#also the idea that Price is going to be the one coaching Ghost through this whole abduction and seduction act

[auspicioustidings]

I love your work! May I please request ghost finding a captured civilian in an enemy base and taking her for himself?

Ah little posessive freak Ghost my beloved <3 I didn't know if you were looking for fluff or twisted Simon so I've leant towards the latter!

CW: Attempted rape (non-graphic), kidnapping

They had been warned there were going to be civillians in the building, but it wasn't the first time Ghost had to work around hostages to get the job done. It was an understanding on the team that whereever possible it wasn't going to be the huge fucker in the skull mask who dealt with that side of things. If they knew where hostages were being kept, that's where they sent Gaz or Johnny or even Price to settle them and get them out. Not the Ghost.

And that was working smoothly once again. Gaz had radioed in saying he found where they were being kept, had taken out their guards and would wait for the all clear for an exit route for the handful of doubtless terrified little civilians looking at him like he was the second coming for saving them.

They were all accounted for and that always made Ghost feel some tension bleed away. The last thing he needed to be worrying about was hostage situations.

The rest of the mission was easy enough, taking out any enemies and finding the saferoom to snoop around in for intel. It was laughably easy to get into. Saferooms only really worked if the person who knew the code didn't spill it at the first little twist of an arm, the press of a knife against their throat. They only worked if they were used. But obviously playing at warlord the man was arrogant, thought he could easily take on whoever came at him. Idiot. The moment he had the code, Ghost had no more use for him until he could get him somewhere for a proper interrogation, so he was smacked in the skull with a pistol and out cold. His fingerprints and eye scanner worked just fine even with him unconcious and the code he had given beeped with a green light and the click of a lock.

It was a damn good thing that you assumed it was your captor coming in and so were aiming the cast iron at where his face would be. Instead it smacked into the tactical vest of a much taller man. You hissed and spat and fought like a feral cat when the man immediately reacted by grabbing your wrist and twisting so you cried out and dropped the pan. There went your weapon, there wasn't much else to use in this little safe room but for the small implements in the kitchen and you hadn't felt confident with a knife. A blunt object with a larger surface area had felt like a better bet.

"Don't fucking touch me! I'll claw your fucking eyes out!" you spat out at what you were sure was a bloody monster.

You had been a victim of wrong place wrong time about 12 hours prior. You had broken down on a stretch of road that barely got any use and had fuck all phone signal to get help, so were at the mercy of someone passing by. Just your luck the someone passing by was some slimy asshole with a compound nearby he thought to drag you to. He had found out quickly he wasn't getting his hands on you without a fight. You were a bit of a mess, shirt torn and what you suspected was a cracked orbital bone from where he had punched you after you bit his tongue. You wished you had bit fucking harder.

The only thing that had saved you in the end was the alarm going off. The man had thrown you into the safe room, telling you that once he had dealt with whoever dared break into his base he was going to fuck you bloody. You'd kill him before he got the chance. You'd fucking kill him before all this adrenaline fuelled fight turned into fear and had you accepting your fate.

The monster in the skull mask didn't have the laugh of a monster. It was gruff but there was something very genuine about it. He had his hands on both of your wrists, locking them so you couldn't scratch at him with yout body pulled right into him so you couldn't kick either. Your wrists were pinned at your chin so you couldn't even bite at him. Didn't much stop you from fighting, trying to just drop all of your weight to get him off balance. The added weight did not phase him in the slightest.

"Settle sweetheart, I'm the good guy."

"Do good guys often wear skull masks?!" you hissed back, still struggling to no avail.

He manouvered so that you could see out of the doorway and to the passed out man on the floor.

"They do when they're going after bad guys."

It was like all the adrenaline had finally burned off at right that moment and you felt yourself go boneless in his hold, fight gone. You had a sick moment of being disappointed that you could see that the man was still breathing.

"We sure all the civilians are accounted for?"

You felt a little dazed as you squinted back at him before realising he must have been speaking on the radio. Whatever he heard back must have been interesting because he looked at you, considering, before twisted the little dial to another channel.

"Got a stray, let's keep it out of the reports."

Simon knew that the 141 would back him up. After all, him and the Seargants had always admired the relationship between Price and his wife even if when they first met she kept trying to murder him. She had grown out of it after a few years.

And Simon had never felt like this before. He thought you truly would have killed him if you had been able when he opened the door. It was love at first murder attempt for him.

He cooed at you and comforted you the whole way through exfil. It wasn't until you realised that you couldn't leave that it really started getting fun.

#mhairidrabbles #cod #fanfic #simon riley x reader #ghost x reader #the two things that you can blame bo for are Johnny always winding up puppy coded and the 141 just abducting partners #also the idea that Price is going to be the one coaching Ghost through this whole abduction and seduction act #mhairidrabblescodkidnappers

[squadrah]

i really wanna hear more about uncanny/cryptid pros headcanons, they're probably one of the coolest headcanons I've seen out there.

I'm so glad you enjoy them, it makes me happy that people appreciate this take on Prosciutto's character because it brings me so much joy to explore his uncanny/cryptid potential!

Basically my starting point was his Stand being extremely grotesque while Prosciutto himself looks deceptively normal, even by regular standards (if you take Italian fashion with the unbuttoned shirts and necklaces/chains, Prosciutto fits that style effortlessly). Meanwhile, in Vento Aureo at least, you don't have any characters who look grotesque but have perfectly normal looking Stands, because Carne looks exactly like someone who'd have Notorious B.I.G., and his characterization as someone downtrodden and miserable creates cohesion between these two designs. Meanwhile, despite his ability and Stand build, Prosciutto is very much a respected professional whose words and actions are consistent throughout, so all these factors considered, here you have someone who is just very, very Different.

Just look at this lineup. Look at it. Everyone else, you can tell by their fashion or their stance that they are trouble, and then there's this guy in the middle, just standing there with a thousand yard stare. It was pretty much this official art that gave me vibes like the short sleeper headcanon that I love to go with just because it is very congruous with his overall character (here's my original tweet on that). And eventually I also started thinking of ways in which The Grateful Dead could affect him, since he is not exactly immune to it, and that was how I started leaning into the idea that he might have certain senses damaged, most prominently taste, smell, and possibly some nerves being dulled. It's like... I wouldn't exactly call it equivalent exchange, but it adds some nuance where he isn't just your average pretty boy with a big dangerous toy, right? He has paid the price for what he is wielding, and he makes do with that, and is able to function and be a respectable person like that.

Plus it's like, it's just plain interesting and fun to work with these assets in a general setting, and play around with whatever makes this man a walking breathing cognitive dissonance. He goes to bed at 2 am and he's up at 6 am and they have no idea how he copes with having 20 hours days, but he somehow just does it. He snores like he's sleeping through demonic possession, but if you have a problem with that, several eyes open up all over him to stare at you until you think the better of it. He eats bone marrow and epoisses and ghost peppers because these are things that he can actually taste well. He can dull his own nerves on command so he doesn't need substance abuse to cope with anything. He is somehow on top of his affairs and everyone else's bullshit not just because he has 20 hour days, but because he's an obsessive micromanager and cares too much despite being a ruthless motherfucker. He's an angel, he's the grim reaper, he will pap your cheeks, he will mummify you in ten seconds, he can be your life coach or your doom. He could depopulate entire cities if he wanted to, but apparently he's fine being the member of an underpaid team because he is that committed. He can do all of this and he does all of this, and you just have to accept that he and his twelve anomalies exist.

#prosciutto #squadrah headcanons #squadrah original #god bless everyone who encourages me to play in my sandbox #these are the things that keep me coming back

[erpublishme]

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#ghostwritten #independent publisher #writer in london

[darkandstormyart]

Xicheng fic recs

(figured i might make a list of my own)

(to be expanded as i dig out more treasure/remember stuff)

in no particular order:

Deep as the Yearning Night by FreckledStarKnight

“At first, it was pure chance. The second time was accidental. And the third time? Well, they say the third time’s the charm, after all. Lan Xichen discovers that Jiang Wanyin sings beautifully and is immediately enamored by it. His pursuit of Jiang Wanyin’s secret talent leads to a discovery and a series of events that he did not anticipate at all. Not that he’s complaining, of course. He got what he came for and more. Or, how two sect leaders get together through the song called love. CQL-verse.“

post-seclusion lxc

trying to get jc to sing

bonus lxc & jin ling feels i hadn’t considered before

cute

Always use protection by hesselives

“In which Lan Wangji attempts to hire a new bodyguard for his older brother, a well-known traveling exorcist. Jiang Wanyin doesn’t even make his carefully considered list of Top Ten Candidates, and yet here he is.

Lots of wandering in the countryside, distant yelling, and mildly inconvenient spirits.”

bodyguard au

honestly just really intersting worldbuilding

Rewrite the stars by Arashii

“Five great kingdoms have been fighting for years and when the kingdom of Yunmeng is destroyed, the Crown Prince Jiang Cheng vanishes.In Gusu, Lan Xichen makes an offer impossible for Jiang Cheng to refuse. His life or revenge? There’s only one option and Jiang Cheng swears loyalty to the man he hated the most his whole life, the Crown Prince of Gusu, Lan Xichen himself.Written for XiChengFest2020 - Day 4“

ROYALTY AU ROYALTY AU

enemies to lovers!

flashbacks! i love flashbacks so much ohmygod

No paths are bound by Arashii

“In seclusion, Lan Huan has the support of a ghost no one has seen since the massacre of Yunmeng Jiang. His feelings start changing with the often visits and conversations they share. Before Lan Huan can confess though, he ascends, leaving everything and everyone behind him.

Two hundred years later, back to the Human Realm and without powers, the Martial God Zewu-Jun has a mission to uphold. His Heavenly Calamity started. The clues are little and the support comes in the most unexpected form, the current Ghost King: Sandu Shengshou. Now they need to stick together to contain a menace that is slowly growing.“

TGCF AU TGCF AU

ghost king jiang cheng come on

doesn’t follow tgcf plot, just the setup so no spoilers

jiang cheng gets the dogs and the xichen he deserves

once upon a dream by cafedeolla

“Xicheng soulmate AU

An au where your dreams are small snippets of your soulmate’s day. They’d show small things like buying coffee, reading a book, or hanging out with people from their perspective.

The problem was that people always have expectations and Jiang Cheng knows he always falls short of them. Time and time again.“

soulmate au, but being soulmates is more a problem than a solution

misunderstandingssss all over the place

now with a squel (in progress?)

Lan Furen series by jagaimocchi

“Jiang Cheng leaves Lotus Pier before the Wen Internment Camp and before the destruction of his home. When he meets Lan Xichen on the run from the Wens after the burning of Cloud Recesses, his plan to live a peaceful life away from cultivation sects is quickly derailed. Now, free to make his own choices, he cannot find it in himself to leave the other man's side.

With love, patience and time, Jiang Cheng finds his own happiness and peace with his past.“

have you ever wanted a fic where jiang cheng peaces out from home in search for a better life, bc he’s Had Enough??? jags got you covered

adorable xicheng

good uncle-dad-figure Lan Qiren

ongoing <3

Just around the riverbend by JungleJelly

“One day.

Jiang Cheng just wanted one day of peace and quiet, away from home, away from his responsibilities, away from his idiot brother and his nutcases of a mother and father. Just a few hours alone — him and a boat and nothing else.

Clearly, that was too much to ask for.”

now with a new story in the series which is adorable too!!!

mermaid!lxc need i say more?

Bad ideas (where they lead) by JungleJelly

“Jiang Cheng is a busy man. Fortunately, he is also a huge pushover when it comes to his sister, so when she recommends that he start doing yoga, he agrees pretty easily.Featuring Lan Xichen in yoga pants, Jiang Cheng’s inability to handle a crush, and, perhaps most importantly, a big fluffy dog.“

done for 2020 MXTX MiniBang

yoga instructor Lan Xichen

Jiang Cheng is: struggling with a crush on the yoga guy from youtube & very angry about that

If there’s a price for rotten judgement by TheWanderingHeart

“All Jiang Cheng wants to do is, well... his job, really. Other than that? Keep the city safe, keep his nephew alive, keep his sanity intact (if possible).

So when his brother calls with unexpected news, he knows all of that is about to fly out of the window.

***

[Every instinct is telling him don’t ask, you don’t want to know. By this point, Nie HuaiSang has scooted closer to listen. Jiang Cheng takes a steadying breath and pulls out his antacids. “What did you do?”]”

superhero au, come on

jc just trying to do his job in peace

(he can’t)

i love it so much oh my god *sobs*

The Form of Boneless Ice by TheWanderingHeart

“Mythical beasts have long ago been driven to extinction by the gentry — hunted for sport, but more importantly for their magical cores. Since then, there remains only one creature that has never been caught. The Jiang’s retreated a long time ago. Abandoning land altogether, they sought safety where the humans could not reach.It all comes to a head though, purely by chance. (Or is it by fate that a spontaneous decision allows for them to meet? If fate were a rock!) Jiang Cheng suddenly finds his whole life balanced on the head of a pin — on the flimsy promise of a human boy. In his opinion, things cannot possibly get worse!(But then they do when the Wens decide it’s finally time to search for the elusive merpeople, and suddenly nowhere is safe.)“

there she goes again, with another beautiful xicheng story full of awwww and mythology

actually one of the first xicheng fics i read

i chose it because there were mermaids

painfully accurate takes on Jiang family dynamics

kids! lots of kids!

Let me Slytherin to Your Heart by TheWanderingHeart

“Jiang Cheng never thought he'd return to Hogwarts, but in hindsight, he probably should have known that someday he would.With his nephew about to start school, he reluctantly takes his good friend's bad parenting? career? advice and ends up tumbling head-first back into the madness that he hoped he'd left behind... and rediscovering some feelings he thought he'd left behind too.“

Harry Potter au!

just really fecking cute

lots of snakes

[I am not going to link all of Jo’s fics, though I probably could, just my 3 favourites. UOSB is there by default]

Talent Hunt Crew Finds Angry Guy Shouting On College Campus, Recruits Him For Vocal Projection Abilities by oh_fudgecakes

“Jiang Cheng, resident Angry Guy and heir to a conglomerate empire, has never been the apple of his father’s eye. Quashed under the shadow of his brilliant brother, the music prodigy Wei Wuxian, Jiang Cheng sees his chance to turn things around when he is recruited by the All-Stars Lan Talent Hunt. One problem: he can’t sing to save his goddamn life.As he struggles to develop his nascent singing abilities, Jiang Cheng finds himself sucked into the whirlwind drama of reality TV, helped along by his adoring siblings, his irritable vocal coach Wen Qing, and strangely enough, the unfairly attractive host of the All-Stars Lan Talent Hunt, Lan Xichen. Somewhere in the glare of the stage lights and an unexpected first love, Jiang Cheng stumbles upon the thing he was searching for all along: the courage to dream — and to attempt the impossible.“

done for 2019 MXTX Big Bang

uuuuuuuuuuh i might have cried maybe

heartwarming? painful at times? lots of family love?

slowburn xicheng being lovely

The Provenence of Hope series by velithya

“A chance meeting on a night hunt sets a course of events into motion that will change everything. Featuring Xicheng getting together, recovery for Lan Xichen, healing for Jiang Cheng, and always, always, hope.“

got everything. feels. hope. love. ~~healing~~

A Small Measure of Peace by Sandstone112

“With his brother in seclusion, Lan Xichen finds himself in temporary custody of his nephew with little to no expertise in the child-raising department. Uncertain and alone, Zewu-Jun is willing to do everything to be the person Yuan needs—even if it means inviting Sandu Shengshou to a playdate.“

a loooot of adorable family times with jc and lxc taking care of their nephews

good grandpa lqr!

canon but fixed and less painful

🍋🍋🍋🍋🍋if you wish to avoid scurvy:🍋🍋🍋🍋🍋

Some day I’m gonna make you mine series by locketofyourhair

xicheng getting together through the years

friends with benefits but the real benefits are the friends we made along the way

Take me over (take me tonight) by velithya

jiang cheng has a tattoo and lan xichen doesn’t stand a chance

i'd be the sweet feeling of release (mankind now dreams of) by piyo13

two bros, chilling in a cave, no feet apart because they don’t want to lose their cultivation powers what are you gonna do

haven’t read yet and shame on me, but AM GONNA:

Upon Our Silver Bridge by TheWanderingHeart obviously

““When the path ignites a soul, there's no remaining in place. The foot touches ground, but not for long.” ― Hakim Sanai

**

Lan Xichen's sorrows have caught the attention of something. Unlike the adventures and foes they have faced before, there is no obvious enemy here to defeat. If this is the same thing they thought had taken Nie Mingjue's life, then he believes it is fated for him to die as well. Nothing can stop the black fire when it wants to burn.Jiang Cheng is sure his part in this is over. Wei Wuxian is back, his grand adventure concluded, and he'd never been at the centre of it anyway. So what does it matter what happens to him in the end? Slowly, he will come to realise that there will always be a battle to fight, a story to tell, a choice to make, and there is no such thing as an end to anything.“

it was difficult to do things in 2020 and few i regret not doing more than not reading uosb yet :’(

i will tho

Emergency Help Wanted by piyo13

“EMERGENCY HELP WANTED I lied when I got my job. I told them I had a kid so I could leave early from work to pick him up from daycare, take him to doctor's appointments, and occasionally miss a day when he's sick. Long story short, I'm in too deep. I didn't think it through. Looking to rent a kid for bring your child to work day. Must be a boy ages four to six, longish dark hair, likes soccer. Must also be artistic as the macaroni noodle paintings I made seem a little advanced for his age. Also, I will pay extra for someone willing to play the role of husband when dropping him off. He's a prosecuting attorney who often brings his work home. Message me for further details. Serious inquiries only.“

Running Our Hands Through Embers by MarvelousMar

“If asked, Jiang Cheng would compare falling in love with Lan Xichen to a moth inevitably drawn to a flame.It burned.***In which Jiang Cheng discovers that even death can't help him escape from his trauma, so he embarks on a quest to save the people he loves, fix what he can, make the love of his life fall for him, and maybe, somewhere along the way, do a little bit of healing.”

The Beginner’s Guide to Moving On by InvincibleMel

gone from ao3, but i think there’s a link with a pdf going around

#xicheng #fic rec #Jiang Cheng #lan xichen #mdzs #the untamed #the grandmaster of demonic cultivation #mo dao zu shi

[echo-three-one]

Chapter 24

I should really put effort on summaries, right? Anyways... Enjoy! ❤️

Table of Contents

Going Dark - Part 3

Gary "Roach" Sanderson

MacTavish Residence, Glasgow, Scotland

Roach never would have guessed that MacTavish was a big time. Their 'old' house was already a mansion, complete with guest rooms, extravagant furniture and even an outdoor pool. Roach could stay here forever.

He was laying on a queen sized bed relaxing after a tiring chase earlier when Ghost knocked on his door and let himself in.

"What's wrong mate?" he asked, lifting only his head. Ghost leaned by the door and crossed his arms.

"You know how I got into a little argument with France back in Brazil right? Well, I still regret it ever happening…" he frowned, as shown by the way the fabric of his mask twitched.

"You regret which part? The fighting or the telling her what you feel?" Gary asked, cornering the ever vague Simon. He always does that when it comes to asking for advice.

