Printable View
I finally have my appointment at the Clinic for Thoracic Outlet Syndrome at Washington University School of Medicine - June 13! Which was way sooner than I expected, so now I am scrambling. I need a flight, and a rental car and a place to stay - Iris Lillies, are you still willing to offer me the use of of your condo for a few days? I'll totally understand if it is not feasible on such short notice or if you've changed your mind.
Yikes!
yes that was fast.Quote:
Originally Posted by SiouzQ.
The dates leading up to June 13+ work for me because I don’t need to stay there until the night of June 16, and even then I wouldnt really have to if it didn't work.
It is good you’ll see this condo before you have actual surgery because you can assess how well it will work for your recovery. The building itself is disability-friendly because it has elevators and you can drive right up to the back door and get on an elevator. That is why we have people in wheelchairs and with walkers living in the building.
The downside is that there is a a single bed and a couch in my condo, neither very comfortable for surgical patients. You can see how it will work out for you, hope it does.
I will send you logistics in a private message.
Cheers!
Thank you, Iris Lillies!
I am looking to fly in on Wednesday May 12 and leaving the afternoon of Friday May 14.
Wonderful news, SiouzQ. Best of luck with it all. And a wonderful thing to do, IL!
This is so cool!!! So glad you are getting very quick medical treatment and what a great thing that you can use IL's apartment!! The dynamics of this forum are so interesting. Here we are a tight "band of brothers and sisters" after decades of revealing so many aspects of ourselves to each other and getting understanding and respect in return, without even knowing each others' real names in most cases. I would expect that this is highly unusual in the world of internet superficiality.
I second that, Catherine. This scenario makes me feel extra good about our little community!
Yes, IL and Siouz Q give hope to forming friendships even on line! I'm glad Siouz has good news about at least finding out what might work!
About these online relationships:
more than 20 years ago, we had Jonathan Allen and his wife visit us in St. Louis. I can’t remember why they were in St. Louis.
I casually remarked to a friend of ours that I was going to be seeing “a guy I met on the Internet”. My friend stared at me in horror because that was code for getting scammed or robbed or murdered. Haha!
All this got me to thinking about when I first joined the forum; I know I was on the previous incarnation of the Simple Living. Forum. Does anyone remember when that started? I'm trying to think back to when I first got on the internet - I didn't have my own computer for a long time until I got my MIL's old one, but I cannot for the life of me remember at all when that was...is there a way to find out?
I was looking back at my old messages and saw that I met "Float On" in person when she came through Madrid about a year after I moved to New Mexico! I wonder how she is doing?
There are so many people we don't hear from anymore! I hope they are off leading good and fullfilling lives out there!
I was going to say late 1990s, but to check myself I googled Simple Living Network, and Dave Wampler's closing post is still there. He posted the end of his 15 years hosting the website on New Year's Eve 2010. He started it in 1995. I feel like I started regularly visiting in 1998. There are so many people I still remember.
I'm pretty sure I've been on here for at least 20 years. I don't quite look like my profile picture anymore, but I like remembering how strong and fit I was back then, because sadly I sure ain't like that now...
I have to sing the praises of Target pickup. No minimum order and no appt time needed. The one by my place doesn’t have a huge grocery section, but it’s cheaper than Jewel (major grocery chain here) and I can get most of the stuff I like. It’s been at least 3 weeks since I was in a store and my knees prefer it. The Target by work has a full grocery section so I need to do a bigger order there for more stuff.
I think I’ve been a member (from the previous forum) in 2002ish maybe.
I think I joined the old forum not too long before it ended, maybe 2009. Then I briefly belonged to an incarnation started by PDQ (I believe that was his name), then this incarnation since it's inception.
I started on the old Forum, probably 2002 or so.
I think my time line is similar to catherine's. I hardly posted - if at all - for many years on the old forum and this one, but came and read pretty much every day.
I have a clean oven!!! circa 1988 GE electric range. The knobs for the timer and stop time and clock are broken so I used a plier to turn the timer and stop time. I didn't bother to change the time on the clock because you just have to add 3 hours to create the stop time. It was a perfect day to do it as I could keep the windows open for air as it does smell like electrical fires. It is CLEAN and shiny! I did nothing extra to it, just wiped out the bottom. The window came clean and it was covered with drippy brown stains. ALL GONE. All we've had to do with the stove is replace the baking element which was easy- ordered on line and put it in ourselves. It makes me happy every time I open the oven door!
That’s great! :)
I have never "cleaned" my oven. I do wipe it out occasionally and think about using the self-clean option, but I have a horror of things getting that hot for a prolonged period. Silly, but there ya go. Maybe I'll be brave and move the oven out into the middle of the floor and try it sometime. It's also a GE, I think from early 90s.
