In my defense, my town was so small we didn't even have an SAT prep course.
Comparisons (of SAT scores) are odious.
And yes about being comfortable with the isolation. I naturally tend toward avoiding social interaction, and marriage and kids made it easy to not get out much. Since I got divorced, I have been really straining myself to be social because with the kids in college, living alone meant no social interaction at all which isn't good for anyone, even if it feels natural.
And now this has been a year-long interruption in all my efforts. Being isolated with Newt hasn't been unpleasant at all, he's a good kid. But getting myself back up out of the house again will be brutal.
You know, mostly I think I'm fairly good about not being offhandedly dismissive about non-coastal America. This breaks down completely with the ACT. I don't believe it's a real thing and you can't make me pretend it's important.
It allows much less odious comparison because there's only like six scores that are in the range for competitive schools.
More topically, my wife's uncles both have covid now. One at home and barely able to climb stairs. The other is on a ventilator.
One of my kids did much better on the ACT than the SAT based on standard conversion models. Found it interesting. From a brief perusal of the two at the time it appeared that the ACT had more acadmeic content-specific stuff rather than the SAT. I may have taken both back in the day, but I really cannot remember.
I naturally tend toward avoiding social interaction
Solidarity, sister.
3, 9: Get a virtual room you two.
Missed the poll.
If I had to summarize my state, I've not been impacted materially; my job and housing have been stable. Working and living in isolation for a year has taken a serious mental toll on me and I feel like an asshole for even mentioning it, given others' much more serious and immediate issues.
In many ways it is fine - I do better alone than most. Lack of interest in long-term-partnering was my biggest mistake in pre-plague planning.
But 1460 pre- or post recentering? Pampered kids* needed a boost to their scores.
*Anyone under 40 at this point.
11: Surely you mean two widely separated rooms? At which point, done!
I think my dad (67) is planning to refuse the vaccine, which may be moot because it's not like it's possible for my vaccine-desiring mom (65) to get an appointment.
Got my vaccine Saturday! Very tired that afternoon, and a sore spot around the injection spot, so I know it's a real vaccine.
Organ transplant recipients get into group 1A in my state. Organ donors do not, causing some marital tension in this household. Six weeks from Saturday I will get a professional haircut, and we may possibly permit the teenager to go to school if it's open. No other lifestyle changes anticipated.
It turns out my wife isn't bad at cutting hair. It just takes forever.
13: It was pre-recentering, and the only reason I remember any of this is that I taught test prep for years afterward.
"No, I got them all cut. One per day."
Thanks for putting this all together, Minivet!
I had a hard time figuring out how to answer the serious economic impact; my job and my income has not been impacted at all because I can do my job from home, but of course our family business has been closed for months and months and I am the lesser wage earner in our marriage. We are getting by ok because of government programs (grants and the furlough scheme) and the business was in a decent position to weather the closures on top of those, as there are no rents to pay as the building is theirs and paid off a long time ago. All employees have been retained, albeit at lower wages, which is great. But, it's been a lot of work to get all the help, negotiate payments, navigate reopening and closing and reopening and closing (and try to do it all safely!), and of course the business is posting a major loss for 2020.
I don't want an entire thread on this stupid topic, but can I survey you commenters to see if anyone else has had a clutter explosion since the pandemic began? Or have some of you go-getters decluttered your houses in between running 7-minute miles and picking up new virtual consultanting gigs? I'm just going to leave that (most conspicuous) non-word where it is because removing the extra letters adds intolerably to my mental load.
You pick it up, look at it, and say the magic words ("This brings me joy"). Then it's not clutter.
I haven't had an explosion, but my clutter was always bad and it's only gotten worse.
I've been pretty stable, clutter-wise. I seem to have gotten worse at tidying around another adult in the household, so my apartment is a wreck and will be until Newt returns to his eventual home in the Frozen North. But there's not more stuff, just more mess.
(This one hits a little too close to home: I have grown far too comfortable with the isolation.)
