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the-firebird69 · 5 months ago

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Warcraft 2 (2025) - First Trailer | Henry Cavill https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3WMbVCr1chM

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There's a few things to be discussed about and this is one of them you see Trump's repulsive character and he goes around absorbing people to wrecking them and please possessed as people keep having him do dumb things and they get hurt

Hera

Well as far as things go this jerk is going to try and harm me when he gets in office. The math proper and foreigners are threatened me with it thusly my wife and Olympus and we have to take it seriously we must put the call out to our people that we need more personnel I was at the top need to be free to address this horrible situation it has evolved because of the Mac proper and their demands. There are several very large threats that are coming up by them and this constant threat when myself and my wife which unfortunately translate into message against our people. Now they're not really giving me a chance to have a life and of course because of my position or what have you here they are completely negligent in their duties for their people there is some division we need to try and find out why and who replicated and destroy them but for now while we're doing that we also need to control the situation more and we need troops. It really needs to be expressed in the true terms of what it is zigzag has a test it should go along with our leaders delivering speeches to our people about recruiting it's their job to recruit people even if they're not signed on. We have families Hera and I have a family I don't want to say anything about it I want Nevada and Ariana to tell people and they always get his name wrong on purpose what wonderful folks there are. He has a family as well and all of us and Olympus have to think about it this is our survival on the line we're not doing simple things because we have no time or not thinking about it or mental block we need conscription of a sort and to be cruel to be kind to our people and they will of course understand it. We're entering a period of time where Trump will be cut down every week probably another third and he will be trying to use devices more and more aggressively and we have to have the manpower to cover regular operations and can't keep pulling from there it introduces more risk to an already risky situation. There are several other major points we brought up that I want spoken at a summit before he takes office so we don't look like jackasses all the time I want to express to them our people they're needed we need to sign on before he goes in office and will tell you what's going to happen if we don't have enough people and hopefully it won't be very bad but we will have to express it our people are suffering here they understand there's some mental blocks up there but you have to get over it you have to break these walls down we're in the war and I'm doing my best to break every single wall that these people have against us down everything and I guess I'm going to have to start applying myself towards what they're doing to make it so hard for people to sign on up there we need the backup we need people out of the Meijer we need a military type civilization throughout all of it right now we're going to be building bases that will help out that will point out a lot of problems they'll get aggressive we'll need to hire we'll see what it is a lot of times but we already know we need people to help break those blocks down now we need to get ahead of it and be the best there is and have no question of it. I salute Olympus and Thor and Freya for their tireless duty and service to us and our people and to themselves for thousands of years we must not let them be abused either they are very important to our survival and happiness and a lot of us want to see them to talk to them and we don't want them to be angry and it's important these things can be done with numbers alone when we sign on we like to do things right we like to do the laundry once we're not going to argue about it and prolong the issue we're not going to fix things incorrectly on purpose and we get them out of the way so we can do our work you will be surprised how much added help assist me and my wife here in our and our duty and sanity

Thank you for your attention and please remember it's our duty as those in our military to make sure that we have enough hired but it is also our duty to have people team up with God's plan which is underway and Thor and Freya are doing that we need more people doing it and yeah in different ways and they are but we need to delegate and to let people know they are very important to our army you don't even have to be in our army yet signed up the formal army to get people to sign up if your children I'm calling you now I was a child and I led this massive group it's been around for thousands of years and is very powerful is unbeatable in battle in combat and we can't allow it to degenerate to that we need controls to go to your parents and your friends we're not signed on and to be a hero like me and Hera as well did it God bless and Goddess bless all and have a decent night

Zues

I will say these people are discussing but we do have to say these things and I helped him say them yes about half of it now the whole time we're working together

Hera

Olympus

#Youtube

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engbergsinfinland · 9 months ago

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Tuesday and Grocery Stores

Because today I don’t have too much new and interesting to report, and I am already a few days late on this, I thought I would offer a deep dive in the realities and wonders that one encounters in a Finnish grocery store.

I will state that the last day of my trip to Stockholm was amazing, with continued beautiful weather. The second night of the Magnetic Fields show was so incredible and the people we visited with in the crowd were so friendly and fun. My trip home was smooth and easy (the train Arlanda Express is super easy and the best way to travel to or from the Stockholm airport from the city center) and I arrived back to our flat at 6:40 p.m. on Monday. Quite an amazing Stockholm adventure. Another thing worth mentioning before I ask you to walk with me through a Finnish grocery store is that today, Jan, our building superintendent, finally took some of the excess/left-behind items out of our apartment! Praise be! We also got Eric’s bank account 100% set up, and back home, my mom and dad’s beloved German Shorthair Pointer, Robin, finally finished earning her Show Championship. I also had a Languages unit meeting at my university this morning (2/3 of which was in Finnish, so I just smiled and nodded) and Eric and I also had Finnish class, which today focused on negative verb forms (“I am not at home,” versus “I am at home,” for example) and we were both so frustrated we nearly threw in the towel. But, it got better by the end, and we will keep going.

OK – so, let’s grocery-shop, shall we? Near our flat, there are three large grocery stores (maybe not “large” by US standards, but nevermind) within a two minute walk (I know I already mentioned this). So, you can choose to go to the K-Market (which is in the lower level of the department store Stockmann) and it has the state-run alcohol store right next to it, Alko. You could choose to go to the 24-hour grocery store adjoining the train station, the S-Market. Or, you could go to the Lidl. If you wanted to go down the street a little ways, you could get to a few more S-Markets or to a large, amazing Prisma, which also sells housewares (think of Meijer in Michigan or like a Walmart, if it were very nice, or a Target with groceries and fresh, prepared foods to take away, and I don’t just mean a rotisserie chicken).

So, how about we go to the K-Market? You enter through some automatic-opening, clear, waist-high divider thing (a gate?), and you’ve gotten your full-size shopping cart or your hand basket ahead of that. At K-Market, you do not have to use a Euro to get a shopping cart, so that is what we usually get. You enter in the fruit and vegetable area. Unless the fruits or vegetables you are choosing already have a bar code on them (because they are pre-packaged, like some tomatoes or pre-bagged lettuce), then you have to weigh your items and stick the printed bar code on them or on their bag. I first saw this, actually, at Wegmans in Ithaca, New York, when I went to the School for Criticism and Theory at Cornell (maybe in 2001?), and my seminar leader, the eminent theorist and a woman I admire deeply, Diana Fuss, said that, at Wegman’s, “mutant vegetables reign supreme!” I will never forget that. She meant it as a magnificent, magical musing on how amazing Wegman’s was.

So, once you’ve made your way through fruits and vegetables, and have maybe taken some still-covered-in-dirt potatoes out of their very own large bin, with a big scooper, you continue past the salad bar and the squeeze-your-own-orange-juice machine towards the prepared foods and meats area. This is where I pick up a few things like hummus and smoked salmon, but if I wanted some herring salad or, say, Finnish sausages, they’d be here too. Then you find yourself at the Tex-Mex aisle, which has a lot of different kinds of tortillas (New Mexicans might be aghast, but also, we take what we can find sometimes) and lots of salsas (not good; I can say that flatly) and, get this, no beans at all. I think I already covered that in a previous post. No pinto beans; no black beans; none (though you can get black beans elsewhere in the store, but not dry beans). Anyway, the next aisle over is the pasta. You will not find what we think of as a “normal size” pasta-sauce jar in this aisle. You will find smaller, slimmer jars. I did buy one about a month ago that was sooooo arrabiata that I thought I might be permanently impacted from consuming it.

I forgot to mention that also just beyond the fruit/vegetable area and the salad bar is the bread area and this is Eric’s favorite part of the store, being the bread-lover that he is. Yesterday, in fact, I bought him some bread because he like to try all kind of breads, indiscriminately, and this one was so colorful that I had to grab it. It looked like it might be cranberries and apples but it was in fact goat cheese and beets! He loved it. He would have loved it either way. The Finns love, love, love their rye bread, and I don’t mind it, but there is also an abundance of oat-bread varieties. By kids prefer just the standard sandwich-sliced bread. But, we experience a whole wonderful world of Finnish bakery breads as a result of Eric buying several different kinds a week.

