But eventually they accomodate to the shape of your head and the effect is lost.
They fit like a cheap motel: no ballroom.
Amen, brother.
Flawed women I have known:
My HS GF washed her jeans between every wearing, so that they never got that just-right feeling. Like a crust of char on a tender steak, the point is counterpoint.
AB has to be goaded into washing my jeans on hot out of some misguided notion of fabric preservation. They don't fit right unless you wash them on hot, honey.
3: My previous pair of jeans, which otherwise had a long life before them, wore through in the crotch.
Laydeez.
My jeans always wear through at the crotch. And they are too damn tight when just washed. I'm just saying.
I stopped wearing jeans because it was too hard to adjust/scratch.
Many of my jeans no longer fit at the waist...Laydeez....
Mine always go at the knees. Gentlemenzzz.
(This is the kind of thing that makes one worry about really arcane figure flaws. "Sure, she's cute mostly, but she's got really big knees.")
Also: pockets on jeans always suck. Too tight!
I never had a pair of jeans which didn't wear through at the crotch. Wherefore I no longer buy them.
But this was such a regular bug I concluded that it was meant to be a feature, keeping your balls from overheating in case you unexpectedly needed to use them or something.
My jeans* also always wear through at the knees. Laydeez... or, I mean, um... Gentlemenzzz? Now I'm feeling a bit confused.
*All my pants, actually.
You know what they say about girls with big knees.
I never had a pair of jeans which didn't wear through at the crotch. Wherefore I no longer buy them.
You used to buy jeans at your crotch?
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This story is just a parody, right? Right?
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15: Lawyer inappropriately uses nonsensical preposition. Film at 11:00.
15: I don't see any location implied for the buying.
I'm at work and I'm not wearing any jeans.
I've got on a rather fetching pair of dark brown khakis, and a green v-neck sweater, and some light pink loafers.
I used to think I was super smart in, like, junior high or something, because I knew what "wherefore" meant, and so knew that Juliet wasn't asking about Romeo's location, she was asking WHY he was Romeo, which complicated things so, and not somebody from a family hers wasn't feuding with. I got over it though.
Everybody's neglecting to tell what color bra it is they're wearing.
Tell me more, heebie. What color are your socks?
What colour are yours Bave? I'm wearing dark blue jeans, a green v-neck seater (just like Heebie!!1!!!!), black socks, a white tee with a Roy Lichtenstein print (which I made myself!!1!!!), and ... wait for it ... red jocks!
Also, I'm not wearing any shoes as my pathetic officemates have turned the temperature up to infernal proportions and I'm roasting enough without them on.
16: It ought to be a parody. I'm only happy that it can't be PK, because he is older than that.
What color are your socks?
They're white, crew socks, with a tasteful loss of elasticity causing a mirthful sag.
My socks do not match*, because, like the kid in 16: I'm a loner, Dottie. A rebel.
*Actually, they're both of the same style (striped tube socks) but of different colors. So they do actually match, in a way.
My socks are a mix of dark and light gray threads. They're factory seconds from the LL Bean outlet store in Bangor, Maine ("Bangor? I don't even know 'or."), which I wear with a certain pair of tennis shoes because my feet are too narrow (laydeez) and my shoes are too wide.
I can't reveal what I'm wearing, because it may imperil my pseudonymity.
I wore a green v-neck sweater yesterday! (That look really wore itself out on January 13 you guys. I'm a little embarrassed for you.)
Now I miss my old green v-neck; I don't have any v-neck sweaters without moth holes anymore.
I'm wearing a button-down long sleeve dress shirt and khaki pants for the 2,500th work day in a row.
But, for a change, I've begun tying the ends of the shirt together above my waist instead of tucking them in.
I was wearing jeans earlier this morning, but then AB demanded that I remove them.
So she could launder them.
Once again, life fails to imitate porn.
37, 38: Actually, it was the orderlies who did that to him.
40.3: You could always make some really boring porn.
16: that's amazing. Someone should alert B.
I am a fan of jeans. Since JRoth and Moby have porn on their minds, I will add that a woman in just her jeans is really, really hot.
28, 35: For some reason I have no recollection of those ads; I watched a fair amount of tv in those days, and I always liked Levis ads. The "I think I love you" one remains an all-time great.
37: I did that in high school with flannel shirts. I was trying to start a trend, but for some reason it never caught on.
42: I'm not sure how that would qualify as porn. Unless you're a laundry fetishist.
47: Sure, act all innocent and unknowing.
I saw this coffee commercial for the first time this morning. It may rank among the worst ever.
You could copulate, as long as you aren't wearing trousers.
The comments on the link of 49 explain that it is not sexist, quit digging for things to be offended by, and points out "You let your father walk you down the aisle, right? You let him give you away, right? So how is it any different that the fiance asks his permission for your hand in marriage?"
"I don't see a single thing wrong with this and I'm pretty attuned."
51: And in the same comment "And I don't think she's a grown woman, either. I think she's probably late college age." 22-year-olds aren't grown women now?
"The best part of waking-up is patriarchy in your cup."
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Has anybody warned you lot not to masturbate to Teddy Pendergrass yet?
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I hypothesize that now, or in the near future, some Brooklyn boutique manufacturer of selvage denim has promoted or will promote a line of "coffee-stained denim," made with denim woven on machines reclaimed from the superannuated Levi-Strauss manufacturing facilities in the U.S. and restored in Japan and advertised with gray-to-blue-scale photographs by the Sartorialist intended to capture the industrial affect of the photographs of Margaret Bourke-White combined with Victorian images of the sooty working classes.
57: apostropher did, but I can't remember where.
The circumstances are slightly different due to her condition, but a boy asked me whether he could "take" my daughter to the dance. I thought it was sweet. I said, "sure, fine by me, but you better ask her. She is the decision-maker."
60: That is sweet. Did she go? Does she like boys "that way"?
60: But what we really want to know, Will, is why the hell you drink instant coffee?
I never had a pair of jeans which didn't wear through at the crotch. Wherefore I no longer buy them.
According to some of his biographers, Thomas Wolfe always bought tailor-made pants which were reinforced in the crotch. Partly, so some of those biographers say, this was because Wolfe was a huge man with huge balls which would rip the seams of an ordinary pair of pants and partly because he liked to walk everywhere with a hand down his crotch.
because he liked to walk everywhere with a hand down his crotch.
Like most people from North Carolina.
64: The ones who bother to war pants, anyway.
63: A lot of tailor-made pants have reinforced crotches, mainly because pants tend to wear out faster than jackets.
LBJ was another one whose preferences with respect to pants construction were distinct:
"And another thing - the crotch, down where your nuts hang - is always a little too tight, so when you make them up, give me an inch that I can let out there, uh because they cut me, it's just like riding a wire fence."
64 is fightin' words. I'm gonna put on my war pants.
When warring pants, go for the crotch. Sun Tzu wrote that. Probably.
Shouldn't be too hard to fight a man with one hand down his pants.
69: Yes, but it's hard to get your hand down his pants once you start fighting.
70: Sun Tzu says, "If your enemy is pantsed, depants him. If your enemy is pantsless, pants him. Once your enemy is wearing trousers of your selection, you can easily defeat him."
For a while Chuck Norris was pitching jeans with an elastic gusset in the crotch so you could kick people in the head without having to take your pants off. Not sure if he still is, though.
I understand that the creator of Gumby is no longer with us.
72: Chuck Norris Action Jeans! Lone Wolf McQuade is really good, though.
I've seen Lone Wolf McQuade, but that was years ago. I remember it as being good, but I had even worst taste then than I do now. Is it Tremors good?
Is it Tremors good?
It's hard even to know how to answer that.
My socks do not match
Mine either! Stanley and I are non-matching-socks buddies!
79: Of course, the technically correct answer is "No, nothing is that good." But after a few dozen viewings, you start to want to see another movie.
If your enemy is pantsed, depants him.
But if your enemy is pantsed, he's already not wearing pants?
83: What is the sound of one leg pantsing?
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My friend Alex notes that we had a rescue team ont he ground within 24 hours of the Port-au-prince earthquake, but Bush wasn't even briefed on the flooding in New Orleans until 48 hours later.
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I don't have any v-neck sweaters without moth holes anymore.
I read this as mouth holes, which caused some concern.
I've likewise never had a pair of jeans not wear out in the crotch. My current most comfortable pair of jeans have worn out in the crotch and started to separate at the seams along the back so I only wear them around the house or with a long coat. They're too insanely comfortable to give up. It's that simple.
I prefer a pair of jeans that have already been worn once, but there is something to be said about the joys of jeans fresh from the dryer on a winter morning.
so I only wear them around the house or with a long coat
You know, people, there are these things called patches. (Insert "Fuck you, Patches the clown" joke here.)
The Mac OS text-to-speech synthesizer saying "Wolfe was a huge man with huge balls" is the funniest thing I have ever heard in my life.
I'm currently very into my skinny jeans (from Target! $15 on sale!). But they only look awesome for the first two wearings, and then they stretch out and look a little mom jeansish.
No campus commitments till next Tuesday. So this week I have been camping out at my new beau's place in E-ville, hanging out with the cats, working from (his) home, and making dinner. Yes, Folks! I've been here all week! Try the veal!
Foolhardy to jump into another exclusive, serious relationship just a few months after ending a two-year relationship? This is the very opposite of "taking it slow"? Possibly. But! So happy! And this isn't just limerence! So this is what it's like to be with someone who's completely enthusiastic about being with you and who can't wait to come home to you and tells you exactly how awesome he feels about you. He told his mother about me. She made me three kinds of fudge and tells me to come down to the farm to visit.
The only truly bittersweet part is realizing how much I was willing to settle for less than this level of enthusiasm and affection, and how easy it was for me to convince myself that I was happy and that it was the right decision. It's kind of terrifying to realize how many bad decisions and justifications you can make even when you're of the stupid college-age years. I keep hoping that as I get older and more self-aware, I'll stop doing that. But of course, that's not the case.
Congratulations, Belle! Woot!
How does he feel about the wearing of socks to bed?
Thanks, M/tch! I totally wear socks to bed, and he has an extra blanket for me just for my side of what he calls "our bed." I have a drawer for stuff. Dang, it took me a year to get that in my last relationship, and after two years, I never even got a key. Here it took like 1.5 months.
91: meant to say "you're no longer of the stupid college-age years." Whups.
I totally wear socks to bed
Matching or non-?
He sounds controlling to me.
"The Farm" is that a cult?
The first sign of trouble in a relationship is giddy happiness.
Run away, Belle. Run away.
Remember: Unfogged is always correct.
I went into this bar and sat down next to a pretty girl. She looked at me and said, "Hey, you have two different colored socks on." I said, "Yeah, I know, but to me they're the same because I go by thickness."
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If I can join in with the giving of good news, I just landed a gig. Minimum of 3 months, likely turning into ongoing. Doing the kind of work I like to do, on an interesting product, for just about (maybe slightly more) money than I was making before.
I'm a little shell-shocked here, and deeply aware just how lucky I am to live in the United States. I had to go donate (some more) to Haiti just to keep Karma from biting me.
Shit. Thanks for helping me stay sane this last year and a quarter, guys. Even if I didn't comment much, I was lurking, and having daily connection with familiar, intelligent voices helped a lot.
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I went into this bar and sat down next to a pretty girl. She looked at me and said, "Hey, you have two different colored socks on." I said, "Yeah, I know, but to me they're the same because I go by thickness."
This is actually a very important concept to remember when dealing with autistic people.
99: mazel tov! I like to hear that such things happen occasionally.
The Mac OS text-to-speech synthesizer saying "Wolfe was a huge man with huge balls" is the funniest thing I have ever heard in my life.
When I was in college someone at my student job turned on the text-to-speech announcement of all dialogue boxes on my computer and installed a plug-in that started each of these with a very collected alto voice saying, "Shit," with the emphasis one might give it when realizing one's soda is regular instead of diet. I loved it and left it on for the rest of my time there. I couldn't get enough of, "Shit. Printing failed," or "Shit. Error #-44."
Also, mad congratulations to Belle & Chopper. Woot!
96: Will is taking over Emerson's role around here.
Good newses for 2010! May that trend continue.
