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Story of Our Life
A Harry Styles Imagine
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Pairing: Harry Styles x Reader
Word Count: 4.1k
Warnings: None
A/N: This is something a little different that was inspired by a dream I had where I was singing Story of My Life with 1D in a car... Also, I made some cover art on procreate plz don't judge my mediocre art skills lmao. Hope you like it!!!!!
Masterlist
Excerpts from
STORY OF OUR LIFE
by 
Y/N Styles
To Louis, the best chauffeur I’ve ever had.
To Liam, who keeps us all sane. Steady on, mate.
To Zayn, who always offers a shoulder to cry on (and a cigarette).
To Niall, the king of late-night chats (and snacks).
To Harry, for everything, forever.
Introduction by Harry Styles
Before she was my wife, Y/N Styles was Y/N Y/L/N. We met in 2011, six months before we would be setting out on the Up All Night tour. Even though I had been on TV, in recording studios, and performed live on the X Factor Live Tour 2011, I was still just a shy kid from Holmes Chapel who couldn’t quite believe his luck. I think I spent that whole year in a state of disbelief, afraid that at any moment, someone would tell me that it was all a joke and I wasn’t very good at singing, actually. Every time I took a shower, I half-expected Ashton Kutcher to jump out at me from behind the shower curtain. Y/N, on the other hand, walked into the conference room at Columbia Records, sat down at the head of the table, folded her arms across her chest, and asked us each, individually, if we had read Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows and, if so, how did we feel about it? Immediately, I knew that this girl was going to be someone special.
Her dad, Greg Y/L/N, was going to be our tour manager. When it was time for the label to put a team together, he was at the top of the list: a goofy dad with a daughter around our age who had toured with some of the biggest musicians of the 90s. He was the perfect choice for a bunch of kids who didn’t really know what they were doing: industry experience to make sure the day-to-day operations went smoothly, and the paternal instinct to protect us as best he could (we called him Papa Bear, which he pretended to hate, but we all knew he secretly loved it). 
We grew up together, spent months on end traveling the world, learning algebra on private planes and sneaking out of hotel rooms to wander foreign cities in the middle of the night. Fast forward to today. While Y/N was pregnant with Willa, our second child, she spent the whole third trimester on bed rest. Eventually, she got so bored that she scrolled all the way back on iCloud. Our older daughter, Hazel, was fascinated by the pictures of me and the band, and Y/N spent hours recounting our days on tour. I told her that she should write a book, but she refused at first. We have enough money, she said. People will think I’m making a cash grab. I told her that was bollocks, but if she really felt that way, she could donate all the profits to charity. It’s perfect, really, I said. The 20-year anniversary of One Direction is coming up, and it would be cool to give the fans a peek behind the scenes. Really, there’s no one better than you, darling, because you know the real us. She agreed, but only if all five of us were okay with it, and if all of the proceeds could go to The Trevor Project. So really, it’s actually me you should be thanking for convincing her to do this in the first place.
Anyways, here it is. The Story of Our Life: Growing Up With the World’s Biggest Boy Band, written by my amazing wife, Y/N Styles. 
Chapter 5
Out of all the One Direction boys, Louis was the first one to get his driver's license in America. He spent the few months leading up to the Where We Are tour with his girlfriend in California, and wanted to buy a fancy car to drive her around in. Hence, the license. So, when the tour made its way to North America, he somehow managed to convince my dad and the security team to let him drive us from the hotel to the venue a few times. Of course, the windows were tinted (and we were not allowed to open them), we were surrounded by a security detail, and there was always a bodyguard in the backseat, but it didn’t matter. 
On the night of the second show in Detroit, we all piled into a tricked-out Toyota Sienna, the best minivan on the market in 2011. Louis and Liam sat up front, I was squished between Harry and Niall in the middle, and Zayn and the bodyguard sat in the way back. We had the radio blasting and were singing along to some absolute bangers, like Party Rock Anthem and Super Bass, when the first few notes of Story of My Life started playing. Louis groaned and reached over to change the station, but I leaned forwards and slapped his hand out of the way before he could, turning the volume up a few notches. 
