Holiday Weekend Open Thread

76 Comments

1. Does anyone have a recommendation for a basic immersion blender? Need to puree some baby foods and also use it for some basic soups – don’t need the world’s best one here. Something not too loud and easy to clean would be great. TIA!

   1. Whatever is at Costco or Target is fine. My no name one is going on 15 years old.
      To clean, just squirt some dish soap in a cup, add some water and run the blender in it.

   2. I prefer one that has a sort of wavy edge at the bottom rather than the ones with holes at the sides of the bottom. The ones with holes splatters through the holes. I quite like the ones with a tiny blender attachment.

   3. I have a copy of the Braun one that comes with the milkshake maker, chopper and whisk.

      Making baby food was something I really enjoyed. I had a rotation of foods and made mommy meatballs for the children as well. Have fun!

2. if you have plans this weekend, tell us what you’re doing? we are… spreading 3 cubic yards of mulch to try to get our weeds under control, wheee!

   1. We are cleaning out our garage, assuming we don’t catch the crud that our kid has.

   2. Hanging out at the pool! And baking and eating a peach upside down cake

   3. Power washing the driveway. Maybe fixing the tile on the front porch if I feel extra motivated. Very adulting.

   4. Driving two hours to see my mom at her house, where she will not have the air conditioning on nearly enough (literally was dizzy last time) and it’s supposed to be in the 90s. And then spending the other day doing as much cleaning as I can, since we have a contractor coming over Monday who will want to go through all of our rooms. Our guest room is a disaster after I had a freak out packing moment before a work trip and never put it all back. Dreading all of it.

   5. Taking the baby to the beach to see grandparents (bit of a drive), taking him to the pool (local), and hopefully getting on my mountain bike myself!

   6. It’s my mom’s birthday and we have a small town parade, going on the boat in the afternoon, outdoor pizza dinner, and fireworks! (I made her a cake yesterday.)

   7. We’re finishing up a couple weeks of remote work at a family home in Maine. We’ll do all the local 4th stuff on Friday (parade, lobster fest, fireworks). Saturday is TBD but probably a balance of what the adults want to do (hiking) and want the kids want to do (community pool). We fly home Sunday.

      1. Jealous!!

   8. Throwing a party for the 4th, having friends stay with us at our lake house, hanging out and BBQing.

   9. Just unclogged a recalcitrant toilet. Ugh. Planning on baking brownies to take to a pool party later this afternoonn.

      1. Replacing all the toilets in our house with power flush toilets that don’t clog is the best ~$1,500 we’ve ever spent (the toilets themselves aren’t that expensive but we had several of them + labor).

3. Any suggestions for wording for a bridal shower invitation? We have 11 friends hosting. I was thinking of listing the names on the back of the invite but any suggested wording other than “hosted by”?

   Also, the group wants unwrapped gifts – do you think this wording works (or any suggested edits):

   “In lieu of wrapped gifts, we kindly ask for unwrapped presents to make gift sharing easier.”

   1. Wait, what? Why would the gifts be shared?

      1. Like displayed. Not shared to other people

      2. I thinks she means “sharing” in the context of holding it up so everyone can see it.

         1. Yes I will change the wording – I can see how that is confusing

   2. Just do “unwrapped gifts please”.

   3. Hosted by Bride’s Friends.

      Why would everyone need to be named individually?

   4. 11 people hosting!? That sounds like a nightmare to me.

   5. Unwrapped gifts is weird. Either have an opening or don’t but don’t have gifts displayed. Tacky AF.

      1. I think this level of tackiness is permitted at a shower, though. That way everyone can comment on the gifts, talk about their experiences using similar things, blah blah. Like it’s a part of the show.

      2. This is popular among brides and moms to be that hate being the center of attention to further dissuade someone from forcing them to sit on the sofa and open presents. I’ve been to several baby showers with an unwrapped gift request and it actually works really well.

         1. Works better for baby showers vs bridal showers IMHO because of the cute baby onesies. Air fryers and towels are not much fun to look at.

      3. This. If she just wants cash then this is not the wording. A pile of unwrapped gifts is really not visually attractive. No one wants to poke around and look at what other people gave. The point of a gift opening is to watch the bride enjoy your gift, not to check out what other guests gave.

         1. I think this is tacky but I wouldn’t interpret it as a request for cash. I think that’s an odd leap.

         2. “Unwrapped gifts” means just that. “No wrapped gifts” means “cash.”

