Interesting to hear others' stories. Mr. thumbs is sort of a third of his name (complicated), so he's not changing it. Hawaii won't let you add a married or middle name as part of the free change with marriage that wasn't somewhere in one of the spouses' previous names. You also can't go to no middle name if you had one before.

We have achieved asleep dog! I have Captain America playing for background noise so she has a variety of noise. But she is out.

Laura, those are fair points as long as the fireworks are limited to the specific day of celebration.

edit: I will allow an exception for putting municipal/official fireworks displays on a weekend when the holiday doesn't fall on the weekend.

Huh. I had no idea there were all those rules.

While I was pondering calling my mom to tell her I didn't really want to go hike and see fireworks like we had sort of planned, she called to tell me she didn't feel like it. So that worked out.

That's a lot of rules, Debet! Good luck figuring something out that works for you both.

Oy. The firework people are at it behind my house. I think they are too close and I am going to die. I also never liked fireworks because of the noise. I did always wonder how they did the fireworks of Seven thistles and a rose in Eight Cousins.

I think that all the n names I get called are people trying to slit my name into one they already know. No people of color really have that problem, which is interesting. Maybe Nadine is more popular in other cultures?

People misspell and mispronounce everything. No matter what.

We have a relatively simple last name, but always spell it for people because they inevitably mishear the first letter. Which lead to the following conversation in our house:

Me making an appointment over the phone: "That's "v" as in "vampire ..."

Mr. Loomy, once I'm done with the call: "Y'know, I say "v as in victory".

Me: "Who are you married to? Why are you surprised?"

A colleage's assistant always seemed to mis-name me. I got Evelyn, Marilyn, Jennylyn?,Jennifer, Natalie...

I finally realized she literally couldn't remember anything except it has three syllables, so she was trying every three-syllable name in hopes she'd hit it right. Write.it.down.sweetie.

I also told colleage when the assistant put me through, or gave her a message from someone with a three-syllable name, odds were pretty good it was me. Evidently the assistant had excellent skills in some other area.

Sophie, what's to stop you from applying for the job you like when the powers that be realize they will have to pay someone more AND hire an assistant for them?

People often pronounce "Fogelson" as "Ferguson," which who knows why.