#i will only be 20 minutes late. and $40 deep on an uber.

[bright-and-burning]

*voice of a mf who cannot accept the limitations of both time and their own body* no yeah i can totally make two pies and cranberry relish before 2pm

[oblxvion]

euphoric | eren jaeger (1)

-> pairing: eren jaeger x f!reader

-> wc: 5.4k

-> warnings: use of marijuana, smut, praise kink, degradation kink, spit kink, oral (f and m receiving), fluff

you were stressed. it was almost the end of the term, and you had spent the past two weeks studying and prepping for your exams because you needed those grades. you had been slipping a lot in your classes but you managed to bring your grades up with the help of your good friend armin. he was extremely smart and honestly, without him, you didn't even want to think about what your grades would be.

“ugh, sasha, i can’t study any more.” you groaned, bringing you head down to into the vast sea of review that you had been going over as per armin’s request. “i need a break, i feel like my brain is going to fucking explode.”

sasha looked over up from her phone and laughed. “it’s gonna be worth it, i promise. once you finish these exams, you’ll be able to relax for a bit. do you wanna smoke later ‘cause we’re all getting together later at eren’s, i forgot to tell you.”

you hadn’t checked your phone in the past few hours so you didn't know that there were plans that had been made. 

you didn’t move your head as you contemplated the thought, it sounded like fun to see everyone and ignore the work you had for at least a bit. exams weren’t for another week and a half, so you should be fine.

“yeah, i'll come.”

“yay! i’ll text the group chat and let them know that we’re gonna leave at around 6.” she squeals as she grabs her phone and starts typing away a text that you soon receive as well.

“ok, i need to nap first. plus it’s like 4 so i’m gonna pass out for a bit.” you got up from the kitchen table and made your way over to your bedroom, beginning to get comfortable. “wake me up at 5.” you yelled so she could hear from her room.

“you got it.” sasha yelled back. you could tell that she said that with food in her mouth. 

“typical.” you chuckled as you felt your body drift off to sleep.

“y/n! hey! wake up! it’s 5:30. i lost track of the time.” sasha tried to shake you awake in which you grumbled in response. 

“ugh, ur so timely.” you joked as you made your way out of your room, and into the shared bathroom. wow i look like shit you thought to yourself as you turned from side to side trying to see all of what you looked like in your oversized sweatshirt and shorts.

there was not enough time for you to get ready to look at least presentable, but you felt gross so you turned on the shower and threw your clothes into your hamper. you put on some music because who showers without music and you made sure to shave because it had been awhile since you had and you wanted to feel clean.

once you had finished, you grabbed a towel and checked the time on your phone. 5:40. perfect.

“y/n, we have like 20 minutes,” sasha called from her room. “do you think you can be ready by then?”

“yeah, i just need to dry my hair and throw on some clothes and i should be good.” you said as you walked into her room, she was pretty much ready to go, and dressed in shorts and a baggy t-shirt. no one really dressed up for these sessions because everyone was already super comfortable with each other.

“ok i’m gonna go change, i don't know if i’ll have enough time to dry my hair though.” 

“you’ll be fine. plus, we can be a bit late, they wouldn’t start without us anyways.” she says with a smile as she puts on a sweatshirt.

you made your way back to your room and threw on a pair of sweatpants, a loose fitting tank top and your favorite pullover. as you made your way back to the bathroom to dry your hair, you found yourself stressing once again about your exams to which you took a deep breathe and reminded yourself that you needed to relax and this was a well deserved break. 

after you finished drying your hair, you quickly ran a brush through it, and put on some deodorant along with your favorite perfume.

“ok sash, i’m ready.” you called from the bathroom as you fixed your appearance for the last time. 

“perfect! i ordered us an uber because i don’t really wanna drive and i know you don't like driving high.” she says as she grabs the last of her things and we make our way out the door and to the bottom of our apartment complex.

“soooo...” 

you look at her as the uber pulls over to the side of the road. “so what?”

“have u been seeing anyone recently?” sasha looks over to you as she gets into the uber after you. 

“how could i? i’ve literally been studying nonstop. i wish though.” you say with a sigh. you had been so preoccupied with studying and getting your grades up that you haven’t had the time to see anyone except friends. “why do you ask?”

“oh, it’s nothing really. i was just curious, you know, being your roommate and all.” somethings up, she’s clearly trying to pick at something and this does not go unnoticed by you.

“ok,” you laughed and shook your head. “whatever you say.”

before you knew it, you both arrived at eren’s apartment complex. for some reason, you felt anxious. you knew the boys that were going to be there but you had this gut feeling that something was going to happen.

the two of you made your way up to his floor and knocked on his door which was opened almost instantly as if he were waiting.

“sasha!” connie exclaimed, embracing the girl into a bear hug. “hey y/n.” 

“hey connie.” you smiled in response. it was really cute how the two of them were so close, it’s almost like they were twins. you made your way into the apartment and saw jean and eren, arguing over god knows what.

“hey guys!” you say as you walked over to the two of them, hugging them both. 

“y/n! it’s been a while. how’s studying with armin?” jean asks as he pulls away from the hug.

“god. don't even get me started. i am in hell. armin’s being so helpful though.” you chuckle as you walked over to eren, who was looking at something on his phone but quickly shoved it away when he saw you coming towards him.

“hey y/n.” he says with his boyish smile as he pulls you into a side hug and you notice that his hand lingers for a bit longer than normal but you smile in response.

“so, can we smoke now that they’re finally here?” connie asks as it was very clear that he was getting impatient. 

“yeah, yeah, let’s go to the deck.” eren’s apartment had a deck with was extremely nice and over time, it had become the signature smoke spot for you guys. it had an outdoor couch and a few chairs along with a small table which was perfect.

you made your way to your favorite spot which was the right corner of the couch so you could be close to the edge of the balcony and look out at the view of the city. everyone had their signature spots, it was like an unspoken rule but everyone followed it. eren next to you on the couch, sasha, jean and connie in the three chairs on the opposite side of the table.

there were some blankets already outside along with a speaker that eren played some music on to set the vibe. 

“since you guys were taking too long, i rolled us a joint so we could smoke sooner.” eren said as he sat down next to you.

“aw, how kind.” you tease him as you nudge yourself against his shoulder, earning a chuckle from him. “dibs on first hit.” 

“aw, c’mon!” jean whined, knowing that you always give the blunt to eren right after you hit. 

“i get priority since eren is my best friend.” you smirk and wait for eren to say anything but he just laughs and shakes his head. 

you and eren had always been close ever since you started school. he even introduced you to everyone, which was the reason why you were here with them now.

eren took out his lighter and lit the joint and passed it to you. you took it between your pointer finger and thumb and took a long drag. 

oh how you had missed this feeling. the feeling of being high with your friends. you passed the blunt back to eren as he took a hit himself and you exhaled the smoke.

the joint was passed around the circle until everyone had gotten a good amount of hits and it was finished. you felt your high and you leaned back into the couch as you closed your eyes.

“tired?” 

you opened your eyes and looked over to eren who’s eyes were red, just like yours. “no, just relaxing. this is nice. i needed this.”

“yeah, i noticed. armin told me that you’d been really stressed lately so i texted asking if people wanted to smoke but you didn't respond so i assumed you were studying,” he says as he stretched his arms and placed them just behind your shoulders.

“thanks,” you laughed as you stared into his turquoise eyes only now noticing how pretty they were. you had looked him in the eyes before but this time it felt different and he felt it too. but your staring was soon broken by sasha’s wails of being hungry.

“there’s food in the fridge, i had takeout last night so there’s probably some leftovers.” eren nods his head towards the inside of his apartment. sasha stood up and made her way towards the food as connie followed her.

“hey! save some for me!” he yelled as he chased after her. all that was left was you, eren and jean. there was clearly some tension in the air but you decided to ignore it.

“ain’t no way i’m gonna be third wheeling right now.” jean huffed quietly and joined the two inside. 

third wheeling? you ignored it because jean obviously knows that you and eren are close friends, nothing more.

oh, how you were wrong.

eren looked over to make sure that there was no way for the others to see the deck and he moved his arm down towards your shoulder. you were shocked by this, but in a way, it was comforting. 

“y/n?” he asked staring off into the distance.

“hm?” 

he didn't respond so you took it upon yourself to look up at him.

“what’s up?”

no response once again.

your lidded eyes becoming heavy as he looked down at you with a tender look on his face. he leaned his face closer to yours until your noses were touching.

“eren?”

his lips connected with yours, igniting a feeling inside your chest that you had pushed away when you first became close. you melted into the kiss and kissed him back in a slow and sensual kiss. eren pulled back and tucked your hair behind your ear as he went back in for another kiss. you didn’t know what to do but the feeling that this gave you, it wasn’t like any other kiss you had before.

“wanted to do this for a long time.” he whispers and rests his nose on yours. 

you didn’t know what to say in response so you pulled him back for another kiss that was interrupted by the three of them coming back out onto the deck. you pulled away quickly, hoping that no one had seen what just happened. eren kept his hand on your shoulder, but no one had asked about it so you just let it slide.

it had been a few days since you had last seen eren. everyone was texting in the group chat about plans for the upcoming days but you had to study, or at least try to study. the kiss that you and eren shared had been replaying in your head ever since it had happened. you knew that he was high and he may not remember it, but it still bugged you and you had to know.

but most importantly, this kiss had sparked feelings inside you that you had pushed away so long ago and it was beginning to get hard to consume them. eren was constantly on your mind, and you couldn’t focus on your work. 

you needed to talk to him but you didn't know how because you didn't know that he had these feelings for you and you didn't know that you still had those feelings for him. you realized that you were ignoring these feelings that you had for him because he was your close friend and you didn’t want that to ruin your relationship.

it was driving you crazy. you needed to talk to him. 

you grabbed your phone and clicked on eren’s contact and called him. it didn’t even finish the first ring.

“hey y/n! what’s up? how’s studying?” he said and you felt your heart swell at him saying your name, which never happened before until now.

“hey, can you come over later? i need to talk to you,” you sigh. this is it, you need to know if he truly had those feelings or he was just playing with you.

“yeah, of course,” he stammered. “is everything ok?”

“yeah, everything's fine, i just wanna talk to you.”

“ok, i can get a ride now if you want me to.” is he eager?

you looked at the time and remembered that sasha was out with connie and jean so she would probably not be coming back tonight.

“actually, yeah, that sounds fine. see you soon, eren.”

“ok, i’ll text you when i’m close.”

“ok,” you ended the call and placed your phone down, taking your head in your hands. you’re overreacting right? he definitely feels for you, why else would he kiss you?

“i need to shower.” you said to yourself, trying to ignore the thoughts in your head.

as you got out of the shower, you heard your phone get a text, which you assumed to be eren. walking back to your room, you heard a knock at the door and you froze. you were still in a towel and debating whether or not you should open the door for him, which you did because you didn't want to leave him standing out there.

“hey y/n, oh,” he stops and looks you up and down. 

“sorry, i just got out of the shower.” you say as you open the door and motion for him to come inside. “can you just wait a sec while i go put some clothes on?”

“oh, uh, yeah. i’ll wait in the kitchen.” he looks around and scratches the back of his head nervously. his hair was tied back into a messy bun like usual and wearing gray sweatpants with a black shirt and his chain peeking out from under it. “you good?” he asked as he took off his shoes.

oh my god, was i staring?

“oh, yeah, i'm fine. i just spaced out a bit, sorry.” you chuckle nervously, tucking a piece of your wet hair behind your ear. “i’ll be right back.”

“take your time.”

you made your way back to your room and threw hung your town on your closet door as you looked for clothes to wear. you opted for a pair of pajama shorts and an oversized t-shirt that was sasha’s but for some reason, it was in your closet. once you had finished changing, you made your way over to the mirror that was across for your bed to make sure that you looked fine.

“ok, breathe.” you exhaled and opened your door calling for eren to come into your room.

he came into your room, still clearly feeling awkward about your interaction from before. “nice room, i like the led lights you have.” 

“thanks,” you laughed and sat on the bed, motioning for him to come sit next to you, which he did.

“so, what's on your mind y/n?” he asks, leaning up against the headboard and trying to get comfortable. 

“i don’t know, i've just been thinking about some things recently, and i can't seem to get them out of my head.” ok, good start.

“like what?” he looks over at you. oh no, don't look at me like that.

“the kiss we shared a few days ago, it’s been in my head on repeat.”

eren looks confused and looks towards your mirror, “is that a bad thing?”

“huh? i mean no, it’s not, i just don’t know what to do because these feelings have come back that i pushed away from when we became close because i didn’t want to ruin our friendship. but right now, it’s consuming me and i don’t know what to do.”

“well, i wouldn’t have kissed you without having feelings for you, y/n. i don’t know how you didn't notice it. i’ve been kinda bad at hiding it.” he said calmly as his gaze remained in front of the two of you. “but if you didn’t like it, we can just forget about it. i didn't mean to make you uncomfortable.” he turns to look at you once again. 

“no, i enjoyed it actually, but...” you trail off nervously, feeling your face becoming hot. you tried to turn away but his hand grabbed your chin and turned you back to face him. 

“but what?” he says softly, looking into your eyes which caused your heart beat to pick up. he thought it was so cute how you were getting so flustered by him.

“but i don’t want to be played...” you averted his gaze.

“y/n, i would never play you.”

you look back at him, now knowing the answer that had been bothering you for the past few days. it took all your strength to not kiss him right there but he beat you to it, closing the gap between the two of you. in that moment, all your worries had washed away, feeling content and glad that you had this conversation with him. the kiss soon escalated into you and eren sliding your tongues into the others mouth. you felt yourself getting hot once again but this time, a completely different reason. eren brought his hand that was on your chin behind your head, pulling you deeper into the kiss as you melted into his mouth once again, whimpering at the feeling. eren could feel it go straight to his dick that was now straining in his pants, trying to contain himself because he didn't know whether you wanted this or not.

“let me show you how much i care for you, yeah?” he says as he pulls away for a brief second. 

“eren, please,” you whimper as his lips met yours once again but this time with more passion. eren then moved so he was on top of you, caging you in his arms as he continued to kiss you. “i want you.”

“’want you too, baby.” the pet name going straight to your core. eren moaned as he moved from your lips down to your neck, gently kissing and sucking to leave a mark. he then placed his hands at the bottom of your shirt, looking at you as if he was asking with his eyes for permission to undress you, you nodded your head vigorously and lifted your hands up so he could take it off. 

“no bra? it’s like you’re begging me to fuck you, angel.” he then brought his lips down to your left nipple, gently sucking on it while taking the other between his fingers, moving it around earning a moan from you at the feeling. he then moved over to the right and did the same action. “you’re so beautiful.”

“ohmygod please, please,” you knew you sounded desperate, but you couldn't help yourself. you had been denying the fact that you had wanted this for so long.

“use your words, tell me what you want.” he groaned and came back up to kiss you, relishing in the feeling of your lips against his.

“’wanna feel you,”

“where, pretty girl?” he sat up at looked down at you with a smirk on his face, he knew where you wanted him but he wanted, no needed to hear you say it. 

“’want you inside me eren, please,” you whined arching your back so he could get the message. he chuckled and brought himself back down towards your sternum, placing wet kisses as he made his way down to the waistband of your shorts. 

“can i?” he looked up at you and immediately saw the approval in your eyes. “you don’t know what you do to me, do you?” you whimper at his remark, lifting your hips up in the process so he could take your shorts off easier to reveal your thong and the painfully obvious wet spot. he placed a finger on your slit, dragging it down slowly, teasing you.

“stop teasing me,” you whined, trying to prop yourself on your elbows but to caught up with the euphoric feeling that you couldn't. eren slowly took off your panties to tease you even more, and threw them behind him onto the floor.

“fuck, baby. this all for me?” he looked up at you with his jade green eyes meeting your e/c ones. he could feel the precum running down his shaft, struggling to keep his composure.

“yes eren, all for you.” your breath hitched as he spit onto your needy heat, bringing his tongue down to your clit, giving it a few kitten licks before he quickened his pace and wrapped his left arm around your leg to keep you in place, not once breaking eye contact. “fuck, keep doing that, holy shit!” you could feel him smirk against your core, and if it couldn't get any better, you felt a finger at your entrance before sliding in. “eren!” he felt so embarrassed to be rutting his cock against the bed but the noises you were making were sinful and he couldn’t help himself.

you began to feel your stomach tighten as he added another finger into your hole and picked up the pace. the sensation was incredible, the feeling of his tongue on your clit and the pace of his fingers going in and out of your pussy. your slick was dripping down his fingers, it was driving him crazy. he felt you tighten around his fingers, you were close.

“’gonna, ‘m gonna cum eren, please,” your release was so close, you just needed one more push.

“c’mon baby, cum for me.” he groaned against your pussy, sending vibrations throughout your whole body and you felt the coil snap. the moan you let out was pure sin and eren thought he was going to cum on the spot. “that’s it baby, good fucking girl.” as you got down from your high, you realized that he didn’t stop, you were sensitive, eren knew that but he needed one more from you.

“eren it’s too much, fuck,” you cry out as he brings his mouth back down to your heat and you can already feel yourself getting close again, and he could tell. you came even quicker this time, your juices gushing all over eren’s tongue. he lapped all of it up, not letting a single drop go to waste, and then taking his fingers covered in your slick into his mouth.

“you taste so good, i couldn’t get enough of you.” he whispers as he comes back up to kiss you. you could taste yourself on his lips and tongue. you reach down towards his throbbing cock, but he shook his head. “this is about you, baby.”

“please?” you look up at him and he couldn’t say no. he knew that he would not last long if you did as much as place your tongue on his tip. noticing that he didn't say anything, you took this as your chance. you flipped him over so that you were on top, and you could feel how hard he was. you grabbed the bottom of his shirt and helped him take it off, revealing his perfectly toned chest with chiseled abs. he threw the shirt to another place in the room, pulling you into another kiss shortly after. you moved from his lips down to his neck and down his chest stopping at his sweatpants to pull them down along with his boxers, revealing his swollen tip leaking with precum. he was larger than average and it excited you every bit. you smirked to yourself, and placed your lips on his tip, his breath hitched at the feeling.

you began to slowly drag your tongue down his shaft, maintaining eye contact with him, just like he did with you. you then took him in your mouth seeing how his legs tensed, you began to go even further. 

eren was trying so hard not to grab your head and push you onto his dick, afraid that he was going to ruin the moment with you and be too aggressive. you then took your mouth off with saliva connecting from his tip to your lips and then went back down taking him all in your throat before bobbing your head up and down, coming up for air while jerking him off. the sounds he was making went straight to your warmth, making you wetter by the minute.

“keep doing that, fuck y/n,” he groaned as his will vanished and he took your hair in his hands beginning to help guide you on his dick. he ran his hand through his hair and looked back at you, knowing that this image will forever be imprinted in his head. his legs tensed and you felt it, he was close. “fuck, i’m gonna cum, i’m gonna fucking cum.” he groaned as he shot thick white ropes of cum down your throat, you gladly took all of it and opened your mouth to show him that you did. 

“fuck, you did so good, so good.” he pulled you up towards him as you laughed into the kiss, and suddenly you were back on the bottom. “but now i’m gonna fuck this pretty little pussy, yeah?” he aligned himself with your entrance and your mind became fuzzy with the feeling of his tip right where you needed him most. he slowly pushes himself in but you didn’t need to adjust, and he began to move at a steady pace.

“oh fuck,” eren threw his head back at the sensation of finally being inside of you, the way your walls grazed his dick, pulling him back him. it was addictive, and he couldn’t get enough of it. “you feel so fucking good y/n.”

“fuckfuckfuck, ’m gonna cum eren.” the feeling came back embarrassingly quick but you didn’t care, the feeling was amazing.

“yeah? you’re gonna fucking cum? cum on my cock. cum on my fucking cock.” eren growled as his chain was in your face. hearing him be so demanding and aggressive set something off and you felt yourself release but this time it was different, arching your back at the feeling. eren was taken aback by the fact that he made you squirt, it was the hottest thing he had ever seen.

“that’s it, squirt all over my fucking cock.” he rode you out of your orgasm and continued to plow you into the mattress, picking up his pace. he was close but not quite there yet. you had taken into account that eren was aggressive in bed but he was being gentle with you at first, and you loved every bit of it. you wanted to make it more interesting. before you could even think, your hand met his cheek, and eren looked at you with a shocked expression but his eyes grew dark with lust. 

“fuck me like you mean it, jaeger.” you growled, hoping to get a reaction out of him. and oh boy, did it get a reaction.

“yeah? fuck you like i mean it?” he slapped you across the face, and then grabbed your cheeks and spit into your mouth. “swallow it.” if you thought you couldn’t get turned on anymore, you were so wrong. you rutted your hips against his, moaning at the sensation. this side of you was so different, and eren fucking loved it. he grabbed your throat, squeezing it and making you look him in the eyes as he fucked you with force.

“look at you, never knew you could be such a slut.” the name made you clench around him like a vice, earning a groan from him. “taking my cock so fucking well.” the feeling of you tightening around his cock for the 2nd time that night was making him lose his mind, he wasn’t going to last any longer and he knew that you weren’t either. he brought his hand that was around your neck down to your neglected clit and began rubbing circles as his pace became erratic. he was so close and so were you, but he needed you to come with him, he had to feel that feeling again. 

“fuck, i’m so close baby. fucking cum with me,” he moaned as he brought his head to your neck, you brought your arms and wrapped them around him, bringing him closer to you. before you could even comprehend, you released your juices, spraying all over his pelvis as he came shortly after you, painting your insides white. he stilled, trying to catch his breath but to his shock, you flipped him so that you were on top once again.

“not done yet.” you moaned as you began to grind yourself onto his cock. eren still so sensitive from his past orgasm that he was barely holding on by a string. seeing you on top of him, the way your breasts bounce and the way you look from this angle is driving him insane. he knows that he’s not going to last like this, the way you’re riding him, he grabs onto your hips and guides you.

you’re so overstimulated, you can’t even think straight. eren is trying so hard not to cum before you, but your pussy is milking him dry and before he knew it, he came inside you once again, legs shaking from the overstimulation. you lifted yourself off him and began to frantically rub your clit as you squirted all over his chest and pelvis. eren stared at you in awe, the way you looked like when you came and knowing that it was from him was a huge boost to his ego.

you finally collapsed onto his chest, trying to calm your breathing as he wrapped his arms around you. the both of you basked in this silence, thinking about the sex you just had.

