Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

A last alliance of elves and men. also pet photos.

A lot of Dems talk about what the media tells them to talk about. Not helpful.

It’s always darkest before the other shoe drops.

And now I have baud making fun of me. this day can’t get worse.

He really is that stupid.

Let us savor the impending downfall of lawless scoundrels who richly deserve the trouble barreling their way.

I was promised a recession.

Republicans in disarray!

Republicans seem to think life begins at the candlelight dinner the night before.

Hot air and ill-informed banter

Make the republican party small enough to drown in a bathtub.

Historically it was a little unusual for the president to be an incoherent babbling moron.

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

Incompetence, fear, or corruption? why not all three?

Come on, man.

I wonder if trump will be tried as an adult.

I didn’t have alien invasion on my 2023 BINGO card.

No offense, but this thread hasn’t been about you for quite a while.

If you tweet it in all caps, that makes it true!

Not all heroes wear capes.

Russian mouthpiece, go fuck yourself.

You can’t love your country only when you win.

I’m pretty sure there’s only one Jack Smith.

Imperialist aggressors must be defeated, or the whole world loses.

You are here: Home / Pet Blogging / Dog Blogging / Saturday Morning Open Thread: Happy National Puppy Day!

Saturday Morning Open Thread: Happy National Puppy Day!

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Of course, isn’t every day Puppy Day, in our hearts?

Meanwhile, this is me, trying to keep up with the news:

Spent Friday evening seeing the Russian National Ballet perform SWAN LAKE (highly recommended, especially by the Spousal Unit, who’s the knowledgeable one). We’re talking about going to see HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON: THE HIDDEN WORLD (if we can stand two such exciting excursions in one weekend; yes we’re old and introverted).

Who’s got plans for the weekend?

Reader Interactions

143Comments

  1. 1.

    OzarkHillbilly

    Blech.

    Just because I don’t want to be accused of playing favorites with the AM threads.

  2. 2.

    SiubhanDuinne

    I’ll put a no-politics Early Morning Open Thread up right after this — let’s see which one gets more comments!

    So far, politics has the edge.

    #TeamPuppies
    #TeamOtters

  4. 4.

    JoyceH

    Swan Lake, you say? I saw a Swan Lake performance once. Starring a nice pair of dancers – Nureyev and Fonteyn. (Yeah, I’m old. But! I saw Nureyev and Fonteyn!)

  7. 7.

    Major Major Major Major

    I’m flying back to SFO from Taipei in the morning. I got a touch of food poisoning last night, and I’m still dehydrated like whoa, so hopefully that clears up before 15 hours in a crowded tin can ?

  13. 13.

    JPL

    Anne, do you have any more room and if not maybe another Boston area juicer can help out these two. Kitty and Leila are best friends and need to be adopted together. link

  20. 20.

    OzarkHillbilly

    I’ve been looking for some good news to post a link too ever since this thread first popped up.
    .
    .
    .
    .
    .
    .
    .
    .

  21. 21.

    NotMax

    Anyone have experience with stuff shipped via 4px? Ordered a printer cover earlier this week (finding one sized right and affordable as well as not pig dog ugly has been a long ongoing quest). Amazon is promising delivery “between April 10 and May 1” which seems a wide, wide window. May be wrong but am presuming once it hits the states it transfers to a domestic carrier.

  23. 23.

    Major Major Major Major

    @satby: I once flew from Dublin to Denver with the flu, may I never experience a worse trip.

    I am on the mend though, just… yeah, not ideal. Should I see about going to the hospital and having them slap in an IV?? Ack

  24. 24.

    Anne Laurie

    @JPL: I’d be strongly tempted, if our household didn’t already include a 15lb rescue alpha bitch who gets stressed by new roommates, a 17-year-old rescue with doggie dementia who’s demanding more attention every day, and a third extremely neurotic rescue dog… not to mention two 15lb male cats, one a nasty bully who’d probably eat little Leila whole if Gloria didn’t kill her first.

    But be reassured: Small dogs and Maine-coon-type cats are highly desirable rescues in the Boston area, and of course Angell is expert at publicizing cases like this. Wouldn’t surprise me if Leila & Kitty have a new home by the end of the weekend, cross fingers!

