I have been seeing quite a bit of posts asking if ______ is okay to compost, so I want to clear it up for any beginners out there. This list is for hot/cold composting.
Short answer: You can compost anything that is living or was once alive. Use common sense on what you cannot compost.

KITCHEN

Vegetables and Fruits

Onion and garlic skins
Tops of vegetables, like peppers, zucchini, cucumber, beets, radishes, etc.
Stems of herbs and other vegetables, such as asparagus
Broccoli and cauliflower stems
Potato peels
Seaweed
Vegetables that have gone bad
Cooked vegetables
Stale spices and herbs
Corn cobs
Dehydrated/frozen/canned vegetables
Produce rubber bands (Rubber bands are made from latex, which is made from rubber tree sap)
Tea leaves and paper tea bags (sometimes they are made of plastic)
Coffee grounds
Citrus peels
Apple cores and skin
Banana peels
Avocado Pits
Jams and jellies
Fruit scraps
Dehydrated/frozen/canned fruits

Grains

Breads and tortillas
Bread crumbs and croutons
Pastries/muffins/donuts
Crackers and chips
Cooked or uncooked oats
Spent grain
Cooked or uncooked pasta and rice
Dry cereal
Popcorn and unpopped kernels

Meats and Dairy

Yes, you can compost meat and dairy if you do it correctly. You can use a Bokashi bucket before adding to an outside bin or you can just add it directly to the pile. As long as you are adding a relatively small percentage of meat and dairy compared to the pile you will be fine.

Shrimp, oyster and clam shells
Eggs shells
Poultry, beef and pork
Fish skin
Bones
Moldy cheese
Sour cream and yogurt.
Spoiled milk
Powder milk and drink mixes

Other protein sources

Tofu and tempeh
Cooked and dry beans
Nuts and seeds
Nut shells
Nut butters
Protein powder

Other

Sauces and dips
Cookies and chocolate
Cupcakes and cake
Snack/granola bars
Wooden toothpicks, skewers and popsicle sticks
Paper towels (Not used with cleaning chemicals)
Tissues
Paper towel cardboard tubes
Greasy pizza boxes
Paper egg cartons and fast food drink carriers
Cotton string
Paper grocery bags
Byproducts of fermentation, such as sourdough discard and kombucha scobies
Alcoholic drinks
Wine corks (made from real cork, sometimes there are plastic corks)
Wood ash or natural lump charcoal ash (lighter fluid is okay)

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BATHROOM

Hair
Finger and toenail clippings
100% Cotton swabs (sometimes the handles are made with plastic)
100% Cotton balls
Cardboard Toilet paper tubes

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GARDEN

Weeds (No invasive weeds that have gone to seed or reproduce asexually such as Japanese knotweed)
Prunings
Fallen leaves
Grass clippings
Diseased plants
Pine needles
Gumballs, acorns and other fallen seeds from trees
Flowers
All garden waste

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PETS

Bedding from animals, such as rabbits
Horse, goat, chicken and other herbivorous animal manure
Pet hair
Shedded skin of skins and other reptiles

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Other

Cotton/wool and other natural fibers fabric and clothes
Yarn made from natural fibers, such as wool
Twine
Shredded newspaper, paper, and cardboard boxes (ink is fine, nothing with glossy coating)
Used matches
Burlap
Wreaths, garlands and other biodegradable decorations
Houseplants and flowers
Real Christmas trees
Dyer lint (Know that it may have synthetic fibers)
PLA compostable plastics and other compostable packaging (know that compostable plastic take a long time to break down in a home compost bin/pile)
Ash from wood and charcoal
Urine

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WHAT YOU SHOULDN'T COMPOST

Manure from dogs and cats, and other animals that eat meat (Hotly debated and not recommended for home composting, especially if your pile doesn't get hot enough.)
Human feces (Hotly debated and not recommended for home composting, especially if your pile doesn't get hot enough.)
Metal, glass and petroleum based plastics
Lotion, shampoo, conditioner and body wash
Cosmetics
Hygiene products (unless otherwise stated on package)
Gasoline or petrol, oil, and lubricants
Glue and tape
Charcoal ashes (unless natural lump charcoal)
Produce stickers
Chewing gum (commonly made with plastic, but plastic-free compostable gum is fine to add)
No invasive weeds that have gone to seed or reproduce asexually, such as Japanese knotweed
Use common sense

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Note: It is helpful to chop items into smaller pieces, but is not necessary.
I am sure I missed a lot of items that can and cannot be composted, so please tell me and I will try to add them to the list.

School? Nah, I think Starbucks instead.

I've seen quite a few 'back in highschool' stories lately and thought I'd share my own experience.
EDIT 3: TL;DR AT BOTTOM
So to set the stage: I graduated highschool in 2013 and my senior year was...a challenge. My sister passed away, my health took a nosedive thanks to chronic illnesses that were progressively getting worse, I crashed and totaled a car (not my fault, but not a fun experience nonetheless), I had two concussions....you get the idea.
The first half of the year tardies skyrocketed among the student body. The school changed the student parking areas and basically made it so that any students who drove themselves and any students who used the door closest to that parking lot were caught in a huge bottle neck and any one student goofing off could potentially keep literally hundreds of students from entering the building. It was ridiculous. Additionally, they decreased the between class passing period from 7 minutes to 5 minutes. Mind you, if you were to walk from one end of the school to the other when the halls were completely empty it would take you AT LEAST 5 minutes. Add 1200 other people to the mix and even 7 minutes was a time crunch.
So tardies increased. A lot. And the administration got it in their heads that the best way to remedy this situation is to implement new punishments for being late to class. Prior to this year, after 5 tardies you had to attend an after school detention with the teacher of whatever class you had missed. That's it. If you skipped class, unexcused by a parent or doctor, 5 times you recieved an in school suspension. And if you missed more than 20 days of a class, excused or not, you had to repeat the class. (There were some exceptions to that, but they were basically catastrophe exceptions.)
The new rules were ridculous. If you were tardy to a class 3 times you recieved a suspension. If you skipped the class altogether, UNEXCUSED, you recieved a suspension. All it took was ONCE! If you recieved 3 suspensions you had to retake the class. But, if an absence was excused then there were no consequences. Oh, and they got rid of the 20 day absence/repeat rule.
So, on to the fun.
I was just burnt out by the end of that first semester. I was stressed and upset and dealing with horrible panic attacks after my sister's death. My body constantly hurt thanks to undiagnosed pain conditions and I couldn't stay awake in class to save my life. I was just over dealing with bullshit. I spent the entire first semester running from class to class because my classes were clear across the school from each other. I lived less than 6 miles from the school, but was leaving over an hour before school started because of all the road construction going on between my house and the school. There was no way out of my subdivision that didn't involve a mile or more of closed lanes, plus there was construction on the road leading to the only entrance to the student parking lot. It was bullshit.
I was a bit too tightly wound at the time. I was a straight A student, in all the AP classes I could fit in my schedule, and I had never, EVER, been late to class. So being late to a couple classes that first semester was extremely upsetting, but I still hadn't even managed to warrant a detention.
End of the first semster rolls around and we're all given a letter notifying us and our parents to the attendance change. Except they didn't include the change to the 20 absence/repeat rule. It just....wasn't there at all. They were hoping by not including it in the letter, the change would be over looked. It was not. (Mwahaha)
So second semester rolls around and my class schedule was changed because of human error and I get thrown in a weightlifting class that I would not have signed up for if you paid me to. I was pissed. I was tired and in pain and you had better believe lifting heavy objects for an hour a day 4 days a week was NOT my idea of a good time. (The weekly swimming day didn't suck, though.) And then more construction showed up on my route(s) to school. And I was late. Very late. As in arrived to school midway through SECOND period.
So I'm in the office, in tears, being written up with a suspension thanks to city wide road construction and the attendance secretary and counselor who oversaw these matters are showing no mercy or leniency. I'm handed the write-up to sign and a copy of the attendance policy. In full. And low and behold, the change to the 20 absence/repeat is on there. As is the word "unexcused." As in "all unexcused absences will result in a one day suspension."
Do you see it? Do you see the loophole?
I cackled. I flat out cackled. Pulled out my cellphone, called my mom, said "Hey. I'll explain later, but I need you to call the school and excuse me from first and second period. Thank you, love you, bye!" And before I could even slide my phone back in my pocket, the attendance line rings.
To say the secretary and counselor were pissed would be an understatement. But I wasn't done yet. After gleefully shredding the write-up. I asked if this copy if the attendance policy was mine too keep and proceeded to highlight the word "unexcused" and the change to the 20 day absence/repeat policy. I then turned to the counselor (C).
Me: "So, I want to be sure I understand this correctly. If I show up late three times I get suspended?"
C: "Correct." (Said very snobbishly.)
Me: "If I ditch class I get suspended?"
C: "Correct." (Said as he crossed his arms like he was trying to be extra intimidating.)
Me: "But if I get my mom to call or write me a note excusing me from class there are no reprocussions?"
C: "Correct." (You could see him trying to work out if he still had the upper hand.) "But good luck getting a parent to agree to that."
Me: "And it doesn't matter at all how many days I miss? The 20 day absence/repeat rule has been eliminated in full with no replacement?"
And that's when he understood the loophole I'd found. I kid you not, watching that man crumple as he came to the conclusion that I found a way around the suspensions was the best "fall of man" I've ever seen. He uncrossed his arms and seemed to deflate straight onto a chair.
C: "Correct."
Me: "Wonderful! Thank you for your time. I've got some time before third period so I'm gonna go hit the vending machines, bye!"
And off I went. Strolled into third period with pretzels and a coke, happy as a clam.
That night my mom wrote me out roughly 50 notes that read: "I excuse elf from [blank] period(s). If you have any questions please give me a call at [work number]. Signed, elf's mom" And she repeated writing out those notes a month or so later.
I skipped EVERYTHING. Gonna be cutting close to make it to first period? Skip it. Hit Starbucks instead. Don't wanna go to that fucking weightlifting class? Don't. Take a 90 minute lunch instead! Over slept? Well, get some breakfast on the way to third period, but then skip that awful weightlifting class and come back for fifth and sixth periods. Need more time to study for a test or finish a project? Skip the morning all together and only come in for that math test. Go home after second period to get ahead on that project.
That weightlifting class? After the first few weeks I attended the swimming days and the game days (soccer or dodgeball) nothing else. Think about that. One, maybe two days a week. For the whole semester. If I attended 30 classes total I'd be surprised.
And of course, they called my mom to verify the notes and she flat out told them she had supplied me with fill-in-the-blank notes and she would gladly verify them all as legitimate.
The sheer amount of times I hit Starbucks at 9am on a school day was astounding. And it was done on purpose. I was flaunting that I had skipped classes. Everytime I walked into that office with a Starbucks cup and a note I saw a little glimmer of fury in the secretary's eyes. If the counselor was there hed lean against a wall and glare, but he couldn't do anything to stop me.
Our district had a strict policy change policy. Which meant that any changes to things like attendance policies and dress codes had to be implemented at the start of a semester and had to remain in place for the duration of the semster. That counselor tried to appeal to the school board to change the policy at every single meeting that semester. I attended the first one. Once of the school board members lost his shit laughing at the situation. He asked, "what idiot wrote this policy?" And that counselor turned coke can red. They basically told him that he'd made this mess, he could deal with the fallout. They returned to the previous attendance policy the following school year. But, as I was a senior, that didn't matter to me.
Naturally, I told others of my discovery. And soon enough everyone was exploiting this loophole. Of course, some parents wouldn't excuse their kids, but enough would. We all showed up on count day, though!
My grades stayed at their previous level and my mental and physical health improved as I was no longer running myself into the ground.
All I know, is that without that loophole I would have run myself into the ground and probably ended up in the hospital. That loophole saved my life. And after all, all I did was ask my mother to excuse my absences. It's not my fault I was allowed more than 20.
EDIT 1: I saw a fair question about the legality of truancy and how schools don't have to accept notes as excuses, but the comment was deleted before I could reply.
Schools don't have to accept parental excuses indefinitely. That was why this was so dumb. The school got in a ridiculous amount of trouble for the number of absences that semester, but it happened after the fact and I'm not sure if it was trouble at the district or state level. I do know that that counselor doesn't work for the district anymore, but I don't when that separation happened.
I checked and checked again and checked again after that, that I wasn't screwing myself over in getting my diploma. And none of the underclassmen who took advantage of the policy had to repeat anything in the following years. So it really was this weird ass fluke that showed up with perfect timing, as far as I'm concerned.
As for not accepting notes after a certain point, that was part of the change in policy. Up until that semester anything over 5 excused days had to have a doctor's note. So my mom could call me out 5 times but the other 15 (to hit the 20 limit) had to be a signed doctor's note. The new policy did not include that requirement anymore. Why? Who knows.
I think the logic (if you can call it that) behind the new policy was that they thought parents wouldn't excuse their kids' absences for no particular reason. My mom did not give a damn if I actually went to school as long as my grades stayed good. She knew I was struggling and school was the main factor in that.
As it was, I could have gotten a doctors note for an extended absence. I didn't know at the time, but the constant pain and fatigue were flares of disabilities that would have guaranteed me excused absences by a doctor. When I was finally diagnosed a few years later my PCP was surprised I had actually made it through high school given how sick I was/am.
I wish I knew where my report card from that semester was. I kept it because the absences are listed and were utterly insane. 😂 But you're totally right. I have no idea how I escaped any state attendance requirements, but I sure as hell wasn't about to ask about them.
EDIT 2: You guys are too sweet! Thank you for the awards!
tl; dr: School changed attendance policy halfway through the year so that there were steep punishments for lateness or skipped class, but no reprocussions for an excused absence. Proceeded to have my mom write 100s of blank "elf is excused from [blank] period" notes and skipped literally hundreds of class periods. Counselor was not amused. School board was. I win.

