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[Welu]

Slept in the new house for the first time last night. Still got to get a lot set up. Can still get on internet in college but I'm gonna try to be working hard so don't be surprised if you don't hear much from me over the next couple weeks.

Also I booked my next tattoo. Eeee!

[Carl-E]

Seems I went from having a modest ($200) refund last year to owing the IRS $2500 this year. 


And trhat's after about a 30% cut in income from last year. 



WTF?


Oh, and tonight I get to see my daughter get honored by a womens group as an "up and comer" for the charity she started.  Pity it was started  to take care of her own medical expenses...  fancy dinner.  I have to wear a suit.  I'll try and get a pic...

[Patrick]

One of my friends is an alcoholic who refuses to admit he has a problem. It is intensely frustrating and honestly pretty damn scary. It is pretty agonizing knowing that in this kind of situation I can't help him, because he refuses to help himself or be helped by his friends. He's instead choosing to antagonize every last one of us that brings up the subject of his dependency on booze.

Dude's Facebook status even said "I must have had a great time last night, because I can't remember any of it." I know the dude, and I know he's not even remotely kidding. Dude has straight lost touch with the real world.

[Jace]

Made these today:


Also this:


Look at that sexy curve:

[Carl-E]

Went to the circus tonight. 

Elephants are awesome.  My phone takes shit pictures, though. 

[Barmymoo]

[bainidhe_dub]

Was that at the Patriot Center? (I thought you said something about being in NoVa at some point & I know they are in town?)

[Carl-E]

Naah, the local shriners do a circus annually using a small travelling family owned circus show (Royal Hanneford).  A one-ring job, tigers, elephants, performing dogs, some acrobats, jugglers, and most of the roustabouts are actually the other performers waiting their turns. 

May, I'm sorry if that upset you, but they do treat their animals really well.  Even the tiger trainer talks them through the act, no whips, spikes or other cruel implements. 

[Mister D Nomms]

I like the Shriners. My great uncle was one and I would like to be one, but I don't think the freemasons would let me join.

[Barmymoo]

I'm just very torn about animal circuses. I love animals, and I love seeing them, and I'd never have seen an elephant or a giraffe (two animals I adore) if it weren't for zoos and circuses, but I still can't quite feel that doing tricks for crowds is a very dignified life for a wild animal. I guess the more accurate emoticon would have been :/

[Patrick]

So Idk if I mentioned it to anybody, but my Berkeley-based band Injun Magic has finally renamed. We're called Sun Kin now. Also, I am thinking of quitting. I've long since gotten over the music, my bandmate is impossible to work with (dude doesn't give a fuck what I have to say about even the smallest thing, and doesn't consider or even acknowledge my suggestions), and it's nowhere near as fun as Troubador in literally every aspect. Hell, if it wasn't for Troubador band practice today, I'd be on a 4 day stretch of being disappointed. Hell, I'm a stoner and even 4/20 was shitty.

I'm starting to think that Sun Kin is just a huge waste of my time, and it's starting to sap my self-esteem. When that happens, it's quitting time, and I think I'm just about fed up. Sucks, because when we're not working and we're just hanging out, I really enjoy my time with the guy.

[LTK]

I'm sitting in an EEG test lab and I won't have a test subject ready for another two hours. So I hooked up my laptop to the humongous 51" screen with a VGA cable that was lying around.

I wonder what I'll do with it?

[BeoPuppy]

Porn.

[Mister D Nomms]

Puppywhirl

[schimmy]

Take meatspin to the next level?

[Patrick]

r/spacedicks. Do it.

[LTK]

Of all those things I think porn is the only one that I can manage a halfway credible scientific justification for.

[Lupercal]

Right, well this doesn't really go in the moving thread and I don't want to just dump in the stress thread, so I guess this is going here where people will see it.

Situation:
I'm currently living in a house with another guy. He is one of these guys who always says he has no money, but had a really important job and must've been paid well. I'm guessing he got a severance package or something because he left and still seems to be able to afford all of life's nice things.

This includes constantly taking baths and using the tumble dryer.

Now, I'm pretty much a broke student. To get time off work for revision/final exams I've had to take it unpaid and effectively have no money coming in for next month, so I'm trying to cut corners where I can.

