We love our robot vacuum. It traveled to Brazil with us. We call it Mose.

Timelies all!

Healthma to your youngest, Cindy.

Yay, Atropa!

Took today off, but not for fun reasons. Finally got an appointment with the child psychologist at 10 today(where Mr. S demonstrated many of the behaviors we've been dealing with) and dropped Mr. S off at his "camp" after. Since I would have to pick him up at 3, there was no point in me going to work.

Congrats, Attila! (Ha, autocorrect, I kinda like it! Atropa, of course)

I have had a weird day. Pretty much all day meeting with one of my more challenging customers (although it might be our salespeople who are more the source of the challenges), briefly interrupted by the employee sample sale (only spent $2 because I only had $2, sample sale is cash on the barrelhead) with surprise ice cream, and ending with a sort of epilogue of the head of the company ( or the new managing director, the founder and owner who I have only seen in quasi-ceremonial situations score) lecturing the salespeople (and incidentally me) about What Is Wrong With Our Company. I guess I can be glad that it is not primarily me, or Operations. And he made some good points, but I don't know what to really do with them.

I do not have high hopes for 2020. The ONLY way there is a chance is getting more people registered and getting non-voters to vote. Trump will win if people focus on trying to swing voters or change their minds.

If you have money or time to give, give it to orgs that are focused on that. Sister Districts is a great one, especially if you are in a safe blue area. You can get hooked up with one single district to try and help and it gets you more invested.

And clearly if you are in an area (like I am) that has horrible voter turnout, get involved with any org that is doing block walks and voter registration drives now - do not wait until 2020.

ION - I had like a comically derailed day at work - a day I NEEDED to get through a very thought out set of tasks - I honestly thought someone had set up my day as a test by about 1pm.

Mistakes (not mine) from 2018 that I have to fix TODAY.

Spam that never gets through my email, getting through.

Sales people just stopping by the office - no appointment - needing people who weren't there, asking a million questions.

Inquiries sent to ME only from people in other offices that I never deal with.

Luckily I was super productive the first half of the day, but I am still looking at a good 2 hours of work tonight.

FUUUUUUCCCKKKKKKK

Congratulations, Atropa!

Health~ma to all who need it..

Yay Atropa.

I'm in a Comanche FB group (I'm a tribal member by a narrow margin) arguing with othet tribal members, some of whom actually grew up in Oklahoma and as part of the tribe, that the detention center at Ft Sill is a concentration camp and it is wrong.

Someone posted about a protest and then thwre were people objecting and repeating the same racist talking points about illegals. And arguing that this is different than what happened to our grand parents and great grand parents and to the Japanese Americans because the immigrants are here illegally.

I left another Comanche group because there were too many Trump supporters (this was in 2017)

It just boggles my mind that people.

Much, much health~ma to all who need it.

Atropa, congrats!

I have question for Buffistas from San Diego/with knowledge of the city/region. A friend who is Very Awesome and Wonderful and Geek will be relocating for a postdoc in computer science UCSD from late October. She will be happy to get all practical pointers on how to do this transition as smoothly as possible - where to live, tax and financial advice for postdocs/expats, and where to start looking for awesome people with similar interests - she will be living in San Diego while her partner and cats stay here.

So I thought of asking here, in case somebody has pointers for her.

Last night, we spent a few hours at the hospital with our boy. He was showing improvement and seemed like himself. He can have nothing by mouth, not even water, because they want complete rest for his gut.

The IBD has caused fistula in his gut, which is what led to the abscess. I don't know if the eventual answer will be surgery or not. From the tests we've had (an assessment MRI last week and a CAT scan from the ER during the admission odyssey) it looks like over all, the disease in the large intestine has improved (except for this area where the fistula and abscess are). But the doctor told me his small intestine still looks like a "war zone."

The team at this hospital is trying to figure out if he'd do better on a long course of just liquid nutrition (like Ensure or Boost), to further rest his gut. I suspect that's where we'll end up, or that plus surgery.

I'm so grateful that he's doing better and that we live here, where you trip over one great hospital on the way to the next, but I'm really angry this is happening to him. I know that's stupid when I think of all the little kids suffering in the world, but even when I try to adopt that perspective, my head is screaming all the time.