I can never give, either—I don’t even get as far as the iron test because I don’t meet the weight requirement! What I do is find out who organizes the local blood drives and get on the list of people they call when they need extra volunteers around the place (serving snacks, etc.).

In my case, I could easily get around…

Black Coffee was a real play, her first. (It’s pretty obvious in the novelization because except for a couple of brief interludes, pretty much all of the action takes place in one room.) The other play novelization I’ve seen (but not read) is Spider’s Web.

I have not read her Mary Westmacott books, which is…

There’s a compilation called The Mousetrap and Other Plays that includes her adaptation of And Then There Were None. It’s got some original plays (excellent!) and some adaptations of her novels - she wrote them herself because she thought other people did it badly (often she thought they were too faithful).

But there…

The book is one of the classics of the genre, and we’re about due for a revival of interest in Agatha Christie stories — she was and so far as I know still is the best-selling novelist of all time.

The “inner turmoil” is completely out of character, but for me what really ruins it is that it spoils the mood. Orient Express isn’t a dark, moody exploration of human behavior - it’s a cleverly assembled puzzle, one of the classics of the genre.

It would almost be better to take Poirot out (something Christie herself…

At least some of them (I’ve only read Black Coffee) are based on authentic Christie plays. However, I’d much rather they just published more of the original plays.

Poirot agonizing over what to do at the end of any murder mystery is a travesty. But with Orient Express, it’s worse—it’s completely missing the point OF THE ENTIRE PLOT. ARGH.

Have you read Agatha Christie’s play version? It makes me sad that people do dramatizations of her books with someone else’s scripts—and do it terribly. Hers are excellent. She edited ruthlessly and even changed the endings and they’re brilliant for it.

I’ve read that, notwithstanding the bystander effect, the single biggest factor is whether people believe that they are ABLE to help.

Yes, but nobody ever drinks just one ounce of brewed coffee. People drink just one shot of espresso (by itself or diluted with water or milk) all the time.

Unfortunately for you, caffeine is not the only thing in coffee. You could be allergic or have an intolerance to any number of substances in it.

An allergy specialist might be able to help you figure out exactly what it is—there are so many different kinds of coffee (and different preparations), there might be one…

Statistically, a woman who really knows her stuff and negotiates well still probably gets worse deal than a man who does not negotiate at all.

It doesn’t have to be because that particular care salesperson is sexist or that particular person is better or worse at negotiating. It’s in the air. It just happens.

I just want to join in pointing out that this is the landlord’s problem to fix. If it’s been drenched in pet urine, the carpet is neither “almost brand new” nor “very nice” by any stretch of the imagination—no matter what the landlord tells you. It’s completely destroyed and should be replaced, period.

As someone with fairly significant astigmatism, almost all of this sounds like A Terribly Bad Idea. With eyes like mine, a fitting from a professional optician is necessary. Free fittings forever is part of why I always buy my glasses locally, not online.

If this is consistently a problem, probably you’ll need to look into lighter frames and/or lenses made from a lighter material.

You can also replace the nose pads. Some people are more comfortable with different kinds. (An optician should have them made out of different materials.)

If you get a new Rx once a year you’re probably seeing someone in person, right? Do you bring your glasses to them to be fitted, too? (Will they look at your glasses you ordered online, just this once, because you’re such a good customer?)

Has anything new changed recently, like a new factor in your prescription (e.g.…

I get a message that it’s no longer available from that seller. Sounds like it’s sold out?

I get a message that it’s no longer available from that seller. Sounds like it’s sold out?

I don’t want them to solve the problem for everyone—that’s not their job. But they could at least start by saying, “women in other industries don’t have the same resources I do, and they deserve support, also”.

It’s tough when you wind up being made into a spokesperson for a whole cause when you really were just…

This would be a lot more helpful if it was broken down by county or at least if the major metro areas were separated from the rest of the state.

I could buy some small towns in rural Minnesota for the cost of one house in the Twin Cities. (Okay, they would be very small towns. And actually, I couldn’t, but somebody…

And “rural Bemidji” is a pricey big city in the eyes of much of the state! (It’s amazing how much money you save when you can only go shopping on the one day every other week when you drive to a town big enough to have stores.)

In my line of work we’re paid based partly on cost of living. My colleagues in the Twin…