Hello Toasties! Thanks for all the recipes the other week. This week’s picture is of a chicken Kiev with mushrooms and mashed potatoes that The Bartender did not make. But could have.
The question is, however, what’s the best gift for a host? Say you’re staying with them for 3 days to a week. In their home. And they don’t have children for whom gift bringing is obvious. Many New Yorkers say Diptyque candles or Aesop soap. Other ideas? Or just open thread like the wind!
Tags: cocktail hour, open thread, the bartender
Many thanks to all who offered Vancouver suggestions last week! Much beautiful scenery was seen, much delicious food was eaten, the process of attending a women’s World Cup game with 50,000 people was surprisingly stress-free, I spent a lot of time being emotional about women’s soccer, and most importantly, USA WON!! All in all, an ideal trip; I hope to return to Vancouver soon.
In other news, I saw Inside Out last night and cried buckets; I am here for any and all discussion of the film with anyone else who’s seen it!
I haven’t seen Inside Out yet, but I was going to post about how excited I am to celebrate 1 year with the ladyfriend by going to see it tomorrow night! Glad you liked it, it looks so so good.
Oh good! What was your favorite Vancouver thing?
Oh man, that’s tough to say. Besides the game itself, I think maybe my favorite thing was the view of Vancouver from Queen Elizabeth Park. At the very least I think that’s the thing that will stick with me the longest.
But it was all great; loved Stanley Park and Granville Island and wandering Gastown. The only downside is i didn’t get to check out any museums, but that just means I have to go back!
I’m going to the final, and I AM EXCITED. I just went back and found last week’s thread and printed it out so I have many, many ideas of how to spend my non-soccer filled time.
I’m going to Canada-Switzerland on Sunday and i am SO EXCITED
I saw Inside Out too. All the feels! Bing-Bong! Such a sweet and funny story. Not Up! but still really good and heartfelt.
When I am a host, I prefer gifts of chocolate. Mr. BHam’s aunts from Hawaii stayed with us last month and gave us several boxes of dark chocolate-covered macadamia nuts that we devoured within days.
I was going to say that! I love posh chocolate selection boxes.
+1 for chocolate! Last time I stayed with somebody for a few days I brought a selection of chocolate/candy from a local gourmet candy store.
If you hosts are booze-inclined, a nice bottle of wine or liquor would probably be good.
Yep. Food or alcohol. Something that can be consumed and enjoyed and then is gone.
If there is a delicacy or specialty from your home that you can take, even better! (E.g. candy that comes from your home town but is hard to find elsewhere)
I love the idea of bringing local delicacies! My city has a trademark candy, so I like to bring that to my hosts when I travel.
YES!! Fancy chocolates are the ideal host gift.*
* Unless they’re allergic, or one of those weirdos who just doesn’t like chocolate.
If guests are staying 3 days or more, I tend to really appreciate an offer to cook one of the evenings as a hosts gift. It’s a bit unconventional, but it really helps out. Alternatively, my SIL started with us for a week once for a workshop closer to our house, and one day I came home to her baking a cake. That works, too!
I always bake when I stay with people, and often ask for requests before I go so I can pack specialty ingredients/equipment I know they won’t have.
Or taking your hosts out to dinner someplace nice.
If I’m staying with a friend more than one night, I try to bring something home each day that tickles their fancy, and take everyone out to dinner before I go, their choice with an emphasis on what they would like but might not get to very ofter. The daily thing is generally small, and useful for dessert, or wine with dinner… just the recognition that I’m there for a longish time and grateful for all that time seems nice.
I had a houseguest from Wisconsin once who brought me cheese curds and that was pretty amazing! I put them in little bowls to share with the household and then proceeded to devour them all myself in the next hour.
Minneapolis/St. Paul Toasties! I know this is super late notice, but if you can, you should join us at the 2nd Wave Feminist Nightmare Enclave improv show tonight at Huge Theater!
Link to the facebook event
Yes! I’ll be there this evening.
Not me this time but thanks! Have fun yall
My beloved Toasties, I can’t take any more bad news. Let’s have a Good Things thread.
For those of you who take comfort in Christianity, here’s the most on-topic song I know.
<iframe width=”854″ height=”510″ src=”https://www.youtube.com/embed/jgomtIc1_yc” frameborder=”0″ allowfullscreen></iframe>
For all the rest of us, here’s Tom Hardy kissing a puppy.
Yinz can add your own happy and comforting GIFs, recipes, links, whatever.
I can’t tell if I’d prefer to be the puppy or Tom Hardy, quite honestly.
I love that picture!
And are you from Pittsburgh? Do you currently live in Pittsburgh? I was thinking about doing a lazy Toast event (happy hour or something), but I don’t know if anyone would be interested/come.
Tragically, no. I used to live an hour or three out, but then the family moved and college happened.
Bummer 🙁
I am in Pittsburgh and have the email addresses of the last group that met up! I have just been too lazy about anything to do anything with them! If you wanna email me at (my username) at gmail dot com I can send them to you or some such! Maybe not this weekend, though, I’m gonna be out of town.
Thanks!
And yeah, I’m being especially lazy this summer so it definitely won’t be this weekend.
Can I get on that list? Pittsburgh is home for me, and though I don’t live there currently, I’m back a fair amount, and we may be moving back next year. My email is shakerethyl at gmail.
Yes! Yay!
I live in Pittsburgh and I think I would be interested in a lazy event of some sort! I live in the East End and don’t get out of that area much, but I’d definitely be up for a happy hour.
Yeah, I will probably send out an overly complicated (for a lazy happy hour) survey with questions about dates/areas. I live on the North Side so it’s pretty easy for me to get anywhere. Email me at poweredbyvelleity at gmail dot com and I will add you to the email list!
This is made me smile and happy on twitter just now.
He was a skater goat, he said see ya later goat
<a href=”http://-https://twitter.com/WeLoveRobDyrdek/status/611925424625455104” target=”_blank”>-https://twitter.com/WeLoveRobDyrdek/status/611925424625455104
Good things! How about… good food things! This week, my boyfriend is staying with me, and he made homemade paneer and with it, mutar paneer from this amazing cookbook and last night we made this pesto. My leftover work lunches have been THE BOMB.
This weekend, I want to make veggie banh mi, although I’ll probably go off recipe for the tofu. The best part of banh mi are the pickles, anyways.
<3 <3 <3 <3 to both of them.
Comfort: do a google image search for kaninhoppning, or Scandinavian competitive bunny jumping. An example of the bounty located within:
Thank you. Thank you so much.
This is wonderful. I looked it up on Youtube, and it made me very happy.
I am at work and also bad at html, but anything from Jeeves the Cotched Kitten’s instagram is golden.
Livestream of an adorable cat family in foster care! so much cute!
The Eve livestream has been my lifeline for over a month now. Those kittens just keep getting cuter and cuter. And then they added FOUR MORE KITTENS. And now it’s constantly twitchy fur piles alternated with so much wrestling and scampering. AAAH.
I’m so happy that the addition of Sloane’s kittens went well! Also I want the little siamese kitten so badly. I also saw a post on the tiny kittens FB that they had seen Sloane at the feeding station and she seemed to be doing really well.
That little Siamese is so goddamn cute. And the calico. And the tuxes. And EACH AND EVERY ONE OF THEM *explodes*!
Glad to hear that Sloane is doing okay! It’s been funny seeing Eve looking increasingly harried by too! many! kittens!
And Pip! Pip is such a lovebug!
FUCKIN’ DITTO. I’ve been checking up on the kittens every day for, what, seven weeks? I found the livestream during an especially bad stretch of mental weather, when I finally gave up on rationally coping with anxiety and just typed “kitten cam” into Google. It’s been a lifesaver.
This is both cute and soothing:
A few good GIFs:
Frances dancing with accompaniment by her Person:
Oscar Isaac goofy dancing in Ex Machina:
I enjoy the idea that whoever uploaded it just called the photo “nnnnnn” because that’s all they could say.
nnnnnnnnnnnn
Nnnnnnnnnnnnnnn
Those eyes it isn’t fair
I’m witnessing the fuck outta those eyes
This is a cow that got her head stuck in a toy car
Other cow: “You’re such an idiot.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch/t5MQVBaqVkA
BB elephant says “I hate to be the one to break this to you, but something’s terribly wrong with your face…”
Has anyone else read Caitlin Doughty’s Smoke Gets in Your Eyes and Other Lessons from the Crematory and want to talk about it??
I am reading it now! I would say I’m about halfway through. I took a break from it, because (a) it was getting a bit repetitive, as is understandable for discrete blog posts compiled into a book, I guess, and (b) while I agree with a lot of what she says, she sometimes gets prescriptive about dealing with death.
What are you thinking? Should I try to finish it?
I would finish it, yes. Eventually? I really liked the end, and the bibliography gave me all kinds of ideas for what to read next.
I read it a few months ago all in a single sitting so my memory of it is a little blurry, but I really enjoyed it . . . I remember after reading it, I had all these anecdotes I wanted to relay to people so they could share my feelings. (I would have told people to read it at the time so I could talk to someone about it, but it seemed that most of my friends fell into two categories: really bad at getting around to ever reading books you lend them, or really good at it but recently lost a loved one, which, y’know, not a great time to hand them that book. So instead the people who fell into the first category were getting me going, “You’ll never read this, so let me tell you about this one thing that happened to her. I need to share my feelings, y’all.”)
Admittedly, I’m also the kind of person who started crying at least two or three times over the course of the book. I realized that I am apparently not a Fortress of Stoicism when it comes to things dealing with the deaths of children/infants. (So. Yeah. If anyone wants to talk about that, I totally have feelings.)
The best thing I can think of to give someone you’re staying with for a week is a massive apology and a promise never to do that again.
Cat Thread!
Bonny does not give half a shit about being covered in balls of wool.
That middle grey-ish purple yarn is so pretty!
It is. Some lovely ravelry member sent all these to me, just enough to make a pretty vest if I use the darker colour at the top and bottom edging.
Sadly it’s discontinued so I can’t get any more.
Gotta add to a Toasties knitting thread, just can’t help it. Agree with apples and oranges, what an awesome color. I just finished a darker purple sweater for my dad. But the yarn was pretty hard-wearing stuff, plenty of vegetable matter in it too. Cashmere blend sounds like a dream right now…or really, always.
I never used cashsoft dk, but Rowan Felted Tweed is the love of my life.
Also, I have a yarn moratorium this year (the stash is out of control) but I often find myself sifting through the Ravelry pages for discontinued Rowan yarn and dream about buying a sweater’s worth. I’ve even drafted messages to sellers.
My micro-panther has turned into a terrible jalopy. Diagnosed with pancreatitis and type 1 diabetes two months ago. I can handle the insulin every day and have been giving her digestive enzymes in her food. But it’s been such a poop explosion for the last few weeks that I think an irritable bowel diagnosis is on its way, guh. I love her but poop explosion is seriously exhausting. (sorry this was not a fun addition to cat threat but I just spent half my morning buying $200 worth of new medications).
OH the lesson here is please buy cat insurance. I have it through ASPCA for $25 per month and it has paid out about 80% of over $3k in vet bills so far.
I think I have posted a similar picture before, but look at Atticus, the worst cat.
Look at the barrier I have had to construct to keep him from scaling the other side.
Apartment twins! Mine has the not-a-fireplace and built in shelves too. I like your unicorn tapestry.
Thanks! It’s a rug-hooking my grandmother made. It lives up there now because APPARENTLY it is a very pleasing texture for someone to sharpen his claws on.
Ack, his climbing attempts are adorable. He wants to be high up so badly!
HE IS LUCKY HE IS SO CUTE.
He wants to be up high, yes, but his One True Desire is to push all the things off the mantle.
Look how many things there are! Imagine how fun a noise they’d make all falling one by one to the ground! And maybe the humans would try and put them back up so he could push them down again!
“Don’t you silly primates know that’s a game? It’s the BEST game.”
My brother and his fiancee have acquired a new cat, who I am greatly looking forward to meeting.
Meet Impurrator Furryosa! Apparently she doesn’t live up to the name and is extremely chill but my brother can’t resist Mad Max: Fury Road and his fiancee can’t resist a pun.
This is Furryosa with their other cat Rinzler. I’m not entirely sure he knew about the existence of other cats before Furryosa. Apparently he keeps jumping on her to get her attention and is fascinated with her tail.
Oh gosh her face is the cutest face ever!
It is SO cute that nose smudge makes me want to die.
However, I may be contractually obligated to like Rinzler best, since I named him and he’s my god-cat-child.
What a cutie!
And she looks so SOFT.
OMG Impurrator Furryosa is the GREATEST cat name!
I know! I suggested a different one but I can’t even be mad about Furryosa.
I’m catsitting oldsampeabody’s little cat Juniper, so for once I can participate in the cat thread! She is a total sweetie who loooooves me. and LOVES waking me up at 6am every morning. EEEHHHHH FEED ME FEED ME I LOVE YOU
she also makes a really cute kittyloaf.
and is very, very silly.
Needless to say, I’m gonna miss this little fuzzball come Sunday when her moms come back from vacation!
Name love. The first cat I ever named on my own was Juniper. She was a sweet black longhair who enjoyed sitting behind me on the couch and chewing on my hair. Sadly, she had myriad health issues on top of being 11 when I got her, so we didn’t have much time together.
YAAAARRRRRNNNNNNNNNNN
Guys the cat thread is killing me, I think I’m finally gonna adopt a cat. (I cannot imagine getting anything but an adult shelter cat, as adorable as kittens are, unless one turns up in my backyard to be cotched.) Tips/suggestions/things to think about while I start cat-proofing my apartment?
Go to a shelter that fosters the kitties! You will know much more about a potential kitty personality if you talk to a foster parent. Make sure they are honest about any potential behavioral issues and decide what kind you can handle. If you only want one cat, make sure it’s a cat that likes to be king of his castle, not one that will be sad to be alone all day. check its butthole, for real, you don’t want a cat that can’t take care of its butt. The End.
The butthole advice is very good advice.
My sweet doofus fat cat is not very good at taking care of her butt and it is pretty gross sometimes. I love her to death and would never give her up and have no regrets, but I will be checking butts on future cats.
Don’t cat proof too much until you figure out what your cat is like. Some will jump on tall things just to push stuff off, others will be much less destructively inclined. Adopting an adult cat and skipping the kitten phase will probably mean much less damage to your possessions.
And eeeeeeeee good luck. I die every time I start looking at shelter cat pictures. I cannot have more cats but I want to snuggle all of them!
This is pretty obvious, but definitely think about (or even make a list!) of the things you’re looking for in a kitty roommate and also the things about your life that are important, to tell the shelter folks when you start the search in earnest. For example, I work full-time, so when I got a cat, I needed someone who’d be okay with being alone on weekdays until I got home at 5. Stuff like that.
Also, when you’re at the shelter, keep in mind that sometimes the cat you think you want to get is actually not the one you wind up walking away with. I went to the shelter thinking I wanted a big lug of a cat (his name was Magoo), and wound up taking home the tiny, dainty cat they were keeping in the bathroom because she was afraid of the other cats. It worked out pretty well:
I got myself a pair of adult female shelter cats who had been together forever, and at the shelter for over a year. I’m not sure how to shop for cats, honestly, because their shelter personality may be pretty different from their personality at home. While I was cat-shopping, I did test out how they felt about being picked up (they didn’t love it, but didn’t growl), and I knew they would at least accept petting. Beyond that, most of what I knew about them was that the shelter staff thought they were great, and would sometimes let one of them wander the cat room after hours. After they got settled in, they did reveal some surprises, but I knew they at least were going to be content and well-behaved house cats. And they are! And also furry little shitheads, but what do you expect.
Moxie continues to be adorably needy. He LOVES hanging out in the back yard, but he doesn’t like being out there alone so he spends a lot of the evening meowing at the door, then when we open it trying to lead us out to go hang out with him then looking sad if we don’t go. He is too cute to resist a lot of the time.
I would probably live in my back yard in that situation.
My cat is the opposite…he is not allowed to be outside, but manages every so often. And then turns into an evil rage beast. The only way to get him back inside without major injury is to block off the easy ways out of the backyard, leave the back door open, and stay out of sight. He’ll come back in eventually, all puffed up and stressed out. He’s kind of an idiot.
Moxie has the same reaction to being brushed or having his claws clipped. He doesn’t seem scared or uncomfortable, for the most part we don’t even hold him in place he just lies in my boyfriend’s lap, purring, viciously biting and rooster-kicking any hands that come near him.
I am going to be a cat thread downer.
I moved out of the house I was sharing with my ex three weeks ago. My kitties are still there and I miss them like crazy. Every time I go to work on packing I spend at least half my time cat snuggling. I am prioritizing cat-friendly in my hunt for a place to live and I can’t wait to get them back. I will not let it be up for discussion. They are my cats, even though both were acquired while in this relationship.
I have a sublet for the summer arranged and I am debating whether I should be a decent person and ask if I can bring my cats, or go for forgiveness rather than permission and bring them and then apologize and pay for anything they damage. They are generally pretty non-destructive so I am not concerned about this, but I don’t know what I would do if I ask and she says no. Another two months of leaving them with the ex is too much. He loves them too, but is careless about things like leaving town for 48 hours and not making any plans for them to eat food during that time.
There was an interesting bird chirping outside my window. Full attention needed to be paid.
Daisy, chilling out on the deck outside. I think she’d like it more if it wasn’t an upstairs deck and if I’d let her roam free outside, but she’s just gonna have to deal. She could roam the backyard at my dad’s house because it was fenced in and she can’t jump very high, but there’s no fence here, so deck naps it is.
This week Bella’s world expanded! She’s been confined to our bedroom since having surgery a few months ago, because our upstairs is laid out so that it’s much much easier to block off the bedroom door than the top of the staircase (seriously, there is no way to put a standard baby gate at the top of the stairs, this seems like poor planning), but we started to feel like she was getting cabin fever and my husband took on Project Catproof. He put window-screen stuff across all the railings, built a baby gate out of PVC pipe and more window-screen stuff, and figured out a way to attach it to the stair railings that extend out onto the landing, and now Bella has the run (well, the hobble) of the upstairs. She does seem happier, although she also seems confused about the force field preventing her from going downstairs.
Taken just this minute
Tell me, Toastians, what is your favorite desk chair for lazily browsing the vast Internet? I just want to sit in luxurious comfort. Probably with my legs crossed and a cat sprawled across my lap in the highest of style. Who cares about posture?
I wish I had sprung for a more adjustable model than the one I have — I think the more settings you can personalize, the less back strain/other discomfort you will have. (Best yet is an iPad so you can read on your couch, but that’s a whole nother budget.)
Love seat. Or extra wide overstuffed chair. So there’s room for a little dog or two to sit next to me. Or on me.
My requirements probably differ from yours, but I just bought a new desk chair to replace an awful thrifted kitchen chair that was narrow and too short and made me avoid my desk like the plague. I looked for something wheeled with a wide-ish seat, adjustable height and low or no arms because, like you, I just like to sit and browse the internets with my cat. I bought this one and so far it’s been lovely. It’s not super cushy though, which sounds like a priority for you.
What do I actually sit on at home? The couch. The bed. A beanbag chair. The floor. Etc.
What is my hands-down favorite of the Corporate Office Furniture type? The Steelcase Think. I find the Steelcase Leap very good, but not my personal fav.
I hate the Herman Miller Aeron Chair— both the specific one I am sitting in, as well as all others, in all colors, models, etc— with the fiery burning passion of several million suns.
FASHION THREAD, talk to me of shopping woes and vestment victories!
My question to you this week: can I, 5’6″ femme lady, make these shoes work for the office? My office is casual but still an office. They get reviews for being well made, they’re waterproof, and I would hike in them, but I can’t justify spending that much on shoes unless I could wear them every day.
I think the shoes would go totally fine with jeans. I do not know if they would go with enough things to wear absolutely every day, but they definitely are REALLY nice hiking boots, like the nicest I’ve seen in ages.
I tried on that jumpsuit last week but it was too big around the waist and the top was made of very little material and showed like, half my bra, but I wanted it to be a sleeveless one, not one I’d have to treat like dungarees. The search continues! I looked at Banana Republic like you suggested but I wonder if the selection in the UK is not as big, which is a shame!
I wear a lot of black, so at least they’d coordinate! I’m definitely feeling the boots, given people’s feedback.
Sorry about the jumpsuit! They’re so tricky to get right. And now I’m looking at BR and jumpsuit reviews are all like “this didn’t fit, it was weird and bulky” which is a shame. But one day your jumpsuit charming will come.
I say this with the caveat that I’ve never ordered from them and thus have no personal experience, BUT – ASOS has a ton of jumpsuits and they’re all fairly reasonably priced. Plus they’re based in the UK!
How long do you wear your pants? I’m a 5’5″ femme, and I largely get away with my oxblood Docs as well as I do because I have a strange aversion to hemming my pants, so my pants are generally covering way more of my shoes than they ought to.
Those boots look awesome, and I’m sure they’d be great on you, but if I saw somebody wearing them in the office I would assume the wearer was an errant hiker who took a wrong turn at Alberquerque.
Hahaha. Well put. I work as an engineer, so there is a lot of “wrong turn at Albuquerque” realness going on here, but I do like to hold myself to some kind of standard. I might get them for hiking purposes, since I’ve been convinced they’re a decent investment, and then see how they look with black skinny jeans and a nice blouse or something before wearing them to work.
Maybe this is just a Chicago or Seattle thing, but I feel like if you can get away with wearing these with leggings and a dress? How fashion-brave are you?
I was definitely thinking tights and a dress. I’m one of the only women in the office, so I can get away with quite a bit of fashion bravery, since there’s really no point of comparison.
Yeah–as grumblyqueer pointed out, you might look like a hiker, but depending on the office that might be okay? Even if not for office, they’re still nice for weekends.
In my office (tech) that would totally fly – I think it sounds like a cute outfit! I’d also think you could tuck dark skinny jeans into them with a tunic-y shirt – like the riffing on high-tops someone mentioned above.
I come from the land of women’s size 12-13, so my perspective is probably different, but $100 for a super well-made pair of hiking/bad weather shoes you can wear on weekends sounds like a good investment. I also think they’d be good commuter shoes. Do you bike/walk/take public transit to work? If so, they’d be good to wear on the way to and from work. I have shoes like that I keep in a fold-up reusable tote bag.
Yes. I wear my hiking boots during those months when it is too cold for sandals but not cold enough for winter boots, and depending on how I feel I will either change into my nicer high-heeled boots (which live under my desk) or just leave them on, but I work in an extremely casual office.
I bought these shoes last week and they finally came and they’re GLORIOUS and surprisingly comfortable.
Those are rad! I love anything with peacock motifs, it just reads so instantly fancy. What are you going to wear with them?
I have only worn them with dresses so far, but I definitely have a romper or two that would also go great with them.
holy fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck those are so amazing
This week I’m paring down my closet as much as I can before my move on July 1st.
So far I have gotten rid of mostly things that I could not possibly consign because they are all ugly as heck and I was mostly saving them as material. Augh this is difficult.
Also I got a suggestion last week when I was at a conference for a person who makes jewelry in the Northwest Territories and I sent them an email asking for a necklace with free-moving trout vertebrae and it will set me back about $80 and I have no idea how long it’ll take to make but it’s gonna be MINE. FINALLY.
I AM SO EXCITED FOR FALLOUT 4
I CAN BARELY BREATHE WHEN I THINK ABOUT IT
Do you have any idea just how consumed I’ll be by the real time community building
DO YOU
YES. THERE IS A DOG. AND IT’S SO SOON! And my computer might be able to play it properly unlike when I got fallout 3! 😀
My Fallout-loving daughter watched E3 live streams and texted me at work to let me know “THEY SAY THE DOG IN FALLOUT 4 CANNOT BE KILLED YESSS”
…I read this and fell to my knees, tears streaming from my eyes, and thanked god.
I am not kidding it was one of my main concerns
if the dog can’t be killed that dog is going everywhere with me
This has saved me many save-scumming reloads.
I’m feeling this over Arkham Knight coming out next week. You can play as Harley which is just *faints dead away*
This is the one that’s going to be set in Boston, right?
…….. If I am considering playing it just for the Bostonish nature of it, what do I need to know? I mean, the wiki page was helpful in terms of figuring out what systems it runs on and stuff like that… but I don’t really understand what gameplay is expected to be like. Should I just find a random sample of playthrough videos of a previous game? etc etc.
(basically, this is an invitation to channel your excitement into selling me on this game.)
OK right it actually looks like gameplay is going to be A BIT different from previous games. HERE IS A GAMEPLAY VIDEO ON YOUTUBE: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z2XfDggqjzk
Ignore white dude protagonist, you can play male or female in any race you choose. You can play first person or third person, and like a lot of games of this type you put points into skills which then determine how good you are at certain things. If you’re good at speech you can persuade people, if you’re strong you can carry a lot and do lots of damage, etc. It’s essential a first person RPG.
Now, what really grabs me about the fallout games is the background lore and the atmosphere. If you want to, you can probably find games 1 through new vegas and their DLC on Steam for pretty cheap, otherwise look around for some decent lets plays of the game which will ive you the idea. I like the ones on LP archive.
Final sale: Imagine a massive, interactive open world where you can do almost anything you want. You can explore crumbling ruins and find the sad stories of lives lived before you. You can discover the awful experiments enacted by vaulttec. You can single-handedly change the future of the post-apocalyptic wastelands you inhabit for good or evil and I LOVE THESE GAMES.
Just noting here that the Fallout franchise is one of the daily deals today in the Steam summer sale. Just in case anyone needs to know…
Well, combat-wise you can play it as either a first person shooter (like, having to aim your gun and look down the sights and all that) OR you can use VATS, which is mode that slows down time and lets you choose where you would like to shoot based on how many action points you have, how much damage it will do, and what your chances of connecting are, or a hybrid of both.
Gameplay wise, it’s more of an RPG, you pick your starting stats and then talk to people and get quests, which in turn give you experience to use on new skills. Usually there is an overarching plot, which will be extremely easy to ignore in favor of doing eight million other quests and general exploring.
The world itself is a retro-futuristic pastiche. It takes place in an alternate universe in which the aesthetic of the 50s prevailed for the next century or so and technology developed along nuclear lines instead of microchips or what have you.
I had not played a Fallout game prior to Fallout 3 and was fine, although I had previously played Oblivion (which is somewhat similar) and had played FPSes before.
My fallout love is the whole package.
Retro-futuristic pastiche? Destroyed 50’s aesthetic? The combination of those? Here for that.
The deep background lore? The satire of the worst of 50’s American culture taken to extreme? here for that.
The general overacrching theme of EVERY game being ‘it’s better to make something new than to try and recapture the old’? here for that.
The sheer size of the world and the number of quests you can do? HERE FOR THAT
The ability to play as basically any character and any style I want? So here for that.
And now the news that I’ll be able to build my own community, my own power armour and my own guns? And even better character customisation? AND YOU CHARACTER STARTS OUT PREWAR AND SOMEHOW COMES OUT OF THEIR VAULT 200 YEARS LATER?
I may ACTUALLY EXPLODE.
Yup, this Cold War historian is ON BOARD.
The thing I really love about Fallout is no two people play it the same way and as long as you have the basic game mechanics down, you can’t be “bad” at it. Yes, you die a lot but that’s never a huge deal and you can choose to be a guns-ablazing badass or a highly intelligent pacifist.
If it helps, ALL of the Fallout games are drastically discounted on Steam today. You could pick up Fallout 3 and Fallout: New Vegas for ten bucks total.
Oh my gah I cannot wait! I want to walk to the building where I work in game and hopefully see it destroyed! I will make a badass sniper lady as a giant screw you to all of the idiots that actually bought the rumor that Bethesda had removed the ability to play as a woman! I will make pistols and rifles and mod them to hell and back!
I would love to try the game, but would have to invest in a console to do so. And 2 people can’t play a game like this at the same time, can they? Cause it would have to be a household decision, since console + game is like epic bday present expensive.
It’s single player.
You wouldn’t have to invest in a console if your PC is high-powered enough. But yeah, is expensive. But I am so into this I am selling my old stuff off to get enough money for a second hand console.
Hmm…I Mac, so I’d have to get something to play it, either way. I’ll see what the beau thinks. Maybe we’ll present each other.
I got this thing PRE-ORDERED I am so excited. Also you can get it for ~45 from green man gaming with a coupon.
Because 4 dogs is too much, and 2 dogs is too few, it’s THREE-DOG.
I miss exploring ruins while listening to 50’s music, it’s so incongruent.
‘I say I’ll care forever’
*Lone wanderer comes round a corner, sees feral ghould*
‘and I mean forever’
*ghoul assault*
If I have to hold back the sky’
HEADSHOT
My fellow toasties, let us have a fandom/fanfic thread.
I am currently cursing the username of whichever one of you directed me to Chash’s The 100 fics because they have TAKEN OVER MY LIFE. There’s one where Bellamy and Clarke cosplay! And keep accidentally dressing up as couples! There’s Furiosa!Clarke and Max!Bellamy adorableness! HOW ARE THESE FICS REAL.
Lately I am all about reading leiascully’s “The FBI Most Unwanted” series in which she writes little snippets or ‘deleted scenes’ from every episode. It’s an ongoing series so I keep obsessively checking back for more M&S adventures.
Is The 100 a decent show? I’ve never seen it and I have a bad track record with queer CW ships, but I will forgive just about anything for a fandom with actual ladyqueer representation.
I have to say that season 2 of The 100 is one of the boldest shows I’ve seen in a LONG time. Some of the plot twists they pulled are ones that most shows would never have the balls to do. Plus, pretty much everyone in power is a woman and it’s like the perfect combination of teen drama and Battlestar-level political machination/mythology.
The first half of season 1 is a bit of a slog because there’s the most milquetoast character in the world who’s at the center of it and UGH he is the worst. But then shit starts going down and it gets GREAT.
I’ve been really into Coulson/Barton Avengers fic again. I go in cycles of enjoying it way too much. Just wrote a lil’ college AU yesterday, too, and that was great fun.
My big fannish thing lately has been talking up Image Comics. If there are any other SexCrimz or WicDiv fans here, let’s hug.
WicDiv!! Haven’t really gotten into the fandom yet, but HOLY SHIT THOSE BOOKS!!
I would apologize for directing anyone to Chash’s The 100 fics, but I shan’t because I AM IN THE SAME BOAT.
YOU ARE A BAD PERSON AND YOU SHOULD FEEL BAD jk those fics are amazing and I will read them a hundred billion times.
I’m holding off on reading the Temeraire fic until they post the last chapter because I would rather wait and read it all on my Kindle, but it is KILLING ME.
I’m enjoying reapersun’s Kirk/Spock comic Chasing Your Starlight.
please please please direct me to good mad max fanfic!
Seconding this!
Last week Harahel posted her AO3 name (Vera_Dragonmuse) and I really, really liked her Mad Max fic, and I wish I were in her other fandoms because her writing is so damn good.
I am well-enamoured of this one: http://archiveofourown.org/works/4031473
thanks much!! just read it all —
I want Strange & Norrell fanfic so badly. So badly.
Toast: This weekend is my bachelorette party AND Pride, all in the same city in Montana. If I don’t make it back alive: I’ve really enjoyed all of our times together, and don’t weep for me, for I am in a glittery, rainbow-y place.
