Salem to Sacramento shouldn’t take that long unless there is gnarly traffic. As a kid, my family regularly did San Jose to Seattle in 16 hours.

The US is a huge place with lots and lots of different types of communities. From my understanding, some of the older cities on the east coast may have old town walking districts that are probably more like what you’re used to.

I will give you a personal example. I live in Silicon Valley, not in San Francisco or Oakland but rather in what some might call a suburb of those cities, though my “town” has over 80k residents. I live in an area of my city that was once unincorporated and is about two miles from the old town city center. The closest grocery store is 0.7mi from me according to Google maps, and it’s a small family-owned grocer that I’m super happy to have. The larger supermarket is a mile and it’s down a large stroad.

It takes me about 45 minutes to drive to SF with no traffic. If I want to go to Los Angeles, it’s a six hour drive minimum without traffic going 80mph.

Because of the angle, at first glance I thought those bottles to the left were defying gravity and sitting on the side of your cabinet.

So will an earthquake. It may be “cheap” but we do it that way because it’s light. At least in California. That way if it falls on you, you might not die.

I’m from California so my wealth meter is broken beyond all reason. Is 1.1 million euros really considered “rich?” Everybody’s making jokes about wearing a monocle or not asking questions about flooding and I’m sitting here thinking about the house on my street that sold for about that much recently…and is a tear-down. 😭

Edit: actually wait, it was more like twice that much… it was like $2.3 mil and there’s no way they do any less than strip it to the framing.

We do have solar, which doesn’t cover everything but covers some. Either way, we figure if we use the more efficient car, less goes to PG&E than if we were charging the larger car more frequently.

Thank you, with the brain comment my mind went immediately to the brain worm and I was super confused because I highly doubted AOC would have ever endorsed him.

Wouldn’t that be great? I think some fancy cars do it, but not ours. To be fair, it’s a small price to pay for giving gas companies and PG&E less money.

We have two electric cars, a big one and a small one. The small one is “mine” and the big one is “his.” However, we both work from home so the only commute anymore is taking the kids to school. So, whenever possible, we take the little one because it’s more efficient by far. He doesn’t mind and thankfully it saves seat profiles, even if we always have to adjust the mirror.

I’m not saying it’s always the right idea to stay with someone in this sort of situation. But the fact that you did was probably a major reason she could be successful. She knew she had support and that is so, so important.

There is so much that can go wrong with human-built bird houses. When I was a very young adult, I worked for a retail bird seed store and learned all sorts of things about backyard birds in order to be able to help customers. One of the things I learned was how specific houses needed to be for each type of bird. One of the major risks was that building it incorrectly would make it easier for predators to get at the nest, for instance. It also mattered where you installed it.

Now that I’m in my 40s, jaded and skeptical, I kind of wonder if some of that was all marketing (oh the wren house is different from the bluebird house so maybe you need both?) but the franchise did really seem to have good intentions. We didn’t make most of our money on that stuff anyway. The real money was in the ongoing fancy birdseed purchases.

Anyway, I can totally see why the material of a birdhouse would matter. I wonder how much good man-made birdhouses are in general?

(I have not seen them but) I feel Pierce Brosnan was born at the wrong time. So much of the cinema in the 90s was so campy. Just comparing 90s Bond to modern Bond, there’s a big difference in tone. Then again, maybe it’s actually his preference; he did do Mamma Mia after all. I can just imagine him as a more serious actor and would love to see it. How does the Thomas Crowne Affair rank in that way?

My gen alpha kids got it in 3rd grade. Or rather one did and one is about to.

I have an iPhone and whenever my Android-owning friend sends me something, it’s a tiny thumbnail of a photo. So yeah, goes both ways.

To be fair, most English words aren’t even really English

Does it count when the photographer is taking a picture of the sign and the cheese just happens to be in the frame?

As someone who always spells it wrong, I must tell you how much I appreciate “fuhshchias”

Also hummingbirds love my fuchsias.

We have 8 and 10 and we have just been thinking that maybe the 10 year old could handle it. Sadly the 8 year old is really sensitive so no time soon.

The guitar one made me physically cringe because it felt the most damaging. The camera and eyeglasses can be cleaned; the orange juice could be thrown out and replaced. I suppose you could restring the guitar but it just feels like there’s a potential for further damage somewhere on the bridge or the other parts I forget the names of.

We added onto our house and our contractor suggested flat and I vetoed it. Eggshell at minimum, please! I don’t do trendy. So happy to have insisted.

All of our trim is in Swiss Coffee though, lol. The funny thing is, I’d much rather have dark wood trim but that would cost a fortune. Maybe someday I’ll improve my DIY skills enough and do it myself.