  25. 25.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @satby: TBH, I really don’t have anything to say about a report that reporters report has been reported, but nobody has yet reportedly read.

  26. 26.

    NotMax

    Expect nitwitter-in-chief bombast aimed at Da Mouse any time now.

    When Disney executives visit the Fox lot in Century City, the home of their newly acquired TV and film studios, they’re greeted by a big new banner that says “Welcome to Fox” and doors newly painted with the word “FOX.”

    It’s not so much a welcome as a way of marking territory, one Fox insider told TheWrap Friday, three days after Disney closed its $71.3 billion acquisition of 21st Century Fox’s film and TV assets — and two days after it started layoffs that are expected to cost as many as 4,000 Fox employees their jobs. Source

    @OzarkHillbilly
    Does this count?

    Saskatchewan’s Scotty has officially dethroned Chicago’s Sue as the biggest Tyrannosaurus rex ever found.

    Scotty was found in the badlands just outside of Eastend in 1991 by a high school teacher and paleontologists with the Royal Saskatchewan Museum who were out prospecting for fossils.

    It turned out to be one of the most complete T-rex skeletons ever found — about 65 per cent intact.

    Now, according to an article in a scholarly journal, it has bragging rights to a new title — the most massive Tyrannosaurus in the world. Source

    If not that, how about Jimmy Carter this week knocking G. H. W. Bush out of the top spot as longest lived ex-president?

  28. 28.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @NotMax:

    Does this count?

    Only if their are no lawsuits filed over ownership.

    how about Jimmy Carter this week knocking G. H. W. Bush out of the top spot

    Yesterday’s news.

    Seeing as you’ve demonstrated a paleontological interest this AM, I’ll share this bit of yesterday’s good news: ‘Mindblowing’ haul of fossils over 500m years old unearthed in China

    A “mindblowing” haul of fossils that captures the riot of evolution that kickstarted the diversity of life on Earth more than half a billion years ago has been discovered by researchers in China.

    Paleontologists found thousands of fossils in rocks on the bank of the Danshui river in Hubei province in southern China, where primitive forms of jellyfish, sponges, algae, anemones, worms and arthropods with thin whip-like feelers were entombed in an ancient underwater mudslide.

    The creatures are so well preserved in the fossils that the soft tissues of their bodies, including the muscles, guts, eyes, gills, mouths and other openings are all still visible. The 4,351 separate fossils excavated so far represent 101 species, 53 of them new.

    “It is a huge surprise that such a large proportion of species in this fossil assemblage are new to science,” said Robert Gaines, a geologist on the team from Pomona College in Claremont, California. The fieldwork was led by Xingliang Zhang and Dongjing Fu at Northwest University in Xi’an, 700 miles (1,127km) south-west of Beijing.

  29. 29.

    ola azul

    @JoyceH:

    Swan Lake, you say? I saw a Swan Lake performance once. Starring a nice pair of dancers – Nureyev and Fonteyn. (Yeah, I’m old. But! I saw Nureyev and Fonteyn!)

    Gotta book (rest-stop reading) callt Lives and Letters by R. Gottlieb. Lotta short biographical summaries. Just read ’bout the life-long, enduring, abiding tenacity and quiet grace of Margot Fonteyn (nee Peggy Hookham).

    Her determination is perhaps best exemplified by a quote from her mother, who once said: “I learnt never to force an issue [with her] but to skirt round it; her will was stronger than mine if it came to a showdown.”

    (Fonteyn was 42 and still had many years ahead of her when she first started in with Nureyev, 19 years her junior. Purty remarkable inna vocation that ain’t exactly kind to the aged.)

    In typical no-nonsense fashion: Toward the end, when she was facing death by cancer, she told her step-daughter, Querube: “I’ve decided not to have any more treatment. That means I’m going to die, so I want you to call Felix (her brother) and tell him.” [Called, got message machine, Margot gets on the blower.] “Felix, this is Margot. Querube and I here and I’ve decided I’m going to die.”

  30. 30.

