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Random Stuff X: Something Weird


soyperson

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According to the signs, the narrow street in front of my new apartment in Liverpool has been closed for almost a year due to still-ongoing construction.  Despite this, whenever I'm at home I can spend my time watching one car after another venture down it and awkwardly reverse themselves back out until they find enough room for a three-point turn.

There is probably some bleak philosophical metaphor that can be made out of this. I leave it as an exercise for the reader.

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14 minutes ago, Draginon said:

Got some novels returned at work and on one copy a 5th grade student stabbed a pencil all the way through the book, cover to cover, and it's just under 200 pages so that kid needed time to do this.

That’s... impressive.

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7 hours ago, Lunamor said:

That’s... impressive.

Not the worst I've seen, actually encountered quite a few hardcover textbooks where the cover is bent in the middle, but still annoying. The eye opener ones though are the kindergarteners and 1st graders drawing lewd pictures and genitalia in their books.

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It has happened again: I search for something, thinking "oh of course that is a thing that exists!" and then it... doesn't.

In this case it's SHIELD wallpapers -- which are actually quite common, but what was in my head was one very like or exactly like the ones you see actual SHIELD computers use in the movies.

Maybe I'm just bad at searching for things, but I can't help but think it's funny that this keeps happening. :P 

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Discussing The Little Red Hen with my kindergartners today.  Watched a simple video on how wheat becomes flour and then bread.

We've also unrelatedly been learning about plants in science.  One of the kids, with a look of horror, suddenly asks, "So bread is made from plants?"

And for whatever reason it caught me off guard and my brain froze. Literally sat with my mouth opened in silence while my internal monologue went: "No. Yes?  Wait what IS bread?  It's just like wheat seed, water, and yeast, right? Salt? It's smashed up wet seeds with....wait what is yeast? Isn't it a bacteria or something?  WHY IS BREAD SO WEIRD. WHY DON'T I KNOW THINGS."

My final answer was something like, "That's a good question....Uhhhh.....bread......isssss.....made from.......crushed up plant seed. So......yes. Some parts of it."

So now some my kids think bread is kinda weird and gross.  

[Also turns out yeast is a fungus. Thanks google.]

Edited by Zelly
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The last several months in review:

We lost Leia in July. :( Many of you may remember the occasional pictures I would post of my sweet little dachshund.

Cutting for potentially upsetting details:

Spoiler

Well, early in the summer she started having seizures; the vet determined that at her age, they were most likely being caused by a brain tumor. She also already had a heart murmur. While we tried to get the seizures under control with medication, the two conditions went into a nasty feedback loop - the seizures put more strain on her heart. Her heart, in turn, was enlarged and pressing against her trachea. When it pounded, she'd start coughing, and the coughing would set off another seizure. She fought hard, but in the end, it was too much. She wasn't pulling out of the cycle, and breathing was getting harder and harder for her. When she got to the point where she couldn't even fall asleep anymore, we had to make the call. She was exhausted. So we did the hardest, kindest thing a pet owner can do.

Gods, 8 months later and typing it out still makes me cry.

I did write a thing afterwards to help me work through my grief. It's bittersweet and full of feels, and you can read it here:

We are not a house that can remain dogless for terribly long, though. In September we rescued a bonded pair from a local dachshund rescue.

Bozley - a chiweenie (dachshund/chihuahua mix) who is equal parts adorable and nervous. He enjoys snuggling, warbling in anticipation of breakfast/dinner, and eating chocolate. (That last one earned him an overnight stay at the ER vet.) No word yet on whether he's secretly coaching a trio of female superspies, but we're keeping our eyes open.

Cooper - a long-haired dachshund. Super chill about just about everything, though we're not sure how much of that is his base personality and how much is the medication he's on for his epilepsy. Snores. Demands attention at inopportune times. Is Bozley's emotional support dog.

 

In non-dog related news: I am no longer employed by Redacted, Inc.

I know you are all so disappointed.

But here's the basics:

In October, my grandboss was "let go" along with a few other people close to retirement. They all got sweet severance packages, and by all accounts they're all doing fine. We who remained behind...not so much.

Grandboss was replaced by a human who will henceforth be known as Professor Umbridge. I do not give this moniker lightly. She swept in, turned our entire service center upside down, and took my team (who specializes in, say, UFO services) and put them primarily on general cryptid duties. Not that anyone else could handle the UFOs, of course, they just got neglected like crazy for several months.

Guys, I busted my tail trying to help my team keep up, but it was like bailing out the Titanic with a sieve. I was stressed as rust. My team was stressed as rust. My boss was stressed as rust. We were all stressed, frustrated, and generally miserable.

And I was getting criticized for my team's "bad attitude" and basically treated as though being stressed was some sort of personal problem, and got corporate buzzwords tossed at us with a cheery, condescending tone that made me want to toss Umbridge to the nearest chupacabra.

I was not happy.

