The cranky thread

[Cancer]

Ow.  Literally.

[Pariah]

The first week of a new academic term is absolutely not the ideal time to test positive for COVID-19.

 

No idea yet what I'm going to have my students do for the next 3-5 days.

[L. Marcus]

Push-ups.

[tkdguy]

This is ridiculous! My temporary crown broke AGAIN, this time eating dinner. It's not like I was eating something hard, just pasta.

[Cancer]

Today's FTFRPG session was skronked when the power went out 20 minutes before the session was to begin.  Estimated restoration time is still two hours off.

[Old Man]

On 10/24/2023 at 3:02 PM, tkdguy said:

This is ridiculous! My temporary crown broke AGAIN, this time eating dinner. It's not like I was eating something hard, just pasta.

 

Your temporary crown was less hard than pasta?  Al dente or fully cooked?

[tkdguy]

3 hours ago, Old Man said:

 

Your temporary crown was less hard than pasta?  Al dente or fully cooked?

 

Fully cooked ravioli. I was trying to chew on the other side of my mouth, but I guess my teeth were still making contact on the other side.

 

I have my permanent crown now, but I'm still getting used to it. Not very comfortable at times. I should have just had the tooth pulled.

[Hermit]

I hate surprises.

I hate things done 'for me' without consulting me.

 

And I absolutely resent that despite the fact some folks should KNOW this, I'm going to end up looking like the bad guy.

[Pariah]

My right ankle is almost completely immobile today due to swelling and tenderness. I must have twisted it in the sheets last night. (Not the first time that has happened, incidentally.) The acetaminophen only does so much....

[Grailknight]

On 11/9/2023 at 12:27 PM, Pariah said:

My right ankle is almost completely immobile today due to swelling and tenderness. I must have twisted it in the sheets last night. (Not the first time that has happened, incidentally.) The acetaminophen only does so much....

 

Advil is what you should take for that type of pain.

[Pariah]

2 hours ago, Grailknight said:

Advil is what you should take for that type of pain.

 

Sadly, I'm already on a prescription antiinflammatory for arthritis, so I can't take Advil. Or Aleve.

[Cancer]

Aaah, the first pathological family dynamic flare-up of the holiday season.  And it's not even either of our families.  It's enough to give my eyeballs motion sickness.

[Pariah]

I woke up this morning to discover that the dryer had stopped mid-cycle, so the clothes were still wet. When I tired to restart the dryer, it wouldn't tumble. 

 

The holidays are not the ideal time, financially or logistically, to repair or replace an appliance. 

[Old Man]

1 hour ago, Pariah said:

I woke up this morning to discover that the dryer had stopped mid-cycle, so the clothes were still wet. When I tired to restart the dryer, it wouldn't tumble. 

 

The holidays are not the ideal time, financially or logistically, to repair or replace an appliance. 

 

There's something about the holidays that causes major appliances to commit suicide.

 

I haven't lost any appliances yet but I'll be lucky if my car repair bill for this month is less than $2k.

[Cancer]

The temporal correlation coefficient among incidents of expensive repairs is large and positive.

 

Or as I put it in my younger days: "Badness comes in waves."

[Old Man]

1 hour ago, Cancer said:

The temporal correlation coefficient among incidents of expensive repairs is large and positive.

 

Or as I put it in my younger days: "Badness comes in waves."

 

Threes.  Bad things happen in threes.

 

It's really discouraging when that fourth bad thing happens.

[Cancer]

  Lessee, I was out of money, my car died, I couldn't move into the new place because it couldn't pass inspection, and my old lease ran out, all within a few days of each other, so I was homeless when I took my General Exam.  I ended up hand-carrying my possessions from the old apartment (it was furnished, so other than being five blocks from campus this task had the same scale as moving out of a dorm room) in the middle of the night from the old apartment into my grad student office.  Took a couple of hours, and campus police stopped me twice, but I was out before the 9AM checkout time.  (The General started a couple of days after that long night, so I did get a bit of sleep, albeit on a couch in the departmental library.)  Not sure the count of misfortunes there is evenly divisible by three, but at that point it doesn't matter so much.

