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idontknowreallywhy · 1 year ago

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Estera Ch 35 - Ten

What went before

It’s been a while! Ironic that in March of the OCs I have throughly neglected my dear OC but I shall try to make up for it! This one fought me (while I’ve written tens of thousands of words for further down the line 🙄) because I wanted one chapter to achieve too many different things and I rather lost confidence in myself to make it work or even to continue with it at all. (Every scrap of credit goes to @sofasurf for giving me a metaphorical shake and waving snippets of her excellent future chapters to bribe me).

The end result is… again… I have broken one event down into more than one chapter. Hoping there is the right balance of fluff and angst to suit those still reading (thank you xx)

Here we ponder whether one can be homesick for somewhere that is no longer your home, there is an addition to the gallery, Scott has a wobble and the giant floof introduces us to his favourite Thunderbird…

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Bez stood guard at the front door, clearly determined to give the earliest possible warning of their visitor’s approach. It had been five minutes since Estera had heard the unmistakeable sound of VTOL engines through the open window which told her he’d decided to leave the jet somewhere nearby, maybe at the fancy golf club where such things didn’t stand out as so unusual. That was 15 mins walk away on normal-human-length legs, so she could probably expect him fairly imminently.

She gave up on the article she was staring at in a futile attempt to stop herself thinking too much and dumped the tablet on the coffee table with a little more force than intended before getting up to pace around the room. Maybe moving would help? Bez glanced over before returning his serious gaze to the door handle.

The intensity of his expression was offset rather by the little blue polka dot bow tie she had attached to his collar to mark the occasion. It had been 5 years to the day since she collected a tiny ball of puppy floof from the breeder and finally made her apartment feel like a home. Because on that particular day it had been exactly 5 years since she’d seen the last place that felt that way.

And thus today, dziesięć. Ten.

Ten years since she’d opened the back door in the morning to stand barefoot in the grass. Ten years since she’d taken a deep, rejuvenating breath of the air rolling off the Tatra mountains.

Ten years since she’d sat on the back porch with a cup of coffee, stealing a few moments to listen to the excitable call of the woodlark, one of the few privileges the militia hadn’t managed to take from them. The yellow-painted structure had been plagued by woodworm even then… it was probably long gone now. In fact, she didn’t even know if the house was still there. That felt wrong. Even if she knew she could never go back to it… surely she should know? But who could she call to ask? Nobody was there anymore…

Ten years since she’d held a meaningful conversation in her native tongue. Bez didn’t count.

Ten years since she‘d started to feel the constant need to justify her presence by being useful, by being an asset to her adopted country. Ten years since she felt like she truly belonged anywhere.

Ten years since she’d hugged her parents and promised to live.

She sighed and walked over to their photo on the wall for the third time that morning and pressed her palm against it. Then rested her forehead on the back of her hand. It felt as though she was fighting through the fuzzy layer that time was beginning to paint over her mental image of them, trying to fix the happy memories somewhere safe. Somewhere accessible. The memories before that day. Before the war and all the horrors that had brought.

Ten years too since she’d found and lost a hero within minutes and gained an imaginary soulmate.

Ten years since she should have died. Maybe in some ways the old her had. Ten years since her life had changed forever anyway.

Her gaze shifted to the new photo, framed in blue, that she had recently added to her gallery. Yes, and in the last few months… everything had suddenly changed again. But this time in an indisputably good way. Because the imaginary hero had somehow shed the imaginary bit and become her friend. The two of them grinned manically out of the hasty selfie - hair dishevelled, flushed with adrenaline and drenched in seawater but vividly, irrepressibly alive.

She couldn’t help smiling back. He was hero to lots of people, but friend was infinitely better.

Bez, who had quietly padded over to sit close beside her whined quietly and rested his big head on her hip.

“Quite right, Niebieski, enough introspection.”

He huffed a non-committal response before an ear twitched and he flung himself towards the door, his claws skittering on the tiles, and resumed his supervision of the door handle.

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Elevator was out again, Scott noticed. He rolled his eyes and then took the stairs at a run… just because. He found himself counting them in groups of ten. Ten ten ten ten ten ten ten… and… hmph, two more. If she’d only lived on the 5th floor that would have been far more satisfying. He took a moment to calculate how much height each individual stair would need to have added to fix this… would that make the rise too steep? Maybe if they could reduce each by 20% and add four more to each flight?

Huh, he was clearly more on edge than he realised if he was compulsively doing math. He recalled frantically focusing on trying to disprove Goldbach’s Conjecture while refusing to visibly react to the agony of…

No. Stop it. He was here so that he didn’t need to lose himself in thinking about it. So that neither of them did.

He looked over at her door. He was technically a few minutes early, did that matter? He decided not and braced himself to withstand 60 kilos of furry, drooling enthusiasm. Bez, the big, fluffy, friendly dog who was most definitely not a half-starved killer. He was a different creature in every way and Scott was definitely getting better at forgetting the nightmare dogs. Much better actually.

It was all good. Even the bark he was about to hear was different - deep and booming and safe. Not snarling and howling. All good.

Scott raised a hand to knock but froze as an unexpected noise reached him… the scratching of claws on stone. They prowled relentlessly outside, waiting... Daring him to even try… He gasped out loud as his lower back slammed painfully into the bannister at the top of the stairs and he grabbed it tight, trying to ground himself. His vision blurred.

A voice drifted through the fog, the same sibilant quality of speech that haunted his nightmares and he was nearly overwhelmed by nausea before he heard a joyful laugh and knew… with a rush he knew… that it wasn’t there it was… here. It was her language, her’s and the dog’s, not… not theirs.

He gripped the bannister hard as the door opened and his friend looked up at him, the smile sliding off her face and her hand slipping from the dog’s collar as it surged towards him and… and skidded to a halt a metre away, ears raised, head tilted.

“Niebieski, Noga!

Scott? What’s wrong?”

The dog returned to heel immediately and sat down, looking up at him with that same questioning head tilt. Scott blinked the sweat from his stinging eyes, cursed himself for overreacting and was about to apologise when he realised Estera had gone… what? He shook his head in frustration and was about to call after her. Except she was already back and lugging a huge beanbag which she placed just to his left away from the top of the stairs. He rubbed his eyes with the back of a hand, it was passing he didn’t need to sit down. He was about to thank her for the thought but reassure her it was unnecessary when his knees decided for him and he sank into the thing, vaguely noticing the loud scrunching noise of the filling reshaping around him. He leant forward to rest his forearms on his bent knees… scrunch again. The noise drowned out the whistling and the barking and he wriggled a little to make it happen a third time. Then all was quiet.

“I’m so sorry.”

“Don’t be daft, Scott.”

“It’s so stupid.”

“No it’s not.”

“I’m sorry…”

“Just breathe for a minute, Blue.”

He did that. Precisely 60 seconds passed. 13 breaths, a couple more than would be usual. His comm pulsed quietly and he triple-tapped it to answer the enquiry in the affirmative. His head was much clearer now. He tried to relax his shoulders and looked around. Bez was nowhere to be seen. Estera was crouched next to him though, humming quietly. She smiled reassuringly as he looked at her and made to stand.

“I’ll just drop him round to George and Edith’s then we can go inside.”

“No! Don’t. Please.”

“It’s really not a problem at all.”

“No, it wasn’t his fault. I… something just took me by surprise. It’s not a problem.” Scott took a shaky breath and sat up straight. “I don’t want it to be a problem. I want to say hello.”

She frowned at him.

“I really do. Please bring him back.” Scott put as much confidence into the request as he could muster with the result it sounded more like a command than a request.

“Do Mnie!” She called quietly. He knew that one - Come! He focussed on practising the pronunciation in his head.

Bez poked his head out of the front door, his mouth full of some huge green cuddly toy. As Scott repeated the command the dog walked slowly forwards and placed the toy in front of him before lying quietly down next to his mistress.

Scott reached out cautiously and patted Bez on the head and murmured his thanks for the gift of… err… whatever the giant green drool-soaked plushie monster Bez had deposited at his feet was meant to be. Some kind of chunky lizard? A turtle with a zip on its belly? The dog looked at the toy and then back at Scott. Waiting for something?

Ah. He needed to physically accept the gift. Ugh… but he could literally see dog-spit-bubbles gleaming on the fuzzy surface. Shudder. Come on Tracy, you’ve dealt with grosser things in Gordon’s bedroom…

Acting with the kind of caution he’d exercise towards potentially explosive toxic waste, Scott picked the item up with a thumb and forefinger, and dangled it as far from his body as possible to inspect. It spun slowly in the air to reveal a very familiar yellow, red and white pattern on the top side and his jaw dropped in delighted surprise.

The shape, he could now see, was almost recognisable but it had been significantly squashed and white stuffing was poking out from several holes. Other sections had evidently been firmly re-stitched together which only emphasised how the rest of the original seams were on the point of bursting. The tail was hanging on by mere threads. Bez sat up tall on his hind legs and looked immensely proud of himself.

“Oh Bez… whatever would Virgil say?”

Now the adrenaline was dissipating Scott felt the overwhelming urge to giggle.

He cleared his throat to repress it and then bit his lip, not wanting to offend the giant animal by laughing in his face. His body shook a little as he shuffled forward and reverently placed the mutilated toy back down in front of its owner but he kept his cool. Said owner eyed him and then promptly picked up the toy and put it more decisively on top of Scott’s shoes.

“Goodness you are highly honoured Scott, he won’t let me near Thunderbird Chew! I’ve had to sneak her away while he sleeps to carry out routine maintenance in the dead of night and… err, Scott? Are you ok?”

Scott knew he was a lost cause even as he crammed a hand into his mouth to suppress the laughter. Bez looked at him with evident concern but it was Estera’s smug expression tipped him over the edge and he threw his head back and cackled.

Thunderbird Chew! He absolutely had to tell Virgil…

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Next: Chapter 36 - Lost

#thunderbirds are go #thunderbirds #thunderbirds fanfiction #scott tracy #tb estera #estera #thunderbirds oc #idontknowreallywhy fanfic

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sleepyselkiesims · 11 months ago

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The Everything Challenge

I have done it!! I have listed everything you can do with packs in the sims! Behold, the everything challenge!

It starts off with a version of the Occult Baby Challenge, but now we follow the lives of each kid after the home, and they're each assigned a pack.

