#even with guidelines it still looks wonky half the

[beardedhandstoadshark]

Pro tip: Can’t keep one of your char‘s to look consistent? Make them a shapeshifter! That way it’s not you hiding a lack of developed skill, but an important and thought-out detail for their character building - bonus points if you getting better at consistency reflects in them getting better at shapeshifting!

[elliotoille]

Do you have any advice for understanding hands better? I’ve been practicing them for years but feel like compared to other aspects of anatomy it’s the one thing I haven’t seen much improvement in. I draw both from life and images and draw nearly everyday but nothing I’m doing seems to help

I personally get by mostly from remembering poses that I’ve already practiced a ton, like I figure out how to draw it once and am able to file that away in my brain and use it again later, and tweak bits of the pose or the level of simplification to suit what I’m drawing. 

I’ve paid special attention to drawing hands for like.... most of my life so I have a LOT of poses I’m easy comfy with now, but when I need to figure out something complicated or new, I can usually work it out by breaking a hand down into shapes, remembering a few key points/”rules” from what I’ve learned about hands in order to help me break it down in a way that makes sense. And if that’s not enough either, then I take photo refs. 

^^^ here is a pose I use a ton. I have a quick way of drawing it from various angles. the first time I had to draw a pose like this, I had to think and figure it out, but in drawing it a bunch of times and having to use various angles like this, I’ve eventually come up with a quick, reliable way to draw it from a few of the most common angles that fits the style I like to draw in. I’m blessed with a good memory for observations, so when I see a beautifully posed hand, I can usually really quickly analyze what I like about that pose and why, and that helps me absorb it so I can recreate my saved impression later. But I know not everyone thinks the same way. it might benefit you to quickly scribble down a study in a sketchbook when you see a pose you find beautiful and want to learn from for later.

^^^ here are some poses I had to stop and spend time figuring out, calling up the “rules” for how hands are built to kind of logic-out how they should look from angles I’m less familiar with. results can be mixed, but... if I end up with something expressive that fits the style of the rest of the drawing, I’m usually really forgiving of fudged anatomy or slightly wonky proportions. as long as the thumb is on the right side and there aren’t too many fingers, that’s a great start lol.

^^^ and here are ones I had to take reference-selfies for. I try to use this as a last resort because 1) it’s a lot of trouble 2) interrupts my drawing and 3) if I’m not careful I stick too close to the reference, and the drawing ends up with the hand looking referenced and the rest of the pose not, which is jarring to me. not to mention I have tiny manlet wrists that without fail, look horrific and emaciated in photos, and the lens distortion makes my fingers look scary too... ugh, photo reference has definite flaws. I actually don’t like the look of drawings for which I can Really Tell the artist drew from photo reference, because most often that means they’re taking the ref too much at face value and incorporating ugly lens distortions into their drawing. so I have to think extra hard not only about interpreting the ref, but also might have to make multiple passes just to get the hand to look normal, AND match the style of the rest of the drawing.

Anyway, here are some of the ““rules””” I mentioned earlier that I fall back on to help me figure out more complicated poses:

1. probably seen this before, but basic proportions. the palm is usually half the total height of the hand. obviously you can mess with this purposefully. 

2. I think of joints as like, ball joints or hinges. I find that easier than trying to remember bones & muscles. here’s a drawing of the wrist as a hinge. note that when you’re thinking of it this way, it’s a shortcut, but a shortcut is only good if you use it with precision. notice the pin for the wrist hinge is not just halfway, it’s closer to the top of the hand. being precise about that is what allows this shortcut to work. the heel of the palm juts out, while the top of the hand transitions into the wrist quite smoothly.

3. simplified planes. planes are important yo. in super simple terms: top is flat, bottom is round. this works on the fingers too, actually. the tops are bony and tendony, and the bottom is where the fat is, so it’s rounder and soft

thinking of the hand as abstract shapes REALLY helps simplify the task of drawing hands, and is just as helpful even if you are drawing from reference. I can say “the palm is a box” and obviously the palm is not really as simple as a box, but if I think of the palm, wrist, and each finger joint as various shapes of box, then all of a sudden, psychologically, my task is SO much easier. I’m not drawing a Hand, which is hard, I’m drawing boxes, which is easy.

4. that prominent knob some people have on their wrist? that’s on the pinky side.

1. the knuckles aren’t really a flat row on top. the hand is like a cup right, so your palm can hold water and things. so we can think of the hand as a box to make figuring out the pose easier, but when it comes down to it, you’ll want to make it more of a curve. this curve is why you can see multiple fingers in a side view

2. when curled up, the fingers nestle together. the fingernails also turn slightly toward the center. even if I’m simplifying the hands significantly, I usually still draw the fingernails because they are SO useful for communicating the pose of the hand effectively.

3. lots of people suggest to think of the hand as a mitten, grouping the pinky/ring/middle fingers and singling out the index finger. this works great, the index finger is more independent from the other three. on the flip side, those three are really stuck together; if you’re drawing the pinky curled up all the way, then you better not draw the ring finger sticking straight up, cause that would HURT. anyway, singling out the index finger leads to more interesting poses in my experience.

1. this is another illustration of top = flat and bottom = curved. this is a really easy way to organize your line quality. straight lines and sharper angles where there is bone, and soft gentle lines where there is muscle and fat. your drawing as a whole will read very clearly if you find some guidelines like that to stick to, as it means all your lines are intentional and thoughtful.

2. this one’s about overlaps. when forms overlap, it makes a crease, and when you draw that crease you’re communicating which form is in front of the other. in the second drawing I reversed all the creases, and it looks.... messed up. think about how pieces connect.

so when you’re trying to make up a pose without using specific reference, I think it’s good to think about the.... flow of energy through the pose. honestly, I know it’s really abstract, but if I have an ability to make interesting poses that communicate weight and movement, the things that make people say your character feels ALIVE, like they really EXIST in a space... it’s because I started to think of poses this way. imagining streams of energy bouncing through the body, flowing down the limbs and out through the fingers. this is why hands are so important to me, cause they’re where the kinetic energy of the pose ultimately ends up. I talk about it when drawing the torso and arms and legs, but an interesting drawing has a bounce back and forth between opposites: for every curve, an opposing straight line, alternating back and forth down the entire body. if you’re sensitive to the energy of the pose, then even very simple poses will be interesting to look at.

anyway, with regards to hands, I imagine the energy getting sort of cinched in as it passes through the wrist, and then emanating out through the fingertips. I hope my drawing at least SORT of communicates this imagery. it makes sense because that’s BASically how the bones in the hand are anyway. and then the right side of the image above is just demonstrating some highly simplified gestures. see how the fingers fan out and curl in, rarely parallel to eachother. when you’re figuring out the pose, using a line to stand in for the row of knuckles is super valuable.

aaand finally, here’s two hands where I intentionally neglected correct anatomy and proportion because I felt it worked better for the style of the whole drawing. Left side: since this is a really simple and cartoonish style, I was thinking back to kids’ and shoujo manga I have read where the style was very solid and distinctive, but definitely NOT overly concerned with correct anatomy, or even really drawing hands, uh, “well” at all. to me, that sort of approach has a Look that I like to invoke sometimes, since for years I felt like I learned a bunch of anatomy and proportion and drawing from life actually in detriment to the liveliness and appealness of my drawings. this hand is mushy and makes very little sense, but it turned out as intended. Right side: sometimes I like to pretend fingers only have 2 bones in them, cause i am a Queen and i do what i want

and there you go. I hope that helped, like, at all? Look at real hands and photos of hands and hands in motion, but also look at drawn hands as well. find what you like, and work towards expressing that yourself. and remember the hand is part of the whole drawing. not only in the art style like I’d been talking about, but because the angle and placement of the hand is reflected in the angles of the arm, which in turn reflects on the angles of the shoulder, which affects the whole torso, etc etc etc. and the techniques you can use to understand and draw the rest of the body, works on hands too. as you improve everything else, your hands will improve as well.

DISCLAIMER: I whipped up these diagrams quickly, they’re not meant to be good drawings or accurate refs, just diagrams to illustrate my thought process lol

[aellynera]

Mors Non Est (Nathan Bateman x Reader)

MORS NON EST (Nathan Bateman x Reader)

(so. um. this was inspired by a dream i had? because my brain does weird things at night and then sometimes i write them.)

Word Count: almost 4k oops

Summary: “Of course, you don’t die. Nobody dies. Death doesn’t exist. You only reach a new level of vision, a new realm of consciousness, a new unknown world.” — Henry Miller, author

Or, what my brain offers as alternate theory on why Nathan made AIs.

Warnings: Leaving this mortal coil (sort of), angsty musings, maybe a swear or two. Okay there’s definitely a swear or...several. (also a disclaimer that I finished this at like 3am and there was a bunch of stuff out of order but I think I got it all worked out now and proofread and all that, but apologies if anything is still wonky)

The rain fell steadily against the wall of glass that faced towards the forest. Sometimes it was soft, like the tickle of a feather, the softest caress of a kiss on your hair, the skim of fingertips against the velvet red petals of a flower. Other times it was harsh, a violently crashing wave on the rocky shore, electricity ripping the sky asunder, an unbridled fierceness like a wild animal frightened and possessed.

It changed without warning.

Soft, hard. Quiet, loud. Calm, violent. Back and forth and back again.

How long had it been raining?

He turned as he heard your footsteps fall on the wooden patio planks behind him. You watched in slight fascination as he unwrapped his hands, used the cloth to dry them, and stuck a hand out to you, your attention half on him and half on the pure beauty of the surrounding scenery.

“You must be the new assistant,” he said, sounding friendly enough although his smile stayed a bit reserved.

He wasn’t expecting you to just show up on his deck. Yes, he was expecting you to be dropped off by the helicopter, that had all been arranged, but for some reason he had...he realized he wasn’t even sure what he was expecting. But you had clearly followed the pilot’s (and soon after, the house’s - that the house told you what to do amused him in the strangest way) instructions and here you were.

He knew his new assistant was more than capable (he had seen your resume, reviewed your coding and debugging history, had meticulously poured over every single little detail of work you had done for his company for the past three years not that he was obsessive about it or anything) but he wasn’t prepared for the person that now stood before him, an intriguing combination of impressed, unsure, interested, and underwhelmed.

You were fucking beautiful.

You nodded. “That’s what they tell me,” you replied, shaking his hand and supplying your name, even though you knew he already knew it. You knew enough about Nathan Bateman to know he knew everything about you before you even heard the head of HR back in the corporate office announce that you got the job.

You later admitted you didn’t know what to think about him either, and you hadn’t really expected anything, since you didn’t know much about him. He was a genius, everyone knew that, and he lived all the way out here by himself. And...that was about it. That’s what you knew.

And you thought he was...kinda hot.

And also an asshole, you liked to point out as the days went on. Nathan didn’t really mind.

*

It was an odd feeling, this feeling of dissonance and uncertainty.

There was so much that needed to be done. There was so much that he didn’t feel like doing.

He came to the door and paused. He spent most of his waking hours in this room - and to be honest, most of his hours were waking at this point, he rarely slept anyway and for as long as he could remember now he had barely slept, except when all that whiskey and vodka kicked in - and yet there was always a moment, the briefest flash of time, where forward momentum paused and he wondered if non-linear time was reality and he would find something different when he opened the door.

It wasn’t, and he never did.

He wandered into the lab and over to the table at the farthest end. Components were spread out before him and he idly reached over to the single chip laying in the center of the mess. It was the last piece of this particular puzzle, the last bit that had to be installed and configured and then…

Then suddenly it became too quiet and too loud all at once. Thoughts were screaming through his brain and he just wanted it to be quiet for a moment.

Quiet so he could go over his calculations in his head. Quiet so he could double check his math. Quiet so he could concentrate on his theories and his expected outcomes. Quiet so he could revel, just for a moment, in his monumental achievement.

There was a sweater hanging on the back of the door. He’d forgotten it was there, even though he had just seen it mere hours before. No, not forgotten, he realized. Blocked. He didn’t forget, he just purposely didn’t remember.

The silent noise became a full-blown cacophony.

Was it still raining?

*

“So how exactly are you going to solve it?” you asked one afternoon, idly twirling your pen in your hand.

“How would you do it?” he bounced back.

You sighed. His behavior was so typical. The man was a certifiable genius but that was usually the problem and not the solution. It was never straightforward. “The AI. How are you going to solve the issue of making it able to have an actual conversation with you?”

“How would you do it?” he asked again.

Shrugging your shoulders, you kept twirling the pen. “I dunno. I guess you’d have to have some way to...maybe cross-reference a database of expressions and emotions and an actual dictionary.”

Nathan paused and considered you, deep in his own forest of thought. He wheeled his chair over to his computer desk and started rapidly tapping keys. “How do you mean?”

“I don’t know,” you huffed. “Like...like some kind of mass well of every available, possible interaction. Honestly I would try to figure out the mechanics of everything else first, like motion and movement, You know, walking and running and sitting and standing.”

“Hmmm.”

“But since there are literally infinite combinations, I don’t even know how you would go about even attempting that kind of data pool.”

 “I did actually have an idea about that,” he muttered. Nathan didn’t even turn from his multiple computer monitors and his fingers never stopped clacking away at his keyboard. “But you’re not going to like it.”

This time you groaned instead of sighing. He knew you could feel it coming before he asked - he always told you that you weren’t going to like it before he asked you to do something incredibly stupid that in any other circumstance would get you arrested and you’d never see daylight again.

But this was Nathan Bateman, and of course he was going to ask anyway. And of course you would say yes. You always said yes, it was one of the things he enjoyed most about your company, and even when you did say no, it gave way to a lively debate and a genuine argument over facts and merits, downsides and advantages, and it was fucking amazing.

It had been that way from the start, grown steadily over the weeks and months, and neither of you could really complain. Nathan quickly found that you could keep up with his train of thought even when the track switched abruptly and it was so engaging. Captivating. Enticing.

But this man. This amazingly intelligent (if almost insufferably arrogant) man was going to be the death of you. You told him that at least once a day. He took it as a personal challenge to give you a reason to keep living.

“What did you have in mind?” You doubted you wanted to know.

“What if…” he replied, clicking away, not looking up from the screen as he spoke, “we used the video and audio coding in Bluebook, and patched it through all the cell phone carriers, and rerouted all the satellite signals back here into the lab.”

Before you knew what was happening, your pen flew across the room and connected with his shoulder with a small *thwap*.

“What?” he finally looked up, mock annoyance in his voice.

“Are you absolutely fucking insane, or is this just an extra special occasion?”

*

He left the lab with no real idea of where he was going.

Okay, that was a lie. It was his house. He knew his way around and he knew where he needed to be next. There was an actual agenda but his focus was off.

He walked past the living room and noticed the chess set was still set out on the coffee table. The pieces were still fairly evenly matched, his green dragons maybe just slightly at a disadvantage to your purple ones (because, as you had mentioned at one point, why have a standard chess set when you could have a fun one? And Nathan knew you were anything but standard.)

He knew it was his turn and contemplated the board for a few minutes. No matter how he strategized it, how he worked it out, how he tried to plan it, you had forced him into a checkmate. Again. For at least the sixth time in a row, and probably at least the eight-seventh time out of the last hundredth you had played. He chuckled, softly, briefly. He could do anything with technology and science, but he rarely could beat you at a centuries-old board game.

