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yshai-tia · 3 years

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. layercake

.LAYER ONE: THE OUTSIDE

name: y’shai tia

“at yer service, mate. aye, though ye might wanna ask again inna moon ‘er so-- lil’ more papers ‘ta push through an’ the last bit’ll change there. still can’t gods damned believe it if y’ask me.”

eye color: blue (left), green (right)

“pree’ common combo fer seekers, y’know? green from me ma, can only guess the blue from dear ol’ pops. is tha’ how it works? i ain’ a genetics sorta guy.”

hair style/color: black, lackadaisical

“oi now, leas’ it ain’ a qiqirn’s nest. take care ov’ me braids though, if yer lucky jus’ might tell ye what they mean some day.”

height: 5 fulms, 9 ilms

“look, ‘m tall fer a miqo’te, thas’ gotta count fer somethin’. ain’ about the height, mate, s’all ‘bout how ye use what yer slapped with.”

clothing style: predominately black with abhorrent amounts of leather

“what, like either ov’ those things ‘er ev’r gonna go outta style? lookin’ good an’ bein’ durable, ye can’t really go wrong there. an’ it ain’t like ‘m allergic ‘ta change, startin’ ‘ta get used ‘ta this whole buttoned ‘ta the throat business. sorta.”

best physical feature: absolutely everything, take your personal pick

“c’mon now, lookit yers truly, notta shortage ov’ ‘bests’ in sight, choosin’ jus’ one would jus’ be cruel. thick thighs, thick arse-- lil’ thick in th’ head sometimes but, aye, leas’ yer lookin’ at somethin’ nice.”

.LAYER TWO: THE INSIDE

your fears: physical restrictions, i.e. being bound, failing to protect those he loves and/or hurting them himself, powerlessness and ineptitude, particularly large coeurls

“cor, jus’ had ‘ta go from a fun question straight ‘ta this. lighten up, mate.”

your guilty pleasure: who’s guilty?

“ain’ nothin’ guilty ‘bout indulgence-- an’ i sure as shit don’ think ‘bout-- ... ah, fuck. guess there was one time... but that was long ‘go now, ain’ no point bringin’ it up.”

your biggest pet peeve: don’t get him started

“the fact that ul’dah exists, does that fuckin’ count? aye, yer right, ‘ta big ‘ta be a peeve. cor, i dunno, what ye cryin’ over spilt yak’s milk fer. i guess... aye, well, this is a personal one-like, but whiddle this fer a second; self-proclaimed sorts ov’ engineers who go off wif’out a single thought fer consequences. ... aye, aye, i hear ye, real fuckin’ bold fer someone like me ‘ta bitch ‘bout that, but, listen, a guy can change. it’s one thing ‘ta fuck ‘round with things ye don’ understand fer the sake of curiousity but ye also don’ see me gettin’ ass deep in allagan bullshit jus’ cause there might be a fancy toy there that tickles me boredom away fer a spell. shit’s got its conveniences, aye, not like i dunno the uses ova’ tomephone-- but most ov’ it is also fuckin’ dangerous, not sayin’ that it shouldn’ be explored proper, but not by some renegade blighter who fancies himself some magitek wiz so far up his own arse it makes yer local garlean look like a dozen o’ roses.

swear, ye got folks out here thinkin’ jus’ cause they can take apart a chronometer ‘er do some basic maintenance on a firearm that they’re ready fer solo-scavenging-- next ye know they’re wadin’ in aetherochemical spills an’ huffin’ ceruleum.

so that’s one fer the road there, ask me again sometime an’ i’ll enlighten ye ‘bout all the fuckin’ joys ov’ seeker racism ‘ve ‘ad the pleasure of gettin’ ‘ta know.”

your ambition for the future: much and more

“one day ‘atta time has always been me go of things, aye, gander though i ain’t without dreams, ‘specially now with tha’ stability in me life-- let me think ‘bout things that i nev’r really thought mattered ‘ta much ‘ta me ‘fore, the future an’ like.

firs’ thing that comes ‘ta mind would be me projects, bein’ able ‘ta have me own workshop has been both a blessin’ an’ a curse; blessin’ fer obvious reasons, curse cause ‘m startin’ ‘ta have one ‘ta many irons in the fire, if ye whiddle me meanin’. the biggest one though... even i gotta admit tha’ this is a generational project at bes’ outlook, but. workin’ ta’wards bein’ able ‘ta purify an’ clean the land ov’ the remnants of war-- speakin’ ov’ ceruleum spills an’ the like. with hope me husband says that we could maybe one day bring th’ elementals’ blessin’ back ‘ta tainted lands, thas’ his field of expertise at work there... jus’ bein’ able ‘ta rid the land ov’ imperial consequence is a worthwhile goal ‘ta me, i reckon.

oth’r than that.. there’s some silly things, aye, winna big marksman competition ov’ sorts, fish up a catch that no one’s ev’r seen ‘fore, get stronger... thas’ one thas’ nev’r changed, fer differ’nt reasons now mind.”

.LAYER THREE: THOUGHTS

your first thoughts waking up: depends on the morning

“considerin’ the curr’nt season an’ all, most of me mornins’ start with me husband latchin’ on ‘ta me an’ not lettin’ me leave the bed at leas’ an extra bell fer the sake of warmth.

which is ‘ta say me first thoughts when wakin’ are pree’ fuckin good ones.”

what you think about the most: his husband, work, personal projects, underlying worries and responsibilities he’s not prone to publicly airing

“i ain’ exactly the ‘fee-low-sof-ick-al’ type, mate. keep it simple-like, thinkin’ ‘bout what’s in front ov’ me, the next step aft’r that.”

what you think about before bed: depends on the night

“‘pends on if ‘m too fucked out ‘ta even think ‘fore sleep takes me ‘er not. still, thoughts still mostly the same ‘gardless-- usually somethin’ long the lines of jus’ how godsdamned lucky i really am.”

you think your best quality is: once again.... take your personal pick

“well, ‘lready mentioned me ass, me thighs... if ye fancy scars me chest an’ back are pree’ damn nice too, me arms got some neat lookin’ ones lemme-- oh, y’don’t mean physical this time. cor, why didn’ ye say so.

shit, uhh... well, i ain’ the type ‘ta give up, come hell ‘er high water. shit tha’ might be a flaw but fuck it, it gets results, at leas’.”

.LAYER FOUR: WHAT’S BETTER?

single or group dates: single

“the hell issa group date? like a bunch’a folk all mated goin’ out? separate mated pairs? yer missin’ me here. only got eyes fer one, so the point is prolly moot.”

to be loved or respected: respected

“this issa easy one. trus’ me, know what is like bein’ ‘loved’ without respect, shit’s fun fer a spell, strokes the ego ‘til yer cummin’ yer own pride an’ fumes, but is all the same as a grog binge down at the Wench-- ev’ry single time ye’ll wake up feelin’ like shite an’ prayin fer death. ye can get mighty high on’a pain an’ pleasure cycle like that, aye, but ‘ventually the pain wins out.”

beauty or brains: they correlate

“me baby’s got both, so it ain’t like i gotta choose. ‘m a spoiled bastard, i know.”

dogs or cats: both

“cute buggers aren’t they, the both ov’ em. been at the mercy ov’ the teeth ov’ ‘em both too-- from coeurls ‘ta imperial trained bloodhounds. still, can’t rightly hate the animal fer instincts an’ trainin’, all jus’ tryin ‘ta survive.”

.LAYER FIVE: DO YOU?

lie: naturally. but also poorly

“ain’ ‘xactly me strongest suit, fair, but ‘ll bullshit me way ‘round somethin’ if i gotta.”

believe in yourself: of course-- sincerity is a non-factor

“fake it ‘til ye make it, mate. call it cheesy writin’ on the wall ‘er what’ver ye like, shit does the job. no one gives a shit how ye feel ‘bout yerself-- jus’ fuckin’ tell yerself that ye got this an’ go. don’ look back.”

believe in love: he’s in it

“kinda hard ‘ta refute somethin’ ‘m experiencin’, y’know.”

want someone: every second of every day

“jus’ ‘cause ye already have it don’ mean that ye stop wantin it. aye, if anythin’ jus’ want ‘em even moreso. constantly, shit never stops. it’s fuckin’ heaven, lemme tell ye.”

.LAYER SIX: EVER?

been on stage: not professionally

“nothin’ like singin’ er dancin’, less ye count bar tables as impromptu stages.”

done drugs: not always consensually. but a moko edible every now and again isn’t such a crime.

“relax, ain’ like i make a habit ov’ it. special occasion, really. don’ fancy bein’ out ov’ it ‘ta of’en.”

changed who you were to fit in: naturally

“ye gotta if ye wanna survive beyond yer own comforts, mate-- that is if yer lucky ‘ta be born inta’ such ‘ta begin with. look, is called adaptin’, an’ if ye haven’ noticed we miqo’te are pree’ fuckin’ good at it. not even mentionin’ tryna fit in at home-- when i left it was change ‘er die; changed when i started learnin’ the common eorzean tongue, changed when i started dressin’ different, when i started learnin’ how ‘ta act, walk an’ talk so as ‘ta survive, hold me own. y’see it all the godsdamn time-- lookit every miqo’te who changed their name once they started livin’ in one ov’ the big cities, aye, not all ov’ ‘em do, but ‘nuff do ‘fer us ‘ta notice.

it’s adaption. it’s survival. hide parts ov’ yerself ‘ta preserve the greater whole. ain’t sayin’ it’s a nice thing tha’ we gotta do it-- but, aye, survival rarely is ev’r nice.

... if yer lucky though, if ye live long ‘nuff, ye can start reclaimin’ them hidden parts ov’ yerself back, aye, s’process.”

.LAYER SEVEN: FAVORITES

favorite color: black

“were ye expectin’ anythin’ else? ain’t gonna say no ‘ta gold either-- ‘specially of the rosey sort. they jus’ go ta’gether so well, y’know.”

favorite animal: jaguars, of course

“biased? me? ‘course not.”

favorite food: seafood in general, rustic homecooked meals, spicy food, way too sweet cream-filled coffee, nostalgic preference for almonds, coconuts, and fruit based desserts

“ye ev’r have those lil’ balls of cod deep fried in batter? could get meself sick on those buggers. too damn good. ‘specially if ye add a generous ‘mount ov’ dragon pepper ‘ta the fish ‘fore hand. ‘course if it’s good, fresh catch then ye can’t go wrong with simplicity neither, crab meat straight from the leg with no bells an’ whistles issa snack fit fer the finest.”

favorite game: card games, puzzles, anything that can spur fun competition, whether it be from hunting, to racing, to a snowball fight, isn’t adverse to the cheap thrill of betting on a race chocobo every now and again

“anythin’ can be good, fun competition if yer willin’ an’ rarin’, nothin’ like a lil’ friendly fire under yer arse ‘ta get the legs movin’ an’ cogs whirrin’.”

.LAYER EIGHT: AGE

day your next birthday will be: 28th day of the first umbral moon

“would be pree’ wild if me nameday wasn’ on.... me nameday.”

how old will you be: 29

“ugh, c’mon, i’m tryin’ not ‘ta think ‘bout it. knock it off.”

age you lost your virginity: between the ages of 19 and 21, he does not specify

“whas’ it matter? past is the past. leave it alone.”

does age matter: to an extent

“i ain’ no damn preacher, but it’s pree’ godsdamned obvious when someone is exertin’ power ov’r another. s’reason there be words like kid an’ adult. don’ fuckin’ be that person.”

.LAYER NINE: IN A BOY OR GIRL

best personality: bullheaded, smart, witty, compassionate, strong-hearted and strong-willed, brave, stubborn, impatient, and rather tactless

“maybe toss in a damn fine arse an’ voice like’a songbird-- wait, those ain’t personality traits?”

best eye color: rose gold

“bonus points if they gotta nice, natural glow ‘ta’em.”

best hair color: a warm rose peach with a streak of pale blonde

“what? ‘m a guy who jus’ knows what he likes. an’ i like what i like, cuff me if issa crime.”

best thing to do with a partner: exist with them in the entirety of life’s capacity

“call me fuckin’ sentimental, but learnin’ ‘ta fuckin’ live, really godsdamn live, with ‘em rath’r than jus’ survive... can’t fuckin’ be beat, jus’ can’t. shit’s golden, can’t wait ‘ta do it ev’ry single day on this star ‘til me times’ up.”

.LAYER TEN: FINISH THE SENTENCE

i love: “me husband.”

i feel: “pree’ chuffed, might go fer a nap.”

i hide: “poorly. mean have ye seen me, mate? ain’t easy hidin’ when yer this big. less’ maybe was in a house built with roes in mind.”

i miss: “me ma. aye, still lot’sa things that make me miss home, wouldn’ change where i am now fer the world, mind.”

i wish: “... fish. er, sorry, mind blanked there. they rhyme. been at sea fer the past few days now.”

tagged by: @ffxiv-sunderedsouls tagging: this is a stupidly late response so not sure how alive this particular meme is still but, here’s the deal; you wanna do this? do it and tag me THAT WAY i’ll know in the future to tag you in other things, good deal, right? right?!

#.memes #.sun kissed panther || y'shai #shai really out here like #whatever nothing bothers me #But Actually #And Another Thing #fuck this and that and the kitchen sink actually #what a boomer #for all he's grown he still never shuts up #sorry for the long post ;;;

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andrina-the-amazingsupergenius · 4 years

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When in Blackpool, the Las Vegas of England || Rowdy and Randy

Summary: Andrina gets the best idea for a joke she’s ever had.

@n0ttinghamshad0w

ANDRINA Andrina was in Blackpool, bitches! How did she get here? She didn’t know. It was one of those Andy-spirals that started off as a joke, then turned into a dare, then turned into a promise, then turned into a swear. She’d just been closing up shoppe in Whosits and Whatsits, checking on their stash. She’d just put on some music– Highway to Hell by AC/DC. She just pretended to play air guitar, just fell into Rob’s arms, just made out with him a little on top of Attina’s desk, when the words road trip fell out of her lips. Wouldn’t it be so funny? she’d said. And maybe Rob said something about there being a couple of buyers who might be interested in Cruella’s finest. And couldn’t they be there, and back again, before anyone knew it? And no she wasn’t drunk, when she started the trip, coasting along in the Whosits van. And she wasn’t drunk when they got to Blackpool either, after midnight, and found the downtown alive and throbbing, bleeding light like a wound. And she wasn’t drunk when she had sex with Rob in the loo of an old arcade, after completely kicking his arse at Pacman, his hair in one of her hands, her raffle tickets in the other. She was, actually, just polishing off a cocktail when they started playing Blackjack. She was, maybe, getting a little tipsy, and a little handsy, as she watched Rob count cards and get away with it. By the time they left, it was 3 in the morning and they were a few hundred quid richer. Andrina’s fingers were caressing the nape of Rob’s neck and she was thinking about fucking him again. That’s when the sweet voice of Freddie Mercury caught her pinball eyes. She turned her head to the sweet rock music of Don’t Stop Me Now, and out of nowhere, Andy started laughing. “Hey, you know what would be so funny?” Andy said, sliding her hand down Rob’s spine. She sipped at the vanilla milkshake she’d just bought cheap outta a McDonalds, and her eyes glinted when she met Rob’s own. “If we got married here.”

