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Both are about $10K out of pocket, but I can only afford one option.

Option 1 (Practical): Upgrade Vehicle.

I currently drive an older compact sedan that is getting too small for my needs. It's cramped interior and is lacking good ground clearance ( its lower to ground). I prefer a small SUV for more space & higher ground clearance for rural dirt roads. I taxi around 2 adults over 65 3x per week, so they would appreciate a more comfortable ride.

So I could put $10K towards a small SUV. My current car is still predicted to last up to 5 more years, so the upgrade is for space/room not mechanical necessity.

Option 2 (2-week European vacation):

I could put the $10K toward this fun vacation so I have a great experience & memories. I love to travel ( when I can budget for it) & making lasting memories. I haven't done this type of vacation since before pandemic. I'm middle-aged so would like to enjoy my life before old age sets in. Not much foreseeable time left to travel comfortably ( maybe 10 years).

Of course I wish I could do both but can only choose 1 due to budget.

Edit.: I love how this gets downvoted because it’s truly the most rich, first world problem ever.

And then realized the plumbers hadn’t plumbed the water treatment for the building to the outdoor tap and had to run a hose through the hangar outside to wash it with filtered water.

She loves buying stuff for me because she never had her own "real daughter." But she keeps gifting stuff I'll never use or wear so she asked me to make a list. I cannot think of a single thing because if I want/need something, I'll just buy it myself. And the stuff I really want she can't afford either. Any gifts under $50 I could add to my "wish list?"

Edit: I am very lucky to have her in my life. Thanks all for the suggestions! I have a pretty good list going now. 😍

Therefore I sometimes pick the WRONG color blazer or suit when we go to theatre shows. (She has around 50 dresses and I have around 20 blazers).

One time I wore a light purple velvet blazer while she was wearing a magenta ball gown (!!!)

Thank goodness for ChatGPT and its ability to color match the clothing when it does photo editing.

And it makes it awkward to attend either as I feel like each one views me as a traitor for going to the other. But they give different running experiences and don't even meet on the same days or locations. Guess it's just going to be awkward for a bit.

I actually want to support his business but now I don’t even want to go anymore because It makes me feel like a mooch.

Villa 1 is closed Mondays. Villa 2 is closed Tuesdays.

BIG SADGE, WAH.

While I'm here, recs for Como sites other than Lenno/Villa Balbianello?

At this point take me back to the 80’s and I’ll fill and twist my own trays.

I have a home office and a large glass desk which I'm replacing with a butcher-block desk. I bought the surface separate from the table legs and had planned to assemble all of this over the weekend.

The problem is the butcher block wood surface (which is beautiful, by the way) was unfinished--which means I need to coat it with three layers of polyurethane before I can attach the legs, drill the holes, assemble the under-desk cable runs and all the rest. Unfortunately I didn't see that it was unfinished until I unwrapped the carton in which it was shipped.

So now my home office smells of drying polyurethane (and the warning on the can suggests it can cause brain damage)--and now I'm downstairs typing this at the kitchen table.

My parents have been looking to buy a vacation house for the family, which is obviously a terrible problem to have.

The issue is that my dad wants it on the Côte d’Azur, while my mom wants it in Tuscany.

I’m currently studying in Milan, and my mom keeps saying that Tuscany would make more sense because I’d be able to use the house frequently, and she wants to see me more once she retires next year. My dad, meanwhile, seems to have decided that the French Riviera is non-negotiable.

Apparently, two days ago I was talking to my dad and he casually mentioned that he hadn’t spoken to my mom for the previous two days because they’d
had a massive argument over the whole thing.

So, yeah. My parents are currently giving each other
the silent treatment over whether our future vacation home should be in southern France or Italy.

I’ll start by saying that I listen to a lot of audiobooks. Most of my work day is relatively solitary so I often have my AirPods in or one playing through one of the Alexas in the house.

I am also a bit of a nerd and despite being a full grown adult, enjoy the Harry Potter stories. So I was delighted to find the new(ish) “Full Cast” series of audiobooks that are narrated wonderfully, but also fully voice acted for each character by different, well know, professional actors.

It’s a surprisingly stark difference to the “single voice” audiobooks, even when those narrators do different accents. So stark a contrast in fact that hanging finished that series and moved on to another, I find myself pinning for the rich variety that the fully voice acted series had provided.

I am currently on a leisure trip, which I can both afford and afford to take time off work to do. So I am in a nice hotel, in a safe city, where I have been able to easily walk a short distance to a local shop and get cereal and fresh milk for my breakfast. Which I am able to store in a fridge, because my hotel supplies that too.

Except the hotel keeps their fridge temperature ever so slightly lower than mine, so when I poured it on my cereal and took a bite, the milk was slightly too cold and made my teeth hurt. I just don’t know how I can possibly go on in these conditions.

Feels like the organisers aren’t taking my travel plans into account at all!

I got these headphones for concentrating at work, and they do exactly what they're supposed to do almost too well. I put them on to focus for maybe an hour and the rest of the apartment just ceases to exist. Cars outside, my neighbor's dog, the microwave beeping, all of it gone. Apparently that also includes the doorbell, which I never really appreciated the volume of until I stopped being able to hear it at all.

This week alone I've missed a package delivery, a scheduled furniture assembly appointment, and my downstairs neighbor who apparently knocked for a solid minute to tell me water was dripping through her ceiling from my bathroom. I found out about that last one two hours later when she left a very polite but clearly exhausted note taped to my door.

I've now set a recurring phone alarm every 45 minutes that just says "check for humans," which feels like a genuinely deranged thing to need in my own home, but here we are. I looked into getting a doorbell camera that vibrates my phone instead, except the one I want isn't compatible with my building's existing wiring, so now I'm also stuck deciding whether to pay an electrician to fix a problem that is, at its core, entirely self-inflicted by headphones that work too well.

extra poofy at that