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[Carter-Orange]

I bet!!  I would not survive the summer without air conditioning!

Funny, I just popped on here because I thought of you, Steph.  I was browsing Reddit before bed and saw a post where a guy posted a picture of what appeared to be insect bites on his leg that hadn't healed for two months.  He was wondering what they were, and the top suggestion was bot flies.  Immediately, my mind went to your story and the bot flies in Jordan Knight's brain and how much fun I had maiming that poor doll LOL.  Good times!

Here is the thread if you're interested: https://www.reddit.com/r/Wellthatsucks/comments/1efiqkb/got_bit_by_something_2_months_ago_and_it_hasnt/  The picture he posted isn't gross.

Oh wow, a real life bot fly Jordan lol.  The post has been removed which is a shame.

I did love writing that story lol

[Carter-Orange]

Mare, cruise parking isn't cheap is it, I think it was about £200 for our 2 week cruise.  But it meant we could park right outside the ship, unload our stuff and then the cruise parking staff took the car away and parked it.  It was so easy.

Had a bit of drama here yesterday, Tim's car caught fire while he was driving.  Luckily he got out before the fire really got going, but he said it was terrifying seeing the flames and the loud bang.  It didn't explode like in movies or TV though.  The fireman came quite quickly but his car is completely ruined.  So now we'll have to see how long the insurance takes to sort it out

[mare]

Oh my Gosh!! Thank goodness Tim is okay! Did you figure out why it caught fire? Hopefully insurance will take care of most of that. Yikes! That is so annoying! So, does that mean you guys have to share a car until things get sorted out? Or will insurance at least let you get a rental until you get a chance to car shop?

For us, it'll be about $30 a day which comes out to $300. It's not valet so my sister will have to drop me and our things off and then go to park. I have port assist which means someone will meet us with a wheelchair and then they'll bring us through the entire process and straight up to my room where hopefully my scooter will be there. We are both confused about the whole not using a cell while on the cruise thing. I know to go on airplane mode but is that only for days when we are at sea. When we are docked at the port can we use our cellphones? Even if we stay on the ship. Do you have any idea how that works? It's going to be so hard to be disconnected for the entire time but if we can get online on port days, it won't be so bad. Mainly to check on the animals and make sure the US is still standing. LOL

[Carter-Orange]

Yes you'll have to put your phone on airplane mode while you're at sea or you'll connect to the maritime satellite service which will be extortionate.  You can buy the internet package to use your phone, but we didn't do that, I think you can buy just a day if you needed to.  You'll be able to connect when in a port, even if you stay on the ship as your phone will pick up the signal from the port.  We did that at every stop and it saved money.  Do you have many sea days?  We were on a two week cruise so had a few sea days, so it was nice to disconnect from the world but also nice when we arrived in port and could check what was happening back home.

We have no idea why the car caught fire, I'm sure the investigators will find out.  He doesn't get a rental car as the car is a total write off so they don't give you one, which I find crazy!  Hopefully it won't take too long to pay out, but I know what insurance companies can be like.  So we will be sharing the car, but it won't be too bad.

[mare]

Thanks for the info! We're going on a 10 day cruise but we'll only be at sea for 2 days. Every other day is a port day. We are actually staying at St. John's for days. So, that's great then. It would seem like a huge waste of time to get the wifi package.

That stinks about the rental car. When my car was a total loss, they let me rent a car for a week before they pulled the plug. Hopefully you won't have to wait too long for that check!

[Carter-Orange]

Two sea days isn't bad at all, don't bother with the wifi package then.  Not long now until you go

[mare]

25 days, but who's counting? LOL

[RokofAges75]

Sorry I've been MIA for the last few days!  When the back to school bug finally hits, it hits me hard!  I haven't actually made it into my classroom yet (hopefully tomorrow), but I've been busy working on school stuff at home.

My district is doing a redistricting study this year to hopefully even out enrollment across the different schools, and we're hoping they will decide to move 6th grade up to the junior high and move 3rd grade to the intermediate school, where I teach.  If that happened, I would be much more willing to change grades at some point in the future.  I loved 3rd grade when I student taught!  Our 6th graders can be obnoxious, but I think it's because they're the oldest kids in the building, whereas if they were at junior high with 7th and 8th graders, they would seem sweeter by comparison.

How was the reaction to your flatline chapter?  I hope you got some good comments on that cliffhanger!  How close are you to finishing the story now?

