I've shared fiction here before and it didn't go altogether too poorly, so I'm going to press my luck and do it again. This was written about a year ago, and I'm tired of trying to peddle it to lit magazines. Might as well share it here, know that it met a few eyeballs, and have done with it.
It's relevant to the sub insofar as it's about urban alienation and the working conditions at a small business run by IN THIS HOUSE WE BELIEVE people. (I tried to pitch it as a story of the great resignation with a momentary flicker of cosmic horror.) It's based on a similar job I took on after getting laid off during the lockdown, and the circumstances of the main character's breakup are faintly similar to one I went through several years back (her job sucked the life out of her).
Without further ado:
* * *
It was getting close to midnight, and the temperature outside was still above 80 degrees. We’d locked up the shop at 10:15 and walked over to Twenty, the dive bar on Poplar Street, where a single wall-mounted air conditioner and four wobbly ceiling fans weren’t putting up much resistance against the July heat baking the place from the outside and the dense mass of bodies giving it a stifling fever from within.
Just now I came close to saying it was a Wednesday night, because that was usually when the cyclists descended upon Avenue Brew, the gritty-but-bougie craft beer and sandwich shop I was working at back then. Every Wednesday between March and November, about fifteen to twenty-five Gen Xers dressed in skintight polyester, all packages and camel toes and fanny packs, locked up their thousand-dollar bikes on the sidewalk and lined up for IPAs and paninis. They reliably arrived around 8:00, an hour before we closed, making it impossible to get started on the closing checklist and leave on time at 10:00. The worst of them were demanding and rude, and even the best got raucous and stubborn after a couple drinks. There were nights when bringing in the sidewalk tables couldn’t be done without arguing with them. Most were sub-par tippers, to boot.
After Wednesday came and went that week without so much as a single 40-something in Ray Bans and padded shorts stopping in to double-fist two cans of Jai Alai, we dared to hope the cyclists had chosen another spot to be their finish line from there on out. But no—they’d only postponed their weekly ride, and swarmed us on Friday night instead.
I was the last person to find out; I was clocked in as purchaser that evening. The position was something like a promotion I'd received a year earlier: for twenty hours a week, I got to retreat from the public and sit in the back room with the store laptop, reviewing sales and inventory, answering emails from brewery reps, and ordering beer, beverages, and assorted paper goods. When I put in hours as purchaser, my wage went up from $11 to $15 an hour, but I was removed from the tip pool. On most days, tips amounted to an extra two or three dollars an hour, so I usually came out ahead.
This was back in 2021. I don't know what Avenue Brew pays these days.
Anyway, at about 8:15, I stepped out to say goodbye to everyone and found the shop in chaos. Friday nights were generally pretty active, the cyclists' arrival had turned the place into a mob scene. The line extended to the front door. The phone was ringing. The Grubhub tablet dinged like an alarm clock without a snooze button. Danny was on the sandwich line and on the verge of losing his temper. Oliver was working up a sweat running food, bussing tables, and replenishing ingredients from the walk-in. The unflappable Marina was on register, and even she seemed like she was about to snap at somebody.
What else could I do? I stayed until closing to answer the phone, process Grubhub orders, hop on and off the second register, and help Danny with sandwich prep. After the tills were counted out, I stayed another hour to take care of the dishes, since nobody had a chance to do a first load. Oliver was grateful, even though he grumbled about having to make some calls and rearrange Sunday's schedule so I could come in a couple hours late. Irene and Jeremy, Avenue Brew's owners, would kick his ass if he let me go into overtime.
Danny suggested that we deserved a few drinks ourselves after managing to get through the shift without killing anyone. Not even Marina could find a reason to disagree with him.
The neighborhood had undergone enough gentrification to support an upscale brunch spot, an ice cream parlor, a gourmet burger restaurant, a coffee and bahn mi shop, and Avenue Brew (to name a few examples), but not yet quite enough that the people who staffed them couldn’t afford to live within a ten-minute walk from the main avenue where all these hep eateries stood between 24-hour corner stores with slot machines in back, late-night Chinese and Mexico-Italian takeout joints with bulletproof glass at the counters, and long-shuttered delis and shoe stores. Twenty on Poplar was the watering hole set aside for people like us. It was dim, a bit dilapidated, and inexpensive, and usually avoided by denizens of the condos popping up on the vacant lots and replacing clusters of abandoned row houses.
When we arrived, Kyle waved us over. He didn’t work at Avenue Brew anymore, but still kept up with a few of us. He was at Twenty at least four nights out of the week.
So there we all were. I sat with a brooding stranger freestyling to himself in a low mumble on the stool to my left and Oliver on my right, who tapped at his phone and nursed a bottle of Twisted Tea. To Oliver’s right sat Marina, staring at nothing in particular and trying to ignore Danny, who stood behind her, closer than she would have liked, listening to Kyle explain the crucial differences between the Invincible comic book and the Invincible web series.
I recall being startled back to something like wakefulness when it seemed to me that the ceiling had sprouted a new fan. I blinked my eyes, and it wasn’t there anymore. It reminded me of an incident from when I was still living with my folks in South Jersey and still had a car, and was driving home from a friend’s house party up in Bergen County. It was 6:30 AM, I hadn’t slept all night, and needed to get home so I could get at least little shuteye before heading to Whole Foods for my 11:00 AM shift. I imagined I passed beneath the shadows of overpasses I knew weren’t there, and realized I was dreaming at the wheel.
I was pretty thoroughly zombified at that point. Heather and I had broken up for good the night before, and I hadn't gotten even a minute of sleep. Calling out at Avenue Brew was tough. Unless you found someone willing to cover your shift on like six hours' notice, you were liable to get a writeup, a demotion, or your hours cut if you couldn't produce a doctor's note. So I loaded up on caffeine pills and Five-Hour Energy bottles at the corner store, and powered through as best I could.
I finished the last thimbleful of Blue Moon in my glass. Oliver wiped the sweat from the back of his neck with a napkin and covered his mouth to stifle a laugh at the KiwiFarms thread he was scrolling through. Pool balls clacked; somebody swore and somebody laughed. The TouchTunes box was playing Bob Dylan’s “Rain Day Woman #12 & 35,” and enough bleary 40-something men around the bar were bobbing their heads and mouthing the words to make it impossible to determine which one of them paid two bucks to hear it. A guy by the cigarette machine who looked like a caricature of Art Carney in flannel and an old Pixies T-shirt was accosting a woman who must have been a toddler when he hit drinking age, and she momentarily made eye contact with me as she scanned the area for a way out. Danny was shouting over the bartender’s head, carrying on a conversation with the Hot Guy from Pizza Stan’s, who was sitting on the horseshoe’s opposite arm.
I never got his name, but when Oliver first referred to him as the Hot Guy from Pizza Stan’s, I knew exactly who he meant. Philly scene kid par excellence. Mid-20s, washed-out black denim, dyed black hair, thick bangs, and dark, gentle eyes. He was only truly alluring when he was on the job, because he seldom smiled then—and when he smiled, he broke the spell by exposing his teeth, stained a gnarly shade of mahogany from too much smoking and not enough brushing.
“How’s Best? Marcus still a joker?” Danny asked him.
“Yeah, you know Marcus. You know how he is.”
So the Hot Guy had been working at Best Burger (directly across the street from Avenue Brew) ever since Pizza Stan’s owners mismanaged the place unto insolvency. (Afterwards it was renovated and reopened as a vegan bakery—which incidentally closed down about a month ago.) Danny used to work at Best Burger, but that ended after he got into a shouting match with the owner. I happened to overhear it while I was dragging in the tables and collecting the chairs from the sidewalk the night it happened. It wasn’t any of my business, and I tried not to pay attention, but they were really tearing into each other. A month later, Oliver welcomed Danny aboard at Avenue Brew. I hadn’t known he’d been interviewed, and by then it was too late to mention the incident. But I’d have been a hypocrite to call it a red flag after the way I resigned from my position as Café Chakra's assistant manager two years earlier—not that we need to go dredging that up right now. Let's say there was some bad blood and leave it at that.
Anyway, I was thinking about giving in and buying a pack of cigarettes from the machine—and then remembered that Twenty didn’t have a cigarette machine. I looked again. The Art Carney-lookalike was still there, fingering his phone with a frown, but the girl was gone—and so was the cigarette machine.
I had only a moment to puzzle over this before Danny clapped me on the shoulder and thrust a shot glass in front of me.
“Starfish!” he said. (Danny called me Starfish. Everybody else called me Pat.) “You look like you need some juice.”
He distributed shots to everyone else. Marina declined hers, but changed her mind when Kyle offered to take it instead.
She and Kyle had stopped sleeping together after Kyle left Avenue Brew to work at the Victory taproom on the Parkway, but Marina was still concerned about his bad habits, which Danny delighted in encouraging.
We all leaned in to clink our glasses. Before I could find an appropriate moment to ask Marina if I could bum a cigarette, she got up to visit the bathroom. Danny took her seat and bowed his head for a conspiratorial word with Kyle.
I watched from the corner of my eye and tried to listen in. Like Marina, I was a little worried about Kyle. He got hired at Avenue Brew around the same time I did, just before the pandemic temporarily turned us into a takeout joint. He was a senior at Drexel then, an English major, and sometimes talked about wanting to either find work in publishing or carve out a career as a freelance writer after graduating. But first he intended to spend a year getting some life in before submitting himself to the forever grind.
He read a lot of Charles Bukowski and Hunter Thompson. He relished the gritty and sordid, and had already been good at sniffing it out around the neighborhood and in West Philly before Danny introduced him to cocaine, casinos, strip clubs, and a rogue’s gallery of shady but fascinating people. (None were really Danny’s friends; just fellow passengers who intersected with the part of his life where he sometimes went to Parx, sometimes came out ahead, sometimes spent his winnings on coke, and sometimes did bumps at titty bars.) Kyle recounted these adventures with a boyish enthusiasm for the naked reality of sleaze, like a middle schooler telling his locker room buddies about catching his older brother in flagrante and seeing so-and-so body parts doing such-and-such things.
Marina hated it. She never said as much to me, but she was afraid that the template Kyle set for his life during his “year off” was in danger of becoming locked in. The anniversary of his graduation had already passed, and now here he was trying to convince Danny to contribute a couple hundred dollars toward a sheet of acid his guy had for sale. He wasn't doing much writing lately.
I was the oldest employee at Avenue Brew (as I write this I’m 37, but fortunately I don’t look it), and when Kyle still worked with us I felt like it was my prerogative to give him some advice. The longer he waited to make inroads, I once told him, the more likely he’d be seen as damaged goods by the publishing world. He needed to jam his foot in the door while he was still young.
I could tell the conversation bored him, and didn’t bring up the subject again.
The bartender took my glass and curtly asked if I’d like another drink.
“No thanks, not yet,” I answered.
She slid me my bill.
I missed the old bartender, the one she’d replaced. I forget her name, but she was ingenuous and energetic and sweet. Pretty much everyone had some sort of crush on her. Sometimes she came into Avenue Brew for lunch, and tipped us as well as we tipped her. Maybe three months before that night—Danny witnessed it—she suddenly started crying and rushed out the door. Everyone at the bar mutely looked to each other for an explanation. (Fortunately for Twenty, the kitchen manager hadn’t left yet, and picked up the rest of her shift.)
She never came back. None of us had seen her since. But drafts still had to be poured and bottlecaps pulled off, and now here was another white woman in her mid-twenties wearing a black tank top, a pushup bra, and a scrunchie, same as before. Twenty’s regulars grew accustomed to not expecting to see the person she’d replaced, and life went on.
“How’re you doing?” I asked Oliver, just to say something to somebody, and to keep my thoughts from wandering back to Heather.
“Just kind of existing right now,” he answered. His phone lay face-up on the counter. He was swiping through Instagram, and I recognized the avatar of the user whose album he hate-browsed.
“And how’s Austin been?” I asked.
“Oh, you know. Not even three weeks after getting over the jetlag from his trip back from the Cascades, he’s off touring Ireland.” He shook his head. “Living his best life.”
He’d hired Austin on a part-time basis in September. We needed a new associate when Emma was promoted to replace a supervisor who'd quit without even giving his two weeks. There was a whole thing. I'm having a hard time recalling the guy's name, but I liked him well enough. He was a good worker and he seemed like a bright kid, but he was—well, he was young. Naïve. One day he found Jeremy sitting in the back room with his laptop, and took advantage of the open-door policy to ask why the store manager and supervisors didn’t get health benefits or paid time off. Jeremy told him it "was being worked on," and that he couldn’t discuss it any further at that time. I understand the kid got argumentative, though I never knew precisely what was said.
Irene started visiting the shop a lot more often after that, almost always arriving when the kid was working. No matter what he was doing, she’d find a reason to intervene, to micromanage and harangue him, and effectively make his job impossible. A coincidence, surely.
It’s something I still think about. By any metric, Jeremy and Irene have done very well for themselves. They’re both a little over 40 years old. I remember hearing they met at law school. In addition to Avenue Brew, they own a bistro in Francisville and an ice cream parlor in Point Breeze. They have a house on the Blue Line, send their son to a Montessori school, and pull up to their businesses in a white Volkswagen ID.4. But whenever the subject of benefits, wages, or even free shift meals came up, they pled poverty. It simply couldn’t be done. But they liked to remind us about all they did to make Avenue Brew a fun place to work, like let the staff pick the music and allow Oliver and me to conduct a beer tasting once a day. They stuck Black Lives Matter, Believe Women, and Progress flag decals on the front door and windows, and I remember Irene wearing a Black Trans Lives Matter shirt once or twice when covering a supervisor's shift. None of the college students or recent graduates who composed most of Avenue Brew's staff could say the bosses weren't on the right team. And yet...