“hope i wasn’t too rough, i kinda got carried away.” eren chuckled as he ran his fingers down your back, earning a laugh from you.

“no not at all, i really liked it actually.” you looked up at him, placing your chinos his chest. 

“I'm glad, been wanting to do that for a while,” he paused, as if he was looking for the right words to say. “i really like you, y/n.”

your heartbeat quickened, and you gave him a quick peck on the lips. “i really like you too, eren.” you blushed, “stay the night.” you didn't have class the following morning, so it was fine.

“ok, will do.” he squeezed you tighter, and you utterly being exhausted, you felt yourself drift off to sleep. eren gently moved you over and walked into the bathroom, finding a small towel and cleaning you and himself up. he grabbed you a new pair of underwear from your closet and the his shirt on the floor, dressing you before he put his sweatpants back on.

you felt the bed dip and a pair of arms bring your back to his chest and press a kiss to your cheek.

“’night y/n.”

© all content belongs to oblxvion 2021, do not repost or change.

[sillyrabbit81]

Her Heavy Cross

Summary: Three years after tragedy hits, Lana she decides to start dating again. She meets Will through a dating app and they begin an online romance. After months of constant requests, Lana relents and agrees to meet and go on an irl date with Will. But is Will who he says he is? Lana is quickly pulled into an intense relationship forcing her to confront her tragic past. Will Lana face it or will she close her heart forever?

Pairing: OMC x OFC

Word Count: approx 2.3k

Warnings: swearing, recreational drinking

Authors Note: The story started as a Henry Cavill fanfiction but I changed it to be an original character, but shades of Henry are still there. Hope you enjoy the story and thanks for reading.

Part 2

Part 1

"It's a cruel, cruel world to face on your own,

A heavy cross to carry along..."

Heavy Cross - The Gossip

He's not coming. I took a deep breath in. I knew this would happen. Why did I believe for a second that he was going to show up? He was only 5 mins late, and he could just be parking his car. I was sure he said he was getting an Uber.

No, he was late, it's the first date, and he seemed like the kind of guy who is 10 minutes early for everything. His watch could be slow, and he thinks he is on time. Except everybody has a smartphone, so everyone knows the correct time.

Why wouldn't he message to say he was late? He had messaged me to say he would call late last week. If you're the type of guy who messages someone when you're going to call them 10 minutes late, surely you'd message if you were late to actually meet them.

Damn him. He's the one who pushed for a date. After nearly three months of chatting online, texting, calling, he finally wore me down. Then he doesn't show up? Dick move.

I looked around the pub again, hoping to see him come in. The pub was dark but not unpleasant. It wasn't very crowded for a Friday night. It was the kind of place you dropped into, have a few quiet ones, and head out somewhere else.

I was the only person sitting at the bar. The bar runners smelled faintly of stale beer, earthy and sweet. I breathed the smell in, letting it soothe my nerves.

Three 20-something women were sitting at a table. A group of four guys were sitting at another not far away. Each group kept eying the other off, the girls exploding into giggles when the guys looked at them. I rolled my eyes, willing the guys to get off their arses and talk to them.

I looked over to two guys in their 40s drinking wine. They seemed so in love sitting there playing with each other's hands. I could see them playing footsie with each other under the table. One of them caught my eye. Sprung. I smiled briefly and looked away.

I jumped as the shrill ring of the pokie machines spilled out of the gaming room. I needed to calm down. I took a drink from my vodka. I wanted a cigarette.

I rechecked my outfit. I shouldn't have worn a white skirt. I don't know what I was thinking. Looking down, I noticed a bit of my bra was visible. I pulled my baby blue singlet up. I should have worn jeans and a t-shirt. Wasn't dressing like this false advertising?

The shirt felt tight. I sat up straight and checked for fat rolls. Then I slouched and checked again. Nope, not a good look. I ran my hand over my hair, checking to make sure it's still neat. It didn't feel frizzy. I put a stray curl behind my ear.

I looked at my phone again. No messages. Maybe...

"Hello, excuse me," a voice from the stool next to me said. I flinched. That was Will's silvery voice. I smiled, relief easing over me.

Turning around, my smile faltered. That's not Will.

The man sitting next to me was living proof God had favourites. He had dark curly hair, a bit long on the top but short on the sides. He had blue, almost green eyes framed by thick, dark eyelashes. Coarse stubble covered but didn't hide his strong jaw and dimpled chin. He was an Adonis. A Hellenic God brought to life.

I wanted to run a finger along his jaw, feeling his skin and prickly hair. I shivered.

"Sorry, I just saw your phone cover, and I wondered if you could help me? I'm sure I've seen that symbol before. What's it's from?"

Simultaneously, my jaw dropped, and I tried to swallow. I made a strangled noise from my throat and started to cough. I grabbed at my drink and took a huge gulp, regretting it instantly as the vodka and bitter soda caught me off guard. I managed not to spit it out, barely.

The Adonis patted me on the back as I choked. "Are you ok?" he asked.

He wasn't from around here, English like Will. But Will doesn't look like this guy. The Adonis was looking at me, his eyebrows coming together. Oh yeah, he asked me something.

"Uh," I cleared my throat. "Ah, it's the Allomantic table of elements from Mistborn," I explained.

He smiled. I giggled. I. Fucking. Giggled. I felt the heat in my cheeks.

Still smiling, Adonis raised an eyebrow. "That's where I know it from. They are great books. Have you read other Brandon Sanderson?"

He was built like a rugby player. His shoulders were broad, and he had thick thighs. I could see the definition of his muscles through his dark denim jeans. He was wearing a light grey knitted jumper. It was so light and thin that it clung to his chest and tufts of dark hair poked out the top. He had pushed his sleeves up, exposing his forearms which were, like every part of him it seemed, toned and defined. Everything about this guy screamed masculinity.

He was very likely out of my league. Although he looked around his late 30s, guys who look like him are after 22-year-olds, not girls who were 30 last birthday. Yeah, that was it. He isn't hitting on you; he was actually curious. This realisation was what I needed to stop being a dribbling mess and return to a normal state of being.

"Yeah, I have a bit. I'm really enjoying The Way of the Kings." I felt my shoulders relax. I hadn't realised I was clenched up.

"Yeah, I've read that too. It's great. My name is Liam, by the way."

"Lana," I replied and stuck out my hand. He took my hand and shook it firmly. His hand swallowed mine.

"Pleased to meet you, Lana," Liam said in an almost formal way. He was still holding my hand. I felt the return of the Dribbling Mess. His hand was so warm. My stomach reminded me of a book I  read as a kid, 'there was an old lady who swallowed a spider, that wiggled and jiggled and tickled inside her.'

"Yeah, you too," I managed. I tried to take as much of my Australian accent out of the reply as possible. He sounded so posh, and I sounded like a bogan.

He smiled again, or did he smirk? He let go of my hand. I was barely able to stop myself from putting my hand to my cheek to feel the warmth still there. I smiled back at him and turned back to the bar. My hand went to my cheek.

"Can I buy you a drink?"

I looked back at Liam to make sure I had heard right. Yes, he was looking at me expectantly, his finger pointed to my drink. "What are you drinking?"

"Vodka, soda and fresh lime." It was my usual drink, and I said it instinctively. I could say the order even when I'm three sheets to the wind.

Liam signalled the bartender and ordered. I took the time to calm myself. I counted to 5, breathing deeply through my nose and out through my mouth. It worked, and my muddled thoughts cleared.

I had forgotten Will. I supposed it's not a good look for a random guy to buy you a drink when you're supposed to be on a first date. But then, Will wasn't here. I checked my phone, no messages or emails. Nothing.

Liam got himself a beer, grabbed my drink and stood up. "Would you like to go to the beer garden? It's a nice night out, and I'm really enjoying this Sydney weather."

"I uh... I'm waiting for someone."

Liam sat back down. "Surely they can find you outside when they get here. It's not that big a place."

"Yeah. I guess, but..." I was interrupted by the group of women I had seen earlier. They were bouncing as they stood, eyes flashing and huge grins on their faces.

One of them asked, "sorry, excuse me, are you, Liam Cross?"

Liam looked at me. His eyes clouded for a moment, and then an awkward smile was plastered to his face. He looked back at the women. "Yes, I am. Would you like a picture?"

Excited squeals and jumping came from the women, but I zoned out. Liam Cross. What the fuck? I stared at him. How the hell did I not recognise him? I've watched nearly everything he has done since he started acting.

I never really thought much of him playing superheroes or spies. Then I saw his last movie where he played a magic enhanced warrior, and he entered my fantasies. A strong, rough, capable man of action with a heart and moral code, what wasn't to love?

My God, it really was him. Liam Fucking Cross.

Liam cleared this throat, and I snapped back to reality.

"You're really him," I said.

"Sorry?" Liam cocked his head to one side.

"You're really Liam Cross."

"Oh yeah. I am." Liam grinned.

"I'm sorry I didn't recognise you. I don't know. I guess it didn't even enter my head, even when you said your name."

"And here I was thinking you were playing it cool," Liam said.

I scoffed, and before I could stop myself, I said, "yeah, nah, nothing about me was cool from the moment I laid eyes on you." I wanted to die.

Liam laughed, a proper belly laugh, and his shoulders seemed to bounce up and down. "Well, alright then, you weren't playing it cool. But it's ok. I don't need to be recognised by everyone I meet."

"Yeah, but I should have recognised you. I've seen heaps of your work." Just stop talking, Lana!

Liam waved his hand. "Don't worry about it. Where were we before we were interrupted? Beer garden, you and me."

I nodded. I grabbed my bag, and Liam took our drinks. "After you," he said, gesturing and inclining his head.

As I walked outside, I could feel my skin heat up. It was a warm March night and only slightly humid. A cool breeze was coming in from the harbour. We were close enough to smell the salt in the air.

"Where did you want to sit?" I asked. Only one bloke was having a cigarette outside, so plenty of tables to choose from.

Liam looked around and indicated to the tables down the back. "Down there, I'm less likely to be noticed there."

"That must suck."

"Yes and no. I like that people like my work and want to tell me and meet me. It feels good. It's just that sometimes, like now, I'd like some private time."

We sat down, Liam with his back to the pub. I sat opposite him.

"If you want some private time, why go to a pub?" I said. I covered my mouth. "Sorry, it's not my business," I added.

"Direct, aren't you?" Liam's lips twitched. "I am also here to meet with someone."

"Oh shit, Will." I rechecked my phone. "30 minutes late." I sighed, "I think I got stood up."

"Really? He must be an idiot." My eyes widened. Liam's lip twitched again. Was he laughing at me? "How long have you been dating?"

"This was supposed to be our first date. We met online, been chatting for a few months." My voice was quiet.

Will isn't coming. The realisation hit me, and I felt like I'd had a brick hit my chest. I turned away from Liam. If I was going to cry, I wasn't going to cry in front of him. I'm an ugly crier.

"Oh, Sweetheart, I'm sorry." Sweetheart? It must be an English thing because Will calls me that too. "Have you called him?"

I shook my head. I didn't entirely trust myself to speak yet.

"Why don't you?" Liam asked. "If he has a flimsy excuse for not coming tonight, then at least you'll know where he stands, and you can stop worry about it."

I took a few deep breaths. "I guess you're right." I got my phone out of my bag and stood up, "Give me a minute?"

Liam nodded. Twitchy lips again. What's with that?

I walked a couple of metres away and called Will. I started to pace, glancing at the back of Liam's head every few steps. Liam's phone began to ring. After a few rings, Will picked up.

"Hello Lana, how are you?" He sounded nonchalant. Did I get the day wrong then? No, I was sure I had it right. I had checked his message so many times.

"I'm ok. I am waiting for you at the pub." I paused and looked at Liam. He was on the phone too. "Did I get the day wrong?"

"No, you didn't. I'm here." I let out a breath I didn't realise I was holding.

"That's great. Did you just arrive? Can you see me?" I looked around. I couldn't see him. I looked back at Liam. He was still on the phone but had turned in his chair and was looking at me.

"I can see you. You can see me too," Will said. I turned around in a circle. I still couldn't see him.

"I'm sorry, I can't see you at all."

"I'll come to you then," Will said.

Liam got up out of his chair and walked towards me. Liam was close now, and he stopped. Liam hung up the phone, and the call with Will went dead.

My heart thundered in my chest. I could hear the blood rushing through my body with each tremendous beat. The ground seemed unstable, and I wobbled. This isn't happening. It can't be happening.

Liam bent to my ear, his breath tickling my neck. His lips brushed my skin as he whispered in a low voice, "I'm right here, Sweetheart."

Part 2

[braden-holtbys]

Wonders of the Younger

A/N: Hey all! I’m back at it again with a fic of one of my mans, Alex Iafallo. As always, part of it’ll be under the cut.

You and your friend had just moved to Manhattan Beach about a week ago from a small town near the California/Arizona state border. Sure it was a bit more expensive to live in such a beautiful area, but you couldn’t complain too much since it was better than being in the desert. To be honest, you both were still getting yourselves familiar with the city especially after spending a couple days moving into your two bed apartment. 

“Hey Y/N, you wanna go surfing?” your friend, Sarah, asked. “The weather’s perfect!!”

“Yeah, why not,” you responded as you got up from the couch. “But you should know that I’m still not very good at surfing.”

“Hey what counts is that you still have fun right?” Sarah asked once again, with an excited tone in her voice.

“Aha yeah true,” you added as the both of you started to get ready. 

It wasn’t like you were in a hurry to go since it was literally a fifteen minute walk from your place to the beach. At the same time, you just wanted to be in the water already. Luckily, you both were ready to go and the walk was quick.

You picked a spot to sit down, and you watched Sarah go to the water first as she surfed. It felt like a good twenty minutes before you decided to join in the fun and give surfing another try. 

“Hey look who decided to come in,” Sarah said playfully as she swam next to you.

“Yeah, I can't get better if I don’t try, right?” you asked as she nodded. It felt like hours passed by while you surfed. It was great, even if you fell off your board a few times since it seems like the problem for you was perfecting your form. 

2:54 pm 

“Hey Y/N, are you ready to go?” Sarah asked as she swam closer to the beach.

“Oh yeah, we’ve been here for a while,” you replied as you caught up with her. You both got off your boards and walked on the sand. Of course, you hated how the sand stuck to your feet when they were wet. A terrible feeling, truly. 

The both of you were deep in conversation about what you two were doing the rest of the day and tomorrow, barely paying attention to whatever else is going on. You were startled as you accidentally bumped into someone. 

“Oh my gosh!! I’m so sorry, I wasn’t paying attention,” you exclaimed. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah, I’m fine,” the man chuckled, seemingly unbothered. “You good? I’m Alex by the way”

“I’m good too. I’m Y/N and this is my friend Sarah,” you replied as Alex smiled at your friend. 

“Hey, not to sound weird but you seem new at surfing. I can give you some pointers if you’re interested.” Alex stated. 

“Oh I’d love that! I’m not that good at surfing and she’s better than me,” you stated as you took out your phone. “Here, you can put in your number.”

“For sure,” Alex said as he quickly put in his number. “There ya go, you can text me anytime Y/N. Anyways, my friend’s waiting for me so I gotta go. It was nice meeting you both.”

“Yeah, nice meeting you too,” you and Sarah said in unison, waving goodbye as he walked away. You both walked off and lord, he’s good looking. 

3:23 pm 

“Oooohhhh, he’s cute,” Sarah said as she unlocked the apartment door. You nodded in response, putting your board against one of the walls. You decided to take out your phone and text him real quick so he can have your number.

“I guess he’ll be my new surfing instructor,” you cooed. 

The next few days turned into a couple weeks and you both have settled in your apartment. You’ve also been able to keep in touch with Alex and meet up with him at the beach so he can help you with surfing. And honestly, it’s been going great. You loved hanging out with him even though sometimes he’d be away for a week or so at a time. Sometimes you’d think you did something wrong when he didn’t text back, but you’d be over it since you figured he was busy and forgot to reply. 

Saturday, 7:03 pm

You and Sarah had decided to go to one of the local bars just to get out and have some fun. Sarah had come back to the table with some drinks and also focused her attention on the one of the televisions that was showing a hockey game. 

“Oh, I forgot that the Kings were playing tonight!” She raised her voice a bit so you could hear her. God, you hated that it was crowded and loud, but it was a Saturday night so you dealt with it.

“Right. I don’t really understand hockey but it seems interesting,” you responded, also slightly yelling. “We should go to a game sometime and you can teach me all about it too.”

“Oh hell yeah Y/N-”

“Kings score! Iafallo scores with his fourth of the season and puts the Kings in the lead for the first time tonight! 2 to 1, Kings,” the announcer exclaimed. “And there goes the second period. We’ll see ya back for the third.”

“Hey isn’t that the surfing guy you’ve been hanging out with?” Sarah asked, just as surprised as you were.

“Yeah????? What the hell, I wouldn’t have known that he played hockey!!” you replied with a smile. You took out your phone to text him, of course you didn’t expect him to respond immediately.

Y: ‘Hey I didn’t know that you play hockey! Nice goal btw!’

A: ‘Hey glad you caught the game… And thanks!’

Y: ‘You’re on a road trip right?’

A: ‘We are and should be coming back late tonight. Something on your mind?’

“Oooh who are you texting??” Sarah asked, a smirk on her face.

“It’s Alex. I’m surprised he responded quickly,” you responded.

“Are y’all gonna hang out again? Do you know?”

“I haven’t asked but he said they’re coming back late tonight and I don’t want to seem too pushy in asking to hang out. I mean we’ve been hanging out a lot lately and I’m sure he has other friends he wants to hang out with,” you stated, frowning a little. 

“I’m sure he likes hanging out with you,” Sarah said, putting a hand on yours to reassure you to try to not overthink.

“Yeah, you’re right.”

Y: ‘Nah, not really. Just let me know when y’all get home so I know you got back safe.’

A: ‘Ahah will do. Maybe we can hang out tomorrow or Monday if you’re not busy, yeah?’

Y: ‘I’ll see ya Monday. I want you to rest up tomorrow.’

A: ‘Sounds good. Anyways, I’ll text ya later.’

You both continued to watch the game at the bar with it going into overtime. It didn’t take long for the Kings to score once more, ending the game with a 3-2 score. Sarah had called up an Uber since it was already past 10 pm. It was about a 20 minute drive back to your place and you both immediately went to bed. You were too tired to scroll through your Instagram or any of your socials, even if it helped a little to fall asleep. However, you saw a notification pop up that Alex had found and followed you on Instagram. Surprise, surprise. 

You laid in bed with your eyes closed, but your mind felt like it was going 40 miles an hour. You wondered if Alex liked you. Sure he’s hot and looks like he can get with whoever, but you still wondered as you both continued to hang out. You didn’t want to ruin anything of course, but you opened your eyes again only to see that it was just past two in the morning. You checked your phone real quick to see that Alex did follow through and had just texted you that they landed. Smiling, you texted back with just a ‘glad to hear’ and went back to sleep. 

Was this one of the many wonders of the younger? Somehow your heart felt full, even though you had just met Alex weeks ago. Maybe there is something more.

[popculturebuffet]

Jake Reviewcaps Stuff: X-Men Evolution: The X-Impulse

Two of the series most popular characters, and one of its’ more popular ships: Jean and Xavier try to lead kitty away from charming asshole Avalanche whose trying to use her for crimes, but have trouble due to having taken stupid pills before this episode. Meanwhile Kurt and Scotty follow Logan as he confronts Sabertooth for the first time and gets cars thrown at him. No really. Abusive Romance, Flying Cars, and probable Gilmore Girls refrences under the cut. 

So yeah i’m doing another one already. This pace MIGHT slow eventually, as I want to get through the show faster.. but this episode gave me a ton of material to work with so I wanted to strike while the iron was hot. So as I mentioned last time the show started with slowly shoveling characters in one at a time, giving each time for focus and to breathe a bit. So with Nightcrawler and Toad out of the way it’s time for Shadowcat and Avalanche.. who happen to be one of the biggest ships for this show.. and also one some don’t like. Me, i’ll form an opinon as I go as I don’t remmeber much of them together other than him trying to join the x-men in one episode, so we’ll see. For now it’s time for some X-Impulse. Wait isn’t impulse dc? Is there a marvel character named that too? 

Yup there is! Two in fact, but somehow one is x-men related. This is impulse a member of the Shiar imperial guard I entirely forgot about because there’s like 40 or 50 diffrent members and he’s not one of hte more promeinet ones. For those who’ve never heard of these guys there the elite superpowered muscle for the Shiar Empire, an intergalactic empire whose former empress Charles Xavier dated for a while after dethroning her brother and who serve either as allies to our heroes or people for them to beat up depending on if someone sane is in charge that day or not, and who often have members killed to show off some new baddy, hence why there’s been three impulses apparently.

 Their based on the less military, more heroic and more fleshed out if still hugely sized,  legion of superheros from dc, which Guard co-creator David Cockrum was one of the  most famous artists for and originally actually CREATED Nightcrawler as a legionnaire, but he was rejected for being too demonic and thankfully recycled into the rougish religious elf we know today. The Guard were as far as I can tell made as a wink and a nod toward that and a gentle jab at the competition and is far from the first or last time either side would make characters based on the other side. I also bring up the Shiar because despite being a sizeable part of the X-Men mythos in the comics.. they’ve BARELY been used outside them. Cartoon wise only the 90′s series used them, though to be fair....