Edited December 4, 2023 by Cancer

[tkdguy]

The holiday blues are nothing new for me, but this year is pretty bad, especially since I've been depressed all year. It's making me physically ill. My head is constantly in a fog, and I can't motivate myself to do anything. People say I should talk to someone, but that has never worked for me in the past, so I doubt it will do any good this time either.

[Pariah]

Dateline is running a story tonight about a guy I went to church with when I was in high school. He was killed four years ago. I had no idea until I saw this story today.

 

The trumpet was his life, but music may have led to his brutal death

[Hermit]

On 12/7/2023 at 6:46 PM, tkdguy said:

The holiday blues are nothing new for me, but this year is pretty bad, especially since I've been depressed all year. It's making me physically ill. My head is constantly in a fog, and I can't motivate myself to do anything. People say I should talk to someone, but that has never worked for me in the past, so I doubt it will do any good this time either.

 

Wish I knew what to suggest that you probably haven't already thought of or tried. I do hope things get better for you.

[Cancer]

I have found (in battling my own depression induced by my wife's illness) that occasional participation in the Zoom meetings of a weekly support group explicitly for caregivers of cancer patients (facilitated by someone with the hospital where she's being treated) helps me substantially.  That doesn't seem to be your particular issue, of course, but thinking about why it helps me, I think the keys are (1) that the group is very tightly focused in terms of its purpose and its target population, and (2) the facilitator is really very good.  (It also is free of monetary cost; it's just that the rigid weekly meeting time tends to collide with other things I do.)  It brings forward a mutual aid mentality, because nearly everyone has something of value to contribute, and everyone recognizes the daunting, terrifying situation common to the participants.  It "meets" weekly, people are welcome to connect in as they feel the need or desire, so I get there every three weeks or so.

 

I was dubious when I first was able to participate (which wasn't until July; it conflicted with my teaching schedule before I retired), and they were perfectly willing to let me listen and nod and not talk very much initially.

 

If you can identify the problems that have you down (and that may not be easy) and find a similarly focused and facilitated group, it can help relieve the lowest lows and give you a gentle, period nudge out of the funk.  I don't know how one would try to find such a group (mine is so specific, and explicitly and directly connected to the clinic, that the information was more or less pushed onto me from day one), but if you've talked with practitioners before they may be able to point you to something.

[Pariah]

Mexican food last night, sleep-shattering reflux at 4:00 this morning. 

[Duke Bushido]

It started yesterday,  As do most of my problems, it started with the finish line.  As do about a third of those problems, it started with the electricians.

 

The electricians caught me while I was running a quick inventory on material that I apparently stock far-too-near the electrical work area, and as a result, they can see me.  This is never a good thing. "Hey, Duke!"  I felt that crick in my spine when I hear anyone from the finish line call my name; it's always a problem, and it's always something remarkably stupid, and it's almost always something they brought on themselves.  "We're outta these!" Number 1 called, holding up a 4x4" crushed-corner combo cover (GFC! and Toggle, for anyone who actually cares).

 

"How?  I ordered enough of those to run us through to January.  Look again; they should have come in last Tuesday."

 

"Yeah.  They did.  They came in wrong, though.  They packed okay, but they's something else in the boxes.  Reckon they's labeled wrong."

 

"Well, crap.  When did you find this out?"

 

"Oh!  Last Tuesday, when they come in."

 

"And I am only hearing about this now?"

 

"Well only run out just now!"  he proclaimed indignantly, as if this somehow justified not saying something... I don't know...  ten days ago, maybe?

 

"You knew you were going to run out eventually, right?" I said, in my teaching moment voice, though despair welled up in my soul; I can't lie to myself.  I have long given up on thinking there is any real chance of teaching these guys anything.  "Fine.  How many of these things have you got?"

