That's not only America. It's how it works here.
It is getting slightly better, but it is so very very slowly.
OK. Now I'm honestly confused. I wanted to make the claim that countries with minimal legal drinking ages had much more of a problem with alcohol, but it turns out that almost all countries have a minimum drinking age.
Which makes France and the U.K. confusing to me: Both of them are listed on that web site as having a minimum legal drinking age of 18, yet in both of them kids frequent drinking establishments, and especially in France it's completely normal to give your kids a small amount of wine with their meals if they want it. I know Impus Major's friend who moved to Germany was always able to have beer with a meal, but I forget whether he was under 16 for his first trip.
So maybe it's attitude and enforcement rather than law.
Limey, want to chime in?
The minimum legal age and the consequences of breaking the law vary greatly. It also may mean vastly different thing in various places. In some places the minimum drinking age is merely the age at which you can buy alcohol without supervision (and adult/guardian can provide you with alcohol without repercussions). In other places it is minimum age at which minor can be sold OR provided alcohol. There are places where minor drinking alcohol commits a crime oneself, and there are places where only person providing/selling alcohol commits a crime. And there are places where it's mainly an offence against licensing laws.
For example, in Poland selling alcohol to a minor is a potentially criminal offence, and is basis of cancelation license for selling alcohol. The minor don't suffer any direct legal punishment but it might be legal basis for putting the minor under the social services supervision if the behavior keeps repeating.
Legal guardians and their relation with the minor might be put under court-ordered social services supervision for failure to properly execute their duties but it generally only happens if there are persistent issues with the minor's behavior (noted as signs of "social corruption").
France (and possibly Germany) might actually fall under the category of "drinking age is merely an age at which people can drink unsupervised". Note that both countries have a very strong culture of drinking beverages with a low alcohol content—beer and wine.
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I feel bad as I am drunk at the moment.
We're on the beach in Kennebunk and NO ONE here is drunk as the local laws prohibit open containers on the beach and the police are here keeping an eye on everyone.
Okay, there is one group of Quebequois with champagne glasses, but they are quiet and well-behaved.
But we have cold local beer waiting on the porch at the house after we get all the small people to bed tonight.
The scene on this beach is mostly families with lots of littles, so the most illicit substance is sparklers.
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There is nothing funnier than driving with my 74-year-old mother in her big truck with the windows down as she is blasting her reggae Pandora station and talking at length about how much she likes Eek-a-Mouse (she once named a pet cat after him).
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I feel bad as I am drunk at the moment.
If *YOU* drink, I have no issues. It's when you first ask, then order me to drink, then get mad at me when I don't that I get uppity.
What does it say about me that I started to put out the trash this afternoon, realized it was the Fourth of July, and decided to leave it in the back yard until morning?
I live in a great neighborhood, but I don't trust people from outside of my neighborhood not to do a drive-by bombing of my trash cans.
Maybe it was my misspent youth...
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Came in tonight, and second shift said "No laundry tonight. Zip, zero, none." So I go back to check, and surprise! There's laundry waiting! So once again, he has lied to me.
Leave a note as you head home:
"Second shift said there wasn't any laundry to do, so I didn't do any."
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There are so many problems with that managerial quote. We both know them already.
How dressed-up is your resume? 'Cause that sort of treatment is deserving of a walkout, among other things.
*sigh*
I hate it right along with you, gran.
OOOOOHHHH!!!
Documentation. Painstaking notes and time-stamped photos. Email the tracked data to your manager. When nothing gets done or improves, send the full file to the manager's boss.
There is nothing funnier than driving with my 74-year-old mother in her big truck with the windows down as she is blasting her reggae Pandora station and talking at length about how much she likes Eek-a-Mouse (she once named a pet cat after him).
Please give your mom cookies for me
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Soooooooo proud of Impus Major... again.
Sure enough, he who is know to be known as "Alcoholic Boy" was determined to do 21 shots last night. Because hospitalization is "fun". Impus Major cut a deal with him: "As long as you can remember these 4 words, you can keep drinking."
The guy thought it was an easy deal so he made it. And got cut off after maybe six drinks. Then Impus Major wanted to take him somewhere safe so he could sober up for a bit before going home, so he brought him to our house and the guy thought it was a great idea.
