stm25rs

Decided on a roof top cargo box for my GTI, and found one secondhand but still new in box locally for a good price. Thule Force XT size L. Actually managed to (barely) fit it inside my GTI to transport home. Was also looking at Yakima's equivalent, but found the deal on this one first. Need to decide on exactly which roof rack I want. Probably just VW oem since they're a fair bit cheaper, and made by Thule so seem like good quality. Will show you all my rack and box when I get the rack.

My girlfriend works in healthcare administration at Johns Hopkins, and just heard from a former coworker, who is now an administrator at a major health system in Atlanta, that they've already started vaccinating non-frontline employees. Her first thought was they were being greedy and administratively bumping themselves to the front of the line. They are not mandating employees get the vaccine, and turns out that 47% of their frontline workers have opted out, which is why they've already started with non-frontline. Note, "frontline" includes things like janitors, facility maintenance, food service, basically anybody that is physically working in the hospitals. So, yeah, not gonna get herd immunity anytime soon at that vaccination rate.

Ridgeline definitely seems like it would check my boxes as far as utility and such. Just looks lame, sorry dish lol The Ridgeline bed has a built-in trunk below the bedfloor - pic from Honda's website - nice looking feature:

Definitely strongly leaning truck, midsize would probably be enough for my needs. Really digging the looks of the Colorado. Girlfriend has been balking at the idea of a truck but I think she'll come around. Her issue is mostly environmental. I don't need all the space for my job, which is the bulk of my driving, so it would be kind of a waste of fuel. We do eventually want a couple kayaks, and like you said with bikes on the roof, would be a pain loading yaks on a roof. And we'll be moving into a bigger house with a yard, so gardening/landscaping, other projects...so we'd get good use out of a truck. Guess if I want to go that route, I'll just have to get it before we get engaged/married so she doesn't have as much of a say lol

Next vehicle will almost definitely be a truck or SUV. Or maybe a wagon. The GTI is a great car, but I rarely get to take advantage of the sportiness. I work in sales which means a lot of boring highway driving. I live in a city, but do a lot of back road driving on weekends for hiking/camping.....but have the girlfriend in the passenger seat and dog in the back seat, so can't do any spirited driving then. Having the sporty GTI is like paying for a hooker then just talking to her. Also, will only have this car for another 2 years tops, so that's factoring in to my cargo expansion decision. I figure roof rack and cargo box should have good resale value if I end up not using them on next vehicle Work's vehicle reimbursement policy requires car be less than 5 years old, and less than 70k miles. I'm just shy of 40k miles. If things are more back to normal in 2021 and can visit more customers, I'll hit that 70k by mid 2022.

2018 GTI, 4 door As mentioned, slightly concerned about ground clearance with the hitch cargo tray, but then again, I'm in Maryland, so camping trips to Appalachian mountains = not very rugged terrain.

The thule trunks are big $$$. A hitch cargo tray plus weatherproof storage tote would do the same thing for a lot cheaper, so that's one option in looking at. Wouldn't be getting any bike or other attachments. Car is low enough and gf is tall enough she'd be able to load/unload the roof. Have also seen mixed things on installation for my car. Have seen some people say need to cut/trim the rear diffuser to get the tow hitch installed, some say they didn't have to do that. Hitch does seem easier though, plus depending on wind noise, I don't think I'd want to keep roof rack on all the time

Need more space with my GTI for camping and beach trips. Debating tow hitch cargo tray vs roof rack with cargo box or tray. Leaning towards roof cargo box, seems the most practical. Car had plenty of room when it was just the girlfriend and I, but with the dog things are cramped.

Just checked my calendar, we were actually there August 29 - Sep 5, so right before labor day, but it was pretty dead. Beach was plenty open, and we did all our meals at the house.

Didn't do an overseas trip this year like had planned, but did a week in the Outer Banks after labor day, and a couple long weekend camping trips. We had 5 weddings on the books for 2020 have yet to hear any updates on if they're going forward in '21. Two or three of the couples got court house married but presumably they still will want to have a ceremony or party of some sort. I've started looking at Airbnb cabins in western MD/VA/WV for a January or February long weekend

Is this PA level?

Pre-covid we had a dog walker. We used a local company, so it would be one of a handful of walkers depending on scheduling. They also had an option for group walks, like 2-3 dogs, which was a bit less expensive and gave the dogs some socialization. They did a pretty good job of matching up dogs based on size and temperament. We had looked into rover but had a bunch of positive referrals for the local company from people in the neighborhood. I'm sure rover can work out just fine, but you probably have to vet the people a bit more.

Serious answer though - if wife can't make adjustments for more dog time during the day, can you have a dog walker even if 2-3 days per week? Our Aussie was a real handful from about 8 months to just over a year. Around 14 months or so he started to mellow out a lot. Well, relatively speaking....still an Aussie but much more manageable.

Tell your wife to put the 4 year old in the crate for 30-60 minutes in the middle of the day and give the dog some more attention. Problem solved.

Does your wife give the dog exercise/playtime/mental stimulation during the day? And I don't mean a short potty break walk, I mean running, fetch, trick practice, hide and seek, etc. My understanding is Corgis are pretty smart dogs and need that mental work too. When our Aussie was that age you could take him out for an hour walk and he'd still seem to have some energy when you got back inside. But then doing 10 minutes of trick practice got him fully tuckered out.

How old is the dog?

When we first put the tree up he nibbled at some of the pine needles. Fortunately he decided they weren't tasty and has left it alone since then

But why can't I pee on it?

Been interesting seeing the hype bubble burst for Cyperpunk. Seems like the initial criticisms have been about bugs, which can be patched, along with poor performance on previous gen consoles, particularly the early versions of previous gen, which can maybe be fixed via optimization patches. But I've also seen some pretty poor reviews of the game itself from people with top tier PCs that are able to run it smoothly. Bad NPC AI causing lack of immersion, mediocre gunplay, repetitive quests.

Beat Fallen Order. Still lots of extra side content/exploration completionist stuff I could do, but won't, so that's heading back to the library. Very good game overall Just started Fire Emblem Three Houses. Enjoying it so far, glad they made permadeath optional. I played Awakening on my 3DS and usually just restarted battles if an important team member died.

Sorry to hear, best wishes to you all. For whatever it's worth, the father of my best friend was diagnosed with stage 4 brain cancer about 3 years ago and the oncologist said a few months left. He responded very well to treatment and made it about 2.5 years past the initial diagnosis. And importantly, with pretty good quality of life for the vast majority of that time

Baltimore City recently expanded the mask order to say at all times while outside in public. So in theory I'm supposed to wear one while walking my dog. I wear it when going to the store, or visiting customers for work, where it makes sense. But I'm not getting within 6ft of people while walking my dog so haven't been wearing it for walks.

So are you super out there? How far away is your closest neighbor?

Our dog got neutered yesterday. Didn't see much goofy post anesthesia behavior, but he was exhausted and understandably seemed kinda grumpy. Seems to be recovering fine, been exhausted all day. He's not on any strong med, just carprofen which is basically doggy ibuprofen Interesting seeing what his skin looks like under his merle coat.

A girl I went to college with is a high end real estate agent in NYC. She posts some "Just Sold" stuff on Facebook. Examples: 3 bed, 2 bath, 1347 sq ft. $2,225,000. And it's a condo, so condo fee of $495 per month. And a recent "Just Rented" - 3 bed, 3.5 bath, 3000 sq ft. $17,450 per month.