UPDATE What's up, it's the proposal guy. You said you wanted to know how this turned out, so I figured I'd tell you. First some context though, because I'm mean and I wanna keep you in suspense longer.
1- I don't wanna doxx us so I'm not telling you where we live, but suffice to say, neither of us are American, and gay marriage has been legal here for less than five years. For both of us, this is the first relationship we've had where marriage was even an OPTION, and I think that's where we've been getting some of that whole 'this has to be a REAL proposal with EVERYTHING' idea.
2- I gotta figure out how to explain this properly. So, I'm pretty used to being the GUY guy in relationships? I was always the one who did the nice gestures, not the one they got done for. Before I met my dream guy, I didn't really notice or care that it was such a thing, I just assumed that's how shit worked. Also, I promised I wouldn't talk a lot about his stuff here, but his last boyfriend before me SUCKED. Anyway point here is, it turns out we both REALLY like feeling swept off our feet sometimes, and a big part of finding each other has been getting to feel special for once? That's a stupid sappy way of putting it the point here is I think all that's what morphed into "I need to be the one getting proposed to, also it has to be completely perfect", and then our Petty & Extra genes got involved.
So I'm sitting in bed thinking about all that up there, and watching all the comments coming in basically being like "Dude, you are BLOWING this" on repeat, and telling me to compromise, and I look up and see him flossing in the bathroom and making all these doofy faces at the mirror, and it's like a switch just flips in my brain, and I'm like "Oh, I'd rather he gets to have his perfect proposal than we both have an okay one". I'm gonna do it.
Morning rolls around, and while I'm 'out for my jog like normal' I hit up a pawn shop for a temp ring (the ring pop thing is cute but NOT HIM). I found one I was at least confident wouldn't get ruined the first time he got his hands greasy (he fixes old machines as a hobby it's hot as hell), got back home, and hid the box in the toe of my nasty ass workout shoes in the bedroom closet, since I figured he'd check there last.
He was still asleep, because he stays up late no matter what and then is SHOCKED he's tired the next day, so I called and booked a table at our usual anniversary spot. (Side note about the 'he picks bad restaurants' thing. This isn't an 'I like Greek, you like Chinese' situation, dude's just BAD at finding places. He either assumes pricey is tasty and I get to eat some overrated gourmet bullshit, or he'll try and find something hip and underground and risk giving us food poisoning again, and he REFUSES to give up and pick somewhere we've been before when it's his turn to plan date night. I'm obsessed with him <3.) Date was set, I'd propose on the 21st.
Some of you might have noticed this, but fun fact! It's currently the 16th.
Last night I'm doing dishes and he's been sent to our room for mug collection duty, and he's taking FOREVER, so I go check just in case he found the ring, because the man's a gift tracking BLOODHOUND. Turns out he hasn't, he's found my Angry Box.
I assume other people have an Angry Box? Basically, we had this huge messy fight right when we first moved in together, and I never wanna let it get that bad again, so I have this shoebox where I keep a bunch of our stuff I can look at if we're fighting and hopefully cool off. There's one of those photo booth roll things, letters we wrote when he moved back with his parents for COVID, the wine cork from our first date, shit like that. Anyway, he's just sitting on the floor staring at it, and I explain about the Angry Box, and then he! Proposes!!! Kind of.
He definitely didn't have anything prepared, because by 'propose' I mean 'ugly cried & rambled at me for several minutes before I figured out it WAS a proposal', but once I got on the same page it was amazing. I said yes, and he had to admit he didn't have a ring for me because he was CONVINCED he'd win and I'd do it, so I grabbed mine because, yeah, he was right. He was like "this is the ugliest ring I've ever seen" and I was like yeah well the plan is to replace it later and he went "No. You can pry this off my cold dead fingers. After I'm buried with it." So I guess it's not a temporary ring anymore.
I'm just gonna go ahead and skip to this morning. I pointed out we still have the reservation, and he said I should propose there anyway because "We can get a free dessert. They have those creme brulee shot glasses you like. And for love, or something" and I said ok deal, but that means you gotta get me a ring to keep it fair, and his eyes LIT UP. When I swung by his work for lunch he was still on the phone with a jeweler and he had a whole page of notes on three other ones. Pray for me.