Ghost ran a hand across his face and groaned.

"Bloody Hell, mate. Why do you have to ask those kinds of things?" he complained.

"So I could be clear as to which one I should recommend you to do." He replied quickly. He was very willing to help, but if Simon refuses to cooperate, then maybe he could handle it on his own.

"There's still one thing… I've been meeting with Alexandra not just for intel… " the tone of his voice was hesitant but he took a sharp inhale and continued.

"... we've also been sleeping together. No strings attached. For her it eases her tension from all the work while I try to forget about my feelings for Francine."

Gary didn't know what to say. Simon wasn't the kind of person to give up easily, and he fully understood the reasons for his latest actions.

"Well, it looks like Francine already made her choice, right?" Gary asked, trying to confirm from Simon that he already lost the battle.

"I'm not quite sure. Everytime I see her, she's physically distancing herself from Soap but later that night, they actually slept beside each other. She's making me confused and it still makes my heart beat for her…" Ghost admitted. As tough as he is on the battlefield, so was his admiration toward Francine. Gary pondered on how to help out his friend in this love triangle situation he caught himself in, but every direction he thought of would result in Ghost actually ending up sad.

The discussion was interrupted when a plane was heard from the distance, as it approached the nearby open area. It looked like the girls made it home.

"Looks like they're here." Roach sounded excited while Ghost looked worried.

~

It was impressive how they managed to bring most of their stuff from Brazil here in Scotland. It wasn't that much but the idea of packing things for six people in a hurry made Roach impressed.

"How did you bring most of this stuff?" Roach curiously asked Maxine as he helped her carry her stuff.

"Well, Samantha asked for help from his Dad and they immediately flew to Brazil." Maxine replied cheerfully, Roach loved how she managed to see the bright side of everything amidst the panic.

"So will Samantha-"

"No. They had a long talk with his Dad and she felt much safer back here with us. Her Dad wanted to offer help now that the New York Attack was over, but Samantha insisted, especially now that they're out hiding."

"Doesn't he have the power to like, pardon us for being wanted? That would make life much more easier for us."

"I thought of that too… but they're seeing Shepherd differently now. He's gone mad. And they want to corner him. Any action involving him may result in a global cripple. And I just heard all this on the plane ride here." Maxine frowned.

"Then that makes our job of locating him all worth it." Roach smiled giving hope to Maxine.

Maxine just nodded, her face was full of fear and doubt. She just wished all of this was over.

With Soap probably asleep, Roach had the liberty of touring the girls around the house, it was huge and spacious that each of them could occupy a room with about two more rooms to spare.

"Man, I could stay here forever." Roach mused as they walked the halls of the second floor. These four rooms are already occupied, most of the empty rooms are over there…" Gary pointed to the other end of the hall. Maxine looked at France and nodded as they both agreed to stay in one room.

"What about you, Miss Samantha?" Gary asked with sophistication, imitating a butler. Samantha giggled and blushed.

"I'll actually be sleeping with Alex, thanks Mr. Sanderson." she replied, playing along with Roach's role play. For a short moment, Roach felt relaxed. He hasn't felt like this for a while and it was too overwhelming. But while the enemies hid in the shadows, he was sure the team would be up for a tough fight anytime soon.

Despite being tired, Roach couldn't sleep. He felt that there was something or someone else he needed to consult. So, he decided to get up and get himself a glass of water down the kitchen. While he could hear himself gulping down a glass of water, he could also hear faint thumping from the basement. With high alert, he began descending down the stairs to investigate the source of the sound.

It was Simon. He was still up and doing sparring rounds with a red punching bag, each of his punches sent the bag swinging violently.

"You okay?" Gary finally asked, alerting Simon of his presence.

"Can't sleep." he said nonchalantly, giving the punching bag another mighty punch. Roach took a minute to admire the huge gym Soap had, each piece of equipment probably spent a fortune. He slowly paced to the small area filled with equipment and grabbed himself some boxing mitts and a protective helmet.

"So, why don't we resume our little talk?" Gary called as he presented himself to Simon on full boxing coach gear. Simon immediately positioned himself and Gary did the same as they began training with the intention of talking it out.

Simon's punches were heavy, Roach could feel a little emotion on each hit he made and it was starting to make him unstable.

"So, anything you'd want to discuss?" Roach initiated, his hands carefully met his punches as they circled around the area.

"I've been trying to ignore her, Gary. You see me try right? But the more I don't think of her, the more excited I get when I accidentally see her. It's frustrating." He explained in between his punches. There it was, the thing bothering him the most.

"What did she say back in Brazil? She probably said something that kept you from moving on. I can't think of anything else that might cause you to feel this way, unless you're lying." Roach tilted his head so he could see Simon's reaction. His punches stopped coming and he just stood there, his hands dropped to his sides.

"She… she didn't say anything… but she distances herself to John while I'm around."

"John MacTavish or John Price?" Gary interrupted, in an attempt to brighten up the mood, but instead all he got was Simon's 'are-you-kidding-me-right-now?' look.

"But when I'm not around, she finds time to see him…" Simon continued. Gary took off his gloves and tapped his shoulder.

"She… she was being considerate." Simon concluded. It looked like Gary did his job. He could feel Simon's shoulders relax upon realizing what was actually going on.

"Despite all that… she sacrificed a little just to not hurt you." Gary added, he had no intention of making Simon guilty but now that he realized it, he was making an impact toward the relationship that was blooming between Soap and France.

"Thanks, Gary. For being a great friend…" Ghost took off his gloves and walked out of the gym.

"... and the worst therapist." He joked with a grin as he walked up the stairs and left Gary in the gym.

"I hope you find your peace, Simon." Gary muttered.

The following morning, the team was already busy walking around the house. Soap was on the phone with a long list of things the girls ordered for their restock. It was planned that for the time being, the team was to stay in the MacTavish residence while Nero and Shepherd were off the grid.

Price and Jack started their own little command center inside Soap's father's office just by the living room. They began creating connections to their closest contacts to track activity from their enemies. Ghost seemed to be not around at the moment and Gary guessed he's still asleep.

Soap nodded a greeting to Roach as he walked by him on his way to the kitchen. Maxine and France were out opening drawers and anything in the pantry to clear up space for supplies. From the kitchen window, Gary spotted Samantha, Alex and Nikolai in front of a truck. Gary overheard that Nikolai wanted to go back home and he guessed today was the day he'd do so.

"I didn't know what kind of sugar you needed so I kinda ordered a bunch of em." Soap announced to the sisters and they laughed.

"The clerk kept asking me of brown, white, confectioners and some other and honestly I don't know which." he shrugged and scratched his head.

"Hey man, I was just wondering… why did you choose the risky life? When you had everything you ever needed here?" Gary asked the question that has been bothering him since he got here.

"I dunno Roach. It's just that I knew it was calling out to me… You also sound like my Mum when I told her I'm joining the force." he chuckled. Gary just nodded but still didn't understand his logic. But he dismissed the thought as soon as Maxine and France asked for his help reaching something by the cabinets.

The rest of the day was busy. Once supplies arrived, everyone else was preoccupied. Lifting boxes, arranging items, looking for intel. It was like they made their own 141 base inside the house.

By the time they're almost free, Roach and Maxine were already in the kitchen preparing for dinner.

"So, any new dreams lately?" Roach initiated as he sliced through the vegetables they're cooking.

"Piece by piece. Last night I remembered having gum stuck on my hair on picture day. I cried a lot." she giggled. Roach smiled, he was glad she's getting her memories back which made him remember of Samantha's case.

"Ow!" Gary winced as he accidentally cut a short scrape on his thumb. He was so busy staring at Maxine that he forgot he was chopping.

"Don't worry. It's just a small wound." Gary assured as Maxine pulled his thumb close to her mouth and blew air through it, just like when you're a kid and you do that to ease the pain.

Gary couldn't help but smile at her immediate action. She also looked concerned and worried about his welfare.

"Hey Max." he whispered, making the girl turn to him, her face was so beautiful in Gary's eyes.

"Is there something wrong?"

"Nothing… It's just that…"

"What is it? You're making me worried"

"I really really like you, Maxine Winters."

Maxine looked at him in the eye, the eye contact they were doing was starting to make the world fade behind them.

"Guys! I have bad news." Soap interrupted, causing everyone to form a small circle by the living room.

"Ghost left. With a note saying he'll try to gather more information on Shadow Company with Alexandra's help. He says thanks and that he'll see us all soon." Soap summarized the note. The room fell silent.

Next Chapter : Off the Grid

Notification Squad my Beloved

@samatedeansbroccoli @enderio @smokeywhalee @whimsywispsblog @beemybee @ricinbach

#horrayfic #john soap mactavish #codmw #john price #simon ghost riley #alex echo 3 1 #gary roach sanderson #whateverittakes #Hahaha see what I did there

[khoicesbyk]

My Two First Loves.

Homecoming Part 2: The Dance.

A/N: I’ve read a multitude of books. And this one is becoming one that I thoroughly enjoy. So; Talley Ho! *in my Sherlock Holmes voice*

Rated: Mature. Contains suggestive content, brief violence and strong language. You know? The usual from me. 😁 | Bolded and/or italicized words are conversations and thoughts of the characters. | Characters: Isaiah Harris (LI) and Kailah Price (MC) | All Characters: names (except MC) are property of Pixelberry. | All Characters are 18+.| Current Word Count: 2,885 words.

Song and Story Inspiration: If I Knew-Bruno Mars, Gorilla-Bruno Mars Too Good To Say Goodbye-Bruno Mars and Versace On The Floor-Bruno Mars. Okay! So I have a slight obsession with Bruno Mars! Deal with it! 😏🙃

It’s Eastridge High’s Homecoming Dance Tonight!

And Kailah was all but excited about it. She barely got any sleep the night before. Why? Because of everything that happened the night before at the game with Isaiah.

He went completely ghost on her. All that day and part of the night before until her eyes got way to heavy; she texted him. She had to make sure that he was okay. Hell; she needed to make sure that he was okay. Whether he showed up to the dance or not; didn’t matter to her. She just wanted him to be okay.

With the dance starting at 6pm sharp and it being 3:30 that afternoon; she couldn’t back out even if she wanted to. The reason: she and Isaiah had campaigned to be Homecoming King and Queen. So, she really had no choice. She HAD TO go. With Bruno Mars blasting through her wireless speaker she forced herself to get ready. She was drop dead gorgeous! Her copper colored off shoulder gown; hugged her curvy 5’9 frame perfectly. Her matching clutch, heels and jewelry set her outfit off, perfectly. And although she was ready to go; she was still waiting on Isaiah to text her. She was still worried about him.

“‘Cause what’s we got’s too good to say goodbye, goodbye! (Don’t you give up!) Girl won’t you listen? (Don’t you give up!) It’s you that I’m missin’! (Don’t you give up!) Take my hand, I wanna go, I wanna go (All the way) If we’re gonna fight, let’s fight for better days! I know we’re gonna make it! This is the chance! Let’s take it!”

That part of the song was stuck in her head; as she, her sister MacKenzie and her dad made their way to the school. She wasn’t gonna give up him. Even though it felt like the world already had; she wouldn’t. She couldn’t! She was determined to make sure the world saw what she saw in him. Once they got there; they were greeted by Principal Jennings; Jaylen and his mom.

“You girls look fantastic! Those dresses are stunning!”, Mrs. Jennings told them. “Yes, you two look just gorgeous! Don’t they son?”, Principal Jennings asked Jaylen.

“Yeah dad. They look just beautiful.”, he said about them even though his eyes were only on Kailah.

“Thank you all! I’m proud of both of them! They were able to clean up perfectly!”, their dad beamed with pride.

Their dads remark caused both girls to roll their eyes.

“Why don’t you kids head on in? The festivities is going to start soon.”, said Principal Jennings. With that their dad was gone.

Knowing it would probably be the only time that he’d get to talk to her; Jaylen asked Kailah, “you got a minute?”

She shrugged and said, “yeah, sure.”, as he pulled her aside as everyone else entered the auditorium.

“Okay seriously; what is your deal? I have texted you constantly since last night and all I’ve gotten is nothing but radio silence.”, he told her.

“Gee! I don’t know Jay. What reason could I possibly have to ignore you?”, she replied with a question of her own.

He groaned as he asked, “are you seriously still pissed at me for what happened after the game, last night?”

She stared at him and said, “ohhhhhhhh not just you. I’m pissed at Coach. At The Cheer Squad. And let’s not forget the rest of the team! Thanks to you lot; I have no idea if he’ll even show up tonight!”

“You haven’t heard from him at all?”, he asked her. “No! Not a word! I’ve texted him and nothing! Not that I blame him. If I were him; I wouldn’t want to come around anybody either.”, she replied.

It was clear to him that she was aggravated. “Kai, I’m sorry, alright? I wasn’t trying to be a jackass last night. I just got caught up in the moment.”, he told her as she rolled her eyes at him. “You have every right to be pissed at everyone. Especially me Kai. You know me better than that. I didn’t think last night would effect him or you like it has. Had I known that he wouldn’t be here; I wouldn’t have accepted that ball, I swear!”

She looked at him and knew he wasn’t lying to her. “You’re lucky I like you as much as I do.”, she told him. “Does that mean you’re not pissed at me anymore?”, he asked her.

“Ohhhhhhhh I’m still pissed at you!…just not as much as I was.”, she replied.

He chuckled and said, “I’ll take my blessings where I can get them. So, you really haven’t heard from him?” She shook her head no.

“Again; I’m sorry Kai. If he doesn’t show up tonight…I’m officially the winner of ‘the jackass of the fucking year’ award”, he told her.

“Yup!”, she said to him.

He shook his head and said, “you weren’t supposed to agree with that Kai!” She merely shrugged.

That’s when Brandi and the rest of the Cheer Squad walked in. “Brandi’s here. I better go.”, he told her. She nodded at him.

“Kai, will you be okay?”, he asked her.

“No; but I guess I’ll manage.”, she replied with shrug.

“He’ll be here Kai, don’t worry.”, he told her with a small smile.

“I hope so. Anyway, I gotta get to my table; I’ll see you later Jay.”, she said to him before she made her way to her table.

There was still no sign of Isaiah. And the longer she waited; the more she worried. She scanned the room and saw Mack sitting with her friends. It was hopeless or at least it looked that way.

“Looking for me?”, a voice all too familiar asked her. It was him. She was happy to see him. “Nice of you to show up! Where have you been?”, she asked him as he took his seat next to her.

“I was…out. Yeah that’s it! I was out.”, he told her.

“You could’ve texted, you know?”, she replied.

“Geez! I’m sorry mom! To make it up; I’ll do the dishes tonight!”, he said to her. It made her smile to see him. And he looked great too. He was decked out in white tuxedo jacket with a white dress shirt and black slacks and he had his dreads pulled back.

“Damn! You look good girl!”, he told her.

“Thank you! So do you!”, she replied.

“Oh I know I’m good looking! But thanks for noticing!”, he said with a wink.

She chuckled and rolled her eyes before asking him, “are you okay, Isaiah?” He looked at her puzzled and asked, “yeah I’m fine, why?”

“Because I’ve been texting you since last night and got nothing. No response.”, she replied.

“Ohh that…yeah I’m good. At this point; I should get used to being passed over. So, it’s whatever.”, he told her.

“Isaiah—“, was all she could say before he interjected, “Kailah…I promise you. I’m fine. Now we have a couple of titles to win!”

She smiled softly at him and said, “Kai.” He looked at her confused and asked, “Kai?” “Yeah it’s what everyone calls me. So, you might as call me that as well.”, she told him.

“Ohhhhhhhh well…in that case; since we’re establishing names; you wanna start calling me daddy?”

His devilish wink and smile put her mind at ease; and made her blush and they also made the butterflies in her stomach flutter. That’s when the night got underway. After celebrating the win at last night’s game; it was time to announce who was Homecoming King and Queen.

“Now can have all 8 couples join me on stage?”, Principal Jennings asked the couples sitting at the reserve tables.

“You ready?”, he asked her as he stood up holding out his hand to her. “So ready!”, she told him.

As they walked up to the stage; all eyes were on them. Once the couples joined Principal Jennings and Vice Principals Gomez and James on stage; it was time to announce the winner.

“It’s an honor to have you all here.”, said Principal Jennings. “Now for the couples who don’t win; do not fret! Because; you will be apart of the King and Queen’s court. But! I wish good luck to everyone. And now the results! As voted on by their peers; the winners of this years Homecoming King and Queen are…”, he trailed off as he opened the envelope with the winning names.

He looked puzzled as he read the envelope. “Is it me or does old man Jennings look like he’s having an aneurysm?”, Isaiah whispered to Kailah.

“I have no idea.”, she replied.

Even Jaylen was concerned about his dad. “Dad? You okay?”, he asked his father.

“My apologies everyone! I’m definitely fine. Just a little bit shocked; because the winners are: Isaiah Harris and Kailah Price!”, he said as he recovered. The auditorium went silent.

“No wonder the old bastard had an aneurysm! We just beat golden boy and his girlfriend!”, Isaiah snickered.

She chuckled at him and said, “you’re such an idiot!”

“Maybe. But at the very least; I get to be the idiot who’s a Homecoming King!”, he shot back at her. The room soon erupted with thunderous applause for them after everyone came out of their shock.

“All this applauding for little ole me!”, he said in feigned shock. “Ummmmmm…you forget its for me too!”, she said to him. “Ohh yeah! You are here…I guess”, he teased her. She hit him in the arm before they went to be crowned.

As they walked over; they passed by Jaylen and Brandi. “Don’t worry golden boy! There’s always next year!…ohhhhhhhh wait!”, he snickered at him; Jaylen just stood there fuming.

“Stop it Isaiah!”, she told him.

“Me?! Stop?! Ohh no! I’m gonna milk this for all that it’s worth!”, he replies. Once they received their crowns and sashes; it was time to face the crowd and another round of thunderous applause.

“Ladies and gentlemen. Your Homecoming King and Queen!”, Vice Principal Gomez announces to the crowd.

“Y’know…I could get used to this.”, he whispered to her. “Get used to what? Being Homecoming King?”, she asked. “No. Yes. But no. What I meant was: I could get used to having you on my arm.”, he replies. She chewed the inside of her bottom lip in an attempt to hide her blushing.

“Now if the King, Queen and their court will join me; it’s time for the official pictures for the school paper.”, Vice Principal James said.

“I’m sorry…did you say pictures? As in me and Kai together?”, Isaiah asked with slow smile spreading across his lips. “Why yes I did, Mr. Harris. There will be pictures of you and Ms. Price together. And pictures of the two of you with your court behind you. Now come! The photographer is waiting!”, she said to them.

“Did I mention how much I’m gonna LOVE tonight?”, he said to Kailah.

She rolled her eyes with a giggle and said, “no but; I bet you won’t stop saying it from now on.”

He flashed that trademark smirk at her; as they were soon ushered to where they were to have their pictures taken.

The pair looked great in front of the camera. They had a chemistry that seemed so natural. Like they had been together for years. As they were having their photos taken; Jaylen watched the whole entire thing with clear jealousy written across his face.

