Its this oneNH, dont tell gothbard. But today I want to an egyptian exhibition at a museum. And now I own a mummy cat plushy.Pics or it didn't happen!
That is awesome.
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Its this oneNH, dont tell gothbard. But today I want to an egyptian exhibition at a museum. And now I own a mummy cat plushy.Pics or it didn't happen!
oh my god that thing is so adorable it has probably been hugged back to life by meow.
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Happiness is a brand new Carl Hiaasen novel in the backyard hammock on a morning when it's breezy and not even 80 out.
Frustration is having to put it down less than halfway through because I have to go prep for today's Pathfinder session.
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One of those little family restaurants in the middle of a flea market where only the daughter speaks fluent English and everything is cheap as hell and it's hot as balls out. Hole in the wall for the win!
In my town, small immigrant-owned restaurants located strip malls are by far the best value for eating out. We have Algerian, Ethiopian, Moroccan, and Indonesian as well as the more expected Thai, Mexican, and Chinese.
A friend and I made a tour one year: each week we would lunch at a different little restaurant. We discovered some serious eats for very little cash.
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One of those little family restaurants in the middle of a flea market where only the daughter speaks fluent English and everything is cheap as hell and it's hot as balls out. Hole in the wall for the win!In my town, small immigrant-owned restaurants located strip malls are by far the best value for eating out. We have Algerian, Ethiopian, Moroccan, and Indonesian as well as the more expected Thai, Mexican, and Chinese.
A friend and I made a tour one year: each week we would lunch at a different little restaurant. We discovered some serious eats for very little cash.
That's funny; in the Bay Area the strip malls are the worst. You indeed want to find a hole-in-the-wall place, but typically rents in strip malls are so high that the places that rent them have to cut corners everywhere.
(1) Shiro's rule of Mexican food: The place has to have tiles on the walls. Tiled walls make for good Mexican food.
(2) The two best hole-in-the-wall places ever:
- A Vietnamese place opened by a husband because while he was out running an extremely successful laundromat his wife was bored. So she just did home cooking as her 11-year-old son waited the tables. Just amazing food.
- A Greek place in the South Bay at (yes) a strip mall. I was stuck in a 3-hour traffic jam so I pulled off at a random exit, saw the fluorescent lighting and the austere decorations, and thought, "Well, at least it's food."
Unbelievably good Greek food. I tried to find it again half a dozen times, but I never could. I now refer to it as my "Ghost Greek Savior" restaurant.
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It's a southern US thing, I think. Best homestyle Italian food in America? Strip-mall-hole-in-the-wall joints in Florida. Best French breakfast (with killer croissants) I've ever had? Owned by two Vietnamese brothers, in a strip mall in Waco, Texas.
Real estate prices killed good humble food in California.
I have to second this, as much as I may gripe about the culture I had to deal with in TX and TN and GA, there aren't many places I can say I've experienced that have the absolute best food have always been the tiny family-owned places hidden away out of public eye. And all such places have been in either remote parts of cities in the South, hidden away in strip malls or corner alleys in cities in the South, or located in small towns that no one who doesn't live there would normally think to visit ... again, in the South.
Granted, I haven't had any opportunity to do any looking around here in Kansas for such places thanks to the Backstreet Boys Reunion Tour, so that likely is obscuring my perception and opinion a bit. Arizona likewise had some places like that, but they were pretty much exclusively limited to Mexican food, while TX and TN and GA - while the places were harder to find - had a lot more variety.
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We don't eat out, I've worked at too many restaurants and watched too many episodes of Kitchen Nightmares and whatever they're calling it now that they're just packing it all in a million dollar semi truck to eat out.
Also, too many years of being super poor and couldn't afford it.
They have this weekly challenge in Fallout 76 where you get 2,000 season points to build a bunch of different s%!! in your camp so my camp is a collosal mess now.
A weirdly shaped shack, posters on every surface, drapes where they don't make sense, and so many water pumps and campfires littering the roadway and ditch.
Also, it turns out that crossroads are surprisingly high traffic areas so there are entirely too many rotting corpses along the edge of camp for my liking.
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We're not quite there yet, but it looks like we'll hit our first 100°F day of the year today. Fremont is hilarious; at the moment its weather is listed as "100°F, Smoky".
