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I'm pineapple-agnostic.
If the pineapple is on the pizza and not paired with horrible combos (sausage, ham, or canadian bacon are okay for example) then it's good stuff.
Have to be in a bit of a fey mood to order one for myself though, and have to stipulate to NOT use BBQ sauce in place of marinara sauce.
And Impus Major's friend reminds me of a younger 'me' before a lot of life experiences with the details reveled in this anecdote.
Note: Did not have the Internet to rely on for info as faulty as might be.
Spent a lot of time in libraries either dodging mandatory study halls or when I didn't want to rush home right away.
By myself.
Non-porn.
Looking back, surprised I've made it this far and having met so many cool people.
EDIT:
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the so-called "Hawaiian pizza" is a fine thing, in my book. my mother *despises* pineapple (and lime, too! which is just . . . bonkers).
but why anyone would even *contemplate* defiling the gastronomic sanctity of pizza with broccoli is a perversion of sound thinking and positive human traits . . . it sets the soul to shuddering.
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That's okay, you guys don't have to like pineapple pizza, more for me and Drejk.
Yes, Hawaiian pizza is my favorite.
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WW found a box of his old comics in the garage. Not, sadly, his huge collection of Spideys, but a few Batmans, Star Wars, and some other interesting stuff. The Dallas Times-Herald (now defunct) used to commission comics that they included as a special supplement, such as Spiderman Saves the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders and The X-Men at the State Fair of Texas.
He also went on at length about how there really needs to be a movie for Man from Atlantis.
I dunno, I've had okay veggies pizzas before.
Now, if you put broccoli on pizza? Spock you, you sick b*****d.
I like broccoli in general but I doubt it would work well on pizza - it is hard on its own and it has to be thoroughly cooked to become soft and tender. I don't see it getting the right texture from being baked on a pizza on its own... Maybe if it was pre-cooked and then added as a topping... It would require a right pick of meat to accompany it, though.
Broccoli and cauliflower with red onions and pesto sauce makes an amazing "pizza"... though really, you're left with crust and mozzarella and the rest has been altered.
As for Impus Major's infamous final, he got his score back and overall according to the prof's syllabus it's good enough to squeak by with a C-. Not what I was hoping for mid-semester, but after two catastrophic surprise exams I'll take it.
Now the big question is, "If the prof isn't going to follow his own syllabus on the date of the final, will he follow his own syllabus on grading?"
And yes, I get bitter about it, because my one formal disciplinary action against me back in my teaching days was because my grading scale was "too confusing" for students. Which was sad, because it was intentionally skewing things in their favor: "You cannot do worse than a flat scale: 90%+:A, 80%+:B, 70%+:C, 60%+:D. Anything below 50% is an F. Otherwise I'm grading on a curve."
Didn't work. Got written up and told to make it flat numbers. Which I hate, because a student at 70% gets a "barely passing" C-, yet a student at 69.96% gets a "failing" D+. If you've ever taught a class, you know you end up with natural "clumps" of students. So I'd put the top "clump" at A, the second "clump" at B, and so forth. Worked well and students liked it. Until one student complained and it went out the window.
My how things have changed.
Ever since COVID, the desk has been responsible for laundry. You all are probably sick to death of me complaining about it. Before I left for my vacation, there was still a sign in the laundry room saying that desk clerks were to work on laundry whenever they had down time.
9 days later, and I walk in to see that sign has been replaced by one that says "Front Desk is NOT to do laundry unless I ask them to!!! Signed, (Head Housekeeper)".
I wonder if whoever filled in for me was just so bad at the laundry that it pissed the housekeepers off so much so that they now refuse to let us touch it? I don't really care, though. All that matters to me is that I shouldn't have to mess with the laundry anymore.
(Head Housekeeper) gets cookies!
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Anne Rice passed away today. Keiko Nobumoto also passed away this week.
A great loss, this is.
My how things have changed.