“Written in these walls are the stories that I can’t explain,” I sang along with Harry’s voice, turning to look at him with a mischievous smirk. He was mouthing along but bit his lip as soon as I caught him. Liam piped up with his part and I shook my head, laughing. 
“Do you guys seriously only ever sing your parts?” I asked. Next to me, I felt Niall shrug. 
“Feels wrong to sing someone else’s, even off stage,” he said, before chiming in on the background vocals as Zayn jumped in on his part. 
“Well, you should do it anyway, just for fun.” Liam turns around and lifts his eyebrows in a silent challenge. Harry and Niall jumped in, and soon we were all belting out the words to every part.
When the final chorus came up, I turned to rest my head on Harry’s shoulder, singing his part back to him. He was usually the shameless one, but his cheeks were tinted pink and he stopped singing for a few seconds. His green eyes were wide, but they never once left my own. I felt his chest rise and fall in a deep, steadying breath before he began singing again. 
From that moment on, Story of My Life was our song. Every time they performed it, he turned towards the side of the stage during the last chorus, where I sang along. On the rare occasions that I sat in the audience, his eyes always managed to find mine. We sang lines to each other all the time. Our favorite thing to do, much to everyone else’s dismay, was yell Zayn’s pre-chorus to each other from across a room. 
“And I’ll be gone, gone, tonight,” one of us would start. 
“The ground beneath my feet is open wide,” the other would respond. 
“The way that I’ve been holding on too tight,” the first person would say, before we both shouted, “With nothing in betweeeeeeeen!” That line was always the loudest, and we always dragged out the last syllable until we couldn’t breathe anymore. 
Chapter 9
When Harry’s solo album dropped, I was in class, taking my Algebra 101 final. My test-taking nerves were multiplied tenfold by the fact that I knew people were listening to it right now, and I wasn’t. We had kept in touch after One Direction broke up, mostly over text but occasionally, when he was in LA, he came to my house to have dinner with me and my Grandma (and Dad, if he was home).
I listened to it all the way through on the drive back home to Pasadena after I finished my exam, and as soon as I pulled into the driveway, I texted him. 
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I signed up for a presale code, and refreshed my laptop continuously for five straight minutes in order to get tickets for his LA show. Harry was furious with me. When I texted him that I was officially coming to the show, he called me in the middle of a meeting with his tour team to yell at me. Something along the lines of, “I put you on the VIP list, you dumbass! And invites to the afterparty were just sent out yesterday!”
To be fair, I just wanted to support my friend, and to this day I still feel uncomfortable asking for free tickets from anyone when I have the means to pay for them. I think it’s all the guilt from five years of attending One Direction concerts for free. But anyways, that next fall, I found myself backstage at the Greek Theater with a VIP badge around my neck, feeling intense deja vu as security led me to Harry’s dressing room. 
“Y/N!” He yelled as soon as the door opened. I had no time to react; I was nearly knocked over by the force of his hug. His mom and sister were there, too, and I was passed around for more hugs before settling next to Harry on the couch. 
“So, how’s it going? How’s school?” he asked, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees. That’s one of the things I love most about Harry; no matter how long it’s been since he’s seen someone, he always picks back up like no time has passed. He is scary good at keeping up with what everyone else is doing, even when his own life 
“Kicking my ass already and it’s only been three weeks,” I said with a chuckle. “But better than last year, that’s for sure!” Harry’s brows furrowed and he waited expectantly. “Did I not tell you that my original roommate was psycho?”
“No, I don’t think that’s come up before.” I pulled up a photo on my phone and handed it over to him without a word, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen his eyes wider than they were in that moment. 
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“Holy shit,” she said.
