I’ve been getting into having a pdf of the various manuals for things around the house on my phone. I recently consulted the manuals for my fridge, a new dehumidifier and the lawn mower and it was pretty awesome not having to find and dig out a paper booklet each time. My phone is on me all the time plus I can get rid of the paper copies.

Maybe I should give buckwheat a try, or shredded latex. I’m probably due for a change but lately I haven’t been able to afford any sleep disruption.

Most of mine came from a vendor called Pure Beech that was exclusive to Bed, Bath and Beyond. They are the 100% modal sateen that seems to have been a consumer favorite that doesn’t seem to be available anywhere. I have another set from Bedsure in their 100% bamboo that has a similar feel though.

I use down feather pillows, they are easily customizable but they can go “flat” and hard in the middle of the night. Putting your head down on a freshly fluffed one is utterly sublime, though.

I have fallen in love with bamboo rayon pillowcases, (aka modal, aka tencel, aka lyocell). They can be extremely soft and smooth like silk but are much hardier, so you can wash them like normal laundry.

That’s ok. I like to play music but guitar just isn’t that fun for me either. I have trouble remembering fingering and chords and it’s hard on my squishy delicate nerd fingers. The musical instruments I’ve been able to keep with and practice I did so because I just liked messing with them and making nice sounds. Did you make this post hoping people would encourage you to keep at it? You don’t have to keep at it if it’s not fun, you can sell the guitars to some local aspiring musician. What I would recommend is trying out some other instruments, maybe at a music store. Something drove you to try out guitar, maybe that creative spark just needs a piano, or a glockenspiel, or a zither or something else instead. Just… try before you buy next time.

You can achieve the same thing with a metal spoon dipped in hot water, like after stirring a fresh cup of tea. It should be hot enough to hurt but not to burn/damage your skin. I’ve been doing this trick for ages and it works every time :)

I went grocery shopping and realized the music was all stuff I liked and recognized. I even knew the words 😭

The last few times I’ve found music I like via a method that was repeatable was searching through tags on Bandcamp. If I was listening to something I liked, I could look at the tags (electro, downtempo, big band etc) and click a few of those to find similar music. As far as a filter for quality, the number of followers for a page might be a decent metric because the genres are extremely precise and niche, and most of the biggest artists don’t self publish. There’s some amazing stuff on there to be found.

Haha it was a funny dynamic, we had a heavily good aligned party, I was the only one out on my own as “evil”. However her whole shtick, as was slowly revealed, was that she had ambitions to take down the leadership of the cult and then replace them with herself and those loyal to her. This meant that the party, who wanted to generally find non-violent means of dealing with conflict, aligned just fine with her own goals of not killing too many of her future minions. So she always acted in what she saw as the best interests of glorifying Her Chromatic Majesty, while still working with the party to stop the cult. Our DM peppered in more dragons and encounters with dragon magic than were in the official books I think, and we all tried to solve them through stealth, negotiation and avoidance. She hated to kill dragons, but if we had no choice but to fight then so be it. If they were too weak to kill us they were culled! She didn’t mind stopping the ritual to keep her from ascending because she believed Tiamat wouldn’t want the world to end, and just wanted as much treasure and followers as possible. So in the end the cult of the dragon queen became the Church of Dragonology, and her influence on the material plane had a net gain 😋

Lol my first character was a cleric of Tiamat. My DM and I worked out a blend of PHB domains so that I had appropriate cantrips, spell unlocks and CD’s. It was a lot of fun playing through the Rise of Tiamat with her, haha 🐉

Janelle Monae is fantastic, an all around great creative person. She’s been getting recognition for her acting at least.

Don’t know your other artists but I frickin love emancipator. I’ve listened to every album hundreds of times, not exaggerating. Have you heard Kinack? Not the same but if you like one you might like the other. I’ll have to check out your list when I can use my good speakers.

Ok but you said “some of”, not “the” best, I wanna know which whiskey you’ve had that’s better than the $12,000 bottle!

It does matter if I ever needed to replace it 😬 I know I’d order some other teapot instead but I do love this one and I’d miss it.

It’s by Le Creuset, and they apparently rotate out most of their colors. So you can still buy the same teapot in a different color, which is what I ended up doing for my friend. The one I got was a limited run, it’s a pretty rich purple they called “cassis”, if you search Ebay for anything in that color the prices are nuts!

I had a friend over who complimented my teapot, I love it because it’s a nice color, good size and has a stainless steel infuser that fits inside. So I offered to get her one of her own only to find out that this particular color is highly collectible and worth 6-7x what I paid for it originally. Now I have a nice teapot I’m paranoid about anything happening to, haha.

My husband got an Oculus before they were bought out only to find out he gets motion sick with most games. I don’t get motion sick ever so he was excited to see me try out his library of cool starship and fighter games and all I ever play on it is beat saber, lol. The custom map scene is where it’s at!

Like OP, my camera, phones don’t cut it and the pictures I’ve been able to get of my kid with it have made it invaluable. I got the Canon Powershot MKIII and it’s gotten some professional quality shots of him and captured a lot of precious moments.

My electric kettle, I drink a lot of tea and it’s so damn useful. I got one with an all metal interior and no visible heating element, it has a bad pour but I still would have a noticeable dip in my daily quality of life without it.

This one is random but a three foot tall solid wood Balinese dragon statue. I got it at an import shop that was closing, it had some damage and so had been marked down and marked down again. I paid less than 10% of the original price of an intact one. We didn’t have a car so my boyfriend at the time and I had to take it with us on the subway. It’s like 75lbs. On our ~mile walk back to our apartment someone asked directions to a local Asian art exhibition and we had to tell them we didn’t know where it was while holding this thing between us. It’s beautiful despite the damage and it makes me happy every time I see it. Plus, whenever someone comments on it I have a fun story to share.

You’d probably mind if your ice cream had lead in it. Microplastics will be the lead poisoning of the new century. They’re carcinogens and endocrine disruptors and we don’t even know the full extent of the effects they have.

It’s my pick too. I’ve never seen another rendition I liked any better and it’s actually pretty loyal to the book. Caine’s Scrooge is actually very sympathetic and his character growth is really satisfying. It’s funny and wholesome and nicely grounded in what the holiday means to me personally. I’m an atheist but I love Christmas because of the reminder to share our appreciation and gratitude to the ones we love, and come together to share our good fortune or commiserate over bad. Plus the songs are so catchy.