What happened to yesterday afternoon? Well, we had a sweet technical meltdown, since “resolved” (silver lining: we are outgrowing our systems, crap lining: this is not over yet, bear with us), and decided to move our posts from noon yesterday on into today, so you could all get to give them the attention they so richly deserved. What was nice, though, is that Nick got to do some yelling, which he’s amazing at, and rarely gets to do because of the goodness of our authors and readers. You can’t keep a bird in a cage; you can’t keep a lawyer from yelling. Let’s call the situation a wash, then. To apologize for the inconvenience, you are allowed to use this link roundup as a Tuesday Open Thread.
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Are you watching the World Cup? Tomorrow is going to be a little rough in my house, because I have to cheer for Germany over the US due to family tradition (no, we are not German, my father is just a longtime supporter of Bayern Munich because he always has to be different.) I mean, the US is probably going through no matter what, so.
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How much of a 1990s Christian youth group kid were you?
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A 1997 interview with the Spice Girls:
Do they think the Spice Girls will go on forever? And if not, what will they do after it ends? What do you really want to do? ‘We talked about that the other day, didn’t we?’ Geri, sitting on the floor, turns around to the three girls sprawled on a black sofa. Emma, in a white from-the-Sixties dress, perches on a high chair. Their hair has been done, their faces powdered, and they’re ready for the photo.’I want to own restaurants,’ Victoria takes the lead. She wears a skin-tight designer outfit, perfectly positioned Wonderbra and heels seemingly too high to walk on. Unlike the other girls, she never lets her mask break open. ’The entrepreneur,’ remarks Mel B fondly. ’Restaurants and art,’ Victoria continues. ‘I’ve always liked art. Ever since I was . . .’ She pauses. ‘And I’d like a nice big house, and to fill it with, you know . . .’ ‘Sculptures!’ Mel B. ‘Nude men.’ That’s Mel C. All the girls are laughing. Victoria admits – and her emotions finally start to show – that’s she’s always fancied doing art. A few years ago, she and Geri were going to return to college, but they didn’t have the time. Now the others are teasing her about her shoes.
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David Sedaris on living the Fitbit life (I too, live that life. You may find yourself pacing around your kitchen island at 11pm in order to make your last row of numbers turn green, be warned.)
At the end of my first sixty-thousand-step day, I staggered home with my flashlight knowing that I’d advance to sixty-five thousand, and that there will be no end to it until my feet snap off at the ankles. Then it’ll just be my jagged bones stabbing into the soft ground. Why is it some people can manage a thing like a Fitbit, while others go off the rails and allow it to rule, and perhaps even ruin, their lives? While marching along the roadside, I often think of a TV show that I watched a few years back—“Obsessed,” it was called. One of the episodes was devoted to a woman who owned two treadmills, and walked like a hamster on a wheel from the moment she got up until she went to bed. Her family would eat dinner, and she’d observe them from her vantage point beside the table, panting as she asked her children about their day. I knew that I was supposed to scoff at this woman, to be, at the very least, entertainingly disgusted, the way I am with the people on “Hoarders,” but instead I saw something of myself in her. Of course, she did her walking on a treadmill, where it served no greater purpose. So it’s not like we’re really that much alike. Is it?
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I really enjoy the Behind Closed Ovens series.
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Tags: feminism, link roundup, the internet
Youth group junior varsity (29/61). My sub-par collection of Christian Rock Ballads did me in (no Relient K, Buzzfeed?), but it’s not a bad score for somebody who was only really into it for a couple years in high school.
They didn’t have POD, either. I was offended. 22/61 here.
I was also JV, and I was in it much longer than you were, so … high five?
I got 31 out of 61 but was also dismayed at the lack of Relient K/POD. Were those technically bands of the 00s and not the 90s?
I also would have liked to see “Did you participate in SPAM (or whatever the word was when you went on a weeklong “secular media diet”)?”
Unless I missed it, there was a distinct lack of 30 Hour Famine references in there too. Admittedly, I was an 00s youth group kid, but I feel like the basics are the same.
I remember 30 Hour Famine! I had a Latin contest to attend the night our church did it and I felt so guilty. And all those shiny-blonde bitches were so smug about it “I wish you could have been there! There was such a *presence.*” Ugh. No wonder I become an agnostic…
YES to 30 Hour Famine, and also you are correct, 90s and 00s youth group culture had very few differences. Because let’s be real, Christian youth groups change slowly. They are not exactly Hip to the Times.
49 out of 61–really into it, but not so into it that some things didn’t get a healthy dose of side-eye.
I got a Varsity score but I promise I wasn’t that much of a dork. And I never did TLW (thanks parents for not forcing that on to me). It’s just that our youth group was a lot more fun than other stuff at the time …and the cute boys that I flirted with/dated one by one…
I was 41 of 61 which I know for sure is not correct, because I was the churchiest church kid you ever did see.
I got the same score, but it was my church camp/youth retreats that got me.
Yes, I did go on youth retreats even in college as a chaperon. And OBVIOUSLY my favorite book of the Bible was Philippians.
I got Super Star score, which is pretty accurate. I was so damn earnest, although I definitely did turn a skeptical eye to some of the emotionalism and (female) body policing and purity pledges, etc.
I’m now one of the people in charge at my church’s youth group (!), and while I can’t change everything which is wrong with evangelicalism (I’ve got a lot of critiques), I do try to make our group a supportive, welcoming, and less shaming place. No “Ok, all the girls come over here, we’re going to lecture you about ‘not causing your brothers in Christ to stumble'” or Rock For Life or “let’s have a sermon designed to make you cry” or “the only way to be a good Christian is to be a Republican” on my watch.
I feel better knowing that there is a Toastie out there leading a youth group. I’m no longer part of any sort of organized religion, but I’m very glad to know you’re out there working for good!
I definitely struggle with whether to leave my church (which is overall much more conservative than I am now, in a number of ways) or not. It is really hard at times to stay (on more of a philosophical level, not because people have given me a hard time personally), but I also know that my church has been like family to me for most of my life. Many of my friends and immediate family are still there, and I am involved in many, many different activities, so to make a complete break would be a major decision.
There is also the factor that if I leave, I feel like there is little counterpoint within that environment to be like: “Let’s think through the story of Vashti/Esther (in a feminist way).” or (like we were talking about recently) Tamar being raped by her step-brother, or “let’s note how Jesus treated the Samaritan woman at the well compared to how the “religious” dudes around him would have treated her” or to be extra-kind to the kids who may be in the closet, etc.
I make my little effort to make evangelicalism a little less monolithic/uniformly conservative? There’s still a whole lot I can’t do, and there are still times when I need to be more outspoken about my disagreements, etc. Am I just helping support a system which is fundamentally broken? I don’t know.
So, I frequently think about leaving and finding another Christian tradition to continue worshiping with, but I also don’t feel like I am ready to entirely make that break yet (at least, while I still live in the same geographic area.)
I understand how other people come out from these circumstances making a different decision than I have, though, and I definitely respect that choice (esp. since I recognize that I’m able to “fly under the radar” in ways which many others cannot.)
Obviously the only person you need to justify yourself to is you, but it sounds to me like you’re doing a lot of good where you are. I wish there had been someone like you when I was in youth group–a lot of the reason why I left is that I became aware of how one-sided a perspective it was. And as you point out, church can be about so much more than religion–the community aspect of it is huge. You have nothing but my admiration and respect.
Thanks so much! (I really mean that.)
ALSO, my Tuesday Open Thread comment: I won’t be around on Friday because I am MOVING. It’s just around the corner, how bad can it be? (SO BAD, my kitchen is barely packed, I keep tripping over boxes, I decided last night was a good time to make a pie instead of pack? help)
Moving a short distance, which I have done twice in my life, can actually be worse than moving far away – BECAUSE you trick yourself into this “Oh, I don’t really need to pack” “Oh, I don’t really need a moving truck” “Oh, I don’t need movers” — and then next thing you know you’ve made 672 trips back and forth between the two places. I hope you’re better organized than I am, and best of luck.
MOVERS. I hired movers to deal with the big/heavy stuff last time and it was the best money I ever spent. They will be arriving at 1 on Friday. My goal is to get the little stuff over there on my own and let THEM haul my massive-ass couch up the steps (I’m going from a second floor apartment to a third floor one, fuuuuuuck hauling my own boxes of books up there).
tbqh, I’m really proud of you. Excellent decision.
*throws money at the problem*
I was in a similar situation on Friday, but didn’t pack QUITE everything, and so had to spend a pretty awful night last night moving all the rest of the stuff in. But now it’s done! I hope your experience is similarly smooth. Moving sucks and I never want to do it again.
MOVERS totally worth it. I did my last move (in Februrary, -30 degrees, everything covered in ice) without movers and I regretted every last second of it.
I told Mr.BHam after our most recent furniture purchases (an IKEA bed with ten thousand screws/nails and a humongous free-standing IKEA cabinet that juuuuuust fits into our kitchen) that we have officially crossed the threshold into “we have to get movers for any future moves” instead of “we can move ourselves!”
A wise and mature decision, by any standard.
IKEA. “Oh, yeah, we can just disassemble it and reassemble it at the new place, it’ll pack flat and save us room!” FALSE.
movers are so great! My mom insisted I hire some and kicked me some money for them (thanks Mom) when I moved from my off-campus college place to a place of my own, because she said my friends shouldn’t have to deal with that. She was very smart, it worked great and they had to deal with the couch that one roommate had sold to me for cheap because getting it through the door was too much of a pain. Thanks Mom!
Yessss good job Mom Ludicrous.
My move within a building – down two flights of stairs, through a hall, up three flights of stairs – was not coincidentally the first time I hired a team of strapping young men to move my shit. Best money ever spent, you bet; even the 5 or 6 trips I made with little stuff left me with quads screaming for a merciful death the next day. How I unpacked and threw a New Year’s Eve party that same night I ascribe to being a lot younger than I am now.
*bows down*
Wow to the party. I did host a band for a few days in my living room the day I moved, but that did not require any unpacking apart from the bar and camping supplies. m/
I once moved about a block and a half with a two-week lease overlap: Big mistake. HUGE.
THE LEASE OVERLAP. It is a tricky mistress. I’ve got a four day overlap here but I scheduled my move-in and my movers for the same day so hopefully I get get everything done in a relatively short amount of time. Were you just taking one carload of stuff over at a time and sleeping on the floor/bare mattress/wondering where all your things were? Because I have been there.
If by “carload,” you mean “wheeled-duffle-bag-load because I didn’t have a car,” then yes, that is what I did (I made my friends help me carry my big furniture up the street! I EVEN HAD a ZipCar membership! WHAT IS WRONG WITH ME).
Oh my god. A move for the ages. Have you recovered?
Not really, no…
Oh my god, I once had a month overlap (don’t ask) and it was literally the worst thing ever. I didn’t hire movers and ended up just abandoning half my shit because I was too lazy to like go back a hundredth time to pick up things like my bike and empty flower pots. Worst. Decision. Ever.
We (my ex and I) once moved about three streets with a 6-week overlap – renting vs buying our first house. We faffed about for ages, carrying bags up there, painting walls while it was still empty etc etc, but did at least get the bed and some furniture delivered before we moved in properly.
I had a two-week overlap the last time I moved (from the East Village to Astoria) and it wasn’t TERRIBLE. I moved some of my clothes and shoes in on a Saturday, movers took most of the rest on Sunday, and I went back and forth in taxis for another 6 days getting pots and pans and stuff. Annoying, but at least my weird roommate had already mostly cleared out so I didn’t have to see him.
I cannot IMAGINE moving via taxis. You are braver than I am.
I thought having a lease overlap would be sooo helpful but I forgot that I’m lazy and a junior-level hoarder so I barely moved anything over ahead of time because WHAT IF I NEEEED IT. Disastrous.
Oh man, I moved literally down the street (1907 to 1940) with a week overlap once; it was a nightmare. A NIGHTMARE. Multiple trips up and down the street with all my heavy shit on my desk chair.
It took me approx 10000% longer than I thought, so I slept in the middle of the floor on a pile of clothing. Awful.
