Color-coordinated lunch is no less delicious. I’ve recently acquired a love for fizzy water. Before, I thought it was the devil’s brew. Guess you never know. Any foods you used to hate that you now love, love that you now hate? Books? Gone With the Wind was my only glimpse into America when I was a kid. Things are different now.
Open thread like none-gone wind! (You know what I mean.)
Tags: cocktail hour, open thread, the bartender is in
This horrid, horrid week is finally over and I have a chunky Kit-Kat with peanut butter in it to console me as I run out the clock. My work is horrid, job-searching is soul-killingly awful (and seeing the super-qualified people getting hired makes me feel like even more of a skill-less, useless lump, and highlights how awful of a candidate I must be to not even be getting any phone calls), I ate a moldy bagel for breakfast yesterday without realizing it (lovely), I cooked a dinner that gave my husband food poisoning, etc.
Let’s all say one thing we are looking forward to in the next week. Me: CLOSING ON OUR NEW HOUSE and moving in! Holy crap, I’m terrified and excited and SO glad to be moving but dreading the moving process!
CONGRATULATIONS ON THE HOUSE! I feel like we are still light-years away from that since the housing market in Ottawa is so terrible. (And also because a big part of me still isn’t reconciled to the idea of settling in Ottawa more or less permanently. I wanna go back to Montreal *sob*)
I am looking forward to hearing about your adventures in home decor and furniture selection and gardening (if applicable).
I love Ottawa and wish we could move back! (Maybe one day, husband’s job depending.) But we can definitely afford more/nicer house here in rural SE Ontario than Ottawa.
I’m a weirdo who wants to leave Montreal for Ottawa — shall we trade? 🙂
FUN!!! The house buying process was terrifying for me too but I love having a house.
Congrats on the house, and on your awful week being over! And the kit-kat, that sounds delicious.
I’m looking forward to VACATION! My boyfriend and I are going to New Orleans and I am going to eat and drink all the thiiiiiings.
Job searching is THE WORST. I am about to embark upon it, and my partner has been mired in it for the past year or so. I commiserate with you, my friend.
NEW HOUSE. Let burly men move the heavy things and then you will have NEW HOUSE and then you won’t have to move again for aaaaaaaaages.
chunky Kit-Kat with peanut butter in it
TELL ME MORE
Are they not a thing where you live????
CONGRATS ISN’T IT THE BEST FEELING!!! If you can, maybe stretch out the moving process? We started moving things a little at a time, taking over a carload every time we went out, and by the time it came for the Big Move of furniture and everything else, it was relatively easy and only took like two trips.
That’s sort of the plan. We’re going to move our clothes and personal knicknacks and electronics and stuff ourselves, then my husband is having a half a dozen of his burly friends come over to move heavy furniture and boxes while I relax at the new house like a duchess. (Like a very harried duchess, but still.)
Congratulations the house! Congratulations on surviving the horrid horrid week! I hpe your Kit-Kat was very consoling.
Ugh, what a rotten sounding week. Many congrats on the house, though!
I am going to spend most of the weekend preparing for my job interview on Monday. Fellow Toastbrarians, would you mind sharing tales of your recent job interview experiences? Bonus points if you’re a reference Toastbrarian. I’ve been looking at a bunch of online resources, like lists of questions for lib interviews, but the questions I remember getting at my last few interviews were a lot more straightforward, so I’m starting to panic a little bit. (One of the lists had “What is your opinion of web 2.0?” Uh, it’s great? Except insofar as it makes Vile Males feel entitled to share their opinions on women’s experiences and other stuff they know nothing about?)
I also applied to 2 other jobs this week. I have 10 weeks left here and really want to have another job lined up before the end of my contract.
In other news, I finished week 1 of Couch to 5k and it wasn’t totally awful, although my calves are mad at me because I have not yet learned my lesson re: stretching. I have discovered that I much prefer running outside because fiddling with the speed settings on the treadmill is such a pain and I end up running more slowly than I can/want to just because it takes so long to increase the speed.
Also, I really want to sign up for this Krav Maga class at a gym near my place, but I am also intimidated. I am a small lady and while I relish the idea of hitting dudes in a controlled environment, the flip side is that dudes would also be hitting me and that is… not quite as appealing.
My boyfriend takes Krav Maga, and I went to a class with him and loved it! I will not go back, probably, because 1. I like my other exercise (Zumba classes, running, pilates, yoga) better and don’t have all the time in the world, and 2. I’m not a huge fan of touching other people while exercising, which grappling definitely does. But a lot of it was great. In this gym, at least, I really felt like I was hitting the pad the person was holding, not the person him/herself, and vice versa when I was holding the pad. Plus, they should be cognizant of size and weight and gender and the fact that you’re new to the class. I’d say try it out!
+1 on the “running outside is better than on the treadmill” thing. outside has things to look at, like dogs, and rabbits, and dogs chasing rabbits (in my local park.) the downside is the occasional bit of street harassment, but i can’t hear it over the sound of the robot run playlist.
good luck with the interview!
I’m not a reference Toastbrarian, nor do I have an degree making me an official librarian. However, I’m still frontline library staff, and one of the main things emphasised at work and in the interview is access. It might be because it’s a council-funded library, but first and foremost, we are supposed to provide and improve access to library services to as many people as possible, in all walks of life. In the interview, they asked how I felt about the importance of access in libraries and promoting diversity through access to information and services (including using computers and helping people use the Internet), and this is re-emphasised fairly often on the job. So basically, we just want everyone to come to the library and have a damn good time, and it helped to really push that feeling in the interview. I hope that helps some, and good luck!
+1 to this… If you can demonstrate a familiarity with adaptive/assistive tech or methods that would probably be helpful.
+1 to THIS.
In my interview this week, the interviewer asked me where I got my “disposable media,” which I think I flailed on because…well, I click on things on tumblr and facebook, and I read the Toast and some other blogs, but I didn’t know if saying that would be an acceptable job interview answer. So thinking about that is basically my only advice. Probably not that helpful.
(I did end up mentioning that I read The Toast, and the interviewer said “Oh, that’s a good one.”)
An interviewer once asked me what social networking platforms I like. I named Tumblr. She asked me what I use Tumblr froze and I froze. Don’t say “homoerotic Sherlock photo manips” don’t say “homoerotic Sherlock photo manips” don’t say “homoerotic Sherlock photo manips”. I think I went with “Pictures of cute animals.” She was not impressed.
Yeah, I steadfastly avoided mentioning tumblr. It seemed like a lose-lose proposition–“either he knows tumblr’s reputation (any of its reputations) and thinks less of me, or he doesn’t know, and asks what I use it for, and I have to come up on the spot with an interview-appropriate way to say ‘Angry social justice posts, Harry Potter headcanons, cute animals, and really terrible puns.'”
“Disposable media” is a great term, why have I never heard it before?
The only time I’ve been asked anything like that was for a copyright librarian job where they wanted to know whose work I followed. And I was all “Oh, Michael Geist, and Boing Boing, and those campaigners, you know the ones, EEF or whatever.” Smooth, right? What I was actually thinking was “I read Benjamin Kaplan doctrine and then everything else I make up based on gut indignation.”
My recent experience interviewing and being on a search committee have convinced me that STAR method still has a place for us. So make sure to use that if people ask for examples of a time when ___.
My last reference gig a lot of the interview was focused on adapting reference techniques to meet student needs (so providing verbal, physical demonstrations, online chat, online tutorial video for students with busy schedules, etc.). There were also a lot of questions related to their student body in particular – the school had a lot of international and mature students, so I discussed different approaches to take when teaching those groups. If you can do any recon of what the school interviewing you’s demographics look like, that could be a good point to reference.
Toastbrarian here: it sounds like you’re headed for an academic library? Awesome! Talk about instructional design and how you’re going to incorporate it into your sessions/libguides/what have you. BUZZWORDS! Also, ask if the college/uni has an ID staff in-house. Ask what their relationship is to the library.
Look up/ask about the library’s strategic plan, and what types of things they’re hoping to incorporate/patrons they hope to reach in the next X number of years. I’ve had lovely chats about reaching out to nontraditional and international students while interviewing.
You also might want to brush up on weird cataloging standards (well, maybe not -how- to do it, but at least know what they’re called/where they’re used)? At one interview, at Very Well-Known Prestigious Women’s College, they grilled me on my knowledge of Cutter Classification. I did not get that job.
Good luck! I’m sure you’ll be amazing!
It’s a government library! (The govt is the big game here in town.) I’d love to work at one of the academic libraries here but they’re pretty hard to break into.
Thank you for your advice!
Ohhh, I’ve definitely been there with temporary federal contracts (not in libraries, but still.) Good luck! You will be fabulous!
yay for couch-to-5k! i agree with finding a good outdoor spot. i bought a cheap digital watch so i could switch speeds at the right intervals, i liked how it worked.
I cannot help re: job interview, but as an average sized lady who adores throwing dudes in a controlled environment, I say let your violent impulses guide you. It sucks when the dudes hit you/ throw you/ whatever, but then you get to HIT THEM BACK. So it mostly works out in the end. Plus, there is a true joy in life to be found by taking all of your frustrations to the dojo, grabbing a huge dude, and just letting loose on him (in, you know, a safe and controlled manner). Go beat people up, it is the BEST.
This!
I have not done Krav Maga but we used to teach self-defense which means we took like hundreds of hours of classes first. And getting grabbed is never fun, but that is kind of part of the point, to feel what it is like and how it is not fun and then react out of that place of ‘Oh wow this sucks!’ so you learn to break through the *ugh* feeling. And at least for us, it carried over into all the rest of our life, just a lot less ugh once we were willing to find a way to move through that suckful moment instead of just trying to avoid it.
My last interview for a reference position (which did not result in job, for whatever that’s worth) was about 50% material they’d had me prepare in advance and 50% technology questions. As in, “how do you change the font size in the browser?” technology questions. I recommend not correcting the question as you answer it, or if you must, finding a more polite way to do so than I did.
Re: stretching, the last time I had physical therapy I was told that people who stretch regularly injure themselves more severely than people who don’t. So I guess don’t bother?
DIRTBAG NEWS.
Last night I went to the BFI to see Made in Hong Kong (1997) dir. Fruit Chan. I didn’t know much about it beforehand. My friend was pleased as the girl character, Ping, had the same My Own Private Idaho poster on her bedroom wall as my friend did in the 90s.
Toasties, it turned out to be a film entirely about teenage dirtbags. Here are some of the dirtbag things that happened:
1. The three friends, Moon, Ping and Sylvester, go to a cemetery to find the grave of Susan, who committed suicide earlier in the film. To find her grave, they run around on the tops of all the tombs shouting “SUSAN! SUSAN!”. They don’t find her grave.
2. At one point Moon leaves his flat to take out the rubbish. He skateboards down the corridor of his block of flats to do this.
3. In the rubbish area, a schoolboy in the employ of a triad boss stabs him. The schoolboy (who is wearing his school uniform shirt still, but it’s unbuttoned all the way of course) then goes to leave, but he sees Moon’s skateboard and takes it.
4. At one point, an acquaintance of Moon is running from a gang of baby dirtbags (also in their school uniforms still) and knocks on Moon’s apartment to try to take refuge there. Moon doesn’t hear him as he is dancing in his flat with his headphones on, listening to music, waving a gun around whilst dancing. “Sorry, can’t hear you, too busy being a dirtbag”.
5. Sylvester has some cocaine strapped to his stomach for a drug courier job, but whilst walking along is attacked by a group of baby dirtbag bullies and they push him to the ground and kick him. A policeman stops them and chases them off – he asks a DIFFERENT group of baby dirtbags to help Sylvester while he chases the first group. This second group of dirtbags carry on kicking Sylvester – the bags of cocaine break and they steal what they can. Two triad bosses come across them and chase the boys off. The dirtbags skateboard off leisurely, giving the finger to the triad bosses.
6. One of the lines in one of the last scenes of the film is Moon saying, “I hate adults”.
I am so pleased I saw it. It was very good and I mean, these are just stellar dirtbag moments.
Well, certainty that I have walking pneumonia has been raised to 98% after I woke myself up at 5:30 coughing so hard that I gave myself a pounding headache. For extra fun, not being able to go to the gym or do any exercise at all for a week now has started messing with my brain chemistry! Hello there, depression, I’d almost forgotten what you felt like.
But I am proud of myself for getting better at asking for support! When I realized what was happening, I sounded the Toastie Twitter Love Alarm and called an emergency internet TV party with my best friend, and both helped significantly. The other bright? spot in this is that the depression snap finally highlighted my annoyance with my current job enough to get me to start looking elsewhere. Maybe I’ll be able to pull myself together well enough to find someone who wants to pay me good money to do excellent work for their organization even after I’ve coughed in their face at the interview.
The Toastie Twitter Love Alarm is such a force for good in this world. And ugh ugh ugh on the Death Cough! Brutal.
Hooray!!!
I missed the Toastie Twitter alarm but *HUGS*. I hope you start feeling better soon!
It sounds like WEE-OOO-WEE-OOO-WEE-OOO-BUTTS, so it can be hard to tell apart from the rest of Toastie Twitter sometimes.
Thanks!
Truer words were never spoken!
Sorry to hear that you’re still unwell, but I am glad to hear from you today! <3
Toast! Today is my eight-year anniversary with my lady, and I’ve designed her a ring, and it will be ready on Thursday and I’m going to ask her to be mine for the rest of our lives.
Also, I’m headed to PDX for an LP concert this weekend and am so excited. So much happenings!
OMG OMG AAAAHH
TELL US MORE ABOUT THIS RING
OK BECAUSE I LOVE TALKING ABOUT IT
She doesn’t know about it yet, but it’s a white gold band with a Yogo sapphire – only found and mined in Montana – set into the band.
My wedding band is also white gold with sapphires (probably not from Montana though?) so I can confirm you made a 10/10 choice.
My engagement ring is white gold with a Montana sapphire!!!!!!!
Not a Yogo, though – mine is blue-green. I love it SO MUCH. Anyway, A+ choice and I hope we can maybe see pictures later??
Yay for anniversaries, and yay for rings (and yay for PDX, best city of my heart)! Good luck with the proposal!
Congratulations! That is so awesome!!
EEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!
WOOOO! Congratulations!!!
holy shit YAY!!
Congrats! Do you have a big proposal planned?
Nothing major, just taking her on a fall picnic in Glacier Park and asking in the forest where no one can see me melt and then coming back to town to a party!
Hopefully the presence of the glaciers will help preserve you and keep you from melting.
(I’m not very good at geology, but that sounds solid, right?)
I think that’s a charming plan and I’m terribly excited for you & your lady!
This is where we are going:
“Nothing major” that is GORGEOUS. Congrats!!! 🙂 🙂
That…can’t be a real place. (CONGRATS HUGPUNCH!!!!)
Dude, it is, and it is 40 minutes from my front door. (THANK YOU!!!!!)
Hooray! I also designed my lady a ring and it’s ready TODAY and I’m going to pick it up in like TWO HOURS. Woop woop! Congrats to youuuu
AHHHHHHH and to youuuuuu!
Now I wanna talk about my ring*, too, cuz it’s pretty and kinda similar to yours!!! It’s a rose gold band with a blue/purple sapphire that changes color in different light, and it’s set in a white gold bezel and it has some white gold leafy patterns running up the sides. Hooray for sapphire! Hooray for love!
*Well, her ring, technically.
It sounds gorgeous! Even though I know I love my lady, going into the jewelry store and designing a ring left me totally sweaty. It was kind of stressful and exciting at the same time.
swoon!
Yay for toast love!
Toast love, like everything else Toastie, is the very best kind of love.
Oh, that’s lovely! Congratulations!
Congratulations! Aaaaa, that’s so exciting, and the spot you picked is GORGEOUS!
Congratulations and best wishes!!!! This is awesome!!
Congratulations on your anniversary! I hope it is lovely.
Also, foods I used to hate but now love? Onions. I used to LOATHE onions and now I can’t get enough of them. But I can’t get my head around mushrooms. I’ve tried! SO MANY TIMES, so many ways, and mushrooms still taste like dirt to me. I’m sorry! I KEEP TRYING.
Also I still love Gone With The Wind as a book and reread it easily once a year, warts and all, and it is amazing. Scarlett is a monstrous antihero, all the characters (except Melanie) are equally ridiculously awful in different ways, and it’s basically a gigantic soap opera sprawling across years. Also it says far, far far more about the 1920/30s South than it does the Civil War and Reconstruction era, which nobody seems to get.
Not only do mushrooms taste like dirt, but those spindly things under the caps? NOPE. Ugh, I’m shuddering just thinking about it.
I looooooove onions. I never ate them growing up because my dad couldn’t. Then I moved out and discovered them and now I put them in everything. Which was kind of a problem the last time my dad came to visit and I had to figure out what to cook for dinner. But it all worked out.
I used to hate onions too! Then I realized that I only hate RAW onions. Cooked onions are great though, especially caramelized ones!
Mushrooms are the woooooooooorst though.
I can’t even tell you how many times I’ve started caramelizing onions for some recipe, only to eat all of the onions straight out of the pan while it’s still on the cooktop.
CAN’T STOP WON’T STOP
(Also, more mushrooms for me yay)
YES! at least to eating caramelizing onions.
With mushrooms, it’s that texture I can’t get past.
I thought it was just the texture too, but then I tried someone’s supposedly *amazing* cream of mushroom soup that had absolutely no chunky bits, and it was still horrifying. So I guess it’s also the taste? The idea of eating a fungus is definitely not helping me psychologically.
After years of detesting eggplant, my girlfriend has convinced me it’s actually one of the tastiest things ever.
I may never forgive her, but if she makes me more roasted eggplant pasta…I might consider it.
I try so hard to like mushrooms and they’re just gross. I’ll eat them if they’re in a thing someone is feeding me, but I would never use them myself. Blah!
God, Gone With The Wind is so terrible and amazing and Scarlett is so awful and I love it.
I (apparently) loved mushrooms as a wee child, then hated them from, like 8-16, and now love them. I think kid-me was just weird
I have found my people! I hated onions as a kid and didn’t really give them another shot until college and WOW. Must have been one of those kids super taste buds things because I don’t know how I lived those years without them.
GWTW- every year! Usually in the summer. You are right, most people don’t get that. But I do. ~*~kindred spirits~*~ You should check out this book (unless you are secretly the person who wrote this book or something?!) http://www.powells.com/biblio/61-9780300164374-1
Both onions and Scarlett kind of remind me of my mother. My mom loves onions and for years I thought she was nuts. Sorry mom! Like Scarlett, my mom does some things that are quite progressive for women (not husband stealing though) but really does them only for personal gain and doesn’t see larger structural issues.
Yes, exactly! Now I am DYING for a plate of onion rings because yum.
GWTW is definitely a summer read. Outdoors with iced tea. And I only wish I wrote that book–it will go on my to-read list right away!
I respect all food aversions, but that said, if you’re interested in someday liking mushrooms, have you tried dry-sauteing them? You slice ’em, put ’em in a hot pan with no oil, and let the juices release and then reabsorb. It gives it a much nicer texture than sauteing with butter, and concentrates the flavor. Though of course, if you’re opposed to mushroom flavor that might not work.
How about different varieties? Hedgehog mushrooms are a goddamn miracle, and taste nothing like the regular old Agaricus bisporus you find in the store. (Downside, they’re expensive and can’t be farmed so can be hard to find.) Oyster mushrooms are meaty and delicious and easier to find and incredible in an omelet, if you’re into eggs. Thus endeth my fungal proselytizing. For today.
Oyster mushrooms are AMAZING. Sometimes our partner makes a pasta sauce with dry-cooked oyster mushrooms and pecans and sherry and it is so yum. I’m glad it’s almost fall!
Oyster mushrooms are what convinced me that I like mushrooms after all. Now I’m addicted. My mom is not happy because all through my childhood she was the only one who ate mushrooms and now when she makes dinner with mushrooms in it she has to share.
I hated mushrooms for YEARS, until someone (who works professionally with food and knows what I like) sat me down and explained to me that I would 100% love mushrooms, so long as they were prepared correctly, and I told him he was 500% wrong and I would NEVER like mushrooms, and then he made me a diced mushroom spread and it turns out he was right the whole time.
That being said, whole, non-diced mushrooms still wig me out. The veiny things under the caps are horrible, and they are texturally alarming.
We used to hate avocado but we have never had trouble eating things we hated, so when we moved to California and people kept feeding us things with avocado in it, we’d just eat it. And a lot of delicious sushi rolls had avocado in them. And then one day we had an unagi roll without the avocado (because a picky friend had ordered it that way) and we said, WAIT this is nowhere near as good! I guess we do like avocado!
Since then, with everything except cilantro, we assume if we eat it enough, we’ll like it. It’s worked with tofu and eggplant, too! Cilantro gets a pass though because it’s genetic. 🙂
I hated cilantro until I was about 25, now I love it!
Welcome to this weeks FRIDAY CAT THREAD!
My cats are just so pretty.
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if not especially bright.
And in Anne’s case, a little bit ridiculous.
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I can’t remember if I posted this picture of MT before, but I can’t get enough of it.
why, hello, gorgeous!
Soft-focus glamour shot of Salsa
Salsa is one of the best calico names ever; I only wish I could thumbs-up your comment multiple times to reflect my approval.
Vegas would like some cat shelves or a taller cat tree, please:
It was very, very hot this week, and neither Luna nor Vegas was pleased:
What a couple of pretty warrior princesses.
Our Benny has a cold, and is all sneezy and hidey, poor baby. He’s eating and drinking OK, so the hard part is keeping Miss Brains from pestering him.
Speaking of whom, BEHOLD video evidence that she will sit on command! Smartypants.
clever kitty!
This week on “my cat makes ridiculous faces”: “HOW DID YOU FIND ME?”
That is the very best cat face.
Perfectface!
Omggggg I love your cat.
This is what Patrick thinks of me looking at y’alls cats online:
Patrick! Perfect name is perfect.What a handsome fellow.
“Um, excuuuuse? Other cat not as pretty like meeeeeeeeeeeeee”
So beautiful!!
My cats were un-photogenic this week, so here is a webcomic from Poorly Drawn Lines:
meet georgia, she is a peach. she loves anything textured.
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(first photo posting attempt, likelihood of failure is high)
It did fail, but hopefully I fixed it for you.
you’re the best!
And thank heavens, because that cat is pretty and adorable! And obviously bubble-wrap high.
thanks! here’s another (fingers crossed)
<img src = “https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-aUsZpTqeiE0/VBxpWv8SLiI/AAAAAAAAAUQ/7QFRyxIk_Ic/w323-h430-no/photo%2B%281%29.JPG”/>
agh.
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You know, I’m not sure why that’s not working, since the formatting looks correct… Same thing, but with no spaces around the equal signs, maybe? Also, that is such a pretty lil sleepy kitteh. :3
Yep, no spaces areound the =. You’ll get it!
third time’s the charm! thanks ladies.
Goodnight kittens.
here’s kismet looking all hipster-instagramy
Our cat Spider was yowling and crying like crazy this morning. I was really worried she was sick or something, because that is really unusual behavior for her. Turns out, no, the door to the litterbox was somehow stuck, and she had to go. I didn’t figure it out ’til I took the lid off to scoop it, and she ran right over and hopped in. Sorry, kitty – and thanks for not pooping on the floor.
So considerate of her!
Chetta decided to claim my side of the bed for herself last night; all attempts to dislodge her from her rightful place were met with BITES and disdainful paw-smacks.
BONUS shelter cats! I cannot explain why this little lady reminded me of you, o Owl Queen, but she did:
And me cuddling a Siamese:
I see you need folding help
I love the cat thread and am glad it’s a regular thing! I haven’t had a cat since I was a kid so it’s nice to see all of the pictures and stories posted here.
A haiku in honor of my departed wisdom teeth:
Four teeth removed:
Face perfectly square.
Now look like Lego minifig.
Excellent. My experience was:
Pharmaceuticals
All the pudding you can eat
Firefly marathon
Enjoy your steady diet of milkshakes and soup!
Painkillers were weird
They made me want a baby
Jaw pain was preferred
Yesssss, got here early!
Until I was like 18, I was the worst eater on the planet. I didn’t like tomatoes. Just, just read that again. Tomatoes. These days, my diet consists of tomatoes, tomatoes, and tomatoes.
So last Saturday I cooked for 40 people! Was toasted and got a big ass round of applause afterwards! It was super awesome, especially considering how nervous I’d been. I also got to feel like a rich person for a couple days since my family rented this ridiculously sweet house on the water in Connecticut (however, that is now over and I am back to being a poor) Anyway, the point is, cooking is fun and pretending to be rich is very fun.
This weekend will be about holding onto the last fleeting moments of summer, screaming OH GOD, SUMMER WHY ARE YOU LEAVING ME, I SWEAR I’LL CHANGE, WHHYYYYYY. My goal is to wear a bathing suit and no shoes the whole weekend and just pretend it’s July. There will be lunch beers, afternoon snack beers, dinner beers, and then I’ll start drinking. What are you guys doing this final weekend of summer??
i dunno, certain kinds of raw tomatoes taste like bleach to me? is that a normal thing?
but cooked tomatoes! sundried tomatoes! tomato sauce. oh my god, tomato juice. i could live on tomato juice.
It’s all about the tomato, man. Late July through August, fresh, ripe heirlooms of all kinds are where it’s at. But yeah, a dull tomato is just like, waterfruit.
Yesss, to cooked tomatoes, and now that you’ve mentioned it, I’m gonna throw some in the oven and make oven-dried tomatoes! Thanks!
Oh, same. I was not big on most vegetables, honestly, until I went to college and I felt like I needed to learn to eat salads to maintain an appearance of adulthood in the refectory. Tomatoes included.
This period was followed by a period of eating EVERYTHING, followed my current period of recognizing that it’s okay for me to simply prefer some vegetables to others. Since I get a mystery-box farmshare, I get the nonpreferred vegetables anyway, but it’s at least kind of fun to figure out new recipes. I baked a green bean-artichoke casserole last week because I got tired of sesame green beans and balsamic roasted green beans. And my overexposure to beets caused me to discover that they can be baked into delicious chocolate cakes.
Congrats on your fabulous dinner!
Thanks! LOVE the mystery-box farmshare, figuring out new recipes is the best.
I keep trying them because I like pretty much every vegetable I hated as a child (turns out canned vegetables are the worst), but raw tomato are terrible every time.
I am a pretty good eater, but I hate raw tomatoes! I love tomato sauce, but there’s something about raw tomatoes that I can’t stand. I wish I liked them! How did you magically get over your dislike??
That sounds like so much fun. The beer will keep you warm!
I’m going down to Baltimore with some friends to visit a friend who lives there!! I’m SO excited!
Haha, I had a very long answer for you, but it got waaay long so here is the short: maybe you just don’t like raw tomatoes which 🙁 🙁 OR you just never met the right tomato! It’s all about quality man. If you have a a truly good, middle of August, garden-fresh tomato, it should take nothing but a sprinkle of salt on a slice of it to be in HEAVEN.
Ahh yesss, Baltimore! Do you know what part of Balmer you’ll be carousing in?
That sounds great in theory. I’ll have to try next year!!
We’ll be in Fells Point. Do you know Baltimore well?
I know it pretty well, yeah, I know Fed Hill and Charles Village better, probably, but in Fells Point there is a place called Spirits Tavern that is super cool (it’s not like, right in downtown, but it’s there on Bank Street)
Also, from my friend Pat:
Pat: but they have this awesome thing called the bucket o’ fun
it is full of shitty beers, and you have to guess which one the bartender is going to pull out
and if you guess right you get a free shot of whiskey
Pat: also they have dollar taco night and really awesome chili
Those were things I didn’t know about until he enlightened me.
My favorite bar in Baltimore is probably Ottobar, in Charles Village. Fucking love that place. In Fells Point, 8×10 is great for a cheap show and a good time. Have fun in Bawlmer!
I’m going hiking! Delaware Water Gap, here I come!
Oh man, have fun!
“cooking and pretending to be rich” is basically the story of my life right now….and I am getting my FALL HAIRCUT this weekend, nothing major but very excited nonetheless as I have not had even a trim since about early March.
Oh man, fall haircut sounds like such a good idea, better than “trim split ends, promise to get self haircut, then never get haircut” which is what I’ve been going with.
Enjoy your new (or just updated) look!
We bought six-day passes for the local Renn Faire this year, and have to go four more times in the next five weekends. We’re planning to do one trip this sat.
But even more than anything I do in July, Faire is the place where you hold a mug in your hand all day and sometimes it gets almost empty so it is time for more beer. Between the six days of my pass, I will probably log more day beers than the rest of the summer combined (especially because there was no tubing).
you hold a mug in your hand all day and sometimes it gets almost empty so it is time for more beer.
This is the dream, my friend.
I’m going to the Renn Faire in October and I can’t wait!!! Have fun and huzzah!!
Where is everyone still having summer??? I scraped ice off my windshield this morning!
Houston. This week summer is “thunderstorms + humidity = muggy hellscape.”
Ugggh, yes. Same in Dallas, except minus the thunderstorms for the most part. Just humid HELL.
Going to Renn Faire with buddies this weekend!! I anticipate wandering happily around the many food stalls sampling whimsically-named delights, and then watching bawdy Shakespeare. OM NOM NOM.
You going to the MD one I’m guessing?
Sure am! If the last few years are anything to go by, I will spend hours on hours browsing and then buy some fancy-ass local honey.
OH DAMN how do you plan a dinner like that??? I want to start throwing dinner parties for people, but I keep getting stuck just on planning and logistics.
Make as much as you can ahead of time! That was the key! Luckily, one of my best friends does this for a living (she was even on the teevee all summer! but that is perhaps a post for a different day) and when I said I was leaving like, half to make day of, she said NOPE, MAKE AS MUCH AS POSSIBLE AHEAD OF TIME. So yeah, she ended up being very, very right, and the food tasted just as good as it would have had I waited. You just have to make sure it’s a dinner you CAN make ahead of time: I did heirloom tomato basil sauce (with angel hair pasta made when I got there) mussels in a white wine tomato sauce, mini crab cakes, olive tapenade all ahead of time- obviously, I didn’t clean or add the mussels til I got there, but I made the sauce ahead of time- but everything else on that list tastes BETTER the next day. That stuff, along with a few simple, classy apps (smoked salmon cream cheese spread with chives and olive oil, a cheese plate, stuff like that) and a bunch of different salads (3 big-ass salads, trying to appease all tastes) with a few different vinaigrettes, a bunch of fresh bread, a lot of wine and voila! If you want any of these recipes, say the word, and I’ll give you my toast/hairpin/etc email!
(Edited because something weird happened with cut and paste in the middle)
TAKING TO THE SEA!!!
We are going to the beach in Delaware. I am wearing my Octopus earrings in celebration: https://twitter.com/Blushingflwr/status/513003779…
There will be the ocean, and a hot tub, and many tasty cocktails.
Oh, those are awesome! Ah, the Delaware beaches, how I love them! Color me jealous!
My coworker is literally having an “endless summer” party this weekend and has requested everyone wear nonsense like bikinis and shorts and white pants. I am all for it, except possibly for the part where she has convinced her roommate to wear a speedo.
Jealous of all the commenters going to renaissance faires though! I went to one in August and don’t get to go to another until late October, boo.
You’re coworker is a solid individual.
Congratulations on cooking for 40 people! That is amazing!
Many thanks!
I have nothing to share this week except this: https://myrkur.bandcamp.com/
She had me at “one-woman black metal band.”
Oh shit. I’m not usually a fan of black metal, but this is amazing?
YES!
Obviously the solution to the whole “black metal is a little boring” problem was that women should be doing it instead of men.
Just like life.
I love it because it reminds me of my favorite Scando Christmas music, but also something to which I could punch manlings.
“This is so haunting and beautiful. Oh, sorry about your face there, sir.”
guys guys guys
i made a scarf last weekend. a RAT scarf. with linoleum blocks and discharge paste and ink. here’s a closeup and a full view. it was so much fun and now i want to print everythingggg.
tell me about your recent creative projects!
omg rat scarf
No lie, if you decided to go into the rat-scarf business, you’d probably get an order for at least three from me. I come from a proud history of ladies who love both scarves and rats.
i’ve considered making more but i don’t know anything about selling creative wares besides window shopping through etsy! but yes, i am glad to be a scarf- and rat-lovin lady myself. it’s a good place to be.
I would also seriously consider purchasing a rat scarf.
Me three, I would pay some real-ass money for that rat scarf!
WHAT this is amazing!!!!
thank you! i have yet to wear it out and about (it’s not scarf weather yet grrrr) but i eagerly await the day!
That scarf is amazing! Well done you. I have done nothing creative besides making up new curries and soups to feed myself at work instead of spending $$ on lunch…but I am also gonna follow you on Tumblr, I’m martiniglass!
i am hopeless in the kitchen, so i’d say that soups and curries are most definitely a creative endeavor (and a delicious endeavor too)!
also, yay for toasty tumblrs! following you back!
Whaaat, you MADE that?? It is so good!! I can’t stop looking at it. I feel like it’s the kind of scarf you tie over your hair when you’re driving around in a convertible.
Lately I’ve gotten back into cross stitching in a major way, here are some of my recent pieces.
This Toast-inspired little guy that I made for my new office:
And this Clone High sampler that I made for a friend:
ahhh these are so cool!
the thought of a glamorous convertible-driving lady wearing a rat scarf makes me really happy.
Thanks!
NICE!
that is AWESOME!
thank you!!
I LOVE RATS. And this is adorable!
I just learned to embroider this past weekend. Here’s what we made:
(I made the “dope” one and the “fuck it” one was made at my request)
I’m also crocheting a doily but that’s not worth taking a picture of until it’s done!
thank you! rats are the best, i haven’t had a pet rat in over a decade but obviously i still love them A+++
those embroidered patches are awesome, i hope you proudly display them on your jacket/rucksack/etc!
Yay, embroidery!!!
It is addictive, and awesome, and will take over your life. Enjoy!
I love these! I have just recently discovered this site: http://www.subversivecrossstitch.com/
I am currently putting off fixing the fuck-up I made on the scarf I was working on. I was talking to my boyfriend while I knitted a row with yarn overs and K2togethers and such and screwed it up, and when I went back to unknit it I forgot about the K2togethers and lost a bunch of stitches. Ugh. I’m going to have to put in a lifeline a few rows down and rip it, I think.
ughhh fixing mistakes is a pain…but you’ll get around to it! and then you’ll have an awesome scarf!
That. Is. Awesome.
