Color in desserts, color outside, awesome color EVERYWHERE! Let’s talk about joyful things, happy things, and Wallace Stevens? Open thread!
Tags: cocktail hour, open thread, the bartender
Color in desserts, color outside, awesome color EVERYWHERE! Let’s talk about joyful things, happy things, and Wallace Stevens? Open thread!
Tags: cocktail hour, open thread, the bartender
Hello toast. Yesterday I worked 17 hours at a conference and also found out my dad had cancer. I wish like fury I was at home right now but I am trapped at a conference with my boss whom I hate.
My mom beat breast cancer like twenty years ago so we are not strangers to cancer, but I am still devastated. I love my dad very much, you guys. I don’t know what to do other than wait a couple days until I can go visit my parents.
Sorry bartender. I have nothing joyful this week.
Oh man… Jedi hugs. That is too terrible for words.
oh, no. [[[[internet hugs]]]]
Oh so many hugs to you and your family. <3
Oof, I’m sorry to hear it. It’s awful to get bad news anytime, and especially when you can’t follow your impulses to take the best care of yourself and the people you love. But soon the conference will be over and you’ll be with your parents, which will be some comfort to you all, right?
Oh, Aravis. So many good thoughts to you and yours.
*gentle digital hugs* 🙁
I am so sorry to hear that and hope you can be with your family soon. Best wishes for your dad…
Oh no… I’m so sorry.
I’m so sorry. I’ll be thinking of you.
I am so sorry to hear that <333 sending love your way.
*hugs*
Oh, I’m sorry–sending good thoughts your way.
So sorry to hear that 🙁 I have been there myself and waiting is the worst, especially when it is away from loved ones. Hugs!
Sending more hugs and good wishes.
I’m so sorry! I wish you and your parents all the best. <3
That is so awful! My thoughts are with you and your family.
Oh man. That’s awful. Wishing him a safe recovery and all the best to your family.
Oh, I’m so sorry!! That’s terrible. Take care of yourself, and I hope that the next few days fly past, and you’re on your way to see your dad soon
I know waiting while in the midst of bad news is the absolute worst, but take care of yourself in all the small ways you can think of, both to help the time pass constructively and so you’re in the best emotional shape possible when you get to go see your folks. Keeping a good thought for the best possible outcome.
I’m so sorry. <3
oh, honey.
That is hard. My thoughts are with you and your family.
I am so sorry that you are hearing such bad news and not able to be with your family. I know nothing can make it all better, but I will send loving thoughts your way to your and your dad.
I’m so sorry. I hope the next few days go by quickly.
After spending over half an hour on the phone with the Public Service Pay Centre, I found out that I was owed a pay increase back in October and nobody at the damn Pay Centre thought to, you know, actually put it through so that I would get the money. The agent I spoke to assured me I’ll get a retroactive payout but god knows how long it will take them.
I really hate this idiotic “one centralized pay centre for the entire federal public service!” thing. It’s caused nothing but confusion and frustration and massive wasting of time. I’ve had so many issues with them – the highlight was when I didn’t get paid for 11 weeks because for some reason they kept failing to process my contract extension despite having all the paperwork – and I’ve only been in the public service for 2 years! The burden should not be on me as the employee to call the Pay Centre and make sure they’re doing their own jobs properly. I should be able to safely assume that the people in charge of my pay (1) know when I need to get a pay increase (2) will actually do whatever it is they need to do to ensure I get the pay increase.
In terms of joyful things: it’s the weekend! I will wear dresses enjoy the sunshine and drink iced coffee and maybe have brunch with my husband.
IDK, it has been a crappy week. My husband had that Montreal-job interview on Monday and even though he reported that it went well, all of a sudden I was flooded with the unshakeable conviction that he wouldn’t get the job and that I would be stuck in Ottawa and be miserable for the rest of my life. The awareness that I’m being silly and irrational didn’t help; I’ve just been clomping leadenly through the day. Hopefully I’ll be able to shake it off this weekend.
It has been a crappy week! I’m sorry to hear about the incompetent pay center. And having a partner in the job-search process is almost less fun than having to go through it yourself, since at least when you are the one being interviewed you actually have a sense of how it went. (I’m going through a similar thing with my boyfriend now, whether or not he manages to get a job in my city will be a major determinant of our future. Good times!!)
I hope you do make it out to brunch. I hope the weather is nice enough that maybe you can even brunch al fresco!
It’s no better outside the core. The same thing happend to me, upon renewal of my contract HR was like “uhm, we’ve been underpaying you for 6 months, so sorry?”
But SUN. And pretty dresses! And _being outside_. Us Ottawegans have been waiting _far too long_. *hugs*
That is a totally crappy week, may you have all the sunshiny dressy brunches with your husband this weekend!
I have had payroll processing jobs. They were entry-level. My coworkers were poorly trained and not very bright.
I have had to correct mistakes in my paychecks at almost every job for my husband and for me. One employer stopped deducting federal tax when a pay increase was made. Another employer failed to increase my pay when promised. I am surprised when payroll goes a year without mistakes.
But I am sorry you have this frustration and that you have to do payroll supervision in addition to your own job. Wishing you happy sunny brunches this weekend. And wishing your husband a great job offer soon.
Oh, as one federal public servant to another (thankfully not in Ottawa), I feel your pain. I had pension buy back that they continued to take off two months after I finished paying, but the backlog in pension is so bad that I’m not likely to see the reimbursement for “a long time”. Every time I log into CWA to check my stubs, I pray for no mistakes. Damn you centralized services. Don’t get me started on IT.
2 years. It took them TWO YEARS to process my buyback. I’m still not entirely positive it was done correctly.
Efiicient centralization ftw.
Yeah, I think I applied in 2012 and it hasn’t been processed yet. Just taken the money. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Toast, I am trying to remember the title of a book I read probably a dozen times in childhood. Googling specific passages has not helped. And yes, I am aware that the following is a very vague description. Is there anyone who knows this book?
– I believe it’s set in the early 1900s in England
– It is a memoir
– I want to say the woman who wrote it had a first name that began with an M (Mary or Molly?) but I might be imagining that part
– The girl was the youngest of all her siblings. She had older brothers who tutored her.
– When she prepared to go off to an all-girls’ school, her brother told her that all she needed to remember was the formula for finding the area of a triangle.
– She was really into geography and would spend hours studying maps. In class, the teacher passed around a book to show the students where a Biblical city was (Bethlehem? Jerusalem?) and she told them that she already knew where it was. But the teacher insisted, “so to please her I gave it a glance”.
– The school had absurd policies about making noise, with rules against doing things like dropping textbooks. She imagines that the school fears a hundred girls dropping their textbooks at once. When you break a rule, it’s the honor system, you have to write your name down in a book.
– As an adult she taught a class. To get the students’ attention, she drew a very detailed map on the blackboard. Then turned around and said, “No tricks, ladies and gentlemen,” and they were all amazed.
– Her oldest brother was Tom. Tom’s wife was not very bright. When Tom’s son called his mother over to look at the moon, she said placidly, “Nonsense, dear, the moon shines only at night.”
– The main character mispronounced the word “reserche” as “research” and then her friend (also named Mary?) kindly wove the correct pronunciation into the conversation.
– Someone was pointed out to her as someone who can imagine 14 dimensions (?) and she thought, he could just be faking it. Prove it.
I have absolutely no idea, but I really want to read this now!
I don’t know what it is, but I dearly want to read this.
This sounds familiar to me also, but I cannot place it
This is definitely not the book you’re looking for, but I think you might like Gwen (Darwin) Raverat’s Period Piece, about growing up in Cambridge in the 1880s and 1890s. She’s a smart, witty, self-aware writer, and it has all sorts of wonderfully bonkers anecdotes about her extended family and the shadow cast by the memory of her very famous grandfather.
That sounds great! Just ordered it from Amazon.
Me too!
If no one on the Toast can track it down, you might try the booksleuth forums I’ve had some luck there with books I can’t quite remember.
Was it “A London Girl of the 1880’s”, by Molly V. Hughes? If you google the title you can find it, and her other books, on Good reads, to see if they sound right. (Sorry, don’t know how to put in link!)
Oh my God, this is it. I have been searching for YEARS. Thank you!!!!!!
Yay!!! So glad it was the one you were looking for! I am going to check these out myself now–thank you for the tip!
This is why I love the toast so much.
Do read the later ones, they’re also interesting—though not, in all honesty, as engaging as the first. Also, Gwen Raverat is amazing, you’re going to love her.
I’m not me-too’ing but your very specific memories ID’d the book immediately to me!
Hello Toast!
I am hungry right now (waiting on coworkers to initiate lunch-getting process) so let’s talk food. Specifically: what are the foods that you would cross mountains, maybe literally, to obtain? What foods have such strong geographic connotations for you that you couldn’t get them anywhere else, even if they were made available?
I have a few:
1) Abura ramen at Pai Men Miyake in Portland, Maine. I have actually planned trips to Portland specifically to get a bowl of this.
2) “Old Beijing Ice Pops.” I’m not sure that translation is right, but when I went to Beijing with a friend and his family, I probably ate 5 or 6 a day. They’re ice blue, sweet, medicinal, and utterly refreshing. I’d go back to Beijing just to eat more.
3) Horseradish cheddar cold-pack cheese spread from my hometown. Sounds gross, tastes amazing. I always say that, when I visit, I should just pack a few tubs in my suitcase to take back, but then I forget.
What are your location-specific delicacies?
When I was in Split last August I had the best fish I have ever had in my life. It was the kind of deceptively simple dish that makes you think, surely I could recreate this at home with no real difficulty, it’s just fish brushed with olive oil and then grilled, but you can never get it to taste the same no matter what you do.
Every now and then I think, “Mom and Dad would love Croatia, maybe we could vacation there together!” and then I realize that deep down, all I want is to go to that tavern and eat all their fish.
I definitely have some much-savored Vacation Fish memories. It’s partly because I’m mostly vegetarian and fish is the one meat-thing I really enjoy so it’s always a nice treat, but then most restaurant fish is not that exciting. But oh man this one grilled fish kebab I had on vacation in Belgium a couple years ago, I still remember you, you were grilled on a little fire pit and accompanied by much Belgian beer. And all kinds of touristy shrimp in New Orleans even though I was just there for work.
Fire pit + Belgian beer? That sounds like paradise.
You also reminded me of another location specific food– I’m vegetarian (sans fish) but make an exception if I catch and kill the meat myself. Last time I went with my boyfriend to visit his dad, who lives on the ocean, we took out their little aluminum dinghy and harvested mussels. Took the rest of the day to clean and debeard them all, but cooked up with butter and white wine… so good. But only replicatable if I have a source of live, wild mussels.
mmmmmm sounds amaaaazing!
That sounds delicious, and very much my feelings about consuming oysters anywhere but in PEI. That fresh briny taste is just not present when they’ve been shipped elsewhere.
The only one I can think of is also Portland-specific! Have your ramen lunch at Pai Men Miyake, then plan dinner a few blocks away at Caiola’s, where the menu’s always changing but the paprika polenta fries with cheese and pepper dips are a constant, and have those with a glass of prosecco — ideally, on the quiet rear patio in summer.
There is, however, a dessert I had only once, but that I think of a few times a year: a terrine of chocolate, raspberry, and hazelnut mousses. It was surprisingly delicate in texture and flavor, and I’ve never tasted or created anything remotely like it. It was a special at a now-defunct restaurant, and it was so good that halfway through my plate, I ordered a second one wrapped up to go.
I’m so glad you got that second terrine. Many times I have eaten at restaurants that then closed, and really regretted not ordering seconds of whatever I really liked there.
I’ve been to Portland a handful of times now, but have yet to try Caiola’s. I’ll have to schedule it for my next trip up!
* Shoofly pie, endemic to eastern Pennsylvania (German/Amish).
* Sweet sauce pizza, made by a handful of pizzerias on the North Shore of Massachusetts
* Hungarian palacsintas with chocolate sauce
PALACSINTA and Gesztenyepure. Hungarians rock the dessert, bar none.
Chicken shawarma, made exactly as I used to get it when I lived in Riyadh: chicken carved off the spinning meat cone, lashings of tahini sauce, pickles, and french fries, all wrapped up in a pita. Preferably served with an ice-cold can of Vimto.
I’ve never seen anywhere else that makes it quite the same way.
This is embarrassing, but I want to go to France again at some point to get salade nicoise in a can. It was gross and satisfying and probably the French equivalent of Chef Boyardee. But I loved it.
I lived in Scotland years ago, and developed a fierce love of haggis. Don’t listen to what anyone else says, it’s delicious and it’s the best pub lunch ever.
And, after a late night out drinking, deep-fried haggis in gravy (from a greasy takeaway shop) is the food of the gods.
I tried haggis once when I lived in Scotland, on Burns Night. It tasted like meat. I had no problems with it, but it wasn’t something I was going to go out and spend my money on. Deep fried Mars bars, on the other hand, was apparently something I was willing to pay for more than once.
I’ve only ever eaten a third of a deep-fried Mars bar, but I’m pretty sure it took at least five years off my life.
unsweetened Jasmine milk tea with pearls, at Fantasia, in Milpitas, CA.
Mackinac Island Fudge Ice Cream! Smoked Lake Superior whitefish. Ham from Platt’s in Rogers City. Sheesh, I miss Michigan I guess.
Cheap and delicious trays of sugary puff pastries sprinkled with large grain sugar from a bakery near the main plaza in Merida, Yucatan. Also the fresh squeezed orange juice.
Oh man, I got to go to Mackinac Island when I was… 6 or 7? Because my dad was attending a conference there. I remember the fudge shops so distinctly. That place was like Shangri-La for a 6 year old with a major sweet tooth.
(Plus, the hotel we stayed at brought out a basket of croissants for every breakfast! I was only allowed croissants for dessert before that.)
Yay! I distinctly remember being given what I experienced as an entire half of a block of peanut butter fudge (that’s 1/4 lb solid fudge) to gnaw on one early trip. It was probably a much smaller piece.
It’s also a magical wonderland for the historically nerdy girlchild. Did you get to go to any of the sites? My parents are displaced Michiganders (putting distance between narcissistic grandma was a major priority), so we wound up there every single summer for years. There’s a family cabin about an hour south. I once thought a re-enactor at one of the forts was one of the ubiquitous life-size historical figurines and when I touched his coat he moved. I was probably around 5 and I’ve never been so shocked in my life.
I have lived in Michigan for my entire life and northern Michigan for most of it, and I have never been to Mackinac Island. That said, I am of the subset of Michigan residents who refer to tourists as “fudgies” so.
*big hearts over my eyes* I puffy-heart love Michigan. My family’s cabin (built in the 1940s, currently owned by my uncle, just biding my time until I get my dirty little fingers on it) is on the southern tip of Hammond Bay, right near the experimental station filled with lamprey eels. Like, 45-60 minutes from Alpena. My dad grew up in Kalamazoo, my mom in Pontiac, and if I could convince MrKat to move there we totally would.
I was able to get him up there for a delayed honeymoon week and our flight from Detroit to Alpena was delayed until 1 AM. Not only did one of the other passengers offer to drive us to our hotel, it was unnecessary because the older ladies who ran the tiny rental car desk at the wee Alpena airport stayed until we arrived. I mean, fuck man. Michigan!
Very cool! I am on the other side, by Traverse City. It is slightly OK here.
And of course you puffy-heart love Michigan! It is the best and greatest State in our lauded Union, at least to my probably-slightly-biased eye. Friendly people! Low cost of living! Un-fucking-believable natural beauty! Beer! Wine! Food! Freshwater seas! Peninsulas! How can you NOT love it?
Mackinac Island fudge is the best!
I had a baked brie in Seattle from a restaurant whose name I forget, and I’d have to contact my ex to find out what it was, which…no. But it was so good I wept real tears and I will live my life in search of baked brie that good.
In Israel you can buy milk chocolate with (unflavored) pop rocks in it; I called it “exploding chocolate” but don’t know what its proper name is. I ate that nonsense CONSTANTLY when I was abroad and I can’t find it stateside except online 🙁
i don’t know if you have a trader joe’s nearby, but they have (or had? it might be limited) something that sounds along the same lines: fireworks chocolate bar.
Oh wow, thank you! This is definitely much fancier than the Israeli stuff (cheap milk chocolate + pop rocks) but looks delicious in its own right.
There’s also this pop rocks chocolate bar which is even fancier than the Trader Joes one, but also super delicious here
Re: pop rocks chocolate, it’s hard to get in the U.S. but some kosher food stores will have it, or be able to order it for you if you ask. You’re talking about the Elite pop rock bar, I assume. Kosher stores have the best Israeli imports!
BREAKFAST TACOS. I grew up in San Antonio. My husband was not convinced that the combo of tortillas, eggs, etc would be that different there but then we visited and he saw the light. Made in house fresh tortillas FTW.
I have to go to NYC every so often to get a potato knish from Zabar’s. This is non-negotiable .
Also, when I was living away from my hometown (Rochester), I had intense cravings for Abbott’s chocolate almond frozen custard. But now I live here, so I can get it whenever I want!
Western NY represent! I’m not there anymore, but I grew up about 45 minutes east via the thruway. Abbott’s is indeed delicious. My mom occasionally brings me Zweigle’s white hots when she visits, as well as Wegman’s amenities. I should probably amend my main reply to this thread with: “Everything from Wegman’s.”
YES! Wegmans is truly The Best. (I work right down the street from the very fanciest Wegmans, and it’s like my lifelong dream come true).
I am also a fan of white hots.
Is the fanciest Wegmans the Pittsford Wegmans? My parents moved to Naples like, 7 years ago, so my route when I visit them is not the same as when they lived in Phelps. IS THERE A FANCIER WEGMANS NOW?
(Are you a teacher?!?! My mom taught at Brighton. Disregard the personal questions, I just never ever “run into” people from my home area).
That’s the one! I go there for lunch a lot.
I’m a lawyer and never lived in Brighton myself, but my younger half-siblings grew up there and went to Brighton schools. So maybe they know your mom! It’s a small world here.
Ahhhh I went to Brighton! I want to know what subject your mom taught so badly…!
English! When did you go? She wasn’t there very long (left previous job because they wouldn’t let her have a sabbatical to finish her book. The last thing you’d want on your English staff is a published author, amiright?), maybe 1999-2008ish? I’m not clear on the dates myself. I costumed a couple of the theatrical productions around 2005-2006 as well.
Did you do 42nd Street? My sister was in that one.
I totally did. That is hilarious.
Ha!! I have to tell her about this tonight. (She was one of the tap dancing girls in the chorus- I think she was a freshman then).
It really is a small world.
LOL Oh I hope she was one of the ones whose opening scene rehearsal shorts fell off because wee Kat trusted the wrong people to sew. Tell her I’m sorry, again!
My sister remembered you, and said that you were “awesome” and that all the costumes were great. She didn’t mention any shorts falling off, so I don’t think that was her! 🙂
First thing I do whenever I get to Paris (which is every other year or so – I’m in the Netherlands) is find myself a crepe au sucre. Never eat crepes otherwise, not much of a pancake person overall, but a visit to Paris isn’t complete without one.
buffalo blue fries!!! @ Local Burger in Northampton MA
I definitely got an order to go the last time I was in Noho, and carefully rationed them for all of my lunches that week. Partly it’s nostalgia, but also they’re amazing.
Oh man.
1. Panang curry with chicken from Blue Orchid in Lincoln, NE. If I could marry any food, this would be it.
2. Chile verde from a Mexican restaurant in my tiny rural town. I have chile verde at every Mexican Restaurant I go to, and none of them can touch it.
3. Jaegerschnitzel from the Gasthof Krone in Eichstaett, Germany. I studied abroad there and ate this like once a week for a year. The best. The BEST.
I went to Ecuador a few years ago and they had these amazing ice cream popsicles that had three layers– I think the flavors were passionfruit, raspberry, and coconut? So so good, and I have been searching in vain for something similar in the US ever since.
Yard bird (aka fried chicken w/mace gravy) from Red Rooster in NYC. Best meal I’ve ever had. My mom took me there for my birthday brunch this year, I had that and she had mac and cheese with collard greens. We also had cornbread and a pitcher of drinks and since it was my birthday the restaurant gave us free champagne and dessert – donuts with some kind of sweet potato goo that were amazing.
It was soooooooo good and so expensive and I want to eat that same meal like every day.
I live walking distance from Red Rooster and it is all I can do to not get that mac ‘n cheese like once a week. The sweet potato donuts are also great.
I adore Marcus Samuelsson. I would follow him anywhere.
Oh man I have SO MANY:
Any coffee from Tazza d’Oro in Rome, but the coffee granita especially.
The frites with mayo and fresh onions from the snack stand in front of the train station in Münster, Germany, where I did my postdoc.
Tongue tacos from Taqueria Juanitos in Tucson.
Clams in black bean sauce from Yuet Lee in San Francisco.
Oh, location specific coffee! I have had two really transcendent cups of coffee while traveling– a caramel latte from Vivace in Seattle (the only caramel coffee drink I have ever enjoyed) and a cup of charcoal-roasted coffee bought from a ferry station in Tokyo near Asakusa. Coffee granita sounds great, like iced coffee on steroids.
It’s basically coffee sorbet (with some strong vanilla notes) and a dollop of barely-sweetened whipped cream. It’s perfect on a humid Rome summer day, and I dream about it constantly.
Their coffees are also delightful.
Falafel at L’As Du Fallafel in Paris.
Spring Grove Soda Pop in Spring Grove, Minnesota.
There is a cheese farm in my home town that makes the most incredible gouda. And curds. I bring home as much as I can possibly eat before it goes off and then most days eat slices of cheese for lunch and poutine for dinner.
Also, Finn pancakes. They are not big fluffy pancakes. They are not crepes. They are Finn pancakes and they are glorious. I make them at home too but this one particular restaurant has their one particular recipe and I usually go there from the airport when I visit home.
You had me at “cheese farm”. My hometown was once the Sauerkraut capital of the world. A cheese farm is world’s better.
When I was but a youth on the college admissions beat, my parents road-tripped through the Mid-Atlantic and found approximately ten thousand places selling beautiful Amish food. I am, however, going to specifically rep the farmer’s market that I visited on the PSU campus, because sweet Jesus, they had the real Amish vendors, raw dairy and huge baked goods and ten thousand kinds of preserves and cut-up rabbit, as well as (to my recollection) the kind of fruit and vegetables that are so local the farms are too small to be USDA certified organic.
When I was in Tokyo I had the most amazing chicken at an izakaya–it had wonderful yuzu kosho dipping sauce. I bought a few bottles of yuzu kosho in Japan, but I wish I’d bought, like, 100 bottles to bring back with me. I also had firefly squid in soy sauce that were so light a refreshing, and raw cow stomach that was also light and fresh and so delicious. Really, all the food I had in Japan was amazing.
In Hong Kong I went to a Michelin-starred Italian restaurant and tasted real burrata and actual pieces of black truffle for the first time. Also memorable.
Oh! And also! Fries with mayo, bought on the street in the Netherlands. Eaten from a cone with a tiny fork. The only phrase I truly mastered while living in the Netherlands during college was “frites mit mayo.”
Crab sandwiches from the Duke of York in Whitby. There is no other crab sandwich. It’s like eating the North Sea.
Lobster rolls from Union Oyster House in Boston. Buttery, crispy rolls, cold lobster, just enough celery and dressing. A+ would eat ten more in one go
The hard rolls and butter that I ate every day for breakfast in Austria. Something about them, man. And the butter, my God. I can’t begin.
There’s a grab-and-go sandwich place in Kings Cross Station that has the most amazing bacon-and-Brie baguettes with cranberry relish. I can’t eat anything even sort of like it without thinking about it–they warm it through so the bread is soft and the cheese gets melty and it’s so so so good.
I may have just slobbered all over my keyboard reading that.
It used to be Snelgroves Burnt Almond Fudge ice cream, but then they went out of business. We would go out for cones whenever we visited my grandparents in SLC, and I miss it every time I drive by the old store now that I live there.
There’s a bakery in Palo Alto that makes/made (I haven’t been in a couple of years) a sourdough loaf packed FULL of dried cranberries. It’s the best, and I’ve never seen anything like it anywhere else.
– Concretes from Ted Drewes in St. Louis (I have not had one in probably…19 years? And I will likely never have one again. But I still think about them sometimes.)
– Falafel from Maoz in London (or one of the Paris locations), it is the best falafel anywhere and I go there at least once every time I am in London. (You have to get the box meal, because then you have more room to load up on all the good stuff from the toppings/veggie bar.)
– Vacherin cheese in Geneva, which is only in stores for a few months every year and I almost always miss it by juuuuuuuust a couple of weeks on either end, and the stuff you can sometimes get in the fancy European grocery/deli here is just not the same At All.
– Also, the entire yogurt aisle of any Migros grocery in Geneva. And the chocolate bar aisle.
– Cream cake from Ruszwurm in Budapest — there are lots of other cream cakes to be had around the city, but Ruszwurm’s is the best, and sometimes when I’m over there I take the bus up to that part of town just to have coffee and cake there.
– Apple pie with fresh whipped cream from one particular little cafe in Amsterdam that I never remember the name of but I did manage to find it again on a return trip, and if you google Best Apple Pie In Amsterdam I’m pretty sure that cafe comes up in the results.
– Every morning’s breakfast from the super-nerdy French language summer camp I went to twice when I was in Jr. High School — fresh-baked baguettes every morning, and pitchers of hot chocolate, and many bowls of muesli fixings, and real jam, and those two months at camp is the only time in my life that I have ever eaten breakfast daily, or wanted to.
Joyful things! Yesterday I found out that Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie was speaking at a library right by my office and I was able to go! And then I finished Americanah this morning and now I just want to consume everything she’s ever written. She’s so smart and articulate and full of grace and wow.
I must thank Google for stalking both my search history and my location and informing me of this event yesterday afternoon. Woo big brother
Americanah is being made into a film! I think Lupita Nyong’o is playing Ifemelu,
Yes! And David Oyelowo is Obinze. I really hope it’s good.
That’s awesome! I just read Americanah last month. I would love to hear her speak, because not only is she awesome, but I love her voice as well!
i’m sick >:( but i still had to come in an hour early for a meeting.
i also still haven’t seen the avengers 2: 2 much joss whedon and the more i read about it, the less i want to see it, which is stupid, because i just want to see captain america on screen, but not joss whedon’s Your Republican Grandpa version of cap.
basically i feel like a huge whiny baby
I enjoyed it, and I’m going to go ahead and say that I think tumblr and tumblr-adjacent parts of the internet are really exaggerating Cap’s conservatism. He’s not actively progressive, but tbh I didn’t find him actively conservative either. He’s really not given a lot of screentime outside of fight scenes. I didn’t mind the romance at all, either. I don’t really ship them but I thought it was nice that Natasha can have romantic and platonic relationships with male teammates without anyone acting weird about it. It felt more grown-up than a lot of action movie romances.
mostly i’m worried because i haaaated cap’s characterization in the first avengers movie. his comment about “there’s only one god, ma’am and i’m pretty sure he doesn’t dress like that” and the “son, just don’t” line—nothing steve rogers would ever, ever say.
all i’ve heard about cap in the new movie is that at one point he chastises someone with “language,” which i find really silly, because, hello, cap was in the army, lead the howling commandos, was best friends with bucky barnes—does anyone in their right mind think he would actually have a problem with profanity??? just super lazy characterization.
also i’m super mad that it looks like they took wanda and pietro—two jewish romani characters, and seem to have completely stripped them of their heritage and then had them volunteer for a nazi organization? who the fuck thought that was a good idea???
It is kind of more of the same Avengers Cap, so you may not like him in this. I read it more as Steve awkwardly feeling out his role as the leader of the avengers, which is partly based on his actual skills and partly on this outsized persona that is sometimes at odds with who he really is as a person (it is on an active com line, so he’s in Official Cap mode). But I am very good at reading things I want to like in a positive light, so YMMV!
Toasts! This weekend is WIZARD WORLD PHILADELPHIA, my first convention of the season, and I am debuting a cosplay and I am nervous!
One of the things I love about cosplay is that my dad goes Peak Dad when it comes to props. I ask him if he has any suggestions for how to make something (in this case, a gem destabilizer from Steven Universe) and the next thing I know we’re at Home Depot trying to find components. He took official art, scaled it out, transferred it to a piece of wainscoting, and filled in the cracks with spackle. He did the same thing with my Kirby wand.
Anyone feel like sharing their Peak Dad stories?
I’ve shared this before on the toast, but it’s the peakest of peak dads, so here it is again.
When I went to college, my dad was very suspicious of sending me packages because he thought that things would get lost in campus mail or I didn’t know how to report my own address. It was unclear. Therefore, he wanted to test out this whole system before sending me anything important and/or valuable. I got a letter in the mail one day from my dad that just included a single piece of paper, with huge writing that said “THIS IS JUST A TEST. THIS IS NOT A REAL LETTER. LOVE, DAD.”
He also sent me a text last week that said “Have you seen the video of the pony hugging a woman, just great.” which for some reason is extraordinarily hilarious to me.
That is hilarious. A+ dadding.
My dad built me a TARDIS garden shed for my birthday a few years ago. Peak Dad-ness.
Awww, dads 🙂 good luck on your cosplay, I’m sure you’ll kill it!
When I was in middle school, I was in a junior theatre stage production of Lord of the Rings. We all pitched in with props and sets, and so my dad went Peak Dad and together we figured out how to mass produce gorgeous wooden swords. We had them all hanging by fishing line from the garage ceiling at one point so we could spray paint the blades silver. Dads!