…but there is never a bad time to bake a pie. B/c then you have a pie. All to yourself.
I do! It’s a test batch pie for a pie contest (maybe) and it has some issues but at its heart it’s still a key lime pie with a margarita thrown in instead of straight lime juice and it’s not half bad.
That sounds like a delicious reward for whatever packing you accomplish today!
Tonight: GOING THROUGH THE FOOD STORES. Ughhhhhh let’s just throw out everything and start over.
Just wanted to say that whatever you’re doing tonight I hope it’s going well!
Thanks! Things are going well! I have not been able to bring myself to deal with the food stores situation, BUT I have half my pots and pans packed, the food processor is boxed up, the miscellaneous kitchen junk has all been put in one terrifying box, most of the breakable ceramic kitchen stuff is in one also terrifying box, and I just packed my shoes. PROGRESS. I really appreciate the good thoughts and the check-in! You people are just the best.
It’s not so bad! I don’t know how big your current place is, but I moved in the past week and really only needed one day of solid packing, one day for moving (with movers, of course). It’s the unpacking that’s taking forever.
Just a one bedroom, and I spent most of last month purging things I don’t need/don’t use/don’t fit into anymore, so I’ve cut way down on the clutter and junk from the last few moves. I’m moving on Friday when most of the other people I know are at work, so they’re all coming by to help me unpack over the weekend. This may or may not work out well, but I’m down for it anyway.
The whole 90s youth group kid thing is entirely lost on me but I can’t look away. It’s like a really pious trainwreck.
I was raised Catholic and we didn’t do ANYTHING like that in CCD. Our ‘teachers’ had a hard enough time wrangling the kids (I went to a church in the ~BAD AREA~ of town) and I don’t think we cracked a bible once. That may have made my outward transition to being an atheist a lot easier.
Yeah that quiz was completely N/A to wannabe nuns and priests.
Fitbit is such a terrible celebration of eating disordered tendencies YOU DON’T NEED TO COUNT YOUR STEPS DO YOU COUNT YOUR THRUSTS/FLICKS/LICKS WHEN YOU BANG YOUR LOVER NO BECAUSE THAT WOULD BE CRAZY
Do you know what’s crazy? COUNTING YOUR STEPS
NICOLE STOP
Sex actually does nothing for your Fitbit numbers, so I have replaced it with more horseback riding, which TREMENDOUSLY INFLATES YOUR FITBIT NUMBERS.
oh i see what you mean
I get NOTHING for cycling 7 miles, so I have begun to ignore my Jawbone Up.
It ignores the shit out of 90 minutes of yoga in a 105 degree room where my HRM says I burn 750 calories so it can suck it.
I researched them when the partner was considering making the change, and I may have learned that you can totally get credit for the bike riding if you put it on your ankle instead.
I will now spend 15 minutes reflecting on what it says about my soul to know this fact.
Hahaha horseback riding would be the BEST cheat for that! However, it is also a lot of work (if you’re doing it right) and provides some real exercise. I get so mad when people say “you just sit there.” OK WELL YOU TRY IT AND FALL OFF ONTO YOUR HEAD IMMEDIATELY.
That makes me mad too, and clearly those people have never ridden a horse before, because holy COW do all your muscles hurt if you’re not used to it.
It also doesn’t think playing catcher in softball games counts as “active minutes”.
no way dude it’s super helpful because if i didn’t have a little Cloud City Administrator Lobot-style mechanism beeping at me I would blog all day and maaaybe walk 500 steps from sunrise to sunset and my HEART WOULD EXPLODE! my default assumption is always “whatever I do is 100% normal” so it’s helpful to see something be like “woman take a walk around the block or your legs will freeze into a sitting position ya dildo”
I forgot to charge mine for, like, a week, and when I started again I realized I literally had stopped moving during that time.
ugh I GUESS you can keep your heart from exploding but i swear to god if you watch a single calorie I WILL END YOU
I literally purchased one only after promising myself that I would pay no attention to purported calorie burn or intake.
Mine helped me to eat more, since the Fitbit says “hey friend, you burn calories just by being alive! Even when you’re asleep! And walking totally counts as exercise!” so for me it was extremely helpful.
Oh man, it was so crazy when I first realized how many joules get burned by every human just to power and cool our massive brains. It’s like we’re carrying little server farms around inside our bodies, except with a far, far smaller window of acceptable temperatures.
FUCK YOU YOU CAN’T TELL ME WHAT TO DO IM GOING TO START COUNTING THEM ALL THE TIME
DON’T MAKE ME COME OVER THERE I SWEAR TO GOD
Oh, shit, I need to move somewhere today.
I did squats, though.
I do squats in my cubicle when there’s nobody around to see me and think I’m a weirdo! My plan is 20 for every hour I’m at work, and I usually fall short, but that’s definitely better than 0 squats.
I’m not moving anywhere because the cat has been asleep on my lap for 3 hours and doesn’t look to be getting up. Would be rude to disturb him. Also the soccer’s on now anyway.
Seriously, the days I don’t leave the apartment, I take no more than 1,000 steps. Kind of frightening.
Plus it’s the bestest alarm clock. Mostly. I do have to either back it up with some other alarm or stay in the habit of never hitting snooze.
I thought Fitbit was that phone app they’ve been advertising on TV that does all the fitness things. Then I read the link and it seems different but equally as awful.
They make a FitBit-like health monitoring device for dogs now called “Whistle”. This has caused me to talk myself out of ever using a fitness tracker:
1. Dogs only ever really need exercise, healthy food and affection.
2. If you aren’t spending enough time with your dog that you know whether it’s healthy or not, your dog is not getting enough exercise or affection.
3. Fix those things = happy healthy dog.
And then of course I remembered that I am a mammal and all that applies to me as well, so…
Oh my god, those kitchen stories, oh my god. You ATE an ICE PACK?
In honour of that, let’s all share stories of the dumbest/worst people we encountered in retail. I’ll start. I worked in a tea shop, and a woman came in and started asking for “yogurt tea.” I had no idea what she was talking about, and nor did any of my coworkers. Then she explained it was something she heard about on Dr. Oz. She got increasingly incensed that nobody could parse what “yogurt tea” meant and finally stomped out in a huff complaining that we knew nothing about tea.
Good times.
I worked in pet retail for many many years and dealt with the WEIRDEST people, obviously. Closest I ever got to getting bit was when a woman made me fit raincoats for her three terrible Chihuahuas. (I’m sorry, Chihuahuas. I probably would’ve snapped at me too. It was not my fault.)
Then there was the time I had to help put a turtleneck on a bulldog, which was more funny than awful. Bulldogs, man. They’ve just go no necks to speak of. Poor thing was so confused.
I think “turtleneck on a bulldog” is my new “nipples on a breastplate.” Poor bulldog!
I had someone once call me to order a stir-fry and was incensed when she figured out it did not have fries in it. “Well, what do I eat it with, then?” she complained. I suggested she use a fork, but she told me that now she was too confused to order food and hung up.
I…what? What??
Clearly she expected a spoon with which to stir the fries!
She sounds like she was too confused to order food to begin with.
Finding the concept of eating utensils other than french fries disorienting and distressing is delightful, though. I want to know what her day-to-day normal is like. I want to know everything
I worked in retail for nearly a decade. The first four or five years were in a well-known UK health-food and supplements chain.
Once we had someone returning pistachios because ‘they weren’t pistachios’. That confused us, a lot.
First place goes to the creepy woman who came up behind me, stroking my hair (it was down to my waist and vivid red) and started muttering about how she thought it was hennaed, so we must stock henna.
It was not hennaed at that point, and we did not stock henna, but she got very upset at my ‘false advertising’.
A long time ago I worked at an Anthropologie and people were always making little piles of clothing on the furniture for safekeeping or something and then they’d get mad if you put it away. Moral(s) of the story: a) have as little furniture as possible in your clothing store and b) don’t cater to hippie/witch/packrat types.
My favorite part of that job was standing at the door and refusing to let people in after we were closed.
I accidentally stayed in an Anthro post-closing the other week and felt MORTIFIED. Six years in retail means that I live in fear of just this occurrence.
No! Don’t feel bad, if no one stayed in the store after closing then no employees would get to stand at the door and tell other potential customers they aren’t allowed in! You were making some poor Anthro employee’s day.
but after hours when the doors lock is when the mannequins come alive and fall in love with you!!
or in the case of an Anthropologie, when the scented candles start to pulsate and divide like amoebas and flow into one another to form a climbing, writhing wax homunculus. (that falls in love with you.) they find you next morning dead on the Astrid Settee.
Truthfully, I barely escaped with my life. A faint scent of Volcano haunts me still.
Other people who shop at Anthro: is it just me or has the quality of the clothes gone way down? I used to go in there and sigh over all the lovely clothes I couldn’t afford; now I rarely see anything I want. And my personal style has not changed.
When I worked at Payless, I often had totally clueless men (wait, “totally clueless men” is kinda redundant) come in who had obviously been sent by their wives to buy shoes for the kids. They would say things like, “My daughter is 7, what shoe size is she?” and then get mad at me when I couldn’t answer.
At a different, somewhat more upscale shoe store, a woman asked me to order something in for her from our warehouse, then became incensed when I said it would take a few days for the item to ship. Apparently she thought we could just teleport merchandise around? “Ma’am, the warehouse is 300 km away and someone would have to process the order before it could be shipped.” “But I’m here on vacation and I’m leaving tomorrow!” WELL TOO FUCKING BAD NO SHOES FOR YOU.
I also worked in shoe retail and had the SAME THING! “My wife’s about your height. What shoe size does she wear?” I don’t fucking know! I’m not your wife!
“Well, how many inches or centimetres long are your wife’s feet? You should go measure them. Yes, with your measuring tape.” They’ll like that.
“Well, is your daughter a 7-year-old with big feet or a 7-year-old with small feet?”
“I don’t know! [frustrated shrug of male helplessness] She’s 7!”
Worked in a college bookstore. I once had a kid show up with hundreds of dollars worth of textbooks and then hand me his cell phone instead of payment. It was his mom, who was going to give me her credit card number but only *after* I verified that he had only books and school supplies. Fortunately, he did, but I’m not sure what I would’ve done otherwise. I’m definitely not the textbook police, people. Awkward.
I used to work at an upscale boutique that sold gifts and kitchen things and all sorts of goodies. SO MANY CUSTOMERS though it was appropriate to ask me “why does this cost so much?”
DUDE I DON’T KNOW. I DIDN’T SOURCE THE RAW MATERIALS. GO HOME.
I get this all the time, even at my current job. “Why does it cost so much?” I’M NOT THE BOSS, I DON’T SET THE PRICES, I DIDN’T MINE THE IRON ORE, I DIDN’T SMELT THE THING TOGETHER, I DON’T KNOW, STOP ASKING ME.
JUST GO FIND A CHEAPER ALTERNATIVE INSTEAD OF INTERROGATING THE STAFF.
I used to get that all the time at Somewhat Upscale Shoe Store. “Why are these shoes $120?” Well, they’re real leather, the insole is all sorts of padded, they’ll last a long time if you treat them properly, but also you realize that as a part-time sales clerk I have zero input over anything, including price? I totally understand not being able or willing to spend that much on a pair of shoes, but please just go to the Payless downstairs and get a pair for $15 instead of riding my ass about this!
One time a woman stepped through a grate on the sidewalk and scraped all the leather off the heel of her shoe. She came back to the store and said BUT YOU TOLD ME THESE WERE QUALITY AND WOULD LAST A LONG TIME! I wanted to slam my head against the wall to knock myself out so I wouldn’t have to deal with her anymore.
“Excuse me, I set my shoe on fire. I’d like a complete refund please, you said these shoes would last a long time.”
One time a woman got upset with us because she’d been wearing the same shoes for 5+ years and the manufacturer had long since discontinued them. I’m sorry you loved your shoes so much, I’m sorry the manufacturer stopped making them 4 1/2 years ago, now please stop yelling, no matter how much you yell I’m not going to handcraft you a new pair of leather shoes from the cows I keep in the back.
