@AlexD1990 see you are in Lewes, DE. Mr. J and I took a trip back the end of September to DE as we had never been there. Stayed in a lovely AirBB just outside of Rehoboth Beach. We ventured up to Lewes. Visited the lovely museum in town. Had some Kickin’ Chicken in the beautiful park just behind it and then ventured down the streets to a secluded beach down by the Yacht club. Had a great time!

10 minutes ago, H2O said:

The whole performance was what music can be an about. A celebration of a culture but also a commentary on other things. The symbolism was meant to educate as well as entertain 

We tend to plan vacations as a family wanting to explore not just a different place but a different culture. Have experienced Costa Rica and last year Eastern Europe. Mr. J and I have been throwing around visiting PR and Belize and after seeing that fun cultural halftime show has it got me wanting to go somewhere. 

8 minutes ago, mappy said:

Then he weenied our posts  such a baby

Well that is not a surprise. That is the type. I was editing to add to my post while you were quoting so will also say the added part here. 

Why certain men feel that if a woman moves their body a certain way is sexual is on them and them alone. It is as pathetic as the ‘oh but her shoulders aroused me’ crap. Honestly the two Ms. J’s would have a field day with him. 

50 minutes ago, Wxtrix said:

my dude, you have been making stupid and gross dick jokes here for 20 years, despite being repeatedly asked by the women here to stop. step off the “but it degrades women!!!” soapbox.

oh and btw, as a woman i can assure you that there was nothing degrading to women during to that performance.

29 minutes ago, mappy said:

Amen

Yep came here to say the same thing. Why certain men feel that if a woman moves their body a certain way is sexual is on them and them alone. It is as pathetic as the ‘oh but her shoulders aroused me’ crap. Honestly the two Ms. J’s would have a field day with him. 

15 hours ago, CAPE said:

Love their early stuff, esp this one.

 

Yep! The concert we went to was so diverse age wise. Saw this one live and me and the Ms.J’s were both singing it. 
 

I have been to many concerts but the ones that I find the most memorable are the ones that are like a stage show. Beck, The Killers, Pulp and The Flaming Lips stand out for me. That being said David Bowie and The Cure shows were just jaw dropping musically. 

5 hours ago, Jebman said:

The Flaming Lips - Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots Pt. 1 [Official Music Video]

WOW Mrs. J!!!!! Thanks for bringing this stuff up!!! I LIKE IT A LOT! I am going to start blasting this on my car stereo at night while I hit the Whataburger drivethru in Kyle!

I love this band!

You are welcome! We actually saw them in concert for New Years Eve at the Anthem down at the DC Wharf. Amazing show whole family went and we rang in the new year together. 

16 minutes ago, Jebman said:

Who is Yoshimi? I must have missed 60 Minutes.

She is a Japanese girl who battles the pink robots of course. Creation of The Flaming Lips a wonderfully entertaining band from OKC. 

Morning alarm just came on. One can wish. 

Just finished making cookies and noticed it is snowing. Not sure when it started. 

Score the trifecta! 

On 2/3/2026 at 3:35 PM, EastCoast NPZ said:

Im surprised it didnt take your gutters off with it.

The panels have been up since 2013. 

I see our friend the Extreme Cold Watch is back. 

1 hour ago, adelphi_sky said:

Sorry this happened. Rule of thumb for job offers is no legitimate company will offer a job without a face-to-face or at least a video interview. Be careful of links to document sites, etc. Always check emails, those usually give scammers away. They pray on people who are too busy to check. Scam emails I get are emails that usually end with gmail.com or some domain other than the company referred to in the email. Instant trashcan for me. 

I'm super critical of most things. I'm getting older, so I may not be as sharp as I used to be. And with AI, catching scams are getting a lot tougher. I'm starting to fall for the AI slop online. Imagine how scammers can use AI in these situations. I imagine in a few years you will be talking to someone in a video conference and they are AI! 

Stay vigilant. Hope your kid gets a great job. 

Yeah the “interview” process was strange. But I have seen this done before and is usually used to select out serious candidates. But the move from this process directly to a job offer without a face to face was one of the red flags that went up. You are correct though with AI this is just going to get tougher and tougher. 

1 hour ago, WxUSAF said:

Scary stuff @Mrs.J! Our daughter is a similar age so I’ll keep an eye out!

Glad I could help so she knows what is going on out there. It honestly needs to be talked about more. But so many who experience it are embarrassed for falling for it. So they don’t. 