In one night Impus Major prevented someone from likely alcohol poisoning AND reaffirmed our house as a safe zone where people can come to recover.
Did I mention I was proud of him?
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Soooooooo proud of Impus Major... again.
Sure enough, he who is know to be known as "Alcoholic Boy" was determined to do 21 shots last night. Because hospitalization is "fun". Impus Major cut a deal with him: "As long as you can remember these 4 words, you can keep drinking."
The guy thought it was an easy deal so he made it. And got cut off after maybe six drinks. Then Impus Major wanted to take him somewhere safe so he could sober up for a bit before going home, so he brought him to our house and the guy thought it was a great idea.
In one night Impus Major prevented someone from likely alcohol poisoning AND reaffirmed our house as a safe zone where people can come to recover.
Did I mention I was proud of him?
I love that boy!
Chip off the old block in the best possible way. :)| 3 people marked this as a favorite. |
Soooooooo proud of Impus Major... again.
Sure enough, he who is know to be known as "Alcoholic Boy" was determined to do 21 shots last night. Because hospitalization is "fun". Impus Major cut a deal with him: "As long as you can remember these 4 words, you can keep drinking."
The guy thought it was an easy deal so he made it. And got cut off after maybe six drinks. Then Impus Major wanted to take him somewhere safe so he could sober up for a bit before going home, so he brought him to our house and the guy thought it was a great idea.
In one night Impus Major prevented someone from likely alcohol poisoning AND reaffirmed our house as a safe zone where people can come to recover.
Did I mention I was proud of him?
Smart.
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Once you start dealing with COVID, it comes as no surprise that it's resurging. One of the people we visited and one of our trip-mates both have full-blown COVID. We've already amply demonstrated that the take-home tests are useless. GothBard, being the socially responsible sort, wants to get a rapid PCR test before going out. It turns out that insurance will no longer cover testing just because you've been exposed, so if she wants to get tested it's $150 out-of-pocket for us.
Call me pessimistic, but I'm guessing that most people, on being told, "Unless you have symptoms it'll be $150 to get tested," will choose not to get tested and will assume they're not contagious.
Just like the beginning, lack of testing and lack of concern leads to the virus' spread.
At least the modern variants are far less deadly than they used to be (better treatments and milder strains combined), but we really are at the point of, "At this point you can just assume you're going to get it once every few months. Deal with it."
If I got covid I got the asymptomatic variety.
Although I probably wouldn't know because I don't have a sense of taste or smell to begin with.
If I got covid I got the asymptomatic variety.
Although I probably wouldn't know because I don't have a sense of taste or smell to begin with.
I think I've documented our entire wild ride:
NobodysHome: Never had any symptoms, never tested positive.GothBard: Never had any symptoms, never tested positive.
Impus Minor: Never had any symptoms, never tested positive. This is particularly impressive because he was back to in-person classes this year and we got an almost-weekly notification that he'd been exposed, but none of his at-home tests ever registered a positive (no surprise) and he never got any symptoms.
Impus Major: A very questionable case at the end of 2021 where he had a strong reaction to the Moderna booster, developed myocarditis, and the hospital claimed he had COVID even though only one of their tests ever showed a positive and even a PCR test performed two weeks after his hospitalization came back negative. Then a pretty cut-and-dried case at the beginning of June where he had ALL of the standard "mild" symptoms. But again, only a single positive test at the doctor's office (they claimed they used an at-home kit), then three negative take-homes and a negative antigen amplification at a different doctor over the course of the next couple of weeks.
So our history of testing is a long series of (supposedly) false negatives, thus I have no idea whether anyone other than Impus Major has ever had it.
Soooooooo proud of Impus Major... again.
Sure enough, he who is know to be known as "Alcoholic Boy" was determined to do 21 shots last night. Because hospitalization is "fun". Impus Major cut a deal with him: "As long as you can remember these 4 words, you can keep drinking."
The guy thought it was an easy deal so he made it. And got cut off after maybe six drinks. Then Impus Major wanted to take him somewhere safe so he could sober up for a bit before going home, so he brought him to our house and the guy thought it was a great idea.
