My cousins got Pong one Christmas that came in a coffee table sized console. It was such a soothing game ....

Us too!

Happy Day Tom!

Oh I hope it's a good day for all of you!

Lower the retirement age to 60! Anyone who worked manual labor is wrecked by then, and the rest of us are a potent volunteer force. Or in my case, need SSA to go back to writing. (But it is weird to be treated as old by medical folks)

My stepmother too! When I hear parents hesitating I threaten to tell them ALL the gory details.

I LOVED the Saskiad! Oh my heart -- it was years ago, but such a great book.

I finished Allegra Goodman's Isola not long ago, and can't stop thinking about it.
www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/738056...

Oh! I love the diaries and refuse to finish Vol. 5, because that way I can deny that she walked into the river.

We're from the same hometown, and our books came out the same year (mine, doh, was not a doorstop bestseller) but he's enough younger than me that I mostly remember him as one of a group of particularly bratty boys at the swim club snack bar window (where I was working).

My mother, during one of her periodic episodes of daily 6am Mass, would hiss at the ones who threw themselves on the floor at communion: "Get UP. Go do something USEFUL."

Ooh. BOLD!
JFC ... I lived in NYC in the 80s (in the 20s on the East Side), and this wasn't true even then.

I know, right?

Donations of money, rather than food, help food banks to feed more people and help to keep them resourced through the summer months, when kids are out of school and need for food assistance is greatest.

I bought them for my mother at the end. She was pretty anorexic/alcoholic but her caretaker could cook up something fresh without too much trouble, and we could often get a third to half a meal into her.

My dog cannot have any of the plush toys because they're shredded in about 10 minutes and I don't think eating polyfill is good for him.