Socks that don't match by thickness REALLY don't match, it's true.
Great news, Chopper! Hooray!
91: Yay!
96: Boo!
Huzzah, Belle/Chopper! The proper response to Chopper's news is to go leave congratulatory profanity on his FB wall, right?
104-113 get it exactly right.
It's always heartening to hear good news. Yay, chopper and belle!
Chopper, allow me to be the first to offer you hearty congratulations.
Clearly, I am the only one who cares about you, Belle.
106: Yes, I thought Will's role here was to encourage people to get married and then advice them to break up.
But before we all get too giddy, and since Chopper did bring it up, holy crap but the news out of Haiti is so incredibly depressing.
Yay, Chopper!
Belle, thanks for being honest about how you're feeling. I've gone through similar revelations and I'm shocked by how willing I was to stay in relationships that topped out at mediocrity. Being treated fairly and well shouldn't be eye-opening but in my experiences is. I'm thrilled you're getting to enjoy it!
Woohoo Belle/Chopper!
Reading this thread backwards, this gave me the wrong impression, but I now see that the sentiment is completely warranted.
Congratulations both of you.
If you're feeling bummed out by Haiti, M/tch, (because yes, wow, so sad) and need a quick pick-me-up, let me recommend this video.
120: God, those photos on the NYT front page, so incredibly sad.
Congrats to those with good fortune, though.
Hooray for Belle and Chopper!
(Reading the thread backwards led me to a brief moment of confusion much like Knecht's 98.)
I went into this bar and sat down next to a pretty girl. She looked at me and said, "Hey, you have two different colored socks on." I said,
I could hardly wear the same sock on two feet, could I?
The proper response to Chopper's news is to go leave congratulatory profanity on his FB wall, right?
That was certainly my thought.
Congrats to Chopper and "I told you so" to Belle.
126: You could if it were a really big sock.
Gah, Nosflow, you always have to ruin everything with your self-congratulatory righteousness. And yet, I am very fond of you and quite appreciative. You might even like this guy. He would find what you're studying really interesting. I would actually let the two of you meet.
Thanks to everyone! I love how you all know the multi-part, multi-pseudonymed story, and I don't think I would have made the right decisions eventually (you know, after making the wrong ones at least a couple of times) without you. Didn't PGD say that it takes at least three breakups for a relationship to really be over? Anyway, I'm glad to have had a forum to work out the mistakes in public--at the very least I needed confirmation bias and support, and you have all been really supportive, even when you told me to do things I was not (at the time) ready to do. But I did need the freedom to make the mistakes, and I did need support even as I was making them. But now I bask in the glow of your approval.
So, I'm thinking of donating to the Red Cross, unless someone has a suggestion for a better charity? I'll probably do it by tonight, so I'll check this thread after I come back from a walk.
Free your mind, nosflow, and your feet will follow.
I don't enjoy editing comments, you know.
Our household has given its money to Partners in Health (Paul Farmer is a fucking hero), MSF, Catholic Relief (shut up, they have been on the ground in Haiti forever and will be there forever), and the texty thing to the Red Cross.
Spelling my surname in a certain direction draws satan's unwelcome eye.
I'm lazy, so I really appreciate the texty thing to Red Cross.
Oops. Sorry. Didn't even notice. I will reform my careless ways.
136: WTTW in Chicago (your window to the world!), the PBS station, used to play Thin Man movie marathons while intermittently running a 900# on screen that would automagically add a $10 donation to them onto your phone bill. CA and I would get so giddily liquored up during the movies that we would call and call and call to note our appreciation. Clever move, WTTW.
139: Such elegant and sophisticated drunk dialing!
And to BL,
Being treated fairly and well shouldn't be eye-opening but in my experiences is.
I've told y'all before about an early conversation AB & I had in which I somehow expressed surprised pleasure at her being nice to me and she said, "You poor, damaged man." You don't notice the crouch after the first couple years, y'know?
So I'm very happy for you, as well. Enjoy this feeling - even if it's not permanent, it's still something you deserve and that you should remember for the future.
Yay Chopper! They're lucky to get you! You are not, however, released from your commenting gig here.
Partners in Health (Paul Farmer is a fucking hero), MSF, Catholic Relief (shut up, they have been on the ground in Haiti forever and will be there forever), and the texty thing to the Red Cross?
I already give monthly to MSF (Doctors Without Borders for the unpretentious among you) and their 3 hospitals in Port-au-Prince were destroyed, so I'm giving them an additional donation.
I also echo oudemia's very sound advice given elsewhere to donate to orgs. that are already on the ground when a catastrophe occurs.
Heifer International has people on the ground in Haiti and the author Patrick Rothfuss has been running a donation-matching campaign for several weeks that ends shortly, though I suppose he may extend it now.
Yipee! Belle, Chopper, awesome! Not to encourage deliberate dating or employment, mind you. But when one accidentally finds oneself in that position, and ecstatically so, well. There should be much rejoicing. Hurrah!
Hi all! I have a question. Is that cool? If someone were to go skiing in approx 24 hours and had basically no ski type clothing, what would be absolutely necessary to get? And what if that person did not desire to spend excessively and, more importantly, was lazy and did not want to take a lot of time about this task? What then?
Love and kisses,
To more directly address the inquiry: skis and/or money. Unless you live in Europe, supposedly.
Speaking of deliberate dating, while driving home I saw someone with the license plate SEXKITTN.
146: I've gone skiing without any ski pants. I wore jeans over thermal underwear and did fine because I was 19 and it was too cold to worry about melted snow. (I had never skied before so I spent much time in the snow.)
149: I think it'll be fairly cool, arid, and mountainous.
146: What have you got outerwear-wise? Rock bottom minimum is outerwear sufficient to keep you warm in the likely temperatures -- gloves, hat, coat. You can fake it without ski pants if you're tolerant of being wet and it's not too cold.
I'd really try to get your hands on some ski-goggles if you can find them easily -- I think they make a huge comfort difference.
Do I need, like, a jacket? Is a hat required? Pantaloons? What about jeans without any long underwear?
Would anyone like to loan me some things?
Congratulations to those to whom congratulations should be directed!
I see that I do need a jacket. Will they laugh at me if it's a leather jacket? More than otherwise?
oh and congratulations to those people too
154: Yes, you need a hat. Yes, you need a jacket and a couple of layers of warm things underneath.
The problem with regular pants is that if it is warmish (for skiing), they'll get wet and then your legs get cold then you are miserable. If it is cold, your legs just get cold. If you're comfortable with the cold, you should be O.K. if it is just below freezing.
157: Yes to both questions. Related: Have you ever spent more than an hour outside in the cold?
Thanks Moby and LB. It sounds like special pants are in order. Ok, got to find me some special pants.
160: I think so. Yes, in fact. But I was always moving around. Or throwing things, repeatedly.
157: If you can carry it off insouciantly, you should be fine. Unless it's really cold, in which case you'll be miserable in twenty minutes and you won't ski.
Look, you're skiing with people who ski, and who are your friends? Phone around and see what you can borrow -- I bet people have spare hats and gloves and maybe even ski pants and such.
162: There's long periods of not moving when you ski (lifts and all). And, unless you are used to altitude, you'll feel the cold more than usual. So you need to dress warmer than you would for that.
163: yes, communication is the key. These are fairly new friends and I usually only ask old friends to give me their pants. But I will call and ask for pants.
Right, it's not the skiing, it's the sitting motionless in a chairlift forty feet up with the wind blowing.
165: Or other friends who ski, but aren't going with you.
I skied 40 years in jeans, and this year bought myself a pair of ski pants. I wouldn't ski without 'em. To be honest, I could get away with jeans -- I probably fell 4 or 5 times in the last 10 years, and 2 of those were standing in lift lines. Anything that's going to come in contact with snow needs to be completely resistant to soaking up water.
Sunglasses, in case it gets warm for goggles.
Huh, I'll take off my hat if I get warm, but I love my goggles. It's not just the light, it's the wind in my eyes.
Counterpoint: I've never liked the goggles at all. If you'll ski regularly, I suppose it's something worth trying to see whether you like them or hate them, but it's certainly not anything that I'd recommend in the list of minimum-required-gear.
I've also skied plenty of times with jeans and long-underwear instead of snow pants--with good long underwear (and thickish jeans), that can keep you plenty warm. But it won't keep you dry, which is an issue if conditions are damp.
I would think roughly the same analysis would apply to a leather jacket, although you have to assume it's going to get snow on it--would that damage the jacket?
For me, the most essential items by far, and the place where I really wouldn't skimp, are very warm gloves, and preferably also very warm socks. But I have poor circulation I think--my extremities are often cold. But I've skied with a decent variety of clothing/equipment variations, and the only times I've been unhappily cold have all involved inadequate gloves.
(I'm buying a helmet tomorrow, having whacked my head but good last Sunday. It's hard to borrow one, but think seriously about renting one. Keeps your head warm too.)
I said, "Yeah, I know, but to me they're the same because I go by thickness
I thought the punchline was "Yeah, I know. I have another pair just like them at home."
169 -- On the chair, or walking around, I wear glasses in the sun. On a warmish (ie 30) day.
The goggles, they do nothing!
A lot of the jeans question is how terrible you expect to be. If you've never skied, you'll probably spend a fair amount of time picking yourself out of snowbanks, unless you're a really good-balance/natural-athlete type. Which means being wet and cold in jeans. OTOH, if you're, oh, I dunno, a skateboarder or something, you might pick it up fast without falling a lot.
173 -- Heh. It was a spectacular fall. Worst in at least a decade, probably two. Apparently impressive to watch -- people who saw it, and people who only saw flying snow from the other side of a rise, took some convincing that it wasn't actually serious.
I remember some of my friends going with army supply wool pants for snow-related activities. It's been over 15 years since I've done skiing; I think I went with rain shell/snow pants. I don't think I had anything especially just for skiing.
Also: I am appalled by the idea of washing jeans in hot water! (And also by the idea of drying them in a hot dryer.)
176: I expect to be quite bad. I've only gone skiing once before, and I took to it quite well, but I was twelve.
170: Leather is out. I think I have gloves that are ok. How do I know if gloves are good?
Breaking news: I have acquired special pants!
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Can I solicit last-minute travel suggestions for me and eekbeat for mid-February? We have a newly discovered week off together. I feel lame having done so in the past, and yet I bow to the 'tariat's wisdom. We're looking for somewhere warm and full of museums and or historical shit. And relatively cheap.
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How do I know if gloves are good?
Thick, padded, waterproof. Mittens are good. You want ski-gloves, not little leather things you wear to work.
For gloves, really, if you don't have or can't borrow ski gloves, I'd just buy a pair when you get to the slopes. They'll be cheaper than your ski rental, probably.
178: I can see heavy wool pants being very effective, but jeans are cotton. Wool, if thick enough, is much slower to soak and much warmer even when wet.
181: Obviously you are wanting to go to Tijuana.
185: I enjoyed St. Augustine, but it's been a very long time since I've been there. There was much historical whatnot, but all I can remember is that Spanish used the power of the tide to flush their latrine.
Also, Florida is pretty cold right now.
Denim is horrible when cold and wet. Wool is better. Layers of clothing: an inner layer that wicks wet away and an outer layer that can break wind. You can dress for winter activity without looking like a skister. A hat that can be tucked in a pocket. Watch caps are good for this. Mittens are better than gloves.
I've never been to St. Augustine, so I'll bow to Moby's superior knowledge.
I endorse Brock's 170. Goggles? Whatever. I'd avoid wearing jeans, but then again, I might wear shorts if it weren't too cold.
and an outer layer that can break wind
Not so nice for the people sharing a lift with you.
181: If Tijuana sounds a bit too staid, I would suggest Savannah, actually.
188: It's a pretty impressive piece of work. But I certainly do know anything about cost or if you can eat well for cheap.
Charleston was nice. We got a very good deal on a hotel by staying outside of the historical part of the city. Lots of museums and very good food.
How far are you willing to travel and how much are you willing to spend, Stanley? It sounds like your closest options are probably Charleston/Savannah/St. Augustine, but if you want to look a bit further afield there are other possibilities.