1 hour ago, mappy said:

This is awful but thank you for sharing. Glad y’all’s alarm bells were going off before any sensitive information was sent! Hope it doesn’t break her confidence, something will come along for her! 

She is all good. Preparing for her face to face interview for an internship on Monday. 

1 hour ago, stormtracker said:

Damn, this is bad.  Just read this after being involved in As The Board Turns.    I'm just glad you and Mr. J caught this shit in time before she sent over her data!  Tell her to keep her chin up and be careful and run things through yall.

So are we. It could have gone really south really quick. The fact that she has not heard anything from the person after Tuesday night tells me they knew she caught on and cut her loose as it was a loss of time for them. Unfortunately probably moved onto the next person. 

58 minutes ago, wxmeddler said:

My wife runs her own business and got a fairly large work/job client offer. Went all the way through the on-boarding process, they even sent 20% down but the check bounced and their "english is my second language so apologies if my emails come off weird" started to fall apart. Was just a big scam. Reported to the police and state fraud center. It's scary how good these scammers are getting with help from AI and such. Really frustrating. I'm sorry that happened to her.

Scary that it is even happening to businesses as well. Did not know there is a state fraud center. This might be worth sending to them. 

Thanks all. One good thing is we had told her to not say anything to family as we thought it would be a surprise when she graduates. But because of this I have no one to open up to and it was really getting to me. I know I do not post much on this thread. It honestly moves to quick for me and I like to give every post a good read. But it was the only place that I felt comfortable with posting to. 

1 minute ago, Kay said:

Sorry this happened, and good to spread the word. Someone tried to scam the college age daughter of acquaintances of mine about a year ago. I think she was a senior or maybe just graduated. Art student. They pretended to want to commission her work/hire her. Overjoyed of course, but a scam. Pretty terrible to prey on young people's hopes and dreams.

Yes it is. And when you think you know all the ways out there they just keep reinventing themselves. Having been an art student myself I would have been over the moon with a commission so know what your acquaintances daughter went through. What we want now is the company that was directly spoofed to respond back to us. Because it was not until the end that the pieces fell into place. Their logo was used, contact name was used in the initial contact. Mr. J is giving them today to respond then he will try to call them. He wants to alert them that their name is being used in this manner. Not sure if they will care or not but if it was my company I would want to know. 

43 minutes ago, poolz1 said:

Thank you for posting this.  I am sorry your daughter went through this BS.  I have a daughter who is in her second year at UMD, working her butt off.  I will be relaying this information to her and my wife.  Never knew of or even imagined this method of scamming! 

That is the reason I posted it. It can happen to anyone. And being a victim myself knows too well the years it takes to get things right. Me knowing that even just you letting your daughter and wife know it makes my post worthwhile. As my daughter is a film and media studies major she has a YouTube channel. She has been doing a weekly vlog and intends to spotlight this. She was a lucky one I am sure there are others out there who have not been. 

So something happened this week that I need to put in writing I am so mad. 

So the oldest Ms. J is in her last semester. And is looking everyday and applying for jobs in this shitty market. Fast forward this week, Monday to be exact. She finally gets an interview for an internship. But on the same day she got contacted for another job that would be exactly what she would like to have. Local DC communications company, would be remote and good benefits and pay. With all the jobs she has replied to lately she did not remember applying to this one. An interview is set up over Microsoft Teams. It is one of those interviews where you are sent questions and then you have to record yourself with a 1 minute answer. Weird but I have seen interviews like these used to narrow down candidates. She is told that she would hear something back the following day. She gets contacted again through Microsoft Teams and asked if she is available to talk over the phone at a certain time on Tuesday. Let me just say here that Mr. J was already kind of surprised that someone who would be fresh out of school would even be considered for this job but we are all kind of caught up in the excitement. Anyways she lets us know she is offered the job and with an after graduation start date. Perfect right?? Well that is where the red flags started to pop up. She had class into the night and then one of her club meetings after so we had not had the time to talk with her. She asked should she cancel the interview for the internship and Mr. J said until you have a signed contract no. So we asked her about the contract. 2 pages, only 2 pages and what was on those 2 pages made the Spidy sense of Mr. J go off. He started digging. Mind you Ms. J had already checked into the name of the person who originally sent the first contact. He was an employee. But the person who called her was someone calling from an AZ phone number and had a thick accent. And his email to send the “contract” to ended not with a .com. In said “contract” it listed the job posting again and all the benefits, which mind you was what was exactly on the companies website. The second page was asking for proof of rent, ID, SS, passport and bank info for “direct deposit” At the bottom was a line for the start date and it was left blank even though she had given a start date. She was to fill out the paperwork and send it back by the end of business on Wednesday. We told her to send us what she had gotten and started to try to connect the dots. Told her to hold off sending anything until we dug a bit more. As a victim of ID theft back in the day I started to get that sick feeling in my gut. She was contacted one more time Tuesday evening saying that she can send the info that night. She did not even have anything printed out and replied she would the next day. Between that and the digging that Mr. J was doing we told her to not send anything at all. That is was looking more and more like a phishing scheme that we had never seen before. What set off his concern was the salary that was being given to someone with her qualifications. Mr. J immediately found an email to the company that was being spoofed asking if in fact she had been given a job offer. We have yet to hear back from them but were 100% sure that she should not send off any sensitive information.

