There’s some cricket-based dog treats out there. My last pup adored them. Current pup only has eyes for chicken and anything salty (potato chips, tears). I tried them, they tasted fine, for ą dog treat.

My parents were checking out the building site for our new house in the woods and I got bored/tired and went back to the car to nap. They looked everywhere for me and I was just safe asleep.

I’m also team office slippers. They’re so snuggly!

Hey, it’s the anniversary of that time your dad went into the hospital and never came out. Here’s a picture of him on the beach!

Let me introduce you to the epidiascope. It could project both transparent and opaque originals. The one I’ve touched worked with glass lantern slides. It expected a bright burning light of some sort, but we retrofit it with a modern electric lamp. They’re so cool.

“destructively scan” makes sense. It’s a PITA to scan books–their spines get in the way and the images are warped, so you have to do fancy image editing. You also have to turn the pages somehow.

It’s much easier to cut off the spine, turn the book into a set of loose pages, and send it through a feed scanner

That’s what we do at my school when we scan old yearbooks, if we have enough copies. We keep the loose pages around in a folder in case we need to rescan, but generally the quality is pretty good.

Even teenagers sometimes prefer dead tree books to ebooks. Back when I worked in a public library, we could tell when a book was assigned reading because we’d suddenly get 10 requests for our 2 copies. The students had access to the ebook, they just preferred paper.

Agreeing: Appliances, repairs, taxes, HOA fees, and utilities are all going up in cost faster than salary. The only homeowner cost I can think of that isn’t going up is my mortgage, which is fixed-rate. With a variable-rate mortgage, even that could be going up.

We accidentally installed a white light bulb in the hallway outside my bedroom. It made me feel so pissed off and on edge every time my door was open and someone turned that light on.

Once we swapped it to a warm bulb I was much more chill.

I do keep a tunable light bulb in a task lamp, but the rest of the lighting in the house is warm.

I will say the presidential fitness tests were awful to go through, as someone that didn’t do well on them. Nothing we did in PE class prepared us for pull ups or situps, so it was always me laying on my back and one of the cheerleaders holding my feet down, encouraging me to do one situp.

I’ve never done a situp in my life. I first started trying at home sometime before 4th grade–I remember the room I lay in, trying my hardest. We moved between 3rd and 4th grade.

That makes sense. I wasn’t thinking American-style health insurance vs socialized medicine, I was thinking American-style health insurance vs self pay.

It’s what’s available within walking distance of my office. That’s the only reason I ever go there–to pick up a sandwich and a coffee over lunch.

I wonder if this is a benefit to having health insurance: my insurance presumedly vets doctors in their network, so I’d have a hard time going to anyone unlicensed.

On the other hand, if I got penis enhancement surgery my insurance wouldn’t cover it anyway, so I’d probably not care if they were out of network.

First thought: Superwash or the lovely really rough stuff?

We have 4 large plates, 4 small plates, and 4 glass plates that only get used when our friend that keeps kosher comes to visit. We also have about 12 bowls across 2 styles, which get used faster than the large plates.

Timeline check. Reagan Republicans in 2005?

(Legit not sure if you’re a fellow millennial that goofed how long ago twenty years ago was, or if Reagan Republicans stuck around longer than I thought. I didn’t start paying attention to politics until college.)

Well, back in my 20s a coworker forgave me for leaning Democrat because “if you’re a Republican in your 20s you have no heart. If you’re a Democrat in your 30s you have no brain.”

So, I’d say never. Reality matters at all ages. Well, until you have deep dementia. At that point, enjoy the invisible angels that help you use the restroom. You need all the help you can get. (Source: my mom on the occasions of caring for my grandmother)

It means I didn’t finish my thought. Oops. I’ll go back and edit.

Plastic recorders are great. They’re portable, durable, and most 5th graders have one. Only downside I see is you can’t blow them through a gas mask.

Low quality ones are also wicked cheap. ($2 at my local dollar store)