How about San Juan, PR (or PR in general)? It is much warmer than SC or FL. Plus, Stanley can practice his cursing.
194: I was thinking Savannah, but eekbeat's got an eye on central America.
DC to San Juan in February looks to be about $240 RT. That might be too dear.
Wool socks are a freaking miracle. Can be quite wet, but still warm!
195: We went to PR last year (woo! go there!), and next time around we'd go east. Money-wise, to answer teo's question, we're assuming hostal pricing-wise. This vacation is on the cheap.
and next time around we'd go east
Meant to write we'd go west for a change. East was lovely.
Hmm, going east. How about the USVI? You can camp (tent or better) on St. John and that island is mostly national parkland. Maybe a little too relaxing.
If you go to Belize, let me know of any isolated places that look like a good place for a large encampment. if I ever get my mercenary seed money, my goal is to become "President for Life" of Belize and I'll need a hidden base for Phases III through IX.
I have a long-shot bid of going to Chicago to go to museums and hang out, which is likely to fail, because, holy fuck cold, plus, ACK! family knows I'm in town. But I kind of like this one and keep inching it forward. Bonus: free housing with relatives and maybe unfogged people!
204: you might get some pushback from the beachside crackheads who live off the spoils of drug interdictions.
You can come stay at our apartment for free. It's wicked warm as long as you stay inside!
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Hey, my music and computer nerd friends, how tricky is it to transfer my cassettes to my computer? Do I just plug in a cable to my receiver and it'll magically turn them into playable files, or is it some big complicated thing? I know the quality won't be great, but I have dozens of cassettes that I'll probably never replace with CDs.
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206: Got ya. Free crack until I get to Phase XII.
208: Do I just plug in a cable to my receiver and it'll magically turn them into playable files,
Eh, yeah, basically. It's a little irritating, but not so bad.
We're looking for somewhere warm and full of museums and or historical shit.
California! Southern California! It's warm, sunny, not as full of tourists in February, and full of museums and history. Granted, the water is still going to be too cold to really want to swim in unless you're used to it, but still. Our state needs your money.
Stanley, needless, I'd hope, to say, but you've got a place to stay in Austin anytime. The Alamo! LBJ's ranch! Etc. It's unseasonably cold here right now, though, to which I say, bollocks!
The Alamo! LBJ's ranch!
Neither of which is in Austin.
210: And what's this magical cable that I need? Is there some kind of regular out-from-the-receiver cable with a USB whosiwatsit on the other end?
213: They are but a stone's throw away, and we have plenty of stones here.
214: no. RCA (which is to say regular (two plugs, one red, one white)) to 1/8" (which is to say headphone-lookin').
Hey, my music and computer nerd friends, how tricky is it to transfer my cassettes to my computer?
Pretty tricky. Cassettes are magnetic, and you don't want to put magnetic stuff in your computer. You'd probably be safe just putting them on your computer, though, and you wouldn't even have to open the case.
you could check out the museum of jurassic technology.
You could go stay with Nosflow, check out the scene around there.
212: Sweet. The reciprocity goes without saying. I'm thinking we might try to do this idea, notwithstanding the not-warm. And maybe I can convince eekbeat that a bunch of awesome museums plus it's my birthday week plus it's not that cold plus a meet-up would seal the deal.
I have brief dictated memoirs from two of my four grandparents, and they're a really delightful thing to have around.
217: Thanks, Sifu. I'll give it a shot.
I've secured radio gear. Any Chicagoland commenters offering a piede a tere for when the relatives get obnoxious? We're very polite house guests
I didn't think anyone was left in Chicago! I would definitely make a sincere effort to show up at a meetup.
I would definitely make a sincere effort to show up at a meetup.
We've heard that line before.
Stanley, if wisdom prevails and you ditch gramps for southern california, you can stay on my couch (n.b. a dog now lives there) and you may borrow my bicycle for transportation.
historical shit
There used to be a chamberpot museum in Munich.
Come to Southern California where the weather is always perfect and we have the Museum of Jurassic Technology. We could have a lovely meet-up and the Unfoggetariat of So Cal could come by and help me eviscerate one of my neighbours, whose guest has parked across the driveway, thereby blocking my parking space at fucking 1am. We stuck a "you are parked illegally, you inconsiderate boor" note on the window. Literally; I printed it out on full-page label stock.
Josh, I added "make a sincere effort to" expressly for that reason.
Dating only rates an insincere effort.
232: Good lord. I don't know that that person would have a windshield left to stick a note to if it had been done at my house. The convenience of being able to yell "This is what happens when you fuck a stranger in the ass!" without leaving my own home might be too tempting.
Also, thanks everyone. Belle, sorry to horn in on your congratulatory spotlight, and let me add my own congrats to everyone else. A new and hopeful relationship is something to be savored like a fine wine. Cheers.
232, 235: There's a person who keeps parking mildly inconveniently in front of my house. I've been considering putting a note on his car, but the only reasonable assessment of his parking would be, "You sure did park in a manner mildly inconviently to me!"
Which seems like weak sauce.
sorry to horn in on
Surely, you mean "hone".
237: I've gotten a note placed on my car when I was legally parked on a public street and not blocking anybody. People believe they own the parking space in front of their house. The note was sufficiently strong that we called to city to check that we couldn't legally be towed. We also moved the car to keep if from being keyed or something. I could have learned a valuable lesson about social construction and property rights, but I was too annoyed.
237:
We recently had this problem. A guy who lives on another block kept parking his very fancy, brand-new jag on our block. (Bc we have no trees and his block has trees.) On our block, we have old people and people with young babies.
One of the fathers approached the guy and said that, although he had every right to park here, it was REALLY inconvenient. Wisely, no direct mention was made of his car getting vandalized or accidently hit by a baseball or golf ball or football.
He stopped parking here.
239: Yeah, oudemia (I think?) has a recent comment in which she describes the Bostonian practice of marking one's shoveled spot with a chair as seeming Republican. This comment has served as a remarkable check on me getting upset over Inconvient Parking Dude.
A guy who lives on another block kept parking his very fancy, brand-new jag on our block. (Bc we have no trees and his block has trees.) On our block, we have old people and people with young babies.
I...honestly don't see the connection between these two sentences.
In our situation, the guy was leaving his car there for 5 or 6 days and it was inconvenient for old people and people with small kids.
Nobody owns the spot in front of there house, but this guy was being a jerk.
241: People here will mark their spot with a chair regardless of whether or not they've shoveled it. About 1/4 or so of the houses on our street have no off-street parking, so I decided to play nice after I'd calmed down about the note. We have our two spaces and using the street only comes-up when we have guests or something. (A note that didn't contain an empty threat to have my car towed would have worked much better.)
He apparently didnt want branches or things to fall onto his car.
There were plenty of spaces near his house.
243: Huh. I still don't get it. You mean he was taking up a parking space that an old person or a person with little kids might have used? Couldn't you say that about any parking space anywhere?
But I don't really get cultural norms around cars, so I shouldn't get involved.
243: Why was it inconvenient to have this guy's car there instead of some other car?
247:
Yes. He was using our block for long-term parking. As a result, one of the neighbors would have to walk a much further distance. Since the neighbors are either elderly or have young babies, I think he was not being considerate.
He has every right to park there, but he was not being a good neighbor. Nobody has the right to park right in front of their house every single time, but this guy was not taking other's needs into consideration.
But I don't really get cultural norms around cars, so I shouldn't get involved.
I spent an inordinate amount of time trying to figure out local norms after I first moved here.
248: I'm guessing that there's some sort of informal rationing of 'parking spot-hours'. If you live on a block, you're 'allowed' to park there as much as you want. Outsiders can park on the block when visiting or occasionally if it's necessary, but if they use more than a few spot-hours in a given time period, they're violating a norm.
Sir Kraab: You'll find that the easy part is getting the audio into your computer (via the cable Sifu described). The annoying part is recording it and, especially, creating tracks from what is recorded. If you're on a Mac, Garage Band isn't terrible, although the interface has that so-simple-it's-complicated feel that some Apple products are prone to; there's also a free program called Audacity that works pretty well. And I think there are commercial products meant for precisely this task. You'll probably want to record a whole cassette side, then cut it into separate tracks.
Also, he lived a full block away and has a BUNCH of empty spots right in front of his house.
I spent an inordinate amount of time trying to figure out local norms after I first moved here.
I've never seen anyone save their space with a chair around here, snow shovelled or not snow shovelled, unless they were preparing to move out. So your local norm is really a microlocal norm.
251:
Does that seem unreasonable?
That old people and people with small children shouldnt be made to walk a greater distance?
Our front lawn isn't big enough to park one car without blocking the mailbox, which makes the mail carrier leave angry notes.
However, he leaves the notes in our mailbox, instead of on the car windshield. Dude, we know! We didn't do it! That's not our car.
253: Since it's a Jaguar, you can console yourself with the fact that (1) it's pronounced funny by British people and (2) it has famously high maintenance costs.
Okay, clearly this guy is being an jerk. But I don't understand how there could be a place where one block away there are lots and lots of empty spaces, while on your block space is so tight that people are massively inconvenienced by having one extra car there that doesn't deserve to be there.
254: I don't really see the chair very often, but I have seen it done aside from people saving space for a truck. Also, the idea of the "Parking Chair" is a local legend that occupies mental space even when the actual phenomenon is no longer very important. Like the Pirates.
But, I was speaking of local car norms in general. Because, even though the "chair" is rare, there are unwritten rules about parking in the street.
It's not that it seems unreasonable as a goal, I'm just surprised? or didn't know? that it was conventional to expect people to consider the convenience of people who happen to live nearby when parking legally. Like, asking him not to do it seems reasonable, his complying seems nice, but calling him a jerk for parking off his home block to begin with puzzles me. (Would he have been a jerk if he parked off his home block on a treeless block occupied by young healthy childless people?)
260 is right. There's no way to even consider him a jerk unless he kept parking there after being asked to stop. And according to Will, he stopped parking there after being asked to stop.
Sorry, Jaguar-owning guy. Though the odds are still good that you are a jerk, since you own a Jaguar.
In a neighborhood where people have driveways, I'd think the on-street spaces would be up for grabs. And in a neighborhood where people don't have driveways, parking is going to be scarce enough that the on-street spaces are up for grabs -- take what you can. (NB: I have owned a car for about a month of my life, and I live in New York.)
(1) it's pronounced funny by British people
You seem to have misspelled 'correctly'.
262: I think you are right. Especially once you get a few apartment buildings, all bets are off. But in much of Pittsburgh, you have a mix of houses with driveways and without. Plus households with two cars and only one off-street spot.
I'm just surprised? or didn't know? that it was conventional to expect people to consider the convenience of people who happen to live nearby when parking legally.
I think it's pretty conventional to expect people to consider the convenience of others whatever it is they happen to be doing. This is an expectation that often leaves one sorely disappointed, but still, I think it's a good convention.
Jumping straight to "jerk" when someone appears to have ignored the needs of others is unwarranted, sure. Often the offender isn't aware that they're causing a problem, and politely informing them of the situation solves it.
But there are some situations where the only possible interpretation seems to be actual or constructive jerkiness. There's a certain point at which obliviousness becomes indistinguishable from malice.
I think it's pretty conventional to expect people to consider the convenience of others whatever it is they happen to be doing.
Huh. Consider the convenience of others as superior to your own doesn't seem to be a default rule to me -- like, I need the old people and babies to think of it being reasonable to expect this guy to behave differently at all. He doesn't want branches on his car, other people don't want to walk a block -- with a conflict of interest like that, I think you're allowed to do what you like. (Which doesn't mean that it's wrong to ask someone not to inconvenience you -- maybe they were unaware of the conflict and don't mind accommodating to your wishes. But just because someone's inconveniencing you doesn't make them wrong.)
with a conflict of interest like that, I think you're allowed to do what you like. . . . But just because someone's inconveniencing you doesn't make them wrong.
I agree. I didn't say anything about anyone being wrong, but having expectations that people will consider others when acting to convenience themselves seems pretty fundamental to polite, civil behavior. Just because something is allowed or not illegal or the like doesn't mean one can't have reasonable expectations that people won't do it.
