I horked just thinking about the dip bottles.. Huurrrrrk. Boy, you’re tough.

All the NYC people should go check out Sprout Creek for nun-made goat cheese. Is not very far/worth it.

This is good advice, but please believe that we have some behind-the-times issues in the U.S. with medical care as well. I live in Europe and I couldn’t get my U.S.-prescribed birth control because it was phased out in the EU some years ago-high blood clot risk, apparently. I won’t get into how much I thoroughly enjoy…

Re the butter apple pie-I live in southern europe, and there is a regional “cake” (see below) called Adarraga Tarta. It’s basically a few bricks of puff pastry pasted together with pastry cream and citrus syrup. The top part though? That’s straight butter. No mixing in some confectioner’s sugar to call it “frosting”…

Depending on where you shop, you can get more consistently-sized clothes in Europe but uh, yr size is gonna be bigger. I am a medium in the U.S. but in some brands a plus-size in Europe. Jarring but whatevs, nobody is peeling back my pants to see the label.

Girl Scouts for life! When I was 14, I sold 600 boxes of GS cookies because they let me use the money to take a trip with other Girl Scouts to BERMUDA (which was the shit, duh). And they gave me some scholarship money for college, and I got to try a lot of neat stuff that someone from east of East Bumblefuck, NY would…

Tzatziki, though.

This is also the case for people who believe that the government is involved in conspiracies against them. As a former government employee, I will attest that they are also incapable of such a high degree of coordination.

I married a man from a culture in which no one changes their name-you get 4 family names in total, but you usually go by 2-your dad’s and your mom’s. We live in his region and I never liked the name-change tradition anyway (and I didn’t want to look like I was his sister living with him...) so I didn’t change my name.…

stealing.

Ugh. Gurl...I didn’t get married until I was 33, to my dude of nearly a decade. Part of getting married was that we were ready after careful consideration, and part of it was that I would not have been able to immigrate to his country legally otherwise. At our wedding reception, my aunts looked inauspiciously at my…

For real though. I played piano in my brother’s wedding and...2 years later...my mom was talking about the wedding and said “oh, I don’t think anyone noticed all the mistakes at the end” (I had gotten a little emotional and a touch ham-fisted, but was able to recover after a couple notes...). From someone who never…

HURK. Would bet money that this person 1) knows nothing else besides English and 2) is one of those people who can’t distinguish there from their on Facebook...

“Be happy you don’t actually have to compete in the current global economy, sir” might’ve been my retort, if I wouldn’t have been shocked...yipes. Srs dickness.

It’s so exciting to hear somebody else say that they just couldn’t quite buy into the idea that you have to eat your friends, that’s just the way it is, etc....I’ve been veg for a long time, much to the consternation of my family when I was young and now to the mystification of the people in the area where I live now…

I think I might need to steal that. Except I’m Ambivalent. But that’s really good. That might just have to be the answer.

I’ve worked in science, and I have teeth-grittingly received my share of haw-haw little lady remarks from clueless dudesearchers, very few of whom were actually terrible people, mostly they were just lacking in a certain...thoughtfulness. Which doesn’t make it defensible, but still, I looked at this guy and thought,…

Tell them something that will make them super-uncomfortable in a very calm and measured way. Example: Why don’t you have kids yet? Are you just enjoying living in (European country)? Me: Yeah, just enjoying myself. Also I’m infertile. I had uterine cancer when I was a teenager. Yup, just an empty shell down there…

Wooo doggie, can we get these things in Sumo style? Before I went on the pill I had hideous gusher periods that lasted a week and left me anemic, and the cycles responded poorly to stress. I went hiking with a group that included my visiting mom during a very stressful personal time, and I soaked through a tampon, the…

I used to be a scientist (a small part of the reason I am not anymore is related to sexual harassment) and you are right on. The whole apprenticeship structure of academic science makes it very hard to do anything about this kind of garbage, and the toxic waste just builds and builds. If you go off about your adviser…