I'm sorry—I was talking about Austin. He was maybe 30 and already had another job, a “real” job, some sort of remote gig lucrative enough for him to make rent on a studio in the picturesque Episcopal church down the street that had been converted into upscale apartments some years back. Austin wasn’t looking for extra cash. He wanted to socialize. To have something to do and people to talk to in the outside world. He wanted to make friends, and all of us could appreciate that—but it’s hard to be fond of a coworker who irredeemably sucks at his job. Austin never acted with any urgency, was inattentive to detail, and even after repeated interventions from Oliver and the supervisors, he continued to perform basic tasks in bafflingly inefficient ways. Having Austin on your shift meant carrying his slack, and everyone was fed up after a few months. Oliver sat him down, told him he was on thin ice, and gave him a list of the areas in which he needed to improve if he didn’t want to be let go.
When Austin gave Oliver the indignant “I don’t need this job” speech, it was different from those times Danny or I told a boss to go to hell and walked out. Austin truly didn’t need it. He basically said the job was beneath him, and so was Oliver.
It got deep under Oliver’s skin. He did need the job and had to take it seriously, even when it meant being the dipshit manager chewing out a man four or five years his senior. He earned $18 an hour (plus tips when he wasn’t doing admin work), had debts to pay off, and couldn't expect to get any help from his family.
The important thing, though, the part I distinctly remember, was that Oliver was looking at a video of a wading bird Austin had recorded. An egret, maybe. White feathers, long black legs, pointy black beak. Austin must have been standing on a ledge above a creek, because he had an overhead view of the bird as it stood in the water, slowly and deliberately stretching and retracting its neck, eyeing the wriggling little shadows below. As far as the fish could know, they were swimming around a pair of reeds growing out of the silt. The predator from which they extended was of a world beyond their understanding and out of their reach.
The video ended. Oliver moved on to the next item: a photograph of the bird from the same perspective, with a fish clamped in its beak. Water droplets flung from the victim's thrashing tail caught the sunlight. And I remember now, I clearly remember, the shapes of like twelve other fish stupidly milling about the bird's feet, unperturbed and unpanicked.
Danny peered at Oliver’s phone and observed a resemblance between the bird—its shape and bearing, and the composition of the photograph—and a POV porn video shot from behind and above, and he told us so. Elaborately. He made squawking noises.
“And mom says I’m a degenerate,” Oliver sighed. “Can you practice your interspecies pickup artist shit somewhere else?” Oliver flicked his wrist, shooing Danny off, and held his phone in front of his face to signal that he was done talking.
Danny sagged a little on his stool and turned away. I sometimes felt bad for him. For all his faults, he had the heart of a puppy dog. He really did think of us as his tribe. There was nobody else who’d only ever answer “yes” when you asked him to pick up a shift, and he did it completely out of loyalty.
He was turning 29 in a week. I wondered how many people would actually turn out to celebrate with him at the Black Taxi. Kyle probably would—but even he regarded Danny more as a source of vulgar entertainment than a friend.
Then it happened again. When I turned to speak to Oliver, there’d been a pair of pool cues leaning side-by-side against the wall a few stools down. Now they were gone.
This time it might have been my imagination. Somebody passing by could have casually snatched them up and kept walking.
But a moment later I seemed to notice a second TouchTunes box protruding from the wall directly behind me. I let it be.
Marina returned from the bathroom. Danny rose and offered her back her seat with an exaggerated bow. Before she got settled, I asked if she’d like to step outside with me. She withdrew her pack of Marlboro Menthols from her canvas bag, which she left sitting on the stool to deter Danny from sitting back down.
Marina never minded letting me bum cigarettes from time to time. I couldn’t buy them for myself anymore; it’s a habit I could never keep under control, and was only getting more expensive. Like everything else in the world. About once a month I reimbursed her by buying her a pack.
The air out on the sidewalk was as hot as the air inside Twenty, but easier to breathe. After lighting up, Marina leaned against the bricks and sighed.
“I wish Oliver would fire Danny already and get it over with.”
I nodded. Marina rarely talked about anything but work.
“He sneaks drinks and doesn't think anyone notices he's buzzed,” she went on. “He steals so much shit and isn’t even a little subtle about it. He’s going to get Oliver in trouble. And he’s a creep.”
“Yeah,” I said. These were her usual complaints about Danny, and they were all true. “At least he’s better than Austin.”
“That’s a low bar.”
Three dirt bikes and an ATV roared down the lonely street, charging through stop sign after stop sign, putting our talk on hold.
“Remind me. You’ve got one semester left, right?” I asked after the noise ebbed.
“Yep.”
Marina was a marketing major at Temple. She’d had an internship during the spring semester, and her boss told her to give her a call the very minute she graduated. Her parents in central Pennsylvania couldn’t pay her rent or tuition for her, so she was a full-time student and a full-time employee at Avenue Brew. Her emotional spectrum ranged from "tired" to "over it." She’d been waiting tables and working at coffee shops since she was seventeen, had no intention of continuing for even a day longer than she had to, and feared the escape hatch would slam shut if she dallied too long after prying it open.
She’d considered majoring in English, like Kyle. She went for marketing instead. I couldn’t blame her.
“Are you okay?” she asked. “You’ve been kind of off all day.”
“I’m terrible.”
“Why?”
I gave dodgy answers, but she asked precisely the right follow-up questions to get me going about what happened with Heather the night before.
It was the new job. Before the pandemic, Heather worked as a server at a Center City bar and grill. (That's where I met her; we were coworkers for about a year, and then I left to work Café Chakra because it was quieter and closer to where I lived.) When the place closed its doors and laid everyone off during the lockdown, she got a stopgap job at the Acme on Passyunk, and hated it. Then in March, she found a bar-and-lounge gig in a ritzy hotel on Broad Street. Very corporate. Excellent pay, great benefits. Definitely a step up. But her new employers made Irene and Jeremy look like Bob and Linda Belcher by comparison. It was the kind of place where someone had recently gotten herself fired for leaving work to rush to the hospital after getting the news that her grandmother was about to be taken off life support, and not finding someone to come in and cover the last two hours of her shift.
Heather seldom worked fewer than fifty-five hours a week, and her schedule was even more erratic than mine. At least once a week she left the hotel at 1:00 or 2:00 AM and returned at 9:00 the next morning. Neither of us could remember the last time she’d had two consecutive days off, and it had been over a month since one of mine overlapped with one of hers. She’d spent it drinking alone at home. All she wanted was some privacy.
I’d biked to South Philly to meet her when she got home at 1:30. The argument that killed our relationship for good began around 2:30, when I complained that we never had sex anymore. Heather accused me of only caring about that, when she was so exhausted and stressed that her hair was falling out in the shower. Quit the job? She couldn’t quit. The money was too good. She had student loans, medical bills, and credit card debt, and for the first time in her life she could imagine paying it all off before hitting menopause.
So, yeah, I was cranky about our sex life being dead in the water. Say whatever you like. But at that point, what were we to each other? We did nothing together anymore but complain about work before one or both of us fell asleep. That isn’t a relationship.
She said my hair always smelled like sandwiches, even after bathing, and she was done pretending it didn’t turn her off. I told her she was one to talk—she always reeked of liquor. As things escalated, we stopped caring if her roommates heard us. “You want to be a father?” she shouted around 4:00 AM. “Making what you make? That poor fucking kid.”
We fought until sunrise, and I left her apartment with the understanding that I wouldn’t be coming back, wouldn’t be calling her ever again. I biked home and sat on the steps facing the cement panel that was my house’s backyard. After my phone died and I couldn’t anaesthetize myself with dumb YouTube videos or make myself feel crazy staring at the download button for the Tinder app, I watched the sparrows hopping on and off the utility lines for a while.
At 11:40 I went inside. One of my roommates was already in the shower, so the best I could do was put on a clean Avenue Brew T-shirt before walking to the shop and clocking in at noon to help deal with the lunch rush.
“That’s a lot,” Marina finally said. “Sorry.”
I don’t know what I was expecting her to say. She was sixteen years my junior, after all, and just a coworker. She didn’t need to hear any of this, and I definitely didn't need to be telling her. But who else was there to tell?
She’d already finished her cigarette. I still had a few puffs left. She went inside.
I decided to call it a night.
The second TouchTunes box was gone—naturally. Danny had taken my stool, and regarded my approach with a puckish you snooze you lose grin. I wasn’t going to say anything. I’d just pay my bill, give everyone a nod goodnight, and walk the five blocks back home.
And then Danny disappeared.
One second, he was there. The next—gone.
Danny didn’t just instantaneously vanish. Even when something happens in the blink of an eye, you can still put together something of a sequence. I saw him—I seemed to see him—falling into himself, collapsing to a point, and then to nothing.
You know how sometimes a sound is altogether inaudible unless you’re looking at the source—like when you don’t realize somebody’s whispering at you, and can then hear and understand them after they get your attention? I think that was the case here. I wouldn't have known to listen if I hadn't seen it happen. What I heard lingered for two, maybe three seconds, and wasn't any louder than a fly buzzing inside a lampshade. A tiny and impossibly distant scream, pitchshifted like a receding ambulance siren into a basso drone...
I don’t know. I don’t know for sure. I’m certain I remember a flash of red, and I have the idea of Danny’s trunk expanding, opening up as it imploded. A crimson flower, flecked white, with spooling pink stalks—and Danny’s wide-eyed face above it, drawn twisting and shrinking into its petals.
For an instant, Twenty’s interior shimmered. Not shimmered, exactly—glitched would be a better word. If you’re old enough to remember the fragmented graphics that sometimes flashed onscreen when you turned on the Nintendo without blowing on the cartridge, you’ll have an idea of what I mean. It happened much too fast, and there was too much of it to absorb. The one clear impression I could parse was the mirage of a cash register flickering upside-down above the pool table.
Not a cash register. The shape was familiar, but the texture was wrong. I think it was ribbed, sort of like a maggot. I think it glistened. Like—camo doesn’t work anymore when the wearer stops crouching behind a bush and breaks into a run. Do you get what I’m saying?
Nobody else seemed to notice. The pool balls clacked. A New Order track was playing on the TouchTunes box. A nearby argument about about Nick Sirianni continued unabated.
Finally, there was a downward rush of air—and this at least elicited a reaction from the bartender, who slapped my bill to keep it from sailing off the counter.
“Danny,” I said.
“Danny?” Kyle asked me quietly. His face had gone pale.
“Danny?” Oliver repeated in a faraway voice.
After a pause, Kyle blinked a few times. “You heard from him?”
“God forbid,” said Marina. “When he quit I was like, great, I can keep working here after all.”
“Oh, come on—”
“Kyle. Did I ever show you those texts he sent me once at three in the morning?” The color had returned to Oliver’s face.
“No, what did he say?”
Oliver tapped at his phone and turned the screen toward Kyle.
“Oh. Oh, jeez.”
“Right? Like—if you want to ask me something, ask me. You know? Don’t be weirdly accusatory about it…”
I pulled a wad of fives and ones from my pocket, threw it all onto the counter, and beelined for the exit without consideration for the people I squeezed through and shoved past on the way.
I heard Marina saying “let him go.”
I went a second consecutive night without sleep. Fortunately I wasn’t scheduled to come in the next day.
The schedule. It’s funny. Oliver was generally great at his job, and even when he wasn’t, I cut him a lot of slack because I knew Irene and Jeremy never gave him a moment’s peace. But I could never forgive him those times he waited until the weekend to make up and distribute the schedule. This was one of those weeks he didn’t get around to it until Saturday afternoon. When I found it in my inbox, Danny’s name wasn’t anywhere on it.
As far as I know, nobody who hadn’t been at Twenty that night asked what happened to him. We were a bit overstaffed as it was, and everyone probably assumed Danny was slated for the chopping block. The part-timers were, for the most part, happy to get a few additional hours.
Oliver abruptly quit around Labor Day after a final acrimonious clash with the owners. I never found out the details, and I never saw him again. Jeremy and Irene took turns minding the store while a replacement manager was sought. None of the supervisors would be pressured into taking the job; they knew from Oliver what they could expect.
About three weeks after Oliver left, I came in for my purchasing shift and found Jeremy waiting for me in the back room. I knew it was serious when he didn’t greet me with the awkward fist-bump he ordinarily required of his male employees.
“You’ve seen the numbers,” he said. Business for the summer had fallen short of expectations, it was true, and he and Irene had decided to rein in payroll expenses. My purchaser position was being eliminated. Its responsibilities would be redistributed among the supervisors and the new manager, when one was found. In the meantime, I'd be going back to the regular $11 an hour (plus tips of course) associate position full-time.
Jeremy assured me I'd be first in the running for supervisor the next time there was an opening.
I told him it was fine, I was done, and if he’d expected the courtesy of two weeks’ notice, he shouldn’t have blindsided me like that.
“Well, that’s your choice,” he answered, trying not to look pleased. His payroll problem was solving itself.
I racked up credit card debt for a few months. Applied for entry-level museum jobs that might appreciate my art history degree. Aimed for some purchasing and administrative assistant gigs, and just for the hell of it, turned in a resume for a facilitator position at an after-school art program. Got a few interviews. All of them eventually told me they’d decided to go in a different direction. I finally got hired to bartend at Hops from Underground, a microbrewery on Fairmount.
I’m still there. The money’s okay, but it fluctuates. Hours are reasonable. I’m on their high-deductible health plan. There’s a coworker I’ve been dating. Sort of dating. You know how it goes. In this line of work you get so used to people coming and going that you learn not to get too attached. I walk past Avenue Brew a few times a week, but stopped peering in through the window when I didn't recognize the people behind the counter anymore.