Well, yeah. I'm making the stronger claim that there are plenty of circumstances where acting in your own self-interest is reasonable even if it inconveniences others. When I dive for the last seat on the subway, I'm making someone else stand. I'm a jerk if they're old, or carrying heavy stuff, or injured, or pregnant. But if there aren't special factors like that in operation, no one has a reasonable expectation that I'm going to consider their convenience and let them sit rather than taking it myself. (And of course I'd be unreasonable to expect anyone else not to dive into a seat ahead of me.)
The parking thing seems like you need special factors (age and infirmity, babies) in order to reasonably expect someone to place the convenience of others above their own.
In my experience different neighborhoods have different established norms about what's acceptable and not w/r/t parking in front of other people's houses. In my neighborhood now, it's fine, and people might be annoyed but it's really their lookout. In a previous neighborhood, it was very much frowned upon, and doing it repeatedly would likely piss people off. I assume that Will's neighborhood is more like my old neighborhood in terms of parking norms than my current one, in which case it seems perfectly reasonable to expect people to follow the culture, even if it's not to their self interest.
In my experience different neighborhoods have different established norms about what's acceptable and not w/r/t parking in front of other people's houses. In my neighborhood now, it's fine, and people might be annoyed but it's really their lookout. In a previous neighborhood, it was very much frowned upon, and doing it repeatedly would likely piss people off. I assume that Will's neighborhood is more like my old neighborhood in terms of parking norms than my current one, in which case it seems perfectly reasonable to expect people to follow the culture, even if it's not to their self interest.
When I dive for the last seat on the subway, I'm making someone else stand. I'm a jerk if they're old, or carrying heavy stuff, or injured, or pregnant.
Here you seem to be endorsing the notion that it's jerky not to consider the convenience of others, but before your line was:
I'm just surprised? or didn't know? that it was conventional to expect people to consider the convenience of people who happen to live nearby when parking legally.
But perhaps we're just disagreeing on the meaning of "convenience"?
I assume that Will's neighborhood is more like my old neighborhood in terms of parking norms than my current one, in which case it seems perfectly reasonable to expect people to follow the culture, even if it's not to their self interest.
Well, yes. If there's a local norm that you can only park long-term in front of your own house, or on your own block, or whatever the rules are, it's reasonable to expect people to abide by it.
Huh. Disagree. I'd have expected there to be a fairly strong norm (which I think is actually implicit in Will's comments, even leaving aside the elderly and the small children) that you shouldn't park on a residential street that you don't live on, unless you can't find parking on your own street. If your street has empty spots, you park there. If you're circling the block to find a spot, then sure, take whatever you can get. But routinely parking on a residential street you don't live on just because you like it better is jerky.
272: I don't have to place the convenience of other people above my own when diving for a subway seat, unless there's some special circumstance that makes it much more burdensome for them to stand than for me to stand. Likewise, I don't see why a parker should have to place the convenience of other parkers above his own unless there's some special circumstance that makes it much more burdensome for them to not have the spot of their choice than for him to not have the spot of his choice.
"Consider" is a slippery word. When I dive for the seat I'm "considering" the convenience of everyone else who wants it in the sense that I'm aware they want it, but if they all look ablebodied I place my convenience above theirs. And barring special circumstances, local norms, or whatever, I think that's a reasonable way to behave.
274: Yeah, I think that goes in the local-norms box. Obviously, not in NY parking, probably not in other dense cities, but maybe there's a norm like that in most other places in the US. Where there's a norm, I'm all for abiding by it, I just didn't know about the 'don't park on someone else's block' one.
I think that's a reasonable way to behave.
It's a local norm, anyway.
constructive jerkiness
This is my standard for getting pissed at someone. If I am inconvenienced I prefer to assume that it's accidental or due to some pressing concern of which I am not aware. Only the constructive jerkiness really sets me off.
don't see why a parker should have to place the convenience of other parkers above his own unless there's some special circumstance
This is actually the problem with my current street. Every resident has carved a spot out of the snow. In my case, I carved out enough that you could plausibly park two cars there, but this juicebag keeps parking one foot short of where he should to let me get into the spot I carved out.
280: That sounds like 'leave a pleasant note' to me -- "Can you pull up a little farther when you park here? There's room for two cars if you're all the way to the front. Thanx! :)" Dude's just being thoughtless, he doesn't get anything out of blocking you out.
Yeah, I think that goes in the local-norms box.
Disagree.
Diving for a subway seat? Maybe in NYC. Everywhere I've lived, you walk at a dignified pace, and if someone of equal status (a guy) beats you, that's it, and if someone of higher status (elderly, injured, mom with ambulatory kids, etc) ties or comes close enough to tie if you slow down a bit, they win. Highest status -- elderly and moving with difficulty, seriously injured, mom with baby etc -- gets the seat even when one is already in it, book open.
280: Just park a car so that he can't get out without digging more snow himself. Borrow somebody's SmartCar if you need to.
I think there is a great distinction in parking norms between situations where each house probably has a car associated with it, and situations where you would not really expect that parking in front of someone's house means you are displacing their car.
If I am inconvenienced I prefer to assume that it's accidental or due to some pressing concern of which I am not aware.
That's my goal too, to avoid assuming jerkiness in the absence of clear evidence of jerky intent, although of course I often fall short of that standard.
Only the constructive jerkiness really sets me off.
Are we using "constructive jerkiness" the same sense? I meant "so oblivious of one's effect upon the world, or the needs of others that, even if they don't mean to be a jerk, they are in fact being one". Like how "constructive knowledge" means "should have known, even if they in fact didn't".
284: We move faster here than people in the rest of the country. But allowing for that, you've pretty much described what I do. I just don't feel compelled to hang back for anyone who isn't significantly "higher status" in your terms than I am.
283: Would you accept 'non-universal' norms? If someone in Manhattan bitched about people not from their block parking on it, they'd be insane. I'm perfectly willing to accept that there's a convention that you've got some kind of quasi-property right over parking spaces near your house in other parts of the country, but it's not a general norm of considerateness that could be deduced from first principles.
Congrats to Chopper/Belle
Late advice on ski clothes: Depends on the temperature. If it's relatively warm and you know you don't fall much then jeans, thermal underwear, and guetres will work. Another consideration is whether you're going to be going up on open chairlifts or on closed contraptions like gondolas, cable cars, or those closed chairlifts. Otherwise either buy a cheap pair of waterproof overpants, or if you're planning on skiing at least semi-regularly over the next decade or so, invest in a ski suit. They cost a bundle but last forever, I've had mine since the mid nineties. Also, good gloves. And if you're doing layers, bring a backpack. You can warm up fast while skiing, and soaking your clothing from the inside is if anything even more uncomfortable than from the outside. No need for goggles unless the visibility really sucks or it's snowing hard. Dark sunglasses are a must in sunny weather - you get a lot more light on the snow.
I'm surprised noone's mentioned hip flask or wineskin full of brandy yet.
Are we using "constructive jerkiness" the same sense?
I think we are close enough. Doing things like failing to pull forward far enough when the line of cars behind you extends into the intersection behind you isn't quite enough for to constitute constructive jerkiness to me, but parking at an angle that obstructs the adjacent parking spot is. The latter is so common in PG county MD that it's almost an institution.
If someone in Manhattan bitched about people not from their block parking on it, they'd be insane. I'm perfectly willing to accept that there's a convention that you've got some kind of quasi-property right over parking spaces near your house in other parts of the country, but it's not a general norm of considerateness that could be deduced from first principles.
But that's exactly what I disagree with. You're right of course that anyone in Manhattan bitching about this would be insane, but that's just because the "unless you can't (or don't reasonably expect to) find parking on your own street" exception more or less governs the entire city.
But that doesn't mean the general norm isn't deducible from first principles. It's fairly obvious that people generally want to park as close to their homes as they can. And that taking a spot on a street other than your own is potentially stopping someone else from doing that. And so when it's done for reasons other than necessity, it's a bit jerky. (It's not a street by street analysis, by the way. Parking in front of someone else's home at the other end of your own street would be just as jerky, if there's parking open in front of your own home.)
But you presumably want the spot you're parking in for some reason (like, no trees); you're not just parking there out of spite. So, the person nearby wants it because it's close, you want it because there's no trees -- why are their wants more important than yours unless they've got some kind of quasi-property right?
I shouldnt be surprised that the New York has a different standard for jerk than me.
I assigned jerkness to him bc when asked nicely, he argued and objected about how it was his right, despite him being approached with the statement that "You have the right to park wherever you want."
I think he is from New York.
Thinking about it, I could accept that all likely reasons for wanting to park someplace particular are bad reasons: that someone who wants to park close to their house is reasonable, but someone who wants to park not-under-trees is silly, so reasonable desires trump silly desires. Is that what's going on?
But you presumably want the spot you're parking in for some reason (like, no trees); you're not just parking there out of spite. So, the person nearby wants it because it's close, you want it because there's no trees -- why are their wants more important than yours unless they've got some kind of quasi-property right?
Maybe they want it because it's close and because there's no trees. In which case, you taking their spot is redistributing some social utitilty to you, but also lowering total social utility. Which, except in limited, non-generizable cases, is almost an inevitable result. And lowering total social utility just to get a larger piece of the pie for yourself is axiomatic jerkishness.
I shouldnt be surprised that the New York has a different standard for jerk than me.
Why would you think that you were NY's standard for jerk? You're not that bad, Will.
295: they don't have to be silly reasons. One street could be a safer place to leave a car than another street, for example. The same analysis applies.
And lowering total social utility just to get a larger piece of the pie for yourself is axiomatic jerkishness.
What if I park in front of someone's house, but also jerk off several dozen mice?
297: I thought we couldn't do interpersonal utility comparisons?
To take that argument seriously, if the spots on one street are preferable for an idiosyncratic reason, maybe the off-block guy really does get more utility out of parking there than the close guy. If the spots on that street are preferable to everyone, on the other hand, why should the people on that block always get the good spots (which they don't own), rather than spreading the wealth around a little?
My fair city has permit street parking over by the university. Is this sort of thing common? Or maybe common only around universities?
I can't make any sense of this argument outside of the peculiar notion, which I have witnessed mostly in suburbs, that some people have (or act as if they have) that they own the segment of street in front of their house. LB is clearly right.
302: Pittsburgh has it, including some streets that aren't close enough to be considered walking distance to a university. Mostly because of shopping/dinning areas where you'd have to pay more to park if you were not on the street.
My fair city has permit street parking over by the university. Is this sort of thing common? Or maybe common only around universities?
I've seen it around schools a lot.
302: Lots of it here. Looking out the window in what is not the densest neighborhood in the city, I see a sign saying that you can't park in the street for more than two hours, M-F 8 a.m. to 6 p.m., unless you have a resident permit.
Will, is it really true that this guy's block has lots of empty spaces where he could park, while one block away, your block is packed to the extent that his car's presence always means someone else is displaced?
Not exactly, Moby. Virtually everywhere in Pittsburgh where residential parking might conflict with people who are just visiting to shop or work is part of one of the parking zones. Exception: Squirrel Hill. (and metered spaces of course)
308: Thanks for that link. I had no idea permit parking was that common, possibly because I live in Squirrel Hill.
I'm trying so hard to get over my kneejerk sympathy to Will's position because doing so is basically my goal for the year. People are not necessarily jerks because they don't put the good of the whole in front of their own selfish desires or don't use their turn signals all the time, much as I might think they are. I'm going to try to be one of those jerky selfish people and I'm going to try very hard because being the one who always gives and thus never prospers left me miserable on what should have been moral high ground.
On my block (or blocks, since we're the corner house and I park on the side street and my partner at the front) the big controversy is apparently my neighbors' desire that I should park my cheesy old Camry well into the area that's painted yellow at the corner so that they can easily fit their two SUVs in behind me since they're bad parallel parkers and leave a lot of cushion. They've never said this to me in person, but I gather they complain about me to other neighbors. And I don't comply much because they're jerks who never even speak to me and there's already plenty of room for their cars and being cited once for parking too close to the corner was plenty of disincentive for me.
And I don't comply much because ... there's already plenty of room for their cars and being cited once for parking too close to the corner was plenty of disincentive for me.
