posted
Not only hamburgers but cakes also. A while back you could get a pure chocolate cake with a thin sheet of gold slapped on the side. For the price I would have expected them to do more than just slap it on the side. Make a flower out of it or some such.
And my dad used to get gold shots.
and in a way you can spend it. There is always someone willing to collect it, to whom you can sell it to.
[This message has been edited by LDWriter2 (edited January 20, 2011).]
posted
Buying and selling gold is not spending it---it's cashing in on your investment. You get either some of those stiff pieces of paper you put in your wallet, or you get something you can, somewhere down the line, cash in for some of those same pieces of paper.
Posts: 8809 | Registered: Aug 2005
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posted
I'm a man and I know this may sound weird, but I've never figured out the fascination men seem to have with sports. I'm weird, so sue me. Nor do I. Hockey is the only sport I follow, and my mother got me into it. She's Quebecois, so hockey is sorta mandatory. Mom grew up playing the sport as a kid, and she and her brother taught me to play, which I still do when I don't mind resting in bed for the next week, too sore to move. I'm a goalie, so I don't get hit (in hockey called "checking") by the other players, and hockey goaltenders wear enough padding to stop a small automobile. Hockey pucks are generally constructed of six ounces of frozen vulcanized rubber, and WILL (not can, will) hurt if you get hit in an unprotected spot. However, I usually find myself diving around, contorting myself into positions the human body has no business being in. I once did a split that left me with a pain in my equator that lasted six days. But, most importantly, I made the save, and gained a newfound appreciation for my favorite player's regular yoga regimen.
Thanks everyone. I'll let you know how it goes. - They make a few liqueurs with gold flakes in them, mostly for novelty. Not being much of a drinker, I've never tried them.
posted
I'm not that much into sports but I understand the physical competition, even if you are just watching it, that makes up sports. Add to that the fact that you can be a couch potato, eat salty crunchy--hot snacks while drinking beer and you get a dream life.
Actually, I would take out the hot snacks and the beer but the rest of it sounds good.
posted
But I said in a way. Maybe I should have added kinda of, sort of. In this case you are buying paper money with it. Posts: 5289 | Registered: Jun 2010
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posted
It's true of any investment, whether gold or silver or other precious metals, or stocks and bonds, or land or a house or equity in them---you can't spend your investment without a portion of cashing in. Of course, you can invest in something that yields an income, like stocks that pay dividends, but it's not quite the same thing.
Did I ever mention how I missed out on getting in on the Great Silver Boom of the late 1970s? I did a report on silver in the early 1970s for school when silver went for, like, four dollars an ounce. Seemed like a good investment, but like most preteens, I had no money. So I missed out when it went up to fifty dollars an ounce (and even now about twenty-five dollars an ounce.) Not the only thing I've missed out on, either...
quote:How do you all feel about using pen names/pseudo names as a writer?
Poorly. Such are the raging needs of my ego that, if I couldn't publish under my own name, I don't think I'd bother---unless the money were off the scale or something on that order. Publication itself isn't sufficient.
Looking at it from the reader's perspective...the bulk of you post here under made up names. How will I know something is yours if I don't know what name you're putting it under?
posted
Robert, if you don't know my real name by now, then I doubt you care. To know what Hatrackers' have published, you would need to follow profile links or read the Publications & Reviews forum. Our usernames don't make a difference in this.
Bill Quiverlance...Perfect for gay historical romances. Ever heard of The Macaronis?
By the way, more people are likely to respond to a question about pen names in Open Discussions rather than here.
posted
I missed out on the Y2k gold boom, the sad part is I saw it coming a mile away, (well everyone did, which is probably why it happened in the first place) I just didn't have the money. I guess I've figured out now why those "we buy gold" situations bug me so much, I'm an avid numismatist and the raw gold is right now in a lot of cases worth more than the stamped images on the coins. So we are losing some great coins (thus driving up the price of the survivors) to the refiner's fire. (Plus we lose some gold with each pass, entropy takes it's share.) Imagine if everyone were trading in their Spiderman #3's for pulp!
As to hockey: Me like hockey! My throat is just now recovering from a Hockey game I went to last week. (Then I went to a choir practice the day after, plus I had a sore throat developing already.) The thing is you have to scream at a Hockey game, it's Canadian law, and any pond or arena where Hockey is being played become Canadian soil.
