A crow I did for Halloween, dunno about beautiful but it’s the first time I tried watercolors.

Do you have olive oil or butter? You have sauce.

I have very small bottles of wine, decanted when we opened two different wines, if you have wine you have sauce.

Soy sauce and butter is pretty good for a sauce, miso butter is even better.

I dunno what your pantry holds but I think here we always have some way to make pretty good pasta of some sort. My kids live spaghetti fried in chili garlic paste.

I cooked rice in a pot for decades before my kids got me a rice cooker. It’s not much more complicated, and is quicker. Put rice in a pot, rinse it, cover with water by about 3/4 inch (from fingertip to first knuckle, yes? You have seen some old person sticking their finger in the rice? That is what we are measuring. )

Bring to a boil on high, cover and turn the heat way down to low (medium low if your stove sucks) Check it in 15 minutes if white rice, 45 if brown rice. If done, take it off the heat. If not, give it 5 more minutes on the burner then move it.

Beans and rice, we always have beans and rice. Today I also have sauerkraut, kielbasa and pierogi so I can make exactly what is planned.

But at any time, can make beans & rice of some sort.

I think Alzheimer’s is complicated by having a body, though. My grandma had it and was happy, not angry. It sucked for us and for her because she eventually forgot how to eat & take care of herself at all. To have that lack of understanding of reality doesn’t seem nearly as bad if you are a disembodied consciousness, as this suggests. It seems more like a death than the other choices.

Alternate Dimension I would go for only if it was a gamble not a certain “being torn to shreds by demons over and over” situation.

I don’t generally enjoy pot, find the effect annoying not pleasant but twice in my life have had some laced with something wonderful (once, hashish, once I have no idea) and soul food is where it’s at. Beans and rice and sausage, bursting with flavor. Nothing sweet and nothing so fancy just simple and satisfying.

Politician, boss or Queen, I am useless in politics. Anything like that where you have to navigate people trying to get your job, backbiting, any sort of office politics I cannot deal with at all, certainly could not handle it AS a job, no way. I just crumble. I need to be able to just do my job and understand everyone wants everyone to succeed where I work.

On the other hand, in jobs that objectively suck but are satisfying to me, I have enjoyed restaurant work and raising children. If I won the lottery and didn’t need to succeed I would open a bar; if my husband died I’d take in foster kids.

Then could you not do this testing on a machine at their office? What the heck?

Emotionally ready like am I ok with it, or would I rage rage against the dying of the light? Yes I think so, I could go gently.

Don’t want to, still happy but I am not that worried, if I had to I could, my kids are grown, I have experienced a lot of stuff, learned a lot, enjoyed being alive and physically embodied, probably more than many people do in a lifetime. I would not feel like I got ripped off or anything.

One of the odd effects I’ve noticed with the last round of inflation is that prices are converging. Cheaper places raised prices more than more expensive places. I never liked McDonald’s - the french fries are good but I’ve never chosen to go there, only had them incidentally. But it was cheap. Not now, it’s more like going anywhere, so why would you go there? As someone else said, I can get tacos down the street, closer than any fast food place and they are pretty fast, or we go to the cafe up the street, they did have inflation but at least the money stays local.

I don’t usually talk about my feelings (I am a woman) but people of all genders seem to feel comfortable confiding in me.

So maybe it’s not so much that men don’t express emotions, more that people in general don’t express them to men?

Or even more likely we are all different and it’s not so much a gender thing. As a stereotype I’ve heard it plenty but in practice it hasn’t seemed so. If I was being sexist I’d say men complain more about physical pain and women complain more openly about unhappiness, but I can’t say it’s a big difference IME.

I was a single mom of 4 when dating so was not open to dating childless men my age. Ended up with so many kids without having more, when we consolidated, but they all get along and as adults are happy for the network of siblings. They are much closer than I was with my brothers and sisters.

I absolutely would NOT have expected a childless man to be into me - it would have been an uphill battle to convince me. If I had been younger, maybe, but it seemed like anyone my age would have already had kids if they wanted some.

I am very commute sensitive, won’t take a job too far away.

Other than that, I hate, hate, hate the unequal compensation the most. Too much money to the people at the top, and raises by % just make it worse.

I worked with a lady whose married name was Xu, she’d kept it when she divorced him. She was Laotian. (Really cool lady, grew up in refugee camp, married high roller Chinese guy, got t educated, when they divorced she moved to the US and was successful on her own). One day i forwarded her an email from a vendor, his name long and unpronounceable, and she looked at it and said, oh! That is the same as my maiden name! I could see why she kept the last name of the Chinese husband :)

Hand lotion, lip balm.

I buy my hair gel in liters when the price goes low enough, not when I need it, so have two or three liters sometimes.

Two dogs and two cats because people left them with us. I’d be good with one cat.

I have a 6 week wishlist for most smaller stuff, to avoid impulse buying. More like 6 months for something like a computer and 6 years for something like a home renovation.

I think if you’ve waited so long and still want the same thing it’s safe to say you really want it and will enjoy it.

Oh - another thing you can do - we have a savings account but also a “goal savings account” that is for things like this, specific items that cost sort of a lot (or a whole lot, for years now it’s been saving for a car for my husband.) Save the money away from the regular accounts so it is your extra money.

I was doing payroll recently for my work, and came across Harsh Harsh. I had to ask our HR lady, really? His last name was Harsh and his parents named him Harsh?

Well, no. She said his name was simply Harsh but our system required a last name so she repeated it.

Still, pretty harsh I think.

I wish you the best of luck!

Haven’t been fat but have been hugely pregnant and had to lose weight and even though people say you can’t outrun a diet, exercise has been the only thing that’s really made a difference for me. The more I exercise the less I weigh, the “out” part of calories in, calories out makes the bigger difference for my body.

Borns made some of the best indie pop on the radio, got in trouble for grooming, disappeared. One of the most heartbreaking losses musically for us. Then years later tried a comeback but seems to be an unrepentant whiny bitch now, the song he released was so bad. It seems to have broken him.

I still think his early stuff is so good.

Ender’s Game is a great book, and I did keep my Neil Gaiman books, the ones I already have.

I think in general (obviously there are exceptions) broken people make the greatest art, it’s hard to have that drive when you don’t have some sadness inside you, dissatisfaction, some missing part you are trying to fill. And with old guys (not Garrett Borns) they did grow up in a different time - I don’t think that excuses them, but it does explain it. My mom thought Jerry Lee Lewis marrying his 14 year old cousin was scandalous but wouldn’t have thought it criminal or really wrong.

Short stories.

Horror novels bring me down. Horror games too scary for me to deal with, the movies are either dumb or too, well, horrifying.

But short story horror is phenomenal. I have read every edition of “The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror” and holy crap short horror stories are some of the best writing I have ever encountered, ever.