Hope it worked out! You guys just need a bit more costuming and posing to match this!
Had a family reunion this past weekend in Ohio. It was a great time; saw a lot of my family that I hadn’t seen in years. Given the drift from a familial home in Ohio, the last couple of smaller reunions had been taking place in North Carolina.
My family is large. Like, really big. My grandparents had 18 kids. Most of them are married now with kids, grandkids, and sometimes great grandkids. From my grandparents alone, there are about 170 odd members of the family. God forbid we ever do a reunion that includes family members from other branches; we’d occupy an entire city like some weird convention. Had my grandparents existed today with similar circumstances, I’m pretty sure my family would be the subject of a reality tv show.
But I’m proud of my family, extremely proud. Grandparents are from Puerto Rico, so we strongly identify as Puerto Rican family. But due to (I think) progressive attitudes, good rearing, and, well, sheer size, my family is incredibly diverse. Backgrounds for those married in range from Midwest America to the Phillipines to Iraqi\Israeli. We’ve got members at multiple levels of relative success and socioeconomic levels. We’ve got gay, straight, and trans represented. Religions of all stripes. I think my family is almost the definition of the melting pot that this country is supposed to be.
I grew up on the east coast, in a fairly diverse area, and had a fairly diverse set of friends. And then I’d travel to see my family during the holidays, and encounter another fairly diverse group of people. I was truly shocked when I reached adulthood and met people who did not love diversity, or at least those who were unused to it. I thought my family was the norm. Now that I’ve gotten older, I’ve realized how much it isn’t, but how much I hope it can be some day.
Anyhow, so yeah - family reunion this weekend. Lots of silly games, a lot of old stories, and a lot more gray in my various cousins hair. A lot of fun, and a brief reminder to me of how awesome this place can be.
Damn, that’s a family and a half, nijimeijer! Really cool reading about the reunion, though. Aside from the prototypical family Christmases and Thanksgivings (particularly of my youth) of a dozen or so people, I never really experienced anything remotely like that (though the Guatemalan side of my family did eventually produce 14 cousins from 6 aunts/uncles–but I haven’t got to see all of them in ages) scale.
Man, they should do a reality show about y’all now :-D
It takes a village to house your family!
Even growing up, I knew my family was big, but as a kid you don’t really appreciate that kind of thing. Nowadays, I understand how weird it is, but it’s a fun source of both pride and humor. By comparison, my wife had a mini reunion with one side of her family the weekend before, and it was like eight people.
Had I any talent as a writer, I think my family would make for a fun book, half genealogy, half personal history. Of course, every family is like that, really. We just happen to have the “hook” of being huge.
We have a very similar situation here, Armando. An office of roughly 18 of us (part of the university), almost all of whom are exempt and earn somewhat below that $47k threshold. So far, our HR has been stonewalling on telling us what is going to happen. I think they will put off deciding for as long as possible. But a number of us regularly HAVE to do overtime, because we travel a lot at some times of the year.
The one good point is that our benefits as exempt employees right now are very nice, and we’ve been assured that even if the uni decides to make us non-exempt (and then presumably just pay overtime when they have to) that those benefits are going to be grandfathered for us, so we won’t lose them. Fingers crossed.[quote=“ArmandoPenblade, post:12177, topic:30028, full:true”]
Mark,
Glad to read that things seem to be moving in a positive direction. Best of luck to you and yours over there!
Interesting update to job-pay saga:
A new federal/state mandate has declared that people earning under $47k/year can’t actually be Exempt (non-Overtime-earning) employees. I, ah, earn significantly under that point, but am considered an Exempt Employee by our current org structure. I also wind up working a very significant amount of overtime at several times over the course of the year (for instance, the week of 13-hour days I just endured at the end of June).
Proposed solutions include raising employee wages to clear the threshold (very clearly not happening w/ me), removing overtime possibilities from these employees “just in case,” (very difficult to do w/ me), or re-classifying employees as non-exempt (which will take a hatchet to my benefits, with the upside of granting me the occasional opportunity to earn overtime).
As is, I look forward to going non-exempt and losing 3/4s of my vacation and sick time for the privilege. Assuming this place is even still around on December 1 when all this stuff takes effect–our fundraising situation is increasingly bleak. But maybe I’m just too pessimistic about this job!
[/quote]
Best of luck, Benny! Honestly, them promising you guys the ability to keep current benefits is kinda nice (haha, bennies for Benny).
If they just let me keep my current vacation day policy and transitioned me into a non-exempt role, I wouldn’t mind at all. Not least of which because I don’t see them giving me 33%+ raise, whereas a few hundred in overtime here and there is a little more realistic.
Or maybe they’ll just shit-can me! :)
This is the pack of 1/4" screws I ordered on Amazon.
http://imgur.com/NQB6CNX
This is the box they came in with the pack on top for comparison.
http://imgur.com/D7kqNQS
This is the craziest overpackaging I’ve ever seen. (And yes, I left package feedback.)
The box is 19"x14"x4" or so. The screws take up maaaaybe 3.5"x0.5" with negligible depth.
I’m always shocked at these over packaging that’s seems to be a common practice in USA. I used to have memory stick shipped to me in the same amazon package that you photographed. The shipping cost, internationally, have cost me wayyyy more that the memory stick, I reckon. Your pack of screws could easily be put into a bubble mailer and save shipping and storage (of the van) space.
Fortunately I have Prime (and Amazon shipping is generally pretty flat-rate even if you don’t, I believe), so it didn’t cost me extra. But it’s ridiculous.
I found a dead one of these male black horseflies. I’ve never seen one of them before. The eyes are super funky.
Here’s a photo that I took of it:
It never used to be a thing here in the UK - they’d generally either plastic wrap things or put an appropriately sized box around it, but they’ve become crazy big in the last two years or so. All most of this stuff needs is a mailing label. It shouldn’t have any extra packaging at all. Half of the time it’s literally a cardboard box holding another cardboard box.
Latest powerball lottery was worth $478 million. I bought a ticket.
News headline “Someone in New Hampshire bought the winning ticket.”
Powerball is 5. My random number ticket has the powerball '#5. I live in NH.
OMFGIWONIWON …
wait no. I don’t have any of the other numbers.
If I had won, given how much my heart was racing, pretty sure I would have died.
Ok, maybe not very interesting.
Two random things:
-
Woke up this morning and it was so dark outside it might as well have been the middle of the night. Sure enough, I get outside to go to work and it’s just pouring rain. I get downtown and wade through mini-rivers on the streets (soaking shoes, socks, and the cuffs of my jeans - not because the water was that deep but because my umbrella didn’t keep the rain off that far down), and I’m almost to my workplace when one of the supervisors runs into me going the other way and lets me know that the building is closed and I can go home. Power issues, I guess. There’s construction nearby and between that and the rain maybe something got damaged. So here I am with an unexpected day off. And I already took tomorrow off, so impromptu four day weekend. Could be worse!
-
The reason I took tomorrow off is it’s my birthday tomorrow. Turns out today is President Obama’s birthday. His name is Barack. Mine is Barac. I don’t know what’s happening here.
You should check to see if you guys can hang out. Happy birthday!
Have you ever been seen in the same room together?
No, now that you mention it. ;)
Playing some Magic with my son, while enjoying the gorgeous day and a my favorite cigar!
Gross!
Err my gross comment was in regards to the black fly above, not Scott lufkin. Sorry for any confusion!