The unhappy life and sad end of the 1999 Dream Machine

Gather round my friends and listen to the very long and very sad tale of my technical nemesis the Maximum PC 1999 Dream Machine.
Back in the late 90s I did tech support in rural Alaska. What's not rural in Alaska you ask?
Well urban Alaska is a place you can drive to on a paved road.
Suburban Alaska is a place you drive to on a road.
Rural Alaska is where downtown is on the road, but the houses not so much.
Remote Alaska takes a boat, plane, train, ATV, snow machine, dog sled, or other non standard mode of transportation.
Anyway on with the story. I worked in town at a small tech shop. We had a frequent customer who lived remote. He was a friend of the shop and spent easily $10,000 a year on hardware for his off-grid "cabin." Every time he came to town he bought some new toy or component and talked shop with us techies.
He was super excited about the new millennium so when Maximum PC released their 1999 Dream Machine he came to us to put one together for him. Top of the line: Pentium 3 - Coppermine 800mhz water cooled and overclocked, 1Gb of CL2 SDRAM, GeForce 256 with dual SLI Voodoo 2s, SCSI 8GB boot drive, Striped 20GB IDE storage array. It was hell on rails and the absolute sexiest machine a gamer could ask for.
For those who aren't reaching retirement age, the Pentium 3 Coppermine CPU was basically unobtainable in 1999 it took us the better part of a month just to find someone willing to sell it to us. We paid 3x retail and considered ourselves fortunate to have gotten it at all. Then we had it overnighted to Alaska from somewhere in Indiana for an additional ton of money. CPU alone ended up costing $3000.
The CPU was the last part to arrive and the shop basically closed down when FedEx arrived. We thoroughly inspected the package for signs of damage, triple checked our grounding straps, and everyone watched in awe and trepidation as the lead tech ever so gingerly placed it into the socket. A dab of Silver Fox and the stock heat sink later we're ready for first boot... Hurray it POSTs!
So we do the usual, slap Windows 98SE install disk in let it get to work on install. Install finishes up and we start up 3DMark, gonna get us a high score! Nope... Halfway through the test BSOD! Crap, okay wire check, temp check everything is good. 2nd try, fingers crossed... Boom BSOD.
2 hours of frantic forums searching later. 98SE hates more RAM than 512 unless you tweak a bunch of system settings. So we pull out half the RAM start it back up, run 3DMark so we know it was just the RAM amount. Benchmark score is nice, like double any of our personal rig scores nice. So we tweak some system settings, shut it down, add the RAM back in, spin it up, Mark it. Success!
Burn in time. Now sure we could have set 3DMark on a loop, but this rig was worth better than half a year's salary and the hottest setup we had ever seen. So we hooked it up to the shop network, big screen, and speakers and payed Unreal Tournament till 2am. Satisfied with the hardware we made our way home.
Bright and early the next morning we show up and get to the hard work of switching from air cooled to water cooled. We ran the tubes, measured twice, cut once, plumbed the blocks, checked for leaks...
No leaks!
Drained 'em set aside to let dry, took off the fans from ALL THE THINGS!!!, installed the water blocks, filled the system, prayed to all the gods we could think of, and checked for leaks...
No leaks!!
Second burn in time! It's business hours now though so it's 3DMark on a loop. Rig runs all day CPU levels off at 45c and stays. Awesome! Full load 45c we're good for phase 3. Let's see what this baby can do! Hit the BIOS set the FSB from 100mhz to 133mhz hell yeah! We've got GHZ! Score it again, this time it's mind blowing. I can't for the life of me remember the score but it was insane. So we start the true burn in, watching like hawks crowded around the bench, staring blinkless at the CPU temp. 45, 50, 55, 60... no sign of slowing, 65, 70, 75... fingers poised to abort because none of us can afford to replace this CPU, 76, 77, 77, 77!
Stable!!!
So we let it run and call the customer. Congratulations Mr. Customer sir it's a thing of beauty, come pick it up. Per shop policy we put it in a place of prominence next to the counter and hooked up to the biggest CRT we had for the ceremonial presentation. Customer finally arrives, as giddy as a rough and tumble Alaskan fisherman can be. It's late December so we shout Merry Christmas and usher him to his newest acquisition. He's delighted of course, and since we're in town and have DSL he's got a request. He pulls a copy of Quake off the shelf, writes out a check and takes his rig to our "cyber cafe" to pwn some folks. (Yes I know this was like 5 years before pwn was coined, cut me a little slack.) He spent the rest of the day and a bunch of that evening in there happy as a clam. On the sickest rig I'd ever seen.
Now if that was the end of it this would be the long, pleasant, and anticlimactic story of building a rich guy a computer. This is the long, sad, and sordid affair of the Dream PC 1999. We're only halfway through.
Our happy customer takes his prize home, the owner cashes the $8,000 check, everyone is happy, we close up shop and take Christmas with our families.
New Year comes around and we get a call from our favorite customer. He finally got new telephone out to his place and got DSL but he can't run Quake for more than 5 minutes without the system freezing up. With great trepidation the phone tech asks if it smells funny or there's any water leaking from the bottom...
Nope dry and smell free!
"Ok then bring it in for your 12 months of free warranty service, we'll see what's up with it."
A few days later in he comes with the rig under his arm, evidently chagrined but in good spirits. He gets the favorite customer treatment and we set the rig up on the test bench immediately. It works, flawlessly. Boot up Quake crank the settings to max run a round still fine. Slap 3dMark on it it chews it up and spits out a mind blowing score. We show the customer and he asks us to keep stress testing it while he goes shopping and he'll stop by after. So we spend 2 hours poking at it trying to make it fail but no dice, it's the most stable overclocked machine we've ever seen. When the customer comes back we pronounce it provisionally fixed and he takes it home.
Two days later phone call, "Quakey no worky." Alright bring it back in... This time we're serious we keep it overnight. Which means over a week since the customer only comes in to town once a week. So for a week we poke, prod, and abuse this computer. Constantly running benchmarks and games, use it as the technical teams super gaming rig in-store after hours. We can't make it fail. We call the customer back "Look this thing works like a champ we can't break it" he comes in we show him. He takes it to the cafe it works, so he takes it home.
The next week... "Rigs not working again, maybe it wants a car ride?" In he comes with it. Per usual it works, he shops, he takes it home.
The next day, "Car ride didn't work, can I schedule a house call?" Generally house calls weren't a problem, but remember I said this guy lived remote. He was 40 miles out of town, only 20 of those were paved or plowed and the last 10 weren't even road. No one in the shop wanted to burn a full day going out there for warranty work in February in Alaska, but since Windows Server 2000 was fresh on the market we offered him a copy on the house if he brought the rig back in and let us reinstall it. We figured that maybe the issue had to do with the system tweaks we had done to make 98 accept the RAM. It was a long shot but we were desperate.
The next week in comes our customer and his dream rig. He leaves it in our care and we spend the next week backing up, wiping, installing the new OS, and burning the rig in again. It still handles like a champ the whole time. Never as much as a jitter. When he comes back in we have the rig set up in the cafe all ready for him to test, which he does but you can see the glee has gone out of him. He's waiting for the other shoe to drop when he gets home.
And drop it does. We don't hear from him for two weeks but that's because he was afraid to call the night he got it home. He still can't game on it. This time when he asks for a service call we schedule it. The lead tech was the only one of us that owned a Skidoo to make the last 10 miles so he got the pleasure of making the trip. He set it for Friday morning so he could make a whole weekend trip out of it and go skidooing after the call out.
Does the boss get his happy weekend? NO! The curse of the intermittent problem rises up to defeat him.
He's there on site for 6 hours. The customer isn't lying, the rig will idle fine, but 5 minutes of Quake and it reboots. Not BSOD, just reboots like the reset button got pushed. He used every tool he had with him but couldn't find anything wrong with it. He even took 3dMark and a copy of Unreal Tournament out in case it was somehow something about Quake in specific. It wasn't, he couldn't run anything graphics or CPU intensive without it shutting down. So he restored the FSB to 100mhz thinking it must be an OC thing...Nope still won't run, just now it fails while not performing as well. So instead of a long weekend of Skidoo he has to bring the rig back to our bench to be tested component by component.
After a week of bench testing each component we still haven't gotten anything to fail either individually or together, but we're on the hook with this guy for the most expensive rig anyone has ever built so we RMA every piece we can one at a time, with a trip back to the customer after every RMA. Over the next 2 months we made that rig onto a Ship of Theseus, that means everything from the case on in has been replaced except for the CPU. We kept the CPU for last since we got that technically aftermarket we were on the hook for it and couldn't RMA it. By that point though it was May and we just bought another one retail. It was still $1000...
I remind you that at no point has this rig been anything other than amazing for us to use in the shop and between the time and the extra expense we'd killed any profit we had on the deal but this customer was still our best customer so we kept at it.
Memorial Day rolls around and I get the delivery job for the now entirely new PC. The "road" is dry now so I can take it in my off road truck along with every tester I own, my personal bench PC, and a take no prisoners attitude. This will be a solved issue!
I rolled out with a multimeter, network tester, lineman's handset, broad spectrum RF analyzer, oscilloscope, surge protector, UPS, you name it I had it, and I checked everything. Power? He was on a generator after all. He took me and showed me his setup, 20kw pure sine wave inverter cleaner power than we had in town. Telephone? It was a new copper run... Tested dead on for voltage, coms were clear. Turns out he's paid $3000 a mile for 8 miles of run to his property line. Then hired out for another mile to the cabin privately specifically to have good enough signal to get maxed out DSL internet.
I setup both his computer and my bench rig. Bench rig first in case I was wrong about the power and network. Bench rig goes up gets online plays Quake. Not at the same settings his could but it runs gaming and then 30 min of benchmark without a hitch. So moment of truth, I took down my rig put up his. Hooked it up to all the same peripherals, then booted it up. First ran 3DMark and it went...Fine!! I stepped aside and he took over double clicked Quake III and... Quakey Worky! I shouted, he shouted, he spun up some Rage Against the Machine and we rocked out to our hard fought victory. Then I packed up all my stuff and left feeling secure in my technical superiority.
But was that the end? It was certainly long, but that's not sad enough.
Summer Solstice (June 20th) is a big day in Alaska the longest day of the year. People host BBQs and stay out late under the midnight sun. So it wasn't a huge surprise when our customer invited the whole tech support team out to his place for a solstice party. He knew how much work we'd put into making his computer the dream he had envisioned. We closed the shop a little early and headed out. When we got there there were a bunch of people, BBQ, beer, I think there was even a 3 legged race at one point. It was midweek so nobody was planning on staying too late but the host asked us to stay after everyone started to disperse.
When it was just us techies and our host he went in and brought a bottle of scotch and 5 glasses out to the deck we were all on. He poured, served, and toasted to hard work and perseverance paying off. We drank and then our host pointed out a beige box at the bottom of his field maybe 150 yards from the house. "I invited you guys out here today because you deserve to see this." he said as he went inside grabbed a .308 deer rifle off his mantle, walked down off the deck into the pasture and unloaded 5 rounds into what I then realized was a computer case.
He slung the rifle over his shoulder, went down the field and retrieved his target. Brought it back up for us to inspect. All this while we stared aghast after him wondering why he would literally shoot a dream computer to bits. We asked as much when he returned and he ushered us inside to his living room and attached a camcorder to his TV. There in full living color with a date in the corner of June 10th was a 5 minute video of a computer refusing to run Quake III...

An open letter to condom manufacturers

What did you get at Souplantation every time? RIP Souplantation

D100 Situations that might happen during an assassination of a king during a giant wedding

It’s kind of specific, but I am going to run an adventure where the players are tasked with assassinating a King during the wedding of his son, the prince. It’s a giant event that’s filled with nobles from all nations. I’m in need of smaller events that might happen to the players during that time. For context, they have invitations to the wedding and are going dressed as nobles, and the king needs to be killed publicly.

