Welcome to #checkin for Saturday, May 10, 2025!
Good evening/afternoon/morning everyone and welcome to today's #checkin. It's another sunny day with 21C outside and perfect weather for the annual spring festival in the city where there is a little festival in the city with music, artists and, of course, the usual food stands. I took a stroll over it while I bought some books. Today is Windmill day. On the outskirts of Paderborn are plenty of windmills, and we generate more renewable energy than we use. It's fun to see all those red blinking lights at night. A friend of mine said it looks like an alien mothership landing... But apparently there is a new technology which can detect flight related activity and only activates it then.
It's also National miniature golf day. That brings back childhood memories. We played this a lot on our holidays in Austria or Italy when I was a kid. Of course, my father nearly always won.
It's also National Small Business day. Are there any small shops left in your area/city? Or just the usual chains. I loved all the little shops in Japan.
Greetings… Ahoj! Aloha! Bom dia! Bonjour! Bună! Ciao! G’day! Geia sas! Günaydın, صباح الخير , בוקר טוב 你好! Håfa Adai! Hi! Hei! Hello! Hallo! Hei! Hola! Howdy! Halō! Kamusta! Kia Orana! Kon’nichiwa! Mabuhay! Moi! Namaste! Ni Hao! Neih hou! Pagi! Saluton! Sawasdee! Shwmae! Γειάσας! Talofa! Terve!😄
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Kenny Chaffin
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Jodi
in reply to Christoph S • • •Lots of small shops (surprisingly), though there are more and more chains coming in.
Funny, I was justing reading a book (fiction) with rows of windmills that people thought were aliens.
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Mark Wollschlager
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DeanC
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Jay Bryant
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Rod Mesa
in reply to Christoph S • • •Sure, there's a Starbucks nearby, but the several coffee shops within biking distance are always packed. Yes there's a large corporate grocers by the Starbucks, but there are three independent grocers and a pair of weekly farmers markets. There are some community gardens around too that often hold sales. There's a traditional bakery, a panaderia, several restaurants, a bodega, a few taco stands, and a tamalera who sets up near a trolley stop which has been doing such good business that a jugadera has set up nearby.
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Griff Ferrell
in reply to Christoph S • • •We try to eat and shop local
Oh hey, it is national shrimp day
nationaldaycalendar.com/nation…
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Cass
in reply to Christoph S • • •It's a balmy 21°C and the wind has knocked back so the bugs are out. We have a lot more small restaurants than we used to, Asian and Filipino so - yum! So some smaller businesses as well as big box. We're getting a Costco so that will be interesting. More people will come/stay here for shopping.
We also have a wind farm not far from here. There are no views to obstruct🙄 so it will be interesting to see if more get put in. It's funny because you can see the flashing lights from very far and they seem north of the highway but are south when you get closer.
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Rod Mesa
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Mark Wollschlager
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Muse
in reply to Christoph S • • •Wind turbines are found in a number of Japanese anime!
a Certain Scientific Railgun
Haibane Renmei
2002 anime created by Yoshitoshi Abe
Contributors to Wikimedia projects (Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.)like this
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Karl Auerbach
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Lisa Stranger
in reply to Christoph S • • •I frequent 2 of the local green grocer/HFS mini-chains (3 and 2 locations, respectively). I will continue to frequent them even after the incoming Big Boutique Grocers set up shop nearby. (Which is not to say that I won't hit up the BBGs—they have some stuff that I have not been able to find locally.)
Restaurants, holy carp that's almost all local... Indian, Thai, Mexican, Chinese, pho...
I don't really do small biz for retail... probably because I no longer have the spoons to go from place to place to place trying to find something (including a place to park), nor to just browse around for the hell of it.
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sb
in reply to Christoph S • • •I do have to long-bike or drive to get to the closest Asian (food) store, but at least there is one we can get to. Oly does not have the variety of restaurants that Seattle has; not enough population to support that.
There are a number of "food trucks" around; we've tried several.
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Lisa Stranger
in reply to Christoph S • • •Hey friends—what's going around that causes minor sore throat/runny nose/bronchial rattle, and leaves you feeling juuuuust rotten enough to be pissed off about it?
Not even trying to google it for fear of learning I have hantavirusgonorrheacancer or something 😒
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Muse
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Lisa Stranger
in reply to Christoph S • • •Big Search keeps telling me "jugadera" is something ranging from a sportsball player to a game console. Clearly I am not asking it the right question.
