Drain is gurgling again..
May. 24th, 2022 09:02 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shadowkatIt is in the kitchen sink. It does that. Once the super wondered about it, and I said, it just does that.
Work was productive but also headache inducing.
Me: So, management wants to know why you want to do a construction phase services option...
PM: Because estimating told us to.
Me: Estimating told you too?
PM: Yes, and we always do it. And we figured if we did what they wanted, we'd get a response quicker.
Me: You do realize you are running this project not estimating. Also you made more work for yourself and estimating in the long run, right?
PM: Ah, yes, that's true.
Me: Also the Construction Phase Services is somehow embedded in the cost of the Design...why is that? Do you want to exercise them together?
PM: Nah, we just want to exercise the design portion, but I guess they put them together - do you want me to ask them to separate them.
Me: Yes, otherwise you will be awarding them together...
PM: Oh.
This is the PM who refuses to wear a mask or get vaccinated.
The further I get in life, the more I wonder how other people have managed to survive this long.
Oh, AA called in sick today - didn't see him at all. Thank god. Not because I don't want to see AA, but because I don't want someone who is sick wandering about infecting me. I just got over a bout with COVID, I don't want to get sick again on top of it. Speaking of? The fatigue is completely gone now. So are the other ailments, such as the tightness in the chest, shortness of breath, feeling of being winded, residual cough, and overall brain fog. Felt so much better today - which was a good thing since I had to host and facilitate a qualification hearing over MS Teams. BYT Manager came in late and listened in. She didn't insert herself at all, so I figure she liked how I handled it.
**
Journeyed home without incident. Stopped off at the pharmacy to pick up some stuff most of which I probably don't need - such as Breyer's Natural Vanilla Ice Cream (which I've a weakness for - it's the only vanilla that I tend to like), Salsa, Nuts, Water, Kleenex, cheese sticks, hard boiled eggs, and ...remember when we could get fresh water from the tap without any worries?
Oh well, at any rate, came home. Took shower. Called mother back. Made dinner. Watched stupid soap opera - which I'm hate watching with mother at the moment (we'll see how long this lasts - mother and I don't hate watch well, we eventually get fed up and stop). Stupid soap opera (and it really is stupid at the moment - the writing is so bad that you can drive a truck through all the plot holes. And worse, it's boring. It had the worst sweeps of all the soaps - yes the soaps still do ratings sweeps) - but I digress.
It was interrupted at the end by the news announcing the Texas Elementary School Shooting, with 21 dead and counting. Some nitwit gun freak 18 year old armored himself up and took two assault rifles into an elementary school and killed a bunch of kids and teachers, after he shot his grandmother or his mother, I can't remember which.
Social media was agog with the information.
Mother: I don't remember any of this when I was a kid or you were kids -
Me: Well we didn't have our media back then -
Mother: No, they'd have reported it.
Me: It's the availability of guns. I wrote a book about it - in my first chapter I talk about how easy it is to get a gun and the type of damage a gun can do to the human body. But Americans romanticize guns.
Mother: No other country does this. I listened to the President speak at 8:30 pm and he was furious and fed up.
So am I. I'm also tired. A 48 year old investment banker was shot in the chest on the Q train on Sunday. Last week a gunman, a young man, shot up a grocery store in upstate New York. Today, over 21 people, most of them children, were shot and killed in a Texas Elementary School.
Americans unlike other countries - romanticize guns. We have a "gun" culture in the US, it is why we have always made the Most Dangerous Countries in the World List.
I remember Ben Browder (John Crichton) of Farscape talking about it in a commentary - how in Australia, they don't have guns. And see them as major weapons and are scared of them, while in the US they are common place. I've seen guns on the hips of cops on city streets. I've seen people with assault rifles and camouflage at Atlantic Avenue Terminal Station.
