Charlie

The problem with living with a partner is that all of his stuff that I would throw in a dumpster without regret is stuff that he couldn't bear to part with, and the same is probably true of my stuff. I still have all sorts of things I have saved from my childhood and youth, not to mention a forty year accumulation of paperwork connected to my professional career, which I will never need again, but still....😟? At the beginning of the pandemic lockdown, I started to go through a box of things from my college days that sat in the back of my bedroom closet (and had sat unlooked-at for a number of years before that on a shelf in the garage), expecting to finally winnow the wheat from the chaff and throw the latter away. After two days, the box was as full as when I started--all I had accomplished was to make myself mushily sentimental.

We have psychological difficulty getting rid of books we have read, so it was a relief when we discovered how easy it was to use the local library. Severalweeks ago, however, I saw that we had no more space left on our bookshelves, because our public library closed down when the pandemic lockdown started, so we had begun buying books again. I went through the shelves and removed about two dozen books that I thought we could give away to the library or to our favorite thrift store, and piled them up. As soon as my spouse saw the pile, he picked up a book and said, "This looks interesting," and began to read it. Eventually he decided that every book on the pile was worth reading again, so now I have spaces on the shelves, but a permanent pile of books on the floor.

Are underage drinking laws less lax these days? I started going to bars back in the days when the laws were not uniform, i.e., I could not legally drink in NJ, where the age to drink in a bar was 21, but I could cross the state line into NY, where the drinking age was 18. Has the uniform age of 21 in the US caused the laws to be more rigorously enforced nowadays?

A blast from the past (1970s)!

You would have to meet at a public swimming pool in order to see whether he is the person in the photos.

I love Brahms, but I'm glad he didn't write any operas.

I think Fed's decision to quit at this point, with the possibility of damaging his body and knowing he probably can't win RG anyway, is actually more honorable than Osaka's decision to skip the final of Cincinnati last September, in order to be ready for the Open. At least he is making it more likely that there will be a competitve final for the fans.

Yes, it was kind of like moonshining. The apartment did have a faint aroma that someone in the know would recognize, but after all, commercial poppers were often advertised as "room freshener." The amyl nitrate aroma dissipates pretty quickly, so I doubt that neighbors were aware of it.

When I worked in Center City, I liked to stop by Wanamaker's at lunchtime to listen to the organ concerts.

My best friend's mother worked for S&H Green Stamps. She liked to give TV-tray-tables as gifts.

I miss MsGuy, too.

I doubt that MsGuy has passed. According to his profile, he started following you only a couple of weeks ago!

Of course Rick is still a member. I don't know about Lucky--we have never discussed this subject--but I have no interest in "kicking out members," and I doubt that he does either. He started this thread over the birthday list, which contained names of people who haven't been active here for years, and I suggested the possibility of flagging them as "inactive" so no one wastes time posting a Happy Birthday to them.

I'm sure there are details that Kris would "prefer to keep between the two of them," as the reviews often put it.

That was a misleading sensation. Amyl nitrate actually decreases blood pressure through vasodilation, so that less blood is getting to your head.

Any unwashed jock straps?

Numero uno

You can also add latlrnr to the list. He joined in 2004 and died in 2008.

I am still confused, because although I followed this procedure and arrived at the group of seven late members, I still don't know how they got to be listed as members of that group. For instance, long time member @bigvalboy's death was announced in a thread back in November, but he is not in the group. I can think of other late members who are not there either.

It happens when any wealthy country gets its first internationally known athlete. Genie Bouchard had the same experience with sponsors when she became the first Canadian woman to make a Grand Slam final, when all sorts of Canadian companies rushed to sign her up for longterm contracts, although she didn't win that Wimbledon title, and didn't even remain a potential winner in the sport for very long.

In case you are not aware, "Scouse" probably means means he has a Liverpool accent.

Well, if I had made $40 million by the time I was 22, I would be depressed, because I would never be sure that every guy I fell for was really turned on by me and not by my money. Talk about a reason to feel insecure. If I had made $40 million by the time I was 72, at least I would know why he was groping me.

One of the problems with "poppers" is that it is a generic term for chemical solutions that are not uniform from one brand to another. When I started using poppers sixty years ago, all that was available was medicinal amyl nitrate in little glass ampules wrapped in yellow fabric that one bought from a pharmacy with a prescription (my grandfather had used it in the 1920s for his heart problems); one broke the container --hence "poppers"--and sniffed until it lost potency. I was lucky that I had a friend who was a pharmacist and provided them to me under the counter. During the 1970s in Amsterdam, I went home with a chemist who made his own 🙃, and we had sex under sheets soaked in it! In the early days of the AIDS epidemic, it was mistakenly believed that poppers might be the cause of Kaposi's sarcoma, often a symptom of AIDS, and at that point the gov't stepped in to make it harder to get medicinal quality amyl nitrate. The composition of recreational poppers was changed to facilitate the legal sale of commercial brands over the counter, and they were advertised as things like "room freshener." Unfortunately, I have never used anything else that has the same effect on me--liquor makes me sleepy rather than horny, and other drugs screw up my head too much and for too long. Too much of the commercial brands usually gave me a headache, but I have never been personally aware of any vision problems related to using it--this is the first time I have ever heard of that. I used them off and on for about 50 years, and my own vision is still excellent, but if they seem to affect yours, then I would not take a chance on developing maculopathy; macular degeneration runs in my family, and I wouldn't wish it on anyone.

It looks like an economy model of the Burj in Abu Dhabi.

I wonder why so many people would sign up as a "member," but never post any content (btw, does "content" include reactions as well as actual posts?), since if all one wants to do is read the site, one could do that as a "guest." Since this thread started as a response to the birthday list--I don't even know where that is--couldn't members who have not logged in for a certain period of time, such as two years, simply be flagged as "inactive," so no one wastes time wishing them a Happy Birthday?