weekend open thread – November 30-December 1, 2024

by Alison Green on November 29, 2024

This comment section is open for any non-work-related discussion you’d like to have with other readers, by popular demand.

Here are the rules for the weekend posts.

Book recommendation of the week: Trust and Safety, by Laura Blackett and Eve Gleichman. Sick of NYC and searching for a more meaningful life, a couple buy a dilapidated house upstate but find rural living isn’t what Instagram had promised. Meanwhile, their attractive and deeply cool tenants seem to have landed in exactly the life they’d wanted for themselves.

* I make a commission if you use that Amazon link.

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  1. Ask a Manager* Post author

    The weekend posts are for relatively light discussion — think office break room — and comments should ask questions and/or seek to discuss ideas. “Here’s what happened to me today” personal-blog-style posts will be removed (because they got out of control in the past). We also can’t do medical advice here.

    These threads are no politics.

    Please give the full rules a re-read.

    Reply ↓
    2. Peanut Hamper*

      I cleaned out the refrigerator and the freezer, and sanitized the former. (Protip: pull out those crisper drawers. There’s probably a lot of junk under there.)

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    3. Past Lurker*

      A gingerbread latte from my go-to coffeehouse! Plus I finally found some of my favorite hand lotion for winter. I’ve been looking for several weeks now.

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    4. Red Reader the Adulting Fairy*

      I mentioned in the Thanksgiving eve thread that I was hoping to see the Candlelight Processional narrated by Josh Gad – I did this evening, and it was lovely!

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    5. Bike Walk Barb*

      Hearing a great horned owl on a walk with a friend in the big forested park near my house! And another one answered it. When we were farther in we heard a funny sound that turned out to be the owl’s alarm bark–likely because we were standing right underneath the trees it was in. Couldn’t see it, but we heard it!

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  3. Sunflower*

    Looking for suggestions on a plant (most likely fake) to decorate in lieu of a Christmas tree.

    I don’t want a Christmas tree for several reasons. I’m looking for suggestions on types of plants to look at to fulfill this. A Large, leafy, full plant I can put some lights on and ideally hang a few sentimental ornaments. Most importantly, the plant would stay on my floor year round. I don’t even own 1 plant so I’m clueless here but I like the look of banana leaf and Monstera. If you can also suggest where to buy quality fake plants – I’m not 100% opposed to real plants but not sure if I’m ready to commit to a real one just yet.

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    2. Chauncy Gardener*

      I used to have a ficus tree and kept lights on it year round and put ornaments on it during the holidays. I bet you could find a nice fake one!

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    4. EA*

      My grandma decorated a (real) ficus tree for years and years. Google says some people call it a weeping fig and that there are fake versions. Looks pretty with lights!

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      1. ImOnlyHereForThePoetry*

        I’m 3rding or 4thing a ficus. Structure wise they are better for lights and ornaments than the monstera or the banana leaf

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  4. sarah*

    Reading thread! What are you reading?

    I actually finished this weekend’s recommendation, Trust & Safety a couple days ago and wonder if anyone can recommend more in that vein, which is kinda light/funny but doesn’t feel like fluff because it is very well written. I find those two things are easy to find on their own but harder to find within the same book.

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    1. Nervous Nellie*

      Two for me this week. Just finished Paul Auster’s mammoth work ‘4-3-2-1’ that imagines 4 simultaneous but very different lives lived by the same person. It’s a bit of a tangle following the 4 lives, but the true cultural & political events described along the way in the 1950s-1970s helped. Greatly enjoyed, but the reviews are mixed. The audiobook is almost 35 hours long.

      For non-fiction, I am greatly appreciating Mark Schatzker’s The Dorito Effect. Do you feel that nothing tastes the way it used to? It doesn’t, and the author explains why and argues the medical & social consequence of blander mass-produced food at the same time that synthetic flavorings are becoming ubiquitous. Fascinating. The reviews in Goodreads add a neat dimension. It’s certainly influencing my grocery list.

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    2. goddessoftransitory*

      I’m in the middle of Interior: Chinatown, but have had to call a halt to start blitzing my annual Christmas reading, starting with The Doomsday Book, by Connie Willis. I also try to read a lot of short stories (including ones by Willis,) A Christmas Carol, and poetry. The space between Thanksgiving and Christmas is so short this year I’ll probably won’t have time, though (although I do have until January 6th, Epiphany!)

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      1. Squirrel Nutkin (the teach, not the admin)*

        You were the person who had a pre-Halloween reading list too, right? I love the idea of having scheduled yearly times to read old favorites!

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      2. Bluebell Brenham*

        I’ll probably re-read Interior Chinatown after finishing the Hulu series. I read it pre-Covid so have forgotten details. Jimmy Yang and Ronnie Cheng are great in the series.

