Back in the 90's/early 00's, the company I worked at did their big annual party in February or March because it was easy to schedule/cheaper/didn’t give the appearance of being a Christmas party. I really enjoyed this approach.

I did two parties and had a good time, but then decompressed and baked bread all afternoon. 

This. My husband is a thoughtful gift giver, and even he asks for hints/lists. I’m sort of a utilitarian gift giver so hints and lists help me a lot.

I admit to being kind of hurt by it initially, since I have gained some weight and perimenopause is messing with my looks, but seriously, fcuk ‘em. There are many pictures of me on the group website, and in 90% of them I’m wearing no makeup, the world’s ugliest safety glasses and may not have brushed my hair recently,…

yet another reason why Ithaca is gorges....

This. I never understood why guys get so damned offended by women wearing makeup, and simultaneously make fun of women who don’t spend much time on clothes/makeup/hair. They even do this when it’s totally unrelated to sex.

I’d like to see them revoke the scholarships of anyone who goes on strike for the bowl game.

Nothing today, but last night I made homemade pizza with sourdough crust and a loaf of sourdough bread.

I think a lot of guys either get the silent thing from porn or from spending years trying to be quiet when they masturbated. I prefer the noisy guys myself but they seem to be way outnumbered by quiet ones.

I went through a tooth clenching phase last year, and I was convinced I’d cracked a filling. That made me stress and clench my teeth more. I went to the dentist to get it checked out (it was fine) and inquire about a mouth guard. I decided to wait a month or so to order the mouth guard so that my flex spending could…

This. I have so many friends who finished grad school/postdoc, got settled in a ‘real’ job, and then met someone. My friends who met someone in grad school mostly ended up being the trailing spouse or trying unsucessfully to do a two person job search.

Mee! I made the mistake of buying some grade A and it was way too delicate for my buckwheat pancakes.

This. I can’t believe how much better the apples are here in NY. Check out Snapdragons if your local markets carry them - they’re a cross between a honeycrisp and something a bit denser, and were developed at Cornell for the NY climate. They are soooo good.

I’ve gotten some extremely bland ones here in upstate NY, as well as some really good ones. So yeah, I can see the point of regulation.

Try a warehouse store, or find someone who lives in upstate NY. It’s still pricy but we pay about $13-20/quart. Someone gave my husband a half gallon so we are living large.

My dad and I are the same size as you and he always asks for sweaters for Christmas. It’s easy because I can just try them on to see if they’ll fit him. He really liked the LL Bean one I got him a few years ago.

I second the Lands End and thrift store recs. You might also check out REI and LL Bean. 

Yum! I used to do the massive cookie trays but have simplified in the last few years. Now I just make biscotti and mexican wedding cookies. I taught my husband to make the biscotti so this year I may add another cookie to the mix.

Sorry, hipsters, back in the 70's my parents had us call ‘mama and papa.’ when we were old enough to realize how uncool it was and switched to ‘mom’ and ‘dad’

Turboscan is wonderful. I think it costs around $5 and you can just take pics with your phone and it converts them into .pdf scans with fairly good resolution. You can them save them on your phone, to the cloud, or email them to yourself. It’s great for taking pictures of the whiteboard after a marathon brainstorming…