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Messages - PaperCrystals

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1
Holidays / Best and Worst Holiday Celebrations!
« on: November 16, 2018, 12:40:01 pm »
For the most part, I've had generically good holidays with family. Very few stand out one way or another, buuuuuut...

Several years ago my husband's uncle had a stroke and was ordered onto a low-sodium diet afterwards. That aunt and uncle hosted Easter a few months later and refused all offers to bring something along (despite that being the family norm). They'd made every single dish with salt substitute. Every. Last. One. Every part of the meal tasted like metal. When one person asked for some actual salt to put on their food, the family started lecturing about how terrible salt is and how they were never going to have it in their house again. Very little of the food was eaten. I'm not sure what the rest of my in-laws did, but my husband and I had to get McDonald's on the way home.

On the good side, last Thanksgiving my husband was on call and all our local friends were out of town for family dinners, but some of our non-local friends had just found out that they couldn't get affordable tickets to their family Thanksgiving across the country, so they flew in to see us instead! I made my first fully solo Thanksgiving dinner with all the trimmings (and got my head swelled by all the praise!), and we spent the whole long weekend playing Pandemic Legacy Season Two. It was AMAZING. We ate off the leftovers whenever we got hungry, drank loads of coffee and Surge, and just had a great time.

What are your best and worst holidays?

2
General Life / Re: To reduce garbage, I’m bringing my own washable silverware
« on: July 12, 2018, 10:16:32 am »
Quote from: gramma dishes on July 11, 2018, 02:30:01 pm
Quote from: Amara on July 11, 2018, 12:38:53 pm
...   I would go out and buy some of those Corelle (?) dishes that are kind of plastic-y so they are good to use outdoors. ...

Actually, Corelle is made of a very special kind of glass and though it is tough, it is not totally unbreakable.  The good news is it can be washed in a dishwasher and used in a microwave oven.


I'd pick a sturdy plastic over Corelle. It's hard to break, but when it does, it shatters into thousands of tiny splinters. No amount of cleaning can find every piece, and my mom had to have pieces of Corelle cut out by the doctor because the shards she found with her feet later got embedded so deep that they were barely noticeable until they got infected. So now I have a thing about Corelle...

3
Wedding Etiquette / Re: How to call off a wedding
« on: June 27, 2018, 03:55:27 pm »
A friend of mine's wedding was called off shortly before the invitations went out. Her parents took care of calling the family that was coming in from far away, and a couple friends who knew a lot of people were given the brief version of what happened so that if people asked why invites weren't done, we could explain. Word got around pretty quickly.

4
Work Issues / Re: Uneven office birthday celebration
« on: June 27, 2018, 03:30:05 pm »
Quote from: Crispycritter on June 22, 2018, 07:55:49 pm
I just have to tell you the story of my birthday celebration at an old job years ago.  I might have told this on the old forum - sorry if it is familiar I can't remember! 

That year my birthday fell on a Saturday, so that Friday when I saw co-workers bringing in covered dishes, a sheet cake, balloons and drinks I just smiled to myself.  They set it all up in the conference room, crock pots bubbling, the cold items in the little fridge in there.  They kept the conference room door closed, so as to "not bother anyone with the smells of the pulled pork".  Yeah, right...…  I totally didn't notice (wink wink).

My hours were 6 am to noon-ish, and so when they all started going into the conference room I snickered to myself.  One even came down to ask me why I wasn't coming up for some of the pot luck.  Nope - it would take more than that for me to go attend my surprise party!!

Nope, it was a football party for that weekend's game.  Not only did they not celebrate my birthday, I wasn't even included in the company wide pot luck.  And they had cake. 

I say celebrate with friends elsewhere or bring your own cake!  Don't leave important things like cake up to others.

Did the company usually do birthdays in that big of a way? It seems like it would take a lot of time out of the workweek if a big potluck with decorations was the norm for every birthday.

5
Gaming / Sims Freeplay
« on: May 26, 2018, 02:55:56 pm »
I've been doing Sims Freeplay for a while, and could use some more neighbors! Anyone else play?

6
Gaming / Re: The Sims
« on: May 26, 2018, 02:54:47 pm »
I go through Sims phases, where I'll play a lot for a few weeks and then back off for months at a time. I'm getting the itch again, though. I liked Sims 3 better overall, but it kept crashing on me. Sims 4 may not have as many options, but I haven't had crash issues with it at all.

7
Cooking / Re: Cocktails!
« on: May 24, 2018, 02:39:03 pm »
Quote from: gorplady on May 23, 2018, 10:12:48 pm
Quote from: PaperCrystals on May 23, 2018, 10:49:06 am
My husband and I just started a weekly movie-and-cocktail date night now that I can drink again, so I will be watching this thread closely!

One of my favorites is one my in-laws picked up from a bar in Northern Wisconsin. I don't know the measurements because I make my BILs make them for me, but it's Amaretto, Gin, Coke, and Squirt over ice. So smooth and delicious...

Wisconsin: outdrinkin' your state since 1848... oh yeah!

(can you tell I'm from Wisconsin?)

My favorite drink is a brandy old-fashioned, sweet:

Ingredients
  • ½ tsp sugar
  • 3 dashes Angostura bitters
  • 1 orange slice (plus extra for garnish)
  • 2 Maraschino cherries or brandied cherries (plus extra for garnish)
  • 2 oz brandy
  • 2-3 ice cubes
  • Sprite, 7-up, Squirt, sour mix, or seltzer (as desired to top off the drink)

Instructions Place the sugar, bitters, orange slice, and cherries in an Old Fashioned glass. Add a splash of water. Muddle, being careful to avoid the orange rind, until the sugar has dissolved. Add the brandy and a couple ice cubes. Stir. Top the drink off with your choice of soda, sour mix, or seltzer. Garnish with a skewered orange slice and cherry, if desired.

