That line about "wasting time on pickup and dropoff" hits hard. I was the same way, renting a grinder from the big box store and it would eat up half a Saturday just getting it loaded and unloaded. Once I bought a unit that lives in my shed, I started finding stumps I'd been ignoring for years. You start looking at old fence lines and overgrown corners and suddenly you're grinding stuff you wrote off as permanent landscape features. The convenience factor changes your whole approach to yard work honestly. Now if I see a stump I just walk over and start it up instead of planning a whole production around it.

Funny you mention that. I had a buddy who swore by that same peanut trick, kept a bag in his car. Walked into Target one afternoon just for paper towels, ate a handful in the parking lot, and still walked out with a new grill cover, three bags of tortilla chips, and a candle that smelled like bourbon. He said the peanuts got him past the hunger but didn't stop the part of his brain that just wanted to buy stuff. Honestly, I think some people are just wired to browse and grab regardless of whether their stomach is growling.

So did the archaeologist say if the coin showed any signs of being buried long term or could someone have dropped it there recently without noticing?

Yeah but here's the thing nobody's talking about, when you have a game like Catan that's been the gateway for thousands of people into the hobby, its rules kind of set the baseline expectation for everyone else. So when you bring in something like Root or Twilight Imperium where the mechanics are totally different, the people who only know Catan are going to expect that same kind of trading and luck-driven gameplay. It's not about the game being bad, it's about the whole "Catan taught me how to play board games" mindset that makes people struggle when they hit something that doesn't follow those same patterns.

Wait, have you been cleaning the same spoon every single day too? I went through a phase where I made sourdough pancakes every morning for like two months. Didn't realize until my neighbor asked if I owned a bakery. My fridge became a graveyard for failed starters and experiments - black garlic honey rye, rosemary olive oil, even a beetroot one that turned everything pink. The sink was always full of sticky bowls. Now I can't eat pancakes without thinking about that flour dust cloud following me around.