BSR

I saw a recipe on YouTube for Filipino chicken salad that called for Miracle Whip, condensed milk, canned pineapple (drained) and sweet relish. I mentioned it to my mother and commented that it sounded disgusting. She responded that that's how Filipinos make it, and in fact, I had eaten & enjoyed that recipe many times at various relatives' homes. Imagine my horror.

Dominic Thiem announced via Twitter that he was withdrawing from the Australian Open. His first tournament back will be Córdoba, Argentina.

You won $10 million from a scratch ticket?! I didn't think scratch tickets had such big payouts. A friend back in Boston won $100K off a scratch ticket, and I thought that was huge.

True, with so much competition, building up a successful OnlyFans is hard for any newcomer. A face-less newbie doesn't have a snowball's chance in H-E-double hockey sticks. Has @nycboi considered go-go dancing? Plenty of go-go gigs in NYC for a guy with the right look. Some dancers make a decent amount just in tips. Others make even more working "off the premises." He could be selective about clients without offending anyone. His list of restrictions will annoy most rent.men browsers, but bar clientele looking to hookup with a dancer will be more accepting (just my opinion).

Uh oh, the likelihood that Novak will the Australian Open just dropped like a rock. While he has not officially withdrawn from the ATP Cup, a member of his team leaked, "It is 99 percent sure that Novak won't go to the ATP Cup. He is training here (in Belgrade) but he has decided to give that tournament a miss." If Novak skips the ATP Cup, then he's not playing the AO either. Roger is definitely out, Rafa is a maybe, Novak is looking far less likely. If none of the Big 3 plays the Australian, then that is the end of an era, or at least the beginning of the end. Until recently, the Big 3 not only played every Slam but won almost all of them as well. I don't know if Roger ever makes it back. Rafa should be back on tour, just maybe not in time for the AO. Novak has no physical issues, but who knows if the other 3 Slams will impose vaccine mandates in the future. Given their ages (Roger 40, Rafa 35, Novak 34), the Big 3 Era had to end at some point, but I still hate to see it.

I saw an interesting stat from Madrid: 12/23/2020: 2,621 new cases, 210 new hospitalizations 12/23/2021: 20,195 new cases, 144 new hospitalizations I wish they had a breakdown of how many of those 144 hospitalizations were Omicron vs. Delta.

From the horse's mouth: Rafa says he's experiencing only mild symptoms. He doesn't worry about the Covid itself, more how long it will take to recover and how long he is unable to train and practice. Even if he recovers in time to make it to Australia, he will have missed precious preparation time before a Slam and after a 6-month layoff. That would be tough for any player, even more so for a 35-year-old.

An interesting wrinkle in Rafa's comeback from injury: he has tested positive for Covid. No word on how he's feeling, but given his age, fitness, and 2 vaccine shots, I'm guessing that physically he's fine. He has enough time before the start of the AO (Jan 17) to shed the virus and test negative, but his participation in the warm-up tournament (Melbourne, Jan 4) he planned on playing might be in jeopardy. On the podcast I'm listening to, they said that once a player tests positive, first he has to test negative then wait 7 days before he can board a plane for Australia. If he can't play Melbourne, his only other tune-up option is Sydney, but that's the week right before the AO, and top players almost never play the week before a Slam. Another option is going into the AO with no competitive match play (Novak often has before both the AO and Wimbledon yet has gone on to win the tournament). No warmup is far from ideal, however, for a player who's been out with injury for 6 months. No word yet on whether Novak is vaccinated, but we'll find out soon because he's entered in the ATP Cup, which starts Jan 1. Dominic Thiem caught a cold while in Dubai (tested negative for Covid) and has withdrawn from both the ATP Cup and Sydney. His participation in the AO is a wait & see.

"I'm into everything" can also mean "that'll be extra."

Huh, you learn something new every day. It's been 33 years since my year in Salamanca (Spain), yet I had never heard of yeísmo & had always thought the Y and the LL had identical pronunciations. I even found a YouTube video on the subject to hear the difference, but it's so subtle that I'll never pick up on it. The only differences I hear are between countries. (Some) Spaniards pronounce the Y & LL more like the J in English, Mexicans like the Y, and Argentines like ZH or SH. If a handsome Argentine speaks with that melodic porteño lilt and all those drawn-out zzzhhhh's, I melt like butter on a hot summer afternoon.

I googled it, and it sounds like "probably not" is correct. According to immigrationhelp.org -- "The amount of time that it takes to get a marriage Green Card is different for every case ... On average, it takes 10-38 months to get a Marriage Green Card." So 10 months if everything goes perfectly, but since when does cutting through red tape go off without a hitch?

If this marriage lasts less than a year, is that enough time to get the young man a green card?

Was there a one-day pause for St. Patrick's Day?