After all photos were taken it was time to dance! And of course; the King couldn’t wait to dance with the Queen especially when; it was a chance for him to rub it in Jaylen’s face. And when Gorilla by Bruno Mars started playing; Isaiah got happy. Now he might not have been able to have the type of dance that he and Kailah shared at the GOGO club; he took her to. But! As long as it made Jaylen even more jealous than he already was; Isaiah was happy.

Especially when he decided to show off a bit and dip her in his arms. When he did; he winked and smirked directly at Jaylen, which infuriated him even more than he already was.

After a few more dances and moves the two decided to take a break. With her going off with her sister and him grabbing something to drink.

“Fruit Punch! Could use some gin instead of ginger ale, but I’ll take it.”, he said to himself. That’s when Jaylen decided to confront him.

“I bet you’re real happy!”, Jaylen sneered.

“D’awwwwwwwwww! Poor little golden boy! Are you mad?”, he asked with a snicker. “Why don’t you have that pretty little girlfriend of yours give you a lap dance? It might loosen you up a bit!”

“Fuck you, juvie!”, Jaylen growled.

“Ooh! Big words from such a big boy! Whatcha gonna do, golden boy? You gonna hit me?”, he asked.

“I should. You deserve to have your fucking teeth knocked out!”, Jaylen snapped at him.

Isaiah raised an eyebrow and said, “is that so? Well I’ll tell you what, golden boy! I’ll let you get one free shot in. But I warn you! I won’t be held responsible for what I do to you afterwards!”

With that; Jaylen swung and the fight was on between them. The two traded blows in front of everyone until the chaperones and school faculty pulled them apart. While Brandi ran to Jaylen’s side; Kailah ran to Isaiah.

“What is the meaning of this?!”, Principal Jennings demanded to know.

“Ask the bitch you call a son! He’s the one with the problem!”, Isaiah growled.

“The only problem I have is you! I fucking belong here! You don’t! You belong in jail or even better the morgue for that fucking matter!”, Jaylen shouted back at him.

When Isaiah flipped him off; Jaylen broke loose and swung wildly. But instead of hitting Isaiah; he inadvertently hit Kailah.

Isaiah caught her before she could hit the ground; that’s when her sister went berserk. Yelling at both boys for being irresponsible and that if anything happens to her she’d have their heads.

And the only thing the boys did was blame each other.

“This is all your fucking fault, juvie!”, Jaylen yelled at Isaiah.

“My fault?! That’s funny! I’m not the one who fucking hit her!”, Isaiah shouted back at him.

When finally she came to a few seconds later; she was dazed but otherwise fine.

“Jesus Christ! Don’t ever do that again!”, Isaiah told her. “Now you know what it’s like to worry about someone.”, she told him.

After he helped her to her feet; she asked him, “Isaiah…what happened?”

To which he replied, “you might wanna ask golden boy that question. Seeing as how he’s the one who hit you.” She looked to be in shock but when she looked at Jaylen; she saw the guilt written across his face.

“You hit me?”, she asks him. “Kai I swear it was an accident! I would never hurt you! You know that!”, he told her.

“I believe you Jay. I know you would never hurt me. Not on purpose anyway. So I’m not mad at you. Like you said; it was an accident.”, she replies.

When she looked up at Isaiah; he had a small relieved smile on his face. “Thanks for catching me before I hit the ground.”, she whispered to him.

“Anytime. Why don’t get you outside for some fresh air?”, he said to her. She nodded and they walked outside to the stars.

“Sooooo…a fight huh?”, she asked him. He let out a humorless laugh and said to her, “definitely not my finest moment.”

She scoffed, “I’ll say. I should kick both your asses!”

“That is an ass kicking I will happily take. Twice!”, he told her. She smiled softly at him.

“I wanna make it up to you. How can I do that?”, he asked her.

After thinking about it for a second; she looked up at him and said, “you could always kiss me.” He blinked at her and asked, “I can do, WHAT?”

She just rolled her eyes at him as her response. “Now I know he hit you but; he didn’t hit you that hard.”, he said to to her.

“Isaiah…shut up and kiss me!”, she demanded.

“The Queen has declared it! So shall it be!”, he replied before kissing her.

It was a kiss that started out sweet and innocent but soon turned hot and heavy. With her arms around his neck and his arms wrapped around her waist. They savored the taste of each other’s mouth. The kiss was broken when; his right hand tangled in her hair and gently pulled her head back exposing her neck to him. She shivered as he softly kissed his way down her neck. Feeling his stubbled chin graze against the soft flesh of her neck; sent chills racing after each other down her spine. He only stopped because he wasn’t sure how far she was willing to go.

“What’d ya say we get out of here?”, he whispered in her ear. “I was wondering when you were finally gonna ask.”, she replied.

Soon they were on his bike and riding off into the starry night.

@txemrn @lucy-268 @choicesficwriterscreations

😘

K.

#choices #choices fanfiction #pixelberry #choices stories you play #fanfic #khoicesbyk #pb mftl #mftl #choices mftl #my first two loves

[anti-pasto]

for the 200 ask thingy, i actually dare you to do all of them. :D

delgaskarthalexhere we go, anon: 

200: My crush’s name is: I don’t have one right now, I don’t get them often (if I ever had a crush at all)

199: I was born in: 2003

198: I am really: A 2005 emo kid x a 2008 scene kid x a 2014 tumblr fangirl x Kyle himself

 197: My cellphone company is: Apple

194: My ring size is: Honestly? No idea. Propose to me with a sword.

 193: My height is: Somewhere between 5′7″ and 5′8″

192: I am allergic to: Nothing I’m aware of 

191: My 1st car was:  94 Station Wagon, by request

190: My 1st job was: being this funny is a full-time gig

 189: Last book you read: Bone Gap by Laura Ruby

188: My bed is: “made”

187: My pet: I have a cat, I love her very much and I will show her to you if you dm me a cursed image

186: My best friend: We don’t use “best friend” for personal reasons, but they’ve been with me since I was 5 so, my one and only Bro

185: My favorite shampoo is: anything with “silky smooth” or “strawberries” on the bottle. i’m not that picky anymore.

184: Xbox or ps3: xbox or ps4  xbox

183: Piggy banks are: really useful

 182: In my pockets: wallet, keys, phone, earbuds, black pen/pencil, earplugs, mini flashlight

 181: On my calendar:  i’m meeting a friend for smoothies tomorrow

 180: Marriage is: something we shouldn’t push so much onto people. it’s a declaration of love, not an end-all fix-all to your life. i can’t ever see myself getting married but who knows!

 179: Spongebob can: continue to be a relevant meme

178: My mom: i mean. we function. i can’t really complain about my family at large but i am defiantly looking forward to living literally as far away from them as i can. 

 177: The last three songs I bought were? psh, you think i pay for music? (folie a deux, lake effect kid, believers never die volume two) (those are albums but its okay)

176: Last YouTube video watched: I watched Markiplier play Uno

175: How many cousins do you have? 11? 12? I lost count

174: Do you have any siblings? I have a brother

 173: Are your parents divorced? Nope!

172: Are you taller than your mom? Yes, I have been for a while

171: Do you play an instrument? dude HECK yeah! i vibe on piano, guitar, ukulele, clarinet, and im a drum major

170: What did you do yesterday? I went on a drive by myself.

 [ I Believe In ] 

169: Love at first sight: Nope.

168: Luck: Yes, but luck is something that can be engineered

167: Fate: To an extent

 166: Yourself: I’d say overall, yeah. I still have doubts tho

165: Aliens: Mmmmmm yeah

 164: Heaven: Yes

163: Hell: Yes

162: God: Yeup

 161: Horoscopes: without an ounce of truth, they would have died a long time ago

160: Soul mates: the greeks had seven words for love. i think we have multiple soul mates to fit each of those categories. there are definitely people we’re just meant to vibe with

159: Ghosts: i want to say yes but i really dont know

158: Gay Marriage: yes. its 2020. grow up.

157: War: in theory? no. war is kinda messed up. in reality? not everyone is going to be down to nice diplomatic conflict resolution, and not everyone is just gonna leave people *countries* they don’t like alone, so...

156: Orbs: ??? energies are real

155: Magic: vibes are real

 [ This or That ]

 154: Hugs or Kisses: hugs

153: Drunk or High: i am a child of jesus

152: Phone or Online: online

 151: Red heads or Black haired:  irdc but black hair bc i am Emo

150: Blondes or Brunettes: blonde?? ig?? easier to dye

149: Hot or cold: hot weather + cold rooms

148: Summer or winter: summer

147: Autumn or Spring: autum (screw spring)

 146: Chocolate or vanilla: vanilla

145: Night or Day: night

 144: Oranges or Apples: oranges (better to share with homies)

 143: Curly or Straight hair: i dont care but curly

 142: McDonalds or Burger King: mcdonald give iced coffee

141: White Chocolate or Milk Chocolate: dark chocolate

 140: Mac or PC: pc for vidgya gaemes

139: Flip flops or high heals: ...converse. please. i cant walk properly in either of those

 138: Ugly and rich OR sweet and poor: sweet and poor 

 137: Coke or Pepsi: pepsi

136: Hillary or Obama: this is kinda outdated but obama

135: Burried or cremated: cremated i aint watch spn for nothin

134: Singing or Dancing: singing. at least that gets better with practice

133: Coach or Chanel: chanel (thank u mr frank ocean and also the neighborhood)

 132: Kat McPhee or Taylor Hicks: whomst

 131: Small town or Big city: big city and if you say small town you’ve never lived in a small town

 130: Wal-Mart or Target: target

 129: Ben Stiller or Adam Sandler: who tf is this

 128: Manicure or Pedicure: idk dude probably pedicure i don’t like people touching my hands and i use them for too much to get my nails done

127: East Coast or West Coast: hnngggggggg west coast has more to do but east coast has better beaches and 

126: Your Birthday or Christmas: birthday 

125: Chocolate or Flowers: chocolate bc then i can give u some

124: Disney or Six Flags: ive only been to disney so disney (though i AM a HARDCORE rollercoaster stan so it wouldnt take much for me to say six flags)

123: Yankees or Red Sox: what 

 [ Here’s What I Think About ]

 122: War: unfortunately sometimes necessary but not as a first resort i went over this already 

 121: George Bush: is that the shoe guy?

 120: Gay Marriage:  be gay. do crime. kiss wife. or husband. or partner. basically, hell yeah

119: The presidential election: america need 2 b single and focus on herself

 118: Abortion: pro-choice and that choice should be made by the one carrying the baby

117: MySpace: tumblr’s dad

116: Reality TV: don’t talk to about abt this

 115: Parents: disgusting. go to therapy. 

114: Back stabbers: if you’re gonna stab me in the back, pull my lungs through my ribcage bc that’s what my ancestor’s ghosts are gonna do to you (thanks great (x a few times) grandma viking ily thanks for the hair:) )

113: Ebay: good for merch and selling books

 112: Facebook: zuck my dick, data-theif

111: Work: i like doing work? like- i enjoy completing tasks and seeing my hard work pay off? it’s not that bad?

110: My Neighbors: old. boring. want me to babysit for free.

109: Gas Prices: i cant really complain rn they’re kinda low and im a little broke so

108: Designer Clothes: i vibe to them, honestly

 107: College: not for everyone but definitely for me

106: Sports: marching band is a sport marching band is a sport marching band is a sport marching band is a sport marching band is a sport but only technically speaking though you can make fair comparisons to sports such as cheer, and gymnastics where the idea is to put on a show and receive a score in the form of competition. 

 105: My family: disgusting

104: The future: the future doesn’t exist

 [ Last time I ] 

103: Hugged someone: god, don’t ask me this

 102: Last time you ate: uhhh like 9 hours ago? it was dinner and i had pizza

 101: Saw someone I haven’t seen in awhile: three or four weeks ago by best bro came to visit and we vibed

100: Cried in front of someone: i finished twist and shout at school at the end of a very bad week. it was only a few tears but that’s as close as i get to crying

99: Went to a movie theater: whenever the last star wars movie came out

98: Took a vacation: last year i went to dc over summer break to see the Smithsonian, it was a lot of fun. i was supposed to go to altanta and florida this year but that didn’t happen for reasons

 97: Swam in a pool: last week

 96: Changed a diaper: never

 95: Got my nails done: never

 94: Went to a wedding: its been at least 6 years dude

93: Broke a bone: never, somehow

 92: Got a peircing: nope

91: Broke the law: technically, yesterday. 55 is too slow

90: Texted: just now

 [ MISC ] 

89: Who makes you laugh the most: the person in my snap named “junior”

88: Something I will really miss when I leave home is: my cat

87: The last movie I saw: probably into the spiderverse

86: The thing that I’m looking forward to the most: things going back to normal. or somewhat normal. i need school to have a schedule bc i absolutely cannot force myself to function without outside influence

 85: The thing im not looking forward to: ironically, school in the fall. the way we’re going back is going to wreck me more than lockdown already has

 84: People call me: i only ft one of my bros and they know who tf they are if you ask to ft you’re getting fuckin blocked mate i dont do that shit video calls are for WORK and SCHOOL thats IT. but ppl call me by my nickname irl, i go by screech on here. 

83: The most difficult thing to do is: listen to my parent’s political opinions? live in a small town? force myself to be productive without a physical influence and reminder? put up with that one dude?

82: I have gotten a speeding ticket: nope

 81: My zodiac sign is: scoprio/leo/gemini

80: The first person i talked to today was: the potential bassist for our potential band? 

79: First time you had a crush: uhh im still not sure if it was a crush but i wanted them to myself and they wanted (and got) someone better. we were just friends so it doesn’t really matter

 78: The one person who i can’t hide things from: the person on snap named “the great oracle”

77: Last time someone said something you were thinking: yesterday, it was my brother

 76: Right now I am talking to: in order of snap names, “vibin ~[^.^]~”, “russian umbrella”, and “mom” (not really)

75: What are you going to do when you grow up: hopefully, a job that makes me happy

74: I have/will get a job: as soon as i know what’s going on with school. but like as an adult? wherever will hire me and pay my fairly. being a barista would be fun, but at a local place (not in my current town)

73: Tomorrow: ???? time for bad poetry: tomorrow i will see my friend/ admist this lasting chaos/ we will be each other’s solitude/ while sharing fruity drinks/ and when we both come home/ a smile we will bring

72: Today: idk what this means so more poetry: today i will be sleep deprived as always/ i will think of them and weep/ but no tears will fall from my eyes/ for i know there is a reason/ we went our own way

 71: Next Summer: i fr dont know whats goin on so: next summer i will be/ as happy as can be/ because i will be in pain no longer/ the earth is sure to heal/ and i will heal with her/ so i can enjoy/ the heatwave of next summer

70: Next Weekend: next weekend i will spend/ my days wasting away/ maybe ill finish hannibal/ again/ not that serial killers make the dopamine stay/ i will not see my friends/ or talk to my family/ i will seldom eat/ and live off coffee/ this has been my life/ all quarintine/ god someone please help me

 69: I have these pets: i have four cats, three chickens, and a dog

 68: The worst sound in the world: my dad and grandpa talking

 67: The person that makes me cry the most is: Them

 66: People that make you happy: snap name time: the great oracle, junior, vibin ~[^.^]~, russian umbrella, mom, hero, booby-king 48, go to bed, son, pooper trooper, mac&cheese, plain egg biscuit, apple pie

 65: Last time I cried: i dont cry bitch (last week over officals that cant make up they gottdamned mindes)

64: My friends are: my family and i would die for each and all of them

 63: My computer is: an old hp but it play gaemes real good so it okie

 62: My School: is trash but the band pops off

61: My Car: old, fast, clean

60: I lose all respect for people who: are my dad

 59: The movie I cried at was: i cried over big hero six

 58: Your hair color is: blonde

57: TV shows you watch: supernatural, good omens, hannibal, parks and rec

56: Favorite web site: this hellsite or youtube

 55: Your dream vacation: out of the country with beautiful beaches, amazing food, and my best friend

54: The worst pain I was ever in was: the time i split the back of my head open, the time i split my chin open, and the time my then best friend said they didn’t want to talk to me anymore. i’ll let you guess which one hurt the most and which one i think about every fucking day

53: How do you like your steak cooked: medium or medium well. 

52: My room is: clean and a reflection of myself, or so i’ve been told

51: My favorite celebrity is: i do not engage in celebrity worship. ill follow them and reblog gifs/interviews but i dont really have a favorite. the less i know abt them the better.

 50: Where would you like to be: my own apartment in nyc

49: Do you want children: FUCK THEM KIDS BRO

 48: Ever been in love: i dont know if it was love. i dont know if it was a crush. what i do know id that i was attached and they didn’t feel the same, and why would they?

 47: Who’s your best friend: we dont really use best friend bc but “the great oracle” “junior” and “vibin ~[^.^]~”

46: More guy friends or girl friends: its 50/50

45: One thing that makes you feel great is: goin fast, the beach, playin video games

44: One person that you wish you could see right now: them

43: Do you have a 5 year plan: go to college, earn degree

 42: Have you made a list of things to do before you die: commit arson

 41: Have you pre-named your children: FUCK. THEM. KIDS. BRO.

40: Last person I got mad at: they do not understand that they do not know everything about something they’re not even involved in yet

39: I would like to move to: new zealand

38: I wish I was a professional: artist? musican? youtuber? who knows

 [ My Favorites ] 

37: Candy: nerds

36: Vehicle: 1970 mustang gt

 35: President: jfk only bc his assassination is the only good thing abt american history the rest of it is fucked up and shouldn’t have happened. also jfk’s song in assassians the musical goes hard

34: State visited: california

 33: Cellphone provider: verizon? apple? idfk

32: Athlete: what is sport

31: Actor: i don't watch shows or movies

30: Actress: i do not consume media

29: Singer: alex gaskarth or alexander deleon

 28: Band: fall out boy 

 27: Clothing store: hot topic (i will not apologize)

 26: Grocery store: okay harris teeter fucks but lidil’s has aloe vera juice and target at 9 pm energy so idk man 

25: TV show: supernatural...

24: Movie: big hero 6

 23: Website: tumblr or youtube

 22: Animal: snow leopard 

 21: Theme park: busch gardens bc roller coaster go fast

20: Holiday: christmas

19: Sport to watch: snowboarding bc its like skateboarding but on snow

18: Sport to play: anything with havy footwork (marching band is a sport)

17: Magazine: i do not condume media

16: Book: the ranger’s apprentice series as a whole makes up my all-time one favorite book

 15: Day of the week: friday bc its game day baybey

14: Beach: cocoa beach in florida but also i have so much left to experience 

13: Concert attended: i havent been to any notable gigs but i was supposed to go to hella mega

 12: Thing to cook: pancakes

11: Food: pizza or shushi

 10: Restaurant: chiplote

 9: Radio station: i like my local rock station and my local edm/top 40 station

8: Yankee candle scent: anything smoky or vanilla idc

7: Perfume: chanel no. 5 if i even wear it

6: Flower: Hydrangea

5: Color: orange

 4: Talk show host: cecil palmer

 3: Comedian: john maulaney

 2: Dog breed: yes

1: Did you answer all these truthfully? ;)

That was a trip. But it was fun, please do things like this more often. Also, I don’t consume media by choice. I’m not sheltered I just can’t be bothered, and I have enough going on. That being said I will now be sleeping. Thanks again, Anon, I hope you have fun reading this :D

[bylillian]

So you think you’re in a pandemic? You are. And as someone who grew up learning how to plan for things like  this, the Cool Mom Eats team asked me to put together a helpful guide to keeping the family fed (and possibly entertained) during a potential quarantine.

