Funeral services are a delicate thing to get right. Sounds like your Grandfather inspired the best in everyone, and they all came out to celebrate him. I've been the emcee/host for a very large celebration of life, and it is a delicate thing to navigate.
I was certainly worried about not striking the balance right. But the audience let it be known they were there to celebrate his life and were happy to laugh and clap - it was really such a nice service. He was quite a talented pianist, so we had a video clip of him a few years back (still in his 70s though) playing a particularly complex piece of work - by Chopin? I need to find the title. But anyway one hand played a different time signature to the other so it was wildly complicated sounding but he flowed up and down the piano without making a mistake. At one point he slows down and says to the audience "You may be tempted to tap your feet in time to the music, please don't try" and whirls off into another piece. As they go, it was a rather great send-off.
Bertha continues to get better! We are going to build an enclosure in the basement and move all our birds down there so she can have chicken company during the winter without having to endure the cold. She loves us but I'm sure she misses normal chicken life --- and her flockmates miss her, for sure. Lost in the sauce Annie likes to perch on my shoulder and groom my hair I'm getting some potting soil to attempt to plant some pothos cuttings I've been growing in a cup of water for a month or so now. I did this with four basil cuttings and only one made it, but I will try a little harder with these and see if I can get more lucky. I also planted some huge aloe cuttings from a professor at school and they seem to be doing quite well. I should also start thinking about if I want to try to grow more office plants this spring --- I have quite a few but you can never really have too many! I guess I am going to make some time to talk to my parents after thanksgiving. I still don't really know what to expect or what I actually want from them.
Bertha getting lost in the sauce is a goddamn opus of oil and canvas created by Basil Hallward of my very soul...no. It is my soul. So utterly has it captured the essence of my being, it has subsumed the thing it didn't even realize it was imitating. Bertha, you glorious and regal hen. You've done it again.
We weighed her tonight and she is three pounds seven ounces, right at the bottom of a healthy weight for easter egger hens! (She was under three pounds at one point, poor girl.) She's been working hard to get here -- I watched her eat an entire hotdog in one sitting. Fortunately for her, she could still stand to be a little rounder for the winter, so she gets to keep eating as many snacks as she wants. Her sister is quite round and well over four pounds. (In case you were wondering, we did the math and after eating that hotdog she was 4% hotdog by weight.)
Woo! Tuesday Pubski! Looks like mk can add "Time Traveler" to that impressive resume of his. I'd love to stay and chat, but I honestly just got on the tablet to check the weather before I head out for a walk. I hope you all have a beautiful Thanksgiving this week and you're enjoying these last few weeks of fall. :)
I think I just decreased feed load times by about 40%. A couple of weeks ago my 7yo daughter was up in our bedroom for a bit. My wife called up and asked her what she was doing: "Just relaxing." Of course she wasn't just relaxing. We went up later to find this: She thought it was hilarious. Thankfully, the doll is hanging by her arm, not the neck. She's a well-adjusted kid with an odd sense of humor. Imgur sucks, so I might be integrating this service for images: https://imgz.org/
Hmm... I think this is like when cats bring in birds and rodents and leave them on your bed. It’s a gift. A sign of love. Not disturbing at all....
Happy Holiday if you're of the mood, if not, Happy Day to you! I got to sleep in today! The other day applewood and I went on a short nature hike and he learned something new about me. I have an affinity for sneaky video game characters because I am sneaky. Despite having on the largest boots in the group I was probably the most silent while creeping through the leaf-littered trail. This does not really surprise me. Back in the day when I worked retail I often scared the pants off of customers because one of our directives was to approach people in the store if we saw them and see if they needed any help finding stuff. My coworkers threatened to put a cat bell on me. I've also been known to be able to bypass motion sensors, and no I was not trying to do it on purpose. I did not enjoy going to the restroom in the semi-dark.
