PrivateTim

"I decided that at least it was more fun than watching Stanford get their asses kicked at football." Oh no, there is nothing more fun than watching Stanford get their asses kicked at football.

I like happy middles? I mean I can't say happy endings, right, because there are more chapters to come apparently, so I guess happy middles will have to do. I would have had Jake survive too, but not for Ty's sake, but rather Diane's. I gather Jacob is Diane's only child and it would have crushed her to lose him. I lost a cousin just before he was set to start his senior year of high school and I saw how it crushed my aunt and created a hole in her the rest of her life. She luckily had two other children who helped her along the way. I know if Craig, my deceased cousin, had been her only child, she would have never recovered. But enough maudlin introspection, let's do some cheery speculation. Which of the twins, Derek or Erik (that is how I would have spelled it) noticed the "closeness" of these boys and will later contact the group and confess he is gay and scared, but now more hopeful, since he has seen their interactions. I think Derek. I bet he is hung too. Housekeeping, do you have an editor Jeff? It is okay to abbreviate Doctor as Dr., in fact more common than not. When someone addresses him, as in, "yes Doctor, I'll get right on it", it is okay to capitalize doctor, but when he is talked about, as in, "he is with the doctor", doctor is not capitalized.

Fun fact, less than .5% of commotio cordis deaths in youth sports are from football. Over 40% were in baseball, followed by hockey (12%) and lacrosse (7%). It is usually caused by an implement, a batted baseball, a hockey puck or a lacrosse ball. It was about time for a little drama.... gets more operatic every chapter. Can't wait for the fat lady to sing.

I think my dear friend Mark Arbor would have Gavin and Deputy Chris Jones hooking up in graphic detail 😲

This is a bit of a gay version of Dawson's Creek, the characters are wise and mature beyond their years. However I don't believe for a minute that two healthy, young, gay boys in love could sleep in the same bed and not be exchanging bodily fluids, one way or another. Maybe one time, in special circumstances, but not twice.... Looking forward to how the talk with the team goes.

I am not sure if it is a different take on realty but rather having different agendas. In my family (grandmother, mother, cousins, aunts, uncles) I have a lot of educators. The stories they have of administrators are something between a Tim Burton, M. Night Shyamalan and Jane Austen movie; the palace intrigue, the looking for the next big move to more power and influence and the 'how can I keep my phony baloney job without doing any actual work' agendas and more are all in play. Dr. Davis could be an actual psychologist given they have a doctorate and are a guidance counselor. In the "olden days" when my grandmother started teaching (1952), guidance counselors were rare and those that there were, were usually teachers who were looking to get out of the classroom. By the time my mother started teaching (1979) guidance counselors were common and most had some training/credentials in psychology. In my generation, you see people who actually went to school to become guidance counselors and a lot do have their masters or Phd/Ed.D in psychology and educational specific psychology. A first year guidance counselor with a Masters in my local district starts at $80,000, which ain't bad for a 6 hours a day/192 days a year job.

"The weather was starting to get colder as the season slipped towards the end of fall. Foliage had long lost it’s battle with the change of season leaving much of everything bare, a chill had settled into the air that was becoming a more prominent fixture in the weather as the days had drawn on." I guess I am different, well I know I am, but what I mean is, the section above stood out more than any other in the chapter for me. It is just a beautiful bit of prose. String together 5,879 such sentences and you win a Pulitzer. One side note though, in my experience schools do not have any principles, but they do a Principal 😁

Meh.... Amanda is a literary device, a character that bridges other characters and introduces ideas that no other character can. One of the joys of being an author is getting to create your own universe. The group of friends is a group of friends everyone would love to have; supportive, outward focused, compassionate... not normal characteristics of many teens these days, if you are exposed to them. So it is nice to create the world and friends you'd like to have.

Except... we have no idea what Jacob was going to say, a lot people assume Jacob was going to ask Tyler to be his boyfriend. He might have merely been coming out to him, based on how close they were. His reaction was so extreme not because of rejection as a boyfriend, but because he thought his best friend was going to hate him, which is far worse than rejection.

Okay, so I admit to cheating. I read Chapter 2 already, so I get why Tyler was so forgiving, so quickly. I also understand Jacob's reaction and why he didn't confront Tyler; he thought he fully understood Tyler's feelings already. Being young has nothing to do with it. The "colossal" misunderstanding is a classic literary device. Without it we wouldn't have Othello, Romeo & Juliette, or any operas.