Given Evolution had both hinted at exterterstials apparently, and was planning on doing the Phoenix Saga in season 5, so they MIGHT have used them eventually, but I somehow doubt it and WOlverine and the X-Men didn’t live long enoguh to even consider it. As for the movies they were considered too ungrounded for them and thus were basically exiled from appearing on film for 20 years. Now the Shi’ar aren’t perfect characters, the fact before he took the throne himself Gladiator would just obey whatever assshole took the reigns due to some misguided loyalty didn’t help, but they could be used intrestingly and the guard are at least intresting in a fight, so it is a shame they couldn’t be used till recently and hopefully with the fox merger the mcu will put them to use at some point. Also for those curious if they showed up in any other cartoons.. nope. According to wikipedia, their mentioned in Avengers; Earth’s Mighteist Heroes (Which will also be covered here some day) and Legion (probably too though also probably not episode by episode if I do), and show up in two of the video games, with Ultimate Alliance being the biggest role outside of the 90′s cartoon from the looks of it, having the well, alliance, head to shiar space to get the mkrann crystal and battle with the guard and deathbird. Anyway, i’ve spent enough time on this weird sidebar, let’s get on with the actual episode!  We open with a pretty good scene. We meet Kitty Pryde, your average teen whose having a weird flying nightmare.. emphasis on weird as it is a bit wonky, but the idea is fine enough.. as is the result where she finds herself having fallen to the basement and FELT it, her panicked parents coming down and Kitty only being able to sob about having fell, her mom putting it off to sleepwalking.. until her dad notices her pillow and blanket fused into the celing above, which only makes the poor girl more upset. It’s a good, tense scene and a reminder that wether your mutant powers are benign or not.. having them awaken can still be traumatic as hell, and uses this world NOT having them be a public concern well: Kitty has NO IDEA what’s happening to her, no one to turn to and is understandabily terrified. For all she knows her body is breaking down and she might not be tangible again, not an unresonable fear given her comics counterpart once ended up in that very situation due to taking some heavy damage in battle from an energy charged harpoon.. from a guy named harpoon because even Claremont had an off day with names sometimes. My point is it’s a very good scene. Naturally Charles notices from cerebro.. and with a weird computer thing that somehow fully researchs who she is because tha’ts not creepy, but It is somewhat understandable. Cue the credits.  We then get a REALLY pointless throwaway scene with Kurt, now having’ been at school for long enough to be late several times apparently, late again and running into Mystique, in her guise as principal before Scott thankfully rescues him. Why Mystique is confronting her son like this I dunno, but what I really don’t is why this scene is here at all. It could’ve easily been replaced with a throaway line about Charles only wanting to have one student miss midterms or not wanting to arouse too much suspcion with the facultiy by taking too many of the kids out of school. Instead we just get this scene to establish their home. And yes they could’ve just needed to fill out the episode.. but there’s plenty of ways, that i’ll mention later, this minute of screentime could’ve been used better and we really didn’t need a whole scene of them to set up that they’d be home for their subplot this episode.  Back in scene’s that actually matter, Kitty is trying to sneak off to school but her mom stops her, with her family apparently having agreed to keep her home but Kitty just wants some normalcy and her family won’t even talk about it, so her mom relucntantly agrees. I can’t blame Kitty: even if it’s a terrible idea to go to school while she has no idea what’s happening to her and can’t control it as far as she knows.. she’s also a scared kid whose body is changing in ways she can’t fully grasp, and unlike puberty, which mutation is a mild metaphor for, there’s no deep years of study on it or how it changes a body: she has no idea what’s going on and just wants to grasp onto SOMETHING normal while she’s clearly not. It’s some well done character stuff.  Meanwhile  Jean and Chuck are on their way to what i’m assuming is that same old place, sweet home Chicago since that’s where Kitty is from in the comics and they had to fly there anyway. Jean questions why her.. out of the three junior x-men so far she’s the least intresting. Charles explains he thinks she can reach Kitty which.. makes some sense. Jean is uber popular at school, easy to get along with and endlessly nice, so she’s a good choice. Another likely part of it, and why not scott, is scott’s powers: it’s a lot easier to sell her parents on powers doing good with someone who can lift objects versus someone whose constantly cursed to never open his eyes, and this way kurt has his buddy back home so he dosen’t feel lonely his first time without his new dad. Now granted I question why STORM didn’t come with them, as she seems like a good choice and it’d be a nice nod to her bond with kitty in the comics, but I suspect it was simply easier to just have two x-men to focus on. Maybe she was busy getting Evan for two episodes down the line...

So then we get.. Charles being really, REALLY dumb.. like out of character dumb. See in the comics when the X-Men came to recurit kitty, they all came in civlian clothes, though ironically Jean wasn’t with them for the initial meeting because even more ironically she, Scott and Kurt were split off into their own group to try and recruit Dazzler, and Charles was nice and polite about it and promoted the school as well. a school. Granted Kitty’s parents didn’t know about her phasing here and Emma Frost was also trying to recurit kitty for HER school for gifted youngsters.. but still, there’s NO reason for Charles not to use that sort of pitch to get into the door, especially since as we learn in the scene after this Kitty’s a straight A student, retaining her deep intelgence from the comics, so there’s an easy foot in the door before he drops the mutant part in. Instead he just casually mentions he tracked her that he’s diffrent and comes off really fucking creepy and naturally they say fuck no to that. LIke.. how do they know he’s not with the goverment or forming a teen militia or just a pedophile who happens to be a mutant.. they do not and their already scared. So chuck gets a well earned door to the face. And thus I get to introduce a new running gag: The Chuck, you Blockhead, Count,. Now granted the obvious name may be the xavier is a jerk count, which i’ll probably also do but that’s more for being an asshole, like he often is due to poor writing or currently pragmatisim in the comic. No no this is for when Chuck is just out an out an idiot. Plus I love a good Charlie Brown refence so Chuck,  You Blockhead Count: 2 It’s at 2 since we also have last episode where Toad showed up with his own uniform, and attacked kurt.. and Charles did nothing and questioned nothing about that. And now I mentioned that other count Xavier is Jerk Count: 1 The Scott thing is more in character but for having his test be.. have a grown woman chase a teenager with Lightning. Storm was involved too but I doubt she’ll be an asshole as much so she’s safe for now. So having throughly botched it Xavier decides to have them split up, gang: Xavier will go to social services to find out more about lance since he’s an orphan, while Jean will infiltrate the school. Now while watching this I questioned why no one in school at all questioned a random teenager they never met roaming the halls.. but odds are jean just used her telepathy to either make anyone who saw her think she belonged there or masked her self from them seeing her, the latter being a signiture move of both jean and her teen self brought to the present because complicated bollocks, so fair enough. I also thought charles was just fucking off but accoridng to the wiki he was at social services, so he avoids another count and was doing something useful, checking on lance before he tries to offer him a spot: both to make sure he’s a good fit after last week’s debacle and figure out the best course to legaly take the boy in if so, and if not knowing charles still find the kid a home anyway because even if he’s not x-man yet, he’s still a child in need asshole or not and Charles is a good man. Such a good man he had to be told 9 timelines ended in utter disaster and ruin for mutantkind for him to even humor breaking from his dream according to recent comics, and according to Moira’s notes STILL took a good 15 years in universe of attempted genoicdes , 1 actual genocide and his people being reduced to a nub to finally cave and even THEN he admits he still loves humanity and wants them to be better. While I did put up an xavier is a jerk count just now at his best Charles Xavier is a good if flawed man who, while prone to ocasionally making utterly terrible decisions, loves both humans and mutants and just wants peace in our time and only created the x-men to foster it.  Meanwhile back at the ranch her mansion, Logan.. senses sabertooth.. I mean even with Logan’s adept sense of smell, I question how he could smell him over the exaust of Sabertooth’s goofy metalic penis, aka his own motorcycle, but it IS part of his mutant powers. Either that or they just have a magic force bond like Rey and Kylo Ren in the sequel trilogy.. minus the sexual tension and forced face turn for the latter.. maybe just minus the forced face turn. So Logan prepares to go fight his rival, and suits up for the first time. and while it’s in a black void for.. some reason it looks REALLY badass and really gives gravatas to seeing wolverine in costume for the first time. And since he’s one of ONLY two looks to look at this episode, since Kitty and Lance don’t get their uniforms this episode, let’s talk about it. 

I fucking love it. Like Kurt’s it’s basically his comic’s costume but slightly modified.. but unlike Kurt it’s a diffrent costume than last time, going with his cool brown look that he wore for quite some time in the comics, though made a bit more orange. However it honestly STILL looks fantastic and I get wanting to go with a color that’s a bit more eyepopping in the more muted tones of Evolution. It just looks fantastic and i’ts nice to see a cartoon use an alternate costume for a character as their main look.   Logan passes a returning from school Scott and Kurt, who decide to follow him and after debating which car, Scott gestures them to his.. which is scott’s sports car from bot the previous series and the comics. Why a 17 year old has this, I can only assume because Chuck is a really good dad, really rich.. and likely knows having a bunch of teenagers around means if one of them DOSEN’T have hteir own car they’ll be borrowing his rolls royce all the time and this way he can have his nights after training free to smoke a blunt with logan while they watch the next generation and eat a pile of cheeseburgers the children dropped off while crusing around out of his lack of hair, you know why you give your teenager a car in the first place. 

Anyways while Kurt and Scott buddy up and go on an excellent adventure, with Kurt even bamfing inside and god I love this dynamic. So fucking adorable. But anyways while that’s going on, Kitty is at school being mocked by two alpha bitches for being sad despite her grades then is shoved in a locker. When then meet Lance, soon to be known as avalanche and the other mutant at school who decides to graffito tag the place.. in the laziest but somehow still coolest way possible by just taking his spray can and spraing one long streak along the lockers. Not as neat as doing an actual tag but it does more petty dumbfuckery faster so fair play to him.  Kitty begs him to let her out.. before her powers trigger again. She tries denying it when he comments on them being cool.. before he shows off his own, making the earth move under his feet, though not the sky tumbling down a tumbling down.. that’s Storm’s job. It shakes the lockers and Kitty rather than be impressed, runs like hell. But yeah, I get the feeling, even with him having evil plans for her right after.. that he does feel some attraction to her here. And as I made clear i’ts not shipping goggles.. the way he acts.. he’s elated to meet someone else with powers, to after likely being pinballed around foster care and treated like shit by his piers over it and then finding out he has a special power but is still seen as a weirdo even by his minons.. he’s elated. It’s what draws him to her: that for once he’s NOT alone, and there’s someone else to revel in the sheer power and joy he feels using his powers and even though she runs he vows he’s gonan rock her world.  Since we’re where a commerical break would be, I figure now’s a good time to talk about Lance. In the comics he had a diffrent name entirely, and avalanche was more of a one note villian who later became a retired bar owner. Here he takes bits, the long metal hair and love of his powers, from Rictor, a more heroic mutant in the comics who only started out doing crimes because he was forced to and quickly joined the original x-men’s class of mutants the x-terminators before joining the new mutants and later x-force. He’s also , as you probably know, one fo the x-men’s most prominent gay mutants, but while hinted at in comics made before this series was fully canonized years after, and like iceman who came out even later, there was no way of knowing that at the time, so it made since to use him as partial template here. It also makes sense not to use the rictor name as while it makes more sense given the earthquake motif, Avalanche is an actual villian.. and you know the obvious fact that Lance is white and Julio Richter.. is not.  Granted they COULD’VE made him latino, and used sunspot for spike to ballnce it out representation wise, but this was the early 2000′s and they cared about as much for repesentation as Jeph Loeb does. Hopefully Rictor gets an adpatation at some point outside of Logan, but I get why not here. 

On with the show. Kitty shows up late for track due to thing one and thing two, and has to run first and trips, while on the nearbye rooftops Lance and his two goons try to break into the administration building to get test answers. They don’t as Lance notices an alarm, and while one of his goons asks why he dosen’t just quake a hole in, Lance points out the obvious: If there’s obvious tampering they’ll just change the test answers.. and since he knows about kitty now, he has a better way and when questioned rather than explain her powers, he just shakes rattles and rolls. He also makes one of Kitty’s bullies trip but it only scares her further. I”m getting. serious heathers vibes here jesus.. I mean Lance isn’t nearly as bad as Jason Dean but still jesus. I need to listen to more of that musical good stuff. 

Kitty retreats from her admierer/stalker to teh autitorim, where Jean finds her.. given Jean again slipped in here without no o ne noticing and no one came after kitty , i’m thinking she use her telepathy to mask anyone from seeing Kitty come in and seeing Jean at all so she could talk in private. Granted Lance shows up right after, but odds are Jean didn’t notice him and thus didn’t think to shield him and probably isn’t up to Charles level where he can create a psychic blindspot in an entire crowd. Anyways Jean tries to comfort kitty who’s still angsting about her powers and again hard to blame her when the only other mutant she’s met is a budding psychopath whose idea of a romantic gesture is injuring one of her enmiies for her. Jean does try to calm her down, first showing she’s a mutant and admitting she was freaked out too when she got her powers.. and given most depcitions of jean getting her powers are far from plesant that tracks. She does however make the mistake of telling Kitty, already figuring this is some sort of trick and jean will throw a puppy across the room to also try and get in her pants or something, that she’s a telepath and Kitty screams at her to get out of her head. Jean truly is taking after her mentor in thef ucking up department. Lance then shows up as I mentioned earlier, and tells Jean to backoff and that’ she’s mine and you get it. Oh and as a side note Jean DOES admit to having read Kitty’s mind so she CAN read minds, and likely has gotten a surface level look of duncan’s thoughts which I feel go a little something like this mnus the actual context of when the song’s going on. 

Lance then finds kitty, whose changed into her regular outift and promises not to use his powers this time, admitting he too felt lost and scared, and wants to help her take control and help her.. and while it is partly for his own petty scheme.. I do genuinely think he means part of that, that he does genuinely wnat her and want someone like him by his side.. it’s just in his warped head doing crime and whatever he wants is the right thing to do, that control means using this power to knock down whoever’s in your way and TAKE what you deserve. 

Jean instead phones xavier and both agree that if lance fully gets his hooks in her they might never reach her and Xavier tells him to stay on her and that she can overcome lance as an obstacle.. and then bemoans that some obastacles are more annoying than others as the social services building has a large stone staircas,e a nice quip and they beat the ulitmate universe to that joke by a few years. 

Meanwhile our two best buds track Wolvie to a car park because fuck if I know why he decided to make his stand there. Probably because the writers had a cool action scene in mind as we’ll see, but it still comes off dumb though given how every other x-man has been acting this episode it tracks. Anyway Sabertooth strolls up on his demonic wang-shang-a-lang, 

Seriously I mocked it before but it bears repeating. While Wolvie has a normal looking, if still badass, bike Sabertooth’s.. looks like something Skeltor would ride after he man. It Looks like warlock is horribly stucki n the form of a motorcycle. It looks like the kind of bike on some random asshole the bikers from sons of anarchy would beat up forposing. It looks like he stole it from the biker mice from mars. It looks like the polution from it’s exaust alone is the reason big bird die. it looks like Creed just brought it off the joker and remonded it. It looks like something the battletoads bought and regretted. It looks like ghost rider’s first trike. it looks like Tooth lost his dick in a horrible acciden tand is compensating with theree metalic ones. It looks like something the BAND creed sold to victor creed here. It looks.. bad is what i’m saying.  As for his actual outfit.. it’s okay,b asically his movie outfit with osme of the skin missing. That look isn’t my faviorite of his but it works to sell him as a savage monster and fits good with the more tactical less comic booky looks of this shows costumes. 

Creed, the man not the band though  he does look like the lead singer of creed, charges at Logan who simply pops his wheel while tooth falls off the roof.. and then the most rediculous and awesome part of the episode starts.... right after Scott’s car gets hit with the bike because what else did he think was going to happen when the fighting started.  Sabertooth , who apparently has really good super strength in this universe, starts CHUCKING CARS UP THROUGH THE ROOF OF THE CAR PARK UP AT LOGAN. Points to the team while the setting for this fight is nonseical, it is WORTH IT for this, with great action as Logan dodges the cars bursting through the roof. it’s rediclous, over the top.. and UTTERLY spectacular and not just in a so bad it’s good way. Logan eventually slips through a car hole, a sentence i’d never thought i’d say mostly becasue that’s the moe syslack approved term for garages but it works well here too, and into the garage before sabertooth RAMS him with a car, ranting about it’s their “destiny” only one is left. Which seems like some weird “applying highlander logic to former goverment weapon mutants’ bollocks, but instead is foreshadowing for the end of the season. Nice touch. Scott and Kurt arrive, in uniform since even if he’s a bit more personably here, Scott still is no dummy, and they sucessfully save Logan, whose pissy about it because it was his buisness and all, but Kurt thinks he secretly loves them and Scott sarcastically agrees. Not a bad subplot and it makes up for a weird choice of battleground on logan’s cart iwth utter insanity. Fun stuff.  Back at not so fun stuff, Kitty finds lance outside the office and takes him up on his offer, and he admits they ARE outsiders, there is something wrong with them.. but instead of moping about it, they can do something about it and revel in it. It really ties into Lance as a character: He’s probably felt, due to being an oprhan and not having a stable home life likely buffeted around foster care and acting out as a result, that he really is an outsider and his powers not only proved it.. but finally gave him POWER over all the people that cast him out. The power to take what he wanted and return what he got. The power to move you. He finally had power and he was going to make them pay for making him feel like he had none and wants Kitty to join him. And for a moment it works, kitty joyfully breaking in with him and actually enjoying her powers for the first time. Meanwhile kitty’s parents showed up, Jean having called them and somehow got them to listen.. and this is what I meant by that one minute earlier. We COULD have built up Kitty’s parents guilt and fear by having Charles approach them again.. and with them panicked over her not returning from school, have him explain what happened and help her father see how wrong he’d been to hide from it or had her argue with her dad then storm out. Instead they just show up here for the first time in almost 20 minutes so we could get a filler scene of kurt being late. 

Anyways inside Lance steals the answers and Kitty is horrified to find out that “Gasp” the juvinele delinquent who hurt someone to impress her is doing BAD THINGS. Lance tries to change her grades but she refuses.. and then Jean and the Prydes show up, with Kitty’s dad admitting he was wrong, he shouldn’t of hid fro her power and shoudl’ve been a better parent.. better than her comics dad who got in bed with gangsters i’ll give him that. But Lance not wanting to loose his new sorta girlfriend knocks a bookcase on kitty and abusively tries to drag her with him.. while jean says if you go with him now, her powers will be a curse like she thought earlier... even though Kitty’s pretty terrified of lance right now and dosen’t actually want to go with him.  it comes off like this bit from final space played entirely seriously

So yeah apparently I need this too...: God Dammit Jean Count: 3 The other two are for the telepath thing earlier and the duncan thing last episode. And given the duncan thing is going to be going on till season 3 yeah i’ll need this. I’ll probably also need a WHAT DOES SHE SEE HIM HIM COUNT, but i’m playing that one by ear. But yeah kitty does the obvious and breaks it off and phases out and Lance takes it well.. by trying to destory the entire school.. my god this really is heathers! Did .. did lance kill some popular kids before this? I have questions. Jean struggles to hold things up and worries about kitty, who falls under some ruble but charles assures her to focus: She can do this.. and as we seen Chuck likely sensed kitty who phases out and reuintes with her parents before rescuing them all. Kitty realizes her powers are a gift after all and says the x-men have her best intrest and heart and Charles finally decides to have an actual discussion with the prydes which had he had one might’ve helped this episode go faster.  We then end on Lance, angry and hurt starring into the distance, when Mistque approaches in her principal disguise, saying there may be an opening for her and transforms ending with a great line “I have much to teach you, my avalanche”. Which ihs a better code name than Rictor when put like that credit where it’s do. And we’re out. Final Thoughts:  This one was a bit of a step down as you could tell: The main core of Lance and Kitty IS really strong, being a good way to breifly touch on toxic relationships. If this gets better in season 2 I have no idea but it’s a compelling dynamic here, with Kitty being terrified of her power while Lance loves his and both are what prop this episode up alongside the fun car park fight and great dynamic with Kurt and Scott. HOwever what drags the episode down is EVERYONE but Kitty and Lance, who act in character, and Scott and Kurt, who had no idea logan was going into combat and were just curious what their cool teacher was up to acts like a fucking moron: Logan, rather than pick a fighting ground where he has an advantage chooses one where sabertooth can easily use stealth and gives him an opening too as well as a garage full of weapons that nearly ends him, Xavier decides just randomly revealing he knows where they live wiill impress scared parents, Jean decides telling someone she’s in their head is a great idea, Kitty’s parents think not talking about the thing tht just happened will make it disappear, which is at least realistic if nothing else, and Sabertooth thought that was a valid choice for a motorcycle. The climax is good but feels unearned and overall this episode could've neen fantstic but is bogged down by bits of stupid, but is still enjoyable thanks to it’s emotional core. Next time, whenever that is, another popular charcter arrives as we go Rogue. Until then, follow for more reviews, like this if you enjoyed it, send asks iwth suggestions for more shows and episodes to cover and until then, stay safe and stay mutant and proud. 

[smokinholsters]

It’s a Clown’s World

“You are absolutely not going to believe this.” Amy said to Ty as he came into view coming up the stairs. “Rollo cancelled, car accident, he’s Ok but busted up some. He’s called everyone he knows to replace him and come up empty.”

Ty frowned “Let’s get over to the house maybe someone there will have an idea.”

Amy walked over and grabbed Lyndy who was playing quietly in the living room. On the way over Amy sighed “she loves clowns Ty, I was so excited for her.”

Inside Jack took Lyndy with a smile “Happy Birthday sweetheart” he cooed at her before setting her down. A second later she was after poor Remi who would let her chase him and then lay down for a cuddle.

“Our clown cancelled.” Ty told Jack and Lisa “he’s been trying to find a replacement but no luck. She loves clowns.”

“Well, I’m heading over to Fairfield, let me call the booker we use for parties and see what he can do. I’ll be back by party time, you’re all set up sweetheart and Lou’s on her way back.”

Lisa started the Porsche, hit send on the phone and backed away.

“Lisa, I trust you and Jack are good, what a pleasure to hear from you, how can I be of assistance.”

“Hey Bert, need an emergency clown for today, lunch.”

“That’s the second call about a clown this morning. No luck Lisa, sorry.”

“It’s fine, we’ll figure something out. Thanks Bert.”

The call disconnected and Lisa sighed. “Poor Amy, she really wanted this, Lyndy won’t know the difference but she absolutely loves clowns.”

She sighed again, “it’s been 40 years Lisa” she said out loud to herself then smiled “It’ll definitely still fit, if my gear is still good, why the hell not, wouldn’t hurt to look.”

Instead of heading to the office when she parked she went up three flights to the attic. She’d seen it, it was hard to miss considering it had a big Ringling Bros. stencil on it.

Lisa pulled it out and maneuvered it to the center of the room. She snapped it open and smiled, there she lay, Pipa the Clown, Registry number F16754W. With a smile still plastered on her face by the memories flooding back she removed the small folding seat, opened it and sat down. She lifted the sealed packet and ripped open the seal.

First she removed her hat which as always snapped open efficiently, the red and white diamonds still bright. Then she popped out the one piece, standing she snapped it once to allow the air to enter the baffles and it expanded. The large red and white leather shoes still soft and pliable came next. Lastly her collar which opened after she pulled the little tab.

Looking down she took a deep breath, she could almost smell the greasepaint.