Pubski, what are you doing? Last night I went to Banff Mountain Film Festival as it made it's way into town. One of my favorite nights of the year! It's a great excuse to run into a lot of friends who I may see once a week, and others I see once every few months to drink some beer and watch some amazing outdoor adventure films. That said, man, I find myself getting pissed off. One of the films was about the Grand Canyon and two people hiking the length of it (730ish miles) and a development group wanting to put in a tram and resort at the confluence of the Colorado and Little Colorado rivers, which is a sacred place for 3 indigenous tribes. I think one of the most poignant points was the former Ranger Superintendent of the park making the point that they are not there to provide an experience for every single person based on their ability. Not all outdoor spaces are for everyone. But it pisses me off that people continue to try and do this, it pisses me off that Bears Ear National Monument was shrank, it pisses me off that people are trying to start a resort at Mount Rainier. These are not mistakes, these are purposeful decisions attempting to reshape the landscape of our public lands to industrialize and Disney-fye them. And it is, and I'm sure will for the rest of my years, continue to drive me crazy. Meanwhile I'm at a point where I feel like I'm walking on eggshells with my partner and it's really not a ton of fun. I like her, I like spending time with her, but I'm currently at a point where I am just waiting for the next issue to come up - will it be this week? Will it be three weeks from now? I don't know, but I know it's going to happen. Things were amazing and fun for a while but for the past month plus they haven't been and as I reflect on things it almost makes me want to say that the most relaxed and most "myself" I have been in a relationship in the past long time was either the start of this relationship or the 3ish months I was the 3rd in an open relationship. Maybe it's that time of year where I start to freak to fuck out because it feels like these things bubble to the surface around the Holidays most years for me.
Magpies, minarets, Roma, and cats all over. Holiday getaway where Thanksgiving is not observed but stores promote Mega Cuma discounts on Friday. Ate brain for the first time, challenged by a friend to try söğüş. Not intolerable while I could avoid thinking about the ingredients, which also included (lamb) cheek, tongue, and “eye edges.” Staying up nights with jet lag reading Ureneck’s book about the burning of Smyrna. Puts the challenge of eating gross food in perspective. Edit: backup images; imgz trial to end Dec 27.
Ironically, social obligations are rankling right now. I've been reflecting on the end of my last relationship, and I've come to the understanding that I wasn't treated very well or very fairly at all. If I had a mind to be mad, I could justify being mad. And my mind for it is developing. It makes it tough for me to feel enthusiastic for all the innocent coffee dates I've set up with old friends and flames alike, which is unfair to them. I'm doing alright dealing with it, though, I just think the novelty of being single has worn off quicker than the heartbreak. My priority right now is to make sure I do right by the people I'm involved with, extricate myself from relationships I can't enthusiastically enjoy, and focus on myself until (realistically, responsibly) I can walk again. Basically, BREAKING NEWS: Young man on internet feels emotions, plans to deal with them!Once upon a time, it was a Friday. Kingmudsy got very sick, and spent all weekend in bed with cold sweats and a splitting headache. His social obligations all lacked a definitive and room-dominating charisma because, lo, he could not attend! When weekend was finally struck down by that dragon Monday, Kingmudsy felt as though he hadn't seen his friends in a very long while, and he was sad!
