#managed to get I Burn for a good price on Amazon

[joyfulpirates]

Updated thoughts on some products I recently bought for my own routine (context, I spent several years not caring about skincare AT ALL and am now very glad I coupon religiously because damn). For every picture, I'll list off all the products shown. I just need to make sure the pictures get there, and y'all presumably have Amazon.

(This is the Byoma Hydrating Milky Toner.)

I really like this, but because of some issues I'm still having with a different product (that I've removed but is still fucking me up), I'm not enjoying it as much as I would ordinarily. I'll try some of their other toners first, but this one seems like a good fit for my skin (which leans dry even during the spring and summer).

It was about $20 at Target, but I coupon like a beast, so I managed to get 50% off.

(This is the Byoma Brightening Travel Kit. I'm going to include all the products individually. This was $5, but it retails for $19, I just coupon really aggressively and go for sales.)

I've used a lot of cleansers, but the Creamy Jelly Cleanser is my favorite, hands down. I'm buying a version of this and their Cleansing Balm as soon as I get the money for it. Why? Because it's gentle on my skin and it doesn't leave oil residue behind, which are two problems I tend to have with other cleaners, even with double and triple Cleansing (I was doing a Quadruple Cleanse for a few years, before I finally got frustrated and gave up on skincare entirely).

Full disclosure, I still don't know why this was happening. Honestly, the leading consensus is newspaper ink. No one could figure it out. I went to doctors, dermatologists, drunk college students, and an ex of mine for help, and all of them looked at me like I was insane.

The Jelly Cleanser is the best daily cleanser I've tried. With a cleansing balm (I recently tried out the CeraVe Cleansing Balm, it works but it's too small for the price, I could probably use this to remove my makeup.

The Byoma Brightening Serum with Niacinamide and Hyaluronic Acid

Full disclosure, my big Skincare Problems are actually pretty simple.

I have skin that leans dry, but still gathers up enough of a sweat to cause oiliness and debris. I'll get breakouts if I don't wash my face, and they tend to be pretty deep and pretty nasty (though not prolific or life-altering like I've seen admittedly), usually around my eyes where my glasses sit. I get hormonal breakouts around my jaw, chest, and neck. I have really deep dark circles that always lead to me looking tired and groggy.

Has the serum helped the pore situation? I mean no, but I've only been using it for a week. Has the serum helped my dark circles? No, and it probably won't, they're genetic and there's nothing I can do about that.

The Byoma Moisturizing Rich Cream

Don't get me wrong. It's a nice cream. I don't mind it. I just have a loyalty to my jar of CeraVe, which I've been using daily for a month and still doesn't look touched (not just on my face either, I use it for my elbows).

It's okay. If you think you'd like it (pro tip, this is better for dry and combo girls, I don't think oily girls are gonna be fond of this). I'll just probably not purchase this ever again, and I don't think that's wrong.

Agency Anti-Aging Skincare

I know this is bad of me to say, since I'm currently using their free trial, but fuck it. I hate this brand.

They prescribed me two retinols (one for my eyes, one for my face), a face cream, and a Cleanser.

In order:

-I don't know what this is, but the retinols burn the shit out of my face. I use it as directed by the bottle, but it's so uncomfortable and itchy - and if I'm not enjoying it, I don't think I'd get into skincare in general. I couldn't bear to use them for longer than a few days, and I'm not shy about using retinols typically.

-I'm having an allergic reaction to the moisturizing cream. What kind? The kind where pieces of your skin fall off your face in dry flakes. That kind. It's annoying, and not the type of reaction I typically associate with moisturizers, I more see that in retinols, so I don't know if this is all down to this retinol they prescribed me, or if there's other stuff at work here.

-I don't know what's going on with the eye cream, but it smells like death.

-The Cleanser is the worst part of it though. It burns, it doesn't really do anything for your makeup, and it just ... SITS THERE.

I'm really glad I have that policy of only buying samples at first, because I'm sending this free trial back. I'm not going to use this line anymore, or pay for anything they sell. I've been eyeing Curology for a few years, so I'm glad I took the leap on Agency since they're owned by the same company, but I will probably not be taking more leaps like this, and in fact will probably just avoid Curology's parent company altogether.

And of course, we can't forget Old Faithful:

I can't emphasize enough how much I adore this moisturizer. It looks so good under foundation guys, you should try it.

[nickgerlich]

The DTC Blues

I remember the 1990s, when the internet was the wild, wild west. Entrepreneurs, flush with tech know-how and investor money, but not a whole lot of marketing sense, launched a wide variety of dotcoms. The common thinking was that virtually anything could be sold online, from furniture to 50-pound bags of dog food, wheelbarrows, and potting soil.

Why not? Folks had seen Amazon take off in the virtual world, and they wanted a piece of the action, too.

The dotcom bubble burst around the turn of the century, and many of those start-ups crashed and burned. The lesson learned was that, just be cause you can, doesn’t always mean you should.Skip forward to the last few years, when COVID found all of us shopping from home, and a new wave of dotcom darlings started to flourish. These were different from the 1990s start-ups, though, in that they were DTC—Direct To Consumer—brands that sold only via their website. These corporate verticals did everything from manufacturing to marketing and retailing.

The problem is that it is very hard to establish a brand in the virtual space these days. Yes, Amazon did it, as have others. But Amazon is selling other people’s products, complemented by its own private label merch. Today’s DTCs face the uphill battle of entering consumer choice sets, remaining top-of-mind, and then making the sale.

No small task, and last year saw many DTCs file for bankruptcy. The outlook for 2024 is not good either.

Perhaps the best chance a DTC has of survival is to add BAM locations, but that takes money and management skills, something they are often lacking. Inventories must be held at each location, further increasing the costs of doing business.

But those storefronts may be the only way to build brand recognition. Retail is a crowded space on a good day, and if you reside only behind the invisible wall of the internet, even the best laid SEO and keyword buys can still fall short.

Eyewear seller Warby Parker has found success by adding stores. In the process, though, price savings to customers have shrunk. But the company is still around. It’s better than facing a protracted death scene like Peloton is enduring.

Peloton, the maker of expensive stationary bikes and treadmills, scored high during COVID. We couldn’t go to the gym, so we bought our own equipment. But with COVID restrictions behind us, the market for home exercise equipment has cratered. To the company’s credit, they retooled and started focusing more on workout software subscriptions, distribution through Dick’s Sporting Goods and Amazon, and product placement in every Hilton hotel property. But it most likely still will not be enough.

Never mind that home exercise equipment is, for most people, just an aspirational purchase. They wind up being covered in clothes or dust.

The DTC that gets discussed the most is Wayfair, the online home goods retailer. Even though they have been around since 2002, they have showed many signs of being vulnerable. And with 14 million different products, they might just collapse under the weight of their inventory.

The Wayfair business model is a classic. Basically, by being available only online, they could afford to sell at much cheaper prices. Stir in their own private label goods, and you have something that, on paper at least, looks and smells a lot like Amazon. But no matter how much advertising Wayfair has done in the last few years, they are still having trouble attaining top-of-mind status.

It is when you read the dire reports of DTCs that you begin to appreciate just how fortunate Amazon is. Jeff Bezos built a brand name from scratch, the same thing all these DTCs are trying to do. It’s just that he did it early enough in the internet era that it caught everyone’s attention. Launch a new DTC today and watch the people yawn. It’s not buzz worthy these days.

Of course, this doesn’t mean there won’t be successes in the years ahead. Someone will come along and show us how to be a DTC darling, how to break through the clutter and become a household word, how to make money at every step along the way. It won’t be easy, though.

Meanwhile, hope springs eternal in the human breast, and we will continue to see entrepreneurs willing to give it a go anyway, caution be damned. Because if you can survive long enough to pass through these choppy waters, there’s gold on the other side. Just don’t bet the farm on it too early, though.

Dr “Back To The Future” Gerlich

Audio Blog

[tombeane-blog]

Beware That Mona Lisa Smile

"You're so like the lady with the mystic smile"

Nat King Cole - "Mona Lisa"

I don't know how long we've had our Pepper Grinder.  Somewhere between 6 and 30 years.

What I do know is that for the past few months it hasn't been grinding properly.  The pepper comes out just like dust.

I took it apart and it looked like the little grinding teeth were kinda worn - or were they?  I never looked at them when it was new so I'm not sure.

And so began my exhaustive online research for a new one.

There was a huge selection of pepper grinders and pepper mills listed.  I asked my AI Chatbot to explain the difference between the two.  It took 3 paragraphs to more or less say, "Not sure".

Prices ranged from $20 to $200.  Wow!  That must be because over the years a lot of advanced technology has been introduced to the grinding arts.  

Many of them were adjustable from a coarse to a fine grind.  Cool, but Hmmm?  Do we need one of the new, more expensive, advanced models?  

"Hey old man, don't be a fuddy duddy.  Join the amazing and wonderful world of advanced pepper corn granulating."

"I don't need you in this blog Vern.  Sit down and shut up!"

As usual, I looked at a whole fecee ton of them and I paid particular attention to the Amazon reviews.

"5 Stars!  I was amazed at the difference in my life from using a well made, cost effective adjustable pepper crushing system.  I feel younger than I have in years.  Even my wife noticed the increase in my zip, energy and stamina(If you know what I mean - wink wink nudge nudge)."

"4 Stars. Works as expected. I rated it down a star because it does not work as well on bell peppers as it does on those little black peppercorns."

"3 Stars.  It worked OK at first but after 3 uses my morning eggs started tasting funny.  I removed eggs from my diet and am now satisfied with this product."

"2 stars.  Product came packaged with way too much bubble wrap - which we all know has a terrible affect on the climate.  I contacted Amazon and requested a replacement.  I sent the climate harming unit back in it's original package and within a few days I had a replacement that came packaged with almost no bubble wrap at all.  Great response from Amazon! (although the box was damaged)  I am extremely happy with it now.  Changed from 2 climate destroying stars to 4 beautiful green stars! I would have given it 5 stars if it wasn't for the damaged box."

"Piece of crap item sucked right out of the box just like every other pepper grinder I've tried!  I might as well pound my peppercorns with a large round rock.  Just wish that I had the ability to give this product 1/4 star.  AMAZON - GET TO WORK ON FIXING EVERYTHING OR I WILL BURN YOU TO THE GROUND!"

"5 Stars!  I work from home in my spare time and made over $300,000 dollars last year!!!  You can too!  Quit your your boring miserable job immediately and order my new absolutely free 4 page brochure on becoming a gazillionaire like me! (You only pay $17.50 for shipping and handling.). "

Research complete, I managed to get my selection down to three highly regarded adjustable pepper grinder-millers.  But then I noticed that one of them looked exactly like the model I already had.  The other two models had little marks on the side showing a I to a IIII in adjustable coarseness but the one that looked like mine did not.

But, it too was advertised as adjustable!

In desperation I studied the diagrams which showed that by twisting the little knob on top you could adjust the grinding mechanism on the bottom. 

Turns out the knob wasn't just to screw the top back on - it was an integral working component of the crushiating process!

Rushing back into the kitchen, I reassembled mine and observed that it did the same thing.  Sure enough there on the counter top was proof that I could adjust the pepper pellets from a fine powder to little nibblets of pepper goodness.

Realizing I had solved the problem, I wiped all the pepper fragments from the counter into the sink, tiptoed silently back into the living room and sat back down and turned on Fox Business.

Later my wife walked into the living room and asked if I had decided which pepper grinder I was going to buy.

"Do you want the truth or do you want a comforting little white lie?", I asked.

"Well, usually when I ask for you to quit lying and tell me the truth you respond, 'You can't handle the truth!' - or you just say the lie louder.  So I'm a little unsure here."

"OK, so maybe I put it back together and maybe it just started working."

"Or maybe I figured out the problem and maybe I fixed it." 

"Then again maybe - after all these years - I finally learned how to use it properly."

I finished with, "I look at it like this.  Based on the higher priced model I saw on the Google - I just saved us $200 dollars!"

She stood there silently smiling at me.

And now I know why Mona Lisa had that world famous smile as she sat there looking at Leonardo.  I know what she was thinking.

"You're an idiot!"

[promotionsonlinereviews]

PROTETOX REVIEW | My Real Experience | ((2022 UPDATE)) Protetox Weight L...

