It’s not rude at all!

It’s best if you stack similar plates together and put the silverware on top or leave it separately. Its also hekpful to have any leftover food on the top plate rather than smushed in the middle. If all the dishes are different shapes, biggest on the bottom like a pyramid.

At the restaurant I worked, we had a bun for compost, trash, and recycle. So it could be helpful to keep trash out of the food scraps still on the plates. Please don’t leave trash in the cups, because we have to fish it out. Water is heavy and we can’t just throw out all the ice with the straw wrappers and the wrappers can’t go down the sink.

Your state likely has a web page designated for election results, so you could get information straight from the source for everything you voted for in your state and see which way your state goes for the presidential election. Your county website may also have a page to show whether any propositions were accepted or rejected.

I’m not sure about a better source to see where all 50 states’ results are reported. Maybe Balllotpedia has something that updates. I’m not sure the federal government would have something because the official results won’t happen until January 6 when a joint session of Congress reads and counts the votes from the Electoral College (who doesn’t vote until December 17).

It’s also not healthy to withhold that long and could lead to health issues. Ironically no shave November was created to highlight the very male health issues that no nut November could exacerbate.

No caffeine after 2

Take magnesium glycinate and threonate and hour or so before bed (threonate helps me sleep but it can cause vivid dreams)

Make sure you’re comfortable in the bed both in terms of bed firmness/softness and temperature

Use a fan to regulate temperature and create white noise

Create a regular bedtime ritual (brush, floss, skincare, etc) and stick to it

Chamomile tea can help relax

I’ve also found drinking some cool/cold water right before attempting to sleep can help, because your body temperature drops as you go to sleep. I’m also a hot sleeper, so that also helps to cool down my core.

Make a regular sleep schedule and stick to it as much as possible

Write down any persistent thoughts, journal emotions, or create a to-do list from whatever might be running through your mind. Getting that out of my head and onto paper helps to alleviate any anxiety and can help stop my brain from planning and running amok while I’m lying there.

I turn off all the lights and only use some color-changing LED lights an hour or so before bed. White lights are too bright and can keep me from sleeping. Red is darker, yet still bright enough to see where I’m walking. Red lights are also best for night vision, if you go stargazing, make sure you have red flashlights, because white light will destroy your night vision for 20 minutes or so.

I also use a screen dimming app on my phone to bring the brightness down lower than the brightness setting will allow. On Apple devices, this is a regular setting in accessibility called “Reduce White Point”. Android still hasn’t figured out how to mimic that well and the best app I’ve found is Screen Dimmer Plus. It basically puts a Grey layer over whatever images show up on your phone and will mess with screenshots taken and it doesn’t change anything with the top 1/4" of the screen. The Reduce White Point setting on ios doesn’t mess with screenshots and changes the brightness for the whole screen. It’s one of the big disappointments I’ve had with android.

Get Blackout curtains to block light from the windows

Don’t exercise too close to bed. I also can’t take showers or baths too close to bed because they will disrupt my sleep.

Slow breathing and closing your eyes will lying in bed can help if you’re restless. I’ve also found that if I’m having a particularly hard time falling asleep that getting out of bed and reading a book or fiction story before returning to bed can help.

Choose something light and calming to watch as the last thing before you turn off your TV. Nature documentaries like Planet Earth or a light comedy can help you unwind and be a little more calm than watching an action, horror, or drama movie/TV show.

Another thing I’ve read about if you’re restless is to work your way uo your body squeezing your muscles for a few seconds. So start with your feet and flex them a couple times for a couple seconds, then go uo to your calves, all the way up to your eyes. The flex and release is supposed to help release any muscles that are still clenching from the day.

Spending time in nature during the day is supposed to help calm the mind and body, so finding 20-30 minutes to walk around a park could be helpful.

Don’t stress out about not falling asleep. Lying there with your eyes closed with relaxing breaths is supposed to be restful for the body

Potassium might help you relax and I think it’s also supposed to help with blood pressure if you’ve been consuming too much sodium. Not 100% sure on that, but I figure getting blood pressure under control can help you get better quality sleep.

I was hoping you’d be able to find it.

Maybe you can contact your county registrar and see what happened. The deadline for voter registration for the presidential election was October 7. Maybe there’s something that can be done.

That doesn’t look like the site specifically for TX. Not sure if there might be something that could cause another site to report an error.

Double check at

www.votetexas.gov

You’ll need to enter your TDL (Texas Driver’s License Number) and date of birth after clicking the “Am I Registered?” button

Kind if reminds me of the scene in The Truman Show when they talk about the cereal to the hidden camera.

It’s definitely been getting worse. The written directions aren’t always accurate. Exits sometimes have the wrong label. Lanes are missing on the highways when they merge and separate.

