My partner and I are eager to get the vaccine. We are more eager to have my partner’s parents, who are co-bubbling with us, get the vaccine as they both have elevated risk factors due to pre-existing conditions.
Once both us and them get the vaccine… my partner and I might just feel comfortable going to a (socially-distancing) restaurant for the first time since… February? Our FLGS recently partnered with a local bakery and coffee roaster chain that open https://cardboardcornerkc.com/ and we cannot wait to check it out… except… I guess we can wait… for a vaccine.
At this point, what is going on is that we’re waiting to get our hot water back. The hot water heater stopped working the evening of the 23rd, and neither filling out a maintenance request form, making a phone call, or sending an e-mail got any response. On 5 January, there was finally a human being in the complex office, and I discussed it with her. She initially said she would send in the maintenance workers, but when I went back and asked after they didn’t show up, she said they’d decided to have an electrician look at it, in case there was an electrical problem. She and the electrician finally came by this afternoon, and he said there was nothing electrical wrong with it; now she’s saying she wants to get the gas company to look at it and/or have the maintenance workers replace it (it will be the second replacement since we moved in last April!). We’re hoping to have them show up tomorrow. At least someone finally physically came to look at the heater!
C and I have started looking at listings for other complexes in the area . . .
I feel absolutely broken by house-hunting in the worst housing market anyone has ever seen here.
We just made a final ditch offer on a place, for far more money than we had ever imagined spending on a house – just to be sure we had a really strong chance of getting it – and apparently we weren’t even in the running.
This has been going on for months, and despite offering massively-escalating amounts of money at each step, the end result is same same every time. No matter how much we offer, other people have been making even more desperate/crazy offers every single time, scaling things up even more than we have. It’s heart-breaking to know that almost every new rejected offer would have been successful at the previous attempt.
I think we’re done. It’s always back to square one every single time we get it wrong, and we’re just exhausted. After a few days of genuinely nice Xmas holiday, this last attempt has made our New Year break so immensely stressful; and now that we’re completely wrecked mentally, we get to go back to work…
I don’t know what the housing market is like where you are, but I think that overspending on a house is one of the worst life choices anyone can make. Excessive debt is so stressful. So, commiserations, but also, maybe you dodged a bullet?
I think we are at risk of deviating from the thread.
I think the crux of it is that we all know why these laws are being considered and we can all be sympathetic to the issue that this creates for @whswhs. I hope that some leniency is built in that accommodates your unique situation.
We’re both a bit meh at the moment. Work is tough - the businessman part of me needs us to be busy, but the part of me that doesn’t want Covid wants us to be empty, but January is always tricky.
We’re trying to get some things in the diary to look forward to; virtually. We’ve got an Eddie Izzard gig tomorrow night and Abandoman in a couple of weeks. Our youngest is going to be 12(!) at the beginning of February and he won’t see any of his friends until well after that. We’re organising a virtual party for him - one playing Among Us and one with a Realms Plus Minecraft world (thanks @pillbox ). We’re going to take bags of party food round to all his friends so they can all eat crap together.
It’s odd organising things when the kids are in High School/ comp because you don’t meet other parents any more.
Trying to play games as a family (Imperial Assault and Decrypto featuring heavily) and virtually (thanks @Whistle_Pig ) as it’s nice to crunch the brain in a non work context.
I’ve also been persuaded that we should get a dog, although I’m putting that off for a couple of months so we can do the new dog stuff (whatever that entails) not in a total lockdown.
Also cricket is back. Although I am proper jealous watching the crowds in NZ and Oz.
I could say more about this, but it would involve discussing, not politics, but more fundamentally, ethics. Is ethics also outside the bounds for this group? Perhaps it should be. I ask the opinion of the moderators.
(Let me note that personally I would be happy to discuss ethics. But then I consider dialectic to be one of life’s greatest pleasures. I recognize that others may not share my tastes, and “there is a time and a place for everything.”)
I’ve never played Among Us, but the boys enjoy it.
The Izzard gig is part of a thing he’s doing in January - running a marathon every day and then doing a “Best Of” stand up show at night - including one in French and one in German!
Sorry. I wasn’t trying to steer into the merits of different ethical views (we are all intelligent individuals and can see both sides of arguments even if we don’t agree with them) but more a rather light touch towards an amenable conclusion. Since it has created a spin off thread I’m happy to let it live there.
As an individual unfamiliar with the US healthcare system I’ll avoid any comment myself.
My original sentiment stands however… I am sorry to hear that this will impact you so severely, I truly hope that it works out somehow.
We have an appointment to look at a new apartment on Tuesday morning. On Monday I’m going to make appointments with two more places, if I can.
I’ve found a local moving firm that will do the packing for us. We just have so much stuff that I can’t expect to get it packed between now and when our lease expires, so I’m going to solve the problem by throwing money at it. At least for the present we have money.
