Quin

Absence makes the heart grow fonder & Absence makes the heart forgetful. You really can't know what either yours or theirs will do UNTIL the absence. _______ I have friends that I go years without any contact, and we pick up,right where we left off. I have friends that I go a few months without contact, and I don't know what I ever saw in them to begin with. Some people are so afraid of finding out (or various other reasons behind, but the facts remain they don't find out as) they NEVER leave their spouse. Not even for an overnight. I know people married 20 to 40+ years before the first night either spends away. Other people go months and even years without seeing their spouse (military mostly), and their relationship is rock solid. All of which boils down to: You won't know until you do it. Q

Huh. I make my deviled eggs with a 10 minute hard boil, cold plunge... And white wine vinegar (plus mayo, mustard, paprika). I'm on another board that had something like 2 zillion deviled egg recipes. I'm shocked that 3 of us are only 1 ingredient off, and you & Pam are identical! That just almost never happens with deviled eggs! Occasionally mix it up use Franks Buffalo for buffalo eggs, or wasabi for "Yowza, I hate you! I thought that was guacamole!" Eggs. But the glorious original can never be eclipsed. Such yummy goodness. Other faves: 20min or less Italian - Tomato, basil, fresh mozzarella baguette slices & - Toasted basil pesto, fresh mozzarella, tomato, & pecorino baguette slices (toasted = sub pesto for fresh basil) - Caprese Salad (cigilienne fresh mozzarella balls, cherry tomatoes cut in half, basil, olive oil, shake) - Gaspacho (ESP Tyler Florence watermelon Gaspacho) - Stuffed mushroom caps Vegg & fruit - Radishes & sea salt (just cut the tops off the radishes. Serve w bowl of salt for dipping. Yep. That simple.) - Fresh Peas & sea salt (toss peas with a few drops of olive oil, sprinkle with sea salt. 3 micrometers more complex) - Cold roasted roots w/ fresh herbs & salt (throw under broiler or on grill, blacken, season, stick in fridge until needed) - Cold Greens (sautéed w/ garlic -lots- and salt/pepper) - Pepper candied strawberries (make molten sugar, add fresh cracked pepper, drizzle over fresh strawberries) - Chocolate drizzled strawberries (wAaaaaaaay faster than dipping, just drizzle melted chocolate over) Latin - Nachos of various kinds - Tostones & Guac (deep fried plantains, this pushes the 20min limit) - Grilled polenta wedges Middle Eastern - Bread with Za'atar or Harissa - Grilled corn with Za'atar or Harissa - Hummus & pita - Baba ganoosh & pita Indian - Buy chicken tikka masala, stab with toothpicks, serve as bites. Hah. Love this cheat on the fly - Chat Masala garbanzo beans (just dust dry roasted garbanzos with chat masala. Seriously addictive) _______ Alt. go to Trader Joes. Buy apps. Heat. Serve.

There used to be a site called trampsafety (cue Requiem, it appears they are no longer with us...waaaaaaaaah) that was AWESOME. They tested every trampoline on the market in numerous ways (not just in stability, but materials, time it took to put together, wear and tear, replacement parts, bounce height, springy-nss, ease of entering &/or falling out, etc,), culminating in two or more 6+ foot guys (250lb linebacker types, and one gnarly skinny guy) attempting to break the sucker. Or knock it over. Several they DID manage to flip & or break. Amazingly, a few they couldn't. It's where I got my "costs more than my car, but that's not saying much" DreamTrampoline from. It wasn't their highest rated, but it was near the top. Le Sigh. I STILL want that trampoline. Q

We have the stomach flu here at Cassita Quins... So our day of feasting and revelry is postponed ... For the record, we're missing TWO holidays, today: May 5th & Childrens Day! (Japan). The horrors. We also missed Chinese New Year, Tet, Fat Tuesday, & Pessacn, this year. Seriously slacking. I feel like a wet blanket, held up by a stick in the mud, that Eeyore is sleeping under. We celebrate the holidays of everywhere we've lived, and of everyone who has married into the family... So we've got LOTS (yaaaaay!) of holidays to celebrate. Should make it less of a bummer when plague & other holiday killers strike, but no joy. Sniff! I couldn't even get my karp banners up! Much less anything alimentary. Slacking. But, hey. I can type. Maybe even legibly. We'll see tomorrow when I retread and see if I make (made?) sense. Q

