isalicat
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Posts posted by isalicat
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32 minutes ago, ABay said:
I was just talking to a friend about this last night. When I was in Ontario 10/29, people were wearing paper poppies and there was a man in uniform outside Walmart with a basket of them. I vaguely recall paper poppies from my childhood but haven't seen any in decades, except on UK TV shows. My friend doesn't remember ever seeing them in real life. She grew up near NYC, I'm from the other end of the state. Maybe proximity to Canada was the difference, WWI being a much bigger deal for commonwealth countries than the U.S.
I think you are correct about WWI being a much bigger deal for Commonwealth countries - I've never seen a poppy worn in November in the U.S. and in England they are practically de rigeur. We do make a big deal (as we should!) over Veterans Day (this Friday in the U.S.) but it seems to be more focused on WWII and subsequent conflicts. As the WWII vets gradually leave us, it will be interesting to see how much the younger generations do honor to those who have served.
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5 hours ago, Carey said:
How bout them Warriors HAHA!
Actually a very respectable showing given that Dray and GPII were out...almost beat the supposed repeat champs the Nuggets so no one in Warriorville is too terribly sad today. Always happy to see the Lakers sink and with AD displaying his usual ability to be out (with niggling injuries) for half the games already, I'm good to go!
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Advice needed from the cat people here:
My four year tom, a giant orange and white tabby named Iggy, has been very quiet and inactive for the last two days which is totally unlike him. He is eating (a little but not begging for food as per normal) and drinking lots of water. His eyes are normal, his nose is cold and wet, he is alert and responsive, purring and moving as normal, albeit much more slowly than usual. I first assumed he had some sort of tummy upset from eating something outside (he is an indoor/outdoor cat) but as it has been more than 24 hours I am now worried it might be more serious. I am always reluctant to haul cats off to the vet unless it is obvious they need to go *now* as car rides and vet visits are so stressful for them, but I assume if he is not back to his regular self in a couple of days it is time to go. What do you all think?
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My brand of Christianity follows the example of St. Francis on this issue:
"Preach the Gospel always, and when necessary, use words."
(i.e. words are rarely necessary if you are actually living the Good News)
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3 hours ago, Rushmoras said:
Couple of days ago completed Christopher Paolini's "To Sleep in the Sea of Stars", which is a wholloping 800+ pages science fiction novel about a xenobiologist, who in a planet, which she is chartering, encounters an alien life form, which attaches to her. Unable to control the lifeform, she accidentally kills all of her team-members and then is being hunted down by an army, who wants to do experiments on her. Then, the whole book turns in to a science fiction war book, wherein humanity's forces are attacked by aliens in a form of squids... I guess I liked it more than Dune, but likewise as Dune, I ain't seeing myself rereading this book in any foreseeable future whatsoever. On top of it all, in the end it became a Mass Effect fan fiction.
Now, I don't know what to read, probably gonna continue with Stephen King books or buy "new" James Clavell's book, which was recently translated to my language.
I know I am a "broken record" here...but if you like sci fi, try "Embassytown" by China Mieville. Its not 800 pages! and its a great sci fi story about a woman who returns to her home planet which is actually the planet of a alien species who have very specific "language requirements" (I won't say more for fear of spoiling it) and the humans are tolerated as guests...until. I thought it was brilliant, both as a great sci fi work and as a meditation on the nature of language itself.
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2 hours ago, chitowngirl said:
Adding to that…I don’t get an extra hour of sleep. I sleep X number of hours and then wake up.
Unfortunately although I am capable of taking advantage of the extra hour, my cats "take after" you - their time for breakfast has nothing to do with what the clock says. 😺
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2 hours ago, EtheltoTillie said:
Same for me! I had double surveillance before mastectomies: MRI once a year and mammogram once a year on alternating six months.
This is now my schedule as I still have one breast left (the left one!). So a bit of angst every six months but I can take it. No gynecological stuff though as I had all my inside lady parts out 17 years ago due to fibroid tumors (figured I would have them take everything, and SO glad I did).
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1 hour ago, mledawn said:
I forgot there was a Shetland forum.
Britbox has shared that the newest Shetland season starts November 29 *in North America*. It starts today in the UK.