He made his final move for this round, sacrificing his king to your queen. 

He grabbed the notepad setting next to the chess board, and your pen that lay nearby on the table. He scrawled a quick note to you - checkmate - and placed it on your side of the board, next to your fairly gained draconian horde, even though he was certain you were never going to read it.

He went to the kitchen and poured himself a drink.

He stared out the window wall, out past the deck, to the running river and the dense groves of trees, off into the distance towards the waterfall.

He should be heading to the room. He should be taking care of the final chip install and making sure everything was online. Instead he simply stood in the kitchen and stared out into the rain.

It occurred to him that the agenda was more of a guideline and his knowledge of his surroundings was merely functional.

*

Nathan briefly considered that standing at the doorway to your bedroom was the last place he should be, but then decided he didn’t care. But that wasn’t true either.

He could just walk in, it wouldn’t be the first time - once you had been wearing only a towel, having just gotten out of the shower and that hadn’t been awkward at all - but that small bit of his conscience that he usually tried to ignore, told him to be polite. 

He knocked.

“What do you want, Nathan?” You sounded muffled, like you had your face partly covered by a pillow. You were probably in bed. He shouldn’t be bothering you. 

He had to bother you, just this once. “Can I come in?”

He could picture your face on the other side, eyes rolling and the sigh as it left your lips, and even though he heard the door hiss quietly as the latch released, his feet suddenly stuck to floor outside your door and his body made no further move.

“I did open the door, so if you’re going to, do it before I change my mind,” you called after a few minutes.

Nathan got his feet to cooperate and entered your room. You were in bed, face half-behind a pillow, your visible eye glaring at him. He stopped at the edge of your bed. His brain started calculating risk factors for the current situation, gains, deficits, advantages - anything it could think of, there were always factors involved, no matter what the situation was, it was just that some factors were more complicated than others. Some required more delicate, cautious manipulation to solve the equation and…

“Are you just going to stand there all night and look at me? Because I swear I really will kick you out, and then change all your passcodes.”

Of course, you teased him later about how much fun it would have been to watch him try to get back in. You swore you were going to do it one day, just for the hell of it. He didn’t mind.

“Do you regret what happened after dinner?” he finally asked.

Your glare softened and you moved the pillow away from your face. Dinner was fine. The company was pleasant as usual, the wine was frequent and flowing. The two of you had started a very animated debate about gender and sexuality as it pertained to artificial intelligence and if any of it were a necessary component or if it was just something you would prefer (he would later tell you how wonderful the expression on your face was when he told you he would be ready to start building a prototype in the next few weeks) and then.

“I don’t regret it at all. Do you?” you arched an eyebrow at him.

Nathan blew a long breath out from his nose. Did he regret kissing you? Nope. Not in the slightest. Did he regret that you might regret it (he was slightly relieved that you said you didn’t) and that nothing would come of it? Yes. And he couldn’t calculate the actual result, just potential outcomes with no concrete denouement, and that made him extremely uncomfortable. He didn’t want this to be an experiment. He wanted an absolute, not a thicket of random. Not in this case.

“No.” He still didn’t move.

“Frankly we should have done it months ago.”

He shook his head and turned just the slightest bit before your reply registered and he processed it. “Wait. You...what?”

You exhaled and sighed as you rolled over, facing away from him and trying to get comfortable in the bed again. “You know, Nathan Bateman, for being the smartest man in the universe, sometimes you are a complete idiot.”

“I’m not going to argue that. This time, anyway.”

“Thank you, because it’s nearly three in morning,” you replied. He could hear the smile in your voice. “Can we talk about this in the morning? Like, later in the morning. I’ll see you for breakfast.”

He nodded and really did turn to leave this time. He was still trying to process. “Okay. Yeah, sure. I, uh...I’ll see you then.”

“Good night, Nathan.”

*

The rain had finally stopped.

He looked out over the landscape, now reflecting and refracting tiny bursts of sunlight in the lingering blanket of droplets.

Trees crowded both sides of the rushing river, leading towards the top of the waterfall. There was a small clearing there, one that almost wouldn’t be found if someone wasn’t looking for it. It was one of your favorite spots.

Nathan found you there fairly often, after he had shown you where it was. If the weather was cooperating, and you weren’t in the house, then nine times out of ten, that’s where Nathan would find you. Sometimes you were reading a book, sometimes you were just stretched out in the grass, looking up at the tips of the timbers as they reached to the sky.

Sometimes he would join you. Those were times that deep conversations would happen, about the projects back at the house and technology and your odd fascination with disco music, which Nathan truly did not understand but tried to humor.

Sometimes he would just smile and let you have your peace. Those were times he would go back to the house and quietly await your return.

He knew that’s where he would find you now.

*

“I’m back from Anchorage,” you called as you came in the front door.

Nathan was in the kitchen and poked his head around the doorway. “Hey. Perfect timing,” he said, brushing his hands off on his pants and flipping a dish towel over his shoulder. “Dinner is almost ready.”

A tired sign escaped your lips as you flopped down on the couch, taking one of the throw pillows and covering your chest and half your face with it. “Thanks. Not hungry.”

“How was the trip?”

You snorted softly. “Wet. Raining. Absolutely miserable.”

It wasn’t what you said that made Nathan stop. It was the way you said it. Your voice sounded so tired, so empty. It didn’t really sound like you, not the voice he’d come to expect to hear every day. It was not the voice that engaged him in conversation, that drew him into theories and concepts and philosophies. It was not the voice that argued about codes and programs and why that would not work no matter how much he insisted it would (to be fair, you were usually right, but he wasn’t going down without a good fight, and neither of you would have it any other way.) The voice that was leaving your body through your mouth wasn’t you.

It sounded hollow.

He leaned against the doorway. The air in the room suddenly felt heavier and he couldn’t quite get his feet to move forward to the couch where you sat. “What did they say?”

Nathan noted that you didn’t look at him. You looked everywhere but him. Like you were trying to keep everything from falling to pieces, maybe? You were definitely not acting yourself either. Suddenly he wanted to take himself outside and kick his own ass. He should have gone with you. You’d been talking about it, for weeks now, he realized.

How tired you were. How you were never really hungry. How things felt like they were getting harder when they shouldn’t have been. How you couldn’t go quite as far on the hikes you loved taking so much, together.

He should have gone with you.

Your face did not move from its half-protected shield behind that tasteful throw pillow.

He doesn’t register most of what you said. He remembers the words “bad” and “already done everything” and “months, maybe”. Maybe. No definite conclusion.

He finally managed to take a few steps towards you.

His brain was kicking into overdrive but not a single one of that rush of thoughts would make an appearance on his tongue. There had to be another answer. Another answer that wasn’t the one he could already see in your eyes.

Your eyes. His favorite feature (at least from the neck up), the ones that showed how much life you had, your spark, your fire.

And he realized the hollowness of your voice had traveled up into those beautiful eyes.

Words stopped making sense in an instant. Everything around him got fuzzy, jagged at the edges, but also intensely focused at the same time.

He finally crossed the room and sat down carefully, warily, on the couch.

Neither of you said another word. His arms slipped around you and you curled into his chest, pulling your knees up to your own. No tears from either of you. No sounds. No words.

He didn’t know how long you stayed on that couch.

The next thing you knew you were in bed, Nathan’s arms still wrapped around you. He must have carried you to the bedroom at some point. You felt the coolness of the sheets contrast with the warmth of his body; you mustn’t have been out for long. You were about to drift off again when Nathan finally broke the silence.

“We’ll figure out a way.”

A sigh escaped your lips, half drenched in sleep.

*

It was the last place he wanted to be. It was the only place he wanted to go.

He slipped into a hoodie and pulled on a pair of shoes and stepped out onto the deck. The air was still somewhat saturated, humid, but the rain was holding off for now. It was warm but he wasn’t, so the hoodie stayed on.

His feet took him down the deck stairs and onto the path paralleling the river. He followed it slowly, breathing in the summer air but not really seeing his surroundings. Like in his house, he knew where he was heading, and this was just the agenda.

At some point (minutes, hours, he really didn’t know how much time had passed) he came to that small clearing of trees.

And there you were.

Nathan took a jagged breath and sat down next to you. His pants were soaked in an instant, but he didn’t care. He was more annoyed that you were cold and wet (he briefly considered how funny you would find the double entendre, and probably tell him that you were definitely wet but he never made you feel cold) and chuckled again when he could hear your scoffing insistence that you were fine here in your special spot.

You weren’t fine. He knew this and wished desperately that you could tell him, tell him anything, say something.

He wasn’t fine. And he definitely did mind.

Nathan didn’t know what else to do, so he just started talking.

“So, uh...I know it’s been a while. I’ve just been really busy, trying to get the AI just right, and...I’m sorry I’ve been away. That’s not what I meant to happen. I’ve been working pretty much non-stop, I know you would be nagging me to get some sleep and eat better and all that shit. And...I wish you would. I would listen to you, for once.”

Silence and the far-off chirp of a bird were his only reply, so he continued.

“I know I shouldn’t be working so much, but I kinda have to. It’s the only way I feel close enough to…”

His throat was acutely, suddenly dry. He did his best to clear it. He was only marginally successful.

“So anyway, that idea I told you about, with all the cell phone data rerouting it here? It worked. Please don’t be mad at me, I know it wasn’t your favorite idea, but I’m pretty sure that’s what finally broke this open. Well, that and all the ideas we worked out together. I can’t thank you enough for what you did for me, and I know I never really did, and I probably never will…”

He had remembered to grab one thing before he left the house, stashing it in the pocket of the hoodie. He pulled it out now, a single red rose. Cliche, maybe, but they were your favorite flower.

Nathan placed it gently against the stone on the edge of the clearing. The stone with your name. It only had your first name, no dates. He could never bear to put any indicator of time on it; it was too final. Conclusive. Terminal.

He stood and started walking back. He never could stay here very long. It was absolutely ridiculous, but he usually had the feeling you would pop out from behind a tree and tease him about how impressive your joke was and he would never top it.

It wasn’t a joke, it wasn’t funny, and he wished he could prove you wrong.

But there was still something he might be able to prove. To make a few things right.

He stopped at the edge of the clearing.

“I have someone else coming to the house this week. He works for the company, he’s a coder...he looks like a good kid. I’m gonna use him to test this model. This really could be the breakthrough we’ve...I’ve...been looking for.”

Nathan turned his head back briefly, to say one last thing before he headed back to the house, before he had to get back to his work.

“I promise I’ll come back soon and tell you all about it.”

The rain started softly coming down again.

~end~

tag list: @anetteaneta​ @darksideofclarke​ @girlwiththemostcake​ @rosemarysbaby13​ @spider-starry​ @writefightandflightclub​ (tags are always open if you want in just give me a holler and say so)

[maljic]

i have been working in the grocery industry practically my entire life. for many companies, and in many many positions. i’ve seen hurricane panic buys, i have seen post hurricane apocalypses, i have closed stores, and i have opened stores. i have been to backroom recoveries, i have worked small stores and big stores. i have seen h1n1, and i have now seen covid19. and even tho this is something unprecedented, all together it’s really not. the difference here is that it’s been going on for three weeks now and there is no end in sight. the duration is what’s so new. 

so i’ve started making notes every day after i got home. just the overall experience, but also customer comments and new things being implemented. it’s a fascination change, and i wanted to write it down to maybe sometime in the future come back to this time and remember anew. 

i plan on keeping notes for the foreseeable future, to keep writing a diary of sorts, to see if this ever levels out or escalates even more, if things change drastically or not at all. and if the fucking toilet paper situation ever goes away. 

things started to change the first week of march. it was super subtle, i didn’t even notice it at first. it was just a steady increase in business. a solid 20% ahead in sales all across the board. and even tho the virus was already in the news it didn’t cotton on right from the start. or it did, maybe, but i wasn’t expecting it to escalate to such heights.

tuesday, 03.10.2020 9am - 5pm

people are making their own hand sanitizer by mixing rubbing alcohol and aloe vera. we’re out of both. lady is asking me by the sun tan section about the state of deliveries of aloe vera gel. we get to talking. i admit that i don’t understand the people’s need for hand sanitizer since the cdc and every doctor ever recommends hand washing first and foremost. Susan comes out and says, ‘well the only thing that really can safe us from all this is...” and i retort with, “washing your hands, right?” but Susan claps back with, “the lord jesus christ.” and i had to excuse myself real quick and leave her ass on the aisle, because why are you fucking here then trying to potion together your own hand sanitizer, Severus, if all you need is god? 

a grown woman that’s working at the register is. coughing. non. stop. co workers comment on it to each other and to me, and i wonder if anyone has taken her aside to explain the current state of world events to her, and maybe asking her to cover her damn mouth. we’re all gonna die.

thursday, 03.12.2020 2pm - 10pm 11pm

parking is an absolute nightmare. i’m 10 mins late cause i can’t find a spot. welcome to hell. i ask my boss what the sales were yesterday and she says we’re 40% ahead of the forecast. which is ridiculous. at this point it’s pretty much a blanket permission for over time. we do not have the capacity to continue to run at this pace. people get worn out, we’re bound to get sick, and the customers are fucking relentless. truck is big. Karen and her brother Chad look at the soap section and wanna know when we get more hand sanitizer in. 

this lady is looking at things in the cold and flu section and we get to talking about shit and she mentions something she’s read on facebook and whoops my filter went poofgone and i tell her that i hope facebook dies along with all this corona virus flu and have a good evening.

at the end of my shift after we’ve finished stocking and cleaning up, i stay longer because there’s still a fuck ton of people in the store but we only have two registers open. i check people out until 11 and then peace out. one dude dropped $650 on groceries.

friday, 03.13.2020 11am - 7pm

“where is the hand sanitizer?” Karen asks. i refrain from shouting at her to get outta my face. the store is absolutely packed. lines of lengths i haven’t ever witnessed. lines and lines of people with full bascarts of stuff. the end is nigh and we are here with a front row view of it. we have a small parking lot, and i have no idea where these people’s cars are? i didnt know we could fit that many people in the store. whats the fire marshall’s max capacity guidelines? someone should review those. meanwhile i’m trying to navigate around everybody and put things on shelves that don’t last very long.

the grocery truck arrives around 3 ish and paper products get thrown out first. usually, when the truck arrives it stays locked until the night crew shows up. we’re set up to always have a trailer at the store, so when the guy shows up he unhitches his trailer, and hitches up under another trailer which was the previous day’s grocery truck, which got emptied off groceries when the night crew stocks, and then got filled with stacks of empty pallets, paper bales, and other reusable thinks like plastic trays the meat comes in, or the eggs come in, or produce plastic trays, things like that. so now that we’re in the apocalypse of paper products, the day crew gets those pallets out on the sales floor asap. at this point we have reduced the quantities of things you’re allowed to take to 3. 3 packs of toilet paper, 3 packs of paper towels... also 3 of lysol wipes and 3 of hand sanitizers even tho we dont have any, calm down, Karen. paper products are gone within an hour. 

my company makes an absolute killing that day.

saturday, 03.14.2020 10ish to whenever. 

my boss said she was coming in (on her off day) so i said yo, mind if i sleep in a bit? i was scheduled 7am and if i don’t have to i don’t want to. she said ok. i rock up at 10:08. things stop showing up on deliveries. the diaper area is sad looking. people have started to buy us out of baby wipes. there’s a problem coming at us in about 2 months. you cant flush baby wipes but since the toilet paper situation is what it is, people will wipe their butts with wet wipes. have fun with that, dallas county utility department (or whoever messes with the water wastes). 