There are 2 basic kinds of temple recommends. What your friend is talking about is a limited recommend. I know of one convert in our ward who was baptized one day, and doing baptisms for the dead (their own family, not that it really matters, but it explains the eagerness a tad) the following week. Some people are very very keen to either get a limited recommend themselves, or for others to get them. Myself, I have no opinion on what others do, but chose not to get one at all. It's not a requirement, so it's something that -unless your bishopric is keen on getting others in doing baptisms for the dead-, a person has to ask for. In GENERAL, I've found that if I'm interested in something, and I ask about it... I either get it, or get the steps to progress through to get it... AND it lets those above/around me know I'm interested in the first place! Which means when they're thinking of who to talk to about XYZ, my name comes up, so I get talked to. Meaning I get to do fun stuff I might not otherwise have even known about. So, don't be embarrassed about not knowing. The more you ask, the more you learn, the more others know you want to learn! Q

To clarify a bit... 1) Which are you most upset by: your son's disrespect, or the lack of support from your husband? I know it's a two part thing, b as parents there are simply times when our kids are going through a stage that -with support- we can kind of take a deep sigh and laugh through, but without support are banging our heads against drywall. Conversely, support can be such a distant second place that it's not even on the map of concerns / simply background info. 2) When you say hat "my husband says it's not my problem"... Pis he says it's not your problem, or not his problem? Q

If this is new.... Yay! Thanks!!! If this is not new... Feel free to snicker up your sleeve at me, now... As I just found it! Q

If it's been 6 months ... I would have to suggest you're not going to just get over feeling badly. Which leads me to suspect that EITHER what he said was true OR that it's something you work hard doing the opposite. The first one is the hardest, so I'll table it for the moment. If it isn't true: The second one has an intermediary step... Which is to meet with him and point out exactly how untrue what he said was. At that point he can either decide to believe you, or not... But either way the miscommunication is dealt with & the problem begun to be addressed. Ahem. Which is another thing... He may be completely unaware that it has affected you as much as it has. Oftentimes things that bother me not at all, send others into fizzles, and vice versa. Not being mind readers, we generally don't know how much something we've said or done has affected someone... Yep. Even if they react strongly in the moment. It's not uncommon to have someone bawling in your office one minute (as a boss, or a teacher, or ANY position of authority... So I suspect it's the same for bishops), and then cracking jokes, working hard, totally fine the next. In fact, in some jobs, it's expected that a person may break down on the 1:1, and then be fine, better, best as soon as they're no longer 1:1. So while you may be simply gutted over this statement, it may very well be possible that he's clueless it's affected you this much, for this long. He may not even remember saying XYZ to you after this long, or have even meant something totally different. To be clear, since you were leaving the actual incident out I have no idea what it's about or how memorable it is in the scheme of things. So the above is just fairly generic what ifs and could bes. I'm not saying he did forget, or meant something different, and he may well be aware how much it's affected you. Or not. No way to tell without talking to him, or more detail. If it IS true... Then you've got some simpler options: sort it and move on. Yeah. I said simpler, not easier, unfortunately. The simple things are always the most difficult. Q

I don't know if I was in a catholic or baptist church at the time, or it's possible it was Judaism (my memories of 6ish are a little hazy in some respects)... But what I was taught "there" (where, we'll never know, but I attended all 3 regularly at age 6... Heck. Deep South, it could have been in public school) was that - the brothers en masse threw him in - that there was discord amongst the brothers (ranging from as Pam said... Reuben wanting to get him out / I thought I recalled Reuban ran to his father for his authority over his brothers / couldn't get to him so came back on his own?... To some wanting to see him die immediately, others suffer, others profit). The differing opinions of the brothers was hammered into us at the time, because 6yos are the epitome of "mob rule". Our teachers were trying to show us that just because everyone is shouting XYZ, it doesn't mean we have to also shout XYZ. And that if we felt ABC, that the time to speak up and be different is BEFORE the mob has tried to kill our brother, or the slavers have made off with him. Otherwise it's a day late and a dollar short. And God will be very very mad at us. I'm leaning towards thinking it was baptist Sunday school, at this point. Q

