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RTDNTOTO 🐻 Random Thoughts Deserving No Thread Of Their Own 19 (2024)

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Unless they are absolutely spectacular, french fries don't really do it for me. Can I substitute chips or cole slaw for the fries please?
Sure, so we have three clubs, two with fries, one with chips, and a Coke? The pickle automatically comes as a side. Will this be together or on separate checks?
 
So three clubs, two with fries, one with chips, and a Coke? The pickle automatically comes as a side. Will this be together or on separate checks?
I'm buying! Finally working for a town that knows how to do a Christmas bonus, jeeeeee-bus! Extra pickles! Nobody leaves without pickles! And dammit, where's @JNA, he would be so fulfilled by the sandwiches AND the egregious filler-posting...the time grows short, you know? Oh, right, he left till after the holidays. He's missing out!
 
I used my day off yesterday to do my Christmas shopping. I have a policy of doing as much of my Christmas shopping within walking distance of my house each year so thankfully we have a couple fancy grocery stores and an bougie (as my niece calls it) "apothecary" that are great for stocking stuffers and weird gifts I wouldn't think of otherwise. I did have to walk to the far side of downtown to buy a specific sweatshirt for my mom and a few items from a spa over there for my wife so there was a bit of an adventure crossing the busy main road that I try not to cross, especially at like 11:00 AM.

Around noon I took a break back in downtown to have some lunch and when I went to pay, I accidentally tried to use a Barnes & Noble gift card that has been in my wallet for at least 2 years (it looks very similar to my debit card at first glance). Afterwards, I was continuing my walk and getting a few items in the downtown and went into the stationary store to get some gifts for my kids and was thinking to myself that I wished we still had an actual bookstore (we used to have a large Borders in our downtown until they went out of business 12 or 14 years ago). When I went to the register to pay they asked if I was a member of Barnes & Noble's loyalty program because they now participate in that. Come to find out, they had been bought out by B&N a few months ago and though I am not a member of the loyalty program, I was able to finally get rid of that gift card that had been cluttering up my wallet forever!
 
Charles Addams Holiday Classic
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Hey, is that the Fourth Ward School in my neighborhood? (Fun fact: the Fourth Ward School was the model for the Phantom Manor ride at Disneyland Paris.)

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I don't remember the last time I had a club sandwich. I would guess at a minimum 3 or 4 years.
That used to be my goto expense account dinner many moons ago. I doubt I've had one in at least 18 years.
 
Me, I'm going to throw everyone off and just get a burger and a Dr. Pepper.
 
I won't go out of my way for a club sandwich and probably haven't had one in at least a decade but I don't really have anything against them. My wife routinely orders them though; it's one of her go-to items at the local diner we like to frequent.
 
This was not a tradition either of our families had, so I am not sure how ir why it started for us , but our household Christmas Eve/Day tradition is to watch old TV commercials from the 50's through 90's. Not necessarily actively watch them, but just have them on on the TV. This started in roughly 2008 or so and has continued.


Jim
 
I'm buying! Finally working for a town that knows how to do a Christmas bonus, jeeeeee-bus! Extra pickles! Nobody leaves without pickles! And dammit, where's @JNA, he would be so fulfilled by the sandwiches AND the egregious filler-posting...the time grows short, you know? Oh, right, he left till after the holidays. He's missing out!
He hasn't had his phone long enough to be scrolling and posting during airtime events. Is it too late for him?
 
If I can't find anything on the menu I'd like, then I'll get one. I usually order my club without tomato (of course) and the center slice of bread.
 
So much for good people. The guy who owns the house that we were renting does not want to return our entire deposit and wants to keep out $50 because he had the leaves picked up when he stopped in to check on the house (after we moved out but we were still had it under lease). Had I known that was the expectation, I would have made sure to clean up all the leaves before he stopped in. It would not have mattered much because 75% of the leaves were still on the tree.

The rental agency was awesome and found a new occupant so we were able to get out of our lease a month early, but the home owner has tried to nickel and dime us for every damn thing possible.
 
I have this idea for a new product. It's a jump to conclusions mat!! It would be this mat that you would put on the floor, and it would have different conclusions . . . that you could JUMP to!

:)
 
^^ I had to edumacate a young planner in my office today about why that is such a great movie...in no small part because of the great underappreciated scene where the trio trudges down into a detention pond and up across the other side and crosses horrible roads and parking lots to get to the restaurant 100 yards away. Only planners find that scene as funny as it truly is. :)
 
So much for good people. The guy who owns the house that we were renting does not want to return our entire deposit and wants to keep out $50 because he had the leaves picked up when he stopped in to check on the house (after we moved out but we were still had it under lease). Had I known that was the expectation, I would have made sure to clean up all the leaves before he stopped in. It would not have mattered much because 75% of the leaves were still on the tree.

The rental agency was awesome and found a new occupant so we were able to get out of our lease a month early, but the home owner has tried to nickel and dime us for every damn thing possible.
Give him the 50 to get rid of him. Don't waste your energy on him.
 
^^ I had to edumacate a young planner in my office today about why that is such a great movie...in no small part because of the great underappreciated scene where the trio trudges down into a detention pond and up across the other side and crosses horrible roads and parking lots to get to the restaurant 100 yards away. Only planners find that scene as funny as it truly is. :)
Absolutely
 
My son was telling me he thinks more than 80% of the so-called "drone" spotting in New Jersey is various civil aircraft. I thought back to my days living in the Garden State and told him he's probably full-of-shit: Jersey has maybe the busiest airspace in the whole country, with flights coming and going from Newark/LaGuardia/JFK/Philly overflying a big part of the state on a regular basis - probably 20 hours out of every day. I remember how quiet everything seemed in my freshman year in college in Maine and suddenly realizing that it was the lack of jet engine noise that I had become so accustomed to in Jersey.

