Are you also saying that they didnt make you feel welcome?

My brother bought a car that way.

The town which employs him made a fleet purchase of 50 vehicles (Ford Crown Victoria sedans). Town employees were invited to buy cars at the town's price, with a limited number of allowable modifications. About 15 people bought cars, thereby lowering their final price, and the price the town paid. The final price was way under what he would have been able to swing on his own.

Thanks for the tip--I'll try that. It's probably just some waxy buildup but it's irritating now and I remember how painful it was to fly when I had swimmer's ear. As long as the spray lasts 8 hours, I should be OK.

so, you'd be fine with it if she was attractive?

by the way, do you eat rice with chopsticks or a spoon?

Well, if she was as attractive as I AM, then I would be fine with it.

Chopsticks or a spoon? What a question.

or you could start confusing all the white people. god knows, i do.

God knows you really do confuse us.

that's because you lot, having come only so recently to civilization, confuse easily.

but i can tell who's welsh and who isn't.

sometimes i forget i am not posting on mongomania. the chopsticks/spoon/rice thing is a reference to a delightful conversation on egullet's "elsewhere in asia-pacific" forum that someone sent me a link to. in it a renowned scholar of asian culture has decreed, based on knowledge handed down to him by one "adopted" korean family*, that koreans do not eat rice with chopsticks and that it is rude to do so at a korean meal. it is brilliant stuff. i thought i'd use it to figure out if you were korean.

*in a nice twist, some ingenue who is new to that site asked said pundit if he had in fact been adopted as a child by a korean family. turns out, he recently became godfather to a korean friend's child and has been "adopted" by his friend's family. of course, it is on the basis of work like this that modern anthropology became a discipline.

There you go, shilling for your own web site again.

http://www.angrylittlegirls.com/

how many farthings in a shilling?

I thought we were all related. You don't know the Thai or Vietnamese or Japanese or whatchamacallit family that lived down the street from the Johnsons? They made delicious stir fried rice.

Aren't all Ornamental girls beautiful?

So, you're in LA right now? There's another DuPars or so.

yeah, but i'm not driving around the city looking for their other locations--aren't they in the valley or some such. plus we have limited access to mother-in-law's car.

we'll be in l.a till the end of next week--in vegas this weekend, winning big. am still trying to figure out a way to make it to monkeymay's place of business (which i imagine resembles something out of a tom waits song--perhaps even "open invitation to the blues"). drinks with aaron t are also on the hypothetical cards. would you be open to rendezvousing at either of these events, should they happen?

Can't this evening, but otherwise, subject to child care duty--sure. As for monkey's place, Tom Waits, eh? Yeah, with some Italy thrown in.

This is why Zeus invented the fax machine. Alas.

What on earth??? Glad you got home before the cement set.

And sorry about the tomato plants too.

clb

You did sort of suspect that would happen.

A reason you should be cheerful though was that you got the only sailing of the Panormitis that day. We were supposed to be on it at 5.00, but due to high winds it was cancelled and we had to leave at 2.00 on the Symi II with all of the daytrippers taking the slow boat via the monastry - 4 bloody hours to get the Rhodes.

what a pain. We did have a very good time though didn't we?

New TVs are cheaper than the diagnostics charge for the guy to look at the old one.

$300 will buy you a wonderful new TV, but prob wouldn't get your old one fixed...

We're in the same boat & currently shopping for new one. Current set is about 20 years old. Don't know how old yours is. Cost to fix vs. cost of new one also a factor.

Must be all that stress from ongoing arbitrary suspensions you-know-where.

Nah, maybe it's from a couple of pan-Asian forums I stumbled upon recently. I was hoping for calm, intelligent and well though out discourse.

Really dissapointing to see people who seem intelligent enough spewing nationalistic hatred at eachother from all points in Asia or politicizing everything. Shit if you're mixed raced and ugly and grew up in a small town mostly full of white people and you hate yourself maybe therapy can provide some relief rather sitting around blaming the larger culture. Intense pettiness from people who seem to be educated and write fairly well. I won't be going to any of these forums. I had a temporary morbid curiosity with deeply internalized and personalized problems being projected onto, well everything.

I'm going to have my second cup this morning: it's steeping right now. Tea is so pleasant...a Reason to Be Cheerful, even.

Beginning today, TVs sold in the US will be subject to new rules on digital chips. In a nutshell, manufacturers will be limited in how many TVs they can sell without a digital chip.

Expect deep discounting on non-digital chip TVs in the second half of 2005 and early 2006.

Ghostrider, Karl's Appliances on Passaic Ave Fairfield has some very deep discounts on a wide range of TVs, lots of choices in the $250-$350 range. I was in there the other dau, lusting after a Viking range...

Do you have a link? LOL

This forum I initially thought had some potential. I quickly grew tired of being lectured at by the resident sophomores who have apparently taken an Asian-American studies class and read a few pages of Chicken Coop Chinaman so they know everything. To be fair, they have some interesting discussions, but they are often poorly moderated by said sophomores. Cute kids, surely the only one's who have ever had questions of identity, of course they have all the answers now.

This forum has 12,636 mebers who've made 845,167 posts. I really thought these attitudes were more from a generation or two ago. They certainly don't reflect my own experiences with other Asians. Maybe they are still in their motherlands but speak English. I starting reading some threads in the Korean forum, but almost every thread has someone from China or Japan making inflammatory remarks. Of course some Koreans flame back. So and so on.

Thanks! It's gonna be a weekend of mostly shopping, in that fine old American holiday tradition, so this is a welcome tip.

Speaking of tips, & getting back to the thread topic, tips at work were really lousy today. I think people are thinking about what it's gonna cost them to drive to the Shore this weekend & checking their wallets twice......