We went back to the office, I don’t care because my commute is immaterial BUT now I leave my laptop there, I disassembled the workstation at home and packed it away, I will not work at home now. Teams is on my phone because I don’t put the work email on my phone and needed a way to tell my team if I will be unexpectedly delayed. I don’t open it ever though, and now we have a group text might take it off too.

ETA: I did also delete MS Teams, we have each other’s phone numbers now.

They’re not spread out like churches though. Here, it might work, we have an insane # of churches per capita and a lot of homeless, but what about LA? No way there are as many churches as homeless there. Same with houses, as someone suggests upthread. There are few vacant spaces here and many who need homes but in any state beginning with the letter I maybe there are thousands of homes and few homeless because they would freeze to death in the winter.

This looks like you did ok, I would check the prices on dried beans, those are usually cheap and a nutritional powerhouse. I strongly dislike the junk food you bought (personally) but don’t think it’s blowing up your budget. I make bread instead of buying it but that’s because I like fancy bread.

Overall - if you are vegetarian not vegan, I think eggs, dry beans, brown rice, tomato paste would be good additions and I will add my voice to the chorus expressing dismay at your choice of canned green beans. If you are underweight, nuts too - expensive but so good and so many calories, healthy fat and protein.

If you are up north, it’s a good time to start some seeds indoors, grow something you like to eat, if you are like me in a warm place, can start them outdoors now.

And I do think you did OK.

Yeah it sucks. If it’s coded as “screening” it’s covered. As a tip - my GYN says she can see as much in the 3d mammogram as she can with the regular plus ultrasound and that one she can code as screening and it costs about $25 as an add-on.

We’ve never had Spectrum and they relentlessly woo us as well. When we ignored the mailings, they started sending them in Spanish, as though they thought we simply couldn’t understand them. Like nobody could possibly resist them if they could read the advertisements, right? Waiting to see what they try next.

No, it’s rolled up in a way that prevents it being opened neatly. I do use scissors on the Red Hot Blues tortilla chips, those have a similar problem but the shape of the bag allows it to be cut cleanly.

I do move it into glass jars, but those bags drive me crazy. Always spill flour opening them.

They need to talk to the people who make flour bags. Those paper bags glued shut with the strongest glue known to man, so that they are impossible to open without tearing a big hole in the bag, rendering it impossible to store the flour in.

Yes and the glorious “playing near you” feature of Play Music. That made the best recommendations for local shows, and I mean local, within a few miles, not just bands I’d listened to but always relevant and often small shows! That feature, I found several new bands I liked that way and good live music. YouTube has nothing like that. Also interface not as intuitive, more cluttered. My kids like it better because they do like having the videos available, but as I do not give a fuck about that but do like live music this is still not as good as the Play Music.

Exactly. Not fruit punch. I try to make something complex, with some bitter, some sour, some sweet. Young pineapple tepache or ginger beer, before they get at all boozy are good if you aren’t serving actual recently recovering alcoholics as they are non-intoxicating and delicious and complex. Grapefruit juice non alcoholic cocktails are also good and complex.

Chinotto soda or Malta can also be good adult choices for a party.

Usually even the drinkers at a party like the non alcoholic fancy drinks. And Diet Coke is always popular too.

Alcohol abuse absolutely affects everyone around you. We had a friend who used to say “there is no problem in the world that can’t be made worse with alcohol!”

Even setting aside things like car crashes under the influence and violence under the influence - lost days at work affect your coworkers, hung over parent who can’t help out, alcohol abuse harms others, not just the abuser.

Yeah it’s so hard because for most of us, alcohol is food culture, not so much a drug. I drink one cocktail 2 - 3 times a week, only ever one because I don’t enjoy being drunk, and make drinks at parties BUT also always make sure there is something adult, delicious, and not alcoholic plus plenty of soda and pitchers of water because I know not everyone can just pick it up and put it down like that. But most people can & do. Fewer people just smoke a couple times a week.

Humans have been fermenting things to get alcoholic drinks for a really long time.

This reminds me of two similar incidents - My mom never advocated for me in school. Like never. Until one day in high school I wore a miniskirt on a game day (on game days the cheerleaders were in really short skirted uniforms). I got in trouble at lunch for the outfit, but just pointed at a cheerleader and said “her skirt is a lot shorter than mine.”. Got sent to the office, my mom picked me up, I figured I was in trouble but no. She told the principal she agreed with me and no she didn’t bring another outfit. We went home.

And at a job, we got a dress code because people were showing up in pyjamas. One of the rules was this weird “4 fingers neckline” no deep necklines? One of our accountants was an older, very old school black man, proper and nerdy and nice. He heard the 4 fingers speech, started grumbling. Later when I passed his desk he had printed out 4 copies of Johnny Cash giving the finger right at the camera, and he just looked at me and said “four fingers!”