I sure haven't. I think of myself as an introvert but this year has pushed the limits of that. I miss happy hours with co-workers and backyard gatherings at the neighbors'.
21: If feels that way. It's mostly kid-related. We've got two or three big appliances for her and dozens of smaller toys and books here and there, in hopes of keeping her busy better and climbing on things that aren't me.
Our house is getting very full. First we brought two people home to work, then we had to use a bunch of space to store more food and paper products, then we had to chat
Stupid phone.
Clear space for exercise, then we had a minor water issue with part of the basement.
We started a thing back when everyone was disinfecting packages before bringing them into the house. Rather than wipe down things that are non-perishable and hard to clean, we'd let them age into cleanliness in a box in the front hall. It's still there.
Thank you for putting this together, Minivet. I've been surprised at how many friends are getting vaccinated. A lot are medical professionals, but the medical researchers are surprising me. A friend is holding a Superb Owl party where the overwhelming majority of attendees will be vaccinated. My workplace is hoping to coordinate on site vaccinations, but it's not going as fast as I'd hope. At the rate we're going, most of my friends and family (including in-laws) will be vaccinated before I am, which is not at all what I would have guessed!
We've been very lucky. We like each other. We have a house big enough for both of us and didn't lose our jobs. We had some nice little home projects to work on. For most of my adult life, I saw family once a year, so this feels a bit like a reversion to normal. We missed a big-for-us, exciting vacation two weeks ago. We miss travel a lot. I miss my far-flung friends. I miss the nieces and nephews.
One kid is doing a bunch of online art classes and her room is an explosion of art supplies and projects in various states. Literally can't walk in the room without stepping on stuff.
Without walking on star stuff.
Only 29% of you are friends with AWB?? Things sure have changed around here.
4: ACT scores probably won't do much to get LB back out of the house again.
32: I'm having trouble remembering things that happened the past summer, let alone earlier. It's been a lot lately.
Oh bummer, I missed the survey too. All my responses would have to be thrown out though.
-Lost about 50 lbs. since start of pandemic
-Significantly paid down my credit card debt
-Job is very stable and secure, and I had a very positive interview for a new position yesterday.
-House cleanliness is not 100%, but it's much cleaner, and I've had the chance to do a bunch of nagging house projects
And, most lucky of all, nobody I know has died directly from the Covid. Lots of friends and relatives infected, incl. of course my sister who was already sick, but no deaths and only a couple of more serious cases
So, nu, it could always be worse, we could have a goat.
I had a co-worker ask me where to buy goat meat, which I knew the answer to even thought I've never bought any.
Those are reasons not to keep goats. Getting a goat is a positive, you can sell or eat it.
35: I believe Natilo was referencing a famous piece of Jewish humor/wisdom.
https://www.aish.com/j/j/51477447.html
As usual I don't know if you all are just pretending not to know this.
32: Ok, I'll ask -- what does this mean?
43: She and her partner had covid back in March/April, during the peak of the New York outbreak, and she wrote about it on FB.
Those are reasons not to keep goats. Getting a goat is a positive, you can sell or eat it.
Goats are the opposite of reservations.
44: Thanks, heebie!
I read the survey results more closely than Mr. F, and this led to a much grimmer conclusion that did not appear to be true.
Am I the only one here who's owned a goat?
(There's a pic in the group, I bet. Does the group still exist?)
(Further to 47.2 -- yes and yes.)
I've been to goats, but goats have never been to me.
It's easy to own a goat. They type their comments very slowly.
There were goats at my parents' wedding. As a child, I thought this story was strange, and asked why they let the goats come to the party. My mom gave me a withering look and asked "have YOU ever tried to tell goats where they could go?" (Which, no, of course not! I was 10 and lived in a city! I think my mom was being unfair to me.)
You can rent goats to carry your shit on a long hike.
Or a short hike, but it's not cost effective.
My middle school kept two goats on the property, not sure why in retrospect.
I assume so kids could imply various teachers were fucking a goat.
The school ultimately got rid of the goats, right? peep has your explanation in 42.