OH PS: I was RIGHT that he'd been the one behind the cat biting me, but it wasn't about the proposal stuff, it's because I paid my baby sister three dollars to shout 'fuck you' every single time he enters a room she's in for (if you ask me, he should be madder at my sister for charging so little), and he did it by giving her a bunch of treats for biting his hands too, so now neither of us can pet our baby girl without oven mitts on. HOLY SHIT I love this man.
Oh my goddddddd I love everything about this <333 I awwww’d out loud on a voice call, like, six times while reading. You two are friggin perfect for each other and so obviously smitten with each other and I wish y'all all the happiness in the world
PS Are y'all planning to have a big wedding? If so oh boy I can’t WAIT to get that one in the inbox
In a statement to The Post, a spokesperson for NBCUniversal claimed the tree work is simply an annual ritual at this time of year. “We understand that the safety tree trimming of the Ficus trees we did on Barham Blvd. has created unintended challenges for demonstrators, that was not our intention. In partnership with licensed arborists, we have pruned these trees annually at this time of year to ensure that the canopies are light ahead of the high wind season,” they wrote. “We support the WGA and SAG’s right to demonstrate and are working to provide some shade coverage. We continue to openly communicate with the labor leaders on-site to work together during this time.”
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If those trees were pollarded annually, the cut areas would NOT look like that. There would be big knobs of old growth at the trimming sites. Not seeing any of that here. The way those trees were topped (not pollarded, which is a very careful process that has to begin when the tree is immature) is excellent way to kill them due to loss of hydration, open sites to infection and parasitism during the best time of year for both, lack of nutrition due to so little greenery and new budding growth being left, sunburn and other exposure damage, and a myriad of other possibilities. Plus, if they were topped annually, they would not have the lovely drooping branches seen in the other picture but would have tons of vertical suckers instead.
This is what an annually pollarded mature tree should look like:
If this was done by the city, the public works arborists should be protesting in front of city hall and screaming their heads off right now. I’m not hearing about that, so… Tree law!
The Studios: *speak*
Botanists and other Tree Experts:
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Update and confirmation of Imminent Tree Law:
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He mentions later in the thread that not only do they not trim the trees annually, they’re trimmed at best once every 18 years. Supposed to be every five, and only in dormancy, which even my layman’s ass knows about tree trimming.
And yes, Universal can probably eat the fine. But it’s gonna be a whopper even if the trees survive (which is as mentioned kinda unlikely), California is a triple damage state for tree law, and it may increase dramatically if there were nesting birds in the trees.
All this to be a Captain Planet filler villain to some writers. And yes, it’s currently just the writers officially picketing there; SAG-AFTRA recommended against it for petty bullshit like this and the suddenly necessary sidewalk construction.
Age-old advice which is more relevant nowadays rather than less. This is the second iteration of it though. The original version is: “Never write anything in a letter you wouldn’t want to see in print.” Advice handed down by my mother from her forbears.
From the IT department. We archive EVERYTHING. And Outlook autosaves every couple seconds.
When my 10th grade honors English class asked our teacher what we were and weren’t allowed to write about in his class his response was he didn’t care what we wrote about- but don’t put to paper anything we didn’t want our parents or a cop to read. And it was such an honest answer to a room full of 14 year olds that I’ve never forgotten it.
What I love most about this is that this person was SO INCENSED at the recipient that they couldn’t even wait the days/weeks it would take for the mail to go through. No, they had to say “FUCK YOU” as soon as fucking possible and, AND, let the recipient that they were not done with the fuck you, nay, this was merely the first volley in what would undoubtably be a dressing down of Biblical proportions.
Good morning to the trans man loudly slamming his girlfriend in the bunk above convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell, and ONLY the trans man loudly slamming his girlfriend in the bunk above convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell
Batman: I need to make this billionaire sex trafficker miserable, AND I need to give my girlfriend an orgasm, but I don’t have much time!
