Co-sleeping, but the baby isn't the reason no one can sleep.

Sorry, I wasn't referring to you hyperfocusing, I was talking about the guy in the video. But based on what he says about why sea salt is so full of the plastic, if Redmond salt is mined from salt flats, I'm thinking it should be relatively plastic-free. I have no actual idea how it's sourced, though, I've never used Redmond - not sure I've ever even noticed that brand. The current bottle of salt I have is sea salt, so whoops. Might switch to Himalayan again!

This, too.

Well, yeah, I don't use bottled water. I've never understood the obsession. Tap water in glass at home or bring reusable water bottle when out. (Or just don't drink for a while... you won't shrivel up and die if youre not constantly drinking, really) The waste from all those water bottles is also next level, besides contaminating the water that's in them. Still think we should maybe rethink packaging everything in plastic generally, though.

Pretty much all food that's in the current environment has microplastics now, so I'm not sure why the hyperfocus on salt. However, I think the gist with the salt is that salt from the ocean is 'in the soup' of the current plastic-laden environment, so is full of microplastics. Himalayan salt is from salt deposits laid down millions of years ago, pre-microplastics. I would think the same would be true of salt that was mined from a dry salt lake (I'm guessing that's where Utah salt would be coming from??) However, similar to water in plastic bottles, I wonder if the salt could somehow get contaminated from being packaged in plastic? But back to my first point, freaking everything is packaged in plastic, also why the focus on bottled water specifically when milk, soda, juice - virtually everything is in plastic and I'm sure is equally contaminated. They've found microplastics in the snow in Antarctica. It's pretty much entirely permeated our whole food chain, much of it likely at the cellular level. I'm not sure how one can avoid the stuff at this point... Rock salt, as it is not alive, is like the one thing that might have some small hope of managing to not have microplastics in it, but that's such a small part of what we ingest...

So freaking reminiscent of "there's no such thing as chronic Lyme." If it's not acute, it's not a problem, and you're just a whiny hypochondriac if you think there are any lingering issues from any kind of earlier infection. I'd hoped that this much Long Covid would get things to change, but I'm feeling less hopeful as time goes on...

My family is all boosted as of October, 6 shots total now, and we pretty much all got Covid this fall/winter. Dh and I for the first time - he tested positive on Thanksgiving Day and then passed it on to me. One kid around the same time as us (but separate exposure), another dd and her wife a couple weeks later. SIL got it while visiting her parents in TX. Her parents were boosted in October, got Covid later that same month, and then got Covid **again** from SIL while she was staying with them. My guess is they had the earlier strain now this one was JN1. But YIKES. But, all mild cases, so still thrilled we're all up-to-date. After getting it and being boosted, I thought maybe I could relax a bit for a couple of months, but then heard about SIL's parents and feeling less relaxed again... 😕 My parents, on the other hand, (also boosted) have been not bothering to take any precautions, even went to a big new-year's-eve dance, and (knock wood!) have yet to get it this round. May that continue to be so. But since Covid showed up, I have never, ever known this many people to have had it in so short a time. Everyone's getting it.

Oh definitely - I'm enjoying this one - or I wouldn't still be watching season 4! 😂 I just thought it was amusing you were commenting that the tv character seemed a bit eccentric/ possibly neurodiverse, but the tv character is way toned down from the book character, and then the book character is in turn apparently way toned down from the real life person he was based on - he must really have been a trip!

Which Siegfried? The one in the current show or the one in the book - they're quite different. They made the one in the show a decade or more older (the character in the book would have been a young child in WW1), made him a sad widower instead of an inveterate womanizer, and gave him a rat as a pet instead of a whole pack of loud dogs. And actually they made him way less neurodivergent. Siegfried at the least has raging ADHD. The opening scene in the book, James arrives for his interview to the pack of loud dogs barking their heads off at the door, no one answers. Mrs Hall (much older than Siegfried in the books and I believe widowed; with neither an estranged son nor disappeared husband) finally answers and shows him into the sitting room; crazed dogs follow. He sits there uncomfortably for a long while until a young attractive woman comes in looking for Siegfried. They have a date. Siegfried is nowhere to be found. James chats with her awkwardly for a while, she then leaves. He stays on for hours till Siegfried finally shows up. He had totally forgotten both the interview and the date with the attractive woman. This Siegfried is way more put together! I'm enjoying the show, but they did change quite a bit about most of the characters and their backstories! Which is fair, while some think the books are memoir or autobiography, it's auto-fiction and the author changed most characters and their backstories from real life from his books, including all the names. His was Alfred, Siegfried's was Donald. The author's wife wasn't even a farmer's daughter. And interestingly, in the biography of the author by his son, he says that the 'real' Siegfried (Donald) was actually more eccentric even than the character in the book!

For personal contacts, if all parties have WhatsApp accounts, it also good for both voice and video calls. I think you may also be able to do group voice calls (connect multiple numbers), though I've never used it, I seem to remember it giving me the option to add another voice line when I was on a call. And of course excellent for both 1:1 and group texting. For 1:1 voice/video calls, I usually use WhatsApp if on my phone, and Skype if on my computer. Zoom is really only better if it's a group video chat. For 1:1 it's clunky and unnecessary to set up the link and all that, not to mention the time constraints if you don't have a paid account. For calling an international landline, like all have said, Skype credits.

Skype->Skype is free. With buying some credit on Skype, you can use it to call Skype->landline at a good rate. That's what people are referring to with that option. The receiving person does not need to have Skype.