As a child, my mother had a cap gun which she gave my brother one Christmas, and it disappeared not long after - since my father hated guns and instilled that hatred for them in my mother (who hailed from the Midwest and whose father owned a gun). My father was in the service and had a healthy respect of them, and saw them for what they were weapons. He despised them.
But alas, Americans love their guns. We treat them as toys to play with on shooting ranges, or hunt with. And they are readily available on our city streets.
The NRA (National Rifle Association) funds and sponsors boy scout outings at shooting ranges, and awards boys who shoot well. It has a strong and active lobby in the US Congress and Senate, and that is the reason we do not have strong gun laws. It blocks them.
There are actually people out there who think guns are no different than motor vehicles.
Gun Lover: Well, cars kill people too. More people have died in car accidents than by a gun, should we get rid of cars?
ME: You do realize there is a huge difference between the two, right? A motor vehicle or car is made to transport an individual. It's main purpose is transportation. It's not created to be a weapon. A gun, on the other hand, has only one purpose - to kill things. It's a weapon.
Gun Lover: That's not true. You can shoot trees, cans, or targets.
Me: So you have something against trees? You don't see them as a living thing...seriously.
Gun Lover: No, my point is that it can just be target practice -
Me: It's destroying something. The target practice is in order to learn how to shoot and kill living things. It's only purpose is a weapon.
Gun Lover: Guns don't kill, people do.
Me: Except Guns are created by people to kill.
But the poor little gun lovers can't give up their toys. I wish their guns would all misfire and they'd shoot their heads off.
My other favorite argument?
D: If we didn't have guns, we'd just use something else.
ME: Yes, but we would eliminate the deaths by the guns.
D: They'd use knives. We'd still have those.
Me: Knives can't take out ten people at once like an assault rifle can. You can get away from a knife.
Our media worships guns. Books do. Movies do. Television does.
This past year, Alec Baldwin accidentally shot and killed a director of cinematography, a rising young star, with a prop gun. A PROP GUN. He also injured two other people. Brandon Lee, son of Bruce Lee, died on the set of the Crow back in the 1990s because of a misfired prop gun.
Do you have any idea how many kids are killed from misfired weapons or weapons in the home?
Guns are evil. They should all be collected and melted into scrap metal and repurposed to be used to build a school.
And all gun manufacturers and members of the NRA should be fined for every single person who was shot this year.
Sorry. Not Sorry. I hate guns.
***
New book is more entertaining, and I actually look forward to reading it, as opposed to zoning out during it. It also sparks my own imagination and ideas. This is Stitch in Time by Kelley Armstrong, who is a good writer. The dialogue is distinctive, not everyone sounds the same, and it furthers characterization and story. Also the description is informative and interesting. There's more of a precision of language and deftness of technique.
My only quibble? Is the time travel bit - I don't quite buy it. But we've already covered my issues with Time Travel. It is also a ghost story, and quite scary in places. Last night's chapter spooked me. It's an interesting novel, a romance wrapped around a ghost story, a time travel story, and a mystery.
The protagonist, Bronwyn, inherits her Aunt Judith's summer home, Thorn Manor. When she was younger she visited the summer home - that is until one summer when her mother put her in a hospital for a nervous breakdown and they never returned, until now - her mother long dead from cancer, Bronwyn recently widowed, and her Aunt demised as well. There's stitch of time in the manor - where Bronwyn and other items can jump back and forth to different periods in time - going back at least a century, but no more. So as a young girl she visited with a young boy her own age and kind of grew up with him over the summers until she was 15. And when she returns, one of his kitten's slips through the stitch in time to Browyn's time, the 21st Century. There's also quite a few ghosts haunting the manor, but in Bronwyn's time not his, or so it appears.
The story takes place on the moors in Yorkshire. Brownyn is Canadian, and hails from Toronto.
Work was productive but also headache inducing.
Me: So, management wants to know why you want to do a construction phase services option...
PM: Because estimating told us to.
Me: Estimating told you too?
PM: Yes, and we always do it. And we figured if we did what they wanted, we'd get a response quicker.
