Former Member

This song has been calling to me all morning.

It’s MacGyver and Johns Hopkins. I got a Timex too, but got a Seiko from my parents when I graduated from high school. ;-) I never completed community college, so I don’t know what they would have given me if I had graduated. I also don’t know what they gave my two brothers when they graduated from college either – and they went to real colleges, not just the 13th and 14th grade of high school that I couldn’t even finish.

Yes, but the people who give out prizes don’t always think things through. I must admit that I was once given a polo shirt from Adobe that included my then-employer’s logo on it when I worked for a computer store. I think I still have it. There were probably only about 60 people who got them.

Gruffly or not, most straight guys don’t end a fight with a hug like that…

Maybe Rob and Ava flirt because they’re safe to flirt with – because they’re not really interested in each other. ;-) Or maybe Rob is bi and he likes both Ava and Bryan. ;-)

You might want to change that from Yocal to Yokel. I think both Ava and Rob are probably aware of Bryan’s orientation. I’m just wondering who Claudia is… ;-)

Yes, and we as Gay people should never be shy to remind the others that this is Tennyson speaking about the man he loved, Arthur Hallam

Mathematicians are sweet in their habits. I know, what I am talking about, lived for five years with one (my K).

Andy is fishing to see if Charlie is Gay too. Charlie seems unaware that Andy Roger is interested in him ‘that way’. Charlie is too wrapped up in trying to hide his attraction to Andy from Andy Roger himself as well as their classmates. I’m sure that most of their classmates are just as oblivious because they’re dealing with their own issues and shortcomings. But there might be one or two who have figured out what’s really going on, maybe because they’re Gay too.

The single year subscription of Photoshop for the school and two years for Liam doesn’t sound too generous to me. Five years for Liam as he proceeds through the rest of high school and into college seems more appropriate. A much longer subscription, if not lifetime, for the school would be much more useful since the school would be forced to pay for future years. In the past at least, Adobe used to offer Educational packages that had the restriction that they couldn’t be used for commercial purposes. The cost, especially since they switched to an annual subscription model, has kept me from using Adobe products. Plus I’m more interested in desktop publishing and relatively simple graphics design and have found alternatives to InDesign and Illustrator that are adequate to meet my needs. There are only a few features in Photoshop that I miss, but they haven’t been essential. I do miss the very robust font handling features of InDesign though.

I’m following the comments, is that close enough? ;-)

Even if you got rid of your business, family, friends, and a life and cranked one out every three days, there would be someone who would complain they had to wait too long for your next chapter! I’d try not to be that ‘someone’. ;-)

A Personal Date Tracking Unit. Data? Whatever you decide…I with you. I’m. Wow! They really are close! I don’t go around flashing my pubes even to my closest friends! I’m not sure I’d feel comfortable with a medical tracking device being implanted – even if it didn’t have GPS included! Congratulations on getting out of your ‘teens’ @Gene63 and @Kelvinvictor (I don’t know why I keep reading that as Kelvinator!)

The documentary Mentor was about a series of suicides among Mentor High School students in Mentor, Ohio, a suburb of Cleveland. I recommend the movie highly. It discusses bullying and its connection to suicide. It also points out the failures of a school that exasperated to the problems. Mentor (the documentary, the school, and the town) are a warning of what happens when you try to hide unpleasantness to maintain an image of wholesomeness. If you are feeling suicidal, please get assistance. Call a suicide help line. Talk to a friend. Reach out, don’t bottle everything up inside. You are valuable. You are important. You would be missed. The Trevor Project focuses on LGBTQ youth.

In my world both mean the same. But here I have something for you: √-1 2^3 ∑ Π and It Was Delicious!

∞ is my favorite.

