Best posts made by Aria

@rnmissionrun said in RL Anger:

@aria said in RL Anger:

It's kind of a crapshoot with insurance, really, but.... that's also kind of the idea behind it? Like, that's how the company makes money? It's a shared pool of funds that only works if most people are paying more into it than they're getting back out of it. That's also why it's a fairly shitty way to manage healthcare because sooner or later, pretty much everyone is going to need to use it for something major. Unlike homeowners insurance, where it's unlikely that everyone's house is going to burn down at some point

They're counting on having enough subscribers that don't actually need the health insurance (ie young, healthy people) to balance out the number of people who do actually need it.

Yes, thank you for explaining.... the thing I just said to me?

I'm aware that's what the insurance companies, and yes, the insurance companies who are on the "Obamacare" marketplace, are hoping to get young, healthy people who aren't going to need it much on the insurance plan. Again, that's kind of how insurance works, and the reason behind the mandate/tax penalty for not being insured. That was meant to pool in as many people as possible, including those not inclined to buy insurance because "they don't need it", so as to prevent premiums from skyrocketing as the result of insurance companies now having to cover people they would've outright refused before.

And once again, that's why I think that health insurance -- while necessary for everyone to have because Jesus H. Fucking Christ, the consequences of something going seriously wrong and not having it -- is generally a crappy system for an entire country to depend on. People don't want to pay for it when they think they don't need it, when they do need it they very well might not have it, and even if they do have it, the insurance company exists to generate profit and has a vested interest in refusing to pay for things. Like, that's just not a great system for most of the people involved. And after having gotten sick while I was living in Sweden -- and having to pay out of pocket because I wasn't a legal permanent resident, and thus not in their national healthcare coverage system, which was still cheaper than having the same thing treated here with insurance, and NOT counting my health insurance premiums -- yes. Yes, I agree with @Tinuviel. Y'all need some socialized medicine.

@arkandel Dude, my company has a Toronto office. I check our job board every week for the sake of my own career path, but seriously. If I ever reach a level in our organization that I can justify a transfer....

<makes grabby hands at Canada in general>

It has also occurred to me that if I had just gone through with it and married my shitty ex, I could have Swedish citizenship and a divorce by a now.

I mean, not that I think either of those countries is perfect. I don't, and I can certainly launch into a very long lecture about Sweden's treatment of its indigenous peoples that tended to very much upset my Swedish friends whenever they started in on one of their tirades about being "the moral compass of the world" (yes, my ex actually said that, like... outloud), but.... seriously. 'Man, I should've married and divorced my deeply emotionally abusive ex so I wouldn't have to live in this shitshow' is not a normal thought for someone to have.

@Auspice Yeah, the smudge pots are definitely workable. Ironically, they're what I frequently used BEFORE switching to the Ulta ones because I liked the shades better and had an easier time finding them. We somehow don't have an ELF store here despite being a city of 1.5 million people, and although they carry it in Target and CVS here, it was never, ever in the colors I wanted. Somehow, the stock at the three local Targets I can easily get to always seems to suck.

@Kanye-Qwest Good to know! I've never tried Flower Beauty because I try not to shop at Wal-Mart if I can avoid it, but I also recently discovered they have better quality tank tops than Target does for literally half the price even when they're not on sale. (And I am in no way deluded enough to think Target's clothing suppliers are any less sweatshop-y than Wal-Mart's. It's just that there's only so many morale stances I can integrate into my life as a consumer at one time before I end up having a meltdown at how impossible it is and turning into a crazy lady living off-the-grid and weaving my own cloth from sheep I hug three times a day and feed better than myself.)

Oh, hey. ALSO.

I know this is a double-post, but seriously, if you don't use eBates? YOU SHOULD. It's basically this company where, if you click to whatever site you're planning on shopping at from their referral link, they give a portion of the money they get for it. It also compiles sales and coupons on the site for you. I use their Chrome extension and whenever I'm shopping somewhere that has cash back or a coupon, I get a little pop-up asking me if I want to activate it. Then they pay you out once a quarter and I've literally gotten $360 back over the last two years on shit I was going to buy anyway.

I bought fancy electric toothbrushes for insomniac7809 and me today and it was like, "Hey, girl. Here's another 15% off that already bangin' sale price for no real reason and also we're gonna give you another 6% back in, like, March. That's cool, right? " and I was like, "Yeah, eBates. We're tight."

@paris said in Good Music:

@selira said in Good Music:

@kanye-qwest said in Good Music:

I can echo (from a year ago) St vincent and pomplamoose, and I think anyone in the world should listen to Gogol Bordello - Start Wearing Purple, Dogs were Barking, American Wedding, Illumination, I Just Realized...also the best live show I have ever been to, even in a small DC club.