    NotMax

    @Major Major Major Major

    Will see your Dublin to Dublin and raise you the 3 day, 9 flight Trip From Hell returning from southern Brazil to New York in 1961, whilst I was at an age when merely looking at a plane made me violently airsick.

    Have told most of the long tale previously so won’t repeat except for the part about young NotMax, biliously green-hued and all but turned away from death’s door for being too sickly, sitting on the floor in the airport in Mexico City during yet another long wait between flights and having Mexican peasant women coming up to give me coins.

  33. 33.

    OzarkHillbilly

    OK, this qualifies:

    A group made up of more than 500 cities, counties and Native American tribes across the United States has filed a massive lawsuit accusing members of the Sackler family, who own the maker of the opioid painkiller OxyContin, of helping to create “the worst drug crisis in American history”.

    The lawsuit represents communities in 26 states and eight tribes and accuses Sackler family members of knowingly breaking laws in order to enrich themselves to the tune of billions of dollars, while hundreds of thousands of Americans died.

    “Eight people in a single family made the choices that caused much of the opioid epidemic,” the lawsuit, filed earlier this week in federal court in the southern district of New York, states.

    The same eight members of the family had recently been added to a small number of lawsuits that are underway against a string of opioid-makers, including the Connecticut-based pharmaceutical company the Sacklers wholly own, Purdue Pharma, but they have not been sued as individuals on anything like this scale before.

    “This nation is facing an unprecedented opioid addiction epidemic that was initiated and perpetuated by the Sackler defendants for their own financial gain, to the detriment of each of the plaintiffs and their residents. The ‘Sackler defendants’ include Richard Sackler, Beverly Sackler, David Sackler, Ilene Sackler Lefcourt, Jonathan Sackler, Kathe Sackler, Mortimer DA Sackler, and Theresa Sackler,” this week’s lawsuit states.

  37. 37.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @JPL: That will be STUPENDOUSLY GREAT news. This is just good news. The more lawyers dipping their hands in the Sackler family pockets, the more I like it.

  41. 41.

    David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch

    Imagine the media hysteria if Hillary showed up on the campaign trail with a big black eye, a giant gash on her forehead and looking like a wino (photo)

  43. 43.

    gene108

    Anne, you are aware we commenters do not multitask. Once a new thread goes up, it will get the attention

    The experiment is set up to fail by design

  45. 45.

    West of the Rockies

    It’s almost 4:30 here in CA. My mother passed 11 years ago today about this time. I woke up with a nightmare (unrelated to my mom’s passing) and am glad for the certainty of a BJ thread.
    I’m not seeking condolences, just enjoying the cyber companionship of you lot!

  47. 47.

    Raven

    @OzarkHillbilly: Packrats don’t drink water, so their urine is very viscous,” Dr. Cole said. “It crystallizes and becomes solid.” Like hardened amber, the solidified waste is an ideal matrix to keep plant fragments intact for thousands of years.

    When researchers find a new nest in a cave or an outcropping, they pick it apart like prospectors — an extremely smelly process — and analyze the plants they find for carbon-isotope ratios that identify them as members of a particular species. Some plants, like junipers, usually grow relatively high in the mountains, while water-retaining species like agave and prickly pear are found at lower elevations.

  51. 51.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Raven:

    Packrats don’t drink water,

    Interesting, and now that I think about it, I’ve never found a packrat nest in a wet cave, only dry caves.

    eta: that I recall anyway

  52. 52.

    Nelle

    We moved from New Zealand to Kansas under four years ago. I put in a front flower garden (daffodils, iris, daylilies, Columbine, daisies, salvia), lilacs, hydrangea, butterfly Bush, spirea, and two raised gardens for vegies. Two clematis on trellises. Now we have to move to Iowa. We put the house in the market on Thursday morning. 13 showings in two days. Signed a contract last night…they wrote a letter. The woman loves to garden.

    On the other hand, I seem to have pneumonia. It was hard getting ready to sell and being out of the house 12 hours yesterday. Other than picking up more meds, I’m staying in bed today.

  54. 54.

    Spanky

    “Who’s got plans for the weekend?”

    Taxes. Blech.

    @Amir Khalid:

    Do I really need a Firefox Account?