I didn't know that "Smoky" was a weather pattern. "Sunny". "Partly Cloudy". "Smoky".
Once Shiro comes online I'll suggest he put a ham out on his back deck and see how it turns out.
EDIT: And there we go; first official 100°F degree day of the year.
It's quite windy and 76 here.
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Fantasy NPC: Dahsus The Sett-Builder. A tunnel-building faerie badger. He doesn't take commissions from monsters and evil-doers. Knowingly.
I got His Dark Materials season 1 on dvd for my birthday and I'm just now getting around to starting it.
It's pretty good so far, fifteen minutes in.
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It's a southern US thing, I think. Best homestyle Italian food in America? Strip-mall-hole-in-the-wall joints in Florida. Best French breakfast (with killer croissants) I've ever had? Owned by two Vietnamese brothers, in a strip mall in Waco, Texas.
Real estate prices killed good humble food in California.
Even in the NYC suburbs, the best mom-and-pop joints are in strip malls. Free-standing real estate is too expensive.
Of course, the Northeast also has an abundance of really good independent higher-end restaurants (one of the best parts about living here), and those are usually free-standing (unless they’re in an urban area). But for affordable non-chain restaurants, strip malls are the place to be.
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They have this weekly challenge in Fallout 76 where you get 2,000 season points to build a bunch of different s@@* in your camp so my camp is a collosal mess now.
A weirdly shaped shack, posters on every surface, drapes where they don't make sense, and so many water pumps and campfires littering the roadway and ditch.
Also, it turns out that crossroads are surprisingly high traffic areas so there are entirely too many rotting corpses along the edge of camp for my liking.
Pro tip: do the build challenges in a workshop. In workshops, your builds use up the materials already present before tapping your own supply. (A material listed in green is covered by the workshop; if it’s in white you’re using your own stuff.) Much more economical. Most items can be built “for free,” unless they require rare materials.
If you have no workshop available and must satisfy the challenge in your camp, feel free to scrap those pieces immediately after building to recover some of the cost.
I wondered if there was any tangible benefit to editing stuff away. The first time I seized a workbench I scraped a bunch of stuff but it didn't tell me what happened to it so ever since then I haven't bothered and most people leave turrets guarding workbenches so I've been using what was left behind.
I'm not worried about using my own resources as there is no shortage of junk lying around and I've barely even scratched the surface.
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Three and a half hours into today's session, we're taking a break because WW has a weekly Zoom meeting for the next hour.
Which is good, because this is the biggest freaking combat I have run in three years of GM-ing.
Small walled settlement on an island. You've got a couple of squads of Bountiful Venture Company soldiers, a few dozen non-combatant settlers barricaded inside the chapel, a few dozen locathah refugees barricaded inside another couple of buildings on the other side of the compound (massive diplomacy checks to get all the humans to agree to that), our PCs, two Purple Worms, and four troops of Skum fighters that followed the Purple Worms through the tunnels they made under the stockade walls in the dark.
I didn't have any Purple Worm pawns, so I took tub of purple Play-Doh, made two gargantuan worms with gaping mouths, and coiled them on top of four-square-size pawn bases. It worked.
I also had a massive box of Roman centurion minis from an ex-Marine former roommate of WW's who used to do SPQR-themed wargames. Paper pawns, lead centurions, and Play-Doh worms. My tabletop is a hot mess.
Happily, WW and the kids have mostly stopped interrupting me when I'm talking or figuring out the math, because he conveniently told me about a trick a mutual friend of ours used to use. He kept a d30 and a d6 on the table. If a player was annoying him too much, he rolled the 30 to determine a Condition, and the 6 to determine how many rounds the player's character would be saddled with that condition. I had to use it twice on Val last Saturday, and now they're all behaving.
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Fantasy NPC: Dahsus The Sett-Builder. A tunnel-building faerie badger. He doesn't take commissions from monsters and evil-doers. Knowingly.
Oh, hi! I wondered what Mike had been up to.
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Fantasy NPC: Dahsus The Sett-Builder. A tunnel-building faerie badger. He doesn't take commissions from monsters and evil-doers. Knowingly.
This dude is straight out of Redwall, and I'm here for it.
Happiness is a brand new Carl Hiaasen novel in the backyard hammock on a morning when it's breezy and not even 70 out.