displays are dwindling. we are not getting product, so we are filling the shelves in the aisles with the stuff that’s on displays. it’s a bit wonky looking. there’s half an endcap with shampoo and then the rest of it is filled with hersheys. its upside down world. but we have to keep things full. with whatever. empty shelves are bad bad bad, but empty endcaps are a cardinal sin. 

people waste so much food when they’re shopping. now that the shelves are getting and staying empty, people will just put things everywhere when they decide against buying the items. bags of chips, six packs of beer, gatorade whatever. that’s not really waste. but we also see bags of salad, frozen items, meats. we are currently not in the position to walk the store every half hour and collect these things. these things are all now wasted and will get thrown out. not the chips, i’m talking about the temp controlled things. being cold to the touch is not enough. shit aint safe. 

monday, 03.16.2020 8am - 4 pm 6pm

truck is gigantic. never ever have i seen a truck that big. so everything that my boss was fantasizing about me doing gets thrown out the window when the truck hits the backdoor at 11 am. everybody who is scheduled for truck is given the option to come in early. and stay until it’s all stocked. or until you’re exhausted. i help with the pharmacy stuff because that’s the biggest part. i stay until 6pm. then i’m out. 

people would like to know where the hand sanitizer is, well, sugar, so. do. i. it’s the one item that has been out since the end of february, and people are absolutely gob smacked when you tell them it’s currently unavailable. i try to appease them with some hand soap, but, stupidly, people dont want to hear that. i’m thinking to myself that in about a week soap will also be unavailable, but to each their own. customers believe that we, the workers, know the exact day and time when lysol wipes will be stocked. but when you tell them that soap is getting scarce they look at you like you’re speaking a different language.

company wide, we are not allowed to order anything right now. which is huge. how it usually works is: our system knows at all times how many items we have in the store, as per bar code, and knows how much will fit on the shelves, how much we’re selling every day/hour, and then there’s the forecasting factor. so the system will order stuff based on sold quantities, automatically. all the time. if we need extra stuff for sales and/or displays and whatnot, we order extra. 

the computer system wouldnt know, for instance, that there was a tornado in oct that wiped out our electricity and that of most of our customers, so we changed orders to reflect that. no frozen things, lots more batteries, ice, coolers. 

a lot of things ride on added orders, which are now out

from here on in, everything is up to the system, and to the powers that be. if there’s soap in the warehouse, we will get allocated with every store in the area so that everyone gets equal amounts or close to. hoarding is, apparently, frowned upon at this level too. 

tuesday, 03.17.2020 2pm - 10pm

i have come to hate the soap aisle. used to always be my favorite. so long, soap aisle, we’ve had a good run. tonight i’m stocking the pharmacy area (cold and flu, pain meds, tummy stuff, those sort of things). truck is small. super small. i try helping customers as much as i can, but most of my end of the conversation is no, sorry, we dont have any. backstocks are dwindling. the backroom is emptying out. we rely on truck deliveries for things to do and products to be put out. “do you have any [insert product here] in the back?” is the most asked questions. “there’s nothing in the back.” is the most uttered sentence all day. 

people obviously do to not get what social distance means. every aisle is packed with shoppers. i’m wasting a lot of time trying to stay out of people’s paths, but people lingeeeerrrrr what the fuck. the mayor of dallas shut everything down to flatten the curve yet here all these fuckers are doing their god damn grocery shopping like it’s 3 months ago. get in, get stuff, get out. i try conjuring up some gas to clear the aisle, but the farts won’t come

go home, people. i wish i could.

somehow our store has become the hub in our area. we get trucks in the afternoon with produce and meat, and people from other stores around us show up in trucks and suvs to transport product between stores. i’ve seen so many people that i hadn’t seen in years because they’re coming by getting shit in the afternoon. 

we lost one of our baristas. she’s retired but works with us the maximal allotted hours per week the government allows you before they yank your money. she’s living in senior housing (cause its cheap) and they’ve completely locked down and she is unable to come to work. her boss funnels her groceries. and they face time a lot. she’s doing ok.

wednesday, 03.18.2020 10am - 6pm

parking lot semi full, too full for a wednesday. toilet paper situation is unchanged. but alas there’s no grocery truck scheduled tonight so this is not changing until tomorrow. i’m talking to three separate people desperate for some toilet roll (lol, i love how this pandemic makes me learn new terms, hi, united kingdom, i see you - toilet roll, i love it). anyways, i explain to all three the truck schedule and how to best strategize to get some butt wipes: truck is 6 days a week, wednesday being the no truck day. when the truck arrives, usually what happens is that the paper products get stocked immediately, to make room in the back room and to alleviate the situations. be in the store at around 3ish? 3:30ish, and hang out. i explain that i don’t want to encourage anybody to spend their afternoon in the store for obvi reasons, but when you gotta go you gotta go. alternately, hang out in your car, and when you see a truck pull behind the store around mid day, chances are in about 30 mins you shall have paper. people appreciate the info. 

i’m in the candy aisle trying to stock a case of twizzlers. we’re using shopping carts to stock, it’s way more flexible than lugging around huge stocking carts, especially now with the store being so crowded. this dude rocks up and asks me if i’m panic hoarding with all those boxes in my cart. he looks at me with a straight face and thinks he’s making a point. meanwhile i’m in full uniform and people around are starting to roll their eyes. i drop the box of twizzlers into my cart (its super heavy and dude is creating a scene). my box cutter comes out and i make a show of clicking the blade out while explaining to douche canoodle that i’m working here, excuse me, and cut into the tape of the box. moron. 

there’s a few people that i’ve seen every day this week. and they’re all advanced in their age. i get that the store is your second home cause you’re lonely, but right now is really not the time. go home. 

the question i hate the most is: when are you gonna get more soap in. the honest answer? no fucking clue, Karen. if i could predict the future i wouldn’t be working here. 

thursday, 03.19.2020 10am - 6pm

there was no grocery truck last night so shelves are still as empty as they were when i left last night. still, parking lot is semi full. we’ve seem to have gotten a decent produce truck, bananas everywhere. great. my boss’s plan for me is to: whatever truck is back there, and then easter. which means i walk the back room, collect anything and everything that belongs to our department, and get it on the shelves. there’s nothing back there except a chocolate delivery which arrived on the dairy truck. a huge amount, by normal standards. at least people are still enjoying some candy. 

by 3pm it’s made the rounds that one of the guys for our dept isn’t coming in: allergies. okay then. truck is not too big, i help out with that until it’s time to hit the time clock. 

times are tough, and i’m a good-natured person that can dish out jokes and emphasize with you and cumbaja we’re all in this together and all the other bullshit we’re telling ourselves to make us feel better. but when dudebro comes down the soap aisle and bemoans the state of the shelves (empty) and then goes into a rant about his two parents, immunocompromised, at home, out of soap, almost getting loud and making it seem like its my fault that we don’t have what you want, then no. i’m all out of fucks to give. meanwhile, people of the free world, have you forgotten that hand washing soap does not only come in little pump bottles that you can cutsify your sink with but also LOOK AT ALL THE BARSOAP, back in the days we used that to wash our hands. calm down and take some irish spring to your parents. 

grocery truck arrives. big time. in the good ole days of yester year we would get one trailer daily, most of the time not even full. we’ve been ramping it up to 2 most of the last two weeks. (and by we i mean we as a society, buying everything on the shelves and not being satisfied and always wanting more).  today it was three. one of which with nothing but water. the others with lots of toilet roll and paper towels. and the usual stuff of canned goods and the likes. nothing will last tho, nothing is forever. 

we have this one guy who works here who has, i believe, severe arthritis and is hygiene wise very challenged. he isn’t very mobile and does super light duty but he’s worked here a long time. i haven’t seen him in a few days. i wonder if he is just off, or if he said fuck it and stayed home. 

the grown ass woman at the register is still coughing. and not covering her mouth. asswipe. 

saturday 03.21.2020 7am - 3pm 6pm

“when do you expect more hand sanitizer in?” 

i have no idea what you’re talking about, hand sanitizer was never a thing. lemme ask you this: is it berenstein bears where you come from? 

people still want to shop brand loyal. i die inside a little bit every time someone turns their nose up at an alternative to their regular, “oh but we don’t use that brand.” dude didn’t you just say you needed vitamin c? was that a lie? here’s the damn vitamin c. it’s vitamin c, not, i don’t know, fucking coca cola. go home.

corporate finally came down and said we’re allowed to wear ppe now. like some of us haven’t since three weeks ago. i finally turned and went all ‘two by two hands of blue’ as well, and it’s really not as bothersome as i thought it would be.  

weekends are now slower than weekdays. i have no idea why that is. and i’m not really sure if these past weekends have been slow, or just normal, and the weekdays are just crazy. i have lost all points of reference. it’s still busy. but is it the same busy it’s always been on a saturday and now we just have more checkers? 

the company is desperately trying to hire more people. i don’t know if the new vigorous ad campaign is working yet? it’s a job, sure, especially in these times, but the starting pay is still barely above minimum wage so in any case people will collect unemployment which could still be more than they’d make working here i’m just saying. 

the only real perk right now is that whoever works for a grocery store has first dibs on stuff. and if you believe we don’t have a “family and friends stash” in the back of all the items that are scarce then you don’t know how the world works. a friend of mine with health problems came to shop at our store today because we do have more stuff than what i’ve been hearing is going on in surrounding areas.  and i was able to give her two cans of disinfectant wipes. another friend asked me if we had any loo roll, and they just came by my place to pick it up, cash on arrival. 

we also extend (or well, i do extend) the stash to customers who always have been courteous. and believe me, after working in one location for a few years you know exactly who’s an asshole and who isn’t. we are essential, we are important, and we’ve been known that forever. we just never got treated like that. people are thankful that we’re working, that we’re doing our best (like if we could afford to just take two weeks off to self isolate, yeah right), and it’s good to finally walk the store with your head held high, to finally feel the appreciation. we are the kings of the toilet paper and it’s fucking fantastic. 

the store manager (or the company, i’m not sure) bought lunch today for everybody. and there might be a texas rule of no gatherings of more than 10 people, but y’all should’ve seen the break room today at noon. we they feasted (i took two slices and went out back to enjoy) thanks for lunch, boss. 

we still haven’t implemented “senior hours,” and i hate that. 

hygiene challenged dude is back at work. so he just had his two days off. 

monday 03.23.2020 12pm - 9pm

people keep insisting on shopping “normally” and it’s mind boggling. if you go to the store for 5 things or 50 things, it’s fine either way. but please make a list at home and roll with it. do not linger in aisles, do not pick up 3 different items and stand there to study the, i don’t know what the fuck, ingredients? country of origin? manufacturer? i have no earthly idea why you gotta look at a bottle of suave shampoo so intently and just. stay. there. reading it like its a new product on the market. go home.

people just waste so much freakin time in the store. they run into acquaintances and have to have a conversation right there when other customers have to walk around you. please stop, please please stop that. please. get in, get your stuff, and get out. if we dont have your fave available right now come back next week, it’s bound to be back unless it’s something like hand sanitizer or over the counter meds. please. go home.

the shopping pattern has changed. there’s all the action in the mornings now. tons of people, full parking lots, all in the morning. i understand it’s because people are under the impression everything gets restocked over night. which is half true. but whatever. i mean people shop all throughout the day and it’s still busy but the bulk is in the morning.

speaking of: senior hours finally!!! i’m stoked.

i feel like i’m getting fed up with customer questions so it’s usually short retorts and no eyes contact. one guy asked me where the aloe vera is and he asked very friendly and from a few feet away and i was sort of a dick to him. i felt bad immediately and rephrased my answer. yikes.

on the upside also, my work buddy was throwing water all day long. poor guy. he said something like 9 pallets of 24 packs. at one point they were replenishing a display and people grabbed water from the display instead of the pallet, and he was like, “you guys are killing me, man, please take it from the pallet and not the display. every pack you take from the pallet is a pack less i have to move.” a couple of dudes then took over stocking duty from him and threw the rest of the pallet to fill the display. how fucking nice. good eggs all around.

backroom looks like we got a crap ton of paper products. a crap ton. something like, i’m estimating, 12 pallets. so they’ve been staggering it throughout the afternoon but also kept lots in the back for senior hours tomorrow morning. it really looks like that part is getting almost back to normal. lmao fingers crossed.

no eggs tho, today. all gone.

hot shot trucks still show up in the afternoon with produce and meat. and other stores still come by to transfer stuff to their location.

company lunch today was from torchy’s taco. i abstained cause i had just eaten at home. but gatherings of 10 or more people had been had in the break room again. no idea if it was paid for by our company or if torchy’s was just getting rid of a bulk of their perishables.

some dude threw a fit about the limits on certain items. i think his beef was with water and how he’s seen someone take more than three. calm down, asshole.

tuesday 03.24.2020 10am - 5pm 

it’s slow in the store. dallas county has a shelter in place ordinance right now and it’s just a slow and steady trickle of customers. the weather also has turned from grey and misty, to sunshine and 80ies. i hate it. i want my grey and misty back. and because it’s nice outside there’s a lot of people on walks and bike rides. there’s a trail behind the store and when i step out back i see people all the times. still keeping their social distance but people non the less.

we’ve finally got our hands on one of the people from the agency that has provided us with help. our girl is super nice and friendly and she works hard. i hope we’ll get to keep her in our department for however long theyre working with us. altogether there’s about 15-20 people in the store from the agency. they’re tasked with sacking groceries, cleaning shopping carts, cleaning shelves and helping to stock. it’s wonderful. they get paid $13, which is more than what you make starting out in the store.

it almost felt like it wasn’t a covid day. after what the covidiot in the wh said on monday, i was a bit unsure if non essentials would reopen (especially since the mayor just shut dallas down). it was weird. it seemed like customers stayed away because a) they went back to work or b) it’s too nice to grocery shop. but that’s prob only my stupid brain making things up.

there were two incidents, both of which weren’t covid related but needed security: a dude tried to walk out with two cases of beer (theft is a thing that happens in our store a lot) but somehow he had half the store chasing after him. i was outside taking my break when all the sudden this guy comes towards me with beer in each hand. where i was, there was no exit away from the store unless you wanted to jump the fence. and he sure did. launched himself and the beer over it. they chased him off (no one touched him, i wanna add, and no one would touch him too, even if we weren’t in the current time),  but got their beer back. that was an adrenaline shock i didn’t need. the second one was a lady at the pharmacy not happy with the speed of the pharmacist and she got upset that her meds weren’t ready to be picked up. she made quite a scene with cursings and such so security was called. they are doing their best at the pharmacy but just like every other department they are swamped with prescriptions.  

it was super slow and i left an hour early. went home and ate and passed out for 12 hours.

wednesday 03.25.2020 7am - 3pm

it’s probs the first time i’m on the road this early on a weekday during the self isolation period. it’s quite busy on the highway. but still no real traffic.