NOTE: This is only the packs that I have cause this is a pack for me. So uhh... yeah Ig I'm the only one that can do this challenge XD But I'd love to know if there are any activities I left out!

Without further ado...

Founder: Parenthood, Laundry day, Kids room, Get together, Backyard

Flower Bunny: Cottage living

Patchy: Outdoor retreat, Seasons

Tragic Clown: High School Years, Discover University

Father Winter: Snowy Escape

Grim Reaper: Spooky stuff, nifty knitting, crystal creations, tiny living

Island Spirit: Island living

Spellcaster: Realm of magic

Vampire: Vampires, pets

Alien: Get Famous

Mermaid: Jungle Adventure

Wishing Well: Romantic garden, my wedding stories, spa day

Plant Sim: dine out, City living

Servo: dream home decorator

Free for all: Get To Work

Bonus Rounds:

Complete all Achievements

“Ask about Home Region” in every world (requires frequent traveler lifestyle)

General Rules:

Get to level 10 in all skills and careers

Whenever you gain a new ability from a skill or career, you’ll try it out

Attend every festival

Complete every collection

If you want to include each death type, there's my Death Legacy challenge that lists them

Recommended play-style is with aging OFF

City Living

Aspiration and traits: City Native. Unflirty

Careers: Politician, critic, social media

Skills: Singing, instruments, video gaming, painting

Collections: Posters, snow globes, stall food

Activities:

Play on a basketball court

Use bubble bottle

Use all bubble blower flavors

Busk

Tip a golden statue until you unlock the golden outfit

Busk as a golden statue

Set off fireworks, sparklers, spinners

Use voodoo doll

Unlock all talking toilet interactions

Use vending table to sell items

Complete a wall mural and a ground

Sell a painting on a street gallery wall

Give all speech types on a podium (to be added)

Gain spice tolerance

Fight with a neighbor

Befriend your landlord

As a high-end politician, kiss a baby

Attend special invited events: circus, opera, and underground concert

Eat curry and then play basketball

Give a eulogy for a tombstone

Festivals: Romance, Geek Con, Spice, Humor and Hijinks, Flea market

Island Living

Aspiration and traits: Beach life. Child of the Island, Child of the Oceans.

Careers: Diver, fisherman, lifeguard, conservationist

Skills: Fishing

Collections: Fish, shells, underwater photos, fish, Sulani treasures

Activities:

Build all sandcastle types

Monster stomp and restore a sandcastle

Befriend 3 dolphins (regular, Azure, albino)

Purchase all snorkling equipment

Volcanic eruption

Break apart a volcanic rock

Use powers to increase a plant’s quality

Flood the floor of a room with the pool tool

Host kava parties for all reward types

Get a suntan and sunburn

Prank a sunbather (there are at least 4 options)

Complete odd jobs

Visit the waterfall

Explore Sulani cave

Encounter a shark

Interact with seagulls

Cook on a fire pit

Use a beach kiosk

Befriend an Island spirit

Ride a jet-ski

Add all add-ons to the aqua-zip

Ride a canoe

Sing all mermaid songs

Discover mermadic kelp (fishing, diving for treasure, requesting a dolphin retrieve treasure,exploring the cave)

Blow the conch shell

Sail on a boat in another world (britechester, copperdale, mt komorebi)

Fish on a boat

Optional: Eat 2 kelp to become human

Festivals: Barbecue, potluck, bonfire, flower and music, family fun day, island celebration, fishing tournament

Cottage Living

Aspiration and traits: Country caretaker. Lactose intolerant, animal enthusiast

Careers: -

Skills: Cross-stitch, cooking, gardening

Collections: 13 animal treats, 15 errand types, 17 canning recipes, 34 fair ribbons, cross stitch patterns, 5 mushrooms, 5 oversized crops, 5 fertilizers

Activities:

Raise a llama, a cow, a chicken, a chick

Hug all animals

Upgrade animal sheds

Leave something at Sophie the snail

Befriend a fox

Shoo away a fox, plead with fox, ask fox not to steal,

Befriend a bird tree stump

Befriend 3 rabbits

Ask for gardening help from befriended rabbits and birds

Give and receive gifts from birds and rabbits

Sing to birds

Get smacked by Agnes Crumplebottom

Befriend or make enemies of the Crumplebottoms

Gossip at the pub

Have a fox and chicken fight

Get golden chicken and midnight chicken

Have a picnic from a picnic basket

Have a toddler and child interact with all animals

Optional: have all animal types from treats

Order a grocery delivery

Buy from Market stalls and country caretaker

Gift a canned food

Turn an oversized mushroom into a chair

Befriend the country caretaker

Dress up animals

Start a romance between residents

Eat golden and midnight eggs

Increase the quality of various items after eating the golden egg

After eating the midnight egg, evil glare at objects and another sim

Ask the golden chicken to help with gardening

Sic the evil chicken on an enemy, the grim reaper, and a fox

Play an instrument in the bramblewoods

Pick chocoberry, blueberry, and raspberry.

Hatch an egg

Let a fox steal an egg

Sic a llama on a fox

Sic a dog on a fox

Have evil chicken set fox on fire

Participate in the fairing friend tradition

Write a simple living cookbook

Set oversized crops as decorations

Buy a mystery box from the grocery stall

Travel via bus stop

Optional: get a sheepdog and garden gnome

Festivals: Finchwick fair; Chicken, Cow, Garden, Oversized Crops, Llama

Seasons

Aspiration and traits: Academic.

Careers: Gardener

Skills: Flower arranging, fitness

Collections: Holiday crafts, 15 snowpals, 10 snowpal interactions, 12 decorative eggs, 10 resolutions, holiday traditions, 65 floral arrangements, 16 flower arrangement scents, 12 tree decorations, 12 umbrellas

Activities:

Help a toddler swim in a kiddie pool

Go for a swim in freezing weather

Become a top-level scout

Cook scout cookies

Shower in the rain

Play in the rain

Give gifts

Sing holiday songs

Have a water balloon and snowball fight

Mud fight!

Play in a mud puddle

Slip in a mud puddle

Rake leaves

Play in a leaf pile

Woohoo in a leaf pile

Burn a leaf pile

Make a snow angel

Declare an ultimate snowpal

Have a child rebuild the ultimate snowpal next time winter comes around

Destroy a snowpal

Brew bee tea

Plant a money tree

Trick or treat!

Fight Flower Bunny for eggs

Win the lottery

Kick a gnome

Create a holiday on the calendar

Put a crocus scented flower near bees

Collect swarm of bees: cheer self up, attack, woo, cheer up, fetch gift, and pollinate plants with bee swarms

Eat a jar of honey in freezing and heatwave weather

Befriend Patchy and steal his outfit

Check Patchy’s pockets for seeds

Upgrade the weather machine

Shoot lightning

Sneak a present

Replace a gift pile with pranks

Decorate!!

Approach bees while wearing the bear costume

Eat honey as a bear

Skate on an ice rink and roller rink

Have a child play in a sprinkler

Upgrade sprinkler

Push someone on a swing set

Sabotage the New Year's countdown

Snowy Escape

Aspiration and traits: Extreme Sports Enthusiast, Mt. Komorebi Sightseer. Proper, adventurous

Careers: Salary Person

Skills: Rock climbing, Skiing, Snowboarding, singing

Collections: 24 Simmis, 5 spirit dolls

Activities:

Hike with a dog

Woohoo in an ice cave

Become BFFs or enemies with Yamachan

Hike scenic loop

Go hiking with someone

Host a Mountain Excursion

Shove snow in someone’s face

Go sledding with a child

Teach a skiing class

Blog about skiing

Record snowboarding videos

Dance to the company anthem

Festivals: Light, Snow, Youth

Note: each festival has an outfit to purchase.

Discover University

Aspiration and traits: Academic.

Careers: Education, Law, and Engineering

Skills: Research & Debate, robotics

Collections: Ipsum

Activities:

Learn someone’s traits using the computer glasses

Ask about the secret gathering

Make offerings to the statues

Use the magical sprites that come with the secret club

Gotta go fast on the bike!

Play a game of soccer with someone

Do a keg stand

Play juice pong

After-school activities: E-Sport Competitor and Soccer Team Player.

Get a servo with a techie lifestyle

Optional: get a servo with a technophobe lifestyle

High School Years

Aspiration and traits: Admired Icon, Live Fast, Goal Oriented, Drama Llama. Overachiever, Party animal, Socially awkward

Careers: Simfluencer, Video game streamer. Cheer team member, Chess team member, Computer team member, Football team member

Skills: Entrepreneur

Collections: Ipsum

Activities:

Go to the shack to see a ghost

Summon urban legend on a vampire

Have a pillow fight

Attend Prom

Sneak out of a window

Go on the 3 carnival rides

Have a Famous student

A vampire sim can get expelled for drinking plasma

Festivals: fashion shows, amateur comedy nights, and poetry evenings

Get to work

Aspiration and traits: Lorem

Careers: Detective, scientist, doctor, retail owner

Skills: Baking, photography, logic

Collections: Geodes, 5 ways of taking pictures, 6 doctor work emergencies, 6 inventions, 15 serums, 8 alien abilities, 20 retail perks

Activities:

Perform surgery on an alien

Take an alien’s fingerprints

X-ray an alien

Determine gender on a pregnant sim

Watch the alien tv channel

Spread an illness with hugs

Cure an illness with herbal tea and orange juice

Take medicine when not sick

Use cloning machine to clone items for your retail lot

Turn a photograph into a memory

Spoil the latest episode of a tv show

Instill a sim with false confidence

Covertly flirt with a coworker

Eat food at a crime scene

Use all good cop and bad cop interactions

Attend an alien party on sixam

Send an alien baby back to it’s homeworld

The more signs you have, the more sims come to your store

Change mannequin poses

Laugh at a broken neon light

Use alien powers to tranmute metals and crystals

Bring a dead sixam alien beast back to life

Get Famous

Aspiration and traits: Master Actor, World Famous celebrity. Self-Absorbed

Careers: Actor

Skills: Media production, Acting

Collections: 4 talent agencies, 21 acting gigs

Activities:

Eat Caviar Crackers

Join Drama club

Woohoo in a money vault

Lock a sim in the money vault

Woohoo in a sleeping pod

Cry in a sleeping pod

Rage into the machine

Upgrade a sleeping pod

Hack the dreams of a sim in a sleeping pod

Swim with the fishes

Live stream your entire life

Wear the celestial crystal crown with all crystal types

Flaunt wealth in a crowd

Appraise an autograph

Autograph’s increase in value after a celebrity dies.