I shall throw glitter to the west this weekend in your honor/memory!
Have so much fun!! That sounds amazing.
Make sure you have enough money on you for all of the awesome merch! I brought 100 bucks to my Pride and barely escaped with pocket change.
Also, I really hope that the stellar ice cream shop in said Montana city has Pride themed ice cream, even if I’m not there to eat it.
Hahaha, the plan is “meet at the ice cream shop and walk from there,” no joke.
I stopped on my way home from my in-laws earlier in the week and even though Mr Thuja and I had a huge lunch, we still made room for sharing a bowl of white mint oreo ice cream. I am seriously jealous of the three cities in the state that are not my city and have that ice cream shop. I have also visited the shops in each of those three cities. I feel like I have my life priorities in order.
The Pride ice cream was huckleberry-lemonade with Skittles, FYI.
That sounds amazing! Also, I’m glad you seem to have survived the weekend!
Hooray!!! I’m sure you’ll have a blast celebrating both!!
I will shed tears if you do not return, but rest assured they will be tears of glitter rainbows. Have an amazing weekend!
that sounds FANTASTIC have a wonderful wonderful time!
I like to bring plum wine to a host–sweet and a bit out of the ordinary. You can drink it on the spot or save it for some future meal.
Toasts, I’ve exhausted each avenue I’ve come to trying to get IntenseDebate to help me update this account (all I really want is to unhook it from WordPress. It was my mistake to set it up that way, but I assumed it would be easily fixed. Nay, nay!). If anyone knows how to fix this, or how to contact ID without the email going to WP instead, or knows Nomi from Sense8 and can ask her to just hack in and shut it down, it would be a great kindness.
Has anyone else fallen into a sense8 obsession hole and can’t get out?
YES. I can’t decide which sensate is my favorite because they are all my favorites.
I know what you mean but my body and soul seem to have decided for me – I’ve woken up the last two days dreaming of Wolfgang! Haha! It’s funny to me because if I ever saw a picture or something of Max Riemelt I’d just be like ‘that is another man, ok’ but after watching the show I seem to be desperately in love with him.
I have to confess a fondness for Lito (that scene in the car where he’s dealing with period pains is GOLD) as well as Capheus and Sun. But they’re all lovely! Also Freema Agyeman’s character who is a breath of fresh air every time she shows up.
Sun is probably my favourite in terms of not being desperately in love with them. The ones I’d actually want to hang out with (and not just stare into their eyes) are the same three you say, for definites. Going to the cinema with Capheus would be the funnest thing ever.
Also I think if I was going to point anyone to this show I would start with the “What’s Going On?” scene.
Seconded on the Lito-and-cramps scene. I had to keep pausing for laughter. It’s a tumor!
I also loved when Amanita soaked a tampon in red cough syrup and threw it at the goons invading her mom’s house!
And “Motherfucker’s here” “You call all my friends motherfucker, I can’t tell them apart”
YES THE TAMPON SCENE. I am going to remember that technique for future reference if I want to get a dudebro to stay away from me.
I have a pretty hetero spouse but remember when Lito was like, “We had sex. It was very special.” to Tatum Channing Lite? (The cop, I can’t remember his name.) I said to my husband, “I’m not a straight dude but I feel like Lito is possibly universally compatible” and he agreed. So there you go. But of course I love Sun and Caephus. And all of them.
Also ask me how much I love that there is a character named Amanita that is the daughter of an old hippie? A LOT. Is Season 2 a sure thing? Please let it be so – I read that they have a story arc for 5 seasons but I feel this show hasn’t been getting the attention it deserves. And I almost didn’t watch it because of my hatred for the 2nd Matrix movie.
I will say the love for this show on Tumblr is HUGE. Also someone asked the actor who plays Will (Channing Tatum Lite) if he thought the character was straight and he said the general consensus among everyone is that the sensates are pansexual, so I thought that was pretty great.
Whhhhhy am I incapable of saying his name right! It’s the same awful middle-aged disease that makes me pluralize non plural words, I think. But also, I get this re: pansexual! And I love it. And am further confirmed that I am a walking, talking Tumblr post. (I had an ex break up with me because he said I was like living with a live NPR station but I think that was just because Tumblr didn’t exist yet.)
That’s okay. My S.O. calls me a walking spoiler because I get so excited about all the great shows I am watching that I sometimes forget he hasn’t seen all of them yet. Eep.
Yes. Holy Shit. I just finished it, and now I’m seriously considering rewatching the entire thing instead of moving on to Orange is the New Black. I just want to see it all again.
I also want to find evidence for my theory, developed about halfway through, that each episode centers on an emotion. Grief and courage were obvious and are what got me thinking about this. There’s got to be fear and love and joy and anger and such, though.
I like your theory a lot – love could be ep 6? Anyway, I think to test your theory I shall watch it all again immediately.
I have only seen the first episode, my brain is rebelling against narrative television right now, but holy shit that first episode was super cool.
I am excited to see the rest of it once my head is ready for it.
ah, I’m only halfway through but I really like it so far!
I was watching it on the living room tv last night and my Dad came home and started watching it with me… just in time for the big psychic orgy scene. GREAT TIMING, DAD.
I should probably move out.
oh no!!!
Haha! My friend texted me at the weekend saying, “have just started watching sense8 with my mum”, and I texted back like, “cool. There’s a good lady sex scene quite near the beginning!” And he turned it off and was like, “let’s find something else to watch!”
I have to say, the big psychic orgy scene is one of the things stopping me from recommending the show to my dad. I don’t think he’d care but he’s my dad and I just can’t think about him and psychic orgy scenes. It just doesn’t work. So I feel your pain so much!
(The other thing is that glistening strap-on in the first episode. Nopenopenope.)
Yes! I am three episodes from the end of the season and I’m SO WORRIED ABOUT EVERYONE.
I’m setting aside my whole weekend for sense8!!! Will check-in next week!!
Oh, hey, are any of the UK toasties into roller derby? Cause I’m selling a bunch of barely used kit to raise money for a next-gen console, and I thought I’d be crass and share the ebay link
http://www.ebay.co.uk/usr/joskarith
I was really looking forward to the weekend, but I had a fight with my husband last night and it’s dampened my enthusiasm. Long story short, dude really needs to work on his communication skills because it’s like pulling teeth getting information out of him sometimes, and then I get mad, and then he uses that as an excuse to continue not telling me things. “Well the last time we talked about XYZ, you got really upset!” Yes, but I wasn’t actually upset about what you told me in relation to XYZ. I was pissed that I had to ask a yes-or-no question 5 times in a row to get an answer instead of non-committal hemming and hawing.
I don’t want anyone to worry! We’re fine and he continues to be a sterling husband in most respects. I didn’t find out about a secret second family or hidden illness or impending bankruptcy or anything major. It’s just… you’re a grown man! Use your words!
HAPPY THINGS: the Fringe Festival is starting today and there are some cool exhibits at two museums in town that I’ve been meaning to check out.
I had a pretty big fight with my spouse last weekend too, and he is almost always a sterling human being in all ways, and it’s just so frustrating when you’re like “you are usually so smart and kind and aware of things, how did you botch this SO BADLY YOU DODO?!”
I wasn’t actually upset about what you told me in relation to XYZ. I was pissed that I had to ask a yes-or-no question 5 times in a row to get an answer instead of non-committal hemming and hawing
God, this. Or “I wasn’t upset until you said I was acting upset and honey you should not have opened that door.”
My favorite is when you realize your ability to talk about important, long-term relationship-y things with your s.o. is entirely dependent on magically asking the right questions. Glad I sometimes manage to figure out what those questions are, but it is mystifying. “When exactly were you going to tell me that you sometimes worry about such and such thing that I could totally be more aware of if only I knew it was important to you?”
Speak up, dude!
Oh god, I was married to that person. I’m glad yours has some qualities that make him worth it.
TOASTFRIENDS! I missed last week’s Open Thread because I was at my big convention! AnimeNEXT was great, though hot, and I’m definitely looking forward to its move to Atlantic City because it has outgrown its space.
BFF and I were Queen Beryl and Queen Nehelenia on Saturday, and I am SO FUCKING PROUD of this costume. It’s the first dress I have ever sewn by myself, and I love it! (You may have seen this in the comments of the Princess Serenity Prayer. I couldn’t help myself.)
But what was more important was…
WE GOT AN HONORABLE MENTION IN THE HALL COSPLAY CONTEST! Not for these costumes, unfortunately, but for our Friday ones, and mostly my sister’s Rose Quartz as we entered as a group. I can share pictures upon request, because I think I’ve posted too many as is already, but like…wow. I have a lot to work on and a lot to improve, but this really made us feel AWESOME.
Anything we should cheer for for you, Toasts?
Also, that is Work Husband in the background in his unders, being a delightful ass. Now you have seen him, and you can all understand why I feel the way I do about him.
I’m afraid I don’t have anything meaningful to say other than THOSE COSTUMES ARE AMAZING!!!!!!
Awesome!!!!
that’s amazing!!! I’m going to Otakon next month, and I’m so excited to see all the great cosplay on display 😀
oh please take lots of pictures! I have always wanted to go to Ota, and it may be on the books for next year, but right now it is not in my cards/vacation time 🙁
YOU LOOK FANTASTIC THAT IS ALL
also how do you keep that wig from tangling?? I had only a mid-back-length wig for Utena and it got pretty tangled towards the end.
Answer: not very easily. Brush frequently while you’re wearing it, if possible. One of the judges gave us the suggestion to use a product from the textured hair section – I forget what it’s called, but it’s apparently in a purple and yellow container, I know, super helpful – and leave that to sit. It’ll still get tangled, but it’ll brush out SO much easier. I am definitely going to be investing in that because this wig is a nightmare to take care of!
Ahhhhhh! You look fantastic! Well done!
Dang, I wish I had the talent and guts to do cosplay. You guys look *incredible*!
I got asked to speak on a panel for Nineworlds convention!
Congratulations! Which one? (I was at Nine Worlds last year, but probably not this year, due to student-ness and lack of money.)
AMAZE
WOW these are amazing. As someone new to sewing/cosplay, my compliments!
Those are both amazing costumes and you two look awesome! Congrats on your honorable mention; next time you’re going to sweep all the awards.
I have a favorite Etsy shop that does custom wood-burning. So when I was staying with my cousins a couple winters ago and got snowed in for an extra two nights, even though they were super pumped to have me and I know I wasn’t overstaying my welcome, I sent them a set of monogrammed coasters a couple weeks later. My cousin’s wife liked them so much that she cried.
link to Etsy shop? I loooove wood crafts.
Woops sorry for replying so late! Weekends amirite??
https://www.etsy.com/shop/CraftyHandsFullHeart
Can you please share a link to the shop?!
Sorry this is so late! https://www.etsy.com/shop/CraftyHandsFullHeart
Who has seen Jurassic Park and who is fucking mad about it? I actually heard from a friend that it did not do well with feminists and sometimes I feel like I’m the only one screaming into the void, so I’ll post my spoiler complaints under the cut in no particular order and encourage you to do the same.
ugh the death of Zarra the assistant feeling so creepy and voyeuristic after all the other deaths on screen being super short and not creepy!
– The theme park did not feel like a theme park, it felt like a lead-up to a dinosaur movie. There were no rides visible except the insane hamster ball (that just went free wheeling through rough terrain and skittish prey animals with no manual override to return to park in emergencies or any guide) and the bored teen sending them off didn’t even give a safety spiel about seatbelts. They kept harping on the VIP passes, but they never seemed to get them to the front of any line. It looked like a zoo.
– 6 foot Pterodactyls, newly released from the only home they’ve ever known, immediately flood the skies and begin attacking and carrying off triceratops and humans who weigh more than they do. Sidenote, some have T-Rex heads.
– Chris Pratt and the Cold Child-Hating Bitch Capitalist Aunt weren’t a good match because Capitalist Aunt planned their date and Chris Pratt didn’t dress up. Then Capitalist Aunt did what women in sexist movies do–get their clothes altered to be a completely different, dirtier, sexier outfit, which reflects a sudden and abrupt character change. Now she is adventurous and he likes her. He does not change and she likes him.
– The “genius” is again a 9 year oldish white boy who knows a lot of facts that include numbers. He otherwise has no intelligent behavior.
– The genetic mishmash dinosaur ate her sibling, a clear sign of not enough space or resources. She was brought up alone, with nothing to do. Have these people watched Blackfish? She should be dead of depression.
– Chris Pratt comes face to face with these raptors he has been training, and they attempt to kill him. Later that same day, they join him on a hunt, him on a motorcycle. Have you ever approached your dog of 6 years on a bicycle? They do not know who you are. Raptors isolated from everything are neither prepared to bring down a T-Rex-sized predator nor be calm around a motorcycle.
– Everyone thinks 4 velociraptors can and will take down Big Lady.
– Big Lady is partially velociraptor, and the raptors were sent to kill her, but they form an temporary alliance. She is mostly T-Rex, but fights with a T-Rex for no reason.
– There is a woman (another Cold, Child-Hating Bitch) who is hired to babysit, loses the children immediately, and is gone from the movie until she has the longest. most torturous death scene. That was so fucking unnecessary.
Two good things: The idea that people will want bigger, scarier dinosaurs is solid. Children’s toys depict dinosaurs only if they are large, predators, or both. There are a lot of toys that are just big monster lizards, not based off real dinosaurs. This makes sense. Also, the black guy lives.
SO MANY OF THESE THINGS BUGGED THE HELL OUT OF ME.
At some point early on, my wife said, very loudly during the movie, “Really? Two boys? How disappointing.” Which, yeah. Very disappointing. That there was a girl character for girls to relate to was one of her favorite things about the original.
Also, even with a lot of the other crap, I was pretty entertained and was feeling like the movie had been worth my money, but then the whole thing ends with Bryce Dallas-Howard’s character having an epiphany and going, “Oh. Wait. I get it now. I totally should settle down with this dude and have a family.” Which, OK, is obviously a totally valid thing for a person to want to do with their life, but it just felt so ham-fisted and obnoxious.
And the assistant’s death was definitely horrifying and far too drawn out and made me extremely uncomfortable.
Yeah. If the deaths are supposed to be some sort of poetic justice, why did the slightly annoying and incompetent assistant get slow torture, but Vincent D’onofrio just got unceremoniously eaten?
I would have cheered for the entire death scene if Vincent and the assistant’s deaths had been switched.
YEAH I found Jurassic Park to be great because there was a competent lady seen as an equal there, but all these ladies SUCKED except the one lady whose job was to watch bad things happen on the screen, she was okay, but she didn’t even leave that one room.
I’m so glad I’m not the only one who thought the assistant’s death was weird and unnecessary. It really stuck out for me and made me feel bad.
During the overly long horrible death scene, I comforted myself with the knowledge that the actress’ most famous role, Morgana in the BBC Merlin, would absolutely not have tolerated that shit. Observe:
MERLIN WAS THE GREATEST SHOW THAT HAS EVER BEEN MADE. And I was so happy to see Morgana! She’s so awesome and hot! But then her role was so lame and her character’s death was terrible and uggghhhh…..
I love Morgana! I always took her side because I figured she had every right to be angry at men constantly lying to her.
When I saw that she was cast in Jurassic Park I was initially excited, then when I saw the incredible lameness of her character, I knew she would be destined to get eaten. Sighhhhh.
However, this is an excellent moment for me to unabashedly brag that while researching in Paris one summer, I saw the cast of Merlin at the giant comic-con there, and it was awesome. Brag over.
“Morgana is a powerful sorceress, who’s prophesied to ruin absolutely everybody’s shit with her terrible vengeance and anger.”
“Ah, I see. Then we should totally lie to her about what’s going on, make her think that nobody understands how she feels, and in all other ways make sure she becomes as isolated and bitter as possible once she inevitably figures out her abilities, yes?”
“Absolutely, that was going to be my suggestion. Well done, my boy.”
OK, I already replied to Angelan below with my issues about BDH’s character who I found so annoying and stereotypical but I also agree with all of this stuff. And Chris Pratt’s clicker training bugged the hell out of me. You don’t just mash the clicker a load of times and hope it gets the animal’s attention. The clicker is supposed to be positive reinforcement for performing a specific task.
The T-Rex and the velociraptors, who spent the last three movies trying to kill each other, form some sort of heroic unspoken alliance (my husband says the look that passed between them at the end is one of mutual respect and understanding–they agree to go their separate ways but will offer no such amnesty the next time they see each other).
Also, why the fuck did that velociraptor come back at the end? You got away, dude, run!
And even if we accept that the raptors remembered Chris Pratt was their friend and decided not to eat him, why didn’t they eat Claire and the kids? Because they form the perfect family unit, and the raptors respect the sanctity of the traditional family?
“And even if we accept that the raptors remembered Chris Pratt was their friend and decided not to eat him, why didn’t they eat Claire and the kids? Because they form the perfect family unit, and the raptors respect the sanctity of the traditional family?”
Thank you for that.
I have barely any knowledge of clicker training, and my first reaction was still, “Isn’t that completely wrong?” Thank you for reassuring me on that front.
And the kayaking-through-the-sauropods attraction was just a lawsuit waiting to happen.
YES YES YES.
I may have forgiven all though if it were not for the terrible, terrible characters. The second that the movie beat up on Bitch Capitalist (read Feminist) Aunt for Doing Her Job rather than taking time off for the kids, I was over it. OVER IT.
I’ve read a review somewhere talking about how you could look at it is a similar character arc as Sam Neil’s character, in that he too started off actively disliking kids and then through the course of the movie, developed a bond with the children and grew to care about them. But the clumsy, cliched, anti-Feminist way that Jurassic World treated BDH’s character was I think radically different and really damaged the movie for me.
I don’t even know where to start with my issues. And so allow me to point out a small thing that made me crazy. So, BDH is wearing this damn white outfit with super high heels the whole movie, that as shartbreaker rightly points out, gets sexier and dirtier (she even gets sexy wavy hair!) as the movie gets on and she is purportedly more likable. Did anybody else notice that when she first talks to Chris Pratt, she has the damn jacket over the shoulders so she LITERALLY DOES NOT HAVE ARMS. She visits the Big Strong Alpha Male (literally) and she does not even have arms.
Also (ok, another random thing). Did it make anyone else crazy that the douche-y hormonal teenage boy (so so cliched) never develops or learns anything? He spends the movie gawking at girls, and never . . . grows up? learns a lesson? evolves in some way? At most, he learns . . . . gawking at dinos is sometimes just as interesting as gawking at women. But probably just equally spectacle.
Ugh, the more I think about it, the more I hate it. I do want to go on that kayaking dino ride though, I must admit.
How did she outrun the dinosaur in the heels!?! In the first movie they couldn’t outrun one in a Jeep!
It was so sad too, because she finally has an idea, and then is badass enough to pull it off, but does so in a patently absurd way.
NOT TO MENTION she probably shouldn’t have been out finding the kids anyway. She is running the park, they’re in the middle of a major disaster where people are dying left and right and there’s the possibility they’ll have to do their first ever total evacuation and she, the ultimate organizer, takes off to go run awkwardly through the jungle? I get being upset and concerned about her nephews, but I’d have respected it a lot more if she sent Chris Pratt and someone else who at least has proper footwear to get the kids and coordinated things from the control room. They could get their action heroine time once the mayhem reaches the main camp and it makes sense for her to be involved, but I couldn’t help wondering how much time was lost and how many deaths occurred because no one was actually in charge of the emergency situation.
Also them going after the kids accomplishes…nothing. The kids are fine! They make it out of there without any help at all! Sure Claire and Owen didn’t know that, but from a film perspective it makes the whole thing feel like a waste of time.
In my mental rewrite of this film, we keep the idea that miltary contractors want dinosaurs, it’s shitty and dumb, but the film seems attached to it. When iRex first goes ‘missing’ Claire calls control without getting in her car for no reason, they realise it’s still in there and can camoflage itself etc. It shouldn’t be able to do this, that’s not why it was designed. Claire calls out Scientist Dude and finds out he built her as a prototype for the military contractors and they’re coming to check her out. They fuck something up and she escapes. The park management want to keep it hush, Claire fights with them to get the park evacuated, they fire her and have her removed from the building, instead of her just leaving in a panic.
I am a biologist, so SO MUCH of the animal behaviour bugged me in its inaccuracies (although, I loved it because like many many biologists I love to watch monster movies and point out inaccuracies to the point where I have held biologist parties to that purpose). Here are just a couple!
– Big Lady gets out of her isolation chamber and start immediately tracking down and killing anything she can find. Why? “For sport” and “to find her place in the food chain” are nonsense reasons that explain nothing. Escaped zoo animals don’t go on killing sprees like that. Hunting, sure, but slaughtering a field of dinosaurs for funsies and eating none of them? That makes no sense. Why not go with a reasonable explaination, like the fact that she’s probably terrified and lashing out because “holy crap there’s a world out here with other things what are these things what if they hurt me???” An animal in that mindset is going to attack anything she comes across, especially once they start shooting at her.
– She meets the raptors and because she’s part raptor they decide she’s the boss of them. That’s not at all how pack animals work. You take a wolf from one pack and put it in another pack’s territory and they’re far more likely to attack and kill it then make it the boss of them. Big Lady would have smelled like some unholy mutant combination of raptor/T-rex/cuddlefish/frog/dragon/whatever, the raptors definitely wouldn’t have figured she was the same as them.
– why the hell did the mosasaur jump on land to kill her? 1) most aquatic species don’t do that it’s pretty much just dolphins that know how to do that and make sure they don’t get stranded, it’s not common behaviour and 2) that’s where people stand! why wouldn’t she have done it at some other point in her life to snack on some people? Why would some deformed dinosaur be the thing that makes her finally go for it?
– if pterodactyls divebomb and kill people, why did they have an aviary? Obviously people couldn’t walk around in it
Hahaha “to find her place in the food chain.” That’s how it works, right? Animals just try eating whatever they find, and when they find something too big or fierce for them to eat, they say “Great, this is where I belong in the food chain, I eat sea urchins and clams and stuff and get eaten by sharks and killer whales. I must be a sea otter. Identity crisis solved!”
And of course, rather than figuring out what was too big or fierce to take on by aggressive displays like everything else on the planet does, she just goes straight for death match every time. I’m sure her last thoughts as the mosasaur ate her was “thank god I’ve finally cleared this whole food chain position thing up!”
I haven’t seen this movie yet, will probably rent it so I can consume it with copious wine, but I just wanted to say that this conversation cracked me up.
“At least I’ve resolved this terrible existential crisis I was having. I can die peacefully, having resolved my inner conflict.”
Ughhh so much truth. Even if there were little glass tunnels to walk through, apparently the pterodactyls would go INSANE pecking and smashing at the glass to eat something the same size as them.
Oh! There’s someone else in this very thread who didn’t like it.
I’M NOT ALONE! Let us seethe together >:)
(BTW was the iRex literally built for the military – my friend and I disagreed over whether the scientist was just plain fibbing to the NotHammond guy about ‘ohhh, we had to put squid DNA in! because reasons! and then it could just camoflage!’ bit, or whether the film thought that was actually a reasonable explanation and it was all a big accident. I mean, the technology to specifically mutate those genes and prevent that from happening, exists NOW, let alone in a shiny future lab (one day I would love to see a genetics lab that actually looks like one. You need more passive aggressive paper signs, trying to hold back the tide of entropy and human laziness), and the scientist guy sneaks off with the military never to be seen again soooo….
On top of all the totally valid and reasonable complaints other people are making, the short, non-gory deaths were really weird. People being eaten by dinosaurs is the central problem in this movie, but we hardly ever see it, and when we do it’s totally bloodless. I assume they were that way so that the film could get its PG-13 rating, but still.
ANOTHER THING that bothered me! When they panned up on the dying brachiosaurus, it had totally bloodless flesh wounds. I thought it was going to be okay? But no? And same with the T-Rex even during the fight! I feel like not including blood makes these deaths seem like an insect’s death, machine death, not a real loss of life.
EDIT: Weren’t there sprays of blood from off-camera gore? So was it for the rating or no?
There were a couple sprays of blood. There were also several things that were covered in blood from off-camera gore, like the iRex’s teeth in the close-up of her mouth after she eats the first two dudes, and the leaves over the dude when they first go to capture her, and that guy’s hand when he hit the truck’s window near the end.
But even if you add all those up there’s still not that much blood.
AND ANOTHER THING why does the film love Chris Pratt’s character so much? Yes, fine, Raptor trainer, that’s cool, but the film is so in love with him it can’t let anyone take the piss out of him, which would have been funnier (‘I’M LITERALLY CALLING MYSELF AN ALPHA MALE’ and no one laughs at that?) He shoots guns! He’s right about the iRex! He rides a motorbike! He’s ‘funny’! He can do everything! The nephews have seen him get his ass kicked by a flyosaur, and their aunt save him, and they still want to hang out only with him. What? They know nothing about him!
(Honestly my rage about this film is just over What We Could Have Had. Jurassic Park Is Open is such a great premise and this is what we got, and UGH.)
I agree with all of these issues and add:
– BDH’s heels really, really bothered me. You cannot trek through a jungle or outrun a Tyrannosaurus Rex in 3-inch heels.
– Why would you (the boys’ parents) send them on a trip while you get divorced, especially without telling them you’re getting divorced? They’re never going to trust you or want to go on vacation again.
– The dinosaur-on-dinosaur violence was gross and gratuitous. I know they’re computer-generated dinosaurs, but I have no interest in watching extended fight scenes between any kind of animals (contrast the first Jurassic Park movie, where, as I remember, the dinosaurs largely survived or at least died quickly). And don’t make me care about velociraptors and then have them die painful, drawn-out deaths at the hands (claws) of a “villain” dinosaur.
By the way, for anyone who has not seen it, the best thing about the movie is the zookeepers who have been recreating the raptor paddock scene: http://allaboard-chaos-express.tumblr.com/post/12…
I completely agree with all the points everyone has made. The film is full of inconsistencies. I want to add a couple of things that bugged me:
– Omar Sy is a fucking charismatic hero of an actor. His character deserved more screen time.
– Why are two big villains people of colour? Doctor Wu is just another stereotypically cold and calculating heartless Asian. And Simon Masrani is portrayed as caring more about the park’s reputation than the hundreds of people dying, ie, shortsighted and selfish. It takes the Big White Hero Chris Pratt to save the day all round. Grrr.
Dog thread?
I visited my inlaws last weekend and got to see their adorable mini schnauzer. She decided that she loved me almost as much as my father in law, and had to be around me all the time. It was adorable and also a little annoying.
Aw, adorable indeed.
Here is a close-up corgi eye:
This dog is like an old dad as a werewolf.
Edit, the first pic!
So this week, I dealt with:
-Person who works for my office building practically dying with excitement every time I encounter him to the point of chasing me out the door, which means I now have to weigh all of my entries/exits from the building
-Confronting a work superior about repeated inappropriate workplace discussions around race/sexuality/gender and getting a load of, “But I understand these issues,” “Well, I understand that you’re personally sensitive to these issues,” “a [x] person worked here and told me they felt comfortable,” “I don’t think it’s good to ban certain topics because they make some people uncomfortable, I think it’s good for people to be uncomfortable sometimes,” and “We’ll talk about it at the next staff meeting.” I really should have brought a bingo card.
UGH. I’m sorry. Both just sound awful.
both of those sound really wretched to deal with
….is your coworker literally a puppy? Because if so, I don’t really see the problem.
I think that’s perhaps the only explanation that would make me happy.
I hated Jurassic World so much and I feel so bad, because all my friends loved it, so I can’t talk about my burning hate without feeling impolite! I feel like I’m going to be on my deathbed, and everyone will be like “she took a breath! she’s saying something!” and it’ll be “AND ANOTHER THING I HATED ABOUT JURASSIC WORLD” and they’ll just pull the plug then and there.
Gotta get over it! Think positive thoughts!
I feel like this calls for a cleansing viewing of Mad Max.
yeeeep.
It’s ok! We all have our Popular Movie That We Think Sucks. Mine was Silver Linings Playbook. I’m sure there will be more in your life. What did you hate about Jurassic World? I haven’t seen it and don’t plan on it, so I’m happy to take your venting!!
It makes no sense! Plot threads wander by like balloons gone adrift. There are 4 people credited with the screenplay and I can easily believe all 4 of them wrote a different draft of the film and then they just pasted the drafts together with no reference to the finished product. Claire is the only character with a proper arc, and her arc makes no sense!
She’s supposed to have Dr. Grant’s ‘hates kids/spends time with kids/stops hating kids’ thing from the first film buuuut…she doesn’t hate kids? Her sister dumps her nephews on her (it’s not very clear, but we can guess this was going to be a whole family holiday, but then SURPRISE DIVORCE), and she, being, y’know, AT WORK, leaves them to enjoy VIP passes to the park, being watched by her PA, promising to take them behind the scenes the next day. That’s…that’s completely reasonable! I like kids fine and I would do that! The film seems to think it’s the worst thing anyone does in the whole film, including making an EatYouAllASaurus for funsies (except the PA who inexplicably gets the Big Villain Death, and I assume there was a subplot cut where it was her idea to make the iRex for the miitary. Or something).
I’m fine. It’s all fine. It was just a movie. I’m going to eat ice cream and try to stop rewriting it in my head.
Yes! I just saw it last night and actually I didn’t hate it, but I was so distracted by being angry about how Bryce Dallas Howard basically played an old Republican’s idea of what a feminist is like (she’s bossy, cold, controlling, amoral, and yet totally incompetent, going to pieces at the first sign of a crisis, and all she really needs to be happy is to give up the career and have baaaabies; seriously, when her sister (who has for some reason chosen to step out of a board meeting to make this call and dissolves into tears in full view of all her waiting colleagues) tells her “when you have children…” and Bryce interrupts, “if I have children” and her sister goes, “no, *when*, it’s totally worth it” which is a conversation I’ve had with my own sister multiple times, I wanted to throw something at the screen), it made it hard for me to enjoy the movie much. Also, Chris Pratt does not know how clicker training works.
This addresses a tiny part of your issues, but my husband pointed out that the meeting the sister stepped out of was likely a meeting with her/her husband’s divorce lawyers.
…so she didn’t even have a job? Not sure that makes it better. Why did she choose that specific moment to call her kids? They’d been there long enough to take a ferry to the island, get into their hotel rooms and get out to see some of the attractions. Doesn’t make sense to me.
I’m not sure! It sounded like the movie took place right after Christmas so she may have also taken vacation time? And if they were talking to the divorce attorney, maybe there were conversations about custody that made her want to check on the kids…
Maybe she just realised they hadn’t called and was trying to be a Chill Mom and not call them, but that was as long as she could manage. It all makes me so annoyed at her attitude to Claire though, like, you’re angry with her for not taking one day off (because everyone can just take time off whenever!) but you’re not even talking about your DIVORCE with your kids until it’s a done deal. No ‘we both love you very much regardless!’ conversations? Nothing? You do not have the moral high ground, sister lady!
Heh, I like the amount of thought you’ve put into this. 😉
I just remembered that while she’s on the phone someone in the meeting room taps on the glass to get her attention and points at his watch or some equivalently dickish move (I only remember because my husband leaned over and said, “who does that?”)…I assumed he was her boss but if it was a divorce meeting then he was WAAAAAY out of line.
