#alliterativeaurantia

<3

What is this low dust clumping cat litter of which you speak? Everything claims to be low dust, but I have yet to find one that is.

It’s called Nature’s Miracle. I don’t wanna say it’s no-dust, but so far it’s been pretty low. At least compared to what I remember of our previous cats’ box, which admittedly was like....15 years ago. 

arukou-arukou replied to your photo “The Saturday Morning Hug For All! This week’s hug is a fistbump, for...”

Looking at this, it seems to me the Mysterious Fistbump may need armor for one arm and one arm only.

LOL! He has a gauntlet on one arm, for better fistbumping! 

alliterativeaurantia replied to your post “I was at the pet store tonight when it hit me: we can send Polk and...”

Just balls of paper entertain my cats better than the absurd amount I've spent on toys for them over the last 10 years.

Yeah, I went on Chewy and looked at all the cat toys and then went, “That one looks like a wad of fabric and that one looks like a wad of paper. I bet I can kludge this.”

That said, I got them a chewy fishy full of catnip and I only gave it to them today and they fucking LOVE that thing. 

tyrannosaurus-trainwreck replied to your photo “The Sisters of Terror have found the sunny spot. They have also...”

Are they dealing better with their collars now?

They are. The problem was me -- I was worried about choking them, so I left their collars too loose, and especially in Polk’s case she kept seeing it in her peripheral vision and trying to attack it. Once I got them tightened up so they’re snug but not choking, both of them were fine. 

I once saw a video of a stray dog that hadn’t had his collar loosened since he was a puppy, and when I was a dog owner I used to have nightmares that I had forgotten I had a dog and hadn’t given him water or food in days -- the two combined to give me a real complex about tightening their collars, because I don’t want to forget to loosen them and have them end up choking. 

saltydorkling replied to your photo “The Sisters of Terror have found the sunny spot. They have also...”

Hi pls tell them that I love them

I mean, if I'm remembering high school biology right there's the old classics, corn and cotton. They both have to be rotated with at least a year of legumes (typically soybeans?) because they use up such a large amount of nitrates.

Holy crap, as someone who works to put on this kind of conference, this is *huge.* They're scrapping probably a year of work already done and have to do it all over again before the meeting. Mad respect to them!

Well, I would imagine a portion of it is that they probably got offered a better rate in Chicago. I’m sure the convention center and hotels they’re working with in Chicago are willing to put in a little extra effort to land the convention, especially if they do a good job and can get repeat business. So probably they’re getting a better rate and a helping hand. But yeah, it’s still a lot of upheaval! 

hellenhighwater replied to your quote “I write today to announce that the Association of American Law Schools...”

This actually puts me in range for it. Thanks, Texas! I get to benefit from your douchebaggery!

Texas in the summer seems like such an odd place and time to host a convention full of people who are going to have to wear business casual anyway. Like, it’s not exactly easy to get to, the Austin airport is LAUGHABLY inadequate for the city it has become, and going outside is like walking around on Satan’s own testicles. Chicago’s not exactly pleasant in the summer but it’s arguably more accessible and at least it won’t be like holding a convention inside the sun itself.  

greenapple2004 replied to your post “Answers About Anaheim”

If you have a bit of a group with you, and some sort of vehicle (Lyft would suffice), I highly recommend Ma's Islamic Chinese restaurant, which is off in the warehouse district of Anaheim. Superb.

Ooooh, that sounds really cool. And it’s not actually all THAT far away -- a lyft wouldn’t even be that expensive. 

alliterativeaurantia replied to your post “yee-jun replied to your post “dame-of-dames replied to your post ...”

You might know if you didn't have a missing tooth. Just a random tooth that was in your mouth. (bonus points: your friend across the room is missing a tooth)

It’s a point, if my friend and I both grabbed our jaws at the same time, them because they were suddenly missing a tooth, me because I suddenly had one, that would be pretty freaky. 

drgaellon replied to your quote “There have been moments, particularly during Spider-Man: Homecoming...”

I feel like much of RDJ's (or at least YOUR RDJ) life consists of people demanding hugs then sending him away...

Well, he looks like he gives really good hugs. Like you know how I want to wordlessly high-five Chris Evans and then run away? Ditto that with RDJ but with hugs. 

windcalling replied to your post “justalurkr replied to your post “thassalia replied to your post “Okay,...”

what does 'torpedoing' mean?

Why is Chicago not known as the Venice of America? This is amazing!

LOL well, we are patently not Venice in any sense other than “near a large body of water” :D I mean, we just have the one river and the lakeshore, so structurally we’re not really like Venice either. But we do have water taxis! 

rike-tikki-tavi replied to your photo “Lake south to Monroe- no gates! :D Still not trying to race this...”

I've got to grin at the idea of Chicago trains going fast. When I went to visit about 7 years ago, I had to drastically readjust my planning for the days because the trains were soooo much slower than what I'm used to and getting around took forever. There were so many places where the EL was just crawling by, hardly faster than a brisk walk.

Yeah, it depends on where you’re going -- the Red Line stops a ton, which is also part of it, but if you were here about seven years ago you were also here at the height of some intense track construction. Usually between stations, depending on distance, the trains get up a pretty good speed, but if there’s construction, even if nobody is on site, they have to go slow by law.  

alliterativeaurantia replied to your post “Your comment about Chicago decaying made me think of the Dresden...”

So Chicago is Roundworld Ankh-Morpork?

I’m pretty sure Pterry, though he said that Ankh-Morpork was a conglomeration of every big old city, was basing it most heavily on London; I think also the Ankh-Morport Is Built On Ankh-Morpork refers in part to some experiences he had in Seattle. Ankh-Morpork is the “city built before city planning, based on where the water and good farmland was, and now built up over itself so far that urban planning is a fever dream” which is Chicago certainly, though because of the Great Fire we are a city built both before and after city planning -- we have the same weird underground systems and strange overall shape that say, Boston does, but almost the entire city (save for a few diagonals) is a grid because of how we rebuilt after the fire. 

I do think Chicago is particularly suited to be a modern-day Ankh-Morpork though, between the forty miles of sealed-off underground tunnels, the river, the crazy crime, and the fact that in Chicago corruption isn’t an issue so much as a sport. 

One time the entire downtown flooded because one of the tunnels running under the river sprung a leak, and since the tunnels hadn’t been sealed off properly, they filled up and leaned into the basements of every major high rise in the loop, because all of them used to have access to those tunnels for mail purposes.