I made a couple of wine cork boards recently – so fun, so easy, great gifts.
thank you!
wine cork boards—also a good excuse for lots of wine drinking.
RAT SCARF YES
thank you! i still have the linoleum blocks so i’ll probably be printing rats on everything.
That scarf is spectacular. I love scarves and rats (we have 2 and they are such awesome animals to live with).
I am currently determined to finish the Ravenclaw scarf that I started for my son a year or so ago (arggh). He missed out when I knit the first round of Harry Potter scarves (I made *5* Gryffindor ones one year as Christmas presents — my 3 sisters, my daughter and my nephew — but my son was too young to care).
Also, I have started a pair of mittens from sock yarn (on Ravelry: http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/handful-o… — they are from Sock Yarn One Skein Wonders, which is an awesome book) and have one of a pair of wristwarmers finished for my daughter. I need to focus….
I love your scarf!
I have no recent creative projects but I helped our almost-5-yr-old daughter make a BOOK for school! Helping meant spelling the words to label her drawings — she can write individual letters but she isn’t reading/writing yet. And she needed me to staple it together when she was done. But she made a book about an imaginary hike with peach trees and sleds and rabbits!
This weekend I am hoping to do my own creative projects. 🙂
Notorious RBG t-shirts are on sale here: http://www.lookhuman.com/design/24817-notorious-r…
I’ve been wanting one for a while and just ordered.
Today is the last day of one of my coworkers, and another coworker has been going around with a card for her, soliciting signatures for the card but also cash donations.
She’s not going on maternity leave or quitting due to illness or anything like that. She’s accepted another position, which she starts on Monday, and she’s going to be making slightly more than she did here (a fun part of working for the federal government is knowing what salary range your coworkers fall into). She’s getting a goodbye lunch from her team and they’ll be paying for her meal. So… why exactly does she need anyone else’s precious cash money? Am I being a curmudgeon or is this ridiculous?
Anyway, in honour of her departure, please share your coworker annoyances from the past week.
cash donations is totally weird.
but mmm shemar
Everything. Everything about every one of my coworkers is burning my biscuits this week.
That is beyond bizarre. Maybe collection coworker is keeping the cash for her own self, hmmmmm?
I literally just yesterday watched Creed do this on an episode of The Office.
Cash = very crass and I wouldn’t personally donate.
Yay coworker complaint thread!
My current complaint is that the new coworker (A) I’m training for my team got the job because she’s friends with another coworker (B) on another team. Despite me being on her team and per managment, responsible for her training, she goes over to coworker B every time she’s stuck or has a question. Then coworker B asks me why I’m not helping coworker A and then manager gets involved and I’m the bad guy for being a bad team player. This is not the first team member I’ve trained but this is the first time I’m having these issues and just grrrrrr! I swear every hour I swing by her desk and go “How’s it going? Need any help? Have any questions? I’m here for you!” and she still doesn’t come to me regularly.
Maybe do that in email form so you’ve got a paper trail that you can forward to your manager.
My office does cash donations for everything. People leaving, retiring, christmas, weddings, babies, everything. If you’re leaving or retiring the powers that be give you a present, then I’m expected to pay to go to a party, pay for alcohol at said party and then give a cash donation? Nope.
Ugh we have these two youngish (college age, they look like maybe they’re around 20) dudes from another department helping us out with our work backlog right now, and they just won’t stop shouting their man-pinions at the top of their lungs. The other day we were treated to a diatribe about how women need to stop wearing makeup because it’s false advertising and obviously if you’re wearing it it’s because you need to “make up” for how ugly you are. Yesterday they got into a screaming fight about iphones vs. droids. JUST SHUT UP YOU’RE LIKE 12 AND YOU DON’T KNOW ANYTHING AND NO ONE CARES. #banmen
omg, false advertising? kill them for real
If a man is stupid enough to believe that I was born with blue/green duochrome eyelids he deserves everything he gets.
If a man is stupid enough not to recognize the awesomeness of blue/green duo chrome eyelids, there is probably no hope for him.
AHHHH this is so pretty I want to get it and then advertise falsely all over the place.
So damn hilarious I can’t handle it.
I really love wearing that as eyeliner.
When men start wearing badges with their dick size and present notarized references from past lovers upon request, then they can complain about not getting what they expected.
That’s totally ridiculous. Not quite a coworker, but a volunteer who was supposed to being training me to register blood donors spent waaaay too much time explaining where he liked to put the highlighter and pen on the desk, and I couldn’t even get a word in edgewise that I am left handed (also I can figure that part out for myself!) and not nearly enough on the actual registration process. He didn’t even correct the actual mistake I was making–I didn’t know until a supervisor came over that I wasn’t correctly submitting the entries in the computer. (I was just scanning the donor card thinking it was a shortcut to typing their name, which apparently it wasn’t. He definitely should have been able to notice a huge lack of typing.) In the dead time, he gave me a long lecture on every.sales.technique.ever. I haven’t been back yet.
The cash isn’t for a present? The coworker is just… getting an envelope of cash? That seems very odd. And maybe I’m a bad person, but that seems like an excellent way for an unscrupulous coworker to skim some extra cash off the top…
UGH MY NEW COWORKER CAN’T LEARN ANYTHING. Or she won’t. Which is worse.
She has to do data entry and then send out an introductory email to every contact she puts in. Usually you do this by sending out a template email. I found out today she’s been putting in every single person by hand (as opposed to copy-pasting because she says “my computer doesn’t copy-paste”) and then TYPING OUT THE ENTIRE EMAIL EVERY SINGLE TIME. EVERY TIME. It’s like ten paragraphs. Jesus Christ.
Also she won’t answer the phone because she says she “can’t figure it out.” LIFT RECEIVER. PRESS LINE THAT IS RINGING. GREET PERSON. OH my god.
How do people like that get jobs?????
She worked with my boss twenty years ago at an old company. Her skills do not appear to have advanced at all since 1996.
Her computer doesn’t copy-paste…? :-/
Her computer is fine. SHE is incapable of learning new things. She reboots her entire computer every time a program freezes.
Oh my god just reading about this person is making me twitchy and angry!
I had a coworker in a previous job who wasn’t quite THAT bad with computers, but she didn’t exactly intuit them either. She would send me a link to something on her desktop and then not understand why I couldn’t access it. Rebooting was her favorite method of troubleshooting.
That’s the most marvelous thing I’ve ever heard. I delight in the obstinate idiocy of others. (As long as I’m not working with them.)
It does take a LOT of dedication to be that clueless.
“My computer doesn’t copy/paste.”
“Ma’am, that’s a microwave oven.”
OK that should be illegal just burn it down UGH! Sorry that your co-worker is so lost, but I am glad this week is wrapping up for you!
She can’t… answer… the phone? *head explodes* I’d like to use that excuse at my job though, I hate talking on the phone.
I’m not the world’s biggest phone fan, but omg, I don’t just let it ring and ring when no one answers! You’re at work! It is your job to help answer the phones! PICK UP RECEIVER. Hit the button by the flashing light. SPEAK. How complicated can this be!??!
I am realizing gradually that my coworker’s sometimes-obnoxious behavior is totally a result of her feeling needy and insecure. Which helps, but only a little, when she condescends to me in conversation. (PLEASE do not call me “sweetie”. I know I am much younger that you and you have more experience, but I am not your child. I’m your coworker and I deserve some respect, please.)
I used to work in the same department of the same company as my mother. We had to have A Talk about the way she would speak to me in front of other people.
oh my god. D: Mom, NO. At least this person only /thinks/ she’s my mom.
To be fair to her, she was very understanding and changed the way she acted toward me. It had the best possible outcome. Which was lucky, because I have a bit of a complex about people treating me like a child, and being known as “[Name]’s Daughter” and looking even younger than I was did not help.
Recently, I’ve had a rash of lady cashiers calling me “baby.” This has never happened before, and then in the last week or so it’s happened three times.
That is strange! Did it start to bug you? I don’t always mind nicknames like that- I think it depends on the delivery, and my relationship to the deliverer. In this case it’s mostly that it’s a close coworker who seems (to me) to be constantly trying to prop up her status.
The female cashiers at my liquor store (er…a liquor store convenient to my house that I definitely do not go to more often than is appropriate) sometimes call me “dollface” which I won’t even pretend to not find very charming and flattering.
My favorite cowowrker left and now one of the candidates to replace her is a dude I can’t stand. I’m ready to make sacrifices to whoever needs it that he doesn’t get the job because I would probably go insane in about two days. I don’t want to borrow trouble but I also think I should start digging an escape route under my cubicle just in case.
Dig one anyway, you never know when you might need an out. Usually around the time someone your parents age asks you how to basic computer.
I am the new hire. The next newest staff has been here, like, 8 years.
Part of my job, as records-manager, is to mediate between the accounting lady and the office manager dude. They have not actually spoken face-to-face for over a year.
So, each time I sit down with either of them and try to put together a whole story of how records get handled, I have to mention “Oh, she told me this” and “Oh, he gave me the impression that” and then they sputter and go “THAT’S just … that’s just not right. I mean seriously. That’s so off-base.” And then the conspiratorial whisper starts. “Look, just, take everything ___ says with a grain of salt, okay? Nobody likes them. Some people just need to have it their own way, you know? Because they’re controlling like that / afraid of change / set in their ways / something something patriarchy.”
I have confided in my boss that I am waging a PR campaign on each of them individually, so that they will both think of me as an ally. He has assured me this is the best possible response.
Also, and I hesitate to talk shit about Our Kind, but the librarian has worked here for 30 years and it’s time to get a new database backend, seriously.
But that guy is territorial like crazy. I was like “Can you show me where your stuff is kept on the server so I can avoid it when I do cleanup?”
and he was like “But why would you need to know that?”
“So I can be sure I’m not inadvertently changing anything.”
“But why would you need to change things?”
“No, I’m NOT going to change anything.”
“But why would you need to, though?”
“No, I’m …. not. Sorry, what are you asking?”
“I’m asking why you would need to change anything.”
… three minutes of this later, I took an hour and a half for lunch and then took several acetaminophen when I got back.
My coworkers are being kind of chatty and distracting today, but that’s mostly an office layout annoyance.
I’m going to be posting two update threads in addition to Cat Thread this week.
First – people said they wanted to see more of my photos if I got better.
Well, here are a few of my best so far.
You can find and follow my flickr here. https://www.flickr.com/photos/gingerbiscuit/ I am aware these aren’t exactly brilliant, but not bad for a beginner with an £80 camera.
These are quite nice! I’ve been doing photography as a hobby for about 10 years now (and spent way too much money on gear) and I can tell you the best thing to do to improve is just keep taking photos, all the time.
That’s the plan! I take the camera with me whenever I leave the house.
Oh, I really like the photo of the cross. So pretty!
These are really pretty! I love the tree + vines picture!
these are lovely!
Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh I like the 3rd one a lot. Really a lot.
It was my birthday yesterday and I am kind of sick. But last evening I just watched “The Last Unicorn” and went to bed early and now and I feeling better in time for my birthday party. Hell yeah.
happy belated birthday!!
I blame this hooligan for my illness.
Sure looks like a troublemaker.
AW YEAH HAPPY BIRTHDAY PARTY TIME
Happy birthday! And I LOVE The Last Unicorn!!! Oooh maybe I will watch it tonight and eat a cupcake in your birthday honor!
THE GIRL I LIKE LIKES ME TOO
THE BEST FEELING
HOORAY FOR YOU!
YESSSSSS
high-fivin’ you across the internet!
😀 😀 😀
EEEEEE BEST STOMACH BUTTERFLIES EVER
WOOHOO!!!!
Huzzah!
Yay!!
♥
And my second, more negative update.
I burned myself, toasties! I burned my belly on a ligthbulb and it lifted like two layers of skin off and it hurts and I’m taking care of it but the dressing I put over it so I could sleep last night said it wouldn’t stick but it did and I tore some of the already-raw skin off and now it’s been bleeding.
I’ll take it to the doctor if it starts looking anything really awful, of course, but commiserate. Tell me how you hurt yourself, please.
I burned my thumb this week on the oven, taking out a spinach pie. I was so hungry I ate the pie then, instead of running my thumb under water, and it’s now super purple and raised up! Although it doesn’t hurt, just looks like it’s going to start living a life independent of the rest of my hand.
WITH MAXIMUM SMART: I do ball slams at the gym, and last week I managed to forget that half the medicine balls are bouncy and half are not. Protip: Do not do ball slams with a bouncy medicine ball, because that fucker will bounce up and deliver, say, 12 ricocheting pounds to your face, knocking you on your ass and leaving you to try to rock a busted lip, panicked personal trainers, an ice pack, and a late-night “so I swear that this is not domestic abuse” assessment at a walk-in clinic with what little dignity remains to you.
Also this summer I sprained my ankle by twisting it, deciding it didn’t hurt that much, and riding/running/lifting on it for two weeks, so maybe don’t do that either.
I have smashed my face by ball slamming a bouncy medicine ball and I can totally commiserate! You are not the only one!
I hope you escaped as lightly as I did: The bruising stayed invisible and I didn’t need stitches on the lip, so apart from the embarrassment and a tendency to check multiple times on whether a medicine ball bounces or not, there’s no lasting damage.
Oh noooooo
I have a huge scar from a burn on a motorcycle tailpipe! Then it got all infected and terrible. Please, please go to the hospital for bad burns because they basically open your body up to anything that wants to get inside. Horrifying.
My most recent weird injury was that I shaved off a part of my thumb nail in the shower? And I couldn’t bear the idea of having one leg done and not the other so I just held the bleeding thumb up and finished the other leg before calling for help?
nononononononononononightmarenonononononono
I burned my arm taking cornbread out of the oven earlier this week and still have a nasty wound that hurts. It’s healing, but still looks nasty.
OW!
My knee is still munched up 15 years later from cycling along gravel logging trails with my Dad, going too fast downhill. On the plus side, I got to dig out the gravel and pus for weeks afterwards, grossing everyone else out. I just thought it was cool!
Moist burn pads (like these) helped tremendously when I burned off skin on my breast(s) with boiling water.
When you…. when you WHAT??
D-:
that happened to a friend of mine (she was too young to have breasts when it happened, but it was in that area). She accidentally got under a pan of boiling water.
Moving boiling pot of pasta over to sink, cat tripped me, water over chest, pulled off my shirt too fast – skin gone. This happened twice, once on each side. And I HAD to wear a bra for work, so it was even more miserable with the chafing.
I think you meant to say, then, “when the cat, with malice aforethought, burned the skin off my breast(s)”
So, you knew that cat, as well?
owowowowowowwww D:
I was trying to chop up a stump of wood, and a piece of metal chipped off the axe and shot into the top of my thumb. There was much blood and hot metal searing. I had to go to the ER to get it surgically removed. It is the stupidest scar I have to date.
I hope your burn heals up soon 🙁
Oh, I can commiserate, re: burns. I have a burn story that is also a Dad story.
When I was 20 I dropped a mug of just boiled water on my legs. I was watching television and literally just…forgot the mug was hot until my fingers reflexively dropped it. I sort of shrugged it off until the next commercial break, then I went to look at it in the bathroom and promptly went into shock because Things Did Not Look Good. My dear friend rushed me to the hospital in a cab, whose sketchy driver asked if we could take the backstreets to avoid the cops (!!!)
Turns out it was a severe second-degree burn. I had called my parents as I was checking the burn and then fainted from the shock, leaving the phone off the hook, so my dear, protective dad drove to my university town in the middle of a massive snowfall and STORMED the hospital (like literally yelling my name roaming through the halls) until he found me. My friend never tires of impersonating the pleading hospital staff trailing helplessly in his fatherly wake.
In the end, I had to take giant horse-pill-sized antibiotics and have dressings on it changed every day for the next THREE WEEKS. I had never taken my pants off for so many different strangers in my life. I have some faint scarring and I have to make sure that area gets lots of SPF in the summer but otherwise I am totally fine. The end.
Yes the constant dressing. Ugh. For my first bad burn the nurse gave me the dressing and then wound some gauze around the paw of my stuffed rabbit so that I wouldn’t be alone.
1) I branded myself on the thigh on the bathroom radiator. The scar stayed for *months*.
2) I melted my watch to my wrist when I tried to lift the lid off a casserole without taking it out of the oven and touched the side of my wrist to the top of the oven. I haven’t got a picture of that but when I took my watch off I pulled a big lump of arm-meat with it. Still have a dent in my wrist.
3) I tripped over and headbutted a lamppost. Three stitches in my head.
4) Aged about 5, I was playing vets and bandaging my stuffed toys with toilet roll and sellotape, and stole mum’s sharp scissors to get the bandage off. Pointed scissors towards me, pulled a bit too hard, buried scissors in the bridge of my nose, right between the eyes.
Those are the comedy/gruesome ones I can think of, but there are doubtless many many more.
oooooowwwwwwwwww! That looks like it was really sore when you did it.
We’re getting some aloe vera and vitamin e oil tomorrow so hopefully that’ll help mine heal without too much scarring.
I broke my toe once while lying in bed reading. I’m still not sure how it happened; I stretched my leg out, pushing against the bedpost just as I’d done many times before (weird habit, I guess?) but the angle or whatever was just right and pain ensued.
I also messed up my knee taking fencing in college, and it still acts up every so often, which means I can grumble about ‘an old fencing injury’ with the wounded air of a 19th-century gentleman/fancy prep-school snob, which I appreciate on many levels.
I kind of want to injure myself fencing just so I have an old fencing injury to grumble about. Alas, I have only an old marching band injury, respected only by other marching veterans.
I once sprained my ankle while standing completely still.
Standing there, drinking a cup of coffee, ankle gave out, BAM! on the ground.
Hit myself in the face with the coffee mug, too.
“Oh, this limp and black eye? Yeah, uh…ninja attack.”
I am sorry but this made me laugh out loud
You never have to apologize to me for my ability to hurt myself in stupid ways.
Unless you are gravity personified, in which case you go fuck yourself. Fuck you, gravity. What did I ever do to you.
One time I accidentally stabbed myself in the hand with a pen while teaching. I have no idea how it happened.
Haha, I stabbed myself in the hand with a fork. Trying to catch the cutlery caddy as it fell off the counter (would have used two hands but had the baby in the other hand).
I felt stupid, but gave myself points for not dropping/stabbing the baby.
Once I burned nine out of ten fingers. I picked up a pie to move it off the stove after taking it out of the oven — hadn’t let it cool enough. Didn’t want to drop the beautiful pie on the floor. Slowly, laboriously texted my brother for help. “SOS brnd all fngrs”
He still makes fun of me to this day.
PSA: Get silvadine (silvadeen?) cream if you can–it REALLY helps with burns. I burned my elbow on the oven door this week and it took the pain and blistering away in a semi-miraculous fashion. IIRC, the tiny tube I’ve got was $5 from Walmart (went there under duress as CVS wanted to charge me $100 for the exact same thing).
I’m a bad person because some of these injuries are making me laugh. Or perhaps I’ve just been awake for too long and am particularly giggly about everything.
Anyway, I was hanging out with my sister at her house several years ago, and their dog was playing, and I was pushing the dog around, playfighting, and then I said to the dog, ‘Beat you into the house!’ and I ran up the steps and kicked the door frame as I running through the door, and I broke my toe.
I won, though.
Hope your burn feels way better soon. Rest as much as you can.
Toasties, I found out definitively this week that I need to get surgery on my left ear sometime in the next month – it’s not a HUGE deal (i.e. outpatient surgery and small recovery time, not cancer, etc. – all of which I’m grateful for), but it’s really freaking me out. I have all these fears, like: what if my ear is in a slightly different place after? what if I touch the back of my skull and it’s shaped weird because they cut the bone? What if something goes wrong? What if I can never wear my hair pulled back again? I realize some of these sound really vain, but it’s not so much that I fear “losing beauty” as that I fear falling asleep and then waking up with a slightly different body.
Basically, I’m just getting A LOT OF FEELINGS off my chest here. Next week, I’ll be back with baby horse pictures. (Though, update from last week: I decided I’m not an advanced enough rider to buy the filly. I’ll just hang out with her at the ranch I guess. I don’t want to mess up her training.)
Good luck with the surgery! I think I’d be freaking out too.
I’m in a similar circumstance right now–facing pretty minor surgery but with a prominent scar (thyroid). If it helps, even as I’ve been spinning off into anxieties and worries about my appearance changing slightly, all of my friends have reassured me that scars and the like add character, which has made me feel a lot better.
That’s definitely what I’m hoping. “What’s this?” “Oh, nothing, just my badass head scar.”
Good luck with your surgery too!
Not too long ago I made myself a dinner of tofu and brussels sprouts and my inner child wept. But it was delicious.
Actually, I was a picky eater as a child, but a weird picky eater. I wouldn’t eat pizza until I was like 10. Something about the sauce.
Tofu and brussels sprouts are one of my favourite combos ever! Especially when you fry the tofu and saute the sprouts in garlic and put some soy sauce and brown sugar in with it and serve it with buttery white rice and mmmmm.
I might have to eat that tonight.
Neither my brother nor I would drink soda as children (he still doesn’t; I only like Dr. Pepper and root beer–no Coke/Pepsi) and so we were the weird ones at birthday parties asking politely for glasses of milk.
Yeah, I still don’t like fizzy drinks. Too… bubbly. And sweet.
I hated pizza too. The sauce was always too tomatoey.
I always hated cauliflower all the time (it looks like white brains and smells SO AWFUL. Cauliflower cheese is the devil’s work), but actually I then went on a crazy Nyonya cooking course in Penang with my mum, and the lady running it made us put cauliflower into achat (spicy vinegary crunchy vegetables basically, but ones that take about 2 hours total to make what with all the chopping), and! it was nice! possibly as there were about 8 chilis, sugar, vinegar, tumeric, nuts, garlic smothering it, and it was still crunchy, but still. I feel it’s a step in the right direction, as I don’t like being fussy about food.
Oh god, it totally DOES look like brains! Cannot unsee! brb disposing of all cauliflower in my house, neighbours’ houses, the local supermarket etc.
actually, a funny french expression is something about having a head like a cauliflower, and it means you have a headache.
i like cauliflower and i’m glad you had this breakthrough. roasting the florets is nice, i like it with just oil, parmesan, s&p, but i’ve also had a great salad that used the roasted florets tossed with roasted peppers and a sort of vinaigrette dressing. good stuff!
I wasn’t into cauliflower for a long time, either, but I found a recipe that uses garlic, macadamia nuts, cayenne pepper, minced cauliflower, and currants? And it was actually pretty delicious! The combination of sweet, salty, spicy was WONDERFUL. I am far too lazy to mince cauliflower more than like…twice a year, though.
Unrelated: Is your username Smee from Peter Pan? If so, I LOVE IT. Whenever my dog gets spooked and goes skeedaddling with her tail so low her butt is on the ground, my brother and I go “SMEEEEEEE SAVE ME SMEEEE!!!” in a Captain-Hook-chased-by-alligator-voice and it cracks me up every time.
Your recipe sounds really good actually! I might try that. I think strong flavours is the way to go for now.
My username is because my surname IRL is Smee. Although I did always like that there is a famous fictional character with my family name, even though he is a doofus. One time my family went on holiday to Disney Land and we went on the Peter Pan and Wendy ride and at one point Capt Hook goes, “fire, Mr Smee!” and my dad went “HA!”
Open thread summary of the week: I managed to get three job applications out the door, and, far more terrifyingly, one volunteer statement of interest. But the thing that felt like a real accomplishment was making a gender-swapped set of the Ocarina of Time trio in Sims 4.
Open thread question: now that legging season has begun, I am glum about my leggings collection. I’m an extremely tall lady (36-37″ inseam), and any search for “tall person leggings” returns three options, most of them over $30/pair, and all of them black. I’m extra-sad, because this was the summer I found the “magic shorts”, which perfectly prevent chub rub and also guarantee modesty while, say, riding the bus.
Does anyone know where the magic leggings are?
(Magic shorts: http://www.amazon.com/Jockey-Womens-Skimmies-Slip…
I am interested in hearing all about the Sims 4 if anyone has opinions/gameplay experience.
I was about to say the same thing! I’m actually still playing Sims 2 because the way they changed the story progression in Sims 3 drove me nuts, but it’s possible that ten years in, I could actually move on to a new version of the game. Maybe.
As with any new release, there is definitely some early griping. They’ve chosen to pull back on some of the “super customize everything” and “one great big open world” from Sims 3 in order to pump up performance, and I do feel the loss of some of that. Other things that are “missing” will no doubt come with expansion packs.
Other things are way more sophisticated: careers, lifetime aspirations, some of the hobbies (you can be a professional astronaut, and/or just go on space adventures in your backyard rocket for funzies). And the whole “sims have multi-dimensional emotions” thing is really interesting. Of course, I’m a goals-oriented, play-Sims-to-win player, so I haven’t seen a lot of the negative emotions/complicated social interactions. My first generation of kids is being groomed for lives of performing and partying, though, so hopefully that’ll change some.
What was it you disliked about 3?
SPACE ADVENTURES IN YOUR BACKYARD. I want a backyard rocket! Can I be a Sim?
Most of my issues with Sims 3 came down to it being more difficult to be a control freak, I think. It really bothered me that things would continue to happen in houses that I wasn’t playing, and none of the mods/workarounds for that fully satisfied me. And I’m used to playing Sims 2 with a ton of mods to tweak behaviors that I didn’t quite like, and it was harder to get those for Sims 3; from what I saw on forums, it sounded like the game had been designed to be more difficult to hack and customize than Sims 2. Since Sims ends up being a fairly therapeutic way for me to have something in my life that I can absolutely control absolutely, Sims 3 just didn’t end up filling the same niche. Which is not to say that it’s a bad game! There were a lot of new twists that I really liked, it just didn’t end up being the game I needed to play at the time. I suspect Sims 4 is probably going to be similar, but I might try it out anyway just to get some post-2004 graphics in my life.
Ah I also play the Sims because of a need for complete control over something! I’ve found the Sims 3 to be suitable though, probably because I play one family until I get tired of my story with them and then move to a different town. I hardly every pick those threads up again afterward so nothing is ever really lost for me when things happened in those households while I was playing in different households.
+1 for sharing the magic shorts link.
I have no answers for magic leggings, but have you tried Black Milk and those other fancy-boutique-leggings companies? Or do you just shop for department-store-brand stuff?
Hahaha(weep), I am absolutely the exact kind of nerd who would love to shop at Black Milk. Except they only go up to a (pretty small) size L, and I’m definitely an XL before we even get to the extra-long-legs problem.
I had mostly resigned myself to the fact that elastic-y things will never fit quite right on my body, but then the Magic Shorts came into my life. And they stay in place all day long without constricting very much, and they don’t bag or nothing. (They pill a little, but the perfection everywhere else makes up for it.) Hence both my newfound belief that the technology is possible for me to be comfy in leggings, and increased despair of ever finding it.
One day you’ll just post a picture of yourself wearing Frankensteined leggings you made out of multiple pairs of magic shorts awkwardly sewn together by hand. And you’ll look like whatserface from the Tim Burton movie. And it will be glorious and terrifying.
I am a Tall too. My go to leggings are Eddie Bauer’s tall leggings. They are not less than $30 a pair, but I’ve gotten at least a couple of years wear out every pair.
THOSE SHORTS ARE IN FACT MAGIC. I have a pair and they are the best.
Sadly I’m of no help about the leggings 🙁
This comes with the caveat that I myself have not yet ordered from them, but they come highly recommended from a number of people I know personally: We Love Colors carries leggings and they are supposedly of great quality and they have a couple different fabrics (so you’ve got your matte and your shiny covered) and tons of colors and these neat “color splash” ones that look like tie-dye but better. Of course, I realize now that I’ve gone back to their site that though they go up to 3XL, they don’t specify whether or not they’re good for looooong legs. I suspect they may not be as long as you’d like/need, but if you’re interested maybe shoot their customer service an email to see if they can give you info on the length?
ETA: Boy oh boy do I want some shiny neon pink leggings.
We love colors is great, that’s where i get all my black leggings because you cannot see my white skin and stubbly hairy legs shining through.
Not sure about tall though…
I was going to link to We Love Colors too. You might also try Sock Dreams — they are pretty good about having alternate sizes and/or listing actual measurements of items (rather than 10, 12, 14, or S, M, L, XL etc).
Toasties, does chatting with guys on OKC (or other dating sites) usually feel like pulling teeth? (When it’s not harassing or creepy, obviously.) I’ve been chatting with a new guy this week, after taking a hiatus from OKC, and while he seems nice enough, our conversation is so tedious. I ask a question – I get a short answer, no elaboration. I ask another question – same. I feel like I rarely go on dates because I’m too judgmental so I’m trying to give this guy a chance, but… I’m so bored and I haven’t even met him yet! I feel like a lot of my online date chats are like this, so – is that just the nature of it, or are these guys just boring? (Or maybe I’m boring!)
This is exactly how I felt on OKC and also why I closed my account, so I am of no help! I feel like most dudes I encounter both online and IRL are both boring and lazy, so unless I’m boring too I don’t think your reading is wrong.
This is is still helpful in knowing that it’s probably not me and other women feel this way too!
I don’t at all doubt that he’s actually just tedious – but maybe skip some of the online? My strategy was always to arrange in person meetings as quickly as possible. That way I figured I’d know for sure and not waste too much time.
+1 for this strategy. Meet for coffee ASAP. Nine times out of ten, discover he’s super-boring. After thirty minutes, announce you have to walk the dog (if you don’t actually have one, you are now officially “dog-sitting”).
One time out of ten, enjoy the conversation enough to stick around for hours/suggest additional activities.
Oh thanks for the dogwalking/sitting excuse. That’s a hard one to argue with!
I like to do that too – I believe a lot in physical chemistry – but I try to pre-screen for as many red flags as I can first and I’m wondering if maybe I’m being a little overzealous in that regard.
Totally just an anecdote but I sort of met my man on OKC. Except that I’d already met him in a person few weeks before that. Our emails were mostly “what a crazy small world this is!” and we met for drinks and the rest is history. I had The Feeling the moment we met, but I’m 100% sure that I would have not picked him based on his profile/communication skills (so many red flags: confuses to/too; vegetarian; doesn’t like to read). And I would have seriously missed out; he’s pretty rad.
Aww, yay you guys! I’m trying to lighten up on my judging those things so that I don’t miss out on someone great either, but it’s difficult!
Yeah, pretty much my second question is, So when do you want to meet?
But do you do this with everyone? I want to do that with the GOOD people, but I don’t want to go on several dates per week. How do you choose which ones to meet?
If the profile looks good, I say go for it. Half of them never write back to actually set anything up, anyway. And I feel like you can’t tell if they are GOOD until you meet in person regardless. I’ve had some great emails with total duds.
I try to meet in person after a few messages. It’s much easier to tell if I’ll like someone when I meet them in person. I think some guys are maybe just not great conversationalists? Especially in my area, where they are all tech types.
Also they usually turn out to be boring in person too. That’s why I like meeting sooner rather than later, so I haven’t wasted too much time. But YMMV.
I find myself making the same excuses too, but then I get angry. Like, I have to be a witty conversationalist and attractive and all-around-awesome, and he can be practically monosyllabic and I give him a chance anyway because ‘maybe he’s better in person.’ And then they’re still boring and lazy.
(Didn’t mean to unload on you! I apparently have deeper feelings on this than I realized!)
haha don’t worry about it! I have been on tons of SUPER BORING first dates; I only just found someone that I wanted to keep dating and I had some of these reservations before we met and even after the first date. But now it’s been a few weeks and I’m pretty sure he IS just shy and not great at conversation. There are pleeeenty of other dudes who are just straight up boring, though.
Boring dates are the absolute worst. At least if the guy was horrible you’d have a story. With boring dates you just have “well, nothing much happened.” I can actually still go on for at least five minutes about one bizarrely boring date I went on- the guy had done plenty of interesting things- he just refused to talk about any of them. It was such a waste.
I feel like so many of my convos are like this! ‘So, do you like movies?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘… which ones?’ ‘Oh, you know, most of them…’
At that point, I just decide they’re spies, trying not to give conflicting information.
“So, do you like . . . stuff?”
I usually assume if a guy isn’t asking questions of his own, he’s either not that interested or boring. In the past I’ve asked those guys on dates still and it usually turns out they were: not that interested and/or boring! Basically if they can’t have a good conversation online, they probably can’t in person. Not all conversation will be like that, promise! It’s worth holding out!
That is what my instincts are telling me, so good to know they’re probably right!
I became a ruthless online dater after too many bad dates. Chatting online feel like putting teeth? No date for you. Seriously! If I’m talking with someone I’m excited to meet/date I’m putting my best foot forward. I figure any dude that I have to work that hard to have a conversation with either isn’t excited to meet/date me (goodbye!) or is completely incompatible (goodbye!).
Yes, THIS is what my brain is telling me and then part of me (society?) says ‘maybe you’re not being fair or open-minded enough.’ Ugh. Do the exciting conversations happen eventually, though?
Yeah, seconded, trust your instincts. Half the time someone you ARE excited about will be a lame duck in person, so at this point if I have any reservations pre-date I just don’t go. Exciting conversations do happen eventually! I mean, I’m kind of a hopeless angry misandrist who hates everyone when it comes to dating at this point, and even I have had some fun dating experiences and good sex off of Okc, if no lasting relationships.
Don’t do that to yourself! Go with your instinct! Chances are very good that you don’t need to be more open-minded. Boring convos are boring. Don’t go on dates with those guys, save yourself time & money.
The part of your brain telling you you’re not being fair or open-minded enough is the patriarchy! You know best who you are interested in meeting. “Because I’m not feeling it” is a valid reason to cut communication. “Because I’m not enjoying having a conversation with you” is like THE BEST reason to cut communication.
Are you fairly new to online dating? There are good dudes out there but if you haven’t chatted with one who’s a good match with you yet it’s super easy to blame yourself (I’m too picky, boring, etc) rather than realizing you just haven’t been clicking with anyone. It took me an embarrassingly long time but once I clicked with someone I suddenly realized that was how it felt when online dating is fun and working. Which made it a lot easier to recognize when it’s not fun and isn’t working so I could move on to find someone I worked better with.
I’ve dabbled in online dating for a few years, but I think I get discouraged pretty easily and give up. Your advice makes a lot of sense though and maybe this time I’ll stick with it long enough to actually ‘click’ with someone!