WOO IT SUCKED BIG TIME
Oh and ANOTHER thing I hated was all the animal-animal violence! It’s human vs nature and nature vs capitalism, not bite an ankylosaur’s face! Don’t feed a great white to a mosasaur, he will eat like 10 a day and the great whites will be finished!
Yeah, it really seems like they could have fed the mososaur something cheaper and easier to produce. Are they breeding white sharks for food? Because that seems incredibly inefficient.
This is like Twilight’s careful explanation that the Cullens only eat apex predators, in order to preserve the ecological balance. Because that is, apparently, how that fucking works. Goddamnit.
I didn’t even notice that! My brain just assumed they were feeding everybody big chunks of cow!
FALLEN LONDON THREAD! What is everybody up to? I am once again wondering what to do next now that I’ve finished grinding for secrets (to move into the Bazaar). I did two terms as governor of Port Carnelian and went to the Iron Republic twice as well. I really enjoyed both. I am still saving money to buy my very own Overgoat, but it is going to take a long time.
Questions for my fellow players:
1. What is the best way to increase Making Waves when you have been banished from Court? I used the Life of the Mind storylet there in happier times, but I am no longer welcome at the Palace.
2. Has anyone played the fate-locked [CENSORED] option in the Iron Republic? Is it worth it?
Working on trading criminal connections for diamonds but you have to wait for a card and I’ve only gotten it once so far. I am building my shadowy fast though, which is good as that’s the stat I want at 200.
I can still use the palace, but also Coffee at Caligula’s raises it a bit I think? You can invite me (octopoda). I know there are some cards that do so too, but I’m not sure of another consistent way.
1. My go-tos are (a) converting Tales of Terror to Extraordinary Implications (and then converting up Implications, if necessary) and (b) doing Heists in the Flit. Yes, coffee invites work too, but are slower. You can also do poetry in Veilgarden, I believe.
2. I believe it just raised your Changed quality, so you can extract more rewards when you leave.
Increasing Making Waves: steal Tales of Horror!! in the Flit, convert them into Uncanny Incunabula.
For increasing Making Waves, you’ll want a Salon or an Orphanage on the Elegant Townhouse card for large chunks at once, or you can work on item conversions (I think stealing Tales of Terror and then upconverting them is the recommended strategy?).
The [CENSORED] option gives no further text, but provides considerably more Changed by the Iron Republic.
Here is what I am doing: gnashing my teeth at all the hints that Heart’s Desire is about to update! Gnashing my teeth, I say, and wailing! I’m VERY ready…
I just started this week. And I keep running out of Fate. I really don’t understand the game, but I like it. I refuse to actually use real money to buy anything in the game, so my progress will probably be really slow.
Nah, you’ll be fine! This is definitely not one of those free-to-play, pay-to-win games. Anything Fate-locked is well and truly optional (although some of them are really, really fun).
Also, welcome to the Neath!
You can use real money to (a) speed up things or (b) do side-stories. Some of those side-stories are great! But the vast majority of the game is free. Just explore and enjoy the stories!
(Also, you don’t get very much Fate at all to start, and it’s hard to replenish in-game without paying money, so probably you mean actions? Just to clarify; Fate-locked is a separate thing.)
here are some FL Toasties who you can send requests to help to in-game! Leave your game username there or here and I’ll send you a little gift next time I draw the right card.
thanks for this spreadsheet, I just added myself even though I started all of an hour ago and don’t know what’s up. 😀
I didn’t start it, I just take it upon myself to mention it for FL people when appropriate! Glad you found it useful.
I started today because of this thread. And I also have no idea what’s going on. High five!
In Veilgarden, you can also collect Making Waves by doing the Honey option and trading wine for honey instead of taking honey.
I have also been to the Iron Republic! And then I discovered that I had accidentally skipped a step in my Ambition (I knew about this step, it just took so goddamn long to get my Iron Republic Safe-Conduct that I forgot about it in the meantime) and I have to go to Hunter’s Keep, get a thing, and then go back to the Iron Republic. So that’s what I’m doing right now — zailing back and forth between various places and trying to keep track of where the hell I’m supposed to go next.
Haha. I just sailed to Hunter’s Keep for the lulz and everyone there kept going “I bet you have some AMBITION here WINK WINK” and I was like “umm no? I just came for the free tea and scones and to rifle through your personal effects when you’re not looking?” until I finally got weirded out by their hints and left. I guess this explains it.
I’m a bit stalled. I’m trying to get to the cave of Nadir but I don’t know where to find an eyeless skull. It kinda feels like I’ve run out of stories; I can’t pursue my ambition until my shadowy is ~200 (heart’s desire) and I don’t know how to get parts of the screaming map for Polytheme, and I don’t know what to take to the Iron Republic. I do have my own submarine. What’s a good name for a sub?
Edit: I’m a person of importance but I don’t know what making waves does for you?
I am reading a book called A Curious History of Food and Drink by Ian Crofton and I feel like This Guy probably is still around and having his comments deleted from The Toast:
Many years later, in 1812, Grimod, having alienated many people in Paris and having failed to disguise his antipathy towards Napoleon, sent out a notice announcing his own death, together with the date and time at which his funeral cortege would leave his house in the Champs-Elysees. When his few close friends turned up at his house at the appointed hour, they found a bier in the hall, surrounded by candles. They were then ushered into an inner room, where to their astonishment they found a table set out for a feast, with a grinning Grimod welcoming them at the head of the table — delighted that he had exactly matched the number of place settings to the number of his true friends.
ETA: sorry I can’t figure out how to place an accent on the E 🙁
é = hold down the alt key and type 0233 on the number pad! Thank you, Pokémon!
that guy is such a historic douchewaffle holy heck
I’m stealing “douchewaffle” even though I Love Waffles.
I’m pretty sure I would have walked out immediately just for pulling that stunt.
YEAH ONLINE DATING
I read the Aziz Ansari and Eric Klinenberg NYT piece on online dating <a href=”http://(http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/14/opinion/sunday/how-to-make-online-dating-work.html?_r=0)” target=”_blank”>(http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/14/opinion/sunday/how-to-make-online-dating-work.html?_r=0) and it just tired me out. To me, it just read like, “You’re probably filtering based on hair colour, so it’s your fault you’re alone and you don’t like anyone.” Nope. I’m tired of broad advice that basically reads like “you need to give men a chance.”
I have the most fun with people who can make me laugh and challenge me through written words. If they can’t grab my interest through a few messages, well, that’s just how I am. I don’t even read profiles first anymore before I respond to a message, because it matters more how they’re talking to me. Maybe I’m filtering too hard.
I talked to my coworker about it, and said, “I’m not interested in meeting lots of people” and he said, “I’m pretty sure most people want to meet lots of people.” Do they really?
Why I gotta feel so defensive? *gnashes teeth*
I reopened my OKC…two days ago? Still waiting. Not making any efforts currently, though there are some people I may respond to this time around. Unfortunately the one super enthusiastic dude that would otherwise be okay has 420 in his username and appears to be kind of a huge stoner, and that’s an instant dealbreaker for me. Whomp.
I see guys like that too and I always feel bad skipping over, but I assume it’s a huge deal to them if they take the pains to say “great if you’re 420 friendly!” Like, am I friendly? I don’t care what you do on your own time but I’m not going to smoke with you. No idea.
Yeah, I figure if it’s an important enough thing that they have to put it in their profile, it’s probably a lifestyle thing or a big part of their identity.
Personally as someone who vapes I might mention that in my profile to filter out people who might judge me. But then again, there are tons of people especially in college for whom smoking is a major part of their identity, and I’m not interested in that. So yeah, I can definitely get where you’re coming from.
Edit: To be more clear, vaping (no smell on clothes) is an alternative to drinking for me that doesn’t make me feel like shit the next day.
I get that completely. I think it should be legal and I don’t think it’s a big deal to do it occasionally, etc., but making that your main hobby or source of identity seems kind of…. boring to me.
Yeah. I mean, I’m straight edge, so while I’m personally not cool with it, it’s fine for others etc., but I think I would probably have a little difficulty coping with an “active participant” so to speak.
And the smell. I can’t deal with the smell.
I feel you. I haven’t done any online dating, but I am noticing that a lot of advice to women is always some variation, “Don’t have such high expectations! Be willing to settle!”
I feel a little defensive because I’m determined to try dating guys I’m attracted to. Long story short, I belatedly realized I never dated men I was ever really attracted to due to low self-esteem issues.
“You just need to keep hanging out with this guy you’re not feeling much about because love develops gradually!”
I mean, true, but also kind of useless. According to this logic, how many people should I have fallen in love with by now just through constant exposure?
I read a terrible AV Club comment where the guy lamented that so many people say no after “just” a first date, and he felt sorry for them that they were probably missing out on so much in life by judging things so quickly. I swear. Real.
Wild overgeneralization here, but I think men filter women out after seeing one picture, while women filter men out after one actual date interaction.
Mr. BHam and I met via online dating (chemistry dot com) and our initial correspondence was…amazing. We were sharp and witty and hilarious; it was like an Oscar Wilde play. It absolutely made it feel the fledgling relationship compelling.
So I know what you’re looking for is possible/out there and I don’t think you’re being too picky, but I totally understand why and how you’re feeling frustrated. Sending you good wishes for future potential-dates!
Thank you! That is so kind.
Seconding this!
I’m in that amazing fledgling relationship mode right now and it’s awesome! And it’s so much fun!
Don’t settle! You will find what you are looking for… and if you don’t? It’s far better to be happy and not in a romantic relationship (b/c you are never really alone) than otherwise.
Every time I’ve had sharp and witty and hilarious interactions with people via online dating, our dates go terribly wrong. 🙁
I think I mentioned this in the link roundup, but as a pansexual who frequently ids as female, I have to have 2 OKC accounts. There’s the you-must-be-an-intersectional-feminist-if-male Bisexual Account and the I-have-to-hide-my-identity-just-to-date-any-queer-women Lesbian Account. I have to settle just to date anyone at all.
🙁
Do you have to do this because of Bi unacceptance? I ask because I am, questioning, I guess. And this is all new to me.
Disclaimer: the queer community as a whole is wonderful and accepting, but some of it sucks, especially for bi/pan/polysexual people. Most of us aren’t like this, but there’s no utopia anywhere and you should know how to avoid the worst.
If you are a questioning lady, you cannot under any circumstances tell people this and expect to have it respected. (Your sexuality should be respected no matter what you identify as, but again, utopia, some assholes, etc.) If you aren’t 110% certain that you like women, guys will assume that you mean “I make out with girls for male attention and free drinks.”
Those girls do exist, and many ladyqueers have been burned by them before. Because the thing about questioning your sexuality means that sometimes, you really are straight, and it really was just Janelle Monae- which is absolutely fine, but it really fucking sucks to get dumped because somebody was experimenting with you and the results were negative. This makes for a really fucking awful paradox where you have to be absolutely positive that you are attracted to women before a lot of them will date you.
Some dykes won’t ever accept that bisexuality exists, though, and there are some who won’t date a girl who has ever dated a dude. There’s this fucked-up cissexist presumption in part of the queer world that if you are a “gold star” dyke (who’s never fucked a cis guy) you’re special, and if you ever date somebody who’s dated an AMAB person, your bullshit gold star vanishes through the transitive property of dick. Trans women are considered sort of dirty by these assholes, but (and here’s the fucked-up part) trans dudes are absurdly fetishized. There are- and I really wish I were joking- women who identify as lesbians while dating trans dudes, but will say a dyke is secretly straight just because she’s dating a trans girl.
What this means for a bisexual woman’s OKCupid profile is the following: Some decent guys, some sleazy guys looking for live girl-on-girl action, a metric fuckton of straight couples looking for a threesome (these are normally marked as “bi woman,” to make your life even harder), and maybe two queer women. But those two queer women are normally great!
Thanks for explaining all this to me. I’m just pretty confused about what I am. I thought I was attracted to guys because that’s the default standard, but I’ve never been able to relate to a guy the way I can with a girl. Also I feel like in a hetero relationship there’s an inbalance of power, at least for me. So I don’t know if I’m attracted to girls because men are the worst or because I’m naturally attracted to them. It’s been difficult this past week because I feel like I’ve made a breakthrough and I want to tell everyone about it but I have to sort of figure things out myself first.
So I wonder if I might be a lesbian because of men’s sexual harassment, and it’s turned me off to them entirely. But then would my desire for women be legitimate?
Clearly I have lots to think about. And thanks for taking the time to explain all that to a clueless newbie. I agree that it’s messed up that people in the LGBTQ community have biases about how “real” a lesbian or a trans-man-or-woman is.
Welcome to my mindset, circa ninth grade. All the guys were revolting (obviously, it was ninth grade), I was at that stage of feminism where you despise gender roles (although I never really left it), and I was surrounded by girls. Cute girls, who had cool hair and smelled nice and I definitely did not think about kissing. Especially because I knew I was actually attracted to a few men. I was lucky enough to be surrounded by queer girls and trans people who helped me through my awkward baby queer stage, and I like to return the favor.
I put a longer response to grumblyqueer above, but just chiming in two days late to say thanks for this conversation, it is relevant to my interests.
Chiming in two days late to say thank you to you and Briarheart for this conversation. I’ve just gotten out of a super long term relationship (started when I was 17) with a dude, and at age 29, am finally getting the chance to consider if I want to try dating women for realsies.
I’m pretty sure I am into women but I’m still struggling to tell the difference between ‘I am prone to girl crushes on bouncing ponytails and short-haired women in tuxes and remember how much fun that one threesome you had was’ and ‘I want to fall in love and have a real-life relationship with a woman’.
I think this is something that I would enjoy, but I am worried about hurting people while I try to figure out this whole new set of options. I also worry that this is something that most queer women went through in their early 20s, and that there won’t be a lot of people willing to put up with a 29 year old trying to sort out her shit. It’s not exactly a pressing problem right now but it’s been on my mind. I might have to throw up a question in the open thread in a week or two, since I’m sure Toasties can give me some good insights.
Do not understand your co-worker AT ALL. I value my time and sitting across from someone I have a hard time keeping a conversation going with and with whom I have no chemistry just makes me wish I was home watching X-Files or reading a book. The idea of taking a volume approach to dating completely baffles me and the number of mediocre dates I had to deal with even not taking that approach makes me very disinclined to start dating again.
Yep! Every time I’ve given in and decided to meet someone I wasn’t really feeling I’ve confirmed that it’s not worth my time. Usually it’s pretty benign, like they’re perfectly nice but there’s just no chemistry, but once I ended up really annoyed because the guy had boundary issues and I should’ve gone with my gut. I knew he would be annoying based on his communication style and then he was. And then when I do meet someone who I spark with I remember how good it feels compared to trying to force it: there’s no comparison.
I’m perfectly happy when I’m not dating anyone though, and I don’t have a goal of ending up with someone: no plans to get married or have kids, long-term relationship only if the right person comes along. So it’s easy to shrug my shoulders and not worry that I’m missing out on someone great, the stakes are pretty low for me. It’s when I get lonely that I talk myself into going out with people who are sub-optimal matches for me and wishing I’d just stayed home.
++++1
You have perfectly summarized what I am learning from my experiences. This FOMO approach to dating is a little frazzling.
I don’t have the goal of ending up with anyone either (and am pretty sure I don’t want that at all – had my eyes totally opened by a discussion here earlier this week that turned me on to the solopoly site and am feeling like less of the weirdo I thought I was a week ago), but I don’t like being without sex….so, I need to have someone around for that 🙂
Whoa, that solopoly site is blowing my mind. “Being poly without having, or necessarily wanting, a primary/nesting-style relationship.” That’s me right now! And maybe forever! But it always takes me so many more words than that to describe. Thank you so much.
And yes, sex. Absolutely.
I’m 100% down with that concept, but I guess I don’t understand how that’s any different from the standard perks of being a single person (i.e., going out and having fun with whomever you want, with carefree abandon).
Can you repost the link/name?
solopoly.net, I’m guessing is the one they are talking about!
But that is based solely on a quick google of ‘solopoly’
This was the article posted before: http://solopoly.net/2012/11/29/riding-the-relatio…
But it looks like there’s a lot of other good stuff on the site too.
I don’t see anything wrong with your methods. A lot of “be willing to settle!!!” advice seems to be lazy and potentially dangerous.
“Most people want to meet lots of people” is the most frustrating statement ever, because I hear it a lot from my family. It took me years to get the point across that I wasn’t interested in meeting tons of people, but eventually they got it. There’s nothing wrong with you. There are wonderful people out there and I’m sure you’ll meet them, but you don’t need to try and make yourself do something you don’t want to do as a way of letting things “develop gradually”.
Nope. I want to meet as few people as possible. (That’s not exactly true…) I’ve been filtering hardcore, the same way you are. If they can’t write a coherent message and carry on a conversation they don’t get a date. I have zero regrets.
Nicknameless dude was on vacation last weekend and my parents are in town this weekend so we’ve only fit 1 date in the past week. Which was a good date! And there has been good texting! And sexting! But my brain weasels have been extra evil this week so I keep having to consciously remind myself that everything is fine. I’m leaning toward having the “I don’t want to date other people” talk on our next date??
Oh, exciting! Good luck!
I definitely do *not* want to meet lots of people. But I’m basically a hermit who lives in a Netflix-equipped cave.
The Toast is good for reminding me my life is not-so-strange after all. Socializing is tiring.
The interwebs is the greatest thing that ever happened to me– I belong to a bunch of online communities of lovely people, and it’s the ideal amount of social interaction for me.
(Also, I have an ENORMOUS family. They’re wonderful people and I love spending time with them, but that takes up pretty much all of my in-person-socialization reserves!)
^ “The interwebs is the greatest thing that ever happened to me.” This. So much this. Online I can find people just like me but in real life I suck at getting out of the house and socializing. It’s air-conditioned inside! I can leave whenever I want without being rude.
It’s a bit of cognitive dissonance where I want a chosen family but I have a lot of anxiety about socializing in person.
In particular, I belong to a Facebook group made up of awesome nerds who are incredibly interesting and hilarious people. (Mostly people with similar interests who are/ were regular commenters on the AV Club over several years).
Quite a few of us have met up in person and become “real life” friends as well. (I visit one of them annually for a film festival, and another became my roommate for a while). Though, really, I consider many of them close friends even though we haven’t met.
And online, you can interact with people in very limited doses, while also doing things you like in your own home. And there aren’t awkward silences, because you can just go and get a snack while you wait for the next comment.
There are a lot of gals just looking for pals on tinder, apparently? Also, a surprising number of straight women under the age of 40 or so who use “girlfriend” to refer to their platonic female friends??
BUT, I have been messaging a couple of women back and forth and while nothing I’ve said has been earthshattering, it’s still nice to chat with cute women.
I do not understand people who use sites that are primarily for dating to meet friends (does that actually work?), but I guess if there are enough of them out there, they’ll find each other.
But good job on the messaging!
My dad was showing me some pictures of my grandmother from when she was younger, and showed me one of “your grandma and her girlfriend in high school.” I was seriously re-examining my worldview when he clarified that he just meant a regular friend of hers.
Yeesh, who wants to meet LOTS of people online dating? Even dates that go well are at least somewhat stressful and awkward. And it’s also important to me that I’m fully enjoying my life and spending time with friends and family. . .that ain’t gonna work if I go on a date with every dimwit who sends me a message.
I actually deleted my OKC and TInder apps this week (though I’ll be back, I always will). It just wasn’t feeling fun– basically whenever I see a message I think to myself “Ugh it’s probably some dipshit. Oh, don’t be so cynical, maybe it’s someone awesome! Nope, it was a dipshit”.And I’m in a new jo bin a new city and meeting lots of new people so I want to see if maybe the universe sends me something awesome (although what this will actually translate to is continuing my almost year-long dry spell until I give in and get on Tinder again. Sigh).
I couldn’t get into my okc account for a week, and assumed I had been wrongfully banned, either by trolls or because someone had hacked my account and was using it to do ban-worthy stuff. And then one day I could just get into it again. I was a little upset about it, because despite it being a wasteland of 20-year-olds messaging to say “hey” or “i’ve always liked older women”, it’s the best way I’ve had to meet people for the past few years, and thinking it was no longer open to me stressed me out a little bit. Like, what am I supposed to do, talk to people at events?? Without knowing first whether or not they think women are obligated to shave their legs?? I don’t think so.
Anyway, now I’m back on and I did not really miss anything, it seems.
But! I reported 2 weeks ago that I had a date with a foxy older woman and we’ve seen each other 3 times now. I am smiley and day-dreamy. She’s married to a woman and we both have pretty busy schedules, and she likes scheduling ahead, which is exactly what I need. Sometimes okc yields very nice things.
I had a 21-year old on OkC tell me that he likes older-ish women, and that he could “show me things I’d never imagined.” I told him he had no idea what I could imagine.
I will recommend Eva Illouz’ “Why Love Hurts” as I frequently do when the topic of patriarchal programming about romance comes up. “Give him a chance”? Why don’t we ever hear it said “give HER a chance”? That stuff makes me want to punch a few walls. I tried “give him a chance” a few times and all I did was waste two people’s time. No thanks.
A lesbian friend and I recently had a conversation about the whole courting versus chemistry thing and we came to the conclusion that some people are courtable (meaning they don’t put physical chemistry that high on the list), and others aren’t, and ne’er the twain shall meet. And it’s not a matter of men and women… she’s had different girlfriends. She’s a physical chemistry chick but many of her lesbian counterparts aren’t.
I do the “would I or wouldn’t I” evaluation pretty damn quick and there’s really no way back once that hammer comes down. IT’S NOT A CHOICE Y’ALL, I want to yell to the world. I will say that there are a few “maybe”s in the mix, and if any of those “maybes” ever showed any interest in my direction, things might be different.
To thine own self be true. You aren’t a problem to be solved.
“You aren’t a problem to be solved.” I may be late to the party but that is absolute genius and I am writing it down on post-its and sticking it to the surface of everything in my vicinity.
The main thing that annoys me about that (“Women should give lots of men a chance!”) is that, statistically speaking, women are MUCH more likely to run into a certain percentage of crazy/ physically threatening/ unstable/ violent types than men are when they date a bunch of women.
We have *very good reasons* to be picky and to go with our gut feelings if someone seems a little “off” in an initial conversation, first date, or what-have-you.
Also, I don’t know if those guys have any idea of the sheer volume of messages that women get that are either (a) really gross or (b) from guys who are all about physical features and don’t seem have any interest in you as an actual human being.
I complained about lack of dating to a church leader and his response was “men no longer think they need women, they’ve got free porn streaming into their bedrooms”
And then I was sad
Like, there are not enough words to respond to everything in that one little sentence.
Let’s all eat some ice cream cake instead.
I’m consoling myself with goldfish crackers. And I knew it was a problem, but being told it is is different. Especially because he knows this because of all the men he’s talked to because of his position in the church.
to fair is not that we need men THAT much either, we have porn AND vibrators.
I do. I have to have an emotional connection to another person to make things work, iykwim.
+1 Gloriana, sometimes I tell myself I should give other people more chances, after all I didn’t really like my friends until 3 years of shared experiences (we met on college) but on the other side, I think, and please toss the bucket of water on me if I’m wrong, dating and falling in love should be a natural process (in opposition to “grown on” someone). I know relationships are about compromises, but the mere idea of being unsure or feeling uncomfortable when dating someone seem to me like pulling teeth and not worth it. But I’ve never been on a relationship, so maybe I don’t know what am missing.
For me sexual attraction is so in my head that I have to know someone before feeling attracted to them. I can think guys look nice (or more than nice) but the attraction is so tied to personality that I date people for months if I like their personality and then the attraction comes. If I don’t like their personality I don’t date them. (not that I’ve done much dating in the last 8 years (that means none))
Echoing many in the thread, I have no desire to meet lots of people. Minimal numbers of people! Part of my reluctance to start online dating at all is that I like being a hermit some of the time, and I like seeing my friends some of the time, and I didn’t want either of those things replaced by awkward and unfulfilling interactions with strangers in pursuit of casting a wide net.
I met my dude on okcupid at the beginning of the year, he opened with interesting questions that made it clear he read my profile and was not sending out rando messages, and we had good chemistry over text and better in person. I talked about this on the toast a couple times while it was happening, but I was conflicted for a bit because I feel like the conventional wisdom you get, especially with online dating, is to keep playing the field and seeing other people for a while, but frankly I found the potential of that exhausting. So I just kept seeing this guy, and I’m still seeing this guy, and it’s awesome. There’s hope!
This is exactly my issue! I haven’t been online dating for a long time because of it. And it’s weirdly hard to be on one of the sites and not have my calendar seem to fill up more than I want. Like if I have messages going with someone I’m interested in and they suggest meeting and I’m like “well, I’ve already scheduled the number of dates I’m ok with having for the next month and a half, how about in 8 weeks?” that seems weird.
I’ve had that problem. Pretty awkward. And it’s happened to me more than once that I made a “eh, let’s see” date with someone only to have another person ask for a date or meeting that I feel way more enthusiastic about.
So I just make choices. I try to make sure I’m genuinely interested in meeting someone, I make it sooner rather than later if I can so there’s less chance of something coming up, and for me, I don’t reschedule people. I said I’ll see you? I’ll see you.
Weird problem!
I am considering buying some Soylent to try, now that they are shipping to Canada. Also because their newest formula seems to be getting decent reviews. And because sometimes I am too lazy to cook food I like that makes me feel good, so I end up eating food I don’t particularly enjoy that makes me feel not-great, and that sucks.
On the other hand, Soylent is weird and a bit pricy and there are definitely people who don’t like the new formula, so it’s certainly possible that I’d be one of them, and I can’t order just one bag to try, I’d have to buy seven. Probably if I hated it I could sell the unopened bags to other people who want to try it, but that would be a nuisance.
Someone talk me into or out of this, please?
I heard about it on Oh No Ross and Carrie! (a wonderful podcast everyone should listen to!) and I’m not sure how great it would be. They didn’t feel physically bad when they switched over to it aside from increased flatulence, but Ross’ moods got much worse, and his coworkers actually had a mini-intervention to get him eating actual food again. Mainly, they both really, really missed the act of eating, which I think is what I would miss, too.
I wouldn’t eat all Soylent all the time, I think. And if I did decide to eat mostly Soylent, I would ease into it. But watching out for mood issues is something I might not have thought of, so thank you for mentioning that.
Apparently the last two versions have finally fixed the flatulence problem for most people.
There are some sauces or sauce-type things (this specific chile de arbol salsa, sriracha, Annie’s Goddess) that I love so much, I could probably deal with a Soylent diet if I could just pour that sauce in to give it that flavor.
They are aiming to make the basic stuff fairly bland, though some people find it slightly sweet, which might be an odd combination with sriracha.
Yeah, sweet + sriracha is not a good look, as I know first-hand from giving up halfway through a bottle of this stuff: http://organicvillefoods.com/products/internation…
I have a friend who bought some, who is definitely into self-punishment, and it was so gross he couldn’t even finish one meal’s worth. Now he tries to entice drunk people to try it. That is all I know.
They just switched to their newest version a few weeks ago, and a fair number of people seem to think it’s less gross than some of the older versions, so I’m kind of hopeful despite hearing various horror stories.
I really like what they’re doing and I might try it myself, but it doesn’t look like they have a little “try it” size to buy.
There’s always the option to make ridiculous smoothies with veggies and greens. Canned pumpkin, a few pieces of raw beet (or canned but I haven’t tried that), frozen berries, a bunch of salad greens, half a cucumber, an apple, dairy/nondairy beverage, protein powder, flax seeds. Tastes just fine, lots of nutrition, and not hard to put together.
But then I’d have to eat greens before they wilt and go gross. And also wash my blender.
On the other hand, if I started using Soylent I’d apparently have fewer things to whine about.
“And also wash my blender. ”
This is primarily why I don’t make smoothies…
+1
To wash blender:
1) put dish soap and some water in blender.
2) run blender for 30 seconds.
3) rinse blender.
Have you tried any of those services that send you all the pre-portioned ingredients for cooking? I eat horribly if left to my own devices, but it’s so much easier to make healthy food if someone just sends you a recipe and everything you need to make it all pre-divided and measured. It’s like on the food network how they have all the ingredients in perfect little glass bowls and everything seems so easy. Soylent seems fine to me once in a while if you’re really eating horribly but I would ‘t rely on it all the time. There is a lot we don’t understand about micro and phytonutrients found in plant based foods and I would worry about subbing Soylent in for real food.
I don’t think they have that in Edmonton yet? I did try the thing where you go portion out ingredients yourself for twelve meals, and you freeze the portioned out stuff when you get home, but I didn’t like their recipes that much and it was kind of pricy. And far from my house.
I have been eating the world’s easiest stir fry lately (ingredients: meat, pre-cut frozen stir fry veggies, some kind of sauce from a bottle). That helps, but it still takes half an hour to cook rice, and it’s no help for lunch unless I’ve planned ahead. Or for snacks.
I’m not too worried about phytonutrients and such. There weren’t that many phytonutrients in the nachos I ate for supper last night anyways. And as I said in another reply, I probably wouldn’t eat all Soylent all the time.
Do you have any grocery stores that sell decent prepared foods? (For instance, I buy a lot of reasonably healthy, pre-made stuff at Wegmans and Trader Joe’s because I’ve had absolutely no energy for cooking lately). I feel like, cost-wise, it’s probably not that much different from buying cases of that stuff, and probably a lot better for you.
My default dinner these days is [serving of pre-made meat/ fish/ protein thing] + [bag of frozen steam-in-the-microwave, 99-cent broccoli].
Not really? There’s some ok stuff at the Sobey’s Urban Fresh, but it’s not especially good or healthy. The deli at the organic store has some nicer stuff, but it’s super expensive. I think the weird little yuppie store has some better stuff, but it’d be a nuisance to get to by bus and it’s a twenty minute walk.
Part of the problem might be that I am getting most of my groceries by bus, actually, and it takes forever and makes it a nuisance to buy lots of veggies and prepared foods.
I seem to be really resistant to being talked out of this, so that probably indicates that I should just go ahead and order some Soylent already.
I hear you on the bus thing– I had no car for many years, and it is indeed a huge pain in the ass to haul all your groceries home.
I’m kind of jealous of England, where all the grocery stores appear to deliver for a reasonable fee. None of the grocery stores here deliver, and there’s a couple of grocery shopping services but they’re decidedly not cheap.
They do that in some large cities in the US, too, but not in the benighted backwater where I live.
One of my ex boyfriends has been excitedly posting about their new Canadian shipping on Facebook a lot this week so I’m predisposed to hate it, BUT I can see the appeal if you’re not really into making food and want a meal replacement that isn’t one of those horrible Boost drinks. Maybe see if you can convince some other people to go in with you on the full shipment?
Maybe? It seems easier to just order a shipment and then sell or give away part if need be.
So my laziness extends beyond cooking, is what I’m saying.
I’m really really bad about eating regularly when I’m at work so I kind of fell into a rabbit hole with this stuff recently as well (even including wandering around the DIY soylent sites, which are crazypants but in a way that appeals to me a lot?) and finally came to my senses somewhat by deciding to just try out some meal replacement drink that I could just walk into a store and buy before embarking on anything more involved. I ended up getting this vegan thing from Wal-Mart of all places, which… it’s okay, but it’s very sweet (it tastes a bit like drinking thin cake batter or maybe Cream of Wheat with wayyyyy too much water in it) and so I’ve been experimenting with it a bit. (So far the best one I’ve made was by blending it into OJ and ice, which unsurprisingly ended up tasting like an Orange Julius. I don’t mind blending other things into it since, unlike Soylent, it’s only 150 calories on its own which is way too low for me to use as a breakfast/lunch replacement unless I want to have the sad brain by afternoon.)