“I wanna see!” Gemma whined, leaning across the coffee table to snatch the phone from him. “Oh my god, Mum, look!” She handed the phone to Anne, who frowned down at it. 
“This was your dorm?”
“For all of three days, yes,” you answered. “I’m not sure what creeped me out more, the life-sized cardboard cutout of Harry watching my every move, or the fact that she threatened to blackmail me if I didn’t introduce her to you.” Harry was doubled over with laughter with tears welling up in the corners of his eyes. 
“What are the chances of you, of all people, rooming with a crazy One Direction fan in college?” he asked, struggling to breathe enough to support his vocal chords. 
“The school investigated and they found an invoice for a private investigator on her computer in a folder with a bunch of my personal information and photos of me that looked like they were taken from behind bushes and trash cans. Apparently, she gave him that paparazzi photo from the week we were in London during On the Road Again and he was able to track me down.”
“He was able to figure out your identity from that photo?” I nodded, and Harry looked impressed, yet mildly disturbed. “She must’ve paid a fortune.” The photo in question features all five members of One Direction on their way into the O2 arena, and in the background, you can see the blurry back of my head as I slipped into the back door ahead of them.
When it was time for Harry to get ready, a security guard led Anne, Gemma, and I to the VIP section and we settled in for the show. He killed it on stage, and it was great to see him back in his element, joking with the fans between songs and waving to everyone he made eye contact with. He performed What Makes You Beautiful and the cheers were so loud, even in the small-theater setting, that I knew I would probably have trouble hearing tomorrow. 
“Alright, now normally I’d go straight into Kiwi, but there’s someone special in the audience today and this next song means a lot to the both of us, and she was the one who told me to sing all of the parts even though it feels weird, I hope you’ll forgive me for making you wait a few more minutes,” he said with a smirk, knowing that no one was going to complain about an extra song. My smile widened and Anne wrapped an arm around me, squeezing my shoulder, to acknowledge how special this moment was about to be. Just like old times, Harry looked straight at me as the intro music started to play. 
“Written in these walls are the stories that I can’t explain,” he began, and immediately tears started welling up behind my eyes. I joined in, leaning my head on Anne’s shoulder for support. When he got to the second pre-chorus, he yelled out “And I’ll be gone, gone, tonight!” and held out his mic for the audience to sing the next line, but I caught an almost-imperceptible wink as he smiled up at me and I knew that he could care less if anyone else chimed in.
“The fire beneath my feet is burning bright,” Anne, Gemma, and I screamed, hoping that we were loud enough for him to pick our voices out of the crowd. 
He sang the next line, and so did the audience, but I kept my mouth shut and joined in on the last line. He dragged out “between” so long that he had to jump back in on “I take her home.” I was the only one still singing along with him at that point, and the audience let out confused laughter, looking back and forth trying to figure out why he wasn’t moving on yet. 
Chapter 11
We’ve never talked about how we got together, and once the gossip magazines found out that I was the daughter of One Direction’s former tour manager, they just filled in the blanks themselves. I try not to read those things, but I do remember seeing a few headlines like “CHILDHOOD SWEETHEARTS RECONNECTED!” over that grainy paparazzi photo of us in Holmes Chapel before the Manchester Love on Tour stops. Others spun the fact that I was doing PR on the tour into a fake “HARRY STYLES KISSES EMPLOYEE” scandal, and it just spiraled out of control from there. But I’m getting ahead of myself. 
When the pandemic hit, I was at home in Pasadena with my dad and grandma. We had no other “bubble” because my grandma was immunocompromised. Needless to say, I got very bored very quickly. It got to the point that I would cycle through the contacts on my phone, Facetiming everyone in alphabetical order by last name until someone picked up. Harry was one of the only people who answered every single time. We ended up calling each other almost every day, sometimes to chat, or just to have someone there, in the background, while we went about our days. He was with his band, working on what would eventually become Harry’s House, and I spent many days listening to them work through different lyric and melody combinations while curled up in my childhood bedroom with my work laptop. He even interrupted a Zoom meeting I was in, once, excited to play part of “Music for a Sushi Restaurant” for me.