The attic at Fairfield was not typical of say a home like Heartland. Treasures were stored here, antiques of all types and artwork. There were two hidden safes and a sealed refrigerated closet to hold furs through the warm months. There were no moths here, no dampness, it was temperature controlled and more importantly right now, there was a full bathroom.

First she needed to get washed. She stared in the mirror and flashed back to her first time. She had done it 4 times in her life, each exhilarating. While she got ready she thought back to the expression on her father’s face. “Circus Camp ?”

“It sounds like fun dad, we have to be in Sarasota anyway for the racing season, you said find something.”

“I figured summer school or theater or something Lisa not Clown Camp.”

“Come on Dad it says after three sessions I can perform and register my egg.”

“What ?”

“The International Clown Egg Registry.”

“You know Lisa, fine, I have no idea what your mom would have thought about this.”

“We’ll keep it between us but you have to promise to come see me perform.”

“You have my word.”

Once washed she stripped off her blouse and covered her shoulders with a big towel.

She grabbed two floor lamps and set them up then sat down on the stool and snapped open her make-up case, then adjusted the mirror. Lisa had been taught old school, it was why she was pretty sure this would work. She pulled out a porcelain bowl and began with the bright white. Measuring out white powder and then opening a container. She moved and folded with a small metal spatula and soon was back in the rhythm smoothing and folding until it was perfect. She set it aside and then started on the other colors. Lisa was the real deal, taught by pros, she mixed her own makeup to spec to match her egg. She looked over at the encased photo to make sure the colors were perfect. There was only one Pipa the Clown in all the world, and she, was always perfect.

As she spread the white foundation and let the first light layer dry she pulled off the gloves she had donned and sent a text to Amy. “Clown found and booked !! I’m running late, minor client issue, I’ll be along.”

She glanced at the response “You’re like a super hero Lisa !!”

“Super Pipa to the rescue !!” Lisa muttered reaching for the makeup.

The transformation from Lisa Stillman to Pipa the Clown once took about an hour, so she wasn’t disappointed at the hour and 20 minutes she took. Walking over to the stand up mirror in the corner she turned back and forth. She straightened her collar and pressed down her hat. She banged the edge of her huge shoe turning and stopped to adjust her mindset to a size 16 shoe.

Then she reached for her bag of tricks and refilled the balloons after checking them, she grabbed her juggling balls and filled her lollipop wand with magic glitter powder and then carefully headed downstairs. She called an Uber for a half hour and made arrangements for a pickup later at Heartland to make her escape and get back, then she sat down, began writing out cards and waited.

While she wrote she thought back to her first day walking into the Sarasota Circus grounds and being welcomed. The smell, the feel, the atmosphere was electric. For the first few weeks they worked closely with the animals to allay any fears while also taking classes in clown demeanor, deportment and appearance. There were guidelines that needed to be memorized and rules that were strictly enforced. She learned about the trains, take down and set up and she was assigned daily chores. The most exciting part though was sitting with several clowns and designing who she would be. As the first session came to an end she remembered how exhilarated she felt and how she looked forward to the next session she’d be able to attend.

She stood hidden in the doorway when she got the text that her car was on the way and snuck out as stealthily as she could but not stealthily enough. Lisa noticed Laura her manager and rushed to the car and then waved the driver to just go. She hoped she wasn’t noticed and looked back. Didn’t seem Laura had moved so she assumed she was safe.

Laura on the other hand didn’t move because she couldn’t believe what she was seeing, a clown, carrying a big bag, just rushed into a car from the house, and took off in a hurry.

Lisa in character sent a text to Amy apologizing that her client needed to be dealt with and she would be late, the clown was on the way and then turned off her phone so that it wouldn’t ring every time someone tried to contact her.

Laura immediately tried Lisa and got a message so she shrugged and dialed the sheriff.

Amy came out onto the porch as the car pulled up and Lisa/Pipa got out. She handed a twenty to the driver who promised to be back as scheduled and Pipa climbed up the stairs and bowed elaborately, then she reached into her bag and took out a big sign with the name Pipa the Clown printed on it next to a picture of a hand with a finger pointing at her.

Amy laughed “You’re Pipa, I’m Amy, good to meet you.”

Pipa nodded and put out her hand for Amy to shake and then stood. Amy looked at her or him, Amy thought her and Pipa opened her eyes wide and pointed at the door.

“Oh, of course, I’m sorry” Amy laughed and opened the door “We’re so happy you were able to come, I’m glad they could find you on such short notice.”

Pipa smiled and reached into her bag and pulled out a large phone receiver to show Amy and then she smiled and nodded.

“They called you, thank you so much for coming, the kids are inside, should I introduce you ?”

Pipa smiled and shook her head and peeked in then with pointed eyebrows raised in question to Amy.

“Go right ahead” Amy laughed again.

For the next 90 minutes Pipa kept the 9 toddlers from Lyndy’s playgroup in stitches. She did magic tricks and sleight of hand, made balloon animals, juggled and played. The adults sat back and watched her captivate the kids and especially Lyndy who Pipa made a point to focus on. The all laughed when Lyndy called her Gamma like she called Lisa and Jack was secretly happy that she wasn’t here to hear it. Lisa was a bit taken aback but as the adults didn’t seems to put two and two together she was secretly thrilled that she couldn’t fool her sweet Lyndy.

While this was all going on Jim Parker had shown up at Fairfield and walked the house with Laura. “Nothing seems to have been taken or even moved.” Laura said.

They checked the offices and the second floor and found nothing. “What’s upstairs ?”

“The attic but it’s locked and you need the code.”

“Have you called Jack or tried Lisa again ?”

“No answer on either but it’s Lyndy’s birthday today, wait a clown, I didn’t think about it but why would it come here ?”

“You know” Jim said “Lock up and I’ll take a ride over to Heartland.”

As Pipa was ending Amy brought out the cake and Pipa stayed to help Lyndy blow out the candles and while they ate cake she slipped into the kitchen to leave. Amy left Lyndy with Ty.

“You were wonderful Pipa, she’ll remember this forever, what do we owe you ?”

Pipe nodded no and then reached into her bag for the big phone and then pulled out a big credit card and pointed.

“Lisa paid, how about a tip ?”

Pipa nodded no and pointed again. “You’ve got one of those too, how about a cab ?”

Pipa nodded no again and pointed to her big watch.

“One is coming, you never speak ?”

Pipa nodded no and then pointed to the porch.

“Of course, you can wait outside.”

Pipa sat on the stoop as Jim Parker pulled up, got out and smiled at the clown on the stoop.

“You are just who I’ve been looking for, can I have your name please ?”

Pipa nodded and reached into her bag and pulled out the big card she showed Amy before with the finger.

“Pipa the Clown, that’s cute, your real name please ? Pipa smiled again and pointed to the card.

“Look, that’s cute but you were seen leaving Fairfield before and I’d like to know why you were there.”

Lou noticed the sheriff’s car and waved to Jack who looked over and then walked out onto the porch.

“Jim, good to see you, problem ?”

“You tell me Jack, can I speak to Lisa ?”

“She’s not here Jim, something up with a client at Fairfield.”

“She’s not at Fairfield Jack, I just checked the grounds, house and offices. Her car’s there but she’s not and Laura saw this clown speed off in a car before.”

It was then that Amy came out with Ty and she put Lyndy on the porch.

“Jim ?” Ty asked.

“Hold off Ty” Jack said.

“Well ?” Jim said looking at the clown “ID maybe ?”

Pipa stuck her hands deep into her pockets and pulled them out bone empty and pouted.

Every body laughed except Jim who smirked but didn’t give in.

“Look, I need to know what’s going on, did you see Lisa Stillman and what were you doing at Fairfield ?” Jim said getting annoyed.

Pipa looked over at Lyndy and held out her hands. Lyndy smiled and ran into them “Gamma cown.”

Lisa looked over at Jim and smiled then pointed at herself over Lyndy’s head just like the big sign.

It was Amy who put two and two together “Lisa, is that you ?”

Pipa turned and pouted then held up the sign.

“You’re Pipa, but when you’re not ?”

Lisa reached back into the same exact pocket she had pulled out and stuffed back and pulled out her phone. A second later she turned it around.

“Lisa ?” Jack asked.

Pipa shrugged and nodded.

“Well I’ll be, so what now ?”

Pipa smiled and mimed rubbing her face and waving goodbye. Then she turned as the Uber driver pulled up. Turned back to the crowd and pointed at her big watch and smiled.

“Go ahead Pipa we’ll see you soon.” Amy said walking over and hugging and kissing her with tears in her eyes. “You are amazing Lisa, just the most perfect grandmother.”

Lisa smiled crookedly trying to hold back a tear and stepped into the Uber.

The party had broken up by the time Lisa returned and everyone gathered in the living room with coffee and cocoa. Lisa pulled out a scrapbook and placed it on the table.

“When I was a teenager my father had interests in the Sarasota Racing circuit in Florida. Sarasota is the home of Ringling Bros. I trained as a clown whenever we went down, after three sessions I performed at an actual Ringling Bros. performance and registered my clown face with the International Clown Egg Registry. I performed with Ringling Bros four times, my father attended each performance. I rode from Sarasota to Raleigh, NC on the actual Ringling Circus train and performed for the first time. I also performed in NYC, Calgary and Antwerp. By then my father was diagnosed and my place was here. I was never serious about it of course but the memories of those faces in the audience are forever etched in my mind and no, no one really knows.”

Amy started turning pages “that’s my first parade, there I am.”

“Where, I don’t see.” Amy said.

“Juggling on the stilts honey, right there.”

“Juggling on stilts ?” Ty exclaimed laughing.

“What else do you do ?” Jack asked.

“Some fire work, juggling, breathing, I’ve never done that live.”

They sat until bedtime looking through the folder and laughing at the pictures. As the evening drew on Jack leaned over and whispered “what do you say Lis, maybe you juggle a little for me later.”

“I’ve got something else in mind for you you old coot.”

The End.

[realwomanleader-blog]

Imagine being homebound for 3 years by no choice of your own - what do you do?

It was a dark and stormy April 1 (no joke). I’m delivering pizza for extra cash, working now 2 weeks beyond my 2-week notice, when my life takes a sudden turn for the much harder.

By now all I’d known all my life is work.

I was the caregiver for my mother from the day I could walk, and she gave thanks by killing my father when I was 19. I’ve never known a soft place to land, and spent many years homeless.

Fast forward to that fateful evening in 2016, and I’m feeling pretty hopeful about my life. I’ve made steady forward progress the last 7 years. Though I’m still suffering with crippling panic attacks every morning, this side gig delivering pizza did its job - we’ve finally moved out of the congested city into a place that was at-long-last big enough to more than just live, in the smallest town in NH by land mass. I felt like I’d actually achieved something.

In fact, April 1 is the first day of our lease. I’m looking forward to letting go of this side job real soon - maybe even tomorrow - and just focus on rebuilding the business I lost in a massive case of writer’s block way back in 2007.

I’m backing out of the coveted spot for drivers when my 5-speed transmission gives its usual kickback and hops out of reverse - the old Hyundai wouldn’t last much longer. Slowing to a stop so I could get it back in gear, I catch a flash of white in my rearview.

NOT GOOD!

I slam the transmission into first and rev hard to avoid colliding with what was certainly my co-worker’s Jetta, once again parked illegally at the ONE PLACE without lights - in front of a dumpster no less! He’d been told numerous times by the landlord to not park there for that very reason, but once again, he hadn’t listened.

I felt no bump other than my old Hyundai popping out of gear (besides, I was traveling so slow my speed-o hadn’t registered at all), so I went about my deliveries. But when I came back, I was greeted by Manchester’s finest, in classic interrogative form.

Turns out, I did make contact. The dent was about the size of my hand, on the driver’s side rear door, maybe half an inch deep.

I didn’t have ALL my insurance information as they required right then, but I was working for the pizza shop right there - in all my 10 years working this gig, I’d always been instructed to direct insurance queries to my employer, which is what I did.

I was called the next day and told I wouldn’t be on the next week’s schedule. The next 6 weeks were marked with constant harassment, and zero assistance from my former employer. The co-worker apparently put it all on his personal insurance, and was allowed to keep his job another 300 days.

All kinds of wrong kept happening. When I asked for a lawyer, I was escorted out the back door. When I was pulled over in June and my car impounded (new to me car, might I add - owned only 2 weeks by then), I put in to have the decision rescinded because I was never notified - but the DMV is its own system. This wasn’t a “decision” in the legal sense, and it would not be rescinded.

The School of Hard Knocks Offers a Master’s Degree

Apparently agreeing to pay restitution to my co-worker for his out-of-pocket expenses is what screwed me, and made this no longer an employment law matter. So much for “doing the right thing.”

There was nothing I could do or say to combat the $4,870 insurance levy, nor point out the clear insurance fraud (what the heck does a passenger-side tail light have to do with a 3-mph nudge to the driver’s side?!). And every lawyer I called either never called back or claimed conflict of interest.

I’ve been homebound ever since.

In the smallest town in New Hampshire.

Without a support network.

Taxis don’t come out here. There’s no such thing as public transportation. The nearest grocery store is a 30-minute drive away. To Uber it, would be $40 one way - not counting the added fees for rural service.

My husband at the time wasn’t any help either. Two years before that happened, he’d told another woman he was falling in love with her. Three months after he said that, my first and only friend died. I was utterly alone in the world when this happened.

Losing my license only served to further degrade our nonexistent bond.

So I Helped Myself

July 1, 2016 was my last anxiety attack. I networked my butt off to land a job back in my field, as marketing director for 1 of 4 people in the world with that expertise. July 2018, I left that job for an invitation to “test” his suitcase of sex toy inventions, and the sudden 180 on every bit of advice I ever gave - but only because it now came from a 15-year-old male.

I took it as an opportunity to rebuild my business, having tried for the last year with minimal success because I had to schedule meetings around a 9-to-5. Less than 30 days later, I landed my first good client - but it wasn’t enough according to my then-husband. October 2018, I made the decision to leave him. Being homeless again was better than living with someone who would never understand what it means to love an entrepreneur.

Then the Universe conspired to help me. Someone I served in a previous job, took me in to his home. A previous client who owed me 3 years in hosting fees suddenly cropped up, wanting access to their domain. I played hardball with their lawyer - and won, just in time to get some oil for the furnace in the bitter December cold.

January 2019, I was approached by a traditional publisher interested in my non-fiction work. That turned into a 2-hour phone call with the proprietor of 4 companies, and a contract gig doing exactly what I always knew would be my destiny.

Roses Smell So Sweet - But Beware the Thorns

You might not think working from home is all that hard - until you realize it’s 90 hours sitting at a desk, and that I was born with rheumatoid arthritis. I was told at 12 that I would be walking with a cane by 20, and wheelchair bound by 30 - but doctors don’t know everything. I’m 34 as I write this, and still a very capable dancer, hiker, swimmer, and sports enthusiast, because I’ve been extremely proactive about my health.

It’s also become apparent that I’ve been managing diabetes all these years too - when my diet changed for the move into another household, I kept getting light-headed, even passing out once, and my feet began turning purple. I’m managing that, too.

The person I’m living with is 5 years younger, without the life experience I’ve had - so even when he wasn’t working 6 days a week, being dependent on him for absolutely everything has resulted in little more than frustration.

In fact, 10 days ago I suffered a total mental meltdown. Someone I hoped to call friend longer than these last 2 years broke a 5-month-old promise to visit - and it was my last hope. When the last day of her week-long vacation came and went without a plan, I spent the evening in hysterics - banging my head against the carpet in my home studio.

The next day, I picked myself up again.

I can’t say that I have nobody.

I have me.

And I am grateful for this life, because I am clearly being groomed for something magnificent.

What it is, I haven’t the slightest clue - and I love that. Life is a mystery we unfold one minute at a time, and I am so very curious.

This past Saturday, I went surfing for the first time. It’s been a lifelong ambition, and I did surprisingly well given my horrible track record on snowboards, skateboards, and plain walking on flat ground.

“Tomorrow is always too late.” Even though I don’t have much for resources, I saw an opportunity to do something I’d always wanted to - and did.

Was I afraid? Sure. But fear is the least of my concerns. It’s all in my head - and if I’ve learned anything at all by overcoming anxiety in 5 years, it’s that -I- am in control of what happens between these two ears.

Aloha Hā’awina, Māhālo Kūmū

The belief I hold which serves me so well, is very simple:

There is always another way, and better places.

And I will find it.

Last night, I started putting together a speaker one-sheet. I’ve had a great deal of success working with this company since January. Every book that has launched under my watch - every single one - has made bestseller, making 23 bestsellers for our traditional publishing arm as I write this.

I’m getting out of this house, and will see the world - one way, or another.

Follow my journey here on Tumblr,��LinkedIn, and Instagram.

[lindoig1]

En Route to Paris    Day 40

Queen’s birthday holiday in Oz, but a normal working day here in hot and sunny Bucharest. Changing $US to Euros was a challenge, but as they say, 6th time lucky. After our 40 leu Uber ride last night, bargained down from 50, the identical trip in the opposite direction cost 12 leu in a cab today. So much for Uber!

Can’t say we saw much of Bucharest but we walked a couple of clicks changing our money and sat in a shady park for a while so that is better than nothing. But then, Bucharest was never on our itinerary anyway.

And talking about countries we have visited, some almost by accident, we filled in a few minutes on the train yesterday, making a list of all the countries we have visited. By the end of this year, we will have visited 39 countries together, plus one that I visited before we teamed up and two for Heather. Pretty amazing, at least for me who never wanted to travel outside Australia until Heather persuaded me to give it a go!

We are now on the train with Vienna only 18-19 hours away. Our cabin is VERY cosy!!! It is a two-berth, convertible to a three berth, really only with room for a one berth. It is about 2 x 1.5 metres, with a bit more than a third of it unusable because there is a tiny washbowl and a large section indented, presumably to give extra room in the cabin next door. One small window, but we can’t seem to get any lights working. Maybe once we are moving, but as at now, we are sitting in the semi-dark facing the back of the train. The bunks are one above the other with only the wall, basin and indented section opposite so we have to sit side by side on the metre and a bit accessible on the bottom bunk. All our luggage is stacked on top of each other next to the door - good job the door opens outwards because there is absolutely no way it could open inwards without us going out the window. I did say cosy!

A couple of hours later and we have organised ourselves pretty well and we are glad it is cosy. The A/C seems to be set to ‘Frigid’ so we have blocked off a fair bit of the cold inlet and rugged ourselves up a bit so we are pretty snug.

We have travelled through some beautiful country: initially flat and cropped then into the mountains, weaving along the edge of a small river through a wonderful forest dotted with small waterfalls. A lot of it is deep and dense and mysterious, dark except for a little filtered light and everything glistening from the rain. Other places, we have been on a ridge or adjacent to a cleared area and we can see right across the treetops to the rocky cliffs and dense greens on the opposite hillside, perhaps with a curling gravel track or a tiny cottage in the distance. There was a variety of trees, some apparently deciduous, but a lot of conifers too. One prevalent species was quite beautiful, some sort of weeping beech perhaps, standing our greyish-blue against a thousand shades of green. As we went along, storm clouds built up and the hills misted over, a little eerie in a way, and then it rained for a while. There were a few small towns that compelled me to think of Grimm’s fairy tales with gingerbread houses, mostly 2, 3 or even 4 levels, topped with cute little cones and pyramids, over quaint low attic-like levels - all very dinky, if a bit run down. In the heavily wooded areas, there were small allotments carved out of the forest, the epitome of rustic, isolated ramshackle houses surrounded by woodheaps, chook pens and abandoned farming accoutrements. They all seemed to be occupied, very picturesque but enigmatic too. Why are they so isolated? Why the farming gear in such dense forests? What else could the occupants do to eke out a living? How do they travel to the nearest village, or even a neighbour, if the need arises? Puzzling!

Except close to towns, we seem to be zipping along - my guess 80 to 100 most of the time and like yesterday, trees are often growing quite close to the tracks so it is very difficult to see things clearly. The things close up are passing too quickly to focus on and the things further away must be viewed through a green veil, often too thick to see anything at all. It makes it impossible to see birds or take photographs.

We lingered over a very nice plain meal in the restaurant car for about two and a half hours. There were much larger windows on both sides of the train and it was really beautiful, not to say dramatic. The paddocks near the train appeared to be waterlogged, with muddy water in all the furrows - I even saw some guys trying to rescue their little car that appeared to have been washed 20 metres away from a low ford. We got a good deal of very heavy rain during the afternoon and early evening and sitting in the restaurant car, we saw towering inky black clouds on one side of the train, emptying themselves onto the nearby snow-capped mountains, while the other side was bathed in bright late-afternoon sunshine. It was quite idyllic and the contrast was remarkably dramatic. The train snaked its way along the valley, sometimes following the mountains, sometimes the river. One thing that fascinated me (and the physics is still a bit obscure) was that we had a bright rainbow immediately to our left and a couple of minutes later, it was immediately to our right. Unless we did a surreptitious U-turn which I am pretty sure we didn’t......... mind you, we did share a bottle of cab sav and a half of sav blanc.

Back in our spacious luxury suite, we started listening to a new book, having finished the first in the series a few days ago, until we turned in. It was pretty hot and the only coverings on any of the trains are ultra-heavy doonas. On other trains, we have taken the doona out of the cover and just used the cover, but it wasn’t possible this time. We had a passport check to leave Romania at 2am and another to enter Hungary at 2:40 so what sleep we got was broken and very uncomfortable. There were quite a few passengers who didn’t have sleepers and there seemed to be people yabbering in the passage outside our cabin most of the night.

[jmsa1287]

A Year in Review: The Best 25 TV Shows of 2017

yeah yeah this is late. deal with it!

With Peak TV rising and rising, not yet bursting an inevitable bubble, the quality of shows over the last few years has been incredibly impressive. It seems like almost every network - from the Big Four to smaller cable networks (and even places outside what we consider television) - has at least one show that has a rabid fan base. But with so many top-notch shows from which to choose, the viewer starts to have higher standards. Dropping the ball -- even a little -- can break a season of TV these days. "Mr. Robot" Season 3 was demur, the new season of "Catastrophe" was solid but spun its wheels a bit and the final season of "Difficult People" was the gone-too-soon show's worst albeit delightful. Unlike the last few years, there were less series (both new and returning) that I loved and more that I thought were very good. Below are the best 10 TV shows of the year, all of which I did love. We may be reaching a breaking point of quality vs. quantity but 2017 did offer us one true masterpiece, which comes in at number one on this list.

