miffy495

Yeah, that one pushed me to the edge of quitting. I really don't have any idea what they were thinking with it.

I've never seen it in an ad, actually. On that note, I don't have a cable subscription and can't really remember the last time I noticed an ad that wasn't a film trailer, so I may be the wrong person to gauge this by.

Grade 4. Apparently I'm going to be on the Language Arts/Science team with another teacher, and the Social Studies/Math team will collaborate with us to develop the whole year plan towards the end of the summer. So I'll be teaching everything, but focusing on Science and Language stuff. Fun!

I highly approve of Gerstmann's efforts. Now we just need someone to put his face on that CFK clapping gif.

Any relation to Gold Jeffcoat-blum?

Damn. Fucking. Straight. Make a supersonic man/woman of EVERYONE.

I got a job! The grade 4 gifted class thing! I'm a teacher! *nervous vomit*.

It's 7.50 on Steam for the next 12 hours. If you have a way to get a cable, you should still play this. I just keep on putting more time in, and even when I'm just fooling around playing chord progressions on my acoustic guitar, I can't help occasionally playing through a song that I learned in this game between others. It's really good, guys. I swear. It appears no one else cares though, so unless the thread picks up I'll shut up after this post. ...until Rocksmith 2014 comes out, anyway.

...where the fuck are all these crickets coming from? Why are they in your kitchen? So many questions.

Gormongous, that really sucks. Especially the thing with your aunt deciding to take a spotlight using the situation. Not super classy on her part. Hope you and yours are doing as well as can be expected given the circumstances. I've now received three calls for job interviews in four days. The interview on Tuesday went super well and though I don't expect to get the job (full time one year contract, fifth grade class in a crazy rich neighbourhood, super competitive) I'm glad for the experience and am comfortable knowing that I interviewed well and that if I didn't get it it was honestly because the other person was better suited, not because I fucked up in the interview. Have another one tomorrow morning. Less permanent, covering the back 4 months of someone's maternity leave in a grade 4 gifted class (contract would run out at the holiday break), but a really good way to get my foot in the door. Also, I went through the same gifted program back in the day and am actually really interested in shaping what it becomes in the years ahead, so that's cool. On top of all this, I'm super proud of my partner right now. She got an email yesterday from the undergraduate advisor in her faculty that was basically pleading her to upgrade to the honours program. Apparently the profs were looking over the students and none of them could figure out why she wasn't going for it, so they decided to approach her directly about it. Super cool. I went through honours, and have been trying to nudge her in that direction for a while, but the fact that she's being scouted for it floored me. It's really awesome, and I'm crazy proud of her, so I wanted to share that.

Ok, so I gave in to that stupid celeb look-alike thing. Here is what the internet thinks that a photo taken on my phone of me in my jammies at one in the morning looks like: Apparently I'm Will Smith when I'm sleepy.

It is kind of unavoidable. Just ran mine as well. I'll be posting the results in the Post Your Face thread, as it seems appropriate.

I think Saint's Row is the Fast and the Furious of games. It started out as a (mostly) straight-faced, competent expression of what it wanted to be, and then began going further and further off the deep end with subsequent instalments. I honestly and unironically enjoy both ends of the spectrum of what both series have been since their inception, and I think the trajectory is very similar.

That was the best thing I've read today.

Pretty much this. Very sad to see you go, and erasing the evidence of some things you've said in the past is something I can empathize with. Still, the mystery, she is a tantalizing one. In the end, mostly just sad. You're not just an old guard Thumb, you're a Mixnmojo alum. That forum was the first one I ever registered for (under a different user name) way back when I was 13, and to have (vicariously - internet style) known you for 12 years and see you disappear suddenly is a bummer. All the best in whatever you get up to, man.

Actually, I think The World Is Not Enough is probably both a skippable film and a skippable game in the Bond franchise. EA kinda fucked up the N64 adaptation. I'd skip TWINE and just play Goldeneye and Everything Or Nothing if you're looking for Bond games.

