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Post by Scott on Apr 2, 2020 22:47:25 GMT
It's only been a few days. I thought it'd be a little vacation, but self-isolation is terrible!
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Post by Joyce on Apr 5, 2020 13:17:21 GMT
We just finished week 3 with at least one more week to go. I’ve been too busy spring cleaning to be bored.
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Post by Scott on Apr 6, 2020 21:03:10 GMT
You're way more industrious than I am. I made some french bread that wasn't very good, so I made bread pudding out of it. I've made four pizzas, eaten teriyaki chicken twice and had spaghetti twice. Oh, and I made dough that's supposed to be for soft dinner rolls and wrapped it around hotdogs and baked them, but I got tired of those pretty fast. I could make a hamburger but I'd have to bake more bread first.
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Post by Stormwatcher on Apr 7, 2020 3:41:52 GMT
I work in a grocery store.
On the one hand, I am glad to be working.
On the other hand, work right now is intensely frustrating, stressful and scary, and settling in at home for a month or so sounds like a grand idea.
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Post by mamabear on Apr 8, 2020 3:55:39 GMT
I'm also fortunate(?) enough to have an "essential" job, and my kids were already homeschooled, so not a lot changed in our daily lives. Other than the kids' activities have either been canceled or moved to virtual. Being an introvert, I would love to be able to stay home for a few weeks. Since our landlord is for giving everyone's April rent and we used our tax return to pay all our bills a month ahead, plus the stimulus package that's coming would help...so really, there's no reason to not stay home and I wish I could. =-/
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Post by Scott on Apr 8, 2020 23:29:58 GMT
I'm out of a job. It may come back but I doubt it. I have two uncashed paychecks and hopefully can get me some unemployment and stimulus money. But I'm afraid to leave the house. I live with my mother who's 88 and I can't risk bringing the virus home with me. Got another pizza in the oven. Used french bread dough for it which works well. Ragu spaghetti sauce, a little hamburger and cheese and onion.
There were only four of us at my job. We don't deal with the public, so I think I was safe there.
Just watched the movie The Day the World Ended (1955) about people who can't leave the house because there's been a nuclear holocaust and the radiation will kill them. They're worried about their stockpile of food but didn't mention toilet paper. |
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Post by mamabear on Apr 12, 2020 18:11:56 GMT
Creepy how close that us to our current situation!
I hope you and your mother stay well!
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Post by Shane on Apr 14, 2020 11:54:01 GMT
I work for a small web developer, and have been working from home for about a year and a half. In that respect, not much has changed. We're still operational, although the business hit some choppy waters before this began so we'll see how it goes.
On the downside, I stay by myself in a small (and rather stuffy) granny flat, so cabin fever is setting in. Plus, one of the couple in the house isn't being paid during this and the landlord is making disapproving noises. Again, we'll see how it goes.
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Post by mamabear on Apr 20, 2020 18:22:08 GMT
I work for a small web developer, and have been working from home for about a year and a half. In that respect, not much has changed. We're still operational, although the business hit some choppy waters before this began so we'll see how it goes. On the downside, I stay by myself in a small (and rather stuffy) granny flat, so cabin fever is setting in. Plus, one of the couple in the house isn't being paid during this and the landlord is making disapproving noises. Again, we'll see how it goes. Funny how stir crazy this whole situation has made even the most introverted hermits. Something about being told what to do, I guess. |
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Post by Shane on Apr 21, 2020 11:48:45 GMT
Funny how stir crazy this whole situation has made even the most introverted hermits. Something about being told what to do, I guess. That sums me up pretty well. I've always despised the parade ground type of disciplinarian, especially when it's clear that they really enjoy cracking the whip. Back in high school, I had to do a year of cadets. <Sarcasm mode> That was a lot of fun. I really miss those days. </Sarcasm mode> |
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Post by Scott on Apr 23, 2020 20:38:19 GMT
I was slightly acquainted with a kid years ago. He was fatherless and started hanging around with a man who lived next door who was a dentist who made dentures and had been a pilot in the Navy. So the kid wanted to become a dentist and join the Navy. When he was in high school, he saw an ad in the back of a magazine for a Navy-oriented military school. He begged and cried and pleaded with his mother to send him there. She tried to explain to him that the school was for wealthy delinquents, not for kids who wanted to join the Navy.
She probably should have sent him. He joined the Navy just out of high school, went off to basic training and realized he had made a terrible, terrible mistake. I don't know what happened to him after that, but that wasn't long before 9/11, so he was probably stuck there for years.
So, who knows. That deep-seated hatred of military discipline cadets gave you could have saved your life.
It's like school music programs. I think their real purpose is to keep kids from ever becoming musicians.
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Post by Shane on Apr 24, 2020 16:35:39 GMT
Scott, the reason we had cadets was because compulsory national service was around back then, with 2 years of military service being required. Cadets was meant to give us a taste of what we were in for. Coincidentally, for each class of boys, it was done the year we had to register (year of our 16th birthday).
I got my call-up papers towards the end of my final year of high school (was assigned to an infantry training division), but applied for a deferment to study at university. I was lucky. During my first year, it was announced that national service was being scrapped, and I never heard from the army again.
In the early 2000s, there was some talk of reintroducing it. I wasn't bothered, since I was pushing 30 by then and wasn't going to be considered top-drawer conscription material. The idea was dropped, but the news did prompt quite a bit of online discussion, with ex-servicemen telling their stories. I once heard someone say that former national servicemen probably look back on their time with a feeling of nauseous nostalgia. Based on those posts, the nausea definitely outweighed the nostalgia for many. Even today, more than 30 years after the fact, my brother-in-law's brother is still bitter about his experiences.
