I take you want to be in Europe for 5 weeks - cool!
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Not good news but interesting. The person we have rented a house from for Graduation weekend in Pittsburgh contacted my sister this week. He indicated that he is thinking of getting out of the home rental business (we found it on VRBO) starting 4/26 and so we might want to seek other accomodations. If we find them, he will let us out of the rental agreement with no penalty. The property shows rented days into August and showed days for next year's graduation as available. What are the odds that he found someone that wants to pay him more for the 3 nights? We are waiting him out. Funny thing is he hasn't adjusted his rates for next two graduation weekends, which have already been set.
Now, if he wants to make it worth our while and give us extra compensation for canceling, we might consider it.
I suspect that is in violation of VRBOs agreements. I would guess that thirty or sixty days is required.
Also, I know that VRBO has dramatically increased their service charge in recent years, and this might be a factor as well. Lots of folks are finding other alternatives or renting directly to people who are familiar with them.
I say research the politicies, and hold out. Meantime, look for alternatives.
Rome & Athens.
Unfortunately, both in Georgia.
Woo-hoo! The missus got a new job!
Rolling admissions - number 2 son has gotten into University of Vermont and University of Rhode Island as a transfer student. Taking both potential Catamounts up to Burlington next Friday.
I have a very good friend who has been sent by her company to London so often this year that they've rented her a 2 bedroom apartment there. She wants me to come visit in September.
I don’t want vacation to end.
Hi, y’all! I’m catching up over here and avoiding work that needs to be done - a grant and taxes. Good times.
Man, I really like Aldi.
You can't get everything you need there, but boy it is cheap. Love their entire business model.
Anyone ever shopped at a Lidl?
I love Lidl!
It may not be the place for a giant tractor load of groceries, although the produce is very good and organic meats, dairy and those vegetables have great prices. You have to bag your own groceries, so take bags.
The middle aisles in back all have seasonal merchandise, toys, some clothing. European candy is a good deal, too.
Never been to Aldi or Lidl, but one of the two is setting up shop about a mile and a half away in the next year or so.
400 hp from my small block Buick!
That sounds cool! Don't know much about engine performance but one of my favorite teevee shows is Garage Rehab. Love it when Richard goes in there and tosses all the junk out of working shops and gets them straightened out. Russell is my new crush, too.
I'm nuts, I'll admit it.
There's the tiniest lady chickadee looking around for a suitable nesting spot near my kitchen door. So hoping she like the neighborhood. Baby birds!
It is a 350 for my 1970 Skylark Convertible. I also http://forums.dukebasketballreport.c...tid=8312&stc=1have a 1970 GS 455.
Not sure why the double post of the picture, added it from my phone. There is more to the car story but I shan't bore all with the details.
As a Detroiter, I love cars. I'm also an excellent dancer.
I'll bet Mrs. Ymo has a great outfit to wear while cruising around in that beauty! I would!
Took the two boys who have been accepted to UVM up to visit on accepted students day yesterday. Lovely campus, lovely school, happy with almost everything I saw. The open house with the Classics faculty went well - the Classics/linguistics kid was excited by many of the course offerings. Then he made a connection with a linguistics faculty member who I could tell was super impressed with him. He's got some theories about Romance language nouns. He has similar interests to what this professor does only he's more interested in it from a root language perspective and she does it with modern languages but they were talking about stuff that I do not understand. (Linguistics, like every other field, has a jargon that non-linguists don't comprehend.) Only one other admitted student attended the linguistics open house. She had taken Latin in high school and she was full of questions for my son. I said they should just exchange emails. I think she wanted to - I don't think my kid realized how much she wanted to and it didn't happen. But she did write down his name. ;)
BUT
there was one thing that really, really, really bothered me. The all male, all white (plus one Asian student) a capella group that performed for the morning info session sang "Waterfalls", the TLC song. They were perfectly fine singers and it was a perfectly fine college a capella group, but when the skinny senior with the floppy hair started rapping, I leaned over to my number 2 son and whispered, "I actively hate this."