See, this makes it seem to me like the issue is not, as you have framed it, "the good of the whole" versus "[your] own selfish desires", but of the neighbors' selfish desires versus your selfish desires. You desire not to get a ticket, and they desire to have an easier time parking. I see no reason to favor their desires over yours, and don't think it makes you a bad person in the slightest to want to park the way you are describing.
This discussion reminds me of my only recent, parking-related shouting. I drive by a school on my way in to work. On the first day of school, a parent tried to park at the corner right in front of the school on the side of the street where no parking is allowed. This reduced the street to one lane at the worst possible place. The kicker was that he wasn't even taking his kids into school as his wife was already walking them into the building.
He didn't move, and after a time, I gave the horn a brief toot. Then he turned his hazard lights on and I lost it. I rolled down the window and started vivid gestures while honking a lot and yelling "You can't possibly be thinking of stopping here." (His window was also open.) After there were a dozen cars piled-up and his wife, who'd been hestitating about going into the building, walked back to tell him to move.
It really is lovely not owning a car.
310: Park two SUV lengths back from the yellow patch. Let them figure out which one of their vehicles should be ticketed.
If the spots on that street are preferable to everyone, on the other hand, why should the people on that block always get the good spots (which they don't own), rather than spreading the wealth around a little?
The "which they don't own" seems to be your key point here, and I think you're going too far with it. Of course they don't "own" it, but they do have a special relationship to it, by virtue of their living closest to it. And that special relationship naturally bestows priority use rights. Analogy: people don't own the sidewalks in front of their buildings, either, but in many cities it's their responsibility to keep those sidewalks free from snow and ice.
People are not necessarily jerks because they . . . don't use their turn signals all the time
The f#$k they aren't. "Visualize Using Your Turn Signal" is the only slogany bumper-sticker I've ever been seriously tempted to affix to my vehicle. Perhaps with "Fucking" and "Asshole" added via carets.
I agree with M/tch. USE YOUR FUCKING TURN SIGNALS.
EVEN IF YOU'RE ONLY CHANGING LANES.
God damn do people who don't use their signals piss me off.
I hate it when I'm in a cab that doesn't use turn signals. I feel like apologizing to everyone around us.
317, 318: I call it "Statutory Jerkiness".
Would it be too much to suggest that people who don't use their turn signals are moral monsters? I think it would not.
Would it be too much to suggest that people who don't use their turn signals are moral monsters? I think it would not.
I would go farther, and claim it would be immoral not to suggest that.
Turn signal misuse is more serious than inconsiderate parking. Turn signals are safety features and failure to properly signal can get people killed.
A discussion I've heard way too many times is "Do you have to signal if you are in a turn only lane?" It makes me want to slap someone. Just asking the question indicates a fundamental failure to grasp the function of turn signals. This despite the fact that the name includes the word "signal."
324: Even worse is "why should I signal, there's no-one behind me?". The proper protocol is to always use your signal whenever you are going to turn or change lanes. Don't waste mental bandwidth making a determination about whether its proper in each instance. Do it automatically. Signalling when no-one sees it does no harm, but wrongly determining that it's not necessary might.
Okay, I give up on my brand-new devotion to not wanting to kill people who don't use turn signals because NOW I HAVE FRIENDS! Oh, it makes me so furious. If I were god, people would be getting zapped right and left and I would finally be happy. And of course you have to use your fucking turn signal in a fucking turn lane because the lack of a signal makes me think you're going to do something fucking stupid and potentially dangerous like not turn.
Otto, my parking legally isn't something that makes me feel morally queasy. Queasiness is reserved for things like if I didn't let someone into traffic if I could have or other things that don't hurt me at all and make things better for everyone. Except I always do those things. I am very conflicted about all this and probably shouldn't be talking about it for that reason, because technically it's a mental illness that I feel so strongly and am so judgmental and yet that's how I really feel and I don't entirely want to get over it. I'm just tired of having people not be nice to me, not as if life is fair.
On leaving work, I'll be waiting to turn left at an intersection where the people across from me never use their turn signals (it's a lane from which they can go straight, in which case I legally must defer to them, or turn left too, in which case we can mutually move and yipee!) and without fail there's ambiguity and it makes me furious and I want people dead. It happens every single day and my response is also predictable. It's not actually road rage because I don't respond to them, but it's road heartbreak and furious sadness in humanity for me.
Failure to properly use apostrophes, on the other hand, is never a sign of jerkiness and imminently forgiveable.
We have residential permit parking here at night - being a block south of the Sunset Strip and all its clubs means we wouldn't have any parking at all otherwise. As it is, parking is at a premium - we have one garage space and two cars, so one of them has to be on the street at night. [This building was built in the 50s; nowadays, the city requires a parking space for each bedroom. We'd have 4 spaces if that had been the rule back when.] Others on the block are in the same situation, which is made worse by the fact that we're on the edge of a parking zone, so parking a block away in one direction isn't an option.
We've got a party-boy neighbour who hosts loud sports galas every weekend that there's a Big Game. His guests frequently park across our space and sometimes in it. This turkey parked across the fucking driveway, just far enough down that the cops wouldn't tow the car w/o the manager's permission, it being on private property and all. I thought the turkey might have been visiting the PBN, and hence woke him up. He was not thrilled. And was apparently insulted that I thought he drove an Audi; he huffed that he had a Beemer. So the behemoth Beemer SUV is his. This does not make me look at him in a more favourable light.
If it weren't for the security camera right over that particular portion of the parking area, I'd have done something far more evil than adhering a nasty note to the windshield. That will have to suffice. Label stock is a bitch to get off glass.
Failure to differentiate between "eminently" and "imminently" also follows M/tch's rules, obviously.
The car-per-bedroom theory is not one I'd heard before. I can only think of a few areas near us busy enough to require residential permits. My parents' town used to but that was just out of snootiness/nosiness, I think.
it's really their lookout
I'm very fond of this expression.
It really is lovely not owning a car.
Word.
Parking is one subject where extrapolating from New York is really just not possible at all, because it's so different from everywhere else in the country. In most large cities, the way parking works is that there isn't very much space for parking, but most people do have cars, so the issue of who gets to park where and when leads to considerable tension that gets resolved in various ways (typically either by permit-only zones or by informal local norms of the type discussed in this thread). In suburban areas, where there is typically plenty of space for parking, this isn't much of an issue except around certain types of facilities that bring in large numbers of commuters, such as college campuses.
When I change lanes, I signal my intentions by putting on my hazard lights. Because I'm extra safe.
(Sorry if I was being bitch, M/tch. I only aim to tease. And work, like turn-signal misuse, has me on the verge of furious tears today.)
((and that I can't even spell "bitchy" says all you need to know about my credibility, though not my bitchiness.))
Failure to properly use apostrophes, on the other hand, is never a sign of jerkiness and imminently forgiveable.
Improper omission's are forgivable; improper insertion's, not so much.
My wife will put on her turn signal if the person in front of her is turning and she thinks the person behind her cannot see the signal of the person in front of her. She maintains this helps the person behind understand what is happening. I maintain that it is dicking with the brain of the person behind you, since you're going to go straight, and that your brake lights convey enough information to the person behind.
Belonging in a slightly higher (?) circle of hell than the non-turn-signal users are the people who make turns that are nowhere close to 90 degrees but rather a gentle arc that takes them through one or more of the oncoming lanes, even when cars are approaching from those lanes, if you see what I mean.
(Do I mean higher or lower if I mean that these people are less bad? Higher number = more bad, right? But it seems like there also be a depth dimension. I never did read Dante.)
The other day, a person I was behind (who had been driving about 10 miles below the speed limit, thus frustrating the numerous cars behind) failed to put on their turn single but pulled into the left-turn lane at a very busy four-way stop, and then proceeded to do a U-Turn. Fantastic, because a) I'm pretty sure a U-Turn at a 4-way stop is illegal and it was incredibly unexpected b) they couldn't actually MAKE the turn and ended up doing a 5-point turn instead and c) a car in the opposing direction, thinking that they were safe to turn right while the car turned left, started to make that turn and there was quite nearly a collision.
336: I think using your turn signal to indicate that you are not turning is probably misleading.
I'm thinking of taking up misanthropy.
The circles of hell are counted from the outside in. The first circle includes virtuous pagans and people who deliberately drive over strollers. The seventh circle contains those who don't use their turn signals. Moby's wife will find herself after she dies joining Judas in being forever gnawed by Satan.
No, I mean there will be an addition.
Turning in a soft arc (rather than committing steadfastly to the turn) would I think only rate the vestibule, rather than any proper infernal circle.
A new, lower, circle will have to be created for Moby's wife, the depths of whose evil I think Dante could never have conceived.
My theory is that people who leave their turn signals on all the time are part of a secret conspiracy and are sending messages to each other. In fact, there are two waring groups, those that are always claiming to be about to turn left, and those who are always claiming to be about to turn right.
345: I'm not sure what you mean by soft arc vs committing steadfastly, but I worry that you might be denigrating constant radius turns, which are the one true path.
Your wife must be killed. Luckily, driving like that, there's a fair chance she will be.
I could have learned a valuable lesson about social construction and property rights, but I was too annoyed.
Property is theft!
350: In terms of not hitting other cars or stationary objects, her driving record is much better than mine.
353: How about in terms of being fired upon by other drivers?
Yeah but what about those behind her?
Shooting a gun while driving takes your attention away from where it should be - texting, eating, drinking, wanking, and reading the paper.
354: She doesn't do it in city traffic and places where you expect a lot of people to turn. I've tried a couple of times to mention not doing it, but it is hard convince somebody that your driving instruction is correct when she knows about the retaining wall you backed into and the park garage pillars you've hit (two). And the van.
Have the pair of you considered moving to a walkable city? New Urbanism is all the rage these days.
New Urbanism as currently practiced in the US still involves lots of driving.
it is hard convince somebody that your driving instruction is correct when she knows about the retaining wall you backed into and the park garage pillars you've hit (two)
You sound like my wife. Excellent driver once she gets her head into it, but occasionally the first hundred feet get weird.
358: I think we are in a fairly walkable city, at least compared to anywhere else I've lived. Our house's walk score is 72, which is "Highly Walkable" and a bit above average for Pittsburgh.
Also, the van was not my fault. The stationary objects were pretty much my fault.
Our house's walk score is 72, which is "Highly Walkable" and a bit above average for Pittsburgh.
Mine is 91, a.k.a., "Walkers' Paradise".
362 is great.
While driving home today, I had to slam on the brakes to avoid an oncoming car that abruptly turned left directly in front of me with no turn signal. I blame this thread.
the park garage pillars you've hit
These can cause damage that's surprisingly expensive to fix, it turns out.
363: I think mine would come in a bit higher, but the local transit authority doesn't give out data the way the walk score people want to use it. I'm very close to the main bus lines for my part of town. (I used to bus to work, but I got to where I couldn't take the crowding.)
Walk score: 65 - "somewhat walkable", yet here I require a car to get to work. Previous place I lived: 34 - "car dependent", yet I made do with walking and buses. Someone should rewrite Walk Score to compute Walk & Public Transit Score.
re: 362
In a similar story, I once saw a fire-engine ram a car out of the way that someone had parked on some double-yellow lines [and on a corner]. Literally crashed into the back of it and pushed it onto the pavement, and then drove off.
Currently, 77. My old place was a 92, though - not bad for a small town!
My address scores a 78, though the average for Durham is only 44.
My walk score is 91. Sounds about right.
The guy who came to fix my Mac last week did so by Metro (DC). Took it back and returned it the same way, which is impressive since it's one of those big screen jobbies the size of a mid sized TV.
373: My old Durham address got a 22.
The house I grew up in got a 28, which is actually higher than I'd have expected.
74, which is high. Being a quarter-mile or so from a neighborhood shopping center doth not urbanism make.
The house where I grew-up got a 45, which seems to be greatly inflated by the fact that it calculates the nearest coffee shop is 27 miles away. You'd think they could go ahead and ignore that if the nearest restuarant is half a mile away.
I think I've had this conversation before. Maybe somewhere else.
I'll be visiting a fairly awesome place for a month in the spring but will be put up in a place with a mere 62 walk score and, I think, where I won't even have access to a kitchen. This is making me grumpy.