People would ask me that at SUBWAY. IDK, I’m sorry your sandwich is $6?
At the Subway near the Southwest terminal in McCarran Airport, there are multiple signs in front of the Subway, in line for the sandwiches, and on the menu board, that the prices were higher and there were no 5 dollar footlongs due to the store being in an airport. Every single goddamn person in that line was shocked when they got to the register and had to pay more than 5 dollars for their sandwich and proceeded to interrogate the cashier about it. Those poor employees.
I used to work in a tea and spice shop and I will continually treasure the woman who came in to complain that our sea salt was high in sodium.
BLESS
I worked at Apple, and there was a lady who came in pretty frequently, who always talked about CRAPPLE computers and the CRAPPLE iPhone and the CRAPPLE iPod and iPad. Always Crapple.
She bought a lot of our stuff, though, so. I don’t know.
Yogi tea?
That was my first thought too!
Even if it was, you may be sure she insisted that it was yogurt tea.
I always enjoyed telling customers that we didn’t stock it because we couldn’t match Safeway’s prices. About fifty percent of the time the inquirer would groan,”I was just there.”
I used to work in a hotel, and our cheapest rates were for interior rooms that had no windows. For this reason, they were listed on our website and on third-party booking sites as, quite logically, “windowless rooms.” At least once a day, often more, someone would call and ask some variation of, “So … um, your windowless rooms? Do they have windows?”
One time when I worked at a jewelry store handling returns and repairs I had a phone call from a woman who was just SO DISAPPOINTED with the TERRIBLE QUALITY of the jewelry. She had purchased a VERY EXPENSIVE gemstone ring and the stone FELL OUT OF ITS SETTING, CAN YOU BELIEVE IT. She DEMANDED HER MONEY BACK.
After ten minutes of screaming (on her part) and placating (on mine), she finally lets me know that she RAN OVER IT WITH HER CAR.
I read the Sedaris piece yesterday, checked to see if it was fiction, and then became Very Concerned for him.
well, I enjoy Sedaris a lot, but let’s just say even his “nonfiction” has a history of being fictionalized at times. Not to say you’re wrong, but just keep that in mind.
That might be true, but I know he has mentioned the New Yorker is insistent on fact checking all of his stories, and talking to people to corroborate his story.
I had the Spice Girls song “Wannabe” stuck in my head this morning for no apparent reason! It made me think about the Spice Girls generally and the late 90s girl power movement. Really, in addition to being a catchy song, “Wannabe” has a good message about being in control of your own body/relationships (“If you really bug me then I’ll say goodbye”) and refusing to devote oneself wholly to a romantic partner (“if you wanna be my lover, you gotta get with my friends”). THANKS, SPICE GIRLS. Good boundaries talk.
My cousin has good friends in a Spice Girls cover band called Wannabe.
Toronto’s Wannabe? I know the girl who “is” Sporty Spice!
THAT IS THE ONE!!!!!!!!
For the LONGEST time I thought the lyrics went “If you wanna be my lover, you gotta get rid of my friends.” I was confused.
“Who will rid me of these troublesome friends?”
“Make their banishment last forever, for as we all know, friendship never ends.”
Don’t forget the line in 2 Become 1 where they talk about safe sex! (“Be a little bit wiser baby, put it on, put it on / ‘Cause tonight is the night when two become one”)
I also cry a lot when I listen to Viva Forever.
I always thought “get with” was meant in a sexual way, and it confused me so much. Like, this girl wants all her friends to take her boyfriend for a test run to make sure he’s good enough for her in bed?
Of course this was when I was a youth who understood little about sex, so that might’ve been part of it.
Oh my god, that’s even better than my mis-hearing of the lyrics. It works so well with the next line, too! make it last forever
Of course this was when I was a youth who understood little about sex, so that might’ve been part of it.
I was a grown-ass, worldly woman when that song came out and I thought it would be awesome if the song meant “get with” in a sexual way because WOW that is some serious commitment to your girlfriends and Fuck Yeah Poly Visibility (even though I wasn’t poly). But of course it didn’t mean that at all and NGL I have always felt a little bitter about that.
Yeah, I’ve always thought it would be awesome if it meant that as well.
I will also shamelessly admit that I changed “get with my friends” to “fuck all my friends.”
I’m an Old who had no excuse for thinking the exact same thing. Of course, the first time I saw the video I also thought it was a commercial & was much confuse when no product ever appeared.
Spice Girls are legitimately a great group! They really helped shape my teen identity and I’m glad they were so Girl Power-y! #NoRegrets
I’m pretty sure that Ulta had a marketing campaign back when I was in my tweens/early teens where you could sign up for a “GIRL POWER!” club and get cute stuff including Spice Girls lip gloss or something. It was great.
Being in Croatia, I have been getting Croatian ads mixed in with the usual book ads I usually get. This morning I got one that was just text saying “1 trik za sretnog psa” (one trick for a happy dog). I know what makes my dogs happy, so I was expecting something food or bed related. Turns out all you need is a fancy brush. Who knew? Anyway, I hope my clicking that ad means there are some kuna headed The dash Toast’s way.
I will be on holiday in Croatia in 39 days I AM SO EXCITED.
Yay! My in-laws are in Istria. Where are you going to be? I love this country so much.
Husband and I are going to Zagreb, Pula, Zadar, Split and Dubrovnik. We have 2 weeks – I don’t know if that will leave us enough time for day trips, but I’d also love to see Porec and Trogir.
I get strange Dutch ads here. Mostly for cellphones, although now also for audio equipment.
‘Tis the season for moving, and I just moved in with my boyfriend, and it is exciting! We’ve been dating for five and a half years (but are 23 and 25) and I’m really happy about it. Also it is a little scary! I’m looking around and trying to parse what will be Mine and what will be Ours and that is just something entirely new. Any advice on living with a partner?
i think it’s something that every couple has to sort out – there’s no right or wrong way as long as it suits you. Finances are very important to sort out – my ex and I had a joint account that we both paid into and house/joint expenses came out of that, then our own accounts for personal things like clothes, his computer stuff, my horse stuff, for instance, but I know some people who were horrified at us keeping some money for ourselves and equally some who were horrified we had a joint account at all.
Enjoy it!
I think you mentioned this a few wks ago and it sounded wonderful and bf and I are adopting it for our move-in next month! Great plan, +50pts thanks for sharing!
If you’re moving into his existing place, make sure it doesn’t become you just fitting your stuff around his. It’s both of your homes now, it should look like it. I don’t just mean emptying out a closet, but making sure your pictures go on the walls, your stuff goes in the kitchen drawers, etc.
Second this. My husband and I just moved into a new apartment (our 5th shared space in 8 years) and EVERY TIME it is a battle. We each have such particular and opposing tastes that it makes getting anything done impossible. The only answer we’ve found is to each have some space that is totally ours. He has complete reign over his art studio, and I will soon have my writing desk/ area which I will decorate however I damn well please. FREEDOM I won’t let you down FREEDOM I will not give you up!
Yeah, I am lucky here in that 1. we are moving into an entirely new space (though he bought the house so he does have a little more say in where things go), and 2. I insisted that we each have our own half of an office. We also have two other roommates, one soon to move out, and once the other moves out – in a year or two – we will each have our own office space. I can’t imagine not having anything that was particularly mine.
Oh MAN this is an important one! Especially around decor. It gets really lonely living in someone else’s house.
Figure out what each of you prefers to clean/needs to be clean for your sanity and make sure you each get to clean those things. Nothing worse than making a generic chore list and being stuck with a chore you hate that ALSO pisses off the SO if you put off doing it.
(1) Don’t take more responsibility for chores just because you are the girl. This is difficult because “I am the girl” sometimes takes on sneaky forms like, “I just care more about having home-cooked meals/clean sheets/whatever!” and “I know how and he doesn’t, so I’ll just take care of it!” You care about it more (probably at least in part) because of gendered expectations! You know how to do it/make time for it because Hints from Heloise runs in Ladies’ Home Journal, not Men’s Journal! Find a balance that works for you & is sustainable. It may be hard at first, but if your dude is Toast-worthy, he will understand and work at it.
(2) If you’ve been together 5 years and are moving in together, you’re thinking this relationship will last a long time, right? If so, don’t think about Mine vs. His, if you can help it. Things like underwear and family heirlooms will of course belong to one or the other of you, but if you sit on the couch and think, “this is My Couch,” or worse, look at something you kind of hate and thing “that is His Thing,” it’s just not a very pleasant way to live.
(3) I understand it may be too late for you to deploy this strategy, but when we first moved in together, we lived in a place with other housemates. Nothing creates intra-couple solidarity like shared resentment against a third party who takes up too much fridge space.
lol at “intra-couple solidarity”… also, this strategy works very well.
Hah, we actually did this! We’re living with his roommate (a friend of mine, I connected them to live together a few years ago) and his roommate’s boyfriend (who is moving out in August) so got that one down pat. His roommate does know that if we decide to get engaged, he shan’t still be living there when we come back from our honeymoon, but marriage is still at least a couple years away.
Thanks, all. Y’all are amazing.
We secretly named our roommate Snowball (like in Animal Farm) and even though he’s since moved out and it’s just the two of us, Snowball still gets blamed for mysterious messes, smells, and breakages. Especially useful since we don’t have a dog.
I use this strategy even when just living with roommates—we invented a fictional fifth roommate and blamed everything on her so we didn’t have to get mad at each other. Usually this was for stuff that everyone should have done (i.e. take out the trash, put away clean dishes, clean up clutter) but no one got around to. So we could vent frustration without targeting a real person, and also kinda acknowledge that yeah, maybe I could have taken care of that too, oops.
Co-sign on the joint account thing. Whether you contribute proportionally based on your income (nice if one partner makes a metric crapton more than the other) or equally, it’s nice to have a separate pool of money for household things. We tried just using our separate accounts for a while, but it got pretty tedious to have to go through and sort out who is paying for the groceries this time because the other one is paying the internet bill and does putting gas in the car count even if the car is primarily used for one person’s commute but sometimes we have to go to Target together and blah blah blah.
The other thing that it took us way too long to figure out: you don’t both have to go to bed and wake up at the same time. We tried this for months and suffered in heroic silence because I’m a morning person and Spouse is a night owl. We say good night before I head to bed and good morning as I wake up and head to work. It is most excellent.
A third voice supporting joint finances. My SO and I have a joint credit card rather than a joint account, and this was mostly because the bank we approached made opening a joint checking account very difficult (direct deposit from both of our paychecks???). However, I believe it is easier to close a credit card than a checking account, if you guys choose to change things in the future.
Does anyone here have experience in buying a foreclosed on house? I’m going to be house-hunting in a bit and that’s looking like the only kind of house I’ll be able to afford, since I live in an expensive area of the country.
I think the rules and regulations vary by state, so do some research on what yours are. My friends (in Kentucky) bought one and were blindsided by additional expenses and red tape.
I just bought a foreclosed house last month! AMA!
The biggest issue for us was that the selling bank had no interest in expediting the process, so it took an outrageously long time for them to actually, you know, SELL US the house.
Low prices can lead to bidding wars, so make sure that the list price is below your actual max budget. (For our house, it was listed at $175k but bidding war meant we paid closer to $200k, which was still under our budget, but not as great of a ‘deal’ as we had hoped we would get.)
GET AN INSPECTION. Make sure it’s a well regarded inspector, too. Our house had/has a host of issues, like, oh, needing a new roof and some exposed wires. The sellers bank will generally pay for ‘safety’ issues like electricity, etc. but will not pay for things normal sellers might throw in to sweeten the deal (sadly, like a roof).
Seriously, AMA.
Do you know anything about how getting a loan works? Is it different from getting one for a regular ol’ mortgage? I’m looking at FHA 203k loans because odds are good anything I end up with is going to need major repairs. Part of the reason I’m looking at foreclosed houses is that I’m handy as fuck, and know from experience I can fix most anything short of major wiring issues and roofs, which would definitely cut down on the amount of work I would need a contractor to do vs. the amount of work I could reasonably take on myself.
