OMG It just dawned on me: the reason that mom obviously upheld the 100 ° or puking standard is obviously because she finds last minute schedule changes as stressful as I do. She was not actually trying to impart a life lesson about being tough, or something. She had a daily schedule and goddamnit she was going to stick to it because it's stressful to disrupt it. Of course because that's exactly how I feel.
100° or puking is the day care standard for sending the kid home, innit? I mean, I know here inn.
Here it's: two loose stools, any sort of rash or red eye, or 100° or puking. All of which is reasonable but god the first three have been the cause of a lot of unnecessary check-ups.
Anyway, yes, the standard is reasonable but I know plenty of people who would give their kid an occasional lazy day, or would hold a standard because they thought their kid was faking. My insight was into my mother's motives - don't disrupt my plans - which is the exact same as mine.
The last word of 2 should have been "iit". Oh well.
I usually don't cancel trips because plane tickets are usually already purchased and I don't want to throw away the money. Actually, I don't even know what the policy on this is; I assume I can't get reimbursed for a work trip that I cancel, since they always demand so much evidence that I actually went before they'll give me money. Still, it seems ridiculous that if I pay $1000 out of my own pocket for airfare for a work trip and then get sick, I have to lose the money myself on top of being sick. So maybe the policy is more reasonable and no one ever told me about it.
Perfect attendance awards are so stupid. I used to be really reluctant to miss school because I would lose the award, but my parents would wisely make me stay home when I was sick.
I don't know why it took me so long to learn that skipping "mandatory" things is wonderful and should be done whenever possible.
I have flown with, simultaneously, untreated broken bones and a Trevi-fountain-esque case of food poisoning, but that was the only way to get home. It wasn't fun.
Blood, vomit and mucus are weakness leaving the body!
7.2 is so true, and so hard for me to implement.
I let my kids stay off school for fairly flimsy reasons, and dd2 in particular takes "mental health days" as needed (about one a month last school year, only one so far since this September).
Personally ... Have never had to cancel a serious trip, but generally I just weigh up whether I will feel worse struggling to do whatever, or missing it. It's usually pretty clear.
as opposed to delaying driving somewhere for a day
Once, I was planning to drive from Ohio to Nebraska. I woke feeling bad, but drove anyway. I made it as far a Rockport before I couldn't go any further. I got a hotel room, puked floridly, slept for 16 hours, and woke feeling great. I should have done all that before I left. To this day, I feel an entirely undeserved animus toward the Quad Cities.
1 I was a sickly kid with high fast spiking fevers every couple months. My parents quickly adopted a policy that I had to be fever free for a full day before they'd let me go back to school because otherwise there was a better than even chance I'd relapse. On the other hand they'd leave me at home alone sick starting around age seven so it wasn't that much of an inconvenience. One of them, generally my dad, would make sure to come home for a long lunch and that was it.
The fever thingie lasted well into my twenties. I remember the first time a girlfriend encountered one. She completely panicked when she woke up in the middle of the night with me shaking and burning. I tried to reassure her that it was no biggie, just a 103 or so, but she was one of those bizarre people who didn't get fevers so thought that going from perfectly healthy to that in a few hours meant something was wrong.
How sick do you have to be before you'll cancel a trip?
Seriously? Sick enough that I know, know deep down in my soul, that going through with the trip will make me a miserable person. I'm not much for martyrdom or heroic measures. If I don't want to do it, I won't do it.
I just did a car repair with aluminum-foil tape. Because drywall screws aren't appropriate for plastic.
6: Apparently you can get a refund if you're too sick to fly, which I wouldn't have expected. Just an hour or so ago I cancelled a flight for the first time in as long as I can remember, because I was tired of waiting on weather delays and it didn't look like I could get where I needed to be in time. Wasn't expecting a refund (and didn't particularly care because I wasn't paying), but the gate agent told me I could get one for sufficiently plan-wrecking weather delays; and on the refund request web page there were options for uploading a doctor's note if your refund was for illness.
I can only recall canceling one trip due to sickness, but I wasn't actually sick. It was a bizarre episode of anxiety about meeting new people, during a time when I was anxious about a lot of things for no good reason. I consider that a big mistake but then who knows how the trip would have gone.
15: Which airline? I thought the best you could hope for would be that they would let you reschedule the flight for a $200 fee or something.
17: It was United, and given how badly they suck I'd have to imagine other airlines' policies can't be much worse. The gate agent told me I'd get a full refund, the website implied there would be a $50 processing fee or something, which I was not willing to sit through the 45 minute phone queue (after squandering 4 hours at the airport already) to figure out for sure.
