Dawn, we had the baby and were paddling in MDR and I kept thinking of you!

Okay, I LOVED this part about the subway boys.

When your child cries in public, it is usually an uncomfortable situation. Once, we needed to get home quickly from Chambers Street, and I told Gustav that we had to take whichever blue train came next. The A train pulled in, and Gustav (who had been hoping for the C) started throwing a fit. However, the other passengers in the car gave me warm smiles. I guess they hadn’t seen that many 3-year-olds sobbing, “Local…I want the local.”

4 people (two teens and the hubby and me), it's a 50 ft. power boat so we've got plenty of room. 3 staterooms, 3 bathrooms, washer/dryer, dishwasher. The drawbacks are storage is sometimes tricky to get to (I gotta crawl under the dining table to get to my pots/pans) and no one is allowed to flush any of the heads when someone is in the shower. I'm going to miss it when we move off later this year (the DH's mom has Alzheimer's and we need to move in with her).

Dawn, we had the baby and were paddling in MDR and I kept thinking of you!

You totally should have stopped by! He could have terroized the cats!

My personal best for crappy mail deliveries was when I lived near the university in Jonesboro. While my junk mail was delivered fine, anything that looked like personal mail or that gave no clue of its contents would arrive late with signs of having been opened. The last straw was when the first attempt to deliver a gift I sent meara was returned and my mail carrier bent the package around the mailbox rather than set it in front of my door, leave it at the manager's office, or return it to the post office and leave me a delivery notice.

Buttons for Buffistas! Snarky McF*ckButtons - Wear What You’re *Really* Thinking

My fave is "stop practicing radical entitlement" or maybe "there's always room for bacon".

anything that looked like personal mail or that gave no clue of its contents would arrive late with signs of having been opened.

I had that happen a lot at my old neighborhood (Wicker Park).

Last night on the news they reported a couple of cities where they are switching their civil servants to the 4-day work week (not just for summer) to money. I searched on google news and found a bunch of stories of different communities doing the same thing.

We start 4 10-hour days next week. I'm still the only employee who's not thrilled about it, because I don't want to get up earlier and I don't like having my evenings truncated.

But I keep trying to think of it as an opportunity to get extra rest on the 3-day weekends. Assuming I survive to the weekends.

Monday is when we start it. (My "shift" is 8:15-6:15. We are allowed to work 10 hours between 7 a.m. and 7 p.m., and I'm surprised at how many of my co-workers are choosing to work 7-5. Jesus.)

t edit What I resent is that, unlike other places that are doing the 4-day 10-hour thing, we aren't being given an *option* (for instance, some businesses will be open all 5 days, and then employees can do the 4-day thing if they choose, or they can continue the 5-day week) -- we were simply told that the entire company is doing this, no option. Our only "option" was what 10-hour shift we wanted to work.

Huh. I wouldn't have expected your boss to be that flexible about when people actually work their hours, Teppy.

Which is cooler? The Buzzball, A Motorized Hampster Ball For Humans or Cola Flavored Vladimir Lenin Head Pops?

I never had my taxes taken out of my unemployement because I always considered it an arts grant and took the full amount and usually six months off. So my income went down and I didn't owe anything.

Heh. That SO would not fly in my state.

They will SO TOTALLY AUDIT YOU at the drop of a hat.