Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

fuckem (in honor of the late great efgoldman)

rich, arrogant assholes who equate luck with genius

Not all heroes wear capes.

Following reporting rules is only for the little people, apparently.

It’s always darkest before the other shoe drops.

JFC, are there no editors left at that goddamn rag?

He really is that stupid.

I see no possible difficulties whatsoever with this fool-proof plan.

Roe isn’t about choice, it’s about freedom.

Perhaps you mistook them for somebody who gives a damn.

We’re not going back!

Today’s GOP: why go just far enough when too far is right there?

Good lord, these people are nuts.

Peak wingnut was a lie.

… pundit janitors mopping up after the GOP

White supremacy is terrorism.

Putin dreamed of ending NATO, and now it’s Finnish-ed.

Something needs to be done about our bogus SCOTUS.

Stamping your little feets and demanding that they see how important you are? Not working anymore.

Nancy smash is sick of your bullshit.

Despite his magical powers, I don’t think Trump is thinking this through, to be honest.

I’d like to think you all would remain faithful to me if i ever tried to have some of you killed.

Our job is not to persuade republicans but to defeat them.

An unpunished coup is a training exercise.

You are here: Home / Open Threads / Back at Home

Back at Home

by | 126 Comments

This post is in: 

Had a joyful reunion with the pups and immediately took a nap with Lily and braced myself for the storm. It’s Homecoming weekend here, and I have about fifteen 45-50 year old alums drinking like they are teenagers. They are currently holding a rager in my living room, kitchen, and back porch, and I’m hiding in the office with Lily and Steve. I must look like complete hell because when I told them to just do whatever they want but not expect me to participate tonight, and they are actually respecting that request.

It was 100 when I left Vegas this morning and it is now 50 and raining, so I imagine I will be sick as hell by Sunday. Talk to you all tomorrow.

Reader Interactions

126Comments

  5. 5.

    Mary G

    Glad to hear you are back where you belong and that you had a good experience on our side of the country.

  6. 6.

    jl

    Did Cole spill to everyone that he is now a high-rolling Vegas gambler with unlimited c * s *n * cash to burn?
    Of course they consider Cole’s pad PART-TAY!! central.

    What happens in Vegas only stays in Vegas if you keep quiet about it.

    Now if Cole had taken some of the commenters’ advice and taken healthful walks out in the austere desert nature, they would all be nibbling effete wafers of some kind and sipping merlot, discussing fine art in hushed tones.

  7. 7.

    gene108

    Does anyone know the origins of Homecoming?

    It is just a strange event that rotates around American football and social activities of high schools / colleges and can involve entire towns, complete with parades, in some cases.

    Never fully understood who is supposed to be coming home.

  9. 9.

    Schlemazel

    @gene108:
    In the old days it was the first home game after the first road game. Mostly an excuse to get wealthy alums on campus. Now schools like to schedule cupcakes so those alums see a win and feel generous to dear ol East Armpit State. That means homecoming is whenever they can get a tomato can to show up.

  10. 10.

    gene108

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    Thanks.

    I forgot about the Internet and found it on Wikipedia.

    Still find homecoming strange.

    Just up, listening to the pitter patter of rain steadily coming down.

  12. 12.

    wmd

    Quit imagining sickness. Drink a lot of water and let your pets use their empathy to keep you well. And image being healthy.

  13. 13.

    Goblue72

    @Schlemazel: Odder thing to me is high school homecomings. Ours was always against our crosstown rivals. Why would anyone come home to see their high school football team play a game?

  17. 17.

    Schlemazel

    @Tara the Antisocial Social Worker:
    Well, if you were a football coach and you need at least 8 wins to qualify for some third tier bowl game played on the 21st of December you want to eat as many cupcakes as you can. Little Sisters of the Poor, the St. Vitus Dance, any group that can put at least 11 guys in uniform on the field. Just win BAY-BEE

  18. 18.

