That may be the one year of HS I enjoyed. Besides, it was a lot of fun following Watergate along with LAUte.
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Watergate is one of my major memories of that year. Also, registering for the Draft, many months after the U.S. military stopped making new draft calls. There are several aspects of my life in which timing worked nicely in my favor.
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Yup.
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I have always been old. I graduated from the very first graduating class of my high school. 
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why?
Is she also going to do this while running with scissors in one hand and garden shears in the other?
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She is then going to eat a large meal and immediately go swimming.
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I don’t know if this is a pet peeve as much as just a general life observation.
I’ve been having more trouble focusing lately and haven’t been able to figure out why. It seems like keeping my attention on anything important for more than 10 minutes becomes a significant challenge, which is getting increasingly frustrating as I get older. I had a bit of a lightning bolt realization today as to why.
I was on a Zoom conference call while getting dings from three separate IM chats while receiving 4 “URGENT” e-mails while trying to set up a different meeting for next week while getting multiple texts from my brother, wife, and kids, while sending two spam calls to voice mail while getting three push notifications from ESPN when it hit me that it just…never…stops. There is never a time when I don’t have something that is immediately and urgently vying for my attention.
Mrs. SkinyUte asked me last week why I often simply just sit and do nothing in the evenings or n weekends. I’m realizing now that it’s the only time I have when there aren’t a million different things flashing “PAY ATTENTION TO ME” all at the same time.
I used to be better about filtering out most of it and being able to concentrate on one thing at a time, but it feels like pace has increased exponentially as we add more and more tech. I just don’t think our brains are wired to actually handle the amount of information that comes at us at any given moment and I worry that it’s actually starting to have a pretty negative impact on me.
Probably need to find a way to turn some things off, but so much of it is necessary for my job that it’s really hard to. I don’t really enjoy feeling like this.
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I just want to say one word to you. Just one word … drugs.
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I empathize with you and I’m sure many here do as well. Part of it is the tech age we live in. Part of it is the responsibility we take on. The other part is a drive to be on top of it when 30 years ago, that was not nearly as distracting or demanding. I have 2 email threads, a paging system, texts, calls and communication through the care portal system. Sometimes these are critical situations, others are impending and virtually everything is actionable or subject to review. With that, I do not think I will miss the stress when I retire. I will miss the people and the quality of work achieved, but I am likely to switch phone numbers and give it out to a dozen or so of family and dear friends.
Everyone else can find me if they want.
Hang in there @SkinyUte! we’re all rowing together and rooting for each other.
Hey! Kinda looks like a metal show…
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Yeah, and then when the Iran war, the Russia/Ukraine war’s supposed impact on fuel prices, Trump’s aggressive attempts to acquire states election data, Trump fighting against any regulation of AI, $5000 election bribe and the resulting 1.2 trillion dollar deficit, Kennedy Center closing as a result of Trump’s name not being added, Oligarchs paying for Trump’s son\s wedding, blah…, blah…, blah…, and any one of many other sets of critical national/world issues (these were chosen from just today’s headlines) added to the hourly insanity of our current President’s general lunatic ramblings, It ultimately gets very hard to find a way to simply turn things off. (but I am working one it 
).
Makes it hard to keep track of the latest on the Epstein files, huh?
If you can turn it all off and get a good night’s sleep, God Bless you and let me know how you do it. I’m struggling and could use some advice…
Note: Edited to add a portion of the rest of today’s headlines…
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But we can’t even discuss how to afford SS or Medicare like every other advance country
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So there’s this thing called a “GetOut” pass. They cost about $200 and you get one entry into a ton of different places (Lagoon, waterparks, zoo, aquarium, climbing gyms, etc). Mrs SkinyUte bought them for the fam last Christmas and we used it to go to Lagoon last week, so I get a bunch of ads for it. Here’s the ad that popped from today.
Is it just me or is some influencer saying “I have cancer so I bought a GetOut pass so I could spend my last days with my kids” really morbid and kinda gross?
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First…ok, it’s complicated. There is a part of me that is glad this family is maximizing the time that is left, and if the pass is facilitating it, good on them.
Second, this whole influencer thing needs to quit being a thing. It’s gross, creepy, and just plain beyond stupid. The fact you got that is disturbing to me on a lot of levels. When the world is finding out things about you before your own family is wrong.
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Oh, I’ve got no problem with that part at all. Having lost both parents to cancer, I’m fully on board with spending quality time.
It’s the whole “using cancer as an advertising pitch” aspect that I find remarkably ghoulish.
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I got dragged to a timeshare pitch once. Dude used the death of his father to sell timeshares, I’m uncertain if it was even true. But if I didn’t have the ick before it started, I sure did from that point forward. I get what you are saying.
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The term “influencer” is a pet peeve of mine. These are not influencers they are vapid attention whores and the only people they influence are the electronically lobotomized.
Now get off my lawn!
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Just curious. Is it possible to be vapid and an attention whore?
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Apparently it is.
You can use jejune, puerile or insipid if you prefer
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At first I read that as “vaped”, which come to think of it probably fits.
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