Me: You do realize you are running this project not estimating. Also you made more work for yourself and estimating in the long run, right?
PM: Ah, yes, that's true.
Me: Also the Construction Phase Services is somehow embedded in the cost of the Design...why is that? Do you want to exercise them together?
PM: Nah, we just want to exercise the design portion, but I guess they put them together - do you want me to ask them to separate them.
Me: Yes, otherwise you will be awarding them together...
PM: Oh.
This is the PM who refuses to wear a mask or get vaccinated.
The further I get in life, the more I wonder how other people have managed to survive this long.
Oh, AA called in sick today - didn't see him at all. Thank god. Not because I don't want to see AA, but because I don't want someone who is sick wandering about infecting me. I just got over a bout with COVID, I don't want to get sick again on top of it. Speaking of? The fatigue is completely gone now. So are the other ailments, such as the tightness in the chest, shortness of breath, feeling of being winded, residual cough, and overall brain fog. Felt so much better today - which was a good thing since I had to host and facilitate a qualification hearing over MS Teams. BYT Manager came in late and listened in. She didn't insert herself at all, so I figure she liked how I handled it.
**
Journeyed home without incident. Stopped off at the pharmacy to pick up some stuff most of which I probably don't need - such as Breyer's Natural Vanilla Ice Cream (which I've a weakness for - it's the only vanilla that I tend to like), Salsa, Nuts, Water, Kleenex, cheese sticks, hard boiled eggs, and ...remember when we could get fresh water from the tap without any worries?
Oh well, at any rate, came home. Took shower. Called mother back. Made dinner. Watched stupid soap opera - which I'm hate watching with mother at the moment (we'll see how long this lasts - mother and I don't hate watch well, we eventually get fed up and stop). Stupid soap opera (and it really is stupid at the moment - the writing is so bad that you can drive a truck through all the plot holes. And worse, it's boring. It had the worst sweeps of all the soaps - yes the soaps still do ratings sweeps) - but I digress.
It was interrupted at the end by the news announcing the Texas Elementary School Shooting, with 21 dead and counting. Some nitwit gun freak 18 year old armored himself up and took two assault rifles into an elementary school and killed a bunch of kids and teachers, after he shot his grandmother or his mother, I can't remember which.
Social media was agog with the information.
Mother: I don't remember any of this when I was a kid or you were kids -
Me: Well we didn't have our media back then -
Mother: No, they'd have reported it.
Me: It's the availability of guns. I wrote a book about it - in my first chapter I talk about how easy it is to get a gun and the type of damage a gun can do to the human body. But Americans romanticize guns.
Mother: No other country does this. I listened to the President speak at 8:30 pm and he was furious and fed up.
So am I. I'm also tired. A 48 year old investment banker was shot in the chest on the Q train on Sunday. Last week a gunman, a young man, shot up a grocery store in upstate New York. Today, over 21 people, most of them children, were shot and killed in a Texas Elementary School.
Americans unlike other countries - romanticize guns. We have a "gun" culture in the US, it is why we have always made the Most Dangerous Countries in the World List.
I remember Ben Browder (John Crichton) of Farscape talking about it in a commentary - how in Australia, they don't have guns. And see them as major weapons and are scared of them, while in the US they are common place. I've seen guns on the hips of cops on city streets. I've seen people with assault rifles and camouflage at Atlantic Avenue Terminal Station.
As a child, my mother had a cap gun which she gave my brother one Christmas, and it disappeared not long after - since my father hated guns and instilled that hatred for them in my mother (who hailed from the Midwest and whose father owned a gun). My father was in the service and had a healthy respect of them, and saw them for what they were weapons. He despised them.
But alas, Americans love their guns. We treat them as toys to play with on shooting ranges, or hunt with. And they are readily available on our city streets.
The NRA (National Rifle Association) funds and sponsors boy scout outings at shooting ranges, and awards boys who shoot well. It has a strong and active lobby in the US Congress and Senate, and that is the reason we do not have strong gun laws. It blocks them.
