Former Member

Well, that’s an interesting way to get Liz and Ryder to bond! ;-) And if this doesn’t turn Oli off girls, nothing will! If they want to traumatize kids into not having sex, maybe they should force them all to watch babies being born! Show them everything including the afterbirth! They do it with all those bloody car accident movies! ;-)

I wouldn’t say that! Teddy does care about the drugs and alcohol. It’s just that there are more important things to worry about! He just doesn’t obsess about them. ;-)

The husband of a former coworker won a radio station call-in contest. During the conversation, he told the radio host that he had four sons (hoping that would give him more prizes). My coworker suggested that he included himself in the count (since they only had three sons)! ;-) On the other hand, a different coworker from the same job was driving one of her husband’s best friends and me to get pizza. She’s one of those people who seems to have a tease me neon sign on her forehead! Best friend and I were, of course, teasing her. In frustration, she cried out, “No fair guys! It’s three against one!” She couldn’t figure out why we immediately started laughing at her! (There were only three of us in the car.) ;-)

I’ve never understood why anyone wants to use smelly soap (or shampoo or deodorant)! The point is to be clean and not smell! I don’t which is worse, when they use multiple products with different scents or multiple products with one cloying ‘fragrance’! I don’t need to smell someone before they even enter a room! ;-) I use unscented soap, shampoo, deodorant, and laundry detergent! I don’t want to smell like flowers, rutting animals, or a hormonal teenager! I’m not a Medieval European who needs to disguise the stench of an unwashed body! ;-)

I know it’s @Cynus, but I always see Cygnus (swan) every time I see your name! ;-) I know I’m Risk Averse, but the restroom scene scares me for Sim. I would not like that to happen to me! I like tall guys too, but compared to my 5’7”, 6’5” would be a little too much of a good thing! ;-)

Kids like the twins need a lot more reassurance than most because of their history. It makes sense that they’d think running would solve their problems. They haven’t had a lot of experience dealing with reactions other than violence and hitting. ;-)

But you did say the word! The grammar police are warning you over the use of ‘worser’! The twatopatomus doesn’t have any relatives? ;-)

More than two dozen chapters in, we are still finding out about the little things Ryder was saying to Teddy in his music when they weren’t speaking to each other! ;-) Could dating Mark center and calm Oli down? Maybe dating Mark will allow Oli to do better in school. Maybe it will help him relieve the stress and tension Oli feels! ;-)

I don’t know what the value of the Zimbabwean currency is. I was using the built-in MacOS Calculator app that accesses Yahoo for the conversions. The ones I listed were the only ones named dollar. I am on Disability and would be able to use extra cash, although it’s a trade-off since Social Security would penalize me if I received too much income. KWD1M would be enough to live on (if I were careful with my spending) even if they took away my Disability payments completely. Interestingly enough, most Peso currencies use the same monetary sign (‘$’) as the dollar because they both share a common origin in the 15th-19th century-‘Spanish dollar’. Peso means weight as in pesos oro (gold weight) or pesos plata (silver weight) similar to the British Pound Sterling. The Peso was the name of the eight-real coins issued in Mexico by Spain. These were the so-called ‘Spanish dollars’ or pieces of eight in wide circulation in the Americas and Asia from the height of the Spanish Empire until the early 19th century. The US accepted the ‘Spanish dollar’ as legal tender until the Coinage Act of 1857. (This is the source of the ‘two bits’ nickname for the US quarter – two is one quarter of the pieces of eight.) ;-)

Why be purple when you can be Pacific Blue? ;-)

@Parker Owens, I never paid much attention to this mention the first time around, it explains a lot! ;-)

I‘m wondering what Eric would make of Geoff & Tony! ;-) The dinner went smoother than I thought it might. Zoe certainly livened things up though. The energy would have been totally different without her! ;-)

You’re right, it is an embarrassing amount of sex in this chapter. ;-) Maybe it’s just me but when I was a late teen, I hated being called ‘boy’. I felt much too grown up to be demeaned by that term. As a 16- or 17- year old, I wanted my parents to use something like ‘guys’ since they refused to call me a young man. I realize that most of the stories on GA about teenagers are written by people old enough to be the parents or grandparents of those very teens. But do 18-, 19-, 20-, and 21-year-olds really call each other ‘boy’ all the time? Isn’t that why the ‘dude’ stuff began (before the word got hijacked by chronologically and legally adult males doing juvenile things)? ;-)