store is still slow but steady. i see a few customers with big bascarts and shopping lists going about their business urgent like. on the inside i was applauding their readiness and their commitment for getting it done. thank you dear customers. buy a whole cart and get the heck outta dodge. *chefs kiss*

help girl from the agency is with me today. i like her more and more. she gets it all done. baby wipes are still off and on, some days we have them, sometimes we’re out. we found 3 small cases of hand soap in the back (6 bottles each) and they are gone quickly. i’m working through shippers/displays (we’ve finally got a smattering in) but most of it goes straight to the shelves. i’m able to make some sense to one of the half shampoo/half hersheys end caps, and my eye finally stops twitching from the weirdness.

grocery truck schedule has changed and now we’re getting them also on wednesdays (for the time being). one trailer of toilet roll and paper towels, and one of canned goods and boxes and pantry stuffs. and maybe some lysol but who knows.

it’s still sunny and 80ies out, so more runners and bikers on the trail behind the store. still social distancing tho.

the news said someone from a grocery store of another chain was diagnosed. and then through the grapevine i heard that someone from our chain (not our store) also got diagnosed and is in the hospital. wash your hands. get in, get your stuff, and get out. stay safe out there.

friday 03.27.2020 9am - 5pm

there’s this lady in the store, little old lady, just wandering and shopping and whatnot for, i kid you not, 2 hours. what in the world? she’s wearing a mask, kinda like a “let me put this mask on cause i’m sanding something in the garage” you know that kind of mask. but it’s only covering her mouth? what is she doing. where is your family? do they know where you are and what you’re up to. seriously someone come get their auntie.

there’s stickers all over the floor by the registers “PLEASE WAIT HERE” reminding people to stay the heck away from each other. it’s working sometimes. people are patient.

this one lady asks me if we have this, and shows me her phone with a pic of the item like she is seriously standing 6 feet away stretching her arm as far as it’ll go. i appreciate it. she insists that the app tells her it’s in stock here. i ran out of ways to explain that the app doesnt keep up with inventory, only states that we carry it, not whether we actually have it in stock. it’s a surface disinfectant. we dont have it in stock.

rando people say their thanks that we’re working, that they appreciate it, thank you thank you. i have yet to learn how to respond to that. “youre welcome?” “oh sure!” “no problem” nothing feels right. me and my co workers all wish we could work from home, or take a few weeks off, without losing our jobs and benefits. it’s weird. how do you respond to that?

we’ve managed to stay in stock on toilet tissue all day long. one brand, one size, mind you. but! all day long! yes, toilet paper, on aisle 18!!!!

sales have leveled. business is returning to normal.

saturday 03.28.2020 7am - 3 pm

some lady lost her cool today and in her frustration she dead ass kicked over a display of gum. lmao, yikes.

every morning we have a little meeting in the store for all the department heads, or if they’re off, for whoever plays department head for that day. on saturdays that’s me. we call them huddles, although now we can’t call them that anymore because huddle doesn’t really scream social distancing. so now they’ll call it morning communication.

while walking the store today i found, get this, a bottle of purell. it was hidden behind other product. i immediately checked my surroundings (no one there) and then went and hid it in the back room. my immuno challenged friend had asked me for some for a while.

really nothing else going on. it was quiet in the morning and then a storm blew through, and then it was just gorgeous out. so the store got busier and busier. our truck was scheduled to be quite big, but it was late and i wasn’t gonna just hang around until who knows when.

monday 03.30.2020 2pm - 10pm

the break room is completely empty of chairs and tables. that’s new. just last week everyone crowded in, employees and management alike, whenever there was free lunch. and even tho one tells them, or points out that, hey, this is a bit more than technically should be in a closed space like this? all one gets back is, oh hahaha, yeah you’re probably right, but nothing changed. so now the break room is empty. only, i dont know, everyone here works on their feet, either standing (poor checkers) or standing and walking. for up to eight hours. there’s gonna be some people who will just have to sit down for 30 mins during their breaks. this was a company wide, or district wide decision, this wasn’t something our management came up with. and here’s the thing. admittedly, some higher ups in our company are seriously not the sharpest tacks in the box. and i’m not saying that you have to have a degree to make certain decisions, but it helps if you have some sort of,  i don’t know, compassion, deductive reasoning, two brain cells to rub together. i, personally, will hardly be found in the break room, i don’t use it. but it’s absolutely clear to me that taking away the opportunity to let people rest is a recipe for disaster.

tuesday, 03.31.2020 2pm - 10pm

so, the owner of the dallas mavericks (basket ball) donated hand sanitizers to our company, for use of company employees. which, thanks, Mark, that was super sweet of you. no really. IF I SEE ONE CO WORKER USE THIS INSTEAD OF WASHING THEIR HANDS I WILL NOT BE MADE RESPONSIBLE FOR MY ACTIONS. wash your god damned hands people. hand sanitizer will never be able to do what soap and water can do. why is that such a big problem to understand.

the break room has a couple of chairs and tables in it now, and a sign on the door that reads “6 people limit, 6 feet apart.” yikes.

its the end of the month and people got paid so the store is getting busier. tomorrow is the first and i’m sure we’ll be packed. please take the following to heart: SHOP ALONE. don’t bring your wifey or hubby or roommate or kids. ok bring your kids if you have no one to watch them. do not use the grocery store as your family outing cause its the only spot you think youre allowed to go. it’s not. youre allowed to go for walks, in front of your house, in your neighborhood, heck, walk a circle around the store if you want, but don’t bring everybody into the store. social distancing is easier achieved if there’s less people to stay away from. be smart, think ahead. and if you think that shopping with two people makes it go faster? it’s not. cause you’re gonna argue over the choices made, you’re gonna veto your shopping buddies choice of beans and your gonna walk every aisle twice instead of once. and there will be more people touching more things and i could really do with less of that.

wednesday 04.01.2020 11am - 7pm

there’s a distillery in kansas who has converted their production to make hand sanitizer (or sanitizer in general) and we have received a shipment of, i think, two pallets. the fun part? they are the size and shape of vodka bottles.

they’re selling for $8 and we put a limit of 1 per family. they look super neat. it’s a plastic bottle, too. i don’t use hand sanitizer and i dont need it and there are people who need these i guess but i want one so badly. just as a, you know, reminder, a token, of these crazy times. i’m not gonna get one (but i kinda want one).

they have finally installed screens at the registers. and new rules came down from corporate: social distancing is the highest priority, hygiene is the highest priority. we are only going to operate 3 (out of 6) registers so that we can ensure that there’s enough space for everyone to feel safe. i have also spent 2 hours today thinning out displays that are cluttering up the sales floor so that we can encourage everyone to keep apart.

starting tomorrow, every employee will get their temp taken when they arrive to work. if the temp is too high you will be sent home (but paid for that day) and only be let back in to work if your temp stays normal for 72 hours without the help of meds.

pay has been increased by $2/h.

friday 04.03.2020 9am - 5pm

face masks everywhere.

like 80% of everybody started donning masks, scarves and homemade things to cover their lower face. face masks are a stark reminder that everyone should keep apart. it’s like an extra “hey, remember how we’re all potentially sick with something deadly? stay away.” i appreciate the effect it has.

there are about 5 different announcements over the PA, one about washing your hands and sneezing/coughing into your elbows, one about senior hours (which have changed now to tue, thu and sat morning), one about social distancing (about the length of two shopping carts!), one about “we’re all in this together” and one about us employees and how we’re doing so much more than our job right now.

ive stopped greeting customers. i smile maybe, since it’s something so ingrained into our brain, but i won’t speak unnecessarily.

the store is absolutely packed. the suggestion of staying away until the 3rd or the 4th that ive seen all over the internets seems to have cottoned on and now we’re slammed. with only 3 registers open now (to keep room between registers) the lines are down the aisles. one of the guys on the registers told me he loved it. it’s waaay less crowding around the registers, safer for the workers).

we have two entrances (the main one and a smaller one) and they closed the smaller one because it’s very tight there and doesn’t really work with trying to stay away from each other. it’s not locked, it’s just closed. no idea about the fire marshall code, but i have worked in bigger stores with only one main entrance so maybe it’s not part of any code.

i saw a woman with a vegas golden knights shirt and i miss hockey.

saturday 04.04.2020 7am - 5:30pm

my first day during senior hours, and admittedly we’ve only recently changed that but there are tons of people in the store and not a lot of seniors. but what do i know they all could be immunocompromised.

in our morning huddle communications meeting the store manager is spitting out a lot of numbers and percentiles and such, basically sales are still through the roof, even with the slower week we’ve had. it’s funny how there’s really no reference point anymore. forecasts and budgets have all been altered due to the situation but even those are still behind. the agency people aren’t with us anymore (since sunday) and i can see maybe 2 new people - but i’m not a reliable source for that because i don’t inter-mingle with other departments that much so i dont even know the regulars so i have no clue who is new. but we’re still running on basically the same people we’ve always had with this increased business.

aceotone is the new toilet paper. cant find it on the shelves, the warehouse is out and people are constantly asking for it. this one guy had me in stitches. he was shopping for the fam and had a list from his wife and you know, acetone, cuticle cream all the stuff you need to take care of your nails after you rip off the fake ones. i used to get my nails done so i gave him advice as best i could  and pointed to some products, but no acetone. about five minutes later she finds me on the same aisle again and shows me a can of paint stripper with the word acetone in huge letters on it. i died. i told him that if his wife used that they are about to have a whole other set of problems. we both laughed. he had a great sense of humor. now go home, dude.

the side door that was closed on friday is open again. not surprised.

we are getting absolutely slammed with business. it’s a mad house. you can always tell when people start to park their cars on the fire lanes around the store. there’s just no more parking.

i do see a lot of single shoppers tho, which is so great. and then you got the families just sticking out like sore thumbs. and young college kids usually shop in threes or fours. but everybody is still taking way too much time. there was an article i read on local grocers and how some already reduced the people inside the stores and how every business is going to follow suit so we will see.

we ran out of eggs. and biscuits.  and no significant numbers of paper products all week.

monday 04.06.2020 2pm - 10pm

fuck these customers, man

wednesday 04.08.2020 7am - 3pm

my company will not limit the customer count in the store. at least not in this state. when the whole thing started there was an email about store hours and they listed basically every division of our company and their changed hours - except, you guessed it, ours. i have a feeling they are going off of what other companies are doing around here, so unless theyre limiting people, we won’t. that’s my opinion. after work i realized i forgot butter and swung by a store (from a different company) close to home and they havent limited entrance either. they did have markings on the floor to encourage one way traffic down aisles, and i guess we’re gonna do that too. but nothing else. i did see smaller chains have started to limit people but not companies we’re competing with. so much for that. i guess first we need to have a few positive cases in order for them to change anything. the dollar speaks volumes, eh?

i saw this article a few days ago and i keep thinking about it. it basically sums up everything that’s going through all our minds every day. (i have no idea who this website is, i saw it and i read it and it spoke to me so dont come at me if it’s something weird - i just wanted to provide a source)

I manage a grocery store.

Here’s some things everyone should know

1. I don’t have toilet paper 2. I don’t have sanitizer 3. I run out of milk, eggs and meat daily 4. I promise if it’s out on the shelf … it’s not in a hidden corner of our backroom.

Those are the predictable ones, now for the real stuff

5. I have been doing this for 25 years I did not forget how to order product. 6. I did not cause the warehouse to be out of product/ 7. I schedule as much help as I have, including many workers working TONS of overtime to help YOU. 8. I am sorry there are lines at the check out lanes.

Now for the really important stuff:

9. My team puts themselves in harm’s way every day so you can buy groceries. 10. My team works tirelessly to get product on the floor for you to buy. 11. My team is exhausted. 12. My team is scared of getting sick. 13. My team is human and does not possess an antivirus… they are in just as much danger as you are. (Arguably more) but they show up to work every day just so you can buy groceries 14. My team is tired. 15. My team is very under-appreciated. 16. My team is exposed to more people who are potentially infected in one hour than most of you will in a week (medical community excluded, thank you for all that you do!). 17. My team is abused all day by customers who have no idea how ignorant they are. 18. My team disinfects every surface possible, everyday, just so you can come in grab a wipe from the dispenser, wipe the handle and throw the used wipe in the cart or on the ground and leave it there… so my team can throw it in the trash for you later. 19. My team wonders if you wash your re-usable bags, that you force us to touch, that are clearly dirty and have more germs on them than our shopping carts do. 20. My team more than earns their breaks, lunches and days off. And if that means you wait longer I am sorry.

The last thing I will say is this:

The next time you are in a grocery store, please pause and think about what you are saying and how you are treating the people you encounter. They are the reason you are able to buy toilet paper, sanitizer, milk, eggs, and meat.

If the store you go to is out of an item.. maybe find the neighbor or friend that bought enough for a year … there are hundreds of them… and ask them to spare 1 or 2. They caused the problem to begin with…

And lastly, please THANK the people who helped you. They don’t have to come to work!

[truthofherdreams]

is this clickbait? (2)

also on ao3 + read the first instalment

BOYFRIEND DOES MY MAKEUP ft. Peter Kavinsky

Song Not-Bakery • 5.6M views • 4 days ago

 “Hi everyone and welcome back to my second channel!” she greets the camera the way she usually does. “Today my boyfriend does my makeup and we’re here with Peter who’s, erh. My boyfriend.”

He’s already laughing. “Why do you have to say it so weird?” he teases her, his voice high-pitched from his giggles.

“I don’t know?” she replies in the same tone, looking away from the camera to stare at him. He’s got his bottom lip stuck between his teeth as he looks at her, and she forgets they’re filming, just for a second. And then she snaps out of it, focusing back on the camera. “So, yeah. It’s actually something I jokingly mentioned when Peter and I started filming together, and people have actually been requesting it a lot so…”

Kitty will edit screencaps of comments asking for this very same video in post-prod, she knows, the way she always does when people keep badgering her with the same thing over and over again. That’s how she ended up doing a fridge and pantry tour a few months ago, and a house tour too. People are damn too nosy for their own good.

“So here I am. Making a fool of myself on the Internet.”

She can’t help but laugh at Peter’s comment, just a little. “As opposed to?” she teases, and laughs some more at the way Peter’s nose wrinkles when he makes a face at her. “Anyway, I gave Peter my makeup bag, and he chose a tutorial from RomanticRonny to follow, ‘cause he obviously needs guidelines.”

“Obviously,” he scoffs. A pause. “Yeah, it’s helpful, don’t judge me.”

“Also, if you don’t already know, Veronica is moving to LA very soon and we’re all super excited about it,” Lara Jean adds, with a little wink to the camera. “So, which tutorial did you choose?”

“Well, you’re usually low-key with your makeup, so I picked something a little more bright and colourful for a change. It’s called ‘Faux Freckles and Sunset’,” Peter provides, doing little waves with his fingers to where Kitty will add the thumbnail to the video later.

Lara Jean hides her smirk. “You’re aware eyeshadow is very different on monolids, right?”

Peter pauses, looking back at her, horror on his features. He freezes for a few seconds, before he turns back to the video and pretends to stands up. “And that’s it for today guys, don’t forget to subscribe and…”

“Sit down,” she laughs. “I’ll help you.”

“Well, if you’ll help me…” he grumbles for show, sitting back down. He grabs a brush then, to brandish it in front of the camera. “Anyway, let’s get started!”

Lara Jean presses the play button on the video, already loaded on her laptop in front of them. It opens on Veronica’s final look as she greets her viewers and showcase the makeup tutorial, doing a few close-ups on the faux freckles and the eyeshadow work. It looks simple but beautiful, yet Lara Jean has no doubt Peter will struggle a little bit.

