A Parlour for a Plague

Hail and snow right now blechhh

so the Snowbirds flyover has been bumped 24 hours

bummer

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technically we are having hail and sun in our hood, but give it five minutes

Pretty damn cold here, too.rain, not hail or snow.

A general wondering about income taxes and health insurance in the US for 2020.

Obviously earned income for most people is going to be down. For many, way down.

I'm one of the many who get my health insurance through healthcare.gov
We've always made it that our earned income is just above the minimum to get insurance through them, so my premiums are just a few dollars a month.

This year it's going to be below that earned income mark, no matter how hard I try.
Which means they would say I should have applied for Medicaid (for which I wouldn't qualify) or pay the full premium of about $500 a month.

I wonder if at the end of the year they are going to make that minimum earned income level lower for everyone, or a lot of people are going to get screwed, to the tune of thousands of dollars.

What an amazing coincidence!

I just saw this article posted on Facebook.
A real life Lord of the Flies.....with a very different ending.

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/may/09/the-real-lord-of-the-flies-what-happened-when-six-boys-were-shipwrecked-for-15-months?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other&fbclid=IwAR27oANRyA_WiQZIMvzkok82BEt8USNfuBNBw34-PAIEzAv2t2lYcvSzyDw

That is so funny I just read the article today. Didn’t see it on Facebook but on a news app.

No believe it or not he doesn’t like those shows

Missed that one

I saw that ... creepy

That was a great read! Paleoanthropologists for the last few decades have been suggesting that early humans could not have prospered, could not even have survived if they had not been cooperative, if they had not been a team.

From The Scientific American: Early Humans Used Brain Power, Innovation and Teamwork to Dominate the Planet

Oh Chai. I hope it works out.for you and all affected.

Loved reading that article!

So my husband went into the office today - they are starting back in the office. They have a very small number of people who work there so it is easier to manage.

It is a sunny day!

Oh and the sun is out too.

Grrrr . . . it was snowing here this morning--snowing on the 11th of May!

Oh it snowed on Saturday for us - did not accumulate but we had snow showers

Some of the snow out my way was in the form of "graupel" or "soft hail",
tiny snow balls. It was interesting, but I'd prefer some actual May weather.

We had a Mom's Day Zoom with the kids and grandkids. It was great fun!

I picked up some baby veggie plants - nothing else to do this summer - and picked up some for my mom as well because I was not sure if she was able to get any.

Drove to her house dropped them on her porch table and went back to the car - called her and she came out - talked across the yard - had the little doggie go see her ... he loves her and came home.

It's great that you live that close.

We were going to drop some stuff off at my daughter's house, but she
preferred to drive to our place. What she wanted most was some time away
from the kids (3 & 5). We had a gabfest on the porch at safe distances.

Thanks.
For me, it's more like number wrangling. For others, don't know. I guess they'll do something. Not gonna worry.

I'll tell you what does concern me, and I honestly don't see this being discussed too much.

Domestic/child abuse, alcoholism etc.

It's bad enough when someone can't get away from someone abusing them, but at least can get away from them physically once in a while.

I get distressed when I see jokes, memes etc about drinking during this time. You know, the "I'm stuck at home so it's fine to drink".

I never thought about it until just now, but when I did drink back in the 70's and 80's, hearing jokes about drinking made it more "all right" to drink to excess. I mean, that just one isolated aspect, but you never hear jokes that involve people getting into amusing situations while doing heroin, crack and other. But jokes about drunks are fine to this day.

I guess because jokes about drinking have been around so much longer. Thousands of years.

My experience of booze is entirely different. I guess I was a "social drinker." I went to the tavern, I went to parties and I went to cook-outs or the beach--all where there was beer and/or whiskey. When I decided to stop drinking (I had done it before, for short periods of time), I happened to hear a woman on the radio who was speaking about when she stopped smoking. She said she made sure to avoid situations in which she would smoke--said she spent a lot of time in the bath. It hit me, that all I needed to do was stay home. I had never drunk at home, nor kept booze in the house. It worked pretty well. There was a local tavern where I met friends, and the head bar tender got it right away. He'd give me tonic water and lime, and the people around me just assumed it was gin and tonic. He didn't even charge me for them. If someone bought me a drink, he'd charge them. I also spent a lot of time at the local coffee shop, and developed a god-awful coffee habit which it took some effort to master.

Mostly, I stayed home and watched a lot of movies and read a lot of books.