Wow. I had no idea that people could get so passionate about buying socks!
As you can see by Itzl's concerned look, this group is for us to check in at to let people know we are alive, doing OK, and not affected by such things as heat, blizzards, floods, wild fires, hurricanes, tornadoes, power outages, or other such things that could keep us off DKos. It's also so we can find other Kossacks nearby for in-person checks when other methods of communication fail - a buddy system. Members come here to check in. If you're not here, or anywhere else on DKos, and there are adverse conditions in your area (floods, heatwaves, hurricanes, etc.), we and your buddy are going to check up on you. If you are going to be away from your computer for a day or a week, let us know here. We care!
We have split up the publishing duties, but we welcome everyone in IAN to do daily diaries for the group! Every member is an editor, so anyone can take a turn when they have something to say, photos and music to share, a cause to promote or news!
If you would like to fill in, either post in thread or send FloridaSNMom a Kosmail with the date. If you need someone to fill in, ditto. FSNMom is here on and off through the day usually from around 9:30 or 10 am eastern to around 11 pm eastern.
If you'd like to be part of the Itzl Alert Network, please leave a comment asking to join, or send us a message asking to join. We'd love to have you. The bigger our network, the less likely someone will be stranded all alone.
This has been a good news/bad news kind of week. The good news has been mostly entertaining. The bad news has been deaths and bills coming in.
The bad news:
My mother has had a fairly large number of friends dating from her early teens. Of them, two were particularly close. One of those two was my stepfather's first wife, who died of cancer a couple years after my father did. The second died in the wee hours last Sunday morning. I remember both those women quite fondly in my own right, but it's my mother who's seriously grieving - though I think she feels better for having been able to be there to say goodbye.
My own bills are fine, but my daughter is getting hit with the final amounts for some medical stuff for her and both her kids. The actual visits and/or procedures happened over a couple of months, but the insurance payouts came pretty close together and she just got what will probably be the biggest bill for what she herself will have to pay last week. The car she uses is mine, and I pay most of the expenses for it. With that, and all the other things I have in the works, I can't see my way toward actual financial assistance before August.
A drinking water advisory covering pretty much the whole tri-county area came out today. It took a link from work to get to a map showing the area covered. It being a holiday weekend, I will not place any bets on how long it lasts.
The good news:
The UK is going to bury Richard III where he was found. Only in the city's cathedral instead of back under the parking lot.
My mother can afford to help my kid. And my stepfather is a doctor, so he has a pretty good idea of what things can cost once the insurance pays out.
We need special permission to submit a grant as an A0 (that's an officially original submission for one that has been already submitted twice and not funded), since the project is a partnership and the budget is pretty large. What can I say? The NIH is a bureaucracy. We will probably get the permission, and it will probably even be in time to get the thing submitted by June 30. The one good thing about grant proposals is that almost everything is boilerplate, and we only need a few tweaks.