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Brew

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Posts posted by Brew

  1. Well fuck, did my annual work up with the cardiologist including a CT scan and got the “we need to see you back in ASAP call” I expect every time I leave. Pretty sure a trip to the cath lab is coming. I’ve known it was on the horizon because of a defect issue and hereditary heart problems. My dad had his first stent at 47 which I will be in 2 months. Shitty part is he had his last one 3 months ago and didn’t make it out of the procedure. Kind of has me in my head at the moment.

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  2. 4 minutes ago, Nice Guy Eddie said:

     

    To me, one of the problems of quitting is that there's a good chance that many in your life are drinkers and they're the ones who have a problem with your quitting. And not that they're bad people that want you to be an alcoholic or heavy drinker but rather that they want a drinking friend at times. Anyone can say those aren't your friends but that's not necessarily true. 

    I have a good friend that lives out of state that I get together with a few times a year. He quit about the same time but he was a bottle of wine + a night guy. His reasons were similar in that it was more about his kids than a personal issue with it. He orders NA beers when we’re out with others. I find it odd, but it’s what works for him.

  3. On the whole drinking thing, if you’re looking for pills to make you feel better it might be time to just quit. I was having a conversation with my teenagers a couple years ago about drinking and how pervasive it was in their classes. The parents didn’t seem to care and enabled it because they were doing the same thing. I packed up 100+ bottles of bourbon, gave them away, and haven’t thought about it again. The health benefits were pretty quick even though I only had a drink or two a few nights a week while cooking or eating with friends. Even a minor amount on a regular basis makes a difference.

    The culture of alcohol consumption is odd when you really think about it. From being around my kids friends, it’s becoming a more significant problem in their age ranges than what I remember growing up.

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  4. On 6/9/2025 at 9:41 AM, Nice Guy Eddie said:

    As I wrote about earlier in this thread, I have slightly elevated BP and cholesterol #s which are controlled via meds. I would describe my PCP as not into uncommon tests or numbers for which he says that there is little to be done. I like him but that aspect bothers me a bit. I have a family history of heart problems so I interested in learning more even if its just understanding the genetic component. This week I signed up, on my own, for more health tests at Labcorp: LP(a), and their Heart Health Test including ApoB. 

    Is there anyone else into testing on their own?

    My PCP has rightfully indicated that if I'm that concerned about my heart health, then I should follow as healthy of a diet and exercise regime as possible and then not worry about anything. I don't disagree with that advice but I'm also a numbers guy. I also wouldn't describe myself as worrying about my health as I can be fairly unemotional about it.

    I was having BP issues several years back and everything else was at least in the vicinity of normal. GP prescribed a BP med and said he would be happy to refer me to a cardiologist to get a work up. Best advice I’ve ever had was getting referred to a research based interventional cardiologist. He put me through every test he had to figure out exactly what was causing the BP spikes and then slow dripped prescription changes until it was in line with where it needed to be. By the time it was done I was taking 1/8 of the dosage the GP wanted to give me and also dealing with some other issues I didn’t know I had. 

    Heart disease runs in my family, so it was better to know everything. I go through a full battery of tests annually now where he can track any changes that need to be watched or dealt with. He’s also basically my GP at this point. I don’t take medicine for anything unless he prescribes it and I see him for general heath things that come up every once in a while.

  5. 19 hours ago, locodos said:

    No one besides half a billion mosquitos and no see ums.  Beach camping on the outside of Choko was fun until the full moon rose over the bay.  Incredible sight but the leeward side of our cooler was black with no see ums.

    I would NOT go swimming in the 10k Islands/Chokoloskee/Flamingo areas, not that you'd want to.

    We’ve never had an issue with no see ums outside of fishing the really low tide mangrove areas at dusk. 

    Disagree on the swimming side also, there are plenty of places to pull in and get in the water. Would I go in the inner islands, no. If you are on the outer islands like Kice or Cape Romano, or the outside islands further south, no problem. If you want more water clarity (Kice is generally pretty clear at the cuts) then you can skip around to the other side of Marco and run to Keywadin or run really far north to Lover’s Key/SanCap. I don’t want to sit on a beach cheek to cheek with people, I’ll take west coast over east coast 7 days out of 7.

    Once you pass Cayo Costa the beaches/water turn more towards what people expect with the gulf. You can still find some seclusion through Longboat Key and the north end of AMI during the week, but everything is pretty well packed from Marco to Anclote unless you go to boat access only places like a few places in the 10000 islands (most on Marco go north to Keywadin), North Cap / Cayo Costa, or the area of Sanibel between the end of West Gulf Dr and Bowman’s where there is no public access.

    Everyone has their preferences, I just hope it is clear water and white sand and they stay away from where I hang out.

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  6. 3 hours ago, Gil Bang said:

    I'd like to add that the keys get old fast. 

    We did...hell, I don't know...I think 9 days on Marathon, house/dog sitting for a very wealthy friend.  Here are the things to do there, in no particular order.  Eat, drink, fuck, ride the jet skis, fuck some more, drink some more, eat some more.  And the restaurants and bars really aren't that interesting.  And here's a hot take: the fucking east coast SUCKS for a sports fan.  If I go to happy hour here, there's a game on the TV.  Baseball, NBA, NHL whatever.  There isn't DICK on in FL at 4 PM.  You're just staring at the alkie across the bar while he's doing the same. 

