... that they told us that if the water's too cold, you should save energy by turning the cold water down before turning the hot water up.
So, taking this to its logical conclusion, if the water is cold, turn the shower off. Sensible enough, but you need to add the part about "Then call a plumber".
My apartment in graduate school had such terrible water pressure that occasionally, when the pressure dropped, it would turn off entirely. It was over a year before it occurred to me to do something about it. I was a bit slow then. A plumber fixed it to a more reasonable level.
When the pressure was very low, one of my cats used to get in the shower with me, and just hang out at the dry end. I kind of enjoyed that.
they told us that if the water's too cold, you should save energy by turning the cold water down before turning the hot water up.
How do you do that if the water temperature is controlled by a single knob?
3 is an excellent question. I can't remember the last time I encountered a shower with two knobs for hot and cold.
Our shower has one knob for cold and one for hot but not two for each.
How is turning underwear inside out less gross than just wearing one for two days in a row?
At confirmation camp, they told us that one paper towel got your hands dry enough and using two was wasteful. To this day, I still feel guilty if I take a second paper towel in a public restroom.
George Washington's shower had like thirty goddamn knobs.
To this day, I still feel guilty if I take a second paper towel in a public restroom.
Mission accomplished.
8: Merry Christmas! (I can say that because (a) confirmation camp and (b) Trump.)
Very Specific advice: I taught my kid how to pour stuff into a hot liquid (like, rice into boiling water, or chopped potatoes into simmering broth) without the liquid splashing up on you, by using a large spoon to deflect the force of the pour. (This is easier to demonstrate than to describe.)
Sadly, I showed her almost every time we cooked, so that eventually she started rolling her eyes and saying, "I know, MOM, I KNOW."
In high school, I liked to whisper to my friends, upon getting in the car with my dad, "wait till there's traffic. Then my dad is going to say, 'I like to always keep one thumb on the horn, in case some jerk suddenly does something and you need to wake him up.'" He always came through.
My grandmother taught me that nightmares are caused by not peeing before bed. Now I can't fall asleep unless I've peed immediately before getting in bed.
I know I've said this here before, but my father told me to never arranged to meet anyone except in a bar. That way, when they're late, you're already in a bar, rather than freezing on a streetcorner.
Plus, you'll never meet a Baptist.
My dad said he never knew a veterinarian who ate joss steaks rare. I'm not sure what I was supposed to do with that, but I've always refrained from learning about bovine diseases.
Heebie promised to post about her brother's advice and sure enough comment #2 is about a pussy getting wet.
18 is so gross, but so is the actual advice, which was: never sit on a boy's lap at a party because they might have sex with you.
Young heebie: through your pants?
Brother: if you're wearing a skirt.
Young heebie: through your underwear?
Brother: if you're not wearing any underwear.
Young heebie thinks, "I guess all those factors - being on a boys lap with no underwear and a skirt and a penis slips inside you - are all things that can happen without you noticing. Weird."
Very specific advice given: One of my then high school or early college age sons got arrested (by an off duty asshole officious college police man who had nothing better to do when driving home at nioght) with two friends for pot possession while they were smoking up in a car they parked just off a back road right next to some woods. I pointed out to him that somewhere between 30 to 50 million people smoke weed in the USA without getting arrested and he needed to change his approach. Specifically: get the f* out of the car and walk 25-30 feet down the path in the woods so that when a police car stops and they get out to check what's going on, you just throw the pipe, joint whatever into the woods. If they ask anything, tell them you got out of the car to take a piss and then refuse to answer anything beyond showing ID if they request it.
Curtsey while you're thinking. It saves time.
I recently mentioned this in the comments, but: Always draw the unit circle before you draw the axes, on the chalkboard. It's easier to aim the axes through the middle of the circle than it is to center the circle on the axes.
14 I'm sorry to inform you but you've hit middle-age.
15 Your dad is wise.
4: I know ahem a house in Cambridge with exactly this problem
Two friends got busted smoking weed on the street in New York and spent a long night in a holding cell downtown. The arresting officer told them, "Smoke at home, boys. Smoke at home."