Said it twice even!!
Small win, but I've been feeling really dysphoric the last day or so, so I really needed this! 😊😊😊

yes. you read that right.
hetalia.
i know, i know! irrelevant, niche, and maybe a little cringy? i don’t care, i adore these characters! i’m looking for an 18+ discord role playing partner who is just as enthusiastic about writing and plotting as i am! i would consider myself an advanced to literate writer, who averages 3-6 (sometimes more!) paragraphs per post. i appreciate someone who puts in an equal amount of effort.
about me? mae, she/her, 29! <3
i highly prefer modern aus over canon or historical settings. i enjoy themes such as hurt, comfort, angst, conflict and resolution, character development, pining (be it mutual or initially one-sided)… the list goes on, but you get the vibe. cliche au settings i enjoy would be things such as: soulmates, high school, adults trying to figure shit out, cafe/coffee shop, ski resort/beach house (or any sort of vacation destination really). it may also be obvious that many of my ships are very “opposites attract,” so i also enjoy plots that lean into that, such as celebrity/fan, socialite/caterer, artist/muse. as a throwback to the edgy early days of rp, i’m stupid for stalkevictim role plays idc idc. throw anything at me, and once we get the ideas rolling i’m the type who is consistently coming up with new plot points/twists/milestones. (bonus: i’ll absolutely end up making rp playlists so you can expect me to send you music, oops!)
now, onto the ships. which is the best part, let’s be real. the listed ships and characters are the only ones that i’m currently looking for.
i write s. italy, you write: prussia france nyo!belarus mmmaybe portugal? interesting…..
i write n. italy, you write: austria! sorry germany. ;(
i write china, you write: rome.
i write greece, you write: turkey.
i write sweden, you write: finland.
i write prussia, you write: poland
and thaaaats about it, folks! hope to hear from someone out there in the void! if you are also a literate writer and you’re looking for some nostalgic rp don’t hesitate to message me! :D

