Turns out we’re overdue for one of these threads too. As always, no trolls, MRAs, MHRAs, PUAs, you know who you are. Write the mods if anything gets weird.
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Open Thread for Personal Stuff: June 2015 Dawg Needs a Break Edition
It’s never a good day when I have to post the Wiki link to “mansplaining” more than once.
Entering the final stages of work on the journal I’m binding for a friend:
https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.869062279806442.1073741832.100001080340239&type=1&l=54f485e828
Now if only my sleep cycle weren’t kind of twisted ’round.
An adorable way to wake up: My cat wants a cuddle.
Not an adorable way to wake up: Because he just ralphed a hairball on top of the TV.
I’m now unemployed and running out of money. 🙁 I need a letter from my old boss in order to apply for jobseekers allowance and she’s taking her time…
Ugh, sunnysombrera. That sucks. Hugs and/or best wishes.
Every once in a while, I re-remember one of my favourite ways to procrastinate: the MapCrunch game. Thought I’ll share.
What you do is you go to MapCrunch.com, which is a website that generates a random Google Street View (which is already fun on its own, by the way), and on ‘options’ you first mark ‘all’ forcountries, then at the bottom you mark ‘stealth’. Then you hit ‘go’, and land at some random spot in the world (provided the Google folks got there first, o course). At that point, you can sorta imagine you’ve been teleported there and need to figure out where you are and how to get back home, i.e. make your way to the nearest airport, or at least the nearest town/village/something. Personally, I tend to kinda-cheat (as much as you can ‘cheat’ in a game you are playing with yourself), and look up place names on signs etc. to help figure things out, because for me personally it’s more fun that way.
Anyway, whichever way you end up playing, it’s a really neat way to see all sorts of spots around the world from the comfort of your own computer. At the moment, for example, I am somewhere in north Slovakia, looking at lovely green hills, and (hopefully) making my way to Žilina.
One amusing experience that I had there once was when I decided to just paly a quick round instead of whatever I was supposed to be doing at the time, and as soon as I hit ‘go’ I realised where I was – about 15 minutes’ walk from my parents’ place. It was like ‘Well, screw the airport, I’m going home‘.
(And yes, I know there’s a sort of ‘official’ game too, geosomething, I forget the name now; I tried it, and didn’t enjoy it as much, because for me the fact that you have a time counter and earn points and all that stuff actually makes it less fun. Not a competitive sort of person.)
@Sunnysombrera, you have my sympathy 🙁 Britain is not the best place to be poor right now.
One of the many reasons I became self employed is because I didn’t trust either of my previous employers to give me a fair reference if I looked for another job. Another reason is because as self employed in Britain you qualify for working tax credit, and their red tape is a lot less punishing and intrusive than jobseekers allowance, though I don’t think you get as much.
I was self employed, but it was commission work for a marketing company, and I need proof that the company dissolved. Jobseekers doesn’t like it much if you simply quit your job, so I need to prove it was because I didn’t really have a job any more. But yes, self employment is da shiz. I would try and do it again in a heartbeat, but for now I just need money.
Thanks for the well wishes.
I have some fairly good personal news. After two and a half years of having my own business I completed my accounts for the last tax year, and I only made a loss of £110 🙂 As far as I’m concerned that’s the same as breaking even. Next year, profit!
@sunnysombrera, got it. Only being made redundant through absolutely no fault of your own will fly with the job centre. Fingers crossed your ex-boss pulls her finger out soon.
I’d really rather not have to sign up for that clusterfuck of red tape and hounding bureaucrats breathing down my neck, but I made the mistake of NOT applying for working tax credit when I was self employed which would have really really helped with my current financial position. FUCK FUCK FUCK.
But the good news is that career wise, even though I’ve lost what I thought would be my dream job, I’ve actually got a different, perhaps better idea of what I want to do with my life. 🙂 So at least I have direction.
Well, having recommended WTC, the downside is you do have to work a certain number of hours each week to continue to qualify, which is why the government’s lovely idea of ‘zero hour contracts’ was such a shite development for people on low wages. So perhaps as a freelancer it wouldn’t have been a good option for you anyway.
I’m glad you’ve got something figured out 🙂
I’m in the UK and still waiting to be assessed for ESA.
Since I have mental health issues (living on SDA+Income Support now) from what I have heard, I will fail ESA and be told to get a job.
So it’s a combo of hoping the assessment is far off and I don’t want to take it, and wanting to get it over with.
(Right, Clinical depression, agoraphobia, social anxiety, eating issues, aenemia [due to eating issues],currently waiting to be assessed for shiny new manic phases)
Oh! And when stressed too much, a cutter.
