[Christmas lights for a tall house]

3 hours ago, thewellerman said:

Thanks!  We are definitely not climbing on the roof or using a ladder, but I was hoping there was a gadget that could do it.  I found a pole hook thing, but it looks iffy and I don't want to spend money on it.  

I think we are going to attempt making reindeer shapes with lights down the privacy fence, and then just see where we go from there. 

I used the pole gadget to hang lights on the first story gutters, but I think it would be too awkward for the peak of the second story roof. We hang lights inside the windows on the second story to give our light display some height. 

[What some people spend money on!?]

DH and I have a game kind of like slug-bug, except we are looking for a special trifecta: a truck modified to roll coal, flying a f*** (politician) flag, with truck nuts swinging from the tow hitch. 

[Anybody else? LED Christmas light blur]

I find that the led Christmas lights mess with my depth perception. I haven’t determined if it varies by color, but objects decorated with led lights look much closer or further away then they are. I do have astigmatism and convergence insufficiency. I still use them, though. I like decorating with lots of lights and I burned out too many circuits last year overloading them with strings of incandescent bulbs. 

[Propanolol for anxiety?]

I didn’t find that it made me sleepy, but I took a pretty low dose, if I remember correctly. I liked it because it reduced physical anxiety symptoms without making me feel slow like some of the other anxiety meds I had tried in the past. 

[Do you see smokers anymore?]

22 minutes ago, Lawyer&Mom said:

I smell cannabis 10x more frequently than cigarettes.  I think smoking pot is far more socially acceptable in my area than cigarettes, but I don’t actually see people smoking either.  Just smell it. 

Yup, here too. And just this morning, as I drove over a viaduct named for the old pickle company, I remembered the vinegar smell that was so prominent in the area when I was a kid. Now it smells skunky from all the cannabis processing going on in the old buildings. 

[Homemade noodles on mashed potatoes]

My mom still talks about the meal my grandparents served that consisted of pot roast, mashed potatoes, noodles, rolls, green beans, and potato salad. Regular Sunday dinner was the above, but green salad subbed for potato salad. Grandma was from Indiana, and Grandpa was from Ohio. 🙂

[Eat or toss]

I consider myself pretty paranoid about food safety, but I would eat them, well-cooked. 

[what kind of juniper is this?]

I would guess Juniperus occidentalis, which is native to the NW and has both awl and scale leaves. But junipers are complicated genetically and there are a million cultivars, so my opinion is worth the price you paid for it. Lol

[Booster shots - how did yours go?]

First dose caused a headache, second dose a sore arm, but the third dose + flu vax is kicking my butt. My husband is laughing because I’m man sick, but he brought me some orange juice and ibuprofen so I forgive him. 😄

[Open plan bathroom???]

 

[Tell me how awful Diet Coke is for me]

Have you sampled a few sparkling waters to see if that scratches the same itch? I find that Bubly and Waterloo have much more flavor than Lacroix and are more likely to trick my brain into thinking I’m having a treat. 

[Charlotte's Web and "Drug Store"]

I thought that drugstore was still the common term until I recently said something to my kids and they just looked at me. "Drug store?!? Like a store where they sell drugs?!?" I guess we've been in the habit of specifying which store and they haven't heard it in conversation. Of course, in Washington we DO have a different type of drug store...I remember the day when my oldest son realized the double meaning of the giant billboard of a sleepy-looking cat saying "I'm so high right meow."

[Clever Cockatoos]

I love it! Today on one of the bird boards I frequent a cockatoo owner was lamenting that their escape artist bird had figured out how to defeat the C-clamps locking the cage. 

[Regeneron]

Comirnaty sounds like the way someone I knew years ago pronounced community, and each time I read it I hear his voice saying “Just doin’ my part to protect the comirnaty.” 

[Root language of words]

Excavating English might be a possibility. You can download a sample on the web site. 

[Analyzing the real estate market]

2 minutes ago, Scarlett said:

I needed a shocked face emoji. Lol

My husband was following the saga of the house across the street every day. I knew when the sold price hit the public records because I heard him laughing hysterically at the computer. 

[Analyzing the real estate market]

I live in a "hot market" where every house elicits a bidding war. Both our current house and our rental house are given the highest value by Zillow and the lowest by Realtor. Current house has a 33,000 spread, rental house has a 64,000 spread. For context, our rental house is in a "bad part of town." The house across the street from it, a 770 sq ft 2/1 was listed for 299,000 this past spring, and sold for 380,000. 

[Rapid COVID tests at home]

I have some of the Binax tests on hand. They are easy and quick. 

[If you’ve bought a car recently]

We have bought our last two vehicles from a little local used car lot whose owner prices based on Kelley Blue Book. He doesn’t haggle and we have been very happy dealing with him. The cars have been great too. 😄

[It’s early, but flu shots - when do you get yours?]

We like the drive-thru flu shot clinics. I think we usually do October. The only downside is that sometimes student nurses give the shots. Lol. Last year I think it took 30 seconds from breaking the skin until the end of the needle was in the muscle. 

[s/o: premarital sex]

2 hours ago, Soror said:

Amazed at how much you guys know about your friend's sex lives (before and after marriage). I'm not certain anyone I know was a virgin before marriage. I would guess 1 couple was but couldn't say for sure. I'd guess most weren't. I think there are many more reasons a couple is likely to succeed or fail than whether or not they have sex before marriage.

I didn't attend this particular wedding, but my mom was appalled by the amount of time the minister talked about the virginal condition of a family member and new husband. Even joking about how awkward the wedding night would be. I hope that's unusual, but I haven't been to many weddings recently. 

[What’s the vaccination rate in your county?]

My state is over 70%, my county health department is at 47%, but somewhere around 1/4 of my county are inhabitants of the local military base which keeps its own records. About 5% of the county (per the health department) has had a positive covid test, and I am sure that many more have antibodies. The local university is predicting a huge spike in cases in late summer/fall. 😞

[At what point would you lock down again?]

I know that some find Eric Feigl-Ding to be alarmist, but I find his latest twitter thread alarming. 

 

[Is this a Washington State thing?]

Another western WA gal here. The two things I’ve received comments about are the aforementioned bag/bagel pronunciation, and “swallowed” Ts in the middle of words like mitten. I don’t swallow my Ts to the extent of my friend from Chicago though—she had a heck of a time explaining to her Swedish exchange hosts that she was majoring in Latin. “La’in” was completely indecipherable to them. Lol

[Word help needed - church architecture]

I might call it a cupola.