I'd love to move to Portland, but I have neither friends nor family other than my immediate here. I'm pretty fucking isolated as it is, so moving to Portland would be a net increase in weather.

I am running Collusion on Chrome to see who is tracking my data as I move about the internet. Buffistas? No one is watching (at least right now). LA Times? 40 people were watching. Collusion is fascinating.

Question: what has caused the metal hinges on my fairly-new toilet seat to turn corroded and green? I thought bleach, but none of the other fixtures are corroding. Is this fixable, or do I have to buy another new toilet seat?

And one of the shirts has the extra long arms with a thumb hole.

Oh, cool, I want one of those. Where do you get them?

Consuela, one of the reasons I'm still in Virginia is because my sister is here. Friends/family social network trumps almost everything, I think, when there's a choice.

ita, I'm glad your pain doc acknowledged there's a problem, at least.

Leaving all my family in California is still hard. I have made friends here and have a community that I'm involved in, but I wish I could have that AND be close to family without moving back.

I just got home from my latest trip and I walked all over in my new Danskos. Man, they were worth the money - no foot pain at all, no blisters, no other aches and pains. Heeee-hawww. Now to resist buying another pair.

The shirts with thumb holes are popular with runners and spotty (ETA: that should be sporty, but it's amusing me) types, I'd try REI?

Also, I do not live near family and did not know more than three people in Seattle when I moved there, but (oh, wait, four, I suppose...Jillian and Pete and Plei and one friend from DC) I am colluding to get my sister and brother in law (and probably my parents) to move to Denver. It's closer than Indiana, and then all of my dad's family would be here. And since we never see my mom's family anyway, that would basically be "all my family but my brother in one place and he lives somewhere cool I'm willing to go visit"

I always envy people who like their family and whose families apparently like them.

When put that way...I knew one person in the Denver area before I moved here. Huh. Unless you count KCD who moved out here too. And my mom and CJ. Huh.

I always envy people who like their family and whose families apparently like them

yeah, the older I get, the more grateful I am that my family all pretty much gets along. I mean, it looks like the big argument this year will be who gets to host Christmas...

My family all gets along...if I define my family very narrowly and forget about all my cousins...and I define "gets along" as "doesn't actively yell at each other during holiday dinner". Yeah. Kinda funny that I moved here "to be with family" and now the only person here is a niece I rarely even talk to.

Y'all, I have been honest to god networking tonight and having substantive conversations with relevant and important people. It's like I don't even know me! I can't wait to tell my therapist.