As to sports in general: It's a throwback to the old warrior caste. (It's odd that we still have warriors but they no longer fill that role in society, I believe modern soldiers fill more of a religious caste.) An athlete represents the pinnacle of the abilities of the human body, and it is a thrill to see it. (Some don't care, that doesn't mean they are broken, just have different thrills.)
quote:Robert, if you don't know my real name by now, then I doubt you care. To know what Hatrackers' have published, you would need to follow profile links or read the Publications & Reviews forum. Our usernames don't make a difference in this.
Your profile doesn't list a real name or pen name...unless you're publishing under "aspirit," I wouldn't know something was by you if I tripped over it.
*****
Bill Quiverlance and the Macaronis...sounds like a mid-sixties rock group, like Paul Revere and the Raiders...
quote:How do you all feel about using pen names/pseudo names as a writer? Are they necessary to any extent, or are they just for show?
I have wrestled with this myself. My name is, apparently, fairly common. Many people of moderate fame (including scientists, professors, athletes, writers, a well-known photographer, an evironmentalist, and a computer code designer) all have my name (or vice-versa). There is even a fairly well-known science fiction writer from the 30's and 40's that shared my first initial and last name. I never knew my name was that common.
My concern is that if I do ever "break through", whether I will be confused with any of these others. I went ahead and used my real name for my recent HM with WOTF, but I will probably choose a pen name if I start getting published. Besides I kind of like the name, Philo - it has grown on me.
posted
Ahh. Perhaps this is why I can't find any copies of the Shakespeare classic, as mentioned in "Monty Python's Flying Circus," known as "Gay Boys in Bondage."
Posts: 8809 | Registered: Aug 2005
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posted
G-d seems to like tempering the good with the bad. I'm at a hotel tonight after a car smashed through my apartment, just hours after someone else took out a phone pole outside the building. Everyone's okay, but there's a massive hole in the brick wall where the driver plowed through my utility closet, tearing out the furnace and hot water heater. A few feet to the left and she'd have taken out an occupied couch.
And this is why you shouldn't speed on a curvy residential road that hasn't yet been plowed.
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What a blessing, EP Kaplan! I'm so glad everyone's okay (I hope that includes the driver of the car?) and terribly sorry for what happened to your apartment. Yikes! Imagine sitting there on that couch and having a car come through the wall right next to you--I just can't.
posted
Ya gotta watch out for that everywhere. It happens here in Florida, and on not-particularly-wet roads, too. Before I bought the house I'm in right now, I looked at---and turned down---this other house, which was directly opposite the entrance to a local park. One reason (not the only one) was that somebody coming out of the park could go completely across the road and straight into the house.
Elsewhere...up north where I used to live, this guy's house was right where one major road came off a long and steep hill and stopped and joined another road. Nearly every winter, somebody plowed into the house. The third or fourth time, he put up this big earthwork berm. After that, they skidded into that, and not the house.
Stay well...and, word of warning: Don't let 'em declare your apartment uninhabitable at least until you get a chance to get your stuff out of it.
posted
Yes, everyone, including the driver, is okay. It's just been very hectic, since we had maybe five minutes to get a few emergency sundries out.
Posts: 180 | Registered: Jul 2007
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The pipeline that the SUV is teetering on runs parallel to a busy street which passes over the freeway (and has a high chain-link fence running along it). We had a big snow storm yesterday--Wednesday--but that road would have only been wet, not icy.
The driver has been given a DUI citation.
[This message has been edited by Kathleen Dalton Woodbury (edited January 27, 2011).]
posted
Be careful. That happened to someone I knew, and a few days later someone tried to rob her. Criminals can find out wher you live by news reports and will assume no one is home. My friend's husband happened to be home, and he was an avid gun collector. Posts: 2003 | Registered: Jul 2008
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posted
Boy we have been having some thick fog lately.
We always have fog this time of year-when we hear the song "White Christmas" we wonder why anyone would write a song about fog-but the last few years it's been relatively thin but in some places not that far away from me, the pea soup fog is back.
posted
It was foggy down here this morning...it often is, this time of year...just some mist creeping in, that's all...no problem driving home...the real-thick can't-see-past-the-end-of-your-nose fog is a pretty rare thing here, though it has happened and I have driven in it...