That sounds like something a teenager might think! It literally made me laugh out loud! That is a real problem. People panic and cannot dial nine-eleven! That’s why they are always so careful to pronounce each digit separately whenever they refer to the emergency number. So Reggie is interested in both Cory, the unattainable ‘straight’ friend, and Perry, the shy cute guy he’s never spoken to. Just because girls keep flirting with Cory and Perry doesn’t mean either of the guys is interested in the girls! I don’t think I’m much of a prize, but girls and women have flirted with me all of my life – and while I was working, most of my friends were women.

Promise not to laugh: "Bille und Zottel" from Tina Caspari. It is a book for children. But I grew up with it and Bille the main character, a girl felt very close to me as a child, and she began to work with Tellington in the same age in the book as I did and so on. So yeah, this will be my forever favorite horse book.

Alex’s behavior is that of a friend. I don’t think he’s changed enough. The question was never whether he cared or not, it was how he made Liam feel when he kept denying Liam.

Is it possible for the comments section to be longer than just two comments before it jumps to a new page? Or was that the only way to get the correct behavior?

After talking yesterday about ice cream, I think, it is time for an easy ice cream recipe. Take 500g frozen strawberries and mix them 100 ml cream and 200 g plain yogurt, 150g sugar and a bit of lemon juice and vanilla syrup. Put everything in an electric blender and start mixing. The frozen strawberries will make it ice cream at once. Of course you can use every other frozen berry or fruit as well. Lyssa

I’m eating leftovers from something I made last week. It was a simplified version of something my mother used to make often – there were many variations. She’d start by browning meat (usually very lean ground beef, but sometimes very lean pork – I don’t remember her needing to skim off fat, but she might have). If it was ground beef, she’d try to break it down as much as she could (I think her ideal would have been to crumble it down to rice-sized particles, but I preferred larger chunks). She’d add soy sauce and a little bit of sugar (sometimes miso with pork, or mirin) and pretty much whatever vegetables were in the refrigerator and she loved green onions. Tofu was also a common ingredient. This was all cooked in a skillet on top of the stove. But it’s not a stir-fry. I don’t have much in the kitchen, so my version only had the ground beef, soy sauce, a little sugar, and napa cabbage. I hated all the onions my mother cooked with, so I do not keep onions in my kitchen. Now that I’ve made it for the first time, I think I’ll make it again, but I’ll add a few more ingredients, probably mushrooms and spinach or snap peas. Of course, it was always served with steamed white rice, but my aunt would sometimes use brown rice or ½ white and ½ brown rice (just mix them thoroughly before you make it in a rice cooker).

As I was reading about the Renault truck, I was trying to figure out where this story was set (I didn’t feel like going back to read the earlier story even though I enjoyed it). The values were mentioned in dollar amounts. Then you mentioned that it was a right-hand-drive UK model. ;-) Then you mentioned the rough route out to the lake and I started thinking about what I’d read back in the ‘70s or ‘80s about French cars. Back then, at least, French cars had very soft suspensions in order to deal with the ‘less than pristine’ condition of French country roads. (The article was comparing the Peugeot 604 to contemporary Mercedes models and explaining why the 604 had a much softer suspension.) Presumably French trucks had to drive along those same country roads and would have had similar long-traveling, soft suspensions to deal with the same conditions. Chris might not have had to slow down as much as if it were not French… ;-) So many delicious little details sprinkled throughout the story. I’m sure I missed many special nuggets because I was still thinking about what I read the paragraph before! I really should go back and read Thrift Shop Nation and this story back to back. ;-) As much as I’d love to read more about Debbie and all four guys, I can’t see you being able to produce installments very frequently. If you decided that you were turning it into a series, I could imagine some of us chasing you with virtual pitchforks and torches just like we already do with @Timothy M. when we got impatient waiting for more installments! ;-)

My most stupid thing was done, when I had my horse only for 14 days. I was sick at home ( I still went to school at this time) and instead of staying in bed, I went to the horse and went for a ride, without someone knowing. On a barley trained ex race horse, which was still under shock from race court. If one of my kids would do this.....

A wonderful poem.