So let’s jump right in.

To panic-shop or not panic-shop. That is the question.

You don’t need to fill your entire garage with toilet paper, although I truly commend you on preparation, should you be on an extreme high-fiber diet.

There are some items you should keep stocked though — but not just for times of home quarantine. As a recovering prepper, I found my “apocalypse pantry” a life saver after a tumultuous divorce, for example. And hey, who doesn’t want bragging rights at being able to fashion an Apple Brown Betty or chocolate chip cookie bars while the world freaks out? Just me?

(It’s just me, isn’t it.)

In seriousness though, I want to focus on the items you really need. But first, let’s get the pantry you already have, organized and ready for stocking.

While this is not a comprehensive list of absolutely everything you’ll need in your pantry/kitchen to feed your family, I assure you it’s a very workable list for you to get started. And if this all blows over faster than we thought, hey, you just saved yourself trips to the market in April and May.

Related: Beyond toilet paper: A helpful list of unexpected items to stock up on in case of a quarantine

Pantry prep: Start with a thorough purge

Before you load up the minivan with instant soup mix, there are a few things you’ll want to do first.

– First, know that this is not about Pinterest. If you are stacking items on top of each other, or making the use of every crevice of a small pantry, do it! Your food does not have to be arranged by color to make a beautiful ombre rainbow.

You are feeding your family, not entering a Instagram competition.

–Clean your shelves. If it’s been a while, can’t hurt to take everything out, give those shelves a good wipe down, and start fresh.

–Search for expired jars of food. Botulism can be a real problem here, and that twist-off can of pickled beets from 2016 isn’t sparking joy. Toss. (Of course keep in mind expiration and use-by dates aren’t always 100% accurate. As for those almost-expired pickles or that box of healthy cereal you hopped your kids would eat but they never did…that’s up to you. First, read this helpful article on food and expiration dates from Consumer Reports.

I’m not a gambler, so my instinct is generally to toss, but CR reminds us that “Nonperishable items like grains and dried and canned goods can still be used well past their label dates.”

–Organize items with the oldest in front. New items go behind existing food. Rotation is the key to a successful apocalypse pantry! Note: I’m currently living in a small apartment and by following the precepts below and being diligent with keeping track of and using my storage, have a four-month supply for me and my teenage son and our pets. It’s doable, it just requires a little forethought and organization

And hey, face those labels out. Not for Pinterest — for you.

– Group food in a sensical way. If you’re used to just shoving the microwave popcorn in front of the soup cans, in front of the flour container, maybe reconsider that. Grouping your foods by category (baking, breakfast, snacks, and so on) makes it easier to know whaat you have and what you need.

Now let’s go shopping!

Related: How to organize spices: 6 easy ideas that let you find what you need, when you need it.

The staples you want to stock

Here are my recos:

–Rice, dried beans, cereals, sugar, all-purpose flour and pasta last forever and are top of my list. Cereals are not just breakfast food. Same goes for dried oats and/or grits. Pasta is the real workhorse here, because of one simple reason: calories. If you need to stretch pantry items for multiple meals, you want foods that can get you to your calorie requirements with as little volume as possible, and here pasta is the waist-thickener you want. If you end up with sick people in your house, they’ll need calories to fight their way back to health.

–Biscuit/pancake mix is terrific for all meals, and don’t believe the old wive’s tale of it turning deadly after expiration, unless you have a highly rare mold allergy. Just keep it tightly sealed.

–As far as protein, it’s good to have frozen meats, poultry, fish… more on that below.

– I’d also grab those big jars of peanut butter if you can have nut butters in your home. (I’ll leave it between your family members to come down on the chunky/creamy side.) Protein sources are needed, and not everyone can tolerate (or want) beans, beans, the magical fruit multiple meals a week.

A good selection of protein-packed snacks

– More protein ideas: Don’t overlook options like canned tuna, sardines, jerky, and if all else fails, protein powder.

–As for canned fruits and veggies, 20 cans each of canned fruits and vegetables are a great starting point for your apocalypse pantry. They can liven up meals in a big way.  Fruit and veggie juices are also great additions, and coconut milk will make that 40-pound bag of rice way more enticing, come mealtime.

–Dried milk comes in handy, for cereal eaters and coffee drinkers alike. Also, get a couple of bulk containers of powdered drink mix like lemonade or fruit punch. The kids can get bored of plain water pretty fast.

–Jarred sauce isn’t a bad idea; get a variety of flavors. If you’re coming down with something and have people depending on you for meals who can’t cook themselves, you don’t want to spend all day at the stove stirring homemade sauce. While you’re at it, check your spice rack and make sure you have all the dried herbs you need to make that sauce more like homemade. (More below)

These are nerve-wracking times demanding thoughtful caution, but that doesn’t mean we have to eat like animals.

Stocking the freezer

Let’s turn some attention to the freezer.

I know we don’t all have massive storage in the kitchen; for what it’s worth, I have a small, apartment-sized fridge and have managed to stock 20 days worth of meat and veggies for myself and my son.

–Fresh berries and veggies like peas can be broken into smaller freezer bags and laid flat to freeze, and they stack wonderfully.

–If you’re a meat eater, load up on things that freeze well like chicken thighs and hearty cuts of beef and pork. Buy in bulk and break into portions to go in freezer bags. Plus, it’s easier to store and stack.

–Lord, be a ghost pepper on that raw chicken! I advise you season your raw meat with a marinade now and save time later. Plus, spices like jerk seasoning and other pepper-based spices are a preservative and inhibit microbial growth! You season your food not to replace proper cooking methodology, but also to enhance the flavor.

(And for the love of your gut, chicken sushi is not a thing, and y’all need to stop it.)

Don’t forget pets!

Should we face weeks or a full month of disruption in stores (remember, I’m an apocalypse planner), you don’t want your pets to suffer. How much do they eat in a day?

Multiply that by 30, and that’s what you need to have on hand. Don’t forget treats, supplements, litter, whatever else they need on a monthly basis.

Next-level pantry prep

These are the things that will make pantry food suck less, so take good notes.

–Stock up on dried spices. Garlic salt is everyone’s friend. Ditto to curry powder, ginger, cinnamon. Tarragon will liven up thawed chicken.

–Coconut milk with rice is another way to perk up bored taste buds.

–Bouillon for soup or as seasoning is always a great idea, and don’t overlook options like mushroom and onion bouillon as an alternative to chicken or beef.

–Items that will enable you to impress your family (or at least keep things interesting) include a variety of cooking oils, shortening for pie crusts, baking items for treats.

-Don’t forget fancy snack ingredients like chocolate chips, shredded coconut, condensed milk, graham crackers and the like.

When the kids are bored on day ten of self-quarantine, making a fresh batch of oatmeal-raisin cookies will eat up a lot of their time, and then while they’re recovering from sugar shock, you can grab the leftovers for yourself.

–Fresh herbs are a huge boon. Liz wrote about that here, including tips for apartment-dweller who may want to start a windowsill herb garden.

–Are you a coffee drinker? Do you like cream in it? You may have to resort to powdered creamer in a pinch, so be sure you have that on hand. Same for tea.

–As for water, please! There’s no need to hoard bottled water. Plus we all should be taking steps to reduce our single-use plastic. If that’s not top-of-mind right now, think about it economically — for the price you’d pay for a month’s worth of bottled water, you could easily buy a 2-gallon water filtration pitcher ($45 from our affiliate Amazon) for your fridge or a faucet-mounted filter.

We don’t have to hasten environmental collapse while coronavirus is going on, after all.

In summary:

Don’t Panic Rotation Spices and Seasonings Teach the kids to play gin rummy

We’ll get through this, and we’ll do it without resorting to MREs and Red Dawn-level terror.

Also, wash your hands!

Laura Stone, a descendant of pioneer polygamists from the early days of the Mormon Church, keeps busy as a Master Gardener, author coach and novelist. While the majority of her family still lives in Utah, she resides in her home state of Texas because it’s where the good tamales are.

#tips and tricks #coronavirus #good information

[overlyobsessedgaygal]

Hold my Hand

Words: 983

Fandom: TUA

Summary: Luther gets hurt and Klaus offers his brother a hand, only to get it broken in return

 Klaus is in his room when the sound of the front doors slamming into the wall echoes it's way through the house. Klaus is knitting while Ben is telling him a story, Vanya is at work, and Grace is quietly dusting the house.

   It's a good day for Klaus, the kind of day where his body isn't begging for the substance it's trained itself to depend on, the kind of day where there aren't so many ghosts that Ben can't just drown them out. A day that would have been perfect had the echoing of the sharp bang not sounded much to close to a gunshot for a war torn mind to handle.

    Ben let a quiet groan slip through his lips as Klaus seemed to disappear from his room, leaving his body behind. A clouded look in his eye as he had to endure the torturous memories that plagued his mind. It had been a good day, he thinks.

     The loud scream of agony is to rough and guttural to belong to any of the usual siblings. They had been hurt enough that Klaus knew the difference between their agonized screams but this one was new. He had never heard such a desperate sound come in that bellowing voice.

      Klaus glanced to see Ben was already gone, must have left as soon as Klaus lost himself in la la land. Klaus made it to his feet and managed to make it halfway to the medical room when a loud crashing sound stopped him in his tracks. He could hear Ben calling Luther's name in anger and he jogged the rest of the way.

    He was not expecting to see the big guy covered in blood with a metal pole sticking out of his stomach. Grace was slowly rising from a dent in the wall, her head tilted just too far to be humanly possible. “Luther?” Klaus questioned, his voice that of a child's.

     Luther was strong, he wasn't supposed to be hurt and yet he was crying out in pain as tears pulsed from his eyes and dripping down his face like streams. His hands were clenched into fists, desperately trying to ground himself.

    Klaus knew the feeling of needing someone else's touch to keep you from getting so lost in your own feel that you ended up paying the price. So he inched forward. “Here, Big Guy, squeeze my hand.”

     Ben protested the solution but Luther had quickly snatched the offered hand as if it could save him from the pain that was about to befall him. The grip caused instant bruising to the hand Klaus had offered and a hiss of pain escaped his lips.

     Luther convulsed as Grace went back to work. That is when Klaus heard the first crunch, he hadn't felt it year and he tried to place the sound. It sounded almost like someone eating chips or cereal. Then he felt it, moments later, a cutting zap through the numbing bruise.

      “Fuck,” Klaus said as he contorted his face to express his agony. He swallowed with great difficulty and refused his body's begging of him to pull away. Mom placed her hand lightly at the base of the pole, near enough that her fingers brushed the damaged skin.

      The second sound was more recognizable as the crack of his bone breaking apart and he didn't have to wait for the pain to hear the whine from his own mouth. “Breathe, it's okay, breathe Klaus.” Ben was coaching him through this as if it was just a bad withdrawal symptom. Klaus appreciated the attempt but withdrawal had never had a sound to it.

    The sickening snaps kept playing through his head and the pain was a dull throbbing all the way through his blue and purple flesh. “Good job, Big Guy. You're doing good. Almost done,” Klaus found himself coaching Luther as others had coached him, maybe as a distraction or maybe because he had no idea what else to say.

    Three more painful onomatopoeias later and Luther had successfully succumbed to the anesthesia and his hand fell away from Klaus’ to rest my the side of his cot.

     Klaus gasped in relief as he clutched his violet dyed skin to his chest. The swelling was a testament to how poor it felt. Every numb ache or Flash of stinging pain seemed to be an inch of swelling. Klaus could feel tears falling slowly from his eyes as he focused on breathing in and out.

    Grace was continuing on with Luther's treatment now that he was sedated so Ben was trying to comfort Klaus as the boy clutched the wrist of his shattered hand.

   Klaus let out a sigh as he heard more footsteps on the floor. It was soft but quick and Klaus relaxed in the fact that it was Vanya, if anyone could help it would be Vanya.

    “Mom? What happened?” Vanya asked upon entrance, her first sight being Luther undergoing his surgery on the table. Her attention shifted to Klaus in less that five seconds. “Klaus! Oh God!”

   Vanya knelt down in front of him and began to softly pry his uninjured wrist away. “let me see, let me see it, okay, okay, good job,” Vanya mumbled reassurances as she examined the hand that resembled more of a black balloon at this point.

    “Good job Klaus, that was a brave thing to do,” Vanya commented. Klaus huffed out a mangled laugh.

    “Can I go back to being a coward junkie?” If Vanya heard the half seriousness in his tone she didn't acknowledge it just smiled at his halfheart joke.

     “I think you're stuck with us now,” Vanya said. Klaus winced at the pain in his hand. Apparently being a good, sober, family member meant he was also stuck with pain, although he really hoped Luther never got hurt again. For totally not selfish reasons.

#tua luther #tua fanfic #tua vanya #tua klaus #tua #the umbrella academy #kaytikittyfanfics

[thisbibliomaniac]

Would you hate me if I asked for all 200?

 I could never hate you my darling !

200: My crush’s name is: ohhhh I’m not posting that here XD

199: I was born in: hell 

198: I am really: average 197: My cellphone company is: stupid 196: My eye color is: brown 195: My shoe size is: inconvenient 194: My ring size is: 7 on my ring finger, 8 on my middle finger 193: My height is: 5′5″192: I am allergic to: according to my most recent rescan, egg yolks, corn starch, and ... something else 191: My 1st car was: a windstar 190: My 1st job was: ice cream shop! 189: Last book you read: Pride and Prejudice. loved it 188: My bed is: blue, green, purple, and pink 187: My pet: obi, who is so cute 186: My best friend: amazing wonderful beautiful incredible 185: My favorite shampoo is: maui vanilla 184: Xbox or ps3: nintendo 64183: Piggy banks are: for collecting cool money 182: In my pockets: scrunchie and box cutter 181: On my calendar: seeing @dangerously-human asap! 180: Marriage is: unlikely 179: Spongebob can: die 178: My mom: cool beans 177: The last three songs I bought were? these boots were made for walking, 9-5, idk probably something by kelly clarkson 176: Last YouTube video watched: steven crowder on the catholic boys. worth the watch 175: How many cousins do you have? oh gosh. so many. i was gonna add them up, but honestly? there’s at least 40, and aint nobody got time to mentally run through the whole family 174: Do you have any siblings? yes 173: Are your parents divorced? no 172: Are you taller than your mom? lol yes 171: Do you play an instrument? piano 170: What did you do yesterday? worked :/[ I Believe In ]169: Love at first sight: nope 168: Luck: i joke about it, but not really 167: Fate: no 166: Yourself: heck no 165: Aliens: nope 164: Heaven: of course 163: Hell: definitely 162: God: absolutely 161: Horoscopes: absolutely not 160: Soul mates: yes 159: Ghosts: no 158: Gay Marriage:  nope 157: War: yes 156: Orbs: ? 155: Magic: cats are magic [ This or That ]154: Hugs or Kisses: hugs 153: Drunk or High: neither 152: Phone or Online: phone 151: Red heads or Black haired: ahhhh. both 150: Blondes or Brunettes: brunettes 149: Hot or cold: cold 148: Summer or winter: nether D:147: Autumn or Spring: autumn 146: Chocolate or vanilla: vanilla 145: Night or Day: night 144: Oranges or Apples: apples 143: Curly or Straight hair: curly 142: McDonalds or Burger King: ew neither 141: White Chocolate or Milk Chocolate: milk140: Mac or PC: pc always 139: Flip flops or high heals: both!!138: Ugly and rich OR sweet and poor: ugly and sweet are not mutually exclusive 137: Coke or Pepsi: pepsi 136: Hillary or Obama: haahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha135: Burried or cremated: idk i wont be there 134: Singing or Dancing: singing 133: Coach or Chanel: walmart 132: Kat McPhee or Taylor Hicks: taylor hicks!!!!! 131: Small town or Big city: in between 130: Wal-Mart or Target: both 129: Ben Stiller or Adam Sandler: adam sandler 128: Manicure or Pedicure: manicure 127: East Coast or West Coast: east coast 126: Your Birthday or Christmas: neither 125: Chocolate or Flowers: both 124: Disney or Six Flags: disney 123: Yankees or Red Sox: Indians [ Here’s What I Think About ]122: War: a necessary evil 121: George Bush: i was like 12 so 120: Gay Marriage: wicked 119: The presidential election: ridiculous 118: Abortion: murder 117: MySpace: useless 116: Reality TV: depends on the show 115: Parents: not really sure how to answer this 114: Back stabbers: dump them 113: Ebay: sneaky 112: Facebook: another necessary evil 111: Work: the most necessary of the greatest evil 110: My Neighbors: enigmas 109: Gas Prices: too high 108: Designer Clothes: why? 

107: College: not for everyone 106: Sports: baseball is the best 105: My family: wild104: The future: D: [ Last time I ]103: Hugged someone: my coworker hugged me yesterday 102: Last time you ate: got shish tawook earlier 101: Saw someone I haven’t seen in awhile: havent really seen anyone 100: Cried in front of someone: i dont do that 99: Went to a movie theater: couple weeks ago 98: Took a vacation: went to see stell and danger 97: Swam in a pool: a looong time ago 96: Changed a diaper: longer ago 95: Got my nails done: never have 94: Went to a wedding: probably a cousin? so also a long time ago 93: Broke a bone: never 92: Got a peircing: ears 8 years ago 91: Broke the law: i do not do that either !90: Texted: stell just now [ MISC ]89: Who makes you laugh the most: @identityconstellations88: Something I will really miss when I leave home is: solitude 87: The last movie I saw: far from the madding crowd 86: The thing that I’m looking forward to the most: seeing danger 85: The thing im not looking forward to: work on monday 84: People call me: boring 83: The most difficult thing to do is: exist 82: I have gotten a speeding ticket: never 81: My zodiac sign is: nothing 80: The first person i talked to today was: my mom 79: First time you had a crush: high school 78: The one person who i can’t hide things from: i can hide from anyone ;) 77: Last time someone said something you were thinking: usually do 76: Right now I am talking to: stell 75: What are you going to do when you grow up: uhhhhhhh74: I have/will get a job: hopefully never again, but thats not my luck 73: Tomorrow: bible study! 72: Today: shish tawook 71: Next Summer: who knows 70: Next Weekend: sleep 69: I have these pets: obi, walker, punky, daisy, loki, and lady 68: The worst sound in the world: nails on a chalkboard 67: The person that makes me cry the most is: no one 66: People that make you happy:my friends 65: Last time I cried: idek 64: My friends are: amazing 63: My computer is: dependable 62: My School: over and done with 61: My Car: adorable 60: I lose all respect for people who: give up their pets , especially for petty reasons 59: The movie I cried at was: oh goodness i dont know 58: Your hair color is: red 57: TV shows you watch: so many 56: Favorite web site: i dont think i like any of them 55: Your dream vacation: paris 54: The worst pain I was ever in was: 53: How do you like your steak cooked: medium 52: My room is: purple 51: My favorite celebrity is: oh goodness i have no idea . tom hiddleston probably 50: Where would you like to be: ireland 49: Do you want children: yes48: Ever been in love: no 47: Who’s your best friend: stell 46: More guy friends or girl friends: girl friends 45: One thing that makes you feel great is: being with cats 44: One person that you wish you could see right now: any of my friends 43: Do you have a 5 year plan: no 42: Have you made a list of things to do before you die: no 41: Have you pre-named your children: no 40: Last person I got mad at: my boss 39: I would like to move to: ireland 38: I wish I was a professional: nothing. i dont want to be a professional anything. i hate working for other people. they suck. every single one. [ My Favorites ]37: Candy: reeses pieces36: Vehicle: corrola 35: President: RAND PAUL 202034: State visited: hawaii 33: Cellphone provider: they all suck 32: Athlete: jason kipnis 31: Actor: tom hiddleston 30: Actress: sandra bullock 29: Singer: lea salonga 28: Band: needtobreathe27: Clothing store: walmart 26: Grocery store: walmart 25: TV show: the office 24: Movie: so many 23: Website: already asked 22: Animal: cats 21: Theme park: not really a theme park fan 20: Holiday: reformation day 19: Sport to watch: baseball! 18: Sport to play: bowling 17: Magazine: none 16: Book: madman 15: Day of the week: friday 14: Beach: the one in jersey stell and i went to last year 13: Concert attended: tobymac and brandon heath together 12: Thing to cook: snickerdoodles 11: Food: shish tawook 10: Restaurant: idek 9: Radio station: majic 105.7

8: Yankee candle scent: cinnamon 7: Perfume: honeysuckle 6: Flower: roses 5: Color: pink 4: Talk show host: regis philban XD 3: Comedian: probably john mulaney 2: Dog breed: pitbull 1: Did you answer all these truthfully?  yiss 

thanks dan

#dan-the-fungus

[myquirkylife]

The black and white of dieting is fairly simple: eat less, move more, calories in, calories out. Be consistent and watch yourself transform. Right? Well, generally speaking, yes. But unfortunately, not always. Just like life, dieting is not always so black and white.

