RL things I love

[Alamias]

@Ghost Hell, that is the length of my commute every morning.

[Ghost]

@Alamias Exactly.

I suspect that my SO is a WTF-Grade speeder.

[Rinel]

@Ghost

Late to the party re: fluency.

I think you misread the statistic, or the statistic was improperly reported. Susie Dent (she of 'Countdown' and '8 out of 10 Cats Does Countdown' fame) estimated that the average English speaker's active vocabulary, i.e. the words you use, is about 20,000 words, while your passive vocabulary, i.e. your active vocabulary plus the words that don't have you reaching for a dictionary, is about 40,000.

So yes, you absolutely do know 20,000 English words.Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix had 7,908 unique words. Extract a few dozen fake words (squib, muggle, etc), and you see just how many words you read without thinking about it. And there are so many words in English. We have words for everything. Plus, once you hit a certain point in vocabulary, you start being able to put together words by looking at their etymology and related words. For instance, say you know "hemo-" means "relating to blood." Suddenly you know hemoparasite, hemoparasitology, hemoparasitologist, hemopathology...

You've probably never seen the word "hyperpermeabilized" before in your life, but I'm positive that you instinctively know it means "the state of something that has been made really permeable." Because you know "hyper-" means "really," you know "-ized" means "done something to," and you know what permeability is.

[silverfox]

@Rinel

I'm going to be pedantic and note that 'fluency' and 'vocabulary' are completely different fields in literacy. Fluency relates to the speed and smoothies of which you are able to take in written text (typically measured by speaking aloud) - it doesn't actually measure how much you understand what you read, though fluency in reading is a major predictor of future reading success. Fluency is slowed down by phonics, phonemic awareness, and/or processing deficiencies. Vocabulary is a whole different area of literacy. It involves actual understanding of words, their meanings, and their connections.

You can have high fluency with a poor vocabulary if you are good at breaking down words and guessing. You can also have terrible fluency with amazing vocabulary if you process things slowly.

This is why teaching reading is so hard.

[Auspice]

Got a call back on interview I had yesterday.

'Just wanted to give you feedback and it was all positive....'

I started to tune out because I was just going into my mode of yup. Prepare yourself for the '....but we are moving ahead with other candidates who fit better...'

Apparently no. They want to bring me in for another interview next week.

This wouldn't be a full-time job. Just a contract that would be like...6-9 months. But. It'd be writing. It'd pay well. And those two things are really all I need. Esp as I'm working on something right now that should have me set not too far down the road. I just need something to carry me through until I get there.

[Sunny]

@Auspice

Congratulations!!!!!! Fingers are crossed for you, but yay good feedback!

[Ghost]

I just achieved dude level 80 in real life for eating meatballs out of a red solo cup at a house party while we are watching Roadhouse.

"Pain don't hurt."

...and then I cleaned out the red solo cup so I can put booze in it later.

[Ghost]

I love my life.

Currently someone is claiming my SO 'threatened them' because she made a joke about how someone should shit on their car.

I wish I could make this up. We went from telepathic alien communication last week to apparently being a part of some vicious ring of threatening 'car shitters' this week.

[Ganymede]

I love that I have satellite radio now.

And I can listen to the 40s and 50s channels rolling through the local destruction, imagining myself in a Fallout spinoff.

Fallout: New Property Damage Claims.

[Pandora]

Harry Potter: Wizards Unite

I'm so excited. Is anyone else excited? I fucking love Harry Potter.

[Auspice]

@Ganymede said in RL things I love:

I love that I have satellite radio now.

And I can listen to the 40s and 50s channels rolling through the local destruction, imagining myself in a Fallout spinoff.

Fallout: New Property Damage Claims.

I was extolling the virtues of sat radio (I got it free for a year with my car and I've been moping that the year is almost up) to @Ghost the other day. It has some excellent channels.

I like playing Sinatra radio (71) during quiet, night time drives home.

[Rinel]

I have a law clerk as of Monday and I assigned her a difficult research topic and she got it back to me the next day and I barely had to spend any additional time researching stuff and I got to make fun of the State for not citing anything while pulling out a reference to the scientific journal Neurology.

There are rumors of a potential paralegal hire.

This is what lawyer heaven feels like.

[Auspice]

So the Twitch stream I hang out on / interact with is a local guy (met him at SXSW when I got to go) and a number of his regulars are also local. This weekend he's doing a huge 24hr charity stream for Extra Life. Spent all day hanging out in stream.

Around midnight, one of the local guys was like hey, you should come join us at (local office he works at). Turns out he'd helped organize a big game day to coincide with the charity event for his company. Friends, family, etc could come out too. Play games, hang out, etc., and the final sort of party would be there too post stream.

I haven't been feeling 100% (partly mental health partly fibro) but I decided...fuck it. I need to push myself to get out and do stuff more. And despite it being so late. Despite it meaning I've been up all night: I'm glad I did. I've been having a pretty great time.

[Ghost]

I just ordered shrimp fried rice and a Sprite.

Fuck yeah.

[Auspice]

So: interview last Friday went better than I thought. I was late because I got lost on location (admittedly the recruiter did not give me very clear directions about building/lobby) and had to do some running around.

That and I've just....been reaching this stage of the process and not getting the damn job for a couple years straight so, y'know.

But I got called yesterday and told they wanna move forward!

.......to a third interview. <cue quiet weeping>
Recruiter did apologize and said she wasn't aware they'd have yet another they want to do.

It's not scheduled yet but man. I wanna just know!

[Sunny]

I am in awe of this kid:

https://www.cnn.com/2019/06/15/us/north-carolina-boy-stops-home-invasion/index.html

I feel so sorry for his parents, but I am in total awe of the kid.

[Herja]

People who have been checking in on me over the past couple months as I work through a pretty debilitating bout of depression. It's just the occasional 'Hey, how are you?' and talking about random stuff that usually has nothing to do with my mental stuff. Those check-ins have been enough to convince me that despite whatever I'm feeling now, people care about me and things are probably going to be okay.

[Sunny]

@Herja

Bless those people. I'm really glad you have them. The rest of us appreciate them, too.

[Ghost]

When you get a drinking horn for your birthday, fill it up with rum & coke, and...your SO and her girlfriends run off with it to giggle and make lewd jokes with it.

[Auspice]

Finally checked out a yarn store here in town I've been curious about. It's lovely and I can't wait to have some spare money to spend on lovely soft pretty yarn.