Given my own relationship with weed, walking 25 feet into dark woods to smoke it sounds like a wonderful, awful idea.
Ooo, specific advice from my father, which I have always followed: Never buy a car from a parking lot.
If chickens, pigs, and dogs do not miss their breeding season, then those who are seventy can eat meat.
Some somewhat specific advice from my mother:
Always wear clean underwear, because what if you were in accident, and what would the nurses say?
Relatedly: never use a safety pin to pull together what should only be mended properly with a needle and thread; and ah, no, now, that's a dirty Irish trick: and what would nurses say?
Never wear red shoes, because no nice girl ever wears red shoes, and the men might think you were advertising something, or something like that.
And never wear white shoes before Victoria Day, nor after Labour Day, of course.
If you find yourself driving a car that is spinning into a slide on ice, always drive your car into the direction of that slide, and then gently, slowly disengage...
Never use an electric mixer to mash potatoes. Only a wooden spoon, if you want to mash potatoes properly.
Never turn someone away from your table. There is always room for one more at your table, after all...
||
After Ajay,
Scrooge gazed up at the enormous face. Many years it had taken him to learn what kind of smile was hidden beneath the white beard. O cruel, needless misunderstanding! O stubborn, self-willed exile from the loving lap! Two nog-scented tears trickled down the sides of his nose. But it was all right, everything was all right, the struggle was finished. He had won the victory over himself. He loved Christmas.
|>
Specific advice from my mother: Spend money on a good vacuum cleaner.
From my father: Punch bullies straight on the nose. It really hurts them and the shock stops retaliation. [I was six. I tested the advice. It worked]
Also from my father: When you're hungry, remember that hunger pangs pass in an hour or two.
Don't start to smoke. I saw people trade food for cigarettes in the PoW camps.
When you're reading in a foreign language and you hit a word you don't understand, try to make sense from the context and only then look it up in a dictionary.
From some now anonymous teacher: at the beginning of an essay question, just spend five minutes writing all your ideas down before you put them in order.
It's hard when a bot thinks you're a bot but really you're not.
"It's nice that this guy wore clean underwear. You can tell from the bit that didn't get spattered with shit when he emptied his bowels because he got hit by a car."
Don't start to smoke. I saw people trade food for cigarettes in the PoW camps.
My farher said he could trade two cigarettes for somebody's entire chocolate ration.
15. I received the same advice from a Dominican friar who was a noted Professor of Theology. It's clearly true.
More advice from my dad, who worked on a dairy farm as a kid: never buy chocolate milk.
He said that was where dairy farmers dump their worst milk.
I argued with him about modern regulations and how all milk sold in stores was AA now and blah blah blah. He still never let us buy chocolate milk. Or eggnog either.
How appropriate my father is a cow.
These days it's nothing but virtue signalling.
Specific advice received: If you rotate an inverted bottle around quickly in a tight circle, you can pour the contents out much more quickly when it makes a little whirlpool than if you wait for it to glug-glug all the way down. This came from a fellow volunteer bartender at a big AIDS charity event many years ago and although it is almost never practically useful (how often am I really in a huge hurry to empty bottles of vodka into a punchbowl with an impatient queue of A-gays looking on?), I still feel a little self-satisfaction whenever I whirl a bottle around to whoosh out its contents and think about the 30-40 seconds I just saved myself.
Specific advice offered: When frying up scrapple, you only want to turn it once. Let the first side get really good and crispy-brown so that it gives the slice structure and it won't break when you go to turn it.
My dad told me to worry less about giving your opponent a good opening in Scrabble and more about using lots of letters so you can draw those blanks and get bingos. Their letters might be bad and maybe you'll be the one who gets to use the opening.
I was told once that the 57 on a Heinz bottle is the scientific right spot to hit, to get the ketchup out. I am 100% certain that the person who told it to me believed it.
A parliament of owls, a queue of A-gays.