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Rod Mesa
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Lisa Stranger
in reply to Christoph S • • •I do, but what would be considered my first symptoms (intermittent ucky feeling at the back of my nose/sinuses, which I attributed to allergies due to the inconsistency) go back more than a week. So not sure there's a point in trying.
Also since I posted that, what was left of the sore throat has transitioned to runny nose, which is S.O.P. for me with colds. What's throwing me is this periodic rattle in my windpipe. That's not S.O.P. Again, not causing me any genuine distress, just fn annoying.
The older I get, the longer sore throats hang on for some reason. But my tonsils have been gone since I was 3 years old. 🤷♀️ They almost killed me trying to take them out!
I was thinking possible mold, due to where the ucky-nose feeling most often occurred. And I hear ya, my B12 level has probably dug its way out of the basement floor by now. I'm supposed to be doing a near-double dose 3x/week but haven't had any for over 3 years.
ah ok! agua fresca ftw?
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Cass
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Christoph S
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Lisa Stranger
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Mark Wollschlager
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Lisa Stranger
in reply to Christoph S • • •STILLLL UPPPPPPP 😵💫
(that's 22 hrs, for the folks keeping track at home)
went to bed and nodded off very briefly, but the rattling was incessant (it's mostly fine when I'm upright, but then my nose runs, go figure)... so I got my ass up and went and got some cough syrup... a thyroid website scared me out of getting decongestant, so I'm having some half caff instead... at this point, what difference does it make if it keeps me awake another hour or two? maybe I'll not sleep all fn day this week!
also picked up some Chipotle... looks/tastes like some of it might be last night's leftovers... good thing I got a birthday deal and a bonus on it
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Lisa Stranger
in reply to Christoph S • • •Oh! A small group of Hispanic construction workers was getting up to leave as my masked, froggy self was heading out with my loot. One of them smiled, opened the door for me, and told me to have a great day. I thanked him and told him to have a great day too.
But they're all scary criminals, right? 😒
At least he knows now that not all middle aged WW are Karens
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Karl Auerbach
in reply to Christoph S • • •We tend to forget that much of the US was part of Spain and/or Mexico prior to being taken (or bought) by the US.
Of course, before that it was lived on by millions of people who got here thousands of years earlier.
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Rod Mesa
in reply to Christoph S • • •Yep. Some of us been here for the whole deal.
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Cass
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Carsten Raddatz
in reply to Christoph S • •The favourite local small shop is this, Chili and Paprika, run by Mexican enthusiasts. Where else to get handfuls of poblano or a jar of mole! The usual queue shows up on those two days of the week when fresh tortillas are brought in.
My next chili sauce cooking coming up I'll be sure to go. Or beans for chili. Shop has been around for more than 5 years, which is a good sign (it has been that long, just checked my Google Maps review).
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Karl Auerbach
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Muse
in reply to Christoph S • • •@Karl Auerbach "pre-made corn/maize masa"
Hard to get outside of North America. I substitute with polenta. Which isn't the same, but close enough.
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DeanC
in reply to Christoph S • • •You can get harina masa, kind of a corn meal, which can be wetted into kind of like masa, perhaps without too much difficulty. Polenta makes sense.
I was hanging out with a friend of mine, who is Jewish. I was describing how I was once making a recipe that called for masa, but as you couldn't get it easily I thought myself clever to get a bag of tortilla chips and crush them up into a powder to add to my, I think it was a chili. He kept trying to interrupt, sort of spluttering and eye-boggling. But I was on a roll. I love Mexican cuisine and talking about the different kinds of peppers etc. Anyway, he finally got a word in edgewise, something along the lines of "I have no idea what the fuck you are talking about, Dean".
Turns out he thought I was talking about matzah. Cognitive, meet dissonance!
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DeanC
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Jodi
in reply to Christoph S • • •LOL! Whole different problem.
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Karl Auerbach
in reply to Christoph S • • •You've seen the Matzah song, right?
youtube.com/watch?v=xMSEFCQCKP…
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Carsten Raddatz
in reply to Christoph S • •Polenta is much easier to obtain here. How fine it is or needs to be, I'll have to experiment
The one remote Taco Al Pastor workshop I did made it seem easy, but everyone used wheat flour. I'm confident to eventually graduate ^^
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Jodi
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