They kill a duplicate king, and the real king is now aware of the assassination plot
While they are scoping out the area, they run into another assassin from a different noble family
Someone who hates the prince releases wild animals to ruin the wedding during the ceremony
The bride stains her dress and asks one of the players to help her clean it off
One of the nobles mistakes one of the PCs as someone else and they are caught in the middle of an awkward conversation.
The wine taster for the king dies of poison but none of the players poisoned it.
Another noble is found dead, and the castle is put on lockdown
The prince has gone missing and no one can find him. He has completely disappeared.
Rival assassin squad bursts out of giant cake(s).
Players are distracted by pitiful orphans working as servants. Will they keep to the mission or help them?
People keep recognizing the PCs as assassins and offering to help them. Do they all hate the King or is it a set-up?
No one remembers why the King's residence was named "Oldshell Hall". That is until the colossal tortoise it's built on wakes up in the middle of a royal wedding.
Someone objects to the marriage during the ceremony. It starts fight between patrons, then guards, and quickly becomes a bar fight scenario, which may make it harder or easier to get to the king.
The bride (or groom) recognizes one of your party members. Turns out, she/he dated their best friend awhile back.
Upon the assassination attempt happening, it’s discovered that the king is illusory.
Large wedding outside needs to move inside due to sudden rain/weather
Goddess of love appears, either to approve or disapprove of the wedding depending on the feelings of the king and bride.
Someone spiked the food with drugs
Musicians' music makes everyone fall asleep quite suddenly
Invitations were magically bugged and listen to the characters the whole time
A huge brawl breaks out as nobles from opposing nations start fighting
Rival squad goes full HAM; targeting players too, along with many others at wedding.
Rival Squad places bomb on the wedding coach. Error in the timing mechanism cause it to go off, blowing your chances. Bonus points if the players have a chance to spot the bomb before it goes off.
The spouse-to-be pulls out a dagger and attacks the ruler at the altar!
The spouse-to-be turns into a real spouse-zilla. Not just losing their temper at everything and abusing everyone in sight (which they do); but they also literally turn into a 40 foot tall kaiju, or was actually a Dragon in disguise.
Turns out the wedding was fake the entire time, as was the castle, the kingdom, the servants (just cardboard and puppets!), etc. "Surprise! You're on Candid Camera!"
Turns out the ruler was polymorphed at some point into a swine, or someone polymorphed a swine to look like the ruler. Also turns out the spouse-to-be was polymorphed too. Much shenaniganry ensues. It's just a mite too much of 'morphin power, rangers.
The King announces that he is donating 50% of his wealth to orphanages and homeless shelters and that tomorrow will be the first day of a new social services program for the poor.
The King announces that he knows there are assassins among the wedding guests and to go ahead and try it and see what happens.
Several snipers are noticed on nearby rooftops.
The assassins find that their weapons have been stolen.
It is announced that the King has been taken ill and will be unable to attend. He is in his chambers in another part of the building and the players need to reach him and find a way to publicly kill him.
The bride refuses to take her vows, declaring to everyone that she was under duress. Chaos ensues.
A rat is discovered in the kitchens. All catering is postponed.
Somebody bursts in and tells everybody that the prince is not really the King's son.
A contest of jousting or some other noble sport is announced as part of the festivities. The prize is presented by the King.
Nobles of a particular nation take great offence to one of the meats offered. This animal is sacred in their religion and mustn't be killed.
The King calls the prince into a private meeting. When they leave, the prince is furious, and it's clear they've had an argument. If the players talk to the prince, he says he was told a horrifying secret and now wants his father dead.
A princess from a rival kingdom announces a declaration of war against the King.
One of the bridesmaids is suddenly unavailable, and nobody is volunteering to replace her, ruining the symmetry of the event. Perhaps one of the players might volunteer to replace her?
The King turns out to be a polymorphed dragon, and he turns back into his true form when the players try to kill him.
The (supposedly) human king is immune to any poison attempts and does not bleed when attacked.
The ceremony is cut short as the bride stabs the groom through the neck with a concealed dagger and attempts to run off.
The king eats a bad clam and ends up vomiting his guts out in a private restroom guarded at the top of a tower.
The king doesn't show up to the wedding at all: It is confirmed roughly halfway into the party that he was kidnapped by roaming (Bandits/Orcs/Bugbears/Ogres).
The plot thickens as a rival assassin sent by the king to assassinate any assassins attempts to assassinate the party.
Two gods disagree about the wedding. One has sent their Clerics to stop the ceremony. The other has sent their clerics to ensure it happens.
The ritual takes place under a full moon. One entire side of the family is werewolves. Oops.
The King has been plotting his ascension to Lichdom for decades. He just needed hundreds of souls to sacrifice and consume all at once. Let the ritual begin.
Upon beginning their assassination attempt, the party discovers the king is a woman. Should they still go through with it? Is she a double or has she been the king all along?
One of the members of the band recognizes the group's bard and demands they join the performance
A trickster god/Archfey has infiltrated the wedding and has replaced the priest conducting the ceremony
A hag has turned the maid of honour into a toad for refusing to let her join the bridal party
The King's brother is too drunk to stand
Someone casts Otto's Irresistible Dance during the first dance causing chaos
A second party learns about the party’s intentions and attempts to buy them off or threaten them into turning on their patron.
An “ally” self identifies and slips the party a magic weapon to assist in the assassination. The weapon is actually cursed and the curse is revealed when it’s used in the assassination. Those are the only conditions where the curse is activated — when it’s used for an assassination. Otherwise it behaves as a normal magic weapon of the DM’s choice. The curse itself is something that makes the assassin readily identifiable, such akin changing color to something unnatural, or a black cloud appearing over their head.
The peasants have chosen the wedding day as the day of their revolution because they all know that all the nobility will be in one place.
An arsonist releases a swarm of of magma Mesfits to take down the whole event.
The Prince and Princess meet for the first time, recognize each other and start a fight that might endanger the ceremony.
Someone has spiked the wine with a strong drug.
The prince comes out as gay and runs away with the captain of the guard/the princess comes out as lesbiand and runs away with one of the maids.
The princess gets kidnapped by a giant, a small man and a fencing master.
The cake is really good. Really really good.
The king attempts to commit suicide
The king declares that a random attendee was there to assassinate him. Said person is innocent.
After the king is killed he is quickly resurrected via the reincarnation spell, leaving him a random race.
It turns out the king is under the effects of a love potion/ spell.
The bride and groom both get cold feet and have to be talked into going through with it.
A vengeful druid releases a hive of bees
A thousand year cursed jewel that a guest has recently obtained releases an evil within
Members from two noble families start a feud after some youths indiscretion and after the king pushes away the matter they insist in honour reparations with duels
A starving Roc/Peryton couple finds this all too convenient clump of fat and plump nobleman and start picking up supplies for winter
A forgotten evil had sprout forth and hordes of rats come rushing out of the church's basement/crypt
The presiding priest falls ill/dead right at the "kiss the bride" moment
One of the party members bumps into a cook in the hallway, causing the cook to spill a large tray of lemon curd pastries all over the floor (and player). They are incredibly distraught and frustrated, insisting the chef will have their head for this.
An impatient mage was going to have an audience with the King, but the audience was postponed due to the wedding, as the mage has just found out (they're somewhere inside the wedding area). The mage conjures up a thunderstorm that follows the King for the next two days.
A perfectly ordinary farmer - perhaps too ordinary - has popped up amid a crowd of nobles. A ruckus ensues.
The King has just been handed a cursed cloak. He hands it to his tailor, who it promptly strangles. The King is now suspicious.

Guys lets help each other out by honest opinions

So a lot of us will be moving OOS for colleges and uni so i wanted to know and share a little about places/cities everybody is going to live in.
Anybody who lives/ lived in any of the following cities please comment ABOUT what is living like in these cities as a teen or young adult and i ll edit it in andalso if you wanna add more cities , please lemme know:
NYC : NYC- FUCK THE MTA. Thats it.
local food joints are a lot cheaper and far more worth it. try going to parks if the ones around you are safe (yes, there are a lot of parks in nyc. playgrounds and small fields and whatnot). learn how to walk fast because people will be very annoyed at you (rightfully) if you walk slow
DO NOT BE TOURISTY YOU WILL WASTE SO MUCH MONEY (and im 99% sure that 99% of us will be broke college students)
I kind of only have subway advice from the days before the plague lmao but: No need to fear New Yorkers, just put on your lost tourist face and almost anyone will help you out with directions or whatever. The subway fare recently jumped an extra dollar to $3.75 which really really sucks, but most colleges are located in Manhattan so you can probably just walk to a great deal of places. Ignore the rats and they’ll probably run away; your bigger problem is dick pigeons that have no fear and stare you down in the middle of the street til you walk around them. Also, generally speaking you’re better off (more comfortable) just standing on the subway than squeezing yourself in the middle seat. Also if you’re on an evening rush hour subway packed like sardines and the poor tired conductor is yelling at people trying to get on that there’s another train right behind this train, they’re usually telling the truth. Just get off and wait, because that next train is usually so empty you can even sit down. For Christ sake don’t lean on the poles, and it’s ok to stand by the doors as long as you get out of the way when people are trying to get off.
washington DC : georgetown is lovely! there’s so many fun things to do around here and during spring when the cherry blossoms bloom it’s absolutely gorgeous! the museums are super fun (i recommend the spy museum!) and the zoo gets new baby pandas every 2 years!!!! if you’re a poli sci major or business major, the internship opportunities are endless! DC has such a vibrant community and it’s such a fun place to live. there’s never a dull moment. make sure to stay out of some more dangerous areas downtown, that’s the only thing i would say is an issue. you can take the train anywhere you want, and basically everything is accessible. the food is so great too!
I'm like 15 minutes away but im still there a lot
the metro's pretty expensive for what it is, but you can get around most of the area pretty easily without too much hassle (esp compared to trying to drive into the city)
there's a bunch of free stuff to do! all of the museums are awesome (esp the botanical gardens & the sculpture garden nearby, they have ice skating in the winter!)
there are always a ton of tourists and families around the mall (at least precovid)
some parts are actually so poorly designed and really difficult to navigate, but that's mostly the richer residential areas (almost cried doing a driving lesson there)
food's pretty good but a lot of places are crazy expensive
there are some places you should definitely avoid but it's sometimes hard to tell that you're headed into them esp if construction's going on
if you are going to georgetown uni, pls pls pls try and get out of georgetown/NW DC and explore more of the city! Georgetown (the neighborhood) is expensive af and if you spent all your time buying 15 dollar salads and shopping from the boutique stores there you will be bled dry come the end of freshman year. Seriously, DC has so much culture that isn't captured in the racially and socioeconomically homogenous region of NW DC (Adams Morgan, Georgetown, Chevy Chase, Kalorama).
Highly recommend exploring all the museums (they're free) like National Gallery of Art, Natural History Museum (a classic😌), Museum of the American Indian, and Newseum (gotta pay for this one but it's worth it imo). After the museums, check out the U Street, Shaw, Logan Circle, Petworth, and Columbia Heights neighborhoods. There're a lot of cool murals that celebrate the black history of the city (DC used to be called Chocolate City). There's food from all over the world: delicious Ethiopian food in Silver Spring, MD and literally Georgian, Uighur, Uzbek, asian fusion, mediterranean, etc. restaurants all around the city, you just gotta go look for them. Eastern and Union Markets are good places to explore with friends, as well as the Wharf (go to the fish market for hush puppies and clam chowder instead of the developed area). There're a lot of great coffee and music places (Tryst, Songbird, Black Cat, Velvet Lounge, basement concerts) for like 18+ and 21+ year olds. Idk if you like clubbing Ultrabar allows 18 year olds but there are also 40 year olds who frequent those places so watch out? You can kayak at the Navy Yard, go to Zoolights, get food and walk around the city (its a pretty walkable city) if you're going on a date.
Know that DC is very much a city that's tailored towards 20 year olds. There's animosity between locals and transplants (a lot of people from around the world not from DC live in DC) because gentrification is pushing a lot of black and brown folks into the edges of NE and SE and SW. Everything around the National Mall/GWU closes after 7pm (when all the commuters from the burbs go home from their day jobs). GET OFF THE RED LINE AND EXPLORE OTHER METRO LINES PLEASE.
Seattle: if i’m being honest it really has gone downhill in the past few years, and a LOT of people are moving out of the city to get away from it lol but that doesn’t mean there aren’t some perks! the downtown area is nice by pike place and on the water, and there is some great shopping/small businesses. the area by UW’s campus can be sketchy but U-Village is a super cool area for shopping and dining!
LA: as someone from california who has spent a lot of time in LA, i personally hate it . it’s nice if u like the city and don’t mind smog and traffic but personally, i love open spaces and nature. also a lot of LA is dirty imo and it’s very expensive
You don't have to pretend to like boba if you move to southern California. The ones that always make a big deal about it are typically the ones that do it to compensate for their lack of personality from my experience.
LA is a car dependent city, and it's pretty limited where you can go using public transit depending where you go, and what area you live in. Also be mindful of where you are going, avoid places like the "jungle" or the "projects".
Food can get pretty expensive, so try to balance it out with cooking your own food or food from the dining hall if you have a meal plan. But also check out areas like thaitown, koreatown, little tokyo and other similar areas.
If you're from out of state, stay at the dorms first, and ask other people about which apartment options are the best and affordable. But this also applies to people instate as well.
Pittsburg:
(I don’t go into the city itself much but I live in the region so I’ll give this a go) I like it but I’m kinda biased. I’ve noticed a strong sports culture and good food, and quite a bit of city pride. Driving in the city is a pain from my experience (which, admittedly, isn’t frequent), but public transport isn’t great either from what I’ve heard. Has nice parks, and if you go to CMU you get free visits to the Carnegie museums. Lastly, avoid Homewood.
Edit: forgot the weather. Yeah, not the best, it’s pretty gloomy but I’m used to it, take that as you will.
Edit 2: I’m going off of both my experience and general impressions, like how I many not go to Homewood, but have heard about it on the news for crime more than some other areas and have been told to avoid it by others.
Southern California:
Wildfires are getting worse and worse every year. Before, we would only see them on the news; now we evacuate. Even if you don't have to evacuate, the bad air quality makes it horrible.
As far as the beach goes, it can get super crowded during the summer, but honestly that doesn't bother anyone too much. If you know the right places/the secret beaches, you can get an entire beach to yourself. Honestly, the beaches here are so beautiful (except for the ones that have too much seaweed :/) and I'm going to miss the beaches so much next year when I go to college :((
There are boba shops everywhereeeeee. Everyone loves boba. Even if you don't, pretend you do.
We go crazy when it rains!!!
One critique of LA specifically: the city plan is wack in terms of public transportation. The city is too spread out to make public transportation feasible, but the streets are too narrow for traffic to be avoided. There's basically traffic all the time.
SF: you WILL need a jacket, it doesn't matter that it's the bay area, the fog is cold. Also ridiculously expensive. Still, it's really close to a lot of gorgeous areas and great hikes. There's definitely a lot of homeless people, that part isn't exaggerated. The food is the BEST, there are so many options. There's so many fun things to do in the city and nearby and you definitely won't run out of ideas.
Born and Raised here and can say I throughly enjoyed it. I will be do my best to honest about my city. There is a thinly veiled facade of anti-racism here. While there is little hate crime or overt racism, this is a city where 5% of the population is black yet 30% of the homeless population is black. The working class struggle against the rich who stagnate progress on issues from housing to policing. It is absolutely expensive here, especially if you are not local and don’t know where to find cheap food and goods. Homelessness and crime is a problem here, though not quite as big as the media portrays it. The crime and homelessness is centralized in a specific area, which is avoidable and I would absolutely not recommend going to. Beyond our faults lies an amazing city, however. We value community based organizations and locally owned business. There is an incredible amount of things to do here, as well as in the rest of the Bay Area. San Francisco has all major sports teams, and an incredibly active population. Out here, We run, we hike and we bike. We enjoy the luxury of being able to be active in such a breathtaking area. Whether you want to surf in Santa Cruz or hike in Muir Woods, they are both an hour and a half away from San Francisco. Finally, the locals love the Bay. If you want to blend in, buy a Ben Davis jacket, San Franpsycho t shirt and SF Giants hat. I hope this helped and I hope you come and make your mark on this amazing city.
Also dont call it "frisco".
BOSTON: Honestly it’s a very solid college town. Perfect size and everything. Students can easily hang out with students from nearby Universities, and it’s super easy to get around with uber and the MBTA.
Boston is very public transport friendly. Great boba/food. Easily walkable too imo. Good shopping/things to do in general. Pretty expensive in the Financial District where I lived. I never felt unsafe walking alone at night in the Financial District at least.
CHICAGO: Chicago: Love the heart of downtown and has many solid things to do, good food(absolutely love the pizza) , good people, good times, good food. There are a lot of homeless people on the streets which might seem scary at first but they won't bother you if you don't bother them! It can get a pretty sketchy in certain areas, but most of the schools truly downtown are pretty separated from it all. I absolutely love the Chicago suburbs, while it might seem like some of the smaller towns don't have much to do, its usually a quick trip to the city or larger towns.
In Chicago, there are these golden weather periods where everything is perfect and the trees are green and everyone's out (even during the pandemic, albeit safely) and I think "man, this is the best city in the world, why do I wanna leave this place" and then November hits lmao
Also, go to a Cubs game. Wrigley Field is an experience you will remember.
TORONTO: UofT is so so nice! It's got an old campus feel with nice old architecture and all but the buildings are spread out throughout the downtown area so you never feel secluded at all. Everything is within walking distance but there are also subways and buses and streetcars running everywhere if you need (although waiting for them can be a major pain sometimes). The city is so multicultural so there's every kind of food from every country you can imagine! Museums/shopping/parks/restaurants are everywhere so you'll never get bored. Winter is horrible though, it's super cold and just depressing while summer is terribly hot and humid. Toronto's pretty expensive though, depending on where you're coming from.
Vancouver: This city is actually so nice but pretty expensive. You've got the mountains, beach and big city all in one place making it perfect to do outdoorsy activities but also just wander around town. UBC is kind of isolated but there are buses that take you everywhere and it just makes it feel a bit more like a campus. Definitely some areas are a bit sketchy but overall it's a safe city with tons to do and amazing food. It rains a ton here but the temperature's mild year round.
-The UBC campus is super nice! it's really pretty and the weather there is pretty mild, both in summer and winters, although it does end up raining a LOT during winter. HUUUGE asian community, especially in the richmond area, but that also means REALLY good asian food. a lot of the recreational stuff in van is like hiking/going to the beach/biking etc, since vancouver has forests, mountains and ocean, so be prepared to be active. public transport is pretty extensive, although sometimes you end up waiting 25 minutes for a bus. downtown is also pretty nice, but there' certain areas/streets (hastings, etc) that are quite sketchy. avoid those. living costs are also quite high tbh.
Montreal: love this city so much. Awesome size, affordable, diverse. Great bike infrastructure, restaurants, summer festivals, amazing Metro system. Beautiful architecture, very LGBT friendly. Downtown is very bilingual. Lots of clubs (drinking age 18), incredibly low crime rate, lively downtown, such a happy feel everywhere as soon as the weather warms up at the end of April and the terrasses open and everyone's eating outside in their jackets loving the sunshine. Winter's cooooold, ngl. You've gotta embrace it and skate outside on campus, on the river in old Montreal, in the parks, cross-country ski on the mountain, or just hunker down and study for 4 months.

