So that lump would be about $15,000 after taxes? I can see the advantage of doing the shit you have/want to do now and be done with it. I would roll it into an IRA but you have to decide what works for you because you're mileage may vary.

I think you need CROWS on that fence. ;)

Somebody please tell Ndamukong Suh.

I dunno. I could probably make it on $20 million. :rolleyes:

Jerry Maguire only gets 2%?? :eyebrow:

My daughter is home from college for spring break! She'll be there when I get home from work.

Happy Friday indeed.

You didn't buy her a ticket to some decadent spring break location? :elkgrin:

Hows she enjoying college life glatt? (remind me - which year is she in now?)

She's doing great. Very nice to have her home. She's in her first year.

5th clean PET scan last week. I am a very fortunate man.

:thumbsup:

Yay! Me too but mine is in her last semester and has a job interview over break. I'm almost done adulting!

Spring break? Hell ye--

Wait...

Home?!

She's doing it wrong.

I'm sure it suits Dad just fine, though.;)

Hooray for glatt and nowhereman! I demand more good news from more people. The littlest things, I don't care, spit 'em out...



My good news: despite everything else, work is finally on the cusp of some forward motion next week. It may go one of two ways, but both are positive for me.

I didn't go to jail today.

Or the hospital.

Yet.

:fingerx:

My good news is that I received a letter from HMRC (the IRS's brother in arms) that I actually understood.

It took about a dozen readings and extensive use of a calculator, but understand it I did! :thumb:

Huzzah!

I'm super happy with the Paralympic stuff I'm seeing. These are real athletes doing damn exciting things. Unfortunately, the Navy Seal Cnossen makes me feel like a damn slacker when he's working on his 2nd Masters Degree from Harvard while training for and winning biathlon Gold.

Slacker? http://cellar.org/2012/nono.gif Most men would do sinful things to have your house, family, and Benny. You're too close to see your own accomplishments.

Earworm Humor
 

I'm visiting a friend in Butthole, MT. The first morning I was here, I woke up with the mother of all earworms. Naturally, I had to share this infection with my friend (pass that crazy shit on, man). Two days later, we're both caught in a double-negative buffalo-earworm vortex of massive proportions.

This evening, after some purposeful self-medication, I stepped out onto the second-floor deck to enjoy a cig in the warm, spring evening air. I mean, it's just perfect out there tonight. As I gaze out over the site of Sitting Bull's camp at the Battle of the Little Big Horn, I begin to notice a subtle shift in the buffalo-earworm migration pattern.

Ah-hah. The worm has turned!

Eager to bring buffalo salvation to my friend, I race inside and announce "Hey, I've got another song in my head!"

Without a beat and wearing a completly deadpan expression, he says, "Hold on. Let me leave the room first."


:lol2:




I dunno. Maybe you had to be there?

Two's company, three's a crowd. Seems like she figured it was either her or the earworm and you know how earworms are.

I do.

That's why I'm trying to pass that shit on!

Unfortunately, he just triple-backflip headbutted me with this.


Motherfucker! :mad:

Bummer, it's almost as though he pulled a Trigger on you.

(Sorry I missed the "he" in your previous post and used she in my reply.)

Fortunately, I was listening to The Magnificent Westerns Album by The City of Prague Philharmonic on Amazon music a couple days ago which conferred partial immunity to Westerns earworms for now.

Oh, you did not just . . . By god, you did. Well done, sir.

No worries. :)

I've heard Big Pharma is working diligently on a generic, non-habit forming anti-Westerns earworm lozenge. I'm all about that.

Oh yeah.




Meanwhile, the buffalo returneth. Pfffft.

Leaving Skamania Lodge now to go to the trailhead of the Beacon Rock trail at Beacon Rock State Park.

Pics later

:)

My kids are all home and it's REALLY nice <3

:cry:

Aww. :thumbsup:

all done. one buggered back off already. Then summonsed another to haul over some extra shit she forgot.....

it's fabulous, but I wish beest were here to enjoy it too

I imagine that feeling will never really go away. It's how you know he was special.

The fruit and veg stall at this morning's market had the first Jersey Royal spuds of the season.

Let joy be unconfined! :)

My training was cancelled yesterday so I blew off work and had a great ride yesterday.

It's nice to see someone that excited about taters.

Or disturbing. I get nice and disturbing mixed up a lot.

Surely you mean distubering? ;)

That joke needs to be removed at the root.

or we could keep chipping away until the nightshade

Possibly mastubering? :cool:

Someone stole m'taters! I've been distubered!