OK, I will say just a few more things (because I really should be doing some grading right now – haha! Some ol’, same ol’, with that!) – so, it is always a kind of fun adventure using Google Translate in the grocery store. The translations are sometimes hilarious and impossible to believe. Also, I’ve got to say, Finnish apples in the grocery stores are just not, well, crispy. I am so devoted to crispy apples and I am fully a member of the Honeycrisp apples brigade, so it takes some getting used to to recognize that you’re just not going to get that kind of crunch here. My parents’ trees produce wonderfully crispy apples too, so it is just what I am accustomed to. And I do love apples, so, they are something that has been absent from our diet here, and we do miss them.

You cannot buy a gallon of milk in any of the stores I have gone to. And Cece drinks a lot of milk. People's fridges here are smaller, typically, and people often go to the grocery store much more frequently.

Lastly, if you use the self-checkout, you will get a printed receipt and you will have to scan its bar code to get out of the gates that separate the self-checkouts from the hallway out of the store. If you do not know you have to scan the bar code, you might be waiting there a long time, looking confused ;) I am sure you can guess how I know this.

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umichenginabroad · 1 year ago

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Classes, routine, and...a giant puppy?

Week 2

So far, it's been a busy and eventful two weeks here in San Sebastian! I've met a lot of people, gotten accustomed to my way around town, and have started to settle into my routine for the next 8 weeks. This post will mainly be dedicated to my university schedule and daily life (but also some fun tidbits from the week thrown in as well).

School Life

Since my program is a research internship, I'm here for a longer period of time than others. Up until this point, a group from Penn State was also here taking a 2 week design class, so a lot of the activities we did were with them as well. I'll be starting my research at some point this week because as of Friday, we just completed our Introduction to Research course. The course went over the basic principles of research methods, data collection/analysis, literature review, intellectual property rights, and more (you get the gist of it). For each lesson, we would have a different professor come in to teach it. I liked the way this was set up since it was helpful to get introduced to other members of staff from the university, along with having people we could contact later on for advice or resources. Class was everyday starting at 9am-11am, then a roughly 15 minute coffee/snack break, resuming from 11:15am-1pm. We would mostly have plenty of time to finish assignments in class, whether it was a hands-on coding lab or a short presentation to do. The schedule was another thing that I liked, since class ended in the early afternoon and we would have plenty of time to rest, explore the downtown, go to the beach, or go with the peer mentors to an activity they had planned. From the hotel where I'm staying, the walk is decently nice! I enjoy going on walks and this one is a comfortable 15ish minutes, which compared to walking across Ann Arbor's campus, isn't really that bad at all. I have some pics of the journey to class, and notice that the sidewalks are made entirely of tile, something that I thought was neat:

Also, the weather kinda fluctuates during the day. It can go from being really rainy in the morning to being bright and sunny by the time class ends (much like our beloved Michigan weather).

Meals

Before class, I eat breakfast at the hotel since we have this included with our housing. It's buffet style, so a wide range of options, and there's a cook who you tell your order to after choosing from what they can make (pancakes, scrambled eggs, bacon, etc.). Below is an example of a typical breakfast spread.

For the first two weeks, lunch has been included at the university's canteen. After class ends at 1pm, we take our lunch ticket to the cafeteria and can choose two dishes along with either a dessert, yogurt, or fruit. Everyday the options change, but usually there's some type of pasta, fish dish, meat dish, salad, or beans/soup.

Featured here are some ribs, a vegetable rice dish, vanilla pudding, and fries on the left. On the right are some fish empanadillas, a strawberry yogurt, and fries. From now on, lunch and dinner are on me. Because of this, I have my next topic that I wanna talk about:

Markets!

You won't find a typical Walmart or Meijer in San Sebastian; those types of places aren't really a thing here. Instead, smaller markets are the way to go. One of the first ones that I went to was called Todotodo Spar, and it reminded me more of a 7-11 but with a wider variety of products and fresh fruits. It's the type of store you would go to when doing some small shopping, like picking up a few items (in my case some conditioner since I forgot to bring some). On a larger scale, Super Amara is an upgraded version of that. An equivalent would be a Kroger, but the products sold are more of fresh/gourmet produce. It's all very reasonably priced, with a meat, cheese, and fish section, along with selling things like cosmetics and household stuff too. There are also a lot of independent fruit/vegetable stand shops as well. These are dedicated just for that purpose, but have to be eaten within the week because it's super fresh. I ended up buying a quarter watermelon from one and it was easily a top tier purchase. If you want the freshest of the fresh, go to a place like Más que fruta!

~ live, laugh, love, watermelon ~

NOW, onto some things I did this week so bear with me here we're not done yet. I surfed? Partially. More like got thrown around by the waves and a lot of seawater in my stomach. Still very fun though and would try again! Took a day trip to Bilbao for the Guggenheim museum. I keep trying to think of how to describe it and the words that come to mind are unique, eerie, odd, interesting, and puzzling? Modern art isn't exactly my favorite thing, I find it intriguing for sure and to each their own but there's much to ponder about in those exhibits. One of the larger exhibits featured spirals that you could walk through and it really made me feel like I was wandering through an acorn. It was also a little trippy. You're probably wondering what I meant by puppy in the title of this post, well here's your answer...

Say hello to Puppy, the guard dog of the Guggenheim!

and here's a guest star appearance of me from another exhibit which felt like I was inside of a christmas ornament.

Enough yapping from me, hope you enjoy following along with my adventures!

In the wise words of a shirt I found at bershka, "Full inspiration today, periodt"

Emily Dobao

Biomedical Engineering

IPE San Sebastian, Spain

June 2nd, 2024

#UmichEnginAbroad #IPETecnun #EmilyDobao #IPESummer24 #Spain

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hlmowrer · 1 year ago

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Week 55: "O Remember, remember"

You guys, this week was weird. I'm still kinda trying to collect all my thoughts and make sure I'm remembering all of it, because this bad boy had MANY chapters.

It wasn't a bad week. We reconnected with two friends we had lost contact with...one is very enthusiastic and wants to be baptized (yay for Dylan!) and the other is less gung ho but we had a really great impromptu Bible study and we were far closer to the same page than we were when we started, so we're making it a weekly thing now! All of this was a tremendous blessing, because finding new people to teach has become extra difficult lately and we haven't had a lot of success. Never underestimate the Lord's power to work miracles!

Wednesday I had another exchange with Elder Burrill, one I expect to be the last for a while. We supported each other as always, and we were so spirit led! Elder Burrill is amazing at listening to where God wants him to go...we were putzing around in Meijer and he suddenly felt prompted that we needed to go in the direction of the sporting goods...and immediately got distracted looking at the disc golf equipment. We began to wander off, hoping we hadn't missed our moment when he decided we needed to go back, and 30 seconds later decided that "dang it, we don't need to be here anymore". We were a bit disappointed, but I made a crack about how perhaps the Lord sent us over here just to delay us, knowing that our juvenile minds would get caught by the discs for just long enough to be in the right spot later. We went to go find the car, and at exactly the right split second we ran into Austin, a super chill dude that was down to hear a scripture and ended up being pretty interested in the Book of Mormon! It was such a rad testament to the need to sometimes follow the Spirit without knowing why, and I was pretty proud of myself for correctly guessing what was happening. Later on our faith was tested again...we were prompted to go into a restaurant, and we found the person we think we were looking for but making our escape without buying any overpriced pizza was a challenge.

Also on Wednesday (now you can see how packed this week was) we had a district council, and I felt inspired to share a message about remembrance. I've been pondering this a lot lately, and the need to remember is so critical to holding on to your relationship with Christ. We are taught things in our lives by the Spirit, sometimes through a thought or feeling, or perhaps through an experience. I know that there have been moments in my life where I felt like I could not be more joyful to be alive/more faithful in Jesus Christ/more loved/more confident. We ALL are given the experiences we need to be faithful and happy...but how often do we handicap ourselves by forgetting them? This is why we write things down and say them out loud. This is why we must consciously choose to keep the joy and the confidence in spiritual things at the forefront of our minds always, because if we never forget we will never falter. And I feel pretty confident in that being what the Lord wanted me to share, because once again (this happens a lot in the Big Rapids District) every person who shared at that council shared a very similar point despite there being no communication amongst us beforehand. And then a member of our mission presidency did a missionwide devotional about remembrance two days later...again without knowing about anything we were talking about amongst ourselves.