i’m in line at coffee shop and 10 minutes ago i was loving myself but then i remembered things i did and i feel so much shame and embarrassment and want to crawl in a hole now

yes. you read that right.
hetalia.
i know, i know! irrelevant, niche, and maybe a little cringy? i don’t care, i adore these characters! i’m looking for an 18+ discord role playing partner who is just as enthusiastic about writing and plotting as i am! i would consider myself an advanced to literate writer, who averages 3-6 (sometimes more!) paragraphs per post. i appreciate someone who puts in an equal amount of effort.
about me? mae, she/her, 29! <3
i highly prefer modern aus over canon or historical settings. i enjoy themes such as hurt, comfort, angst, conflict and resolution, character development, pining (be it mutual or initially one-sided)… the list goes on, but you get the vibe. cliche au settings i enjoy would be things such as: soulmates, high school, adults trying to figure shit out, cafe/coffee shop, ski resort/beach house (or any sort of vacation destination really). it may also be obvious that many of my ships are very “opposites attract,” so i also enjoy plots that lean into that, such as celebrity/fan, socialite/caterer, artist/muse. as a throwback to the edgy early days of rp, i’m stupid for stalkevictim role plays idc idc. throw anything at me, and once we get the ideas rolling i’m the type who is consistently coming up with new plot points/twists/milestones. (bonus: i’ll absolutely end up making rp playlists so you can expect me to send you music, oops!)
now, onto the ships. which is the best part, let’s be real. the listed ships and characters are the only ones that i’m currently looking for.
i write s. italy, you write: prussia france nyo!belarus mmmaybe portugal? interesting…..
i write n. italy, you write: austria! sorry germany. ;(
i write china, you write: rome.
i write greece, you write: turkey.
i write sweden, you write: finland.
i write prussia, you write: poland
and thaaaats about it, folks! hope to hear from someone out there in the void! if you are also a literate writer and you’re looking for some nostalgic rp don’t hesitate to message me! :D

If you tip with a credit card at a coffee shop, do the employees actually get any of that money? How does the virtual money become real?

yes. you read that right.
hetalia.
i know, i know! irrelevant, niche, and maybe a little cringy? i don’t care, i adore these characters! i’m looking for an 18+ discord role playing partner who is just as enthusiastic about writing and plotting as i am! i would consider myself an advanced to literate writer, who averages 3-6 (sometimes more!) paragraphs per post. i appreciate someone who puts in an equal amount of effort.
about me? mae, she/her, 29! <3
i highly prefer modern aus over canon or historical settings. i enjoy themes such as hurt, comfort, angst, conflict and resolution, character development, pining (be it mutual or initially one-sided)… the list goes on, but you get the vibe. cliche au settings i enjoy would be things such as: soulmates, high school, adults trying to figure shit out, cafe/coffee shop, ski resort/beach house (or any sort of vacation destination really). it may also be obvious that many of my ships are very “opposites attract,” so i also enjoy plots that lean into that, such as celebrity/fan, socialite/caterer, artist/muse. as a throwback to the edgy early days of rp, i’m stupid for stalkevictim role plays idc idc. throw anything at me, and once we get the ideas rolling i’m the type who is consistently coming up with new plot points/twists/milestones. (bonus: i’ll absolutely end up making rp playlists so you can expect me to send you music, oops!)
now, onto the ships. which is the best part, let’s be real. the listed ships and characters are the only ones that i’m currently looking for.
i write s. italy, you write: prussia france nyo!belarus mmmaybe portugal? interesting…..
i write n. italy, you write: austria! sorry germany. ;(
i write china, you write: rome.
i write greece, you write: turkey.
i write sweden, you write: finland.
i write prussia, you write: poland
and thaaaats about it, folks! hope to hear from someone out there in the void! if you are also a literate writer and you’re looking for some nostalgic rp don’t hesitate to message me! :D

Hi, Before even getting my Steam Deck I was wondering if we will at some stage get a full Android OS for this thing as its form factor is ideal as a tablet but never see it (maybe cause Valve never shared the source code of SteamOS / kernel).
So I started to check Andoid x86 distros and the one that worked well is Bliss Os 14.10 (Bliss 15.8 works but apps are not starting so no go), see my video below (sorry for the noise, I'm on a coffee shop!):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eAOKXmE8p1M
you can launch it on live mode by write the ISO on a pen drive through Rufus to check it,
https://sourceforge.net/projects/blissos-dev/postdownload
Choose 14.10 Gapps ISO
What works:

• System starts very quickly and very responsive without crashs, if I didn't thinker it I would say that it was designed for Steam Deck..
• Wifi 2.4 / 5Ghz
• Bluetooth
• Audio through bluetooth
• Touch screen, I confirm that it's not perfect but way more better than windows and SteamOS, keyboard is accurate as well.
• Left touch pad as a mouse and triggers as left and right mouse buttons.
• volume & power button.
• I saw that the OS power consumption is very low 4w - 10w which is good for a non intensive apps use.

What's not working:

• Audio through speakers / jack
• Gyro
• Controller is on lizard mode, so not working
• HW video decoding is not working on Netflix & Youtube app, but videos are working on Youtube through Chrome.
• HW acceleration on games is not well optimized but working.

