Can you speak on how well this works with cast iron? How about canning, both water and pressure? I much prefer gas, which is what I have, but I cook a LOT and the health issues with gas have me concerned. And the oven does not work as well as electric. So when we go to replace, I'd like to consider other options. I had a glass top electric way back when and it had many benefits. The slow-to-heat-and-cool, especially when canning, was a big reason for us to go with gas.

Our school did graduation as an outdoor parade. Spectators were allowed to spread out all over campus and the graduates paraded while distanced from each other all the way through. Each college had a "station" with their faculty where that part of the parade split off so graduates could be paraded through, granted their diplomas, and get a photo. Spectators were encouraged to camp out near their graduate's college area. University-wide speeches were piped over the campus speaker system with screens set up all over for viewing. Its as also streamed so if you were a spectator that chose a spot that was not near a monitor, they would watch on their phone. Graduates could have as many spectators as they wanted and they were asked to pod and distance throughout campus. I thought it was pretty cool and would actually prefer that to the traditional ceremony. We are a campus that has terrible weather most of the year so there is pretty much nothing May could dish out that would cancel an outdoor parade like this.

My 17yo has had both doses. Aside from a sore arm, there were no significantly side effects....other than HUGE relief.

Dd will be attending Michigan Technological University in the Environmental Engineering program. Her total aid package covers about 80% of tuition, room, and board.

Dh had Covid in early March 2021. He had a pretty textbook case. About one week of sore throat, headaches, fever, fatigue, chills, and body aches then a slow recovery. The slow recovery has been mostly just getting full energy back. By some miracle, no one else in the household got it, even though we had all been traveling in an enclosed car together for a full day during what was likely to be his most contagious time. We isolated him in the house and we all quarantined as specified by the CDC at that time. He has since been vaccinated and for sure had more pronounced side effects that the other members of the household. But nothing catastrophic.

Our neighbor walks her rabbit around in an umbrella stroller. It is better than the ice cream truck....the kids all flock to her.

It probably will. Mine is old and was a cheap no-frills version. So if it has it, yours probably does too.

I am guessing there are good apps for this but I just keep an eye on my monitor to stay in the zone. It was REALLY hard at first because I felt like I was running in slow motion. My monitor has a feature where it will vibrate if I go over whatever number I set. I found that obnoxious but I can see it would be useful for times when I cannot peek at my monitor. But once you get the hang of it, you will start to recognize where you are without even looking. I am still awaiting the magic day when I will suddenly get faster while staying under my threshold. I found the Maffetone books useful. I think he has websites now.

Yes, the tests will pick up all kinds of drugs. But most (I think all, actually) other than pot leave the body quickly whereas pot use going back up to 30 days will be picked up by the test. So, someone can use a hard core drug on a Saturday and have a clean drug test on Monday but if that same person ate a pot brownie three weeks ago, they won't. And let's not even get into prescription drug abuse. I'm not saying I am in favor of any drug use or that employers should not be concerned about the safety issues and liability associated with it. What I am saying is the testing methods we use are not very effective in addressing those issues and more times than not flags people who are using a relatively benign drug (weed) that is legal in many states. If that is true, it is an unnecessary barrier to employment.

Hmmm. I missed that memo. I heard to not schedule a mammogram but nothing about exercise. Although, I do heart rate training staying completely in the aerobic zone so I don't consider my runs strenuous at this point in my training cycle. But now I know that if we have to have boosters later to look into this.

Today's run went much better so I have hope I have turned a corner. I only got slightly lightheaded during the last few minutes and not enough to even feel like walking.

Well, I haven't run it yet so..... As someone who came into running later in life, I feel like an imposter most of the time. I really only do it for health and sanity but got talked into this ultra by evil college friends. I ran a marathon 6 years ago and nearly died so this may not end well. Ha ha!

Well, of course not. I am not advocating for people working while high. Just pointing out that these drug tests are not actually making a work environment safer, they only indicate when a person has specifically used pot within the last 30 days. No other drugs or alcohol. Which makes them pointless. I do not care one little bit if my painter smoked week last weekend.....any more than I care if they had a beer. I DO care if they are a raging meth-head, but the test does not pick that up. To me, that makes drug testing a pointless barrier. It does not make the workplace or employee safer but does prevent some qualified people from working.