Saturday we had a really epic opportunity to travel to Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo for an oratorio performance called The Lamb of God. The Lamb of God is about the ministry and sacrifice of Jesus Christ, and is designed to bring people of different faiths together. It was written by a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, but each Lamb of God performance is put on by over a hundred people from dozens of Christian denominations. It was a powerful performance, and as part of a district goal from Elder Burrill I considered what the Lord may want to teach me as I listened. Remembrance once again filled my mind, and temperance also. I think the Lord is trying to tell me something.

About half the mission was invited to the performance, so it was also a very fun opportunity to see people I haven't seen for a while. I really, really have such a great love for these missionaries. I've been working hard to see people as Christ sees them, and I feel like I'm getting better at it. I've also never been to Kalamazoo before (it is apparently a real place) so that was neat.

Since then, my life has mostly consisted of taking care of my dear companion...he seems to have gotten something stuck in his intestines, and has been in pretty brutal pain for the last few days. We're trying to get approved to go see a doctor...pray for us pretty please.

Alright folks, I hope I got it all (I probably didn't, but when do I ever).

I love you all! (Really!)

-Elder Beren Mowrer

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detroit-grand-prix · 3 years ago

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Wildest Dreams Chapter 11 - Better Than Revenge

Chapter summary: The GP3 season starts in earnest for Bee, and she's settling into her routine after moving to the UK full-time. There's new feelings to contend with, including racing at the track that almost ended her career before it started.

Content warning: N/A

Chapter word count: 3,685

Author’s notes: Both of the companies I mentioned, and are both based in Michigan. I'm trying to go for something as close to reality as possible, so I used some real companies. No, I didn't get paid to namedrop them.

I'm sure most people know the story of George Russell and his PowerPoint presentations, but here it is if you don't. It's very charming.

George's placements in this chapter are real, except for the Monza one. He actually did win that one, but I decided it was high time that Bee got on the top step of the podium. And the Monza GP3 sprint race was cancelled due to heavy rain that year.

Previous Chapter

Brackley, Northampton, England, United Kingdom Mid-December, 2016

After securing her placement for the 2017 season, Bee’s life changed very rapidly within a few weeks. Since she was going to be mostly based around Brackley, she ended up moving to the UK, out of her parents’ house. She moved in the second week of December, but would be returning to Stuttgart for the Christmas break.

She rented a small furnished flat in Northampton, and bought a car - the first car she’d owned - on a company leasing scheme that Mercedes offered its employees. Fortunately, the discount was generous, so she was able to splurge a little on it. She got a silver AMG A45 4matic hatchback and absolutely loved it. (She hated that it was a UK-spec one, though, because right-hand drive would never not be strange to her.)

The day before the holiday break, Toto summoned her to his office. She was a little nervous about that - she felt like she’d been called to the principal’s office and she wasn’t sure why. She went to the office and knocked on the glass door. Toto looked up from his laptop and gestured for her to come in.

The room reminded her a bit of a fish tank - almost every wall was transparent glass, no privacy at all. There was a large glass trophy case right in the middle of the floor that displayed an assortment of medals. The walls had bookshelves with some trophies, some helmets, and various books.

“We have a few contracts to review,” Toto said as Bee sat in the chair across from his desk. “You’ve gotten a few sponsorship offers, which is a very good thing. After our press release went out, it was circulated to the news in your home state, and there’s a few companies interested in sponsoring a rising hometown hero, it seems.”

“What? Like… who?” Bee was confused. She knew that someday soon she’d need to find sponsors, but couldn’t fathom the idea of sponsors wanting to find her, especially because Formula 1 didn’t have much notoriety in the United States, let alone the feeder series.

“We have one from a mortgage lender called Quicken Loans, one from a grocery store chain called… May… May-jer Major? I don’t know what this word is in English.”

“What?” Bee stood up to look across the desk at the document Toto was holding.

“Oh, Meijer. ‘Mye-yer’. It’s Dutch. There’s a lot of Dutch people in Michigan.”

“Ah - that’s a bit surprising. But, anyway, I’ve already taken a look at the contracts, and I just want to go through these with you step-by-step, discuss what changes we’d like for the terms and things.”

Neither one of the sponsorship deals were for earth-shattering amounts of money, but for a junior formula driver that only had a high school education, it certainly meant she’d be making a perfectly comfortable living. By the end of the meeting, Bee felt like her eyes were crossed and she barely understood a word Toto was saying. “Sorry but… this just seems like a lot.”

Toto chuckled. “It can be. But you’ll start to understand these things eventually. I am your manager, but ultimately, I’m just making suggestions here. If you don’t agree with me on something, please feel free to let me know and we can discuss it.”

“I think everything is fine with the changes you’ve suggested, I just… honestly wasn’t expecting to be getting personal sponsors already, especially before I even sought them out.” Bee sighed and rubbed her temples. “I know having to do these things is just a fact of life in this sport, believe me, but the idea of having obligations beyond just… racing. Like, being a spokesperson or something. The idea of it feels so strange to me.”

Toto nodded. “I understand. It’s normal to feel the pressure, but you don’t have to go all in on these things right now. It’s important for you to remember just to keep a solid perspective on the things you have to worry about now. These contracts are fairly basic, just logos on your car and your suit. The rest of it - having to do marketing, whatever else - it will come in time. And I’ll have your back when the time comes for bigger things like this.”

Bee felt a little better. It was hard to not let her thoughts get carried away, but Toto was right - getting worried about the details of the future right now wouldn’t help.

She headed back for Stuttgart the next day. It barely felt like she’d left, but she needed to hit the ground running after the holidays with simulator work and preparing for pre-season testing, so she didn’t have a lot of choice other than moving in a hurry.

She was happy to be home for Christmas, though. She’d been running from one thing to the next, all over the world, for the last three months of the year, and it finally felt like she could take a breath. She made the most of the downtime, too - she slept in, ate too much, went to the Weihnachtsmarkt with her parents, hung out with some of her German friends, bought gifts, and just enjoyed herself for two weeks.

After the new year, she had to travel to Le Mans, France, for things at the DAMS headquarters - getting fitted for her race seat, meeting the rest of the team, and some PR functions. After that, it was back to the UK.

As a mercy, her schedule mostly fell into a daily routine at the Mercedes factory without any travel until March, when she would head to Portugal for the first round of GP3 pre-season testing. It almost felt like she had a normal job, except the normal job was driving a fake car around a fake track. She and the other development drivers were officially testing the W08. When she wasn’t in the sim, she worked with her trainer, and sometimes shadowed the engineers and strategists. She loved it, even the stuff that didn’t involve racing. She was developing a fascination with race strategy - it was something she could see trying to do if racing didn’t work out in the long-term.

Brackley, Northampton, England, United Kingdom January 2017

On her first day back in Brackley, she was standing in a hallway outside of the canteen, talking to someone from the PR department she’d gotten to know a little bit, when she felt two hands clasp her shoulders from behind. It made her jump a bit, and she turned around to see George Russell grinning down at her.

“Alright, Phoebe? Thought that was you when I saw the braids.” She was still wearing her hair in two braids most of the time. She liked the way it looked, and it was the easiest hairstyle to keep her hair somewhat tamed under her helmet.

“Oh my god! George! Hi!” She pulled him into hug.

“It’s good to see you, Phoebe. It’s been a while. Glad to see you back in the saddle after Austria last year. Sorry that Red Bull let you go.”

She stepped back and looked up at him. “Well, I think it worked out in the end. I’m here, aren’t I?”

George laughed. “Yes. And it’s funny that it has, because I think you and I are the only two people that have the dubious honor of turning down an initial offer from Toto Wolff, and now here we are.”

“Wait, what do you mean?”

