Han I would love to see Howard Stern pay SMG

If SMG has a preferred charity and says she'll donate the lot . . . .

Laura, I'm sorry; I hope your recovery is swift.

I was going to take Jim out for a picnic at the beach for his birthday, and with the air full of smoke from the fires, now I am scrambling for a backup plan. Picnic in the living room, probably.

I'm sorry the smoke is messing with your beach plan, and a whole lot of other stuff. A picnic in the living room would likely be delightful.

Stern should pay up, and yes, they should donate it.

msbelle's dream apartments and amyparker's living room picnic both sound delightful.

I am pleased that SMG and Freddie are still happily encumbered.

Everybody was very busy sleeping in this Saturday. I will sally forth at some point to hit the Asian market and get lots of veg for the pigs and frittata. I've been making muffin tin frittatas so we can all have some portable / quick protein in the morning.

It's grey and foggy today in SF, which is welcome after the recent heat wave. (Which barely touched us for a couple days.)

I have plans to go see the new Bowie doc in IMAX with my artist friend, Jes, on Monday. I'm excited about that.

Less excited about the new maintenance project which will be chaos making for at least two weeks, but needs must.

Timelies all!

Update on my parents: My mom went back to the condo at the end of August. They've got an aide to help her in the mornings, and my dad is looking into physical therapists. Things seem to be going well.

Happy birthday wishes go out to Trudy Booth today! I hope you are doing fun stuff today and that the year to come is filled with joy.

That is good news, Sheryl.

DH is pretty miserable at this point. He was supposed to be up here for a week or two. Now he has been here five weeks. He has a basketball team with games scheduled (next weekend) and he hasn't been working out with them. We have a big complicated software issue to deal with at work, and of course he doesn't want to leave me sick, and can't be sure he isn't going to end up positive in a few days. It is a big mess. The only thing he doesn't have to worry about is me because I am fine and have family to fetch me stuff and leave on the porch if needed. Part of me wants him to hit the road, but if he does get this that would not be cool, and he can't be driving for 2 days when he needs to focus on the tech stuff. There are no good solutions.

I'm trying to stay upstairs, but the bathroom and kitchen are downstairs so I pass through often. The workers haven't shown up to do construction since I got sick, although they are working outside!! The are super Covid paranoid, which I get, but I am nowhere near them!!

There's more, but bottom line, life kinda sucks.

Laura I hope you feel better soon. The doctor recommended Musinex when I had Covid to help loosen up congestion.

The Paxlovid actually made me feel worse so the dr also said it was fine for me to stop taking it.

And regular cold medicine also helped with a lot of the aches and things as well. Plus drinking lots of water and using Vicks Vaporub...although I couldn't smell it I could feel it help opening things up.

I am going to have to find a new psychiatrist. The one I've been seeing , well the psych nurse practitioner is leaving the practice and I figured this is as good a time as any to find one locally. Although I hate looking for a new meds manager because it' always feels more personal than just a regular doctor. I have the last appointment with the psych nurse practioner tomorrow so this afternoon M and I are going to drive up to Mom's and spend the night. I wanted to just go by myself but M's mom asked if we could both go and give her some time without us around so we're doing that. In a couple of weeks I have Fri and Sat off so I may go up Thursday after work and spend some time. I just haven't really had a chance to visit with Mom, just me and her, in a while.

I would assume that SMG would donate the money. I would hope so at least.

Happy Birthday Trudy!

Happy birthday, Trudy.

I came across a link to this excellent Sars story about 9/11; I'd read it before, but it's always worth reading again. [link]

I really need to get off my butt and do some laundry and vacuum and pack for the week: I'm going to San Diego for what is officially training but is really the one opportunity I will get to spend time with the rest of the agency's environmental staff. There will be drinks around the pool and lots of gossip about the fact that it took 9 months for HQ to not pick the most obvious choice for the chief of the program office.

D has been with the agency for many years, knows everyone, has been deputy chief for a decade; has been acting chief since last December; and yet after all that, they're bringing in a much younger person from outside the government to run the shop. People are going to be pissed. For one thing, this new person will not know squat about how we operate and how the field units work. It's gonna be a shit-show, even if she's good. Gonna be a big lift.

Shit-show indeed, and a story I hear too many times in other organizations as well. May the drinks and camaraderie be just what you all need.