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austingirl

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Posts posted by austingirl

  1. 2 hours ago, miguelito said:

    You arrogant ass - you've killed us!

    28,160 today.

     

    And with a front coming in tomorrow, and no real rain in sight, we're going to have high counts for a while.  I've been keeping a total count (every day added up) for the last 4 seasons, and we're only about 76,000 particles behind the 2017-2018 season, which was the highest total in that span.  And we're about 8,000 behind a running average of the 4 years.  So this is certainly a worse than normal season.  El Nino?  La Nina?  El Chupacabra?

     

    19 hours ago, Nonbryan said:

    It feels like it is at least 27,000 out there

    KXAN home page today. FML.

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  2. One of my college roommates was from Clarksville. She grew up dirt poor with a really crappy home life (which, from what she said, was par for the course for almost everyone there) but ended up with a scholarship to UT and eventually got a PhD. Works in DC in some non-partisan transportation planning capacity now. Anywho, when she graduated with her bachelor's degree, her mom and two brothers, who still lived in Clarksville, stayed with us for a few days. We lost touch for a while and then a couple of years later she called me out of the blue with a crazy story. One of her brothers disappeared and her mom reported it to the police. Turns out that the two brothers who had stayed with us had gotten into a fight several days earlier and one stabbed the other to death. The killer's girlfriend helped him bury the body under their mom's trailer, where the murder happened. They left town, but I guess guilt finally got the best of him because he turned himself in and plead guilty and will spend the rest of his life in prison in Huntsville.

    /csb

  3. Disclaimer: I haven't read all 15 pages. I live in Austin proper now but grew up in southeast TX and have no desire to go back or move out of the city. I was born in Port Arthur and moved to Groves in 6th grade. I think PA is ~60k people and Groves is ~15k, so neither is super tiny in population, but SETX is so insular, culturally, that it feels much smaller than it is. Families have been there for generations and many people are happy to just keep the cycle going. It's rare for people to leave permanently, if they leave at all. There are good things about it, for sure, but I couldn't wait to get out of town. I never felt like I REALLY fit in there. 18 years was long enough.

    • Like 2
  4. 11 minutes ago, Deej said:

    With these high counts, I just end up with constant of sneezing, lungs that hurt, and the need to sleep 20 hours a day. Aside from that, the cedar has no effect.

    Other than that, how was the play, Mrs. Lincoln? ;)

    • Like 1
  5. 26 minutes ago, austingirl said:

    Do they have two female pastors right now? One of my good friends is one and was recently fully ordained (or whatever the term is). We met many years ago when we both worked at a large tech company in Austin. She is indeed amazing. I'm not religious but if I had to go to church I'd go to hers.

    Actually I just checked and I'm 99% we're talking about the same person. 

  6. On 1/3/2020 at 3:44 PM, Brisketexan said:

    St Johns?  FANTASTIC church, and their pastor is AMAZING. Seriously, she's brilliant.  And she's also one of my wife's dearest and best friends.  And also, I have a little bit of a crush on her, that everyone knows about.  I admire smart and capable women.

    Do they have two female pastors right now? One of my good friends is one and was recently fully ordained (or whatever the term is). We met many years ago when we both worked at a large tech company in Austin. She is indeed amazing. I'm not religious but if I had to go to church I'd go to hers.

  7. On 12/6/2019 at 1:00 PM, ATLLonghorn said:

    I thought it was great and Daniel Craig in a genteel southern accent saying  

      Reveal hidden contents

    “ What where the words overheard by the nazi child masturbating in the bathroom?”

    is one of the all time great movie line deliveries.

    Yes, any lines involving that character are great. Also him going off about donut holes.

    I liked it far more than I thought I would. Daniel Craig with his ridiculous accent should've annoyed the shit out of me, as should the rest of the over-the-topness of the movie itself, but somehow it worked. Everyone just looked like they were having a ton of fun playing against type. Chris Evans plays a douchebag, Toni Collette is a Gwyneth Paltrow/GOOP type, the normally-terrifying Michael Shannon is a shrinking violet limping around with a cane, and so on. My 11-yo and I both really enjoyed it.

    • Like 2
  8. On 12/25/2019 at 9:16 PM, mdmost said:

    She was Nicole Kidman's therapist in both seasons of Big Little Lies and was great. 

    5d16486c21a861068c45ca58?width=1100&form

    She's also Annie Wilkes' mom in Season 2 of Castle Rock but I think there are only a couple of us here that watch it.