💥 Website: https://official-siteweb.online/Protetox-mc1 💥 Website: https://official-siteweb.online/Protetox-mc1

PROTETOX REVIEW | My Real Experience | ((2022 UPDATE)) Protetox Weight Loss Supplement

What is it Protetox Weight Loss Supplement? Protetox is a newest and innovative weight loss supplement formulated with 100% powerful natural antioxidants, scientifically designed to detoxify and accelerating supporting weight loss, using natural ingredients, Protetox weight loss supplement helps users eliminate toxins from their bodies without putting them through a significant cleansing routine.

Protetox it's such an advancement in the weight loss industry to burn fat in a healthy and safe manner. Protetox is the newest natural formula that manages weight loss and a healthy immune system.

Protetox is safe, this product is antibiotic-free, gluten-free, non-GMO, manufactured in an FDA registered facility and without animal testing, Made only with the freshest and highest quality natural ingredients available and always following Good Manufacturing Practice (GMP) guidelines.

Benefits of Protetox Weight Loss Supplement: The formula Protetox increases metabolism and supports weight loss, also supports a healthy heart, improves energy well-being, fights fatigue and increases vitality, Protetox is a powerful and unique blend that is helping thousands of people in many different countries.

How to use Protetox: Protetox Weight Loss Supplement comes in a form of oral capsules, each bottle contains 30 capsules and covers a 30 day supply, the correct way to use this product is simple: Just take 1 capsule with half a glass of water every day with your evening meal and take your treatment seriously to enjoy the best results.

Protetox Side Effects: Protetox is manufactured under a registered FDA approved and GMP certified facility Protetox is completely free of side effects but watch out for the dose, you can’t take more than once a day. If you want to slim down you must follow the correct treatment.

🔴 ALERT: Due to the huge success of this supplement many websites are selling fake supplement, so to help you out I will leave the link of the official website. ✅Official Website: https://official-siteweb.online/Protetox-mc1

Take your treatment seriously and remember that you have a 180 day money-back guarantee.

Protetox it's such an advancement in the weight loss industry to burn fat in a healthy and safe manner. Protetox is the newest natural formula that manages weight loss and a healthy immune system.

PROTETOX REVIEW | My Real Experience | ((2022 UPDATE)) Protetox Weight Loss Supplement PROTETOX REVIEW | My Real Experience | ((2022 UPDATE)) Protetox Weight Loss Supplement PROTETOX REVIEW | My Real Experience | ((2022 UPDATE)) Protetox Weight Loss Supplement

* See More Information: ✅Official Website: https://official-siteweb.online/Protetox-mc1

More videos about this product: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=38qRc3olEB0 Video Link: https://youtu.be/q2OlQSn2-uU Thеѕе vіdеоѕ аrе fоr іnfоrmаtіоnаl рurроѕеѕ оnlу. Hеnсе Indіvіduаl rеѕultѕ mау vаrу.

Subject about this video: protetox, protetox review, buy protetox, protetox reviews, get protetox, protetox price, protetox supplement, protetox benefits, protetox ingredients, protetox discount, does protetox work, protetox is good, protetox review 2022, protetox diet pills, protetox pills, does protetox really works, protetox customer review, protetox amazon, protetox real reviews, protetox supplement review, protetox weightloss, protetox usa, protetox supplement reviews, protetox is scam, Protetox Supplement Weight Loss

PROTETOX REVIEW | My Real Experience | ((2022 UPDATE)) Protetox Weight Loss Supplement

[pxrifiedmxniac]

The gang’s all here!

[fireblogger]

Tips to Reduce Spending

I’ve never had a problem with my monthly budget, mainly because it doesn’t exist. I naturally spend less than I make, therefore there’s always some money for the bills and rarely some time spent managing my money. It’s not a good situation to be in, it’s not the worse by any means, but if you want to build your savings and retire earlier you need to be deliberate with your spending and savings choices.

This is traditionally done with a budget. Now I’m not going to lie, I’m terrible at budgets. I can create them no problem, but remembering to actually follow them? Good luck.

1.     The first step to create a budget is to document your expenses. If you don’t know how much you tend to spend then it will be very difficult to create an effective budget. If most of your transactions are on debit and credit cards, then you can go back through previous months to track your spending. Or you can start tracking today so you have a better idea in the future.

2.     Once you have a good idea of how much money you tend to spend on various categories you can start building the budget itself. (Don’t forget about annual or semi-annual expenses like car insurance). Make sure you are aware of the differences between needs and wants when you are budgeting.

3.     Once you have a budget you aren’t done, you should continue to track your expenses and adjust the budget as needed.

So, now you have a budget. How does that translate to actually spending less money?  Here are some behavioral tips to help spend less money:

·       Now that you know about how much you spend on things start paying for them in cash. When you go to a grocery store with a $100 bill (or a $100 gift card) you are forced to spend less than that $100. You can’t go over, but if you had a debit card a $112 bill would approve even though it was $12 over your budget.

·       Change your daily habits to avoid temptation. Does your route to or from home pass by a fast-food restaurant that you just love? Did you just notice that you actually spend $50 a month there on coffee and French fries? Try taking a side street so you never see the sign. Do you habitually order delivery through your handy-dandy phone? Try deleting the apps, not seeing them on the phone can reduce temptation and the extra step of needing to redownload every time can slow you down when you’re thinking about ordering. Even if you don’t want to delete the app you can hide in somewhere in the back folders of your phone so you don’t see the icon and thing huh, think imma get myself some pizza.

·       If there’s a consistent ‘treat’ you like to get, think about low-cost alternatives. For example, I love pizza. Like, it’s not healthy, neither is my solution but we’re talking about money not fitness. I will often keep some tortilla shells, a cheese blend, and a bag of pepperonis on site. Then if I’m craving pizza, I can make myself a 400 calories pizza roll that costs less than 50 cents instead of spending the minimum of $10 (to deliver) which usually ends up being a $12 order which also has a delivery charge, tax, and tip and becomes something closer to $20 for a single craving?

·       Consider how your spending habits change when you’re emotional, are you more likely to buy yourself a treat and how much does that treat cost a month? Make the decision before-hand to redirect emotional buying to other positive behaviors instead. Things like working out, calling a friend, drawing a doodle of whoever pissed you off then burning it in the sink, or meditating. Whatever you do, don’t open up Amazon.

·       Ask yourself if you need something or want something before you buy it. Do you need those new shoes? Or do you want them? Taking the time to add one more mental step before actually spending the money can help reduce impulse purchases. My No Spend Year | Michelle McGagh | TEDxManchester is a great TED Talk on this topic.

·       Forget trends. Don’t even bother trying to keep up with all the newest fads. And if a fad looks really cool? Take a step back and ask yourself if you really think that this new item is actually useful and will add joy to your life, or if you just think it is because of herd mentality.

·       Don’t go into debt to buy things. This mainly applies to credit-card debt and doesn’t really apply to houses (especially if you plan on getting a duplex and renting out of it). If there’s something that’s really cool, it will still be really cool when you have the money saved up to buy it in cash. It might even be really cool and cheaper if a new model comes out in the meantime.

Pay down your debts. This is less advice to reduce immediate spending and more advice to avoid future spending on interest payments. There are two main schools of thought when it comes to paying down debt:

1.     Start with the high interest debt. This makes the most logical sense as high-interest debt will end up costing you more in the long run.

2.     Start with the lowest balance, regardless of debt: This makes the most emotional sense. People are human, and they like to see progress on their goals. The feeling of success when you pay off a debt completely can help spur you on to tackle the next debt.

Starting with the high interest debt is my preference. I want to save every penny possible, and that’s the way to do it. But if you know that you may have difficulty sticking to a plan, or if you want the satisfaction of paying off your debt then the second option is a fine one to take.

Changing your behavior and paying down debt are some of the harder steps to take when trying to spend less money overall. Here are some simpler, practical, pieces of advice:

·       Buy in bulk. When you go grocery shopping do some meal planning first and buy in bulk. If you have a larger family then stores like Costco or Sam’s Club can be very useful to get some discounted prices. However, if you’re like me and live in a very small household then buying some items in bulk at a local cheap grocery store can be just as effective without cluttering up limited storage space.

·       Explore secondhand shops for new appliances, clothes, furniture, etc. Online marketplaces like Craigslist and Facebook Marketplace can be great places to get good deals. There’s no need to spend $50 on a waffle iron when the Youth Ranch down the street or Bob around the corner is selling one for $5.

·       Price-shop. Amazon won’t always have the cheapest prices, and while convenience is nice they aren’t the only home delivery store. Shop around to see where you can get the best price for your purchases.

·       Don’t buy as much stuff, borrow it if you can. If anyone knows me then know how much I love books. I used to have multiple bookcase that I would move about once a year when I switched apartments. Over time I forced myself to give away or sell most of them, and now check the local library for my next read. And by now I mean pre-COVID-19. But post Covid I’m sure I’ll be back at it!

·       Look for long lasting, high-quality versions of products. A nice pair of shoes can last you five years or more in my experience. If you can, save up for the longer lasting versions so you don’t have to replace them as often.

·       Reduce any monthly bills that you can. If you consistently have rollover data that may mean that you should pay less for less data. If you’re going to the gym just to use the treadmill, consider walking around the block a few times instead. Decide if you really need all those streaming services that you pay for.

·       Adjust the thermostat, especially if your home isn’t especially energy efficient. Keep the apartment a little colder in the winter and a little warmer in the summer for power savings.

Finally, this is all well and good. But how do you actually follow through? The best person to answer this is yourself, but here are a few options:

1.     Get an accountability partner. You can go through each other’s finances to make sure you are hitting your goals. Having an extra set of eyes can be incredibly useful to not only spot places where expenses can be curbed, but to make sure that what’s on paper matches what you wanted there to be.

2.     Pay for everything in cash. This is reminiscent of Dave Ramsey’s cash budget. But if you have an envelope of cash labeled food, and that’s all the fast food and grocery money you have for the month it will be difficult to go over the limit. There’s also something more visceral in giving up cash as opposed to sliding a card that may make you think twice about going through with your purchase.

3.     Feel broke to be rich. Try opening a second bank account for your paycheck and bills, then set up a recurring transfer to your main checking account. If you never see the bulk of your money, and if your bank balance looks low every time you open the app to check it may be easier to avoid spending money. This isn’t a mindset that everyone wants to be in, but I’ve found that constantly feeling broke means I am far less likely to spend money on frivolities.

If you have more ideas on how to save money on a daily basis leave a comment below!

[buirbaby]

The Wardens: Death Is A Cruel Mistress

Summary:  Tabitha's time had run out on Earth, consumed by flames. When she wakes up in her new hell, she discovers that not only is it cold, but it's a hell of an entirely different meaning. She is in Westeros, with the knowledge to change the tides of future, but without the ability to speak it aloud. Tabitha must carve her path without fame, fortune, or noble titles in order to save characters from their deaths. All she has is a sword in her hand and the ability to warg.

Rating: M+ Mature themes, language, and violence

Masterlist | Next

The end of the work day was like any other. Tabitha was misting a few plants in the lowlight of the fading afternoon as evening encroached on her small storefront. Jingling jovially, the door tinkled open with just five minutes to spare on the clock before she'd lock it. Lifting her head, her fingers listed up toward her glasses to see who had entered. Originally, she had believed it to be a customer in search of a last minute plant or clippings she sometimes arranged into floral bouquets. However, rather than a customer, her stomach dropped to the floor at the cursed visage of a man in a finely pressed suit.

He wasn't there for a plant, she knew this. Just as she knew many others that had been harassing her and a few other remaining shops on Main Street. A new development wanted to take control of this block and turn it into an impressive condo complex on the rustic street that garnered attention from tourists and locals alike. Wiping her hands off on her apron, which was dusted with dirt and pearlite, Tabitha cleared her throat and approached. If he thought there'd be a mousy garden shop owner, he was sorely mistaken. Tabitha's family had own this storefront for generations and she wasn't about to hand it over, not when she'd fixed it up with her own blood, sweat, and tears. She was a successful business woman, the shop was in stellar condition and thriving despite the pause in society due to COVID.

"Can I help you?" she asked sharply, coming around the polished wooden counter to assert her place.

"Yes, is the owner or manager in?"

The fated question, one that made her blood boil each time the casual, yet scathing glance was set over her, as if a woman in her late twenties couldn't be said person. It happened yet again and Tabitha forced herself not to snort in indignation. "I am her," she replied evenly.

"Wonderful," the man drawled, withdrawing a manila folder from underneath his arm. "As you're likely aware, my company is purchasing property in the vicinity. There are a few stores, this one included, that are refusing to sell. I've come with an offer-" he opened the folder, images of the supposed development and work ushered beneath a contract and a hefty sum with quite a few zeroes.

