Posts made by Aria

@Ghost said in Real World Peeves, Disgruntlement, and Irks.:

@Arkandel said in Real World Peeves, Disgruntlement, and Irks.:

Pet peeve: Couples sharing their social media accounts. The "Nick and Laura" Facebook page kinda deals.

Ugggggggggghhhhhhhh those are the worst, because I always kinda feel like that happens because one of the two wants to monitor the other's activity.

I've usually seen it happen with the aforementioned old couples and also with middle-aged couples where the husband absolutely gives no shits about social media, like, at all and his wife is using it for keeping up with social calendars scheduled via FB or discussion groups for their kid's school or whatever.

Which still weirds me out because like.... yes, Brenda. We all know you're carrying the mental/emotional load here. No one thinks that the birthday message came from Fred and we all know that asshole never looks at this, or remembers when parent-teacher conferences are, and is just going to tell us he "needs to check in with the wifey, haha!" if we ask him about next Saturday's barbecue. It's fine. It's fine. Stop making this more awkward than it already is.

@Arkandel said in Real World Peeves, Disgruntlement, and Irks.:

@Aria Pet peeve: Couples sharing their social media accounts. The "Nick and Laura" Facebook page kinda deals.

For some reason it irks me so much. Like aren't you people separate beings! Don't you have more than one device connecting to the interwebs?

Those legit creep me out. Like, a lot. AFAIC, the only time they're socially acceptable is when it's an old couple who have an account on these new fangled Facegrams so they can see pictures of their grandkids four states over and wants to leave nice, encouraging comments on your selfie from six months ago.

Grandma gets a pass because she's trying. (And it's always Grandma. Grandpa just puts his glasses on, squints at the phone, and says "Well, isn't that nice?" and then goes back to watching baseball.)

@Testament

It sounds like now is a really good time for your friend to learn that in healthy relationships, you don't need to Do Exactly All of the Things Always and Forever with your partner. Like, it's legitimately better for both of you if you don't share all of the same interests/hobbies/social circles and that you don't necessarily have to be forced to choose between your boo and your besties.

Example:
@insomniac7809 has a super shitty, unpredictable calendar because he works retail. It is often difficult for him to make plans in advance, so scheduling social activities is hard. I have some things where if he's off that night and going out -- SCA events, bowling league -- I will include him every time, because he knows those people, gets along with them, and it's a group event.

I also have my two best girls, who both adore him. But. But! When we go out, it's frequently a "ladies night" kind of vibe. I will only invite my husband along after asking my friends if its okay and even then, it's when we're doing things like going to the movies or going to one friend's house when I know her husband will also be there for him to chill with. When we're getting together for our annual Christmas dinner, grabbing drinks, having a life event gossip/vent session, or celebrating our strangely close birthdays.... he doesn't need to be there. At all. It would be awkward and weird.

It should be okay for your DM to be able to have TT nights with his just his friends. It should be okay for you to ask. It is not okay to be ass about it or frame it as "her or us" when you have the option of going with, "Hey, man. I noticed your girlfriend seems pretty uncomfortable with some of our views, some of us have been uncomfortable with her behavior, and you're left in this awkward in-the-middle position that must feel awful. Since we don't all gel, maybe we can do our TT with just us and you can do X, Y, or Z with just her?"

That's not a comment on her being a shitty person, pressure to sever a relationship, or being melodramatic. It's just acknowledging that you guys don't mesh and that probably sucks for him, so you want to find a solution that leaves no one feeling strained and uncomfortable. You never know. He might even be relieved to have someone give him a reasonable out without anybody bailing, crying, or shooting each other awkward looks.

@surreality Ohh, tell him to stop being such a baby.

If I win the PowerBall, Imma buy it and you guys can have the 3BDR carriage house and then you can come over and we can play Umbrella Academy meets CAOS whenever we want. It'll be totally fine as long as no one lets the fireplaces go out at midnight and if it gets really bad, we'll just let the ghosts eat one of the neighborhood kids.

@surreality said in Real World Peeves, Disgruntlement, and Irks.:

@Aria I think my official irk of the day is that it isn't already my house, so yes.

Also, yes it does and I weirdly love it. I even love/hate the decor. (Some I love, some I hate.) The gargoyles everywhere? Original to the house. I MEAN...

I stumbled across it a few days ago and was just dyin' because... yeah you always hear about 'that gorgeous huge old house that's selling for way less than it should' and you think 'sure, I hear about that, but I've never actually seen it happen... ' and, welp... seen it now!

I mean if I absolutely have to get haunt-murdered... I'd like to do it there, plz.