Well I know that many of you will say why try something that is not working well but as we say Science is not about why but Why not! also you have access to millions of apps already optimized for touch and the size of Steam Deck screen, and of course my prupose is to start a debate and maybe convince Bliss Os devs or other devs to work on it as from my point of view it needs only a small thinkering to get it fully working on Steam Deck.
For info, getting it on internal storage needed some thinkering as the installer doesn't work directly on Steam Deck (screen orientation issue) so I had to install it on a sd card through my laptop, resize SSD on steam deck and clone the partition and label it "android-x86", copy android EFI starting files from my laptop (grub and EFI\Android) and paste them on EFI of Steam Deck (on partition 1) rename "Android" folder to "boot" in order to start by Steam Deck boot manager.
Happy thinkering!
Klinux

yes. you read that right.
hetalia.
i know, i know! irrelevant, niche, and maybe a little cringy? i don’t care, i adore these characters! i’m looking for an 18+ discord role playing partner who is just as enthusiastic about writing and plotting as i am! i would consider myself an advanced to literate writer, who averages 3-6 (sometimes more!) paragraphs per post. i appreciate someone who puts in an equal amount of effort.
about me? mae, she/her, 29! <3
i highly prefer modern aus over canon or historical settings. i enjoy themes such as hurt, comfort, angst, conflict and resolution, character development, pining (be it mutual or initially one-sided)… the list goes on, but you get the vibe. cliche au settings i enjoy would be things such as: soulmates, high school, adults trying to figure shit out, cafe/coffee shop, ski resort/beach house (or any sort of vacation destination really). it may also be obvious that many of my ships are very “opposites attract,” so i also enjoy plots that lean into that, such as celebrity/fan, socialite/caterer, artist/muse. as a throwback to the edgy early days of rp, i’m stupid for stalkevictim role plays idc idc. throw anything at me, and once we get the ideas rolling i’m the type who is consistently coming up with new plot points/twists/milestones. (bonus: i’ll absolutely end up making rp playlists so you can expect me to send you music, oops!)
now, onto the ships. which is the best part, let’s be real. the listed ships and characters are the only ones that i’m currently looking for.
i write s. italy, you write: prussia france nyo!belarus mmmaybe portugal? interesting…..
i write n. italy, you write: austria! sorry germany. ;(
i write china, you write: rome.
i write greece, you write: turkey.
i write sweden, you write: finland.
i write prussia, you write: poland
and thaaaats about it, folks! hope to hear from someone out there in the void! if you are also a literate writer and you’re looking for some nostalgic rp don’t hesitate to message me! :D

This story is very hard to explain, considering my first language is not English, and the story itself is crazy. This all happened yesterday. I’m not sure if this is the right place to put this, but whatever.
June 2nd, 2023, I got a phone call from a number in my area. I answered and it was one of my old friends saying something like “hey ___ gave me your number! Wanna hangout sometime?” Or something like that. This girl I haven’t seen in ages was my best friend in middle school, so I said yes, because I thought it’d be nice to catch up.
2 hours after our call, we met up at a local coffee shop. Keep in mind, this place is extremely busy as it’s a coffee house, so there is almost always a band or something playing. We talked for about an hour until deciding we should go. As we were heading for the door, a group of people walked in and my friend immediately started chatting with them as they were her “friends.”
Bare with me, because this part is a blur. I have no idea how to describe what happened, so just try your best to understand.
As this group came in, they all swarmed around me, to the point I was literally squished. Before I new it, I had been stabbed by something in my leg. After this happened, I woke up in my bed. I was freaked out. I was thinking it was probably a dream, so I was like “okay whatever it’s not real” but I was so wrong.
I walked downstairs into my kitchen and my brother looked at my horrified and pulled out his phone. He was asking things like who are you etc. and I was crying telling him “it’s me.”
This has been happening with everyone I encounter.
My guess is that I woke up in the coffee place, walked home, and got into bed. It definitely has something to do with whatever I got stabbed with. But anyways, I’m not sure if I was like stabbed to death, injected with something, or whatever. I’m currently at a hotel. I’m wondering if this is a NDE but I’m not sure.
Anyways, sorry if this was hard to understand. My first language is not English. Let me know what you think this means.
EDIT: sorry for the vague details. Like I said, everything before today was a blur.

Can anyone share his/her experience opening a coffee shop and what are in their opinion the absolute must haves to get a new coffee shop started. As to what is the bare minimum so you can start serving folk.. thank you very much!

After weeks of relapse, I went counseling session dahil sa panic attacks and interrupted sleeps nights na nakakabahala na. It went well as the counselor helped me to process this heartache and validated how I did my best to get up each day. Last part of session left me a task to do creative way to let go of my lost love.
Pumunta ako sa coffee shop days after to think of how can I do it. Nag-scroll at nakita ko sa AskReddit yung post about moving on. May isa dun na gumawa ng memorial service sa ex niya. I got the idea then I jotted down the details & executions. I did my best to make it symbolic.
I did it the day of our supposedly anniversary sa Quiapo church (favorite na simbahan ni ex) kaso hindi masyadong solemn dahil puno ng tao kaya naghanap na lang ako ng place to light candles. I bought 5 blue candles (for peace of mind daw) and brought the remaining stuff I have from him, his grad pic na may message sa likod. Nagexchange kami ng grad pics noong first date namin.
The message had “I’m glad to meet you” kaya sinulatan ko rin ng “Glad I’ve met you! Goodbye!” then after ko magpray, sinindi ko na yung blue candles at sinunog yung picture niya. Parang cremation ang peg.
After kong hinatid sa huling hantungan yung pag-ibig ko kay ex, pumunta akong Binondo at kumain ng mami. Kinabukasan, parang gumaan yung loob ko pero hindi ako kampante dahil alam kong eto pa rin yung dahilan pag malulungkot ako pero this past weeks, magaan na lahat sa akin. Naalala ko pa rin at namimiss siya minsan, pero hindi na same feeling, hindi na umaasa na babalik siya.
Mukhang tanga yung ginawa ko pero it was very helpful. First break up experience and I’m happy doing moving on phase so well. Focusing on myself and working on being better.
Ceremony

On a recent thread here someone likened ADHD to being chained to the laziest version of yourself. And it got me thinking about how I would describe my relationship with it. Even before I was diagnosed, I would explain to people how it felt like I had to always throw a bone to my mind. In the sense that, whatever I was doing, I would have to toss a problem or idea or transcript of a conversation I'd had 4 years before to my brain to chew on in the background that invariable invaded the foreground.
I was diagnosed in the middle of last year at the age of 32. The catalyst for even considering ADHD came about after reading this post by David Cain on his exceptional blog Raptitude,
https://www.raptitude.com/2021/03/what-raptitude-has-always-been-about/
(if you haven’t seen his stuff already, immediately quit reading this bumbling mess and check out his work. You won’t regret it).
His site was one of those rare corners of the internet that I took great value from and really resonated with. And to see that his perspectives were, in hindsight, in some way influenced by ADHD got me thinking about my own proclivity for certain behaviours.
So many things from my life made sense through this newfound and unexpected lens. How my degree was built on desperate writing sessions, often starting at 11pm the night before the deadline right through to dawn, where I would camp out in the library eating raw instant coffee and haribo. How, without fail, before every task I’d have to find means of upping my dopamine levels so that the water line was high enough to get started. And how even after that work could feel almost weirdly painful at times. The fact that every message I sent normally begins with 'I'm so sorry it's taken so long to reply'. How everything must have a place, not because I am in any way organised, but because if it doesn’t then that belonging will disappear into some kind of temporal abyss. How, many years ago when I was once under a lot of pressure at work, I instead spent hours writing a 2000-word satirical academic dissection of the song ‘Shake Ya Ass’ by Mystikal for no one in particular.
Of all the gifts that it offers (spontaneous hip-hop literature aside), today I found myself somewhat lamenting the way I am. I’m sure you can relate. Fed up with that ever-present tension of your mind’s engine revving like nobody’s business but being unable to actual put it in gear. Depleted due to the navigation of your thoughts feeling like playing Tetris on the hardest difficulty, desperately trying to compile a chaotic onslaught of hues into some kind of workable form. The contradiction of incessant activity paired with persistent stagnation. Which is to say, how I came to the ham-fisted acronym / cry for help in the post title. Always Doing, How Do?
I think Reddit is so appealing, at least for me, because of those buried nuggets of wisdom that you can stumble upon within all the noise. These fleeting discoveries make me come back again and again, because maybe if I keep looking I will find 'the answer". The quote or wisdom that will propel me into who I am and who I want to be, truly. Like for all of us, that clarity can spontaneously unfurl organically too, like swathes of morning light over a new day. I can only liken that feeling to that moment when you're riding coach when the plane breaks through the clouds. And you’re above the weather that colours your days and connected to something bigger. The sky. And that feeling is bloody addictive. I don't know about you, but I chase it. I went to a coffee shop on the banks of a lake by my house the other week and, through magic or unintentional design, I was greeted by that light. And so today I went back again today, hoping it would shine again. And it didn't. And that's okay.
One habit that (surprise surprise) I struggle to maintain is using FocusWriter to freeform journal. This clickity-clack of vowels and coffee cups often take a familiar shape. I start off deep within the apathy or funk that is currently enveloping me. As I write I slowly gain subtle glimmers of lucidity and by the end I normally reach an optimistic reframing of my life & worth to walk forward with. I hoped as I wrote this that the above format would fall into place with this post. But this time, unfortunately, all I can offer is my experience. Of not being at a beginning or an end but rather somewhere in between.
If you were to try and fish a theme from this muddled heap like one of those claw machines at the fair, the prize you would retrieve would be solidarity. With the challenges you face on the day to day and the frustrations you may have at that unalignment between who you are, how you behave and all the multitudes in-between.
I don’t really know why I’m posting this. But I guess it’s to try and put some good into the world to counteract the negativity that has temporarily enveloped mine. To say to you to have faith that things will be better, even if they don't feel like it now. That you will meet answers on your journey, not from Reddit, but within and from yourself. That our ability to transform 'doing’ to ‘do’ isn't a measurement of our innate value to this world but rather a skill we can refine and misplace and begin anew. At least, that's what I hope for myself.