My parents' current home puts up a perfect goose egg.
And the one I lived in as a young kid would too, except that there's now a gas station/convenience store a mile or so away.
386: I'm going to conjecture that 385.2 applies with equal force to your parents' place, no?
More likely meth labs. The swimmin' hole situation is pretty decent, provided you don't have an unreasonable aversion to fecal coliform bacteria.
Our house is rated 82, "Very Walkable", which frankly perplexes the hell out of me. I don't know how our neighborhood could be any more walkable unless we had a covered walkway from our front door to a federally subsidized whiskey bar.
My thoughts exactly. The new house only gets an 85? That's bullshit. I'm not a big fan of their algorithm. (Although I'll grant that it's usually at least directionally useful, and there's nothing else better out there, so it's hard to complain too much.)
Like all possible conversations, we've had this one before.
We've had this conversation before, and their algorithm still sucks. 78 for my neighborhood is absurd.
I'm amused by how places that are about two blocks apart can have scores that differ by 10.
My current home scores a 100!
But in a couple of weeks I'm moving to a place that only has a 55. :(
Yes, but it could have been worse -- the city lockup is only two blocks from a bail bonds and a check casher.
Mine is 91, a.k.a., "Walkers' Paradise".
As I walk along Irving Street to the health food store
I take a look at my hood
And realize we've got it all.
'Cause there's Indian and sushi and Thai
And even my momma thinks our sidewalks ain't flawed.
But I am not saying there is not room for improvement.
Our bars just ain't that hoppin', we wish they were better.
So don't count on finding parking
Ya come here walking
Or you and your homies will circle the block.
I really got to warn on Sunday morn,
The farmers, their market will be full of strollers.
Fool, this is kinda hood that little homies will grow up in,
Eating some gelato
And sandwiches from Pluto's.
[Chorus]
I've spent just over 5 years
Living in a walkers' paradise.
I'm gonna tell Weird Al that someone is on his turf.
What kind of person rents out a bedroom in their apartment for a month at a time but forbids kitchen access? And charges $1000 for that?
98! House I grew up in: 25. This is fun.
Apologies for lying to you before. For once in my life, there was no one at the stoplight when I got there and I was able to turn left in peace. There were plenty of other bad drivers, but none in that particular spot.
My house scores 86, which is about right thanks to our town's little main street revitalization, though the restaurant it's ranking is an Arby's and the movie theater closed something like 15 years ago. I do routinely walk to bars, restaurants, the library, and my weekly bellydance class. I drive to work because it would take 2+ hours on the buses to make it the 10 miles to my office (maybe faster if I spent 10-20 minutes walking across the bridge to downtown and picking up a bus there) and I'd rather just have the whole travel thing done in the 15-minute reverse commute I have now. Mass transit here is bad and getting worse under budget cuts.
Am I the only one with a score of 100? I hereby deem Los Angeles to be America's Most Walkable City. Thanks.
And charges $1000 for that?
Forgive me if this is pseudonym breaking, but where the hell are you going to be? You can sublet one-bedroom places nearly anywhere (I'm guessing not Manhattan) for that....
I have a bridge to sublet for less than that. NO KITCHEN ACCESS.
Hmmm - our address scores an 88, which does not take into account the very steep hill up to Sunset - I've seen people younger and more fit than I struggle up it - or the slightly less steep hill up from Santa Monica Blvd. Absent the hills, I'd agree with them, bit hauling groceries [or books] up hill is not an activity I care to indulge in.
Our house is a 95, but the site tells me that 43% of Cambridge addresses have a higher walkability score. They don't have better access to the best beer bar in Cambridge, though! Take that!
There are addresses that are closer to said bar and closer to the fish store, but they're further from the post office and the Y. I declare my apartment ideally located.
Huh, my previous apartment gets 100. That's counting the Center for Marxist Education as the nearest bookstore.
My mom's house gets a 60. The apartment in downtown Albuquerque where I used to live gets a 94. I think the algorithm has improved since the last time we did this, or maybe it just has better data available.
65. I can walk to pentecostal churches, crack dens, and one of America's busiest freeways. And a pretty good playground.
Forgive me if this is pseudonym breaking, but where the hell are you going to be?
A west coast national lab.
You can sublet one-bedroom places nearly anywhere (I'm guessing not Manhattan) for that....
Probably, though the tricky part is finding one that's available for short-term renting and within walking distance (or maybe a convenient bus line) of the place I'm visiting. The things I'm seeing on Craigslist are no good. The default option is to stay at the lab's on-site hotel, which is perfectly nice, except that it lacks a kitchen.
Current address gets a 77, just slightly higher than my old address, which makes sense since I only moved about 3 blox. But it's still skewed, because, as I mentioned back in 2008 when we last looked at that site, they are listing the late, unlamented Commodore Bar as being nearby, despite the fact that it blew up over 5 years ago.
Don't blow up the spot!
The walkability site isn't able to tell me that it doesn't have data for my parents' address. Instead, it gives me the score for a place with the same street name, wrong zip code.
416: Have you considered putting an RV in the parking lot?
I mean to live in, not just to improve the appearance of the parking lot.
Chaco gets an 8.
More walkable than where I grew up! Seems to be because it's near a park.
The place where we lived when I was a little kid gets a 23.
A west coast national lab.
Maybe try appealing to commenters who you know live in the area? (If there are any?) I bet they could help!
422: Indeed. Everything else is way beyond walking distance, but there's a park right there!
(I'm sure you already thought of this. But the thought of paying that much AND not being able to use a kitchen for a month hurts.)
Interestingly, my work only gets an 88, despite being in the most densely populated zip code in the state. Which is telling. The idiot landlords want to build MORE housing, when what we need is more and better amenities, particularly cheaper groceries. Also, it lists several defunct businesses for our address, instead of us, as per usual.
415: No, this is a hole in the wall in Central Square, near the Dance Complex.
The place where my dad grew up gets a 0. I'm mostly impressed that it can even find these places.
Both places I lived as a kid get 78, but one of them was actually much, much, more "walkable" than the other in terms of getting to places where goods are bought and sold. The other one was closer to a park and a recreation center. And a school I did not attend.
Every thread is a food thread, so this is not off topic: how long does that Adams peanut butter last (kept refrigerated)? I usually don't eat peanut butter all that quickly, but with the brands with all the preservatives, it's generally not a concern.
Meggles says all the really walkable bits of this rock are going to be underwater shortly. That could be a problem.
432: first hit for "walkability" on Google
ok. Current house = 78 (in the city)
My old house = 3. But I could see the river and walk without seeing anyone for a long time. Still very walkable.
Maybe try appealing to commenters who you know live in the area? (If there are any?) I bet they could help! (I'm sure you already thought of this. But the thought of paying that much AND not being able to use a kitchen for a month hurts.)
Well, I wouldn't be paying that much and not using a kitchen; if I don't find a nearby sublet with a kitchen, I'll just stay in the lab's hotel, at their expense. And there are plenty of people I know (IRL, even) who live in the area, but far enough from the lab that I wouldn't want to commute from their place daily. I think proximity is outweighing kitchen-having-ness in my considerations, so the on-site hotel will probably have to do.
Place I grew up gets a 37. Not bad. It did use to have a downtown before it became a suburb. Fiancee's soulless development gets an 11.
Is there at least a microwave at the hotel?
Minneapolis residences: 52 and 54.
Chicago residences: 85, 66, 89.
SF residences: 94, 91.
I'd say the ordering implied by those scores matches pretty well the one I would have come up with on my own, so I'm satisfied with their algorithm.
Though, the Chicago residence that was a 66 may have not been very walkable to the generic human, but it felt very walkable to me in that it was immediately adjacent to campus and thus gave me very easy access to stuff that was important to me at the time.
Is there at least a microwave at the hotel?
They say that microwave and refrigerator are available upon request.
I can't figure out how anywhere in Hyde Park can get a score as low as 66.
Borrowed from the biologists?
Oh, that's not bad, then. Plus, you could regale us of Brock like tales!
Obama's Chicago house also gets a 66. The Prez and I are walkability buddies! No wonder I feel like he understands me!
My current place gets a 92, which is a bit high compared to the reality of the situation. My previous place, all of 6/10 mile away and (IMO) better located, scores 89, just to remind us that their algorithm doesn't always agree with us. Even the place I lived in western mass comes up with a 40 - living across the street from a beer bar, pizza shop, packie, and bus stop is pretty good for being car-dependent otherwise. My mom's current place, where I grew up, gets an entirely unsurprising zero, and reminds me that I had a three-mile drive to get to the bus stop for high school.
446: I was over on the west side of campus. There's actually not a lot of business over there (Sammy's Touch was the main off-campus dining option) due to the space taken up by things like Stagg Field and Washington Park. Great place to be if you anticipate needing ER access, though. Getting downtown and points north was also markedly less convenient outside of the hours when the 173 was running (closer to lake you have access to the express buses, whereas over where I was you had to take the 55 or go for a good mile walk through the park to the Green Line).
But as I said, the algorithm certainly undercounts the importance of that apartment's proximity to the Regenstein A-level. In conclusion, don't decide where you are going to live purely based on Walk Scores.
||
Things the Obama administration has done wonderfully, amazingly right:
1. Granting Temporary Protected Status to Haitian nationals who were living in the U.S. as of Jan. 12.
2. Holding an urgent conference call at 6 p.m. on a Friday of a holiday weekend to make sure that critical information about the TPS process was released to community organizations.
||>
To clear out the freezer, I'm heating my first-ever Sara Lee premade frozen apple pie thingy. I'd been thinking of adding some sharp cheddar in honor of my cheddarhead relatives, but at the moment blue cheese sounds more appealing with it. Have I lost my mind?
Blue cheese on apple pie sounds really good, but mightn't a premade frozen apple pie thingy be too sweet for that to work?
I lived for 2 months in SF with just a microwave and a fridge. (Two rooms, laundry included (but shared, meaning the landlady had to go downstairs to my rooms to do her laundry), $600/month near west portal - not so bad but would have been unworkable for much longer.) The thing that I really missed was having an adequate sink area - the sink itself in the bathroom was fine, but there was no counter space around it. A hotel should be better on that count.
NPH, I don't know. I've never tasted one before, but I am expecting it to be too sweet and taste like the sort of thing you'd get in a school cafeteria. I guess I'll taste first, cheese later.
451: Ooh, yeah, that was a bit of a desert over there.
Ooh, yeah, that was a bit of a desert over there.
Put some blue cheese on it!
Well, I'm working on Monday, but it is MLK Day. Lots of offices are closed.
Martin Luther King Day is on Monday, racist.
See, I knew I'd feel bad partaking in the racist name-calling. It hurts worse when you're pwned.
That can't be right. MLK Day is never more than 2 weeks before the Super Bowl.
No holiday up here, you American exceptionalists.
That walkability algorithim is bollocks. I plugged in a former address I lived in in Glasgow; right in the centre of boho tenement land. Smack bang in the middle of the highest density concentraiton of pubs, galleries, shops, one could possibly imagine. We once worked out there were about 15 liquor stores within 5 minutes walk. There were also a couple of large parks, a univeristy, several art galleries and a couple of national sporting arenas. And it came up with 89. I can't really imagine how somewhere could be more walkable.
Becks-style on the univeristy.
See, I knew I'd feel bad partaking in the racist name-calling.
Don't feel bad. It's Lee-Jackson-King Day for the real racists of the world.
It's offensive slang for a person from Pakistan.
464: So who is in the wrong here: The federal government or the NFL?
Maybe it's assuming that with all those pubs, pedestrians will have to dodge drunk people fairly often.
Or that it'll be hard to walk because of all the vomit on the sidewalks.
re: 473
Are you insinuating we can't hold our drink? People have been stabbed for less ...
walkability: 89
stabability: 100
Kidding aside, that area was the sort of area where you'd actively seek to live, even if you had a LOT of disposable income.
474: No, it's not you, Sirs. It's all the damn Yanks who come over there on their year abroad.
packie
A what now?
You know, a spa.
I'd say any difference within 20 points or so is easily attributable to imprecision in the algorithm or problems with the data.
