Oh, Juliebird, at least that's some relief about the ticket.

Theo, I think Instacart is also in your city, and they're a great company to work for. I'm having fun driving around, shopping, & delivering groceries. (Even with all of the road crews apparently deciding that November is a fine month to dig up ALL OF THE STREETS.) But, I really like grocery shopping.

My mom retired at about 67, not because she was unable to physically do the job, but because she wakes up in so much pain from a bad back & foot neuropathy that she takes a long while to get started in the morning and she just couldn't get there on time and ended up calling in sick a lot. She would have worked longer if she could have, her 401K was horribly underfunded and then she retired right as the market tanked & her 401K lost that much more value. (So, yeah, many people only retire when they have no choice, esp with money woes).

ION: We're doing a Thanksgiving pot luck tomorrow at work and I signed up to bring stuffing. The store I was at only had the stuff that's basically just a bag of bread chunks so I had to add stuff to it. They recommended celery and onions, but we don't care for onions at my house so I didn't have any. But I did get carrots in my CSA box yesterday, and I think carrots make everything better, so I diced up some of those and added them (with spices & whatnot). Good news: the taste is good. But I'll probably have a ton of leftovers because, Bad news: the carrots were purple and turned my stuffing GRAY. It looks so gross. Ah well, more for me. Stopped at a different store for a box of Stovetop - I'm the only person who signed up to do stuffing and I think I'd feel bad if the only option was gray (and the tiny bits of purple carrot make it look like there's either chocolate chips or olive chunks in it). Yeah, plenty of leftovers I'm thinking.

Timelies all!

I've been with my current employer 14 years, but I'm a federal employee so there's the stability.

Every time I think I've settled into a career or at a company, the universe laughs in my face as it is doing right now.

Every time I think I've settled into a career or at a company, the universe laughs in my face as it is doing right now.

This was my last job. Right as I was thinking I could feel settled, they closed the San Diego plant. That was in my mind here, so when they said they were sending our jobs to Poland I was cynically unsurprised. Now that Poland's been cancelled (the planned move, not the whole country), I still feel like nothing's permanent. I've been here over 9 years, but in the corporate atmosphere nowadays, I don't feel that cynical that I don't feel like my job is safe even after almost 10 years.

ION: This t-shirt made me LOL: [link]

Paid up. Now need to register the poor car before I get scanned again.

I was in my last job for seven years and the previous one for eight. If someone dropped $20 million on my head I think I could find things to do that didn't have a paycheck. But until that happens, a job would be nice.

ETA: I'm glad you were able to work things out, Juliebird.

Jesus Christ, I don't get that much mail, so I only check my box once a week. If I'd put this one off even one more day, there'd be a warrant out for my arrest. I can't believe this ticket has been floating around the post office for over two weeks.

Every time I think I've settled into a career or at a company, the universe laughs in my face as it is doing right now.

Yeah, I'm afraid to get too complacent.

Juliebird, don't feel all by yourself, I let my registration expire for a YEAR and didn't even realize it until a cop pulled me over. So embarrassing. When I went to re-register, I had to get new plates, the clerk told me I'd been "out of the system" so long I'd disappeared. I almost said, "You mean I could have been committing crimes this whole time and I didn't know it?!" She probably wouldn't have laughed.