I love maps. I love reading maps. I love following along with our various state gazetteers as we do back and dirt roads to find cool fishing spots and pigment gathering places.

Ugh. Disturbing indeed. At the time this happened, I found it hard to read some of the articles about it because just imagining it was awful. I don't know that I want to know more than I already do. 😞

Interesting article. I am a bit of a contradiction because I really dislike great rooms, but in our new house, the piano will go in the dining room and we’ll put our dining table at one end of the living room, from which you can also see the kitchen. -_-

Although at least there’s a half wall b/w the kitchen and the living room, so it’s not as open as those in houses being built today. But it’s still pretty great room esque…

Ax, agreed. But in the absence of that, moving to prevent medical debt from appearing on credit scores is a good thing

Exactly!!

Ok I think it’s a sweet shrub, also called an allspice bush (but not actual allspice). It says we can trim it, but probably not until late fall at this point. Apparently they get quite large, so these bushes must be pretty mature.

@wtg You’re welcome!

My best friend, who lives in Sequim, had (I think) what you described as the minimally invasive laminectomy/microdiscectomy. She had to go into Seattle for the surgery because.... that's where you go for major surgery when you live in Sequim! (There aren't many doctors, and far fewer specialists on the Olympic Peninsula). I don't know the details of her problem, but I do know that the surgery did resolve her pain issues.

I'll be talking to her soon and can try to get more details, though it sounds like your back problems are a bit more complicated than hers. Hoping you can get some relief from the pain. Back pain is the pits, to say the least. Yours sounds like a real challenge.

@Big_Al I will try to get there and take some pictures, too.

I looked up the obit for the owner (the listing said it was an estate sale). I can just imagine the parties that were held in that house.

https://www.friedrichsfh.com/obituaries/John-Meinert?obId=30271710#/obituaryInfo

Wheeling Township Cemetery, where he is buried, is a little cemetery just a block from his house.

It’s a big decision. No sense in rushing things.

Thanks everyone! Yep, it couldn’t have worked out better! And I’m so glad we didn’t do an actual wall there instead, esp. given how nice the room is down there.

And I am glad we got it installed now, before we moved. It’s definitely safer, and it’s one of those things that if you didn’t do right away, it would just stay that way forever. Until someone fell off the stairs 🙀

@ShiroKuro Awww, thanks!

If anything the court has leaned toward reducing the power of the executive branch.

Sarah Isgur, one of the another’s of the piece, has long talked about 3-3-3, evaluating them in two dimensions with the x axis being ideology and the y axis being institutionalism. Roberts is an institutionalist above all, to the occasional disappointment of conservatives.

I was totally expecting @Mik and/or @jon-nyc to chime in...

Good suggestions; we haven't had bananas around the house for a while.. The Costco organic bananas are great...they look a little green but they always taste wonderful. And they have a little plastic wrapped around the stem end that keeps them from ripening too fast. They're the poor man's version of these Nana Hats that were on Shark Tank a while ago:

https://nanahats.com/

😆😆😆

Ah, found the solution. The part of the window with the x was off the top of the screen. If I grabbed the bottom of the screen and pulled it up, the top appeared and I was able to resize the window to make it all visible. It must be some setting I have, because everytime going to a chat, it appears the same way off the top of the screen.