We applied for (and got) a conventional mortgage so I’m not really sure I can help too much with that aspect of it. Our house is/was liveable, it just had a laundry list of mostly minor things that needed addressing since the house had been vacant for over a year.
We decided not to use a program like that because, while we did get a good interest rate on the house, if we had added in, say $20k for a roof, we’d end up paying a significant premium on borrowing that money. Also, our big ticket item (roof) is still okay for another 1-2 years, so it wasn’t necessary to have the money right now. I don’t know, maybe it would’ve been more prudent to take additional $$ in the loan? This is our first house so I assume we’re making some mistakes here.
Also, it’s possible I’m very stupid but it looks like the application deadline for FHA 203k loans was Sept 2013?
That… is an excellent question. I see places that are still accepting applications, but I also see where it says that the deadline was 2013. wtf.
Toasties! I am having a LEGGINGS CRISIS. I had heard tell that American Apparel leggings were the Best of the Best, so I bought two pairs, but now they have both worn out in the crotchal area and I’ve had them for less than a month!!! Personally, I’m pissed, but the world spins on and so must I. Tell me, where do you find good leggings that are black, matte, opaque, long enough for your long legs, and can withstand the mighty force of your thighs rubbing together???
We Love Colors is awesome if your hips are less than 45″: http://www.welovecolors.com/Shop/SolidColorMatteL…
I used the We Love Colors ones for a cosplay and the material was SO COOL. In both texture and letting air through. Would definitely recommend.
Looks like these would work nicely! Thank you!
I haven’t tried them personally but I have heard VERY GOOD THINGS about the ones from Sock Dreams.
I think I’ve heard of Sock Dreams… I’ll check that out! Thanks!
I’ve gotten socks from them before, their customer service is A+ top notch, and if you have questions about fit or sizing just ask them! They’re great about helping.
Plus, shipping is always free! I have a pair of purple capri-length cotton leggings from them which I wear all the time, plus for the colder months, they have hooked me up with over-the-knee socks and fleece-lined tights which have been staples of my wardrobe.
I also want to know this. I fear leggings a little because someone always comments in the reviews to say they’re see-through, and that’s not what I want on a winter run/anywhere.
I don’t have an answer to this, but thank you for “crotchal area.”
I’ve resorted to buying leggings from Target when they go onsale for $8, so that when the crotchal area wears away I’m not as upset about it. I’m juuuust on the cusp of plus size (16-18) so straight-sized leggings always wear away at the thighs & plus sized leggings always sag. LIFE IS HARD SOMETIMES.
Yep, I have a shitton (that’s an official metric) of Target leggings and I just trash them when they inevitably rip or wear in the crotch. Spending ~$30 a season and always having a clean pair of leggings is worth it to me.
I have pretty good luck with Target. My thighs for sure rub together but I think maybe on a smaller scale than what I’m reading in this thread. Mine are lasting about a year each. Unless? Are you looking for work out leggings or underdresses leggings? Because I am not currently exercising. I have the opposite problem though where my leggings are too long because my legs are so short.
Another inbetweenie who does the same thing. So many Target leggings!
The One True Source for plus-size tights and leggings is We Love Colors. I also really like the Teggings from Re/Dress, but they are NOT ankle-length on me (5’7″). At most, they are mid-calf. Good material, though.
Athleta. Ridiculously expensive, but excellent quality and 100% opaque.
Seconding this. I really wish they weren’t so expensive but they are The Best.
To piggyback on this very important leggings question: Lululemon has a pair of sparkly workout tights that I may be coveting. There are three problems though:
1) Lululemon is stupidly expensive
2) Lululemon’s founder has said some stupid things, although I just learned from that article that he was let go a year ago, which does nothing for the last problem of..
3) I don’t think they’re available in my size.
So, Toasties: where can I go for sparkly workout tights? Athleta, Old Navy, City Sports, and Amazon have yielded next to nothing.
I definitely want to see these sparkly tights. Link?
Okay, it may have been discontinued because I can’t find it! However, I have found these tights which is basically what they were. I’m not sure how great they are for working out though, but maybe?
IDK about sparkly but there are always gobs of cheap, good-quality and cute workout leggings at Marshalls/TJ Maxx/etc, I never buy workout stuff anywhere else! The most recent pair I bought have a gray/black stripy panel down the side and sheer black stripe on the knees! The gothiest workout tights ever.
I usually go there for yoga pants too! They are fantastic. I am still new to the world of leggings though, and feel like my first pair should be sparkly. I don’t know why, I know how ridiculous that sounds.
It’s just like.. if I’m going to go there, my ass might as well sparkle.
I’ve had good luck with Hue leggings.
Tuesday Open thread!
WRITER TOASTIES! (Writies? Toasters?)
I have discovered Submissions Grinder. It basically keeps track of your submissions, and your accepted/rejected levels, as well as tells you the stats for different publishers. It’s like Duotrope, but free.
Anyway, The Toast is ONE THERE and only has my submissions listed currently, so if you have submitted/been accepted/been rejected by the toast, pop along and make the stats more accurate. http://thegrinder.diabolicalplots.com/Default.asp…
The page for The Toast http://thegrinder.diabolicalplots.com/Market.aspx…
(please note that grinder isn’t 100% stable right now, so if you can’t connect try later)
…not to derail your comment, but I definitely read that as Submissions Grindr, which I interpreted, ah, differently.
That would definitely be a very different site.
Is it helpful to submit information that happened a while ago? (I feel like this is a silly question but it is morning and I am very tired.)
Yep! That is fine. It all adds into the algorithms and makes their site more accurate. Because right now,The Toast is sitting at a 33% acceptance rate, which is… not correct.
And when you have an account, you can keep track of all your current stuff!
Holy shit I was just going to ask for something like this and then you provided it before I asked reason number 80000 the Toast is the best
I’m glad it helps.
I find it really useful, because I can tell at a glance if a piece maybe needs me to prod the submissions department about it.
I was going to put in my submissions but I don’t write fiction and I feel like I’m lying… ^_^; Should I just get over it? It does seem like it’s more geared for fiction than anything else.
There are non-fiction entries as an option! It is more geared to fiction, for sure, but non-fiction is catered for too.
Okay, I’ll double check! For some reason I’m having a hard time figuring things out today.
It happens. If it helps, the best way to do it is to create an account, and then in your dashboard go to ‘manage pieces’. click on ‘add new piece’ and ‘choose story type’ and non-fiction comes up there. Then, once you’ve put all the gubbins about your peice there, you can pop along to the entries for any markets you’ve submitted it to and click on ‘report submission’. Add the date it was submitted, and if relevant, the date it was accepted/rejected and you’re done!
It’s when I get into the “subgenre” style that trips me up, but I guess I’ll just list it as historical! Although I want to list it as “fabulism” or something really unrelated.
Second nagging question: I have two outstanding pitches to the Toast that were accepted, but I haven’t submitted actual writing for! Should I log those… o_O?
WRITE THEM
I have a Google Doc that’s just “List Of Things I Said I’d Write For People”. None of them are written.
From The Toast’s Submissions Grinder page: “100.00% of rejections are personal”
(I realize that by “personal” they mean “not a form letter,” but surely there is a better way to phrase that.)
I HATE YOU AND YOUR PITCHES AND THINK YOUR CLOTHES ARE FUG
I would use this if editors ever responded to my pitches at all. 🙁
🙁
(they have an option for that: Never responded. After a certain time, you should email editors and say ‘I am withdrawing my submission’)
Toast Writer. Better than ghost writers. Toooast Writers in the Skyyyyy.
Only a little high on pain meds. Feel free to ignore me.
I basically resent doing anything today. I will do my work, resentfully. I will exercise, resentfully. I will even eat resentfully.
i love this and I didn’t know it was an option for today. Resentment ACTIVATED.
the choice to resent everything is always available to you
Not unlike taking to the sea
TOASTIES! I QUIT MY JOB!
HEY me too! UP TOP!
Spice Girls! Has everyone heard this cover of “Say You’ll Be There” by MØ? It’s amazing and I want to listen to it all day every day. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YSu-PKTIhuA
Friday will be 6 months for the beau and I, and we will be going to a Burlesque Noir show that evening. Obviously, this calls for taking the entire day off to celebrate and prepare.
Oh, which also means I probably won’t be around on Friday, but hope the week goes swimmingly for all!
Obviously, this calls for taking the entire day off to celebrate and prepare
OBVIOUSLY. I mean, how could you not?
Have a great time!
If you are pregnant, immediately buy this adorable and comfy ASOS dress I have been living in, bc it’s on sale for $22.86.
I am not pregnant but I think I would like to wear that dress — would it look weird on a non-pregnant person, or is there not a whole bunch of fabric at the front?
You could absolutely wear it. I mean, it’s empire-y, you’ll look pregnant, but honestly, people just lift stuff for you and smile warmly and give you extra churros, it could be worse.
If that’s what looking pregnant gets you (extra churros! warm smiles!), I might need to reconsider my stance on looking pregnant.
Probably just when you’re a white Utah resident, tho.
Hmm. People are not that nice in DC. Although someone did give their seat up to a verrrrrrry pregnant person on the metro this morning, that was nice!
Nicole, I will be in SLC in mid August – Pregnant Toastie Meetup?!
We should definitely do a meetup!
churrrrros
I’ve been wearing knit maxi dresses this summer and when I answered the door for the uPS man he said, “wow, you’re dressed up.” Silly man, this is the women equivalent to boxers.
All the knits and all the maxis! The only way to get through summer.
My favorite maxi dress is actually a long nightgown from Lane Bryant. NOBODY NEEDS TO KNOW I’M ACTUALLY WEARING PAJAMAS TO WORK
Where do you get your maxi dresses?
It is hot here, and I have recently started getting a lot of bruises on my legs for enjoyable reasons I don’t want to explain to most people on the street, so I have developed a new interest in this topic.
The one I’m wearing right this minute is this one http://www.landsend.com/products/tropical-impress…
My daughter got hers at H&M
They are like wearing pajamas at work !
lol “enjoyable reasons I don’t want to explain to most people”
Do you have any good stories of explaining said enjoyable reasons to doctors? Those are the ones my friends swap the most often.
(I’m an extremely tall lady who can only buy maxi dresses from Long Tall Sally, because otherwise they all turn into midi dresses)
Yesssss. Summer: when I can go from wearing only underwear at home to being dressed up & fancy-fied for going out in three steps (maxi dress + sandles + one very large necklace or bracelet).
Thanks for the reminder that I should go order some more slip shorts pairs, though.
I am a medium-sized not-pregnant person with two (two, count ’em) ASOS Maternity empire-y dresses, and on me, at least, they are super flattering, and extremely comfortable. I have also asked strangers in bars DO I LOOK PREGNANT, and the answer has always been no, but then again, maybe people are just scared of the angry lady in the flappy dress.
Excellent, thanks for the report. Dresses! You look a little fancy-ish but you’re just wearing your jammies at work! I need to do more of this.
ASOS plain jersey midi dress. Elastic waist belt. Jersey leggings. Flat canvas shoes. LITERALLY THE SAME AS PYJAMAS, and very flattering on basically everyone, and looks smart.
EEEE so I am in the earliest earliest earliest part of my 1st pregnancy so at this point we aren’t telling anyone, just just referring to it as “Benjamin Sisko” in code and hoping it sticks around. You have now added ASOS maternity to the list of websites I’ve been furtively clicking through at work while simultaneously trying not to hurl.
omg benjamin sisko, brilliant!
yessssssssss thank you
I read the David Sedaris piece yesterday and immediately shared it with my brother so I could point out that he might be able to run into him. (We are from East Sussex; David Sedaris apparently spends all his time roaming around West Sussex. It could happen!)
I’m glad the website going down was a problem that could be resolved. My laptop hates me anyway, so when I got an error message on The Toast yesterday I thought it knew I was trying to sneak a break on my internship and was punishing me for the inherent darkness in my slacker soul.
I have just won a writing prize at my university and finished second year with a first. It’s pretty amazing so I just want to tell everyone in the world!
Well done!
I was so productive at work yesterday. I’m so glad it’s over.
Great work!
Good on you!
