Untamed
May 16, 2022 2:49 AM   Subscribe

Pop Quiz Time! Who said the following? “Freedom is power. To live a life untamed and unafraid is the gift that I've been given, and so my journey begins.” A: Wei Wuxian ☐; B: Catwoman ☐; C: This Thread ☐

Heyyyy, could it be? Why yes, yes, it is. it's another Free Thread ... and so our journey begins. Just us, fancy free and on the prowl. What could be more purrfect?
posted by taz (112 comments total) 1 user marked this as a favorite
 
Just in time...

I tested covid+ last night. I guess I should be grateful that I made it two years, given my public-facing job interacting in a windowless room with dicknosers or blatant "I can't breathe with a mask" fuckers on a daily basis, and grateful that the vaccine + booster = no symptoms (I was testing for travel, which is now canceled, obviously), but instead I am fucking pissed at all the people who act like the pandemic is over.

The only possible exposure I can think of was the day after my birthday, I won lottery tickets to the touring production of My Fair Lady -- which was incredible, btw; Shereen Ahmed deserves all the awards -- and my local performing arts center was like actively discouraging masks (why do people feel they need to eat and drink IN THE THEATER? This is not dinner theatre, folks! You got the munchies, go outside!). I'd previously been to another production there (Hadestown, also incredible) when they were still checking proof of vaccine/negative test along with requiring masks, and I've been to shows at other places that are still mask-required, so I wasn't expecting this level of recklessness. I kept mine on door-to-door, but it was the most uncomfortable I have been in two fucking years.

So now I lose out on a national advisory board position (what I was traveling to) plus I have to convert a week of clinic to telehealth, for a patient population that is mostly geriatric and/or demented, and I'll get penalized for it by the bean-counters and on the next round of Press-Ganey (Yelp) scores -- my appointments are scheduling into August or September as it is. I get it, being abruptly switched to video or rescheduled months out really sucks -- especially for people who already waited 3 or 4 or 5 months for an appointment in the first place. It also really sucks to have covid.
posted by basalganglia at 3:41 AM on May 16, 2022 [15 favorites]


Covid is tearing through my workplace: a fancy-pants garden center in a very liberal neighborhood in Chicago. The city and my workplace dropped the mask mandate, though many employees still wear masks when inside. I work mostly outdoors, but when I go in to use the bathroom or whatever, I put on a mask. Bunch of employees in the greenhouse selling house plants and tropicals got it, people in the gift shop got it, one of our guys outside got it—all very recently.

The crazy thing is our clientele is easily like 50% over age 50, and many, many elderly folks. Most shoppers just go maskless. Good news is we're all vaccinated and boosted, and none of the recent workplace cases have been very bad. I've already had it twice... once back last September and again over Xmas. Neither were "bad" but they were still bouts of the flu, feeling like shit, sick, loss of appetite. FFS, I don't want a COLD let alone Covid again!
posted by SoberHighland at 3:55 AM on May 16, 2022 [2 favorites]


There's been an uptick in cases where I work too. I have so far tested negative - and have ALWAYS tested negative. I've been vaxxed and boosted, and have been wearing my mask on all public transit or just walking where I need to go.

Wildcard backstory though - I also was at Mardi Gras in 2020, which was one of the early Covid superspreader events; but I didn't even get sick there. However - I was there as part of my 50th Birthday observation. My first night there I stopped in a voodoo shop and picked up the makings of a mojo bag, which I then mixed up and have been carrying with me ever since. Maybe it's better at protecting me than I thought it would be.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 4:15 AM on May 16, 2022 [3 favorites]


I see the blogger reviewing old TSR novels (previously in 2019) is back again after a five month break - go give some encouragement to continue this worthy project!
posted by jjderooy at 4:50 AM on May 16, 2022 [5 favorites]


Six weeks ago I came back from my first trip out of province in five years with a positive Covid diagnosis. Luckily, being fully vaccinated, I experienced it as essentially the cold I have not had in two and a half years... there days of sore throat, a week of congestion, bit of a cough. Not great, but better than an intubation. I am glad no one else around me tested positive, including the people I live with.

Yesterday I was in the grocery store picking up one thing only (laundry detergent) and with fewer staff there, only one cash was open. As I headed for it, a woman with a full cart arrived at the cashier four or five seconds before I did. Bad luck, but I was in no hurry, so I waited quietly.

I am not one to judge others’ decisions at the supermarket, but I noticed two things as I waited: on the woman’s upper arm was a blood sugar monitor like a friend of mine has: about the size of a large coin, with a tiny needle sunk in the flesh to give rapid results on blood sugar changes.

The second thing was her shopping. Her entire purchase was a package of air fresheners and twenty-six large bottles of Coca-Cola. Ye gods. I hope they are for someone else who is not (yet) diabetic.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 4:58 AM on May 16, 2022


A year ago at this time I was fully-vaccinated and eagerly looking forward to July 4th. I had made it, and I was ready to party like it was 1999.

Now I'm looking ahead to this summer and fall with trepidation. I'll certainly get next booster, but how many others will? What's the availability going to be like? I still got covid last month even though I was triple-vaxxed (and I'm still lethargic and short-winded) what state of protection will I have at the beginning of next year?
posted by RonButNotStupid at 5:18 AM on May 16, 2022


We dodged this thing for the whole pandemic. Now the 3yo picked it up at school, and my spouse just tested positive. Multiple kids in the 5yo's class are getting this for the second time. Infection rates are fucking nuts even with the massive underreporting and our local and national governments are just trying to pretend nothing's happening. Sorry if this is turning into a covid thread, but it's just maddening.
posted by phooky at 5:38 AM on May 16, 2022 [1 favorite]


There's actually a covid thread ongoing here. I don't want it to seem like you can't talk about what's on your mind, but these threads were started with the idea of being more of an intentional escape from the serious / depressing stuff that's sort of taken over everything everywhere ... a place for random links and interesting things / anecdotes people want to share.
posted by taz at 5:51 AM on May 16, 2022 [8 favorites]


This weekend I learned that Sean Bean started streaming on Twitch this month with the help of some people from the Yogscast and their community.

They met each other playing Dread Hunger, which is a "The Terror" themed social deduction survival game where a Crew of 8 try to get resources to drive the boat from start to finish before the timer runs out, and 2 of them are secret cannibal thralls trying to sabotage the expedition.
posted by I-Write-Essays at 6:12 AM on May 16, 2022 [3 favorites]


Twitter thread about a list of 1,126 dog names by 15th century Edward, 2nd duke of York

The thread points out some notable names. I downloaded the linked paper and found some more good bois:
Comforte
Crykette
Pretiboy
Blackberde
Plunket

Also, surprising number of Star Trek crossover names:
Kyra
Picarde
Paris
posted by td2x10e3 at 6:26 AM on May 16, 2022 [12 favorites]


When I last moved and filled out the USPS address change form, there was an option to sign up for "informed delivery" emails, where you get a daily scan of what should be delivered to you each day. It is occasionally wrong, occasionally helpful and mostly a preview of the day's junkmail.

Today's junk mail is addressed to the other resident of my home, but the return address is "The School Bus Safety Program." Kind of interested to see what this junk is about, since we don't have kids and are not, so far as I know, on any kid adjacent junkmail lists.
posted by the primroses were over at 6:30 AM on May 16, 2022 [3 favorites]


I've been into this young Japanese rock band No Buses. They have a very classic rock sound, but it's like looking at the US/UK rock scene of decades past through a slightly warped mirror.

