If you can parallel park my 14'6" Prius in the 12' she gave us, more power to you!In some districts the crumple zone is a legit space saver...:)
But I think what you have is that your neighborhood has weird parking rules and not everyone that drives is used to the unwritten rules of parking in a crowded neighborhood. I'm from the burbs, so "paying to park" or having places you can't park or even thinking about where to park are oxymorons. She's effectively a stranger in a strange land, even if its from the same state.
Honestly, that might be it. It's an older smog-spewing smaller SUV, completely inappropriate for urban use. Having grown up in the city, "Pay attention to how you park" is ingrained into your system, as you'll get plenty of key scratches or soda poured over your car if you park too obnoxiously.
The idea of, "She's not even thinking about it and just pulling up, stopping wherever she happens to stop, and hopping out of the car without ever thinking about other people," explains the behavior.
Doesn't make me happy, mind you (when in Rome and all that), but at least it's a better explanation than any I have at the moment.
EDIT: Well, I've got to think of SOME way to scare her off...
Today is supposed to be THE HOTTEST DAY OF THE YEAR (cue national freakout). Supposedly it'll get up to 41 degrees Celsius/105.8 Fahrenheit, but not up North it won't.Are you okay?
Yes thanks. It's a mere 27 degrees at the moment, and I'm well hydrated and am following our Health Service's advice and have damp laundry all around the room in order to cool things down. The French have it worse, what with the wildfires and all.
Yes thanks. It's a mere 27 degrees at the moment, and I'm well hydrated and am following our Health Service's advice and have damp laundry all around the room in order to cool things down. The French have it worse, what with the wildfires and all.Today is supposed to be THE HOTTEST DAY OF THE YEAR (cue national freakout). Supposedly it'll get up to 41 degrees Celsius/105.8 Fahrenheit, but not up North it won't.Are you okay?
We stole their wine, they stole our climate.
We win!
EDIT: Well, I've got to think of SOME way to scare her off...
You could take some sidewalk chalk or chicken (yes. it is. absolutely chicken.) blood and draw pentagrams and summoning circles all over your parking spots :) Mgepogg r'luhhor fhtagn uh'eor (elder god sleeping only)
This person goes here that person goes there, this guy goes here..." isn't something country mice are going to do. Or even can. They have no idea how many people need to park in x amount of space or where they're going to wind up. They're missing more numbers from the Suduko than you are, and don't do a puzzle every morning.
There's also a couple of differences in parking, especially with a Big SUV. They're going to want/need more space. I'm sure its POSSIBLE to back a 19 foot chevy suburban into a 20 foot space and wriggle it out, but that isn't a regularly used skill in many areas. Taking up less space lets more cars fit, but increases the likelyhood of dinging someones car if you can't just turn the wheel and pull out.
If you've seen what my old suburban did to other cars with a "small tap" you'd want me taking a little extra space to make sure it didn't happen too...
EDIT: Well, I've got to think of SOME way to scare her off...
You could take some sidewalk chalk or chicken (yes. it is. absolutely chicken.) blood and draw pentagrams and summoning circles all over your parking spots :) Mgepogg r'luhhor fhtagn uh'eor (elder god sleeping only)
This person goes here that person goes there, this guy goes here..." isn't something country mice are going to do. Or even can. They have no idea how many people need to park in x amount of space or where they're going to wind up. They're missing more numbers from the Suduko than you are, and don't do a puzzle every morning.
There's also a couple of differences in parking, especially with a Big SUV. They're going to want/need more space. I'm sure its POSSIBLE to back a 19 foot chevy suburban into a 20 foot space and wriggle it out, but that isn't a regularly used skill in many areas. Taking up less space lets more cars fit, but increases the likelyhood of dinging someones car if you can't just turn the wheel and pull out.
If you've seen what my old suburban did to other cars with a "small tap" you'd want me taking a little extra space to make sure it didn't happen too...
