Sidious, Snoke and Salacious B Crumb’s Sarcastic and Sassy Situation Saloon (Fanfic Social Thread)

She's back!!!

Can't even talk, I'm so glad to see you!

 

Yay, you're back!! So glad to see you in 2023!

 

I have a cold. Just needed to share my self-pity party. I haven't been sick much these last couple years, thankfully. But now I am, and I'm remembering how much I hate it. It's icky.

 

@Kahara -- Awwww! Colds are no fun.

 

... No, Vek, not that kind of party.

Oh, well I hope you feel better soon, Kahara. Being sick was fun... when I was a kid. No school, lots of attention, lol. But no, not for the last few decades it's not.

Feel better.

 

Get well soon @Kahara !

Thanks everyone for the kind "welcome back" messages. I'm not on the boards quite as much as I'd like yet (being on sabbatical also means that I'm spending more time with my daughter ) but I'm finding my pace slowly but surely.

 

Today the temperature in Athens was 18°C (64°F). Most of my plants are in bloom and there's a mosquito in the room as I type.

Climate change is a Chinese hoax, I'm telling you.

 

Why is it always a Chinese hoax? Why not a Canadian one? How do we know we're not secretly melting our own glaciers with giant magnifying glasses attached to the International Space Station in order to levy more carbon taxes for Justin Trudeau's Socialist agenda?

WAKE UP SHEEPLE

....

Seriously though, that sounds like a lovely day in Athens.

 

I found myself floating around the boards this evening and thought I’d pop in and say hi! Great to see some familiar faces and some new ones!

 

Every time I’ve been to Athens, it’s been in November-January. I love this time of year there.

@Briannakin hello again.

I’ve been off the boards for a little while because I had a chapter of a fanfic that would. Not. End. Being on here reminded me that I still wasn’t wrapping it up. It turned out to be 12,616 words in length and I got it posted last night. For reference, that is 1/8 the length of the first book I got published. It hurt my head a lot.

 

I casually clicked on that email notification when I saw it as I was getting ready for work and was all excited about a new chapter but then realized how long it was. I'm now holding that email for a time when I have a half hour or so to dedicate to it to read it properly, because I will read it. Every. Single. Word.

Meanwhile, one week from today I'm flying to Florida to escape winter on my birthday weekend. It will be my first time ever flying commercially or navigating an airport, and I'm extremely nervous about it. I have been in the air once before, in the back seat of an old Aeronca Champ at an EAA Young Eagles day when I was 12 years old, but never in a commerical plane.

 

@jcgoble3 I hope you have a wonderful time! Airports can be intimidating, but as long as you give yourself lots of time and read the rules for what you're allowed and not allowed to travel with, you'll be fine.

 

I trust you will. Also, how exciting to fly commercially for the first time! My relatives were all over the country and in one case, all over the world when I was growing up, so I’ve been doing it for many years. (My aunt’s family lived in England at one point, so we got to visit them for a month when I was ten. The rest were in places like Illinois and Washington.) I hope you have a good break in Florida. What part are you going to?

 

Going to the Tampa/Clearwater area and staying three blocks from the beach.

My entire extended family has always been within southwest Ohio (except for one uncle who was a radio DJ in Louisiana and flew in once a year for Christmas), so I never needed to travel to visit family, and my parents hated vacations (I don't recall my dad ever taking more than one day in a row off work!), so I never got to go anywhere as a kid. In the first 17 years and 354 days of my life, I only left the state of Ohio once, and that was only a day trip to the Newport Aquarium on the Kentucky side of the Ohio River with my Cub Scout pack. My first time ever staying in a hotel or really sleeping anywhere other than my parents' house or Grandma's house was on a school trip to Washington, D.C., 10 days before I turned 18.

 

I went to Tampa on my senior class trip and we stayed in my friend’s beach house. So awesome. I’ve never been to Ohio, but have a bunch of friends there and should really make it a destination some time. Hope you pack a lot of sunscreen. I’ve got the pale freckly thing going on, as you can see in my profile pic, and use it a lot.

 

There's a lot of stuff to see and do in Ohio! In the Dayton area where I live, we have the National Museum of the U.S. Air Force, a top-notch metroparks system that bills Dayton as the Outdoor Adventure Capital of the Midwest with tons of hiking trails and rivers for paddling, and many other things.

I can't imagine being that pale! I'm 100% white, but with a slightly darker skin than average for white people, so without sunscreen it takes me about 4-5 hours to burn on a sunny summer day in Ohio. That would obviously be shorter in Florida (but it is still winter), but the point is that I don't have to obsessively apply sunscreen every hour like some people do. And I'm thankful for that.

I did have to buy new sunscreen off of Amazon because my existing bottle is too big to go through the TSA checkpoint.