I got hooked on eg Girl, Cut My Nails, and their work up to 2019. Their new single Alpena has some reaction to the pandemic but still rocks. So there's some fun stuff but with a bit of Covid misery if you want it: "School is online/I learn nothing at all/If you wanna be a good kid/you gotta learn by yourself. "
posted by SaltySalticid at 6:30 AM on May 16, 2022 [5 favorites]


Informed Delivery is great although it does sometimes up the anxiety to eleven if your mail delivery happens in the afternoon and you have to wait hours to find out what something is about.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 6:33 AM on May 16, 2022 [6 favorites]


They build buildings so tall these days. And you wish that you would but you don't anyway. Today we're younger than we're ever going to be. I went walking through the city, like a drunk, but not. You look like New Years.

(My new free-thread game - inspired by the Break Free thread a few weeks ago - is making vague statements about my life using only song lyrics in a way that will be incomprehensible to everyone here. I promise to stop before it gets too tiresome. But, the game at least makes me giggle.)

I passed the quiz, but only because I've never heard of one of the options and I've learned enough about test-taking strategy to assume the last one wouldn't appear on a single-question quiz. If it weren't multiple choice, I think my best guess would have probably been Emma Goldman.
posted by eotvos at 6:40 AM on May 16, 2022 [5 favorites]


Analysis: "One cat was tested only on the first trial because she escaped from the room."
posted by I-Write-Essays at 6:58 AM on May 16, 2022 [5 favorites]


Been thinking about human error lately. It's my belief that error is a feature, not a bug, and that any time you see a sign up on a door saying "Push," a designer made the door look as if it was meant to be pulled.

One of the things I like about having a family member in the hospital is that every time, I get another story about hospitals. (Not a bad story, he's in for a nice procedure to make him feel better.)

This week's story: They ordered medications for Mr. Peach, to be delivered at 10:30 yesterday. When we asked the nurse what was up around 1:30, she went and found they had ordered the medications for 5/15/2023.

This is a hospital that is a cutting edge check-list place with all kinds of great fail-safes in place.

Meanwhile, Mr. Peach, as his his wont, has charmed everyone in the place and the personnel stop in to pass the time and dish the dirt.
posted by Peach at 7:16 AM on May 16, 2022 [2 favorites]


I've noticed more butterflies in my backyard this year. I think it a good sign. I avoid using pesticides precisely because I want my backyard to be perceived as a haven for the local wildlife. (I live on the edge of a canyon.) My rosemarys and aloes provide forage for pollinators, although now they are all out of bloom. (It was very sad to see a lone bee circling my aloes, as if in search of pollen.) I keep no pets, but I have birds, bugs and lizards to keep me company. Also the occasional mouse, squirrel and rattlesnake, but not so many as to be a problem. My house and backyard are small, but I consider myself fortunate to have them.
posted by SPrintF at 7:19 AM on May 16, 2022 [4 favorites]


I recently purchased an Oculus Quest 2 (it's officially Meta Quest 2, but come the fuck on, although a "metaquest" has a certain amount of resonance, especially here, but anyway), and one of my justifications was for exercise programs, and so I downloaded one called, of all things, Supernatural, and there's a meditation module in it, so I tried that, and part of the meditation--which was all about how we're star stuff--was the phrase:

"As above, so below."

Huh.
posted by Halloween Jack at 7:24 AM on May 16, 2022 [1 favorite]


Today's junk mail is addressed to the other resident of my home, but the return address is "The School Bus Safety Program." Kind of interested to see what this junk is about, since we don't have kids and are not, so far as I know, on any kid adjacent junkmail lists.

Whee mysterious junk mail!

I've talked before about the Scientology pamphlet that arrived at a theater company I worked at for a long time; no one on the staff had any idea why we were suddenly getting a copy of this pamphlet with L. Ron Hubbard's Dissertation About Art. After some blinking, they stuck it in the shelf in the bathroom that had become the unofficial Libary of Weird Shit they'd started, with other random catalogs, abandoned books, and suchlike.

About three apartments ago, my roommate and I were VERY puzzled to one day find some porn in our mailbox. There was no label and it was not encased in an envelope; it was just....there, mixed in with everything else. It was a small magazine-type thing, titled "Tittyfucker", and was nothing but a series of photos of a woman engaged in a three-way with two guys who sported tube socks and nothing else. (And despite the title, there was no tittyfucking in any of the photos.)

Even longer ago: I had a casual summer job cleaning our local library once a week, and sometimes running to the post office across the street and getting the mail. And one time, mixed in with the mail, was a Publisher's Clearing House sweepstakes entry, addressed to "Mrs. [Name Of Library]". We spent several amused minutes reading it, giggling at all the times when the form letter tried to breathlessly urge "Mrs. Library" to get in her entry now! "My only question is," the librarian said, "how did they decide the library is a woman?"
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 7:28 AM on May 16, 2022


Speaking of USPS:

I sold something to someone in New York, and shipped it insured. It was marked as "delivered" but the buyer never received it. He checked his apartment building's security camera footage for that morning, and it clearly shows the mail carrier delivering a toilet seat for someone else, but not the package I sent. He called up the local post office and they said they'd do the whole search thing, and gave him a claim ID number for that. A couple of weeks went by, it didn't turn up, and they said I should file a claim. So I refunded the buyer's money and did so.

Of course the claim submission form doesn't have a text field for an explanation, just a form to upload proof of value. So naturally, because the tracking information still says "Delivered", they denied my claim (and did so via snail mail rather than email). When I appealed it, there was a 255 character max field to explain why, so I had to be pretty succinct.

At this point it's been more than a month since the package went missing...
posted by Foosnark at 7:37 AM on May 16, 2022


The second thing was her shopping. Her entire purchase was a package of air fresheners and twenty-six large bottles of Coca-Cola. Ye gods. I hope they are for someone else who is not (yet) diabetic.

soda doesn't give you diabetes, that's not how diabetes works.
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 7:40 AM on May 16, 2022 [5 favorites]


Meta Quest 2

In a better world than this one, this features Roger Wilco and Sonny Bonds teaming up to save the Kingdom of Daventry.
posted by zamboni at 7:59 AM on May 16, 2022 [3 favorites]


Now's as good a time as any to admit that even though I've been on this site since 2007, I have no idea how to make posts or comments that have indentations, like in for example this recent Radiohead post.
posted by The Pluto Gangsta at 8:02 AM on May 16, 2022 [2 favorites]


I saw a bear yesterday. I yelled “BEAR!” No one heard me. The bear lazily glanced over at me and went about its bear business.
posted by kerf at 8:04 AM on May 16, 2022 [7 favorites]


Whee mysterious junk mail!

Here's an odd thing. I received a letter from the IRS informing me that they couldn't process my return because they were unsure of my identity. This was weird because A) the IRS had successfully processed my return a month earlier, and B) the name on the return was not my name. The address was correct, but the name was not my name, not even a close approximation.

Out of concern for the addressee, "Daryl," I looked him up in one of those online "find this person" databases. To my surprise, it found him and cited him living at my address. Huh.

Thinking about it, I can only conclude that the IRS is checking the same address registry (possibly compiled from the recently concluded census) and finding that "Daryl's" address on his return doesn't match the census records, hence the uncertainty of "Daryl's" identity.