I fee like my housemate is taking advantage of the fact that I'm here and is doing all this energy-consuming stuff so that he won't have to pay quite as much on the next bill - it will be subsidised by me. I've talked to him before about the tumble dryer, how I have never used it once and will not pay for it, and his reply was "oh well I couldn't possibly itemise the bill", yet was willing to charge another housemate £15 because she has a fridge constantly on in her bedroom when she's not here.

Essentially I'm just sick of this guy doing all this energy consuming stuff when I'm here. To give you an idea - my first bill in the house (last September) was £13 for a month, last bill was £45. For my 'share'. What this guy's problem is with just taking a quick shower or hanging clothes on a clothes-horse is totally beyond me.

He's a nice guy - but has a dark side. I don't want to fall out over stupid petty crap like bills, but on the other hand I feel like he shows a complete lack of respect towards me with this whole "can't itemise the bill" stuff. What doesn't help is that last time I tried to bring it up, another housemate piped in saying "dude if we start getting into pedantics about seperate use of utilities it just gets so complicated" - it doesn't get complicated, I'm the only one out of every other person in the house who doesn't use the tumble dryer, end of. I looked online, its simple to work something out - energy input x rate per KWh (kilowatt per hour). It doesn't help that he does all the bills - I don't know what our rate is so its even harder to keep asking him these questions.

Essentially, am I in the right to pick him up on stuff like this, or should I just pay and hold the social niceties intact?

[Carl-E]

Just pay.  If you don't, he will make the remaining time you live with him a living hell, simply because he's the one doing all the bills. 


Then look for a new place/roomates for next term. 

[Barmymoo]

On the flipside, if your bill has gone up from £13 to £45 that is ridiculous, and I think you do need to talk to him about that - Carl, for reference as to how much money that is, I spend about £10-20 a week on food.

[Lupercal]

Its weird how much you learn of somebody just by living with them. We're friends, but I always get that impression that he's not telling me something that I should know. I don't know, its all a bit weird and I'm often the kind of person that gets trampled due to being nice to people and then they take advantage of it. Also I hate confrontation and realise I get really anal and petty about certain things, usually when I live with people for a lengthy amount of time.

On the other hand, I did order a bicycle which I'm excited about. The fact I'm revising all the time has me rooted to my desk and chair and I'm really very aware of how much time I'm spending sitting down - I'll be cycling every day (I hope) when it finally arrives.

[Patrick]

Cycle every time you run an errand! It's what I do. I feel amazing just about every single day, with minimal exceptions.

[Akima]

Cycle every time you run an errand! It's what I do. I feel amazing just about every single day, with minimal exceptions.

Yes! Do this! I commute to and from work by bicycle and do most of my shopping, errands etc. on it too. My commute is only 14km round-trip these days, but it's over steep hilly terrain so I get two stiff little cardio workouts every workday and feel great.

[Omega Entity]

Just got my upper-right wisdom tooth out. Fun.

[bainidhe_dub]

So it looks like one of my engineer's company cards might have been stolen, because he now has a $325 charge on it from a Tesco hardware store near Glasgow...

[Papersatan]

So I have dermographia, which means if I scratch or slap my skin I get hives where the pressure was.  Those hives then itch and it is a cruel cycle.  I usually don't notice I am scratching until an area is covered in hives, but luckily they don't last long, so if I just sit on my hands for 10 min I will be fine again.  Also, hives on my hands are painful, not itchy and I get them from, clapping, opening jars, tieing my shoes, and other every day things that should not cause pain.  This problem developed over the last few years and after a year of me covering my ears and singing lalalalalalala, Stephen has convinced me that it may be related to my food allergy. 

I am allergic to sulphites, which means I can't eat wine, dried fruit, corn starch or corn syrup.  My food allergy symptoms are heartburn, headaches and hives.  When I first developed the allergy (7 is years ago now) I avoided everything, but I found as time went on that I could tolerate more and more so I now eat corn syrup freely, and will eat small amounts of corn starch, for instance in shredded cheese.  My full allergy symptoms have not come back from these, but I did develop this dermographia.  Also the last month I have heart burn again. 