    Of course not. No one “needs” anything on the intertubes. SATSQ.

    Did I mention that I retired last week?

  58. 58.

    O. Felix Culpa

    I’m up for election as Democratic county party chair this morning. The “progressives” have turned it into a cyber-bullying shitshow, but there are good people who want us to, you know, actually get things done. Will let you know what happens (if you’re interested).

  64. 64.

    hedgehog mobile

    Going to yoga, then haircut and pedicure this afternoon. My Cyclones lost to the damned Buckeyes by three points last night. To quote Amir, pout.

  69. 69.

    Immanentize

    Weekend plans? I am going to go to the bi-annual model train show at the Shriner’s Auditorium in Wilmington, MA. It’s got it all: big trains, tiny trains, men wearing fezzes….

  71. 71.

    Dorothy A. Winsor

    Back from morning bagel and coffee shop run. My plans are all boring–laundry, bills, soliciting beta readers, reading The Last Hours, the novel about the plague. That last part isn’t boring. Also I will ignore Trump as much as I can.

  76. 76.

    Immanentize

    @Dorothy A. Winsor: I love a good plague novel. Not joking! Some Aubrey/Maturin books include some very nice plaguey motifs. And Blindness by Saramago is really ‘just’ a plague novel.

  77. 77.

    Dorothy A. Winsor

    @Immanentize: Connie Willis’s Doomsday Book is good. It’s interesting because its theme is parental love, a motif repeated over and over in various forms from God’s love for his people to the love of an overprotective mother of an Oxford undergrad to a graduate advisor’s care for his student.

  78. 78.

    Amir Khalid

    With no English Premier League football this weekend, I am going to continue figuring out the riff from All Down The Line. I have a hunch that you don’t actually need Keef tuning; you can just use the D and G strings and invert the power chords. I plan to test this — with the Girl, of course.

  79. 79.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Immanentize: If you are a fan of trains, as in a Sheldon fan of trains, you need to make a pilgrimage to the National Musuem of Transportation. Pullman Cars? Yep. The largest steam engine ever built? Yep. (iirc) They got ’em all.

    eta: from their website:

    “These include the mid-1800s Boston & Providence Railroad Passenger Coach built in 1833; Providence “Daniel Nason”; Union Pacific #4006 (“Big Boy”), the largest successful steam locomotive ever built; the diminutive “Charles H.”, a small steam engine from Chicago’s Lake Street Elevated rapid transit line that was cosmetically restored in 1996 to its original appearance; and the 6,600-hp, two-engine Union Pacific diesel #6944 (“Centennial”), built by General Motors’ Electro-Motive Division in 1971.”

  80. 80.

    zhena gogolia

    I have an off-the-beaten-track recommendation for the BJ crew: Innocence; or Murder on Steep Street, by Heda Margolius Kovály. It’s by a woman who survived Auschwitz only to have her husband caught up in the Slansky show trials and executed. She then made a living partly by translating Raymond Chandler into Czech. The novel is absolutely gripping — it’s a mashup of hard-boiled detective fiction with the surveillance state in 1950s Czechoslovakia. I haven’t finished it yet, but I am devouring it before bedtime!

  81. 81.

    Kay

    @Dorothy A. Winsor:

    Back from morning bagel and coffee shop run

    We’re back from visiting daughter and her husband in NY. On the way home we stopped at Dunk’in Donuts for coffee and my 16 year old came in for a donut. So this is after 5 days on the road in the tiny rental car, which I chose because I wanted to try a hybrid, so we’re all sick of each other. The young woman behind the counter asks him which donut he wants and he says “surprise me” – okay, unbearable! I must have looked mad because she said “I think it’s cute- he’s just a kid” and then I felt bad. I would have given him a bran muffin- “surprise!”

  82. 82.

    Kay

    @Dorothy A. Winsor:

    Back from morning bagel and coffee shop run

    We’re back from visiting daughter and her husband in NY. On the way home we stopped at Dunk’in Donuts for coffee and my 16 year old came in for a donut. So this is after 5 days on the road in the tiny rental car, which I chose because I wanted to try a hybrid, so we’re all sick of each other. The young woman behind the counter asks him which donut he wants and he says “surprise me” – okay, unbearable! I must have looked mad because she said “I think it’s cute- he’s just a kid” and then I felt bad. I would have given him a bran muffin- “surprise!”

