This happens at our house too. Except for my husband and I, each person's laundry is separate, but I think sometimes in our rush to switch the loads, something small like a sock or a mask can be left behind, where in then gets mixed into the next load. And my boys are pretty oblivious and just toss any socks in the dresser or leave the clean mask in a random place because "I would see it there". 😁

I would also look and see if there are "practice" questions available or even a "how to take this test" video so you can talk through the interface with them ahead of time. You might want to let them know whatever you can find out about how the test works -- can they go back and check previous problems, or is there no "going back" once you hit submit? Is it timed? When can breaks be taken? And so on. We've never done that particular test, but with the test we've used to meet our state testing requirement (We've done the NWEA MAP test the last few years) I made sure to inform my kids the first time about how the test works, so they knew what to expect. That one is adaptive (continues to get harder until they've gotten too many wrong, basically), so some questions will definitely be on material they won't know, so I wanted them to know not to feel bad that they definitely wouldn't know how to do all the math. There's also no skipping questions to go back to later like there would be on a paper test. Agreeing with HomeAgain that something like Prodigy Math or Khan could help with practicing mouse/keyboard skills and generally learning how online questions might work.

A year or so ago I started receiving a spam text every day (from a different number each day) that always started "Hey Johnny! We've checked your records and you are qualified for $xxx today. Apply at this link!" And the amount was different each day. After religiously marking them as SPAM every day for weeks, Google Fi finally got better about directing the messages directly to spam, though I still get a notification that a message was moved to spam. They stopped for several months and just started again.

I'd say the buyer protection is why PayPal is popular for online buying from unknown people. I've never thought of it in terms of returns, but there is always the possibility of a scammer who never intended to send the item (maybe less likely here with many long term members, but I buy and sell in Facebook groups and on the Homeschool Classifieds site where people are essentially anonymous or unknown). It can also serve as a stopgap against losses in case of postal service issues. In FB groups that I frequent, insurance is the discretion of the seller, but they are also responsible for it getting there. If I buy a book and it never arrives, the seller needs to refund me and it's on them if they bought insurance or not to cover that potential loss. When I sell, I insure if the value is more than I would want to just refund out of pocket. If it's a $5 book, I'm willing to eat that loss. I haven't been personally involved in any lost packages from this type of buy/sell/trade but I've done quite a bit so I feel lucky that nothing has ever gone seriously wrong.

It's a little disheartening to know that my tip on a take out order may not benefit the staff who have to box up my meal and possibly carry it out to my car if it is curbside. On the other hand, sometimes when I tip on a bigger take out meal it is to support small/local places so I guess I am supporting the local economy in some way if it is going to a local restaurant owner or to the staff. I usually only tip at a fast food/coffee/counter service type place if I am rounding up on a cash payment, or if I felt like they did something especially nice or "above and beyond." My DD17 works at Dairy Queen, and she gets tips occasionally. I think her first summer working she said it added up to about $40 over the whole summer working 30 hrs a week. She said that she more often gets tips from someone if they gave her a really large order (needing to make 8 blizzards or something like that) or if someone comes minutes before closing time. She says she thinks that people tip more often right before close because they can see the staff are busy cleaning up for the night and feel bad that they are causing new messes to be made that will need to be cleaned.

My bucket list is mostly all travel-related. Though I don't keep an actual "list" -- more like, I have a good idea of places I definitely want to see in my lifetime. I have been fortunate to travel a lot already in my lifetime and I have seen many places on my list already! Some are kind of small (I just did one this weekend!), and some are big (I really want to see Pompeii and the Parthenon).

Our district just decided to go virtual for two weeks. (Only 8 school days though because of the Monday holiday and next week and one previously scheduled teacher grading/recordkeeping day). We've been masking all year. The decision seems to be more based on staffing levels than student illness levels - though I think they may also be trying to get ahead of things getting even worse here in terms of student illness levels...Our state has not peaked for Omicron yet. My high schoolers report that there haven't been an incredibly large number of student absences, or even teacher absences. But communication from the district has been that staffing shortages haven't happened in all buildings, but they thought it would be easier to manage if all buildings went virutal at the same time. They are trying to pull together care for children of critical workers (lots of people employed in the health care industry here).

At least in my state, they were making clear that today's numbers represent what would have been 4 days worth had it not been for the Fri - Monday holiday weekend.