I want a poster on my wall that says that first sentence, because I spend SO MUCH TIME trying to ignore the part of my brain that says I’m not being fair enough. 🙂
For instance… our daughter made a friend at school, yay! And the friend’s mom seems like the sort of person we ought to really hit it off with because if you just made a list of some of her traits, she overlaps with some people here like 95%! But… we really just don’t like her. I mean, we like her enough that it is not hard to be civil with her during playdates and stuff and if her daughter & our daughter are BFF for the next decades, it’ll be fine. But this mom is not going to be our friend, because the person underneath those traits is not our kind of person.
How much time have we spent agonising over our horrible unfairness about this? TOO MUCH.
Saving that first line to use on my mom.
I agree with everyone else about trusting your instincts.
Some of the great OKC conversations that I’ve had have led to dud dates, but all of the good dates have come after great OKC conversations. All the tedious OKC conversations have led to tedious dates. Either they’re actually not that interested and ask you out anyway, or they’re just really awkward and closed off, or they just REALLY LOVE talking about themselves and ask you no questions, at all. Those are my favorite. Just sit back and let your eyebrows get higher and higher.
I can personally vouch that it’s also like that with women on OKC, at least some of the time. Or else there’s a nice initial conversation and then the message thread just fizzles out and goes nowhere. (I’m on the verge of deleting my account for the second time around; it just doesn’t seem to work for me.)
I’ve done the fade out on my end too. I think sometimes I expect the same kind of interest chemistry and conversation that happens in person and maybe isn’t really possible in online dating.
It’s not just “these guys” who are boring. A lot of dudes are boring. You don’t have to be interesting to be a dude! The world just comes to you to present its awesomeness at your feet, right? Grrr.
Written communication is important to me. If you can’t flirt and be funny in writing, I am never going to want to send you sexy/funny emails at work all day. Monosyllabic answers in writing or in person are a turn-off. If you’re like me, reject them with impunity and/or never reply.
On the flip side, if you don’t care about writing and messaging skills, I cosign the “meet sooner rather than later” directive proposed here.
Then again, I’ve made out with boring OKC dates just to get them to shut up and to then hustle them out of my car faster, so you should probably not ever listen to me re: romantic strategies.
*facepalm* I’ve totally done the ‘kiss him just to shut him up’ thing! And yes, I really value someone who can communicate – if we’re going to be serious, I want to be able to take you to a gathering with my friends and trust that you can hold a conversation without me hovering close by.
And I do get that vibe from some of them that they don’t need to put effort into chatting, because they’re dudes and I owe them my attention. Ugh.
Ugh indeed. Just…don’t engage with those ones. Your intuition is usually right.
I feel like a lot of PEOPLE I encounter EVERYWHERE in my life are like this. Like they never, ever ask any questions or show any interest. I used to think this was just me being too judgemental but then I went to the Toast Anniversary Party and was in a roomful of people who were actually interested in each other and wow, okay.
So yes, those guys are just boring. Or they are incredibly interesting and do not have the basic social skill of demonstrating their interest in the other person, which really comes down to the same thing. You deserve better!
I kind of do the opposite of everyone else’s suggestion, whenever I have done any online dating and/or just encountering people — I _much_ prefer to have extended email exchanges before considering meeting in person. When it comes to romantic/sexual attraction…if you can’t write well, it’s unlikely I will be interested for very long. (Plus I’m sort of a hermit, so I prefer to sustain my friendships/relationships via letter-writing on a regular basis, and only have the energy/desire to spend actual physical time with people on occasion.) But really, I actually ended what was an otherwise very enjoyable occasional casual sex situation with someone because he just could _not_ write an email or a text message worth a damn. It killed all the attraction for me, eventually. (I am probably the exception, though — most people prefer immediate physical/in-person assessments.)
Toastrons! I mentioned yesterday that I was talking to someone on OKC that seemed okay, right?
I CAN HAS DATE! We’re getting coffee Sunday night. Even though I don’t drink coffee and will probably get hot chocolate instead. I’m kinda stoked about that because lord, I haven’t been on a real date in eons. What do I wear? Should I wear makeup? I’m excited because he seems like a really genuine kind of person and also does stand-up comedy, but all the ‘favorite comedians’ he listed didn’t make me recoil in horror!
Cross yr fingers, y’all. I could use some good romantical thoughts. I’m just so much better at being in a relationship than dating.
Yaaaaaaay for dates! Congrats!
Wear what you usually wear, so you feel comfortable. My go-to first date outfit is usually jeans, a nice top, cool earrings, and a little bit of makeup. In my experience if I dress outside my normal style I just feel awkward and self-conscious.
I’ll be crossing my fingers for you! One of my favorite first date questions is: If you could choose between the superpowers of flight or invisibility, which would you choose? (shamelessly stolen from a John Hodgman bit on This American Life)
I am usually a pretty dress-y person, so I may just pull out my favorite dress and hope he doesn’t think I am dressing up TOO much. That’s just standard for me!
I will steal that one for certain, thank you and thank John Hodgman! My one coworker suggested asking if they would rather be stuck wearing clown makeup permanently or clown clothing permanently. I don’t know how that would work.
For the really ice-breaker-y, it’s “how did you get into your current line of work?” You get a little bit of personal history, and a snapshot into how they make decisions about one big part of their lives.
We seem to have been touching on that via text, so I may ask him to elaborate when we meet up – he is a very responsive texter, which is nice for me!
You can get through this dating nonsense and on to the relationship goodness! Excellent romantical thoughts coming your way. They’re little heart-shaped things so they’re not terribly aerodynamic but they’ll get there eventually.
<3 <3 <3
Yes, they look just like that! Keep an eye out.
I like to wear a little bit of make up on a first date, because I don’t generally wear make up and I feel like it helps me get into the right frame of mind for some reason. Being comfortable is definitely the most important thing though, so ymmv if make up feels like a hassle.
Good luck! Hope you have a lovely time.
We are crossing our fingers for you!
If wearing makeup makes you feel awesome, do it! If it makes you feel like you are dressing up for an interview or something, don’t!
WOOOOOO! I am so excited for you!!!!!
Thank you for all the piercing encouragement last week! Here’s my new tragus piercing:
It’s been a week, and it still hurts, but I don’t think it’s infected, so that’s good? I’m still considering getting my nipples pierced, though with how slowly I apparently heal, that might not be the best idea.
ALSO. Did any of you hear of the Naughty Girl Donuts story? Basically: 17-year-old entrepreneur and her pastry chef mom started a donut shop with a Rockabilly pinup theme, and despite all the awesome stuff they’re doing and all the money they’ve raised for charities, they’ve apparently been criticized for being “too sexy” or whatever. I’m not sure how legit that part of the news story is, but this girl sounds awesome, so tomorrow I am mini-roadtripping out with a friend and buying some sweet-looking donuts.
It’ll hurt for a bit! Keep it clean and it’ll stay uninfected.
That said, IT LOOKS AWESOME, congratulations on joining the tragus club and additional congrats on your excellent face/lipstick situation.
HOORAY!! I’m glad you went with a tragus – they’re adorable and great and it looks fabulous on you. 🙂 See how you heal with that one and then maybe move on to bigger and more nipply things!
teehee nipply is a great word
That looks great and also your lipstick is PERFECT on you!
Thank you! I think it’s Revlon’s Love That Pink, which is weirdly not that pink.
Beautiful piercing! I have the same with a small hoop going on ten years and will probably have it forever. Can’t wait to be a badass senior lady rocking it.
Also, I want a donut.
I like it! Also you have a lovely profile/face.
yes, porcelain/serene profile… +10 points.
Looks so good! Mine hurt for a few weeks, mostly because I kept answering the phone on that side and slamming the phone into my ear.
Love! I also have a tragus piercing and I kind of feel awesome every time I look at it. I’m sure the piercer told you this, but soak in warm saltwater twice a day, don’t play with it, and if you’re a side-sleeper, try the other side or get a little donut pillow to keep your ear off the pillow (I used a small rolled towel with the ends tied together).
I wouldn’t have thought of that pillow thing! I am unfortunately an “every way” sleeper, so I sleep on both sides, my stomach, and my back pretty much every night. I keep accidentally rolling over and squishing my piercing and waking myself up. I’m gonna try this with a hand towel tonight!
I’m drinking fizzy water too! Because I got too drunk last night and fell on my face and scratched my glasses. Also my boyfriend was a giant asshole to me this morning (probably because of the last night thing) and kind of… kicked me out of my own apartment? I was leaving for work and grabbed my keys and he starts yelling at me like “Oh, you’re taking the keys? Where am I supposed to go? You’re just going to pull a disappearing act and I won’t see you until Sunday”. So I left them for him. I wish I had been awake for more than 15 minutes and actually had said something back to him. Like “I don’t know, get a job, find a home?”. Fucking freeloading dick.
Also I HATED mustard as a child and now I love it.
As one that has entirely too many men live off of me – kick that shit to the curb now. If he isn’t busting his ass to be the perfect houseboy while unemployed, then he’s just using you. Don’t let lack of a place for him to go hold you back, either – his problem, not yours.
Whyyyyyyyyyyyyyy do I keep getting freeloading boyfriends? Is there a “SUCKER” tattoo on my forehead that everyone can see but me? The weird thing is that they don’t start out that way, the last three had jobs and homes when I started dating them, but then that all went away. Oh my god what if I’m just ruining people’s lives and then dumping them when I get sick of trying to help them?
Men are The Worst, is why. I mean, what did he expect you to do, just leave the keys to your own place for his convenience?
hahahaha I actually totally did that. And now I want to tell work I have a doctor’s appointment and go home because I feel like crap and I can’t. Because I don’t have keys. To my own apartment.
>>>>>>>SUCKER<<<<<<<<< :-/
Not a sucker, just a nice, sleep-deprived person. (let me know if you want me to come by & loom menacingly at him; or, if shit gets weird, let me know if you want to hang out on my couch for a night or two)
I had to struggle through all of these thoughts, too. The line between “did I do this to myself” and “why am I attracting manipulative fuckers” wavers. I’m currently in a relationship that has echoes of past ones, but is healthy, and isn’t abusing the privilege of ME. But, I’m also super-paranoid of anything that smacks of taking advantage, which can make it rough on him. But, we are a team, he works, but makes 25% of what I do. We split bills on % basis, and share all yard/house/life work equally. He goes out of his way to make sure I know I’m treasured. That’s what it’s supposed to be like (I think?).
You may be attracted to a certain type of fellow, but there are many variations on the theme. Just because the ones that you’ve met to date have ended up taking advantage, doesn’t mean that they all will. And as time goes on, you’ll get better at seeing the signs of manipulation faster, and kick it to the curb more effectively. You are not responsible for the choices they make that abusing your giving, but you are responsible for making sure that you don’t leave yourself more vulnerable than you need to. (NOTE: this may be only true for me, but it seems to hold with others that I’ve talked to) I think that there is a degree of PTSD/go-with-what-you-know going on, as well. We are drawn to the familiar, even when it’s unhealthy. Over time, you learn to recognize the attributes that draw you, can determine if you want them in your life, and act accordingly. I stayed with one guy a year past when I came to despise him, because I knew he would literally end up on the street if I kicked him out. He did, but within 3 months had found another woman/sucker. I could have been happy and guilt-free for an entire year of my life, but wasted it on that shit. Ugh.
Sorry if this rambled a bit, or pushed anyone’s buttons, but I get a little worked up.
Friday Gaming Thread! What are you folks playing this weekend?
I’m doing co-op Borderlands 2 with the husband, and trying a little Dark Souls. However, I came here today to talk about Hatoful Boyfriend, the pigeon dating simulator which was finally re-released on Steam. “Wait a second Bourne,” you say, “You didn’t mean to say ‘pigeon’ there, did you?” No, anonymous commenter, I *DID* mean to say pigeon.
It’s Japanese otome-style dating game, where you are the first human student at a prestigious pigeon academy. Over the course of the school year, you can sweetly romance various pigeons and morning doves and quails, including *gasp!* the teacher. Each of them has their own little arc, some of which are silly, some of which are surprisingly sweet. It’s the strangest little game I’ve ever played, and it’s amazing.
And then suddenly it went to a very dark place.
If you play it, play it to get multiple endings, and play with no spoilers.
Omg I want to play Hatoful Boyfriend so much! I am going to get it off Steam asap.
Dooo eeeeet. Also, advice. Once you’ve gotten a bunch of endings (like, with most of the main characters), make sure to start a new game rather than continuing from an earlier save. That’s when the weird stuff starts happening!
You posted before I could finish my post :). I’ve been on a big Diablo 3: Reaper of Souls kick (just got it). It is much improved from D3’s release.
Someday I’ll actually get around to playing D3 – it sounds like it’s all gone to being a rather excellent game! Though Torchlight 2 may already have filled the ARPG-shaped hole in my heart…
I would recommend it now, when it first came out I was highley disappointed with it. But they have improved things a lot, and I really like the expansion act’s themes and locations.
I got the unlimited demo to SSB for the 3DS so I’ve been playing that. It’s fun so far!
BUT HATOFUL BOYFRIEND OH MY GOD I AM SO INTRIGUED BY THAT CONSTANTLY. Like, no spoilers, but Shuu’s route…whoa.
You know, it’s weird – Shuu was the only one I didn’t complete (well, and Anghel too, I suppose). Mostly because I got to the “Hateful” arc before I finished his story, and it felt weird to go back. I like knowing that there’s still some batshittery left over for when I really need it, though.
oh my god it is nothing but pure batshittery, you will LOVE it.
Eeeeee!
AHHH co-op Borderlands 2 is so much fun! Do you have the Tiny Tina expansion? IT IS THE BEST.
My gaming update is that I plan on buying a budget gaming laptop this weekend so I can finally have my very own gaming platform for the first time ever! I have always just played on systems purchased by other people (significant others, friends) prior to this. My husband bought me the Legendary edition of Skyrim as encouragement.
I want to try this pigeon dating simulator now.
We DO have the Tiny Tina expansion! Thanks to the glory of Steam sales, we both have the Game of the Year edition. Sooooo much DLC. We just started, so we’re still in the main story, but it’s been such a blast so far. (Co-op car driving/gunning!!! Moar plz!!!)
Also, having your own gaming machine is AMAZING. Have you done Skyrim on PC before? And are you gonna mod it huh huh huh?
Once you’re done with the main story, definitely do Tiny Tina’s DLC! There are all sorts of fantastic jokes, including some Downton Abbey ones.
Also, I am totally going to mod Skyrim once I get this PC. I’ve only ever played on PS3, which is like the anti-mod platform. (We always got the DLC much later than everyone else..)
Okay, the Downton Abbey jokes have sold me on this. We’ll head to Tiny Tina next!
PC Gamer did a pretty good guide to the best Skyrim mods out there, with some tips for how to get started. I’m a big fan of using the Skyrim Nexus Mod Manager, since it gives the most control over how stuff gets loaded (and lets you launch with the SKSE script extender). Steam Workshops is quite easy to use, though, and less intimidating to start with. Just go searching through files, too – there are so many great armor and cosmetic and creature mods (although, sadly, many of the modders seem incapable of producing anything but bikini armor and lingerie >_<).
Also, a slightly more advanced thing. Applying an ENB – essentially, a bunch of cinematic post-processing effects – is the fastest way to get the game to look *really* amazing. BUT it’s also the fastest way to totally kill performance and frame rate. So I recommend it mostly if you want to go totally crazy taking screenshots (or are extra-confident with your computer), rather than just having fun with the game. The best mods are the ones that make gameplay and the UI better! Like, having more than one follower at once!
Ooooh thank you! The only mods I really know about came form lurking on r/skyrim 2+ years ago, so they include: the one where you can kill kids, and the one that turns spiders into bears.
JUST REMEMBERED: have you played the Elder Scrolls MMO??
I have not! MMOs tend to terrify me (I’m very much a singleplayer kind of girl). However, I do kind of want to try it at some point, if only to see what the other territories of Tamriel look like, such as the Summerset Isles… Is it any good?
I don’t know! I haven’t tried it yet, I still have to buy a gaming rig.
Btw, I am in full-on indeciison mode with this! I am trying to decide between the Lenovo Y50 and the ASUS ROG G56JK. Both are at the price point I’d like, but according to the reviews the screens are terrible.. but I’m trying to tell myself it’s for a given value of “terrible” and usually compared against Alienware.
I want to play that game so much.
As for me, I’m playing Bravely Default. The only thing I hate is the stupid title (imo). EVERYTHING ELSE IS PURE LOVE.
When I played the Bravely Default demo (which didn’t have voiced dialogue) I thought Ringabel was a girl with a bitching haircut. I thought it was so cool that she had a different armor design than Edea and what’s her face for the same jobs. I thought it was super cool that the game had a 3:1 female to male character ratio.
And then I played the full game. Sad trombone.
I played a lot of Destiny this week. I 100% agree with all the criticisms of the shallowness of the game but… I still really enjoy playing it. It’s weird. I also love the theory floating around that The Traveler is evil and you are actually playing as the bad guy. The fact that people can’t talk to me is a plus is my book, even though everyone else seems to hate it. I also want to work on some of my Wii U games (most of the way through Wind Waker, on the bonus levels of Mario 3D World, at the beginning of Wonderful 101) but I will probably continue to play Destiny.
And maybe I will finally finish Guacamelee.
I loved Borderlands 2. I only regret that I played through it the first time with Zer0 – he is a bitch to play until you beat Captain whatever his name is on the Southern Shelf and then he is really underpowered in TVH mode if you use the sniper build instead of the melee build, which I did. I played through again with Gaige and loved her, even though I usually prefer sniper characters.
Yeah, I’d heard similar things about Zer0, which is why I’m happy that my husband has really taken to him and doesn’t want to play anything else. I was kind of confused how to play Salvador until I finally unlocked the special Gunzerker mode, and now everything is amazing. How can I not love a character where one skill tree is called “RAMPAGE” and where another tree has a final ability with a raised middle finger icon and the name “Come At Me Bro.”
I just finished Hatoful Boyfriend earlier this week and that game goes some fucking places, let me tell you (but not any fucking places, it ain’t like that). Afterwards, I kept trying to explain it to my husband, “And then it gets really weird” and he was like “Yes, this is where your pigeon dating sim gets weird.” And I was just like “man, no. seriously. you have no idea.”
They did a giantbomb quick look of it and Okosan just confused the dude so much.
Which, if he’d seen Okosan’s end… would still be the case. Wtf Okosan.
I thought Okosan’s “true” ending was the weirdest thing I’d encounter in that game.
I was so wrong.
just the very fact that Hatoful Boyfriend exists makes me so, so happy. God bless.
I picked up my Baldur’s Gate save after a many-months-long hiatus and am having a grand old time. So happy they released the Enhanced Edition for Mac.
Aw man, I have the BG2:EE sitting and waiting to play on Steam too. Gotta find time to play it between Dragon Age and Pillars of Eternity coming out this Fall. Suddenly there are too many RPGs coming out at once, and it’s amazing!
Have you checked out Divinity: Original Sin on Steam? kind of an old-school Baldur’s gate style turned based RPG. I found it a lot of fun, immediately started another play-through after beating it the first time, and I never do that (usually have to wait a bit before playing through again).
I loooooooooooved Divinity. Put a good 50 hours into it, and should really go back and finish it at some point (50 hours is usually my limit on any game before I start burning out, regardless of quality). The combat is so much fun, the jokes are delightfully stupid, and my mage walked around with a bucket on his head for like half the game. By the time I had arranged a marriage between two kitties, I knew I was in love. Probably my favorite new game this year so far.
I had to do another plathrough to try “Lone Wolf” with both the mains, so I had no companions. Really fun game.
I’m trying Divinity right now but I’m finding it a bit clunky and dull. The writing is fun though so I should maybe stick with it.
It took me a little while to get into it at first, and figure out what I should be doing. It really doesn’t hold your hand in the beginning, and I spent a while in that first town not knowing what to do, and being kind of bored running around talking to people. Plus you start out really under geared and so die easily and take forever to kill guys.
But once I got some decent gear, and my characters had a better variety of spells, I found it to be a lot more fun. It is cool to find nice combos to do, like using someone with aerothurge spells to teleport enemies right next to your melee character, so they don’t waste AP on moving around.
This game would be fun to play with a friend I think, but someone who has already played through the game once.
I’m enjoying making my characters disagree on EVERY DECISION! I’m riiiight at the start and I’m supposed to be investigating some guy’s murder aaand…I can’t even find the tavern. I really wish I could move the characters around with the arrow buttons – constantly clicking where I want them to be is frustrating.
Yeah sometimes waiting for your characters to run allll the way across town gets a little old.
I highly recommend that if you get bored solving that murder, just run out of town a bit (in places where you can reasonable survive) and get in some fights. I didn’t even solve the murder in my first play through until I’d cleared half the surrounding area. You don’t really have to do anything in the game in order except for the fact that the areas / enemies definitely do not scale, so you can end up some places way above your ability to survive.
Also I cheated and looked at walkthroughs at some points ’cause sometimes the game can be terribly vague about what to do next, and then there are the puzzles with the mostly invisible buttons they you have to hit in a certain order without any hints on what that order is.
I’m nearing the end of BG1 (well, nearer than I ever got in my original, non-EE run – you’re talking to a girl who has never actually beaten a video game), but once I’m done I’m totally going to import my mage into BG2 and wreak some (chaotic good) havoc. 😀
Pigeonation’s is a dark place.
I’m playing Guacamelee and SWtOR with my dude. I am terrible at both but we have waaaay fun so it evens out? And MMOs are okay when they have real story and I don’t have to talk to strangers.
Also, Shuu forever. <3
Amen to that. Talking to strangers is the worst. But co-op with loved ones is amazing, even when it’s just flailing (see: my own gaming abilities). Must convince my husband to buy a second copy of Dragon Age this fall, so as to play MP together.
I still need to get Destiny ! but no one I know has an xbox one. Everyone has ps4. Before, I got a PS3 and everyone i knew had an xbox. It’s like they are purposefully avoiding me
I don’t get how anyone ever manages to play co-op with their friends in online games, between needing to have the same platform and the difficulty of managing schedules…
This game sounds so silly in the best way and intriguing, even though I normally don’t play dating sims.
I’ve rediscovered how much I love Kingdom of Loathing this week! Every few months I always go back to it and find more and more interesting and hilarious quests to complete.
They’re not really my thing either, but the tropes being parodied are pretty universal (“shy nerd boy,” “hot rich foreign student,” etc.), and the humor and weirdness transcends genre. Someday I’ll finally check out KoL along with Fallen London and all the other excellent games folks recommend here…
If I ever, ever get through the queues on the servers, I’ll be playing Archeage. But if that doesn’t work, obviously I need to try Hatoful Boyfriend.
swtor just got housing, and in between missions, I’ve been decorating Micaw’s Nar Shaddaa Sky Palace. It is hilariously fun. For complicated game reasons, there is incentive to fill up as much of the house with furnishings as quickly as you can. I made a chair forest in one room, with the idea that it should look like a lecture hall where everyone had to leave quickly. Unfortunately, you cannot place the chairs tipped over, but I did the best I could, and it does look like a lecture hall. Even people who come into the ‘sky palace’ without knowing my plan have commented that ‘this looks like a lecture hall that got interrupted’. I am absurdly pleased.
Also, you can place your characters’ companions (republic and imperial, even next to each other) in some of the slots, so I have also been devising little tableaus that put the companions in situations that fit their backstories. It’s been very fun, surprisingly so, since I don’t usually enjoy player housing options, and prefer to just go do quests and missions.
In odd moments while I’m working at home, I am also still playing ‘a dark room’, which is a throwback to the olden days of zorkish type games. It works ok for a 5 min break then back to what I *should* be doing.
More games need to incorporate interior decorating. The new Dragon Age apparently lets you renovate and style your own castle, and I am so there when that comes out.
I am so into this. In the Fables, I buy all kinds of furniture whenever I have a discount just so I can redecorate the homes I rent out. I don’t even need to tell you my feels about Skyrim houses, although I miss the Morrowind-style gravity that allowed me to collect rare clutter and display it at will around the house I adopted from that guy in Al’druhn.
oh man me and my friend played borderlands 2 for like 6 hours last week but it didn’t save my friends character and she leveled up to like 12 so that was a bummer. But it’s super fun! I’m also playing Dragon Age Origins as an elf rogue and it’s been v fun. I borrowed my friends xbox for a little bit, so these are all his games technically. But I also just got the power cord I ordered for my gamecube and I’m going to try to get twilight princess from another friend to play that. Yay games!
I am playing Dragon Age Origins as well! As an elf rogue! We are twins.
(But I am playing on casual mode because I just want to plow through it and then plow through DAII so I can play Inquisition not THAT long after it comes out. I didn’t have an Xbox until like two years ago and therefore missed everything.)
yes I sometimes switch it to casual if I keep dying in the same battle. I also enjoy making my character say misandrist things and kill men that don’t need to be killed.
I’m playing Dragon Age for the first time! I just got to Redcliffe and am liking it so far! Also I chose a female elf warrior as a class and boy was that opening story super upsetting!
Dalish or City? Because BOTH stories are upsetting, albeit for different reasons… (If it’s the City Elf, it actually had the dubious distinction of ending up in the most recent Tropes vs Women video!)
I had to take a sadness break after the City Elf origin for my lady.
Same!!! I almost stopped playing tbh. Thankfully the tone of the game seems to be…if not lighter, at least less aggressively dominated by violence against women.
City, and I was not surprised to see it in the Tropes video.
For realsies. The only plus side is that the game doesn’t just brush the incident under the rug, and it explores Shianni and the other characters later on. So while it’s disappointingly “gritty”, it’s not just a fridging.
I went to look at Dragon Age and it looks gorgeous but also only available for pre-order? Is there a different site other than dragonage.com?
Aaah, that’s the new one coming out this fall (#3 in the series!), and it does indeed look drop-dead gorgeous. The first one, Dragon Age: Origins, is about five years old now and can be purchased on Steam or Amazon etc. It’s not nearly as pretty as the new one, but it’s a terribly awesome game.
Sweet! Thanks toastron!
You are most welcome, toastandrist!
Also playing for the first time! As a Dalish elf rogue, though, which seems to have a much less upsetting origin story than others. Lucky me, I guess?
Lately I’ve been playing Mario 3D World. I just got to the special worlds, and am having so much fun! I only recently bought my 3DS, so I have a lot of good games to catch up on (so far I’ve played Animal Crossing and Fire Emblem: Awakening). Next I will probably play Link between Worlds, because the Nintendo e-shop had a sale on smash bros. related games so I bought it.
And now I have to go and purchase Hatoful Boyfriend. So I am totally set for what to do while I fly to places next week.
I just downloaded Halo: Reach because it is free on Xbox Gold this month. (I have Xbox Gold primarily for Netflix purposes but I LOVE GETTING FREE GAMES EVERY MONTH.) Has anyone played it? Except for this free business, I am verrrry slowwww to try out new games–although once I find one I love I play it ad infinitum, c.f. Mass Effect–and although I feel like Halo games have always been on the edge of my consciousness, I know very little about the series.
I LOVE Halo Reach. It is probably my favorite out of the whole series. It’s beautiful and there’s a lot of feels that I don’t really want to spoil for you. The only caveat is that it is a prequel to Halo 1, so you might be a little lost as to all the details, but there is a Halopedia if you want more info. The intro to ODST is the perfect summation of the Halo series to me: “The year is 2552. Humanity is at war with an alien alliance known as The Covenant. And we are losing.”
I also love that you can choose a female Spartan, since the Halo expanded universe is filled with powerful women. Youtube “Deliver Hope” for the live action Halo Reach trailer, which is pretty damn cool.
I have a lot of Reach feels.
That is a very persuasive recommendation! I’ll try it out soon and report back to a future gaming thread.
I will probably be reading the whole Halopedia anyway, as that is how I roll, and probably contributes to my deep and slow pace of my game obsessions.
I really enjoy the Halo universe, although I wish a little bit more of it bled into the campaigns of the games themselves. They are definitely soldier-hero-men saving the world on the surface, but there’s a lot of interesting things behind the scenes, such as the question of whether the good guys’ humanity saving programs constitute war crimes, how easy it is to unite warring factions under a single banner when there’s a common enemy to fight, the lives of artificial intelligence, etc.
I’m trying to work up the nerve to finish my most recent Mass Effect 3 playthrough. My Shepard romanced Kaidan but let him die on Virmire and then romanced Thane, so it’s been a wild emotional ride.
Aw honey. I am so sorry! Bad luck Shepard!
I feel that. I just started a new playthrough of ME2 and I’m considering some grisly options–fail to help Thane with his ME2 mission so that his story ends in the Collector Base, or lose Thane to Kepral’s again?
If the latter, the Citadel DLC allows you to invite Kolyat for a memorial service and FEEL ALL THE FEELS. If not, I am not sure what happens.
Finally played Papers Please. Finished yesterday and I still feel dirty. What a incredible and weird game, sort of a “banality of evil” simulator. Few times I felt so emotionally invested and had actually experienced guilt while playing a game (except when procrastinating, which is almost always, but that has nothing to do with the game itself).
This first time I played mostly like myself. Gonna start a new playthrough, this time as Arstotzkan True Believer.
Glory to Arstotzka!
Glory to Cobrastan!
I still haven’t finished this all the way through but it was a very interesting game.
Can I still comment here in the gaming thread if I haven’t been able to stop playing Animal Crossing: New Leaf since I got my 2DS back in June? It doesn’t feel very gamer-y, but I’m a few days away from the golden watering can and my town is awesome.
Oranges are my native fruit but I have all the other kinds if anyone wants to play. My friend code is 2337 5253 3982. I’m usually in game between 7 pm and 11 pm PT. You can email your friend code to blunderbusst at gmail if you like.
I’ll go back over in the Not A Real Gamer corner now.
You can decidedly comment and it is most encouraged!
Oh man…someday I really need to buy a 2/3/whateverDS and get in on that AC:NL action…
Yay! And thank you!
The 2DS was a surprise gift and it is lovely. Go get one! It’s weird and uncommon and nice to hold and completely devoid of all the 3D-ness that gives me a headache. The new Animal Crossing is HUGE compared to its predecessors, and (IMO) other fans of the franchise will find it as delightful as I do.
Plus, Zelda: A Link Between Worlds. To which I will return as soon as I get that damned watering can.
Whatevs, you play games, you are a gamer. 🙂
I really loved Animal Crossing on the Game Cube (so, a long time ago) and being able to play more Animal Crossing was the only upside DS have for me. I am really stingy about buying machines though (pls reference the fact that I am only buying my first gaming platform this weekend) but that would be the game I’d get off the bat if I had one.
DO IT. It’s too fun.
Also, if someone wants to talk to you about #gamersgate, just call it by its true name: #themanchildrenscrusade. I’m trying to make it stick.
I finally signed up for Steam just to play Hatoful Boyfriend and then I’ve only played for about a half hour since I’ve been getting home from work late the last week or so. I’m hoping to play it more this weekend.
On my commute I’ve been alternating between Fire Emblem: Sacred Stones (started a while back and never finished it) and Professor Layton vs Phoenix Wright (which I’m enjoying quite a bit, though there are far too many dialog boxes that are just “…………”)
As for my food that I couldn’t stand as a kid but now love, bell pepper. Especially red bell pepper. nom nom nom
I still can’t do tomatoes outside of ketchup or onions, though I think the latter is actually an allergy.
Plumbers are currently at the house so maybe today we’ll be able to do the gigantic pile of dishes that has backed up! Constricted water use has allowed for showers and bathroom use, but no dishes or laundry.
Also there are houseguests that aren’t mine staying this weekend. *grumpy face*
Dirtbag family time: my sister texted me yesterday to tell me that apparently the plumber left the hot water off in the house for two days, but nobody realized because nobody had showered.
In books, I am just over halfway through Lois McMaster Bujold’s Shards of Honour and I love it so much I want to marry it and have ordered the second book. Why did no one tell me about her before, and are her books always so hilarious?? I love Cordelia!!!
Cordelia is the best, and the next book is even better. I’m right there with you on wishing I’d discovered Lois McMaster Bujold earlier (which is totally my fault, since my mom bought me that book for my 16th birthday and it sat on my shelf for a decade before I finally read it)
Your mum is the best.
Totally. And I am the worst.
Cordelia is the best.
My favorite character, though, was quite a slow burn. I didn’t realize how much I loved him until literally the last book in the series.
Is that the last book forever??
I hope not!
I am not sure when it clicked for me but yes I love him too. Although our favourite for *obvious* reasons is Mark. 🙂
Mark is why I skipped Cetaganda until near the end of my read-through – I wanted to know more about him after Mirror Dance so I skipped right to Memory. And then Mark didn’t play too much of a role in Memory.
Check out Elizabeth Moon’s space heroines, as well, if you like Cordelia.
I’m slowly working my way through the Vorkosigan Saga and it is well worth it. Labyrinth is next on my list!
Shards of Honour is wonderful and it is also the very first novel she wrote (it started as fanfic) which means dear reader you are in for a treat because they JUST GET BETTER.
Her books are often so hilarious, even when they are very, very dark.
Bujold is amazing and I also love Cordelia.
A warning though – the books after Barrayar are also great, but they are about the next generation, and it took me a couple of tries to get into them, because Not Enough Cordelia.
Toasties! What cultural-type things have you enjoyed doing recently/are looking forward to doing soon?
Last weekend, B (my girlfriend) and I went to the Mid-Autumn festival in Chinatown…just as it started raining buckets and everything closed down. We soothed our disappointment with sesame balls as big as our hands and wandered over to the Museum of American Jewish History, which neither of us had been to before and was perfectly lovely. And in about a week, we’ll be meeting a friend in NYC for a long weekend of museum-going and theatre (originally, we were just going to one show, but oops, now we have front-row seats to Les Mis, too), which I’m very excited about.
Wait! Are you a Philly area Toastie too?
The cultural event I’m looking forward to Opera Philadelphia’s free broadcast of the Opening Night of the first opera of the season (This year it is The Barber of Seville) which is happening on Independence Mall next Saturday night. It’s a really nice time (assuming it doesn’t rain) – bring a blanket and a picnic basket, and watch opera (on a Jumbotron) under the stars. It’s totally “come as you are”, very community-oriented and accessible to all levels of familiarity with opera (from “none” to “expert”).
(More info, if you want it: http://www.operaphila.org/operaonthemall )
Hey, Philadelphians! I just Fringe Arts’d myself to my Fringe heart’s content. Sort of recapped here if anyone’s wondering what shows to see this very last weekend.
If you’re Phillian and you don’t see much theater, I’m happy to advise. It’s a vibrant, eclectic scene, and much of it is pretty accessible pricewise. Ex. ToThisLand, would you be interested in Philadelphia Opera Collective? Loved their Frankenstein show last week.