Billy really, really needs to tell Brett the truth before they take a road trip that might derail a political career for an uninvolved man. Just the possibility that he may have fathered a child out of wedlock could cause him problems. And we all know that Billy seems to attract problems like a magnet! ;-)

Eventually? ;-)

Dad’s a classic case of living your dreams through your kids! It’s not healthy to put that sort of pressure on them. The twins are proof of that in their contrasting reactions! ;-)

@Wesley8890 usually says exactly what I’m thinking, but expresses it completely differently from me! ;-) What a terrifying experience for Cameron! He had to leave one school because of bullying and now in his new school, just when he thinks things are better, the identical twin of his new potentially-maybe-boyfriend starts harassing him! I’m sure even if the new school has anti-bullying policies, Cameron is unlikely to report Devin to teachers or administrators because that was ineffective in his last school!

Live? If you die you’ll never be able to finish the story! Or live? I cannot imagine it would be very exciting to watch you as you type and edit the story – or worse, decide to delete a section while we’re reading it! Levi? I’m not interested in what you are wearing or not wearing while you write this story, but Levi Strauss is a very LGBTQ-supportive San Francisco-based company! Vile? Possibly – if there’s a third cliffhanger in a row or soon after! ;-)

I had forgotten about the Giraffe scandal! ;-) Russ should have taken a picture of the blonde woman. If this were a Cole Matthews story, it could be a vital clue that solves the case. It could confirm a conspiracy or something! ;-)

Wow! @Butcher56 commented first! ;-) I know R Eric knows that Right Whales were apparently named that way because they were the ones whalers preferred to hunt because of their abundant blubber, but the name might connote true or proper – meaning typical of the group. The Southern Right Whale is a separate species from the North Atlantic Right Whale and the Northern Pacific Right Whale. The two Northern species are among the most endangered whales in the world. They are docile, relatively slow swimmers, and tend to stay close to the coast which contributes to their being endangered since the two leading causes of death are being struck by ships and becoming entangled in fishing gear. Kal Kan dog food used to include whale meat. Commercial whale hunting wasn’t banned by the US until 1971. That ban forced a whaling station in the Bay Area (of all places), the last in the US, to be shut down.

Well that clears everything up, not! Every time I read new chapters of this story, I’m reminded why I don’t read mysteries! I’m not good at figuring them out, all the contradictory details that seem equally important – or equally unimportant. ;-)

Even with “a little too much” information in your comments and discussion, I’m hopelessly confused. I hope you’re happy! You’re doing your job as an author! ;-)

I think that was a reference to the serial killer case in Toronto, as is everything from the third sentence on. ;-)

I once taught a group who were attending an Anger Management Group how to fold a modular origami ornament. It takes 12 modules to make a complete ornament. I was surprised that only one person decided it was too difficult, but stayed to watch everyone else fold. No one got frustrated, crumpled up the paper, and stormed out! I had pre-folded a bunch of modules so they wouldn’t have to fold all the modules themselves. Everyone seemed happy to have learned a new skill. ;-) When I worked in a computer store, I enjoyed showing customers new ways of doing things. It was fun coming up with metaphors to explain how computers work (more RAM means you have a larger desktop to spread your work around, more hard drive space is like having a larger file cabinet, virtual memory is like using a board to extend your dining room table for Thanksgiving – the further out you extend it, the more likely it is to collapse, etc). Of course, this was the ‘90s when virtual memory was more likely to cause your computer to crash! ;-)

You also need to be clear about which dollar you are asking for. There is a wide variation in value between the various denominations that use the term. Obviously, the US Dollar is the one most commonly traded though. 😉 US$1M = US$1,000,000.00 AU$1M = $596,921.93 B$1M = $765,403.75 (Brunei) C$1M = $772,010.01 (Canadian) HK$1M = $127,549.07 NT$1M = $34,273.57 (New Taiwan Dollar) NZ$1M = $732,171.62 S$1M = $764,000.31 (Singapore) I think I’d prefer 1 million Kuwaiti Dinar ($3,334,444.81)! And avoid South Korean Won 1 million ($939.84). There are also other currencies that are dealing with extreme hyperinflation to avoid, as well as defunct currencies that might not even have value as a collector’s item. 😉 Maybe I’m a luddite, but I’m wary of Bitcoin. However, if someone wants to give me Bitcoin1M, I’m not going to turn it down. (I wouldn’t turn down KR₩1M either.) 😉