'Twas down the glen one Easter morn To a city fair rode I. When armed line of marching men In squadrons passed me by. No pipes did hum, no battle drum Did sound its loud tattoo But the Angelus bell o'er the Liffey's swell Rang out in the foggy dew.
posted
"The Foggy Dew," Father P. O'Neill, date-of-writing unknown but written to commemorate the Easter Uprising (1916). I found it while looking for the lyrics to a folk song and liked it better.
Posts: 8809 | Registered: Aug 2005
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posted
Valentine's Day is coming and I'm having difficulties sending flowers to my wife. First I think the florist I used last time may have gone out of business because the link I saved didn't work but a night later I figured out my mistake. Today I tried calling a few times at work but just got a busy signal. When I checked back to their web site tonight I saw I had the 800 number without the 800 part. I would use their web page order page but I need the address to where my wife works . I don't have it but its a well known building and they were able to get it there last time I used them but I called them then.
So I need to try calling again with the right number.
And I add that that new phone number didn't pan out either. I tried twice and no one answered the phone either time.
[This message has been edited by LDWriter2 (edited February 02, 2011).]
posted
It's been a ventworthy day. I don't believe in taking work home with me so hopefully I can just leave it here.
First of all I'm in zombie mode for the first part of my Saturday shift because it starts a 8:45 AM which wouldn't be so bad if I didn't work till 1 AM the night before. Early in the day I had to make a delivery to this one building and I found that someone had decided to move stuff around so the hallway was filled with crap that I had to maze through carrying a box of paper towels and a box of large trash liners. This was difficult to do on zombie mode. Then when we got to one building it was surrounded by firemen and paramedics, turns out the computer repairman had been moving furniture and started having pain in his arm. The guy was at risk for a heart attack/stroke so it was taken quite serious. We're pretty sure he just tore a muscle, which still sucks for him. Of course we then had to put all the furniture back. Later we went to the ice-cream shop to take a break and the freezer was broken, (although I guess this counts as the ice-cream people's bad day, since I got some free runny ice cream.) Then we had to go clock-in the part timers and get them going, which went smoothly except we have this new guy who has the nasty habit of talking about the things around him as if he's casing the joint for a robbery. It's just stressful handing that guy a master key. Next I had to hit a stain that was right in the big boss's through way, but of course I realized that one of our machines had been leaking in the closet and I had to deal with an emergency mildew outbreak. Then as I went to talk to my part-timers about what we were going to do about their leaking machine, I discovered that they were a little late coming back from their 15 min. break, 30 minutes of searching for them later I found them laying around back where they should have been working. So then of course I had to impress on them that that was a bad idea, then I had to go hit that important spot and let one of my more leisurely duties fall to the wayside. When it was finally time to lock up the building there was an unusually high number of people to kick out. While I was doing that I noticed a broken stair, just one more thing I need to call in. And to top it all off I left my reading book at work so poor Harry Dresden is stuck in the middle of a fight with a pack of lycanthropes for the weekend.
But I just saw an interesting Benny Hill clip where he was watching a man and woman playing tennis, well he was watching the woman anyways, and there was this Irish Wolfhound in the frame. We get a close up of Benny's face as he is clearly having thoughts, then we get the wavy screen and we can see what he's thinking about, which turns out to be him imagining himself in the woman's place beating the man handily at tennis. Then we get shot out of his mind and we see that the Irish Wolfhound has peed on his leg, and the fantasy turns into the man beating Benny at tennis.
posted
Long as we're talking about bad days, well, my whole week was bad.
Monday morning I came home from work with a sore throat...by Monday night it was the sniffles, and Tuesday I was so out of it I was flat on my back the whole day---gave me too much of a headache to even have the TV on. Bad cold. Lingered something awful...Wednesday night I called in sick, and Thursday night I was all set to go, as far as getting my work shoes on, when I started throwing up.
Been going in, these last two nights, though I don't feel that well even now. Writing's been right out the window. At least it doesn't seem to have moved down into my lungs, so I won't be congested and coughing for months.
(I'd think it was the flu, but with only a mild fever and the symptoms---also, my mother insists nobody in our family ever catches the flu. I'm dubious but can't say I ever have had a case of the flu...)
*****
quote:...I discovered that they were a little late coming back from their 15 min. break, 30 minutes of searching for them later I found them laying around back where they should have been working.