Yeah, I have seen this in the vaccine thread too. I just didn't know if it was concerning to otherwise feel perfectly normal but then have this odd thing happen when heart rate is elevated. It sounds like my experience is within normal expectations. And I agree! If I have to vaccinate periodically and it will always trip up a full week (or more) of training, that is going to be a problem. I really feel for people who have to be active as part of their jobs. I can just adjust my training.....a landscape or road crew, etc... worker does not have that option.

Has anyone here experienced or know someone who has experienced difficulties with athletic training post-vaccination? Pfizer, second dose, if that matters. While I don't really consider myself an "athlete," I am a runner and currently training for an ultra. I am pretty early in the training cycle so running between 5-10 miles at a time. I got my second Pfizer dose last Sunday morning. That afternoon, I did my planned 8 mile hill-training run (which is the most challenging of my runs during this part of training) and felt normal. Side effects kicked in the next morning so I did not run that day. On days 3 and 4, I felt back to normal and attempted my runs. Having had some side effects, I decided to take it easy with plans to run easy 5 miles each day. On both days, I started out just fine but around mile 2, started feeling light headed. So light headed that I had to stop and walk. On day 3, I was able to rally and finish my run after walking for a bit. On day 4, I could not recover and ended up cutting my run short. I was light-headed enough both days that I worried about passing out. Is this a thing? Should I be concerned? I am going to try again today but want to be sure I should not get this checked out.

This probably deserves a spin off, but why? My understanding, which might be incorrect, is that this kind of drug testing is only going to pick up pot use. The harder drugs leave the system quickly and therefore are not detected. I personally would WAY rather have someone working on my HVAC system that might smoke a little weed here and there than a heroin, meth, or coke user. Even heavy alcohol use would be more concerning to me. Someone could be falling down drunk of the job and still pass a drug test. I feel drug testing has more roots in racial and class discrimination than anything else. I can even see it backfiring......"Well, I shouldn't partake in my low level weekend pot habit because I might fail a drug test, maybe I should drink more or try prescriptions meds or or or....." Sure, the "best" and healthiest practice is to abstain from everything, but we know white collar workers are certainly NOT doing this so why the double standard?

Teens around my area have a hard time with part-time jobs because many businesses don't want to deal with the limitations of hiring someone under 18, both the rules and working around school schedules. Especially when there are plenty of adults who will work those jobs. And if you are a teen who is lucky enough to land one, you had better clear your schedule indefinitely because most employers do not care about that band festival or NHS induction ceremony or ACT test. You work when they want or they will find someone who will. If you are involved in any extra curricular, forget it. Family vacation? Nope. My dd does work on a farm. This will be her third summer so she is apparently cut out for it. She loves working outside and enjoys physical labor.....but would also tell you that none of her friends would even consider it. The dirt and "ick factor" alone is a hard no for most of her friends. Her employer works around her schedule. She is really lucky. Transportation is a real issue. Our family owns one car and for each shift we have to decide between all being stranded while dd is at work, or someone driving her to and from, which is a 40 minute round-trip drive. The only reason it works is because dh is currently unemployed and therefore can either do the driving or can be very flexible about when he needs a car. If we were operating "normally," this would never work and would be a barrier to dd having a job. The lowest wage positions are being filled around here with no problem. It's the trades, construction, and skilled nursing jobs that are going unfilled. I nearly had to sell my soul to the devil to find a contractor to reroof my house.

Dd did not share so did not get a huge amount of mail. U of Chicago did still find her. Wow. Seriously? One of the strange breeches she did have was from competing in a national-level race in her sport. Many schools with that sport sent stuff, despite the fact that she was not recruitment material. She also got a lot of local schools that mostly missed the mark completely. Just yesterday she got a very flashy, large, and heavy package of promotional material from a community college about 3 hours away. I don't understand why they are wasting money and materials on this stuff....especially at the CC level. None of the mailings swayed her. Most of it went directly into recycling without anyone looking at it. She made her decisions very early and those decisions were mostly out of her hands anyway. No use in looking at awesome schools she cannot afford to attend. The few times she did take a look, it was mostly just made her sad.