    On 12/13/2019 at 12:31 PM, henrygandorf said:

    saw a screening of this last night.  i actually liked it more than i thought i would.  jay roach was the right guy, as he can do comedy, but also more serious movies with some really tense, pressure scenes - which this movie had many.  it was funny, intense, sad, suspenseful, kind of a roller coaster.  theron crushed it.  so did robbie.  some comedic actors were great in more serious roles (delaney, mckinnon, duplass).  and lithgow was awesome and scary all at once.  i thought it did a good job of capturing the enabling and complicit culture of fox news, without shaming victims who did or didn't come forward in appropriate time.

    theron, roach, and the writer charles randolph (the big short) were there doing a q&a after the movie.  mostly just talked about how the movie came together, who they met with, spoke to, confidentiality agreements, and why it was a movie that needed to be made.  randolph made about 3 guiliani jokes in 10 minutes (richard kind played him in the movie, but his appearances were very brief).

    i give it a solid b-, went in with fairly tempered expectations.

    I'm pretty torn on whether or not I want to see this. I'm sure the acting is great, and I'm usually up for a story about women talking down misogynistic assholes. That said, I'm having a hard time separating the truly heroic work Kelly, Carlson, and the others did to bring all the sexual harassment stuff to light from the bullshit they peddled on air. Much of which promoted opinions and policies that can foster environments where sexual harassment thrives.    

    • Like 1
  9. 41 minutes ago, Mrs Whiggins said:

    Anecdotal and I’m not a Dr, but I had PPD after my second child, and two weeks out I was still feeling pretty good from the hormones. I suppose every woman is different, but it was somewhere around the 4-6 week mark that I was underwater. 

    I hope they are okay, but I fear that this won’t end well. 

    If she had PPD after the first kid it likely reared back up pretty quickly after the second one. That's what happened to me.

  10. 33 minutes ago, Bottlecap said:

    Some Chris Watts vibes going on with this case. Does anyone really think she's just missing? A woman two weeks post-partum? Those are some delicate times for both recovery and for the baby. Hope I'm wrong.

    I will be very surprised if they are just missing. I'm also trying not to entertain the possibility that she harmed herself and the baby as a result of post-partum mental illness. More likely that her husband or someone she knows did it, but either way this is not going to have a happy ending.

  11. This is a really great read. The story itself is interesting enough but the journalistic skill of the reporter brings it to the next level.

    The Jungle Prince of Delhi

    Quote

    For 40 years, journalists chronicled the eccentric royal family of Oudh, deposed aristocrats who lived in a ruined palace in the Indian capital. It was a tragic, astonishing story. But was it true?

    Quote

     

    The story began with his mother. She appeared, on the platform of New Delhi’s train station in the early 1970s, seemingly from nowhere, announcing herself as Wilayat, Begum of Oudh.

    Oudh (pronounced Uh-vud) was a kingdom that no longer existed. The British annexed it in 1856, a trauma from which its capital, Lucknow, never recovered. The core of the city is still made of Oudh’s vaulted shrines and palaces.

    The begum declared that she would stay in the station until these properties had been restored to her. She settled in the V.I.P. waiting room, and unloaded a whole household there: carpets, potted palms, a silver tea set, Nepali servants in livery, glossy Great Danes. She also had two grown children, Prince Ali Raza and Princess Sakina, a son and a daughter who appeared to be in their 20s. They addressed her as “Your Highness.”

    The begum was an arresting-looking woman, tall and broad-shouldered, with a face as craggy and immobile as an Easter Island statue. She wore a sari of dark, heavy silk and kept a pistol in its folds. She and her children settled on red plastic chairs, and waited. For years.

    “Sitting, sitting like yogis,” recalled Father John, a Catholic charity worker who distributed food in the train station. The children were strangely submissive, he said, reluctant even to accept a banana without their mother’s permission.

    “They were more obedient than the dogs,” he said. “They were absolutely under her control.”

    The begum’s behavior was imperious and dramatic. She refused direct conversation, demanding that queries be written on embossed stationery, placed on a silver platter and carried to her by a servant, who read them aloud. If the station master gave her any trouble, she threatened to kill herself by drinking snake venom.

     

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    • Like 3
  12. 5 hours ago, closetojumping said:

    The whole “he looks suspicious/innocent” shit is fucking pure ignorance. That means nothing. The woman from Seattle that was convicted in Italy of murder, Amanda something or other, is a classic example of someone looking guilty as hell to a majority’s expectation of “normal” behavior after her roommate’s murder. It turned out she was just a socially awkward chick. She had nothing to do with the murder and was later vindicated.

    Meanwhile, there are endless stories of the guy or girl next door surprising everyone when it turned out they were guilty of heinous shit.

