Dr is such a convenient option! You do have a pretty good blended name option with "Holliway-Hathaday", I have to say. (If we ever for some reason want to put our "family name" on a sign somewhere, it is 100% going to be "the Bigman-Bjorkneys")

This is SO REAL. And god forbid they all start failing in a cascade. I have been clinging for life this year when I was pretty okay in 2022 because we had an Oven -> HVAC -> Washer -> Computer -> Phone -> Dryer -> ONLY VEHICLE WE OWN death spiral in 2023 and then medical bills.

I am sometimes SUPER petty and respond to RSVPs with lots of crossing out and writing in "Dr. and Mr. LastName" (spouse took my last name for social purposes, aka Facebook, holiday cards, and wedding invitations).

I believe my father's father went to his grave not knowing that my brother (my father's only son) didn't have his last name—when I was born a kid apparently had to get the father's last name if the parents were married, but the laws got updated by the time he was born, so my parents traded off.

My sympathies. I started having this argument with people in high school, somehow (?!), and pointing out that I didn't have the same last name as my mother and it was literally never a problem got zero traction.

I just took a feedback survey (for Oxford Abstracts) 100% because the email invitation mentioned a draw for a $100 gift certificate. Going to try to remember that the next time I decide it's too much work to incentivize feedback.

For those of you in the US: basically all Canadian universities are public, especially the ones you've actually heard of. * technically there are private universities here, but they're all tiny religious schools

I don't really think newspaper op-eds stand any odds of changing public opinion on topics like "should we fund universities", but this article is still cathartic to read: www.theglobeandmail.com/business/com...

Opinion: We don’t need no education: How Canada’s broken university system holds us back

Higher education is the perfect case for how our system has been failing and what needs to be done for the Canadian middle class to flourish again

The downside of having created my website using Jekyll but only updating it every (*checks notes*) 2.5 years is that even a minor restructuring requires kind of re-learning a programming language.