I took Friday off to celebrate the release of Baldur’s Gate 3 on PS5 and played extensively all weekend. Now it’s Monday and I’m sitting in the dark drinking my coffee and trying to ready my mind to go back to work and not play video games all day. While I like my job, I would like another weekend now please.

I wish I was better at conflict, especially with my partner. It gnaws at me constantly if unresolved, gives me horrible anxiety (I’m normally not an anxious person) to the point where I can’t eat or sleep. So, I tend to hold back from conflicts altogether. Not a useful solution. I wish I had better advice to offer but in place of that, please accept my commiseration. Hopefully some time to reflect and cool down will prove useful and perhaps your partner will have fresh ideas for resolution when you readdress it.

Our vet told us that cats don’t really chew their food, they just kind of horf it down and sometimes use their teeth if there’s a big piece of something that they can’t swallow whole. Kibble seems to horf down just fine!

Looks absolutely delicious! Did you make the pappardelle? If not, what brand did you use?

Echoing the others, this is totally fixable. I recommend buying a silicone gasket rather than the standard rubber ones they come with. My rubber gasket was obliterated within 9 months of daily use, but then I bought a pack of 3 silicone gaskets on Amazon maybe four years ago and the first one is still basically pristine.

Sorry, but my cat eats whole mice. I don’t think our tastes have much overlap. I’ll trust her decisions on the wet food varieties without personally experiencing them.

I was curious about her utter devotion to Temptations, though, and can safely say that whatever causes cats to go wild for them is not present in at least this human.

My partner and I had fun playing Cat Quest 2 and Spiritfarer as coop games, in addition to It Takes Two which you mentioned. CQ2 is a cute action RPG and Spiritfarer is very chill, lots of sim/management tasks but with really beautiful characters, art, and story. Definitely very unlike Cuphead or Portal 2 but sometimes it’s nice to switch things up a bit.

Option A has a description but options B and C don’t for me.

Yeah except oyster and other shellfish shells should be returned to the ocean to decompose and alkalize the waters from which they were harvested. Surely there are other means of creating white paint for roofs and then two benefits could be gained for the environment.

Look like they might be common mergansers. Sweethearts!

One of my personal favorites. I love how it seems so abstract at first but then on closer examination, you can see the distinctive landscape elements. I find the colors so evocative. So different from his other works (that I’m familiar with, anyway).

Agreed. I bought Beyond Meat patties at Costco because mine was out of Impossible and I was sorely disappointed. Impossible or bust!

But much healthier for the cow, which I think is the reason a lot of folks are interested. Those eating plant-based for health alone are probably more likely to go for a lentil or black bean patty than Beyond/Impossible Meat.

Yeah, I think the birds are in their summer molt because I’ve noticed they’re all looking haggard and scruffy! Nothing like their beautiful, vibrant plumage of the spring.

Beautiful shot! I think it might be a lesser goldfinch, not a grosbeak. And on a thistle, the finches’ favorite food, too!

I put out a birdbath last year and it truly warms my heart how much my local wildlife uses it. Every kind of bird, squirrels, chipmunks, everyone comes to cool down and have a drink. I have to clean it out daily but it’s a small price to pay to see my critters hop up for a drink of fresh cool water on a 90-degree day.

Seriously, I’m pretty disappointed. Just scrolled past a meme about Lizzo (har har she’s fat) and then I find this (har har short-haired bitches be like)… I’ve been finding this community to be overall pretty positive so it bums me out to see that shit infecting this space too.

There’s currently a Douggles (that’s what we call them at my house) on a branch screaming his high-pitched incessant barking scream - this will probably go on for several more minutes. They’re lucky they’re so cute because they can be god-damned annoying. But then they meet me at the feeder and take a peanut from my hand and all is forgiven.

Republicans who want to smoke weed and abolish the age of consent.

If you’re open to paying for something, America’s Test Kitchen is a great resource for all the basics. Their website also gives you access to Cook’s Country (which is like regional American food) and Cook’s Illustrated (which does deep dives into how they come up with and test recipes to get the final result, which in turn gives lots of technique tips). They have an absolute wealth of technique tips, recipes, videos, cookbooks, etc etc. They will advertise to you a ton so I recommend unsubscribing from their marketing emails, but the depth and breadth of their cooking resources are massive.

You can also find their content on YouTube with kitchen equipment tips and technique lessons. If you’re a library user, you may also be able to check out digital copies of Cooks Illustrated/Cook’s Country through Libby. The library, digital or otherwise, is also a great resource for cookbooks and such. One last book you might look for is Mark Bittman’s How to Cook Everything, which is massive and does go over a ton of basics.