It costs a LOT to put someone to death in America and, yes, costs far less to keep them in prison until they die of natural causes. Here’s why:
1) The cost of the appeals process as the person who gets the death penalty tries to get it knocked down to life in prison. This is a very long and drawn out process, meaning…

One year, when I was a kid, we had my grandpa come to visit for a week and we decided to make a mini-vacation of it and go down to San Antonio for Thanksgiving (we lived in Dallas at the time.) We’re staying at one of the nicer places on the River Walk and they have a huge Thanksgiving buffet with all the trimmings.…

I’m definitely a fat woman now, and I honestly think that has a lot to do with the fact that my parents started me on a diet when I was 8 and were always harping on my figure, regardless of how thin I was. Really fucked up my relationship with food.

About 12 years old, parents are planning a trip to Europe and my dad looks at me and says “You need to lose some weight before we go, I’m embarrassed to have my friends meet you right now.” I was 5’7” and a size 5, so I know now that I wasn’t the least bit fat, but boy did that give me a complex. 13 years later and…

I get 2 weeks vacation and 1 week sick every year, plus 3 personal days. Vacation and personal disappear after the fiscal year but the sick days roll over. My husband, on the other hand, gets 3 weeks off per year and those are vacation, sick and personal days all rolled into one. He works retail, I’m a journalist. Not…

That pasta looks amazing!

I’ll give my husband this much, he is terrible when it comes to helping out with chores, but he does his own laundry and he wrote the thank you notes to his side of the wedding people. He also writes his own Christmas cards. The man can’t empty the dishwasher, but I guess there are small victories here.

Mr. NotLois and I have already carefully planned how we’re going to introduce our children to Star Wars, including video taping their reaction to finding out that Vader is Luke’s father. It will be beautiful.

He tries the Jedi mind trick thing on Watto and Watto’s species is unaffected by the Jedi, so it doesn’t work, and they establish that parts for Naboo ships are rare there, Watto is the only one in the area who has one. He definitely tries to pay with the republic credits he has, then tries to mind trick Watto into…

You sound like an excellent professor. I had a few like you in college, and it really helped. Thanks for making a difference :)

How hard would have been to say “Ok, I’m rescheduling the exam but class will still be happening tomorrow. We’ll be doing exam review and discussion. Students in attendance will have the opportunity to get extra credit. If not in attendance and still want to get some extra credit, write an essay on such and such…

I feel like mostly mall stores who do this deserve all the kudos because I know that a lot of malls have contracts with the stores in them that says “Hey, if the mall is open, you’re open,too, or else you pay a fine.” I imagine H&M is probably racking up a lot of fines doing this, so good for them!

We’ve basically ruled out having any kids at all until we can move back to the same area as our parents because the likelihood of us affording childcare and leading a decent lifestyle is very very slim. Now we’re just waiting for our careers to take us back home, who knows when we’ll actually get there.

Unfortunately, there was a rather recent supreme court ruling that says that the police can arrest people and stop people and the like for doing what they THINK is breaking the law, even if it’s not actually illegal (the case in question was a man who was stopped for a single tail light being out, but state law said…

Fun story that I hope my friend won’t mind that I tell:

This doesn’t really involve restaurants, but the coolest celebrity I met was randomly Phil Collins. My dad had an in front of the camera media job and interviewed celebrities on the reg, so I’ve met more than my fair share of famous people and don’t really get at all star struck anymore. Eventually it just sinks in…

I read the book and want to see Room SO BAD. I’m considering driving 2 and a half hours to Chicago to see it because it’s playing fucking NOWHERE by me and it’s driving me up a wall. It’s good to see that you liked it!

You. I like you. And your taste in cookies.

My mother asked me that, of all the ones running, who was the least awful and I just kind of sat there with my mouth gaping open for about 20 minutes before I was like “They’re.... they’re all just so bad! It’s impossible to pick!”

He has stock options and stuff as part of his benefits and they seem to do nothing but grow and quarterly earnings are almost always positive! I’m not sure why lol. They’ve become stricter with coupon usage, though. Like with their “prestige” brands, you can’t use coupons on them (so Nike, X-Box, Beats, designer…