David's bridal has "guaranteed in stock" bridesmaid dresses...this is more expensive than finding something used but there are a lot of pastels. Here's one that might work: https://www.davidsbridal.com/Product_flutter-sleeve-crisscross-mesh-bridesmaid-dress-f19933_ready-to-ship-bridesmaid-dresses

And even if the first "Widgets Unlimited" is trademarked, it would also depend if the second one was in the same "market space". If the first one is about auto parts and the new one is about computer games, it might be considered to be without confusion as they don't compete in the same industry.

Same for Aldi here...I often buy there generic brand and feel it is a fair substitute, especially for a casserole. I make a chili casserole that calls for Fritos and they work just fine.

My DD who is not a fan of math in general loves statistics. I agree with everyone else that it's a class worth taking.

We were out of power at our house in SE Minnesota for about 8 hours, but my MIL in IA had multiple downed trees, including two that fell on her roof. 😞

I've seen the doorposts things, and they might be what you are thinking of - they definitely have those at homeschool conventions. There's also this thing, which I owned eons ago, but I never really used it...it was sort of that kind of thing though, I think: https://www.amazon.com/Wise-Words-Moms-Ginger-Hubbard/dp/0966378660

Today, after reading the Beast Academy section about the Pythagorean theorem, DS10 decided he didn't believe it. "Mom, that can't be right. I think they made this up. A+B=C would make so much more sense. Why isn't THAT the Pythagorean theorem?" 😁😄😂 It took a lot of skeptical measuring of triangles, before he grudgingly acknowledged that it "works". But he is now claiming that triangles are broken and whoever made this all up is trying to mess with his brain, because it SHOULD have been A+B=C. LOL....

We call our robot vacuum Roomby, which is pretty boring. Somehow our cars never have names, but we have had several computers with names. RIP to Brownbox, a faithful home server. My laptop is always named Lappy (think Strongbad / homestarrunner). A tiny laptop we had back when laptops were less powerful was 'Superpalm" because it was barely better than a palm pilot (remember those???).

I would probably block the guy. But you can mute people in messenger so the notification doesn't ever pop up. I muted a couple people in messenger that I want to stay friends with on Facebook, but have this annoying habit of randomly sending gifs/memes in messenger at any time of day or night for no apparent reason. Super annoying. So they are just muted in messenger and I never open their message thread.

Out of my four kids, only one has studied Latin. DS14 asked to try Latin in 4th-5th grade, and then also chose it as his high school level foreign language. DD17 and DS12 both did Duolingo German in elementary and are/will taking German for high school. DS10 is severely dyslexic and I can barely wrap my mind around what he will do for foreign language in the future. Everyone has done some level of vocabulary/word root studies at one point or another. My latin student, DS14 is the weakest (of the older 3, not counting the dyslexic kid) at testing that involves language/vocab skills despite the Latin - his strengths are in other areas. DS12 scores extremely high on vocab, etc in standardized testing w/o Latin study. So while it's a good thing, Latin study certainly isn't the end all be all for good educational outcomes.

My DD17 is currently booked for a trip to Germany next summer that was originally supposed to be in 2020. This is organized by the German teachers in our school district but isn't "sponsored" by the school per se. They work through a tour/travel company that specializes in educational tours. The travel insurance they recommended (even pre-Covid) was a "Student Travel Protection Plan" through AIG Travel. Since all travel is organized thru a tour company (group rates, blocks of hotel rooms, etc), they said it isn't necessarily possible for one individual to get a "Free cancellation" if the trip as a whole happens, but the specific individual can't go. This would cover us getting our money back if DD17 is sick/injured (COVID or otherwise) and can't take the trip, if there is a death in the family and either she can't go or has to come home early, if she needs to be evacuated for medical reasons, etc. In our case the insurance was only $145 on a $3700 trip, so it seemed well worth it even on the off chance something were to happen. If the trip is cancelled again by the tour company due to COVID restrictions/outbreaks, we will get all but a $500 deposit back, and that deposit can be applied toward trying to take the same trip again a future year, or toward other travel with the company. Since this is her senior year it seems likely that she might be "out" that $500 if she doesn't go this year since I doubt she will want to take a trip with high schoolers after she is in college, but that has been the case since we first paid for the trip back in 2019, once COVID hit and the trip didn't happen in June 2020.

