My fav educational channel is Socratica. They have playlists for astronomy, biology, chemistry, python programming... really serious and beautiful videos. On a kind of meta topic they also have a new series of study tips like taking notes, the Pomodoro Technique, the Feynman technique, etc. that have helped me a lot.

VC Andrews, anybody? Flowers in the Attic and My Sweet Audrina. I was 12. Scared and turned on at the same time. My friend Tammy memorably said “they make me feel like I have to go to the bathroom.” We were really stumbling around in the dark back then, trying to figure it out with very little help from the rest of…

Snuck in a visit to Pappadeux in Houston during a layover and ate my first course there in the restaurant (gumbo) then packed my shrimp etouffe to have on the plane. BLISSFULLY happy, still thinking about it ~ 3 years later.

We finally stopped travelling at the holidays. Spend thousands of dollars and wrestle with airports during the worst holiday traffic just to be ignored in favour of the family members who had kids? No thank you. Life is much, much better now without that nonsense. Someone wants to see us? They can travel to see us,…

Same. The cats luuuurve me because I can make this special high ish soft cooing voice for them. They know I don’t use it for anyone but cats and they feel very special when I use it.

I use the Pomodoro Technique every day at work, and I just use the built in chrome feature. If you type in “set timer for 25 minutes” it starts the timer. I alternate between 25 minutes working and 10 minute breaks where I get up, walk around, and do yoga stretches.

I only made that mistake ONCE in NYC. I walked for a couple of blocks in flip flops, and then happened to look down. My feet were dark grey. I had to stop by a Duane Reade for wipes.

Food scale. I measure the grams of everything I’m cutting into a salad. Easiest way to do it is put the salad bowl on the scale, zero it, and measure each ingredient as you put it in. I keep a food scale and a notebook on my kitchen counter, and I do it for everything I eat. Measure *everything*, especially…

The stores around me almost exclusively carry artificially sweetened and flavoured protein powders, so I buy plain unflavored ones online - usually Amazon.

I go one step further and whip a scoop of casein powder, some berries, and some milk with a hand blender into a giant bowl of protein fluff. Incredibly filling and a great low calorie high protein snack/ mini meal. Google protein fluff recipes - great stuff.

Mr. Roper?

I would say yes, but this year I got one and my spouse didn’t.

This is exactly how I plan for retirement - I assume I’m getting zero from SSA. I told my mum years ago that I thought of my SS payments as going towards her retirement. “But I paid in for 40 years!” she said. Sigh. It did make me feel better to think of it that way, though.