ROB This was the closest he’d been to home in ‘bout two years now. ‘Course they weren’t even that close, mind you. ‘Course Rob wasn’t supposed to be thinkin’ of Nottingham as home. ‘Course Rob was supposed to have left Swynlake soon as the Davis job was over, find Tuck and Martin and Jo once again. Funny how plans change. Here he was now, pockets full of money he’d won and he’d whispered in Andrina’s ear that maybe they should consider a career in gamblin’ instead — she’d make a mad good poker pro, if he had to guess. Briefly, he entertained travelin’ the world, goin’ to casinos in Monaco and Las Vegas, places glitzier and more glamorous than lil’ Blackpool — his head spinnin’ with possibilities, with thoughts of suave suits and sparkly dresses and then Andrina spoke. He let out a laugh. That was the furthest thing from what he was thinkin’ right now really and so amused was he that he near scooped her up and planted a kiss right on her mouth. “Imagine the two of us gettin’ married at all,” he said, leanin’ over to take a sip of her milkshake. And ‘cuz it was a dumb joke by Andrina, he went along with it, of course, ‘cuz that’s what the two of ‘em did. It was sorta like a game. Well it was really a game — sometimes against one another, sometimes on the same team. The only rule, really, was that they had fun. And Rob did like havin’ fun. “Here’s how it’ll go,” he said with a grin. “I’ll knock the rings off a vacationin’ couples hand — a rich one, mind you, only the best for my betrothed. And you’ll sweet talk a dress from a shop clerk who’s sweet on you, not even a dress maybe just a veil or somethin’. And we’d have to get married by that bloke over there — “ Rob pointed at the Freddie Mercury impersonator. “‘Cuz it’s not real love unless it’s sung by Freddie, you know.”

ANDRINA She loved this game. Andrina actually loved a lot of things. She once thought that wasn’t the case-- that she was sort of a heartless monster (lol) and the love gene had skipped her. But since she’d started stealing things, Andrina realized that her love gene was just different. Maybe she didn’t have one or two hobbies-- maybe she had a whole bucket-full, and that was okay. Maybe she didn’t want to go on dates or get a boyfriend and maybe she really was going to be Wine Aunt. But that wasn’t failure. She wasn’t heartless. Andrina loved nights that ended in a completely different place than they began. She loved the chaos of her room, its pieces always spread out like she was a magpie with her nest in constant creation. She hated working the counter at Whosits, but she loved sorting through the boxes of donations. She loved playing dress-up; she loved sex in public places; she loved getting in the Andrina-Zone between the hours of midnight and 4 in the morning, where the world was quiet and it zeroed in to whatever weirdo project she was working on. Those hours were Andrina at her most exhilarated, creative, blissed out. She stumbled into bed exhausted and happy as if she’d had the best sex in her life, though Andrina would tell you it was always better than sex. She didn’t understand the thrill her sisters got from crushing on this or that person or the dreams they had about husbands, wives, kids-- even empires. But she knew what it meant to love. She didn’t think she loved Rob, but she loved the type of life he gave her. She loved that he never pushed her into stupid boxes. She loved every night like this one. It was between the hours of midnight and 4. The Andrina-Zone. Her favourite hours. So maybe that’s what made that particular, stupid box appeal on that night. Because it wasn’t just a box, it was a story. Rob told it so well, Andrina’s heart was suddenly pounding, she wanted to know more. “Ooooo, the height of romance-- why, I do declare, Mr. Gardner, if I won’t just marry you right on the spot.” Andrina affected her voice into the buttery accent of a Hollywood movie star. She cooed. “I want a rock as big as the moon, Mr. Gardner! Will you steal me the moon?” She batted her eyelashes at him. She giggled but then her eyes flashed and she was Andrina again. “I dare you. Hey, whoever gets back to the chapel first wins a prize!”

ROB The game was on. Rob tugged Andrina’s hand to his lips, pressing a fresh milkshake sticky kiss to the back of her hand, and then dropped it, giving a two-fingered salute as he backed away. “Prize to be determined by winner — starting now!” And off he dashed. Sometimes, if he really wanted to get thinkin’ about things, Rob realized he was turnin’ 30 this year, which never seemed like an age he’d even get to, really. He figured he’d be caught by then, figured that like many of the blokes he’d grown up with, he’d be lost to drugs or to the cops ‘cuz of somethin’ else. But he was lucky — he was lucky and hey, he dinnit know the makeup of his DNA, but he looked enough like everyone else to get by. And he was very good at what he did and so here he was, almost 30, older than he thought he’d ever turn and still just as wild as he was at 18. Well, he was more careful now. Dinnit draw attention to himself. Dinnit get into fights. Instead, he slipped into crowded casinos and bars and he looked for couples sloshed outta their minds. Rings were tricky little buggers. Try a wrong hand, with someone whose ring was just tight enough, and you were easily caught. Rob waited a lil by the bar, orderin’ a drink and keepin’ an eye out for easy marks. For the bloke — he spotted an older fella, sittin’ with a girl who had to be at least half his age. On his left hand, a wedding band. Rob kept his eye trained on this fella, ‘cuz he knew at one point this man’d slip his ring into his pocket, feelin’ too guilty about flirting with the pretty young bird with the reminder of a wife at home. This happened quicker than Rob anticipated, which dinnit make him feel at all bad, as he brushed past and slipped his hand in the man’s jacket pocket and secured the gold ring. It was more varied with stealin’ a women’s ring. He could check the loo, see if anyone forget their ring as they washed their hands. He could hope that there was a gal who had a similar mindset as that old bloke. But really, the best bet in a place like this was to find a bird who was too skinny, too jittery, wearing fancy clothes and with pristine skin — someone drunk enough to say yes to a dance and not notice if in grabbin’ her hand, Rob slipped off her ring. He spotted a bird like that, and just his luck, it was someone at a Hen party — not the bride, but another gal and everyone at Hen parties, ‘specially Hen parties thrown by rich women, wanted to dance with fit scrappy blokes. The girl in question was blonde and had massive fake tits and plump fake lips and before Rob asked her to dance, he heard her talking loudly to her friends about sendin’ back her meals last night at dinner and how she had to fire her last chauffeur for takin’ time off to see his newborn baby. So yeah, he dinnit feel bad as he snagged the large diamond off her ring finger. She was so distracted by the fact he was whisperin’ some dumb sexy thing into her ear that she barely noticed. Rings secured, Rob bolted back out into the night, racing to the chapel as fast as he could. He saw Andrina right across from him, ‘bout the same distance away, and then grit his teeth and ran the remaining distance.

ANDRINA Andrina loved games, but she loved winning more. So as Rob pulled away, she was already laughing, her victory a bright spark in each eye. They hadn’t established any rules, which meant that Andrina could cheat if she wanted. And duh, she wanted. Cheating never cheapened a victory; it sweetened it, reminding Andrina that she was clever, and she loved being clever. And without Rob around to curb the worst of her impulses, she’d give into them. So Andrina didn’t bother to race off into the city, to find some shoppe with its lights still on. She knew how this worked. She’d seen movies and TV and stuff (wasn’t life just like movies and TV and stuff?) Andrina slurped at her milkshake and strided toward the very chapel they were supposed to meet at. She walked right in and up to the desk. “Hey, do you guys do, like, bridal veils and dress rentals and stuff?” she asked the man working at the counter. The man started at the desk, looking up from his phone. His eyes were bloodshot. Ooooooh he was high as fuck. “And by stuff, I also mean weed, you have any of that too?” “Wh--” “I’m kidding! Kind of. I am if you are,” Andrina flashed a smile and leaned over the desk, showing off her cleavage. “We...are a wedding chapel,” the man stated very slowly. He licked his lips. “We do have uh, tuxes and dresses available with some of our packages, listed here in the brochure…” “Here’s the thing,” Andrina said and she leaned in even closer. “I sort of have a bet with a friend. Can I like, just borrow it?” “Uh.” “I’ll give you the rest of my milkshake,” Andrina sang, giving it a shake. She tilted her head and grinned. “And I won’t tell your manager you groped me.” The man’s jaw went slack. Ten and a half minutes later, Andrina was outside, dressed in a cheap wedding dress, with a joint between her teeth for good measure. “I WIN!” she shouted toward Rob. “By all means, take your time! Maybe I’ll just marry my new friend, Earl!”

ROB “Ah, fuck,” said Rob, but he smiled and sprinted the last bit of the way. Reachin’ into his pocket, he pulled out the ring, and as he reached Andrina, he more or less crash landed onto one knee, holdin’ out that big, obnoxious rock that he’d swiped. “Andrina Genieve Triton,” said Rob, voice all serious, as he held out the ring. “Will you do me the honor of marryin’ me?” This was a grand game — a grand joke, yeah? Imagine scrappy Robin Hunt from Nottingham ever getin’ married. ‘Course it would be somewhere like this busted wedding chapel in Blackpool, with rings he stole. When he’d thought of marriage in the past, it seemed like somethin’ impossible: Rob was not a man who wore stuffy suits in a proper church and said bullshit lines in front of a priest. That’s what most girls wanted — maybe not a church, but a country club. Maybe not a priest, but a speech from their fathers, a best man and all that bullshit. Andrina dinnit though. Andrina had a bloody joint in her mouth now and the wedding dress she wore looked like a Halloween costume with its gaudy jewels and plunging neckline. She looked like the best goddamn thing he’d seen in his life. “Well whaddya say?” said Rob, still on one knee.

ANDRINA: The ring was gorgeous. Also, really ugly. It was both these things at the same time, and Andrina’s eyes widened at the sight of it, before she burst into laughter. Of all the ridiculous things that Andrina had ever done in her whole life-- this was the most ridiculous. A spontaneous trip to Blackpool! Gambling, sex in the bathroom, milkshakes, Earl, a costume wedding dress! And now she was looking at some kind of Kardashian mistake of a ring-- she had no idea if any of those stones were real, because they were the kind of thing that looked so shiny and over-the-top you had to second-guess, but also maybe it was real, and Rob held in his hand more money than any of them had ever had in their bank accounts combined (and that was saying something for Andrina, Daddy’s Little Princess). And here he was, offering it to her. And was he serious? Suddenly, Andrina didn’t know. Suddenly, she was looking down at the only boy who had never asked her to be anything that she wasn’t, and he was wearing that smile of his-- one that looked like he was always hiding the best part of an inside joke. She wanted to kiss that mouth. Andrina wondered if that meant she was in love with him. She wondered it, and nothing moved inside of her. No big firework moment-- but none of the cold, clammy fear either, that had always taken her by the neck and never let her go. She could marry this person and she didn’t think it would change anything, besides the fact that she’d have this massive, ugly ring to wave in people’s faces. Also, she could call herself Mrs. Gardner in an affected posh accent, which was always fun. Mrs. Andrina Gardner. Or Mrs. Andrina Hunt, or whatever. “I think I dared you first, that’s what I say,” Andrina declared. She grinned. She yanked up Rob by his collar, took the cigar out of her mouth, and planted a kiss on his lips, dirty and greedy and still tasting a little bit like milkshake. When it broke, she stuck the cigar in Rob’s mouth, took the ring, and slid it on her hand. She fanned it in front of her face. “I’ll do it if you’ll do it,” she said. And that was definitely a yes in Andrina-speak.

ROB Hell, they’d come this far and Rob wasn’t about to back out now. Did he want to get married? He dinnit know. Getting married was somethin’ he’d just never thought about. When Andrina kissed him though, hard and fast and sticky, he had the quick little thought that if somethin’ ever happened — if he couldn’t kiss her anymore — he’d be missin’ something more than just her lips. Not to say he wanted her to be the only person he kissed from here on out (or vice verse), but just that if he couldn’t kiss her well, then — Look, this was all some complicated stuff to be thinkin’ about when he was supposed to be havin’ the happiest day of his life, yeah? He didn’t answer her directly. Cigar still in his mouth, he grabbed her and lifted her up bridal style and spun around a little, before marching right into the chapel. “Oi!” he said to the greasy-lookin’ bloke at the counter. “We’re here to get married! Where do we do that at?” Determined not to put Andrina down till the moment they were in front of whatever sorta makeshift aisle they had in this horrendous lookin’ building. The greasy bloke grabbed some forms and led them through a door, down to a room dressed up in pink gawdy hearts and flowers and floatin’ lil naked babies. He plopped Andrina down then and extended his arm to her. “Ready?” he asked. There was still a teasin’ look in his eye, of course, but it was coupled with just a bit of seriousness. ‘Cuz here they were, here he was with Andrina wearin’ some trashy rental gown and ring he’d nicked at a nightclub, lookin’ at him like he was a prize she just won at a carnival. He looked at her and he felt… well happy. Ahem. He turned away, shouting at greasy fellow. “Can we get a wedding march here? Or something dancey? I wanna do this proper, mate. Only the best for the love of my life.”

