Girls, especially teenage girls, have a sort of social hierarchy. A lot of teenage girl life is basically trying to figure out where they fit into this hierarchy and it drives a lot of the relationship dynamics between girls. Not every girl necessarily wants to be the "queen bee" either. In this context, some of the things girls do start to make a little more sense.
Interesting. I guess I must not talk to people on the phone a lot because I hadn't really experienced that much before.
One of the strangest things, to me anyway, that came out of the pandemic is this habit of texting/messaging people to ask if you can call them. I'm not saying it's right or wrong. It's just an interesting change in communication dynamics.
It sort of makes sense for Teams, Slack, etc. where even if the person is available, they may not be prepared to receive a call for technical reasons. But a lot of people do the same thing for phone calls.
Update: Angry rant delivered as promised.
I've been calling my congressman's office to angrily rant at his staff every other day for the past few weeks. I plan to do the same tomorrow and Ukraine will be the topic of my rant.
Not sure if it will do any good since he's a shithead Republican and probably doesn't care about my opinion.
"Ah. It's this guy again. I'm just gonna boop his lure real quick so he knows that I know that it's him."
-- Some shit ass Bass at the bottom of a lake (probably)
J.D. hasn't figured out that he's only there because Mike Pence didn't want to risk a second assassination attempt.
The only Trump with any brains was Ivana and she's currently being stepped on by golfers trying to find their balls in the weeds.
Something that would actually help you? Lol. No. We can't afford that.
Some of the features you're looking for led me to switch to Quicken a few years ago. It's a legacy desktop app (Quicken Online sucks) and it's not very fast but it is still the gold standard for personal accounting software. I've honestly been happier with it than I was with anything else I've tried.
Thankfully Intuit sold it off so they can't enshitify it anymore.
To me it seems like the DNC has kept with the strategy of pushing the candidate that they feel has the most cross-party broad appeal. Both parties used to do that to a point. Republican's really began to pivot hard in the late 80's-90's.
Now we're at the point where there the GOP has embraced a cult of personality and anyone with half a brain or any moral fiber has either abandoned or effectively been exiled from the party. If Democrats were going to secure any more of those votes, they would have already done it. The third way Democrats are DOA whether they want to accept it or not.
Analog wrist watches. Seiko is my preferred brand and I have a few of them but my favorite is a Timex Indiglo from somewhere around 1989.
It was my grandpa's. It was the only watch he owned and probably cost $20 at the Walmart jewelry counter. The glowing dial still works 36 years later.
Yayoi Kusama’s Infinity Mirrored Room―My Heart is Dancing into the Universe at Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art.
Edit: Just to clarify, my stance here is not "ignore everything Trump." He has done and will do quite a lot of things that warrant attention and concern. He's also a serial liar and world class bullshitter. A human testament to the phrase, "actions speak louder than words." Donald Trump's political success has always hinged on the fact that people are quick to forget that. He's already working overtime to distract from the fact that the majority of his campaign promises were just lies and the sooner he can make the people who voted for him forget all the pie in the sky shit they were promised, the better.
We have a rather unique Christmas tradition in our family. Some people like to get those gingerbread house kits and decorate them. We like to decorate them and then turn them into a cookie catastrophe. We call them "gingerbread crime scenes" but they're really more along the lines of Shrek meets Apocalypse Now.
It's something we started doing when our oldest child was probably 10 years old so she wouldn't feel bad about accidentally wrecking her gingerbread house. It just became an annual tradition after that and we have a lot of fun doing it. They actually seem to get more creative every year.
This years episode is "Gummy Bears vs. Peanut Butter Perps" (the 'ginger bread men' are actually peanut butter cookies).
Finally sucked it up and replaced our worn out water pressure regulator. Installed a shut off valve as well so I don't have to shut the water off at the meter every time.
The old copper with globs of solder is not mine. Whoever installed the water lines when this house was built should not been allowed near any tools, ever.
Case in point:
The "average" American, much like the average human, is driven by "feels" rather than facts.
They will rail against "socialized medicine" because they live paycheck to paycheck, don't manage their finances in any meaningful way, and have no idea how much their healthcare is actually costing them. Spoiler: it's A LOT.
They will demonize immigrants because it's easier to blame random brown people for "stealing our jobs" than it is to hold giant corporations accountable for closing the plant and moving jobs somewhere cheaper.
They will gladly feed women's rights into a wood chipper over the idea of "saving babies", until that baby starts to make demands (on day one of it's life). Then it's an "entitled taker."
They will brag about America being the "greatest country in the world" and in the same breath, complain that we need to "make America great again", while completely missing the irony.
They will happily drink up as much propaganda as possible because it gives them someone to blame for their problems and allows them to believe that constant manufactured outrage is a solution, even though it's really just a distraction.
They spent so much of their time believing and repeating the lie that the United States is comprised of "rugged individuals" and that if things have gone poorly for you, that is somehow entirely and unquestionably your own fault. Upon finding that things have gone poorly for them, they can't reconcile this incorrect belief with the fact thar they didn't necessarily do anything wrong. This is incredibly and understandably demoralizing.
I'm painting with a broad brush here. Not every American thinks this way but a lot of them do. I don't really know what it's going to take to get us back on the right path but I think a good place to start is by taking notes from John Donne, the English preacher and poet who wrote, "No man is an island entire of itself. Every man is a piece of the continent. A part of the main."
I don't and will never sympathize with Nazis and fascists. I do understand some of the things they're frustrated about. The only way forward is for them to accept that in order for things to get better, it has to get better for all of us. Shooting holes in the someone else's corner of the ship only makes their corner sink a little faster than yours. I just hope they figure that out before we're all completely under water.