25. The Good Place Season 1-B / Season 2-A  (NBC)

24. Fargo Season 3 (FX)

23. The Girlfriend Experience Season 2 (Starz)

22. Legion Season 1 (FX)

21. Search Party Season 2 (TBS)

20. Baskets Season 2 (FX)

19. Stranger Things Season 2 (Netflix)

18. Rick and Morty Season 3 (Cartoon Network/Adult Swim)

17. Master of None Season 2 (Netflix)

16. Girls Season 6 (HBO)

15. Mr. Robot Season 3 (USA)

14. American Vandal Season 1 (Netflix)

13. American Horror Story: Cult Season 7 (FX)

12. The Deuce Season 1 (HBO)

11. Mindhunter Season 1 (Netflix)

10. Insecure Season 2 (HBO)

Issa Rae and Larry Wilmore's "Insecure" continues to be one of the most modern and funniest shows on TV. Deeply realized and stylish, "Insecure" is a 30-minute delight that showcases the black experience of young people living in L.A. Sex, relationships, dating and class are explored in the comedy and the show's MVP Yvonne Orji's Molly remains one of the best characters on TV.

09. The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel Season 1 (Amazon)

"The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel" is a breath of fresh air in an otherwise cynical and dark TV landscape. Bright, bubbly and simply delightful, the new comedy is only boosted by its stellar cast, namely the titular star, the fabulous Rachel Brosnahan and costar Alex Borstein. From its styling (those coats!) to its set pieces (1950s New York City!), "Mrs. Masiel" is a special show with a strong feminist viewpoint during at time when independent women were sidelined.

08. Better Things Season 2 (FX)

Pamela Adlon's "Better Things" improved with its second season, as the co-creator, star and write directed all 10 episodes. "Better Things" may be a moving half-hour comedy about family but it's also one of the most cinematic with Adlon pulling out some truly stunning shots unlike any other TV show (or movie) this year. Meditative and resilient, "Better Things" proves itself again to be a daring and insightful show.

07. Neo Yokio Season 1 (Netflix)

"Neo Yokio" is not for everyone. The anime created by Vampire Weekend front man Ezra Koenig is niche as niche can get: "Mourning the death of a recent relationship, an elegant and fashionable demon hunter struggles to stay afloat in the elite society of Neo Yokio," reads the show's synopsis. But "Neo Yokio," with its all-star cast (Jaden Smith, Jude Law, Susan Sarandon), is a hilarious series that skewers New York City's millennial one percenters with precision. It's a subversive and innovative show that's a whole lot of fun.

06. Nathan For You Season 4 (Comedy Central)

In its fourth season, "Nathan For You" continues to be an incredible mind-boggling show that pushes the boundaries of storytelling and comedy. Creator and star Nathan Fielder tests viewers limits of humor, putting himself in truly uncomfortable situations that are often flat out mean towards unsuspecting people. From exposing the problems with Uber to essentially sneaking a bomb into a sports stadium, the fourth season of "Nathan For You" was capped off with modern TV masterpiece, "Finding Frances."

05. Feud: Bette and Joan Season 1 (FX)

The first season of Ryan Murphy's "Feud" came months before the #MeToo movement. But it examined the way in which (older) women were treated in Hollywood, following frenimes Bette Davis and Joan Crawford while filming "What Ever Happened to Baby Jane" in 1962. But "Feud" goes beyond the making of that movie, delving deep into the renowned actresses lives and what made them who they are and, more importantly, why they had such a tumultuous relationship with each other. With an all-star cast (Jessica Lange, Susan Sarandon, Alfred Molina, Stanley Tucci, Judy Davis, Jackie Hoffman, Kathy Bates, Catherine Zeta-Jones and more), "Feud: Bette and Joan" was as entertaining as it was enlightening (and visually stunning).

04. The Young Pope Season 1 (HBO)

Daring and exceptional, "The Young Pope" was Paolo Sorrentino's singular vision impressively executed. Though bogged down by memes and Internet jokes, "The Young Pope" was a wild ride that featured Judd Law's best performance to date as the titular young (and hot!) pope, American Lenny Belardo. The miniseries could have been read as an early critique of the Trump administration (though it was made before he was elected into office), "The Young Pope" was a sumptuous and dazzling show full of breathtaking Italian vistas, nuns playing basketball and CGI kangaroos. It may have not always worked but "The Young Pope" was auteur TV at its finest; a thoroughly enjoyable watching experience without compromise.

03. The Leftovers Season 3 (HBO)

In its final season, "The Leftovers" again proved to be one of the best shows of the decade. A brilliant and deeply moving drama with some of the best performances of the year (Carrie Coon, Justin Theroux, Amy Brenneman, Christopher Eccleston, Ann Dowd), the show bowed with grace. For all its oddities (sex boats, penis scanners, oh my!), "The Leftovers" had a tone like no other show, balancing existentialist questions with bizarre humor. Showrunner Damon Lindelof, who got major flack for the "Lost" series finale, closed "The Leftovers" story with a fascinating ending, that will forever let the mystery be.

02. Big Little Lies Season 1 (HBO)

Outside of "Game of Thrones," "Big Little Lies" may have been the biggest - and most talked about -- show of the year. And rightfully so. The drama treated its stellar cast as multi-dimensional and complicated women with fully realized wants and desires. Reese Witherspoon gave the best performance of her career - a 40-year-old Tracey Flick as Madeline Martha Mackenzie. Same for Nichole Kidman, whose slow-burning performance as battered wife Celeste Wright was marvelous and captivating to watch. With supporting roles from Shailene Woodley, Alexander, Zoe Kravitz and Laura Dern, "Big Little Lies" was a stunning drama that put the murder mystery on the back burner. We're lucky we're getting a second season.

01. Twin Peaks: The Return Season 1 (Showtime)

David Lynch and Mark Frost pulled off the impossible by returning to the world of "Twin Peaks." Nearly three decades since its unceremonious cancelation, "Twin Peaks: The Return" was not a nostalgic reboot cash-grab full of cherry pie and coffee. It was a profoundly moving show with audacious storytelling and bold filmmaking. It explored aging unlike anything TV or in film has done before, it examined the plight of trying to change the past, and it was a critique on the way in which we watch TV. Lynch and Frost subverted every preconceived notion of what a "Twin Peaks" revival would mean: Fans did not get the wholesome good guy F.B.I. agent Dale Cooper for the majority of the series. Instead Kyle MacLachlan gave four incredible performances as the mindless Dougie Jones, Cooper's evil doppelganger Mr. C, the chilling Richard and, yes, as Agent Cooper. Just like the original two season of "Twin Peaks," "The Return" will undoubtedly change TV. With concerts at the Roadhouse, experimental montages of the atomic bombs, and long takes of a janitor sweeping, somehow 18 hours of "Twin Peaks: The Return" was still not enough.

[neonsugar]

My Door Dash Delivery Driving Experience

One day when I was feeling very disgruntled about my day job situation, I was digging deep in the job postings online. I stumbled upon a listing on Craigslist for DoorDash [pictured above]. I’m not into Uber or Lyft because I am kind of bad at technology and social interactions so I’m not sure why this particular day I was lured into the gig economy. After a little bit of research, I learned that I could make an extra $100 for completing 10 deliveries and that most deliveries averaged $7-10. Years ago I worked as a delivery driver for a local pizza place and didn’t make that much PLUS I had to do a lot of side work [dishes, prepping toppings, making dough and sauce], so I figured what the hey, let’s give it a try.

I signed up through their website, entered my info for taxes and a background check, then waited for my welcome package to arrive. I watched videos on YouTube to get an idea of what I was getting myself into. I was expecting to receive a DoorDash t-shirt, space blanket [the silver blankets that come in first aid kits], a debit card, and delivery bag and information for orientation. What actually came in the mail was the delivery bag and debit card. I am a little bit bummed that I didn’t get a t-shirt that I would never ever wear and eventually donate to the thrift store. Apparently, DoorDash is so new to my area that there was no one nearby to do orientation so it was a figure it out for yourself situation - I don’t like to read rules and instructions anyway so not a real problem, it was very intuitive once I had completed a couple of deliveries.

I decided to jump right in and give it a try once I had activated my debit card. I clicked “Dash Now” and started my shift. There are two ways to work a shift on DoorDash, the first option is to schedule yourself for a specific time period which is a good option if you want first dibs on the shifts that work with your schedule or that you feel like will be the most lucrative. I am a fly by the seat of my pants kind of person when it comes to this supplemental income [one of my favorite parts about it actually] so I’ve opted to open up the app and click “Dash Now” so I could get started whenever I have extra time and feel like getting out of the house to bring in some bonus income. At peak times when they are super busy and low on delivery drivers, DoorDash will send you a text message and let you know: “It’s super busy in VA: Blacksburg/Christiansburg/Radford and you can now earn an extra $7.50 per delivery!” I always want to pick up those shifts because hello, that’s going to be about $15-18 per delivery which is quite a bit more per hour than I make at my full-time position.

An order pops up on your screen with the name of the restaurant with the guaranteed amount that you will make, you have about a minute to decide and swipe to accept the order. Thus far I have accepted all of my orders, if you want that bonus peak time pay, you must accept at least 80% of the orders for your shift and since I never know how long I’m going to be out there I accept everything because I’m out there to make money moves.

Once you drive to that restaurant, you swipe the app to let them know you have arrived. Some restaurants will have the orders placed and prepared already, at other places [partuclarly fast food restaurants] you will have to place the order yourself. I wasn’t expecting when I had my first delivery for McDonald's, but thankfully there was another DoorDash driver in there ordering as well and he helped show me the way. I place the order, swipe on the app to confirm, then I will be able to use the DoorDash debit card they sent me to pay for the order [it only works for that period of time and at that specific location, you can’t choose a different McDonald’s to place an order, it has to match the address]. As I wait I like to gather up the extra items folks grab at restaurants - napkins, eating utensils, ketchup, mints, etc which could help seal the deal on you getting a good rating from that customer.

When the food is ready, you swipe to confirm on the app and you are now provided with the delivery location and with a click of a button you are on your way to the customer. Hand over the goods with a smile on your face, and wait for your next order to come through.

Day 1: Smooth Sailing

My first day delivering with DoorDash was made up of 3 deliveries [I worked until I ran out of gas and my phone battery died]. I worked for 90 minutes with peak time bonus of $5 per delivery and in that time I made a little over $40. Everything ran smoothly and I was so in love I thought I could probably just never return to work again and live the rest of my life just working on a whim [in addition to my business, of course].

Day 2: A Bit of a Shit Show

Day two, I had received a text saying that it was busier than usual and they needed extra drivers, bonus pay would be $5 per delivery. I drove to the downtown area so I would be closer to where my first order would probably be from, but it took nearly 30 minutes for my first order to come through. It wasn’t even in that area so I should have just waited on my couch until the first order came through, day one had given me very unrealistic expectations. Order one went off without a hitch and I quickly received my next order of the night to Starbucks in the neighboring town. When I arrived at Starbucks, they had closed early because someone called in. I didn’t really know what to do in this situation so I panicked a little, they ask that you provide a photo of their operating hours when this happens, but they were closed when they were scheduled to be open so I called to get it canceled so I could be assigned another order. Taking care of that whole situation killed another 20 minutes for me, but at least I ended up being compensated $4 for making the trip out there and my next order happened to be less than a mile away. This order was for a nicer restaurant where I would still have to order in person. DoorDash gave me 20 minutes from the time I went in to the time I should leave the restaurant to go on my delivery, but it took the restaurant nearly 40 minutes to make the food, this brought my score down on the app for having a late delivery so my rotten mood from the wasted time was getting worse. “Fine, I will do one more delivery tonight so it won’t be a huge bust,” thankfully that next order was a home run, quick, easy, and good pay. I was so excited I figured what’s one more delivery? It was to Jamba Juice on Virginia Tech’s campus, but it was Spring Break so they were closed also. I was a little salty and again made $4 for the inconvenience and gave up and went home. It turns out I still made about $55 that night so even though it wasn’t smooth, I still made good money.

I feel like I saw the two extremes on my first two shifts and even after the shift that annoyed the crap out of me, I still plan on doing more. I have no social life so I’m game for making bonus money I wasn’t expecting - the perfect way to help fund my trip to Las Vegas, more art supplies, and to squirrel away in my fund to start my next big business venture - a wedding and event venue.

I’m a bit hooked on DoorDash, I’m even tempted to sign in on my lunch break for my day job, but I’m trying to restrain myself. I have 90 days to make 100 deliveries so I can make that $100 bonus cash and I love me some bonus monies. You can also become a DoorDash driver [except near me because I call dibs on all my local deliveries]! Earn up to $25/hour and get a $100 bonus after 100 deliveries in 90 days for signing up here.

[thrashermaxey]

Ramblings: Jesse Puljujarvi Surgery; Updates on Martinez, Schenn, and Perron; Svechnikov – March 5

  I’m sure most reading this has heard the news already, but it was learned Monday morning that Ted Lindsay, Hall of Famer and Detroit Red Wings legend, had passed away at the age of 93.

For his career, Lindsay accumulated 851 points in 1068 games, was a 9-time All-Star, won the scoring race in 1950, and procured four Stanley Cups, including back-to-back efforts in 1954 and 1955.

It was his impact off the ice for which Lindsay will most greatly be remembered.

Of course, there was the NHL Players’ Association, the union that would look after the NHL player membership. He helped start the NHLPA to bargain for player rights, which would eventually include free agency, a more equitable share of revenues, better pensions, better health care access, and more. Of course, there was a lot of pushback from ownership around the league, and a smear campaign of Lindsay began. Nonetheless, the NHLPA was eventually recognized and would morph into what we know it today.

Beyond that, I came across this little tidbit: Lindsay did not attend his Hall of Fame induction. Why? Because women weren’t allowed to attend, which means his wife could not attend. This was unacceptable to Lindsay, and his non-attendance led to a rule change that would allow women to attend Hall of Fame induction ceremonies.

Talk to five different people of a certain age and you might get five different answers about what they remember about Ted Lindsay. Some might say on-ice stats, championships, the award named after him, the ferocity of his game, his union assembly, or even his Hall of Fame induction. All that means is this was an accomplished man both inside and outside of the rink. Not much more needs to be said than that.

Condolences to Lindsay’s family, friends, fans, and the Detroit Red Wings organization.

*

The Sabres announced defenceman Jake McCabe will miss the rest of the regular season – 5-6 weeks to be exact. It didn’t lead to a recall of Lawrence Pilut, though, so it appears Marco Scandella and Matt Hunwick will get some run. I’m not very interested in either for fantasy purposes, even in deep leagues.

*

Just wanted to chime in briefly on Jesse Puljujarvi’s injury. It’s clear that three years of development from the Oilers has done nothing, and now he’s on the shelf for most of the summer with double hip surgery. To me, that means 2019-20 will be mostly getting back up to speed as he’s behind the eight ball again. Not that this effectively ends his career, but if next year is basically just trying to get his legs under him following surgery, he’ll be four years into his career with little to show for it, even with this year and next mostly being a wash due to injury. I wonder how much longer we wait before the Oilers move on.

*

Jared McCann remained on Pittsburgh’s top line in practice on Monday. That was following Saturday night’s beatdown of the Canadiens where McCann had a goal and an assist and Sidney Crosby had four points.

Obviously, if he sticks, he’ll have the opportunity to produce. How long it lasts, we’ll see. McCann does have solid shot rates (he shoots as often per minute as guys like Anthony Mantha and Mike Hoffman) so that skill set might mesh well with someone like Crosby. I’m optimistic and he might be worth a look as a bench option for the first week of playoffs. The Penguins are a team with four games next week and they include games against the Sabres, Flyers, and Capitals.

*

As we look ahead to the 2019 draft, Dobber Prospects writer Jokke Nevalainen had a good read on prospect Vasili Podkolzin. He may have caught the eye of some from the most recent World Juniors, and it's a level-headed look at what he is and what he might be. 

*

Chris Kreider was not at practice on Monday for the Rangers. Maybe it was maintenance, but Pavel Buchnevich took his spot on the top line. Maybe it’ll be something more than maintenance? When we know, you’ll know.

*

Nazem Kadri was at morning skate for the Maple Leafs skating as an extra. He did not play Monday night but it does look like he’s on the cusp of returning.

*

Just spit-balling but I’m not sure what to make of Luke Kunin’s season so far. The underlying numbers aren’t great but how much of that is due to injuries on his part and upheaval of the roster by management? It can’t be an easy situation to overcome. By the eye, he’s looked fine whenever I’ve watched him if unspectacular. He should have a big role on this team in 2019-20 (he’s played 17:40 per game over the last month) so he’ll be a guy to follow over the final month. It could tell us a lot about what to expect from him next year.

*

Alec Martinez was in a regular jersey in practice for the Kings and looks like he’ll be returning later this week. There are serious concerns about point production and plus/minus, but he should see a lot of minutes and that will lead to a lot of peripheral stats. It’ll be up to individual fantasy owners to determine what their team needs and if he can fit into a league’s scoring system.

*

Both Brayden Schenn and David Perron should be back in the lineup soon, especially Perron as he has completed all necessary medical testing, though Schenn will be the one going on the road trip. Now it’s just up to Perron as to when he feels good to return.

It’ll be interesting to see what they do with the top line. Craig Berube hasn’t been shy to swap guys in and out (O’Reilly for Schenn, Schwartz for Schenn when the injury hit) but with the way the team is absolutely rolling right now, why rock the boat. I would expect Schenn to come in on the second line with Perron, but we’ll see.

*

Edmonton staged a two-goal comeback, scoring three straight in the second period to beat the Sabres 4-3. With time winding down, Jason Pominville had a glorious opportunity to tie the game and did this:

  OMG, Jason Pominville just stopped his own shot at a mostly open net. He literally stopped his own goal pic.twitter.com/dLprCgEZ0h

— CJ Fogler (@cjzero) March 5, 2019

  I don’t think I’ve ever seen that in an NHL game.

Leon Draisaitl had a goal and an assist while Connor McDavid picked up a couple helpers. Jack Eichel scored a pair of goals in the losing cause. That makes 25 tallies on the year for Eichel, tying his total from last year.

Casey Mittelstadt had a goal and five shots in the loss. Those five shots are a single-game high for him. He hasn’t been given a lot of ice time generally but it would be nice to see him shooting more often like this rather than what he’s done most of the year.

*

Let’s check in on Andrei Svechnikov, shall we?

It’s easy for the rookie to get lost in the Carolina excitement right now. It seems Nino Niederreiter’s trade has turned the fortunes of this team around, Jordan Staal is back and healthy, the team is scoring, and even Evander Holyfield is getting in on the fun:

    Watch until the end what they do with Jordan Martinook after Holyfield throws the punch. I couldn’t stop laughing.

Anyway, as I was saying, it’s easy for Svechnikov to get lost in the shuffle. So, how’s he doing?

For one, his ice time has declined since the acquisition of Niederreiter. It’s not a huge decline but losing 40 seconds a game when you don’t penalty kill and play fewer than 15 minutes a night is significant. Even a drop of just 40 seconds a game could lead to 2-3 fewer points over the course of a season. Not to mention that with Micheal Ferland healthy, it locks Svechnikov into a third line role. Not only is he getting less ice time, but lower quality line mates.

It hasn’t really affected his production as he has 10 points in the 19 games since Niederreiter joined the fold, compared to 19 points in 46 games prior. The team has enjoyed a regression of shooting percentage (in a good way) which has led to more goals overall. A rising tide floats all boats, etc.

One concern is that he’s shooting a lot less. He had 120 shots in his first 46 games, or 2.61 shots per game. Since the acquisition of Niederreiter, that has plummeted to 34 shots in 19 games, or 1.79 shots per game. A 40-second ice time drop does not explain such a shooting drop. It’s easy to forget that he’s still just an 18-year old rookie, though.

On top of him just being an 18-year old rookie, the Hurricanes in general have been shooting less: from the start of the season through to January 18th (when the trade occurred), Carolina averaged 35.6 shots per 60 minutes. Since then, they’ve dropped to 32 shots per game. Again, that alone doesn’t account for Svechnikov’s shooting decline, but it helps explain part of it.

The ice time is important to keep in mind when we look at Svechnikov’s 29 points. We don’t expect players getting 14-15 minutes a game to have a significant fantasy impact, even more so at his age. Even Steven Stamkos, who played 14:56 per game in his rookie year, failed to crack 50 points (he had 46). Rick Nash, who played 13:57 per game in his rookie year, only managed 39. Also, Marian Gaborik played 15:26 per game in his rookie year and had just 36 points. All eventually turned into elite players, and sooner rather than later.

Having watched a lot of Hurricanes games lately, he still looks like the guy he always has: an uber-talented 18-year old rookie playing on a third line with third liners. His individual expected goals rate at five-on-five is still among the best in the league, his shot rate his top-50 among all forwards, and his goal rate is solid (it’s actually slightly higher per 60 minutes than Sebastian Aho). Everything else will come along in due time. He still looks like the future superstar we all expect him to be, even if he’s not one of the focal points of the team right now.

from All About Sports https://dobberhockey.com/hockey-rambling/ramblings-jesse-puljujarvi-surgery-updates-on-martinez-schenn-and-perron-svechnikov-march-5/

[andrewdburton]

Mr. Money Mustache, UBER Driver

Special Surprise: Did you know there is now an MMM Android App? It’s really good. Beautiful offline reading. Alerts you to new articles automatically, if you want. Thousands of users already. Free. Many more features (plus an Apple version) to come. It’s on the Google Play Store.

—-

About two years ago, I switched from taking my personal car to the airport, to hailing Ubers and Lyfts. The math of it was pretty simple: Uber was cheaper than paying for my driving and parking*. And that was before the considerable joy and time savings of not having to park in the airport lot and cram in among the huddled masses in the shuttle buses. Nowadays I sit in the back and get some work done like an Executive, leaving the driving to someone else.

Once I arrive at my destination city, these ride sharing services have replaced at least 90% of instances where a car rental would be useful. Between walking, renting a bike, public transit and calling a Lyft, a car rental is only useful for destinations deep in the boondocks such as a ski resort or a distant beach cabin. Which is another great improvement, since renting a car at an airport has never been a fun experience.

But during all these Luxury Executive rides, I’d often get to talking with the driver. We would talk about life, family, money and business. I always inquired about their experience with rideshare driving, and the response was inevitably something like this:

UBER DRIVER: “Oh, it’s pretty good. On a good day I’ll make a hundred bucks, sometimes even two hundred if I really work it and stay up late.”