   6. That is a great idea! That way, people can gossip about who was cheap!

      1. Hahahahaha. FWIW, I’ve hosted like 20 bridal showers in my day and never had a gift opening portion. I made it clear it was a party and no gift opening by providing the bride’s address for sending gifts ahead and a note they wouldn’t be opened at the shower. Easily avoided if you don’t want it to be a feature.

         1. Back in the day, the whole point of a shower was to admire the gifts as they were opened. Often while eating Jello-O salad.

   7. “In lieu of” is confusing—some people will think you want cash. Just specify that gifts should be unwrapped for display. (Some people call it a “display shower”).

4. There was a post a few days ago about whether Ozempic makes you not enjoy food. I feel like it varies but on most days it makes me not interested in or enjoying eating at all. The issue is I still feel hungry and feel the affect of not eating all day (headache, feeling tired, etc) but don’t really want to eat. It’s a strange feeling. I’m not nauseous though.

   1. You’re not supposed to not eat all day. Eat regular meals and snacks.

      But this is how you know it’s working. Food isn’t occupying all your thoughts all day long. Focus on other sources of joy and resetting food as functional like brushing your teeth.

      1. I know! I don’t mean to, it just happens. Eating lunch right now.

         I guess now I know what all those people who said they forgot to eat meant.

         1. Put some timers on your phone for breakfast, mid morning snack, lunch, mid afternoon snack and dinner. I find it easiest to get caught up at work and all of sudden it’s 2pm and I haven’t eaten or stopped since breakfast.

   2. thanks for sharing! I was wondering about exactly this when people mentioned the ‘food noise’.

      1. To me, the “food noise” was solely the reminder to eat until I actually felt faint. I would still get totally wrapped up on certain things (like the idea that I had a certain candy in my desk and wow, I just want to eat that whole thing. I thought that would go away more, but I still “fixated” on certain foods and wanting them).

5. I had the mediation session with my ex husband and wanted to thank the posters who helped me Tuesday/yesterday. It went as well as it could have.

   1. Yay! Thanks for reporting back!

6. Anyone have wedding speech/toast ideas they want to share? Bride is a close friend since shortly after college, they’ve been together a long time but I don’t know the groom well because he’s shy and doesn’t talk much in groups — she mostly talks for both of them lol. I’m struggling to find personal stories that would be appropriate for the audience and I don’t want it to be too generic.

   1. I run with talking about how happy he makes her and any cute stories about BTS when they met. Pump it into chat GPT and plan to revise but it will give you a great starting point.

   2. it is impossible to give you not generic suggestions as you have given us no information about these people or yourself. that said, i don’t think there is any expectation that people talk a lot about both people at at wedding, most people really only know one and that’s ok.

      something like:

      I am SUSAN and BRIDE and I first met at stupid job/ gym class/ volunteering with an animal shelter. MY first impression of her WAS or I know it’s hard to believe now but she used to DO/WEAR/ or some not embarrassing anecdote.

      One of the things I love most about SUSAN is (what do you like about this person)

      That’s why when she met HUSBAND i knew he was the man for her Say something nice about him/ repeat something nice bride said about him etc.

      i am so pleased to be part of your special day, wishing you both a life time of happines, raise a glass to susan and husband.

      Main point: no more than a minute or two unless you are legitimately an experience public speaker. Don’t say anything that could be considered overly personal or inappropriate (don’t talk about getting drunk, other men, or the time you went to thailand and she got dysentary on the side of the road)

   3. Unless there are tons of speeches, you can tell how you met her, cute kid story from a childhood friend/family, cute story from your friendship (can tell the G rated version of a non-G rated story, cute couple story and best wishes.

      It’s okay if it’s a little generic.

   4. I would just say that it doesn’t have to be really dramatic. The personal stories that really touched me to hear during our wedding toasts were small things that I didn’t really know about and wouldn’t have known were registering with other people. For example, our maid of honor described when she realized things were getting serious with my now-husband, which had a cute punchline and also I totally hadn’t realized at the time (I was kind of the last person in our lives to realize our initially light romance was the real deal), and our best man talked about how once we moved in together, my husband was always so eager to go home (which I had no way of knowing, since I wasn’t there!). They weren’t exciting stories, but they really made me happy to hear that day.

   5. I’ve never heard a wedding toast that was too short.

7. Weekend thread may not be the place for this, but here goes. I’m growing increasingly frustrated at work with being asked to weigh in on strategic questions with little to no notice. I have a strong analytics background, so I understand how I can be helpful, but I don’t always have the bandwidth to put together a well reasoned analysis and recommendation especially when there’s a rush. I should note the rush is entirely manufactured – most of the topics are easy to anticipate with the right planning horizon (think a revenue forecasts for Q4).