Akin.. coffee right after waking up, read a chapter of a book (I’m slowly easing my way back to reading), clean the house, do my laundry the past week, bathe my 2 dogs and then take a bath and go to the mall and get a massage.
I always feel accomplished pag chores muna tapos I get to choose my reward latter part of the day.
By the way, I’m typing this while inside a coffee shop. Simple joys.
Have a nice Saturday night, kids!

I’m sure if I scrolled far enough I’d see another post like this but to be frank, I’d rather just make the post lol! What businesses do you want to support? Are they new? Where are they at in the area? I’ve already checked out the new cat cafe so let’s try to avoid that please!
Give me whatever you got, mechanics, salons, coffee shops, etc. don’t hold back! :)

Getting Rid of Most of My Flavors, Part 46
PREVIOUS > Part 1 - Part 2 - Part 3 - Part 4 - Part 5 - Part 6 - Part 7 - Part 8 - Part 9 Part 10 - Part 11 - Part 12 - Part 13 - Part 14 - Part 15 - Part 16 - Part 17 - Part 18 - Part 19 - Part 20 - Part 21 - Part 22 - Part 23 - Part 24 - Part 25 - Part 26 - Part 27 - Part 28 - Part 29 - Part 30 - Part 31 - Part 32 - Part 33 - Part 34 - Part 35 - Part 36 - Part 37 - Part 38 - Part 39 - Part 40 - Part 41 - Part 42 - Part 43 - Part 44 - Part 45
Starting Flavor Count: 2,434 (down from 2,972)
TASK OR TRASH - Each flavor gets assigned at least one task or it goes in the trash.
 

CAPELLA Honeydew Melon

Update. I gave CAP Honeydew Melon one chance to stick around, a recipe called “Melon Blow Pop.” Before trying it, I wondered what made this recipe a "blow pop" considering there aren't any gum flavors, but something about the way these flavors combine does give it a very interesting bubblegum-y aspect in addition to the candy melon and apple. And the candy apple-melon is great. Unfortunately, I also get a slight perfumy-type off note from the recipe. Specifically, a baby scent perfume. You know, whatever it is that makes baby stuff like baby lotion, baby oil, baby powder all have that same baby scent. I hate that, so CAP Honeydew Melon is history. TRASH 1
 

FLAVOUR ART

 
Royal
Accidentally passed over this one last time. I found it to be a kind of warm and spicy tobacco; with a spice note or notes similar to cinnamon, nutmeg, clove, and ginger, but not specifically or distinctly any of those. Also found it odd that despite having no menthol taste or cooling it kind of hits me right in the same spot that menthol does.
I purchased this flavor to make Chem Twista Lime - cigarette with a pinch of lime - and will continue to use it for that. TASK 1 But, I can’t find anything else that I want to do with it.
 
Shade
I don’t know what this is, but it’s not tobacco. It tastes like dirty cooked fruit sweetness, like just part of cooked dark berries or stewed prunes, just the sweetness from them and not their distinct aromas, mixed with something earthy and pushing dirty tobacco but not authentically tobacco. But, it does taste like it would be a good ingredient to use in a fruity tobacco, like you would need a tobacco, and a fruit, but this could be a bridge ingredient.
Already plan to mix CBV’s Cherry Oak Tobacco that uses it. Will also try his Southern Lights recipe for a bourbon-vanilla tobacco that uses it TASK 2, and the very solid looking Bob’s Bacco. TASK 3 I just wished the new ATF showed steep times because I’m not sure how long to steep these. Anyone have a guess? Three weeks sound about right?
 
Soho
I don’t consider this tobacco flavor. It’s more like... Dirty Trail Mix, but in the best possible way.
Slightly dirty roasted nut crust? It’s an odd, complex, flavor that’s oddly weak for FA (8% is not unusual for a mix) with something lightly tobacco-ish, kind of toasty, in there somewhere along with a lot of other stuff - some roasted nuttiness, something like a graham cracker-type or pie crust bakery, a bit of caramel or brown-sugar like sweetness but not too sweet, maybe some raisin-y type sweetness as well. Dry, yet smooth. It’s not a rich flavor but it has plenty of dry bakery-like body.
No, I’m not throwing away FA Soho. I need it for 1-2-3 Burley TASK 4 and it’s used in about 10 recipes I’m planning to try.
Adding to that - I can’t wait to try Pistachio Brulee - Soho. It’s a lot of TFA Pistachio and not a lot of FA Soho for a “comforting warm deep dessert tobacco,” but I still think it’s going to be terrific. TASK 5
Will also add Maga for the simplicity - it’s just FA Soho, FLV Mild Tobacco, and FLV Vanilla tobacco. TASK 6
And because I’m feeling brave, Arcanite, a weird-looking recipe that mixes Soho with Meringue, White Peach, and TFA Dragonfruit. TASK 7
 
Sour Wizard
Held off on ever trying this for a long time because I’d already been burnt by too many supposedly sour things to get excited about FA coming out with Sour Wizard. Anyway, it doesn’t really taste sour, not like sour candy tastes sour, not at 2% anyway, but it definitely has a noticeably tart “pop” to it, more so than the others. Very bright. Other sour additives don’t have much fruitiness but this one does have a very slight green apple kind of taste to it. Top heavy with a dead finish but the sour-ish flavor does carry just a little deeper than just being right on top. The usual suspect acids might be the main ingredients, but FA definitely did more than just put malic and/or citric acid in a bottle with PG, and it shows. Unfortunately, I could not find a single recipe using it that I both felt inclined to mix and had all the ingredients to mix. TRASH 2
 
Spearmint
Aka, “White Winter.” Tastes like the disembodied spirit of weak spearmint gum. Not much body or sweetness. No leafy green stuff. Not extra methol-ed up.
I’m pretty sure I would be fine without it but there is just one recipe I want to try first, just to make sure.
Spearing Mint, Creamy Concoction is one. Although FA and TFA Spearmints aren’t the mints I’d choose for the job, I’m really interested in this “slight spearmint note with sweetened heavy cream” profile, and the sweetened heavy cream part looks great. TASK 8
 
Stark Apple
Sweet red apple, fairly accurately tastes like a red delicious apple or apple juice. I think red delicious is actually the least delicious of apples, but if you don’t, or you need that as a component, this offers it. I guess some people say it tastes more like a yellow apple but I always associate those with having more of a “ripe,” kinda sweaty taste. FA Stark Apple is quite sweet, with a deep natural sweetness, not a ton of flavor, but the flavor that’s there is on point. No tartness or crispness - not very fresh tasting. Sweet and timid enough that I would use it to sweeten a mix of other fruits without worrying much about it getting in the way. Not dry, but not really juicy. Very smooth, does not add any throat hit. Some body, with that mild flavor on top and a medium thick sweeter base, not too thin.
I really liked Strap-On Aid when I tried it six years ago, let’s see if I still do. TASK 9
There are a bunch of apple bacco recipes and at least a handful of them use FA Stark Apple. The one that looks most appealing to me is this Starkonja’s Head, mostly because it has serious, grown-up tobaccos in there and not just RY4 Double and Soho. TASK 10
 
Strawberry (Red Touch)
Fairly weak for FA. I call it the astronaut strawberry, not that I’ve ever had one, but it’s what I imagine eating a freeze-dried strawberry would be like. It tastes natural, with that subtle earthy note that brings some realism to the party, but unnaturally dry. Not juicy at all. Top notes are mild, slightly tart, and the finish is weak but there’s a solid middle that tastes like a semi-sweet ripe strawberry only without any juice. It’s not the best standalone strawberry by far, but it is a great tool. Seems to work really well as part of a strawberry layer to make sweet candy strawberries taste more natural and fill out the middle more, despite not working so well by itself. Cranking it up too high that earthy note starts to get a little grassy, like freeze-drying that strawberry leaves and all.
No, I do not agree with those who say it smells like farts, and no, I’m not throwing away part of the original Strap-On and many of the Strap-On variants. t’s in more than half a dozen things on my to-mix list.
I also need it for Lychee Blossom, which is a fantastic lychee recipe that I love. TASK 11
And I want to try Strawberry Whirl which is described as “layered strawberry jam, light fluffy cream on a whirl cookie.” It had me at OoO Strawberry Jam. TASK 12
StrawMelon Melee because I love cantaloupe and strawberry together and this looks like a great new cantaloupe-strawberry mix. TASK 13
Custard’s Last Stand because I’m very interested in how that WF Sugar Cone fits in there. TASK 14
Daveberry Cheesecake because it’s named after me! TASK 15
Yuno because it looks like a great strawberry milk and I’m really interested in the combination of WF Macadamia Nut and OoO Cream Milky Undertone it uses. TASK 16
 