Heroic dad story from my childhood. Combing the city for a Battle Cat during peak He-Man days. He found one and he was incredibly and justifiably proud of himself.
Awwwww!
Not a dad story, but PLEASE tell us more about your SU costume (love that show too much, too upset about the surprise hiatus)
aaah yay! I’m gonna be JASPER and I am so pumped, the only thing I am nervous about is that the unitard I ordered arrived much lighter than I thought so I’m not ENTIRELY on model but I hope that my gem destabilizer will make up for it!
The next big-ish con I’m going to we have a full group (Rose, Greg, Amethyst, Steven, Lapis, POSSIBLY a genderswapped Garnet and a Pearl) and I really just want to take pictures with Garnet cosplayers of her kicking my butt and Lapis cosplayers of us fusion dancing. YEAH
cuuuuute. i don’t do cosplay/cons but the big queer house i live in at school has a themed private party every semester and in the fall we are absolutely doing a SU theme. gotta figure out what gem i can most easily/cheaply pull off.
Jasper’s been around long enough to remember the first war for this garbage planet, and she has to have retreated to her gem a few times over the millennia. She’s probably had the opportunity to try out different shades of leotard.
That convention sounds awesome, have fun!
Not only did my dad purchase a snowblower for our wedding gift, this week he loaned us a sum of money in order to pay our mortgage. My dad is pretty amazing.
A snowblower is the dadiest of all gifts!
My dad just offered to buy me a new toilet and bathroom sink for my birthday, which I am totally going to take him up on.
Those are the kind of presents I really like, now that I am An Old.
I’m so envious (and old)!
When I left Bad-News Husband: The Starter Edition, and moved into my own apartment, I said to my dad, “I guess I’ll need to buy a hammer so I can hang some pictures up.”
He said, “I’ll take care of it,” and apparently, immediately after hanging up the phone, left the house for 2 hours.
Four days later I received a giant, heavy box that contained a toolbox chock full of everything I might ever need to make any kind of repair ever except possibly maintaining a nuclear power station. And a plate hanger. In case I ever needed to hang a plate.
As someone who has been wondering how to hang up the decorative plate received for my wedding (*cough* four years ago *cough*), I am deeply intrigued about this plate hanger business…
The one I have I got at, like, JoAnn Fabrics, and it’s basically an L-shaped bracket with two arms that come out from the wall. It was very easy to install (two screws?) and I believe they had different sizes.
My dad bought me a full tool kit when I moved into my first apartment, and to this day, nearly thirty years later, regularly inquires about the status of its contents as if they’re family members and he’s asking after their health.
This week my parents had solar panels installed on their roof, and my dad went up every day, took pictures of the workers working, and then sent those to all of us to keep us updated on their progress. He even made them stop to pose for a picture!
Guys, my joy:
despite the stressful move about to happen, I’m so excited to get to Oregon and ride my motorcycle freely over the country and mountain roads. I want to see Crater Lake from the seat of my motorcycle. I want to ride around without fears of trolley tracks catching my wheel or the frustration of stopping at every. single. light.
Beyond stoked.
Anyone else ride that is super excited for the warmer months and new adventures?
I just moved to Oregon too and I want to spend most of my free time this summer going to the coast. I spent the last five years living in the desert and I missed the ocean so much!
I wanna hit the coast too! I understand there is a great beach almost directly west from where I will be, maybe with elk? or something? HOW COOL!?!?
Me!! This winter was particularly horrible, and I kind of feel like a sleepy bear emerging from a cave. (And I’ve been working crazy hours at work for a long time now).
I’m getting the wanderlust in a big way now. Hoping to do some trips to the Finger Lakes this summer (maybe do some wine tasting), or along the Hudson River. Honestly, I would just like flee from the office, hop in the car or a train, and go *anyplace* right now.
That Oregon trip sounds really fun!
AH! I went to the Finger Lakes Wine Festival about 4 years ago, and it was SO MUCH FUN! it was around June-ish I think? You should totally check it out!
Will do, thanks! 🙂
I love that area- I spent a lot of time there growing up, and went to college there. (They actually had a wine tasting class at my school, but I was too young to take it, sadly!)
Ahhh! How awesome! What’s your ride?
The Burgomaster bought a ratty old Honda Elsinore that he’s going to restore for me once the Chevelle is on the road. So, in about five years? I’ll be on two wheels, myself.
I have a Sym Wolf 150 Classic, green motor cover. It’s a classic styled new bike, 2014. Only 150cc, but I like it: the warranty helps me feel confident riding it because I don’t know maintenance (yet) and the size makes it feel manageable for me.
But real talk: riding a motorcycle is honestly one of my favorite activities now. It feels so free and amazing. You’ll love it.
I love being a passenger on a motorcycle, and it’s only been in the last year or so that I’ve gotten so I think I would be comfortable driving one myself. Here’s the Burgomaster’s ride:
GUH! that is such a beauty!!!
Welcome to Oregon! I moved out here more than 7 years ago and I love it. Seeing it from a bike sounds deliciously joyful. Don’t miss the Japanese Garden in Portland.
Oh god yes. It’s literally perfect outside–75 and breezy, no humidity and also no bugs–and that meant today’s voyage to the post office included meandering around town for a little while and also getting a chicken salad croissant, which is one of my favorite warm-weather lunches. So happy. Why office.
I missed the OT yesterday but I’m basically bursting with excitement/anxiety about moving to CA this summer to finally live in the same place as my partner. I’m going by way of an absurd cross-country road trip to make it to two weddings on the East and West coasts, respectively, and pick up my mom so she can do some of the road tripping with me. It’s going to be a blast.
Crafting thread!
This came in the mail last week. I can’t wait to start crocheting myself a yoda. I do hope he becomes slightly more symmetric than the wyvern I attempted recently…
Oh my goodness that is just adorable – I really want to get into crochet! My mum tried to teach me once but gave up :(.
That sounds amazing.
that’s just delightful! Crochet intimidates me…I can knit and used to do a lot of needle felting, but crochet just doesn’t make sense. Good luck and may the force be with you.
craft thread-wise, I’ve been helping my parents sort all of their basement storage and REDISCOVERED all of my felting supplies from high school. Not sure if the wool is too dried out to use, but I might use your yoda as inspiration for some Star Wars felted people. we should share progress pictures next week 🙂
We definitely should!
After six failed attempts as an adult, I have ordered an introductory crochet kit for kids. I want to make some washcloths and dishcloths. They’re just squares, not rocket science, so I hope the easier instructions get me there.
If you’re a visual learner check for tutorials on youtube! Some of that stuff is so much easier when you can watch an actual pair of hands do it!
I’m pretty new at crochet too, so I keep losing count and then making lopsided things. On the bright side: mistakes are a lot easier to fix than in knitting!
Thanks for this–my leftie friend found southpaw videos and turned herself into a crochet MACHINE in no time flat. I, for some reason, am a stalwart for book larnin’, but I may try to follow up with YouTube for the finer points. Fingers and different-sized hooks crossed.
That looks awesome!
I have been asked to embroider something for my grandmother’s impending funeral (she’s not doing well, so it will be a relief), and am feeling the pressure. But my Dad is talking everything through, so hopefully I’ll end up with something meaningful that is very her. And fingers crossed I get it finished in time!
That sounds like the most lovely tribute. Sending good thoughts your way.
Thank you
I haven’t done any crafting/sewing in way too long. I think I have been mentally just Not Right and need to get back into it to keep the anxiety down. I’m going to a quilt show with vendor booths tomorrow, which I hope sparks interest again. I don’t think it’s time for a new hobby, just need encouragement to keep going with stuff.
I interviewed for a different position in my organization yesterday! They are not interviewing the other candidates until week after next, so I have a bit to wait before hearing back and am trying not to go crazy. It would be a great move for me, but it would put my current department in a really bad position because I would be leaving them on 2-3 weeks’ notice, and it would likely take them several months to fill my position. I am trying not to feel like a heel for doing what’s best for me, and not really succeeding.
Also: internal interviews are so weird! I’m working on projects currently with 2/3 of my interview panel! It felt very strange!
You gotta put yourself first! Good luck with getting the new job!
ALSO! I AM PINK AGAIN:
I love that lipstick! What’s it called?
Thank you! It’s the Nyx Wicked Lippie Betrayal, I believe! It may be Immortal, though – I bought both and can’t remember which I grabbed last night!
I was just writing the same thing!
Elyse, were you the one who posted about the selfies with toilets series? That was the cutest.
KEEP POSTING SELFIES – I love them. Your hair is an inspiration.
Yes!!! It is me! My high school friends and I started #ToiletSelfieFriday and I have yet to take today’s, but it seems like more people are joining in!
I am blushing like 100000x shades of red right now, you are wonderful and I love you!
*preens*
that’s such a gorgeous soft pink, I really like it.
A+ outfit choice to compliment, too
Thank you! eShakti had some great stuff this spring, a perfect match 🙂
You have such wonderful huge sweet cartoon character eyes (this is a compliment, although I suspect it sounds different in my head than it sounds out loud, but it’s really a giant compliment), and I cannot stop looking at them. Riveting eyes. (And the pink is lovely, too.)
I love the way it shades from redder to pinker — subtle but gives lots of depth to the color & to your hair! And I love the tough floral thing you have going on, too — just lovely!
My joyful things are:
-I’m leaving work early to go home and bake a cake
-I’m getting a haircut tonight
-I’m reading a Miss Fisher Murder Mystery
-The Caps are up 3 games to 1 in the second round of the playoffs!
-Agent Carter got renewed and I am wearing my Bessame lipstick to celebrate!
That is an excellent Friday night plan!
I really have to catch up on Agent Carter… I wonder if Hulu has it. Off to check.
A fellow Caps fan Toastie?!! Where have you been all my life??
I’ve been the worst fan in the world for the last couple of seasons because I didn’t have cable and I hate watching in bars. But I never realized illegal feeds had gotten much better! And now I remember how awesome it is to actually watch a hockey game. It’s the best! Except when they lose. That’s the worst.
Hooray Miss Fisher! I need to go back and read the earlier books again, it’s been a while and they’re so much fun.
12 Angry Men Inside Amy Schumer, anyone? I’ll start off by saying that I am irrationally proud of Amy Schumer – it’s like I’m her mom or something. Toasties who haven’t beheld the glory of S3 Ep 3 and who don’t have cable apparently can pick it up over on Amazon for $2. It was on Youtube for about 2 hours before the inevitable takedown notice.
On other notes:
* Online dating: nothing (good) to report. Let’s just hope that things stay merely banal – I don’t really want to live in interesting times where this issue is concerned.
* I am going to see Maria Bamford at the Wilbur tonight!!!!
I LOVED 12 Angry Men Inside Amy Schumer. Then got into a whole discussion with the boy, who thought it was funny too but said that since there were plenty of talented people in the world, why not cast the ones who are most pleasant to look at, and of course he’s straight so he has no opinion on which guys are more pleasant to look at and uuuuuuugh. Luckily, I managed to get through to him a little by explaining that due to our fucked up society, I almost automatically judge the attractiveness of women immediately too, and that sucks.
It got posted on Gawker, and like half the comment section was men debating whether or not they found her attractive (“I don’t understand it! She’s really pretty!”) The entire show is like a televised version of Lewis’ Law.
Did that ($2 on Amazon) just last night, and it was all more than worth all two of those dollars. I would watch a feature-length film version of this episode – it was perfect form start to finish.
How did I not know that she was so awesome until this last week?
yay for maria bamford! she’s a good one.
“But I was on trial for vehicular manslaughter!”
I died
Also I am SO JEALOUS of you re: Maria Bamford. She’s my eternal fave and I can’t go because I’m Shabbat-observant. Way to test my faith, universe!
OMG!!!! THE AMY SCHUMER 12 ANGRY MEN EPISODE WAS BRILLIANT!!!!!! I LOVED IT!!!!!!
I tried showing my parents a few episodes of Inside Amy Schumer (which I have also done with Broad City), but they like just did not get it! It made me kind of sad–I guess they are more of the Jimmy-Fallon-esque-humor 🙁 *sigh*
Well, the news came through! We’re packing our bags and moving to London. My husband’s transfer has been approved and now we begin the visa process and jump through a million hoops and decide what to do with our stuff. Has anyone had luck with shipping things across the ocean? Will I have to promise them my first born child in exchange? Also, if anyone wants to talk to me about neighborhoods in London, I am all ears.
My London advice would be a good 15 years old, but I’m very excited for you! I shipped by freight to get my stuff to the States, and that was pretty affordable, if a bit drawn out. Best of luck!!!
Thanks for the glimmer of hope! Affordable would be lovely, although I will also settle for not so exhorbitant that I cry actual tears.
RE: neigbourhoods, depends what you want out of your London experience, but my go to advice for people is look at Zone 3 south of the River. Its slightly less that eye-wateringly expensive, lots of pretty parks and the trains and buses are brilliant, which makes up for the lack of the Tube. (For reference Zone 1 is central London, no one lives here apart from oligarchs, and Zone 2 is where all the fancy apartments and penthouses are. Anything past Zone 4 is a barren wasteland, or so I’ve heard, and it will take an hour plus to get into central from there)
I’m also a London immigrant, so obviously a source of sage London wisedom (With my whole year of living here!)
Hahah this is 100% correct! People used to look at me aghast when I told them I lived in zone 6 (but it was so leafy!).
Thank you so much! I appreciate all possible insight! I’m moving from a tiny place with very little public transit, so this will be a big old adjustment.
The public transport can be a bit intimidating in London! Google Maps is very useful and gives lots of info about transport options (give it a try, type in two addresses and get directions) and CityMapper is also good. The underground is probably the easiest to get your head around, there is multiple lines, but its all colour coded and the map is very easy to understand (And there’s an app that will plan journeys for your, I think its Tube Map). But I highely recommend getting over the dependency on the tube as soon as possible, its nasty to commute on the tube (super packed, super hot and claustrophobic), busses are sort of easy to understand, esp if you know where your’re going. Trains are a bit terrifying at first, there’s about 10 different train companies operating in London, and they all go to different places, usually outside of london, but they all run on the same lines all the time, so you begin to learn where they stop along the way. E.g I live on the Thamelink lines, which go front Kent, through South London, and then London Blackfriars (one of the bridges) and up to St Pancras (which is beside Kings Cross)
Most people want to live near a tube station, esp when they first move here, but often you can find a Train station near by that goes to the same place, quicker and cheaper, and the houses are cheaper.
It all looks a bit scary until you get here, and its all pretty logical. But you will get used to taking at least two buses or having to change tube lines a few times to get anywhere (I refuse to go anywhere that requires more than 1 change), and everything take either 1/2 an hour or an hour to get there.
Serious pro-tip: In Central,its often much quicker to walk between tube stations than actually get the tube, or get a different lineto a station just around the corner, so always check it out on Google maps!
Thanks! It is all a bit scary to wrap my head around, but yes, I’d much rather commute by train or bus if possible because I do not love being underground. It’s good to know there are other options to consider.
You’ll be fine once you get here and experience it all. The best thing about London/UK is the post codes, you don’t have to remember addresses, just post codes to type into google 😀
Do you have a plan for your accomodation for when you arrive? I’d suggest trying to find a houseshare or something with a month to month contract to move straight into when you get here, and then you can go find houses to rent (are agency fee’s a thing where you are? cause look forward to some shocks), that way you don’t have to sign a lease from abroad without seeing the place (I’ve had to do that before, luckily it worked out ok, but it was an added stress)
Yes, the plan is to start out month to month. Agency fees and brokers are not a thing where I’m from because we are rich in space and can sprawl as needed here, but I have read this article on the billfold: http://thebillfold.com/2015/05/brokers-i-have-kno… It’s about apartment hunting in New York, but some things translate, I’m sure. So I’m just sort of steeling my nerves for that part; not sure what else I can do really.
Try and find a private landlord; you loose out slightly on service, but you save a TON of money, its usually just a months rent as deposit and first months rent upfront, instead of 6 weeks-2months rent as deposit plus 100-300 in ‘fees’ for signing the bloody contract with an agency. If you’re a decent tenant, most private landlords are super cool and don’t care what you do with the house decoration wise, but they also often won’t do maintenance or upkeep as often as you like. If you’re happy enough to do your own painting and basic DIY it’s brilliant, but it can me a pain if things like the washing machine or boiler breaks because they might be a bit slow to fix it (totally depends on the landlord). And its much easier to develop a relationship with your landlord, and negotiate on rent after a few years, instead of just being slapped with rent increases every year
I avoid letting agencies like the plague, I’ve lived in three different houses in the UK, all private arangements and its been brilliant
Very good to know. Luckily, I’m very very handy with everything except electrical issues. Plumbing and small cosmetic repairs are my strong suit. If I could find someone who would let me change the fixtures or not care, so long as I replaced them when I moved, that would be ideal.
2 months and 6 weeks deposit sounds outrageous, but I guess I have to get ready for life in a big city. Do you go about finding private arrangements in the same way or is it all word of mouth? I’m leaning very heavily towards doing a short-term rental and then trying to find something more permanent from there, but the thought of moving all of our stuff twice is … discouraging.
Oh well, it’s all part of the adventure!
Most house hunting websites will have private options on them, some, like spareroom.co.uk, have an option to search private landlords only etc. I’ve found all of my houses online, it just takes a bit of digging and being very sure of what you want vs what you don’t want
Gumtree.com is always good for finding a huge amount of houses/houseshares, but you do have to dig through a LOT of crap and dodgy posts (You’ll find men looking for ‘roomshares’ with young single women AAAGGGHH), the more specific you can be about where you want to live the better.
For example when I started house hunting in London, as soon as I discovered the price discrepancy between North and South, I knew I wanted to live south (London is a very un-even city, everything this north of the river, South is pretty much a suburb, which is very different from the likes of Dublin where I grew up, where there’s equal city on both sides of the river), South is great because you can live walking distance from the River for relatively cheap, compared to North, in somewhere like Vauxhall or Greenwhich (still expensive though). I originally wanted to live in Clapham, cause its pretty, but as I got a bit more realistic about my budget I headed further east in my hunt and ended up in Honor Oak Park/Forest Hill, which is like an up-and-coming Dulwich, I had said I’d never live in Lewisham (the Borough) as it has a pretty dodgy reputation, but actually I love it here, its full of just normal people living their lives, really nice houses and parks, and transport is brilliant.
Good luck with the house hunting! I hope you find exactly what you want!
Thanks again for all the feedback! I just noticed this because I came back to this thread to make some notes. I’m leaning South too for the reasons you mentioned, although it’s still all a bit theoretical because I’ve really only been looking at listings and “walking” around on google maps. The proximity to the river also sounds nice, mostly because I feel like I will be seriously jonesing for green spaces. The parks in the south look nice and spacious. On google street view I can see some picnics happening in Clapham Commons.
Anyway, I cannot even begin to say how grateful I am for all the insider insight. It’s already been a word of help in soothing my nerves. 🙂
Also get an Oyster Card ASAP, they are amazing!
Oh my gosh that is super exciting! Hooray! I am so jealous!
Thanks! I’m very excited, but also quite nervous. It’s hard to know what I really feel. It’s like that scene where Mr. Burns’ doctor tells him that he has so many diseases that they’ve created a kind of traffic jam. But with feelings instead of diseases.
Wow, how exciting! Do you know where he’ll be working in London? And what kind of places you’d be looking at? I’m at (hopefully) the end of the house buying process in London so have some vague idea of areas but I guess it depends on what you’re looking for and budget etc.
From what I understand of the lay of the land, the office sits on the cusp of Zone 1 and 2 in the North East? Or North Central? I do not know where the dividing line for east/central/west sits, but if I had to guess I would say East Central.
Edit: More information might help. We’re looking for a one or two bedroom place with no roommates. Could look at smaller places in nicer neighborhoods, since we did live in an efficiency together once and survived, or larger places further out, but my preference at the moment would be for something tiny and nearby to transit over something large and remote. We have not hammered out a budget yet, or even really wrapped our heads around the dollar to pound conversion, so I expect to look at everything to get a sense of the range. Except maybe not the zone where the oligarchs live, as that is almost definitely out of the question.
If this gives you any ideas, I’d be happy to hear them! It’s soothing for me to start putting it out there so to speak, although at the moment it still feels like a daunting road ahead.
Ah ok so more useful to go on is kind of what station(s) are near the workplace as they’ll determine what line (or rail link) you’ll want to be near to. http://commutefrom.com/
This website is useful if you have an idea of the office location. It can bug out sometimes and tell you your journey will take you 0 minutes but it gives you a good idea of your rail/tube options, and its ‘monthly fare’ calculator is a bit outdated (but if you click on the fare it gives you, it links you to a more updated version). Ok that looks a bit overwhelming at first, so I guess having an idea of areas is good and then you can click on those areas and see how they work with your travel needs.
My experience is mostly limited to South London but here goes:
Clapham: very nice, a bit yummy mummy, rather expensive. Has rail links (giant Clapham Junction) and tube (Clapham Common, Clapham South, Clapham North)
Balham: basically the next clapham, a bit cheaper but still too expensive for me :). Rail links into Victoria and Clapham Junction.
Streatham: have friends who live here but I’m not a huge fan, I’m quite a delicate flower though. Rail links into Victoria I think.
Streatham Hill: where I live now, I like it because it strikes a balance between safe but not hugely gentrified (yet), there are loads of cool delis and stuff down on the high street. Transport links are rail, takes 20 minutes to Victoria. You can also get buses to Brixton that gives you more transport options.
Brixton: used to be…er…not great, now is getting very trendy and prices are going up accordingly. It has rail links to Victoria (takes about 5 minutes), and the real plus if you ask me is that it’s the terminus for the Victoria tube line, which means you always get a seat.
Crystal Palace: further out and therefore more affordable, lovely in my opinion, but basically as you get further out you are more reliant on rail and have less bus support. So if rail is screwed for some reason, it can be slow to get in by bus. Still do-able though.
Dulwich, Sydenham Hill, Herne Hill, Forest Hill: all on rail links but no tubes, quite suburban considering how close they are to central, all nice; Dulwich and Herne Hill rather expensive, Sydenham Hill and Forest Hill a bit less so.
Peckham: Close to central – has a rep for being a rough area but in recent years has been popular with young professionals who want to be closer to London. For the Denmark Hill area this is particularly true, Queens Road area a bit less so.
Greenwich: nice, close to London, too expensive for me 🙁
Blackheath: very nice! Transport links not quite as good as you’d think for a place so close into central.
Lewisham: another one of those areas that has a poor reputation but now certain parts of it are getting the run off from people wanting to be near Greenwich and Blackheath.
Canada Water/Surrey Quays: my brother lives here at the moment! It’s another area that is getting its share of young professionals who have been priced out of other areas.
Ok North of the river I’m not very familiar with so this is more based on hearsay/what my coworkers say etc.:
Kentish Town, Camden: very nice, prices to match the niceness though
Belsize Park: Have you ever seen the parent trap (Lindsay Lohan version), and the house Annie lives in? I would not be surprised if that was Belsize park – I went there one time and pretty much just said ‘holy shit’ over and over again, it is SO fancy. But expensive.
Chalk farm: Also nice, I believe more expensive than Kentish town and Camden, not 100% sure on that though.
Angel, Islington: Very very nice, unaffordable for most.
Stoke Newington: lots of people I work with live here, from what I can tell it’s a very nice place to live – has a bit of a villagey feel despite its proximity to London.
Shoreditch, Dalston, Hoxton: currently becoming very hip and trendy
Alexandra Palace: honestly I’ve only been here one time to attend a quilting fair (because I am a normal 25 year-old >_>) but it looked like it would be a lovely place to live and I was very envious of the Ally Pally residents. Trains can be infrequent though, but I was going on a Sunday.
Walthamstow: briefly wanted to live here mostly because they have a market that sells an amazing range of fabric. From my research it looked like an area known as Walthamstow Village (I think historically?) was the nice place to be, and places surrounding were less nice.
Seven Sisters: my friend currently lives here but is trying to find a way to move, apparently it’s not such a nice place.
Ok I think that’s enough from me! Let me know if you need more clarification or have more ideas on what you like vs. what you don’t like – I get all the email updates anyway so I’ll see any replies 🙂
Thank you so much! This will all be going in my notes to pour over and re-pour over. I had not heard the term ‘yummy mummy’ but I have a friend who lives in Park Slope, Brooklyn, which is basically the epicenter of very toned mommies pushing strollers and having lattes or juices on the way to or from yoga, so I think I know what you mean there.
Bus support would be helpful, I think, so thank you for pointing out the places that might be a little to far out. I’m somewhat resigned to living in the not perfect spot our first year, and then learning from our mistakes, but it would be nice to make managable mistakes rather than getting stuck somewhere where we need to make a million transfers every day or spend what we save in rent on transit, so I will indeed be putting commutefrom.com through its paces. 🙂
Sorry that was a bit long! Yummy mummy and nappy valley are terms I saw a lot when I was looking at areas a few months ago, so I guess they’ve rubbed off on me!
I saw below you mentioned King’s Cross. In that case, South is do-able (most South-east areas – which are most of the areas I noted above – have their rail links into Victoria, and Victoria is of course on the Victoria line, which King’s Cross is on as well*), Brixton may be worth a look as it’s Victoria line and would get you to King’s X in about 15 mins. But you may want to focus on areas like Camden, Kentish Town, Chalk Farm. To be honest you could probably walk from Kentish Town to King’s Cross in about 40 minutes, but according to commute from, going via Tube is super duper quick as well. I still like Alexandra Palace, which has trains into King’s Cross that take 15 minutes, but I think the vibe is a bit different. Kentish Town and Camden are quite central and as far I know have a bit more of a night life, and a bustle basically. Alexandra Palace is a bit quieter, it appeals to my needs for ‘quiet retreat after the work day’.
Oh and property sites to look at to get an idea of places: http://www.zoopla.com http://www.rightmove.com
*But transferring from rail to tube at Victoria station at rush hour can sometimes be a real pain in the ass – I say as someone who luckily works in Victoria, so as I go up from the tube, I see all the queues of people on their way down
So helpful! I poked around on rightmove earlier, but there’s such a wide range of prices and neighborhoods that it was more bewildering than productive, but now I am going to dive back in with vigour. I’m hopelessly indecisive, so it helps to narrow down the list as much as possible, before I even start to think about amenities.
I live in London (north of river), and grew up here (south of river) so ask away if you want to know about specific areas! What sort of environment are you looking for?
Yay! I have so many questions and am just going to spill some out, so please don’t feel obligate to answer all or any of them; it may be a bit of a jumble.
Here goes:
1) South of the river, how’s the commute to the north of the river side, if someone has an office job that has a somewhat flexible start but would still sometimes need to come in at rush hour?
2) Biking, can someone who usually commutes via bike expect to continue doing that. My bicycle commute is very long, but flat. We have some snow, so I can deal with all-weather biking, but maybe not traffic.
3) Is there a good neighborhood park somewhere? Perhaps something for someone who is used to trees and quiet.
As far as environment, we’re on the older end of the young couple spectrum with neither kids nor pets, although we might want to have children someday. We cook a lot, so proximity to a grocery store would be a bonus. We’re also an interracial couple, sorry there’s no real segue there but I have been reading about the elections and worrying, so would prefer to live in a diverse area if possible or at least one where we would not stick out too much and where our child, were we to have one some day, would feel comfortable. This is in fact my biggest source of excitement in moving to an actual city, since it was not on the table in my childhood. As I mentioned above, I do need some green space, but one serrious park and some potted plants and maybe a balcony should suffice.
Ok, here goes:
From your other replies, it sounds like you’re commuting to somewhere like King’s Cross or thereabouts? Basically, commute-wise, if you’re within a 10-15 minute walk of a Tube station, you should be able to commute in 45 minutes or so. So, south of the river, you’re looking at places like Brixton, Clapham, Tooting. The Overground, which runs in a circle through the inner suburbs, is also pretty handy though slower.
Cycling – I actually cycle to work in London myself, but I would advise proceeding with caution. It’s not the most bike-friendly city in terms of infrastructure and attitudes, though it is reasonably flat. I’ve worked out a route that bypasses busy roads as much as possible, and sticks to cycle paths and side streets where those exist, but it’s still far from ideal. Try testing yourself in traffic before you commit to cycling to work, and build up your confidence if it’s an environment you’re not used to.
Parks – London is pretty leafy, and you’re usually never far from a park, square or common. Ditto grocery shops – chain supermarkets like Tesco and Sainsbury’s have little ‘metro markets’ dotted all over the place, and depending on the area you live in, there are lots of independent shops as well, although these can be more expensive.
Diversity – London is diverse as fuck, for the most part. There are a few ‘white flight’ suburbs on the outermost edges, bordering Essex and Kent, and the super-rich districts of Mayfair, Kensington, etc. aren’t especially diverse, but otherwise London is the classic ‘melting pot’ city. It’s not perfect, but significantly more liberal and progressive than other parts of England.
Also happy to answer questions about specific areas, if I can!
Wow! That’s all wonderful to know. Diverse as fuck sounds perfect. I will cross Mayfair and Kensington off the list, although I suspect they were never really on any reasonable list in the first place. We can absolutely do the £1000 to £1700 range, but it would be a stretch to go outside of that, especially because my job hunting will be a big x-factor, so thank you for throwing out those figures.