ANDRINA: Rob lifted her up and Andrina squealed, instantly kicking her feet as if she was trying to escape. Rob’s grip was firm though. He had her locked in his arms. Locked down, some might say-- hardy har har, marriage is an oppressive institution that people still willingly entered despite a shitton of sexist comments and attitudes!!!!!!! But Andrina could escape if she wanted. Elbow Rob in the face and give the bugger a nosebleed and call the whole thing off. She’d even laugh it off and make it impossible for Rob to get mad at her. She knew how to play her cuteness as a shield like that. But she didn’t want to escape. She kind of wanted to get married. Why not? It wasn’t permanent. No matter what anyone said, marriage was a checkbox, and Andrina could check it off tonight, and erase it tomorrow. But she wanted to say, at least once, she’d been married. In Blackpool. On a whim. To the love of her life-- or maybe not-- but certainly to a lad she liked more than she’d ever liked any boy. So she struggled only to make this more fun, and if she was playing a part, she was playing damsel, for once. God knows she’d never play that part again. And then it was time, and she clicked down onto her boot heels and flipped her hair. She pretended to sniff snootily and tugged down at her sweater as though she was adjusting some kind of fancy bodice. Then she weaved her arm through Rob’s and waited for the music. The wedding march sounded and Andrina turned to Rob with her Serious (™) face on. “Race you down the aisle,” she said, Seriously. And then she darted down the aisle, yelping as she felt the veil stuck in her hair give way a little. She reached up to secure it, and nearly tripped over the cheap dress. Rob caught her, and then they were laughing again, spinning the rest of the way, to the intolling organs and a bored looking for-hire officiant at the other end. When they arrived, she was out of breath, but grinning. She flashed her ring at the officiant. “Pretty, innit?” “Beautiful,” deadpanned the very bored bloke. She wondered if this place paid more than McDonalds or Starbucks. Hmm, back-up options for a career… “Ahem. We are gathered here today--” “Wait! Rob, play my dad for a second. You gotta give me away.” She said and elbowed him in the side.

ROB “Right, o’course,” said Rob without a moment’s hesitation. He darted back down to the end of the aisle. The rent-a-preacher stared at the both of them. Rob extended his arm out to Andrina and did his very best JEFF Triton impression. “You look beautiful, darling,” he said, making his voice deeper which wasn’t necessarily how JEFF sounded, but it sounded vaguely what Rob imagined fathers to sound like. “I’m so happy that you’ve found someone for you.” He didn’t know what fathers said to daughters on their wedding days, but he imagined it went something like that. Puffing out his chest, he stomped down the aisle as the music played again. The bored pastor, preacher, random official person sighed. “Are you ready now?” he asked. Rob saluted, still pretending to be JEFF, and then took his place as Rob. He clasped his hands together like a groom in a movie, even though he was wearing a Dead Kennedys t-shirt and some old worn jeans, he pretended he was in some fancy tuxedo. “Ahem. So, like I said we are gathered here today to join together this man and this woman in Holy Matrimony...did you wanna do your own vows or just do the ‘for better or worse’ bit?” “Nah I can do my own,” said Rob. He wasn’t about to say some church bullshit. He cleared his throat as the pastor bloke man person went about all the other “Andrina,” said Rob, clearing his throat. “You’re absolutely batshit and I say that as someone who’s too hard to handle for literally every person in the world I've met before. You’re sexy and fun, but you’re also my partner in crime.” A smirk here, ‘cuz that was literal eyooo. “And you know, “ Rob continued, a little more sincere now if you knew what to listen for, but you’d have to really know what to listen for in Rob’s voice. “I don’t think there’s been many girls in my life I’ve wanted to never stop kissin’ but I never wanna stop kissin’ you. I promise I’ll always be down to do something as wild as gettin’ married in this chapel and I promise we’ll never be bored. Or maybe we will be, but we’ll find somethin’. I love you — “ It slipped out and he couldn’t stop now, so he just grinned as he talked hopin’ she’d also find it like a joke (or hopin’, maybe that she didn’t). “And I’d steal a million pounds for you and you know it, babe.” “Lovely,” said the pastor, then turning to Andrina.

ANDRINA: It was a joke as they waltzed down the aisle the second time, Andrina taking long, serious strides, trying to remain smooth-faced. It was a joke as Robbie jumped to the front, smoothed a hand down his front, clasped his hands together. It was a joke as Andrina climbed up to meet him, lifting her chin before sticking out a tongue for a split second before the officiant finished his cliche, scripted speech. It was a joke as Robbie started his vows. But it wasn’t a joke for long. Andrina couldn’t trace where the slippage happened. But Rob’s smirk faded at some point and suddenly she was noticing the color of his eyes, which she’d never noticed before. She was not the type to note shit like that. That was for Tiny and Dell, even Lana to a point. Andrina only cared about how smart a boy was. If she was in the mood, she’d pick a stupid lad to get her off, finding the most embarrassing, neanderthal dirty talk a strange turn on-- like watching shitty porn on purpose. Other times, she picked someone a little wittier, who could keep up with her jabs-- good not just for the fuck, but for the foreplay. Rob was obviously the latter. She loved his mouth, kissed it plenty of times, felt it on her neck, her breasts, between her legs. She liked when he talked and when he didn’t-- when he chuckled, when he smirked, when he sucked on a lolly she nicked for him from the market. But now she was looking in his eyes and her stomach fluttered. Butterflies, for the first time, here on her wedding day. She could blame the wedding for them. Blame her veil and the fake stained glass behind Rob and the big rock on her finger. It was all just an illusion. She didn’t really feel… she didn’t actually… But maybe she did. And suddenly there was a before and an after. There was a split in Andrina’s roads. She saw it clearly, her life behind her-- a life of seven sisters, never enough space, and always drama she was obligated to participate in. She’d leave Blackpool and return to it. The idea crushed her. She was suffocating right here, right now, which is usually how she felt when a boy, any boy, looked her dead in the eye like this and told her that they liked her-- except Rob was doing that right now and all she wanted to do was fling her arms around his neck and beg him to steal her away next. Don’t make her go back to that fucking town, to all those sisters, to her shitty apartment and the dinners she had to show up to like reporting for the army, to her dead-end job, to Attina’s depression. Please, dear god, no. Her marriage was a getaway car. Rob was driving. Andrina was calling shotgun and hopping the fuck in. “I think vows are overrated,” she said. “But I promise that you are the best fucking thing that ever happened to me.” And she looked to the officiant. “Okay, say the thing.” “Oh-- that’s all--?” “Yeah. Chop chop buddy!” Andrina said with a hand wave. “This is the happiest day of my life, helloooooo!” “Er--right. I now pronounce you--” Andrina flung her arms around Rob’s neck and kissed him before he could finish.

ROB Rob kissed Andrina back, picking her up a little and swingin’ her around. And ‘cuz why do this if he didn’t do this the right way, he picked up Andrina’s legs and carried her in his arms, like they were somethin’ out of a movie or somethin’. Ha. Rob Hunt from Nottingham Orphanage never thought he’d be worthy of a movie. Not that this shitty chapel and these stolen rings and this rent-a-pastor were worthy of a movie. They were all shams, hacks, more reflective of Rob, really. But Andrina — Andrina was a real thing, better than any dumb movie endin’ because she had a wicked smile and sometimes in the morning her breath smelled and sometimes in the night she kicked, but she was smart and she never stopped, ever, and the mask Rob wore always somehow disppeared with her. Also she was sexy as fuck. He spun Andrina around a little, givin’ a bit of a woop, the gave her a proper snog. It was sticky and messy, the sort kiss that horny teenagers in the back of a car kissed. And what of it? He couldn’t wait to go back to the van and shag his wife. “Hey, uh, sorry but you’ve got to sign these forms and stuff,” said the rent-a-preacher, holding up some papers. “It’s real quick, I promise. Sorry shoulda done it before but — “ “Yeah, yeah, just bring it here,” said Rob, dropping Andrina down and grabbing the pen to quickly sign because, okay, the primary thing on his mind right now was sex.

ANDRINA: Andrina was also thinking about a car-shag-- a back-of-a-van shag, actually, was more accurate. Her thighs were already trembling, desire as hot as the rest of her blood. If she stepped back from herself, she’d maybe realize it was the adrenaline from what might have been some kind of mental breakdown or dissociative episode. Because, her! Andrina! A wife! Honesty, this was her most brilliant joke yet. Wait until she told her sisters. (This thought instantly led to a short-circuit, and the Nyan Cat Video played on repeat.) First though, right. Paperwork. This was another chance for Andrina to rewind this whole insane episode and decide she wasn’t going to be a wife after all. But Rob grabbed for the pen without hesitating, and fuck if she was going to prove to be a coward in the last ten seconds of the biggest Andrina-prank ever concocted. Plus, she got bragging rights, she supposed, being the first sister to ever marry. That was kind of a fucked up thing to think. But it’s true, went the little voice in her head. As Andrina signed her name with a flourish, something very pleased inside her stretched itself out and started purring. A smile slid across her face. No one thought it’d be you, Andrina. Yeah, maybe this is a mental breakdown. Or maybe you finally found out who you’re supposed to be. “Should I take your name?” Andrina said as she straightened up. She wiggled her veil off so she could plop it on Rob’s head instead, stepping forward to adjust it carefully. “Andrina Gardner. But that isn’t even your real name right? Well, that’s kind of hot. A fake-new last name. Or maybe you can take my last name-- it can be your new fake name. Or like, fake-real name. Rob Triton.” Her eyes moved from the veil down to his own. She smiled. It was her softest smile of the whole night. “What do you think?” ROB Rob had no attachment to his name. He slipped on and off his name like it was a scarf of some sort. Sometimes he forgot Robert Gardner wasn’t a real person; sometimes he forgot Robin Hunt was one. Sometimes, he forgot that once he went by Oliver and also that was his legal middle name. “Well, you can’t marry Robert Gardner ‘cuz he ennit real,” said Rob, cheerfully, tossing the veil over his shoulder. The rent-a-pastor looked massively confused, but Rob paid him no mind. It’s not like this bloke was gonna do a deep investigation into Robert Gardner. That name was so common, Rob had chosen it for a reason. Sometimes Robert Gardner felt more real to him than Robin Hunt. Robin Hunt was a name chosen by a system, a name written on paperwork and run through computers. A name he’d shed because the baggage of being Robin Hunt was too heavy for him to carry. A name he sometimes felt guilty about leaving behind. But he needed to pick up new ones. He had to keep evolving. Stay still and he’d die. He looked at Andrina now, his mouth cocking up into a smile. “But I can marry Andrina Triton. I’ve never had a real name of my own, so I might as well take yours, yeah? I don’t need to be Robert or Robin. Just Rob. Time to reinvent myself — “ He took the paper and signed Rob Triton with a flourish. “There we go — who’d thought you’d make a new, honest man outta me, eh?”

ANDRINA Andrina stared down at Rob Triton and felt something. That something didn’t have any name that she knew. It tickled, and if she thought about it too much, she suspected it might feel a little bit like heartburn. Here’s what she did know: that something made her want to take this piece of paper with Rob Triton written on it, tear it up into pieces, shove it into her mouth, and eat it. That’s how much she loved seeing it written out like that, the idea of not belonging to Rob at all-- but him belonging to her. Instead of giving into her weirdo, paper-cannibalistic desire, she swept up the paper, folded it neatly and then reached under her dress, hiking the whole thing up. She hadn’t taken off her jeans, see. So she could just slip the paper in the back pocket. She let the dress back down and then slipped her arm through Rob’s own. “Okay Mr. Triton. I think we need to consummate our marriage,” she winked at him. The officiant grimaced. “Chill out, we won’t do it here,” Andrina said and giggled. “We have a very on-brand sex van. Let’s make the most of it. Maestro, play the wedding march!” “We don’t really do that on the way down the aisle…” “Nevermind!” Andrina exclaimed and she tugged Rob down anyway-- and together they skipped their way back out into the early hours of a Blackpool morning.

#rowdy and randy #para

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deartreadmill · 6 years

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Gift Giving: A Rant

This is not a fitness related post, but I’ve got nowhere else to rant like this, so you get it.

Apparently 54% of people returned Xmas gifts last year, and that seemed like a startlingly high number.

Initially, I was reactive - what asshole is returning these gifts?! And then I realized me. I am that asshole. Last year, I returned $350 worth of gifts to Costco. Just Costco.

And my ire shifted.

$250 of that was items my in-laws purchased for us. Like the box set of books my mother-in-law had purchased for my daughter for the 3rd year in a row (that is NOT a joke). Or a mask and snorkel set that was $65 for a 10-year-old. Or a flimsy crappy not-hot-wheels garage and race track for my son. And various and sundry items for the kitchen that neither myself nor my husband would ever use, or already had.

Last Christmas was a bad year to become the focus of my rage. I had just lost my mother, and so understandably, emotionally, I was extraordinarily fucked up. Which made the insult of having to return gifts all the more hurtful.

Because it is fucking hurtful to me to have to return Christmas gifts.

I was raised in a family where you DID NOT return gifts. You grinned and bore it, like a good child, even if it was the weirdest, shittiest gift ever. I remember this fucking hideous ‘bumwarmer’ length sweater with matching leg warmers my gramma bought me when I was 9. It barely fit, and was FUGLY, and I wore that fucking thing until it was too small.

As a result, I grew into a very conscientious gift-giver. It took until I was a young adult to get it right, but I worked hard to know people well enough to give gifts that had meaning. Some of the best and most treasured gifts I have ever given anyone cost less than $10. So it has nothing to do with the cost associated with the gift, and everything to do with the thought behind it (true story: in my parent’s spare bedroom are two lighthouse prints I bought for my parents for Christmas one year when I couldn’t even afford groceries. They were 99 cents each, and the frames cost me an additional $6. That was nearly 20 years ago, and my mum redecorated an entire fucking room in her house around those goddamn prints.)

I put a lot of thought into gift-giving because I love giving a gift that will make someone happy. It makes me happy to give gifts that are appreciated. By contrast, I find it really hurtful when people give me a gift that has no meaning whatsoever.

My mother-in-law once gave me what I presume to me a compliment by saying “I don’t even know how you do it. Every gift you give is so thoughtful.” (Last year, I didn’t want to buy gifts. So instead, everyone got ugly christmas sweaters. I felt terrible about it!! I hadn’t put any thought into them, other than sizes and making sure they sorta matched their personalities... THEY WERE THE FUCKING HIT OF CHRISTMAS. My niece was DEVASTATED that she didn’t get one too)

Long story short - I am a great gift-giver. And you can be one too! It’s easy! Here are some tip, if you’d rather not have your gifts be part of that 54% that get returned:

Know the person you are buying for. No, I get it, secret santa situations don’t count for this one. But try to figure out the hobbies, interests, likes and dislikes of the people in your family who you are responsible for purchasing gifts for. Yes, even weird Uncle Ted.

If you don’t know someone well enough to know what kind of gift to get them, you don’t know them well enough to buy them a gift. Seriously. “But it’s my Grandma/Brother/Niece/Cousin/Boss and/or Favourite Coworker!” Yeah, I get it. But don’t buy them some weird-ass shit just because you feel you owe them a gift. Get them something generically thoughtful. Like a gift card - to the local mall, or Tim Hortons/Starbucks/David’s Tea, the new restaurant in town everyone is raving about, their favourite store. I fucking love gift cards and cannot endorse them highly enough.