Nuns ... Catholic school ... too traumatic to go into detail

I have no idea why I typed Dalí, must have been a brain fart. Dalí was a painter, not an architect. From the Wiki article, apparently Gaudí quit the Episcopal Palace years before it was finished, and another architect completed the project. Maybe that's why the Episcopal Palace is the only Gaudí work I like, because Gaudí's over-the-top style was moderated by another architect. I admire La Sagrada Familia for how different it is. Anyone can recognize it instantly because it looks like no other church on earth. But judging just the aesthetics, I still think its fugly.

Or one man's underrated is another man's overrated. I'm with @Rockey, I thought Sagrada Familia was fugly. I'm just not a fan of his architecture, although I can appreciate how different it is. In the category of underrated, I nominate Dali's Episcopal Palace in Astorga, León, Spain. It reminds me more of a fairy tale castle than a church.

Mexican food looks and smells so appealing, but since they add a ton of cilantro to so many dishes, I can't eat it. Yup, I'm in that ~10% who thinks cilantro tastes like soap. Sometimes I see a Mexican recipe that sounds really good and wonder if I could sub out the cilantro for Italian parsley or another herb.

A player's name on the entry list means even less than I thought. I just read over on MTF that all active players with a ranking above the direct entry cutoff get automatically placed on the Australian Open entry list. Also, I was mistaken about no fine or penalty. If a player withdraws less than 42 days before the start date, he gets sanctioned (I didn't bother to read the 90-page PDF to find out what the "sanction" is). In any case, a player can always get a doctor's certification of injury (big air quotes around "injury") to weasel out of whatever fine or penalty.

I liked one of the comments, something like, "Why do people go to touristy places and then trash them because of all the tourists there?"

Correct, a player's name on the entry list is simply a placeholder. The player can withdraw at any time before his first match, without fine or penalty. But a last-minute withdrawal is kind of a sh*tty thing to do, and given Novak's longstanding relationship with Tennis Australia in general and Craig Tiley in particular, I doubt Novak plans on making a big public statement by pulling out last-minute. I'm guessing that Novak sincerely intends to play. Novak may already be vaccinated, but like I said in a previous post, he has a rather extreme view of privacy. He attended a concert in NYC that required proof of vaccination for entry. Maybe he got the shot, maybe a connection sneaked him in against the rules, who knows?

According to the ATP website, Novak is on the entry list for both the ATP Cup and the Australian Open. I keep reading conflicting reports on whether unvaccinated players (~35% of the men are unvaxxed) will be allowed to play, or even to enter the country. The Victoria premier said that unvaxxed players would be barred from entry, yet the WTA said that unvaxxed players would be allowed to play but with a 14-day hard quarantine (i.e., the player is not allowed to leave their hotel room, which means no practice and very limited training) and regular testing. Honestly, I can't be sure what's going on. Rafa and Dominic Thiem are also on the AO entry list. Notable absences are Roger, who announced a while ago that he would not be ready for Australia, and Stan Wawrinka, who's been out for so long I forgot what his injury was. On the women's side, the most notable absence is Serena. Uh oh, hamstring injuries are notoriously slow to heal, and it looks like hers was a rough one. Either that, or she's about to make a retirement announcement. Also out is the oft-injured Bianca Andreescu.

Good catch, Charlie. I liked his ad because he is wowza hot but missed the incongruity of Spanish-speaking and MidEast Arab. Is Maghreb (a word I didn't know until I learned it in Spanish) considered part of the Middle East? I always thought of Northern Africa as geographically separate, but maybe this escort disagrees. A Moroccan tourist once told me that in the north of Morocco, they speak Spanish exactly as it's spoken in Spain. I just looked it up on Wiki, and yup, apparently ~4.5% of Moroccans speak Spanish. I guess that's not surprising given that the northern coast of Morocco used to be Spanish territory and today it gets all the Spanish TV and radio (the Strait of Gibraltar is only 9 miles wide). Also, Spain still has 2 exclaves on Morocco's north coast, the cities of Ceuta and Melilla. Who knows what this guy's story is. Gotta hear it from the horse's mouth, I guess. But given his impressive physical assets, asking about his ethnic & linguistic background might be understandably low on a client's list of priorities.

Let's try to look at this from the escort's point of view ...

I disagree. Disinformation can spread by many other means: the water cooler at work, friends hanging out, neighbors chatting, the guy next to you at the gym, etc. If someone posts something inaccurate on social media, it gives others the opportunity to post evidence proving the inaccuracy. My biggest problem with the argument that disinformation should not be allowed on social media is that a few oligarchs get to decide what is & isn't true. Social media oligarchs quashed the story about Hunter Biden's laptop before the 2020 election because it was allegedly "disinformation." Well, whaddya know, the NY Post's story turned out to be 100% true. Mark Zuckerberg and Jack Dorsey just wanted to protect Biden. 43K votes in 3 state's would have flipped the election to Trump. Such is the power of those who decide what is & isn't "disinformation."