I noticed after buying my Wal-Mart thing that the local (Loblaws-owned) grocery store also had a display with a different brand (Vega One) and I think GNC has their own as well if you want to try dipping your toes into something somewhat similar.
I actually spent some time on the DIY site for similar reasons. The main reason I haven’t seriously tried a DIY recipe is that I didn’t want to order $100 worth of ingredients without trying the result first. I did try to put together a recipe based mostly on things carried by Bulk Barn, but everything I came up with tasted terrible, and I didn’t have the patience to really fix it.
I’ve also considered existing things, but as you said, they just don’t have anywhere near enough calories to actually replace a meal. I suppose I could try combining them with other things. That’s actually how several of the popular DIY recipes work.
I do like that the official Soylent makers have recruited a serious nutrition expert at this point. But maybe if I like the official stuff enough I’ll take that as a sign that some kind of Soylent-ish thing would suit me, and then experiment with finding a cheaper DIY recipe.
Toasties! Steven Universe thread? I won’t be around for much of the thread (final Final tomorrow, so revision…) but would love to hear what thoughts people have had about the new episodes this week. I came to SU quite late a couple of months ago when going through a rough patch, and it seems like the show’s going from strength to strength. Also, “Do it for him/her” has been stuck in my head all week…
OH MY GOD, ALWAYS HERE FOR STEVEN UNIVERSE. I have so many fucking theories right now, but mostly about fusion.
Like, okay, SPOILERS Rainbow Quartz. That is not even a real mineral, it is fabricated in a lab and I feel like there is something metaphoric there about the whole Pearl/Rose thing.
ANd oh my god, I felt SO BAD for Garnet in Wednesday’s episode. This was the first time we have ever seen any hint of her being a fusion – with Ruby and Sapphire fighting – aside from her being separated.
I was just about to go and start a Steven Universe thread!! 😀
I didn’t started watching SU until late April this year, but it was all over my dash for ages before that (so I knew spoilers like Garnet being a fusion, etc.)
I have a theory about Rose!! I think that when she gave birth to Steven, her gem split in half, and half of the gem went to Steven and half went to Lion. I say this because Rebecca Sugar has seen Mawaru Penguindrum (she had some figurines from it sitting on a table in an interview at one point) and a similar splitting of character into two entities thing occurred in the show. Either that, or Rose had to fuse with another gem (Lion) to become Pink Diamond (and we know she was Pink Diamond).
I really want to see some information about the Gem Homeworld’s culture? How do they make gems? What’s their government like? I WANT TO KNOOOOOOW!
I’m also super happy with all the Revolutionary Girl Utena references the show keeps making. Like Greg and Rose’s dance in Thursday’s episode was just like the dance in The Adolescence of Utena, to the point where I can’t remember what the song from SU sounded like and I just hear the music from Utena when I think of the scene. This is the scene btw. I would suggest watching the Utena show before watching the entire movie though because the movie is weird. Both are on Youtube! (But check the trigger warnings for them first because hoo boy this is not a light show)
I am so here for Rose actually being Lion. Also, if you look carefully, Rainbow Quartz’s hair looks JUST LIKE Lion’s mane. COINCIDENCE??? I THINK NOT
Here’s a giant wall of text on what I think about Homeworld:
We have some clues about Homeworld’s culture from this interview, especially the part where Rebecca Sugar says “there’s a lot going on on the Gem Homeworld that [Steven] doesn’t know about at all, and a lot of rules that exist there that the Gems we know don’t follow! … Steven’s going to learn a lot more soon on the show, about what each of the Crystal Gems is supposed to be… it’s very different from the way they’ve been living on Earth. It is very unusual for Gems like Garnet, Amethyst, and Pearl to be living and working together the way they do, almost as unusual as it is for Steven to exist!”
This week brought us some more possible clues, too, like Pearl’s line about not being “built for fighting” (which fits with Jasper calling her “some lost, defective Pearl”). From that, it sounds to me like the Homeworld probably creates Gems for specific purposes. Jasper and Peridot each seem to have a very single-minded focus on her own function (battle and technology, respectively), and Peridot at least is kind of childlike when it comes to matters outside her narrow expertise (“Why are you destroying my things?”). Amethyst, Jasper, and the giant Gem we saw fighting Rose Quartz in Pearl’s flashback all have the same hair, so they could all be soldier-model Gems.
Gem culture also seems to be okay with literally treating its citizens as though they are objects. Lapis was made to play the role of a magic mirror (for some unknown reason), and the Crystal Gems were OK with leaving her in that state (for some other unknown reason). The Desert Glass seems likely to be another Gem-powered magic item, like Lapis was.
In an earlier interview, Rebecca Sugar said that Steven Universe is supposed to be a story of “reverse escapism,” in which “a fantasy world and fantasy characters became interested in real life, and wanted to participate in that. And Steven is the son of a human being and a Crystal Gem, and he’s like the product of fantasy having this love affair with reality. And all the imperfections of real life could be beautiful and fascinating to someone, and those are the sort of things that are exotic and foreign and interesting to these characters, who are used to the impossible perfection of their fantasy world.”
In a similar interview, she said, “I always dreamed of making a show that would have this mix of fantasy and reality, so I wanted to make these fantasy characters that enjoy being with Steven, as much if not more than they enjoy being fantasy characters. The characters aren’t perfect, and that’s what makes them so great. Steven is the ultimate version of that: he’s not perfect. He’s great. He’s a super excitable, hammy kid.”
And yesterday we saw that Rose had difficulties understanding the difference between enjoying someone and loving them. The credits song, “Love Like You,” seems to be about the effort to learn how to love like a human does, written from Rose’s perspective.
Also, Jasper does not seem to approve of the type of love present in Garnet’s relationship.
So I guess Homeworld is – or was at one time – an impossibly perfect fantasy world, but maybe really utilitarian, with blurred distinctions between people and objects? And no real understanding of how you can love someone apart from their usefulness or entertainment value? And they want every porkchop to be perfect?
I want sheet music for that song RIGHT NOW so I can convince my voice teacher to let me sing it in a recital. Even though I’m very definitely not a mezzo like Deedee Magno and that song routinely goes to the absolute lowest note I can actually sing. It’s just SO RARE for musical theater-type songs to have any kind of queer representation, ESPECIALLY for women’s voices*.
*(digression about gender and representation in vocal music and the parallels between the gender divide in vocal ranges and artificiality of the gender binary omitted)
Also I am the angriest right now because my roommate gets off work an hour before I do and has monopolized the TV to watch Zombieland so I can’t watch today’s episode. Hope the DVR gets it 🙁
I have four apartment complexes in Portland that I’ve submitted lease applications to (not for specific units, but so they have my information on file and the screening done when I come up next weekend). I love them all for different reasons, but there is one in particular I *really* hope looks as good in person as it does on google street view.
It’s been a BONKERS week, because on top of Portland apartments being leased faster than I can apply for them, my supervisor had a baby Tuesday morning, and the nurse who’s been appointed temporary supervisor in her stead is going on a bog-standard power trip. For the first time in the entire year and change I’ve been here, we have to write our clock in and out times on a sheet of paper and have her initial them before we go home – even though we’re salaried exempt. I am not going to miss this place.
It is three weeks today since I got dumped!
A couple months ago I was on here posting about my partner having ‘relationship concerns’, that I talked to him about and thought that everything was going to be okay.
But nope. Got abruptly dumped a couple days after the last time he insisted that everything was fine and he was really looking forward to having more time to spend with me really soon! So, I am angry and frustrated and occasionally miserable. I’m sleeping in friend’s spare rooms and frantically looking for a job! And a place to live that I can take my cats to! And packing all my stuff in short bursts while he is out of the house because being there for more than a few hours makes me super anxious.
I would seriously consider quitting men if I didn’t like sleeping with them so much.
To be on topic to this week, I am staying with so many friends! Nobody for more than 4 nights in a stretch so far, and have given no gifts except heartfelt thanks. But I also totally feel like I have some spare room karma built up. In the last couple years I had someone sleeping in my spare room for free for 4 months and another one for 2 months.
But also once I have an income I will do something for these people who have sheltered me and bought me the nice kleenex with lotion and paid for me to eat and go to fun things with them. There will be tailored gifts of probably booze because that is easy and matches everyone’s decor and I know what all my friends like to drink.
I’m now about five months out of a total blindside breakup and I was just thinking the other night about how it really is just time and distance. But you can’t rush it. So it sucks, but it’s not forever!
Yeah. I started feeling better sooner than I expected to. Which I mostly blame on getting out of town and spending the week with a couple pairs of great friends, who are in super healthy happy stable relationships. I got to unwind and cry and vent and also spend some time seeing the things that had not been present in my relationship for a while.
There are good days and okay days and terrible days, but the balance is shifting and already there are way fewer terrible days.
Last couple days were super shitty, but I spent lots of time at the house packing and moving my stuff into storage. So, I was kind of expecting to feel like crap.
Sorry you’re having to deal with this. See lots of friends and drink lots of wine (if you’re a drinker) and do lots of bitching. Always helps. Sucks you’re the one having to deal with the stress of finding a new place when he’s the non-communicative dumper, but at least you have your cats.
but I don’t! I don’t have my cats until I can find a place! They are still with him and I miss them terribly.
I did make a few noises about keeping the house and letting him be the one to leave, and he completely ignored those texts! And I would rather move than fight with him.
But yes, I am drinking plenty of wine. Next week I will finally be in the same place for 2 months and that is the deadline I have given myself for when I should start paying attention to how much I am drinking. I think that is a reasonable cut off and refuse to feel guilty until then.
Arrrgh. Sorry I misunderstood that and said probably the most unhelpful thing. Sorry! You’ll have them back soon.
Brilliant Toasties – I respect your opinions more than all others, so I have a question for you about gentrification. A year ago, my husband and I moved out of Manhattan and to an “up-and-coming” (coded language for “rapidly gentrifying”) neighborhood in Brooklyn. He has health issues which preclude him from working, and on my salary alone, we were priced out of the city. I did not know much about the neighborhood when we moved there, except that my husband’s Irish grandparents grew up there in the 50s, and that it came highly recommended by our (white) friend who lives there and loves it. Almost immediately after moving there, the racial tensions became obvious. Once or twice a week, I have an encounter with someone (usually older black men) who is very vocal about the fact that their neighborhood is being overtaken by young, white people and that they are not happy about it. Sometimes I overhear loud conversations, and sometimes comments are directed at me… (Cont’d in reply)
While I don’t necessarily agree with their tactics, I completely understand their POV and sympathize with their frustration. Rents have gone up and many are being forced to move. Part of me thinks that, had I known this was such an issue, I wouldn’t have moved to this neighborhood. But we’re there now, and I’m having a hard time navigating the situation. I know there are no easy answers, but what can I do to make this work? Aside from being a good neighbor, trying to be friendly to those who are open to it, and perhaps becoming involved in the community in some way (street clean-up, for example), is there anything else I can do? Any particularly smart pieces on gentrification that you’ve read?
I think supporting local businesses (bodegas, etc.) is a good way to both help keep the neighborhood diverse AND improve your standing in the community. Maybe I’m being overly optimistic, but if you stop in at the bodega for beer/chips/batteries pretty regularly, you’re going to become a regular face to the shopkeeper & other employees, who also presumably live nearby and have a more established presence in the neighborhood. Maybe as they get to know you, the long-term residents who also shop there will see you frequently and start to look at you as someone who isn’t trying to close down their favorite bodega and open a Lululemon store or whatever.
I’ve been doing a pretty crappy job of hitting my local bakeries/bodegas lately, so thank you for the reminder 🙂
Indeed! One of my favorite things about our new neighborhood is the local businesses. It has been really nice developing a rapport with local shop owners and feeling like I’m spending my money more meaningfully these days. I haven’t felt that translate into friendly encounters outside the shops yet, but maybe it will over time. Thanks for sharing your experiences!
It’s funny though – a Starbucks went in at the end of the main street last year and many people were upset about it (myself included). But when I walk by, I see that many older people go there to relax in the easy chairs and read newspapers during the day. It offers much more space than the smaller cafes in the area and seems to make them happy.
Oh my god, I wish I’d seen this post earlier, because I’m pretty sure you’re talking about my old neighborhood (based on the Starbucks mention). I actually moved because gentrification was becoming such a problem – my rent went WAY up and I could also feel the racial tension starting to pick up. I really love that area, but I wasn’t comfortable staying there.
Now I’m in an area of Manhattan that seems to be gentrifying with much less drama – I don’t feel like the same issues are happening in my current neighborhood at all, even though there are young white people (like me) starting to move into a traditionally black-and-Dominican area. I love it and have no plans to move. It’s even cheaper than the aforementioned Brooklyn neighborhood!
Yes, this! I’ve lived in Bed-Stuy for 3 years and I now looooove my neighborhood. Frequenting/becoming friendly with local bodegas/coffee shops/restaurants etc. has helped a lot. I think time will also help tons, both with you becoming more comfortable in the neighborhood and unfriendly neighbors becoming more used to you.
Join and actively volunteer with local community groups that are fighting ***luxury condo developments***. Such developments frequently come at the expense of affordable, middle class housing. I think the racial composition of a gentrifying neighborhood is a proxy for the real issue, which is the class&income mix of a neighborhood.
My concern with opposing luxury condos is how often it seems to lead to very little housing being built at all. It doesn’t seem to lead to affordable housing being built. Then, the people who would have moved into the luxury apartments simply move to other apartments and drive up the cost of all apartments, forcing younger, poorer people to move farther out.
I guess I am curious how to push for middle class housing to actually be built, instead of opposing all development, which seems to be happening, especially in San Francisco. I’m not saying you oppose all development, just that I see it happening.
I have been thinking about this a lot too, because the neighbourhood I live in is also being gentrified and I am definitely complicit. I moved here 5 years ago and I love it, I want to make my home here, but I’ve realized recently that if I’m going to do that I have to take my head out of the sand acknowledge my role in the systemic racism and classism at work.
Here are some things that I am trying:
-supporting local businesses, as suggested above
-going to neighbourhood events when appropriate (not to insert myself but to participate in events that are open to everyone and get to know people). E.g. I went to our the participatory budgeting meeting for our ward and read up on what projects would be most helpful to communities that are traditionally rooted here so I could vote for those. I am not doing a great job of this yet because a lot of things going on here are not on my radar, which has made me realize just how much I am ignorant of. I’ve missed a few fundraisers, community yard sales, activist events etc. because I didn’t find out about them in time or had prior commitments. It’s going to take a bit more proactive-ness and reordering priorities I think.
-Saying hi to people on the street. This might not make sense in your geographic location (I’m in Canada), but I went to a presentation about gentrification here recently, and one thing I heard from several people was that the newer white residents aren’t as friendly and don’t greet people, and that this has changed the character of the neighbourhood. I’ve had to step out of my comfort zone a bit because when I walk in public I wear headphones and generally try to project an air of unapproachability, because I sometimes get harassment and even benign small talk with people I don’t know can make me uncomfortable. I’m rethinking my idea on that a bit, and trying to figure out how my white privilege intersects with gender oppression. I still prioritize protecting myself, and I go with with my gut and don’t talk to people I have a bad feeling about, but I’m trying to check myself and think examine where my gut feelings are coming from.
-Learning as much as I can about the history of the neighbourhood the ongoing process of gentrification, so that I understand the historical context. There are a lot of examples here of rich white people thinking they know best, and trying to help but making things work.
-I haven’t done this yet, but I’d like to get involved with local activism around affordable housing too. Going to community events is going to help inform me on the issues, I think. There are established activist efforts here that I can offer my support to, so that’s where I should start.
I’m definitely still trying to figure it all out though. Thanks for opening the discussion, I’ll be watching the replies.
This is definitely tough! Aside from what everyone else has suggested, voting in local elections for people whose policies support the existing community! Although it doesn’t necessarily translate directly into people being nicer to you on the street, it makes me feel like I’m at least being a less terrible gentrifier?
Also, slightly off topic but my area recently had a big arts festival with a lot of either bro-ey or Burning Man-y people coming in for it and I have noticed since then a hilarious note of “well, at least *our* white people are less annoying than those other ones” coloring interactions with people around the nabe
local politics is actually a pretty big deal. City/county school boards decide school curriculum. Let that sink in a minute.
Toasties, can you please give me your wise words on two quandaries?
1. I got invited to a wedding of someone I’m not very close to, and for that reason plus money reasons, I’m going to decline. I feel guilty about it even though I know I SHOULDN’T, I haven’t seen this person in years. I will still send a gift (a nicer gift than if I’d gone, honestly). So why do I feel guilty? How have you said no to wedding invites?
2. I have a RASH UNDER MY EYE and it’s weird and not that noticeable but it has lingered for weeks, so I feel like I can’t keep ignoring it. I don’t know if I should go to an eye doctor or a dermatologist. It’s rightttt under my eye so confusion abounds as to which body part is most in need of medical care.
Yes, I have. I got invited to a co-worker’s overseas wedding and I was like, “Here’s a cash present, enjoy!” I felt bad about it. But it was just fine.
Worst case scenario — if they’re nice people, they’re kind of disappointed but understand. If they make lots of drama, well, it’s good you’re not very close. People just can’t make things.
Send your gift plus a very nice note — “I’m so touched you invited me to your special day!” — and assure yourself they’re probably happy they saved on your plate or something.
EDIT: OH. I even had to decline to be a bridesmaid shortly after the couple decided to move the venue across the country and make skiing a big part of the wedding. I thought about flying across Canada, grabbing a van to attend their shindig, and then leaving ASAP so as not to force myself to ski, but man, it did not weigh out.
So. If you feel bad, think of me and feel better.
I have said no to wedding invites! Do not feel bad! One of my favorite wedding-related quips is “A wedding invitation is not a summons!” Send them a gift, write a sweet note, relax at home and enjoy. Your work is done.
Haha I was just coming here to write “An invitation is not a summons!” so I’m glad I’m not the only one.
Unless there’s some related drama, I assure you that within weeks of the wedding being over, the couple will not remember whether you came or not. I sure as hell can’t recall who was at my wedding.
Honestly don’t feel guilty. Every guest adds loads to the cost of the wedding; you’re saving them money by not going. They’ve shown that they like you enough to invite you, you’ve shown that you like them enough to send a present, they are almost certainly not going to hold it against you if you don’t go.
Last year my husband and I were invited to 12 weddings, only one of which was in the country where we live, and we went to about half of them. I did feel guilty but I consoled myself by remembering my own wedding the year before–even though we liked all the people we invited, and even though it would have been lovely to have them all there, it was a little bit of a relief when people regretted because each person that declined knocked about £250 off the cost of the day. Sounds harsh, but there it is.
For the eye thing – I had a patch of what looked kind of like excema by my eye and my GP prescribed a cream that cleared it right up. So you do not necessarily need a fancy doctor. But if you want to I would go with the dermatologist.
You’re saving them money by not going. I have never planned a wedding and never intend to, but don’t people stress out about feeling like they have to invite everyone they know for risk of offending them, even though that drives the costs up?
1. The Fella and I RSVP’d no for a wedding a [TIME REDACTED, YOU’LL NEVER KNOW IF IT WAS YOU, FRIEND] ago for no reason except we didn’t want to go. Lovely couple, we’re both thrilled for for them, couldn’t be happier they found each other, best wishes, and so forth.
We were both pretty busy and exhausted, we had lots of family commitments eating up our free time, we would have had to schedule a day off to go to this wedding at a time when we hadn’t even been able to wangle a free evening to celebrate two milestones of our own, and we looked hard at each other and decided we didn’t have to go. It was wonderful. And I’m sure the happy couple didn’t miss us one bit.
I have a new policy of only going to weddings for immediate family. I’m just sick of them. I made an exception for one friend who a few years ago told me she didn’t know what love looked like (majorly messed up family situation there) and I’m glad I did, but no other weddings in the past 2 years.
I’m actually counting on a certain percentage of our invitees not being able to make it. Mostly it’s people who live far away or are perpetually busy, but whom I wouldn’t feel comfortable excluding from the list. If they do end up being able to come, awesome, but I’m not actively expecting it and won’t feel snubbed if they don’t make it.
AND you’re sending a gift too, which I don’t think you are necessarily obligated to! You seem like a nice person who is going about things with grace and thoughtfulness.
Another topic, who has read about these two guys who broke out of prison with the help of a worker? Highlights:
-One of the guys killed a cop by shooting him 12 times and running him over.
-They are still free as of right now.
-People Magazine is apparently super catty and included quotes from the woman (who did the breaking-outs)’s ex-husband’s new wife, saying “she must have had really low self esteem to have fallen for a murderer”.
-They were supposed to kill that woman’s husband (although I don’t know how anyone figured that out).
That’s right around the corner from me. I live far enough away to not have to deal with any of the fallout from the manhunt though. It has been surreal.
I’m in Syracuse but hi to another upstater!
I will be in your fair city next week for a conference! It is going to be weird I think because I will be staying at the Crowne Plaza, which is where I had my first kiss, also at a conference (for school), like 25 years ago and I haven’t been back since. Will I have first kiss flashbacks? WEIRDNESS.
Ooh have fun! That hotel is much, much nicer now than it was 25 years ago! We stayed there when we came to look at the school back in oh, 94-95, and it was a shithole. So you may not have first kiss flashbacks, alas.
(waves frantically from Rochester)
Hi hi hi!! (from, uh… Glens Falls? If that rings a bell. If not, pretend I’m waving from a spot equidistant between Saratoga and Lake George.)
Yes! I know where that is! 🙂
Hello! I do know where that is!
Me too! This is certainly the most exciting thing that has happened here in years, possibly since 1814.
I AM GOING ON VACATION TO THE ADIRONDACKS IN TWO WEEKS AND I AM VERY CONCERNED THERE WILL BE MURDERERS IN MY CABIN
It makes me feel old and cranky to know when I lived in the Adirondacks you only had to worry about bears in your cabin/house.
Coloneldad is half-convinced they’re hiding in his pigstye. This is the most excitement Vermont has had in a while.
Between that and Bernie’s campaign there is so much Vermontcitement.
Oy, Bernie, oy. That’s pretty much my default response at this point.
My favorite quote from the stories:
Retired Detective David Bentley, who helped put him away in 1997, described Matt as “very handsome and, in all frankness, very well endowed.”
Why does the detective know this? Why is it relevant?
I made kickass peanut butter cookies last night and want to share the recipe with all of you, because it’s gluten-free and so easy!
1 cup sugar
1 cup flour
1 tsp. vanilla extract
1 large egg
Sea salt for sprinkling
Stir that shit up minus the sea salt. Roll the dough into balls then flatten them in a cross-hatch pattern. Sprinkle sea salt over each cookie, then bake for about 12 minutes at 350.
Gotten a lot of compliments on these ones, and they took almost no work, so literally everyone should make them.
Did you mean peanut butter instead of flour? Because I do make those all the time and they’re amazing and they are terrific with chocolate chips!
I’m with aravisthequeen and assuming you meant peanut butter instead of flour =)
If you like this sort of thing, I also highly recommend these blondies. I’ve made them so many times, with lots of different subs for the chocolate chips. Chopped up candied ginger was a big hit. So was serving them with no chips or anything, but a dollop of raspberry jam instead.
I have such fondness for this recipe! It was one of our favorite things to make as kids, because the recipe was easy to remember (quantities are all 1), it was something we could make by ourselves, we liked pressing the fork tines into the cookies, and it was ingredients we usually had in the house. It was absolutely our favorite desperate-for-dessert recipe.
YES I MEANT PEANUT BUTTER whoops.fff
I have arrived in Virginia for researching (after a drive down that somehow involved my driving through the very middle of NYC, thanks a lot, gps) so please pardon the mostly radio silence. I am now comfortably ensconced in Williamsburg and hopefully not melting. On Monday I got to go to the Smithsonian’s storage in Maryland. I touched so many artifacts. And not a glove was worn.
WILLIAMSBURG! Please eat some bread ends in my honor (with or without house dressing, as is your preference).
Will do.
mad jealousy on touching artefacts without gloves….
I swear I was only following the lead of the Smithsonian guy. Really. He did it first. After that there was nothing to stop me from touching ALL the barkcloth.
Pregnancy thread! I am 37 weeks, gigantic, and every time my husband touches slash looks at me, I want to explode into a ball of rage fire. I’m sorry, husband. I feel slightly less annoyed with my daughter, but still pretty annoyed tbh.
I forgot how miserable the end is!
Ugh I’m sorry. It will be over soon?
I’m 23 weeks today, feeling good physically except for sciatica. (Which, every time I think that word, I hear it to the tune of “Veronica.” Makes it slightly more amusing, anyway.) I’ve been enjoying feeling the baby kick a lot, but it’s not strong enough yet to be uncomfortable.
Emotionally, though…my clinical anxiety/depression has peaked in the last week. We’re currently buying a condo, which is an objectively Good and Privileged Thing and not something I thought we’d be able to do for years. But it’s in a SUPER WHITE suburb and not the diverse urban area that we’ve lived in for 10 years and that we’re now being priced out of. (The reason we’re leaving is that our rent for the apt. we’ve lived in for the last decade just went up by 25%. Gentrification!) And I am freaking the fuck out about it. To the point of having thrown up half an hour after making the offer, and then not sleeping for three nights. It’s not the finances; weirdly, the condo in this wealthy town was far more affordable than anything we could have gotten in our current area. I’m just literally terrified of moving to a suburb, even though it’s nearby and I’ll still be able to take the bus to work.
Anyway, sorry, this is only tangentially related to pregnancy. But I think much of my reaction is due to A) the fact that I’m not on my antidepressant and B) I’m terrified that I’ll have the baby and become the isolated, lonely suburban mom that 50s nightmares are made of. And I feel like an ungrateful bitch for not just being happy that we have the possibility to buy a nice, if small, place of our own.
Oof, that does sound miserable, I’m sorry!
Almost 11 weeks now, and we got to hear the baby’s heartbeat this week! It was awesome and I breathed a huge sigh of relief. Ultrasound next week, and I’m anxious/excited.
My new pain of the week is a weird stabbing/pinching thing in what I am guessing is my cervix or around there? I am guessing round ligament pain maybe? Also, bloating is out of control, my pants are held up with a hair tie right now, v. hot.
Yay for the heartbeat!!! That is such an exciting moment. Congrats. 🙂 I found belly bands to be very helpful in the 10-16 week range when I didn’t yet need maternity pants, but none of my regular pants fit anymore. I tried using hair ties but they always popped off the button of my jeans.
Hang in there! My babies were born in June and July, so I know where you’re coming from. Luckily there’s a sweet payoff in the end.
PLZ HALP.
I am getting married next August (it was supposed to be next September, as close to our anniversary as possible, but last month, after I had had over 6 months to get attached to the date, my fiancé went to visit his brother, who is studying in Montreal, and they were joined by their parents, and my fiancé’s mother took that time to inform him that if we had our wedding in September, no one would come. This sounds more heartless than it is – my fiancé is French and his whole family lives in France, basically, meaning taking vacation time in September is culturally frowned upon. I’m still a little pissed because my farthest-flung family, who live across the US from us (no, it’s not as far or as expensive, but still), has several people who are beholden to the public school system schedules (two aunts work in it, three of my cousins are still school-age), and yet told me they would make arrangements.)
So I am getting married next August and also starting grad school this August, so we’re spending the summer getting some of the wedding stuff out of the way. I’ve also lost quite a bit of weight in the past year-and-change, and it’s changed the shape of my body, meaning that, dress-wise, I had no idea what would suit me. I’ve been looking at all kinds of expensive dresses with gorgeous fabrics and colorful embroidery (a lot of Claire Pettibone, oh dear), but only online. Last Friday, after we got back from our first World Cup excursion (Edmonton! You are very flat, and have magpies everywhere!), I said “fuck it, I’m going to make an appointment at the closest David’s Bridal so I can try on dresses for silhouette”, so I did, and we (me, my fiancé, and a friend of mine from my recent years in fashion retail) went to Colma on Saturday.
And then I bought a dress. Holy shit, what the fuck. I bought a fully polyester dress with a skirt with enough poof that it only just qualifies as A-line, and a fucking chapel train. (I’m Jewish, I will have no bridal party or attendants to help me deal with the train.) The thing is, despite the tulle and the polyester and the train, it looks pretty damn good and has much of what I was looking for – not white (not even “champagne, actually), colored botanical embroidery, buttons! The buttons and embroidery go all the way down the train, too! And it was on sale, cost less than $1000 (w/o alterations), and already fits quite well.
But I still feel weird because I didn’t want to buy something at DB, and I didn’t want to buy something now, but I do like it very much and so does my fiancé and so does my friend. And the price means that we can put money we had budgeted for the dress into something else like getting the guy who does floral arrangements using real insects to make a headpiece for me, or buying real jewelry*. HALP WHY DO I FEEL LIKE I DID IT WRONG?
*http://www.langantiques.com/products/item/90-1-6550
http://www.langantiques.com/products/item/90-1-65…
Dress:
(The back is bustled in this image so you can’t actually see the length of the train, just the details.)
Girl this dress is BEAUTIFUL! You’re a total smokeshow. I don’t have much else to say because I would probably feel the same way but it looks really, really good and those buttons are killer. Also please elaborate on the insect piece!
I couldn’t easily find images of headpieces with insects on the website, but the floral designer’s homepage is http://johnjamesdesigns.com (I doubt we could afford to use him for all our flowers, but just a headpiece I think we could manage).
Here is an awkward picture of me in the headpiece he had on display at a vendor fair we attended in March:
Awwww girl yes to the dress
oh my goodness I love that dress. And it does suit your shape marvellously.
I thought walking into a store and finding The Dress was the dream? It has all the things you want for less money than you wanted to spend. This is a thing to celebrate! Well done, you!
I too am intrigued by this insect bouquet/headpiece idea. And that pansy necklace actually made me gasp out loud. Before I saw the price, even!
Yeah, antique jewelry can set you back, though sometimes less than new jewelry, depending upon size/materials/demand. My engagement ring is also antique, Art Nouveau era, cost around the same as the necklace (small button opal flanked by diamonds in a yellow gold band shaped like stylized leaves/lilies). Frankly, new rings that I liked also came in similar prices (or more!), because gold is expensive, and so is talent. Also, I would rather buy a piece like that, which I would continue to wear to special events, than the “bridal accessories” that get sold in bridal shops and really are only meant to be worn at your wedding.
So pretty! You look amazing in it, and it’s so nice to have found something that works well in your budget AND looks so killer. Mittenstheboar has a great point below – my wedding dress came from David’s, too, and I had some of the same thoughts. But in the end I could spend more money at local business for food and flowers, and it was great. 🙂
Holy sockmonkeys, that dress is gorgeous. It suits you *really* well, and as far as I’m concerned, freeing up resources to use on other parts of the wedding is a huge bonus. There’s a lot of pressure on brides to make their weddings special, which inevitably paints stores like DB and AA as cookie-cutter and boring, but from the sounds of it, your wedding is going to be anything but. (Real insects! That’s awesome!)