Frustration is having to put it down less than halfway through because I have to go prep for today's Pathfinder session.
FIFY
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It's a southern US thing, I think. Best homestyle Italian food in America? Strip-mall-hole-in-the-wall joints in Florida. Best French breakfast (with killer croissants) I've ever had? Owned by two Vietnamese brothers, in a strip mall in Waco, Texas.
Real estate prices killed good humble food in California.
Even in the NYC suburbs, the best mom-and-pop joints are in strip malls. Free-standing real estate is too expensive.
Of course, the Northeast also has an abundance of really good independent higher-end restaurants (one of the best parts about living here), and those are usually free-standing (unless they’re in an urban area). But for affordable non-chain restaurants, strip malls are the place to be.
not like that in the cities, no good place to eat is in a mall, they are in a small hole in the walls in mostly ethnic neighborhoods.
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Spiderverse was even better than the hype had me expecting.
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Spiderverse was even better than the hype had me expecting.
Spiderverse was awesome sauce.
The animation tends to make me want to throw up occasionally but otherwise it's a great story with great acting.
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Fantasy NPC: Dahsus The Sett-Builder. A tunnel-building faerie badger. He doesn't take commissions from monsters and evil-doers. Knowingly.Oh, hi! I wondered what Mike had been up to.
Getting older. His birthday was yesterday.
What a coincidence...
'twas a dark and rainy night...
That's sort of sums up the last week. I think it was a while since we had a rainy start of September...
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I wondered if there was any tangible benefit to editing stuff away. The first time I seized a workbench I scraped a bunch of stuff but it didn't tell me what happened to it so ever since then I haven't bothered and most people leave turrets guarding workbenches so I've been using what was left behind.
I'm not worried about using my own resources as there is no shortage of junk lying around and I've barely even scratched the surface.
Scrapping stuff in the workshop just goes back to the workshop's invisible stash of supplies. But scrapping stuff in your camp goes to you.
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Fantasy NPC: Dahsus The Sett-Builder. A tunnel-building faerie badger. He doesn't take commissions from monsters and evil-doers. Knowingly.Oh, hi! I wondered what Mike had been up to.Getting older. His birthday was yesterday.
What a coincidence...
Please give him my best.
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not like that in the cities, no good place to eat is in a mall, they are in a small hole in the walls in mostly ethnic neighborhoods.It's a southern US thing, I think. Best homestyle Italian food in America? Strip-mall-hole-in-the-wall joints in Florida. Best French breakfast (with killer croissants) I've ever had? Owned by two Vietnamese brothers, in a strip mall in Waco, Texas.
Real estate prices killed good humble food in California.
Even in the NYC suburbs, the best mom-and-pop joints are in strip malls. Free-standing real estate is too expensive.
Of course, the Northeast also has an abundance of really good independent higher-end restaurants (one of the best parts about living here), and those are usually free-standing (unless they’re in an urban area). But for affordable non-chain restaurants, strip malls are the place to be.
In the city, restaurant selection is an entirely different kettle of fish. Of course, the abundance of independent restaurants in Manhattan is one of its defining features. And in the boroughs you have to be in the right neighborhood (agreed - not in a strip mall).
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Fantasy NPC: Dahsus The Sett-Builder. A tunnel-building faerie badger. He doesn't take commissions from monsters and evil-doers. Knowingly.Oh, hi! I wondered what Mike had been up to.Getting older. His birthday was yesterday.
What a coincidence...
He celebrated his birthday by almost getting killed (twice - once would have been by a Great Old One) in my Strange Aeons game!
He has been a feature of my Sunday Pathfinder games that started this Spring.
It has been my experience in life that the more expensive location a restaurant is in, the more weaksauce its food. You're paying for "ambiance" and decor and locale and setting - usually at the expense of the quality of food. The rattier the hole, the better the food.
As such, I find the idea of food from Manhattan to be more than likely paying for name over flavor.
Having not experienced it, I could be wrong.
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The restaurant culture is one of the big draws of the city, and it is known internationally as a culinary destination.
