small h

Geography is a construct.

I went to the Costco liquor store in Yonkers for the first time and bought Grey Whale vodka instead of gin by mistake. Challenge! Since I, too, mostly drink gin cocktails.

I have a hard time with morphine, but I'm fine with everything else. Maybe unfortunately.

This year's Byproduct (you only get one). With an absolute disaster of a homemade pickle spear - the whole batch came out mushy, and I am gravely disappointed. Well, the drink was good, anyway.

Same! I'm saving them for the apocalypse.

I was given Vicodin after wisdom teeth extraction, and I marched back to the dentist the next day and demanded real drugs. I got them, but there's only so many opioids I feel like taking. A couple of months ago I had an epidural for leg pain that did nothing. We can put a man on the moon...

The Sheep Detective. Cute, but not as good as I'd been led to believe.

Pain management tends to be pretty ineffective, at least in my experience, and obviously in hers as well. It sucks.

Potato salad with horseradish and dill, and a tuna melt.

A long-time friend of my sister's, a guest at many of our Thanksgiving celebrations, suffered from insurmountable orthopedic pain for many years, which had sapped her strength and her ability to engage with others. This week, she took her own life. I am furious that the medical establishment couldn't do more for her, devastated for her partner, and also relieved that she is finally at peace. Taking some time to be grateful for what I have.

Same. We went for a weekend at Resorts International on a Groupon. What I remember is people taking an enormous amount of crab legs and then abandoning them (this is in the Rao article as well); I was appalled. Because I trust everyone here knows how I feel about wasting food (I am against it). I had a pretty good meal, if memory serves. I ate all the crab legs I took. I have enjoyed myself at many buffets, from brunch at the Rainbow Room to some place in Koreatown (the name of which escapes me) to the Mid Hudson Buffet in Kingston. Now I miss Sizzler.

It is a very difficult situation. I had a friend who moved to Austin, and over the course of several years spiraled into mental illness and cut himself off from everyone: his partner, his lifelong best friends, the members of his family that hadn't already abandoned him after he came out (🙄). A mutual friend who works in supportive housing managed to find a placement for him - which he walked out of, and then disappeared. Calls to local hospitals and the coroner turned up nothing, and after a couple of years, we assumed he must have died. And then about 6 months ago, he "liked" one of my Instagram posts, and at first I thought he'd been hacked, but nope, that was him. He gets in touch with me and others very sporadically, and he's extremely cagey about his situation, but at least he's alive.

Is this a situation where you could steer them toward services that aid unhoused people?

Synopsis: Buffets are more expensive and scarcer than they used to be, and Tejal is bad at buffeting and also obviously grossed out by their clientele. Have a gift link: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/07/dining/las-vegas-buffets.html?unlocked_article_code=1.wFA.scI9.Pum4-iJzee0n&smid=url-share

Project Hail Mary, one of the better movies I’ve seen in recent months, although it’s kinda hard to follow the science (and I am not terrible at following science). Regardless, the story is very engaging and emotionally involving, and you’ll see homages to 2001, ET, Arrival and probably 50 others I didn’t catch. Ryan Gosling was very fine, and how nice to see Sandra Huller (of Anatomy of a Fall) and Lionel Boyce (of The Bear, we miss you already!).

I had a little time on my hands today yesterday. (The days are running together.)

I'll take "Things That Enrage Grammar Nerds for $600," Ken.

Yes, I've been noticing that for a while and strenuously trying to excuse my "side" because that's how I roll. Sigh.

If I were to go to a dark place, it feels like trying to normalize this behavior, and to inure us to being vilified. I am reminded of the scene in The Handmaid's Tale - a sequence about the run-up to the establishment of Gilead - when June is called a slut by a barista, randomly, seemingly out of nowhere. It's one incident, until it's not. Everyone please take a moment now to hope I'm wrong!

Fuuuck. I'm so sorry. I shared this a while back on another forum, and while the vitriol wasn't (initially) directed at me, it was still very troubling. I worry that this is going to get worse before it gets better. "H & I were on the bus yesterday, and a woman behind us was having a loud phone conversation with a colleague. During the course of it, she spoke of being the only non-Jewish person in a work group. Then she added that Jews were known to be liars and robbers. I turned around and told her that was offensive and antisemitic, and then she and my husband and I had a 10:00 fight about this, until she got off the bus. You can probably guess most of it: her conversation was none of my business, she can say whatever she wants because America, she’s sure I say similar things about other ethnic groups. Obviously this was profoundly upsetting to me, not just because people think like this - of course they do. But because they feel comfortable announcing it at full volume on a crowded M22."

Squid ink risotto with tomato, saffron and ramp butter. Despite having a difficult time extracting the squid ink, and the dish’s weird color, I am happy. Scallop aguachile on (most of, it had issues) an avocado wedge.

Oof. A rough assignment. We dared to leave our a/c'd apartment for this, and it was worth it.

Garden Gnome. Tarragon / mint syrup, gin, lemon juice. Needs a garnish, I see now.

The USQ greenmarket vendors dropped a lot of their prices today (I got kirby cukes for the relatively gentle cost of $2/lb), both as thanks to all who came out on a scorching holiday morning, and in an effort to get rid of their inventory so they could leave early. My fish guy threw me a free squid, and then tried to charge me $100 for a bag of ice. 🤣

How did we let this languish? Rectifying! Here's the whole shebang. Tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, sorrel, komatsuna, chard, and a mess of herbs. And here's my some of my apparently heat-loving (at least so far) herbs!