mike carey

Peter is one of a kind. A couple of years ago I was considering a potential trip to LV for a reunion and was asking in the forum about the city and its opportunities. He didn't know me from Adam but said words to the effect that if things weren't working out call him and he'd make things right. My trip didn't happen but he had been gracious and friendly since then. For me, that's a winning approach.

Lol, I suspect that he is not the only person to have added a trip to Las Vegas to their to-do list because certain gentlemen are there!

My experience in Germany is decades old, but an anecdote nonetheless. (In general I found enough people who could speak English to get by.) On the train from Warsaw to Berlin, the DDR customs/immigration guys were speaking Polish to the other people in the compartment but when I handed them my passport they switched to good English. I did not expect that from Ossies.

'Rooting' is far more general than that, it's generic slang for sexual intercourse. Here, boned has the connotation of being violated rather than just having sex. Boned is also used in a non-sexual context. I looked in the Oxford and it cites 'root' as Australian, NZ and Irish slang. Regardless of that, we tend to take up each other's slang more readily than we do American slang (although we generally understand that, so 'rooting' for a team doesn't always attract mirth as we know what you mean). We also use 'rooting around' in that sense. Perhaps as a derivative of its sexual meaning 'rooted' can mean exhausted (shagged and fucked can also be used that way).

Happy birthday, Brian! Hope you are having a great day. Even in Indianapolis.

Bon anniversaire!

Oh, it does mean that. Australians are constantly amused by Americans who root for football teams, and why they discuss that promiscuity so publicly.

Lol, it's not 'correct' (or incorrect for that matter), it's one convention of how to punctuate a list. Pro- and anti-Oxford comma advocates can be rather dogmatic in their views! IDGAF. Yes it does avoid ambiguity when there is ambiguity in the way the list is written. I use that comma, or other punctuation, if there is any ambiguity and omit it if there is not. I found it interesting having worked in both systems that the USAF writing guide mandated its use whereas the RAAF (actually Australian Defence Force) guide said the default was to omit it.

The Oxford comma is a cult.

Bon anniversaire!

The mass of your fee in pennies, nickels, dimes, quarters or pieces of eight is not something I had previously put my mind to. Something else to consider, @VictorPowers! I'm guessing that Australian or Canadian $2 coins is not something that would interest you!

To start off the conversation, I always used two spaces after a full stop, and it made sense with fixed width fonts (as used with typewriters). Now, I use one space, and the previous comments on proportional fonts are apposite. Yes, Microsoft reinforced this as its grammar check threw in those green squiggly lines under the text when you used two spaces, but it never auto-corrected when I was using it (if it did, you can turn off auto-corrects item by item). I never learnt typing, it wasn't a thing when I was at school, but when I went to uni I did teach myself to touch type (I still look at times but I use the correct fingers for each letter!) by sticking paper over the keys on my typewriter.

*notes for a meeting with CollegeDom, say Abba are wonderful and anyone who disagrees is a fool. That should make him like me*

'Kies' would probably rhyme with 'pies', so not a useful example. I would say Australia is diverse, so the use of 'are' for the US is not a given. I would interpret 'is' to mean the country as a whole is diverse irrespective of state boundaries (which it is) and 'are' to mean that the states as entities in the country are diverse in that they are different from each other (which they also are). I have never seen 'money are' and I'm usually aware of British usage. I'm with others that words like university, council, staff, parliament and congress could take either singular or plural verbs. Sometimes for slightly different meanings, and sometimes just different writing styles.

Him: 'Nothing personal, merely my professional opinion.' You: 'You might wish to reserve your professional opinions for your own patients. If you've managed to retain any.' (Please forgive my underlying assumption there.)

It was about 6.30am Saturday here, but I didn't get up for it, some cloud was forecast. That time of day is perfect for the red colour as the light has a long angled passage through the atmosphere.

Yes, straws are only a small part of the problem, but they are an easy one. There are people for whom a durable aid to drinking is necessary, but as noted there are steel and glass alternatives. Of which more in a moment. And there is the paper version (less robust, of course) that we used to use. All sorts of marine plastics are a threat to sea turtles, and all sorts end up in the gyres. Straws are a particularly visible one that wildlife rescue services see. Plastic bags that look like jellyfish are a more insidious threat. This week the second season of 'War on Waste' started on ABC television here and a sea turtle made from straws is one of the props they are using, taking it into McDonalds and pubs to argue the case. (They had a number of pubs agree to join an anti-straw campaign not by banning them but by taking them off the counter and only supplying them when they were asked for, with a sign on the bar explaining what they were doing. As they used tens of thousands a year, they had an economic incentive to join in.) Reducing unnecessary plastic is a long game, scale of impact and ease of taking each step are separate parts of it, both need to be done and every bit counts. Last year's War on Waste had disposable coffee cups as a focus issue, they are made of paper layered with plastic and cannot be recycled. We use over a billion a year. The program caused a spike of shops selling reusable cups, and customers being prepared to carry a cup with them. There has also been a controversy here as supermarkets phased out single use plastic carry-bags in the states where they had not already been banned and instead sold reusable bags of various types. (War on Waste had also rolled a 3m-diameter ball of plastic bags around to press for their withdrawal from use, embarrassing politicians out for a run or at an event.) From the protests you'd think the world had come to an end. Those of us in states where they were already banned rolled our eyes, and said 'Get over it, taking your own bags isn't hard'. Councils are being pressured (successfully) to ban plastic cutlery at outdoor events and mandate compostable ones. I had previously seen people advocate carrying cutlery with you rather than take disposable ones when you buy take-away food. If there is a common theme, it is that you can take your own reusable item rather than take a single use plastic version when you buy something. Whether you are forced to by a ban or decide to for your own reasons it's not difficult once you get into the habit. (You don't forget your wallet, or not often.) People could carry a straw with them if they like using one, and they could live without disposable ones. Here, we've managed it with shopping bags, people are doing it with coffee cups. Replacing plastic straws is a small action with a small effect, but remember that straw that broke the camel's back.

In a news panel show a couple of years ago one of the panellists referred to a good outcome in some political context as a 'happy ending', to the considerable mirth of the rest of the panel and much of the audience. She had no idea what was funny about what she had said. Not so much a gay issue but an example of a less than universally known meaning for innocent sounding words.

On really hot days, you could always bring the pots they are in into your house/apartment. Regardless, keep up the water to them.

I think I need to go to Brisbane and see if I can find him....

It's a map of Nantucket Island.

Meanwhile in the southern hemisphere (where it's winter) Canberra has just had two heavy frost nights -6.2 and -7.4 (that's 20.8F and 18.7F) which is cold for this place. Don't worry, I'll mention temperatures in the 40s here when it's snowing there next December and January!

An appropriate comment might be, `Build a bridge`. Tangents, and downright highjacks are a fact of life here.

Thanks for posting that @fedssocr1

There are dangers with deformed cans, but denting in itself isn't one of them. Evidence of bulging certainly is. I would see this as an issue of cost. If you can buy dented cans more cheaply elsewhere, factor that into your decision of whether to buy by mail order. Do a test on the next consignment, count the number of undamaged cans and the number of dented cans and work out how much you would pay buying that many of each locally. If that calculation puts mail order ahead, just take it, and limit your customer service calls to times when they exceed the average number of damaged cans. (Don't disregard the fact that by complaining you are giving them feedback on their shipping company, if they change shipping arrangements that could push up the price.)