I’ve also seen a similar thing with routes not always showing up or giving bad directions. It attempted to take me through a school bus barn and even through someone’s yard once.

I wish it was that way. I’ve seen a 20 year old get brass instruments mixed up. Many reference squidward when talking about clarinet, oboe, English horn, and bass clarinet. Unfortunately it isn’t just musician vs a 5 year old.

Omg, that’s basically how it’s been in TX too. Just 3-5 degrees cooler up there. Y’all shouldn’t be burning up like that

The US isn’t any more concerned about sexual orientation now than any point in the past. Back in colonial times, it wouldn’t have been safe to be anything other than straight with all the hyper religious colonists. They were even forcing their gender conformity and the straight sexual orientation on the Native Americans. Baron Friedrich von Steuben got a pass for being gay, probably because he was the one in charge of training the troops for Washington. 100 years ago, you could be killed on the street for being anything other than straight or denied jobs. The Lavender scare of the mid century brought this more to light. The AIDS crisis that started in the 80s and bled through into the 90s and 2000s as new medicines were being invented, further brought negative light to sexual orientations outside of straight. The cause of all of this attention to sexual orientation has been the religions brought over by colonists.

In recent years, sexual orientations outside of straight are finally being seen in a positive light with Lawrence v TX (2003) legalizing same-sex relationships and Hodges v Obergefell (2015) legalizing same-sex marriages. In Bostock v Clayton County (2020) legal protections against job discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity were finally put into place over 70 years after the start of the Lavender Scare.

The attention to sexual orientation has always been part of North American history. It has just changed from acceptance with the Native American peoples to hate, death, and intolerance under the colonists, to a more accepting present day. With some of the positive news in recent years, it can be easy to forget (if you’re surrounded by progressives in a blue state) that the hate of sexuality injected into North America in the 15th Century still has hold over large portions of the population today.

Yeah, it’s just like growing up. I remember as a kid hoping the weather would finally cool down by Halloween so we wouldn’t sweat through our costumes. In fact there were a couple years that we changed which costume we were going to buy because it would have been too hot to wear.

Is there a particular VPN router that you suggest?

Also, is there a subscription fee or something for the VPN usage?

Thank you so much for the info!

Is there a way to put a VPN on the router, so that all devices are covered?

I found that while popping popcorn, the finished kernel (mushroom or butterfly shaped) depends on popping conditions. I only use Redenbacher and if the heat is too high, you get the mushroom shape and the kernels are dense and if you set the heat a little lower you get fluffier butterfly kernels.

Is the popped kernel shape really supposed to be different based on what kind of popcorn you buy?

It’s largely the same system. You can play as the Greeks, Norse, or Egyptians. Each civilization has the choice of 3 major gods (is Zeus, Hades, or Poseidon) that choice is kinda like choosing your civilization in AoE. Instead of going feudal age to castle age, you choose a different minor god to worship. Each god gives you a different god power and mythological unit (Cyclops, trolls, anubites, etc). The final civilization upgrade allows you to build a building that unleashes a titan on the map.

There is a new currency called favor that is used to research some improvements unlocked by worshiping specific gods and to train mythological units.

The types of games are largely the same as AoE, with different maps. The campaigns are a lot of fun. It’s a great game, especially if you like mythology. The stories are original and not based on the original myths, but you can learn some of the myths of heroes, mythical creatures, and the gods by right-clicking on them. The campaigns walk you through how to play and through the features that are different from AoE.

You can choose varying difficulty for the scenarios and can choose the difficulty of the computer players when playing a random map. This makes it about as complex as Age of Empires. However, just as with online AoE, the player vs player can have a steep learning curve if you’re matched against people that have been playing a long time.

Age of Empires and Age of Mythology play similarly, where it’s easy to cross from one to the other with many similar human units shared between the games. I think it’s definitely worth a look into! Even the remake that’s already on steam is worth it in my opinion.

This comment reminds me that one time I came across an hour and a half long ad on YouTube that turned out to be a full episode of some show and something else. It was crazy to see one that long after skipping a couple ads

It’s not based on the movies, it’s based off the ride itself. You would catch more references having ridden the ride at any of the parks.

Only other place I can think of off-hand is the local library for rentals. Half Price Books and thrift shops will have some for sale, but I’m not sure how much lower they may be from Amazon’s rental fee.

The rejection of fanaticism went out the door along with E Pluribus Unum in the 50’s when the Christian nationalists forced their religion on the national motto. Then over the next decade black people were lynched and attacked with fire hoses when they were asking for basic rights.

They also started conversion camps where they emotionally and sometimes physically and secually abuse minors in conversion camps to attempt to change sexual orientation.

I believe it was Nixon who helped foem fox News to pull the Republicans further right and we’ve been seeing the consequences of that.

Basically the fanaticism has always been there, but with the internet and social media, it’s easier for them to make their voice heard.