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The GD soap opera (as the cheese turns)… final episode I got home from WI last night. I think it’s safe to say we’re doing really good so far. Especially since we just spent six days (SIX!) with each other. That is the dating equivalent to running a decathlon! I drove up early Monday and got to her place just before 6 PM. Well, first I stopped in West Salem and rented a hotel room. If for no other reason just so I could take a shower and change. Best sixty bucks I’ve ever spent. After over 11 hours driving I was beat and that recharged me. I hadn’t seen her house yet and it’s nice. She’s renting a small house a little ways out in the sticks. She had made a really nice dinner and our “first night” together was just perfect. Afterwards we stayed up talking until almost sunrise. It’s amazing we hadn’t run out of things to say to each other since we’ve spoken almost every day and even a few times while I was on the road up. Conversation with her is just so easy. The next day she had some rounds to make and I asked if I could come with and help. That was very cool. She is just a natural with animals. She told me she can relate better to animals than to people. That is something I can COMPLETEY understand. That night we went to LaCrosse and I took her and her daughter (her name IS Brie but she spells it Bri) out to dinner at this cool place called “Huck Finn’s on the Water”. So all through dinner this girl (she’s 20, college student) is staring at me like she was trying to bore through stone. G goes to the rest room and B pounces the moment she was gone. It was a short but memorable conversation that ended with “if you break my mother’s heart I will hunt you down!”. I have to tell you I respected her for that. Never had a conversation quite like that one, but I respected her for it. She is tough. A lot like her mother as it turned out. After we got back to her place we were sitting on the porch talking and she asked me what B said. I laughed and told her. She laughed but that was the segue into the first of several serious conversations we had last week. This was really the elephant in the room for her. She was divorced, I’m divorced twice. She wanted to know what happened. She wanted me to know what happened to her. I told her everything. Neither story was all that interesting if you ask me but she wanted to know every detail. I think she really wanted to know if I was still in touch with either of them. I told her the truth, that I had just broken three years of no contact with Steph but we’d only spoken once. I assured her there was no chance in hell of reconciling. I think continued contact with Steph would be a dealbreaker with her. Definitely something to think about since I have no feelings for Steph whatsoever. If casual conversation with her comes with a price it’s definitely not one I’d want to pay. Then she told me all of her story. Jesus. No matter how bad your s—t was I promise you there is someone who had it worse. A lot worse. He was B’s father and G’s only long term relationship in life. This f----g guy was just evil. I can’t imagine a better word to describe someone who spent 20 years putting them through what he did. Infidelity and emotional abuse and sometimes physical. The broken marriage trifecta. It sounds like he was a high functioning alcoholic. She said one of the things that attracted her to me was that I didn’t drink booze in any form. Anyway it had been five years since their divorce. The guy literally ghosted her after she had him served with a RO. He took all the money from their joint accounts and disappeared. He left them literally penniless. At the time B was only 13 and G was a 1/3 owner of the Vet practice she was working in. She had to sell their house and her stake in the practice just to cover the costs of the divorce, debts, and provide a basic living for her and B. Since the guy disappeared it took years and thousands of dollars to finalize. Finally he turned up, signed the papers and it was all over. Both her and B attended therapy for a long time to get over that. The next five years she dedicated to being B’s mom and trying to rebuild their lives. They are very close and both are amazingly resilient and tough. And both of these amazing ladies have serious battle scars on their hearts. I am always amazed at people’s capacity for cruelty to other people. Especially someone they had to have loved even a little. Anyway, some time after that she is sitting next to me on the couch, leaning her head on my shoulder, and said that she had never had or even considered another serious relationship since. Then she looks me in the eye and asked if that is what we have, a serious relationship? Now…. Here it the problem. And if anyone has any advice after the fact please speak up. I’ve already decided I’m crazy about her. If fact I was completely sure I was falling in love with her. But that male part of the brain is telling me not to rush in, to play it cool. Show a little but not too much so heart and brain were not on speaking terms at the moment. Annnd I froze. Words failed me and I said something lame. Ugh. I really thought I blew my chance right there. But… the next day I recovered. The first “I love you’s” were exchanged. LOL I think I was more relieved than happy! The rest of the week we just enjoyed each other’s company. We drove over to Sparta and double dated with my cousin and her husband. She (cousin) is overjoyed with how things are going. We went horseback riding on one of the equestrian trails in a park near town. G told me she had always been attracted to the “cowboy” outdoorsy type. I had told her I had half of that. I could expertly handle a revolver and my outdoorsman cred was unimpeachable… but I was no cowboy. A horse named Dottie certainly exposed THAT! I had no idea how to ride a horse and the horse knew it. The power in that relationship was definitely under the saddle not on top of it. But it was a lot of fun. Sunday came all too soon. I have some work to do on some of my properties this week so I had to come back yesterday. We talked about when we’d see each other again and it looks like it will be two weeks (a freaking eternity if you ask me) before she has a gap in her schedule. I told her I wanted her to come down and stay with me next time. I’d like her to see my place and let me treat her to a good time. She’s never been to Memphis. I got the sense the drive is off-putting for her. Can’t blame her there. It does suck. So this morning I got up early and bought a ticket on Delta from LaCrosse to Memphis, open ended, for two weeks from now. I put the ticket into a card I had bought for her and signed it with a quote from one of her favorite writers. I won’t say which or what it was because if you have gotten this far into the story and don’t think I’m already a total sap I don’t want to push you over. But I think she will like it. I put the card in the kitchen in front of the coffee maker so she will find it after I’d left. We shared a passionate goodbye kiss and I drove home. That was 24 hours ago and I already miss her. But she is coming here soon. Last night we were talking about the circumstances of our first meeting. She was actually supposed to visit Amy & Mark (cousin & husband) the day before we met. If she had, I would have been five hours north on the road from Bayfield. I told her how I came to be there and how Sunny’s passing had affected me. She knew I had recently lost my dog but not the details. When I want to get away I usually go to the Gulf Coast and go fishing. But because of Hurricane Ida I couldn’t. So I drove north with no particular destination and somehow ended up right where I was supposed to be when I was supposed to be there. It’s funny how the stars align. She said this was meant to be. Maybe it is, or maybe our luck is changing. Anyway, that is the third gargantuan ramble I’ve dropped on you guys. Three too many probably. It’s not the end of the story but it is the end of the beginning. If you have been reading I certainly appreciate you. If it’s TLDR I certainly don’t blame you. And if you have any advice on how I can avoid f—king this up please speak up!