My "entities" list for the birth center has 37 entries on it - these are things that need some sort of trigger in the phone system, the server or the email plant (or all three). All but two of them are working, and that's because two people haven't made an office call from their cell phones in a week. Our naturopathic doctor has been averaging 50 new patients per month. I have managed to figure out a way to put up pictures of families and babies such that we cannot be accused of either cultural appropriation or prejudice, which is quite an accomplishment in an industry where wokeness points are scored by accusing someone else of not being woke enough. Our problem student, who we had to let go because she was too racist to work with our South American midwife, is facing disciplinary action from the VP of her school. It took three weeks and dozens of hours of wargaming but we have successfully terminated a person of color while being white AF. Which is not to say there isn't a massive whisper campaign about how we're incompetent hood-wearing butchers. But our credibility is intact. But what about YOUR shit, KB? Surely you haven't been dealing with your wife's bullshit for a month straight? I'm trying to extricate one of our employees from the school. She's been forced to restart her thesis three times and they keep changing it on her. I'm probably a dozen hours into that as well. My wife has pointed out "hey, at least you're getting to help someone in real life instead of on the Internet for once." My daughter wants to take "beginning strings." This led to a two hour discussion with my wife last night where I realized that my pursuit of mixing and my college career in clubs was a reaction to the abuse and discouragement I experienced in the school music program as amplified and expanded by my parents. I guess that's what a high ACE score is about - the likelihood of being reduced to inchoate rage over a quarter-sized violin without even seeing it coming. I kept it together but just. The shitty thing is that the reasonable, responsible adult thing is to rent the fucking violin, put on a happy face and plaster over the gaping wound so that my kid doesn't have to grow up dealing with my bullshit. I've probably been 50 hours a week into the birth center for the past month. My wife would like to pay me so that it doesn't suck so hard. This would of course nullify my unemployment, which has been under review and hearing for the past month because I omitted my middle initial when I refiled in September. Tomorrow we're meeting with an accountant to talk about upping our corporate status and to figure out how to provide health insurance and retirement for our employees without allowing my wife to be eligible because, you see, as soon as my wife even has access to ANY KIND of health insurance my super-great health insurance that I spend 5 months in LA earning is no longer available to her. Or my kid. My wife was late coming home from the outlet mall. I immediately went to her dying in a car crash and immediately went to how I would handle the books and scheduling because if that business goes under two people lose their houses. It sucks being an employee in the United States. It sucks being an employer, too. I get to spend the next week configuring $2500 worth of IT bullshit so that our two receptionists will be less mad at one of our doctors because a technological solution is one that nobody needs to get their feelings hurt over and because fuckin' hell, nobody's paying me any extra but if I don't figure out a way to get you more money you'll never be able to get health insurance and how fucking shitty is that.
Stephen Colbert just did a week long series on his trip to New Zealand. He's sitting chatting with one of the guys from Flight of the Conchords and Lucy Lawless (notice whose name I remembered easily, and whose I didn't...), and he asks them about how health insurance is in New Zealand. Dude says, "It doesn't exist." Stephen is kinda caught off guard for a moment. That wasn't in the script. Dude continues, "If I get sick, I just go to the doctor and it's taken care of." Stephen gets it - his entire framework for discussing health care is fucked - and smiles. Dude continues, "Even you. If you get sick, you go in, they fix you up, and you leave. For free." They then go on talking about the canned spaghetti sandwich they are eating, and what a delicacy it is. Fuck, man. What would it be like to live in a civilized country... ?
There is a 42% chance that a cancer diagnosis will cost your entire life savings. This is partially by design. My wife has a friend whose husband got a diagnosis of pancreatic cancer. The social workers at the hospital said "look - how fast can you get below the poverty line?" They couldn't do shit for 'em until they could get 'em on welfare, at which point they could tap a different set of funds. So she had to tell all her patients she was no longer practicing medicine and they had to move in with her parents. Two years later and he's beat it and she's back in practice... but literally. "oh, you can pay something? well, that's not good enough. You have to pay EVERYTHING." It's fucked up from the provider standpoint too. We've had this doctor working for us for four months now. And we had to run every ICD10 code we thought she could possibly bill against our reimbursement rates for every insurance we take with a weighted average for our projected patient makeup. Then we had to subtract our overhead and et voila that's how much we can afford to pay her. That's her max. That's all she'll ever make from us until it's time to renegotiate insurance rates at which point they're as likely to go down as up because dealing with insurance companies is like dealing with Walmart. It's been four months and we won't even have a decent amount of bills to check to see how close we were guessing because most of the insurance companies? They don't even attempt to pay you for six months. We've got bills outstanding from 18 months ago. So we're hoping? We'll know whether we can pay her more? Or whether we'll have to reexamine our relationship? some time next month. Maybe. But on no planet. Under no conditions. As chosen by anyone. Does our current system make a lick of sense. Unless you're in the insurance business.