    You're on some patio, sweating your ass off, listening to some asshole sing Jimmy Buffet covers, and ordering the next round before you're done with this one because there's nothing else to do.   "But Gil, did you go to the turtle hospital?"   Yeah.  That was cool for about 2 hours.  Check that off the list.  Went out on a half-day boat too.  It was shitty fishing.  

    GF breaks her phone?  Cool, we get to drive to Key West, because that's the nearest T Mobile store.   Key West was fun when we did 3 days there a few years back.  But again, you run out of shit to do. I can (and do), get shitfaced at home, I don't need to fly across the continent to do that. 

    I’m not a huge fan of the Keys, but the whole point of the Keys is to get out on the water and do very little else. I’ve always had a great time in the middle keys, but it’s get up, get on the boat, get off the boat, go to bed, do it again.

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  7. 7 hours ago, SurlyBDR said:

    What are y'alls favorite beaches anywhere in southern (Atlantic) Florida? Any thoughts on whether a trip to Marco Island would be worth the drive from Miami? I found a boat to charter that does trips through the ten thousand islands and stops to explore them, and you can do shelling also. 

    This is a much better idea than driving to Key West for the day. Taking a boat out of Goodland to fish, shell, sightsee the 10000 islands will be more memorable than the clusterfuck the drive to KW is. For me, there isn’t any place better than Sanibel down through the 10000 islands. You can still get out and find a place to set up with no one else on it. Saying that, SWFL beaches aren’t like typical gulf beaches so if you are looking for clear blue/green water and white sand don’t bother, go further north past Venice /Sarasota to AMI or that area or stay on the East coast. It will also be a little warm that time of year, so be prepared. We get out early, avoid the mid day sun, and go back out early evening. If you need recs on the area, I can send a few.

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  8. On 6/3/2025 at 4:08 PM, Bert Orange said:

    Wait, a Tritoon is $120k now?!?!? Holy shit. I paid $72k for mine 6-7 years ago and thought I was going to have a coronary. 

    You can get up over $300k on a 28 foot with twin 450R’s. We were out sea trialing a boat in SWFL and one just absolutely dog walked us in the intercoastal. They were easily running up around 75-80 on a 28 foot tritoon. The salesman was telling us all about them.

  9. 5 hours ago, HookEm said:

    I have a different view on going to UT as a person of faith.  If faith is important to you at Texas, you can definitely find groups that share your faith.  Catholic, Nondenominational, Baptist, Methodist, Muslim, Mormon, whatever.  And when you find those people, they will likely be serious about their faith, because they have decided to follow it in a place that is neutral toward faith at best (and often quite hostile). 

    In contrast, at many "religious" schools, the average student has no more faith than your average student at UT.  Many go there because it is smaller, or because their parents think it is more sheltered.  I dare say it is easier to find a SOLID group of Baptists to connect with at UT than at Dallas Baptist or Baylor.  Because they are congregated in a small number of organizations.

    Just my anecdotal experience, but I have seen it play out across generations at UT and other large state universities.

    I went to a faith based school and outside of required chapel (which I managed to never attend) didn’t feel faith based at all. I also was not looking for anything having to do with faith back then, so I never found it at a Southern Baptist backed college. My daughter at UGA easily found a large group that she goes to church with and that attend on campus ministry events. Even her good friends that aren’t churchgoers by any stretch attend with her on occasion and are extremely supportive. Ultimately, if your faith is a priority you can find what you are looking for on most campuses, especially large one where there are people looking for the same thing.

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  10. On 5/7/2025 at 6:44 PM, gernblansten said:

    Could always do Bavette’s or Eiffel Tower with a view of the fountains. Saw Absinthe a month ago. Didn’t seem as good as in the past, could’ve just been an off night. 

    Ate at Bavette’s this week, have to say I prefer the Chicago location. Something about it being in the Park MGM and where it was located inside just didn’t fit. We ate at Beauty and Essex again and it was great like always. Also ate at Amaya (took over Holstein’s spot) at the Cosmo and it was excellent for what it was. 

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  11. I pay $100 a night for someone to stay at the house overnight, walk/feed the dogs, etc. We use high school / college kids that we know so I’m fine overpaying them. We also want them walked in the morning and late afternoon and let out at lunch, so I’m fine paying a little extra for all that.

  12. After reading this whole thread for some reason, I’m putting down a deposit. I’ve been looking for a truck to haul trash, potting soil, recycling, etc and haven’t found anything I’m willing to pay for. I can pull trailers with my other vehicles so this is more about needing an open bed at the moment. I will also enjoy having another vehicle that it bothers my high falutin wife to ride around in assuming it makes it to production. 

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  13. 3 hours ago, Prepuce of Doom said:

    We have never been a "vacation over Christmas break" family, but the extended family visits are starting to be enough that we want to hit the beach between Christmas and New Years. 

    Is there anywhere in the US where the ocean is warm enough to be comfortable/pleasant in December, or are we going to have to go to the Caribbean? 

