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[Gemmwah]

oh my god, fuck yeah dicky! o/

[Barmymoo]

Nothing that doesn't cost quite a lot of money. And even then the only thing to do would be pointless shopping, as there is no cinema, no bowling alley, no theatre, no ice rink, no park, not really anything you might call leisure activities during the day (and in the evening I have no transport). I'm trying to persuade my mum and stepdad that we should all go over to the big town at the weekend to see a film and have dinner, but the weather might stop play. I miss living in walking distance of lots of interesting places, and also friends.

[benji]

My academic good news: I found out that I'm getting full tuition forgiveness (as in, they won't charge me any money) for the new program I'm starting. I'll still have to take out student loans to cover living expenses, but this is still really good news.

[october1983]

Thanks guys! \o \o

Also, May, we should definitely meet during your time in London - I'm around on the 16th, and the week after new years. Also, if you're really struggling for somewhere to stay, we have a spare room that you're more than welcome to. Also, if you guys get out of the habit of calling me Dicky I am going to be bummed out.

[Edith]

You'll always be Dicky to me.

Also, well done!

[valley_parade]

Richard is just too old frumpy guy for me, Dicky. Don't worry about it.

[The Seldom Killer]

Barmymoo, you live in Cirencester and I claim my five pounds.

[Edith]

I'm seriously considering international adoption.

I've been thinking about it for a good long time - off and on for 15 years or so, so this isn't a rash decision completely out of nowhere. It's actually not even a complete decision yet.

I would love to have my own children, but I don't really want to just go get knocked up for the sake of being a parent, and I know there are lots of kids out there who need parents, and the world is pretty overpopulated as it is. Also, the older I get, the higher the risk of birth defects including autism and downs, which is pretty freaking scary.

Pros:
I make a good salary and have a secure government job with great benefits.
I have a shitload of love to share. I love deeply and long-term.
I have a lot of resources, including a wide network of friends and family.

Cons:
It would put a damper on my social life. The pool of eligible men to date would shrink to those who are willing to take on a kid.
Being a single parent is HARD. I have a couple friends who are doing it, and at least they have a babydaddy in the picture - this would be me, on my own.
I'd get maternity leave for 6 weeks, same as for pregnancy, but after that, I'd have to set up childcare. It would probably be a better life than they'd have in a 3rd-world orphanage, but how much better?
I might not be good enough. If I fail at parenting, that's about as bad a failure as there can be.

[Tom]

Richard, that's great news. I hope you can get it published because that would by bloody fantastic and don't feel like a dick for posting because I'm not at all annoyed about marks. I am pissed off for political reasons now, this is usually far worse than the former. I hope you can get

[valley_parade]

Eed, just don't go all Angelina Jolie on us and adopt half of Swaziland, okay?

[Edith]

Oh, I forgot one more con: Adoption is fucking expensive. It'd be cheaper, with my insurance, to get knocked up after all.

Don't worry, veep. I'm just thinking one.

[valley_parade]

Adoption is cool, though!

Trust me, I was once adopted.

[pwhodges]

Once adopted, always adopted?

My first child was adopted (he's actually my step-son, but adoption was still required to normalise his position), and his oldest child is adopted in turn.  So my oldest grandchild is twice-adopted, sort of.

[valley_parade]

I'm glad I was adopted.

Apparently I spent the first month or so of my life without a name. Can you imagine going through life as The Boy Without A Name?

[öde]

Can you imagine going through life as The Boy?

[pwhodges]

Doesn't one of our posters around here refer to her boyfriend exactly like that?

[benji]

The pool of eligible men to date would shrink to those who are willing to take on a kid.

Since you want children, isn't your pool pretty much limited to people who want children anyway? I mean for more than just a casual fling?

I'd get maternity leave for 6 weeks, same as for pregnancy, but after that, I'd have to set up childcare. It would probably be a better life than they'd have in a 3rd-world orphanage, but how much better?

I have met orphans from the 3rd world and know someone who runs an AIDS orphanage in Africa. I can tell you that yes, going to a nice, clean, 1st world nursery and then coming home to an adoptive mother who loves you is better than the way these kids live now by a substantial amount.

[David_Dovey]

I know for a while it was fairly de rigeur for forumites to dub their partner "The Boy" or "The Lady" (depending on the respective partner's sex, of course), but honestly I think it's gotten to the point where we are so involved with one anothers' lives at this point that it's not odd for members to know (and oftentimes, have met in person) various other members' long-term Boys and/or Ladies. There's also the trend of giving Boys and Ladies more specific pseudonyms e.g; Punk Rock Girl or Conservative Christian Boy.

(of course, some people do still get confused and think I am talking about forum user Sam when I mention my Lady, Samantha)

[valley_parade]

Doesn't one of our posters around here refer to her boyfriend exactly like that?

I want to say Yelley but she hasn't posted here in forever. Lunchy, maybe?

[Edith]

Since you want children, isn't your pool pretty much limited to people who want children anyway? I mean for more than just a casual fling?

