So you’re the one behind the War on Drug!
. . and since Im on a roll, is it too much to ask my fellow citizens to cut up and fold their cardboard boxes before dropping them off at the recycling center? It was the first day over 40 degrees in weeks where I live, and I expected there to be a lot of boxes in the dumpsters, but they were overflowing out, all over the ground----mainly because at least 1/2 to 2/3 of them weren’t cut and flattened. Plus, think about the poor minimum wage schmucks who have to deal with these mountains of cardboard Monday morning. Smarten up.
I missed her birthday party yesterday. 
She’s doing much, much better and (crosses fingers) may get to go home tomorrow.
“Why is it” gripe of the day. Passport pictures. Why is it that the most ham-fisted, banana-fingered, all-thumbs desk clerk at the provincial licensing office can take an acceptable picture (with glasses!!) for my driver’s license and provincial health card but a professional (:dubious:) at ______ Photography cannot take a passport picture without glare on the glasses. And don’t tell me that the passport office doesn’t allow glasses or “what if your glasses change? That changes your face entirely.” Does too and does not. Only requirement of passport office (besides mug shot face and no smiling) is that there be no glare and my eyes can be seen clearly. And the glasses-face you see IS my face. No one would recognize me without 'em.
You seem to be a pretty smart person, so please don’t take this the wrong way. BUT…why would your neighbor even consider going out in the subzero weather to shovel when you are willing to inconvenience yourself for him? You are enabling this behavior.
Just start parking your car where its convenient for you and let him deal with his problem. Being a good neighbor is one thing. Being a pushover is a totally different matter. (I’ve never lived somewhere where snow is a problem, but on those rare occasions when I had to walk through snow, it was slippery. Aren’t you putting yourself in actual physical danger by walking farther than you have to?)
Um, no. People walk in snow all the time, it’s no big deal. Just wear proper shoes.
I didn’t want to resurrect the 4-year old “Fuck you Shovel your sidewalk” thread but
Fuck You! Shovel your sidewalk!
No excuse for this. It was warm after the last snowstorm and you had all of Sunday to clean it up. Someone needs to hit you with a shovel until you get the clue in your head.
Even worse, some folks around here have done a half-ass job of shoveling. They clear off the section in front of their house’s steps, and the part that leads towards where most people park their cards, but the other way? Can’t be bothered. seems like work. That corner house? I won’t bother shoveling the side, its only a little side-street after all.
SHOVEL. YOUR. SIDEWALK!
I’m so sorry that you missed her birthday party. But the good news is that she is doing so much better. Maybe you can do another birthday party just between the 2 of you when she’s home and you aren’t sick. Any reason to eat cupcakes and give presents is always a good one 
Like I said, I’ve never lived with it. If walking in snow is such a bad thing, why would Mr. Miskatonic refer to a thread about shoveling sidewalks, and why did so many people post there agreeing that FUCK YOU! SHOVEL YOUR SIDEWALKS!!!
Again, I never had to live with the problem. I probably do not have proper shoes but that is probably because I never had a reason to buy them. If for some reason, I go all crazy and move to an area with lots of snow, I will get proper shoes for snow walking. I’ve read that learning to walk in snowshoes takes practice, so would clip on crampons be better?
No. Just winter boots with deep treads do fine.
Mine kind of look like a rabbit died inside a pair of Doc Martens. I expect that someone who goes everywhere in high heels would have a problem, but in your case it should just be a matter of learning to adjust which socks to wear, flatlined.
Not taken the wrong way at all. Its an older guy, and he made the request. I prefer peace with my neighbors, and its easier to gripe about it here than to his face. Plus, I figure the snow is gonna melt soon, then I can park wherever I want so why create conflict.
The fact he doesn’t shovel or have someone shovel his driveway which would make it easier to get in and out is a bit galling though.
Ah, it’s such a shallow little thing to gripe about, because I do have vivid memories of ranting here about three years ago when I literally didn’t know how I’d feed my family, but…
I was getting ready to check out at the grocery store this evening, and spotted an old school mate in the line ahead of me. Nice guy, married to a woman who also graduated with my beloved and me. He’s a bank VP, she owns and operates a home construction company, they both know that my Tony was in a devastating wreck two years ago. But I suddenly “forgot” that I needed another item from the aisles, because I simply couldn’t face the notion of pulling out my EBT card to pay for groceries while chatting with said classmate. I couldn’t.