“Do you remember when we were in F3? I was racing with Carlin, they’re a Volkswagen team, so I couldn’t be sponsored by Mercedes then. And then, I tested in DTM with BMW - they offered me good money, too, but Toto told me if I went that route, I’d never be considered for an F1 seat with Mercedes, so, here I am.”

Bee laughed. “I don’t think I ever heard that. I remember Carlin was a VW team, but I didn’t realize Mercedes made you an offer that long ago.”

“Oh, it’s kind of a funny story, actually. Powerpoint presentations were involved, but I’ll tell you later. I have to get ready for my sim session. We should catch up soon, though.”

In February, the team had an unofficial launch and shakedown for the 2017 iteration of the Formula 1 car at Silverstone. It was a rainy, cold, miserable day, but Bee couldn’t have been more excited to be at the track for it. She stuck by George most of the time, neither of them really sure where to stand without being in the way. They chatted as they huddled against the wind in their black team jackets. They would also be going to watch pre-season testing in Barcelona later that week. Bee watched in awe as Lewis and his new teammate Valtteri completed their laps. She felt tears pricking at the corner of her eyes, but it was hard to say if it was emotion from watching the car make its first laps, or just from the wind.

Barcelona was the real test for the car, with Mercedes putting down impressive times and lap counts. An electrical issue grounded Lewis on the last day, and Mercedes was edged out a bit by Ferrari, but the W08 still managed to impress.

Testing for her own team came around with the spring. There were three testing sessions - one in Portugal, one in Barcelona, and one in Valencia, Spain. George’s team, ART, was absolutely dominant, with him trading top times with his teammate Jack Aitken. Bee wasn’t doing too badly herself, consistently getting into top of the midfield.

Her moderate success, though, had a downside - she always noticed the stares she got as she was walking down the paddock, like she was some sort of novelty. Sometimes she even caught people whispering to each other as she walked by. She had gotten used to it in her European Formula 3 seasons, and she knew as the season went on, it wouldn’t happen as much. It still gave her the feeling that she might not belong here.

She had a Skype session with Natalie after the last round of testing. They talked about the way getting personal sponsorships made Bee feel like she had more responsibility and pressure to deal with, and what she felt like when she was at testing.

“It’s just disheartening.” Bee said to the image of Natalie on her laptop screen. “I’ve been doing this for years and every time I show up to a track in the beginning of the season, people still stare at me. And I can’t even imagine what they’re saying or what they’re thinking, other than wondering what I did to deserve my place. It’s not even like I’m the first woman to race or anything, I’m just the one doing it right now.”

“Well… have you considered that you might be getting the attention because they might be impressed, or even surprised? Are you sure the things they’re saying are negative? Has anyone said anything negative to you?”

Bee thought about it for a moment. “Not… recently, no.”

“I understand why you might assume that it’s something negative. It has been in the past, since you were a kid. But from what you’ve told me, you’ve been putting in good times at testing, so maybe they’re impressed.”

“I didn’t really think about that. It’s not like I would go up to someone and ask.”

“Well, try this. Next time you see someone staring at you, or pointing at you, or what have you, just imagine that they’re just blown away by your presence. Straighten up your back, square your shoulders, put on a little swagger, and walk around like God himself sent you. You don’t have to actually act like that, not that I think you would.” Natalie shook her head. “You might be surprised to find how much reframing your perception might help. Let me know if it does.”

She also got a new helmet ahead of the first race of the season. It had to be blue and white to match the DAMS livery, with the Mercedes star on the front and an AMG logo above the visor. However, it was the first helmet that Bee was able to have some input on the design. Her previous helmets were all Red Bull-branded and just given to her as they came.

She opted for a dark blue background with a design of light blue stars. She thought it suited her, being an American, and she had Susie’s old Williams helmet in mind when she was working with the designer. She couldn’t stop staring at it once she took it out of the box. Her first custom helmet. It felt like a big step, somehow.

The first race weekend arrived. Bee arrived with the Mercedes team on Wednesday as usual for the track walk, and practice was Friday. Qualifying was a 30-minute straight fight for lap time, which determined the grid order for Saturday’s race. Sunday was the second and final race, with the grid decided by the top eight being reversed, so getting eighth on Saturday meant you were on pole position for Sunday, and if you were on pole on Saturday, you had to fight your way back to the front. Bee qualified in P7, and got P8 on Saturday’s race, which meant that she was starting Sunday on pole.

She was incredibly nervous, more nervous than she ever remembered being before the start of a race before. She almost felt a little sick from it. Unlike most drivers, she hated being on pole position. She vastly preferred to do the chasing. As the mechanics got her car positioned on the grid, she thought she was going to chew a hole through the seam of her balaclava - it was a nervous habit she’d had since her karting days. As the grid cleared for the start, she tried to remember the advice Susie had given her before testing, to take some deep breaths to get herself outside of her head, to work on visualizing the line around the track. It helped. Her usual pre-race calm took over, and she was ready.

Despite only being on pole because of the reverse-grid format, she was able to defend spectacularly, only allowing two overtakes, putting her at P3. A podium on her first weekend outing in GP3. She felt so many things at once as she climbed out of her car in parc fermé - relief, elation, joy. When she was on her way back to the pit after the podium ceremony, she saw people’s eyes on her again, but this time, she took Natalie’s advice. She squared her shoulders, raised her chin, and walked down the paddock like she’d just won the World Driver’s Championship.

She sent a text to Susie with a picture of her helmet next to her third-place trophy. She hadn’t talked to her lately - her son, Jack, was born in early April. Bee didn’t want to bother her while she was recovering and trying to adjust to motherhood. “Couldn’t have done it without the advice you gave me at testing this year. I hope you and Jack are doing well.”

She responded when Bee and her parents were out for dinner. “I’ll be at Silverstone this year. I can’t wait to see you. I’m so proud of you.”

The next race on the calendar was at the Red Bull Ring. Bee wasn’t sure how she felt about it. On one hand, she suffered a fairly horrific accident there that almost indirectly ended her career. On the other hand, she’d landed on her feet and ended up with a team that she was much happier with. She was still racing, and she had vastly improved as a driver from putting so much time into the sim. It did bring something to mind, though.

“I have a question,” she said to George while they were eating lunch at the factory after returning from Barcelona. “Do you remember Evgeni Kozlov?”

“Hmmm… wait, that Russian kid that pushed you off at the Red Bull Ring?”

“Yeah. I haven’t seen his name in a while. Is he still in European F3? I haven’t seen him on the F2 roster or anything.”

George raised his eyebrows and finished chewing the bite of food he was eating. “Oh, you must not look at any motorsport news or anything.”

That was accurate. Bee had seen a few articles about her accident after-the-fact, and found it too upsetting to read, mostly because of the deluge of comments about a girl “causing” one of the bigger accidents in an F3 race to date, no matter what the stewards had ruled about the crash. “No, I don’t. After the crash I decided to stop reading racing news. It just wasn’t good for my sanity.”

“Ah, okay, that’s fair. Well, there was a little bit of drama with him. He got pissed at one race about qualifying and decided to overtake during the formation lap, so he got black-flagged for it and got disqualified. And then at another race, his dad got into a fight with his team principal over… something, I don’t know. So, Red Bull dropped him, more or less because he was a PR liability, and his dad took his money out of the Red Bull academy, and there’s not a team that will take him. I don’t even think he’s racing right now.”

“Wow. You’re kidding. Well… that makes me feel better.” Bee leaned back in her chair. She almost felt giddy about it.

“Were you worried he was going to crash into you again or something?”

“No. There was… well, never mind.” The truth wasn’t really a road she wanted to venture down with George right now. “I just could never stand him, and for good reason.” She left it at that.

Austria went well. No podiums for Bee, but George won the first race. Bee ended up in the high end of the midfield again. Her team principal told her he was pleased with her performance regardless. She thought she’d be nervous going back to Austria, but the knowledge that Evgeni was nowhere near a race track took the edge off, somehow.

Silverstone arrived on an overcast weekend, but even the dark clouds couldn’t dampen the mood in the Mercedes garage, with a 1-2 for Lewis and Valtteri, and Lewis getting his third career grand slam.