32: There have certainly been changes. In particular, Unfogged as a whole has been more or less post-horny* for more than a decade, and there's a vocal minority of commenters who really seem to lament this.
* weariness abounds, sex takes effort
|| Good news for folks coming to Montana: our legislature is in the process of repealing the law that made it illegal to bring your concealed guns into a bank. |>
That's great news for people who decided whether or not to rob a bank at the last minute.
(By which I mean the bill passed the House, and it's second [of three] readings in the Senate. Banks could still put a 'guns prohibited' sign on their door, but it wouldn't be a crime to walk in with your gun.)
It will still be illegal to bring your guns into a jail. And while they're now going to let you have your guns in your college dorm, they did add that you can't bring them to a ball game. Obviously, not everyone has accepted the full import of "shall not be infringed" but we'll get there.
I've seen a guy (a grown adult) put the beat-down on a ref at a high school basketball game. I think it would get hard to find people to ref if there were too high of odds of angry plus gun.
At my micro-alma mater in N. Wisconsin, the 'jock' dorm had a game-processing room, which raised some eyebrows among us city kids (not so much me, this was only a couple years after the scandal at the U of MN where some football players had boxes of decomposing deer parts in their dorm room for some reason, so I figured, might as well give them a place to do it with a modicum of hygiene*). But I would assume that's de rigueur for even the girls' dorms in Montana.
*Obviously, it's Wisconsin, so better that than a modicum of Ed Gein!
game-processing room
My first thought was this was for emotionally processing the outcome of a sporting event.
My cousins raised goats throughout their childhood on their mom's hobby farm in exurban Mpls. And you can't throw a sambusa around here without hitting an establishment that sells goat in some form. Did I ever mention here that, when the world was young, and men, and seals, were fiercer, i.e pre-Covid, the scruffy-but-lovable convenience store on our block started selling big presentation boxes of Turkish Delight? Dee-lite...Dee-lite... (My cousin in Maine once composted a llama, not sure if that counts.)
That's spelled B-A-R. (Or O-F-F-S-A-L-E)
I thought you weren't supposed to compost meat.
Also, Turkish Delight is enough to make an English boy betray his family but not good enough to make me pass on a peanut butter cup.
V.S. Pritchett on Orwell and goats:
He was an expert in living on the bare necessities and a keen hand at making them barer... He was a handyman. He liked the idea of a bench. I remember once being advised by him to go in for goat-keeping, partly I think because it was a sure road to trouble and semi-starvation; but as he set out the alluring disadvantages...
It almost breaks my heart to think it's now been a whole year since I visited the convenience store. Man alive, I could really go for one of the big deluxe cheeseburgers that the tiny deli in the back makes. The kitchen is like something out of Dickens, but its produce is purest ambrosia. I hope the lady who usually cooks there is doing ok. And Jesus and Mohammed. It's funny, now the WHOLE FUCKING WORLD is scared of my neighborhood, but I've scarcely had a negative interaction at the convenience store in the decade or more I've been shopping there. I'm sure part of that is that they sell smokes, but not alcohol or lottery tix. I mean, this is the kind of place where any decent regular is informally extended credit if they're short a couple of bucks. I've seen some folx in there who looked pretty tough, but everyone's polite to everyone else. I mean, the saddest I've ever been about an interaction there is when a woman I used to have a huge crush on came in and breezed right past me. But it's like Everybody Comes to Rick's -- except for cops, they don't hang around too much. So I guess we couldn't really reenact the Marseillaise scene, but still, you've got white bike punx from the community bike center across the street, people of the dozens of ethnic communities in the neighborhood, many of them recent immigrants, sex workers, streetcorner loafers, grumpy elders, excited kids, flashy teenagers and weird old white dudes like me. I will really cry if I write about it too much more. 'S weird to think so many people I see all the time could have died in the interim, and I'd never know it or even miss them really. Years will go by and I'll remember Waffle or Chuck or some frequent bus companion and wonder if I lost track of them during the pandemic or if it was before or after. I mean, when I was 18, there were ~100 people on the anarchist center's "key list" -- our security procedure was that if you'd shown up to work one volunteer shift, your name went on a big list that was duplicated with one at the natural foods co-op across the street, and when you wanted to unlock the @ist center, you asked the collective member at the counter of the co-op, and if they saw your (first) name on the list, you were good -- and I knew pretty much every one of them. Every so often, I'll run across a former volunteer around town here, and it's always the weirdest feeling. Like meeting someone from your dream.