Oh man, I completely forgot about the Last 5 Years performance (it was just down the street from me, too!). As it is, B and I are running the play discussion group for our church, so we’ll be seeing so much of the Philly theatre scene, I almost don’t mind.
Your recommendations sound great! (I’m sorry that there looks like I missed all the performances of The Last Five Years, because I love that musical too.) I had been semi-aware of Philly Fringe going on, but hadn’t really looked into it. Although I’m pretty busy this weekend, I might try to fit in something Sunday night 🙂 It’s good to see that the prices on many of the events are affordable too – there are so many cool things to do in Philly, but I have limited resources to attend all the events I would like.
The Frankenstein opera sounds bonkers, but could be interesting!
I am! Hello hello, I was sure there were more of us out here. 🙂 I’m actually an opera novice (I’ve seen…two?), but Jumbotron opera sounds fantastic (especially Barber of Seville!). Do they do it for other performances, too, or just the opening of the season? I’ll be in NYC next weekend, alas.
It’s only for the opening of the season, unfortunately! But they have been doing it for four (?) years now, so look out for it again next year. The opera company usually tends to pick a familiar/accessible opera for the first one of the year, and have lots of educational info about it. Last year was a slight exception, since they did Verdi’s Nabucco (which is slightly obscure), but they put things together to really tie it into the whole thread of Jewish history over the centuries (and also the opera’s contemporary role in the foundation of modern-day unified Italy).
I’m sorry you will miss Barber of Seville (but it sounds like you have some awesome stuff lined up for your NYC trip)!
Also, FYI: even if you can’t afford to attend the opera on a regular basis, you can still sign up go to their “A Taste of Opera” lecture/free mini-concert, which they usually schedule for a Sunday afternoon slightly before a new production opens. They give an talk all about the opera (which is usually quite funny), and excerpts are performed from the opera by Curtis students &/or performers with smaller roles in the opera who get to sing part of a leading role they hope to someday have.
Ooh, this is excellent to know! Thanks for sharing the info.
Oh dang, I was at that! I was manning one of the Lions in the Lion Dance, and also our kung fu demonstration got rained out! Hiiiiiiiii!
Hiiiii! I was really sad to miss out on everything, and now that I know a Toastie would’ve been one of the lions, I’m extra-disappointed. Do you guys do performances/demonstrations throughout the year?
Yeah, we do lion dance for almost everything — there’s only two groups that do lion dance in the whole city I think, so we bring those suckers out for parades, weddings, restaurant openings, holidays, whichever. There’s actually a parade tomorrow for China’s birthday (I won’t be in that one, though), and another I think next month for Taiwan’s birthday (lion dance knows no politics, apparently).
Oh, I am reminded!
If you like art and/or photography and such, my friend is running this thing in West Philadelphia, and there is an open house tonight:
http://www.westphillylocal.com/2014/09/19/the-art…
Books on my nightstand: Bad Feminist; Eleanor & Park; Middlemarch; Where’d You Go, Bernadette
Books I am currently reading: A Friday Night Lights Companion: Love, Loss, and Football in Dillon, Texas
What’s on everyone’s reading list this weekend?
I’ve been watching Frankenstein, MD on PBS’s Youtube channel, so I’m finally getting around to reading my thrift-store copy of Frankenstein.
How are you liking Frankenstein, MD? I really enjoy LDB and Emma Approved, but I’ve read those books so it landed well with me. I watched the first couple episodes of Frankenstein, MD and I really liked Victoria, but I haven’t gotten back to it yet.
It’s quite good! They’ve just gotten to the bit where Victoria decides to re-animate the corpse, so I’m ready for her single-minded pursuit of extreme science to go even further over the top.
As a side note, if you loved LBD and EA, I’ve really been enjoying Nothing Much to Do. It’s an adaptation of Much Ado about Nothing set in a New Zealand high school. I feel like they actually do a better job of making the videos feel properly in-world than Pemberly Digital has manged to do post-LBD. Both EA and (especially) Frankenstein, MD post things online that wouldn’t really make sense in the real world. The NMtD characters, by contrast, use their YouTube channels in a way that feels very similar to the way real high school kids would. Plus, the acting and the accents are both lovely.
That super appeals to me! Thanks for the rec!
I really need to read Gertrude and Claudius (it was lent to me by a friend who really wants to discuss it) but I just got We Have Always Lived In The Castle in the mail and I reeeeeally wanna read that instead.
I’m reading the new Jack Reacher and it’s just flawless. SO dumb.
Currently rotating between the second Outlander book, a bio of Peter the Great, and The Two Towers (having a kindle is both a blessing and a curse).
Also I have a bunch of reading to do for school this weekend about ethnic identity and nationalism and whatever.
Double fisting Bad Feminist and Mark Kurlansky’s Salt: A World History. Plus, like, all the Destiel fic as usual.
I have one more chapter left in A Fine and Private Place, which I’ve enjoyed but not as much as I’d hoped (considering how much I love The Last Unicorn, I mean). Next up is… undecided, but the Emotionally Devastating Post a couple days ago has definitely inspired me to pick up Code Name Verity this weekend.
The Emotionally Devastating Post inspired me to reread Code Name Verity over the past couple of days, and I can confirm it is just as devastating as I remembered.
I just bought 2 AM at the Cat’s Pajamas by Marie-Helene Bertino, Women In Clothes by Sheila Heti and 600 others, and The Paying Guests by Sarah Waters. Excited!
I just picked up Jo Walton’s newest book, My Real Children, from the library yesterday and so far it’s been interesting. I also got a book on the history of teenagers/youth culture because I watched the documentary based on it and wanted to find out more.
And also I really need to finish this volume of Hellblazer before it’s due back. I had to request it from another library and their lending period is irritatingly short.
I am currently reading The Devil in The White City and next on my list is Hangsaman by Shirley Jackson. I’m a very seasonal reader: Fall is for creepy/murder/detective things, Winter is for biographies, Spring is for Classics (mostly 19th Century fiction, because its the best) and Summer is for contemporary fiction. Does anyone else sort their reading by seasons or is that a weird thing I do?
We do some of our reading by the seasons! We tend to read series detective fiction every fall (different series every year although we have gone through some Christie twice) and start some big serious classics in the winter and more contemporary stuff in the spring and then light fluffy genre stuff in the summer. Although it is not cut-and-dried since all year around we run into random things and decide to read them, or someone gets obsessed (Cassandra I am looking at you and the TWELVE BOOKS on Rupert Brooke) with something and goes to town on it.
I read some quote by a Chinese author 320945 years ago which laid out the reading for the seasons and it was very elegant. If I can find it when I get home tonight I’ll post it for you. 🙂
I was just thinking today how excited I am for fall so I can start reading creepy things! (We Have Always Lived In The Castle, The Secret History, Rebecca…)
I’m reading Mortal Gods by Bonnie Quinn (Not to be confused with a different Mortal Gods that’s actually getting a fair bit of publicity right now). And after that, I’m not sure–I have to return library books tomorrow, so I’ll probably end up with another armful of “Whatever the library has that I have on my to-read list.”
Bernadette! The beach house we stayed at last summer had a copy of that lying around, and I somehow convinced myself that it was an enjoyable piece of beach-y nonsense. But the more time that goes by, the more I’m realizing what a super awesome little read it really was.
I’m here to testify that it can both be read while sitting on sand and also it will find the feels.
Yes! That was honestly my most surprising read of 2014 so far. It was such a gem in a way I completely did not expect it to be. So funny but also so … generous, to its characters? Loved it.
This excites me! I picked it up because I read the first 5 pages on a whim in the store, and it was the paperback, on sale. I’m glad it’s good!
Bedtime reading: Douglas Adams and John Lloyd’s The Meaning of Liff, the funniest thing ever. A much better bedtime read than the previous few, Bluebeard (Vonnegut), All Quiet on the Western Front (Remarque), and Elective Affinities (Goethe), all of which were depressing, and unconducive to sleep and happy dreams.
For non-bedtime reading, I’m going to finish Alice Oswald’s beautiful and haunting Memorial.
Just finished Annihilation (not impressed), just started Ancillary Justice (already in the middle and much enjoying it). I’m deep into a newly-discovered love for science fiction, so next up will be Labyrinth (from the Vorkosigan saga) or the Women Destroy Science Fiction special issue of Lightspeed.
I have read all your to-read list except Middlemarch (I KNOW, the shame), and I can guarantee there is no bad option there. All feelings-y, thoughtful loveliness.
I just finished Untold and will be starting either To Say Nothing of the Dog or We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves this weekend.
Middlemarch has been on the nightstand since… March? A long time, and every time I finish one book I never feel like I have the energy to start on that one. Maybe once winter sets in?
May We Be Forgiven. So dark, but the writing is amazing and I think I might truly love it. Just a question: I’m on about page 200 or so, is there ever a chapter break? I’ve never sped through a book so fast, the structure is interesting.
Tomorrow I am going to Elliott Bay Books (Seattle represent!) to purchase Wolf In White Van, because I’m a fanboy and the cover art is amazing and I refuse to read any reviews for fear of spoilers but am thrilled that it’s supposed to be good (I’ve seen star ratings and letter grades and that’s all).
I went to the used bookstore and managed to find a copy of the (usually rare and expensive) London and the Culture of Homosexuality, 1885-1914. VICTORY IS MIIIIIIINE. Also I’ve been going through Megan Abbott’s back catalogue (Bury Me Deep, which I loved, and The End of Everything, which I did not) and I dug my unread copy of Elizabeth Hand’s Mortal Love out of storage because it’s been awhile since I read any Elizabeth Hand and I miss her.
Currently on my Kindle/to read: Chugging slowly through the 5th Outlander book, the latest October Daye novel waits for me.
Paper form: Family Secrets: Shame and Privacy in Modern Britain, The Highfell Grimories, Bad Feminist, Daughter of the Forest.
audiobook: Raven Boys.
I need another furlough or a week long vacation only for reading.
Mockingjay! I’ve heard wildly varying opinions on how it ties up the series, so I’m interested to get into it.
I also have Ursula K. LeGuin’s The Unreal and the Real and Master and Commander sitting on my kitchen table. I have to do classwork as well though, so it may be a bit before I can get to them.
I’ve been reading Secrets of the Fire Sea in between death coughs and death-cough-induced-naps, and I like it more and more the further along I get. Girl mathematical geniuses! Woman bishops of godless churches! Female bear-type matriarchs of trading societies! Steam-powered men! Intrigue and politics and a detective haunted by a god called Badger Headed Joseph!
Just finished The Snow Child, by Eowyn Ivey. It’s a retelling of a folk/fairy tale, set in a 1920s Alaskan homestead. It was haunting and lovely, so if you like your fantasy with a side of pioneers like I do, read it.
Next up is Soldier Girls by Helen Thorpe. It’s nonfiction about women serving in the military post-9/11, and it should be a different kind of haunting.
The wind-up bird chronicle <–AMAZING
How to survive in a science fictional universe: a novel
Training the best dog ever
Four books:
The Prose of Rupert Brooke (which is surprisingly good!)
My Friends the Hungry Generation (because Jane Duncan is kind of amazing in her 60s way)
Necklace of Kisses (FLB should have stopped in the 90s I think)
The Sappho Companion (surprise! guys have been misogynist forever!)
And a huge pile more lined up.
I’ve been alternating between Bad Behavior by Mary Gaitskill and The Borrower by Rebecca Makkai. Enjoying both, especially Gaitskill’s writing style.
Also, a couple weeks ago I put in a suggestion for the library to get Saeed Jones’s Prelude to Bruise and they just ordered a copy!
I’m reading Garlic & Sapphires by Ruth Reichl and loving it. Lately all I seem to want to read is books about food, so I’m going to read A Homemade Life by Molly Wizenberg and Blood, Bones & Butter by Gabrielle Hamilton next.
I’m also sort of reading Americanah and really into it so far.
Bunnies, bunnies, it must be bunnies!
I can’t get our girl to stand still long enough to get pics of her this week, so this is more a picture of our chihuahua FREAKING OUT than it is a Friday bunny thread picture. But still.
Bunny went to the vet and she is “practically perfect in every way.” Probably 4 months old, just starting to get grey tips on her ears (which means she’s not for eating… good to know). She has finally mastered drinking water from the bottle thingie, though she looks like a drunk frat dude when she does it. I’ll try to capture that moment for next week.
How are all the other bunnies?
She’s cute but hates everyone and everything except the cat. I tried to tame her for the first three years of her life (I had another bun, who was my buddy who liked cuddles and laying on my arm while I used my laptop), but it was not to be. So now I keep her comfy in a giant cage and give her food and try not to disturb her more often than necessary.
She does like it when I talk with her through the cage, which I do every day, but she doesn’t like much else.
Those tiny ears! That fur!
Nice habitat, by the way.
Thanks! She likes to burrow and rip, so since she dislikes petting I pour all my bun love into giving her stuff to burrow in and rip.
Sometimes I get to extract a forehead stroking during food time and she seems to like it, which may be a weakening of her rage due to the approaching senior bun years. (She’s 7) Even amazons grow quieter with age.
Aw, rage bunny.
I have many pictures of my roommate’s rabbit being adorable but no way to post them right now (also I’m not sure I know how?)…le sad
Step 1: Upload them somewhere (Google drive, Flickr, etc)
Step 2: Type this code into the comments box
More bunnies please!
hmm failure
You’re close! With Google pics, the URL will send you to the viewer instead of the picture itself. Right-click on the photo and choose “Copy image URL” or whatever looks similar. And try again!
I can click on the link from the notification in my email, and this bunny is adorable and totally worth another attempt.
I have also recently discovered a love for fizzy water! PS is that avocado toast? I have lunch envy.
I used to hate olives, mushrooms, and onions but now I loooooove onions and mostly like the other two (thanks, veganism!). Raw tomatoes are still a no-go, though. They just taste like sour, watery slime to me, even fancy in-season summery heirloom whatever ones. Can’t do it.
I need to schedule a well-woman appointment in the near-ish future. The trouble is, this will be the first time when my provider won’t be the one my mom used, a colleague/friend of my parents’, or the one available through a university health system. Does anyone have any advice for finding a good primary care doctor and/or gyno? Or Atlanta-area Toasties, any recommendations?
I picked mine sort of at random; I had a choice of ten or so docs through my insurance. The website had a photo and a little bio of each. I knew I wanted a young-ish woman, because I wanted an IUD and I figured younger women were more likely to give it to me. Then I searched the top few contenders on Yelp to see if they had any reviews, and then I just sort of randomly picked one. And it turned out great, I really like her!
Good to hear that my current strategy might work! Thanks!
I’m not in Atlanta, but I use ZocDoc to find providers. It has the added benefit of filtering by insurance (so you don’t have to ask if they take yours) and reading reviews from other patients. You can also schedule appointments online and fill out all your paperwork beforehand.
I’ll check that out, thanks!
Fellow Toast gamers:
I thought it might ba cool idea to have a thread where we could share gamer tags / ids etc for various platforms, to have cool people to play with. Understandable if you don’t want it shared wide here though. Here are some of mine:
Steam: Project2501
battle.net (starcraft 2 and D3): teuthida#285
origin: octopoda
I mostly just play PC gmaes (no consoles right now). Lately just got D3 Reaper of Souls so have been on that for a while. I’m also on MInecraft sometimes. Always looking for new stuff too 🙂
N7Ambrai on XBox Live
m98widow on Steam (but I pretty much never use this since my computer is too weak for gaming)
0619-4509-9955 3DS
I… think I am N7Cailet on WiiU, but I am not sure about that one.
Ooh, I’d like to get in on this but I only have a Macbook, & Steam doesn’t have many good offerings. (Though I can waste whole days (still) playing Civ 5 & Dwarf Fortress, and I’m tearing through Bastion right now.) Anyone have recs for games on a Mac?
Games I have that you can play on Mac – batman, awesomenauts, bastion, binding of isaac, borderlands 2, xcom, counterstrike/dota (not recommended unless you hate yourself), dear esther, dust (highly recommended), FTL, GOAT SIMULATOR (HIGHLY RECOMMENDED), the stanley parable (recommended), tomb raider, trine 2, super meat boy,
I WOULD LIKE TO PLAY XCOM AGAINST SOME TOASTIES.
steam: predatorhistorian
Good choices above, also all Blizzard’s offerings have Mac clients and Minecraft is on all platforms. Also on gog.com they have some older classics for sale, that I think are on Mac as well.
My DS friend code is 2337 5253 3982. I put it up there in that other gaming thread and I am still feeling like a poser. So.
Email your friend code to blunderbusst at gmail if that suits your fancy!
Guild Wars 2! I’m avapersia
And I have access to Teamspeak servers where nobody hardly ever goes, so we can chat and kill noobs together. Or quest. Whatever.
Is there anything nerdier than saying “quest” unironically?
Folks, I’m about to split a seam. I have a HUGE project at work and as I’m assembling data reports I get shut out of my adobe account. After hours dealing with our supposed tech person telling me how to login in and putting me on the phone with the reseller, I finally figure out that there is no license for me. After calling adobe she reports that “the license was cancelled somehow.” It’s all a mystery!
Then people who were supposed to have parts ready for me two days ago said that they talked to someone else (not me, not in charge) who said that she wouldn’t need those parts for her (separate, different) presentation for another week. So they figured the deadline I gave them was no longer in place. And then had the nerve to apologize “for the miscommunication.”
It’s only 9am but damn do I need a cheeseburger.
Ugh. I hate it when a project depends on other people and they screw it up AND won’t just admit they didn’t do what they needed to.
Here, have two cheeseburgers.
This is why I’ve been extremely leery of Adobe’s new “Creative Cloud” license model. Oh something went wrong with your license for some reason? You no longer have access to your programs.
Toasties, my wife and I need your help. My wife has a coworker who is a lovely woman, and she loves cats. She loves to take on difficult and needy cats, and she’s really good at it. About a year ago, she adopted an older cat who had been a stray, and feral, and was not in good shape. And she cared for him and got him healthy and he’s a great cat.
So now last week, he was diagnosed with cancer. He has tumors throughout his body, and to even treat him, they would have to remove part of his jaw, and one of his lungs, and only then would they even be able to start on chemo and radiation. She doesn’t have the money or the heart to put him through any of that, so she is going to care for him and love him for as long as he remains… well, in good spirits I guess.
My wife and I want to do something for her. A card doesn’t seem enough. Do you toasties have any suggestions or recommendations on what we can do or get for her?
I’m thinking maybe a soft blanket or catbed or something to help make the fellow more comfortable?
A handwritten card and a catbed–one that you don’t mind that they throw out/donate after he is gone. After my old lady cat had to be euthanized after a long illness (she was in fine spirits until the last night, when she looked up at me and ‘told’ me she was done), I could not bear to keep the cat bed and blanket she used, plus it continued to upset her partner cat, so I got rid of them. The partner cat got a brand new bed (that I sat on/near for a few days as well) and he was calmer after that.
Also, after the old man is gone, a handwritten card would be very welcome, at least to me. The rare people who send a note acknowledging that it was a loss are people I remember fondly.
Does she work with any cat rescue groups? I bet they, and she, would really appreciate a donation in her & the cat’s name, especially in this hard spot between kitten season and the approaching colder weather.
Ugh, what a sad situation! I’m not sure what I would do in your situation. I’d definitely write a card, in addition to whatever else you do — when our cat had to be put down a few years ago the vet hand-wrote us a card and I was surprised at how much I appreciated it. Maybe make a donation in her name to a cat rescue organization? Or, baked goods are usually good too if you know what she likes.
A donation to a humane society or cat rescue in her (or the cat’s) name?
If either of my cats was in that position, the things I’d most appreciate would be practical things to help the cats. Like, special easily digested food can be expensive, or maybe one of those self-heating cat beds that can soothe aches and pains in cats.
Plus in the UK there’s the PDSA that funds medical treatment for animals who can’t afford it – I think I’d appreciate a donation in my name to them.
I have recently discovered the joys of spinach. Not that I ever actively disliked it. But now I know that you can just throw a handful or two into pasta or rice or scrambled eggs or anything and it cooks right down and makes it better.
Spinach is so good for “uhh vegetables??” because of exactly that reason — no effort required! It’s also good in fruit smoothies, if you are a smoothie fan. You don’t taste it at all and there are just some little green flecks in with all the fruity yogurty goodness.
This week has been pretty fun but also super stressful. I’ve had a million and one homework assignments due, plus a really difficult seismology assignment that’s due on Monday. I’ve gone in for help twice already and I’m going to need to go in again today (after which I will rush to pack and then clean the apartment because I’m going home for the weekend but I need to catch a shuttle ugh). My seismology prof is very nice, but I feel like I’m bothering her. She’s probably got super important earthquake stuff to do and I’m just like ‘HOW DO I SOLVE THIS MATRIX’.
I did manage to squeeze in some brownie cake making for my roommate’s birthday (the cake fell apart soon after I frosted it, but it tastes good and my roommate liked it) plus some laser tag for her birthday party! I’m terrible at laser tag but it’s so fun! 😀
What are you studying?? Seismology (I guess that is a thing on its own!)? Geology?? Either way, so cool!
Just general Geology! 🙂
Hellooooooo Toast, consider this your official bookseller recommendation to go out and buy (from an indie, Powells.com or AbeBooks.com, not the Corporation-Which-Must-Not-Be-Named) WOMEN IN CLOTHES, which I have been happily devouring over the past few days. The description is a bit misleading, as I am most psyched about the people they interviewed who are not Big Name Cultural Figures (except Roxane Gay, of course) but all the totally normal, regular women of all sizes and colors and gender presentations. There are pictures of items women have in multiple, funny little poems, wonderful pictures of moms (the moms!), Xeroxed hands wearing rings…I could go on. It’s great. Get it!
Yes, it’s amazing. My favourite page so far is the photograph of the collection of dresses that are the same but in lots of different patterns. I stared at it for about 10 minutes and wished I was the lady who owned them.
this sounds awesome and is so in line with my interests that i am mildly shocked that i didn’t know about it before. thanks for the heads up!
YES! Which chapters are your favorite?
I am not finished yet but the five year old girl was my favorite so far!!! Besides that, the mom photos made me so emotional, the collections are great, and I love the kind of verbal collections, where the editors extracted similar bits from everyone’s interviews–“sisters,” “40s,” etc.
Oh The Billfold excerpted this and it was very intriguing.
Toastwitches! (I am stealing this from Sara Davis on the Link Roundup thread and appropriating it because I lurve it so)
Anyhoo Toasties, Toastwitches, Toasters, please bring me your recipe ideas. My dearest other half went apple picking and brought home a 1/2 bushel of apples last weekend and I need ways to use up All The Apples before they go bad. So a 1/2 bushel is like, I dunno, 150 apples (?) just for the two of us and I’ve done the following to date: frozen about 9 apples worth of apple slices, eaten 12 apples since Monday, made apple pie (approx 7-8 apples) and made apple chips (3 apples). I’m planning to make fruit leather with as many apples as I can tonight. I’ve used about 1/4 of the apples and if I don’t do something with them soon they’ll start going bad and I don’t think I’ve got room in my freezer for more than half of the remaining apples. Halp me Toasties, give me your apple recipes, you’re my only hope!!
Apple butter! It’s a little labor intensive but so good. I think it works best if you make it in a slow cooker but I did it on a stovetop once and it wasn’t so hard.
I have a crockpot! Thanks!!
I have this problem and: APPLE BUTTER.
This recipe is for freezing, not canning (I don’t know about you, but I’m not up to canning). It’s very easy, with the only hassle being peeling the apples.
Whoo! Yes, I don’t quite have canning in me either 🙂 Thanks!
Make a gigantic apple cobbler and bring it to work or host a party or something so everyone will eat it! Like an apple pie – the same brown sugar/spices coating on the apples – but no crust, in a pan of whatever size, and combine, like, some flour and brown sugar and a lot of butter and an egg and spices all together and throw it on top. It’ll be fantastic.
Capitol idea! Thanks!
That is a shitload of apples and that’s GREAT. I have a recipe for German apple cake that may also be cheesecake, but it is not within reach – I will do my best to reply with it later today!!
This sounds totally awesome 🙂 I await the recipe with bated (baited?) breath.
Chicken and apples
You can take apple slices in a butter/sugar/cinamon mixture, wrap them in crescent roll dough, and stick them in the oven at 350 for 25 minutes. Baked apples! Like little portable apple pies.
Seconding (thirding?) the apple butter recommendations, and also passing along this recipe for what Molly calls “Apple Tart Cake”: http://orangette.blogspot.com/2009/01/calls-for-c…
It looks so impressive (like you spent the equivalent time you would on a galette or tarte tatin), but is SO EASY. The hardest part is slicing up apples and arranging them on the crust, and that is pretty easy. You make the crust (which is basically a giant shortbread cookie) in the food processor and just squish it into the pan. I’ve made 7 (?) of them since I found the recipe last year, and everyone who tastes it, loves it.
ETA: Oops, fixed link
Looks fun and exciting! Thanks 🙂
I just cut a bunch of apples into slices and gently boil them in a pot of water with cinnamon, nutmeg, honey, maple syrup, brown sugar, star anise, cloves, and sometimes rum until they’re all soft but still solid enough to eat with toast for breakfast. Mmm, stewed apples.
Breakfast apples! yes!
Similar to the apple butter, but: applesauce! You can go light on the sugar, and up the savory spices/salt, and use it as a garnish for lots of dinner recipes.
For example, I recently used up some leftover pulled pork by mixing it into waffle batter with some thyme that was dying. It’s crazy-tasty, but crazy-rich, so I made some heavy-on-the-ginger applesauce to go with it. It really balances out quite nicely.
Make pancake batter with added cinnamon and sugar. Chop apples into thin rings. Dip in batter, fry, eat. JOY.
😀 I am delighted!
I second the suggestions to make applesauce. You don’t even need to season it–good apples and a smidge of water make bangin sauce–and you can freeze it if you have too much. I like to bake with applesauce can replace eggs or oil or both, depending on the texture you want. You could bake snickerdoodles, which are awesome, or some kind of muffin but I don’t have a favorite recipe for that because they come out smaller and denser than I like my muffins to be. Or you can make the extremely lazy/easy crisp bar crust from Smitten Kitchen and bake applesauce on top until you have delicious little apple cobbler bars.
Yes to everyone who suggested applesauce. For added awesomeness leave the peels on. Like give them a quick rinse, quarter them, and go. You’ll save a toooooon of time and your applesauce will be pink! (assuming you have pink apples)
Make a couple of apple galettes. They are so easy and you can season them and add nuts or sultanas or cheese…I could go on. IF you are in a cheatin’ mood, buy those lovely Pillsbury pie crusts, they are fantastic!
For a savory take you can also make an apple curry — I’ve done variations on this one http://allrecipes.com/recipe/chicken-and-apple-cu…. Sometimes I’ll use apples AND squash to make it super fall.
I just wanted to come down here and talk about how I’m listening to the BBC radioplay of Neverwhere and GODDAMN now I just want to make love to James McAvoy’s voice.
Does anyone have other good recs for things like this to listen to? I’m able to do a lot of audiobook listening at work, and I’d love to expand my collection beyond just books!
Mmmm, I do love that voice.
I really like the BBC Afternoon Plays. They’re radio plays like Neverwhere, but they’re usually one-offs and run about 45 minutes each. You can buy them off Audible or you can subscribe to the BBC Drama of the Week podcast and get one each week for free. (The ones on the podcast aren’t always the Afternoon Plays, but I’m not entirely clear on the differences between the different radio drama shows, tbh.)
They’re shorter, but there’s so much variety. I have some I can recommend, but mostly I’d suggest seeing which ones attract you.
Drama of the Week is the only BBC drama podcast (other than their farming community soap, The Archers), but they do lots of full cast audio drama, which is available on iPlayer (not region restricted for radio) for 7 days after broadcast.
Big Finish do some fantastic full cast audio plays, mostly but not all Dr Who related. Their range can be a bit overwhelming – I usually wait for sales and use the ratings on http://thetimescales.com/ to help choose. Mary’s Story is a good taster – the 8th Dr meets Mary Shelley in a 1/2 hour adventure. A couple of suggestions from their early stories – The Marian Conspiracy, the 6th Dr & history lecturer Dr Evelyn Smythe in Elizabethan England, and The Chimes of Midnight, a spooky Christmas story with the 8th Dr and edwardian adventuress Charley Pollard.
In audio books, Ellen Kushner’s riverside books are mostly narrated, but have full-cast for some scenes. For narrated books, the best audio productions I’ve heard are Wein’s Code Name Verity, Gaiman’s Anansi Boys and Marchetta’s On The Jellicoe Road.
There are quite a few short story podcasts around as well. These generally don’t work as well for me, I’m not sure why. One story I enjoyed a lot is Emma Newman reading Diana Wynne Jones’ christmas story Samantha’s Diary on Escape Pod.
I’ve got an audible subscription and get a book a month. I have most of Gaiman’s stuff, the Watch novels by Sergei Lukyanenko (well, the first three, they don’t seem to be in a hurry to do the others), and eveyrthing. BBC radio 4 and 4 extra is a marvellous source of dramatised stuff though.
I’m a huge fan of the CraftLit podcast. I think the podcaster describes it as an “audiobook with benefits.” It’s part crafty chat, part – the best parts of a good English class. Public domain books, she does one book at a time at a chapter or two a week – you get some crafty chat, some book talk/analysis, then you listen to the chapters of the week, and it’s free. Excellent if you like Old Books.
*kicks down door* CABIN PRESSUREEEEEEE
My last day of work at my current job is Sunday! And I start a new one that pays more and is in a nicer place to live in two weeks. Super excited to no longer be working for my current boss (sometimes I feel guilty that she has no idea how much I dislike her. She’s very nice to me, and is sad that I’m leaving, but she’s a racist, classist bigot, among other things)
Congratulations on new job! That rocks!
Congratulations! Those all sound like excellent changes!
Congratulations and discard the guilt. A bigot dislikes people she has never met. And is oblivious to her own bigotry. You are correct to dislike her and that she is oblivious to it is well within her comfort zone.
Thank you. I know intellectually that I shouldn’t feel guilty but sometimes I need it affirmed by an outsider.
Toast! I mentioned this yesterday but I am still in disbelief so I’ll say it again here: I got a new job! I’m so excited! My last day at my current awful job is a week from today!
Thanks to all of you who talked me down when I was in HR limbo last week, and everyone who sent good thoughts out to the universe on my behalf. I am overflowing with good feelings right now so if anybody needs some good vibes, just let me know and I will direct them your way. You are all excellent humans who deserve the very best of this world.
having recently gotten a new job after an awful job and knowing the joy you are about to experience, I am throwing internet confetti in your honor! congrats!
Congrats!
YAAAAAAY CONGRATS!!!!!!!!! WOOHOOOOOOO!!!!!
Congratulations! That is excellent news, and I hope your current job is not so awful for the last week. Hooray!
Whoop whoop!
Congratulations!
Toasties! Help me scam money off my partner please!
Ahem. That sounds bad. Thing is, I am organising a surprise party for him. Which costs money (which I know he will not begrudge after the fact). And we share a bank account (I know!, it’s a temporary thing!). So my play so far is to buy things I need/would buy anyway, and claim they cost way more than they do, and then squirrel the money away. I bought a pair of trousers this morning. Got any suggestions on what to ‘buy’ in this manner? Help!
Hm. Do you ever have to pay for parking or laundry? that is a good way to take out some money without specifically needing to account for it (especially because ATMS, you know? “Oh, I was just in town for a minute, but I needed cash for parking and it would only let me take out $20”, etc)
Sadly no, we don’t have a car and wash at home. Otherwise, yeah that would work so well.
Cash for coffee, then, because the coffee house’s system was down?
Other things I use cash for that might mean taking out $20+ at a time:
– a library fine
– the farmer’s market
– going out with friends, want to take cash to pay my portion
– going out for drinks, want to take cash so I have a low cut-off point
– yard sales, Craigslist
– buying something at that store/chain that just had a data breach (I know, I know: if they just recovered from a data breach, they’re safe, but the psychology of it makes sense)
Happy surprise party!
Thanks, these are all brilliant ideas.
Bras, if you wear them. Bras are so damn expensive, you can easily inflate price.
YES! My bras are ridiculously old anyway, thanks, this is perfect!
Be careful about this ruse, though, as he might want to see them in action.
I feel like any other girlie products will do the trick too. I don’t think men have any sense of what bras, period supplies, cosmetics, etc cost.
For most of the men I know (but not, I think, my husband), I could shut down any conversation by saying “TAMPONS” repeatedly until they went away.
Yeah man, I can actually spend $40 on lipsticks no problem when in a fugue state, so cosmetics, bras, etc seem like the easiest.
Or what about a night out with a friend? Grab some cash and be like “we splurged on $12 cocktails! I know, it was silly, but so much fun.”
I am in no way criticising any of this, but … if you just went to the ATM and took out a whack of money, would he ask you why? I am guessing yes or you would not be thinking up things to tell him, but I am curious!
If I shared a bank account with someone, and presumably already knew their spending habits, I would.
Well, that makes sense. We do share our bank account, but our partner never seems to have the faintest idea what is going on with it.
Yes, he would ask why. Or think it was weird. Not because he monitors my spending, but because I am a chronic oversharer and worry about money. So every purchase I make (pretty much) I say
Hey, whaddaya think of this? It was € X amount, do you think that’s ok, oh gosh did I spend too much, do I really need this?
So if I start spending noticeably more money, and don’t have an easy ‘this is what I bought’ to go with it, he will probably notice that something’s up. (Also, he almost always says yes that’s ok, we have money, stop stressing silly.)
I will point out that this is a temporary thing, we are moving countries at the end of the year, and will have both joint and separate accounts there, i.e. some money to do what we like with, without the other seeing. It just seemed like too much hassle to do all of that here.
I had a Toast dream this week! I had something published on the site and Mallory was hosting a writers’ party at her home. I was embarrassed because I came in the pajamas that I was actually sleeping in, but Mallory (depicted similar to Cousin Itt, but with her luxurious mane instead of Itt’s brittle haystack hair) comforted me and served me her most well-known delicacy: hard-boiled eggs covered in white sugar.
(I have recently quit the wacky tobacky and my lucid dreaming is back full force. My running monologue the entire dream was, “But I haven’t written anything in years! Nothing The Toast would publish! Sugar eggs sound disgusting; I will not make those when I wake up.”)