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    3. Falling Diphthong*

      Rereading The Adventures of Amina Al Sirafi, a rip-roaring tale set on the Arabian Sea about 1000 years ago. Monsters, maps, pirates, smugglers–all over 40, when adventuring with a trick knee isn’t quite what it was in your 20s. But they need to get the old gang back together to pull one last job….

      (I am a sucker for that last line, and this is a really well-executed version.)

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    4. Squirrel Nutkin (the teach, not the admin)*

      Did not finish Edna Ferber’s *Saratoga Trunk*. It was a little stagy for me. I can imagine that it might make a better play or movie than it did a book, and someone here pointed out last week that it was indeed made into a movie.

      Loved Betty MacDonald’s *Anybody Can Do Anything*, about the various jobs she held during the Depression and about her relationship with her larger-than-life sister, who sailed through the Depression with supreme self-confidence. It has some nice slices of family life, and I think people from large families might particularly enjoy this book. Content warning for the rampant sexual harassment women faced in the 1930s. Yikes.

      Dipped into Kiese Laymon’s *How to Kill Yourself and Others in America* collection of essays. I always enjoy his work, which is uniformly thought provoking, but I think I liked his memoir *Heavy* even more.

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      1. Pam Adams*

        I read that Betty MacDonald, plus Onions in the Stew, and a biography of her. Interesting! What I haven’t read is The Egg and I.

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    5. Rara Avis*

      Edith Holler, by Edward Carey. The narrator is a 12-year-old girl who has never left the theater she lives in, in 1901 Norwich. Am interesting voice but not a lot has happened in the first 4 chapters.

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    6. word nerd*

      A lot of my read this week were so-so (sorry, Booker Prize winner), but I really enjoyed Highly Irregular: Why Tough, Through, and Dough Don’t Rhyme–And Other Oddities of the English Language by Arika Okrent, a linguist. It’s written in a light, entertaining way (including plentiful funny illustrations) with lots of geniunely interesting info about the history of English and how it got a lot of its quirks.

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    7. Tiny Clay Insects*

      I’m reading Love and Other Conspiracies, about an LA streaming TV producer working with and falling for a cryptic hunter. I’m interviewing the author, Mallory Marlowe, for my XFiles podcast in a few weeks so I had to be sure to read it. Luckily, I find it delightful! It’s a light romcom but has some very real, serious stuff (like the way the main character is coping with the damage from the way her ex treated her).

      I am having a rough November, and I always struggle with the dark this time of year, and this is a really bright, enjoyable read right now.

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    8. Summer Vines*

      I’m just about to start Nigger: An Autobiography by Dick Gregory. I really don’t know what to expect but I’m looking forward to giving it a go!

      Reply ↓
    9. ImOnlyHereForThePoetry*

      I just finished Floating Hotel by Grace Curtis. I found it by searching best sci-fi for 2024 (or maybe 2023 since it’s easier to find books that are not new releases at my library.)

      It was billed as a mystery – which it kind of is but not like a traditional mystery. I do recommend it. It was very interesting though it started off slow.

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    10. Bluebell Brenham*

      Earlier this week I enjoyed Last Gifts of the Universe by Riley August, even though I’m not a big SciFi reader. Also finished Claire Pooley’s How to Age Disgracefully, which was delightful. She also wrote Iona Iversons Rules for Commuting.

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  5. Jackalope*

    Gaming thread! What are you playing? Share your current games and give or request recs. As always, all games are welcome, not just video games.

    Yesterday a friend and I played a game called For the Queen. It’s a deck of questions and you have to answer the questions with a story you make up, until you get to the point where the queen is attacked and you have to decide if you defend her or not. It went a lot faster than the game creators thought it would, but that was okay. We had fun with it. Also, my spouse and I are playing coop Stardew Valley together and have nearly finished the spring.

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  6. Falling Diphthong*

    What are you watching, and would you recommend it?

    The Tourist, 6 episode season on Netflix. An Irishman in Australia wakes up after a traffic accident with no memory. Which is inconvenient when dangerous people keep showing up to try and kill him. This was really fun–it becomes a buddy road trip except that one person is awkward and one has amnesia, so they keep not quite executing the tropes correctly.

    Reply ↓
  7. wassailing*

    What are your during-the-day Christmas Day or Boxing Day traditions with your family, if you have any?

    My husband and I have a 3.5 year old and a 0.5 year old, and I’m thinking about how cool it is to start new family traditions. This year, as we have for the past two years, we’ll spend Christmas Eve at my husband’s parents’ house eating dinner and singing Christmas carols around the piano; then his parents and my parents will come over on Christmas Day for presents, brunch, and…something else! Probably reading time, a walk. Maybe some crafts? We live somewhere very cold but not reliably snowy at Christmas.