Hide from paparazzi in a photobooth

Publish a paper about acting

Bribe a bouncer

Play one of your mix tapes on a public venue speaker

Get Together

Aspiration and traits: Leader of the pack. Dance machine, Insider

Careers: -

Skills: Dancing, DJ mixing

Collections: Club perks

Activities:

Join a club

Send emotional texts, and accept the outing invitation

Dare someone to streak

Go skinny dipping at the bluffs

Woohoo in a closet

Brew drinks at an espresso bar

Do activities at a cafe

Host a dance party

Dance as a group

Create a custom mixtape

Feel the crowd and get hyped as a DJ

Overthrow a club leader

Begin a club rivalry

Dance off against another club

Wander the maze at the chalet gardens

Befriend/become enemies with the chalet ghosts

Garden Lady Shallot’s garden

Paint with Lord Shallot

Play chess at the chess pavilion and the Estate

Fantasize about weddings at the Estate

Play piano at the estate

Start a bonfire at the beach

Perform all diving moves

Set fire to a llama table

Play darts, foosball, and cards

Change bonfire colors

Throw a voodoo doll attached to a sim into the bonfire

Burn trash in a bonfire

Fire dance

Nap in a bush

Let a child play in a closet

Travel to the ancient ruins via gate

Festivals: Happy Hour, Bear’s Night, Alien Night, Ghost Nights, Knight Nights, Ladies Nights, Singles Nights, Guys Nights, ancient ruins party, estate party

Dine Out

Aspiration and traits: Foodie, glutton, snob

Careers: Restaurant Owner

Skills: Gourmet cooking

Collections: Experimental food (20), experimental food photos, restaurant perks

Activities:

Get a restaurant to 5 stars

Draw on a placemat at a restaurant

Compliment and insult the chef

Feed a bite of food to your partner

Get food poisoning

Simstagram every meal

Stock an aquarium

Try every advertising package

Get 5 stars from a critic

Leave the restaurant running in your absence

Vampires

Aspiration and traits: Vampire Family, Good Vampire, Master Vampire

Careers: …Vampire?

Skills: Vampire Lore, pipe organ, mixology

Collections: Vampire tomes, 5 vampiric drinks, vampire perks

Activities:

Ask to turn

Have a club where you play the organ, use vamp powers, and drink plasma

Create garlic wreaths, braids, and garlands

Make plasma fruit salad

Slay a fellow vampire with the Vampire Cure Cocktail

Receive the “Defeated a hunter” moodlet from surviving the cocktail

Woohoo as bats

Woohoo in a coffin

Vampire duel

Receive vampiric training

Meditate and hibernate

Create plasma packs from frogs and pets

Find a sim with Excellent Plasma

Reach irresistible thirst

Become a master vampire

Train another vampire

Place bearcula in front of a mirror

Manipulate life spirit, deprive needs, influence emotions, mesmerize, command, cast hallucination, use vampiric charm

Break into a sims house and drain them

Have a non-vampire fight them while having garlic in their inventory

With vampiric strength, crush crystals and metals

Realm of Magic

Aspiration and traits: Spellcraft & Sorcery, Purveyor of Potions

Careers: -

Skills: -

Collections: 3 bloodline types, 20 wands, 11 familiars, 25 brooms, 24 spells, 15 potions, 8 curses

Activities:

Travel through the Glimmerbrook portal

Befriend all 3 sages

Get a replacement Glimmerstone from a sage

Bind a pet as a familiar

Send pet to forage for items

Participate in the 5 duel types

Cook the 3 food types in a cauldron

Parenthood

Aspiration and traits: Super Parent

Careers: Stay-at-home parent

Skills: Parenting

Collections: 10 character values, 7 childhood/teen phases, 28 relationship types, 12 table settings, 5 volunteer activities, 7 projects (with 3 types each)

Activities: Lorem

Pack a sacked lunch

Have a sack lunch in a child’s inventory when they go to school

Add drawings to the bulletin board

Set a curfew

Write in a journal

Relive journal memories

Snoop in a journal

Catch a sim snooping in your journal

Make a mess

Build a buildl ‘em blocks table

Play doctor

Destroy a school project

Put a kid in time-out

Ground a child (7 types)

Talk a child through a mood swing, Encourage child to redirect anger, criticize mood swing

Note: skills that help for each project: painting, rocket science, logic, programming, handiness

Spa Day

Aspiration and traits: Self care specialist, zen guru, inner peace. High maintenance

Careers: At-home wellness center

Skills: Wellness, mischief

Collections: 4 unlockable recipes, yoga poses and routines

Activities:

Teleport somewhere with the wellness skill

Freeze your motive decay

Use all 6 incense types

Join a yoga class

Host a yoga class

Promote yoga virtually

Give and receive 11 massage types

Use 7 bath soaks

Sabotage a sauna

Woohoo in a sauna

Receive and give a mani-pedi

Wear all 6 face masks

Get a rash from too many face masks

While “feeling fine,” gain/remove an emotional moodlet

Outdoor Retreat

Aspiration and traits: Outdoor enthusiast. Squeamish.

Careers: Lorem

Skills: Woodworking, Herbalism

Collections: Bugs, fish, 9 wild plants, 13 herbal remedies

Activities: Lorem

Stargaze and cloudgaze

“Take deep breaths” for a nauseated squeamish sim

Wear a bear costume

Roar in bear costume

“Imitate roar” at someone who’s wearing a bear costume

Host a weenie roast event

Woodcarve the Camping Mascot

Tell stories around the campfire

Summon the campsite ghost

Woohoo in a tent

Roast marshmallows, fish, hotdogs, veggie dogs, and beetles

Cook campers stew, breakfast scramble, fruit cobbler, gumbo, and walleye surprise

Befriend the hermit

Get info from a kiosk

Befriend a Camp Ranger

Purchase supplies from a ranger station

Go hiking

Pets

Aspiration and traits: Friend of the animals. Cat lover, dog lover

Careers: Veterinarian

Skills: Pet training, veterinarian, painting, photography,

Collections: Feathers, postcards (7, from rodents), types of rodent notifs (10?), type of toys, paintings, pet treats, 4 pet recipes, 4 nips

Activities:

Get all vet clinic perks

Have a pet reach 1500 simstagram followers

Order from a food stall

Give your pets Gourmet and homestyle pet food.

Mix the Minty Fresh Pet Confection and call pet to drink

Get vet clinic to 5 stars

Run an obstacle course with a dog

Travel by a brindleton bay boat

Woohoo in the lighthouse

Let a pet explore a bush

Craft the bird sculpture

Swim with a dog

Have a hamster, rat, pygmy hedgehog, and bubalus

Get rabid rodent fever

Research rabid rodent fever

Purchase rodent remedies

Ask vet employees about rabid rodent fever

Become bffs with a pet

Have cats and dogs investigate the rodents

Plant all 4 nips

Feel the love

Get attacked by a pet

Become companions with a pet

Send pet to explore and dig

Encourage a pet to mate

Sic a cat on a mousehole

Let furniture get scratched up

Have a pet unlearn all behaviors (counters, scratching, waking up, barking, attacking, puddles, drinking from toilet, eating things they shouldn't, chasing pets, toilet)

Befriend and adopt a stray pet

Adopt a ghost pet

See how a baby interacts with animals (they seem to like to sleep near dogs, for example)

Have a female pet run away, and get pregnant during that time

Post alert for missing pet

Calm down pet

Have a dog learn all tricks

Sell a pet

Optional: there are 12 paintings you can create from cats and dogs

Jungle Adventure

Aspiration and traits: Jungle explorer, archaeology scholar

Careers: -

Skills: Archaeology, Selvadoradian culture, guitar

Collections: 10 recipes, 3 mixology drinks, 9 relic combinations, 15 relic curses, 12 relic blessings, 16 Omiscan Artifacts, 13 Omiscan treasures

Activities:

Rumbasim dance

Play the 7 Selvadoradian songs on the guitar

Tell bones jokes to a skeleton until it dies

Access the food stall’s secret menu

Buy secret wares

Study art for insights

Give an archaeology lecture

Write an archaeology book

Write a travel guide

Authenticate an object for the smithsonian

Perform a Selvadoradian salutation and introduction

Share pictures of vacation

Break a wooden relic by using it too much

Become a skeleton, and perform all special skeleton interactions

Try to eat and drink as a skeleton

Perform romantic interactions on the bridge

Eat every type of emotion berry

Open a treasure chest by a plane wreck

Swim in the Omiscan Royal baths

Open a treasure chest in the Omiscan gardens

Catch a fish at the lagoon

Open a treasure chest on the Island

Mix drinks in an Omiscan temple

Walk through the 4 gate types without disarming them

Offer a relic to temple defenses

Extract an element on the Archaeology table

Sell items on a Craft Sales Table

Dream Home Decorator

Aspiration and traits: Observant, Friendly

Careers: Interior decorator

Skills: Photography

Collections: -

Activities:

Get a good and/or bad reputation

Get fired for: flirting with clients, nudity, eating/sleeping/showering, low hygiene

Be featured on the Dream Home Decorator network

Renovate a room, add a room, renovate a level, add a level

Renovate a celebrity home

Write articles

Spooky Stuff

Aspiration and traits: Brave

Careers: -

Skills: Handiness

Collections: Candy (technically seasons)

Activities:

Cook spooky cookies, cheese eyeballs, and zombie cake

Place haunted paintings

Decorate!

Dress up!

Host spooky parties at all levels

As for a party treat

Carve pumpkins (10 styles, 4 colors)

Wear a pumpkin as a ghost

Preserve a pumpkin

Light a pumpkin

Smash a pumpkin

Enable pumpkin emotional aura

Get all 4 moodlets from the candy bowl

Wedding Stories

Aspiration and traits: Any love. Romantic.