I was working remotely for a PR firm, after graduating college in 2020, my options were limited and, in the end, the place only gave me an offer because they worked with Columbia Records and knew my dad. I mostly wrote copy about movies to be put on Wikipedia or IMDB, which was super boring, so Harry seriously saved my life by letting me listen in on his studio sessions, or to the audio of whatever show he was watching and his commentary. 
By the time he was able to start prepping for Love on Tour, I was working at the firm’s office building on Sunset,  just about ready to quit my job and sell foot pics online. 
“Come on tour with me,” he said, (seemingly) impulsively, during one of our Facetime sessions in which he patiently listened to me complain about how Mark from accounting wouldn’t stop coming over to my desk to “chat” every hour on the hour. 
“What?” I answered, laughing a little. 
“Seriously, Y/N, it’ll be just like old times! We can race on the dolleys they use to bring the speakers in, and I’ll even let you win this time.” I rolled my eyes.
“It’s not really winning, then, is it?”
“Okay, fine, I won’t let you win. But I am serious, Y/N. You should join me on tour.”
“What am I supposed to do, just follow you around the world like some sad, desperate groupie?”
“I mean, you are a bit sad and desperate.” I flipped him off, to which he responded by cackling with laughter. 
“I’m sad because my job sucks, and desperate to get away from Mark, not to get into your pants.”
“Well, you wouldn’t be my mistress, you’d be doing PR for the tour, obviously.” Harry’s cheeks flushed with the slightest hint of pink, 
“Well, maybe you should have led with that!” I started laughing, too, and it took a while for either of us to be able to speak again. 
“Okay, sorry, I’ll start over.” He took a deep breath to calm his giggles, but still couldn’t manage to keep a straight face. “Y/N Y/L/N, I would like to formally request that you join me as my PR Manager for Love on Tour. My publicist is about to give birth, like, any day now so she obviously can’t go gallivanting around the world. Really, you’d be doing me a favor, and who better than someone who already has my dressing room requests memorized since half of them are actually yours.” 
“You still have the same dressing room requests?” I gave him a skeptical look. 
“Old habits die hard.” He shrugged. “And even though I don’t drink Diet Coke, having it in the fridge makes it feel like you’re there with me.” The pink was now red and I bit my lip to keep myself from smiling too wide. 
“Alright, Mr. Styles, you have a deal.”
Like he said, old habits die hard, so even though we were now adults and my dad wasn’t on tour with us, we still fell into our old routines. Back in the day, I was never allowed to be alone in a room with one of the boys, but we had our ways around it. Usually by walking through the hallways of the floor of the hotel everyone was staying on, checking in with the guards stationed at either side on every loop. So while we could have hung out in our rooms, more often than not, we walked through the hotel hallways in circles just like we used to. 
The night before the Pittsburgh show, Harry showed up at my door at 10pm with a bag of sour gummy worms. 
“It’s not Haribo, but it’s close enough,” he said with a shrug, flashing me his trademark “Harry Styles” grin. And just like that, we were off to wear a hole in the carpet, or so I thought. We hadn’t even made it through one full loop before he pulled me through a random door marked “Employees Only” and dragged me up three flights of stairs. 
“Are you taking me somewhere private so you can murder me?” I asked as we trudged through the dirty stairwell. 
“Something like that,” he answered. But when we reached the top, he opened another door and we were on the roof. 
The view was gorgeous, the moon was bright and cast a cool glow on the Pittsburgh skyline. I turned to Harry with wide eyes.
“Scoped it out earlier,” he said with a sheepish smile on his lips. “Just thought we could use a change of scenery.”
“It’s perfect,” I said, reaching out to squeeze his hand in thanks. “As much as I love hotel hallways, this is better.”
