Carol the Dabbler

Looks like a pizza to me.

VBS, you are the champ of excess verbiage!

You could try un-Readers-Digesting it. Like instead of saying simply "a red car," you could say "a car that has been painted red in color."

Hi, Bedelia! Great to hear from you! You and Arcadia see Mary's fictions as lies, but I don't, not exactly. She's like a person in a witness-protection program. She has a new identity, and in order for it to work, it needs to be airtight. That means no telling *anybody* anything, ever, about her past life. If you want to call that a lie, fine. But it wasn't told out of malice or because she doesn't trust John, it was simply an integral part of the program. I don't think John ever got that. Must admit, if I were in his shoes, I might not either!

I based my "discount" assumption on the "never knowingly undersold since 1925" claim at the bottom of their web pages. Maybe they just don't want to be put out of business by the actual discount stores? They seem to have been around for a while -- odd that I'd never heard of them (as I had Harrods, Marks & Spencer, Liberty, Selfridges....). Maybe because their name is so -- ordinary? Will have to check out their Oxford Street store next time I'm in London.

Yup, that was back before NASA officials got over-confident, back when they still took their engineers seriously -- back before Challenger.

It seems to be a discount department store with locations all over the UK.

That depends a lot on the individual. And as long as she likes her job, then even if the town feels "too small" to her, she can always pop over to Indy for the weekend. I've seen farmer's market the size of yours, but haven't generally bothered shopping at them -- got too spoiled in Ventura, California.

About anything in particular -- or just that it's a cold, dark Monday?

You could freeze some to eat later. If you have more self-control than I do.

So what kind of job did you end up with, if you couldn't teach?

Well then, there's no way that you could ever be successful or even acceptable to them, so there's no point trying. That could be kind of liberating in a wsy. To paraphrase Rick Nelson, you can't please your parents, so you've got to please yourself.

That's a quick one?! It was sunny and cool here yesterday, but very, very gusty. Around 6 pm the electricity went off. I was hoping/ expecting it'd be back on by dark, but apparently there were a whole lotta limbs down. Our power didn't come back on till half past midnight, and some people apparently had to wait even longer. Weird how quiet it gets. Other than an occasional car going by and the ticking of a battery-powered clock, all I could hear was my own tinnitus.

My parents were pretty good, actually, now that you mention it. They were just so matter-of-fact about everything that it felt like they were ignoring my accomplishments. Of course I went to the college they wanted, mostly because I had no real reason for wanting the college I wanted (though it turned out I was right, it was a much better school, and presumably the same price, because they're both state schools). And I majored in an acceptably girlie field, teaching. But I assume they'd have come to my graduation in any case, simply because that's what parents do.

Not us, John. Arcadia was talking about Sherlock and Mary lying to him.