Canopyflyer

54m here, married for 19 years.

My wife has a very demanding career, so really needs her hobbies to let go of the stress. What I do is listen when she's talking about what has her interests. Then if there is anything I can do to facilitate it, it will suddenly materialize. This is not always something expensive or even something material.

Just before COVID the entire family got into playing D&D. Being an artist my wife went bonkers on painting miniatures. So I made sure she had all the paints and brushes she needed. Plus, the dining room, which is actually our "hobby" room, got a lighting upgrade

How bonkers did she get? This bonkers and there are many many more:

Just finished Adrian Tchaikovsky's "Service Model". It was excellent. But be warned, if you're looking for military, adventure sci fi with snarky AI's this will not be your cup of tea. The author takes on modern societal issues in the setting of post collapse human society. Yes, I'm aware of the dichotomy there.

If you do want snarky AI's and adventure, then I recommend the following series:

"Backyard Starship" series. I think it's up to book 17 so far and the quality of the books have stayed pretty consistent. The prequel series "The Peacemaker Wars" is also pretty good.

"Expeditionary Force" The quality does NOT stay consistent in this series and quite frankly, it's not very well written. However, it's like Lofthouse cookies, a lot of mediocre ingredients come together to make something great. I am a die hard fan of the series and highly recommend it if you want something that just removes you from reality for a while.

I was getting ready to leave my girlfriend's apartment. We had gone out for a walk and ended up having dinner. It wasn't a formal date or anything, we had been together, officially, for nearly 6 months by that point.

We hugged and just kept hugging. Not petting or getting frisky, just holding each other and enjoying each other's company for the final few moments of the evening.

It just came out, I said "I love you."

She tensed and was silent for what felt forever. Long enough to start thinking I just either ended our relationship, or caused serious damage.

Just when I was about to disengage from her, she relaxed looked up and gave me a very very nice kiss and said; "I love you too."

At the time I lived nearly 20 miles away from her and I do not remember the drive at all.

That was 21 years ago. We have two teenage boys now and happier now than we were back then.

In case someone wonders why I didn't stay with her that night, it was a weeknight. We both had work the next day and she had an earlier morning than usual. The following weekend we spent the whole time together.

54m here who is neurodivergent.

Yes, I can have a conversation with a stranger, but that was not always the case. It took years of practice to get to the point where I could be in a group or one on one and actually contribute.

The issue is, it takes SO much out of me. Where the people I'm interacting with have nice processing centers in their brains doing the bulk of the work for them in carrying the conversation. The processing centers that deal with social interaction are inactive in my brain and I have to actually think about everything going on. Which is a lot of energy to spend on conversations that really have no actual merit, other than just being social.

Think of it this way, do you remember how much energy you had to expend thinking on the last difficult test you took at school? That's how I feel after social interactions. Because I have to do virtually the same amount of thinking in that setting, that most people use on a Physics exam.

Even with my wife and kids, I have to take breaks from them. While the years have given me habits and known behaviors that I don't have to think about with them and keep our relationships healthy. I still have to do a lot of active processing to interact with them.

It sucks, but it is the way I am and always will be.

As a parent myself, might I suggest using that as her middle name.

When we named our two boys, we chose classic yet timeless names for their first, but did have some fun with their middle names. (and NO, they are not named "Ben" and "Will". My god, I actually know 6 families that have two boys with those names). That way, we got to name them something fun, but they had good classical first names they could go by through out their lives. Our boys were born during the height of what I call the "din" period. Where a lot of babies have names that ended with some derivation of "din", "dyn", "den" or something along those lines.

There is a very good reason why there is an entire subreddit on that other site called "/r/tragideigh".

To me, this is one of the most fully realized female characters in science fiction (at least):

An IT company I worked for many years ago went through a massive growing phase. One of the things that lead to this growth was the hiring of much more competent management, particularly in security and the data center.

Security actually started doing their jobs and started routinely doing network scans. They discovered two servers that were not located in the data center, which was a huge no no. The servers were running two porn websites off the company's internet connection. The guy had been doing it for years and apparently was making many times his company salary from them.

All of these movies my family sits down and watches at least once a year:

Harry Potter series.. All of them.

LoTR/ Hobbit.. All of them.

Paul

Strictly Ballroom

Princess Bride

Music Man 1962 version

Court Jester 1955 with Danny Kaye

In a surprise announcement the German airline Air Lingus announced they are merging with Connie Kalitta's freight line Kalitta Air.

The new passenger/ freight line's new name is:

Connie Lingus

The new airline's tag line? "We go out of our way to lick the competition."

Bacon

Bacon and eggs

Bacon and pancakes

Bacon and French Toast

Bacon and waffles

Bacon and toast

Bacon and Omelette (especially if the omelette has bacon in it.)

Bacon and Bacon

If I had been a member of Monty Python, we would be calling email spam... Bacon today.

This goes back over 30 years. Was at a bar with friends after our volleyball league. The bar had two levels, with the second basically a large balcony that over looked the lower floor. We were on the upper level and arranged where I could easily see the tables on the first floor.

A couple caught my attention, as I was people watching and it looked like there was some tension between the two. The woman got up to go the restroom, just as their drinks were being delivered. As soon as she was out of sight the guy put something in her drink. I immediately got up and headed for the restrooms and waited for her to come out. Fortunately, the restrooms were out of direct site of their table.

When she came out I approached her and of course I received the standard; "I have a boyfriend." I told her I didn't care about that, but that I witnessed her "boyfriend" putting something in her drink. Then handed her $10 to buy a replacement on me and told her she needed to buy a new drink and not let it out of her sight and that I would not approach her again. I went back to my table.

About 10 minutes later she showed up at my table, handed me my $10 back and told me I probably saved her life. The guy she was with was a new boyfriend and she had been getting bad vibes about him. She pretended to take a sip of her drink, then handed it to her "boyfriend" for him to try it as it was "sooo goood." He flew into a rage, the got into an argument and he left her at the bar. He was driving. I offered her a ride home. No, I didn't stay with her, two other people were riding with me that I also had to take home.

She and I did become good friends. She asked me out and we dated a few times, but it was pretty obvious to both of us that it would never work. We stayed friends though and she did meet her husband in my friend group. They got married had a couple of kids, whom I was an official Uncle to. Both their kids are now married and have their own kids (yes, I'm old).

The old "boyfriend" never showed his face again. So I have no idea what happened to him, if anything.

I was 31 when the attacks happened.

While I do think that there was an awareness that an attack was possible, or even in the works. I sincerely doubt that anyone truly thought that 3 airplanes were going to be flown into buildings on that day and one crash in a PA field. The US had the attitude that we were isolated and well defended enough that such attacks were unthinkable. The complete one sidedness of Gulf War 1 really gave the US an out of proportion notion of being invulnerable. Even though the WTC was bombed 9 years prior, two years after the end of GW1.

Conspiracy denotes malicious intelligent intent. The reality is closer to stupidly complacent. Sometimes the two are hardly indistinguishable.