[conspire] Housekeeping, again

[Rick Moen]

Quoting Edward Cherlin (echerlin at gmail.com):

> Just consider it to be what they would have taken a little later, had
> they been enclued, so it's a wash.

No, it really isn't.  I'd been looking forward to making a loaf of
garlic bread -- and also -eating- pieces from a loaf of garlic bread.
Neither pleasure was available to me -- plus I resented someone treating
my property in a cavalier manner.  

> Deirdre is right. (Her comment appears further on.)

Deirdre is right, _but_ something is fundamentally wrong and in need of
fixing, when people attempt to crowd past me to grab the food I'm right
in the middle of preparing, working in the food-prep area.  As I said,
it's necessary to have boundaries.  One of mine has been transgressed
several times to a degree that needs correction.  The need is _not_, I
should stress, my just getting used to it.  (I'll kick you all out
without a qualm, before considering that.)

I really do think many of you need "modern life" lessons.  Did you know,
a couple of you don't even know how to break ice cubes out of plastic
trays without damaging the trays?  The correct way is to run tap water
over the tops and backs of the cubes, loosening them, so they can be
gently knocked out.  

The _dumbass_ way is to twist the brittle, hard-frozen plastic -- which
_does_ remove the cubes, but also quickly _cracks the ice-trays_.  I now,
thanks to a couple of CABAL members who aren't properly house-trained,
have some leaky, cracked ice-trays.  

I mean, for Ghod's sake, _ice cubes_?  Is there anything more
characteristically American than a mania for ice in one's drinks?  And
yet, y'all aren't even getting that part right.