Let's not forget Wanderlust King if we're going for their songs that get you absolutely pumped.

They are /amazing/ live and absolutely the nicest people in person, just all around a fantastic band.

^ Very true. I've actually lost count of how many times I've seen them perform. Probably around ten, and it's never been a bad show. Ever. Not once.

@tnp said in Real World Peeves, Disgruntlement, and Irks.:

Learn to say no. It's your health. You're your best advocate.

I'm going to prescribe you X.
No, it doesn't agree with me.
The initial side effects...
No.
I've really had some good results with...
No.

If you can document your reasons, such as you were on it from this date to this date and this dosage, etc even better. You'll be taken more seriously. Women especially.

I've had to deal with this one many, many times before. It's fucking exhausting, but seriously, stand your ground. Absolutely stand your ground, because being horribly misdiagnosed with what mental illness I had and being put on the wrong meds almost killed me in my early twenties, and a quack psychiatrist about four years ago who wanted to "experiment" with fistfuls of the newest and greatest anxiety meds almost landed me in the hospital with the sort of blood sugar levels that can put a person in a coma, and had to figure out what all my symptoms meant myself.

I'm not saying don't take your meds. I'm not saying refuse to try something on the basis of "I don't want to". But you live in your body 24/7, and for most of the users on this forum, for about 30+ years. You do not have a medical degree or the knowledge that comes with it, but your doctor is trained in medicine -- not living inside your particular meat-suit, with all its oddities and quirks and bumps and feelings and reactions. It's okay to remind them of that, especially in a system where they spend maybe ten minutes looking at your records and stats and if you're lucky, fifteen to thirty minutes talking to you. If you can provide documented reasons as to why, even better, because doctors miss things and make mistakes and while a lot of them are loathe to admit that, absolutely none of them want a malpractice lawsuit on their hands.

@jinshei I feel like she's a prime candidate.

mumbles to herself

The only good thing to come out of this year's season is Gritty, said the Flyers fan.

@paris At the risk of being that shitty person who tells someone else how to manage their long-term health issue....

The weeks leading up to Christmas are also made entirely of ass in my house. My boyfriend, who usually does most of the housework-y tasks while I handle most of the paperwork-y/errands/scheduling tasks, works retail. At this time of year, I turn into what's known in the industry as a 'retail widow', living in a house full of his stuff and his bills and never seeing him save maybe a few minutes in passing. Dinner becomes a giant pain in the ass, too, because even if I do cook.... I have to figure out something that will cool and reheat well about five hours later.

We rely a lot on the partially prepped meals from the grocery store at this time of year. It's more expensive than cooking yourself, but it's also faster, and it's less expensive than this meal delivery service sounds, with better food. Try stuff like steam-in-a-bag veggies that you can microwave in two minutes, the family-sized refrigerated soups they usually have over in the produce/deli/salad bar section (chili being my favorite), rotisserie chickens, etc. It's not GREAT, but a rotisserie chicken, a bag of steamable green beans, and a box of mashed potato flakes will cost about $12 at most, work out to about four meals, and take you about as long as boiling a pot and stirring a bit. If you can manage it all at once, you can also reheat the leftovers just fine tomorrow.

If you have a super-fancy store like Wegman's nearby, even better. A family-sized store-made lasagna is about $18 and will feed us for several days, and all I have to do is put it in the oven and walk away. Or get a family-sized thing of 'homemade' style mac and cheese, portion it out, and pop it in the microwave with a frozen veggie burger. Done.

@runescryer said in Good or New Movies Review:

Went to the local Amazon Prime preview of Aquaman

It's good. Maybe not as good as the hype, but still almost as good as Wonder Woman.

Another step in the right direction for DC movies.

Does the red wig look as fucking awful in the movie as it does in the preview? There's one shot that was totally fine on YouTube, but once I saw it in theaters on a large screen, it was, like.... distractingly "this hair is plastic" levels of bad.

The upside to a surprise WFH day:

I just heard my dog and my boyfriend having a 'barking contest' downstairs.

That moment when a coworker tells you that your sweater is great and would have been a huge hit yesterday!

....yesterday was apparently the ugly sweater party.

Protip: i do not recommend putting out a firr by carrying iy to the sink with your bsre hands. Hurray, drugs?

@paris said in Good Music:

Hanggai - The Vast Grassland

The singer is the big guy with the mohawk. Very atmospheric.

If you're into atmospheric folk rock/metal, I will happily recommend, like, half a dozen Scandinavian and Mongolian bands to you, babe.

@paris said in Good Music:

@aria Yeah, as a pagan, I've noticed the rise in racism amongst asatruar as well. I will look up bands, though, and thank you!

