When I left my job on staff at a public university to go back to school, I had 2 weeks of paid vacation, and close to 4 weeks of sick leave. I could carry over a max of 200 hours vacation from year to year, and any excess converted to sick leave. My employer (i.e. the state) paid out the vacation time when I left, and…

I haven’t tried the thins - is it just thinner cookies with the same amount of filling, or less filling as well?

Convenience is a huge factor. You can request an uber/lyft from the app, get an ETA for the driver and route map, then track their arrival. Directions to your destination are automatically loaded to the drivers phone, and there is built in recourse if a driver long hauls you. The rates are standard and you get an…

It’s not true. Airplanes have HEPA filters and also mix fresh air with filtered air. The air coming out of the overhead vent is “clean.” If you do get sick from exposure on an airplane, it’s most likely from a person in your row or the row in front/behind you. There’s a pretty good explanation of airplane air…

Ha! I had pretty much the same experience with my undergrad stats class. I had perfect scores on everything until the final. I got one question worng, and it was because I “overthought” the question. I went as far as working out an example that met the criteria stated in the question, but didn’t match any of the…

One of my closest friends had a baby last winter. We live in different states, and I visited for a week towards the end of her maternity leave, to help out during her transition back to work. My first evening there, she asked if I could dress the baby for bed while she washed up post diaper change. As I was casually…

No, it was (a +b)*c - d.

We were very passive aggressive and just grumbled about it while we were within earshot of the two (very) young women running the escape room.

It was. We had the second fastest time of all the escape room attempts for the month. Without the order of operations fail, we would have had the fastest time for the month. And yes, we are obnoxiously competitive.

I did an escape room with a group of friends last summer - four PhD students, one medical resident, and one psychologist. All of the clues led to a math problem (a + b x c - d) that would reveal the combination to the final lock. We tried and tried, and it wouldn’t work. We absolutely had the math right, but the lock…

I’ve had norovirus twice in the past 10 years. Round one was from contaminated fruit on a breakfast buffet at a work function. I warmed for a university student health service at the time, and 2/3 of the people in my department got sick. We had a full scale health department investigation, which is how I know the…

Barley and finely chopped mushrooms are make good meat subs/extenders for chili.

My dad wanted to get sheep back in the early 1980's. My mom shut it down - she already had two children, and did not need wooly toddlers to care for. They compromised and got a goat. That goat was as good as having a dog.

Ellen coming out and Murphy Brown having a baby are my biggest/most profound TV memories. The Murphy Brown/Dan Quayle dust up was one of my first true political moments. I was 9 and the child of a single mother. Quayle’s bullshit really pissed me off.

I’m a white lady who commutes via public transit in Baltimore. His account of public transit in Atlanta read as 100% bullshit to me. Other than teenagers being teenagers, people are pretty much silent on the metro here, regardless of race.

a/s/l?

Lately, my comfort shows are Great British Baking Show, Jane the Virgin, Archer, Parks and Rec, and Call the Midwife.

This is really timely! I’ve always been pretty good with money (no late payment or overdrafts in 15 years of financial independence, despite a couple of years where I hovered just above the poverty line), but have relaxed a bit in recent years. I’m getting ready to move to a far more expensive city for a post-doc - My…

Only slightly related, but my library prints a receipt with a list of books and due dates when patrons check out (and people have to show the receipt to a security guard on the way out). I just use that as my book mark.

The family is not all on the same page. One side settled with Johns Hopkins several years ago, and is reasonably happy with the continued use of HeLa cells in research as long as Henrietta Lacks gets due credit for her contributions. The other side feels like they were shut out of the conversation when the fmaily…