Backroads

I tried to make a cheesecake for Husband. The cream cheese I bought yesterday was spoiled. Didn't notice until I was pouring it over the crust. He gets just a t-shirt and a cake IOU.

Ready Player One may become our reality.

This sounds like every engineer I know. Ever played DnD with an engineer DM?! This is my life to deal with.

And now I'm fascinated and want to know more.

I really don't intend this as whining, just more musing on the nature of PTO and what JaG was saying about what employers can even offer on PTO. But also on the balance of types of work and employment and any need for time off. As a teacher I work on a contract with a system number of days for which I am paid. I roll my eyes at being accused of my paid summers and holidays because while you can say whatever you want about my salary and equal comparisons and whatnot, at the end of the day my contract doesn't say a word about paid summer vacation. If you want to get technical, I am unemployed as of Monday. I just happen to anticipate a new contract coming up one of these days. Okay, I'm descending into potential whining, but it's hard to be expected to feel superior about my technically unpaid summer break when I know a lot of people who are in fact getting a similar amount of time in actual paid vacation. For what it's worth, I would rather trust a well-rested surgeon with my body parts and I love my summer and winter breaks and figure every job has it trade-offs.

Probably about five years ago.

Nope. Ralphie had one job: make the gigantic arc reactor really small. One job.

Most of the family has been sick and afflicted this week, leaving Husband to call off the classes he's teaching for the second day in a row. I asked him (out of curiosity, not money, he worked security at a certain big festival this last weekend) how that works as far as PTO or making up hours and he pretty much looked at me like he was crazy. He explained he's not going into work because if he is seen coughing and sneezing suddenly everyone will conveniently call in sick. He also has a funny rotating work schedule that makes it easy to hide enough that he's not there and will handle making up the hours later. More or less suggesting that PTO is for the weak. Me, on another part of the spectrum, finds PTO to be a perfectly acceptable part of modern-day work compensation, mostly under the opinion that a potential employee with enough skills is likely going to have a choice of who he gives his time and labor to, so the employer who wants to keep people around will likely offer PTO and stuff. I also fully believe that an employer should not offer PTO he doesn't want employees actually using. In fact, I used PTO last week to traumatize my kids myself at the movies. Why? Because I wanted to and it was use-it-or-lose-it by the end of the school year. Furthermore, as an employee, I am happy enough to use any PTO given to me prudently and with respect to my team as best as I can in relation to my own needs, but I'm probably going to use it. Husband remains more on the side of "but this is the company and this is what you're being paid to do, so get to work!" Which I respect and largely agree with, but with still pointing to the above issue of "you still got to make sure they don't go elsewhere if the opportunity arises if you actually want to keep them". Yet, I also think some companies seem to go overboard on all that fun whimsical stuff like unlimited PTO. A friend of mine, before saying forget it and becoming a stay-at-home mom, worked for a company that paid horribly but tried to make up for it by being cool and trendy and giving away lots of snacks and swag. Eventually she decided to let her husband pay all the bills instead instead of commuting an hour for energy drinks and chips. She still says a better no-nonsense paycheck would have possibly made the difference, particularly when she found they had to hire three people to do her job, so it cost them some money to lose her. My point is that overly fancy PTO options could fall into that category of "I'd like it more if you just paid me". I also admit I'm in a cushy position. I feel there's two main categories of work-sick: you're legitimately and horribly sick, or you're "socially unacceptable sick". The latter is on a spectrum depending on your work conditions, but I honestly use most of my proper sick leave for my daughter's hours-long doctor's appointments or when a sick kids really needs me. I think there was exactly two days in the past two years where I was too sick to cohesively community over a computer or just do the boring clerical side of my job. The "socially unacceptable sick" just doesn't really apply to me when I work from home. So, I'm not exactly sure where I stand. I think in many ways some work places have become too cushy in retaining employees. With the work options so theoretically available these days, that may have some level of necessity, but where does it end?

