Charlie

I don't understand how some places, like one of my Visa card suppliers or my auto dealer, know my birthday, but they always email birthday greetings. I have never even visited Facebook.

I think that all it means is that they offer more flavors than vanilla, but you have to ask to find out specifically what is available.

It has turned unusually hot early in parts of the south and southwest, which means that people who were outside in April and May could be retreating back into air conditioned insides.

Tennis officials have finally realized that asking ball kids to constantly handle the players' dirty towels is not a good idea, even without a viral pandemic, and it was announced just before the Indian Wells tournament was cancelled altogether that players would have to deal with their own towels for the first time. In the unsanctioned matches that were play in Florida last month, the players each had his own set of balls to play with, and were not supposed to touch the other player's balls (yes, I am aware of the double entendre ).

I agree that tennis can survive without the Big Three, and I often prefer to watch new players. But many casual fans watch only the slams and a few other major tournaments, and only if a big name they are familiar with is playing. That is not good news for the financial interests of the Open, which are already under serious stress.

I doubt that any one of the Big Three will show up if the US Open is held on schedule, which will be a serious problem for the sponsors. Nothing like that has happened to a slam since the 1973 Wimbledon, when the top players boycotted the tournament.

But I buy whatever my housecleaner tells me she prefers to use.

Perhaps the best response would be: "Which stats would you like to know?" Then you can decide whether you want to provide them.

I have been retired for 18 years, my spouse for 23 years. We have a small mortgage and a car lease (which is treated like a loan), which are in both names. All utility bills are in my name. I have several credit cards, which I use regularly, and pay off completely every month (and always have: I have never had an unpaid balance on a credit card); he has a few cards, but hardly ever uses them for anything. Despite the difference in the way each of us uses credit, our FICO scores are almost identical, never differing by more than a few points. I have no memory of what our scores were before we retired (did they have FICO scores then?), but they are always well above 800. Perhaps Unicorn trusts the members here to give him a broader perspective than he would get from his financial advisor. I get most of the useful practical advice I need from posters here.

I have tried to find Clorox and Lysol Toilet Bowl Cleaner at three different stores in the past few days, with no luck.

When an escort's ad says he "speaks" all these languages, it doesn't mean he is fluent in them. I have an Ivy League degree, have lived in a few foreign countries, have studied four languages academically, and I love opera, so I can muddle through some very simple conversations about familiar topics. When I travel outside the US, I often carry a dictionary of the local language. However, if I say hello to you in Serbo-Croatian or Japanese, please don't respond by asking me what I think about the effects of climate change on herbivores. When an escort says he speaks five languages, it may only mean that he can quote his fee for certain acts in those languages.

After reading the article posted above, I then went on to another linked article on cnbc, in which the WHO a little later walked back the claim that Van Kerkhove had made in the interview about spread by asymptomatic spreaders being very rare. Trying to keep up with these things is really difficult.

Al Parker?

Charles Atlas also sold body-building materials and advice. I remember buying some when I was an adolescent, but I no longer can remember what they were. It never occurred to me that I could just buy him instead.

My nephew's wife has a doctorate in physical therapy from USC.

I came out very young, so almost all of my first experiences were with guys who were older than I was, even 30-40 years older, because they were the guys who were available. Therefore, I never got fixated on youth as an essential attribute of sexual attractiveness. When I started hiring, in my mid 30s, I tended to go for guys around my own age, and I was in my 50s before my hires generally were younger than I was, though rarely more than about 20 years younger. The oldest escort I ever hired admitted to being 59, but he was handsome, very well built and had incredible soft, smooth skin. Nowadays I sort of think of anyone younger than 50 as a kid, so they are more like masturbation fantasy material than someone with whom I would actually consider having sex. One sees very few ads for escorts who admit to being over 40, but I think there should be a market for them, and anyone over 60 should probably have some unusual specialty to offer.