You’ve hit the nail on the head re King’s Cross, so to be more specific about neighborhoods, would it be concievable to live nearby? Is that area Camden? Do you like living there? To get there from the south, is it best to be on the Victoria line? Which I guess means I am also curious about Brixton.
As far as cycling, it will certainly be a long while before I try it out, since traffic rules will be a bit different and I am fairly nervous about that. We will almost certainly be without a car though, so I will probably eventually want to ride again, just to expand my circle.
I actually live very near Kings Cross! If you wanted to live close by, consider Caledonian Road, Camden, Holloway, Somers Town, Angel/south end of Islington, Clerkenwell and Bloomsbury. Kings Cross connects with the Northern Line (Bank Branch), Piccadilly Line and Circle/District Line, which puts a lot of North, Southwest, and East London within your grasp.
I don’t know much about Brixton, other than that it’s rapidly gentrifying but remains racially and economically diverse. I do like Camden, very much so, though of course the fact that it’s central-ish and near to chi-chi areas like Primrose Hill means that it’s become pretty expensive. It’s got great food and live music, though I avoid the market and other touristy areas at the weekends.
If you want a friendly cycling guide when you get here, happy to be that person!
Sweet! That sounds like a lot of possibilities. Great food and live music do sound like pluses, although tourists could be annoying. Or maybe it would be a confidence booster to be around people even more clueless than me in the early months.
I’d love a cycling guide! I’m not sure that I will bring my bike along, since it’s honestly an old clunker and would probably cost more to ship than I spent on it in the first place. I’d probably want to get the lay of the land storage-wise too before I commit to a bike. My old apartment complex had a rack out front where we could lock up our bikes, but that might not fly in a big city? Sorry to sound like such a rube, but I really am a hick from the sticks as we say around here.
Oh, I meant to add – if you are renting, expect to pay between £1000 and £1700 for a one-bed, depending on whereabouts you live. We (boyfriend y yo) pay £1300 a month to live in Camden, which is an inner suburb and pretty gentrified (tiny flat, nice street). That’s about $2000 I think.
Ahhhh that’s so awesome! Mega-jealous over here!!!
Thanks! I’m trying to keep gratitude at the opportunity at the forefront, because maybe it will help me not freak out about all the logistics.
It’s a big cliché, but I am joyful about all the blossoming trees. Plus, spring is a different colour palette here than I’m used to, like a whole different spectrum of greens, so I’m enjoying that, in a hippy/stoner way.
Ok, one more try for a Minneapolis/Saint Paul meet-up! Whoooooo wants to meet up for outdoor beer/snacks on Tuesday 19 or Wednesday 20?? I’ll be done with grading and end-of-year meetings by then, so I’m looking forward to being blissed out on a patio somewhere, talkin’ about tree colours.
Reply here, and I’ll confirm closer to the time if anyone’s interested!
or you can message me on twitter @mfvendetti
THOSE TREES THOUGH
A week ago, I was wearing boots; now it’s sandals-and-sleeveless weather and all the trees in the neighborhood are in big, fragrant bloom and it’s like winter and its person-high snowbanks never happened.
I spent my entire lunch break outside taking (bad, cameraphone) pictures of all the different buds on all the different trees, I am so happy! It was a long winter, I am savouring the spring.
I’m up for an MSP meetup!
Yay! Would Tuesday 05/19 work for you? I can repost here next week and set a firmer date/time then.
That would be perfect! Looking forward to it!
Follow up! Let’s say next Tuesday, 7pm, at Muddy Waters (2933 Lyndale)? I’ll post it to the Cocktial Hour thread later this morning, too, unless anyone else wants to join.
I think that’ll work great for me! And yes, hopefully we’ll get some other takers…
I’m done with finals! I still work full time, but it’s amazing how free my evenings are going to feel… until summer school. It has been remarkably easy to blend in with regular undergrads as a “non-trad”, but I’m not sure if I want to continue to pass.
I also went to talk to my usually long-suffering TA about FUTURE (grad school?) plans and he got enthusiastic and recommended all sorts of classes and people, and sent me an adorably long email after with MORE IDEAS and a “whatever you decide, be sure to update me.” I had a crush on him throughout the semester and this email made me happier than it should have, and I’m toying with the idea of asking to hang out (but I’m probably not going to, since I remember being a TA and resenting that. On the other hand, I did get to be good friends with a girl I was originally the TA for…).
Toasties, tell me your optimistic stories of college and finals and school part time and cute TAs!
One of my favorite parts about being a TA was that I ended up becoming good friends with a lot of my former students once they were no longer my student. Definitely reach out! The worst that can happen is that he’ll say no, right?
True! I’m trying to figure out if I really am interested in him as a friend or if what I really want to do is ask him out…
So I did the crazy thing and started over in a new city about six weeks ago. I was comfortable but pretty miserable at my last city and I have one good friend in this new city.
The good news is that I was able to find a pretty affordable place to live (with a housemate) and a job (the pay is terrible but I can manage) within six weeks. Still, I’m impatient and want an active social life now.
I know that it takes time to get settled so I’m hoping to hear happy stories from anyone who did something similar.
Woo-hoo! I’m so excited for you! When I moved to Philadelphia a year ago, I actively sought out people to get lunch at with work and asked my old highschool friends and college friends if they knew anyone in Philadelphia, and asked to be “e-introduced.” I asked seemingly cool people for their numbers all the time and I talked to my housemate’s friends. I looked up free events and suggested them to acquaintances and asked them to bring friends to it. It wasn’t in my nature, but it worked. My housemates threw a party last Thursday, and I had somehow had the most friends who attended. I also got close enough with a friend to be invited to her bachelorette party last week.
I wish you luck!
I’m happy for you!
Now that I’m making income, I definitely plan on putting myself out there more. Thanks for the happy story!
I have done this three times – once for grad school (knew no one in the city), once for a job (knew two people in the city), and once earlier this week (know maybe… three?… people in this city). I personally kind of cherish the interim periods before I have a slightly crazy social life, but YMMV. My point is, it’s doable, just give it time!
Yay! I had been comfortable but bored for a long time in Boston. I went to school there and had best friends there, but they gradually all moved away and I stayed. Then I moved to Glasgow for grad school. It took me about two months to really make friends with the people in my program, but then after that I had such an active social life. It was fantastic and so much of what I’d missed in Boston for years.
Guys, my less than joy:
My dad (who is a cagey paranoid former drunk) has been slipping quite rapidly into dementia over the last year. He recently has come to the point where he has difficulty recognizing my voice on the phone, calling my sister after he leaves a message or we speak, asking her for my phone number because he doesn’t think he was speaking with me.
Complex feelings, many of them not very loving: I don’t know how to have a dad because he was so absent my life. I especially don’t know how to have a needy, demented dad. I’m angry and sad.
Anyone have advice?
Is it possible to see him as a lonely old man, no relation, who you are visiting out of charity?
Before I move, yeah for sure. But i’m moving to the opposite coast in a few weeks. So we will see how things evolve at that point I suppose.
I’m sorry – this sounds like a really hard situation.
I have to admit that I’ve never experienced anything quite like this, but I wonder if maybe video chatting could improve your calls with your dad? Of course if that involves purchasing him a tablet and teaching him how to use it it could be a lot of work/expense…
Medical social workers are great people to talk to about situations like this– they often have some good info or know about local resources.
If he can’t manage his own care (and doesn’t have other family willing or able to do so), many areas have Adult Protective Services that can provide an appointed guardian to manage someone’s personal care and/ or finances, and make sure that they have a safe living situation.
(I’m an attorney in the health care field, & my two cents is that people shouldn’t feel obligated to care for parents who were absent, abusive, etc. It’s okay to prioritize your own mental health, and to limit or avoid contact if you need to).
thanks so much for this. I think even knowing that I have the option to NOT be so directly involved in his care makes me feel so much less pressured into the situation, and more willing to get involved as needed. Your comments were so needed/valuable to me this weekend, thank you.
I’m very glad to hear that! It’s a very tough situation to be in.
Anger and sadness sound about right.
My mom has dementia and aphasia, and is in a nursing home in another state. I have a 90-second phone “conversation” with her every week, sometimes a bit more. It is frustrating but if I remember that the point of my call is just for me to show up for her, it helps.
My relationship with her has always been somewhat fraught: not sure what I’d do if she had been a truly absent parent.
“the point of my call is just for me to show up for her”
that’s a great point, and a great way to remember it. I think I’m getting hung up on feeling overly responsible for his happiness. Thank you <3
Wallace Stevens is my jam. He was a terrible racist, it’s true. But he wrote so beautifully about fruit, and that is the topic of one of my chapters, so here we are. If you love Modernist art and poetry then many of your faves are problematic.
Here is a post about how Wallace Stevens partly inspired one of my tattoos.
He was a terrible racist?! I’m so sad to know that.
What nice quenelling!
Wish me luck, toastpals — I have a 3-4 hour long krav maga test on Sunday. I have never done 3-4 hours of exercise before, besides hiking in a relaxed fashion, so it should be uh… an experience.
Other students have assured me that so long as I survive the first hour, I should be fine (haha good lord) — I’m carb loading, I am going to make a friend fight me in an alley tomorrow so I can practice choke defenses, I’m taking it easy so I’m not overtired for the test, and I’m trying very hard to not think about the horror stories from tests past other students regaled me with, so hopefully I should be okay (hopefully, aaaa)!!!
“I am going to make a friend fight me in an alley tomorrow so I can practice choke defenses” is the best thing I have read today. Good luck!!
HELL YEAH
(You’d be surprised how hard it is — “hey, can you put your hands around my throat and squeeze super-quick?” is the sort of thing most of your friends shy away from)
Good luck! My Aikido black belt test was the most exhausting thing I’ve ever done, but it was so worth it.
Belated congratulations :v
As apprehensive as I am, I’m still excited — this is the first sport I’ve really felt strong positive feelings about. Punching stuff is fun, who knew!
“I am going to make a friend fight me in an alley tomorrow”
You have excellent taste in hobbies 😀
Mostly I just have extremely tolerant friends!
Ahh another krav maga person! Hi hello! How long have you been practicing? Is this a belt test? I’m excited for you, good luck!
I started doing krav about 8 months now but I’m embarrassed at how inexperienced I still feel. I can only go for an hour a week due to limited car access and the fact that the studio is pretty far from me. I love it though!
\o/ hooray, thank you! This is for a belt test — I’ve been going for about 5 months now? I was going 4-ish times a week for a while, heh — I am not entirely sure I”ll be able to keep that up after the test. (And it’s SO fun, I totally love it too!)
Good luck! Enjoy the carb loading and remember to stock up on high-quality proteins to recover with! YOU GOT THIS
Heh, i”m going to do something dumb and celebratory like go out for steak afterwards!
Good luck! Krav Maga sounds intense and interesting. Enjoy your alley fight too!
It’s super fun! I am too easily distracted and bored to just go to the gym, and I don’t have enough cash money to hire a personal trainer, so martial arts is pretty much the one way I can get motivated enough to actually make an effort to move my meat prison.
(And oh, I will /cracks knuckles menacingly)
Good luck! Krav Maga sounds awesome, I really want to learn it one day.
DO IT JOIN US
For real if you have access to a gym and good instructors, it’s soooo much fun!!
\o/!
Hi Toasts! It’s been a while since I’ve seen an open thread! Did you know that today is asexual visibility day? As a Certified Asexual Human, I am very eager to shout about it all day and to answer all of your questions, either here or on twitter. Today I am feeling pretty joyful about being comfortable with myself, but I definitely haven’t always felt that way. Thank you, internet, for teaching me about asexuality and for confirming that there are other people who feel the same out there.
I did not know that! Hurray asexuality being a thing, and hurray for the internet for clarifying what was so “different” about me.
I will make sure to hug my sister extra tonight when I get home! High fives and hugs if wanted to all of my asexual friends, y’all are great.
I knew it was coming up, but did not know it was today. Thank you!
Am also asexual, did not know we had a visibility day. I will be spending it being as closeted and invisible as possible, with the exception of this comment.
Yay, another one! Apparently we do have a visibility day, but that doesn’t mean you need to be visible (unless you want to). I’m only visible on the internet, really, so I try to make up for it by being vocal when I can/feel comfortable. If you ever want to talk, I’m esnmurphy at gmail.
Fellow asexual solidarity fist bump.
Happy to see this thread. I didn’t chime in on Friday because I still don’t know if this is the hat that fits me best or not, but it sure leaps out as a possibility. Nibbling on the idea like a small sesame cracker.
HAPPY THINGS
*MrChouffe has been gainfully employed for 4.5 days and his boss is already making noise about getting his position to FT, instead of .8FT
*My gorgeous cousin got married last weekend, I like her new husband a great deal, Greek Orthodox weddings are stupendously beautiful and the parties just. don’t. stop
*JOSHUA DAVIS ON THE VOICE 😀 😀 😀
*It is currently 75 degrees and I’m wearing one of MrChouffe’s giant t-shirts in the office because it’s Friday and comfortable
*Fage 2% plain Greek yogurt + Kind granola = 3 lbs lost this week
*Barre class moving into new studio with giant fans, so as to avoid situations like last night in which most of the class was drenched with sweat in the first ten minutes
*Moa and Diesel appear to be getting along!
*I have negotiated myself a four-day weekend next month that can’t come soon enough. But I need help! What does one DO with time off? In the past, MrChouffe would’ve skived off work and we’d go do something ridiculous, like wine tasting on a Tuesday or something, but he’ll be in the office. Two days of ME time. WHAT DO.
😀
Two days of ME time. WHAT DO
This might not be your cuppa, but sometimes when I’m home from the office but the Burgomaster is not (a rarity), I spend most of the day slightly tipsy and reading explicit fic. Then when the Burgomaster is finally home for the evening, we have a lot of sex.
Iiiiinteresting.
I <3 you a lot
I kinda want to make this my cuppa.
When I have a day off alone, I love to do secret wonderful things! Like, there’s a donut shop where my dude and I always get donuts on Sunday mornings, but sometimes when I’m alone I’ll go there MYSELF and just get ONE for ME!
OH THERE IS A PLACE. There are macarons. This is so happening.
yogurt + granola = best warm weather breakfast IMO!
For the past couple weeks my morning breakfast has been that (Astro’s Balkan Style yogurt that’s full fat bc honestly, lower fat “yogurts” aren’t really yogurt) AND I include my mom’s homegrown homemade seedless raspberry jam at the bottom to mix in for extra deliciousness. My mom makes the best jam <3
Ooooh. That sounds amazing!!
My special treat yogurt is Noosa, which has a texture that more resembles cheesecake smoothie drink than yogurt, and it is full fat and gorgeous. I can only let myself have one a couple of times a month though, because it’s impossible to find plain and the fruit versions have so much sugar 🙁
Has anyone taken a pay cut for a new job? It would be a bump up title-wise, but a significant pay cut (a 15-25% pay cut depending on range). It’s a move from the private sector to academia, and I’m quite sure they are not very flexible on the range, so there’s little room for negotiation. For a job that’s a good fit, I could make it work. What I’m more concerned about is negotiating power in the job or two after this job. I can afford a cut in pay now, but it could also mean a hefty decrease in potential earnings down the road.
I hate having to think about this, but I also feel like I don’t want to get screwed over for the rest of my working life. Anybody have experience with this?
Be prepared not only for that pay cut, but also very few and far between (if any) merit raises. They are rare beasts, indeed in academia. I’ve worked at a state university for over a decade and I think I’ve seen maybe four cost-of-living increases. If you’re in the hard sciences, this might be different, but just… be aware. I like working here, but if I was worried about promotions, advancement, or anything like that, I would probably stay in the private sector.
thank you–that’s a good point. It’s definitely not a hard sciences job (it’s a communications job), so the cost of living/possible advancement thing could make a difference.
Ask A Manager has some stuff on this, but the pay of your next job shouldn’t (key word) be based on the pay of your last one. If you think about it, it’s pretty irrelevant to another organization, with their own budgets, pay structures, management structures, etc, what your current organization’s budget, pay structure, etc, etc, is.
I do think you have less of a worry because academia is pretty notoriously underpaid, so it would be totally natural for your next out-of-academia job to be a big jump, verses a crappy private company that just pays people less because it can.
Yeah–one of the things that worries me is that for the job I’m currently in, I think they very much did base my salary off my last salary. It was a comparable job in a comparable market. I think they wanted to pay me less. So, it makes me a little nervous.
AAM talks about this too, but there shouldn’t really be a way for future jobs to know your former salaries. Even if they ask, you can decline to provide them, saying something like, “I’m not comfortable sharing my current salary, but the range I’m looking for in my next position is X” and my understanding (again, just from AAM and the comments section there) is that employers won’t usually push after hearing that.
One more variable: job longevity. Higher pay does not equal higher income if the job is unstable, if you could be laid off, if it’s short term for any reason. Lower pay can equal greater income if it’s a job people tend to keep for years and years.
Have they said anything to you regarding benefits? I’ve found that because my insurance deductions are so much less, I actually make comparably more as compared to a job outside academia.
Just popping in to say that I took a more-than-50% pay cut from my last job to my current job and that was two years ago and I haven’t had a single regret.
I am waiting to hear about a job I interviewed for and ugh, I am so sick of being in the state of waiting to hear about things, which has been the case for basically the past year plus.
You are more patient that I am. I would consider the job lost and try very hard to put it out of my mind. And distract myself pursuing another job. I cannot maintain mental health while waiting. So I eliminate it by doing something else instead.
But I hope you get the job.
well, it hasn’t been one year for the same job! But I’m in a field where it takes a loooong time to interview and hire, so. I’ve been getting lots of interviews, no offers. Maybe I have something in my teeth?
It has nothing to do with you, with your resume, or with your interviews. Hiring is seldom done well. Very few people know how to go about it and 99% of hires are made based on the employers’ prejudices or moods. It’s out of your hands. Frustrating and soothing simultaneously.
I am in the same boat right now, chickpeas! It’s no fun! But, solidarity at least? Hopefully you find out soon!
Job hunting sucks. I just started a couple of weeks ago and the waiting is the worst, followed by cover letters.
Are you applying for an academic position by any chance? Because they tend to make the wait paaainfully long
Hey friends! I’ve never been this early to the Open Thread before, woohoo!
So after years of hovering around the edges of Marvel fandom, over the past few months I’ve found myself getting super into it. Between Agent Carter, Age of Ultron (minus the Romance Subplot Of Which We Do Not Speak), the compilation of Thor comics my friend made, and Daredevil, I am just…SO into Marvel right now. But I kind of don’t know where to start, comics-wise! There’s so much of it and at least three universes that I know of. Does anyone have Marvel recs? Also, does anyone want to talk Daredevil and Charlie Cox’s fine, fine ass?
Marvel recs!
If you want some stuff that’s fairly free standing: I’d go for the recent runs of Ms. Marvel and She-Hulk, who are mostly disconnected from the other goings-on in the universe.
If you want to dive deeper into the characters you just got to know: I’ve been making my way through Daredevil starting with the Bendis run, and it’s really dark and not great about women but also really fascinating? YMMV. I’d also recommend all the Captain America comics Brubaker wrote.
My biggest recommendation, if you have a tablet or don’t mind reading on screen, would be to get a Marvel Unlimited subscription for a few months and just graze here and there. It has most of what they published, except for the past 6 months or so, and it makes for great binge-reading.
I’ve never WANTED a tablet until I started wanting to read comics. I’ve got a decent comics reader program on my laptop but that doesn’t come with me everywhere. Maybe that’s the next step in my unnecessary-technology journey. Thank you for the recs! I’ve heard great stuff about Brubaker.
The tablet is basically so that a) the boy can browse 9gag in bed and b) I can read comics. Totally worth it! And you don’t even need a superfancy one. I’d go 10 inch, though, because then you barely ever need to zoom in.
Just hold out until you reach Mark Waid’s Daredevil run (starts in volume 3). He specifically said his intention was to write a DD comic that didn’t make him want to drink heavily. IT’S SO FANTASTIC I AM IN LOVE.
I heard that one was a lot lighter and more quippy, I’m looking forward to it! I’m some ways into Brubaker’s now, and that started out undoing quite a lot of Bendis’ depressing stuff, but it’s not exactly chipper.
Matt Fraction’s Hawkeye, full-stop.
Can’t believe I didn’t mention that. Absolutely yes.
This is the only Hawkeye I want in my life.
It’s the only Hawkeye I’ve ever read and I’m perfectly happy to keep it that way.
YES! I just read the first volume this week and this is the Hawkeye I didn’t know I wanted.
came here to say exactly this.
YASSSS
I’m not super into the MCU, but for comics, I do get the trade paperbacks of Hawkeye and Ms Marvel whenever they come out. Hawkeye is fairly different from MCU Hawkeye, but I think for the better, especially the addition of Kate Bishop Hawkeye.
I understand from a friend who’s more knowledgeable about these things that they used Ultimate Hawkeye’s backstory for MCU Hawkeye, which is weird to me? I understand that comics Clint is basically a fuckup former carnie with no family and a dog and I really like that. I’m not here for Heteradorable Clint with his wife and 2.5 kids. Deaf Carnie Disaster Clint or bust.
i have no marvel recs, except that if you haven’t seen the two captain america movies yet, you definitely should.
also, i will agree that charlie cox’s butt is indeed a…spectacle of beauty. also his mouth? i feel so creepy about it but he is so pretty???
HIS MOUTH IS OBSCENE. ALSO OBSCENE: THE CRINKLES AROUND HIS EYES WHEN HE SMILES.
It’s weird, I want to cuddle Charlie Cox and pet his beard but I want Matt Murdock to fuck me up.
They are so lush, and filmed in such loving detail.
ughhh i just watched the second-to-last episode and that scene where it’s just him and karen and he is like, “i can’t do this alone/i can’t take another step” and it was a close-up on his face and his lower lip kept getting bitten and was wobbling and then karen hugs him and he makes this wounded noise as he starts crying?
MY MIND WAS SO DEEP IN THE GUTTER i was practically swimming in the storm sewer, cripes. obscene is right.
Like obviously I want him to win his fights because he is The Hero but good LORD he hurts so pretty. The scene in Nelson and Murdock where he wakes up groaning and covered in cuts and bruises? Completely wrecked me.
Just another day of not wanting to examine my attraction to wounded men too closely….
i have found that wounded men in real life are rarely very attractive but that on film, they always have these stab wounds that highlight their abs, or bruises that somehow make their cheekbones look better. ~*TV MAGIC*~
‘he hurts so pretty’
I love this phrase a whole lot.
Seconded. I can’t let myself go too far down that mental rabbit hole right this minute, but his mouth is just. Ungh.
Your Charlie Cox/Matt Murdock feels are my Charlie Cox/Matt Murdock feels.
Hedwig already mentioned Ms. Marvel and She-Hulk, but if you are looking for currently running series…and I seriously will bring her up every time Marvel comes up…SQUIRREL GIRL
ALWAYS SQUIRREL GIRL
(Also, Captain Marvel is pretty great, too. I picked up Silk and Spider-Gwen as well but haven’t read any of them yet, things have been SUPER BUSY.)
I love the current run of Black Widow. Phil Noto’s art is gorgeous and it’s about Natasha atoning for past sins separately from the Avengers or S.H.I.E.L.D. so it stands on it’s own.
(Also, as others have mentioned, Fraction/Aja’s Hawkeye and the new Ms. Marvel who is ADORABLE and She Hulk.)
Also! I was totally in your shoes around this time last year: loved the movies, didn’t know anything about the comics, I’d just gotten a tablet, several people on tumblr kept talking about this Captain Marvel, so I just kind of dove in. I know you said above that you don’t have a tablet, but if you’re considering getting one, I recommend it. Reading and discovering comics on my ipad mini has been a delight. All of the awesomeness of comics, none of the intimidation factor of walking into a comics shop!
The entire reason I got into Marvel was toasties (and pinners) who I follow on tumblr. Now I have several comixology subscriptions and a comics problem.
YOUNG AVENGERS.
Everyone has posted fabulous suggestions already, but Young Avengers is where I started. You can either go with the original run from the early 2000s, or start with Kieron Gillen’s run from 2013. The latter is definitely more similar to things like Hawkeye, but I’m a completionist and like to start at the beginning.
Also “Alias” and “The Pulse”, which will give you your background for the next Netflix series about Jessica Jones who is AMAZING. And you should also check out Mark Waid’s run on Daredevil (starts with volume 3) because it’s spectacular and Matt is SO HOT omg (though I am not pleased with the recent costume change wtf is that shit)
Ahhh, the completionist impulse makes getting into comics SO DIFFICULT. I just want to start At The Beginning with everything and read all of it, but that’s completely impossible with the convoluted Marvel universe(s).
(puts chin in hands) hot comics Matt, you say? Your ideas intrigue me and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter. (Seriously, I have such a Matt Murdock problem right now.)
I WILL TALK ABOUT HOT MATT ALL DAY EVERYDAY.
Keep in mind that comics!Matt has red hair and I have a major thing for redheads. So YUP HE DEF DOES IT FOR ME. Take a gander:
It’s SUNNY and the bike I bought myself for my birthday is arriving today and my college roommate is coming to visit for the weekend and we’re having a barbecue and one of my friends might bring his DOG to the barbecue
That all adds up to an amazing weekend! That is a lucky dog, especially if yall are drinking and likely to drop food.
This sentence is so FULL of happiness! Have a great time, you bicycle belle!!!
My friends know they are not welcome at my house *unless* they bring their dogs. Conversely, some of the invitations I receive are actually motivated by a desire to see my dogs. I’m just the chauffeur, and that mammal at the other end of the leashes.
ONLINE DATE TIMES
1. I met my date’s wife! She’s cool (as I suspected)! She apparently got dressed up and she wore an outfit EERILY LIKE WHAT I LIKE TO WEAR (striped mini, dark top, tights, although her tights were purple and way more fabulous). We discovered our mutual love for DS9 and shipping Bashir/O’Brien (also Garak), and Latin. She made a lovely stew and we ate lots of cheeses.
It was awkward though nice, and there were some weird silences, but luckily their baby is adorable so I just stared at him and played with his tiny hand sometimes. I’d like to see them again some time and hopefully it’ll get less weird.
2. Glory Hole Patrol guy! Our last date, he took me to his favourite bar, which has a library on the top floor (WHAT). He also took me to a sushi place and asked me if they’d have coffee. Aw. We’re going to a burlesque show this weekend (my first, so excited!) and I’m probably going to take him to one of my favourite Neapolitan pizza places.
Woo online date thread! Your date clearly has great taste!
I met up with an OKC dude last night. It was my first date post medium-length-evil-gaslighty relationship so I almost canceled out of fear. It was the most comfortable and fun date I’ve ever been on. And the dude is like a cross between a lumberjack and a leprechaun which it turns out is totally my type. We did dinner which throws off my normal dating pattern of drinks/dinner/cooking as the 1st 3 dates so now I’m not sure what to do as a second date. It feels too early to have him to my apartment (although very much looking forward to that). Dinner again? Activity?
Dinner is always a good choice! Depending on the weather where you are, maybe a picnic or something? Go to see a movie?
I am bad at planning dates gah
YES LUMBERJACK
How about some kind of low-key show? Maybe a bar with live jazz, and snacks/apps with drinks?
For easy activities, I like walks. Pick a cool neighbourhood either of you know, or a place where there’s lots of points of interest, or a big, natural park. Gives you something to talk about. Depending where you are, the weather’s getting nicer. Best of all, exercise and FREE. I’d map out a few places you want to see as a guideline, and a few places to keep in mind for snacks, hydration, and a rest.
I like museums as a date activity, because you can talk the whole time, but you also have the exhibits to give you something to talk about.
Yay good times!!!
I had date number umpteen with the OKC guy I’ve been seeing lately last night. I felt bad because he had to reschedule last week’s because work exploded, and was super exhausted last night, but didn’t want to bail on me again 🙁 aw.
I think that Something With Him is something I would like to continue to pursue, as I have been lamenting off and on for the past few open threads, but I feel really relaxed and at ease with him around. So next time we get together I hope we will have some time alone? Most of our meetups have been fairly public, which is chill, but I think the next time is when I need to get my hubris together and be like “aight let’s talk about us and the future of such.”
Oh man, good luck! Yeah, maybe pick a place with booths or corners you can have a quieter talk together without having to yell? Maybe close enough to your or his place so you can decamp if you decide you want more privacy?
With GHP Guy, I like him a lot but am already feeling very minor nerves about A Future (mostly because he made a joke about long-termness and it took me back a little and I felt weird for being the one who’s like “no, fun times only on my mind right now”). I think I need to think through a little more closely what I want right now — I assumed I wanted long-term dates and a future relationship, but I’m not so sure now. I’m way more … que sera, sera?
I had date #2 with the Canadian on Wednesday, and it went really well! We went to a panini place and then to my friends’ new bar that just opened. We talked for many hours and then had some brief makeouts when I walked him to the train. We’re supposed to go see the Neo-Futurists next Friday 🙂
The thing is, he is TERRIBLE about texting. I haven’t actually talked to him about it, but it seems like it just forgets to respond when he gets a text? (As in, “Oh, I’ll text her back when I’m done with [blank] and it just slips his mind.) He’s taken over 24 hours to answer texts sometimes, but it’s always a positive response! But it stresses me out because I LOVE texting.
Like, he’s the kind of guy who will not even glance at his phone during a date (which is awesome, because we basically don’t stop talking), and he even balked at using it to check a band’s name he couldn’t remember. I think maybe I should be worried? But I don’t feel paranoid about it, which is both comforting/terrifying because I have pretty strong intuition about when things are going wrong. I don’t know what to think!