Ever since COVID, the desk has been responsible for laundry. You all are probably sick to death of me complaining about it. Before I left for my vacation, there was still a sign in the laundry room saying that desk clerks were to work on laundry whenever they had down time.
9 days later, and I walk in to see that sign has been replaced by one that says "Front Desk is NOT to do laundry unless I ask them to!!! Signed, (Head Housekeeper)".
I wonder if whoever filled in for me was just so bad at the laundry that it pissed the housekeepers off so much so that they now refuse to let us touch it? I don't really care, though. All that matters to me is that I shouldn't have to mess with the laundry anymore.
WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO ROOM PARTY!!!!
I'm curious...
...all the news articles around here said that due to the ongoing drought and fires and such, trees would be ridiculously expensive and hard to find.
So yes, the prices were up about 100% over last year ($99 for a 5'-6' tree), but 40 years ago we were paying $40 for 8' trees, so they're still in line with inflation, and we had no trouble at all getting one at our usual lot.
If people are willing, I thought it would be interesting to see what trees cost in other parts of the country (if you buy them instead of cutting your own, artificial, or decorating a living tree on your property, which are all more common in other areas, or so I'm told).
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Aaaaand... it's started.
As a social introvert, I'm perfectly capable of handling up to two social events per week, as long as there's a day separating them. Any more than that and I start burning out and getting really unhappy.
Then along comes the holiday season.
Everyone who hasn't said "Boo" to you for the entire year wants to get together. Half a dozen New Year's Eve invitations (I don't go anywhere I have to be on a freeway after midnight, so at least I can limit my choices there), a dozen dinner invitations.
And any time you decline you're treated as if you just spat in your friends' bean curd.
Y'know maybe, just maybe, planning social events over the same two weeks that everyone else in the area is planning social events isn't such a great idea.
I'm going to be cranky for the next few weeks for sure. I just don't need this much social contact.
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I bought a pre-lit 6' artificial tree a couple of years ago. In fact, I got it 3 or 4 days after Christmas, so it was on clearance for $15 or $20. Put it in the closet until the next year, set it up in the living room and it has stayed there for the last 3 years. I just unplug it outside of the holidays. I still haven't plugged it in yet this year. Maybe in a couple days.I'm curious...
...all the news articles around here said that due to the ongoing drought and fires and such, trees would be ridiculously expensive and hard to find.So yes, the prices were up about 100% over last year ($99 for a 5'-6' tree), but 40 years ago we were paying $40 for 8' trees, so they're still in line with inflation, and we had no trouble at all getting one at our usual lot.
If people are willing, I thought it would be interesting to see what trees cost in other parts of the country (if you buy them instead of cutting your own, artificial, or decorating a living tree on your property, which are all more common in other areas, or so I'm told).
I bought our artificial tree on Boxing Day the year we got married, because I wasn't willing to pay 40 bucks for a tree. Kmart was having a 75% off sale, so in 21 years, it's cost us roughly the price of a coffee each year.
I miss real trees, though.
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I miss real trees, though.
The goons (the kids' term for their friends) came over last night and at least two of them commented on how much they love the smell of Christmas trees in a house.
So yeah, we love our expensive-but-natural trees. And they're all farmed out of Oregon now, then green wasted once we're done, so other than transporting them they're not particularly environmentally unfriendly.
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There is something about the smell of fir or pine that is just...heady and festive.
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Terrible beer flavor though, generally pride myself on finishing adult beverages of odd types when the and wife and I go to somewhere to taste new things, but there was a Christmas beer made with pine I tried a few years ago, it was, like drinking a pine scented candle, and it was, the worst beer I have ever had. And as noted, love the smell of pine, love pine nuts, that beer...not so much. Glad we were at a beer hall and it was just one, would have been annoyed to pour out the rest if it were a 4 or six pack.
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I'm allergic to pine trees, mostly spruce and the like so I'm not a fan of real trees, but I've been overruled year after year so I just deal with it.