So, I am going clean.  I will not be eating anything that is 'bad' for me for at least two weeks, probably for a month.  Since I live in the US the "no corn syrup" thing is brutal.  Corn syrup is in everything.  Beyond the obvious candy and soda it is in most commercial breads and sauces.  Pretty much we will be making everything from scratch.  Now that school is out, I have time to do this, but it still means no short cuts, and no going out to eat.  This is super frustrating, but it is what is best.  I don't know if I am hoping it works, and the damned itching stops, or if I am hoping it doesn't so that I can expand my diet again. 

Tl;DR To get rid of itching and hand pain I am only eating simple homemade foods. 

[Redball]

I had that kind of hives years ago in a new job with a lot of stress; scratching a minor itch left a red itching line where I'd scratched. The itching would develop symmetrically. An itch on one arm would add an itch on the other.  A physician mentioned allergies but gave me Benadryl, and the itching pretty much went away. Although I thought it was stress-related, I now think I should have looked for specific allergies.

[dr. nervioso]

Dear fellow blogozoids,

I went out to dinner with a group of friends saturday, and I am going to dinner with another group of friends tomorrow. I just wish it was something besides pizza,, but oh well.

[Redball]

Yeah, but it's with friends. That's worth a lot of pizza, in my case a lot of gasoline. Too many of my friends are too far away. I'm driving 3 hours or more over to Chicago Thursday to have dinner with Peace Corps friends from the late 1960s, driving back to MI the following day. In the fall, I sing with a group of friends in Detroit 2 hours away.

[Omega Entity]

I probably spend more time in the car for my job than I do in the actual stores! I think I figured it out to average between 700-1000 miles in a 5-day week, sometimes in a 4-day span if I'm really hauling to give myself a 3-day weekend.

[Carl-E]

So the day after we went to the local shriner's circus, my wife gets a phoe call - Make-A-Wish has extra tickets for Cirque du Soleil at the Penn State campus, the "Michael Jackson - Immortal" tour.  (I know, first reaction was "Immortal, or Undead?")

5 tickets.  On the floor, second row.  We all went.  I caught a peek at the pricing list, they were $180 tickets...

The show was amazing.  I wish I could describe half of it.  Arealists, acrobats, the dancers and musicians were simply amazing, lights, fireworks, it was beyond words.  There was even a dancer/acrobat who only has one leg*, and works on arm crutches when he's not balancing on his hands.  Beautuful, even inspiring across the board. 

* this guy.  Couldn't take pics, but an internet search for one-legged acrobat in Cirque du Soleil finds him pretty quick!

[Redball]

Makes me want to send Make a Wish some money. They seem to do good work.

[Barmymoo]

AAAAAAAARRRRRRGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHH make it all go AWAY and come back ONE AT A TIME ARGH

[Welu]

Got internet in the new house. It's home now. 

My birthday is on Monday. Having a party tomorrow night where everyone's gonna be dressed as Batman characters. We were meant to go out but of course in the last couple days I've got people saying, "Are you serious about going out? It's gonna be embarrassing to be out in costumes." Well, yeah, that's the half the fun. For fuck sake, it's me who wants to go out dressed up. You know me? The person who has been out of therapy for social anxiety issues just over a year.
Thanks to parents though who are nice to let me use their house since we're still settling into the new one. Plus don't wanna piss off the neighbour.

Photos to follow in the relevant thread soon.

[Barmymoo]

Are you taking bets on how many people are going to turn up dressed as each character? I'd say at least 50% Batman.

Ooof I'm so tired. Getting up at 5.30 was a good idea apart from the fact that I won't get to bed before 11 tonight. I was meant to do three hours of reading this afternoon but I ended up vacuuming my room and tidying my bureau instead. Upside: the floor is no longer disguisting, which is important since I have a friend sleeping on it tomorrow and my mum and grandparents are visiting next week, and the bureau is finally a workspace again instead of a disaster-zone catch-all storage space. Downside: I have only done about three hours of work today, and that means I'll have to do more after choir, plus proof-reading another essay for my tutee's mum. Argh.

[Welu]

I was actually trying to get everyone to dress up as Batman but people weren't up for that idea. There's about ten of us and we've all agreed on our characters.