Any other Toastie Lucid Dreamers? I can acknowledge the dream I’m in, but haven’t manage to manipulate the situation.
I am horrified by the idea of those sugar eggs. But a party for writers in pajamas sounds aces.
I used to lucid dream a bunch when I was younger but have since lost it. I’m trying to get back into at least journaling my dreams every morning as it helps a LOT but even that is hard lately :/
Haha though I love the dream-Mallory-Itt, what a great thing to see
I have occasionally realized, mid-dream, that I am dreaming and thus can do whatever I want. I then commit unspeakable atrocities.
I occasionally realize I’m dreaming, which isn’t so exciting, but the other night I realized I was dreaming and then flew above my dream, where the whole thing was presented like a storyboard in front of me, and I could hop in between scenes as I pleased and change things up, and it was probably the best dreaming experience I’ve ever had.
I don’t actually remember the dream at all, though.
I also had a Toast writer’s retreat dream! Last night, I dreamed of a NYC brownstone where The Toast hosted its operations. (I know.) I walked there in stocking feet, which is a dream hat-tip to another editor of mine who lost a shoe on the CTA this week and had to walk home half-shod.
I got to write in one of the top-story rooms for a while; later, Nick was MCing a writer’s conference in the same room while waiting for Nicole and Mallory to arrive. (I think Nicole Callahan’s presence hasn’t yet trickled down to the portion of my brain that handles dream narratives.) It was GREAT.
Oh yes, a lot of our dreams are lucid, although it is sometimes kind of hard to know what the line is between dreaming and whatever-else.
My parents are visiting this week. My dad has been going through our books and started a binge read of all my graphic novels, so I gave him Fun Home and Are You My Mother? by Alison Bechdel. He loved them both. So nice to have some of one’s favorite books get Dad approval!
ETA: I used to hate mushrooms and now I love them!
Oh, I should reread Are You My Mother? What a fine use of time!
at a work event I attended this week about doing work with the government, a middle aged white man asked why there was no assistance or set-asides for anyone but women and minorities, and why it was so hard for white men. the group attending was about 90 percent women and minorities. if LOOKS COULD KILL.
ahahahahahahaha poor him having only THE ENTIRE REST OF THE SOCIAL STRUCTURE to assist him.
LLLLLET’S GET READYY TO SPPOOOORTTTTTTTTSSSSSSSS!
Ladies and Gentlemen, introducing your NL East Champion Washington Nationals! Ohhhh, I so don’t want to jinx this team, but oohhh boy do we look good (just, everyone, please stop reminding me that Clayton Kershaw exists)
Also, congrats to the Baltimore Orioles, your AL East champs (see you motherfuckers in [redacted]).
This, from Deadspin, on the bullshit that is the personal conduct policy in the NFL:
The NFL would like to convince you that its high officials are worthy moral arbiters; that its players are like unruly children, kept in line by the firm yet loving hand of an all-knowing father; and, above all, that it deserves to play a central and defining role in American life. The personal conduct policy helps it do so.
(Full article here: http://deadspin.com/the-nfls-useful-idiots-want-r…
K State/Auburn was pretty good last night: CFB people, any big games for you this weekend??
Back to the NFL, briefly, because yikes: The Hawks were up 56-0 at the end of the 3rd quarter last night. Yes.
Watched the USWNT beat up on Mexico in their last friendly before qualifying. Getting excited for the World Cup, y’all, can’t wait til June.
I’m leaving out a lot, guys, but I have to go get a beer and make some grilled cheese, so it’s time for you to fill in the blanks! Go!
*High fives a million angels*
Also, the Washington Free Beacon is a wretched right-wing rag, but I begrudgingly respect their sports trolling: http://freebeacon.com/blog/congrats-to-washington…
I haven’t watched a good football game in the last two weeks, and I’m not sure if it’s because this season has just been bad, or psychic discomfort with the NFL.
That trolling is an A+ piece of trolling. If I was to have an NL team I’d be divided between the Nats (the closest thing to being my “other” home team since I grew up between Bmore and DC) and the Pirates (general bad record + postindustrial city bonds) BUT part of me still giggled at that.
Re: watching NFL games- it’s a little from column A, a little from column B, I think.
Wow, the troll-force is strong in this one.
SPEAKING OF THE NATIONALS, I learned about the Presidents Race on a Toast thread earlier this week, and then I watched like 20 videos of it, and now that is the only sports thing I will be interested in from now on.
I stand behind the idea that Camden Yards is the best baseball experience* but the Presidents Race is a really hilariously special thing.
*this is uninformed and biased as I have only been to two MLB stadiums in my life, and one of the visits didn’t involve a game.
One time I went to a game at Fenway. There weren’t any racing presidents and they played baseball for a really long time. I give it a C+.
Fenway was the other stadium I’ve been to but it was for a drawing class (long story) so while it was kind of cool from a historic standpoint, I didn’t see any baseball. Also the seats seemed really tiny to me, as an already small person.
Fenway is a hole (I’ve never been, still stand by my statement)
Also, the green monster is fucking stupid.
I’ve been to maybe 5, and yeah, Camden Yards is absolutely beautiful. Best stadium and gameday experience in all of sports (ETA: as far as I know so far)
After your suggestion on the Presidents Race thread earlier this week, I think Camden Yards could do with a tug of war or something between the Os Bird, Poe (either caricatured mascot like the Nats’ Presidents or Ravens mascot), the Natty Boh guy and a cartoon crab or something.
Throw in a drunk stevedore and you’ve got a million dollar idea.
Maybe a likeness of John Waters to round things out?
Okay, running list:
-Os bird
-Poe (Edgar Allen Poe or Ravens Mascot)
-Natty Boh Guy
-John Waters (caricature mascot, although I wouldn’t be surprised if Real John Waters would be willing to do this)
-Utz Girl
-Blue Crab (w/ beehive bc why the fuck not)
-Omar from the Wire
I hear they play some silly stick-ball game before and after the Race. I wouldn’t know, I’m full of shandy and crab meat by then.
It’s AMAZING. People get out of their seats to get food during it sometimes, and I think TRAITORS, TRAITORS ALL.
Hmmm Pierogi Race > Presidents Race
COME AT ME
::googles::
Okay, I am generally supportive because I love pierogies, but the noses are kind of freaky. I don’t know why that part of an anthropomorphised foodstuff bothers me that much, but there you go.
There is also a Lady Pierogi who wears giant earrings but has no ears. It’s freakish. I always root for her because the giant purse she has to tote around makes her an underdog.
LETS GO Os
LETS GO Os
LETS GO Os
For once in my life I want to buy all of the postseason things. I didn’t even feel this jubilant in 2012, even though that was amazing too!
Re. NFL for this week: my husband grew up knowing and going to church with the same linebacker that got that pick 6 (aka the only ambigiously legit TD) from Atlanta (second string) last night, Danny Lansanah! My mother-in-law and Lansanah’s mom are friends. I’m two degrees of separation away from a guy who was on Thurs Night Football! What a world. Also, I wonder what it is about central PA (Harrisburg area) that leads to big athletic men (my husband is big w/ above-average athleticism, but was never quite professional sports talented), but that’s a conversation for another time.
Yeah, there is a diff vibe to both these teams compared to 2012, it’s all pretty exciting. I just wish you guys could get Machado and the rest back!
So do I! If only because they worked so hard and contributed to the awesome team vibes to get us to where we are.
For some reason I especially miss Wieters. Machado is young and has his career ahead of him, Chris Davis.. kind of made his own mess (although his ADD sounds really bad) but Wieters? Poor Wieters. 🙁
Yes, there is something about Weiters :\
I like yelling out his name like that annoying kid in the Aaron Rodgers/Discount Double Check State Farm commercials, and I miss being able to do so at games or in bars.
WIETERS!! WIIIETERS! [DISCOUNT DOUBLE CHECK!!]
Why yes, I am really this charming in real life!
Okay I lied a little about only caring about racing presidents… my boyfriend was sadly telling his parents about how the final games of CONCACAF World Cup qualifying will be in Philadelphia but it’s kinda far from us and would be too expensive to get tickets and a hotel and stuff, annnnnnd they surprise bought us tickets and arranged for us to stay with his aunt and uncle who live outside of the city and they’re all coming to the games with us and I’m SO EXCITED GUYS SO EXCITED ahhhhhhhhhhh
WOOOOOO-HOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!
Yay that is awesome! I will also be there, though I am delaying buying tickets because there’s no chance I can go to the Friday games and I don’t want to pay for tickets I won’t use, hmph. This will probably backfire on me somehow.
Pirates have a winning season for the second season in a row! And probably postseason! Woooooooooo!!!
Yay hello fellow fan, go bucs n’at!
(p.s. not to sound sooo 2006 but did you know today is International Talk Like a Pirate Day)
I was at the Orioles game on Tuesday (totally random–we decided to go to that game weeks ago) and it was electric. I’ve never felt anything like it at a baseball game.
JEALOUSSSSSS
My dude was at a different sportsball practice so I ended up heading down to Fed Hill to watch the game for the atmosphere. My neighborhood bar is usually on the quiet side.
It’s actually kind of funny–I have NEVER actually attended an Orioles game where they won (not that I’ve been to a ton, but maybe 2 a year in the 5 years since I moved back) and after the last one my friend who lives near by and is obsessed with the O’s forbade me from going back until I bought some official Orioles items. Until then I’d just been wearing orange and black and painting my nails and such.
So I’ve since acquired a pair of O’s earrings and an MD state flag scarf and I wore both, plus orange shirt and black cardigan, and now he says I can’t come back unless I wear the earrings and the scarf every time.
Ahh I was there, too (also randomly, because my workplace was donating some of the ticket $ to Habitat for Humanity?) and I am not a sports person, but it was an awesome night to be at Camden Yards.
I didn’t push a single Dodgers fan onto the el tracks yesterday, I merely daydreamed abotu hitting some of the clueless in the way ones with my Matt Cain lunchbox. But then the Cubs had to Cubs all over the place and do me NO GOOD.
Megan Rapinoe is the light of my life, and I was ready to maul the Mexican player who stomped on Kelley O’Hara’s ankle last night. Also Julie Foudy is such a wonderful announcer and I love her.
I live in the Bay Area, and ran 3 miles yesterday morning wearing this shirt: http://imgur.com/4LSyfk7
I got so into my audiobook and my workout, I forgot about the shirt I was wearing and I could not understand why people kept honking and waving and fist-pumping at me.
The dodgers hate this year is extra-potent, especially after last weekend.
The rivalry’s not as much fun if both teams aren’t good! And now that that’s happening I just wanted hang out in front of the hotel where the Dodgers are probably staying to see if I could maybe shove them into traffic. But my bright orange sweatshirt MIGHT make my motives obvious.
Also that’s an AMAZING shirt.
Isn’t it? I bought three of them from a boutique in San Jose and the guy told me he could not keep them in stock.
On the internet, the design comes in both hoodie and girlie shirt varieties as well as unisex shirts. http://dammmcreative.com/collections/anybody-but-…
if I hadn’t gotten my brother playoff tickets for his birthday, this would be the best gift. Bookmarking it for sure.
playoff tickets are pretty awesome, though.
oh, I’m giving myself #1 sister points for sure.
Maybe next year I’ll actually get a birthday present of some kind from him! but I’m not holding my breath.
That shirt is delightful.
I admire your restraint re: violence toward Dodgers fans.
Megan Rapinoe is sunshine and dreams and wonder.
fuck baseball.
Aw, no_blues, I know the feeling (had it last year). I hate saying this, but…there’s always next season? That sweep by the O’s was pretty much the killshot on their season, huh?
Am I the lone MiLB person here? We’ve got a bunch of affiliation changes happening right now and the panic is a beautiful thing to watch.
Our division rivals just jumped ship from their Oakland A’s affiliation to become part of the SF Giants franchise! Blunderboyfriend, a lifelong Giants fan, is so conflicted! Watching his distress is a nice distraction from the disappointment I feel after we choked in the championships.
Well, I did see that a lottttt of people were not happy with the affiliation changes, but otherwise, I keep track of our teams as far as who is coming up and who is going down. I’m not great about following as a fan of the actual teams (I’ll try to do better!)
It is really difficult to keep all the franchises straight! Fortunately, it seems to be not only acceptable, but ENCOURAGED to enjoy multiple baseball teams (one in each conference or something, yes?), and that you can apply that across leagues, too. Like, I could have two MLB teams and two MiLB teams if I wanted.
Tracking players is complicated, but the names are starting to stick. It’s pretty exciting to be a new baseball person!
That said, do you think it’s wacky to visit another state just to watch your affiliated farm team play? Because the Hillsboro Hops play near some friends of mine and their logo cracks me up.
Baseball is misery. The only thing I have to look forward to is the Nationals’ inevitable defeat at the hands of the Cardinals. I just hope someone has a camera on Bryce Harper’s face when the last out is recorded. (Is it too much to hope that Harper himself will make the final out?)
That’s so weird because, I’m looking forward to seeing Bryce catch the final out against the Cards when we exact revenge on them. Funny.
Hey guys,
OTL just published an absolutely damning piece on the Ravens handling of the Ray Rice case, what they saw/knew/did/etc. Read it.
http://espn.go.com/espn/otl/story/_/id/11551518/h…
Hello Toastrons. I am not well. Will be discussing assorted kinds of assault-y and self injur-y things below.
I went out by myself on Sunday and ended up blackout drunk (I think?). Anyways I woke up by a very nice lady who I did not know with multiple cigarette burns and bruising. I remember going home with Nice Lady (but not what happened after we got there). I don’t remember anything else. There is a large chunk of the middle of the night missing. I know I left the bar? I know I came back? What happened in the middle is a mystery.
So either someone did something awful to me or I did something awful to myself. I’m 90% sure I did it to myself. (Goodbye, four year non self injury streak.) I know I wanted to do things with Nice Lady, but I don’t remember doing them.
The whole thing makes me sick to my stomach and touches on lots of bad things in the past and I do not know how to handle it.
ETA: I want to talk about this a lot, more than I have ever wanted to talk about a potential assaulty thing before, and that is weird to me. I don’t know if it is right or wrong to talk about it. I’m just exhausted. It is only sinking in that this might actually be a Big Deal, and I kind of hurt.
Whatever happened, your feelings about it are valid.
If you injured yourself, remember that a relapse doesn’t have to mean all the time is wasted. You are still wonderful, still amazing, still loveable.
If she hurt you, you are OK with feeling however you do about that.
Not knowing is awful, the worst, and it’s OK that you feel sick and shocked and afraid and triggered. Be very kind to yourself for the next little while. Treat yourself gently. Help your skin heal with soothing creams. Treat yourself like you would want to treat a small, hurt, frightened child.
I’m so sorry this happened.
That is so scary, and I am so sorry it happened to you. Please talk about it as much as you want, here and elsewhere. If you have a Person you regularly talk to about self-harm and other difficult things, maybe reach out to them, if it feels safe to do so? I offer enormous internet hugs, if that is the sort of thing that would be welcome.
“I offer enormous internet hugs, if that is the sort of thing that would be welcome.”
The best thing about this community, right there.
I don’t know what to say or advise, but I’m glad you’re coming here to speak about it. Hopefully we can help provide you with some support and care so that you can feel what you need to feel and do what you need to do. You’re a wonderful person, we’re here for you.
I’m not sure exactly what to say, but I’m here to listen and support you if you want to talk about it more. I hope you’re doing okay and remember you can always come hang out with us. Sending you lots of hugs and love!!
That sounds stressful and upsetting and I’m so sorry it happened. A four year streak is an incredible achievement and one night of things going wobbly does not invalidate that at all, or undo all the learning that came along with it. I hope you can be kind and gentle with yourself – you deserve that 100%. You should talk about it here as much as you want or need to. Internet hugs, if you want them.
AddieJoy, I’m sorry to hear this happened to you, however it happened. And of course it’s right to talk about it! If you’re feeling like talking, that’s a powerful coping mechanism you’ve got in your corner, and you should give yourself a gentle pack on the back for being willing and able to talk about it.
Consider that it may not matter what happened in the lost hours. You know awfulness happened, and you know you are hurt. Will it hurt you more to recreate the events? I don’t know which way is best, but take some time to weigh up the worthiness of a search for an explanation. (Though if you find out it was someone else and can do anything to prevent that person from doing the same to others, of course that’s a different equation.)
It sounds like you don’t feel Nice Lady was the perpetrator, so that’s good. Think now about what the best parts of yourself would do to care for the person you love most, if that person was hurting like you. I’m thinking talking, asking for help with monitoring while drinking (a buddy who can help keep you from blackout levels), a new snuggly scarf, talking more – do you have access to a therapist who can help you process Past Badness? Because you may be are at a point when you’re able to process it differently than you were in your younger days, and that can be helpful.
But overall, remember that you are valuable, that your voice matters, that being sick to your stomach is possibly your body resisting the need to seek professional-type help but that fighting the need can feel worse sometimes than giving in and vomiting up all the feels, as it were.
You are safe and loved and we are here to listen and talk. Talk as much as you need and stay quiet when the talking is too much for you. Everything you’re thinking and feeling is valid because your thoughts and feelings are you, and true. It’s ok. We got you.
My experience is not with self-harm, but I do have some experience with streaks of harmful behavior, followed by streaks of not engaging in harmful behavior, followed by episodes of harmful behavior, followed by streaks of not engaging in harmful behavior, and so on. It’s ok to be gentle and forgiving with yourself. It’s ok to feel angry at yourself, too. All of those feelings are instructive. It’s not the falling down that defines us: it’s how we pick ourselves up. And engaging in behavior we have avoided absolutely does not undo the work we have done up to that point. It is an opportunity to grow stronger and learn how to cope when (not if) we make unhealthy choices.
Also, if this is triggering for you, you might be feeling a lot of things that don’t make sense. You don’t have to force them to make sense right now. Hard as it is to feel them, you can choose to experience the feelings before examining them. (Sometimes going right into Action Mode can get in the way of some emotional healing.) If context is helpful, by all means examine, and call upon all your resources, professional and otherwise, to help you navigate that.
Everyone who says to treat yourself gently and kindly is right on.
I am really sorry this happened, however it happened. We are here and listening. I know that feeling of really, really wanting to talk about things.
I’m so sorry.
If it helps at all, I went through a period getting black-out drunk and doing things that were not good for me that I don’t remember, and waking up with bruises and fluids on me, etc. And it’s pretty well in the past now, and I while I feel tender about my potential assaults sometimes, I don’t feel any shame or guilt or sadness any more. I am whole and I am not any less for having had those experiences.
Talk and talk and talk, or don’t talk, or scream, or whatever you feel. You are held in the loving arms of all of those people who care about you, including this whole Toast community.
I’m sorry to be seeing this so late (I missed page two! How does this happen?), but I want to add my support during this scary and confusing time. That your desire to reach out is new strikes me as evidence of great progress on your part, since the more we hide the ways we hurt ourselves, the easier it is to ride a cycle of “Oh, right, this is what I deserve.” You never deserve to be harmed, and *however* it came about it’s not your fault. And if you want a back and forth conversation or just a safe place to vent, I’m at heatherlseggel-at-gmail-dot-com. Be gentle with yourself while you heal, but know this isn’t a step backward.
I have spent the whole week in indecision, and it is driving me nuts. My boyfriend’s parents are moving and have offered to sell us their lovely house for a considerable discount. The thing is, it’s still nicer and about $50,000 more expensive than what we’d buy otherwise, probably. It’s not that we can’t afford it, since all-told the monthly payments split between us would be what my boyfriend was spending on our current place before I moved in, and only $100 more than I was spending on my old apartment, and both of us make more money now than we did then. We are sick of living in our small, somewhat weathered trailer, so it’d be great to have an actual house. It’s just such a big decision, and I have a habit of spending the least amount of money that will “work” and this is going in the face of all of that (which may be a good thing). Can’t someone else make this decision for me?
I THINK YOU SHOULD DO IT.
DOOOO IT. (If you can afford it without financial hardship, which is sounds like you can.)
I can identify with you saying you spend the minimum to get by, and yeah, that’s good and all but sometimes people like you and I get so fixated on the bottom line that we forget to live a little.
Strangers on the internet agree: BUY THE HOUSE!
Stinginess is a hard habit to kick! It sounds like you’re worrying about what will happen if you say yes – could you reframe it in your head as “would I regret it if I said no?”
Buy the house! You work hard, you deserve to come home to somewhere that you love.
Definitely do it. Think of the comfort, space, and stability your money will buy! It’s a bargain if you think of it that way.
if it’s a considerable discount, it sounds like a good idea. would there be any strings attached, such as, them being hurt or angry if you decided to sell a bit down the road and reinvest in something you’re more comfortable with?
i’m currently in escrow in a crazy market, and it is not fun on the buying end. if you can buy an affordable house and you know what shape it’s in and know you can afford to maintain it, i think it sounds like you’re starting in the right place.
one thing to put your mind at ease, go ahead and apply for prequalification, use an amortization calculator to try out different payment amounts, look at houses that fall within your budget. you’ll get a whole new appreciation for the deal you’re getting.
That’s a really good point. I asked my boyfriend about how his parents would feel if we sold/ripped up their precious lawn to build my chaotic vegetable gardens/whatever and his response is “does it matter? it’ll be our house, I don’t care what they want us to do with it”. Which is not “no, honey, they won’t mind at all!” but is somewhat comforting to know he has strong boundaries there. Not that I think they will get mad, except maybe about the lawn thing.
it’s great that’s where he’s at, but before going into this deal, i would back it out one step and get clear with the parents that it’s a free and clear discount. like, are their intentions just to help you out and send you off with a starter home, or do they have some dream of you being obligated to stay there because they gave you this discount, or insert any complicated entanglement of feelings and money or lawn, you get my drift.
and i’m probably projecting here, because i can only afford a fixer, but don’t be shy about treating it like any other business decision. you don’t have to skip out on a thorough inspection just because they’re offering you a deal. make sure it’s comparable to what you could get for your money anywhere else and that you know what repairs are down the road. real estate can be crazy, but if anything you learn a ton in the process if you take the bull by the horns. and in the end, you’ll feel really solid about your decision because it will be a very educated one.
good luck!
Argh, this week! My town’s been under a boil-water advisory since Wednesday. Or possibly Tuesday, since the notice on the town website was posted on Wednesday but said “effective Sep.16”, way to be current, Town! Also for most of Wednesday we had no internet or cell service because when you live at the arse-end of nowhere the company with the monopoly on both can do what it likes. Aaaand this morning the power was out.
I’m really tired of small-town life this week. No competition for services, no variety in shopping (seriously, I’ve been keeping a list of Things I Cannot Buy Here When I Want Them). I’m visiting Ottawa in a couple weeks and might just not come back.
Sorry for the rant. I hope you all are having a much better week than I am!
Oh, you have one of those lists, too? ME TOO. I was supposed to visit Ottawa this weekend and couldn’t make it and now I’m quite irritated that I’m going to be denied a visit to T&T and Ikea and a real mall.
Does your list include books? THERE IS NO BOOKSTORE HERE. Yes, I can internet-shop but nothing can replace a good bookstore-browse. Pretty sure my time in Ottawa will be divided between bookstores and grocery stores 🙂
There is no bookstore in the town where I live, but a Chapters (meh) in the town where I work 20 minutes from home. It’s better than nothing, but not great.
I’LL TAKE 20 MINUTES TO A CHAPTERS. Nearest bookstore to me that Google can find (not even a full Chapters, just a Coles) requires an 8-hour drive over mostly gravel road, then a 2-hour ferry crossing (if no delays [there are always delays]) then another 4.5 hour drive. Seriously, it’s faster to order online.
ETA: Sorry I’m so shouty! This place is very frustrating this week. Arse End of Nowhere, Welcome To.
I LOVE seltzer water. My mom called it “bubbles” and raised me and my brother on it and it’s just my favorite beverage, hands down. I was over the moon my semester in Europe, where fizzy water is prevalent. Alas, not so much here in North Carolina.
Bubbles! That is adorable. And I agree with you – best beverage, far better than any kind of pop and definitely better for you. My obsession with Perrier (I may have called myself “the Rob Ford of fizzy water) is much more recent and it makes me both financially and environmentally guilty. I drink a 750ml bottle PER NIGHT which is a lot of money and glass. But otherwise it goes flat!
Have you ever tried the fizzy water from one of those at-home pop machines? Do you know if it’s comparable?
I have one of those machines! It is pretty great, but the bubbles it produces are more comparable to those in cheaper seltzer-type sodas than the tiny, fine bubbles in Perrier.
Thank you! That is very valuable information! I will try to downscale my fizzy water choices slightly and see how I feel about it before diving into the machine-buying.
I love love LOVE my sodey machine. Admittedly, I had a gift card that covered half the cost, but even if I’d paid full price, I’d say it was worth the money. (And any money I saved with the GC was more than made up for the amount of fancy bitters I’ve since purchased to go WITH my sodey water.)
LaCroix is usually on sale somewhere in NC. Saw it at the Whole Foods most recently! Good luck.
In this week’s edition of men who need to have flames thrown on them, I went to a small dinner party last weekend at a friend’s house. The friend’s husband is generally a nice guy, not quite a “toff”, but he makes a bunch of money, flies business class on transatlantic flights, drives ferraris, goes shooting in the countryside, and makes lots of off-color jokes that aren’t terrible, per se, but I have to replay them in my head just to make sure. Borderline, I’d say, but does have a certain charm and can make people feel at ease. Anyway, his best friend was there, along with a couple of our other friends. His best mate (called BM from now on), on the other hand, just says whack-ass stuff every time I see him. Also has similar sensibilities and interests of the husband, but not at all charming. I had already figured out I didn’t like him much when I met him the first time, and friend’s husband and I were discussing what it’s like to drive the aforementioned Ferraris. BM interrupted the chat we were having to point out that the lady (me) probably doesn’t want to be bored with talk of cars. I assured him I was very much engaged before being interrupted.
SO, flashforward to last weekend: I was saying that living in this area of southern England has grown on me, but I would prefer the diversity of London, and miss the overall diversity present in LA, both ethnic and socio-economic. BM chimes in with “That’s WHY I like this town”. I had to back that truck up and ask him to clarify. He said people naturally segregate themselves, it’s just the way things work (!!!), and when flames started coming out of the side of my face, he backtracked by saying “well, it’s less about skin colour and more about class.” For fuck’s sake guys, I didn’t want to flip the dinner table over at this thing, and I’ve already gained a bit of a reputation among these people as being mouthy, but I told him that people like him and that attitude, generally by upper middle class white men like himself are the exact reason I struggle with living here. HRUMPH MOTHERFUCKER. We soon changed the subject, but seriously, while I like our friend’s husband, his choice in BMs is seriously questionable.
I’ve been turning this over in my head all week, and had to let loose. Ah, I do so love it here.
“his choice in BMs”
heh. heh heh. BM indeed. What a turd.
His first initial DOES begin with B, so I really hope his surname starts with M, and this was all a serendipitous misandrist naming of the scourge of the bowels of society? BM would look just ducky tattooed on his forehead.
HASHTAG BAN MEN
You people are awesome and sharing this story, and this communal dancing around the proverbial bonfire of his unsavoury character does my soul good.
Instead of bonfire heat, think cold burn. My grandmother had it down to a science. The next time he (or anyone else) says something that starts the burn, take a moment…gather yourself and look at them as cool and upright as you can and say something like “how very interesting” or “Really…” You then excuse yourself and leave. She taught me to answer a rude question by saying ” Why thank you for asking. Now, why on earth would you pose such a question?” I wish I could tell you that I manage this attitude all the time, but I am working on it.
I used to be an extremely picky eater, but now I feel deprived if I don’t have some form of leafy, green vegetable in my day. I also used to hate eggs, but being both a rugby player and a broke grad student led me to them as a source of cheap protein. (I still think hard-boiled eggs are nassssssty though.)
(And you’re still wrooooong)
I am compelled to share the cover of my (NEW! FREE!) novella, because I am madly in love with it. (Also for cynical buzz marketing, obv.)
(Though when my younger son first saw it, after I’d told him about the plot, he pointed out that I failed to mention the part where Miguel ends up laying in bed with just his boxers on. Silly boy. It was implied!)
This may be a stupid question, indeed I am pretty sure it is. Sorry!
I don’t have an e-reader, not an amazon member, and am not on google play. I probably need to be one of those to read your novella, don’t I?
No, but you have to have, say, nook app on your phone, or iTunes will give you iBooks on your computer if you have iTunes.
Or you can email me & I’ll send you a .doc or .epub and you can just open it on your computer. [email protected]
I’ve added it to my library and when I’ve read it I will give an honest review of goodreads. Which, if it’s as good as I hope it is, might drive some more readers your way!
You = superb.
Yes please to honesty – some very nice friends have been very enthusiastic and sweet but now that hundreds of people who aren’t my IRL nice friends have it, I’m very interested to see what reaction it’ll get.
Plus, all reviews are helpful for visibility, and that’s the newbie self-pub writer’s biggest challenge (presuming she writes competently.)
Downloaded and excited! Will review, but it’s going to take a while. I got avalanched with work. Still: Excited!
I had the most vivid dream last night/this morning that I was nine months pregnant, like vivid enough that I woke up in distress about what the hell I was going to do with this baby. It was so disconcerting and weird (to clarify, there is zero chance of me being pregnant, so it’s not like my body is trying to tell me something).
I’ve had those dreams multiple times! They’re one of my least-favorite nightmares.
I’ve had those dreams too. Usually they involve a moment of “…wait, what? WTF? How am I pregnant?” Not distressing so much as extremely baffling.
I have had those dreams too, about both myself and my girlfriend. In one, I was pregnant and I cried for the entire dream because I didn’t know who the father was or how it had happened and in another my girlfriend was pregnant and we had to sell our dog because we couldn’t afford to raise a baby (much less a dog) and she refused to tell me who the father was. Very upsetting.
Guys! So I’m reading that book about the lady who was friends with Ted Bundy after a few of you mentioned to give it a go and yeah, it’s not the most well-written thing in the world but I actually knew nothing about Ted Bundy before this, because, although I really like true crime novels, Ted Bundy was always way too scary for me. So I’m a little hesitant to get into the part with more details about the murders, but also super fascinated.
Also, I saw 14 movies at TIFF last week. Do not attempt to watch 9 movies in one weekend. When it was finally over I felt like exercising so badly because I’d been sitting down for hours and hours. Here’s a quick roundup of my favourite films!
-Nightcrawler (I thought was predictable and so-so except for Jake Fucking Gyllenhaal in an awesome, subtly horrifying performance)
-Shrew’s Nest (awesome Misery-esque Spanish thriller with an amazing, disturbing lead – also almost entirely about women and women coping with mental illness and general misandry)
-What We Do in the Shadows (charming, hilariously absurd deadpan humour)
-The Voices (LOVED this, directed by Marjane Satrapi who I adore. Like a classic Disney film about the world’s sweetest serial killer you just want to hug)
-Over Your Dead Body (Takashi Miike working in the vein of Audition with beautiful theatre sets and gruesome supernatural violence)
-Tusk (Kevin Smith’s love letter to bleak, campy Canadian horror, complete with celebrated “Canadian actor” “Guy Lapointe” – an uncredited Johnny Depp actually not channelling Jack Sparrow)
Honourable Mention: The Guest, which was a fun and silly action horror, The Terminator crossed with Halloween, with a great Final Girl heroine and Dan Stevens being scary and ridiculously, unbelievably hot. Guys, Cousin Matthew! He is so un-Cousin Matthew, I’m so proud.
So Tusk was worth it, then? I’ve seen lots of hype around here about it (well, I live about fifteen minutes away from Red Bank which is Kevin Smith Central, so it may just be the location) but I have been hesitant because I am not the best with horror. D:
I actually dislike almost every Kevin Smith film, and I loved Tusk (I do like horror a lot, though). It’s not too terrible if you’re bad with scary movies, but I would say it’s a very, very dark comedy, and veers into disturbingly absurd a lot. It’s kind of fun!
There’s also a scene where Genesis Rodriguez addresses the camera, and I won’t spoil it or anything, but it’s a great scene, and she’s wonderful, and Michael Parks is unbelievable.
Based on the ads I’ve gotten for Tusk on Hulu+, it looks like a mad scientist is trying to turn Justin Long into a walrus? Is that correct?
YUP, TOTALLY CORRECT
It’s pure midnight madness horror absurdity, so if camp and dark comedy mixed with the upsettingly weird isn’t your thing, I’d avoid it, but if it is, definitely get on that
“classic Disney film about the world’s sweetest serial killer you just want to hug” made me imagine Edward Scissorhands and “directed by Marjane Satrapi” sealed the deal! yes please will purchase ticket
I wasted basically my whole childhood refusing to eat strawberries (and other berries, but those were the ones I had access to most frequently), but now they are amazing to me. Even though apparently not everyone gets an itchy tingly nose when they eat them? WHO KNEW.
I’m trying to make friends and find a job in a new city, and really struggling. There’s not much to do about jobs except keep applying, but FRIENDS. How do people make friends after college? (I’m 2 years out, but my girlfriend was in grad school, so through being absorbed into her tiny friend group of librarians-in-training, it hardly counts as “making friends in the real world” time.) I signed up for meetup.com, but I’ve been too nervous to go to any; volunteered at Pride, had good fun talking with some folks but didn’t really have time to have a meaningful conversation, have been doing my martial art of choice (aikido) and only 2 people regularly come, and they’ll never be more than classmates (I barely gel enough to be classmates with them)…and here I am, stuck. Any kick in the pants to just go try something new (or other advice) is appreciated!
Making friends is HARD, it’s not just you. I don’t have any advice (you know it all already), just empathy.
I thought I’d met a new gonna-be-friend two weeks ago, she came to pub quiz with us and had fun (I think?) … and then just disappeared. I’m still bummed out
awww, so sorry to hear that! I love pub quizzes–wish we could go together! (and thanks for reminding me that it’s not just me. It was definitely starting to feel like it, especially for my girlfriend, whose coworkers have been inviting another new hire to do things in front of her, but not including her. that’s kind of middle school, in my opinion, especially with the invention of email, etc., but it is what it is. sigh.)
Ugh, I hate those high-school-dynamic groups.
Yeah, pub quizzes are great, and also actually have been great for my social life this year. Do you have random acquaintances you could invite to join you & your girlfriend for a pub quiz? That’s how my partner & I got our pub quiz group started, basically I wanted to go, made him come, and invited a few people we vaguely knew. It took a while, a month or so maybe?, but now it’s a fixture. There’s something low key and non threatening about pub quizzes that seems to work for getting to know people.