Terrible beer flavor though, generally pride myself on finishing adult beverages of odd types when the and wife and I go to somewhere to taste new things, but there was a Christmas beer made with pine I tried a few years ago, it was, like drinking a pine scented candle, and it was, the worst beer I have ever had. And as noted, love the smell of pine, love pine nuts, that beer...not so much. Glad we were at a beer hall and it was just one, would have been annoyed to pour out the rest if it were a 4 or six pack.
I must admit, I am curious about spruce beer, which is apparently a thing, but I've never seen it, let alone drunk it.
I have had the Scottish heather beer you can get, which was alright.
I have to admit, I would be curious enough to try the pine beer, because I am one of those perverse souls who actually enjoys the taste of retsina.
And I like trying different beers. There was a peanut butter pretzel stout I tried that was surprisingly good. And the Voodoo Doughnuts beer is cool.
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I've been on a Crabbie's Ginger Beer kick lately.
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Fantasy NPC: Mr. Twiddles, The Cat.
Yep. Definitely a cat. Not a furry demon or anything. Now give him a treat.
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Fantasy NPC: Mr. Twiddles, The Cat.
Yep. Definitely a cat. Not a furry demon or anything. Now give him a treat.
That is awesome.
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I'm curious...
...all the news articles around here said that due to the ongoing drought and fires and such, trees would be ridiculously expensive and hard to find.So yes, the prices were up about 100% over last year ($99 for a 5'-6' tree), but 40 years ago we were paying $40 for 8' trees, so they're still in line with inflation, and we had no trouble at all getting one at our usual lot.
If people are willing, I thought it would be interesting to see what trees cost in other parts of the country (if you buy them instead of cutting your own, artificial, or decorating a living tree on your property, which are all more common in other areas, or so I'm told).
Okay, after seeing your post, I randomly happened on a local news article claiming that DFW tree prices were among the highest in the nation.
Then I dug around.None of the Home Depots near me (the place I would guess would be the cheaper option, other than Kroger) even have trees available at this point. At Lowe's, the only one available for local pickup is $268.46 for a 6-7' Douglas Fir.
Most of the big, high-Yelp-ratings tree lots in the area (every single one of which claims to bring their trees in from Oregon) do not publish their prices online. The only one that does starts at $115 for a 5-6' Fraser Fir and goes up to $725 for a 10-11' Noble Fir. All of their larger trees are already sold out.
Seven. hundred. and. twenty. five. dollars.
For a tree that's already dead.
Of course, this is in a town with a Salt Bae steakhouse.
EDIT: I'm suddenly feeling intensely smug about the fake tree I spent less than $80 on, 21 years ago.
If people are willing, I thought it would be interesting to see what trees cost in other parts of the country...None of the Home Depots near me (the place I would guess would be the cheaper option, other than Kroger) even have trees available at this point. At Lowe's, the only one available for local pickup is $268.46 for a 6-7' Douglas Fir.
Most of the big, high-Yelp-ratings tree lots in the area (every single one of which claims to bring their trees in from Oregon) do not publish their prices online. The only one that does starts at $115 for a 5-6' Fraser Fir and goes up to $725 for a 10-11' Noble Fir. All of their larger trees are already sold out.
Seven. hundred. and. twenty. five. dollars.
For a tree that's already dead.
Of course, this is in a town with a Salt Bae steakhouse.EDIT: I'm suddenly feeling intensely smug about the fake tree I spent less than $80 on, 21 years ago.
Wooooow... This may be the first time I've heard of something significantly cheaper in the Bay Area than pretty much anywhere outside of Manhattan.
$700+ for a tree? Nope. That's even beyond Shiro ridiculous.
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Ji, Hohn!
(Hold on... that doesn't seem quite right...)
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Work Update:
So there was an innocuous email sent that basically said "Hey folks, don't worry about the settlement. We totally planned for this!"
Which of course begged the question: "Settlement? What settlement?" A quick google search later tells me they had to pay out a settlement in the 10s of millions of dollars for shady garbage. This happened about a week ago and fast forward to today an email was sent off saying they were selling the company and merging under a new business.