In the GP3 race, George won again, but Bee had a bit of a rough weekend. She had a mechanical retirement in the sprint race because of a brake failure, and only got P9 in the feature race. It was her first mechanical DNF, and even though there was little to be done about it, Bee still felt bad. Susie found her after she walked back to the pit lane during the sprint race, and gave her a hug.

“I’m sorry, I know it’s tough. It happens to everyone at some point, and you were still impressive in the feature race. You’ve come so far as a driver already.”

“I know. But even the feature race was my worst placement this season.”

“Well,” Susie said. “If you were doing that well at your worst, I cannot wait to see you at your best.”

Susie had her over to their house for dinner that night, and she got to meet Jack. Bee hadn’t ever been the kind of person that sought out interactions with children, but he was a really cute baby. And, as Bee found out, holding a baby was surprisingly good for chasing away the sadness of a less-than-stellar race weekend.

As the season proceeded, Bee got another podium or two, and was always inside the points. She was happy with that. Sure, she was racing to win, but the GP3 field was uncommonly deep and talented that season, and Bee was very proud of being the “best of the rest”.

Bee finally got a taste of victory at Monza. Bee qualified in sixth. Saturday’s feature race was canceled because of heavy rain on the track, meaning the feature race was moved to Sunday, and there would be no time for the sprint race.

During the feature race, she was particularly dialed-in. All she had on her mind was trying to make as many overtakes as possible, and she interrupted what would have been an all-ART podium with a stunning last-second overtake on George right before the line. Bee was a little surprised when her engineer said she’d managed to pull off the last bit of distance and pull off a P1. It was her first-ever victory since she’d started racing in single-seaters, and it was at the same track that she’d gotten her first podium in Formula Renault. She cried on the podium, at the top step. She didn’t even try to stop it.

She would later laugh at the picture of her and George - even with her standing on the top step, she was still shorter than him.

Bee and George walked back to the Mercedes garage after changing out of their racing gear and back into their Mercedes team kit to watch the F1 Grand Prix, and both of them were met with cheers from the entire crew. Toto pulled Bee into an enormous hug that lifted her off of her feet (not difficult considering the height difference between the two of them).

“I’m so proud of you, bienchen. That was truly amazing driving out there.” He said. “You’ve come so far.”

That night, she let herself indulge in every scrap of news on motorsports blogs she could find. One article mentioned that she was the first woman ever to achieve a victory in the GP3 series, which would be more impressive if the series hadn’t only launched in 2010, but she would take it. It was nice to know that she’d put a small mark on the history of racing.

Next Chapter

#f1 fanfic #f1 oc fanfic #formula 1 fanfic #original character #female oc #female f1 driver #susie wolff #toto wolff #george russell #my fanfic #series: wildest dreams

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leslie-lyman · 4 years ago

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There are so many things a wanna know about Tessa and Pero. I see Pero as a curiosity killed the cat type of person, too curious for their own good lol! So maybe a list of first for Pero? What is his first time in a grocery store like? What is his first time in the city like? How does his first time home alone go? If we want to get a little spicy here, maybe what is it like when he see lingerie for the first time? And any firsts for Tessa? Does he teach her anything from his mercenary lifestyle?

Erin! These are excellent questions. I definitely have a running list in my head of “firsts” for Pero that I want to explore. Some may make it into the main storyline of SAMG, while others might see their own one-shots down the line, and all of the things you mentioned are absolutely on my list, so allow me to give you a few of my rambling thoughts here without going into a ton of detail with some of these things. Also disclaimer that some of this assumes that Pero and Tessa have more time together than the seven weeks until the solstice, but in those cases this is all hypothetical musings on my part for now and should not be taken as SAMG canon at this time!

Grocery store: Pero’s first time in a grocery store is sensory overload. Tessa takes him to her local Meijer on a weekday morning when there are as few people there as possible, but it’s still totally overwhelming. Imagine you had never seen fluorescent lights before - you’re indoors, but everything is so BRIGHT. There’s music playing on the loudspeakers (this is a thing Pero notices about modern life, there’s always music playing in the background, in the car, in stores, everywhere) and then every few minutes an automated announcement comes on advertising some deal in the meat department or whatever. This is one of the very first places outside of her house Tessa takes him, and it is one thing to be told about or shown images of modern life, and another thing to experience it. This is one of the moments where Pero very acutely feels the enormity of the changes that have happened in the last thousand years.

And the food - the produce section is pretty straightforward. Pero might not recognize a lot of the types of fruits and veggies there, but it’s at least clear that that’s what they are. Imagine Pero in the cereal aisle. In the freezer section with all the ice cream options. In the bakery department in front of rows of cupcakes and donuts and bread. Imagine Tessa trying to explain to Pero why some Goldfish cracker bags are labeled “flavor-blasted” and others are not. In chapter 4 Tessa tells Pero she’ll buy him anything he wants if he goes to the store with her, but he mostly relies on her that first trip to pick out things for him to try, because he’s trying to just wrap his head around the whole thing.

In a city: Chicago is the most obvious place for Tessa to take Pero. Grennich, her town, is very, very small (you’ll see more of it in chapter 5!), but Tessa shows Pero pictures and video of large cities to give him an idea of what city life looks like now. He’s amazed to see that there are cities that existed during his time that still endure, but that look so incredibly different now (Paris, Rome, Istanbul). Imagine that after the Midwest has dug itself out of winter, Tessa takes Pero to see Chicago. Again, seeing pictures of it and experiencing it firsthand are two very different things. Some things are familiar: the rush of people, the ebb and flow of different smells, the endless noise (though the specific noises themselves are very different).

Tessa and Pero have their own little version of Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. They take a boat tour down the Chicago River. They spend hours at the Museum of Science and Industry (which Pero finds much more interesting than the Art Institute of Chicago). They eat deep dish pizza and Tessa insists Pero try all dozen-ish flavors of Garrett’s popcorn (he likes the CheeseCorn the best). They take a picture of their reflections in the Bean. Tessa takes him up to the top of Willis Tower and it’s his first time in an elevator. Pero insists he isn’t nervous, isn’t afraid of heights, and if he holds onto Tessa’s hand a little more tightly than usual while they’re up there, well, she wouldn’t dream of giving him any grief over it. Tessa loves Chicago - she went to college and law school here, she grew up visiting the city with her family. But when she left her job and her fiancé and moved back home, her last few years in the city were so awful that they had tainted all of her good memories of it. When she goes with Pero, she gets to see the city anew through his eyes, and rediscovers all the reasons she loves it. Pero helps her heal from the trauma of her old life at the firm and he doesn’t even realize it.

Pero’s first time home alone: It’s like leaving your child home alone for the first time. Tessa is a wreck and Pero is just rolling his eyes and being like, “Do you not remember that time I told you all about how I fought and survived literal monsters on the Great Wall? I think I can handle a few hours in your house by myself,” as Tessa is reminding him for the tenth time not to put anything metal in the microwave if he gets hungry while she’s gone.

Lingerie: The first time Pero sees modern underwear of any kind it’s gonna be a bit of a surprise. Modern women wear fewer layers and less fabric than women in the 11th century did, but actually as far as undergarments go, women largely just...didn’t wear underwear then (though note that this is all based on my googling “medieval underwear” so I am not claiming to be an expert here, lol).

And here’s one of the things about Pero that I’m excited to explore in future chapters: he has no notion of modern beauty standards. Things Tessa might be self-conscious about - how long it’s been since she shaved her legs, what her pubic hair situation is, how old and ratty the bra and panties she might be wearing are, etc. - these are things Pero doesn’t even notice, doesn’t even care about, because the idea that those sorts of things can be changed, that they should be changed because they are somehow “undesirable,” just does not exist for him. He thinks Tessa is beautiful for all sorts of reasons regardless of what she does or doesn’t wear or what she does or doesn’t do with her body hair.

That said, I imagine that maybe the first time Pero sees modern fancy lingerie isn’t on Tessa, but as she’s doing a little online browsing. And he’s like, what the hell is all that??? The thing is, he sees how bras and thongs and garter belts would look good on a woman’s body, but ultimately, he thinks it’s all just so impractical. If he gets to the point of getting a woman’s clothes off, it’s because he’s gonna fuck them. He doesn’t need the additional allure of lingerie, he’s already sold, and it might look nice, but it’s really just getting in the way. Much better in his time when he could slide a hand underneath a woman’s skirts and reach his destination unimpeded.

