Any homemade card is more thoughtful than a purchased one. So I don’t think it matters if you are a good artist or not. It’s a thoughtful message and you created it yourself.

Everything that has to be individually worked like that is a drag. Each one rolled out and cooked by itself. And it’s never one, right? The only time we do that is for a party so it’s at least two dozen.

I love homemade croissants, and make them, mostly because with sourdough starter in there the flavor is incredible but while I am a reasonably neat- handed person, you are understating the difficulty of laminated dough. It wants to tear, the dough and butter have to each be at the perfect magical temperature, can’t overwork it, dough is delicate and butter is tough. It’s fussy as fuck.

My first one didn’t last, but my second try, made with regular all purpose flour from the grocery and tap water, has been going strong for over a decade now. I do ferment other stuff too. Wondering if he could seed it with starter from someone local, I’ve shared mine before and it helped people.

I just made that this week and think I may agree with you, or at least I’d not try on a workday again. I didn’t have the right peppers and used dried ancho, jarred roasted red pepper and a little fresh red pepper and it came out really good, sorta new world /old world delicious fusion but my God, toasting, grinding, processing, tasting, resting the paste. Started in the morning and let it rest while I was at work. Also started sourdough naan in the morning & of course made a vegetable dish to go with the meat - everything was good but I was exhausted by the end of the day!

Well if money is no object then a world tour that lasts the rest of my life, thanks (or if I can use this magic purse on behalf of others instead, stay home and buy up all the world’s debt, sponsor a jubilee year.)

Performing Arts. Dancers can be great without becoming choreographers, singers & other musicians can be great without becoming songwriters. Interpretation of existing works can be very creative, and technical proficiency and stage presence are also impressive skills.

Like a medieval peasant, I’m living now less than a mile from where I was born. The US is too big to feel culturally attached to it, but my city, yeah, I am very “from here”. Like when I was a kid we’d wander around the ghost town of a weekend downtown, and as I grew up the city became populated and revitalized, it grew up with me.

In another country I usually say Florida, and if it’s a Spanish speaking country then people start speaking to me in Spanish.

I have made some fussy dishes, including sourdough puff pastry. I’m pretty motivated to make food homemade.

Baklava is the one I’d like to make but never will, even if I bought the dough - layering phyllo sheets one by one would kill me.

Temp to perm, I started as a temp and was hired on.

That’s a pretty healthy weight for that height. I agree you don’t want to lose though. And need energy for a physical job. Eat eat eat!

Anecdotally I have found the exact opposite to be true for my body. I got a job that required a short walk and stairs to get to and even that made a difference in how much I had to eat. Started jazzercise after my last kid and was confused because I thought I’d lost like 5 lb but I was having to buy new clothes because mine didn’t fit - I had dropped 25lb, and gotten underweight just from doing aerobic dance while my kids were in swim class a few times a week.

When I cannot work out, even if I control my diet I will gain, still inside a healthy weight but definitely gain.

It’s always activity that makes the difference for me.

House. But not in the suburbs. I’ve shared houses with lots of roommates, both rented and owned (well, with a mortgage) houses, in town not on the outskirts.

If the choice is apartment in the city or house in the suburbs, then apartment is the only choice because I don’t want to commute, want a lot of stuff around me not just miles of houses.

This is sort of what I saw in California - where I’m from, Hispanic people were “the white people”, and people descended from Africans were “the black people” and I wasn’t aware of any sort of prejudice against Asians, they got lumped under the big umbrella of “white” . But when I was in California it was more like black and white guys considered themselves Americans, all one thing, and discriminated against Mexicans and Asians.

It’s all made up, to keep people divided. Not to say there are no historical reasons reverberating still - institutional wealth comes from the past and slavery, so descendents of slaves have legitimate grievance- but the categories/rules of in groups and out groups and who is discriminated against are not the same all over the US.

For every one making millions, there are millions making near nothing.

People at the top of every industry DO make that much. Think about the UHC guy, you don’t think he was pulling that much?

Inequality is baked in.

I got some crazy genius IQ score when I was a kid because I was very good at taking tests and read a lot, good with language. Just happened to be good at what they were testing.

If you like to do programming, create things, are curious and interested in things, you ARE NOT STUPID. Not everyone’s intelligence runs to language or something tested by those tests. They are not really tests of potential, and the only reason my mom got us tested, the only reason I got two of my kids tested, was to get us into the better classes in school because they will only do it as an accommodation for a learning difference in.the public schools here. My other kids went to schools that promoted them based on their performance in class, which makes so much more sense.

Now - my friend had a legit genius boyfriend and he was a raging asshole, I think because he had nobody who thought like him, he was alienated. But the problem was that he was an asshole, not that he was a genius. So as long as your partner is nice and you can talk to each other, there is no problem, don’t borrow trouble and don’t think of yourself as stupid.

Ah the b’root! We have a heavy vertical axe that is shaped just like that and it is awkward to use but does something no other hand tool seems to be able to do. Stab stab stab and pry. The weight of it does help.

I had the original and now the 5. My kid got the same (5) and the battery was swelling. But the process to get a new one was smooth as silk, I had bought the insurance because that kid is hard on phones (they bought the phone but I am covering the insurance).

What was funny to me was we said “the battery is slowly exploding” and they said “mail it back in the packaging the new one arrives in” which was just a cardboard box. That can’t possibly be safe!

Universal diffuser for hotel hair dryer.

My bulking food was always Triscuits and hummus. A lot of calories in a small package and not really unhealthy. Walnuts are also good for you and calorie dense.