Somebody stole yer taters, that's not good.

You should launch an a peel, so everyone can keep an eye out. Want me to mash something together?

You're sounding awfully chipper today.

Stop that! Stoppit right now.

Silly.[/GrahamChapman]

:footpyth::D

I've gotten desperate, and thus I'm trying a session in a sensory deprivation tank today. Certainly can't make the tension worse, at any rate. I'm really looking forward to it, if only for the solid hour of silence.

My relief is playing music with other people. All life's troubles disappear for the duration of the rehearsal/session ... bliss ....
But do tell us about your experience (or lack of it!) ;)

It was pretty awesome. There were a couple times I felt my body start to loosen cognitively--the kind of "where does my skin stop and the water start" dissociation that's ideally supposed to happen--but then I'd notice the change and sort of snap-to again. But it was intensely physically relaxing, and my lingering neck/back soreness from the wreck is much improved, at least temporarily. (For those worrying, I've already seen my chiropractor, and there's no lasting damage, just the equivalent of a sharp muscle pull.) They say I'd get better at the brain-relaxing with another float or two. Overall, not life-changing, but highly recommended. [emoji106]

I've wanted to do that, like, forever. Literally since I saw Altered States the first time.

Today was my last day in my current team - I have tomorrow booked as a holiday, and Monday I start my 4 week training for the specialist team.

This makes me both happy and a little sad. Probably should have gone in the bitter sweet thread - but hey ho :P

What is making me happy is the wonderful card and giant bunch of flowers my team gave me at our comms meeting today. I was really touched. Nikki said not to read the card til later - she meant not til I'd gone home, but I read it a little later in the afternoon - awwww, the messages were so lovely. I could honestly have just sat and sobbed.

An awesome group of people, and an awesome team leader. Am going to miss working side by side with them - though as I am not moving very far away I will still see them in passing, and we can hook up for lunches or after work drinks as and when our shifts converge.

I wish you the best of luck, my friend!

Thank you :)

For the last couple of weeks my 1992 VW Passat has been less than cooperative when I need to select second gear.
All manner of 'discouraging words' have been heard on such occasions.
I asked a mate, who is a mechanic and does all my repairs and servicing, to have a look.
He needed to go and collect a car for his next job so drove mine there to get an idea of the problem.
On return he removed the moulding around the gear lever and spotted a circlip which had removed itself from a spindle resulting in excessive lateral play.
A quick reinstatement of the clip and all is well!

Nothing nastier than excessive lateral play! Lovely quick and cheap fix, though!

'It wobbled about a bit' doesn't really have the same gravitas! ;)

Edit:

That's the best bit. It didn't cost me a brass farthing!

Payback for Normandy, Battle of Britain, etc.

:):):)

Considering its age, the car isn't doing too badly, although when something minor is amiss I do wonder if it's a precursor to a catastrophic failure.
If today's problem had been say, a major gearbox or clutch problem, I'd have had to give serious consideration to replacing the vehicle.
It's only done 71,000 miles so, in terms of its age, that's nothing.
Given that I do one grocery shopping trip a week, and the usual litany of hospital and Doc's appointments for Dad, it is only chalking up a total of about a thousand miles a year.
That's why I'm attempting to keep it going. There's no point in shelling out vast sums of money for a new, or newish, car and watching it depreciate by the day on the drive.
Anticipating the worst for this morning, I had a look at the VW website last night and prices for the current version of the Passat Estate are well north of £20,000!* :eek:
That's not a road I wish to drive down if it can be avoided.

*$27,000

[aside]

Years ago, a friend of mine in Seattle encountered a chair on the curb near his apartment. The chair had a sign on it: "Take me. I wobble."

My friend took the sign (but not the chair) and displayed it on the front of his refrigerator.

I think of that "Take me. I wobble." sign often. I should wear it on my back at all times.

:D

[/aside]

I posted it on youtuber but it went viral so now there's famine in Ireland......

Printing , matting and framing photographs for a group exhibition. I belong to the New England Large Format Photography Collective and we are having our first museum exhibit in June. It's a big deal for us, having had gallery shows previously but nothing on this scale. The nuseum is even using one of my images for their "Upcoming Exhibitions" web page. I'm so chuffed.

oh hai nowhereman! Where ya been?

Is that at Lyman Allyn?

Congratulations! Please link to the page when it's up, if you don't mind sharing that with us, I'd love to see.

Dittoes.

It's Lil' Griff's GraduBirthday weekend! Now I am old. Was given a senior coffee at McD's this week... should I be pleased about the savings?