Hey, so, on a completely different note: I just heard what sounded obviously like gunfire near my house, in this case four shots and then a car roaring away. I have never called the cops about gunfire before. Should I, in the future? How does it work? I have zero information besides "I heard gunfire from my living room around 6:40 and it sounded like it was on or around [nearby street]." Do I have to meet with the cops and get interviewed? I am also between two jurisdictional boundaries with different police (i.e. our house is in unincorporated county, our side yard and several neighboring houses are in the city, and my guess is that this incident was on the city side), but does the dispatcher sort that out? Non-emergency line, right?
I am the most pitiful Karen, and I assume the other higher-proof Karens on the block (thinking of one in particular) call immediately about anything I can hear. But this is the second time this week that I heard a clearly-not-fireworks pattern, and I am aware that this is becoming more common in various places. Maybe all places. "Never call the cops" is advice I will obviously entertain, since it makes my life easier, but what do you all say?
In my neighborhood, it just gets posted to the neighborhood fb group.
72: I think I had forgotten your gift for narrative and description. Thanks for this. Hope you're able to get back to the store soon.
Anyway, maybe an ambulance before the cops?
The only time I've called the cops on someone was when the person was swerving all over a country road like a maniac - hanging out in the oncoming traffic lane, etc. I was wetting my pants out of fear that I was about to see someone get killed.
...in this case four shots and then a car roaring away
Some kids around here had a car that would backfire like gunshots when they accelerated quickly. I know this because I saw it and then went home and say everybody on Nextdoor talking about gunshots.
32: I'm friends with her at the other place, but I'm not sure we're close enough that I would have thought of her when answering the survey.
59: I lament it, but I didn't think I had been vocal about it. I'm not sure how much I could contribute anyway. As if the coronavirus wasn't responsible for enough atrocities, sex around here is even more vanilla than it was a year ago.
73: If I heard that, I'd assume kids are shooting at the deer crossing sign again, and it's not worth calling the police. Since this seems to be an uncommon occurrence where you are, may as well call 911. You can give the entire report over the phone, and forget about it. Police probably won't want to interview you further, although they will ask for your name and address, and you might be a witness if someone is ever prosecuted and it goes to trial.* If local police haven't been defunded and aren't too busy they will send a patrol car around to see if there's a corpse, or a deer crossing sign with bullet holes. In the highly unlikely event that someone was actually murdered, and a body is found off in the woods a few days later, at least they will know when the shots were fired.
*The one time I did call the police because of noises coming from next door, it was to report what sounded like domestic violence. Police told me the next day that they had arrested someone and I might be a witness, but he pleaded out so I didn't have to.
If we're shooting at deer crossing signs, it must be Tuesday.
Pittsburgh has a shotspotter thing, but I can't find a map to see if the area I live in is covered. I guess maybe they don't want to put up a map that says "go ahead and shoot here."
I should go to sleep now, just to avoid the chance that I get too tired to remember why I shouldn't keep a hedgehog before I get too tired to enter a credit card number.
I guess they don't even kill mice.
59. post-horny
Hmmm-- for myself, I don't like bringing up the subject because it pretty necessarily means a privacy breach for my partner, which seems rude especially as pseudonymy has weakened. But I wouldn't use that phrase.
This seems like an extremely tough time to be dating. Has anyone had or known of relationships breaking up during COVID? I think one commenter has mentioned a split with housing complications, maybe started before distancing kicked in.
post-drama, I'd happily say that, and usually drama is what's fun to talk about or ask about.