Best wishes for your wedding, and I hope things go well as far as making arrangements with your family. 😀
If it’s gorgeous (no if, holy hell that is FABULOUS) and you love it? DO IT. Especially if it means you can get one of those beautiful necklaces.
My dress also came from DB and I also didn’t have much intentions of it coming from there and I also walked in and saw something and tried it on and fell HEAD OVER HEELS IN LOVE. It was one of the few things I wound up with true control over on that day and I never regretted it. DO IT.
I think you feel like you did it wrong because certain parts of our culture are so self-consciously hipster that we have to have the Most Special dress from that tiny shop downtown crafted from the tears of unicorns. How dare you go to a chain store with a variety of styles and sizes and helpful staff?
Just my two cents. You look absolutely stunning and there’s no shame in buying a dress you love at a store.
First off, that dress! It’s gorgeous!
Second, you feel bad because the wedding industry suuuuucks and wants you to spend as much money as possible making Your Special Day perfect and ~*~*unique*~*~. When, really, as you said, saving on your dress frees up your funds for your other priorities!
You look great. The dress is great. Those buttons are great.
I think “doing it right” just means going about things in a way that feels good to you and stresses you out the least.
1: Buy the necklace. I was gifted a pair of earrings from Lang for my wedding, and I wear them all the time. Cost per wear, they are one of my cheapest pieces of jewelry. It’s nice to have a piece of fine jewelry that’s perfectly your style that you can whip out at a moment’s notice for special occasions. ( http://www.langantiques.com/products/item/20-1-49… these are my earrings, for reference)
2: I turned my nose up at DB, too, but if you find something you like, go for it. No one will know unless you tell them. Also, FWIW, DB is openly committed to ethical sourcing of their products, which is a rarity in the garment industry. http://www.davidsbridal.com/Content_Legal_ethics If you’re worried about the train, have it bustled. DB has seamstresses they contract with, or you can find one yourself. Any competent tailor or dressmaker should be able to do it, and it’s a cheap alteration.
Lang is really lovely, it’s the first place I went when I was looking for my engagement ring (I ended up buying mine from Isadora’s in Seattle, but there were a couple that I was eyeing there). Those are beautiful, versatile earrings!
It’s also nice to know that DB is committed to ethical sourcing. I’m just a super fiber snob – this was drilled into me from childhood by my mother, who is adamantly against clothing from non-natural fibers as a general rule. And polyester is just sort of awful, so I am going to see if I can find someone who is willing to re-line the dress with silk, or even cotton – just something that breathes, at least! (I recently attended a wedding in an old dress of mine that has a silk shell but a polyester lining and even though it was strapless and cocktail-length, I got extremely hot and sweaty dancing in it in the heat).
I love Lang. My wedding ring, which is designed to fit around my edwardian filigree engagement ring (which did not come from Lang), also came from there. They guarantee their jewelry for life, and will do any repairs for free (plus they switched those earrings from screw back to pierced without charge).
Also: my mother is also a fiber snob, and I have sensitive skin and prefer natural fibers, so I totally get it.
oh.
what I learned is that EVERYONE has opinions on how we/you should be getting married and they are strongly held and backed up by tradition and also their ideas range from one to fifty-three years out of date and with dramatically different tastes informing their choices.
Your dress looks amazing, and if you love it, i’d call that decision done. Wear what you want, wear and do what makes you happy, to the best of your ability ignore all the relatives, both sides. If possible, develop a sign between the two of you for people offering useless/pointless/fruitless advice and proceed your merry way.
Feel frree to ignore this advice as well.
A. That dress is BLAMMO WOW on you and you look amazing, and now you have your dress, so that is one big-deal-thing out of the way. High five!
B. “HALP WHY DO I FEEL LIKE I DID IT WRONG?” Because the whole dang thing is set up to make you feel like you’re doing it wrong no matter what you do. Everyone everywhere thinks you have to do it This One Way, but This One Way is different depending who you ask.
It’s awful! And freeing! Because if no matter what you do, someone somewhere has Strong Opinions on how UR DOIN IT RONG, you might as well choose only what is best (happiest, most meaningful, most convenient, most just, most life-enhancing, cheapest, whatever) for you and your future spouse.
I literally gasped when I saw the pansy necklace, so that’s a vote in favor of it! Also my engagement ring is from Lang and I love it!
In a post-honeymoon stage relationship, what is an okay amount to miss being single and what is…. not? I am in a stable, blissful relationship with the best man I know. I have had a lot of unhealthy romantic experiences in the past but he is incredibly respectful and understanding. He knows everything about me and I’ve never felt more in sync with another person… but only sometimes? As of a couple months ago, half of me is in love with him and wants to marry him and have babies and do the whole thing (things I never once wanted before I met him), half of me REALLY misses being on my own and being able to do whatever I want without thinking about the well-being of a relationship or another person.
The dominant half switches literally by the week, leaving me feeling very confused and guilty and weird. I feel like when I’m really into somebody I forget about my own priorities and just start wanting whatever they do (not in a healthy compromise way, in a “what life goals?” way) until I come to my senses much later. I’m honestly scaring myself just typing this because I feel like these feelings should correspond with a controlling and dismissive partner but he is nothing but wonderful and supportive of me and my dreams and it would kill him to know how stifled I feel by our loving relationship.
So basically I’m trying to figure out if it’s okay to love being in your relationship but also feel more like yourself/love yourself more when you’re not in one? Please share, and sorry for the melodrama lol I’m having A Day and y’all are the most supportive, sensible community I’m aware of.
I don’t think there is an amount really… but can you try making yourself a priority for a while, and see what it does to your relationship / feelings? Like, just tell him you’re going to book club after work (or whatever) and just do it?
I was going to try to give advice, but I probably should not because I am slowly realizing that I totally was being stifled in my recently ended relationship.
Um, that is not helpful.
Maybe during one of your wanting independence phases take the time to write out all the goals and things you want to do. Have them in big letters on paper you can see. And then talk with your partner about how to make them happen while in one of the ‘yay relationship!’ phases? Maybe something like that will help you keep your priorities in focus even while being blissfully in love?
I don’t know though, I did not do a good job at this and am mostly talking out of my ass
All of you are so helpful and wise! That stuff, like being specific and concrete about my goals and talking about them, is what I’ve been working on. I hope it works. I’m in kind of a weird place right now and I’m trying to remind myself that when I feel happier and more satisfied with the rest of my life, the constant stream of “break up with him” will stop flying through my head.
I think I’m also worried because I don’t trust my own judgment after some of my more glaring missteps with men? Like what if I AM being stifled and he IS being lowkey undermining under the “nice guy” facade and what if he’s just saying supportive shit but not following through? I’m nervous I’m missing a bunch of red flags the same way I always do and UGH it is so difficult teaching yourself to NOT trust your gut all the time when it’s not really working in your best interest.
Also, I tend to stick to the advice Ask a Queer Chick gave out a lot. Being in a long term relationship will always involve sacrificing something–time, choices, whatever, but you get to weigh what you get in exchange.
Do you have friends you trust to give you truth bombs if you ask?
Talk to someone close to you and tell all and ask them to be super honest and see if they see any flags you are missing? That might be helpful. Trust someone else’s gut if you think yours is unreliable!
Also, you don’t need A Reason (like cheating or abuse or even incompatible life goals) to break up – you can just be done with a relationship, even if he is a truly wonderful person, who is truly very kind and supportive – that doesn’t mean you have to be with him forever, if it isn’t working for you.
And by the same logic, you could have an open relationship, or separate bedrooms, or etc, if whatever the factor is isn;t working for you. … In these situations, I always assume think the hangup is “I want to bone that stranger”, but whatever your actual problem is applies.
I really relate to what you describe! I’m in a relationship with an awesome guy, planning to move in together in about a month, and while I am crazy excited I also keep second-guessing it/myself/him/everything. I think a certain amount of this is normal, especially if you have spent a fair amount of time single and/or in not-so-good relationships where the second-guessing was legitimate.
Are you familiar at all with Dorothy Sayers? Her novel, Gaudy Night, really expresses a lot of how I feel about relationships. (I completely understand if you’re not into British detective fiction as therapy/self-discovery, though!) Basically it’s a woman trying to figure out how she can be with the person she loves without feeling like she’s disappearing or losing her sense of self. (If you do read it, just know that it’s third in a series of four.)
What helps me is thinking about the fact that I want to be with this person long-term, and that he will undoubtedly change a lot, and so will I, and that if we didn’t it would be so boring! You are both in the process of becoming, and you both need independent space in which to do that, and negotiating that is hard but that doesn’t mean it isn’t good.
blah blah, my two cents. I wish you all the best, truly.
That last paragraph is so smart, omg. Spot on.
I don’t think there’s really a “right” answer– it’s just a matter of individual preference, and everybody’s is probably a bit different.
My two cents is that it’s perfectly fine to enjoy spending time on your own and being your own person, and that it doesn’t mean that you love your significant other any less. It’s also possible to maintain a long-term relationship *and* keep a sense of personal autonomy.
I’ve been with my partner for 11+ years now, and we love each other very much, but we each have our own places and I prefer it that way. We see each other several times a week and talk (at length!) every day, but we also have our own friends and separate interests, too. I’m very introverted, and have been living on my own and doing my own thing pretty much since I was 17 (I’m 35 now). I don’t think we’d be nearly as happy living together and being together 24/7.
It’s very possible to keep a relationship going and still carve out some “alone time” during the week. I know it’s not financially possible for every couple to have separate residences (and it’s obviously not ideal if you have kids, etc.), but there are possibilities. There’s no law that you HAVE to follow the traditional path of living together/ engagement/ marriage/ being together all the time. You can negotiate and make the arrangements that work for *you* personally.
I’m ten years in with the Burgomaster and I really do love him more every day and we are 100% great together but there are days I really really miss being single and having casual sex and being in my own place by my own self and having no responsibilities to anyone god damn it. I think that’s kind of normal and healthy?
Maybe a good question to ask yourself would be “Is my overall life better or worse with him in it?”
One thing I try to remember when I feel this way is that I already am free. My husband would never try to stop me from doing something I really wanted to do, even if it meant I went on vacation alone, or got a different job, etc. So while there are certainly compromises I make for the better of the relationship, I know that I can do what I want to do, if it’s what I really want, and often what is holding me back is me, not him.
Being in a relationship involves a certain amount of opportunity cost.
When you are single, you are beholden only to yourself. You eat what you want, when you want, you make whatever social plans you want, you pursue life goals without having to worry about how they will affect your partner. There’s a lot in it that is very freeing.
When you are in a relationship, you are beholden to someone else. You make compromises, you check in, you think about their needs too. If that other person is a good teammate for you, supports you, considers your needs and feelings, etc, then it is worth it, but it is okay to occasionally long for the freedom of being single.
I think you need to ask yourself if the pangs of missing single-dom are just wondering about what might have been, or if they are a reaction to feeling stifled. What sacrifices have you made for this relationship? What are you giving up? What are you getting in return? Is what you get in return sufficient recompense for what you are giving up? Are there ways for you to have some of those things that you have sacrificed without giving up the relationship (e.g. can you schedule a date night with yourself, re-prioritize time with your friends, etc)?
I gave one month’s notice at my postdoc job, which was slowly draining my will to live. I am leaving academia for good now, and ain’t no one who can stop me.
I alternately feel like celebrating and freaking out. I think I’ll just lie face down on the couch for a while or go play some Mass Effect.
*high fives for leaving academia*
Except I still have a year left until I get my PhD and can leave. And I’m going to be spending that year finishing experiments/TAing/applying for jobs/being in GSA/trying to find time to breathe
Woohoo! Thanks for the high fives! 😀
Aw geez, good luck with the next year! My final PhD year was one of the busiest years of my life (was also getting married between my submission and defense ahaha), but when it was all over it felt GOOD.
Amazing! I am so happy for you. I will hopefully be joining you in leaving academia for good in less than a year. There are so many other great things out there for us!
Thanks!! That’s what I’ve heard too…now I’ve just gotta find out what those jobs are, heeeh…
The highest of high fives! I hear The Outside of Academia is a great place filed with well paid jobs, but I haven’t been there. You will need to report back. Freeedoooom!
Thankee! I shall indeed report back! I’ve heard there’s this thing called “money” which exists and you can exchange for goods and services?? Crazy, I know.
I recommend lying face down on the couch while listening to the Galaxy Map music.
That + the Andromeda Johnny Cash song on infinite loop, yusssss.
Congrats! Feels good to finally give your notice, or at least I hope it does.
As you can likely tell from my icon, I thoroughly endorse Mass Effect as a way to chill out. Hope your weekend is good!
Thanks a bunch! 😀 Yeah, I think it might be time to roll a new Shepard, do some Vanguard charging, and romance Garrus one more time, eeeee.
Few things in my life are as guaranteed to relieve stress as firing up a Vang and hitting the bad guys of the galaxy with my face.
Damn straight.
I left academia for good after my postdoc (which I finished, because it was actually rather nice, especially after the shitshow that was my dissertation). That was two years ago. No regrets. NO REGRETS.
Which is to say, you’re not alone, you got this, and you celebrate/freak out as much as you need to.
♪└|∵|┐♪ ♪└|∵|┘♪♪┌|∵|┘♪
Thank you for the encouraging words!!
Mazel tov, and good on you for taking a chance.
Thank you! 😀
I have little personal experience of academia, but everyone I know who works in it (or has a PhD and is trying to get a job in it) seems pretty miserable. So…. high five! I wish you the best.
Haha, yeah, that sounds like almost everyone I know in academia as well… Thanks!
Mazel tov! We who still have half a foot in that world salute you.
(I’ve pretty much given up on TT jobs, but my position for next year is a combined teaching/admin one in my graduate department, which I have Mixed Feelings about.)
Aaah, good luck to you! My husband, who is also a postdoc but still likes the science work he does, just gave up on TT as well. We’re trying to get him a lab job, but it’s unclear if anything will pan out, and he’s still not accepted that this is all going to end soon. Urgh, why is academia so terrible at not treating people like shit?
I seriously wonder that every day.
Thank you, and good luck to your husband too! And to you as you figure out what’s next. I bet it will be great!
One of the greatest sentences in the English language is “I am leaving academia for good.” Godspeed!!
Woohoooooooooo! Thanks! 😀
Yay! I will be doing this in the next year (finishing up a paper for my postdoc, really reeeeallly hoping for a Cell paper out of pure spite haha)! Report back to us that this is indeed a thing that you can do & all failed academics aren’t secretly murdered/thrown into an island prison!
I will let you know, assuming I’m not secretly murdered/thrown into an island prison!!!! Good luck to you!
ALL THE HIGH FIVES FOR YOU! 😀
(I am out the door the minute my thesis is done, so, solidarity.)
Hello, Open Thread! This week I have discovered the X-FILES. I’m 8 episodes in so far and literally cannot shut up about how great this show is. I’m reading a series of recap comics as I go along (see here for the first one), but I’m interested in reading other recaps, meta, and related stuff — any recommendations for where to look without spoiling myself?
There’s a podcast called, I think, The X Files Files, with a guy who I remember really liking on other podcasts but whose name I can’t remember. I’m ….. not actually sure that’s that helpful, now that I’ve written it out.
Yay! I recommend the AV Club’s recaps from after the show ended (http://www.avclub.com/tv/the-x-files/) and Autumn Tysko from while the show was airing (http://www.syndicateconsortium.com/sites/autumntysko/). Her reviews were really well-known amongst fans when the show was on the air. Now there are a million TV websites with recaps, but 20 years ago recapping every episode of a show wasn’t really a thing. I read them when I first got into the show in the 90s and I still go back to read them sometimes.
I recommend Kumail Nanjiani’s The X-Files Files podcast. Each podcast episode covers one or two episodes, starting at the beginning (but skipping some of the crappier episodes) and does sort of a critical analysis, historical context, etc. He brings on guests and stuff. I really like it!
That’s the guy!
X Files is awesome. No particular resources, but there is enough fan fic to last a lifetime out there…
Sus always loved the ones from the old Television Without Pity site. They are archived here now.
Oh, awesome! I used to love TWoP recaps — I’m glad the X-Files ones were saved! Thanks!
Let’s pause a moment to mourn the loss of TWoP. ; ;
You are my new best friend for informing me of the existence of this comic. I never knew and now I’m going to start re-watching just to follow along with the comics.
Aren’t they great? They only go through the end of the fourth season, but from where I’m sitting right now that’s a nice long expanse of excellent comics stretching out in front of me.
I LOVE Kumail Nanjiani’s The X-Files Files. Also there is a great set of recaps on TVMouse.com entitled “Times Mulder and Scully Should Have Made Out This Week” that is PERFECTION: http://thetvmouse.com/category/the-x-files-2/.
Hmm, I will check out The X-Files Files but I don’t think I can get on board with those recaps. I have already formed the opinion that there are ZERO times Mulder and Scully should make out, and I believe it firmly enough that I am ready to travel in time back to the Internet circa 1996 and fight someone about it.
… okay no actually I just read the first one and while I disagree wholeheartedly with its premise it was pretty funny.
LIfting/other Exercise PR thread! Tell the rest of us how awesome you have been! Squat PR? New record in your Clean & Jerk? How much ya bench? etc., etc.
Ugh. I just yesterday got diagnosed with a damaged labrum on my left hip. So that’s what’s been causing all my hip pain for…um. Years, possibly? If the new and revised PT exercises don’t improve things in a week, I’m supposed to get an MRI to see if it’s actually torn and not just (I hope oh god I hope) just massively inflamed.
UGGGGGHHHHH Labrum tears are the worst! I hope it is (just) inflamed and not torn!
Thanks, me, too. I have the worst luck with this sort of thing, though, so it won’t surprise me if it’s torn/frayed/actually damaged.
The PT guy was apologetic that he hadn’t diagnosed it on either of my first two visits, but apparently these things are pretty difficult to diagnose and they’re not terribly common, so…eh. Also leave it to me to have the weird-ass injury. I had to google it when I got home because I’d never even heard of it before.
Good thing it isn’t a torn glute, or it’d be a weird ass-injury.
Sorry, sometimes the dad jokes just can’t be stopped.
Seriously, though, we think one of the things that exacerbated this was my glutes don’t like to turn on and my quads wind up doing a lot of work they ought not do. Got suggestions for movements/techniques to get lazy glutes to fire when they should? Or suggestions on how to get my quads to chill out?
When squatting? Kelly Starrett (of MobiltyWOD fame) has a cue that I use with myself and people I coach that seems to work very well:
“Screw your feet into the floor” on the way down.
What he means by this is to think of pressing each foot into the floor and rotating it outwards as if turning a screw. So, left foot turns widdershins/counterclockwise and right foot turns clockwise. What this will do is place some torque on your femur, which in turn engages the hips, which then causes your glutes to contract together so that they become actively involved in the lift. When you get into the hole (aka at the bottom of the squat), you’ll feel kind of wound up like a spring – a lot of stored energy in those hips and glutes that is ready to help you drive back up to lockout. Does that make sense?
Yes, that makes complete sense. I’ll give it a try when I’m cleared for movement. Thanks!
Aaaah sorry to hear this! It’s a difficult injury. I had my left hip resurfaced last fall, and the over-reliance on my right leg during recovery resulted in a torn labrum on the right. So now my left hip (which was bad for years) is awesome, and my right is so painful that I’m now walking with a cane.
Right there with you on that GIF, is what I’m saying. We’ll get through it, though! I am going to try a SERF strap and see if it helps. I hope your PT gives you some relief!
Wait, “resurfaced”? That sounds *painful*
It was gnarly. http://www.hss.edu/condition-list_hip-resurfacing…
Glad that your SI issues have sorted themselves out! Good luck preparing for the upcoming meet.
*watches vid* *has nightmares* owowowowowow.
My SI joint rehab has been going well; I’m finally back into my normal range for squatting, and I’ve been forced to fix some bad habits and fliexibility issues that had led to the issue to begin with. So that’s good. But now I have a meet in less than a month and I don’t feel super-prepared :/
Yay! Glad to hear it! So fantastic when an injury can actually help us improve in the long run! Best wishes for the meet. Maybe think of it as a practice competition with your newly-healed self and not a competition with the other lifters?
Yay! I finally started lifting again after my surgery. I was good to lift again last month, but above all things I am lazy.
So I’m back at my routine, starting from scratch again. It’s weird because all the lifts have been fairly easy, but I am more sore than I ever was when I was doing more weight. Not sure if that’s normal. But I am enjoying my newbie gainz and shorter times in the gym.
Glad you are lifting again! Congratulations on a comeback! Soreness-wise, sometimes not getting enough protein (vs. your level of activity) can exacerbate things. I wouldn’t worry about it too much, though, if it goes away in a day or two and if you are meeting your athletic goals.
I have no real achievements to report, except that I have been better than usual about working out at home because I, uh. Fell in love with Abby Wambach and decided I need to be strong and fit in order to be worthy of her. (“Liz, she’s married.” Shh. “Liz, you’re married.” Shhhh. Let me dream.) So… great strides in self-motivation, at least.
I totally do this.
I’m so late to the open thread this week, but I once had the opportunity to take a photo with Abby Wambach, which involved her putting her arm on my shoulders and me putting my arm around her waist because she’s half a foot taller than me, and she is MADE OF STONE. Like, just pure muscle. I use her as workout motivation frequently and it is very effective.
This week my PR has been in the ‘just get out there and ride’ category. With the horrid heat that means getting up and out on the bike by 7am (at the absolute latest).
Days/weeks/months like this are where you make the gainz, because consistency > everything.
I’m three days back from a long weekend trip to Budapest and it was such a great vacation. I met up with my Scottish Not a Boyfriend (suggestions on a shorter term for him are welcome) who had been traveling for the past few weeks. We stayed in a really nice but cheap apartment through airbnb. It had a terrace. He made three cheese salami omelets for breakfast and we ate outside. We walked around and didn’t do any sightseeing and slept in late and ate good food and had lots of sex. He gave me a piggy back ride up the stairs to a bridge because I was lazy and not looking forward to walking up stairs! I didn’t even ask for it! There were massages and food brought to me in bed while I waited for breakfast and it was just a very good weekend overall. I also got to see my friends who live in Budapest a few times, though none of them gave me massages or made me omelets.
Now I’m back to a very boring time teaching English in Russia and already looking forward to my next vacation. Does anyone else have any good vacations planned? Tell me about them so I can live vicariously until the next time I get to go away!
ScotNAB? Pronounced Scotnab or Scotn’b? That sounds like a frikkin awesome vacation! Really want to go to Budapest one of these days…
Much less exciting, but I’ll be going to Martha’s Vineyard with my family for a week right after I leave my job in a month or so, so I can have seven full days reading fantasy novels and eating delicious pie and diving waves in the Atlantic with absolutely no work stress, eeee.
He’s your Scottish boo.
Ah we were debating doing Prague and maybe Budapest next year! My grandmother was Hungarian so I have some distant familial connection there.
This year we are going to do a two week road trip through the American Southwest, which I’ve never been to before. Looking forward to it!
He is your KILTED MANTOY (even if he has never worn a kilt) (make him wear a kilt tho)
He has worn a kilt for me! Once he brought it over and put it on for me while we were at my flat and about a month ago he put the whole outfit on, sent me a couple of pictures, and then we Skyped for a little bit. Not sexy Skype. Just regular Skype with him in a kilt because I had just watched Outlander and wanted more kilt action.
*wipes a single tear* You are living the DREAM
Also, speaking of games, WHAT GAME ARE YOU PLAYING THIS WEEKEND?
And are you excited about any games from E3? I’m looking forward to Unraveled, the new Mass Effect, the new Fallout, the new Deus Ex, the new Mirror’s Edge (geez that’s a lot of sequels), and of course, new Dishonored with a choice of badass lady protagonist!!
Mass Effect! Recore! Tacoma! Fallout!
Gonna finish Dishonoured 1 this weekend – have now abandoned all pretence at sneakery. The rats can have this city, I’m too bad at games to do a pacifist run.
Horizon Zero Dawn looks pretty awesome, and I am immediately swayed by mythical animal sidekicks, so The Last Guardian trailer was very exciting. Also, Unraveled looks so pretty and the guy’s presentation was so adorable and full of love. I don’t know if I’m ever going to buy the game, but I want to give the creator a hug.
This weekend I will be restarting FFX, because I am very slowly getting through all the games I missed growing up. I got about 10 hours into the game the first time before our PS3 died, and we replaced the PS3 last weekend.
My daughter sat me down and made me watch the Unraveled presentation. His hands were shaking! I know that feel. It looks like a super fun game, too.
Yes, the Unraveled presentation was the most wonderfully personal and unexpected moment of the entire conference. He was trembling! He talked about the metaphorical strings connecting us! I will buy your game just to make you happy, Swedish man with hand tattoo.
Literally the only video game series I play is Mass Effect, so I’m super psyched for ME: Andromeda. Can’t wait to put a custom paint job on my Mako so it looks nice and pretty driving straight up a cliff.
New Mass Effect for sure!
SUPER EXCITED for the new Mass Effect.
Somewhat intrigued by the new Fallout, now that I’ve heard you get an invincible dog companion.
OH GOOD it is invincible! I had faith in Bethesda, but my boyfriend– the Fallout fan in the relationship– is super anxious about the quality of the game and said he wouldn’t even try it if he had to worry about the dog dying.
PS: Bethesda has said that playing as the female character is official canon, though you can also play as the dude from the previous game.
Awe seriously? That’s awesome! I admit to being slightly disappointed at first that Corvo was still on the books (I liked Daud a loooot more), but then I realized that they had a choice of protagonist and STILL were marketing with Emily, and I got really happy! That never happens! They *never* market with the female character! This is great!
Oh man new Dishonored! So excited. I didn’t catch up with E3 this year because of business, but I’m happy I get to play as a girl. I’m so bad at games I cheated all through that game because I suck at being sneaky.
I submitted this here and was declined cuz apparently y’all are blowing up Nikki’s inbox with too many of these. Bummer. But I thought you might enjoy (linked to my Tumblr because I’m 13):
If Mad Max as Played by Tom Hardy was Your Boyfriend: http://theresnoearthlyway.tumblr.com/post/1210259…
Let’s talk about Hannibal!!!
http://12bottlebar.com/2012/02/1912-the-rms-titan…
Is Ryan Fuller in charge of the previews for next week? I yearn for the Next Time On Mad Men-style vagueness and not showing characters.
Terrifying to learn the truth about the fate of Mischa and the reveal/hair washing scene.
I’m glad to see Bryan interjecting some humor back into the show (that may have been impulsive INDEED), but sometimes I just want him to dial back on the art film pretentiousness just a little bit so the plot can move forward more. But I’m psyched for Chiyoh and Will hunting Hannibal across Europe.
BUT WILL. WHAT ARE YOU DOING. MURDER TABLEAUS, SERIOUSLY?
And a Death’s Head moth/angelmaker tableau? Really, Will? How do you even relate a moth to that dude? There’s no in-universe reason to do that!
I’m surprised Bedelia even participates in dinner parties anymore. And how OTT orgasmic was that lady about the roast of Dr. Whatshisface? Pretty OTT.
I just started watching Hannibal yesterday, and I was blown away by the camera work, the cinematography. I was so blown away that I didn’t follow the story … so now I have to figure out Netflix maybe or Popcorn Time … just something so that when I’m caught up in how beautiful this show looks, I can rewind and tell myself to PAY ATTENTION TO THE STORY. Yelling at myself, yes. Collapsing over the beauty, can’t help that.
I missed lots of the weird dialogue because I was livetweeting, so I need to rewatch all three episodes online.
Amazon Prime has the first two seasons. I’m rewatching the old seasons between new episodes (for the third or fourth time) and the cinematography is AMAZING for all three seasons. The OTT nature of the crimes/tableaux makes it less gross to me too. I also read Cindy Davis’s recaps (on Pajiba.com) after I watch each episode to see what I missed
Hello toasties!
Shall we do a podcast thread? I discovered Mystery Show this week and I absolutely love it. The conversation with the customer service rep in the Britney episode is so wonderful, and the end of the belt buckle episode made me tear up.
Mystery Show is GREAT. I don’t know how they came up with the idea for it, but it’s wonderful.
Currently I’m going around telling everyone to listen to You Must Remember This and The Black List Table Reads. YMRT is by Katrina Longworth about lesser-known stories from Hollywood (she’s currently doing 11 episodes on Hollywood and the Manson family) and it’s awesome. The Black List Table Reads are four-part readings of unproduced Hollywood scripts. They’ve finished two so far- the incredibly raunchy “Balls Out” and “The Other Side” about a Hasidic boy and a hipster girl confronting the differences between their experiences and learning from each other. They’re currently halfway through “Terrible Parents” which I am DYING to see made into an actual movie because it’s been spectacular so far.
I just downloaded a bunch of YMRT episodes last week in order to catch up! Apparently I had the wrong rss feed at first and it took me forever to notice it had stopped uploading. I really like Longworth as a writer and podcaster. I’m also a little jealous of her life (currently living in London because her boyfriend is filming a Star Wars movie there).
I’ve never heard of the Blacklist one, but it sounds great! Will check that out.
I only got into YMRT a few weeks ago and I’ve already almost listened to all of them. I’m really interested in the Charles Manson series they have going right now. And on the same topic, I’ve been watching The Story of Film on netflix, and the two really go well together!
I love Mystery Show! I did not realize that a reunion between a man and his belt buckle could be so emotional, and yet there I was, holding back tears while on the treadmill.
I started listening to Pistol Shrimps Radio, which is Matt Gourley and Mark McConville (both from Superego) commentating while the Pistol Shrimps women’s basketball team plays. It’s not especially sporty, it’s more just two guys hanging out, trying to understand basketball and making jokes. I will say that it’s not something I can listen to exclusively – like, if I’m just walking and listening to it, I get bored. It works better for me as something that’s kind of on in the background, like while I cook or clean or something.
Also “heynong man” has been bouncing around my head all week
Ha! I almost never listen to CBB, but I did listen to that one!
Zouk’s choking/coughing hyena laugh makes everything ten times funnier, so Hey Nong Man was pretty much my favorite joke run into the ground that I’ve ever heard on CBB!
I laughed REALLY LOUDLY when I saw this picture, so thank you for that
And my other favorite thing is the guys ganging up on Scott’s bad puns, I just love when Zouks feigns outrage or disgust with his friends
I’ve been listening to a lot of The Flop House and Read It and Weep lately–apparently I’m really into hearing people talk about bad movies. I’m also enjoying The Adventure Zone, a podcast where three funny guys and their dad play D&D together.
I absolutely love the Another Round podcast hosted by Tracy Clayon and Heben Nigatu. So many great guests! Tracy’s Joke Time! Such fabulousness.
Tracy’s joke time is the best. It’s basically dad humor (which I like to begin with) and then her delivery pushes it over the edge to hilarious.
I really want another story like podcast, along the lines of Welcome to NightVale, but I haven’t found a good one
I need advice: I work in a pretty laid back office- we’re a federal building but there’s no dress code so jeans are the norm and tshirts aren’t uncommon. I’m supervising an undergrad. She regularly wears short shorts and sports bras with the kind of holey shirts that are meant to be beach cover ups. On 1 hand, nothing she’s wearing is technically against dress code so she should wear what she wants. On the other hand, she’s not being taken seriously and gross dudes are being gross. Do I have a convo with her?