So its Agatha Raisin in the Orkneys? Plus Posh? 😸
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I hereby bequeath my lifetime allotment of all manufactured candy bars to you all. I only like plain dark chocolate (preferably 70% cacao) and nowadays gravitate to the kind that is eco-friendly when I buy it at all.
When I was a kid, frozen Three Musketeers bars were the bomb and I had a ritual around eating candy corn (bite off the white part, then the bottom yellow part and then you eat the orange center), but nowadays anything with corn syrup tastes too sweet to me and since I am quite vain, I follow Kate Moss' edict ("nothing tastes as good as skinny feels") within reason (because fanaticism is boring).
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4 minutes ago, peacheslatour said:
Example and this is a mild one-
Oy vey. 😸
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15 hours ago, peacheslatour said:
I have. See Chick Tracts. They've been doing that for decades.
Okay I know "curiosity killed the cat" (well not any cat I've ever been around) but I need to know: What are "Chick Tracts"? (given the name, my mind immediately went to some sort of make up or hair styling instruction manual 😸, but I guess probably not...)
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On 10/30/2023 at 3:08 PM, chessiegal said:
My stepdaughter sent me a variety pack of 4 large cookies, about 4" diameter, from crumbl cookies today. Way too much sweets for the 2 of us. Any thoughts on how well they might freeze?
They freeze quite well. The pantry at which I work just had our 50th Anniversary celebration (50 years of feeding our neighbors in need!) and we got four giant boxes of crumbl cookies (the smaller size - in lemon, chocolate, and chocolate chip) for dessert. I found them much too sweet although textural and flavor-wise they were very good. We had so many left over we froze them, and then repackaged them a week later in groups of eight to give out to our clients for dessert. Everyone working had another one and they were just as good as before freezing. In my opinion, freshly home baked cookies with less sugar are better, particularly given the cost of crumbl!
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1 hour ago, BlueSkies said:
Education is a good thing.
But I tend to think too much book education leads to too much abstract/ivory tower trains of thought
Huh? How much is "too much"? I have lots of friends with Ph.D.s that don't think abstractly much at all (they are engineers and scientists, and very much grounded in physical reality). People are people, whatever their level of "book education" - many are incapable of common sense whether they have read a lot of books or not (see: my brother-in-law).
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6 hours ago, peacheslatour said:
Everyone with cats and especially black cats would do well to keep them in on Halloween. There is a special place in hell for people who chase and kill them because they think it's funny.
Yes, many shelters will not allow black cats to be adopted in the weeks just before Halloween because people take them for cruel reasons I won't elaborate. 😿
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41 minutes ago, Laura Holt said:
My cousin is driving me crazy. Every single time she gets a new man in her life she completely makes herself over into this person she thinks he wants her to be. This time around the new guy is a hunter and suddenly she's taking lessons in gun safety so she can buy guns. This is a woman who, a few guys back was a born again vegan. It's infuriating to watch because I know, based in every relationship she's ever had, that when this one runs its course she will change herself around to be the "soul mate" for the next guy.
Just curious...why does this drive *you* crazy? I would let her do her...maybe there is a chameleon somewhere back in your family tree that you have not yet learned about? 😸
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On 10/27/2023 at 12:50 PM, Browncoat said:
Peeve of the day -- my stupid satellite TV. It worked fine this morning, and at lunchtime, but now, for no reason I can see, some channels are not coming in. It isn't cloudy, nothing has disturbed the dish, and no trees have grown branches that block the dish in the last four hours. I checked the cable, and it all seems to be connected properly. It's just so random. And annoying.
ETA: And it's back. No idea why.
This is clearly *them*, not you. Happens due to rotation of the earth vis-a-vis the satellites that are transmitting...My husband was a beta tester for Dish when Dish first came on line so he used to explain these things to me...not that I understood 1/4 of it. 😸
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My surgical oncologist moved out of town a few months ago, so now for follow up I am seeing a nurse-practitioner while they are searching for a replacement. Apparently it is incredibly difficult to attract doctors to my neck of the woods due to our housing prices; so you know its crazy expensive when even doctors can't afford to live here. My first mammogram since my mastectomy came back all clear last week so I am still doing the happy dance of joy. (Gals: silver lining to a mastectomy - your mammograms take half the time :) I have a separate, medical oncologist for everything else whom I see every three weeks after they do a blood draw and then he sends me on for my infusions (which I keep insisting are just H2O, given that I have experienced zero side effects despite being quizzed assiduously each and every time). This will go on until May with alternating MRIs and mammograms every 6 months. Bring it!! F**k cancer! (Get your mammograms!!)
