So trivial, yet it really ticks you off.

[Edward]

Works well enough for my needs, and Google does not need my traffic.

Less Google is always a plus!

 

[swanson_eyes]

You know what ticks me off? Having to take half a day off from work, spend gas money, and get up before sunrise to drive an hour and a half to my doctor just to get my prescription renewed. Apparently the opioid crisis is such that you can't get a prescription renewed in Maine anymore without showing the doctor your face -- even if all you need renewed is your post-menopausal estrogen pills. It'll serve them all right if I go on a hot-flash rampage.

Maine doesn't make sense. I could see this if you're getting a script for opioids but no one is abusing estrogen pills so there shouldn't be a hassle for those.

 

[tonyb]

Less Google is always a plus!

You just gotta check to verify that your wallet and your children are where they oughta be when dealing with an entity whose motto is “Don’t be evil.”

Google does indeed protest too much.

 

[LizzieMaine]

"Evil" is one of those Humpty Dumpty "When I use a word it means just what choose it to mean" words. Nobody, outside the pages of a comic book, who is actually evil ever declared themselves to be so.

Silicon Valley may very well be the single most empirically evil location on Earth today.

 

[3fingers]

Evil may be subjective and hard to define but like Justice Stewart, we know it when we see it.

 

[Formeruser012523]

Was ticked off last night as the fireworks and/or gunfire started about midnight and lasted till sometime around 3am.

Needlesstosay, I was jolted awake more than once by the noise less than a block away from the house. How this became a thing around New Years, as well, idk.

 

[Zombie_61]

Was ticked off last night as the fireworks and/or gunfire started about midnight and lasted till sometime around 3am.

Needlesstosay, I was jolted awake more than once by the noise less than a block away from the house. How this became a thing around New Years, as well, idk.

My wife and I were pleasantly surprised by the amount of restraint our childish neighbors showed last night with regards to fireworks. Last year they started around 11:00 p.m. and didn't let up until after 2:30 a.m., which even for them was unusual on New Year's Eve, so we expected something similar this year. Instead we heard the occasional explosion between 10:00 p.m. and midnight, a war zone from 12:00 a.m. to 12:30 a.m., then it tapered off rather quickly to nothing but the normal ambient nighttime noises.

 

[LizzieMaine]

One of the few advantages of a cold, raw, and wet Northeastern winter is that it keeps the New Year's Eve pyromaniacs at bay. Given that Maine is the state where a particularly intelligent specimen killed himself by trying to launch a rocket off the top of his own head, anything that in any way discourages the use of fireworks is a good thing.

 

[Fading Fast]

⇧ Same thing in NYC, the cold hard rain dramatically tamped down the crazy of New Years. We (in bed about 10pm) had a pretty peaceful night compared to years past. Interestingly, the extreme cold doesn't deter "revelers," but the 40 degree hard rain seemed to do the trick.

 

[LizzieMaine]

And now that the holiday season has belched its last, may I say for the record how heartily I dislike Christmas trees. Not the idea of them, so much as the execution -- and especially the way in which the kind of people who are so militant and gung-ho about putting the damn things up the day after Thanksgiving are somehow nowhere to be found when the time comes to take them down. It wasn't enough we had to have one in the lobby, the OMG CHRISTMAS people in the marketing office foisted two of the wretched things on me this year, and one of them was a ridiculous artificial tree that sheds needles worse than the cheapest real one from the worst gas-station parking lot. This may be somebody's idea of realism, and if it is I'd like to have ten minutes where I could thoroughly deck their halls. Dismantling this display has taken up the better part of a morning, and has left me in a thoroughly humbugged state of mind. BAH!.

 

[Just Jim]

After my last "New Year's Resolution" took me several years to accomplish, I picked an easy one for 2019. I'm tired of sellers in the Classifieds who can't be bothered to list sizes in the subject line (or worse yet, expect you to go to ebay to find out the size). For 2019, when I notice them, I'm clicking "ignore". Doesn't accomplish much, but maybe it will keep me from wasting some time.

 

[GHT]

And now that the holiday season has belched its last, may I say for the record how heartily I dislike Christmas trees. Not the idea of them, so much as the execution -- and especially the way in which the kind of people who are so militant and gung-ho about putting the damn things up the day after Thanksgiving are somehow nowhere to be found when the time comes to take them down. It wasn't enough we had to have one in the lobby, the OMG CHRISTMAS people in the marketing office foisted two of the wretched things on me this year, and one of them was a ridiculous artificial tree that sheds needles worse than the cheapest real one from the worst gas-station parking lot. This may be somebody's idea of realism, and if it is I'd like to have ten minutes where I could thoroughly deck their halls. Dismantling this display has taken up the better part of a morning, and has left me in a thoroughly humbugged state of mind. BAH!.

So you don't like Christmas trees, good. Blame Queen Victoria's Husband. Prince Albert brought a fir tree into Windsor Castle on Christmas Eve and the family decorated it. I wholeheartedly agree with you, trees, tinsel and baubles are as far removed from the Christmas message as you can get. At a guess, I would speculate that emigres took the wretched custom with them to the rest of the English speaking world, and from there it went viral.
Serves you right for transplanting your wretched trick or treat Halloween rubbish on us Brits.

 

[Zombie_61]

After my last "New Year's Resolution" took me several years to accomplish...

Many years ago my New Year's resolution was to not make any more New Year's resolutions. So far it's worked out pretty well.

 

[LizzieMaine]

There's something about the symbolism of the Christmas tree that really seems to fit the modern Boys From Marketing approach to "tradition" -- a tree is grown and nurtured and carefully cultivated for ten years or so until it's a thing of utter natural beauty, and then it's cut down, dragged into a house, covered in festoonery that makes a mockery of that natural beauty, and then when the rite is finished, it's tossed outside to die alone and unmourned, to turn brown and brittle as blows around in the yard until the trash collectors haul its brittle, forgotten skeleton away in the spring. Merry Christmas, everyone.

 

[HanauMan]

So you don't like Christmas trees, good. Blame Queen Victoria's Husband. Prince Albert brought a fir tree into Windsor Castle on Christmas Eve and the family decorated it. I wholeheartedly agree with you, trees, tinsel and baubles are as far removed from the Christmas message as you can get. At a guess, I would speculate that emigres took the wretched custom with them to the rest of the English speaking world, and from there it went viral.
Serves you right for transplanting your wretched trick or treat Halloween rubbish on us Brits.

The 'Christmas' tree, or fir tree, far from being a 'wretched custom' as you put it, is actually a Christian symbol of the resurrected and immortality of Jesus Christ.

 

[Lean'n'mean]

I wholeheartedly agree with you, trees, tinsel and baubles are as far removed from the Christmas message as you can get.

Absolutely.....Xmas shopping, pigging-out & shopping again on the boxing day sales is much closer to the real meaning of Christmas.
Just a reminder, only 354 shopping days before Christmas.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Well, if a wanton Bacchanalia-Saturnalia was good enough for the Romans....

 

[V.C. Brunswick]

Many years ago my New Year's resolution was to not make any more New Year's resolutions. So far it's worked out pretty well.

I recall hearing somewhere that January is the busiest time of the year for gyms and health clubs and then it tapers off in February. Gee, I wonder why.

 

[Lean'n'mean]

The 'Christmas' tree, or fir tree, far from being a 'wretched custom' as you put it, is actually a Christian symbol of the resurrected and immortality of Jesus Christ.

Isn't the chocolate easter egg a symbol of the resurrected Christ ?

 

[Lean'n'mean]

Well, if a wanton Bacchanalia-Saturnalia was good enough for the Romans....

And look what happened to them.