Posts made by Aria

@arkandel said in Holiday materialism! Let's talk gifts.:

An hour and a half of research, a non-inconsiderable amount of money later and today I realized - too late - I forgot my in-laws' big present back home.

Well, never say I didn't ruin Christmas! I'll have to come back on the weekend and bring it over, else the Google Home they're getting as a side isn't gonna be that useful on its own.

This is what a print-out hastily stuffed into a card is for. It's less exciting, but at least gives them something to open instead of just telling them, and people seem to like that when I've done it, or when the thing I got them was, like..... a subscription box that wasn't going to arrive for awhile, concert tickets that would be at will call, a package that arrived late, or a promise to take them on a trip to a store to pick out the color/finish/whatever option on something I already paid for etc. Of course, it probably helps that @insomniac7809 's family does the same thing, so they don't get offended when I do it.

I got the expensive boots for Christmas. ^_^

• I don't have a favorite color. No, really. I've been through so many 'favorite colors', I've just given up on the idea. The sole exception is with clothes, in which case 'Does it come in black?' is probably the first thing out of my mouth. If it comes in black, I am buying it in black.

• I have two tattoos, a dozen piercings, and previously have had pink hair and a faux-hawk.

• I currently work in the notoriously conservative financial industry, otherwise my hair would STILL be pink. My hair has been about every shade of red since, just to try and keep things a little interesting.

• I have personally rescued about 15 cats in the last ten years, about half of which I have rehomed. There is usually some kind of cat food in my trunk, 'just in case'. I've had the neighbors try to call the cops on me because they thought I was stealing someone's car. No, dude. I was just crawling around under there trying to get a half-starved, mangy, limping little calico to come out so I could make her better. (Also, you don't hot-wire a car from underneath the front-end, dumbass.)

• This is hilarious, because I am actually a dog person.

• The sadder and uglier an animal is, the more likely I am to lose my mind trying to love on it. I have a few scars to prove this.

• The first time I was diagnosed with depression, I was 8. I also have anxiety, and mild OCD.

• And a crippling fear of being perceived as 'crazy' thanks to my super dysfunctional home. If I think I've upset you, I will monumentally overexplain myself. You will probably think this is me trying to prove I'm "right". It's actually me trying to prove my thought process did not involve a detour over to Crazy Town. It usually just makes things worse. Sorry.

• Once, I met the Dalai Lama. He accidentally elbowed me in the stomach. Then laughed.

• I have been to more concerts than I can count. I consider this good for my health.

• I punched a neo-Nazi. It was one of the prouder moments of my life.

• I was an overacheiver in high school. I didn't graduate from college until I was 30.

• Macaroni and cheese is my comfort food.

• Condiments are the devil. Don't. Just don't.

• Except for hummus. I will eat hummus in giant buckets from Costco. And guacamole. Chutney is also acceptable in certain cases.

• I wasn't allowed to drink soda as a child and I still don't like it. The fizz is weird and stingy.

• I own over 100 bottles of perfume oils. I should stop buying them. I say that every year.

@surreality said in Who are you?:

@pyrephox said in Who are you?:

• I have sordid addictions to paranormal romance novels and cooking shows. If you managed to write a romance series about competing chefs in a fantasy world who fall in love, I would buy every copy.

My former mentor wrote a series fantasy novels about knitting witches. Alongside each novel, she'd write a book of patterns. She did well enough with it to produce companion audiobooks of them. If someone actually did what you're describing, and released a side-by-side recipe book people could opt to buy as a 'set', they would likely do pretty fucking well.

What is this and how do I make them take my money?!

That moment when a coworker tells you that your sweater is great and would have been a huge hit yesterday!

....yesterday was apparently the ugly sweater party.

@auspice It does take a while. Like, just when you look back at the "5-7 days later" on the box and decide that this is bullshit and is never going to work, your feet suddenly begin peeling like the worst sunburn you've ever had x100, leaving you astounded at just how much skin you actually have.

Personally, I do this in the winter because I am more likely to be wearing shoes that cover my entire foot, thus preventing my co-workers from thinking I have some sort of horrifying medical condition. About a week after that, every bit of callous you've had has vanished into the ether.

Magic! By which I mean alpha-hydroxy acids.

If you have never tried Baby Foot and are curious, I am my second or third use of them in as many winters.

I can confirm that they work as well as all the ads claim. I can also confirm that the peeling process is absolutely revolting.

