I just lost my dog after her needing people around pretty constantly. My partner and I can mostly arrange working from home, so the situation is not the same. What is the same is how you approach how your dog feels and how to tell when it’s ‘the time’.

You’re probably the most important part of his life. The shelter might let him find a home that can care for him better or it might not (because people are hesitant to adopt older dogs with health issues). What they can’t give is the stability he gets from staying with you. It really sucks that we can’t ask them what they want. I know that my pup would never have chosen a longer life if it meant giving us up.

When is it time? There are resources online about how to judge quality of life. For us it was as simple as picking her favorite things to do and watching to see if she still wanted to do them.

I have second guessed myself a lot - should we have done more vet care, should we have spent more time with her, etc. You’re in a hard situation. The decicions don’t get easier and sometimes are no win. My advice is to make your decisions for him as best you can knowing that your best is not ever going to be the perfect ideal AND it will be good enough.

Something sweet to pair with the salty. Apple chips, dried fruit, caramel corn, or something like that

Yes, and you have to dig deep in some places to get below the frost with your foundation. In those places a basement makes sense because you’re digging that far either way. Texas frosts don’t get very deep, so you’re able to have a shallower foundation making a basement just an extra cost.

Nice work on the write up! It is hard sorting things out when they’re half true. For me, drinking water is especially important to get the fact straight on because of how bad it can go if the system fails. It would be silly to disregard anyone saying water wasn’t up to a safe standard, but separating things I would care about out from the fluoride and chlorine background noise is tricky. Thanks for the deeper dive!

Just generally, you can get a report of your municipal water testing. The biggest safety variable that I would be worried about testing at home for is lead in the pipes between me and the treatment plant. That includes my house/building and the municipal pipes.

Now taste, that’s a to each their own situation. Sulfury water is my limit for sure. No thanks!

I think hey are talking about the chloramine that Minneapolis uses to disinfect. It is more stable and isn’t just chlorine, so it would be in a “combined” result. The levels are page three of this report https://www2.minneapolismn.gov/media/content-assets/www2-documents/residents/2022-Consumer-Confidence-Report-FINAL.pdf It looks like 2023 isn’t posted yet, but I doubt it changes much year to year.

Are you talking about using chloramine in disinfection? I think conflating pool water and drinking water standards is a bit of a mistake. Things get added to pools from people’s bodies after chlorination that cause weird combined results. Drinking water is disinfected (chlorinated) as a final step. I would object to my municipality using chloramine, but not because I wouldn’t drink it.

Me talking at dinner: “Will you pass me the peas?” Cut to 5 people confused about whether I mean just one of them or if I want the whole table to all hand me the peas.

I get why they/them can be confusing because of the plural thing, but we are used to a quirky language. With a little practice, the tone and context clear up nearly all confusion. The rest is as easy or hard as what we have to do with an ambiguous “you.”

PS Sorry to the “yous/yous guys” people. I am not trying to turn a blind eye to you obviously superior usage. It just really ruins my point.

I spend time highlighting how my past experience relates to the job and what I like about the place or job specifically. Depending on the vibe in the room I will add one quick, interesting, and nonoffensive thing about my personal life at the end. Basically recapping a cover letter but in a personable way because my writing is dry

No kind of expert on the idiomatic use, but the literal translation makes it feel like the monkey is going after something without a plan for where to land. I would expect it to indicate impulsivity

It is your choice on sanding. Sanding down the crack/tape area below grade will make the flattest patch. The alternative is feathering out your joint compound further to hide the bump. You’ll be surprised how thick tape seems when you’re going for a smooth finish.

I like the flat (presanded) option because the bump option bothers me even though nobody else sees the difference.

You might want to use mesh tape on the big cracks to help stop recracking. I would poke around and see if the whole section is damaged too. You can replace large chuncks of drywall pretty easily and cheaply so no sense keeping damaged drywall if you’re doing work anyway.

The biggest issue is what caused the crack to begin with. If it is settling, make sure there won’t be any more of that before doing a repair to the crack.

Credentials - working on a house with foundation problems and water damage

There is a difference between pain from an injury and muscle pain from excercise (DOMS). The former should be treated like a real injury where you give rest including very light exercise. Too much work could make the damage worse. The latter can be mostly ignored except for your own comfort.

In my area, trash is screened and ladfilled. Some hair goes with that, but most enters the solids stream where it is treated then the treated residuals are applied to farms as a soil enhancer/fertilizer. Pretty cool that they don’t just send it to landfill imo

Absolutely no sarcasm intended. I had just never thought of it that way.

Mind blown by flawless logic

I looked it up and cooking oil definitely can boil in a physics/chemistry sense of the word. That temp is well above the smoke point. I agree that in a practical sense boiling oil is a fire ball before you’d ever have to worry about breathing too much oil vapor though.

Yep, 80C or 180F. I’m not sure if you can actually boil oil on a stove, but I do know that would be a bad idea. If you ever end up wanting to poach you might be able to do it in your oven on a very low setting rather than the stovetop.

If you keep your oil at the right temp (below boiling) the thing you’re cooking won’t ever brown. You get it cooked through evenly and infused with flavor from the poaching liquid. The texture and flavor will be much more like a boiled veggie than a sauted one. And usually if you’re poaching veggies you leave them in much larger chunks than you would saute - like even a whole carrot wouldn’t be weird.

It is actually the extreme heat that prevents sticking more than the oil. You can stir fry in a dry wok. The stirring is for even cooking.