Perhaps you know someone that despite training hard, eating at a deficit with properly balanced macronutrients/micronutrients and recovering appropriately, they just can’t seem to lose weight? More often than not, factors at fault include:

“Ghost Bites” – aka those bites of your coworkers dessert, those mindless bites while you prepared your meal, those random bites of various snacks at work, those unmeasured spoonfuls of peanut butter, always eating out and guesstimating, etc. They all add up!

Not Actually in a Deficit – They may not be burning as much as they think they are in their training, therefore, not being in a true caloric deficit (more on this later). Or, eating more than they think they are in comparison to their output. Yes, it is true, sometimes in dieting, to get to a specific goal, you have to be in a lower deficit than you think you need to be in. Harsh truth.

Other than the above factors, there are some that fall in the grey area of dieting. Perhaps you’ve heard folks say, “I can’t lose weight because I have a slow metabolism”? Hell, I’VE said that (thanks, thyroid)! People can have slow metabolisms (soooo many factors that contribute to this), but the most important tidbit of information to take away from this post is: a slow metabolism is NOT a life sentence that you are doomed with forever (or to use as an excuse). There ARE ways to remedy this.

But it takes work. By tracking your intake, you are in control of the calories-in – which is extremely important if you have specific goals. Controlling the calories-out, aside from exercise, is more so dependent on your biology, which is where things can get tricky. The human body is extremely complex, and it is your metabolism (a mega machine of organ function, hormones, energy, etc) that dictates the amount of energy your body outputs in a day.

The thing with the human body is that it is extremely durable and will adapt to extreme circumstances when necessary. Some bodies do this quicker than others (hi). So if you’ve been eating really low calories for a long time, even when combined with hard, diligent training, and you’re still not losing weight, chances are that your metabolism adapted to its current state. No, this is NOT starvation mode. Most people, thankfully, won’t ever experience true starvation. What this means is, your body adapted to its current intake as its “maintenance,” so even though you’re technically not eating much, your body doesn’t think it’s in a caloric deficit, it thinks it is maintaining.

So, how can this be fixed? Reverse dieting! Or, simply getting back to (or figuring out) your true maintenance numbers (macros to eat to maintain weight). This is done so that your body can slowly adapt to eating at higher calories, with minimal weight gain while also increasing your metabolic capacity.

Some argue that there is no need to to do this slowly and you can simply go back to eating at maintenance in a 2-3 week window after a cutting phase (Lyle McDonald, PhD), while others argue that this should be done slowly in a 10 week (or more) window to minimize fat gain and give your metabolism time to adjust (Alan Aragon, Avatar Nutrition, in3 Nutrition, Layne Norton, PhD, Sohee Lee). In my humble opinion, if you’ve been cutting for a long time, slowly increasing your food intake can also help you mentally. Big increases in food in a small time frame can easily lead to binging.

So…all this may sound familiar coming from me, right? Well, that is because I have covered this topic before in The Dark Side of Reverse Dieting. Read that post where I go over my personal experience with reverse dieting (at that point) and the parts of reverse dieting that people don’t like to talk about. Folks love to focus on the group of folks that respond extremely well to reverse dieting such as weight loss and can get their macros upwards of 400g of carbs without gaining but that is not as common as you think.

Okay, so now you’re probably asking, “Well Jo, why are you bringing up reverse dieting yet again?” Sigh.

HERE’S THE DEAL

To put it into perspective, I wrote that post in July 2017 and it is now toward end of April 2018. I was in the middle of a reverse diet that I had began in March 2017. Which, five months in was a record for me! As mentioned in that post, I was notorious for starting a reverse, and at any sign of gain, I’d jump back into a cut. And very recently, I was reverse dieting…again. WHAT?!

So, what had happened was…we had a trip to Costa Rica planned for November 2017 and I did not want to go looking/feeling fluffy (can you blame me?). I was advised against going into a cut just yet, that I should give my reverse more time, then go into maintenance for a bit, and THEN cut. Well, vanity and impatience got the best of me and I compromised on doing a “mini cut” right before the trip. I was warned that cutting a reverse short and diving straight into a cut is not a great idea, but that if I’m to do it, that I should stick to the reverse up until October 2017, then for the month of October, do a somewhat aggressive cut (shock the body in a sense), then get back to a reverse when I return. Well, things did NOT go as planned whatsoever because my body is a difficult bitch (hence why I am writing this long ass post about metabolic adaptation).

Basically, the aggressive mini cut did NOTHING for me. I went from eating about 2200 cals to pretty much 1500 cals (without change in training volume) in a span of about three weeks with no change on the scale or body. The frustrating parts were:

Reverse diet that I spent 6 months on, turned out to be a waste because I was back to eating what I was eating pre reverse diet (perhaps even less) AND at a higher weight than when I began reverse because I’m one of the lucky ones that has some fat gain during a reverse (Note: sarcasm – there should be a sarcasm font)

I was compliant 95% of the time during the reverse and 99% compliant during the cut, so it’s not like I was going YOLO style and overeating

I was diligently training hard in weightlifting throughout

What was done, was done. There I was, right before Costa Rica vacation feeling like…

But I got to thinking…I should NOT be stressing about this during my vacation. I had never been to Costa Rica, it was my first international trip with Migs, and I had spent months planning it. I was determined to turn my shit around and have an amazing time. I planned to mindfully eat but not track my food.

This is just a glimpse at the adventures we had on our 10-day trip living that pura vida:

The trip was phenomenal. We laughed, we ate, we drank, we swam, we did adventure. I couldn’t have asked for a better trip. It took a lot of willpower to not think about what I looked like in this bikini or in those shorts or that dress, but I did it well enough and remained in the moment. Pura vida.

Back to Reality

In my last blog post, I went over exactly what took place upon our return from Costa Rica. Rest in forever peace, my sweet Abuelita.

In that last post, I definitely focused on my training and those lifetime PRs that did make me ever so happy! There’s one major plus from truly fueling my body – getting stronger!

What I didn’t focus on in that post was nutrition and my body, well, because I knew it would take some explaining and it needed its own post to do so.

Anyway, so upon getting back, feeling as discouraged as ever (on top of the emotional roller coaster I was on), I basically just went back to the calories I left off of on my cut and mindlessly stayed there for some weeks until January came around and I stumbled on AHub Nutrition‘s Ashleigh Hubbard on Instagram…and was intrigued. I lurked on her for a while on Instagram from afar. I’d click through and see what her clients were sharing, what she shared, her methods – basically, went down a rabbit hole.

Although I felt Avatar did serve me well, my body just does not always respond as typically as most bodies do and feel it requires more patience than the algorithm allows. It responded well to the reverse overall, but the cut method, not so much, which I know is partially my fault for going from reverse to a cut so quickly. For someone who has a fairly responsive body, I feel Avatar is a great, affordable alternative. But ultimately, it does only base your weekly macro tweaks on your weigh ins (weight + body fat measurement + compliance, and for women, menstruation) without any other factors considered. I figured the time may have come for me to take on a coach again. Someone that can take into consideration not only the weight on the scale but also take into account other measurements such as how I’m feeling, whether I dropped the kids off at the pool, my stress levels, my energy, how I’m recovering, my training changes, etc. I KNOW I could do this for myself but let’s be honest, we’re not always as real with ourselves as we are with others.

What sold me on Ashleigh – because it IS a hefty price tag to take her on, I’ll be honest – is how responsive she was before I even hired her. We DM’ed for about a couple hours the night I finally reached out to her. I asked any and all questions and concerns that I had. I explained my situation, warned her my body is notoriously difficult and I let her know I did not want to go through what I went through before with a previous coach (scroll down). Responsiveness is key with me. Most importantly, don’t brush off my concerns when I have them. She reassured me of all my concerns without giving me blanket responses and added a bonus: her clients have her cell number and can text her with any questions or to just chat.

Time to get to business. Time to make a plan. And she told me what I knew was coming (but was somehow hoping not to come to this). The only way to really get me out of the hole of eating such low calories and not seeing any results was to reverse diet me…AGAIN. Ugh. I expressed my feelings about doing a reverse AGAIN, potentially gaining weight AGAIN, spending months on a reverse AGAIN when I had just spent 6 months on one. I said and asked all these questions, knowing the sad, sad answer already before she even said it. I don’t have much a choice if I want to get my body and metabolism in order. It’s either, remain eating very low calories and lowering them even more with the possibility of still not seeing any change (and have my performance suffer) or reverse diet, but this time go into a maintenance phase, and then cut. And of course, taking into consideration more than just weight on scale the whole time (biofeedback) and adjust accordingly.

Ugh, fine. So here I am. I started the reverse with Ashleigh in January and my reverse just ended a couple weeks ago. From when we started I gained about 3-4lbs – which to some, may seem like nothing. But if you think about the overly aggressive reverse (aka bulkI didn’t ask for) I was put on post op by my previous coach where I gained nearly 10lbs, then the reverse I was very recently on where I had also gained about 3-5lbs (with Avatar) – it sure adds up and IS a lot. I am now on maintenance for the month of April with a week diet (mental) break at the end of the month where I won’t track macros which is also when I’ll be out of town for work. And then, when I’m back in town…

Time to cut! I am hopeful that it will go well this time under the watchful eye of an attentive coach. Another thing I already knew before Ashleigh mentioned it, was that it is very likely that I will ultimately have to go very low in calories due to how my body has responded historically. But luckily, she said she won’t keep me so low for too long and, I don’t have trouble eating low calories when I have to. I more so get frustrated eating low calories and seeing no changes.

HAVE YOU STRUGGLED?

I’m curious to know my readers better. Aside from the common issues listed in this post, have you also struggled with any body goals? Do you feel your body is difficult to change? Did you end up finding what tweaks work for you?

xx,

Jo

The Joys of Metabolic Adaptation #flexibledieting #nutrition #health #wellness #metabolism The black and white of dieting is fairly simple: eat less, move more, calories in, calories out.

#Flexible Dieting #health and fitness #iifym #metabolism #Nutrition #wellness

[bentonpena]

For less than $100, you can tour the abandoned towns around Chernobyl. Just watch out for radioactive trees and dogs, crumbling buildings, and the occasional selfie stick.

For less than $100, you can tour the abandoned towns around Chernobyl. Just watch out for radioactive trees and dogs, crumbling buildings, and the occasional selfie stick. http://bit.ly/2ZCuE9A

On April 26, 1986, the world saw its worst nuclear disaster in history when an explosion at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, in what was then the Soviet Union, resulted in a cloud of radioactive particles spreading across parts of Europe.

About 350,000 people were evacuated, and now the parts surrounding the nuclear power plant are considered to be some of the most polluted parts of the planet.

Only a few locals and a teeming wildlife population have lived in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone, the restricted area within a 19-mile-radius of the power plant, since the accident.

But visitor interest has spurred a tourism industry around the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone in recent years. Some have referred to it as "dark tourism," a trend where tourists travel to sites marked by death and suffering.

Guided tour companies have been taking visitors into the area since around 2000, though the Ukrainian government had, until 2011, said it was illegal to do so.

Now, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has designated the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone an official tourist attraction, stating that he hopes to bring "new life" to the area with improvements like a "green corridor" for tourists.

About 150,000 tourists are expected to visit Chernobyl in 2019, thanks, in part, to the HBO mini-series of the same name released in 2019 that chronicles the events of the explosion on April 1986.

While a nuclear waste expert told Business Insider that visitors can expect "very minimal" radiation exposure, they are still advised not to touch any dogs, artifacts, trees, or building walls.

We spoke to three visitors that have taken guided tours of the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone.

Here's what it's like, from booking your trip to meals during the tour to wearing radiation readers around your neck while inside the zone.

Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

SEE ALSO: A photographer visited the abandoned towns around Chernobyl more than 20 times over the past 25 years, and the captivating photos show just how suddenly time stopped in its tracks after the disaster

DON'T MISS: Photos show what daily life is really like inside Chernobyl's exclusion zone, one of the most polluted areas in the world

SEE ALSO: How dangerous is it to visit Chernobyl? We asked a nuclear-waste expert involved in the cleanup.

On April 26, 1986, an explosion at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, in what was then the Soviet Union, resulted in a cloud of radioactive particles spreading across parts of Europe.

Source: Business Insider, Adventure, BBC

The disaster has gone down in history as the world's worst nuclear accident.

Thirty-one people died in the explosion, and the areas surrounding the plant were permanently contaminated. They're now considered to be some of the most polluted areas on the planet.

Source: Reuters

As a result of the Chernobyl disaster, an exclusion zone was established in 1986 within a 19-mile radius of the power plant, and access to the area was heavily restricted for almost 30 years.

Source: Business Insider

Only a few locals still live within that area ...

Read more: Photos show what daily life is really like inside Chernobyl's exclusion zone, one of the most polluted areas in the world

... and there’s a brimming population of wildlife, thanks to the lack of humans.

Read more: There's a thriving population of radioactive animals that have taken over the abandoned Chernobyl exclusion zone, even though the area is toxic for humans

But in recent years, the site has also become a hotspot for tourists looking to get a firsthand glimpse of the exclusion zone and what remains of the abandoned towns there.

The first wave of tourism started around 2011, which is when the area was opened for the first time to tourists traveling with a licensed guide. The Ukrainian government, however, warned at the time that tourists' safety wasn't guaranteed.

Source: CNN, The Guardian

But in July 2019, Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky announced that the site would become an official tourist attraction. He said the area would undergo some changes that would make the area more tourist-friendly, like a "green corridor" that would offer safe entry to the exclusion zone.

Source: CNN

"Until now, Chernobyl was a negative part of Ukraine's brand," Zelensky said as he signed the decree in July 2019. "It's time to change it."

Source: CNN

Visitor interest is something that several local tour groups around Chernobyl are taking advantage of.

The guided tour company SoloEast has been taking visitors into Chernobyl since 2000, according to CNN. And the website for Chernobyl Tour advertises an "eye-opening experience of post-apocalyptic world."

Source: Chernobyl Tour and Chernobyl Welcome and CNN

When Taylor Zwick, a tourist from Prague, booked his May 2019 guided tour of the exclusion zone through Chernobyl Tour, he told Business Insider that he had to provide his passport number.

Ines Aguilera, a Spanish student living in Copenhagen, said tour guide officials from Chernobyl Tour were very strict about that before she visited the exclusion zone during a different tour in mid-May. "We had to show our passports many times," she told Business Insider.

Aguilera and a group of friends were studying abroad in Copenhagen when they decided to go. "It's like one of these weird things that you've always wanted to do as a kid," Aguilera said.

Zwick said it cost about $80 USD for a full-day tour, and Aguilera said her tour cost her about $88 USD. When we checked the Chernobyl Tour website in August, we found one-day trips priced at $99 and up. SoloEast's one-day tours are priced at $91 and up on its website, as of August.

Source: Chernobyl Tour and SoloEast

Zwick said he paid for part of his tour through PayPal when booking, and he had to pay the rest in person with cash. Aguilera told Business Insider that she had to do the same thing when she booked. She paid the second half in cash when she entered the shuttle bus.

They were given instructions upon booking. Aguilera said they had to wear long sleeves, long pants, and couldn’t have space between their pant legs and socks. They wouldn't be able to touch any metal or the ground while touring Chernobyl either.

Julia Czub, a student from the UK who toured Chernobyl in May 2019 with SoloEast tour company, told Business Insider that they weren't allowed to touch trees inside the exclusion zone and couldn't leave a bag or anything on the ground.

She said she booked the tour in December 2018, nearly six months before the HBO show was released, so interest in visiting Chernobyl certainly predates the successful mini-series.

A mix of visitors from nearby European countries were in all three tourists' tour groups. Zwick said he encountered a group from Sweden that had gone to Kiev for a bachelor party and decided to take a private tour of Chernobyl.

After booking online, visitors received a QR code, which is how they gained entry into Chernobyl, according to Zwick. The code was scanned when boarding the bus in Kyiv that took them to Chernobyl.

Zwick said he met the bus at Kiev's train station. It was a full-sized coach bus with about 40 to 45 people onboard. The bus left the train station at 8 a.m. ...

... and Zwick said it took about two hours to get to the Leliv checkpoint at the outer edge of the smaller, 10km (6 mile) exclusion zone surrounding the power plant.

Aguilera said that her drive wasn't the most enjoyable. "It was very uncomfortable because the roads were so bumpy," she said.

Before entering the exclusion zone, Zwick said they were given what looked similar to flash drives attached to green lanyards that they were to put around their necks.

The devices were meant to measure the different radiation levels they were exposed to while on their tour. Zwick said that the tour guides collect them at the end of the tour and give them to officials.

After stopping at the Leliv checkpoint, Zwick said they turned onto a side road toward Moscow's Eye, or the Duga-1 radar station, that Soviets intended to use as a warning system against US missiles in the Cold War era.

By about 1 p.m., Zwick said they drove the rest of the way to the Chernobyl power plant.

Czub said you're not allowed to take photos too close to the reactor, but she was still able to get near it. "I had no idea that we would be able to get so close to it," Czub said. "We were literally right next to it."