“She’s so pretty,” she can’t help but comment at Veronica’s baby doll face.

“She looks like the chick from Lucifer,” Peter adds.

Her mouth opens a little at the accuracy of his comment. “Oh my god, you’re so right!”

He preens a little, before he focuses back on the eyeshadow palette Veronica showcases on the video. “Hold on, hold on, wait, you don’t do foundation first?”

“No, eyes first.”

“Whoa, okay.” He watches as Veronica applies the first colour to her lids, before he pauses the video. “Okay, let’s try this. We don’t have the same palette but this colour looks close enough so that will do. Close your eyes.”

She’s laughing a little at how serious he is about it, but does as she’s told anyway, closing her eyes and facing him. She didn’t realise how intimate that would be, one of his legs between hers so they can sit close enough to each other, his fingers delicate as he holds her chin. He’s so close she can feel his breath on her mouth, and it only makes her want to kiss him. Which would ruin the shot, but oh well.

He softly applies pigment to her lid, then sits back to look at the result and hum his approval to himself, which makes her smile a little more.

“Don’t do that, it makes your eyes crinkle.”

“Well, excuse me for being happy,” she teases, and laughs harder when he taps her nose with one finger.

But then she sits straighter too, relaxing her features in a neutral expression. She wouldn’t want to make it harder on him, when he’s trying his best to do something decent. He plays and pauses the video a lot, to make sure he follows the instructions as accurately as possible. Eye shadow doesn’t seem to be too much of a disaster, but then he’s swearing a lot when it comes to eyeliner and mascara, giving Kitty a run for her money in blipping it all out.

“Okay, it’s not too bad,” he comments. “Oh she’s doing foundation now, cool.”

“Tell the audience why you chose that tutorial,” she prompts him as she opens her eyes again.

He’s rummaging through the mess of her makeup bag to find her foundation and a brush, before she guides him to the right one and to her beauty blender. “Cause there’s no contouring in this one.”

“Peter is scared of contouring,” she comments for her viewers.

“Am not!” he replies, almost offended. “It’s just a lot. And I like a more natural look on you.” Then, to the camera, “Who needs sharp cheekbones when you’ve got that pretty round face.”

She’s melting, just a little. “Awww, Pete.”

“Like a donut.”

“…And you ruined it.”

Her does The Face at her – when he grins so much his smile is all dimples and his eyes close almost entirely – before he goes back to the foundation. Which is kind of a mess, and she’s trying her best not to burst into laughter when he goes to town on her face with the beauty blender. She isn’t sure how effective it’ll be, cause he’s getting rid of half the product as he goes, but at least he’s having fun.

“I like how none of those brands are Western, by the way,” he comments as he shows her concealer to the camera, two fingers holding the tube with his hand behind it for the autofocus. A real beauty guru through and through.

“Yeah, it’s all Korean,” she grins. She can feel him drawing the triangle of concealer under her eyes, which might actually do a good job of hiding her never-disappearing bags. “When we go there, half the budget is for food, the other half for beauty products.”

He’s back to dabbing with the beauty blender again when he says, “And because people are going to be asking, yeah, we’re planning a trip to Korean next summer.”

She’s smiling now, chin dropping a little to hide her emotions from the camera, to which Peter replies with a large grin of his own, shaking his head a little in a silly way to mimic her and make her smile even more. Which is working, obviously.

(And if they have to cut there because he drops a quick kiss to her lips… Well. Nobody needs to know.)

“Do I need to fill your eyebrows in?” he asks next, and she’s once again stricken by how earnest he sounds.

It took them a few months to get to this video, if only because Peter was quite reluctant to do it – all because of Gen. He’d told Lara Jean that he’d asked Gen to do that kind of video before, once upon a time when they were dating, but she’d outright refused. Stated that he would only mess it up and make her look bad, and it’s not something she wanted for her modelling career. Lara Jean had (silently) called bullshit the moment he’d explained, but she could understand how he was feeling about it.

How he still feels, careful not to mess it up, to do something good so she will be pleased and happy about him. Not for the first time, she’s saddened by how insidious a toxic relationship can be to someone like Peter, too kind and too people-pleasing.

“Only if they look too powdery,” she explains.

He leans in closer, frowning at her eyebrows, before he blows on them softly. It tickles a bit and makes her laugh, to which Peter replies with a smile. “It’s fine. Also, no lipstick, your mouth is fine.”

“Your mouth is fine too.”

He grins. “You’re welcome.” Then he’s grabbing her chin again, his fingers soft against her skin as he turns her head this and that way to check up on his work, before he nods sagely. “Good. Freckles now.”

It goes a little bit faster from there, hand-poking faux freckles on her nose and cheekbones in different eyebrow pencil colours to make them look natural, before he dabs them with a beauty blender. Before she knows it, he’s nodding again and grabbing a round mirror.

“You ready?” he asks, eager and excited.

She loves him so much it hurts.

“Yeah, show me,” she replies, clapping her hands before raising them in front of her mouth.

He flips the mirror over so she can see her reflection, and her mouth opens in surprise.

“Oh my god, Pete,” she whispers as she leans in closer to the mirror.

The blending on her eyelids need a bit of work, and her eyeliner is definitely wonky, but the faux freckles look amazing, and the warm colour palette on her eyes looks amazing. He really did take care of all the details, and so she leans closer to the camera so the audience can look at the results too.

“You like it?” he asks, suddenly shy and nervous.

Her boyfriend. Her beautiful, amazing boyfriend.

“I love it!” she exclaims. “It’s so different, wow! Look at those colours!”

And if many people comment about how he’s blushing and looking at her adoringly, well. It’s nice to brag about how awesome Peter is, once in a while. He deserves it, if anything else.

  Gabe Rivera ✓2 days ago

GUYS TONE IT DOWN THERE ARE KIDS WATCHING!!!!!

View 47 replies v

 RomanticRonny ✓1 day ago

Awwwww you guys! Peter did such a good job! Can’t wait to meet you all next month!

View 51 replies v

 bellyrubs 2 days ago

I know we’re all always commenting on the way LJ looks at him in the vlogs but can we talk about how SOFT Peter is around her? How he was delicately holding her face? The compliments all through the video? How pleased he was that she liked the look? We stan one perfect boyfriend.

View 35 replies v

 CovinskyIsLove 3 days ago

doctor: you only have 16:47 minutes to live

me: *clicks on this video*

View 29 replies v

 HairyPouter 4 days ago

last time I came this early Gen was still in the vlogs

View 8 replies v

[wayfaringmd]

An All-Inclusive Guide to Making Your First Year in Practice Not Suck As Much As Wayfaring’s

Hi there, just curious if you’d share what things you were looking for in your first job vs what things you value now, now that you’ve been working out there on your own. Anything that must be in the contract that wasn’t there before (or vice versa)? Tips for future graduating residents?

Yaaaaasssss so many advices. So many things. This ask has been in my inbox for months because I have too many things to say about it and I can’t seem to organize it properly. 

Let’s break it down into 3 sections: 1) What I thought I wanted 2) What I needed and didn’t know to ask/look for 3) What I want now. Here goes.

What I thought I wanted:

big dolla$$$

super sweet signing bonus

moving allowance

loan repayment assistance

regular 40 hour work schedule

nice patients

independence / autonomy in decisionmaking

ability to practice the way I was trained - with up to date guidelines and procedures and equipment

What I wanted and didn’t know to ask for:

Supportive colleagues - In your first year of practice out of residency you lose every ounce of confidence that you gained as a senior resident. You question minor decisions and are constantly afraid of killing people or being sued. It is extra hard to practice in a new town when your partners in practice are not supportive. Sometimes you need someone to lay a fresh set of eyes on a wonky EKG or a weird rash, you know? I didn’t have that option. It made me study harder and somewhat be more cautious and definitely more creative in my practice. But having a colleague to commiserate with at the end of the day or to consult on difficult cases would have been really nice. You don’t have to be BFFs with your colleagues, but they have to be people you can agree/get along with and trust to take care of your patients in your absence.

Friends - This sounds obvious, but I moved to a new town that literally has no people anywhere close to my age. Even having one person I knew and could confide in would have been wonderful. One person to go to a movie with or watch a football game with would have been a sanity saver for me. Find a place where you can find other people like you. 

A reasonable amount of time off - I got less time off in my first job than I did as a resident. That was unacceptable to me. This would be fine if my practice didn’t act like they were going to go bankrupt if I took an unpaid day or even a half day to go to the doctor, but they did. You need a place where you can take one week off every 3-4 months if possible, even if all that time isn’t paid. Medicine is such a stressful job. Make sure they’re giving you rest time.

A non-toxic work environment - I knew going into my job that I was replacing a workaholic and that I was joining a workaholic. What I didn’t realize was that I was also expected to be a workaholic and anything less than killing myself was seen as laziness. Pay attention to the culture at your new job. Ask the docs what they do for fun or to relax and more importantly when the last time was they did that thing. If they don’t have any answers, they’re too busy. 

Diversity. This may just be me, but I went into family medicine because I get bored easily. I need variety of patient types and disease types and socioeconomic groups and everything else. I realized quickly in my practice that most of my patients were privately insured elderly white people. As in, the most boring demographic for Wayfaring. 

A Balanced schedule. I figured that when I joined a practice that had been established for 30 years that the workflow kinks would have been worked out and it would run like a well oiled machine. In reality I would have 8 physicals a day and 5 of my most complicated patients in hospital follow ups back to back, all scheduled for just 15 minutes. There has to be balance in the schedule. You have to be able to take a little extra time here and make it up elsewhere. 

What I want now: 

fair dolla$$$. In actuality, what’s fair is actually considerably more than what I was making in my first job. I was grossly underpaid, particularly considering this being a rural area where nobody wants to work (typically those jobs are paid much higher). It’s not about the bottom dollar value for me. It’s about compensating me in a way that is comparable to my peers. 

Colleagues who can be both friends and mentors. See above. 

Good benefits. Two years of no dental or vision sucks when your most expensive problems are dental and vision related. Life insurance and retirement plans aren’t something most 30 year olds think of, but they’re really important, and I didn’t have those to start with. 

A flexible schedule. The whole world doesn’t need to fall apart if I need to switch my regular day off or if I need a half day to go to the doctor. 

Administrative time. Preferably a full week day, but a half day is great too. I’m happy working 4 10 or 12 hour days a week to have one week day off to catch up on work I’m behind on or get my hair cut and get my taxes done and see my psychiatrist, you know?

Knowledgeable and helpful staff. I need staff who don’t perpetuate old wives’ tales and notions like “you need a zpack for that cold”. I need to work with people who will ask if they don’t understand something rather than just make something up and who can help me educate my patients. I need folks who are prompt and who can anticipate some needs. 

To not be responsible for other peoples’ paychecks. In private practice, if I take time off or scale back, the practice loses money and thus our staff lose hours or money too. The staff in my first job were horribly underpaid and I don’t like the idea of the entire burden of the practice’s finances hanging on my shoulders. Sign me up for that hospital-owned practice, please.

To not have to turn patients away based on payer source. This is a national problem and is definitely not limited to my first job. But my first job wouldn’t let me take Medicaid patients at all. It made it completely impossible for me to build any sort of pediatric or OB practice in our town. I don’t like the idea of turning away a patient because their type of insurance doesn’t pay as well. I want to just treat patients and not have to worry about their payments. Hello, single payer healthcare system. Get on it! Obviously I will still have to worry about whether my patient can afford their meds or whether their insurance will cover their meds, but I won’t have to pick and choose what patients I accept based on their payer source. 

To deliver quality, up to date care. To work with people who will back up my evidence-based decisions and not practice based on feelings and patient satisfaction. To work with people who will encourage me to learn more and do new things. 

There you have it folks. A lil summary of what I want, what you might want, and what I’ve learned in these first (almost) 2 years of practice. Here’s to better future jobs for us all!

[dnmunchkin]

Dungeons & Plutonium Dragons Rules

Alright, here are the basic guidelines for how I smash D&D and Munchkin together into one big blobby mess. Note that it helps if you have played Munchkin before because this is largely based on the original Munchkin rules! And this is a very rough guideline. You may come across things that I haven’t encountered or thought about, so agree with your party what you want your rules in those situations to be (and if you think of it, submit the circumstance + the rules you decided on to me so I can pass them on!).

If anything in here is wonky, I wrote this post in the rich text editor, put it into HTML, and then back again and it fucked everything up. Naturally. So sorry about that (and please let me know)!

Read More because of length.

Game pieces:

Pen/pencil and paper

A basic Munchkin game (no expansions (unless you wanna add those and figure out rules for them yourself, but I’m just using the basic game))

168 cards

1 six-sided die

the rulesheet (can be found online here if you’ve lost yours)

(optional) 10 tokens OR 1 ten-sided die per player

(optional) 4 more six-sided dice if playing with rolling

(optional) 1 or more (probably at least 2) twenty-sided dice

Gameplay:

The basic gameplay is the same as normal Munchkin with the following exceptions and changes.

Roleplay is, of course, encouraged!

Cards in play can be taken back into your hand.

My friends and I prefer to play Munchkin without the 5-card hand limit and without the third phase (Charity) of gameplay, just because we find it’s more fun. If you want your game to be easier, do the same! If you want your game to be more realistic, play with the hand limit and the Charity phase. Think about it, you can only carry a certain number of things in real life, so if you want to play a serious game, you might want to make the same true for your characters.

Winning

If you want, you can decide to play as a party, but it does take some of the fun of backstabbing away. I like to play with multiple parties, or alliances, and that way you can still get the backstabbing-fun of Munchkin with the teamwork of D&D.

If you play as a party/parties, you can decide A) whether you can change/dissolve/etc the parties during the game or not, and B) if only one person in the party has to make it to the winning level number for the party to win or if everyone in the party must make it to that level.

If you want a longer game, you can up the number of levels you need to win to 15 or even 20. I like to read the room and decide this when people start to make it to around level 7; if people are bored, we end at level 10, if people are still into it, we go to 15 or 20.

Players may choose to fight each other, but defeating another player does not kill them.

The loser loses half of their levels and gives all of their items, in play or not, to the winner. They keep their race, class, and sex.

If the winner was a higher level than the loser, they gain one level.

If the winner was a lower level than the loser, they gain enough levels to match the loser’s level before the combat.

The DM: see the section below

If you play with a DM, another option is adding rolling! There’s also a section on that.

If you play with rolling, there’s another section on classes and races and some nice bonuses they can get you!

The DM:

In keeping with the D&D theme, I’ve decided to try to create a DM player. You don’t necessarily need one, you can just play without a DM and follow the traditional rules for monsters and things, but this gives you someone to fight. Here’s how the DM works.

The DM gets their own hand, but no character. If they draw any race or class cards, they must discard them.

The DM must end each turn with 4+ Door and 4+ Treasure cards. They must draw until they meet this requirement. This is to be done last, after every other player has done everything they want that turn.

The DM uses their cards to aid the monsters that the other players encounter, whether they came from a door or from Looking for Trouble. They play their curses and modifications to the monster or players after the players do their own, and then after the DM, the players can do more, and then the DM can do more, and so on.

