#akatonbo

I heard the Dar Williams song (February, that is) today and thought of you, Sam. (I also suspect that the song is using February as a metaphor for depression.)

I’d never heard it! I have to admit I kind of cracked up at the first line because I was expecting Super Sad Indie Folk Rock and then the first line is like “I threw your keys in the water” which is such a funny way to describe a breakup. 

akatonbo replied to your post “Hi Sam! I wanted to say THANK YOU for introducing me to the windytime...”

I, too, am grateful, since I found the one for my timezone that way. Kind of wish it were every 30 minutes instead of every 15, but either way it's useful as heck.

I think they’re automated -- you could probably send them an ask (if they check their inbox) and ask about setting up a half-hour one. 

franks23 replied to your post “Inform Polk that Dearborn is also the pretty one”

I love your cats.

I’m very fond of them myself :D 

demerite replied to your post “Inform Polk that Dearborn is also the pretty one”

Deebs' lil feet omg I'm screaming ��

She has adorable back feet, she looks like she’s wearing little velvet black socks! 

kissmeagainarthas replied to your photo “Dearborn’s under-the-couch camo sneak attack is met with derision by...”

Deebs: "And then...the PAWS came for my beloved sister!" Polk: "...sure they did."

SHE STALKS IN THE NIGHT....WITH PAWS! 

brilliant-starlight replied to your photo “Dearborn’s under-the-couch camo sneak attack is met with derision by...”

If it makes her feel better, you can tell Deebs that if I didn't already know she was there and she attacked my ankle from that position, she 110% would make me yelp. +10 camouflage and sneaky points, Dearborn.

Yeah, she gets me ALL THE TIME with this move -- those paws were originally meant for me. She hides under there while I’m fixing dinner, then when I sit down to eat she reaches out and grabs my heel just before I sit :D 

aerialsquid reblogged your photo and added:

Your cats are named…I love it.

Some of those (and a lot of classic fandom tropes) count as forced intimacy, so if you list that as one trope you can fit some more in. (*slaps hood, etc.*)

Ooh, good call. Thank you!

Car Salesman: *slaps roof of car* “This bad boy... can’t actually fit a lot of forced intimacy tropes in it, so you two are gonna have to sit really close together, okay?”

The first fic you posted to LJ should be findable in your archive if you either kept your LJ intact or imported it to DW, and the first fic you posted to AO3 is probably the first one with a date after the creation date of your AO3 account, which is on your profile.

In theory I could, I was just too lazy :D But also there’s a major issue in that my LJ is not intact -- in 2008 it was hacked and every post I’d ever made was deleted. I lost a lot of the first few years of posts. The later years were either cloned to DW or recoverable through googlecache, archive.org, and similar, but even then I reckon I lost about 20%. So there’s no way of confirming that what I would find would be the actual first, since so much of the early journal is gone.  

mythologist replied to your post “Buy the Future!”

As an instructional designer we made something like this for one of our business courses :D it wasn't as fun as yours though because it stayed at the boring round. WHAT IF THERE WAS LIKE A DND element where you had a game Master to keep facilitating the crazy scenarios as the players got deeper and deeper into the game? :D

Sure! Or you could even have someone working with the economist -- say, the economist always set the prices, but you could have a futurist or a DM style storyteller to say, “Okay, here’s the new scenario for you: four months from now there’s a wheat blight....”

kaldannan reblogged your post and added:

I would kill for a web series.

Ha. It wasn’t you, I’m pretty sure.

It's tiered! I've never seen one like that, that's neat!

It’s pretty cool! I was looking for the one-level trackball one that comes with a scratching bit in the center when I stumbled across them. 

vr-trakowski replied to your video “Life feels pretty terrible right now in general so I offer all of you...”

I can see her zipper!

LOL yes. She does appear to have a seam where the spite was sewn into her. :D 

thewittiestpartition replied to your post “Okay, so I did go to Target, which is very nearby, since I needed...”

The idea of needing to take a shopping cart up to another floor is just so alien??? Even in malls with stores that need an escalator, its just a normal one and you're expected to either carry stuff (Its just clothing stores) or buy it on that floor. This seems so strange and unnecessary.