All you people who don't know what the packy is, sheesh. It's like you didn't grow up in eastern Massachusetts or something.
This apple pie with blue cheese was not exactly a success. Together, the apple was too cloying and the cheese too creamy. Eating a slice of pie and then treating myself to a slice of cheese was perfect. Now I can just watch the cat attack a plastic bag and enjoy my knitting for the rest of the evening.
479: Having googled, I see that I've been to a packie/packy and didn't even know it.
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So, a quick google tells me that I should never leave primer unpainted. But it doesn't tell me why not. I had planned to paint the inside of my closet white, but I primed it first and it looks fine and now I'm tired. I don't really need to paint it, right? Right?
|>
482: Primer? I 'ardly know 'er!
If leaving primed walls unpainted is some kind of horrible risk behavior, we're pretty much screwed at my place. No noticeable ill-effects so far though.
482: It'll show dirt and scuff marks readily, and it's not made to be cleaned. If you leave it unpainted for very long, you'll likely have to prime again if you decide to paint it. Other than that, though, I don't see what the problem would be.
Eh. As I said, it's inside a closet, who cares. As long as it won't like slough off into fine inhalable poisonous powder over time or something like that. At this point in the process I'm tired and fine with the lame job I'm doing.
Speaking of inhalable poisons, I'm convinced that the glue stripper I'm using to clean the floors after carpet removal is giving me lung cancer. (Also that using a palm sander is giving me cancer of some sort, possibly of the bone, although the mechanism for that is not clear.) Home renovation isn't a hobby for the neurotic or the hypochondriac, as is becoming increasingly clear to me.
Oh, I didn't know it did outside the US. I got 75. But that's with thinking that we have no transit system. In fact, I have bus stops for about 5 different buses within 200 yards, and a train station less than 1/4 mile away. Plus it seems to have lost the cinema in town about a mile away, is only counting things with 'park' in the name as parks whereas I have green space and playgrounds extremely close by, and has missed a couple of clothes shops. And counting the swimming pool instead of kids yoga is probably a better idea. Although it has given me a bookshop round the corner! (That I don't think is an actual shop, even if a bookseller lives there.) So I think I must really have over 90. I certainly walk about all the time.
A friend of mine recently moved and made me laugh (at her) a lot by saying that she liked her new town because everything was within walking distance. Although she thinks her definition of walking distance is probably further than other people's because they regularly walk the *gasp* mile to the pool.
jms, my sister and I felt exactly like that after painting her boat with a copper-based paint. But then we ate chard for dinner and decided that we had prevented the cancer (probably with anti-oxidants or vitamins or something). Worked a charm, I'm telling you.
You could have blueberries for desert, if you are worried about the palm sander too.
My parents' new house is a 9. Although they do have a decent bus service that it doesn't know about, which ameliorates things.
I'm convinced that the glue stripper I'm using to clean the floors after carpet removal is giving me lung cancer.
I tend to think of paint strippers, and I suppose by extension glue strippers, as needing to be used with great caution. There are presumably warnings of various kinds on the container -- ensure plenty of ventilation and that sort of thing? You're in CA, I think, so it's probably warm enough to keep windows open.
Chard! That's a great idea. I only have kale, but I'm sure that will work too.
We're definitely keeping all the doors and windows open, and using face masks and all that. I'm just super neurotic. Anyway I'm sure it'll be the cigarettes that give me cancer, not the glue stripper, so I shouldn't even worry.
Chard! That's a great idea. I only have kale
Sounds like you need to get re-charded.
House I live in now: 6 (Apparently, they don't think be right at the trailhead for a wilderness -- I can walk to Canada and cross pavement 3 times -- counts)
House I sold in 2008: 48
MSU student: 86
Adolescence in CA: 9
Childhood in TX:83
(I'm guess it's about a 200 mile walk to Canada, avoiding pavement. Maybe a bit more.)
Are there many bookshops along the way?
My brother walks home from work each day in central London - 5 miles and he only crosses two roads. Pretty cool.
495: You should go up to border and sit in a lawn chair with a shotgun, just to be sure none of their socialism leaks through.
We're definitely keeping all the doors and windows open, and using face masks and all that.
Oh, good. I was going back and forth here between: hm, she knows all that, right? And: of course she does, don't be silly!
The face mask for the sanding particles, maybe for the glue stripping too. The other thing I'd do is think about my contact lenses, actually. Don't know if you wear them, of course, but I had a pair of contacts become contaminated when wearing them in a freshly painted house for a few days. They're gas permeable, and you're trapping things against/on your eyeballs with contacts. This may be not applicable.
405 You can? That's about what it would cost for a relatively short term mid range decently located one in Warsaw. The rather modest two bedroom in Geneva I grew up in cost that much thirty years ago. In Manhattan the median price for a one br south of Harlem would run around three times that. In the outer boroughs we're talking either an exceptionally bad apartment in a so-so location or the reverse.
$1000 a month would get you a hell of a nice apartment (or house) almost anywhere in the US.
$1000 a month would get you a hell of a nice apartment (or house) almost anywhere in the US.
Except in nice neighborhoods of major metropolitan areas on either coast or in Chicago. Well, on the East Coast, I guess I'm thinking of the area north of Baltimore.
$1000 a month would get you a hell of a nice apartment (or house) almost anywhere in the US that you wouldn't want to live.
No bookshops. No towns at all.
No wait -- the gift shop at the top of the Going-to-the-Sun highway in Glacier Park is just steps off the path, and they have a fair selection of relevant books.
Canada has been colonizing us with wolves for many years now, and we get plenty of smoke from their forest fires. I say we invade and see if we can't capture some of that socialism and bring it back.
502, 503: Like I said, "almost anywhere."
503: Pittsburgh is kind of nice, once you get used to it.
Geographically sure, population wise a lot less, urban areas where you'd want to live really not. What's the population of the NE Corridor - some one fifth or sixth of the US?
505, 506: Just funning. I do recognize that there are viable alternatives to decadent coastal elitism.
The apartment I mentioned in 413 (walk score of 94) cost me $500 a month in 2007. It went up to $525 after 6 months when my term lease ended and I switched to month-to-month.
In my dialect (Dorchester) a packie is not a spa.
I've heard that a person can buy, like, entire neighborhoods in North Dakota for $1000.
511: What an acre of good wheat land go for?
Except in nice neighborhoods of major metropolitan areas on either coast or in Chicago.
Chicago is much cheaper than any coastal area where I've rented anything. More expensive than most of the country, I suppose, but not extremely so. (Though when I was in college, my parents were appalled at the rents in Chicago, because in my hometown of NewBtockLamerfville, $700/month would basically get you a centrally-located palace.)
Re: parking: how about how one resident's consistent illegal parking forced the relocation of a bus stop?
Also, the walk score thing is still sort of idiosyncratic and bullshitty, but maybe less so than it was the last time I checked. My old address now scores an 82; my current one a 94. I'd reverse those scores since the new place's walkability is still somewhat theoretical (unless you really only care about grocery stores and Metro access), but what do I know?
1600 Pennsylvania Ave has a Walk Score of 97, but I'm guessing Obama doesn't walk his shirts over to the dry cleaners all that much.
It would take a little work to find a 1-bedroom apartment in Pittsburgh for more than $1000/month. The really upper-end market considers itself "condos" rather than apartments.
517: You could hit over $1,000 downtown or in Shadyside with no trouble at all.
Yeah, that was an exaggeration. What about $3000?
Meanwhile, I'm pretty sure this complex was renting two-bedroom apartments for $110 a month ten years ago. The rates may have gone up a bit. Or down, who knows.
dammit, wrong link. this complex
513: The last time I lived in Chicago -- eight years ago, I think -- I struggled to find a decent one-bedroom in a nice part of the city for under $1000/month. In fact, I failed and ended up in a crappy studio sublet from a UIC undergrad. That said, I find Chicago pretty confused, so it wouldn't surprise me to learn that I had been looking in the wrong place.
Have I mentioned how much I'd like to move to Pittsburgh?
And right up the street from 520, you can buy this 6-bedroom house for only $16.900!
519: I don't think the nicest one bedroom would go for much over $1,500, but I could be wrong. Of course, $1,500 is mortgage + taxes on a nice house.
522: I grew up outside Cleveland. We used to visit Pittsburgh in the winter to get some much-needed sunshine.
522: Not that the $110/month place was nowhere near Pittsburgh.
523: Pittsburgh winters are far better than in the Midwest. This year has been a rat's ass, but that's pretty much everywhere.
Of course, $1,500 is mortgage + taxes on a nice house.
Hating you right now.
Of course, $1,500 is mortgage + taxes on a nice house.
Ahahahahahahahaha.
Pittsburgh winters are far better than in the Midwest.
How are you defining "Midwest"? I've lived through Nebraska winters, and I've lived through Pittsburgh winters, and I'll take Nebraska.
How many times have you lived in Chicago, ari?
What? $1,500 would still make the payment on something well over $150k and still leave room for taxes. That will do you more than fine.
531: Three. And never for more than a few months, the term of a long research trip or a short fellowship.
530: Seriously. I've lived through Nebraska winters. 21 and 1/2 of them, if you want a count. Pittsburgh winters are much warmer and the wind doesn't bite as much.
How are you defining "Midwest"?
Let's say instead that Pittsburgh winters are the nicest in the entire rust belt.
Living at 520 was part of my plan for what to do if my parents lost all their money and died and I couldn't go to college and had to work as a nurse or something and support my sister. It's even on a bus line!
532: I understand intellectually that there are places where that's true. It just reminds me how fucked the real estate market is here.
534: I'll trade Arctic cold for actually seeing the sun once in a while. At least you can bundle up against the cold.
532 feels gratuitous to me. May your winters grow longer and your baseball team never improve. So there.
537: So the problem with the Pittsburgh winter is the same as the problem with the Pittsburgh summer, that is, "clouds".
537: True about the sun. However, I've never frozen the skin off my ear in Pittsburgh.
538: The last part is probably a safe bet.
539: Yes, precisely. Same reason I could never hack Seattle.
"clouds"
Again, having grown up in Cleveland, Pittsburgh always seemed like Mesa, AZ by comparison.
In my experience different neighborhoods have different established norms about what's acceptable and not w/r/t parking in front of other people's houses.
My previous car (which I still miss very dearly) gave up the ghost mid-divorce. Or, more literally, the radiator. Replacing the radiator would have cost more than the car was worth, so I bought a new one (which is perfectly nice, but just not the same). I left the old one in the driveway for months, however, as I'd decided to give it to a friend (who has the mechanic skills to replace a radiator himself) in exchange for his promise to do my landscaping (which he never did -- jerk!). So my point, which I am totally getting to if you'll just bear with me another minute, is that when he finally came to get the car (they were going through a rough pregnancy at the time), a neighbor apparently approached him to express joy and relief that the hideous thing would *finally* be taken care of. A car. Which looked perfectly fine, despite its not running. And which was parked, in any event, in my own goddamned driveway.
I may have mentioned here before how much I love my community.
Same reason I could never hack Seattle.
Yeah, tell me about it. I'll be doing a bit of drinking before this winter's over. On the plus side, my mortgage payment is pretty low.
I left the old one in the driveway for months,
My dad once drove an old car into the trees beside our house to get it out of the driveway. We lived in town and the car was still visible from the street or the neighbor's house. I'm not sure why he didn't sell it right away, but nobody said anything.
544: I figure there's a reason espresso + weed is called a Seattle speedball. You're not going to make it through a winter there without either.
What an acre of good wheat land go for?
Probably around $1000 depending on where in the state it is.
500: My $1000 will get you a one-bedroom apartment sublet suffered from my characteristic lack of precision; I meant that you should be able to at least rent a room in an apartment for that price with full access to the rest of the place even in coastal cities (granted, not necessarily in the best neighborhoods). I am aware of the typical rental prices in the Bay Area, I swear - but I don't think that's absurd statement with the above redefinition. Or if it is, I know a lot of outliers.
Or you could use your $1000 to buy an acre of land in North Dakota and grow wheat. I don't know how much wheat you could grow with just an acre, though.
