Nora, your only debt is your student loan, now? That rocks! You must feel so great.

checks own timesheet

517 hours. Holy crow. (Practically the only thing that doesn't suck financially about working for UC is the benefits -- pension, good health coverage, generous vacation and absurd sick leave. Doesn't quite make up for the below-market pay scale, but it helps.)

And, ita, huh. I don't know what Ms. Zacharek was talking about. I can think of, like, ten Buffistas with asses that are not only better than hers, but exponentially better. And that's just ten off the top of my head; if I sat down and went through the F2F photo archives, I could probably come up with a score or so. Her costume designer in Hitch must be some kind of ass-enhancing genius, 'cause on its own it's very much nothing special.

Nonian, I swear we probably know people who know each other. A handful of friends we knew in NM through Meeting built hay bale houses.

I made good money (well, for a college student) being a parttime nanny through college (and then full time until I got this job) for a variety of the profs on campus. From what I understand from the parents' perspective, it can be a little crazy coordinating two or three college students' schedules and finding new people as they graduated, but for a lot of them it was less expensive than going the standard local daycare route. It was a small college so the profs could easily do informal background checks on the students.

Robin, WHAT KIND OF DOG?

lori, that's an awesome rent anywhere. I don't think you could comprable here. My $650 gets me roughly 700 or so sq ft and hot & cold water. And that is only because I've renewed the lease so many years, so the increases are piddly. Or none until management switches hands again and they are apparently bound to a certain rate. New rentals of this apartment would start near $800.

I can think of, like, ten Buffistas with asses that are not only better than hers, but exponentially better.

Heh. Ya mean like this Buffista?

OK, there is a commercial that includes the line "ventilated seats." I keep hearing "mentholated seats." Which strikes me as really freaky.

I mean ten BESIDES that one. I'm not totally craxy with the ego.

But, thanks. It's been a crap week here in hell the office. You get a big sloppy MWAH for that!

If you do straw bale, I totally want to come out and help you because I want to learn how this is done. I'm fascinated by it. Or in other words, I'd be free labor.

I would love to do that too, though it's probably not that realistic that I could.

the Whizzinator,

That is right out of Withnail and I

This is a device enabling the drunken driver to operate in absolute safety. You fill this with piss, take this pipe down the trouser and sellotape this valve to the end of the old chap. Then you get horrible drunk and they can't fucking touch you. According to these instructions, you refuse everything except a urine sample. You undo your valve, give them a dose of unadulterated child's piss and they have to give you your keys back. Danny's a genius. I'm going to have a doze.

Have any of you NY Buffistas ever heard of it, or been there?

I'm not sure there's a Jew on the East Coast who hasn't -- it's a standard Hebrew School Trip To New York stop. (But like Hil, it's been over ten years.)

Stupid Cylons. Always blowing stuff up.

I keep meaning to go to the tenement museum, and then not going. Maybe it's because I'm not Jewish??

Interestingly, I just spent a fair amount of time talking about money. I found out how much my friend paid for her GORGEOUS, but tiny, apartment, how much of the down payment her fiance had saved, and how much was a loan from his parents, how they each feel about their financial situation, individual and join, etc., etc.

See, I said this was how my friends do it!