Well, the interview went really well. They're interviewing a lot of people for one fifth grade position though, so who knows? On the plus side, they say that no matter what their answer is they'll call me to let me know on Thursday, if only so that I'm not in a bunch of suspense for forever. As for the worry, I just kind of always feel like I'm faking competence rather than actually competent. It tends to piss people around me off because they just see me getting shit done, but I always feel like I'm in over my head any time I take on something like this. I handle it, but always feel like I'm just scraping by. I'm just kind of neurotic about that shit, and it's hard for me to find sympathy as it always turns into the other person saying "What the fuck? You always kick the crap out of these situations..." but that is the opposite of how I always expect to do. I do not learn from history. In my mind, I'm always just lucky enough to postpone the fuck up to the next try.

I think it's a bit of both. Mantel is obviously cool with making up motivations and extra details where the need arises, and as this is historical fiction there's nothing wrong with that. I'm sure that there are many details that we DO get that are totally made up (the three brothers welcoming him in in a foreign country struck me as a pretty obvious embellishment, for example). That said, the book does point out the benefit of concealing your past, not because you did anything particularly shady, but because it's more useful to have people unsure how shady you are. I think that employing that not only on others in the book but on the reader as well is a very strong choice that Mantel made to drive that point home. We get to make up our own motivations, as sinister or not as we want them to be, and do so cognizant of the fact that this is exactly what (Mantel's) Cromwell would want us to do were we actually face to face with him. I like that ambiguity a lot.

I am currently trying to contact a guy who is a friend's professor at veterinary school and breeds axolotls. If all goes well, I will soon own a pair. Those things are amazing.

Speaking of fourth grade, I got a call this afternoon for an interview tomorrow morning at a middle school (grades 4 to 8). I'm nervous enough to cry right now, but who knows? This may work out. I thought that I had to apply specific places once I'd been accepted by the school board, but it appears that any school that's looking has access to my resume, and these guys were interested. Now I need to get my interview face on in less than 12 hours, and my hot water tank is busted so I may have to go in without a shower. I guess we'll see what happens. I'm freaked out as hell, but I don't know if there's any other way to approach your first year of teaching, so I guess I just need to jump in and see how I like it. Holy crap though, that was out of nowhere and is now terrifying.

Rubber is awesome. I'm glad more people know what it is.

Kroms! Don't do it! We still love you!

My town is crazy flooded right now. Pretty much any neighbourhood near the Bow or Elbow rivers has been evacuated. Downtown is underwater. Both my girlfriend and I live at the top of a very large hill, and are therefore fine, but it's pretty crazy around here. We've both taken the weekend off for a music festival (which was cancelled this morning due to all their venues being flooded), so we've got no reason to leave the house before Monday and can just wait it out. Making a huge pot of soup now, and had an awesome pancake breakfast. States of emergency are pretty much like vacations, right? I love the way that Calgary is handling a huge crisis. I realized that I needed a can of tomato paste for the soup, so I walked a block away to a grocery store. Everyone was really chill and laughing about whatever. I got to the shopping carts at the same time as another woman and the exchange was just "Go ahead. No, you first." etc for a while. Got my tomato paste and a zuchinni and headed back to the girlfriend's place. If you live here and have been displaced by the neighbourhood evacuations, stay safe and stay dry. I'm super lucky to be as unaffected as it as I have been. It occurred to me this morning that if the move I'd been planning last month hadn't fallen through, I'd be underwater right now. For context, this is just down the hill from my house. There's actually a road on the underside of that bridge about 5 metres below the arches, which is completely submerged: And this is the neighbourhood I was planning on moving to last month (a couple of blocks away): And here's an aerial view of downtown:

Yeah, loan sharks rarely rock a sweater vest like that.

Haha, glad you got it, Zeus! That's a really tricky one, I'll admit. Also glad that my hints were vague enough that they took some time to work out. I was worried it'd be too much of a giveaway.