Now that I've gotten a message from one of my hosts assuring me that comfortable non-hotel accommodations can be found, despite the fact that this thread is the only place where I've expressed any concern about this, I'm getting all paranoid. (If you're reading this, can you let me know my secret identity is compromised? I mean, it was never very secure, but I might want to be more careful about what I say.)
$110 a month? Damn. Seventeen years ago I was paying two hundred for a crappy studio in a mediocre location in Warsaw. Two hundred happened to be the median salary back then in Poland, which gives a good idea of why folks weren't moving from sky high unemployment areas to where the jobs were.
With irrigation, 100-150 bushels. Without, 30-60. Or so says wiki.
My general route to staying in the Bay Area for longer stretches of time is to house sit. People will even pay you!
550: Probably just a government agent. Nothing to fear.
Again, having grown up in Cleveland, Pittsburgh always seemed like Mesa, AZ by comparison.
Damn, I thought the attraction of cold places over the coastal PNW was that at least you got to see the sun in the winter. You're saying that in addition to being Cleveland, Cleveland has no sun?
551: Take a look at the location of the $110 a month apartment. How much would apartments go for in a village on the outskirts of Wodzisław Śląski?
You'd better be able to get a room in an apartment with one or two others for less than $1000/month in the Bay Area. I might be there in the summer.
That should be, with irrigation, 80-100 bushels. I can't read well, and it sounds like it is highly dependent on place.
556: You can. I just perused Craigslist. They might demand that you bring no one home with you, ever, though.
557: I'd like a loaf from the north side of the field. '96 if you have it.
558: While that may happen anyway, I don't really like the idea of institutionalizing it.
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Hey, so remember when we were talking about online dating a while back and parsimon asked if the OkCupid matching algorithm would have matched me with my paramour from last summer? Looks like the answer is yes. 82% compatible. (Sounds about right.) I winked at her.
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Are you in the same place, or is this just a "ha, isn't this something" kind of wink? (Probably the only acceptable kind.)
I've had yet another interesting-sounding person on OkCupid message me and then delete her account before I got around to replying. This is becoming a pattern.
And I should note that there's not really anything fortuitous about this; she mentioned on her LiveJournal that she had started an OkCupid account, so I decided to see if I could find her there. I could.
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Facebook is inviting me to become a fan of The Book of Mormon: Another Testament of Jesus Christ.
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My friend who unfriended me for some reason (it was during one of the months long periods I didn't log in to facebook, and I never post or comment on anything, so I have no idea what that was about - maybe just an accident) is now trying to re-friend me. I really don't want to see his conservative updates.
You could accept it and then hide his updates.
Yeah, I have a few people hidden. I like it.
Yeah, I have a few people hidden. I like it.
Asilon has the body of an eighteen year old, but nobody knows where she keeps it.
Honestly, the more I see about FB, the less attractive it seems. They steal the copyright to all your stuff, you expose yourself to being stalked by people you've spend decades avoiding, what's the plus side?
Well, without Facebook I would be in touch with maybe four friends ad acquaintances who no longer live in the same city as me, and with Facebook I am in touch with something like 100 people that I want to be in touch with. (and some people who I have no interest in) That has been a massive improvement in my life.
I second 573. I'm terrible about keeping in touch with people, and Facebook has alleviated a lot of that guilt.
I too am terrible about keeping in touch with people. By and large I regard that as a feature rather than a bug. How much time can you give to interacting with 100 people? And if the answer is not much, what's the point of being "in touch"?
572: And FB makes it pretty easy to avoid people you want to avoid. You control what anyone else sees about you, and you can deny access, or later delist, anyone who you find annoying or stalky.
Its default mode is for everyone that you've allowed access to to be in one big group, which can be kind of weird/different if you have separate, not particularly compatible groups of friends (e.g. from different eras of your life). But you can change that if you want to, or just say to heck with it and let everyone deal with the aspects of your life/personality/views that they weren't aware of.
In case you want to talk to them, you can talk to them, without saying "Remember me? You probably don't even remember me. Holy crap, don't even ask me how hard it was to find your phone number."
But if you don't like people, as you say, then it would not be good, I guess.
Also, previously I never kept in touch with people because it would require having a long phone coversation, or sending a long letter, and I could never think of enough things to say to merit staying in touch with people, which was a great regret. Now we can interact in very small ways through facebook.
575: I like the way FB allows me to pretty passively catch up on people's lives without there having to be a big "so, this is what I was doing in the 8 years since we talked".
Also nice is all the quotidian stuff about people's lives. These little posts get broadcast to all one's friends, so it only takes someone a minute or so to inform 100 or however many people that, for example, their pipes broke in the recent freeze and flooded the house. And then it only takes me a couple of seconds to read that and express condolences and maybe suggest getting together soon or the name of a good plumber or whatever.
OT: I have a dumb phone problem. Which is that Verizon keeps calling my phone. They've called around once every day or two for the past week.
I have a Verizon plan, and it's up to date (bill is paid, no messages or anything on my account). No one ever leaves a message.
So, (1), I'm deaf, and have no way of answering a voice call. I guess if a call happened to come when I was with a hearing person, I could have them do it? But that brings me to
(2) I have an unlimited data, no voice minutes plan, and I don't really feel like paying extra minutes for unsolicited, indirect communication. Plus I don't really know how to operate the phone to, like, talk and listen with.
Does anyone have an idea what the phone calls might be about? Do your phone companies call you? How can I make them stop without spending hours on hold?
Obviously this isn't a huge issue in the larger scheme of things, but it's mildly and repeatedly irritating.
580: No idea, and that does sound incredibly annoying. Do they maybe have a form on their website that you can e-mail them with and explain your situation and ask to be put on a "do not call" list?
Not that I can find- and they send me emails and text messages with updates about things that seem important. I assume it's advertising of some kind? Oh well.
579
My guess would be it is just a sales pitch for something.
How much time can you give to interacting with 100 people? And if the answer is not much, what's the point of being "in touch"?
Right, somehow it ends up feeling like the right amount. It's much better than the "how are you?" passing of someone in the hallway, because people are more honest and interesting in their updates than they are in the hallway. And those who aren't interesting get quickly hidden by me.
And those who aren't interesting get quickly hidden by me.
I often wonder how many people have hidden me.
Sprint calls me from time to time, to try to sell me things or request that I take a survey about their service, but they always assure me that those minutes don't count towards my monthly totals. Have you checked your bills, and do you really have to pay for Verizon's own calls?
Verizon never calls me, only texts.
586: This is something I would really like to know as well. I suspect quite a few, as I am prone to letting filthy filth just trip right off my keyboard. And I update a lot, which apparently can bother some folks' sense of the proper way to use FB to the point of moral outrage. But then again, who knows.
Asilon means bodies. Buried in the back.
587- no, I have no idea, since I can't answer the calls anyway. If one comes when someone else of appropriate audiological status is around, I'll find out more.
I have a friend who regularly get upset to find that someone has unfriended her. Except she only knows someone's unfriended her because she now has only 358 friends instead of 359. "I can't figure out who dropped me or why!" People use FB in so many different ways.
I dont keep track of how many friends I have so I have a hard time knowing if someone defriends me.
Friends come. Friends go. Sometimes they come back.
Sometimes I deserve defriending. Sometimes I dont.
Clearly, I have a low sense of outrage bc I dont know how Chopper would bother anyone.
If Will goes quiet, he's under my patio ...
Yeah, heebie is right again here - it does feel like a nice amount. I can get little snippets of my schoolfriends' lives without it having to be a big deal. I can get 2 dozen people's opinion on whether curry or pizza is better for breakfast - and none of you answered, so you've probably all got me hidden. Bastards.
I have one 'friend' hidden because she's just incredibly irritating. And the others I have hidden because they constantly spout homeopathic, anti-science, "ooh spooky!" type bollocks and they're only internet friends anyway. So not you Di.
594 - no! I think he's just got really prudish relatives. In fact, perhaps you could step the filth up a bit, Chopper?
KR's advice in 584 sounds good.
Facebook's marketing technique is backfiring on me. Every time a new person invites me, I get an e-mail to my work address reminding me of the seven or eight other people who have previously invited me. This causes me to shudder and thank my lucky stars that my home phone is unlisted and my personal e-mail remains unknown on the wilds of the Internet.
These people may be able to find me at work, but at least I don't have to deal with them in any other capacity. (To be clear, these are people with whom I share the barest connection, such as that once they cold-sent me a resume. I have yet to be friended by any actual friend from RL or the Internet.)
I'm feeling kinder toward OKC, which has finally let up a little on suggesting the massively-age-inappropriate candidates.
Although it seems to want me to move to Brooklyn. I don't want to move to Brooklyn! I have set my geographic settings very carefully! I suspect a Firefox glitch.
and none of you answered, so you've probably all got me hidden.
I totally answered. In depth.
So not you Di.
In light of the above, I'm not convinced.
598 was me. Also, I've defriended people for not updating enough (hey look! We don't interact on FB either! Why are you here?!), so Chopper would be safe and I probably cause a great number of people to worry what they said to make Friend #398 reject them.
598 - oh shit, I'm so crap. I read your comment and noded sagely. You are MY FAVOURITE FB FRIEND!!!!!!!11!11
I was considering logging in more often and actually posting updates. But this thread is convincing me otherwise. So is the FB leadership's recent comments that privacy is dead because it's not what the people want. They're just giving people what they want, you know?
Oh thank goodness! I worked really hard on that answer.
Asilon, I was enjoying watching your kids argue in front of their grandparents. But pizza wins, hands down.
I have yet to be friended by any actual friend from RL or the Internet.
We can fix that, you know.
I use facebook to find houses to burn down.
Josh, I think she meant online friends she actually likes. You know, like read.
Don't listen to TJ, Josh. I like geeks just fine.
Is there an ap for that?
So disingenuous.
C'mon, Ari, you must needs know that nowadays, there's an ap (or is it an app?) for just about anything and everything.
605: It's called a match. They make them pocket size nowadays.
what's the plus side?
Facebook makes a pretty good social calendar if you keep it to people and groups that you're actually likely to interact with socially. Beyond that, I couldn't say.
Facebook is all things to all people.
Every woman's husband and every man's wife.
FB keeps you closer to the people you like. People you don't like you can drop easily enough.
Also, I've defriended people for not updating enough
Yikes! I almost never post, but I do try to "like" and comment on other people's posts relatively regularly. Is that enough to save me from defriending?
Ask not for whom the status updates.
The poke comes
on little cat feet.
It sits looking
over harbor and city
on silent haunches
and then moves on.
There once was a man from Nantucket,
On his Facebook account he said "Fuck it,
"These updates are trite,
"And Farmville is shite,
I'm more amused by the Lolrus's bukkit!"
I am really tired of the spam e-mail I get about "fuckbook".
Apparently, Witt is not on facebook at all. Either that, or I'm guessing wrong. Meanwhile, all of facebook's friend suggestions for me appear to be people related to this blog.
Via Haiti-related status updates, Facebook is currently reminding me that I went to high school with a lot of objectively horrible people.
615: You're pretty safe, M/tch. "Liking" or commenting count as interaction. I have a load of other idiosyncratic rationales for defriending people, but I don't think any of those apply to you, either.
How could I have missed the curry v. pizza debate?!!??
My family mocks me bc I want to add tumeric/curry to everything. Curry Yogurt! Curry eggs!! Curry oatmeal! Curry cookies!
There's a shop round the corner to me that sells cumin cookies. Weird, but good, and very moreish.
I would have starved in England but for all of the "Indian" places.
Will, have you ever had a Naga bar? There's a related ice cream, too.
rfts is the foodie extraordinare. I wish they lived next door to us.
I wish they lived next door to us.
Weren't you supposed to be working on putting together some sort of commune? If I recall, rfts was to have food-related responsibilities and Jesus would take care of the wine.
You've never poured milk into your toaster?
I just wanted to highlight this as the weirdest statement I've ever seen here on Unfogged: I've defriended people for not updating enough.
"Updating" should probably have been "interacting." But yeah, I get that this is at best a fringe approach to FB. (I've also lightened up a bit now that I've figured out how to dump non-friends into privacy categories with restricted privileges.) Mostly my point is that no one should take anything on FB personally because people are weird.
FB s/b internet
or maybe even just delete the words "on FB"