Kaymyth

Yay! And just remember that you're special enough to be one of, like, three Sharders I know well enough to be comfortable inviting over for Thanksgiving.

If you start downloading the "Welcome to Night Vale" podcast from the start, you will start to understand quickly. It's...a very strange story, and a bit slow. But entertaining. I find it best to listen to during road trips to break up the monotony of just listening to music all the time.

I cannot answer that because spoilers.

Just remember, there are people out there who think that Tennessee and Kansas City count as "exotic places".

Heh. I think we're locked into doing Xmas stuff with my family this year, though so far as I'm concerned Twi is welcome to drive up to our place for Thanksgiving.

You could just say that sure, you have the leave, but you can't afford the plane ticket right now. (Then, at least, even if you do wind up having to go, at least you've gotten them to buy your ticket.)

Under the cut is a map of downtown Kansas City: ETA: ...once again, spoiler tagging did weird things when I attached images. I have no idea what happened there. Ah, well, there's a lot of text underneath that cut, too.

@TwiLyghtSansSparkles - Just remember: you're good enough, you're smart enough, and gosh darn it! People LIKE you! But in all seriousness, I advise strongly against going to visit for Christmas. Not because of anything that might go wrong on the trip, but because I think you need more time to stabilize and build yourself up before you can walk into that hornet's nest of toxic dysfunction without it causing you significant distress. You're still in the midst of a crucial transition, and I worry that you're still vulnerable to losing months of progress to extended exposure to your mother's crazy.

I imagine so. I get along with most folks on the Shard. Dear gods, I hope so.

Well, no. He's a spoiled, narcissistic bully of a special snowflake. Rules don't apply to him.

Dude really has no idea what he's doing. I honestly think he's more interested in winning, and not so much in the actual job. That's what he's after - the win. Everything that happens after that is irrelevant in his mind. Which is why he's just standing up there saying anything he thinks will help him win.

Honestly, it's just an absolutely terrible joke. So bad that it raises the creators of Pokemon higher in my esteem.

Yep. See, it's a psychic Pokemon. So apparently it can do spoon-bending.

Whoever it was, I think we can all be certain that...

Sigh. You all look like children to me. (Well, most of you, anyway.)

The more I read of that man's blog, the more I thoroughly enjoy his existence as a human being.

Funnily enough, if you actually do that, you're more likely to get more upvotes. The only way to remain in stasis will be to never post again. (Which is still no guarantee.)

WOOT! I'm thinking of doing a Manic Panic test to see if I can get purple to take over henna. I miss having funky colored streaks in my hair. I think it's time. BEHOLD, THE LAST YEAR OF MY THIRTIES, I REFUSE TO LOOK MY AGE! Fear us! Long hair is fabulous. But eventually I get bored and want something new. I am just tired of having to shampoo and condition over 2 feet of hair.

I, on the other hand, am getting my hair cut short tonight. I'm going from "almost long enough to sit on" to "chin length sassy bob". FEAR MY FUTURE ADORABILITY.

1. Like Twi said, it's expensive to transport heavy building materials 2,000+ miles. Plus, the sorts of building materials that hold up well against tornadoes are completely terrible for earthquakes. We have several earthquake zones in the States, and there's some overlap with tornado territory. Really, the U.S. is a huge overlapping Venn diagram of potential natural disasters. And none of it matters, 'cos someday the Yellowstone supervolcano will erupt and kill us all. 2. Heh, yeah. Street layouts here are usually well-planned, but we have exceptions. Kansas City is nice and gridded - except where it isn't. Sometimes I think it's a bit worse to be expecting logical layouts and suddenly find that the street you expected to go through suddenly dead-ends in a housing division because cul de sac. 3. With a few exceptions, it's actually very difficult to impossible to manage in the U.S. without a vehicle. Our public transit is awful, sometimes nonexistent. I know I've said this before, but the KC metropolitan area crosses two states and four (maybe six, depending on who you ask) counties. Each of these regions has their own bus system, and NONE of them intersect. You want to hop a bus across the state line? Good luck, 'cause you're going to have get out and walk between stops, sometimes several miles, just to cross over between the bus systems. My husband used to have a job up in the northland, and we live on the south side of the city. He once calculated the bus route he'd have to take to get from our house to work, and it came up to a nine hour commute. And that was with both origin and destination in the same state! 4. Americans are obsessed with lawns. Lawns are stupid but impossible to escape in the Midwest.

...yes. It is my birthday. One of my team members at work ponybombed my cube. It's kind of awesome.

It really depends more on how quickly you catch them. Once they've gone through a full life cycle, you then have to wait for the next round to hatch and get poisoned before you can get them all.

<-- is a pagan <-- can't taste tea <-- needs coffee to be sugared to death to palate, so doesn't drink it because calories <-- thinks sweet booze is good, beer is disgusting There's a huge cost difference involved there; most of our houses are wood-framed, with a layer of insulation in between the interior drywall and exterior walls. Building out of solid brick or concrete is expensive, and most people just can't afford to pay double or triple for their houses. Plus the odds of getting hit by a tornado are extremely small, and basic homeowners insurance covers it. I live in Tornado Alley. I have a basement. I love thunderstorms, and get annoyed when I have to trundle downstairs instead of staying upstairs and enjoying all the thundery rumbly goodness. As previously pointed out, not everywhere in Tornado Alley has the geology to make basements a reasonable option. One of the reasons that the big Joplin, MO tornado a couple years ago was so devastating was because the town is in a swampy area. You can't build basements in a swamp. At least in Oklahoma you can build a separate storm cellar if you need to have a shelter nearby. Heh. OK. So, again as previously stated, the United States is BIG. Tornado Alley is also BIG. We're talking between 1/4 and 1/3 of the entire continental US (including the ENTIRE Midwest region), and almost the entirety of our arable farmland. It's not possible to actually have any sort of agriculture in this country without people living where tornadoes are common. And you can't just expect the entire middle third of a country to be completely devoid of people. Nobody would ever be a It's also worth pointing out that there is really NOWHERE in the continental US where tornadoes are unheard of. Eh...sort of. Hurricanes are HUGE. You can see them coming days away. Tornadoes are the result of strong thunderstorms and can pop up out of nowhere (though meteorologists are getting better at spotting them in radar echoes). Also, tornadoes CAN form over water; they're usually called waterspouts then. Also, fun fact: hurricanes can spawn tornadoes.

Yeah, it took about that long to eradicate Leia's when she got them last year. Regular doses of Frontline + regular baths (but spaced from each other so the bathing doesn't wash off the medicine).