Suitedjustice's Ongoing Mid-life Crisis

Were is the subjunctive, describing an impossible or unlikely situation.

I have a Mandela Effect memory of newscasters naming snowstorms back in the 70's, when I don't believe they did. I figure I popped over from a nearby universe at some point. For that, I blame the acid.

How's the power grid holding up? I haven't heard the greatest things about it, but I'll guess that West Texas doesn't have a huge number of trees to knock down the lines, and sleet is preferable to freezing rain any day.

Fair enough. If I were King of England, we would refer to ourself in the majestic plural.

Long day, yesterday: 6.5 hours of poker for -$170, and 4.5 hours of slots for -$60, so not a great day.

I did, however, get an offer for my two original Pokémon Starter packs for $450 each. That's a little low for the average, but I have seen them for cheaper online, and $900 would be a nice chunk of the rent for next month.

The offer seems legit. It's from a local collector who is reported to have discretionary cash, so hopefully it goes through.

Back in '99, when my bookstore got these new "Pokey-man" cards, the kids seemed to be crazy about them. We had to keep an eye on them on the counter next to the cash register because they were being swiped on the regular.

The big starter packs, however, didn't sell well, and were too big to steal easily, so after Christmas they made the 50% off clearance list, and still didn't sell. The next step was to mark them down to 75%, and after that down to a dollar. That's when I bought two packs at a dollar each. I figured that if this new Millennial generation was as nostalgic as mine, I'd be able to sell those for a pretty penny twenty years or so down the line.

Jeez that is an INSANE increase in value!!!

I only sold sports cards once which, alas, I got severely ripped off : it was a Brett Hull limited edition signed hockey card that I had just opened up directly in the sports card store and snapped-accepted when the clerk offered me a mere 20CAD$ for it, feeling kind of content enough in the moment that I managed to extract value from an abstract hockey card, but somehow feeling had... which would be confirmed a mere 7-8 years later when the card was already worth over one k - let alone today!!! At least the gambling world has exposed to much worse bad beats since 😉

Yep. Not a lot of tall trees to cause problems. ERCOT has assured everyone in Texas that the infrastructure has been upgraded and expects it to hold through this cold snap. So far so good.

Back in 2021 when the **** hit the fan with the grid. Our town never lost power. We are near three of the largest wind farms in the state. The huge transmission lines are only a few miles outside of town. Don't know if that had anything to do with it or not.

Keep grinding and good things will happen on the gambling front.

"Ferns, Sammy!" (hoping that at least one of SJ's readers gets this reference!)

We shall permit this.

Yeah, never trust a clerk. I was one for many years. When I started at the convenience store; age 18, I was a coin collector. Back in the 80's and 90's, you could still find pre-1965 silver quarters and dimes and wartime silver nickels and steel pennies in circulation at a rate of around 1 coin per thousand. I sifted through a lot of coins at the register, and over the years I picked up a heaping double handful of silver and steel.

One college girl asked me if she could buy a pack of cigarettes with two Morgan silver dollars from the 1890's. Smokes at the time were $2.10 a pack. I told the girl yes and that I would throw in the dime.

Another day, 5 kids came in: 3 brothers and 2 sisters, all under 12 years old, and each had so many silver coins in their pockets that I could hear them jingling and identify them as silver from 6 feet (2m) away. Silver coins make a different sound than standard coins; it's tinnier.

All of them bought a bunch of candy; and most of the coins they spread on the counter were silver. This was a neighborhood store, and I knew their mother. The local scuttlebutt had it that all 5 kids had had different fathers. Still, the mom was a nice person, and I wasn't one to judge what consenting adults did.

"Did you take these coins from your mom?" I asked them. "You have to tell me the truth. I'll ask her next time I see her."

No, they had taken the coins from the current stepfather. He was an oaf and a creep, and there were rumors going around that he was abusing the eldest daughter; not enough evidence to call the authorities, just speculation from the town gossips.

I took their silver for the candy.

Stay warm, CowboyCold!

