Have a great vacation, Lee! Does this mean you are bringing Bagel (or name TBA) home soon?

I don't think I really have the concept of the "family home" in any meaningful way. We are just not that kind of family. Grandpa's ashes are scattered over his ranch, which we haven't owned for a long time - it was definitely his and not the family's, and Grandma tended to treat real estate as investments.

Dana, insent to profile addy.

Have a great vacation, Lee! Does this mean you are bringing Bagel (or name TBA) home soon?

Thanks! He is arriving at some point this afternoon.

I'm almost ready for him too! Just need to go get a car seat (did you know they make them for dogs now? and food bowls.

You are not being general about control freaks, Julie, but how is it a mark against other people who are either being general about cases which don't match yours, or specific again, about cases that aren't about your boss. The existence (or possible prevalence) of manipulative control freaks is not shocking, surely?

My first boss here was a manic control freak, and I'm sure that's part of why he's no longer here--he played it way wrong. My current boss has tendencies, but it's something he's working against, and his directs are openly working against it by leaving him out of things. In general, in fact, power (and resulting control) is being pushed down the org chart a bit as a company decision.

It's less bad than it was. No, that's not fair. It's better than it was. It wasn't bad, just sub-optimal.

Yay being almost ready for dog's imminent arrival!

I have put on my cranky bloomers (thank you Jilli for making these available!) and my SF2F T-shirt, flying the b.org flag pretty high today. While I sit on my couch or possibly in my backyard, but still.

I agree that more of you should move to the northwest. Maybe Seattle instead of Portland. We have more jobs.

Sarameg, he has an accent? That almost counts as being in a foreign country for you, r it should...

Dana I'm so sorry. But you're closer geographically to her now than you were, right? And what everyone else said--early stage is usually very curable.

Yay dog for Lee!!!!

Welcome, Lee's new dog!

While I sit on my couch or possibly in my backyard, but still.

As a true Buffista does.

Dana, I'm sorry, and much ~ma to both of you.

Today in an effort to stop being a hermit, I'm going to a "meetup" with other local movie fans to watch Serenity at someone's house. I don't know any of them. The social anxiety is topping the charts, here. But if I back out now, it means I took a space that someone else might have wanted and didn't use it, and that would make me feel bad, so I have to go. I'm feeling especially old and ugly and fat and unlovable today, and would prefer to hide in my den, but I'm going to put on real clothes and go. Maybe I'll meet someone I can be friends with. Maybe it'll be an uncomfortable disaster. We'll see.

Dana - much ~ma for your mom.

Hooray Lee dog!

DH's parents treated me to my first opera last night. I discovered about five minutes in that, either due to the overwhelmingly pejorative costuming, the translation/libretto being so over the top, and the plot being essentially 'don't talk to women, they are evil' with added 'my insta-love stopped talking to me for the night, my life is over, I shall kill myself' that it is possible to rage blackout over the classics. My inlaws have no idea I didn't like it as much as they did. They never will. Too bad I know what the music says now. I used to like some of the arias.

I am obviously an ungrateful cretin. Anyone have a favorite opera that isn't The Magic Flute?