Me, because I'm stubborn that way. I do things like excuse myself to the washroom and instead go find the server or host/ess or maître d'hôtel or whomever and discreetly slip that person my credit card.
That said, I've raised my boys to always always always pay for whatever. The gentleman pays, period, full stop.
ETA: With a same-sex couple, my understanding is that the individual who proposed the date, pays for the date.
Update: Loud is still in my fucking dining room. Now he has a very distinct "Good Morning", "Loud's a good bird" plus something that sounds like "Leave it!" (a command used with both Lily and the two Anatolian Shepherd Dog fosters) and of course, the mumbled "fuckitfuckitfuckit FUCK IT!"
Fun times. Plus the fosters, being Anatolians and therefore unlike Great Pyrenees not inclined to protect small livestock, saw Loud and thought "food". Fanfuckingtastic.
So. One of them went for Loud Saturday evening...not a good choice. Lily came flying (literally, she jumped a chair rather than go around it in her haste) for the foster the second she heard Loud squawk, and my Saturday evening went from "okay-ish" to "absolute fucking chaos" in approximately 0.6 seconds. Did I mention that the other foster joined in, because why not? He did.
Picture 300-odd pounds of bared teeth and absolute fury and determination plus furniture being knocked over and did I mention the teeth? Anyway. Picture that and you've about got it.
Loud is fine. Lily is fine. One of the fosters required multiple sutures in his neck (this is the one who went for Loud, and when an Anatolian Shepherd Dog is defending whatever, they do not mess around), the other foster suffered only some abrasions from being thrown against the fireplace hearth a couple of times, by Lily.
I managed to secure both fosters and Loud within about 3 minutes, give or take a couple minutes. I was cleaning up the blood and kept coming up with more and more, thinking, I just cleaned that up. There was more! A lot more, as it turned out.
In my focus on making sure Loud, then Lily were okay, and then assessing the fosters, I failed to notice that my 5.11 ripstop tactical/practical pants had a couple of puncture points on the right side. And that my right clog was entirely filled with and spilling over with blood. Which is why as much as I cleaned up, there was more on the floor. I'd been bitten, twice, during the maelstrom. At least one of the two bites went clear through to the fibula, fracturing said fibula.
Anyway. Loud is fine, Lily is fine, the fosters will never come near a chicken again since apparently they all have their own protection detail. Me, I have a couple four dozen sutures, am in a "walking" cast until the wounds heal and the fibula can be surgically pinned.
Like I said, fun times.
No, no. Here's the thing. Bielefelder Kennhuhn, a breed developed in Gerrmany in the 1970's, isn't common--anywhere--but is not considered a heritage or rare breed because of the relatively recent development of the breed, and because there are relatively large flocks of them, from many different lines, in some places.
Barnevelder, which is what Ruth is, truly is a threatened breed. They're Dutch and much like the Svart Hona, which I also had (and sold, thank G-d; they're assholes), they're developed from a landrace predecessor. I'm writing a fucking dissertation on chickens here.
Crested Cream Legbars, a rare breed/"breed of concern", are a breed of chicken developed in the UK a couple six hundred years or so ago. Like the Dorking and the Sussex (and a hundred or more other breeds in the developed world), the number of flocks plummeted following WWII, when factory farming became a thing and harvesting eggs no longer involved actual chickens--just pick your box of twelve or eighteen or twenty four identical, white eggs, and call it good.
So I can't put Loud out with the Bielefelder. Those hens? They're not even fully grown (the reason for their lack of popularity despite being prolific egg producers and cold hardy, plus being "dual purpose", meaning they're also meaty), and won't be for about another four months, give or take. Even now though, the two "chicklets", the ones that hatched about two weeks after Ruth, are easily twice the weight of Loud.
Ruth was (like Loud) the sole survivor of an incubator failure. She's funny as fuck--among the different feeders is a hopper type, and she shoulders aside the much larger Bielefelder hens and literally climbs into the hopper. She's named after Ruth Bader Ginsburg (may blessings be upon her name), because as a chick, she was very....opinionated. Angry? Chicks don't like to be alone. You could hear her yelling from outside of the actual house. And she hatched the same day Justice Ginsburg (may blessings be upon her name) passed.
So. I've tried multiple times and in multiple ways to put Loud out with the Bielefelder hens and Ruth. Every time, he's literally been run into hiding. I had no idea that hens could be so aggressive. Ruth especially, no idea why, but the hens have legit run an actual raccoon up a tree (Lily woke me up, trying to get outside to get said raccoon). Loud has no chance--left outside alone (with Lily, because we have both raptors and four-legged predators, which is something I love about living here), he ends up hiding in ivy, bushes, the hose reels, anything that will allow him to be very, very still until a human comes and calls his name.