Chances are, you actually do know them well enough. So weird, every time you call Gramma she’s complaining that missing coffee mug from her corelle blue onion old town set - not the teacup, mind, the coffee mug? Your niece dressed up as Raven from Teen Titans for halloween and no one knew who she was? Your boss is always sneaking off to play golf on Wednesday afternoons? Corelle Blue Onion Coffee cups (2) - $15USD on eBay. Teen Titans complete first season $10 on amazon.ca. Bag of 50 golf tees $3 on amazon.ca

Homemade gifts are always winners. Trust me. One of Mum’s coworkers would gift Mum a hideous and weird crocheted ornament every year, and even though we all thought they were hideous and weird, Mum put them on the tree every year - because in their own weird and hideous way, they were beautiful. J. had made them for my Mum because she knew Christmas was Mum’s favourite time of year, and the Christmas tree was central to that. I now have one of those ornaments, and every year I put it on the tree and think warmly about J. as we all giggle and point at the hideous thing. It’s beautifully hideous. For years my kids have given weird fucking art projects to their grandparents. Last year we didn’t. And I heard about it from my in-laws, but also my Dad. And holy shit, can we talk about those knit cotton dish cloths for a minute? Add ONE to a gift, if you know how to knit, and you will make someone’s entire Christmas. Give 4 and call it done. I fucking love receiving those things.

Memory books are a thing, yo. Honestly, Xmas has become incrementally easier since I realized all the grandparents really want is pictures of my kids. But this doesn’t just apply to doting grandparents. Did your family go somewhere amazing in the last calendar year? Did you have a camping trip that was a comedy of errors? Photo books are relatively cheap, and they are personal.

You have a smartphone, use it. Every time I come across something I think would be funny, fun, thoughtful or useful for someone, I make a note of it in my phone, along with the store it was at, and the price. If you refer back to my top two points, the reality it that you know those people well enough to buy them gifts - but Christmas is stressful and unless you are ready for the barrage of carols blaring over store speakers, bell ringers out front, eternal debate about happy holidays versus merry christmas, and really fucking rude shoppers, you’ll feel like you’ve failed and wind up with your gift returned. This leads to the next item:

“This made me think of you.” If it made you think of that person, it’s the right gift. Even if you have to explain it when they open it. My dad got me this awesome coffee mug 2 years ago at Christmas - it’s all crumpled like a balled up wad of paper, and it says something about having anger management issues. He bought it for me at work because work had been TERRIBLE that year. He was so sad when he found out I couldn’t use it at work because it wasn’t a sealed container (I crush a LOT of medication, and can’t have anything on my cart that med dust could fall into). He was so apologetic - but you know what? I didn’t care that I couldn’t use it at work because the cup reminded him of me, and made light of a situation that, with a few months distance, was comically bad. Every time I see weird outdoorsy string lights (fish, moose, lanterns, whatever), I think of my in-laws who love camping and love going hunting.

Honesty is also a thing. If you seriously can’t figure out what to buy that person, ask. This might be awkward, but it might also open up a bigger door to a cool conversation about something that brings you closer

Guinea Pigs make great gifts, or Charity gifts rock! One year, a charity sent me a gift giving catalog, and I ‘bought’ my in-laws $50 in vaccines for a 3rd world medical clinic, I ‘gave’ my brother 3 guinea pigs for a family in South America to start a guinea pig farm, and I gave my parents $50 in mosquito nets for somewhere that has malaria-bearing mosquitos. I’ve also donated to the local hospice and food bank in the name of someone. Because let’s face it - do any of us need more stuff?

Give a gift of thoughtfulness. This one I learned from my cousin. My Gramma turned 100 this summer. Instead of buying a 100-year-old who has been praying for death for the last 5 years a gift of more stuff, she gave her a gift card to a grocery store that delivers groceries.

Everyone loves bird feeders. Last, but not least, I’ve never had a single person return a bird feeder. The world needs more pretty birds at our windows to make our hearts happy.

If you already gave a bird feeder, give them seed. ‘Nuff said.

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justalittlemango · 4 years

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Entry #16 - 21/01/2020

Well, it’s safe to say returning back to Cheltenham and the whole dorm life has been fairly bittersweet! I guess I adapted very well when I was back home (and I mean, who wouldn’t when you are blessed enough to not worry about money for that period, and great parents who are willing to help you out as much as possible!) It was quite sad on the final day of coming back here with my dad dropping me off, but at the same time it feels quite nice. Nice to have my privacy back, my own bathroom schedule and be able to use my gaming PC again!

It’s currently 6am as I write this, sadly my sleep got interrupted by a phone notification, turns out a friend was spamming me on Steam so now I am awake. The power of the internet right there folks, being able to wake someone up from thousands of miles away. However, I am not too fussed. My semester starts again today, and my lecture is at 11:15 so it’s not all too bad.

Initially I was kind of freaking out, predominantly due to the fact that my first lecture this week involves group-based work... and I guess I’m not really satisfied with the input that I had put in before Xmas for the group, but oh well. I am hopefully willing to change that with this next lecture coming up.

I want to try and get some organisation into the group. Sort out roles for each group member so we know what we’re doing and contribute more ideas together. I think before Xmas I was just so drained, tired and stressed with all the other assignments that my mind just went completely blank. However, it’s a new year now, new semester and that means I gotta be back on my A game.

So I’m feeling relatively optimistic about that, albeit nervous.. but hey, I’m still here and I’ve managed to get through all this shit before in my life, there’s hardly anything stopping me, other than how negatively my mind perceives me. In all fairness, my mood has been quite good ever since Christmas and my last post. I’m hoping it stays that way! I’m satisfied with the long break I had, and now it’s time to work hard again. This project should be fun anyways.

I don’t imagine this project/assignment will be too time-consuming regardless.. we’ve got 4 months to do it and we’ve got a very very basic concept that runs... I guess we just need to keep adding stuff to it over the next 4 months and see how far we get into it. Least that gives me hopes about time-keeping for the other assignments I’m starting this semester which I’m sure will be just as stressy as the ones I’ve just done :^)

Talking of assignments, my creative skills assignment got graded, the one which heavily involves Photoshop, Illustrator and all that graphic design stuff. I got 68, which was 2 marks off the top criteria.. So I’m happy with that! Considering a pass grade is 40, an extra 28 marks on top of that I’m chuffed with. So that’s kept me very positive recently that my work isn’t utter crap!

I am sorta worried for my other two assignments that are yet to be graded. One assignment which is the creating a game in Unity that I had to request an extension for, I feel like I’m going to get a low grade or not pass at all... trying to write the code myself was so difficult so uh, some sort of it was uh, “referenced” from online, i guess. My 3D modelling assignment I’m also sorta worrying about as I rushed it towards Christmas as I requested an extension for that too. Oh well, I’m going to try not to let it play on my mind...

On a more positive note, I decided to get this student housing thing sorted once and for all. I can’t afford to go back into student halls, and I’ma be real with you, but the flatmates you get can be obnoxious as fuck. Not saying that my current flatmates are like that, but uh, we just live and let live and we don’t really speak to each other. But they like to hog the kitchen a lot, and that annoys me. So I don’t really want to put up with that again next year.

I organised a Discord group thingy between my bf and a friend from the course, so we could get a 3 bed house that’s close to the campus. Thing is, this student house is ideal for me because the rent is so cheap compared to student halls. So if I can get this student house, I’d be able to keep and spend so much more than I get right now. Lets put it this way, in student halls at the moment, I only get £300 to spend across the 3 months. If I was in a student house, on average I’d have just over £1k to save/spend over the 3 months. Yum fucking yum!!! So I really hope to fuc that we can get a place sorted!

I ain’t really got no fear of anything going wrong tbh... we still got quite a bit of time, and there’s still some good choices going around in the area near the university- which is convenient as currently where we stay it is an hour walk to campus, and yeah.... not worth it. I might also mention it to a few friends on the course if they want to also come live with us, but it looks like everyone is sorted... so I think it’s best that we just find a place, inquire, see if we’re happy and then slap the deposit on it.

Conveniently, my dad just got his redundancy money from work and has offered to pay my deposit for me which is a MAJOR help, otherwise I simply would not be able to afford it and live at the same time. So I feel very blessed knowing this. Of course, once we get to the house I am not going to blast any of the money, in fact I might just spend it how I do now, very minimally. Reason being? Overdraft. I gotta get out my overdraft. My bank has started to change the limit of how much is fee-free, and at the moment I can take out up to £2000 and it’s fee-free, but at the end of this year it’s going down to £1500, then the year after it’s £1000, year after is £500 and then so on.

So realistically, it is absolutely in my best interests to go for a student house. I need that money. I have also been looking at costs about doing an internship in Canada, and yes, it is fairly expensive once you count the application fees, flight fees and the fact that the Canadian government want you to prove that you have 2400CAD in your bank to prove that you can sustain yourself in Canada.

I have been looking at the invitation pools for UK residents to take the working holiday visa scheme in Canada, and right now it seems 3k people have signed up, and there’s 6k slots... so... that’s filled some hope in me! I just really hope I get a place!! It is absolutely my dream to work in Canada for the year. I just gotta be on top of my game on December 2020... as I believe that’s when the pools next open. I just hope they don’t mind being there for only a year when the visa grants you two years! But uh, they don’t need to know that hehe... or maybe they do. lol idk.

But yes, a student house is needed in order for all this to be accomplished. I know for a fact I would be more comfortable staying with my bf and a coursemate rather than more random people that I have to awkwardly say hi to when I want to grab my noodles from the kitchen. But yes, I’m estimating that over the second year, I’ll have about £800 or so to spend. That’s amazing. And I want to invest £500 into my overdraft so I can go down to the fee-free amount (£1500), and then do the same for the next instalment so I can go down to £1000, and then save whatever is left from the final instalment to try and sustain myself for if & when I go to Canada. They ask for 2400CAD in your bank, and that’s £1400... I guess as long as I have that in my bank they’ll accept me, and then once I get in I can focus on paying that overdraft off.

I’ve heard internships in Canada pay minimum wage, so if I have extra money in the month that I don’t necessarily need, I’ll send it to my UK bank account and help me get out of that overdraft, as when/if i’m in Canada, the fee-free amount will reduce to £500 or so, therefore I need to get that paid off. I don’t think it should be too difficult, but I’m super relying on these things working out, and lets be real, there’s a very high chance of all this not working out. Though, I won’t allow myself to. I will find a student house. I will save the money I get when I’m at said student house. I will pay my overdraft bit by bit. I will try to save up 2400CAD so I can get accepted into Canada, but the most important part: I will try my best to entice Canadian game studios to accept me..

That last part, that’s going to be tricky I think... I hope I am good enough that they will accept me as their intern. I don’t know really. I still don’t know where I wanna go , but anywhere in Canada I’m happy with: particularly if it’s Toronto or Montreal. Hell, I have still been learning French for just in case I do get a place in Montreal. They speak French there? well heck, so will I with all this time I got to do it. Plus, I’ve been wanting to learn French for a while, but just needed a sort of kick up the butt to say “ok, here’s why you should ACTUALLY do it!” and yea :3

That being said , I would also be happy if I got accepted at a studio in Vancouver.. a bit far and very much behind time-wise from the UK, but hey it’s only for the year, I may as well live it up aye? Of course, I am still banking on myself to get accepted into the pools and be invited by the Canadian gov, then consult jobs/studios all over Canada with my work and stuff, then save up the money to get into Canada, all simultaneously while trying to find a roommate in whichever city I get to (however, this seems like a rather simple one as I’ve already seen many apps that can help find roommates and offers seem to come & go A LOT.)

A roommate would definitely be ideal for me, as it would help split the rent. If I’m going to stay in a city like Vancouver or Toronto, it isn’t really possible for me to sustain myself on minimum wage in these cities. So a roommate is ideal. Besides, I need friends when I get there anyway! lol

I wonder if I’ll look back at this post in a few years and think... “Wow Kurt, you thought it was that easy?” - part of me thinks this goal is far-fetched, another part of me sees it as perfectly accomplishable with the correct amount of time, planning and finances. So really... I don’t know. I would say at the moment, probability is low in the likeliness of me getting in, because my work is still a bit.. questionable, as I am still a fresher after all. So I gotta rely on producing really good work that catches the eyes of employers, host a website with my portfolio on it and send it to just as many Canadian studios as I can and then hope for the best. I just really want this goal, it’s an even more motivating goal than thinking of graduation, honestly!

Welp. I posted a lot on this one, but everything I said here is 100% the things that run through my mind a lot of the nights. I am going to stay optimistic, I’m going to work to the best of my ability and make my creations look appealing, I am going to get that student house so I can be happy financially and secure myself & my goals. Til next time

~mangie

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basshouse · 5 years

Text

Bring on the FAQs

I know you have questions! Oh, ok, I’ll honor the era of the fact check (be the change you want to see int he world, after all!): I think you have questions and I know I want to use questions as a framework for telling you more about my life. On board?? In case your answer is “no” and you choose not to click “keep reading” below, here’s the obligatory picture right up front:

That’s me in San Jose a couple days ago. Yes, I have a “bum bag” (super apologies to everyone I ever mocked for a fanny pack, a sweatpant, or a mini van, and a reminder to us all that it’s ridiculous to judge people for the things they decide enhance their quality of life...are heavily starched jeans in my future? who can say?). Also, yes I am on the North American continent. Sadly not with enough time or planning to be able to connect with many people, plus it’s a work trip and I’m freezing by balls off. More on that later (the work part, not my balls). Let’s get to the Q&A!

A bit of a heads up: a lot of these are combo questions, I grouped them by flavor to make things more compact... you bunch are good at asking the same question multiple ways.

1. Do you miss home/Seattle/the States? What do you miss the most?

Alright, I’m going to leave out the obvious friends, family and a certain tiny dog, because...duh. Do you really need the validation? You know I miss you. As for P-dog, he was IN A WEDDING. IN A BOWTIE. So suffice it to say that while I still get sad when I get in bed at night and he’s not curling up at my feet, his new family is showing their commitment to him in a whole new and completely adorable way.

