💾 Archived View for gemlog.blue › users › birchkoruk › 1639500454.gmi captured on 2023-06-16 at 16:45:49. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
⬅️ Previous capture (2021-12-17)
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- There's still some magic left in the Internet. I'm going to make a tomato soup for christmas and the best tomato soup I have ever had is the tomato mushroom bisque at this one establishment in Colorado. It was so good that I would always order it and to this day I get really excited about this soup. Like if I were to visit my parents in CO, I would definitely go to this place and have the soup. So I was looking for tomato mushroom bisque recipes, found out that the establishment put out a cookbook with the recipe 20 years ago, and sure enough, some nice person has it posted on their blog. Hopefully it is just as good as I remember.
But I didn't find it with google/bing/duckduckgo, I used millionshort.com, which lets you skim off some of the search clutter we are unfortunately cursed with due to SEO. Lately if I really want to find something specific, I go to millionshort.com. I think I heard about it on metafilter.
I'm going to make the soup and confirm this old biddy isn't lying and has made up some inferior mock recipe for internet points. If it tastes the same I will post the recipe link.
- Spouse is all motivated and got preapproved for a home loan. It sounds like we are being allowed a whole dragon's hoard of money but it's not very much in house terms. "We could live like kings in nebraska!" he says.
Spouse has been poking around and it's basically enough to get us an old house or a townhouse, maybe. I am a bit terrified of home ownership, but I am also terrified of the current rental market. Perhaps it's just a narrative that is being pushed but it feels like you either scrape together what you can and buy something now/soon, or get ready to get totally screwed by your greedy corporate landlord whenever lease renewal time comes around for the rest of your life. Renting has always been a game of musical chairs, but now it seems extra desperate. We pay what I think is a stupid amount to rent this old creaky apartment and it is a bargain for the area (it has a little in-unit washer/dryer, super swanky). I am sure the people who move in after us will be paying hundreds more. Which is lunacy. What normal young working class couple can afford $2k rent? You'd have to have roommates, all stuffed in an 2bed apartment with one bathroom. And jobs don't have much stability anymore. I remember living with roommates, being anxious if they'd lost employment and wondering if they could make rent that month. Arguing about who used more utilities, or raised the thermostat, or hogged the bathroom, or brought home sketchy people you were then forced to interact with in your own kitchen. Great way to end friendships. So much mental stress. Great way to end relationships, too. If the only way to afford a place is couple up and move in with your SO + roommates ... jesus christ, the potential for people to get trapped in abusive relationships they can't afford to leave is mindblowing. I'd say it's job security for mental health professionals but working class people can't afford luxuries like mental health services.
I have lived in 19 different living spaces in my life in 6 different states, and I think aside from when I was a tiny baby, all of them were rentals. Not military - my parents moved for better economic opportunities which mostly did not pan out. We were poor and changed homes frequently to suit the cashflow. My parents own a home now but they bought it long after I moved out. I have no attachment to property, really. Home ownership is a foreign concept. It's always been, "well this is okay enough for now" and then you move out in a year or two or three and go somewhere else. Maybe better, maybe worse. I mean, I keep my moving boxes all flat and neatly stacked in the closet. They are pre-labeled, easy peasy. One or two of them have labels in my parent's handwriting because it was my moving box when I was a kid. When I get an amazon package, sometimes I can't help but admire the size and think, oh that's a great moving box and I cut the packing tape, flatten it and keep it. Maybe that sounds obsessive but when you've moved 19 times you know the next one is always coming, and good moving boxes are nice to have. The ones that hold a good amount but not too much that you'll overfill it and make it uncomfortably heavy? Plus the smaller boxes are easier to tetris pack around furniture and stuff, and the less shifting there is, the less likely you'll end up with something damaged. (I basically have a degree in moving.)
I can't wrap my head around owning a home. Like, maybe I could paint the walls a color that isn't white? !!! Maybe we could mount the TV on the wall? !!! Maybe we could have a little outdoor play space for the cats? !!! Maybe I could plant stuff? !!! Maybe I could build in shelves? !!!!!! Maybe there will be a garage? !!!!!!! That's about as much as my brain can handle before it rejects the concept and insists we are going to end up stuck in another dumpy apartment and we shouldn't get too excited.
It's getting to be about the time when we need to give notice to the apartment complex. Theoretically if we give them 60 days, we can break the lease without penalties. We live in a very blue area with fantastic renter's protections, of which we are very aware and grateful. We bitch about this state, but honestly, there are much worse places and we made the right choice to move here. The big risk is that if we give notice and something happens to spouse and he can't finish this training round, we would be fucked. The other week, someone got their shoulder dislocated and had to get sent home to heal up. They will have to get another spot in a future training class and start over. If you make all the moving arrangements too soon and something unexpected happens ... So I'm really on spouse to take his vitamins. Don't get sick, don't get hurt.
Spouse got a black eye because someone tripped and fell on him, and recently he got kicked in the face. There's a significant amount of physical training, and thus, risk. He loves it though, I can tell. "Lookit my bruises."