    Lamh36

    are they all staying in town and just using ur house as a gathering place or, are they staying at your house?

    reminds me of back in the day, when my family would get together and have a big party at the aunts or uncles houses…I’d make an appearance and eat some food, but inevitably I’d end up in one of the other rooms watching TV with the lights off or lying across the bed.

    I like hanging with the fam, but I prefer the end of the party time, when the aunts and uncles and long time friends from the neighborhood just sit around and talk, laugh and reminisce about the old days. I have literally spent hours after a family party, just helping with clean up while listening and being surrounded by my family.

    I’ve been feeling a bit of a wanderlust feeling the past few months, to the point of actually looking around at different places and imagining moving there. Then I rememeber how much I missed being in the embrace of my family and NOLA and I can’t imagine moving somewhere else.

    my “social life” here is nonexistent, but for the majority of the time I am more contend being back home in NOLA than I’d ever been in DFW.

    Boy, this comment had gone in longer than I planned…lol.

    anyhoo, with ur luck I can certainly see u getting sick soon.

  19. 19.

    Schlemazel

    @Goblue72:
    I’m probably being too cynical (I know, hard to believe, right? Me?!). There probably is a community building component to homecoming. As much as I hate rah-rah I admit it has the ability to make many people feel like part of something bigger.

  20. 20.

    Roger Moore

    @gene108:

    Never fully understood who is supposed to be coming home.

    Alumni. As I understand it, Homecoming started as a college thing, where alumni would come back to their alma mater for reunions and whatnot, and there would be a whole bunch of celebrations to welcome them back. It became associated with football games, and then it was copied by high schools. But if you read John’s descriptions of homecoming- including this one, where he mentions a bunch of alumni coming back, it’s clear that the tradition is still alive and well.

  22. 22.

    Roger Moore

    @efgoldman:

    Some schools, notably Harvard, use the 50th reunion (week after graduation every June) for the same purpose.

    At my alma mater, we’re so geeky that the big alumni events are centered around Seminar Day rather than an athletic event.

  23. 23.

    Aleta

    Was just reading (on TPM) about the sheriff in Oregon being a “Sandy Hook Truther.”
    This weirdness in this country is just about freaking me out today. Maybe it was always around, but since the internet is hooking these people together, the snowball effect can approach critical mass? Or maybe the internet just makes the weird more visible and louder, but not so different from before? HST covered the weirdness in ’68 and ’72 election years, after all. (But with additives.)

  24. 24.

    Schlemazel

    @Roger Moore:
    Pffft! They obviously don’t understand the mission of universities.

    Here is a bit I love from a favorite author, Donald Westlake:

    At the time, Henry was enrolled in a huge Midwestern Land grant university, thousands upon thousands of enrolled students, hundreds in every lecture hall, and all of it to cover for the school’s football team, which was the actual product being manufactured there. The football team won games, the alumni therefore gave to the university endowment, the school sailed sunnily on

  27. 27.

    LesGS

    I live in southern California, but am currently in central Viginia helping my mom deal with the aftermath of my step-dad’s death a month ago. (No will. Massive debts. Red tape strangling acquisition of the death certificate. Blah.) She has five dogs, and neighbors have put out a flock of 7 sheep in the area in front of the house, with her permission, as organic lawnmowers, which has freaked out the dogs. However, the shepherd set up an electric fence around the graze area, to keep the sheep in and the dogs out. Despite lakes falling from the sky, Mom took the pack on their regular walk this afternoon, and – you guessed it – one of the males lifted his leg and peed on the electric fence. She said he screamed as loud as the time he was shot ($3500 vet bill), and high-tailed it home.

  28. 28.

    KMG

    It was 80 here 2 days ago…it is currently 43 and raining, midnight, Friday…and I’m still at work.

    I estimate I’ll probably be at it until 5 or so.

  30. 30.

