All of the corn-laden, hydrogenated junk like Pringles etc. --those are nice and conveniently located in the center aisles for you. The items that you purchase are scattered to the 4 corners of the store for your inconvenience. These are not accidents.

I wouldn't get too conspiratorial about that. Things that require refrigeration (fruit and vegetables) or quick access to work tables and storage units (fish, meats) are going to have to be on the outer edges of the floor, where cooling pipes, HVAC units, walk-ins, and workstations (for the butchers or fishmongers) can be set up out of the line of traffic, and where refuse can be disposed of quickly (imagine walking through a supermarket and having the butcher's assistant wheeling a cart full of trimmings dripping "meat juice" across the middle of the floor to get to the Dumpster? Blech.)

Interestingly, of the five supermarkets in walking (or hiking in one case) distance from my house, four of them push patrons through the produce department, and then to either the dairy, bakery, or seafood departments before they get to the packaged foods.

(I had an amazing chicken adobo from a Filipino friend at a potluck I went to a few weeks ago, and in exchange brought spicy Moroccan beef stew which went over like gangbusters)

And in case anyone was interested:

http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/230639

I make it without the raisins. Also If boneless short ribs are on sale, I'll chop them up into stew-sized chunks instead of the chuck the recipe calls for. Its perfect for cold weather.

My lady and I have been together for almost 10 years now. We have made our pledge to each other and our families. We are honest in our commitment to each other, and it's clear to anyone who knows us that we are in it for the long haul.

You need to worry about the people who *don't* know you, such as:

* Emergency Room personnel

* Police

* The court system (eg. estate and inheritance law)

It's perfectly fine to say "we're happy the way things are" and to think you're kind of sticking it to the man or whatever by not getting your relationship legally codified, but if you actually believe that "a piece of paper doesn't mean anything" you are sorely, and potentially tragically, mistaken. If you are not the legal next of kin, you have ZERO rights. None. Nil.

All the wills and powers of attorney don't amount to shit when contested by the *legal* next of kin and believe me when I tell you that all the good feelings and understandings and good-faith promises in the world can and will dissipate into thin air when someone's medical care, life, or property is on the line.

I suffered a pulmonary embolism. My physician's nurse practitioner recommended a stress test. The internet informed me that any physical activity could have caused a heart attack or stroke. After being admitted to the hospital the attending pulmonary specialist would not let me get out of bed for 48 hours until the clots inside my lungs were stabilized.

Once the clot is inside your lung, there's no place else for it to go. The only thing it can do is dissolve. Blood moves from the leg/pelvis, up through the iliac vein, through the heart, and into your pulmonary arteries. It doesn't go back out from your lung into your heart, and it certainly doesn't go from your lung into your brain. They get into your brain either if they form above your heart, or if you have a heart defect that permits a clot to travel from the right ventricle to the left, which pumps blood to the brain. A defect like that would show up on a cardiac echo.

I'm not sure what your pulmonary specialist was doing, but I was walking around while in the hospital, dragging my heparin drip behind me the whole time. They kept me inpatient for 48 hours til my INR went above 2 then sent me home with a box of Lovenox vials and a script for warfarin. I was back to running 5 miles a day by the end of the next week. Maybe you were sicker than I was, but given that you weren't dying on the table and were upright and breathing well enough to do a stress test, the 48 hours of lying still seem a little over the top.

As for me, I consider myself very well informed, and I understand that someone who studied nothing but human anatomy and physiology for 8 years plus residency etc. probably knows a lot more about the subject than I do. The only thing I would caution is specifically to residents: watch out for assumptions and make sure you take a good history! I'm 34 (33 at the time), nonsmoker, athletic, slender, and my PE was almost missed because the resident thought I had asthma. He didn't ask me about air travel (and I didn't think to mention it, truthfully I thought I had allergies), and even though I said that I was on the Pill and had a direct line family hx of DVT and PE, he still thought I was going home with a script for albuterol. They only did the D-Dimer "just to be sure" and it came back 5x the normal level, whereupon my doc told me to go straight to the ER when she saw the results and I thought to tell her I'd been on a flight back from Europe two weeks prior to oos.