I sat in the car and cried for a minute before pulling myself together and picking up my son from his meeting. And I feel like an idiot for that. Our pantry is overflowing - maybe to some pathological degree, if I’m honest with myself. I’m incredibly grateful that my family is well fed, that we aren’t in danger of going hungry while we sort out Tony’s medical woes. But I have my limits, and I’m not proud of myself.
Why is there always so much month left at the end of the money?
I let the dogs out around dusk last night. For some reason I let them out the back door that exits our sunroom/bird room. Due to ice/snow the door wouldn’t close and Rocco, our African Grey was on top of his cage, so I needed to get the door shut quickly.
So I went outside, knelt down, and used my fist to pound the bottom of the door. That worked fine. But now I’m outside in 0 degree (F) weather with deep snow everywhere. And I’m barefoot, and cannot go back in the door I’m at.
Walking barefoot in snow is a bitch, and we have a really big house. I’m glad we do not lock our doors.
I am going to crack. I hate February, I hate February, I hate February, and March likely won’t be much better. Why do we live in this frigid hellhole of a cultural wasteland? WHY? Get me the fuck out of here.
Gross and disgusting anti-vax thing of the day.
Yeah. She’s compared flack for her anti-vax stance to being a Jew in Nazi Germany. They really went there. Vaccines are Nazism and any criticism of her refusal is akin to being shoved into an oven and gassed.
LavenderBlue, last week one of the columns in my local newspaper was an Ode to Vaccines, with a link to Roald Dahl’s letter about his daughter’s death from measles and partial translation thereof. Made me think of you guys.
This is completely stupid but it’s been giving me a sort of brainworm. To me, one of the main purposes of curtains is to hide whatever is behind them. If I have windows, and a radiator below the windows, and I put floor-length curtains there, I think the curtains should hide the radiator. If I wanted to see the radiator (c’mon, those things have to be among the ugliest architectural features ever invented), I would have used shorter curtains.
Another use is to filter out the light. Get some thick white curtains, you protect people and furniture from the glare of the sun without having to roll down the blinds. You still need to roll down the blinds for other purposes, but you don’t need to roll them down at say 11:30 only to roll them back up half an hour later once the sun has rotated out of the window.
My mother and my sister in law appear to consider curtains as objets d’art in their own right, and apparently flimsy is best. I was hearing them discuss the curtains I should place in Grandma’s house once it’s mine (if ever etc etc) and I wasn’t sure whether to run away screaming or push both of them in front of a train. I finally settled for pointing out that it was “my” house they’re talking about and that I don’t like flimsy curtains. “You don’t? 
” “You’ve been to my house in Castellón. You’ve been to my house near Pamplona. You’ve visited or been in my house in Philadelphia. Where have you seen flimsy curtains in any house of mine?” “Oh. But they’re so much prettier!”
I feel like I have flimsy-curtain cooties.
What really bothers me so much is how little they remember of history. The ultimate history of the world is, in some sense, the history of children dying. Before vaccines, that is what happened. Children died. It was not a rare tragedy like it is in most of the developed world today. It was something that happened pretty much every single day of the year even to the rich and well off back then.
They died and there was nothing a parent could do about it. You couldn’t stop diphtheria at all. You couldn’t pray away a child’s pertussis cough. You couldn’t end measles with a poultice or get rid of polio with a bit of chicken soup or some garlic.
All you did was to sit back and watch. If the universe was kind, the child survived. If the universe wasn’t the child died. Or maybe it was blind from smallpox or deaf from measles or sterile from mumps.
They remember none of that. The history they should remember is the kind they deliberately choose to forget.
Because it’s much easier to walk on a sidewalk that has been shoveled. It doesn’t mean you CANNOT walk on snow at all.
Nava, really drive them insane–tell them your already pricing out gallons of black paint for the windows.
Then walk away.