and have to sit here chilling until it goes away, and now my son has arrived, post-bedtime, to ask whether I have seen a giant rat in the house. No, no I have not. HAVE YOU?

Thank God, he means the Dog. He is pretending the dog is a giant rat.

[Zen]

So this week, in addition to being some obscure national holiday involving lots of idiots trying to blow themselves up, also happens to coincide with my wife's birthday... exactly I might add... Yes, my wife was born on the 4th of July... and my son on Halloween... her sister on New Year's Eve... and my daughter on... well, the Saturday of Memorial Day Weekend, but SOMETIMES it lands ON Memorial Day... My kids tell me that MY birthday is actually Constitution Day! (Evidently September 17, 1787 is the day that the delegates in Philadelphia signed the thing...) They learned that in school... they never told ME that when I was in school! So, yeah, we're kind of a "holiday birthday" family... My son got the cool one.

This year, my wife got the best present she's ever gotten for her birthday. You see, after the winter/spring term ended, my son came back home for a couple of weeks before heading back to college for the summer to take a few summer classes to try (most likely in vain) to increase his grades in some classes that he got "passing but hideous" grades earlier in his college career and thus erase those earlier grades from his record and increase his GPA, possibly saving his scholarship... though I'm pretty sure it's too late for that... I think he already lost it... Thus the "in vain" part... (I think he was informed about losing the scholarship after he signed up for the classes.)

Most of the classes ended up being online classes, because it turned out that almost everything he needed to take was offered at overlapping times. The one live, in-person class he signed up for was scheduled to meet for one hour, five days per week. So he headed back to school for the summer. (Which is between three and four hours south of where we live, depending on traffic, construction, and how many times you have to pee, eat, or stop to maintain your sanity on the boring as frack roads... though they aren't as boring in that direction as they are in any other direction from here. There be HILLS and crap down there... and TREES... it's almost like there's... LANDSCAPE!?!?!? It's freaky!) Before he left, my wife asked him if he would be able to make it home for the 4th? He told her that his class schedule would only give him one day off that week for the holiday and he didn't think it would be a good idea to drive up just to stay for less what really would amount to less than a day... My wife was understanding, but obviously a bit sad. Even though she USUALLY works on her birthday, because as a hospital nurse she makes 2.5X base pay on holidays and, really, why wouldn't you work as many of those as you can, right? it would still be the first time one of her kids wasn't there to celebrate her birthday at ALL.

Well... the first day of my son's class, the professor walked in and said, "Ya know... I don't really like this schedule! How about we do two hours on Mondays and Tuesdays, one hour on Wednesday, and call it done for the week?" The class agreed that he was a genius and the schedule was modified, whether the school knows about it or not. Then he cancelled the Tuesday class for this week.

Last weekend my daughter took the train down to visit her brother for the weekend, since he "wasn't going to be able to come up to see us at all this summer." They had a good time over the weekend, including going out to Red Lobster to celebrate her finishing her GED and officially being done with high school and able to enroll in college at Loyola of Chicago next fall. (Hopefully she'll be able to keep HER scholarships for the duration! Maybe even add an honors one after she's been there a year?) While she was there he told her about the schedule change and that, surprise, he was planning on coming home for Mom's birthday, but asked her to keep it a surprise... FROM MOM!

So one of the first things she told me when I picked her up at the train station was that her brother was coming home on Tuesday night, but it was a surprise. Then when her aunt got here early Tuesday evening to help celebrate her sister's birthday, she told HER as well... Later that evening, my wife was on the phone with her mother, who asked when we were expecting him to come and she told her that he wasn't going to be able to make it and explained about his class schedule, while my daughter and her sister sat there smirking and trying not to give away the secret in the room with her. At about 10:30, my son rolled in and my wife was somewhere between pissed off and overjoyed. She was pissed that EVERYONE in the house except for her knew he was coming, but very happy he was able to make it. She actually DIDN'T work on her birthday, at my daughter's request, since it is her last one before going to college. She wanted Mom to be home for it instead of at work.

We didn't go to the fireworks or anything... well, my son did... with his friends... but the rest of us just hung out at home. It was nice...

However......

On Tuesday night, shortly after my son arrived, I got one of those nasty text messages from Verizon telling me that I have only 10% remaining on my data plan for the month, with SEVENTEEN DAYS LEFT!!!!!! I immediately hopped over to the usage statistics page to see what was up and, low and behold, 78% of the data usage was on: MY SON'S PHONE! (Yes, it's a family data plan.)

How convenient! He just walked in the door so I can ask him WTF?!?!?!?!?!?

Well, it turns out that shortly after the term started and he moved in with the friend of our family in Carbondale for the summer, she left for a vacation for a few days. While she was gone, her internet went down... he has multiple online classes... that have video lectures he needed to watch... that are a couple hours a piece... and he had to watch them before she returned... and it was the weekend... (I didn't mention that there was probably someplace he could have gone with free WiFi and he could have saved data, but...) So he used a buttload of data for class material... I can't really get MAD about that, can I? Sure, he could have found free WiFi... but there were also WiFi outages all over town around that time. (One of his buddies also used a crap-ton of data because the WiFi at his apartment was out. The wired internet was working but the WiFi wasn't and the internet provider was too swamped because of the issues like the one that took out the WiFi at our friend's house to bother with a request to reset his router, and it was the type of error that THEY have to reset...) It still took a day or two after our friend got home before the internet was working again...

Stupid hick town internet! Now I have to go over TWO WEEKS with no data on my phone! BLAH!

[Mike]

Nice of you to accomodate your kid's data issues.

[Zen]

Also would have been nice of him to INFORM US about it before Verizon did!

[Mike]

When my kid screws up and we go over data, he pays the overage charge, and the rest of us go about our business as usual.

The two times it has happened, he's been responsible for 60+% of the usage (out of 5 phones), so he's paid us $30 each time for 2 extra Gb.

[Zen]

I'm hoping we'll still avoid the overage. I'll just stick to WiFi for a while and not use my phone away from home as much... except for, you know... things like text messages... and phone calls... It still does those things, I think...

[Ronster]

Removed yet another large egg eating snake (King Snake) from the chickens' nesting box. It gave me a real scare when I opened the lid. So much I said "Holy Crow"...wonder where I learned that language

[Phoebe]

Listening to Tool?

[Ronster]

Listening to NPR podcasts...

[Mike]

Jeezly Crow is for when you're REALLY intense.