Rudynate

I read not long ago that Dutch is one of the easiest languages for a native speaker of English to learn. The only easier one is Frisian, and how much good would that do you?

It was just one of the things that men did-they weren't self-conscious about being nude around other men. In locker rooms, men walked around in the buff in front of each other without a thought. Guys who were self conscious were sissies. I think it's just a prudish age. Men's locker rooms in health clubs always have individual showers now. It's another legacy of therapeutic parenting wherein parents try to spare their kids as much stress and discomfort as they can.

The wisdom and good sense of PKs advice momentarily took my breath away.

Who cares?

As good as the Germans are, I think the Dutch are even better. Most Dutch speak English with no more than a trace of an accent.

I would say that a lot of Germans welcome opportunities to speak english

In general, the French don't speak English very well, at least not nearly as well as the Dutch, the Germans, the Scandinavians, for example.

I would rather be undraped, therapeutic or sensual. It feels more intimate.

It depends on how important the room is to you. If it's important to you, better to have your choice of properties and rooms. If it isnt, then you might be comfortable risking that the room won't be great.

The US has the power and influence it does because it stepped up and assumed those roles after WWII. We wanted it. It wasn't anything anybody shoved down our throats.

I never disliked history, but didn't have great enthusiasm for it. I took some history courses in college that I really enjoyed-modern German history and Soviet history.

My feeling exactly.

Albuquerque is the second of my possible post-SF cities.

When I was a kid, I remember people using the word "fag" for cigarette. When I was in the Army, guys who'd been to Vietnam occasionally called cigarettes "squares."

I grew up in the east, and took Horace Greeley's advice to "Go west, young man." Never regretted it. I've lived in SF for almost 30 years and it has been go, go, go nonstop.

I just have high school French, but I leaned it well and remember a lot if it. I've had very successful chats with French-speaking guys assisted by Google translate.

I've heard complaints that RMs email is unreliable.

It's nothing like the coastal cities, but it has become pretty expensive there. I lived there for 14 years. I go back to visit from time to time and I'm always struck by how beautiful it is. No desire to live there again though. It's interesting that the article cited upthread mentioned Salt Lake City. Ive always liked it, and have had it in the back of my mind as a post San Francisco possibility.

I've always imagined the bone in "boning" was a hard dick.

I was going to say, you hear it in Aussie TV shows and movies.

I think I remember the rationale for it was that the "and" is a replacement for the comma. So having both "and" and a comma is redundant.

So the Oxford comma is the old-fashioned way of placing a comma before the "and" or "or" that precedes the final term in a series? I'm so used to the modern way that omits the final comma that I think the Oxford comma looks busy.

It doesn't make sense from a business standpoint. Devoting the square footage to paying customers probably generates more revenue than allowing someone to take it up with a dog, although allowing dogs certainly generates good will. A couple weeks ago I spent the weekend at the Hilton Hotel in Santa Clara. It's a comfortable place - I always enjoy staying. The one drawback is that there is an awful lot of sound leakage between guest rooms, but occupancy is low on weekends so it isn't a problem. They have started a weekend promotion, I think to attract families, where people are allowed to bring their dogs. All weekend long, I had to listen to dogs barking in the adjacent rooms. I emailed the GM and suggested that that promotion wasn't a good match for a property with such thin walls. She apologized for the inconvenience, but I'm probably done with that hotel. The Hyatt is right next door and costs about the same.

Not the same thing at all. The restaurant is there for its patrons - even large ones. The restaurant as a courtesy to its patrons, may choose to accomodate dogs, but a patron expecting a restaurant to take up space intended for patrons to accomodate an outsized dog doesn't seem reasonable.