Despite all this, I'm actually a keen student of military history.
By the way, congrats on your 2000th post. Too bad Fiona isn't around to throw one of her parties.
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Post by Scott on Apr 25, 2020 5:21:24 GMT
Oh---I never even noticed the counter there. Two thousand posts! For a while I was about the only one posting. I didn't know if I was keeping the place alive or driving everyone away. I'm glad you stayed out of the infantry, Shane. They brought back draft registration when I was in high school. I didn't register. It was a felony and they sent letters threatening me but I knew they weren't going to do anything. But even now, forty years later, I'm barred from government jobs.
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Post by Shane on Apr 26, 2020 10:39:12 GMT
Curiously, although failure to report for call-up was an offence, and would land you in jail for a couple of years, I don't think failure to register was one. It was only when conscription had a couple of years left, that I saw a news report talking about the powers that be seeking to criminalize it. So it seems it hadn't been illegal as such before then. It seemed an odd discrepancy. Don't know if it was due to the fact that anybody failing to register would have been a minor at the time. On a side note, it's good to see that the old HDA tendency for thread drift is alive and well.  |
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Post by Scott on May 2, 2020 20:56:09 GMT
The thing didn't worry me. If they arrested you for failing to register you could usually register then. And if they tried to draft me I had idle thoughts of fleeing the country although I'm sure I could have gotten out of it. I should have become a Quaker and joined every gay organization I could.
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Post by JD on May 5, 2020 20:34:06 GMT
Back then, Scott, I'm not sure there WERE any gay organizations!  |
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Post by Shane on May 6, 2020 16:05:06 GMT
The thing didn't worry me. If they arrested you for failing to register you could usually register then. And if they tried to draft me I had idle thoughts of fleeing the country although I'm sure I could have gotten out of it. I should have become a Quaker and joined every gay organization I could. This got me thinking about the song Alice's Restaurant, where the singer tells the story of how he was rejected by the draft board because he had a record for littering. It's based on the true story of the singer's experience. I remember that the literature I was sent had a section on applying for conscientious objector status. There were several categories, ranging from willing to serve in a non-combat capacity to refusing to serve at all. It looked like a complicated business and, at any rate, I had zero chance of convincing anyone that that applied to me. I read a book a few years back that dealt with the subject of national service over here. One of the guys interviewed was an objector who served in a non-combat role. Turns out they wore blue overalls instead of the normal khaki uniforms. Must have been awkward. None of the former servicemen I've spoken to over the years mentioned them, and I never thought to ask. |
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Post by Scott on May 7, 2020 9:42:10 GMT
I'd heard that, during the Vietnam War, they had conscientious objectors serve as medics. They were sent into the most dangerous areas and were killed in large numbers.
Something on a related subject that I found interesting----George Lucas got some terrible advice back then. Because he was a film school graduate, if he went into the military, he would have been made a cameraman. I don't remember if he could have skipped basic training. But he was told he would have gotten a lot of training and experience. He was going to do it, but, luckily for him, the doctors found he was diabetic and he was rejected. He didn't know that during the war, they needed a lot of cameramen and so many of them were killed that once you joined, they wouldn't let you leave. He would have been stuck there for years.
Lucas and Francis Ford Coppola wanted to go to Vietnam while the war still going. They wanted to film Apocalypse Now on 16mm for Roger Corman, but Corman wouldn't allow it.
Years later, when Coppola made Apocalypse Now without him, Lucas tried to get even by setting More American Graffiti in Vietnam, which was kind of pitiful.
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Post by Shane on May 8, 2020 14:18:13 GMT
Huh, I had no idea George Lucas was diabetic. Might explain some of the more saccharine dialogue in Star Wars. Gotta say that Star Wars has a better ring to it than Southeast Asia Wars.
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Post by Scott on May 8, 2020 17:38:04 GMT
Yeah, and he was real skinny back then.
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Post by Shane on May 11, 2020 13:44:48 GMT
That's what surprised me when I remembered pictures of him on the set of Star Wars. Then again, I went to high school with a guy who was diabetic, and he was pretty skinny as well.
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Post by mamabear on May 13, 2020 21:19:31 GMT
I'd heard that, during the Vietnam War, they had conscientious objectors serve as medics. They were sent into the most dangerous areas and were killed in large numbers. Something on a related subject that I found interesting----George Lucas got some terrible advice back then. Because he was a film school graduate, if he went into the military, he would have been made a cameraman. I don't remember if he could have skipped basic training. But he was told he would have gotten a lot of training and experience. He was going to do it, but, luckily for him, the doctors found he was diabetic and he was rejected. He didn't know that during the war, they needed a lot of cameramen and so many of them were killed that once you joined, they wouldn't let you leave. He would have been stuck there for years. Lucas and Francis Ford Coppola wanted to go to Vietnam while the war still going. They wanted to film Apocalypse Now on 16mm for Roger Corman, but Corman wouldn't allow it. Years later, when Coppola made Apocalypse Now without him, Lucas tried to get even by setting More American Graffiti in Vietnam, which was kind of pitiful. I bet he was one of the very few people glad to have been diabetic! 😆 |
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Post by Scott on May 16, 2020 16:28:44 GMT
Lucky diabetic.
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Post by mamabear on May 17, 2020 21:25:53 GMT
I sure didn't feel that lucky when I had gestational diabetes! But then, I was already miserable enough as it was, without the diabetes. XD
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Post by Shane on May 19, 2020 16:43:50 GMT
Sounds like one of Lucky Luciano's lesser-known henchmen. |
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