About 30 years ago, my dad learned that if you loan someone your Sawzall, loan them only the tool and let them go to the store and buy the blades they need for the job they’re doing. He got sick of getting it back and finding out the person broke (or wore out) half the blades.
To a certain extent, I’ve learned to stop even mentioning tools I have that I don’t want to lend out. No one asks to borrow my O2 Sensor socket or 10" battery chainsaw if they don’t know I have it in the first place. Plus, with things like those that I don’t use often, it could easily be months or years before I even remember that I loaned them out.
With that, I’ve also learned not to mention, services I can perform but aren’t interested in performing. That’s a clunky way to say that. You know how if you have a truck, people want you to help them move. Well, casually mention you have a welder and suddenly people want you to weld stuff for them. Mention your 3D printer and people want you to make stuff for them etc.
Similarly, a while back I finally retired from being the extended family’s free ‘computer guy’. That finally ended when I decided I didn’t want to spend half a day at a relative’s house trying to clean ransomware off her computer. Either take it to a computer place or, since there wasn’t anything on it that needed recovering, replace it (and don’t let a cold caller from “Spectrum” install something on it again).
It’s kind of hard to be a nag (pun not intended). But do it. Pre cell phones, my Wife took the dogs for a walk, turned out to be a LOT longer than I thought it would be. Winter.
She came back to find me gearing up to go search for her. x-country skis, backpack, survival gear, the works. Being married gives you the responsibility to worry. A good spouse will. Same with kids, I’m sure.
Yeah, but depends on the friend. One thing we don’t lend in the high country is chainsaws. Each has it’s own peculiarities. I just assume to go along with it least someone gets hurt. I’ll run the saw, you clean up the slash.
Yep, I will still work on the in-law’s computers, but no more cousins or uncles. And since both of my parents have passed, that’s a job I no longer have. Or miss.
Including Especially money. If it’s going to cause you catastrophic hardship if you don’t get it back, don’t part with it. I don’t know how this applies to family, as I have no family.
Yeah, that gets scary, real fast. I do it, to a degree. But when I see troubled waters, I back away. General BS, no problem. But as soon as you think to yourself, “I donno”. It’s best to back away for a second or two.
I told my mom that when something pops up on her computer that she did not request to push ‘NO’ or ‘Cancel’ but she kept getting bullshit. And kept pressing OK.
I bought my mom a new computer. All set up and configured. Ended up with two virus protection systems on it. Sigh. She had installed another virus protection system and had every bell and whistle enabled to the point that you couldn’t do a dam thing because you had to continue to shut the thing up. I have since uninstalled it.
To a point, I enjoy it (and fixing computers) as well. The problem for me isn’t doing those things, it’s that I’m expected to do them. People act like I’m the asshole when I decline. The story I mentioned in my post, both her daughter and my sister continued to nag me about fixing that computer and I had to continue to put my foot down.
Another time, a relative that I see 3 or 4 times a year, called me out of the blue at 9pm. I’m one million percent expecting this to be a “someone died” phone call when I see the caller ID. Nope, she spilled something on her laptop and doesn’t know what to do. WTF am I supposed to do from 400 miles away? I got her to take the battery out and told her to take it to a place in the morning and her tone suggested she thought I was holding out on her, like I could have walked her through fixing it but I just didn’t want to.
And, this is actually a big part of my unintentional ‘no apple products’ I seem to have adopted. The rest of my family are all apple fanboys. I told them back when they got their first iPhones, that I don’t know anything about fixing them and I have no intention of learning so you’re all on your own. It’s nice not being handed a phone or laptop every time I walk into someone’s house because it won’t print or the internet is slow or whatever.
I make a lot of chicken broth. I used to chill it, then remove the fat, and then put it in freezer containers. That was a lot of work, and took a lot of space in the fridge.
Now i just ladle it into tall narrow freezer containers. (The ones soup from the Chinese restaurant comes in.) I start by carefully collecting the fat and a little broth by holding the ladle just at the very top of the broth, and letting the top contents gently flow in. As soon as I’ve removed most of the fat, i switch to a different container, and fill it with broth. Repeat until almost all the broth is in freezer containers, and then pour the dregs into the one with all the fat.