Two things - my cousin is in one of those videos, where Colbert trains with Piri Weepu and DJ Forbes. Bloody hilarious how small NZ is that my family member can just rock up to a field for practice and get asked to be on camera with Colbert. Secondly - yeah our healthcare system sometimes has it's faults but holy shit, we get well taken care of a majority of the time. My sister having her son? Spent a week in hospital and had no bills, just some baby stuff to take home to make things easier. I've had specialist appointments after a inner ear issue, all paid for. My prescriptions never cost more than $5 a pop, and they may last me for 6 months - so $10 for a year of medication if needed. My mum had a stroke in 2013 and is on a variety of meds since then, $20 a year for the lot of them. My brother is a severe hemophiliac, entirety of his treatment was government funded - I estimate in the early years before treatment really got good, we cost the NZ government millions with hospital visits, surgery, and Factor 8 treatment.
As you'd expect, we have our fair share of asses but they often isolate themselves so the ones you meet traveling are usually like-minded and open to everyone! So the medication, the $5 is just the co-payment. Most common medicines are subsidised to the point that you just pay $5 each time you get it renewed, then after a while of using it you can apply for high-usage charges and get the whole thing covered. I did that for my anti-depressants when I was on them, $5 every few months wasn't bothering me at all but my Dr insisted we could remove the charges entirely as I would be on them for at least a year, and they did! Last 6 months on them, I didn't have to pay for them at all. If you're a child under 13 your medication will pretty much always be free - like in the case with my brother. He was funded regardless of how much it cost, then once he moved past 13 the treatment had improved vastly so even if it wasn't funded, it wouldn't have been so bad. Thankfully it was and still is to this day! Certain medication won't be subsidised - but I don't have much of a list handy for you, I know some unique meds for epilepsy aren't covered as much so the person pays $20 or so each time - I would like to think after a while they can get high-usage cover as that's likely saving/improving their quality of life. But don't know enough to be sure!
I am late to the party. (I don't mind.) I've run 5x/week every week this month. This statement will become true so long as I get my run in today. I'm holding steady at 21 miles/week right now. I'd like to get it up to 25 in December. I have a 5k (my 2nd race since re-re-re-re-starting running this go around) on Friday. I would like to PR, which would require a sub-29:26 time. I am pretty sure I can manage that. I hit 29:26 on a 5k exactly a week ago today (Why did I sign up for 2 races so close together? It was not driven by sense, I tell you) and in training since then I feel really confident that I can go faster than that this time around. I'm single again! As it often happens with me, I am glad to be single; I am single because I decided I did not want to be in the relationship any longer. I regained solo dolo status a little over a month ago, so while this is news, it is not fresh. I enjoyed Thanksgiving with my grandmother, an aunt and uncle, and my parents. My sister went out Thanksgiving Eve and became so successfully hungover that she missed Thanksgiving, which is a definite first for our family. I skipped a Mother's Day in college once, which is my closest personal equivalent. I have read four books this month and, often when I get home after work, like to refuse to turn the TV on and entertain myself with at least one less screen. I do love the internet and laptop, although I try to spend my time there reading about as many legitimate news articles as I do r/relationships and r/AmITheAsshole shitposts. I am grateful for you all. I am glad you came by here and said hi. In fact, I'm grateful for Hubski. Whatever time of day it is where you are, I hope you're having a great one. - ref
i feel personally attacked. I don't think I've ever skipped a family event due to being hungover, but I did puke at my parents house a couple month ago, after my sisters bachelorette. My mom gave me some alkazerser, and didn't even make any passive agressive comments! I felt like a teenager. Congrats on the singledom! I find with being single comes a lot of freedom :)r/relationships and r/AmITheAsshole shitposts
