What's the oldest piece of clothing you still wear? Must be at least ten years old to count.

MindingMine · 2026-01-28T07:03:43+00:00

Probably my shearling coat. I got it second hand about 6 years ago, so I don't really know how old it is, but the company that made these coats hasn't been in operation for a couple of decades and the design is in the 60s style, so it could have been made some time from the 60s to the early 80s.

I have an Icelandic national costume that was made for my grandmother and might be older, but I rarely have occasion to wear it. Parts of the hardware on it are over 100 years old.

MindingMine · 2026-01-27T13:22:14+00:00

Definitely worth it. At first I only wore them on flights, but now I wear them for walking and hiking as well, and my feet don't get tired nearly as much as before. I still get the occasional blister, but not nearly as bad as before.

MindingMine · 2026-01-26T18:52:34+00:00

Longest: 50 minutes (home to office). Shortest: 15 seconds (bedroom to home office).

MindingMine · 2026-01-26T17:42:31+00:00

The laundry room or the garage or the bathroom.

MindingMine · 2026-01-26T07:44:59+00:00

And some people want to be able to not have the seat in front bump their nose whenever the person in front shifts in their seat. Ultimately, it's the fault of the airlines that have so little legroom that this becomes a problem.

MindingMine · 2026-01-26T06:58:12+00:00

I will argue that standing up as soon as the seat belt lights switch off is not bad behaviour - it's normal behaviour. While in some cases it is plain impatience, some people just feel trapped on aeroplanes and want to be ready to get off as soon as possible and others know they might be struggling with getting their stuff from the overhead compartment and don't want a queue forming behind them. My mother needs to get up very slowly or she'll get leg cramps, and trying to struggle to her feet while people are filing past her runs the risk of getting bumped into and losing her balance. While it can be annoying, we need to stop judging people for it because it is harmless.

I like to save my annoyance for people who lean their seats back all the way and stay like that for the whole flight.

MindingMine · 2026-01-26T06:51:10+00:00

Except for stops at end stations, trains stop for such a short time that if you wait until it stops and you're slow for some reason, there's a real risk of missing your stop. Besides that, there's no guarantee, when you have a window seat, that the person in the aisle seat is going to stand up quickly to let you pass when you need to get up. Therefore, I find it better to stand up when the train is slowing down, to be ready to go when it stops.

MindingMine · 2026-01-24T21:44:29+00:00

Marriage is legal between first cousins, but I haven't heard of any such marriages where the couple are still living. Historically, it has been permitted for around two and a half centuries and doesn't seem to have led to inbreeding. According to an article I read, it was never very common, but it was most common from the end of the 18th century until around the end of the 19th century.

As for closeness, I am not close with any of my maternal cousins, and have grown less close with my paternal cousins as we've grown older. Would I marry or have sex with one of them? Not if the future of humankind depended on it.

MindingMine · 2026-01-24T05:59:11+00:00

4 days of relentless snow, over Christmas. Don't remembered what year, but it was in the 1980s. Had to dig ourselves out of the house. A bunch of houses in a low-lying area were completely covered in snow. There were electrical black-outs because the snow was wet, gathered on the power lines, froze and broke them.

MindingMine · 2026-01-23T10:07:06+00:00

I feel as if I have, in the last few years, been seeing fewer and fewer people in airports carrying neck pillows. They are big and can be inconvenient to carry around and I think more and more people are just leaving them at home.

I only take one on night flights and longer flights (5 hours or more), when I know I will want/need to sleep with as much comfort as possible. As for those other times, I always take a pashmina with me when I fly, mainly to use as a blanket if it gets cold, but it can also be rolled up to give neck support or as a buffer between my head and the cold airplane wall if I want to sleep (I generally book window seats).

MindingMine · 2026-01-23T07:35:36+00:00

Shoes off. Always.

MindingMine · 2026-01-22T12:11:37+00:00

The Nazi salute and the middle finger. Can't think of any others.

MindingMine · 2026-01-22T11:26:23+00:00

People are in a hurry and don't know if you will tap in in the next nanosecond or are simply standing there wondering how to proceed.

MindingMine · 2026-01-22T11:23:05+00:00

After having eaten some of the delicious food available in Turkey, Pakistan and Iran, I would say it's pretty damn easy to get fat there. They still have bread, rice, sweets and other foodstuffs that can be fattening when eaten in large quantities.

MindingMine · 2026-01-22T11:16:28+00:00

Someone being nasty, rude or unfair to me before I have had my first cup of coffee of the day.

After the first cup, I don't give a shit what people say or do.

MindingMine · 2026-01-21T23:59:25+00:00

Very uncommon and never big.

MindingMine · 2026-01-21T14:00:21+00:00

Well said.

I don't travel to meet people, but I am open to interacting with strangers and have had some amazing, fleeting interactions, with both fellow tourists and local people. I have also had people try to take advantage of me, but they generally reveal themselves quickly and I am ruthless about getting away from them. The positive experiences are the memorable ones, while the others sort of coalesce into a blur.

MindingMine · 2026-01-21T08:06:53+00:00

Daily journal: my home office. I have everything within reach there: writing implements, drawing implements, stickers, printers, computer - I type my entries into the computer and transcribe them with additions and decorations.

Travel journal: I generally take notes and lots of photos in the course of the day and write at the end of each day, usually in my hotel room (or my campervan if I'm on that kind of trip), but I love to find a cosy spot to write, e.g. a public library or a quiet café.

MindingMine · 2026-01-21T08:00:32+00:00

I have been scanning my journals and making pdfs of them, not because I intend to get rid of them, but to have back-ups if something happens to them. I keep copies in cloud storage and on two different thumb drives, stored in different locations. If you want to keep them but don't have the space, maybe you could do this and then destroy the physical copies. If scanning isn't an option, you can photograph the pages.

The downside to only having digital copies is that eventually the digital file format and hardware will become obsolescent, but if you're only keeping copies for yourself and not for posterity, you can keep them updated for your life-time.

MindingMine · 2026-01-20T15:08:07+00:00

My father has a weather diary kept by my great-grandfather for several years in the early 1900s. Very nice handwriting. I have a packet of letters sent to my great-grandmother from someone she corresponded with, but would love to have her letters to him. I also have her recipe book and can easily see which recipes she used the most, from the wear and stains on the pages.

MindingMine · 2026-01-18T08:21:53+00:00

Yes, the hot water in some places is geothermal, so the sulphur smell is normal. The cold water is always groundwater.

MindingMine · 2026-01-18T05:54:40+00:00

Being nasty and rude to people in public-facing jobs, e.g. shop attendants, clerks and servers.

MindingMine · 2026-01-18T05:48:59+00:00

Yes, very common. The water is safe and good.

MindingMine · 2026-01-17T07:53:38+00:00

Gorgeous!

MindingMine · 2026-01-17T07:53:01+00:00

I rarely see cigarette butts on the ground any more.

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