I am right now but only for a few more weeks. Dd was homeschooled K-12 and graduates next month. She did take some DE classes so these last two years have been less hands-on for me, but I am still at it for the last mommy-credits. The diploma is in the mail!

Never EVER take the ice scrapers out of the cars before June 1....says the person with two broken membership cards I had to use to chisel ice off my windshield yesterday....... This applies to putting the snow boots away and swapping out the snow tires too. I swear I control the weather by my miscalculated attempts to put away the winter gear every single year. I will never learn but maybe I will save one of you all!

Dh and I got our second Pfizer on Sunday morning. Dh had Covid in early March and his first Pfizer dose resulted in a sore arm and mild chills/headache. I had only a sore arm with dose #1. For the second dose, dh was in bed with fever and chills by 9pm that same night. Then fever, chills, nausea, and fatigue for almost 24 hours. He is now fine except for a sore arm and a weird torso rash that appeared this morning. I felt fine on the day of my second dose, even running 8 miles that afternoon. I thought I escaped the worst of it and awoke the next day feeling fine. I had to take dd for her second dose and do a bunch of errands for work that morning. By 11am, I felt "off" enough to ask dd to do the rest of the driving and by 1pm, I was in bed with fever, chills, and body aches. They all disappeared 4 hours later as though nothing happened. It was really strange. I was up making dinner and finishing up my work day. Today my arm is very very sore and the alarm surprised me even though I got 9 hours of sleep. Otherwise I'm fine. Dd is 24 hours after her second dose and has had fever, chills, headache since about 10pm last night. She is still standing....she has finals this week.....but she is dragging. I hope she avoids brain fog during her finals!

I have no advice but I am not one bit surprised. We have a single "recreational" soccer club in our entire area. The teams compete together and there are levels similar to what you describe. When you sign up you at least know that you will not travel more than 20 minutes for any game or practice. But after that, you sign up and PAY before you know when, where, or how frequent practices and games will be. Somehow this activity is still wildly popular and there is a waiting list every year, but I do not get it. How can anyone commit when you don't know when or where or how often you need to be somewhere?!?!? No other local sport operates like this. My kid has been in travel sports. I know the drill. It's a pain but we knew what we were getting into before committing. Soccer was a hard no due to these issues. What is it about soccer, specifically?

I'm close! Just a few more weeks. I have been juggling homeschooling and working full time for a few years now so it is more a relief than bittersweet. And we have been FAR from the cozy days of playing with wood blocks to work on spelling and doing "sun days" when the weather is nice for years now. At this point, I am more and administrator than educator. But it will still be the end of an era.

We eat lots of fermented foods! I'm not a kombucha fan in general as it is too sweet for me. But I love condiment-type fermented foods. Fermented winter radishes are probably my favorite. They STINK to high heaven but taste amazing. I feel similarly about sauerkraut and fermented beets and turnips. I make all of these using the methods in the Nourishing Traditions cookbook. I'll use them as a condiment or sandwich topping on just about anything but we tend to eat them almost daily with breakfast eggs or bagels.

I should probably stop reading these. Dd has her second Pfizer dose scheduled two days before her first final. I already tried to move the date but Pfizer is really limited in my area and the only site that has it has a four day window for all second doses (they only did a four day run on dose one as well). Dd is scheduled for day 2 of 4. Even if I could somehow get her switched to day 1, which so far has been unsuccessful, that would still be too close to finals to deal with a bad reaction. She had no reaction to the first dose. Fingers crossed. I am sure her professors would work with her if she does have a terrible reaction but it's the in-between reaction I worry about. Not too sick to ask for accommodations but sick enough to make studying and having her best test days difficult. She has always struggled with tests to begin with so this is not awesome and she is right on the edge of an A in one class. The exam will be the final push one way or the other. Still worth it though, even if she gets a B. Had she not gotten it when she did, it could be a long long time as she is not yet 18 and we have so little Pfizer within a four hour radius. Dh and I also get our second doses that day but nothing in our lives cannot be put on hold if necessary.