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My son turned three on Wednesday. But today marks the third anniversary of his arrival into our lives. If you're ever thinking about adoption, feel free to reach out to me. Anyways, I wrote his "arrival home" story on Facebook and would love to share it here.

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We got a phone call from our adoption agency at 10 pm on a Sunday night three years ago. We knew something was up, because they never call. Our social worker congratulated us. We had been placed with a newborn boy who was one day old.

First question: Is he healthy? (Yes, albeit a bit on the small side.)

Second question: Where is he located? (Answer: Reading, PA. This is thrilling news. If an adoption occurs across state lines, you essentially have to live in that state for an uncertain time period.

This made us likely the first people to ever be thrilled to go to Reading.)

Third question: When do we bring him home?

Our thinking was that it would be a few days. I mean, that's how it usually happens, right?

Wrong.

We would be brining home our son the next day, as soon as all of the paperwork was processed.

WTF?

We head to the hospital the next day. The paperwork is processed. We wait. Finally, he arrives in a car seat. However, we're not allowed to hold him yet because of some technicalities that meant we technically could be charged with kidnapping if we were seen doing so on hospital grounds. (Not kidding.)

16 hours after call, we were headed home as parents. The first time we got to hold the little dude was in the parking lot of a Comfort Inn off of the PA Turnpike. This somehow makes sense due to the weirdness of our (my) lives.

Earlier in the day, before we left, I ran into my neighbor Janis. I told him the news. He somehow managed to get me to calm down a little bit.

He and a few of our other neighbors kept texting us throughout the day to check in on us to see when we would be headed back home and if we needed anything. We desperately needed pizza.

About 16 hours after that phone call, we arrived to our block. There was more than just pizza.

Almost the entire block was in front of our house. There were balloons. There were signs all over the door made by the many awesome kids on the block that said "Welcome Home Rory!" and the like. And there were a few moms more than willing to show us (me) how to hold a baby and how to feed him and how to change a diaper. I legitimately would have not known or would have had any idea how Rory would have made it through the night if left to my own devices.

Every day, whenever Rory gets home from daycare, our neighbor's daughter Sofia asks if she can play with him. So do a few other kids. And every day, I get to see the signs they made because they decorate the walls in his room.

We've all learned the past few years just how important our communities are. But we learned it three years ago today. It's the number one lesson I hope Rory learns in his life. And I think he has, because anytime he sees Sofia or anyone else on the block he has a gigantic smile on his face.
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  • 3 weeks later...
On 5/6/2022 at 10:51 AM, Zimbra said:

I got a picture yesterday.  They're noticeably larger and darker than they were a couple days ago so apparently cranes grow fast.

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They came back (at least one of them) for the first time in a couple weeks.  Getting bigger and ganglier:

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  • 3 weeks later...

I got my Judo brown belt this evening, and am currently feeling very pleased with myself! I did it originally at school from about 13-15, got to provisional junior blue belt, then stopped going because teenagers are lazy. Then I took it up again at 31, and just under six years later (minus nearly two for Covid), here I am.

Black belt will be a whole other kettle of fish because apart from the mother of all theory tests, I'd have to definitively beat 10 other brown or black belts at competitions, which I might never manage because I've seen people at that level in competitions and most of them scare the shit out of me.

Still, I can worry about that when I come to it, and I'm proud to have gotten this far. Also, I love that I'd brought my Team Taz t-shirt along for the post session warm down/putting the mats away, I didn't know I'd be getting graded tonight and it seems like the most appropriate possible fashion choice when the assessment included doing two versions of the Kata Hajime/Tazmission/Redrum. We Build Assassins, and also nearly middle aged men from Hertfordshire who are determined to exercise like lunatics to keep up their mild gluttony while maintaining the physique of a passable indie jobber.

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20 hours ago, SturmCRF said:

I got my Judo brown belt this evening, and am currently feeling very pleased with myself! I did it originally at school from about 13-15, got to provisional junior blue belt, then stopped going because teenagers are lazy. Then I took it up again at 31, and just under six years later (minus nearly two for Covid), here I am.

Judo freaking rocks.  I took karate several years ago through some 6-week summer rec course deal.  In the middle of that, the instructor mixed in a couple of judo sessions.  I was in heaven.  Learning how to actually do the stuff I'd seen on TV?!?!?  Yeah, sign me up!  Then I got hurt doing a practice fall and that was that.
 

Congrats!  Keep it up!