Meanwhile, somewhere in WI, a certain veterinarian reads a card that says in meticulous cursive script: "All my base are belong to you."

Going to bed. Hope to wake up to some good news from Shady.

I'm not unaware that your whole deal with UBI and the like is written maybe-really-actually-obviously-sarcasm, and plausible deniability in order to avoid actual discussion and defuse debates. I'm a regular genius sleuth. I am so good I even infer things

Speaking of that when I was on the phone with the realtor he was putting the full court press on selling the house. I think he knows I am somewhat interested but mostly torn and he’s trying to push me over the top. I was, somewhat naïvely, hoping when she comes down in two weeks she will fall in love with the place and start imagining some kind of a future here. But even if all that happens it’s not realistic. B is a grown woman living in her own apartment and going to school. But there is no way G will move 700 miles away from her. And it would not be right for me to ask her to. No matter how things are going. I hate adult problems

Looks like they need a new internet box.

Objectively FB getting hacked would be bad news for everyone given their Orwellian tendencies and propensity for making dummy accounts on non users. Subjectively, getting hacked couldn't happen to a nicer company and maybe, just maybe, someone might decide that deliberately adding security holes to everything so employees of TLAs can do a bit of virtual panty sniffing on the side is idiotic. Don't think it's anywhere near confirmed though, and it's pretty easy to fake having hacked FB since a lot of the account data is fundamentally public (and of course they'll happily sell it themselves to pretty much anyone, so you could get genuine FB data by hacking multiple 3rd parties). Thought and prayers to Raithe though, without fbcdn half the meme content of the internet is down.

Been there and three months later I was half way across the country. Not a single letter

I never even got on MSN after ICQ

It’s funny you mention that. I asked her if she thought things were moving too fast. But she said we’re not making life decisions together. We’re just spending time with each other. And that’s true. It bothers me that it’s a long distance relationship. Those are usually doomed. Her life is there and my life is here. I don’t know how those two can be brought together. But I think it’s probably too early to worry about that. Those are problems for later. Maybe it will just work itself out on its own. For now I just thoroughly enjoy spending time with her and I think she feels the same. So we’ll just focus on that. In other news one of the lots I put up for sale got an offer. It’s a little bit under the asking price and the realtor advised me to counter or decline. I thought about it on the drive home yesterday. It’s not what I was hoping to get but it is more than enough for my share of the seed capital of a business venture I’m interested in. So I called him a little while ago and told him if the buyer is qualified to accept. That’s probably taking him off because he’s considering his commission LOL. Well, will play hardball on the other one. Right now I just need the cash.

