I’m going to type faster than ChatGPT generates, and I’ll hallucinate more

Yeah it totally isn’t easy reading lol. Just compared to The Silmarillion it feels that way.

I remember liking it, but I read it long ago so don’t remember a ton of it. I might’ve liked it because it’s Literature and you’re obligated to like it.

I like the Shrike a lot, does that count as a character? I always imagined it as something cooler than depicted in a lot of art though, like something completely unreal, with angles and points that look like glitches in reality, like your GPU is trying to render something while its melting.

Nah, those are easy reads. The Silmarillion? Now that’s daunting 😈

Including the ones by Brian Herbert? I’ve never heard anyone say a single good thing about those.

The audiobooks for HHGttG are quite good if that’s your sort of thing. Stephen Fry does a great job on the first one. I didn’t quite like the voices in the other ones, but they were still overall well done.

In the middle of reading Tress of the Emerald Sea, by Brandon Sanderson. I haven’t read any of his stuff other than his completion of the Wheel of Time series. I saw that Tress is a good standalone book in the series so I figured I’d try that out. It’s good so far, but seems rather YA compared to what I assume the rest of the series is like.

You probably won’t be the first person responding to issues at work, because the people in Eastern timezone have probably already started to handle it by the time you’re up. Likewise, if you have a deadline like “end of day”, you have some extra breathing room over the other continental timezones. The downside of that is that if things are still broken by EOD Pacific, you’re most likely to have to work late to fix it.

One nice thing about working in earlier timezones is that if a lot of people at your company are Pacific, you’ll probably get a few peaceful hours before things really start going.

That sounds very intentional?

Have you ever managed to get everyone together in one place?

It’s good you clarified the UK. 3h30 on a train in the US gets you to about the next town over 😢

It’s not quite that bad, but I’ve really wanted to take Amtrak cross country, which should in theory be easy to do because of all our open land. And yet, it would take like a week or something ridiculous like that.

How about we split the difference and compromise on Anglish?

They seem pretty content with the way things are tbh. They’re welcome though, that way we wouldn’t have to compromise and start drinking tea.

EDIT: I think they’re also smart enough to not want to get more involved in our shitshow

Yeah, it unfortunately sounds like you might be drifting apart. Hard to say for sure just from reading comments, but that’s a thing that happens even though it sucks.

You might get somewhere by asking yourself why this boundary is being put up. It’s not explicitly said, but it sounds like this is a new boundary in a longer relationship. Did something happen that caused it? If it’s a new boundary, it’s probably worth asking your therapist if they can help you figure out a why. More for your own benefit, because even if you figure out a “why”, it doesn’t sound like it would help the relationship improve.

Joking/lighthearted replies are generally OK, but the OP is clearly looking for serious answers, and joking about guns is extra not helpful

This isn’t really the sort of comment we’re looking for in this community. It might be a joke, but it comes across as rather aggressive.

Did you get a fancy coffee maker? A few years ago I splurged and got one from Costco that grinds the beans as it makes it, totally worth it.

Hopefully it went well. If not, just tell them the cookies were delicious but they didn’t deserve them

We’ve got some good answers in this thread, which is good to see. This question is really leading though, and not really meant to start a conversation so much as fire people up. I’m going to leave it up, but this isn’t really the sort of conversation we’re going for here.

It’s always nice to have someone coming a bit later that you can call and have pick something up that you forgot about.

Are you a wizard? 🧙