 

"Two cases." he replied, pointing at two boxes that had been pulled from the racks and set on the floor near the end of the racking.

 

"Two cases; okay, here's what you do:  take those two cases, and put them on that pallet outside the door over there.  I've got a guy headed to a supply house; I will have him pick up those and run by the electrical house as well.  Just get them out there _now_ before he leaves; I've got to make a couple of calls."

 

Obviously, I called 'the guy' first and told him to pick up the two boxes and run them to the electrical supply house for exchange, then I called the electrical supply house to work things out.

 

Hooray!  Everything worked perfectly, and he was back in less than an hour.  Problem solved.

 

You'd think.

 

I mean, you'd _really_ think so, wouldn't you? I know _I_ did!

 

 

Skip to today:   

 

"Hey, Duke!"  Crap.  Apparently I was forklifting too close to the electricians.

 

:Yeah" I replied, eyes busy on what I was moving.

 

"We're outta these" he yells, holding up a _different_ 4" crushed corner combo cover (this one was toggle and duplex, again, for those keeping score).

 

"That is not possible!  I put two cases of those on the shelf _myself_ while you guys were at lunch three days ago.  That's two hundred pieces; you guys use an average of twenty-one per day.  It's not possible that you're out."

 

"Well....   well, we are.  We got 'bout four left."

 

"How the--  No; never mind. Hang on."  I shut the lift down and went directly to the spot where they were stocked.  And sitting there were _not_ two cases of the cover that belonged there, but the two mis-labeled cases of a cover that we do not use, ever--  you know: the ones that they had put on the floor and flagged me down to tell me they were wrong and that they were out of what they were _supposed_ to be---

 

you guessed it!

 

When I said "put the two cases of mislabeled items on that pallet to be exchanged," they instead walked right by the boxes of incorrect material-- the boxes that _they themselves had pulled from the shelf and placed on the floor because they were wrong_-- and grabbed the last two cases of toggle-and-duplex (which they use every day) and sent them back to exchange for toggle-and-GFCI and then put the 'bad' material on the shelf in its place.

 

But even then-- why point it out to them?  Why explain it to them?  They would _never_ understand, never learn, never get one whit smarter.  Instead, I just hung my head so they couldn't see the rage I was choking on.  Finally, I gave in-- just a little, but I _had_ to say something, or I would burst.  "Do you two have any idea why you are the only guys in this plant that I am not allowed to fire?"

 

"I think it's a-cause Bossman got tired a' you doin' it."

 

"Yep.  It's because Boss got tired of my firing you two.  I don't suppose you're ever going to understand the deeper problem here, are you?"

 

Blank stares.

 

 

 

Some people, I think, are a complete waste of the skin it took to wrap them.  When I see them, all I can see are the burn victims who could put their epidermis to far better use.

 

Then there are people like these: people who were _born_ to be firewood on a beautiful, glorious pyre....

[Duke Bushido]

Oh, crap!

 

I left off the last sentence (this was composed in e-mail (because the computer has an actual keyboard) then copy / pasted.

 

Forgive me; that has left the impression that I support the immolation of morons.  While I am not _opposed_ to it, in theory, I can't advocate for it because their might be some jackass like me in charge of deciding who burns.  Safer, I think, to just not advocate for it.

 

Anyway, the whole thing was meant to be an extended metaphor:

 

Some people were born to be the firewood on a beautiful, glorious pyre.....

 

 

 

Set every day, specifically to keep my sanity afloat, and far, far out of my reach, forever.

 

 

 

Sorry for any other suggestions there....

 

 

[tkdguy]

My poor sister has had a really tough year. She's had so many problems, including a crazy neighbor who's terrorizing the whole neighborhood (and the cops aren't doing much about it). Now she just found out her cat has cancer. This is about one year after my mom had to put down her cat, also because of cancer.

 

God, I hate the holiday season enough already. Stop giving me more reasons to hate it even more.