You guys… this world sucks! This kid has been busting her ass to not only finish college but has been stressing over not being a burden on us. Which she will never be and was told as such. She is working 2 jobs and making contacts. And wants a job she wants to be self sufficient. I feel absolutely gutted for her. She still has her interview for the internship but after what just happened she went back in to check if she even applied for this. And cross reference the contact with the actual company. This one checks out and will actually be a face to face interview. She will now be keeping a spread sheet of what she applies for on top of the email trail. We are glad that she still feels close enough to us to keep us in the loop. Because had she not this could have ended very badly. Sorry for this being so long but I needed to put my thoughts out in words with people not connected directly. 

Everyone enjoy this sunny day. 

40 deg and sun. The solar panels finally warmed up enough to let loose. Went out to clear the drive with my ears on the rest of the other half. It did go while I was clearing. But heard it and went down into the street. 

On 1/31/2026 at 9:40 PM, 87storms said:

The southwest has done extremely well in that department this winter.  I was tempted to travel, but prices are bad and I was already out there for 3 weeks recently.

We were looking at Puerto Rico or the USVI. But then the reality of us wanting to do new flooring made us put the hold on. 

I have been looking at warm weather trips the past couple of days. We want to put in some new flooring in our lower level but with this cold we are not exactly wanting to rip up carpet. 

5 hours ago, snowfan said:

Cleanup in aa co continues

 

Have started to see some of that up here. Went out for the first time today. While I knew our neighborhood would be sub par to get out of I was surprised at the interesting plowing conditions on the main roads. Lanes just going into the middle of the roads and some just stopping all together making you veer off into the shoulder or median. And the amount of street parked cars in my neighborhood when everyone has a driveway. The streets that are the extra wide ones are reduced to single lane due to the plowed in cars. The combination of the sleet and cold temps have turned the snow into an almost glacial pack. Even getting that blue hew from chunks that I broke up on our deck to get to the bird feeder. 

Ok so what is up with this. Mr.J is headed into the office this morning. Looks like I need to alert him. 

Low was 9.3 at 7:30 am. Up to 14 currently. Going to go out and chip out some left over snow at the end of the drive in the street that the plow ran over. 

The older Ms. J in DC got another day of campus closed and zoom classes. The younger Ms. J in PA will be trucking across campus for classes as campus is open today. Told her welcome to school in the North. Told her my memory of walking to class at my school in NW Ohio and got into the building with my eye lashes frozen together due to the wind chill.  

9 hours ago, pazzo83 said:

how are folks' streets?  We got plows all day so our streets are actually pretty clear (we live on a street corner)

I live on a Square. Farthest point back in our neighborhood. As it is all townhouses we are HOA maintained. They came in several times during the storm. Some areas you can see pavement but it is mostly snow packed down. As of the rest of the neighborhood have no idea. Being single family homes it is County maintained. Mr.J works from home on Mondays so we have not checked the status of roads. Will have to though as he drives a MX 5. He may just be taking my EV6 to work tomorrow if the neighborhood is packed down snow. We got the AWD dual motor and it has a snow mode vs his RWD manual. 

Upon seeing the back edge on radar we went out for what we hope is our last driveway clear. Totals are 6” snow and 4” sleet. The sleet was the worst to clear off of the driveway. Was like shoveling sand. 

Family spread out and we are all experiencing a different type of precipitation. Kid in DC said it just started raining, presumably freezing rain. I am getting sleet here. Kid up in PA is getting dumped on with snow.