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I got a new job (by choice).  After 16 years at my old company, through multiple company name changes and a whole bunch of different roles at the company, I've got a new job.  I applied for positions all over the country, got calls from a bunch of recruiters from all over the place and............ended up in the same building as my current company.  I start the new job on the 27th and I'm pretty excited.

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I've mentioned my wife on here a time or two. She's currently back in school at the tender age of 40 (or as she puts it 27) to get her bachelors and then her masters in literature in order to get her teaching and librarian license. She's presently taking advanced creative writing and her end of the semester project is a 40 page manuscript to be submitted for publication. Well, she's 30 pages in and, IMHO, she's actually got something with it.  Her professor agrees and has told her that she hopes that after the semester ends, that she continues with it and makes the necessary revisions to attempt to get it published.

 

I've already asked (and received) permission from her to share it with a few friends/acquintences who are already published or just people's who's writing/opinions I have a lot of respect for. She's undecided if she's actually going to take that step, however.

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2 minutes ago, Dolfan in NYC said:

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I just got elected to the NY Gay Football League's hall of fame!     

Must... not... make... Jets joke...

Congrats!

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On 6/26/2022 at 6:02 PM, Bustronaut said:

It turns out that my health insurance policy started covering hearing aids in 2021, so after 8 years of tinnitus and hearing loss, I can now afford to actually get some help!

Even with insurance it'll still be $3000, but on the bright side my out of pocket is also now maxed out 2 days into my insurance year ?

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1 hour ago, Bustronaut said:

Even with insurance it'll still be $3000, but on the bright side my out of pocket is also now maxed out 2 days into my insurance year ?

Now you can get all those appointments, procedures, whatever you've been putting off. ?

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Got a heads up this morning that the local paper is running a very positive article on one of my wife's closest friends tomorrow.  People have been lobbying the paper for a couple years to run said article and the paper resisted, probably because of the optics and politics.

Basically, my wife's friend was involved in a scandal years ago.  An employee claimed discrimination, the story made the regional media, the friend got canceled, etc. Three years after the original accusation, the accuser's spouse grew a conscience during a deposition - lol, that was bad timing - and admitted the whole story was made up.  The accuser was angry she didn't get the raise she thought was coming and made up a story thinking the employer would give her a raise or a payout to make the story go away.  Like a lot of scams., the story mushroomed and got away from the scammers.

The initial accusation got a lot of attention.  The retraction got virtually none.   By then. the friend had given up her career and moved cross country to get away from the attention.   Not many people were still interested in the story and media seemed reluctant to bring it up.  I think they were reluctant to point out that they - and many other groups - rushed to judgment and harassed an innocent person.

Wife is planning to call the friend tomorrow after the story is available online.  They still talk weekly.  I'm going to talk to her too and apologize profusely.  There was an incident a year after the story broke that I feel guilty about.  We were sitting with the person and her family at a high school basketball games and a few people came over and harassed her.  Wife and I just sat their awkwardly because it's what the friend wanted us to do.  It may have been the right way to handle the situation, but.... I would react very differently now.  My wife is certain the friend is going to tell me I have nothing to feel guilty about and have always been supportive, yada yada yada. but.... I want to at least say the words.  Not sure I'll feel any better, really, but it's worth making an effort.

Anyway. expect to be very pleased tomorrow when I read the newspaper.  It doesn't really make up for much, but the friend is a very nice, very unselfish person, so I'm hoping some people read the story tomorrow and feel ashamed of themselves.  Not expecting that. but maybe I'll be surprised.

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Speaking of health insurance Ws it looks like putting my wife on my insurance is going to save us like $350 a month compared to her Medicare, plus about a grand a year in prescription costs.  Fuck yeah, Unions.

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On 7/2/2022 at 12:03 PM, Bustronaut said:

Even with insurance it'll still be $3000, but on the bright side my out of pocket is also now maxed out 2 days into my insurance year ?

 

On 7/2/2022 at 1:34 PM, JLSigman said:

Now you can get all those appointments, procedures, whatever you've been putting off. ?

Ain’t U.S. health insurance grand?  Same thing happened last year when I had back surgery.  “Congrats!  Yes, you have an 8” scar, we had to remove a chunk of disk, and your huge deductible wiped out all your flex spending and some of your savings, but now you get 8 months of free prescriptions and checkups!  ?

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I didn’t know where else to post this, but my “good news” comes from reading the replies to this “journalist”  claiming that legalized marijuana has led to an increase in scromiting:

 

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Today marks one year of sobriety for me. 

