That looking for this linked -- for some reason -- to this, which I was just curious about to find the link to THIS in the sidebar.
(Less loved: totally forgetting everything I learned in link 1 by the time I read the initial post on link 3. Still totally worth having to re-read the thing I was so 'whut'-ted out of recalling I was even looking for in the first place.)
Been playing a new DnD campaign over Discord and Roll20. People were suspicious about the idea of playing a character that's more or less the Doom Slayer, mostly because I thought the idea was too funny not to play.
I thusly proven to the players that you can indeed play a character that doesn't speak and still get your point across with mannerisms and gestures.
I have made a personal rule though. He talks once a session, so I usually make whatever he says important and it's usually never more than a single sentence. Infact, the player who plays our Druid tends to speak for him, which gives a great dynamic between the two.
And really, nobody is complaining when he beats two wargs to death with his hands, especially when the second one was killed with pieces of the first.
@Testament Are you playing the Doom Slayer, or are you playing Ferb?
Getting a random Marco Polo from one of the 4 year olds at church saying how he loves us so so so so so so so so so so so (mom, okay now) SOOOOO much.
Definitely needed.
https://www.thesource.org/freeforher - a women's clinic in Austin is providing free products for women (1 order a month). Tampons, pads, pregnancy tests...
This is super awesome. Share it with any ladies you know in Austin (and hopefully other clinics in other cities will do similar).
I feel guilty for how easy this quarantine has been for me, but honestly it's brought me closer to a lot of people I care about, despite the physical distance. As someone who's lived alone for my entire adult life, this has seriously driven home for me that no man is an island, and the importance of good custody of one's social relationships.
Quarantine?
Meet quarantoy:
I have only wanted one of these for half my life or thereabouts, but... there's finally a cheap one that isn't crap.
Did not wake up this morning knowing this existed, or this would be possible for the long-long-long time I'd accepted it probably would end up being for ages now.
S'cuse me, I got a rabbit hole to joysqueal into for a while like a tween at a boyband marathon.
So it's pow-wow season -- or at least it's supposed to be. They, like everything else, have been cancelled.
Except literally thousands of people who would normally attend them have flooded into a group online to share videos of themselves dancing -- dancing in full regalia in their living rooms, their basements, their yards, the local park, a parking lot, a trail they hiked, everywhere. It's beautiful and moving and I have been watching every day, often for several hours with the videos up in the background while I'm working.
Specials -- aka competitions -- are still being held and today was the "Tiny Tot Special", for children six and under.
Today was also, quite unexpectedly, a really hard day. But then I got to spend my evening after work methodically going through every one of those videos tagged for the kids' special, liking each one, and leaving comments like "Wow, Branson! That's some fancy footwork. Thank you for sharing your dancing with us!" for the kids who got the least upvotes and replies.
I'm really glad I just got to say a bunch of nice things to a bunch of little kids who are probably really scared and confused right now and have their moms and dads tell me how excited their kids got when they read them everything people were saying.
That's probably weird, but it made today a whole lot better.
HOLY CRAP the hand cramps.
I have never ever ever been happier to have hand cramps.
I haven't actually drawn anything in well over a decade, since shortly after the last art school, save for a few very small bits over a summer that was still well over a decade ago now. The creeping dread was real as fuck.
It's going to take a WHILE to adjust to the toolset, but it could be going so much worse for so many reasons.
My student with the worst homelife is now living with mom. Comcast is providing free internet for 60 days. She was able to get on Zoom for the first time and the room (the five girls in this group) almost exploded with joy seeing her face. I texted her other teachers too and they all jumped on to wave at her too.
It is the tiny things that will keep me sane though this.
The tribal response to this crisis has made me feel blessed to get to be a part of the community as much as I do.
I did a reflective session with my students who are in practice. Just giving them a space to talk about their feelings, and it ended with such positivity and pride I could have cried. So. Bloody. Proud.
@silverfox - I just emo'ed at that share.
So, there's a voting contest going on at my office right now where people can submit photos of their home setup to see who has the coolest one. That's not the important part of the story. That's the background.
The important part is that after one of my coworkers began teasing our teammate Elliot about his submission with an MS Teams chat about #ElliotForPresident, I started peppering him with hard-hitting questions about how he feels about dogs. Then asked if he'd be willing to have a dog as his running mate. Then Duke the dog-mayor of Minnesota came up....
And now my team is debating the possibility of a dog-based presidential cabinet and our willingness to remove term limits if future State of the Union addresses will be conducted with puppies replacing most of the officials normally on the podium.
I say vote Doggo in 2020.
https://whatiswrongwith.me/Mia
There were never any good old days. They are today. They are tomorrow. It's a stupid thing we say, cursing tomorrow with sorrow. -- Gogol Bordello
@Aria John Oliver's in with the assist with the All Canine Supreme Court.
So, I ordered a slimline pen for the tablet because I have tiny mutant child man hands and big fat pens exacerbate the cramps. It was worth it after realizing 'yes I like this'.
The pen came with a case, how nice!
Er.
I had a moment in which I realized there was surely not a single woman on the design team for the Wacom pen case, because one is expected to be able to use this to take the pen along wherever, in a purse or laptop case or whatever.
...yeeeeeeeeeahno. Not doing that. (In any sense.)
Really glad my mother didn't accidentally open that amazon package. I cannot even imagine the amount of 'I SWEAR IT ISN'T WHAT IT LOOKS LIKE OMG MOM SRSLY!' would have rocketed me back to being a teenager in the worst possible way. (I can't help this happening sometimes. Our address is super vague, and so all packages and bills and whatnot goes to the folks, who are next door facing a cross street with a sane people address without perpetually lost mail.)
Entered the raffle for some Yeezy Boosts, because they tend to be pretty hard to cop and I hate paying resell price. I don't usually expect to win the raffle, but today is a good day apparently because I won out on the raffle. While I try to not give Kanye money because I think Kanye is legit crazy, I do like the shoes. Thankfully, I try to keep the amount of pairs I do buy to a very low number. Or well, low considering the amount of Nikes and Pumas that I have own.
The Metropolitan Opera's At Home Gala
4 hours of music all performed in the performers' homes all over the world. Not just soloists and duets but also at times the entire orchestra. The highlight for me is at 1:30:00 where the entire orchestra performs the prelude to Act 3 of Wagner's Lohengrin.
I just got into the top-ranked of the four MBA programs that I applied to -- making the interview I have at another one on Monday waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay less stressful and dropping the fact that a third refused to grant me a GMAT waiver into a "Cool, you guys can withdraw my application" category of giving zero fucks. 
https://whatiswrongwith.me/Mia
There were never any good old days. They are today. They are tomorrow. It's a stupid thing we say, cursing tomorrow with sorrow. -- Gogol Bordello
@Aria said in RL things I love:
I just got into the top-ranked of the four MBA programs that I applied to -- making the interview I have at another one on Monday waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay less stressful and dropping the fact that a third refused to grant me a GMAT waiver into a "Cool, you guys can withdraw my application" category of giving zero fucks.
YAY! Congrats!
My student with the worst homelife is now living with mom. Comcast is providing free internet for 60 days. She was able to get on Zoom for the first time and the room (the five girls in this group) almost exploded with joy seeing her face. I texted her other teachers too and they all jumped on to wave at her too.
It is the tiny things that will keep me sane though this.