Yes! Just because there’s no dress code doesn’t mean that beach wear = office wear. Rather than have a “you are breaking the rules” conversation, you need to have the “there’s a time and place for short shorts and neither of them are here and now” and also the “it’s unfair, but your clothes present an image, and people will respect/treat you differently based on that image.” Admittedly, the second one is harder to have, because of the nuance and clarity of language required, but she should still learn now rather than later.
[I’ve been having lots of thoughts about dress codes and dressing “appropriately” and shaming women’s bodies that I actually have been meaning to bring up to discuss with toasties in another thread one day! But that’s my two cents for now.]
I’ve been having that convo in my head for the past day while I try to figure out what to say if I say something. I will for sure jump in on that thread.
Yes. Tell her she needs to dress more professionally (even if the standard isn’t that professional, she’s still falling below it). Perhaps point out a couple younger employees she should emulate, or perhaps list a few things that are never appropriate (shorts, clothes with holes, visible underwear of any kind).
It will be an uncomfortable conversation, probably for both of you, but she is presumably there to learn, and you have to teach her things like that.
oof, this is rough, but in the end…i would just leave it be.
she’s not doing anything wrong, and if she’s undergrad age, i’m sure she knows how to present herself in a more formal, professional manner, if she so chooses. she doesn’t have to for this job, so why would she, if she prefers her more casual garb?
if gross guys are being gross, take the opportunity to have a chat with them, instead.
Yes, have a convo. Ask A Manager has some good advice on it.
YES. Definitely talk to her. Maybe take her to lunch/coffee and see how the internship is working out for her, and then gently segue into “funny unspoken rules about offices” such as dress code. I know it’s summer, I know you’re an intern, you’re not at the “dress for the job you want” point yet, buuuuuuuuut you want people to look back at you as an intern for the work you do, not for the way you dressed.
Can you have a convo with the people bullying her?
There is no bullying. A coworker I trust overheard 2 other colleagues make an off-color comment when she was in another room. In a perfect world I would tell those guys what’s what and they would be perfectly reasonable and we could all wear whatever we wanted. This is not a perfect world.
Well if she’s not breaking any rules, I wouldn’t just be quiet about it. At least that will bring the circle of Who I Can Mock This Girl To down by one.
Yeah also I mean. She would probably like to know that gross dudes are being gross and that she isn’t being taken seriously. That’s not her fault, it’s definitely everyone else’s fault, but it’s still her problem, you know?
She sounds like Ilana in Broad City! She rocked that look. This intern, however, probably is not rocking the look. I’d talk with her. It’s awkward to bring up especially if it’s already gone on without your saying something, but it’s not too late and it’s a good thing for her to hear. (And if your supervisors are anything like mine, they’re likely going to ask you soon why you haven’t talked to her, so it will be good to have done it by the time they get to you!)
I really really want to discuss this ask.metafilter question with yall:
http://ask.metafilter.com/281694/While-I-was-in-a…
I feel like the husband probably should have taken that particular secret to the grave instead of ever telling his wife about it, personally.
Yup.
Yeah, that’s the kind of thing I wouldn’t want to know if I ever came out of a coma. It’s the sort of thing you can never un-hear, you know?
Yeah, like she hasn’t been through enough.
also, devil’s advocating here– it sounds like she was potentially at death’s door and maybe the SIL thought this was a genuinely humane option. bringing it up only could hurt anyone involved.
Yeah, that’s not something I’d want to know. Ever.
Jesus. Why did the husband feel it necessary to tell her what his sister said? I think she could have happily lived the rest of her life not knowing.
yeah, like the only reason to bring it up is to start some shit
I am getting a tattoo next week and I’m pretty pumped about it.
My coworkers have started randomly moving files I need from place to place? I may flip out and yell at someone tbh.
(also — an adult beverage of some kind? Depending on finances and how long you’re staying, a meal out or takeout or something would probably be appreciated.)
What’s the tattoo going to be and where? (If you feel like sharing)
I’m planning my second one (first is on upper outer thigh) and I am thinking outer forearm.
A pair of maple seeds, over my left ankle — for personal history reasons and also witchy reasons. A friend drew a test pattern on my ankle and I 100% loved it, so I’m pretty excited to have it affixed permanently to myself!
My husband was assaulted by the former receptionist at his office this week, so that was fun. She left scratches and a nasty bruise on him, since she was being super drunk flirty and rather violently threw herself on him and tried to make out with him during after-hours drinking time (gotta love those tech start-ups). And of course burst into drunk tears when he pushed her away. He talked to HR, they were horrified, and since she was a temp who had already left, they just won’t hire her again.
I was surprised by my reaction. Firstly, annoyance, since my dude was upset and nervous, but then I was all, “Oh, honey, no. This is not how to get men to like you. Not even going to address the whole ‘who gives a fuck if men approve of you’ stuff, since you obviously do, but my lovely guy is old enough to be your father, young lady!” I mean, I’m 33 and I just felt all kinds of sad for this young woman. I guess I am An Old now.
(And also, yes, I know, but really, this is a very very gentle man I have here. I 100% believe him).
I beleive him too, partly because I have had a similar experience with my very gentle husband. But I was there, and watching while a very young woman got very drunk and emotional and had to be dragged off him by friends, while he was clearly uncomfortable.
Aw, thanks. I appreciate that. I was texting my friend about it, and had a moment where I was like, “Maybe I shouldn’t tell her this, because I sound just like some in-denial lady making excuses,” until I was all, “Oh, wait, this has totally happened to her and her husband, too.” Also a gentle dude. An epidemic of drunk ladies!
I’m sorry your husband was in that position as well.
I’ve seen drunk women violently throw themselves at the Burgomaster (also an incredibly gentle and mild man unless you’re honest-to-god sparring with him), too. So yes, I believe you and I’m so sorry he had to suffer that. How horrible for him. Perhaps he, Mr. Pruska, and the Owl King could go out for drinks and exchange war stories.
Please advise time and date, and Mr Lass will commiserate with stories of removing young ladies hands from inside his pants.
OH MY GOD.
YUP.
Thanks, it was very weird to hear about.
That sounds incredibly upsetting! Ugh.
I believe him, too. Men are definitely not the only gender who can behave incredibly inappropriately when drunk. I had a roommate in university who was a really nice person, but at one point she was having a really tough time, got drunk at a party at our house and then told a guy she had taken an interest in (who wasn’t interested in her) that he wasn’t allowed to leave until he made out with her and refused to even tell him where the bus stop was so he could leave. I ended up giving him a bus ticket, directions home, and taking him out the back door while apologizing profusely.
I had a friend go through some terrible stuff once and she wound up getting really drunk and kinnnnnda breaking into a guy’s apartment and waiting for him. That was a cause for a Very Serious Talk.
So I’m trying to get knocked up, and it’s making me so obsessive and weird! I tried to avoid any kind of testing or charting this month, thinking I would just rely on having lots and lots of sex, but then my husband got a cold, and the whole thing took a weird, less-than-enthusiastic-consent turn. Blarg. Ok thanks for letting me vent.
It is weird! I am also trying to make a human and trying to stay away from testing stuff because I know it will make me flat insane. Our method of “sex and ignoring anything else” has been fun this month but now I’m heading into When Do I Know territory because I just realized I have no idea when my last period was. Three weeks ago? I SHOULD KEEP TRACK OF THESE THINGS
You can get one of those period tracking apps, that should help you keep vague track of things without all of the bells and whistles about ~fertility~ that can make you feel insane. If you know when you ovulated and you have normal periods, you can safely test about 2.5 weeks after that. Otherwise wait as long as possible. I dunno, I think I;m getting obsessive and weird even in the absence of testing. I will probably go back to charting because I’m in my mid-30s and it’s probably important to see what’s going on hormone wise anyway. SIGH.
I am all about period tracking apps. Lady things I get up on a soapbox for = period-tracking apps and the menstrual cup. The period-tracking apps are super useful in general, but especially useful during little-human-making time.
When I was trying conceive I just put my periods in my gcal, because gcal will never judge or show you cartoon sperm or what have you.
Clue. Clue is awesome and non cartoony and there is no pink. I like it lots and I’m not even trying to make a tiny human.
I remember one night, when one of us had a cold and the other had a stomach ache, and he thought he could just go to sleep, and I was all NO WAY, you are sexing me now and I don’t care if you like it, and that was not a great moment really. (He did, nothing got fertilized, but I was just so on edge after months and months of failure – I don’t know if I was really capable of acting differently at that time…)
Also will share a little tidbit: I have always had super regular, 28-day cycles, but it turns out, I ovulate on like day 22 or so, instead of 14 as one would expect – so sometimes I was letting up on the constant barrage of terrible sex just when it would have actually maybe worked, so.
“constant barrage of terrible sex” yes yes exactly my month. And that is a good tidbit! My friend had a similar problem where she was following those ovulation test strips religiously and after almost a year realized that her body just doesn’t respond the same way the box of strips told her it would. So she’d been having a barrage of unpleasant sex every month about a week too early. Yes, this is why I need to go back to charting, unless husband’s libido goes out of control.
Also keep in mind that sperm can last for days and days all up in you – no need to do it every day – every two or three days ought to be plenty. That might help you both keep at it for more of the month…
Indeed, I read somewhere that doing the sex every second or third day is actually better because it allows you both to recharge your batteries (and recharge the dude’s sperm factory as well?). But then I also read that you should have sex every other day but have the dude jerk it on the “off days” to “flush out the dead sperm” and I don’t think…that’s how it works….so whatever, everything is a crapshoot forever.
I have no useful advice to offer, just commiseration.
RANDOM THOUGHT:
I know we’ve settled on “Toastie” as the individual appellation for Toast enthusiasts, but I kind of wish we had picked “Toaster” like on Battlestar Gallactica .
Related-but-not, we actually have the Battlestar Galactica Cylon toaster: http://www.geeky-gadgets.com/battlestar-galactica…
The novelty, alas, wore off fast. We took out the plates that burn the cylon head/FRAK OFF a long time ago and now… it’s just a toaster.
We should maybe have gotten a toaster oven instead.
GASP
I would get that, but my sister already got me a Domo toaster, and I feel like there’s probably an unwritten rule about how many novelty toasters one person should have…
domo toaster solidarity.
I’m thinking the rule is probably “1” unless you are a novelty toaster collector, in which case it is INFINITE TOASTERS.
When I started commenting here and talking about it to my husband, the first thing he said was “do you call yourselves toasters?”
But Toaster was a pejorative on BSG. OK for other folks to use it here, but I don’t think I will.
But we could make it our own!!
Here’s how I understand reclamation & appropriation of pejoratives: If you are a Cylon, you can righteously reclaim “Toaster.” I’m not (as far as I know), so I can’t.
No, I’m a……. perfectly normal human being, of course. Yeah, that’s the ticket.
I am now officially on the look out for other Mrs_Peels.
I would have preferred “Toastadas” personally.
Oh I saw this one recently, and was trying to remember it. It’s my favorite.
Mmmmmm… now I’m hungry.
I try to use a different variant every time I address the group collectively. Toastrons, toasties, toastlets, toastarians, etc.
Bartender! This is the lady you had Szechuan food with the other week. Thought you might appreciate the username. So I have finally created an account to comment. I say, bottle of booze (fancy gin or scotch) PLUS treat them for dinner or drinks if you are staying more than 3 days??
YOU HAVE MET THE BARTENDER IN PERSON!!! That is so exciting to me!
Saw the username and immediately knew it was you!! Gin/scotch/food is all great. But what ELSE?
E3 thread! I am still super excited about No Man’s Sky, even though it seems like a lot of people are turning on it because it may not be what they imagined it would be. Personally, if all you do is fly to a planet, check it out, and then fly to another planet I will be happy.
Recore and Tacoma look cool.
Nintendo though… why you gotta be like this, Nintendo? This lack of care with the Metroid franchise is just baffling. I’m looking forward to Yoshi’s Wooly World, but that’s about all that interested me.
And Mass Effect Andromeda! I cannot wait for a new Mass Effect game. I don’t care that they didn’t reveal too much, I am happy to just let my anticipation continue to build. Although I do wish that I had written down my speculation of what ME4 would be about way back when because I called Andromeda and as my reward I would like to work for Bioware, thanks.
In other video game topics, has anyone played Neverwinter? I downloaded it on the Xbox (free!) and got sucked in… It’s technically an MMORPG but I’ve been playing pretty much solo aside from the occasional skirmish. It’s pretty fun!
No Man’s Sky’s gameplay is pretty much exactly what I expected, so I’m still extremely ~*~intrigued~*~ by it. It looks profoundly relaxing and full of the majesty and massiveness of space.
I honestly really adored the Andromeda trailer. I knew what it was from the moment the first image came on the screen, but the music and landscape images keeps its identity in tension until you suddenly see N7 and I was grinning and had chills. I really missed you, Mass Effect. I’d been expecting a colonization / Voyager-style plot for a while too, and it sounds like the trailer confirms the earlier leak for what the focus on the game is: http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2015-04-20-prob…
I’m also really excited about Deus Ex: Mankind Divided. I looooved Human Revolution, and the new one looks both super-duper-pretty and narratively interesting. Plus, they’ve added some new augs (Biotic Charge!!) and are promising you can play the whole game without killing anyone (which you could *almost* do in HR), so I’m really damn excited. Plus, cyberpunk Prague, mmm. The gameplay demo from yesterday looked so very very awesome: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jh-iX2bxOjI
I was actually concerned that No Man’s Sky would be something *besides* “fly to a planet, check it out, fly to another planet,” so I’m happy. I just want a practically infinite universe of endless variation to explore from the comfort of my own couch.
*bounces around in seat*
MORE MASS EFFECT MORE MASS EFFECT!!! MORE MASS EFFECT!!!!!!!!!!
Is anyone writing a book?
I’ve been writing short stories and one is getting longer and longer, so I’ve come to accept I’ve been cursed with a novel. I’m having a lot fun actually.
Anyone working on exciting creative projects?
I would love to hear more about the excitingness! I am in the editing hell phase of a novel and I just want it to be over.
Good luck! I’m in the fun part but I know editing will be rough.
I’m working on some discussion/guided inquiry topics for the class I’m teaching next term…It’s an intro class but it’s like a part 2 of an intro class, and I want to make it completely discussion-based instead of 2.5 hours of me feeling like I’m lecturing at the wall because none of my students are paying attention. We’ll see…
I’m also kind of wanting to get into writing fanfiction? But not sure if I would be any good at it.
That sounds like fun! It’s been ages since I had a story do that.
I’ve had a story kicking around for a while, but I’m stuck in the “how do I even make this work” phase, which is when it’s not even finished, but I know I can never finish it unless I edit it extensively. Yeek.
My problem is that I’m good with coming up with characters and scenarios, but I have a hard time coming up with plots.
This story is sort of Italo Calvino type weirdness already.
I am writing lots of things, and I’ve been flailing for the past couple of weeks. I set myself a goal of “Write 278 words per day [Friday and Saturday are acceptable passes], doesn’t matter what, just write.” But now I have half a dozen different stories/novels I could potentially be working on, and I don’t know where to go with most of them, and everything I write seems dry and boring. I haven’t written anything since Monday, and that’s the longest gap I’ve had in writing since New Year’s. Hopefully I’ll get out of the slump soon.
Yep! I’m familiar with the process of a story slowwwwly expanding until you have to admit it’s a novel. I’ve got one I’m avoiding editing right now. Instead I am entertaining myself by writing an extremely gay mystery novel. I figure that procrastinating by writing more can’t be THAT bad, right?
Best host gift: a fine bottle of Scotch (or similar, assuming your host is a drinker); bonus points if it’s something local to you. Then take them out for a nice dinner, and if you feel the need to be more gracious later, send along something you noticed was missing or broken or would go well with their decor later (replace their busted corkscrew, send a little tray to hold their keys, something like that).
ETA: I would skip candles or soap, unless you know for absolute certain that your host uses these things (some people only like body wash, or need a certain kind of soap for eczema, etc.) AND that they like that particular flavor.
WINE.
I’m moving on Tuesday (!) and my mother just informed me that she and Dad are staying with me Wednesday to Sunday. On my new bed.
They better bring wine, or I’m getting myself a hostess gift and hiding it in the half bath.
AHHHH
Even better, I don’t own a tv. My father’s preferred form of entertainment is endless Gunsmoke reruns viewed at maximum volume. There will be grumpy old manning.
Perhaps just pass the gin.
That is not the type of thing that one can just announce. UGH
Right? I knew they were coming up for the settlement, but I had thought that I would have some me time in the evenings.
Why do they get to decide that they get your bed?
Because it’s the queen. Plus, I’m reasonably sure that if I stuck my Dad on the air mattress he would never get up again.
AUGH.
They had better be the best unpackers and organizers in the world AND come armed with wine. Because that shit is not cool!
I’m going to be making them paint. And forbidding second guessing of my color choices.
No no, don’t forbid. Make it sadistically fun. Declare that anything close to criticism of your choices results in … I don’t know, extra chores? The two of them moving to a motel? Having to sleep on the air mattress?
Ooo….I can threaten my Dad with quinoa
Toasties! My little cousin has had a lot of health problems and had to leave university in her first year. This is after an extremely sheltered childhood (my aunt is afraid of everything). Her health problems aren’t resolved yet, but now she sees all of her friends graduating and she’s really upset about it. What do you think would be a good way for an older cousin to cheer her up? I live on the other side of the country, so we haven’t seen each other a lot, but I thought maybe I could send her something nice.
Hmmm well I have two trains of thought:
1. Depending on her health issues, something to aid in her comfort? If she has a limited diet, some fun snacks she can eat, fancy lotions (especially if she’s allergic to an ingredient – splurging on something she can use), warm blanket, etc.
2. Something encouraging her to continue following her dreams – I’m thinking a nice journal and pens and a motivational card, but other toasties may be more creative than I. Is there a biography about someone who faced similar issues and overcame them maybe? Or someone generally inspirational that aligns generally with her interests? [I love reading, her mileage may vary]
Thanks! I’ll start exploring my options. (She’s mostly dealing with chronic pain/mobility as I understand it.)
I like the above ideas, and I think this is such a sweet thing for you do to. I bet there are lots of biographies or other books about people who didn’t “follow the timeline” and still did cool things and had good lives. Maybe something like that? Also, I just bought a grown up coloring book and truly love it. If she’s stuck inside or in bed for health reasons, maybe one of those and some nice markers/pens/pencils?
Did anyone watch The Astronaut Wives Club last night? I tuned in because I love Space Race stuff and also Bret Harrison, but it… wasn’t great. I’m willing to keep watching it though, because it is so pretty! So much great lipstick! And Bret Harrison, although he is playing really far against type and I’m not sure about the 60s hairdo he has.
I find the guy who plays Alan Shepard really creepy though.
I did! I agree. It reminded me of Pan Am. Insofar as it’s a Mad Men rip off that is just not very good. Also I’m pretty sure the guy who plays Alan Shepard was Chuck Bass’s creepy uncle on Gossip Girl. He lost a lot of weight since that role, which I thought may have been to look like the real Alan Shepard, but I just looked Shepard up and he was not super gaunt at all. Weird.
Hi Toast friends. There was a Roundup this week with a Lyme disease related link and it prompted a lot of tick- and Lyme-fears in the comments. Well, I have Lyme disease. I’ve had it for over a decade and it’s destroyed my life. I am bedridden most of the time due to fatigue and pain. I cannot work and I have few friends. Reading the Toast is a major high point in my long, shitty days full of pain and boredom. So it was greatly discomfiting to see so many people expressing their fears here about, essentially, my life.
I’m not suggesting anyone did anything wrong and there’s certainly no need for anyone to apologize. This disease is legitimately awful and you’re right to think of it that way. But it’s my life, and I have to deal with it, and hearing people talk about how scary it is made me feel like… like I’m scary. Like no one wants to look at me, because what I represent now is too frightening. I don’t talk about my disease on the internet for precisely this reason. I feel like no one will want to talk to me if I do, because you can’t catch Lyme from me, but you can catch fear.
I guess I’m wondering if there are any other disabled/chronically ill folks here who’ve dealt with with feeling and what I can do about it. Because I’m shut-in enough as it is and I don’t want to lose the one tiny social outlet I have in the internet to feeling like I’m a horrible monster that scares people just by existing.
I’m so sorry. Thank you for being here, and for sharing, and for opening up this conversation.
Oh gosh, oh, Bun, I’m certain that’s not what folks meant. I’m so certain nobody here is afraid of you or is turning away from you. I would love, and I am sure others would too, for you to feel safe here to talk about your experiences. <3 <3
(Also, of course I’m not trying to say that your response is wrong. Just clumsily meaning that I’m sure that wasn’t the intent, and we want you to be well and safe and happy.)
I’m so certain nobody here is afraid of you or is turning away from you.
This. I have an autoimmune disease myself, and while I’m not currently disabled, it’s a possible future of mine. I do everything I can to avoid being bedridden because I fear what that loss would mean to me. I don’t judge or fear others who are, though. I admit with them that it’s an unfortunate situation, but I don’t think people with illnesses are monsters. We are not our diseases.
I hope you continue to feel valued and welcome here.
Thanks! I agree that wasn’t people’s intent, and I know rationally that no one here would think less of me for having a disease, but sometimes it is hard for me to FEEL it even if I know it.
Oh, man. First, let me apologize, because I was one of the folks who made a Lyme disease comment the other day and now I realize how thoughtless it likely came off.
As others have said, you are valued here and I don’t think anyone would deliberately mean to exclude you. Thank you for calling out the behavior and reminding me to do my part to keep The Toast a safe space for everyone. I hope I/we can do better in the future.
Oh, you don’t need to apologize. Being afraid of illness is a really basic human thing to feel and I don’t blame anyone for expressing it. I just struggle with the fact that I now essentially embody a really basic human fear. If I had to choose a basic human fear to embody, I would rather have been magically turned into a grizzly bear or something.
Thank you for making this comment. It can be very easy to get caught up in speculation and fear, and we here at the Toast certainly aren’t immune to that. I hope you can forgive us for making you feel shitty! I will definitely try to be more aware of the shape/tenor of health conversations here in the future.
You are highly valuable, just as you are. And I’m not scared. I like you. I’m sorry you feel down and will keep you in my thoughts. I will imagine you lifted up by daily pleasures.
This isn’t totally the same, but I think a lot of commenters here have had issues with depression/anxiety, which can also make it feel like people are avoiding you because SOMETHING SCARY IS WRONG WITH YOU. At least I’ve felt that way, less so now that people are more open about things like depression/anxiety, not to mention everything is pretty under control thanks to the wonders of modern pharmaceuticals. But I definitely went through a period where I felt like no one wanted to be around me and I couldn’t talk about what was happening. So, I feel you, sort of. I am very sorry that you are feeling like this, and I do think that it’s cool that you have found some support here on these internets.
Yes, I definitely also struggle with depression/anxiety (helped greatly by medication) and I’m sure that’s a big part of why I feel this way. Sometimes it’s hard to remember that my Sadbrain likes to lie to me about things and it would probably be good for me to keep it in mind.
I’m so sorry if I was one of the people who made you feel uncomfortable, because my mom has it the same way you do. It’s a struggle that I completely understand and I hope you can feel safe here. She’s managed to make somewhat of a recovery by moving outside of Western medicine and trying pretty much anything she can, but who knows what exactly worked and how. But I know the fatigue and pain are real, and I truly apologize.
I’m so sorry for any comments that made you feel unwanted here. Thank you for making this point, I really appreciate the reminder to be careful of how I talk about illness and the impact that talk can have on those who are ill.
Oh god no, you’re not the frightening one! My mother has CFS, and there are potential links to genetic factors and/or viral infections that I could also be harboring, because I am her child. I fear what happened to her (the basic shutting down of her life, the long and drawn-out medical ordeals, the strife that comes from being to exhausted to deal with things and your spouse also being too exhausted to deal because they now have to deal with a full-time job and the household jobs, the emotional exhaustion for everyone, the difficulty maintains social relationships because you literally cannot go out and do anything, the pain, the boredom, all of it). But *she* doesn’t frighten me. She is not the boogeyman or the representation of my fears, she’s my *mother*. The fact that she’s my mother and so I’ve observed the effects of debilitating disease first-hand means my fears are a little less abstract than some people’s, that’s all.
Thanks for speaking up! I just learned my next-door neighbor has had Lyme, and is currently in something like remission (?) and trying to tackle a lot of projects that were on hold while she was too wiped out. Other than Kathleen Hanna that was the most I’d heard about it ever, and it was really interesting to learn. You are not a monster; however, ticks are.
As someone with recurring mobility issues: I hear you. Anything that restricts your mobility can be isolating, so the experience you describe from yesterday’s thread compounding that sensation of isolation makes perfect emotional sense to me.
I’ve had it for over a decade and it’s destroyed my life.
As I read it (and admittedly, I only read a fraction of that thread), this is what those commenters were saying: It’s a potentially life-altering condition that is shockingly easy to contract in some regions, just by walking the dog or taking a shortcut through tall grass. But I can see how that anxiety would be alienating, as if by the commutative property, fear of the potential condition translates into a fear of you or your situation.
I’m wondering if there are any other disabled/chronically ill folks here who’ve dealt with with feeling
I have intermittent conditions, both physical and mental, that can keep me very isolated for stretches of time. Occasionally, friends of mine laugh about about voluntarily restricting their own social lives as “being a shut-in” or “being agoraphobic” and I kinda raise an eyebrow [edit: and remind them] like, OH REALLY? NO, Y’ALL, THAT’S NOT WHAT IT’S LIKE.
I’m so glad you said something to reclaim the feeling of community you find here. I hope you do still feel that sense of community.
It’s so hard when your daily reality is like, this boogie man for the people around you. It’s a profoundly isolating experience, and I’m so sorry it happened to you here. The lack of malicious intent doesn’t really make it easier to deal with.
Thank you so much for sharing, and for all your contributions here. You’re valued!
And you’re not alone, either. I’ve definitely felt that feeling, and it sucks, and I wish I could tell you a way to fix it. I really admire you for taking the step to tell everyone here how you felt.
It’s a tough line to walk— On one hand, when I get a lot of migraines, I’m not very functional, I’m potentially seen as a flaky friend, and my life is pretty un-fun. And if people don’t understand that chronic migraines are more than just the occasional tension headache, then I get pretty pissed off, because this isn’t the sort of thing where I take some tylenol and am back to normal, it’s a complicated and terrible obstacle course to try to negotiate.
But, on the other hand, it’s my life, and I would sure as hell prefer to not have migraines, but there are plenty of worse things, and I’d prefer to have understanding over pity. But if someone hasn’t ever been chronically ill, they probably don’t really get it. And if they have been chronically ill, they probably understand so well that they have understandable fear of other chronic illness.
I guess that, overall, I guess I prefer the fear (which implies that people get that I’m going to need some slack) over the people who think I’m just a drama queen hypochondriac. But all in all, I tend to gravitate to the people in my life who have had significant health concerns, because it’s just easier.
Oof. I know some of these feelings. I have a minor disability that, while not terrible to work around, has affected my life a lot more than I let on. On the rest of the internet I can pretty much ignore insensitive comments but here they hurt more because I’m not expecting to come across them. Sometimes I respond to comments and try to kindly explain why I found them insensitive. And toastfolks are always very kind in return (as you can see!). But sometimes I’m too busy to sit down and write out a well thought out reply, sometimes I’m not emotionally able to write out a kind reply. Those are the times when I get really upset. I get upset not only because someone said insensitive things but also because I’m not able to advocate for myself and other people who found the comment insensitive. I’m not sure if that ramble was helpful at all to you but I wanted to let you know that your comment was helpful to me and you’re not alone.
Dee Dee Thread!
Dee Dee is built like a tank (a beautiful, dappled grey tank) and being an “easy keeper”, she tends to pile on the weight. So Dee Dee is currently on a diet and has been for the past 3 weeks and yesterday, looking at her, I think she’s slightly less bulky. Today, she’s getting her teeth floated and tomorrow a massage from an equine masseuse. Starting July, she’s under 30 days of training with an excellent rider who’ll take her up the mountains, on the highways, etc.
BONUS: a local horse owner saw Dee Dee yesterday and LOVED HER. She wants first dibs when Dee Dee is ready for her new home and I’m praying that she follows through: she takes really good care of her horses and is a forever home (“my horses die on the property, they don’t leave”).
PS I’d post pics of Dee Dee and my sketches of her but can’t figure out how to do it from my iPad’s photo album! Boo!
she sounds WONDERFUL!! I look forward to pictures
I would like to invite all Toasties to celebrate my newly completed tubal ligation with me. Thank God for reproductive rights AND good insurance.
I had the Essure procedure done, which means I have to wait three months to verify that it “took,” but it’s a much less invasive procedure than the old-fashioned one and the risk of it not succeeding is very low.
Also, I’m putting the house on the market next week, most likely. I’ve been here for nearly two decades. Every time a realtor comes in and says “it’s a nice little house” I start crying, but this puppy will go on the market notwithstanding any leftover sentimentality. Condo in a nicer burg, here I come.
I’m looking at a few towns north of Boston, but one keeps calling out its name:
NEWBURYPORT
NEWBURYPORRRRRRRRRT
This is an utterly impractical choice for me, but I might have to wind up making it. I have friends/consiglieri who will guide me through, as well as a sharp realtor.
Congrats!! I’ve been tentatively researching Essure for when my mirena gets yanked. If you feel like sharing I’d love to hear how your experience has been.
Congratulations!!!!! And best of luck with the move. 😀
I’ve been researching Essure since I was in high school, but I haven’t asked any doctors about it because I’ve heard they won’t even consider it from anyone under 35. (A friend of mine got it at 26, but only because she submitted a 5 page essay to her MD after 6 weeks of convincing.)
I grew up 15 minutes from Newburyport. It’s a nice place! May I ask which other towns you are looking at?
Did you like Salem? I’m thinking of moving there. Newburyport was awesome when I visited, and my dude and I definitely added to our mental “future home place???” list!
Congrats on the TL! It’s something I’ve been considering casually for a while, so like Cookie said, please share your experience!
By popular request, here’s how it’s been for me so far:
The anesthesia used was an “LMA,” which is heavier than IV drip sedation but not as nasty as full-on intubation. I woke up with a scratchy throat and I’ve been drinking a lot of water.
The surgeon said he was done in 10 minutes but apparently my tubes were very well situated for the procedure. Had they not been, I’d given consent in advance for the full on old timey type of ligation.
I think I went into the OR at 7:45 a.m and was awake by 8:25.
Cramps were the worst when I first woke up, nothing terrible though. Right now it feels like I pulled something in my upper abdomen but only if I’m moving around.
There’s a little bit of postop bleeding, again nothing to write home about. You can’t wear tampons for a while, so just use pads.
No gym this weekend, no driving today. I’ll probably start walking the beach again tomorrow.
I just took 400 mg of ibuprofen, my first postop dose. My doc typically prescribes 800 mg ibuprofen for Essure postop.
I’ll post back in September on the results of the confirmatory X-ray.
On the home front: Beverly is my first choice because a) cute downtown b) not as traffic-ridden as towns to the south c) on the MBTA commuter rail line d) proximity to ocean. Also, I do a lot of stuff in the evenings in the Salem/Marblehead area, so I want to stay close by there.
I do like Salem, but I live in a nearby town and the whole area south of Beverly is pretty much an anthill, especially in the summer and October. Newburyport is a wonder, but it would be wicked far away from the aforementioned evening activities (not to mention my friends) and I don’t want to be in my car all the time any more. I might even uncar – just got a ZipCar membership which is free through my employer.