That is, however, until he sees Tessa in lingerie. And then - well, that’s all I’m gonna say about that for now. 😉

Firsts for Tessa: Oh yes I definitely think Pero teaches her things! He’s both in awe of all the conveniences of modern life and absolutely horrified that it means that Tessa doesn’t know how to do any of the basic survival stuff he knows. And she might gently rib him about wanting to teach her how to do things like start a fire without matches, but she also recognizes that he does so because he cares about her. He may not be great at telling her how much he cares, but he’s much better at showing it than he thinks. If he can make sure she’s able to stay safe and care for herself in some theoretical harsh circumstance where all her modern technology fails, then by god he’s gonna do so, and he’ll sleep better at night for it.

Tessa also absolutely asks him to show her how to use his swords. 100%. And he does, because he may be a grump of few words but the simple truth is he cannot deny this woman anything.

#answered asks #stranger at my gate #samg!inspo

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peachdoxie · 4 years ago

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So I decided to go to Walmart today (my first mistake) because I've absolutely been craving white cheddar cheese rice cakes and both Meijer and Kroger are sold out after I bought them all last week, and of course walking an hour both ways in the relatively cool Ohio summer of 77°F and twice that in humidity is the most logical choice. I check to make sure it's not going to rain on the The Weather Channel app, then grab my unintentionally-diluted gatorade and Cubs hat with the pride flag on it and head out.

Now, when I planned to leave it was mostly cloudy and I thought that would be fine, but the sun decided to show its sexy face and I spent most of the 2.6 mile walk limping in the sunshine since my right foot decided it was going to yell at me for putting weight on it, but I persevered and made it to Wallyworld in more or less one piece, albeit exhausted and with a headache building. I get half way to the grocery section before remembering I need a cart (I also want to buy flour) and wander my way to the front, then back to the grocery aisles. I eventually find the location where ideally there should be dozens of bags of white cheddar cheese rice cakes for me to purchase, but, alas—they have all the flavors but white cheddar cheese, and so I have to settle for white cheddar cheese poppéd cörn triangles instead. With my disappointing spoils of war, I hobble to the self-checkout and legally purchase my corn triangles and flour.

At this point I'm really feeling like crap and am totally dreading heading back out in the heat, so I plunk myself and my mostly-empty cart down at the Walmart Sbubby (eet freesh) and play around on my phone, hoping that taking a break off my feet in the aircon will help me stop feeling like crap. After sitting for a bit, I get up, push my cart to the exit, stare outside with a mounting sense of dread, return the cart, and then walk back inside to the Sbubby, wondering how long I can loiter before they kick me out, when my body finally decides to inform me that holy shit you need some more calories girl. Hmm, I think. Maybe this is why I feel like crap.

The problem is that I don't really want Subway—I've mostly forgotten/ignored there's an entire Walmart behind me, as any sane person should—because it's Subway, and also because I was hoping to stop by the Italian restaurant on the way home and get some spaghetti, since eating a Subway sandwich will make me not hungry for the very excellent spaghetti that I don't get the chance to eat since I only go to this area of town when I can justify walking an hour for something, which apparently includes white cheddar cheese rice cakes but not spaghetti. I'm wondering how much the Subway Sandwich Artist™ will judge me if I just get a six inch with nothing but cheese on it when my eyes fall upon what I instantly know will be my savior: a soft pretzel covered in butter and salt.

"One salted pretzel," I say, somehow coherent, "and a regular fountain drink" because I'd also like some soda because why not. The Subway Sandwich Artist™ obligingly gives me my pretzel, which I legally purchase along with the soda. I sit down with my ambrosia and nectar and immediately regret my decision: Hellworld's attempt to cool its firey pits is super loud and I am quickly descending into the sensory overload layer of hell. Luckily, this Subway has a back area where it is 2% quieter into which I can retreat. I do, I wipe off half the salt because I'm not a masochist, and begin consuming the pretzel.

While this is happening, I'm updating my friends on discord as to my situation, and I recall the time my sister passed out while on a hike in Albania because she got overheated and threw off her salt balance, and I think, hmm, this is probably what's happening to me. And sure enough, after eating the pretzel and downing the soda has made me feel better! Yay! I mean, I still feel like crap, but crap that can at least attempt to make the walk home. It's like an hour after I arrived to Walmart at this point and 45 minutes of that has been me in this Subway. I throw out my trash, pack up my things, and head to the exit.

It is now pouring down rain.

Curse you, The Weather Channel! I shake my fist at the sky. Curse you for lying to me! I trusted you! My tears rival the rain.

I am now faced with walking home in the pouring down rain, thus missing out on my spaghetti, or remaining in the Walmart Subway for even more time, despite my health bar being rapidly drained by proximity to the megacorporation's holy temple. I check the The Weather Channel app to see what they say, knowing they are untrustworthy, and see that it's supposed to rain for the next few hours.

Fuck it. I'm going to go buy a rain poncho to protect my flour and just sacrifice my shoes to the puddle gods since the sidewalks here range from "flat" to "expert mountain climbers only" and I know my feet will be soaked within five seconds of leaving the building. First, though, I want to use the toilet, but the one at the front is being cleaned, so I head to the back. Granted, I had to go there anyway since I figured the sporting goods area is the most likely to have a rain poncho.

I cannot find the rain poncho. I've been in this Walmart for over an hour and a half at this point.

I go back to the front in the off chance the seasonal picnic aisles might have one, cringe at the bountiful supply of American Patriotic Equipment, and eventually give up and ask the greeter lady where I can find a rain poncho. Aisle L24, aka one of the camping aisles in the back of the store. I've already searched there but apparently cannot read, because I find them this time, begrudgingly grab the blue since they don't make pink in the adult size, and return, once more, to the front of the store, where I legally purchase the poncho.

In the ten minutes it took me to decide to find the rain poncho and buy it, it's stopped raining and the sun is shining because of course it is.

#anecdotes by peachdoxie #at least i got my spaghetti #now i only have two miles to walk back to my apartment #where i will promptly collapse on the couch

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marshallpupfan · 3 years ago

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It's been a bit, but I recently added some new items to my Marshall merchandise collection!

First off, I managed to find the last two stampers of Marshall! My local stores didn't get any more in, but fortunately my folks ended up going to this town about an hour away, and their Meijer had exactly what I was looking for. The trip was certainly worth it for me!

And here's all three! To think, there are twenty-four of these in-total, so it's a good thing I'm just collecting some of the one pup! 😅

And the last item, which is... a box?

Ah, but of course, it's what's inside that's important.

So... what it is?

Well, it's something I've been trying to find for quite a few years!

Yes, a rare Marshall item!

It's that 2016 Marshall Christmas ornament! 🤩

For any new followers, or for those that might not remember, I've been looking for this ornament for YEARS. In fact, I even made a post where I talked about it and some other rare Marshall items I hope to find someday.

I first found out about it on a Sears website, but they ran out of stock a long time ago. I tried my best to track one down, but I couldn't find one anywhere... not even any additional pictures of it! My only evidence it existed was on that Sears website. For a while, I was starting to wonder if I'd ever get one...

Lo and behold, one finally appeared on Ebay a few days ago (late at night, no less). As soon as I seen it, I was quite shocked... in fact, I'm pretty sure my eyes grew about two or three times their original size! The item I've been trying to find for years, and it's not broken or anything?! Needless to say, I was very quick to purchase it!

I'm being serious when I say I never expected to ever own this particular item. Being able to hold it in my hands and finally add it to my Marshall collection... it just puts a big smile on my face. 🙂

Well, that's all for now!

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tracynotabi · 4 years ago

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Riptide Day 0-1

So I wasn’t going to record my time in Ohio, just because I forgot to take pictures and we weren’t really mobile, but looking back, there were just too many memories to forget and I just really wanted to share with everyone how much fun this community is, despite the fact that we were canceled.