ROFL... Oh.... They really, really DO exist. My uncle was an astrophysicist... His dinner parties were absolutely hilarious. NO ONE is cooler than all the post docs from applied maths and sciences at a BBQ. I had no idea that a lot of substances were banned &/or illegal (who says you can't grill steaks with thermite? The trick is to contain the explosive nature of 3000 degree heat + water... Or better yet, funnel,it insta something like a potato gun...or that any FOOL wouldn't know "insert some extremely obscure fact here", or that most people don't have to look out for structural engineers crashing the party in spite and removing some of the supports from the deck, so 20 people are on a -perfectly sound- structure that has canted 6feet away from the house. Think Val Kilmer in Real Science meets Numb3rs meets Big Bang Theory... And you have my uncle's circle of friends and colleagues. Q

LOL... I would suspect its because the colonies had unlimited land/ property... Just build on it, defend it, and it's yours. Heck. Montana STILL has homesteading. Meanwhile the sum total of the UK has, at various points, been in the hands of the aristocracy. Whether the Kings land, or the hereditary Lord's the K/Q has given it to, or even in later years when estates were bought and sold... We plebs couldn't own property ourselves. We lived at the discretion of our (literal) land-lord. Even long after those documents were written and even -to an EXTENT- today,.. Property holding in the UK proper can get pretty dicey. England/Wales/Scotland/Ireland are pretty small islands. Granted the commonwealth extends to Canada & Australia, so it's not desperate like it once was, and even when the US constitution was drawn up, feudalism had already been done away with, so it wasn't as bad as it had been. ________ I think 3 is an English (spoken language) thing. It has a certain ring. Be it friends, Romans, countrymen... Or Life, liberty, & the ___________... It sits well in our hearts & minds. The original sound byte. Longer than 3 requires music or rhyme to have the same bang. Other languages have other number combos. Or different linguistic tricks to make them memorable/meaningful. Even old English used a different meter. Beowulf (one of my favs!) splits lines in half, and alliterates them. _______ So.... Yah. I suspect pragmatism & prose. Q

I grew up with five (ish, smattering of a lot more) different languages. The moment I learned the bible had been translated into English? Oh. That explains it, then. I think I was 8. When I learned that only certain authors, and certain parts were included? Well, that sheds even more light. When I learned even the included, translated sections had more than 1 author, in addition to countless editors? I'm amazed there's anything left that's understandable, at all. True miracle. Q

I am so having flashbacks to Epic Rap Battles of History : Nerd v Geek One of the few without swearing, although I'm going to err on the side of caution & not link it. Q ETA The Einstein v Hawking one, though, is one of my favorite things of all time. Humming... When I apply my battle theory minds are relatively blown... Ill school you anywhere, MIT to Oxford. All your fans will be like, um,,that was awkward. There are a million million million million million million particles in the universe that we can observe.... Yo mama took the ugly ones and put them into one nerd. I'll be stretching out the rhyme... Like gravity stretches out time...

Woe is meeeeeeeee. Argh. I like this thread. Because I hate court. Loathe, despise, revile. Am terrified of, simply gutted by, starkly fear. It's a completely visceral thing at this point. The shaking, the sobbing, the throwing up, the sleeping 29 hours in one stretch, the 180 resting heartbeat, the sweating, the staring at my phone trying to MAKE myself call my attorney for 4 days, the taste of metal, the cuts in my palms from my fingernails, HATE court. And I have 2 trials coming up. I think I'm going to be sick. Q

I wonder how the (super gorgeous) 1 legged hitchhiker I didn't pick up is doing? Q Yep. I'm totally shallow enough to admit that the Adonis Aspect plays a large part in this wondering. So. Pretty.

