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My two-year-old girl has the most fun with:

- puzzles with big pieces

- clay

- fingerpaint (the parents might hate you)

- DUPLO

 

I veto any pink shit. They will get that once they ask for it themselves. The cultural indoctrination ends at my doorstep.

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Actually, what i got my niece for her 2nd birthday was a chair like this so she could sit and watch tv in an "adult" chair. She really loved it for ages.

 

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Childrens-White-Stars-Fabric-Armchair/dp/B00E3SIL7E/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1428654456&sr=8-1&keywords=kids+armchair

 

That is a cool chair!

 

I was really interested in this board game described on the Tested podcast a few weeks ago, but it's not carried in any brick and mortar around here, and is a little out of the price range.

 

http://www.amazon.com/HABA-3103-Orchard-Game/dp/B000ELORPY

 

I ended up doing a safe boring Disney thing.

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I'm feeling very down today. A combination of things: I haven't spoken to a girl I've been seeing in almost a week now (she's on vacation with her mum in Scotland) and I'm worried that her silence is meant as an indication that things aren't going to progress any further between us; I just received a No from drama school, which bums me out as I got through to the final round last year but something has changed, and I've done poorly in all my auditions this year; I'm also exhausted from work, and I don't know. I don't sleep well.

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Her silence might be an indication that she's on holiday in Scotland and making the most of it

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I'm feeling very down today. A combination of things: I haven't spoken to a girl I've been seeing in almost a week now (she's on vacation with her mum in Scotland) and I'm worried that her silence is meant as an indication that things aren't going to progress any further between us; I just received a No from drama school, which bums me out as I got through to the final round last year but something has changed, and I've done poorly in all my auditions this year; I'm also exhausted from work, and I don't know. I don't sleep well.

 

 

Breathe. It'll be ok. :)

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I will be getting my undergraduate degree in about a month now, and have accepted a job out in the Boston area. Any recommendations of where to live? I spent a summer there and liked the Davis Square/Porter Square area quite a bit, but curious what other people think/reccomend.

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I will be getting my undergraduate degree in about a month now, and have accepted a job out in the Boston area. Any recommendations of where to live? I spent a summer there and liked the Davis Square/Porter Square area quite a bit, but curious what other people think/reccomend.

I lived almost exactly in between Davis and Porter for a couple years and really liked it a lot. It's a great area, and the Red Line is one of the better subway lines to be near.

In terms of Cambridge/Somerville, I also would have loved to live in Central Square. It's scuzzier than Davis/Porter and certainly Harvard/Kendell, so some people I know weren't as into it, but I like that kind of thing.

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I lived almost exactly in between Davis and Porter for a couple years and really liked it a lot. It's a great area, and the Red Line is one of the better subway lines to be near.

In terms of Cambridge/Somerville, I also would have loved to live in Central Square. It's scuzzier than Davis/Porter and certainly Harvard/Kendell, so some people I know weren't as into it, but I like that kind of thing.

 

Central Square was also somewhere I was looking at. I kinda split my time between those three squares when I was there previously, and I'm excited to head back.  Of the three Central felt the "busiest" to me and I don't mean that in a negative sense.  Thanks for the advice! 

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Our old landlords have stolen a bunch of plants we had left at our old place to pick up later.

It's a weird thing to feel upset over but I mean really, helping yourselves to our garden and saying "too bad" when we ask for our plants back?

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Weird. I'd definitely be annoyed about that. Really they should refund part of your deposit or something... they could have been highly sentimental plants!

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Weird. I'd definitely be annoyed about that. Really they should refund part of your deposit or something... they could have been highly sentimental plants!

Yeah they were awesome plants : (

 

The landlords weren't super mean or anything they gave us a whole bunch of greek import olives as a parting gift and aside for the usual landlord weirdness things weren't sour before (they asked for the carpet to be shampooed and complained of a weird smell that already existed when the house was closed up with no air) But one of the wives from the greek family decided to pinch one of our more awesome ferns, a desert shrub, and our poinsettia. :(

 

The plants were pretty much our pets before our recently arrived kitten so everyone was invested in them. Suuper bummer.

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Yeah, I have a whole bunch of plants that I'm attached to. That sucks.

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Wow, almost 3 (or is it only 2?) years after moving in, I'm finally getting cupboards/wardrobes for putting stuff into. Only had one dresser for all my clothes before.

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After 5 years of being in my current house I'm finally getting a third chest of drawers (already have one for myself and one for my wife) so now I can actually properly put away linens and overflow clothes. I'm also getting a new bed frame with built-in under-bed drawers from IKEA. I'm pretty stoked to actually theoretically have enough storage for all my crap!

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This past weekend was the first nice weekend in a while so I got a lot of outdoor stuff done.  I fertilized and partially weeded the yard, spread some insect repellant around, got the driveway sealed, and installed some hooks in the garage to hang up some things that have been sitting around for months.  I probably should have tried working on a Wizard Jam game but I couldn't pass up the opportunity to be outside for a while and get some housework done.  Gonna have to start mowing the lawn soon.