However, your rule of thumb is a good way to sort good restaurants from mediocre in Manhattan. Restaurants in highly trafficked areas, such as on major avenues or facing major tourist destinations like Times Square, are indeed subpar. Rents are lower on the cross streets, and the restaurants are usually better there (or in more residential, less touristy areas).
not like that in the cities, no good place to eat is in a mall, they are in a small hole in the walls in mostly ethnic neighborhoods.It's a southern US thing, I think. Best homestyle Italian food in America? Strip-mall-hole-in-the-wall joints in Florida. Best French breakfast (with killer croissants) I've ever had? Owned by two Vietnamese brothers, in a strip mall in Waco, Texas.
Real estate prices killed good humble food in California.
Even in the NYC suburbs, the best mom-and-pop joints are in strip malls. Free-standing real estate is too expensive.
Of course, the Northeast also has an abundance of really good independent higher-end restaurants (one of the best parts about living here), and those are usually free-standing (unless they’re in an urban area). But for affordable non-chain restaurants, strip malls are the place to be.
In the city, restaurant selection is an entirely different kettle of fish. Of course, the abundance of independent restaurants in Manhattan is one of its defining features. And in the boroughs you have to be in the right neighborhood (agreed - not in a strip mall).
I've had some killer cheap food in Washington Heights. That's the only place I've eaten in the city, though.
I told my daughter that I couldn't make reservations at the library because they were fully booked. And now she won't talk to me.
I need to check this out but your daughter is being quiet. Perhaps I can search for the information?
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Purple play-doh worms sound amazing!
I didn't have any Purple Worm pawns, so I took tub of purple Play-Doh, made two gargantuan worms with gaping mouths, and coiled them on top of four-square-size pawn bases. It worked.
The coolest thing about it was that I could pick up the paper pawns and stick them sideways in the worms' mouths and they stayed there.
Sadly, that didn't work with the lead centurions.
Lead Centurion needs to be a band.
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Purple play-doh worms sound amazing!
I didn't have any Purple Worm pawns, so I took tub of purple Play-Doh, made two gargantuan worms with gaping mouths, and coiled them on top of four-square-size pawn bases. It worked.
The coolest thing about it was that I could pick up the paper pawns and stick them sideways in the worms' mouths and they stayed there.
Hihi even better!!!!!!!!!!!!
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I've had some killer cheap food in Washington Heights. That's the only place I've eaten in the city, though.not like that in the cities, no good place to eat is in a mall, they are in a small hole in the walls in mostly ethnic neighborhoods.It's a southern US thing, I think. Best homestyle Italian food in America? Strip-mall-hole-in-the-wall joints in Florida. Best French breakfast (with killer croissants) I've ever had? Owned by two Vietnamese brothers, in a strip mall in Waco, Texas.
Real estate prices killed good humble food in California.
Even in the NYC suburbs, the best mom-and-pop joints are in strip malls. Free-standing real estate is too expensive.
Of course, the Northeast also has an abundance of really good independent higher-end restaurants (one of the best parts about living here), and those are usually free-standing (unless they’re in an urban area). But for affordable non-chain restaurants, strip malls are the place to be.
In the city, restaurant selection is an entirely different kettle of fish. Of course, the abundance of independent restaurants in Manhattan is one of its defining features. And in the boroughs you have to be in the right neighborhood (agreed - not in a strip mall).
you've only eaten in the heights? Oh God, CH and I must rectify this.
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Reason number 892 why I love Bill Bailey (after the Chaucer Pubbe Gagge, and his sendup of U2 in a power outage onstage, and his dub reggae version of the Downton Abbey theme, and his French jazz cover of the Doctor Who theme, and so many more):
Scarborough Faire, as covered by Rammstein, also Welsh and West Country death metal.
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you've only eaten in the heights? Oh God, CH and I must rectify this.I've had some killer cheap food in Washington Heights. That's the only place I've eaten in the city, though.not like that in the cities, no good place to eat is in a mall, they are in a small hole in the walls in mostly ethnic neighborhoods.It's a southern US thing, I think. Best homestyle Italian food in America? Strip-mall-hole-in-the-wall joints in Florida. Best French breakfast (with killer croissants) I've ever had? Owned by two Vietnamese brothers, in a strip mall in Waco, Texas.
Real estate prices killed good humble food in California.
Even in the NYC suburbs, the best mom-and-pop joints are in strip malls. Free-standing real estate is too expensive.