I'm such a terrible Wisconsin girl- I don't like beer or bloodys, and I haven't had a Brandy Old Fashioned yet. I chalk it up to not living in the state until I was almost 5.

8
Romantic Relationships and Sex / Re: A Twist on Social Units and Invitations
« on: May 24, 2018, 02:27:35 pm »
Thanks for all the advice! I'll probably send my husband to talk to the husband about it, since they do online gaming together once or twice a week.

The "standing invitation" is that when either of us has free weekends we'll talk about the possibility of a visit. When we were all closer, we managed a weekend 2-3 times a year. Since we moved away, it's been hectic on both our ends (babies, ailing parents, loads of family weddings) and hasn't happened yet, but it's not just aspirational- we'll definitely have them over, we just don't know when yet. Life has settled down a lot in the last couple months so we're aiming for summer now. They live near our parents, so we've done dinner about every other time we're back that way.

It's definitely that the wife is a couple with her husband and also in a couple with her girlfriend. Which is where most of my confusion about what to do came in, since they all hang out together a lot. If she was seriously dating both of them, it would be easy- I'd definitely make sure to offer to include the girlfriend when we talked specific dates.


9
Books / Re: DON'T READ THAT!!!
« on: May 23, 2018, 07:51:50 pm »
This may be a cliche, but Ulysses. God, I hate James Joyce. So much.

10
Cooking / Re: Cocktails!
« on: May 23, 2018, 07:49:40 pm »
Quote from: Felicia on May 23, 2018, 05:25:09 pm
Quote from: PaperCrystals on May 23, 2018, 10:49:06 am
My husband and I just started a weekly movie-and-cocktail date night now that I can drink again, so I will be watching this thread closely!

One of my favorites is one my in-laws picked up from a bar in Northern Wisconsin. I don't know the measurements because I make my BILs make them for me, but it's Amaretto, Gin, Coke, and Squirt over ice. So smooth and delicious...

Squirt?

It's a citrus soda- they might be using it in place of sour mix, I'm not sure.

11
Romantic Relationships and Sex / A Twist on Social Units and Invitations
« on: May 23, 2018, 07:43:36 pm »
This is a fairly new question for me, but one I had no idea where to ask until now.

My husband and I are friends with a couple- well, we're mostly friends with the husband and couple-friends with the wife. She's nice, we just... don't have much in common with her. We've known them for probably about a decade now. When we've lived in the same city, we'd hang out about once a week, occasionally more. When we were in different cities but not too much of a drive, we hung out about once a month. Now we're a farther drive away and, while they haven't been able to take us up on it, we do have a standing invitation out to them to come stay with us for the weekend.

Just a few weeks ago, the wife told us that they'd opened up their relationship a while back, and she'd been seriously seeing her girlfriend for nine months now. We met the girlfriend at a party shortly after that. The girlfriend also seems very nice but with very little in common with us.

So that standing invitation- should it include the wife's girlfriend? I have zero experience with polyamorous relationships, and if a single friend had a serious partner of nine months we'd probably include them in the invitation, but because this is the SO of only one half of the couple, I'm not sure where etiquette would fall. Is it that we're inviting our friend (and his wife), or our friends and their SOs (who happen to be each other and also this other woman)?

If we were still living close by, I'd probably handle it by specifically including the girlfriend in some of our invitations, but because we're farther away, it feels both like it would be worse to not invite her (because she's a serious partner) and worse to invite her (because introversion and hosting a near-stranger for a weekend). Any thoughts?

12
Cooking / Re: Slow Cooking!
« on: May 23, 2018, 10:53:09 am »
I've been slowly collecting slow cooker meals that are also good to prepare in advance and freeze. This chicken curry was one of my favorites. It is mild, though. I'm a wuss!

2 pounds boneless, skinless chicken breasts
1 6 oz can tomato paste
1 15 oz can tomato sauce
1 13.5 oz can unsweetened coconut milk
1 diced onion
1 pound frozen peas
2 cloves garlic
3 TBSP honey
2 TBSP curry powder
1 tsp salt
1 tsp red pepper flakes

Cook for 8 hours on low in a 6-quart crockpot. Shred chicken before serving.

13
Cooking / Re: Cocktails!
« on: May 23, 2018, 10:49:06 am »
My husband and I just started a weekly movie-and-cocktail date night now that I can drink again, so I will be watching this thread closely!

One of my favorites is one my in-laws picked up from a bar in Northern Wisconsin. I don't know the measurements because I make my BILs make them for me, but it's Amaretto, Gin, Coke, and Squirt over ice. So smooth and delicious...

14
Cooking / Re: Potluck!
« on: May 22, 2018, 02:45:18 pm »
My favorite summer potluck dish is:

1 bag frozen sweet corn
2 15oz cans black beans, drained and rinsed
1 red onion, diced
2-4 tomatoes, diced
2 avocados, chopped
juice from one lime
salt and pepper to taste

mix and serve!
It's always popular, and you could easily add a diced jalapeno for a bit of kick.

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Updates and Announcements / Re: Welcome! We have tea, coffee and baked goods! Oh, and low moderation.
« on: May 21, 2018, 11:33:00 pm »
Haha, this seems more my speed! Hello!

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