This! My friend who was working daycare and really enjoyed it went from it being a low paying but adequate job, to having multiple weeks not working (and of course not getting paid) due to covid quarantines due to exposure at work. Or other weeks her room at the daycare was closed due to a case, and even if she wasn't directly exposed, she still couldn't work with her room not being open. The income became too inconsistent and she found another job. I really wonder what all those working parents did the multiple weeks the daycare room was closed. I know several older (65+) people who were working part time jobs in retirement who decided not to return to those jobs. They will just make do with other retirement savings.

I generally prefer BetterWorldBooks to thrift books, but probably would have less trust of them for a high priced item. But for readable copies of books, I rarely have had it gone wrong, other than a couple times where I received the wrong book all together (and got my money back in those circumstances). One thing to keep in mind about AbeBooks is that there are many, many individual sellers there, not one "AbeBooks" - I buy from there relatively often but check the sellers before ordering. Some are just big thrift sellers, etc. Some are small individual book sellers. I've had higher priced items turn out well there, but only if they are showing an actual picture or very clear description of the actual item (not just some generic description). I've also had good luck buying from ebay (again, making sure if it's a high price item that I am seeing actual product description and photos), and from joining sales groups on Facebook that cater to the specific types of books I'm looking for (I collect certain vintage children's books, so I join groups where those are likely to be sold). I've gotten a few good deals from shipped books on Facebook marketplace, but that's not my favorite. When I was completing my vintage Narnia set last year though, I spent about a quarter of the price I would have paid on ebay by buying on FB marketplace and having books shipped from sellers there.

I had the permanent kind. I ended up asking the dentist to remove it in my late 30s because it was so, so hard to keep the area underneath clean. He said he ends up removing a lot of them from adults. One of my teeth shifted but it's minor. I have other teeth issues unrelated to orthodontics that are more distracting looking, and so I'm not concerned about the one slightly misaligned tooth. I'd probably suggest to my kids to get removable if it's an option since those can be replaced if lost or broken but you don't have years of difficulty trying to keep clean around it.

We used the reviews here when we purchased ours: https://www.coffeegeek.com/ Nine years ago we had a budget of $1,000 to spend (it was a gift to us meant to be spent on an espresso machine), and we got this one: https://www.chriscoffee.com/products/quick-mill-silvano-evo Well, basically but an older version of it that came to under $1,000 at the time. You probably know this, but the grinder is just as important as the machine when it comes to espresso, so if the budget is $300-400, you might want to allocate a minimum of $100 toward the grinder. We had a crappy old burr grinder when we got the above machine, and even with our fancy machine, the quality of the coffee went up significantly when we bought a grinder in the $400 range a couple years later. We really appreciated buying our machine from Chris Coffee, the retailer above, because they are very knowledgeable on the machines they sell and also sell spare parts. We've owned three machines in almost twenty years of marriage, and if there's one thing I've seen is that Espresso machines almost always need ongoing maintenance..kind of like cars...LOL. DH has replaced a few different parts in ours, and the employees at Chris Coffee were helpful in giving him suggestions as to what he needed or what might be going on with the machine.

I read two Shakespeare plays in high school classes, and my DD read two as well - one in 10th grade honors English and one in AP English. She said that usually they do 2 in AP English, but the instructor had to cut a few books from AP English last year as they were in distance learning for 3/4 of the year and weren't able to move as quickly through the typical class material. Reading 2-4 plays seems reasonable to me, given how important Shakespeare is for cultural literacy. It would seem excessive that was "most" of what was being read, unless it was a Shakespeare-specific class.

I have three boys sharing a Switch (full version, not the Lite), and my DD17 has her own. She does do animal crossing and it's a relaxing activity for her, but it would be hard to share that experience on her brothers' switch because she likes having access for those little bits of play time here and there to fit in the daily rewards. (I should note, she bought her own with her work earnings). It works pretty well for the three boys to share, because most games they play aren't like animal crossing and you can have separate profiles for each game. AND, we also have a WiiU, a Retron5 (plays old school games), and a couple desktop computers they use for minecraft. So even if they are doing screen time all at the same time, they just take turns who gets the Switch. Someone can be playing switch on the small screen while someone else uses the WiiU or Retron5 on the TV. We also sometimes do Mario Kart, Mario Party, and Overcooked as a family on the Switch...we can only do 4 a time but when all six of us play, we just swap controllers around and take turns.