Most people will be referred to by their names, but I’ll introduce them with their tags first. If you see this and would like your name removed/changed, please let me know.

Also, some of this is not a perfect play-by-play because I am writing purely from memory.

Also, please note, there is degeneracy.

Thursday; September 9, 2021

Starting off the day, Kevin (The Doctor) and I had basically no sleep. We woke up at 7am PDT (read: 6:30am but too lazy to get out of bed) after getting to be around 4-5am mainly because Kevin wanted to hang out with his friends in Discord before he leaves them for the whole weekend. Me? I was just procrastinating on packing.

Joey (Big Large) texts in our group chat that we never got rid of from Emerald City that they’ll be at my place in 10 minutes with Ivan (Ivayne), because they were driving up north from Elk Grove, which is about 20 minutes south of where we live.

The plan was to drive to Robert (PotatoesAreYum)’s place and then make the two hour drive to San Jose, where we would catch our 1:45pm flight.

Why did we do this? Because our tickets were canceled for Blacklisted 6 and we couldn’t get refunds so we only had credits to work from, but apparently, Sacramento Airport did not have available flights to Ohio that were by Alaskan Airlines.

We took off, leaving Sacramento and heading to Davis. Part way through, we get a text from Robert asking how far out we were, because he had to poop, but we were 11 minutes out.

Robert, the descriptive man he is, describes that his poop was ready to crown, so he was good. I thanked him for the visual, because goddamn, I needed another one after getting a Snapchat from Joey the night before of his ass hanging out in jorts.

Robert: At least I didn’t sent a picture like Joey. But if you want a picture, I could send you one. Me: I would cancel your flight.

We end up driving south to Kevin’s brother’s house, where we tried to find a Jack in the Box that was on Google Maps. We spent about five minutes looking for it before ultimately giving up and going to a Hawaiian BBQ/Donut shop. We were just as confounded as you are probably right now. Food was OK.

Kevin’s brother insisted the Jack in the Box was there but for the life of us, we could not find it. He took us to the airport and off we went to Chicago. Yes, they played Smash at the airport, because this is what Smash players do.

They also played on the flight. Sidenote: there was this very loud cat in the aisle across from me that was meowing like crazy.

Flight from Chicago to Cleveland sucked. It was hot and cramped and they took our baggage away.

We land in Cleveland at about 11pm? Parker (Boringman [Sip Mastah]) was waiting for us at our gate because he had landed an hour before us.

We go down to Ground Transportation to reach our shuttle when I read the little red tag one of the flight attendants gave me. It said that our baggage would be given to us at the end of the flight.

... Well, we had just passed through security and going down the escalator at that point.

Well, fuck.

We run into Washington at baggage claim and I’m panicking because I have no idea if our luggage is going to pop out at baggage claim. Joey, Kevin, and I go up the escalator - the WRONG escalator and we go up a flight too much. We go back down and the airport’s just empty.

Makes sense, it’s 11pm EDT and there’s not a single worker in sight.

Robert texts us saying our luggage popped out and I hate life because the wording on the ticket, I swear, implied it wasn’t going to come out of baggage claim.

We go back down, grab our luggage, say bye to Washington, and head on our to the shuttle wait area.

There, we run into Luke (Yung Quaff) and Will (Twisty) from Massachusetts. Apparently, they had been waiting for the shuttle for over an hour and it was about 11:30pm at this point in time and we’re so tired because we’ve been travelling the whole day and there were people waiting for us to goon with.

We get to the shuttle and it’s an hour to the resort. Crying inside.

We check in and our room is on the other side of the resort from Guttey and Spencer (Mr. Watch and Learn)’s room even though they provided our confirmation number when they got their hotel room. What the hell.

Seeing everyone in that room was so amazing. I can’t remember everyone there exactly, because let me tell you, that room at one point probably had more people than it should have and we most definitely violated some kind of fire hazard.

Friday; September 10, 2021

Twisty ended up staying the night in our room because we had a two bedroom, two bathroom suite with six people. Our suite had a king bed, two queen beds, and a queen pull-out from the couch. Joey and Robert - the two largest people - stayed in the king bed. Kevin and I shared a queen. Ivan had a queen. Parker had a queen. Though I believe the first night, Parker and Ivan shared the queen (?) and Twisty stayed on the pull out.

Twisty barrel-rolled the whole night.

The bed squeaked so much it was insane. I think it only really bothered me, but that was fine because the guys needed their rest more than I did.

Spencer, the god that he is, ended up driving from Long Island to Ohio, and he offered to take us to go get some groceries for his room and us at Meijer.

It seated five, but I don’t really count as a full human size-wise, so I sat at Kevin’s feet, who was sitting in the passenger seat, underneath the dashboard, while Guttey, John (Gluteus), and Luke sat in the back.

Shoutouts to Meijer. Had a ton of awesome stuff.

A bunch of wings and thighs that probably weighed as much as a chicken itself plus 2 Liter Coke for $8.

It was all a blur, but we ended up in the Chad Room at some point - the Presidential Suite, just as crews were starting.

We end up meeting Yuko, who had a very large speaker about the size of me curled up. He ended up making an entrance and there’s a video on Twitter where you can just hear Joe (Qtip) go, “I’m scared.”

Also ran into Zoey (Frost) again. :) Haven’t seen her since she left NorCal. We ended up just talking a bit, catching up, before I think Kevin needed me to go back to our room for a Wii.

I ended up walking entirely back to our room on the other side of the hotel - next to the convention center, getting out Wii, only to find out two things:

1. We didn’t have composite cables. 2. There was no other outlet.

We ended up getting kicked out after Qtip’s team won anyway.

Can’t remember anything else, other than the goon was too hard and too real but if you would like for me to include anything that happened while I was there, let me know! :)

#Riptide #Undertow #Project M #Super Smash Bros #Fuck Nintendo

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i-am-a-bad-influence-writes · 4 years ago

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The Dutchess’ Garden - Part 4

Series Masterlist - Chris Evans Masterlist - Full Masterlist

Pairing: Chris Evans x OC Emma Meijers (typical Dutch girl. Blonde, blue eyes.)

Warnings: Explicit language, fluff, not really smut but kinda.