MIAMI: Miami is both amazing and horrible. The weather can be fabulous and the nature is so vibrant. When the sun is out it feels like you're living in a "indie" snapchat filter that raises the saturation. So much diversity; the cultural melting pot of America. If you want to meet people from around the world and see more cultures then come here! You better know some Spanish, because now more people speak Spanish than English down here. If you like the beaches and you can deal with the heat then Miami is perfect. Also get used to rain and you have to be comfortable with nature; ants and lizards and bugs and roaches will come into your house. Also a great place if you like art as we have many large art festivals here.
BUFFALO
ROCHESTER
ITHACA: I was born in Ithaca, but it’s been a few years since I’ve visited so take this with a grain of salt.
First of all, it’s gorgeous. Even though the town lacks in accessibility (it’s at least an hour away from major cities), it has some of the best scenery I’ve ever seen. There’s waterfalls (yes, waterfalls!) nearby and it borders Cayuga Lake as well. It gets really cold in the winter, but summers are literally perfect.
Ithaca is dominated by people associated with colleges (students, professors, etc.), and the town reflects this as well. I remember there being a lot of restaurants with options ranging all the way from vegan to Greek and there’s a pedestrian mall called the Ithaca Commons. Overall, the people are super nice, and if you decide to come here, it will definitely be 4 of the most memorable years of your life.
NEW HAVEN
ATLANTA: One thing I will say is that the roads are absolutely CRAZY. they'll be 5, 6 lane roads just running through the city and its a nightmare when you arent sure where you're going.
AUSTIN:
Austin is cool, but so many people have expectations that are just way too high. If you go and look up “best city in America” I guarantee that Austin will pull up on at least one. Austin isn’t bad, but it isn’t the idealistic wonderland that it is made out to be. It’s a real city with real issues, and just because you went for SXSW doesn’t mean that you will love it.
The Awesome: lots of interesting food choices, live music if you’re into that, excellent job opportunities after college, like a combination of Nashville, Seattle, and Texas hill country
The meh: housing prices aren’t necessarily terrible compared to places like DC or NYC, but it is much much more expensive here than in the past. Almost everyone’s houses have doubled in value in the last ten years. Do not come thinking you’re getting a cheap experience. Definitely more expensive than Houston and Dallas. Another thing that isn’t awesome is people tend to be pretentious, but not like in Dallas. It’s more pretentious in a hipster way, whereas Dallas and LA are places that are pretentious in regards to money.
The awful: traffic is terrible, because the population growth has far outpaced the infrastructure development. Another major issue is the homeless downtown. If you go to UT, expect to see several homeless people on and around campus. They are trying to solve this issue, but the crisis is worse than almost anywhere else not names Seattle or Portland. Also, tons of people wear UT merch despite never have attended the school. THE WEATHER SUCKS, in august almost every day is over 100 degrees. Winters aren’t even that mild a lot of the time like some would expect (Although it’s been warm this January). Weather is not like Miami.
Other things to know: overwhelmingly liberal downtown, suburbs tend to be mixed. Dallas, Houston and San Antonio are pretty close by, but leaving the state of Texas from Austin is at least a 5 hour affair.
DENVER
DALLAS: Uhhh Dallas is not public transport friendly at all. You need a car on campus. The DART tram goes through downtown but it can feel sketchy at times if you're alone and the stops aren't super conveniently located. Parts of Dallas also have really high crime rates but downtown and uptown aren't so bad. Oak Lawn is also a great location for nightlife/convenience in general but far ish from the universities. Rent is increasing at a relatively fast pace. Increasingly diverse foodie scene. Dallas suburbs are a better mix of lower rent but still good access to entertainment/shopping/food if you have a car and can drive (especially Plano/Frisco/Carrollton)
**PHILLY:*\*Philly is a beautiful city. If you’re going to Upenn please don’t walk off campus too far. If you’re going to Temple, rip. Go to magic gardens, every indie trendy philly teens home. Living in philly shapes you as a teen, it really is kind of like a culture. Don’t get a cheesesteak from Pat’s and don’t tell anyone you aren’t an Eagles fan.
Baltimore - The bad reputation we have is completely overblown; Baltimore is a really fun, charming quirky city that has a very distinct underdog personality to it. Charles Village, Hampden, Mount Vernon and Station North are all fun areas to explore—lots of vintage and thrift shops, trinket stores, places to eat, etc. All of these neighborhoods are extremely walkable as well. Once COVID goes away it’s always fun to see movies at either the Charles or the Parkway Theater in Station North or visit the BMA, AVAM or Walters Art Museum. Public transit isn’t great, but if you don’t have a car either the bus or the light rail can take you to the places that have the most action going on. No one goes into the Inner Harbor except tourists. Areas around JHU are completely safe as long as you aren’t doing anything stupid like looking at your phone at night with headphones in while walking around. Please make sure to be careful when you’re around roads though! We’re known to be absolutely terrible drivers haha.
Blacksburg, VA (V tech): I sent a summer on campus at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg Virginia and staying there was so nice. There are so many activities to do and on the weekends people and families visit campus to play with their dog or hangout downtown and the vibe is so amazing. There are farmers markets, hiking trails, so many farms for fruit picking. It's a college town in the middle of no where so there is just so much for Blacksburg to offer!!
ETC.
P.S all of these are comment additions so not my experiences.

Semper Shil'vati: And SSBverse Story: Chapter 3

Another story that takes place in the Sexy Space Babes universe written by BlueFishcake. He owns the story, I just got permission to write my own. If anyone is interested is joining the Discord server and participating in writing, here's a link. https://discord.gg/aJTTaf649S
[Previous](https://www.reddit.com/HFY/comments/l9gljw/semper_shilvati_an_ssbverse_story_chapter_2/)
Chapter 3: Decisions