@arkandel The boyfriend did. He let the dog outside, so the dog dropped out of the competition.

The upside to a surprise WFH day:

I just heard my dog and my boyfriend having a 'barking contest' downstairs.

@runescryer said in Good or New Movies Review:

Went to the local Amazon Prime preview of Aquaman

It's good. Maybe not as good as the hype, but still almost as good as Wonder Woman.

Another step in the right direction for DC movies.

Does the red wig look as fucking awful in the movie as it does in the preview? There's one shot that was totally fine on YouTube, but once I saw it in theaters on a large screen, it was, like.... distractingly "this hair is plastic" levels of bad.

@auspice I actually really, really liked when I lived in an area with a grocery chain where the standard procedure was "load everyone's groceries into their car, period". The only exceptions were when they got super, super busy and then would prioritize the elderly, pregnant women, anyone who was obviously injured or disabled, and people who flat-out asked over, like..... my able-bodied college-age self, which was perfectly reasonable.

Most of those jobs were, in fact, those mythical entry-level minimum wage jobs held almost exclusively by teenagers looking to earn money and, frankly, I think it taught a lot of those kids empathy given that a big part of their job was gauging who needed help, when, and how much help they needed. And no one who needed help ever had to be embarrassed about it, because it didn't draw extra attention and you weren't being 'difficult' as a customer. It was just the standard. Everyone who shopped at Marsh's had their groceries loaded in their car for them.

@paris Sadly, the closest one to me is in Edison, NJ -- not far from where I grew up, about two hours away from where I live. >.<

We do have Aldi, though, and Aldi is awesome when I have the patience to wait in their absurdly long lines.

@paris At the risk of being that shitty person who tells someone else how to manage their long-term health issue....

The weeks leading up to Christmas are also made entirely of ass in my house. My boyfriend, who usually does most of the housework-y tasks while I handle most of the paperwork-y/errands/scheduling tasks, works retail. At this time of year, I turn into what's known in the industry as a 'retail widow', living in a house full of his stuff and his bills and never seeing him save maybe a few minutes in passing. Dinner becomes a giant pain in the ass, too, because even if I do cook.... I have to figure out something that will cool and reheat well about five hours later.

We rely a lot on the partially prepped meals from the grocery store at this time of year. It's more expensive than cooking yourself, but it's also faster, and it's less expensive than this meal delivery service sounds, with better food. Try stuff like steam-in-a-bag veggies that you can microwave in two minutes, the family-sized refrigerated soups they usually have over in the produce/deli/salad bar section (chili being my favorite), rotisserie chickens, etc. It's not GREAT, but a rotisserie chicken, a bag of steamable green beans, and a box of mashed potato flakes will cost about $12 at most, work out to about four meals, and take you about as long as boiling a pot and stirring a bit. If you can manage it all at once, you can also reheat the leftovers just fine tomorrow.

If you have a super-fancy store like Wegman's nearby, even better. A family-sized store-made lasagna is about $18 and will feed us for several days, and all I have to do is put it in the oven and walk away. Or get a family-sized thing of 'homemade' style mac and cheese, portion it out, and pop it in the microwave with a frozen veggie burger. Done.

mumbles to herself

The only good thing to come out of this year's season is Gritty, said the Flyers fan.

Things I Did Yesterday:

1. Take my doggy to the vet and find out he was mostly better.
2. Spend many hours trying to nap away the last of this stupid fucking cold.
3. Make friends with a guy heavily connected to the old Philly mob.

.....My life is fucking weird, man.

@jinshei Awwwww. She looks so earnestly concerned with two eyebrows. Like, I expect her to sit me down for a cup of coffee and have a long talk with me about an important life choice.

If it would make the retail workers feel better, I will tell my very funniest retail story ever, which involves end-of-night inventory at a friend's place of employment. I will warn, however, that said friend was working at a fetish shop at the time, so.... it's super, super NSFW.

Y/N?

@jinshei I feel like she's a prime candidate.

@pandora Ohhh, that one is shiny.

@il-volpe I've had a pretty solid experience with FS3, myself, and like it for a fair number of things. I think that you'll definitely need to put some thought into a magic system beyond that, though, or how to best apply it to a magical system in order to ensure players can explore that aspect of the game. Personally, I don't think it needs to be particularly complicated, but I'm pretty biased there. I've never been a fan of complex mechanics and will shout "BURNING WHEEL, MOTHERFUCKERS" at pretty much anyone who asks for my opinion and quite a few people who don't, so....