Ahahah, I figured out I love texting so much that I put it on my profile as one of the six things I can’t live without.
But even as a diehard texter, I don’t check my phone during a date either (except when he’s in the washroom, just in case my mom called or whatever). I think this is respectful as a default setting if you don’t know what the other person is into. I generally like it if they’re talking to me too instead of phone-checking.
I don’t think you should be worried if you don’t feel worried. But if you like texting, maybe you can tell him. One of my dates texted me less for a while, and my therapist encouraged me just to say that I really enjoy his texts when I get them and I miss them a little. Maybe tell him you like texting as a form of personal communication and keeping in touch, and see if he’s not a texter and it’s not personal, or if he’s just been holding back. Maybe once he knows you like it, he’ll try texting you occasionally (like sending you a silly photo or something that makes him think of you).
Hah, I’ve been seeing a guy who is very similar about texting (once received a text response from him that was like 3 days later, and luckily my phone provided the previous texts there on the screen or I would’ve forgotten what it was about). It worried me a little at first, but also, the responses were always positive and he also doesn’t like pulling out his phone at dinner to check things like a band’s name, so I figured it was just him! That was months ago by now, and things are still going well, so…one data point in favor of no need for you to worry 🙂 Looks like you just have different feelings about texting in general, not about texting each other specifically.
Long-distance moving thread!
In the past week I have: received my formal offer, negotiated, quit my job, found and booked what appear to be reliable and affordableish long-distance movers, broken my lease, planned a going away party, started to plan a cross-country road trip, and sifted through three bookshelves worth of books to see what I can and can’t take with me. And there is SO MUCH MORE SHIT TO DO and so little time to spend with family and friends. At least the busyness gives me less time to freak out.
How are the rest of you all doing with your big life transitions?
Also, has anyone driven NYC-Cali and have advice? So far I’m thinking NYC–Pittsburgh– St Louis–fast as possible to NM and Arizona where we’ll do some nature things/get an air b n b for a few days before on to LA.
Count me in as watching this thread like a hawk!
You’ve been busy!
This week I planned the going away party and various family get togethers before I leave. I also started to list some items that we plan to sell before we leave. I’m waiting to hear about whether or not we have an apartment we applied to (should hear later today MEEP!) and then I will feel MUCH better about the move, stress decreased dramatically.
The new job seems so posi and nice! They seem really stoked to bring me on.
there is a lot to do yet (I see you, all my things to pack). But trying to enjoy my last weeks in my adopted city of the last 7 years. It’s an especially nice time of year to spend time outside with friends.
Ahhh good luck with the apartment! That’s been the thing I’m most grateful for– I’m moving in with my best friend and his boyfriend and they got themselves a short-term roommate while I was waiting to hear back about the job, so I don’t have to worry about finding a place.
My new job seems so nice too! One of my coworkers added me on Facebook and he is unfortunately terribly good looking, so that’s a problem. And just now my boss added me and I’m very paranoid that there’s something terrible lurking on my Facebook that he will see. But it’s one of those small friendly nonprofits and I have seen through my stalking that my boss likes to post “good job!” things on people’s wall and I think that’s sweet.
I highly recommend staying at the wigwam motel in Holbrook, AZ!
Good route planning. If you are tempted to change it, remember this is the wrong time of year to get anywhere near the Gulf Coast and its hurricanes. Tornadoes are fewer the farther north your route, and least frequent anywhere there are mountains.
Good luck. It all sounds so exciting.
that is AWESOME i am proud of you 🙂
I arrived earlier this week, I started my job Wednesday, and my stuff arrives Monday! I am surviving, so far. I also sucked it up and will be spending the money for unloading help. My drive west was blessedly uneventful, other than the cat being deeply unhappy.
Congrats!! Glad things are going well so far!
First of all, break (clap emoji) it (clap emoji) up!!!! If you try to red-eye and white-knuckle your way across the continental US, you will probably die. I would avoid going straight to Pittsburgh, though, because everything between there and Philly is what you call Pennsyltuckey: Alabama with dozens of 5 mph Amish buggies, significantly deadlier drops, and more road construction.
I’d advise you to creep through Jersey to Philly, ease your way out the state by way of DC/Maryland, and then head through Ohio/Indiana/Illinois. I find that the easiest way to get through the Midwest is to include a couple of cheesey roadside stops and diners, so you at least have something more immediate to look forward to than eight more hours of corn and cows.
You are so right about that stretch of Pennsyltuckey. I drove that 6 times, Philadelphia to central Indiana. The last time was more than 10 years ago and the memory still makes me shudder.
congratulations on getting shit done. honestly, while there will always be a ton of work in big life moves, you’ve really got the bases covered.
and welcome to LA! we need more toastrons 🙂
Late to the party but I’m planning a move to CA too… I laid out dates and made hotel reservations for the road trip today, and talked to the person moving into my apartment after me about buying some of my furniture. I am so excited to unsentimentally rid myself of excess belongings.
I love all you delicious weirdos so much. I feel really grateful for our readers this week.
The feeling is mutual!
If this is even slightly a tip of the hat to how much time some of us have spent in the comments on the Pegging piece(*cough*me*cough*), I have to tell you that I REGRET NOTHING. Unless someone from IT ever looks closely at my web history, at which point I will tearfully confess something.
“Some from IT looking closely at my web history” is basically my worst nightmare, 97% for Toast-related reasons.
thirding
RIGHT?
I’m still refreshing the pegging thread and for some reason the Q&A thread. No one is contributing any more let it go NO I DON’T WANNA
I’m still reading (on my phone) some fanfic that was suggested from the pegging thread. It’s the gift that keeps on giving!
Oh crap. Now I want to pull up that tread at work. I should wait until I’m home, right??
Yes. You might be able to avoid anyone seeing/understanding the sheer number of times the word “pegging” is used, but you’d only want to find the fanfic, and then you’d have the fanfic up, and, don’t get me wrong, I feel like some of my best work of the week was not at my job, but in that thread (I am especially proud of “grief takes strange shapes, and sometimes it’s the shape of a never to be used strap-on.”), and the fanfic in the thread I’m familiar with is worth reading, but probably not worth risking one’s job over.
tl;dr- Right.
The thread is pretty okay (like cosetthetable said), but the fanfic…not so much…
Oh, c’mon, the one where Tony Stark is a Sex Toy Tycoon? Classic.
; )
That might be the fanfic to which I was referring (one chapter left until I’m sad that it’s not a finished fic)
I was mostly kidding- the entire article is not safe for my workplace so the fanfic would be waaay over the line!
Also very fitting that Nicole’s lovely post has been taken over by pegging chatter.
MOAR PEGGING.
Hamlet Y/N?
I’m so excited for the Historical Men suggestion someone made in the comments. That is going to be a delightful article and might be Peak Toast.
That is why I did not comment on that particular thread, although I wanted to. I contented myself with Mallory’s tweets on the same, since phone is on 3G and I pay for that myself.
oh god I was busy that day and haven’t even read the pegging piece and I am distraught about this. But now I know that there will be so many delightful comments when I finally get there.
<3
<3
This is my favorite place to be a weirdo on the internet. Thank YOU!
<3
same back at you 🙂
I am reading Young Men and Fire and I haaaaaaaaate it. Sorry Nicole.
I described my dislike to my partner and said “He’s just no Sebastian Junger!” and conveniently, SJ has a new article in Vanity Fair: http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2015/05/ptsd-war-h…
It is very good and is related to an article someone posted here recently about high rates of mood disorders in industrialized/modern/developed societies – if you are at all interested in mental health or veterans or sociological issues I highly recommend it!
Shoot, how did I miss the article you’re talking about (high rates of mood disorders)? Does anyone remember where it was? I’d like to pass it along to a friend who’d be verrrry interested.
Oh gosh, it was maybe in a comment in a link roundup sometime in the past week or two?? (so helpful :/) I’m trying to google (I think it mostly talked about schizophrenia) but I’m not quite getting the right keywords to find it.
Aw, bummer. I love those fire books.
I’m glad you enjoyed the SJ article though! It’s always great to read something good after not enjoying another read.
I normally love books like this! I think Norman MacLean was a little too close to the subject and he tries to “report” on the fire (there was some interesting sections about early fire science research!) but then gets too verbose and ~*~creative writing~*~*~ about it. There’s some beautiful sentences but I think the plot gets lost and ultimately my ability to follow along trumps a quotable line, you know?
I read his son’s books first and they totally captivated me (when I was in training for doing wildland firefighting myself), so even the verbosity has a bit of a hold on me, lol. But definitely yes to the “too close” thing. His son kept his books less creative writing and more documentary-ish, so those might be an easier read.
I have so much joy today! After months of grey the joy is extra extra joyful. What are the tiny things that have been bringing you joy lately?? This week I realized all my towels are a decade old and stained and scratchy so I bought myself a new bath sheet which is luxuriously large and it makes be so damn happy!
I HEAR YOU. New linens are such a treat. I’m actually looking for smaller, what–used-to-be-normal-sized towels and I’m having the worst luck. The smallest I can find are still oversized. *grump*
I know those towels! They’re the perfect size to wrap wet hair up in but no, they don’t seem to exist anymore. I have a few I ferreted away from my parents a decade ago that I can remember using as a wee cookie.
WHAT IS THE DEAL WITH THESE GIANT TOWELS GDI
While I was decluttering, I found a gift bag from a long-forgotten present in which was A BRAND NEW BATH SHEET with its department-store tag still on (and shhhhhh I didn’t even tell my husband I am hoarding it shhhhhh)
That’s what I do! When I feel down, if I haven’t done this in a year or more, I send my personal shopper (Mr. Rose) to get me one extremely thick and fluffy bath towel. I let him choose a color. He knows what I like.
Glad you have joy.
Toasties, I come from a long line of joiners. I don’t so much have FOMO as FONC (Fear of Not Contributing), and while this serves me well in packing resumes and looking impressive, I might be on that fine line between pleasantly challenged and utterly overwhelmed. How do you deal with overwork, prioritizing, and (my mortal enemy) quitting things?
I will share with you my introvert secret knowledge: Realize that you won’t hurt anyone’s feelings if you say “No.” Don’t say why you’re saying “No”. Make no excuses.
Grown up, adult people will just roll with your “No”. They will accept it. They too are busy. They too must say “no” to things.
And if an extracurricular is not bringing you joy, you may freely quit it. It will carry on without you. Or it won’t. But be free.
As for prioritizing, ask yourself “What is the risk if I don’t do this thing right away or not at all?” The ones with the biggest consequences go first. The ones that have no consequences — ask if they really need to be done at all.
You have no. idea. how much I needed to read that. Thank you.
FONC! I have this, at work. My boss said yesterday if I don’t stop volunteering for things soon he’s going to tie both hands behind my back. Message received.
I wish I knew! I have a partner who keeps me in line (“Ummm hello we have not spent a weekend together in ages??”) but I try to carve out time that is just for me and pretty much calendar it like any other event! I’ll start looking at the next 3-4 weeks and if I see that I’m starting to get busy, I’ll tell myself that “Okay, in two Saturdays you are having Polka Stripes Day and you will turn down anything that does not suit you even if you are technically ‘free’.” I learned it’s okay to say “Sorry I’m busy.” even if “busy” is taking a bath, reading outside, going for a walk, whatever.
Thanks to you I just booked some time in my calendar to stay home and work on my hobbies, which have been sadly neglected since I’ve been socializing and working a lot lately.
I’m feeling surprisingly good for once! Huzzah!
The weather is beautiful here, and I’m finally getting out of my upstate NY winter hibernation phase. I’m taking my mom out for a pre-Mothers’ Day trip to the Finger Lakes tomorrow.
Also feeling enormously proud of my sister (a jazz pianist), who just came out with a second album yesterday. She’s working super hard and is just an awesome person.
I missed a chance to correct an old white man last night and now I’m sad 🙁 Does anyone have good stories of their best clap-backs, or noteworthy esprits d’escalier?
My crowning white dude smackdown: A TSA officer checking IDs told me “You should smile! It can’t be that bad!” I don’t remember exactly what I told him but it was along the lines of “You have no idea how bad it is or isn’t and no woman owes you a smile.”
I got an obscene caller once and only once while I was in college. He asked what underwear I had on; I said “Does it really matter that much?” and hung up.
A couple months ago the crap-for-brains male profs in the office next to mine were ranting (loudly, with their door open) about their opinions on women and religions and after about 15 minutes I’d had enough. I went next door and told them that nobody cared about their stupid opinions on on women’s roles and that they’d better keep it down because some people were working. Then I slammed the door to my office really loud, the end.
I’m walking home from the El in my impoverished neighborhood. Some manchild in a shiny convertible is keeping pace with me, trying to catch my eye. I steadfastly refuse to give him attention. But he succeeds in provoking me when he says “Hey! Don’t you see what I nice car I have? Don’t you know what that means?”
Toastfriends, I could not help myself. I stopped, locked eyes with him and said “Yes, it means you give far more time and money to that car than you will ever spend on a woman.” I waited long enough to see his jaw drop open, then turned and walked away. He did not follow me after that. I will admit to feeling smug.
Amazing.
Mine is an after the fact one, which took a week for me to suddenly think of. Last Sunday MrRoisindubh and I were doing a sushi-making class (his birthday present, actually) and the older gentleman there was very fond of Making Pronouncements on what he thinks of things. One of these was “The thing that shocks me is that how many of the young women smoke these days. So shocking!”
1. this is in England. As far as I can tell, everyone smokes, except my husband, myself and some small children
2. Yesterday (oh brain, why are you so slow?) I thought, “Isn’t it more shocking that so many young men smoke? The poor things have such a relatively short life expectancy, they should be more careful of it!”
Alas, I need too long a run at a thought to be witty on time.
I appreciate this for you, as if you’d said it in the moment. Beautiful.
Four miles into a run, I pet a dog, whose owner says, “Careful, he likes to chase pretty girls, too.”
I shot him the DIRTIEST look I have ever shot anyone, ever, with a similarly toned “Excuse me?” and proceeded on my run.
A mile later I hit my turnaround and had to run back toward this chump. When he saw me, he actually apologized, and I responded by saying, “Does that ever actually work?” He looked absolutely shocked that I’d said anything, then his shoulders slumped and he said “No…” in a tiny, broken voice.
You are my hero.
I was recently walking down the street at 5 am with three female friends after a night of hittin’ the bars. Two of us were supporting the third, who’d tweaked a sprained ankle still in the process of healing. We were all miraculously still in high spirits. As we made our way home, we came across two young men in the otherwise deserted street. They turned toward us expectantly.
I had no reason to believe that they had ill intent, but I’d been catcalled more than usual that week and was not feeling tolerant. So we marched by right in front of the guys and I sang out, “Don’t give a FUUUUUUCK!” with a big smile on my face.
They were stunned. Behind us, I heard one explain to the other, “They don’t give a fuck.”
Judging from Mallory’s post on female heterosexual desire according to literature, I’m not the only one who’s in love with Robin Hood, fox or otherwise. So my question to you is, what is your favorite Robin Hood depiction in literature, movies, or TV?
I actually don’t have one favorite, despite my love of Robin Hood. None of them are quite perfect enough to be my one true Robin Hood, no matter how much I may enjoy them. I do have a soft spot for Cary Elwes in Robin Hood: Men in Tights though.
ROBIN OF SHERWOOD. Oh, man. Michael Praed at his shaggiest. I just… wow. Wow.
workspouse and I played Dream Casting Couch this week and I proposed Tom Hiddleston as Robin, he Natalie Dormer as Marian. Then I sent him “If Natalie Dormer Were Your Girlfriend”
My first Robin Hood was Errol Flynn, so I’ve always had a soft spot for him (I think I only saw the animated one once or twice as a child, but the Errol Flynn one I probably watched at least a dozen times)
I adored the book “The Forestwife” by Teresa Tomlinson as a wee one, and I think the secondary-character Robin was always my favorite.
I can’t believe nobody’s mentioned the fox version yet
Patrick Stewart in that one Star Trek episode:
Full disclaimer, I’m going back to school after time spent in the military. There be non-traditional aged college student problems below.
The last final was finished yesterday. Thank god. I got pneumonia this year and swear I had brain fever for half the semester. It sucked balls.
But now the real work begins. I’m meant to be starting a summer research fellowship next week. ‘The Work of [insert victorian amateur artist here] in the Context of the Rodgers-Ringgold Expedition of 1853-1856.’ I thought it was cool when it was just going to be looking and categorizing sketches and researching the expedition and maybe hitting up the naval archives or the Smithsonian for information on the expedition. (Usually they would publish books detailing pretty much everything when they got back to the states. When these guys got back the situation was a bit volatile and when they finally finished compiling everything for publication in 1861, everyone kinda had more important things to think about. Therefore, there’s very little published on it, etc.) Now the list of museums to contact/visit is growing exponentially (one’s in Japan, insert ‘well, I wasn’t expecting that’ freaking out here), the paper has turned into the official research paper, another for publication (that’ll be a first) and a presentation at a conference. No pressure. Plus found out there are members of the history faculty who do not think that I can do this. Well.
I will be powering through the summer on spite alone. I’ll show ’em. I’ll show ’em all. Bring it.
That sounds AWESOME and YOU sound awesome and you can do it!!!!!!
Yes! WooHoo! This is a huge task you’re taking on, but I’m confident you’ll be able to do it if you apply yourself.
If I may give you some advice (I am a real live History Professor)
1: don’t worry about tracking down every last piece this guy (I’m assuming it’s a man) has done. Especially with an article-length piece, nobody expects you to. If the Japanese museum doesn’t have their pieces digitized, or a certain archivist turns out to be a protective jerk: don’t worry, it happens to the best of us. I’m about ready to publish the book based on my dissertation, and I still am missing sources. It’s the nature of the beast when you work with the past. It’s more important to say something cogent that speaks to your colleagues’ work than it is to have seen everything.
With that in mind…
2: Remember you’re trying to build an argument. So many students do big research projects and the thrust is “look at this stuff I found.” Then I have to say “well, that’s nice and you worked hard, but you haven’t told me what all this stuff means.”
Thanks. I’m definitely going to be trying to keep the last in mind. Which will be interesting because this thing keeps growing bigger and bigger as I go on.
Good luck, and remember: it is less important to read all the things than it is to write one very smart thing.
They clearly don’t know about your big hair and your lack of a heart. You got this, girl.
For real. They are apparently unaware that I am entirely powered by vindictiveness, elnett and the lamentation of my enemies.
Of course you can do it! Anyone can accomplish anything, really (life-changing insight for me after believing that accomplishment is based on having talent or some other inner quality, like “being a real college student” or whatever those faculty assholes believe). To do a Thing, you just have to find out and do all the steps until the steps run out and you have your Thing. The only reason anyone ever fails at anything is logistics. A severe lack of money or time can slow you down (soooo many things aren’t “impossible”, just “impossible to get done within a reasonable time to an acceptable price”, which can be just as bad – logistics, man), but that doesn’t seem to be a huge problem for you right now?
Rarely, there’s an absolutely crucial little thing which you literally can’t go on without and can’t find a way around, but do those nonnegotiable steps even exist for pieces of writing? I can’t think of any. Most nonnegotiable steps I’ve run into have been bureaucracy-related (you need a ticket to get on a plane, you need to fulfill criteria to graduate, etc).
Oh, I’m also a nontrad student, btw. Solidarity! Also, if there’s anything my military friends are amazing at, it’s logistics, dealing with assholes and problem-solving huge headachey projects. The people in uniform really seem to practise those three things a lot, haha. You can doooooo iiiiittttt! 😀
Dog thread! Post your dogs!
Ugh brothers amirite?
Kitchen hangouts:
That face:
Leela and Gertie, trying to use perspective to trick you into thinking that Leela is some huge spaniel mix, while Gertie is a wee-scaled borgi.
The weather has been fabulous and stormy in turns this week. She likes to put her head out the window, but only at red lights. The wind in her face isn’t fun when we’re driving, I guess?
Trixie and I went for a walk/run on Tuesday and got caught in the rain. She got so wet so I put her in my shirt, but she wouldn’t keep her head down. I was worried that she would be afraid of thunder, but so far she just keeps growling at the window or front door when we have thunder. Which is better than cowering in fear, I suppose.
We used to have a neighborhood dog who was a big tough lab, but was terrified of thunder. He would try to simultaneously try to climb up on the bed while slinking on his belly during storms (which would inevitably cause huge tears in the sheets).
We had a Great Dane when I was little, and he would hide under the coffee table during storms. Poor big scared dogs!
Hello toasts! I have plentiful happy things, though each one is somewhat tiny:
*Spouse has off next week so we will be planting our container garden and hanging out.
*My squash seedlings are robust and seem happy.
*I found a place with good reviews from recent weeks to take my car on short notice, which is important because we are driving to visit BFF at the end of next week and Priscilla is making a funny noise.
*I’ve been walking more and more and my feet are holding up ok and I’ve been having fun exploring all the small little parks and nature preserves around.
*Spouse is away for the weekend so I’m cooking meaty foods he doesn’t eat (and freezing a bunch for above-referenced BFF, who’s been ill).
Tell me about your container gardens! I’m planting two crooknecks (they work well in big containers, surprisingly!), two tomato plants, some green beans, and ALL THE HERBS! What have you got going on?
They are not in containers (anymore), but I moved two tomato plants, lavender, thyme, rosemary, basil, and strawberries into the ground. One tomato plant isn’t looking so hot but I think that’s the one that is supposed to produce fruit later in the season so I guess we’ll see. I also planted onions (although, given how much wild onions are growing in my yard that was probably unnecessary), dill, radishes, and wildflowers.
I had started a new window box with squash and hot pepper seeds that I was planning to plant later in the season but I dropped it all over the deck when I was bringing it inside so I think they’re probably dead.
It’s not yet warm enough to plant container gardens here, but I’m planning! Tomatoes and herbs and lots and lots of greens. I’ve declared defeat after a few unsuccessful years of trying to grow strawberries so this year I’d like to try something new. Tell me about crooknecks! How big a container? How much sun?
I have these two square pots that are around 1.5-2′ on a side, and they’re maybe 18″ deep, and the squash I planted in one two years ago was pretty happy. The package says full sun, so my porch is perfect for them!
That sounds eminently feasible for my balcony, thank you!
I’m debating about container gardening this year. I usually go as extensive as possible on my tiny balcony but I’m looking at houses and would hate to end up moving mid-august or something so I might skip it all together? But let’s be honest, I’ll still get a tomato plant.
I am in a teeny apartment with no access to a yard, but we have a healthy windowsill container garden! Exciting news: one of my lithops has split! I have three, and they all started emerging from last year’s leaves at the same time, but I noticed one was coming out at not a 90-degree angle. That’s because it has reproduced! Somehow!
I’ll try to post photos next week. Lithops are so delightfully weird.
I learned about a new plant today!
Ooh in other plant-related news, I got to see pitcher plants in the wild this week, so that was super neat!
I have really low light in my apartment, but the various ivies my mom brought on her last visit seen to like the windowsill anyway!
MONSTER HUNTER 4 ULTIMATE.
Does anyone play? I adore this series, but I am just so tired of so much of the community! Tired of enduring the rape jokes when hunters mount or get pinned, tired of getting mocked or kicked from rooms because my gear doesn’t meet someone else’s arbitrary standards, tired of people who assume there’s a problem with me or with women because I complain about how hard it is to find stylish gear that doesn’t show my thighs and cleavage.
I would love to add some Toast hunters to my friend list so that we can focus on just having non-elitist fun in a safe environment; any takers? 🙂
I’ve heard good things about this series but down own a 3ds… I hear Nintendo is planning on bringing games to mobile devices in the future so maybe I’ll get to try them on my phone at some point.
Joyful things! I got two new Spirited Away t-shirts this week! I cannot wait to wear them.
AND, last night, thanks to wine and support and amazing lady friends, I finally got to unburden myself from a secret I’d been lugging around for far too long. It feels so good! You guys, I am so happy, and so INCREDIBLY lucky, to have such a strong group of friends. I don’t know what I would do without them.
I have a mental health question (not heavy, more a practical-suggestions thing). How do you manage/what can you do when you have the kind of depression that is usually bad in the morning times and improves as the day progresses, when you have a daytime office job? Obviously I go to work, but it’s difficult starting the day in a numbly despairing mood, even if I know it’ll wear off over time. Anyone have diet/exercise/mindfulness/whatever tips that work for that specific issue?
I drink coffee first thing in the brightest room in my house–my kitchen and wash down some Vitamin D and spirulina to feel like I’m kind of covered in the nutrition department. It’s easiest for me to make my morning ritual brief–I shower and lay out my clothes the night before so I can go from alarm to car in about 20 minutes if I force myself to be efficient. More than that and I’m hitting snooze and wishing I could stay in bed all day or thinking about how lovely it would be to stay in and make chocolate chip waffles and watch movies. Finally, I refuse to check email or news before I get to work so that my commute time is MINE to sing along to whatever I like without worrying about the day ahead of the state of the world. Obviously, if you have unpredictable traffic or weather and need to check on that, adjust.
Seconding everything you typed, especially coffee, sunlight, big dose of vitamin D, nothing but routine motions from alarm clock to shower to clothing to car, no email or news, music.
i, too, have to give myself only exactly as much time as it takes to get my ish together and get out of the house. if i give myself any time to lollygag it’s hard to push through.
i also make my breakfast at work after a cursory check of my email inbox. getting food & tea (caffeine!) & meds into me ASAP helps get me on a better track.
In addition to everything everyone else has said if you’re having trouble getting out of bed and get up early enough that it’s still dark outside maybe think about getting a sunrise alarm clock or putting your light on a timer so you’re not waking up to a dark room. I love love love my sunrise alarm clock for SAD wakeups, it might help non-SAD depression wakeups as well.
I asked my doctor about taking meds at night so they’d be kicked in by the time I get up in the morning. I know it doesn’t work with all meds, but for me that’s important. I think a caffeine jump-start can be ok as long as you don’t have accompanying anxiety.
Maybe this is not what you’re looking for, but I’ll put in my 2 cents.
I have bipolar disorder and I “wake up” at about 2pm. The morning is a complete loss. And then a few years ago my pdoc prescribed Nuvigil, a “wakefulness” drug that, about an hour after I take it, actually does wake me up. It’s incredibly expensive though, but there is another drug called Provigil that is in generic form. (Nuvigil and Provigil are the same drug, one is right-hand, the other is a mirror image of the chemical molecular makeup … a doctor could explain better than me …). But yeah, it does work. Uh, air force pilots take the drug for long flights, and I think that’s why it’s so expensive, because the government buys it for the military.
I wish you so much luck, I know how frustrating it is to be half-awake for most of the normal working day, and then waking up about the time you go home for the day.
Mostly chiming in to say you’re not alone, and also to suggest setting a small goal for yourself later in the morning to make the early morning more manageable. For me I allowed myself to buy a small breakfast item or a fancy coffee at the cafe outside my work every morning, so even though the couple hours after wakefulness consistently felt awful, there was the carrot dangling ahead to actually get me out of the house. It’s good if you can afford it or if that kind of thing is motivating, but this is admittedly more for behavioral symptoms of depression (“if I go back to bed I don’t have to deal with this feeling” — avoided) than the feeling itself.
Thanks for the solidarity! And to all of you for many great suggestions. I’m on the spirulina train already and it does seem to help sometimes. Ditto omega 3s. The big thing for me is persuading myself into an attitude change in the mornings – rather than starting the day with ‘ugh everything’s terrible I don’t wanna get up AND ANYWAY WHY SHOULD I WORK IS BULLSHIT ANYWAY’ thought cycle, I’m trying to modify it to ‘I feel terrible right now but I can do some things for myself that will make starting the day – which I have to do – a bit more tolerable’.
Also. I have discovered that apparently having a crush close to thirty is just as debilitating as a middle school crush. My brain knows that there is no reason for me not to be able to have an intelligent conversation with someone. The rest of me doesn’t care. I have not babbled that inanely since I asked someone to prom a decade ago.
Ugh. Is there a way to remove just the bits responsible for babbling? Apparently heartlessness doesn’t help.
Don’t ask me. I’m in my late 30s and about four years ago I had such a crush on a customer of the local bike shop I worked at that I could not manage to, like, hold things or talk.
I cannot even look at someone very handsome in the eye if I know he can see me. BLARGH. Thank goodness for sunglasses.
Seriously. Whenever I see him the Polish Tatar side of me is all like ‘Yes. The blood of the great Khan flows in his veins too. Wed him. Bed him soon and your offspring will reclaim their empire with fire and sword.’
It’s very distracting when you’re trying to have a normal conversation.
ummm my eyes just turned into tiny hearts
so thaaat’s why i do that.
or it might be my crazy viking side wanting to steal them for my own purposes
My crazy Viking side is relatively calm about it. I’m pretty sure all of my current trouble is Grandpa Genghis wanting to see the bloodline preserved.
Blaming everything on my ancestors, yep. Cause I am a mature, responsible woman.
YEP. I have that kind of crush too. On a coworker, which makes it that much more difficult to look like a competent human at work.
Toasties, I just spent a relieving but very frustrating $110. My wife and I bought a house in March, and this week when we tried to turn on the AC for the first time… nothing happened. So being the calm people we are we automatically assumed that we’d have to replace the whole AC unit. Well, the AC repair guy left about an hour ago, and everything is working perfectly after $110… but the problem was that the AC unit was never actually wired into the furnace. It’s good, because it wasn’t a couple thousand dollars, but it’s frustrating, because if the guy we bought it from had done things right (the house was a flip) we wouldn’t have had to spend anything.