That seems like the kind of thing they could be convinced to do even if it's not their policy. "Ok, I'll get on the plane, but I hope you're ready to be liable for all the other people that are violently puking within a couple days. I'll be sure to tell everyone on the plane that you gave me no choice but to fly."
"The life of everyone on board depends upon just one thing: finding someone back there who can not only fly this plane, but who didn't have fish for dinner sit next to the sick guy."
It was a bizarre episode of anxiety about meeting new people, during a time when I was anxious about a lot of things for no good reason.
Was this last Memorial Day weekend???
Last weekend I was supposed to got to Boston for an annual reunionish dinner. I felt lousy the day before and still felt lousy that morning. But I hauled my butt to Dulles and checked in. I boarded the plane and a few minutes after departure time they announced a twenty minute delay because of a mechanical issue. After that they had feedback from the mechanic who said it was either a new plane or a new part. The flight crew wasn't sure which. But at least another half hour delay. Then they let people off the plane. Then they told everyone to get off. Meanwhile I am texting my friends back home and still feeling meh.
So I sit there at the gate and decide to hell with it. I am probably not going to make it in time anyway. I called Uni/ted's reservation number and say I want to cancel the trip because I feel lousy and because the delay meant that I would probably not make it to Boston in time. I fully expected to get back only a fraction of what I paid. Much to my surprise I got a complete refund. They also sent me an email for a choice of vouchers. (They knew I had cancelled, so I figured they knew what they were doing. I took it.) (The flight ended up being delayed nearly four hours and they did end up getting another plane.)
This is the first time I have ever cancelled a trip. I think that if it hadn't been just up Saturday and back Sunday, I'd have stuck it out and not cancelled.
I will say that the Uni/ted cabin crew, cockpit crew, and gate crew were all quite good at communicating information as it developed (and it was a situation where things kept changing). I was pleasantly surprised.
21: Maybe it's all the time, but the only cancelled trip I'm remembering right now was to an unfogged meet-up in New York many years ago. I told Becks I was sick. Sorry Becks (if any of you is Becks).
I did also cancel a more recent unfogged trip, but it wasn't due to sickness or fake-sickness.
23: Hey, I remember that! We missed you.
sorry teo, I was a big douche and missed out on fun.
I always want to cancel trips no matter what because travel is dumb. I have to repeatedly talk myself out of canceling any trip.
I think I've just about convinced myself to cancel a trip that was coming up in a couple of weeks. Maybe I'll schedule the removal of the hole in my mouth for that week.
You need that hole to eat and breathe.
No, apparently there's another hole that shouldn't be there. The oral surgeon wants to remove it, presumably leaving behind a hole of the second order, the hole where a hole used to be.
I'm not entirely sure what that means.
Something like that. It all started with this.
A junior colleague came to me for advice on the following: he'd been invited to give a talk, and he was super dreading the prospect. I was like, "Hell no don't give that talk! You'll be full of anxiety for the next six months!" He was so relieved. (He is not hurting his tenure prospects by turning it down.)
It must be nice to have tenure prospects.
Where were you to give me that advice three days ago, Heebie?
39: I don't know if I could give you that advice in good faith. Yay grad school?
38: I'm pretty sure there is tenure waiting for you at Heebie U, should you ever become passionate about teaching intro to phys.
Nooo, Berkeley wants essear. There is an endowed chair in Veronica Mars studies, I hear.
I would like tenure, but I have no teaching experience.
I would like tonsure, but I'm going to wait until my hairline recedes a bit more.
44: And if you change your mind, nowadays it's often as easy as outpatient surgery to get tonsures removed.
I have to get up at 4 tomorrow morning in order to drag my ass to NYC for the week. I'm sitting here resenting it to the point that I'm having trouble enjoying my last few hours with my wife and kids. (Hence here I am.)
Anyway, TKM expressed interest in meeting up (yay!). Anybody else up for something in Midtown, preferably after 6:30 or so? I think Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday will all work.
Wednesday definitely works. JM should be in as well.
I'm a definite maybe -- this week is going to be dicey at work, but I might not have to work late Wednesday. On location -- I don't have a favored bar in Midtown, but the hotel you're staying in must have one, which will probably be overpriced but at least convenient.
46.1: I sympathize. Same wakeup call for me but no long drive.
I always want to cancel trips no matter what because travel is dumb.
This is the wrongest thing that has ever been posted here.