Of course, the Northeast also has an abundance of really good independent higher-end restaurants (one of the best parts about living here), and those are usually free-standing (unless they’re in an urban area). But for affordable non-chain restaurants, strip malls are the place to be.
In the city, restaurant selection is an entirely different kettle of fish. Of course, the abundance of independent restaurants in Manhattan is one of its defining features. And in the boroughs you have to be in the right neighborhood (agreed - not in a strip mall).
WW has a batcrap crazy wealthy old artist friend who lives in one of those Art Deco high rises near Fort Tryon Park. She has two apartments, one to live in and one for all her weird art. She was born in Poland and won't accept my friend request on FB because her family is Jewish and mine is Catholic. (For a better explanation than I can give, well, there's Art Spiegelman's Maus) We've stayed with her twice, once in July and once in December. She took us to The Cloisters, and to her favorite hole-in-the-wall. Then she disappeared for the rest of our visit.
It has been my experience in life that the more expensive location a restaurant is in, the more weaksauce its food. You're paying for "ambiance" and decor and locale and setting - usually at the expense of the quality of food. The rattier the hole, the better the food.
As such, I find the idea of food from Manhattan to be more than likely paying for name over flavor.
Having not experienced it, I could be wrong.
depends on the neighborhood and the type of food.
WW has a batcrap crazy wealthy old artist friend who lives in one of those Art Deco high rises near Fort Tryon Park. She has two apartments, one to live in and one for all her weird art. She was born in Poland and won't accept my friend request on FB because her family is Jewish and mine is Catholic. (For a better explanation than I can give, well, there's Art Spiegelman's Maus) We've stayed with her twice, once in July and once in December. She took us to The Cloisters, and to her favorite hole-in-the-wall. Then she disappeared...you've only eaten in the heights? Oh God, CH and I must rectify this.I've had some killer cheap food in Washington Heights. That's the only place I've eaten in the city, though.not like that in the cities, no good place to eat is in a mall, they are in a small hole in the walls in mostly ethnic neighborhoods.It's a southern US thing, I think. Best homestyle Italian food in America? Strip-mall-hole-in-the-wall joints in Florida. Best French breakfast (with killer croissants) I've ever had? Owned by two Vietnamese brothers, in a strip mall in Waco, Texas.
Real estate prices killed good humble food in California.
Even in the NYC suburbs, the best mom-and-pop joints are in strip malls. Free-standing real estate is too expensive.
Of course, the Northeast also has an abundance of really good independent higher-end restaurants (one of the best parts about living here), and those are usually free-standing (unless they’re in an urban area). But for affordable non-chain restaurants, strip malls are the place to be.
In the city, restaurant selection is an entirely different kettle of fish. Of course, the abundance of independent restaurants in Manhattan is one of its defining features. And in the boroughs you have to be in the right neighborhood (agreed - not in a strip mall).
Wow.
Not only is this something that could only happen in New York, you just described one of my biggest fantasies.
Holy s@!*.
As an aside she sounds like someone my Polish friend would go to literal family War with.
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I swear, Bethesda games have save files that corrupt so easily, I almost believe they're a branch of the US government.
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I swear, Bethesda games have save files that corrupt so easily, I almost believe they're a branch of the US government.
Owlcat games is gaining on them.
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So, I've always railed against the wind chill factor, but at least I understand it and they at least try to make it scientific.
Looks like the "heat index" deserves my scorn as well. This is relative nonsense, and I love that it's one guy's regression curve and everyone just adopted it because it produced big numbers, even though (as with all regression curves), "The Rothfusz regression is not valid for extreme temperature and relative humidity conditions beyond the range of data considered by Steadman."
Anyway, this pops up because at Shiro's house it's 102˚F with a heat index of 114˚F, which seems just silly.
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So, I've always railed against the wind chill factor, but at least I understand it and they at least try to make it scientific.
Looks like the "heat index" deserves my scorn as well. This is relative nonsense, and I love that it's one guy's regression curve and everyone just adopted it because it produced big numbers, even though (as with all regression curves), "The Rothfusz regression is not valid for extreme temperature and relative humidity conditions beyond the range of data considered by Steadman."
Anyway, this pops up because at Shiro's house it's 102˚F with a heat index of 114˚F, which seems just silly.
I think that NobodysPossessedHome is speaking in tongues...
I might need to ask Freehold for a second opinion, though...