In one night Impus Major prevented someone from likely alcohol poisoning AND reaffirmed our house as a safe zone where people can come to recover.
Did I mention I was proud of him?
What were the words?!
After a few weeks of excessive heat we have rains for a change. The temperature is pleasant. I have groceries for a few more days so I don't have to go out for now.
Yay.
On the other hand, I have finished ice cream and cake. I will need to go without.
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Last night on the way home from the beach, Teensy Valeros was telling his cousin that he was worried about Santa.
"I mean, he's getting up there, and he's really fat and he smokes all the time."
Now Eve's daughter is also worried that Santa is going to kick the bucket.
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"As long as you can remember these 4 words, you can keep drinking..."What were the words?!
It's Impus Major. They were four multisyllabic nonsense words, of course. Things like, "Flibbertyjoof."
Alcoholic Boy was sure they'd be easy enough to remember since he put all his focus on remembering them. After 5-6 drinks, not so much...
EDIT: OK, I asked Impus Major, and Alcoholic Boy got through four "drinks", but from the description of them ("whiskey-based drinks served in full-sized glasses") I'm guessing it was closer to 8 "legally-recognized drinks". Which is enough to cause memory loss, so we'll see whether Alcoholic Boy even remembers last night...
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"As long as you can remember these 4 words, you can keep drinking..."What were the words?!It's Impus Major. They were four multisyllabic nonsense words, of course. Things like, "Flibbertyjoof."
Alcoholic Boy was sure they'd be easy enough to remember since he put all his focus on remembering them. After 5-6 drinks, not so much...
I'd probably forgot them without having to resort to any drinks.
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OK. Sober participant #2 showed up, and they were "nonsense-adjacent" words: Gazebo, Paragon, "Bazingas", and "one other that I can't remember".
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OK. Sober participant #2 showed up, and they were "nonsense-adjacent" words: Gazebo, Paragon, "Bazingas", and "one other that I can't remember".
I HUNGER.
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"As long as you can remember these 4 words, you can keep drinking..."What were the words?!It's Impus Major. They were four multisyllabic nonsense words, of course. Things like, "Flibbertyjoof."
Alcoholic Boy was sure they'd be easy enough to remember since he put all his focus on remembering them. After 5-6 drinks, not so much...
EDIT: OK, I asked Impus Major, and Alcoholic Boy got through four "drinks", but from the description of them ("whiskey-based drinks served in full-sized glasses") I'm guessing it was closer to 8 "legally-recognized drinks". Which is enough to cause memory loss, so we'll see whether Alcoholic Boy even remembers last night...
I just assumed the four words were "you can keep drinking" this might be why Wisconsin (and especially Madison) are known for binge drinking.
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So, I'm making super difficult cuts on pavers and I just get done with the hardest one and I look up from my work and there is this new lawn guy standing there, smiling, ready for me to give him a high five. So I give him a VERY confused high five and he pumps his fist in the air, extremely pleased with himself and genuinely excited, and then walks away.
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It really does irritate me how operating systems still don't recognize many simple "quality of life" steps that would be ridiculously easy to implement:
(1) Instant waking. Which is more common? Telling your computer to sleep and then accidentally moving the mouse so that it wakes up again and says, "Oh, you didn't mean to do that?", or telling it to sleep, realizing you didn't want it to, and frantically moving the mouse to try to re-awaken it?
I'd love a simple, "If you put a computer to sleep it'll ignore the mouse for the next 5 seconds," timer so that my computer would stop waking back up because I'm getting up from the chair and I bump my desk and the mouse jiggles a little.
(2) Focus stealing in the middle of typing. OK, Microsoft insists that focus stealing is an absolute necessity for usability. But could it at least check: "If the user has typed a key in the last 0.5 seconds then don't steal focus?"
How often are you in the middle of typing a password and some notification pops up, steals focus, and you have to start over because you have no idea where you were in your half-completed password?
NobodysHome's gripes of the morning (GOTM).
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I finally found out why Jose doesn't like me.
I had a bunch of the Latino guys working with me yesterday and I asked them "who has experience with pavers or installing patios?" Their answer "Jose".
