Recent Comments

1. about 24 hours ago on Breaking Cat News

   I was just reading about the bomb cyclone over on Penny Arcade! It sounds like you all were well prepared, although it’s a shame to lose the trees even if they weren’t the “right” trees.

   The longest we’ve been without power was what they call “Hurricane Elvis,” a derecho back in 2003 which reached the power of a category 2 hurricane. My husband and I were emphatically NOT prepared for a long term outage, so we just piled the cats in the car and the expensive stuff out of the fridge into a cooler and drove north until we could see lights from the highway. Then we stayed in a hotel with a full kitchenette for two weeks until our neighbor said our power was back on. This was at a time when our finances were unexpectedly flush due to crunch time on UT 2004, so being able to kick back with air conditioning in a new place was like a mini vacation. I’m just grateful we were able to afford to do it since at many other times in our lives we wouldn’t have been able to.

2. 1 day ago on Frazz

   Y’all, Happy Holidays started because New Year’s is also a holiday and happens one week later. It wasn’t originally anything to do with inclusivity, forced or otherwise. It was because people literally used to send greeting cards which said “Have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!” to people they hadn’t seen in a while. I guarantee no one in the 40s and 50s sending Happy Holiday cards was thinking about inclusivity.

3. 8 days ago on Luann

   I just had an old friend die after going on hospice with kidney failure. He had lived for seven years on dialysis but he also had his own home machine and his wife was trained to use it. He was also not old, but was in kidney failure mainly because of being massively obese, which may have given him an advantage over people who are very elderly.

4. 8 days ago on Luann

   I hope it goes well for you! That is rough over the holidays but at least you’ve got a good attitude.

5. 8 days ago on Doonesbury

   Checked, not check. Hate when autocorrect tries to make me sound ignorant.

6. 8 days ago on Doonesbury

   Is it really indexed to inflation in the real world, though? I keep hearing that grocery prices are up 4% or something, when mine have literally tripled. In all seriousness I just check and groceries are supposed to be up 25%, in other words they cost $125 for what used to cost $100. But if I look at individual prices of items, many have tripled or quadrupled. I’m not sure how their indexing works but it isn’t functioning in a reality-based way.

7. 8 days ago on Luann

   In all seriousness I had one of these moments. I was suffering from undiagnosed lupus at the time and could barely walk without my heart racing because of inflammation. It was New Year’s Eve and I decided to make Hoppin John because of the belief that each black eyed pea you eat on New Year’s means a happy day in the new year, but I couldn’t even walk to the back of the store without sitting down and they were out of peas. So here I am sitting by the magazine racks at the front of the all-night Walmart when I see a couple of kids hiding behind the racks pointing and giggling at a man with two bionic arms. He called for them to come out and explained that he had been an electrician when he ended up being burned by a live wire, and that he was so lucky to be alive and to have two wonderful bionic arms. He was so cheerful and so happy that I felt terribly weak for being so pessimistic, and I resolved to try to do better. And then the stocker brought me some peas he found in the back!

8. 8 days ago on Doonesbury

   When I worked as a waitress in college I could fill my tank for 5 dollars, now it’s about thirty. Tip wage? $2.13, today the same as then.

9. 8 days ago on Doonesbury

   Kinda tough for those on fixed incomes though

10. 8 days ago on Doonesbury

    I don’t want to drink non-floridated water and catch brain worms! Ahhh me… what a mess