    We project onto others our expectations of behavior and expect them to fit that pattern. When they don’t, there’s something you just know about them. Right. It is called “the assymetry of insight” and this board displays it in an exemplary way every minute of the day. You know more about someone you’ve never met better than they know themselves, but nobody knows you better than you. Uh huh. It’s fucking idiocy. 

    Amanda Knox also had the misfortune of being tried for a crime in Italy.

    3 hours ago, Doc Reeves said:

    Women tend to do that- statistically. 

    theres a telling case of a man who got into a yelling fight with his wife and left to cool off. When he returned he found her raped and barely alive. They convict him based on her testimony that the last thing she remembered was seeing him enter the bedroom. Guy spends 26 years in the clink until DNA proves he didn’t do it and pointed to a guy already in the system. The original detective went and interviewed the guilty guy and due to the fact the falsely accused also happed to be a Marine, the guy confesses completely. 
    the original detective and DA went to the wife and told her the news, that she was wrong and they caught the guy who actually did it. The woman refuses to this day to believe that anyone other than her former husband assaulted her. 

    What is telling about this story? 

  13.  

    13 hours ago, Deej said:

    Two dogs is actually easier than one. They can entertain themselves and tend to wear each other out in the yard, so your walks don't need to be as long.

     

    23 hours ago, sachick said:

    I haven’t checked this thread in a long time. Spent the last two days catching up. Really is the beat thread. Toby has been with us almost three years now. I fought getting a dog for a long time before finally giving in to the kids. Best thing I ever did. I had never had a pet before and now I’m a full on dog person. Open to the idea of a second dog now if the right opportunity comes up.

     

    My Toby on the left with Cousin Louie on the right.

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    “You really not going to share your dinner with me mom?”

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    Yeah, I was hesitant to have two, but looking back, I'm so glad we got our second one. Dogs are pack animals and they really do do better with other dogs. Edgar was pretty neurotic and on Prozac for a long time, but he mellowed out a lot when we got Rocket. Not that they didn't have issues getting along at first, but it's been almost a year and they are best buds for the most part. Unless one tries to take the others' bone/toy, and then all bets are off.

    • Like 1
  14. On 12/14/2019 at 5:38 PM, Doc Sam Beckett said:

    This show is really fun, I can't believe there isn't more people talking about it. The Easter eggs are the best part, I like how they change things around a bit. 

    Yep, it's really great and not too gruesome - I haven't seen a lot of the movie versions of King's books for that reason. And I like how they are taking elements of his stories and making something new out of them.

  15. On 12/9/2019 at 1:16 PM, BabaYaga said:

    Any puppy advice?  Besides a military-esc schedule for potty training which we're gearing up for.  This little monkey is going to learn to love soccer fields.  Practices 4 days a week.  Games.  Tournaments.  She'll be going everywhere with us.  I run/ruck a lot during the kids practices, so she'll start that with me immediately.  

    Are you in Austin? If so, check out Hearts and Paws - they do free puppy parties on a regular basis for puppies under 16 weeks old. We did one with Rocket and it was great. Fun to watch all the puppies play and a good socializing time for them with little dogs their own size. Somewhere in this thread I posted a video from the one we went to.

    • Like 1
  16. On 12/9/2019 at 1:16 PM, BabaYaga said:

    Any puppy advice?  Besides a military-esc schedule for potty training which we're gearing up for.  This little monkey is going to learn to love soccer fields.  Practices 4 days a week.  Games.  Tournaments.  She'll be going everywhere with us.  I run/ruck a lot during the kids practices, so she'll start that with me immediately.  

    In addition to what the others have said, expose them to things like a vacuum cleaner (both running and off), brooms, and so on. It sounds dumb but those are the kinds of things dogs will bark at or freak out around, and the earlier you expose them the better. And make sure they get a chance to be around people of all colors, shapes, and sizes. If they only ever see white people, for example, during puppyhood, then they may not know what to do when they meet someone who's a different color.

    • Like 1
  17. On 12/7/2019 at 4:50 PM, dcbc said:

    I just finished the Under the Dome audio book.  This one seems to be really underrated.  All of the world and character building of The Stand on a smaller scale, a shorter timeline, and, frankly, with better pacing.  Up Next . . . The Dead Zone.

     

    8 hours ago, South Austin said:

    I thought Under the Dome was great.  Wasn't there a TV adaptation?  If so, was it any good?

    Spoiler

    I like Under the Dome but didn't think he stuck the landing at the end. A bit too "deus ex machina"-ish for me. Still enjoyable though.

     

    • Like 1
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