The good news is we have one more school to visit, UMass Amherst, and then he'll make his decision and I'll shut up about college acceptance. Sorry to be such a broken record. It's occupied most of my brain space for a few months now.
Should they have avoided TLC at all cost or should they have substituted No Scrubs for Waterfalls?
So, I missed out on the '70 Trans Am...
Polar white. The first few years ('69-'72) there were only a couple colors available, white or blue. And '69 actually only offered white. By '73 there were 3 colors available. It wssn't until '76 that you could get one in black, though that is likely the most famous color due to Burt Reynold's Smokey and the Bandit portrayal.
The screamin' chicken logo on the hood appeared in '73.
I'm trying to find a reasonably priced '70-'72.
Siiighhhh.
Paid my taxes today. :(
Preparing my taxes now. Almost finished. I got hosed because my new employer bought out my lease. Because of the way it was handled, it got put into my W-2 as income. I can’t deduct the lease that I was reimbursed for, even though I was living hundreds of miles away and couldn’t live in the house. Thanks, Uncle Sam.
Edited to add: Thanks to DinK for answering questions!
I guess today is tax day. I gad mine done in mid-February. I over withheld a bit and wanted my $$ back.
Ate some Paqui Ghost Pepper chips last night. I regret that decision.
Also, I hate payroll days.
Not a tax expert but I know a little about taxes. If your employer paid for some of your living expenses, i.e., your lease payments on your apartment or house, why would that NOT be considered taxable income to you? Furthermore, you should come out a head, even after paying the income taxes on employer-paid lease payments, rather than making the lease payments yourself with after-tax dollars. (Maybe I am not thinking about this correctly?)
Snowing again today. Enough!
Nope, wasn’t grossed up.
True that it was a worthy cause. It does hep somewhat to think of it that way. It still seems to me as though it should count as a moving expense, though. It’s not like I would choose to rent a house 800 miles away from where I working, and I was still paying rent as a consequence of moving (and having a total jerk wad of a property manager who wouldn’t list the house to lease after I moved out).
My new employer wanted to make the payment directly to the owner. The property manager refused to provide me with the necessary info, allegedly because the owner was afraid of identity theft. If the manager hadn’t been a jerk, I wouldn’t have even seen the money to have it count against me.
I've been in my current location nearly 6 years. That tops the 5 years I spent in Charlotte, NC.
And I'm making marinara sauce with meatballs and sausages for a weekend gathering.
I have a pretty shallow interior/mental existence, I'll admit.
Wife’s out of town. Just had pinto beans and fatback. Comfort food from my childhood. (Wife will not allow me to have it if she’s at home, or is going to be back in a couple of days.)
No cornbread. My cooking skills are very limited. I did make toast with garlic butter.
Day 4 of Mrs. TruBlu being out of town. Today’s dinner - 2 fried bologna sandwiches and potato chips.
Arteries are still hanging in there.
Trying to decide whether to do something, or not to do it. All help would be appreciated.
On Wednesday, the city construction crew replacing the sewer lines in front of our house accidentally cut our fiber optic cable. We just now got our internet/tv/phone back. Did anybody miss me?
When it comes to shopping, I am the friend you take along when you want to be talked into buying something because, obviously, you deserve it. Hmmm, hotel room, if "it" means going somewhere special or doing something special once you're there, then yeah, you should. Because, obviously, you deserve it.
It might be fun, likely will be.
But I could do Something Else. And Something Else might be fun too. Likely will be.
And, I could Just Chill. Which also might be fun, likely will be.
I’m flummoxed and indecisive.
Tough to decide.
My posting game has been off lately.
We all go through dry spots Ymo. Shake it off.
Weird (non painful) pulsating feeling around my lower left lumbar. I've had kidney stones and it definitely doesn't feel like one. Any idea what it could be? I'm about to schedule an appointment with my doctor, just wondering if anyone here has experienced similar symptoms.