(Optional rule, but I like doing it.) When players enter a room, the DM describes it. The players can also ask questions about the room. Players then use what was described to their advantage, and the DM uses it to the monsters’ advantage. For instance:

If the room is dark and the monster could reasonably be assumed to have better night vision than the player(s), perhaps the DM will get to play curses before the players.

If the players think to say that they climb up onto a ledge and attack from above, maybe the DM will say they get one extra combat point.

This way of playing does take agreement and negotiations to make work, but it can be lots of fun!

Rolling:

If you choose to play with rolling, here’s how I would incorporate it.

On a piece of paper, write the six basic D&D abilities (see below). For each ability, roll four 6-sided dice. Add up the highest three and write them next to each ability. This is how you generate your ability scores (the same as in D&D). For example, your character might get:

Strength: 13

Dexterity: 14

Constitution: 12

Intelligence: 8

Wisdom: 10

Charisma: 15

Don’t forget to apply changes based on your race and class, and change this when your race and/or class changes (if you wanna add in that aspect). Then determine each ability modifier by subtracting 10 from the score and dividing by 2. If you end up with a half number, round down. Write each modifier next to each score. With the earlier example, if the player started out as a human cleric (+1 to each score; +2 more to Constitution and Wisdom) their sheet would look like this:

Strength: 13 14 (+2)

Dexterity: 14 15 (+2)

Constitution: 12 15 (+2)

Intelligence: 8 9 (-1)

Wisdom: 10 13 (+1)

Charisma: 15 16 (+3)

Now, when the DM determines it, you and another player (or a monster) can roll against each other in different ability checks to see who would get to do something or perceive something first. Each roll a D20 and add your modifier, and the higher scorer goes first or “wins.” You can also roll to check doors and things like that. Roll a D20 and add your modifier, and if the DM thinks the number is high enough, you can gain information. For example:

Kicking down a door

Say the DM requires a 7+ Intelligence roll to sense a monster behind a door and a 17+ Intelligence roll to sense a curse.

DM: You approach the door.

Human Rogue: I listen at the door.

DM: Roll for Intelligence.

HR: Rolled an eight, +4 Intelligence modifier for a total of 12.

DM (after checking the card and seeing a curse): You don’t sense any signs of a monster in the room.

HR: I enter.

Finding allies

Elf Thief (fighting a monster, in need of assistance): I ask the Halfling for help.

Unclassed Halfling: I’m unsure if I think it’s worth it.

DM: Elf, roll for Charisma.

ET: Rolled a 16, +3 Charisma modifier for 19.

DM: Halfling, the Elf quickly persuades you to join the battle, and convinces you to not take any of the treasure.

And more!

I’m planning on making another post, too, going through all the monster cards and assigning them ability scores and modifiers so if you want to you can roll to see who attacks first after kicking down a door or something like that. That’s for the future, though.

Classes/Races:

Classes:

traits are taken from each class’s Wikipedia page

Cleric - divine magic, healers, control or repel undead creatures (choose control or repel at beginning of game)

If playing with rolling, add +2 to Constitution and +2 to Wisdom

Thief - (D&D, rogue) sneaky, nimble, stealthy, dexterous, sense and disarm traps, pick locks, sneak attack

If playing with rolling, add +2 to Dexterity and +2 to Charisma

Warrior - (D&D, fighter) weapons-oriented, skill, strategy, tactics

If playing with rolling, add +2 to Strength and +2 to Constitution

Wizard - arcane magic, less effective in melee combat

If playing with rolling, add +2 to Intelligence and +2 to Wisdom

Super Munchkin - This card acts as it does in normal Munchkin play.

Races:

traits are taken from each race’s  D&D Beyond page

Dwarf - underground/mining, short and stout, bold and hardy, weigh as much as a normal person, courage, endurance, long memory, long grudges, enduring, loyal, determined, true-to-word

If playing with rolling, add +2 to Strength and +2 to Constitution and +1 to Wisdom

Elf - otherworldly grace, forests or pretty places, slightly shorter than humans, slender, often amused and excited, curious over greedy, unfazed by petty happenstance, flexible, diplomacy

If playing with rolling, add +2 to Dexterity and +2 to Intelligence and +1 to Wisdom

Halfling - small, practical, kind, curious, cheerful, bonds of family and friendship, few dreams of gold or glory, easily moved to pity, hate suffering, assimilate well, work well with others

If playing with rolling, add +2 to Dexterity and +2 to Constitution and +1 to Charisma

Human - interest in conquest, adaptable, ambitious, live in the present, opportunist

If playing with rolling, add +1 to each ability score

Half-Breed - This card acts as it does in normal Munchkin play.

[lowmaticnews]

A Quick & Easy Way To Hang Curtain Rods

Last fall we shared our trick for hanging affordable Ikea curtains so they look a lot more expensive than their $14 price tag per panel would suggest (across an entire house you can save thousands with that trick & these curtains alone!!). But since we were just replacing our old bedroom curtains when we wrote that post, we skipped the crucial step of actually hanging the curtain rods themselves. And since we just installed approximately one million curtains at the duplex (okay, 16 of them, but that’s a pretty notable amount to hang all at once) we wanted to share a new trick that we used to speed things up, keep everything looking level and equally spaced, and make it much easier and less overwhelming in general.

But first, let’s establish some quick curtain basics:

How HIGH Should You Hang Curtain Rods?

Like anything in decorating, there’s not a hard and fast rule for this, but most people agree that curtains look best when they’re hung (say it with me!) HIGH AND WIDE. As in, higher and wider than the window itself. This not only creates the illusion of a bigger, grander window, but it also makes your room feel taller and draws the eye up. This is a 9′ room below, and you can see how nice it is for the window trim to get to breathe a little, and the eye goes from floor to almost-ceiling thanks to those long white curtains and that highly hung rod.

sofa | side table | coffee table | rug | bookcase | lamps | wall: SW White Heron | trim: SW Stone Isle

Speaking of the floor, most experts say that your curtains should usually touch or nearly touch the floor itself. This is all personal preference (some like them to hover slightly above the ground, others love a dramatic pool of fabric at the bottom) but we typically like them to graze the floor ever so slightly – like below in our showhouse’s dining room. We find this helps keep them in place better (when they don’t quite touch they tend to just hang randomly, but when they graze the ground they ground themselves and stay put if that makes sense).

Having them just touch and not be extra long and pooled makes them easier to move for vacuuming and ours don’t get all dragged around and gross on the bottom since they’re not excessively long (bonus: remember these curtains are 100% washable! In fact one of the first steps of getting them is to wash them to preshrink them so whenever you wash them again later, they don’t shrink on ya and the rod is still in the right place – more on that here).

But back to the rod. The precise placement of yours depends on a few factors (ceiling height, curtain length, trim & molding style, etc) so I can’t give you a hard and fast measurement for where your rod should always go… but generally, we like to hang ours about 3-4″ below the ceiling or, if there’s crown molding, 3-4″ below the bottom edge of the crown.

capiz chandeliers | benches | chair | marble vase | stools | pendants | sconces

This allows the curtain rod to “reside” fully (including finials) within the painted area between the window and the ceiling, which always looks SO NICE. But the important thing to note is that we’re hanging them in relation to the ceiling, not the window. It’s the assumption that your curtains need to relate to the window that causes a lot of people to hang their curtains too low. Heck we have seen rods drilled right into the window trim itself, which is just another way to make things feel really squat and cramped.

Remember, trim looks so nice when it’s allowed to breathe without any rods looming over it or being drilled right into it. That being said – sometimes the window trim is really close to the crown, and in that case we like going into the wall above the trim if possible – since the crown or the trim might look tortured with a rod sticking out. This is another picture from the showhouse we designed a few years back to demonstrate what we mean:

Your best bet is to have someone hold half of the rod up with one curtain panel attached (after you’ve washed, ironed, and done whatever else might change the height of your panel – except for hemming, that should happen once they’re hung so you can get the perfect length). If you step back and view it while someone holds it up for you, you’ll be able to decide what looks best to your eye – and using that 3-4″ below the ceiling or crown molding guideline can help.

Of course there are super tall cathedral ceilings, or rooms where the ceiling height slopes, etc – so this guideline probably works best when the ceilings are 10′ or lower without much of a slope. All super tall rooms or spaces with sloped ceilings are special cases – but again, looking with your eyeballs as someone holds half a rod with a panel on it can really help you visualize what looks best.

How WIDE Should You Hang Them?

This is another thing that’s influenced by a variety of factors, like the size of the window itself, what else is on the wall (especially if there are OTHER windows nearby), and how tight or loose you want your panels to look. Generally we like to place the rod hooks about 8-11″ from the outer edge of the window trim.

sofa | side table | coffee table | rug | lamps | media cabinet

This gives us the loose, breezy curtains we like, while still allowing us to barely cover the window molding, which is what creates the illusion that the windows are wider than they really are. In other words: THE CURTAIN PANELS ARE HANGING IN FRONT OF THE WALL NEXT TO THE WINDOW – NOT IN FRONT OF THE WINDOW (which makes it look smaller and blocks light). Sorry for shouting, but it makes such an insane difference when people stop hanging their curtain panels right in front of their windows.

We might hang the rods less wide if there are windows that are closer together than usual (like in our bedroom below – where they’re just a few feet apart, plus that one window on the right is very close to the right wall). We don’t want them looking cramped so in the instance below we didn’t go as wide with the rods – but we definitely made it so that as much of the curtain panels as possible could hang in front of the walls around the windows as opposed to blocking the windows themselves.

bed | nightstand | armchair | dresser | floor lamp |chandelier

Conversely, we might hang them even wider than 8-11″ beyond the outer edge of the window trim if we’re trying to fill a large wall space. We might even hang the rod wider on one side than the other if we’re trying to make a window look less off-center (more on that here – it can make all the difference!). So it really is flexible.

Ok, But Now For Our Curtain Rod Trick That’ll Save You Time (On Video)

The reason for all that mumbo jumbo is because knowing the width (your desired distance from the window trim) and height (your desired distance from the ceiling) is what makes this easy trick possible. John demonstrates it all in this video below (also watch for my super cool footwear cameo). There are more photos after the video for those who can’t watch right now, but I’d strongly recommend coming back to view it when you can – things are so much easier to “get” when you see them in action on video – and this skill is handy to have forevermore.

NOTE: If you’re viewing this in a feed reader, you may need to click through to see the video. You can also watch it here on YouTube.

Step 1: Determine Your Measurements

John and I determined that for the duplex we wanted to place our curtain rods 10.5″ from the outside of the window trim (weirdly specific, I know) and 3″ down from the ceiling. I should note that these are our measurements to the screws (the top screw, to be exact) since we find it easiest to work with the measurements of where you’ll actually need to drill. Watch as John models exactly what I mean below:

Step 2: Make Your Template

We used a scrap piece of cardboard to make our template – marking 10.5″ from each side and 3″ down from the top. This was actually the cardboard that came in the curtain package, so you might have something like it on hand already! Once we marked our lines (you’ll see them labeled below), we lined up the curtain rod hook and marked the two screw holes on BOTH 10.5″ marks.

3. Drill Pilot Holes

You can pre-poke holes along these two marks, or you can just do it when you mark your first window. Load up your power drill with a small pilot hole bit (we used a 3/32″ one) and hold your template above your window with the edge lined up with the outside edge of the window trim and the top held flush to the ceiling. Then you can just drill small pilot holes through your two template marks.

Now, a note about keeping things level: CEILINGS AREN’T ALWAYS LEVEL (I’m looking at you, duplex) so using the ceiling as your guide might seem ill-advised. What if your ceiling is sloped and your curtains end up being sloped too?!

Well…. we have actually found that when you’re hanging the rod close to your ceiling, you actually want the rod to follow any slope in the ceiling exactly! It will be your eyes’ closest reference point for a straight line, so it will appear level even if it isn’t!! Meanwhile if you hang the curtain rod level but the ceiling slopes, the rod will actually look wrong! Or emphasize that the ceiling is wrong! So yeah, using the ceiling as your guide actually works well for wonky ceilings (again, the duplex has plenty of those – as does the pink house!).

4. Drill Larger Holes & Add Anchors

Next you’ll want to make your pilot holes on the other side the window using the other half of your template (this is why you marked 10.5″ from BOTH sides of the cardboard) – so you can use it as a template on both sides of each window. Assuming you don’t hit any studs, you’ll need to add anchors after making those pilot holes, so swap out your drill bit for the correct size that works with your anchors (the provided anchors for our rods needed a 3/16″ drill bit) and drill into each premade pilot hole to make larger holes that fit your anchors. Bonus – the template acts as a great way to catch drywall dust. John was very excited when he discovered this. Just look at the joy on his face.

With all of your anchor-ready holes drilled, gently tap in your anchors in with a hammer or mallet. As I passionately interject in the video, your anchor holes shouldn’t be too loose or the entire curtain rod will be rickety and won’t hold up. And you shouldn’t be able to push your anchors into the wall by hand or the holes are way too loose (which can cause your rod to sag or fall out of the wall). So using the correct drill bit size for your anchors is important. It should be indicated in your curtain rod’s instructions or on the box that your anchors came in.

5. Screw Your Hooks To The Wall

The rest is pretty straightforward – hammer in your anchors and secure your curtain rod hooks to the wall using the provided screws. I insisted on filming John as he demonstrated this part too, so if you want to see it in action you can catch it in the video above. Truly I think watching these things get done in real-time is worth a thousand blog pics & words – so check out the video whenever you have a second.

Bonus Tip: Correct Any Rod Sagging

I’m gonna throw in another little hack here. Depending on your rod and how wide it is, you may notice that it appears to sag a little bit in the middle – especially where the smaller rod piece connects into the larger ones. Even if it’s super secure to the wall, it’s just that the skinnier middle rod looks like it’s sloping down to your eye – and I’m Type A to notice this and hate it. Your package may come with a third hook to hang in the center of your window if you reach a certain span with the rod, but often ours aren’t super wide so another support bracket would be overkill – so we rely on this weird little hack instead. Emphasis on WEIRD.

First, I take some of the protective plastic end caps that come on the curtain rods (they’re just packaging) and use a utility knife or scissors to cut off some small slices.

Then we tuck a piece inside the curtain rod at whatever connection point is sagging. It’s important that you put it on the TOP side of the rod and if you can’t slide it all the way in, just rotate your rod slightly so it’s hidden from view because no one is viewing your rod from the top. I know it’s REALLY weird, but it has been an easy way for us to correct a little bit of rod sag which makes my heart very happy. Just trust me – there is a noticeable difference and it no longer looks like it’s sad and droopy. Plus it’s free and I’m scrappy. So yeah. Five stars, would recommend.

That should pretty much do it for hanging the actual rod itself. And again, you can check out the post from last fall with our tips for actually preparing & hanging these inexpensive white curtains themselves. Between this post and that one you should be able to add curtains that are extra affordable (and washable!) along with tackling a whole bunch of windows at once, which might have felt overwhelming or nerve-wracking before. And you’ll definitely be faster with our little template trick too ;)

sofa | coffee table | rug | lamp |bookcase

Oh, and the curtain rods we typically use are either these oil-rubbed bronze ones with these ring clips (ordering them online means you don’t have to run from store to store to find enough that all match) and sometimes we grab these Allen + Roth rods from Lowe’s in person if they have enough (their stock is often spotty).

When NOT To Use Curtains

“Wait, what if I have baseboard heaters or a built-in bench or something under my window?