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I went back to my hometown this weekend, and it was really bittersweet.  No, it was mostly just bitter, it was not a pleasant trip because of some family interactions, and on Sunday I visited the old farm place because my dad had told me the old barn finally collapsed during a vicious storm on Good Friday (100+ mph straight winds).
 

post-33601-0-78979000-1428935476_thumb.jpg

 

post-33601-0-40887200-1428935487_thumb.jpg

 

This was a barn my brother and I grew up playing in, with all sorts of tools and equipment, some of which was a hundred years old.  There was a manual grinding/sharpening wheel (like a stationary bike one person pedaled while another used the big grinding wheel on it).  Some old wooden sewing equipment.  Tons of old horse tack.  And lots of loose nails lying around.  All sorts of shit to climb on (and fall off of)  It was like the world's most awesomely dangerous playground. 

 

And now its a pile of broken sticks on the ground.  I got surprisingly emotional about this.  The farm feels like an empty shell now.  There used to be so much there, a house, the barn, the quonset, animal sheds, dozens of pieces of big equipment.  And now just the quonset and some equipment is left.  Thirty years ago this panoramic shot would have been full of buildings, and people, and stuff and life. 

 

post-33601-0-75826900-1428935492_thumb.jpg

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So after a month or so of my ex now working in the same company and building as me, we crossed paths in the corridor today. As I would with anybody, I looked at her and smiled, but she just walked on by in that awkward 'blatantly avoiding looking at you' kind of way.

I'd kind of been dreading running into her and ending up in some kind of conversation, and had been OCDing about what I might say to her. While we ended things peacefully last year, it was a bit odd when she moved out because she just walked out without saying goodbye while I was in another room, despite us chatting normally earlier that same day and for like two months living together post-split — and that was the last time we spoke.

I guess that her preference was to sever things weirdly for whatever reason. It's actually a relief that she doubled down on the rude/whatever treatment, because now I feel OK about just going ahead and ignoring her back, as childish as all of this might be. It's stress neither of us need I guess, but after years of being together it's strange stuff.

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i've only driven through Kansas but it never fails to blow my mind how damn FLAT it is. That panorama is amazing (as well as sad, to your narratively) in that regard, if also sad. I wonder to what extent the extreme flatness might play in that nostalgic/emotional response? 

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i've only driven through Kansas but it never fails to blow my mind how damn FLAT it is. That panorama is amazing (as well as sad, to your narratively) in that regard, if also sad. I wonder to what extent the extreme flatness might play in that nostalgic/emotional response? 

 

 

I actually find the flatness very comfortable and familiar (naturally, having grown up in it).  It's normal for me to think I should be able to see a single lone tree emerging from the horizon that's 3+ miles away.  There's also something very stark and awe inspiring about the incredible apparent emptiness of it, though once you know the place, there are all sorts of fascinating things to find.

 

Bonus picture of our old horse trailer tipped on its side from the same storm. 

 

post-33601-0-01419600-1428945881_thumb.jpg

 

I was trying to get these to show up, but they aren't visible in this picture, my phone camera just isn't good enough, but to the right of the trailer and low on the horizon are giant wind turbines, these nearly 40 story behemoths that loom over the landscape now.  They're probably 5-7 miles from the farm, and easily visible to the naked eye from there.  They create a lot of surreal images of towering marvels of technology with the decaying remains of last century in their shadow.  That might sound overly poetic, but it's quite literally true in a lot of places.  It feels very sci-fi out there whenever I get near those things.   This link isn't my picture, but I've taken a similar shot of the same windmill.  In person, that old windmill looks like it's made of toothpicks compared to the turbines that surround it. 

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Being from the north Netherlands I'm no stranger to flatenss, but holy moly the emptiness is just surreal. Where I grew up (400-head vilalge) I could see the church tower of neighbourign villages in every directions, and clumps of trees around the farmhouses everywhere.

 

example pictures

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I cannot deal with flatness. I moved to Wisconsin after living in the mountains of NY and it's fucking unreal. 

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It's amazing the inter-Midwestern "that place is so flat" opinions.  Wisconsin thinks Illinois is flat & everyone at least can point to Kansas and say 'at least we're not Kansas levels of flat.'

 

My favorite thing is along I-35 you can drive by this enormous stone sign next to the interstate that says "Welcome to the Flint Hills"

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/fe/Flint_hills_kansas.jpg )

 

You can literally see the horizon in every direction, and there is not a single hill. It's amazing.

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To be fair, we have a very generous definition of "hill" in Kansas.  It doesn't take much.  We even have our own mountain! (Mount Sunflower).

 

From the Wiki: "The state of Kansas gradually increases in elevation from the east to the west. As such, "Mount" Sunflower, while the highest point in the state in terms of elevation, is indistinguishable from the surrounding terrain."

 

Also, Kansas does have a pretty significant slope to it, running west to east.  It means all of our shit pours into Missouri, which explains a lot *zing*!

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