Zwick said he ate lunch at the Chernobyl Canteen where the workers eat, which is right next to the power plant. There's a workforce that lives nearby and works on the plant three weeks at a time before taking a break to avoid extreme exposure to the radiation.

Zwick said he saw dogs hanging out in front of the cafeteria. Czub said that she also saw many of the "Chernobyl dogs" around the zone during the tour.

Read more: Chernobyl workers are adopting the site's contaminated dogs, but not all of them are safe to pet 

Zwick said the food was included in the tour package he purchased. He was served mashed potatoes, chicken, and soup, and he said it was decent. Aguilera said she brought her own meal after reading so many bad TripAdvisor reviews of them.

Zwick said they stayed in the cafeteria for 30 minutes to an hour before heading to Pripyat, the abandoned ghost town that was once the shining star of the Soviet Union. The town housed plant workers back in the 1980s.

There were swimming pools, supermarkets, and other attractive amenities that have since spiraled into decay.

Czub said Pripyat was her favorite part of the tour. "I didn't expect the city to look so interesting," she said.

She said there was a cafe right next to the river with beautiful stained glass windows. They wandered around Pripyat for an hour to an hour and a half, Zwick said.

There were some areas that Zwick said their group's tour guide didn't take them. For example, they didn't see the swimming pool like Aguilera was able to.

"That was our highlight," Aguilera said of visiting the abandoned pool.

Zwick said the itinerary isn't super strict, it just depends on what everyone in the tour group wants to do.

Throughout the trip, Zwick said he carried a Geiger counter, a device that can measure radiation levels, that he rented from the tour company for $10.

Aguilera said she and her two friends also rented one to use throughout the trip.

Zwick said his readings fluctuated throughout his tour through the contaminated exclusion zone. In front of the reactor at the nuclear power plant, Zwick said his counter gave off normal readings

But at one point it reached 200 mSv near the Ferris wheel in Pripyat's amusement park. A normal radiation reading is 3 mSv.

Zwick said a tour guide told them that the reading near the Ferris wheel was because of a speck of radioactive dust that had traveled from the reactor to one of the Ferris wheel cars at the time of the explosion, and it's still there giving off a high radiation level.

Many of the buildings in the zone are made of concrete. Zwick said tour officials told him that most of the wooden buildings had to be demolished since wood traps radiation.

But Aguilera said even the remaining concrete structures are deteriorating.

"I don’t know how long these tours are going to be possible because the buildings are about to collapse," Aguilera said.

Many of the signs on top of buildings are in the Ukrainian language, but the signs inside an abandoned store were in Russian, Zwick said. He said that he was told that at the time, Russians were trying to usher out the Ukranian language, so they tried to include a lot of Russian when they originally built the city of Pripyat.

Pripyat was the last stop on the tour, Zwick said. After that, they started to head back to Kiev. At the checkpoint, they had to get out and go through radiation scanners.

Zwick said it was similar to walking through a metal detector. He said the point of it was to make sure each visitor didn't absorb an abnormal amount of radiation. "It was just like going through a door," Aguilera said.

    He also said there wasn't even someone standing next to the scanner. "It looks like a very secure place, but at the end of the day, they were just sitting there," Zwick said.

Zwick said he felt like the radiation scanners were more of a formality.

Zwick said that at the various checkpoints, there were souvenir shops where you could buy sweatshirts, hats, snacks, and Geiger counters.

Czub also said she saw the souvenir stall, though she said it felt weird to her to purchase something. But "there were a lot of people buying things," she said.

Aguilera said she bought some postcards and a patch to put on her backpack.

Zwick said he was inside the Chernobyl exclusion zone for a total of almost nine hours. Aguilera said the same.

All three visitors that we spoke to also said tour guide officials told them that the radiation they were exposed to was minimal.

"We had more radiation going from Copenhagen to Kiev than in the exclusion zone," Aguilera said. "At least that's what they told us."

Zwick said he was also told that the radiation he was exposed to from spending the whole day there was the equivalent of a 3-hour flight and that a chest X-ray gives you 40 times more radiation than did the tour they were on.

As more and more tourists travel to the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone, some have viewed the visitors as insensitive to the gravity of the tragedy that left dozens dead and hundreds of thousands more without homes.

Source: CNN

For years, some have referred to Chernobyl tourism as "dark tourism," a trend of visitors flocking to sites marked by death and suffering.

Source: CNN

Photographer David McMillan has visited and photographed the Chernobyl exclusion zone at least 20 times over the course of 25 years. He told Business Insider that he's watched as tourism has grown increasingly common at the site.

Read more: A photographer visited the abandoned towns around Chernobyl more than 20 times over the past 25 years, and the captivating photos show just how suddenly time stopped in its tracks after the disaster

"They're there with their smartphones taking selfies," McMillan said.

But Czub said that, though she took photos throughout her tour, she tried to be mindful and respectful. A native of Poland, she said people from her country are specifically interested in Chernobyl because they're so close to the site of the disaster.

Zwick said his trip to Chernobyl taught him more about the history of the disaster and what happened in the aftermath.

And Aguilera said she tried to stay respectful throughout the tour and that she's always been moved by the story of the Chernobyl accident.

She also said she's seen the HBO mini-series since taking her trip through the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone and that the show's recreation of the scenes inside the zone are realistic.

"I see my photos and then I see the TV show — it looks quite similar," Aguilera said.

Czub said the HBO show will likely keep drawing crowds, and so does the owner of the SoloEast tour group, who told CNN that he's seen an almost 40% increase in interest since the mini-series aired.

Source: CNN

"I'm guessing there's going to be more and more coming now," Czub said.

Tech via SAI http://bit.ly/2ZZpEbV August 30, 2019 at 07:29PM

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Gabby liveblogs the new teen wolf ep

i mean technically it’s not liveblogging since I’m in australia and the delay obvs but here we go guys prepare for death:

-lololololololo the fuck they always gotta start it at the school cause they cant afford another set anymore

-whut scott is the assistant coach???!!!!!

-omg hayden left?????? why do they literally just remove all of their female characters with nonsense explanations??? hello kira???? havent seen her in a while. do females not exist in beacon hills?? apparently even being a love interest isn’t a good enough reason to keep the gals around anymore dear god.

-’you want my whistle? who gave you a whistle???’ omfg coach finstock is the best

-the fuck was that supposed to be a wolf on the field or a coyote??? or malia???? legit can’t even tell, oh nvmind scott and liam followed it into the woods found a pack of dead wolves with weird bugs that are crawling out of their eyes, naturally.

-malia heading out to paris and not wanting to help anyone with the problem is goals. but you know there are other ways to write female characters without making their only interest being climbing dick you know, we can have depth.

-liam and scott bonding, lol, they cute and feels, scotty all worried he’s losing control, making him repeat the werewolf mantra dear god this is dorky. giving it instrumental impressive music wont change that friends.

-lol, ‘i got ducktape’ this is me.

-oh goody more mental asylum stuff and weird frozen mummified rock shit, is this a throwback to pompeii or what?

-yeah touch the petrified ashy human corpse thing, that’s a great idea obvs like what is even happening right now.

-of course some dude exploded out of it, why are we even surprised people? oh that’s right we’re not. wait who the fuck is that? no wait, i can guess, it’s another mediocre white guy.

-’i like latin’ liam you dork, oh poor kid ‘this has been a really hard year for me’ ‘if you want to talk about your girlfriend guidance hours are posted’ damn girl that’s brutal.

-interesting that all the youngins are getting a senior registration and applying to colleges scenes talking about their futures at school but for the veteran characters we barely got a sentence about it.

-’you can see me right’ omg lol corey are you having some visibility issues.

-who wants to guess this new college guidance lady is probably not human- lol the music just changed and went all sinister like bruh we already got this, literally every new character we meet ends up being evil like cmon.

-who the fuck is this nolan kid- yet another mediocre white boy!!!!!- are they going for the olympics in white boys what is this shit- oh god she wants to talk about the animal attack on the field.

-lol him being like ‘that was no animal’ jesus fucking christ honestly am i in deja vu land are we just repeating tired drama from the first season now.

-liam how do you not know what a scarab is????? have you not seen the mummy what kind of kid are you??

-haha that girl screaming ‘why does this keep happening to our school’ when all the rats show up is the real shit.

-mediocre other mummy white boy appears in the classroom, stares a bit and tries to look interesting and then leaves. wow lifechanging moment.

-naturally liam and mason end up in the pipes again, because where else would teen wolf film things that happen.

-lydia making a bestiary yeah girl. Her mama isn’t being very smart saying no to that- who’s guess is it she dies almost immediately??? yeah girl leave that paperwork in mamas desk. 

-scott trying out his weird electrocution kink with his mum, i am uncomfortable, but also teaching her the ways of electrocution is vaguely sweet.

-mama mccall gonna cover all the werewolf shit when scott is gone i love it. family bonding stuff yeaaaaaahh. oh shit she electrocuted him whilst hugging. family fun times.

-’i held the button, didn’t I?’ ‘you held the buttton’ BEST

-rat king ew is that what they said. gross. lol malia making liam smell the gross dead rat.

-REROUTED. malia is determined to get on a plane to get that french dick apparently.

-how the fuck did mummy white guy end up in the sheriff station???? do the deputies no longer exist?? wheres papa stilinski???

-parrish on the creepy white dude, all is well apparently.

-liam and mason bringing mama mccall a nice dead rat. bring her dinner you sick bastards.

-the fuck??? hallways in flames, parrish meeting another possible hellhound??? what is trying to be said here, fucked if i know.

-weird white guy has some kind of blood kink, sniffing all the injured people in the hospital because of reasons.

-idiot dudes punched liam in the face and he lost his shit. some mantra kid. use the werewolf force. freaky white mummy guy looming in the hallway behind him, cue demon suspense music while he chases for liam now in a closing elevator.

-ANDDDDDD the door closes before mummy white dude can get to him. shocker. i am on the edge of my seat with surprise and  anguish obvs

-lydia showing up to get scott? i thought in the last ep stiles said hed be driving down to campus with lydia together???? does that mean she did and came back for some reason?? or stiles miraculously teleported there on his own. wow i love continuity. good thing im watching teen wolf huh.

-all the lights go out, because its lydia this is teen wolf and EVERYTHING MUST BE DARK AND HARD TO SEE AT ALL TIMES.

-phones ringing are always the most suspenseful thing to happen to me as well, love hearing that dialtone and having a wind machine suddenly blowing hair out of my face before appearing back in... wow you guessed it- the school!!!

-ohhhhhh spideyweb time. love it. gotta touched those creepy webs because otherwise what else could lydias banshee powers possibly do. lots of screaming. love that. was that gunfire? idk here this is stupid. 

-ah yes, lydia miraculously finds the perfect bit of web to touch because of unexplainable reasons.’ YOU LET IT OUT YOU WERE SUPPOSED TO RIDE WITH THE HUNT FOREVER’ k thanks im hanging up the web now byeeeeeee.

-how does nobody lock the fucking school doors at this point. parrish and mummy white dude just walked straight in.

-’what are you?’ ‘you know what i am im the same as you’ lololololololololl this is gonna be some weird hellhound pissing contest.

-’something you let out, something that needs to be stopped’ oh goody something new an differernt for us. so innovative.

-ah yes, the pissing contest begins. or fire contest i guess? idk?/ and oh hey the guidance counsellor lady was not as she seemed!!! wow, i never would have seen that coming in my life. thanks

-hey guys when you take away the fire, it’s just two shirtless dudes homoerotically wrestling with each other.

-oh well time for parrish to sleep it off,

-’if the wild hunt couldn’t keep you nothing can’ this is literally sounds like the fucked up adage ‘if i cant have you no one can’ and i am uncomfortable.

-oh boy white mummy guy isn’t after liam- i could never have guess that would happen.

-’it must be stopped nothing else matters’ wow, no, because here I was thinking just let the monster run free and kill people and pile up bodies and stuff. isnt that what teen wolf is about.

-OMG SCOTT GOT INTO THE JEEP  AND FOUND A ‘BE GENTLE’ LETTER FROM STILES THIS IS THE HIGHLIGHT OF THE EP I SWEAR

-what the fuck lydia, popping your ass up in the middle of the headlights like some kind of ghost haunting, ‘we cantt leave’ bruh you need to chill. 

-of course they need some scene with mason giving liam a pep talk like hes the most important character in this show, yeah id totally believe that. hey heres an idea instead of making it about comforting him for losing his girlfriend, how bout you dont write his girlfriend out, there i fixed it.

-malia’s flight no longer delayed!!! haha that squeal of excitement, omg she yelled ‘Oui Oui’ i gotchu girl leave this hellhole while you can.

-opp and heres scott and lydia out to ruin her fun. ofc.

-”no, no nonononono  no, its just rats and wolves- and maybe a little bug problem’ see shes got the spirit. let her get french dick in peace. but also, how the fuck are they gonna explain her and scott hooking up in the future because idk what a fucking ride.

-goes to the window instead because her friends are trying to cockblock her- shes DETERMINED PPL U CANT STOP THE DICK.

-lol scott steps aside and then lydia moves into malias way MY GOD before scott pulls her back out, fuckin i cannot.

-two seconds of disappointed looks but cmon guys lets not pretend that malias an independent person who can make decisions outside of the group- aaaannnnnn shes back. wow. quelle surprise.

-but hey at least she hit scott in the face with her bag, get it girl.

-injured white mummy hellhound staggering through the woods then shift to lydia, malia and scott in the car ‘we opened a door to another world and something came out with us’ THIS IS LITERALLY THE PLOT FOR SEASON 3? 4? THE ONE WITH THE NOGITSUNE CMON PPL.

-of course guidance counsellor college lady is gonna kill white mummy hellhound boy. i support her.

-’what kind of price a big price?” ‘big’ wow, A+ dialogue here, someone give them an emmy for this shit.

-oh no guidance counsellor lady in trouble. bu t of course when push comes to shove, shoot white mummy hellhound boy in the head. but white guy actually died for once???? props. lets see how long hell stay dead before theres a reason that makes no sense to bring him back. cough cough theo.

-two seconds later cause apparently thats enough time for her to escape without the Gang sans stiles noticing. even though two of them have increased hearing and sense of smell?!!!??!! because it wouldnt be teen wolf otherwise.

-lydia ‘i thought you couldnt kill a hellhound’ WHEN WAS THAT EVER SAID??? I LITERALLY DO NOT REMEMBER THAT BEING STATED???

-scott, picking up the bullet casing which apparently killed an unkillable hellhound but hes just so good its not an issue. oh hey, is that a fleur de lis?

-’argent’ ooooooooohhh more suspense. dont think i can take it.

-’the sound of someone who’s never lifted a hand against a human being’ you can says shes a hunter lydia, her trunk was full of murdery shit we get it.

-also whats with teen wolfs repetitive need to make girls have an emotional distressing response to something before they go all ‘i kill you, ill kill everyone, ill kill myself idgaf’ and their expression goes all Tough Girl. like cmon. u realise girls dont all react the same way to the same things right?

-but hey props to guidance lady for not dying, though i mean she’s a girl and shes not white so lets assume her chances arent strong for future eps.

-lol all three of them sitting on scotts bed together. is it just me or should they all just make out, im just saying.

-’can we say we forgot?’ omg lydia PHRASING, u literally forgot stiles barely a few eps ago, dont crush him already.

-’we almost lost him last time’ i just love how the girls have all the emotional lines and scott just gets to sit there a nod like stiles hasnt been his best friend for years and years. but apparently connection on teen wolf means only if you want to fuck each other since scott magically forgot stiles without much effort and the entire season was about lydia getting him back even though they literally werent even dating and theyd given no indication shed even liked him when he was taken. but suddenly shes magically interested in him and the connection with scott, his best fucking friend for life somehow wasnt strong enough and I AM SALTY.

-malia- ’if this turns out to be somthing big and we don’t call him-’ ‘he would kill us’ hey look Scott got to say something accurate about his best friend, yay!

-’you guys didn’t hear his voice, he was really excited to be there’ aww scott, but seriously you asshole writers are still telling me their connection wasn’t enough for scott to bring him back? for shame.

-’lets just play the voicemail’ lol here comes the swelling emotional music.

-but seriously fuck you guys, heres stiles telling scott to leave beacon hills behind him and that its not his responsibility and not to worry about it and take stiles’ jeep (which we know he loves more than anything) and drive, and the instrumentals are getting really emotional showing stiles at the fbi and youre still trying to tell me that scott wouldnt have remembered his best friend without lydia???? fuck off.

-omg the nerd stopped at the fbi seal and straightened his tie i fucking love it.

-seriously whats with this music??? like stiles just won the damn noble peace prize or something just for showing up. its no wonder ppl think scott isnt the main when the writers give stiles all these storylines and attention, like this is not subtle ppl.

-stiles constantly interrupting the fbi dude in the middle of the presentation gives me life omg.

-’one recent manhunt had our crisis response team chasing down a bizarrely feral unsub in the wilderness of north carolina-”

-OFMG LOL ITS DEREK 

-STILES SPAT WATER EVERYWHERE THIS IS GREAT

-are they literally trying to sell that this is current??? like that is clearly season 1 footage of derek what the fuck is happening right now. why cant he just have a vacation for fun, why do the writers have to ruin everything for him but nope, mass hunting derek time ofc,

-the way stiles put his hand over his mouth as if that would cover up the fact that he literally spat water everywhere. smooth stilinski.

-omg the presenter dude look down at the list of names seeing Mieczyslaw Stilinski and legit being like ‘uh... young man’ thats awesome.

-’just got a little excited’ honestly what the fuck teen wolf. you baiting sterek fans or what?

-stiles trying to find out what they’re after him for- ‘Murder’ but what type of murder. “Mass murder’

-suspenseful music AGAIN jesus fucking c h r i s t.

-OMG now they’re just zooming in on dereks tattoo, increasing the music. dude we fucking get it, thats derek hale and you, the writers, fucking hate him. chill.

#teen wolf season 6b #spoilers #semi live blogging #i have a lot of feelings apparently #this is one hundred per cent sass lets be real here #lololol what a laugh really #teen wolf spoilers #6b spoilers

[loyallogic]

How to earn on the side while you are studying law

This article is written by Ramanuj Mukherjee, CEO, iPleaders.

In the last two years of my college, I earned between 50,000 and 90,000 per month, working about 6-7 hours a day. I have helped numerous other students achieve the goal of earning money while studying, usually to support their studies, most in the range of 10,000-15,000 per month. I will tell you how you can too, if you want.

My parents always told me “never run after money, only focus on your studies”.

It’s not that we had a lot of money. We could just about afford the necessities of life. There wasn’t much of discretionary spending possible. We still used to buy tons and tons of books though. Somehow we always had money for books.

I used to come up with business ideas as a kid as well as a teen ager. Those vagaries were strictly discouraged.

Anyway, I got into law school. I took an education loan which was to cover 80% of the fees over 5 years. My father and later mother came up with the rest.

Unfortunately, halfway through my 2nd year the university decided to dramatically increase the fees. From 67000 a year it was suddenly 1.3 lakhs per year. I was dumbfounded. What the hell would I do now?

I remember the anxiety even today. That’s what made me write my first blogpost ever. It was about why such a fee increase was unfair.

First I thought students will revolt and protest. But that never happened.