From a landline, me too. I use WhatsApp and Skype (free!) to do it all the time. And just select the contact with no dialing at all. But as OP pointed out, that doesn't work to call a business, only friends whose contact info you know on that same platform. My pre-homeschooling job was in international marketing, so I called international from a landline every day and had the dialing sequence and many country codes well memorized! The paid Skype option where you can call from Skype to a published non-Skype number is probably the best option for OP.

From a landline, you need to first dial the international access code (from US it's 011) + country code then local number. Germany, for example, is +49. So, Germany from landline was 011 49... From a cell, you can just start with country code, I think - I've only called international from my cell with WhatsApp and Skype, because you pay $$$$$$$ if you call from a cell phone directly without an international plan on it. The US and Canada have the same country code which is +1, and you didn't need the international access code to dial between them, but i think you likely still get socked with international calling charges.

Also don't know L&O, but I think this is the one from Cousin Vinny: There's also this eyewitness where he shows he can't have accurately identified what he thought he say, because he had an obstructed view:

This doesn't actually surprise me (older vax status being not significant) that much. Immunity to this virus seems to wane (from both vax and previous infection) after about three months, and the virus has also mutated significantly from the original vax. And a third point is that virtually no one unvaxed and still alive is virus naive anymore. At this point most unvaxed people have had Covid at least once, so also have some previous immunity, so the difference between those people and those with old vaxes is not going to be anywhere near as wide as say, someone virus naive and someone with a recent updated vax. Knowing all this, we should really be having updated boosters every 6 mos (not yearly), and there should be public health education about why it's important to stay updated, especially for more vulnerable populations.

Dh and I wore our trusty Happy Masks to my nephew's wedding. Even ate indoors (appetizers outside, but dinner was on 2nd floor; no easy exit) - we lifted the mask for a nanosec to ingest food; chewed and swallowed with it on. Danced my heart out on the dance floor. Dh and I were the only ones masked. Half the wedding party, most of my brother's family, and one person at our table got Covid there. Dh and I, fortunately, did not. Certainly did not regret being the masked weirdos.

Yeah, many things transmit pre- or asymptomatic. The big difference is how much more transmissable Covid is (has now passed measles as most contagious pathogen), *and* unlike measles, smallpox, or chicken pox, you can get it over and over and over, so the population isn't immune for long after a spike, so round and round it goes...

We finally got a fake tree this year. We tried last year and were too late to go looking in person and dh ordered a couple that looked okay in pics but we didn't like in person and we returned them and got a real tree. So this year we managed to get out on time. We looked a few different places and only saw one tree that we liked, which was at Home Depot (the rest of the trees there and all the other places were a big nope). We did get prelit, even though I wasn't crazy about the lights, but one of the big reasons to get it was to make it so dh didn't have to swear at the tree while managing the lights every year.

Dh brought Covid home a whole month and a bit after his latest booster. Then gave it to me, who also just got the latest shot.. Good news is that it was relatively mild, still super-happy we'd gotten the latest shots. Shots are XBB; current most-common strain has evolved enough to get through at least first-line defenses (though second/third line defenses seem to be holding, hence milder cases), and a new even more evasive one is headed over from Europe, apparently. Oh boy.

That's what I figured. Dh and I both took it - we didn't have any drug interactions to worry about. I also wonder, for those who have drug interactions, where you have to take only half the recommended dose and/or stop taking other meds that they need for other conditions, if that affects how effective it is. I don't think I would stop important meds to take it. I was waffling on taking it and I googled around and found an article that quoted (yes, a retrospective) study (from last March, I think? - and I think included many vaxed patients) saying it did seem to reduce long covid - . This was the article. Here's another on it. And for me, I figured, what was the downside. I do know a couple of people who only took one dose and quit because the mouth-taste side effect was so bad, but that seems to show up immediately after that first dose, so decided to give it a go. Dh and I just had a vague coppery taste, nothing too bad. Dh did get the rebound fun, though. He did go out right after recovering the first time and haul logs around the yard. I do think maybe he shouldn't have done that...

So far, I've made it and either used it right away or the next morning. I mince the apples in the cuisinart on pulse, and then all the dried fruit (my recipe has currants, golden raisins, cranberries, apricots, and cherries) get the same treatment. Then you cook it up with spices, some cornstarch, a bit of molasses and some rum in a big heavy pan. Then let it sit overnight in fridge or cook right away. Or I think you could probably freeze it - I made an extra batch for my mom one year who I think froze and used later in tarts. Soooo good! Much better than jarred. Our family loves (mock) mincemeat.

I would. Those jarred mince"meat"s are pretty much corn syrup sludge, plus some dried apple bits and raisins, possibly some preservatives. And if the seal isn't broken... might just have lost any zest it ever had, but I wouldn't imagine it would be harmful. There's no actual meat, for those who don't eat mincemeat. My mom used to always add fresh minced apples and raisins soaked in rum to the jarred stuff. The jarred stuff has gotten ever less fruity and more sludgey, IMHO, so I now make my own from scratch.

I guess we're back to... why not give them the money as an actual cash bonus? Or I guess the amount ends up being embarrassingly pitifully small when put in a check. But it would solve all the liquidity and tax issues!

Christmas Bonuses (like up to an extra month of salary in December) used to be pretty standard, or at least fairly common. How sad that a gift bag of random stuff or a gift card so small that it's worth is significantly eaten into by taxes is now considered 'generous'...

As much as I don't like supporting Bezos, I prefer Amazon to the VISA gift cards, because 1- there's a service charge so what is paid by the buyer is not the same as what can be spent by recipient, and 2 - if you don't spend the whole thing at one go, you can't use it again unless you know the amount left on it, so if you don't make a note somewhere, they end up in a drawer and never fully used, which I'm sure is the point of that. You can buy pretty much anything from Amazon. Those cards get used.