    Schlemazel

    @BillinGlendaleCA:
    Being in a Big10 city Purdue and Northwestern are popular choices, Minnesota or Illinois for the better teams. The lowest teams like schools like C. Estes Kefuaver Fightig’ Kangaroos. Because of the drive for more money making a bowl, any bowl means teams like South Dakota an University of North Dakota get invited. They get a big check and their brains bashed in while the home team gets an easy win. It can be a risky play though, one year the Jackrabbits won so not just a loss but a humiliation. Those things cost coaches making high 6-figure salaries their job.

  36. 36.

    srv

    @Aleta: It get’s better:

    Two days after posting a link to the conspiracy video, Sheriff Hanlin wrote a letter to Vice President Joe Biden, much publicized at the time and now, vowing not to enforce any gun-safety law that he deemed to be unconstitutional.

    “Gun control is NOT the answer to preventing heinous crimes like school shootings,” he wrote Biden. “Any actions against, or in disregard for our United States Constitution or Second Amendment rights by the current administration, would be irresponsible and an indisputable insult to the American people.”

    “The United States Supreme Court has ruled that when a sheriff chooses to enforce an unconstitutional directive, he is violating his Constitutional Oath. I will NOT violate my Constitutional Oath.

    “Therefore, the second purpose of this letter is to make notification that any federal regulation enacted by Congress or by executive order of the President offending the Constitutional rights of my citizens shall not be enforced by me or my deputies, nor will I permit enforcement of any unconstitutional regulations or orders by federal officers within the borders of Douglas County, Oregon.”

    The sheriff’s letter echoes some of the extreme rhetoric heard at the Washington state Capitol last December, after the state’s voters passed an initiative requiring criminal background checks for those purchasing firearms at gun shows and online.

    The letter to Biden was riddled with language of a group called Oath Keepers, part of the so-called “patriot movement” that encourages law enforcement officers and military personnel not to obey laws or orders that they deem unconstitutional.

    Perhaps a good response would be for all the bloggers to start alleging a cover up by this sheriff and photos of chemtrails over Oregon.

  37. 37.

    Anne Laurie

    @Goblue72:

    Why would anyone come home to see their high school football team play a game?

    There’s a section of the population for whom high school really was “the best days of our lives”. They were young & full of energy & didn’t have any responsibilities! The world was golden then!

    Whenever I start wondering if I’ve done enough with my life, I remember the girls I graduated with who were actively dreading life after high school, because they’d stop being the stars of the winning basketball team and the prom court. At least I didn’t peak at seventeen…

  40. 40.

    Aleta

    @efgoldman:

    a free, non-moderated (unlike letters to the editor in print) unlimited outlet for their illusions

    Now that you mention it, those editors did destroy a lot of insanity and ranting back in the yesteryears. Helps me realize just how much they and newspaper publishers did to maintain that “more civil society” that we (sort of) used to have (for some people).

  41. 41.

    Roger Moore

    @efgoldman:

    Werdz. Just werdz. Let ’em spew.

    Yeah, they’re just werdz until some asshole tries to put them into action. There have been at least five mass murderers who were regulars on Stormfront. It’s not a coincidence; it’s what those “just werdz” turn into when there’s nobody there to moderate the run-away reaction.

  42. 42.

    Aleta

    @srv: yeah, check out the website of the CSPOA (self-named Constitutional Sheriffs … Association) and read the Resolution on their site if you want to get a true chill. These delusional clowns need to get vamoosed out of office and pronto.

  43. 43.

    Steeplejack

    Dagnab it. I just did a Firefox upgrade (to 41.0.1), and now the fonts have subtly changed on some webpages. I can’t really tell if it’s just Balloon Juice or others, too, but it’s definitely affecting Balloon Juice. I’m seeing the icky default sanserif text font instead of the better one I changed it to. At first I thought Cole might have thrown the switch on the site upgrade, but now I think it is some interaction between the Firefox upgrade, the Stylish extension and the Stylish style that I use to make Balloon Juice more readable.

