I'm glad she is feeling better, sj. I hope you get results today.

Shir, they are clearly wronger than people who are very wrong!

Helath ~ma for ltc, sj. I have been thinking about you all, but I don't think I typed it in the box.

Butter chicken was good last night, and, as the recipe said, I have a bunch of sauce leftover to use over rice or more chicken or whatever, so... win.

My sister's family decided to cancel the group Thanksgiving at their place, and I'm glad about that, even though it sucks. Given that and why we weren't going to go, a notice from their governor, and the really useful FB post many of you shared (and I re-shared) yesterday, they were like, "Yeah... no." So it will be all Zoom all the time.

ETA: Words I learned from not getting them in yesterday's Spelling Bee - tontine, ollie (other than as a name), and nonillion. There were other words I didn't get, but I knew those. Also, iolite wasn't accepted, and I object! It's pretty.

I think I need nachos.

I think you should have nachos.

sj, it's good to hear that she's feeling better.

JenP, why would they not accept iolite? My engagement necklace has that!

Large machines are chewing up the blacktop in front of my apartment, producing huge clouds of dust and the occasional rock bouncing out of the dump truck. The owners of that Tesla parked out front aren't going to be happy about the slurry the dust is making with the rain from last night.

Oh, that's an issue ... once, a few years ago, they were resurfacing the street in front of the building I lived in. For a couple of weeks in advance, they left notices for everyone that the resurfacing would be done and that people should move their cars (it's a narrow one-way street in a residential neighborhood with parking on both sides). Of course, there was one car that wasn't moved. It ended up COVERED in road dust. Don't know how the owner reacted, though.

Is something retrograde? Literally everything I've tried to do for work today (4 different manuscripts/projects) has had a problem that prevents me from getting any work done on said manuscript/project.

I feel like this is a message from the universe that I shouldn't do any work today. (BECAUSE I CAN'T, apparently.)

I did have nachos. They were tasty.

YES.

That may account for the weirdness...

Mercury turns direct at 9:49AM PT (North America) on November 3, 2020

[link]

Not like anything important is happening on November 3.

In between my previous post and now, one work thing did actually come through that I can do (it's author corrections to an article, and for changes to statistics, we always ask the author to verify that the change is okay -- the author keeps answering "This is fine" to those questions, which is making me think the "This is fine" dog is actually the author of this article).

The dog burnt your homework?

There may well be something going on. This week, the organization I work for sponsored its first virtual conference. Since I'm the only one actually in our office - with the phone number people had to call - I've been dealing with people who didn't get their information to "attend" or were having problems and, of course, the email address I give them goes to people who aren't responding. Tuesday and Wednesday were exhausting, since the phones were ringing non-stop and I kept having to apologize to people when I couldn't help them (since, of course, I hadn't been given access to the back end of the system to get people's information). Yesterday was comparatively quiet, but today there are people (! actual people!) in the office and, seemingly, things are not going well.

In somewhat better news, it was brought to my attention that today - October 30 - is Grace Slick's birthday. She's 81 (whimper).