See ya chums! Heading out to Santa Barbara tomorrow for a wedding. Tacking on a short visit to SF to eat too much.
Hoo boy, glad to put today in the rear view mirror!
Attachment 8331
(Hope not!)
Saw a piece in CBS news the other day about sensory deprivation tanks. Anyone ever experienced one?
I heard Joe Rogan praise them and had to try it. Glad I did, but it wasn't cheap.
https://www.stillpointwell.com/salt-water-floatation/
Graduation weekend is coming! Heading to Pittsburgh for Niece Elizabeth's graduation this weekend. Can't wait to see everyong and celebrate. Sister & Brother-in-law are driving so they are taking my wine/chocolate contribution for the weekend. (8 bottles of red, a magnum of champagne, and a batch of fudge - that should hold us for a while.) :D
Asheville area friends (there seems to be a number of you) -- Todd Snider is playing tonight at Salvage Station (looks like an outdoor show). If you like it, you can thank me by buying me a beer sometime. If you don't, I owe you.
Talented, funny, always interesting and entertaining.
Today is the Battle Of Flowers Parade in San Antonio. I did not attend.
Chili queens...
Have the announced when Homecoming is this fall?
Congrats to Niece Elizabeth and the DinK clan!
I retrieved the young Turks, Felix and Oscar, from the dorms on Friday. Oakland was the wrong kind of zoo and we got the heck out of there. They survived their first year with very good grades, no encounters with law enforcement (that me and Mrs. Turk know about), and only one trip to the emergency room.
Back in the day when I was broke and starving, I was extremely grateful when parents took us out to eat (is Darryl's still around?), and I always imagined someday taking the kids and their crew out someplace similar that they liked and melting the credit card to pay it forward. But in this day and age, they have so many food options on the swipe card that are practically 24/7 that they just roll their eyes and say, "It's not worth the hassle. Can we just go get Chipotle or Primanti's instead?" So we make do with a couple boxes of Mrs. Turk's chocolate chip cookies.
Happy 85th birthday, Willie Nelson
I remember my graduation like it was 25 years ago.
I hope the ER trip was relatively minor. No chipotle. Lunched at Hello Bistro, dinner at Eleven diwntown, brunch at Thr Porch, and final dinner at Penn Brewery. Penn Brewery even let us bring in the celebratory magnum of champagne. Except for lunch, meals included Boyfriend Max and his family. Final dinner included Roommate Jenny. We even had reserved seating at graduation. A great weekend all around.
Darryl's went mostly out of business. There is still one in Greensboro and that is it.
The sounds of spring in Kansas - tornado sirens. I really need to keep a few wine glasses and a corkscrew in the basement.
This week has been a bear, but there is light.
Root rot. Grr.
I'll pas on both the root rot and the raw sewage...
Argh, heat/cooling pump busted. Making my root rot issue seem mild.
I hate firing people more than I hate raw sewage.
Bummer. Visit http://forums.dukebasketballreport.c...?3840-Ymm-Beer for some suggestions to help you feel better this evening.
DinK I went to a big wedding last weekend in CA put on by the bride's KC family and I have to say I have never met more friendly and welcoming people!
It was as if we'd been pals forever. What a lovely experience!
And I hate having to lay someone off (due to a poor corporate decision) more than either. At least with a “firing” there usually is a cause. In my case, corporate said I needed to lay off 3 people, even though my district was highly profitable and growing. By using their own “headcount formula” I demonstrated that we needed to hire 4 people. They reduced the layoff to one.
I met his wife and kid when I drove him home.
I lost quite a bit of sleep, and lost practically all respect for “corporate”.
By the way, corporate picked the one to lay off. He was the oldest employee. He sued. He won. YEAH !!!!
I'm so checked out.
I physically leave for vacation on Friday, but I've been mentally gone since yesterday.
