Little things that cheer you up.

[Dra508]

Cute waitress. Wedding ring. Bummer. Still cute, though.


Little things, right?

I was called out for not being observant of one's ring finger. Honestly, is it normal behavior to look at the ring finger of everyone you meet? I finally started doing it, and ironically (for me) I'm only noticing the women. Some of them have the ugliest wedding rings. Like I want to say "what'd you pick THAT". I know that's not the point, but it's my experience.

Asking someone in email to do something (request their support), the response I got was "Scott and I did rock-paper-scissor-lizard-spock and he lost. He's going to send you some info". It cheered me up.

[virushopper]

My niece told me I'm awesome!

[jessamineny]

I found a place to live yesterday! A nice little duplex, not far from campus, and only for $250 a month! Three bedrooms, but one is empty, and the owner's daughter lives in the other one. Now I just gotta find a couple jobs to get me through the summer and I'll be good to go for the semester.

I'm sorry, I just have to ask... Did you actually see the place? Are you sure this isn't a scam of some sort? It's hard for me to imagine that a parent would allow an 18-year-old dude to move in with their daughter, much less the kind of dude that might be attracted to dirt-cheap rent on a month-to-month basis. If it were my child, and she wasn't able to get her friends to live with her for some strange (!?) reason, I'd only be renting to women and doing criminal background and credit checks.

The city or county probably have their real-estate tax records online, and you can confirm who owns the property. Then look up that person in the phone book and see if the number you called matches that person, etc.

VVV I'm glad to hear!

[ImTheWiseJanitor]

I'm sorry, I just have to ask... Did you actually see the place? Are you sure this isn't a scam of some sort? It's hard for me to imagine that a parent would allow an 18-year-old dude to move in with their daughter, much less the kind of dude that might be attracted to dirt-cheap rent on a month-to-month basis. If it were my child, and she wasn't able to get her friends to live with her for some strange (!?) reason, I'd only be renting to women and doing criminal background and credit checks.

The city or county probably have their real-estate tax records online, and you can confirm who owns the property. Then look up that person in the phone book and see if the number you called matches that person, etc.

Haha, yeah. I saw the place in person, they let me REALLY look around because they know that people will think something's wrong with a place that's only $250. I even talked with them a while so they kinda got to know me, too. It's really not a bad place/situation. (By the way, I'm 22 years old, not 18 :P And her daughter's the same age.) The owner of the duplex owns the place entirely after paying it off over the years, and she lets her daughter live there rent-free, she just pays the utilities. This lady just rents it out to college students to make some of that money back. It's not far from campus, and it's really not a bad place at all. It's in a good neighborhood. Nicer homes and cars an all that - you can tell it's a place where maybe upper-middle-class people might live. I mean, I know that if it were in a different part of town with more shady people, the whole thing would seem kinda shifty...I've lived in shady apartments in bad parts of town. I've learned from experience and know what to keep an eye out for when it comes to looking for a place. I'm not oblivious. But ya know, these are just good people looking to make some money back while giving people a place to stay. They're both gainfully employed, and the owner actually just got married, so they seem to be doing really well off. If there's a scam, they're being awfully thorough about covering their bases. And about the "attracted to dirt-cheap rent" thing...I mean...Who wouldn't want a nice place to live for THAT little? I'm not some junkie coming to them off the street asking to live with 'em. I'm just a college kid from out of town who needs a cheap place to stay. I don't think anything about me even says I'm someone to worry about. And I'm not gonna say "Well, the cheap rent is great, but I'd feel more comfortable paying you an extra $100 a month for good measure." :P

But the funny thing is: Today, me and my mom went to sign the lease on the duplex. My mom met the lady's daughter (the owner's away on her honeymoon), took a good look at the place, and really liked it. Especially for $250 a month plus up to like, 90 bucks for utilities, so $340-ish total per month. The only thing she didn't like was that the bathroom was shared. I ended up talking about Legends Apartments, these KU affiliate apartments that have really awesome floor plans, individual full bathrooms, locks on each bedroom door, fully furnished, complimentary digital cable and wifi, AND it's directly on the official KU bus route. You can't even apply without giving them your student ID number so they know you're a KU student. Anyway, this place wanted $350 a month, and all the tenants just split the electric bill. Now, when I told her all the perks, she wanted to check the place out just for kicks on the way out of town, to see if they were just blowing smoke or if I was just exaggerating. Well...she ended up falling in love with the place. It's really nice, and in a great community, and the staff members are even mostly KU students. She said "Honey, you're paying $250 plus almost $100 more at that duplex. You'd be paying $350 here, plus like, $60 for the electric bill. You're basically paying $60 more a month, and you get all of these amenities for cheaper than you would if you got them separately. I should have listened to you before! This place just sounded too good to be true, but MAN....it is NICE here!" (I mean, hell, you can look at it yourself here - http://legendsplace.com/ The site says they charge more per month, but they just haven't updated their page with the new rates.)

So we talked, she called the girl back at the duplex, had her cancel our lease agreement (which was way awkward, but I was laughing too hard at the situation to do it, because my mom doesn't usually change her mind on things like this, ever), aaand I'm now moving to Legends in August!

[theruiner]

Nail polish.

Sure, I have to be really discreet about it, but still.