LOL. Nah, she's got a tiny little thing -- looks a lot like a Jeep... possibly a small Wrangler.
And our parking isn't particularly arcane -- "park in the correct direction and don't block people's driveways, and try not to park in front of someone else's house for more than a day or two."
The trouble is the quantity. There's space for one car in front of each house, or two if you stick into the driveway a bit. So managing to park so that the distance between you and the car behind you is too small to fit anyone, you're blocking a driveway that's got a car in it, and you're still sticking a bit into the space past the driveway is either cluelessness or an art.
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You gotta get out of there man.
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I told the boss Friday I'd need a couple of people to help mix and spread the concrete paver edging Monday or Tuesday.
Everyone else was rained out Friday and apparently delayed two days because I'm not getting any help.
It's for the best.
I think that Baba Ji found an apprentice...
You said it.
Eve to her daughter this morning:
"My love, generally a hug does not warrant a battle cry."
This is news to me.
Tell that to Thibbledorf Pwent :).
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Today I learned that the German term for a lower back tattoo, aka a "tramp stamp", literally translates as "ass antlers".
As a man with a lower back tattoo (soooo! not low enough to qualify as a TS, also got it way befor that was a thing), I nearly spit out my coffee, though gotta say, kinda like ass antlers, leave it to the Germans to coin that...
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Today I learned that the German term for a lower back tattoo, aka a "tramp stamp", literally translates as "ass antlers".As a man with a lower back tattoo (soooo! not low enough to qualify as a TS, also got it way befor that was a thing), I nearly spit out my coffee, though gotta say, kinda like ass antlers, leave it to the Germans to coin that...
I have one as well. It's an art nouveau dragonfly that a friend designed for me. I've never considered myself particularly trampish.
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I have no tattoos or piercings.
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Every year at about this point in July I get the same feeling: I have too much to do, work is taking too much of my time, and I really need to go back to teaching so that I can have summers off again to spend with my kids and working on the house.
Then I think about trying to survive the $60,000 pay cut, and I look at my retirement account and think about trying to retire on that plus a partial teacher's pension, and I realize I'm going to be working the slide mines until I'm at least 65.
And it always frustrates me: I want to teach. According to my students, my peers, and my managers I'm a top-of-the-line teacher. I wouldn't mind putting in the extra hours to teach. (If you're not putting in 60 hours a week during the school year, you're not teaching.)
But the U.S. economy thinks so lowly of teachers that I can't see a way to teach and remain living where I am now, even with GothBard remaining in her tech job.
And people wonder what's wrong with U.S. education...
I found myself in a group conversation on facebook with a group of weird normal people that I don't (really) know...
<.<
>.>
People from my class in elementary school are organizing a meeting on Friday.
No tattoos or piercing here either.
Me neither. I have only the holes provided by Nature.
38 degrees today, which I surely could have done without, and a general torpor has spread itself over the nation. D&D was cancelled, and we were promised a thunderstorm, which is yet to materialise. How about it, Adad?
I'm almost finished with the pool, I would have finished it today but there was an excavator operater for a different company flailing around with his bucket on the last side I had to install the concrete paver edging around. So I'll get it tomorrow morning.
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No tattoos or piercing here either.
I used to work with a guy who everyone called "Tacklebox."
Shortly after I signed on, one of the other new hires asked him about his nickname-- "Do you like fishing?" he asked. "F+@* no," replied Tacklebox.
"Then why does everyone call you Tacklebox?"
"Well," said Tacklebox , "when I was in my early 20s , I had a bunch of facial piercings. I was working with a couple of old timers who started calling me "Tacklebox" and snickering at me whenever they thought I couldn't hear. When I finally asked them what the hell was so funny, they pointed at my face and told me I looked like I got into a fight with a tacklebox and lost. By that time, everyone around the job site was calling me Tacklebox, and the name just kind of stuck."
