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RTDNTOTO 🐻 Random Thoughts Deserving No Thread Of Their Own 20 (2025)

So you started a cult in 2005 and this is where you have branches?
Those are the states we have been in together, in the order of when we first visited them together, beginning with our meeting in California in 1994.

We have both been to a couple of states the other hasn't, but unless we are in the states together, those aren't on the board.

ME but not her: AZ, NM, OK, KS, PA, MN
HER but not me: AR
EACH of us at some point, but not together: NJ

Jim
 
AIB jumbach

I have lived in some of those same states -
NJ, CA, UT, TX, CO
And have visited some of those same states -
FL, ID, VA, MD
But you don't have
NY or IN
 
Taking four spoiled cats to the vet for their second round of vaccinations. The cacophony will be real.
tobin bell art GIF by hoppip
 
Well, I think The Big Interview went well. But while I was in it, I got a VM setting up another interview with the state (but not planning).

The boss said she’d be calling tomorrow, which I find highly improbable for a government job. I’m guessing next week.
 
Since I am still technically a government employee for a few more days, and I was in Carson City, I went into the big and awesome Nevada State Library and pursued the stacks. My card still worked!

Loaded up on books for this weekend’s getaway.

Hadn’t been in there since 2016, when I worked in Carson City.
 
Since I am still technically a government employee for a few more days, and I was in Carson City, I went into the big and awesome Nevada State Library and pursued the stacks. My card still worked!

Loaded up on books for this weekend’s getaway.

Hadn’t been in there since 2016, when I worked in Carson City.
The wind howling through the Washoe Valley makes the drive between Reno and Carson City, um, interesting...
 
You may be able to get them here: https://www.napcommissions.org/virtual-summer-short-course

I will say this organization's training series is excellent, and they offer municipal memberships, which is so helpful to offer the training to Commissioners

@jumbach @michaelskis
I've always felt NAPC could give a lot of other organizations training on training. I've always found the topics on point, the presenters are usually very knowledgeable and entertaining, and they're usually fairly cheap. I haven't been in 10 years, but their conferences were always pretty fun too. Lots of hands on workshops and social events in unique locations.
 
When mom used to take our cat to the vet, she'd tie him up in a big denim laundry sack & put it on the floorboard of the car. Cat did not like to ride. True story.

Now I do it in a plastic pet carrier/kennel. Cast doesn't like that either.
 
The wind howling through the Washoe Valley makes the drive between Reno and Carson City, um, interesting...
Yep. I don't like driving along big trucks just in case. They have been known to tip over.

Jim

"This was all we saw that day, for it was two o'clock, now, and according to custom the daily "Washoe Zephyr" set in; a soaring dust-drift about the size of the United States set up edgewise came with it, and the capital of Nevada Territory disappeared from view. Still, there were sights to be seen which were not wholly uninteresting to newcomers; for the vast dust-cloud was thickly freckled with things strange to the upper air - things living and dead, that flitted hither and thither, going and coming, appearing and disappearing among the rolling billows of dust - hats, chickens, and parasols sailing in the remote heavens; blankets, tin signs, sage-brush, and shingles a shade lower; door-mats and buffalo-robes lower still; shovels and coal-scuttles on the next grade; glass doors, cats, and little children on the next; disrupted lumber yards, light buggies, and wheelbarrows on the next; and down only thirty or forty feet above ground was a scurrying storm of emigrating roofs and vacant lots.

It was something to see that much. I could have seen more, if I could have kept the dust out of my eyes.

But, seriously, a Washoe wind is by no means a trifling matter. It blows flimsy houses down, lifts shingle roofs occasionally, rolls up tin ones like sheet music, now and then blows a stage-coach over and spills the passengers; and tradition says the reason there are so many bald people there is, that the wind blows the hair off their heads while they are looking skyward after their hats. Carson streets seldom look inactive on summer afternoons, because there are so many citizens skipping around their escaping hats, like chambermaids trying to head off a spider.

The "Washoe Zephyr" (Washoe is a pet nickname for Nevada) is a peculiarly Scriptural wind, in that no man knoweth "whence it cometh." That is to say, where it originates. It comes right over the mountains from the West, but when one crosses the ridge he does not find any of it on the other side! It probably is manufactured on the mountaintop for the occasion, and starts from there. It is a pretty regular wind, in the summer-time. Its office-hours are from two in the afternoon till two the next morning; and anybody venturing abroad during those twelve hours needs to allow for the wind or he will bring up a mile or two to leeward of the point he is aiming at. And yet the first complaint a Washoe visitor to San Francisco makes, is that the sea-winds blow so, there! There is a good deal of human nature in that."

Mark Twain, "Roughing It"
 
The thing I probably like most about my morning bowl of plain yogurt and Grape Nuts is the smug sense of superiority it gives me over people who don't eat Grape Nuts everyday.
 
Up at 6:30 AM in order to shower/shave and be presentable and borderline coherent for an 8 AM on-camera meeting with a client (that lasted all of 11 minutes). Have a redeye flight over to Scotland at 11:10 PM tonight. Still haven't packed a damn thing. This is definitely a "what the hell did I get myself into" day...
 
I work across from a daycare and love hearing the kids play. They're out as long as it isn't raining, snowing or dangerously cold. Rugged.

That's how it is at the Catholic school by us - as long as it's not dangerously cold, they're outside.

FWIW, the school by me is a K-8 school and from the sounds of it, at any given point during the day there are at least a couple classes of kids outside. I used to think to myself, "Are these kids ever inside doing some book learnin'?" because the noise from the kids was constant. Then one day I happened to walk past at like 10:30 in the morning and then again at like 2:00 in the afternoon and even though it sounds like there are 100+ kids outside from a block away, once I got over there I realized that unless it's lunch recess, there's usually only like 30 kids out there at a time. That's when I learned how loud just a few dozen kids can be. :rofl:
 
There's a special place in hell reserved for folks who schedule recurring 8 AM Monday meetings...just sayin'.
An architect tried to do that to me once. I sent declined but encouraged him to carry on with his 8am Monday meetings but they would be with himself. We arrived at a more reasonable 10am.

Hey hey, I’m back from vacay. Two of my staff are out sick today and one is WFH. Quiet day to get caught up.
 
Im at 19 years, which feels insane since I registered at 15.

I posted in forums back than related to Sim City, NYC Transit, Death Metal, Black Metal, Punk Rock/Hardcore and Chevrolet's (didnt get volvo love until age 21). Now all those discussions happen on Reddit. Web 1.0 was a huge part of my childhood, and I was a t(w)een for the golden age of forums.
 
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