she only works one day a month, and I've never met her, but she's done that one day a month for 15 years.

So she's had 180 days of work over 15 years. No wonder you've never met her.

somebody (the Romans, I think) used to execute condemned criminals by throwing them in a river tied in a sack. With an ape, a dog, and a snake in the sack, too, so that the animals' panciked attempts to escape imminent drowning also sped the condemned to their doom.

Right, that was for patricides, I think. Slaves got strangled, citizens got killed with a sword unless their crimes were so terrible that they needed special treatment. Foreigners could be crucified or whatever.

I have done no laundry, but I had a nice lunch with my folks and chatted with my brother, who is fine but had to listen to gunfire all night, poor noodle.

Right, that was for patricides, I think.

This somehow makes it stranger. For most capital crimes, you just get stuck with a sword. But if you kill your dad, you have to get the crap beaten out of you by an ape, mauled and probably bit by a dog, and poisoned repeatedly by snake bites (one suspects they shoved the snake down the condemned's pants, so as to make it "snake bites to the nads), all while drowning.

yay - all the laundry is put away - except , DH keeps doing laundry. doesn't he know that that makes more laundry to put away?

All of the Kim Possible fans must watch "Cap'n Drakken".

For most capital crimes, you just get stuck with a sword. But if you kill your dad, you have to get the crap beaten out of you by an ape, mauled and probably bit by a dog, and poisoned repeatedly by snake bites (one suspects they shoved the snake down the condemned's pants, so as to make it "snake bites to the nads), all while drowning.

Well, yeah, just dying is too easy. Parricide was, like, the worst crime there was in Rome so it had to have a punishment that was literally a fate worse than (just) death. If you killl your father you will seiously suffer, is the idea. You aren't even allowed to kill yourself to escape it.

Wait -- did people who were committing the particide kill their father via the ape/snake/dog/drown method, or was that the method of punishing the person who killed his father?

All of the Kim Possible fans must watch "Cap'n Drakken".

yes they must

don't understand the economic forces that make a mortgage payment significantly higher than rent on a similar property, but it seems to be happening around here

Conventional wisdom is that if your mortgage payment would be 20% of higher than your rental payment, rent. The places I've been looking at are 80% higher than rental.

That's one reason for not buying now, acutally. We would probably have to rent the place out after a couple years, and would still be paying almost a whole normal mortgage ourselves.

Mallory, throwing subtlety to the winds, has realized that if he bangs the crap stereo in the housing unit into the wall enough, it will reset to the first track, which is the one he likes to dance to (Rasputina, fwiw).

Conventional wisdom is that if your mortgage payment would be 20% of higher than your rental payment, rent. The places I've been looking at are 80% higher than rental.

I wonder if that really holds, or if it's like a lot of other economic shorthand calculations that haven't really been updated with the times. For sure it doesn't seem a reasonable - or workable anyway - standard for Chicago.