"Then you would be aware that I, like the other few businesses, are still refusing to sell. Listen, this street prides itself on historical shops and architecture. I know that we're prime water view property, but I'm not selling, and I know for certain that my fellow business owners are just as adamant in our position. I don't need the money," Tabitha didn't touch the paper. He could have added more zeroes and she wouldn't have cared. This was principle, her family's lineage, and she wouldn't be a sell out.

"Please, these prices are negotiable. My company is really eager to develop here and keep to the charming architecture on the street. Won't you consider it? You could always reopen in a much larger shop down the road," the man suggested.

"It wouldn't be on Main Street," Tabitha pointed out. "Look, sir, I've got nothing against you, but I don't appreciate being badgered to sell. I will never sell. Your company should either take what they've got or look elsewhere. Now please, I'm just about to close."

"Nothing is going to change your mind, miss?"

"Nothing," Tabitha assured him, closing the folder and sliding it back over toward him.

Escorting the man to the door, he paused to glance at the fire alarm posted near the entrance. It was a bit old, but the pipes had been updated within the last decade. "Old system here," he commented.

"The shop is as humid as a rainforest, I'm not too worried," Tabitha shrugged, opening the door. Perhaps she should have thought about the oddness of the comment more, but she didn't. A lot of things in the shop were old, considering how long the building had been standing. She had put a lot of money into reinforcing the structure and replacing the old with new so that the beautiful piece of history could be continuously preserved. Shutting the door behind him, she locked the glass door and flipped the sign over to ‘closed’.

There were a few chores to finish up around the shop, to include changing out bug sticky tape and sweeping up dirt. After balancing the register, she locked up the cash, and shut the lights off. Through the back of the store, there was a locked door that led to a staircase, revealing a set of stairs that ascended into her apartment that was situated above the shop.

Her head ached, them pestering at least twice a week to sell her home and livelihood just to relocate. That wasn't it. Aside from the principle of it all, she would also have to find a house and a new store. Who knew if she'd be able to buy it outright or what she'd be getting. Then the stress of moving alongside of wondering if her typical clients would follow her elsewhere. No, it was too much and she wouldn't do it, even if she was the last one on the frontier against this condo company. Maybe if she had some family to help her she would've grudgingly considered it, but already she was spread thin between all her work.

A loud meow greeted her as she pushed open the door to her flat and she smiled, the tension of the day slipping away as a fluffy black cat stood on the arm of her couch and beckoned with his tail to be given attention. Letting out another shouting protest, Tabitha chuckled and brushed her palm over the feline's head, the long hair cat pressing into her hand as she raked down his spine. "I know, I know, I kept you up here all day. I'm sorry Balerion. Bad cat mommy," she hung her smock up and bent down to pick the fluffy monster up, the baby curling into her arms like a babe as he mewed in content. "But you know I'm going to make it up to you. Tomorrow we're going on another trip, aren't we? Hollis is gonna take care of the shop while we're gone."

The plan was to head up to Iceland for the hike and climbing trip that Tabitha had been saving for for years. Balerion was her partner on all escapades, a willing participant in hikes and her little buddy even in rockclimbing as he'd be situated in a special backpack where he'd be fully strapped in. Already the feline had been with her to the Amazon, Alaska and Denali, Scotland, the Azores, and Hawaii. He seemed to love the adventure, which was uncommon for cats, especially given the strenuous conditions they were sometimes subjected to. However, even if Tabitha was miserable, Balerion was always kept warm, dry, and safe. She had friends, but Balerion was her soul mate.

"Let's go through our packing list one more time, we don't want to forget anything," she said, reminding herself more than him as she brought him into the bedroom and plopped him down onto the bed. Balerion flopped down, hanging his meaty paws over the edge as she opened her suitcase and hiking pack to double check the supplies. "Now it'll be summer there, so lots of hours of sunlight, but still quite mild. Want to make certain we're warm enough at night. Shouldn't be as bad as Denali though."

After checking the list thrice more and comparing it to what she had laid out, Tabitha decided that the two of them were ready for the journey tomorrow. Dinner was simple to prevent much to clean before the two of them settled in for the evening, a book on her lap as she re-read through one of her favorite series: A Song of Ice and Fire . The place where she'd gotten Balerion's name from. She barely managed more than a chapter, too excited to board the plane at the crack of dawn to Iceland with her furry companion.

Tugging the blanket up, Balerion curled up by her side, Tabitha set her alarm on her phone and tried to get some shut eye. It was difficult at first, the anticipation clawing at her, but eventually she slipped away from reality. Cascading into a dreamless sleep, she was awoken by the worried yowl of her cat, which roused her. Eyes burning, Tabitha turned over in an attempt to grab her phone to check the time. It wasn't often that Balerion made such an awful noise. Usually when he wasn't feeling well and was going to vomit. However, as she turned on the night lamp, she noticed a thick haze permeating the room. Balerion was no longer beside her, but she could hear his crying, loud and insistent.

Smoke. It was smoke.

"Balerion?" The moment she opened her mouth, she drew in a copious amount of smoke and choked on it. Sputtering, she rolled off the bed and crawled, looking for her pet. "Bale, come here baby. Come here!"

She didn't hear the fire alarms going off. If there was any sort of fire, the alarms should have been ringing. Ducking underneath the bed, she found him cowering in the corner, reaching beneath to drag him out toward her. Fire escape. There wasn't time to think about what had caused the fire, nor where it had originated. Her mind was fully in survival mode. This was the second floor and the ceilings were quite high, her best hope would be utilizing the escape to get as close to the ground as she could before dropping down.

Tabitha made it to the window where the escape was, standing up enough to try and glimpse outside, but was horrified by what she found. There was a glass pane to look through, but a curtain of fire as the flames had consumed the exterior of the structure first. She had replaced a good portion of the interior, but the outside was still the same old shingles. Wherever the fire might have started, it had lanced up around the outside, beginning to eat in through the roof before billeting up through the flooring of her apartment. It was possible that the wet atmosphere of her shop cocooned the apartment temporarily, but in the meanwhile the rest of the older parts of the structure went alight.

Panic consumed her as Tabitha dropped back down to the ground and hoped that maybe the nearby fire department would get inside before either of them perished. Keep low to the ground, try not to breathe in the smoke.

Crawling away from the window and doorway, Tabitha slid next to her bookcase, glancing over at the picture frames and the years of her early twenties depicted in photos of her when she'd left the confines of her small town home to embark on a journey in the military. Those years, while she'd complained a lot about them, had helped put a backbone in her and set up a foundation for schooling and regiment. She still enjoyed rucking-or backpacking as the civilians called it, never quite trading in her boots in.

Her eyes fluttered, a soft hoarse cough parting her lips again as Balerion's yowling quieted and she felt exhausted. Perhaps she could hear the fire trucks in the distance, perhaps she couldn't. Tabitha's eyes shut to the sound of a formation marching and a cadence being called.

[route22ny]

New York Unmasked

by Harry Siegel

Imagining our city, for worse and for better, after the coronavirus pandemic

The city that never sleeps is taking a nap now, and it’s going to be a very different place when it finally wakes up.

Not long after the World Trade Center was destroyed on Sept. 11, 2001, and again after Lehman Brothers collapsed on Sept. 15, 2008, there was a lot of talk about how New York wouldn’t be the same. Both times, reports of our collective demise proved to be greatly exaggerated as the city quickly recovered, economically speaking, and resumed the upward path — ever more prosperous, populated and pricey — it’s remained on for at least the last quarter-century.

This time is different.

Any remaining vision of the city somehow picking up more or less where things had been left off went away with the decision to start shutting down the trains for four hours each night. That’s a huge though supposedly temporary shift for a system that’s run 24 hours a day for over a century with only the briefest of interruptions — until now the only one in the country that doesn’t turn off, as I’ve been shocked to re-learn every time I make the mistake of visiting another city. As with many of the decisions New York and the nation have made in this plague year, it will be much more difficult to turn things back on than it was to turn them off.

Already, the devastation is staggering. In less than eight weeks, the 13,168 (as of Friday night) confirmed coronavirus deaths here have exceeded the total number of murder victims, 12,509, over the past two decades — and that’s counting the 2,977 victims of 9/11.

New York managed to keep the death count down to 13,168 at the cost of putting the city and its economy in the equivalent of a medically induced coma, and with no assurances at all that a second wave of infections won’t be coming despite that.

While putting New York under helped keep the first wave from completely overwhelming the medical system here, as happened in Italy, “the point where we can really start at reopening…obviously is a few months away at minimum,” Mayor de Blasio said Friday.

Even at that point, whenever we finally get there, it’s hard to see everyone just getting back on the train for a crushed morning commute to the office, or servers returning to packed restaurants and bars and theaters and nightspots. Forget about tourists flying in to burn dollars; it’s an open question how many of the generally better-off New Yorkers who’ve left in the course of this will return here, or how many families will borrow or pay now so students can have the city as their campus — or if there will be a campus at all this fall.

This is all surreal. While some people talk about how the virus ravaging New York compares to 9/11, Donald Trump — who claims he lost hundreds of friends on 9/11, though he’s never named a single one of them — dispatches fighter planes to fly low over the city as a tribute to first responders.

While we still don’t know why New York was hit so hard by the virus, it’s clear that density — in places from the Meatpacking District here to the meatpacking plants in the Midwest — plays a big role in spreading it. And this is a place built on density, by far the densest big city in America as well as the biggest.

So this witchy hour we’re in is looking less like a PAUSE than a painful and fundamental shift in how the city functions and what it means to be a New Yorker.

To get through it, many people need to keep looking ahead and, I hope, looking at what New Yorkers can do in their own lives and demand from their politicians to see the city finally emerge as a fairer and more resilient one . I was born in New York City just ahead of the blackout babies, in November of 1977 — the month that Ed Koch was elected mayor and started to set the city on the path it’s mostly remained on until the virus — and I’ve remained here pretty much since. My dad grew up here, and his dad , and me and my brother are both raising our daughters here now, walking distance from each other and Rosie and Zadie.

I’m committed to the city for a lot of reasons, in addition to my family here: I own a house (or at least the bank lets me live in it), and one that’s bizarrely worth much more than I bought it for, at least if I was to sell it. My kids have a couple hundred square feet of their own outside as we shelter in place. And I know a bit and write a lot about New York, which really isn’t a skill set that travels.

But the truth is that the city of the past two decades has felt less and less like home, and more and more like the parts of Manhattan I try to avoid. I’ve spent too much of my adult life railing against the hipsters, gentrifiers, trustafarians and yuppies who didn’t have the good taste to spend their money here and then leave but instead “discovered” neighborhoods and remade them in their images, often to be priced out in time by new “discoverers.” I saved a bit of spleen for the people who rail against those people, rather than do something more productive with their time.

New York has become a city of increasingly sterile retail, one where internet listings have made real estate a more transparent and internationally accessible marketplace for foreign capital to reshape neighborhoods that preserve less and less of their old characters — for better and for worse.

It’s a corporate town, full of semi-interesting hustlers and characters along with its steady share of the depraved, the doomed, the damned and the dull. I’ve seen enough and read enough to know that none of that is new. But it’s metastasized over decades of financialized and increasingly monopolized and VC-fueled growth to swallow other values and ways of life. It’s hard to swim against a tide of money, and it takes a certain mania to even try.

Some of this is selfish, for sure. I preferred the waterfront of my youth, when the piers were barren and all but off-limits but for the bold and the desperate. No one with means would walk there, let alone live there, since it still had the taint of not so long ago shipping and industry and the rougher trades that lived by the waterfront, when the High Line was just a long-abandoned elevated track west of the projects that you could break into and walk on.

That all became part of the steel-and-glass luxury city that Mike Bloomberg described, one here for companies that can afford the best and priciest, and the people who draw incomes from those companies, directly or by providing services for their FIRE (that’s finance, insurance and real estate) workers who live in The City while firefighters commute in from Westchester and Long Island, or by constructing the buildings these people live in, or from the bloated government that services the “other” people who need help to stay here at all. A city that’s priced hospital beds out of big swathes of Manhattan and Brooklyn to clear space for luxury housing.