We sat on the edge of the roof, dangling our legs over the top of the building next door, and passed the bag of gummy worms back and forth as we talked. We were out there for so long that my eyelids started to get heavy and our conversation slowed down. I leaned my head on his shoulder and he wrapped his arm around me, huddling closer for warmth (or so I thought). 
“Wanna listen to some music?” He asked. I nodded and he pulled his Airpods out, sticking one in my ear and the other in his own. 
Story of My Life started playing and my heart rate sped up, pulsing adrenaline through my body. Suddenly, I was wide awake and hyper aware of every place our bodies were touching (thighs, hips, my shoulder to his chest, his shoulder to my head, his arm on my bicep). 
I lifted my head up and turned to look at him.
“Do you ever get sick of this song?” I asked. My voice was quiet because I wasn’t sure I actually wanted to know the answer. 
“No,” he replied. His voice was low and raspy and it made my stomach flutter. I felt myself leaning in, unconsciously, as he continued. “It reminds me of you, and I could never get sick of you.” 
He brought his free hand up to my face and rubbed his thumb in soft circles on my cheekbone, and his eyes flickered down to my lips. The distance between us closed as if we were replaying something that had already happened in slow motion. Eventually, I could just barely feel the soft brush of his lips against mine. My mouth fell open just a bit in anticipation of what was to come, but Harry paused. 
“It’s you, Y/N,” he whispered.”It’s always been you.”
Feel free to cross my name out and write in your own, I won’t be mad. I get it; what really happened was better than any self-insert fanfiction.
Chapter 17
I’m going to keep most of the details of our wedding private, but I will tell you about our first dance, because it ties into a lot of the other stories that I’ve written about. If you haven’t noticed by now, Story of My Life is sort of the underlying theme of this book, and that’s because it’s been the underlying theme of my life, the soundtrack to my relationship with Harry. 
After dinner, and some absolutely mental toasts, Harry and I were eager to get the party started. Even though he’s not the best dancer, I have never met anyone who dances with as much joy as Harry does, and I love getting pulled into his wild, spontaneous routines. But our first dance was different. The fairy lights surrounding the garden were twinkling in the moonlight, and Niall, Liam, Louis, and Zayn stood on the sidelines to sing, you guessed it, Story of My Life. We swayed in circles, gently, without trying to put on a show or impress anyone else. It was a beautiful, full circle moment, and the boys even dragged out “between” just a little bit to tease us. 
Life is funny. One minute, you’re sixteen and screaming “The fire beneath my feet is burning bright,” at your best friend and you think that this is it, you will be touring the world with your friends forever, and the next you’re twenty-seven and in a wedding dress, leaving mascara stains on the shoulder of his suit. But I wouldn’t change a thing, because I think it was written in the walls all along. 
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ayuvogue · 1 year
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Ayumi Hamasaki 25th Anniversary Live (April 8th, 2023)
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dasistblod · 4 months
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Kimberly and Jennie gonna throw hands in a Haldiram's parking lot
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howifeltabouthim · 9 months
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Telling all is a dubious form of generosity. Some things are better not told.
Siri Hustvedt, from The Blindfold
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jerseydeanne · 2 years
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Word Salad coming soon, A Narc version of the truth!
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seeanimation · 1 year
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youtube
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On August 1, 2004 Mommie Dearest was screened at the Dublin Lesbian and Gay Film Festival.
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beaft · 2 months
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my mum forbade me to say anything to my dad about the top surgery thing, and it's just hit me how funny it would be if i got it done and didn't tell him and just waited for him to notice. i mean, what's he gonna say? "didn't you used to have tits?"