Doesn't the answer to this question depend greatly on the answer to the question "how much do I want to go on this trip, anyway?"?
Oh, we haven't had the travel conversation then. Just as well. It finds me at my most unbearable.
My parents had a checklist of symptoms, some combo of which allowed you to stay home. It was issued by the school. If we told my mother we were too sick to go to school, she would run down the checklist. Usually we were ruled healthy enough to go. By third grade, I had gotten into wanting the perfect attendance award (trophy! pizza party!) more than wanting to miss school, so I would actively hide sick symptoms. Once my grandparents threatened that if I coughed one more time they'd keep me home, so I spent a whole morning suppressing a cough, which is a very uncomfortable thing to do, if you've tried it. I agree that perfect attendance awards are stupid and counterproductive to everyone involved.
By 6th grade my father had died and my mother had gone to work and decided she was too busy to parent, so being sick and missing school just kind of sucked since we were left to fend for ourselves.* In high school I have memories of lying in my unheated bedroom with the flu, shivering and hungry, but too miserable feeling to properly take care of myself.**
But anyways, I have never cancelled a flight due to illness, but I have read online that you do have refund rights. Plus lots of CCs provide travel insurance which covers illness, so you might be able to get refunds for hotel rooms and other stuff if you reserved them with a CC.
*we were allowed to stay home alone by my mother in middle school, but not old enough to legally leave school by myself. I remember in 8th grade I had horrible menstrual cramps and had to leave school early. My mother was working and my older brother had to get me after high school, which let out an hour earlier than middle school. The last thing a 13 year old wants to do is tell her 17 year old brother she has her period, so I was totally mortified my brother had to get me. I think I told him I had food poisoning.
**It's amazing how through selective story telling one can make one's rather privileged upbringing sound Dickensian. I suppose it was unusual in that my mother really dropped the parenting schtick almost cold turkey when I hit middle school. There were lots of reasons that made sense, but it was kind of abrupt and not very in line with standard UMC parenting practices.
My parents were really gung-ho about carrying out plans come what may, and I was sent to school while quite ill (I think 100 degrees or puking would have done the trick, but it was never formalised. Then I had a tumour which was misdiagnosed and survived by the skin of my teeth, and after that I could cancel anything I wanted to without even sneezing. But I was a kid, I usually wanted to crack on.
Oh, we haven't had the travel conversation then. Just as well. It finds me at my most unbearable.
There's a post somewhere in the archives about how I don't like visiting new places for the sake of seeing them, but that's slightly different. One of the (many) reasons was that I preferred using vacation to visit friends and family, which I love doing. So I'm not quite as unbearable as you.
I tend to find travel sucks, too, unless I am doing it on my own. Properly planned, on my own, it's just a process of being contained in once place for a while [plane, train] where I get to read books.
I like going to new places, sight-seeing or just wandering about indulging in flânerie. But the process of getting from A-to-B is always a pain in the arse. My wife is a very casual traveller. She'll invest a load of time in packing properly, and then just 'chill'.
'Oh we'll make it on time, stop nagging.'
While I rattle about in a state of nervous anxiety. She's somehow come to believe that she's been proved right as we've never missed a plane, when the fact is, without me chivvying, we'd have missed almost every one.
Oh man, both Jammies and I are neurotic about the actual flying or getting-there part, and it tends to compound. I find it stressful to be carrying lots of stuff, and he finds it stressful not to have items in case of every conceivable emergency. Plus there are small children.
Here is how we cope. Say our flight is at noon. Ten days out, we'll say, "So, we want to be at the airport by 10:30 am. Leave from the house at 10?" "Okay.""Okay."
Five days out, "What did we say, leave the house by 9, to leave a buffer?" "Yes, I think so." "Okay." "Okay."
Two days out, "So it was leave at 8, so that we'll have plenty of time?" "Yes" "Yes"
"So we should set our alarm for 6 so that we can leave the house at 7?" Yes, yes.
"Oh look, we're at our gate two hours early. You know, that wasn't as stressful as it might have been."
I find it stressful to be carrying lots of stuff, and he finds it stressful not to have items in case of every conceivable emergency.
You are so right and he is so wrong.
Also, I am, as a matter of fact, staying home with one sick Pokey today.
59 is me. My motto comes from the Victorian guy who said, "The only way to be sure to catch a train is to miss the one before it."
Topically, kind of, I feel sick today but I went to work.
I don't think I'm neurotic, but I am like ttaM. We've run through the airport in socks, just made final boarding call, and rarely have time to grab a snack or drink. I spend the entire time panicking but trying to remain pleasant (probably unsuccessfully).