Careers: -

Skills: Flower arranging, baking, cooking

Collections: Messages in bottles, cakes, bouquets

Activities:

Host: family gathering, engagement dinner, bach party, rehearsal dinner, reception, vow renewal

Call off a wedding

Grapevine gossip

Dance

Use the bathroom in city hall

Send a pet down the aisle

Bake a wedding cake

Make a wedding bouquet

Romantic Garden

Aspiration and traits: Any love. Keptomaniac.

Careers: -

Skills: -

Collections: -

Activities:

Play in a fountain

Fill a fountain with bubbles

Make an offering to the wishing well

Make all wishing well wish types

Nap on a fountain

Toss coin in a fountain

Swipe simoleons from a fountain

Backyard

Aspiration and traits: Bro

Careers: -

Skills: Motor

Collections: - (could be Season’s eggs)

Activities:

Drink Lemonade (3 types)

Add bubbles to water slide

Trick slide on waterslide

Fill a bird feeder

Watch birds

Get attacked by birds at birdfeeder

View a windcatcher

Place all windchimes

Laundry Day

Aspiration and traits: Slob, lazy, neat

Careers: -

Skills: Handiness

Collections: Types of clothing (dry, smelly, damp, etc.)

Activities:

Wash clothes in a tub

Use all scent additives (possibly endless???)

Search pockets of laundry

Place clothes on a clothesline

Cause a dryer fire

Clean lint tray

Have a toddler splash in the wash tub

Upgrade the washing machine (5 types)

Upgrade the Dryer (4 types)

Upgrade the clothesline

Break a clothesline

Sabotage the washing machine and dryer

Watch the washing machine

Add extra soap

Clean the lint trap

Wear wet dirty clothes

Wear clean dry clothes

Sniff clothing

Tiny Living

Aspiration and traits: -

Careers: -

Skills: Handiness

Collections: -

Activities:

Build 3 lot types: Micro, tiny, small

Use a murphy bed

Upgrade murphy bed

Nifty Knitting

Aspiration and traits: Master of the knits

Careers: Plopsy

Skills: Knitting

Collections: Knitted items (haven’t counted)

Activities:

Brutally dance to metal music

Have a toddler/child play on a rocking chair

Max knitting skill

Wear all knitted clothing

Dress up babies and toddlers

Dress up farm animals

Knit yarny

Create the sweater curse

Elderly reminisce on a rocking chair

Have a cat play with a yarn ball

Have a child play with knitted toys

Gift the Grim Reaper a lil grim

Crystal Creations

Aspiration and traits: Crystal Crafter

Careers: Plopsy?

Skills: Gemology

Collections: Crystals, metals, 9 gem cuts, 11 jewelry types, 27 effects

Activities:

Read gemology books

Grow a crystal tree

Befriend the Grim Reaper

Kids Room

Aspiration and traits: -

Careers: Drama club

Skills: Social

Collections: 20 Voidcritters, limited edition foil voidcritters

Activities:

Perform all 5 puppet plays

Use the voidcritter battle station

Have a childhood bff

Have a childhood enemy

Dance to tween pop

Look for discarded toys in frog logs and trash cans

Trade voidcritters

Train voidcritter to highest level

#sleepysims #sims 4 #sims 4 challenges #legacy challenge

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ajscico · 1 year ago

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📸

🍙

🍙 - What's a food you've always wanted to try?

I've gotten pretty lucky and been able to try a wide variety of foods from a bunch of different places. I think I've gotten to try most of the weird/exotic ones that sound appealing.

That being said, I collect recipe books lately and sometimes wish these fantastic looking or sounding recipes were... possible for me to do. Like there's a fish pot pie in my BOTW cookbook that would be fantastic if it wasn't... quite the process plus having ingredients I have to order online because no store in my tiny town would carry random things like artichoke cream. Or I found a collection of recipe books from like 40 different countries. Some of them would be really cool to try but they're like all day prep and cook and not meant for someone working a 9-5

📸 - What's one of your favorite photos in your phone?

Ok, so I got a new phone and had to move most of my photos off my phone. Out of those... most of them have people's faces and I'm not editing them to not do face reveals. So you get the photo I stole from Nancy Dear because I'm also missing Gemglyph's version of Sky getting smothered in love. @nancyheart11 who drew this one so I can credit the amazing art to them?

My undying affection for someone who can find me the sketch of @gemglyph's Sky getting either a day in the blanket fort with sweet things or getting cuddled by Loft, either one.

#asks and answers #nancy dear #emoji ask game

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disneydelights · 10 months ago

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Walt's Museum in his hometown of Marceline is a really fun place to visit. Just like with any Disney Theme Park, you enter and exit through a gift shop. Then as you go around the corner you see a giant Mickey Mouse in a train conductor's uniform. This Mickey is one of 75 that were made for the Mickey's 75th Birthday Celebration at Walt Disney World in Kissimmee, Florida. Then the entire collection toured the country. After the tour was completed they were sold at auction and one of the patron's of the museum bought the All Aboard Mickey and gave it to the Museum where it resides to this day.

The Museum resides in an old train Depot and the Ticket counter is left preserved the way it was when it still operated as a depot. You can stand on the spot where Walt "found the Magic" after getting off the train as a young boy in Marceline. He only spent 5 years there as a boy but it was the key to his success. "To tell the truth, more things of importance happened to me in Marceline than have happened since - or are likely to in the future." Walt wrote in a letter to the local newspaper in 1938.

The museum is two stories of memorabilia, artifacts and history. There is a 2 hour star studded film about Walt Disney's impact on Marceline and the world as told through the voices of his friends and family. There are models and drawings of many of the elements of all the theme parks, early artwork and conceptual designs, photos, letters and so much more. There are multiple video loops playing throughout the museum with interviews and clips from some of the most historical moments of Walt Disney's career. And so many of them tie back directly to this tiny little town in rural America. Here are a few pictures of the museum.

While you could spend hours in the museum alone there is more to do in Marceline than just the museum. A couple of blocks away is a US Post office that issued a a stamp honoring Walt Disney. Commemorative stamps are generally issued 10 years after a person has died and it has to be passed by an act of Congress. Believe it or not only two years after Walt Disney's death a unanimous vote in Congress made it possible to issue a commemorative stamp honoring this American legend. Mickey Mouse was on hand and they unveiled it at the post office in Marceline. There's another little gem at the post office too but I don't want to give away everything. You really need to go yourself and see this beautiful homage to turn of the century America and Walt Disney.

The radio station, call letters KDWD 99.1, the movie theater and many other buildings in town were Walt Disney's inspiration for the stores and shops along Main Street in both Disneyland in California and Walt Disney World in Florida. One of those places is a corner shop called Zurchers. It is on the corner of Main Street and Ritchie Avenue. Walt said it was the inspiration for Coke Corner at Disneyland and Casey's at Walt Disney World. A lot of people were unsure why as the architecture appeared to be quite a bit different and it just didn't seem to make sense. But after a fire took place in the back of Zurchers and part of the building was destroyed it became apparent where Mr. Disney got his inspiration. The back wall of the building behind Zurchers had a large Coca-Cola mural painted on the side of the building on the back corner of that block. When it was discovered after the fire they restored the original mural and it looks like this today.

You can also tour the family farm and see the spot where Walt's Dreaming Tree stood. Then there is the barn which now is a place where you can you pay your respects to Walt Disney yourself. After the barn was restored the workers "autographed" their work and pretty soon visitors were doing the same. Now you really have a hard time finding a spot left to autograph!

This little town in the heartland, that still in so many ways is reminiscent of turn of the 20th Century life in rural America has not simply faded into obscurity as a tourist attraction. It is a vibrant town with wonderful people and thriving on local industry. They also keep up with the times in other ways. While exploring the town you can scan a QR code at many locations and get in Paul Harvey's famous words, "the rest of the story" as it pertains to each location. I did not get to see or do everything in the time I had, but I plan to go back again... and I recommend that you do the same!

Postscript: Before I forget, Walt Disney loved trains. There are a lot of train related things to see in Marceline. They also have 75 trains a day go by just outside the museum.

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paranormal-taters · 1 year ago

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1, 9, 20, 24, and 28💜💜💜. (sorry, I know those are some of the harder questions, but if you’d like to share I’d love to know ^-^)

sorry this took me so long XD

1. what are three things you'd say shaped you into who you are?

Novo Amor's music, Lockwood & Co. (the books and the show), and Endeavour. i picked a few more recent things that have shaped me for this one ^-^

9. tell a story about your childhood

so this probably started when i was like 9 and continued on for the next 4-5 years, but when i was a kid i had this little tiny pink Littlest Pet Shop mouse that became my constant companion. i was crazy over books that featured mice as the main characters (A Nest For Celeste, Tumtum and Nutmeg, Redwall) and i had an extremely active imagination. so i carried this little mouse (whom i named Cherry) with me everywhere i went, and i do mean everywhere. if she wasn't in my hand, she was in my pocket. she had a whole personality and many complex plotlines and i spent the majority of my time crafting little miniatures and building little spaces for her in my room and outside and pretty much everywhere i could. but one day, i misplaced her somewhere. i never did find her. 10 years later, i still wonder where she ended. i found a replacement for her in another LPS mouse whom i named Raspberry, and later on my mom let me buy a small lot of LPS mice off of eBay with my own money and my new favorite became a little brown mouse whom i named Cassie. Raspberry stayed a very prominent character as her aunt, and Cassie even had a love interest at one point named Ralph (yes, a reference to Ralph S. Mouse by Beverly Cleary).

i still have all of them somewhere, besides Cherry. i still enjoy making miniatures sometimes, but all the fun i had with those mice is probably the thing i miss most about childhood. i miss always having a mouse in my pocket.

(sorry this answer was so long XD)

20. favorite things about the night?

fireflies (you would not believe your eyes), hearing frogs and coyotes and crickets sing, seeing shooting stars, and that very specific earthy, loamy scent in the air on spring and summer nights. these are all also some of my favorite things about living out in the country.

24. what's one thing you're proud of yourself for?

going to the hardware store on two separate trips this week and picking up wood filler and sanding pads for working on my camper that i'm renovating. i feel daunted by all the stuff i need to do before i can move in but i'm proud of myself for chugging along despite feeling overwhelmed. i know it'll be so worth it in the end!

