We don’t speak to my wife’s family. To make a long story short they have always treated her like shit. We set up some boundaries as recommended by a therapist. And then to get around them they essentially kidnapped my children. Since that faithful day we don’t speak to them or of them. Her mental health has greatly improved. They have been trying to contact my wife to let her know that her mom is dying. (Nursing home, hospice, etc). They are now trying to guilt trip my wife into seeing her mom one last time. She has had thirty something years to make amends to my wife. No need to do it now. We’ve had to block them from multiple phone numbers and all social media. We just want these fucks to leave us alone. They have been dead to us for a long time. Our life has improved. Rave- We are over due for a new car (we both drive 10+ year old Toyotas). I got a massive bonus at work. And we are going to pull the trigger on a new one. It’s a minivan. And that’s no rant because it has a TV. I can’t wait.
Rave: I was helping an old lady move, she said I could have anything from the shed I wanted. She said it was full of junk, and it was. Except I did snag a full size wood lathe. It will take a little work to get it back in usable condition and it didn't have any chucks or accessories, but it's gonna be awesome.
RANT: Doc office called and said that the insurance company never sent anything over. Insurance company said they sent it on over on so & so date. This is her 3rd reschedule and I've had two so far. She understandably doesn't want to use that Doc office so now she'll have to go back to her primary for another referral. Thankfully she hadn't taken any of the prep stuff yet lol. RAVE: Confirmed my appointment. RANT: My appt is May 31st. Two fucking months!
Rave: Our band's version of "March Madness" is over, and was a huge success. The crowds, people who are actually there to see us, are getting bigger and we have a lot of great things on the horizon this year. It'll be the best year in the band's 22 year history. Rant: March is 3-4 weeks of not being home a lot, late nights, long drives, irregular eating and trouble sleeping in hotel beds that wears me down. I actually said to my wife, "I don't know how much longer I can do this, but I know I can't give it up." If you've ever been a working musician, you get it. So I hammered vitamins, went to bed earlier when home, and did all I could to not exhaust myself. Despite that, it was still a lot of stress and my mouth is so fucked up with cold sores ( which happens when I'm sick or really stressed ) right now it aint funny.
Rant: This outboard is being a real cocksucker. I've basically had to replace the whole midsection, between the lower gear housing and the engine because it's all fucked up from salt water corrosion. Rave: A local boat dealer has a similar used engine with enough interchangeable parts, it's saved me about $800 getting steering and tilt/trim parts I needed. I think, now, I can have it ready end of next week. Just in time to take it to town on my birthday, drink and eat catfish bites at the lakeside brewery.
RAVE: Finished the last of my cancer treatments yesterday. My nose has been thoroughly nuked. But my joy was tempered... RANT: The day before, my girlfriend was diagnosed with lung cancer. Fuck cancer. This beautiful, intelligent woman, who not only puts up with me, but has also never smoked has lung cancer? UN-fucking-believable. Now we get to go through the whole ordeal and stress again. RANT II: The town in Mississippi I was was looking at two houses in, took a direct hit from last night's tornado. At least 23 dead in Mississippi from the storm, with the numbers likely to rise. Fuck tornadoes too.
Redacted RANT: Sometimes my girlfriend forgets I'm not also a doctor and kind of skims over details when talking about medical things. With her diagnosis I heard "Tumor, Lung, Chemo, and Lymph Nodes." She sat me down and explained the diagnosis last night, it's not lung cancer, it's Lymphoma...meaning basically there is no cancerous tumor, her lymph nodes are the tumor. It's certainly a better diagnosis than cancer, but still messed up. The survival rate is higher, but there will still be chemo (Although much fewer treatments...probably about 8, so hopefully fewer side effects.) We still have to wait for the biopsy, because apparently lymph nodes are very complicated and there will probably be a number of specialists conferring on how to best attack it. I can't exactly call this a RAVE, but it is better news than the information I was initially provided.
Rave: I've put this off over and over, buying cords connectors and diag software for newer fuel injected outboards and inboard engines. I've just always told customers my limits with them and when they would have to take to a dealer for repair. I'm excited to get to expand my knowledge and skills. Hopefully I can stop turning away the work and accumulate the equipment for all major manufacturers.
RAVE: First time checking the weather and not seeing rain forecasted for the next week in MONTHS. RANT: Chapstick "Reformulated" the Medicated Chapstick that I've been using since I was 15. Why can't companies just leave well enough alone?
