You know you are getting old when:

[LizzieMaine]

You lay awake tossing and turning an entire night, and finally get up in the morning to discover that you forgot to take your sleeping pill.

 

[2jakes]

You lay awake tossing and turning an entire night, and finally get up in the morning to discover that you forgot to take your sleeping pill.

Watch a tennis match on TV at night.
You’ll fall asleep “faster than a speeding bullet” my dear Lizzie.
And you won’t have to take those “pills”!

Or I’ll regale you with my adventures in “Hollywoodland”..
that’ll also do the trick!

 

[Harp]

When I first arrived at Ft. Polk ( 1970 ), I ran into a processing E3 clerk from near my hometown in Indiana. In those draftee days that made us almost kin. He asked if I'd like a new MOS rather than 11B. Of course I said YES. He sent me to a holding company for the weekend until Monday when he would have my new job description....

When I got to Ft Polk I was slated 11B, and told "we always put the smart guys into Infantry; dumbasses into military intelligence."

 

[Trenchfriend]

You lay awake tossing and turning an entire night, and finally get up in the morning to discover that you forgot to take your sleeping pill.

Morning coffee, Lizzie, morning coffee. Finally start to be a coffee-drinker!! After such a wrong-gone night, the evil next day will be OK, with Crystal Meths healthy, little brown brother, I swear.

Coffee improves everbody's healthiness. Dopamine, serotonin and so on... The caffeic-acid kills all radical stuff inside us.

 

[LizzieMaine]

I'm a tea drinker myself, but I make sure it's not prissy dainty china-cup tea. I steep the tea bag for about twenty minutes until it's so strong you have to chisel it out of the cup, and then I take it straight, in one gulp.

Right now, though, I'm sore that the Giant Regional Supermarket Chain is out of Red Rose, my tea of choice since I was a child. They have *decaffienated,* which is pointless, and a row of unnecessary novelty flavors, but not a single box of regular Red Rose is in stock in any style, quantity or form. I've been reduced to Lipton, which is nowhere near up to the job.

 

[Trenchfriend]

@LizzieMaine
This stuff?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Rose_Tea

 

[LizzieMaine]

That's the stuff. New England's favorite tea for the better part of a century. If it's been discontinued, I will go on the rampage of all rampages.

 

[Trenchfriend]

Seems to be alive.
http://redrosetea.com/best-sellers

But, where's the tea, made from red roses??

 

[tonyb]

... I've been reduced to Lipton, which is nowhere near up to the job.

Maybe two bags? Or three?

 

[LizzieMaine]

I'm thinking I should just tear open the tea bags and sprinkle it on my All-Bran.

 

[ChiTownScion]

That's the stuff. New England's favorite tea for the better part of a century. If it's been discontinued, I will go on the rampage of all rampages.

Bigelow used to make an Irish Breakfast Tea that really packed a caffeine punch: when I was a starving law student I'd steep 2-3 bags a cup while pulling an all nighter study session and had to be at work the following morning. It's been discontinued, and I moved on to coffee after I graduated. I couldn't choke down a cup of coffee to save my life when I was younger, but can't live without it now- especially when I'm at my cabin on a cold morning.

 

[BlueTrain]

Being sort of from the South, I grew up drinking ice tea all summer long, sweetened to the point of syrupiness, almost. My wife drinks hot tea but to me, it lacks something, even with copious amounts of sugar. Now I drink coffee, probably a quart a day. The first mug goes down fast, too, but I don't start in until after I get to work. I didn't start drinking coffee until the place I worked had it for free. I don't drink near as much when I'm at home on the weekend and for that matter, I'm not at home near as much as I'd like to be, either.

 

[LizzieMaine]

I've never been able to tolerate coffee -- it upsets my stomach. I do, however, enjoy smelling coffee, and will often sniff an open can or bag of it. This was a childhood habit that was not encouraged, along with the habit of eating raw macaroni, both of which habits, I was warned, would eventually kill me.