I guess that’s our problem! No vague acquaintances yet outside of girlfriend’s work-folk and our landlord, as I’ve been alternating reading the Toast and applying for jobs from the comfort of home. I’m making a FRIENDS ONLY OkCupid, so we’ll see how that goes. And definitely about pub quizzes being great low key ways to meet people–you pretty much always have a conversation topic handed to you for between-rounds conversation from the questions. (eta: oh, and I guess aikido people. but those two are intense. and also in the multiple-little-children stage of life.) Thanks for the encouragement–I’ll definitely have to research pub quizzes around here!
Well GOOD LUCK and remember that it is hard meeting people and making friends, so make sure you look after yourself (and your girlfriend) and give yourself a break or two.
This week has had a surprising amount of nonsense from straight men. (Except my coworkers, who are keeping me from giving up hope and creating a Toast Island with my bare hands.)
Yesterday, my supervisor and I had to catch a bus at lunch time to go to a big meeting. I was rushing through our building’s lobby while speed-eating a big sandwich when one of the older maintenance guys came up to me.
Him: You should worry about your weight!
Me: What?
Him: *makes expanding gut gesture and points to my sandwich* You might get fat!
Me: *speedwalking away* This is my lunch!
I told my supervisor when we got on the bus, and his jaw dropped. “He said that??” “One of the guys from our building?” “Why would he say that?” I told him it’s not the first time an older man has come up to me while I was eating in public and told me I should worry about getting fat. (For the record, I’m not fat, so their motivation is purely that I am female and eating something besides a salad too enthusiastically.) Oh, to be a dude and not have to swim in a sea of sexist bullshit.
Sadly, I can commiserate. I once had a male coworker who weighed probably 50lbs more than me tell me “you should lose some weight.”
HM OKAY NO.
ETA: I just went out to lunch and have been thinking of this the whole time and I am just boiling with rage and I’m sorry this happened to you and kill all men.
Oh no, please don’t ruin your lunch for me! If anything, eat more delicious food to stick it to the man.
I’m trying to keep in mind that at work, the only critical comments about my eating habits that my male coworkers have made were to mock me for eating one burrito instead of two. There’s hope!
Because all women would just eat too much and enjoy life if men didn’t watch what we eat. Thank you, men!
I had men tell me to Be Careful, I was getting Fat,and I was PREGNANT. I guess not even pregnant women are allowed to eat.
IMPORTANT STORY
This week one of my 5th grade music students told me that I couldn’t like Queen because I am a girl and “girls don’t like Queen.” I was naturally concerned about a young citizen of the 21st century holding such bizarre views on gender and music. I needn’t not have worried, though, because a few days later I passed some of his female classmates playing football on the playground, and as one of them threw the ball to her friend, she yelled “FEMINISM!”
TWEEN LADIES ARE FIGHTING THE GOOD FIGHT THE END
Ah yes Queen, the manliest of man music.
Hah. This reminds me of a similarly ridiculous argument I had with a boy when I was about that age. He seemed to think that I, as a girl, should be barred from wearing red and blue because these are boy colours. I attempted to explain to him that they’re only called that because boys wear them more often, and that he could totally wear pink at any time, there AREN’T rules which govern what colours what person can wear.
I went away from that conversation having lost all my respect and good feelings toward him, I don’t think he actually was convinced either.
This is the best story. Also… QUEEN is where you’re drawing the line of The Patriarchy young man?
But…Queen? Seriously?
Found out I will indeed be able to host a reading and meetup for friends and fans of The Toast to coincide with Binder Con (in NYC Columbus Day weekend) at Henrietta Hudson (queermo bar) Saturday, Oct. 11 at 7 PM (after the official “Happy Hour”–and not too far away). We’ll have a mic and stand, an amp and our own room (and bar) and room for about 50 people. You don’t have to be part of the conference to read (or to attend), just be in NYC. Who wants to read? Let me know @renjender on Twitter.
San Francisco meetup one week from today, Friday, 26 September, at The Tavern at Hotel Whitcomb on Market St between 8th and 9th Streets. Come when you can anytime after 5. I’m buying your first drink so look for me: white, middle-aged, apple-shaped, with short auburn hair. I can’t wait to meet you!
Yay!
I am crossing my fingers we can make it although given SF and Friday and our kids, we wouldn’t be there until 8pm or so. 🙂
Do come! No matter how late. I’ll be there all night.
CHANGE OF VENUE! The place I chose no longer exists or I can’t find it now that I’m in SF. Instead, I will be at Two Sisters on Hayes St between Laguna and Octavia.
Welp, the ring is finally finished and so tonight’s the night I ask a certain question of a certain somebody. And even though we’ve discussed it and already have a great many things decided, I’ve still got butterflies. So. Wish me luck!
Best of luck! <3 it will be magical, I’m sure.
That is such a good feeling, enjoy every moment!
All the luck to you!
Good luck!!! (not that you will need it)
good luck and enjoy!
All the luck, Emby! Because even if you don’t need it (and you don’t) luck is never wasted on love.
LUUUUUUCK!!!!!!!!!!!
How exciting! Good luck, dude, though I know you won’t need it 😀
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
I just got it! If anyone wants to see, the link is here: http://i.imgur.com/TZs9WXL.jpg
That is the most gorgeous ring–all good luck to you for the proposal!
It’s beautiful! Be sure to report back 🙂
Oh, that’s beautiful!
It’s gorgeous! Nicely done, sir.
I’m SO late to the congrats, but wishing you all the luck nevertheless!
WELL?
Tostones,Tostones,
Can I tell you how much I hate Georgia labor laws regarding overtime?
I just worked a shitty week involving 10+ hour days alternating with ~5 hour days (of Officially Scheduled and therefore paid time, as opposed to unpaid time answering emails, helping Scheduling figure out my schedule,…). Under GA law, I only get paid overtime for the quarter of an hour I went past 40 hours for the payroll week. And I’ve been working every day consecutively since August 24. Last night by Hour Twelve I was near verbally incontinent. In front of clients.
So glad I have 60 unscheduled consecutive hours this weekend. Except that I have to use the time to fill out the damn payroll form and work on a massive TPS report due Monday.
I have some misogyny in the wild to report! My husband works in an increasingly less male-dominated industry, but it’s still a boy’s club in our city, anyway. So I get dragged to this regional awards ceremony last weekend, expecting it to be either a) really boring or b) jaw-droppingly, absurdly sexist in some way. Keep in mind that this was a formal, black-tie-optional event.
Dear reader, it was B. The MC got up and told a series of jokes that bombed, including one about H.W. Bush wanting Reagan to bite it after his assassination attempt. (Timely! And yet also … too soon?) But this did not dissuade him from the crowning glory of his speech: A 15-minute-long shaggy-dog-story type joke about an Arkansas roughneck and a French prostitute.
Also, no woman has EVER won the annual professional award given at this event. There were 20 honorees for a lesser award on this night and ONE was a woman… the only woman to ever be recognized at all by this organization, ever. (Interesting that she didn’t get top honors, hmm…)
Upside? I ended up having a great conversation about sexism in the industry with my husband’s coworker (Her: “I don’t mean to make this a gender thing, but …” Me: “YOU DON’T KNOW WHO YOU’RE TALKING TO, HONEY.”) AND all the guys my husband works with were gathered around asking themselves how they can never turn into the 60-something-year-old guy at the podium telling misogynistic jokes. So I have hope for a misandrist future.
At a conference I was at last week, one of the keynote speakers started his speech with a long, rambling analogy about how wives/women love to buy shoes and it’s an eternal struggle in his household. I raged slightly, but then the next speaker (also a man) started his speech by announcing that he loved to buy shoes, even more than his wife did.
You guys, I know I have been bragging for weeks about this new person I’m dating but I’m not sorry because it’s GREAT. Fifth date coming up this weekend and there has been some A+ email/text flirting all week. Flirting is so great! Yay!!!!
Yay! 😀
I’m thinking about asking my bank for a car loan so my dude can break into teaching outside the city, and I realized I have zero idea how likely this is. I mean, I have $80 000 in student loans ($40 000 from my bank), but I also have a good job, so maybe that’ll even it out?
Also, does anyone have advice re: used cars.
Carmax? I had a really good experience there.
Where do you live? I just inherited a car so my partner and I were going to donate our current one. I’m not going to pretend its pristine, but we still take two- to three-hour trips in it pretty regularly.
We live in exotic Winnipeg, so I can’t imagine very close to you. It is really awesome that you’re going to donate your current car to someone who needs it though! 😀
Sadly that is quite far away 🙁
I bought a used car a couple years ago! I wrote this advice out for a friend:
-http://www.kbb.com/
Enter as much you know about the car and check the prices of comparable vehicles.
-http://www.edmunds.com/
Edmunds gives you information about pros and cons, safety, and reliability.
-http://www.cars.com/
You can refine your search to a crazy degree. There’s an option to look for only certified pre-owned cars. I think if it’s certified pre-owned it has to come with a free Carfax report, which is awesome because Carfax is a total (but necessary) rip-off. You want to check that the car hasn’t been in any accidents which resulted in frame damage or the airbags going off, and that it hasn’t changed hands very often. It looks weird when people only keep the car for a year or so before selling it. Also, I like to check when the car was offered for sale because it looks weird if it’s been sitting around too long.
And then, of course, if you do see a car you like, you want to do some research on the dealership.
Thank you so much! This is very helpful!
Fizzy water is the best! I buy it by the case! my favorite drink right now: the orange fizzy water (just the “hint” of orange) with fresh ginger juice sqeezed into it… I use a clean garlic press and a 1cm chunk of ginger. YUM.
All is well in Noodgeland. Haven’t been here in a bit, and it’s mostly because I’ve been doing quite well actually! The divorce is progressing ok – the former Mr. Noodge is being, well, a noodge, but I can handle that. He went overboard with some more verbal abuse when we were trying to sort stuff out – this time completely sober – and I feel like it helped me mentally, emotionally, completely x him out. Which is mostly good, however it leaves me in a place where I am not grieving it as much as I may normally? So I’m bursting into tears in random places maybe weekly? But that’s ok with me, better out than in.
But I’ve missed my doses of wit and MISANDRY from you lovely people, and am stoked to be back reading your awesome stories, thoughts, feelings, and gifs. <3
We are glad to see you and hear how it is going!
I think I’ve more discovered foods as I grew up? Chickpeas and broccoli rabe were Brooklyn’s gifts to me. I still stubbornly refuse to eat peas, and will pick them out of a dish without shame. And I can taste coconut at 50 paces. Bleah.
I am FINALLY able to tippity-tap type like a mofo again after a sad week of ouchy hands (repetitive stress tendonitis I guess?). Haha, that’s what happens when writing is both your job and your social outlet…
Toasties – I posted about this in more detail in a thread earlier this week on the misogny that women experience on a daily basis, but in short I got street-harrassed last weekend and it left me feeling ANGRY. Just asking for some thumbs-up here to restore my faith in human beings. Thanks.
Foods I used to hate but now love: olives, especially in oil with raw garlic. HEAVEN. Although not for those around me afterwards, I dare say.
Also, hello Toastrons! I finally managed to delurk this week, partly because I’ve always wanted to participate in one of these Open Threads. ACHIEVEMENT UNLOCKED.
Hello!
Olives are amazing. As is garlic. Someone told me I used too much garlic in my cooking once.
Pfff, there is no such thing as too much garlic.
I may have told this story here before, but my father-in-law claims he does not like garlic. He says it dulls the taste buds. Meanwhile he puts red pepper flakes on everything because he says that awakens the taste buds or some such. I continue to use tons of garlic when he’s here, without telling him, and he always compliments my cooking, so.
Oh man, I can eat Kalamata olives the way some people eat potato chips – with utter thoughtless abandon. Delicious.
Kalmata Olives = The Best Olives
Welcome to the wonderful world of the open thead!
I’m not entirely sure if I actually didn’t use to like Brussels Sprouts, or just refused to eat them because every Thanksgiving there was a family rule that all the children must eat at least ONE Brussels Sprout. I was so offended by this arbitrary rule that I would come up with increasingly elaborate ways to avoid them (including feeding them all to my uncle’s then-girlfriend, now-wife, who guaranteed herself a spot in all our hearts forever by facilitating that operation). I was 22 when I discovered I really do like them, but it was four more years before I stopped refusing to eat them at Thanksgiving, specifically, in continuing protest. I was, shall we say, a difficult child.
Fallen Londoners! I missed last Friday’s open thread, then tried to send calling cards to everyone using my phone, then messed up because the screen is so small so I couldn’t see what I was doing and accidentally spammed one person with a bunch of requests. Whoops! I’m Vivian Street, and I enjoy dinner with devils, consorting with church-goers, and narrowly escaping being sent to the tomb-colonies. I’d love to make your acquaintence over dinner, or a game of chess, or a harrowing review of your recent nightmares.
I shall send you a thing! (Friending Toasties on Fallen London is what has finally got me to unlurk here …) I would love to make your acquaintance. I’m Mnemosyne Lane and I am a mad archaeologist.
I am already friends with lots of Toast People (including Vivian Street) but if anyone has not sent me a message yet, I am of course Bryn (Plus Others) in Fallen London. Invite me!
FALLEN LONDON “TOASTESS” TAKEOVER
The Magazine Formerly Known As London Magazine reports ever-growing numbers of badly-behaved Fallen Londoner ladies identifying as devotees of toast. These depraved individuals can be seen frequenting the suspiciously ill-lit corners of the city, setting respectable gentlemen on fire, velocipeding while smoking, and chanting “BAN MEN” in the center of the Bazaar. What is the connection between these shocking displays and the crisped breakfast food?
(This branch costs 25 Fate to play and is best suited to individuals of Misandry 100 or higher.)
I’m pretty new to Fallen London and spend most of my time catching massive quantities of rats– send me a calling card anyway! I’m Lily_powers.
I am Fayezer, although I am ALSO Elodia because I wanted a scandalous bohemian jewel thief counterpart to my vengeance-driven detective. I am so happy to have toast-friends there!
I am gallimaufry (no underscore) over there. I enjoy conspiring with urchins, and have grown tired of killing rats. Happy to have coffee or loiter or anything, and also to help with menaces although I am constantly on the verge of going mad with nightmares (CLATHERMONT WHYYY) so maybe not that.
I am out of actions today but will add Fallen London Toastesses over the weekend!
I just started playing last week! I still don’t really understand what I’m doing other than getting instant gratification from clicking stuff, but I am enjoying that part of it to be sure.
I think I’ve added everyone in the thread so far, but I’m Esmeralda Poppycock if you see me!
Oooh, I’m going to send you a calling card! (And also hope this will be the kick I need to be such a lurker here…)
I’m Fanny Packe on FL!
Toast-Friends! Laurie Penny’s book, Unspeakable Things was released in the US this week, and I have been reading it! I think it is very good, and I am wondering if any of YOU have read it, and what your opinions are as well!
http://www.amazon.com/Unspeakable-Things-Sex-Lies…
It feels like fall in the midwest!! I need to eat all the pumpkin! Please tell me the following: 1. Your favorite recipes for cooking actual pumpkin. 2. Your favorite pumpkin foods/drinks to grab from the grocery store. 3. Your favorite pumpkin beers. Especially your favorite pumpkin beers!
make this thing: http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Thai… but put pumpkin instead of butternut squash. So good.
Cooks Illustrated did a fantastic pumpkin bread a few years back:
http://www.cooksillustrated.com/recipes/7026-pump….
(sorry, I’m frightful at linking)
The pumpkin gets cooked and thus develops a deeper flavour, which is then enriched with cream cheese and buttermilk. The recipe developers thoughtfully turned the pumpkin cooking pot into the Wet Ingredients Combining Vessel, so fewer dishes to wash.
I bake the batter in a muffin pan with a Trader Joe’s Salted Caramel, Chocolate Truffle, or Dark Chocolate Peanut Butter Cup placed in the middle after about 15 minutes of baking (keeps it from sinking like a stone to the bottom and completely disintegrating).
I like UFO Pumpkin by Harpoon brewery, but I’ve really yet to meet a pumpkin beer I didn’t like!
The only pumpkin beer in my heart is Shipyard’s Pumpkinhead, but it is not available where I now live and only serves as a melancholic reminder of long autumns past.
In other news, fall occurred here in interior Alaska this week. The trees turned golden M-W, and now are all rapidly divesting themselves of foliage.
Ohhhhhhhhh pumpkin. This is our local version of the Afghan dish kadu bouranee, as perfected last weekend:
1. Engage in the following steps, the order depending upon the pumpkin: chop, peel, roast. If the pumpkin is really tough, you have to do minimal cleaning, then roast, then actually peel and cut it up the rest of the way. If it is a little sugar pie pumpkin you can clean it, peel it, cut it into cubes, and then roast it. Or braise it! (This also works with red kuri squash if you happen to be subscribed to the same CSA we are.)
2. Mince two onions. Cook until soft in some oil along with coriander and powdered ginger. (This may smell really unpleasant while cooking, but trust us and persevere.) Add minced garlic, cook until the garlic smells amazing, add ground beef/lamb/veal (your choice of meat, skip that if you don’t eat meat, just do all the rest). When the ground beef is browned, add pureed tomatoes, and cook and cook and cook until it is a fairy thick consistency.
3. While the pumpkin is cooking and the meat sauce is cooking, get out a bowl. Put some minced garlic in the bowl. Add salt to it. Mush it together until it is paste-like. Add a cup of plain thick yogurt and stir it around and taste it.
When everything is ready, serve yourself some pumpkin, then put meat sauce over it, then spoon a little yogurt on top. It is amazing to-die-for good. Usually when we eat our own cooking is not-bad but we can figure out how to do it better. This was perfect.
And the note about the smell — for some reason at the point that we had the coriander and ginger in the pan, it did smell awful. Our daughter came in and was like ‘Ewwww’ and she is the least picky almost-5-yr-old on earth. But then the finished dish came out great.
Oh, and your other question! The pumpkin butter from Trader Joe’s is a staple for like the last 10 years. And last year we discovered the pumpkin pancake mix, yum.
Dogfish Head Punkin’ Ale is delicious. Less sweet/more dark than many pumpkin beers, but I like that about it. It’s also more expensive, but to make up for that it’s a 7% so you get a decent bang for your buck.
Savory bread pudding (bread, garlic, cheese) baked in a small pumpkin: http://doriegreenspan.com/2008/09/pumpkin-packed-…
Night Owl by Elysian – maximum deliciousness + great label.
Couple things:
– I got my daith pierced in early June but I noticed about a week ago that I’m developing a cartilage bump :((( Pierced Toasties, what do? It’s kind of a fiddly location for a saltwater/chamomile soak.
– I need a book that is spooky and murderful like Tana French’s “In the Woods,” but does not feature a horrible whiny protagonist like Tana French’s Rob Ryan, The World’s Worst Detective
This may not be the BEST advice so please take with a grain of salt, but when I got a bump thing on my tragus I went with tea tree oil, directly applied. Worked like a charm!
Also, for the fiddly position, try soaking a cotton ball with first aid saline spray. That helped heal my most recent piercings SO WELL.
Sea salt spray. You can get specialty pre-made stuff from piercing shops or just get a spray bottle and make the usual ratio. You make up for a lack of soaking time by spraying it a few more rounds a day. I spray my (undippable) chest microdermal and it works pretty well.
1) Nicole, can we talk about cults forever and constantly b/c it is in my top 5 favorite topics and I have so many thoughts and want to hear everyone else’s thoughts and anecdotes.
2) I got married last weekend and I didn’t hate it! It was actually very lovely and nice and low-key and everything I would’ve wanted had I allowed myself not to dread the ceremony with all the dread I could muster. Actively trying to dread less now as a result, just in general.
3) Entered the non-horrifying part of pregnancy! Only sick once or twice a day and it is GREAT and I’m getting really pumped for introducing this new human into the world! (Instead of just lying very very still for hours out of the day, interrupted only by breaks to google”why is pregnancy horrible.”) That said, I just got an offer of a hand-me-down crib from some friends with a 3 year old. I know cribs are one of those things that you’re supposed to buy new because of recalls, etc, but for reals. . . it’s not old. It’s in good shape! Their kid is alive! I’m probably going to just take it and then find out if it’s a recalled model – but is my stinginess going to doom my child? Is this a horribly irresponsible decision, is what I’m asking.
Congratulations on the wedding! And congratulations on the being-less-sick! With regards to the crib….hmm. I’d investigate the model number and see if there’s any recalls/complaints, or if your gut is giving you any weird signs about it to go with something else, but honestly? It’s three years old, right? I would probably also take it if I were you.
ALSO, cults: I read The Face on the Milk Carton at an impressionable age and spent some years petrified that as soon as I went to university I’d fall in with a cult and be totally brainwashed and forget my parents.
Right? I think it’ll be fine! I’ll do my due diligence but really, free, functional stuff is great.
I have an unreasonable love of stories about irrational (BUT ARE THEY) fears instilled at a young age, as I was a very neurotic and impressionable child myself.
Totally get the crib if it doesn’t have any recalls on it. I think the only big change in crib rules in the last few years have been that drop-side cribs are now a no-go, so if it is fixed side, you’re good on that front.
Congrats on feeling better and you appear to be a superhero? Because “only sick once or twice a day” was my “MORNING SICKNESS IS KILLING ME” so bravo for your perseverance and personal strength.
Man, I couldn’t even sleep through the night before! And that was with the anti-nausea meds. To clarify, I’m not actually throwing up once or twice a day – just bouts of nausea periodically, instead of the 24/7 of the past 3 months. As far as perseverance goes, I basically did nothing at all for three months, so please take that into consideration. 🙂 Morning sickness is TERRIBLE and I HATE IT and it’s made me more pro-choice than I ever could’ve thought possible. I mean, seriously, I thought I was as maximally pro-choice as a human could be, but no: I found deeper stores still.
Man, this is good! I’ve been reading too much alarmist internet material about how if you love your child, you would never get them a used crib – I’ll investigate but I think it should be just fine. Thank you for your advice!
Congratulations on both your marriage and feeling a bit better! No one tells you that the first trimester is awful!! I’m finally out of it myself and while I’m not back to my normal energy, I’m able to tolerate my day better.
Regarding the crib: we accepted a hand-me-down crib from my sister for our first kiddo and it has been perfect. I never even checked the recalls (I guess I failed on that part), but knew that it didn’t have drop down sides (those aren’t even sold anymore) and the slats were the appropriate width. I would do as you said: take it and check for a recall. The pressure to buy everything new is driven by the industry and I think it is absurd. The only place I put my foot down was for a new car seat, but we’re re-using the first one for the second kid so obviously my standards have changed.
Best of luck!!
The first trimester is terrrrrrrrible! You did it twice! I’m so, so impressed. Working a full time job was bad enough, I seriously cannot even imaging going through this while trying to care for an existing child.
This anecdote is so comforting – thank you! I’ll investigate thoroughly, but if all is well, I’ll take the crib with no guilt or shame. Also the added bonus of socking it to the man with my used baby-goods is extremely appealing – thank you for that!
The crib will be fine, really. Google about recalls before you take it, and then take it.
I am a HUGE believer in keeping kids safe etc etc but do also remember it is an industry that takes billions of dollars from the fears of parents.
Ohhhhhhhh and I am glad you are feeling better! Yes the first trimester is awful isn’t it?
I am not sure what to say about cults other than they are not as much fun as they look. 🙂
Man, I do not think they look fun! But I grew up in Northern California which really has a shockingly high cult-content. Shocking to me, anyways. 🙂
And the first trimester is dreadful, and I am so, so glad to be through it. postComment(1);
Well, since nobody else said it: cults cults yes all the cults! Have you read Going Clear?
No, but I’ve been meaning to! I’ll check it out at the library next visit. Some of my cousins worked on the vault/helopad Miscavige had built out in Petrolia, and they had some pretty good stories. (And theories, but a lot of those were marijuana based.) Also, my partner’s buddy is L. Ron Hubbard’s grandson, and his stories are booooooooooonkers.
Any Dallas-area Toasties looking for a book club? My club is looking for new members (several people have moved away). We started out of the Hairpin meetups, so I feel like Toasties would fit in perfectly! Our next book is going to be Bad Feminist!
In new that isn’t awful, I am trying to build a list of fitness goals that I can pretend are requirements to be a civilian liaison to the Avengers. The list right now includes running a mile in a certain time (for running messages/evading goons), running a certain number of miles at a go regardless of speed (for a slog through enemy territory back to a base), squatting my body weight to be able to carry unconscious civilians out of harm’s way, pull ups so I can climb back over the edge of a cliff, etc. Any suggestions? Ideally, such goals would be measurable, with identifiable stages along the way, based on strength rather than aesthetics, and tied into heroic activities.
It seems like heroes are always hanging off ledges by their fingertips, so perhaps you could do some grip-strength/pull-up activities!
I’m kind of a broken record about her, but Neila Rey! I love to hate to love her workouts; if you can get past Level I, you probably win a plane.
Deadlifts at bodyweight or more, so you can pick up said civilians?
That is a hilarious and awesome goal. It reminds me of when John Leavitt (thewhelk in the comments here) got back on track by being Captain America.
Learn how to do a fireman’s carry so that you can actually hoist said humans? Being able to carry adult humans around even for short distances is surprisingly fun. See also: learn how to do a rolling break-fall so you can dive away from an explosion, roll, and come up ready to run. This may require trips to a judo or aikido dojo.
Rope climb for when you’re hanging over a balcony and have to climb back up to safety? Running and jumping over things? Running up a certain number of flights of stairs in a certain time? Actually, I bet firefighter fitness tests would be a great source of workouts along these lines.
Edit: Also, you could totally learn how to do this:
WHILE SHARING MISOGYNY STORIES. This week I called our home insurance provider to have some business done, blah blah, and the MAN on the phone asked me a question, and when I said “Just one second–my husband set this up so I just have to double check” he said “Well, if your husband set it up, maybe you should let him handle this because he’ll know what’s going on.”
FUCK OFF, USMAN AT MONAGE-MONNEX. I’ll light you on fire. When my husband called (because I slammed the phone down and proclaimed to my husband I wasn’t dealing with this bullshit any more and he said “Of course not. Let me call and if I get the same guy I’ll yell”), he got an extraordinarily nice and friendly woman.
ALSO in misogyny: I’m glad we’re moving from our apartment because when the weather is nice an old creepy man sits in front of the building in a lawn chair and talks to everyone coming or going. Except me, because one time when my husband and I walked in together he said “Oh, you’re married to her! You always look so friendly and she always looks sour like she just ate a pickle!” to my husband.
Geez, what’s his dill? He sounds like a real gherk.
I have no idea if anyone is even into this, but I had the thought to watch some video game “Let’s Play” videos. That said, I have no desire to wade through an ocean of man-boys just to find some quality content. Anyone know of any channels or people that you’d recommend?
Let’s Plays are not my thing and so I do not speak from direct personal experience, but the YouTuber Kikoskia is in my D&D group and I can testify he is a lovely bloke. Maybe worth a try?
ZombieCleo for minecraft and other assorted games
Hmm. The only let’s plays I’ve watched on a regular basis are those on hankgames. The channel includes games played by Hank Green (brother of the now-rather-famous John Green), occasionally his wife (Katherine), and John plays FIFA. Personally, I’d recommend the Super Mario Bros. Wii set; Hank and Katherine play through the game on co-op mode and I remember it being fairly funny.
Edited to include Katherine Green’s actual name, because why should only the men be identified by their names!
StreamFriends has a good rotating cast of people! You can check out their archives on their YouTube channel too.
presshearttocontinue is a pretty good one. She does various games. What games are you looking for Let’s Plays on?
Depends on what kind of games you’re looking for! I’m personally quite fond of BeagleRush’s XCOM video series. He is a male human who manages to be funny without manboying it up.
More generally, check out the Something Awful LP archive (http://lparchive.org). Something Awful is by no means perfect but they do weed out the most egregiously stupid LP content and thus tend to be of higher quality.
If you like 1) horror games and/or 2) watching other people’s shrieking, flailing reactions to horror games, my husband loves this dude. (I don’t watch Let’s Plays myself, but I’ve watched a couple of these over his shoulder and they’re pretty entertaining. Also the dude is kinda cute.)
I don’t tend to watch many traditional YT Let’s Plays, but I do really like Giant Bomb (YT version). They have their man-boy moments, and I wish they’d hire a lady already, but they seem to be good eggs. They tend to do shorter videos (“Quick Looks”, which are anywhere from 15 minutes to 1 hour+) but they do occasionally do full playthroughs of games (which they sometimes call Endurance Runs and sometimes just call other things and sometimes they’re behind their membership paywall). Their playthrough of Persona 4 was one of the first things I watched on the site and it got me through a really shitty summer full of overtime.
I also quite enjoyed Idle Thumbs playing Crusader Kings II but that might be an acquired taste.
I used to have a gag reflex whenever I ate sushi. I just could not handle the texture. After high school, I would go to my friends house, and her parents would always get sushi, because…I’m asian. So to be polite, I would always say I ate or something and pick at it. So I eventually had to learn how to eat sushi so as to be polite, and now it’s one of my favorite foods. The mental hurdle with food is really hard for me with certain dishes still though. I can’t do chicken feet and meaty gelatinous food in small doses.
I LOVE FIZZY WATER WITH ALL MY HEART. I ALWAYS HAVE AND I ALWAYS WILL.
Toasters, how do I become un-bitter about men/dating? My friend gently pointed out the other day that maybe it isn’t super helping my dating life that I’ve started to kind of blanket hate men (who are not already my wonderful friends and brothers), and when I see a cute guy my reaction is like ‘ugh you’re cute with your stupid cute beard I bet you’d act really into me and never call me again or you’re really into how great your stupid novel is, I hate you stop being cute’. I can, dimly, see how this might not be a helpful attitude. Other than mountains of therapy, how do I adjust?
I don’t know how to do this about dating specifically but over the past year I’ve been really trying to make myself less bitter in general, and I think it takes a concerted effort to redirect your thoughts. First, I am trying to separate out the actual reality from my knee-jerk reactions to people’s superficial qualities. It’s so easy for me to turn the tiniest thing about a person into a weighty symbol of the political affiliations and background and class that I assume they have. Now that I’ve identified that tendency and the type of speculative anger that goes with it it’s easier to stop it.
Second, I’m trying to use my own self-loathing as a starting point to hate others less. How many dumb things do I myself say in the course of a usual day? How obnoxious have I been in the past, when I knew less than I know now, and how many things am I still totally clueless about? A lot, probably. So when other people seem obnoxious or clueless to me– well, aren’t we all.
Both this comment and the excellence of your username has helped me with my bitterness. Thank you.
It is hard; I am sure there are actual things that have happened in your life that lead to you feeling this way, and those feelings are real and valid. But… they are real and valid *feelings* instead of facts. I think what bird_internet says below is excellent. Can you try to look at behaviours instead of things like cuteness and beards (or bears as I wrote initially) and look especially for positive behaviours?
I assume that you would like to have a dating life and this is not just some kind of thing where you think you need to? 🙂
Thank you! Yes, I really do want to have a dating life, but am just really exhausted of dudes seeming great and turning out to be terrible. My serious relationships have all involved me investing way more than he did, and I haven’t gotten past a first date with anyone since my last one fell apart a year ago. I feel like I’ve dated every guy in Brooklyn and all of them are the worst (like literally, I have a thing for bearded computer programmers and recently a friend texted me that she was watching a game show with a bearded computer programmer from Brooklyn competing and I should check him out, and I had ALREADY SLEPT WITH HIM. And he was terrible!). I know how whiny it sounds, but it’s at a point where when I see an attractive person I don’t think ‘ooh I’d like to get to know him better’, but ‘ugh, another one’. It’s probably a good thing that I won’t invest anything in a guy until he proves he’s also invested and worth my time, but that translates to not dating at all.
Oh it does not sound whiny to me at all. It sounds really tough! I am feeling a little bit the same way about in-person friends (although without any actual experiences having only met 2 new-potential-friends in the last six months) so I am very sympathetic.
Do you read Captain Awkward? She has a lot of stuff about how to meet lots of different kinds of people, and my first reaction is that you need to meet totally different people who are not bearded computer programmers. 🙂
Aw, I hope things get better finding new friends! Our problems are definitely opposite– I feel like I meet awesome women to befriend constantly, and no men to date. I went to a board games night recently in an effort to meet new people, and attending were: a ton of awesome women and one lame dude I’ve already made out with. But, as my friend pointed out, my blanket misandry is probably coloring who I pay attention to and what I think of the people I meet. I used to have no women friends because I was one of those terrible ‘women don’t understand me because I don’t wear dresses’ feminists!
I think it’s also a fear of getting excited about anyone because I feel like every time I do I get dropped on my head. Recently a friend-quaintance who I’d vaguely crushed on for years kissed me, said he really wanted to take me on a date (and take things slow because he really liked me!), texted me a few times before the theoretical date and then just. . .stopped texting me before the date ever happened. I don’t know how I’m supposed to stay hopeful and open when this kind of shit keeps happening, yknow?
I loove Captain Awkward, and I think you are right. I have a very specific type and that type tends to be emotionally stunted hipster doofuses. The beards are kind of non-negotiable though.
Anyways, apparently I am good at making friends if not dating people, maybe I can help. How have you been going about tryin’ to meet peoples?
Reading some more of your story makes me think that maybe taking a break for a while might be a good idea too. How about going on ‘experimental dates’? By this I mean going on dates with men you’d normally never go for. See it as an anthropological experiment.
ETA: bitterness = ‘calcified’ mourning.
Thank you! I think you are probably right about the bitterness= calcified mourning. I am working on feeling the feelings, and also feeling them as individual experiences and not a trend of All Men Being Terrible. I actually realized yesterday I was hanging out with this dude and I didn’t like the way he talked about women because he kept talking about ‘all the girls I dated have been like this’, but that’s actually kind of exactly how I talk about the men I’ve dated. I gotta respect these as individual experiences that hurt me and not turn it into some wider trend of How Men Are.
Date girls?
Ha! It’s ridiculous to say considering I have All The Privilege because of it, but sometimes I do feel my heterosexuality is a curse.
One thing I have learnt about bitterness, is that it often comes from un-felt-through emotions. Say a man treated you badly: the ‘magic’ approach is to feel your feelings and cry like a stupid little rejected baby. Basically: bitterness = hardened badfeelings. non-bitterness = dissolved badfeelings.
Missing my high school reunion this weekend (I have to work and tickets are just too expensive). Guess I have to give up the teenage dream of telling my classmates I invented Post-Its. Any good reunion stories out there?
