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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 17th, 2023

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  • I’m fortunate enough to not be in a position where money is tight for food, but re: beans and rice, I absolutely love my instant pot!

    Mexican-style beans are, IMHO, delicious, easy to make, and dirt cheap. I love them, our toddler loves them, and it’s easy on the wallet. Dry beans are really affordable, and a 25lb bag of rice is great to have in the pantry (note: careful with bulk brown rice as I think it can go rancid). A stove and a pot can do both, but an instant pot and a rice cooker makes it so easy.

    I also drink a fair amount of coffee, but again, bulk or even just “make coffee at home” is very affordable. A few cups at Starbucks costs the same as a pound of beans (which yields many cups).












  • As others have mentioned, a few possibilities (I’m in the US, not sure how specific this is):

    • Payment isn’t always monthly, it is often every two weeks. So sometimes you get two paychecks in a month, sometimes you get three.
    • Compensation isn’t just salary, even if you’re salaried. Bonuses, stock grants, etc. might be done yearly/every 6 mo./every quarter.
    • Expenses aren’t always monthly. If you own a place, you probably pay property tax which isn’t due every month AFAIK. If you budget for vacations, holiday travel, etc., these are costs that vary wildly month to month, but have some stability on a yearly basis.
    • ETA: taxes are based on annual income, too.





  • It was a class on sleeping+dreaming, an “easy A” class that was actually really interesting. Taught by William Dement, an old timer who helped pioneer the field of sleep research. As I recall there wasn’t much emphasis on what dreams mean — it was fairly matter-of-fact in that regard, which I liked.

    The journal process, from what I recall, was just to write down every detail. In doing so you may realize patterns in your dream — recurring objects or themes, or anything really.

    Another thing, especially for lucid dreaming, is to do “reality checks” throughout your (waking) day. This can be something like looking at a watch. Get in the habit of this — just randomly looking down and verifying that your watch is reading a valid time, and ask yourself if this makes sense, and if you’re dreaming. Most of the time you’ll look at your watch, say “yup 11:42, and I don’t think I’m dreaming.” The idea though is that this will be a habit that you perform in your dream, too — and hopefully, in your dream, your watch won’t make sense, you’ll ask yourself if you’re dreaming and boom! Lucid dream.

    For me, lucid dreams were usually pretty short — as soon as I realized I was dreaming, I’d only have a little time before waking up. I also found it frustrating that I couldn’t always control my dreams, so I’d try to fly, and… nothing. Even though I knew I was dreaming.