Glad I'm already on my way out. New owners seem actually pretty legit however. Won't really change any of my plans however. The whole thing really puts into perspective the whole no raises, cutting holiday hours and completely removing overtime availability.
I'm well known in the office for being that guy who always guesses things right and guess who had "Company is about to sell out" on his list?
Work Update:
So there was an innocuous email sent that basically said "Hey folks, don't worry about the settlement. We totally planned for this!"
Which of course begged the question: "Settlement? What settlement?" A quick google search later tells me they had to pay out a settlement in the 10s of millions of dollars for shady garbage. This happened about a week ago and fast forward to today an email was sent off saying they were selling the company and merging under a new business.
Glad I'm already on my way out. New owners seem actually pretty legit however. Won't really change any of my plans however. The whole thing really puts into perspective the whole no raises, cutting holiday hours and completely removing overtime availability.
I'm well known in the office for being that guy who always guesses things right and guess who had "Company is about to sell out" on his list?
Tom Cruise?!
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I grew up with white pines being the tree of choice for our annual tribute to odin. NC has a fascination with Frazier firs. I am underwhelmed. It can be hard to find a white pine here, but they are almost always cheaper than the firs. A 6-7 white pine is usually around 50-60 depending on how close to xmas. A comparably sized fir is 75-120.
This year we went with a 6' fir and it was 80 on thanksgiving weekend.
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Last week of school!
It's Impus Minor's last week as well, and I have no worries there, but I find it pretty depressing that I've taken the steps to screenshot all of Impus Major's homework and test scores and download the syllabus in anticipation of battling the instructor over the final grade.
Instructors love to bump up or bump down grades based on the result of the final exam, weighing it even more significantly than indicated on the syllabus. So I'm prepping to fight that as needed.
And it's pretty sad. I keep thinking, "How is it that throughout high school and college I've had so many issues with teachers being incompetent, vindictive, or petty?"
And then I remind myself that they get paid significantly less than I do; I couldn't afford to be an instructor in this area. So you get two types: The ultra-dedicated, selfless ones (such as our old choir director) who burn out young and fade away, and the lazy, incompetent ones who do as little as possible for the students, settle in like barnacles, and slowly await the day of their retirement and pension.
Am displeased.
That is a depressing truth NH, but truth none the less. Actually one of my best friends of 30+ years is a band instructor in Ohio of the dedicated to the point of near madness type. While another best friend of 30+ years (we all went to school together from 1st grade on until HS graduation) was a teacher for a while, and burned out (in a bay area School system even). Nail meet hammerhead, alas.
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Has anyone heard any updates on Orthos and Scint?
A good question. I think Tacticslion may be the only one who knows.
If people are willing, I thought it would be interesting to see what trees cost in other parts of the country...None of the Home Depots near me (the place I would guess would be the cheaper option, other than Kroger) even have trees available at this point. At Lowe's, the only one available for local pickup is $268.46 for a 6-7' Douglas Fir.
Most of the big, high-Yelp-ratings tree lots in the area (every single one of which claims to bring their trees in from Oregon) do not publish their prices online. The only one that does starts at $115 for a 5-6' Fraser Fir and goes up to $725 for a 10-11' Noble Fir. All of their larger trees are already sold out.
Seven. hundred. and. twenty. five. dollars.
For a tree that's already dead.
Of course, this is in a town with a Salt Bae steakhouse.EDIT: I'm suddenly feeling intensely smug about the fake tree I spent less than $80 on, 21 years ago.
Wooooow... This may be the first time I've heard of something significantly cheaper in the Bay Area than pretty much anywhere outside of Manhattan.
$700+ for a tree? Nope. That's even beyond Shiro ridiculous.
Someone is clearly prixe gouging here.
No Pathfinder yesterday.
No fencing tonight.
No D&D tomorrow (though we might do something else)
No fencing on Weds.
O well.
That means I can fix my fencing gloves (badly) and start work on the Unicorn Badger song.
Unicorn badger, unicorn badger, unicorn badger, yeah.
