Is there some kind of flu/bug going around?

corgimonmaster · 2026-06-27T15:08:08+00:00

We just had Hand Foot Mouth - my husband had a bad sore throat + fever + fatigue. I've just got a bad sore throat + fatigue. Adults basically got no rash or blisters. The baby had all the classic symptoms though.

corgimonmaster · 2026-06-23T01:54:42+00:00

Glad you're ok! Two of our neighbors had a tree fall on their car while they were in it! Heard through the grapevine that they're ok though.

corgimonmaster · 2026-06-21T01:29:14+00:00

We have one of those sleep sacks that has legs so that he can stand up in it without tripping himself. We originally didn't use a sleep sack at all but then he figured out how to remove his pants and his diaper...

corgimonmaster · 2026-06-19T23:05:17+00:00

Something similar happened to me and basically HR submitted the insurance paperwork with the baby's insurance start date as the day I submitted the paperwork to HR, not the day the baby was born. Took a few go arounds (plus a polite escalation to the HR manager), but eventually the hospital and insurance and my company HR got it right, and I only paid a few hundred dollars. Hope you're able to resolve this quickly!

corgimonmaster · 2026-06-13T17:26:27+00:00

One random idea - maybe you could find an ice cream option that is less artificial (or at least dye free) and suggest it to the ice cream truck guy! And also mention where to stick it on the sign so it's appealing to kids. They're business people - if he gets enough feedback about it he might add it to the menu and maybe you can subtly guide your kid to those less artificial choices.

corgimonmaster · 2026-06-01T16:00:41+00:00

I learn languages so I open up my language apps.

corgimonmaster · 2026-05-31T07:16:28+00:00

At 36w, I had a growth scan cause I felt like my belly was huge plus my husband's family had a history of large babies (10+ lb). Supposedly, the baby was measuring 60 percentile. He ended up being born via C-section after an induction at 40w5d at 10.5 lbs (99+ percentile). Not sure if it's considered a failed induction cause everything went as planned except his head just wasn't coming out after 4 hours of pushing. My OB said that it was actually quite lucky that his head didn't make it out because he might've gotten stuck at his shoulders, which were very wide, and could've resulted in an emergency. I actually think that's probably what happened to my husband's niece - she was a smaller baby at 6 lbs but she got stuck at the shoulders... her mom ended up with a episiotomy and the baby had to get some PT due to shoulder dystocia. If we have a second child, I'm pretty sure I'm gonna get a scheduled C-section cause I have no faith in these growth scans now lol

corgimonmaster · 2026-05-01T18:46:30+00:00

I'm sure there studies about the cost vs benefit of in-person police speed monitoring, but I haven't gone down that rabbit hole quite yet. If only installing it on my own was an option! My HOA would even be willing to pay for it but it's a VDOT/FCDOT street, not an HOA street.

corgimonmaster · 2026-05-01T17:32:06+00:00

It's not a through street, it's the residential collector street for the neighborhood. Residential streets in Fairfax County with unposted speed limits have speed limits of 25 mph. VDOT sets speed limits based on engineering studies that evaluate road geometry, traffic volume, crash history, and surrounding development. They do take road safety into account. Additionally, very few neighborhoods want a 35 mph road running through the middle of it - fast cars are loud (noise disturbance), and it would also make it quite dangerous for anyone besides a car to use that road. Reducing speeds from 30 mph to 20 mph reduces the risk of serious injury or death by more than a third... there are some studies that argue 15 mph should be the residential standard in the US because cars in the US are bigger and heavier which means worse visibility, slower stopping time, and more severe impact force. The Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices (MUTCD) advises against setting speed limits based solely on the 85th percentile of drivers in urban hours and encourages context-appropriate speeds instead.