  84. 84.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Dorothy A. Winsor:

    reading The Last Hours, the novel about the plague. That last part isn’t boring. Also I will ignore Trump as much as I can.

    I sense a contradiction here.

  85. 85.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Kay:

    I must have looked mad because she said “I think it’s cute- he’s just a kid” and then I felt bad.

    Heh. Nothing like a stranger to get us looking at our children in a different light.

  86. 86.

    Immanentize

    @OzarkHillbilly: I want to go! I’ve been to the Transportation Museum in Chicago, and Steamtown near Scranton PA, but haven’t been to the St. Louis one. Bucket list.

    ETA. I love those huge UP rotary snow plows. They are crazy engineering.

  87. 87.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Immanentize: I love it. Clambering around atop those massive machines of pure power is intoxicating, I can’t imagine what it’s like to actually drive one.

  89. 89.

    opiejeanne

    @Nelle: Congratulations on your sale. I hope it sticks, unlike mine this week.

    And please take care of yourself. .

  92. 92.

    Gin & Tonic

    @zhena gogolia: Sounds great, thanks.

    And some in this crowd might appreciate Laurent Binet’s The Seventh Function of Language, which I finished on the way home from Argentina. A mashup of detective/murder mystery with semiotics and post-modern literary theory. Yes, really.

  93. 93.

    Dorothy A. Winsor

    @Kay: LOL. My dept chair and his whole family (4 kids) once drove from Iowa to Alaska and camped along the way. If we’d ever tried that, the Mounties would have found us dead along the side of the road with our hands around each other’s throats.

  94. 94.

    Wag

    The family and I are heading out to Moab for the twins’ Spring Break. Looking forward to hiking and canyoneering, maybe a bit of mountain biking as well.

  96. 96.

    debbie

    @Immanentize:

    “Stupidity has a knack of getting its way, as we should see if we weren’t always so wrapped up in ourselves.” (paraphrasing from a poor memory)

  97. 97.

    JPL

    @OzarkHillbilly: The city that I live in has a big truck day where the children can get up close with the city equipment. It’s pretty popular and a few years baby boy can attend with me.

  98. 98.

    Kathleen

    Reposted from below because I think I should have waited for the Happy Thread:

    Good Morning, All. A couple of music links to get your day going:

    Fred Astaire & Rita Hayworth dance to Jackie Wilson:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8AXkfhqvO44&start_radio=1&list=RD8AXkfhqvO44

    Brothers Johnson, Stomp
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tPBDMihPRJA&index=10&list=RD8AXkfhqvO44

    I’m fighting to maintain positive focus (challenging for Irish person). But I see so many successes and “helpers” in my community. I have to stay focused on that. Link to MyCincinnati, a youth orchestra in my neighborhood that all the naysayers said would fail:

    https://www.mycincinnatiorchestra.org/

    Have whatever kind of day you feel like having.

  100. 100.

    Kathleen

    Today I’m visiting a friend and going to see Casablanca in a theater right up the street from her. My carpets, windows & blinds are being cleaned tomorrow (whee). Started my day at the Y doing a spinning class followed by strength training.

  103. 103.

    Sloane Ranger

    Watched the England v Czech Republic game last night, 5 – 0 to England with Sterling scoring a hat trick. I can’t tell you how nice it is to watch an England game w/o my blood pressure going into overdrive. May all our qualifiers be as easy.

    Went to the presentation of the new membership database our U3A Group is thinking of getting this morning but won’t be going over to my brother’s to finish the clear out of his house as it turned into an ad hoc committee meeting about a proposed membership subscription increase at the end and by the time it finished it was too late. Maybe Tuesday?

  104. 104.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @JPL: Oooo… that reminds me, my coming grandbaby is a second Baby Girl just for PawPaw to spoil.