I've ordered a second Aleko coop and run and have six Crested Cream Legbar eggs on day six/seven of incubation. Since shipped eggs tend to have a live hatch rate of between 75% (very good) and 0%, crap if I know what I'll end up with. I did try to purchase day old straight run CCL chicks from Murray McMurray, a hatchery I trust, but so far, no luck.
Okay kids, dissertation over, go visit The Livestock Conservancy site and try not to end up with a cow!
Done, almost two weeks past administration of the Moderna product. And I'm not dead, my DNA hasn't changed, and whatever other nonsense is out there, is just that, nonsense.
Get the damn vaccine. It's a clusterfuck right now as states move to vaccinating Tier 2 patients, while people who should know better, who fall into the Tier 1A group (I was Tier1A(A), one of the first five hundred or so vaccinated in WA) are still being stupid and refusing the vaccine. Let's go with "there's not a lot of biochemistry and molecular biology taught in nursing and medical school" and leave it alone.
The Moderna product, the product that my employer abruptly switched to, does such a good job of imitating the *actual* virus that when you receive the second vaccine, you will have some kind of disabling reaction, not immediately but a few hours to several days later. Everything from numbness in weird places to your immune system going full elephant-on-meth, suppressing the manufacture of anything but "killer" T-cells, white blood cells remodeled to have one purpose before dying--kill the virus.
It's not fun, subjectively, but objectively, it's a super good sign that the Moderna product will prove out to be the best vaccine.
The Pfizer is more like a traditional vaccine, although none of the current vaccines in development or with Emergency Use Authorization are anything like traditional vaccines. It does not evoke the same immune response as the Moderna product. More like a tetanus shot than anything else. Antibodies are present in titers, as they are with the Moderna product, but the Pfizer product does not seem to evoke the same or any production of "killer" T-cells.
The Oxford-AstraZeneca product, no information.
The Janssen product, with a crazy low efficacy rate, just from reading the journals, nope.
Um, no. One, I live (primarily) in Seattle, a place where you can go weeks without seeing the sun. Two, I'm Canadian born and of straight Scottish-English descent.
I'm milk white--damn near translucent, really--and any unprotected exposure for any length of time to the sun, even on an overcast day, will result in a burn. Hell, I once walked to a Starbuck's on a sunny day, back when I was working elsewhere, outside maybe for 20 minutes, if that, and the nape of my neck and décolletage burned.
Are we talking bikes or motorcycles or horses? No matter, the answer is no. Not in the past year or more.
Mac, my poor neglected 17.2hh Percheron x Thoroughbred gelding who is boarded about ten miles from my house, hasn't had me in his saddle in over a year. He's been chartered out since February 2020, though, b/c he's an absolutely bombproof trail horse and b/c I knew, back then, that it would be a bit before I could get out to ride. Ha. I thought then that it would be a few months. Stupid me.
My bicycle, a...hybrid road something? Is a Novara, made by REI, pink and white with flowers, custom ordered so that it could be ridden by a stupidly tall woman. I'm looking at the Rad electric assisted bikes now, but only because it's a local company, they're offering huge discounts through my employer, and they're kind of cool. Please note that by "looking" I mean "reading emails from the mailing list". I'll probably end up with one of their new RadWagon bikes, because I don't drive unless I absolutely have to do so.
Motorcycles/mopeds/anything similar? Oh, Hell no. No. There's a good reason that in the medical community, motorcycle riders are referred to in various ways, but all involve those riders being imminent organ donors.
7500. On Amazon Prime Video. Which I didn't finish because I can't take hearing people scream in movies--I think because in real life, I could help them, but it's a movie, and I can't. Seriously, I can't even watch Cinderella or Sleeping Beauty.
So. Loud has, as of last evening, decided that he should also yell/crow at dusk until someone comes and either scratches his pinfeathers to his satisfaction or cuddles him.
And I did a bunch of reading last night--no crashes--on the topic of chicken intelligence. Turns out no research was done, for a long time, and then someone ran out of mice or macaques or whatever and started to study chickens. And the bastards can learn, can recognize individuals, and--as with Loud's crow sounding more and more like "Good Morning!" every single day--apparently have a limited capacity for speech.
His new trick this morning is unzipping the top of his enclosure/brooder (it's like a little pop up tent, called the -Brooder and sold by Incubator Warehouse), letting himself out, and wandering my fucking dining room. Also, ty for the laugh, Jimbo2.
Tiramisu (yes, not a pie) is by far my favourite, but since I really truly suck at baking, any pie that someone else made is my favourite pie.