While I appreciate the IRS trying to verify the identity of the person to whom a return is owed, it baffles me that they'd look at census data (compiled every ten years) to perform this check. I wonder if anyone else has observed this.
posted by SPrintF at 8:05 AM on May 16, 2022


how to make posts or comments that have indentations

<blockquote>You want the blockquote tag</blockquote>
You want the blockquote tag
posted by zamboni at 8:06 AM on May 16, 2022 [6 favorites]


Yikes. I was composing an amusing little story about getting the new very pretty international letter stamps from USPS, and my partner texted me that their boss tested positive and boss' spouse is very ill, and to test away.
I think I can order two more tests from USPS and also get more from our local Walgreens. It's the first truly beautiful cool yet sunny day here, and I was going to get on a bus to get some equipment for an event I'm doing this weekend.
Best of luck to everyone.
posted by winesong at 8:23 AM on May 16, 2022 [1 favorite]


More on USPS: I likely missed a post on the blue about this but I am stoked about the new Next Generation Delivery Vehicles. For a while there it looked like it wouldn't happen, but I am glad postal workers will get a ground-up design to suit their needs. Some don't like the styling, but it seems necessary for safety and meeting the (many) required specifications. Plus, in a few years, many of us will just grin to see postal workers cruising around in electric-powered, Richard-Scarry-lookin' rides :)
posted by SaltySalticid at 8:35 AM on May 16, 2022


soda doesn't give you diabetes, that's not how diabetes works.

From the Harvard School of Public Health page on sugary drinks: "People who consume sugary drinks regularly—1 to 2 cans a day or more—have a 26% greater risk of developing type 2 diabetes than people who rarely have such drinks. Strong evidence indicates that sugar-sweetened soft drinks contribute to the development of diabetes."

Malik VS, Popkin BM, Bray GA, Després JP, Willett WC, Hu FB. Sugar-sweetened beverages and risk of metabolic syndrome and type 2 diabetes: a meta-analysis. Diabetes care. 2010 Nov 1;33(11):2477-83.

Schulze MB, Manson JE, Ludwig DS, Colditz GA, Stampfer MJ, Willett WC, Hu FB. Sugar-sweetened beverages, weight gain, and incidence of type 2 diabetes in young and middle-aged women. JAMA. 2004 Aug 25;292(8):927-34.

Palmer JR, Boggs DA, Krishnan S, Hu FB, Singer M, Rosenberg L. Sugar-sweetened beverages and incidence of type 2 diabetes mellitus in African American women. Archives of internal medicine. 2008 Jul 28;168(14):1487-92.

Dhingra R, Sullivan L, Jacques PF, Wang TJ, Fox CS, Meigs JB. D, Agostino RB, Gaziano JM, Vasan RS: Soft drink consumption and risk of developing cardiometabolic risk factors and the metabolic syndrome in middle-aged adults in the community. Circulation. 2007;116:480-8.

Drouin-Chartier JP, Zheng Y, Li Y, Malik V, Pan A, Bhupathiraju SN, Manson JE, Tobias DK, Willett WC, and Hu FB. Changes in Consumption of Sugary Beverages and Artificially Sweetened Beverages and Subsequent Risk of Type 2 Diabetes: Results from Three Large Prospective U.S. Cohorts of Women and Men. Diabetes Care. online 2019 Oct 3.
posted by jedicus at 8:42 AM on May 16, 2022 [5 favorites]


It is true that simply consuming soda does not immediately and directly cause diabetes. There are certainly many millions of individuals who regularly enjoy soda and do not have diabetes.

However: There is a strong causitive link between frequent soda consumption and development of the metabolic disease Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus.

To oversimplify the biological mechanism, the trigger of Type 2 Diabetes is when the peak amount of insulin hormone that an individual's pancreas can produce is insufficient to enable the movement of digested sugars out of the bloodstream into cells for use or storage. The condition of Diabetes is the ongoing presence of higher-than-healthy amounts of blood sugars. There is additionally a negative-feedback cycle that high blood sugar increases cellular insulin resistance, making the biologically-limited amount of insulin produced even less effective at transporting sugar out of blood. That is the chronic metabolic disease of Type 2 Diabetes.

Soda has two factors that cause it to disproportionately contribute to the development of Type 2 Diabetes:

- Soda is less satiating (provides less reduction of hunger sensation) than other foods and beverages. This encourages overconsumption of calories and sugars relative to an individual's body needs. That excess, over time, triggers the condition of Type 2 Diabetes.

- Most sodas sold in North America use High Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS) as a primary sweetening ingredient. For reasons of complicated biological interplay, high fructose sugar forms trigger a smaller amount of insulin release than an equivalent amount of other sugars (sucrose and glucose). This means that the high-fructose source sugars will remain in the blood longer and contribute to the condition of Type 2 Diabetes.

It is pretty clear from both biological science and heath outcome studies that the ongoing activity of consuming soda will significantly hasten and exacerbate diabetes. (Thanks jedicus for bringing the citations!)
posted by QuixoticGambit at 8:48 AM on May 16, 2022 [4 favorites]


how to make posts or comments that have indentations

You can also use the Unbulleted List tag <ul> without any list item (<li>) tags. This technique used to indent paragraphs perfectly, but no longer, unfortunately; now it just mirrors the <blockquote>, indenting all the text enclosed within, instead of just the first line. Now, that kind of indenting's done with style sheets.
posted by Rash at 8:48 AM on May 16, 2022 [2 favorites]


Garden update: peas and potatoes are well up; garlic is 18 inches high or more; onions are 6 inches or so; the zinnias and cosmos need to be thinned out soon.

And! The lettuces, beets, chard, and carrots are juuuuuust up. I tried to take pictures, I am so excited, but of course it just looks like little flecks of green on a dirt background. The herbs are settling in and this weekend I put in three tomatoes and a flat of marigolds. Next: beans!

Extending good wishes to all those of you with covid for a quick and complete recovery. This continues to suck.
posted by Lawn Beaver at 8:54 AM on May 16, 2022 [6 favorites]


I think what person one may have been saying is that that person was probably a type one diabetic, though sugar monitoring is becoming more frequent in type twos.
posted by sibboleth at 9:00 AM on May 16, 2022 [1 favorite]


I am miffed. Peeved. Vexed, even. For a couple of months now I've had a solo weekend camping trip/photo outing planned next weekend, but now I may have to cancel it because of a knee issue. And it's quite time-sensitive; if I miss the window this year I'll have to wait a whole year to try again. It's already been two years since I last hauled my camera out and gone out looking for photo opportunities (and even longer since my last camping trip), so I was really looking forward to this. But NOOOOO my knee has decided to be cantankerous. I'm using pain-relief gel and cold packs on it to control the pain, and the doc recommends staying off it as much as possible. Unless it clears up in the next few days I'll be in no shape to go traipsing around in nature. Phooey.
posted by Greg_Ace at 9:27 AM on May 16, 2022 [1 favorite]


And to add injury to insult - since I've been compensating for the ouchy knee, now my other knee is complaining a bit as well. I almost wrote "getting old ain't for wimps", but hell, it ain't for anybody! Double feh.
posted by Greg_Ace at 9:31 AM on May 16, 2022 [2 favorites]


I love hearing about people's gardens.