In other news, Agent Carter was renewed, and that is an excellent thing.
It is an excellent thing. If Agent Carter do better with racial representation this time, even more excellent.
One joyful thing making me particularly happy: Today, I realized that exactly 5 years ago I went to a bookstore reading Karen Cushman did, where I met the girl who I’d been corresponding with online in person for the first time. She dropped Karen Cushman’s Newbury Medal as it was being passed around the audience (we were all sitting on metal folding chairs, so there was also a terrific clang! when it fell), which was terribly embarrassing (for her) but also very, very adorable. That same girl and I are still together, five years later.
In that spirit, Toasties, what are some awkward/embarrassing, yet fond memories you have of your own significant others, past or present?
KAREN CUSHMAN EEEEEEEEEEEE
I lost my copy of Catherine Called Birdy that I had for literally close to two decades. Finding a similar copy has been okay but not the same.
She was such a sweetheart, too! I have a lot of really great memories from that day.
I’m starting to think my own copy of Catherine has disappeared, too–I couldn’t find it five years ago for the event, and it hasn’t turned up anywhere in the intervening years either. 🙁
Happy five years of knowing your cool lady!!!
One of the first dates I ever went on with my Good Ex, we went to Warped Tour. We were watching the Alkaline Trio when he jumped into the pit and started throwing down…and then he lost his glasses. He found the rims and one of the lenses was still in, but not the other. The set subsided and we located them…scratched to all hell. But he popped the lens back in his glasses and wore them like that for the rest of the day.
He practically embodied the word “adorkable” either way, but that really sealed the deal.
The Burgomaster often goes about town looking like this:
I got over any embarrassment regarding my significant other a long time ago.
Please help I am trapped in a tiny locked room with a giant wall of computer monitors for the entire weekend. Please send help and/or screenshots of Hot Men In Videogames.
A giant wall of computer monitors? Are you sure you aren’t a super-villain planning on taking over the world from your secret base?
No, just one of the minions, I fear. -_-
Fun fact: I *have* actually worked in a research laboratory buried under a mountain in Europe. This is not nearly as sexy as it sounds. They didn’t even teach me how to break a man’s neck with my thighs, sigh.
I’m actually just jealous of your wall of monitors. I only have two and I work in IT! I want more, always more!
What good is such a facility if they aren’t going to teach you to be a super spy / assassin? So disappointing.
There are TWELVE of them in this room! Plus two laptops. *Cranks up the aircon.* They’re only linked up in pairs, though, and each of them is being used for a bullshit VNC session to another computer. I mostly stare at them and hope nothing A) stops moving, B) Starts moving TOO MUCH, or C) turns red. Please, please don’t turn red.
The mountain facility did have a good coffee bar with a foosball table, so not all was lost. (I also, um, met my husband there, so I guess they did teach me *some* femme fatale skills.)
I don’t play videogames. Can I interest you in Hot Men in general?
Okay there is some excellent hotness going on there so I will allow it.
*Stamps writhing Chris Evans with an “APPROVED”.*
APPROVED
good lord that Channing Tatum one just gave me an actual heart palpitation.
Not a video game but another hot man with sexy hands! If I can get the embedding to work…..
Mmmmmmmmmmhm.
YOUR WISH FOR HOT VIDEO GAME MEN IS MY COMMAND
have you ever licked an embarrassing reference in winter
ok this one’s an elf sorry
and this one’s actually a wolf woops
and this one’s a chocobo
I HAVE NO REGRETS
Iorveth AND Alistair??? APPROVED APPROVED APPROVED
Others are top-notch too. Good job A+ hot dudes in games.
HAIR THREAD HAIR THREAD:
How do you do your hair, or do you?
I have long hair that’s between wavy and straight, and I absolutely love doing fun things with it: blowing it out sleek, using hot rollers, going for crazy tight curls with a curling wand, doing a retro pincurl set, or doing fun braided updos. BUT I have absolutely zero energy for my appearance during the week, so my creativity is mostly reserved for weekends and parties. Most of the time, I let my hair air-dry and then just comb out the knots in the morning and go. I do often wish I could wake up a bit earlier so I could spend more time on my hair, but I never do.
What about you all?
Pincurls. True to the username, I have massive hair. It has brought hairdressers to tears before. When I would pull it back into a bun in the military it was out of regulations for being too thick, despite the fact that my hair barely hit my shoulders. There is just that much of it. It took me twenty-seven odd years to learn what to do with it, but now I just end up throwing it up in sloppy pincurl sets every few nights, brushing it out, and leaving it as is. I can usually get a good three days off of one set. It might make my hair even more massive and curly than before, but at least now it’s structured.
I’m sorry but can you please tag your porn?
Sorry, what was that? I can’t hear you over the sound of how awesome my hair is.
My mom is a hairdresser yet I’ve never taken advantage of this. I am stubbornly boring when it comes to my hair and she’s sad she doesn’t get to dye my hair purple.
I am a brush and air-dry in the morn and go. I am blessed to have relatively problem-free straight, strong hair. I wish I did more with it — I love Pinterest dos. I get frustrated trying because I never texture my hair right, and my hands get greasy from touching my hair a lot, and then my arms get tired. Sigh.
I’m completely inept with any kind of hairstyling- I just wash it at night and let it air dry, then usually brush it really fast and stick it in a ponytail before I fly out the door in the morning.
(I have really thick, curly hair that refuses to listen to reason).
My hair is fluffy and curly and it’s about 75 percent air– when I straiten it, it disappears.
So I don’t have to do my hair, just blow-dry with a side part and let it do itself. It’s even fine after I sleep on it, but if something goes wrong I finger-comb it carefully and it looks good again.
It’s long and I trim it myself when the ends get cranky. Salons INSIST that they have to comb it straight before cutting, which makes no sense.
My hair game is actually pretty strong right now. I’m terminally averse to product and also super lazy, but for the first time in my life I’ve found a product (Marc Anthony curl envy perfect curl cream) that works on ridiculously thick wavy/curly hair and needs zero fussing. Work it in a bit, let it air dry, and boom.
Thank you! I”m always on the lookout for curl cream recommendations since I’ve yet to find my One True Product.
Good luck! Bonus feature: it doesn’t feel like you’ve got anything in there at all, which has historically been the case with other products and which is argh-inducing then makes me break out.
i am growing out a pixie cut and have no idea how to hair. the last time i had hair long enough to do anything with was 7 years ago, and i didn’t know how to hair then, either. i scraped it back into a bun or flat-ironed it into submission, and it never looked very good.
anyway, on the pixie growout journey…it’s finally long enough to be a short bob, and it’s wavy/flippy/kinda-curly as hell. the only thing i can do is let it air-dry and put some kind of curl-enhancing goop in it and scrunch it up? it kinda looks like audrey horne’s hair except i have bangs. it’s so stubborn, it really just goes whichever way it wants to, and the only thing i can do is try and smooth and placate it so it’s not super frizzy.
I have no advice for growing out hair–when mine was at that awkward stage, I just pinned it up every day. Which sucked, because the bobby pins hurt my scalp.
luckily i think i am past the awkward stage—although it lasted a good few months! i have an undercut at my nape, so i’ve actually been able to wear a tiny ponytail for the past 5 months or so. before that, it was just very…shaggy. very bieber-esque.
the bob is okay. i think the voluminous quality of my hair might actually work better as a bob than it would at a longer length, where it’ll just get…heavy and annoying?
but truthfully i kind of miss my pixie cut.
Oh god I’m so bad at hair. My hair has gotten mega-long and is sorta straight but a little wavy with some weird extra-curly bits near my scalp. It is also hilariously thick. I have no idea what to do with it so I mostly just let it air dry and do what it wants, which works out sometimes and sometimes REALLY doesn’t.
I’m actually getting my hair cut tomorrow and I’m thinking of getting something like this: http://thebeautydepartment.com/2014/12/hair-talk-…. I haven’t had short hair in aaaaaaages so I will probably bombard my poor stylist with a million really stupid questions and then be sad because I’m too inept to ever make my hair look like that without professional assistance.
I quit shampoo last August because my goal is to put the least effort into my hair as is possible, and somehow it looks better than it ever has? I’m so happy with my hair now that I’m letting it grow out again, something I never thought I’d do after I went super short seveal years ago.
I quit shampooing around last August too. Seriously, my hair is looking pretty damn fabulous now. I don’t think I’ve ever been this happy with it in… well, ever really.
I got frustrated trying to maintain my own pixie cut (paying for haircuts as often as is necessary for a pixie – not fun) so I bought clippers and cut it all off. I have a rad buzz cut now that is just long enough to dye whatever color I want, since I’m constantly trimming the ends off so it doesn’t get super damaged if I bleach it all the time.
Oh man, I just buzzed most of my head last night and I’m so happy about it. I had a mohawk for like two years, and then I thought I might go job-hunting so I had my stylist cut off the back part so it was just long on the top, and I was growing out the back and sides a bit, but then it got too long and she’s not available this weekend and I’m not available next weekend, so I just buzzed everything but the top, and now I can feel the breeze on my scalp again. #bestlife
In a perfect world I would use a round brush and blow-dry my stupidly fine pin-straight hair daily after applying some kind of magical lightweight thickening tonic that doesn’t transfer to my skin and make everything feel greasy and heavy.
In the real world I mostly air dry it after applying a bit of this “not your mother’s waves” cream-paste stuff that coaxes a little tiny bit of wave out of what are actually cowlicks.
I’ve reached the point of growing out a pixie where it’s actually a discernible style again, though! It’s now a bob that hits just below my chin, which is thankfully not an awful look.
I think we are hair sisters! I’ve been growing out a pixie that did not want to cooperate with my cowlicks and I also have crazy super fine baby hair. I have used many a product to try to boost my hair off my damn head and so far the Paul Mitchell Tea Tree Thickening Spray is my favorite. It’s not really a volumizer in the traditional big hair sense, but it doesn’t collapse at the end of the day or make me look like a grease monkey. It’s not magic, but it’s the best thing I’ve ever found.
Twinsies! Does yours also willfully refuse to hold a curl?
I will have to look for that! I use the Tea Tree Shampoo/Conditioner once or twice a week because 1. the tingles are nice and 2. my scalp is as prone to breakouts as the rest of my face.
It doesn’t like it, but if I’m using a curling wand I can get it done. That might be because when it’s hot and humid enough out I get these little curls all around my face. Like a lovely frizzy halo. In a former life maybe my hair was curly? Both sides of my family have been known for crazy hair 180s. My dad went from blond to black with some red beard stuff in the middle.
I’ve been enjoying finding different ways to tie/clip/etc my hair while it’s damp to promote waves (my hair is stick-straight), and I find this can also make my hair stay wavy for two days if I curl it! I do this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bsGuWokn47A
and I’ve also started putting my hair up in a bun with just a clip, no hairtie, whenever I’m walking around or not at a place where my hair is supposed to look nice, and I feel like it’s really helped to make it voluminous and slightly more intentional than my boring, straight, 0 effort hair.
WHOA I will definitely be trying this. I love no-heat styles I can sleep on!
I just discovered plopping and as a wavy-borderline-curvy hair person, I gotta say what a life changer. ETA: I use the tee shirt method.
I think my hair is finally/maybe long enough to plop? It’s like 8 or 9 inches long? maybe 10. thoughts?
Sure, give it a try! I just measured my own (holding head upside down with a ruler to my scalp–what doesn’t everybody do that in their office?) and my shortest layer is 14″ (holy crap) but my curl doesn’t actually start until around my ears, so nine inches of length (heh) could work!
After several years of vaguely thinking, “Oh, yeah, I should try the tee-shirt thing, whatever,” I started using a tee instead of a towel a few weeks ago and HOLY CURL RETENTION WHAT? You wouldn’t think different fabric would make such a dramatic difference, but it really does for me.
I have ringlets again! I haven’t had ringlets since high school!
To be fair, this is also the longest my hair has been since I was 19, but going gray (which started in high school but took over my whole head at ~30) changed the texture and curl pattern quite dramatically. I never thought I’d see air-dried ringlets again. And all it took was switching from towel to tee, nothing else.
I tried that but my hair was SO wet in the morning. I might need a few more shirts for squeezing water out with? Even without a shirt my hair is usually damp 9 hours later when I get up (and I live in UTAH, not the tropics!)
I do mine in the morning because I can’t sleep with anything on my head. I squeeze mine (gently, and in a way that babies the curls) when I get out of the shower, then I wrap it in a Turbie Twist while I dress. Then I put in the curl cream and wrap it up in the tee shirt. I leave it for the rest of the time I’m getting ready for work (about half an hour), shake it all out, and let it air dry the rest of the way. My hair would never get dry if I left it wrapped up. I mean, it might? But it would take days.
I have long-ish wavy-ish hair, and my go to, no work look is to wash it at night, comb it in the shower, apply mousse while it’s wet and then sleep on it. The mousse isn’t too sticky when the hair is wet to dilute it, and I can basically wake up, make sure the part looks neat and walk out the door. Sometimes a spritz of water to refresh the curls in the morning or a clip to pull the top back while I work, but that’s about as much work as I put in. If the top is too straight I will put in some spirals with a curling wand (aka cheap curling iron with the clip removed), which takes about 7 minutes
Oh man.Your hair looks a lot like mine except for the color. I always forget about refreshing my curls with spritzes of water in the morning. Will write “SPRITZ WATER ON HAIR” on my mirror.
I chop my hair into a bob every 2 or 3 years and then let it grow. I’m at the two year stage right now and re-enjoying brioche buns and french braids. My summer style is more bohemian, which goes better with post-bun wavy or with braided styles, and in winter I tend to dress more vintage, which goes better with the bob (bob looks better under hats too). My 6 month plan is to enjoy a last hurrah with bleach and Manic Panic Cleo Rose streaks in my underlayers before chopping a Phryne Fisher in the late fall.
I’m also super happy that now I’m at an age that I can pin braids over my head and look like Ruth Gordon’s Maude rather than Dominique Swain’s Lolita.
I’m like you- I grow my hair a bit longer so I can do loose, flowing bohemian hair looks with a lot of braids in the summer, but in the cooler months I go more for a collar-bone length classic look and do more of the hot rollers or 1940s pincurl sets. I <3 seasonal variety!
oohhh, your hair sounds kinda like mine. It’s a few inches past shoulder-length. I can straighten it, or I add NYM Kinky Waves to it and diffuse, then spritz some beach waves spray on it (most brands are cool) and let it fly. It’s a big-ish mop of waviness that I kinda adore. I didn’t know I had waves until I grew it out (it had been short for the better part of 8 years, and wasn’t wavy before).
NOTE: I shower and wash my hair at night. When I wake up it’s a bit of a mess, but I wet my hands and finger-comb my hair until it’s damp enough to take on the product and be diffused. But it’s not so damp/wet that diffusing takes a long time because really who has time for that.
This is a great idea! I too, wash my hair at night and the sleeping kind of flattens out my waves. I’ve never thought of damping and diffusing in the morning- I will definitely be trying that!
I am loving this thread because I have fantasies of rocking some cute wavy long bob thing, but the very most I can do is ….sometimes blow dry it. Sometimes. How to hair?! What magical combination of techniques and products achieves such a thing (with minimal to no effort of course)? Am I pursuing a hair unicorn that does not exist??
The sad truth of wavy hair is that the less you do to it, the better it seems to look AND the better you need it to look, the more uncooperative it gets. Much like a cat, really.
I have long, weirdly wavy hair. Sometimes I put product in and scrunch, sometimes I blow dry, sometimes I curl.
BUT that I really want is hair just like SJP in season 3 (I think) of Sex and the City. So…..I’ve been thinking of getting a perm. Has anyone else gotten a perm? The problem is I don’t trust anyone in my whole state to do it, so it would have to wait for a trip to a big city. And then maintenance might be a problem? I just have dreams of beautiful messy curls and I can’t get over it.
My hair is long enough that I sometimes tuck it into my jeans, but it takes a good 2 hours to blow-dry, and same-day air-drying is a myth. I have had to develop a hair schedule that maintains length and lets me be strategically lazy: I wash my hair Sunday and Thursday-ish night and put my hair in some elaborate braided updo that keeps my baby hairs safe. I wear that Monday, let the whole thing out Tuesday for a mountain of tight waves (they hide grease better than straight), and establish a super-deep No Sebum Here side-part braid that night to wear on Wednesday. Sometimes I wear a headband on Thursdays if I needed to study on Wednesday night and my scalp is truly repulsive.
Those microfiber hair towels/turbans do a pretty good job of shortening dry time (my hair is probably shorter than yours by just a few inches). My hair will normally be dry before the end of the day. I do only wash my hair every other day or so, though. And then I don’t do anything with it/braid it when I get to the lab and it needs to be back (ponytail will fall forward and around my shoulders, so it has to be braided).
I was trying to reduce how often I used shampoo and use the stuff that doesn’t coat your hair or whatever, but I just never found a balance that I was happy with and so I gave up a couple weeks ago and bought some Herbal Essences. So far I’m happy about this.
I have been growing out a pixie cut since roughly forever, and it turns out that my hair is finally long enough to French braid and tuck the ends under, which is the correct shape for my hair to be in so far as I am concerned. But although some bits are barely long enough to stay in the braid, the end of the braid is kind of longish, and also I have to start the braid kind of far back for my hair to stay in it but then there’s less space for the end. Also I am out of practice with the braiding. So it’s not quite how I’d like it to be yet, but soon. Very soon.
While waiting for my hair to get French-braid-able, I had started thinking that maybe if I got an even shorter pixie cut it would succeed at keeping my hair near my scalp with minimal work, which is all I desire of it. But then my parents visited this week, and my dad made a comment about how he can never get his hair to stay in place, and I realized that my dream of easier hair through scissors will never come true, so I have recommitted to the historically more successful French braid and tuck plan.
My hair is curly. The degree of curl depends on things like how long it has been since I have washed it, humidity, what I did to it when it was last washed (air dryed, slept on, braided, etc), what I have done to it since, etc. It is also thick, and I keep it at just below shoulder length (when dry), so there is a LOT of it.
My basic hairstyle is a messy bun, because I am lazy. I also like to pull it back like it is going to be in a ponytail, but then only pull it halfway through the elastic (so that both the top and the bottom of the ponytail are in the elastic) and have basically a loop of hair coming out of the elastic. This is slightly easier to rest my head on than a bun, if I am in the car or something.
When I am biking or doing yoga, I like braids. I do French-braided pigtails for yoga because then I can lie flat on my back and my hair is out of the way (this is also my fave way to do my hair if I am flying, for head-rest reasons).
One of my very favorite and simple ways to wear it is to wear it down, but with a kerchief/bandana over it. I tie it loosely (tighter makes it more likely to fall off) and then use a couple of barrettes on the side to help keep it in place. I like having the curls out and free, but the kerchief helps keep them back off my face and a little bit more tame.
I also like fishtail braids, but they take FOREVER and I can only make them work if I pull it to one side (b/c my arms get too tired trying to go straight down my back) so I don’t do them very often.
When I want to have fancy-looking hair for professional things, I do French-braided pigtails, and then tie them in a knot at the base of my skull and pin them in place with bobby pins. It looks super-fancy but only takes me like 10-15 minutes and can stay all day with minimal effort.
I just cut 10″ off to donate, so now my hair is just above my shoulders and all up in my business all the time (I had forgotten that short hair does that). On the other hand, when I told my hairdresser that I had no intention of ever doing anything with my hair besides washing it and air drying it, so please give me a cut that will work with that and not look like a triangle (it only has a mild wave, but tends towards thick and floofy), she totally came through. I can wash & finger comb or brush and look like a totally put together human being with this cut, which is AWESOME.
Toasties! I won tix to see one of my favourite bands live (this is not huge; they play live all the time). And I won a) because I am a rabid fan who has factoids about this band ingrained into my skin and b) due to my masterful use of caps, punctuation, and italics, learned directly at the knee of our venerable Toast writers. He said “normally, when people email me more than once I get annoyed, but yours were entertaining so I’m letting it slide this time.” Greatest writing compliment ever?
There is not enough *flail* for how excited I am.
what band?!?!?!?!?!
The Sadies! http://thesadies.net/.
I love them so much that my gentleman caller went to see them with my folks (i was not in town) and then challenged them to figure out which one I’d rather (which is creepy on a lot of levels, really). My mother chose the one that looks most like my brother (also. creepy.)
I love the Sadies so much that my BFF talks incessantly about requesting Sadiecest fanfic for Yultide for me, and I cannot work out if I am terrified or eagerly awaiting what *might* result. (hint, probably more excited than terrified)
I love the Sadies so much that I get _upset_ when they collaborate with huge stars like Gord Downie and Randy Bachman and Gregory Keeler because they inevitably ruin my jam. Not when they collaborated with Buffy St. Marie, though. That track is solid gold.
i find your enthusiasm infectious. i’ll have to check ’em out.
have fun at the show 😀
Thanks! Protip: They just keep getting better. So if you start with Internal Sounds, you’ll be hearing the Sadies at their finest.
Did you know that being the enthusiastic girl at a show is code for “I want to go home with someone”? I… I didn’t. Until I was That Girl at a Bouncing Souls show, and complained to my escort that some random dude gracelessly tried to pick me up, and he was like “well, you were jumping and cheering”. I’m still a little miffed that I don’t get to be enthusiastic AND not on the prowl at the same time.
Yay, the Sadies! I like them! Saw them open for Neko Case in like 2005. Haven’t listened to any of the recent albums, though — I’ll go check them out.
hi toast.
1) what do i watch next on netflix? i am out of ideas and it keeps recommending ted talks. i am not in to avengers-related media, and do like (GOOD) documentaries and tv.
2) what do i do while i am in washington dc in a few weeks? looking for cool queer stuff, the best museums, etc. i will be with my mom.
National Museum of the American Indian has the best food out of all the Smithsonians.
My two cents.
Have you seen the BBC documentaries “The Secrets Of…” There’s one for Scotland Yard, Highclere Castle, etc. They are marvellous. Except for the one with Princess Diana’s brother, the Earl of Spencer. He wants to talk about himself and not his wonderful house.
If you have not seen Miss Fisher’s Mysteries I suggest it with all of my heart. If you think you might enjoy Australian flapper detectives, madcap murders, and period pieces then it is the show for you. Also, I love that it is surprisingly (but wonderfully) feminist in many ways and does a good job at showing that women who have completely different ideas of how to live life can be good friends and genuinely care for one another, which is always nice.
Library of Congress, Smithsonian(s) of Choice based on interests (for me, American and Natural History, Air and Space). The Museum of the American Indian has a great cafeteria, the rest of it is less interesting (or at least it was several years ago, but it’s young for a Smithsonian, so perhaps the exhibits have improved since then?). Botanical Garden. US Capitol (reserve online ahead of time).
If you are looking for foods from other cultures, the best place to start your research is here– https://www.gmu.edu/centers/publicchoice/faculty%…
Places I miss, years after moving away- Good Stuff Eatery, anywhere that sells Peruvian Chicken (Especially El Pollo Rico), Teaism, Kabob Palace (in Crystal City), Eden Center (Vietnamese strip mall thing in VA), Rays Hellburger, Ben’s Chili Bowl.
that restaurant page is excellent, thank you! i am definitely planning on the natural history museum, and bopping over to the american indian museum for lunch sounds worth it.
Have you seen Planet Earth before? They just put it up a week or so ago. David Attenburough at his finest. Jaw-dropping nature BBC doc series.
The National Cathedral is beautiful architecture. Check the schedule if you want to hear the pipe organ.
The American Art museum has a really nice folk art/outsider art collection, including this beauty: The Throne of the Third Heaven of the Nations’ Millennium General Assembly. Built by a guy in total secrecy in a rented garage over a period of years! Also a Teaism is right down the street from there and it’s a solid choice for lunch.
I will also put in a plug for the Postal Museum. Totally underrated.
Culture Capital always has a good rundown of things going on.
” i am not in to avengers-related media”
(cries, runs away)
sorry, but half the recommendations i see lately are for marvel stuff, and i just am not interested.
Just a little joke, my avatar is an Avenger but the ’60s secret agent kind.
<3
I loved the Avengers movie long before Marvel had one.
CHEF’S TABLE, full stop.
is this a restaurant? i googled and most of the results were restaurants with a chef’s table, but not something with that as the name.
It’s relatively new. MrChouffe and I stumbled across it earlier this week and were both just floored.
This article pretty much sums it up. Episodes can be found here.
The Building Museum is my default suggestion for all DC tourists. It’s near Chinatown (ha!) and the Mall so you won’t have to venture too far away, but it’s a gorgeous building that feels slightly more “DC” than all the damn granite and marble that’s downtown.
Zaytina isn’t too far from there, and they have a really nice prix fixe lunch menu. Other than that and Rasika and maybe a few others the food around Downtown/Penn Quarter/Chinatown leaves much to be desired.
I was just at China Chilicano a few weeks ago and it gets a thumbs up from me. If you’re trying to eat in the area after working hours having a reservation is a really good idea. Such a happy hour crush of people!
I like Denson a lot. It’s old-fashioned classy without being pretentious. Harry’s Saloon is also in the area and I like it for 100% opposite reasons: the weird carpet! It always smells like popcorn! Like it is very odd that it can survive in that neighborhood. I will defend the quality of their onion rings, however.
Documentaries: How To Survive A Plague is an awesome/heart-wrenching doc about the early years of LGBT AIDS activism. Gasland is about the fracking boom in PA, but mainly watch it for the scene where a guy lights his sink tap on fire with the natural gas that’s leaked into his water via fracking. As far as movies go, I’m really feeling Doubt, which is about a case of possible child abuse in a Catholic school reeling from Vatican 2. Gender tensions! Religious debates! Viola Davis for the best 5 minutes of the film! If you haven’t seen the OG Hedwig And The Angry Inch, watch eeet.
Person of intereeeest (start at the end of season 1). One of the only shows I’ve ever watched past 2 seasons.
Documentaries:
Hot Coffee–looks at famous so-called frivolous lawsuits and the move towards tort reform
Pray the Devil back to Hell–about the women’s peace movement in Liberia, which brought about the end of their civil war
The Island President–the president of the Maldives (which is being seriously threatened by rising sea levels) and working on climate change initiatives
Anita: Speaking Truth to Power–the impact of Anita Hill
Women, War and Peace–women in conflict areas around the world. I don’t think it’s on Netflix, but is available in full on PBS
Reel Injun–the portrayal of Native Americans in film
If God is Willing and da Creek don’t Rise–the gulf coast after Katrina and the BP oil spill
4 Little Girls–the bombing of the Birmingham 16th Street Baptist church in 1963
A Walk to Beautiful–a hospital in Ethiopia which performs childbirth fistula surgery
Twenty Feet from Stardom–back-up rock singers
After Tiller–the remaining late term abortion doctors in the US
My DC museum advice is to remember that the Smithsonians (also the National Gallery and National Archives) are all free. So if there is only one object or exhibit you are interested in in a specific museum, you can go, see that, and leave, then move on to the next one, without having wasted money. The Freer/Sackler Galleries and the African Art Museum are part of the Smithsonian, and they are usually undervisted. If you like Asian or African art, check them out (or even if you just want AC without the crush of the crowd). The Zoo is also part of the Smithsonian, though not on the Mall, as are the American Art Museum/National Portrait Gallery (two museums, one building) and the National Postal Museum.
We are heading into tourist season, so it would behoove you to look up what times things open and whether or not you can reserve tickets/tour times in advance for some of the touristy things. Plan to do your museum visiting during the day, when they are open, and your monuments at night, when it is cooler and the museums are closed (also usually a little less crowded at night). There are also some companies that do evening/night tours, which will take you to most of the major memorials/monuments in the evening.
This might also be a good time of year to visit Hillwood, which is a historic house museum that has lots of decorative arts stuff (fancy furniture, Fabrege eggs) and amazing gardens.
If you take Metro, make sure to buy enough fare for your round trip in advance, and stand right, walk left on the escalators.
DC is a great city, and there is a ton of stuff to do, but without knowing specifically what you are into (e.g. history, fine arts, etc) it’s hard to say what museums/attractions you should do. (e.g. the Air and Space museum is the most popular Smithsonian, but it tends to leave me cold).
Wish me luck! It’s my first tournament as my roller derby team’s coach/manager. My focus: make sure they all have fun. Which in turn should lead to some great play.
Good luck!! I love that as a tournament goal. You’re not at Mayday Mayhem are you? A few of my teammates are there (playing with a team one province over). It’s their first WFTDA tournament, and everyone in our league is very excited.
YES COLOR I am wearing new tangerine colored shoes.
Also I want to move to Norway (from the US), any advice for job-hunting? I’m a librarian but I would basically work any job. I keep reading that generally everyone has very good English there, but I’d like to get started learning Norwegian anyways– out of respect and to show determination, if nothing else. What else should I know?
Norway is expensive as hell but they also pay really, really well. People from other parts of Scandinavia travel there to work, because it’s easier to get a job and the pay is better. The biggest difference is how much the lowest paying jobs pay. As an American, you’ll be surprised at what a waitress can earn.
Mandatory “winter is coming” warning…
If you’re from the northern parts of the US, like Michigan or upstate New York, the weather won’t be super different, except it rains a lot in Norway. You already know how to handle snow (the summers will be less warm though). The uniquely horrible part of the Scandinavian winter isn’t the weather. There will be snow, the temperature will be below freezing, but I actually have milder winters than many Americans.