-Posted from my gate at SFO, where I arrived 20 min before boarding, enough time to grab a drink and snack.
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A former student has a status update today about how her boyfriend shot a deer and said "you're going to be soooo proud of me!"
She assumed he was going to go into great detail about how big the buck was, but instead he said "I donated the deer to help feed hungry families!"
She was in fact very proud of them, and semi-knowing them, I think he was probably being incredibly generous and charitable.
But...how does that work? Where do you take a dead deer for hungry people? I'm so confused.
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con'td: it seemed to have happened immediately after hunting. As in, he shot the deer and donated it in the same afternoon. So I presume, uncleaned and...? I am so confused.
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I think donations go through places that process the meat. The processing places work with food banks and the processed venison is handled like any other kind of meat.
Ah, that makes sense. I just couldn't shake the image that he was dropping a deer off at Goodwill or something.
You can only fit small game into those bins.
Donating deer to food banks has a website in PA. We got a lot of deer.
I just couldn't shake the image that he was dropping a deer off at Goodwill or something
"I'm gonna pop some stags..."
Here it is legal inside city limits, where I live, to hunt deer with a bow and arrow. Or crossbow or whatever people do when they can't hunt with a gun because their neighbors are ten feet away.
I don't think it is legal to hunt deer in this state with a modern rifle. You have to use a shotgun with a slug (most common), a bow, or a muzzle loader.
74: I knew you were a fraud.
In fact Allegheny, like a few other urban counties has an extra rifle season. (Killing them via other implements has a longer season, by automobile is year round.)
DEER, ANTLERLESS EXTENDED REGULAR FIREARMS: (Allegheny, Bucks, Chester, Delaware, Montgomery and Philadelphia counties): Dec. 26 -Jan. 25. One antlerless deer with each required antlerless license.
Maybe that was Ohio where you had to use slugs? I've never killed a deer and the closest I ever came was with my car.
It was indeed Ohio that makes you use slugs.
(Killing them via other implements has a longer season, by automobile is year round.)
Stupid cyclists.
Let's turn this into a bicycle thread.
That's what I'm sayin'. Then we can turn heebie's bicycle thread into a deer thread.
In high school I was sick one day and missed a qualifying event for an annual competition trip, which in retrospect was probably a waste of time, but it bothered me immensely then; probably more the unfairness of missing out due to being ill on a regular school day, rather than on the date of the trip itself.
I went on about half of a pub crawl on Saturday. Sunday I felt a bit crappy, but decided it was just a bit of a hangover, applied my usual stimulant cocktail (sudafed and excedrin washed down with coffee), and went on with my day. Eventually I noticed that I was feeling unaccountably chilly, and after getting home from an outing with a bunch of other parents-of-similar-age-toddlers, threw up and developed a full-body ache and a fever. So! Not, or not just, a hangover.
Today I mostly feel better and went to work. My wife came down with it overnight, but also went to work, because stupid quasi-military public sector attendance policies. Kid seems unaffected so far.
For the deer thread. Or the scum thread, more correctly.
I have no knowledge of bars in midtown so someone else will have to figure something out but I'm up for Wed.
Up to Chopper, but I'm lobbying for the bar in whatever hotel he's staying in. Bars in midtown largely suck, so that'd at least settle it.
85: The Hilton offers a perfectly standard convention-hotel lobby bar, or the Minus5 Ice Bar.
Not that I'm certain to show, but good god do I not want to drink in a meat locker. Generic lobby bar all the way.
The image of hunting deer with slugs will stay with me.
"Faster, Grip! Faster, Fang! They're getting away!"
I think slugs are ambush hunters. You need enough of them that the deer sort of gets stuck in the slime.
You don't attach the slug to the tip of the arrow and then pull the deer in when the slug adheres to it?
Every time I hear the word 'slug' I think of apophallation. I learned of it here. Bastards.
They're persistence hunters, with an as yet unobserved killing method.
93: see, for example, the appallingly bad "Slugs" by Gelliant Gutfright Garth Marenghi Shaun Hutson.
If one hunted using snails, of course, the snails could shoot the deer with their Lurve Darts.
THE LOVE DART OF HELIX ASPERSA MULLER IS NOT A
GIFT OF CALCIUM
(write the surprisingly poetic Koene & Chase, 1997).