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Currently wrapping up a committee-designed "public community space" project that's right next to a shelter / halfway house, and every day we've had a bunch of "spectators" watching us work. Most of them are pretty chill, but occasionally, some of them can get a little squirrely.
Today, one of the guys (pretty sure he is/was a tweaker) was jabbering to himself off in a corner. Most of it I couldn't hear or understand, but at one point, he said, reasonably clearly:
"I don't talk to nobody. Only just God and the guy."
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At the park, My nickname was Wookie. For obvious reasons.
When we had a second person with my meatspace name sign on, calling which one of us on the radio quickly got old, So they were their name, and I was wookie.
One of the park police (they listen to our radio, because if there's a problem we tend to find it first) Drives up at the end of the day.
"Hey, what the heck is a wookie. And why is maintenence looking for it when it has to deal with the weird stuff? I mean they want the tree guy when its a downed tree, if there's a snapping turtle chilling in the pool or a skunk under a heater they want the wookie"
"Star wars, Chewbacca, the big guy with all the hair?" Do the noise
He starts cracking up "That makes. So much. Sense..."
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And they have their own device (of what sort? Who knows? It has a Mysterious Aura, and jewels on it that flash in sequence) that makes them prisoners there.
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No tattoos or piercing here either.I used to work with a guy who everyone called "Tacklebox."
Shortly after I signed on, one of the other new hires asked him about his nickname-- "Do you like fishing?" he asked. "F!#% no," replied Tacklebox.
"Then why does everyone call you Tacklebox?"
"Well," said Tacklebox , "when I was in my early 20s , I had a bunch of facial piercings. I was working with a couple of old timers who started calling me "Tacklebox" and snickering at me whenever they thought I couldn't hear. When I finally asked them what the hell was so funny, they pointed at my face and told me I looked like I got into a fight with a tacklebox and lost. By that time, everyone around the job site was calling me Tacklebox, and the name just kind of stuck."
One of my favorite part of construction type jobs is the prevalence of nicknames. Two people named Scott? No problem! That's Tiny and over there is Scooter!
Need an adventure hook?
The party checks into a nice inn, and meets some of the other patrons. There is a group of eagle-like birdfolk who claim that, now that you've checked in, you can never leave.
Welcome to the hotel california Condor ?
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Tiny, of course, weighs 275lbs, and Scooter rides a Harley.One of my favorite part of construction type jobs is the prevalence of nicknames. Two people named Scott? No problem! That's Tiny and over there is Scooter!No tattoos or piercing here either.I used to work with a guy who everyone called "Tacklebox."
Shortly after I signed on, one of the other new hires asked him about his nickname-- "Do you like fishing?" he asked. "F!#% no," replied Tacklebox.
"Then why does everyone call you Tacklebox?"
"Well," said Tacklebox , "when I was in my early 20s , I had a bunch of facial piercings. I was working with a couple of old timers who started calling me "Tacklebox" and snickering at me whenever they thought I couldn't hear. When I finally asked them what the hell was so funny, they pointed at my face and told me I looked like I got into a fight with a tacklebox and lost. By that time, everyone around the job site was calling me Tacklebox, and the name just kind of stuck."
So you HAVE worked in construction before!
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I think I've complained before about the trope of the "more powerful NPC": Especially at earlier levels, you need to craft your campaigns carefully to avoid a situation of, "Well, this NPC is far more powerful than we are, and they have a vested interest in the result, so why aren't they taking care of this for us?"
I've had both players and GMs try to use this to dump quest lines, and I find it very frustrating:
- In a Runequest campaign, one of the characters was intimately familiar with all of the powerful and important NPCs in Glorantha, so every time the GM gave us a plot hook, their response was, "Oh, well, that problem is close to this NPC, so we should go schmooze with that NPC and have them take care of it." The player viewed the entire campaign as one of socializing and schmoozing with more powerful people. The player wanted the entire campaign to be, "How to be a sycophant." For some reason, none of the other players were interested in this.