No, the unique thing is the darkness. New York City is at the same latitude as Madrid. Seattle is at the 47th parallel, which goes through the middle of France, south of Paris. Norway, however, starts at around latitude 60. You know what else does? Alaska and Canada’s northern territories. It’s not the Arctic circle, so you’ll still get sunrise in the winter, but it’s ten degrees south of it, so the sun will basically drag itself over the horizon and hang unenthusiastically just above the treetops before it gives up a few hours later. Winter is definitely milder in Scandinavia than in Alaska (the Gulf Stream, woo!) and is usually not quite as cold as Americans from northern states expect, but it will almost certainly be darker.
Sooo if that’s a concern at all, don’t just look at a map of Norway, is what I’m saying. Pay attention to the latitude, compare it to North America and google the winter sunrise and sunset times. Glorious socialised medicine might pay for the vitamin D, but we haven’t yet found a way to socialise the skewed distribution of sunlight. My city at the 59th parallel literally had three sunlight hours in the entire month of November, because even when the sun’s supposed to be up, we’re trapped under an oppressive wet woolly blanket of clouds. Uugh.
But on the other hand, the light summer nights are awesome and I wouldn’t trade them for the world! Maybe for a few more sunlight hours in the winter though.
/Scandinavian born and bred who sometimes wishes we could just hack off my stupid country and drag it behind a boat to fit it next to Italy in the Mediterranean
They’ve been digging up the road in front of my house for about a month now, with probably three months to go. It’s cool, it’s cool. It’s not at all super loud and currently actually shaking my house.
I finally went back to one of my medical specialists I’ve been avoiding for over a year because I suspect I might have to have another surgery and I really, really don’t want to do that, but I also can’t keep on living the way I have been, so, you know. Go me? Blah.
Cannot convince MrKat that the NYC-FC vs NY Red Bulls game would be a great way to spend his birthday. Bought him many geeky tshirts and Ron Swanson bobblehead instead. Will make him a bowl of cream cheese frosting and watch the game on TV.
My mother visited last week and brought five carousels of slides and the slide converter I got her for Xmas. 1960 trip to Mexico. My mom is hitting a pinata and she’s dressed like Sally Draper and it is glorious. Silly little crinoline petticoat and everything.
It’s going to be in the 80s for a string of days where I live? In MAY? I’m really deeply unhappy about this.
ETA- the How Old app thing? Toasties, I am turning 33 the end of the month. That thing told me I was 21. My secret is hatred and fear of the sun. Tell the others.
My secret is hatred and fear of the sun.
It told me 27 and I turned 45 in January.
Excellent GIF!
I’m just waiting for my brother to wake up so I can rub it in his face. He’s 35, it told him he was 41. I win! (In the smallest and least-relevant way possible).
I told me I looked 12 years older than I am (30) so I don’t think it’s very accurate since everyone thinks I’m younger than my 23 year old sister when they see us together (maybe she just looks old?)
Yeah, it guessed I was 18 years older than I am. IRL, people guess about 5-10 years younger. WTF, Microsoft?
I got 14 and I am…twenty years older than that. I was wearing grown-up lady lipstick and everything! It might have been the angle of the shot or just the fact that it’s a BS program and just picks numbers at random.
Foster dog update:
So we have been e-mailing back an forth with a couple for about two weeks and it looked like they wanted to take Roxanne. Then, at the last minute, the husband decided he really wanted a male dog. The good news is that there is a couple, in Austin, who want a dog and they jumped at the chance to meet her this weekend. I really hope this works out.
Ugh to the first couple. “I just like, really want a dog penis in my house. I dunno why.” I feel sorry for the wife.
I hope this couple is more worthy of the sweet Roxanne! It’s so awesome of you to do this for her.
You nailed it. That manchild does not deserve Roxanne. She will be better off without a misogynist idiot.
Ugh also to dudes who won’t neuter their male dogs because it makes their weewees sad. ::rage blackout::
Really. How fragile is manhood if it feels threatened *vicariously*. In a species whose intelligence tops out at that of a human toddler!
i am here always and forever for all Roxanne updates.
Hey Toasties! Last week I was looking for someone to go to a baseball game with me and I … didn’t. And I ended up deciding to go alone. It was the first time I had gone to a ball game alone, I was rooting for the visiting team which means everyone around me hated me, and I had a BLAST. Two thumbs up to going to a baseball game and getting to just hang out in the lovely warm weather and watch baseball and not worry about anyone else.
So here’s a question: what things do you do solo that you used to be afraid of doing by yourself? What am I still missing out on doing by myself?
1) movies 2) concerts. Going to shows alone is my new favourite thing, because I get to dance like a mad thing and never have to worry if my show-date is having a good time. Not sure that this applies to djs yet. YET.
I haven’t done concerts – I’ve done theater, though, and I love that. Adding that to the list!
Definitely concerts!
I’m very extroverted so it took me awhile to try restaurants by myself, but I started going on my lunch break and I enjoy is more than I thought I would. I like to take myself to brunch. I’ve also done movies, plays, and concerts alone. I think I prefer plays and concerts with others because I like to talk about it, but its nice to know if I really want to see something and no one else is interested then I can just go and have a good time.
Also museums! No one else rushing me through and I can look at whatever I want!
Movies and concerts! I love just showing up whenever I want and slipping into a great single seat because all the other seats are awkwardly taken up by couples and groups. Then I treat myself to a drink, and eye up hot ushers and the like.
I really want to start doing restaurants by myself … busy places that are hard to do groups or even partners with, and sit at the bar.
Oh yes, snagging the single seats is definitely a perk of flying solo. Plus I feel like I’m making it easier for everyone who doesn’t have to move to fit more people in their row.
We’re like Oscars seat fillers!
Sitting at the bar is the BEST, especially when you figure out the seat that gives off the “not here to socialise, fellas” vibe and can read in glorious peace over your meal and wine.
I love eating by myself. Not even at a restaurant or with a book or anything. Just…sitting at a table and enjoying my own home-prepared food. I sometimes close my eyes to focus on the bliss of uninterrupted enjoyment of my delicious food.
Yes! I love it when I have a little extra time in the morning, and I will prepare myself semi-elaborate breakfasts to eat all by myself. The husband doesn’t get it, because when left to his own devices, he will maybe just make instant oatmeal. Meanwhile I make myself a soft-boiled egg (in a cute egg cup!), fruit salad, toast with a selection of fancy jams, etc. etc. It is so wonderful.
Concerts and restaurants, all the time.
I much prefer going to movies alone than going with people. Easier to find a seat and you don’t have to share your feelings about the movie afterward (I realize some people like that, but I don’t like being forced to have opinions immediately). Also love camping and hiking alone (well, with my dog, so not totally alone).
My favorite art museum. Alone, I can dawdle and absorb every detail of the textile exhibits. I can sit and stare as long as I like at an oil painting that fits that day’s mood.
EXCELLENT choice. One of the first things I ever did solo, actually. I’m from the DC area and once I was in high school if I had a day off and nothing to do my mom would offer to drop me at the National Gallery for the morning. It was a pretty smart move on her part. She’s a sales rep – she would drop me off on the way to appointments, pick me up for lunch, and I would walk around the art by myself.
Yes! Plus, you can skip anything you’re not into without feeling guilty.
Concerts and museums and book readings! It was so great to realize that I don’t have to miss going to a concert I want to see just because I can’t find someone else who wants to go. Next I want to try movies.
There is an awesome theater near me that shows classic movies, foreign films, documentaries, current indies, etc. and I had totally forgotten how amazing it is to put on my comfy pants and do a double feature there on a weekend by myself. Like, just to tuck my feet onto the seat and veg out in the dark.
Joyful things! The boyfriend and I found a new apartment!! We are currently living in the one-bedroom he was living in before I moved in, which does not have nearly enough space, so my boxes of clothes and miscellaneous have been sitting behind the couch for five months. The new apartment is *huge* and *surrounded by trees* and *there’s a trail from the apartment complex directly into a park with a lake, and you can see the lake from the apartment complex.* Also, *in-unit washer/dryer.* It’s also about three minutes from a Mexican place with $1 Taco Fridays, which the boyfriend is very happy about. We’ll be moving at the end of June.
I’ve also been spending the past week thinking over the logistics of starting up a site for publishing serial fantasy fiction. I have a horrible habit of making dreamy, vague plans and never following through on them, so I’m going to try and overcome that. I’m cautiously optimistic.
The best part of an in-unit W/D is that you can toss in laundry, pour yourself a glass of wine, sit down, and be like “Yep, I’m doing housework right now.” This pleasure is doubled if you have a Roomba.
I moved to a new apartment with a new roommate last weekend (after working for 7 days straight thanks to a conference the weekend before), so I’m still stuck in the “just moved” clutter and unpacking mess. We still have no internet at the new place, and I’ve overused the data plan on my phone because I got a new one last week and redownloaded apps. My grandmother, who lives 3 states away with the rest of my family, had a mini stroke earlier this week…so I just get updates via group text from the approximately 100 people in my family. And now my roommate and I are trying to figure out moving a free couch from my friends’ house to our apt and i’m ready to tell them all to just forget it.
Stress all around, and I’m struggling with feeling productive at work on top of all that. I just want to curl up on my bed and watch movies all weekend, ugh.
So.
Yay to the Toast for being awesome. It’s great at countering my “ugh” feelings for a little bit at a time.
I just need to share that on May the Fourth I had a dream I was at a con of some sort and eating pizza. Two guys dressed as stormtroopers came up and asked if they could have some pizza. In my dream I replied “This is not the pizza you are looking for.” I am very pleased with my subconscious.
What other nerdy dreams do people have??
I think I may have told this story on here before, but I once dreamed I was having a baby and the boy was dead-set on naming it Jean-Luc regardless of gender. Woke up, told him about it, and he was like “Yup. Sounds about right.”
Make it so!
The boyfriend and I have had serious discussions about naming our future (like, way future) child Riker, also regardless of gender. This has yet to make its way into my dreams though 🙁
I have many, many Doctor Who dreams. I enjoy them thoroughly. Though there is slightly less running than there should be. My subconscious is apparently lazy.
Beer food suggestions needed: I completely forgot that the husband’s homebrew club is meeting at our house tomorrow and I promised I’d cook. I’m thinking a giant crockpot of chili, although if anyone else has some good suggestions for feeding a crowd of around 10 folks who will be sampling beers for 2 hours, I am listening. I plan on having some snacks (chips and homemade salsa as well as chex mix) and maybe brownies?
Taco bar? Taco bar is my answer to basically any question about feeding people.
I really enjoy making lasagne, so I make a HUGE pan of it for a lot of like family events with my dad’s family that I always end up cooking for. This is the recipe I use and it is perfect: http://www.cdkitchen.com/recipes/recs/1324/Vegeta…
Obligatory posting of my favorite chili recipe ever! http://www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat/2012/02/01/su…
It’s got beer in it, so it goes well with beer. I think that’s how things work.
Ooh, shitake mushrooms? I am intrigued.
Broiled cheese toasts! They sound terrible, but are actually quite good. You just take a bunch of slices of good fresh bread, put them on a baking sheet, sprinkle shredded sharp cheddar or gruyere or the cheese of your choice, and then pop them under the broiler. For eating alongside beer, I would add a really really strong mustard on the side and tiny pickles.
It’s funny you say that, because I was seriously thinking about making this. http://smittenkitchen.com/blog/2012/02/cheddar-be…
Honestly, chili sounds perfect for eating with beer. Is there a theme for the beers? Like, if it’s springtime pales and wheat beers and suchlike, you could even do a white chicken chili to complement the fresher flavors, versus a dark and spicy chili to go with heavier beers. I’m making a bit vat of beef chili this weekend to freeze for my BFF who has been ill though, so I may be in a chili mindset 😀
The more I think about, the more it makes sense to do a vat o’ chili. There will be all sorts of beers (and meads! and wines!) so I’ll do a big pot of spicy chili with all the trimmings. Oooh, now I think I might be getting in a chili mindset. And then if there are leftovers I can make chili dogs the next day. Win win!
Weird cat things anyone?
The Brigadier has decided that he will only be reclining on metal from now on.
Literally. It’s either that or the fiberglass chairs. No cushy things. Upholstery saps his masculinity?
Did it just get warm where you live? I’m guessing what you have is a case of Cat Thermometer (i.e. upholstery now feels too hot, cat will be lying on cool hard surfaces until fall).
There is a Vermont heatwave on. Though Casimir apparently decided on this a few weeks back when it was still cold? Strange cat.
My male cats lck the walls. the ladies? Not at all. Why do the boys lick the walls? I will never ever know.
My female cat licks EVERYTHING. Mostly when she’s protesting how we’re definitely starving her to death by not feeding her 16 times a day. One time she was licking a chair and my boyfriend sprayed her with some water and she walked over and slowly licked the spray bottle while staring into his eyes.
My boy licks everything. Mostly plastic bags (my theory is he knows how loud and annoying the sound of cat tongue on plastic bag is). As soon as I get home from shopping he runs up to wherever I put the bags down and is SO EXCITED.
The funny thing is I stash the plastic bags right by the litter box, so they’re always accessible. But he never licks those, he demands fresh plastic. Little dummy.
Ha! Cats, man, they are awesome jerks. My 15 year old lady cat just straight up doesn’t notice being sprayed with water; I have had to towel her down after a particularly gruelling punishment session during which she just kept engaging in bad behaviour. Good thing she’s so cute.
I have not noticed a correlation between demanding food and licking walls, but this is an interesting point to consider.
One of my cats licks the toilet paper roll, tearing it up a tiny bit and making several layers stick together, glued by cat spit. Lovely.
Our female cat LOVES licking sticky things, like lint rollers and tape. So weird.
My (lives in a different country but whevs) lady cat loooooves to lick photographs.
I had a cat who would lick the wall, but it was only one specific wall, which was covered in fingerprints and hadn’t been washed for years. I wondered if he was getting some salt off of it. Do cats get salt cravings?
I’ve wondered this too! But mostly when they are grooming me, rather than the walls. I wondered if it was the lead paint that was so delicious? Maybe he’s getting high off the walls?
Haha, I used to joke that he was remedying a lead deficiency.
Roo toe beans!
Omg. Those are the cutest paws.
Um, I love your decor! Those wood and brass details! Also <3 Kate Beaton.
Thank you. (I suppose I ought to be humble about my apartment. Never. I lived in barracks for four years. I earned it.) I spent an ungodly amount of time on Craigslist/in thrift stores/trawling auctions to assemble that room. I am justly proud of it.
And you can’t even see the pink velvet couch or the art walls from that angle.
*DIES* You said some very magical words to me.
Please decorate my place.
I really am inordinately proud of my couch.
Hngngngngngn DAT COUCH
It is much paler in real life. But still lickable. It plus the matching chair and delivery was the best hundred bucks I’ve ever spent.
I LOVE YOUR TASTE
Besides the fab couch, I like how you use blue to introduce some cooler contrast, but picked in a hue that flatters the pink. Lamp, cushion, and the triangle on the other cushion, and even the top picture left of the window frame. A++++
And I adore your art wall. I’m very scared about more free-form hanging so right now everything looks too rigid and generic.
Also blue and not pictured: the WWI poster on a side wall. http://originalvintagemovieposters.com/ww1-britis…
The one opposite it is a pink-y orange.
Seriously, I put too much thought into it, but it makes me happy every time I open the door.
please decorate my house too thank you
Sure if you don’t mind it taking two years. (Which is around how long it took for it to reach this state.)
I’m not going anywhere!
My Gus loves shoes. Looooves them. He loves to shove his face in them and roll around on them purring loudly, and rub his face against them. So weird.
One of my cats (different cat than the toilet paper licking one) loves certain pairs of shoes, and he will lay with his front legs over them as if he is guarding them.
Saffron loves shoes too! Particularly mine, especially if I’ve gone barefoot in them. She will sprawl atop my sandals with her little face smooshed into the sole. F*cking weirdo.
He looks like a tiger on a giant shimmering rug in front of the door.
My cat has a lot of energy lately, and has jumped into the empty bathtub a few times and started digging. Why??
I just found her laser pointer, so that should help her get some exercise.
My youngest, craziest cat is utterly and completely disinterested in the laser pointer. I’m sad because this girl NEEDS to burn off some of her insane energy and I have yet to find anything she will play with for longer than five seconds.
These: http://www.amazon.com/Cat-Dancer-301-Charmer-Inte….
My cats are ok with the lasers, but they (all four of them) cannot leave the wand pictured at the link alone. AND, because it is not made out of feathers, is nigh on indestructible (which is IMPORTANT. My alpha destroys EVERYTHING, including catnip toys made out of denim)
Moa guards the food dish, Diesel complains to Dad about it
Moa finds cushion, oh wait that’s my pajamas:
I keep thinking it won’t be a cat in the pictures, but a giant flightless bird instead.
Our elderly supercat amused us for a while by insisting on sitting, not on the overstuffed chairs or three seater couch in the living room, but on the lap of one or the of my old dolls – hard plastic, but seated on the couch and toddler-sized. He learned early on that little girls would pet him and fuss over him as long as he wants and I think he was hoping for some new worshipers when the dolls got left there. No idea why this lasted past realizing how uncomfortable they were compared to say, couches or actual humans.
So after a long time of identifying as bisexual, I think I might be gay, maybe? Compulsory heterosexuality is an idea I was unfamiliar with for a long time, but the more I read about other women’s experiences with it, the more I go “Yes, I’ve felt that. And that. And that. Oh my god YES it’s like you’re in my brain!” I am recently out of a long term relationship with a man, after ~10 years of hetero serial monogamy, so I feel like now is a great time to begin figuring my shit out. I’m nervous and excited! So, gay ladies, any advice? Stories? Thoughts? Encouragement?
I’ve offered this advice before, but if it helps, just remember that you don’t have to *decide* anything. You can feel a little more gay or a little more bi or a little bored or whatever, and still just be Gen_Burnsthighs. If you’ve been with dudes and mono for 10 years, you may have some pent-up lady-lovin’ energy, but if it takes you a while, or you hit some bumps in the road, just be patient, and treat yourself like you’d treat a friend going through the same thing.
Thank you, this is really good advice <3
Toasts, have any of y’all read this book (1001 Questions to ASk Before You Get Married)? Is it good? Is there something else you’d recommend along the same lines (secular, leaning towards practical how-to-do-life questions)? This whole genre is notoriously full of terrible things and I want a seal of Toast-approval.
I’m looking into the same thing and found The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work: A Practical Guide from the Country’s Foremost Relationship Expert. I’ve read some of John Gottman’s stuff before and thought it was pretty sound. We haven’t started it yet though!
nice, never heard of this one! Now I even more want a Toast Seal of Approval to be a thing.
I liked that one! I read it before I got married- my husband and I didn’t really work through it, but I found it to be a pretty comforting read. My husband did not mind the random questions I asked him from it, either.
My ex and i were reading that one before he dumped me! It was good, I thought. Seven principles is also good.
I mentioned I read Gottman’s seven principles below and liked it a lot. We also met with a financial planner (partially for complicated financial reasons, partially for life-planning reasons), which turned out to be a fairly effective pre-marital counseling type thing on the side- we learned a lot about how we both tolerate financial risk and how we do money and all that stuff that we sort of knew but hadn’t really planned or stated explicitly. Also, since it was to some extent a “let’s plan the rest of our lives, at least sort of” exercise, it really helped me get a handle on the “this is my rest of my life person” thing.
Anyone else having an “ugh, but what am I even going to DO with my life?” day?
I have that day every day…so, yes.
Yep. Yep yep. We’ll sort it out though!
meeeeeee
Read this (http://io9.com/your-doctor-probably-has-a-dnr-heres-why-you-should-co-1702556735) and wanted to know if any Toasts have DNRs, and especially stories of how to discuss a DNR for yourself with your family.
I do not have one (yet) but I will definitely get one at some point. I wish we had had one for my mother – she had a heart attack and was resuscitated, but was in a coma and mostly non-responsive. My father and I were fairly united in believing she wouldn’t have wanted to remain in that state, but we had a neuro team that kept wanting to try new things and painting a perhaps too optimistic picture for us (look at all this brain activity – she’s having tons of strokes, isn’t that great?) and a very Catholic contingent of immediate family who were looking for a miracle So we accepted a few more days of treatment that didn’t much but prolong the horror. So, definitely get a DNR and an advanced medical directive.
I do not have a DNR strictly in place yet, but am considering one in case of brain death due to some horrific accident.
The Five Wishes program is helpful in giving guidance for how to discuss these kinds of complex issues – tailored more for talking about end-of-life wishes with aging parents, but very useful all the same: https://www.agingwithdignity.org/five-wishes.php
I highly recommend Atul Gawande’s Being Mortal as something to read. It’s focused very much on the current failures in our medical system around end-of-life choices and decisions, and Gawande is a brilliantly gifted writer.
My mom and I had the Five Wishes talk before she went in for her mastectomy. It was… hard. Really hard. But we were both so glad to have had the talk.
MrChouffe and I did our will and POAs and things when we bought the house, because at that point we had no plans to ever get married. Both of us are DNR past a certain point.
I do not recommend signing a DNR before going into a big surgery and then mailing a copy to your daughter without telling her it’s on the way because surprise mail is fun but not THAT kind of surprise mail!
That’s all I got. I do plan on signing a DNR when I get myself together and get a will, but I’m not that much of an adult yet.
On the topic of advanced directives, just throwing out there the Icarus Project. They are a radical mental health organization, and one of the many resources they provide is a sort of worksheet on how to make a mental health advanced directive for times of crisis or when the ability to make your own medical decisions is taken away. http://theicarusproject.net
Our family has a big of a horror story with DNRs. A relative was in the hospital, dying, had a DNR and everyone knew and agreed. But he went into cardiac arrest, or something – I can’t remember what exactly – something to trigger the emergency response team. They burst in, ordered people out of the room, and did the whole really aggressive ‘clear’, cpr, stuff, just like on TV, everything happening at once. My Mum was in there trying to get them to stop, and she did, eventually, but they had resuscitated him. So it meant that instead of a quiet death surrounded by loved ones, he had to hold on longer, and everyone in that room was pretty traumatised by that.
I don’t know what the takeaway from that is. Maybe double and triple check with the care providers?
I probably shouldn’t have been so flip above, because I do actually have a similar story – my grandmother had signed a medical directive of sorts that said “No extreme intervention” or something of that sort. Of course, “extreme” is up for debate, and since it was a teaching hospital they were really into trying every intervention under the sun instead of just letting her go peacefully. So I think being a bit clearer on what you mean when you say an “extreme” intervention (or whatever the word was) would be very helpful. Obviously you can’t plan for every scenario under the sun, but some examples and/or more descriptive language of what you wouldn’t want would probably be better than not.
For many, a health care proxy may be a more appropriate first step. I’m young, and what health problems I have won’t kill me in the short term. At the moment, I really would like Full Code. Now, I expect that to change as my age and health status changes.
That said, I know I will not be able to make my own health decisions for the rest of my life. Something will happen at some point, and I won’t be conscious, and someone else will be in charge. I don’t want that to be either of my parents, I want that to be my life partner (we’re not married, we may never get married). This also gives me flexibility. I want Full Code now, but if something happens to me, that may change, and I trust him to figure that out, and move me to DNR if appropriate if I’m not able to.
In many states, naming a proxy is as easy as filling out a standard form and having two random witnesses sign it, and it’s generally only good for medical decisions if you are unable to make them, so it’s not as costly, time consuming, or serious as something like a POA.
Pregnancy thread! I’m closing in on 31 weeks and I can’t breathe or bend over. How delightful.
This morning I was walking my daughter to school and we ran into a dad from the preschool. I asked him if they were going to be around this summer, and he said that they were expecting a baby in July. “Me too!” I said. After some more chit chat about due dates and newborns, he looked at me and said, “Wife’s name] is much bigger than you.”
I mean, I know he’s just looking for something to say and doesn’t mean a damn thing by it, but really. Don’t we all know by now not to comment on a pregnant lady’s size?
For real! I’m 24 weeks and started showing pretty early, and I can’t believe how many people feel the need to comment on it. One of my coworkers actually told me, “wow, you’re just getting bigger and bigger every time I see you!” You nailed it, coworker… that’s pretty much how it works.
I think my joy today is how many people are mentioning Agent Carter getting renewed among the things that cause them joy.
Also, hopping on a train later today to leave the city behind and see family in Upstate NY for Mother’s Day weekend. My Nonie is total joy.
My joy last night was apparently hysterical to my roommate. She came home just as I was getting ready to turn out the lights and I was all “All our ABC tv shows got renewed!” And she said “all … two of them?” to which I responded “We have more than two.” And then I got to watch her face as she realized what show I was referring to and she got all excited too. But then she opened facebook and saw the message I had sent in case she got home after I went to sleep and started laughing her head off.
Upstate NY Toastie high five!
Yay! Western, Hudson Valley, Central or Northern? (I guess I probably just could have asked garbage plate or poutine and gotten a similar idea of your region)
Garbage plate central. 🙂
🙂 I’m grew-up-saying-eh-and-eating-poutine
Agent Carter Agent Carter Agent Carter [dance of joy]
My joy this week:
I saw Sleater Kinney! They rocked so hard that I nearly cried from happiness because I never thought I’d get to see them live.
Happy Victory in Europe Day! I mention it because cool WWII planes just flew over the Capitol and Im’ TRE PATRIOTIC at the moment. It also makes me think about my grandfather who was a Filipino fighter pilot in the Pacific, and thats how he was able to come to America –> me & my fam 🙂 So, America, I have a lot of things w you, but this is all a process. Hopefully we’ll get it right one day.
Do we have a fanfic thread yet?
Dragon Age Inquisition is my current obsession. I am anxiously awaiting the next chapter of Exit Light, which is fic about Bull, Dorian, and Cullen and I literally cannot get enough.
And I am almost finished with my embarrassingly long Solas/Lavellan/Cullen Love Triangle.
What all are you reading and writing?
I could desperately use some fluffy fic for this weekend. Something in the MCU/HP/The 100 vein would be fantastic.
I finally got off my ass and managed to write something for my HP headcanon blog, so I’m not feeling ridiculously guilty about not having written for a while.
*Can’t stop thinking about the BioWare character discussion from Wednesday’s pegging thread…………*
WHAT. How on earth did I miss that? BRB, heading to the archives.
What? I missed that too! Joining you in the archives.
Starts here on page 2: http://the-toast.net/2015/05/06/a-list-of-fiction…
(Bless you Megano!.)
I read an Alistair/Bethany wardens fic that was really good and now I can’t find it.
I’m writing a dragon age mass effect AU that may never see the light of day. But MAYBE.
All my favorite fic writers have switched to het-dominated fandoms lately! It’s not necessarily a deal breaker for me, but it IS a huge adjustment. Is slash going out of style? 🙁
So here’s a funny thing that’s been happening to me, which I was reminded of by Hey Ladies.
I share a very similar email address to someone in the UK. Basically mine has a “.” between my first and last name, and this English person does not. Gmail is apparently confused by this and I constantly get this woman’s emails (and I guess she may get mine). I’ve tried to email her about the problem, but I also get those emails.
At first it was just e-cards from her children, which I felt bad about, but there was nothing I could do, since no one’s email was attached to them. Then I started getting a series of groups emails from friends of hers. Apparently she is the wife of an Elder in some church and the Elders wives do a lot of group activities. Once they went to Croatia (?) on some sort of bus trip? Right now they are having a get together that was supposed to be a regular book club meeting, but is now a going away party for another Elder’s wife. In the original email the leader indicated that the host would provide an entrée, that she (the leader) would provide a pudding, and that if the other wives could bring something that would be great. Literally every other respondent indicated that she would also bring a pudding. There is going to be one entrée and like 6 puddings at this get together.
At one point I tried to alert other members of the group that my name twin was not getting these emails. But it kept happening so I just gave up. I’ve been slowly switching to a new email address because I’m not sure if she’s getting my emails too (one can only hope that she is and she’s enjoying them).
That’s weird because I thought Gmail essentially treats emails with ‘.’ in them as equivalent to those without (if it has the same letters). I’m surprised it allowed registration of both emails separately.
Gmail ignores dots in usernames, I believe. So firstname.lastname -at- gmail.com and firstnamelastname -at- gmail.com are the same address. That’s why your attempt to email her doesn’t work.
Possibly she has mistyped something. Or maybe her address is something like firstname.lastname.1638 and she is very bad at the internet and keeps forgetting.
I don’t know what you can do about it, though.
“There is going to be one entrée and like 6 puddings at this get together. ”
Ooooh, I wanna get in on this.
Yes! Emlorark, you’ve been invited, you should totally go! (and also take me with you)
Travel to England, watch from afar, show up at her door dressed as her, laugh, eat pudding, become best friends.
also tour the country as heroes?
Ugh. How annoying.
I have a pretty unusual legal name, but my first and last names are exactly the same as a woman who…well, let’s just say the world would probably consider her to be a Much More Successful Adult than I am to which I say Fuck That because being known on the Toast for my gif usage is pretty great, IMO. But I gotta say I’m glad I don’t get her email because I don’t need to be constantly reminded that I do not get paid to be a world expert at anything and nor do I enjoy the hobby of falconry well enough to write a book on it.
I bet I have better hair, though.
I would love to read an elderly British lady version of Hey Ladies!
That’s Agatha Christie novels, basically.