Unicorn badger, yeah
Unicorn badger, yeah.
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And here's the follow-up. Writing the dean was the correct course of action, because they offered Impus Major a make-up final. The instructor calculated his overall score at 69.55% or already a C, and Impus Major's not going to get 94% on a make-up final to turn it into a B.
So he sent a polite note thanking them for the offer, but if he's going to get a C anyway, he shouldn't waste everyone's time.
Everyone took the correct course of action all around, so I'm as happy as I'm going to be with this tomfoolery.
Looks like we'll be wrapping things up on this whole sad affair this evening.
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Has anyone heard any updates on Orthos and Scint?
Orthos is showing on my Steam friendlist at the moment as playing Neverwinter Nights: Enhanced Edition so he is probably GMing on their Neverwinter server.
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Marvel Movie Timeline #5: The Incredible Hulk: How much does it tell you that Disney+ doesn't even carry its biggest box-office flop, and third-lowest-rated film on Rotten Tomatoes? (Thor: Dark World and Eternals rank lower.)
But I'm stubborn, and I can pay the $3.99 to stick to my guns, so I watched it.
(a) It was the first movie I hadn't seen before.
(b) Within the first 3 minutes of screentime I could tell why it did so poorly.
What was Iron Man? An origin story.
What was Thor? An origin story (of sorts).
What was Dr. Strange? An origin story.
You see a pattern.
I watched in incredulity as the entire origin story of The Hulk was glossed over in the opening credits so they could move on to the far more interesting, "I'm hiding in a jungle doing absolutely nothing for the first half hour of the movie so you can feel my angst."
Y'know what would have been angsty? Getting to know Dr. Banner and seeing him lose everything to his inner monster!!!!!
So, with the origin story flushed down the toilet, it was like picking up Issue #236 of The Incredible Hulk from the local comic store, reading through it, and thinking, "OK. Whatever."
The movie's not terrible. But it's not good because of its very conscious choice to skip everything interesting (the origin) and move on to "the ongoing life of Mr. Hulk".
Overall I'd say it wasn't worth my $3.99. But it's out of the way and I can move on. And it wasn't the performances (though William Hurt really stunk up the joint -- I was honestly surprised). It was 100% poor writing.
So Disney banned it from Disney+ and there you go.
Glad to know he's okay at least.
They gloss over the origin of the hulk because it is technically a sequel to "Hulk" (directed by Ang Lee in 2003).Marvel Movie Timeline #5: The Incredible Hulk: How much does it tell you that Disney+ doesn't even carry its biggest box-office flop, and third-lowest-rated film on Rotten Tomatoes? (Thor: Dark World and Eternals rank lower.)
But I'm stubborn, and I can pay the $3.99 to stick to my guns, so I watched it.
(a) It was the first movie I hadn't seen before.
(b) Within the first 3 minutes of screentime I could tell why it did so poorly.What was Iron Man? An origin story.
What was Thor? An origin story (of sorts).
What was Dr. Strange? An origin story.You see a pattern.
I watched in incredulity as the entire origin story of The Hulk was glossed over in the opening credits so they could move on to the far more interesting, "I'm hiding in a jungle doing absolutely nothing for the first half hour of the movie so you can feel my angst."
Y'know what would have been angsty? Getting to know Dr. Banner and seeing him lose everything to his inner monster!!!!!
So, with the origin story flushed down the toilet, it was like picking up Issue #236 of The Incredible Hulk from the local comic store, reading through it, and thinking, "OK. Whatever."
The movie's not terrible. But it's not good because of its very conscious choice to skip everything interesting (the origin) and move on to "the ongoing life of Mr. Hulk".
Overall I'd say it wasn't worth my $3.99. But it's out of the way and I can move on. And it wasn't the performances (though William Hurt really stunk up the joint -- I was honestly surprised). It was 100% poor writing.
So Disney banned it from Disney+ and there you go.
Additionally, Paramount still has the rights, just like Sony still has Spider-Man and why you won't find those movies on Disney+ either.
I liked it.