Xander ,'Conversations with Dead People'
[NAFDA] Spike-centric discussion. Lusty, lewd (only occasionally crude), risque (and frisque), bawdy (Oh, lawdy!), flirty ('cuz we're purty), raunchy talk inside. Caveat lector.
They have to pay overtime, and every minute the power is out, they're running power plants but not bringing in any money. They have 2,000+ linemen from other utilities working, and they have to pay those workers' companies for them and their equipment. An outage like this is multi-million dollar loss.
The bigwigs probably could be blamed for things like poor planning, not prestaging enough crews and for having poor telephone response to customers.
About the babysitting/child discussion. I can't even get into it, but I feel like it's all I've been thinking about lately. I've been questioning my choices and decisions regarding not having kids, and it feels like I"m questioning the very essence of who I am. I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing. I'm actually really kind of... not sleeping at night because of it.
OMG - DH just paid for some Chinese food that we didn't order. WTF. Luckily he ran back out and caught the delivery person and figured out that they had the wrong address.
My car history:
1980 AMC Spirit (bought in 1988 with 130K, I called that chocolate brown hatchback "The Beast")
1989 Nissan Sentra
1994 Saturn SL-1 (which lasted over 120K)
2004 Saturn Ion
My first car was an 89 Honda Accord that was my mother's. She gave it to me and bought herself a new car. My second car is a 1998 Honda Accord, that I bought new at the end of the model year. I am hoping it still has a few more good years in it.
{{Nora}} Why are you questioning yourself?
Cars?
I still have the last three. I also went through a ten-year period as an adult when I didn't own a car at all. Only two of those cars cost me more than $1,700.
My parents passed my twin sister and me there 1981 oldsmobile, which took us through three years of high school until we graduated in 1989--and we had to scrape by the summer and first year of college in an 88 Yugo that my dad bought off my aunt for $500 (I think he overpaid).
We then shared another passed down car (an 88 chevy cavalier) which my sister eventually bought from my mother while I scraped for a sheriff's auction Ford Escort.
When the Escort cracked a head gasket a year later, I got my first car loan for an 88 Cutlass Ciera which lasted me until DH and I traded it in for a new truck in 2001.
I'm now in the Mommobile Minivan.
I empathize with every 'ffista mom who feels trapped like a rat in a cage. We are lucky to have gotten out without the kids, together, a total of 3 times in the last 10 months. Paying a babysitter on top of dinner and a movie runs about $100 so that's usually out. Last night a good friend repaid a kindness by babysitting for us for free and it was really, really nice. We grabbed a beer before going to see the new Bond movie.
I hate to ask friends to sit with the kids because I feel like I'm imposing. It's not about trust issues or even guilt for the kids. But being so far from our family pretty much puts the usual outlets for free sitting out of our reach.
Cars?
Speaking of which, tommyrot, I've been meaning to mention that Tom Waits has a song on his new collection titled "The Pontiac" that makes me think of you every time I hear it. It's up at the NPR website for All Things Considered so if you check out his last interview there (in Nov.) you should be able to hear the song for free.
Cars:
(edited because of a complete inability to format)
EM has volunteered to babysit and she means it. She showed up at the tryouts today wearing Matilda in the front pack (which was a surprise). JZ's Mom and Dad will also offer babysitting services and I could also probably impose on Emmett's Godmother or the older Godsister for that matter.
Plus there are local Buffistas who who need to be abused would delight in Matilda's company, I'm sure.