My mom’s in Ipswich, but is shifting to Merrimac, I think to a smaller house on Attitash. Beverly is so improved from when I was growing up there! And the train is a huge win.
Essure has been fantastic for me so far, and I’m excited to see someone else report back about getting it (and, of course, that it’s been positive). The follow-up test is not the most fun medical procedure I’ve ever had, but it wasn’t horrible, and I had a wee dose of Xanax before it and a huge dose of Now That’s Over pastries afterward. Go on with your adulting self!
Toasties! I’m at the National Organization for Women’s annual conference in New Orleans and it is a bylaws convention and I am in AWE of the intensity with which people are debating our freaking conference rules. What are your experiences with Robert’s Rules of Order, because I have no idea how this system work and am kind of confused as hell.
Oh lord, Robert’s Rules. There are those who love them and then there’s everyone else who tolerates them when they have to but secretly hates them and everyone who takes them super seriously.
I’ve spent a lot of my time around Robert’s Rules between Young Democrats conventions and GSA, and it’s definitely not something you can learn from watching. I had to be walked through it my freshman by a friend who did Model U.N. a lot and had a penchant for yell-whispering “Point of information: fuck you!” to people who pissed him off.
My advice would be to find someone who understands them and have them explain to you what’s happening while it’s happening. Since there’s always a minority of people who genuinely understand the rules, the ones who do can wield that power almost indiscriminately, and so it would behoove you to become one of them. I say this as someone who has sat through many, many GSA meetings hijacked by people who know the Rules and use them to push their own agenda, even when the majority of council wants to just vote on the damn thing already.
I’m fortunate that the friend I came to this conference with is a former Model UN member who knows her Robert’s Rules!
So this isn’t something that’s immediately relevant to me right now, but I’ve been mulling it over lately and thought the people of The Toast might have similar thoughts – how do you guys feel about nontraditional (and especially androgynous/masculine) wedding attire for straight ladies? I am a hetero person who just never grew out of my tomboy phase, and I have become increasingly comfortable with the idea that I will never be a Person Who Wears Dresses. If I ever get married I’m not sure I’ll want to go the traditional dress route, but all my googling suggests that getting married in pants is almost exclusively the province of men and the queer community. Anyone have thoughts/ideas/stories of their interesting wedding attire?
I firmly believe that you should wear whatever you feel comfortable in, especially, but not exclusively, at your wedding.
Seconded!!
It’s your wedding, you can do whatever you want!
Two words: Formal Overalls.
Do it. Do it. Plleeeeeeeasse??
Well now that I know that formal overalls exist, I think I may have to obtain a pair posthaste, no reason to wait for a wedding!
I think the more of us who do what is right for us without bowing down to conventional gender expectations that don’t work for us, the better for everyone.
I also think that if you are getting married, you should wear something that makes you feel like you. Sure, a fancier version of you, if that’s the wedding you are going for, but you want to be able to look at those photos 30 years later and recognize yourself. So if you are the kind of woman who doesn’t wear a full face of make-up on the regular, then you shouldn’t wear it on your wedding day. And if you are the kind of woman who never wears skirts/dresses, then I think you shouldn’t wear one on your wedding day.
Yeah, I sometimes think about this– not too long ago I was in a family wedding where one of my more high-maintenance relatives insisted that I could not wear glasses at the wedding because who wants photos that include a bridesmaid wearing GLASSES? WTF. I wear glasses every waking moment unless I’m showering; being bespectacled is just what I look like. Show me where it is written that you cannot look like that while wearing formal wear!
Likewise, I’m not anywhere close to being married but a foofy white dress is about the last thing I’d want to wear on any occasion. And you know what? When it comes time, it will be my choice to wear literally whatever I feel like. Maybe I’ll just run around the hall in a unitard with glitter smeared on my face yelling “IT’S MY SPECIAL DAY!” I will have that right.
+1 for glitter unitard!
+1 for glitter unitard
+1 another to lemonadefish for cheerful approval
I feel the same way about straight ladies getting married in trousers as I do about filling a minivan full of donuts: you’ve taken something I really don’t care about and suddenly made it indispensable to my life.
This is the best analogy I have ever heard in my entire life, ever.
This is such a good comment that I felt the need to screenshot it and tweet it out as an example of why I love toasties. Just thought I’d let you know.
+1 for magical image that I didn’t know I needed
This is amazing and definitely makes me want to get married in pants.
MY WORK HERE IS DONE
I think I’ve seen pictures of women getting married in pants in, like, the seventies, which might be useful for inspiration, but I’m having trouble finding any.
I did a google image search for “bride pants” to see what other people might be doing, and the results had an interesting variety of white and off-white pantsuits, but further investigation revealed that many of them were labelled as mother of the bride outfits. Which seems weird, because I would not expect the mother of the bride to wear white at most weddings. But they could maybe serve as another source of examples of women’s non-skirted formal wear anyways.
Bianca Jagger!
One of Solange’s wedding outfits was pants! (A jumpsuit, actually, but bifurcared leg coverings ftw…)
Oh yeah, that was a great outfit.
I also saw the white mother of the bride pantsuits and thought it was very strange! I guess I haven’t been to that many weddings, but I’ve definitely never seen the mother of the bride in a white pantsuit, and I certainly can’t imagine my mother ever choosing to wear one. Isn’t whole point that only the bride gets to wear white?
Also Amal Clooney wore pants to her Civil ceremony, and of course looked awesome (despite it being Stella McCartney!)
I don’t always love this site, but please see APW’s #BridesinPants posts for ideas!
I just googled and found this and now I honestly want to get married in a pantsuit. http://happywedd.com/clothes/2014-wedding-trend-5…
You should wear whatever you want! Always, but ESPECIALLY at your wedding. It’s your special daaaaaaaaay 🙂 If it ever becomes relevant, I’d suggest looking at some of the awesome places that make custom suits for women. Yeah, they have a largely queer/gender-nonconforming client base, but they just exist to make suits that fit well and look fabulous for people who want them and can’t buy them off the rack.
There is no reason to be wearing something you hate at your own wedding!!
When I got married, I was pretty not interested in the whole Wedding Industrial Complex mandated nonsense, so I played it as fast and loose as I could with traditions. I had “bridesmaids” but they each wore something different that they picked themselves, and my one sister who has worn a dress perhaps 3 times in her life, wore awesome flowing, gauzy pants. She was comfortable, and happy, and felt like herself. It was awesome.
i say wear what you want!
personally (although marriage is not on my mind) i tend to feel more comfortable and even more feminine while wearing a pretty blouse and slim, ankle-cut trousers, rather than a dress or skirt. i wouldn’t even consider it androgynous, personally?
bridal suits are not that crazy. off the top of the head, i’m picturing bianca jagger looking ultra-fab. for the record, even a mainstream wedding purveyor like jcrew has a wedding jumpsuit in their lineup.
I think a classy white pantsuit would be awesome.
I am a lady engaged to a man, and we’re probably going to get courthouse married first (and married-with-a-party later), and I found a tan seersucker suit in my size at a thrift store, and By God I am going to get a sapphire-blue frilly shirt, and wear the shit out of that at the courthouse wedding. My gentleman says it makes me look like Elly Jackson of La Roux:
If only my hair was that cool.
That outfit sounds absolutely amazing. Congratulations, and enjoy your wedding and your awesome suit!
Well, as a queer person who — if I ever get married — will most definitely be wearing a suit to my wedding, I say: go for it. I’m all in favor of resisting the hegemony of the Foofy White Dress, no matter who does it.
Honey, you wear what makes you comfortable and feel most like yourself on your wedding day.
(…I mean, if one is a nudist, one ought to give folks a heads up, but otherwise…)
Offbeat Bride is a wonderful, encouraging resource, and just ran an article about a cis-bride who wore pants: http://offbeatbride.com/2015/06/new-york-city-bri…
I had a busy afternoon at work and didn’t get to come back to this until now, but I’m glad to have so many Toasts on my side. I definitely fall into the “wear what you want and ignore the haters” camp, but the white wedding dress thing is soooo culturally ingrained that it’s good to have some backup in the pro-pants camp. My family’s always been super great about my boyish fashion sense (my dad proudly passed on his tattered old jean jacket to me years ago and it’s still one of my prized possessions), but I think even they would be a little surprised at me rejecting the dress.
Who knows, my hypothetical wedding is years away and I could change my mind, but I think a well-tailored Janelle Monae-style tux (even if I would look nowhere near as cool as Janelle Monae) would be the ballingest of wedding attire. Plus then I could repurpose it for future fancy occasions!
I think you should wear something that makes you feel awesome. I mean, you should feel free to do that every day, but especially at your wedding.
People have a lot of Feelings about wedding, so there will be almost no end of people telling you that you are doing it wrong, but fuck’em you should be able to do you on any given day of the week!
Final Fantasy VII! Final Fantasy VII! I caught the tail-end of the epic fandom wanks way back in 1998 or so, and I am so, so excited for this new internet generation and the kerfuffles that will undoubtedly occur. And of course I’m excited for the game itself, holyshit. My babies! Back again!
Anyone else a FF7 nerd?
I’m sort of an FF7 nerd by proxy, because every friend I had in high school was frickin’ obsessed with it. I sort of watched from the sidelines as they fought epic battles over stuff I had no context for. It was hilarious. I can’t wait to see what the current generation does with it. 😀
YES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
This was basically my face when I heard the news:
Haha yep! I think I might’ve even shed a tear.
my partner is LOSING HIS SHIT over the news. FF7 is his Most Favorite and Perfect Game of All Time. he just so happens to be finishing up a replay at this very moment (like, he is at home in his bathrobe playing it right this very second ’cause he has the day off.)
he texted me like a giddy schoolboy about a thousand times the day the news came out. “i finally have a reason to get the PS4!” was his opening volley.
yes!!! FF7 was my first real video game love. I highly doubt I’ll ever get to play the remake, though, seeing how my most “modern” gaming console is the PS2 🙁 regardless, the trailer was VERY EXCITING and I might have screamed a little when I saw it.
Yes! I let out a happy squawk when you first see Barrett’s arm.
Howdy, Toastfriends! I don’t really have much to report back new or different from previous weeks, but I thought I’d say hi anyway.
We’re in a heat wave right now so going outside requires prep work and bravery.
Howdy, Scandyhoovian! I’m hunkering down indoors, too. Heavy-coated little dogs and I Cannot. Do. Heat. They lie on the floor, bellies down. I sit quietly with herbal iced tea and feel deep gratitude for central air conditioning.
I hope things are going well for you.
Things are going well on some days and not as well on others but mostly I am puttering along. <3
I hate the summer. I hate it so much. *melts*
“I hate the summer. I hate it so much.”
(sweaty high-five of commiseration)
I’ve had to revise my entire approach to summer, because my usual tanktops and elastic-band skirts make entirely too much contact with my skin, and everything is terrible. Because central VA. I need to invest in cotton and boxer shorts. (overshare: pantyline sweat is the worst.)
Heat waves can suck it. Stay inside like a civilized person!
I need to buy a new laptop, but I’ve never bought one for myself (the current one was a college graduation present from my parents four years ago). I know a couple characteristics I definitely want (something on the larger side, desktop replacement type thing, Windows OS, number pad, eraser mouse a plus) but… I am overwhelmed, and I don’t know how to even locate and identify my options. Any suggestions?
Also, have laptops with touchscreens become a THING? Must I resign myself to greasy finger streaks on my computer screen?
Laptops with touchscreens have become a thing for a lot of models, due to Windows 8, but you don’t have to use that aspect at all if you don’t want.
I’ve had good luck with Dells and Lenovos at work (the higher end Thinkpads). At home I have a couple of Acers as they were cheaper and I have desktop computers too.
You can change the settings to make the touch screen no longer respond to touch. Also keep in mind that you can buy a peripheral ten-key for swift numeric entry. That allows you to spend less. The PCs with keyboards big enough to include the ten-key can be pricier.
I go years between tech purchases, so I feel I never know what my current options are. That’s why I go to pcworld.com and read reviews. It helps me narrow down the nexus between what serves my needs and also reviews well.
Good luck.
Laptops with touchscreens have become a Thing, but not so much that you can’t avoid them. (Especially if you’re economizing.) Laptops with Windows 8 have definitely become a Thing, but at least Windows 10 is coming soon.
I use Consumer Reports and CNET reviews to shop for tech and I usually do okay. For a laptop it’s nice to actually try it out, so Best Buy and the like are good for that, but I buy from NewEgg or TigerDirect. Better prices, humane return policies, no obnoxious warranty upselling. Also find out if your workplace/apartment complex/other organization has a relationship with a manufacturer – I got a custom-built HP desktop for 30% off a few years ago because my dad’s company gets a deal. If you’re not on a strict deadline, back-to-school is obviously the best time to buy a laptop, as they’re usually on sale. And that’s only a month or so from now, really.
Everyone is all excited about SSD hard drives, which are lighter and faster but large ones are still expensive as hell and there’s some indication that they don’t last as long as regular old hard drives. I still haven’t bothered buying one.
Thanks! Waiting till back-to-school sales is a really good idea. Maybe by that time I’ll know what I want to buy 😀
THANK YOU for explaining SSD hard drives. I’ve been seeing people mention them, but I couldn’t figure out why.
SSDs are great on a desktop for loading the OS on (and having traditional drives for storage) or a laptop that is not your primary computer. But yeah, would not recommend if the laptop is your only computer, the amount of storage per cost is a fraction of that of traditional drives.
And don’t forget end-of-quarter is when the better prices happen. Best prices are the last week of December, to shore up the year’s sales figures.
I went looking for some stuff I looked at when I bought my laptop, but I found something that is probably better: it turns out that Tom’s Hardware has a laptop-focused spinoff now, and that spinoff has an interactive, automatic laptop recommender. So my advice now is to try that, and then look at reviews of whatever it recommends.
My place of work is hiring an Instructional Media Producer, and it would be rad as hell if they picked a fellow Toastie. If you’d consider living in central Illinois, please apply! We’re a very cool team, and we make great stuff: https://youtu.be/iLOd_KE_PrY
https://jobs.illinois.edu/academic-job-board/job-…
“Applications are invited for the position of Instructional Media Producer, Center for Innovation in Teaching and Learning at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. This is a full-time benefit eligible position, salary is commensurate with experience and the start date is as soon as possible after the close of the search.
As part of the Instructional Media Resources (IMR) team, this position works closely with faculty, lecturers/instructors, and academic professionals to plan and execute media production consistent with pedagogical and research goals. This position coordinates curricular media productions across teaching delivery methods and collaborates with campus media professionals to assist with the design and development of shared media resources to benefit the faculty, staff, and students at the University of Illinois”.
I live in Charleston, SC and am not dealing so well with all that’s been happening here. It’s all maddening and infuriating. I wish there was more that I could do. My husband and I had been thinking about trying for a baby soon, and now (among my other doubts) I wonder if it’s right to bring a baby into a world where horrible things like this happen and people have such hate in their hearts.
I haven’t heard much about what’s going on in the aftermath — are there protests?
There’s a big vigil tonight, and there are protests planned–one in Charleston tomorrow, one in Columbia is hopes of getting the governor to take the awful confederate flag down from the state house, and a big solidarity thing on Sunday. I’m sure more will be planned as well.
My local news station is live-broadcasting the victims’ families making statements and it’s making me cry at work.
And I understand that they’re not showing the speakers themselves probably for privacy reasons, but I hate that they’re focusing on the guy’s reaction. I don’t care what this guy thinks.
Is there not an Orange is the New Black thread yet???? Surely I am not the only one that has, ahem, finished the whole thing already??!
I finished the last two episodes last night. SO MANY QUESTIONS.
I have, what did you think?
So I was definitely surprised at the incredibly uplifting final 10 minutes, what with the women having this moment of freedom in the lake. I kept expecting something to come along and ruin the moment, and that never happened. Granted, it was uplifting as long as you forget that Alex is probably dying/dead in the greenhouse. And that when next season rolls around, the women will face repercussions of that lake romp.
I also thought it was very interesting though that during this lovely inspirational scene, the ostensible protagonist of the show is alone and tattooing herself with an infinity symbol while the ostensible protagonist’s primary love interest is dying in a greenhouse. As a lot of people have said, the show’s greatness lies in its story-telling about diverse women, so that ending seemed to further signal OITNB’s continued departure from a story about a White Lady in jail.
That being said, I am curious what people think about the Piper/Alex storyline. I’ve read some people saying they wish the show would just kill off/release Piper and not even bother with her anymore. But I must say that there is definitely some enjoyment in watching her grow progressively more unlikable, while the other women grow progressively more sympathetic.
I feel like Piper’s complete lack of humanity is being demonstrated in prison, but has been there all along,and I’m glad the show took the time to develop it, I just am kind of bored with her as a character. I do like the way the show is demonstrating the layers of complexity and awfulness about the prison system with the for-profit aspects playing out now.
I loved getting the backstory on Leanne, Flaca and Norma esp as well as Cindy’s conversion story, but I felt like Piper/Alex grew tiresome and Lori Petty was way underused. Maybe it’s just because Lorraine Toussaint was so amazing last year, I felt simultaneously sort of bored but also relieved at the lower intensity? Poussey broke my heart though.
Oh Poussey. She is so great, and the tragedy of losing the library was so incredibly tragic. The book funeral was perhaps one of my favorite moments in the entire series. I loved it so much.
Assuming Alex does not return for Season 4, I am interested to see how Piper deals with prison once she is forced to be alone. As we saw Piper to some extent “succeed” in prison as we watch so many characters’ downward spirals (Nikki, Poussey, Soso, etc. etc. etc.), I can’t help but hope that next season is Piper’s downward spiral once all her crutches are gone.
Yes! Also: Daya. How did I forget that? Heartbreaking. Do you think Bennett is gone for good?
And how much longer is Piper’s sentence anyway?
I have two thoughts about Bennett! On one hand, I loved that terrible abruptness of him racing away from the forlorn crib on the side of the road. It so perfectly emblematized his cowardice. On the other hand, would I love for him to come back in some way so Daya can give him a piece of her mind? Maybe. How did you feel about the whole Daya/Bennett story in general? It so often read as this positive ray of light and love in the prison environment, but I couldn’t shake off the ick factor of “he is a prison guard, SO NOPE” and also, relatedly, the questionable nature of a supposedly loving relationship within the horribly uneven power balance. So, I must say that I’m glad Bennett’s “good guy” status was deflated in his final scene on the side of the road.
I was wondering that too! How long was she in for initially and does she have any extra time? I can’t help but think that it will just happen to extend as long as the show runs . . .
Also! Will Nicky come back?!?!
And also! Lorna! I find Lorna both incredibly sympathetic and then surprisingly terrible all at once. She comes off as so darn sweet, and her desperate need for someone is so sad, but then she says or does something that makes me second guess my affection for her.
Agreed that their relationship is deeply not ok and I’m also uncomfortable at the whitewashing of it as star crossed lovers. Daya’s poor little baby though. I like that the show does not gloss over the pain of generational poverty.
I really would not care if Piper was released and we just kept going with all the other characters. I would greatly prefer it actually. I don’t think Nicky is coming back. I’d love it if she did but I don’t see it happening. I did like the full consideration of motherhood as a theme over the course of the season, it gave a lot of shape to the season for me.
Lorna, man. I like how much more complex they have made her character but damn, girl. Getting her stalkee’s ass kicked like that? Wow. So cold.
I have watched five or six episodes, while home with a sick toddler, who is being treated with steroids, and so is angrier and more energetic than usual, despite feeling terrible…
I am finding this season to be way more depressing than the first two, but it’s possible I was just depressed to be home AGAIN with a sick baby AGAIN after I have actually already used up all my sick time being home with said sick baby before, and it wasn’t my turn, and I hate everything, but especially staying home with sick babies, so, I’m just not sure whether it was the show’s fault, ya know?
Ugh, that sounds like a rough week 🙁
GYM/FITNESS thread!
Anybody got any PRs this week?
I squatted at triple at 87% of my max which makes me happy. This is a post-Peru-trip PR. I haven’t been hitting anything close to my maxes since I got back a month ago, but getting a triple at 87% probably means I could at least hit my one-rep max the next time I try.
We also do a Crossfit workout called Karen (150 wall balls, 14lbs, to 10 foot target) about twice a year. I got 9:37 which beat last year’s time of 10:38. Sore today!
Anyone on Goodreads? I finally got an account, but was disappointed to find that many user reviews on there are about as vicious and uninformative as YouTube comments, so I’d like to add some friends I can pay attention to while ignoring the general populace. The Toast commentariat have led me to good books before!
I am! I don’t review much, mostly just give stars to books I’ve finished.
I mostly use it to track how many books I’m reading, don’t really do much community stuff but you are certainly welcome to friend me!
goodreads.com/RianneMarie is me
Added! I am really happy to have *any* book recommendations, even if they’re just a star rating.
Same here on pretty much all counts!
goodreads.com/jwhittz
There is a Toast connections spreadsheet here, that includes Goodreads accounts too:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1_26MiL9WN…
Oh, thanks for linking this. I’d heard mentions of it but hadn’t seen the link anywhere and wanted to add my info. 🙂
I am! I also don’t really do reviews that much, but I use the star rating.
https://www.goodreads.com/lfar
I have a goodreads account! But I can’t recommend my reviews–I mostly use them as a place to record how I felt about the book in case I need a reminder somewhere down the line, and less something that’s meant to be helpful to other people. Also, my tags are kind of cryptic.
Here’s me
I’m another Toastie who only gives stars to books on GR, but new friends are always welcome! Here’s me: https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/188365-caitli…
There’s a Toast group on GR https://www.goodreads.com/group/show/127766-the-t…
I am! I’ve had pretty good luck with reviews on goodreads, maybe because I mostly read contemporary fiction, classics, and religious studies stuff (and cookbooks!). The reviews seem harsher for genre stuff.
There’s a toasties goodreads group too!
I’m on goodreads at https://www.goodreads.com/prismmirrorlens, but I use it more as a way to keep track of the books I want to read than for posting reviews. I’d love to have some Toastada friends too.
I’m getting closer to getting a proper house, but it turns out that what we can afford is going to look like a double-wide. It’s not going to *be* a double-wide, and it’ll be a lot nicer inside with real wood floors I hope, and butcher block counters, but … it’s going to be a rectangle. I’m working on accepting this. At least we’ll be out of the RV, right?? Yes.
I know that kind of house. It’s an excellent candidate for a future porch addition. It doesn’t have to be a rectangle forever. Happy for you being closer to a proper house! Congratulations.
Just think of it as a Louisiana-style shotgun house!
The house I grew up in is basically one of those houses, and it eventually acquired a dining room that made it non rectangular. Also thirding a porch in the future. Congratulations!
butcher block counters are kind of part of my dream house, so you have some awesomeness going for you in my opinion.
Ranch-style houses are my favorite because they are practical and efficient. I live in a house that everyone says is so charming and what an interesting layout and how perfect for parties and blah blah blah and I hate it. I despise the layout of this house because it’s impossible to do anything other than read in one part of the house that isn’t completely audible upstairs, and I have to go up or down stairs anytime I want to do anything (which is not great when you have various injuries and chronic fatigue) and the kitchen is weird and way too open to the rest of the house so I can’t ever let it get messy and there is no actual dining area so we have a table set up in what’s basically the living area and just god damn what I’d do for a fucking boring rectangle house OH MY GOD.
*cough*
In other words, I am sorry you are not as enthusiastic as I would be about the shape of your soon-to-be home.
Well now I will just channel you when I get cranky about it.
I am uncertain that anyone should channel me when they’re already cranky, but hey!
Oh wow I hear this. We rent but our apartment is a weird shape, especially the kitchen and I rotunely get so angry at its un-usability that I throw things and start crying out of sheer frustration.
With this process, where we’re sort of designing it — at least modifying an existing plan to suit us better — I’m terrified that I’m going to end up hating it but it’ll be my own fault.
We reorganized the kitchen and got a pot rack so it isn’t AS BAD as it was but its still bad. I’d be happy to brainstorm about how to optimize your kitchen if you’d like! We made lists and plans and stuff before we did ours and we didn’t even change cabinets or anything.
Might do! I don’t remember if you are twitter-ified …
I am not but I have an email address I use for this: shakerethyl at gmail 🙂
YAY PROPER HOUSE!
I’ve been looking at houses online, and I notice that a lot of the smaller houses I’ve bookmarked are gussied-up double-wides. Some personal touches and well-crafted details will make a big difference.
Thanks, that is what I had hoped but I was wondering if I was deluding myself. I’d love to see some of your bookmarks if you don’t mind sharing (here or twitter or fb or whatever).
I went looking through my bookmarks and it turns out most of the trailers/prefab homes had sold, which means I untagged ’em and can’t find ’em now without digging through my search history.
But take a peek at this site on gussying up a double-wide! I know they’ve got a vested interest in convincing people, but there’s no doubt some added architectural features over time will make a biiiiig difference.
Oh, awesome, thanks! Of COURSE there are blogs about this. *smacks self*
This one’s clearly a marketing device, but I’m sure there are individual decor blogs by double-wide owners, too. There’s a lot to be said for a simple floor plan and a blank template you can color with your own style.
Rectangle house is way better than an RV, and you don’t have to live in it forever – you can trade up! Congratulations!
I feel like I’ve fallen down an internet hole of Fury Road analysis since I finally went to see it the other day. I have been so unproductive this week.
(I’m glad I didn’t listen to my housemate who said it wasn’t that great a film – I think possibly he might not live with a constant undercurrent of seething anger about gender oppression).
Come join us on Tumblr where everything is about Fury Road all the time!!!
Omg yes join the sisterhood! I bought the art book yesterday and then went to see it for the 6th time last night, so yeah it’s pretty much taken control of my life. This week I’ve been musing over Capable, Nux, and consent, and I’m fascinated by the way that they use touch to literally and figuratively reconnect with the parts of their humanity that Joe stripped from them.
So what did you like about it? Favorite character? Scene?
(And yeah, got into an argument/discussion with a dude acquaintance who didn’t like it and apparently hadn’t noticed any of the amazing feminist messages in it, because “he doesn’t usually think about that stuff.”)
Oooooh how’s the book?? Did you get the comic(s) too?
I just read a pretty disappointing review/analysis of the first comic, unfortunately: http://www.shakesville.com/2015/06/we-need-to-tal…
TL/DR — STAY AWAY FROM THE COMIC
Ah, I had heard that it was bad, but this Shakesville takedown is good. And depressing. Ugh. I am a completist by nature though so I wonder what I will end up doing. :\
Yep, can confirm that the comic is ehhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. I just won the first comic on eBay, and I think it’s supposed to be better. I’ve read the Nux comic in it already, and that part was pretty sad/adorable.
The art book is gorgeous, however, and I’m super happy with it. It has hilarious concept designs and a good breakdown of the cars. Each character gets a couple of pages with absolutely beautiful photographs. I definitely recommend it for people interested in the world as well as folks who just liked the look of the movie.
Having now finished the shakesville piece, I am pretty much not going to buy that. Yuck.
Instead let’s all think about this fanfic which is way better canon than the comic (nsfw, Furiosa and Valkyrie sex) http://archiveofourown.org/works/4145037
Ooh, thanks for the link!
Yeah agreed with not buying it. Someone mentioned do Bitch Planet the other day, though, which in may check out.
So, in my headcanon, Joe makes a huge mistake in allowing The Wives to socialise with each other, and in assigning Furiosa to watch them. He does so because he underestimates women, because he ultimately thinks of himself as a “good guy”, and because he doesn’t really view Furiosa as female anymore anyway.
Capable, with her empathy and badass communication skills, gets them all talking (with more or less degrees of reservedness) about their lives and what it was like before they got stuck in dudebro hell.
Furiosa doesn’t hit them or tell them they should be grateful to a rapist, because that makes no sense considering where she’s come from and what she’s been through. The Wives don’t make fun of her gender presentation.
Furiosa is already planning to leave with the War Rig, and asks them if they want to come too. They all come up with a plan *together* to get out of the Citadel.
(I am way too emotionally invested in this film).
You and me both. Also my husband and what seems like at least 80% of Tumblr. So, yay?
I think Joe TOTALLY thinks he’s a good guy.
George Miller. Ugh.
To add: you know who could’ve done a great job with this comic? Brian K Vaughan and Fiona Staples. Everyone else to the left.
VAUGHAN AND STAPLES for presidents of comics
Ugh, that sounds really horrible, and totally incongruous with the way the women are characterised in the film. Especially Furious saying they should be “grateful” to Joe, wtf? 🙁
A quote from a mefite acquaintance: “as someone who writes spin-off comic books, let me assure you that they are not canon.”
Art book? Very relevant to my interests. I will search for it. I’d appreciate any details that are in easy reach for you. Thanks.
Sure, whatever you’d like to know! It’s not a super in-depth encyclopedia, but it gives a good breakdown of the characters, locations, and cars, and it’s a beautifully colored book – high quality paper and ink.
How do I get one?!
I bought mine at B&N.
I thought it was great that the women all had agency in the plot, including The Wives, and that they all had their own individual strengths and weaknesses. As if it were saying that there are many different ways of being a woman, and all of them are valid.
Similarly, I think it’s great that there are strong femme women portrayed in pop culture, but it seems like nearly every action heroine is femme, so I found it really refreshing that Furiosa isn’t.
Also, I really liked that Furiosa didn’t fall into the usual trope of Strong Female Characters lacking compassion and empathy. And that they didn’t sexualise her at all – the total lack of male gaze was great.
Furiosa is my favourite character (can you tell?), because I wish I were anywhere near that fearless. The Vulvalini are also really rad.
How about everyone else? What did you like about the film?
Well, I mean, everything. But.
I love how the wives jump in immediately. They’re in the fight with Max, pulling him off her. They’re attacking Nux when he attacks Furiosa. They’re keeping an eye on Max when he’s still cagey and weird. They’re out in the dark shoving engine panels under the wheels to get unstuck. They’re part of the team. They ARE the team.
I love when they’re trying to get unstuck and the rig pulls forward and we see Max and Furiosa look at each other like “who’s driving??” it makes me laugh out loud every time.
And I love and also am heartbroken by Furiosa and the Valkyrie’s greeting. She’s Furiosa’s only peer, and the only one who remembers her and recognizes her. I wish she had stuck around longer. (But note that she is also a dead-eye shot, like Furiosa — she can’t get through Joe’s bullet-proof glass, but all 4+ of her rounds hit right where his head is.)
Their teamwork is such an awesome portrayal of female friendship!
I personally haven’t gotten over the scene with the big gun, where Max evaluates that Furiosa is more likely than he to make the shot, willingly hands her the gun, and she tells him, “Don’t breathe”.
I probably am just repeating many smart people here, but that seemed like it represented a lot of the movie’s attitudes.
Oh, also, I got a new kitchen gadget for the first time in ages (see above re: living in an RV with no space): a sous vide immersion circulator. Anybody else have one? Tell me what delicious things I can do with it!
A sous vide is like the one kitchen tool I don’t have. But I hear you can make perfect poached eggs with one.
Ooooooooh. I’m kind of envious but I really don’t have room for such a doohickey. I’ve heard good things about doing meat and confit in it, though with meat you do need to sear it off at the end or else it’s kind of unappealingly uniform.