And I think Will would be fooling himself if he thought that. How we perceive ourselves to be and intend our actions to be is very different from how the receiver perceives us and our actions. That is part of the crux of the #metoo movement.

Will meets a fellow wolf and doesn't like it? Too funny.

Yes it is strange to rape someone you like. Personally I would have given Cameron my phone number and asked him to call me and then give a better, detailed explanation (in person, but away from school).

Yeah, I know this is from 8 years ago, but I have to agree with Connor that full on sexual assault seems out of the character that Quinn has been portrayed as. I thought maybe Quinn was going to apologize and come clean, at least partly, but instead he becomes a rapist. Not good.

Disneyland and Disney World are so completely different it is really hard to compare the two. I guess a lot depends on what you like. At Disneyland you can stay 5 minutes walking time from the parks at reasonably priced hotels. At WDW even staying at onsite hotels, if you are 5 minutes from Epcot (Yacht & Beach Club or Boardwalk hotels) you are 20-30 minutes or more from the Magic Kingdom and Animal Kingdom. At WDW you have to reserve which rides you want to go on and where you want to eat months in advance and the time elements aren't the same, 180 days for dining, 60 days for rides; so if you want to eat at The Crystal Palace (MK) on a Tuesday, you can reserve 180 days out, but then you might not get FastPass+ for the rides in the MK you want 120 days later so you are basically screwed. Disneyland is smaller, more intimate, has more rides and attractions than the MK and better versions than the MK in several of them. Then, you can hop over to Disney's California Adventure, 40 yards from Disneyland's Main Entrance. Park hopping is difficult at WDW. All that said, I can do DL and DCA in two days easy. WDW when I go, I plan on 7 nights minimum, more like 10 usually. WDW for me is a real vacation, Disneyland is a fun weekend.

Even though I went to Cal, my family ties to USC are wide, deep and long. I know a lot of the people in the "cheating" scandal and I'll keep my comments very generic. To start, I can't imagine why the FBI spent all the time and resources to bust 53 families for trying to get their kids into certain schools. I would have thought more resources devoted to China's involvement in U.S. universities, to Chinese students spying for their government, on what Qatar and Saudi Arabia were getting for the billions they send to U.S. universities might have been a better spend. Second, I have a hard time believing that Rick Singer was giving his clients full disclosure, such as, "you know what we are doing is illegal, right?" I have not talked to anyone caught up in the operation about it, but knowing the ones I do (from the parental side), I can believe they thought this was just the way it was. The ones on the university side surely knew what they were doing was wrong, but when you are struggling to fund your minor sports (water polo, crew, etc), someone offering $250k donation to your program goes a long way. Little, if any, of the money found its way into personal bank accounts of university personnel. Third, there are now questions about the conduct of the FBI agents in charge. In notes that Singer took at the time, he says FBI agents encouraged him to lie to his clients in order to get them to incriminate themselves. This goes back to the second point because the FBI/prosecutors were telling Singer to lie (allegedly) in order to shore up the case that the parents knew what they were doing was illegal. What looks very bad for the prosecution is that they withheld these notes until one day before the lawyers were to get together and set trial dates. Judge Gorton was not amused. It is especially bad now, as it piles on to other missteps by the FBI and Justice recently and looks more and more out of control.

It is a family house, not Stef's house. Common decency would have been for Stef to, if not ask JJ if he minded, at least speak to JJ about his plans before inviting people over. Stef is the one being immature, not JJ.

Nice to see Will is still an arrogant cock.

I actually find it creepy. Too many weird things between gay sons and mothers already. This feels like the creepy cherry on top of a Red Velvet Cake.

Kelly Slater when he was a certain young, gay surfer in Malibu's ultimate fantasy.

The where wolf (there wolf), vampire genre never appealed and I found/find the furry thing..... uh different. I get the native American tradition of shape shifters, but each nation has its own tradition and beliefs. I always wanted to be able to shape shift in high school into a hot chick to get with the few straight boys I wasn't able to nail.

Texas courts respect the law. Stef will open probate in CA.

The San Diego Zoo is a non-profit, the LA Zoo and SF Zoo are non-profit by virtue of being municipally owned. The SD Zoo is one of the leading resources for fighting off extinction and reversing extinction. They don't do so for profit, but because they think it is the right thing.

The what genre?

Oh be nice to the Texans..... they don't all have big hair and eat steak at every meal