I have never heard of Spirit Day. No clue what it's about, or when it was.

Last year, when people were wearing purple to show support for LGBTQ youth and against bullying.

Congrats, shrift!

Oh, it wasn't in Natter. I met up with shrift & a couple of other Chicago friends at the restaurant, and we got weirdly hit on by a drunk guy who also behaved as though he was restaurant staff. I complained to my brother's co-owner, who was working that night.

Turns out it was a restaurant employee who came in on his day off because they were having a special function with a local brewery. And got pretty drunk.

Words to the wise: do not get drunk in the workplace. In case any of you needed to know that.

I suspect this is a special danger for folks who work in the hospitality industries...

Inexplicably, the Freecycle moderator has failed to put up my "TAKEN" posts, so I'm still getting impassioned pleas for a small brown ottoman and some sheet protectors. I had no idea the fervor they could induce. Many posts have come and gone since I have twice posted them.

Also, an eBay vendor accidentally sent my mother's present to Austria and a small china owl to me.

Oh, it wasn't in Natter. I met up with shrift & a couple of other Chicago friends at the restaurant, and we got weirdly hit on by a drunk guy who also behaved as though he was restaurant staff. I complained to my brother's co-owner, who was working that night.

Oh! Gotcha.

Congrats, shrift!

Slut Walk is totally different, IMHO. You don't have to dress slutty at a Slut Walk, and the underlying message is provocative clothing does not cause rapes (or something along those lines).

If I had not been struck with a migraine, I would have gone to the Seattle Slut Walk wearing my usual gothy-Victorian-cupcake wear, because I've been sexually harassed by wearing it.

I understand that cosmetics are historically fraught. But dammit, I'm with Allyson in this: my personal aesthetic is for ME. Other people seem to like it, which is a nice perk, but I do all this for my enjoyment and amusement.

Yay, shrift!

IcompletelyON, this is depressing for us U.S. workers:

Statutory holiday entitlement is the amount of time off work that an employer must provide its employees by law. Workers in the U.S. have no statutory holiday entitlements while employees in the U.K. have 28 days. U.S. federal law does not mandate pay for time not worked and holiday policies vary widely.

I see encouragement, which they're totally supposed to do

I don't like the thing they're encouraging, so I wish they wouldn't do it. How is that unclear?

I have no issues with individual people wearing any amount of makeup for individual reasons. But I think the idea of an organization ostensibly celebrating women's power by telling us all to wear lipstick is really fucked up.

I don't like the thing they're encouraging, so I wish they wouldn't do it.

Oh, okay. I just didn't see the harm or pressure in it, so from where I was standing, I wouldn't have cared if they were encouraging people to do it--I'd just skip it myself. I was over-reading into you wanting them to stop. I thought you meant they were doing a bad thing, not just a thing you weren't interested in doing (regardless of the cause they're talking about).

Yay shrift! And did you ever email about the military thing? Because I haven't seen one. I had lunch with my dad (which involved a long discussion of some admiral I'd never heard of) and it reminded me.

I just won a Yankee swap! By "won," I mean that what I brought was the most popular -- traded the most times, and ultimately taken by the person who could choose anything -- AND it cost me $2.50 at CVS just prior to the party. AND I ended up with microwave popcorn which I will totally eat, and a scratch-n-sniff book, which makes me laugh. Sweet.