I think, when I hand out candy, I should sit on my porch in my prom dress, sawzall, crowbar and a piece of the concrete board remainders on the table, work gloves and my safety glasses and vent mask. Maybe an old pot of paint and a roller. I'll be HandyWoman.

The parents'll get it.

Or, with some makeup, you could be Handy Zombie.

I have no advice, Burrell, but I think you are kind of awesome for worrying about that.

Hooray for cats getting home and files not being permanently lost!

Good luck with the QA job, Connie. Having the head of the department tell you you ought to apply should totally boost your confidence.

I didn't finish shopping (for general Halloween stuff and specifically pumpkin carving stuff and also cubicle-decorating stuff that I feel I have been peer-pressured into and only after all that groceries) until after seven, when Frankenstein started, so I guess I will try to make the Wednesday showing. If it is not sold out. I should have all the ingredients for the s'more pie I'm making for the inexplicably BBQ-themed potluck on Friday, so that's not hanging over me at least.

It may be because I am very hungry, but this TJ's Kofta in Marinara sauce is really very tasty.

Having the head of the department tell you you ought to apply should totally boost your confidence.

If she didn't think I could do, I don't think she'd go out of her way to tell me about it. And they can't say they don't know my work. Hopefully I won't run into "we can't lose anyone off the phones!" again.

often when it is an internal move - you want to give the right info - but not get too cranky about format - they need your skills listed, filled out etc for hr reasons.

I think I need to be trying harder. To not get mad, to keep my daughter on task, etc. But that still might not address the bottom line, which is what do we do if we think she's struggling so hard to meet expectations and address work habits that she's not actually learning the materials all that well?

Is there one place in particular she isn't doing well? can you find a tutor for that subject? Get the stress of explain and doing well off your shoulders. Let her own it - and work with someone that is not a teacher or a parent. One of my friends did this with her son. Eased tensions in the house and son and family learned that he just need a little more time with math

Very promising!

JFC, I am so over this fucking nation freaking the fuck out over Ebola.

You know who needs to freak out? Those without access to clean IV fluids, regular electricity, good diagnostics. Governors need to shut their tiny pieholes.So over it.

The one death here was a classic system failure of the weakest point in our system (minority), focus on putting the public back in public health.

My BFF saw Frankenstein for the first time tonight, with her daughter. They LOVED it. We talked for two hours after.

And now bed.

Amen, Sara. A-to the fucking-men.

And blaming Obama. Because it's all a grand conspiracy.

JFC, I am so over this fucking nation freaking the fuck out over Ebola.

Oh my god SERIOUSLY. You know who's gotten it so far (transmission within the US, I mean, not people who have returned from African countries like Thomas Duncan or the cameraman whose name I can't remember)? Healthcare professionals. JUST healthcare professionals. [EDIT. I am *so* aware that this is the point where someone with more up-to-date knowledge of me will come in and post to prove me wrong, for lo, Buffistas have all of the knowledge and wield it like a mighty sword.] The fact that Thomas Duncan's own girlfriend, whom one presumes had fairly close/intimate contact with him, didn't develop symptoms, is really telling.

Healthcare workers get it because they had to deal with Thomas Duncan when he was super-duper most contagious, in the last stages of the illness. His partner didn't.

(None of that is to make light of the healthcare workers contracting it; after all, it's still freaking Ebola. But if I hear one more person flipping their shit about how "They SAY it isn't airborne, BUT WHAT ABOUT A SNEEZE OH MAH GAWDDDDDDDD!!!", I will lose my mind. No one in the last stages of Ebola is going to be walking around the Food Lion bleeding from many, many parts that shouldn't be bleeding, and sneezing in people's eyeballs. They're JUST NOT.)

All the Ebola panic really took away from a more crucial local headline last week, which was "Boa Constrictor Escapes From Home." NOPE. Nope nope nope. (He has since been found and reunited with his owner. But he probably picked up Ebola on the way.)

(I realize that me getting squished by a renegade boa constrictor is even less likely than me getting Ebola [from a horrifically sick patient who is bleeding out the eyeballs but yet allowed to go to the grocery store], but still -- that's a big fucking snake. HELL NO, SON.)