I think I've been on this forum - under a different name- since the late 90s. I'd been looking for a frugal home since Amy D. stopped her newsletter in the mid 90s. The only member I've met IRL is Fawn. She and her kids came to our house for dinner once when she was passing through the area. I think it freaked her out, she is one who tries for 100 items in her home, and I have way more than that in my kitchen cupboard! It was a nice visit, though.
early morning, The fear of the high heat put me off, too. But the stove is snugly in between two floor cabinets and is against a wooden back, and no problem at all. The top of the stove gets hot to the touch, but not scalding. Give it a try. But do open windows as the smell is of burning electric wires. It's such a joy to open that door-and even peek in the window!!!
That's interesting about meeting Fawn. I remember her.
I’m steaming mad about a forum I’ve been on since about 2003. it’s the St. Louis Post Dispatch forums. Some idiot tech bro wiped out my account along with many other accounts. It erased all my posts from the last year or so, since they only keep about a year’ worth of posts. But now there’s no history at all, including the year I joined.
There are so many tech problems plaguing the St. Louis Post dispatch online system. I’m not a subscriber now, the tech problems drove me away and it bugs me because I want access to local news and it’s hard to find it.
that makes me think about this website here which, when the day comes we shut it down, all of the posts which is kind of my personal diary will disappear. But I’m fine with that, I’ll live with it.
IL, people on another forum have been talking about the slow death of forums. Most people have migrated to FB or other social media. A millennial told me a couple of years ago that he couldn’t navigate a big scuba forum. Yet he could figure out FB? Face palm!
I've had a similar experience with groups that I've been a part of. Also, when I do interviews with patients and they tell me about the information and support they get online, it is ALWAYS FB groups. The thing I like about FB groups is you can set them up to be private--you can even set them up so that no one even knows they exist! It's WAY easier to upload good photos and add other images.Quote:
Originally Posted by Tradd
I think the downside would be that once you are in the group I don't know if you can give yourself another name other than your FB account name. I guess you would have to set up a different FB account for that. So our anonymity WITHIN the group would be broken down unless you joined with a different name from a different account.
I don't think FB is hard to figure out.
Forums are good for find out out specific info. Like dive gear reviews and discussions, diving techniques, etc. There are discussions that go on for hundreds of pages. They’re what comes up in searches for that topic. Not FB.
Also with the forum, you can be more anonymous and Alan can get your IP and figure out the area you live, but your not giving a corporation all your info to sell to advertisers, etc.
I don't have or want a Facebook page, but may have to set one up to run the company one. (which I think is a crock)
thanks, nswef - appreciate the info - I may get brave enough to try it yet! RE: forums vs facebook - not on FB, see no reason to be there, very happy with the forum concept. I appreciate that it's mostly a user-ran entity, and that it's not a corporate shill. I appreciate the relative anonymity of these forums. AND I appreciate Alan, and all he does to keep us connected!! I many not agree with him often, but I do appreciate him, and everyone's input in discussions here. THIS is my happy place, lol. Or at least my on-line one :)
I agree that I wouldn't want to rock this boat and migrate to FB but I do see advantages for other purposes. I belong to a few private groups (a watercolor group, a neighborhood group, a finance group). I am posting less and less personal stuff on my FB page. But when I'm in my private groups, I feel much more comfortable about posting.
I think Facebook is hard to figure out, it’s not intuitive. And then they change it all the time. And then the response time is so bad so I never know gosh have they changed something So that no longer works? Or is it timed our! Or? I still haven’t figured out tagging. Yet I run a couple of Facebook plant pages and my last post got 900 likes.
Anymore I like Reddit. Reddit is simple. The functionality for me runs like a forum. Technically I suppose it has different properties from forum software, but I like it. It did take me a while to figure out because I joined at a time when there was old Reddit and new Reddit and I switched back-and-forth, and then I switched back-and-forth between the website and the app. But now I’m 100% new Reddit on the app.
I have checked out the simple living sub Reddit, and it’s not very interesting to me. Lots of post of of nature scapes, posts about going back to the land to live, etc. Besides, we can’t move to Reddit because some of us of a particular political stripe will be muzzled. There are only certain points of view allowed on Reddit. Why just yesterday I learned that only Republicans wear bras.
Re tagging: I know. Some people don't get tagging and it drives me crazy. Someone will take a picture when I'm sloppily sucking down a wine, and they'll tag me, so I've learned to tell people in advance: DO NOT TAG ME WITHOUT MY PERMISSION!! I would never tag ANYONE without their permission.Quote:
Originally Posted by iris lilies
Then my cousin "tags" people thinking she's creating a "group" but she's not so all of a sudden her random posts about our family are floating around to my friends list, which includes clients and other people who don't care a whit.'
Regarding the bra issue... really? How do you know that? I just came back from my 50th college reunion and I felt weird putting stockings on because supposedly. no one wears stockings anymore, but this liberal bleeding heart Democratic Socialist certainly had a lot of undergarments on, including a bra. Stockings and bras help keep me warm. I'm thinking back to our "pencil test" discussion and I STILL believe that if you can't pass the pencil test, you should wear a bra. About 10 years ago I could have passed it, but not these days.