Zachary’s eyes went blank, and face expressionless, before turning back to the bartender. “Have a good night, Sheila.” Zachary said as he put money on the counter for the drinks, walked around the Shil’vati Marines, and walked out of the bar, not saying another word.
“Zachary, where are you going?” Mal’Ava asked, as she and her fellow Marine followed him out the bar. The response she got was the human flashing his middle finger, a symbol that became synonymous as an insult on Earth.
“You’ve got some fucking nerve asking me that question, Mal’Ava!” He snarled as he walked faster and faster, wanting to get away from the aliens. “After everything I lost to you people, why the fuck would you even ask me that?”
“Please just listen to me, I’m trying to help you!” Mal’Ava said desperately. This caused Zachary to stop, and turn around in her direction, a rage burning in his eyes she never saw before, and terrified her more than a little.
“Help me? You Shil’vati have a weird fucking definition of helping people out! Slaughtering millions from orbit, taking away the independence of billions, defiling our most cherished monuments, destroying religious sites, yeah, we totally wanted your fucking help!” he snarled at her, in a way that Mal’Ava had never seen before. “Like those people at the hospital, or that prisoner of war camp that was run by your Gestapo! Why the fuck do you think I want to join the same force that not only fucked up my life, but those of countless millions?”
“That wasn’t our fault!” she growled back, causing Zachary to intensify his stare.
“Which part, because I brought up quite a few!” he said, not breaking eye contact with her. Sergeant Kolani tried to interrupt, but a hand gesture from Mal’Ava stopped it.
“Our attacks on those cities were intended to knock out the military capacity within them, not intentionally damage or destroy them! And those latter two events you refer to had nothing to do with us, it was-”
“Those god damn SS that do whatever they want, yeah I’m aware. With the way they act, you wonder why you people get so much resistance from us. You talk about having morals, yet you seem to not realize why so many people are pissed off? After all you’ve done, you expect us to be happy, and welcome you with open arms! You people are as obvious as a brick through a window!” as he turned away from her, ready to walk off, he stopped but inches away from a Shil’vati Marine who was standing behind him, staring down at him.
“You’ve got a mouth on you,” she said in Shil, a smirk on her face. “I wonder what else it can do.”
“Ask your Captain, she knows real well of what it can do.” he replied in her language, before moving around her, and continuing on in the direction he was going. As he did however, he felt a hand grab onto his shoulder. He reflexively leaned forward, hoping to throw whoever was grabbing him, off balance. Grabbing the Marine’s arm, he kicked his leg out, sweeping her leg out from underneath her, sending her tumbling to the ground. Once she was down, he immediately backed away from her, not wishing to continue the fight, especially when more Shil’vati were coming closer to the ruckus on the street, and more than a few curious onlookers.
“I’m about to teach you a lesson you won’t forget, human!” she growled as she got up, reaching for her stun baton, only to be held back by a metallic hand gripping her shoulder, and pulling her back.
“Private,” Sergeant Kolani said, staring daggers into the woman’s soul. “Try something that stupid again, especially when unwarranted, and you’ll be on latrine cleaning duty until you leave this planet!” she said harshly. The Marine put away her baton, and quickly rose to her feet.
“Yes Sergeant!” she obeyed and walked on, but not before glaring back at Zachary. He could only sigh before looking back once more at Mal’Ava.
“You already know I hold nothing against you or your people,” he said. “But the way you went about coming here isn’t going to make you many friends. If you wish to continue our conversation, however pleasant, or unpleasant it may be, I suggest it be done elsewhere, so none of your own shoot me.” he said before getting into his truck, and driving away.
When he got back to his apartment, he slammed the door shut, locked it, and sat down on the sofa in his living room, and put his head in his hands. He still couldn’t believe she had asked him that. He pulled out his phone, going through his texts, seeing if anyone tried getting ahold of him. Like he expected, there was nothing, the most recent text being from an old buddy a few days ago. As he scrolled down further though, he came upon the growing number of contacts he’d never speak to again.
Among that list were his mother, brother, and many fellow Marines, who had died all those years ago. The last message he had from his mother, dated 3 days before everything happened, simply read; “Have fun out in the field, hope to talk soon!”. So many memories, so many people he’d never said goodbye to. Zachary couldn’t hold it in anymore, and just let it out. He cried harder than he did in a long time. The flurry of emotions inside him that was brought up in the last hour played hell with him. He already had so much built up in his system, with virtually no way to release it.
All the thoughts he had about being a failure, about being called a traitor, that most people he knew and loved were all dead now. If they weren’t killed in the initial phases of the invasion, a great many had died with the resistance. He too had joined up in the early days, roughly one month after the world fell under occupation. He remembered that day very clearly, as he, and others like him, had gathered in a small town in Georgia, planning their next moves.
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All those gathered in the room were pissed. Veterans, old and new, as well as civilians, looked over multiple maps that described the situation Earth was in. Among those in the room was Zachary, as well as some of fellow Marines from Okinawa, and many other military members. Some retired, others active duty when the war happened, but all ready to fight in any way possible.
"Alright, listen up, this is what we know now!" A man with a gold trident on his collar, said, garnering the attention of the room. "These alien bastards hit us quick and they hit us hard. The world had barely time to prepare and we got our asses handed to us. They must've been watching us for some time, as they indiscriminately targeted and bombarded, nearly every single military base on the planet. Some of us here were lucky not to be on base when this occurred, but most weren't. Many like me, and our friend Alistair here, were off on assignment, well away from targeted areas around the world. In the last month, those of us who survived made our way back here, trying to gather as much information as possible.”
“That includes a list of casualties and losses from around the world. We’ve done our best to do so, but it's not easy, not with how these eggplants have locked down travel as tightly as they have.” A British man with an SAS patch on his shoulder, said. “At least in Great Britain, 50,000 of our own were killed in the first few days. That represented a third of our total manpower available before they arrived. As of now, our only remaining assets that we know of are some of our submarines that have refused to surrender.”
“It wasn’t much better here in the states either,” the SEAL, who’s nametape read Jameson, continued. "Combining what information we have about those who were abroad and in the country during the attack, roughly 600,000 dead. Nearly half of our active duty personnel were killed, but luckily the majority of reservists didn’t get caught by them, and we’re trying to coordinate with them, as well as others that survived long enough to scatter.”
“And we shouldn’t expect them to get caught either, not after everything we did when it became clear we lost.” said a woman in a suit, the aura of a government agent radiating off of her. “Those of us in the CIA, NSA, and FBI did our best to wipe out files that contained information about those in the armed forces, to help ensure they didn’t get their hands on them, and hunt down those that escaped. Combine that with the beating they gave DC, important hubs ended up getting hit, and did our jobs for us. We didn’t get it all unfortunately, but most of the important information is gone, and they’ll never find it.”
“Which is a good thing for me,” Jameson said. “Because on my ID those purple bitches issued me, it doesn’t list me as former military, only civilian. Guess their files didn’t have my military records on them, which also works out for many of us who crept our way back here, ready to continue the fight. They won’t be expecting us, so that gives us one advantage.”
“All this talk of how much we know, what damage did we do to these space orcs?” a soldier said from across the room. “Or did we really get rolled over like Iraq in '91?” The special forces operators and government agent just looked at each other, looks of disappointment written across their faces, before turning to reply.
“Not as much as we’d like unfortunately,” Alistair said, a somber tone in his voice. “Most of you should be aware of the various nuclear strikes in some of the major cities. Us, you Yanks, the Russians, and Chinese still have some subs roaming around the seas. Some landing zones that were away from cities, others that were directly inside cities, got hit from submarines that pulled up directly to the coastline, fired off, and dived back down.”
“We had asked the Russians and Chinese to hit our own territory, while us and the Brits hit targets in theirs.” Jameson said, the thought of it clearly bothered him, as it did to most others present. The Israelis wiped out one of their landing zones in the Sinai with a massive nuclear strike, while they tripped a nuclear trip mine in Pyongyang. However both of those nations are functionally gone now, and I don’t need to tell you why. We know some went off in India and Pakistan, but we don’t know much more than that.”
“Basically, most of the damage we did to them was via nuclear strikes, many of which hurt us more than them. We’ve still got subs in the water, and some very limited communications with them, but this won’t last forever. Aside from the nations already listed, only Japan has anything left in the water. And like we’ve said, they can’t go on forever. They’ll either have to surrender or make one last suicide attack, being completely blind of what’s going on.” Alistair told them.
“And conventional options are obviously off the table for obvious reasons,” the agent said. “While we’ve confirmed a few old weapons depots weren’t hit, trying to drag shit out of them when our enemy is watching us from orbit isn’t a good idea. As it stands, we have to play the long game here. Watch our enemy, learn their strengths, their weaknesses, and exploit them whenever we can. If ever possible, infiltrate their ranks should the opportunity arise. But until then, we wait, and don’t do anything too obvious.”
“So the question is, are you all in?” Jameson said, scanning around the room, and his gaze resting on Zachary and his fellow Marines.
“You're damn right we are!” he said. “Most of our brothers and sisters died on Okinawa, and we’ll be damned if we can't get revenge on these damn eggplants for that! You can count on us.”
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He continued to think about that day, and the first few years of the occupation ever since. He and his friends had taken part in more than a few operations back in the day, but slowly they realized that they were losing too many of their own, and that the current approach just wasn’t going to work. He and many others just gave up, at least for the time being. Granted, he still knew people in various cells across the US, but his days of directly helping them out was over for now. Partially because he was sick of seeing his friends die, partly because of his entanglement with Mal’Ava, and not wanting her to catch on to anything.
It still didn’t help him feel any better about the situation though, but for those he worked with, they understood. But the civilians didn’t, as many still held rather pointed opinions about him. He, and many others, had done their job to the best of their capabilities, but the Shil’vati were just too damn powerful. Earth wasn’t going to win alone, a lesson in Afghanistan and Vietnam would tell you that. But thinking back, when they were told to infiltrate if possible, Zachary thought if it would be a good idea to at least try.
He wasn’t a coward, but he didn’t see many ways to effectively fight back against their occupiers, not ways that didn’t take horrendous losses on their side anyway. He also wondered just why the Shil’vati were in the process of recruiting from Earth’s population, since the vast majority of the planet was still actively resisting. Something must be going wrong for them somewhere in the depths of space if they need humans to fill their ranks. He wondered if he should take the chance, but that was taking a backseat to his current thoughts. He sat on his couch for what felt like hours, trying to compose himself.
“God dammit Mal’Ava, why did you have to ask me that? Of all fucking things to ask me!” The Shil’vati had marked him, and many others, to keep track of them, and ensure they didn’t cause trouble. The same excuse Germany had used in rounding up those who they considered threats to their nation. The same excuse that saw members of his family rounded up for no other reason than their religion. Something his great grandfather learned when his unit liberated Buchenwald in 1945. The horror stories surviving members of his family had passed down. The parallels with the current occupation, and the Nazis, wasn’t hard to recognize. A POW camp run by the Interior early in the occupation was a great example of that.
Yet the Shil’vati wondered why so many people on the planet hated them for what they did, especially those like Zachary. He hated the Shil’vati for what they’ve done to his world. He hated those who ordered his planet invaded, who killed millions, and acted as if they were bringing civilization to barbarians, like the Empires of old did to much of the world, and expected them to be grateful for it.
About the only positive feelings he had for any of them are Mal'Ava, and neutral ones for Kolani, who he just met for the first time since he blew her arm off on Okinawa. Aside from that, the rest could take a long walk off a short pier for all he cared. Sure, he didn’t hate every last one of their species, but he’d be damned if he ever talked to one if he had a choice, or even thought of considering the propositions he’s heard from Shil’vati Marines on the streets.
But right now he just wanted to forget everything. He got up, hit the light switch to his living room, and made his way to the bedroom. He hoped he could fall asleep without much issue, and escape the stress of the day. “What a wonderful way to spend my Friday night!” he thought as he plugged his phone in and collapsed onto his bed. “Get my buzz killed by the only Shil’vati I can call a friend, and attacked by one of her Marines on the street.” he spent what felt like hours tossing and turning in his bed, until a look at his phone told him it was only 11:30 at night.
“Fuck me!” he said as he tossed his phone back down, trying to fall asleep. However the sound of his door opening jolted him upright, focusing on the sound of footsteps in his apartment. He reached for the Glock 19 he kept in the drawer next to his bed, and pulled it from its holster. As quietly as he could, he got up, and crept towards his door, and slowly opened it. The lights were off, and he could hear the footsteps getting farther from the door, and coming closer and closer to the living room. He felt around for the light switch, flicked it on, and stepped out and levelled his pistol at the home invaders. “Hold it motherfuckers!” he ordered, only to do a double take as he recognized just who came into his home.
The sight of two, seven foot tall space amazons, sneaking into his house half an hour from midnight, made him lower his sidearm, and run his hand through his hair in frustration. He was at a loss for why the hell they were here in the first place, especially after what happened a few hours prior.
“What the hell are you doing sneaking into my apartment? How did you even get in here, I locked the fucking door?!”
“You gave me a key a few years ago, remember?” Mal’Ava replied. “As for why we’re here, we wanted to apologize, especially in regards to the actions of Private Valek, who’s been reprimanded appropriately for unauthorized use of force. And myself for what I asked of you, especially when remembering your own ancestry.” she trailed off, looking over at a nearby shelf, and the photos that were displayed on it. One of which was a black and white photo of his great grandfather, with the 6th Armoured Division at Buchenwald.
“Yeah, I’m surprised you remembered that,” he said, placing the pistol on the living room table, sitting on his couch, and running a hand through his hair.
“I just thought that a different line of work would better suit you. Considering you don’t have much of your own, and have worked the same job for years, I thought you might have taken it.” Mal’Ava explained.
“Not to mention how you get treated by most people for your refusal to kill me.” Kolani said, sitting down next to him.
“As I’ve said before, it wouldn’t have been right. Hell, I was following the laws of war in my conduct. You weren’t a threat to me anymore, and leaving you to die would’ve gone against the values of my country. I might not have been a medic, but I’d be damned if I wasn’t going to try my best to save you.”
“I know we have differing definitions of honor, Zachary, but there are many, at least of those I’ve met, in the Shil’vati military that admire the actions you took, especially after so many other incidents across the planet were the opposite.”
“You really shouldn’t expect the same conduct from every place you’ve occupied. I’m far from a global standard.” he replied. “As for what else you said, you need to realize I don’t talk to any other Shil’vati unless I’m forced to. I’m not saying I haven’t thought about it, but I’m not completely comfortable with the idea of serving alongside your own for any extended period of time.”
“Was your own military always comfortable?” Mal’Ava asked.
“The difference with that is I was surrounded by people of my own species, ones I grew up with, and got along with. The opposite holds true for your people, for a number of reasons. Aside from my personal thoughts on it, being surrounded by women who’ve likely never had sex before, is not an ideal situation for me. Especially not ones almost twice my size and a foot taller than me.”
“I can assure you that’s unlikely,” Kolani said. “We had a male in my training cadre when I was a recruit, and the only woman who dared to try what you're referring to got kicked right out. Besides, don’t most of you human males love sex? It's what I’ve heard on the data-net, as well as from certain people.” she said, a slight smile forming on her face. Zachary gave a cursory glance at Mal’Ava as Kolani said that last bit, causing the Captain’s face to turn a shade of light blue, and look away.
“I can see where you might get that idea,” he said as he smirked at Mal’Ava. “And who’s been telling you such things. What we consider love for sex is entirely different than your own. We tend to have sex with people we love and trust, not just random people we encounter on the street. Culturally, it means something far different to us. You barely have any males, and from what I’ve heard, its not hard to imagine why you think we’re sex gods. Still though, as I’ve said previously, a great deal of us think you people are absolutely beautiful. If circumstances regarding your arrival were different, I can almost guarantee every one of your Marines, male or female, would be satisfied before they ever left our world.” he said matter of factly.
If they had come in peace, humanity would’ve helped them cum in peace as well. If they hadn’t invaded Earth, there’s no telling how many Shil’vati he would’ve tried to bed. Especially their guys, who you could barely tell were guys in the first place.
“So does that mean,” Kolani trailed off, twirling her hair between her fingers. Zachary only chuckled at what she was hinting towards, and he couldn’t blame her. To be honest, he hadn’t had sex in a over a year. He never really cared to go out and mingle, and given his reputation, those he was interested in didn’t care for him. He had gotten a shock when he found out that Mal’Ava was a virgin, but soon found out that wasn’t uncommon in their society.
“You know what, fuck it!” he said as he got up from the couch. He already guessed partially why they’d come here, since both of them were wearing a tank top and some rather tight fitting pants. He wasn’t enough of a dick to clam jam both of them, and quite frankly, he needed to take out some frustrations on something, otherwise the next person to piss him off was liable to get knocked out. “Just gotta ask this beforehand, will her tusks be a problem if you sit on her face?” he asked Mal’Ava, before turning to Kolani, whose face turned entirely blue upon hearing his question.

This paper still hasn't defeated me, but what's with this Special Edition?

(Issues 1, 2, and 3)
Got a random paper today, not on my usual days. That’s great.
Okay, first things first. The toad’s dead. Y’know, in case you wanted an update on that. It was getting pretty skinny, so I think it was getting desperate, and when I turned away from it while I was packing to leave for work, it tried to jump at me. Elliot was on it before I could react, which I’m not going to lie I’m kind of impressed about. The android dragged it to the kitchen and sliced its throat, then stood and asked me, “Would you like frog legs for dinner?”
I can’t deny I barked a laugh, then said, “Not from that fuckin’ thing,” and went back to packing. I dunno what it did with the toad after that, must have disposed of it somewhere. Then Elliot cleaned the kitchen so well it’s pretty much impossible to tell there was blood all over the floor.
Elliot ended up coming with me for work, I felt uncomfortable leaving it alone in my house alone, and I want to make sure it doesn’t kill anyone. For all I know it’ll feel freer if I’m not in the vicinity, and decide to ignore my stipulation. I also packed the cat, just in case. I want to keep an eye on its, uh, eyes.
Look, it’s been a long few days.
We did try to break it, Elliot got kind of creative. He had me drop the cat off the side of one of the skyscrapers in a city we passed through, 63 floors tall. It was a couple hours before dawn, and he made sure the area around it was clear of people for me. Made a pretty big dent in the sidewalk, not so much as a hairline fracture in the cat. We tried tossing it into one of those big compactors they use on cars in junkyards outside of that city, had to pay off the junkyard owner just to try. I managed to shut it down before it caused more than a dent or two to the machine. We even borrowed a laser cutter and tried that too, it just refracted and hit some trees instead, would have hit me too if Elliot hadn’t blocked it.
I’m not sure how it heals, but the holes in its chassis are already repairing themselves. It did say whatever the mechanism is can’t heal its internal parts, it has to do those repairs manually. Not that it really matters, right? I still don’t know what Elliot’s goal is here, but I guess if I ever have to destroy it, that knowledge should help.
Anyway, I left on Monday instead, figuring that with this whole paper problem I’d be best off giving myself an extra day more than I thought I needed. The drive from my city to this one took about 16 hours, straight through. I learned Elliot can drive, don’t know why I’m surprised. Not that it has a license, but still meant I didn’t have to drive the whole way. I don’t know if anyone’s realized this yet, but legality doesn’t really matter to me. I don’t consider myself a bad person, I have and try to maintain my own moral code, but sometimes the law just doesn’t make sense. Or maybe I’m just talking out of my ass, I don’t know.
Since I hadn’t originally anticipated bringing Elliot with me, I’d already booked a room with a single bed. Not that it really matters that much I guess, it doesn’t sleep.
I tossed my bags next to the bed and grabbed a few things from them. Then I stepped out of the hotel and spent the next several hours setting things up for work. This particular job requires a little more subtlety and preparation than usual, so I have to establish myself a bit more thoroughly before I can pull this off. Not that my jobs don’t always require those things, but generally I can get away without a full week in another part of the country.
And then Elliot had to go and make my week a little bit harder. I came back to the hotel around 3am today to find it sitting on my bed and examining a new issue of the paper, tilting it this way and that. It only looked at me when I started swearing loudly, an innocent look on its face.
If it hadn’t been so late in the morning I would probably have slammed the door shut, but instead I gently closed it and walked toward the android, snatching the paper from its hands and sitting down on the bed, “I’m going to murder you, you realize that right? Where did you get that?”
“It came at the usual time. Perhaps the new time zone has changed the days you get it on? I wished to see if anything was different, or if there was any way I could pick up the frequency the writing is displayed at. That I’m unable to see it vexes me.”
“None of those are good reasons. Your curiosity is going to get me fucking killed.” I flicked the paper open and scanned it briefly, surprised at its existence and what it contained. But whatever. I just started reading the thing aloud, knowing Elliot wouldn’t be happy until he heard what it contained, and it would probably be best to have an idea of what was to come.