My son had some trouble breathing so we took him to urgent care who didn't like what they were seeing so they sent him to the nearest children's hospital via ambulance. That hospital doesn't have an ICU so then they got another ambulance to take him to the main children's hospital across town. Spent the first night in the PICU connected to all the tubes and machines that go ping. Last night we got transferred up to a regular room. Less tubes and less ping. He might be able to go home tonight but most likely tomorrow.

Make sure you wear body armour.

Then dont add your personal bias' to them.

Truly does, surgery hasn't been mentioned, the only thing they did actually mention is that there's really nothing to be done about it but physical therapy.

They both work. Frightening. Yes, and no. It really sounds like the best part of the show, that doesn't mean the first part isn't good. Also gotta read that edited part. It's a combination of dropping concentration during binge watching and the fact that the show's structure and plotting got a little, uhm, jumbled near the end there. So that's a doubly whammy. Ah, a pity. I was looking forward to hearing about Princess Tutu. Ah, well, I can wait. Also, Steins;Gate: 2011 animation, super strange color selection and saturation, super bright at times, all the characters speak like aliens (at least in the original Japanese), highly annoying male lead that really needs to be slapped silly in a many worlds time travel story... And then there's Faris NyanNyan: You should love this!

I'm doing my part!

I have so much extra armor from Burg.L quests. I wish i could destroy them to get some stuff back.

You should, Faris is great.

Mate, happy to meet most forum members in real life with a few notable exceptions (which doesn't include you) I'm an omnivore and feel no religious obligations to avoid alcohol. By all means, lets meet somewhere for some nice food, have some drinks and some long chats if you make the way over to the far east (relatively)

This would be a segue into one of my rants about the inherent evil of "government" but meh.... you've all heard it before so... government bad yadda yadda

I remember reading that Anno was pleased that Rebuild wouldn't face the same creative restraints that the original NGE did. My reaction to remembering that he said that after now having actually seen Rebuild: Yeah, but if I don't watch anything post-2000, then it's not a problem to begin with! I mean, sure, I keep breaking that rule to try out random stuff, but the key figure is that I have repeatedly regretted it roughly 9/10 times, . I presume this was a joke, because no, I wasn't saying that at all, . Also, I edited in a few more sentences to that section while you weren't looking, . I've discovered that I have way less memory of the latter half of the show - some of the stuff more towards the ending here I've basically been like "whoa, what the hell is that, I don't remember that". That probably makes sense, since you're probably more likely to remember the first hour of a 10 hour marathon of watching a new show more than the eighth, ninth, or tenth hour of the 10 hour marathon. And this is why I never watch shows like that...except for NGE, which I inexplicably did for reasons still unknown to even me! For myself, it should be purely Cardcaptor Sakura and Devil Lady at this time...and maybe Stein;Sgate if I want to test out to see whether I hate the show before y'all finish before I ever try it, . As for Princess Tutu, that was originally slated to be watched, but for the month of October, I think there will be a little bit of a hiatus for anime in general on that particular front. To be re-visited at some point in the future, .

I guess. It allows their imagination to come to "life" in full, no matter how terrible that may look, and there's a major component missing, a forced reality check in terms of what you can and cannot do. Therefore we're saddled with enormous CGI battles that are unfollowable, or Transformers movies where every frame is so dense you simply can't remember what happened because it overloads even my capacity to retain things. Well... it is what it is, and it's not really going to go away. At least in this day and age it's no longer as bad as Lost in Space was. Ugh. that was terrible. Sounds like "skip the first 40 episodes, watch the mini-arc", alas, can't really do that. Nice. I thought about the ending a bit on and off in between, and while I like the episode and the thematic ending, I'm still not ever going to like the way there's no narrative closure. Anyway, what's up for the next watch project? Going for some ballet action now?