    Oh, well, too late to fiddle with it tonight, so I’ll put up with it until I have some time to look at it. Just putting this out there in case anyone else notices something odd.

  45. 45.

    Aleta

    @srv:

    Perhaps a good response would be for all the bloggers to start alleging a cover up by this sheriff

    I was thinking the same thing. What a hoot that would be.

  46. 46.

    raven

    I feel you Cole, I just came from the rehearsal dinner for the wedding band the juice was flowing. At least I get to see the Dawgs tomorrow. Thank the fsm the game is on at noon out here. I did some body surfing at Huntington today and it’s unreal how warm the pacific is.

  49. 49.

    Mnemosyne

    @Steeplejack:

    It really is spooky as hell, in large part because you don’t see a damn thing. You always have a feeling that if Wise would just move the camera an inch to the side, you would finally see one of the ghosts … but he never does.

    I re-watched “Repulsion” and “Rosemary’s Baby” relatively recently and Polanski was very obviously influenced by this film (and the Val Lewton films of the 1940s).

  50. 50.

    Aleta

    @Steeplejack: No upgrades, and using Safari, but some oddities have been happening for me here in the last hour. And then going away again. Like some small things being tested, I wondered.

  51. 51.

    seaboogie

    @gene108: Waiting for the seasonal rainy pitter-pat to arrive in NorCal – some several weeks away, I imagine. While it’s always a soothing sound, during a drought it has magical, restorative and calming benefits for the body, psyche and soul.

  52. 52.

    Steeplejack

    @Steeplejack:

    The other thing is that right before I did the Firefox upgrade I installed a couple of Windows 10 updates that were pending. I haven’t had any problems with Windows 10 since installing it a few weeks ago, but I guess the updates could be a factor.

    I think I’m going to have to put Stylish up on the rack and check for problems there. Not tonight, though.

  55. 55.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @raven: I didn’t get the impression that Cole was in hiding because of the booze. I interpreted it as his hermit instincts taking over.

  56. 56.

    Steeplejack

    @Aleta:

    Eek! I don’t know if that makes me feel better or worse.

    I don’t want to start a flame war, but I hope the Balloon Juice rebuild offers some options for changing the body text font.

  57. 57.

    NotMax

    Headset attached to my landline phone has given up the ghost. Only close to reasonably priced replacement could find locally cost twice as much as the entire phone and headset combo originally did.

    :(

  58. 58.

    PurpleGirl

    Glad you’re home and with Lily and Steve, JC. Your posts from Vegas were very good and fun to read but you’ve missed the animals and being with them. If you stay warm and sleep, you might not get sick.

    I went to NYU and it didn’t have a football team. I think they had a basketball team and fencing and some other stuff. (The teams they had had names like Violet Owls, which were mocked as Purple Pigeons.) The Coles sports center was only built later, years after I left. No homecoming stuff, but reunions were held in the Spring and fall by the Alumni Fund.

    It rained in NYC all day Friday and will probably rain Saturday and Sunday as well. Really wet and cold.

  61. 61.

    BillinGlendaleCA

    @raven: I heard the water temperature is about 75. Odd thing, my wife and I love the beach(travel to Tahiti and Hawaii), we’ve never been to the beach here in LA(closest would be once in Santa Barbara).

  62. 62.

    srv

    A Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) trauma center in the Afghan city of Kunduz was ‘very badly damaged’ during a U.S. airstike that killed three staff members and injured dozens more, the medical aid group — also known as Doctors Without Borders — said on Saturday.

    At least three MSF staff were killed in the bombing and 30 more were unaccounted for, the group said a statement.

    Col. Brian Tribus, a spokesman for U.S. and coalition troops in Afghanistan, confirmed to NBC News that the strike had come from the U.S. side.

    Stuff happens.

  63. 63.

    Aleta

    @Steeplejack: Someone once told me that Mark Twain once said, “The worst things in my life never happened.” (I tried to find such a quote and didn’t, so who knows if anyone ever said that.) But I know what you mean. The dread, the dread, as the imagination runs wild. (joke)

  64. 64.