Ah, memories...I used to work with a guy who'd stretch a fifteen minute break into almost an hour, and over an hour for a half-hour lunch break. (Rule-of-thumb: five minutes going, fifteen minutes there, and five minutes getting back.) And these usually at critical times, like switching from one pass to another, or dispatch pulldowns---and, often, too, just when I wanted to go on break. We got rid of him, eventually.
quote: And to top it all off I left my reading book at work so poor Harry Dresden is stuck in the middle of a fight with a pack of lycanthropes for the weekend.
You know how it came out but was that the fight in the garage?
I have done that with my writing. I had to leave my hero in a fight for a week before I could write how he got out of it. Imagine sitting in the cockpit of starfighter for a week while you waited to see if you were about to be blasted or if your missiles hit the other guy. Or being a wizard out for a morning jog and because of your pride falling into a trap set by an inner city gang you should have seen from a mile away and then having to wait a week before you can figure how to get out of it.
That reminds me of a story I saw on TV many years ago. It was part of a TV anthology series that lasted one year. Anyway this story had a man and woman who didn't know where they came from or were going. But even though there was a car the guy had memories of being on horseback with a sixgun on his hip. Every now and then you and they could hear a loud rhythmic tapping above them. I think you can guess what that turned out to be.
posted
No it's the one where they were chasing him in a truck so he jumped out of a moving car to save the womenfolk in the car.
I once had a character have to wait a month while I figured out how he could possibly survive the fight he was in, it turned out the answer was he couldn't. So the delay kept him alive a little while longer. (He was still mad at me about it.)
posted
Reading through the last page of this enormously long thread. One post digressed my own mind on random musings.
Dumb questions: why do people write "G-d" with a hyphen for an "o"? Is it out of revernence?
Also, why in books (particularly older literature) is a person's name something like: M________ Boulanger. What do the underscores mean after the first initial?
posted
Jewish law holds that one shouldn't write the highest Hebrew names of our deity in a place where it could be desecrated or erased. Traditionally, many Jews don't write it out in English (or other languages) as a sign of respect. Many of the highest names are also only spoken in certain contexts. For instance, we use certain names only in prayer or when reading aloud from the Torah during services, and even if quoting a passage containing that name in a conversation, we'd replace it with a placeholder.
Also, I found a new apartment today. The CO inspection is Wednesday, and if all goes well I should have the keys on Thursday.
Well, I did try to make it as small as possible. You should have been expecting another fight with them anyway. And I left out something important about that scene....the Butler did it.
posted
I do the G-D thing for two reasons, that includes a few other words I would spell out that way....Either I'm not sure what is allowed on a certain board or I don't want to actually say the word even though it seems to fit better than another word, as on the US thread or I am quoting someone.
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posted
I usually take g-hyphen-d to mean that the name of a deity is being taken in vain, and not the name of the deity itself.
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posted
The M_______ thing has to do with the letter writing conventions of the time. The mail wasn't quite secure so they had to be a little bit secretive. Both parties know full well who M_____ is, but a third party might not.
Posts: 1895 | Registered: Mar 2004
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posted
Thanks PD. I must have spent an hour or so on google a year ago trying to figure that out. Perhaps if I write a steampunk short story missive-style I could incorporate that. I may try that- kudos for the writing prompt.
Posts: 475 | Registered: Jul 2010
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And I should add that sometimes I don't like to use the word as part of the reverence thing and to not take His name in vain. Of course God isn't His name but in our society it's close enough.
posted
I'll be the one to spell it out...I think they're referring to the fact that "G-d" would be God, and "G-D" is more likely to be interpreted as saying the letters "G" and "D," which is a common replacement for "G-dd*mn" (edited out of respect for those in the conversation who might find the real word offensive).
[This message has been edited by wetwilly (edited February 10, 2011).]
posted
Started moving my stuff into the new apartment. Tomorrow should be my first night (and first Shabbat) in the new place.
I can only attest to the Jewish habit of replacing the 'o' in God with a dash, which is tradition, not Halakha (Jewish law), something several rabbis at prominent yeshivas have demonstrated by writing GOD on a blackboard, then erasing it. It is an act of respect, but not considered necessary.
[This message has been edited by EP Kaplan (edited February 10, 2011).]
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Love it! I told my wife and she can't stop laughing.