Most others were not particularly bothered about this fee hike. The average NLU student, at least in those times, used to be fairly rich and this wasn’t even a noticeable increase for them.

Some teachers asked me to apply for a scholarship. I did. But I wasn’t qualified for the scholarship, as preference was given to disabled and those from backward castes. Both my parents worked for government. I wasn’t poor enough to get scholarship, but not rich enough to afford the fee either.

I approached the bank. The manager said that they will increase the loan as I go to a good institute. But they will need a security. My parents had no property to their name except a plot of land where they wanted to build a house someday.

They decided to mortgage it. My mother was planning to sell the little gold she had. They never hesitated. They never wondered what if I don’t get a job after such expensive education etc. I hope I make them right to an extent today.

My heart was breaking. I didn’t want them to mortgage anything.

I told them hold on to it. I still had some time till my existing loan would run out, in the middle of my 3rd year. I had time till then.

So what to do? Now I knew, this is the time. I was going to earn. I didn’t know how, just 19 years old. But I would.

That decision changed my life. Within another year, I was earning more than my parents earned put together, through freelancing. I was creating study material for IMS CLAT coaching, ghost writing books, taking CLAT classes, promoting legal education in schools, and even doing some legal work on the side such as drafting contracts. I not only managed to pay my fees, it also enabled me to do many other things, such as travelling abroad for conferences, traveling to almost every state in India and getting access to the social circles I wanted to be part of. Later, when I sat for job interviews, that experience of doing work on my own was very valuable.

When the goal is clear, there is no stopping.

I wrote an article last week about why doing cheap online courses can be detrimental to one’s career. I also promised in that article that if you can’t afford a properly priced premium course, I will tell you how to earn enough so that you can break free from financial dire straits, so that you can afford to invest in yourself.

Change what you believe

Students are programmed with many belief systems that prevent them from even attempting to earn. Before I tell you what are the specific ways to earn, I want to tell you that unless you detect these faulty programming and take action to counter them, there is very little chance that you are ever going to earn on the side as a student.

Your biggest restraint is that you only have limited time. You are going to compete with people who are working full time. You are not only new, but also forced to work only a few hours. So you must choose what to do and how to do very carefully.

Also, you must be as good as anybody else doing that work, if not better. You have to be professional. You can’t use your age or inexperience to justify low quality work, or undue delays. If you do that, you will be quickly discarded or treated like a lowly intern who gets a stipend and not a salary.

The biggest barrier for most students is that they do not believe that they deserve to be paid for work. If you don’t believe that you deserve, nobody else will either. It all starts from here.

Once you believe firmly that you are going to do work that is good enough to be paid for, the next step is to actually give it your all. The gap between belief and reality has to be bridged with hard work.

But you get what you deserve. Start with the firm belief that you are going to produce work worth paying for. I never doubted this for a moment. But when I started mentoring others, I noticed this was the biggest stumbling block. If you can’t really believe it, fake it till you make it works here.

Remember, the advice I am giving you is counterintuitive. Most people don’t do this and don’t believe in this.

You got to believe.

The first CLAT module I created, I was paid Rs 9000 for it. The last one I developed for someone else, it was Rs 90,000.

The last book I had ghostwritten, brought me around 2,00,000. While I was still a student. I was paying income tax while others just looked forward to attending income tax law classes.

I believed I was worth it, and asked for it without any hesitation. I was worth it. I got it. If I asked for 20,000, I would have got that.

Build a team

One person is nothing. No matter how smart. A team is always better. I used to turn in work at record speed, because I built up a team around me. In every business I have been involved in, my real secret to success has been my team. Relationship with some of the team members and others who still help me today date back to college days! For example, I met my cofounder Abhyuday back in college. Some of the people I got to know back then and collaborated with are now rising stars in their chosen fields. We still collaborate!

Build teams, build relationships, share the benefits with others and do not try to do everything on your own. Your chances of success will be higher if you find the right team.

You need to network

If the people who can potentially give you work do not even know who you are, how are you supposed to get work? You need to play the long game here. People take time to trust. Keep in touch with people, give them reasons to remember you and like you. Give them a taste of your abilities, even if for no cost initially. Once people know that you can generate value for them, its possible to ask for a reasonable price. The more value you generate, and more clear it is to both parties, more you can raise your rates over time.

Networking does not mean giving your cards to people and shaking hands. Networking means meeting people who you need to impress, or build long term relationship with, and then demonstrating to them what value you can generate. Usually, you need to give before you can ask.

More than anything else, treat people well, with respect and kindness. That goes a very long way.

Develop your skills and reputation in a specific area

The biggest mistake you can make is to go wide. You need to go very specific, and very narrow. You need to dominate a small niche rather than targeting a big market.

Let me give you an example. I met a very promising young man in his 1st year. He had good tech talents considering he was a first year law student. But then he wanted to do many things, which one cannot blame him for. But he didn’t do one single, specific thing long enough to make a dent. He tried his hands in this and that, and having dabbled in many different things finally his time in college was up. It is not that he never earned anything, but it was not anything significant because he never committed to one specific thing.

One of the reasons I made very handsome figures as a college student (when I joined a big law firm after graduation, it was only a small pay hike) was that I kept working around the same area over the years. I learnt new skills, worked on new projects, experimented but all were related to education, specifically around how to crack competitive exams, teach law, build online communities, writing blog posts etc. Everything was connected. Teaching, blogging and law were the passion I pursued over all the years till today. If you do one thing for long enough you start getting good at it. You discover new things about it, and get to experiment on new aspects. You also build reputation, create trust all around and the more time you spend the better this factor gets. Those who just dabble will never get to know!

Stay focused. Over the years, build expertise in something, or even a bunch of well-connected skills and if you chose a small niche, you will begin to dominate it even before you graduate. That’s how you get to make money even as a student!

Click here to get free materials for cyber law course!

Step 1 – What would someone pay for?

Consider, what are the skills you have for which people will pay you?

Alternatively, what pain points to people have that you can solve that they will pay you?

In New York, there are dog walkers who make tons of money. Some dog walkers make more money than an engineer or a banker or a lawyer.

How is that possible?

Walking dogs is very important for dog owners. They want a reliable, trustworthy person. A very busy person is ready to pay a decent sum every month to a dog walker because the dog walker takes all the trouble of walking a dog, making time for it, following a schedule etc away.

Note that it doesn’t take great skills. It just takes time and care.

What can you do for wealthy people in your environment to take their trouble away? A common thing is writing the essays for rich kids. All of you must have heard about it. This falls in the same category, but if you think harder you can come up with better problems.

Can you help a lawyer in creating and maintaining a website? Can you help them with content writing?

Every lawyer wants to write books. They have money but they don’t have time. Can you help them to make their dreams of becoming a published author come true? Many will happily give you a very decent sum of money for that.

Can you ghost write articles for them and then help them to publish the same in newspapers and blogs? Of course, you will incorporate their inputs and let them finalize the final look and message. But if you can take away most of the grunt work from them, and do a good job at it, you will be very surprised by how much money you can make.

I had a friend who was drafting petitions and applications for INR 4000 per task back in 2010 for a lawyer in Delhi while he was sitting in Kolkata. The lawyer had too much work, no juniors or patience to train or handle them. He was happy to get the work done reliably and predictably and paid well for it.

I know someone who helps NGOs to raise funds, by making presentations, writing emails, speaking over phone and setting appointments for pitching. She does this as a service for several NGOs and make a very handsome sum.

A law student I know from his first year, began to offer fitness training and dietary advice to the girls in the hostel who wanted to slim down. It was hard to find the first couple of clients, but after that as results were visible, he had more than he could handle and raised his rates. When he graduated, predictably, he chose to go into the fitness industry, and I only assume he earns very well.

One easy thing to do to get quick money is social media marketing. You can help a startup or some local brand to manage their social media presence. Maybe you can manage their snapchat or instagram? If you do it well, in a way that generate revenue or branding for them, you can expect to get paid.

You can even help lawyers to create systems to manage their offices or clients better. Maybe a better filing system? Or introducing software for higher efficiency? They will pay you for it if your service is valuable.

It is also possible to get paid legal work from them. You will not get paid as much as a lawyer does, obviously, but if you can turn in a good first draft, it saves a lot of time for lawyers and the busy ones will pay you for it. You need to figure out who those lawyers are though, and how they are going to trust you.

Always check after internship if the lawyers who were happy with your work will like to give you some work even afterwards. Don’t ask for money at this point, just keep doing it and get them comfortable with the remote working arrangement. Later you can request to be paid! If your work is actually useful, they will not say no.

These are jobs that need not always require a lot of skills. Others require skills you can easily learn, and still others that will take years to learn.

Choose wisely.

Step 2 – How are you going to ask for it

It is not too bad to just walk up to them and ask. Worst you will ever hear is a no. Many a times when I was young I used to walk up to people completely blank, without any preparation and then asked for opportunities. I got rejected a lot. But some people said yes. I stayed in touch with the people who said no as well. Some day some of them did come back!

But the best way is to go prepared. I learned that over time. You can start right from the beginning. It’s much better.

Do a requirement analysis. Talk to people, do market research. Talk to 15-20 people trying to discover the real pain points. Then you will know exactly what you need to offer and how much to charge.

Let me give you an example.

How can you figure out whether to offer guitar lessons in college to other students, or create an youtube channel where you give guitar lessons? Or maybe you should try to find out some wealthy clients outside the college?

It’s tough, right?

Start talking to people. Who are the people who want to learn guitar? What is their motivation? Why are they not already learning? Have they bought a guitar? Do they want you to help them to choose a guitar? What sort of guitar do people want to learn?

And most of all, what is the problem? Why have they not already learned? Where are they stuck?

Maybe you find out that many people who bought expensive guitars then lost motivation. They felt lazy. Is it possible that if you give them lessons inside their hostel room, they will actually do it? Are they ready to pay a decent sum for it? That would depend on their motivation. If the goal is to serenade the girlfriend on her next birthday, and impress her with guitar skills, motivation is high. One would pay.

Similarly, you may find out that the local builders have a big problem in getting certain paperwork done. Lawyers charge a lot. They don’t really need a lawyer to do it. What if you could do it? What if you can get a part time job drafting real estate contracts for 2-3 local builders? What if you start offering services to help them to comply with applicable labour laws?

What if you could find a startup which needs some legal support? Maybe it can’t afford a proper lawyer yet, could you help them with some basic things as a paralegal and charge a fee?

There are thousands of possible options. But to pitch it right, you have to understand what is the pain point of your target group, and then propose a solution. How much they will pay you depends on how motivated they are to solve that particular problem.

Once you know what is the motivation, what is the pain point and what value people want but find hard to come by, you will also know where to find your customers. And you will know exactly what to say to them to open up their purses!

You tell people what their problem is, show them that you understand the problem, and then offer a solution. Not all will buy, but many will. That’s a very simple way to pitch your services!

Step 3 – take money first

Once you have a confirmed client, please make sure to take the money. Either an advance. Or if possible, the full amount. This serves two purposes.

One, as a rookie freelancer, you don’t know yet, but collecting money is a big problem for freelancers. A lot of time you do the work and don’t get paid. This is a typical problem in India.

Only serious people will give advance. Those who don’t, don’t work with them. So taking advance ensures that client is serious. I recommend minimum 50% advance.

Exception, when you are very new and do not have a reputation or success stories to show off yet, work for free. For a bit. Maybe a couple of days, maybe 10% of the work. Just to give a taste. Then insist that you must get paid to continue. If you don’t get paid, there may be two reasons. One is that your work is not worth paying for. Introspect, find out the truth. Ask around. See who is getting paid and if there is a difference in quality.

The other possibility is that the employer does not value you, for whatever reason. Or maybe his business is tanking, or just that he wants to exploit people. Either way, don’t waste your time there. Move to another potential client.

Also, taking money already means you must deliver. You make it serious for yourself too. There is no wriggle room after you take that advance. Go and make things happen.

Step 4 – Deliver

A very important step. How good the delivery is decides your future success. Did you do it well enough that you will be asked for the same service again? Are you going to get more, better paid work? Will you get referrals?

All that depends on the quality of delivery. Don’t compromise here.

Step 5 – ask for success stories, testimonials and referrals and showcase them

Many rookies think that after delivery you get paid and it’s over. No, it’s just the beginning if you have done the work well. You must keep in touch, you must give them reminders about when they should take the next set of actions, and you must ask for testimonial, which you are then going to display. In a physical business it can be on the wall, but these days it is far more profitable to get it on the internet. Make sure you get your reviews, testimonial, or case study, whatever makes sense, and put it out there for everyone to see.

Also don’t forget to take the bad feedback too. What could you do better? What was not quite upto the mark. This is also important for you to learn and then evolve.

You got to promote your success. You have to showcase it. Don’t miss that little but critical step. This will help you to get your next set of clients, or even repeat business. Nothing sells like results and success.

Most importantly, get out there and get started. It’s a long way, and you are not going to stumble into a regular income. It is the result of steady and long term effort.

  The post How to earn on the side while you are studying law appeared first on iPleaders.

How to earn on the side while you are studying law published first on https://namechangers.tumblr.com/

[juudgeblog]

How to earn on the side while you are studying law

This article is written by Ramanuj Mukherjee, CEO, iPleaders.

In the last two years of my college, I earned between 50,000 and 90,000 per month, working about 6-7 hours a day. I have helped numerous other students achieve the goal of earning money while studying, usually to support their studies, most in the range of 10,000-15,000 per month. I will tell you how you can too, if you want.

My parents always told me “never run after money, only focus on your studies”.

It’s not that we had a lot of money. We could just about afford the necessities of life. There wasn’t much of discretionary spending possible. We still used to buy tons and tons of books though. Somehow we always had money for books.

I used to come up with business ideas as a kid as well as a teen ager. Those vagaries were strictly discouraged.

Anyway, I got into law school. I took an education loan which was to cover 80% of the fees over 5 years. My father and later mother came up with the rest.

Unfortunately, halfway through my 2nd year the university decided to dramatically increase the fees. From 67000 a year it was suddenly 1.3 lakhs per year. I was dumbfounded. What the hell would I do now?

I remember the anxiety even today. That’s what made me write my first blogpost ever. It was about why such a fee increase was unfair.

First I thought students will revolt and protest. But that never happened.

Most others were not particularly bothered about this fee hike. The average NLU student, at least in those times, used to be fairly rich and this wasn’t even a noticeable increase for them.

Some teachers asked me to apply for a scholarship. I did. But I wasn’t qualified for the scholarship, as preference was given to disabled and those from backward castes. Both my parents worked for government. I wasn’t poor enough to get scholarship, but not rich enough to afford the fee either.

I approached the bank. The manager said that they will increase the loan as I go to a good institute. But they will need a security. My parents had no property to their name except a plot of land where they wanted to build a house someday.

They decided to mortgage it. My mother was planning to sell the little gold she had. They never hesitated. They never wondered what if I don’t get a job after such expensive education etc. I hope I make them right to an extent today.

My heart was breaking. I didn’t want them to mortgage anything.

I told them hold on to it. I still had some time till my existing loan would run out, in the middle of my 3rd year. I had time till then.

So what to do? Now I knew, this is the time. I was going to earn. I didn’t know how, just 19 years old. But I would.

That decision changed my life. Within another year, I was earning more than my parents earned put together, through freelancing. I was creating study material for IMS CLAT coaching, ghost writing books, taking CLAT classes, promoting legal education in schools, and even doing some legal work on the side such as drafting contracts. I not only managed to pay my fees, it also enabled me to do many other things, such as travelling abroad for conferences, traveling to almost every state in India and getting access to the social circles I wanted to be part of. Later, when I sat for job interviews, that experience of doing work on my own was very valuable.

When the goal is clear, there is no stopping.

I wrote an article last week about why doing cheap online courses can be detrimental to one’s career. I also promised in that article that if you can’t afford a properly priced premium course, I will tell you how to earn enough so that you can break free from financial dire straits, so that you can afford to invest in yourself.

Change what you believe

Students are programmed with many belief systems that prevent them from even attempting to earn. Before I tell you what are the specific ways to earn, I want to tell you that unless you detect these faulty programming and take action to counter them, there is very little chance that you are ever going to earn on the side as a student.

Your biggest restraint is that you only have limited time. You are going to compete with people who are working full time. You are not only new, but also forced to work only a few hours. So you must choose what to do and how to do very carefully.

Also, you must be as good as anybody else doing that work, if not better. You have to be professional. You can’t use your age or inexperience to justify low quality work, or undue delays. If you do that, you will be quickly discarded or treated like a lowly intern who gets a stipend and not a salary.

The biggest barrier for most students is that they do not believe that they deserve to be paid for work. If you don’t believe that you deserve, nobody else will either. It all starts from here.

Once you believe firmly that you are going to do work that is good enough to be paid for, the next step is to actually give it your all. The gap between belief and reality has to be bridged with hard work.

But you get what you deserve. Start with the firm belief that you are going to produce work worth paying for. I never doubted this for a moment. But when I started mentoring others, I noticed this was the biggest stumbling block. If you can’t really believe it, fake it till you make it works here.

Remember, the advice I am giving you is counterintuitive. Most people don’t do this and don’t believe in this.

You got to believe.

The first CLAT module I created, I was paid Rs 9000 for it. The last one I developed for someone else, it was Rs 90,000.

The last book I had ghostwritten, brought me around 2,00,000. While I was still a student. I was paying income tax while others just looked forward to attending income tax law classes.

I believed I was worth it, and asked for it without any hesitation. I was worth it. I got it. If I asked for 20,000, I would have got that.

Build a team

One person is nothing. No matter how smart. A team is always better. I used to turn in work at record speed, because I built up a team around me. In every business I have been involved in, my real secret to success has been my team. Relationship with some of the team members and others who still help me today date back to college days! For example, I met my cofounder Abhyuday back in college. Some of the people I got to know back then and collaborated with are now rising stars in their chosen fields. We still collaborate!

Build teams, build relationships, share the benefits with others and do not try to do everything on your own. Your chances of success will be higher if you find the right team.

You need to network

If the people who can potentially give you work do not even know who you are, how are you supposed to get work? You need to play the long game here. People take time to trust. Keep in touch with people, give them reasons to remember you and like you. Give them a taste of your abilities, even if for no cost initially. Once people know that you can generate value for them, its possible to ask for a reasonable price. The more value you generate, and more clear it is to both parties, more you can raise your rates over time.

Networking does not mean giving your cards to people and shaking hands. Networking means meeting people who you need to impress, or build long term relationship with, and then demonstrating to them what value you can generate. Usually, you need to give before you can ask.

More than anything else, treat people well, with respect and kindness. That goes a very long way.

Develop your skills and reputation in a specific area

The biggest mistake you can make is to go wide. You need to go very specific, and very narrow. You need to dominate a small niche rather than targeting a big market.

Let me give you an example. I met a very promising young man in his 1st year. He had good tech talents considering he was a first year law student. But then he wanted to do many things, which one cannot blame him for. But he didn’t do one single, specific thing long enough to make a dent. He tried his hands in this and that, and having dabbled in many different things finally his time in college was up. It is not that he never earned anything, but it was not anything significant because he never committed to one specific thing.