THE MIDNIGHT PAPER: SPECIAL EDITION
YOUR HOROSCOPE, WEEK OF 11/17/2020
Pisces: If you find yourself in the middle of a bog, climb the nearest tree. It will open new doors and may even save your life. Your lucky food is stromboli, and your unlucky animal is the octopus.
Aries: Your future is certain, and cannot be changed. Do not attempt to maneuver away from the consequences of your actions. Your lucky food is tilapia, and your unlucky animal is the raven.
Taurus: Happiness will not come your way, don’t bother with tears as they will not help, simply go about your life as if everything is usual. Your lucky food is duck, and your unlucky animal is the duck.
Gemini: Don’t predict everything to go as planned, avoid potholes, perfume, and the patriarchy. Your lucky food is pumpkin, and your unlucky animal is the penguin.

I stopped reading here because I was pissed off and I could both feel and hear Elliot softly laughing next to me. I glared at him and he gave me what was probably meant to be an apologetic look, “My understanding of this zodiac system is severely limited, but may I guess that you’re a Gemini?”
“Fuck off,” was all I responded, then I looked back at the paper and continued to read while he chuckled.

Cancer: Don’t forget to pack an extra set of underwear when you leave the house this week. Your lucky food is milk, and your unlucky animal is the greyhound.
Leo: Don’t forget to pack an extra set of wearunders when you leave the house this week. Your lucky food is dog food, and your unlucky animal is the cow.
Virgo: Clean your room and change your sheets. This is your final warning. Your lucky food is canned corn, and your unlucky animal is bed bugs.
Libra: Open your windows when the sun shines through them this week, you will be pleasantly surprised. Your lucky food is tacos, your unlucky animal is the axolotl.
Scorpio: Make time to look toward the stars this week, or you may lose something critical. Don’t trust the makers. Your unlucky food is oranges, your lucky animal is the platypus.
Ophiuchus: Start at the beginning, end at the end. Do not pass through the middle. Never touch the middle. Your lucky food is pizza, your unlucky animal is the giant otter.
Sagittarius: Take care to temper your desires, it will not be you who will suffer the consequences if you do not. Don’t go chasing waterfalls. Your lucky food is clams, and your unlucky animal is the rhinoceros beetle.
Capricorn: The white rabbit will lead your way. Don’t brush your teeth until the end of the week and you will have good luck. Your lucky food is applesauce, and your unlucky animal is the flamingo.
Aquarius: Avoid travelling by motorcycle for the next seven days, or you will end up in a bad situation. Your lucky food is asparagus, and your unlucky animal is the orangutan.

I folded the paper up and tossed it over into the trash bin, then collapsed back onto the bed. “Talk about cryptic bullshit. How the fuck am I supposed to interpret any of that? And it’s supposed to be valid for the whole week? What the hell, man.”
“Would you not only need to pay attention to your own?”
“Nah, I don’t trust the thing. Whatever it says, I’m gonna guess I’ll have to be wary of things relating to anyone I interact with. This sucks.”
“This edition certainly is more cryptic than the last two.”
I was silent for several moments, then narrowed my eyes at Elliot, “When were you… built?”
It turned and blinked at me, that soft glow in its eyes, “I don’t know. But I believe that my neural network was activated on a date that would make me a Capricorn.”
“So white rabbits and not brushing your teeth, a thing you don’t have to do anyway. Guess this paper really is targeted at me, fucking hell.” I made an annoyed noise and sat up, pulling out a butterfly knife and tossing it open into the air and catching it closed in my hand on each flip. It helped ease my frustration a little, and Elliot watched it for a minute before it got up and took the paper out of the trash. I caught the knife and glared, “What’re you doing now?”
“I still wish to figure out if there is some way I can see what is written on this page. I will examine it until it disappears.”
I grumbled and put the blade away, then got changed into something more comfortable. I took the ceramic cat out of my bag and set it on the table near the door, facing away from me. Its eyes don’t look like they’ve opened at all, that’s a good thing, but I still didn’t want it ‘watching’ me.
I looked at Elliot as it sat in the chair next to the table, its irises subtly changing color as it tilted the page this way and that. That was interesting, something new. I’m guessing it can examine things in different wavelengths? Also good to know. Maybe. I don’t know anymore, I feel like for once in my life I’m completely out of my depth. I like having a handle on my life, but now it’s completely out of my control, and the frustration I feel is palpable.
Elliot glanced at me as I stared at it, eyes shifting back to the normal green as it did so. “What do you plan to do for the remainder of the night?”
“Dunno. Sleep I guess. Avoid the patriarchy.”
That got a small laugh from him, “Don’t forget penguins. Bad luck, those.”
I reached for the bedside table and threw the dagger sitting there at him. He caught it, his eyes still filled with amusement, and we both knew I hadn’t aimed to kill him. A knife wouldn’t be enough to do that, and last thing I needed was to wake up any neighbors by starting a real fight with him in a hotel room.
Maybe bringing him along was a terrible decision.
Too late now, I guess. I ended up trying to sleep shortly after that. Not the easiest with Elliot directly in the room with me, I could see his eyes subtly glowing in the dark and hear him shifting the paper this way and that. Eventually I succumbed to exhaustion. I’ve been uneasy about him being in the house since he moved in, so ultimately his presence in the room itself hasn’t actually affected my ability to sleep. It was still shitty and I’m still tired as hell.
Gonna go out now and do some more shit around the city, I need to make sure some things are still how I expect them to be. And figure out what to do for when things go awry, ‘cause I guess I can’t predict things will go according to plan.
Fuck.

(Author's Note (A/N): This special edition was brought to you by u/jonip16, who donated one of their weekly pages this week to me for my birthday, so Scott got an additional paper this week! Hope you all enjoy! And thank you MidnightPaper for approving it!
Additional side note, I enjoy responding to comments IC, so feel free to ask Scott stuff if you want, or try to piss him off, that's fun too)
(Next Issue: 5)

I absolutely bombed my audition today. Feeling lost and hopeless now.

Hello everyone, I took part in the audition for my university's orchestra today (I was auditioning for French horn) and unfortunately it went pretty badly.
To start with, I was given my assigned score for the audition 2 days before the actual date, so I only had that much time to practise. I tried to make do with the time that I had and managed to brush it up my part to a reasonable tempo - not the actual concert speed, but one that was acceptable given the tempo markings. I did full run-throughs during practice and they were quite accurate, so I felt reasonably confident on the day of the audition.
However, things did not go well from the start today. I was quite nervous even upon entering the waiting room, and all of a sudden I felt incredibly insecure about my practice. It was affecting my breathing and I tried to do some deep breathing exercises to calm myself down and played some basic warm-ups to get into the familiarity of playing the horn, but it didn't make me any less nervous. My breath support wasn't there and my scales sounded weak, but I thought, "okay, screw it, I'll just start playing and maybe the routine of practising will help carry me through".
That didn't work. When I entered the audition room, there were 5 people in front of me, all wearing masks, expressionless, and there was a lone chair and stand in the middle of the room. I became infinitely more nervous and self-conscious, and, despite my best efforts, I think that was the point where I conceded to myself that perhaps I really wasn't prepared for this at all. But here I was, and, well, there was only one thing left to do: play.
The audition turned out disastrous. I botched the first note and then the second; I decided to restart after that. I managed to play most of the notes for my first piece correctly, but my breathing was off and my sound was unfocused and pinched. I missed a number of notes throughout - it was so frustrating; I had practised the piece over a dozen times yet when the critical moment came I couldn't remember what certain phrases sounded like. During my second piece, there were a lot of rests in between miscellaneous phrases; everyone was looking at me during those rests expectantly and I felt like a fool, wondering if I had miscounted or if I was playing too slowly.
During my third piece (the horn solo excerpt from Tchaikovsky's 5th symphony), I played nothing like how I would do it during practice. I would split or mispitch notes that I normally had no trouble playing cleanly during practice. While playing a section of high notes, I was actually running out of air and noticed that my lips were incredibly dry; this alarmed me even more. At some point I actually clammed up (meaning I could not produce a tone on the instrument despite blowing air into it) and simply sat there stoning like an idiot while 5 people sat there waiting for me to continue playing. I wanted to drop into a pit; I had never felt more embarrassed playing my instrument.
The conductor, bless him, actually offered to let me replay the entire solo, and thankfully I was able to play better the second time round, though still falling far below my expectations. Upon finishing, the conductor remarked that the solo was "a difficult one", and I had "played much better the second time." I'm not sure what to make of that statement. I have no doubt that I still pretty much bombed the entire audition, but I don't know if I should infer from that statement that there might still be a possibility that they would consider me.
There was an also an interview after that, but thankfully that went pretty well and I gave well-informed responses to the questions posed about the music. After that, we thanked each other, I packed up my instrument and left, and I've been having an existential crisis about my instrument after that.

If you're read this far, thank you for reading this far and for listening to me. Reflecting back, I can conclude that the problem was probably due to nerves much more so than lack of practice. I've always had problems of anxiety playing with or in front of people, even if I'm not playing a solo part - and it really showed in this audition. I completely let my nerves get the better of me, but I didn't feel I could control them. I have 5 years of experience on my instrument, but you'd think from my sound I was playing with 6 months of experience. I feel completely lost and hopeless - I don't know if I'd ever be able to play music in front of people carefreely without getting anxious about my performance, especially on an instrument as demanding as this one.
Fellow Redditors, do you have any advice on dealing with nerves (esp in an audition)? Thank you.

Edit: Thank you so much to everyone who has responded who has either shared stories of slipping up in fellow auditions or shared some advice and tips on preparing for auditions. After a period of time to process the event, I have accepted that what has happened has happened. I think the key thing here to process is that screwing up the audition doesn't make you a bad performer or musician; one bay day of performing doesn't nullify months or years of progress. And, well, you just gotta keep putting yourself out there (I mean playing in front of people) to get used to it. I will very likely make many more mistakes in future auditions (though hopefully not to the extent I did this time!) but knowing that it's part and parcel of growing as a musician certainly helps to deal with it better.

I should also mention that I am not a professional music student auditioning for a professional orchestra, rather, I was auditioning for my university's student orchestra (most of the musicians there are also non-music students), so the stakes weren't high than if I were doing this directly for my major. Regardless, this audition still meant a lot to me, as I had been making steady progress on the horn for the past year, gradually improving my range, note accuracy and sight-reading, and I had wanted to challenge myself to see if I capable of playing in an orchestra, something I've never done before. Just that I played so badly on the day itself that it really shook me.

Edit 2: For any horn players reading who are interested in what else I had to play, I was assigned two excerpts from Pictures at an Exhibition. One was from 4. Bydlo, which was easy enough to prepare, and the other was from 7. The Market at Limogenes, which was significantly harder. I listened to clips on YouTube and found it ridiculous how they played so fast for the latter; fast high notes are not a welcoming sight on the horn lol.