All of it. Probably the most difficult was filling out death certificates--I'm an L&D nurse, women don't just up and die on us. Early in the year, as I was filling out one of the first ones, a Reuters pool photographer caught a pic of me. My hair was tied up and I was sort of at an angle to the photographer, but what is stunning is what he captured--there were teardrops on the paper. And I don't cry.
I'm up to 203 certificates now, just me. I don't know why I keep track of the number, I just do. We are all human, but at the end of the day, we're just numbers and letters on paper, lives untold.
King County, WA, the misconception is that we're all Seattle nice. Which we are (especially me, being Canadian), right up until we're not. Also, that we all wear Gore-Tex 24/7.
British Columbia, Canada, the most common thing I run into is that Canadians don't have anything like the military personnel the U.S. maintains. Um, no. The longest recorded sniper kill, over two miles away, was made by a Canadian. Besides JTF-2, we also have BAFTUS and a raft of other training facilities as well as military equipment.
The other thing is "how do I get Canadian citizenship"? The answer is, you don't. Especially not now. I married an American and have dual citizenship, but my husband was never granted Canadian citizenship. You have to be married to a Canadian, then stay in Canada without leaving for any reason, then two non-relatives with specific professions (physician, veterinarian, engineer, judge) have swear an affidavit that you're an upstanding person. And marrying a landed born Canadian is still the fastest way to citizenship.
West Coast, from the Aleutians to Northwest Oregon. I went to California once, when I was nine, and all I remember is that it was hot, the water tasted bad, and the mirror in our hotel was broken. It was also, to me, stupidly hot. The East Coast is fine, I just don't think I could live there.
I do like the American Deep South, not in the cultural sense but in the weather sense and historic sense. My grandmother married an American during the war and from about age 4 to age 16, every year, I'd fly down to St. Louis. She'd drive me down to Cape Girardeau, and two or three days later, after packing up the car and her CB radio, she'd say, "We're going to (wherever) to see the Americans." Despite living in the United States for most of her life (she served in as a flight nurse in WWII, in the RCAF), she still didn't see the irony in her "going to see the Americans". Still. Four days in the Smithsonian, visiting Hannibal, MO, and staying for two weeks in New Orleans. Amazing stuff.
Thanks, Liz. I just spat perfectly good coffee onto my keyboard laughing. Still dying at "...you want my gun? Come kiss me for it."
Well-kempt facial hair on a man who keeps the rest of himself in order as well is can be very attractive--as can a man who prefers to keep his face shaved. It's really more about the man himself, not about his appearance, for me.
Thanks, Kee. That was an excellent snippet to demonstrate how to write in the first person in a more engaging manner.
Me, I just try to wholesale avoid the first person.
Yup. I’ve been there, and of course Powell’s in Portland, OR. There’s a store in Seattle called The Elliott Bay Bookstore; it was in a building built almost immediately after the great Seattle Fire. The general ambience plus their mix of new and used books...I spent hundreds of hours there as a child, because my father worked nearby.
The store moved after the Nisqually Earthquake caused serious structural issues. I’ve not been to the new version.
I've always ploughed through a book or seven per week, for as long as I can remember. First it was because I was learning proper English, and then...yah. I read a lot. I had a Kindle Paperwhite, but what is a book without foxing? So I gave it to my son. The last million years (COVID time....) I've slacked off on reading non-peer reviewed journal articles and nonfiction books related to pandemics, but that will change the second I can possibly manage to change it,
FWIW, I think my love of books--heavy, bound books--started with my maternal grandmother. She was Canadian, but lived in the South (she'd married an American during the war) and would haul me all over "to see the Americans". Lots of times, we'd go to an auction, and she'd give me exactly USD$50. I figured out fast that the best use of that money was to buy random boxes (sometimes pallets) of books.
The first time I found a first edition, first printing signed book in one of those boxes, I think I was eight or nine. It prompted an addiction. Now I collect first edition, first printing, signed books written by modern writers (Krakauer, Dorris, Alexie, Sebold) as well as first edition, first printing signed pre-1910 books, mostly science or law related. It's probably half me knowing what to look for, and half luck, but when I've sold a book or books, it's been because they don't quite match my standards for keeping them. Meaning that I've put books up for auction--or rather, had them put up for auction--that ended up benefiting me financially.
There's nothing like the smell of paper, of holding a book that someone like Charles Darwin or Thomas Jefferson held. It's a direct connection to history. Even things like marking pages by folding them down, or in one case, using a sterling silver monogrammed book weight, which promptly tarnished and stained the pages, is something special.
Girl, we need to have a talk...I didn't make it past even ten pages, someplace where the female protagonist is crossing a street. In stilettoes. In Seattle. I knew the exact intersection the author was describing, and it's riddled with cracks--from neglect, from the Nisqually quake, from wear. So yah. 