- In our current 5e campaign, the GM has given us a massive world-ending scenario, and we've been pursuing it and ignoring all his other story hooks. Finally, in frustration, he stopped the session to say, "I'm really tired of you guys pursuing this plot line. You're supposed to be handing this off to the NPCs because they're more powerful than you and they have the resources to deal with it. You're supposed to be following the other plot hooks." Yeah, being told that you're -NOT- the group that's there to save the world is so nice.
I bring this up because last night's session was a horrifying counterpoint to those frustrations. Early in the campaign the party met a "crippled" muse as a plot hook for a much later mission that gave them a solid reason to settle down in an area where I could feed them a lot of plot hooks. She checks in with the party every so often, but otherwise is a non-entity.
Then, of course, my players happened. They need to travel through a forest, so they did a sending to her asking her to guide them. The forest is full of giants who've been murdering the local fey. They offered to track them down for her and help her exterminate them. And when they finally found a group, they encouraged her that it would be cathartic to join them in the fight.
It was a massacre. And the group loved it. It hasn't changed my overall opinion on adding "active" NPCs more powerful than the players to campaigns, but at least for one night my players had a lot of fun with her.
I don't get it. What happened exactly? They fought some giants with help and it went poorly?
I don't get it. What happened exactly? They fought some giants with help and it went poorly?
No; the 9th-level party wiped out a CR 12 encounter in 2 rounds. They loved it and thought it was hilarious. But I know they'd get really tired of it after even one or two more sessions, so now I have to figure out a realistic way to write the muse out of their party.
EDIT: So last night was an example of a powerful NPC being fun for the players. I considered it a rare exception to the "powerful NPCs are bad" rule. But even though they had fun last night, if I have the muse travel with them for the next 5-10 sessions and all they ever do is watch the muse win fights for them, they will get bored. Since they're excellent roleplayers, the PCs aren't going to complain directly to the muse that she's stealing their thunder. So I need to provide the players with a believable "out" where the PCs can send the muse on her way so they can be the stars again. And it has to be the PCs that send her off. She can't just say, "Oops! Gotta run! See you when you're 14th level!"
It'll work out. I was merely surprised that the group had so much fun letting an NPC curb stomp the bad guys.
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It's really depressing that my plans every day are:
(1) Map out a schedule for myself, Impus Major, and Impus Minor.
(2) Make contingency plans for when one or both of them forgets what's going on.
(3) Execute the contingency plan.
Yesterday was a prime example: "OK, kids. Impus Minor is doing driving lessons at 4, we're hiking at 5, and we'll start the game at 6:30 pm."
Impus Minor scheduled a game for 1-4 and it got delayed to 3-6, so he got no driving lessons nor hike.
Impus Major went to a friend's house from 11-6:30 then forgot to pick up our fourth player and had to go back and get him, so the game didn't start until 7:30 pm.
And that's pretty much every day of my life.
*sigh*. It's hard to be a borderline obsessive-compulsive about scheduling and to live with those two.
I had the same issues with The Adult Kid as both a kid and an adult.
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I have applied for a promotion.
Not sure if I'll get it, but still.
I have also undertaken outreach to an organization that may provide the training I need to become an official Sex Educator.
Maybe it took me too long to start this. But I'm here, and I'm starting this.
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I don't get it. What happened exactly? They fought some giants with help and it went poorly?No; the 9th-level party wiped out a CR 12 encounter in 2 rounds. They loved it and thought it was hilarious. But I know they'd get really tired of it after even one or two more sessions, so now I have to figure out a realistic way to write the muse out of their party.
EDIT: So last night was an example of a powerful NPC being fun for the players. I considered it a rare exception to the "powerful NPCs are bad" rule. But even though they had fun last night, if I have the muse travel with them for the next 5-10 sessions and all they ever do is watch the muse win fights for them, they will get bored. Since they're excellent roleplayers, the PCs aren't going to complain directly to the muse that she's stealing their thunder. So I need to provide the players with a believable "out" where the PCs can send the muse on her way so they can be the stars again. And it has to be the PCs that send her off. She can't just say, "Oops! Gotta run! See you when you're 14th level!"