I'm in the SCA with a Norse persona, and it's something I find incredibly infuriating on multiple levels -- not the least of which because there's been a few high profile issues within the group that have, blissfully, been met with a fairly large and collective "YOU FUCK RIGHT OFF" from other members. But it's by no means universal enough to stop them from continually trying, which is more than a little ironic given the actual history of Norse cultures interacting with other ethnic groups, including very brown ones. (Basically, they were happy to interact with you and incorporate whatever cool stuff you had as long as you were willing to give them shiny shit. The Norse were pretty shameless capitalists. This is a gross over simplification, but generally if silver was on the table, they'd play ball.)

@highfalutin said in Good TV:

You on Netflix was kind of excellent. Super uncomfortable in the best way to be uncomfortable.

I just finished it. Having read the novel when it was released, I.... have complicated feelings about the show. I mean, I loved it. I really loved it. But the book made me deeply uncomfortable with its fascinating portrayal of the narrator and how truly disturbed and delusional he was. The show made me deeply uncomfortable with myself, because despite knowing from the very beginning -- even without being familiar with the book, so no spoilers -- that he's a fucking psycho stalker, I actually really liked him and was kind of rooting for him at the end?

I'm not sure whether that says more about the incredibly fucked up idea of 'romance' we have portrayed in media or about me, but either way, I'm sitting here pretty skeeved out by having thought to myself, "Aww, Joe. You'd be such a great guy if you weren't a violent lunatic." And this is from someone who reacts with an instinctive, visceral anger to the slightest hint of Nice Guy (tm) bullshit after horrible real life experiences growing up.

@Auspice said in Real World Peeves, Disgruntlement, and Irks.:

@Sparks said in Real World Peeves, Disgruntlement, and Irks.:

So in a pinch, remind Aunt Karen that if she doesn't like the way you're planning things, you could always just elope?

Seriously. I wish I had.

My first mistake back when I got married was telling family I was getting married. I wanted to just go and see a judge. And I told them this. So 'Well, shouldn't your parents at least be there?' became 'But what about your siblings?' and '...you grandparents?' and eventually every extended relative under the sun.

^ We sooooooooort of are? This is what she's complaining about. We're going to City Hall and getting married by a judge. The building is gorgeous, but old, so the rooms are small. You're only allowed eight guests in chambers. So that's my parents, his parents, his brother, and his brother's long-term partner. Probably also my two closest friends, who are practically like sisters. City Hall here only does weddings on Tuesdays and Thursdays.

I assumed that outside of his immediate family, none of our Midwest/Rust Belt relatives would want to take three days off of work to drive 9-12 hours to come to a 15 minutes ceremony on some random Thursday afternoon and go to dinner after.

I also assumed that this would likely be disappointing for our extended families, so agreed to let his parents throw us a big semi-catered, semi-potluck, low-key bash in their backyard six months later. Everyone gets to see us in our fancy clothes (which I feel less stupid spending money if I get to wear more than once), get drunk on someone else's dime, eat cake, have some photos snapped, and generally celebrate with the added bonus of the two introverts not having to stand in front of ~200 people being stared at while they talk about their feelings.

UNACCEPTABLE.

Apparently I'm now supposed to explain to her what sort of place I'm getting married in that has such a policy and why and, after peppering me with questions, she wants to 'take it to private chat' so we can discuss it.

Be glad we're doing anything for extended family at all. I live in a state where you don't even need to have an officiant if you pay an extra $10, so we could've just filed the paperwork and never even told anyone except the IRS if I'd been able to convince the boy.

Also, thank you for the well wishes and (sincere) marriage advice. Keep 'em coming. I'm going to need them to make it through October without murdering any relatives. The Knot really should add a section for "bride and groom's coping booze" in the budgeting tool.

@Cobaltasaurus said in RL things I love:

On the upside of life: I ordered my first perfume from BPAL and it's amazing. It came with a sample that is ALSO amazing ... so I guess I'll be buying more perfume on my next payday, lol.

Take care. BPAL quickly becomes a string of wildly irresponsible orders that builds into "I need a box for this", she said three boxes later.

@moth said in RL things I love:

@Aria

I apologize to your wallet. (But not really.)

Also, if you're a BPALista....Lupercalia's dropped yesterday. They are my favorite update. If I had not just dropped a stupid amount of money buying @insomniac7809 a custom suit for the wedding, I would be piling things in my cart literally right now.

I keep telling myself it's okay though, cause he gonna look goooooooooooooood.

@Testament said in Good TV:

The Umbrella Academy - Nothing like the Dark Horse comics at all, but honestly, I think I like this televised version better. It actually makes some amount of sense.

Klaus is my favorite thing.