I have the same thing! Although not with a wife of a church elder, but apparently with like…at least 3 different other people. One is a guy who inspects sewage treatment plants, or at least he had a field trip to one at some point. Another one is a woman in Florida who has a son, whose timetable plan I’m often asked to vote on, and the final woman is a lady who sells maxi skirts at kids’ parties. I’ve emailed all the people emailing but they don’t seem to get it. None of mine are quite as interesting as 6 puddings and one entree though, except now and then people get a bit frantic about ordering the wrong size skirt. And also it seems like one of these people is signing up to A LOT of extra-marital dating sites, which leads to some interesting emails.
a lady who sells maxi skirts at kids’ parties
I met someone with my SAME EXACT FULL NAME on myspace, and then she was actually in town once and came over for a visit. it was a little awkward but also pretty funny.
There’s 1 person in the US who has the exact same full name as me. The only internet proof of her existence are her police records and mugshot.
my email address is first letter of first name+last name and I have gotten two actual official emails for a Kevin mylastname and Kim mylastname recently. One was relating to an insurance claim and one was something medical. Sadly not as entertaining as pudding and trips to Croatia.
Well I looked more closely at her name/email and it appears her first name it different from mine by one letter (which is a very unique spelling) so perhaps that is the source of the issue, rather than the “.”
I get this kind of thing all the time. My email address is also firstname.lastname, and there are apparently a ton of people out there with my first and last name who forget that their own email address also includes an extra initial, or a number, or something. I get notices that someone’s child’s cafeteria balance is overdrawn, various receipts for online orders, group emails about people’s college classes, and the occasional plane reservation. (One of them signed my email address up for a kajillion mailing lists all on the same day; that was a fun round of “unsubscribe, unsubscribe, unsubscribe.”) Every once in a while I get something with the person’s postal address in it and I seriously consider sending her a postcard that says “Hi! You might want to learn your own email address!” But I never do.
Someday I’m going to write a short story about it.
My favorite is when I get locked out my own accounts (bank account or Steam account) because people keep hammering the wrong password in and then it shuts down. I’ve had these account names for over a decade!
Gmail *does* ignore dots in email addresses. This is why I get so many emails for a woman in Canada who shares my first and last name but includes her middle initial, which, since it is the same as the first initial of her last name, rarely seems to make it into the typing of the people she shares it with. So, my email is firstname.lastname@gmail, hers is firstnamellastname@gmail. If she used dots we might not have this problem (i.e. firstname.l.lastname), but I can’t for the life of me convince her to do so.
The time I got a follow-up “corrected” email with the dots removed going “gee, she (me) sure is cranky” and got to reply “wrong email again” was pretty funny, though.
Most recent email was registration for some tooth fairy website for young girls….previous emails have included “so, we’re meeting at the credit union to sign X papers tomorrow, right?” and pictures of other people’s children.
My husband got the best golf club board meeting notes that have ever existed mistakenly addressed to him (essentially Hey Ladies, golf club board style), and I am super bummed that we have not gotten follow ups, because I would frankly like a subscription.
This happens to me ALL THE TIME. My name’s alterego appears to be involved with a corrupt church — I learned all about how Bob had got away with thousands in donation money one day. The problem is that UK email addresses can be the same as ours, but finish with .co.uk instead of .com, so the email is probably the same and they keep screwing up the end bit.
mine is a chemist for Bayer aspirin. She’s Danish and so I get these emails that I can’t read most of the time.
Once though I did get bachelor party invites for a different name doppelgänger who lives in the UK and it took me a while to get off, so there was Hey Ladies for shy European girls in my email account for a while.
Glad not to be alone in this!
OHMYGOSH YOU GUYS. Last night I went out with my ex and he was trying to hit on me and flirt and shit and it was weird because I thought it was just a “catch up as friends” situation. I finished my drink, and then he said “heyyyy you wanna get outta here?” and I said “Yeah, but not with YOU.” !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! He was so sad and confused. It was so empowering you guys.
OH JEEEEEZ DUDE WHAT WHAT
*high-fives you, shakes head at your ex*
I just moved to a town where my ex lives. He keeps FB-ing and texting and trying to hang. I am torn between ignoring him until he gets the message and sitting him down for a come-to-Jesus talk. Since you’ve got this under control, which should I do? Tell me. Tell me. Tell me.
Ah the pressure! I’d say, do whatever feels comfortable for you! (That’s not helpful is it? Ahhhh. These situations are all so highly specific.)
But whatever you do, do it with ATTITUDE and go forth in the knowledge that you are a Babe in Total Control of Herself (BITCH), and all men must bow down in supplication before you.
PS I love your username so much. SO MUCH.
Thanks! 🙂
And fiiiiiine I’ll be a grown-up and make my own decisions, albeit with your sassy encouragement.
I have returned from Washington State! Lots of lovely water & salted caramels & the EMP Museum (and Star Wars Costume Exhibit) was amazing!
Of course I came to less-than-great things:
Gross cat thing happened- she has a ruptured anal gland. She’s mostly fine just uncomfortable and on anti-biotics. However it is gross to clean and gross to wake up with it in your face.
At work one of my student workers hasn’t been showing up for his shifts so the rest of us are working long, long hours and are annoyed/furious in varying degrees). Also it’s hard to replace people mid-quarter so boooooo.
Glad you got to enjoy WA! The weather has been pretty great here lately so you are lucky, sometimes in spring it is really rainy or unpredictable.
I went to that Star Wars Costume Exhibit too! It was so awesome! I also got slightly too close taking a picture and set the alarm off! The guy on duty was mostly just amused, it was obviously not the first time that had happened that day.
I’m going to rock & roll camp next weekend and I’m terrified! It’s going to be great! But also being creative in public stresses me out and I haven’t played an instrument in almost ten years and it’s all affirmation-y and supportive and I’m going to have feelings ALL OVER THE PLACE.
<3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3
My joy was riding my bike through the Emerald Necklace last evening (not as easy as it sounds since it disappears for a bit and then you have to re-find it again) and smelling flowers all the way– then meeting queer writers who are interested in the Big Collaborative Project I’ve been trying to put together for a while now.
I’m jealous of your bike ride! I miss running through the emerald necklace, and this is a lovely time of year for it.
I fell down a wikipedia hole yesterday and this guy’s life would make a great movie. Heinz Drossel, one of the Righteous Among the Nations recipients (for helping Jews during the Holocaust), was a German Army lieutenant who first started letting Soviet prisoners escape, then stopped a Jewish woman from jumping off a bridge and hid her in his own apartment until he could help her move on, then helped another family before winding up in a situation where he ordered his troops to fire on the SS rather than go on a suicide mission against the Soviets, whose arrival interrupted the whole “arrested and sentenced to death” thing that happens when you disobey orders in the German Army and open fire on the SS. And after the war? He married the woman he helped from the bridge.
How is that not a great movie?
Holy cow!! That would be a fantastic movie.
I would watch the hell outta that.
Joyful things: I bought a pink couch after Ikea discontinued said pink couch. I bought the very last one in my area, literally the very last one. It’s pink.
I posted a few weeks ago about a former instructor/work supervisor promising to write me a letter of recommendation for graduate school and then JUST NOT DOING IT despite many, many very polite reminders that were always met with, “of course, I’ll send it to you tonight for sure.”
Well, I managed to get someone to fill in for her, although the letter was already pretty late and the new person needed a few more days to write me one, and this whole time I was everything you’d pretty much expect a person in my situation to be. How do I still have hair? And stomach lining? It’s amazing.
Two of the schools called me for an interview – and I got an acceptance from each one. I’m not exactly joyful about it because every bit of good news is met with trepidation and skepticism around here, BUT, everything I was working for was this, and now I’m here, and it’s going to be very busy and nerve-wracking and, um, frugal, for the foreseeable future – but I’m here. Plus I got to have a delicious grilled cow heart and a sangria to celebrate and if you ever get the chance to do a very dainty Daenerys Targaryen impression, I suggest you take it.
I too own a pink couch. Welcome to the sisterhood. You will find your life now becomes exponentially more fabulous.
What color is your couch?
I got the last of an armchair Ikea discontinued, and it is not pink, but it is the world’s greatest chair and I have no idea why they discontinued it. It’s the absolute best. It’s GIANT, and has an ottoman so big I have an extra six inches at the end of it, and I am not short. I can curl up my legs in it, but you definitely couldn’t put two people in it. The arms also serve as pretty effective shelves OR pillows. It is my 3rd most prized possession after my computer and my car.
Ikea will sometimes discontinue things just because. A good place to park your butt at home is the best thing ever – but it’s even nicer when you know that you’re sitting on a rare Swedish collectible. “oh this old thing? No, you can’t get it anywhere.” *tucks feet under self, sips tea, closes eyes in deep, smug satisfaction*
Super late contribution: I had a similar experience with reference letters — three “yes of courses” and then total silence for the two months leading up to the application deadlines. The person who filled in was, for me, a longshot, but totally came through. So awesome.
Congrats on your acceptances. <3
Hi! Thanks for the response and the commiserating! It’s just such a mindfuck to deal with, isn’t it? Why say yes when you can’t do it? It’s kinder to just decline and let us waddle around and find somebody else. Makes me wonder why we didn’t just make our Plan B people our Plan A people from the start, right? My Plan B person was so appalled at the way my MIA recommend-er was behaving that he tried to talk to me about putting in a formal complaint about her (he’s corporate and she’s academic, which, sadly, explains some of this nonsense). Alas, you can’t complain. You can just scream inwardly and send yet another polite email. But let us forget all about that now.
tl;dr I am so happy that your reference letters came together and that all ended well for you! I hope you’re on your way to great things <3
Help! In need of credit card advice!
I currently have a credit card that is linked to air miles, and I am thinking of canceling it — I just end up spending waaaaay to much money with it. But it has been wonderful getting so many free miles with it, so I am reluctant to actually go through with canceling it. But I don’t think my budget can withstand it anymore!
Do any toasties have advice? How many credit cards do you actively have/use? What does canceling a credit card actually do to one’s credit score? How do you manage your credit cards without overspending?
I am one of those terrible people who actually can do the “put everything on a credit card and pay it all off every month” thing. Because of that, I put everything on an Amtrak rewards card – I live in NYC and most of my travel is on the east coast, free train tickets are awesome. I have two other open credit cards. One is the Amazon rewards card that was My First Credit Card. A few autopay things are still on that, and I pay it off in full every month. The other is a Gap card that I opened for the discount and paid off immediately and am not entirely certain where it actually is.
I’m not sure why I can do this whole pay it off every month thing, but I think it’s because I’m pretty debt-averse and I’ve been lucky enough to not need to rely on my credit cards to get me through anything yet. I’m unemployed right now and have access to a lot of credit compared to the salary I’m seeking (like, credit equal to 25-30% of my potential salary) and I could see myself ending up in a situation where I need to go into a small amount of credit card debt to get through this period in my life. I’m really worried that the whole system will get fucked up if I do that and that I would start accumulating lots of consumer debt and that’s terrifying.
I’m another person who uses a card a lot but pays it off every month, mostly because of rewards.
I use this budgeting program, which I really like. It helps me know how much I can spend on things without causing problems. It’s $60, but it does have a 34 day free trial, and there’s a bunch of video tutorials and free live online classes and very helpful forums and so on.
It would be better to keep that account and just stop using it while you pay down the balance to zero. Your credit score will thank you. Try to keep it unused, save for emergencies, if you cannot stop spending outside your budget. After the balance is zero, try restricting its use to something you never overspend on, like gasoline, and pay the balance every month. That will make your credit score happy as well.
Similar question: I have a credit card, which I use rarely, and pay the entire balance every month. It’s just a generic one from my bank though, and I would like to get one that comes with rewards for free travel-any recommendations?
I have used this site with excellent results:
http://www.credit.com/credit-cards/
Thanks! Going though its quiz thingy now!
Agreed with everyone about not closing the account. This is for two reasons: 1) it benefits your credit score to have a longer credit history, so it hurts you to close older accounts, and 2) it benefits your credit score to have a lot of credit, but low balances, so having an open card with a balance of zero is beneficial.
If you’re really worried about spending on it you can hide it somewhere, put it in your freezer, or ask a trusted family member/friend to hold it for you.
Or cut it up!
Hey Toasties! So I had a weird thing happen (good weird) and I wanted to see if y’all have had the same experience.
Last weekend I bought a tshirt with that John Waters quotation on it – If you go home with somebody & they don’t have books, don’t f**k ’em – and I wore it on a plane last Sunday. I was a little worried, but I did it. I felt SO badass. Some guy tried to cut in line at the Xray machine and I told him where the line started and refused to let him cut without apologizing in any way. No, “Sorry, the line’s back there,” no making my request or myself small and quiet. I wasn’t rude, but I wasn’t scared of upsetting him, either.
Do y’all have anything that makes you feel badass? Do you ever notice yourself behaving different ways depending on how you present yourself to the world?
Do y’all have anything that makes you feel badass?
My leather motorcycle jacket. I strongly recommend one. I bought it because it made me feel badass and after two decades of wear, the badassery just comes naturally.
When I was in college I used to dress up– like, pencil skirt, heels, blazer, everything– if I had to take a big test. It made me feel like I knew what I was doing.
I had a Kill All Men moment last night at Mt conference when a drunk guy kept castigating me about software we sell. How it sucks and is boring and blah blah blah and after saying repeatedly “I’ll pass that along to the manufacturer” and “that’s valuable feedback” and he wouldn’t shut up, I just said “Okay” and turned my back and walked away.
He immediately went “I’m sorry! I’m just saying!” and I said “Okay.” I did not apologize or make any gesture of conciliation, just stared. I don’t even care if it was rude. Fuck that guy, I don’t give a shit!
At work sometimes, I tug on the end of my shirt like Captain Picard to channel my inner Authoritative Bald Man.
Just realized I was so eager to talk comics that I never posted any joyful things!
-Last weekend I got very, very depressed – the worst episode I’ve had in months, maybe years. That’s not the joyful part; the joyful part is that it didn’t last and I got out of it. I distracted myself with fandom stuff, and when I finally stopped being stupid and opened up to friends about what was going on, they were lovely about it.
-A good friend of mine is getting married tomorrow, which is lovely and means seeing people from college.
-In exactly two weeks I’ll be visiting my alma mater for their commencement/reunion weekend (even though it’s not my official reunion).
-My sister is having another baby! I will be an aunt thrice over!
-In approximately three weeks I’ll be moving out of my super-toxic living situation
-Hannibal comes back in less than a month
-I have a Starbucks reward to use so I’m gonna get me a S’MORES FRAPPUCCINO after work.
Toasties, tonight I am seeing a friend I last saw in 2006, when we were wee rising freshmen in high school. I will spend the weekend in her company, telling her about the cute poet I’m pursuing (oh jesus that could be a whole other post. Suffice it to say he is a flirt over email and shy in person, thereby driving me insane). I am happy. Yay for friends and free airline miles and crushes-who-are-also-lovely-friends and hot thinly-veiled poems and all that is good in this life.
If any other Toasties want to talk Penny Dreadful AKA the Vanessa Ives show + bonus witches I am here for that.
*zip lines through nearby window* I AM READY
MY GOD EVA GREEEEEEENNNNNNN i love her so much. So much.
She honestly needs to win all the awards. I didn’t realize how much I’d missed the show until I watched last week’s episode. What are your hopes for the season?
Mine are:
1. Sembene backstory
2. Dorian seducing everybody
3. Vanessa vs. witches showdown
4. Less Frankenstein angst
5. More Simon Russell Beale wacky Egyptologist
Also, the costume designer is a gem omg
Sembene backstory is my #1 as well. I want to know everything about him.
I also want to know more about Ethan’s backstory. Why did he know so much about exorcisms?? We got a good taste, but that part of last season in particular has me flummoxed.
EVERYTHING INVOLVING VANESSA (I’m mildly obsessed). I am also deeply enjoying Megan McCrory (sp?) as the head witch. She is a delight.
Did you see that Hot Topic (I know, I know, hear me out) has a Penny Dreadful line? There is a blazer in particular that I am lusting after, with very little hope that it would actually fit, because they seem to only carry junior’s sizes. But still. Costuming on this show is spectacular. After the first episode/the initial scene, I turned to Mr. Wren and said, “Is there anything more beautiful and terrifying than an unsmiling woman in a gorgeous black Victorian dress?” I am not sure he knew what to make of that.
NEGL, having checked it out, I am pretty into the black top with the scorpion neckline.
I also want to know more about Ethan. Based on contextual clues I’m sure his dad is a gem. Between Ethan and his father, Frankenstein and his creature, and Mina and Sir Malcolm, there’s a lot of bad parent stuff going on in this show. I wonder if Vanessa is Sir Malcolm’s biological daughter or more his spiritual daughter? I’m hoping for the former because the latter is a bit on the nose for me. Sir Malcolm also seemed to want to use Ethan last season as his less sickly, more alive son and I wonder if they’ll revisit that.
I thought this was a neat article about the costumes.
There’s a steely austerity to Vanessa’s character that reminds me very strongly of Gillian Anderson’s Stella Gibson, which makes me very happy. I’m always delighted to encounter a female character who’s not always the easiest to root for. Of course, I do end up rooting for both women and it’s just fascinating to watch them interact with their surroundings.
I am waiting for the season to come out on DVD because that is how the Burgomaster prefers to watch television and I usually don’t care, but waiting for this one is killing me.
That is the worrrrrst. My condolences.
I feel about this show the way I felt during the first season of American Horror Story. If anything, I think season two is more promising than season one.
We accidentally watched the first episode like 2 weeks ago (there was an early preview) not realizing the actual season started later. So we got a taste of more Penny Dreadful and now have had to wait all this time for new episodes!
Oh man I am still watching season one, I will watch Eva Green in anything (have you seen “Womb”??), except I do hope this whole demon possession thing is over for good.
[Writes and then deletes an essay on the subtexts of delicate women being taken over by a powerful supernatural being]
Joyful! One of my most dear friends is visiting and I’m counting the hours until the end of this long work week!
I had a very positive evaluation at work.
Had drinks with a friend on Tuesday and at some point was going on and on about my love for Carole King. The bartender apparently shares my musical tastes and bought my pal and I a drink! Who knew my love of singer/songwriter types had such perks!
TOASTIES: Oh, frabjous day! I’m being interviewed very seriously for a position with a clinical research center in Portland! One of my favorite cities in the world! There’s one quibble, though: I live in DALLAS. I’ve never moved further than El Paso (with furniture, anyway; I lived in Japan in college). They’ve been very upfront with the fact that they want to give me relocation assistance, and they’re moving WAY faster than any other job I’ve ever applied for.
They reached out to me Wednesday saying they think I meet the requirements, and now it’s Friday and they’ve already sent reference forms to the supervisors on my resume (one of whom called me to ask what was up). They want to do a phone interview with the unit supervisor next week! THIS IS A THING THAT IS HAPPENING. THIS IS A THING I NEVER THOUGHT WOULD HAPPEN. I already have tentative plans to sell most of my furniture on craigslist to make moving easier because I don’t *need* most of this, anyway.
But…..I’m sort of afraid to hope, because what if it doesn’t work out? This is something I’ve dreamed of since I was in high school, and now it’s so close, I can taste it. Any advice? (Thanks for letting me explainabrag, btw. Happy Friday.)
I think a thing to keep in mind is that if this doesn’t work out, there will be other opportunities. There is no way that this is the only job in Portland that you’d be interested in and well qualified for that offers relocation assistance. If you want to move to Portland, then I’m sure you will, regardless of what happens here.
Which is not to say that you shouldn’t hope that this continues to go well, of course!
It’s going to be great! It will work out. But even if it doesn’t work out, it will still be great. You can get another job from Portland. With this great new Portland job on your resume. Don’t hesitate. Full steam ahead.
THANK YOU FOR TEACHING ME THE WORD FRABJOUS.
Two things.
Last Man on Earth thread? Okay, let’s do that since it just ended it’s first season. I really loved the commitment to despising its main character for such massive stretches of time and hopefully Will Forte Will finally become famous like he deserved to after appearing in Brothers Solomon & MacGruber. January Jones was exceptional as well and obviously Kristen Schaal knocked it out of the park.
I’m going to San Diego next week for a vacation leaving on Thursday morning. I have a lot of stuff planned already that I would like to see. Anything that I absolutely shouldn’t miss in the city?
Last Man on Earth was pretty fun, though I’m disappointed it didn’t make more use of end of the world plots in the middle. I loved the first episode when he was just descending into decadence and madness. And January Jones was great!
Every week we watch Last Man on Earth, and every week my husband says, “but he isn’t the last man on earth any more! I don’t like this show.” and then he ends up watching the whole episode and laughing. repeat weekly.
I really liked Last Man on Earth in the beginning, and then for a while it was just Will Forte trying to sleep with other women really, really hard and it got a bit repetitive. I like him being the least likeable man on earth, but be an ass in a new way! And then the finale was just A+ all the way, so now I’m excited again for the next season. I’m very happy that Kristen Schaal left with him to start over somewhere new and I’m also very intrigued by the idea of poor Jason Sudeikis, stranded in space.
Pretty exciting times for me: I got promoted to full-time with benefits at work yesterday after 8 months of 32-hour weeks. I’m 31, have two degrees, and this is my first full-time offer, so it’s due. Also, I’ve been CRUSHING IT the whole time and it’s satisfying to have that recognized. (Though I don’t know what my salary offer is yet and am nervous about possibly having to negotiate it.) I was pretty nervous about my career prospects there after our department boss was suddenly fired a couple weeks ago.
I also have a couple of poems coming out in a lit journal next week (that I even got paid [an honorarium] for). I stopped writing for about six years and this is going to be my first publishing credit this decade, so it’s a pretty big deal for me.
Bonus: there are several blooming magnolia trees on my bike commute, so when I have to bike into the wind, sometimes it smells incredible.
Wow! Full time job and getting published! Awesome job. You’ll do fine at salary negotiation, I’m sure. Enjoy your successes and the lovely spring weather!
Congratulations on your publications!! That is huge. Go you!
Pray to the goddess Misandria for all the UK Toasties. The Conservatives won the election with a majority, so it’s five more years of rule-by-Sauron. 🙁
or
Whichever’s your poison.
Both! A nip of whisky in sweet tea is pretty nice.
I defended my thesis yesterday, and I am done with grad school! Squishycatmew came, and we met in real life instead of idle chit-chat around the liquid nitrogen tank. (When I found out which lab she was in, I guessed who she was, as she is the most Toast person at her lab.) She was delightful, and I wish I’d gotten to know her earlier when I was also spending a lot of time in the lab. I guess I’ll just have to go back and do more research even though I’m done. (This is a joke, mostly.)
My presentation went pretty well, I was able to answer 3/4 of the questions completely and accurately, the answer to the 4th was “I would totally have been able to do that if you’d come to your office hours at any point in the last month.” and I DIDN’T say that out loud, and then we had wine and snacks and my mother told my lovely supportive cohort the story of my conception. Twice. She found an opportunity to tell it twice.
I have a tendency under stress to not eat and then get low blood sugar and then refuse to eat anything because food is “gross”, so my husband filled our house with cherries and sugar peas and prosciutto and hot chocolate and siggi’s yogurt, and I am going to spend today eating everything I didn’t get to during the final push. Also napping, since I didn’t start awake at all last night, and yet I still slept ten hours.
Wooooooooooo!!!!!!!!!
Haha, free! Free from obligations!
Pretty much, yes.
Congratulations! You did it! You’ve worked so hard, and now it is DONE! BY YOU
Your husband’s strategy sounds like the best combination of loving and caregiving, and you deserve every bit of it. Enjoy your triumph!
Cherries are an ideal form of caregiving. I concur.
YAY! Congrats!
It was an awesome defense! And having attended a few defenses now I have noticed that there is always *someone* who asks “why did you not do *thing that would have taken a bajillion more years/thing that you would have done if you COULD HAVE*?” You are also delightful and so are your weirdo botanist friends (I have no idea what is is about plants that makes me go “whut” and just sort of shrug because they are SO WEIRD and polypoid and WHAT IS UP WITH THAT? but I just… am not a plant person, at least scientifically).
Also I am slightly less terrified of grad school now because I have actually witnessed people finish!
I escaped! You will escape too! And I am so glad you came!
It was a fair question, and it is a question that professor always asks, and it’s also a question ONLY HE knows how to do the math for, and if he were not in the midst of a whirlwind of personal crises, we would have done it together and it would have been in the presentation. Yes.
Polyploidy makes NO sense, and I just realized I left out about five minutes of talking about why, sooo, um. Yes. Plants!
Congratulations!!!! I am laughing because hot chocolate and siggi’s yogurt sound like heaven. Also, because I read about the tendency not to eat and then remembered the wine from earlier in the story and suddenly was very worried, so thank heavens for the tempting snacks and thoughtful husband.
He said “Behind every great scientist is a great administrator.” I like it.
Congratulations!! I’m just starting to prep for quals, so it’s nice to be hear happy stories of people who not only passed quals but finished the whole thing! Enjoy all your sleep and leftover snacks.
Happy things: I work in a large-ish tech company and my female friend and coworker and I are so tired of the parade of dudes that we’ve decided to do something constructive instead of complain endlessly to each other. There are five women in our group of 60, and we’re going to try to start some kind of women’s group in the company. Maybe get involved with some of the larger organizations (Girls in Tech, etc), do some outreach…I don’t know.
Do any of you have experience with this? I would welcome any and all advice!
Item of joy – I don’t know how to post a picture, but there are two Eastern Box Turtles visiting my office today! They are small and have little wiggly tails and they were eating strawberries. It was awesome!
Hi Toasties can I ask a mental health question about supporting a friend? It is long so below:
One of my very best friends abruptly stopped talking to me a few months ago. She is severely anorexic and not getting help and also has a history of other mental illness. I am pretty sure that she isn’t mad at me but that this – isolating herself – is part of her illness – she has done the same thing before but for shorter periods of time, maybe two or three weeks at most. It is now over three months this time.
I’ve continued to reaching out to her once every week or two via text and occasionally voice mail, sometimes saying something like “I miss you, I’m thinking of you, I’d love to hear from you” and sometimes going lighter like asking if she’s heard the new song from a singer or band we both like. We live in different states now so that’s about all I can do. I’m basically watching her through social media/one mutual friend who she’s still occasionally talking to to reassure myself that she’s still alive and semi-functioning.
I’m not sure if I should keep reaching out like this or if this is making things worse. If it was anyone else in any other situation I’d take the hint and let the fadeaway happen, but this girl has been in my life since we were 10, I was in her wedding, we have always been super super close. She doesn’t have much of a support system where she lives now and has become increasingly withdrawn in the past few years – she has just a few close friends and I want to be there for her. If I stop reaching out it feels like I’m giving up on her. This is the longest we’ve been without speaking since I’ve known her. I miss her so much and don’t know what to do. 🙁
You are doing exactly the right thing. Continue the “I miss you” and light, short messages. Because she is/has been sick, do not interpret her lack of response as reason to stop. You can stop when you see her social media mentions some super positive event that assures you she has improved and has sufficient other support. Such as her announcing her engagement, or announcing a mental health breakthrough, or a wonderful new job. At that point send one last message to say you’re happy for her and wait for a response. But until you know she’s OK, keep doing what you’re doing.
Thanks <3
As a decided non-expert but someone who also tends to isolate during bad stretches, I’ll say that your strategy — reaching out with light messages with songs or other pop-culture ephemera — seems pretty sound to me. In her shoes, and in the throes of crisis, I might feel [affectionate/ guilty/ sad/ frustrated/ unworthy/ all of the above] in response to those messages and fail to respond to them, but you can’t control that.
Whether I’m the isolated person or the person reaching out, I find “hey, have you heard [song]?” messages or fun links or light-hearted invitations often work better than abstract “I’ve been thinking of you, how are you doing?” messages, because they provide a conversational opening that is not focused on the isolated person’s isolation.
If you keep reaching out, your friend knows you’re there for them; the reaching out can be very fluffy and frivolous and still invite deeper discussion. But sometimes when someone sends an “Are you okay?” message, I feel like they’re asking me to discuss things I don’t want to discuss as the price of admission to conversation, and it can be overwhelming. (I recognize that feeling isn’t objective reality, that those friends aren’t intending that; I’m just conveying the feeling as it occurs to me when I’m in crisis.)
It sounds like you’re doing well by your friend. It’s worth considering whether you’re doing well by yourself, too. Is there an emotional cost to you in continuing to reach out to her without response? It’s okay to take a break (or stop completely) if that’s best for you; it might be a kindness to tell her you’re respecting her quietness for a bit but she can always reach out to you, or whatever is true for you. It’s okay to set boundaries, and it’s important to take care of yourself.
edited to add: I just remembered that during a dear friend’s bad stretch, in addition to texts and voice mails, I sent her actual paper mail: postcards with simple messages, a pretty card, a simple sketch, stuff like that. She never responded directly, but after she resurfaced from that depression, she mentioned that getting actual mail once in a while made her feel especially loved. If you have her physical address, that might be a fun thing to add to your repertoire, if you can do it without too much emotional cost to yourself.
Thank you! I will continue to go in the lighter direction and might try physical mail. I’ve sent her Christmas/birthday cards before so I know I have her address somewhere.
One of my friends sends me postcards on occasion, and they always make me feel wonderful, especially if I haven’t been in a great place lately. They’re always very light, but the show of taking the time to get a card and put it in the mail and write it out always makes me feel very loved.
Oh, joyful things!