It'll work out. I was merely surprised that the group had so much fun letting an NPC curb stomp the bad guys.
I maintain that CR is an interesting idea that first Wizards and then Paizo never fully fleshed out. Its so imperfect and based off of very rigid guidelines to how a specific combat to the death might go that it's almost funny.
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I have applied for a promotion.
Not sure if I'll get it, but still.
I have also undertaken outreach to an organization that may provide the training I need to become an official Sex Educator.
Maybe it took me too long to start this. But I'm here, and I'm starting this.
Best of luck, Freehold! :)
It's really depressing that my plans every day are:
(1) Map out a schedule for myself, Impus Major, and Impus Minor.
(2) Make contingency plans for when one or both of them forgets what's going on.
(3) Execute the contingency plan.Yesterday was a prime example: "OK, kids. Impus Minor is doing driving lessons at 4, we're hiking at 5, and we'll start the game at 6:30 pm."
Impus Minor scheduled a game for 1-4 and it got delayed to 3-6, so he got no driving lessons nor hike.
Impus Major went to a friend's house from 11-6:30 then forgot to pick up our fourth player and had to go back and get him, so the game didn't start until 7:30 pm.And that's pretty much every day of my life.
*sigh*. It's hard to be a borderline obsessive-compulsive about scheduling and to live with those two.
I'll fit right in as Impus Mediocre!
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Me earlier today, getting groceries:
Me now, after eating small pizza bough from Lidl:
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I finished the swimming pool I was working on.
Only took me three weeks, which is pretty good I think, especially considering it was just me except for two days right before the 4th of July weekend.
...I maintain that CR is an interesting idea that first Wizards and then Paizo never fully fleshed out. Its so imperfect and based off of very rigid guidelines to how a specific combat to the death might go that it's almost funny...
Oh, you'll just get me going. When the party was 4th level I was building fights that I thought were "reasonable". They ended up ranging from CR 3 to CR 9, and the terrain and party preparedness had WAY more to do with the fights' difficulty than the CR.
But the muse was one-shotting hill giants at a time any other party member takes 3 rounds to do it. She definitely made things silly.
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One of my favorite part of construction type jobs is the prevalence of nicknames.
I don't know why, but I've never been given a nickname. Case in point: the last landscaping company I worked for had four other guys named David*, and I couldn't go by my middle name, because there were also three guys named Michael**. When I started working there, instead of giving me a nickname, I simply became the only one without a nickname.
One of my favorite part of construction type jobs is the prevalence of nicknames.I don't know why, but I've never been given a nickname. Case in point: the last landscaping company I worked for had four other guys named David*, and I couldn't go by my middle name, because there were also three guys named Michael**. When I started working there, instead of giving me a nickname, I simply became the only one without a nickname.
My best friends growing up were David and Michael.
And I once had six Davids in my house at once. Because we thought it would be hilarious to invite them all over.
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Best of luck, Freehold! :)I have applied for a promotion.
Not sure if I'll get it, but still.
I have also undertaken outreach to an organization that may provide the training I need to become an official Sex Educator.
Maybe it took me too long to start this. But I'm here, and I'm starting this.
Thank you.
Things have been a bit...well, rough of late. I love the new job, but I need a bit more in life to move forward. Hopefully this is it.
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That's a bizarre philosophy to follow for 6+ hours.
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One of my favorite part of construction type jobs is the prevalence of nicknames. Two people named Scott? No problem! That's Tiny and over there is Scooter!
When your spreadsheet is due in 8 hours, you have time for "get me Dayle" "Dayle from accounting?" "No, Dale from Records..." *
If you need someone to say, pull you out of a concrete mold, while screaming over the sounds of heavy machinery, you really want to get the guy on the first try...
*this is probably one of the ways we wound up with last names....