Tracy: Well-- That call -- That call means you just murdered me. Mal: No, son. You murdered yourself. I just carried the bullet a while.

'The Message'


Natter 78: I might need to watch some Buffy for inspiration

Off-topic discussion. Wanna talk about corsets, duct tape, butt kicking, or physics? This is the place. Detailed discussion of any current-season TV must be whitefonted.


Trudy Booth - Jul 30, 2025 9:14:39 am PDT #8525 of 8557
Greece's financial crisis threatens to take down all of Western civilization - a civilization they themselves founded. A rather tragic irony - which is something they also invented. - Jon Stewart

Trudy, if you get another chance to escape this summer, come to Otter Lake!
Oh I would love to.


-t - Jul 30, 2025 9:44:01 am PDT #8526 of 8557
I am a woman of various inclinations and only some of the time are they to burn everything down in frustration

Today I hit a "there's only one posible word left at guess 3 and still needed to guess 5, so. Spelling Bee I am only at Good

I am boggled at thinking of 4 12-year olds together at a beach house. The potential for mischief and shenanigans seems high!


Laura - Jul 30, 2025 9:48:31 am PDT #8527 of 8557
Our wings are not tired.

I did fine on all the puzzles, except for Connections, which was impossible for my brain.


Trudy Booth - Jul 30, 2025 9:54:09 am PDT #8528 of 8557
Greece's financial crisis threatens to take down all of Western civilization - a civilization they themselves founded. A rather tragic irony - which is something they also invented. - Jon Stewart

We rarely have all at once, but the current available kid count is a 15 year old girl, four 12 year old boys, two 10 year old girls, individual boys of 10, 7 and 4 (those last two are ND - but increasingly verbal!) and a 5 year old girl.

Its... merry.

They're remarkably good kids - plenty of mischief and shenanigans but nothing ever dangerous.


JenP - Jul 30, 2025 10:02:43 am PDT #8529 of 8557

Soj ddike a fab vacation, Trudy. So glad you could do it.


DavidS - Jul 30, 2025 10:03:18 am PDT #8530 of 8557
"Look, son, if it's good enough for Shirley Bassey, it's good enough for you."

Oh man, people not reading emails makes me crazy

The biggest source of aggravation for JZ at her job, especially since she had to send out very detailed and concise emails in advance of the case conference (covering all the upcoming surgeries that week) and invariably she'd get replies back asking about things which she had clearly addressed in the email.

Which made her do the Charlie Brown "Aughhh!"

I read that combining blueberries (antioxidants) and walnuts (omega 3) had positive synergistic benefits (good for your brain), and combining oats and Greek yogurt also provided extra benefits, so I put it all together into my daily mug of oat bran.

Fighting biological entropy with nutritional strategies!

I don't want to live forever, but I want to be as functional as possible during my allotted span.

My Monday morning and Tuesday afternoon Pilates kicked my ass and everything is sore.


dcp - Jul 30, 2025 10:30:05 am PDT #8531 of 8557
The more I learn, the more I realize how little I know.

people not reading emails

I found that two things made this even worse. 1) People using their phones for email tended to skip a lot of text. 2) People who only read the subject lines, and not the bodies of the email.

Soooo many times I was tempted to reply, "You have demonstrated failure of reading comprehension. Try again."


Dana - Jul 30, 2025 10:48:15 am PDT #8532 of 8557
I'm terrifically busy with my ennui.

This wasn't even email! This was a chat!


Atropa - Jul 30, 2025 11:19:51 am PDT #8533 of 8557
The artist formerly associated with cupcakes.

I just thought when I said "DON'T SEND THIS TO THE CLIENT YET," that my coworkers might read it.

:: laughs bitterly ::

One of the parts of my managerial life is telling people on customer-facing teams that NO, they can't share that information with customers just yet, who said they could, thanks I'll go have a conversation with that sales rep, NO don't share that information yet.

That and meetings. So many meetings.


lisah - Jul 30, 2025 5:37:04 pm PDT #8534 of 8557
Punishingly Intricate

Is anybody else finding the Bee impossible today??