Oh! I thought of one, Gwendolyn Christie.

I knew a Genevieve in college, and then my son’s best friend in preschool was a Genevieve who went by Jenny (or Geny?) and now my daughter has one in her class, so they’re making a comeback maybe?

I’m fond of “Gwendolyn” but I’ve never met or even known of one, to my knowledge.

I know a 10-year-old Agnes! And also a 40s/50s-ish Agnes (I can’t guess adult ages well).

Sometimes it’s not the kids’ fault. I’d say most of the time the parents need to be involved in some way with the costume (buying, making, helping to make) and some kids just don’t have present parents so I don’t want to punish them for that.

Also I really don’t want leftover candy in my house (because I’ll eat it) so…

And sell it to them. Capitalism gonna capitalize

I know it makes me super basic but… dragons. I know, it’s not inspiring. But I must add a caveat. I prefer that they are intelligent, on par with or surpassing humans in intelligence and willing (if reluctantly) to interact with them. Game of Thrones dragons are cool and all but they don’t really do it for me in the same way as, say, the dragon from Dragonheart.

Ack thank you, I mix them up even though I’ve never read Brooks, who seems to be better loved.

It’s probably not the worst for me either but it’s easily the first thing I think of. Really left a bad taste I guess.

Oh yes I agree! And I’m a huge dragon fan, so it was extremely disappointing. That one I gave up on after maybe 50 pages. I couldn’t get past the prose. So I didn’t even get to the heavily recycled tropes, but I did see the movie once and they were plenty obvious from that.

No Such Thing as a Fish, from the QI Elves. Funny, informative, rarely about current events which is a breath of fresh air. Just nerds getting nerdy about stuff.

Wizard’s First Rule by Terry Brooks. I suffered through the whole thing because I was young enough that I thought that’s what you should do when you’ve started a book, but I was also old enough to know that it was very bad. I’ve heard many people say they read it as teens and loved it, but I assure you, it does not hold up.

Hmm, maybe that’s why my English teacher assigned Huck Finn instead (which I remember liking).

The modem made noises when connecting, but if someone picked up the phone, your internet would just stop working and they’d get their dial tone.

Now dot matrix printers, those were real pterodactyl sounds.

Lame to recommend a show and not name it!

I’ve seen Spaced a few times but it’s been a while and I don’t remember what Tim had in his coat pocket. Guess that means it’s time for a rewatch! (Not a hard sell.)

My hope is that she chose him, so she likes him, maybe for the same reasons we do.

I pan fry hotdogs all the time. I put a little water in the pan to help the hotdogs heat all the way through and then let it burn off and fry them a bit to get them slightly crispy.

Usually when I back out of a comment, it’s for one of two reasons. Either I start second-guessing my level of knowledge about a subject, or (being an over-sharer IRL) I decide I was giving too much personal information.

Oh I had that book, and Scary Stories to Tell In the Dark, so I just assumed that story was in the latter. Funny what you misremember! I definitely remember that one clearly. Now I want to go look at the list of stories…

Salem to Sacramento shouldn’t take that long unless there is gnarly traffic. As a kid, my family regularly did San Jose to Seattle in 16 hours.