    Steeplejack

    @efgoldman:

    I’m staying with Win7 on this machine, though.

    I think it’s a toss-up. I wasn’t dying to upgrade, but I got sick of the constant reminders from Microsoft, and also a semi-insider colleague told me the internals on 10 are better. It does seem slightly peppier than Windows 7 on my middle-aged notebook, but I have a few gripes, mostly with pointless UI changes and the much-discussed “anti-privacy” settings—most of which I have neutered, I think.

    Anyway, I won’t be the one telling you that you must upgrade. Windows 7 worked fine for me. Probably would have been a different story with Windows 8.

  65. 65.

    Betty Cracker

    John’s home, but my roadtrip has just begun. We arrived at our hotel for the night in the middle of Georgia, the waypoint for our trip to the mountains. It rained every goddamned mile of the way up here, and it looks like it will rain on us every mile of the way tomorrow too.

    But it’s good to be on the road, even if this hotel is rather suspect. My mother would have called it a “fleabag,” even though no actual fleas are in evidence. It’s not outright nasty or anything. One just has a vague compulsion to wear socks.

    Also, it’s cold up here! We stopped in Tifton for dinner, exiting the car in our shorts, flip-flops and t-shirts and immediately formed a scrum at the trunk to dig jackets out of our suitcases.

    Kind of nice after the sledgehammer heat of the past several months in Florida. Tomorrow, the Blue Ridge!

    @LesGS: LOL! Poor doggy! He must have been so confused. Probably terrified to pee again!

  66. 66.

    Aleta

    @srv:

    Stuff happens.

    Have begun to realize that this phrase sums up not just the learned response to collateral damage, but the attitude of the Supreme Court etc. conservatives toward the death penalty. It doesn’t -matter- to them if some innocent people are casualties to the death penalty. That old horror of an innocent person on death row is not a horror to some people; rather it is to them the cost of doing business.

  67. 67.

    PurpleGirl

    @efgoldman: LOL. Washington Square Park not Union Square Park. There was also the legend of the Garibaldi statue — that Garibaldi would pull out his sword if a virgin ever walked passed the statue; since no one ever saw Garibaldi pull out his sword, no virgin ever passed in front him.

  68. 68.

    Mnemosyne

    @Aleta:

    So was Robert Wise. He was trained by the best — Val Lewton, who had a film production unit at RKO that made classics like “Cat People” and “I Walked With A Zombie.” Wise directed one of the best of them, “The Body Snatcher,” with Boris Karloff.

    I have a couple of different funny stories about seeing “The Haunting,” but one was at a huge movie palace in downtown LA where they had a triple bill of “Frankenstein vs. the Wolf Man,” “Black Sunday,” and “The Haunting.”

    There were a couple of frat boy types sitting behind us who started out hooting and snickering at Eleanor’s voiceovers, but they slowly got quieter and quieter as the movie went on until one of them turned to the other and whispered, “Dude, is this movie kind of getting to you?”

  69. 69.

    Steeplejack

    @Betty Cracker:

    Good to hear the road report, Betty. I’m going to leave here about 6:30 to head down to Rehoboth Beach. Forecast is “steady light rain” but nothing worse. The high wind watch got downgraded to a wind advisory.

    And of course I should be going to bed, but of course I’m not sleepy.

  70. 70.

    Aleta

    @efgoldman:

    Didn’t they have a varsity drug pusher league that competed in Union Square Park?

    I seem to remember the pennant in their ‘clubroom.’

  71. 71.

    Steeplejack

    @efgoldman:

    I saw that but wisely decided not to weigh in.

    I think the problem with Windows 8 was that they tried to have one interface for both traditional keyboard-and-mouse computers and touchscreen-equipped computers and made the mistake of emphasizing the latter. Hence millions of complaints about no start menu and an inability to find/launch programs. I’m glad I dodged that bullet.

