That is an important one and I’ll expand on it slightly…I spend probably 80% of my time either sleeping, sitting in front of the computer, or out walking around. Consequentially, the most comfortable and expensive things I own are my mattress, my office chair, and my shoes. Spend your money where it matters.
That is an excellent book, and I agree with you about how hard the third act hits. If you’re interested, she has a couple other novels in the same setting (time-traveling historians): To Say Nothing of the Dog, a much more light-hearted Victorian-era farce that overlaps with events from the real-life novel Three Men in a Boat which is itself a good and funny read, and the two-parter Blackout and All Clear, neither of which I have read but are on my list to get around to someday.
Yeah, I would recommend it. My biggest takeaways from it so far have been understanding how many of my habits and personality quirks are actually coping strategies that I just didn’t realize. Like, I always thought I just happened to like chewing gum all the time because I enjoyed the minty flavor. Turns out the repetitive chewing motion can actually stimulate the dopamine I crave. I thought everyone has a collection of rhyming phrases or little songs that they only say in private and we all collectively pretend like we don’t because it’s embarrassing. Turns out that’s verbal or auditory stimming. It’s been great in that regard, helping me understand why I am the way I am.
Can’t really speak to how effective any of the ADHD management techniques in the book are since I’m still working through it and trying to take things onboard, but the author also has a very popular and successful Youtube channel where you can probably find all the same information and more if you’re interested.
I’ll take “Books that made me sob like a baby” for $500, Alex.
See, this is why I hedged my bets. That wasn’t the comma that threw me off. I didn’t even see that one on first read-through. I was focused on the “the substance that, injected intravenously, turns women into cats!”
I’m pretty sure that having only one comma in that sentence is grammatically incorrect, but I don’t feel confident enough to be pedantic about it.
Strange to call it a “all-new espionage thriller” when it’s a remake.
Given St. Paul’s reputation for left-wing activism, kinda surprised they were still on Twitter for this long.
Two good movies my wife and I saw in the last year and we were pretty much the only ones in the theater:
The Last Stop in Yuma County, a tense indie crime movie set almost entirely in an isolated gas station diner. Loads of, “Hey, that’s that guy from that thing…” actors in it.
Outlaw Johnny Black, a comedic Western produced, directed, written by, and starring Michael Jai White as a revenge-obsessed outlaw who has to pose as the town’s new preacher.
What, Netanyahu cynically making political moves for his own gain and damn the consequences, stop, that’s crazy man, you’re blowing my mind, dude.
Just got back from voting, no wait. It’s about a 10 minute walk from my house to the polling place. They had 3 lanes open for people to check in, only 1 was occupied. I was in and out in under 5 minutes. Longest I’ve ever had to wait was probably 45-60 minutes in 2016 but that was at a different polling place that was always poorly organized.
You can dish it out but you can’t take it? Well, so can I!
“Spearing ham on a broom handle” is how I refer to my bachelor days.
Obviously.
I struck up a conversation with a guy at a bar one time, turned out he was an animal control officer and the county shelter had just had a bad outbreak of parvovirus. He said he had spent the whole week just euthanizing dogs from sunup to sundown. He looked rough.
Hospital security guard. Had to help hold down suicidal mental patients so the nurses could put restraints on them. Had to escort counselors from Child Protective Services when they were collecting babies from the maternity ward, so that angry family members didn’t attack them in the parking lot. Had to help wheel bodies down to the loading dock when the mortician came to collect them. Had to stop grieving relatives from trying to rush the ER or operating room when their loved one was on the table.
I quit after walking into the ER one time to see one of my coworker guards getting a wound on his neck examined while the other guard said, “Dude, you just missed the excitement! Lenny just got bit by a crackhead!”
I feel like “don’t try to get with your kid’s best friend’s mom” is also an option that should be on the table.
That said, don’t go the Facebook friend route. The intent is too ambiguous and doesn’t get you any closer to your goal. I’d favor either the direct approach (the classic, “would you like to go out for a drink sometime?”) or tie it to an activity you’d both be doing already anyway (“My son and I are going out for pizza after the t-ball game, would you and your son like to join us?” (I don’t know how old your kids are)).
I keep having dreams of things I need to do
And waking up but not following through
But it feels like I haven’t slept at all
When I wake to a silence and she’s facing the wall
Posters of Dylan and of Hemingway
An antique compass for a sailor’s escape
She says, “You just can’t live this way”
And I close my eyes and I never say
I’m still having dreams