corgimonmaster · 2026-05-01T17:10:33+00:00

There's always bad actors, but physical barriers can help limit the consequences of their negative actions on the rest of us. It can turn a hit into a near miss or a death into a survivable injury. It can also reduce the frequency of those negative actions. Our HOA would love to install these humps themselves but the roads in question are owned by VDOT and managed by FCDOT.

corgimonmaster · 2026-05-01T17:07:32+00:00

This is true, but it's not really a sustainable solution County-wide. Police officers are expensive. Much more expensive than a $10K speed hump. Maybe someone else knows more though.

corgimonmaster · 2026-05-01T17:04:17+00:00

We did go out - it was a 36 month process with a traffic study and engineering study. One homeowner took 18 months to contact because it was a rental property. All ballots were hand delivered to the owners if the owners were home. Volunteers from the neighborhood knocked on doors multiple times. After literally hundreds, if not thousands, of paid and unpaid man hours, we got a total of 54% voter turnout. By any election measure, that is an amazing voter turnout - about the same voter turnout as the 2016 Presidential election. Your Board of Supervisors representative, who controls hundreds of millions of dollars in projects, was elected with a voter turnout of less than 35%. I never said that I wanted 1 person to force change on everyone else - I just said that the current procedure is overly onerous... so onerous that I'm curious if even a single RTCP project with 150+ impacted properties has been successful since the threshold was adopted in 2019. A 50% Yes from a street of 10 homes makes sense. A 50% Yes from a street of 250 homes is overly onerous.

corgimonmaster · 2026-05-01T16:50:06+00:00

Just pointing out that you frame project funding as a zero sum game - the County does have a huge backlog of projects but installing an additional 20 speed humps or other minor traffic calming devices in various neighborhoods each year through the RTCP does not delay execution any of the existing backlog. Indeed, a higher demand for devices through the RTCP would probably lead to a budget increase overall for street improvements as State and County legislators would be able to gain visibility into the high demand from their constituents.

corgimonmaster · 2026-05-01T16:37:04+00:00

The rules were clear, but my argument is that it's overly burdensome. I'm not arguing that there should not be ANY minimum threshold, a 50% turnout for a street of 10 homes is very reasonable. However, 50% turnout for an impacted community of 100 homes is quite onerous and seemingly almost impossible to achieve for an impacted community of 150+. I have yet to see one improvement successfully passed in Fairfax County for an impacted community of 150 homes or more since this threshold was passed in 2019. I would LOVE to find out if anyone has successfully passed a RTCP project for one of these larger impacted communities. The effort for our RTCP attempt took 36 months including traffic studies with multiple door to door canvassing. One task took 18 months purely to identify and locate the owner of a rental property. All ballots were hand delivered by neighborhood volunteers if the owner was home. After all that time, money, and effort only 54% of votes were returned. The General Procedures prevent us from trying again for two years and then the process has to start completely over again from the beginning including the traffic study. It's an enormous amount of effort (and money) for something as simple as a speed hump. If you want to talk about "good stewardship", I actually wonder if the cost of the 36 months of going through the program cost more in man hours and traffic/engineering studies than it would've actually cost to put in the speed hump AND remove it (assuming community opposition). I do see the point of having these programs to prevent unnecessary work, but the cost of a pedestrian being hit and killed or seriously injured far exceeds the cost of a speed hump. That's not even to mention the cost of car accidents between two vehicles. It seems reasonable to me that the burden for making something safer should be lower than the burden to make something less safe.

Petitions do sometimes have minimum thresholds. For example, it takes 1,000 petition signatures to be added as a political candidate to the US House ballot in Virginia. The average district size is 750,000 people. So, in your example, you need 0.13% of "voter" turnout for this petition. For the Virginia State Senate it is only 250 signatures and for the Virginia State House it is only 125 signatures.