  105. 105.

    opiejeanne

    @Immanentize: Yes, the cabin sale lasted from Tuesday to Thursday. The buyer backed out because his kids pressured him. He’s an Italian-American, a US citizen, 70 years old, and spends a lot of time in Italy. He wanted a little place in the US, a home base, but he doesn’t use computers so his son had to help him with the internet parts of the sale. Digi-sign & email messages. The son lives somewhere off the mountain. His age makes me think it wasn’t a wise purchase for a year-round home, but if he could afford a new heating system and to pay one of the neighbors to keep the walk and steps clear of ice and snow, and to cut him a parking spot when it snows, he could be pretty comfortable. mr opiejeanne is 72 now, and I’m 69 which is part of why we’re selling it.
    And no, there were no back-up offers so it’s back on the market. We are told that the place is a little gem, the price is good compared to similar properties, and the ex-buyer looked at 9 places before choosing ours. The realtor says there are other parties interested, according to other agents in her office, and she’s holding another open house this weekend, I’ve always thought of open houses as being for the benefit of the agent, in order to find new clients, but I think on the mountain it might be good for both of us.

  110. 110.

    Mandarama

    @Immanentize: Yep, love those too! I thought the films with Ioan Gruffudd were good adaptations. Did you see them?

    The amazing thing about O’Brian is that I often forgot they weren’t primary literature when I was reading them the first time. I teach a lot of 19th century texts, and his precise language is so true to the period. So is his understanding of the social conventions. I love historical fiction and don’t mind the inevitable anachronisms, but with O’Brian I honestly felt like I was reading Austen’s male contemporary.

  111. 111.

    L&DinSLT

    @Immanentize: Add to it, if in the vicinity, California State Railroad Museum. The 1881 painting “The Last Spike” is worth the price of admission.

  113. 113.

    MomSense

    I’m going to go to the gym and hopefully work some of this anger and worry out of me. Not even puppy pictures are sparking joy.

  114. 114.

    Amir Khalid

    @Sloane Ranger:
    England have an unfortunate history of being world-class in qualifiers, and then falling apart in the tournament proper. I hope Gareth is curing them of that.

  118. 118.

    Sloane Ranger

    @Amir Khalid: Yes. They generally do OK in the Group stage but lose it when it gets to the sudden death knock out stage. Still be reached the semi-finals at the World Cup so fingers and toes crossed.

  119. 119.

    StringOnAStick

    I woke up to having an allergic reaction to the pad of the waterproof bandage over my knee replacement incision, not unexpected since I’ve had it happen with padding inside casts. Such a a panicky feeling, but the Oncall member of the doctor’s team talked me through taking it off without disturbing the glue-on skin closure device (used to avoid stitches or staples). Instant relief! I knew I couldn’t make it through the 5 more days until my doctor’s visit

    Pretty much all padding and sterile pads are made from some kind of synthetic material; it’s really hard to find these things made out of cotton. I strongly suspect the usual stuff is rayon made with juniper since my years of landscaping have me a severe reaction to landscape juniper. Bu, who knows!

    Th is afternoon my husband is taking me down to the flat trail by the creek (so I can hobble around ). S o looking forward to this!

  120. 120.

    Immanentize

    @Mandarama: I did like the Gruffudd Hornblowers — especially him as young Horatio.

    And I agree about O’Brien. It’s the immersive feeling that makes them so worthy (IMHO).

    I loved Peter Weir’s Master and Commander, once I stopped thinking about it as having anything but the most glancing relationship to O’Brien. Beautiful movie, almost like Kurosawa, but really nothing to do with the language or atmosphere of the books.

  122. 122.

    Immanentize

    @StringOnAStick:
    I so sympathize! My wife was allergic to latex and adhesives (which have latex?) And ALSO to any sulfa-based antibiotic (like bactrim, bacitracin and neosporin). Try months of cancer treatments with that combo of allergies! That said, once the Docs got a handle on the issue, they were really great except for the team that inserted her port and washed with bacitracin. Yikes!!

  123. 123.

    Immanentize

    @zhena gogolia:
    I must admit his case is an example of why I generally hate author/artist biographies. I don’t want to know anything about them as actual people! I want to know their works. Some (other) assholes’ works I love include Norman Mailer and Diego Rivera.

  127. 127.