In a fit of insomnia, I finally finished Legendary Idol Eriko by binge-watching the rest of it. The main story and everything motivating the series kind of concluded episode 40, which left about ten extra episodes, which is precisely where I stopped watching like...a month-plus or so ago - whatever was the last time I talked about Eriko. I just couldn't find the motivation to watch anymore when it seemed like the rest would be a little more on the "silly" and "nonsense" side. However, I was pleasantly surprised a couple of episodes in when the show suddenly introduced a small new arc that was more low-key and simple about Eriko simply trying to connect not with just her closest friends and family in light of growing as a person over the course of the show, but also with classmates she'd never really gotten to know because of her way too busy life. It was nice to have something a little less serious and crazy while still feeling like a worthwhile story to end the series. Eriko even manages to make frenemies with a super tsundere* girl that's hated her guts since the moment she appeared in the show like 30 episodes earlier! Happy times! *Tsundere might be the wrong word to use here, because I don't THINK she has a crush on Eriko, although it was a little odd because she took some time to watch her shows and listen to her songs and would deliberately create situations that would force them to interact with each other, so who knows, maybe it is accurate, but if so, mild subtext at best. ...And it's nice to have a couple of shows out of the way - plus, the NGE re-watch is almost finished, too, . The feeling of having a much greater appreciation for (and understanding of) NGE on a second watch has only continued, and, well, let's just say it's a very different experience from the first watch, and it definitely feels to have been worth the time. Six episodes left, guess I'll figure out how I really feel about the original ending soon... Oh, that makes sense too, especially because any CGI work you outsource should be relatively easily modifiable, whereas with traditional methods...well, yeah, either it's going to look horridly out of place or you'll have to re-draw it.

I do indeed. Around 10km south of the city centre. Close to the "Chinese" neighbourhood no less. Lots of decent Asian foods, both takeaway, small restaurants and grocery stores, to be had (I really need to try out the crocodile meat some day) Edit: Close, as in about an hour on foot away... https://www.mustdobrisbane.com/features/sunnybank-brisbanes-little-asia

It depends on the world line. When you get to the end of Stardust Crusaders , I'd recommend watching the last four episodes all at once if possible. I can't speak for animation (but I know that animators are poorly compensated and overworked almost everywhere), but for Hollywood I've heard it explained that the shift towards cgi instead of practical effects or makeup was driven in part to get around union labor and outsource to what is close to a sweatshop.

Well, perhaps after your evil alter ego tried K-On! you could just jump right in and enjoy Love Live! for the ten or seconds it takes to turn it off and delete everything. Heh. I'll most likely focus on Steins;Gate now, with the occasional detour to finish Stardust Crusaders. Well, I'll find the time... eventually. I hope. That I have no idea. I don't even know what modern CGI animation costs compared to regular 2D animation, or the most commonly employed hybrid models (i.e. digital coloring of hand drawn outlines). I wonder sometimes, because CGI-heavy shows and films have like ten shousand people in the credits. Is it really that much cheaper, or is exploitable labour just much more readily found? edit: That NY scene is one of the better ones, you should see the final one the closed the movie with. Or better, don't... only madness and terror that way lies.

i like the idea of using an environment puzzle set up to defeat a boss. But the difference in size is actually dependent on diet and gender. We could be fighting malnourished males.

Transforming your enemies into memories is more efficient.

I played Arcane Knight , and ended up burning out. Now that I think about it, I should have played it as a DEF stacking tank with WoTEP w/ Offensive Parry, and casting spells. On the other hand , I agree that Battlemage is more overall 'fun'!

drawbridges, levers, cranks and pulley's could be useful for new things like: a crane, or flood gates.

yeah, forgot to chime in that aside from the weapons summon and the dragon summon (for SC), getting 100% uptime on summons isn't really worth the bellower's time. i would also be careful since it hasn't been explicitly mentioned - the bellower PL boost is a temporary buff that appears on your character and expires after a few seconds, which means the "Eld Nary" is almost a trick choice for a bellower despite looking great on paper - the projectile and bounce in RTwP is soooo slow that the PL bonus will expire before you get the best benefit from PL scaling (the extra bounces). On turn-based mode, it's awesome though (since you're guaranteed to have a PL buff that lasts a round, and your guaranteed that your invocation ends before advancing rounds).

With Kitchen Stove's thunderous report, you can ascend instantly as you know. Also, if your accuracy is high enough, you will often be able to ascend from the two shots of The Red Hand. Another great weapon that is available early is the essence interrupter, which does pierce and shock damage, so it's great against pierce immune foes. These are great early weapons for a SC ascendant. You might also consider trying a melee witch. The speed bonuses on the barbarian side will let you spam powers very quickly which ascended, and melee is generally faster when it comes to building focus in my experience.

last few days o' buggy wotr gameplay has had the following song playing on a loop in our head. sure, play game is nothing like turn-of-century coal mining, but still feels more like work than entertainment at the moment and is not like we got control o' the crazy connections our sleep deprived brain makes. on the positive side, compared to the "songs" which usual spawn inexplicable and get stuck in our head, am calling this a win... though we gotta admit that for the past few months, in the hall of the mountain king is the music (not song) which plagues us unbidden and most frequent. given the theme o' peer gynt, this subconscious selection is disquieting on multiple levels. HA! Good Fun!