I got 22/61 on the youth group quiz, which is less than I was expecting. Also let me say fuck the teen study Bible I had. Colorful peppy little inserts designed to convince kids that the Bible was Very Clear on things like homosexuality and sex and all the rest. (Bonus fun: one insert that basically said AIDS wasn’t specifically punishment for homosexuality but hey, if the shoes fits. . .) Years of my life wasted thinking that I had to think exactly the right thing and mistrust myself or I was doomed to hell. Fuck that Bible.
I specifically remember a poster or something titled the “Ultimate Top Ten” where one of the commandments was swapped out for “save sex for marriage.” BRO. COME ON.
BUT OF COURSE. 😐
The satisfying thing is that when I realized my current(ish, things are complicated ATM) church had a few copies of that damn thing and nervously asked the youth leader if he would consider removing them, he took a look at them and went “Whoa, these are terrible” for all their prescriptivism and railroading and removed them right away. That was reassuring.
because of that poster, I thought “adultery” and “premarital sex” were the exact same thing for way too long.
THANK GOD SOMEONE ELSE SAW IT THOUGH. I shared your confusion and concern.
My church youth group was very liberal and relaxed for most of my time there, but senior year we got an uptight conservative for youth leader who gave me one of those teen study bibles as a gift when I went to college. Christ, it was terrible. I took a lot of evolutionary theory courses in college and I was absolutely delighted when I was able to dissect the logical fallacies behind the anti-evolution insets. I kind of wish I’d kept it now just to laugh at.
ETA: Oh, oh!! Did you guys read the one where the just-married woman comes back and talks to the youth group girls and is like “waiting for marriage is the best, you all, it was completely not awkward or damaging, you have to protect your purity for God (and your husband)”? UUGGGGGHHHHHHHHH
A teen study Bible… when you went to college? Kinda missed his chance to begin with, there, didn’t he?? I am glad you were already well-equipped to knock down that BS.
No, I think I was spared that one! By “spared” I mean “sex was almost never never never talked about.” Purity/waiting for marriage was the assumed baseline that apparently we didn’t need to have enforced by talking about it.
Yeah, I wanted to hand it back and say “sorry hon, that boat’s already left port”. God knows where I got that independent streak from – I was an insecure kid who absolutely loved rules and praise /and/ I went to Catholic elementary school- but I’m eternally grateful for it. I took a Hebrew Scriptures/ Early Christian Literature pairing my junior year instead and absolutely loved it, I still have my carefully annotated and researched scholarly Bible. And my copies of the non-canonical Gospels, which /blew my mind/ the first time I found out about them. There was so much cool stuff about the Bible that never got mentioned in Catholic school or Sunday school.
Woo! An early Open Thread means I can post the pics from Friday’s performance! It went really really well, y’all. Thank you SO MUCH for your positive words and encouragement. I’ll link the pics instead of displaying as images ‘cos they’re kind of huge.
Pic One
Pic Two
Pic Three
Pic Four
Pic Five
Pic Six (my fave)
The Partner got video, but I haven’t even had a chance to look at them, much less download them from the camera and get them up on YouTube. Maybe I’ll have that by Friday’s Open Thread.
wowwwww
Whee!
You look amaaaaaazing!!!
Thank you!
I respectfully inform you that you are a foxy lady.
Also, well done!
I respectfully accept your compliment! =D
Fabulous!!
Thank you!
Can Toastie “action shots” become a thing? These are inspiring and I would love to see more Toasties doing cool stuff.
Ah! What a great idea! Maybe you can start an Action Shot Thread, like we have our Cat Pic Threads on Fridays!
WOW!
Thank you!
I am respectfully seconding (or thirding or fourthing) that ‘Woooooooow’.
Thank you so much!
Toasties, I find myself pining for my fwb in the most unbecoming way and I just can’t seem to snap out of it. It’s like I’m 14 again, having my first crush and being totally overwhelmed by the feels. He is so pretty and good in bed but also shitty at communication, and I am neurotic and insecure, so I’m stuck in this quicksand of “Hmm, we haven’t talked in a while. Should I call him? If he wanted to see me he would have called me himself. So obviously he has lost interest in me. But maybe he hasn’t called because he thinks *I* have lost interest in *him* because I haven’t called?” I feel so pathetic, ugghhhh.
Noooo that has happened to me before and it is Not Fun. Sadly, my experience indicates that it won’t go away unless you tell him how you feel or end things. Obviously, you are not me and know what’s best for you – so good luck. <3
Ugh. I’d say if the FWB isn’t into “benefits” that also include “feels,” it’s best to cut your losses and get out. Especially if he’s not actually More Than Friends material.
Both of us are in open but committed relationships (I’m happily married!) so I don’t want him to be more than a friend (with benefits). I guess I just want him to not let 2 months go by without so much as a text message. I just get weary of always making the first move and planning dates and such because it makes me think, well, if he actually wanted to see me, he’d take the initiative for once.
Ahhhh. I see. Yeah, that would get old, always making the first move. Bleh.
Is it possible that he wants you to make the first move most/all of the time because he wants to be respectful of your primary partnership? I have friends who are poly and I have hooked up with one of them, but I (as a woman, but still) always took care – probably too much care – to make sure he has space and time for his primary partner.
tl;dr – maybe it’d be worth having another talk with him about boundaries?
Ugghhh. I know that feeling, so well. I have zero tips for managing it.
I am in a similar situation with the guy-I-am-kinda-seeing (you can tell my confusion by the fact that I have no idea what to call him) and I feel like this is the worst game of Twister I have ever played. I have no sage advice but hopefully some commiseration is helpful. 🙁
Is there something in the air that this is happening to so many of us? I don’t know what to think about mine because he says and does things that make me think he has Feelings but I don’t want to be pushy and ask for clarification yet. :-/
Mine is super sweet and attentive and all that good stuff when we’re actually together, but then weeks or even months go by without us seeing each other or having any sort of contact. I DON’T GET IT. And what always happens is I crack and message him first and ask him out. I am trying to hold out and not do that this time to see what happens. It’s been 7 weeks and counting and nothing.
I think I would turn inside out at the 2 week point from sheer stress. 🙁
Yep, same! Though we have had considerably more text contact lately, but I don’t know how long that will last.
This morning while I was walking to work, I saw a guy trying to walk his dog, but the dog kept flopping over onto the pavement to ask for a belly rub, or chasing after a bug, or turning around in circles out of excitement. It was so adorable & made me really happy so I wanted to share here.
This is a day-improving kind of story. Thank you for it.
I love obstinate and lazy dogs.
yessssssss
Lazy/joyful dog or puppy?
I would guess that the pup was about 1-2 years old – definitely looked young but not quite puppyish anymore. The human was so not amused by the pup’s antics that I wanted to offer to take that adorable ball of fur and excitement off his hands.
Pupppyyyyy (they are always puppies, even when they are not)
My dog is almost 2 and this whole thing very accurately describes him. Mostly I am amused, but every now and then I am like OKAY WHAT. WHAT CAN I DO. Mostly if I am wearing a skirt and it is windy and he keeps making me spin in circles with him because otherwise we’d be tangled and I’m almost definitely flashing my underwear at drivers.
Haha! Yeah, I can imagine that this guy was probably also trying to get to work and was unamused for that reason. I know all too well what it is to love a dog to pieces but still think “WHY. WHY ARE YOU DOING THIS TO ME RIGHT NOW.”
Aw. We’re adopting a dog soon and this made me smile.
do you have a specific dog picked out yet? if so, TELL US EVERYTHING. If not, what are you looking for in a canine companion? LET’S TALK DOGS.
I want a dog SO BAD (see: http://sulagnamisra.com/post/88534582012/how-do-i… but Mr.BHam is not-yet-a-dog person (he’s never had a dog) and he’s nervous about the cost and the time constraints a dog presents.
IF I HAD A DOG, I’d want a Victorian bulldog
or a French bulldog, though the one French bulldog I know in real life is CRAZY.
SO CHUNKY AND DROOPY.
Currently in love with this babyface at my local humane society but alas, cannot have a doge right now:
AHHHH THE SPOTTED SNOUT. So adorable.
Look at dat widdle tongue!!!!!
thbbt
It breaks my heart to leave my childhood dog, a golden retriever named Bailey (pictures here, here, here and here) with my parents but he has a much better life with them in NH (fenced-in yard, swimming pool with frequent visitors, and 2 other dogs to play with) than he would with me in Brooklyn (alone in an apartment all day while I work). Golden retrievers are my absolute favorite because they are soft and cuddly and goofy and perfect.
Nothing specific other than a black lab/lab mix. My brother wants a puppy; I’d prefer an adult dog unless it’s a very laid back puppy!
The good news: if you choose to adopt, you will have your choice of dogs! Black dogs–especially medium to large black dogs–are often the last ones adopted, because people are strange, I guess. Go love a black dog today!
(My parents have the best dog on the planet, and he is a black dog, and he is the best dog.)
It has been a really emotionally and mentally draining few days for me and instead of burrowing under the covers I’m gearing up for another 60 hour work week. Plus working this weekend. Everything will be fine. Everything will be fine.
Tell me your stories about deciding to cohabitate with your partners? And please remind me that money is a terrible reason do to so. But when the alternative is long distance is it still a terrible reason?
I ended up moving in with my now husband because of money, and it ended up working out really great for us. We were living in a city with a very expensive and tight rental market, and a string of my living situations fell through all one after the other. I ended up at his place in the middle of the night. We’d been dating for about six months, and have been together now for four years.
I moved in with my boyfriend because I couldn’t afford to live by myself and living with my friends was destroying my relationships with them. (two horrible reasons?) Now it is four years later and we are going strong! We are even recent residents of a studio apartment, which the landlord was straight up “I am kind of hesitant renting this to two people in case the size breaks you up.” And we were like “CAN”T STOP US NOW”
My partner and I kinda moved in due to money! We’d been dating for a year and both of our leases were up and some friends we were going to live with backed out so we just gave up and started looking for our own private oasis. It was a great decision!
Well, we were already planning to move in together, but I wasn’t supposed to be moving in for a few months and then my dad got drunk and pushed me over so I moved straight in with none of my stuff
And that worked out fine.
Here is my long-winded reply:
With my first cohabitation, we had been together a year (during which we lived 2 hours apart and saw each other only on weekends). I had just graduated college and didn’t have a job or place to live lined up (I had the option of living an hour outside of where my BF was living and I didn’t have a car). My BF was in grad school and needed a roommate. I wanted to move in for, like, relationship furthering reasons, but afraid to bring it up because he was squeamish about commitment. Finally he was like, “Well, I need a roommate, so I GUESS you could move in.” So I did and it was ok for a couple years. When we broke up it was because it had become clear we weren’t REALLY compatible. I’m not sure whether not having moved in together or moving in together later would have changed anything. I do not regret it.
With my current partner/future spouse, we lived about a 40-minute drive apart when we started dating. Within four months, we were literally seeing each other every night (I’d drive to his place after work, we’d stay there, the next night, he’d drive to my place after work, he’d stay at my place). It was a BLESSING to move in together after a year of dating and 8 months of an absolutely ridiculous commute (it made sense to my love-addled brain at the time and our loved ones were kind enough not to make too much of the fact that we were clearly acting insane).
I guess the lesson I’d take from this is: if you’re both on the same page about living together, it doesn’t matter if it’s ALSO because of money reasons. If one of you is way more ambivalent than the other, that’s probably not a good sign. I personally would do a lot to avoid having a long-distance relationship, but other people’s mileage may vary on that one.
Also what someone said upthread about making sure that you’re not just moving into his place (i.e. your stuff gets equal space to his) is super critical.
I moved in with my now-husband because I wanted to move to his city and couldn’t afford it unless we cohabited. Not a problem — but we were already planning to marry. I think the key is that you aren’t only moving in for the money, but that you really want to be together. And that you’re both similarly gung-ho about it.
