I just wish someone would admit that travel has inherent risks and we'll do what we can to minimize them without making everyone feel like they'd rather have stayed home.

Not just this, but let's stop fending off the LAST terrorist attempt. You know what the shoe & underwear & liquid bombers all have in common? THEY DID NOT BLOW UP ANY PLANES. They ALL failed. So why the hell do the rest of us now have to walk barefoot through full-body scanners without our bottled water?

We say "fuck" all the time around here but we don't say, "shut up" either.

That's our house all right. Expletives are sometimes necessary and/or fun. "Shut up" is just plain rude.

Also, what did you do for your bachelorette?

We had a party at my friend's makeup store. We had our makeup did and our nails did and shiny tinsel put in our hair! Plus ate snacks and cake and drank a lot of wine. It was very low key and also hilarious. Also, there was Lisa trivia! Then some of us went to a neighborhood dive bar everyone calls the Bloody Bucket for the funniest karaoke. I sang Like a Virgin which got a good response. Fun times!

Yay fun! That sounds perfect. When is your Actual Wedding again??

Now I am in a pisy mood, as I almost got hit by a car on my lunch break. This happened a month ago too. Both times I was walking in the crosswalk with the right of way. I'm kind of tired of random near-death experiences at this point.

tommyrot, was it the same crosswalk both times?

Facebook etiquette question: someone I knew from the freak-ass church days sent me a friend request a while ago (like as soon as I got on FB). And I ignored it. She sent me a kind of snippy FB message last night asking "Can I just ask WHY you won't accept my friend request? Your public posts still show up on my friends list and I have NO idea why!"

Is...that weirdly aggressive? I mean, isn't it just understood that if you send a friend request and the person doesn't reciprocate, you just let it lie and assume the answer is no?

I feel pressured to answer her, and really angry that she would be so aggressive about it. I kind of want to answer "None of your business. Perhaps the fact that I didn't accept the friend request for over a year should indicate my disinterest. NOW GO AWAY."

So my question(s) is: Is her agressive not-taking-a-hint e-mail weird? And should I answer it?

tommyrot, was it the same crosswalk both times?

No. But both were in Evanston.

If I had managed to get a license plate, would it be worth it to call the police? Even if all that happened was the police talked to the person and told them, "A pedestrian says you almost hit him," that would make me less grumpy about it.

And should I answer it?

Just say, "I am now communing with Satan and figured you didn't want to hear about it."

It's weirdly aggressive and she's not taking the hint, Teppy. I'd be tempted to send a terse reply saying "it's my choice and that's the end of it."

It certainly could have been phrased better, Steph, but there's also the possibility that she *has* taken the hint but wants to know why you feel the way you do so she can figure out if she's done something offensive or whether there's some general behavior she's unaware of that she needs to change. Not to get you back as a friend, but to avoid alienating others. I tend only to take the risk of asking such a thing of people who were reasonably close friends. It's not worth the risk to find out from casual acquaintances.

I had someone ask me the same thing once. I tried to sidestep it a couple times but he wanted to know. So I told him. It broke that casual acquaintanceship (and he was a mutual friend of a number of my friends) but it also stopped him from bugging me again.

Yeah, it might be worth being explicit one time?

I can't believe I don't have a good (bad) enough story for this Jezebel thread! [link] I've done so much online dating! I've got to be able to come up with something.