Blergh. I'd give anything to be somewhere else...but I have nowhere to go that I could take Cagney.

You and Cagney are always welcome to come spend a few days at our house if you want to get away from the center of things. My town will not be celebrating the inauguration!

The direction also asked federal offices to try to be closed on the 18th and 19th, which has never happened before.

Maybe they just want to make sure everyone trying to leave before the new administration moves in can get to their job interviews. (Rumblings from other friends seems to indicate there will be a LOT of open job positions at State in the new year.)

Dislike: company has moved to having some assistants be remote in India. Which is annoying enough--but then even though the assistant works 1pm-10pm her time that means the end of her day is 8:30am my time. Leaves very little ability to have a damn meeting. Grrrrr.

Ooh, that is annoying!

Even though my noon meeting was pretty short, I have no regrets about eating lunch at 11:30. For what that's worth!

So...D's mom is buying and having delivered a new mattress for our Xmas present. Which is awesome, because the old mattress is old AF, and D has been sleeping in a recliner for almost a year because it hurts his back so to sleep in the bed. (It's over 20 years old.)

But neither of us has ever bought a matress! I don't want to hose D's mom by buying some expensive mattress, but I don't even know where you start. I know some of you have recently bought matresses (Ghost? Casper? IDEK) so I'm looking for recs to at least start from. IKEA?

We need a firm queen...ok, that sounds wrong! But that's what we need, basically. Our box spring and frame are still fine.

Suggestions? Warnings? Hel

I will follow mattress recommendations with interest, as it's something I'm thinking of buying in the new year!

I've about decided to return my Tuft & Needle, but it might be getting better? I think it's among the cheapest (and supposedly firmest?) of the internet mattress-in-a-box dealies. It's fairly low-risk because there's no charge to return, but it still feels like an undertaking to do. OTOH, I have literally no idea how I'd ever pick the right mattress in a showroom.

Sitting next to the CEO's EA is so much fun when I don't want to work -- just heard some Big Big News well in advance of anyone else.

We went to the mattress store and laid down on a handful of mattresses to see which one felt best. You really need to lie down for at least 5 minutes, ideally more, to really get a sense of how it feels. Lie on your back, your sides, your stomach.

Do you have the Original Mattress Factory out there? That's where we got ours. They were great to work with.

Also, a lot of mattresses now aren't made to be flipped -- they only have the pillow top on one side. I think that's kind of ridiculous, and we found a mattress than has pillow top on both sides so we could flip it. (Of course, flipping it is a pain in the ass, but it's good for mattress life.)

I have not only met my deductible for the year, I've met my OOP maximum. So now I'm sitting here trying to think of medical stuff I need, which will be free if I can get it done before January.