It's finally sort of raining here after some unusually hot and dry weather and I'm so happy. I was getting very irritated with the daily hose wrangling.

With rain on the way I was able to spend the watering time on a project I am calling My Past Self Can Suck It. It involves only one simple step and that one step is the worst ever.

Step one: Dig (the heavy ass clay soil wtf why) and heave and yank huge crazy intertwining viny clumps of common periwinkle from the ever-spreading monstrous mass that has swallowed a third of my largest perennial bed. DIG. HEAVE. YANK. Forever.

I planted the horrid mess in there several years ago to "make weeding easier" and I really wish I could go back in time and stop myself. PSA: vines that spread are worse than weeds. Do not plant invasive vines to make weeding easier.

My reward for today's session was finding some happy little volunteer nasturtium seedlings that have popped up in the perfect spot.

Maybe the best thing that happened so far this season in the garden is that I made the hell strip tree into a Wishing Tree and it's been very popular. There's a rope tied up and draping around the lower branches and I put out a sign and a bag of recycled sari silk strips for people to wish on and tie to the rope. It's pretty magical and I hope all the wishes come true.
posted by RobinofFrocksley at 9:38 AM on May 16, 2022 [8 favorites]


i been doing that with lawn violets in my garden, RobinofFrocksley. less heaving maybe; more breaking up clay to find the little tubers. lasagne-style bed prep does not smother these things (which, in lawn, i tend to like better than grass. but not in garden, where they smothered much of the first radish planting and may interfere with beets.
posted by 20 year lurk at 9:44 AM on May 16, 2022 [4 favorites]


I think what person one may have been saying is that that person was probably a type one diabetic, though sugar monitoring is becoming more frequent in type twos.

honestly i'm just fucking sick of people getting judgy about other peoples' health, and in this case about the hypothetical health of a hypothetical other person who wasn't even there, it's none of anyone's goddamn business what someone buys at the store regardless of their medical devices which are also none of anyone's goddamn business.
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 9:53 AM on May 16, 2022 [11 favorites]


...they had ordered the medications for 5/15/2023.

Electronic health records are often presented as a panacea for preventing errors. Particulary prescribing errors. A study a few years ago found that written and electronic prescriptions had the same error rate, which as I recall was 11%.
posted by neuron at 9:58 AM on May 16, 2022 [3 favorites]


1. So excited to be in the middle of booking a vacation (domestic); even if we don't get to go for pandemic reasons the idea of going to the ocean with my person is giving me life.

2. I hate it when jerks fail up.
posted by wellred at 10:04 AM on May 16, 2022 [2 favorites]


You can also use the Unbulleted List tag <ul>

My apologies, I didn't get the nomenclature quite right. We use the <ol> tag to create ordered, or numbered lists; whereas the <ul> Unordered List tag is used to create unnumbered, bulleted lists. Items in both are marked with the <li> List Item tag.

(Yes, as a matter of fact I do still compose my HTML in a text editor, how'd you guess?)

posted by Rash at 10:11 AM on May 16, 2022 [1 favorite]


I had a really good weekend that I sorely needed. It's been a dreary, cold, wet spring here. But this weekend was nice (72F). I drove over to the other side of the state for an amateur rocket launch. There were about 30 people there launching and I saw some old friends that I hadn't seen in a long while (I've been doing this for over 20 years). I launched two smallish (3-4 feet long, 1-2 pounds) rockets, one on an F motor and one on an H. The F had a great flight. The one on the H motor didn't release its parachute and lawn-darted about a half mile out in some brush and I didn't find it. But I got to spend 8 hours in the sun!

Back at home, my wife was left to battle alone with our cat who has bloody diarrhea. The poor thing is having [description omitted] every 30-60 minutes and has mostly given up on trying to make it to the litter box. She started steroids and buprenorphine (an opiate which slows the gut and reduces pain (we don't know whether she's having pain)). She is accustomed to living on our bed which we've had to cover with old towels. My wife sleeps on the couch because of an Incident which happened last week; I'm still sleeping on the bed. We're waiting to hear back from our veternarian who is going to talk to a specialist. The cat is 18 and we're not going to make her go through anything too unpleasant.
posted by neuron at 10:18 AM on May 16, 2022 [2 favorites]


I got a new job and am pretty stoked; same money, less responsibility, located in a state that doesn't hate trans kids. We move in two weeks and I am frantically giving away excess furniture. (If you are in DFW and want a brand new futon, hit me up).

I WAS sad I didn't get a call for the extremely cool job I applied for that would have involved six weeks in Antarctica each year, but that one was going to be a stretch. And hey, I could always try again in future.
posted by emjaybee at 10:20 AM on May 16, 2022 [18 favorites]


Is this a free thread?

Because I need to vent about my elder dog who has two giant lung tumors, and has started refusing all foods after the regimen of steroids, chemotherapy drugs, and an anti-nausea drug...

It makes me so sad. She is the best girl...
posted by Windopaene at 10:52 AM on May 16, 2022 [14 favorites]


My sister in law had a goldfish, called Benedict Cumberbatch. He was won by a child as a prize, and survived in a small tank for several years now.
I took him over as I now have a pond. I was a bit worried about being responsible for my SILs beloved fish, but thankfully Benedict seems to be thriving in the pond.
I hadn't realised how social fish are. There has been a noticeable change in the fish's behaviour since I added Benedict and another bigger fish. They went from hiding all the time, to swimming about in a little school, exploring the nooks and crannies of the pond.

There are some mysterious new diggings in the soil next to the pond. I think it's probably a field mouse. P..?

(Those last few letters were typed by my rat Jasper. He loves touching my phone screen with his clever little hands.)

Hoping all the Covid + people on here recover soon. Take care.
posted by Zumbador at 10:56 AM on May 16, 2022 [11 favorites]


Mild USPS rant: A couple of weeks ago I shipped something Priority Mail Express, guaranteed to arrive by Wed. By Friday it still hadn't arrived so I went back to the post office to get a refund. They said no refund until the package is delivered, which I half-jokingly think incentivizes them to NOT deliver and just keep my money! Fortunately the package eventually arrived, a week late.
posted by mpark at 11:05 AM on May 16, 2022 [1 favorite]


Just got a support ticket from a customer that included the following description:

Can you please provide me with documentation for [a specific process]? Pretty please.

A tad less than business-professional, perhaps, but it made my day!
posted by Greg_Ace at 11:30 AM on May 16, 2022 [3 favorites]


I was jazzed about the lunar eclipse last night, but it was cloudy. :(

Add me to the annedata about surging COVID cases. My husband has it and is quarantining at home while I stay with my parents so as to not risk the pregnancy (I am pregnant again, hope this one sticks this time).

Saturday I was at one of the Planned Parenthood bans off our bodies rallies, and it was excellent. Full crowd in the pouring rain. PP and allied orgs are focused on local fights at the moment, especially state-level fights, there's more hope there than at the federal level.

I planted some rosebuses in the front yard, and the irises are now coming up. Lovely. There's some poison ivy coming in from the neighbor's yard under the fence though, which our cats love but it's gotta go (sorry kitties).

I started playing Disco Elysium, and I'm near the end (I think), but it's going slowly bc I can't bring myself to play the game when it's sunny out. It needs to be, at minimum, drizzling or foggy, if not pouring rain, for the atmosphere to feel right. Plus when the weather is nice it's nicer to be outside.
posted by subdee at 11:30 AM on May 16, 2022 [3 favorites]


Yesterday afternoon, my spouse finished her M.Ed. It's been an arduous time with her teaching full time—online and in-person—in a pandemic, and with every spare second devoted to writing papers and following the APA7 style guide, and battling MS Word.