    Miss Bianca

    @O. Felix Culpa: yes, let us know!

    Also, NM alert: looks like I may be heading down next weekend. Staying with some really cool friends in Pecos. Maybe a mini-moot Saturday night or Sunday morning?

    @Immanentize:

    May effort prevail over whinging.

    And so say all of us!

  128. 128.

    Kay

    @Dorothy A. Winsor:

    He said it like “surprise me”- flirting. She was probably, oh, late twenties? I sometimes envy how confident he is and then other times I think “oh, the world is going to be VERY MEAN to you” but it might not matter because he’s blissfully obtuse.

  130. 130.

    Mandarama

    @Immanentize: Agree about M&C. Although Paul Bettany is too striking to be Maturin, I thought Russell Crowe did a surprisingly good job. And it was a beautiful movie. I actually had the hardest time with a very beloved Pippin as Bonden, who is one of the most important characters to me and whose 2-word fate hit me so hard I had to put the book down.

    I hope you are looking forward to a fun summer before the packing starts! I’m still not sure which school Thing 1 will pick and it’s stressing me out. (Also, I feel like being a ridiculously overenthused dorm decorator is the only way I’ll feel like I can mother him and manage my own feelings. I know it’s foolish.)

  131. 131.

    Immantize

    @Mandarama:
    Is Thing 1 seeking/thinking far or close?
    The Immp is a dorm minimalist who plans to Marie Kondo his space with order. Kids are so fabulous!

  133. 133.

    TomatoQueen

    @Amir Khalid: When a laptop died completely without warning (BSOD and a fuck off, it’s all gone, system error message), the Firefox Account, on sign-in, populated the replacement within about a minute, which was the only bit of comfort during the long and mostly fruitless search for suitable stuff. I haven’t used the Firefox Account since.

  134. 134.

    Aleta

    @Nelle: Hope you feel better soon. Must be hard to leave that garden. The new garden-lover must be overjoyed at her luck. (My mother was able to have beautiful gardens in SE Iowa, in case that’s where you’re heading.)

  135. 135.

    Mandarama

    @Immantize: Everything is far away! He didn’t apply anywhere in the Southeast at all. But he got into 2 of his top 3 (and the other was MIT, so we were still pretty proud he was deferred even if he ultimately didn’t get in). That means he has to consider those 2 options and they’re really different. Dadarama and I have opinions that we’re trying so hard not to impose.

    Neither Thing 1 or 2 is minimalist. But they tend to love to fix up their spaces and THEN live like teenaged boys in them. ?

  137. 137.

    Aleta

    @OzarkHillbilly:
    Ffestiniog Railway gravity train (in Wales, still runs). Around 16 minutes in, the engine is removed. The downhill is pretty cool.

    Wiki: The line was constructed between 1833 and 1836 to transport slate from the quarries around the inland town of Blaenau Ffestiniog to the coastal town of Porthmadog where it was loaded onto ships. The railway was graded so that loaded wagons could be run by gravity downhill.

    To achieve this continuous grade (about 1 in 80 for much of the way), the line followed natural contours and employed cuttings and embankments built of stone and slate blocks without mortar.

    ETA High def, good scenery, full screen is nice.

  139. 139.

    JoyceH

    @MomSense:

    WHAT?!?!?!?! Nureyev was a god in his prime and she was the GOAT.

    This was the Royal Ballet US tour at the Muny Opera in St. Louis. My family would go to the Muny about once a year, usually for a road company tour of a musical like Camelot or 1776. It was a big deal for us, because St. Louis was a 3 or 4 hour drive. My sister and I were about 12 or 13 at the time, and the amount of NAGGING we had to go to get the family to go! I don’t think Mom or Dad were particularly interested in ballet, but finally gave up because we wanted to go so bad.

    Of course, we knew almost nothing about ballet, but we read enough to know the Nureyev and Fonteyn production was something to see. It wasn’t easy being culture vultures in southern Illinois in the 1960s, but we gave it our best shot. (I think I still have the program somewhere around here.)

  141. 141.

    2liberal

    wondering why doug j hasn’t posted a thread about the 737 max entitled “crashing by design”

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