Sigh, number 2 son didn't get into Duke as a transfer. Straight A's in Harvard night classes and an extremely strong rec from a Harvard professor. But they only accepted 50 students out of 1200 transfer applications. Both my middle boys are probably heading to the University of Vermont now. Number 3 has already paid his deposit. Number 2 likes it best and will probably still pick it, but he has yet to hear from 6(!) schools. Transfer applications are a bit different. He has to make up his mind by June 1 and he still has 6 schools to hear from. They both got scholarships from UVM which will almost make up the difference in price between UVM and UMass. They both thought they wanted to go to UMass until they visited it. ;-) The education you can get at a large state school is on par with many if not most smaller LACs but if your kid isn't a big state school kinda kid, then it's not going to work out. And my kids aren't big state school kinda kids. UVM has 10,000 undergrads but only about 1500 graduate/medical students so the overall student body is actually less than Duke's. This will be my penultimate post about the college application process. I'll post one more time when Number 2 makes his decision. Me? I have grown rather fond of the idea of spending some time in Burlington. I liked it on my first visit and want to explore it just a little bit. I'll hit Parents Weekend at least once, maybe twice. October in Vermont is awesome.
Thanks for sharing. Maybe I'll pick up where you left off. Based on the financial wisdom of Mrs. Turk and my own encounters with some recent college grads, I am also becoming a believer in the value proposition of Big State U. My middle Turks, Felix and Oscar, are happy and successful at Pitt. I went to their first-year engineering conference (designed to simulate industry conferences, with research, papers, and suit-and-tie presentations), and was absolutely blown away. It blew the doors off of anything I would have been able to do in any subject my freshman year, even giving an allowance for the chisels and stone tablets we had to use back in the day.
We are starting the process again with the baby Turk, Sunshine, who is finishing her junior year. She has no clue what she wants to study or where she wants to go. She doesn't even know what she DOESN"T want to study, or where she DOESN'T want to go - we are usually able to at least start there...
Spawn #1 chose Geo Mason engineering for a variety of reasons, notable among them was getting into the "honors college" subset, meaning no class with more than 25 students; large lecture sections really worry her. That she also got a reasonable award (to our benefit more than hers - we'd have supported her choice either way, in more ways than one).
-jk
I don’t have a child yet, but I also plan to push for State U., along with the distinct hope that said offspring decides that they find their inspiration in the notion of being a plumber or an electrician.
I made a rough estimate of how much money I've spent just on applying to college for my 3 sons. By the time you factor in taking the SAT, take AP exams, sending the SAT scores, sending the AP scores, and the application fees themselves, plus one that has done the process twice, I've spent over $7000. I've got one more kid. Poor thing - I'm not going to let him apply to any "reaches". If he's got straight A's and top tier SATs, I'll let him apply to Duke and Harvard because of the family connections. In fact, that's his application list right there, Duke, Harvard, and UVM. He can add one or two more schools that look better than 50-50 in Naviance, maybe. I'm not spending a boat load of money chasing an impossible dream anymore. And if he doesn't have the straight A's/top tier SAT scores, he's not even applying to Duke.
I've been told by insiders who know such things that the hardest declared major in terms of acceptance rates is undecided. Tell your daughter to pick something, even 2 somethings. She doesn't have to stick with it, but it's a lot harder to get accepted without picking something. Also, sounds like college visits are a must. Has she gone with you to Pitt? Does she like Pitt? Maybe start with that - schools like Pitt if she likes it, schools not like Pitt if she doesn't.
At least try a warm salt water gargle. I always bellow at my doctor husband to give it a shot when he feels a sore throat coming on and he usually laughs and agrees.
And to all you parents of soon-to-be-entering-college offspring, take a bow. I guarantee that you have passed a major milestone and it will, yes, get better from here on.
The bigger the kid, the bigger the worry but these little darlings do actually start taking the reins of their lives and they will surprise you!
So, well done parents!