Patch Notes January 27

https://game-updates.info/spelunky2?29

Fixed an issue which would cause the daily challenge to restart shortly in some setups.
Fixed issue where players were sometimes being unjustly crushed just by having platforms nearby.
Players can now let go of a rope while attacking.
Fixed whip issue when jumping and attacking on a 1 tile high corridor.
Fixed issue where being damaged while holding the jump button could later trigger a jump if button isn’t let go.
Fixed issue where dying after a long fall while wearing the ankh would make the player do a small jump after being revived.
Players now recover control slightly sooner after leaving pipes.
Slightly reduced the time before a player can grab a rope.
Fixed issue to prevent players from being dropped from a rope when attacking right after throwing something.
Fixed issue where the throwing animation made players unable to move through platforms while climbing ladders down.
Fixed issue where players with the climbing gloves could accidentally grab falling platforms far away from their physical hitbox.
Fixed issue where standing on a falling platform while hovering with a hoverpack prevented the platform from falling.
Fixed issue where players could sometimes miss a stomp right after leaving a pipe.
Tweaked stomp margin so it should hopefully feel safer to use.
Tweaked lavamander’s hitbox.
Slightly tweaked bats’ and vampires’ flying form shapes.
Tweaked grub’s hitbox to better match their sprites.
Widened floating orb’s hitbox just slightly so it can be hit by the whip right from below.
Hermit crabs starting to climb will now smoothly switch hitbox shapes so they don’t make players miss stomps.
Fixed issue where creatures could sometimes move while outside of the level bounds.
Broken arrows will hopefully no longer be the bane of your existence (tweaked depth).
Fixed issue when necromancers revived a creature that had just been tossed by the Pitcher’s Mitt.
Fixed issue when necromancers revived a pet while another creature was holding it.
Opening crates by using up+attack now tosses the contents forwards so they can more easily be skipped.
Fixed issue where items stuck to honey could sometimes slowly fall down.
Fixed issue where chained blocks could still be pushed.
Setting an on sale equippable on fire now correctly angers its vendor.
Fixed issue where certain events that didn’t trigger a defensive response from vendors could eventually kill them without ever dropping their weapon.
A player that’s hanging from the base of a giant clam will no longer be crushed when it closes.
Fixed issue where players wearing Vlad’s Cape got stunned when jumping away from other players’ hands.
Certain closed back layer rooms will no longer have blocked paths generated towards them.
Floors now also trigger falling platforms.
Lava will now cook dead turkeys as well.
Fixed issue where bear traps weren’t triggering when put over certain floors (such as the sliding walls).
Fixed issue where cavemen could sometimes harmlessly pick an armed bear trap up.
Fixed issue where tossing a creature against upside-down spikes with the pitcher’s mitt prevented the corpse from falling back down.
Octopus will now only inflict vertical toss and stun damage when actually damaging from above.
Fixed issue where certain wall torches could keep on igniting on a loop after being put off.
Fixed issue when a player wearing the pitcher’s mitt tried to toss the light arrow while riding a mount.
Fixed issue where a falling platform could get dragged down by a pushblock and not explode on contact with the floor.
Fixed issue where fire frogs triggered by players left Waddler in a bugged angered state.
Teleporting inside the back layer room of the vault now always correctly angers shopkeepers.
Pushing the imp’s lava pot with a shield or by any other means now forces it to drop.
Firebugs can now be correctly pushed away from chains.
Fixed issue where helmet Olmites could sometimes still be stomped.
Fixed issue where stealing from a shop made backpacks have extra invencibility frames that other items (such as bomb bags) didn’t.
Fixed issue where an in-flight sorceress’ dagger could still spawn an enemy after the Sun Challenge completes.
Fire frogs no longer explode when shattered after being frozen.
Red skeletons are now also considered undead and can therefore be killed by the camera flash.
Being killed by a red skeleton now uses the same death message as the regular one.
Fixed issue where mosquitoes could sometimes get stuck infinitely on the corner of a tile.
Fixed frog trap generation so they don’t create paths that require resources.
Fixed crash when dice were brought into a portal.
Fixed issue when a monster wakes up while on hands of a player that’s riding a mount.
Shields no longer protect from witch doctors’ voodoo attack (also fixes a related teleporting issue).
Prevented certain floor tiles from spawning right above platforms.
Fixed Au’s robe flipping during his walking forward animation (and his head moving one pixel to the side).
Fixed Van Horsing’s hat poking out of the frame on one frame of his throwing animation.
Fixed several blocked paths (many related to coffin rooms).
Fixed issue where blowing up a pipe while inside left your equipped item looking smaller.
Deployed parachutes can no longer be cloned.
Blowing up a certain altar after a specific sacrifice will no longer halt the transition to a certain world.
Fixed issue where paused time wasn’t being added on certain scenarios.
Renderer tweak, might make the game run smoother on certain scenarios (updated Windows 10 swap flip mode).
Fixed broken tree texture artifact.
Fixed issue where the HUD wasn’t hiding after taking off with the ship.
Slight tweak that will hopefully make the renderer pick the correct screen frequency.
Made available a structure to make developing autosplitters less annoying.
Fixed issue where particles were suddenly disappearing.
Fixed a memory leak related to liquids.
Updated credits title.

Online Beta Changes

Certain item outputs (such as when opening a pot) will now be decided at generation, making the experience more stable across runs and during online rollbacks.
Fixed an issue which would allow players to wrongly unlock achievements and journal entries during prediction phase of rollback.
Dying in an online run now keeps the camera in place for a couple of seconds so players can get feedback of what killed them.
Fixed issue where players could be given the wrong amount of bombs/ropes after a player had disconnected from an online run.
Fixed issue where online players disconnecting after their coffin had been created could lead to uncontrolled situations.
Player coffins will now generate in levels 10, 50, and 90 of a certain world.
Fixed issue where a player disconnecting in certain situations could crash remote games.
Added support for Recent Players of players joining by invite code or steam invite.
Players that disconnect while wearing the Ankh will now drop it first.
Disabled joining to the room you’re already in via room code.
Cloned player coffins will now become hired hand coffins.

AITA for going off on my parents for making inappropriate sexual comments about me?

He punched me over a fender bender, I destroyed his life.

I was working as a civilian with the US Military Overseas and I lived off base in an apartment complex popular among the US Military. One morning I accidentally hit another soldier's vehicle.
Upon exiting the vehicle I noticed that both our vehicles were what you could call a Hooptie. A Hooptie is an old car that is pretty beat up that has been passed around from service to service member and they generally sell for $1,000-$2,000. I also recognized that I was at fault for the accident. It was a very minor accident. His rear bumper was dented in slightly. But I could hear both our cars still running
I approached the driver who had already gotten out and he was in uniform and I apologized and said if it was alright with him I'd like to negotiate a payment that I will pay him in cash and we don't involve the authorities. I wanted to keep this simple. I'll be honest the accident was so minor I honestly expected him to say "Nah man it's good" but even if he wanted some money I'd have paid him. I have always been of the opinion if you have a fender bender and can negotiate agreeable terms between both the parties its best to not involve insurance/police.
He told me he wanted to call the police, I said we could call the police or we could go on base together and I could give him $300. He said that wasn't enough. So I upped my offer to $500. He proceeded to punch me in the face. It was a sucker punch, he got into his car and took off and in the process nearly ran me over.
Now I had a black box in my car which recorded everything. I went to the provost marshall office on base (The police station) and reported the accident and the assault and showed the MP the footage. Which they used his license plate to track him down. I was also asked if I wanted to involve the local authorities/press criminal charges off base.
Honestly, I felt like the soldier would learn his lesson if I let UMCJ (the Military Court basically) handle this and I said "Not at this time" I was told it was an option.
The end result was the soldier in question got 60 days of extra duty, reduction in rank, and forfeited a portion of his paycheck. Essentially if he dealt with that, this would have been the end of the whole ordeal. Honestly, at this point I assumed our little ordeal was over.
Well a few days after his punishment was decided on, which was not long after the incident itself I was in the commissary (Grocery store on base) shopping when the soldier who assaulted saw me and began to insult me. I told him he needed to clam down, that he should learn his lesson, he told me I was a pussy who didn't know how to take a punch I reminded him that I held back on destroying his life he told me he's already been punished and I can't touch him again.
He left me be
A store employee witnessed the entire encounter and I got the employee detail and reported this interaction to his command. His commander told me he had been ordered to not interact with me and would take action. His commander also recommended me I involve the local authorities since this soldier obviously isn't learning his lesson.
So I did. I contacted an attorney. The attorney was unsure if we could successfully sue the soldier and said he would need a cash payment to take the case. Honestly I was mad and I wanted to teach this guy a lesson. I agreed, it was not cheap.
To keep this story short, we ended up in a court off base. We presented our evidence. The soldier in question had decided to represent himself. Several times in the court he had outbursts. The Judge ended up granting me a judgment of approx $50,000 USD. When the judgment was given the soldier called the Judge a son of bitch, and that the Army would cover for him.
So the Judge changed his judgment to $80,000 and the Judge then asked me if I also wanted to press charges against this soldier in criminal court. Honestly, it was obvious this guy wasn't going learn a lesson, I told the judge I wanted to pursue criminal charges in addition to the judgment.
My lawyer later advised me that if I ever wanted to see the money I should persue an international hold. With my judgement its likely that a judge would grant me an international hold. An international hold is basically where this soldier would not be allowed to leave the country until I was paid my $80,000. Also he told me that according to the agreement between the US Military and the host country the US Military would honor the international hold. Basically the US Military would not protect him or move him out of country to avoid punishment.
Honestly, by this point I had paid my lawyer thousands of dollars, and I honestly didn't feel like paying thousands of dollars and getting nothing for it. So I said yes I want to go forward with the international hold.
About a month later the international hold was granted, and the US Military was informed of this. 2 months after that the criminal case was over and the soldier was sentenced to 90 days in jail. By this point the soldier had been moved onto the base into his barracks by his commander. I remember the day I was informed the MPs handed him over to the local authorties to begin his 90 day jail setence. Did I mention he still owed me $80,000?
I heard nothing for a year, and then one day I get a call from his commander, his commander wants me to make a statement in regrads to the case. I go in and make the statement. During the statement I find out the US Military was in the process of chaptering the soldier out of the US Military. The commander also informed me that he was close to coming up with the money to pay me so he could have the international hold lifted. The commander also asked me if my lawyer would be willing to make a statement.
I contacted my lawyer who also made a statement about the facts of the case.
A few weeks later his ex-wife contacted me, when this all started I knew he was married, guess his wife decided to divorce him. She informed that his ex husband had the money and needed the details on how to pay me. I provided her the details, and a few days later I got the payment and contacted his ex-wife to inform her I had been paid. She then asked me to send a reciept so he could have the international hold lifted and return to the states. I asked her how he got the money, she said he maxed out his credit, and also had family help out. Also during this conversation, I had found out the Army had chaptered him out of the Military
I sent her the reciept and that was the last I ever heard from his side.
TL:DR I get into a fender bender with a soldier, I try to resolve things with him he punches me, he gets UCMJ action, a civil judgment, 90 days in jail, a divorce (I actually do not know if the divorce is connected, but I imagine this case didn't help his marriage) , a ton of debt, and a loss of his career.
I took his $80,000 and bought myself a brand new car and used the rest of the money to put down on an investment property.
FAQ
This post blow up, I turned off inbox replies cause it was too much so I felt like answering some common questions

Am I worried about the guy getting revenge on me?
No, he's back in the states I'm still overseas. He most likely has a criminal record which means he wouldn't even be allowed past immigration. Plus since then I've taken a new job, moved, etc (not connected to his incident, just how things are) plus this happened many years ago.
The amount seems high?
The actual amount was in a foreign currency, and I rounded up and adjusted figures but it was very high. I did suffer from a black eye, and his behavior after the fact didnd't help. Also this incident happened in an Asia country during a time period in which we had several other high profile incidents with US Service members screwing up. My incident was not high profile at all. But that all played a role. Honestly I expected around $15k-$20k. Also in this country settlements for damages are based upon your ability to pay and tend to be on the higher side. I think the court also thought he was an American and could afford it. However the amount even shocked my lawyer.
Why did his commander recommend I take this to civil authorties?
I got the feeling his commander was tired of this soldier. I suspect I wasn't the first incident.
What country did this happen in?
I don't wish to disclose that, however, several people in the comment section have guessed correctly, actually someone who was familiar with the incident PMed me. So this blew up more then I intended. I will say this, it happened in Asia in a country with a large Troop presence.
Why did I go so far?
Honestly, that was never my intention. In fact I decided to report to the military instead of going straight to the local authorties because I figured doing so would allow us to deal with the issue in house and his punishment would be limited. I was right, he didn't learn his lesson. However once I got the local authorties/ my lawyer involved it turned into somethign I didn't expect. Also by the time that dust had settled I had paid my lawyer a significant sum of money, had to use up my vacation days, in total this entire incident cost me many thousands of dollars in lawyer costs, vacation time, etc so I did want my money back at that pont.
Why did he get a jail setence for simple assault?
So in this country, they do not like to give suspended setences to foreigners. I suspect a local national would have gotten a suspended setence. I do have a local national friend who was involved in an assault many years ago and got he got 90 days suspended setence. However my guess is the Judge gave him jail time instead of suspended setence because he was a foreigner. However I was not involved very much in the criminal case.
Questions about his wife/ex wife
Truth be told I don't know much about this. I do not know if she was his ex wife because of this or not. I also never saw his ex-wife in person. The only involvement I had with her at the very end

AITA for calling my husband out on being selfish about our free time?

I'm 28 and I make $58,000 in Los Angeles working in public health

Background: I'm a 28 y/o girl living in a pretty expensive part of Los Angeles living with two apartment mates. I graduated from my public health masters program a couple of years back and I've been working in the field (epidemiology) since. I'm currently in a bit of a quarter life crisis where I am deciding whether I want to move up in my current job, take on a new role at another company, or jump ship and do a career switch to UI/UX design. I am also trying to move in with my boyfriend sometime, but my job soul-searching dilemma complicates when/where that will be.
Assets & Debt | Total Net Worth = $9,700

Account	Amount
Checking	$5,700
Savings	$19,000
Retirement - Roth 401(k)	$11,500
Personal Investments	$3000 between robo-investment and brokerage accounts
Student Loans	$29,500 - undergrad $14k (3-5% interest), graduate MPH program $15.5k (5.25% interest)
Other loans (e.g., car, credit card)	$0

Some details on my assets and debt
I make around $58,000. I receive $1,400 biweekly after a $250 contribution to my Roth 401k. Checking account is high because I move ~$2000 to my savings account at the end of each month, excluding my student loans described below. My short-term savings goal is to buy a car (at least half in cash) sometime next year and move to a new apartment, long-term... I guess a house downpayment and a wedding, though I definitely am YEARS away from both. I'm a very casual and noob investor, but I do try to throw in money on (profitable) companies with goals that align with mine - usually stuff relating to sustainability, biotech, etc. I had to take out loans and work multiple jobs to support myself throughout undergrad and graduate school unfortunately, but the debt is somewhat manageable.
Monthly Expenses | Grand Total = $2,380

Fixed Cost, $1,885
- Rent = $1000 for my own room with all utilities included. The apartment is very big/nice, so I would say the price is good for the Santa Monica/West LA/Culver City area
- Loan payments = $700. I'm doing the avalanche method where I try to pay off the highest interest (my graduate loan) first. All of my loans are also under forbearance due to COVID so I am holding the money in my HYSA until the payment deadline (9/30).
- Online subscriptions = $22. Includes VPN, Apple cloud storage (do I even need this lol), Crunchyroll
- Car insurance = $67
- Credit card fee = $46. I set aside money to pay for the annual CSR fee
- Phone = $50
Varied and Misc. Expenses, $495
- Groceries = $120
- Gas = $50
- Dining/entertainment = $150
- Extra things = $175

Money Diary

Day 1, Saturday = $51.86

11:00am: I start my morning routine - scroll through my phone for 10-15 minutes to catch up on emails and social media, brush my teeth, and apply my skincare stuff. I pan fry some dumplings and hash browns to eat with my boyfriend Nate. We’re in ultimate mega super full potato mode and spend the whole day doing our own thing - he’s playing Team Fight Tactics (TFT), I’m playing Animal Crossing and working on finishing my UX course assignment.
5:00pm: I freak out that I basically wasted a whole day. At this point, I’m trying to figure out if we should cook food, order takeout, or drive home to my parent’s house for dinner. We decide to make chicken wraps and Lebanese braised green beans with the leftover veggies I have in the fridge. We head over to Trader Joe’s to buy some groceries - Romaine lettuce, frozen clam linguine (I had it years ago and can’t remember if I liked it or not), dark chocolate peanut butter cups, dark chocolate espresso beans, lavash bread, and hummus ($23.83). I want the garlic spread (toum) to go with dinner, too bad it’s sold out at TJs. We finish our grocery shopping at Ralphs ($28.03) - eggs, rotisserie chicken (too lazy to cook), lemons, potatoes, garlic. I guess I'm making my own toum!
7:30pm: I prep and braise the green beans first because they take the longest. While they’re on the stove, I’m making toum. It came out pretty good! The green beans came out ok.. it probably needed some more seasoning. I’m not that used to tart veggies. We watch 3 episodes of Brooklyn 99 while we ate.
10:15pm: We throw everything in the dishwasher because we’re too lazy to hand wash them. We spend the rest of the night rewatching Avatar the Last Airbender while doing our own thing - he’s on TFT while I work on my embroidery project.
12:50am: Nate and I shower and head off to bed. He immediately knocks out, but my brain is still awake - I read random stuff about different tech careers (software engineering, programming, UX), news articles, and whatnot until 3:05am and knock out.