For years, I’ve been anticipating a reset as office space declines in importance with the rise of remote work, and that in turn brings down commercial and residential prices; hoping for a different, sturdier and livelier New York that exists for and better reflects the people who live here rather than serving as a clearinghouse for the world’s money. Over my adult life I’ve read endless warnings — including in this paper — about the return of the “bad old days” that are long gone for most New Yorkers, if they were here for those days at all. Now, we’re about to get a real taste of what a sharp downturn, along with a hostile federal government, feels like: “Drop Dead.” Now they’re looming as trading floors are vacant along with everything else that isn’t actually essential, and much of what’s abruptly left won’t soon return or the money that they brought in and splashed around.

This will be painful, but New York has always found ways to make new uses of what’s here. The same way that small and sturdy Brooklyn rowhouses built for the burgeoning middle class woke up one day as $2 million “townhouses,” and Single Residence Occupancies that single men depended on to maintain lives here, such as those were, become mansions with enough money and time, office spaces can become creative spaces like warehouses became artist’s lofts. Finally, housing prices, and everything else, should relate to the incomes of the bulk of the people working here. Right now, they relate to the vagaries of the global markets.

I’ll repeat that: The size of our economy, and real estate prices, should relate to the value of the goods and services people here actually produce. That will hurt a lot of New Yorkers who’ve invested in the city, including me, as property values and rents flatten or even go down, but some of that pain is needed. A city that’s too expensive for gas stations or grocery stores — looking at you, Manhattan — is too expensive for most people.

I hope we’re becoming a city that gives a proper Bronx cheer to Airbnb and Seamless and Uber and WeWork and all the venture capital-funded wannabe monopoly “tech” companies looking to “disrupt” fundamental aspects of our life by losing money for long enough to drive their competitors out of business altogether. That resists the convenience of Amazon and its ilk to support our local grocery and book and hardware stores, so that those are still there when we really need them.

A city that knows better than to cut off its nose to spite its face, now that we know better than to touch our faces. If New York has to sleep now to survive, it’s the perfect time to dream.

harrysiegel@gmail.com

***

This essay appeared in the New York Daily News, May 3, 2020.

Photo via ShutterStock

[kpop-bg-roleplay]

(I've decided to send all of our replies in one here for an overview so far! The rest of our rp is going through asks!)

Finding the same nine people you were joking around during the day, carrying weaponry and dealing with drugs in a dimly lit alley way was more than a shock to your system. The first to acknowledge your presence was Hyerin, and holy hell did her expression carry a complete 180' from how she looked that morning. Was this really the same person? "Elise, what are you doing snooping around? The night is a dangerous place."

-----

"I was about to go home actually", I answered her while holding my grocery bag slightly tighter in my hands at the scene in front of me. "What did you do to those people?", I asked the whole as my body language showed tensed up shoulders, ragged breath, pupils widened and having an even more paled up face than usually. The scene in front of me could be out of a crime scene. Bodies on the ground and only the guys I've called my so called friends standing in the middle of it.

------

All she did was look at Hongjoong, who immediately caught onto what she was thinking about and ordered the others to get back in the group car. Joining his right-hand, Hongjoong rolled his eyes, "None of your business, unless you'd rather get scarred."

------

"Alright. I've never seen anything", I asked him as I morphed my face completely blank despite my stiff posture before looking behind me briefly and then making my way, passing the car while only shaking my head in dissappointment at Hyerin.

------

They had no other business that night, and returned to the car before Seonghwa drove back to the cafe. Sighing as they all walked inside, Yunho  needed very little incentive to gather intel on you; you had found them out - in a way - after all.

------

"I'm home", I called out and walking inside my house to sort my groceries inside the fridge. I didn't hear anything besides the Amazon Echo greeting me back. Walking inside the living room to turn the lights on, with a beer glass in my hand I then went ahead to recall the memories of what happened a few hours ago. The bodies on the ground, Hyerin and the others being completely different from how I know them and knowing now that they're somehow involved in something criminal, I've decided to stay away from them as good as possible.

------

Finding your location, then everything else about you was easy. Yunho scoffed as he made his way through your systems, who actually kept Echoes? Especially when they're such easy targets. Yeosang couldn't have agreed more as he rerouted through the smart devices in your home, the data falling in his lap like candy. Meanwhile, Hongjoong, Seonghwa and Hyerin were in the leader's office discussing what they would do with you. Leave you and possibly risk having you reveal them to the police, or keep you under watch.

------

"And... another night alone with no friends to help me finish my food from yesterday", I sighed softly to myself as I looked at the time and walking upstairs to the attic. I opened the door to reveal hundreds rolls of paintings I've been doing in the past. When you walk upstairs, you can smell the plastic mixed in with a white substance called C17H21NO4 or for the Day to Day person between us, Cocaine. I use that particular powder in my paintings, hidden in the pigments and the paper that can be used to smoke it as a cigarette or joint. I've had some encounters indirectly with the dealers from BigHit and Pledis but had managed to keep my name clean up until now. I've started early with selling it in the black market as dupes for certain museums. The actual thieves swapped them out with mine and I can still see one of the not caught paintings in the next Art museum. Nobody has to know that unless they start to actually burn the paintings that most of these are priceless. I always have them in big jars that are labeled as Sugar and Flour, one being more intense than the other but the results are mostly the same.

The thing is, I started at the age of 15. I was stupid and unknowingly sold them online to finance my living expenses for some pocket money after my escape from the organization. Then I found out about it through an unknown source that works for those people and...here I am. Not even Hyerin knows about it, because I always lock the attic and most people wouldn't be assuming that there are illegal drug paintings in there in the first place anyways. She never seemed to be interested in it and asked me questions.

Here I am, making sure that my newest painting gets sold online as the address is always changing in alphabetical order. It can't be the same route as it's another drug dealers territory and he's a scary bulky man that I ALMOST broke his nose when we were talking the first time I've put it in there. I got away with a few bruises anyways, no big deal.

A few days since then passed after the encounter that they're in the mafia and I kept my distance with each member of Hyerins friend group. I went the other way when I heard familiar steps, excuse myself from attending classes and turning in my assignments online, and I ignored Hyerins texts and calls as good as I can. But...the Mafia people are persistent more than the scam callers or mild inconveniences on the street to make you donate to a charity.

I heard my bell ring one night on a Saturday, while I was finishing my painting for the night. I kept the door to my attic open and walking downstairs with my mask on before opening up. Well, it wasn't for sure the neighbors that got my packages or the delivery guy I've been waiting on for 20 minutes. It's them. And I immediately tried to close the door shut.

------

A week's worth of research, intelligence gathering and hacking on part of Yunho and Yeosang had paid off. And they weren't in the mood to be patient. In silent agreement, Seonghwa and Mingi kicked the door down together, the group walking in with a beyond intimidating presence. "Gather everything of value, I want to see this place ransacked, understand?" Hongjoong ordered, no room in his tone for debate. Hyerin seemed to have taken an interest in the jars, and began to walk towards you, "Interested in the world of narcotics, are we? How fascinating." Her words weren't scary on their own, but with a handgun in her hand and the more than evident danger she carried with her, Hyerin could induce a nightmarish fear in even the most hardened individuals.

------

"Do whatever you want, but if you want to take something... you have to pay for it first", I began saying and being to list all of the prices at each item they're holding, "You". I pointed at Mingi first who's holding my lamp, "I got it from Ikea for 25,99€ plus the light switch. You". I pointed to Hyerin as she's taking an interest in my jars of cocaine, "That includes highly concentrated cocaine and because it's opened it's going to be released in the air around us that will get us addicted. It's also 3000€ worth per kilograms. You." I then pointed at Yunho and Yeosang, "Individual paintings are worth 5000€ each, customized fakes are 10.000€ and up worth. The the ones you're holding are for my customers that pay lots of it and if you want to snatch it it's 40 Million€ worth. You". I pointed at San and Wooyoung carrying out my pigments, "I made these myself and they're mixed with the cocaine. I would say 500.000 in total and You."  I pointed at Hongjoong and Seonghwa that is taking a sit on my couch, "390€ and 5.99€ each of the pillows. And lastly, you." I looked over Jongho with a tired sigh, "Please don't raid my fridge...". I sighed softly before doing the math in my head, "That'll be 4.518.421,98€, please. I take checks too". And despite being terrified of every member of the Mafia people, I managed to sit down on the couch to cross my arms over my chest. Until I got a gun against my temple, which made me raise an eyebrow. My forehead started to sweat, my hands got clammy and my throat dried up immensely but I took a deep breath to calm myself down. "What are you going to do with me once you took everything out of my house and killed me? I mean, I didn't tell anyone about your hidden secret,Hyerin. I've lived my life in peace and didn't meddle in on your business. Don't you think that I deserve a different death than a gun against my head?", I began to speak slowly and looking at her direction with a small smile despite her glaring that already killed me, "I want to be killed in a different way, not like that"

------

Maybe the three eldest of Ateez had a twisted sense of mercy, or maybe they were interested, but once Hongjoong had processed how much money you could possibly bring in, he was at Herin's side, whispering in her ear. With an amused smirk, Hyerin put the gun back in the holster and chuckled, "Since my friend here is so~ interested in your works, Hongjoong thinks I should let you go." Her laugh was dangerous, as she called for the the others to bring the artworks to the van. Walking to you, Hongjoong crossed his arms, "You'll make us quite a bit of profit, you'll be pretty useful with us. " He remarked, voice twinged with interest. How much could you make them? Well, that was for them to find out. And it would cost you absolute loyalty to the mafia, and Seonghwa was still unsure whether you'd be a good fit.

------

"I choose death please", I replied blankly and sighing softly as I immediately shake my head at their direction and pointing at Hyerins gun, "Please shoot me, or roll me over with your car or burn me alive. Anything to satisfy your twisted fake conceptions of sadism."

------

A dark, slightly seductive (well, to the others, with you, who knew?) chuckle fell from the other female in the room, as she ran her tongue over her lips. Fuck, that was hot. Sadism? That would her be middle name. "Oh, oh~ I haven't been in the Crimson ward in so long~ maybe I should give our little friend here a personal tour?" She taunted, flicking your chin with the tip of her nails. "I agree with Hongjoong, let's take this one with us."

------

"Careful, I bite", I played along with with her and holding her cheek gently to kiss her forehead lightly, "But I would rather go ahead and begin suicide than leaving my house in the middle of the night. I can't leave physically this place, unless you want me to paint ugly paintings that aren't worth lots of money? I wonder what would happen if I just killed myself now?"

------

Okay, you were a brave one. Amused, Hyerin pulled you to your feet by you collar and whispered, her breath fanning your neck, "From now on, your life is in my hands, understand that? And don't you worry about the quality, you'll have a much better studio for your art." She saw something in you, and she wanted to harness that. The other members had long since emptied the apartment of your artworks, and they were in the van. They'd definitely sell to the highest bidder, and my God there were crooked curators who'd kill to get hands on your art.

------

"Let me say goodbye before I go", I requested to her and gently taking her hands off my collar to take a few steps back. "Would you be kind and wait outside? I won't take long", I added with a small smile that seemed almost too forced but I refused to cry infront of anyone

------

"Very well. Make it quick, and don't you dare think about running." Hyerin replied simply, her arms folded at her chest. Reading emotions was no effort, and it was clear you had no intention of streaking your face with tears in their presence. Walking by the door, she gave you one last look before she stepped outside, silently ordering the soldiers in the other cars to surround the building. Trying to flee wouldn't be a good idea, nor would breaking the miniscule amount of trust Hyerin had granted you.

------

Walking to my room that I usually put in my clothes in my luggage, I somehow played it off with no suspicion whatsoever for now. Taking out a piece of paper to then start writing a note to people who are going to be searching for me, at least I hoped that someone would care about me in my friend group. I sighed softly as I kept it short and simple to write down a simple note of me being taken away to a remote place for awhile. Wiping my tears away from my eyes as I hide the note in between the broken cracks of the house, I walked out of my room to do a last room tour to then join the group again. "My luggage, here's also my ID... I don't think I need it anymore from now on", I mumbled and avoiding their eyes as good as I can while handing my belongings to them. Walking over to the trunk, I willingly climb in to avoid talking to anyone as good as possible.

------

By the  time you stepped inside the trunk, the others had all piled in and were more than just a little impatient to get back. Taking the wheel, Seonghwa pressed his foot on the gas and soon you found yourself on the way back to the...cafe? The Twilight Cafe was probably the most innocent looking cafe on the street, and that's where they were returning to?

What?

Parking round the back, the members all filed out, entering the cafe and taking a seat. The three eldest remained, ordering the soldiers to bring your belongings into the main part of the building, and Hongjoong pulled you out of the trunk, a bored stare in his eyes.