Toasties, I discovered last night I have a bod made for evening gowns, who knew? As a lady who normally dresses way down but is going to a fancy-ass shindig next month, I was prepared for tears and disappointment. The first three dresses all looked pretty fantastic, so I bought the one that had the best fit and was on mad sale. Triumphantly done in 20 minutes!
Shoes, on the other hand….where did all the cute 1″ – 1.5″ kitten heels go? Everything’s either sky high or super flat.
Is anyone else here freaking out about Wolf In White Van?
Planning extended freaking out once I get my hands on it!
Definitely! After listening to him read the 10 minute excerpt, I’m thinking I might go for the Audiobook version. Eeeeek, so excited.
YUP YUP JUST HEARD IT WAS OUT AND WENT STRAIGHT TO AMAZON ALL CAPS JOHN DARNIELLE IS MY HERO/SPIRIT ANIMAL/TRUE LOVE.
Does anyone else out there use a vaporizer/mod and RDA/RBA? I started at the beginning of the year, and threw away my last cigarettes within a couple of months. It’s not something you meet many people using these days, and I thought it might be an interesting thread topic, and a good way to get juice suggestions.
Mine:
Mod: Panzer Blackhawk
RDA: Patriot
Fave juice: Far From Heaven by Composed Chaos
I am going to be very Canadian for a moment and bitch about the weather, because we have apparently jumped from summer directly to WINTER here in Eastern Ontario. It was 6 degrees this morning! Mostly this upsets me because fall is my favourite clothes season, and I have like 4 blazers/fall jackets that I have not yet had the opportunity to wear. WON’T SOMEONE THINK OF THE WARDROBE?
Ahem. With that out of my system, I invite you all to complain about your respective climates here if you so choose.
UGH YES. It was -1 here overnight. I scraped ice off my windshield this morning! WHY! I am so irritated by this.Two weeks ago we were sweltering, wtf.
But boy, it’s a good thing climate change isn’t real! Then we’d be in big trouble!
The weather here is still insisting on being summer and around 75-80 degrees (Fahrenheit), and I am DONE with it, and am just generally glaring at the sky, clutching fistfuls of cardigans.
“glaring at the sky, clutching fistfuls of cardigans.”
Amazing. I am also doing this, but in a full-length wool coat. Maybe you send me a little of your heat and we’ll both get fall weather this year.
We are in a horrible HORRIBLE drought. Everything looks wilted. The sycamore trees on the way I drive my daughter to school are all dying. I already hate the climate here because I miss actual seasons (with leaves changes and real winter and spring that starts in March instead of the end of January) but now I am hating it SO MUCH MORE. Plus now there is a lot of moisture in the air but the weather conditions are such that it just sits there in the air, making it humid and muggy and just like the pit of despair in the midwest we were kids in, except that at least in that pit of despair there were seasons. I feel like I am going to be trapped in humid muggy no-rain land forever.
Ughhh mugginess is the worst, I’m sorry. I hate feeling like as soon as I leave my house I am wading through soup. Here’s hoping you get a little rain ASAP (poor sycamore trees!).
Gah! Send all of your weather here to me, please. This has been the dumbest, longest summer and it supposed to get into the 80s again this weekend and SUMMER IS THE WORST INVENTION EVER AND I AM SO GRUMPY!!!!! *ahem* But seriously. If it never ever got above 50 degrees, ever, and just cycled endlessly between autumn and winter forever, I would be the happiest clam in Clam Town.
For a different varietal of whine . . . The weather is changing, and none of my winter clothes fit because of breast-feeding boobs. But I don’t want to buy a new wardrobe because THEY ARE GOING BACK TO NORMAL, RIGHT?
Toasties! Last week I missed the Open Thread entirely because the entire work week was basically a nonstop swirl of activity. This week, same, but it’s slowly abating. I am very pleased to report that I finally bought a slow cooker (just a basic Crock-Pot, the kind with the knob) and made an inaugural beef stew with red wine and carrots, which came out very nicely. Next week maybe I’ll make a chicken thing. Or lentils. In other news, I went on a hike last weekend and made some new friends (yay Meetup!) and that’s led to dinner plans tonight.
Speaking of foods: I used to hate mushrooms in any shape or form after being forced to eat cream of mushroom soup as a child. Now I love mushrooms. Still not a fan of Campbell’s Cream of Mushroom, though, unless it’s disguised by other things, like green bean casserole.
And fizzy water is the greatest. Whole Foods sells a mint-flavored version that’s weird but very pleasant in summer.
The first and only thing that has been purchased on my wedding registry so far is my slow cooker. I’m so excited to make stews, pulled pork, and beans for days (daayyyzzzz). What’s your opinion of Pinterest? I feel like you have got to have a slow cooker to be able to find its true worth (which is generally obfuscated by core exercises, bridal hair, and general gag-inducing women hatin’). There are so many recipes!
I don’t really use Pinterest for recipes — I mostly just use it to remind myself of clothes I like, interesting knitting patterns, that kind of thing. (Also I made a Pinterest board for books I read and loved as a child, just for the nostalgia factor and for the hell of it.) For recipes I’m more likely to just Google ingredients and cooking methods; Pinterest doesn’t have the greatest search function, and I don’t usually have the patience to wade through it if I’m looking for something specific.
The bartender, I like your pajama pants and also your choice of olive. Who are you?
Bluh, also I started learning dao at kung fu yesterday (kung fu saber), and it is great and I am in favor of it, but I have had aggravating muscle twitches in my arm all day because of all the extra exercise.
I’m just sitting at my desk, twitching.
graaarrgh
Toastrons, I may be late to this thread, but, hey, feeback would be appreciated.
Remember the date from last week? The ancient magic historian whom I desperately hoped would not fade into the ether? He’s sort of faded into the ether.
What’s the protocol for moving forward from promising dates? I feel like I’ve had a lot of people seem to just disappear after what I had thought was a lovely time. Thoughts?
This is pretty daft advice, but have you tried asking him on a second date?
We’ve actually been on four dates, now. Sudden radio silence just when things were getting good.
I’ve just texted him again in a last ditch attempt at salvaging something, which makes me feel desperate and sad. Blegh.
Ah, I see. Dang.
Not much advice I can give, other than screw people who can’t answer a text IT’S LITERALLY THE LEAST EFFORT YOU COULD PUT IN YOUR ANCESTORS WOULD HAVE DIED OF STARVATION IF THEY WERE HALF AS LAZY and then I pour a glass of gin.
PRAISE HELIX
Ah, the old Ghost Routine. I’ve been on the receiving end of this a time or two! Normally afterwards I go on a Misandry Rampage, swear off men altogether, and spend a lot of time reading/Netflixing/hanging out with ladyfriends until I gather the energy to deal with dating again.
I tell myself that sometimes we just need reminders that good and promising things are out there for us. This wasn’t your thing – but it was your reminder that they’re there.
I usually read this: http://www.theawl.com/2013/08/ask-polly-i-feel-bi… , and repeat “IT DOESN’T MATTER HOW COOL HE IS IF HE’S NOT HUNGRY FOR ANCHOVIES” to myself over and over again, and get very drunk. But, I’m a wreck so this may not be a great strategy.
Seriously though, people just. . .do that. It’s nothing personal, nothing you did wrong or nothing you even misinterpreted. He probably had a lovely time too, but isn’t interested in a commitment, or met another girl/saw a birdie, or. . .any number of things that have nothing to do with you. Better luck next time!
Happy Talk Like a Pirate Day, Toastmates! My office has an annual TLAP scavenger hunt, and my team won! We got gloriously tacky plastic necklaces with skulls wearing pirate hats. It’s a good day.
My sister totally waited outside the bathroom door for me this morning just to give me a good “Arrrgh!” The resulting conversation went something like this:
Me: Ahoy! Thar be fruit smoothies in the fridge?
She: Yar!
Me: Them’s in the odd-looking tupperwares?
Her: Drink ‘er down!
My house is a stupid place.
Your house is a wonderful place.
What’s a pirate’s favorite letter?
You’d think it would be arrrrrrrr, but a pirate’s first love be the sea.
Man, I keep waiting to run into somebody who doesn’t know that joke.
I saw a screening of the all-male Globe production of Twelfth Night starring Stephen Fry and it was magnificent! Still basking in the glory of Mark Rylance.
It is so wonderful. I have a copy on DVD and I like to watch bits of it whenever I’m having a bad day to cheer me up.
I am planning on moving back to the West Coast in two years, and I wanted to do something cool and exciting to celebrate my return, and I think I’m going to hike the John Muir Trail with a friend (!!!!)
But, moving to the Midwest has physically wrecked me — my bike is my main form of transportation, so I’m not totally out of shape, but I haven’t been on a good long hike in now 8 years. My friend and I are already committed to going on long multi-mile hikes through the city, but we need to get some hills in, and also field-test equipment (I want to head towards minimalism but lol the first time I use a tarp is not going to be on the beginning of a 3-week trip), and ack.
So, fellow toastrons:
1. tell me about your favorite hike, or your best experience, or the worst experience you’ve ever had.
2. if you live in or around Chicago, are there good places to go for some short overnight trips? Or am I committed to sweettalking my friend’s landlords into letting us set up bivy sacks in their back yard?
Full disclosure, I have never actually hiked but I did live in Chicago for six years and all my outdoorsy friends kept going up to Michigan or to the Indiana dunes.
Alright, I’ll check it out! Thanks!
I think the UP especially is a pretty popular area but it might be a bit far of a drive outside the city.
There’s a book called 60 Hikes Within 60 Miles of Chicago. Some of them are super long. Some of them are also bike paths. This book is the solution to your problem.
If you want a hiking place with Terrain, I’d recommend Indiana Dunes, with a side trip to the Three Floyds Brewery as a post-hike reward.
This book is the greatest book! Though as a West-Coaster, I did have to eventually give up saying snidely to my partner “This isn’t really a HIKE so much as it is a scenic walk. I mean, it’s hard to HIKE without any actual hills. What a nice stroll this is.” He was getting really annoyed, and justifiably so.
That said, we did some stuff at the Indiana Dunes that really did make me break a sweat.
My wife and I did that while she was 6 months pregnant because she’s tough. I was almost as impressed with her for that as I was for her giving birth to a human person. Also we almost got bitten by a pit viper.
Heh, a friend of mine (who is from Northern California, and also bemoans the flatness of this state) went skiing in the Midwest at a mountain that boasted “500 vertical feet of excitement!”
I try really hard not to be obnoxious about topography around my friends from the area, but like
Midwest, you are killing me
Hi, are you me? Although I am even more terrible because I grew up in the Rockies, so on the east coast I say obnoxious things like “that peak is almost as high as the house I grew up in.” But now I have been living at sea level-ish for years and it has ruined me and my glorious altitude adaptations.
Thanks for the recommendation!
Alas, the majority of my friends out here are not particularly outdoorsy, so my knowledge of what’s good to do in the area is pathetically lacking, but soon that will change! I will pick this up this weekend!
The weirdest/worst hiking experience is when I went on a six mile hike with my thesis advisor who was probably drunk and my then-boyfriend, who had just had shoulder surgery and hiked with his arm in a sling.
We are geologists, though, and that leads to some very, very bizarre hikes.
Please may I have some bzarre hike stories
My favorite one, because it takes the cake: I went to school up in north Jersey, and we spent a good portion of my petrology class researching the Palisades. It was February or so, I think, and my professor decided that we NEEDED TO GO SEE SOMETHING THERE THIS WEEKEND. So we all piled into the geology van and proceeded to start hiking…only to find that not even a third of a way up the trail it is now covered in ICE. Not just snow, which would be easy enough to hike on, but about 2″ thick ice. Steeply graded. This was probably my first or second serious hike, and I was terrified I was going to fall and break my ankle. I lagged behind with a couple of friends and tried my best to carefully make my way up the trail without dying. Any tree I could hold onto became fair game. There are pictures on Facebook somewhere of us just hanging onto trees trying to Not Die.
In the time it has taken me to go a snail’s pace, my prof has made it to the top already. So he runs back down, jokingly chastises us for going so slowly, then grabs my wrist and drags me at his pace up the rest of the way.
At the top of the trail was a frozen waterfall, which the rest of my asshole classmates have decided is perfect to go ice sliding on. Nothing could POSSIBLY go wrong here. So a bunch of us just start to do the slip-and-slide thing. A couple friends hike back a bit further into the woods, right around where the stream is starting. We’re all enjoying ourselves and then all of a sudden – CRACK! SPLASH! OH SHIT!
My friend Dan fell through the ice. One of the other guys says he has a change of clothes in the van, so we all start hiking back towards the car. Downhill is much easier than uphill, as we can just slide down for part of the way. We’re about 3/4 of the way back to the van when my professor notices some vines hanging from a tree…and starts to jump up and down on them. Dan is still half soaked. Professor is goofing off on vines for like fifteen minutes.
I am well and truly surprised there have not been any fatalities in the geoscience department.
I love geology field trip stories. One of my favorite trips was when we were hanging around our campsite in the afternoon, and our professor goes “Hey, I heard there were hot springs around here, you guys want to try to find them?” I have since learned that most geologists have a mental encylcopedia of hot springs locations.
This is vaguely true. When I was doing field camp in Argentina, one of our “lunch break” stops ended up being a hot springs. That wouldn’t let women in, so I couldn’t join in the fun. Whomp.
Literally all of that sounds either hilarious, or disastrously terrible, and I’m not totally sure which, heh.
I think the worst I ever heard was a friend of a friend who slipped and fell while playing frisbee and broke the shit out of his wrist — they were nearly to the halfway point, and he insisted it was totally fine and that they should just keep trucking, but apparently when they came out on the other side and he put his elbows together, the arm with the broken wrist was noticeably shorter than the other (he was fine once he got to a doctor, but still!).
The reason boyfriend of the time needed shoulder surgery is because he dislocated his shoulder and tore his labrum while playing Frisbee.
What is it with Frisbees?????
I’m only outdoorsy in my fantasies so I’ll just say WEST COAST BEST COAST WOOT WOOT.
I MISS IT, I miss home :c Chicago is honestly a pretty great place, but I miss the coasts and the ocean and the mountains and the weather.
My worst Chicago-experience was going to the Dunes when I was 2.5 months pregnant and in the throes of constant morning-sickness. I cried and almost threw up in the bushes and then declared that my partner didn’t care about women or else he wouldn’t have suggested a 4 mile hike on sand. That’s actually the last hike we did this summer, WEIRDLY ENOUGH.
Have you been up to the Illinois State Beach up in Zion? It’s really lovely – not much as far as hiking goes, but here are some lovely wetlands and a nature preserve with lots of cool birds, and we saw some gorgeous snakes. Plus there are these super cool abandoned beach structures from the 60s all up and down the shore. Very apocalyptic. (Well, the nuclear power plant in the background adds to that effect as well. Goddamn I miss the West Coast.)
Hiking on sand is THE WORST, I would take every death-defying mad scramble up every alarmingly vertical hill over hiking on sand. Also, my sympathies re: sickness — I did a beach hike once and got mild (very mild!) food poisoning and I think between the waves of nausea and having to do things besides lie in the sand and shiver, it was the most miserable I have ever been in my life.
I have not — I will check it out! I am a huge fan of weird abandoned bunkers and old machinery left lying around to bestow tetanus upon unsuspecting young women.
I have done a death-defying mad scramble up a giant sand cliff once. I would not recommend it. We were looking for a helicopter pick-up spot and it looked open up on this plateau and the hill didn’t look that high. We almost got to the top and realized the last 2 m was completely vertical, but the problem with sand cliff is that if you stop moving you start sliding and there was a large fast river below the cliff so we kind of threw ourselves over the top. It was a beautiful alpine meadow up there, but it was wasted on us as we flopped on the ground panting and regretting our poor life choices.
There are surprisingly many options! If you have/can get a car, everything from Wisconsin (Devil’s Lake State Park, etc.) down to Starved Rock and the Mississippi Palisades becomes accessible AND you will become everyone’s best friend (including mine) if you want to find more people to hike with. I was part of a few hiking-related Meetup groups for a while that seemed pretty active, so you should check those out–though I never did anything with them, because I can’t drive and everything was an hour out of the city.
Check out the Waterfall Glen, which is basically on the property of the Argonne Laboratory, and the Fermilab Trail, which is, you guessed it, on the property of Fermilab. What’s up with science facilities around here having hiking trails also?
Better, non-boy related whining news: I’m going to a swanky work gala next weekend with great food and open bar FOR FREE. I volunteered to help man and run the silent auction bits, and I’m really excited! I even already have a new fancy dress, that I already bought for a friend’s wedding. And earlier next week, I’m going to another work event – a wine tasting at a fancy house with fancy food. I will be well-fed and watered next week! I am a bit nervous about the all the mingling and small talk with people I don’t know well, but hopefully each event makes me better at it!
I used to really dislike sharp tastes, like vinegar and mustard. But suddenly a couple of years ago, something clicked and now I crave them. I voluntarily put mustard on my sandwiches now, it’s really great. I also started eating a lot more spinach, but I think in this case it’s because I started eating it raw. I dislike cooked greens, but that was the only way I ever got spinach as a kid. Bleh.
But in other news, the day after I celebrated my departure from my crappy job, I got a new job! It’s still something I’m vastly overqualified for, but it’ll do while I study and look for something more relevant. The hours are better at any rate, even if the pay isn’t. Yay!
What are your favorite misandrist TV shows?
Or TV characters?
I need some more badass women in my Netflix queue.
Top of the Lake!!! Also, The Fall.
I don’t think this qualifies as misandrist but I looove Call the Midwife. There’s only a few male characters and they’re usually kind of dumb and bumbling. The women do all the good smart stuff. It’s very cute, more than badass, but I highly recommend it! (eta just saw that someone else suggested Call the Midwife! wooo!)
lovely, thank you!
OOOH OOH!
Murder She Wrote
Miss Marple (any of them, but my favorite are the Joan Hickson era)
Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries
Hmm. I’m sensing a theme. Anyway, all awesome ladies.
Mysteries are the best! I like to read them too. I’m an Agatha Christy fan, also Dorothy Sayers, and Laurie King.
Sayers is so amazing!
Oh Miss Fisher, she was everything I was looking for on my last badass women in Netflix queue hunt. I second this recommendation a hundred times!
MISS FISHER’S MURDER MYSTERIES! #seconded
ORPHAN BLACK ORPHAN BLACK
LOVE Orphan Black!
Orphan Black: where the (straight) men are useless, annoying, and evil, and are only effective as obstacles because they are backed by powerful institutions/money/religion. Also, while I think the second season passes the Reverse Bechdel test (named male characters talk to each other about something other than a female character), the first season does not.
Would you be willing to consider anime?
Yes! I haven’t watched much at all but I like new things.
I recently watched and liked Kill La Kill. Some caveats, esp since you haven’t watched much anime: yes, there is a lot of teenage girls in skimpy clothing. I found this really gratuitous and unnecessary at first. But after awhile, it makes more sense vis a vis plot, and you come to realize that all of the characters, male and female, become naked all of the time. (My dude and I have speculated that it’s more or less about making fun of the gratuitous nakedness in other anime.) Most of the main powerful characters are women as well. There are some Japan-specific jokes that have gone over my head.
It ends up being a feel-good anime at the end, but it definitely requires some patience at first! It’s very goofy though.
Princess Jellyfish: okay, so admittedly I’ve been trying to get someone, anyone to watch this anime but it is basically about an all female geek/otaku commune in a neighborhood in Tokyo. Each of them have their specific obsession (the main character’s is jellyfish, other characters like things like Trains or the Three Kingdoms era in China) and they band together to save their commune from being bought out redeveloped since they’re living in a gentrifying neighborhood. They’re helped by a young man who likes dressing up as a beautiful trendy woman for funsies. It’s not really straight badass/misandry, but it’s very female-centric and I feel like there’s a lot of subtext about gender as performance.
Full Metal Alchemist: Brotherhood has Olivia Armstrong, who is just straight baller. She doesn’t show up until season 3 or so though. Both FMA and FMA:B (one is a remake of the other, since the former was completed before the manga was done and they had to make shit up) have the main character’s mentor as well, Izumi, who is also straight baller and intimidates every-fucking-one. Winry gets a lot of really uncomfortable sexualized attention in FMA in the outros, but in the series she is an engineering prodigy, which is pretty awesome too.
Attack on Titans has Mikasa, who is a straight up cool and collected badass. Yeah, she is kind of (weirdly*) obsessed with Eren (the main male character) but part way through the series, Eren kind of ends up being a constant dude in distress. All of the female characters are awesome in their own way (Annie, Ymir, Sasha), and in this world it’s understood that men and women have equal fighting and thinking capacity.
*but understandable if you watch the series.
tl;dr many feels about anime, all of it is on Netflix
Many thanks! It’s a bit daunting to dive into a new genre, so it’s nice to have some recommendations.
No worries! Anime is sort of a medium unto itself, so it can easily be subdivided into other genres; some are more sci-fi, some lean more towards fantasy, others are rooted more in Japanese history. A lot of the ones I mention here have a bit of a “twist” to them. You’ll have to post again if you try any of them out! I would love to hear how you like (or don’t like) them!
Princess jellyfish sounds right up my anime group’s alley!
YESSSSSSSS
Sorry, I feel like I’ve been the Princess Jellyfish evangelist but I haven’t been successful yet! It’s just very sweet and very quirky. Also, I’ve told my husband that if anything happens to our relationship (death or divorce) I will probably spend the rest of my days in an all-female geek commune.
No need to be sorry! Sadly we watch things so slowly it might be YEARS before you & I could geek about it but hmn I will see if I can find it on Crunchyroll or somewhere else and watch the first episode. 🙂
What other anime do you like? We started watching in the 90s so a lot of our favourites are very old, probably Revolutionary Girl Utena is the #1 favourite.
It’s definitely on Netflix! Somehow I stumbled onto it on there.
I like.. the anime that has ended up on Adult Swim in the late 90s/early 2000s. ^^; [I’m not sure where this places me on bullshit “real” anime fan hierarchies.] FullMetal Alchemist: Brotherhood, Cowboy Bebop, Samurai Champloo are my constant favorites that I rewatch. I could probably watch a ton of Inuyasha but I never bothered to follow it all the way through its 108430821 episodes. I would probably rewatch Utena too if it was on Netflix.
The above post probably sums up my recent favorites, when recent anime became more accessible to me. I also saw Death Note recently, and while I enjoyed the story overall, I think it felt too much like “entitled dudes duel” too much.
I also really liked X/1999 (the series) in college, but I haven’t rewatched it in awhile and I’m not sure how well it holds up. I have a strange soft spot for CLAMP because when I was in HS/college (late 90s/early 2000s) I didn’t want to spend the money on actual anime but I would read about Magic Knight Rayearth on fansites.
We also have a very soft spot for CLAMP in its multitudinous forms, our very favourite being XXXholic… although wow they are so bad at ending series. We have read most stuff by them but yes the Tokyo Babylon fanfic (for instance) was much better than the actual arc of the series.
I saw the Tokyo Babylon movie (I think) and that was terrible. Although the Strawberry Fields outro made me laugh.
Rizzoli & Isles
Orphan Black
Bletchley Circle
Vikings def isn’t misandrist and can have some problematic stuff (mostly in regards to the main character’s brother), but the 3 main women are pretty awesome, Lagertha especially is one of the most awesome female characters on tv
ooh thank you!
Seconding Vikings, because the women in it are mostly awesome (Lagertha is entirely awesome and I would watch it just for her). I also like the main character, Ragnar, who is not your stereotypical Viking character.
I’m guessing you’re already all over Orange is the New Black? Not sure if My Mad Fat Diary is available on Netflix where you are – terrible name for a show, but amazing characters and amazing writing.
Yes I have watched it, not sure always how I feel about it (mostly Piper is annoying and sometimes the characters feel more like caricatures), but yay for a more diverse cast, and a story focused around women!
I’ve heard of My Mad Fat Diary, I’ll have to give it a try. Thanks!!
My Mad Fat Diary is sooooo good!
Smile!
Why don’t you smile more
Be happy
What do you mean ‘not bad’ why aren’t you good?
I mean I (like most of you) have been getting it my whole life but coworkers at both of my jobs have doubled down in the last month or so and its fucking getting to me. Like that was one of the perks to me of my primary job: it wasn’t retail so I didn’t have to fucking smile. Silly me.
I sometimes wonder what would happen if we started spouting these inanities back at the men who think they’re perfectly reasonable remarks. If I started saying “Smile!” and “It can’t be that bad, smiiiiile!” to men, would they see the inequity of our exchanges or would they just think I’d lost it?
I know, I know: they’d just think I’d lost it, because if they were reflective enough to see the disparity, they’d already have wised up. But if we all started urging dudes to “smile, beautiful!” they might start seeing how shitty it is to be treated like nothing but an ornament.
Gonna try this as an experiment. Need a more … something descriptor than “beautiful” though. Something that is a little more condescending instead of simply flipping it. Handsome? Sexy? Young man? Sailor?
“Smile, sailor!”
As a guy who has been getting this shit for as long as I can remember? I have no idea what would happen if it started today. But I suspect (based on how it feels to me) that it would feel less as being treated as ornamental and more just being constantly teased/insulted. So no. They still wouldn’t wise up, probably just lash out because they think they’re entitled to strike back.
“Sure thing, Sugar Buns”
Pause for their reaction.
“Feels condescending, doesn’t it?”
Then turn your back and leave them to bluster or consider alone.
Personal finance thread?
In a year of professional upheaval there has been yet MORE upheaval in my department. Boss is resigning, heir apparent to the boss isn’t sure she wants the job any more, another staffer of 25+ years in the department is going. By the end of the year there will remain only one person in this department who was here when I started. I love this job and if everything works out I plan on staying but if they bring in some monster to tell me how to do my job I will leave not only this job, but I will likely leave DC.
This is why I just dumped the couple thousand I had saved as the beginning of a downpayment fund into my student loans. Switching financial gears. Better housing and building equity would be nice but freedom/flexibility is going to be more important. I’m about $1500 from a positive net worth!
Daily money stuff has been pretty good though I went out last night and spent $50 on drinks and made out with an ex! Whoops.
Haha whoops! I’ll remember possible regret as another reason to try to keep my drinks spending low.
Personal finances doing good! I’m working through a habit of getting super agressive on loan payments and savings goals as soon as I get paid and then relying on a credit card float towards the end of the pay period, but MAN could it be worse (it was way worse a year ago, when I just constantly had my credit card maxed out). Trying to really stick to a cash budget.
My vacation fund has $3000 in it! I will fully pay off my government loan next month, and then it’s only the massive private loan to take care of, of which I have paid off $15,000 in ONE YEAR! I’m still like 5 years off from it being done, but still, I’m proud.
All of this is facilitated by my ever-growing ability and habit of rejecting spending off-hand. This morning I briefly contemplated how much I really wanted Repetto lace-ups, and then thought “Oh well, I just won’t buy them I actually have some shoes that are wearable so that’s that!” Which is pretty amazing. And the same is going for eating out and stuff. More and more I’m like “nope, financial goals first”, which is such a huge change.
If anyone ever makes it this far, and is interested, I made a NSFW/locked Twitter account over at @minideath.
Tweet sent!
🙂 🙂 🙂
I got engaged this week!! It was unexpected but very welcome and happy. Six months ago, I asked fellow Toastees what they thought about co-ring shopping with their intended–and what do you know, on Tuesday, I thought he was simply asking and it turns out he had a ring all along. 🙂
BUT. my dad–who i have only recently understood is a bit of a narcissist–is being such an a-hole. He is a very emotional person, who usually makes his overflow of emotion overshadow other people’s, but in this case, he seemed only vaguely positive about the news and then began listing all my other family members who had recently gotten engaged or married, and how he felt about their partners. Good for you for noticing patterns, I guess?
It got much worse after that; he decided to fill me on several family tragedies that occurred in the last month or so. tragedies that I had purposefully NOT asked him about because he never knows when not to share traumatic details. He also launched into numerous complaints about why siblings never want to see or meet up with him. Why this particular call would be a good time to segue into these things–your guess is as good as mine.
There were some more on-topic well wishes at the end, but by that point, after I’ve spent forty-five minutes going “uh-huh” and “oh really?”, it felt disingenuous at best.
Everyone else in my life has been much happier and supportive than I would’ve dreamed, which I’m very grateful for.
I just never expected that the way he would make this about him is by treating it as a fine prompt for an endless life monologue. Man.
Congratulations!!!
I can tell you from experience- I’m less than a month away from the wedding date after a two year engagement- that wrangling parents and their accompanying responses/expectations is one of the hardest jobs. I don’t think anyone properly prepared me for the weird twists and turns on this angst-train. Your dad sounds like a mix of my parents and I can hardly deal with them individually, let alone rolled into one sensitive, smooshy, narcissist. It does sound a bit like your Dad feels like he can really confide in you even if it’s misguided, given the sibling-bashing and untimeliness. 🙂
Just to add spice- here’s what my parents are guilty of:
– Threatened to disown me and not come to the wedding. (Because I didn’t buy my Dad a birthday gift when I hand-drew him a card and then took work off to go down where they live and visit.)
– Told me that I shouldn’t wear heels to my outdoor ceremony (“I’m just too feminist, I can’t imagine anyone wearing shoes like that.” – Mom) and then told me the flats I found were ugly and meant for men (really cute blue oxfords from ModCloth).
I have been found raising my hands to the heavens and shaking my head out of sheer frustration with these bozos. I love them dearly and they are a huge part of making the wedding a reality but could someone get us all a valium?
Thank you so much, truly. Having a parent be a complete dingbat, and expecting all along that he or she will be a complete dingbat, and thus girding yourself against it, and yet their dingbattery still blindsiding you in its exact manifestation–it all sucks. In moments like this, it sucks more.
I expect full-on batshittery of the kind you mention. Bless your heart for including that list because you are doing exactly what I hope to and find so difficult and don’t really see around me very much: be a decent or decently kind person to someone whom you love and who loves you and who will never understand how limited they are, in themselves and in their treatment of you.
I’m glad someone else out there is trying to fight the good fight. Cheers to you (and to your wedding next month)!
Aw, how sweet! Congratulations and best wishes to you both!
(I’m sorry about your dad, try not to let the very reasonable frustration over his response reflect at all on your happy news. Narcissists gonna narcissus.)
Thank you!!!
I will shyly tell you that you are one of my favorite commenters on here, for being so funny and wise. Thanks for your note and advice!
That’s very kind of you, but this is a thread for YAY CONGRATULATIONS TO YOU! What a happy, happy occasion!
My engagement and wedding really cemented for me the truth that people are just going to be who they are, and there’s not much you can do about it. What you can do is set boundaries, both visibly and invisibly: externally, I handled it by gently redirecting conversations or saying “Well, I’m not comfortable talking about that”; internally, I handled it by reminding myself not to expect people to be who they aren’t. If someone has a history of behaving one way, I shouldn’t expect them to behave differently today just because it’s a special occasions and I wish they would.
There’s a scene from Mad Men that I think of often. [This is NOT a spoiler.] A male character is excited over a success and he says that he should call his mother—so she can congratulate him and share his happiness, of course. His wife gently advises him: “Don’t go to the well. There’s no water there.”
That’s such perceptive, non-judgmental framing. If you want water, don’t go to a dry well. It just makes more work and worry and disappointment for you, and the dry well—though it may have a practical purpose or a sentimental significance that makes it important in other ways—is never going to give you water, no matter how much you want it.
Congrats!!!
Boo to your dad. But A+ to what Elsa is Emily said about narcissists.
I’m sorry your dad is being a dingus of the first order. I hope his negativity won’t put too much of a damper on the excitement and happiness you’re feeling now. For what it’s worth, I – a strange lady on the internet – am very happy for you and your beloved and I wish you a lifetime of happiness and joy <3
Congratulations!!!
Yay, congratulations to you both!!! Also, your user name is fantastic. 🙂
I realized this morning that I’ve successfully distanced myself from all Frenemies and Mean Girls. It means less invites out, but more Buffy the Vampire Slayer. WIN.
It’s been Body Failure Week around these parts- spent Tuesday night and most of Wednesday fighting off a depressive episode, then yesterday and today my anemia kicked into high gear. It’s that time of the month when the Communists are preparing to invade, and normally I’m OK, but this month it’s hitting me hard. I know my body does its best with the chronic illnesses I have to manage, but I wish I could have things run without incident for just, like, a month or two without something else going SPRROOOIINNNNGGG.
On the plus side, I had a dream this morning that culminated in me making out with a shirtless Captain America. Someone up there still likes me. :3
OMG I had the weirdest, hottest sex dream about Chris Evans once and I couldn’t talk about him irl without blushing for MONTHS.
On a related note, I find that – ah – taking care of business relieves some of my menstrual woes. Do it early and often, is my advice.
San Pelligrino is my shiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii……. !!!!!!!!!!!!!
I was CONVINCED that I hated oysters, capers and bloody mary’s my entire life but have learned that this is FALSE all this year!
Bloody Marys! I hated them for years. So many wasted opportunities to drink delicious spiced and spiked tomato juice.
Let’s see… I acted a damn fool a couple of weekends ago (mixed a lot of booze with a lot of negativity and a fragile brain) so I’ve been flying solo, no more friends for me. But it’s cool… without distractions I figured out that I’m not emotionally stable and I need to become stable before I can find a new job or new friends or a new boyfriend again, or finally move out of my parents house. I’m a work in progress…
You guys! Some of you may recall that Polly answered my letter last week.
Well, this week I went to my doc to talk about ADD, and it was as awful as I thought it might be. We don’t really get along, I guess? She was like “I’ll put you on Wellbutrin!” and I said no. This would be the third time she has tried to treat me with anti-depressants. The first time I took them for three months, hated them, and stopped. The second time it was like 2 days. I’m not depressed, and anti-depressants make me feel really disassociated and basically just like I care less about my shitty behaviour, but do not help at all with procrastination and attention issues.
I’ve kind of decided that taking meds for ADD is not my route. I think it’s drugging an existential crisis. So I’m doubling down on exercise and the skills I know can help counter the things I struggle with, and am going to think harder about how to end up with a job that suits me a bit better.
My dear sweet boyfriend therefore got up early with me and we did a bunch of exercise-y things in our bedroom before we made coffee, and it was awesome! Not exactly Aderall. Way better.
I know this might not be an option what with insurance problems, but could you get a second opinion from a different doctor? I’ve had doctors put me on antidepressants for OCD and it was A NIGHTMARE, with literally all possible side effects. But maybe there is an actual ADD med that would help you.
