Nothing, other than the joke that England is responsible for more independence days than any other country.

At my age, wrinkles.

1. Political activism. Voting and canvassing. I live in a country where it usually takes fewer than 10,000 first preference votes to elect someone to the Dail (parliament), so each of my votes, and each person I convince, counts.
2. Retirement savings. In order to enjoy your retirement savings, you need a safe place to enjoy them. So, I match my contributions to my retirement savings plan with donations to groups that in my opinion are trying to make the world a better place.
3. Self-sufficiency. I’m not cutting myself out, but I am improving my independence on the rest of the economy: renewable power sources, vegetable garden, picking up skills to fix my stuff instead of replacing it, etc.
4. Hobbies. Mainly running and art, two hobbies where I can turn off my brain.
5. Data blocks. Removal of most of the social media from my life, filtering news sources.
6. Leading by example. Teaching my kids to be decent human beings with strong moral compass, who think for themselves. Wish me luck with that one.

I saw this quote on the desk of a proctologist I once visited.

I work for a tech company. A decade ago we got rid of user acceptance testing (and our entire QA team) and invested in a bigger service desk department. We only do unit testing, but actual customer facing bugs are discovered and reported by customers. AI, if we actually invested in it, could improve our quality if we used it for UI regression testing.

I can’t think of any food or drink (save for alcohol, but I cut down to one drink per week) that I’d buy because of the brand. The majority of what I’m buying is from store private labels. Living in Europe, however, I do pay close attention to country of origin, and try to buy as close to home as possible.

So, sort of like Washington D.C. urbanities and tourists vs. much of the overflight country.

I think about getting this contraption once my balls start poking out of my shorts.

Two of my favourite game franchises are Civilization and The Elder Scrolls. I played them since the first game, and I still play them. The original Civ and Daggerfall are always with me on a USB stick, in case I feel like playing them, even when the computer doesn’t have them installed.

The last games from the franchises I played were Civ IV and Oblivion. The next games required a download, and to this day I refuse to pay for a digital copy only. I have a huge backlog of older games on discs, so I don’t mind that my recent game purchases are largely limited to collector editions on Kickstarter.

Are webcams that ubiquitous nowadays? My monitors never had one, and I could never be arsed to buy an external one, but perhaps I’m the weird outlier here.

I wouldn’t mind that. I’m already finding it difficult to find a common topic to talk about with the twentysomethings.

I hear you. A few wrinkles around my eyes and daily cardio, and I haven’t gotten so much young mom attention since I was taking my kids to the playground. 10 more years, and I may do the same with potential grandkids. That will be a deadly combo.

Oh give it a break. He was just caught trying to flick a booger he picked from his nose. I have the same embarrassed look in my face when someone sees me trying to do the same.

Thanks for the suggestions. I ran the Connemarathon and Dingle marathon, and both were pretty hilly (but the views were really awesome). Another I have on my list, Flanders Fields, seems to be flat, but looking at the finish times from the past few years, doesn’t seem to be too fast. I’ll check the ones you mentioned, especially Wales, as I could just take a boat there and make it a weekend.

Some women are like Faraday cages.

I ran Dublin six times. Then, I skipped due to injury, and instead of a guaranteed place I had to go through the lottery. Lost five years in a row, and gave up. I heard from friends, though, that last year there were no longer guaranteed entries for people who run the previous year, and nearly everyone had to go through the lotto. The main problem this caused was the breakup of long-term running groups, of people who trained together and ran the race together through many years.

I solved the issue for myself: I’m signing up for smaller marathons, usually outside cities. Little chances for PB’s, smaller (if any) crowds, but the views more than outweigh these small issues.

There’s a saying: If you are over 50 and nothing is hurting, you’re in trouble. I haven’t been in trouble since I turned 50, so I’d love a new, healthy body straight out of the cooler.

You just triggered my Marley PTSD again. Bastard.

Silly person. Everybody knows that most of the nutrients and vitamins the croissant provides are in its peel.

I just cracked my knee. Because I’ve been sitting without moving my legs for too long. Also, because it’s wet and misty outside.