28. do you collect anything?

i do! i collect a few different things, but one thing in particular is marbles. i have a pretty big marble collection. i don't do anything with them besides look at them XD i like to look for jars of marbles at antique stores and buy them if they're not too expensive. i used to actually play marbles with my younger brother, but neither of us were very good at that so now i just collect them for fun.

thank you for the asks!! these were fun, sorry the answers are so lengthy XD

#yippee yippee yippee #💙

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milflewis · 2 years ago

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top 5 mundane things you enjoy doing (my #1 is unloading the dishwasher lmao) top 5 journeys you've ever been on top 5 forms of self care!

1. peeling an orange. i love biting into it and tasting the peel on my mouth and then peeling it open with my fingers. bonus points if it comes off in one go!!!! 2. folding clothes. esp if they're still out of the dryer and all warm and soft. 3. reorganising bookshelves (it was my fav thing to do when i worked in a charity shop when i was younger). 4. collecting eggs from the chickens and the ducks (my grandad used to have a farm). 5. chopping up vegetables

1. every summer we used to go to my grandparent's place out west in this tiny nothing village. the last forty minutes of the drive were on really shit country roads and the car would be so bumpy and you could smell the sea. it would often be dark by the time we could there and bc there was barely any lights you could see the stars for ages. 2. the bus ride and then flight to see fran and kyle in germany this summer. i hadn't slept in nearly forty-eight hours with work and traveling and it was so worth it in the end. 3. every cliff walk i've ever been on. 4. i sailed around the coast of ireland once in a tall ship. i was starving and cold and wet and exhausted for the entire thing. my hands were permanently raw. it stormed for most of it and one point when i was climbing the rigging i was dangling over the sea bc the ship was practically on its side. it was one of the coolest things ever. 5. going to edinburgh with two friends i've known for over ten years now. we just spent three days drinking and laughing and walking everywhere

1. washing my make-up brushes. 2. snacking on comfort food and watching a movie from my comfort list. 3. falling asleep on my stomach with my cat purring away on my back. 4. swimming. specifically in the sea but any kind of swimming tbh. 5. getting high in the park with the sun shining

#this was really lovely thank u!#top five/ten ask game #niamh.asks

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nuri148 · 1 year ago

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My trip to Japan! ⛩️ Part 5 (last)

21.12

The winter solstice made an entrance with a very cold day. Getting out of Osaka station was fortunately much easier than it seemed on Google Maps, and we found our hotel easily. We left our luggage and went straight to the castle. The current one is the third iteration, rebuilt in 1970 after being destroyed twice in the 17th century, when it was first built. Therefore, at 53 years old, this version is actually the longest-standing one. Inside, it's a museum, not a castle, but it was interesting, unexpensive, and the views from the top are fantastic. What impressed me the most, however, was the double moat, huge and full of water. There were even boat rides around it (we didn't ride, but they were there).

We then went to the Namba district, where I had marked a restaurant that had an Attack on Titan collaboration, but it was over. We had lunch in a US-style burger restaurant. In fact, next to Namba there’s this area called Amerika-mura, with many shops of American items or aesthetics. Lots of hip-hop style clothing. It's worth mentioning that the commercial density of Osaka is similar to Tokyo; every building is a shopping center, and there are several covered pedestrian streets as well. Walking around, we reached Dotonbori, Osaka's entertainment district around the canal of the same name, and went on to a street with several manga and anime shops. I had already browsed some in the previous cities and everywhere, here too, there was little to nothing on AoT. Only a handful of 2nd hand, 2nd rate keychains/badges featuring none of my blorbos (sorry Jean, I love you, but not as much as to buy merch with your horseface on it). Still, I managed to find a tiny string bag from the Sanrio collabo and a couple gachas.

For those who don’t know, gachapon are coin-operated machines that dispense a plastic capsule with a surprise inside. Like a Kinder egg, minus the egg. Each gachapon has a picture showing the trinkets you can get in that machine: small character figurines from a given franchise, or a collection of figurines following a certain theme, or a certain character in various positions; keychains, stickers, totebags... anything and everything. And when I say everything, I mean everything. Japanese Rule 34: If it exists, there's a gachapon of it. The variety of themes and objects you can get from a gachapon is as overwhelming as the commercial streets of the country. Every tourist attraction has some related gachapon. In castles, there are gachas of samurai figures, tiny swords, or pins with emblems of Japan's feudal houses; near zoos, there are ones with animals. In commercial areas, there are entire gacha shops, some with several floors. Some of these shops include a container for recycling the empty plastic capsules, and all of them have a change machine, since gachapon only accept ¥100 coins. The price for gachas usually range from ¥200 to ¥500, with a majority at ¥300-¥400, although there are some "premium" ones up to ¥1000. All good, but I'm not willing to pay so much for a surprise.

youtube

⬆️ English subs available!

In this regard, gachas are not alone: buying surprises seems to be something very deeply ingrained and popular in Japan. Many brands sell surprise products. You buy a little box, an acrylic figure, a little doll, but you don't know which model out of the available ones you'll get. In several shops there are products that aren’t for sale; they're tombola prizes. You buy a number at the counter, you get one of those items. While, as Husband observed, we’re not privvy to the exchange rings generated by this business model, not so conceptually different from the stickers we collected as kids or Kinder Eggs themselves, the profusion of surprises really took me by surprise (no pun intended), both for its ubiquity and for the prices, which can exceed ¥1000, and you don't even get a chocolate egg to console yourself if, as it happened to me twice, you get stupid Eren.

For dinner, we did manage to go to an okonomiyaki place that had an AoT collaboration. Usually, collabo places aren’t particularly good places, food-wise. They offer a menu of dishes "inspired" by whatever franchise they’re featuring, and if you spend more than a certain amount, they give you a souvenir like a card or sticker, a surprise, of course. You also have the chance to buy exclusive merchandise made specially for that collaboration. Again, many of these items are surprises. In short, the food was decent, I got my photo with Levi’s cut-out, and got a little card of him, too.

22.12

After breakfast, we took the Shinkansen to Himeji. The city's 17th-century castle, which has remained intact until today, is a UNESCO World Heritage site. Himeji Castle was defensive; it's not a palace, although it may look like one from the outside. Still, it's fabulous to see what a castle was like during that time in Japan (the defensive systems are very similar to European ones. As someone who hates the cold, I was pleasantly surprised by the arrow slits with replaceable covers). It's also mindblowing that this megastructure, mainly made of wood and adobe, is still standing after three centuries.

A few years ago, for maintenance, they dismantled it... and reassembled it entirely… with the same 300 y.o. pieces. The two main columns are two logs almost a meter in diameter and 25 metres long, going from the basement to the 5th floor. The views from the top are beautiful. The visit included a stroll through the neighbouring Japanese gardens. Here, there's a very cute restaurant with views over one of the many ponds in the gardens, which, oh joy, had very reasonable prices, so being already noon, we had lunch there. We returned to Osaka, and after coffee we decided to go our separate ways so each could shop to their heart’s content until dinner. I checked a few merch shops for AoT stuff, no luck.

⬆️ This comic book shop had a lot of dedicated doodles. I looked all over twice and Yams wasn't there, but I did find some other familiar faces.

We’d planned to meet in Shinsekai, but Husband got there first and said it was pretty dead, so we met in Namba and went to Dotonbori for dinner. We had takoyaki and kushikatsu, a local specialty consisting of breaded and fried skewers. I also ordered a beef cartilage stew, it was delicious and, funnily, it sort of tasted like fricandó, one of my favourite typical Catalan dishes back home.

23.12

We woke up early to catch the Shinkansen back to Tokyo. We left our luggage at the hotel (the same one as on arrival), and here I had a great disappointment because we planned to have a mid-morning snack at a nearby place, Hekkelun, which has been selling flan since the sixties. I don't know if I saw the schedule wrong on Google or if they changed it in the ten days we were touring the rest of Japan, but it was closed on the weekend. It made me very angry because I was really looking forward to it and, had I known, we would obviously have gone in the first Tokyo cour. I needed to cheer myself up, so after a tea in front of Shinbashi station, we passed by the NTV building, where there’s a beautiful clock designed by Hayao Miyazaki.

We arrived just in time to see the movement at 12, which was, of course, super cute. We then went to the Hama-Rikyu park. It used to be the shogun's gardens and includes things like ancient tea rooms; a seawater pond, as it’s next to the bay; and duck-hunting ponds, an activity which seems to have been very popular back in the day. Using real trained ducks as bait, they led the birds to narrow corners of the pond with camouflaged huts on both sides from where they hunted them. We returned to Shinbashi for lunch and stumbled upon an inconspicuous sushi place in the basement of the station, where we ate amazing susi for almost half of what takeaway costs here. We decided to go our separate ways like in Osaka, to cover more ground. I checkedd a couple of cute stationery shops I’d bookmarked and went all the way to Shibuya to check the Attack on Titan pop-up shop (it opened on the 22nd, so it wasn't there in the first part).

⬆️(Sorry for the awful audio, I was trying to be discrete)

Finally! I got decent merchandise (plus surprise cards for spending a lot my purchase).

There was supposed to be a collabo café nearby, but I had enough “surprises” and Shibuya was horribly crowded. I would’ve expected that a weekday at 6pm, not a Saturday at 4. I met Husband in Akihabara, where we looked at some merch stores (found nothing), had something at a cat cafe (pretty shitty, but the cats were cute), and had dinner at a nearby place.

⬆️ All my Levi stuff was in that blue bag, kitty knew what he was doing!

24.12

We both woke up ridiculously early, so we had breakfast at McDonald's (the only thing open at 6 am where you could sit) and went to Meiji Jingu. It's a Shinto shrine in Harajuku where Emperor Meiji and his wife, Empress Shoken, are enshrined as deities. Emperor Meiji opened Japan to the world in the mid-19th century, ending two and a half centuries of isolation during the Edo era. It’s beautiful, well-maintained and free. There is a small fee for the gardens, that we also visited. These were the emperor's gardens; there's a closed tea house from where the empress would gaze at the lake, with a small pier for fishing. There's also a lily field (barren since it was the middle of winter ofc) with a gazebo to contemplate the blossoming. This field was planted in what was once a rice paddy, where the children of noblefolk were made to work in ancient times to understand the labour than went into rice cultivation and appreciate the food they had.