Finally, raw sewage in a positive light. I never thought I would get to post this.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0La3aBSjvGY
LOL, as someone who has recently suffered a large number of "household problems", including a malfunctioning septic system, a leaking hot water heater, various electrical problems, rodent (large and small) infestations and who has subsequently had to write large checks to the plumber, electrician, excavation "guy", exterminator, etc., I'm not sure that for some kids, at least, learning a trade may not be a better life route than spending enormous amounts of money on college with no guarantee of a high-paying career when done with the fancy education.
I've often wondered ...does it really matter in terms of admission to the highly-selective colleges and universities what a prospective student tells them they are thinking about about majoring in? Is it really a factor in who gets admitted or doesn't get admitted? I realize schools don't necessarily want their entire student body to be Economics or Sociology majors and they want students with different intellectual interests but, given how many kids change their minds about majors once they get to college (more than 50%, I believe), it would be a somewhat futile effort to try balance out the admissions process based on predicted majors.
Hey, it's what I've been told by friends who would know. Yes, kids change their majors and colleges know this - they know roughly how many are going to change their minds and they know roughly from what to what. Very few kids start out wanting to major in English and wind up in physics, for example. Colleges do try to balance their classes. As my friend who used to work in admissions at a highly selective school once told me, they roughly divided everybody into "techies" or "fuzzies", their nicknames, not mine. This friend also told me that my oldest absolutely should list a first choice major even if he hadn't quite made up his mind between physics, chemistry, or another science. He said that his interest in science would be obvious from his activities and high school courses but it would not serve him well in the application process to say he was undecided about a major. His advice was to pick one. That's my advice too.
Also - I don't know about all other state schools, but at both UMass and UVM where Number 3 son was accepted this year - you do have to apply to a specific major. Granted, neither UVM or UMass counts as highly selective so, I'm not really answering your question. I forget the exact wording, but UMass even told us something along the lines that there were limited slots for undecided students. It is also true at UMass that you cannot just switch into certain majors. I know that if you want to study computer science there, you have to apply as a computer science major. For computer science in particular, UMass strongly suggests that you list a 2nd choice and I have heard of kids who are accepted to UMass but not as computer science majors. They can apply to switch into computer science after their freshman year but it's competitive. Now - is that a big state school thing? I don't know. It's a UMass thing though. It did seem less restrictive at UVM. Number 3 listed classical civilizations as his 1st choice and linguistics as his 2nd choice. He was accepted as a classical civilizations major, but, I think that has more to do with who will be assigned as his adviser at the summer orientation program. That does seem to be a state school thing, incoming freshman are required to attend one of several 2 days orientation sessions over the summer where they get registered for classes among other things. Number 2 did that at Michigan State prior to his freshman year too. UMass has it as well.
One place that I know having a declared intended major really matters - the wait list. Selective schools pick students off the wait list based on perceived holes in their incoming classes once all the deposits are in.
To really understand the word we need to break it down into its component parts, pass and ion.
Pass - to move in a specified direction
Ion - a compact car produced by the now defunct Saturn division of General Motors
So, really what the admissions departments want to know is if you see a small car while you are out walking, what would you do?
Very true. Not everyone needs, or should, go to college. Learn to weld and be willing to work on the highest floors and there is a lot of money heading your way. My favorite person is the garbageman. He comes to my house and hauls off my trash. In my city, starting pay is just over $56K. Not too shabby. (Wouldn't do much in NYC but is adequate in KC metro area.)
The big welding demand here in South Central Texas is for pipelines. The starting pay is usually around 60k but with all the overtime they usually get, they are more likely getting 100+.
I had two things that I really wanted in life when I was 17 - to be accepted to Duke and for Duke to win a national championship in basketball.
Well, they both happened, though one may not have occurred in the time frame you were hoping for.
I'm guessing the 2010-13 alums say thanks but no thanks.
Ahhhh, late spring. A few days of nice, unexciting, cool and pretty weather but boom right into the heat and humidity of mid-Atlantic bleech weather. Thunderstorms, bugs already chowing on the kale and uuugh.
Phooey.
I'd be willing to let them have the kale. It is the tomatoes that would concern me.
I'm at the Crossroads of America...
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