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On 10/23/2023 at 5:51 AM, Shelbie said:
About a year ago I started using a dishwasher cleaner monthly. It never smells odd and my glasses and cutlery sparkle instead of looking cloudy.
Yeah, I'm doing mine about every 2 months - the water where I live is so hard that you pretty much have to use a dishwasher cleaner to get the lime residue out of the hoses or say adios to your dishwasher way before time.
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Once upon a time, I was standing at a bus stop in San Francisco (by myself...it was in a neighborhood about mid-morning and no one else happened to be waiting for a bus at that time) and a guy about 18 or so walked by, and then came back and grabbed my right breast, and then walked away. I spun around and at the top of my lungs yelled "What the f..k, f...khead!", and then made as to pursue him. I am all of 4'11" and was then around 100 lbs. but I can be way fierce and he looked quite scared and start to run...HA! There was no one else around but it was pretty satisfying nonetheless.
Another time I was walking to high school on a major L.A. boulevard and a guy (in a raincoat, how cliched) walked towards me and then opened his raincoat to expose his withered little man parts. I don't know what he expected, but I dissolved in laughter, and he quickly closed up the coat and skittered away.
Apologies to any men persons on this forum, but really? What possesses you sometimes? 😸
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I'd like to make a general comment, not directed at anyone posting here specifically, but just inspired by 40 years of being in the recruitment field (thus vetting resumes and interviewing people non-stop for what felt like a lifetime, because it was!). There are some things that factor in on decision making on the part of the hiring person or persons that aren't readily quantifiable or necessarily obvious to the applicant. One of them is a general sense of well-being and self possession, which is not something that comes from the job (unless your job is your vocation, which is unfortunately rare in life). People who are "comfortable in their own skin" and are not desperately looking for affirmation from others, or expressing entitlement or unhappiness either verbally or with their body language, are going to be perceived as much less "high maintenance" by a prospective employer. An example: If I interviewed someone who brought up company PTO policy right away, I took that as a real red flag that this person valued their time away from the job more than they were interested in doing the job (and that may have been unjust, because everyone deserves a life away from work, but there it is). As a hiring manager, you don't want to bring someone in these days unless you are *absolutely sure* they will be a "happy camper" because employment laws make it so difficult to get rid of permanent hires (thus the ever growing penchant for filling jobs with temps or contractors). This is also why internal candidates have such an advantage, because they are already vetted for their personality issues, unlike someone coming in from the outside. People who already have purpose and meaning in their lives are more confident and successfully communicative during a job interview process; you can just tell: by posture, by eye contact, by facial expression, by composure when you ask something they had not anticipated. Just some thoughts...
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21 hours ago, RealHousewife said:
One thing that’s crazy is how many men think unless they put their hands on you, it’s not harassment.
Being an old (I'm 67...so not very old, only somewhat old 😸 ), I kinda subscribed to that myself back in the day (as in, stick and stones...). If a guy was just blatantly rude and forward in a sexual way, I always either ignored him or had a snappy and hopefully withering comeback, so it just never mattered to me. But NO touching! without consent, ever. That was my line in the sand.
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11 minutes ago, peacheslatour said:
My kid grew up with cats. They're living, breathing lessons in consent. I'll never forget once when he was chasing around one of the cats as a toddler and he goes "He touched me with his pointy hand!" He was only about 3 but he learned not to hassle the cats.
Amen to that. Once my son, as a toddler (who had been forewarned about what cats find threatening behavior), got his face right up into the face of my big tom, who was trying to take a nap on the couch, and my tom gave him a good swat across the nose (just enough to draw a tiny bit of blood, but no lasting damage). That "learned him", as they say. 😺
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Pet(s): Photos & Discussion
in Everything Else
I did not know you could take a cat's temp other than what happens at the vet's office and no, I don't have a cat thermometer of any kind. Where do you get the "ear ones"? Are there any other signs of a high temp I could look for? (again, nose cold and wet and overall body temp when touched seems entirely normal). Thanks!