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still thinking about the brainrot that fast fashion has caused in people, like i made this pair of pants that are black and white with a cool flowery design, and an acquaintance saw them and said "wow i'd pay like 20 dollars for you to make me a pair" and i could barely think with how utterly horrified i was at that; i told them that 20 dollars wouldn't even cover the materials, let alone the hours of work that went into cutting, sewing, ironing, hemming, altering, etc. they just had this look on their face when i told them that, when i said i wouldn't make them a pair for even 100 dollars because that was still way too low of an amount, a look that said "you're crazy for thinking that those cost 100 dollars" and maybe i am crazy but holy shit, 20 dollars for a pair of handmade, durable, lined pants fitted specifically to your measurements? 20 dollars for upwards of 60 hours of work? 20 dollars for several yards of high-quality fabric, thread, and buttons? 20 dollars???
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myclericalromance · 11 months
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i went to a tiny counterserve diner once and accidentally poured sugar instead of salt all over my hashbrowns and was eating them sadly anyways. the waitress took them away and started making me another one and I tried to protest, but she just snorted and said "we're not catholic here". now every time i'm doing something painful out of obligation i think about how that is not repenting, this body is not a catholic establishment, there is no nobility in suffering.
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rainintheevening · 16 days
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Enjoyed everyone's comments on the last one so much, here's another.
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ayuvogue · 4 months
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caputvulpinum · 1 year
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yeah we might be brothers in christ but so were cain and abel so shut the fuck up before i decide to find a rock about it
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deep-space-netwerk · 6 months
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So Venus is my favorite planet in the solar system - everything about it is just so weird.
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It has this extraordinarily dense atmosphere that by all accounts shouldn't exist - Venus is close enough to the sun (and therefore hot enough) that the atmosphere should have literally evaporated away, just like Mercury's. We think Earth manages to keep its atmosphere by virtue of our magnetic field, but Venus doesn't even have that going for it. While Venus is probably volcanically active, it definitely doesn't have an internal magnetic dynamo, so whatever form of volcanism it has going on is very different from ours. And, it spins backwards! For some reason!!
But, for as many mysteries as Venus has, the United States really hasn't spent much time investigating it. The Soviet Union, on the other hand, sent no less than 16 probes to Venus between 1961 and 1984 as part of the Venera program - most of them looked like this!
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The Soviet Union had a very different approach to space than the United States. NASA missions are typically extremely risk averse, and the spacecraft we launch are generally very expensive one-offs that have only one chance to succeed or fail.
It's lead to some really amazing science, but to put it into perspective, the Mars Opportunity rover only had to survive on Mars for 90 days for the mission to be declared a complete success. That thing lasted 15 years. I love the Opportunity rover as much as any self-respecting NASA engineer, but how much extra time and money did we spend that we didn't technically "need" to for it to last 60x longer than required?
Anyway, all to say, the Soviet Union took a more incremental approach, where failures were far less devastating. The Venera 9 through 14 probes were designed to land on the surface of Venus, and survive long enough to take a picture with two cameras - not an easy task, but a fairly straightforward goal compared to NASA standards. They had…mixed results.
Venera 9 managed to take a picture with one camera, but the other one's lens cap didn't deploy.
Venera 10 also managed to take a picture with one camera, but again the other lens cap didn't deploy.
Venera 11 took no pictures - neither lens cap deployed this time.
Venera 12 also took no pictures - because again, neither lens cap deployed.
Lotta problems with lens caps.
For Venera 13 and 14, in addition to the cameras they sent a device to sample the Venusian "soil". Upon landing, the arm was supposed to swing down and analyze the surface it touched - it was a simple mechanism that couldn't be re-deployed or adjusted after the first go.
This time, both lens caps FINALLY ejected perfectly, and we were treated to these marvelous, eerie pictures of the Venus landscape:
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However, when the Venera 14 soil sampler arm deployed, instead of sampling the Venus surface, it managed to swing down and land perfectly on….an ejected lens cap.
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spearxwind · 7 months
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Saying skill issue has done irreparable damage to my vocabulary
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theaudiblebookclub · 2 months
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Listen to Confessions of a Prairie Bitch by Alison Arngrim on Audible. https://www.audible.com/pd/B076HYMPL6?source_code=ASSOR150021921000R
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