I’m in the opposite camp. What are the reasons you don’t like Rivian? (I don’t like VW because we had not one, but two vehicles caught up in Dieselgate. They’re dead to me. Which is a shame because I really liked them.)

Thanks!

I’ve tried. The thing that’s hard to replicate is the beans, actually. Though I’ve mostly used canned refried beans; I’ve been meaning to get a can of whole pintos and mash them myself, and see if that helps.

The Double Decker taco came back for like a month last year and I went to Taco Bell probably eight times once I realized it because it’s my favorite and I’m super pissed that they won’t just make one for me even though they have all of the ingredients, FFS.

My dad would put golf on the big color tv in the house and also have it running on the small black and white tv in the garage. We weren’t allowed to change it because he’d move back and forth between those two spaces while doing whatever it was he did in the garage and he didn’t want to miss anything. This was pre-DVR, of course.

Maybe he had feelings for you and felt he needed to make a clean cut? Not that that is an excuse, really.

Winter, but I’m in California so of course it’s a bit different for us. I love rainy days, particularly with no wind. I prefer to be inside listening to it, but if there’s no wind, I don’t mind being out in it too much.

They’re just feathered cats, I swear

Community mailing lists. Maybe Nextdoor. I’m much more likely to try someone that a person I know recommended. For instance, we have a very active school “bulletin board” mailing list and people ask for and receive recommendations all the time. I may not know the person making the recommendation personally, but we’re all part of the same community group and that holds some water for me personally.

Nextdoor is a real crapshoot depending on where you live, but if you have nothing else, it’s worth a try.

Totally get that. I used to be that way; somewhere along the line I decided that I would not allow myself more than three WIPs at a time, and I’ve mostly been pretty disciplined about that, and it’s helped. I make a lot of sweaters for myself so when people learn that I knit, they know to ask me if I made what I’m wearing, and the answer is often “yes.” The ones who are also crafters just admire the work, but the ones who aren’t start telling me I should sell (big lol) or that they’d pay me to make them one. If I charged an hourly rate, it’d probably mean upwards of a thousand bucks for a single sweater, but they have no concept of that.

Anyway, I hear you on the learning new stitch patterns and then getting bored. I mostly knit while in meetings or watching TV these days, because it got easy. I had to learn something new (sewing) to stretch my brain because knitting wasn’t doing it anymore.

Haha I was trying to remember what they sounded like and your comment made it come to life in my brain. Thanks!

People want to pay me for my knitting. Too bad for them that the amount they want to pay me is laughable and also there’s no way in hell I’d take the time to knit someone I barely know a sweater.

I can’t burp either. Turns out my mom can’t. I wonder if it’s a genetic disability. Seriously, that may sound ridiculous but sometimes it’s really inconvenient!

I (maybe, kinda) miss what Facebook was like in, er, 2008-ish. But then again I was also 25 so maybe I just miss what life was like back then.

It’s been a long time (my kids are 8 and 10) so I’m sure features have changed but I figured I’d chime in with my favorite baby monitor feature. Not all of them had it but I found it invaluable.

I think ours were Samsungs? And they had a “vox” feature. Essentially, if the room was quiet, the monitor screen and microphone would turn off. If there was a noise, it would pop back on. (In this way, it’s different than an audio-only monitor which I presume is on all the time.)This allowed me to sleep (when sleep was available…rarely with our first) and be awoken when needed. I was way too sleep deprived for Nest Cam alerts on my phone to actually get through to me, especially since they popped up once; if I missed it then, it wasn’t going to keep nudging me.

That said, the monitors themselves were cheaply manufactured junk, and not inexpensive. I liked the vox feature enough that when the first one started having problems with the antenna, we bought a second one and immediately taped the antenna down. Hopefully you have better options out there these days.

Sometimes I think this too. But if I was 27 again, I’d still want to do the whole shebang. It’s only with the experience of having done it that I would choose not to do it again. Although it was freaking expensive…

Knew what video it was before I clicked the link. We bought one because of that video!

I would agree with this, but I would add something. If you ever get to a point in your work where you have ownership over your tasks and production and aren’t just a tiny cog in a big machine, it can be really fulfilling (at least as much as any paid job can be). I speak with experience only coming from the non-profit side though, so I’m sure a lot of people may not feel that way about corporate jobs. So if you have experienced that kind of fulfillment, and something changes (either your role or your workplace or your manager or whatever) and it’s not fulfilling in the same way anymore, it can be really frustrating, even if you could feasibly fill your time with personal stuff.

Also, sometimes being forced to be somewhere chafes when you’d rather be out in the world or at home. Napping, hiking, checking out a book at the library — hard to do when you’re stuck in a specific place.

I guess what I meant was, they were so aware that we were lamely going as fast as we could (not very) in the slow lane that they managed to move over in plenty of time even when they were going way (way) faster than us and had to merge into other traffic. No one ever seemed to get stuck behind us unable to pass. I chalked it up to their very high awareness of our very shitty car, lol.

Ooh man, I’ve driven a lot of rentals for work…

I hated hated hated the Nissan Cube. Thankfully the check engine light came on within two hours of me picking it up so I got to swap it.

But I think the one that takes the cake is actually a vacation rental car. My husband and I rented a car when we went to Belgium. It was an Opel Corsa. It struggled to even reach the speed limit on highways and definitely couldn’t go above it. The funniest thing was that all the Audis and BMWs in Belgium didn’t even bother to tailgate us; they saw us ahead of them and moved over to pass well before they got to us. They knew. That thing was hilariously bad at being a car. I was also a new stick shift driver and it was very difficult. We then went to Switzerland where we got a VW Polo and suddenly I got a whole lot better at driving stick, lol.