One of the reasons I made very handsome figures as a college student (when I joined a big law firm after graduation, it was only a small pay hike) was that I kept working around the same area over the years. I learnt new skills, worked on new projects, experimented but all were related to education, specifically around how to crack competitive exams, teach law, build online communities, writing blog posts etc. Everything was connected. Teaching, blogging and law were the passion I pursued over all the years till today. If you do one thing for long enough you start getting good at it. You discover new things about it, and get to experiment on new aspects. You also build reputation, create trust all around and the more time you spend the better this factor gets. Those who just dabble will never get to know!

Stay focused. Over the years, build expertise in something, or even a bunch of well-connected skills and if you chose a small niche, you will begin to dominate it even before you graduate. That’s how you get to make money even as a student!

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Step 1 – What would someone pay for?

Consider, what are the skills you have for which people will pay you?

Alternatively, what pain points to people have that you can solve that they will pay you?

In New York, there are dog walkers who make tons of money. Some dog walkers make more money than an engineer or a banker or a lawyer.

How is that possible?

Walking dogs is very important for dog owners. They want a reliable, trustworthy person. A very busy person is ready to pay a decent sum every month to a dog walker because the dog walker takes all the trouble of walking a dog, making time for it, following a schedule etc away.

Note that it doesn’t take great skills. It just takes time and care.

What can you do for wealthy people in your environment to take their trouble away? A common thing is writing the essays for rich kids. All of you must have heard about it. This falls in the same category, but if you think harder you can come up with better problems.

Can you help a lawyer in creating and maintaining a website? Can you help them with content writing?

Every lawyer wants to write books. They have money but they don’t have time. Can you help them to make their dreams of becoming a published author come true? Many will happily give you a very decent sum of money for that.

Can you ghost write articles for them and then help them to publish the same in newspapers and blogs? Of course, you will incorporate their inputs and let them finalize the final look and message. But if you can take away most of the grunt work from them, and do a good job at it, you will be very surprised by how much money you can make.

I had a friend who was drafting petitions and applications for INR 4000 per task back in 2010 for a lawyer in Delhi while he was sitting in Kolkata. The lawyer had too much work, no juniors or patience to train or handle them. He was happy to get the work done reliably and predictably and paid well for it.

I know someone who helps NGOs to raise funds, by making presentations, writing emails, speaking over phone and setting appointments for pitching. She does this as a service for several NGOs and make a very handsome sum.

A law student I know from his first year, began to offer fitness training and dietary advice to the girls in the hostel who wanted to slim down. It was hard to find the first couple of clients, but after that as results were visible, he had more than he could handle and raised his rates. When he graduated, predictably, he chose to go into the fitness industry, and I only assume he earns very well.

One easy thing to do to get quick money is social media marketing. You can help a startup or some local brand to manage their social media presence. Maybe you can manage their snapchat or instagram? If you do it well, in a way that generate revenue or branding for them, you can expect to get paid.

You can even help lawyers to create systems to manage their offices or clients better. Maybe a better filing system? Or introducing software for higher efficiency? They will pay you for it if your service is valuable.

It is also possible to get paid legal work from them. You will not get paid as much as a lawyer does, obviously, but if you can turn in a good first draft, it saves a lot of time for lawyers and the busy ones will pay you for it. You need to figure out who those lawyers are though, and how they are going to trust you.

Always check after internship if the lawyers who were happy with your work will like to give you some work even afterwards. Don’t ask for money at this point, just keep doing it and get them comfortable with the remote working arrangement. Later you can request to be paid! If your work is actually useful, they will not say no.

These are jobs that need not always require a lot of skills. Others require skills you can easily learn, and still others that will take years to learn.

Choose wisely.

Step 2 – How are you going to ask for it

It is not too bad to just walk up to them and ask. Worst you will ever hear is a no. Many a times when I was young I used to walk up to people completely blank, without any preparation and then asked for opportunities. I got rejected a lot. But some people said yes. I stayed in touch with the people who said no as well. Some day some of them did come back!

But the best way is to go prepared. I learned that over time. You can start right from the beginning. It’s much better.

Do a requirement analysis. Talk to people, do market research. Talk to 15-20 people trying to discover the real pain points. Then you will know exactly what you need to offer and how much to charge.

Let me give you an example.

How can you figure out whether to offer guitar lessons in college to other students, or create an youtube channel where you give guitar lessons? Or maybe you should try to find out some wealthy clients outside the college?

It’s tough, right?

Start talking to people. Who are the people who want to learn guitar? What is their motivation? Why are they not already learning? Have they bought a guitar? Do they want you to help them to choose a guitar? What sort of guitar do people want to learn?

And most of all, what is the problem? Why have they not already learned? Where are they stuck?

Maybe you find out that many people who bought expensive guitars then lost motivation. They felt lazy. Is it possible that if you give them lessons inside their hostel room, they will actually do it? Are they ready to pay a decent sum for it? That would depend on their motivation. If the goal is to serenade the girlfriend on her next birthday, and impress her with guitar skills, motivation is high. One would pay.

Similarly, you may find out that the local builders have a big problem in getting certain paperwork done. Lawyers charge a lot. They don’t really need a lawyer to do it. What if you could do it? What if you can get a part time job drafting real estate contracts for 2-3 local builders? What if you start offering services to help them to comply with applicable labour laws?

What if you could find a startup which needs some legal support? Maybe it can’t afford a proper lawyer yet, could you help them with some basic things as a paralegal and charge a fee?

There are thousands of possible options. But to pitch it right, you have to understand what is the pain point of your target group, and then propose a solution. How much they will pay you depends on how motivated they are to solve that particular problem.

Once you know what is the motivation, what is the pain point and what value people want but find hard to come by, you will also know where to find your customers. And you will know exactly what to say to them to open up their purses!

You tell people what their problem is, show them that you understand the problem, and then offer a solution. Not all will buy, but many will. That’s a very simple way to pitch your services!

Step 3 – take money first

Once you have a confirmed client, please make sure to take the money. Either an advance. Or if possible, the full amount. This serves two purposes.

One, as a rookie freelancer, you don’t know yet, but collecting money is a big problem for freelancers. A lot of time you do the work and don’t get paid. This is a typical problem in India.

Only serious people will give advance. Those who don’t, don’t work with them. So taking advance ensures that client is serious. I recommend minimum 50% advance.

Exception, when you are very new and do not have a reputation or success stories to show off yet, work for free. For a bit. Maybe a couple of days, maybe 10% of the work. Just to give a taste. Then insist that you must get paid to continue. If you don’t get paid, there may be two reasons. One is that your work is not worth paying for. Introspect, find out the truth. Ask around. See who is getting paid and if there is a difference in quality.

The other possibility is that the employer does not value you, for whatever reason. Or maybe his business is tanking, or just that he wants to exploit people. Either way, don’t waste your time there. Move to another potential client.

Also, taking money already means you must deliver. You make it serious for yourself too. There is no wriggle room after you take that advance. Go and make things happen.

Step 4 – Deliver

A very important step. How good the delivery is decides your future success. Did you do it well enough that you will be asked for the same service again? Are you going to get more, better paid work? Will you get referrals?

All that depends on the quality of delivery. Don’t compromise here.

Step 5 – ask for success stories, testimonials and referrals and showcase them

Many rookies think that after delivery you get paid and it’s over. No, it’s just the beginning if you have done the work well. You must keep in touch, you must give them reminders about when they should take the next set of actions, and you must ask for testimonial, which you are then going to display. In a physical business it can be on the wall, but these days it is far more profitable to get it on the internet. Make sure you get your reviews, testimonial, or case study, whatever makes sense, and put it out there for everyone to see.

Also don’t forget to take the bad feedback too. What could you do better? What was not quite upto the mark. This is also important for you to learn and then evolve.

You got to promote your success. You have to showcase it. Don’t miss that little but critical step. This will help you to get your next set of clients, or even repeat business. Nothing sells like results and success.

Most importantly, get out there and get started. It’s a long way, and you are not going to stumble into a regular income. It is the result of steady and long term effort.

  The post How to earn on the side while you are studying law appeared first on iPleaders.

How to earn on the side while you are studying law syndicated from https://namechangersmumbai.wordpress.com/

[broke-ass-twat]

all of them . . .

Fuck you and fuck the anonymous asker and lets fucking get this shit started. Also do your goddamn work Izzy.

200: My crush’s name is: Hey Izzy. Because that was such a huge secret199: I was born in: October198: I am really: Bored197: My cellphone company is: AT & T (Are you gonna ask my mother’s maiden name and first pet name now?)196: My eye color is: Brown195: My shoe size is: 11?194: My ring size is: Decently large193: My height is: 6 foot tall god192: I am allergic to: Assholes. And cats and dogs and eggs and milk and eggplant191: My 1st car was: I had a first car?190: My 1st job was: I had a first job?189: Last book you read: The first 6 pages of Cat’s Cradle. Alternatively book 25 of Desolate Era (it’s a Chinese wuxia novel)188: My bed is: Comfortable?187: My pet: Don’t have one186: My best friend: I have several185: My favorite shampoo is: Head and shoulders184: Xbox or ps3: Xbox183: Piggy banks are: Chill182: In my pockets: 2 bic pens, typically my phone, wallet, asthma pump, chapstick, and keys181: On my calendar: I don’t really use calendars180: Marriage is: Something I’ll get to179: Spongebob can: Suck my dick (I don’t really get spongebob?)178: My mom: is caring but could use some chill177: The last three songs I bought were? I don’t honestly remember the last time I bought a song. Which is a lie but I don’t know what I bought176: Last YouTube video watched: Vaguely watched the youtube video for Girls by Mura Masa175: How many cousins do you have? Total of 3 I think174: Do you have any siblings? I have a twin sister173: Are your parents divorced? Yes172: Are you taller than your mom? Definitely171: Do you play an instrument? Nope170: What did you do yesterday? Die slowly

[ I Believe In ]169: Love at first sight: Sort of yeah168: Luck: Sort of but not really167: Fate: No166: Yourself: Honestly not really and that accounts for at least 2 rather important problems I can think of165: Aliens: Sure164: Heaven: No163: Hell: No162: God: No161: Horoscopes: They’re fun and sometimes fool me but no160: Soul mates: Not really?159: Ghosts: Sometimes momentarily hen I se shit move in the dark out of the corner of my eyes158: Gay Marriage: Yah157: War: Depends but yah156: Orbs: ????155: Magic: I fucking wish

[ This or That ]154: Hugs or Kisses: Um. Fucking both. but kisses153: Drunk or High: Depends. Mostly drunk152: Phone or Online: Online151: Red heads or Black haired: Read heads are hot150: Blondes or Brunettes: Brunettes149: Hot or cold: Hot148: Summer or winter: Feeling winter atm (I know its odd)147: Autumn or Spring: Autumn 146: Chocolate or vanilla: Chocolate when eh. Vanilla when stuff is quality145: Night or Day: Night144: Oranges or Apples: Orange143: Curly or Straight hair: Um. Curly?142: McDonalds or Burger King: McDonalds is my shit (cuz apple pie)141: White Chocolate or Milk Chocolate: Milk chocolate you fucking heathen140: Mac or PC: Mac (theyre prettier tho I know PCs can be better)139: Flip flops or high heals: I don’t really wear either. Both are fine.138: Ugly and rich OR sweet and poor: I can be ugly, sweet, and rich. Tho I guess this means ugly person. Ugly and rich since I’d just do whatever the hell I want and be rich137: Coke or Pepsi: Coke136: Hillary or Obama: Obama135: Burried or cremated: Cremate this mess134: Singing or Dancing: Dancing133: Coach or Chanel: My dude I know fuck all about either brand. Still would go with Chanel132: Kat McPhee or Taylor Hicks: Who the fuck?131: Small town or Big city: Big city130: Wal-Mart or Target: They’re both cool. target feels nicer tho129: Ben Stiller or Adam Sandler: I hate them both128: Manicure or Pedicure: manicure127: East Coast or West Coast: This is actually hard. Um. Shit. Hm. Weast coast?126: Your Birthday or Christmas: Christmas. My birthday doesn’t tend to mean a whole lot to me (probably cuz I didn’t really have birthday parties as a kid)125: Chocolate or Flowers: I’ve never gotten flowers and that’d be chill but chocolate124: Disney or Six Flags: Disney probably.123: Yankees or Red Sox: Yankees you fucking heathen

[ Here’s What I Think About ]122: War: Avoid it if possible121: George Bush: No very intelligent120: Gay Marriage: It’s fine119: The presidential election: Kill me118: Abortion: It’s your choice and fuck what other people have to say. Though it’s interesting to think about if one potential person wants the child and the other doesn’t. At which point I feel like whoever really wants it that bad should have sole care of it otherwise it’s unfair to both the child and one who didn’t want it. And if the dude wants the child then it’s still the woman’s choice I feel like? But this is rocky but would make a fun conversation tbh117: MySpace: Stop poking the dead thing with a stick116: Reality TV: Mostly really dumb with marginal entertainment115: Parents: Mine I guess are half really good but hard on me for good reason and the other half I seriously feel like I couldn’t care less about. In general Id hope for them to be caring, understanding, firm, and logical114: Back stabbers: Fuck em113: Ebay: Chill concept I’ve never used112: Facebook: Blackhole for my time111: Work: I hate doing it as it very rarely interests me110: My Neighbors: Chill109: Gas Prices: High I guess?108: Designer Clothes: Can be cool but mostly just why and dumb107: College: Fucking scam but also really cool adult babysitting106: Sports: theyre alright I suppose. Don’t really pay them any mind at all105: My family: I only pay attention to the ones I interact with even though there is a family member I really should talk to but don’t cuz I have a hard time caring although I really should104: The future: Scary

[ Last time I ]103: Hugged someone: Today sorta. If not today then sunday102: Last time you ate: Like an hour ago101: Saw someone I haven’t seen in awhile: Thanksgiving100: Cried in front of someone: It’s been a while. Don’t remember99: Went to a movie theater: During spring break like 2 weeks ago98: Took a vacation: like 2 weeks ago97: Swam in a pool: been a while. Swam in the ocean like 2 weeks ago

96: Changed a diaper: I’ve never done that

95: Got my nails done: never94: Went to a wedding: It’s been a few years. Would’ve liked to go to one this year but couldn’t for some pretty shit reasons93: Broke a bone: Never92: Got a peircing: Never91: Broke the law: Um. Like Saturday90: Texted: like 30 minutes ago

[ MISC ]89: Who makes you laugh the most: Things that are funny. Also myself88: Something I will really miss when I leave home is: Parents paying for shit87: The last movie I saw: Get out86: The thing that I’m looking forward to the most: Figuring out my shit85: The thing im not looking forward to: the future84: People call me: Kemi83: The most difficult thing to do is: Have self control and follow through on it82: I have gotten a speeding ticket: Never81: My zodiac sign is: Libra80: The first person i talked to today was: Today a girl named sara cuz I was up and around at 2am79: First time you had a crush: Like elementary school78: The one person who i can’t hide things from: There is no one I can’t hide things from77: Last time someone said something you were thinking: I have no idea. Probably within the last few days76: Right now I am talking to: Well right now I’m not talking to anyone75: What are you going to do when you grow up: Hopefully happy and relatively successful74: I have/will get a job: hopefully over the summer73: Tomorrow: Is another day72: Today: Is my current reality that I really should use a lot more wisely but tend not to71: Next Summer: It’d be nice to be a more productive person70: Next Weekend: Probably gonna be doing fuck all instead of doing work69: I have these pets: I don’t have pets68: The worst sound in the world: Nails on a  chalkboard, velcro ripping, people chewing with their fucking mouths open. I can’t choose one67: The person that makes me cry the most is: Um. Prolly my stepfather?66: People that make you happy: My friends occasionally family when they aren’t disappointed in me65: Last time I cried: I dunno64: My friends are: Chill63: My computer is: Cool but mostly a huge distraction I literally can’t live without cuz I need it for everything. And I also really like it.62: My School: Is meh. Some chill people61: My Car: Don’t have one60: I lose all respect for people who: I suppose cheat59: The movie I cried at was: I dunno58: Your hair color is: Black57: TV shows you watch: I dunno. A lot 56: Favorite web site: Youtube probably55: Your dream vacation: Europe54: The worst pain I was ever in was: I don’t remember feeling pain I thought was all that intense. Like shit has hurt a lot but not like holy fuck I’m screaming53: How do you like your steak cooked: Medium52: My room is: A little dirty atm51: My favorite celebrity is: Um. Gordon Ramsey I suppose? Don’t really have one50: Where would you like to be: In a very nice restaurant sipping very nice whiskey with a lot of money. Ive said this before.49: Do you want children: Maybe eventually. At least 2 but not more than 348: Ever been in love: yeah47: Who’s your best friend: I have multiple46: More guy friends or girl friends: I definitely have more girl friends45: One thing that makes you feel great is: music44: One person that you wish you could see right now: My girlfriend would be nice to just chill with tbh43: Do you have a 5 year plan: Don’t be a failure is sorta just it. realistically grad school.42: Have you made a list of things to do before you die: I actually haven't 41: Have you pre-named your children: Nope40: Last person I got mad at: Um. I dunno39: I would like to move to: Somewhere on the west coast38: I wish I was a professional: Chef

[ My Favorites ]37: Candy: Twix is up there36: Vehicle: Teslas are pretty fucking cool35: President: Obama probably wasn’t the best but damn was he chill34: State visited: California never really disappoints me33: Cellphone provider: AT &T I guess? What the hell sort of question is this32: Athlete: Um. Don’t really have one. Ichiro Suzuki seems pretty chill. Curtis Grandson also seems chill. What can I say my stepdad likes the Yankees. Well so does my father31: Actor: Um. idk30: Actress: Idk29: Singer: Adele comes to mind cuz damn that voice. But I probably have others I like more and don’t remember28: Band: Mura Masa is high up there for producers. So is Flume, Ekali atm, Ta-ku, and Snago27: Clothing store: Don’t really have one. Uniqlo is pretty chill26: Grocery store: Fairways is chill25: TV show: Adventure time probably24: Movie: Don’t really have one tbh23: Website: I Don’t per se have a favorite. I like tumblr and Facebook 22: Animal: Deer are chill21: Theme park: Don’t have one. Which ever one has the wildest roller coasters20: Holiday: Um. Christmas19: Sport to watch: Baseball if I had to choose18: Sport to play: Ultimate frisbee17: Magazine: Cooks Illustrated is cool16: Book: Don’t really have one15: Day of the week: Friday or saturday14: Beach: Orange beach atm cuz it’s the nicest one i’ve been to13: Concert attended: Shitttttttt. Alina Baraz and Jauz are really high up there12: Thing to cook: I like making pasta cuz I do all sorts of shit to the sauce and I’m good at it. I also make pretty decent pork chops and shit. I dunno. 11: Food: Sushi probably. Also like steak and curry a lot.10: Restaurant: Um. Five guys? I don’t really have one.9: Radio station: Don’t really listen to radio8: Yankee candle scent: Don’t know any7: Perfume: same as above6: Flower: honeysuckle5: Color: Blue and green4: Talk show host: Don’t have one3: Comedian: Louis C.K. is great2: Dog breed: Cant choose1: Did you answer all these truthfully? Very

#me