Well, that’s the thing. With Target, there are no purchase points in the departments -- there’s just the one row of cashiers, the way there is in a grocery store. And if you’re, say, buying five pounds of flour and a two-liter of diet coke and a bunch of bananas and a 12-pack of toilet paper, expecting you to carry those upstairs, to then add three t-shirts, a box of baby formula, and some legos for your toddler, then carry them back downstairs to the purchase point, is a bit on the unfair side, or at the very least it’s consumer-unfriendly. Even if you start out on the upper floor, imagine having to cram all that shit into a hand basket and then carry it around a shop about twice the size of a grocery store, especially while minding a child or three. 

I guess...think of it as if a mall only had one exit and you could only pay for stuff at that exit. Now imagine you had to hand-carry everything in the mall you wanted to buy to that one checkout point. You’d want to be able to load up a cart, especially if you were shopping for a family. And now imagine that you had your cart full of goods, but the last thing you needed was in a shop on the second floor. 

Hence, cart escalators. Especially since it keeps the elevators from jamming up constantly.  

akatonbo replied to your post “Okay, so I did go to Target, which is very nearby, since I needed...”

Maybe in Chicago most Targets have two floors (although I'm pretty sure I've been to a Chicagoland Target and it didn't; could be wrong tho since as traveling Michiganders we usually stuck to Meijer), but I have never been to a two story Target in any of the... idk, half dozen states I've been to a Target in. If there's room for a strip mall, there's no need for two stories.

Yep, that’s why I mentioned specifically urban area Target stores in this configuration -- that doesn’t include areas like Chicagoland, which are considered suburbs of the urban district. In urban Chicago, you know...there isn’t room for a strip mall. Of the three Chicago Targets I normally shop at, none are in a strip mall. Only one even has significant parking available. 

Texans on the sun = accurate.

Sam and Bill have an ongoing brother-fight, not so much about whether or not you could settle on the sun, but whether or not someone would believe a book written about it. :D 

junker5 replied to your post “coffeecocoatea-me replied to your photo “GLAMOR.” ...”

I have that problem now, too. Even though they technically still fit in the same carrier, I can't cram them both in at the same time. They aren't suspicious of the carrier yet, though, like their older sister cat. She sees the carrier and disappears!

When I brought them home, I just left both carriers out all the time -- the cardboard carrier lives next to the orange chair in the living room, and the mesh carrier under the desk in the bedroom. Usually I put them out in the living room together a few days beforehand and they start to play in them, and they don’t really seem to connect them with “have to go somewhere”. 

akatonbo replied to your post “coffeecocoatea-me replied to your photo “GLAMOR.” ...”

My cat is a weirdo. If I bring the carrier out and open the door, she'll probably get in it sooner or later.

Yeah! Polk likes to jump in the cardboard carrier and peek up at the world from “safety” :D

spaci1701 replied to your post “coffeecocoatea-me replied to your photo “GLAMOR.” ...”

Would it work to get them into separate carriers, block the doors with a sheet of something, place the doors together and then remove the barrier? Trap them individually but let then travel together? You'd likely need help to just shove then into one at the end of the very visit.

You and your mum are Nancy Drew and a Hardy Boy. Whoever in town is rudest to you is the villain.

That would probably be the waitress at the Huddle House where we had lunch. WHAT DOES SHE KNOW??

clockworktardis replied to your post  “Also today,...”

And suddenly Sam has a new book plot

I have always wanted to write a modern Southern Gothic.

akatonbo replied to your post “Also today...”

Usually unexplained explosion means meth lab but if it was due to go up for auction that's another thing entirely.

Yeah, meth lab was my first but unspoken thought -- I wanted to find a news story about it so that I could follow the story and find out, but I guess there were more important things happening in the news yesterday. 

ravenreyamidala replied to your photo “Memphis…what is in your water?”

that is definitely not the only water fountain in the airport

It might not be, but it was for sure the only one I could find in Terminal A, and it was all the way at the end of the terminal. I assumed it was because they really wanted you to pay for bottled water...

spaci1701 replied to your photo “Memphis…what is in your water?”

Is actually there because it's right next to the doorway to the washroom. For some reason the regs require those warnings to be posted in women's washrooms, which... Well, even if that's something you didn't know, wouldn't it be a bit late to warn you once you're already recycling your beer?

That is...bewildering to me. All I can think is like “Hey don’t have sex in this bathroom or you might get pregnant and then can’t drink.“ I’m sure that’s not right, but it’s the only thing I could think of.