Word count: 1902

‘Okay, so come around 6:30? We can eat dinner together?‘ ‘Sure.‘

‘What are we watching,‘ Emma asks while shoveling another piece of pizza into her mouth. Chris doesn’t want to think it’s adorable, but it’s adorable. ‘Dammit, can you eat normally,‘ he laughs. She sees her eyes peek up, ready to say what has to be said. ‘I know, I know, language.‘ ‘That’s what I thought,‘ she says sternly, but he can see her smile just a second later. How did she manage to get him under het thumb this fast? And why doesn’t he mind at all? ‘Back to movies,‘ Chris says, ‘do you have any suggestions?‘ ‘I dunno. What are you up for? We can watch something funny like Not another teen movie, or something touching like Gifted, or something like Red sea diving resort, or-‘ ‘Are you going to name every single film I’ve ever done?‘ She huffs. ‘I didn’t even get to the Marvel movies,‘ she whines, ‘but yes. And as someone who thoroughly enjoyed Knives out I need to know if you still have your knit sweater from that movie. Because you won’t after I leave tonight.‘ ‘I do not own that sweater and even if I did, I wouldn’t tell you,‘ he smiles. She rolls her eyes in fake annoyance. ‘I’ll just take another one to hold hostage,‘ she says and walks over to him, grabbing his shirt by the hem, ‘like this one.‘ ‘You wouldn’t dare,‘ he says with a grin twitching on his lips. She steps a little closer to him. They’re only inches away from each other and Emma wants to pull him down and kiss him so bad, but she won’t. ‘You sure about that?‘ ‘I am fairly certain you wouldn’t be able to, even if you tried,‘ he leans down a little as a joke to tower over her, hoping to intimidate her a little. What he forgot is that Emma is a firecracker. She’s not easily intimidated. In fact, she steps closer so her chest is against his and she has to lean back to face him as he leaned over her. ‘I thought we agreed that I’m stronger,‘ she tries to say it seriously, but bursts into laughter and the moment is gone. She walks back to her seat. Chris tries to laugh along, but he feels a bit strange. Did that just really happen? Did she just do that? He wanted to kiss her, but she made a joke out of the situation. The mood was good, but she manipulated it to her will. ‘I’ll show you strong,‘ he says menacingly. She watches him with wide eyes as he walks over to the couch, grabs a blanket, and walks over to her. ‘Oh no,‘ she breathes out and jumps off her chair, ready to start running from him but she’s too slow. He’s already captured her in the blanket. He picks her up and throws her on the couch. Then, he flops down onto her. ‘I’m stronger.‘ ‘No, you’re just heavy,‘ she whines, ‘get off meeee~.‘ ‘Never.‘ ‘Okay, fine, you’re stronger,‘ she finally admits. Chris gets off her and she pulls her arm from under the blanket to show her crossed fingers. ‘Oh you little-‘ Before he can grap her she jumps over the back of the couch, racing through the house with Chris hot on her heels. Laughter fills the room until the third lap around the couch. She picks up a cushion and hits him with it. Not hard, but hard enough to surprise him. ‘Shit, did I hurt you,‘ she asks worried when he doesn’t move after she’s hit him. She drops the pillow and walks over to Chris, reaching for his face to check if he’s alright. He plays along, pretending to be hurt, but when she’s close enough he scoops her up again and pins her down on the couch, leaning over her body and holding her hands above her head. ‘You lost.‘ ‘Asshole,‘ she laughs. ‘Language,‘ he warns. ‘Dickhead,‘ she smirks. Chris puts both of her hands in one of his and starts ticking her, holding her down with his body. Her aggressive laughter and pleas fills the room. Dodger starts barking and runs over, pushing Chris’ leg. ‘Yeah, get him Dodger,‘ Emma tries to yell, but the dog doesn’t understand it through her laughing. Finally, Chris stops and Emma’s face falls into an angry frown. She crosses her arms, but he knows she’s just playing. ‘Okay, I’m sorry. You can pick the movie.‘

Chris has to admit he didn’t expect her to pick a movie that he didn’t star him. He was fully convinced she’d choose one that he played in to tease him back, but she didn’t. Instead she put on Coco and curled up against him. It was nothing like he expected. When the night got colder, she had coyly asked him if she could borrow a sweater anyway and Chris had said yes without thinking twice. Even after she told him he’d never get it back. He wrapped her arms around her to keep her warm and kissed the top of her head mindlessly when he heard her sniffles near the end of the movie. And suddenly the end of the night was there. Chris let her out after she insisted she could walk herself home. He didn’t want to let her walk alone, but knew he’d only strain their relationship if he forced himself on her. He finds himself back on the couch with Dodger’s head on his lap, trying to explain his feelings to the animal even though it won’t understand a word he’s staying. He looks nothing less than confused. Just a few minutes later, the doorbell rings. Dodger runs over to the door and starts wagging his tail like crazy. For a second, Chris wants to ignore it but Dodger doesn’t look that excited for just anyone. He peels himself off the couch and walks over to open the door. Without really paying attention, he pulls open the door to see a very sleepy Emma with her arms wrapped around herself, holding the sweater towards Chris. ‘I forgot to actually give it back,‘ she laughs, ‘and if I don’t do it now, I’ll probably forget.‘ ‘Please put it back on, you look like you’re freezing,‘ he begs her, pushing the sweater back to her. ‘I don’t want to.‘ ‘Listen, you were bugging me about the Knives out sweater earlier. This one looks like it, just keep it,‘ he tells her, not understanding why she has to be so stubborn about a damn sweater. ‘But if I keep it, it won’t smell like you anymore.‘ Her eyes widen when she realizes what she just said. ‘Oh no,‘ she whispers. Chris takes a step closer to her, taking his sweater from her and wrapping it around her shoulders. ‘You like the way I smell?‘ His lips play an amused smile as he watches Emma go into full panic mode. She takes a step away from him. ‘Ehm, I gotta go. I have a lot to do tomorrow. By the way, I won’t make it to our run tomo-‘ Chris grabs her arm, pulls her back in and gently presses his lips on hers. The kiss isn’t wild or deep, but just their lips together feels like electricity running through. Their lips part and Emma’s eyes go wide again. A blush is pulling up on her cheeks as Chris admires her with a small smile. ‘I like the way you smell too,‘ he admits. ‘I’m sorry, I have to get my head straight,‘ Emma tells him, handing him his sweater and almost running away, leaving Chris feeling confused. Did he read her feelings wrong? Was it all purely platonic?

It has almost been a week. A week since the kiss, a week since Emma disappeared and The Dutchess closed. Robert called Chris for to meet somewhere because he knows it has something to do with him. It has to. Those two were basically eye fucking each other the first time they met. They ended up in Chris’ garden to keep it private. ‘Why do I get the feeling all of this has something to do with you?‘ Robert stares Chris down, not a bit of niceness in his voice. He sounds nasty, like he’ll do something to Chris and he will. If he hurt her, that is. Emma is like family to him and he’ll treat her as such. If Chris took advantage of her, he’ll make it right. ‘I didn’t do anything,‘ Chris argues, ‘I don’t know what’s going on.‘ The two stare at each other for what feels like forever. Then Chris’ phone goes off. ‘Yes?‘ “Hey Chris, it’s Tom. Listen, I just met up with Emma and she asked if you and Robert were coming to the party Monday since she hadn’t heard from either of you.“ ‘You met up with Emma? Where is she?‘ “Well, she just took a plane back to the Netherlands. She’s been visiting family in Europe.“ Chris looks up at Robert. ‘Visiting family in Europe you say? Listen, I’m here with Robert. I’ll put you on speaker.‘ “Hi mister Downey. Emma said that you’d know about the party. She said it’s an annual thing and she felt sad that she hadn’t heard anything from either of you. She thought you would’ve seen the post by now.“ ‘The post,‘ Robert asks. “Yeah, the Instagram post on the private page of The Dutchess.“ Robert pulls out his phone and goes to the page. This is the first time Chris hears anything about a page. ‘What’s this page you’re on about?‘ ‘Don’t bother asking him,‘ Robert snaps, ‘it’s a private Instagram page that keeps members of The Dutchess updated. A better question is how you got into that page Tom.‘ “Oh, I’m a member of The Queen’s Garden. It’s the British version in England. They’re all owned by the same family.“ ‘Well that’s new,‘ Robert mumbles and shows Chris his phone, ‘let Emma know we’ll call her to confirm we’re going.‘ “I can’t tell her. She already left. I think you’re better off just calling The Dutchess or calling her dad. She told me you have his number.“ ‘Okay, thanks Tom.‘ “No problem. Have fun at the party.“ Chris stares Robert down, waiting for an apology he’s never going to get. ‘I forgot about that,‘ Robert admits, which is as much as an apology as Chris is going to get. ‘But there is something going on between you two. I’m certain of it. You wouldn’t be the first one to fall for her.‘ ‘What do you mean?‘ ‘She’s charming and beautiful. There has been more than one occasion where her father blacklisted a member because he was making moves on Emma.‘ ‘I-I’m sorry?‘ Robert sighs. ‘To name a few, Tom Cruise, Channing Tatum, Hernry Cavill got close to being blacklisted,‘ Robert sums up. ‘You’re forgetting about Hiddleston,‘ a voice calls. The two of them turn around to see Emma walking towards them, Dodger already circling her feet. ‘Emma, you’re back,‘ Robert says quite unbothered. ‘Hi, welcome back,‘ Chris says, opening his arms for a hug which she happily walks into. She presses a kiss to Robert’s cheek and sits down with the two. ‘As I said, you’re forgetting about that time with Tom Hiddleston,‘ she says, ‘my father almost blacklisted him because our way of friendship is flirting. He has no interest in me whatsoever. I’m not his type.‘ She says the last thing while looking at Chris. ‘He prefers my niece.‘ ‘I thought you’d be home Monday,‘ Robert says. She looks at him with a smile. ‘I was supposed to be home Monday, but I realized I left someone hanging at home,‘ she explains, ‘so Chris, can I take you out sometime? Preferably tonight at seven?‘

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