That made me chuckle.
Yes, Italian, and yes, this.
My husband’s Dad has five brothers, each one of them has an eldest son with the first name of their grandfather, but then the grandkids have named some of their kids after their grandfather, too.
We broke with tradition for my son, for a lotta reasons. But the grandkids have gotten more leeway, so we got away with it. If it were in keeping with tradition, my son would have been named after my husband’s father. In actual fact he was named after the protagonist of a beloved science fiction book series and a famous humanitarian.
When my husband’s sister was adopted, her parents named her against tradition - going instead for a reference to her birth family - and you wouldn’t believe the drama. Grandparents wouldn’t even call her by her first name until she was older. She was just, “the baby.”
By this point, Grandma doesn’t care at all, she just wants more great-grandbabies.
People have been more liberal with Grandma’s name. There are both men and women in the family with variations on her name.
I buy those jars of black peppercorns with a grinder on top from Trader Joe’s. At some point last year it dawned on me that it’s a bit wasteful to throw that grinder away and get a new one every time I buy more pepper, and I decided I should just buy a jar of peppercorns without the grinder, and refill the jar with the grinder on it. Except Trader Joe’s doesn’t sell grinderless jars of peppercorns; they only sell the ones with the grinder. And jars of peppercorns with no grinder at other stores cost more than the ones with grinders from Trader Joe’s. So it actually costs more to do the environmentally friendly thing and reuse the grinder I have, than to throw out the grinder and buy a new one.
Or buy a grinder of Amazon along with Tellicherry peppercorns. Also a matching one with pink Himalayan salt pebbles.
Well, just if you only shop at Trader Joes.
You can get five pounds of Black Pepper from Amazon for about $50, or $10/lb.
But 2oz of pepper with grinder is about $4.
I am sure you can do that math.
My work shoes have gotten beat to shit. I hate to replace them, because I always have a terrible time shopping…I can never find things that match my criteria, let alone affordably. Anyway, I gave it the old college try, and OMG! I found the Holy Grail! I’ve looked for shoes like these for literally years. Just one fly in the ointment: the whole planet is out of ones my size. I could buy some other shoes that would work, but nah. I’m gonna wear these raggedy ones forever and keep all my money. That’ll show you, universe!
But if I did that I’d still 1) be throwing away the grinder I already have, which is the main thing I’m trying to avoid. 2) Either have to pay more for peppercorns to refill it than it costs to buy one with a grinder, or still buy the ones with the grinder and have to toss the grinders, which again is what I’m trying to avoid.
Well, Trader Joe’s and Target are the two closest stores to my house, so that is where I to the vast majority of my shopping (Target is where more expensive no grinder peppercorns are). I don’t really want to go to a more distant store just for pepper. And I admit I didn’t didn’t think of checking Amazon, but I feel like buying such a large quantity at once wouldn’t be a good idea, since it would lose their freshness long before I could get through that much pepper.
You are correct. They lose their freshness quickly. But you can get much better Tellicherry peppercorns online from many spice purveyors, such as Penzey’s or India Tree (via Amazon), which put the TJ peppercorns to shame - as much as I like Trader Joe’s. The source of the Tellicherries and the freshness make a huge difference. TJ’s are less expensive because the peppercorns are lower quality. (speaking as someone who worked at a spice importer for many years)
It infuriates me that last night I thought of an example that I wanted to add to this thread, and now I can’t remember what it was.
Do you have any ethnic grocery stores around you? Or even one of those oversized convenience stores that are almost but not quite a grocery store? In my experience (in Montreal, admittedly) these places have a large selection of spices and herbs and teas at reasonable prices. Sometimes bulk, so you can get the quantity you want. Prices tend to be higher than grocery chains, but you’re supporting a local business (often immigrant owned).
I’m privileged to be able to do “top up” shopping at such a place and the quality is great and I’m supporting the friendliest family. And it’s adjacent to a bagel shop, which gets my business too!
Got a new complaint.
I’ll be retiring in a few months (ya baby ya!). But Operations says they must update my computer but the update won’t work (they won’t tell me why). So they are going to give me an entirely new Virtual Machine to replace the one I already have.
Operations can’t clone it (no idea why). Nor will tell me why it won’t update (win 11) or the error it throws.
The guy that really knows his shit (sys admin in Ops) says there is absolutely no need to do this for my machine (I retiring after all, the VM will no longer exist). His boss looks at a spread sheet and says that machine HAS to be updated.
This is gonna cost me (them) days of work. I’ll need to rebuild all of my connections from scratch. All of my links to other computers. I have about 20 mapped drives. All will be gone. Including the local programs I use to write code. Gone.
And I’ll be gone too. This is pointless, and is gonna cost everyone a lot of grief.
I’ve had the same wooden pepper grinder for at least thirty years. I buy a few ounces of pepper from the bulk spices bin at my food co op when my grinder runs out. Although I could also order pepper from the tea and spice company we get our teas from (bulk only). One of the reasons I avoid Trader Joe’s is that everything is wastefully over-packaged. It’s part of their ‘look’. I despise it. My husband loves Trader Joe’s because it is really simple to shop there, and the aisles are wide. He gets stressed at the farm stands and the food co op where I shop because there are too many choices and things are too close together. I do about 95% of the shopping.
I get tired of over zealous landscapers who scrape and destroy the landscape with no thought of how it looks so that they won’t have to work on it again for a longer time. “Lets just hack away everything, leaving just enough so eventually something will barely survive.” This is especially a problem with the city crews that maintain public spaces. “Look at all that lush greenery in the public spaces. Lets mow it down to bare earth and stumps. That will surely be the best course of action.”
Yep. Or people who hire pro pest services because they saw a mouse or a bug. the Exterminators then come out and in the case of the rodent- put down illegal poisons that kill creature that might eat the sick rodents- such as cats, dogs, racoons, hawks, etc-
or they spray bug poison all over the years, killing the bees and other beneficial insects- and poisoning the environment too.
Television commercials featuring the founder and/or CEO. They rarely have any charisma or public speaking ability. Why do they think that will sell their product? Just hire an actor, ferchrisake!
Around here we have Emagine theaters, which is this fancy theater chain where you get heated recliners and they bring you your food, etc. The founder/CEO is painfully uncharismatic, but so damned earnest I think he really does believe he’s changing the world one movie at a time. He’s always got a spot in every show.
The one grinding my gears now is the urinary infection cure being hawked by the founder Jenna and her partner Spencer. And Uqora is a stupid name, it sounds like the noise a sorority girl makes after drinking too many White Claws.
I am miffed and peeved about how long it takes for my iPhone to do a simple back up. 11 hours and it’s still not finished,
This is kind of important.
There is a law in Colorado that allows a Law Enforcement Officer, or any judge or member of the court to prevent having their name shared on-line. You cannot search by their name.
It is only available to LEO’s and Judges and the like. Not the rest of us. You have to apply and get approved.
So that totally jacks up multiple systems. Sheese. And IMHO, is unfair.
I understand that a cop that gave you a speeding ticket does not want a drive by shooting at his house. BUT I worry about the special protection. I can’t get it. How far will this go?
These people are citizens just like me.