Honestly, even though it seemed unfathomable, I knew I could do it. I mean, I HAD to do it. For 12 years, even a minute dry would've had me up the fucking wall and in a panic.

Being sober is cool. Real cool. Especially not having to worry about all of that bullshit any more fucking up my life.

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On 7/4/2022 at 7:18 AM, Control said:

I didn’t know where else to post this, but my “good news” comes from reading the replies to this “journalist”  claiming that legalized marijuana has led to an increase in scromiting:

 

As a prodigious enthusiast of scromiting, don't knock it til ya try it.

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Got a “prestigious” award last night from a regional business group, so clearly standards in my chosen profession have sunk so low that you can get recognized if you have opposable thumbs and can put on a suit without cutting yourself on something sharp.  Jokes aside, it was a great evening.  More of my friends and family put on ties and bought overpriced steak then I expected.  
 
I had to give a talk.  Before I got called up to speak, my wife told me to ditch whatever speech I had prepared and just talk.  Apparently, I sound like a tax attorney when I give speeches.  Apparently, that is not a compliment.  So I just talked about whatever came to mind.  Started out talking about the challenges of growing a business during the pandemic and everything else going on, and how hard it’s been to pivot from the private sector to government contracts.  Then I unexpectedly started confessing how hard it to run a large business that looks really strong on paper but constantly has cash flow worries because we have huge upfront costs every time we start a new project, and the government is generally slow to pay and does so only after we jump through hoops.  And how I wake up in the middle of the night most nights worrying because I do genuinely love my job and the people I work with and for.   And how I am generally a helpless babe in the woods without my much smarter spouse; my wonderful, excellent staff; and devoted friends, neighbors and relatives.  Most of my allotted time was spent thanking  people for keeping me sane and not looking like an idiot.

I figured I overshared and colleagues would wonder how much I had to drink.  I was a little embarrassed afterwards, but don’t seem to have any reason to be.  Everyone seemed to love my candor.  One person told me they have a higher opinion of me because I am “well -spoken.”  They seemed surprised, so I probably don’t want to think too hard about that one.

My administrative assistant was touched.  She said nice things afterwards that mean a lot to me.  She’s been with the company for almost 40 years and is near retirement age.  Most of the guys who did my job before me treated her like a secretary or bitched when she offered an opinion or whined about her lack of computer skills  I try hard not to be those guys.  

lol, I even told the most embarrassing story of my life and laughed it off.  Eight years ago, I had a chance meeting with an exec from a large firm and showed some interest in working for his company.  That led to a lunch with a couple other execs from the same firm.  About halfway through lunch, I handed them my resume and discovered that they had me confused with my brother (same profession, same city, similar job titles, look a bit like, etc.).  I.. tried to get out of that one gracefully and didn’t quite manage it.

It’s been a good decade since then.   Probably better then the ten years before it and those years weren’t awful.  Career has gone well, wife is still around, family and friends mostly still around, kids somehow have grown up to be successful, responsible people (they were teenage hellions, wife deserves 90 percent of credit for getting them to turn out properly)

 

Edited by Tarheel Moneghetti
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35 minutes ago, Tarheel Moneghetti said:

Apparently, I sound like a tax attorney when I give speeches.  Apparently, that is not a compliment.

I'm just finishing up an online course on tax accounting. So while I have no experience with tax attorneys, I will say that if they sound like tax accounting professors, then yeah, that's not a compliment.

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Safely back home from Belgium. The last leg of the flight was delayed for about an hour, but that was way more lucky than the flights that got cancelled due to lack of personnel yesterday.

Also, not only did my new prescription sunglasses arrive to the store in a little over a week, instead of the original four (I was only able to get them today, as I've been away), they were over 80e less expensive than I was originally told (they were 25% off, but that would be like an additional 20% on top of that).

I don't know wtf went down there, but I was not about to ask. This sort of thing hardly ever happens. So I guess that was the ROH PPV money, as well as All Out '22, right there!

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9 hours ago, Blue Dragon said:

I'm still weirded out that I'm gonna age slow, when I'm 40 in few more years I will still look 23.  Just with some added scars.

I'm sure the weirding out part will turn into appreciation at some point, because that's good work if you can get it. I seem to age in waves. The 40-45 range hasn't done as much damage as 35-40 did and 30-35 I guess did the biggest leap "forward" in aging, so far.

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