My brother plays a party (work, family dinner, in queue at the market, wherever talking takes place) game where he tries to kill conversations awkwardly. I wonder what his current score is. I wonder if I beat his score this week. <<< Social Moron week. I'm going back to bed. Or applying duct tape to my mouth. One or the other. Q

Great beeeeeeeeeg hugs to you! I can help with #2. AS that kid (who jumped off balconies aiming for Palm trees that were slanted the wrong way, and falling 2 stories i(through bougainvillea) into my mum's roses... Who did cartwheels on adobe fences 12' off the ground (and occasionally slid down them, scraping all the skin off my left side)... Who walked on a broken ankle for 2 weeks before telling my mum... 1) God looks out for children, fools, & the blind. I swear. And being a parkour chick before there was parkour (although I was a gymnast) ... We count as all three. I still think the spirit flattened me to that adobe wall and slid me down it like sandpaper. Yep. Partly in payback. But it also -physics aside, when gravity shifted to the left- totally saved my bacon. 2) Some people have high pain tolerance. Those of us who bash ourselves about as much as we did? We just don't hurt the same as other people. I don't know whether it's nerve damage, or a rocking 4th ventricle (the part of your brain that creates endorphins and natural pain killers), or what. But while stuff hurts, it just doesn't hurt us the same. 3) Lessons teach us how to do the stuff we already do SAFELY . Also, they give us a total,stranger to listen to. Not sure why we'll give a total stranger more credence than out mom,,. But it's true. We do. Mom says its stupid, we do it when she's not looking. Stranger says not to do it... We go "Huh. Yeah. I see your point. That would be stupid." Face. Palm. 4) Bob Marley. Every little Ting...gonna be alright. Q

As the heads up: I'm the "Yep. Get divorced. Yesterday." person on this board. (The lovely & brilliant Annatess my foil). My three cents? 1) Your husband deserves someone who loves him. If that's not you, please stop wasting his time, and making him feel terrible in the interim. 2) Take all the blame squarely OFF your child's shoulders. YOU control your child's diet & exercise& medical regime. Worrying that "at this rate he'll be 400 pounds by college" totally abdicates all parental responsibility, while blaming your husband for your failure to act. Don't do that. Good diet, good activity & if it's a glandular disorder, take him to the durn doctor and get his levels stabilized! 3) Some genetic lines (think Viking & Polynesian & Russian wrestling) spawn BIG people. Big HEALTHY people, so long as they keep their activity up. 350 pounds of "Never gonna be ripped like Batman, but I can make a quarterback wish they were never born" fast, strong, HEALTHY. These people are never going to be the nimble thin runners you see darting all over. These people WILL be the TANKS in underarmor (and other stretchy clothes, cause tailoring custom clothes is expensive, and their size isn't sold off the rack) who have to replace "flimsy" shoes and furniture on a biannual basis, as they make you giggle with their terminator impressions. I knew a few of these guys in the Marine Corps. (350+ pounds of grizzly bear ya never never never wanna face in a fight). Football, & hockey players, & wrestlers the lot of them. Even running 3 miles under 18 minutes 5 times a week, with about 20 hours of gym time, and 40+ hours of constant motion...my hese guys never thinned out like the rest of us. 15-20 years later... I still know a couple of them. Those who have stayed active (physically), playing sports every day, cops on the street, gym teachers, etc... Are still as healthy (and TANKS) at 40 as they were at 20. Those who moved into desk jobs & non movement? Well... They waddle a bit. If they manage to stand much at all. You met a BIG physically active guy in college. Whatever his diet & exercise program was... It was obviously working for him, as he was playing college ball. You've tried to completely change his diet, and clearly that hasn't been helpful. Have you considered encouraging your husband to go back to what WAS working? Eat as he was... But go back to training. Do something he LOVES, and is good at, and kept him fit. __________ Ahem. As a former athlete: I need 10,000-15,000 calories a day when training. Of I don't have that level, my body starts to eat itself. We're not talking "lose weight". We're talking bone loss, organ damage, heart damage. I also start stacking on weight (because my body hoarders calories) if I'm eating too few calories when exercising. It looks INSANE to people who aren't doing similar training (I remember my family -all athletes- snickering at people with jaws dropped over Michael Phelps talking about the 10k-20k he eats, all whipcord thin). In the military? Your rations depend on your environment. I never worked in the desert, I worked in mountains & jungle. Our rations were 6,000 kcal per package. 3x-5x per day. Yep. For some exercises we were stoking 30,000 calories a day. (The army moves on its stomach). Just some food for thought. Q