 

Because I'm Gamiel:
Old Master Yoda by dashinvaine on DeviantArt

So, pale grey-white
Sorry for bad pun, but not sorry enough to not make it.

 

Seems a reunion of sorts is occurring, so it’s probably time I joined that particular party. In my absence, I’ve FINALLY got my butt out of Canada and moved to Texas, and honestly I haven’t been this happy in a very long time.

 

Now you know why the students at the multicultural office would ask for my ID and registration card when I came in for my tribal scholarship checks. I am an adult member of an indigenous nation, but the rest of my ancestry is incredibly Scandinavian.

 

I am freaking out. My young son (22) wants to do a paid internship across the country in California...probably because I grew up in California and he heard all my cool stories. The internship pays about $25 an hour and where we live that is great pay, but not in California. I told him to look into rent for a one bedroom apartment ($3000 a month for an apartment $900 for a room in somebody else's house). He is getting upset with me because he is so excited and I am harshing his buzz. I haven't even got into the details...like eventually he will have to pay for his own car, health and renter's insurance. He has been in college with me paying for his tuition, room and board, car and insurance. He has a part time job and buys most of his other stuff. So, should I just let him go and see if he flies or try to talk some sense into him?

I often told him that as a mom it is my job to worry about him and I am very good at my job. My husband and I joined the Army as teenagers, so we didn't have to worry about these things. For those who did it the hard way...give me some words of encouragement. I want the best for my son.

 

He's 22. He's plenty old enough to stretch his wings and try to fly. And sometimes you have to give your adult kids room to fail, as scary and painful as it may be, because many of life's important lessons can only be learned by failing.

$25/hour is not great for the area, but it's not slave wages either. He'll survive, but he'll probably get a major reality check on what he can/cannot afford with that money. The rent can be cut significantly if he can find a roommate or two (have him ask the company -- he's unlikely to be the only intern they're bringing in, and they might be able to connect him with other summer interns, who may be looking for the same). Renter's insurance is not expensive (mine is about $100 for a year, can't imagine it would be hugely more than that in California).

Depending on the specific area of California, he may not need a car at all (if public transit is robust in that area), or if he does, get a cheap used car (the older, the cheaper). (Or if he goes the roommate route with a co-worker, his roommate might have a car and they can carpool to work.)

Health insurance shouldn't be a problem right now as legally your insurance has to cover him up to age 26, by which point he'll likely be able to get his own insurance through his employer.

I know it's scary, but let him do it. Just make sure he has realistic expectations, and if you give him a credit card, keep a tight control on it.

 

@DarthIshtar - I have a couple of blonde Metis friends who shared similar stories... I'm sorry you have to deal with that.

@Jedi_Lover - I moved to Vancouver when I was about your son's age (back when the suburbs were affordable!) and I think he'll be alright as long as he has the judgment to avoid ruining his credit and racking up debt.

Living within his means will be a lifestyle adjustment-- say goodbye to convenience foods and hello to dried lentils!-- but when everyone else is in the same position, you don't feel left out. If his social skills are good and he knows how to clean up after himself, he'll avoid most of the roommate drama.

If this doesn't work out for him, he can always come back home.

 

He is a slob. I bought a condo for my sons to live in that was across the street from the college (it was cheaper than dormitories). He always told me his brother was the slob...and I believed him. But his brother joined the Army and the condo is still messy...so I guess they were both slobs. He has been getting a little better over the last year, but that might be because between work and college he is not home much. I only have myself to blame. My husband and I are not neat-freaks. I think after years of military room inspections when we got married and had a home of our own we got lackadaisical when it came to tidiness.

I guess I worry because my niece decided to move to NYC and get a job. She lived in her car for months before she found a place to rent. My brother was terrified for her. She is a country girl from Mississippi. She made it in probably the most expensive place in the USA, so I guess he can make it in Northern California.

Thanks everybody. I wasn't going to try to stop him, but I didn't know how much advice I should be giving. With my older son I can give advice all day. The younger son takes things a bit personally like he sees it that I don't trust his judgement or abilities.

I guess I just need to chill.

 

Some young adults are more receptive to Mom's advice than others. The ones that are less so will value it more when they get older.

I would have a heart-to-heart discussion with him over dinner (your treat) and make it abundantly clear that you trust him but that it's a mom's job to worry. That latter truth is one I resisted for a long, long time but have now accepted. Tell him you're excited for his opportunity and will support him, but that you just want him to understand the realities. If he ignores that and runs off and messes up, we call that a lesson.

And as for being a slob, he may learn more about housekeeping from his roommate than from you. Or his roommate may be a slob as well (many young adults are, which is not necessarily a bad thing) and they can happily coexist. Talking with his roommate early -- ideally before signing the lease -- is important to set those expectations.