TL:dr -- I think my fellow Jersey peeps can pretty accurately tell the difference between civil aviation and drones.
 
So much for good people. The guy who owns the house that we were renting does not want to return our entire deposit and wants to keep out $50 because he had the leaves picked up when he stopped in to check on the house (after we moved out but we were still had it under lease). Had I known that was the expectation, I would have made sure to clean up all the leaves before he stopped in. It would not have mattered much because 75% of the leaves were still on the tree.

The rental agency was awesome and found a new occupant so we were able to get out of our lease a month early, but the home owner has tried to nickel and dime us for every damn thing possible.
I had a college landlord of mine try to charge me for a second cleaning of the apartment after her regular cleaner told her the first cleaner 'didn't do a good enough job'.

What pissed me off was that it was three months since I'd lived there, I told her to take the 1st cleaning out of my security deposit, I had been her resident manager for the entire prior year, I had often driven her to family in metro Detroit and she didn't even check for herself on the first cleaning (her regular was very shady, but she liked him for some reason).

In no uncertain terms, I told her the 2nd cleaning was 100% her responsibility and I would not be paying for it.
 
I woke up from such a deep sleep once when I was a young father, so disoriented that as I came out of not really being cognizant of who I was, etc., my actual life seemed like I had dreamed most of it and I really thought for just a few seconds that I HAD, and that I was not an adult, or married, or had kids or a job or anything.

Sometimes I sit and think about that feeling. Like....for too long, sometimes. And then I feel guilty and call my wife or text one of my kids.
 
I am pleased any time I get a full 7 hours of sleep. I used to want 8, but honestly if I get 7 where I actually sleep the majority of the time, I am pleased.

I am old.
 
Sometimes I sit and think about that feeling. Like....for too long, sometimes. And then I feel guilty and call my wife or text one of my kids.
But...aren't you effectively empty-nesters now?

Don't feel guilty. You got to the finish line. Phew.

season 3 race GIF
 
my actual life seemed like I had dreamed most of it

When my wife was diagnosed with cancer, I’d lay in bed thinking I was there to sleep, but in reality, I was there in bed, I think, and I was there as the universe, being its sole occupant. Sure, it was my mind trying to resolve an unexpected uncertainty with a reality unwanted, though I think mental health professionals would call it an out of body experience.
 
I rarely nap anymore (at least purposefully) after having napped and woken in utter panic unsure if it was 6:30 PM or 6:30AM and whether I had missed a very important appointment.:confused:
 
I am developing a list of four letter words to send to my street department for my current project. I'm supposed to find the amount of impact fees paid - easy - and how much street they built to determine if we owe a credit or not. You would think I just need to pull a grading plan or street plan or some kind of civil plan, but it's not readable, not there, not dimensioned. Always something.

So words I'm including: - I especially like BARK
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Nice that I can order car parts with shipment via FedEx, and can track on a map there the truck is located. Parts were ordered yesterday and according to the tracking, originated in Tennessee and is out for delivery the next day and 1,200 miles away.
 
But...aren't you effectively empty-nesters now?

Don't feel guilty. You got to the finish line. Phew.

season 3 race GIF
Not yet. If we had 3 kids, we would be. My second set of three is still in the house. It'll be waaaaay too quiet without them. 21, 19, and 16. It's a hot-house of tom-foolery and violent swings of political and social opinion. I'm as exhausted as I was when they were toddlers. :)
 
Not yet. If we had 3 kids, we would be. My second set of three is still in the house. It'll be waaaaay too quiet without them. 21, 19, and 16. It's a hot-house of tom-foolery and violent swings of political and social opinion. I'm as exhausted as I was when they were toddlers. :)
It won't be too quiet, if you just CRANK THOSE TUNES UP!!!!!!!
 
When my wife was diagnosed with cancer, I’d lay in bed thinking I was there to sleep, but in reality, I was there in bed, I think, and I was there as the universe, being its sole occupant. Sure, it was my mind trying to resolve an unexpected uncertainty with a reality unwanted, though I think mental health professionals would call it an out of body experience.
This is so interesting, and a really apt telling: "I was there as the universe." What a hard, hard thing, too. I can't imagine. I can't imagine.
 
Hard to find a utility contractor since most around here are in the mountains fixing lots of things.

We had one bid for a project that included a serious 'upcharge'
 
I woke up from such a deep sleep once when I was a young father, so disoriented that as I came out of not really being cognizant of who I was, etc., my actual life seemed like I had dreamed most of it and I really thought for just a few seconds that I HAD, and that I was not an adult, or married, or had kids or a job or anything.

Sometimes I sit and think about that feeling. Like....for too long, sometimes. And then I feel guilty and call my wife or text one of my kids.
On a similar note, I can remember in my actual life, thinking when I was 19, "Wow, life is perfect: I live in a fraternity house and my meals are provided, I don't have to worry about money, my only responsibility is to get passing grades, I'm totally carefree. Life is never gonna be better than this." And in a way I was right, but you can't make a perfect day last forever.

Oh, and I'll be a grandpa in the spring, so there is that.
 
NPR had a segment about what to get a dad who doesn't really want anything. They said to figure out what they do in their free time and buy something that they could use then. What if that is napping? Are we back to comfy socks?
 
NPR had a segment about what to get a dad who doesn't really want anything. They said to figure out what they do in their free time and buy something that they could use then. What if that is napping? Are we back to comfy socks?
How about a couch throw blanket that's long enough for tall people?
 
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