Seems to me that presidential commentary of all kinds is rarer lately.
Hedgehogs are jerks. Why can't they just share the hedge?
Why yes, I am a dad, and am not above regifting Edinburgh Festival Jokes of the Year. Why do you ask?
Everyone post your SAT score and current position on the Hertzsprung-Russell diagram of horniness decay.
Middle-aged but not post-horny here, dating someone in another state who I've seen once since February and I'm very cranky about the whole thing. We text a lot.
But there's no drama, just wistful annoyance.
That's like 90% of everything after 45.
Speaking of getting fucked, the US Supreme Court today decided that the heirs of German Jews can't sue Germany in the US for Nazi-era forced sale of valuable art. Why not? The German citizenship of the owners of the art.
9-0, Chief Justice writing.
Where exactly do I fit here?
93: That's really unfortunate. I'm not a super-big fan of universal jurisdiction and/or extraterritoriality, but the fact is that the big Holocaust claims settlements of the 1990s and early 2000s would not have happened without the involvement of the US court system. The big Swiss banks would have continued to sit happily on billions in unpaid life insurance claims, for example. Other forms of restitution also came about because of the threat of litigation in the US.
96 I have the impression from the opinion that the process in Germany ended up with a conclusion that the sale was fair.
The opinion didn't mention it, but the sale was in June 1935 and the Nuremburg law stripping citizenship from Jews was in September 1935, so it all checks out.
97 I guess I don't really disagree in general. We have an exception to foreign sovereign immunity for expropriations contrary to international law. Genocide is contrary to international law. A country taking property away from its own citizens isn't.
Btw, the other decision from the Supreme Court today was a procedural issue regarding judicial review of decisions concerning railroad retirement. Notable because it was 5-4, with Roberts and Kav joining the liberals, opinion by Sotomayor. Thomas wrote the dissent.
73: Well, the second to last time there was a bunch of gunfire on my block it was the police. And some jackass who drove into someone's yard. So much of the really fucked up stuff that happens around here, especially that little incident with the police station in the nighttime, is out-of-towners coming here to do their shit because they think no one cares, and often they're right. I do get a bit of a jaundiced view, living right on one of the main thoroughfares through the neighborhood (and leading straight south into more of the type of somewhat integrated middle-class sfh neighborhoods that I grew up in). But on the other hand, the open air drug market is usually a few blocks away on one of the side streets. Again, this area is super easy to drive in and out of for your sex, drugs and violence. You will find no greater apologist for the lumpenproletariat than myself, but when they're doing just stupid shit, fucking with people from the neighborhood, pointlessly trashing houses, doing drug scene beatdowns right out in public, like, come on, nothing's ever going to get better if people don't develop more self respect. Personally, I leave it to the Shotspotter system and the fuzz to distinguish between gunshots and fireworks. I think I'm right about 90% of the time, but of course it's hard to be sure. And if they can't figure out that there's gunfire all the time in this neighborhood, me calling to tell them ain't a' gonna help none. My basic philosophy can best be expressed as "don't be where the security forces are" however, so you may attain some kind of merit by phoning it in, in the time before, I used to do all kinds of goody-two-shoes citizen stuff like call in to the 311 line when the WALK/DONT WALK sign was misaligned and obscured due to being jostled by construction workers. Now I suppose the world can go hang, for all of me. I'm surprised I haven't just shluppp...shluppp...shluppped into my bed or chair at some point. The only thing that differentiates one day from the next is politics. Which almost sounds like it could be cool, until you realize it's the The Dark Island version where politics is the moment where everyone sees what is on the end of everyone's fork.
Maybe a week ago there was a bizarre altercation in front of my place where three or four cars pulled up, blocking each other and both lanes. Out came like a dozen women who got into a very loud, long shouting match. There was some shoving and then some deescalation, and then they went their separate ways, but not before the last person pulled out a handgun and fired three shots into the air to speed the other remaining car on their way. I would've called that one in but plenty other people did and I didn't have an angle on the shooter's license plate.