The USC academic calendar lists Spring Recess as March 10-17. I think the story broke on March 12. So while most students wouldn’t have been on a yacht, most would have been on break.

Well if it’s just about school costs to you, some of the students involved in the scandal got into Yale, which has financial aid packages that can make it cheaper than state schools for students from low-income families. So if stupid rich kids are preventing talented poor kids from getting a full ride to graduate with…

What a precious little cutie! Are there any pet insurance plans that could possibly help? I don’t really know the situations where they are best. I guess if the bulk of the bills are behind you, now, then it may not be the time to try it out. Fingers crossed that the treatment works and your pupper is all better soon.

It’s true—many Ivy schools (and probably other prominent private colleges) have need-based financial aid and no-loan (i.e., all grants) policies. One of my friends paid nearly nothing because her parents’ income was low, and she graduated without student loans. Obviously it’s good to apply to a range of schools and…

So does a mousetrap. Beating heart, schmeating heart. Hearts are not particularly unique.

That’s so lucky. My dad’s was on the lucky side—literally. The doctors said that because his tumor formed at the front of the pancreas, it started pressing against his stomach (or intestines or whatever it was he could feel) when it was still small. He’d felt sick to his stomach for a couple weeks, went into the…

Thank you, we will. I’m so proud of my dad for being willing to do what it takes to fight it, and we hope that his otherwise good health will help him beat the averages. Best of wishes to your family as well.

Thank you. It’s kind of crazy that this news came out less than a week after our own terrible news. First headline I saw was simply that Trebek has cancer, and I thought, “Oh no, pancreatic?” because of course that’s the first thing on my mind, and what do you know? Now I’m seeing articles popping up about why…

I posted in a SNS back in the fall that my dad had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. At the time, he was about as lucky as a pancreatic cancer patient could be, because they caught it early (small tumor, hadn’t spread) and he was a perfect candidate to have the rounds of chemo followed by tumor removal followed…

Ugh, I’m so sorry. This hits close to home, because my dad has it now. He was supposed to be one of the lucky ones (as “lucky” as anyone with pancreatic cancer can be considered, which is decidedly not lucky)—they caught it early, still small, hadn’t spread, perfect candidate for operation. After several months of…

Ugh, I didn’t know about deaths in unregulated facilities, but I guess it makes sense—it’s why they have the rules in the first place. My mom has a licensed in-home preschool in MA, gets inspections, only allowed to have up to 6 kids alone, or up to 10 if there are two adults—which is how I knew how far off this…

Like, is this something that child services in her state would want to investigate? Something to report? I tried doing a little google research at some point and concluded that I wasn’t completely sure of whether it was enough to report, so I dropped it, but maybe my research skills were bad.

She’s an asshole for lots of other reasons, but that’s a story for another time. This is plenty reason for the situation at hand.

That did occur to me. My mom has a licensed in-home preschool, and she’s allowed to have 6 children by herself. She has fire drills and clearly marked maps for 2 exits posted. And her kids are all old enough to walk themselves (at least 3yo).

I’m really not someone who lies very much, and I think if I ever tried to conjure up an elaborate lie in person, I’d crack up about 10 seconds in and it would all fall apart. That’s why my most complicated lie was on AIM (AOL Instant Messenger for the young ’uns).

So I have an acquaintance who lives in another state who runs an unlicensed daycare out of her house. She takes care of ~12-15 kids at a time—just her there alone—and keeps them penned in a section of her living room in front of the TV. The babies she keeps in their carriers. She knows what she’s doing is sketchy,…

Bleh, he’s too caveman-looking.

So he’s saying that Democrats use facts and Republicans and Trump use fake facts, and the Washington Post acts as their respective fact checker and fake fact checker. That...actually checks out.