I do not actively miss living in Seattle or the States. I haven't been homesick. and to be clear, Seattle is an amazing place and our lives there were full of amazing people and things. It’s just that I am enjoying being somewhere else and doing new things (and many of the old things in a new location). I can love Seattle (and you!) and love somewhere else at the same time, how amazing is that? One good thing about being faced with losing my job and visa was that I had to ask and answer the question of whether it was best to just “go home” -- and it was clear for both me and Jason that we did not want to leave Christchurch yet. No, we did NOT ask the kids this time :-).

I DO miss some things about living in Seattle, and if you know me you won't be surprised to hear they are largely food related...La Palma. Pickles. Gardenburgers. Caesar salads that don’t have a poached egg on top. The ability to fulfill a special order (say, make a Caesar salad without an egg on top). Jale-frickin’-penos! It’s not to say that NZ doesn't have good food; overall the quality of the food is high and it’s nice that all the coffee shops serve real food. Also, you almost never have table service, which threw me off at first, but now I really appreciate being in control of when I order and when I pay my bill. A non-tip economy has its perks for sure, including less math at the dinner table! But there are some foods for each of us that fulfill a craving, are a go-to, and when you can’t get them, even a close approximation or a really good option just won’t do. This problemhas inspired me to learn how to cook new things, at least. Haven’t nailed the gardenburger yet.

Also, I miss yoga. A LOT. Props to Core Power, Shefa, Haute, and Maven for being awesome places to practice a powerful flow in the heat with music. Thanks to all of you who taught me and those that let me teach you. Christchurch has more bars and restaurants and interesting places than we expected, but this style of yoga just isn't there as far as I can tell. So hit me up if you're interested in investing in a probably-not-very-profitable business in NZ once I have a visa that lets me own a business, and you can weigh in on whether “Surfing Donkey Yoga” (Jason’s nomination) is on brand or not. I have an opinion but no harm in workshopping it.

2. Wait, you said in an earlier blog you don't overwork (or sometimes even work at all when you should be)...what do you do/are you going crazy/how do you handle it/are you really you?!?!?

This is an honest question I have gotten in phone conversations, and since I assume you know me and my, um, rather industrious ways, you may have it too. I mean, it’s not a secret that when I lived in Seattle I worked A LOT, and stressed over work A LOT, and talked about work A LOT, and did work-y things outside of work, and worked at home and on the weekends FAR TOO MUCH. And for background: in New Zealand I have had a much better work life balance. And at the end of my time at SLI there were many many hours that I went to work but did not really have work to do. So while I have done what I needed to do, and contributed to the business, and used my skills, working and being at work has NOT defined my life here, even in the slightest, which it did in Seattle. That pains me a little, because I also did lots of of things besides work in Seattle, and I never valued being a person who was stressed about work all the time (at least, I did not value that for other people or in principal, though I did build up some kind of addiction or compulsion based on an anxiety about not working). Can I attribute being ok with more balance to a “less demanding” job? In part that would be fair, but after giving it some thought I also must attribute it to both breaking the chain of bad habits and the general difference in culture, For, as far as I can tell, in New Zealand, it is not common to work outside hours or on vacation; people value value and respect family time; and there's a much more subtle and prevalent difference that's hard to explain about the feeling that everything really is going to be ok if you don't struggle to get it all done in record time -- there’s an undercurrent of pressure that does not exist, at least not for me, and I think it’s a Kiwi thing. An informal poll and some observational data (e.g. one boss told me when I sent an email on a sick day not to do it again, no laptop, employment contract stating a 37 hour work week) backs it up.

So what do I do and am I still me and not going crazy? Well, I’ll tell you and yes and no to those questions. Let’s be clear that I still work 37-40 hours a week which is plenty so don't get too exited, but here’s a wee list of some of the things I’ve been doing with “all this time.” Sadly not enough yoga :-(

I write a blog! You're welcome.

Cook, surf, hike, bike, gym, listen to records...I think you knew that already. Same shit, different continent.

Burlesquercize! Yes, it’s what it sounds like -- a sluttier version of Jazzercise. My friend Tas and I also did a 6 week burlesque course that culminated in an actual performance. On stage. In. Front. Of. Real. People. Body positive, pro-female and anti-agist? You betcha. Terrifying? Kind of. Entertaining? I hope so. And no, we did not take our clothes off (that would have moved the answer to “terrifying?” waaaaay up).

Tennis lessons! Finally fulfilling a desire to learn and play tennis that I have had my entire adult life, I joined an adult beginner group lesson at the tiny Opawa Tennis Club. Really, in American terms, this should be “club” -- because like the lawn bowling club and croquet club near my house, this is the kind of club that where pay $100 bucks to get a key so you have access to equipment and courts when you need them, and there are organized games and lessons a few hours a week. Plus a water fountain. Croquet might be my next project, as I am still as shockingly bad at tennis as I was in junior high when I got moved from the 8th grade beginner team down to the elementary school group at a “real tennis club.” But learning tennis is fun, and I have met some great people, and hey, it’s summer in December so why not?

I grew tomatoes. It didn’t take that much time, so I could still do tennis and burlesque, thank god.

I make pickles like twice a month. In NZ, pickles are almost exclusively sweet gherkins. Most of you are probably like “making pickles is super easy, der.” You're right. I don’t know why I ever paid for them...oh except they were pretty cheap and super convenient to buy pretty much anywhere. It’s remarkable how scarcity, a bit of dill and a head of garlic can drive such commitment to a new activity. Now if I only had a goddamn Gardenburger to eat with my pickle slices!

On a career path note, I became a volunteer city coordinator for Product School meetups and am working to get that off the ground. I am mulling over ideas about generating and delivering content and education in the product management space...there may be a great opportunity to leverage my skill set and breadth of professional experience in NZ and I’m doing some activities that will help me network and consider the possibilities.

I have read more books since we moved than I think I read in the last 10 years. I do miss the New Yorker, I think I could finally be crushing the cover to cover in a week challenge. If you haven't read This is Where I Leave You, you should.

TV: In the interest of transparency...I don't just read and write and exercise, and as much as I’d like to present as that virtuous, I can’t lie to you, even by omission. If you have not seen the Amazon TV show Red Oaks, I highly recommend it. Obviously the tennis montages have a new-found appeal for me, but the rest of it was really good too.

Roadtrips! There’s a lot to do around NZ, even within an hour or two of Christchurch. I’m trying to think of a good way to tell you about the things we have done, there will be more posts to highlight what we’ve done so far.

We hang out with friends, host guests, and sometimes try to make new friends. More on that in other posts as well.

Here’s another thing we did, which was attend an interactive improv-y game show at the Busker Festival...yes, I am realizing as I get ready to hit “publish” that it sorta seems like Jason and I are into a whole new realm of adult entertainment. 😱. We’re really not, not that there's anything wrong with it. I just thought you might appreciate this picture of Jason:

Next up in the blog: more FAQs. Political! Personal! Practical! See you soon.

PS: I don’t just cook with cheese...and these are my tomatoes:

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lady-nevermore · 7 years

Text

Third Session

June 5, 2017

Yesterday I:

5AM - Went to Church with my mom (been finding it really relaxing and peaceful actually).

8 AM - Accompanied and Went with my folks on running their errands.

12/ Noon - Went to the Flea Market (haven’t been in lke forever, saw a bunch of cool stuff like always) and at the behest of my parents, whom also decided to give this a go, got a message......I actually feel like it loosened me up a bit....feel a lot more: sensitive/tender around my shoulder area/neck...at least i don’t feel those damn kinks anymore....but idunno if i like feeling this tender/sensitive/vulnerable around there. >_>;

1-5 PM - Went the Grocery Store and spent the last remaining hours looking for that dratted, evasive gift-bag (more details below in a sec). >_<;

6-7 PM Ate Dinner, and Took a shower.

8-9 PM - Went to bed, and actually slept well.

Today I:

- 6:45 AM: Went with my mom, for the third/fourth time this week, walking around our local Half Library/Half Duck Pond (powered-walked for an hour and saw a bunch of the local wildlife: Squirrels, ducks, geese, robin-birds, crows, etc). It’s always very nice and soothing to see, not to mention it makes me smile. :)

- 7:00-11:00 AM: Did some housework, laundry, made and prepared dinner for tonight as well as for the following days, and tried to fix my TV (sorta worked....still pending....we’ll see).

12/Noon Ate Lunch (made myself a small Tuna Salad with cucumbers, and spinach, with a side of baby carrots, a couple of pieces of store-bought Sushi, and a granola bar); it was really nice actually. :)

1-4 PM Tried to take my mind off my nerves/anxiety a bit, managed to listen to music, and read a bit before mentally preparing myself for My Therapy appointment at 5 PM.

6-7 PM: Ate a healthy dinner and afterwards have been writing this therapy blog up till now......Looking at the clock: it’s 9PM *sigh* -___-;

9 PM - Gonna get off tumblr, take a shower and head to bed (whilst reading a fanfic); G’night y’all *yawn*

So yeah, Today and Yesterday have been semi-stressful (a little bit hectic) to say the least; Y’all remember my ‘Aunt C aka The Poor Excuse of an Aunt who emotionally traumatized/abused me when I was 5, well her daughter let’s call her “Jay” has a Graduation this upcoming Friday....Ironically enough, Jay is graduating from my old alma-mater/my old high school: AHS High.....I’m not that close to Jay for obvious reasons (I’ve sorta sub consciously stayed away/distanced myself away from them in order to avoid Aunt C.....but then again I rarely like to spend time with or at family reunions, nowadays anyways). >_>;

But that’s beside the point; I’m proud of my younger cousin, proud and happy for her: she’s an AP student, got a full scholarship to UC Davis (aka the College I’ve always dreamed of going as well as the same old alma-mater of my Old Mentor/Friend who passed away but meant a great great deal to me to the point where he left his mark/imparted his memory onto me), and who is so amazingly ambitious that my dear cousin jay dreams of becoming a Doctor. This is why I’m soo damn proud of her (tho a selfishly part of me does feel a twinge of jealousy/envy....but my happiness/pride of her is far greater), She’s probably going to be one of the few in our family who might actually achieve graduating from a legit University, and effing applaud her for that. I mean I know that we may not be close (nor do I know If I would ever want to be, considering her connection to my abuser aka my Aunt C/her mother)....But despite that, it is in my nature to try to look past that and kindly offer a gesture of happiness in congratulating her, cause I am honestly quite proud of her. :)

....Which is why I decided to impart to her what my old mentor/friend imparted onto me when I graduated from AHS High: A nice couple of (and by couple I mean 2) boxes of Tea, specifically Vanilla Chai Tea and Earl Grey ; My Mentor, let’s call him Obi-Wan (cause he was a huge die-hard fan of Star Wars), well Obi-Wan always said that Tea helped him to relax, and I wholly agree with him in this statement, it’s been around 9 years since he introduced me to the Wonders and Joy that is Tea (and 8 years since he passed away from Colon Cancer), but it’s something that I feel will always connect me to him, and in turn is my own personal means of honoring his memory.

So, I hope that my little gift/gesture to Jay (isn’t too cheap/offensive in her eyes or my Aunt C’s in that matter) and that it will help her to relax throughout her fun, but what I’m sure will be quite the stressful venture that is College/University (I dropped out, something I’m ashamed of, so I can’t talk or say much on the matter, but I do hope it’ll help Jay in the long run). I say this in all seriousness, because I ended up having a nervous-breakdown by taking waaaaay too many college-courses/classes (around 5-6 tops) what with my mentor/friend passing away, plus me struggling depression, pushing my friends outta of my life/cutting them off, as well as struggling with said classes and me being sleep-deprived on top of that didn’t help....it was just too damn much and now here I am now (struggling with anxiety and going to therapy....though my issues have been long since precedent and something that I’ve been dealing far longer) but the point is Jay is a High ranking AP student and off to a legit High Ranking University......that can’t be easy on her poor shoulders the bear, which is why I worry and hope she doesn’t repeat my mistakes........hence a few kind, meaningful, soothing words of wisdom on the graduation card I got for her, as well as the heartwarming gesture of Tea. But yeah, I hope it at the very least make her smile (and think oh, how appropriate, Tea: a nerdy gift from my dorky cousin Lady Nevermore). lol x)

So I told my Therapist that I woke up today feeling melancholic for no apparent reason (or so I thought); But my therapist thinks that I might me projecting my stress/anxiety from Yesterday (when I was trying to find/prepare the perfect gift for me to give Jay for her Graduation) onto today; She’s not wrong ....I was sorta freaking out, yesterday, that we were never going to find the perfect gift-bag for the occasion (not to mention that my indecisiveness/pickiness didn't help)...most of the gift-bags were either too tacky or not appropriate (birthday gift bags for example)....but in the end I got lucky and found the perfect one, yay! :D

So yeah, I talked to my therapist about my anxiety/fear that Jay ro my Aunt C will find my gift cheap/offensive and or worse, she’ll want to start to get close to me (and considering her connection to my abuser, having my Aunt Cas her mother)......yeah that’s not something I’m at all entirely comfortable with, like at all. :/

We talked a little bit about my Mentor/Old Friend, Obi-Wan and how his passing/death affected me aka via anxiety-terror filled nightmares, etc (but I don’t really wanna get into that atm, maybe later or some other time). We discussed how my therapist is glad that I’m continuing to go outside (going to church, walking around the library-duck pond area, and going to stores or to the grocery store with my folks; it’s been three weeks more or less of this now without me feeling too overwhelmed)

2nd Piece of Homework: Note to Self: Notice and become Aware of what triggers my depression or anxiety during stressful/anxiety-filled situation and write it down (this way we can start identifying what triggers my anxiety/depression and what me and my therapist can start to work on).

****Pretty sure I forgot a lot of other stuff, and I will probably try to add more to this later or post another one of these the following weeks, but for now this’ll have to do.

Just got back from therapy (around 6 pm-ish and it took me a while to eat dinner, not to mention get on tumblr and organize my thoughts in order to write this blog) and I’m Feeling sorta tired/drained/low-key sorta cranky and i really really really just wanna go shower and go to bed right now (and recharge); sucks cause I really wanted to start pick up where the anime in Bleach left off, and start reading the manga (Bleach) and / or watch one of the bleach movies....or another Ghibli film.....or hell, at the very least cruise on tumblr (reblogging, chatting, etc) for a bit. *sigh* Ah well, maybe tomorrow. -____-;

Welp, Later, and Good Night my dears! *hugs* :)

- Lady Nevermore

#therapy blog #therapy #Third Session #anxiety #melancholy #meh #personal

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calvin-af-crone · 3 years

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Zane Lowe Interview

I gave myself the arduous task of transcribing Calvin's recent interviews & started w/ the last one. What a chore! I reacted strongly to some of this but I'll cover that later.

