I’m both “youngest of a few” and “the afterthought”; voted the latter.
Two sisters, nine and ten years older than I am. I never worked up the nerve to ask whether I was accidental (as an adult, I don’t think I ever thought about it when I was a child), and it’s too late now.
Yeah. I’d love to be able to get 87 no-ethanol: my old tractors are fine on 87, but they don’t like ethanol. So I have to either pay for super premium or buy additives and still get less power per gallon; because around here, that’s the only octane you can get no-ethanol in.
They weren’t recommending that at the time – in fact, when I first went on the pill, they told me to go off it at least one month out of the year and make sure I had a period without it, because they weren’t sure yet that it was safe to use it for long stretches even with the week off. That recommendation changed, IIRC, within a couple of years.
I didn’t mind periods that much when I was on the pill – because that cut the cramps down to minor levels, the amount of bleeding down to easily controllable, and provided that lovely clockwork timing. Without the pill, it was anywhere from 2 weeks to 8 weeks apart, soaked the bedsheets, and generally gave me most of a day in so much pain that I couldn’t even read, just lie there curled around a heating pad which wasn’t helping.
The contraception was a side effect; though for some years a very handy one.
I vote other for the fuel, because Switzerland has 98 octane, and that’s what’s recommended for our Subaru. Fortunately we only need a tank a gas per month.
Subaru recommends 93 in the U.S., so I could have marked that, I suppose.
And now I’m musing about fuel grades. I’m just old enough to remember when gas stations still sold leaded gas. I wasn’t old enough to drive, but from what I remember the three pumps back then were “leaded”, “unleaded”, and “premium unleaded”. In my recollection, “mid-grade” gasoline didn’t come about until after leaded gas went away. It almost seemed like it was created to give gas stations something to use that third pump for.
IIRC, octane ratings are measured differently in Europe, so the numbers are higher over there but the fuel is the same stuff. Based on the US recommendation, I’m guessing 98 in Europe is equivalent to 93 in the US.
10% ethanol, at least. I don’t know that it’s sold or mandated nationwide, but it is sold in enough of the U.S. that it’s pretty much a must-have for cars to be able to handle it.
E85 (85% ethanol / 15% gasoline) is another story, though “flex-fuel” vehicles, which can use that, never really seemed to take off, other than in fleet sales, and not too many new vehicles are even offered with a flex-fuel option now.
I’m both the oldest of two and a middle child. My mom and dad divorced when I was 12 and dad got remarried several years later. She had two kids from her previous marriage and they were both older than me. So I’ve been able to experience both being the eldest and being a middle child.
My mom was 20 when she had me, my dad 25. I find it interesting to look at their ages when I was born compared to Hubby’s and mine when my eldest was born. We were both almost 32 (my birthday is one month after CtE was born, Hubby’s is 4 months.) My youngest was born when we were both 34. I think that extra 12 years made me a better parent than my mom was. She just didn’t have the patience. I don’t either, but I think I hide it better.
As for gas - 87, 10% Ethanol. It’s what my car is used to so it’s what I buy.
I read polls about personal stuff like abortions but don’t vote on them. You all are not privy to my status on them. Although no longer having ovaries and being age 62 means that I won’t have an abortion in the future.
A story line in Dumbing of Age last year involved a home-schooled Christian girl who was prescribed contraceptive pills because of her menstrual difficulties. This… bothered her but she made work-arounds.
Sounds good – take the average. My parents were 32 and 28 so I picked 30s.
I answered that I’m the younger of two, but then I hesitated. I’m the younger of the first two my dad had, my half-siblings were 10 and 13 years younger than me, and we only saw them for a couple of weeks in the summers. They moved to our city when I was 17, but my stepmother was pretty fed up with my dad’s shit by then, and she took the kids and moved back to her native Sweden with them within the year. We’ve stayed in touch, but we did no growing up together and we didn’t really have a sibling dynamic.
When I was 30, I discovered that I have a third half-sibling who’s 9 years younger than me. I remember meeting her mother at my dad’s house here once, but I had absolutely no clue until she called me out of the blue. She visited me a couple of times, but she ended up moving back to her native Germany after she finished college in the US. And I’m just now realizing that her mother’s appearance at my dad’s house may have coincided with my stepmother decamping. Huh.
They all have a standing invitation to stay if they’re in the country, and they all have done so once. But aside from comparing notes on our attitudes towards our dad, there’s really very little family feeling there.
I did not vote in the wrong dish poll because there are too many other variables.
How hungry am I? Am I regular at the restaurant and the correct dish one of my heavy favorites? How similar are the two dishes? Jambalaya vs. etoufee an exchange would be a more likely than vs. blackened catfish.
Do i have to get somewhere afterwards? How much do i like the dish they prepared? I’m a picky eater. There’s a decent chance they made something i just won’t eat, which means that if i have a hard time deadline I’ll ask them to bring me a lot of bread and butter, (or whatever they can bring out quickly) and not have an entree at all. On the other hand, maybe i was waffling between two choices and they cooked the other.
Yeah, no way i can answer that with the info given.
Yup. If I also like the wrong dish, even if I don’t like it quite as much, I’ll eat it. If I really don’t like it, then I’m not going to eat it. Whether I’d then make the restaurant bring me the right one, or something faster, or skip the whole thing, probably depends mostly on what I, and anyone eating with me, would be doing next.
When this has happened to me or my wife, which does happen because someone screws up her order with gluten or gratuitous cheese, there has never been a forced choice of only the wrong item or the previously ordered item, and there’s a 4th choice, which is to eat elsewhere.
This has happened to me a few times. I remember being served a grossly overcooked steak which I’d ordered rare. I did wait a long time for them to cook me a new one, to the annoyance of my family, (and me) as none of us had expected to spend so much time there. I’ve also had items replaced quickly, and I’ve sometimes looked at what turned up and said, “meh, good enough”, even with the waiter offering to replace it.
I’d also have to know what dish is in front of me before answering. There’s an equal chance I’d eat to wrong dish or hold out for what I ordered. (Or, perhaps, a third option that will take less time.)
For the drinking poll, I don’t drink every day, but it adds up to more than 6 drinks a week, so there wasn’t an answer for me.
I voted “one a week” in the drinking poll; but that isn’t really accurate, as some weeks it’s none at all and some weeks it might be one (or even, rarely, two) on each of several days.