  74. 74.

    goblue72

    @efgoldman: True enough. The overwhelming majority of my high school classmate, of those who didn’t drop out, went from graduation to work, or possibly community college. A minority (20% or so) went on to college – and of those, only a handful wound up going to school other than one of the local state colleges. My only thought most of high school was get out and flee.

  75. 75.

    cckids

    @Mnemosyne: Love it. Reminds me of my daughter’s 13th birthday party – a sleepover with 7 teenyboppers on a Friday the 13th in October. It was perfect – even got vaguely stormy & thundery.

    They decided to watch the original “Poltergeist” – none of them had seen it, but 2 girls were very much too cool for the old school effects & kept quietly deriding it. Then they got pulled in, & shut up until the clown appeared from under the bed. After all the screaming died down, one of the smart asses quietly whispered “Can we watch The Little Mermaid next?”

  76. 76.

    Steeplejack

    @NotMax:

    I’ll take it. I like the rain and even like driving in the rain, as long as it’s not rush-hour conditions. I just didn’t want to be running into detours, road closings and flash floods. Looks like it’ll be smooth sailing tomorrow (today).

  79. 79.

    PurpleGirl

    @PurpleGirl: The character of some of the craft fairs has changed over time, some are more flea marketish and have more commercially made items. There is a good craft fair held in Bryant Park (behind the main Library) and one in Grand Central Terminal. These have replaced some older ones. Also there is a craft fair at St. John the Divine that has good crafts people.

  80. 80.

    Betty Cracker

    @Steeplejack: I hear ya. I should definitely be sleeping right now since we’re heading out early. But of course I’m wide awake.

    ETA: Be safe, and have fun at the beach!

  82. 82.

    Anne Laurie

    @Steeplejack: Last time the Spousal Unit was forced to ‘upgrade’ my laptop, he switched me over to Pale Moon because he said FireFox ‘was getting too aggressive about pushing what they want your screen to look like, instead of what you want your screen to look like.’

  83. 83.

    Mnemosyne

    @efgoldman:

    The disappearance of Carol Ann into another dimension in “Poltergeist” was partially inspired by the “Little Girl Lost” episode of “The Twilight Zone,” which was in turn inspired by an incident where Richard Matheson’s toddler daughter somehow fell between her bed and the wall and he and his wife couldn’t figure out at first where she was.

  88. 88.

    Origuy

    I remember in the late 60s and early 70s when the local John Birch Society would put an ad in the local newspaper (Bloomington Herald-Telephone in Indiana). It was always covered with hand-written annotations and talked about fluoridation or civil rights or something. It was the equivalent of an HTML page with a dozen fonts, including Comic Sans, and blinking text.

  89. 89.

    Anne Laurie

    @efgoldman:

    mrs efgoldman went to the kind of high school where males graduated and went to work in the shoe factories (now long closed) or at the gas station, or went into the service. The girls mostly got jobs, if they worked, in the local stores. Most were pregnant (with or without marriage) by their early 20s.

    Yeah, that was my high school experience, too. Except it was an all-girls parochial school, paired with an all-boys school (separated only by swinging double doors, and the combined force of will of the Dominican nuns and teaching brothers).

    Out of my graduating class of 75, I think 15 were going on to college. I was the only one going to an out-of-state college (and that was mostly to get away from my disfunctional family, truth be told). IIRC, two of the ‘smartest’ girls were going to Fordham, one to Columbia; one of the brightest surprised us all by announcing at our graduation ceremony that she was going into the convent. The most ambitious was going to Katherine Gibbs (secretarial school), because that was the only ‘higher ed’ her parents would permit. The rest of them were looking at minimum-wage retail jobs, early marriage, and non-stop pregnancies. One of the girls I liked best dropped out during junior year when she ‘had to get married’ — she showed up to congratulate the rest of us, already pregnant with her second. Good Irish Catholic girls, sigh. I (now) suspect at least one or two of the others were pregnant by the time of the ceremony (held, of course, at the parish church), but I never went back to find out…

  90. 90.