The clean ones go in the freezer right then, or after cooling a bit on the counter if they are very hot. The one that has all the fat goes in the fridge. If i remember, i scrape the fat into the fat can the next day. But if i don’t, i just discard a little broth and one of my many many free containers.
@puzzlegal that’s basically schmaltz, and is delicious spread on hot toast.
Bonus points if you use the chicken fat to saute a bit of minced onion first, then spread that mixture on toast.
Throwing away chicken fat is like throwing away bacon grease … a punishable crime in some tribes.
Eh. I keep the duck fat and the goose fat. I don’t keep the fat from chicken, lamb, or beef. I think i have some bacon fat in the fridge, but probably won’t use it.
But also, the fat left over from making chicken broth often picks up some off flavors, and isn’t as tasty as fat that’s just scooped out of the roasting pan, or rendered separately.
I mostly ride alone and I use RoadID. I wear a bracelet with info on it, but there’s also an app that tracks where I am, and if I’m stationary for more than 5 min it will warn me first, and if I don’t cue that I’m ok (or get moving again) it will alert my chosen contact. My husband in most cases. He uses it too for when he walks in lonely places, and when he flies his teeny, elderly plane.
My hack for remembering the ID bracelet is that it goes from my wrist to the chin strap of my helmet, and then back to my wrist.
OMG lamb fat - mmmm!
One of my favorite meals is lamb chops (the big ones - mini Tbones) broiled, served with rice that’s been drizzled with the fat from the broiling pan. So good. I’d eat an old shoe if it were basted in lamb fat, I think
Ah, but the best part is the browned juices. When i roast a chicken i often pour the drippings into a measuring cup, and then spoon some of them on my rice. But i try to get mostly the aqueous phase, which is much tastier than the fat.
My Wife uses a Fanny pack as a purse. But just slings it over her shoulder. We both have smaller ones when we go on long vacations. Especially overseas. So many good things about them. Very, very secure. The ‘belt’ has a small cable in in, you can’t cut it off without bolt cutters. The zippers have ‘locks’
And I don’t give a damn what anyone thinks or if we look ‘dorky’. So what. I’ll never see them again and could care less about their opinion.
Same with clothes when traveling. I have ‘Travel’ pants. You can zip off the legs and they become shorts. Two for one. They seem immune to to dirt and spills.
When my Wife and I did Germany for three weeks, we traveled by train. We both knew that we would have to pack very, very light. Worked like a charm. No one cares if you wear the same pair of pants for four days, you’ll never see them, or they you again (we did this on our own, not a group thing).
Wash your under clothes in the hotel sink/tub. That takes some planning because of the need to dry. Also pack a couple of 13 gallon kitchen trash bags to separate dirty and clean until you do the above washing.
That’s pretty much our standard now. Carry on only. Except I’m going to a wedding in about a month and will need the whole suit and tie BS.
Regarding washing your clothes in the hotel sink, I remember reading travel section articles that talked about people traveling with quick-dry clothing including underwear, just for this reason.
My world-traveling cousin travels with just 3 pairs of this type of underwear. He takes them into the shower with him at night, washes them while he showers, and hangs them to dry while he sleeps. According to him, this works like a charm.
(Full disclosure: I’ve never traveled with him, so I cannot vouch for the effectiveness.)
That little underwear (and presumably that little of other clothing) would make it easier to pack lightly, so you might be able to get away with just a backpack or other carry-on baggage. I tend to overpack, so I find the idea somehow appealing.
Also with purchases. One time there was a guy at work who was one of the most friendly, congenial people you could imagine. He was part of a group that I frequently hung out with after work. One hot summer he really needed a window air conditioner, and I said I had a really powerful one that I wasn’t using, since I had central air. He agreed to buy it, we agreed on a price, and he picked it up, telling me he’d pay me “next time”.
“Next time” never came. Eventually both he and I left the organization and never saw each other again. No great loss for me as I never would have had the opportunity to use it again since I’ve always had central A/C since then, but it did have value and could have been sold to someone more honest. A lesson learned.
Yup. Got them. Cotton is not your friend in these situations. I also have some tee-shirts marketed to kayakers for the same reason. They constantly get wet, but dry quicker.