From there, we went to the ukiyo-e museum a couple of blocks away. It was small but very interesting, with lots of insight into this technique, the one from Hokusai’s famous "The Great Wave off Kanagawa". We ate at a nearby place, Kyushu Jangara: the ramen was excellent, with its tonkotsu broth, soft-boiled egg, and the comforting feeling that a proper bowl of soup brings on a cold winter noon. We took a stroll through Harajuku; it was so full it was a challenge to walk through the pedestrian street. We then walked down the main avenue, full of fancy brands, to Omotesando Station, where we took the metro to Tokyo Station. Here is Character Street, a gallery of character shops. I’d heard it was expensive, it wasn’t so good, yada yada yada… well, here I did get more AoT stuff, including Sanrio items.

⬆️ There was probably more Aot stuff here than in all of the other shops I checked.

I stopped by the hotel to drop off the purchases, and we met at the KFC in Shinbashi to buy our "Japanese Christmas Eve dinner." The tradition, born from a 1970s advertisement, is to have KFC for dinner on this day. Despite what the decorations might suggest, Christmas is not celebrated here. They’re just into it for the aesthetics.

It was our last night in Japan, but not our last adventure! Around 11pm, right before getting into bed, we got an email saying our flight was canceled. Wham!

25.12

Needless to say, we slept like shit, and at six, we were already awake. Husband chatted with Lufthansa, and they rebooked us on a flight two hours earlier than the original one, so we got dressed and rushed to the airport. Every cloud has a silver lining, though, and I was thrilled when we got to ride on the LTS monorail! See you, Japan!

#nuri148 trips #Japan 2023 #Osaka #Tokyo #attack on titan #aot merch #finally #gachapon #hayao miyazaki #aot collab #sanrio #little twin stars #kiki and lala #Youtube

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fillycolt · 2 years ago

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15 mutuals 15 questions

thank you for tagging me @skelkankaos :3 :3 :3

1. Are you named after anyone? ... unfortunately yes. queen elizabeth. my mum's family has been naming their kids that way for like 3 generations and the name aside from that has a lot of importance to me so i kept it

2. When was the last time you cried? i don't know, probably last week?

3. Do you have kids? no but i consider my pets my children (not in the annoying "i know what parenthood is like! i have a dog" thing but bc i love them very very much and i feel strongly like a mum to them etc)

4. Do you use sarcasm a lot? not super i think?? i mostly tag along if someone uses sarcasm but i sometimes do myself. i prefer when sarcasm is either obvious in that it's suuuuper clearly exaggerated or when it's just completely nonsensical and probably only funny to me so i dont do it much organically

5. What sports do you play/have played? i never like, got on a team for anything, or did anything outside of gym glass, but i liked badminton. oh and in grade 4 i went to my school district's like cross country running thingy and i got in 101st place. one of the only non seizure/basically toxic shock syndrome related times i've fainted was next year's tryouts when it was too hot with a jacket but too cold without and i ran with a jacket on. oh and um i've played bloodbowl a couple times but also was never in a league but like i was gonna be

6. What’s the first thing you notice about people? their fashion probably

7. What’s your eye color? green and orange :3

8. Scary movies or happy endings? of the two i guess scary movies

9. Any special talents? i'm like, really good at controlling my experiences while high. i can write pretty good stories and shit. i can make any outfit work

10. Where were you born? ottawa

11. What are your hobbies? writing, making weird art, making and listening to music, playing video games, collecting my Collections

12. Do you have pets? I DO i love to talk about them. lentug is my beautiful snake daughter, she is a ball python, she is about a year old now but i celebrate my pets' birthdays as the day i got them and it hasnt been that long yet. shes so sweet and loves getting water poured on her and shes SUCH a good eater. then theres gawi, my precious guinea pig daughter who is a sweet little angel baby with me and licks instead of biting and has Big Feelings and Issues and Particularities but she is a bully to the others just a little bit. then dr pepper, who just turned a year old recently also and is a weird little freak of a guinea pig. she's a himalayan rex so she's albino, colorpoint, and has weird curly/frizzy fur and she bites to maim and she's SO fucking tiny even though she was the biggest of the litter and from two of the biggest guinea pig breeds. then there's my new little beasts: bobo, my old lady guinea pig who is all rumpled and so sweet and soft and loves her cuddly houses, and caramel, my even weirder freak naked beast of a guinea pig, whose ears slap when she shakes her head.

13. How tall are you? 5′5 since i was 11 or 12 lol

14. Favorite subject in school? english til high school then nothing bc i hated being there

15. Dream job? if i could publish my books and get like crazy famous without having to jeopardize my odsp til i'm solidly able to keep myself afloat for the indefinite future/at least longer than a few months so i can get back on odsp if needed... and i can use my money to travel across north america to write about weird little towns in different places... and to other places in the world to try all sorts of regional fruits and vegetables and snacks and do youtube videos about them. yeah that's it

tagging @thing2taste @1011100010 @shadowtouched @indicabutch @pranaferox444 @unseelie @rcris123 @xxm0nstrrrk1dxx @groblinboy @agatke @mothernatureslonelyson @wizardkins @07170 @forestsecretshack @solar-satan

#thoughts.txt

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whatsjenniupto · 2 years ago

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Calm at the Boca do Inferno

If there is one area in which Portugal is lacking, it would be in the concept of left luggage lockers. There are very, very few places in the country that even have lockers. Of that limited number, some were "out of order" forcing a reconfiguring of plans and all were ridiculously expensive. This was not Central Europe where I could toss a backpack in for a couple euro. 6,50€ every time I needed to be backpack free for a few hours.

But I didn't know that at the time. I decided to do a quick stop in Cascais on the way to Sintra. I could take a train out to Cascais along the river and then a bus up to Sintra. Simple. I only wanted to see two things in Cascais anyway: Praça 5 de Outubro (main square with amazing tile work) and the Boca do Inferno.

The square was close to the train station as were the other random things I located in Cascais. Boca do Inferno? That's a 2km walk. One way. And I didn't want to do it with my big backpack. So I was relieved that Cascais is one of the few locations where lockers could be found. A tiny well of lockers off to the side of the train station, next to what I would discover was basically the only grocery store in Cascais. Seriously, no idea where people shop in this city. I walked through three different options and they were souvenir shops. All I wanted was some drinkable yogurt, deli meat, and cheese. Pack in some protein after walking 4km.

I digress. Luggage tucked away, I ran across the street to double check bus times to Sintra and then walked down to the square before heading out to Hell's Mouth (Boca do Inferno).

I put all my Czech speed walking skills to good use and quickly made it out to the arch. The entire walk was along a beautiful bike path that stretches quite a bit further up the coast.

Now, I had looked up tides for when I would be up in Nazaré, but I hadn't connected the dots on how if three days from now, shortly after noon is low tide, today, just before noon will be low tide. A very, very calm low tide.

My misty morning walk in Alfama ended earlier than anticipated, moving my entire schedule up a bit. Having made it to my main destination, I knew I had time for adventure. The whole way out to Boca do Inferno, I kept seeing stairs cut down to the cliffs over the ocean. If there are stairs, clearly people are meant to use them. And as one who loves jumping out of windows and finding her own path (China, Montenegro, Arizona), I wanted to climb down these stairs and head out to the cliffs over the ocean. I mean, they took the time to make the stairs. Clearly they should be used.

Boca seen. Stairs and cliffs explored. Protein located at the train station grocery store. I realized I could grab an earlier bus to Sintra which meant more time to explore Quinta da Regaleira. I collected everything and dashed across the street to the bus station.

5 minutes til the bus comes.

Ok. It should come now.

Ok. 5 min ago it was supposed to come.

I eyed all the bus numbers coming into the station and saw the alternate option to Sintra. I was planning on taking the shorter 30min bus through the mountains rather than the longer 60min bus along the coast. But if the coast bus is here and I'm 2 hours ahead of schedule....

I made a beeline for the bus, hopped on, and paid for my coastal tour out to Sintra.

#europe #portugal #cascais

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rjzimmerman · 1 month ago

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Excerpt from this New York Times story:

The morning promised to be deadly.

High above Chicago, in the predawn dark, flew an airborne river of migratory birds. It was peak spring migration traffic, in late April, and the tiny travelers were arriving at one of the most perilous points along their journey.

These birds, inhabitants of forests and grasslands, do not perceive glass as solid and get confused by its reflections. Bright city lights seem to attract them, luring them into glassy canyons. The gleaming buildings of Chicago, curving along the shore of Lake Michigan, are especially lethal.

A call went out to volunteers across the city: Be ready to hit the streets early to rescue the injured and document the dead.

But at the building that has long been the city’s most notorious bird killer, a sprawling lakefront conference venue that claimed almost a thousand birds on a single day in October 2023, new protections were in place.

The vast glass windows and doors of the building, called Lakeside Center at McCormick Place, are overlaid with a pattern of close, opaque dots. Applied last summer to help birds perceive the glass, the treatment’s early results are nothing short of remarkable. During fall migration, deaths were down by about 95 percent when compared with the two previous autumns.

Now monitoring is underway during the first spring migration since the dots, with implications for glassy structures far beyond Chicago. Across North America, with Toronto an early leader, a growing number of bird-friendly policies and decisions by individual building managers are helping make cities safer for birds.

On that recent morning, David Willard, an ornithologist at the Field Museum, set off on a lakefront path toward McCormick Place. Known as the Bird Man to workers there, Dr. Willard has been tallying the building’s avian victims for almost 50 years.

Researchers have estimated that hundreds of millions of birds die hitting buildings every year in the United States. These strikes are believed to be one of the factors behind an almost 30 percent drop in North American birds since 1970.

Chicago is one of the most dangerous cities in the country for migrating birds, according to research by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. And no building was known to be more lethal than McCormick Place’s Lakeside Center.

Dr. Willard has been cataloging the dead there since 1978, when he was the Field Museum’s collection manager for birds. He had heard that migrators sometimes ran into McCormick and, one morning before work, he decided to check it out. Below the glass were two dead birds.

“I sometimes wonder if I hadn’t found anything, whether I would have ever gone back,” Dr. Willard said.

Hundreds of birds continued to die each year during spring and fall migrations. Often, it was a few each morning, but sometimes dozens in a day.