There are actually people out there who think guns are no different than motor vehicles.
Gun Lover: Well, cars kill people too. More people have died in car accidents than by a gun, should we get rid of cars?
ME: You do realize there is a huge difference between the two, right? A motor vehicle or car is made to transport an individual. It's main purpose is transportation. It's not created to be a weapon. A gun, on the other hand, has only one purpose - to kill things. It's a weapon.
Gun Lover: That's not true. You can shoot trees, cans, or targets.
Me: So you have something against trees? You don't see them as a living thing...seriously.
Gun Lover: No, my point is that it can just be target practice -
Me: It's destroying something. The target practice is in order to learn how to shoot and kill living things. It's only purpose is a weapon.
Gun Lover: Guns don't kill, people do.
Me: Except Guns are created by people to kill.
But the poor little gun lovers can't give up their toys. I wish their guns would all misfire and they'd shoot their heads off.
My other favorite argument?
D: If we didn't have guns, we'd just use something else.
ME: Yes, but we would eliminate the deaths by the guns.
D: They'd use knives. We'd still have those.
Me: Knives can't take out ten people at once like an assault rifle can. You can get away from a knife.
Our media worships guns. Books do. Movies do. Television does.
This past year, Alec Baldwin accidentally shot and killed a director of cinematography, a rising young star, with a prop gun. A PROP GUN. He also injured two other people. Brandon Lee, son of Bruce Lee, died on the set of the Crow back in the 1990s because of a misfired prop gun.
Do you have any idea how many kids are killed from misfired weapons or weapons in the home?
Guns are evil. They should all be collected and melted into scrap metal and repurposed to be used to build a school.
And all gun manufacturers and members of the NRA should be fined for every single person who was shot this year.
Sorry. Not Sorry. I hate guns.
***
New book is more entertaining, and I actually look forward to reading it, as opposed to zoning out during it. It also sparks my own imagination and ideas. This is Stitch in Time by Kelley Armstrong, who is a good writer. The dialogue is distinctive, not everyone sounds the same, and it furthers characterization and story. Also the description is informative and interesting. There's more of a precision of language and deftness of technique.
My only quibble? Is the time travel bit - I don't quite buy it. But we've already covered my issues with Time Travel. It is also a ghost story, and quite scary in places. Last night's chapter spooked me. It's an interesting novel, a romance wrapped around a ghost story, a time travel story, and a mystery.
The protagonist, Bronwyn, inherits her Aunt Judith's summer home, Thorn Manor. When she was younger she visited the summer home - that is until one summer when her mother put her in a hospital for a nervous breakdown and they never returned, until now - her mother long dead from cancer, Bronwyn recently widowed, and her Aunt demised as well. There's stitch of time in the manor - where Bronwyn and other items can jump back and forth to different periods in time - going back at least a century, but no more. So as a young girl she visited with a young boy her own age and kind of grew up with him over the summers until she was 15. And when she returns, one of his kitten's slips through the stitch in time to Browyn's time, the 21st Century. There's also quite a few ghosts haunting the manor, but in Bronwyn's time not his, or so it appears.
The story takes place on the moors in Yorkshire. Brownyn is Canadian, and hails from Toronto.
no subject
Date: 2022-05-25 04:12 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-05-27 12:57 am (UTC)The second amendment came about because of slavery - they wanted to put in a clause where they could build a militia or bear arms to keep their slaves from running away or being taken from them. Also, unlike Canada, the US fought a revolutionary war and a Civil war. We have a bloodier background.
Add to that the American West - or the Wild West, where we had gunfighters, which Canada really doesn't have in its history or it hasn't romanticized them in its media. No one has. If you go abroad - or if you did in the 20th Century - most Europeans thought of the American Cowboy and pistols = America.
no subject
Date: 2022-05-25 07:51 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-05-27 12:30 am (UTC)