She is elated.
posted by bz at 11:52 AM on May 16, 2022 [10 favorites]


an outdoor social thing yesterday started out as a pain in the ass to get through and turned into one of those moments.. I looked around and realized I'd never see some of the assembled people, ever again.. a family friend who performed reichi on my father in his final days and helped relieve him of some of the cancer pain.. another family friend who used to play for the BC Lions and still cuts a commanding figure in his 80s, we had a little band assembled and we sang songs from an Alberta Wheat Pool handbook they must've given out in the early 70s, everything from old labour standards, Four Strong Winds, Take Me Home Country Road, some of the traditional tunes and hymns you would expect. I can't make it through Morning Has Broken, it reminds me of my mom too deeply but it's a beautiful, beautiful tune. Anyone know of a good recording? I think you just have to sing it with a group of people, the recordings I have found all seem to be lacking in some way.
posted by elkevelvet at 12:07 PM on May 16, 2022 [1 favorite]


hello. I popped in here purely for the untamed reference, but as of yet there does not seem to be any more in this thread.

thank you for bringing this content onto metafilter. i would love more of WWX and his ilk on the blue (or green, or gray, or whatever color is fanfare).

in other news, the show after Untamed that my friend and I started watching was Word of Honor. after I got past the first few episodes, I do quite like it.
posted by wym at 12:56 PM on May 16, 2022


Greg_Ace, I feel your (knee) pain; a few weeks ago I *finally* got in to see the orthopedist, who after looking at my x-rays told me I have next to no cartilage left in my left knee, and need total knee replacement surgery, like, yesterday, but unfortunately, thanks to COVID, elective surgeries are enormously backed up and the earliest I can probably get in will be next February. This, along with the upsurge in COVID cases, means I'll be spending the foreseeable future where I've been for the past 2+ years, i.e. in my apartment. Being able to get out and walk around the city regularly kept me sane in 2020-21, but that's not possible at this point, and gas prices mean I'm reluctant to just go drive around, so it'll be a long housebound summer and fall. (Realizing at the same time I'm incredibly lucky to be living in a time when such surgery is even possible, and also to have insurance that will cover it.)
posted by Kat Allison at 1:03 PM on May 16, 2022 [2 favorites]


honestly i'm just fucking sick of people getting judgy about other peoples' health, and in this case about the hypothetical health of a hypothetical other person who wasn't even there, it's none of anyone's goddamn business what someone buys at the store regardless of their medical devices which are also none of anyone's goddamn business.

Yeah, I hear you. I only threw my hat in because I am a little pedantic (that's probably not a T2, and hypoglycemia is dangerous!) and in training to judge other people's health, though I also try not to pass judgement -- people generally are doing the best they can given their circumstances. Very few people actively want to do harm to themselves and for sure Coke tastes good and sometimes makes me feel good in this very messed up world we live in.

I wish that our food supply weren't so fucked.

That all aside.
I am going to be working in a very rural primary care clinic this month and I don't even know how to use language in a way that makes me easily comprehendible, let alone how to address the massive intersection of health, economic, and educational discrepancies. Yeehaw.
posted by sibboleth at 1:41 PM on May 16, 2022 [3 favorites]


the earliest I can probably get in will be next February.

Thanks, American healthcare system, for classifying knee-replacement surgery as "elective"...
posted by Greg_Ace at 1:45 PM on May 16, 2022 [1 favorite]


Yeah... I've got problems with the hernia repair that I had done a few years back, and it's remarkably painful. So I'm waiting on an appointment to see a surgeon, and then I'll be waiting for surgery And in the meantime if I lift anything over five pounds or so I discover a whole new world of agony, which is inconvenient. It dovetails nicely with my Crohn's disease, because nothing helps hernia problems like going to the bathroom multiple times a day.

So if I get Covid, which I've been fortunate enough to avoid so far, I'm immunocompromised due to my Crohn's medication which means who knows what, the gastroenterological symptoms of Covid will interact with my Crohn's, the pain from the hernia stuff will be aggravated by coughing, and if I don't get to do my daily physical therapy my back will go out.

Needless to say I'm staying home, smoking pot, and playing No Man's Sky obsessively.
posted by MrVisible at 2:00 PM on May 16, 2022


Anyone know of a good recording?

Before I knew better I thought "Morning Has Broken" was a Cat Stevens song. That's Rick Wakeman playing the piano.
posted by Rash at 2:05 PM on May 16, 2022 [3 favorites]


Second hospital story: Mr. Peach is on low fiber diet and requested no green beans when filling out his order. We lifted the plate cover to reveal: an entire plate of green beans and nothing else.
posted by Peach at 2:49 PM on May 16, 2022 [6 favorites]


My brother has dementia, It's self inflicted and we saw it coming for years and so we managed to avoid losing his considerable estate to vultures and salesmen. He is now in assisted living with his two favorite guitars. My sister and I went to Florida to clean out his condo to ready it for sale and discovered four more guitars. A '70s Fender Strat, a Gibson J-50, a Gibson ES-225 and a FrankenStrat he built himself. My brother has more than enough money to provide for himself for the rest of his (abbreviated) life, he has the only guitars he remembers, and my sister and I have no interest in guitars.
What to do?
My Reason-For-Living's niece recently had a baby, and the father of the child has proven himself to be a stand-up guy, in spite of the fact that he's a touring musician. (I kid! I KID!! Jeez.)
We gave him my brother's guitars.
The only thing that feels better than giving guitars away is seeing the unmitigated JOY of the recipient! Hoo-boy! He was in tears!
I told him that my brother, if he was able to understand what we'd done, would be happy they went to a good home.
posted by Floydd at 3:02 PM on May 16, 2022 [14 favorites]


MetaFilter: Overthinking an entire plate of green beans and nothing else.
posted by Floydd at 3:14 PM on May 16, 2022 [4 favorites]


Hello, update from later today: Covid tests negative. Yay this time.
I started seeds pretty late, but I have sprouts: tomatoes (lil mini pot types) pepper (pepperoncinis, if you can only plant in pots they're the best), nasturtiums that are doing their best little umbrella imitations, bunching onions!!!, dwarf sunflowers, leaf celery, exuberant dill. The cat grass/wheat grass came up in 4 days!! Time to start another set of pots.
I've been learning to cut out butterfly shapes for May Card Swap.
posted by winesong at 3:33 PM on May 16, 2022 [3 favorites]


Today's junk mail is addressed to the other resident of my home, but the return address is "The School Bus Safety Program."

PSA: Despite looking extremely junk mail-esque and coming from an out of state address, this turned out to be a school bus camera violation. So, um, good thing I'm weirdly curious about junk mail, because we could have very easily just thrown this out. Maybe have your contractors more clearly label your revenue generating camera tickets, local governments!