We moved across the country together but it was earlyish on and we didn’t want to put strain on our relationship by moving in at the same time. But when he and his intended roomie started looking for places and realized that a three bedroom was the same price as a two it just kinda made sense for me to be the third. I’m not sure if having a roomie maybe helped (see upthread comments on united fronts v. roomies) but it really went just fine. I guess the big thing is knowing where the relationship is heading and making sure you’re both on the same page with regard to what it means that you’re living together.
I moved in with my partner halfway across the US last year because of a perfect storm of stuff: my academic job was ending, I couldn’t get (and didn’t want, in the end) another one, I was ready to do a career change, we’d been long-distance for two years and were sick of it…This was a year ago, and we’re very happy we did it. We even eloped so I could have non-craptacular health insurance.
So glad I did. If money is the only reason you’re doing it, then it might be a terrible reason, but if, say, you were talking about doing it before and money is just pushing up your timeline a little, that’s a different story.
I’d say the number one thing we’ve learned in the last year is that you have to be extra clear about everything. Stomping around the house sulkily is tempting, but easily leads to more trouble than you want, whereas saying, “X bothers me because of Y–can we figure something else out?” is so much more satisfying in the long run.
Y’all are so great. We have a couple months to talk and explore other options but i am SO RELIEVED to hear that shacking up sooner than expected because of cashflow issues isn’t an automatic death sentence. Plus my coworker is covering for me tonight so I can get some much needed beers and hugs and sleep.
My now-wife got kicked out of her parents’ house for catching the gay. We’d only been together a month, but she moved into my 300 sq foot college apartment with me because what else was she going to do? So we moved in together for money reasons.
I graduated two months later and we moved out of state together and then we got married and ended up with fancy jobs and now we’re just a couple of polite rich people drinking mimosas on Sunday morning in our khaki trousers.
So basically I’m not going to tell you any reason is a bad reason. Our reasons and pace were TERRIBLE but, as it turns out, we make a great team and really love being married to each other.
Did anyone else have a copy of the “teen magazine”-style Bible? I think it was called Revolve?
Shit, I totally saw one of those somewhere on the internet the other day and was COMPLETELY HORRIFIED
Toasties, why is so hard to get someone to come do sunset yoga with me at a vineyard! We do a tour and then yoga and then a wine and cheese tasting!
How is that not the most fun thing?
That sounds amazing and I would do that in a heartbeat.
That actually does sound great. Where is it?
Mt. Airy, which is an hour outside of D.C.
D’oh! 🙁 If I were closer, I’d be all over it!
Is this a recurring thing? BC I will be in DC shortly and will happily coordinate a Toastie yoga/ wine experience
They are doing it again in July, August, and September.
I AM IN! isn’t there a Toast group / list serve for DC already?
Like where the Jewish boy’s summer camp is? (I went to the girl’s one.)
Yes!
Darn! Too far away. Come to think of it, I don’t think there are vineyards up here in Lucifer’s Frozen Asscrack where I live, so I should have expected that.
ummmmm I am into the idea, email the DC Toast list if you want some Toasties??
If you are in the area then we could plan for July, August, or September?
well that sounds great, call me!
… you obviously didn’t ask ME bc those are all the best things that exist
I would totally come and do this with you, were I not clear on the other side of the country. 🙁
I don’t even like yoga and I would be down for this.
I’m shy about public yoga because I’m so awesome at slipping and falling, but if that was going on somewhere close to me it would signal time to get over it and TRY because yes, that does sound like the most fun thing ever.
When the Toast was down yesterday I nearly had a heart attack because I thought my work blocked it. (Which would be weird because this is a school and a library and I could probably BS IT into getting it onto a safe list but still… the fear is real)
Same here. I was paranoid all yesterday that they had caught me!
ME TOOOOO I immediately texted a friend like “I need you to get on the Toast immediately and tell me if it’s down or if I’m FIRED.”
same! 🙁
Same. Every now and then an article gets blocked as porn by our firewall, and I’m just waiting for IT to rescind my internet access.
Toasties. I am moving my 10 years’ worth of stuff into my family’s 50 years’ worth of stuff and feel completely overwhelmed. I can’t really start other things (like the very important Making Of Money) until there is less of a mess and even though life really isn’t sucking, I’m putting so much pressure on myself it really feels like it’s sucking right now.
That sounds like a super stressful situation. Let yourself take lots of breaks–I’m a big fan of Unfuck Your Habitat’s 20/10 method–do something for 20 minutes, then break for 10. Repeat as much as needed, and tweak to your own needs. Don’t be afraid to take a day off to recharge yourself.
I did take Sunday off. Then I finally got some decent sleep last night so today is going a little better. Thanks. I needed to get that out.
I have an apartment full of boxes to unpack and it’s stressing me out so much that the only thing I’ve managed to move is beer in and out of the fridge.
I am very familiar with this activity loop. I’ll lift one for you tonight.
A completely valid course of action.
What good books have you read lately? I had never, to my shame, read Ursula K Le Guin despite people recommending her for years, and just finished The Dispossessed last night, and I loved it.
I’m 3/4 through Alias Grace (Margaret Atwood). I really wasn’t into it for the first half, but as soon as I got to the second half I’ve had a hard time putting it down.
I tried to read The Left Hand of Darkness by Le Guin last year & just couldn’t get invested. :/
The second half of The Left Hand of Darkness is way, way better than the first half, but you need the first half to set up the second. Please give it another try; I predict it will all have been worth it by the time you finish it.
Left Hand of Darkness was hard for me, too. I’ve read it twice now, and it breaks down for me at this one part where he’s having a dream but then it’s not a dream? I get so confused and I never recover.
Really like the gender ideas though.
I just finished a[nother] reread of American Gods, it was fantastic as it is every time.
I’ve just finished another re-listen to the audiobook. Also fantastic.
I finally finished Roger Ebert’s Life Itself. Aaaaand cried a little at the end.
I’m reading London Falling by Paul Cornell. I don’t usually read books written by men, but there are several women characters (one of them a main character) and several black characters (two of them main characters) so I gave it a go, and I’m glad I did.
Basically, a group of cops accidentally get the Sight, and are able to see London’s otherworldly attributes. This leads them on a chase after someone who’s murdering anyone who scores a hat-trick against West Ham. It’s pretty great so far!
It was a fun read! The sequel is either out now or out soon. Also if you liked London Falling, Ben Aaronovitch has a similar London-set series featuring a biracial cop-magician.
I keep getting stuck in the middle of Aaronovitch’s books. It took me forever to get past the middle of the first one, and now I’m taking a break from the second one in nearly the same place. I don’t know what it is about them!
I read almost all of the first one last night, but passed out at 3:30 before I could finish. I was not expecting to be so thoroughly hooked, despite have one of the central conceits be so common that I’m thoroughly jaded about it and spent a lot of time wanting to email the characters a clue.
I just read “The Girls at the Kingfisher Club” by Genevieve Valentine and loved it. It’s a retelling of the Twelve Dancing Princesses, in Jazz age Manhattan. FUN TIMES. A fast and delightful read. (Disclaimer, I am internet acquaintances with the author.)
Just read Graceling by Kristin Cashore – really high quality feminist fantasy YA, aka my jam. She’s written a few other books in that universe, which I’m really excited to get my hands on!
Currently reading Book of Ages, Jill Lepore’s biography of Jane Franklin (Benjamin Franklin’s youngest sister) and it’s a fascinating/depressing window into the lives of everyday women in colonial America. If you’re into history, I definitely recommend it!
Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie. It’s a nice little revenge/saving [a] civilization story, wrapped up with some interesting weird characters and absolutely gorgeous weird science fiction worldbuilding.
Also, the weird pronoun thing that everyone mentions: the first person narrator is from a culture that doesn’t have the concept of gender, so unless she’s speaking a language that requires her to pay attention to it, she just uses the same pronoun for everyone, and that pronoun is “she.” This does weird (but not bad) things to your brain, or at least it did to my brain.
In summary, it was really good. And weird. Not super weird though, just consistently a good level of weird.
I really enjoyed that book.
I just read and immediately re-read Katherine Addison’s The Goblin Emperor, then bought a copy for myself because I’d have to take the one I read back to the library, I hearted it so much. It’s an ever-so-slightly steampunkish elflands bildungsroman full of court intrigue and centred around a main character who clearly needed a hug. A little reminiscent of Lois McMaster Bujold’s Curse of Chalion, in the best possible way.
Have you read her books under her real name? Did you like them?
As Sarah Monette? Yes I have, and yes I did – though Goblin Emperor may be my favourite of them all.
I read Anna Karenina for the first time recently and loved it!
I have not read anything fantastic since finishing Hild like a month ago, but after years of sticking my nose in the air I am really enjoying reading Anthony Bourdain — we finished A Cook’s Tour last week which is travel/food journalism but also interesting because he is so very aware of how problematic it can be to perform masculinity, and now we’re reading The Nasty Bits which is a collection of random food journalism he did last decade.
I think the thing I am reading right now most likely to end up being good is Melymbrosia, which is a recreation of Virginia Woolf’s original draft of her first novel (The Voyage Out) before she rewrote it like 5 times because of adverse criticism she was getting about being too blatantly feminist. I liked The Voyage Out a lot but it was very very cool and removed and this book is much more intense and up-close.
I love my Fitbit! If you’re not walking on the treadmill replaying Mass Effect for the 4th time then you’re not living.
Actually, you probably are.
The fact that 10k steps is aaaaaalmost 5 miles and then 20k steps is aaaaalmost 10 miles tends to cause a lot of “Well, I guess I should just keep going” thoughts. Which I desperately need, because I am terrible at exercise.
Ha! My first-ever playthrough of Dragon Age II is what is currently hooked up to my walking desk. Want to get riled up about the stooopid news coming out about Inquisition? Or just discuss how amazing Fem!Hawke is? (I have to admit to never having played the Mass Effects, due to completely non-existent FPS skillz)
I would recommend giving Mass Effect a try even if you are bad at shooters – it is not twitch based play, you can pause combat at any time by pulling up your power wheel or switching your guns, and you can throw the games on casual and let your teammates do most of the work. I definitely recommend first timers play at least ME1 on casual because the combat is wonky.
That said, I have only played DAO and I didn’t finish it. After about the ninth hour I spent in Orzammar I really lost my forward momentum. The fact that I couldn’t make everyone in my party happy was stressing me out and I somehow never picked up Leiliana as a squadmate. I was planning on going back and playing though because I feel like I didn’t give it enough a chance but we apparently sold it back to GameStop at some point. I am definitely planning on getting the DA3 though.
I’m partway through DAO. I lost momentum when a bug messed up my save game and I had to start over. I keep meaning to finish, but I am Not Good at the combat, and even now that I’ve come to my senses and set it to easy I still find it kind of frustrating.
Ooof, DAO is such a weird game, in that it is super-perfect in some ways and super-aggressively-broken in other ways. I played it once way back when it came out, and then picked it up again recently to play both it and DA2 in advance of 3 this fall. Mages are so very over-powered and rogues are so very under-powered (a fact somewhat fixed in awakening).
I will say that you can get DAO with Awakening + all the other DLC bundled for something like $12 on Steam (and, yes, Origin) these days. So you can use Shale as your OP tank and abuse the bajeebus out of the pause button and if you’re like me, totally look up all the major plot choices on the wiki to make sure you get Leliana and most importantly, Alistair never gets too pissy at you, because… *adoring sigh* Alistair.
DA2 definitely improves on a lot of the things that were weird/annoying/super-broken about DAO. It’s worth giving that a playthrough, even if you never make it back to DAO. It’s not a perfect game, but it’s one that feels much more balanced in so many ways, and the storytelling gets far more sophisticated, I think.
The Mass Effects have pretty good difficulty settings, so if you set them to casual then you don’t need very much in the way of FPS skills. When I first played the Mass Effects, I think the only even vaguely FPS-ish game I had played was Portal, and I was fine.
I mean, obviously you can choose to not play them if you want to avoid all FPS type things, but if you think you might like them then don’t let your lack of skillz stop you from trying them.
I’ll definitely put them on my maybe-to-play-next list. My understanding is that the first one is kinda all wonky with some parts being super-time-consuming/grindy in an unpleasant way, though?