I've been writing just enough to keep my streak alive, but between school stuff and watching gymnastics live in the morning, I've fallen off my morning writing routine.  Worse yet, I still haven't finished that damn Frick & Frack story I posted part of for April Fool's Day, and now it looks like I probably won't finish it before school starts.  Fail!  I need the guys to do something together and give me some inspiration LOL.  I've been more focused on Kevin and my OCs in my other story.

Ooh, that's exciting that you were able to print your cruise stuff!  Getting closer!  When are you leaving again?

[mare]

I figured that's what you were doing. I thought it was interesting the way your schools are set up. I've never seen a k-3, 4-6, 7-8, 9-12 setup before. All the schools where I've taught or went to (NY, NJ, MA) were either k-6, 7-8, 9-12 or k-6, 7-9, 10-12. And of course, standard Catholic schools are k-8, 9-12. You guys having four divisions tells me that you probably have a huge district. My hometown in NJ was pretty small. We only had 6 elementary schools and two middle schools, and we all ended up in one high school. I always thought it was dumb to have 9th grade as part of the middle school because some of us who were in the more AP classes, ended up losing out on going up a grade because of the location and for me, I was still in the Marching Band in 9th grade, so I still had to trek to the HS for afterschool practices and games etc... The year I left, they reconfigured and moved 9 up to the HS. That would be awesome for you, if 3rd did move up. Sometimes a change is refreshing. I can see why the 6th graders were obnoxious. I think the 'oldest' of any school acts like they are the best!

I'm not sure how the flatline chapter went. For some reason, AO3 was being sketchy for me all day yesterday. Probably because we had some really bad storms, and a tornado roll through! I was able to post my chapter but not able to access it at all the rest of the day. I'm not sure if I have any comments or not. They really suck at sending emails. I usually get the email after I've already been to the site and have replied back to my reviews. I'm going to attempt to get in there after I am done here. I have figured out that I'll be done by chapter 25. I think that one is just going to be a short epilogue and then a year time jump with the beginning of the brand new one. That's what I'm currently toying with in my brain. Whether I want to go through the entire healing process or skip ahead a bit to after he gets out of the hospital and already has his skull put back together. LOL poor guy.

Well, at least you kept your writing streak alive and now gymnastics is over so maybe you'll be able to get some writing on the frick and frack story done. If not, I say just wait until next April Fool's and just make that a thing. One new chapter a year. LOL It seems like AJ and Nick are active, but the others are just chilling? I have seen Howie doing cooking things randomly on twitter. Maybe the food network will give him his own show. It seems like their thing.

We leave for NJ on the 28th. We decided to leave a day early and get a hotel since it'll be about a 7-hour drive. Then we get on the boat at noon on the 29th and come back on the 7th. YAY!

[RokofAges75]

My district has 11 schools, which makes us one of the bigger districts in the mostly suburban/rural area I live in, but not big compared to the urban districts.  It is probably just slightly bigger than your hometown, as we also have 6 elementary schools, 2 intermediate schools, and 2 junior highs.  Our district does not include the high school; they're actually a separate district because several other K-8 districts feed into them.  The high school is huge!  It is a weird way to divide the grades, definitely different from the district I grew up in.  I went to a K-4 elementary school, followed by a 5-8 middle school.  Those two schools have since combined into one K-8 school after one of the schools added on a new wing.  My school is the newest building in our district, and we are already busting at the seams, so it'll be interesting to see what changes redistricting brings.

I heard AO3 was having issues yesterday, so I don't think it was just you.  I tried going there to reply to a comment, and it wouldn't load.  Then I saw they had tweeted about the site being slow and something about emails not working properly.  Then my power was randomly out for 3 hours last night, so I never did get back on to see if it was working again.  I hope you didn't have any damage from the tornado!  And hopefully you do get some good comments on your chapter.  I understand the debate over whether to show the entire healing process or skip ahead.  Sometimes I like to go into agonizing detail, and sometimes I feel like that just drags it out too far.  I guess it depends on how well it fits with the rest of the story and whether it's important to show the healing process or not.

I actually ended up having a decent writing day yesterday because my power went out, and I had nothing else to do except write on my Chromebook.  LOL That's a good idea, just update the Frick & Frack story every April Fool's Day.  I started it as a one-shot, but it's getting long enough that I will probably end up breaking it up into 3 or 4 chapters by the time it's finished, so that would get me through the next few April Fool's Days LOL.  That is always a minor source of stress for me, trying to come up with a good prank.  Every year, I'm like, "Maybe this is the year that I let that go," but I've always managed to come through with something, even if it's lame and last-minute.  What's really pathetic is that "Frick & Frack's Fuck Fiesta" already has more hits on AO3 than half of my novels. 🤦‍♀️

I could see Howie with a cooking show on Food Network LOL.  That would be awesome!  Do they have celebrity cooking competition shows?  He would be a great contestant on one of those.  Still hoping to see one of the other guys on DWTS or The Masked Singer at some point!  I don't watch either of those shows anymore, but I would if they had a BSB on it.

