one of them took a look at my monitor and got it working. yay! now I can sit upright and actually see what's on the display.

Yay indeed. Visibility for the win!

My bean soup turned out really well. Dropping some leftover tomato paste into the pot turned out to be a really good addition.

The good news: doing remote work from another state is not out of the question at my job. The bad news: they have a list of states where one can do that, and Michigan is not on it. Nor is Illinois (or I'd just move to Chicago).

Bummer about the remote work, Calli. Yay soup!

I just saw a picture from the collapsed bridge in Pittsburgh and the bus in the wreckage showed 'Squirrel Hill' as the route, which was the neighborhood right next to where I lived there. I lived in Point Breeze. Anyway, my recollection was that there was just shy of 1000 bridges in Pgh, so perfect place to discuss infrastructure. queue conspiracy theory that Biden sabotaged the bridge Seriously, I put nothing past these right wing wackos.

Anytime I travel I look up when I go under the bridges and overpasses, and sooooo many of them just ain't pretty.

Had to google the bridge collapse - sounds like no one was hurt too badly, hope that is true.

After looking at a billion potential Zoom backgrounds with myself in front of them all I definitely don't want to be on a Zoom call now. So that's that. I did keep some I may use randomly, though.

I definitely don't want to be on a Zoom call now.

Did you ever? (unless the alternative was a face-to-face with someone terrible)

Well, no, you are right, I did not. But I was considering doing it anyway more before seeing myself so much?

I just got the 15-year gift catalog thingy. I don’t think ours are as generous as some. But whatev. At 5 years I got a car emergency kit that I still have. At 10 a small handbag.

It’s honestly such a chore to go through the massive online catalog now that it’s outsourced to some gift company. I’d rather just have something standard, or an allowance to company swag, which is nice to have sometimes.

I'm with msbelle, company gifts that aren't money or benefits or like vacation designated money are bullshit. Also, -t, have you been looking for a new job?401k matching is a pretty standard benefit.

I've worked here for over 30 years, but no catalog of gifts. Then again I am the one who would give me a gift so that could happen.

I have only been in a very small number of zoom meetings, and I generally dislike them even more than phone calls, and I hate phone calls. I am absolutely an email and text girl. We don't even want to discuss FaceTime. The worst.

I have not been. Not quite annoyed enough to overcome my dislike of looking for work.