Apparently you can get a refund if you're too sick to fly
What?!?! I got sick on the first leg of a trip to New Orleans a couple years ago. By the time the plane touched down in Atlanta I was shivering and dizzy with fever. I paid fucking Delta $150 for the privilege of staying in Atlanta for the weekend and returning home in the exact same fucking seat I'd already paid for. The woman at the customer service desk repeatedly offered to call an ambulance for me, but stayed firm on the point that I would need to either get on my next flight, fork over $150, or find another way to get home.
If one hunted using snails, of course, the snails could shoot the deer with their Lurve Darts.
Speaking of, slug sex can be surprisingly beautiful, as David Attenborough has taught us.
Non-Hilton Midtown options: Jimmy's Corner (dive), the Russian Samovar (piano bar, infused vodkas), The Pony (craft beer), Rum House (fancy cocktails).
Snails can also be inspirational.
The Love Dart Of Helix Aspersa (Muller) Is Not A Gift Of Calcium
by
Kai Lung, B.Sc. (Zoology) (failed)
The love dart of Helix aspersa (Muller) is not a gift of calcium
Its practical contribution to the welfare of the snail in question is minimal
In most cases the snail does not even assimilate it -
Its true function is mysterious and possibly symbolic;
Mysterious, at least, to those who study the affairs of the snail world
If not to the snail itself.
The bower bird of the southern tropics will spend many energetic hours
Devising and constructing an elaborately ornamented enclosure
But this pavilion, when completed, will not serve to house the object of his affections -
She will merely admire it briefly before passing on
To a nest constructed along more functional and prosaic principles.
I, myself, an inept and presumptuous reciter of ill-conceived and unstructured verse,
Am doing so with no intention of thereby improving the lot of my beloved;
Her spiritual nature is already so refined
That the admixture of this poorly-formed and laughable creation would merely impoverish it and thereby the world which it had hitherto adorned;
And yet I hope that it will serve at least to turn her gaze in my direction.
There's a post somewhere in the archives about how I don't like visiting new places for the sake of seeing them, but that's slightly different.
This is some part of what I mean. See also this. And many other fine, in some instances assholic objections. And also some stuff Ttam said.
I guess there's a kind of travel I get sad about not being able to do/not doing very often, but it's maybe 5% of what I hear about from people who travel, travel being one of the main things people talk about.
I've written endlessly about it elsewhere, but for me travel, when I do it, is a real mix of pain and pleasure. My big trip in February to California because when am i ever going to go to California ha ha ha ha ha was wonderful and, at certain moments, awful. I've love a lot of trips I've taken but I can't think of one that didn't have some moment or hour of intense anxiety.
Thanks. I should have known that you'd have heard of Kai Lung...
I have never heard of Kai Lung but I like 101.
I read lots of Sayers and never noticed. I tend to skip poems.
It's not poetry, but a series of Edwardian comic novels/story collections set in imaginary China (sort of like the Gilbert and Sullivan Japan of the Mikado). If you can forgive the Orientalism, they're very funny. Harriet quotes them to Peter in Strong Poison.
(You're the soulless monster who doesn't like Wodehouse, though, right? You might not like them.)
I've love a lot of trips I've taken but I can't think of one that didn't have some moment or hour of intense anxiety.
Well yeah, but then again my regular life always has some moment or hour of intense anxiety. This way I at least get to experience that anxiety in a new and different place!
Old and familiar places are better for anxiety. There are people there you know, and your stuff is there, including your benzos.
Old and familiar places are better for anxiety. There are people there you know
I think maybe we've just zeroed in on the crucial difference between us.
You keep your benzos with strangers?
We can't go to my hotel bar. It's small and full of customers and my cow-orkers. I'd have to wear a suit. I am intrigued by this Pony bar of which you speak, Blandings. There are two locations--are we talking the Hell's Kitchen one?
Does the Pony serve anything other than beer?
I don't think you can bet on seating a group at Pony Bar unless you get there at, like, 5 or something. I can't even picture tables there. Maybe there are some but I've never seen them because they're obscured by all the people standing.
Oh, google has a new "see inside" feature for bars! There are tables along the wall, I see. I maintain that if you want to sit at them, you would need to arrive very early.
I hereby request an orange-titled post! (No, seriously, could we give this its own thread? We need to work out a location, and that may involve some arguing.)
Orange-titled posts are for closers.
But you can have a regular post.
Let's have at it then. (As much as I'd like to come I'm not sure I can make it as I'm under a crushing deadline but we'll see...carry on...)
I'm a...so not a closer. But a regular post would be fantastic, as I'm terrible at organizing things but insist on having a clear agenda.