I don’t know all your backstory, but I looked up the Ask Polly column, and you sound a lot like me, in terms of time-wasting and feeling like a lazy shit. Have you taken ADD meds before? I’ve been going back and forth with them for years, and they definitely won’t cure an existential crisis. But it does help me a lot to have them, so that I can deal with other things and clear more brain space for dealing with my existential crises. It’s a pain in the ass to find a doctor who doesn’t either brush off adult ADD symptoms entirely or try to medicate the everloving shit out of them, which can have nasty results. I finally found somebody who was willing to let me take the lead on my dosage and now I’m taking a very low dose that’s working pretty well.
Geez, your doctor sounds unpleasant. It’s like you came in and said “Hey, I hurt my foot” and she was like “OK, here’s a bandaid for your arm”.
For what it’s worth (THOROUGHLY non-medical opinion time), I related a tonnnn to your letter, like I sent it to my therapist because it explains me better than me, and I am fairly certain I do not have ADD. Partially because, what I’ve heard from people who do have it is that when you do, it doesn’t feel like crazy-fun-high when you take Adderall, and I have taken Adderall recreationally and it was like cocaine X 1000. Lots of fun but definitely not something anyone in their right mind would prescribe that I take every day. So I think finding a doctor to talk to seriously about it is a great idea, but I think making sure you focus on the existential crisis and non drug solutions is extremely important, maybe even more important than the ADD.
Oh my god the very fact that cocaine X 1000 sounds AWESOME to me is a very good reasons that nobody should prescribe me Adderall. I’ve never taken it before, so maybe it would be different for me? But wooooooow.
I’ve just got the name of another GP to go to because I’m in Canada and can just go to another doctor like NO BIG THING. Love that.
Bahaha, this is why you shouldn’t take advice about prescription medication from people whose only experience is abusing it. But yeah, my guess is if you try it and it doesn’t make you feel like you’re on a cocaine binge for the next 12 hours, you probably do have ADD. And if it does do that, you’ll have an entertaining 12 hours (I recommend playing Pacman during this time), and you’ll know you don’t! SCIENCE.
Hahaha well. I won’t post the picture here because… I’m not exactly sure why, but this seems apropos: http://www.quickmeme.com/meme/3sc95k
ETA: This is from a more-or-less past life of mine, that seems incompatible with the Toast. Maybe that’s the source of my reluctance.
Good luck with the other GP! A very good friend of ours has ADD and the Adderall has been a life-saver for her, and boy can we tell when she is taking it and when she is not.
Ugh. It’s time to dump that doc.
If the exercise/review of things is what works for you, that’s awesome. FWIW, though, I think there’s sometimes a reluctance to use medication because it seems like cheating, or ‘oh, my case actually isn’t that severe’. No one would tell someone with mild astigmatism they don’t really need glasses, but smart girls with ADD who use their intellect to compensate for it get told we don’t really need the help.
( I , for one, hate the way stimulants make me feel (like I’ve drank sixty-odd ounces of coffee), but I’ve found Strattera actually helps–I still have to write things down, but I actually follow through on writing things down, and I don’t feel less creative, so I guess it works.)
I just found out that my mom has breast cancer and I don’t know what the fuck to do
You breathe. You ask her what she needs, and what you can do, and tell her she can let you know any time. You research support groups, doctors and treatments. You go to appointments with her (if you can), so that you can remember to ask the questions and get the answers she needs. You don’t cry/cry as she needs. You make it all about her when she needs it to be, and talk about normal stuff in a normal way when she’s getting overwhelmed. You bring her wine.
Sadly she is in FL and I live in NY, but these are all much better suggestions than my current path of “cry, sit around, cry more, get very drunk, cry while being hungover.” Thanks.
My mom’s in FL, so I know of some great resources here.
Are any of them in the southeast part of the state by any chance? I’m official (dot) which at gmail but with the appropriate punctuation instead of “dot”
That is an a-ok plan! Not forever but for now. You have a lot coming up that will take a lot out of you- you can take some time to get angry and sad and drunk about how much it sucks and how much unfair the world is before you deal with reality.
Oh, I’m so sorry. My mom was diagnosed with breast cancer last year – she’s in the US, I’m in France. It was really hard being so far apart. What you can do – look up information, help her think of questions to ask doctors during appointments, even if you’re not there. Depending on how she’s feeling, she may really appreciate someone else sifting through all the reading. She may also want to have someone to talk to about something, anything other than cancer! And you can do that, too! Hugs to you.
embryoconcepts has good advice on both counts. You keep breathing and get through the first shock; you let her tell you what she needs and how she wants to handle this, you eventually get your feet under you and become capable of supporting her. And while you’re doing that, you let your friends support you.
I’m so sorry. Take care of yourself while you’re helping her take care of herself.
You bring your fears and worries to us, to help shoulder them.
I’m really sorry to hear that. Sending you internet hugs and love from over here. We’re here for you.
Thanks. Part of me was like “now you are being depressing to a bunch of people on the internet” but I am not sure how to tell people in person yet, so.
I’m so sorry.
Talk to her. Breathe.
And take plenty of your own time out to freak out as much as you want. Maybe even talk to a therapist, if you can afford it.
I don’t know if you want actual things to do, or just to vent because it fucking sucks, so feel free not to read past me saying “we are here for you.”
But in case this help at all: the last time my mom was diagnosed with cancer I started reading Emperor of All Maladies. Maybe I can’t really explain it, somehow reading something so logical made me feel better. Just being able to track the history of cancer and have it confined to something so logical, it was comforting admits my life that was otherwise all emotion. Maybe it was just my own fucked up coping thing.
I also echo that someone else mentioned going to appointments with her. It is really important to advocate for the right care. My mom was told double mastectomy, but then spoke up and asked if she could do chemo then a lumpectomy. The doctor said, “well sure! Most people just want it out right away so we do double mastectomy” ?!? She also was able to get herself moved from a depressing stale chemo room, to a beautiful center with floor to ceiling windows over looking a garden, a recliner with built in TVs, ect. Fight for what is best for your mom if you are able.
We also did a care calender. Different people took her to different chemo appointments. (Like one coworker brought her on his Harley, my mom loved that). People will want to help, but creating an organized system makes it easier on everyone – to be sure things are covered and so there are boundaries.
Things to do are good! Better than just sort of sitting around here being like “…well, this is pretty terrible…”
I’m sorry this has happened. I hope you have some people around to help take care of you while you’re taking care of her. Talk/vent/cry here as much as you need or want to! We’re here for you.
Ouch. I am really sorry to hear that. I hope you are taking good care of yourself.
Hey lady. I am so sorry. My mom had breast cancer twice when I was growing up, and I work at a breast cancer center, and I live in NY too. You can email me at c dot tesoro 330 at gmail, if you want to talk, and also if you want some in-person support, and we’re nearish each other, I am here for you! I will drink with you and cry with you and feed you comforting foods.
If you’re not up to new people right now, though, I totally understand that, too. Hugs for you. Breathe. Maybe take a long, hot shower and don’t get out until your skin is puckered and flushed. The first time my mom was diagnosed, I took my anger out on this marker board — smashed all the felt tips of my markers to nubs, even though it was my favorite toything (I was nine, I liked to “play school” after school). It is normal to be angry and scared and feel helpless. Allow yourself to feel those feelings. Be kind to yourself so that you can be there for your mom. Don’t forget to take care of yourself too.
mittensblum, I’ve been thinking about you all day. This sucks. I hope things go as well as possible for your mom and you. I’m thinking of you both.
How do I finish my unpacking?
I have boxes left to unpack and I need to do something with them to not go crazy, but the shelves and furniture I got at IKEA won’t arrive for two more weeks. WHAT DO I DO I barely understand how to organize things.
*sigh*
How many boxes, what kind of stuff? I am a former Professional Organizer. Fer serious.
Just do what I do, shove the boxes in a closet or a room you don’t use much and ignore them for a few years.
(Don’t do what I do.)
Toasties!
Instagram contacted me to take part in some market research. The first step is a survey and it is CHOCK FULL OF LOLZ.
What kind of bucket do you fit into? I fit into a bucket that is approximately 5’9″ with a 40″ diameter. I also fit into a 12 piece bucket of chicken from KFC. Open discussion on buckets:
Which of the following buckets do you fit into?:
A chum bucket
Tell us a little bit about why you fit into the bucket:
I am a fish head.
Which of the following best describes the phone you own and use:
I cannot use a phone, because I am a fish head and possess neither hands nor fins.
I am a cool hunter. I stalk through the Bushwick undergrowth, careful to stay downwind, shouldering the old rifle my grandfather brought home from the war. The cigarette butts here are fresh and warm to the touch. I lay down my record player playing the latest First Aid Kit and sit in the shade of a crooked oak tree, and wait for them to gather. I will get my trophy this day.
…Clever girl.
Are there people that would really categorize themselves, down to their essence, as TED FANS?
does this ted count? http://www.togashistudio.com/data/photos/517_1edw…
This convo is getting TED TO TED:
Truly, one needs A Bucket of One’s Own to thrive.
I never get tired of bucket walrus (even though I know it’s not really a walrus)
It’s not? Then what is it?!
He is an elephant seal named Minazo. Here’s another article about him.
I have never attempted to fit myself in a bucket but (shamefully) I have fallen for the old “You could never fit in that giant duffel bag!” “I could, too! It’s enormous!” “No way, show me!” *gets zipped into duffel bag and roundly mocked* trick. I’m not sure that is useful to Facebook, though.
brb have to go procure giant duffel bag
Does anyone know what might cause someone to have problems expressing herself? For the past several years my memory has been terrible and I can no longer put together logical sentences, I have trouble remembering nouns, and I misuse prepositions (I am a copy editor and this is distressing and is now something that affects my work). My ability to communicate worsens if I am tired, which seems to be all the time. I have been examined by doctors and therapists, who have encouraged me to eat an iron-rich diet and to take supplements. I have also changed the dosage of my anti-anxiety medications, which has not helped. Exercise makes me more tired which leads to greater confusion. It’s a cyclical problem: The more aware I become of my missteps the more self-conscious I become about my ability to express myself and the more I make mistakes. I often confuse others in conversation, and sometimes I begin to stutter or repeat words or phrases or begin my sentences several times. It is very frustrating and I feel helpless and ignorant. Any ideas would be much appreciated!
I think you should see a neurologist. Was one of the doctors you saw a neurologist?
I had a CT scan and a lot of bloodwork. Everything was fine–no thyroid, brain, or liver issues. The doctor doubled my dosage of anti-anxiety medication which didn’t seem to affect my speech habits but did help my phobias and mild depression. I am no longer on ant-anxiety medication but I still use birth control. I’ve been told I’m borderline anemic which is why I take an iron supplement, along with a general multivitamin. My ability to concentrate has also suffered–I often lose my place while reading and forget whole passages of text. Maybe I’m just not getting enough good-quality sleep but it’s very stressful!
I don’t know how much of that could be anemia, but I have been anemic, which leads me to ask the following: How long have you been taking iron supplements? Have your iron levels gone up? If you haven’t had a follow-up blood test for iron levels yet, has your doctor said when they will order one?
Edited to clarify: My experience with iron-deficiency anemia was that my doctor prescribed iron supplements for several months, followed by blood work to check if they were working, followed by a few more months of iron supplements and so on until the bloodwork said good things. If that’s more-or-less what your doctor is doing, then yay. I guess I thought from your comment that it sounded like they might have just told you to take iron supplements and not planned the follow-up, which I’m pretty sure would be not so great, but maybe you just didn’t mention the upcoming follow-up stuff.
The first several years I had chronic fatigue syndrome, I had major word issues–I would switch the prefixes on words in a sentence as I was saying it, so by the time I ended it, it was complete gibberish. And then I would have to repeat myself, and second and third attempts weren’t any better; so for a few years I just spoke as little as possible. That part over time has gotten better. But I still have issues with word association mix-ups–I have the right word in my head (something like dinner), but what comes out is a word that is related to the word I want (so I say lunch instead). Since the right word is in my head, I don’t always hear that I’ve said a wrong word, and so the other people are confused (wait, why are you talking about Dallas when we were talking about Houston), and I’m insistent that I didn’t say it. Being tired or stressed definitely affects it. And any medications that has memory problems, fatigue or trouble concentrating as a side effect, even if it’s a rare one, absolutely makes it worse.
Trying to make sure I was well-rested and not stressed with any social or work situation helped. And writing was a lot easier, I could sit and read and re-read it to make sure my words were right before sending out unlike speaking. So if I could, especially with anything really important, I would do emails or write things down beforehand that I wanted to say.
Your situation sounds very similar to mine! I will feel like I have an idea of what I want to say in my head but then when I’m ready to speak I either mess everything up or completely forget the word I was trying to say. I’ll also leave out information that I thought I had already brought up, such as when or where an event is taking place. This makes it very difficult for others who are trying to follow along. The most alarming is when I mix up prepositions, which seems to be an issue with relationships, so the logic of my sentences is all wrong. I am looking into hobbies that would give me a feeling of self-empowerment, because I think that a lot of the stress about my speech comes from a loss of confidence in my own abilities, but I feel like there is a physical or mental factor, too. I will bring up chronic fatigue syndrome at my next doctor’s appointment. Are there any habits you’ve picked up that help with concentration?
Of course, hopefully you can find a Dr. first that can be more helpful. But my mom has a host of chronic fatigue issues and she found NADH to be somewhat helpful. According to WebMD:
“NADH is used for improving mental clarity, alertness, concentration, and memory; as well as for treating Alzheimer’s disease. Because of its role in energy production, NADH is also used for improving athletic endurance and treating chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS).”
Not sure there has been a ton of full research on it yet, But you should be able to buy it in any store with supplements.
Regularly (as in daily) doing crosswords and other kinds of words puzzles/computer games seems to help some with concentration and that disconnect between the word and it’s definition. Even computer games like hidden object or room escape games, anything with that kind of puzzle logic. Also board games like scattergories, upwords, scrabble, etc. But maybe start out not doing using the timer and work up to that, as I find even now when playing timed games I can easily get flustered and loose the words. And then sometimes when I was alone, I would read books, whatever, out loud to work on getting the words I’m saying to come out right.
Fibromyalgia is another one that can also cause the confusion/memory issues, so that might be one to bring up (as fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue syndrome have overlapping symptoms or go hand in hand). Omega 3 (fish oil) and vitamin E, in addition to the vitamin B12 mentioned below have all been said to help with memory. If they helped me, it was a pretty gradual thing, but I figure it can’t hurt to get all the help I can get.
I took one migraine medication for a year, and it was causing some major short term memory loss, worse is that I didn’t even realize it. After I stopped taking it, it actually took several months for it to really wear off and start getting more normal. So if you find out it was your anxiety medication that was causing it, unfortunately it might take a while being off it to see an improvement.
Try high doses of B12. Look for 1200 mcg doses. B12 anemia can affect your memory. When mine was really bad, I had a lot of these symptoms. My memory didn’t come back 100%, but it’s definitely not as bad.
That sounds really, really tough, I am sorry that is happening to you!
It does seem like this is most likely physical and so all the physical ideas are very good ones. But you might also look into doing some kind of mindfulness meditation or other exercises to try to be present in your body, because we have both seen and experienced dissociation presenting in this way. Which I am happy to talk about more, but I am not sure how relevant it is so I will stop there for now! (Also it is almost pick-up time for kindergarten.)
Are you post-traumatic at all? Being in a chronic (even in mild) state of fight-or-flight aka hypervigilance can cause memory and expression problems like these.
I have general anxiety disorder and have been diagnosed previously with depression. When I am feeling anxious my ability to communicate is much worse, but I do not have PTSD.
Iodine deficiency? My mom had that for a while (she can’t eat fish, and dad was only cooking with kosher salt, so not enough iodide), and we were actually worried she might have early-onset Alzheimer’s.
Thank you all for taking the time to respond. All your answers were helpful!
Did the new Toastcard round start yet? If it did, and I missed the email giving me addresses, I apologize to anyone expecting postcards from me. It is entirely possible that I did something wrong in filling out the form, though, too.
Just wondering, because I don’t think I’ve seen anything about it on open threads recently.
I haven’t seen anything either, so hopefully that means nothing’s gone out yet? It’ll be my first ToastPost, so I’m very excited for it to start!
same here! Haven’t heard anything. Maybe we missed the secret instructions. Is invisible ink a thing on the internet?
I think polka_stripes mentioned on another thread that she got buried at work, and had not sent them out yet. So it looks like we didn’t get left behind.
Speaking of stressful men, these people are giving me heartburn. Can you imagine going to dinner with them?
http://captainawkward.com/2014/09/17/624-my-frien…
Uh, wow. I could not deal with that level of wrapped-up-in-each-other interpreting-facial-glances type stuff. On either side.
Holly HELL. What is wrong with this couple? I would never ever hang out with them if they were in my social circle. What a nightmare.
Eeeeeeeyuck.
I think that boyfriend is manipulating. A healthy relationship does not have one person dancing around trying to “explain” the other one.
I have trouble with sensory processing, and sometimes I do not realize what emotions I am feeling until they are named. This is a brain problem; I have done a lot of work to overcome it on my own and it has not worked. Now I have a spouse who names my emotions and it is excellent; the responses to this letter make me feel sad and isolated because everyone agrees that my coping mechanism is a bad thing.
I am sorry you are feeling sad and isolated, but I think there is a huge difference between a spouse who /helps and supports you/ and a spouse who tells other people what you are feeling. What you are describing sounds like the first one; your spouse tells you what they are seeing in you to help you name the things you experience. This is a good!
We have been that letter writer. It was awful. We are very glad we stopped. The person we were translating for feels like we have betrayed them utterly and ruined their life forever. Ugh.
Graduate student/academic Toastwitches: what’s your preferred method for crushing your insecurities and going out there and being the best Toastwitchy academic badass you can be?
For my part, I’m trying to wean myself off self-deprecating jokes, or at least get them down to a manageable quota, trying to sum up my weekly research progress (/”progress?”) in a straightforward way that doesn’t begin with the phrase “Well, I wanted to get more things done, but…”, and faking-it-until-I-make-it my way out of ABD anxiety and insecurity.
Apply for all the CFPs. Overbook the hell out of yourself. I was always way less anxious about class / supervisor stuff when I had Professional Reputation on the line. And somehow it made all the mundane shit easier.
Totally in sympathy with the whole progress thing. Weeks need to be longer. Or shorter. Or something.
I don’t have a lot to say but I’ll hang around and eagerly read other people’s brilliant comments.
Just remember that you are awesome.
I agree with the above commenter–put yourself out there. Present at conferences, submit abstracts to journals, etc. Nothing is ever going to feel done or ready, but just putting it out there is the first step, and you never know when you might wind up with an award or a valuable connection at another institution. Also stay away from negative talk with colleagues–I find that comparing myself to my colleagues only results in anxiety spirals.
Also it’s okay and important to take breaks and have a life outside of school, and these activities will mean that you come back to your scholarship refreshed rather than feeling totally burnt out. Have novel experiences, exercise if you like to do that, make friends in other departments, etc. My therapist always tells me that self esteem is often bolstered by new experiences, just because you’re showing yourself that you can move outside of your comfort zone, and I’ve found this to be true.
Aside from general self-care stuff, I allow my misandry to fuel me by remembering that A Male Academic would never feel these doubts I do about, say, not being good enough to apply for a particular grant or submit to a particular journal or whatever. Do it anyway, what is there to lose?
I also rec, with some reservations, a website called TheProfessorIsIn dot com. Use the tags down the side to find posts on things that are relevant to your career stage. She’s a bit too far into the “women must act like men to get ahead!” school of feminism for me to be entirely comfortable, but she still has a lot of good advice.
Also, it is pretty clear that you are awesome. So definitely bear that in mind 🙂
We are trying to remember (after a bad month or so) that our feelings are just feelings and are not actually information about the True State Of Things, and that doing things is much more fun than not doing things. So that when we feel like the world is ending and we cannot leave the computer, we do it anyway.
Results so far this week have been promising, with some vital errands run, a trip to Gymboree for the toddler, a very nice lunch (FIG SALAD) and right now I am sitting in a cafe trying to finish reading the open thread before I have to go get our daughter from school!
I feel like this comic is relevant to The Toasts Dad interest! http://www.smbc-comics.com/
Ghosts & Dads? The best.
OK one more thing, I’m chatty today: Can we do a weekly Ask Polly discussion thread? Because I just can’t with the comments on NYMag, Nothing ruins an Ask-Polly high like scrolling down and seeing “LOL TL;DR WATZ WITH U WIMMINZ”.
As usual, I loved this week’s and I finally understood why my family friend seems to be less upset about her breast cancer than I am.
Linky: http://nymag.com/thecut/2014/09/ask-polly-life-is…
Yes I love Polly.
This letter made me think about how I’ve been thinking about life lately, due in part to my minor and uncommitted dabbles in Buddhism.
Life is not a race or a some kind of contest that you win or don’t win. Unless you believe in heaven, the very best you can ask for is a quick end. Living for a really long time means almost certainly that you will experience the pain of old age and a slower death. You can be good all your life and you will still die, that’s a true fact. Being good and doing the right things do not guarantee you any kind of prize at the end, because there is no prize, not at all.
Is that depressing? I don’t think so. Our lives are strings of moments, beautiful pearls that we collect in our laps. Some moments will be good, and some will be bad, and they are all beautiful, and they will all end. Nothing can take away love you had in the past, or moments of ecstasy looking at art, or times you were kind or righteous. All of those things were ends in themselves; they are the whole point. Sickness and disease and misfortune and death (nothing more than death) are inevitable, but there’s nothing wrong with that. Those moments are moments too, and the more we look for the sublime in all of them, the more of life we live.
I feel like maybe we’ve been reading the same books-for-non-committal Buddhists.
YES the NYMag comments are dreadful. This week’s question is one I’ve been asking myself constantly lately – Polly’s answer had a lot of true shit in it but it didn’t really make me feel better.
It was definitely a little less comforting than her columns tend to be, or the comfort was more in bits-and-pieces. But the biggest comfort to me is that Polly knows EXACTLY how miserable and lost I feel in my 20s and has ended up being the awesome person she is today.
Cilantro: I hated it, HATED IT! Then one day it fell off a bicycle into a birdbath and it was so charming. And it turned out to be kind of mentally unstable but in a really adorable way. Now I eat it all the time. It’s the manic pixie dream herb.
And I have a simple question. When I say “ship” I mean a really big-ass boat, one with masts and stuff. Sometimes in this space that word appears and I do not understand how it is intended. Someone please enlighten me.
Do you mean when talking about fictional characters? Sometimes it is short for relationship, such that “I ship X & Y” means “I am a fan of the idea of characters X & Y being in a romantic relationship.”
I think that’s it, thank you! So, you could ship me and cilantro, given that at this distance you don’t know if I’m real or if the cilantro I’m rom-comming it up with isn’t just a plastic sprig, right? Am I using it right? Streaming on Netflix: Lars and the Real Herb.
You have it exactly right!
Late to the party, but: birth control question. I had to switch to a different kind because my insurance decided not to cover the one I had been taking and am feeling very conflicted because on the one hand, it makes me kind of bloaty/inclined to hang onto weight and dampens my sex drive but on the other hand, my periods last like 2 days and my face is AMAZING. No hormonal acne anywhere. Is this what Catherine Deneuve meant when she said you have to choose between your face and your butt? What would you pick?
I chose the terrifying Paragard cramps of doom over the dampened sex drive/generally flatlining emotions of Yaz. A year later, I’m conflicted about my choice, so solidarity with your confusion, I guess?
I choose sex drive 10 times out of 10. For what it’s worth.
Us too!
I went on a depression shopping trip to Ulta and bought one of the Naked Basics palettes. (Even in my depression shopping haze, I did stop myself from spending 54 bucks on the full Naked palettes… jesus christ). This is the fanciest make up I’ve ever owned, and my golly gosh it’s nice! But I also don’t know quite how to use it to look good. Toasties, what are your fave neutral eye make up looks? If you have any specific online tutorials please do share! 🙂
I love to just dab a light-colored shadow in the inner corners of my eyes – it makes you look so bright and cheery! Then I do a bit of darker brown along the lash line plus mascara. That’s my going-out look!
I like a super light “smoky eye” with neutrals. Caveat: all of this is done with a *super* light hand.
All over lighter shade. Medium shade in the crease, darker shade in a kind of sideways V (ie <) with the bottom point starting at the outside corner of my eye and the top point ending in the outer third of the crease. Maybe blend the darker shade along the eyeline (over eyeliner, if wearing). Blend the shit out of it (blending is the secret to eyeshadow WHO KNEW) and highlight the browbone and inner corner of the eye, wear some mascara, blush and lipstick, and VOILA I look professional but also subtly more attractive than usual?
I do this SUPER fast and easy, and as I say, a light hand is my friend. I love neutral eyeshadows for this, and have a great Smashbox palette that is purple-toned neutrals that bring out the blue in my eyes.
Ooh, I have the Naked Basics palette, and am so in love with it! I haven’t used the darker shades at all, though, but I am pretty fair. What I do is sweep one of the two middle shades over my whole eyelid — in my palette it’s W.O.S and Foxy. Then I do the light, shimmery shade over my brow bone, and blend that in. Then I take the lightest of the brown shades, the fourth one going from the left, and follow my crease with that one, winging it up just eeeeeever so slightly at the side of my eye. After that I might use a little of the one of the lighter shades on the edges to soften and blend it a little bit. That’s a very subtle look. So naturally I then pile on as much black eyeliner as humanly possible, and cake my lashes in eight million coats of mascara, because god forbid I look too subtle. 😀
Any foods you used to hate that you now love, love that you now hate?
ALL OF THEM, basically.
Among the things I used to hate and now love: avocado, sour cream, yogurt, winter squash, cauliflower, tomatoes, sweet potatoes, bitter greens, cooked greens of any kind, all beans (refried beans, bean soups, garbanzo beans in a salad, whatever), beets, hot oatmeal, eggplant, identifiably large pieces of onion, soft cheeses, peppers, salad dressing, cucumbers, winter squash, cooked cabbage or cauliflower (though I loved both of them raw), cooked carrots, chili, hot peppers and fiery spices.
And this is a real waste: because I was weird about beans, flavored rice, salsa, avocado, and sour cream—and because I didn’t know how to navigate a menu to avoid those things—I missed out on almost all of the abundant and delicious Mexican food that my whole family enjoyed throughout the years of my childhood we spent in Texas.
There’s still a handful of foods I avoid when I can do so discreetly: blue cheese, plain ol’ cucumber pickles, mayonnaise and mustard on a sandwich, ketchup, green peppers. And I’m still not suuuuper on-board with most commercial salad dressings; I’d usually rather eat my salad undressed. (I make spectacularly good dressings at home, though.)
Weirdly, as a kid I loved—and loved to try!—a lot of the foods that children often view with suspicion: chicken liver, fish of all kinds, steamed clams, oysters, snails, squid, octopus, frog’s legs, duck, gamy meats of all kinds, mushrooms, black and Greek olives, weird casseroles, dishes from foreign cuisines I’d never heard of or seen before. And I ate almost any vegetable with delight if it was served raw. That didn’t stop my parents from making constant jibes about me being a picky eater, which I am certain prolonged my period of self-restriction.
I experienced 3 incidences of blatant homophobia in two days, and after having corrected a group debating the immorality of allowing “those people” to marry the previous day and a guy jokingly telling his friend not to be a fag that morning, I had no energy to snap at the guy who sprinkled a 2-hour rehearsal with countless “fag” and “fajjit” jokes. This would be a good week to burn Cornstate College to the ground and retreat to a bunker in the LGBT Student Center.
I used to love the Little House books until I realized how racist they were. I now like The Indigo Girls when I used to think they were just another one of my mom’s weird hippie acoustic groups.
Pro-tip to the world: the phrase “those people” is not okay unless you are referring to a particularly rowdy table in a small and quiet restaurant, e.g., “I wish those people would leave.” And even then, you’re probably better off saying “that table.”
DC area friends, help! I meant to ask this when I posted earlier, but I forgot! I’m finding a place for a third date, preferably in the city, preferably near Dupont. Any suggestions? Outdoors is nice, chill but interesting is nice. I’ve been to Duke’s Grocery already, so that’s my backup plan.
P Street between 17th and 18th (closer to Logan Circle than Dupont Circle, but still very close!) has some sorta casual restaurants that are pretty good. I’ve been to Commissary and Logan Tavern, both are tasty! Annnd, Dolcezza is on that street too. Gelato!
I don’t know any fancy places, but Mission Dupont is a delicious Mexican place, with a patio outside with little lights strung over it, and if you order guacamole for your chips you get an absolutely massive bowl. I’m also a sucker for Afterwords–I know I’m biased towards it because it’s a restaurant/bookstore, but the food (and desserts) are in fact very good.
True, their desserts are AMAZING.
Bistrot du Coin is classic, fun, and French without being at all pretentious. I miss it SO much! Depending on when you go it’s more or less chill – can get a little noisy but just in a bistro-y chatty kinda way.
My sprained ankle is not healing as fast as the doctor would like. It’s week 2 and it still hurts and puffs up like a balloon and my foot is all floppy. Another month of no derby, no running (it surprises the former chubby, non-athletic kid in me how big of a deal this is), no squats etc. What will happen to my muscular calves and bum? It’s not as bad as it could be. I met a skater last weekend who broke her fibula. But it’s so aggravating. I think I’m going to venture to the gym this weekend and begin building a tremendous upper body to console myself.
Chicago Toastie meetup at Rogers Park Social, Saturday, November 1, 7:00 – 10:00 pm!
nooooo the one Saturday I can 100% not make it!
🙁
Might I drop by? If so, how would I find yooooou?
Everyone is welcome, and we will plan another one on another date for those who can’t make it.
My Toast account links to my FB page.
YES.
Things my dog and I can do after one week of working together:
-“walk” Walk next to me on a leash. SHE LOVES IT.
Things we can’t do yet, but we’re getting there:
-“Look” she sits quietly and makes eye contact with me
-“Here” she comes here to me (still requires a reward of cheese to do this reliably, and it is a battle of wills.)
Things we already knew:
-“Sit” Not quite perfect but pretty good.
-“Let’s go!” She gets off the recliner so I can close it
-“Come on!” She stops standing around like a weirdo and follows me (I have to be careful not to say this when we’re walking or else she wants to run)
-[point] “Go” She goes.
Long term goal:
-“BANG” she plays dead 😀
This week has been exhausting. I finished my job (a one-year graduate trainee position) two weeks ago, but returned this week for the annual stocktake – lots of moving books around and getting very hot and dusty. I also started a new job, three evenings a week shelving books in another law library. The week after next I start my MA in Library and Information Studies; next week is the induction period, which looks like it will be busy. I want to spend the weekend sleeping, but this would probably be a bad idea in terms of getting stuff done.
Um, pig thread?
I have misplaced an entire live adult pig. I can’t find him anywhere.
I have a batch of pigs who live on the pasture and then another batch who live in the barn. This morning the pasture pigs knocked down their electric fence and then came over to the barn to visit the barn pigs apparently. We got them all back in their pasture pen except one, who is recognizable because his ears are messed up from a mystery injury a while ago. He’s not with the pasture pigs and he’s not in the barn. Pigs are pretty social and don’t much like to be off on their own, so I keep checking to see if he’s waiting outside the fence at either location to be let back in with his friends, but so far, nothing.
I guess it’s time to put up flyers. HAVE YOU SEEN THIS PIG?
If it makes you feel any better, my friend who was (briefly) a cow farmer at one point lost ALL OF THE COWS.
That happened to me last week *weeps*
(We found them. But let me tell you it is alarming to stand up in the bed of the pickup truck and look out over your flat 95 acres and not see the cattle that should be there. [They went to the neighbor’s and were hiding in tall grass.])
I don’t know any farmers who haven’t lost an animal, and possibly All the Cows, at least once. It happens! I hope your pig turns up soon, safe and sound.
Good luck in pig location!
Time to crowd source for wisdom.
My friend/roomie is dating a 47-year-old. She’s 25. It’s been 6 months or so. I was hoping it’d be over by now. She practically lives with him. I know she can do way better. She says she loves him. I know she’s capable of loving someone her own age or who at least has his life together. I also don’t want to be nosy or weird. We are also not bffs so I’m not on a talk-about-everything level with her. I really have no clue why she likes him. I’ve been trying to figure it out for months. He’s nice, but that it.
So … what is the problem? Like, what behaviours does he engage in which send up red flags for you?
Yeah what exactly is your issue with this guy besides his age? She’s an adult and although that is a huge age difference, it’s not insurmountable. If this dude is otherwise decent and kind and just older, then I’m not sure what the issue is that YOU feel uncomfortable with it. If he’s doing her wrong then you can try stepping in, but otherwise I think you need to let it be.
Two thoughts, not at all related:
1) Perrier, Pellegrino, or Topo Chico? (I like all three, but Perrier is my least favorite due to its Frenchiosity.)
2) I only just learned how to favorite/follow people via IntenseDebate. My apologies if it suddenly seems like I’m creeping. I’m not. I just think you’re funny and smart.
I like Pellegrino, but it is made by Nestle, and I guess we were all boycotting Nestle a while ago, so I’ve gotten into that german sparkling water with the white label, and then into other people’s soda streams, but then some people are boycotting Israel, and I’m not exactly, but I kind of tangentially support the boycott, so no soda stream for me, so…. feelings about fizzy water.
More info please on ANOTHER kind of sparkly water.
And… boycotting Israel?
Yeah, because of the occupation of the West Bank.
I have an ISI soda charger and it’s pretty great.
GERTRUUUUUUUDEEE!!! I am worried about Gertrude. Any updates on her shady/precarious boyfriend/job situation?
I went to the organic farming fair today. Beautiful day for wandering around gazing at goats and crafts. There were a few games of Amish or hippie. The key to proper identification seems to be the shoes.
Toasties! I got up the courage to go talk to my neighbor, and we’re good now. There was some hurt, and some anger (from her), and some crying (all from me), but we’re good, and we love each other, and we ate many cookies. Also, the puppy missed me, and spent several minutes sitting on the back of the couch and licking my face.
This is vaguely true. When I was doing field camp in Argentina, one of our "lunch break" stops ended up being a hot springs. That wouldn't let women in, so I couldn't join in the fun. Whomp.
look ma i vom’d blood
right into my hands. guess i
could drop it, oops, zzzz.
look ma i vom'd blood
right into my hands. guess i
could drop it, oops, zzzz.