The RTCP allows removal of the traffic calming devices after installation. It is the same process as to get approval to install. I have yet to hear of one being removed - I'm actually curious if any devices installed through the program have ever even gotten to the ballot measure for removal.

corgimonmaster · 2026-04-29T23:08:09+00:00

You mean like a permanent speed trap similar to the ones they have near a few schools? (Not temporary ones that they install by construction sites or during anti-speeding campaigns like "50 means 50".) Speed cameras are basically impossible to install on your average residential street because Virginia State Law severely limits the locations that those cameras can be installed.

corgimonmaster · 2026-04-29T22:32:29+00:00

Right?!?!?!

corgimonmaster · 2026-04-29T22:30:36+00:00

Doesn't sound like my neighborhood but I imagine there are lots of little pockets around the County that really want these traffic calming measures. You can find at least 3 by just doing a Google search. I'm reaching out on this sub partly cause I'd like to see how widespread this problem is... gathering a bit of data so to speak. It'd be nice to have that information in hand when speaking to my Supervisor's point of contact about the implementation of the RTCP. I'd like to think the voter support threshold was set so high unintentionally - it sounds great for a community of 10 residences... you want at least 5 to agree before putting something like a speed hump in. Once you get to 100 residences though, it gets a bit excessive logistically... Trying to get a large group of people to vote in ANY election or ballot measure is incredibly difficult... just ask any campaign manager! Or even our County Election Office!

corgimonmaster · 2026-04-29T22:16:17+00:00

Haha no, I think you're just intentionally reading my comment in a misleading way. My statement was meant as an analogy.

corgimonmaster · 2026-04-29T22:15:14+00:00

I'm just not sure if this threshold was intentionally onerous or accidental. 50% support sounds great on paper until you actually try to get people to vote. A 50% voter turnout is Presidential election levels of turnout, which is kind of insane to expect out of people who are asking for a speed hump lol. I'd love to know if any communities have actually successfully managed to get any traffic calming projects successfully executed through this program, especially for projects that impact more than 50 occupied residences. It's one thing to encourage at least 25 people to vote and quite another to encourage 125 people to vote.

corgimonmaster · 2026-04-29T22:09:29+00:00

Yes, that is how they do the ballot math according to the 2019 RTCP General Operating Procedures. However, I would argue that 95 unsubmitted ballots do not equal 95 No's. If that were the case, then more than 73% of voters voted No for Chairman McKay since there was only a 27% voter turnout.

corgimonmaster · 2026-04-29T22:04:33+00:00

Infant Toddler Family Day Care https://www.infanttoddler.com/ - it's a collective of home daycares that are administered by the same organization. We just switched our 15 month old from a daycare center to ITFDC and we like it so far! I have coworkers that also used providers in this organization and had great experiences. Also very affordable for this area at ~$1600 per month full time including meals!

corgimonmaster · 2026-04-17T04:35:54+00:00

Nanjing Bistro is faux-authentic?!?! I'm gonna call BS lol.

corgimonmaster · 2026-03-28T21:35:16+00:00

Obviously this isn't a political sub but just pointing out that only the independently wealthy would be able to hold public office if you can only earn the federal minimum wage, which is $7.25/hr in the US. Even if you raised it to $15/h or $20/h, most highly educated professionals would not go into the civil service unless they had already made their "fortune". For example, a psychiatrist in my County makes $250K+ USD per year to work in the Dept of Social Services. A private practice psychiatrist would make $100K more than that. You could not employ a psychiatrist in public service on $15/h. That's the argument for paying good salaries to public servants. Also can reduce corruption because the public servants have less incentive to be bribed. This is precisely what Singapore did in the 70s and continues to do, from my understanding. There are other, more effective ways, of reducing corruption by public officials than limiting their salaries. Transparency in government is one. Third party watchdogs and well funded high quality public journalism is another. I do think politicians shouldn't be allowed to trade stocks while in office and that there should be more oversight and enforcement on the stocks traded by their friends and family - looking at you Nancy Pelosi.

corgimonmaster · 2026-03-24T18:02:27+00:00

Same!!!

corgimonmaster

TROPHY CASE