Mental Health Thread #8 - Fall is here!!

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When I get my beach condo down south I'll rent it to you guys real cheap during the winter.
 
Even if it were cold, I am still really looking forward to my trip north. Even if it is just a brief visit. God bless Jet Blue and their last minute cheap fares.
 
I sure very much wish I could but for various reasons I can't. :( I would love to see you all & also not have Thanksgiving alone.
 
Betty, can you ask about community or senior centers in your area? Most do a holiday dinner. Churches too.

I've been looking at the pictures from Buffalo and it brings back unpleasant memories of Snowmaggedon. 5 feet of snow in one storm and 3 blizzards in one year were a bit much. Cbg knows how much fun it was to get to my old house in good weather. My SUV was the best purchase I made that year.
 
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Elle, I thought about that but I think I rather spend Thanksgiving alone if I can't spend it with family or friends. That's just me - the way I am. It's not the dinner but being with family and/or friends that I like/enjoy. I have my dog.

Wow, I can't imagine 5 feet of snow either. I think I know the house you are talking about - the one where if you weren't careful, you could end up sliding into the river.
 
Betty, I'd have been hit by a train first. It would be a long slide. But yes, that house.

Today it is 70 here. Wednesday, they are calling for snow. I'm flying out Wednesday so Mother Nature better get her act together and fast.
 
Strange weather (very strange) - changes drastically sometimes day to day.
 
Also heading 10 hours north and the temp will be 20 degrees warmer. Not complaining, just saying.
 
Been quiet on here. I for one am very ready for the holiday break.

Pet peeve of the day- employees with multiple names. I don't mean those who go by an obvious nickname. If your given name is Joseph Cool, I can figure out that Joe Cool is also you. I mean the folks whose given name is Joseph Cool but they want to go by Mike Cool-Jones or Mike Jones because that is the name they "publish" under. The whole purpose of a name is to identify you. I don't care if you publish under Roger Rabbit, pick one name and use it. Even the "goes by middle name" people are driving me nuts these days. I don't know your family history and that your mother promised to name you after her favorite uncle. I just want to know how to locate you and what name to call you. If you hate your given name, change it legally. Or consistently use your made up name. Don't really care, but stick with one.

Trying to send out confirmations from OE and matching up the name they used on the enrollment form and the name they use for email and in our system, is turning out to be far more complicated than it should be. In some cases, those are 3 totally different and not even close to resembling one another names.
 
I know usually nicknames come about naturally, but what I don't get is people who name their child one thing, fully intending to call them something else. Name them what you plan to call them!
 
The nickname AND the middle name things were how my parents in law compromised. In my husband's family, it was a tradition to name the oldest son James. My mother in law didn't like that name. So the compromise was that my husband was named James Bradford and called Brad.

But yeah, I hear you, Elle. We have any number of post docs, most but not all of them Asian, who have Anglicized their name but still have their formal, given name in the records for visa purposes. I can maybe figure out that Juajing is Julia, but when Yishio becomes Kevin, I'm lost.
 
We've run into a few nickname problems here from time to time. A few of them are simple: name is John James Smith, everybody calls him Jim. Maybe officially we know him as J. James Smith. No problem, I can deal with that. The difficult ones are when John Smith grows up being called, say, "Spike". Everybody knows him as "Spike" and when you say John Smith they go "who"? Where we've run into that the most is our e-mail addresses. If the IT department will only set the addresses up using actual legal names, and if he is set up as John.smith@company.com for e-mail purposes and everybody knows him as Spike, it can be difficult to figure out.
 
Cynthia, I'm running into it in reverse. We are large enough that I don't know most of the employees personally. There are several thousand spread out all over. The benefits statement comes in John Smith but the email is Spike.Smith@email.com. Our HRIS has the guy listed as J. Spike Smith. And I have a bunch of the Anglicized names as well from employees of all nationalities and backgrounds including some based on religious beliefs a la Cat Stevens. Plus the "we wanted to name our kid after grandma but don't like grandma's name so we are going to just call our kid Jane". As a logical matter, I fail to see how giving a kid a name they will never use serves whatever purpose caused the parents to do that. Don't those kids get tired of having to relay a family history lesson every time someone asks their name?
 
I'm glad I only have 140 or so employees to deal with....the whole "name game" must be a nightmare for larger organizations!

I agree, I don't understand giving a kid a name they will never use. I know a number of people named that way. If you don't like the name enough to use it, don't give it to the kid! When my second son was born, we didn't know if we were having a girl or a boy. I was sure it was a girl, so I made a deal with my husband at the time: if it was a girl, I got to name her, if it was a boy, he got to name him. Except we both had veto power over any names the other picked that we absolutely hated. We'd narrowed it down to one name which is a nickname, so I figured if it was a boy that shortened version was the name he wanted to use. When the baby was born, I looked over at him and said "Okay, so what's his name?" and he said the long version of the name, which I don't really like. At that point, though, I had no fight left in me after giving birth to a 9.5 pound baby, so that's what we named him!
 
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