Last night I filled the tub as full as possible and soaked for quite a while. I woke up at 3:30 a.m. not feeling too great. I got up and took a pain pill. It has been almost 2 years since I have had to take any. It was April 2006 when I had back all my hardware installed. Thank you kindly. I like that "plant on" too. Happy, what part of TX are you near? I went to the habitat for humanity store today to see if I would luck out and find pavers. They did not, but my oh my they have everything in the world. Old doors, new doors, old windows etc. It is a 57 mile round trip, so I doubt I will do that very often.

Soaking rice is a trick I learned back in the day when I led backpacking trips for a living. You'd put the brown rice in to soak in one of your nalgene containers at lunch, and then it would be ready to fast cook for dinner at the end of the trail. It's really a technique for brown rice, which is much longer cooking than white rice, it's not necessary for white rice. Anyway, the soaking cuts the time down but yes, you have to remember to soak it which I hardly ever do. The nice thing is, if you remember it doesn't require watching or anything in between. It worked really well for this short grain brown rice. Steaming is definately the way to go, but I mostly burn rice when I steam, I just don't have the cooking knack that most do on this site. A lot of it is due to me not having a nice heavy bottomed pot and also my electric stove is complete carp and I often get distracted by some other task when I'm cooking. Sometimes all the rice gods come together for me though! I think starchiness is part of the appeal of the short grain brown rice for most people. I'm glad I'm almost out of it now, I am definately a long grain brown rice gal. But this turned out very creamy with the feta cheese, which is fab. with asparagus. Even Alton said use long grain rice for rice pudding, on the video I was watching over the weekend. I can't wait to make room for some basmati rice in my cupboard and try Alton's recipe, with milk, cream and coconut milk! Here is a link that might be useful: Indian style rice pudding

Wow! This really takes the cake. It sounds as if the parents ran the entire show and the bride had little or no say in anything. I agree that the woman was startled and searching for something to say, as she was totally surprised that someone not invited would actually bring a gift. It is absolutely wrong and totally tacky to invite anyone to a shower without inviting them to the wedding. We had a similar experience with our recently married daughter's mother-in-law, who invited 170 people to the rehearsal dinner, nearly half of whom weren't invited to the wedding (we had "limited" her wedding invitations to 150!!!) Many of them were her husband's employees, most of whom had the good sense to decline to attend the rehearsal dinner, displaying better sense than she did. (She also had the nerve to have a gift table at the dinner!) I never ceased to be amazed at the bad taste exhibited by some people when it comes to weddings.

Some thoughts. I'll miss Annie and hope she returns soon. Be aware that when someone states something akin to the following, it uses fallacious reasoning. Ex. "My brother has two PhDs (art history and biology) and he doesn't think for one second that the Challenger blew up because of a faulty O-ring." Unless the brother is an expert in the field at hand, his PhD or post doc or Mensa score is irrelevant. The above statement employs the logical fallacy _argument from authority_ or _appeal to authority_. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_authority There are people with assorted degrees who might habitually leave a cooked turkey on the counter overnight or goof when composing a simple sentence. Business owners tend to vote for the party they think will be better for their bottom line. The voters who supported Trump don't all come from the same motivation or perspective. I believe a good many (professionals or tradespeople, marginally employed or unemployed) might well be low-information(*1) voters. Some are surely racist, mysogynistic, anti-gay. I know (but don't play with Trump supporters who have spoken disparagingly of blacks, non-whites, and gays (LGBT). If someone utters the N word, or jig------ or other term, I think it's safe to conclude something unmistakable about what they are about in some of their beliefs. * LIVoter -- strong tendency toward unidimensional news, headline, emotional news; not wide, in depth or varied. I believe that there is a substantial element of internalized misogyny in some of the women disliking HRC. I think Trump recognized a good amount of "identity anxiety" and accompanying anger. "Crap, we've got a Whitehouse full of blacks and their friend for eight years! What? Now a woman! Maybe a femnazi. Over my dead body." Hillary Clinton, a "flawed" candidate? Remember Lee Atwater's handbook -- just repeat something often enough and long enough... Even NPR began parroting Fox News. There were no shenanigans with the Clinton Foundation. No quid pro quo. If certain officials from this or that country donated large sums, keep in mind that the Clinton Foundation does an enormous amount of charitable work both domestically and globally. It get's a solid "A" from a well regarded organization that reviews and rates charities. If King Tut gave a large donation to the CF in an attempt to curry favor politically, well, looks like all he got was tofu curry. HRC was repeatedly smeared by certain RW operators and media outlets. She got an undeserved bad rap. And repeated misinformation, sensationalized and misleading or untruthful headlines can stick to almost anyone. It's not about facts or truth, but about the power of innuendo or out and out lies (ex. The recent engineered lie by Fox News right before the election and which legitimized Trump repeating it at his rallies -- that an indictment would be forthcoming. BS of course, but I'll bet more than a few people still believe it, even though the liar "walked it back" more than a day later. Fox did a similar lie trick before Bush-Cheney's invasion of Iraq. I've seen more than a few straw man posts. Don't put words into someone else's mouth (post), then proceed to argue against them. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man Tonight 60 Minutes features an "interview" with Trump. Unfortunately the interviewer is going to be a softy. I imagine that is the only way the Donald would agree to it. No Anderson Cooper. And I doubt we'll ever see a well-informed strong interviewer get to sit down with Trump.