Also, reminder that in many (most?) states, you still have to stop for the school bus blinky stop sign even if the bus is 4 lanes of traffic away. (The contractor website had like 45 seconds of video available to view with the violation that clearly showed several cars driving merrily by the bus, because it's a five lane road and people don't pay attention to the bus on the far side.)
posted by the primroses were over at 3:35 PM on May 16, 2022 [1 favorite]


Floydd wins the thread, as far as I'm concerned.
posted by neuron at 3:38 PM on May 16, 2022 [2 favorites]


A pair of Thrashers have nested in the spruce in my front yard. They entertain me while I make my morning coffee. Brown Canyon Towhees, Spotted Towhees, in mated pairs, poke about the yard next to the adobe wall. I don't know what they find in the sand, but it seems worth their while, for they show up nearly every day around noon to conduct their busy little patrols.

I hauled two wheelbarrows of head-sized boulders around back and embedded them into the rocky dirt on the hillside, arranging them into irregular sconces, where I will plant the beavertail, ocotillo, and cholla next year. Agave pups from the front yard also will have a home here next year. Several cactuses blossomed near the back gate--showy red and yellow petals upstage, the several early-blooming wildflowers (shades of blue or violet) that grace my sandy, stony garden. The Saguaro we got from the quarry is still alive, but two of the Barrel Cactuses may have gone to the Great Nursery in the sky.

It's hot here, in the 90s; single-digit humidity makes it bearable if I pace myself. I crawl about the hillside, fit stones together, back-fill with gravel and loose dirt, then dump a layer of garden soil on top.

I knocked off around 4:00 pm and sat on the landing of steps I had groomed into the hillside. I can see about thirty miles to the north, where the massive Black Canyon fire pushes scalding air up through rising ashes to form huge, deceptively lovely cumulus clouds while a persistent southerly wind carries the soot down through the Mimbres Valley. The pseudo-thunderheads rise in white, cottony billows; soot falls downrange, looking like rain, but it isn't.

I retire to the shade of my back patio with a cold Fat Tire in my lap. A Black-throated hummer zips into the shade and hovers a few feet in front of me. I wonder what she's thinking.
posted by mule98J at 4:57 PM on May 16, 2022 [6 favorites]


Two years and about three weeks since my spouse holed up in our bedroom while I looked after the kids for ten terrifying early-2020s days of her COVID infection. Two days and several false negative tests ago I got consigned to stay in here to protect our unvaccinated under-5 and other kids.

Shorter stay. Much milder (though still shitty) symptoms. Still haven't gotten to hug my family in several days - I feel it like hunger at this point.

It's absolutely spiking, and everyone is absolutely unwilling to do what it takes to even flatten it at this point. It's on its way to the glove compartment of history with climate change and Citizen's United and civil forfeiture and everything else just below the radar of things we will take action to prevent.
posted by abulafa at 6:38 PM on May 16, 2022 [4 favorites]




sorry, I got way overmad earlier about that whole grocery-cart business. It just really hit me at the intersection of all the bullshit I'm dealing with lately -- most notably, caring for my mother, who is literally starving to death but never too sick to give everyone else shit about their food choices and weight.

sending love to the pups and kitties and humans who are having a rough go.
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 8:03 PM on May 16, 2022 [4 favorites]


Hugs to Windowpaene.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 8:09 PM on May 16, 2022 [2 favorites]


Thanks Empress...

But, no middle "w"

Why do we outlive our wonderful dogs?...
posted by Windopaene at 8:12 PM on May 16, 2022 [1 favorite]


Hugs, We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese. We try to remember them at their best while we're going through this. If they had no "best" we best not remember them at all.
Again. Hugs.
posted by Floydd at 8:57 PM on May 16, 2022


I’M AT THE BEACH
posted by cortex at 9:11 PM on May 16, 2022 [5 favorites]


Give your best girl some scritches from me, Windopaene. It's so tough to lose them.
Poor old doggo.
posted by Zumbador at 9:19 PM on May 16, 2022 [2 favorites]


I'M ON A BOAT!
posted by Windopaene at 9:59 PM on May 16, 2022 [1 favorite]


I foolishly decided to implement a PDF invoice generator in SQL using no 3rd-party tools*, libraries, or APIs. It’s just me, the 600+page PDF ISO 2008 spec, and my trusty text editor. It’s going ok, but hoo boy it was a bit more complicated (and tedious) than I had believed it would be.

Amazingly, very few of the tutorials and eBooks about PDF development are any good. I looked at a lot of them. The bad ones just tell you to do things a certain way —which is sometimes only accidentally correct— but don’t explain why, and the good ones mostly just sling copypasta from the freely available ISO spec. So it turns out that RTFM wins again 🙃

I’m not sure I’ll try something like this again in the future, but it sure has been educational!

*sort of true, I did end up using some pdf extractor tools to help me better understand the file structure
posted by Doleful Creature at 11:23 PM on May 16, 2022 [2 favorites]


Yeah, I tried to implement an "export-to-Word" feature in my program several years ago. It wasn't easy. I won't say that Microsoft set out to make it impossible. The hurdles I encountered made sense in context. But wow it was hard.
posted by SPrintF at 12:33 AM on May 17, 2022


I'M ON THE SAUCE
posted by flabdablet at 4:01 AM on May 17, 2022 [3 favorites]


Somebody ought to devise a specialist platform for sharing these vital little status reports. Perhaps we could call it Matter.

don't attempt anything without the gloves
posted by flabdablet at 4:07 AM on May 17, 2022


all the talk about putting in gardens, bird activity, really makes me think of my mom.. yesterday I was dropping the fellow off at his place, Mondays are ESL lessons, and he pointed out the robin's nest at the entrance of his rental house. He doesn't have/make enough opportunities to practice his English but he started watching "Friends" recently and I'm surprised at the immediate impact, a recent show he viewed helped him navigate "surrogate" (apparently Phoebe?). any show recommendations out there for ESL learners? He is Korean, early 30s, and so far he has taken to "Friends" but not "The Office."
posted by elkevelvet at 7:34 AM on May 17, 2022


Thoroughburro, maybe you can comment on this - I tried to get a jalapeno seedling from a nursery, but the one I went to was fresh out and the guy talked me into trying a Hungarian wax pepper instead (the only other hot peppers he had were habanero and cayenne, which would likely be a little much for me). But....I'm unfamiliar with Hungarian Wax peppers. What's the best use?

This was meant to go with my early flaily "shit I don't know what to do and it's May already lemme stick in a couple tomatoes and sweet peppers and oh hey, an eggplant too" plan. I was targeting a jalapeno because "well, I like chili and salsa...."
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 8:25 AM on May 17, 2022




with the talk of peppers and Scoville Heat Units, I have to find a purpose for the Hot Ones Challenge gift box I received from my siblings. SHUs start at "a bit hotter than I'd like" (more than my daily sriracha intake) up to 2,000,000+ according to the one bottle's label.

I'm thinking.. community fund raising event? any suggestions?
posted by elkevelvet at 9:17 AM on May 17, 2022


I turn 40 next week and my husband has been showering me with little gifts almost daily for the entire month, and we will be spending my birthday weekend out of town with our favorite people. It is unexpected to be looking forward to my 40th birthday like this.
posted by obfuscation at 9:28 AM on May 17, 2022 [4 favorites]


Last month we set a record for April rainfall here in Portland, Oregon… and we continue to get an abundant amount of rain this month. This is not so great for taking daily walks – but my bamboo is loving the rain and is sending up lots of thick, sturdy shoots.

