Charlie

But think of all the gas I use just to get back and forth to Costco or Sam's Club.

Years ago, a friend of mine had a relation who worked for a pharmaceutical company. He told her she should invest some money in the company, because it was working on a new drug that would be a big seller. She was reluctant to take a chance, so she didn't do it. She told me, "I think he's wrong about it selling well, because I don't like the sound of the name--it's called Viagra."

I paid $4.78/gal for regular today at my usual Phillips 76 station in Palm Springs.

I don't believe in playing with things that I don't really understand and could make costly mistakes. I don't service my own car, and I don't invest my own money. I was lucky that when I started working at 23, one of the contractual requirements my employer made was that employees join a TIAA-CREF retirement plan, in which we had to invest a set percentage of our paycheck, and the employer would match it. I left everything in their hands, and I retired at 59 with a very comfortable income which has remained steady through all kinds of economic ups and downs. When my spouse got a jump in salary thirty-five years ago, he decided he needed a financial advisor, and he found one through a recommendation from a friend. Several years later, he unexpectedly inherited a substantial sum, and he turned that over to the advisor as well. Nick kept the investments growing, not dramatically but steadily, and we left everything in his hands. He was an independent advisor, but he worked through Schwab. When Nick announced last year that he was retiring at 82, I panicked for a moment, but he recommended that we move everything to an independent advisor whom he had known for years and trusted absolutely. Rather than try to find someone on my own, or--heaven forbid!--try to manage it myself, we moved it all to the new guy. So far, so good, but he does seem to want us to be more involved in investment decisions than we were with Nick, and I am really not too comfortable with that. BTW, because I am an old-fashioned type who was raised by working class parents, I think all those brokerage numbers on paper are nice to look at, but I never think of them as REAL money, so I always keep a stash of cash in traditional bank accounts, which would probably horrify an advisor.

It's being surrounded by all that black leather that turns him on.

Sweet photo of two late pornstars. (I know what you are feeling there, Al. I had my hand in there, too.)

If I saw only the handle, I would expect a female escort named Zoe to be advertising.

And what's with "rustic white" bread?

If you don't want to see all the photos when you go to Unread Site Content, you will see a column that says Content Types; click on Topics and Apply Changes at the bottom, and you will just get the unread contents in the old format (no photos). Radio Rob addressed this in a long post on Site Issues.

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Funny, when I got to photo #11, I said to myself, "That looks like a flat in Covent Garden," and sure enough, when I got to the text, it mentioned his flat in Covent Garden. (The first time I had sex in England was in a flat in Covent Garden with a similar view.)

I just read a USA Today article that says the tests that arrive in the mail may be affected by cold temperatures, so if yours are sitting in your snow-covered mailbox in Iowa or your icy conditions in Dallas, they may give you a false negative (false positive less likely).

The Amtrak station in PS is far outside town, there is usually no taxi service on site, and the scheduled arrivals from the east are normally late at night, if they are on time. I like train travel, but it is not a good choice for PS, unless you have a friend with a car in North Palm Springs, who is willing to pick you up at any hour. There are air connections from the cities you mention, but few international visitors arrive at those cities.

For international travelers, SFO is sometimes a better choice than LAX for connections to PSP, even though it is farther away, because it has better air service to PSP than LAX does (more flights on larger aircraft).

Unfortunately, there is no direct service provider between LAX and Palm Springs. I don't know where you are flying from, but there are several new airlines flying directly to PSP from various locations now, and it is probably worth the extra airfare--if there is any--to fly in and out of PSP rather than LAX. However, if you are coming from an international location other than Canada, LAX is probably your only choice.

Yes, it was a federal judge.

He's into whips, too?!!!😈

When I was researching family history, I discovered an old newspaper in Salt Lake City that had a story about my grandfather in 1899 suing the Southern Pacific RR, because he had been riding in a freight car ("Go west, young man!"), and a security guard found him and threw him off the moving train, causing injuries for which he was hospitalized in SLC. A federal judge dismissed the suit. That was an incident that I had never heard about.

I was surprised this morning to log on and find the photos in Public Images actually show up in the thread titles. I think you will get blowback from some members who don't expect this and don't want photos of naked men showing up as they scroll through new or unread content on their phones or in places where others may be able to see what is popping up on their screens. It also makes the list of threads much longer to scroll through.

The commentators for the Australian Open were also in a studio in Bristol, CT, though the backdrop looked like they were in Melbourne. Working remotely from home is the new thing everywhere.

I am no longed licensed to test drive.🙄

When I opened his RM ad, my first reaction was "I've seen that guy!" The "map me" function on the site shows him within walking distance of my home, so I can at least affirm that he is not a fake actually working out of Belarus.

Smithsonian Channel did an episode of "How Did They Build That?" on this building. My blood runs cold at the thought of living in such a place.

"I just adore him, So I can't ignore him..."

I wonder if he realizes that the date stamp on that photo is there? I guess he was -5 yrs old when it was taken.