MMM: “Is that your profit after subtracting the cost of driving?”

UBER DRIVER: “No, that doesn’t include gas. But I’ll only use, like, not even a full tank – maybe thirty bucks”

“Hmm”, I would think to myself.

“If this driver is burning through $30 of gas, (twelve gallons), they’re probably covering over 250 miles. Whether they realize it or not, it’s costing them $125 in direct car costs before even accounting to the damage to their health or the risk of injury. Thus, the net profit might be as low as $50 for a big day on the road, or five bucks an hour.”

There’s no way Uber could be such a successful company if the pay rate were really this low. Is there?

But on the other hand, some of my Uber drives to the airport have included a Dodge Ram pickup truck (V-8 engine, fancy wheels, bought brand new on credit), a BMW X5 and even a Hummer H3 (with over 250,000 miles on the odometer). Maybe people really are that  uninformed about the cost of driving. As my friend Bill said when we talked about this:

“Imagine developing a company specifically to take advantage of people’s ignorance of how expensive it really is to drive their own car. What would this company look like? “

(the answer is of course that it would look like very much like Uber or any other ridesharing company)

To resolve this mystery (and as a way of getting some test miles on my new electric car), Mr. Money Mustache decided to go deep undercover in September 2016, and sign up as a driver for both Uber and Lyft services.

The Initiation

Using another driver’s referral code, I signed up on the Uber system and started to follow the instructions. I needed a background check, medical exam, car safety inspection and a few other daunting things. Luckily, Uber runs facilities called “Greenlight Centers” which put all this stuff in one place. The closest one to me was about 40 miles away in Denver, so I charged up my new Leaf and headed down.

When I arrived, I found an interesting scene that nicely personifies our new sharing economy. It was a mashup of an Apple Store and the DMV. Modern design and furniture, good music and glossy tablets everywhere, combined with an ocean of slightly desperate and bored looking people waiting to start their new driving careers. And Mr. Money Mustache, trying to blend in.

It was a funny feeling, spending those three precious hours of my Tuesday morning, waiting in queues and filling out forms. I was keen to learn about the driver experience and how things work in the New Economy. But I also felt a bit of the nervous “I’m applying for a new job” energy of the other applicants, and like a bit of a fraud for being here when I had absolutely no interest in truly having a job.

There was a trendy little cafe in the corner of the room, so I strolled over and picked up a Clif bar and a coffee. Due to my naive privilege as a former tech worker, I expected it all to be free – after all, don’t all offices offer free coffee and snacks, along with a keg of local beer and another tap for Kombucha? But a man popped out from around the corner and rung me up for $3.85. On top of that, it was a bland coffee in a small cup. This was an interesting reminder that working in a lower-training job is a different world than the one you and I probably both inhabit, here at the top of the economy.

When the process was finally done, my 25-year-old Uber concierge looked up from his iPad and issued me a genuinely warm congratulations and we shook hands.

“So that’s it?”, I asked

“Yeah! That’s it! You could go out and get in your car start making some money RIGHT NOW!”

“Hmmm…”

“Nah”, I thought to myself. “Eighty miles of driving plus three hours in an office building is more than enough wasted indoor time for me for the next little while.” 

The spoiled retiree in me loves hard work, but only the right kind of hard work. The sedentary locked-indoors variety of work always falls to the bottom of the list. As you can tell by the low frequency of these blog posts.

My First Ride

Eventually, I was ready to give it a whirl. I cleaned up my car, stuck the Uber decal on the windshield, put on some nice clothes, mounted my phone on a sturdy dashboard clamp, and fired up the app. Within minutes, I had my first ring.

RIDE REQUESTED! John, 5 minutes away.

The ring was deafeningly loud, because (as I later learned after half an hour of looking unsuccessfully for a way to change it) the Uber app overrides your ring volume setting and sets it to !!MAXIMUM!!  I was so startled that I could hardly slide the “accept” button, but I eventually got safely on the road.

I recognized the address as Longmont’s “Pumphouse” brew pub, right downtown. I headed down the hill and scoped the area, and eventually found John. As he hopped in the car I slid the “start trip” button and his destination was revealed as the local Marijuana shop, just 1.9 miles away away.

John and I exchanged pleasant conversation and he was impressed by the quick silence of the electric car. I dropped him off at Native Roots and then parked nearby, expecting another fare to pop up just as quickly.

Ride 1: 5 minutes waiting, 5 minutes driving, 1.2 miles unpaid, 1.9 miles paid. Net fare to me: $3.37

But the second fare wasn’t quite as quick. Fifteen minutes later, the Uber app rang again. It was John, now properly restocked and thrilled that I was still there in the weed shop parking lot. We headed back to the Pumphouse.

Ride 2: 15 minutes waiting, 5 minutes driving, 1.9 miles paid. Net fare to me: $3.37 … plus TIP $5.00!

Hey this wasn’t so bad: that five dollar tip really brought up the average. I was thirty minutes into my career and up about 12 bucks, minus five miles of car costs.

After another five minutes of idle time, the app rang again. This time it was a suburban address listed as 12 minutes (which turned out to be almost four miles) away. I decided to take the ride anyway, in the spirit of experimentation.

I got to the house, but nobody was there. After a minute, I used the Uber app to send the customer a text message. “Oh sorry!”, he said, “My phone GPS isn’t working well because we’re inside so it probably shows us in the wrong place! We’re just on the next street.”

I drove around a bit more and eventually found the young couple, and the app revealed a nice surprise: they were headed all the way to Boulder, which was over 12 miles from this part of Longmont. Surely now I would start earning the big bucks.

After 24 minutes of smooth, expert driving and pleasant conversation, I dropped them off at a restaurant. But I was surprised to see that the total wasn’t that impressive:

Ride 3: 10 minutes waiting, 4 miles unpaid, 12.4 miles paid. Net fare to me: $13.96. No Tip.

Driving in the Happening City

Now I was in Boulder, which has a much bigger scene than Longmont. Everybody is rich, every night is a big night, Colorado University is right downtown and it’s all action – there are no real suburbs. Due to high rider demand, the city operates in a perpetual “Surge Mode” which means Uber Fares are 20-30% more lucrative, and there is virtually no wait time for fares. And now, I was right downtown. So the app shrieked its notification tone immediately.

The customer was only a mile away, but due to the incredible slowness of trying to drive a 14-foot-long, 3300 pound Racing Wheelchair in a dense city it took me a lot of slow gliding in traffic and waiting at long traffic lights to get there. It was a couple of younger guys, heading back downtown.

We slogged through the dense traffic yet again at roughly one third of bicycling speed, and I earned my five dollar fare.

The app rang again, and I saw from the map it was yet another non-downtown person, probably looking for another ride downtown.

I decided not to play this game anymore, contributing to car traffic in a city that needs fewer cars. So I let this ride request go to another driver and set my destination to Longmont, hoping to find a customer heading that way so I could get paid for the ride home. There were none.

So I flew the Leaf back along the highway to home, and stopped at the grocery store to pick up some fresh food and a free battery charge for the car.

Total stats for the day:

4 Rides 1:51 hours 18.6 miles unpaid 17.2 miles paid $32 including tips ~$18 of car costs roughly $7 per hour net

Ongoing observations

After joining Uber as a driver, it was easy to add on a Lyft license: you can submit scans or photos of the same examination info to both companies. So over the next few months, I fired up both Uber and Lyft apps to do a bit more driving and collect some more observations. I had a lot of fun, but made very little money.

One time, I was summoned by a 13-year-old girl coming out of the middle school, effectively turning me into Mr. Schoolbus Dad. After finding her in the school lineup, she directed me to the elementary school, where we picked up her little brother. I dropped them both off safely at home in a rusty suburban area nearby.

Another ride was from a college student, deep in the Colorado U campus. It took me forever to navigate the throngs of after school foot and vehicle traffic and find this young lad in the crowd. During the ensuing 3MPH transit of Boulder, I couldn’t help but remark, “Wow! I apologize for how slow this trip is going. I’m usually on my bike when I cross Boulder, which is a lot faster.” Our final destination was a strip mall, and he directed me meticulously through the entire parking lot so he could be let off within 20 feet of the front door of the restaurant. End fare for about 35 minutes of work, even with surge pricing, was another six bucks. My resolve to avoid driving cars in Boulder was reinforced.

My favorite times to be a driver were Friday nights. It was fun to feel the energy of people going out on the town, and find out what was going on.  I could see Uber driving to be a good escape for single people looking to meet new friends (or romances), because I almost always got along well with the customers, often exchanging business cards or email addresses with people when we found something in common. On longer rides with people over 30, the topic almost invariably led to life, business, and money, which led to Mustachianism, which led to me admitting my secret identity. Thus, some of my past Uber customers may even be reading this article today(?)

But in the end, it was hard to stay motivated to keep doing this experiment. There is just usually something better to do than driving around in a car, and I wasn’t willing to sacrifice too much of my life to gather more data. And with the financial gain of rideshare driving being negligble, I am surprised that there are so many people who do it.

How to Make the Most of a Low-Profit Situation

Still, as with everything in life, I did my best to optimize Uber driving for both fun and money. From my experience as well as reading online forums, the best way you can do it is:

Use the referral and bonus system heavily. Actual driving doesn’t pay well, but I have seen bonuses pop up on my app offering between $100-$500 to refer other drivers. There are also “weekly guarantee” offers that come up occasionally, offering more pay in exchange for meeting a certain threshold.

Use the lowest cost and most fuel-efficient car you can find. Uber requires you to have a fairly new (under 10 years) car, so get something on the older side of that spectrum, but with low miles. A 2009 Prius, for example, uses less than half the fuel of most cars of similar size.

Focus your driving around on “Surge Pricing”. By watching the app throughout the days and months, you will learn when your area enters periods of higher demand. Special events like Halloween, late weekend nights or major league sports events are popular times.

Try to find trips involving highways. Since you get paid mostly by the mile, you earn almost ten times more more money at 60 MPH than you make in on a long trip through central city where you might average only 6 MPH.

Experiment with the “set destination” feature to filter for rides going your way. Taking fares with you on your commute to work or to an airport.

Make the most of your downtime: there will still be lots of waiting between fares. If you bring a book, podcast, laptop or make business-related calls that help you learn a trade that pays more than driving, you can get yourself into a more lucrative trade.

Suggestions for Uber and Lyft

During the course of this experiment, I happened to receive emails from relatively senior people at both Uber and Lyft for unrelated reasons. So I took the opportunity to make some suggestions to make things friendlier for drivers:

Report the total driving time and miles for each ride and each shift, clearly specifying paid and unpaid miles and hours.

Provide an drivers an estimate of the car costs incurred, and estimated hourly earnings after these costs

Allow drivers to specify the types of rides they are willing to accept. For example, “only ring me for riders within 1 mile”, or “I would like to be paid for for both pickup mileage and rider mileage.”

Provide drivers with the details of where the person is going, or at least how long of a ride it is. Right now, Uber has all this incredibly useful information at the time of booking, but deliberately withholds it from the driver.

I was surprised that none of these suggestions got anywhere. This was a disappointment to the Economic Libertarian in me, because it seems obvious that  an open market between buyer and seller is the key to more efficiency.

In fact, early in my driving career I learned how much the unpaid driving was hurting my profitability so I stopped accepting distant fares. The app quickly sent me this note:

  Yeah, right. How about you just stop ringing me with fares that are ridiculously far away, instead?

When these companies deliberately tilt the field, they are being sneaky, which causes them to lose public trust, which causes the public to vote in a bunch of sclerotic regulation to protect the drivers and the public. If you, as a company, just avoid being a dick to people in the first place and treat them with complete openness and good old-fashioned honesty, they are more likely to let you run free.

Since I started this experiment a year ago, Uber has fallen into a world of trouble and bad publicity. Their internal culture of sexual harassment was blown wide open, along with the misdeeds of the wild and temperamental former CEO. From specific programs to evade government regulation to annoying treatment of drivers, Uber triggered a widespread backlash which became the #deleteuber campaign. Saying “Uber” is now a bit like uttering the words “ConAgra” or “Philip Morris” or “Exxon”.

Meanwhile, from the very beginning I noticed a friendlier tone in the way Lyft operates – see this 2016 interview with Lyft more laid-back founder John Zimmer.

In the End..

In general, I really want companies like Uber and Lyft (and Tesla, AirBnb, Google, Amazon and many of the other tech companies that have been stirring things up so much lately) to succeed, because the benefits to all of us greatly outweigh the inconvenience of the disruption.

For example, some people worry about what will happen to driving jobs as self-driving vehicles gradually take over. But I’m excited about the ways this can make our lives safer, quieter, and less expensive as we give up on owning personal cars, ride bikes much more, and use automated cars as a service whenever the bike is impractical. Technology provides a lumpy ride, but it also provides change which is an essential ingredient in every human life to avoid getting into a rut. So, share on.

Further Reading: How Big Oil Will Die – an interesting walk through the changes today’s technologies have already set in place – leading us very quickly to a place where nobody in 2010 would have even guessed.

  * this sentence surely made you ask, “but what about the BUS, Mustache?!?” – good question. Of course I’d always choose biking, then public transit as the first two options, but the airport is 45 miles away (well over 2 hours by bike) and the bus requires a transfer in Denver, which makes it even slower than biking. Also, both Uber and Lyft have referral programs which give you credit for referring friends – I still have a few credits in my Uber account.

If you want to try Uber or Lyft, sign by randomly choosing one of these codes from friends, and you’ll get $5-10 off of your first ride (and give a small surprise to some of the members of the MMM-HQ coworking space!)

Uber #1 Uber #2 Uber #3 Uber #4 Uber #5

Lyft #1 Lyft #2 Lyft #3

from Finance http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2017/11/22/mr-money-mustache-uber-driver/ via http://www.rssmix.com/

[2cool4heartbreak]

- thursday november 16, 2017 -

so last time i checked in gaelen and ellen were on their way to cuse. heres a lil recap:

friday nov 10th:

they arrived kinda late around 5 or 6 pm. We hung around for a little, chatting and stuff and decided it was a good idea to go to the liquor store. ellen drove us to the liquor store and we entered the store and were offered a free shot of tequila. We bought that tequila they gave us a shot of even though it was ASS and headed back towards my dorm room. we out music on a began getting for the night. the plan was bar, then afters at some frat party. We realized gaelen didn't have a second form of ID to get into the bar we thought the best thing to forge would be a social security card, lol. spent sometime photoshopping that and then headed to sami’s to pre game. while at sami’s max snapchatted me, saying his frat was open and lit. we decided to head there ASAP and would not need the ID’s or the social security card lol. headed to the party and danced for about 40 minutes until they shut it down. claimed they had been partying for like 5 hours... sad i didn't get the invite earlier lol. so we headed to where Mia and Violet were. when we got there i slipped on black ice but got right back up and paid five dollars to get into this average ass party. while in there we found violet and mia we all danced and were hunted by boys. sami ellen and i gave this guy these huge ass hickies on his neck, and i peed in the attic twice. i found ellen and sami outside and they were giggling life away and it was v cute. we decided to peace and head to my dorm. we all got into our PJ’s. Ellen had weed so she suggested we smoke. we didn't have anything but a one hitter to some but somehow in under a minute ellen found a toilet paper holder to smoke out of.. lol typical. So were smoking and stuff and we get a knock on the door. its DPS and my RA. in the 30 seconds it took me to open the door the girls had all scattered all to different beds. Josh said he smelled marijuana coming from this room. i said it wasn't us and he asked why the window was open. i said it was because of all the girls in there it got hot. he said he was sorry to bother and left. we all sat there shocked we just got away with that. 

sat nov 11th:

this was a day FULL of shit shows. lynzzee came in in the morning and saw gaelen using her blanket and also smelled the room. we all pretended to be asleep. we got ready for tailgate and hit up the liquor store. then went and had breakfast up on the mount and headed to semi’s to start pregaming for game day. we pre-gammed a long long time and headed to ZBT when we got there it didn't last longer than 30 minutes and we go kicked out bc it was over. so we headed to sig chi. heart eyes. it was my first time there but it was worth the wait. the guys are sexy and the layout of the house is wonderful. feels very movie like. nick o’conner and i ran into one another and talked it up for such a long time. party began to whine down and sami and ellen had found boys. so gaelen convinced me to leave with her and marty’s friends... lame idea they weren't fun. one girl talked about wanting to get her nose pierced the whole time and didn't end up doing it bc she lame af. so finally my drunk jealous self met up with sami and ellen and their boys.. i was all pissy bc they had boys and i had to hang out with marty and gaelen and no boy. so when we met up at ernie davis i rannn in. sami have to guest swipe me in. ellen walked in and we got in a 3 second fight and got over it. it probably helped that i ate tbh. so we took an uber with these boys to their hotel room. when we got there all was fun and games until gaelen started hooking up with ellens boy in front of all of us. this kid had acid so they cut us up small little pieces and we all took it. besides gaelen and the boy she was with. who btw had an eyebrow piercing. we took the acid chilled outside for awhile and decided we need weed. so we all get in this taxi headed to another hotel and gaelen and eyebrow guy join us and ellen starts running away and making this big ass deal. we finally all got into the car and galen was so drunk and had 0 common sense and ellen kept chirping. we finally got to the hotel and shit started to go down. when the guy ellen was suppose to be with asked for his jacket back she threw it on the floor in the opposite way he was standing and stormed off. ellen and talent started fighting and gaelen is bawlin gg her eyes out telling ellen she had no idea and that she doesnt know what she did wrong. we get our attention called by the hotel staff to keep it down and i decide we need to leave. bc we had been in that hotel for about an hour and no way those guys were still looking for weed they high key ditched us. we get to the mount and my acid starts to kick in. it makes me get hella laughing gas, and gaelen won't stop crying. we get up to sami’s room and the shit won't stop. ellen is being insane and won't just swollow her pride and gaelen  wont stop crying and calling people to tell them.this goes on for 3 hours i finally tell ellen she's acting like carly and it triggers her. she runs away and goes missing for ten minutes finally and calls me bawling. when i meet her outside she gets very dark. says she really thinks carly fucked her up, says she never wants to talk about parental issue, how shes scared for me bc of carly, how she read a journal entry about how carly is in love with christian. poor sami was in the car with drunk ass gaelen who kept calling her ellen. so i had to end ellens episode and go to the car. so i drove us back to my dorm after a good 4 hours of fighting. we got into my room and ellen and gaelen kept fighting and nikki came in and asked us to please keep it down. so i told ellen we were going into the car to smoke and gaelen would end up falling asleep. smoked in ellens car and got deep again. i apologized to even about interupting and she told me i didnt need to apologize for doing that bc thats something carly gets mad at it made me cry. because she's so right. the only reason i ever interupt is because i am so engaged in convo i get excited and think of something i need to tell also. we went to bed and that was the end of that insane day. 

sunday nov 12th:

so ellen and gaelen left and i went back to my room, cleaned the monstrosity up and laid down to take a nap. i was woken up by lynzzee coming into the room and slamming things open and close and organizing things. after about 20 minutes she had not closed the door so i asked her if she could close the door. she proceeded to say, “no. i need to air out the disgusting smell you left in here” in the bitchest tone ever. so i just turned around. another 20 minutes go by and she starts playing her tv show out loud. which she stated was against the rules. so i stood up and decided i would make peace. so i took 1.50 in quarters and handed it to her and apologized for dumbass problematic gaelen using her blanket. she gave me the quarters back and told me to keep them because i was moving out anyways. so i told her she needed to put headphones in because that was one of the “rules” she implemented. she told me she wouldn't and that i needed to shower. she started to get SO hostile and i told her i was closing the door. and she kept opening it. she began calling me a slut and trans and told me i needed to shower and that the room smelt disgusting and that smell and that i am insane. she just kept repeating this. so i told her i was gonna go get our RA. i knocked on his door but he wasn't there. so i came back in and told her when he returned he would quickly come into her. she goes yeah let him come in here and small the marijuana cocian room of a mess you left. i just laughed at her. so i wanted to get under her skin and break one of the rules too. so i started face timing ellen. and i turned the camera to face her and told ellen to listen to how crazy she is. she proceeded to call me a slut and trashy bitch before leaving the room and not to return for 5 nights. she emailed our RA saying i was sarcastically talking about her over ft which is not true. i was just saying exactly what she had done and i was laughing about it because she is crazy lol. it was all hysterical i did not break once. she told me i was moving out and i was like, you can't kick me out. this is my room also if you don't want me in here you'll have to leave because i am staying. and she did :P haven't seen her in 5 days and now I'm on the way HOME!!!!!! 10 days home <3 and I'm sure some shits gonna go down so ill be back here to chat. 