    What do you consider comfortable/pleasant? My kids swam through the winter when we had our place in SWFL, but I avoided it other than being out knee deep while fishing. I think water temps were usually mid/high70’s in December. I don’t think you will find much warmer than that in the US.

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  14. Sanibel/Captiva and the north end of Anna Maria Island above Pine Island are tops for us. Owned on one, was buying on the other when the hurricane hit last fall, may stick with vacationing for a while.

    Outside of those two, it would be the northern keys or the beach areas around Charleston and then the St Simon’s area. I’m not a fan of the Atlantic beaches but the towns are worth a visit.

  15. 4 hours ago, BabaYaga said:

    Isn't that directly within the purview of these state schools, to support in-state kids over all others?

    Yes, they are one of the few state schools we looked at that go as far as they do to protect in-state candidates. They also make it incredibly difficult to convert to residency status once you are there. We’re buying a house, moving her residency, moving her to claiming herself, etc and it’s still a crap shoot whether they will change her undergrad status. It should make a difference for law school though so at least there may be some benefit.

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  16. On 3/15/2025 at 9:27 AM, Vegas64 said:

    I wonder if Georgia is going down the Texas path of selectivity, in that because of the Hope Scholarship and basically making UGA free for Georgia kids, there are less spots for out of state kids.

    UGA is already way down that path. Their out of state acceptance rate has been super low and keeps going lower each class. Honors college acceptance for out of state is even worse. Most of my daughter’s friends are Atlanta kids that are going for free. It drives her nuts when they talk about it because most didn’t want to go there and are going for free while we tote most of the cost of her going.

  17. 11 hours ago, Willfully Horn said:

    Torching all leases for federal offices.

    ”One of the next moves in President Donald Trump and Elon Musk’s sweeping effort to fire government employees and curtail operations is using the agency that manages thousands of federal employee worksites around the country to cut down on office space.

    Last week, regional managers for the General Services Administration, or GSA, received a message from the agency’s Washington headquarters to begin terminating leases on all of the roughly 7,500 federal offices nationwide, according to an email shared with The Associated Press by a GSA employee.”

    https://apnews.com/article/trump-musk-gsa-terminate-office-leases-f8faac5e2038722f705587c8dd21ab26?user_email=dabc81d5ec766cfb0c88230c077bd88afdc57894c6b8dcdfcf8102146e6ce9b3#

     

    I presume there is a financial penalty to violating lease terms. And, as skunk said, the government will have to reinstate that which was cut stupidly, which will incur additional cost, so, how much money do they think they are saving? 
     

    Flood the lowlands! Leave no water for crops!

    Just renewed a lease with USDA, when do I get my check for the remainder of the lease? I have a really good client that has really long-term leases on courthouses, post offices, etc be interesting to see what he hears.

    Did it ever occur to anyone to actually have a plan with reasonable goals that could be targeted rather than just widespread chaos and see what’s left? Who am I kidding, what sense would that have made?

  18. 59 minutes ago, Chad Fuck said:


    Man, it’s a race to the bottom in the former Confederacy. AL, GA and TX all give TN a run for their money. I’d throw in AR, MS and LA, but I’m not sure if they have running water there yet, so I can’t fault them as much for living in the 1860s.

    I don’t know, if we’re doing a draft Burchett, Ogles, and Blackburn have to be near the top of the list federally and I can’t imagine Faison, Sexton, and their bunch wouldn’t be high up the state draft list.

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  19. And the next grift begins, make a bunch of noise about the 22nd knowing it will not be changed, attack the legislature for not changing it over the next 3 years, run him as a VP on a ticket with a figurehead top of the ticket, and the sideshow continues.

  20. TN has to have the dumbest bunch of elected officials of any state at this point. I don’t know what it is about Middle/East TN specifically, but they are a special group of idiots.

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  21. This week has to be icing on the cake of the most perfectly executed grift of all time at this point. Create a bunch of social justice crises to capture a certain subsect of the US population, get elected, sign a bunch of EO’s and then tell them how much you have done, enrich yourself along the way, and go into midterms patting yourself on the back for all that has been accomplished with your proclamations. It’s not like the Dems are going to post ads saying wait a second, there are still brown people at Home Depot, Haitians in Ohio, trans/gay people among us, etc. They are just hoping egg prices stay up so they can use that at this point.

    Half the country is celebrating like the US is fixed and they can’t wait to go on vacation to the Gulf of America and the Dems aren’t going to be willing to go low enough to explain the grift to them. The idiots have been enthralled with the sideshow at the circus while getting fleeced all along the way.

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  22. 5 hours ago, txduck87 said:

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    Ridiculous . Sounds like they may have simply run out of time. Puts alot of kids in a bad position that applied early DECISION at other places. Some have to decide before they even hear back from UT. Boo!

    I’m pretty sure an early decision application can only be submitted to one college. Early action would be the application process for their other colleges. With early action you have until the normal commitment time frame (normally May) to decide where you want to go. If you didn’t get an ED acceptance, you‘re free to see who accepts them, who offers money, etc all the way up until the commitment deadline.

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