Ask Rachel

Dear Rachel,

OK, now that the “Avengers” series has more installments than “Rocky” and “The Land Before Time” combined, yet it’s still not going straight-to-DVD, I’m wondering if I should start watching it. This seems like perhaps the defining cinematic achievement of this generation. Either that, or it’s a pure cash grab masquerading, as it were, as something noble. Worth it? Or nah?

– Caped Crusader

Dear Non-Nerd,

You probably just kicked off the next great Ask Rachel Fan Debate of 2019 by signing off a Marvel question with a DC-comics pseudonym. This is a publishing rivalry unlike any other. I mean, I chill in book-geek circles, and no one sets up Random House versus Harper Collins camps. No one refuses to read a Penguin book because they’re a Simon & Schuster loyalist. Though I’m thinking that would make for a more entertaining world.

– Read a book, Rachel

Dear Rachel,

I was hiking this weekend near town to get some peace and quiet, but everywhere I went, I encountered groups of people with walkie talkies and wheeled apparatuses making quite a racket. I gather they were training for search and rescue or something like that, but really, couldn’t they go train somewhere, you know, where people actually get lost?

- Yield to Hikers

Dear John Muir,

If you want peace and quiet, go hiking far from town, where you can’t hear the train whistle or the hum of 550 traffic. Go high into the rugged wilderness country we have in such abundance. And go soon, before the search and rescue folks finish getting trained to find chuckleheads like you.

– The mountains are calling, Rachel

Dear Rachel,

I have a new neighbor. He lives in the ADU next door to my ADU. He’s gorrrr-geous, and he doesn’t even know it, which makes him only more swoon-worthy. We’ve had two good conversations now, where I pretended to know something about mountain biking (I don’t) and he pretended that my job isn’t boring (it is). Seems like the start of sparks, right? But maybe dating the next-door neighbor is a little too daring. Should I go for it?

– Too Close to Home

Dear Personal Space,

What happens in that post-coital moment when you realize you want to go home because you have cashew butter in your fridge and that sounds really good with chocolate chips right about now, and then you want to get into your own bed where you know how recently the pillowcases were laundered? Can you pull that off when your beau suggests you come right back? Or, what happens when he sees that by “work early in the morning” you meant “watch ‘Avengers’ movies in your pajamas all morning?” Not saying this isn’t workable. Just saying, maybe you should invest in some good window blinds.

– The girl next door, Rachel