I have always liked Reddit too but notice changes since they went public. Many more ads and posts that look legit but are just more ads.
I learned that only Republicans wear bras as part of the nonsense that is spewed on Reddit when it comes to politics. I’m on several subs, none of them about politics, but once in a while the dumb shit creeps in.Quote:
Originally Posted by catherine
I'm not a facebook person and when some adoption forums migrated onto facebook, I did not join. The talk was all about making it private so that there wouldn't be any "spam" or "controversy". I have found there is a big difference between private versus public forums.
The 95 degrees and 40% humidity (100 degree heat index in St. Louis) feels way different than the 100 degrees and 5% humidity that we had in Madrid, NM last week. I tried to walk around the Missouri Botanical Gardens this afternoon but only lasted a little over an hour before I was done. Fabulous plantings though - it was so nice to see the lush greenness and the tall, tall trees, instead of the usual desert dirt and pinon juniper.
St. Louis is a really cool city - this was the first time I've really driven around (just this one small part near the Botanical Gardens, the Barnes Jewish Hospital and the Central West End) instead of barreling through on the highways on my way to New Mexico from Michigan all those years. The architecture really reminds me of when I lived in Richmond, VA back in the eighties. I couldn't stand the humidity there either; it was one of the reasons I left. My body does not like humidity and has no tolerence for it now.
I have escaped the heat for the afternoon in IL's lovely little condo! Thank you!
It's wonderful that you have a cool place to rest. I've lived in humidity (PA and MD) all my life and at 75..it is often intolerable. But we have central air conditioning now so I just stay inside.
I made it home late last night - yesterday's travel was much less stressful but still a long, long day. It's nice to be home and now I can start to think about how this upcoming surgery can be arranged (and financed). I feel like everything will eventually fall into place, one step at a time. I'll probably be creating a flow chart to organize it all.
Glad you made it home safe and sound, SiouzQ. Best of luck with the upcoming surgery.
Shout out to our neighbors! Summer is here and people are starting to emerge from the "house cocoons". Spent a good portion of yesterday with the neighbors, outside relaxing, watching the kids, etc. It was a wonderful day and I'm glad to have nice weather and WONDERFUL neighbors living next door to share it with.
It's great to hear about positive interactions with neighbors! So often it's the other way around, lol
So glad you enjoy your neighbors, happy! We feel the same way and we consider ourselves lucky in that regard.
My rave has to do with crap. Literally. For the past two months we had issues with our septic system. water was backing up and wouldn't drain from the sinks. We had someone come out to pump it, even though it wasn't the best time because the water table was so high with the spring thaw. It helped for a while but before we knew it things were gurgling again. So the same company came out to pump again, and told us we had a "septic failure" and they recommended replacing the whole tank for $8,000 and it would also cost us four limbs on our beloved maple tree to get the excavator in there. Meanwhile they had noted that the tank had risen a little which caused a "belly" (or bend) in the pipe.
So we thought we'd get other quotes. The next guy told us that not only did we need a new septic but also new leach fields and that would be $35k and he was so busy he wouldn't be able to get to it until fall. That was a non-starter, first of all for the price and second we share a leach field with our neighbor and we certainly didn't want to bring them into our problems.
So we tried again. The next people to come said that we could possibly just try to fidget with the pipe first. They told us we'd have to dismantle our outdoor shower which was a bummer because we only built it 4 years ago. Father's Day two of the fathers--DH and my SIL plus my other DS and even BIL took it down. The other unknown was the fact that our 60 gallon propane tank sits on top of where the septic pipe leaves the house. So we didn't know what we were going to do there.
Monday morning the septic folks were there with an excavator but after they took a look, they said they'd use shovels. They literally dug the pipe out with their shovels. As it turned out the pipe just skirted the edge of the propane tank so we didn't have to worry about that either. The two men finished replacing the pipe adding in gaskets and other things the old pipe didn't have all in an hour and a half and they even planted grass seed and replaced a hosta they had to remove (which I didn't care about at all).
Price: $1250. I am SO glad we didn't get sucked into believing we needed a whole new system!! I'm sure eventually that tank will have to be replaced but I'm hoping I'll be dead by then.
I’ve never had to deal with a septic system, they make me nervous. Too many moving parts. Here in Hermann we are on city sewer system and across the street they are on septic systems. Our neighbor across the street has 4 teenage and young adult girls, and they are all very popular so lots of friends in and out, Hard on their septic system.
He was investigating hooking into city sewer system which means he would have to trench across our property a looooong way. We told him that would be ok, but he has since dropped that idea.
But Lord knows we have had to put in multiple sewer systems. The last one was $18,000 and that was just partial pipes.