How I wish--O! so fervently!--that I had an alternative to the Microsoft Office products. Yes, I know there are alternatives out there, but my clients use Office, so I must, too, and I hate it, with the white-hot heat of 10,000 suns. it is so very, very dysfunctional. I consider myself a reasonably expert user--I can use styles, for example, if there's noone else using that document who is going to fuck up the styles--but it just freezes and breaks and wtf. I suspect part of it is that I'm using a Mac, but I've lived in the Windows world, too, and it's just awful. Take yesterday's adventures: I went to mactopia and found the latest update (from January, but whatever) and installed it . . . and then all of my toolbars were broke, plus all of my macros--and I had, oh, 20 or so that I had developed for my copyediting--were gone. Just gone--unrecoverable. Apparently, the newest version of Office for Mac--the one coming out around now?--is changing the macros are handled such that there's no cross-platform compatibility. This isn't necessarily an issue for me, as I don't share, say, workbooks with macros in them, but what a pain in the ass. I'd give up on it entirely if I didn't need to track changes in documents that I'm editing.
The weather here has finally changed. The list of things I have to do when that happens grows a little each year--or, perhaps, it just seems like more. Switching my clothes out isn't that big a deal, not least because I now have an abundance of closet space. I also have to crank up the vaporizer (I woke up at 2:30 am Saturday night, barely able to breathe, so I filled it and I'm better now; it's a little amazing what a huge difference that makes). I have to start slathering my body with lotion after I shower, but, in part because of my job, my fingers still crack sometimes. Getting dressed takes longer--all those layers of clothing; back when I practiced yoga and played handball, that was even more of a pain, because it meant changing several times in a day. The bathroom doesn't have a radiator, so I have to run the shower for awhile so it's not cold in there when I get in the shower. But I can switch back to flannel sheets, which I adore, so it's not all bad. Still, I think I'd trade the flannel sheets for not having to stand on the train platform with cold, damp air swirling around my legs.
I already have a ticket (and a decent one) for the Sunday Bruce show--but now I'm trying to score a floor ticket for the Monday show, and may even have found one. That means I'm probably going to exceed my entertainment budget for the month, but what's the point of doing all the side work if I can't do things like that once in awhile? In fact, that's precisely why I've been willing to take on all the extra work I can get: so I don't have to count every damned penny. I still do that, insofar as I track what I'm spending, and on what, but it's not the anxiety of looking at the checkbook, and looking at the bills, and wondering how I'm going to get them on the same planet.
I've been in that situation--for more than 10 years, as a matter of fact, from about 1981 until, oh, about 1995--and, as J and I have discussed repeatedly, it wears you down. I can't even imagine what it's like when it's the only circumstance you know, or when you're trying to support your kids, too, or when, say, your kids get sick or hurt. I still have a certain amount of anxiety around it, as you all have seen displayed here, but it has lessened gradually over the past 18 months. I still get a little anxious (okay, more than a little) about what I'm going to do next, how I'm going to get out of the bakery, blah, blah, blah, but I have irons in various fires, and we'll just see what happens first. I think even if I got a day job that only required, say, 40 hours a week for a decent salary plus benefits I would continue to take on editing projects as offered; hell, if I can fit the work in when I'm working 50 to 60 hours a week, I can certainly fit it in when I'm working fewer hours, and that would mean paying off the student loan sooner and maybe increasing retirement savings while I'm at it.
Speaking of your kids getting sick or hurt, Paul Krugman got it exactly right: "I don’t know about you, but I think American children who need medical care should get it, period. Even if you think adults have made bad choices — a baseless smear in the case of the Frosts, but put that on one side — only a truly vicious political movement would respond by punishing their injured children." That's really at the heart of it all. Either we take care of each other, or we don't. Will there be some people who exploit whatever system is in place for their own benefit? Of course; look at all those executives who get exorbitant pay even when their companies have gone into the toilet or when they've had to cut jobs (never their own, of course) or when they get their money on the sweat of the workers. I wouldn't say that those executives don't deserve health care, for example, no matter how many people they've exploited. And everyone else deserves it, too. I've always said that I want the same health care plan as my representatives in Congress, and the same retirement security as well. Seems fair, no?
3 comments:
We may be getting to the point where we can start to move toward some sort of universally available health care. But the medical establishment (AMA, big pharma, insurance companies, hospital corporations, HMO's) are heavily vested in what we have, and they have a lot of money (which equals power) and they will fight like rabid trapped rats to preserve as much as possible of the current "free market" system. This is one reason I don't like Hillary Clinton for president: She wants to keep them in the loop, when what we need is for them to be phased out. There is no room in a sane world for market forces to influence basic healthcare, and as long as these vipers are involved the medicine will go to the highest bidder.
Also, is Springsteen limiting the price of tickets? If not, those two tickets would exceed my entertainment budget for the whole year.
I actually disagree with you about the AMA--the docs don't much like the current system, either, and I think they'd abandon it in less than a heartbeat. The rest of them however, yes, they're craven.
Bruce did not "limit" the price of tickets--they're all mostly $95 per seat, with some obstructed views for $65. throw in ticketbastard charges and it's about $105 per. Luckily, I get mine through a ticket exchange, a by fans/for fans thing, where the explicit rule is that one cannot charge over face value. so far I've scored three tickets for this tour--including two GA for Monday, which could result in Very Close Seating--and I've traded/bought/sold tickets for other tours as well. I've only paid over face once--but then, I was treated to a 3rd-row seat as well, so I have no complaints.
I wasn't referring to doctors. I was referring to the AMA, which represents less than a third of doctors, which sells doctors' prescribing data to big pharma, which works to raise medical fees, which attempts to limit the number of practicing physicians, which tries to choke off nontraditional medical "competition," which opposed Medicare in the 60's and still supports market-based health services, blah, blah, blah. Know what I mean?
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