I suspect one of the most key things will be finding out why people are inactive in your ward, to begin with. About half my ward goes "inactive" (not exactly, but also not attending scarement) once every three years... Because we've got a lot of night workers who are also parents. Which means getting off work at 4am-6am... And needing to be at church at 9am simply isn't going to happen. A few years ago someone noticed that we had no teens, whatsoever. Come to find, in our stake, there were about 50-60 teens in total, but they were spread out 2 or 3 per ward. Most of the families with teens were inactive, because a GREAT way to get teens to hate the church is to make them sit in a room all by themselves -or with one other person they can't stand- for 2 hours. So the stake designated one ward where all the youth 12+ (and their families) would go. Shazaaaaam. Did that ward's attendance skyrocket. Most of the teens, plus all of their families meant overflow into the gym every Sunday. I'm sure there are other common reasons... But these are the two I'm first-hand familiar with. Q

Wow. So many many moons ago... I knew I was supposed to break up with my boyfriend. Put it off. Found out I was pregnant. Broke up with him. As I was giving him no say in the matter (abortion WAS on the table, I decided not to, and was giving him no say in it), I told him he was welcome in the baby's life if he wanted to be, but if not? No worries. No child support, no et cetera. Well,.. When I was 6 or 7 months pregnant (and weeping at sports drink commercials)... I allowed myself to finally bend under everyone but god begging me to marry the bloke. Seriously, guy proposed 6 times one month. In MY case, "yes" was wrong wrong wrong. Your guy min not be an ubercharming sociopath with violent tendencies... So I can't say what would be right / wrong for you, your guy could be best friend / best coparent/ best husband ever... Mine was the sociopath. And despite countless thwack upside the head from the spirit I still married him and stayed that way for over a decade. Bad news. But whether Prince Charming or Dr. Evil... EXPECT pressure... If he doesn't run for the hills... To marry him yesterday. From everyone around you. At all times. Including strangers. Really. Strangers in the supermarket when they looked at my left hand would give me advice on how to "snag him" or how it's soooo much better for the baby (blah blah blah. I mean, asked for advice is one thing. But there is something about a bulging belly that removes everyone's boundaries and sense of common decency! Hands off! Nose OUT of my business! No, really, take your hands off of me. That's still my stomach and I did not tell you to rub up all on me while telling me your horror of a birthing story, and tell,if me what a terrible life my child will have from a single parent Ms. Bluebird of Happiness XP ) KNOW that the idea that you won't be operating with all your marbles at all times due to massive hormonal fluctuations is going to be insulting, and feel ridiculous. Also know that if you're crying at commercials and yelling at 6yos who could be cast in a Mary Poppins movie... Your marbles WILL return. But in the meantime Try not to make major life changing decisions . Decide that now. Before your heart swells up and starts overflowing with so much love someone you wouldn't touch with a ten foot pole you bind yourself for all eternity. If he's the guy, great... But don't decide that with a shotgun. 3rd (4th 5th 92nd?] Consult a family law attorney. Q