Too bad I’m way behind on yardwork, and lots of thick, sturdy weeds are thriving in my yard.
posted by LovelyAngel at 12:45 PM on May 17, 2022 [1 favorite]


Are we talking peppers? OMG

Never been able to grow any here in Seattle, or even when we were in Eugene. But

Fresno peppers. Red flavored. A bit hotter than jalapenos, but not habenero level. Have been using them a lot during the pandemic. So goooood
posted by Windopaene at 12:59 PM on May 17, 2022


For many uses I prefer Fresno to jalapenos since their flavor is fruitier than jalapenos' more "green" and vegetal taste (and it's almost impossible to find ripened jalapenos around here).

Last year I tried fermenting Fresnos (half fresh, half smoked) to make my own hot sauce, but it didn't take for some reason. I plan to try again this summer.
posted by Greg_Ace at 1:31 PM on May 17, 2022 [1 favorite]


I have a batch of habaneros fermenting even as we speak! Going to try to purée them into sauce this time. Normally I prep and use them in Hunan salt-fermented pepper style (small slices, used as a condiment), but making them into a sauce may be helpful for titrating the dose. Hunan fermented peppers tend to be around Fresno level of heat, and are used plentifully. I love the habanero flavor but they are close to my limit of hot.
posted by notoriety public at 1:56 PM on May 17, 2022 [2 favorites]


Nice! Habanero flavor is not my favorite. Though the Murray's Cheese Habenero Jack is wonderful, (Krgoers).

We get a farm bag every month, and a couple of years ago got some sweet Italian peppers, "goat horn peppers", and they were pretty great, though mild. I am more of a hot pepper dude, but these got me to appreciate plain old bell peppers. Green for my curry chicken, (still haven't gotten my recipe right), and Reds, with Fresnos, for my Shashuka, (not even close to getting the eggs poached). But it is delicous in the trying. I will get it right soon.
posted by Windopaene at 2:10 PM on May 17, 2022 [1 favorite]


If you can find it, try the Melrose pepper. It’s a Chicago area heirloom variety, named for the Melrose Park neighborhood where it was grown by Italian immigrants. It was only repopularized relatively recently, but I’ve gotten it from Chicago farmers markets and CSAs, and it’s a lovely mild sweet pepper.
posted by notoriety public at 2:33 PM on May 17, 2022 [2 favorites]


Your Evita update: three people in the cast so far that I know of have tested positive today--the director and two of my buddies. One has no symptoms, the other had symptoms yesterday, went to the doctor, tested negative, went to rehearsal...and then tested positive today. Were people wearing masks there? Mostly no, of course not! No word yet on Evita herself, though she said she was feeling better today and I guess she did not test yesterday *facepalm* So far only three people have posted that they have negative results. Don't know on anyone else, which is annoying because the last time this happened, people were saying if they did/didn't (in that case, almost everyone did not). Sigh.

I tested negative. I found this out right before my therapy phone call and my shrink had to walk me through the at home rapid testing. So far, so good, no symptoms, but am wondering if I should bail out on my theater ticket for tomorrow or not (may just rapid test before leaving that day). Found out I still have to go into the office as long as I don't test positive because they don't have you quarantine any more if you were exposed but have all your shots.

On a related note, hey, the government will let you order free tests again for a third time. Good thing I reordered yesterday.
posted by jenfullmoon at 5:01 PM on May 17, 2022 [2 favorites]


love the pepper rail. may return to it.

here, pop w/ dementia broke his hip & is in inpatient physical therapy with private 24-hour companions to discourage him from walking, likely en route to an institutional memory care facility when discharged. the hospital was hell notwithstanding how well the hospital ultimately did; rehab place leaves a lot to be desired; perhaps shall denounce elsewhere. mom has rested some while he's been away, enjoyed the counseling of some social workers and patient advocates, and seems to have reached comfort with the institutional plan.

little lurk was a "close contact" of two teachers shortly thereafter shown to have covid on different days a couple weeks ago, as the daily case notifications from the school district have ticked upward from maybe one/day to 9 today. so far no positive tests for us though.

at about the same time the principal of the school sent a letter about an incident (little lurk and mother report some recent occasions of police activity on the grounds), referring to some recent mention of the school in news, and reminding readers that racist epithets and suchlike hatespeech have no place in our community. it was a fox & tabloids story about the content of some educational literature written by an antiracist author and educator who, as best i understand and contra the presentation of the tabloid (some other facets of their coverage are also in error), addressed an assembly of the grade school students about antiracism back in february and, via school emails to parents, made available links to said literature for those interested, about all of which some parents complained to fox news. i infer from the principal's letter that the incident involved someone inspired by the news coverage shouting abuse at the school/students and handled by police. while i read the tabloid story little lurk sitting next to me asked "why is there a picture of my school?" in the tabloid. i hadn't noticed it, my eye avoiding that space as likely advertising. sure enough, a photo of the address from google street view. i did not tell the first grader that fox and tabloids are trying to immanentize the stochastic lone wolves: "why, indeed?"

i am aware that tabloid has since published a similar story about similar efforts in a nearby county and seem to recall reading such a story there before about another local county's curriculum.

gardening progresses with the usual ups and downs, e.g., i think i just planted a tomato seedling and some squash in the middle of my most recently sowed radish rows; garden journaling could improve; peppers, from a turkish seed kit that came in a can with dirt, have just been transplanted to garden bed. i could go on but have said too much already.

sympathy & best wishes.
posted by 20 year lurk at 7:38 PM on May 17, 2022 [1 favorite]


Something has been nibbling my basil plant in the garden! I found a discarded iced coffee cup somewhere in the garden and my seedling was low enough that it could fit under it; I put that over it for now pending other ideas.

Anyone HAVE other ideas?
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 3:27 AM on May 18, 2022




Your Evita update
Cripes. The pandemic hasn't been good for me, but I really feel bad for performers. That's awful. Though, I guess an Evita who is *actually* dying would be. . . as method as it gets. (Sorry if that's too dark a joke. I am genuinely sad for everyone involved and hope they all recover.)

My mom and her partner tested postive two days ago. They're doing surprisingly well, despite being in their '70s and having other health problems. They've also had three shots, which I'm very grateful for given some of their weird beliefs about medicine. (I'm far less convinced the colloidal silver is going to help. In small enough amounts, it probably won't hurt.)
posted by eotvos at 7:36 AM on May 18, 2022


Empress, try putting a nice wide layer of ashes or diatomaceous earth around your basil. It will shred any crawlers. Maybe instead of a coffeecup, try a transparent cover, like a clear tupperware.

I know that my garden will get Japanese beetles in a few weeks and my plan is to go in the mornings and hand-pick them and drop them in a jar with dish soap and water to drown them. They are BEAUTIFUL - iridescent gold wingcases - so maybe I will try to keep the wings for art projects of some macabre kind. I also have neem oil for spraying on greens.
posted by Lawn Beaver at 7:41 AM on May 18, 2022


Though, I guess an Evita who is *actually* dying would be. . . as method as it gets.

Well...she does have lupus, is on dialysis, and seriously put something like "Anyone got a spare kidney?" in the program....But yeah, she'd probably make the joke too.

No news from anyone else this morning one way or the other.
posted by jenfullmoon at 8:08 AM on May 18, 2022


Goddamn, jenfullmoon. It was an even darker joke than I knew when I hesitated and then decided to make it anyway. Good to know.
posted by eotvos at 8:15 AM on May 18, 2022 [1 favorite]


Empress, try putting a nice wide layer of ashes or diatomaceous earth around your basil. It will shred any crawlers. Maybe instead of a coffeecup, try a transparent cover, like a clear tupperware.

