“Because I’m not poor! I got all the water I need from food”.

My boomer dad, constantly suffering from health issues because of poor hydration. Does not help that the only liquids he consumes are beer and wine.

After my mother passed, I spent more time with my father than before, just because I thought it was the right thing to do (and my siblings really did not care that much). I realized why I did not have a lot if contact before, he us a classic toxic boomer narcissist.

Spending more time with him did not mean that we grieved my mother’s loss as a family, it was just him monopolizing the grief and needing an audience wallow in self pity. I had no say in any aspect of the funeral, he did not listen to anything I said, he never even once asked how I was, and when I talked about stuff from my life (because someone else asked), he started talking over me, making the conversation about him again. Classic narcissist parent playbook.

At some point i was fed up, and told him as much, which of course did not go over well. Complete disbelief, he acted as if I had insulted him, yelling, accusations of being ungrateful, all the bells and whistles. Not a single thought that this behaviour might have been wrong. I just left and cut contact. After a week or so he wrote me what I think was meant as an apology. What he “apologized” for was that because of his greatness, he was always the center of attention which of course emphasized my insignificance, which he can see made me feel bad. It was so grotesque that I burst out in manic laughter, my wife was seriously worried.

The good thing about this, it made me slowly unwrap what I now realize is a lot of childhood drama (which I thought was normal), and understand why my siblings basically don’t want anything to do with him. Still struggling to take the step to seek professional therapy (which I know I need), but I already feel better starting to understand that how my father treated me was not because I am worthless, but because he was a really bad dad.

Additional day 3: be overjoyed that you can just replicate your basic needs, so you now can work less (or not at all). All that free time! Think of all the projects xou could do!

Start by replicating junk food and beer and sloth around until the evening of Day 29, panic, make plans for some way to big Project for Day 30. Day 30 replicate stuff you need for the project. Before properly starting, realize you forgot to buy replicate some crucial stuff but home depot is now closed you’ve already used the replicas quota, be discouraged, overwhelmed, give up, promise “next month is going to be different!”.

Add gorgonzola or some other blue cheese, had one like that recently, and though I absolutely loathe Hawaii pizza, the pear and blue cheese combo blew me away.

Wouldn’t that be “hundreds of a thouseand”?

I feel that. My dad sold my childhood home after my mother’s passing and moved out a few years ago. I had not lived there for 25 years or so, but three of my cats were buried in the yard because I lived in rentals during that time. The last walkthrough through the house was of course emotional, but strolling through the yard past the trees where I put the little furballs to rest really hit me.

I second that. I travel a lot for work, sometimes a bit obscure places (as in not touristic destinations), and I always try to find the odd tap room or micro brewery. It’s often hit or miss, but stumbling upon the rare gem every once in a while always feels really good. Bonus points if the head brewer is there and it’s a slow day so they have time to chat beer and brewing. And even in the well known areas, it’s fun to sift through the touristy hipster “more-show-than-anything” places to finally arrive at one which has said vibe. Had a week in Portland, OR, and visited about a dozen or so places, and from the over marketed polished hip joint with mediocre beer to the “here’s a bar and some stools thrown into the brewery hall” with absolutely stunning brews it had everything.

I don’t like Mondays from the Boomtown Rats.

Mind, when I first heard it my English was not that good so I really only got the Chorus about not liking Mondays (and who does, eh?). Dismissed the “shoot the whole day down” as an idiom for something which I did not know.

Then at some point much later I realized it’s actually a school shooting.

Nucular, it’s pronounced nucular.

In a former job, I developed “software” (I clicked together some LabVIEW…) for custom designed scientific experiments, which many other researchers (mostly PhD students) would use. Wrote detailed SOPs for their usage, because everything was wonky and in constant evolution, and in some circumstances, data generated could be wrong. So I put a toggle switch with some cryptic acronym on the panel which was told to be flipped in the SOP when users reached the part where following instructions was really critical. The toggle switch did nothing but to log time and date and what user was logged in. When discussing weird data later on, first thing I did was to check whether that log existed, and if not heavily scrutinized the data with respect to errors that could be induced by not following the SOP.

… and then having carpet everywhere. Sometimes even kitchen and bathroom.

And a “perambulator” is a kid stroller. It was an enlightening moment when I first came across that word in Neil Stephenson’s “Seveneves”, delved into its etymology and then realised why my British friend called the stroller a “pram”. This is just a contracted form of perambulator.

It did not occur to me that there’s actually also a verb for it, so thank you for pointing that out! I love it, and I will use it henceforth!

The permit requirement does not apply to kitchen knives, does it? Been some time, but I travelled to Tokio quite frequently for work, and always made it a point to go to kappabashi and get a nice cooking knife, some of the longer than 20 cm.

I guess it shows how out of touch (old) I am that it’s completely bewildering to me that there could be people who do not understand folders … on a computer. Phones, tablets, yeah, I get that, those actively make it harder and harder to access the folder structure. But computers?

Oh, I have a similar story from my (unfortunately late) void:

Had a big chunk of pork, which I trimmed for the BBQ. All the cuttings (mostly fat) I put in a pad to render (?) the delicious lard. Somehow I forgot to put a lid on the pan while it cooled down, and the whole thing got forgotten in the mess the kitchen was after a nice Barbie and beers with friends. Next morning I woke up, thought “oh crap, the lard”. Went downstairs, first susicious thing: cat nowhere to be seen. Pan on the stove was completely clean. As in straight from the dishwasher clean. The I saw the cat lolling around on the sofa, barely awake, and almost unresponsive. Even shaking his morning treats did not prompt him to come into the kitchen (which usually was the ritual). And then it dawned on me: the little rascal slurped about a whole pound of pork lard during the night from the pan. Did not eat for two days straight, but seemed happy as a clam.

Wherever he is now, I hope he gets all the lard he wants.

Scientist here, a lot of my job is writing texts with references to other literature of the field, or reviewing such texts (or PowerPoints). Main screen has the document open, the other is actually in portrait format and has gazillions of open pdfs on it that are relevant to whatever I’m working on. I had to get this setup for working from home because productivity dropped immensely with only one screen.

This so much. I have a three days a week home Office deal, and I did Not, We, Fr for some time and it sucked. Monday I just could not find a proper start for the workday, which in the end translated to doing more work in the evening. Same on fridays, where I just did not find a proper cut to end the work day. So bad it even went into Saturday mornings. Now I do Tu-Th as home Office days, which works amazingly.

I am thoroughly confused, isn’t “Dudette” a term that’s used for female Dudes? Or “her Dudeness” if you aren’t into that whole brevity thing.

To be really inclusive, I would also use the term for female dogs, like, “Hey, dogs and…”. Yeah, no,.sorry, I’ll show myself out.

Schnutzeplotzepfnitzekatz!

Guess the language…