"You'll be escorted to the living quarters. Don't cause any trouble; I'm not looking to get my gun out right now."

------

"Yes, Sir", I replied in a small whisper, following the people inside while keeping a straight face. I couldn't even hide my stiff posture, how I'm holding my hands behind my back as if I'm a prisoner and the bloodied underlip that I've bit on the whole time. It didn't help my situation at this point on how my stomach started to rumble loudly during the ride and how nauseated I'm feeling due to motion sickness.

I didn't look around the cafe at all, too scared to anger even more people and knowing that I'm not going to get my freedom back at all is the worst thing that could be happening to a human being. I know that I'm fucked at this point. Sometimes I wished to be not able to draw or paint, maybe then I'd be a normal person with a bright future.

'I want this nightmare to end already... please help me', I thought to myself almost desperately and started to pray in my head already. I'm thinking of ending my life at this point, ending the pain and start somewhere new. I think it's out of question right now and the pressure only pumped up my adrenaline rush in my system. My survival instincts are tingling and my heart beats even louder than a hammer against a wall.

The steps stopped ultimately, and I snapped out of my trance. It's a small room, enough to sleep in and change your clothes. Plus an attached bathroom, that didn't have security cameras. I'm slightly thankful for it at least, they give me the privacy to an extent. I didn't think much of what happened afterwards, nodding along the order for tomorrow and I was finally alone. Alone as I can get, at least.

So I quickly walked inside the bathroom to get everything out of my system and let my guard down. I cried in silence, hugging my knees and hiding behind my hands to muffle out my sobs. "I want to...go home", I whispered gently to myself and swallowing thickly, my body started to shake violently due to the pressure. I'm currently having a panic attack and I couldn't control it entirely. For some reason, I managed to pass out on the bed, shaking violently to the core and desperately trying to stay conscious to not cause even more problems.

------

Once you had been escorted from the initial cafe space, Hyerin immediately got up, getting her phone to discuss the latest findings with the financial heads at KQ -one of which she was a deputy to. There was much to discuss. And she'd definitely have to work overnight to draft up a reasonable report to KQ.

Among all the staff that walked around the complex, one stood out. Younger than Ateez's youngest, a high rank that almost rivalled Ateez themselves. With a tablet in hand, she walked through the dorms until she arrived at your rooms, a mutter of 'this wasn't used before...' coming from her.

She entered your room, making no announcement that she was entering. Maybe she had received similar training to the mafia members themselves, because her presence was palpable in the air. She tsked when she saw your condition, placing her tablet on the windowsill and walked over to you.

"Come to your senses, you've been brought here and you need to hurry up and accept it. Now what's you name? I have to provide KQ with accurate reports."

------

"Elise Liddell, Ma'am. I would appreciate it if I could use this night to eventually finish my mental break down until tomorrow morning", I answered her as quickly as possible, almost making it sound that I've rapped and my still shaking body leaning towards the cold wall. Wiping my tears away from my eyes, I avoided her gaze despite listening to her instructions intensely. "I'm just an ordinary artist, my paintings aren't real to be original.", I continued further, then quieting down as I don't want to spill out more information about myself and why I'm even doing my current profession as follows. 'Over my dead body, I'll be free in no time, even if I have to plot against them somehow', I thought, straightening my posture and eventually looking at the person nearby the windowsill. "What am I supposed to do tomorrow morning? I have to go to college and I don't want to be raising suspicion over my disappearence that soon", I asked her, coughing slightly as the crying made me thirsty, yet knowing that those bastards are going to love it to see me dying of dehydration soon.

------

The girl almost laughed. Almost. Scoffing, she tilted her head and gave you an overly sweet smile. But her eyes held something much, much more dangerous. "I'm not going to stop your precious little mental breakdown, go right ahead~."

The very idea that Ateez had someone as young as the girl in front of you working with them definitely seemed off.  Shouldn't she at least be in school? Reaching for her tablet, she was quiet for a moment before meeting your eyes.

"Ateez will take care of that. If you require something to drink I will put in a notice for the staff to provide a water dispenser."

------

"The absence of me entering college should be because I got either pregnant and have to leave due to my VISA or because I'm going back to Germany to fulfill one of the courses there. Any other reason isn't acceptable at all", I sighed softly and nodding slowly at the water dispenser for my casual use. "Anything else that I need to know?"

------

All she did was roll her eyes. It wasn't her problem, neither did she care. Whatever excuse they came up with would have to be the one you accepted. "You're not to enter Hongjoong, Seonghwa or Hyerin's office without letting either them or myself know beforehand." About to continue, her focus is drawn to someone calling her name.

"Minnie, you're needed in Seonghwa's office."

"Okay Kai, I'll be there."

At least you knew her name. Leaving the room and shutting the door behind her, you were left to your own devices, and thoughts, again.

------

'If she's going to tell them what excuse they should use in order to get me out of there, they also don't know who I'm close in contact too.', I thought to myself, drinking the water that Kai brought earlier to then walk to the bathroom and using some of the time to clean myself up as good as possible. The room had my luggage inside and instead of hyperventilating the whole time, I looked straight at the camera to flip off with my perfectly long nails to the person who watches me now. The ordering process of my stuff, made me calm down just a little bit, despite the shaky hands and the low blood pressure I'm feeling on my body the whole time. I sighed softly to myself, taking out my Notebook to write down the first informations about today.

----

Holy shit I forgot how long our responses were. Also I am practically gonna include eveny group I stan in this plot.

The rest of the complex was active, like a city that never slept. Throughout the night, footsteps rang through the building, staff - and some of Ateez themselves - working the night shift, keeping all operations stable. One location in particular that was lit up like daylight was the camera and intel rooms, where Yunho was asleep on a bed in the back, while Yeosang watched the moniters with his team, rolling his eyes as he checked the camera in your room. Thank God he’d only have to keep that camera installed for another few weeks. Watching new arrivals for their three month probation period was a pain, and more often than not he left the task to some unsuspecting staff. And that’s exactly what he did.

“Hey, Yang Jungwon, watch our new arrival, I need a smoke break.”

“Y-Yes Sir!”

[numberangora21]

Risk-free Sarms Muscular Tissue

Cycling Athlete Suspended For Visibility Of Sarm Rad

Content

Possible For Development Of Bacterial Resistance To Amps.

Possible Advantages Of Taking Sarm Products.

Medik8 Liquid Peptides.

Different Types Of Sarms & What They Do.

If it has been a tough task for you to put muscle mass then LGD-4033-- finest SARM for bulking will work like your bodybuilding friend. The demand of injections is removed and it can be taken by mouth. If you pay attention to the dose, it will not trigger also minor damage to the body. Every SARM works in a different way and here we will certainly go over regarding the one that will certainly assist you build muscular tissues quickly.

The only precaution you need to consider is the dosage due to the fact that it reduces the testosterone manufacturing. LGD-4033 is additionally called Ligandrol Fluid or Anabolicum which boosts toughness and aids to develop the muscle mass swiftly.

Potential For Advancement Of Microbial Resistance To Amps.

It is best used to protect muscle mass while in a calorie deficit. Ostarine mk-2866 can and also will certainly subdue your all-natural testosterone production in longer, greater dosed cycles, so a SERM PCT is required. Ostarine can also create gyno in some customers, so it is suggested that you have an AI accessible. RAD is powerful sufficient to restrict the result of testosterone on the prostate and also various other unwanted areas. It has also been revealed to be a lot more anabolic than testosterone, too. Application appears to be in the 4mg to 12mg variety, with ideal cycle length being 4 to 6 weeks.

Illegal Contact: Banned drugs found in athletic performance supplements - WAVE 3

Illegal Contact: Banned drugs found in athletic performance supplements.

Posted: Wed, 05 Feb 2020 08:00:00 GMT [source]

It can perhaps be utilized as a pre-contest hardener, incorporated with various other muscle setting compounds. Ostarine binds to the AR, which demonstrates anabolic activity in the bone as well as muscular tissue. By binding to the AR, MK enhances healthy protein synthesis and modifies the expression of genetics. The main negative effects connected with MK677 is the increase in cravings, which might rate by lots of research subjects. Researches show this to go away after 4-8 weeks, though this varies from one person to another.

Possible Advantages Of Taking Sarm Items.

If you do not really feel up to some press ups as well as raise in your bed room after that perhaps a little bit of strolling would be good. This could just be a ten min walk around the block or a walk down to the stores daily. Attempt to make the walk rather quick to obtain the optimum benefit and don't just amble along. To be reliable the stroll must be quickly enough to raise your breathing price however not so fast that it would certainly make it hard to talk with a person at the exact same time.

SARMs: The massive black market in illegal bodybuilding 'research chemicals' - ABC Online

SARMs: The massive black market in illegal bodybuilding 'research chemicals'.

Posted: Tue, 17 Apr 2018 07:00:00 GMT [source]

Too much cardio can inhibit growth, as it will burn the excess calories you're consuming. Rather, a mixture of low and high strength cardio through the week along with your bulk will aid reduce body fat. It does have the capability to likewise produce less hazardous negative effects, that are uneasy to customers, ostarine results body building. However, if Buy best quality peptides Direct Belgium remain in a cutting phase, after that you can pile it with Anavar, Clenbuterol, and Winstrol, sarms get currently pay later on.

Medik8 Liquid Peptides.

It is worthwhile to keep in mind that selective androgen receptor modulators act on particular androgen receptors in the body that are located in a variety of crucial tissues. Androgen receptors are located in the influential vesicle, prostate, sweat glands, genitalia, testis, ovary, intestinal vesicular cells, thyroid follicular cells, brain, liver, adrenal cortex, sebaceous glands, and also hair roots. SARMs, or discerning androgen receptor modulators, have not yet been verified to be safe. Possibly, they assure a superb choice to steroids that usually feature a lengthy listing of side effects. Nevertheless, you ought to do your research to ensure that you're purchasing top quality items-- sadly, many firms attempt to utilize the popularity of SARMs by creating tablets that have absolutely nothing to do with the actual compounds.

Does Amazon sell SARMs?

Amazon.com: sarms.

This orally bioavailable nonsteroidal SARM is best understood on the planet of body building as a much better option to S-4 that promotes muscle mass hardening. Known as "The Big Father" of selective androgen receptor modulators, S-23 targets chemical receptors in the skeletal bone as well as muscle. They are additionally not toxic to the liver as well as this top quality makes them a perfect option for people that are suffering from existing liver illness or encounter an increased threat of liver toxicity. In short, selective androgen receptor modulators profit both healthy and balanced individuals along with persistantly ill individuals who are looking to enhance the quality of their life. In the last couple of years, scientists across the world have advanced several findings in the context of enhancing dental bioavailability and reducing the hepatic poisoning of these performance improving medicines.

Different Types Of Sarms & What They Do.

They revealed an actual rise in total muscular tissue mass as well as better stamina levels. When incorporated with an excellent diet plan and also intense workouts, this SARM helps users achieve resilient and also unmatched muscular tissue mass and also endurance gains.

It also reveals assurance to replace androgens which can generate similar desirable outcomes on muscle cells as steroids.

All you require is some basic nonprescription PCT supplements and you're excellent to go.

Considering that they do not interrupt the hormonal levels in the body, you won't be susceptible to the nasty adverse effects that anabolic steroid and prohormone cycles can cause without an appropriate PCT program.

It's one of the greatest reasons SARMS are collecting quite a dedicated following nowadays.

No, you don't need to have a post cycle therapy or PCT after using SARMS.

It can be carried out orally, reducing the impacts of testosterone blood degrees.

Differing only in strength as well as duration of action, all these agents produce enhanced performance, a boost in blood pressure, heart price and also depth of respiration. Buy best quality peptides Direct UK indicate that the user will be able to partially balance out the impacts of exhaustion. Energizers may additionally enhance the rival's discomfort limit, allowing that added push beyond their generally maximal initiative. I did a great deal of researching different methods to quick and also one approach that stood out was the 72-hour water-fast. Clearly not consuming for this lengthy means your body will certainly be dipping into its fat books, resulting in weight management. But people claim a series of various other advantages, including improvements to your immune system, giving your digestive system system a break, better blood-sugar policy and reduction in swelling. Others claim it's a load of hokum-- and it's definitely a great suggestion to approach these things with a healthy dosage of apprehension.

Product Groups.