    BillinGlendaleCA

    @Steeplejack: I think you’re right. I used Win8 & Win8.1, but primarily on the desktop with a replacement start menu. I never had too many problems. I liked the live tiles and I’m happy to see them on the Win10 start menu. Your insider friend(I’m also and insider) is correct, the internals in Win10 is vastly improved. I’ve really noticed that memory management is really better.

    OT: Being that I’m in SoCal they have a car chase on the TV news. It’s ended at an In-n-Out burger. Cops all over the parking lot and folks are still picking up their order from the drive thru.

  92. 92.

    Steeplejack

    @NotMax:

    The Panic in Needle Park, Al Pacino, 1970? Somewhere around there. One of those movies where one actor broke out and nobody else ever went anywhere. The vagaries of fortune. That’s got to leave a mark.

    . . . Okay, looked it up on IMDB. Raul Julia and Joe Santos are way down in the credits. I don’t even remember them from the movie, although it’s been decades since I’ve seen it. Kitty Winn was the actress opposite Pacino. Had a part in The Exorcist, lots of TV guest shots, last credit in 1984. But she won the Golden Palm at Cannes for Needle Park.

  93. 93.

    Steeplejack

    @Anne Laurie:

    Firefox has made a few boneheaded UI choices in its history, but there’s always an extension to whip it into shape. I like it well enough and am lazy enough not to be looking for a replacement.

  94. 94.

    PurpleGirl

    @Mnemosyne: I vaguely remember “Little Girl Lost”. It was spooky. I’ve seen “The Haunting” several times and it still scares me. But I wasn’t in the mood to watch it tonight. (I pulled a back muscle a few days ago and spend the day trying to be comfortable and I finally hit a concentration of Aleve and Tiger Balm applications that worked.)

  98. 98.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @NotMax: I believe that reservoir featured in “The Alienist” which I am surprised has not yet become a movie.

  105. 105.

    Anne Laurie

    @efgoldman:

    I wish we could go to NY more often. I’m a city kid, and NYC is *the* city, and it’s only a 3.5 hour train ride. But it’s so expensive….

    Haven’t tried this myself (when we travel, we have to bring the unboardable dogs), but friends have had good luck using AirB&B in Hoboken, and taking the PATH train under the river into Manhattan.

  109. 109.

    ruemara

    I’ve lived a few places, but I don’t know if any are “home”. But I do miss NYC a lot. Now I wish to try finding a “home” somewhere but I don’t really know where.

  111. 111.

    Pie Happens (opiejeanne)

    @Omnes Omnibus: Really? I thought you were in your late 40s/early 50s. He died in 1994,but most of his recordings were done before that, but he did all the music for Popeye in 1980.

  112. 112.

    seaboogie

    @LesGS: Wow – what a hot mess! But I am confused about red tape around a death certificate. That should be pretty straight-forward, and you will want multiple copies (request that – maybe 4 or 5) to resolve everything. Some places will accept copies, and some will need an original.

  114. 114.

    J R in WV

    @goblue72:

    I left for college almost immediately after H S graduation, I enrolled in the summer session once I was admitted. Summer session was wonderful, I was the only pre-enrolled freshman on campus. The upper-classmen even took me to Newport Folk Festival, back when it wasn’t discovered yet.

    @jl:

    Cole, welcome back to the “Green Rolling Hills of West Virginia!!” While you were gone news happened! A hurricane spun over the Bahamas the whole time you were winning at the case-in-oh !! In 12 hours it went from Tropical Depression to Category 5 Super Storm!!!

    We suspect your winning streak pushed the Atlantic hurricane season off balance !!!!

    or maybe not.

    I made hollandaise sauce for asparagus for dinner. The cat finished up 5 stalks of asparagus that were left on my plate. Should I worry about Punkin? They were fried in butter, that was probably the attraction. She would drag a stalk off the plate, and Alice the white lab would steal it from her once it hit the floor. So there were a multitude of sins there!

