If I had the choice of the Yaris or another car, I would choose the other car. Because driving that car would make me at least low-level angry for the time I had it.

My mom sold the house.

I was the youngest of three, and my parents told us all that as long as we were in school (including college), we could stay and they would pay for college. My brothers both got the benefit of this (oldest ended up staying outside of that for a couple years, but whatever).

My dad died in August after my graduation. My mom and aunt had inherited some money from my great-aunt and bought a house together near a college my mom wanted to go to, so she sold the childhood home (that I'd lived in my entire life) and said "good luck."

Completely understandable, and I'm glad she got to live the life she wanted. She's a nurse now (mostly retired, can't seem to make it stick), remarried, and they're building their own house. And my aunt now lives in the house they bought.

And I'm doing awesome (40s, two kids, wife of 16 years, set to retire in a town in Alaska we love, own our own house), honestly a lot better off than either of my brothers, so I can't complain about how anything happened, other than wishing my dad was around longer.

Interesting that allowing women to vote created a situation where women felt it less absolutely necessary to get married. Because after a while, their voice had to be considered when discussing bills like prohibiting banks from refusing bank accounts, home loans, and credit cards to women.

The Yaris ads did this to me. I got so pissed off by their "It's a car" commercials that I absolutely despised the product.

For every state that is below Alaska...

Have you seen Alaska? Have you spent time there? Alaska is crazy dangerous! How bad must your healthcare be that the constant threat of the entire environment being against you doesn't win out for short life expectancy?!

And Mississippi, just... be better.

I've found that amongst people I know who fly the Gadsden Flag, it makes zero sense. Like, if Ben and Jerry's made a boot-leather flavor of ice cream, their target demographic and the those of the people who sell Gadsden Flags would be identical.

A book that I got as part of a birthday present when I was in middle school had a passage where a man's long-lost sister (who was part monster, but was painstakingly described as very attractive) told him that either he had to impregnate her the old-fashioned way, or she would simply get a syringe, extract sperm from his testicles, and impregnate herself that way to create, if I remember correctly, a monster that would end the world or something. It was labeled as "Young Adult" level.

So, like, probably something like that.

I'll never understand how difficult people make things by not being forthright and making things awkward:

"Is it okay if I bring my boyfriend?"

"...I think there's been a misunderstanding. I had asked you on a hike as a fun first date, I didn't realize you had a boyfriend. I'm going to bow out of this, but I can give you the hike info if you want to take him." And then you laugh about the misunderstanding the next work day, and keep things at work from then on. No reason for it to get bad. Flirting is still fun! Just leave it at that without expecting anything more.

There are more appropriate ways to say this:

"Nobody with kids. I might want kids some day, but I'm not ready yet, and it feels like there would be too much pressure to either be involved with her kids or be cut out of a major portion of her life until we're really serious. And again, not ready.

And somebody athletic, since I'm into biking and hiking and other activities that require a certain level of fitness.

And... well, somebody who isn't into the whole casual sex thing, honestly. I think sex is special and, for me, requires a strong emotional connection. I want someone who has similar views on sex."

See, I feel like it changes it when you're not focusing on the other person, but yourself. I'm not ready for kids, I'm into fitness, I'm a demisexual. It sets up the same thing without disparaging people who aren't what you're looking for.

Her character gave the impression of being in her thirties with a doctorate and tons of experience, regardless how old the actress was. In the books she was apparently in her "late twenties" so that reasonably tracks.

My experience with people who are really into working out is that they want everyone to be into working out, and want to help you get there. They're nerds for lifting. They're excited to get you excited.

Anyone who shit-talks you for not already being great at it is a fucking poser and you should tell them that.

So I'm in the military, and my unit is particularly pleasant to be at, enough that if there are other military people on here, they might get upset by what I'm about to say.

We have peer group meetings with the Commanding Officer of the base, meaning each paygrade meets with the CO without the people above or below them to hear, and discuss issues. As you can imagine, those in the lower paygrades tend to be significantly younger, and when it got to my paygrade, we were all, almost without exception, millenials.

To give a background, in the military we get 30 days of leave per year (basically vacation), unlimited sick days, maternity and paternity leave (I believe it's at 2 months for Paternity, which is pretty generous by US standards). Additionally, at my unit, we get a four day weekend for every federal holiday, have various "morale days" through the year for fishing derbies, group hikes, etc, and a 6.5 hour work day (cue all military going WTF?!).

At the lower paygrade peer group, a few of them were apparently asking for "more control" over their time off, and being able to take ask for days off with no notice because the weather was going to be good (for hunting, for example). When the CO brought the stuff they were saying up to us, the older, supervisor, millenials, we were facepalming and talking about the fucking Zoomers. But then something amazing happened:

The CO said he could see their point, and maybe we take some of those four day weekends and instead give a few "Liberty Bucks" at the beginning of the year to each person, that can be turned in to get a particular day in the immediate future off (like getting the next day off to go hunting). That actually worked really well for us, because it made those long weekends easier to schedule, and spread out the days people would be out.

And I realized we Millenials were just so happy to have what we had, we couldn't fathom asking for something better... but they could, they did, and got it.

Fucking Zoomers indeed. Keep pushing, y'all.