Strawberry Green
That’s what it tastes like, underripe strawberry. Very green like you can taste the chlorophyll, and pretty tart, but very clearly a strawberry, and has some syrupy sweetness. It tastes like a small amount of it could do amazing things with other strawberries, like making them taste brighter and more refreshing, maybe making a flat sweet candyish strawberry taste more like the real thing.
Pretty excited to try things with this one, already have a couple planned. Mike’s Peach, Strawberry and Vanilla looks like a winner, too. I’m really interested in the combination of WF Strawberry Gummy Candy and FA Strawberry Green for the strawberry and even more interested in the combination of FA Peach White and SSA Nectarines for the peach. TASK 17
 
Summer Clouds
I’m not sure who started calling it FA Dryer Sheets, but I can confirm that is an accurate description. It’s supposed to be peach and rose, it think, but I get a hint of peach and a whole lot of dryer sheets. TRASH 3
 
Tiramisu
There’s a really nice ladyfinger cookie buried in here, and accurate cocoa notes, but unfortunately nothing resembling mascarpone flavor or richness, and even more unfortunately, it’s all soaked in, not liqueur-spiked espresso like it’s supposed to be, but booze-free coffee brewed by a skunk who had recently sprayed skunk spray and burned some popcorn in the same kitchen where he made the coffee. TRASH 4
 
Torrone
As best I can tell it’s actually accurate to a certain type of Italian nougat that contains lemon zest, almonds, pistachios, vanilla, sugar, honey, and egg whites. I’ve never had that, but it pretty much tastes like what I imagine all of that stuff mixed together might taste like. It’s sweet and creamy and nutty and lemony all at the same time. I’m not personally a huge fan of this mostly because the lemon feels weird in there and it seems a bit busy, for a single flavor, but it’s not terrible. It’s a little on the thin side, but just a little; there’s still enough body there to pull off a sugary creamy texture. The nuts aren’t distinctly almondy or pistachio tasting and more of a generic nuttiness.
Need it for Stag Night, also interested in trying The Key To Happiness, described as “a nice piece of store bought key lime pie like you find in the freezer section of your local grocery store. TASK 18
 
Up
This one is so odd. It’s coffee, cream, and... cereal? I don’t know why there’s a bakery flavor in there. It’s coffee forward and that coffee is not terrible, it’s kind of burnt but not dark, like a light roast coffee that’s been on a warmer too long or at too high a temp. There’s a little milky cream that makes an appearance and then there’s some bakery that is, for whatever reason, supposed to be a cereal. I guess it’s cereal? It’s kinda dry and gritty, almost graham cracker like. It finishes on that note and I’m not sure what you’re supposed do with that other than use this to add a coffee note to a bakery recipe, or get really creative. No skunk spray or burnt popcorn or anything like that, so above average for a coffee flavor, but also nothing I want to mix that uses it. TRASH 5
 
Vanilla Bourbon
Thin, natural-ish and darker but not quite spicy vanilla. Really very plain to my taste, Rick calls it warm and a little floral. I’m not getting any warmth or floralness, it tastes more like an attempt at vanilla bean that doesn’t quite get there but is more of a bold natural vanilla than a lot of other offerings. There's a richness or depth to the vanilla flavor, but not to the concentrate itself, it’s actually rather thin, it will most likely will not add the perception of creaminess or thickness that many vanilla flavors do.
Three or four things I’ve planned to mix use it. Here’s two more: Premium Vanilla Custard - obvious from looking at it that it’s going to be delicious. I see you, OoO Marshmallow. TASK 19
And Shunsui Kyoraku. I’m scared of the WF Egg Yolk in there, but not too scared to give it a try. TASK 20
 
Vanilla Cookie
tTis is a very vanilla cookie. Loads of baked in kinda bright but not overly bright vanilla taste. Also, pretty buttery. There’s a nice cookie there in the middle of that butter and vanilla. Without steeping, the cookie is just a little too sharp (nutty, overcooked, pyrazine) for my taste, but it vapes smooth overall with all that vanilla and butter. If it had just a little less pyrazine sharp overcooked nuttiness (and I’m told it does have less of that with a longer steep than the five or six days I gave it before sampling 2.5%), it could get fairly close to a Golden Oreo type of thing.
I already have at least 10 recipes I’m going to make that use it, but also:
3 2 1 Stroopwaffel I don’t know how accurate that will be, but I love VT Honeycomb and looking forward to seeing how SSA Crisp Waffle and FA Vanilla Cookie mix with it. TASK 21
And Makoto Shishio, because I love the idea of an “oreo waffle with cream filling." TASK 22
 
Vanilla Ice Cream
Milky, plain base, not custardy at all - more like gelato. Darker vanilla. I don’t love it, simply as a matter of personal preference and liking a richer style of ice cream, but there’s nothing wrong with it. I’ve got at least recipes in line that use it, and here’s one more that stood out: Lemon Gelato. Looks refreshing and satisfying. TASK 23
 
Vanilla Tahity
This is every bit as much an almond flavor as a vanilla flavor, I get more almond than vanilla. It even has a bit of a cherry-ish note to it the way some almond flavors do. It’s like sweet almond-vanilla-cherry, or amaretto and marzipan. It’s a bit dry, but there’s fluffy marshmallow-like body to it, and it’s not dry enough to be unpleasant. I actually kind of enjoy vaping this as a single flavor. The hint of cherry is similar to the hint of cherry in amaretto, not a medicinal plastic cherry. The vanilla is very bright and artificial, like the vanilla in a vanilla coke, not a coke with vanilla syrup added like at a soda shop or Sonic, but just the vanilla from a can of vanilla coke.
Already planning to keep it long enough to mix one custard recipe that uses it, now I have two more things to try:
This recipe for Vanilla Crescent Cookies looks wonderful. TASK 24
And I’m really interested in the combination of VT Creaming Soda and WF Cotton Candy Jelly Bean in this Blue Balls recipe for blue raz and vanilla hard candy, even if I think FA Vanilla Tahity was probably not the best vanilla for the job. TASK 25
 
Vienna Cream
Absolutely requires a steep, not just to come into itself, but to not be disgusting. It’s weird how much better this gets after steeping for just about 4 days. Freshly mixed, it tastes like someone tried to make spiked eggnog and substituted nail polish remover for rum. After a short steep, it tastes like a very sweet, light dairy cream, on the thin side of creams but still very much a cream. with a bit of bright vanilla and an interesting sort of ice cream-like crispness to it. Very smooth, clean tasting. Have found it sometimes works when other creams don’t, just takes a little patience.
I need it for four of my all-time favorite recipes, Mango Beauregarde, Notorious, Vurve’s Vanilla Almond Milk, and Vanilla Cronut.
Gotta try The Worlds End, too. It looks like too much TFA DX PB for the profile - banana nut bread with chocolate sauce - but looks delicious, regardless. TASK 26
 
New Flavor Count: 2,429
 
Just a short one this time, to get back in the groove. I went on vacation, brought COVID back as a souvenir, and have had a bunch of work to catch up on because of all that. Will finish off the Flavour Art next week.