I can finally comfortably afford my ticket to NZ and I leave next month.
I get to go strawberry picking with one of my besties and her twin almost-2-year-olds.
I got to go wedding dress shopping with my BFF last weekend and she will look amazing and I am so thankful for a friend who has known me forever and really *sees* me and loves me in all my weirdness.
I have a weird, wonderful family and I get to see a lot of them in the next few weeks.
Wedding dress shopping!! Oh my gosh, I would be so honored if any of my friends asked me to come dress shopping with them. None of them are engaged right now so that’s… not really an option, but I love the idea of it. Yay for female friendship and all its delightful rituals!
It was so fun! I got to know one of the other bridesmaids and it was the most wonderfully efficient day (aside from our first appointment). She lives in NYC, so we had quite a few places to choose from, and we definitely did the Kleinfeld’s thing. I expected it to be crazy, and it was definitely Disneyland for Brides, but our consultant really understood my BFF’s dress and shopping style, so we were really pleased. Wedding Atelier and Kleinfeld’s got big thumbs up (a boho-chic place called Lovely was thumbs waaaaaaaaay down).
Twin toddlers, squeeeee!
They are The Cutest! Waking up early is not something I do basically ever unless being paid to do so, but how could I resist wandering through a strawberry patch with good friends and adorable kids?
Helloooo open thread! I had a lovely weekend last weekend (friend visiting from out of town, and we went to the opera, the Doctor Who bar in Brooklyn, and my local movieplex to see Age of Ultron, which despite its problems we both enjoyed — also, we had lots of good food and walks around New York). This weekend I’m culling my book collection and investigating neighborhoods I might want to move to, because I have to move sometime in August. Tell me your tales of apartment-hunting, NYC Toastrons? Any recommendations for hanging onto your sanity while searching for a place to live?
Also, WALLACE STEVENS. When I’m grumpy I sometimes find myself repeating “Have it your way. / The world is ugly, / And the people are sad.” And when I’m less grumpy I get lines from “The House Was Quiet and the World Was Calm” or “The Snow Man” or “The World as Meditation” or “Final Soliloquy of the Interior Paramour” (or a long list of others) floating through my head.
Ooh, which opera?
The Rake’s Progress, at the Met. Totally weird and fascinating Stravinsky opera.
Ah! I’ve never seen that one. That’s one of those that they save for the very end of the Met season, for the really hardcore folks. 🙂
Yay The Way Station! Have you seen the Hulu commercial that filmed there?
No apt hunting tales, sorry. We’ve been in the same place going on 6 years, we lucked into a 1 br in a building owned/inhabited by the family of a college friend in Bensonhurst. It’s far from everything, but so damn cheap and our landlords are lovely, so here we stay.
No, I had no idea about the Hulu commercial! Is it online anywhere? I love the Way Station and its TARDIS bathroom and its goofily named Doctor Who drinks menu.
Do you think a harbor master ever celebrates good buoy placement by exclaiming, “jeez Louise, check out these buoys”?
Because if it were my job I’d probably say that at least once a day.
the harbor master is a Dad, he’s standing there with his hands on his hips, grinning hugely, looking around to see if anyone heard him, they heard him the first three hundred times
He just really takes pleasure in a job well done, y’know? Builds character.
My coworkers and I deploy buoys regularly and no, we don’t. We’re not harbormasters so they may have a different standard operating procedure.
Non-European and particularly Canadian Toasties! Fairphone is gauging interest for international sales in the lead-up to their next model (due out later this year) — sign up for info (and list your country) and hopefully they’ll start to sell them in Canada/North America. http://www.fairphone.com
(Fairphone makes durable smart phones that are meant to be repaired rather than replaced, with conflict free minerals and transparent labour practices. A+ stuff and a rarity in the tech industry.)
DONE. This is amazing.
I know, right? I’m in the market for a smart phone and I will throw what money I have at them for more ethical electronics.
Really? I drove Philly>L.A. and then L.A.>Philly, and the interstates in western Pennsylvania were some of the smoothest stretches of the trip (except for Texas and Oklahoma, which was just a straight line for hundreds of miles). On the westward trip, we took 76 West to 70 West, stopped in Wheeling WV for “Freedom Fries,” and then slept the first night in Zanesville, OH.
Ugh ugh UGH what a shitty day, Toasties. I have barely been holding it together all day.
My mother and I have been at odds for a long time, but about a month and a half ago she was verbally abusive to me, so I put her on indefinite time-out. I was already feeling pretty gross about not sending her anything for Mother’s Day, but I needed her to realize that this was serious (garden variety depressive narcissist, so it’s always about her but never her fault that her life is a mess). HOWEVER my brother texted me last night and said I should reconsider because her (third) marriage is seriously on the rocks. So now I have to figure something out, despite the fact that I can’t resume contact right now and don’t have any hope that the relationship will ever be EASY or require anything other than constant vigilance/maintenance.
On top of that I am having some issues with a really good friend of mine. I can’t imagine my life without their friendship but there are some pants-feelings involved on their end and I am just not interested, and of course it’s getting awkward.
Blerg argh why did I have to work today, I just want to go home and watch the Bad Wolf Bay scenes from Doctor Who until my eyes have completely run out of tears.
I support any method you choose for maintaining boundaries with your abusive mom. I trust your judgment. That said, *if* you are wavering on the Mothers Day gift, it may be better for you to send a token in observation. I suggest this only because it maintains your standards, not hers, to send a card, even if it’s late, that says something like You’ll always be my mom and you can choose to be a good parent. Again, if you feel it’s best to send nothing, I’m all for it.
I know the constant vigilance and boundary watching with an abusive parent. I am sorry we both lost the parent lottery. But you are aces at making the consequences hers and taking care of yourself.
Yeah I think I am going to make a personalized card online and have my little brother print it out and bring it over to her (he lives in the same town… I don’t even live in the same state). It’s not the best solution but it’s better than her getting something LATE – it will completely ruin M-day for her if she thinks she’s not getting anything.
Thanks… despite being a functional adult I still occasionally need to have that validation. This is just not how I wanted to spend my birthday weekend. Lots of self-care to balance it out, that’s for sure.
I’m sorry you’re up to your armpits in suckage. Mother’s Day is such a terrible day for so many people but no one really talks about it. I always give my verbally abusive narcissistic mother Mother’s Day presents not because I particularly want to celebrate her but because it’s the price I pay to keep the peace. But that’s my arrangement, you should do whatever feels best and safest to you. If that means sending a generic card or gift, that’s okay. If it means not acknowledging it at all that’s okay too, no matter how her marriage is going and what your brother says.
I went through something similar with my mom last year and didn’t observe either her birthday or Mother’s day. It turned out to be an effective message to send in the sense that it caused her considerable pain not to hear from me and that she is now kinder to me to prevent that outcome again. That’s a hard line to walk, though. It’s up to you, but make sure you’re doing what you need to do for your sake and not reconnecting with your mom (only) because she’s having a hard time or because your brother wants you to. Your boundaries must be maintained, and they are allowed to be flexible, and they are allowed to be rigid. (The end of the story is that I reconnected after five months, and our relationship is better with stronger boundaries because of our time apart, but your mileage may vary.) Strength and solidarity!
Do we have a book thread yet? if not: BOOK THREAD! What are you reading and loving right now? or reading and not-loving?
I finished Ali Smith’s “How to be Both” yesterday and loved it – it was such a warm and wonderful puzzle of a book. my copy had the Eyes section first, then Camera, and I can’t imagine reading it the other way around now (though I am rereading the first section again to catch everything I missed the first time through). For anyone else who read this book, what order did you have?
Book thread! I just finished Day of Honey and I recommend it to anyone who likes food writing. It’s a whole lot of things in one so hard to sum up…a food memoir by a war reporter? A war story about the people who don’t usually show up in war stories?
that sounds fascinating! adding it to my to-read list. 🙂
Seconding this recommendation, that book was wonderful.
I finally got my hands on the audiobook for Wolf Hall and I’m loving it! I’ve seen the mini-series and thought it was beautiful, so I’m excited about this book. I also just reread Texts from Jane Eyre and fell in love with it all over again. I think I might need to buy a copy for my little sister.
I’m rereading Forever Amber right now. I had forgotten how addictive and detailed that book is. Then I remember that Kathleen Windsor was like a twenty year old housewife when she wrote it and I want to die because what is my excuse for not producing a massively researched piece of historical fiction yet?
I haven’t been able to do How To Be Both but I might cycle it back into my reading list and see what happens.
I found a copy of Only Revolutions last weekend, so that is on my plate for this weekend. I’m also reading The Vorrh which is strange and weird and full of incredibly beautiful sentences and crushingly honest throw-aways that just make you say, “Oh. Oh boy.” After these will probably be Under the Skin or A Brief History of Seven Killings. I went on a book buying binge and I’m just trying to make my way through all of them.
I just got Elizabeth Wein’s newest out of the library. I haven’t so much as read the back cover but if it’s anything like Code Name Verity and Rose Under Fire I’ll be spending my weekend reading and crying.
Earlier this week I finished Cetaganda, which was lovely, and Americanah, which was amazing. I recently started Ethan of Athos and I can’t stop giggling and smiling at the MRA planet and this poor dude who’s (hopefully) about to get all his ideas about evil women being the root of all sin punctured when he ventures out into the wider universe. I love the Vorkosigan Saga so much.
Ethan gets better and better. Just finished a reread of Komarr and A Civil Campaign, trying to stop myself going on a full reread binge through the Vorkosiverse, becuase my TBR pile is already huge
Ooh, I just stayed up WAY too late finishing S., which obviously owes much to Nabokov and Kafka, but is a lovely, multimedia puzzlebox of an experience.
Oooh! I’m reading All The Light We Cannot See and am not far enough into it to have too many feelings either way, except man, I am all about WWII in fiction lately. Traveling this weekend so I’ll be diving into that (or getting back into The Secret History of Wonder Woman because I always travel with options.)
Finished After Birth last week (two weeks ago? can’t remember, not checking) and thought that was a hell of a read, totally engrossing and real.
I was just given a book called NATURE NOIR by Jordan Smith, about a park ranger working in part of California that was essentially condemned to be flooded by a dam project, so instead of docenting tours and showing people salamanders and spotted owls, he was trying to evict gold miners and meth manufacturers. And finding people who were partially eaten by mountain lions. It was both grim and superb.
OOhhhh I know a lot of people (myself included) who would be really into that.
The whole time I was reading I had to restrain myself from shoehorning it into a Link Roundup. It’s very Toast-appropriate.
I finished His Dark Materials basically in one shot. Loved it, am having the sadness of never being able to read it for the first time again.
Just finished The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell. It is… not a light read, friends, but it is achingly beautiful. It is the first of a series and hoo boy, I can’t my hands on the next one (Children of God) soon enough.
Re-reading the third Game of Thrones book in between other things.
I love The Sparrow (and basically everything Mary Doria Russell has written). I’m due for a re-read
I loved The Sparrow! The sequel is also interesting – I’d say it’s more… scifi-ish? than the first one, but it’s also worth reading.
I am about to start the last book of the Vampire Academy series. Which has been a delightful romp.
Clearly haven’t been reading anything else too exciting lately because I can’t remember any titles. Except the book I’m reading for my Mindfulness Meditation course.
Sometimes forgettable fluff is the best. I read a lot of it when I’m stressed, or listen to it while I sew so I don’t have to think too hard but also keep pace while I machine quilt
I’m currently reading A Man Came Out of a Door in the Mountain by Adrianne Harun for my work book club. It is good, though it deals with a lot of depressing subjects (poor, small community, drugs, missing / murdered women off a notorious highway). There are also some quasi-mystical elements. Overall I’m enjoying it.
I am reading Young Men and Fire, which I am hating, and My Beloved World, which I LOOOOVEEE and I love Sonia and just, o o o I want to hug her and tell me stories all day.
I also started the audiobook of Rebecca, which is very nice but the world is so distracting! I listened to it while on the bus to run an errand and kept losing focus.
I’m reading Apollo’s Angels, which is a gorgeous history of ballet. It’s been amazing learning about how much historical context influenced ballet. I particularly enjoy when she highlights bits of dances that I know in order to illustrate some historical nuance I’d never even considered. It’s clear that she’s a dancer as well as a historian; her descriptions of how the dances feel on the body ring so true.
I’m reading Underworld by Don Delillo. Not bad, not anything I’ll probably think much about once I’m done. Last week (earlier this week?) I read Women in Clothes and it was fantastic. I read it on a Kindle and it would probably be better in book form with (I’m assuming) color pictures instead of black and white, but still. Wonderful.
I’m reading The Sympathizer and looooooving it.
I just read All the Birds, Singing and Days of Abandonment which were very different from each other and both excellent. Be warned they are not particularly cheerful books but are rather intense and stressful.
I also read Dept of Speculation a few weeks ago (a recommendation from here) and really liked it. Although again, not particularly cheerful so….beware. I think I need to find some lighter books to read.
I just finished Half a Yellow Sun, and it was so good that I’ve been kicking myself for not reading it sooner and running around recommending it to everyone I know.
Thank you so much Toast. Y’all were indispensable last week; without you I might have just started bawling at my desk. Thank you for your kind words.
My joyful thing: this past Saturday night we went up and saw the lava lake that’s formed in Halemaumau crater and it was MAGNIFICENT. It was cold and rainy and great. Here is a news story about it:
http://www.hawaiinewsnow.com/story/28989141/crate…
I have a good friend who lives on the big island but he had a kid so I no longer get routine lava updates and it makes me sad. We’re both geologists and lava is SO beautiful and scary.
Joyful things: spring, and a Toastie meetup tomorrow! I’m excited to meet all you wonderful people and eat mini-foods 🙂
Question, if anyone actually makes it this far down-thread: What’s a good femme-y haircut that is relatively low-maintenance but still says “this girl is not straight”? I am usually read as straight, but I am very much into girls (although I haven’t explored it much yet). I keep looking at Natalie Dormer’s awesome undercut and then remembering that I don’t have her amazing bone structure, and also I’m job-hunting. What to do, what to do…..
Military men have been getting a form of the undercut for decades. Including men without good bone structure. I have seen so many mushy-faced men with the sides of their head shaved. Don’t let your face shape stop you. Go ahead with an undercut on one side so you can let your hair fall over and cover it for job interviews. Your stylist can help with that strategy.
Sympathizing with Mother’s Day feelings. Those days are always hard even though I observe them. Try to do something nice for yourself, especially if you also send something to her.
Any recommendations for a brazenly feminist tattoo artist in Chicago? Because I am going to get “feminist” tattooed on my shoulderblade and I want someone to do it who will be psyched about it. Looking for a woman artist, obvs.
Reccing Maya Evans!
Anyone wanna share negative in-law stories that ended up working out in the end? i.e. not destroying your relationship?
My girlfriend had to cut off all ties, move, and change her phone number.
Drastic times.
She’s fallen back in with them lately (long story) and she’s about to change her number again.
To be honest, joyful things are hard to muster up right now because (I am finally realizing) I have cycled back around from minor depression to major depressive episode as of a few weeks ago. I described in to The Fella as “that horror movie cliché: you’re in a corridor and allllllll the way down the corridor, the lights start shutting down, and you run as fast as you can just to stay ahead of the outage before the dark catches up.” BUT
1. Even as I felt it coming on, I’ve kept working, even though writing feels like shoveling frozen ground, or trying to pick up dimes with numb fingers. My words feel clumsy and numb, but I am doing it, damnit, and when I look back at any given piece, I can see that I’m still doing it well. I don’t get the ping of satisfaction I usually do from writing, but that is optional: Doing the work is decidedly non-optional.
2. I’ve not only kept up with my household goals, I’ve even started an ambitious decluttering project. It will take a long time, and that’s fine. I’ve managed not to get discouraged or overwrought by the emotional or physical work of sorting possessions, even as the emotional lights started going out.
3. I continued socializing and (to a lesser extent) exercising, and even threw a family birthday party for my mother this week, then took her out for lunch yesterday.
These things are good news on their own, in part because I know in the abstract that they’re good for me, and in part because the simple fact that I can do them means I’m handling this chapter better than I would have been able to a year ago.
(One note: Please don’t offer me advice, however well-meant it might be. I’m handling it, and I’m proud of that, and advice on my mental or physical health right now would be counter-productive.)
I’m sorry to hear you’re in a down cycle, but want you to know that the way you’ve accounted for what’s working in the face of that is really helpful to see. Sometimes I forget that being aware on that level is enough to maintain a grip on the life raft until land comes back into view, so thanks for putting it out there. I hope things reverse themselves in a happier direction soon.
I’m glad it if did anyone any good, but frankly I wasn’t super mindful or aware of it until last week, when my illusion of complacency kinda exploded. For a month or more, I’d been thinking “Isn’t this interesting, I’m exhibiting some of my usual symptoms of depression without actually feeling depressed, ho hum, fascinating,” right up until I fell apart.
That level of denial is absurd, but now I know that —at least for me — complete self-awareness isn’t a necessary component to keeping my head above water, which is useful information on its own. I just kept on truckin’ because I had to, and because I didn’t know any better. Keeping to my goals (while making allowances for my own exhaustion) not only kept me on-track in mundane matters of life, but actually ameliorated some of the depression itself.
That’s it, though. Sometimes we can practice self-care in spite of our best and worst selves by simply channeling Larry the Cable Guy and trading a lot of leaning in for a little git ‘er done. OK, maybe that’s just me because I want flannels with ripped sleeves to be a thing, but still. Helpful to be reminded.
::hugs::
{{{hugs}}} from me as well.
♥ You are so brave.
Jedi hugs to you, my fellow Toastie
Elsa is Emily, I am always so impressed by you for the following reasons:
1.You do the work. Even when the work is hard to do.
2. You know yourself well enough to know what won’t be helpful and you firmly set that boundary.
3. Your writing is beautiful. Even your internet comments are full of phases I want to turn over in my head a few times.
I’m hoping all the best things for you.
SmrtCookie, that’s very kind of you to say, especially since setting the boundary is crucial to my well-being but actually doing it gets harder the more I need it. Sometimes, people react as if I’m shoving them away or judging their own coping mechanisms instead of simply explaining what is counter-productive for me. So hearing that, especially from you, is just lovely.
<3<3<3<3<3
I’m definitely up for a Minneapolis/STP meetup! I’ll also be done with the semester right around then and ready to join you on the patio!
This was supposed to be a response to 2for1cheesecake!
I am way behind the times but I started watching Hannibal this week.
I have Will Graham feelings. OMG so many feelings. He is so pretty and damaged and I just want to watch him be pretty and damaged forever.
I can’t believe that baby Penny is almost a month old already. How did that happen?!?! She’s doing great, and finally gaining weight. She’s not quite back up to her birth weight yet, but she’s stopped losing weight and is actually gaining now, which is a huge relief. It’s funny, considering how much I hate breastfeeding I was really upset at the thought of having to supplement. I’m relieved that it looks like I’m going to be able to keep exclusively breastfeeding, although I do still find it unpleasant.
Pic spam!
They are so cute together. Also please note MiniMe’s amazing bedhead.
Biiiig stretch!
For once she isn’t screaming at her Papa! <3
Oh and SO’s nieces are coming for a sleepover tonight. Which means that my 3 year old is going to have a bad attitude for 4 days straight. Ugh. Lord give me strength.
Your children are adorable! But you knew that. What you call bedhead I assumed was the child’s preferred look, purposefully achieved with hair product. So it’s a naturally achieved product of sleep.
I’ve sat here for a few minutes trying to phrase this in a way that doesn’t’ sound like some sort of Internet Youth Vampire before realizing that, hey, that’s what it is, so:
YOU CHILDREN ARE GIVING ME SUCH JOY
RIGHT THROUGH THE SCREEN
SO CUTE
Please steal their energy! Enjoy!
TOASTIES, I HAVE CHOSEN WHERE TO GO TO COLLEGE. FREAKY IS GONNA BE A RHODE ISLANDER. HUZZAH!
Hooray!!!
*tacklehugs* I DIDN’T EVEN HAVE TO LEAVE IT TO A HAT – I JUST WOKE UP ONE DAY AND KNEW.
THAT IS SO GREAT!
I want you to know how grateful I am – I couldn’t have done it without you, or any of you guys, for that matter. Toasties are the best.
Late reply is hella late, but.
Congrats on the choice.
Rhode Island is lovely. ….. At least it is if you didn’t have to grow up there.
From the looks of it, the benefits are more or less the same. Some are slightly better, some are slightly worse. It feels so weird to have to do financial gymnastics. Honestly, if the job turns out to be something I would really like, I would take it even with the pay cut. And, I’m a firm believer that money isn’t the most important aspect of job satisfaction. But, I feel like I’m generally not great at negotiating salary, and I do think it could have a long-term impact.
Take some time to explore the HR site, because Universities often offer benefits that may come in useful in the future, like tuition discounts or other professional development. Plus you may have the ability to jump around within once you’re hired, which can often come with pay increases. Good luck, and I hope you get a job that makes you happy.
Friends! Audiobook Sync has started their 2015 free audiobook downloads! http://www.audiobooksync.com/
Go forth and listen well.
BLACK WIDOW/MYTHOLOGY THREAD
I just read an interesting piece on i09 called How To Make Black Widow Truly Awesome, According to Richard K. Morgan. In it, they interviewed Morgan, the man resposible for the comic run that actually gave Black Widow a backstory, talking about his history with the character and all the Marvel drama that has surrounded her characterization in the films.
When talking about what would make a good Black Widow movie he said something really interesting about female superheroes and archetypes:
Superhero fiction is all about atavistic archetypes made flesh, and that shit’s no good for empowered women. Strong, smart, self-reliant women who don’t need men to define them only crop up in the human myth-base in one guise — the Wicked Witch. You’ve got to take the narrative somewhere else.
Thoughts, Toasties?
I read that and now I’d really like to read his run. It was nice to see his thought process about how BW’s personal history would be reflected in her character and how being female would tie into that – not as a man with boobs, but as a person who had done things and had things done to her. It’s sad that it’s that refreshing to see a male writer outline such a simple approach, but in these days of Sad/Rabid Puppy Hugo wtfery I’m pleased to see it.
I agree, as implausible as it seems, female superhero movies really do break new ground in storytelling because we don’t have those ready-made, patriarchally-enforced archeotypes to go off of. The thought of a woman superhero having her own agency and a character that is influenced by “real” life choices (instead of just how to please/help a hero) is revolutionary. And that is really fucking sad! The fact that Morgan actually realizes this is exceptional.
Most male Hollywood screenwriters have no fucking clue how to portray female superheroes in their own light. I remember reading something I believe Mark Ruffalo said about the Black Widow’s romance storyline where he basically says, “Well of course she gets involved with a romance, there really aren’t any other storyline options available for her.”
Everyone in the industry from the studio heads to the writers and actors can’t conceive of a storyline for a woman that doesn’t put her in a romance! It never even occurs to them that we might want to see her struggle with the terrible things she’s done in the past instead of focusing on the things that were done to her. It’s so lazy and it makes me SO mad.
Hello! Short time lurker, first time commenter.
I haven’t failed to notice that many of you guys are librarians/MLIS grads (there was a library thread last week, but assumed it was ill-mannered to hijack it with my own woes). I graduated last year and I still haven’t broken in to the field (or any field), so I guess I could use some moral support. I just spent a dreary afternoon in a temp office that looked like a set from Eraserhead, during which time I learned that I was rejected from yet another job that 1) focused on areas of specialty from grad school, 2) must have had a shallow applicant pool, and 3) didn’t even grant me an interview. So, yeah, tears were shed on the way home.
Stupid things I did:
-Got into tons of debt to go to a school with a good reputation, hoping this would help get me in the door
– Planned for my long-term future and completed my education while I still had mushy adolescent frontal lobes
Not-as-stupid things I did:
-Worked a substantive amount of time in a library setting before deciding on librarianship as a career path
– Interned/practicum-ed/volunteered all throughout grad school
– Picked up transferable tech skills
How do you guys do it? =p Thanks
(Apologies if any of this is difficult to read; my blood sugar levels are so low right now)
Hi! I give out librarianship advice/stories that is generally on the horribly pessimistic/nihilistic side. If you want to talk, and you are on twitter, I am “allanaaaaaaa” – if you are not on twitter, hrmmmmmm, could you leave an email address?
There are so many good resources – have you done the resume critique on Hiring Librarians? (the rest of the site is depressing and crazy, don’t read it.) I would also totally love to critique and help you with your resume / cover letters. I know a million great mentor people as well that I can hook you up with if you want to just talk about stuff.
Ha, it’s cool, I’ve already crushed a library dream or two myself. Hm, I don’t have an active Twitter account right now. Is there no way to leave a private message with intensedebate? My email address includes my full name. We’ll figure something out, though.
No, but thanks for bringing that to my attention. We did a cover letter critique in one of my classes, but that’s about it. I’m pretty satisfied with my resume, but I do worry that my CLs could read as too stiff and boilerplate. I appreciate your offers; I feel really disconnected from sources of support over here!
oh silly me — I totally have an email address without my name in it, I just totally forgot when I was posting this.
hundred.billion.bottles -at- gmail.com I swear it’s not a Police reference, at least not exactly
I can’t possibly overstress how many librarians are on Twitter and how candid they are and how I have learned more from them in the past six months than I did in the two years of grad school.
Thanks! I like the name either way. =)
I don’t think I discovered many cynical (realistic, really) library bloggers/internet figures until it was too late. Even the BLS had optimistic data about the field when I started out.
I am so sick of paternalistic men who just won’t take no for an answer and push and push until I want to scream and break something. Just needed to get that out somewhere so I can get rid of that icky feeling I’ve been having all week.
Fantasizing retorts on your behalf:
Tell me about the last time you took “no” for an answer.
You seem to need me to do this for you. Why is that? Are you feeling needy? Are you not sufficient unto yourself? Needing to control others is a sign of insecurity, don’t you think?
Yeah, a little more of the end of that would have helped a bit. I can understand getting rid of the toilet pool but you really shouldn’t get rid of a margarita pool, especially since there’s no way to go wrong with one.
I really want a weekly web series that is just him interacting with the sports balls.
Hello Toasties! This is my very first ever comment. There isn’t much to be joyful about here in UK. It’s presently 23:25 and we’ve had an election. Today the country voted to have the Conservative government for another five years which basically means goodbye to the NHS, the welfare state, and hello to increasing racism and anti-immigration/anti-EU feeling. So it’s pretty shite here.
Well, the boy is home from college sort of…I went and hauled the fridge, etc out of the dorm room into a borrowed van and helped scrub the floor and he owes me about a gazillion nights of dishes because he asked me to sweep his room and I found…a thing I ‘m glad he’s using but still didn’t need to find., in 90 degree weather in MAY! and then we drove the 2 1/2 hours home for him to say “I’m going to dad’s”.
I have a lacrosse game so early that I have to be at the school by 7:15 a.m. tomorrow.
I am waffling between trying to get all my friends to take me places/have me stay at their houses/go camping with me/have an adventure for the three weeks I won’t have my kids (June 5 through the 26, if anybody wants to know) and being angry and depressed about not having the money to actually do any of the things that I used to do. Seriously. I am broke. I am so over it.
daughter STILL has bad back from Dad’s trampoline and hasn’t been able to run, jump, or do karate. Nothing to do but wait it out.
And I opened the windows and the spring air is cool but it’s going to rain for the next 5 days straight and go from the 80’s to the 50’s, yippee (not). And the giant junebugs are making noisy buzzing whomping sounds into my windows.
I survived another week of Mal Wart and I’m getting the hang of things, but the managers are still mostly the worst and my body is still betraying me. I’m pretty much the only person working in Housewares with an occasional foray into apparel/infants.
I get on well enough with my co-associates, but I’m not really making friends, and that’s okay.
I’m considering on writing an actual diary about the less banal things that happen. A lot of banal things happen. I just spend a great deal of time straightening shelves and walls and logging stolen shit.
I’ve been thinking about you at Mall Wart. Glad you survived. The diary is a good idea.
Flarg, I’m already mostly avoiding FB due to gloating Tories in my feed, but then just now I saw that my half-sister posted up a misogynistic cartoon with her own caption “feminazis”. Like…she’s only 19, our dad is a jerk, her mom also sucks, and she grew up in a macho culture, so things in her worldview might be a bit skewed. She’s put up racist shit in the past, as well as memes gleefully mocking the twin towers collapsing and the death toll every sept 11th (charming, no?). In those instances I said something to her, but I don’t speak much of her language and she doesn’t speak much English (feminazi seems to transcend barriers -_- ). I’m not saying anything this time, as it’s becoming fairly clear she is going through a dickhead phase (please let it just be a phase). Sooo I just came here to vent and say how much I love this place and facebook can eat a bowl of fucks.
Oh man I waited all week for the open thread to post this and then Friday happened and I forgot all about the open thread so please forgive me for using this largely invisible internet space to unburden myself:
My eighty-year-old arthritic coworker who just used up the last of his FMLA leave recovering from a third stroke has finally retired. Everyone at work keeps talking about how sad this is and how much they’ll miss him and all I can think is: thank fuck, now maybe they’ll hire someone who can keep up with the job, doesn’t cause more problems than they solve, and will pick up enough shifts that I can finally have more than one weekend off in a month. This feels uncharitable. He is a nice guy. I am sorry he can’t work when he obviously wants to. But jesus christ on a pogo stick he has (indirectly, through his absence) made my life miserable these past three months and I am glad he’s not coming back.
*sigh* I feel better.