I may or may not have a pile of things that I’ve bought off my Steam wishlist because they went on sale during my Dragon Age playthroughs sitting on my desktop, though.
I didn’t find it that bad, but I’ve only played through it once, and that sounds like the kind of problem that I’d find more evident during replays. Also I’m the sort of player who does all the sidequests even if they’re boring and not that important, so I might be the wrong person to judge this.
It does have the world’s worst inventory system, especially once your inventory is full, but your inventory won’t be full enough to cause headaches until late in the game, so for most of the game it’s ok-ish.
Melt the extras down until you have 999 omnigel and then sell the rest to the quartermaster on the Normandy!
But yeah, I really don’t need 9 copies of every single gun in the game every time I open a box. Only three people in my group can even use shotguns, I don’t need 40 new ones every time I trip over a rock.
But I forgot to, because I had no way to know that I had 134 items before I started this mission, and now I’ve picked up 16 things in the first half of the mission. And I already have 999 omnigel, and what if I need one of the guns that I don’t have ten of for one of the team members on the ship whose equipment I haven’t changed recently? Also it’s kind of painful to compare the guns to see which ones I should be keeping one of.
Back on the topic of trying to encourage people to play these games: It’s really not unlivable, mostly you just do what the nice commenter who’s named after a Mass Effect item said. And it gets much, much better in 2 and 3.
I can give you allllll the advice on which things to do and which to skip, but I honestly don’t mind the side quests too much. The only downside to skipping the planet exploration sidequests is that you will have no idea who Cerberus is, and they factor hugely into ME2 and ME3.
When I convince my friends to play ME1, I send them a long email with tips and tricks. It sounds like a pain in the ass and sometimes it kind of is, but to me it’s worth it to make all the decisions yourself. Also, the opening to Mass Effect 2 is a wham moment that probably wouldn’t mean too much if you didn’t play the previous game.
Captain wants attention. The debris on the floor is what he knocked of the table before falling over at me.
That is an invitation to a belly rub/mauling if I ever saw one
They start begging for dinner an hour before dinner time every day, which is amusing as all my phone meetings for work are scheduled for the time they start begging and are alwapys punctuated by me apologising for them yowling in the background.
He doesn’t maul though luckily, I can quite safely blow raspberries on his tummy.
Ok, I want to bury my face in his belly fur now.
if I could take a picture of myself doing that for you I would, but it would never work and he’s too shy to let me do it when there’s someone else here to take it.
WHAT A CUTE CAT
Klaas-Jan has been asleep on my legs all afternoon. I meant to go do errands but, cat. He is still snoozing away.
What a cutie!
My kehtten is a master of the passive-aggressive fall-over. At his best, he can even do it such that the dramatic paw across the face happens directly underneath the main recessed light in the dining area. I politely inform him that Brannagh is not having auditions this morning, and yes, I will still be leaving him to go to work.
Does he grumble and mutter and meow at you before falling over to make sure you’re watching?
I took a personal day yesterday to sit around, play Guild Wars 2, and plan my upcoming trip to Kauai. It’s my mom’s 60th birth year and she’s always wanted to go to Hawaii so we are doing the whole 9 yards. She’s picking a helicopter tour and I’m supposed to pick a kayak tour but there are like 1,000 of them. Which do I pick??
Apartment searching is the WORST and it has been delegated to me for the day because my boyfriend is in the secure room at his job trying to decipher some old retired guy’s poorly-written code. I am not even doing anything, just sending out emails, and trying to psych myself up to call someone, but STILL.
I really wanted to go for a bike ride, but now I have to hang around and see if someone gets back to me. We better end up with somewhere so great I can brag about it and not another vermin-infested decrepit building like my current place (my boyfriend’s current place is, of course, gorgeous and perfect, but his roommates suck and there are already four people sharing one bathroom).
livelovely.com was really helpful for me in my apartment search when I was leaving my decrepit vermin-infested (rats! in the walls!) place. Good/affordable one-bedrooms are hard to find but they’re out there. Good luck!
apt searching is indeed *the worst* but It Get Better!
You guyyyyyyyyys I am pregnant. It seems weird to be announcing it now since I am like half-way through. But it’s been kinda rough, ya know? Everyone’s been telling me I would feel great by now, and guess what, I don’t. I have so many responsibilities at work and when I show up already bone-crushingly tired, it’s hard to figure out how to go on. Also, what does one do when drinking 3 liters of water a day is not enough to not feel dehydrated?
Blessings on Chicago for being unseasonably cool (although hellishly humid) from this mama.
Congrats!! I’m sorry you’re still feeling bad. If it’s any consolation, I had a very similar experience of being told the 2nd trimester was a magical wonderful time and it was not. It’s really frustrating, especially because they tell you that in the process of gleefully warning you that the 3rd trimester would be hell. FWIW, my 3rd trimester was better than my 2nd. But essentially, anyone telling you how you ‘should’ feel during pregnancy is selling you some BS. Wishing you the best at figuring out how to make it through work – if there’s any way to pamper yourself, this is definitely the time.
Congratulations!
I have never been pregnant but I think it’s okay if you don’t feel great–obviously we want you to feel great, but it’s not always an option, right? Your body is GROWING ANOTHER HUMAN. Sleep for weeks!
Are you allowed things like Gatorade? I’m not a huge fan of it normally but when I’m out doing fieldwork and am sweating/dehydrating more than any other time in my life, it really helps.
what kind of fieldwork do you do??
Rare word collection, maybe, going off the username? In my mind’s eye I see gentle words caught fluttering in gauzy butterfly nets.
Wow, I wish linguistic fieldwork were actually like this.
i love your job! i’m an architect, although my undergrad was in architectural history. ARCHITECTURE!
but yeah UGH. do you have good boots for the field? my old old old docs just bit it and now i have to get new ones… i curse all of the dudes in my life who are (unnecessarily) wearing work boots around (because fashion) and i’m like WHAT NO I NEED THOSE YOU DON’T NEED THEM TO GO TO DUANE READE FOR TOOTHPASTE.
I live in my ugly-as-hell-but-3000%-waterproof Merrells (not exactly these but close, got mine a couple years back) in the summer and Sorels in the winter. I like the lower profile ones better than a full boot in the summer because they’re lighter and actually easier on my ankles. (The only time I wished for boot-boots was when I went out to Nevada, which was 98% hiking through sagebrush and only 2% buildings, not what I’m used to.) Since we’re not on worksites all that often, we’re not required to have steel toes, just something with heavy duty soles to keep our feet dry and protected.
Sweet fancy Christmas, that sounds FABULOUS. Unfortunately, no–I’m an architectural historian so it’s more of the “wander around small towns wearing a hard hat and safety vest taking pictures of houses and explaining myself to people” variety. Gatorade is a MUST.
Ahhh, my own field work is of the collecting tiny plants variety. I love hearing about what other people do “in the field”
TINY PLANTS. One would guess (hope?) that you don’t have to explain as much to the plants as I do to the homeowners I encounter.
Both of you PLEASE write about these things. I want to know MORE about people’s cool jobs.
WHAT THE HELL this sounds like the greatest job ever
Can be cool sometimes! Can be hot as hell JUNK sometimes too. Most of my time is spent writing reports about how most of the houses are not special. Job would be improved 100% with addition of butterfly net.
Try coconut water, it’s nature’s Gatorade.
Sorry you’re not feeling so good 🙁 Maybe eat lots and lots of fruit? For sugar and vitamins and stuff, but mostly for the sugar.
I’m pregnant in Chicago, too! About the dehydration thing, maybe try something salty? You may actually be needing some electrolytes or whatever. Coconut water really helps me with that. And juicy foods are good. I have been straight up eating an entire cucumber every afternoon for the last couple of weeks. I’m a bit further along than you, and I have to say that even when I feel really good, I feel more tired and spaced out and completely uninterested in my many responsibilities. If you figure out how to get anything done, let me know.
SO I am barely pregnant in Chicago and feel like a traitor to feminism b/c I literally do not want to do anything except curl up in my bed and drink ginger tea and pretend to watch Netflix even though I cannot stay awake for a single episode of anything. Forget a movie, or reading a book. Thank god the dog needs walking.
You are not a traitor to anything! You are GROWING A HUMAN. Take many naps. Snuggle the dog. Do whatever you feel like!
This!
It might get better or it might not, but either way it /does/ end eventually, so take care of yourself and if someone says you are a traitor to feminism, bite them.
Chicago Toast Mama Meetup??
thanks for the cuke tip, I will add it to my regimen of peaches and pluots.
Congratulations! My BFF is also pregnant and having an absolutely miserable time. She is vomiting like an Icelandic geyser and nothing is working for her. I feel awful for her, as it’s the one thing she has wanted for so long and she can’t enjoy it at all in this state. I think she’d stab anyone who told her to enjoy being pregnant right now.
Congratulations on the pregnancy! I am really sorry you are feeling so awful. We have been pregnant twice and both times it was pretty horrible, so we sympathise a lot! Now that our kids are 1 1/2 and 4 1/2 the awful pregnancies are just a distant bad memory… but I know that doesn’t help right now. For what it is worth I give you carte blanche to bite and savage anyone who tells you that you will feel better soon or it’s not so bad or ANYTHING like that.
I’m glad there’s a Tuesday Open thread because I could never wait till Friday: I cut off all my hair! I FEEL GREAT.
I’m also trying to decide how annoying a patent leather wallet would be. Thoughts?
A+ HAIRCUT HOW DOES YOUR NECK FEEL
NAKED
You are THE CUTEST I LOVE IT! <3
Also I think a patent leather wallet would be cute until it got scratched, at which point I would be despondent (and also, knowing myself, that would be the same day I got it).
Oh man, that is an EXCELLENT POINT, between the keys and all the other random crap in my purse it would get battered to shit.
and thank u <3
One woman’s “battered to shit” is another woman’s “full of character.”
That’s what I keep telling myself as I continue to let my non-patent leather wallet get water damaged.
I think men’s and butch women’s leather wallets that are all worn and creased are super sexy because it reminds me that those things have been riding around next to their butts for a long time. Mmm. Butts.
I have been debating whether I could do a cut as short as this. You may have convinced me! I AM TEMPTED!
EDIT ALSO YOU LOOK GREAT
I don’t see how a patent leather wallet could be annoying at all. Especially when paired with THAT FREAKING AMAZING HAIR OMG YOU LOOK AMAZEBALLS.
Yay haircut!
DUDE you look awesome
You look awesome 🙂
London is too hot. London is too hot and I have to write a whole long thing about myself, and why the things I do are worth money and time, and why people should give me money, and I am terrible at it, partly because SOCIETY and partly because SELF-LOATHING. I don’t even know how to write this thing. Balls to it all. I hope you all are somewhere with a pool and air-conditioning and not writing things about yourselves.
I am also in London and having to write that sort of thing about myself, and it is horrible. I empathise completely.
Is there a London Toast-up? I think there should be. We can all write each other’s “why I’m great” statements and drink cocktails.
OMG You made me panic for a bit that I had the wrong date for USA v. GER but it’s on Thursday, not tomorrow! I triple-checked!
Also, I am thankful for the Tuesday open thread because I will be travelling to Nashville to visit my friend for her birthday on Friday and unable to participate even a little bit.
Also, I have literally spent all morning since this thread went up looking at those Behind Closed Ovens posts and I REGRET NOTHING (except maybe not revising this report, oops)
So I’m starting a new job in August (full disclosure: Americorps Vista, so not like, Wall Street or something) and I’m freaking out a little. I graduated right at the beginning of the recession and have had to make do with odd jobs like packaging items for a cake decorating company and helping a hoarder move his hoard from one house to another. (Best job interview question ever: “I lost my cat in here like six months ago, so you might find him under something. Is that going to be a problem for you?”) So now I’m going to be working 40 hours a week and am going to be in charge of volunteers and responsible to people other than myself and my lovely but too understanding clients. I feel like this is going to require a big step up on the maturity front, which is great because I’m 27 but is terrible because WHAT IF I CAN’T DO IT, WILL I BE RANDAL FROM CLERKS FOREVER? Ahem. Sorry for shouting, but like I said, freaking out a little.
