At the risk of unsolicited advice...do you have a vocational school near you? Sometimes you can get deep discounts by having a student do it, and they are being supervised, so the work is usually excellent

I keep thinking about this as I learn to knit. I could buy a sweater for much cheaper (both "time is money" sense, and "yarn costs how much!?"), but that's not the point. If I'm willing to spend ungodly hours on that, I'll spend an extra 5 minutes writing something myself. And I'm far from alone.

The Tattooed Potato and Other Clues? Because I think of that book every time I hear those lines

Not my first, but wow the visceral reaction I had to the cover, I remember exactly where in the library it was ..

Oh wow, that "needs that are specific rather than special" really hit me.

I think it's interesting that statistically one is almost as likely to have read 5+ books as 0 books, with only a tiny percent reading 1 or 2 a year. I guess that readers like to read and non readers don't shouldn't be surprising.

Beneath Strange Lights is sapphic horror with an main character possessing tentacles.

If you do, try it out with someone who's an actual beginner alongside you- I think a lot of people recommending things for "a beginner" are coming from a place of so much knowledge they don't realize that a program is moving too quickly, or is overwheming, or making assumptions about grammar

Lolsob, reading 10-20 books a year makes one a "book person" to most people out there. Those of us reading this thread, most of whom read a *lot* more than that, are weird outliers even in the land of "book people"

To everyone in a similar scenario: the tactic my doctor's office has taught me is to ask, in writing, for:
1) the name, board specialty, and license number of the doctor making the determination the treatment was not medically necessary;

This is gorgeous!