Yay, you're less than a month away!  Arriving the night before sounds like a good idea, just in case of traffic or anything else.  Have you started making a packing list yet?

[Carter-Orange]

I could see Howie on a cooking show like Great British Bake Off or something like that lol.

Wow you had a tornado there? That must be scary.  I hope there's no damage.  We don't get anything like that here, just lots of rain.

[mare]

I did finally get on to AO3 yesterday and there were two reviews. One of them was really long and detailed. I love those! I think she figured out that I'm not going to kill Roman. The other girl just said the usual I can't wait until Roman and Gerri reunite. LOL I think I'll probably get one or two more comments. I usually have one steady reviewer who usually doesn't read until the end of the week. It's so weird, because some weeks I'll get about 2 or 3 comments. Other weeks like last week, I'll get about 6 or so. I've stopped trying to figure it out. I'm just grateful for people who take the time to review my stuff.

The tornado hit downtown Buffalo, so it was a pretty safe distance away from me. It's rare to get a tornado here. It was an EF1 and mostly just took some roofs off of houses and downed power lines and trees but thankfully no deaths or causalities. Climate change, weather is getting wacky everywhere. I am surprised we didn't lose power.

I'm glad you got writing done because or your power outage. I do think you should go ahead and do that with your one shot. The fact that it's not a one shot alone is a great April Fool's joke. I can't believe you've managed to maintain that gag for as long as you have but, I also can't believe you also have kept your site alive for as long as you have. GOAT!

Howie on the Great British Baking Show. I would love to see that! I stopped watching The Masked Singer a while ago and only watched SYTYCD because of Nick that one season.

I have not done the packing thing yet, but I do think I have bought everything I'm going to need including every possible motion sickness medicine available. Just in case. LOL

[mare]

I could see Howie on a cooking show like Great British Bake Off or something like that lol.

Wow you had a tornado there? That must be scary.  I hope there's no damage.  We don't get anything like that here, just lots of rain.

We aren't supposed to get anything like that here either. We are only known for heavy snow but within the past year we've had an earthquake and now a tornado!

[RokofAges75]

Yay for reviews, especially the long and detailed kind!  You can never predict what readers will choose to comment on.  Sometimes things that I expect to get a big reaction don't, yet small things will.  But like you said, I'm grateful to get any reviews, so I'll take whatever I can get!  Shoutout to Steph for leaving detailed, coherent comments!

LOL Thanks for the GOAT comment!  I'm really just unusually loyal.  Once I fall in love with something, I tend to love it forever.  I do take pride in my site's longevity, so I'll keep it going for as long as I'm still using it.

I'm glad you weren't affected by the tornado!  We actually had an EF1 tornado here while I was in Tennessee.  I guess there were a lot of tree limbs and power lines down, but thankfully I didn't have any damage at my house, and everything else was mostly cleaned up by the time I got home.  Tornadoes aren't that unusual in Illinois, but it's scary to hear about them happening in places that don't usually get them.  We've had a couple of dust storms in the past year or so, which is not something I ever remember happening here before.  It happened in the spring when we had a long stretch without rain while farmers were planting their crops, so the fields were full of loose dirt that blew up into big dust clouds.  It affected visibility so badly that they had to shut down interstates because nobody could see to drive.  I would expect that in the desert, but not here.  Climate change indeed!

[mare]

I miss Steph's reviews. The BSB peeps all gave really great reviews.

It usually takes me awhile before a hyper fixation dims for me, but when it does, it completely goes away at first and then it'll slowly come back but nothing to where it was before. That's where I am with BSB now. I'm clicking on more stuff related to them now, showing more intertest but not anywhere near where I was before. I will always love them though. That's another thing that remains true of everything I've ever obsessed over. They still mean the world to me. I think the only fandom that has never swayed for me is The Mets and it's been my longest one yet. Although I'd probably put that in a different category.

I'm glad we've never had a dust storm here. Those seem awful. So weird how all these weather events are slowly hitting places they never have before. I didn't really want to live through the actual apocalypse, but here we are.