Then, on Oct. 5, 2023, Dr. Willard climbed the lakefront steps to the building’s walkway on his routine inspection to find it littered with dead and injured birds. Shocked by the sheer volume, struggling to save the living while gathering the dead, he called a colleague for help.

“They were continuing to crash as we were picking them up,” Dr. Willard recalled. The casualties were mostly warblers, but also thrushes, sparrows and others. On the way back to the museum, they carried plastic bags bulging with roughly 975 dead birds.

As news of the episode ricocheted around the world, public outrage was unlike anything the managers at McCormick had seen. Calls and emails poured in. The American Bird Conservancy took out a full-page ad in the Chicago Tribune with a headline reading: “One Night. One Building. 1,000 Birds Dead.”

Ms. Clark said she reached out to the Field Museum, federal wildlife officials and bird advocacy groups with a question: “What can we do so that this will never happen again?”

Some of the earliest research on how to make glass safer for birds was conducted by Daniel Klem Jr., an ornithologist at Muhlenberg College in Allentown, Pa. He found that falcon silhouettes were not effective. Birds did not register them as predators and simply flew into the adjacent glass. Instead, to effectively deter birds, the glass needed a pattern over its entire surface. A distance of no more than two inches would prevent even tiny hummingbirds from trying to dart through, he said.

Eventually Ms. Clark and her team decided on the dots. The treatment cost $1.2 million, paid for by the state of Illinois. Ms. Clark chose the pattern herself, and it was installed in a hectic three-month period last summer to be in place for fall migration.

Visitors don’t seem to even notice the dots from the inside, she said. She knows of no pushback.

#Chicago #McCormick Place #birds #bird deaths #high rise windows

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the-book-queen · 2 months ago

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sunnyastersims · 3 months ago

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Hello! I am Sunny!

I post my sim stuff here.

Masterlist

Builds tag

Cas tag

WCIF tag

TIP JAR (Thx so much!!)

ABOUT!

Hi! I'm sunny! I'm 25 and all i do is dress up sims and build houses for hours lol. I'm westcoast stationed in the US and own 5 beautiful cats.

Packs I don't have:

Business and hobbies

life and death

lovestruck

sweet allure kit

sleek bathroom kit

business chic kit

refined living room kit

casanova cave kit

secret sanctuary kit

comfy gamer kit

sweet slumber party kit

cozy kitsch kit

storybrook nursery kit

simtimates collection kit

desert luxe kit

modern luxe kit

Packs I own:

for rent

horse ranch

growing together

high school years

dogs n cats

seasons

city living

get famous

island living

discover university

cottage living

get to work

get together

snowy escape

eco lifestyle

Werewolves pack

Vampires

Realm of Magic

my wedding stories

dream home decorator

parenthood

dine out

spa day

outdoor retreat

strangervill

jouney to bantu (it was a gift don't judge lol)

crystal creations

homestyle chef hustle

moschino

tiny living

laundry day

vintage glamour

cool kitchen

backyard

my first pet

perfect patio

toddlers

movie hangout

fitness

bowling night

romantic garden

spooky

luxury party

paranormal

nifty knitting

kids room

Holiday celebration

artist studio

rivera retreat

urban homage

party essentials

goth galore

castle estate

poolside splash

book nook

grunge revival

basement treasures

greenhouse haven

bathroom clutter

everyday clutter

pastel pop

first fits

decor to the max

blooming room

industrial loft

courtside oasis

incheon arrivals

country kitch

bust the dust

throwback fit

carnaval streetwear

fashion street

modern menswear

moonlight chic

little campers

#sims 4 #ts4cc #ts4 #simblr #builds #CAS #WCIF

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slinksterfeline · 6 months ago

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"Get to know me"

I cannot get anything to format correctly. (Seriously. Examine this.)

I'm just going to go with it...

I found this and thought it might be fun to play with...

Get to know me

1. Name: Stephanie

2. Age: ?

3. City that you live in: Tucson, Arizona 🌵

4. What do most people not know about you?: Anything, and I'm fine with that.

5. What do most people know you for?: I'm actually not sure anymore.

6. Hobbies?: Animal crossing. Shopping.

7. What are your passions? So many things.

8. What do you search for in a significant other? I don't.

7. What are you most proud of? A lot.

8. When was the last time you had a significant conversation with someone you love? I haven't been able to for a while. Quite a while.

9. Have you ever collected anything? What was it? Yes, Pokemon cards, Animal Crossing cards, and CDs.

10. List 10 things off of your bucket list: I think it's bad luck.

11. What was the last thing you learned? This evening's television programming line-up.

12. How many relationships have you been in? One.

13. Turn ons: It is no way safe for me to list that here.

14. Turn offs: Too many to list.

15. Favorite food: Pizza.

16. Favorite drink: Green juice.

17. What is the best birthday gift you have ever received? I'm not sure...

18. Are you optimistic or pessimistic? I'm not pessimistic, I know that for sure.

19. Do you sleep during class? Never.

20. What is the most expensive thing you own? I'm not sure.

21. What is the cheapest yet most useful thing you own? Paper. Pens.

22. How many times a day on average do you check your phone? About three times.

23. Text or call? Call.

24. Opinion on long distance? You should probably have it.

25. What is your definition of success? I've probably achieved it.

26. Favorite song? Right now, it's "Merry Christmas" - Ed Sheeran, Elton John

27. Favorite artist? I don't do that.

28. Celebrity crush/crushes? Nope.

29. When was the last time you read for fun?it's been ages.

30. Favorite flower? I love them all.

31. What is the best gift you could receive right now? A long hot shower.

32. Any guilty pleasures? No. None. But, I do own a copy of "Guilty Pleasures."

33. What is one thing you would like to change about yourself? I'm incredibly injured right now and I would like to heal.

34. What do you search for in a friend? I don't.

35. How many times have you said "I love you" in the past month? Every single day.

36. Where did you last go other than your room/home? I went out pumpkin hunting on Halloween Eve.

37. Why do bad things happen to good people? Next.

38. In your opinion, what hurts more? Being left out or being stabbed in the eye? (Who wrote this?!) Being stabbed.

39. How many green shirts do you own? More than a few.

40. Do you like anime? Not really, no.

41. What do you invest the most time in? My work. My body. My life.

42. What was the name of the last book you read? Tiny Pretty Things.

43. What's the difference between loving and liking someone? One you like, one you love.

44. Where are you most productive? In bed.

45. List 3 things you enjoy doing with friends. Barely watching "Criminal Minds," talking and solving mysteries.

46. List 3 things you enjoy doing alone. Everything. One of the beautiful things about me and my boyfriend is he's always here and I always feel "alone," I never feel like I have to fucking entertain someone, I feel like I'm effortlessly doing things alone but I'm not, he's right here and we do nearly everything together. More specifically though, read, shower, work.

47. Do you believe world peace will ever exist? Yes, and then it won't and then it will again.

48. Do you have any allergies? No. And, magically, yes.

49. When was the last time you cussed at someone? Very, very recently.

50. What was the last promise you made? I don't make promises.

51. What was your last dream about? I don't remember.

52. If you won a trip to Hawaii and you could take 5 people with you, who would those 5 people be? I wouldn't.

53. How many countries have you visited? Canada. So, one. One country.

54. What is your favorite medium of art? (Music, dance, painting, etc.) For me to participate in? Most recently it was photography.

56. When was the last time somebody complimented you? This doesn't happen.

56. If you switched bodies with someone, how would you recognize yourself? This would never happen. I would never do this.

57. Do you consider yourself mature? Yes.

58. How many days in your life do you think you have wasted on tumblr? None. None days.

59. What is your favorite quote? I have so many... Let's go with: "May the bridges I burn light the way."

60. If you started a new religion and you had to create 3 rules or commandments for your new followers to live by, what would those 3 rules be? This sounds like so much work...

61. What is your greatest accomplishment? There's so many...

62. Do you believe in the death penalty? No.

63. What are your goals for life? Success. Success in all endeavors.

64. What do you think your soulmate is doing right now? This could take A very long time to answer but I believe he is content.

65. If you could live anywhere, where would you live? The place can be in an imaginary, fantasy, or the real world. I like where I live. Truly. I love it.

66. What were you like in 2013? Busy. Plotting revenge. And, then learning there is no such thing. Besides, I can do way better than revenge.

67. Do you have a job? Yes, several.

68. Tell us a story about your childhood best friend. I didn't have one and I won't reduce my dog to "childhood best friend."

69. If you could change one thing about society, what would it be? I'm working on each thing I could list here and I believe firmly in doing to work and then discussing it.

70. How many all-nighters have you pulled before? A lot. (Never for school.)

71. Is tumblr your favorite website? If not, then what is your favorite website? No. Right now, my favorite is anything I can use as A resource correctly.

72. What is the craziest thing you would do for a million dollars? I do not do crazy things. I just don't.

73. Does money equal happiness? Yes. Emphatically.

74. How many times have you experienced true happiness in your lifetime? Constantly.

75. How many times have you experienced true sadness in your lifetime? Sadly, more than a few.

76. What is the funniest joke you have ever been told? I cannot think of one. But, I'm sure in elementary school I heard some funny ones.

77. When was the last time you looked at the news? About an hour ago.

78. If you could say one thing to the world, what would you say? Thank you.

79. What is your favorite animal? I love them all.

80. If you could earn a million dollars by pretending to be dead for 3 years, would you do it? No.

81. What is one thing that everyone is bad at? Apparently communicating...

82. What time do you normally sleep? How many hours of sleep do you usually get? Right now, I'm falling asleep around six o'clock in the morning and I'm sleeping until noon. This is not healthy and I look forward to correcting it.

83. Does age necessarily equal maturity? No, not at all.

84. What is your favorite clothing store? I like so many. Right now, QVC.

85. In the winter- beanies or gloves? Neither, I live in Tucson.

86. Would you rather have wings or a fish tail? Wings.

87. If you had the power to erase one person from the world so that nobody remembered him or her except you, would you do it? Yes, and I know who.

88. What do you fear the most? Everything.

89. How many digits of pi can you recite? 3.14.

90. If you could travel back to one year and relive it again, which year would it be? No thank you.

91. Describe yourself in one word. Awesome.

92. Describe your last victory. That would take A very long time, but there was just a recent one, it came out of nowhere and it was great.

