Adjacent life tip: If your dog does not fit in the cabin, do not bring your dog. A lifelong friend’s mother has worked for [major airline] for over 30 years, and as soon as I got a dog, she called me to tell me to never let him travel in the baggage bay. She said she’s seen those containers dropped, kicked, and…

I think it’s this. My mom told him, “M, we don’t make anywhere NEAR the threshold!” “But we COULD.” “You’re a small business owner nearing retirement age. No, we couldn’t.”

My dad is a CPA and is SO MAD about this. I don’t even think he does taxes for people earning that much, aside from maybe his client that was on Oprah?? And even then, probably not. It’s such a bizarre reaction.

Is it weird if I LOVE being wrong, in some ways? It means I get to learn something!  In adulthood it’s so rare to get to learn something that you don’t actively seek out, so spontaneous moments of learning are so fantastic.

I’ve done Dry January for 3 years now, I think? I do it as a check-in with myself on my drinking habits, because alcoholism runs in my family. This is the first year in a really long time where I do think I’ve been using alcohol as a coping mechanism too much. Which is, for obvious reasons, worrying. So it’s a great…

We just moved into a new house, and I really want to continue my family tradition of banging pots and pans on the front porch instead of fireworks at midnight.... but I also don’t want the neighbors to hate us.  QUANDARY.

People often treat their service workers like AI, so it’s good to instill kids with a “be polite to those helping you” regardless, imo.   I say this as a service desk worker - there are people who are perfectly nice, but will yell at me from across the room for what they need.

Since this is local, they may have a more supportive boss.  I know my bosses at a small, local cafe empowered us to treat customers as we saw fit. It was great.  There was one particular guy who never tipped. He also happened to be someone who has had a movie made about him and is a well-known philanthropist and…

One of my biggest “god, I was young” moments is getting drunk at my first professional holiday party. I tried to stop drinking, and the partners wouldn’t let me, and I didn’t feel comfortable saying no. They just made fun of me for it, because it was a huge bro-y culture, but man, to have had the confidence then that I…

As a former Catholic schoolkid, it wouldn’t make me leave, but it <i>would</i> make me stop talking.

Oh my god, I am going to watch the SHIT out that Marie Kondo show.  I NEED it.

I don’t have the “Insights” option.....

On the baking side, the same can be said for dried apples for filling. Stella Parks notes in Bravetart that “[F]reeze dried apples pack flavor while soaking up all the moisture from the fresh apples, which actually thickens up the filling.” 

I have one of those back-of-the-door toiletry hanger things, and it’s AMAZING.  Make sure you get one with clear or mesh pockets so you know what’s in each.  This is also great for cruises since you have no counter space in the bathroom, and/or what you put on the counter will fall off.  (A coworker recommended…

This didn’t happen to be at Illinois, did it? Because they got in huge trouble for not taxing their stipends correctly from the 80s through 2011.

I think about this article a LOT: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/04/opinion/middlemarch-college-fame.html

I’m OK being a cog, living a small life unremarkable to anyone but me and, perhaps, in some small way, those I interact with. We’re (mostly) all forgotten, but that’s not an excuse for seeking nominal immortality,…

You sound depressed, my friend.  Can you talk to someone?   

Let them have their moment of misguided superiority. They’re probably an engineer who will spend their entire career dismissive of social capital and soft skills, wondering why they’ve never advanced in the ranks.

My friend learned the denture cleaner trick when she studied abroad years ago. Apparently the Dutch were eons ahead of us on Sigg-bottle cleaning tricks.

This is pretty much my go-to salad but with different flavors. It’s seriously such an easy side dish, or weeknight dinner.

Pro-tip: You can buy pre-shredded sprouts at Trader Joe’s if you’re lazy. They’re more a slaw consistency but whatever. ALSO if you want them a lovely bright green, make sure they’re dry then lay…