I get the reference, but I'm not sure how it fits. I can tell you that I'm grateful for a gay bar in Las Vegas, where the doorman took my $20 bribe to let in two of my co-workers, aged 18 and 19, and very obvious about it, for our bookseller's night out. Our manager was gay, so we'd let him pick the venue. It was a fun place. I sang "Don't Fear the Reaper" at karaoke and got a nice round of applause.

I get the reference, but I'm not sure how it fits. I can tell you that I'm grateful for a gay bar in Las Vegas, where the doorman took my $20 bribe to let in two of my co-workers, aged 18 and 19, and very obvious about it, for our bookseller's night out. Our manager was gay, so we'd let him pick the venue. It was a fun place. I sang "Don't Fear the Reaper" at karaoke and got a nice round of applause.[/QUOTE]

Sorry...I was riffing off Cowboy Cold's mention of Winter Storm Fern. Probably doesn't fit. My apologies...nothing to see here, move along!

No no. My bad! I should have seen the fern. I have a fern reference. Could be obscure...

Pats are going to the Super Bowl. For the last two decades, as a fan of the Patriots, Red Sox, Celtics, and UCONN Huskies, I've been tremendously blessed.

I would trade all of that rooting luck for an equivalent personal luck in a heartbeat.

The storm is mostly over, having dropped around 24" (61 cm) in my neighborhood. As much core exercise and light cardio as I've done over the past months, I still found myself huffing and puffing and coughing while digging out the Jeep. It didn't help that I only had a broom.

Last time I owned a shovel and we had snow like this, I scratched up the roof of my Mercury Cougar, being a callous dumbass. Since then, I haven't trusted myself with that particular implement.

The Cougar had a light fiberglass body, was rear wheel drive, and had a heavy V-8 engine in the front. In the snow and ice it handled like a hooked smallmouth bass. Every winter I would put 100 lbs (45 kg) of wood pellets in the trunk, and that would mitigate the swerving somewhat, but I still had to go very easy on the delta V.

It's a Jeep! Can't you just get in, start it up, and bust out of the snow like Indiana Jones?

I was parked nose out, facing down a slight hill, with the snow up to the bottom of the doors, drifts above the wheel wells at points on both sides, and a 4' (122 cm) drift from the plow right in back of me. I would have needed a little bit of a run up to burst through, but didn't have it.

I like the frequent updates in this thread. It's also nice to hear Krusty's voice again! 😀

it's a shame the snowstorms didn't coincide with helen's arrival

thank you for mentioning the young ones. haven't thought of them much since sometime last century but they were the backdrop video noise for many a stoner friend get together. also makes me think if kids in the hall and sctv.

re: your media list, has the first season of True Detective been mentioned?

I am going to guess that it does not appear in the list because he has already watched it...

Thanks Sheep! It was the video games, and my embarrassment at the amount of time I was spending on them, that kept me from posting.

She wished me a happy New Year (Western), but has otherwise left me largely alone.

I did see the first season of True Detective, and I loved it. I've always appreciated Woody Harrelson as an actor, and I think he's been underrated throughout his career.

It might have something to do with his playing a kind of low-effort role on Cheers for so many years, but that was the showrunners' fault, not his.

Today I'm $900 richer thanks to a meth-fueled speculative Pokémon buy 26 years ago. Yesterday I did slot work for 2.5 hours and lost $1.

Gotta put that in the novel, just with $90k, and you won them it in a Poker game.

Yeah I ought to include Pokémon in some capacity, in honor of the Millennials, who might be the last generation of novel readers.

My kid, whom you took me for a celebratory beer and sesh of 1/3 at the Wynn to celebrate, will be 7 in June! He’s starting to become a better reader and he’s an avid storyteller. I cannot wait for him to get to Young Adult novel age b/c we’re gonna drop some bank at Barnes and Nobel

I remember our hang with fondness. I'll text you if and when I make it out there again.

Good job, dad! Hopefully I'm wrong and he'll have plenty of book friends his age.