I have points. I could use some in person small town gossip. :-P

With that said, that's the bad kind of exciting. My female friends including yourself have been *excellent* wives to their lucky husbands.

*Sees other mens' wives being a bit too exciting.*

Um, how exciting were those other women?

I saw my old friend this weekend, and she's also a book person.

I suspect her husband is quite content at her book addiction, given that other women have far more expensive and distracting addictions.

Stella Markle. :-)

I've generally argued that you're probably better off paying for long term care insurance, but in a cold sense, once you need LTC, who will help you to fill out the form? :-/

I'm generally meh about using kids as bail out options, but I'm biased. Sometimes, your kids resent you and want nothing to do with you, other times, your kids become meh adults that can barely support themselves, and sadly in some cases, they're not available. :-(

*Nobody wants to use the toilet on the sidewalk.*

From what friend tells me, the number of people peeing in public in NYC has spiked up given that a lot of the public bathrooms never reopened after the pandemic due to the fear of homeless guys using them and sometimes "camping out". :-/

FWIW, my brother worked from home, and he stayed in shape because he no longer had a commute, so he had extra time in the day to do exercise routines, but as you noted, it's the people that had those routines before that continued them into the pandemic as best as possible given the limitations.

It was the same thing here in NYS as well, but I would have presumed that Germans would have just walked around aimlessly.

OTOH, as you noted, if everything is closed and most exercise is of the natural form of just walking to shops and such, the loss of that means the loss of physical and mental activity for many people, especially the elderly who were probably scared to death out of doing anything…

That's the one thing I wouldn't have expected from Germany, especially since the German pandemic restrictions were never as harsh as the English or French lockdowns.

I need one of those passports from said broken Caribbean state for it work. Otherwise, somebody will figure out that I entered with an American passport.

Yes! :-)

Speaking ill of Bill Clinton was grounds for an argument with her. That was *her* president, and she’s been in the states since Nixon. FWIW, like my mom, she wasn’t crazy over Obama, and I suspect because he beat Madame Clinton…

And you would have become persona non grata to my grandmother for that one…

They do charge admission. It’s called the application for a permanent visa.

I never quite made the leap into the 32 bit era for some reason, and my brother’s skill set surpassed mine making competitive gaming a little pointless.

It’s weird, other than my SC4 binge, I really haven’t played games in years. I’m a weird outlier given that I’m not athletic but I’m not a gamer either. Makes for some “so what the hell do you do at home” conversations at work.

*strategic computer games*

I spent waaaaay too much of the pandemic playing SimCity 4.

All it needs is Plushie Instagram and Twitter to show up and ruin everything with cuteness.

Very much so. An activist wanted 15% for my friend's union to make up for previous losses, but people wanted at least 10% per year as a solid effort, or at least some non-cash substitutes such as more days off.

Instead, they were told 3% per year, the retirees get worse care, and we'll help the pregnant women go on maternity leave with worse leave options than white collar employees in the same agency.

The real problem is that nobody wants to hike taxes to pay for these inflation matching raises, some bargaining groups have better PR than others, others better negotiators, and the old trick of "we'll make it up to you in retirement" doesn't work anymore. So they just make the workers eat a de facto pay cut while wondering "why do we have a recruitment problem?"

The cops got 3.5 instead of the 3 & cash bonus. Both roles have sizable overtime, so the cops will win in the long term. The teachers were told they would just accelerate the process to top pay sooner.

My friend and his coworkers feel *very* cheated right now by their union leadership…

Yes, but they don’t know that. :-)

If you have minimal bills, you don’t feel inflation in the same way that somebody supporting a family feels it.

Coincidentally, my friend’s union sold a 3% increase plus a cash bonus as a “win”. He’s not in agreement given that other unions saw larger increases. :-/

I suspect if you’re new to investing and the bank is offering 4% savings rates with zero chance of losses, it sounds perfectly acceptable.

When you no longer have those rates, but you desire financial growth, then Bitcoin and other investments start to look compelling.