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    1. Ginger Cat Lady*

      Board games.
      One year (the year my daughter digitized all of them as a gift for me) we watched old home videos all day. My adult kids loved seeing (very amateur) video from our wedding, themselves as babies, etc.
      If the weather is good, a walk.
      Could be fun to do a thing where you ask the kids questions and record them. Things like “What’s something that happened that made you laugh?”
      “What do you think mom and dad do after you go to sleep?”
      “What toys do you like to play with and why are they fun?”
      Basically get them to talk on camera about their life.
      Then turn the tables and let them interview YOU on camera about your job, your hobbies, etc.

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    2. old curmudgeon*

      Traditions have a way of making themselves when you’re not expecting it.

      When my sister first separated from her ex, their kids were about 7 and 10 years old. Sis got an apartment in an old mansion that had been broken up into multiple apartments (typical student ghetto type place), and the elderly furnace went out the night before Christmas. On Christmas morning, Sis and both kids were freezing cold in the unheated apartment, so she grabbed their gift-filled stockings from the living room and brought kids and stockings into her queen-sized bed so they could all curl up together and go through the loot in the stockings.

      The stocking-gifts-in-Mom’s-bed turned into a tradition that they recreated every year, long after Sis bought a house and they moved out of the ramshackle apartment. In fact, it continued up until the kids went off to college.

      So even in seemingly mundane moments, find ways to make them memorable. And you’ll build your own traditions along the way.

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    3. Bike Walk Barb*

      A small but incredibly helpful tradition to start now–trust me, you’ll thank me. Tell them that kids stay in bed on Christmas morning until you come in with hot chocolate. If they have to get up to go to the bathroom they have to run straight there and straight back to bed. Why? Because that’s part of Christmas.

      I’m not the world’s best morning person. Doing this meant I could be at least half-awake when they squealed over their stockings and I’d had time to start coffee while I made the hot cocoa. If I’d fallen asleep early and hadn’t fully stocked the stockings I could make last-minute additions.

      This tradition has persisted so far into adulthood that when we were all visiting family a couple of years ago, my 28-year-old stayed in her bedroom waiting for me to bring hot chocolate. As a guest I didn’t know whether there were any cocoa-making supplies on hand so this was a mini-challenge but made for a great laugh when she called plaintively from behind the closed door, “Moooommm? Where’s my hot cocoa?”.

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    4. Double A*

      We’re not Christians or religious so I like to lean into the solstice/magic elements of the holiday. Growing up the “Christmas Tree Fairy” always brought us an ornament and chocolate on Christmas eve.

      I started last year, but I am buying a fairy door every year. (We have a local art gallery that sells locally made ones). I’m gonna figure out how to have the door appear near the tree on Christmas Eve so the gnomes can bring a gift (there’s also a shop that sells these cute little gnomes and I buy one every year). The the fairy door will move out into the garden after Christmas.

      We have a great little Main Street in my town that has lots of neat local arts and crafts like these so it’s fun to shop and feel good about what I’m supporting.

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    1. Stunt Apple Breeder*

      Deep cleaning the house! I cleaned the floors today, ran out of steam (both literally and figuratively), and called it an evening a little while ago. I’ll pick up more distilled water tomorrow for the steam mop.

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    3. Dark Macadamia*

      I just organized the storage room! It was getting pretty bad. Now I have a clear path to start getting out Christmas decorations tomorrow :)

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    4. Double A*

      Well, I’ve been off the past week but illness has passed through the house so I’ve been ok with just letting things go since even with 2 functional adults that’s the state of things with little kids. But I would like to actually put away the laundry (2 loads) and wash basically all our towels since they’re all out and I don’t really what’s musty and what’s not.

      Also maybe I will drop off some stuff at the thrift shop? I read should. it’s definitely something I’ve been putting off.

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    5. Snow Angels in the Zen Garden*

      I have an idea for some Christmas decorations that I hope to test making tomorrow. The end result will hopefully look like peppermints, and maybe some suckers, that I can hang on my porch walls.

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    1. Lizzie (with the deaf cat)*

      Ah, maybe it is already cleaned and he is just buffing it up a bit.
      Definitely a Christmas card-worthy picture!

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  10. Wide Width Purple Boots*

    I have been searching for a pair of purple boots to complete several dressy outfits, and am coming up short in a very literal way due to foot comfort specifics, not the least of which is a wide foot with a narrow heel!

    I would dearly welcome your searching skills.

    Requirements:
    -11 wide. (Widest part of foot is about 4″ across.)
    –This can translate to C or D width. This can also translate to 42 in EU sizes, at least for me – though I’ve found 43 is better.
    -Low heel – 1 1/4″ is my maximum. The flatter, the better.
    -I’d prefer an bootie, but could look at a smooth-topped (no laces or minimal laces) shoe, or a taller boot.
    –However, for a taller boot, I have athletic calves, as they say, which means 16″, which then means “wide calf.” Yay.

    So many leads have come up against my size being out of stock, or the color out of stock, or both. Or falsely advertised: Walmart marketplace amazingly has all sorts of everything I could want in a purple bootie, until you read the reviews. Grr.

    Reply ↓

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