Charlie

I would certainly consider hiring him if he does windows.

He came to the country with the reasonable understanding that he was welcome. The confusion over whether he had the technically correct type of visa does not seem to be his fault, but it gives the government a chance to reconsider in light of the adverse political reaction. He didn't demand a right to play (that's his father's position, not his), but went through the process of requesting an exemption and apparently having it granted before he went to Australia. I'm not a personal fan of Novak, but it sounds like it is not his fault that he has become a political football.

Many years ago I had an apartment in NYC that was at the end of a hall, so when I looked out the peephole in my door, I could see down the whole hall. Halfway down was a middle-aged gay neighbor who I suspected hired escorts. One evening I was near my door when I heard the elevator door open in the hall, so I looked out my peephole and saw an attractive young man and a girl walk down the hall and stop at the neighbor's door; then he motioned to the girl to go into the stairwell that was almost opposite that door, before he knocked on the door. The door opened, and the young man entered the apartment. As soon as the door closed, the young woman emerged from the stairwell and stood there listening at the door, while I stood at my peephole watching her. I didn't know what was going on--was she an audio voyeur?--but it made me uneasy, so I phoned the neighbor and quietly informed him that the young man had arrived with a girl who was listening at his door. A few minutes later, the girl jumped back into the stairwell and the young man emerged from the apartment looking rather perplexed, but with something in his hand, and the door closed quickly behind him. The girl came out of the stairwell to join him, and the two of them whispered together as they headed to the elevator. Afterwards, the neighbor called me back to thank me, and said he had told the young man that my call was from a friend who needed to come over to see him right away, so he had cut the appointment short, paid the young man and sent him away. So was I a voyeur secretly watching another voyeur? I'll never know what was actually going on.

Driving his '55 Oldsmobile 88 in flipflops? Unwise.

Groan...🙄

Tennis Channel commentators have just said that they have been informed that Novak is definitely going to leave Australia.

If Novak is barred from the the country because of the visa problem, the member of his team who applied for the wrong kind of visa is going to be in deep shit. His father is already raging back in Serbia.

That does sound like fun. Which country houses do you plan to see?

You did better than a friend of mine here in PS who tried to fly to her family in Oklahoma on Xmas Eve. She sat on the plane for three hours here waiting to take off, at which point they returned to the terminal to offload all the passengers who had lost their connecting flights by then; she was one of them, so she just went back home and tried to re-book for the next day. But that didn't work, and she didn't finally get to Oklahoma until just before midnight on Dec. 26. Everything was going smoothly on her trip back on New Year's Eve, when the passenger sitting next to her had a stroke, and the plane had to make an emergency landing in Tucson (she said the guy kept moaning, "I don't want to die in Tucson!").

I don't know. They haven't sent me anything about it this year.

I used accumulated points on an airline credit card to buy lounge access at the beginning of the year--in 2020. I never flew at all that year, but the airline kindly credited me to use the lounge access in 2021. I didn't fly that year either.

Yeah, that was me in freshman year.

I haven't worn pajamas since my freshman year in college.

To clean out the closets I was going to clean out when the pandemic started two years ago.

I agree with @azdr0710. My dog usually will eat anything you give him, but my standard feeding practice is to put some canned food under the kibble; most dogs will eat the kibble to get at the canned food, and if the canned food is wet enough, it will also flavor the kibble. Right now we are in luck, because we have neighbors who got a Poodle puppy last year, who is very picky and turns down lots of things, both canned food and treats; they are always giving us the cans and boxes of expensive stuff he turns down--the latest is a mix of turkey and venison in gravy--which our shelter mutt thinks is the food of the gods.

The problem with flying into ONT is that the extra expense for renting a car to get back and forth to PS (there is no other option) pretty much negates whatever you save on the flight.

I don't think I could count the number of hours I have spent on Charing Cross Road looking at books in Foyles.

I could probably make another list as long, but let me start with a half dozen favorites of mine. Catherine Allgor--A Perfect Union: Dolley Madison and the Creation of the American Nation Lorene Cary--Black Ice (memoir) Eric Foner--Gateway to Freedom: The Hidden History of the Underground Railroad Mary S. Lovell--The Churchills: In Love and War Peter Shinkle--Ike's Mystery Man: The Secret Lives of Robert Cutler Raleigh Trevelyan--Sir Walter Raleigh (biography) All of them seem to fit your mother's interests, but most of them come to my mind immediately because of personal connections; i.e., Cary was a friend and neighbor of mine; Foner's history revealed the surprising fact that my first New York apartment was in what had been the private home of prominent abolitionists in the 19th century; and when I opened Shinkle's book, I saw a photo of a man I once knew. The Raleigh biography is by one of his descendants, who was also an old friend of mine.

At the moment I am sipping a small glass of Galliano.

The title of the poem, of course, is "Ring out, wild bells!"

Very.

I have one glass of wine with dinner every night, and don't normally drink any other alcohol unless I am at a social gathering. However, on Xmas day I looked though our liquor cabinet and found a bottle of Triple Sec--I don't know how it got there and I wasn't sure what it was, but I had a very small glass for a token celebration. We will be home alone tonight and tomorrow, so at some point I will search the cabinet for another adult beverage for one glass to toast the New Year.

"Ring out old shapes of foul disease; Ring out the narrowing lust of gold; Ring out the thousand wars of old, Ring in the thousand years of peace." Alfred Lord Tennyson

You know he isn't familiar with American English jargon when he replies to "What is your niche?" with "My mother's house."

When I told my spouse that we often had beef tongue for dinner, he almost barfed. I loved it. I think my mother bought it because it was one of the cheaper pieces of meat at the butcher (yes, she went to a real butcher shop--I haven't seen one of them in a long time). When I objected to something my mother served, she usually said, "Be thankful you're not one of the starving children in China" ("starving children in China" was a standard trope in my childhood).