Delhi, with its history and busy city life, is a great place. But sometimes, you need a break. Luckily, there are many lovely places nearby for a weekend trip. You'll find everything from old towns to quiet hill stations and exciting wildlife parks. From historical sites and serene hill stations to adventurous wildlife parks, there's something for everyone. And if you're in search of the ideal place to stay, look no further than Sundays Forever Stays, offering top-notch accommodation in Dehradun, Mussorie, and Shimla.
1.Neemrana
Neemrana is a charming town nestled in the Alwar district of Rajasthan, renowned for the majestic Neemrana Fort Palace. This historical place exudes a vintage charm and serves as a royal reminder of India's rich heritage. Whether you're exploring the centuries-old fort or walking through the town's narrow lanes, Neemrana's essence can be felt in its every nook and cranny. Delicious local cuisine and panoramic views are the icing on the cake, enhancing your overall experience.
2.Lansdowne
Situated amidst beautiful pine and oak forests, Lansdowne is a hill station that stands apart. Away from the touristy crowd, it provides a peaceful retreat to the weary city dwellers. The sweet chirping of birds, the rustling sound of leaves, and the quiet ambiance serve as a refreshing respite. Here, you can lose yourself to nature, take relaxing walks through the dense forests, or simply enjoy the tranquility.
3.Dehradun
Located in the heart of the Doon Valley, Dehradun offers something for every traveler. Flanked by the Himalayas, the city presents lush green landscapes, a variety of flora and fauna, and several trekking trails for adventure enthusiasts. It's also home to fascinating places like Robber’s Cave, Mindrolling Monastery, and the beautiful waterfall, Sahastradhara. To top it off, why not book your stay at Sundays Forever's properties in Dehradun? It guarantees a comfortable and memorable retreat amid nature.
4.Dhanaulti
Dhanaulti, a quaint town set between Mussoorie and Chamba, is an oasis of calm and serenity. It’s cool and pleasant weather, scenic vistas, and the simplicity of life make it a perfect getaway for those seeking peace and solitude. Visitors can spend their time exploring the Eco Park, trying out adventure sports, or simply relaxing and soaking in the town's natural beauty.
5.Shimla
Known as the Queen of Hills, Shimla offers a picturesque retreat with its scenic landscapes, colonial architecture, and pleasant climate. From the lively Mall Road and the adventurous Kufri to the scenic Jakhoo Hill, Shimla has plenty to offer. Make your visit even more special by booking your stay with Sundays Forever. Our properties promise a blend of comfort, luxury, and stunning views, ensuring a memorable vacation.
6.Alwar
Alwar, a city steeped in history and culture, offers a peek into Rajasthan's royal past. Its plethora of historical sites, including the grand Alwar Fort, City Palace, and the tranquil Siliserh Lake, make Alwar an exciting destination for history buffs and culture vultures.
7.Jim Corbett National Park
Home to a rich variety of wildlife, including the majestic Bengal Tiger, Jim Corbett National Park is a paradise for nature lovers. Embark on a thrilling jeep safari, traverse through its diverse landscapes, and lose yourself in the enchanting beauty of this wildlife reserve.
8.Mussoorie
Nestled amidst the Himalayan ranges, Mussoorie is often referred to as the "Queen of the Hills". It offers breath-taking views of snow-capped mountain peaks and lush green valleys. This hill station has many attractions like Kempty Falls, where you can enjoy a refreshing dip, Gun Hill, which offers panoramic views of the Himalayas, and Mussoorie Lake, a picnic spot with pedal boating facilities. Make your trip even more memorable by booking your stay with Sundays Forever. With our luxurious homes providing top-tier comfort and stunning views, you'll have an unforgettable holiday.
9. Kufri
Kufri, located near Shimla, is a beautiful hill station well-known for its adventure sports, especially during winters when it transforms into a skiing paradise. One can visit the Kufri Fun World amusement park for some exciting rides or take a hike up the Mahasu Peak to witness an incredible panoramic view of the surrounding Himalayas.
10.Dharamshala
Dharamshala is a beautiful hill station renowned for its Tibetan culture, thanks to the residence of His Holiness the Dalai Lama in McLeod Ganj. You can explore the Tibetan monasteries, learn about their intriguing philosophies, or shop for Tibetan crafts in the local markets. Do take a stroll around the Dal Lake, enveloped in tranquillity, or visit the Bhagsunag Waterfalls, a place where nature is in its full bloom.
Conclusion
Delhi's nearby areas offer a rich diversity of experiences, perfect for a short and refreshing weekend getaway. Whether you are a nature lover, a history enthusiast, or an adventure junkie, these destinations will not disappoint. If your travels take you to Dehradun, Mussorie, or Shimla, remember to check out Sundays Forever's exquisite properties for a stay that will enhance your travel experience. Book your stay with Sundays Forever- a guarantee of comfort, luxury, and enchanting views that you'll remember for a lifetime. Plan your next weekend getaway now and create unforgettable memories!

Hey all. I wanted to make this post to share some of the things that 170 scorers do that help them achieve such a great score. These are things that I did myself and things that my students that score in the 170s do, so they may not apply to every 170 scorer, but they apply to a lot of them. If you are interested in tutoring or just have LSAT questions please reach out to me.
-Practice under realistic conditions. Take your practice tests under real conditions. Don't give yourself a few seconds extra or a long break between sections. On the real LSAT you don't get these things so you don't want to get used to them while you are practicing.
-Blind review extensively. Blind review is going through the test untimed after you have taken it. The goal of blind review is to understand why every answer is right and why every answer is wrong. Blind review is your chance to grow as a test taker. It is your chance to learn from the mistakes you made on the test. So, take it seriously.
-Treat the LSAT like it is a job. It can sometimes be tough to find the motivation to study. What I did to combat this is act like the LSAT was my job. I wouldn't show up late to my job or just skip a day. So, whatever I decided my schedule was I would stick to it. For the first month or two, I would go to a coffee shop every morning to make sure I would study and not go back to sleep or get distracted at my apartment.
-Be excited to take practice tests. Being happy to do something often makes you a lot better at it because it puts you in a positive mindset. For me, the way I got excited was to treat the LSAT like a challenge. I wanted to beat the test makers. So, find a way to get pumped for the LSAT and you will see your score increase.
I hope this information is helpful. This is not an exhaustive list by any means. If you have any questions or are interested in tutoring please reach out to me.

Myself and my partner are pretty new to the whole THS thing and are planning to attempt to use it for some nice places to stay when we spend a few months in other countries. (Notably the US since we're in the UK) We live in an area of the UK where there are a lot of older, wealthy people with large country houses so we've applied for a few and are currently on our 3rd sit.
We've learned a few things in that time and wondered if others had any lessons they've learned after they actually started doing sits.
For one, it seems you really have to pay attention to photos and can't really trust them, the house can look really clean and tidy and they can list a weekly cleaner, etc, but, you still turn up to find a filthy house that has been cleaned with a wet rag. Look at the levels of clutter, it seems like people with a lot of clutter also don't really look after their living spaces.
People with large country houses seem to have terrible guest room setups. 2 out of 3 sits have had the worst mattresses I've ever seen, practically bare springs.
Don't take on more than you can chew... We just completed a sit with 4 dogs, 2 cats, chickens, and exotics. The pets were wonderful and we actually miss them, but looking after them properly was a full-time job. Owners seem to believe their pets are easy to look after, because they do it every day, discounting the work that goes into someone new jumping in to do it, and the pet's behavior changes due to them not being there. (One of the unneutered cats just loved spraying around the house!) - The homeowner was thrilled with how well we'd done but then acted totally offended when we said we wouldn't be able to sit for her again due to the sheer amount of work it was.
Really ask questions before you start and get a feel for the homeowner and their level of respect or gratitude for you. This 3rd sit is for a single elderly dog, but the homeowner is just incredibly rude, to the point that she seems to act like she's doing us a favor by letting us live here and look after her dog... The house is a mess to the point she left half-eaten cake and half-drunk wine on the side of her literally filthy kitchen, then texted us asking us to bring the washing in. It's also one of those with those bare spring mattresses. (She's also locked the door to half the house, including the downstairs bathroom in an obvious sign of mistrust... You'll trust us with your baby, but not half your house?) If it weren't for our love of animals and need for a good review we'd have just left. Lady, we own our own home an hour's drive away with a lovely bed and no filth where we prepare food.
What other people consider usable working space may not be what you do. I have a sweet WFH job so travel with a large laptop, external screen, peripherals, etc. None of the sits has had a good enough chair... I've had to buy lumbar support pillows, seat cushions, wrist rests, etc, and strap them to dining chairs.
Take enough non-perishable food for a couple of days, you might be busy getting settled in before you get a chance to go shopping, and homeowners all have differing ideas about what they're happy for you to eat/drink or if they'll even have space in the fridge for you to store food. Also, bring your own tea/coffee maybe even sugar. I also bring my own travel mug.

Hi all,
Me and the girlfriend are taking the plunge and meeting families. A big step, especially in South Asian culture.
She's already met my mum and it went very well, but my mum has now suggested to me that she wishes she brought a gift for her prospective daughter-in-law and that I shouldn't make that mistake and to take my prospective mother-in-law a gift.
She's suggested a perfume or something because I'll be travelling via public transport and won't be able to carry around anything big like a bunch of flowers.
I personally don't think it's necessary at all.
I've texted my partner to ask her and am waiting for a response, but I can probably predict her answer to be "I've no idea"!
So I thought I'd jump on Reddit and ask what people thought would be appropriate.
Everyone involved was born and raised in Britain, so we're more in line with British values and customs, but we're all of Pakistani descent so opinions from people of similar backgrounds would also be appreciated.
Thank you!
Edit: my partner replied and, as predicted, wasn't sure at all what would be deemed appropriate. She did think flowers seemed like a nice idea when I suggested that though. My mum also thought that would be okay. Appreciate all the advice so far.