I get this question a lot so I couldn’t end this post without touching on it. Some spots just aren’t great for a curtain panel. If it can’t hang all the way to the ground, sometimes it can make a room feel awkward to hang a not-quite-full-length curtain panel. There are definitely exceptions where cafe curtains can look really sweet, but we generally just go whole-hog (full curtains from floor to almost-ceiling) or skip curtains entirely in that spot. Take our dining room, for example, which has two heat registers right where curtains would hang, as well as a window that’s super close to the corner – so the panel would cover a lot of the window instead of having a wall to hang in front of:

capiz light | stair runner | entry table | glass jug

We just skipped curtains in there and went with woven shades. The room still flows nicely with other rooms nearby, since we kept the woven shades consistent throughout the first floor of our house.

For example, these are the same shades in the kitchen (you can read more on our curtain reno here):

Clearly we couldn’t have long curtains hanging down from those kitchen windows since they’d hit the counter – so we just went with the nice warm texture that shades added.

And here’s the living room, which DID have room for nice long curtains (and we love the softness they add), so we did BOTH in here. The woven shades tie into the other spaces that also have them with or without curtains…

sofa | chairs | side tables | marble table | floor lamp

… like our home office, which also has both.

desk chairs | parson desk | rug | bookcases

Our home office is actually a nice room to use as an example that you don’t have to treat all windows in the same room the exact same way. See how the windows along that right wall wouldn’t have room for curtain panels and the cork board (they’d basically cover the area where the cork board is, if we hung them wide so they didn’t entirely block the window?). So we just skipped them on that wall. Still looks fine having them around the bay window and not around those front windows, which also have heat registers that the curtains would have blocked on both sides. So it worked out just fine. It’s kinda like the bay window is the star, and the front windows are just supporting actors.

My closing lesson would be: general curtain rod guidelines and a trick to hang them more easily & quickly can be handy, but when it comes to the whole “what would look good in here” question, every single person might have a different challenge, layout, etc – so it’s really smart to have someone hold things up and step back and trust your eye. Try different heights. Stare at a picture of a certain window shade on your phone while standing in that room and looking at the window. Really try to picture things before you commit. Heck, you can even try photoshopping different solutions or printing out a photo of your room and drawing right over it (color blinds or curtains right onto the pic – this is the original photoshop – ha!).

And don’t forget to consider woven blinds or even a pretty patterned roman shade (like this) for certain spots where curtains wouldn’t quite work – and remind yourself that it’s ok to just take your time and figure things out as you go. So many of our rooms have had curtains or blind changes while we figure it out – so don’t beat yourself up about it if it takes a second try.

P.S. Wanna know where we got something in our house (or what color’s on the walls)? Click here. And we made the same masterlist of sources & paint colors for the beach house too for ya. And we’re pulling together a source lis for the duplex – it’s not very thorough yet, but a lot of the stuff we have there is on this page for ya – and there’s more to come.

*This post contains affiliate links*

The post A Quick & Easy Way To Hang Curtain Rods appeared first on Young House Love.

A Quick & Easy Way To Hang Curtain Rods published first on https://landscapingmates.blogspot.com

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A Quick & Easy Way To Hang Curtain Rods https://ift.tt/2TLWdLz

Last fall we shared our trick for hanging affordable Ikea curtains so they look a lot more expensive than their $14 price tag per panel would suggest (across an entire house you can save thousands with that trick & these curtains alone!!). But since we were just replacing our old bedroom curtains when we wrote that post, we skipped the crucial step of actually hanging the curtain rods themselves. And since we just installed approximately one million curtains at the duplex (okay, 16 of them, but that’s a pretty notable amount to hang all at once) we wanted to share a new trick that we used to speed things up, keep everything looking level and equally spaced, and make it much easier and less overwhelming in general.

But first, let’s establish some quick curtain basics:

How HIGH Should You Hang Curtain Rods?

Like anything in decorating, there’s not a hard and fast rule for this, but most people agree that curtains look best when they’re hung (say it with me!) HIGH AND WIDE. As in, higher and wider than the window itself. This not only creates the illusion of a bigger, grander window, but it also makes your room feel taller and draws the eye up. This is a 9′ room below, and you can see how nice it is for the window trim to get to breathe a little, and the eye goes from floor to almost-ceiling thanks to those long white curtains and that highly hung rod.

sofa | side table | coffee table | rug | bookcase | lamps | wall: SW White Heron | trim: SW Stone Isle

Speaking of the floor, most experts say that your curtains should usually touch or nearly touch the floor itself. This is all personal preference (some like them to hover slightly above the ground, others love a dramatic pool of fabric at the bottom) but we typically like them to graze the floor ever so slightly – like below in our showhouse’s dining room. We find this helps keep them in place better (when they don’t quite touch they tend to just hang randomly, but when they graze the ground they ground themselves and stay put if that makes sense).

Having them just touch and not be extra long and pooled makes them easier to move for vacuuming and ours don’t get all dragged around and gross on the bottom since they’re not excessively long (bonus: remember these curtains are 100% washable! In fact one of the first steps of getting them is to wash them to preshrink them so whenever you wash them again later, they don’t shrink on ya and the rod is still in the right place – more on that here).

But back to the rod. The precise placement of yours depends on a few factors (ceiling height, curtain length, trim & molding style, etc) so I can’t give you a hard and fast measurement for where your rod should always go… but generally, we like to hang ours about 3-4″ below the ceiling or, if there’s crown molding, 3-4″ below the bottom edge of the crown.

capiz chandeliers | benches | chair | marble vase | stools | pendants | sconces

This allows the curtain rod to “reside” fully (including finials) within the painted area between the window and the ceiling, which always looks SO NICE. But the important thing to note is that we’re hanging them in relation to the ceiling, not the window. It’s the assumption that your curtains need to relate to the window that causes a lot of people to hang their curtains too low. Heck we have seen rods drilled right into the window trim itself, which is just another way to make things feel really squat and cramped.

Remember, trim looks so nice when it’s allowed to breathe without any rods looming over it or being drilled right into it. That being said – sometimes the window trim is really close to the crown, and in that case we like going into the wall above the trim if possible – since the crown or the trim might look tortured with a rod sticking out. This is another picture from the showhouse we designed a few years back to demonstrate what we mean:

Your best bet is to have someone hold half of the rod up with one curtain panel attached (after you’ve washed, ironed, and done whatever else might change the height of your panel – except for hemming, that should happen once they’re hung so you can get the perfect length). If you step back and view it while someone holds it up for you, you’ll be able to decide what looks best to your eye – and using that 3-4″ below the ceiling or crown molding guideline can help.

Of course there are super tall cathedral ceilings, or rooms where the ceiling height slopes, etc – so this guideline probably works best when the ceilings are 10′ or lower without much of a slope. All super tall rooms or spaces with sloped ceilings are special cases – but again, looking with your eyeballs as someone holds half a rod with a panel on it can really help you visualize what looks best.

How WIDE Should You Hang Them?

This is another thing that’s influenced by a variety of factors, like the size of the window itself, what else is on the wall (especially if there are OTHER windows nearby), and how tight or loose you want your panels to look. Generally we like to place the rod hooks about 8-11″ from the outer edge of the window trim.

sofa | side table | coffee table | rug | lamps | media cabinet

This gives us the loose, breezy curtains we like, while still allowing us to barely cover the window molding, which is what creates the illusion that the windows are wider than they really are. In other words: THE CURTAIN PANELS ARE HANGING IN FRONT OF THE WALL NEXT TO THE WINDOW – NOT IN FRONT OF THE WINDOW (which makes it look smaller and blocks light). Sorry for shouting, but it makes such an insane difference when people stop hanging their curtain panels right in front of their windows.

We might hang the rods less wide if there are windows that are closer together than usual (like in our bedroom below – where they’re just a few feet apart, plus that one window on the right is very close to the right wall). We don’t want them looking cramped so in the instance below we didn’t go as wide with the rods – but we definitely made it so that as much of the curtain panels as possible could hang in front of the walls around the windows as opposed to blocking the windows themselves.

bed | nightstand | armchair | dresser | floor lamp |chandelier

Conversely, we might hang them even wider than 8-11″ beyond the outer edge of the window trim if we’re trying to fill a large wall space. We might even hang the rod wider on one side than the other if we’re trying to make a window look less off-center (more on that here – it can make all the difference!). So it really is flexible.

Ok, But Now For Our Curtain Rod Trick That’ll Save You Time (On Video)

The reason for all that mumbo jumbo is because knowing the width (your desired distance from the window trim) and height (your desired distance from the ceiling) is what makes this easy trick possible. John demonstrates it all in this video below (also watch for my super cool footwear cameo). There are more photos after the video for those who can’t watch right now, but I’d strongly recommend coming back to view it when you can – things are so much easier to “get” when you see them in action on video – and this skill is handy to have forevermore.

NOTE: If you’re viewing this in a feed reader, you may need to click through to see the video. You can also watch it here on YouTube.

Step 1: Determine Your Measurements

John and I determined that for the duplex we wanted to place our curtain rods 10.5″ from the outside of the window trim (weirdly specific, I know) and 3″ down from the ceiling. I should note that these are our measurements to the screws (the top screw, to be exact) since we find it easiest to work with the measurements of where you’ll actually need to drill. Watch as John models exactly what I mean below:

Step 2: Make Your Template

We used a scrap piece of cardboard to make our template – marking 10.5″ from each side and 3″ down from the top. This was actually the cardboard that came in the curtain package, so you might have something like it on hand already! Once we marked our lines (you’ll see them labeled below), we lined up the curtain rod hook and marked the two screw holes on BOTH 10.5″ marks.

3. Drill Pilot Holes

You can pre-poke holes along these two marks, or you can just do it when you mark your first window. Load up your power drill with a small pilot hole bit (we used a 3/32″ one) and hold your template above your window with the edge lined up with the outside edge of the window trim and the top held flush to the ceiling. Then you can just drill small pilot holes through your two template marks.

Now, a note about keeping things level: CEILINGS AREN’T ALWAYS LEVEL (I’m looking at you, duplex) so using the ceiling as your guide might seem ill-advised. What if your ceiling is sloped and your curtains end up being sloped too?!

Well…. we have actually found that when you’re hanging the rod close to your ceiling, you actually want the rod to follow any slope in the ceiling exactly! It will be your eyes’ closest reference point for a straight line, so it will appear level even if it isn’t!! Meanwhile if you hang the curtain rod level but the ceiling slopes, the rod will actually look wrong! Or emphasize that the ceiling is wrong! So yeah, using the ceiling as your guide actually works well for wonky ceilings (again, the duplex has plenty of those – as does the pink house!).

4. Drill Larger Holes & Add Anchors

Next you’ll want to make your pilot holes on the other side the window using the other half of your template (this is why you marked 10.5″ from BOTH sides of the cardboard) – so you can use it as a template on both sides of each window. Assuming you don’t hit any studs, you’ll need to add anchors after making those pilot holes, so swap out your drill bit for the correct size that works with your anchors (the provided anchors for our rods needed a 3/16″ drill bit) and drill into each premade pilot hole to make larger holes that fit your anchors. Bonus – the template acts as a great way to catch drywall dust. John was very excited when he discovered this. Just look at the joy on his face.

With all of your anchor-ready holes drilled, gently tap in your anchors in with a hammer or mallet. As I passionately interject in the video, your anchor holes shouldn’t be too loose or the entire curtain rod will be rickety and won’t hold up. And you shouldn’t be able to push your anchors into the wall by hand or the holes are way too loose (which can cause your rod to sag or fall out of the wall). So using the correct drill bit size for your anchors is important. It should be indicated in your curtain rod’s instructions or on the box that your anchors came in.

5. Screw Your Hooks To The Wall

The rest is pretty straightforward – hammer in your anchors and secure your curtain rod hooks to the wall using the provided screws. I insisted on filming John as he demonstrated this part too, so if you want to see it in action you can catch it in the video above. Truly I think watching these things get done in real-time is worth a thousand blog pics & words – so check out the video whenever you have a second.

Bonus Tip: Correct Any Rod Sagging

I’m gonna throw in another little hack here. Depending on your rod and how wide it is, you may notice that it appears to sag a little bit in the middle – especially where the smaller rod piece connects into the larger ones. Even if it’s super secure to the wall, it’s just that the skinnier middle rod looks like it’s sloping down to your eye – and I’m Type A to notice this and hate it. Your package may come with a third hook to hang in the center of your window if you reach a certain span with the rod, but often ours aren’t super wide so another support bracket would be overkill – so we rely on this weird little hack instead. Emphasis on WEIRD.

First, I take some of the protective plastic end caps that come on the curtain rods (they’re just packaging) and use a utility knife or scissors to cut off some small slices.

Then we tuck a piece inside the curtain rod at whatever connection point is sagging. It’s important that you put it on the TOP side of the rod and if you can’t slide it all the way in, just rotate your rod slightly so it’s hidden from view because no one is viewing your rod from the top. I know it’s REALLY weird, but it has been an easy way for us to correct a little bit of rod sag which makes my heart very happy. Just trust me – there is a noticeable difference and it no longer looks like it’s sad and droopy. Plus it’s free and I’m scrappy. So yeah. Five stars, would recommend.

That should pretty much do it for hanging the actual rod itself. And again, you can check out the post from last fall with our tips for actually preparing & hanging these inexpensive white curtains themselves. Between this post and that one you should be able to add curtains that are extra affordable (and washable!) along with tackling a whole bunch of windows at once, which might have felt overwhelming or nerve-wracking before. And you’ll definitely be faster with our little template trick too ;)

sofa | coffee table | rug | lamp |bookcase

Oh, and the curtain rods we typically use are either these oil-rubbed bronze ones with these ring clips (ordering them online means you don’t have to run from store to store to find enough that all match) and sometimes we grab these Allen + Roth rods from Lowe’s in person if they have enough (their stock is often spotty).

When NOT To Use Curtains

“Wait, what if I have baseboard heaters or a built-in bench or something under my window?

I get this question a lot so I couldn’t end this post without touching on it. Some spots just aren’t great for a curtain panel. If it can’t hang all the way to the ground, sometimes it can make a room feel awkward to hang a not-quite-full-length curtain panel. There are definitely exceptions where cafe curtains can look really sweet, but we generally just go whole-hog (full curtains from floor to almost-ceiling) or skip curtains entirely in that spot. Take our dining room, for example, which has two heat registers right where curtains would hang, as well as a window that’s super close to the corner – so the panel would cover a lot of the window instead of having a wall to hang in front of:

capiz light | stair runner | entry table | glass jug

We just skipped curtains in there and went with woven shades. The room still flows nicely with other rooms nearby, since we kept the woven shades consistent throughout the first floor of our house.

For example, these are the same shades in the kitchen (you can read more on our curtain reno here):

Clearly we couldn’t have long curtains hanging down from those kitchen windows since they’d hit the counter – so we just went with the nice warm texture that shades added.

And here’s the living room, which DID have room for nice long curtains (and we love the softness they add), so we did BOTH in here. The woven shades tie into the other spaces that also have them with or without curtains…

sofa | chairs | side tables | marble table | floor lamp

… like our home office, which also has both.

desk chairs | parson desk | rug | bookcases

Our home office is actually a nice room to use as an example that you don’t have to treat all windows in the same room the exact same way. See how the windows along that right wall wouldn’t have room for curtain panels and the cork board (they’d basically cover the area where the cork board is, if we hung them wide so they didn’t entirely block the window?). So we just skipped them on that wall. Still looks fine having them around the bay window and not around those front windows, which also have heat registers that the curtains would have blocked on both sides. So it worked out just fine. It’s kinda like the bay window is the star, and the front windows are just supporting actors.

