Last year, I quit smoking cigarettes after a pack a day for nearly a decade. Because of the money saved, earlier this year I was able to pay off a debt that had followed me for years; as a result, yesterday I applied for a credit card and got accepted!
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DUDE! MY BROTHER!!
We had a concert last night as well! And one of the songs we sang was also a silly story about lovers, first published in 1465 (apparently), written in a mixture of sort-of French, sort-of Catalan, sort-of Spanish: “Dindirin, Dindirin”. Here’s a good version of it (obviously not our chorus of about 80 people):
No matter how I am feeling I drag myself to rehearsals, because singing in a group is the finest thing you can do to lift your spirits (and help lift the spirits of everyone else).
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Congrats! I quit about a year and a half ago after smoking for over 40 years. I miss it every day! 
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Totally agree with the sentiment. Going to the recitals, though, requires a commitment of “spoons” that I usually don’t have. I usually get them back at the end, but you have to pay upfront. 
Gratz! You should post your version, I promise I won’t criticize it. I love to see how people reinterpre these songs in different ways. Is a bit like a cover 
Dindirindin is a villancico. Nowadays, this would translate as “Christmas carol” but originally the word comes from ‘villain’, or "belonging to a ville (town)'. So basically villancicos are one of the first recorded folk genres, because they were sung in front of churches after mass, usually by wandering minstrel. Over time, churches would forbid singing profane songs in front of the church, so villancicos ended up being only sung in Christmas (the evolution of the villancico is more complex but is late and I don’t have my books at the bed 
).
El cancionero de palacio is a great songbook to see the evolution of the languages of the peninsula of that time, as it records about 50 or 60 years period over a vast region that was quickly changing. You have old Spanish, french, basque, aragonese… There are some glaring omissions like no songs in galician, catalan, or mozarabic. But you have some great songs there, specially to sing “tavern like”, like “pase el agoa” or “hoy comamos y bebamos”…
The book, BTW, is publicly available to read on the internet, here’s your song page.
Anyway glad to see “the old classics” being represented. I will stop fansqueeling now.
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Congratulations to you, too! I still dream about it (half of the time smoking and lamenting that my streak is over and the other half refusing because I quit), but I don’t really miss it.
It’s been almost a year and a half for me, also! I quit on June 15th, 2023 and it gave me the strength and determination to quit other unhealthy things.
Here’s to proudly being EX-smokers, both of us!
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The crushing pressure of doggos’ stares can run in the metric tons per square centimeter, something that has been scientifically verified in thousands of laboratories across the world.
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That’s a significant win, given the incredibly worrisome current events and, with that, continually waking up in the middle of the night.
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Every year the large legal division I work in has a holiday party. At the holiday party, each division gives an award to one of their people as a recognition of their work.
I’ve been working here for almost a year and a half.
I received one of the awards! Plus, My boss’s boss’s boss had nice things to say about my work and contributions. My boss was supposed to present the award, But unfortunately he had a flat tire and was late.
Which is fine. I’m just glad he’s safe.
The award came with a silver plated star that has my name engraved on it. It’s a silly thing probably. But I feel really good. In my previous job, where I worked for 15 years, I was almost never recognized. Much less in front of the entire legal division (200 people) by one of the top people in my employer with a pretty silver star and everything.
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That’s awesome! Congratulations!
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Who won what now?
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Adult merit badges.
Sold at:
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These are amazing…
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Thanks for helping! I agree, they’re great.
There should be a set just for online interactions. “Cleared up comment section confusion.” “Walked away from a troll.” “Read the entire thread before commenting.”
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UNcancelled stamp on an envelope in today’s mail!
Also: the envelope contents (stickers and a bonus post card)
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wow, how did i miss this post?
what an excellent postal mistake! (you could reuse that stamp, y’know. save yourself 2/3 of a buck.)
cool stamp, too!
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And thanks for alerting us to that site, very cool goods!!
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For last April’s solar eclipse Kiddo and I drove to a small town in southern Illinois to experience totality for the first time ever. I didn’t even try to photograph it.
Yesterday at an event at the local university I met a student who had been 3 miles (5 km) from us with a group of other aerospace engineering students launching balloons with cameras and instruments. He was also taking photos. So, almost a year later I finally got a glorious print of the fully eclipsed sun, solar flares visible, from almost exactly where I was. 
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Lovely!
The totality was amazing. I took one quick photo but then decided I needed to simply experience it.
Laying on our driveway and feeling a strange euphoria. I could hear the screams and shouts of delight from the schools 3 -5 blocks away.
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