Offered its shorter half-life, RAD requires to be dosed a minimum of two times daily. Human studies have revealed it to increase both muscle mass and also bone mineral thickness. Dosed at 25mg day-to-day, Ibutamoren has been shown to boost IGF-1 levels by 60% in 6 weeks in humans. Cyclists now appear to favour this technique of improving performance over practically any other. Athletes might unlawfully make use of hGH in mix with AAS in an attempt to enhance muscle mass and also toughness. On the various other hand, hGH is a hormone produced by the pituitary gland, which is essential for regular growth in kids and helps the body in structure muscle mass and also bone.

So, the best SARM for constructing muscular tissue is LGD-4033 and adhering to are its attributes, benefits, dosage referral, etc . To develop muscular tissues like a bodybuilder you need to educate like one and also depend upon performance enhancing drugs or supplements like SARMS. It may appear like a pricey, time consuming and bothersome task to construct huge muscular tissues particularly when you check out pros. In one more trial, enobosarmsafely boosted lean muscle massin 159 cancer individuals.

This time around will depend upon the mass-to-charge proportion of the bit. From this time around and the well-known experimental criteria one can locate the mass-to-charge proportion of the ion. The organic half-life of a medication or radioligand artificial insemination or in vivo. In vitro, the t 1/2 of the impact of a drug is the time taken for the action to a drug to decline to half the initial feedback. In radioligand binding, the t 1/2 can be made use of to determine the dissociation rate of a radioligand from its receptor, consequently it is the moment considered the quantity of radioligand bound to the receptors to decrease to half its initial level. In vivo, t 1/2 describes the metabolic half-life of a medicine or radioligand, i.e. the time considered the concentration of a medication in plasma to decline to half its original level. To obtain muscles with your exercise program you need to stick to develop muscle mass quick supplements where LGD-4033 will never dissatisfy you.

The most effective part of S-4 is the truth that it causes a drying out of the muscle mass and also the skin bordering it, and consequently binds extremely well to the androgen muscle mass receptors, hardening as well as developing the muscular tissue. This indicates that in the direction of the end of a cycle, it would prove to be really reliable.

Time-of-flight mass spectrometry is a technique of mass spectrometry in which ions are increased by an electrical field of recognized stamina. This acceleration causes an ion having the very same kinetic energy as any other ion that has the same charge. The moment that it ultimately takes for the particle to get to a detector at a known range is determined.

Nonetheless, what is encouraging is that also in cancer cells individuals undergoing periods of severe muscle mass squandering, the introduction of SARMs has demonstrated significant boosts in lean body mass and much better general physical performance. The extent of lean body mass gain depends considerably on the certain SARM is concern, however most SARMs in pre-clinical animal trials saw at the very least considerable boosts in lean body mass, and also on numerous events resulted in decreases in fat mass. SARMs were developed to be tissue-specific and just attach to receptors in the muscular tissue and bone to stay clear of the dose-limiting unfavorable effects on various other tissues that happens with common testosterone or steroid use.

The opposite impacts that showed, though were very irregular as well as unusual, were mild lower extremity edema and muscle discomfort. Nevertheless, they are a distinct course of substance currently going through investigation and also advancement from a number of pharmaceutical business. SARMs are promoted as more secure, lawful options to anabolic androgenic steroids. They are stated to supply comparable favorable outcomes, but to have a lower danger of side effects. SARMS are a discerning androgen receptor modulators, which are drugs that bind to androgen receptors in the body, trigger androgenic signaling paths, and also thus upregulate muscular tissue and also bone metabolism.

[alyssabethancourt]

If you only read one of my project updates, make it this one.

It took most of the day to kick in, for some reason, but the price of the Mornnovin eBook on Amazon has finally adjusted to 99¢. It will remain at that deeply discounted price at least until February 26th. I may or may not be persuadable on the subject of extending the sale for an additional week.

So now that the stress of that unexpected snafu has lifted, I can do a proper update.

It's Friday, five days in, and as of posting this the fundraiser is sitting pretty at $821 or 22% funded. We're nicely on track. The next big goal, obviously, is getting to 25% ($925) and I'm confident we can hit that mark easy-peasy before the end of the weekend. Please, keep talking up this series and sharing the link with your friends, family, and followers.

Trajelon is a special book not just because it's mine and I have to say that, but because it explores issues and themes that I don't think we see often enough in fiction – especially not in the sparkly elf magic genre.

I'm going to get real with you for a minute.

I've talked before about how the version of Mornnovin that is now published is the culmination of thirty years and four versions of telling that particular story. What people may not know is that I'd also written Trajelon once before.

In late 1997, I was 18 years old and I'd made some terrible decisions that I was locked into living with for the foreseeable future, both because of the nature of responsibility but also because of pride. People had tried to warn me, and of course being the age I was, I knew everything. I'd been downright insolent about my conviction that I knew what I was doing.

So there I was, miserable, bridges burned, everything to prove, struggling under the load of several massive responsibilities all taken on at once, knowing that I'd made the bed I now had to lie in. I was also trying to pass my first semester of college as an English major. I can't remember now precisely which combination of events led me to come to this conclusion, but I started to feel that although I was reasonably good at academic writing, my creative writing was a clear waste of my time. I actually went as far as deciding to give it up.

I think, now, that I might have been trying to punish myself.

That take makes sense in hindsight because as soon as I'd grounded myself from the sort of writing I actually enjoy doing, two things happened.

One, at odd moments I started doodling scenes that weren't supposed to be part of anything, so I was free from the feeling that they had to be any good or make any kind of sense or fit within a larger narrative. This would come to be important later.

And two, the scenes I was scribbling down without any commitment to story or quality were all about bad things happening to Loríen.

Because writers have to write, even if they've made bullshit nonsense declarations about how they've given it up, a story idea did eventually coalesce out of all of these snippets. And because of where I was, the story was dark. The finished product was horrible, but it was genuine – a savage cry of pain from someone who believed she had no right to it.

Fast forward ten years. Now it's 2007. I'm still living in that hell of my own making, but it's different because I'm ten years older and time does change things, for better or worse. Now I'm working a crappy retail job and it's killing me. To save my sanity, one day, I pull some blank receipt paper out of the cash register and in tiny, cramped letters I start scribbling some scenes that aren't supposed to be part of anything. They're just junk for my brain, something to keep me alive. Because they're not for anything real, I don't worry about them being any good or fitting within whatever other arbitrary writing rules I have for myself. At night, while the household is asleep, I transfer the cramped letters from cash register paper to computer file.

After a while, I realize they are actually starting to make a coherent story, but it's not canon, I tell myself. It's just some cracky Asrellion fanfiction. Just some mindless entertainment. I keep giving myself permission to tell a different kind of story from whatever I imagine canon to be.

By the time I leave that crappy retail job, I find that in my time there I've managed to scribble onto bits and pieces of receipt paper what amounts to roughly twenty typed pages of... something.

Then I realize that what I have on my hands isn't just something, it's the seed of a new version of Book 2. One that actually has something to say besides screaming in wordless agony. The only problem is, this new book that I can see laid out before me is far too good for the terrible most-recent draft of Book 1 that would precede it.

Then I realize that I'm going to have to write this book, which means that I'm also going to have to rewrite the first book in the series in order to lay the necessary groundwork.

That's the story of how I came to begin my ground-up re-imagining of Mornnovin in 2008.

It turns out to be a good thing that I took the time to do that first, because I wouldn't have been ready then to tell the story that I ultimately had in me in 2016 when I wrote Trajelon over the course of six intense months. By then, I had escaped Hell. By then, I was safe. By then, I had some perspective on what it is not just to live through but to survive trauma and depression.

The first incarnation of Trajelon was what I needed it to be when I screamed it up, all those years ago. It was catharsis. I don't blame it for its darkness or its ugliness any more than you would blame a post-surgical scar for its raw appearance. This iteration of Trajelon is what it needed to be. Almost Athena-like, it sprang fully-formed from the brain of its creator. And it's no longer a cry of suffering. It's... a meditation on living with the suffering that inevitably comes along with the triumphs we experience in life. Living with, enduring, growing from. Learning to discard where possible. Drawing into our identity and building off of where necessary.

No doubt this is scary territory for some readers, but that's exactly why I think it's so important to tell these stories. They can't all be about glorious victories on the field of battle. There are more shades to the spectrum of the human (elven?) experience. I so wish this book had existed at a time when I could have drawn strength from it. Now I no longer need to draw on that kind of strength, but others do. I know they do.

So maybe this was a big old heavy update for a Friday evening, but I hope you don't mind the candor. This book is very personal for me, as you now understand, and that would have become clear anyway as soon as you read it. Because I think that's actually its truest and purest strength, I wanted to be up front about it in this fundraiser. I am pitching to you a fantasy novel written by a survivor of abuse, trauma, and depression written for survivors of abuse, trauma, and depression.

If you, like I do, think that's an important thing to have exist in the world, please help me get the word out and bring it into reality.

And thank you for letting me get real.

Help fund TRAJELON on Kickstarter.

[sonipanda]

Here we go with some glam for my birthday blog! This was supposed to be scheduled for Wednesday as the outfit I did want to wear today just wasn’t cutting it so I opted for this one to be posted today instead!

I love how you can get so many off Amazon that you have never heard of before! I would like to provide more information for you, however they don’t seem to have any about Richtoer.

Now these beauts were gifted by such a lovely follower of mine, and came as a 2 pair pack! I do have a spare unopened one going if anyone fancies them! – Or I just might keep them as a backup instead hehe!

The Spec

Colour: Champagne

Size: One Size

Denier: 70

Materials: Unknown

Price: £19.99

Website: Amazon – RICHTOER 2 Pairs Shaping Socks Oil Socks Shiny Silk Stockings Pantyhose Dance Tights

My Outfit

I have always wanted to do a glam outfit and I thought this would be perfect to pair up with some serious glossy hosiery! I paired my outfit with some platform diamante heels and created a party look!

My Deets

Full Outfit: Custom Made

Tights: Richtoer

Heels: Steve Madden

    The Review

From The Website: SHINY SHAPING SOCKS. Trendy style to show leg curve perfectly.Giving your legs a skinny and unique appearance. Special and modern design makes you more attractive, charming, fashion. The bottom of the garter is thick and not easy to wear damage, ultra-smooth and durable. Say goodbye to the easily teared and ripped stockings. Package Content: 2 pair pantyhose stockings.

HIGH WAIST SEXY OIL SOCKS SILK STOCKINGS Thickness:70D. Size: Free Size Fits 40-75KG(88-165 lbs)，155-180CM(5 ft to 5.9 ft). Show leg curve perfectly, pure shimmer dance ballet tights. These tights are great for dance, exercise, recital, costume, and fashion.

SHAPING SOCKS SUIT ALL KINDS OF COMBINATIONS They tend to look better on your feet than in the product photos. Works out great with skirt/cosplay costume/shirt dress/tunics. Go with jeans, short pants, on heels, loafers, etc. Function: Breathable, burning fat, shaping,absorb sweat,prevent beriberi, beautiful body & thin leg.

HOW TO WEAR Please put the pantyhose inside out to wear properly. Hand wash at first before wear to keep it more durable. Hand wash in cold water, lay flat to dry. Do not iron and bleach.

  The Packaging: as I took these away with me, I didn’t bring the second pair to take that picture of how I first received them. They are identical pairs let me just say.

The front and back show 2 different models wearing 2 different colours in this make, so it confused me a little to begin with until I got inside. You will find these are double wrapped; 1 on the outer packaging and 1 when you get in under the card – the tights are in their own packaging. This is probably to preserve the quality of them.

These come flat folded and wrapped around plain card.

  Getting Them On: so it stated on the website to turn them inside out before wear – I did not do this and just went straight for it. Whoops…

Anyways these do get tighter the further you scrunch them down, so do keep that in mind when you’re gonna get them up the legs. These were fine going over the anklets and up the legs. I did make the mistake of creaming my legs before I got these on, so please do excuse any lined marks near the thighs (if you see any) as that will be my little mishap!

  On The Legs: well by the amount of images below, I can happily say that these were such a fun pair to be in and really worked for me!

Let me start off with the colour; it is one that is closely matched to my skin and gave me such a glowing tan look on the legs when you compare it to my arms. I loved how natural looking they are, like you’re not wearing any from far! I thought these were the perfect colour! I would love to see how these would look in black.

The quality of them are fantastic; I had no rips or snags at all, and even though I creamed my legs and made little wet lines on the thighs, it dried right up without leaving any residue or markings on the thighs like normal tights would do. I thought these were a fab pair!

