u/SpeakNowAndEnter

Earlier this year I got an official RCPD diagnosis from Dr Pittman in NYC and opted for the in-office Botox injection.

I had a noticeable improvement after the injection, but not the full benefit of what would typically be expected. After it set in I had one or two true burps at random, and a handful of micro burps, but then mostly nothing. To be fair, those small handful were more than I’d ever really experienced and it was great to see progress! But Dr Pittman recommended a second in-office shot on the opposite side as a follow up.

About 6 weeks after my first shot I got a second, and after that had a few days to set in it was like night and day. I was burping regularly, I could make myself burp, it was great! I was buying cases of sparkling water just to be constantly practicing throughout the day.

But then over time that one wore off too. It’s been a few months since then and I will get the occasional accidental burp (again, that’s more than I could say before the shots) but I’m getting bloated again and running into more and more times where I feel the need to burp but can’t make it happen.

Obviously that’s a bit disheartening. At this point I’m pretty sure the next step would be getting the traditional method injections while being put under. I’m not opposed to doing this, but I just hate the idea of spending the time and money to do so just for it to wear off again…

Has anyone had a similar experience and can offer any advice?

I have an idea for a theme that I really love and have compiled a list of about 30 words and/or phrases that could be used as answers in that theme. I've been wanting to take a shot at making a 21x21 puzzle, but the issue is the answers I have are all in the 6-10 letter range.

Specifically, four are 10 letters long, including the revealer. Two are 9 letters long. Four are 8 letters long. Nine are 7 letters long. Twelve are 6 letters long. And technically there are two I could combine for one 16-letter-long answer, but it wouldn't be the cleanest.

Obviously I can't use all of those, so I am going to have to pare the list down regardless, but I am trying to gauge if it would be editorially frowned upon to do a 21x21 grid where the marquee 13-21-letter answers aren't the theme answers, but rather there are maybe a higher quantity of theme answers at a shorter letter count. I'd still have those long answers, they'd just be fill rather than the theme answers.

The other option of course is to pare the list down to just the best 6-10 and do a standard 15x15 puzzle, but I was curious what others think.

Thanks!

To clarify: I mean do they allow an answer to not be a real word if it is part of the theme. I feel like I have seen examples of this in the past but I can't think of any specific examples, so I might be misremembering.

For example, if someone's theme was that every theme answer was missing the word "cat" from it, would DOMESTIED (domesticated, minus cat) and INTOXIED (intoxicated, minus cat) be allowable? Or does the answer always have to be a real word/phrase no matter if it's part of the theme?

That's not the best example because I'm not sure how you would build a whole theme around that, but that's the general idea of what I'm curious about.

It would never happen, but Daoust should make a public stink about the draft order. On the one hand it would earn him some goodwill with the fanbase who dislikes him only slightly less than we dislike the league office right now, and on the other hand if it pisses off the league and they fire him we get a new GM. A real win-win scenario!