 

[Stearmen]

I’m still can’t get used to saying 2017.

I miss the times when the year began with 19.

I'm still getting used to the last century is no longer the 19th century! A couple of friends and I have a running gag where we say, sounding like cartoon gold prospectors talking to his donkey out in the desert, "I remember back in ought nine Betsy, nuggets, big as your fist, all you had to do is reach down and pick them up, dagnabbit, them was the good old days!"

 

[ChrisB]

I’m still can’t get used to saying 2017.

I miss the times when the year began with 19.

I can't quite grasp that when people refer to "the turn of the century" they now mean 2001.

 

[tonyb]

I've never been able to tolerate coffee -- it upsets my stomach. I do, however, enjoy smelling coffee, and will often sniff an open can or bag of it. This was a childhood habit that was not encouraged, along with the habit of eating raw macaroni, both of which habits, I was warned, would eventually kill me.

I drink strong coffee on ice. I slam down several ounces of it first thing in the morning. I have at least a 12-cup pot of it per day.

Addicted? Sure am.

 

[Trenchfriend]

I like instantcoffee, but the problem on this stuff is, that the most seem to lack coffeine, whatever the reason is. Maybe, there's a basic difference between "spray-dried" and better "freeze-dried", but I don't know really. I'm happy, to have this bio-fairtrade-stuff, which is tasty, aromatic and out of the mainstream. Many Germans wouldn't believe, that instantcoffee can taste that good!

 

[Zombie_61]

I can't quite grasp that when people refer to "the turn of the century" they now mean 2001.

That was another issue that was near-constantly being debated where I worked--that the year 2000 was the last year of the 20th century and that the 21st century began with 2001. When people didn't understand that, I'd use the analogy that if someone owed them $2,000, paid them in $1 bills, and stopped at $1,999, they would want that other dollar. Almost all of them replied with, "But that's different."

 

[Lean'n'mean]

I can't quite grasp that when people refer to "the turn of the century" they now mean 2001.

The turn of the century was indeed the year 2000, by 2001 the 21st century was already a year old.

 

[BlueTrain]

Was "1" a good year?

I also like the aroma of ground coffee. I've mentioned before, I think, how certain aromas from the past (I guess they're all from the past) have stuck with me and one of them was the smell of coffee. A&P grocery stores had a coffee grinder somewhere up at the front of the store where you would dump the bag of beans and have it ground however you wanted it. The brand was Eight O'clock and I think it came in a red and black bag. The grocery store we patronize still has it, along with the grinding machine somewhere in the middle of the store. But the store is so huge and presumably so well-ventilated that there is no coffee aroma except right in front of the machine.

Another smell, not exactly an aroma, was the strong antiseptic smell of the building where the doctor's offices were. It hit you the moment you went inside. It was a downtown building and the doctor's offices were upstairs over stores. There was the regular doctor, who would make house calls, and at the end of the hall, the eye doctor. He didn't make house calls. I couldn't begin to describe the smell but it wasn't bad, just like something had been cleaned with strong detergent. I never smelled anything like that anywhere else.

Another memorable smell was the swimming pool. Just the water itself, nothing else anywhere around the pool had the same smell. It was a bleach-like smell, same as swimming pools everywhere. Another smell that qualifies as an aroma, maybe even a fragrance, is that of new mown grass, which of course still smells the same. I've smelled hay and played in a barn full of it but not recently enough to remember what it smelled like. Another aroma, not bad and not quite a fragrance, is that of a garage, with a mixture of oil, grease, various lubricants, gasoline, stuff like that. That's what my father-in-laws garage smelled like and since he passed away and we carted home a box of leftover oil, grease and whatnot, our garage has the same smell. It remind me of my father-in-law's garage. We had a garage where I grew up where my father parked our 1950 Chevrolet Deluxe. It had a gravel floor and the only thing beside the car was a coil spring from a railroad car, the presence of which I cannot explain. I never thought to find something useful to do with it but as it was, the garage was always locked and I didn't have the key.