I have seen precisely one Bond movie during my life that I can recall. I enjoyed the Bourne movies well enough and thought they managed to be consistently good. Oof, but I can take or leave the realism. I had an old boyfriend who was a physics nut to the point it was no fun to watch movies with him. I'm happy enough to declare the impossible as "magic". As for Tony Stark, I feel the movie freely admitted the sheer implausibility of it, but it also served as a nice baseline for "he was that good" which I think works fine for suspension of disbelief in films.

I think we're all guilty of it to some extent. I was catching up on this thread and felt prompted to reply here, so here we go: I do try to make an honest and earnest effort to love others, and to a degree I think I'm pretty good at it and can adopt a live-and-let-live attitude. The administrator directly over me at my job was a woman I initially worried about, however. Very progressive (which while common enough many people are surprised to see at a charter school), practically pioneered the pronoun inclusion in her communication, and while not exactly outspoken doesn't hide her views. At this point I'd take a bullet for that woman. She is amazing and truly loving and adores the LDS people (apparently an LDS family took her in during a hard time in her youth) and spoke up for our more conservative families when there was some issues with the curriculum. Yes, we love our ideologies and I think even the best of us have trouble seeing beyond our pet biases. But I think we can all make an effort.

We certainly have communities of faith, though some in different ways. But I feel it sometimes.

My understanding from friends in that area is that despite the many accommodations culture is still tricky to change. They may have, for example, lengthy maternity leave, but to a certain extent women aren't actually supposed to use all of it. All the working mother's accommodations in the world just aren't going to make up for not being active in one's career. So, yeah, you're right on that front.

There was a "The Good Place" meme I can't find in order to respond to this/bother @Vort but I can't find it.

I dislike when this is done with MLMs.

Honestly, my kids handled it better than, after all I mused about here, I thought they would.

*Bawls in trauma*

I spent a bit of the morning pondering on the parent/career thing. I know this may wax controversial, but at least in my area and circles I've seen an uptick in more family-friendly work positions. Love or hate the idea of working from home, I honestly think it works great for some people and companies, and I think communities are responding to that with more child-trading and whatnot. Which is all to say, you don't necessarily have to ditch your child at daycare for twelve hours.

I feel like those really address the spirit of the goal.

Proceeding with the conversation, I think, is key. Many people don't necessarily have all the info you think they have and they want to proceed to, oh, get more information, roll more information around, etc. I do a commitment pattern in my job (with actual paperwork) and it never works.

I hear this far too often. The trouble is that once you have a career you kind of have to maintain said career and that's not always easy when you start your family in the middle of it. I tend to advise having kids when you're still trying to figure some things out (I of course advise marriage and some semblance of a plan to keep body and soul together) as I think in some ways it's easier to bring in kids when you don't have this fancy settled life and kids can just fit into the growth. I have single female friends and family who are pretty much accepting they are realistically going to miss the childbearing years.

Yup, that one. My kids grew up watching the first two on various movie nights with us and love them. Loved the cartoon series. Hence wanting to see this one.

And this is one of the reasons I was talking to people: heard it was dark, it upset Friend, etc. I'm not still sure how to judge it on that rating scale (you likely have a better frame of reference than myself). I personally thought Multiverse of Madness pushed the envelope further. So, yeah, I was definitely wondering about taking the kids to it and trying to get a better feel for exactly what that meant. Visually I'd say I found Multiverse of Madness darker, at least as far as stuff one could see. Thematically this one was darker and more disturbing. @Ironhold still has better training on me to decide. 🙃 Overall I really enjoyed it and as a person who tends to enjoy Marvel movies (not the greatest of art but I know what to more or less expect and find it entertaining) I thought it was their best film in years, but it really did get me thinking about what goes into ratings and that those advance reviews were definitely into something.

I may have to be that parent...

I know my one friend would have appreciated more precise warning than she got. But even the she admitted she still went on knowing it might upset her.

I feel rather out of the movies myself. But my Cinemark club thing keeps reinstating itself no matter what I do so we've been trying the movie thing now and then.