Calvin: This new one has felt like nostalgia to me in a nice way, the sort of thing nobody else is making it. So that feels good & regardless of how it does or whatever it felt really nice to me.

Zane: How do you go about choosing the voices? We’ve talked about this in the past but I wonder if that’s changed or how you settle on a voice like Tom’s for a song like this.

C: I couldn’t think of anyone else suited to it, to be honest w/ you. The first thing is I liked his voice a lot & stated following him on IG & I was struck by his positivity, his relentless positivity in his posts. I thought this guy, gee, I liked it. So yeah, when I kinda figured out what the song was gonna sound like he seemed like such an obvious choice. I wasn’t sure if he was gonna be up for it either. So I very happy he was & just good vibes, just nice good vibes.

Z: This idea of relentless positivity catching your attention, ya’know, I think a lot of time immersing ourselves as human beings in the other side of it cause it’s just really Moorish and we get attached to it. Is that a big driving force for you right now is like, ah, really trying to surround yourself w/ collaborator-wise or in your life w/ relentless positivity…

C: Yeah, yeah, that’s exactly what it is. Yeah, yeah, no point in doing the other thing & had enough experiences that were making records w/ people who were kinda like oh-wow this is a fun <mumble> weird.

Z: So is this the start of something new on a Calvin Harris level? I mean it’s been, it’s been what, what—I know we had Love Regenerator & I loved those projects as a DJ & someone who loves to listen to dance music. Those are about as authentic as you can get in the last sort of half decade but it has been close to half a decade since the last one for real, for real. So what’s your feeling about releasing albums—quote unquote.

C: To be completely honest w/ you, I don’t really think about it.

Z: So you’re not making an album per say, you’re just making music & if it works out that way—

C: No, I, absolutely not. I mean I’ve made albums since 2010 & then my albums became compilations of singles. They kinda like became compilation albums. And that’s a more fun way of doing it because on—firstly, every song’s gotta be good & secondly, cause it’s coming out as a single. And then secondly, zero pressure…just nothing, ya’know, fun. So nah, I can’t imagine me doing one probably ever at this point. But then next week I’ll start working on one.

Z: <snickers, chuckles> Well, someone will tell you when you’ve got enough singles for one & that will be easy.

C: Nah, because I had enough singles for one. There was like from 2015 to the end of 2016 I could have done 4 more tunes & then put out an album & got like 3 billion streams & that proved that I’m not that guy. That would have worked a treat. I would have got me another platinum disk or whatever. But it just felt a bit sorta cheap so I didn’t do that. But I like <laughing> being cheap.

Z: What’s motivating you now? If…because a lot of the traditional motivations are like what you just pointed out to be not as quite as cheap sounding as that but the idea of making an album & taking another step & another step…

C: Oh gawd, no. Imagine that. Step where, to what? What are we trying to get to?

Z: Exactly.

C: <laughing> You know what I mean? That’s what, you know, we’ve all been there but ultimately we’re the same person no matter how many rungs on the ladder we’re climbing. We got to sit w/ ourselves at the end of the day & ask ourselves are you actually happy now? And, uh, even if you’re top of the ladder some of the most desperately unhappy people I’ve ever met have been the ones w/ absolutely everything at their disposal. So yeah, it’s not that for me. For me it’s making records that make me feel good in the hope that other people feel good from it & ya’know it’s like I’m a service provider. If, like, if you wanna listen to my songs & you enjoy them then that’s absolutely fantastic. I don’t really ask for anything more than that for me.

Z: Calvin Harris, it’s great to see this brand new song featuring Tom Grennan, which is called By Your Side. You know it’s the kind of lyric, the kind of moment that will resonate with a lot of people because there’s been a lot of loneliness & there’s been a lot of anxiety & a lot of uncertainty in the last 18 months. Um, is that to some degree kinda even where subconsciously the message from this came from, ya’think?

C: I had the idea for a while & I was going thru things I forgot that I made &, um, it was one of the things that sort of jumped out at me & I thought oh I should finish this, it’s the max, you know. It’s just if it makes you feel good then, ya’know, stick it out probably it’s a good idea.

Z: Definitely. It’s why we’re talking cause it’s out. I wanted, how many things like not being a reflective human being, but also knowing that you created a lot of music that could just sit somewhere in the background forever & then you could just literally completely forget about it, how is that experience of going thru ideas & tracks & stuff…

C: Yeah, it’s funny I used to release everything that I made & I never had any folders of anything. Everything that I made used to come out. Um, & yeah, recently I’ve done a lot of tracks for people that have either fallen thru or, um, their label said no, or they changed their minds, or I changed my mind. So now I have like folders like I finally feel like a normal kind of producer cause that’s apparently what people have.

Z: Remember you saying to me like 3 years back that you, like, don’t have anything left, like, I make it, I put it out—I think at the time I, like, mostly believed you because of what you just said. Like producers gotta have ideas that don’t make it to the cut but you would literally put yourself into a situation where it’s like if this one isn’t complete then it’s not even gonna go in a file anywhere, nothing's going to happen.

C: Yeah, just getting deleted so that’s what I did & it worked a treat as well because, you know, um, especially like, not that I’m a nostalgic person at all, but 10 years ago when I was putting out loads & loads of singles & also I was touring a lot at the same time so I didn’t have a lot of time in the studio. So, you know, if you got 2 days a month you better use those 2 days to finish this song. So, you know, no time for any, you know, messing around & like trying things out. Um, & that’s the sort of thinking that leads you to using the same kick drums across a whole album because it’s easier…& it sounded great. I don’t know. Now I use other kick drums & enjoy the process of creation more. Less of a treadmill or what do you call it? What’s the, you know, less of a factory line mentality.

Z: You still got that kick drum tho—the good one.

C: Yes, it’s actually from Steve Angelo from 2010 & it’s banging. It’s a little too high for today’s sub.

Z: The way that those kicks used to thump. I feel like when we were all touring & everyone was making big records & it was all crazy, kick drums probably reached their apex of thump-ness. I don’t think we could thump any harder & we had to pull back a little bit. But we may be thumping harder back then.

C: Yeah, you couldn’t use them in a house record now. But I actually, if you were going to press me on my favorite kick drum, Zane, or my favorite era it would be 2010 w/ a close second & this is, ah, really for the demographic of whoever is still listening to this, Ummet Ozcan in 2014, what a kick— unbelievable.

Z: You’ve got a few in the can yourself, my man, I mean I’ve played a few Calvin Harris bangers in my life & there’s a few kick drums that come in a bit shy after yours.

C: Nah, but I never made them. That’s the thing. I always just stole them off other's records.

Z: Everybody did, most people did.

C: But that’s, the best thing. I made a song called Awooga, big EDM track, & I stole an Afrojack kick & 3 years later he asked for the Awooga kick & said I love that track, every time I play that track it really bangs, can you send me that kick. So I send him back that kick. I didn’t tell him that it was his kick.

Z: <laughter> That tickles me in a wonderful, wonderful way. So we have this brand new song w/ Tom that’s wonderful. Are you inspired? Are you going to make another song?

C: Another song, oh, that’s asking a lot that.

Z: I thought I was being really delicate, you know.

C: Yeah, nah, I don’t think, I don’t know. We’ll see. We’ll see. If I have, it’s like that thing, sort of what I was doing before, but much slower because I’m allowing myself to live life at the same time. So it’s, you know, if it’s a good idea & someone wants to sing it & stuff then yeah, absolutely love to but no pressure. I’m not trying to climb that ladder, dude.

#Calvin Harris #Zane Lowe #interview #transcription

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suzanneshannon · 4 years

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Clips from my DEV AMA

I recently did an AMA over on DEV. Just taking the opportunity to port over some answers here like a good indiewebber.

If you were starting out as a front end dev in 2020, what would you say is the first thing you would learn and why?

You need to put yourself in a position where it's your job to create and take care of a website. Even if that feels like a stretch for you early on. Get the domain, get the website on the public internet. Put your name on it. Now you've given yourself stakes, and you'll learn technology because you must make your ideas come to life.

For me, 650 years ago, that was putting up a website for the ol' college band. We needed a website! That sounded like fun to me, and I managed to struggle through buying a domain, hosting, and putting up a WordPress website. Then, over time, I learned front-end web technologies because I wanted to change up the design, change up the templates, add cool features, etc.

Get yourself a project and learn through the project.

How do you determine what you want to turn into a blog post and what you leave as a simple Tweet?

I usually won't avoid the tweet. The tweet is usually a good proving ground for the blog post anyway. If nobody cared, eh, maybe not that good of a post. If it does get good engagement, it's like the conversation around it is useful in the creation of the blog post. Plus, tweets are so easy to kick out the door. Blog posts, for me, on purpose, have a longer schedule that includes editing and scheduling and such.

Here's an example tweet. Just a silly little UI experiment. I didn't feel like waiting to blog about it to drop the demo. But from the Twitter thread, I got some interesting technical feedback, info about what parts people were most suprised by, and some other related ideas. That will, hopefully, lead to a much more robust blog post.

I even treat DEV like that, honestly. I wrote this blog post reaction quickly here, but then refined it for my own blog with some of the feedback.

Do you have a favorite CSS-Trick, where you were just like "wow"?

I think "scroll shadows" in CSS is one of my favorite CSS tricks of all time. It's originally by Roman Komarov, but explained and improved by Lea Verou. I saw a tool the other day around the idea by Stefan Judis.

It's a real mind-bender involving four-layered gradient backgrounds, each positioned, sized, and colored differently, and then behaviorally different regarding scrolling.

It's not just a neat trick because it has real UX implications. Showing a shadow of where you can scroll is important UX. Consider this story of a recent design update in iOS that led to complete confusion around UI actions hidden behind a place you could scroll to, but had zero affordance on how to get there. (Happens to me all the time in Spotify, for the record.)

What would be your top 3 pieces of quick advice for developers trying to follow a similar path to growing their influence and exposure?

I think writing is literally the only way.

I can't think of a developer with influence who has that influence for anything other than writing. Or if it's not writing, then it's a YouTube channel or some other form of creating public stuff.

How much do you see yourself personally playing with Houdini APIs as they are released? Which API are you most excited about (Painting, Layout, Typed OM, ...)?

This super-low level stuff sometimes feels over my head. It's hard for me to picture the industry implications of stuff like this just by looking at specs, ya know?

To me, it seems the Layout API has the most powerful potential.

What I'm imagining right now is that Houdini doesn't affect normal day-to-day front-end developers like me that much. I won't be writing much Houdini code. But I'll use fancy things that other people create, because it does something useful for me. Just like most people don't write their own libraries or have published npm packages — they just use them.

It's fun to be wow'd by Houdini. If anyone is looking for that, make sure to look at Vincent De Oliveira's showcase website.

What is your favorite thing about working at CodePen and/or CSS-Tricks?

You know what I really like? I like getting into the office every day and having a pretty decent amount of freedom of what I'm going to do that day. I'll probably have meetings. I'll probably have some stuff on the ol' calendar. I'll probably have some team expectations I'm trying to meet. But I also usually have plenty of time to pursue things that are interesting to me at the moment.

Sometimes I'm in the moment to drill through some emails. Sometimes I want to tinker with some demo that sounds like fun. Sometimes I want to write up a thought or record a video. Sometimes I want to plan something out or document something. Sometimes I want to talk something out with other people or do some pair programming.

I'm fortunate that I'm the boss (lol) and I put myself in that position on purpose so I have that freedom.

What is something that you wish we could add in CSS?

I feel like every time someone asks this we all should take every opportunity to scream Container Queries! until we get them.

The idea is that we should be able to write CSS that says, "When this element is this wide, this CSS should take effect." And not just width, but whatever media queries we have at the page level already.

The best demo of a use case out there is Philip Walton's page.

I want to write a card component that shuffles itself around based on how wide it is, not how wide the page is, because there isn't always a direct connection between those two things (e.g. a card component can show up in a narrow sidebar on a large screen, but be full-width on a tablet or something).

Every component can be in a situation like that, so for the love of CSS, let me write media queries scoped to those components. I echo a lot of other people when I saw that if we had this, the vast majority of media queries we write would be these, not page-level.

Do you think it's worth suggesting a { position: above-fold; }?

I'm not sure I've ever made a big fold-based decision once in my career. Not a big fan of that thinking. THERE IS A LINE IN WHICH THIS IMPORTANT MODULE MUST NOT CROSS, haha. Prioritizing the most important stuff to be higher up the page, sure. Websites don't fold like newspapers.

Plus, we've got viewport units now, so if you absolutely need to position something in the top visible viewport area, you can.

Since you've been writing blog posts for so long, have you developed a process for writing one?

Sorta! It still feels pretty casual to me (let's call my writing medium quality), so it's not like I'm renting a cabin in the wilderness and finding inspiration in the sunsets and cheap whiskey.

I write down every blog post idea that comes to me. I try to keep that list fairly public but I also have a personal list where I can be even sloppier.

I put as much context into those lists as I can, so I can hope to summon up the same emotion that made me write it down in the first place. If I revisit the idea a week later and can't, it's probably not a very good idea.

I write up the post with as much context as I can. Light research is typically involved.

We have a lead editor on CSS-Tricks, so it's reviewed by at least one person before being scheduled.

CSS or CSS-in-JS?

I see a ton of cool stuff happening in CSS-in-JS. I think it solves a lot of interesting problems for certain websites. For example, I very much like the idea of having the option to write styles that are scoped to a component programmatically, and thus are tree-shaken when the component isn't used automatically.

But the web is a big place, and dare I say most websites aren't built with JavaScript-powered component models. Thus, CSS-in-JS isn't necessary or appropriate for a lot of sites.

Although, two things to be clear:

You can't have CSS-in-JS without CSS. CSS-in-JS is still styles that are applied to elements. It doesn't absolve you from learning CSS.

The CSS-in-JS landscape is wide. It's a little hard to talk about so vaguely. Each project in the bucket of CSS-in-JS handles things a bit differently and how the styles are applied to the site is even quite wide. I think it sometimes gets lost in the arguments that some of the approaches literally make a CSS stylesheet that you link up like you would any other CSS — even Sass-produced CSS — which there doesn't seem to be much argument about anymore.

The post Clips from my DEV AMA appeared first on CSS-Tricks.