The fit of them are true to size and I would have had a better glide up the legs if I didn’t cream before putting them straight on. I felt there was enough stretch in these, and I would hope there is plenty for slightly larger individuals as these are supposed to be a one size pair.

The feel of them are super soft and so smooth; you can just glide your legs right off one another wearing these.

I cannot express how much I loved being in this pair!

  The Toes & Ankle: as you can see below, my nail colour only peers through slightly. This shows you how thick it is around the feet. You wouldn’t think it from far, but when you look for little details, this is where you can really tell.

I still had enough room for my toes to wiggle about, but I would recommend shorter nails in these as it is quite fitted around the toes and feet so you don’t want your nails causing you pain in these.

Around the ankles, you won’t spot any wrinkles as these are so thick and fitted!

  The Waistband: now I didn’t manage to get any waistband shots as we was running out of time. But the waistband is damn good but also sits super high. It went past the belly button on me and sat inches away from my bralet! So I had to fold these down and keep them in place the whole time wearing my outfit unfortunately. This wouldn’t have been an issue with any other outfit, but as I was showing off my midriff, it just didn’t look right!

The band as you can see below is slim and pretty tight to begin with. This does loosen up slightly but not much, so you may want to stretch it out a few times before you get them on if this is gonna be an issue for you. It worked for me as I folded mine over and I needed them to be tight to stay in place, otherwise I would definitely have stretched them out a little.

These hold up the tights super well let me add, and they did not let me down once during the day!

They also have a gusset to them, which you may be able to see near the bottom which is stitched into the tights and fits like a dream against the skin. It doesn’t irritate at all, so you can wear with or without underwear.

  My Thoughts?

These are so good for what you get. If you’re after a nice thick pair of glossy tights, these are the ones I would recommend. I loved being in mine, and especially in this gorgeous tan colour!

RICHTOER 70D Shaping Shiny Tights Here we go with some glam for my birthday blog! This was supposed to be scheduled for Wednesday as the outfit I did want to wear today just wasn't cutting it so I opted for this one to be posted today instead!

[snorlaxlovesme]

SoMa Week 2019

Day 6: Hands

You know that hectic panic you get in when your mom is gonna be home in 20 minutes and you just remembered she had left a list of chores for you to do before she got back? This fic is like that. Except it's Soul with his arm stuck in the dishwasher.

This is a very serious SoMa Week fic.

“Alexa, record my last will and testament.”

“I’m sorry. I don’t know that one.”

Soul looks at the clock. Maka should be home any minute now, he thinks hopelessly, mostly because he had that exact thought 3 hours ago and he was wrong then, so who really knows when she’s going to be back? His neck is absolutely burning from being in this position, and his left arm has taken on a new feeling that’s hovering somewhere between the realm of “stabbing pain” and “complete paralysis.” He’s been sitting on the floor of their kitchen for so long that he’s starting to find shapes in the weird stains on their tile like some kind of fucked up Rorschach test. The one shaped like his mother’s disappointment in him might be blood from Maka’s cut from their last mission. He’s also discovered they have ants.

This all started out with good intentions. Kind of. Okay, no, it started off with Maka leaving him 300 passive aggressive sticky notes (she was the fucking queen of those) saying that if he didn’t start cleaning up their apartment she was going to dump him in the street like the lazy weapon he was and someone else could cook and clean after him. Which is not the Top Ten Most Romantic Ways for the love of your life to tell you to do chores, if you ask Soul. So yeah, maybe he waited until the day before Maka came back from her trip to see her mom to finally start cleaning. And yeah, sure, maybe he was getting kind of aggressive about how he was putting the dishes in the dishwasher. So what?

He’d never admit to Maka that he doesn’t know anything about their new dishwasher, but now he really doesn’t have a choice. When he was maniacally stacking dirty dishes before Maka’s plane landed, he managed to drop one of Maka’s metal chopsticks in between the racks and into the bottom of the dishwasher. He had considered just leaving it down there and hoping for the best, but with the literal signs all over his kitchen calling him LAZY WEAPON, he decided to do the right thing and retrieve it instead of leaving it down there to potentially destroy their new appliance.

Big mistake.

His arm is stuck and it fucking hurts.

He didn’t know the space in between the bottom rack and the water-propeller-thingy was so small, okay? His hand went in just fine! But once he got in up to his shoulder he knew he was fucked. He had the chopstick in hand, but his arm was bent in a position that left no room for wiggling out. And force did not seem like the best option when they just sunk $600 into this stupid fucking appliance. If Soul broke it, he’d never hear the end of it, for sure.

So Soul’s only option? Waiting for Maka to come save him. Pathetic.

He didn’t even have his phone on him when he trapped himself, so he’s been sitting on the kitchen floor for the past three hours (has it been hours? Days? Time has no meaning anymore) wondering if this is how he’s going to die. It’s hard to think of a more undignified way to go at the moment, but he’s sure it could be worse, right? At least his hand isn’t in the toilet.

A tickling on his ankle has him flinching aggressively. An ant has attempted to crawl up his pantleg. Soul pinches it between his fingers on his right hand and flicks it across the kitchen, only to belatedly realize it would have been better to just kill it. Now it has time to come back and tell all its ant friends that the kitchen is open for business and essentially unguarded. What can one boy do when 20% of his body is wedged inside of an over-priced dishwasher?

He tries again to morph his arm into a weapon, like maybe trying it now might be more successful than the 8 other times he’s attempted this solution. But Soul’s arm is bent at an angle that would absolutely destroy the dishwasher if he morphed it into a blade. Maka’s favorite “I closed my book to be here” mug is directly above his hand on the top rack and would for sure be shattered if he transformed. That would even worse than destroying the dishwasher, probably. His arm returns to miserable skin and bone.

“Alexa, play ‘The Funeral’ by Band of Horses’.”

“Here’s a sample of ‘The Funeral’ by Band of Horses. To play the full version, please purchase Amazon Unlimited Music by—”

“Alexa, stop.”

Soul’s pretty sure he’s dying.

The floor-stain shaped like the pain in his left arm has a gathering of ants around it. Maybe it’s spilled soda? Or maybe they’re all congregating to discuss how they plan on eating Soul’s body after he inevitably perishes? He tries to save himself and tamp on them with his foot, but shifting his body just sends shooting pain up his arm. He stills and grits his teeth. He’ll just have to wait for Death to take him.

Minutes later, hours later, years later, he hears the clicking of the lock to their front door, and Maka walks in with two large duffel bags in hand and her cell phone wedged between her shoulder and ear.

“Yeah, Mama, I made it home safely, I’m just gonna—Soul?”

He looks up at her with sad, sad eyes.

Maka gingerly sets down her bags. “Mama, I’m gonna have to call you back. Okay. Yeah. Bye.”

“Help,” he whines pathetically. No traces of coolness to be found in a situation like this.

She kneels next to where he lays, slouched on the tile. “What happened here?”

“I found out why I never do chores.”

She makes a face at him. “If you did chores more often, maybe you’d hurt yourself less. Practice makes perfect, you know.” She looks at his stuck arm with a morbid kind of wonder. “Wow, you’re really stuck in there. How long have you been sitting like this?”

“You were supposed to be here hours ago” is Soul’s only response, because fuck if he knows how long it’s been.

She runs her fingers through his messy hair. “Sorry, sorry, my layover got delayed and things got all hectic. I guess this explains why you weren’t answering your phone, too. Does it hurt?”

“Fuck yes. Can you get me out? Please?”

She gives him a little kiss on the cheek. “Yeah, let’s see here.” She moves him over a tad so she can see better (“sorry, sorry!” she shrieks as he groans) and discovers that not only is he mega-stuck, but there doesn’t seem to be a sensible way to bend his arm to free him.

“Okay then, we’ll just do this,” she says, and in one Superman-like motion she’s grabbing the bottom rack of dishes and straight-up ripping it off the track so Soul can pull his arm free. He about cries in relief, then from pain when finally puts his arm into a position that lets the blood flow back into it. His shoulder is so fucking stiff.

Maka sets the mangled rack onto their kitchen floor, apparently not giving a damn when the dishes still inside it clank together in a dangerously-close-to-shattering cacophony. She sits down beside him, digs her fingers into the crook of his neck, and starts massaging.

“I can’t believe you broke the dishwasher to get me out,” Soul says, rolling his eyes back a little because her hands feel so fucking good on his sore neck and shoulder.

“Well, I wasn’t just going to leave you stuck in there,” Maka says. “Plus, it’s under warrantee, so we can just get the people from the department store to come back and fix it in a few days.”

“WHAT?” Soul roars so loud that Maka jumps a little bit. “Are you saying that I just 127 Hours-ed myself for NOTHING because I could have just BROKEN IT TO BEGIN WITH??”

“Hey, don’t yell at me, Soul, just because you don’t listen when the people who install our appliances tell us about what we’re paying for!”

“I was stuck there for hours because I thought you’d be mad if I broke it!”

“When on earth did I imply during our five-year partnership that I liked a dishwasher more than I liked you in one piece?”

When she puts it like that, he does sound a little stupid. Or maybe she sounds a little sweet. Or maybe being trapped inside a dishwasher for half a day is just distorting his view of reality. He needs to get up off the floor, like now.

He stands up, popping his spine in like nine different places and offers her his hand to help her up too. When he reaches down, the metal chopstick that has been trapped in his raccoon-like grip finally slips between his fingers.

It falls on the floor and bounces before rolling away, and Maka scoots to go retrieve it.

“Is this what you were trying to grab when you got stuck?” she asks. “These don’t even go in the dishwasher, Soul. You handwash them.”

Soul swears his vision whites out for a moment. He can’t even dignify that statement with a response because he’ll probably live to regret whatever comes out of his mouth next. Besides, all’s well that ends well, right? He got the chopstick, he didn’t technically break the dishwasher, and his meister is home and happy. So it was all worth it in the end, right?

Maka finally slaps her hand on the runaway chopstick, shouting a dorky little “a-ha!” Her hand lands near a floor-spot that looks like a wonky heart.

Soul sighs. He’d probably do it again, for her, if it came down to it.  He squats down beside her and plants a kiss on her unsuspecting cheek.

“Missed you while you were gone,” he tells her, because it’s worth saying.

She smiles warmly at him and leans in to give him a proper kiss. She doesn’t make it all the way there, because suddenly she’s jumping a foot in the air with a yelp, coming close to headbutting him in the nose. Maka looks down at where her hand rests on the floor, where a small black insect is skittering across her knuckle. Soul watches in horror as her eyes zero in on 10 of its closest friends a few feet away on the floor.

There’s the briefest moment of silence as she ponders what she’s looking at. The calm before the storm. Then:

“Are those ANTS?”

She whips around to face him, but Soul’s already gone. He can still hear her shouting from down the hall. “Soul, I told you to MOP while I was gone!!”

His shoulder twinges painfully as he slams the door shut to his room. He thinks he’ll just live with the sticky notes for this one.

[growback-gums-naturally-blog]

Grow Back Gums Naturally

The Treatment For Gum Regrowth is the only tool that works on each the parts of one's mouth area where plaque occurs. This really is very important to know if you have gum disease and can't obtain yourself a proper task. There are a whole lot of products on the market that will help to whiten the gum line, nevertheless the Remedy For Gum Regrowth is going to do exactly the exact same job as a traditional product and can be two times as effective. For more about Receding Gums Grow Back

Whenever you visit that your dentist, your dentist will examine the level of plaque in your mouth and find out whether there is any risk that you might have gum disease. Once he sees that there is a problem, he'll prescribe a treatment program which involves oral cleaning and a special diet plan, or an over the counter pill, to help to remove the plaque and bacteria that are causing the problem.

Receded Gums Grow Back

If your dentist does discover that you have gum disease, then you'll receive a visit to a healthcare provider who'll provide you a complete exam of your teeth and gums.

The Treatment For Gum Regrowth can accelerate the process of removing the plaque that is on your mouth, and also the chief justification for it is since it doesn't include alcohol. You'll also have the ability to select in one of three unique colors, or mix them together for much more vibrant results.

The very widely used color combination available on the market is called Shimmer and Sparkle, which is based on the exact blue and pink colors found in the Treatment For Gum Regrowth bottle. There are also green and blue, white and pink, and even Purple and Glow.

Gum Recession Grow Back

Once you receive a Remedy For Gum Regrowth from Amazon, you may discover that they are very attractive, and a great deal of people are finding that these are the best selling products within their store. You will also realize that the purchase price is very affordable and can save money compared to other products which are available on the marketplace.

