The most recent 20 comments posted to Making Light by joann:

TomB #36:

Whole Foods began in 1980 or 1981. Central Market didn't open until 1992 or 1993.

We hit CM at least once a week, and have since it opened. We tend to save WF for times we feel like we can handle the parking hassle and want to be completely surprised by what we find--IOW, about three times a year. Sounds like that's going to shrink.

I wonder what would be the reaction to a sliding series of BMI-based discounts for customers?

B. Durbin #325:

Just don't do the obvious and microwave the ants. Not if you want to avoid what we're still calling "that unfortunateness with the crockpot" decades later.

Ants will turn up in the weirdest places, including a Brita pitcher we kept out on the kitchen counter.

We finally dealt with them by going to the local Self-Chem and getting some sort of bait-traps (not Combat) that they recommended for pharaoh ants (the teeny-tiny things that will go for sugar for a while, then switch to fats, and then to water--or maybe in the other direction).

nerdycellist #132: I got a similar reward a couple of months ago. I spent mine on underpants!

Poor tactics, unless you were in the throes of an underwear crisis. I once got a Christmas bonus, spent it at the specialty shop down the street, and got a dress that was, it seems, so notable and perfect that when it came time for me to leave that place, the parting gift was a gift certificate to that shop. With which I bought something even more notable.

David #976:

Sounds like the intent is first to make sure there isn't anybody around who might conceivably need to take evasive action. Of course we all know this is total rot in practice ... It's beginning to sound as if I should never ever think of trying to drive in England.

Falconer $27:

Then what did they say about icosahedrons?

Serge #216:

It means I can no longer trust you--or any of your other recommendations. Alas.

Sam #97:

Do "books to be avoided because the author is just plain sloppy" fall into "author is foolish" or "author is a liar"?

OK, while everyone's answering computer questions, I want to disable the trackpad on my Samsung. (Yes, I already know how to do this.) It looks like it goes away completely if I do so, rather than just disabling itself until the mouse is unplugged. Since I've occasionally had issues with my USB mouse going temporarily non-functional until I go standby/restart, it looks like I've not got any escape route short of total shutdown/restart/pray if I disable the trackpad. OTOH, my typing position is such that I can't avoid hitting the damn thing, usually with results detrimental to the last paragraph I just typed.

What may I be missing?

Serge #623:

Have you tried Fn-uparrow? Although my Samsung has a dedicated Fn key, and the Dell does not, both respond to Fn-uparrow/downarrow keys

Rikibeth #84:

Not as dramatic, but we had aisle seats for the Celtic Christmas in the local (not huge at all) cathedral a couple of weeks ago. The proceedings (im)proper began with the procession of the pipes and drums down the aisle. Took a couple of minutes to recover our hearing ... and I *like* bagpipes!

Bill Higgins #65:

I'm a trained art historian, and I've got to get a copy!

(I'm sure I've mentioned the paper I sat through about fifteen years ago at the annual art historians' convention, about pictures of Jesus in living rooms across the US. Talk about your alien ...)

And hasn't the image of Betty Crocker also changed over the years?

Steve C #23:

Yeah, I was tempted to remind him that water is a solvent of serious proportions.

Ursula L #19:

I would have thought vacuum, too, had it not been for the spray bottle of clear liquid that he was brandishing. Maybe I should have said, "Looks like water!"

I had an interesting encounter with a door-to-door seller yesterday. He was flogging some magic cleaning substance. His kicker was: "It's chemical-free!"

I said, "Sounds like water to me!" and closed the door rapidly. That amount of laughter would have been rude.

John Chu #10:

The thing about the whole Sarantine Mosaic is that it's, well, a mosaic. You can't see up close what you can at a distance--i.e, after reading both parts. There are a lot of things that seem unimportant, or maybe extraneous, perhaps incomprehensible, that come back with a bang as you read the second half. In the first book, he lays out some tiles. In the second book, he puts in more tiles, and the picture changes, becomes impossibly deep and rich. It's not an Alexandria Quartet sort of production. Instead, time proceeds, narrative progresses; some events in the second book are reflections, via very oddly distorting mirrors, of ones in the first, and it's more a thing of many facts and events coalescing into a whole which cannot be totally perceived until you're done.

Epacris #294:

The Royal School of Needlework, which sounds moderately authoritative to me, limits their definition to "hand embroidery".

So a poetaster's output might be described as ... poetastic?

James #79:

Sounds like a plan. We've got one of those new-fangled thermostats that shows in-house humidity, and it was reading 40% today, which I personally think is more than a little on the dry side ...

Other cold weather hazard: really cold dry air drying out eyes, not playing well with contacts. After the control-tower Christmas lighting ceremony Friday night and walking round downtown Saturday in very cold dry windy weather, one of my eyes turned bright red and refused to accept its contact. OK by Tuesday, but looks like I need to remember to watch out.

Joel #117:

Back in the mid-90s, we had DSL installed. In addition to other idiocies (eventually solved when the phone people said "We'll need to talk to your ISP contact person", to which $SPOUSE replied "I *am* the contact person, start talking") they managed to leave the POTS part disconnected, a fact that we didn't discover for a couple of days. Shows how much we used the phone.

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