Thanks for the early Pubski. Tomorrow is my company's annual Turkey Fry, which is a 200+ person potluck of fun and chaos and drinking, and it starts at 11:AM, and everyone basically leaves when they are full. We will be back in the office on Monday. Love this job! The bad news is that my tennis elbow is back with a fucking vengeance. Been in pain for more than a week, after twisting my wrist slightly putting a jar back in the fridge. Today was my physical therapy appointment. It was supposed to be the last one, as my treatment of the last two months had basically gotten me back to normal again. My therapist diagnosed nerve damage, and traced it up into my shoulder and neck - my first rib, actually - and did a BUNCH of work there to release the tension in my wrist, because my wrist hurt too much to touch. So now I am back again to not being able to use my right hand basically AT ALL, for the next couple of months. I have a series of new nerve-treatment exercises to do regularly, to help "floss" the problematic nerve and get it on the path to healing. In the mean time, any activity with my right wrist - including playing guitar (which I will be doing this weekend in the recording studio), and riding my motorcycle, and writing (on Hubski, too), and removing the old forced-air ducting so I can close up the gaps and keep all the heat being generated by our new heating system INSIDE the house, and a hundred other things - are on hold for the foreseeable future. Which includes my motorcycle rebuild project. Which I found out isn't going to happen either, because there are some weird design anomalies with this bike that make it REALLY hard to modify and get running right again (gee, I wonder if that is why it only lasted for 4 years in Suzuki's product line?), so I just need to slap it back together and sell it on to the next sucker. But after my wrist heals. :-(
I decided to stop being a stubborn dumb fuck and just go to London. Literally 3 people that were my closest friends at some point in my life live there now. I almost feel like the recipient of a weird curse where I make a close friend, bond and hang out for about 2 years, and then they inevitably move to London. I have 9 people on my "to see" list. And I had multiple offers of free accommodation, without even asking. Better than going to Berlin (even if I like the city more, they have Club Mate and awesome affordable food and fun parties). Got my plane ticket for next Monday and I'm super exited about this! Made a short trip to Antwerp this Sunday to hang out with my friend from Montreal that's in Europe for a work thing this month. It was a great day, walking around and talking - kind of felt like Before Sunrise in a way. And it was nice being around someone that knows me. Being around new people all the times makes every conversation heavy with context setting for a while. I've really had nothing but really great and deep conversations about literally anything with her. She's super knowledgeable, smart, has interesting thoughts and ideas... while being the biggest messy explosion externally. I think it's her second time this year losing her passport, and she gets lost literally anywhere. But i'm not much better. I've washed my passport once this year and missed my bus to see her in Antwerp (but the bus driver let me hop on the next bus for free and we had a nice chat about his experience as a Moroccan living in Belgium). Maybe that's why we get along so well.
It's been a great Wednesday so far, seeing as it is Wednesday already. How the time flies! I'm pretty much set to release the new album on the first, a week shy of 2 years after the last time I released something. It will be nice to have that wrapped up, then I can focus on the long, long game of ineffectual internet promotion. I've been way less productive with my free time recently since I've been playing Noita for almost all of it since it came out. But I have been doing some pretty good cooking in between. Since my fiancee switched to a non-nightshift job, I've been having to make a lot more meals. She doesn't really cook, and on most nights when she was at work I wouldn't really either. Instead I'd mostly just like, eat a block of cheese or something.
I'm guilty of the "block of cheese" for dinner scenario too.
One time my partner just got up and went to the fridge, grabbed the cheese block and carved a big chunk off it, then sat back down with the chunk in hand and nibbled away. I didn't say anything but I thought it was just so funny that her brain was like... "Am peckish. Cheese? Cheese" and away she went to acquire the cheese. I do a majority of the cooking too. Recently my partner switched from a horrible hour job to 37.5hr weeks and day time only, no weekends. So I'm excited to have another pair of hands in the kitchen and she's excited to not be stuck on dishes every night!
Hubski pt. 2: Holiday stuff: I do a half day at work today, then I go home to make cranberry sauce to bring down to San Diego tonight. Work has been slow recently because 1/2 of my instrument setup took a shit and died a while ago. We placed the order for it's $65k replacement which just arrived right now, so I'm stoked!