Back in the ‘80s, I shopped at Aldi in Chicago. They had one of every kind of item, and it was all house-brand (I particularly remember “Tasty Buddy” (sp?) crackers). It wasn’t terrible, and it was dirt cheap.

Ford Taurus Stationwagon. Three little words which translate to: Big, heavy, underpowered. Need more be said?

This likely need not be said, but—the suggestion in the original post only applies to electric water heaters. If, like me, you have a gas water heater, you will still save energy, but it will be on your heating bill, not your electrical bill.

Do the mice go *into* the bottle? Dang, it makes it hard when people misuse commas.

In my younger, poorer days (C. 1982), I had an all-manual film-based Nikon SLR, a 50mm lens, and couldn’t afford a flash. So I practiced shooting 1/4- or even 1/2- second exposures. One photo taken this way, shot in the Art Institute in Chicago, eventually made it onto a magazine cover.

Miller is an asshole. End of line.

But you left out “Aztek.”

True. Though I suspect anyone who finds a dead phone these days will plug it into a charger...given the short lifespan of batteries in smartphones, it’s kind of expected that anything you find lying around will be dead.

My “label” is an email address that I use for forwarding only, incorporated into my lock screen.

Why does this all of a sudden remind me of the “New Coke” cofeve?

writing out your own songs is a cinch because TabBank places your most-used chords at the top of the keyboard

Needs Mor Pedal!

Spidey-sense!

Yes, thanks, fully recovered (I did two metric and one English century the next summer, but every time I walk into a courthouse [I’m an attorney] or an airport I get extra-special scrutiny because of the metal).

I’ve posted this before and I have to post it again.

This is true. They don’t even have to be snow tires. This past December, there was a massive storm that shut down most of the East Coast airports. I ended up having to drive Rt 15 from New Haven to JFK at 6:00 AM (normally about two hours, it took four). The snow was very bad, and I saw lots of Very Bad Things, but I…

Excellent points. 4WD does not make a car suitable for snow. FWD/manual is a vast improvement over RWD/automatic, but you’d be amazed how many 4WD vehicles I see off the road in Connecticut when it snows. Most of them are (predictably) macho-man SUVs.

I think Tom T. Hall covered that in ‘Pamela Brown’: “guess the guy she married was the best part of my luck/she dug him ‘cause he drove a pickup truck.”

I got to be one of the background SNAG singers/dancers for that song when Christine Lavin played the Egg in the mid-90s.

My college was the CLA at the University of Minnesota back in the late ‘70s. My guess is that no more than 5% of the student body belonged to greek organizations, and they did not have a good reputation in that period. Years later I taught at a college known as the “Mother of Fraternities” that had something like 70%…