You aren't going to have to be concerned about the costs of expensive medications or the trouble of visiting the dentist to get your mouth sterile and cleaned. You are going to be able to generate a good choice, and you also will not need to worry about burning a hole into your pocketbook with a traditional, all-natural product.

For those who are concerned with the long-term ramifications of choosing an all natural supplement, you may see that there are no harmful side effects which are associated with using the Remedy For Gum Regrowth. You can simply set it in your mouth for the entire 3 days, or you can just opt for a week or two, and then you will be able to decide just how long you want to use it.

Grow Back Receding Gums

Whenever you're thinking about that the perfect solution for your problems, it's necessary to understand that there are no permanent methods to gum disease, thus there's no need to fear. You need to only have patience and continue to keep an open mind, and continue to go to your dentist for a routine check up.

Keep in mind that in the event you have gum disease, you should speak to a dentist.  

There certainly are a great deal of people who have seen incredible results following the Remedy For Gum Regrowth. It is certainly among the best solutions available today, and I urge you to take to it now.

Also, if you make an effort to touch with your gums, they will feel quite tender if they're inflamed. This means that you are able to be certain nothing bad can eventually your gums if you opt to have your teeth whitened.  

Gum Regrowth Treatment 

 You might also detect some pain along with your gums are especially tender. So the gums will also obtain the exact same quantity of cleaning. They are also known as the gingivae. Nevertheless, bloated and inflamed gums especially after having a lengthy period of no pain could possibly be a sign of distinct problems.

There is a patented process known as the nonsurgical surgical technique that claims to really help gums to grow back. If it's caused by the gingivitis or perhaps a similar dilemma, knowing ways to get rid of swollen gums implies understanding that which may be impacting you at the 1st case. One of the primary concerns with receding gums is that they become more vulnerable to bacteria growth. It's vitally important to take care of the problems causing the sore gums soonest possible as a way to avoid it from getting worse. You might not see a gap on your gums from 1 day to the next. The unfortunate reality is that at some point, each one of us will probably need to manage sore gums.

Gum Regrowth Treatment At Home

In the event you opt to earn a whitening treatment for the teeth, prepare yourself to experience some sore gums also. Diagnosis Diagnosis Receding gums and other kinds of periodontal disease are characterized by means of a dentist. In many other cases it may possibly not function as the gum disease, however other associated sensitivities that leads to painful gums with no bleeding which follows. Among the prevalent indications of gingivitis is bleeding gums, which ought to be the warning signal. Nearly all the period that the pain or soreness is obviously a temporary character and isn't normally a reason of concern. Chronic soreness shouldn't be ignored.

[accidentallyadrift]

Credit Cards and Finance Things: The Good, The Bad, and the Honest Truth

First off, if you’re dealing with an annoying mound of credit card debt you’re not alone. I used to swear up and down that I would never get a credit card...until I got to college. It was just one, with a manageable limit through my bank, but then it was two and then a Victoria’s Secret card and a Best Buy account, Amazon, American Airlines. It got out of hand quickly and now at 23 I’m still dealing with the repercussions of irresponsible decisions I made at 19. But, in dealing with all of the BS that comes along with credit cards and paying them off, my friends started asking me for advice with handling their own. Which seemed...Bizarre? Now initially I would have told you under no circumstances should you ever get a credit card ever! In reality this isn’t really a practical thing, and here are a few reasons why.

 If you have any plans to travel, rent hotel rooms or cars you’ll need a credit card. Most if not almost all rental car companies will not let you use a debit card when you’re renting a car. And if they do they increase the already ridiculous hold on your account and unless you have a major amount of liquid cash and you can stand to not access $400-$600 on top of your rental fees for the duration of your trip it’s a necessity. I’m often surprised at how many people don’t know this, the best man in my best friend’s wedding found himself stranded in New York City without a way to get to Vermont because the rental company they had booked with didn’t list that you had to pay by credit card and you had to be over 25. (Also age isn’t won’t always stop you from renting but it will almost always increase your rental price so check to see if there’s a young renter’s fee!) 

Certain hotels follow similar policies, and at minimum it’s always a good idea to have some way to cover your ass if you find yourself in a bind while away from home. Lost debit cards, emergencies, accidents, or traveling for work where you’ll be waiting to receive reimbursement from you employer are all things you could encounter where not having one is going to make for a giant pain in the ass. 

Different types of credit help you build a strong credit profile and no credit history can be just as frustrating to deal with as bad credit history. Credit Cards fall under the revolving debt category and help show that you can faithfully pay down or pay off a balance to a lender. They’re also how most people establish their length of credit history, which is a pretty large factor in your overall credit profile. Now, you don’t want just revolving accounts, installment accounts (usually car loans are where the average 20 something will pick this up) are even stronger for your credit profile and honestly look better than accounts with a revolving balance. Services like Credit Karma offer great break downs about all of this and how each type affects your credit scores. I highly recommend getting in the habit of checking your credit score on a regular basis if you don’t already. It’s free and it’s one of the first ways you can spot if something that doesn’t seem right shows up on your credit if you don’t pay for any kind of credit monitoring service. Having no credit history makes things like trying to rent an apartment or get a vehicle loan difficult. My current roommates previous roommate had no credit history or rental history and because that was viewed as a risk factor for the rental company their security deposit jumped to over $600 from $250. As for a vehicle loan you’re more than likely going to need a co-signer or co-borrower which can be difficult if you don’t have someone that is willing to put their name and credit on the line to help you.

Long story short. You need to build credit history some how, credit cards are kind of the path of least resistance to do so but I will say if you don’t think that you have the self control to keep your “emergency” card in your wallet for actual emergencies. I would suggest holding off. 

Your bank and local bankers are excellent resources for financial questions and concerns! You can always go in and chat with a banker about your financial goals or to seek some advice. Debt, budgeting and finances are tricky and no one is expecting you to understand it all so use the resources around you and don’t be afraid to ask for help if you need it. 

The best thing I can recommend is to be SMART about what you choose, stay away from store cards with attractive incentives. “But what about the rewards?! And the freebies!? It has to worth it” Absolutely not, this is just a great way to build up unnecessary excess debt, and trust me the perks don’t take the sting out of the 29% interest rate once you realize how much you’re paying back for your retail therapy. 

Airline cards have the worst annual fees and ridiculously high interest rates, if you do want something travel specific that you can build miles up on the only one I suggest is through American Airlines specifically their Fly Now Pay Later program. This can only be used to purchase flights and has 6 months interest free financing on all of your flight purchases, you still earn miles and it’s tied to your frequent flyer number. Over all, this is a card I plan on keeping because it allows me to grab flights at any time when the prices bottom out because we all know that great deal won’t usually stick around till your next pay day. Just make sure to pay it off within that 6 month window and you’re good!

Really you want to look for a card that gives you cash back on your purchases, that you can either redeem for other things or you can roll back into your monthly payments. Personally, I have a Discover It card and although the interest rate is a little on the high side (which differs for everyone depending on your credit profile) it is nice that I can take whatever cash back rewards I have and roll them into my payment. 

If you’re like me and are dealing with multiple accounts and trying to tackle getting them all paid off. USE GOOGLE CALENDAR. I used to end up with late fees because I would space a payment and not realize it till the next morning when that stupid late fee had already been posted to my account. I wanted desperately to be an organized planner girl that could keep everything written down but it just doesn’t work for me, and I have to remember to write them all in every month and to be honest ain’t nobody got time for that. My google cal took me a bit to set up but the nice thing is, once it’s up you can set it to just auto repeat every single month until the end of time if you would like. Every single one of my accounts is listed on its due date, they start out green and when I’ve made the payment I go in and switch them to red for that month. If an account is paid off, I switch it to orange and just tell it to change all the following events to match.  Easy, simple, and no late fees. And since I get paid bi-weekly it really helps with pay mapping and knowing what I need to set aside to make sure everything is covered. 12/10 for the very visual planning type! Also, I know most banks have a Bill payer feature, I’ve just found that this is what works best for me. And if you’re like me and paying off multiple accounts tackle them one at a time! Make minimums on all of them except one, when that’s paid off move on to the next one. Everything is still getting paid but you’ll actually start to see productive results sooner. (This one came straight from my banker and let me tell ya it works!) Start with the smallest one and work your way up to the highest ones. 

Going Back to Pay Mapping, this is a great tool to tackle paying down debt and keeping your monthly budget on track. This allows you to sit down and see when you have money coming in and when money needs to in turn go back out to cover your bills and where you’ll need a little extra or where you’ll have some cash leftover. I usually pay map for a month out from wherever I’m doing my budget. Starting with my current account balance, adding in my upcoming paycheck, deducting all of the payments that will be made in that pay period until my next check and then adding that next check in and repeating the cycle. So I can see if one week I’m going to come up a little short then I need to keep some of my over flow cash from a previous week in order to make sure I don’t over draft my account. It seems simple, and you would think that it’s just basic knowledge...but again I’ve heard so many times “If I would have realized that I wouldn’t of done _____ last week!” The best thing you can do for your financial mind set is to alway be thinking forward, don’t let that extra 20 bucks burn a hole in your pocket if you haven’t checked to see if it really is extra. Better yet, just move it to your savings account (which you should also be dumping at least $10 in to whenever you can...I’m still trying to get better about this one myself).

And if you’re on top of it and pay your card off every month! Pay it off before the due date and then a revolving balance will never hit your credit report. Having accounts that are consistently paid off and don’t carry a revolving balance is the ideal way you want to deal with having credit cards. It looks great on your credit report that you pay faithfully, your usage stays low, and your still establishing length of credit history.

Wow okay this got much longer than I expected it to be but I feel like these are like the financial FAQs I usually get so now maybe I can just send it on as a master post the next time someone asks? But if any of this is unclear or you have other questions I’ll do my best to answer them! Again, by no means am I an expert this is simply a collection of things I’ve figured out through trial and lots of error. So if anything learn from my mistakes lol and if there’s anything you would like to add feel free! I’m always looking to learn more! 

Also, remember it’s not forever. It may be stressful and not very fun right now but if you keep working at it and you learn from it and you make sure you don’t end up there again. I know it can be incredibly overwhelming and it sucks when you have to make the choice to stay in and be responsible when all you want to do is go out and have fun. But, it’ll feel so much nicer when you know you’re doing it all cash and you don’t have to worry about paying for your fun at the end of the month. You got this! Now go color code your calendar and get that shit paid off!

[sn0kitten]

Colored Contacts

So...I've never used Tumblr before, but a friend told me I should start. So I am.

This is a story that literally happened to me over the last few months. I thought it was funny....

So a couple months ago I was going through Amazon and I stumbled into looking at stuff for cosplay. So eventually after crying about all the prices and how I would never afford any of it, I saw that there was a brand of colored contacts that were only $8 compared to the $20+ for the other ones. Of course, I was skeptical at first because why would it be so cheap? So I read the reviews. Couldn't find any. But the seller had decent reviews so I figured, why not? It's only $8 and free shipping. So I bought them. I want to say it was February when I bought them. For about a month I had been checking the shipping about once a day but got no updates. Eventually, I forgot, deciding it wasn't really worth it. So yesterday I get on and see that they still had no shipping updates. So I decided to return them, deciding my $8 could be spent on a spare set of headphones or something idk. And this morning, my stepmom comes in and hands me a small package. I open it and find my contacts...or so I thought....

When I open the container...I find one very vibrant green contact lense. Not two. One. Of course, the writing on the package was in Chinese. So I couldn't read it. So I pulled out the Google translate app and used the camera to translate. Once I got the brand name I googled it to see if the reviews were good. And I found nothing on contact lenses.

So me being a dumbass decided to just say fuck it and try to put it in. Of course, I didn't go in blind, I consulted my 12-year-old sister, on advice where she demonstrated with her own contacts. I also consulted YouTube. And after trying for about twenty minutes...

I got nothing. I was close a couple times, managed to get it in my eye for about two seconds, but it didn't stay.

And now my right eye is burning. And I know it's supposed to burn a bit, especially if it's your first time putting in contacts but it's been an hour. And it's still burning.

Bonus:

I went to check Amazon to leave a review and the page in my recent orders for it wouldn't load. I look for it in my wishlist, which I know I put it in and it and all the other colors of that brand are deleted.

So now I'm out $8, my right eye, and I can't even leave a 1 star. Thanks a lot, Amazon. (I'm not actually blaming Amazon, I just don't want to out the brand because apparently, they have other decent products)