SPECIFICALLY DONT LET CHRISTMAS GET THE BETTER OF YOU. HUG EVERYONE YOU CARE TO TWICE, AND IGNORE ANY AND ALL ASSHATS
From my mother: "If you hit your mother you'll become paralyzed." (I think I was five)
From my father: "Don't look a chow dog in the eye or they'll bite you." (I didn't know what a chow dog was)
Because I don't even own a TV, I only learned yesterday that Jose Cuervo's slogan is "Tomorrow is overrated." I'm not one to use the word "problematize" often, but I feel like there should be somebody that tells them to at least pretend they don't know who orders shots of tequila.
I appreciate the honesty, actually.
I'm afraid it will start a trend, like Zima will go with "It's probably not so hard for 16-year-old to raise a baby".
As if you could fit that on a billboard.
It was on the TV. I can remember when they weren't even allowed to have ads for liquor on the TV.
I believe the Heinz 57 thing. Maybe not specifically on the 57, but side tapping is better than bottom smacking. (Obviously a squeeze bottle is even better, if you can get one.)
From my mother: "Be alert. The world needs more lerts."
34 was great. I missed saying so earlier because of the whole holiday thing.
64:
"Don't be aloof."
"What's a loof?"
"It's a cross between a loser and a doof."
Don't grow up and become a-dolt.
I guess I could drive out to York to get this stuff, but there's no way I can get it all the way to Vermont.
The right spot to hit the ketchup bottle is on the squeezy bottle you bought instead because you're a sane person.
If anyone asks you if you slept well, always say "Yes, thank you".
(This was given as part of the briefing material for a school exchange to Germany, with a suggested translation. I have always wondered why the organisers found it so important.)
71.1: "I heard nothing, I tell you! Nothing!"
"Yes, but why does the dog have a bigger bedroom?"
This morning I finally thought of some advice for this thread. My Japanese sister-in-law's mother told her that she should never let her husband see the greens before they were cooked.
75: Maybe?
The official explanation is that husband would get suspicious because what seemed like so much would turn out to be so little, after it was cooked.
Zhou aristocrats ritually invok[ed] powerful spirits with blood sacrifices and call[ed] upon these spirits to enforce the terms of their oaths. Such covenants, sanctified through smearing the lips of participants with the blood of sacrificial animals and burial of the covenants in the ground to transmit them to the spirit world, were used to form alliances between states or lineages.Always read the contract. Like always always.
I feel like a thread on awfully specific advice isn't complete without a remembrance of "bob recommends porn".
I had also totally forgotten about comment 116 in that thread. More jokes should be made along the lines of "sure it was good, but was it champagne in the vagina good?"
A lot of awfully specific Christmas activities kept me offline most of yesterday. 12 sounds very useful. Maybe your daughter can post a video demonstration on YouTube. We'll help it go viral so she gets tons of ad clicks and can buy you a new car in appreciation of all you've taught her.
78.1: I suppose I should have known the net nanny would block that link.
78.2 What's the ratio of mouse orgasms to champagne in the vagina?
The ultimate expression of Neoliberalism is masturbation.
The dinner table conversation with my family got a little out of hand this year, but in a way very specific to my family. A question about etymology led to my father standing up (he was leaving to get more wine) and announcing "Did you know that there is a word for when you are trying to think of a word you can't remember?" We all played along "what's the word, Dad?" "I don't remember" but then he told us the word: lethologica. And I said "oh, like the river," and only one person knew what I was talking about, and amidst incredulous responses to how any river could possible be involved, several fierce side arguments ensued about Greek mythology and/or etymology.
Then it was time for dessert so everyone became friends again.
I don't really recommend the "lethologica" bit as a general-purpose conversation starter, though I do like "guess what weird fact I just learned!" if I have a weird fact that I just learned.
WHOOPS I am on the wrong thread. Small talk!
On the other hand, that's nice specific advice for how to calm a fight at a dinner party: "Who's ready for dessert?"
The rental car facility at the Omaha airport has been moved. Now you need a shuttle.
I guess that's general advice that all need to know.
I have very specific advice for Nissan. An alarm* for "Low Outside Temperature" isn't really necessary, especially when it is clearly going to be on for at least two weeks.
*With no sound, fortunately.
The ultimate expression of Neoliberalism is masturbation.
The preferred term is "pubic-private partnership."