I feel kind of like... if you hang up giant weird paintings of Seventh Seal death in your house, you're kind of inviting ghosts to come murder you. Like that's basically just a flashing sign that says "poltergeists welcome here."

Just sayin'.

@surreality Honestly, that book is a really good book. The professor was completely right about teaching it in the course not only because of the desire to avoid "women's issues" existing solely in an echo chamber where they'll never reach the people that most need to hear about them, but because the two instances of assault in the text and how the main character -- who perpetrates one and is traumatized by the other -- reacts demonstrates a sharp contrast in how accusations are dealt with based on race, class, levels of familiarity, levels of violence, and -- given that this was a South African novel -- history and politics in the region.

Someone just really needed to put up some guardrails for the class discussion, including pointing out how said discussion fed into those very same contrasts and given that he's the 50 year old professor in a classroom full of 20 year old kids.... uhhh, that's you, dude. That's definitely you. He was very apologetic, sweet, and receptive about everything I said. I hope he's still covering that book, but better!

As for the house:

a) GORGEOUS. I want it now.
b) Definitely haunted. Like, either in a good Harry Potterish kind of way where that's secretly the headquarters of a school for wayward magical orphans or something, OR it's a creepy murder house and everyone is gonna die, but definitely not anything in between.
c) .....Is it just me or does the big painting in the background of photo #11 look like an abstraction of Death in The Seventh Seal?

@surreality said in Real World Peeves, Disgruntlement, and Irks.:

I have a moderately obscure first name.

I have seen it used in television twice for aliens/non-human fictional characters.

I have also now seen it occur four times in various paranormal shows as the victim of a haunting, which is really a peculiarly high incidence. (Including that one time the preview at the start of the episode re-enactment kicked off with a creepy voice whispering MY OBSCURE NAME. Beads and cats suddenly flying everywhere as I yikesed, having been caught totally off-guard... )

Dear Mom + Dad: Thanks for the weird name pick, guess you wanted me to get haunted.

If it makes you feel any better, I also have a relatively uncommon first name....

And once had to sit through an entire class while I was finishing my degree where a room full of 20 year olds analyzed a book in which a character with my name had been sexually assaulted and while most of the kids were.... let's say "well-intentioned" in that discussion, there was a whole lot of talk about how victims are "supposed" to act and this character very, very much did not.

Guess who had a panic attack in the bathroom and then a long chat with the professor the next week about a) content warnings and b) being the adult in the room responsible for giving the little shits some perspective on both the likelihood of someone in that room having been assaulted at some point and why most victims do, in fact, behave as said character did in such "wasn't violently attacked in an alley by a total stranger" circumstances.

Like, good on those kids -- even the little sophomore boys! -- for recognizing that the way that scene was portrayed was definitely rape. They were so, so close to getting it right! But. BUT.

Fortunately he was my favorite professor and I was one of his favorite students. So we very much agreed on not relegating such subjects to the Women's Studies classes where they won't be discussed by the majority of the student body literally ever, but he was also super receptive to my suggestions on how to handle that book in the future.

Knives Out is great.

That's all.

@JinShei said in Real World Peeves, Disgruntlement, and Irks.:

I have been sick since Christmas. Three different bugs. I am bored of this now. I was coughing and struggling to breathe for two weeks and now a headcold. BORED. We have a selection of drugs on the kitchen side for whichever stage the household is in at that time.

(my daughter started working in a primary school - it is a Petri dish)

Go to the doctor and make sure it's not bronchitis. This time last year, I was so sick for so long that I ended up with it and almost passed out at work. I ended up on an inhaler for most of a month.

@Auspice said in Good TV:

@Aria said in Good TV:

Please excuse me while I ugly snot-cry at The Good Place finale.

I haven't watched it yet and I don't wanna watch it cause I don't want it to end but I want to watch it because it's The Good Place but....

They tapped into pretty much exactly that feeling with the finale -- that idea of "When is it okay to end a good thing?" -- and that made it fucking amazing.

Please excuse me while I ugly snot-cry at The Good Place finale.

@Aria said in The Work Thread:

I have six competing priorities all due for the end of this week. And bless my primary business partner, because when I told him and my boss about this and how strained I am this week, he sent out an email to his entire team, my boss, her boss, and my entire team that basically said:

"Aria is a wonderful resource and we are lucky to have her! She is also entirely too nice to say to any of us, so I'm going to say no for her. She has several high level and complex priorities due at the end of the week, which are:

<bullet points>

Let's all help her do her best work by not adding anything to her plate or making asks that are unrelated to those things."