Then they announced a big management reorganization. They redesigned the entire command structure, sweeping out all of the existing positions and replacing them with all new ones. That anyone who wanted to stay around had to then apply for. But no, we weren't having to re-apply for our jobs, no, of course not, perish the thought!

I declined to re-apply for my job.

The upshot is: I have severance and a paycheck up through the end of May. I am job-searching and thoroughly enjoying the time I have at home right now. The dogs are delighted. James and I are going on vacation next week. I'm working on my She-Ra costume. In the week I have been off of work, I have felt my creative spark starting to come back. I think I'm ready to start writing again.

...you know, just as soon as convention season is over, because I'm chairing a convention that happens in two months and I still have SO MUCH TO DO.

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The other day me and my mother went to this place in Fort Worth called Swiss Pastry Cafe and we wanted to take home some Black Forest cake. She said they made it differently than traditional cake, meringue and whipped cream, but I was expecting it to have that Black Forest cake flavor of cherry and chocolate. Not only did it not taste like cherry it was a disappointing cake overall.

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  • 3 weeks later...

Recently the radio station I listen to changed the morning host and some segments got changed. One new segment is called Fired From America and the one they picked today wasn't unreasonable or fireable. The story here was of the principal in a Houston school enforcing a dress code for the parents not to be in the building if they are wearing attire that implies they just rolled out of bed, like pajamas and hair rollers, or just showing off too much of your body like dresses that end at your butt.

I don't think it's unreasonable for a school to enforce a dress code saying "don't be a slob or a hussy" since it's similar to what a fancy restaurant would enforce to keep a certain image.

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  • 2 weeks later...
On 5/10/2019 at 8:11 AM, The Sovereign said:

I probably enjoyed this a bit too much...
 

img.php?e=gif&s=c&file=UmV0YWlsLzIwMTkvM

Double standards are the worst! Recently saw a picture on furaffinity that depicts r*pe double standards and the creator sees it as fine because it's a guy getting it without consent on his part. I'm seriously considering reporting that drawing to the moderators of furaffinity since that's not funny in the slightest.

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I have noticed that mosquitoes rarely bite me.  People around me are swearing and swatting at the air and not a one touches me.  Honestly can't remember the last time I had a bug bite.

Spiders, however, apparently love me. Or maybe hate me?  I always seem to have 1-3 spider bites.  No dangerous ones, but still. Go away spiders. :angry:

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10 minutes ago, Zelly said:

I have noticed that mosquitoes rarely bite me.  People around me are swearing and swatting at the air and not a one touches me.  Honestly can't remember the last time I had a bug bite.

Spiders, however, apparently love me. Or maybe hate me?  I always seem to have 1-3 spider bites.  No dangerous ones, but still. Go away spiders. :angry:

Huh, I’m the opposite. I once got 30 mosquito bites in one day. Not a fun experience. 

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3 hours ago, Zelly said:

I have noticed that mosquitoes rarely bite me.  People around me are swearing and swatting at the air and not a one touches me.  Honestly can't remember the last time I had a bug bite.

Spiders, however, apparently love me. Or maybe hate me?  I always seem to have 1-3 spider bites.  No dangerous ones, but still. Go away spiders. :angry:

Huh, interesting. I also don't get bitten by mosquitoes very often, but I don't feel like I get a lot of spider bites. Then again, there aren't all that many spiders where I live.

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3 hours ago, Kidpen said:

 Then again, there aren't all that many spiders where I live.

Oh man.  Whereabouts are you?  I'm in the mountains of Virginia and we're just brimming with spiders.  I went on a trail run few years back and in the middle of the woods kept running into spider webs constantly. (Fun Fact: it's possible to be allergic to spider webbing. I'm not, but it's a real thing).  Bunch of orbweavers had made webs across the open space of the trail.  I stopped and could actually look down the trail and see them in webs like every 10 feet.  Went back home. :D

Really nice trail like a block from my house.......haven't been back since.

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Ate Keto for the first time. It’s got to be the blandest thing I’d ever eaten. These consisted of cinnamon muffins, lemon poppyseed muffin and a Nutella cupcake. They were all moist like they weren’t finished cooking at all or too much water was in the batter, the flavor went away pretty fast and I was left with no flavor at all, just chewy dough. The Nutella one was the worst offender since to mess up Chocolate anything shows how bad it was since the only times I’ve never finished a chocolate dessert was because it was too rich and I just couldn’t eat this thing at all. The best tasting was the lemon poppyseed but only on the small amount of frosting on top, though when I tried to not chew the frosting as much so that the lemon flavor stayed I was left with a strong lemon flavor from the frosting and a huge blandness from the muffin itself.

I’m not against healthy eating but I’ve had foods that were vegetarian and vegan that I enjoyed and bland/no flavor food is something I do not enjoy at all. Not entirely sure how anyone can stomach it unless they are one of those supertasters who can’t handle even mild flavor.

23 hours ago, Silverblade5 said:

I've recently developed a new hobby: Translating the # in twitter hashtags as pound.

I did that when I first saw hashtags and couldn’t figure out why everyone was putting pound in front of stuff.

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