Clips from my DEV AMA published first on https://deskbysnafu.tumblr.com/

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213hiphopworldnews · 5 years

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Lil Nas X Is Handling ‘Old Town Road’s Success Exactly The Way He Should

Eric Lagg / Uproxx Studios

Lil Nas X really seems to be enjoying the success of his viral hit, “Old Town Road” — as he should. Viral moments seem to come along more and more often these days, but their ability to translate into real-world success still has varying degress of return. Nas’ version includes a Columbia Records album deal, three consecutive weeks at No. 1 on the Hot 100, a remix with Bill Ray Cyrus, and a batch of parodies and takes ranging from wildly explicit to dad joke corny. The fact that the 20-year-old rapper from Atlanta is taking all of this in stride makes the rollout even more fun to watch than usual.

Lil Nas X’s responses to the challenges that have arisen from his viral hit’s ubiquity are like a master class in how to handle unexpected fame, enjoy the moment, and make the most of the opportunity, and his ability to roll with the punches proves he’s ready for an even bigger spotlight. When longer-established rappers try to detract from his song’s success, rather than entering an ill-advised war of words, he focuses on that elusive No. 1 status, reminding the world that he does not give a f*ck what a hater thinks — even when the hater in question says he isn’t being a hater in the first place.

no fuckin way https://t.co/uxuioMReGn

— nope (@LilNasX) April 23, 2019

Some might believe that hate is justified though: Rap and country have long been considered mortal enemies at worst and strange bedfellows at best. Prior attempts at blending the two seemingly opposing genres were met with mixed responses, from the ridicule that followed Nelly and Tim McGraw’s “Over And Over” and LL Cool J and Brad Paisely’s “Accidental Racist” (rightly so, in the latter case), to the ho-hum commercial performance of more earnest attempts like Bubba Sparxxx’s Deliverance or other so-called “hick-hop” artists like Big Smo and Cowboy Troy. “Old Town Road” is the first song to chart on both the Rap and Country Bilboard lists, seemingly bridging the gap, but not without resistance, in part from Billboard itself.

When Billboard removed the song from its Country chart, the resulting backlash from social media invoked the genre’s long history of whitewashing Black artists, even as Billboard‘s reasoning that “Old Town Road” didn’t contain enough country elements sorta-kinda holds up. Fans who wanted to see this trend upended championed the song right back onto the Country Airplay chart as well as the Hot 100. While it has its detractors — mainly from established country and rap purists like Brothers Osbourne and Dave East — it has earned many more rabid supporters, including the aforementioned Billy Ray, who claimed that it was “obvious” that “Old Town Road” should qualify as country as much as hip-hop.

Normally, when a song gets as huge as “Old Town Road” has, there’s a worry that the song has become bigger than the artist, which is the first step toward them becoming a one-hit wonder. Lil Nas X’s fellow Atlantan 6lack spoke on this effect on his own breakthrough mixtape, Free 6lack, discussing the dangers of falling into a formula on the mixtape’s closer, “Alone/EA6.” “I’m not settling for that sh*t,” he says on the track’s introductory monologue, “‘Cause if I do it once and it pop, I’ma have to keep doing that sh*t over and over again. You can’t build no fanbase like that. You become a f*ckin’ song instead of a person.”

Lil Nas X takes a different approach. He seemingly wonders “What’s so bad about being a one-hit wonder?” Rather than shying away from the success of “Old Town Road,” which, let’s be frank, seems accidental, considering the jokey subject matter of the song and its broad departure from the sounds and content of Lil Nas X’s 2018 debut mixtape Nasarati, he’s leaned into it. He’s in on the joke. He reposts the memes. He wears Wrangler jeans and cowboy hats and posts goofy photos to Twitter posing with antique, pearl-handled revolvers straight out of the Old West.

who want war pic.twitter.com/FMrxCrhX8k

— nope (@LilNasX) April 24, 2019

By doing so, he endears himself to fans as a good-natured, funny, charismatic guy who they want to see win. When fans have an investment in an artist like that, they’ll take them to the top of the charts, as they did for his viral single, but they’ll also stick with the artist through thick and thin. If XXXTentacion could engender the level of outsized support he did with his rap sheet, a relatively unproblematic jokester like Lil Nas X should be easy to root for. It doesn’t hurt that the rest of his music is also enjoyable.

Even if I wasn’t much impressed with Nasarati when it dropped, revisiting it in the wake of Lil Nas X’s yee-haw takeover really lends some perspective to why the standalone “Old Town Road” blew up when nothing else on that project did. He flashed a lot of potential, but seemed limited by his resources. As a kid likely making songs on a laptop with whatever beats he got for free or cheap, the sound quality hamstrung some of the more clever songs. It’s a first effort and it sounds like it, both content-wise and from a production perspective. Now, he’s got access to million dollar studios and name-brand producers like Take A Daytrip, who produced “Mo Bamba” and “Home” from the Into The Spider-Verse soundtrack, and Nick Mira, who gave Juice WRLD some of his biggest hits (“All Girls Are The Same,” “Lucid Dreams,” “Robbery,” and more).

We his future plans because Lil Nas is savvy at the use of social media — maybe more so than any other rapper who’s had a massive hit. That’s likely to be expected from an artist who once ran a Twitter meme account, but pinning a thread of his works in progress to his profile as the top tweet is the sort of promotional tactic that major labels should look to swipe for their other artists. He addressed the controversy surrounding his name succinctly and earnestly. He retweeted a Genius headline that stated he intended to “milk the f*ck” out of “Old Town Road” just to confirm it. Opportunity only knocks once, so he’s holding opportunity hostage after opening the door and looking for ways to make his 15 minutes of fame last even longer, all while keeping the same sense of humor that brought opportunity calling in the first place. Even if he never has another hit, he has “Old Town Road” right now, and he’s gunning to see exactly how far it goes.

source https://uproxx.com/hiphop/lil-nas-x-is-handling-old-town-roads-success-exactly-the-way-he-should/

#hiphop #hip hop legend #hip hop history #hip hop #music #trending #hip hop news #ballin #hip hop scen

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propertyhold · 7 years

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Designing Olivebridge Cottage 2.0: Part 2!

So, you may recall that last time we discussed Olivebridge Cottage, we had a plan to kinda-sorta rebuild the house and it looked more or less like this:

This period was the closest this job probably ever came to feeling manageable: we had the town and the engineers on our side, the homeowners were happy with the direction, and the tasks ahead were difficult but not that difficult. It’s a little one-story house—a few more months and we’d be out.

Then the homeowners threw a second floor master suite into the mix. Which they wanted me to design. In approximately 5 minutes. Two weeks before we were set to start construction on a plan that had remained unchanged for a few months.

At the time, the logic went like this: after spending so much time and so much money on this house, reselling the house at a price that bore any resemblance to the amount invested would be somewhat impossible if the finished product didn’t really differ materially from the original house. Adding a whole bedroom and bathroom would turn the house from a 2 bed/1 bath to a 3 bed/2 bath, essentially shifting it into a different bracket of real estate. Obviously the upfront building cost would be higher, but the homeowners felt that it was the right move.

And so, the second floor. Maybe it sounds easy to you. It did not sound easy to me. It didn’t even necessarily sound fun to me, because I think I’m more of a renovator at heart. I like working within the constraints of an existing structure. Pulling a design out of thin air…that’s a whole different thing.

And you can’t just plop a second floor onto a house and call it a day! You have to rethink everything. For starters, stairs! Stairs take up a lot of space. You also have to think about using that new space efficiently. You have to think about plumbing paths and electrical requirements and septic systems and all the codes. And you have to think about what that new house is going to actually look like! And, in my case, without really any experience to lean on, I had to do it in a really short amount of time and have it approved by two homeowners, a team of engineers, and the fine folks at the local building and zoning department. And then I had to be able to build it.

All that being said, it’s not like I could just propose/build whatever. Every design job has constraints, and often those constraints guide the design much more restrictively than your imagination does. As somebody with some educational background in architecture, and certainly a personal interest, my mind immediately went to all kinds of things I’ve seen or read about. The Eames Case Study House, constructed from factory components in a matter of days. The stark geometry of the Bauhaus. The undulating concrete forms of Saarinen and Niemeyer. Those incredible walls of glass and rich wood finishes and the indoor-outdoor dialogue they create that Neutra did so well. It’s easy to get caught up.

And then you come back down to reality, because these were my constraints:

Experience: at this stage, we didn’t even have a builder. Obviously I can’t literally, single-handedly construct a house, so I knew I’d be working in conjunction with a contractor, but we didn’t know which contractor. New construction is somewhat uncommon around these parts, so there really just wasn’t room to gamble on some complicated or experimental design. This house needed to be simple and straightforward to construct.

Cost: I had to be able to build it inexpensively. New construction is never cheap, but there’s a big difference between a simple, traditional stick-frame structure and a complicated one that requires steel supports or tons of custom components or hard-to-source materials. Time is money when working with contractors, going back to the ease-of-building point. Cost is also part of what eliminated prefab as an option: everything I found was priced much higher than we hoped to be on a cost-per-square-foot basis, not to mention really tiny!

Footprint: partially because we were working with most of an existing structure, and largely due to zoning regulations and setback requirements, we essentially had to maintain the footprint of the existing house. More on that in a second!

Site: this site was somewhat challenging. You have the beautiful wooded areas in the back and off to the side with big mature trees and boulders and the wonders of nature, but then across the street and next door you have houses. Two of the three are currently in states of disrepair (and even fixed up, it’s not like you want to highlight neighboring houses when you have nature as an alternative!), so I had to try to maximize the appealing views and minimize exposure to the less desirable ones.

Practicality: even with the additional floor, the house still isn’t particularly large. You can dream all day about the architecture of a space, but ultimately you still have to have a functioning kitchen, three bedrooms, storage, wall space for art and small storage and display, two bathrooms that meet code, utility space, and laundry. The house has to work.

Codes: There are codes for almost everything. Heights, spans, clearances, distances between supports, the rise and run of each stair tread, the R-value of insulation, the placement of electrical receptacles, forms of egress, the type of glass required on a given window, fire safety, vapor barriers, grades of lumber for interior walls vs. exterior ones, the space around the toilet bowl. To say the learning curve for me was steep is an understatement.

Engineering: Regardless of what would have actually been possible, the engineers had some restrictions that my hands were somewhat tied to follow—the most consequential being the pitch of the roof. You hear a lot about snow loads being greater than they used to be, and our engineers said emphatically that our roofs had to be 6/12 at a minimum. This refers to the rise and run—for every 12″ of run, the roof must rise 6″, which is fairly steep. That’s kind of fine for a regular gabled roof, but wouldn’t allow us to build, say, a shed-style roof without the angles just looking insane.

Time: there just wasn’t enough of it! I had to design it quickly, primarily because all of this came about in mid-September, and we had to get a foundation in the ground before winter hit! And we had to build it quickly. Had is a strong word—the homeowners wanted it done quickly. They wanted it done yesterday. There was quite a bit of time spent on this project trying to explain why various things were so time-consuming, and why we probabbblllyyyy couldn’t build and finish (and furnish!) an entire house in 3-4 months.

Homeowners: as much as the homeowners and I really did get along and were on the same page about so many things, remember that I’m designing this house for them, not me! It’s easy to forget now, but during this period there was SO much anxiety and frustration that, for the homeowners, it started to feel essential that the house had mass appeal. OH DEAR. To me this house was always aspiring to be more modern, not less, but Adriana started showing me examples of these very traditional, kind of generic but well-executed new construction projects that just felt so at odds with the actual house, or what they even wanted to live in! I think it was really just panic about the future prospect of resale, which I understand. Not only did this feel really…uninspiring, it also seemed like an efficient way to increase construction costs: with modernism you can get away with simplicity and utilitarianism, but it’s hard to do that with more traditional styles without everything just looking cheap and flat. As a small example, we were aiming to reuse certain things like windows that were still in fine shape, but large single-lite vinyl casement windows were not going to look right on a house that’s supposed to have 6-over-6 divided lite double-hungs. Nonetheless, this period of not wanting to go “too daring” with the design was happening in the background of this and felt like a big complicating factor, even though they eventually got over it. Ha!

SO! The first thing was figuring out the space I had to work with. Our original footprint was this, with the top facing the street:

Since we asked real nice and applied for a zoning variance, the town allowed us to bump out the living room wall 6 feet, giving us an addition 120 square feet of space to play with. Like so–shaded section is new:

One of the challenges I see in designing a structure vs. renovating one is that with renovations, you tend to be thinking mostly about the interior or mostly about the exterior. Exterior work is often cosmetic—re-siding, re-painting, re-roofing, landscaping…ya know. But you have a structure: you have window locations, doorways, ceiling heights, the direction the roof pitches. But designing a building, you have to consider the how the interior looks and functions and how the exterior looks, and the two don’t always play well together! You might think a certain window would be nice inside the house, but then outside it just looks totally dumb. Or vice-versa! Or you want really high ceilings inside, but that makes the structure really tall and proportionately unappealing. There are so many things like this. In this case, it felt imperative to maximize light and views on the elevations of the house that face nature, but ALSO create a street-facing facade that looked welcoming and attractive, but didn’t highlight the undesirable views available to that side of the house from inside. Tricky!

In super simple terms: green is where we have good views, red is where we have bad views.

So, at THIS point, the back portion of the house (now the “guest wing,” since the master bedroom is moving upstairs!) was supposed to remain fairrrrly unchanged, although I wrote in the last post about some of the stuff we were required to do with it.

The kitchen and dining room plans were also more or less set, at least in their locations. That footprint wasn’t changing, and since we were hoping to keep some framing and the foundation under the kitchen/dining space, which would not allow us to put a second floor over that part of the house without redoing the foundation as well. Weight and stuff. So our second floor master suite is confined to the area where the whole foundation would be new—directly over the living room.

So basically we have this enlarged living room, which is also the only artery to get to the kitchen/dining spaces, the guest wing, up the stairs that don’t exist, and into the house at all unless you’re just going in the front door and into that long skinny guest room. It’s a ton of space, but once you add in all of those factors it gets a little tricky to create a room that doesn’t just feel like a massive pass-through.

It dawned on me that nobody was especially tied to the front door location, and that maybe it ought to be facing the street. Incidentally that’s where the front door was before the previous owners bought and wreckovated the house.

It also occurred to me that it’s not like you spend a lot of time in a stairwell, and you can get sort of creative with window placement in a stairwell, and that the stairwell should probably go against the street-facing wall, too. That way, we concentrate the views from the living room out into the woods, not onto the street and neighboring houses.