[toauw]

Leave Your Friends At Home, You’ll Come Back With More - Short

If you honestly ask me why I specifically went to Los Angeles, CA for my 24th birthday, I’ll give you the straight answer. It was the farthest place in the continental United States that I had any interest in visiting. A friend that worked for an airline told me they had access to discounted flights anywhere in the “lower 48”. With that discount, plus the fact that I had a friend who was willing to accommodate me for a few days, it became the cheapest option for a quick getaway. I didn't decide to go there for a concert, I had no special objectives, it wasn't a business trip, No. It was just far, and cheap. As I left my house on the morning of October 4th, I thought about the upcoming week and what kind of shenanigans I would get into. After all, did I mention I was pretty much going alone? I had one real friend in LA, and I hadn't seen her in years. In fact, I never spent time with her in real life before she left to hit the west coast. For this story, we’ll call her Mya. I was technically going to stay with a stranger I barely knew from highschool, that I only corresponded with online. In addition to that she had work on some of the days that I’d be there, and wouldn't be able to spend much time with me either way. I’d be by myself most of the time, and I didn't know how I’d feel about that. Her home, while nice, wasn't in the most accessible place, and it’d be a 40 minute drive to get anywhere particularly interesting. The first day consisted of me catching up on sleep, hanging out at the house, and looking for people to connect with while I was out there. The next day, she drove us into West Hollywood, where I started my first portion of this solo journey. Hollywood Boulevard with all the stars on the floor was 10 minutes away, and I figured that was a good place to start. I called the first of many Ubers, and coordinated my pickup. Within 15 minutes, I was wandering along Hollywood boulevard. This was the first place being by myself really hit me. I saw the street performers acting like famous Hollywood characters. As I walked past Maverick from Top Gun, and Captain Jack Sparrow, I noticed something. Typically, when you’re out with squad you tap your friends and point to that funny thing you see across the street, or maybe you mention a fancy car you think they’d be interested in. There was none of that. Whatever it was that I observed, unless it was worth me stopping to take a picture, only stuck with me. The first thing I noticed about that, is that things weren’t innately funny, but rather interesting. When there’s no one to bounce jokes off of, you tend not to laugh as much. Once I realized that, whenever something did make me audibly laugh, I appreciated it that much more. I met some friends I made on Instagram the first night, and we hung out at their apartment. Alcohol, music, and good times with new friends from across the country. No complaints. I went to breakfast with Mya where she told me about her plans to go hiking, something I’d never done before. There was a popular trail that everyone visited, but we decided to go to a farther more peaceful one that apparently ended with a waterfall. We went to pick up her ex boyfriend from the train station downtown, which took long enough, then headed towards the canyon. I knew her ex from the internet, but never met him before then. As we drove up north, we all got acquainted, and familiar. Hiking was rather strenuous, but nothing insane. Along the 3 mile walk through the valleys of Altadena, CA, I recognized how peaceful the effects of nature were, if you weren't scared of the little rustling of small animals in nearby bushes. Once you got over the irrational fear of being attacked by mountain lions and poisonous snakes, you could really settle in, take a deep breath, and appreciate how untouched it all was. Another thing I recognized while I was out there, was how little I was. While I spend hours and hours in Manhattan among buildings hundreds of stories high, it never occurred to me how little I was in the grand scheme of things. There's nothing specifically human sized in the wilderness. It was all very humbling. If I got lost out there, or tripped over a cliff, I was done for. It wasn't made for me, I was merely a visitor. A speck on this vast planet, trying to enjoy it and experience it while I had the time and energy. I won't say I particularly had fun hiking, but I appreciated it. The views, the discoveries, the challenge, the open space, and the fresh air. It’s something I think everyone should try at least once. When we got back home, we decided to go out and find a party. Mya and her ex decided on a party, and we got dressed up to go. It was a pajama party but you could show up in anything. I would’ve wore pajamas if I could, but I didn't have any, and I realized that it would limit me if I wanted to go elsewhere. When we got there, I immediately knew I wasn't going to enjoy myself. Everyone there was at least 30, and while I’m not opposed to partying with older people, it wasn't the scene I envisioned. I really just wanted to be around people my age, and do 24 year old stuff. No soul train lines, no line dancing, no cupid shuffle. I’m refused to resign to old age that easily. I will admit I had a noticeable attitude, because I paid $15 to get in anyway, but within 20 minutes of being there, I couldn't take it anymore. I started looking for other parties, and found something free not too far away. I told them I was leaving, and bounced on my own. Another lesson. At the point where I was too annoyed to stay there anymore, I recognized a lesson that I would keep coming across on my adventure. It's one lesson but there are two points. If you don't like something, only you can change it. You are in charge of your own happiness. These two lessons in conjunction helped me form the rest of my experiences while away. One without the other doesn't equate to much, they have to be used together. Once I left that party I immediately felt better about where my night was headed, and I ended up party hopping to two other fun spots, getting rather drunk along the way. Although in hindsight it could sound like a blast, at that time anything was better than doing the electric slide with middle aged people that weren't even in pajamas. It was day 3 out in Cali and One of my new friends invited me to a music festival the day before, and said he would meet me there at 3. I took the ride to the city with Mya around 2. I did the same this as the day before and wandered for a while, taking pictures of things I found cool, before checking the time and heading towards the festival. I got to the festival, and showed them my confirmation. I entered into a walled complex with graffiti all over, art everywhere, and vendors with tables wherever they could fit. There was a food stand in the back, and carnival style games on the sides. It was truly an amazing environment with the opportunity for fun everywhere. It was 3, and my connect was nowhere to be found. I figured I would walk around and try to look at the vendors while I waited for him and the squad to arrive. After walking around for 20 minutes, I naturally got bored, and turned to my phone, something I was trying to avoid. Still no word from my friends and it was 4. I tried to enjoy the musical acts for a bit, but I wasn't really feeling it that much, so I went to find somewhere to charge my phone. I hadn't plugged it in for most of the day and it was dying. After discovering I made it into the green room by accident and volunteering for about an hour, I got VIP passes. I checked my newly charged phone and it was 5. My friend still wasn't there. Around this time, my lesson from earlier had shown up again. I was there, not really enjoying myself, and only I could change my situation. I didn't even know if they were coming, but I couldn't rely on them to make it fun for myself. I decided to get more proactive, and start speaking to whoever I felt was interesting. Without the help of alcohol, I really had get out of my head, and make the moves on my own. It wasn't easy, and I quickly came to the conclusion that whoever said “Alcohol is liquid courage” wasn't lying. I felt like I could use it, but I was happy with the challenge of having to socialize without it. After speaking to people here and there, I found out I was way more comfortable communicating with strangers than I had ever thought I’d be. At first it was very hard to get over the initial hump of saying Hi, but I got used to it. As time dragged on, I enjoyed some performances, bounced in and out of the backstage area, and awaited word from my friend. They finally showed up at 8, 5 hours later than I was expecting them. By then I was already over the atmosphere, and I was only there because there were still performances left, and they had just showed up. We met up and I chastised them for being so damned late. They stranded me for 5 hours without any friends, which was initially a curse but turned into a little blessing. I discovered that I could spend a significant time alone, something I never really did, and make something of it. I had met a few artists in the most natural way possible, and talked to all the girls I thought were interesting enough to warrant the effort. They showed me, someone who’s always around people I know, that I could spend time by myself, and meet new people without it being a huge ordeal. Before that day, I never really spoke to random people in public without a reason. This time, I noticed that the reason doesn't have to be solid, but literally because I wanted to. Typically I have friends everywhere I go in NY, and not having that put me in somewhat of a compromising position. It pushed me out my comfort zone, and trust me. I’ve been VERY comfortable. What I learned is that the hardest part is starting. Once you get over the initial hump of saying hi, you’re in and you can let whatever social skills you have take over. After we left there and parted ways, I hit up a spot called The Reserve with two of the homies. I was impressed. Inside, there was a “Vault” that housed the entire party, with gold bricks under glass in the floor, and decor to match the theme all over. It was live in there. The Reserve had a large variety of beautiful women, people dancing, drinks flowing, and the music was right. My friends were also impressed, but before long I could tell that it wasn't really their scene. They, much like myself, were more the house party and get-together kind of guys. Loud music with no interpersonal interaction wasn't their thing. They decided to leave, and once again, I was alone. Looking at the time, it had just hit 1:15, and the club closed at 2. The two lessons from earlier came right back into my face, and hit me. I was in charge of my own fun, and if I didn't do anything, I wasn't going to have any. I needed to get a move on quick. I scoped the joint for interesting groups. I saw two ladies sitting down next to each other, and casually introduced myself. Long story short, I ended up at dinner with four 30 year olds from South Carolina, where the cheapest entree on the menu was about $30. It wasn't my idea of the most fun I could have, but it was an experience nonetheless. On my long trip home in the Uber, I realized that as much as I was attracted to two of the ladies at the table, I wasn't upset that it didn't turn into anything I’d run home to tell my boys. I was just pleased with the possibilities that arose once I stopped over-thinking about what I was doing, and started doing. Some of the greatest things you’ll ever experience, are hiding behind that moment of hesitation that leads to inaction. Now that I’ve recognized this, I’m much more willing to take immediate action when I see what I want. Whether that's talking to women in a club, speaking to someone important about an opportunity, or even just making decisions that I’d normally spend way too long on, I see that merely thinking about doing something does not get you anything. This doesn't mean I’m insanely impulsive, but I’m less inhibited by the fear of not getting the results I want. The last thing I wanted from my trip to Los Angeles was to come home wishing I did more. Another day down, I prepared for my last full day in Los Angeles. When I got up Mya was getting ready to leave for work, way earlier than I knew I’d ever be ready. I was on my own. It was fine by me, at first I felt weird about doing everything by myself, but I realized I had been alone for most of my journey. I decided to go to the beach because it was cheaper to get to than the observatory, and there would be more to do. I got dressed and called my cab to take on a day at the beach. When I got there, I immediately hopped out and made my way straight to the pier. Another thing I noticed about moving on your own, is that there are no delays in action. No drawn out decisions trying to figure out if you want to go right or left, eat at a place or not, it's whatever you decide, and it all happens at your own pace. As I walked through the pier, the countless meetups and shootouts I had engaged in at that very location flashed back to my memory, all courtesy of the Grand Theft Auto series. In reality, it was a beautiful place that deserved none of that extreme violence, and I couldn't be more pleased that I was there taking it all in. I couldn't see an angry soul, and there was a general happiness to be out in the sun by the ocean. I soaked it all in, and continued walking. I went far enough onto the pier to get a quality picture, and headed back to see what else there was to do. I heard Venice beach was not too far away, and considered heading over there to see what it was like. It was a mile or two down the coast, and I didn't feel like walking there. I rented a bike and headed towards Venice Beach. Considering I hadn't ridden a bike in over 2 years, I was shaky to begin, but quickly locked in my balance. Cruising down the beach on the bike path was amazing. Barely avoiding a couple accidents on the relatively narrow path, I finally made it to Venice beach. You could clearly see the difference in atmosphere, from Santa Monica, to Venice Beach. Venice was way more local, and where you saw classy tourist traps on and near the Santa Monica Pier, you saw colorful homes and quiet alleyways dedicated to parking. There was a community out there, and it showed in how everyone interacted. The skateboarders and bikers congratulated each other over landed tricks and the older rollerskaters did spins as they danced to the tune of 80’s classics, while laughter and shouts of approval filled the air. I love New York City with all my heart, but that right there was something you’d be hard pressed to find in the 5 boroughs. Venice beach was probably my favorite part of my vacation. I can almost say that I’m happy to have gone alone, because it left me no choice but to be present in the moment. I wasn't explicitly having fun, but I was legitimately happy. For a long time, I’d have a hard time distinguishing the two, but I’m glad that I’ve arrived at that conclusion. I looked at the time, and realized I had to make it back to the rental spot by 6:30. I lost track of how long it took to get there, and figured it’d be best if I rushed back, and rushed I did. Two minutes into riding, I recognized how much nicer it’d be if I put the GTA San Andreas soundtrack on, and did just that. The spotify playlist provided me the classic tunes that filtered through my ears years ago as I spent countless hours exploring the digital world of California. First I listened to “Welcome to the Jungle”, then “Some Kind of Wonderful”, and a few other classic tracks. My favorite song from the game, “Freebird by Lynyrd Skynyrd” came on without my input, and I enjoyed every single second of the 10 minute song. Riding along the beach to those songs while the sun set in the background was by far my favorite memory from the trip. Later that night I had arranged to go to an event called TrapXart, a sex themed art party. Amazing stuff. Everyone in there was well put together, the best of Los Angeles showed their face. I messaged an exhibitor I knew from Facebook and quickly found her upstairs. She was exhibiting so I felt weird about hovering with her for too long, considering she had a whole job to do. I didn't want to be annoying, so after a few short minutes of conversation, I parted ways, promising I’d circle back around later. I’d be there for a few hours, so I needed to find something to do. I went and got a drink to kickstart my social side, because I really didn't have it completely under control yet, and got to work. Before long I was using my instagram story as a crutch to meet any and everyone I was interested in. In all honesty it was too easy. Fake it till you make it I guess. As long as I didn't say something stupid in my intro, they’d definitely talk to me and engage in conversation. It didn't matter who it was, artists, exhibitors, models, or the general audience, I spoke to them all while observing the overtly sexual art around me. I met up with another woman I knew from Facebook and her cousin, and we all clicked rather well. We walked around, split up, reconvened, and stopped to talk about how ironic it was to meet someone who lived in New York, while on vacation in California. After checking out the art for about an hour or so, they pretty much got bored of the event, and I realized that although I showed up solo, I was having more fun than they were. No it wasn't gut wrenching laughter, but I wouldn't have minded continuing what I was doing, circulating and speaking to the random people I encountered. Once again, I learned that I could make my own fun, by simply deciding to take action towards the things I wanted to do. I didn't have to settle with a boring experience because the situation wasn't ideal, I had full freedom to make as much out of it as I could, within reasonable limits. It might seem like a minor realization, but I learned something important that I plan to take with me wherever I go. New York, Los Angeles, Ghana, Cambodia, it didn't matter. I could keep myself entertained and engaged in any setting I wanted to, as long as I was willing to step out of my comfort zone. I was enough for me. In New York I had only ever gone out by myself once, and that was one of the most eventful nights of the summer. For a long time I feared being alone, not in an existential sense, but in the sense that I felt company was necessary to enjoy myself or have any fun. Every interesting thing I had done that entire time, was a result of me pushing myself to get what I wanted, even if it was a little awkward at first. Most times I didn't get what I wanted, other times I got some of it, and some times I got something completely different than what I expected to get. The whole trip pushed me to do things I had normally thought were weird, and I didn't even intend for it to teach me as much as it did. One thing you’ve probably noticed this whole time is that I didn't mention anything spectacular. I didn't end up in any wild cocaine-fueled threesomes, didn't wake up on top of a casino, didn't get into any cop chases or turf battles, and I didn't even get to smoke because I just didn't find the right setting for it. It was all in all, a pretty regular vacation. Anyone could do the things I did, and as a matter of fact, I think everyone should. I know if I went with my boys, things would have been drastically different and way more fun, but I wouldn't have learned what I learned or experienced any of the odd situations that made me grow as a human being. Even though it wasn't the exact type of fun I had hoped for, it all ended up being valuable to me for entirely different reasons. With that being said, I encourage everyone to take a trip alone. Pick a reasonably safe place you're interested in, or in my case a place you can afford, set your money aside, and go. Maybe set it up so you can meet a friend or two while you're away, but don't make them the focus of your trip. Don't bring your entire entourage, don't go and stay with family that will expect you to stay by their side the whole time, and don't go with extremely high expectations of what will happen. Just go spend some time by yourself in a strange land. I’m sure you’ll learn something.

[ghenegersnaps]

I’ll see you again

Sighhh. Sad how you had to leave so soon. :( I mean, yeah we only got to hang out twice, but they were honestly the best nights to me. I learned a lot about you. Just like how much you order whenever we eat in a fast food chain, how you like your pizza and burger dipped in ketchup, how you bite your nails sometimes, how much of a Mama’s boy you are (which is cute haha), how you know almost ALL of the rap songs there is and sings to them instantly, and how clingy you are too hahaha.

There wasn’t really a final place and time on where we’ll actually go last January 2. Walrus was closed, which really sucked!! So Tj had to look for another place to go. Still, no luck hahaha he just told me to be at Starbucks, Katipunan by 6 to 7 pm. I told Jet and my heart sank when he said, “Okay, I’ll try my best to be there. It’s ‘cause we’re leaving tomorrow already”. Idk, I mean usually whenever someone would say they’ll ‘try’ to come or whatever, most of the time it would already mean they won’t. So that’s why I kinda felt like not going anymore. But hey, that was just a thought lol I wasn’t ditching Tj haha.

Before I left the house, Tj kept on texting me to get my ass there already. And it was only before 6 pm!! I told him I’d be there by 6:30 so technically, I’m not late. I arrived at around 6:40.. Lol. When I got there, “holy fucking shit” Tj said. I thought maybe he got a little pissed off because I was late for 10 minutes?? Lol. I just hugged him, said sorryyy and he was good already hahaha. He introduced me to Diego. He has a beard and hair tied in a small man bun. I thought I’ve never seen him before but I didn’t know he was the DJ at Walrus last time lol. His hair was laid down that night that’s why. Turns out he was a fashion student too. Doesn’t look like it to be honest.. I thought he was some art student really haha but he complimented what I was wearing and said, “You smell good, what is that?” “Bath & Body Works, Peppermint” I replied. Mom gave it to me and it’s my favorite perfume atm hehe.

“Jet’s on his way” Tj said. I made an instant squeal and said sorry after lol. I didn’t know he actually meant what he said! Get a man who sticks to his words right?? Lol just kidding. NOW I’m more excited hahaha. I sat down and a few minutes later, Jet came. And DAAAAMN HE’S SO FINE. We hugged and sat down. We were still waiting for Gab. I met him before at Walrus too. And yes, I was one of the boys once again haha. I went to the restroom to pee and inside, I made this quick happy dance all by myself lol. Seriously. I was that happy Jet’s actually coming! And it seemed like I was in some movie huh? Haha! I went out, fixed my hair and made sure I still look fresh enough lol. “I thought you weren’t coming!” I told Jet. “I said I’ll try, remember?” he replied while looking all cute lol. I bought an espresso frap with a note: “Enjoy! Nice name :)” written on my cup from the barista just above my perfectly spelled name lol. I spelled it out to him that’s why hahaha. Gab arrived a bit longer and now that we’re complete, I asked Tj, “What time are we gonna leave?” he asked Diego and said we’ll leave by 8:30. Tj and I were shocked ‘cause it’s not even 8 pm yet. But oh well, the night was still young anyway haha. Jet took my frap and read the note, then he made this funny face which made me laugh lol. So there we are, just chilling at Starbucks and talking about random things. It always feels different being around with just guys. I got so used to hanging out with girls ever since I was in Prep. I only get to experience this whenever I’m with Tj honestly haha. I’m thankful though. I don’t get awkward or scared or whatever— which is good! It’s funny too ‘cause they always talk about dirty jokes on dicks, sex, all that shebang haha. Even Gab’s ex girlfriend who left him for a lesbian lol. By the time when we’re almost leaving, Jet randomly squeezed my left cheek and of course, I got all giddy inside haha.

We left Starbucks and went to Jollibee. We were so noisy while walking on the way there and I was laughing so much ‘cause Gab was being such a weirdo lol. He was even more noisy inside, others were already looking hahaha. While waiting in line, that’s when Jet started being touchy again. I guess you can say, he’s kinda flirting with me already. Not complaining here!!! Lol. We ate and left at around 8:30.

Ohmygod. We seriously went to sooo many places that night. I swear. 4 in all. And Diego paid for every Uber he booked for us!! It’s crazy lol. But I mean, Tj did tell me he has a lot of money on him so. Good for all of us hahaha. Inside the car, Diego would always sit in front and it would be Jet, Me, Gab, and Tj at the back. It was a bit crowded lol but I didn’t mind. We first went to a clubhouse which I forgot where exactly that is ‘cause Diego had to drop off something. After that, we went to 2020. It was a bar somewhere in Makati. The place was nice and there weren’t too many people since it was a Monday, so we decided to just start there and go to a different place afterwards.

Diego ordered drinks for us which tasted really good but it was strong! Well, at least for me hehe. I turned red instantly! They were all teasing me how drunk I am already but Tj knows I’m not lol. Gab kept on telling me I’m a tomato but would also randomly say out loud, “Ghene’s so cute” “She’s so cute” stuff like that haha. Gab was one of the 2 guys who told me I was cute before. Him and Tj’s other friend, Luigi. Jet was teasing me already too. Just like last time, he’d grab my face and tell me, “You’re so reeeed”. Sometimes I catch him just looking at me at random times too. Then he would slightly stick his tongue out and it was cute haha. There was a time wherein I saw Jet and Tj talking for quite a long time. Before I went to the restroom, I stopped by them and they looked at each other and actually stopped talking. I honestly think they were talking about me. Maybe. I didn’t bother asking Tj. He’s not gonna tell me anyway. Pfft, stupid bro code. Anyway, we had to finish all 6 huge ass mason jars and there were only 5 of us! 

Something really embarrassing happened to me again. :( UGH WHYYY. Okay so I had to go the bathroom ‘cause I needed to pee. I washed my hands after, fixed my hair a bit, and went outside the bar since that’s where they are. I sat down beside Tj and suddenly, “Ghene” Jet was calling me. “Your zipper’s open” HOOOLY FUCKING SHIT??? I wanted to get a time machine asap and go back to when I actually zip my pants up this time!!! WHY WHY WHYYYY. How could I freakin’ forget! And Jet has to be the one to see and tell me. :( It was honestly nice of him to tell me straight up though. After hearing him say those horrible words, I gasped so deep and instantly touched my zipper. Shit. It is open. I quickly stood up and said, “Ohmygod why didn’t anyone tell me!!” “I don’t wanna be the one to say it” Gab said. Okay so he saw it too. Wow Ghene. Great, just great. Tj didn’t even notice it!! I wish he was the one who saw it instead ugh. I zipped my pants up and said thank you to Jet. Man, what a freakin’ nightmare.

Anyway, let’s move on from that. It was I think around 12 am when we decided to leave 2020. I didn’t really know where Diego would take us by that time. We just all went we did. While heading out of the parking lot, Diego asked me, “Ghene, how many boyfriends did you have?” “I had one” I replied. Then suddenly, Gab was like, “You’re very beautiful, Ghene”. Uhm, what? Well that was random lol and for the fact that none of us is drunk yet. I just said thank you afterwards. “How many hearts did you break already?” Diego asked. Tj decided to butt in and said, “A lot”. Of course I said no!! It’s not many to even have to count it. Besides, what does that have to do with anything? “Seems like it” Diego replied. Tj told them, “That’s roughly around more than 10, man”. I raised my voice up and told them it wasn’t true! Tj added, “She’s such a good girl before though. Now, she just looks like a good girl but she’s a…” he was thinking of a word to describe me, then Diego continued, “BAD THANG” Tj and Gab sang along, “FINE AS HELL”. And it was pretty funny lol. Jet was a few feet away from us ‘cause he was at the atm machine. Honestly, a part of me wanted him to hear everything though. Oh well haha.

Jet came back and we all had to cross the street and wait for our Uber. It was funny ‘cause while waiting, we were all goofin’ off by the sidewalk lol. I had to admit, because I already drank quite a lot, I was getting really hyper too. Gab, Tj, and Jet posed in the middle of the street when there were no cars passing by lol. There was also a time wherein we caught Jet undoing the first 2 buttons of his top. “Ooohhh” Gab said. “It’s ‘cause it’s getting hot, man” Jet replied while finishing undoing his 2nd button. “I will“ I said. Yes, I was flirting back of course lol but I mean I was tripping too!! “OOOOHHHH” they all reacted and I honestly felt a bit shy and shocked I actually said that. I know, alcohol right? “Later, later” Jet replied teasingly and we all laughed lol. He would sometimes hold my hand and hug me while waiting too hehe.