@Penny Psmith
I love Geoguessr! 😀 I really enjoy the fact that I can pretty much tell from the get-go when the Google Streetview location I get plopped into is in Finland or Estonia or one of the otehr Nordic countries. It’s just such a fun little game and time waster. 🙂
Also, may I ask if you’re a fan of P. G. Wodehouse’s work? If so, I heartily congratulate you on your great taste. I’m also a huge fan of the Psmith books but my first love will always be Blandings Castle and especially the Empress of Blandings. 🙂
Scented Fucking Hard Chairs-LOL! My cat coughed up a fur ball on the couch. I only noticed when I was setting down. Luckily I noticed before my butt landed on it! I had to clean up the mess, too. 🙁
@monzach
Oooh! I just tried playing that and it’s fun! On my first round I guessed I was somewhere around Calgary, when I was actually a little way north of Winnipeg. Not too shabby!
For the record, Google dropped me on a road in the middle of nowhere, and I had figured out it was an English speaking country from a road sign. Then there was a picture of a man riding a bike with a Canadian flag on the trailer, which really gave it away. xD
@sunnysombrera I’m not able to do it at the moment but if you’re still struggling by the end of this month let me know and I’ll transfer you some money. I’m not just saying that, it’s a genuine offer.
In other news, we might finally have a diagnosis for my son. Pathological demand avoidance syndrome. It describes him perfectly and I’m actually glad to have a possible diagnosis because it means I can learn techniques to help him.
Monzach – Geoguessr, that’s right! Couldn’t remember that, because ‘geocaching’ and ‘geohashing’ kept jumping to the forefront of my memory. Like I said, the actual points-and-timer thing isn’t for me, personally, but the idea is the same, basically, and the views are of course the same views.
And yeah, I love Wodehouse, although I have to admit I’ve actually read very little of the Psmith stories.
It’s just that when I got here I started posting under ‘Penny’, which is a common interet name I use (not real name), and then discovered there was already a Penny posting here, and scrambled to find some variation; ‘Psmith’ seemed plesingly alliterative and nerdy.
Back to Wodehouse – Blandings Castle stories are great, yes, and of course the G&W stories tend to be very fun. Have you read his book ‘Laughing Gas’? I picked it up because it spoke of ‘the fourth dimension’ or something like that, and the idea of Wodehouse+SciFi seemed intriguing. It’s more of a standard body-switching comedy sort of story, but still quite fun.
I like Wodehouse, though if you read *too* much of his work in a row you start looking for the tropes and the basic plot structure — “Oh yes, and we should be getting to the Zany Scheme right… now. Counter-Zany will probably arrive in 10 pages.”
@sunnysombrera
That sounds like a really fun first game you had! 🙂 I just really enjoy watching other people play it, too. I’ve noticed that it does really pay off to look out for flags and the like, it really helps to narrow down the area you’re in. Although of course the biggest help by far is knowing how to recognize the names of major cities in writing that differentiates from the “normal” Roman alphabet. It’s at times like these that I’m grateful to little Monzach who decided to learn the Russian alphabet at age 10 or so…
@Penny Psmith
I’m glad to have met a fellow fan of Wodehouse. 🙂 I’m currently reading his collected golfing stories. They were published in different collections from the 1910s all the way to the 1970s originally, so it’s really interesting to see his style develop, and his characters as well. Very fun stuff, especially if you know a little about golf. I personally barely know the basic rules but I still manage to get enjoyment out of them.
I have “Laughing Gas” in my bookshelf actually! It’s a pretty fun little story, though of course the sci-fi bit is basically half a page long. The description of 1920s and 30s Hollywood is pretty interesting, and I do like it that at least one female character in the story has a characterization beyond a one-word description.
Well, yeah, that’s true for almost any writer I can think of though, especially the prolific ones. I once read through all the Holmes stories in one go, and it got a bit disappointing, how easily the patterns show up.
Seeing the wonderful cats in these threads makes me long for a feline friend of my own. (My apartment complex allows one pet only so it is just my chihuahua. He likes it that way just fine.)
I’m meeting a guy I really like tomorrow hopefully. I’m really nervous he will change his mind when he meets me irl. I’m also scared it’s a colossal waste of time because I freeze up during anything below the neck and I’m afraid even if everything goes fine this first time we’re eventually going to get to a point where we break up because I can’t do sex. It’s really frustrating. I wish I could see a counselor for my issues but I can’t afford it and my dad won’t help pay because he thinks “counselors don’t help they just tell you what you want to hear.” I’ve brought up getting counseling food this before he just doesn’t care lmao. It’s all very frustrating. I wish it was easier to find other people who can’t/won’t do sexual stuff that I would get along with. And even aside from this potential relationship it just really irks me that I don’t have the option to have sex or even mess around.
Oh, rhank goodness, personal stuff. I need to talk and not care about my spelling. Our littlest kitty Rainey, she’snot doing well. SShe’s lethargic and listless, sleeps a lot, her meows are soft to nonexistent, she’swalking sliw like sshe’s in pain. My littlest baby, I’m terrified. I’m not ready to lose her. I want to fix it, make it better but i can’t. I feel so helpless.