Poor SIL Sara. That sounds tough.

My parents have each been super sick one at a time, the past few days--I'm guessing norovirus? So ew. We told them to stay far away. But tomorrow will be presents and dinner. Tonight I went on a tinder date (meh, but worth a shot) and then went out dancing, which was good times. But now my nose is running a bit so I'm really hoping its "I forgot my Claritin yesterday" and not "I'm getting a nasty cold in time for Christmas". Ugh.

Also sad: the one foster kid my sister had who went to college this fall. She's back under a special program where they get somewhere to stay over the holidays if they're in college. And I mean, my sister and BIL like her, she was here her whole senior year. She got a scholarship to college (not sure if it was due to grades or due to the foster kid thing?) but had to keep a certain GPA. ...apparently she signed up for 18 credit hours, skipped most of her classes, and got one B and the rest Fs. So she is going to lose the scholarship and have nowhere to live and have to get a job or join the military or something. And I feel so bad for her but also like giiiiiirl. People warned you. This was your one good shot. And it's not like "oh, it was harder than I thought and I got some Cs and just missed the GPA requirement", so...

Some kids just aren't ready and can't do it, but I don't think there are any good options for them. I had a roommate like that -- her family had no money, and her father lost his job, and she literally never went to class or studied. So of course she failed out.

I feel like I lucked out in that my roommates and circle of friends were mostly nerds, so working hard in school was a given whether or not there was also hard partying going on.

That's the same scale people use when they try to convince me that a given food item is not spicy. (SPOILER: they are liars. Every time.)

I have trouble convincing my dad that spices used for flavor don't necessarily equal spicy food. But I did get him to try a chicken pesto flatbread last week, and he liked it, so small victories. (He also likes a number of things with garlic sauce, even though he says he hates garlic. I don't know, maybe Grandma fed him garlic bulbs as a child and it was just too much?)

The train I take to work is on the Sunday/holiday schedule today, so I drove to work. At times mine was the only car on the road.

I am starting to suspect that most people have off today.

I am afraid that is going to happen for my student worker, but I am glad she appears to be going to class and meeting with her professors.

The "feel a little pressure" thing led me to try to be stoic with my root canal, until my dentist said "are you feeling anything, because anything is too much" and then he gave me much more nova sine. Which sort of gave me a panic attack, but the root canal didn't hurt anymore.

I love that Buffistas jumped to Daniel's defence on Fb on the dodgeball thing.

Typo... I'm too squeamish to want to contemplate what might be giving you trouble... but I'm sending Vibes for improvement of whatever.

I did much the same thing my first year at university at 17.

I was about to ask if anyone else read it!

I did much the same thing my first year at university at 17.

Me too! My mom was diagnosed with cancer two weeks after I got to college my freshman year, and I just...shut down. I stopped going to class, didn't go to any of my finals, and failed out (or at least was on academic probation, with a 0.0 GPA), and I didn't tell my parents, because they had other things to worry about. Then I dropped out for the spring semester to help my dad take care of my mom, and after she died I went back to school for what would have been the fall semester of my sophomore year, and I did the same thing all over again, and failed out for real. And I didn't tell anyone. My dad was busy passively committing suicide because he was so depressed about my mom, my brothers barely knew me (and didn't want to know me) and I lied to all my friends and pretended to be in school. For years. While I worked three jobs. It went on so long, that I thought I could never tell my friends because they would "hate" me for lying for so long, and my father died without ever knowing. I went years thinking I couldn't get back into school. It wasn't until I met Terry and mustered up the courage to tell him, that things finally changed. He was really supportive, and we had each of our friends over one by one so that I could "confess" that I'd been lying to them for years, and then he went with me to the undergraduate admissions office, and I applied for readmission and got back into school, and finally, years later, got my degree, but I carried so much shame around for screwing up and hiding it and lying about it for so long that sometimes it's hard to believe. There are only a handful of Buffistas whom I've ever talked with about this, and it's been so many years now I can't even remember if I ever posted about it here, but I'm fairly certain I didn't, because it's only with the distance of middle age that I've really, truly forgiven myself for the whole mess and started to look at it as an accomplishment that i got through it all, and not that my entire adult life is a hopeless failure that I have to fake. So!

Which is a long winded way of saying yeah, me too. Preferred reading of previous paragraph: quickly! Moving on. I felt the need to type it, but already regretting it.