That’s how I got to some earlier version of this. You’ll notice that a couple of walls have shifted around in the guest wing with the elimination of the old entry, but those changes weren’t planned for until after we started building! A number of major things changed on the fly once construction got underway.

ANYWAY—if memory serves, all of this took place in a couple of days, and then it was time for another meeting with the engineers and Adriana the homeowner. In the background of all of this was the fact that I was no longer under contract at this point—we had to scrap and re-write my contract for the job completely, which was underway but not complete. This sounds inconsequential, but typically I wouldn’t be designing or sharing drawings and renderings (not to mention running around town to building departments and engineering firms) until after I have an executed contract and a deposit check in hand—a little freelancer safeguard against doing a bunch of work and never getting compensated for it if a client decides to be a jerk. Unfortunately it’s happened so I’m leery of it, even when I work for people that I know and trust!

The point is, we walked into this hour-long meeting with the engineer, and I didn’t really know what we were doing there. Adriana had called the meeting but without a design in place, it seemed premature and potentially like a waste of everyone’s time.

As it happened, Adriana had been corresponding with the engineer and had submitted a sketch of what she thought the second floor layout should be. I think she’ll be OK with me pointing out now that it was…a mess. Haha! Problem number one was that it wasn’t at all to scale and showed the staircase coming up in a location that made no sense for the first floor. The allocation of space was choppy and complicated and gave the toilet the best corner in the whole house! There was an enormous amount of space given over to closets, not enough room to actually use the washer and dryer in the plan…and I was just sitting there like…oh shit.

Again. I am not hired. I am not being paid. I am watching the engineer set these plans in stone in CAD, and feeling like if the meeting continued on this way, we’d have a terrible plan that I could then be possibly tasked with executing, and a client who might not understand the need to start over with a different plan since why did we have that meeting in the first place where we designed the house in an hour?!

So, I stepped in. And drew up a little sketch of what had been tumbling around in my brain. Then we dropped it into CAD. And then we moved a couple things. Then we rotated the roof 90 degrees to have a street-facing gable. Then…the basic strokes of the design were all there. We had a shape. We had walls. We had rooms.

Then some more decisions. How tall are the first floor ceilings? I say 10 feet. Adriana wants 12. How tall are the second floor ceilings? I say 8. Adriana insists on 10. All of a sudden the house gets four feet taller. That doesn’t sound like a big deal, but things like that had a bigger impact on everything—costs and time, for instance—than any of us appreciated at the time. That’s longer lumber, more insulation, more of all the finishing materials…whoopsie!

With those plans and decisions in hand, and shortly thereafter my contract executed, it was time to take our basic shape and basic layout and flesh it out into something resembling a house!

Because budget was such a concern, it was always the plan to reuse as much of the original house as we could in the rebuild! That’s right up my alley, of course, but it’s tricky—you don’t want to be so tied to the idea of reuse that the end result suffers because you were just trying to make too much stuff work together. This started with the windows, so I made a simple visual of all the windows that could potentially be relocated and the rough openings required to install them:

Pretty exciting stuff.

Then I set about placing them, and quickly realized that we’d need more windows, and the sizes we had were mostly really strange and difficult to work elegantly into a design. I tried, though! In order to keep costs down, I recommended that new window purchases be readily-available stock sizes.

Here was the first proposed design—oof! I hated that entryway when I proposed it, and I hate it now. Haha! Since the front elevation is where we wanted to minimize views, I kind of liked the idea of doing it up really fortress-like with just a couple little windows on the front. Those windows come from the list of windows with potential for reuse, but the sizes felt arbitrary and not so great.

The clients thought it looked uninviting and scary. I get that. Moving on…

Idea #2! In both of the first two designs, I sort of liked the concept of doing a shed roof over the kitchen/dining spaces, but the required 6/12 pitch was kindaaaaaa too much. I also turned the entryway inside-out, thinking a little recessed covered exterior mudroom kind of thing might be totally cool? Especially clad in a cedar tongue-and-groove or something? Given that we already bumped the front of the house out closer to the road than the existing zoning allows, it seemed like an interesting way to avoid pushing our luck with the building department by also asking for some kind of porch/portico/something that would bring anything structural even closer to the road.

The clients did not like the outdoor mudroom concept. Still not feeling the facade. Next!

I liked this plan! I think I still kinda like this plan! The mismatched window sizes on the second floor window are an error on the rendering, so ignore that. Anyway.

This plan definitely felt the best so far to the clients, but something still wasn’t sitting quite right (with all of us, really) so we brought in another set of eyes! Trained, talented, and experienced eyes! Adriana is great friends with an NYC-based architect named Matt Bremer, so she brought my renderings to him for some input!

Matt drew the above doodle, Adriana sent the doodle to me, I made the alterations in SketchUp, and that got us to…

Boom, house!

And that’s…pretty much what we ended up building. With some minor changes, naturally.

All in all—is this the house I would have built if I could have built anything my heart desired? No. But it IS a house that I think takes into consideration the things that I talked about at the beginning of this post. Simple and relatively inexpensive to build fairly quickly, satisfied our technical requirements, had the happy approval of the homeowners, made effective use of the site, and allowed for an efficient but spacious-feeling interior layout. Check check check!

Now let’s build this thing! This is where it gets fun.

Psssst! Olivebridge Cottage is an ongoing series about a renovation that flew off the rails (and then found its way back on)! For lots of backstory and schadenfreude, check out these past posts!

New Season, New Project!

Plans for Olivebridge Cottage!

Oh Dear, Here We Go…

Little House of Horrors

From Bad to Worse (And Worse and Worse and Worse)

Blogger is Hired to Renovate, Mistakenly Destroys Ulster County Art Piece “House”

Olivebridge Cottage: 2.0!

Designing Olivebridge Cottage 2.0: Part 1!

Designing Olivebridge Cottage 2.0: Part 2! syndicated from findqueenslandelectricians.wordpress.com

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additionallysad · 7 years

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Easy Makeover: Taking A Neutral Living Room From Plain To Polished http://ift.tt/2o41tth

I love a baller room makeover as much as the next person (Lisa Vanderpump’s closet? I could stare at it for HOURS), but scrapping all of your existing stuff and completely overhauling every nook and cranny of your room isn’t always realistic, especially if you don’t have a Housewives-sized budget. Sometimes using what you have and just getting a few new things to revive the entire room is the sweet spot (have I mentioned how much fun I had staging my friend’s house to sell a few weeks ago?!). So when my best friend asked for some help with her bare bones living room, I immediately started shouting out ideas and scribbling sketches like a lone weirdo playing solo Pictionary.

You can see where we started below shortly after they moved in. Pretty sparse with just a rug, sofa, armchair, and tufted ottoman. It’s their “formal” living room, so the TV and big cozy sectional is elsewhere – but this room still gets lots of use (by the kiddos, for holiday entertaining, for spirited adult game nights, etc). After the move she was feeling so underwhelmed by how her existing stuff looked, she actually had convinced herself everything needed to be craigslisted so she could start over.

In her mind that felt like the only option since she was so tired of the things she had, and she just couldn’t imagine them ending up in a space she truly LOVED. But her current reality = three young kids (and a cat). So after some pretty deep talks about what we coined “that sticky fingers and rogue Cheerio dust life” – all off which will be around for at least five more years – she realized she would much rather wait a few more years to update her sofa and rug with something awesome that her kids would probably be a lot nicer to when they’re a little older.

Enter Captain Optimism stage right (that’s me, btw – my other aliases include Sergeant Enthusiasm and Petty Officer Peppy). I was all “Woah, woah, woah – this stuff is neutral enough that it can work with anything! Let’s not throw the baby out with the bathwater.” Then we took a long conversational detour to discuss how weird that whole baby/bathwater expression is, but eventually circled back to the task at hand: me successfully convincing her to Tim Gunn it in there (aka: make it work).

By just moving in some stuff she already owned and purchasing a couple of accent chairs, a pair of super inexpensive bookshelves, and three pieces of art that she adores – we breathed a ton of new life into her old stuff (btw, her neutral sofa and armchair are more tan and less pink in person than they look in these pics). Plus everything we added will not only work with this existing stuff, but should she replace their seating or their rug down the line, well, these new pieces will play nicely with whatever else she chooses.

The main “projects” in the room were the gold display shelves flanking the couch. They were a DIY effort that we tackled together and they only required two $50 Ikea shelves, this gold spray paint (the primer is built-in so it’s just one step, and it’s the best gold color I’ve found), and this marble contact paper. As for the how-to details, after we assembled the frames of each bookshelf (leaving the actual shelves aside), we spray painted both of them with a few thin and even coats of gold spray paint and allowed them to cure outside for two days so they wouldn’t stink up the house or get dinged up when we brought them inside.

Here’s a detail of the bottom shelf (you can see the top shelf in the pic above). All of the middle shelves are glass, but the top and bottom were solid metal – so when we dressed them up with the marbleized contact paper, we only covered the visible side of each one. It was sorta like wrapping a present where you just fold an inch or so of excess around the backside of each one. The contact paper didn’t affect the fit, so they still slid right into place. It was an idea that she found on Pinterest a while back and had always wanted to try – and it could not have been easier.

The other high-impact addition was the art. The large piece on the back wall is this photograph from Minted (in the 40 x 30″ size with the whitewashed herringbone frame – my favorite of theirs). The other two that were added to the mix are Paris View and Day in Paris (both 24 x 18″ with the same whitewashed frame).

The art was definitely the splurge (the total for all three pieces came to around $480 with a discount code that we googled) but thanks to such inexpensive Ikea bookcases, and the fact that they kept their existing sofa/chair/rug/ottoman instead of rebuying any major pieces, the makeover still came in under budget. Best of all the art has become their new favorite thing in the room, especially because of what it represents to them. She and her husband go to France once a year (he goes for business, and she gets to tag along for fun) so they love having a little bit of France in their living room. I know, I’m jealous too. #NeverBeenToEurope

The funny thing is that everyone who walks into the room says “Woah, that’s such a cool picture of your husband!!!” because he wears a bright orange jacket like that all the time. So people literally think the guy in the foreground is him, which leads to some pretty hilarious “I can’t believe you think I can take a picture like that!” revelations from my BFF. Sometimes she’s like “oh, you know, just a little snap I got on my phone...”

Also: this is Kitty Purry (named after Katie Perry’s cat by their oldest child). I like her because she matches the art. Also because she’s a sweet kitty who only occasionally makes my eyes itch thanks to my stellar cat-intolerant genetics.

Let’s bring it back around to the before shot one more time, just to show one last “zone” that we added to fill out the room.

The only other purchases for the room were the two $65 ghost chairs that we added on the exposed edge of the rug, which help the seating area feel more complete and extra functional (now we can squeeze in two more butts on game night). They actually already owned two of these acrylic chairs in their dining room, so I just dragged them in here to test them out. We liked that the clear acrylic lets your eye travel through them (if they were larger or more solid it might feel like a jarring “wall” of chairs in your face). Once they were sold on the look, they just ordered two more so they weren’t short on dining room chairs. And that side table between them? That’s a basket they already had turned upside down. How’s that for using what you have?

We also brought in (and anchored!) a leaning mirror they already owned for one last hit of gold in the room. She got it a few years ago at West Elm, but it’s back in stock in brass (it tends to go in and out, so here’s a similar one on Wayfair). And for the accessories on the shelves, we just used stuff she had around the house – some magazines stacked horizontally, framed photos, boxes, vases, and these perfectly-sized lamps that put out a nice glow at night. Most of their books live on built-ins in the other room, so these shelves got to be more decorative and light.

For anyone else who is faced with bare shelves, or crazy cluttered ones, my best shelf-styling tip would be that a few larger scale items are better than a bunch of little busy or piddly looking ones, and I love decorative boxes, stacks of mags and books, framed photos, and a few vases – perhaps with some cheap grocery store flowers if you’re feeling fancy (we paid $4 total for the two bunches that you see in the after pics).

Here’s a little board full of ideas if you’re looking to fill out your shelves with items other than the books & magazines you already have on hand:

1 / 2 / 3 /4 / 5 / 6 / 7 / 8 / 9 / 10 / 11 / 12 / 13 / 14 / 15 / 16

This probably isn’t the last time you’ll see this house (you’ve actually already seen their son’s room, and we’re slowly working with them on a bunch more). But I just couldn’t wait to share this tale of turning a room’s frown upside down with just a few new items. Total time spent: around 5 hours including planning, measuring, assembling, spray painting, marble-papering, ordering things online, and hanging prints. Taking a detail shot for the post just as Kitty Purry saunters by: priceless.

*This post contains affiliate links

The post Easy Makeover: Taking A Neutral Living Room From Plain To Polished appeared first on Young House Love.

#additionally sad home renovations

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vincentbnaughton · 7 years

Text

Easy Makeover: Taking A Neutral Living Room From Plain To Polished

Let’s bring it back around to the before shot one more time, just to show one last “zone” that we added to fill out the room.

Here’s a little board full of ideas if you’re looking to fill out your shelves with items other than the books & magazines you already have on hand:

1 / 2 / 3 /4 / 5 / 6 / 7 / 8 / 9 / 10 / 11 / 12 / 13 / 14 / 15 / 16

*This post contains affiliate links

The post Easy Makeover: Taking A Neutral Living Room From Plain To Polished appeared first on Young House Love.

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213hiphopworldnews · 5 years

Text

Lil Nas X Is Handling ‘Old Town Road’s Success Exactly The Way He Should

Eric Lagg / Uproxx Studios

no fuckin way https://t.co/uxuioMReGn

— nope (@LilNasX) April 23, 2019

who want war pic.twitter.com/FMrxCrhX8k

— nope (@LilNasX) April 24, 2019

source https://uproxx.com/hiphop/lil-nas-x-is-handling-old-town-roads-success-exactly-the-way-he-should/

#hiphop #hip hop legend #hip hop history #hip hop #music #trending #hip hop news #ballin #hip hop scen

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vincentbnaughton · 7 years

Text

Easy Makeover: Taking A Neutral Living Room From Plain To Polished

Let’s bring it back around to the before shot one more time, just to show one last “zone” that we added to fill out the room.

Here’s a little board full of ideas if you’re looking to fill out your shelves with items other than the books & magazines you already have on hand:

1 / 2 / 3 /4 / 5 / 6 / 7 / 8 / 9 / 10 / 11 / 12 / 13 / 14 / 15 / 16

*This post contains affiliate links

The post Easy Makeover: Taking A Neutral Living Room From Plain To Polished appeared first on Young House Love.

0 notes