Part 3.b. specifies that there should be a monitored system for pool use in place. It "recommends" that a "designated onsite manager or other responsible person" do the monitoring of the pool use but does not say that the monitoring is not required. Admittedly, the wording of item 2 is squishy, but someone has to do the monitoring at some point, and there is no one on the current staff who has "supervision" of the two pools (in two widely separated sections of the community) as his or her specific duty. The system described in the document is fairly specific about how the pools are to be used, and that can't very well be monitored by someone who isn't present at the pools, which are open from 7am to 9pm (early and late hours are popular times for pool use in a hot desert). Contracted maintenance staff can't be used for that purpose, so unless enough responsible volunteers from among the residents can be found to do the monitoring, staff will have to be hired to do it. Until now at least, the city's own COVID regulations have required someone to be present to do the monitoring, which is why the pools have remained closed. Current management staff consists of six individuals (one of them physically disabled), five of them working remotely from home.

Aha! I didn't read the one you posted, which is for LA county. The Riverside county restrictions up till now have not contained anything like this, and the city of Palm Springs has even more restrictions than the county. The news that gyms could open next week was only announced here yesterday afternoon, and I haven't seen any county update to their regulations yet. Pools here were allowed to open a couple of weeks ago, but only with the one person at a time restriction, so our management has not re-opened them at all. If the new regulations here are like those you quote, things will be much better. However, the distancing requirements for equipment in the gym will still be a problem. BTW, where did you find the statement about residential complexes and staff moderating? I couldn't find it in the link that you posted. Maybe we are not reading the same document.

We are a 55+ community. Our gym space is fairly small, so the repositioning of equipment would require elimination of some of the most used ones, like the treadmills. The two outdoor pools are large, and the surroundings are also used by sunbathers, so allowing only one person at a time into the enclosed pool areas is unreasonable, and would also end the popular aquatic classes. Perhaps most onerous is that the regulations assume the spaces have full-time staff monitoring them; we have no staff to do that, only maintenance people, and the expense of hiring them would be substantial.

Probably not, since they are all part of the physical community property which needs to continue to be maintained, even if they can't be used at present. Eventually the regulations will be adjusted or eliminated, but some of the requirements will actually cost more money to meet, so the HOA fees will go up. HOA fees are not like rent: the residents own the community property, so we vote on the fees.

CA has announced that gyms may open in a week, but the requirements are clearly designed with large commercial gyms in mind. There is no way that the small gym for residents in my HOA can be compliant with all the details. The same problem has arisen with our pools and all the other recreational facilities for our residents. I fear that all our amenities are going to be wiped out by new regulations.

I started to get pedicures a year ago when I accepted that I no longer could see my toenails clearly enough to safely cut them. I had no idea they could be so pleasurable.

You can't have a "convention" if people don't convene. How else does one have a smoke-filled back room where agreements are worked out? Will there be riots outside, like Chicago in 1968? If no city wants the convention, will Trump hold a private get-together at Mar-a-Lago? Will those who wear masks caucus separately from those who don't? Will there be a betting line on how many conventioneers develop COVID within two weeks after the convention? Most importantly, will Melania give a speech? This nominating convention will be very different from any other we have seen.

I don't think you know (or care) very much about how the Nobel Prize winners are chosen. The prize for medicine is decided by a small committee within a Swedish institute, who take recommendations and then chose three candidates for the prize, to be voted upon by the 50 members of the faculty of medicine (usually all Swedes) within the institute. The prestige that has come to be associated with the award is largely due to the very large prize money that goes with it. The academy refuses to reveal the reasons for their award choice until 50 years after it has been awarded. One of the other two men who won the prize along with Montagnier was later investigated for his ties to AstraZeneca (big pharma), which provided financial support to some of the Nobel activities as well as to two members of the committee. Many international scientists criticized the committee for not giving a joint award to both Montagnier and Gallo, and questioned the fact that Presidents Reagan and Chirac privately negotiated how credit would be divided between the two men when the questions arose about patents for AIDS drugs. To quote you, "You are not factoring that there is an agenda, by big pharma and the media," not to mention by governments and institutions.

And you seem to have a blind trust in the glitter of the Nobel Prize, as though it is the definitive answer to an objective question and not as politically influenced as many other issues. Even Montagnier himself expressed surprise that he received the prize alone instead of jointly with American scientist Robert Gallo, since although Montagnier identified the virus first, it was Gallo who was first to prove that it caused AIDS. Since receiving the Nobel, BTW, Montagnier has made other scientific claims that experts have found highly questionable, not just the latest one about COVID-19. Any examination of the history of the Nobel Prizes would raise doubts in many people's minds about the quality of the choices, and of those who were not chosen.