[Zingoleb]

Have half of you smash up your faces and the other half look normal and you could be a collective Harvey Dent

[schimmy]

Well it's official, my house is officially breaking! Today, the kitchen flooded, and the water in it leaked into the basement, onto the fuse box, which started sparking. We turned off the water and unplugged everything electrical. We would have turned of the electricity, but none of us where going to go near a sparking fuse box in a flooded basement. Anyway, our letting agency sent over a contractor, who proceeded to not find a leak anywhere, and pointed out that the water was tripping out the electricity downstairs. Since the leak didn't seem to reoccur when he turned the water back on, he told us to leave it on, and just wait until the electricity downstairs starts working again.

Oh, have I mentioned on here before that we have no gas in the house? Last Friday, we noticed there was a gas leak in the basement. We shut off the gas and called the gasman. He told us what was wrong (some corroded pipes) but said he didn't have the equipment to fix it, and that we'd have to get our landlords to call a contractor. Having asked them several times over what has now been a week, they have yet to do anything. If we don't hear anything by tomorrow, we're just going to call the contractors ourselves, and send an invoice to the landlords.

Jesus H., I hate this house.

*presumably because it's below the bathroom, but we called a handyman and he couldn't find a leak anywhere.

[nekowafer]

Hi peoples!

I haven't been here in forever. It's sad 'cause I used to come here every day, and I've missed out on what I'm sure was fun times. Ah well, I blog now.

I was in a mental hospital recently, for about 10 days. I went all crazy-like and almost killed myself. I was on suicide watch for half that time, so I couldn't even poop by myself. I almost miss that place, actually. Is that weird?

[celticgeek]

Welcome back!

[pwhodges]

I hope you're feeling better about things.

[Carl-E]

Is that weird?

Decidedly not.  I was at the hospital yesterday where, two years ago, my daughter lay fighting for her life.  I suddenly realized that I missed being there.  It had become such an integral part of my life for a while.  Anything that fits that definition can be missed, even if it was horrible. 

And welcome back, in every way. 

@Welu, happy birthday (a little early)

[Redball]

I understand that. I miss the trips to University Hospital in Ann Arbor. After two years of chemo and radiation, my wife was gone four days after she left for the last time.

[Lines]

Neko, glad you're back! I hope all is well now?

[lepetitfromage]

Welcome back, Neko! Hope you're feeling better.....brains can be a big pain in the ass sometimes.


And y'know what? Every once in a while I think it might be nice to be put in a mental hospital. Especially on the really rough days when my neurons are particularly angry (or just lazy, I can't tell).... So no, that is definitely not weird at all.

[Mister D Nomms]

They wouldn't let you poop by yourself? Last time I was on suicide watch I had a toilet in my room, but some of the guards wouldn't let me have toilet paper. Hands.

[Jace]

Hey I'm gonna show off this shield I am working on for SCA.

We begin with 2 layers 1/4" of birch plywood glued together and left to dry stretched around a tree. The shield has a nice curve to it.
We then gorilla glued leather onto the edges (also tacked it with carpet nails) and covered it with canvas. Then put the basket and arm strap on it. (that is what the bolts on the front are)

Then I started painting it, decided to go with azure and vert quarterly.

And finally I sketched out and copied the charge in argent.


I just have to touch up the green and then a couple spots of the white and throw a shit ton of sealant on it and it is good to fight with.
For it being my 3rd week fighting, I want to impress the shit out of the veterans and show that I am serious. I also already have leg, arm, knee, and elbow armor that is made with metal, not plastic.

[Akima]

I think the fact that you laminated your shield round a tree gives it extra awesome. It wouldn't be nearly as cool if you'd done it over an oil-drum or something.

[snalin]

That's really well done!

I'm wondering about the grip though - from where the bolts are, I presume that you are holding your left arm at a very sharp angle. Which means that if you want to protect your left foot, you'll have to bend your left arm downwards, exposing your right shoulder. Which means that you'll have to use your sword or axe to protect your right side, which makes counterattacking hard. I'm used to a horizontal grip, where you hold your left  arm at at right angle. Is that grip standard where you fight?

[nekowafer]

Thanks guys Things are much better, now. My medicine had stopped working and everything seemed hopeless. Plus my boyfriend was being a jerk. But he's gotten better too.

@Mister D Nomms: I had a bathroom in my room, but there had to be a guard right outside the open door. Also, ew.

I met other crazy people there, and feel slightly less crazy for it. I even hang out with one of those crazies now, and she's one of my best friends.