This Weekend's Most Active Threads

Today I'll look at the most active threads over the weekend, starting with a thread titled, "2023 - 2024 school calendar" and posted in the "Fairfax County Public Schools (FCPS)" forum. School calendars are a surprisingly controversial issue and each of our various school forums tends to have multiple contentious threads on the topic. In this case, the calendars in question are draft proposals for Fairfax County Public Schools which were published last week. School calendars must address a daunting number of often conflicting priorities. For many, the most important factor is for school calendars to align with work calendars so that parents and children are off at the same times. Others prioritize religious or cultural holidays. Some value long breaks that allow time for travel while others prefer short breaks that cause less interruption to the learning process. Everyone thinks there are too many days off while still demanding that their favorite days off remain. FCPS has presented four draft calendars that attempt to reconcile these differing preferences in alternative ways. Not surprisingly, all of the drafts have their fans and detractors. Probably the most intersting aspect of this thread is the justifications posters concoct for their preferred days off. For instance, I can't imagine that a large number of FCPS families are travelling cross-country by car lugging a cooler full of food and staying at Motel 6s along the way, which was why one poster claimed to require a two-week Christmas break. A few, maybe, but enough to justify planning a calendar around? Doubtful.

Next was a thread posted in the "Food, Cooking, and Restaurants" forum titled, "Baking cookies is a waste of time. Better to just buy them at bakery". This is the second thread I've written about in which I am convinced that a poster has discovered that the surest way to provoke me into a full on rage is to put down my favorite cookies. I mostly maintained my composure last month when a poster criticized Hershey's Kisses cookies, but now someone has it out for home-baked chocolate chip cookies. Has this poster no shame? The original poster contends that her local bakery has better chocolate chip cookies than she can make at home for roughly the same cost. So, she has decided to no longer bake and to support the bakery instead. While I have had some good chocolate chip cookies from bakeries, I hold firmly that nothing can compete with home-baked. Apparently, I am not alone as the 15 pages of replies generated in less than 24 hours attest. Many posters defend home-baked cookies because they enjoy baking, others because they have better control over the ingredients. Several posters argue that the original poster's cost analysis was incorrect. Other posters, however, agree with the original poster and argued that there are many advantages to cookies purchased from a baker. The only one of those that I find to be convincing is that there is no clean-up. Some posters were enticed by the original poster's description of her bakery's cookies and asked for its name. However, the original poster — demonstrating admiral protective instincts — refused to identify it lest posters inundate the shop with orders and leave nothing for her.

The third thread that I'll discuss was titled, "Date has no online presence" and posted in the "Relationship Discussion (non-explicit)" forum. The original poster asks whether other women would be comfortable going on a second date with a man who has no visible online presence. Many of those responding indicate that they would not be surprised that a man in his early 50s who has a stable job would not be a frequent social media participant. Others find the lack of an online presence concerning and a suggestion that he may have provided a fake name. Several posters report that they have sometimes concealed their identity at the beginning of relationships for various reasons. Different posters explain that they have erased or limited their own online presence precisely because they didn't want people "Googling" them. Quite a bit of the discussion is lamenting the role social media has come to play in our lives. As one poster pointed out, people have dated for centuries without learning about one another through social media. These posters argued that the original poster should get to known the man through interaction rather than searching online. Others suggested that if the original poster's instincts raised red flags, she should be cautious regardless of whether the man had an online presence or not. The solution most posters suggest and with which the original poster agrees, is to continue seeing the guy, but keep the dates public and low key.

The final thread was also posted in the "Relationship Discussion (non-explicit)" forum. Titled, "Wife seeing divorce lawyers", the original poster explains that he and his wife have been seeing a counselor for a few months to work on their marriage. However, he recently learned that she had been seeing a divorce lawyer behind his back. His wife and their therapist have told him not to worry about the meetings and to focus on other issues. The original poster agrees that the best way to save his marriage it to forget about the lawyer, but only if his wife is also concentrating on saving their marriage. If she is actually planning a divorce, it is better for him to do so as well. He wants to know if he is missing anything from this analysis. Many of those responding accept his wife's explanation that she only met with a lawyer to better understand her rights and not to prepare for a divorce. Others insist that there is no good reason to meet with a divorce lawyer if a divorce were not in the works. Depending on which side of this division posters fall, they either recommend following the therapist's advice or urge the original poster to prepare for divorce himself. A few posters suggest that it is possible to both consult with a lawyer and to continue working to repair the marriage and, as such, the original poster should not consider this an "either or" situation for himself. Both he and his wife can do both.