I feel like I'm a great example of that. We moved to VT for family reasons as we needed to be in New England. My partner's job got sent to VT. We'll move away again in a few years. I don't think people realize how high the cost of living is here and how low the pay is.

I have a masters. I got a job in my field with a very well known nonprofit here. It was a cool job. I finally quit because I was making so little money and they expected too much of me even at a good salary. A nonprofit doing the same work at a nonprofit in states like Arkansas and Oklahoma would be paying me 2x as much. It was an eye opener when I realized something. After undergrad, I took classes for a summer at a midwestern state school. I got a day job at a telemarketing firm being on the phones. This would have been in 2006 or 2007. I don't remember for sure. I made more there taking inflation into account than I did in VT doing a professional job. I looked up the job at that same place and it took benefits into account. It was paying more than I was making in a low cost of living area.

Online is best.

Gardener's supply has some good stuff earlier on. You've got to keep checking. They get things in as time goes on.

We grow some really weird stuff, so we might be looking for different things than you. But we usually get 20-25 or so packets locally each year.

In my experience they say things like that a lot more here.

That's hilarious. Well, they do help if your car has almost opaque lenses. They've got that market cornered.

That does make sense with the lights blinding me on the highway signs. I vividly remember that one half hour drive.

HID's and the wrong lenses... I'll share. Like 10 years ago, my car was a 20 year old pile. It's was great. My headlights were basically unusable at night. I got brighter bulbs a few times, and finally got the brightest HIDs I could source. They were adjusted right. I had to buy a safety torx driver to adjust them slightly in grad school after someone hit my car. I never got flashed. I knew the housings were yellow, but new ones cost too much and the ones at the salvage yard were yellowed too, but not as bad as mine. Anyway, I was visiting my parents and went to my mechanic buddy's house. We were talking and he saw my headlights. WTF duder? Those are the most oxidized shitty things I've ever seen. Let me fix that for you. At work I get $300 a set to do these on a semi. So he polished them up and clear coated them. I drove home right at dark. I no joke could see a stop sign light up over a mile away in one particularly downhill spot. The roads in that area are gridded by one mile so it's easy to tell distance. The reflections off the road signs I drove past were blinding me. I went to napa the next morning and got normal bulbs. It's a really low population area, so I never met anyone, but I was worried I was going to. It was absurd like an airplane light or the brightest offroad lights I'd ever seen. We had just bought my dad a $600 or something absurd brightest spotlight made for checking cattle and these were brighter.

Are their any furbuyers around VT? I'm aware of the prices. I'm going to start calling soon. I was wondering if anyone would buy coyotes or if I should just not shoot them because.

Whitefish are really good. People love walleye, but it's just really mild. I like northerns more. Along the same lines, I prefer haddock to cod. If that makes sense it's a good comparison. I haven't had land locked salmon.

I have to eat everything once. Whatever you do, don't grill the lake trout. I thought I had a really bad fish or something, so I did it again. Not good. I eat a lot of small panfish and usually catch and release anything else. But I try and eat things first just to see how they are.

I really, really, really want to catch a whitefish on champlain. I don't know if it will happen sans 4 wheeler. It sounds like you have to get far out there and get lucky.

I hunt and fish a lot and all over the place. A lot... I love to cook and will eat anything. I'll cook suckers...they're tasty. I know how to cook carp so it's delicious. Lake trout are just not that good. You're not missing out on much. The best way to eat them is when they're very little and steam them Chinese style or do a MN style lake boil. Even then they're meh.

No. Get reservations. Anything outdoors here sells out fast.

You better have deep pockets. It's everything is expensive here and the jobs generally pay way less. I was making 1/2 I would have anywhere else. The feds keep bumping up the COL allowance for the Burlington area.

As someone else who lived in Eugene and has lots of friends still there, everything is cheaper there.

This might help: In Springfield, MA...Hartford CT area....Framingham, MA. Somewhere in Western MA I found actual homemade Oaxacan mole at some place. Waltham, MA has a couple good places too. I'm kind of lumping Salvadorian/Guatemalan in with Mexican here... Oh yeah. There's a truck in Springfield right off the interstate that's REALLY good. Good for anywhere and I've lived all over and grew up on this kind of food on the regular. Um, they make those birria tacos with Oxacan cheese where they griddle them like in Tijiuana. I haven't gotten those there yet. Look that up and you'll find them. Most places are very solid, but they still make me miss my favorite trucks and shacks in Mexico and across the US.

Springfield does have some super solid food options in general if you're into the whole $5 food made by a grandma in a shack thing rather than the VT $30 hyper local hipster thing. The $75 fried chicken in Winooski cracks me up. Someone took me there. It was fine, but I'd had better fried chicken in the south from gas stations for about 1/5 the price.

I think Giesswein are pretty good. I wear mine a lot when I'm not working (probably 6 days a week for a few years) and do garage work in them/walk in the snow with them, etc. I'm kind of surprised they've lasted as long as they have. They're like what you had, but with rubber soles. I kind of treat them like work boots after I take my work boots off to be honest.

I wore them to an auto parts store (mid project) a couple days ago and some guy said, "A man with slippers on and greasy hands....you've got your priorities straight."

I've got the Veitsch, but those Vents look better. Honestly with how I treat them, they have no right to have lasted 1 year, let alone 3 with no end in sight.