Yeah, steak and poached eggs (not together — unless …) are on the list. And I have a recipe I love for confit chicken gizzards that I’m definitely going to do.
The new ones are surprisingly small! I got this one. It’s bulkier than my stick blender but not much taller.
That looks like fun!
Woah! That is super small. I always thought sous vide required a big dedicated device.
Home sous vide technology has had great advances in the last 2-3 years!
(you can borrow it if you want to play with it!)
Thanks! :). By the way, my parents would be interested in some leaf lard too. I’m excited to try baking with it!
Excellent!
I don’t have a circulator, I just have a temperature controller that hooks onto my slow cooker. The downside is that it’s less precise so I can’t do eggs, but I have done steak, pork chops, and ribs that have turned out really well. Carrots are actually really amazing done sous vide, too!
I have a crock pot controller also! (Well, technically it’s Mr. Thuja’s, but close enough) So far we’ve just used it for steaks and a Christmas roast. I’ll have to try carrots out though, that sounds very tasty!
Carrots sounds awesome, thanks. I’m interested in using it for veggies, but most folks seem to want to talk about meat. Which is also fine, but, variety. (Steak for dinner tonight!)
Also, HOLY SHIT I just got the official letter that my job is going to full time! I’ve known about this since February (and I’ve been working full-time hours since then, just without the benefits/status), but I kept telling myself not to get excited about it because it wasn’t real until I got the letter. AND HERE IT IS.
(This is SUPER AWKWARD because my place of work hardly ever promotes people and there are two people here who have every right to feel this full-time position should have been theirs, including my officemate and the friend who got me this job in the first place, so yeah. But goddammit, I am finally getting real grown-up adult health insurance, and I am gonna be excited.)
Use your new powers to uplift the peoples!
Suuuuper excited for the Into the Woods original cast reunion on Sunday. Do you think they’ll sing songs? Do you think they’ll sing the entire Prologue?
…What if I ask really nicely?
OH MY GOODNESS I WILL BE THERE! I am the MOST excited. I got seats with a crappy view, because they were cheaper and I don’t really need to SEE Bernadette Peters (gorgeous though she is) as long as I can HEAR her.
We need to get on the same page about what song to chant for until they sing it just to shut us up. In addition to the Prologue, I would be up for Agony (are the Princes coming?), No One is Alone, or the Finale.
If you have your heart set on No More, we are very different Sondheim fans.
Oh man, that is so tough! I love all the songs so much. No One is Alone is a definite possibility. I’m a sucker for big group numbers, so Prologue or Ever After are both favorites. For solo songs, there’s always The Last Midnight. Hmmmmmm…tricky.
Are there….are there really people who would have their hearts set on No More? I mean, it’s fine and all, but…really?!
It is not EVEN fine, it’s the weakest number in the whole dang show! (Which still makes it better than anything Andrew Lloyd Webber ever wrote, but Sondheim shows are held to Sondheim standards.)
JEALOUS JEALOUS JEALOUS JEALOUS OMG
Oh goodness, I just heard today that this was happening, and I’m so envious of you and everyone else who’s actually going. I hope you have a wonderful time (she says, sincerely but also jealously)
Booooooze. Booze for a host gift. Booze.
Only if you know they’ll drink it. I’m teetotal, and never know what to do with gifts of booze. If it’s really fancy I’ll donate it to a charity auction or something, otherwise into the bin.
So what gift would you prefer?
I like flowers, or chocolate, or cheese. Fancy mixes can be nice, and I can never have too many tea towels.
Tea towels!!
Solid point. One should know one’s audience.
Wait, what? Boomhauer from King of the Hill was a Texas Ranger?!? (see fact 14)
I got engaged to my boyfriend of nine years last weekend and am already stressing out about wedding planning stuff. (Where? How many people? How much alcohol do we need to buy? What if it rains? How much will it cost, and who’s paying for what?) Mostly in a good way, though, I think? Like, I am excited and stressing out about minutiae is my general comfort zone because it means I get to feel productive.
Congrats! As another new-ish engaged person, I’m in the same stressed-but-excited place right now. One thing that’s actually helping (and weirdly, a lot of fun) is something I honestly never expected to be doing…Pinterest. Just, pinning ridiculous wedding things I find poking around online, with the full understanding that nothing I put on there is actually something that needs to happen, or should; it’s just an idea, to be thrown out, modified, or actually used (and even then, used with the understanding it won’t look like it does in the photos, because nothing ever looks like it does in the photos).
Like, obviously this doesn’t help with the budgeting stuff, but in terms of visualizing ideas, it’s pretty great.
Congrats to you too!
I signed up for a Pinterest account yesterday and am still not 100% clear on how to use it, but it’s been fun so far. Another place that I’m finding useful is APracticalWedding.com, which has a lot of DIY tutorials and tips on planning and budgeting, as well as stuff I would never have thought of (getting even the teeniest changes to vendor instructions in writing, how to make sure your makeup won’t look weird under flash photography, how many extra glasses/plates to have in case someone drops theirs, etc.). Just from browsing, the editors and commenters also seem pretty level-headed and body-positive and queer-friendly, which is reassuring.
APW has an alcohol calculator! I used it to budget alcohol costs for my September wedding….TBD on how well it works, though. I don’t have a direct link, but I’m sure a google “how much booze should I buy a practical wedding” should find it!
Congrats! As someone who just had her third wedding anniversary, just remember that it can be as low-key as you want it to be. I had my wedding in a friend’s back yard and had food catered by our favorite Vietnamese and Thai restaurants, and it was a great!
We are definitely seriously considering the backyard route. I think I read somewhere that venue rental makes up half the cost of the average wedding, or something along those lines? Which is RIDICULOUS.
The key for us was to think about weddings we’d been to, and what we’d enjoyed and what we hadn’t. And what we wanted the day to be–for us, it was about gathering our friends and family together as witnesses and participants in our joining together as a family, and having a big fun party to celebrate. We wanted to be able to go on a fun honeymoon, and we didn’t want debt from our wedding! It can be a stressful process, but have fun with it too! You’re planning a giant party to celebrate your love!
If you don’t have a great backyard to use, it might be worth it to look into city/county owned event spaces. 4 and half years ago when Mr. Thuja and I got married we rented a cute little city building that had nice wood floors and came with tables and chairs and it was under $300 once we got the deposit back. Granted, we only had about 40 guests, but it’s still an option to check out.
And congratulations!
Congratulations!
I am exactly the same way: stressing out over planning is my comfort zone. But my now-husband and I voluntarily delayed the strategizing/planning frenzy by postponing every single decision until after his brother’s wedding, which preceded ours by ~10 months.
(That had the unintended side-effect of freeing us from endless conversations with in-laws opining about our plans during that wedding weekend; every time someone essayed an opinion on our wedding or said “But you’re going to [whatever], of course!” we responded, “Oh, we aren’t even starting to plan until after [bride] and [groom]’s wedding! Aren’t they beautiful together?” It ruled. If there’s some excuse you can trump up to similarly side-step those converations, I 100% endorse it.)
Thanks! Coming up with a standard-issue deferral response sounds like a good idea. I am also seriously considering redirecting any and all planning queries to my sister, who has, in her words, “watched every wedding show ever made and you have watched NONE of them, LET ME HELP YOU.”
Congratulations! Wishing you a happy wedding, and an even happier marriage!
Our wedding was last week and it was surprisingly fun. Everything flowed really well once the whole thing was in place (those spreadsheets paid off). But I lost a lot of time and sleep over the anxiety of planning. Weddings make people weird! Especially friends and family around you.
Three things to avoid: giving an answer when people press you about wedding details shortly after your engagement (brush them off in any way you can! You don’t have to know right away!); worrying about weather or anything that has to be set up on the day of the wedding (don’t let cute Pinterest centerpieces stress you out already); letting other people tell you how you’re supposed to feel.
In fact, you should ignore all of this advice if you want to. I spent the whole year with family and friends telling me I was too easy-going, or that I should care more about cake servers, or that I didn’t seem happy enough, or reacting to an honest answer (“How is it going?” “I’m feeling stressed about seating arrangements”) by telling me I wasn’t doing the wedding the way they would, or the way I was supposed to. There’s no “supposed to.” You don’t have to feel or act the way anyone else does. And most of the advice they’ll pass along is specific to their own relationships or their own marriages.
This isn’t anyone else’s marriage. It’s yours and his.
Good luck to you!
I had a friend that kept getting unwanted input from family members and she told them “maybe for my next wedding,” which shut them up pretty quick
I got the registration form for my faith group’s annual conference last Sunday. This year there was a note about trans inclusiveness. There are going to be gender neutral options for housing and bathrooms, and people are encouraged to write their preferred pronouns on nametags. Just thought that was pretty awesome
UU?
Quakers, UU’s quieter cousins
Can father’s day marketing be over now please? Father’s day itself is actually a relief for me now that I have no contact with my dad, because I no longer have to stress out about pretending that I am glad he’s my father. It is freeing to not have to worry about spending time with him. I am happy for people who have good relationships with their fathers, and when I see the barrage of facebook posts I always just feel relief that it’s just another day for me now, not something to dread. But I just got an email with the subject line “Dad and I” and for a split second thought my sister was emailing to warn me about something before I realized it was a father’s day themed marketing email trying to trick me into opening it with a personal subject line. Don’t need that! My dad tried to get in touch with me a few months ago and since then I’ve been having bouts of anxious feelings that make my chest hurt and my brain go inter overdrive survival mode. Bleh.
*hugs* Glad you won’t have to do anything this Sunday, it sounds like that wouldn’t be a healthy thing for you at all. If it helps, on Monday the second worst season of the year is over: Mother’s Day + Father’s Day. Sounds cynical, but that’s how I’ve started thinking about it. It’s like the Christmas season, with less gingerbread and none of the pretty snow.
Yes! Thank you. Mother’s day is also a bit fraught for me, but in a different way. I am in contact with my mom, which is what I want, but our relationship is strained. Definitely a relief to have this season over for another year.
I understand, on both Mothers’ Day and Fathers’ Day. I hate hate haaaaaate trying to think of something to write in those cards; finding a card that’s innocuous and not smarmy is hard enough, but then having to think of something to say? Kill me now.
*hugs* This season is almost over.
::solidarity fist bump:: I’m with you all the way. Feeling the same relief about F Day, but wishing to be rid of the marketing. No Contact is truly a relief and source of freedom. I, too, am happy for those with Good Dads, but want to ignore this particular Hallmark Holiday in peace.
Good for you, setting and keeping boundaries. And I’m sorry you lost the parent lottery.
Thank you! Heh, parent lottery.
Yep. I’m done with father’s day too. I got an email from mine a couple of days ago and I was in a funk for the rest of the day, and it was a group email about making plans around the family reunion in 6 weeks. I don’t want to make advance plans. I want to see him for the first time in a year (almost no contact in that time) and THEN decide about other activities. I also don’t want to meet his wife (he cheated on my mom with her, lived with her overseas while my parents were still married and didn’t tell anyone)
Ugh. It’s perfectly reasonable to not want to make advance plans and just take it as you feel, I hope you can do that with minimal pushback.
I’m so sorry about the father-related anxiety. That’s a legitimate thing to feel, and yeah, father’s day marketing has been going on for what feels like more than a month already, so you really can’t catch a break. I hope you can use this Sunday for self-care and relief from overdrive survival mode.
Thank you! I have very good plans to be with my sisters (they are excellent and very supportive) and be out of the house for most of the day, so I won’t be on the internet very much. I think that will be good.
Heh, yeah, I feel you. “Dad Magazine” posts are like that for me.
Oh yeah, for me too. And just the cultural up-tick in affectionate dad jokes in general. Ah well.
I hear ya. My spouse’s mom passed in 2006 and his dad skipped out when he was 3, while our adopted sister has just the worst fucking shithead “father” you can imagine, her mother having passed when we were kids. So these days aren’t super good fun in our house. I wish you emotional resilience, love from your support system and chosen family, and peace.
Here’s my random brain-obsession this week: I bought a copy of Maskerade and just read it (so bittersweet- wonderful as always, but it was one of the few I haven’t read and every one I read brings me closer to there being No More New Pratchett and ALL THE TEARS). It’s definitely not his best witch-novel, but I was OBSESSED with Phantom of the Opera as a kid, so I was in stitches. And now I’ve been listening to the soundtrack (Sarah Brightman version, obviously) and I cannot STAND Raoul. His obnoxious gaslighting of her is the worst! I mean, you know she was kidnapped! And someone just died! And you’re telling her she’s DREAMING this shit?! IN THE MIDDLE OF YOUR LOVE SONG?! ARGLE BLARGLE DESTROY.
Now I just want an invention that lets me leap into fiction stories so I can PUNCH PEOPLE IN THE JUNK, and then just leave again. His non-existence is onlymaking him more irksome to me.
So Toasties, when this machine is created for me/us, what fictional character would you thwack and why?
I would kill Iago and punch some sense into Othello. Those guys are STILL pissing me off.
ROSS GELLAR PUNCHED IN THE DICK FOREVER
MULDER
So I just realized that the dude in the book Like Water for Chocolate is a complete jerk. Mom: “Daughter #3 is not available for marriage, but Daughter #1 is.” Dude: “OK, I’ll take Daughter #1 instead. I will ruin her life by marrying her without love, ruin my life by wrecking the family dynamic, and ruin Daughter #3’s life by taunting her with being so close and trying to tempt her to get it on with me which would only cause her immense guilt.”
I haven’t read it since I was in high school, but that was my take on him as well.
LACTARDS! I’ve got a question for you.(disclaimer for other people– I imagine some of the replies may seem gross to you! sorry!) If you accidentally eat something dairy, how soon after do you get sick? I’ve been off dairy for about 4 years, but accidents happen and I’m trying to better trace the sources—e.g. figure out if the reason I’m sick right now is what I just ate for lunch or maybe it’s from breakfast or even last night’s dinner.
For my son, it’s within an hour or two, about what you’re experiencing I’d guess.
Warning: obvious GI TMI follows.
Depends on how much dairy. If I were to sit here and eat a large bowl of normal dairy ice cream without lactaid, I’d be feeling it within 10 minutes, and within, say, the hour, everything would have blasted through my system posthaste— a pretty terrible ~15 minutes, but it would all be gone. If I had, say, a large slice of pizza without lactaid, it would likely be ~3-4 hours later, and a couple hours of what feel like menstrual cramps, followed by several separate unhappy trips to the bathroom. Slight miscalculation resulting in just slightly not enough lactaid will result in very mild discomfort/smelly farts as long as 6-8 hours later.
Most difficult to sort out is when trace amounts add up. So, a light sprinkling of pecorino-romano is fine on its own. But if you combine that with the pat of butter on last night’s ear of corn, plus the quarter cup of milk in yesterday morning’s eggs, plus plus plus……. then I’ll usually end up with that very mild discomfort mentioned earlier, but god knows exactly what it was that pushed me over the edge.
Whoa so late here, but like cosetthetable, if I were to have any ice cream (not sure what it is about ice cream) I will be feeling my stomach turn in 10, in the bathroom within 30 minutes and feeling some after effects in an hour because it will have mostly come out by then. Add and extra 10-20 minutes to that timeline if it’s straight milk or cream.
Sometimes, I have less of a problem, and I don’t know why exactly. Cheese rarely bothers me- occasionally a very creamy, milky cheese, like burrata with give me gas, but that’s it. If I don’t take enough lactose pills or there is trace amounts of lactose in what I’m eating, sometimes the effects are just headaches and some gas. I have always felt the effects within minutes though,
In case anyone was wondering, The Best Lunch is: sliced onion and broccoli (peppers also work well) and a can of tuna, gently stir-fried with sriracha and hoisin sauce, and served over rice with a fried egg on top, (My first bibimbap experience the other day reassured me that my tendency to just mix a bunch of veggies and tuna with rice, spicy sauce, and an egg is actually Cuisine. Yay!)
OK, this might be one of the stranger things I’ve posted here. Recently at pub trivia there was a question about the invention of margarine. A teammate made some comment about it actually being an accident (which turns out to have been a too long believed urban myth), and I said, “Oh, like the myth that Ivory Soap floats because someone dropped a cheese sandwich into the vat?” and everyone stared at me like I was some sort of space-alien. SO I just went to look it up on the internet to show them all that it’s totally a thing, and I found *NOTHING*!
I swear this is something that a teacher somewhere along the line in grade school taught my class, but apparently this is not a myth/legend that other people know or have ever heard. Am I the only one who was misinformed in this oddly specific way?
(OR am I mis-remembering some other urban legend?)
I am somewhat baffled. The origin story for Ivory Soap that I’ve heard is that somebody left the soap-stirring machine on too long, thereby incorporating too much air into the soap, but then someone noticed that it floated and turned the bug into a feature.
I have NO IDEA how that might turn into a cheese sandwich, though??
I know, right?! The over-whipping of the soap mixture is apparently the real story, except that it was intentional, rather than accidental as the commonly told story goes. However, I only just learned this as I was scouring Snopes for the completely batshit version of events I learned as a kid.
I wish I could remember which grade school teacher told us that story. I’m still in contact with several of them, and I am really in need of an explanation at this point.
[For the Final Fantasy thread] Yeah, I flipped my shit while watching the preview for the remake. It was so perfect and beautiful and just stunning. That game was THE GAME for me when I was young. I called my brother that same day and he answered the phone, “So, are you getting a PS4 now?” And I laughed… but probably the answer is yes.
My 5-year-old went to Dolphin Quest yesterday with her summer program, and I spent the whole morning asking if she was excited for “Golfing Test” because it is my favorite thing to hear her exasperatedly correct me.
This is also why I tell the same dad joke every time we go to the beach, “oh no it looks like it might rain, what if we get rained on while we’re swimming” because my daughter, without fail, explains why it’s okay if we get rained on while we’re swimming. She knows I’m joking, but she’s sweet enough to play along with her weird dad.
Yay dads! Do you subscribe to Dad Magazine? 🙂
My dad also has similar terrible jokes that he always makes and they make me smile a lot…
Toast – advice, please. I think my boyfriend and I might be on the verge of breaking up. I’m away at the moment, so we’ve agreed to see if things improve between us once I get back, but I’m scared they won’t.
Without going into the whole long story, circumstances over the last few months (very broadly: him having to find a job) have meant that both of our worst qualities have been bumping up against one another. Specifically – my tendency to be unsympathetic and demanding, and his tendency to be lazy and a little self-pitying. As you can imagine, the more I perceive him as being lazy, the more unsympathetic and demanding I am, and the more self-pitying he gets, which makes me more unsympathetic and demanding, and on and on. We keep having micro-fights along these lines, and then we apologize, but then it just comes up again a few days later. And lately the apologies haven’t really been sincere, we just end the conversation without even trying to resolve it. It doesn’t seem like there is a resolution. I don’t want to break up – I love him very much and he’s my best friend – but we’ve been having this fight for months now and I just don’t know if it’s possible to get past it.
Has anyone been in a similar situation with their SO? How do you move on from a Giant Overarching Fight that has inspired the possibility of a breakup? Is that even possible?
All of my breakups have been completely unexpected dumpings so I have no answers, but good luck to you…
Consider couples therapy.
Therapy is great for disrupting a habitually unresolvable argument.
It might not be resolvable, but a good therapist can help you either move past it, or see that it is, indeed a reason to move apart.
I’m going to agree with this. Therapy is good for any repetitive, spiraly issues. A third party can really help with perspective and having a standing appointment can make day to day life easier because you can think to yourself “ok I’m going to make a mental note of that and we can deal with it on Thursday,” or whatever.
Maybe it’s not what you want to hear, but it’s my experience that those small but persistent differences are what cause a relationship to fail or be forced to morph into something other than what it was. It might be that you’re better off as best friends without the additional intimacies of a romantic (and, I assume, co-habitating?) relationship. No matter what, this is gonna be tough to get through. Best wishes to you as you navigate it.
Are these fights really about these semi-immutable character traits (being demanding or lazy or etc.) or are they about the uncertainty introduced into the relationship by one partner being unemployed & other circumstances? I think there’s a distinction to be made there.
My boyfriend and I just exited a ~1 year period while he was finishing his master’s in a different city and looking for a job. We didn’t so much fight, but sometimes I felt like he wasn’t looking hard enough; I’m sure sometimes he felt like I was being unsympathetic. One night, when I was feeling particularly pessimistic, we sat down and talked it out: I expressed my difficulty being present in a relationship that might have an expiration date, given where he ended up geographically, and he reassured me that being close by was not a small factor in choosing a job. After we’d communicated, gotten it out in the open, it ceased to be a problem between us and was more of a regular-stress thing, even with the idea that going longer-distance would mean breaking up.
If it really is about a clash of personalities, though, that might be harder to work through.
“we’ve agreed to see if things improve between us once I get back, but I’m scared they won’t”
I understand feeling scared. But, objectively, it would be *good* if things don’t improve, not something to fear. Lack of improvement would be a clear signal, would remove ambiguity. In that case, it would be reason for sorrow, but not fear.
You two are doing the right thing, taking time apart. Your instincts are correct: the end of the separation will tell you what you need to know.
None of this is easy. I may not seem sympathetic, but I do feel for you. I know firsthand how all this might feel. And I am sorry. I trust your judgment, though. I trust you to do what’s best for you.
If you really think/hope that this guy is The One, please find a counselor who can help you get through this rough spot AND who will teach you both how to disagree and/or be in a stressful situation together without hurting each other. It is possible, but if no one ever taught you, there’s no reason to assume you’ll stumble upon it yourselves while immersed in a tense situation, yanno?
No help to offer, but all the sympathy. Going through a similar situation now (with different trigger events), and it is the garbageworst.
Thanks, y’all. These comments are so sweet and helpful. Funny (or sad) story: I was at the jeweller’s waiting for my watch to be fixed while I was reading them. Looked up from my phone, feeling all emotional, and found myself staring straight at … a giant case of engagement rings. I laughed (lest I cry).
I’ll try talking to him more about it soon. Right now we’re on a self-imposed communication break/cooling down period, since when we talk on Skype or on the phone, we just end up yelling at each other. What’s really scary to me is that I suggested reassessing the relationship once I got back, expecting him to freak out and talk me down from it – but he said he’d been thinking the same thing. The bottom kind of dropped out of my stomach when I heard him say that.
Hey one other thing. I’ve been with my partner since 1997 and we’ve had several tough spots as well as several times when we were separated by distance. I noticed that any issues become way worse when we are apart, and that we both tend to pick fights more when we’re long distance. So if you’re having a tough time AND you’re long distance for a bit, I definitely think a break from talking every day is going to ease the tension.
Tinkerbell and the legend of the never beast is actually quite good. It is also extremely sad.
Unrelated: i had forgotten how much i love huevos rancheros. I am making up for lost time though.
As someone with recurring mobility issues: I hear you. Anything that restricts your mobility can be isolating, so the experience you describe from yesterday's thread compounding that sensation of isolation makes perfect emotional sense to me.
I've had it for over a decade and it's destroyed my life.
As I read it (and admittedly, I only read a fraction of that thread), this is what those commenters were saying: It's a potentially life-altering condition that is shockingly easy to contract in some regions, just by walking the dog or taking a shortcut through tall grass. But I can see how that anxiety would be alienating, as if by the commutative property, fear of the potential condition translates into a fear of you or your situation.
I'm wondering if there are any other disabled/chronically ill folks here who've dealt with with feeling
I have intermittent conditions, both physical and mental, that can keep me very isolated for stretches of time. Occasionally, friends of mine laugh about about voluntarily restricting their own social lives as "being a shut-in" or "being agoraphobic" and I kinda raise an eyebrow like, OH REALLY? NO, Y'ALL, THAT'S NOT WHAT IT'S LIKE.
I'm so glad you said something to reclaim the feeling of community you find here. I hope you do still feel that sense of community.
I mean, let's be real: I already look great naked. "Harder to kill," now that's a goal I can get behind!
Toasts! I stupidly scheduled the next three weeks such that I’ll be traveling to two different conferences and hunting for apartments when I’m not traveling. (And conference travel will eat up the week which would probably be the optimal one for finding an apartment, timing-wise.) I feel like I’m being pulled in 50 different directions and my brain has gone on strike to protest the situation. I did have the foresight to book myself a massage appointment for this weekend, and I have a bit of actual vacation coming up in August, but…AARGH. What do you do when you’re feeling overwhelmed?
I wish I knew. I get overwhelmed so very often. Let me know if you learn any good techniques. Meanwhile, best wishes for Getting Shit Done. And good move, making time for a massage.
I've been really into Regency Solitaire because anything more fast-paced than that makes me anxious.
Thought some toasties might interested in this: http://www.anchoragepress.com/cover/outing-bogeym…
TW for rape, I’ll leave a description of it in a reply, if you’d like to avoid.
In the article David Holthouse names the man who raped him when he was a boy. This story may already be familiar to people, he told the story of planning to murder his rapist on This American Life a few years ago. It’s a really powerful story and he is a really powerful storyteller.
A non-rape example of his work: http://www.westword.com/news/72-hour-party-people…
That was incredibly powerful. Thanks for sharing the link.
Wow, that is amazingly powerful.
Oh my god. Damn.
Actually, the Bartender outed themselves to me (a longtime friend). It was like realizing you are actually friends with a celebrity. That is to say, it was AWESOME.
Yep, big time celebrity. That’s The Bartender!
Toasties, have any baby gear advice? I’m 7 months pregnant with my first child and trying to figure out what we need to buy/put on our registry. Please share any baby items that were not obvious before you had a baby, but that I should make sure to get!
I have only been a nanny (not a parent), but my #1 suggestion is tons and tons and tons of onesies. (I usually give people the larger sizes, since the newborn ones don’t fit for very long). It’s just astonishing how many they can go through in one day…
Not the most obscure, but we had both a Moby and an Ergo, and loved them both. Moby was better for early on, when our son just did not want to ever be put down, and we still use the Ergo all the time at 15 months for walks around the block. Also, gIve in to the swing. Resistance to the large, expensive, over-engineered GODSEND is futile.
Do not buy any clothes. I am serious. Everyone loves to buy and gift baby clothes, and you will be awash in cute little outfits that your darling child wears once or twice before outgrowing.
Try on lots of different baby-wearing devices, if you can, and choose the one that’s most comfortable. You and your partner might need different ones, and it’s worth the cost to get two.
You will want a super-extra-supportive nursing bra if you’re going that route. Again – comfort. I wound up with ugly white cotton bras that looked like something you would expect your grandma to wear. They were really expensive but support and comfort was off the charts and totally worth every penny and every degree of frump factor. Definitely not a time to go with the Target Special!
Q: Have any of you had a diagnostic work-up as adults to see if you’re on the autism spectrum?
I have tons of relatives with Aspergers (I know the DSM V classification is different now, but it still seems like the best descriptor to me)– mostly “high functioning” people who can live independently, hold down jobs, etc., but who have some very noticeable and typical autistic traits.
That includes my mother, a bunch of her cousins, and probably quite a few older folks who weren’t officially diagnosed (e.g., my grandmother and several of her siblings, my mom’s grandfather, et al.). My mother wasn’t officially diagnosed until her mid-40s. Interestingly, it seems to run most strongly among the women in our family.
I’ve suspected for years now that I might be on the mild end of the spectrum myself, but I don’t know that it affects my life significantly enough to make a full evaluation worthwhile. (I’ve settled into a pretty comfortable life and career, and my family/ friends/ romantic partner seem to tolerate my more “eccentric” qualities). I guess it would be more of a matter of curiosity than anything else to find out.
Just curious if anyone’s done it, and if you thought it was worthwhile or not.
I am also very interested in this topic. Sorry I don’t have any answers though!
You may have already seen the discussion at Social Skills for Autonomous People, but I’m going to link just in case.
http://realsocialskills.org/post/121433161194/poi… http://realsocialskills.org/post/121560059002/poi… http://realsocialskills.org/post/103990089929/on-…
Late to the party, but in case anyone’s still reading:
I haven’t pursued therapy yet for my ex-boss-related PTSD, but I seem to be doing ok. Actual!boss is a huge help. Every time he considers my opinion, or corrects a mistake without getting mad, or takes a moment to compose himself while dealing with a stressful customer, to get out of that headspace before interacting with employees, I feel a tiny bit better. I’ve stopped having that dream where ex-boss is out of jail and back in the office, and I can even make jokes about the situation now. Actually, everybody’s more willing to make jokes about everything, so I think we’re all healing. The office manager doesn’t yell at people anymore! Because now nobody’s yelling at her about her inability to correctly “manage” the rest of us.
Everybody’s also making fewer mistakes now, because it turns out we’re all more productive when we’re not anxious and upset all the time. *~*Magic*~*
Oh, and I’ve got a handle on my church job, so I get positive feedback there as well, which furthers the healing process.
I I am I am out I am out of town (actually, the country, but Toronto is only 4 hours away from my house so it’s not that momentous)but I am hanging out with old friends who I met on the Internet 14 years ago! We had a blast at a party last night so i’m a little late to the thread, due to travel and tipsyness .
Only thing new to report is that I have a job interview with with the with the Toledo compant on tuesday. I’m freaking out, because the reality of how bad my financial situation is without the job really hit, and the logistics of moving, dealing with kids, dealing with custody, all of which will have to happen no matter which job i get because none of the, are in town– holy hell did i have a sobbing meltdown i will post more when i getto my laptop, i think i may scream if i try to type on this tablet any longer!
Oh hooray, CCoryy! I am so happy about your interview. The sobbing meltdown is understandable and much better than keeping it bottled up. But please, one step at a time. Try to focus on the interview and nothing else, for now. I know that’s not easy. Any transition will be hard for you. I know that. I also know you deserve better than your current conditions. That means a transition is necessary. I also know you have amazing reserves of skill and strength. You’ll rally when you need to. Until then, don’t waste energy on dread. Save up for the next step toward improvements. Good things are on your horizon, I feel certain.
I am going to focus on making a cheat sheet for the interview that has more in-depth responses to what ive laid out in my resume. That way I’ll have a bullet pointed list to refer to if i get tongue tied, and by going through possible topics and brainstorming answers ill feel more prepared.
I have also booked a very spendy massotherapy appointment for myself at the end of next week. I had a hard time convincing myself but it is my lacrosse money and i think it will really help my shoulder issues.
Also the trumpet for the girl is great, so hooray! New trumpet for her belated birthday!
ugh Eyeless Skull. I think I spent a couple of days just repeating Exploring the Forgotten Quarter until I randomly turned one up.
I'm trying to grind my Connected: Hell quality back up to 50 so that I can purchase a room at the Brass Embassy. I'm on about 20 at the moment (lost it all when I got caught robbing the Brass Embassy) – any tips on where I can raise it?
Just a warning for this, though – hydrocortisone can cause thinning of the skin, and so it's not recommended for more than very infrequent use on the face.
Yes I think this is a good approach. I stayed with some good friends a few years ago (for four weeks, that turned into six weeks – eek – bathroom renovations in my rental gone very wrong), and I made dinner etc at various points, plus I bought their new puppy a beautiful timber kennel that they wanted at the end of it. I now also always offer to house and puppy sit!
If you are still paying attention and want more – just go trawl ssstrychnine's bookmarks. They have good taste. (Was reading through them this afternoon at the dentist.)
Just asking but, after review of many of these recipes, i am curious if you ever post things that are for people on fixed incomes. Thanks.