I bet octopuses think bones are horrific. I bet all their cosmic horror stories involve rigid-limbs and hinged joints.
To an octopus, a human is like a thinking being with blood-stained coral growing inside it.
I need to sit down and breathe into a bag for a while.
Its parts were obscenely limited in their movement. Each hinge could open or close only a small amount before reaching its limit, yet by working in concert they demonstrated unexpected dexterity, moving and manipulating the objects before it with cunning equal to my own. It was more torso than limb, as though a seal had been stretched and warped, given long grasping tentacles filled with bones like bars of coral. It’s head was most horrid of all, flat and ovoid, jutting out too small from the trunk as though it belonged to a beast half its size.
The thing rose upon its lowermost appendages, two long trunks that ended in flat, protruding flippers that branched into stubby, grasping mockeries of a sucker. It’s triple-hinged uppermost limbs were similar, but the ends branched into five smaller tentacles, each with three hinges of their own.
I froze, as the thing’s gaze fell upon me and it opened its hideous fish-jaw, filled with thick, many-shaped teeth like white shards of stone, and spoke in a shrill, discordant babble. I felt its horrid dry grip on my flesh, as those hinged appendages closed on me like the legs of a crab.
I felt the heat of its body, tasted its noxious, oily flesh through my touch, and prepared for the end, and all went black as a swoon overtook me.
I awoke, some time later, the cold and comforting water, banished back to the comfort of the sea and the dark. I should be grateful I am alive. I should cast aside the experience like a half-remembered dream.
I shall never again go swimming in search of lights above. The last thing I recall before the darkness took me was my right eye popping free of the thing’s grasp enough to see into the distance for one brief moment.
I saw thousands of lights.
ok so it turns out “horror but it’s about something mundane from the perspective of a non-human animal” fucks severely
I will topple your empires and your kings. I will drain the wealth from your coffers, and elevate your serfs and servants until they stand on the same ground as the mightiest of emperors. Women shall freely speak their minds, unbound by the fetters you have set, and the lines between man and woman shall be hopelessly blurred and shattered into a thousand facets. Your children shall fall into one another regardless of sex or class or wealth and none shall raise a hand or a word against them. The age of crowns and boundaries and divine right shall end, and it shall fall to each human to choose their - wait - why - why are you cheering
can’t get over when famous gangster lucky luciano was like “hey lansky seems like quite a hassle getting all those nazis offa your terf you want us to help ya out” and meyer “Left Russia Because of Pogroms and Became A Gangster In The US” lansky was like “no. no getting to beat the shit out of nazis is reward enough for us. sorry lucky this one’s personal don’t worry about it”
here’s a quote from a New York Times article abt it
also bonus quote from that article
“quick question about the punching, judge perlman: how about murder instead”
everybody says that “the government” enlisted these mobsters to beat up nazis, but like. no. no that didn’t happen? judge nathan perlman illegally called up a man who could have him shot dead at a minute to say “hey. i’ve scoured the fucking law books tryna find a way to get these fucking nazis out of here, but my legal means have unfortunately run out. so-” and meyer fucking lansky was like “ah say no more boss lemme call a buncha friends and we’ll get this sorted out real quick don’t even bother paying me.“
can you imagine that phone call. like genuinely. how am i supposed to continue living my normal life knowing this happened. people who loooove talking about punching nazis, taKE FUCKING NOTES
this is my favorite Meyer Lansky story.
my second favorite Meyer Lansky story is about the time, many years later, that he was at a meeting of mafia heads and one of them started bragging about how his son was following him into the family business.
Meyer Lansky said “That’s nice. My son works for NASA.”
somehow instead of saying “as a treat”, I’ve started using the phrase “for morale”, as if my body is a ship and its crew, and I (the captain) have to keep us in high spirits, lest we suffer a mutiny in the coming days.
and so I will eat this small block of fancy cheese, for morale. I will take a break and drink some tea, for morale. I will pick up that weird bug, for morale.
I’m not sure if it helps, but it does entertain me
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