   Is there a better way to push back on these requests than “I’d be happy to help but this request takes time and I won’t have an answer to you for a few days.” The senior leaders in question seem allergic to planning / like to run decisions down to the wire, so asking to get these requests in a more structured format ahead of time isn’t working. Is this better approached as a resource request for someone who could focus on these types of requests more fully?

   1. When I was divisional CFO of a rapidly growing division I had this happen a lot. I asked my manager, the CFO of the company how to handle it and he said to write down each request and see what repeats. At the same time try to find the correlation between the ask to you and what triggered that ask, so you can better anticipate what is going to come up.

      I followed that advice and build every analysis requested in a format that could be easily replicated for a future period. After 9 months I was able to correlate what the CEO was asking for with what the GM asked me to provide analysis for. My forecasts also ended up being extremely accurate.

8. I was lucky and found a pair of light Olive linen pants. Perfect for summer. But how to style them? I have some cream and white tops, but a part from that most of my tops are black and navy. What would goe well with these kind of pants?

   Thanks

   1. In the past few weeks I’ve worn my olive linen pants with a white long sleeve gauze shirt, kind of half tucked, a black and white striped linen jersey tee, a black tee with a denim jacket, a chambrey shirt open over a tee with a design on the front, and a pink linen vest. My summer uniform is linen pants with variations on these tops.

      1. This sounds nice! thanks

   2. Navy & black work well. Pink, orange, denim jacket/shirt

      1. Thank you, good ideas. I am not good at wearing colors, have to branch out a bit

9. Paging colonoscopy from yesterday: I have these routinely due to family history and always decline the sedation. The doctor couldn’t care less. My mother now does the same. It’s totally fine.

   1. They don’t give you anything? Not even to relax you or for pain?

      1. Some people don’t need it. My friend declines the sedation.

      2. Nope, nothing at all. It’s not painful just slightly weird.

10. I’m thinking of buying a small apartment building as an investment that will hopefully provide an income stream in my golden years. I will have to liquidate all current investments other than retirement accounts and I will still have a 12 month emergency fund. Talk me in or out of this idea?

    1. What do you know about it already? How much experience do you already have with renting apartments? How well do you know the area? How close will you live? What’s the demographic that lives there now and who are you targeting? What other assets could you lean on if times get hard?

    2. Sounds risky to me. You don’t know whether tenants will actually pay their rent, evictions are costly and time consuming, all the while you aren’t collecting rent. What about repairs and damage to the units?

       Surely you’re not saying you’d liquidate your 401k or other retirement savings!

       1. She literally said “other than retirement accounts”.

    3. My mom and her sibling sold their beloved family home in a famously beautiful tourist destination because it was so much work maintaining it. And they didn’t have major renter issues because it was a single family home and they found a responsible long term tenant. You would need to pay me mid-7 figures a year to even consider owning an apartment building. And I can’t think of a less pleasant way to spend my golden years. You sound like you have robust retirement funds. Just invest in index funds.

    4. When you do the math, make sure to account for a full-time manager, unless you want that full-time manager to be you. Which, I promise, you don’t.

    5. This is completely city dependent. I know it’s very not PC but there’s a large mega employer in my city and I know a few landlords who pretty much only rent to people who work for that employer, it’s basically having a pre screened pool of applicants. A friend is a landlord in a place without an easy screening method and their house has been trashed a bunch of times by tenants.

    6. We use an agency to screen prospective tenants and handle showings and calls about maintenance.
       It’s kept us from only having one fraudulent tenant we had to evict. Budget for an agency and some occasional work by a landlord-tenant lawyer.

    7. Not a bad idea, you just need to know what you’re getting into.
       Location? What do you know about the current tenants? Are you going to rent to folks on HUD vouchers, college students, working families, retirees…you get the idea. Is the area coming up? Most LL’s make money when they sell.
       What shape is the building in? In other words, will you have to make some big upgrades in the short term or will you have time to budget for the big stuff (as opposed to regular maintenance).
       How close are you to this property? Even with a property management company (tax deductible expense, BTW), you should plan on spending some time overseeing your investment.
       How long will it take for you to become profitable?

11. Did 100 comments disappear?

    1. Yeah!

       1. Yep, there are at least two of mine (re display showers and the strategy question) that are completely gone.

    2. There’s a note about it in the post

       1. See the “admin update”

12. Is this updating? What happened to all the comments?

    1. See the comment above yours and the Admin note in the post.

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