Sorry for the lack of clarity - it actually IS a clear cup, it was a plastic iced-coffee kind of Starbucks thing. I'm not sure that the thing eating the basil is crawly, either...we were all warned that last year the community garden had a rat issue, and it's always possible some of them have come back.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 8:39 AM on May 18, 2022


rat traps!

my plot has holes that something lives in - I suspect voles - and if they seem to be eating things I'm going to try live traps. my fellow gardeners and I might have to discuss and team up.
posted by Lawn Beaver at 8:53 AM on May 18, 2022


my plot has holes that something lives in

I started out assuming you were writing a seriously problematic book or screenplay...
posted by Greg_Ace at 9:57 AM on May 18, 2022 [3 favorites]


among the usual setbacks:
squirrel digs up and eats sunflower seeds every time i plant them whether in ground or pot. mitigating with mobile pot squirrel doesn't know about or can't reach until they're big enough to put in the ground, whereupon deer likely will want to munch the tender shoots.
rabbits were eating my kale; may still be. think i've got the fencing tight enough but not sure. guess ragged leaves could be slugs or damage from birds eating slugs?
nothing inside the fencing is high enough for deer to menace over the fence yet.
got ground eggshells to discourage slugs but haven't deployed yet.
considering pouring dilute urine around the yard (would keep it out of garden beds) to make it a little more hostile to the deer and rabbits.
there is a cat who spends a lot of time in a little sunny and concealed corner of the yard, but it never seems to hunt those rabbits. and there are hawks, but so far i've only seen them carry off birds.
posted by 20 year lurk at 10:11 AM on May 18, 2022 [1 favorite]


problematic voles

plots with holes

something there is that doesn't love a vole
posted by Lawn Beaver at 11:33 AM on May 18, 2022 [2 favorites]


problematic voles

plots with holes


thwarted goals

tortured souls

Camilla Parker Bowles ...yeah, I'm all out of ideas
posted by Greg_Ace at 11:58 AM on May 18, 2022


porcelain bowls

for your problematic voles

digging their way to the antarctic poles

I'm reaching, aren't I.
posted by Lawn Beaver at 12:05 PM on May 18, 2022


I think we both are...on the whole
posted by Greg_Ace at 12:49 PM on May 18, 2022


FYI, Evita tested negative yesterday. We're up to a known four today (director's husband). Emergency meeting tonight, which I presume is going to be about canceling it since I presume enough people are going to drop like flies before the weekend. Sigh.

I stupidly/optimistically bought a show ticket elsewhere for tonight, which I stupidly/optimistically changed to tomorrow night after this. Universe is gonna LOL at that one, I'm sure.
posted by jenfullmoon at 2:39 PM on May 18, 2022


Six testing positive as of today (two actors, one stage manager). A couple others who feel ill or somewhat minorly ill are testing negative so far. They are going to attempt to do the show anyway, but we'll see if people keep dropping, I guess. If a lead or a guy gets it, they may be done. Various minor parts were reshuffled about. I'm going to be very nervous the rest of the week.

I can't help but think that if I'm asymptomatic, I don't....really want to know if I've got it and don't have symptoms circa day 5 (that'd be Friday), since that'll be during the weekend if I suddenly have it and have to drop out. I'm just another extra girl so it doesn't super matter if I drop/test positive or not compared to others, mind you, but...I dunno.
posted by jenfullmoon at 9:27 PM on May 18, 2022


#7, my crush, got it. I figured since he was in the "minorly ill" category already. It's canceled.

I still feel fine but at this point it feels like waiting in limbo. I had to go to work in person to deal with mail BS but won't test again until tonight and tomorrow morning.
posted by jenfullmoon at 10:12 AM on May 19, 2022


plots with holes
and badly cast roles
who are playing trolls
take their tolls
on the poor proles
watching the rolls
(Yeah, I know reels would make more sense. I claim I'm talking about the production team.)

Also, sorry to hear that, jenfullmoon! What a pain in the. . . everything. Best wishes to everybody involved.
posted by eotvos at 11:59 AM on May 19, 2022


a toll is a toll
and a roll is a roll
and if we don't get no tolls
then we don't eat no rolls
posted by Greg_Ace at 9:33 PM on May 19, 2022 [1 favorite]


A bit of bright-spot news I just learned -

Remember that guy who went bird watching in Central Park two years ago, and a racist woman walking her dog had a hissy fit and tried to call the police on him but then she got her comeuppance?

He's the host of his own bird-watching show on National Geographic now.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 7:13 AM on May 20, 2022 [5 favorites]


(i eventually came back from the beach)
posted by cortex at 10:23 PM on May 20, 2022 [2 favorites]


Interesting iPhone occurrance yesterday...
My phone 'reminded' me of a meeting in 5 minutes, so I went to my calendar, and there it simply said 'Link for our Zoom meeting on May 20th'. My first thought was that it sounded like a phishing attempt.
My second thought was, what did I forget? So I clicked on the calendar entry and got no further information- no link, no phone number, no attendees...
The only thing useful there was a 'Show in Mail' link, so I clicked.

The email referred to was from March 14, and it was part of a long email train involving, yes, a Zoom meeting. The start of the chain was an invitation to a Zoom meeting for a group of my high school class, some of whom I haven't seen in person in 50+ years. We started meeting quarterly, but weren't due for the next Zoom for another month.

The original invite had everything you would expect from a Zoom invite, including the the correct date and time- Mar. 20 at 5-6:30PM EDT, but the subject line said 'Link for our Zoom meeting on May 20th'- a typo (or brain typo'). Most of us are on the east coast, but one guy is in Oregon, and he was responding that since he was joining from 2-3:30, it would be an early happy hour for him.
My phone decided that given the (incorrect) subject line and a mention of a (west coast) time slot, that I had a meeting May 20th at 2PM.
Thanks, Siri!

I suppose Siri must have asked me if I wanted to add this to my calendar, and I said yes, but it still seems weird for it to have decided this for me.
posted by MtDewd at 6:31 AM on May 21, 2022


I got a robo call from Costco yesterday, saying "our records show that you may have purchased a tub of peanut butter which Jif is now recalling for possible salmonella contamination. Go to http://jif.com/recall for more info."

Hm, I thought. Mr dog and I use peanut butter sandwiches as our base-line lunch, and have been eating out of a Jif tub for a couple weeks. So I dutifully grab it and try to decipher if our UPC code is one recalled and if so, is the batch number in the right set. After a few minutes of puzzling, it seems like the tub we're eating from is OK, but then I realize that this is from a previous Costco run and there is a new unopened "two pack" in the pantry. That one turns out to be dead center in the recalled product run, so into the trash goes the (gigantic) tubs, which is what they want you to do with them.

I guess I'm grateful for the call, if a little disturbed they know what secrets lurk on my pantry shelves. Am also a bit puzzled there is no talk anywhere of compensation...I mean, $10 vs. getting very sick is easy math to do, but as slim as the pickings are around here $10 is ok to lose. That very well may not be the case for others, and I trust they'll pick up the tab.

Anyway, if you have Jif peanut butter, check the site and make sure you're not sitting on a potential problem!
posted by maxwelton at 12:15 PM on May 22, 2022 [2 favorites]


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