My boss and her boss were both super thrilled, pushed one of those things to Monday, then told the groups I'm working with on two of them that the heavy lifting is on them until items #1-3 get done and too bad for them if they don't like that.

I have literally never had managers do something like this for me before. I am simultaneously super grateful and wondering if I maybe somehow stole someone else's life. If I did, screw them. I'm not giving it back.

Guess which manager just exploded one of those three priorities with changes that force me to scrap half of what I've done and can't be fully confirmed until lunch tomorrow, but still expects this to go out the door by EOB?

........
........
........

The one who sent the goddamn email.

Bax. Sweetie. You are a darling and I love you and instead of counting how many high-fives you've managed to get from me, maybe you should consider counting the number of times I've threatened to murder you under my breath.

I have six competing priorities all due for the end of this week. And bless my primary business partner, because when I told him and my boss about this and how strained I am this week, he sent out an email to his entire team, my boss, her boss, and my entire team that basically said:

"Aria is a wonderful resource and we are lucky to have her! She is also entirely too nice to say to any of us, so I'm going to say no for her. She has several high level and complex priorities due at the end of the week, which are:

<bullet points>

Let's all help her do her best work by not adding anything to her plate or making asks that are unrelated to those things."

My boss and her boss were both super thrilled, pushed one of those things to Monday, then told the groups I'm working with on two of them that the heavy lifting is on them until items #1-3 get done and too bad for them if they don't like that.

I have literally never had managers do something like this for me before. I am simultaneously super grateful and wondering if I maybe somehow stole someone else's life. If I did, screw them. I'm not giving it back.

@Kestrel I was mostly thinking toppings, not weird blended in flavors. (It's already weird that we serve hummus cold.)

I will admit, however, to liking a good white bean hummus with garlic and za'atar and pine nuts. That stuff is delicious and I have no regrets.

@Pandora said in Real World Peeves, Disgruntlement, and Irks.:

My favorite new author is a struggling young artist & I started supporting him on Patreon last year, in October. The tier I subbed at gets you a handwritten thank you card, a bookmark, stickers, and the best part - a collectible fridge magnet in the shape of one of the cans of the canned human meat they eat in the cannibalistic post-apocalyptic setting of the novels: "Good Boy" made of healthy young people, "Foi Ras" made from the liver of people that were force-fed corn, etc. It's grim, I love it.

Anyway! I subbed in October. So that's October, November, December, and now the end of January. I didn't get any of the things in the mail! I was so miffed, and since I finished reading all the books to-date anyway, I cancelled the sub and added the reason was not getting the tier stuff. This was like 2 days ago. TODAY, I get a package in the mail from him with all the stuff and a personalized note apologizing that it took so long and including some extra freebies - including the full set of the magnets!

I feel terrible for being an impatient asshole, but I'm too fucking embarrassed to re-sub. What do I do? So annoying!

Re-sub and say thank you. I recently received a Kickstarter for an indie tarot deck I ordered awhile back and somehow ended up with five nines and zero eights. I messaged the artist and she was so sweet and apologetic and offering me all sorts of free extras, but I told her not to worry about everything else as long as I could get the missing cards. They came super fast, she sent out a note to the other backers in case someone has many eights and no nines, and seemed really happy I was so chill about it.

It's okay to ask someone to fix a mistake in something you paid for! It's not okay to be an asshole about it.

Also, they would probably be happy to have the subscription money coming in again.

@Kestrel said in Real World Peeves, Disgruntlement, and Irks.:

@Aria said in Real World Peeves, Disgruntlement, and Irks.:

White People Problems: Bitching about the price of hummus.

....But I am also legitimately annoyed at the price of hummus. A single 8 oz tub is $4.89? WTF?!

Hummus recipe:
buy can of chickpeas
drain can of chickpeas
pour drained can of chickpeas in blender
blitz

cheaper, tastier, healthier, fresher hummus.

Squeeze lemon and add tahini/salt/garlic if desired.

— your friendly neighbourhood Israeli

You got any recommendations for adding tasty extra flavors? I have made it 'plain' at home before, but it's honestly the extra flavors that I miss.

White People Problems: Bitching about the price of hummus.

....But I am also legitimately annoyed at the price of hummus. A single 8 oz tub is $4.89? WTF?!

I don't know who decided that work should start in the mornings, but that person is shit and I hate them.

I want to be Hilda Spellman when I grow up.

That is all.

I have what I feel is an appropriately mature response to his "jokes", by which I mean not mature at all and a bit vulgar but I can't get the spoiler tags to work.

Just imagine Jon Stewart sarcastically laughing before flipping the camera off. And yes, the choice of a Jewish celebratory is most definitely intentional.