Well, there are a lot of guys who are fine with the idea of having their own kid, but not raising one they're not related to. You're right, though. Why would I want to date those asshats anyway?

[David_Dovey]

Doesn't one of our posters around here refer to her boyfriend exactly like that?

I want to say Yelley but she hasn't posted here in forever. Lunchy, maybe?

jmrz still does it on the regular, I think

[David_Dovey]

No idea, bro

[valley_parade]

Not I, male aquaintance.

[bainidhe_dub]

Doesn't one of our posters around here refer to her boyfriend exactly like that?

I want to say Yelley but she hasn't posted here in forever. Lunchy, maybe?

jmrz still does it on the regular, I think

I did that for quite a while but by now I figure people know or can gather from context who Robert is.

[Tom]

I use dude pretty regularly in meat-life, not so much here.

[bainidhe_dub]

My boss brings her daughter to the office after kindergarten, and right now she is playing with a set of Cinderella and Prince Charming toys. I'm pretty sure the prince just said, "You are my alpha bride," and I am kind of creeped out.

[Jimor]

New socks and underwear. Fuck yeah, bring on the new year!

[tania]

just started marking the 50 papers that are due by monday. observations so far -

- oh my god do NOT use the word "half-assed" in your final term paper, you are an adult and a university student so please write like one
- if you are going to cite cases involving people in your term paper LOOK UP THEIR FUCKING NAMES. the man who was tasered to death at vancouver international airport was named robert dzeikanski. not robert jerkansky. did you just make some feeble attempt to remember the guy's name and then make that name up on the spot? are you aware it would have taken you less than 15 seconds to google this (literally, it's the third hit on "vancouver international airport taser death")? i don't even... i don't know if you were trying to be funny or if you are just unbelievably lazy but this is absolutely inexcusable.

i don't want to be a dick here but do students just not try anymore or something? no wonder professors get teaching assistants to do this stuff for them, even i want to pay someone else to mark these for me now.

[tania]

yeah i am sure there are a few really good papers in here too, all of my seminars have had a few really smart kids who consistently try really hard so i haven't given up completely. what i have learned from this experience is that, unfortunately, being a teaching assistant means you also get to read and grade all the work done by the students who really don't want to be there and are just trying to scrape by with a passing grade and oh god are there ever a lot of those, and boy do they aim low

[Joseph]

Let the forum mark the papers.



Really though Tania I'm pretty impressed you're making it through that job. If I had to mark assignments by many of my classmates, I don't know what I'd do.

[tania]

it pays really well

[Joseph]

Think about how much more you'd be making per hour of work if the forum was marking the papers.

[StaedlerMars]

Actually, on the opposite end of the spectrum, I feel like students have been trying waaaay harder here. There are first and second years at this shool that care way too much about doing stuff instead of doing extra-curricular stuff. In those two years it really doesn't matter what grade you get, but somehow people are all freaking out. Way more than I did in those two years.

Like, in first year I didn't care as much about courses, I even failed one but I got through it, but now first years are constantly complaining about how much work they have. I don't understand. First year wasn't hard at all.

[snalin]

Man, Edith, I'm not sure how single mother adoption works over there, but my mother tried for 4 years after the Norwegian state agency had cleared her, and nobody was interested in a single mother. Plus I think it cost... $15K+, and that's before anything really happened. Third world adopting might be ethically more ideal as those kids in many ways need it more than western homeless kids do, as they'll be taken better care of in homeless shelters here than there, but the mindblowing amount of time and bribes that it takes to get that adoption done, you might be better off getting a kid that'll have you for 4 more years of his/hers life.


Blog thread, I just saw Battle Royale and it's the best movie ever ever.

[Allybee]

hanging out, laser cutting the rough draft of my final architecture model. I think I might have accidentally made the world's most difficult lego set for myself to complete....

[Allybee]

also, how do you deal with people giving you advice that you really don't want?

friend: did you ever reschedule that therapy appointment?
ally: no. I'm so sick of people telling me I need to go! are you telling me to go?
friend: no! but why didn't you reschedule?
[conversation about why I don't feel like therapy is helpful for me]
friend: you really need to go to therapy. [insert a lot of "I know what's best for you, despite what you think" bullshit"]

what am I supposed to do with that? sigh. I don't want to go to therapy! it's sort of hurtful a close friend tell me that I'm lonely and sad when I don't feel like I'm either of those things! I just walked away.

[De_El]

someone introduced this terrible internet flirting/missed connections thing called "Like a Little" to my college's campus yesterday and it is wreaking havoc on productivity levels because everyone is desperate for distraction from their final papers, projects and such

losin sleep to work and not workin' woo

i turned in an important research paper and was embarassed that I spawned it woooouhheh ughrghegh fuck

[Drill King]

I didn't have a name until I was 5 months old, my mom almost forgot to register me. My name was almost officially 'Baby Sears'

[jhocking]

hanging out, laser cutting the rough draft of my final architecture model. I think I might have accidentally made the world's most difficult lego set for myself to complete....