Rant: I really hate how well paying my job is sometimes. Wished i could just walk away, unfortunately they are the highest paying job in the area. I normally go to most of my union meetings, there is a $50 dollar fine if you don't go. When i haven't been able to make it in the past because my wife is working i call in and say i can't make it because i dont have child care. And it has been ok, until this morning. I get a call say i have a fine that has to be paid today, i tell them no and why. Then i get a call from the BA(business agent, union rep) who is supposed to be on our side, tells me i cant work until i pay the fine. I guess i have a few days off until i want to pay the fine.
Rant: I done fucked up. This year the kids were actually good at finding the Easter eggs. And instead of saying "the Easter bunny is going to have to find better hiding spots" I said "I am going to have to find better hiding spots.
Rant: USPS incompetence is just staggering. My home carrier delivered packages to the front porch and set them on the front step. They got soaked in the rain. They could have literally moved them 2 feet onto the porch instead. My office carrier has "delivered" a package that Amazon won't do anything about yet. ("Did you check with a neighbor?" fuck off)
Rave: Big-timed my FIL yesterday on purpose. He came up to do Christmas with our kids (yeah, in April) and took us out to lunch. His wife was being a real bitch to the waitress over absolutely nothing, so I made sure to give the waitress my credit card before anyone else so they couldn't screw her out of a tip based on some very minor offense. The look on my FIL's face when the waitress told him it was already taken care of was a mixture of anger, confusion and embarrassment. He took a minute to compose himself and thanked me for lunch. When we got to the car, my wife started cracking up. That was a very satisfying experience.
Rave: I still think it's weird that you need a laptop and specific software to diagnose a two stroke engine, but it worked. It saved me a ton of testing and chasing my tail, when my original thinking, without the software, was ignition system, then fuel delivery. Yet, here were no fault codes. Ever. At 900+ hours, it has never had a "check engine light". What the problem actually was, a failed neutral safety switch. The onboard computer thought the engine was always in neutral, never disabling the rev limiter and allowing the engine to have full range of performance. A little display on the software showed me, it said the engine was in neutral, when it was not.
Rant: Had a job interview Friday for a role in a wilderness education program at a school near me. Was shitting bricks the whole time. Can casually wander around with explosives and have no problem dealing with a group of 20+ teenagers but stick me in an office room with two suits and the world is ending. Rave/Rant: ADHD testing coming up this week and nervous but hopeful this will lead to some treatment that helps curb the worst of my excesses. Rant: Relationships are hard and I suck at them.
RANT: Stopped in Santa Barbara for lunch and found a perfect parking spot. Right up against a curb on the driver's side so I had plenty of room on the passenger side. Some asshole parked ON THE FUCKING LINE and gave me a big ass door ding. Less than 5,000 miles and the Jeep already has two curbed wheels (thanks wife), an unfillable windshield rock chip a week after I had it tinted and now a door ding that will cost retail ~$1,800-2,000 to have it fixed properly.
Rant/Rave: Caught my daughter watching Salad Fingers on her iPad last night. Not sure where to take things from here.
Rave: I had a PhD interview the other day and blew it out of the park. I was supposed to have started a PhD through my work last year, but funding kept falling through, so an opportunity in the exact same research area came up in another country came up so I figured I should apply for it. They scheduled the zoom interview in the middle of a conference I was attending on the very subject, and I had several days of listening and discussing things with the top experts in the field. So when I went into the interview I was fresh full of ideas, facts and confidence. I feel bad for the team interviewing me because there is 0 chance I actually accept it since the PhD position through my work finally got the funding to go ahead. Rant: Since the funding is also through the neighboring university and not just my work, they have to do a full selection process, meaning there is a chance someone else in theory could get it. But I figure I just do what I did the other day and I should be set.
Rant: Apparently in America it's totally normal for your health insurance administrator to charge you a $20 processing fee to pay your health insurance premium. Not that the premium is $20, but rather you have to pay an additional $20 in order for them to process your premium. This applies to both credit card and ACH transfer. If you wish to, for whatever reason, pay multiple months in advance, they go out of their way to clarify that you cannot make a single large payment, but rather have to pay each month individually, with a $20 fee on each. At this moment if Bernie Sanders said he was running for President on a platform of guillotines, I'd vote for him.
You might have the best luck directly addressing @Juice or @shegirl, as they are the main insurance company bootlickers on this site. I'm sure that they will have an answer that explains how the per-month price hike is actually to your benefit.