I recently had a bottle of whiskey sent to a friend in upstate NY - I live outside of NY. By upstate I mean near Albany (upstate’s pretty big...). I did it through a liquor store in NY, sort of near Albany, that had a web presence. They had some precautions, such as the person it was for had to be present to take…

Virginia has such a history of electing assholes for governor. There was Macaca Allen, Bob McDonnell (is he out of jail? did he go to jail? how about his wife?), Northam’s policies were pretty good, but not even he knows if that was a picture of him in blackface in his medical school yearbook... and that’s just since…

Vomit indeed.  If they would all disappear off the face of the earth I don’t think they’d be missed.

I always thought the lack of a male heir was the issue. It’s the reason he gave for divorcing Katherine of Aragon. Though I wasn’t there, what do I know? I always thought the infidelity/witchcraft thing was a ruse to get rid of her because she hadn’t given him a male heir.  Not that it was her fault, but the bit about…

I read that jar of pickles thing as that’s all he ever has to do for her - open a jar of pickles - and she still looks at him “like that”. Which makes me wonder whether this picture was posed and she was told to look at him like that while he looked at the camera, which is gross. She should have refused on the grounds…

I know one of her teachers from high school, and he said her kindness and congeniality was genuine.  She was exactly the same way on tv as she had always been. 

If they were going to drag Henry VIII into it, they should have gone with Anne of Cleves. Diana had already given birth to two sons, and she and Chuck were at the point where they loathed the sight of each other. Anne Boleyn’s problem was that she couldn’t give birth to a boy.

That doesn’t guarantee you’re going to have bats, though.  They’re picky about where they’ll roost, and I’m not sure I know how to break the code.  I’ll have to do more research.

I like parsley.  I’m happy to substitute parsley for cilantro.  I eat so few dishes that have cilantro that it’s not worth taking the time to get over the soap taste.

It varies by location.  The two places in which I’ve seen houses sold in the U.S., which are Colorado and Connecticut, are different.  Where I was in Connecticut, the appliances were considered to be connected to the house, and if it wasn’t specified otherwise, they all stayed.  In Colorado, I had to negotiate…

I like them with butter, salt, and pepper.  I usually cook them and eat them like regular baked potatoes.

I grew up in New England and never knew people ate macaroni and cheese on Thanksgiving.

I prefer my potatoes whole.  I just skip the mashed ones.

My brother called me from college to tell me about this great new meal he’d invented: take noodles and tuna and a can of cream of mushroom soup and some frozen peas and cook it all together, and it’s great!

Oatmeal. It’s still my nothing-looks-good-but-I-need-to-eat meal. It comes in the big cylindrical containers and all you need to do is put some in a bowl and pour in boiling water (I have never ever made it in a pan). It has to be rolled oats, not steel cut, because steel cut takes much more effort to make. You can…

I’ve never had one of the Starbuck’s holiday drinks, because they’ve always seemed like they’d be too sweet, but I might have to try the Chestnut Praline drink.  Even though I think it might still be way too sweet.

The thing about both yams and sweet potatoes is that they’re already sweet, and anything that adds more sugar is ruining a good thing.  All they need is butter, salt, and pepper.

I wonder what cilantro tastes like when it doesn’t taste like soap.  To me it’s way too soapy to eat.  Plus, if wanted soap I’d go for the real thing, not a leafy green substitute.

Yeah, I don’t like stuffing or mashed potatoes. Stuffing doesn’t taste good enough to me to even bother pretending, and I’d rather have a baked potato. Mashing potatoes ruins them for me. I’m sure many will find this blasphemous, but I don’t like gravy. I don’t even like to look at gravy.

I had a bat stuck between my screen and window - but it wasn’t IN the house.  Animal control came and got it out, and questioned me extensively on whether I’d touched the bat or it had gotten into the house, etc.  If it had, it would have had to be killed so it could be tested for rabies.  I’m glad that it hadn’t been…