Back at RISD the laser cutting guy loved to do jobs for everyone except architects. He refused to do laser cutting for architects, because they would drive him crazy with nit-picky requirements and special requests. Apparently the last straw was when an architect told him to cut out every brick of a building model he needed the next day.

He didn't even mind the time I asked him to laser cut some magazines and it ended up filling his shop with confetti.

[Scandanavian War Machine]

also, how do you deal with people giving you advice that you really don't want?

by having less friends


i wouldn't necessarily recommend it

[öde]

Good news:
-all my uni module stuff arrived, hooray!
-my hard drive should arrive tomorrow!
-found an exciting course I'm looking forward to taking in a year's time.
-applied for lots of better jobs.

Bad news:
-got my netbook back from the friend I lent it to as I'm giving it to someone as a christmas present. The screen has a massive crack in the middle, and she insists it was fine only hours before she gave it back to me (it took me a week to get it off her). She has agreed to pay for a new screen though, so maybe it's not totally lost.
-flatmate still hasn't paid me the £90 for all the on-demand movies he's watched.
-still waiting for the guitar I lent someone over a year ago (I gave his back months and months ago and he's come up with tons of shitty excuses for not giving me mine back)
-so much shit to do to organise moving in 3 weeks time ):

[nobo]

Wife and I successfully made angel wings/chrusciki/faworki!  Now I have a tummy ache from eating too many of them.

[Elizzybeth]

So I'm taking this sculpture class just for fun, mostly (also I needed 4 more units to meet financial aid requirements, and I didn't want to take another grad class).  Our final project is to do something that the community can interact with somehow.  It is that vague.

I've put stickers of feet with the words to poems on them on sidewalks around town, so that as you walk down the sidewalk, you read / step on the poem.  The feet also have a URL on them, which takes people to a website my boyfriend coded for me (nice to have a programmer in-residence) where people can listen to .mp3 files on one page and upload them on the other.

This is the site.  It is tested in Safari, Firefox, and Chrome... if you have something else, you are unfortunately probably out of luck.  But if any of you poetry buffs are interested in recording yourself speaking a poem as an .mp3 and uploading it to the site, please please do!  It'd be super cool if I wasn't the only person reading on there when I present the project to my class tomorrow.

ETA: This video explains the IRL side of the project.

[McTaggart]

I have about a week's worth of cat dishes to wash and I can't bring myself to do it. I just can't deal with cat food. It's the most disgusting thing in the world. If I look at it too closely I feel like I'm going to throw up and the smell seems to be specially designed to make me feel ill. I can't touch the stuff without getting that weird jelly feeling all down my arm.

I think when I move out I should not get a cat.

[The Seldom Killer]

I'm seriously considering international adoption.

...

I might not be good enough. If I fail at parenting, that's about as bad a failure as there can be.

Ask anyone you think is a good parent and I reckon just about all of them will tell you that they've had the same fear. A little fear is a good thing, it reminds us to pay attention, to assess continually and judge fairly. As long as you manage that fear well and believe in yourself when you do well then you're already well on your way to being a good parent, failure won't happen.

Don't get me wrong, if you do become a parent, either by adoption or pregnancy, you will fuck up and it will be the worst moment in your life. You will feel like and abject failure and will probably cry. It happens to every parent. And here's the really funny part, if in future years you talk to your child about what kind of parent you were, this complete and utter betrayal of responsibility that you have beaten yourself up over nightly since it happened will barely register in their memory and they will criticise you for something you thought you did really well.

The sad thing for me is that through work I come into contact with a lot of bad parents. Many of them will never question their own parenting abilities and will continually neglect and fail their children on many levels. But in many respects even these children can be considered to have better lives than some of the children in orphanages in the developing world.

The brilliant thing about kids is that some mistakes don't matter s long as you put them right. Kids bounce. If you don't believe me, pick on up and drop them.

[Barmymoo]

Eed, I am absolutely certain you'd make an awesome parent. I would suggest you adopted me if I didn't already have six parents and was an adult. I don't know much about the process of adoption but I'd imagine that it can't hurt to start looking into it properly, and that the sooner you start the better.

And by the way, Seldom Killer, I don't live anywhere near Cirencester. I don't even know where that is. Please don't assume things about me.



We've got a bunch of pheasants who live in our orchard and when we feed the chickens we also throw a handful of corn to them. After having me feed them for several days last week and then again today, they're almost at the point where they will eat from less than a metre away. I confidently predict that they will be flying around my head cooing and eating out of my hand within three days.

[pwhodges]

I think he felt he was recognising Cirencester from your description; I can see why...

[The Seldom Killer]

Sorry, that wasn't assuming anything. The description just reminded me of when I was living near Cirencester. That sense of nothing to do and being so easily isolated from the rest of the world.

I assure you I don't make many assumptions about people, especially not that they might genuinely live in Cirencester.

As an aside, don't move to Cirencester, it's crap.

[Barmymoo]

Sorry, I guess I overreacted in that case. Probably the boredom getting to me.

[StaedlerMars]

I just learned that the guy I work with is the guy behind the counter in this burger king ad

Aside from the hangover and the wallet loss, today is an amusing day.