So I guess it's because of jealousy or spite. It's not because I'm lazy or a jerk, I didn't even start messing with him until I'd determined he doesn't like me (I know how to say "you're an a&!&###" in 5 different languages, Spanish just so happens to be one of them) and then he started being lazy this year.
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Sometimes, you just gotta sigh and say, "Darwin."
Our 16-year-old cat with arthritis and kidney problems, while on a harness and lead, just caught a mouse in the back yard.
I am not mourning that mouse.
(Of course now she's all pissy with us because we won't let her bring it inside, but she can just sit in the back yard with it 'til she's good and done. No dead mice in the house, thanks!)
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I had a dream that I was visiting a city and NobodysHome was sort of my guide. Except he didn't look like himself. And the place almost certainly wasn't San Francisco.
There was also some sort of... T-Rex stalking around? It might had been mechanical or even made of trash. I don't remember anymore.
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I don't know whether to be touched or insulted. Cranky Calico's "gift" for us was the hind half of the mouse.
"Love you! Here's a mouse butt! Now let me in!"
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I had a dream that I was visiting a city and NobodysHome was sort of my guide. Except he didn't look like himself. And the place almost certainly wasn't San Francisco.
There was also some sort of... T-Rex stalking around? It might had been mechanical or even made of trash. I don't remember anymore.
I'm never the guide; I'm the enabler.
Shiro and GothBard will run you ragged into whatever random shop they see. They'll see some kind of weird store full of who-knows-what, and ask, "Should we go in there?", and I'll say, "Sure!"
I don't know whether to be touched or insulted. Cranky Calico's "gift" for us was the hind half of the mouse.
"Love you! Here's a mouse butt! Now let me in!"
How is she doing anyway?
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How is she doing anyway?I don't know whether to be touched or insulted. Cranky Calico's "gift" for us was the hind half of the mouse.
"Love you! Here's a mouse butt! Now let me in!"
Paizo ate my last post, but she's doing quite well, thank you. As of her April vet appointment her kidney numbers had mysteriously improved, but her weight is still too low so she's on permanent steroids. They make her happy and she seems content, so I'm good with whatever lets her be her.
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I could say a great deal about Current Events on our Sparkling Island Home, but since such discussions are not allowed on www.paizo.com, I will confine my comments to:
Ha ha,
And,
About bloody time, considering all the other b%*&~+@s he's got up to.
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Paizo ate my last post, but she's doing quite well, thank you. As of her April vet appointment her kidney numbers had mysteriously improved, but her weight is still too low so she's on permanent steroids. They make her happy and she seems content, so I'm good with whatever lets her be her.How is she doing anyway?I don't know whether to be touched or insulted. Cranky Calico's "gift" for us was the hind half of the mouse.
"Love you! Here's a mouse butt! Now let me in!"
Reminds me of Grandma S (Mom's side). She was using Ambien as a sleep aid. Doc was really concerned about addiction. Grandma looked at him and said "I'm 86 years old. If I want to be addicted to drugs I'm gonna be addicted to drugs!" Lived until she was 90, even though she broke her neck 7 years earlier while raking leaves.
I love jarred and canned foods. If you watch any of the multitude of specials that detail the scam that is "Sell By" dates, you can typically pick and choose expired foods that are likely perfectly safe and tasty. The general statement for jarred and canned foods is, "If the jarring or canning was done properly, the food can last indefinitely as long as the airtight seal isn't breached. However, some degradation of flavor may occur over time so jars and cans include 'Sell By' dates to indicate when they will be at peak flavor."
So I'm about to open a jar of curry simmer sauce that expired in 2015. I look forward to seeing how it comes out...
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I'm not sure what it says about me when a chiropractor stops what he's doing, looks at me, and says "Vany, there are days when you seriously creep me out."
I had just stretched and loudly popped the joints of my sternum and ribs unintentionally.
I'm not sure what it says about me when a chiropractor stops what he's doing, looks at me, and says "Vany, there are days when you seriously creep me out."
I had just stretched and loudly popped the joints of my sternum and ribs unintentionally.
Wait... Others don't do that from time to time?!
Though in my case it's more of cracking than popping.
I do those pretty regularly and the ones in my back even more.
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The General ended up giving me a full body massage after work.
One of the advantages of being married.