93. What is the weirdest thing you have ever seen? I've encountered so many...

94. What is something you will never forget? I'm never sure.

95. Would you rather forget all of the past or remember everything in vivid detail? Remember everything in vivid detail.

96. Have you ever broken a bone before? Yes, several.

97. Is it harder to love or to hate somebody? Hate. It consumes too much time and takes to much effort with no reward.

98. Coffee or tea? Coffee.

99. What are some little things that you do that have changed your life in a positive way? Sleep. Prayer. Meditation.

100. How many hours have you spend on tumblr today? Less than one.

Well, there it is... I learned a little about myself and where I am right now.

I'm really not that interested in discussing much right now.

Which makes perfect sense to me.

Bye for now.

0 notes

the7continentplan · 2 years ago

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Solo female travel. It really does feel like one of the last remaining taboos. Tell anyone who isn't one of us that you're traveling alone, and you could swear you said that you're really into intravenous drugs. I have an upcoming trip to a Caribbean island that will be my first true solo adventure- no tour group, no family, no friends. With that on my horizon, I've decided to talk about my experience with some common SFT myths- list of myths mostly lifted from this article.

Traveling, especially as a solo woman is soooooo dangerous.

For me, this one is dependent on your day-to-day existence. I grew up in a rough city, went to school in a rough city, and I live now in the rust belt. There are certainly places that are more dangerous than the places I've lived in, but let's not kid ourselves and act like America is an easy place for women. If you've lived in suburban Connecticut and going to private school your entire life, while also wrapped in bubble wrap and wearing horse blinders, your milage might vary. Other than that, if you follow the same safety rules you would at home- don't get falling down drunk without back-up, don't get arrested, know where the fuck you're going if you're going to walk around at night. And for the love of all that is good, if you decide to go to a country where women are expected to be more covered up, cover up a little. This goes triple or quadruple if you've decided to go to a religious monument. You're not a feminist for disrespecting someone's religious customs. It won't kill you, and it'll save you from unwanted attention and sunburn alike. If you're really that put off by a country's expectations of women, maybe don't go and give them your money. All in all, it's all about doing your research.

2. Eating by yourself is boring/awful/scary

I have found, far and away, that the US is the worst place to eat alone of the places I've been. I went to breakfast in Chicago once, went to the bathroom for less than 5 minutes, and when I returned my place had been cleared, my coat turned into the lost and found, and another customer seated at my table. In Spain? Was never once a problem. I have become an enormous fan of eating alone. My favorite eating alone experience recently was actually on an AirFrance flight from Paris. Me and an elderly, stereotypically Parisian were sitting in the row directly behind premium economy and had had the supreme good luck of having an empty middle seat between us. Airplane food is not typically a fan favorite, but AirFrance does pretty well. Camembert, beautiful little sandwiches, genuinely good wine out of tiny bottles, and an even smaller bottle of cognac with a Madeline to finish the meal. I made that meal last an hour. I stared out of the window at the Atlantic Ocean, savoring the experience of being in transit. Of what it felt like to come home. If you need a place to practice eating alone, try it on your next flight. You're probably not going to read that book anyway.

3. You travel solo because no one likes you

Yeah, maybe some people do this. Good for them! I support women's wrongs. Be a bitch, collect passport stamps. Work from 'home' in the South of France. I love you. But even if you aren't a bitch, adult friends are hard to plan things with. Someone's got a baby, someone's got no money, someone only wants to go to Italy, and another only wants to go to Japan. There's no shame in not wanting to wait for everything to line up perfectly to go with your friends- or even with your partner.

Uh-oh. I just heard the record scratch. I sometimes have a hard time even convincing other solo female travelers of this. Yes, I have a lovely committed SO of over a year. Yes, it would be lovely to take them along. But our budgets, schedules, and interests don't perfectly overlap. We like traveling together- we even survived a great American road trip in a microscopic car- and we in fact plan to go to Italy together sometime next fall. However, I'm a big believer in maintaining your individual personality in a relationship. I was a traveler before them, I am a traveler now, and I would still be a traveler if we ever parted ways. Me traveling alone doesn't mean anything about my relationship, except that one of us has more PTO than the other.

The comradery I share with fellow STFs- including any women who might read my words and yearn to travel even if you haven't yet- is more meaningful than I can describe, and the friends I have made in this pursuit are more meaningful than I can say. I met a girl on my first leg of a flight who was also going to be traveling solo. We parted after that first flight for different continents, but we meet up for drinks once a month or so. I've met dozens of women that I have mad fleeting, but important, friendships with that I've met in tour groups. Do they hear my work drama? No, we don't know each other. But they like my Instagram posts, and I text them whenever I have a question about somewhere they're been. One girl and I had a riveting and deeply philosophical conversation while I was on my lunch break from the night shift, and she was stuck in the Istanbul airport due to 4 consecutive flight cancelations. And in my upcoming trip to Australia, I will be returning back to the US mere days before a college friend will touch down in Sydney. We tried really hard to make being there at the same time work, but it just didn't. When we finally admitted we couldn't make out schedules work, we parted with the knowledge that we would still be thinking of each other as we planned an experienced.

4. If you are going with a tour group, you aren't a real solo traveler

Yeah, sure, no true Scotsman. If I got my dumb ass on the plane by myself, booked and planned and dreamed by myself, landed by myself, got a taxi to a hotel in a foreign country by myself, and then proceeded to travel with 2 dozen absolute strangers, I booked a solo trip. Solo doesn't mean alone. You can book tours, make friends in hostels, and maybe even meet up with friends for part of your trip. Any part you do without a trusted other makes it solo. Most people won't ever have that level of independence. So, if you're a solo travel purist, and for you that means no tour groups, that's fine. But let's not undercut what tour group SFTs are doing.

Also- solo with a tour group is a great step toward true solo. That's what it was for me. I started with tour groups, and now I'm venturing into 100% solo. But! For me, that's still going to included booked day tours and trying my damnedest to make friends at the hostel. And I am not going to stop going on group tours just because I've done some trips without a group now. For example, for my 2024 Thailand/Australia trip, I'll be doing the Thailand section with a group that includes one of my college friends. This will actually be the first time I travel international with someone I DO know, though I will be getting in a day early and exploring on my own. My rule of thumb going forward is to use tour companies, such as EF or G Adventures, for countries where I will need a translator. Any English or Spanish speaking countries, or countries where the majority of people will speak those languages, I won't be doing a tour for. I will be using tour groups when I want to have experiences that are difficult to plan for if you aren't local or if you didn't book way ahead- such as St. Paddy's day in Dublin or watching wildlife migrations in sub-Saharan Africa.

5. Hostels are nasty and you're gross for staying in one.

I've stayed in some really nice hostels! Again, just do your research. Hostelworld.com makes it very easy. If you're cool with sharing a bathroom you could get your accommodation for the week for the price of a hotel room for one night.

6. All of those vacations are a waste of money.

We all make different financial decisions. For me, I don't get my hair or nails done professionally, I bought a sensible car and paid off the note, and I live in an affordable city. I have a good job. I have savings set aside for retirement, emergency fund, wedding fund, and to pay for tuition for my master's program each semester, with a percentage of my income going to each of these accounts every week. Travel is the luxury I chose. As long as it's not cutting into my rent money and it makes me happy, it isn't a waste.

7. Traveling is only for rich people.

Firstly, travel doesn't need to be super expensive. My entire budget for Puerto Rico is $750. There are lots of great destinations, that you can get to by driving and you can camp there. The KOA network was great for me as I was just starting out.

International travel is a little bit of a different animal. For most Americans, Europe is likely completely out of the question. However, not being a trust fund baby doesn't necessarily mean you can't travel internationally. For me, 6.4% of my weekly income goes to travel, plus all bonus and any OT I manage to pick up. In 2022, I worked about 100 hours' worth of OT, which paid for everything in my Morrocco trip except for flights. I am on track to work about 180 hours' worth in 2023. For me and my household, this budget and the tradeoffs of me working long hours are worth it to support the travel lifestyle. Another household could be in our same situation and ultimately decide it's not worth it. Budgets are about what works for you!

8. You're not really a traveler if you haven't been to (insert city/country/attraction here).

No, I haven't seen the Louvre. Yes, I am a traveler. And vice versa for those who've only seen European capitals. Is it my cup of tea? No. But you're seeing and experiencing new things that interest you and I love that. The only people I'll really make a face about are the all-inclusive resort folks. It's your money if it's really important to you to sleep until noon in Antigua, but unless you've seen something beside the resort, you aren't a traveler.

I tend to feel like I'm not 'really' a traveler when I think about the fact that I've only actually been to 5 countries. Social media, especially if you follow a lot of travel Instagrams or have friends from traveling, can make you feel like everyone has been to at least 20 countries. It's just a basic probability problem though. If you're on a group tour, you're more likely to have people who go on 2-3 trips a year than you are people who go on one trip every 5 years. This isn't because there are so many of the first kind of people, it's because the second sort have only ever traveled with a few people.

The experiences you have traveling make you a traveler, not the tally mark of countries. Every missed layover, canceled flight, rainout of the one activity you wanted to do, and bout of motion sickness on a bus going through the mountains is turning you into the independent, bull headed, worldly person you know you can be. Yes, it's fun to talk to people who don't travel about what it was like to see La Sagrada Familia in person, but it barely even scrapes how fun it is to talk to other travelers about that time that you had a 6-hour layover in the same terminal as 75 German teenagers on their way back from New York being forced to periodically count themselves off for their teacher.

9. You're so brave for doing that, and I can't do that because I'm not as brave as you.

I'm a little baby about traveling. I get really, really scared. I am always at the airport waiting for my first plane at least 80% hoping that it will get cancelled last minute. I get to hostels and have to practice what I'm going to say to people. I'm worried they'll hate me. I panic every time I get back to my accommodation because I'm 10000% sure I've managed to lose something. I'm not any braver than you. You can do it.

10. Travel *changes* you

It won't! At least, not in the style of Eat, Pray, Love. The reality is much more subtle. I feel like I walk taller now. I have more confidence in my abilities. Is that about travel, or is it just what happens in between 19 and 22? It could be either. I certainly didn't need to go anywhere to *find myself*, and neither do you. Enjoy the pyramids. You don't need to feel enlightened after.

#sft #travel blog #solo travel

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