We've been modifying food since the dawn of time. Plant genes are so easy to modify we don't event need laboratory equipment to do it. Kids helping out on the farm are able to do so (and win awards at the 4H for their creations). I'm actually pretty excited about all the Ag programs who are working at getting the nutrients back into food that we've bred out completely over the past 50 years (apples are the common example... Those pretty pretty pretty ones are not only mushy and awful tasting, they've lost most of their nutrients... But less ooh-la-la food are also victims of 365 available fruit & veg.). Similarly, we've had some pretty epidemic-level food infections & infestations both recently (past 100 years) as well as historically. So foods which used to have ABC % and XYZ nutrients were killed off by this plague, that blight, etc... While the hardy versions are seriously lacking. Can we breed them back? Given a few thousand generations (decades at the least).... Yes. It's what farmers have always done. Even though they're not always successful. Anyhow... If they want to LABEL genetically modified food? They're going to have to label ALL of it. - Every orange carrot (started out white, eventually bred to purple, then -purple carrots are bitter- toned down to orange) - Every sweet apple (ever had a crab apple? That's what apples were pre farmers... About the size of a big marble, sour as blazes and rock hard) - Every ear of corn with more than 3 kernals on it (maize started out with THREE seeds! Farmers in mezoamerical got it to 9, then the NE United States got them to 33, meso pushed the count again to 120 something... Really the regions volleyed back and forth for millenia). The list goes on. Because ALL the fruit & veg we eat has been modified. By people. Q

I had my baptism kicked up to the mission president. I've even known a few who have had their baptism kicked all the way upstairs to SLC. While most probably have their baptism interviews by the other team of missionaries ("yours" never do the interview), it's not an insignificant number that need approval from higher up. I actually found it comforting, because I had a whole lotta those little "no" boxes ticked "yes"... I would have hated to have been accepted into the church just because I'm friendly & people like me (really, in real life I'm waaaay less cranky than I am online)... Only to be kicked out or excommunicated later on because I shouldn't have been allowed in to begin with. So having my baptism kicked upstairs was a HUGE relief for me. Q

Don't do cleanup at the end of the activity. Stop things about 15 -30 minutes beforehand for cleanup... Let them know in the beginning that y'all have been having problems with cleanup so tonight you'll be pausing in the last quarter to blitzkrieg, then will be finishing up the activity after cleanup... And when you do call halt, just remind them : "Heya, faster we get this done, the more we can get back to the activity!" Don't use it as punishment, though. "The beatings will continue until morale improves" usually doesn't work so hot. You'll just end up with people leaving early. Just do it that way from now on / no big deal / let's bust it out. Upside, it's what most "messy classes" teachers do in school, so it's something at least some of them will be used to.

It's pretty well established, however, that medical necessity trumps the WoW... As nearly all medical procedures use substances, that if used recreationally, constitute breaking our covenants. A Bishop turning the tables and saying that the WoW / LoC trump medicine? That would follow that no LDS person can undergo - Surgery - Chemo/Radiation - Dental work - Local anesthesia for any procedure (locals usually use a cocaine derivative) - IVF - Etc etc etc There ARE churches which ban it's members from undergoing medical treatment... With the same argument: that God would rather have us die than take substances into our bodies, or be laid open, etc. I was just under the strong impression our church was not one of them. That we were huge supporters of science & medicine? And that spiritual & medical arenas were seperate? Q

Okay... Feeling compelled to add a bit more: (And I was so proud at beig concise, for once! Le sigh). Would a doctor ever tell you to drink alcohol? Yep. It's the antidote for antifreeze poisoning. Would a doctor ever tell you to masturbate? Yep. Kinda necessary for IVF & a few other things. PLEASE... Stop looking for medical advice from people who are not your doctor... And worse, taking it. HF wants you to be healthy. HF has placed these doctors in your life to help you achieve that aim. Why only follow their advice so far, and then ignore it completely in favor of someone who has no idea what all is involved? My mum (doesn't drink) always keeps a bottle of Everclear in the house... Because kids do stupid things like drink the "thick Mountain Dew". Should she just let a kid die, because it's against the word of wisdom to drink alcohol? Of course not. But will there be someone, somewhere, who would refuse for alcohol to be poured down their toddler's throat as it bein against God's wishes? Of course there will be. There will ALWAYS be someone in your life telling you what God wants. You're LDS, take I to him, yourself. HF... Should I follow my doctors medical advice, or my bishops medical advice? Q