I'm very glad to hear about your reunion with your luggage.

After 48 hours I'm finally reunited with my luggage. The jetlag was bad yesterday, much better today, and maybe by next week it'll be gone. Also, I'm getting re-used to the heat.

May your soul catch up to your body after all those time zones!

So glad you came, Shir!

Yay for safe travels, Shir! That sounds exhausting.

Thanks for heads up, dcp. I will nudge my ex-boss Tuesday about getting that moving.

Or, you know, don't. You don't owe them anything. If they want your advice on how to not be shitty employers, your consultancy rates start at $1k/hour.

Yeah. The super fun part is that they framed letting me go as wanting me to “start my new adventure rested and refreshed.” Me too, but that wasn’t their call and moves are expensive.

They could have offered to pay me for my institutional knowledge before I left, but they didn’t. Just more proof that I was only valued for my physical labor.

So they aren’t even getting the typed summary of the session in NC the other week that they paid my entry to. And I plan to respond to any queries with “per your decision, my last day of employment was May 20th.”

And they didn’t listen to my feedback while I was there, so. Why waste any more energy?

After 48 hours I'm finally reunited with my luggage.

Yay! It was so good to see you and get F2F hugs. I'm grateful that you could come, and that you are home and reconnected with your luggage.

Thank you, friends. I'm so happy that I could come and see so many of you and give you hugs.

That vacation was very much needed.

Shir it was so delightful to meet you and hang out a bit (unexpected brunch was especially lovely). Glad you made it home safe and that your luggage eventually made it too. I guess if there’s ever going to be a luggage delay, it’s better on the rest in home end of things than when you are in a strange climate without anything but what’s shoved in the carryon. I hope your kitty has welcomed you home with purrs and only brief feline disdain.

Smonster that’s rough, and I would like to send your former employer a strongly worded letter re respect. If you were decent enough to give notice, they ought to continue to at least pay you for the time you were intending to continue working.

Entirely unrelated, I just got word that my dad is getting a pacemaker installed June 24th. I’m pondering a trip to RVA for support before and after. Annoyingly, my mother is in town at my place June 1-18th for her medical stuff and I’ll be taking a fair amount of sick leave to shuttle her around and take care of her in my guest room. So not the greatest time for me, but I know he would like to get it done asap and out of the constant life vest wearing so….faster cardio surgeon, install install install!

Shir it was wonderful having you here and seeing you again in SF! Glad your luggage made its way home.

Shir, I echo the delight everyone else has written of with regards to getting to see you (and, in my case, your lovely local friend!). Thanks to you, I now know where to go for pretty killer vegan burgers, too.

J finished Season 2. Imma share a lil something he just shared with me:

Spike's Saga (to date)

• Came in like he was going to own the town

• Got into a power struggle with a small child

• Got his ass handed to him in every single encounter with Buffy

• Was such a non-threat to Buffy that she declined to stake him despite multiple glaring opportunities to do so

• Let Buffy's crew waltz in and out of his lair

• Telegraphed his big plan so badly that Buffy was able to one-shot his superweapon

• Got himself crippled restoring Dru

• Immediately after let Angel steal Dru away with hardly a peep

• Was forced to side with Buffy and play nice with Joyce

• Could only fight Angel by bushwhacking him

• Turned tail and ran out of town as fast as he could

And I have my phone again! HUZZAH! It had quite the journey. Charging up and then I should be able to start dealing with photos from this weekend. Not that I took many...but there is at least a prophetic pic from the back of a Waymo, LOL