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Agreed and agreed. But an addendum regarding mattresses: No matter what the salespeople tell you, most mattresses with pocketed coil springs are pretty much the same apart from hardness, especially with a compensating mattress topper. Just get one that feels right to you, definitely don't think that more expensive=better, mattress-wise.

More money advice: Most things come in two tiers worth purchasing: "nice" and "wow".

"Nice" are the things experts deem good enough, or clothes-wise ones that you can see yourself actually wearing across multiple years, both durability- and appearance-wise. Affordable, and you like them. A useable placeholder, if you will.

"Wow" are the things that you've been steadily dreaming of for years, or ones that catch your eye even if you weren't looking. "Buy it for life" stuff. Solid whole wood furniture, that teapot or coffee maker you've been dreaming of. A designer winter coat that only costs 20 times your old one. 🫣 On these you look at the price tag after; you want it, you get it, and if it breaks, you repair it. If it's affordable, or if you find more than one of these every 1-3 years, consider yourself very lucky.

Nothing below "nice" is worth getting, and very few things between "nice" and "wow" are worth getting.

IMHO that's a surefire way to burnout and self-doubts later on. My advice would almost be the opposite.

Never too late to change if what you're doing isn't working for you. Recognize when you're about to kill your passion with expectations, and don't do it. There is little to no cross-disciplinary knowledge that doesn't come in useful, so don't force yourself to be single-minded in your pursuits. What you're learning matters surprisingly little, that you're learning matters so much more.

But yea, don't change major pursuits, like, every year. Probably depends on the person which advice they need. I definitely would have needed the latter.

Yeah... I kinda think that's an experience every omnivore should have. Raise something with your own hands, then kill and eat it. If you can't do that, at least you now know your hypocrisy.

I'm a hypocrite, too.

The bulls, yeah, that's a planned pick-up to a meat farm or to the slaughterhouse, easy to distance yourself from mentally AFAIK. Not the heifers you've named and intended to keep.

Some of my relatives have a dairy farm. One time they had to put down a young cow and had it cut for beef/veal for themselves, since it was so sudden and unplanned. They told the cow's name, what had happened to it, what its temperament had been like. That was enough to make the eating experience weird and a bit offputting.

🫡

I'm still wrapping my mind around how this even works. ATM I use Debian for my laptop, so now my husband (already knowing I'd support an open marriage if he wanted one) should be a free target for sexual harassment? Is that the joke?

Max Richter - The Blue Notebooks
Arvo Pärt - Portrait (Angèle Dubeau, La Pietà 2010) (or anything really)

Ode to Joy flash mob https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kbJcQYVtZMo

So sorry about your duck.

Love you.

I'm sorry.

If it doesn't give her the ick and she likes the classic styles, used jewelry is the way to go. It's already had the "walk out of store" depreciation and I think engravings on most rings are pretty easy to replace.

As a more personal recommendation, when I ahem "outgrew" my own engagement ring and was too lazy/cheap to resize, I got a "temporary" replacement 10? years ago from here. It was supposed to be moissanite in titanium, did an XRF analysis and the band material was some sort of nickel-less maybe steel IIRC. No idea if the moissanite is genuine, but it's held up way better than any CZ has, and the band has kept better than silver so props to that.

They'll keep bringing this up again and again and again until it passes, huh.

Next Council deliberations and vote in October-December.