[Fixer808]

A girl I was seeing painted my nails pink once. I snickered at the sidelong glances I'd get from cashiers or whatever.

[allegro]

G has really long nails on his right hand. For classical guitar. i'm jealous of the nails on that hand, they're way better than mine,

[Fixer808]

I honked for a pro-choice rally (that was awesomely rowdy to combat the pro-life rally on the opposite corner) and one of the girls there ran over and handed me a pink button that says "If abortion is murder, then a blow job is cannibalism". Awesome!

[theruiner]

Discovering new magazines. How is it that I've never read Popular Science* or Skeptic before? I think I'm in love.




*Though it would take a lot for me to like it more than Discover which is pretty much the best magazine ever.

[REPLICA]

Tomorrow off, 2 days of work, then two days off! It'll be pretty great!

[Fixer808]

Discovering new magazines. How is it that I've never read Popular Science before?

Popular Science is better than its redneck cousin, Popular Mechanics, in which the lions share of articles are either "HEY CHECK OUT THIS FUCKIN' AWESOME NEW TANK!!" or smarmy articles by Jay Leno about how many cars he has. PASS.

[allegro]

The Punk Rock thread in the Music forum really cheers me up.

[Mantra]

Popular Science is better than its redneck cousin, Popular Mechanics, in which the lions share of articles are either "HEY CHECK OUT THIS FUCKIN' AWESOME NEW TANK!!" or smarmy articles by Jay Leno about how many cars he has. PASS.

Popular Woodworking easily beats both of those.

[Beef of the Sea]

Popular Woodworking easily beats both of those.

I'm more of an Obscure Sports Quarterly kinda guy.

[Mantra]

My dad subscribes to Tile Letter.



A truly incredible magazine.

[Beef of the Sea]

Holy shit!

[Mantra]

It's always been a dream of mine to read this one someday...

[theruiner]

Further proving my point...


Also:

My dad calls me ten minutes ago: "That comedian you like...Louis C.K.? He's on Leno next. I've never seen him before." After hyping him up for YEARS, I'm glad my dad is actually watching Louis in something.

Edit: I just realized that I already showed him a clip from Louie. So...he has seen him before. ha ha. Whatever.

[Fixer808]

I'm more of an Obscure Sports Quarterly kinda guy.

Football-boxing.

[Beef of the Sea]

It was more of a Dodgeball (The movie) kind of joke. I'll just go sit in my corner now.

[theruiner]

So, this is kind of cool. My uncle is going to be a TV star. Sort of. (He's Ed).



I've been sitting on that news for six months. ha ha. It's really weird seeing that commercial. Watching the show will be even stranger.

Even weirder is that it takes place in Phoenix.

[virushopper]

Cute girl sitting next time to me on the train ride home.

[ImTheWiseJanitor]

I've finally pushed soda completely out of my diet and am now drinking basically water, milk, some tea, and a ton of orange juice. And I feel fantastic. On my way to being healthier again!

[theruiner]

I've finally pushed soda completely out of my diet and am now drinking basically water, milk, some tea, and a ton of orange juice. And I feel fantastic. On my way to being healthier again!

I just asked my can of Coke how he feels about that. He's crushed.

[sukey]

Off to Turkey for a week tomorrow and then Portugal for ten days. Sunshine awaits me!

[Merse]

I just applied to college, filled out my FAFSA, and now I'm on to California State Financial Aid. And I'm listening to Word of Mouf at the same time. Accomplishing things feels pretty good.

[bruised]

http://instagram.com/p/Mg80GdEZ2G/

[theruiner]

So...once upon a time, about 30 years ago, my aunt and her husband (who will be known as Shithead McGee from this point forward) divorced and Shithead McGee got custody of my cousin, who is about a year and a half older than me. Shithead McGee then cut ties with my entire family- including my aunt- and disappeared into the wild blue yonder. She was essentially missing for about 20 years until about 2003 or so when my aunt somehow got in touch with her and reconnected.

So...I haven't seen this cousin since I was one. So we've basically never met. For the last eight years I've kind of off and on wondered if/how I could get in touch with her (sure I could have asked my aunt for her address...why didn't that occur to me until now?) but for one reason or another it never happened. Now said cousin has finally joined Facebook, apparently today, and I might actually be able to reconnect with her. So...that's weird. I mean, that's pretty awesome, but it's weird. I've got a cousin that I should have grown up with that I never met and now I might actually talk to her for the first time. That's, um...that's pretty fucking cool.


Edit: My mom informed me that she's not even sure I was born when they lost contact with my cousin, so I'm not even sure I ever actually met her. Though, even if I did, I would have been, like, one month old. Does that count as "meeting" someone? When you're a month old and the other person is a year and a half old? I don't think so.

[REPLICA]

A friend of mine from college emailed me two days ago and apologized for acting a fool during this past sememster.


EDIT: Got my original ETS avatar back up.

[ImTheWiseJanitor]

I'm gettin' on the plane to go to D.C. with the family for a few days! Got my iPod loaded up with new tunes, a couple books I haven't read yet, and a big wad of spending money. I'm ignoring Facebook until I get back for sure, don't know about the rest of the internet. But if I don't come back for a while -

See ya later, fuckers!

(I'll actually probably check back here a few times, so if anyone has any recommendations for group activities in D.C., I'd love to hear 'em!)