Inside the Uber, Jet slid his right index finger behind my left armpit. Lol! I squealed and felt okay with it though. Ha! Dude I waxed my pits that afternoon and they weren’t sweaty so your girl’s good. I’ve come prepared. Lmao. He would also rub my back sometimes too. I didn’t know we were heading to BGC until I actually saw the sign. I was shocked we already reached The Fort lol. I wasn’t worried though. As long as I get home before sunrise, I’m good hehe when you’re 20 af. “Why don’t you just stay here in Manila, Jet” Diego said. “I want to man” “School’s just so expensive here” he replied. I honestly was a bit shocked when I heard the second thing he said. He comes from a pretty wealthy family though. Probably just personal reasons. We went bar hopping at BGC, looking for a good place to stay for a bit. We walked here and there which was fun! BGC’s fun to go to whenever it’s night time. There are a few people, few cars, it was cold, city lights, I just love The Fort itself haha. 

We got a few drinks at this place called Cable Car. Finally, a place where there’s actually more people and better music lol. I only drank half of my drink ‘cause I was getting dizzy already. I was fine! Just dizzy. I would sometimes close my eyes and lean on Jet’s shoulder for a few seconds and keep my head straight up again. I also laid my head on the couch and closed my eyes. I think I was ready to sleep that time lol. But Gab poked my right waist and they’re all telling me not to go to sleep. I sat back up properly and drank plenty of water. A few minutes later, Diego told us that we’ll go to his friend’s party. I know. So sponty huh? I love it lol. We went out of the bar and waited by the open parking lot for our Uber. I sat down on those cement stopper thingy for the cars when parking. I was all quiet because my tummy suddenly felt funny. “I need to take a shit” I told them. “Turn on!!” Gab said lol. I laughed while placing my hands on my tummy. I honestly needed to! And I got a bit worried where would I actually do it or if I will. Cable Car was a few feet away already. But thank God, it sorta went away for a bit. I stood up and suddenly, Diego was all like, “Okay, honesty hour. Ghene’s pretty hot” “Wow” I quickly replied. That was random and unexpected. I’ve been getting compliments tonight lol what is up. Gab and Tj nodded and agreed. “Actually, she is hot” Diego continued. “She is” Tj added. Wow really? This is coming from Tj now lol. Jet was sitting next to me and I casually glanced at him and he was just quiet. I honestly don’t know what that means haha.

Our Uber came and as we get in, they were all teasing me with these noises whenever you gotta take a shit lol. They repeated it at random times too. It was funny but it’s a good thing that feeling didn’t come back hahaha. Jet wrapped his arms around me while we were in the car. It was tight and it felt nice. He would sniff my hair a few times and give me soft kisses on the left side of my head. How cute :(

We reached Corinthian Gardens and I think Diego said it was near Robinsons Galleria. I was already feeling the need to throw up again. Ohmygod. What happened to me. I swear whenever I drink, I don’t normally throw up. Maybe it’s ‘cause I wasn’t peeing enough lol. Once we got out of the car, I told Tj, “Tj I need to throw up” I decided to tell him ‘cause I’m shy to let Jet know this time. Tj asked me again, “You need to throw up?”. I nodded while placing my hand on my chest. “You need to throw up?” Jet asked me. Well, guess he heard it too. Tj made me come with Jet and without hesitation, Jet came with me. He placed his hand on my back while we were walking to a plant area (lol). “Here” he said. As I was throwing up, he would rub and pat my back. After embarrassing myself again, “Are you okay?” “Feel better now?” he asked. I nodded and told him, “Sorryyy. It’s so embarrassing, this is the second time you’ve seen me throw up”. “It’s fiiine, that’s part of drinking” he replied. Ugh :( I sprayed my favorite peppermint perfume and fixed myself while we were walking to the house. 

“This is a house?” Gab said. The ‘house’ was HUGE. It seemed like a freakin’ clubhouse! They had over 7 cars there I think. Damn. And I don’t even know who’s house was it! I saw the owner though but she didn’t really care that there were already strangers at her party lol. I met new friends! Fran, Juicy, Donna, and Kyle. They were all so nice hehe. They drank a bottle of beer but I didn’t. I just wanted water lol. We stayed there for a bit and Fran suddenly said, “Are you guys together? You look good together” she was referring to Tj and I!! FUCK NO. I honestly think Fran thinks Jet’s cute though. She was dancing with him at the party. Meh.

We left the place and stayed by the sidewalk again while waiting for our Uber. It was almost 2 am and I sat down next to Jet. I was already getting tired to be honest. I laid my head on Jet’s left shoulder and he asked me if I was okay. I nodded and kept my head up again. I wrapped one arm around his shoulder and ran my fingers behind his lower head while he was texting his Mom. Lol how cute right? A 19 year old, 6′3″ tall guy texting his Mom at 2 am hehe. I can tell he likes what I’m doing too though haha. Tj told me, “Let’s go eat at McDonald’s, Ghene” I nodded and Jet said, “Yeah let’s eat”.

Our Uber arrived and Jet and I sat real close to each other again. Same thing haha. We were back at Katipunan and Diego and Gab had to leave already. Diego asked Tj to make sure he asks me to come with them more often haha. And I sure will! It was just the 3 of us left. Jet asked me if he could text his Mom using my phone. Of course I let him and I never really deleted his text to his Mom haha. While walking, he opened his right hand towards me and I held onto it. Then he hugged me tight again. At McDonald’s, we ordered and waited for our food by the counter. “Donna’s pretty cute” Tj said. “She’s got the Asian look” Jet replied. “How about Ghene though?” “Hot?” Jet said. I was just there, between them, being quiet lol. “Hot” Tj said then stopped, and confidently told Jet, “Dude, Ghene’s like high standards. Nobody can be compared to Ghene”. Woah there Tj lol. I mean yeah, thanks for being my wing man here but that’s so not true haha. “And a virgin” he added. I hit his right chest hard and didn’t even say anything. Fuck you, Tj lol.

While we were eating, we were talking about Tj and Clarence. He keeps comparing me to her. He keeps telling Jet how I’m just in the middle of a controlling girlfriend to an Idgaf girlfriend. Tj tells him, ‘I’m just right’. He also said how he got his long ass patience from me. I honestly didn’t know that but wow, that’s actually good to know. :) At some point, Jet said, “I fucking hate LDR” as he drinks his Coke. Right there I knew this isn’t the right time for us yet. I honestly don’t know if I can make it through another LDR too. I get why he hates it.

We were all done eating and Tj told us he’s just gonna buy ciggs outside. After a few minutes, Jet and I decided to go out and follow him. We did and he keeps leaving us! Lol. I know what he was doing haha. Tj went to 2 of his friends he randomly saw at McDonald’s. Jet and I were alone and I was stepping on those cement stopper thingy for the cars when parking again. He faced me and hugged me. It was long and tight. It’s like those ‘I’m going to miss you’ type of hugs haha. I hugged him back and told him, “I’ll miss you”. He looked at me and in my head I was like, “Omg are you gonna kiss me?” he didn’t lol. We looked for Tj again and I was still booking Jet’s Grab. We found Tj again and this time Jet told me to come with him. He leaned back to this red car and grabbed my arm, pulling me close to him. We hugged and I looked at him. Right there, he kissed me. I wrapped my right arm around his neck while we make out and smiled at each other after. I giggled a bit haha. It was better than before and it felt nice. :)

“I think there are people in this car” Jet suddenly said. I looked at the windows and there were!!! Holy shit, they didn’t even honked or said anything! Lol. What? Enjoying the show?? Hahaha. “Ohmygod let’s go” I said while grabbing his hand and heading back to Tj. Tj was still talking to his friends. We were still outside and sat down by those cement stopper thing. Still no Grab driver for him. Tj finally went outside and sat down beside me. “Did you guys kiss?” he casually asked. Jet and I were quiet and nodded. Lol. Tj made this teasing laugh and Jet told him to fuck off haha. Sadly, I finally booked him a GrabCar. Noooo :( We all stood up and not long enough the driver came. Tj and Jet hugged and it was so cute. We hugged too and Tj said, “Kiiisss”. So Jet kissed me for the last time and got in the car. He waved bye and I got sad. :(

Tj and I got into our cab and I asked him, “Does he really like me?”. “He does, Ghene” Tj replied. “He’s not gonna hit on you like that and eventually quit. That’s why I was leaving you both awhile ago” he added. I laughed and told him how I noticed it. I’m pretty sure Jet did too haha. “Why do you think I let him kiss you? He’s a good guy. I think if he finally stays here in Manila, he’d definitely go for you”. Wow. Music to my ears. 

It was around 3:30 am when we reached my house. I kissed Tj on his left cheek and thanked him again. “I told you, I got you” he said. We hugged and he kissed my forehead. I showered and finally went to bed.

I understand why Jet doesn’t wanna be in a LDR again. For the fact that he just been into one and it’ll be too soon to be in a new relationship anyway. I guess, we really are both victims by this LDR bullshit haha. With the 2 nights I’ve been with him, it may seem like we were just using each other, just having a good time. I don’t know. At least that’s one of the things that popped in my head. At some point, maybe I did and so did he. 

BLAH. Whatever. Besides, he’s not just some stranger. We already had feelings for each other before. I mean, I’m not expecting anything really. Like what Verna told me, timing really is a bitch lol. That’s why I’ll just let things happen.

I’m gonna see him again. I’m sure I will. :)

[rotoworld-yahoopartner]

Dose: The Harden Show

Week 12 Schedule: Games Played

5 Games: CHI

4 Games: BKN, DET, HOU, LAL, MIN, NYK, OKC

3 Games: ATL, BOS, CLE, DAL, MEM, MIL, NOR, ORL, PHI, POR, SAC, SAS, TOR, UTA, WAS

2 Games: CHA, GSW, LAC, MIA, PHO

1 Game: IND

Sunday Stars

James Harden quadruple-doubled (with turnovers of course) during Sunday’s 129-122 win over the Raptors, registering 40 points, 10 rebounds, 11 assists, two steals, two blocks, four 3-pointers, and yes, 10 turnovers in 38 minutes. Watching Russell Westbrook and Harden obliterate the box scores this season has been euphoric, and when you throw away those pesky turnovers (8-cat format), Mr. Harden ranks No. 1 overall (Westbrook No. 2) with insane averages of 28.2 points, 8.2 rebounds, 1.4 steals, 3.0 triples and a league-leading 11.8 assists per contest on 44.3 percent shooting. When two guys are having a ridiculous season like the one we’re witnessing, the MVP trophy is typically awarded to the player on the team with the better record, which in this case (at this moment) would be James Harden. However, with Russell Westbrook very likely to average a triple-double for the first time since 1961-62 season, that could certainly sway the voting in his favor. I honestly don’t really care whom the MVP award goes to this season, but I am certainly enjoying the show.

Chris Paul was phenomenal during Sunday’s 98-86 win over the Heat, racking up 19 points (7-of-11 FGs, 4-of-5 FTs), 18 assists, six rebounds, one 3-pointer, two steals and just one turnover in 29 minutes. CP3 leads all point guards in assist-to-turnover ratio by a wide margin at 4.38, ranks No. 3 overall in assist percentage (47.2) and is No. 4 overall in total assists (324), which are just a few reasons why he ranks No. 4 overall in standard 9-cat leagues. As a side note, Paul registered his 8,000-career assist in this one, a feat that only 10 other players have accomplished. 

Otto Porter posted an Otto-Porter-line with 13 points, three 3-pointers, seven rebounds, seven assists, one steal, two swats and two turnovers in 39 minutes. Porter can fill the box score like few others, which is why the 23-year-old has been a steady top-20 guy all year long. I used to give Scotty Brooks a lot of grief over the way he handled his rotations in OKC, but he hasn’t given the fantasy basketball world anything to complain about this season, and you’ve got to give the man some credit for Porter’s emergence as a stat-sheet stuffer this season.

Jabari Parker abused the box score in his 41 minutes of action during Sunday’s matinee, racking up 28 points, eight rebounds, seven assists, three 3-pointers, two steals, one block and two turnovers. While Giannis Antetokounmpo has been getting all the headlines this season (and justifiably so), Parker has also been having himself an impressive season, posting top-50 value and hitting career-highs across the board with averages of 20.4 points, 5.7 rebounds, 2.5 dimes, 1.1 steals, 1.4 trey-bombs and just 1.5 turnovers per contest on 49.9 percent shooting. Now that we have three years of data to go off, it’s pretty obvious that Parker should have gone No. 1 overall over Andrew Wiggins in the 2014 NBA draft.

T.J. Warren held his own against the defending champs on Sunday, hitting 7-of-9 shots on his way to 15 points, three rebounds, two assists, one 3-pointers, three steals and one turnover in 27 minutes. Warren has been hit-or-miss since returning from his mysterious head injury, and his usage rate has been down (from 22.3 pre-injury to 19.7 post-injury), but hopefully this successful stat line against a tough defensive team will help him start trending in a positive direction. I think Warren is a good guy to try and buy-low on.

Kentavious Caldwell-Pope drilled a tough, turnaround 3-point bomb to seal the victory for Detroit during Sunday’s thrilling 125-124 double overtime win in Portland, tallying 26 points, four triples, four rebounds, two assists, four steals and three turnovers in 48 minutes. Reggie Jackson also went to work on offense, scoring a team-high 31 points on 13-of-26 shooting to go with one rebound, two steals, three assists and two turnovers in 47 minutes. Jackson had a painfully slow start to the 2016-17 season, missing all of training camp and the entire month of November as he recovered from PRP injections to his right (shooting) thumb and left knee, and it was slow going when he initially got back to the court as he worked himself into game shape. However, since the turn of the New Year, Jackson has looked like a new man, pumping out top-30 value in 9-cat leagues with 24.0 points, 7.6 assists, 1.2 steals, 2.0 triples and just 2.6 turnovers per contest on 48.4 percent shooting. Jackson is entering his prime at 26 years old, so it’s reasonable to expect some improvement from last year’s numbers now that he’s fully up to speed. In other words, I would recommend Reggie as a hold as opposed to a sell-high guy.

C.J. McCollum did all he could to help Portland to a win during the double overtime loss, scoring 25 points on 16-of-28 shooting to go with three rebounds, three 3-pointers, six assists, one steal, one block and one turnover in 44 minutes. McCollum has been a stud all year long, but he’s been particularly impressive in 2017 with averages of 33.8 points, 4.6 rebounds, 4.4 assists, 1.2 steals, 0.8 blocks, 2.8 triples and 2.8 turnovers per game on 53.2 percent shooting from the field and 95.8 percent from the charity stripe. McCollum has ranked No. 4 overall in 9-cat leagues during that five-game span, so while I do absolutely love C.J.’s game, owners may want to pursue some sell-high opportunities as this is likely his plateau. And by sell-high, I mean don’t deal him unless you’re getting a first-round stud in return.

On the Radar

T.J. McConnell remained in the starting lineup despite the return of Sergio Rodriguez (ankle) and put up four points, eight boards, six assists, two steals and two turnovers in 36 minutes. The 76ers have now won three of their past four games with McConnell running the point, and he’s also a much better defender than Rodriguez, so it’s looking like he may stick as a starter moving forward. Over the past four games, McConnell has been a steady late-round guy with averages of 9.0 points, 9.8 assists, 5.3 boards, 1.5 steals and just 2.0 turnovers per game on 39.5 percent shooting, so if you can stomach the inefficient scoring and need some help in assists, give McConnell a look.

Dario Saric had a nice game off the bench, going 5-of-13 from the field and 5-of-6 from the charity stripe on his way to 18 points, five boards, three 3-pointers, one steal and four turnovers in 30 minutes. However, this stat line does come with an asterisk as he did this against the worst team in the league at defending the forward spots, so I’d like to see him do it again before recommending him as a standard league add. Basically, as long as Ersan Ilyasova is healthy, Saric is only going to be worth owning as a deep league stash.

Malcolm Brogdon remained in the starting lineup despite the return of Matthew Dellavedova (hamstring), and he went off for a career-high 22 points on 9-of-15 shooting (2-of-2 from the stripe) to go with two triples, one rebound, three steals, one block, five dimes and four turnovers in 36 minutes. He’s been a steady late-round guy since being inserted into the starting lineup, owning averages of 13.7 points, 5.0 boards, 6.5 assists and 2.0 turnovers per game on 45.1 percent shooting, so give him a look if you need a point guard.

Allen Crabbe did not miss a single 3-point attempt during Sunday’s double-overtime loss to the Pistons, going 12-of-15 from the field and 1-of-1 from the line on his way to a career-high 30 points to go with five triples, one rebound, one assist, one steal and two turnovers in 43 minutes. The impeccable shooting had Crabbe clocking in with a ridiculous 97.2 true shooting percentage, and he’s been heating up over the past three with averages of 20.7 points, 2.0 assists, 3.0 triples and just 1.0 turnover per game on 55.6 percent shooting. The uber-efficient shooting scoring is not sustainable, but if you’re searching for some production in the 3-point category, it makes sense to swoop Crabbe up to see just how long he can keep this up.

Al-Farouq Aminu also had an efficient night, going 7-of-10 from the field and sinking his only freebie on his way to 16 points, eight boards, two assists, one block, one 3-pointer and one turnover in 37 minutes. Aminu was launching up bricks at an alarming rate to begin the 2016-17 season, but he’s been much more efficient over the past seven games, sitting on an eighth-round evaluation in 9-cat leagues with averages of 8.4 points, 7.6 boards, 3.1 assists, 1.1 steals, 0.9 treys and just 1.0 turnover per game on 42.6 percent shooting. Aminu is an intriguing fantasy prospect with his ability to bring a little bit of everything to the stat sheet on a nightly basis, so he’s deserving of a speculative pickup in most leagues. In points leagues, I think he’s a must-own guy.

DeMarre Carroll made it rain on the Rockets, draining six trey-bombs in 34 minutes on his way to 26 points, eight rebounds, one steal and one turnover. Carroll has been stealthy climbing the rankings over the past five with averages of 11.6 points, 2.4 triples and 1.2 steals per contest on 48.6 percent shooting. He could fall off at a moment’s notice, but if you’ve got someone to cut, Carroll could be worth a look. 

Injury Tracker

Hassan Whiteside (eye, personal) returned from a four-game* absence and put up 15 points, 13 rebounds, two blocks and two turnovers in 31 minutes. His return to action resulted in Willie Reed being sent back to the bench, and Reed ended his night with four points, 10 boards, one steal, one block and one turnover in 17 minutes. With Whiteside healthy, Reed won’t be worth owning in most leagues.

Giannis Antetokounmpo (illness) sat out Sunday’s game, which resulted in Mirza Teletovic moving into the starting five, although Teletovic was a no-show in his 31 minutes of playing time. Considering it’s just an illness, I imagine the 22-year-old Antetokounmpo will be back in action for Tuesday’s game in San Antonio.

Michael Beasley exited Sunday’s game with a left shin contusion and did not return. Consider him questionable for Tuesday’s game against the Spurs.

Sergio Rodriguez (ankle) returned from a three-game absence and went 2-of-6 from the field in 12 minutes off the bench on his way to four points, three assists and one turnover. T.J. McConnell may have stolen Rodriguez’ spot in the starting five during his injury, and as a reserve, El Chacho isn’t worth owning anywhere.

Larry Nance (knee) is expected to return to the court in about two weeks. He’s not worth stashing in most scenarios, but Luol Deng owners can expect a fairly significant drop-off in production once Nance returns to the court. When Nance was healthy, Deng was only earning 26.2 minutes a night.

Jon Leuer exited Sunday’s game with a sore right knee and did not return, so he should be considered questionable for Tuesday’s game in Sacramento. If he’s out, Tobias Harris would move back into the starting five and Stanley Johnson would have the opportunity for some extended minutes off the bench.

Trevor Booker exited Sunday’s game with a left hip contusion, and while he was initially ruled out for the remainder of the game, he eventually got back on the court and ended his night with four points, four boards, three dimes, one steal and one block in 18 minutes. Because Booker was able to return, I imagine that he’ll be available for Tuesday’s game against the Hawks.

Austin Rivers (illness) missed Sunday’s win over the Heat, but with the Clippers off until Wednesday, he’ll likely be back on the court for a matchup with the Magic. Raymond Felton drew the start in his place and produced seven points, seven boards, five dimes, two steals, one 3-pointer and one turnover in 37 minutes.

Josh Richardson missed Sunday’s game with a left foot sprain, which resulted in Wayne Ellington moving into the starting lineup and he struggled during his 20 minutes on the court, missing all five of his 3-point attempts and finishing the game with just four points and one assist. Richardson said that he injured his foot “a few games ago,” and that the injury was only getting worse the more he played on it, so while X-rays and an MRI revealed no structural damage he could be missing more than a few games here. The timing of this injury is extremely unfortunate, as Richardson had finally been coming around as a mid-round guy over the past few weeks after a lackluster start to the year; but now he finds himself back on the sidelines with yet another injury to a different appendage. While Ellington drew the start on Sunday, I imagine that Dion Waiters could find his way back into the starting five if this is a long-term issue for Richardson, so Waiters is someone to consider as a speculative pickup in deep points leagues.

Luke Babbitt (illness) also sat out Sunday’s game, which allowed Derrick Williams to draw the start, but he did a whole lot of nothing during his 21 minutes of action with two points on 1-of-5 shooting, three boards, two assists, one steal and one turnover.

Matthew Dellavedova (hamstring) logged 18 minutes off the bench in his return from a five-game absence on Sunday, going 1-of-5 from the field on his way to two points, two boards, four assists, one steal and one turnover. It’s looking like Malcolm Brogdon may have usurped Delly for the starting point guard position in Milwaukee, so Dellavedova isn’t worth owning anywhere.

Kyle Korver did not play on Sunday because Mike Dunleavy has failed to report for his physical in Atlanta. Dunleavy wants to be bought out, so he’ll be free to join a team of his choosing, and if this situation isn’t resolved quickly, Dunleavy’s antics will delay Korver’s Cleveland debut.

Brandan Wright (left ankle) has begun going through full-speed individual workouts, and he’s hopeful to return to the court sometime in January. He’ll be brought along very slowly, and can remain on the waiver wire in all leagues.

Aron Baynes (ankle) returned from a two-game stint on the sidelines and put up two points and one rebound in six minutes off the bench.

Bradley Beal rolled his right ankle on Sunday, and while he played through it (and looked fine doing so), he was spotted limping around the locker room after the game. Beal said he was “OK” during his post-game interview, but with a long history of lower right leg injuries, I’m going to have to consider him questionable for Tuesday’s game against the Bulls. If Beal hits the sidelines, Kelly Oubre will benefit most with John Wall running the show on offense.