You’re gonna do fine! I’m starting out/starting over too, and it’s okay to be freaked. We’re still gonna do fine!
Thank you! It’s good to know I’m not alone, haha. Yes, we can do this. It’s going to be great!
Can I ask how you’re starting over?
I quit a degree that clearly wasn’t going anywhere fulfilling and am trying to do writing fulltime.
I’m interviewing for a new job on Monday that sounds vaguely similar to your new one (congrats!) with the being in charge of volunteers and stuff and I have THE SAME FEELINGS. You can do this! We can do this! It’ll be an adjustment at first but that’s how it is for every job on the planet. Nobody comes in knowing exactly how to do things, and the people who already know how things go will help you get your feet under you. You’ve got this!
Good luck with your interview — I hope you get it! And thanks for reminding me that I’m not supposed to be an expert right away. At the end of every school year I used to tell my dad that I was pretty good at the grade I just finished, but I wasn’t so sure about the grade I would start in the fall, and he was always like, child. You will be fine. Guess that still hasn’t sunk in for me yet!
“I lost my cat in here like six months ago, so you might find him under something. Is that going to be a problem for you?”
Yeah, it was a totally gross thing to consider, but I never did find the cat. I think it probably escaped, or he found it on his own and was too embarrassed to tell me. I’m hoping it was the escape option, personally.
I did two years of AmeriCorps (Not VISTA, a state program), so I know that “oh shit gotta be matureish” feeling. I did so much volunteer management and chainsawing.
Yep.
Good luck!
Thank you! Where was your program based? I’m glad I won’t have much chainsawing to do — not much call for chainsaws in literacy, as far as I’m aware… I should probably check.
St. Louis! I did conservation and disaster response my first year, hence the chainsawing. I did NOT anticipate learning to chainsaw, but it ended up being one of the coolest things. I keep it listed on my very social work-y resume, which leads to some fun conversations.
I’ve got a job interview tomorrow! Wish me luck.
Good luck!!! Hopefully it will be awesome!
Good good good luck! You’ll rock it!
Luck! Luck! Luck! Luck! Luck! Luck! Luck!
*fingers crossed*
In a fit of pique, I got my hair cut boy-short/Leslie Caron-short from a floppy pixie. I also bleached out the pink for a swirling mix of tealish blue and dark blue. AND I LOVE IT. I know the blue is going to fade out way too fast, but I wanted a change from the pink for our year end. My next day off is going to be July 4th, so I gotta have something to keep me happy.
In other news, I took my mom to get cataract surgery at 6 this morning, and am looking at a fricking spectacular 16 hour work day on 2 hours of sleep. Everything went perfectly, except she hates the glasses, and I thought about duct taping them to her head before I left for work. She makes me read all her medical advice stuff then gets tetchy with me when I expect her to follow it. Moms.
Your hair sounds AWESOME. My mom just had a cornea transplant last week and the guy sort of botched it and she said she still feels like she has a stick poking her in the eye :-/ Glad your mom is doing okay, good luck with the work, and hope rest finds you soon!
AH!!! Pics! Pics of your fabulous hair pretty pretty please! Quick! Before the blue fades!
Oof. Hope you get good sleep tonight. Best wishes for your mom’s recovery.
I’ll try to selfie like a mofo on my next break, and if not today, oh there will be pics in the Friday thread.
Sent from my iPhone
Get yer fresh hair pics here!
No lie, I’m probably gonna repost at least one of these on Friday, because dat blu.
GORGEOUS! Oh, wow! Thank you for posting and yes yes yes I look forward to seeing it again on Friday!
Yay blue hair! I redo mine about every three weeks, in that time it fades from proper skyblue to turquoisey. I find crazy color peacock lasts waaaaaaaay longer than anything else.
I haven’t seen that brand in my area. I use Manic Panic, mixed with conditioner, which helps my hair keep it for at least a few extra washes.
I got my first 10K+ steps on Saturday, because I played a softball double header. Of course, playing catcher for two games in a row meant that my Sunday was more of a 2.4K steps day, because ooooooooooooowwwwwwwie my legs and ass hurt so fucking much.
Etiquette question: can I decline an invitation to a bridal shower because the guest list was female only? I hate single-gendered showers (baby or bridal), and in this case, I am mostly a friend of the groom. Do I suck it up and go to hang out with him? Do I gracefully decline and not specify why? The worst thing is that it’s a surprise and thrown by a bridesmaid I don’t know super well, so I can’t just check in with my groombuddy.
I’d gracefully decline unless you know the bride and other attendees well enough to want to spend an evening with them.
You can decline for any reason, nobody will care that much. Just don`t give a reason–nobody is going to drill you for one, and even if they do, “I’m so sorry, I already have something that day!” will work.
No need to bring anything else into it.
Thanks all for wise counsel. A sliver of me wanted to turn this into a FEMINIST TEACHABLE MOMENT (TM), but that’s a completely horrible impulse, particularly in highly-ritualized events like weddings and their associated celebrations. So I will be sending my happiest regrets instead!
Other people are correct about the etiquette, so just high-five that there’s someone else who hates unisex invite lists on principle. Like, which subjective quality of my company is necessarily and inextricably tied to the shape of my genitals and/or my preferred pronouns?
I had a debate the other night about Beyonce – I was trying to explain to a friend of mine how Beyonce is powerful and relevant in the feminist sphere. Anyone have any good articles that I can share with her? I know there were a ton when her most recent article came out but I can’t think of any in particular to back me up.
There was a great one in Bitch about a year ago–not sure if it was in the Food issue, and the ones I have are in storage–but it definitely deepened and expanded my already favorable view of Bey.
Our own dearly beloved AHP wrote about Beyonce and feminism (though in an admittedly ambivalent way) here. It takes a bit of a side-eye stance to Beyonce and feminism, BUT it was written last February, before the new album dropped like an atom bomb. A good read regardless of your position!
My coworker just used her experience as the (American-born and raised) child of white (American-born and raised) Northern Europeans to claim expertise on diversity, so if you need me I’ll be rolling my eyeballs into the back of my head until they plop out onto the ground.
BONUS ROUND: did so in front of my pregnant Middle Eastern boss, after repeatedly quizzing her on whether she’s fasting for Ramadan. if you need me, I’ll just be slamming my head into the wall.
I wish to provide you with a Nopetopus so that you may set it free in front of her next time she does something like this.
Oh man I think I just sprained the thing that holds my eyeball in my head from all the eyerolling.
I played my first volleyball game since high school at a bar league last night and I was only the second worst player on the team! Yay for conquering fears!
Who else is starting to have Game of Thrones withdrawals?
I don’t know if anyone is still scrolling all the way down here, but if so: anyone else get vertigo sometimes? I occasionally get it as a migraine symptom, and I’ve been having spells (to get all Southern belle about it) for the last few days AND I AM GOING NUTS. It’s like having the spins but without the fun of getting drunk first.
Not so much, but any time you’ve got migraine + new neurological symptom, I’m inclined to rec a checkup (as well as a symptom diary to track occurrence and possible triggers). Be well!
Thanks! I have actually had it before (it’s what initially got me to my neurologist, who is a good egg), but it had not been a problem for several months. We had some serious storms a few days ago and ever since, it’s just made a comeback. The head pain isn’t even that bad today, but it’s maddening to have to move around so carefully. I will keep track of this and consult my neuro if there’s a pattern–thanks for the tip (and the sympathy).
Ugh, vertigo is awful. Have you by chance had an internal sinus lift recently? I’ve been having *spells* the past few days, too, but mine at least have a definite cause: on Friday I had a dental surgeon banging around the roof of my mouth with an actual hammer and it disturbed the delicate structure of my inner ear.
My vertigo is supposed to resolve itself in 10-14 days, but you might get rid of yours using the Epley maneuver. I think it’s supposed to be administered by a medical professional, but there are videos of how to do it on YouTube.
UGH, that sounds awful, and I’m sorry you’re going through it. I hope your dental stuff and vertigo resolve soon! I can’t think of anything similar that would have triggered mine, except that it’s the summer and storms + allergies is a bad sinus combination for me. Maybe my ear got a little involved that way.
I hope you feel better soon! The thing that bothers me most about vertigo is how surreal it is–it’s like an illness that is also existential. Ugh.
And it’s completely subjective, so there’s no good way to describe the profound awfulness of being completely nauseated while bouncing off walls except maybe as Satan’s version of taking to the sea.
I’m too impatient to do the Epley properly, but I’ve had good luck with lying on the bed and letting my head and shoulders hang off the side, or doing supported backbends that tip your head back.
I hope it clears up soon for both of you!
Ugh. Yes, vertigo is the WORST. Mine manifests like motion-sickness and I get all headachey and nauseated. It’s the worst. 99.9% of the time it’s brought on by weather changes, or other stuff messing with my sinuses. I hope you feel better SOON.
Yes, sometimes, and yes, it is awful. You have all my sympathy!
Toast! I’m so glad you survived! And I’m just here to say I refuse to be pessimistic anymore about housing, I hope to put a bad habit of threadjacking in check by remembering things are only all about me in my head, and that I hope you’re all having happy Tuesdays. Someone mentioned pupusas here a while back and it led me to notice a place up the street makes them, so I’m dangling them like a carrot to keep all these engines in motion. Pupusas!
Yesterday was my birthday and first official day of being unemployed (it was just a part time job, but it was helpful!). I’m trying reallllllly hard not to be depressed. But ugh. I’ve had interviews and stuff throughout my full time job search, but nothing’s panned out yet – I’m also waiting to hear back from a couple of interviews I’ve had recently.
Ugh, my anxiety is making it super hard to combat the all or nothing thinking of “everyone hates me even though the interviews go well.”
My friends are all amazing people though and they made my birthday weekend awesome.
Urgh, I’m sorry. Unemployment is gross and stressful, and it’s ok to feel horrible about it. And totally normal to feel the ‘everybody hates me’ thing after interviews. So sorry your anxiety is making that worse.
Happy birthday for yesterday, and hurrah for lovely friends. Really hope you find something soon!
Thanks! I appreciate the validation.
I was like, “I have this really nice to-do list I need to bust through today… laundry! food! adulting!” and then did maybe a third of it. I have a feeling the whole productive unemployment thing is going to take some time to build up to. Especially with late night anxiety keeping me up.
I’ll get there! OR get a job.
I know many of those feels, and they suck. Take care of yourself! Happy belated birthday, and I hope job things go much better very soon.
dear open thread stragglers: please give me some opinions on the OK or not-OK-ness of occasionally watching porn at night, while your beloved is asleep in the other room, because you can’t sleep.
I think it is pretty weird, but am I justified?
Seems courteous, actually, unless the volume is up too high. Much less rude than waking the other person up for sex. But I suppose it depends on your feelings about porn.
I watch porn when my beloved is wide awake and in the next room, so….
Okay by me.
Well, is that the weird where it makes you uncomfortable that someone else is doing it so you are looking for permission to be uncomfortable? Or is that the weird where you are wondering if it is okay if you are doing it?
Either way I think it is fine to watch whatever the heck you want when your beloved is asleep in the other room, whether it is porn or Spice Girls or documentaries on the making of horseshoes. Or anime about getting stronger to protect the ones you love!
Not necessarily! Mine would EAT THE HOUSE if she were uncrated while I was at work, but she would do that because she's a dog and she does not understand our elaborate human rules about what is ok to chew and what isn't AND who wouldn't get bored sitting by themselves for 8+ hours??
The rule of thumb I hear a lot in training/behavioralist circles re dog exercise is 1-2 hours per day for a moderate-energy dog. Hardcore working dogs (German shepherds, border collies, etc) need 4+, and super lazy dogs will be happy with 1 hour. But also you can totally tell by things like your dog's willingness to snooze while you read!
Re separation anxiety, there are dogs who get so stressed out when their owners leave that they'll refuse food and even self-mutilate. I think it makes sense to reserve the clinical label for them. Dogs who've never been alone are just not alone trained! The distinction matters because alone training can happen with some time and persistence. Separation anxiety is very, very difficult to fix.