Day 2, Sunday = $0

11:30am: Wake up and do my morning routine. My mom asks me when I’m going home, I respond that I’m getting ready now, but that’s a lie..
1:30pm: I lag a bit to pack up, but done! I drop off Nate at his car a block away and drive home. I do some work on my laptop and play games for a few hours.
5:00pm: Mom made some fish and tomato noodle soup (bun ca) for dinner. I work on my embroidery and play with my dog. She’s been so itchy during the summer, I feel so bad for her :(
1:00am: After embroidering, reading stuff online, and learning I finally go to sleep.

Day 3, Monday = $112

9:30: I ended up staying at home so I will be working a full day at my home (not my apartment). I make myself a bowl of leftover bun ca and use the new instant coffee my grandparents bought a week ago. I pour two bags of it in a mug, add in 2-3 cm of water, and use a handheld frother to fluff up the coffee. Finish it off with lots of ice. I enjoy making my own coffee (e.g., cappuccinos, real Vietnamese iced coffee, dalgona, cold brew), but there’s just SOMETHING about instant Vietnamese coffee. It’s addicting. Just don’t look at the ingredients list. I do some patient chart reviews and write some project documents.
3:30pm: My friends (Nancy, Roger) text in our group chat and decide on take-out Thai food for dinner. I read the menu for a while and choose chicken green curry. Nancy is going back to medical school this weekend and we want one last hangout before she leaves.
4:45pm: Grandparents come home from the food bank and bring back boxes of stuff for us. Bags of rice, canned fruit, etc. The food bank also gave them a HUGE box of plain donut holes.. I swear it was enough to fill up a 10 gallon bucket and then some.
5:30pm: Wrap up my workday and look at the clock - time to get ready for dinner! I go to the freezer and air fry ~30 donuts. It did not make a dent in the giant freezer stash at all. I eat some glazed donuts my sister made, not bad. I roll the air fried donut holes in cinnamon and sugar and place them in the biggest Tupperware in the kitchen. I’m glad they fit.
6:30pm: I arrive at my friend’s house and we catch up and eat family style Thai food. We talk about our career aspirations, gossip, and current news. I’m so proud of my friends. They’re amazing! They give me a couple of recommendations - a book called Bad Blood (exposé of a biotech CEO) and Jeffrey Epstein: Filthy Rich (documentary on Netflix). Nancy gives me a couple of cute face masks her mom sewed. She Venmo requests me $12 for dinner, I'm sure dinner is actually more, but she's too nice.
8:30pm: I arrive back home, pack up, say bye to my family, and drive up to my apartment in LA. My apartment mate Steph and I catch up on our weekend. I spend the rest of my night unpacking, showering, and looking up stocks on Robinhood. My portfolio is very bare and I’m not a super trader or anything. I just like to throw in extra money to support companies I believe in. When I have the time I’ll look into shorting/putting and strategize how to make more money on individual stocks, but no rush. I deposit $100 to my account and set limit orders to a couple of stocks. I knock out at 2:10am…

Day 4, Tuesday = $0

8:30am: I finish preparing for my mid-year evaluation - I skim through my calendar to make sure I captured any relevant events, update my goals list and accomplishments. The evaluation goes surprisingly very well. For some reason, I’m able to really hype myself up and emphasize the importance of my role throughout multiple studies this morning. I’m usually not so confident. My manager goes through my stakeholder reviews and I receive a lot of great feedback. I was in such a slump since WFH and now my motivation has rekindled! I hope I get a nice bonus too... I attend a Toastmasters meeting. It’s such a safe space for those who want to improve on public speaking skills. There’s another (optional) meeting after Toastmasters, but the invite link doesn’t work. I give up and eat lunch instead.
1:20pm: I heat up leftover chicken pad thai from yesterday’s dinner and eat that while watching Graham Stephan’s money review on a guy making $47k in Denver. I’m done with meetings for the day and spend the rest of my work hours reviewing COVID patient charts and preparing to roll out our new study.
6:00pm: I leftover chicken wraps and green beans from Saturday’s dinner. I do my laundry while watching the Epstein documentary on Netflix. No one deserves that much power!!! Also boys are icky. I do some UX work and knock out around 3am.

Day 5, Wednesday = $68.36

9:30am: Wake up and do my morning routine. Have a couple of meetings. This is the last meeting for one of my projects. It's a bittersweet ending, but I’m ready for new opportunities. I make myself a breakfast - yerba mate and overnight oats. I like it with cinnamon, chia seeds, maple syrup, and a mashed banana!
12:45pm: I pack two tupperwares of donut holes and drive over to work. My gas light flashes and I head over to the gas station near work. I pay a 35 cent fee for using my debit card because: 1) I don’t want to use cash and 2) too lazy to walk over to the cashier. The total for gas is $47.90. I regret paying the debit fee.
1:20pm: My work has a very thorough protocol to enter the office during these COVIDdy times. Because my remote work is extended AT LEAST til the end of the year, I pick up some stuff from the office (e.g., snacks, knicknacks, monitors) and do a bit of work at my desk. Two coworkers stop by (at separate times) at my desk and we spend a good amount of time catching up. I really miss my coworkers, we were such a tight-knit group! We reminisce about old times and give updates on our lives. I surprise them with the “Hey I’m interviewing at other places by the way! Also I’m considering changing careers!” They’re very supportive and I give them encouragement in their career goals as well. I give each of them a box of donuts and drive back.
7:30pm: I find out that my iPad pro arrived at my boyfriend’s house! I finish drafting a few study documents and end my work day around 6pm. My friend Kevin stops by my apartment to pick up boxes of stuff that he left here. He brings a looooottttt of Taiwanese food, sake, and makgeolli (Korean rice beer). The dinner’s his treat, so kind! We catch up (I’m catching up with so many people lately lol this isn’t normal by the way). We talk about his new job, Steph’s work drama, and we just have gr8 night chatting. They assure me that I’m NOT TOO OLD to change careers and if I put my mind to it, I can be a very successful UX designer. I hope so? I make a batch of donuts, glazed this time.
10:00pm: I guess I’m buzzed, but I play games, finish work, and somehow spend almost three hours on TikTok and Youtube. I’m so annoyed and disappointed in myself. My plan was to finish my UX assignment and watch Procreate tutorials, but that will have to wait until tomorrow I guess.. I buy a matte iPad screen protector on Amazon for $20.46. I skip the shower because it’s too late, do a shortened night routine, and fall asleep around 3:15am.

Day 6, Thursday = $0

9:45am: Wake up and do my morning routine. Have a couple of meetings today.
1:30pm: I heat up leftover Taiwanese noodles and chicken. Still good, but after I microwave them, there’s a big puddle of grease on the bottom of the bowl.. Not the healthiest kind of food. I go back to work after eating.
7:30pm: I finish work and realize that my wrist is extremely sore. My first thought is carpal tunnel - I watch some wrist stretching videos and freak out. I complain to Steph for a very long time about my potential ailment. After complaining, I heat up leftover bun ca from Sunday’s dinner. My mom used tuna for this dish, and it is fishhhyyyy. I brush my teeth after eating this.
12:00am: I watch some educational videos, learn about different careers, along with other random Youtube videos. I end up sleeping at an ungodly hour.

Day 7, Friday = $9.99

9:30am: Wake up, do my morning routine. Work is usually super chill on Fridays if I plan my week correctly.
2:00pm: I skip lunch, but eat some random snacks like a banana, etc. I ask my boyfriend Nate if I can go over to his house over the weekend, he says sure. While I’m working, I start packing my things to drive over.
5:00pm: I arrive at his house. I set up my new iPad Pro. The screen protector is super annoying to install, but eventually I got it. I download Procreate for $9.99.
7:00pm His family plans on going to the beach to do a bonfire, but they note that the pits are probably all taken by now. His parents and cousin drive to the beach to scout - Nate is playing TFT, I’m still setting up my iPad. I watch some Procreate tutorials and download all the important apps I need including Spotify, Reddit, banking apps, etc. I eat one fried chicken drumstick for dinner that my boyfriend left on the table.
10:30pm: His parents come home and tell us they were able to get a pit very late (30 mins before closing), but they had some bomb food such as shrimp skewers. I think Nate just forgot to drive over to the beach. He did seem very engrossed in his game. I end up drawing and playing around with the new iPad until bedtime (2am?).

Reflection

Expenses Overview | Total = $242.21

Groceries: $51.86
Dining: $12.00
Gas: $47.90
Other: $130.45

I spent quite a lot this week, but everything I bought had a purpose (I think). Though I try to save a lot, I still want to buy things that would make me happy. I'm always sad so anything helps lol.
In terms of finances, I’m trying to build a growth mindset. With YNAB and budgeting I am able to save and make do with what I got, but at this age my goal is to build my wealth (aka earning more). I’m not pleased with my income and student debt, but I am proud of how much I’ve grown financially throughout the years. For someone living up in a very low-income household without any financial guidance, I consider that a huge accomplishment.
Also looking back at my money diary, I realized how wonderful my support system is. Over the past few months I have been feeling alone and lost, but I don't’ know.. I guess I didn’t see that there’s a whole village behind me - my family, Nate and his family, my coworkers, and all of my friends. They’ve cheered me on throughout the years, even now. I’m in such a weird stage of life right now where I’m wondering if I should be comfortable/successful in my current job, work in the same field but different company, or take a huge risk by switching to a new career that could potentially be a better fit. I wish I could know which path is right for me, but as my boyfriend Nate keeps telling me - I CONTROL MY DESTINY! I kind of agree with that. I'm excited to see where I'll end up next year!

what to do with canned clams video

Canned Clams Recipes 19 Recipes. Anything you want to exclude? Without Eggs No Restrictions. Skip. Last updated Feb 06, 2021. This search takes into account your taste preferences. 19 suggested recipes. Barley Paella Eat Good 4 Life. olive oil, garlic cloves, carrots, lemon wedges, carrots, frozen peas and 16 more. With recipes like buttery baked clam appetizers and clam dips to clams steamed in beer, Italian-style linguine with clams, stir-fried clams in black bean sauce, and of course, classic clam chowders, you'll find recipes here for cooking fresh, live clams, plus several that use canned clams. What to do with canned clams? Clearing out my cabinet, and I appear to have a dozen cans of Snow's brand chopped clams. My first thought was New England-style clam cakes, but that's seriously greasy and I'm trying to go a little leaner. Looking for canned clam recipes? Allrecipes has more than 100 trusted canned clam recipes complete with ratings, reviews and cooking tips. PASTA AND RICE DISHES: Classic Spaghetti and Clam Sauce works well with canned clams (and means less work for everyone at the table trying to pluck the clams from their shells). Paella is also a place where you can swap in canned for fresh in a pinch. Photograph: Sho Spaeth. It's tempting to claim that this recipe for clam sauce, made with canned clams, is a product of coronavirus. It would be easy to frame it as a nimble pivot on the part of our recipe team—particularly a specific, man-of-the-people recipe team member (me)—to address the needs of a readership that finds itself increasingly relying on dried pasta and canned products to ... Canned clams are a creative way to get some extra protein into a Thai stir fry, especially one that might need a little salt to cut the sweet. This stir-fry recipe uses lots of authentic Thai ... While the spaghetti cooks, make the clam sauce by sautéing garlic and red pepper flakes in oil. Then add in the liquid from the canned clams, plus some white wine (or chicken broth). Simmer until it has reduced and thickened slightly. Remove the sauce from the heat, and add in lemon juice and zest, butter, and the canned clams. Canned Clams. Looking for canned clam recipes? Allrecipes has more than 100 trusted canned clam recipes complete with ratings, reviews and cooking tips. Staff Picks Quick Manhattan Clam Chowder Rating: Unrated 17 I was looking for a quick and easy ...

Spaghetti with Canned Clams Recipe - Ready in 15 Minutes ...

what to do with canned clams

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What to do with canned clams?

Can I eat this clam? It’s about 4” wide and I don’t know what to do with it. Clam strips?

What to do with two cans of baby clams?

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