  115. 115.

    ThresherK (GPad)

    @J R in WV: Sounds like quite the pet tag team there.

    How much did the cat get of the five stalks? Our own experience with felines and veggies suggests the issue if any may be that in haste to get the yummy butter they won’t know what to do with a stringy plant which their teeth are not equipped to grind up, and almost swallow it in too-big pieces.

  116. 116.

    OzarkHillbilly

    Canada’s conservatives have decided to one-up our wingnuts:

    Canada’s Conservatives vow to create ‘barbaric cultural practices’ hotline

    Canada’s ruling Conservatives have pledged to set up a police hotline to report what it called “barbaric cultural practices”, as it sought to capitalize on a hardline stance which has helped it gain in the polls.

    And just exactly what ‘barbaric cultural practice’ has their panties in a bunch?

    The new pledge follows a string of opinion polls showing that the incumbent party’s hard line against Muslim headwear – refusing to permit a new immigrant the right to wear a veil during a ceremony affirming their citizenship – has helped lift it from third to first place in the drawn-out election campaign.

    I predict massive trolling:

    “Barbaric Cultural Practices Hotline, how may we assist you in oppressing your liberal commie fag neighbors?”

    “Yes, I want to report a local group that engages in worship of a polytheistic nature before a depiction of a man being tortured to death culminating in faux ritualistic cannibalism.”

    “Do you have a name and address?”

    “Yes, St. Anthony’s Parish at 991 East Concord Drive.”

  119. 119.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Amir Khalid:

    which is intended to fight forced marriages and human trafficking,

    And is now about to be used to enforce a “Canadian” dress code.

  120. 120.

    bemused

    @J R in WV:

    If asparagus has the same effect on dogs or cats urine as with humans and you happened to be in close proximity to your pets when they had their first pee after the asparagus heist, it should be easy to guess which ate the most.

  121. 121.

    Elizabelle

    Good morning all.

    Chilly and breezy and wet in NoVA, but no other issues. Great day to stay warm inside. Love looking at the woods when they’re dark trunks and limbs with bright green and tending yellow leafery.

  122. 122.

    HeartlandLiberal

    Will be attending Indiana vs Ohio State game here at home in Bloomington this afternoon. 54 degrees and a good chance of rain. Friend that is going to this game with me still works at the uni, and her department is hosting a big event in one of the enclosed areas available, so instead of sitting on row 10 40 yards line, which is hard to beat, we may retreat upstairs and indoors. At 69, I just don’t enjoy sitting in cold rain much anymore. Got email about game day traffic and such, the game is sold out, 52 thousand plus seats. This may be the first time we had that many tickets sold since the new north end zone seating and office complex closed up the north end of the stadium five – six years ago, while I was still working there.

  123. 123.

    Aleta

    @NotMax: That was fantastic to read. Thanks so much. Now I want to go to NYC though. (AL–thanks for the great idea about Hoboken.)

    I found 2 very brief journals by relatives. One is by two brothers, farm boys, who travelled to NYC and walked around for a few days (turn of century). The other is a journal of expenses by a woman in a family living in Brooklyn for a few years (1910s). She records a trip to Bill Cody’s Wild West Show, going to some event in a structure whose name I can’t remember w/o looking it up, one of the “domes”? — I couldn’t find it on the internet when I tried a few years ago. Buying a bunch of violets and some used furniture. Buying a ribbon for a Christmas present for her sister.

  124. 124.

    Aleta

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    Barbaric Cultural Practices Hotline, how may we assist you in oppressing your liberal commie fag neighbors?”

    “Yes, I want to report a local group that engages in worship of a polytheistic nature before a depiction of a man being tortured to death culminating in faux ritualistic cannibalism.”

    very funny

    binding the feet of 2-3 year old children to flat boards and forcing them to stay upright on a slope designed to make them slip, at below-freezing temperatures

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