ArtieShaw

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Under cabinet manual jar opener. It’s flat and mounts under your cabinet of choice. Easy to use, but also easy to forget it’s there! I sometime find myself jar in hand and half-way to wherever my husband is before I remember that I no longer need his skills.

Electric candle lighter. Rechargeable lighter with long neck. Eliminates the need for matches or standard lighters. The noise it makes does scare one of the cats, though. I haven’t tried it on campfires yet, but I think that was something the ad said it could do.

Chicago suburbs. It’s sort of an interconnected area, so this takes place over two adjoining towns.

There was a very public and stupid feud that took place between two middle aged men. Some of it played out in real life and some was documented on that now defunct website, Topix. One of them had been close friends with the the police officer who was convicted of killing at least one wife. I think he was also a cop. In any case, he was very vocal in defending Drew and anything the other guy said about the murder trial really seemed to get his goat.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drew_Peterson

The other guy claimed to be connected with the Chicago outfit. Or the cop claimed he was. I don’t remember.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_Outfit

Basically, it was two vaguely mobbed up guys in their 50s engaging in a very public and embarrassing battle of fists and wits in an otherwise unassuming suburb. They would trade insults on Topix, get into slap fights with each other at the local supermarket, and generally just behave like leaded gasoline sniffing idiots. Neither could just walk away from it. Both used their real full names.

$70k USD - 3 bed, 2.5 bath, 1400sq ft., 0.3 acre lot, two stories and a detached garage. The interior needs plenty of non-cosmetic work (e.g. - new flooring)

$75k USD - 2 bed, 1 bath, 800sq ft., 0.15 acre lot; newly redone floors, electric and paint.

After that, there’s about 10 more in the 125-150K range.

I watched the Gormenghast miniseries on the Space Channel many many years ago and eventually read the books. They were interesting. Not something I’d want to revisit, but definitely weird.

It’s time to pay the price.

I like some of the names from Puritan New England.

Cutting Moody

Tristram Coffin

I like some of the names from Puritan New England.

Cutting Moody

Tristram Coffin

Sorry for the late response - I just got back from travelling to meet that side of the family. But unfortunately, I don’t remember the lyrics. She introduced it a long time ago and she stopped being MC of Christmas a few years back. We didn’t get to enjoy it this year.

I just made this up on the spot, but it was in this spirit

Oh God above, sweet lord of mine
How much you love your children.
Oh God above, sweet lord of mine
How much you love your children.

You sacrificed, your one true son
to save us earthbound sinners here…

--and so on –

Rejoice, repent! We praise your name…

Off the top of my head:

• That little triangle embossed on your plastic container says it has been / can be recycled.
  https://www.npr.org/2020/09/11/897692090/how-big-oil-misled-the-public-into-believing-plastic-would-be-recycled
  https://www.earthday.org/plastic-recycling-is-a-lie/

-Anything involving babies and incubators is immediately suspect. (Or babies and bayonets, for that matter).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nayirah_testimony

-And this one is pure conspiracy, and I know it’s not what you asked for… but it’s ridiculous and 'tis the season. My mother in law is convinced that the lyrics to “Oh Christmas Tree” (O Tannenbaum) were changed by people who wanted to erase the true and original lyrics. By who? Big Tree financiers? Communists who are stealing Christmas and replacing it with trees?

Anyway…

The original lyrics, according to this conspiracy, praise God and never mention trees at all. It’s completely ridiculous and always ends with the whole family singing along with the “true lyrics” from a badly photocopied paper that she hands out. I hope this doesn’t come up again this year because it really makes me want to fight. Which would make me the bad person, because who initiates fights on Christmas? The next couple of days are going to be tough.

No - they’ve already got pants. Nice and sturdy ones. Bit jealous.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/north/qarlinngua-nunavut-arctic-bay-hidden-sea-arch-1.4515601

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sources_for_the_historicity_of_Jesus

A google of “historicity of Jesus” will turn up some results. The wiki link is one of at least three very similar wiki articles on the topic.

tl/dr - it’s generally accepted that Jesus was a historical person but all that can be confirmed from written accounts is 1) he was baptized and 2) he was crucified.

Of course people can and do question the independent contemporary Jewish (Josephus) or Roman (Tacitus and Pliny) sources, but they seem to be in the minority. Even the less shady version of Josephus’s passage suggests that he was talking about a person who existed.

I don’t have anything to add since I’m not Christian - merely surrounded by Christians. I’ve done a fair bit of reading trying to figure out what’s going on with all that.

Egg and rice is the easy comfort food my husband learned from his grandmother. It’s our too lazy to cook or shop dinner.

Yes! Let your imagination run riot.

The Netherlands is in an interestingly unique position when it comes to rising sea levels. They’ve been fighting the sea (and winning) for centuries. I’m sure they’ll be at the forefront for engineering future sea incursions.

Having guys make me mix tapes.

Anyway, this one really cute guy at college had an epic cassette collection and he was also artistically talented so he made custom covers/inserts for each one. The original tape is long gone, but somewhere I still have my favorite cassette cover that also includes the hand-printed play list.

He had other excellent skills, so I eventually married him.

Once, and only once, the dream ended with me deciding to enter the mystic portal and me subsequently finding myself standing alone in the hallway of a Hampton Inn in Salt Lake City at 3:00am.

I was in my jammies. No socks, no room key, no phone. I contemplated many options to get myself out of the situation, but they were all objectively bad. The only high point of the experience is that the breakfast bar hadn’t opened in the lobby, so this remains something shared between only me and the night clerk. Neither of us were happy, but she was wearing more clothing.

My main takeaways for hotel stays and dreams:
-jammies must have pockets
-jammies must have full coverage
-spare key cards are in the pockets
-never enter the mystic portal that you summoned

Mystic portals: never again

Unless I’m also having an off day, the article is just really confusing. It makes sense to me that Italy would want the base back because it would be like selling a framed painting to Hitler and getting only the canvas back when it was returned. (Hitler, amirite?)

It’s probably a pretty nice base. Probably custom made for the statue shortly after it was unearthed, and probably the sort of thing that art historians would care about keeping together with the sculpture for art historian reasons.

It was a not so subtle way of saying “we love you but you’re not saved so you’re going to suffer during the tribulation.” Or, “are you sure you don’t want to accept Jesus and avoid all that?”

The rapture is not an instakill scenario for them, but the details make my head hurt.

Baptized Lutheran shortly after birth, but never attended church. It’s a long and vaguely racist family story. Don’t consider myself Christian.

My in-laws are fundamentalist end times folk, and it took years to try to make sense all of that. I love my husband, but it’s a lot to take in. And my brain naturally tends to try to make sense or analyze things, or figure out what’s motivating people.

Their older generation are very interested in controlling the people around them and they’re very good at it. I think it’s control and authority at the heart of it, with a helping of genuine trauma that makes death and reward look appealing.

Actual quote that I’ve heard a few times: “Life is hard, short, and cruel - and then you die!” \ Let me just say that Christmas visits can get really weird.

On a lighter note, they mailed us a Tribulation Survival Care Package for the 1999 x-mas, ahead of the Y2K impending millennial crisis. That was actually sort of fun, and the shiny space blanket came in handy a few times.