Canopyflyer

Chili (I modified the "Joy of Cooking's" McCleod chili recipe with fresh chilis and roasted red peppers)

Julia Child La Beouf Bourguignon (This actually gets better the longer it sits in the fridge).

Baked Ziti (Cooks Illustrated)

Chicken Tinga (Bon Appetite recipe)

Quite the metaphor mixing you're doing there.

Must say I rather like it.

Got to see Chicago/ Beach Boys double headline back in 1989 (I think). Both bands were great. Saw the Beach Boys at the old Riverfront Stadium in Cincinnati, OH about 5 years later and it was a great show.

Bad Company Holy Water tour. Brian Howe was front lining the band and he was great, but really would have preferred to have seen Paul Rodgers.

Black Crowes opening for ZZ Top on the Recycler tour. ZZ Top had a great show, but musically, Black Crowes was much better.

Duran Duran ... I was a closet fan of theirs back in my teens. I'm not in the closet any longer. Soup Dragons opened for them and they suuuucked.

Linkin Park opening for Metallica at the Atlanta Braves stadium in 2003. They were great, Metallica was meh, but I've never been a huge fan of theirs.

Live... Not a big fan of theirs, but they did have a good live show. (see what I did there! Yes, I'm a Dad.) They opened for the Counting Crows who were great too.

Santana is a lot better live than anywhere else. I saw him on the Supernatural tour, or at least that was the album he had just released. Funny side story about this concert. This was in 1999 and was there with a friend. 25 years later, my wife and I were talking about concerts we have attended over the years. She mentioned she went to see Santana when she first moved to Cincinnati, which is where I lived at the time... Turns out we were at the same concert 5 years before we met and didn't realize it until last year.

Yes, I'm old.

My Friday night group started playing 2024 rules a couple of months ago. Also made the change from Roll20 to Foundry VTT, so it's been a little bit of a learning curve for the group.

I absolutely love Weapon Mastery. It's a mechanic that is long over due. Haven't been playing long enough to say what could be done better about it, as so far it's been pretty good across the classes. I play a Rogue Soul Knife and having Vex, in order to get Sneak Attack damage every turn is really effective. Plus, as a Rogue I can use tactics more individualized for my character.

The lack of flanking giving advantage was annoying... At first. With that said, it has forced the party to actually engage in tactics that didn't just involve lining up in a row.

So far so good... Just waiting for everything to go behind multiple paywalls due to Hasbro having a bad quarter. I really tried pushing my group to go to Pathfinder after the License dust up, but was overridden. My group is more important to me than the stupidity of Hasbro, so 2024 is what we play.

Hard... AGREE on this one.

Why in the holy Tiamat didn't they just call it 6e? Got to be edgy or cringy...

My college girlfriend bought me a tri-fold wallet for my 20th birthday. It is still in daily use.

Why? It is an expensive and well made wallet and it has always felt "right" in my back pocket. While it shows obvious signs of wear, all the stitching is still in perfect shape.

That girlfriend dumped me, after 3 years of dating, for a guy that owned a fancier car. She contacted me two years later looking to get back together. I told her to pound sand, but I still use the wallet.

Thanks for the wallet Shannon... It doesn't remind me of you, but it is a good wallet.

Just remembered, she bought me the Led Zeppelin box set for Christmas that same year. It is currently sitting in my closet. I still "use" it, but I've long ripped the discs to FLAC files and listen to them via my Plex server.

So two things from the same girlfriend.

I will be turning 55 next month.

Just you.

Vincent Price might have made his career in horror and playing creepy characters, IRL he was anything but. By the things I have read about him, he was a good person. He was also a chef in his own right, so seeing him in the kitchen baking cookies with someone would have been completely normal for him. He was probably having the time of his life, sharing his love of food with a child.

I'm sure that photo documents one of the few healthy interactions Drew had during her childhood.

Edit: Grammar

Brilliant.

You are the Universe experiencing itself.

Playing a high level (19th) home brewed adventure. I'm playing a Dragonborn Twilight Domain Cleric, my wife is playing a Sea Elf Paladin Oath of Vengence. There are two other players in the party a Tortle Warlock/Bard and Triton Ranger.

The party runs across a large chamber absolutely filled with various monstrous insects and other nasties, with the latest BBEG at the other end of the chamber. In between are chasms, and other obstacles. Basically, the entire room was designed to wear us down before we get to the BBEG.

My wife's Paladin has Gauntlets of Storm Giant Strength, so her strength is 29 AND she's hasted. So my nearly 300 pound armored Dragonborn Cleric climbs onto her back and casts Spirit Guardians...... at 9th level.

Then my wife runs as fast as she can. Her movement was 120 and she was able to leap over all the chasms in the way. I rolled for Spirit Guardians and damn near maxed out the damage and the DC was 22... There were THREE monsters left, besides the BBEG, and they were severely bloodied and easily dispatched by the other two characters, at range obviously. Also, the BBEG had to use one of its Legendary Resistances to save against Spirit Guardians, and with smart work from the Warlock/Bard and Ranger its next two LR's got used up and we killed it in 3 turns.

Our DM was too impressed to be pissed.

Immanuel Kant was a real pissant Who was very rarely stable

Heidegger, Heidegger was a boozy beggar Who could think you under the table

David Hume could out-consume Wilhelm Freidrich Hegel

And Wittgenstein was a beery swine Who was just as schloshed as Schlegel

There's nothing Nietzsche couldn't teach ya 'bout the raising of the wrist Socrates, himself, was permanently pissed

John Stuart Mill, of his own free will On half a pint of shandy was particularly ill

Plato, they say, could stick it away Half a crate of whiskey every day

Aristotle, Aristotle was a bugger for the bottle Hobbes was fond of his dram

And Rene Descartes was a drunken fart "I drink, therefore I am."

Yes, Socrates himself is particularly missed A lovely little thinker, but a bugger when he's pissed

Hobbyist cook here that owns one of the best duel fuel ranges (gas top, electric oven) on the US market. A Wolf DF304 and yes, I'm damn proud of it. It is by far the best cooking range I have ever used. Unlike its predecessor, a Dacor RSD30, it has stood up to very heavy use over the years.

I love to cook with gas. I have cooked on resistive electric and they are terrible.

With that said (induction supporters, it's time for you to just wait a bit, I know you're just cracking your knuckles to put me on blast).

My next range, or cooktop will be induction. A friend of mine has an induction cooktop that is comparable to Wolf. It actually is pretty nice... For the most part. My issue with induction really is not how it cooks, but rather the weird noises that will sometimes come from either the cookware, or the cooktop itself. It's a high end induction as well (Viking I think). So I'm not talking about some cheap stove from a box store.

But as far as how well it cooks, I really do like induction. It does all the things that gas does well; instant temperature control, gets really low for simmering, gets really hot for searing or other high heat cooking. I also like the fact that induction doesn't produce any carcinogenic combustion byproducts. I've always had a high flow vent above any gas range I have owned. My wife used to have the bad habit of not turning on the fan when she uses the stovetop. Yeah, that doesn't happen now.

The bad news is... It's a Wolf which is designed to last 20 years in a professional kitchen. While mine sees heavy use for a home kitchen, that's peanuts in comparison. A Wolf will literally last a lifetime in a home. It would really pain me to junk this thing prematurely. If we stay where we are, the kitchen will need to be remodeled in the next 5 to 6 years. At that point my stove will be 15 years old, so we might just replace it.