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Ooh, thank you! I will definitely be doing this.

I'll cross my fingers for you! I have never had any kind of medical scare so I can't even pretend to understand what it must be like. Wishing you only good news!

I used to live with a cat who would eat foam or certain types of plastic. We knew about the plastic thing and would clean up shopping bags or that cellophane wrap certain products come wrapped in, but the foam was a surprise. My dad let me have some boxes from his job one time I was moving. They were large, VERY thick durable cardboard, originally used to transport delicate scientific instruments. They originally had some formed foam glued inside, almost similar to a foam mattress topper in consistency. My dad had ripped the foam out, but some small chunks of it were left on the box. One of the boxes sat out in the living room empty for a while, and one day we were like "Have you seen the cat?" after not seeing her for a while... Found her sitting in the box chewing on the foam. A small pile of soggy foam bits were right at her feet, she'd been there chewing for a while. Thankfully nothing bad happened but there were definitely little bits of foam in her poo for the next couple days hahaha

I already reached out to FRYD, and I will give a droning_in_my_ears a chance to get back to me, but if either of them don't, I'll let you know!

I'm currently working my way through Distress by Greg Egan, a bit more than halfway through.

This is my last Egan novel, I've read everything else he's written, and have thoroughly enjoyed the ride.

It's been interesting to connect completely separate unrelated universes by the language he uses. Several of his books have various trans-human or post-gender characters that use Ve/Ver pronouns, which I didn't know were an actual thing because I'd never heard that before.

Also, he used the word "Tarpaulin" in 2 different novels (Orthogonal trilogy, and I just came across it in Distress yesterday). Another word that's apparently just a fancier name for "tarp", but again, I had never seen it used before. It was used extensively in the Orthogonal trilogy as an item characters interacted with often, but it seems to just be one random instance slipped in to Distress to describe a shanty truck with a tarp on the back the main character has to ride to some location. It was just kind of a funny "Aha!" moment reading it in Distress, as the word kind of stuck with me as one of the few new words I added to my vocabulary from reading the Orthogonal trilogy.

Also, many of his novels are based in or have plot points centered in Australia, because he's Australian... Nothing really odd about that, but reading so many different books back-to-back all set in various iterations of future Australia has been different. I can't think of any other author I've read recently that bases anything in Australia.

That sounds exciting! Though, for me, the replying and being able to converse back and forth is really the important part. I'll mull it over and let you know. I wouldn't want to just be a one-sided drain on you sending me anything without getting something in return!

It's easy! Just write a name and address on the front, make sure you've got the appropriate stamps affixed, and drop it in a mailbox!

Or if you aren't sure, just go to a post office and ask. I sent my first international postcard from a random shop in the Netherlands, and although the lady seemed to keep forgetting I didn't speak dutch, she was very nice and let me know that the postage I requested was in fact enough to get it where it was going.

Want to try? PM me and we can swap addresses.

No worries, it's alright. This is far from the first, and won't be the last time this happens... I live in the greater Boston area so the market is stupid silly.

It's already been passed over lol. It was a highest/best so there's no counter-bidding. I was told that I was the #2 offer, so in the extremely unlikely event the buyer's financing falls through or something, then I would have another chance, but I'm not getting my hopes up this time.

This is very close to how I feel. I've never had a "ride or die" type of friend who is on my same level. No matter how good of a friend I seem to make, I always end up being the one who needs to initiate in order to communicate. I have never been able to find someone who will reach out to ME first and suggest hanging out, and that's what I REALLY really want. Being the constant initiator gets exhausting. It's been this way since college. For a long time I had been sort of hiding behind constant long-term relationships, even living with a partner for ~5 years, as a partner is sort of expected to do half the work... I broke up with my most recent long-term girlfriend a couple months back and have been really happy single, it's something I've needed in my life for a long time, to take a break from dating/relationships (over the last 15 years of my life I think I was single for a cumulative total of maybe a year or a year and a half?)... but I am sorely missing that feeling of someone acknowledging that I exist. I don't want or need it to come from a romantic partner, I just want people to treat me the way I treat them. Send me a text every once in a while to ask how my week was, see if I want to grab coffee Saturday morning, or join them at some event after work... I can usually keep up my effort and be social, but sometimes I just get tired, and when I stop reaching out to people and being the initiator, I get 0 text messages, 0 phone calls, 0 initiation no matter how long I wait.

That's my loneliness, that feeling that I could drop dead and the only people that would care or notice are my brother and parents.

I put in an offer on a house on Sunday, and got my hopes way too high because I was actually able to submit a really competitive offer... Spent the first half of the week dreaming about the things I'd do first, what I want to change, how I would do it, spent hours watching DIY videos... Then I found out on Wednesday morning that I was still outbid, so that dampened my spirits a little bit. Trying to stay positive, I don't NEED to buy a house, and honestly it's probably a really bad decision with the way the market is, and the high interest rates, but I am SO tired of renting and not being able to make my space exactly what I want it to be (and not having a driveway), and have serious FOMO about the market getting even worse and slipping further out of reach.

I'd also never noticed either of the 2 nymph stages before. Heck, I hadn't seen too many of the adults.

A big nest must have popped because the little black nymphs were EVERYWHERE a little while ago, crawling all over the outside of my apartment building and the tree next to it, I even found a few INSIDE my apartment. Smash smash smash.

The second nymph phase is nice and easy to see with its bright red. Also smash.

It makes me sad how many I am seeing.

Thanks for reminding me Batmetal is 11 years old lol

I'm a particular fan of the 2nd one (9 years old)

Here's the whole trilogy. Insanely better than the original Metalocalypse music videos, but those themselves are ~18 years old... Insanity, now I feel super old.

https://youtu.be/_r7mWacAlvs