My closing lesson would be: general curtain rod guidelines and a trick to hang them more easily & quickly can be handy, but when it comes to the whole “what would look good in here” question, every single person might have a different challenge, layout, etc – so it’s really smart to have someone hold things up and step back and trust your eye. Try different heights. Stare at a picture of a certain window shade on your phone while standing in that room and looking at the window. Really try to picture things before you commit. Heck, you can even try photoshopping different solutions or printing out a photo of your room and drawing right over it (color blinds or curtains right onto the pic – this is the original photoshop – ha!).

And don’t forget to consider woven blinds or even a pretty patterned roman shade (like this) for certain spots where curtains wouldn’t quite work – and remind yourself that it’s ok to just take your time and figure things out as you go. So many of our rooms have had curtains or blind changes while we figure it out – so don’t beat yourself up about it if it takes a second try.

P.S. Wanna know where we got something in our house (or what color’s on the walls)? Click here. And we made the same masterlist of sources & paint colors for the beach house too for ya. And we’re pulling together a source lis for the duplex – it’s not very thorough yet, but a lot of the stuff we have there is on this page for ya – and there’s more to come.

*This post contains affiliate links*

The post A Quick & Easy Way To Hang Curtain Rods appeared first on Young House Love.

[vincentbnaughton]

A Quick & Easy Way To Hang Curtain Rods

Last fall we shared our trick for hanging affordable Ikea curtains so they look a lot more expensive than their $14 price tag per panel would suggest (across an entire house you can save thousands with that trick & these curtains alone!!). But since we were just replacing our old bedroom curtains when we wrote that post, we skipped the crucial step of actually hanging the curtain rods themselves. And since we just installed approximately one million curtains at the duplex (okay, 16 of them, but that’s a pretty notable amount to hang all at once) we wanted to share a new trick that we used to speed things up, keep everything looking level and equally spaced, and make it much easier and less overwhelming in general.

But first, let’s establish some quick curtain basics:

How HIGH Should You Hang Curtain Rods?

Like anything in decorating, there’s not a hard and fast rule for this, but most people agree that curtains look best when they’re hung (say it with me!) HIGH AND WIDE. As in, higher and wider than the window itself. This not only creates the illusion of a bigger, grander window, but it also makes your room feel taller and draws the eye up. This is a 9′ room below, and you can see how nice it is for the window trim to get to breathe a little, and the eye goes from floor to almost-ceiling thanks to those long white curtains and that highly hung rod.

sofa | side table | coffee table | rug | bookcase | lamps | wall: SW White Heron | trim: SW Stone Isle

Speaking of the floor, most experts say that your curtains should usually touch or nearly touch the floor itself. This is all personal preference (some like them to hover slightly above the ground, others love a dramatic pool of fabric at the bottom) but we typically like them to graze the floor ever so slightly – like below in our showhouse’s dining room. We find this helps keep them in place better (when they don’t quite touch they tend to just hang randomly, but when they graze the ground they ground themselves and stay put if that makes sense).

Having them just touch and not be extra long and pooled makes them easier to move for vacuuming and ours don’t get all dragged around and gross on the bottom since they’re not excessively long (bonus: remember these curtains are 100% washable! In fact one of the first steps of getting them is to wash them to preshrink them so whenever you wash them again later, they don’t shrink on ya and the rod is still in the right place – more on that here).

But back to the rod. The precise placement of yours depends on a few factors (ceiling height, curtain length, trim & molding style, etc) so I can’t give you a hard and fast measurement for where your rod should always go… but generally, we like to hang ours about 3-4″ below the ceiling or, if there’s crown molding, 3-4″ below the bottom edge of the crown.

capiz chandeliers | benches | chair | marble vase | stools | pendants | sconces

This allows the curtain rod to “reside” fully (including finials) within the painted area between the window and the ceiling, which always looks SO NICE. But the important thing to note is that we’re hanging themin relation to the ceiling, not the window. It’s the assumption that your curtains need to relate to the window that causes a lot of people to hang their curtains too low. Heck we have seen rods drilled right into the window trim itself, which is just another way to make things feel really squat and cramped.

Remember, trim looks so nice when it’s allowed to breathe without any rods looming over it or being drilled right into it. That being said – sometimes the window trim is really close to the crown, and in that case we like going into the wall above the trim if possible – since the crown or the trim might look tortured with a rod sticking out. This is another picture from the showhouse we designed a few years back to demonstrate what we mean:

Your best bet is to have someone hold half of the rod up with one curtain panel attached (after you’ve washed, ironed, and done whatever else might change the height of your panel – except for hemming, that should happen once they’re hung so you can get the perfect length). If you step back and view it while someone holds it up for you, you’ll be able to decide what looks best to your eye – and using that 3-4″ below the ceiling or crown molding guideline can help.

Of course there are super tall cathedral ceilings, or rooms where the ceiling height slopes, etc – so this guideline probably works best when the ceilings are 10′ or lower without much of a slope. All super tall rooms or spaces with sloped ceilings are special cases – but again, looking with your eyeballs as someone holds half a rod with a panel on it can really help you visualize what looks best.

How WIDE Should You Hang Them?

This is another thing that’s influenced by a variety of factors, like the size of the window itself, what else is on the wall (especially if there are OTHER windows nearby), and how tight or loose you want your panels to look. Generally we like to place the rod hooks about 8-11″ from the outer edge of the window trim.

sofa | side table | coffee table | rug | lamps | media cabinet

This gives us the loose, breezy curtains we like, while still allowing us to barely cover the window molding, which is what creates the illusion that the windows are wider than they really are. In other words: THE CURTAIN PANELS ARE HANGING IN FRONT OF THE WALL NEXT TO THE WINDOW – NOT IN FRONT OF THE WINDOW (which makes it look smaller and blocks light). Sorry for shouting, but it makes such an insane difference when people stop hanging their curtain panels right in front of their windows.

We might hang the rods less wide if there are windows that are closer together than usual (like in our bedroom below – where they’re just a few feet apart, plus that one window on the right is very close to the right wall). We don’t want them looking cramped so in the instance below we didn’t go as wide with the rods – but we definitely made it so that as much of the curtain panels as possible could hang in front of the walls around the windows as opposed to blocking the windows themselves.

bed | nightstand | armchair | dresser | floor lamp |chandelier

Conversely, we might hang them even wider than 8-11″ beyond the outer edge of the window trim if we’re trying to fill a large wall space. We might even hang the rod wider on one side than the other if we’re trying to make a window look less off-center (more on that here – it can make all the difference!). So it really is flexible.

Ok, But Now For Our Curtain Rod Trick That’ll Save You Time (On Video)

The reason for all that mumbo jumbo is because knowing the width (your desired distance from the window trim) and height (your desired distance from the ceiling) is what makes this easy trick possible. John demonstrates it all in this video below (also watch for my super cool footwear cameo). There are more photos after the video for those who can’t watch right now, but I’d strongly recommend coming back to view it when you can – things are so much easier to “get” when you see them in action on video – and this skill is handy to have forevermore.

NOTE: If you’re viewing this in a feed reader, you may need to click through to see the video. You can also watch it here on YouTube.

Step 1: Determine Your Measurements

John and I determined that for the duplex we wanted to place our curtain rods 10.5″ from the outside of the window trim (weirdly specific, I know) and 3″ down from the ceiling. I should note that these are our measurements to the screws (the top screw, to be exact) since we find it easiest to work with the measurements of where you’ll actually need to drill. Watch as John models exactly what I mean below:

Step 2: Make Your Template

We used a scrap piece of cardboard to make our template – marking 10.5″ from each side and 3″ down from the top. This was actually the cardboard that came in the curtain package, so you might have something like it on hand already! Once we marked our lines (you’ll see them labeled below), we lined up the curtain rod hook and marked the two screw holes on BOTH 10.5″ marks.

3. Drill Pilot Holes

You can pre-poke holes along these two marks, or you can just do it when you mark your first window. Load up your power drill with a small pilot hole bit (we used a 3/32″ one) and hold your template above your window with the edge lined up with the outside edge of the window trim and the top held flush to the ceiling. Then you can just drill small pilot holes through your two template marks.

Now, a note about keeping things level: CEILINGS AREN’T ALWAYS LEVEL (I’m looking at you, duplex) so using the ceiling as your guide might seem ill-advised. What if your ceiling is sloped and your curtains end up being sloped too?!

Well…. we have actually found that when you’re hanging the rod close to your ceiling, you actually want the rod to follow any slope in the ceiling exactly! It will be your eyes’ closest reference point for a straight line, so it will appear level even if it isn’t!! Meanwhile if you hang the curtain rod level but the ceiling slopes, the rod will actually look wrong! Or emphasize that the ceiling is wrong! So yeah, using the ceiling as your guide actually works well for wonky ceilings (again, the duplex has plenty of those – as does the pink house!).

4. Drill Larger Holes & Add Anchors

Next you’ll want to make your pilot holes on the other side the window using the other half of your template (this is why you marked 10.5″ from BOTH sides of the cardboard) – so you can use it as a template on both sides of each window. Assuming you don’t hit any studs, you’ll need to add anchors after making those pilot holes, so swap out your drill bit for the correct size that works with your anchors (the provided anchors for our rods needed a 3/16″ drill bit) and drill into each premade pilot hole to make larger holes that fit your anchors. Bonus – the template acts as a great way to catch drywall dust. John was very excited when he discovered this. Just look at the joy on his face.

With all of your anchor-ready holes drilled, gently tap in your anchors in with a hammer or mallet. As I passionately interject in the video, your anchor holes shouldn’t be too loose or the entire curtain rod will be rickety and won’t hold up. And you shouldn’t be able to push your anchors into the wall by hand or the holes are way too loose (which can cause your rod to sag or fall out of the wall). So using the correct drill bit size for your anchors is important. It should be indicated in your curtain rod’s instructions or on the box that your anchors came in.

5. Screw Your Hooks To The Wall

The rest is pretty straightforward – hammer in your anchors and secure your curtain rod hooks to the wall using the provided screws. I insisted on filming John as he demonstrated this part too, so if you want to see it in action you can catch it in the video above. Truly I think watching these things get done in real-time is worth a thousand blog pics & words – so check out the video whenever you have a second.

Bonus Tip: Correct Any Rod Sagging

I’m gonna throw in another little hack here. Depending on your rod and how wide it is, you may notice that it appears to sag a little bit in the middle – especially where the smaller rod piece connects into the larger ones. Even if it’s super secure to the wall, it’s just that the skinnier middle rod looks like it’s sloping down to your eye – and I’m Type A to notice this and hate it. Your package may come with a third hook to hang in the center of your window if you reach a certain span with the rod, but often ours aren’t super wide so another support bracket would be overkill – so we rely on this weird little hack instead. Emphasis on WEIRD.

First, I take some of the protective plastic end caps that come on the curtain rods (they’re just packaging) and use a utility knife or scissors to cut off some small slices.

Then we tuck a piece inside the curtain rod at whatever connection point is sagging. It’s important that you put it on the TOP side of the rod and if you can’t slide it all the way in, just rotate your rod slightly so it’s hidden from view because no one is viewing your rod from the top. I know it’s REALLY weird, but it has been an easy way for us to correct a little bit of rod sag which makes my heart very happy. Just trust me – there is a noticeable difference and it no longer looks like it’s sad and droopy. Plus it’s free and I’m scrappy. So yeah. Five stars, would recommend.

That should pretty much do it for hanging the actual rod itself. And again, you can check out the post from last fall with our tips for actually preparing & hanging these inexpensive white curtains themselves. Between this post and that one you should be able to add curtains that are extra affordable (and washable!) along with tackling a whole bunch of windows at once, which might have felt overwhelming or nerve-wracking before. And you’ll definitely be faster with our little template trick too ;)

sofa | coffee table | rug | lamp |bookcase

Oh, and the curtain rods we typically use are either these oil-rubbed bronze ones with these ring clips (ordering them online means you don’t have to run from store to store to find enough that all match) and sometimes we grab these Allen + Roth rods from Lowe’s in person if they have enough (their stock is often spotty).

When NOT To Use Curtains

“Wait, what if I have baseboard heaters or a built-in bench or something under my window?

I get this question a lot so I couldn’t end this post without touching on it. Some spots just aren’t great for a curtain panel. If it can’t hang all the way to the ground, sometimes it can make a room feel awkward to hang a not-quite-full-length curtain panel. There are definitely exceptions where cafe curtains can look really sweet, but we generally just go whole-hog (full curtains from floor to almost-ceiling) or skip curtains entirely in that spot. Take our dining room, for example, which has two heat registers right where curtains would hang, as well as a window that’s super close to the corner – so the panel would cover a lot of the window instead of having a wall to hang in front of:

capiz light | stair runner | entry table | glass jug

We just skipped curtains in there and went with woven shades. The room still flows nicely with other rooms nearby, since we kept the woven shades consistent throughout the first floor of our house.

For example, these are the same shades in the kitchen (you can read more on our curtain reno here):

Clearly we couldn’t have long curtains hanging down from those kitchen windows since they’d hit the counter – so we just went with the nice warm texture that shades added.

And here’s the living room, which DID have room for nice long curtains (and we love the softness they add), so we did BOTH in here. The woven shades tie into the other spaces that also have them with or without curtains…

sofa | chairs | side tables | marble table | floor lamp

… like our home office, which also has both.

desk chairs | parson desk | rug | bookcases

Our home office is actually a nice room to use as an example that you don’t have to treat all windows in the same room the exact same way. See how the windows along that right wall wouldn’t have room for curtain panels and the cork board (they’d basically cover the area where the cork board is, if we hung them wide so they didn’t entirely block the window?). So we just skipped them on that wall. Still looks fine having them around the bay window and not around those front windows, which also have heat registers that the curtains would have blocked on both sides. So it worked out just fine. It’s kinda like the bay window is the star, and the front windows are just supporting actors.

My closing lesson would be: general curtain rod guidelines and a trick to hang them more easily & quickly can be handy, but when it comes to the whole “what would look good in here” question, every single person might have a different challenge, layout, etc – so it’s really smart to have someone hold things up and step back and trust your eye. Try different heights. Stare at a picture of a certain window shade on your phone while standing in that room and looking at the window. Really try to picture things before you commit. Heck, you can even try photoshopping different solutions or printing out a photo of your room and drawing right over it (color blinds or curtains right onto the pic – this is the original photoshop – ha!).

And don’t forget to consider woven blinds or even a pretty patterned roman shade (like this) for certain spots where curtains wouldn’t quite work – and remind yourself that it’s ok to just take your time and figure things out as you go. So many of our rooms have had curtains or blind changes while we figure it out – so don’t beat yourself up about it if it takes a second try.

P.S. Wanna know where we got something in our house (or what color’s on the walls)? Click here. And we made the same masterlist of sources & paint colors for the beach house too for ya. And we’re pulling together a source lis for the duplex – it’s not very thorough yet, but a lot of the stuff we have there is on this page for ya – and there’s more to come.

*This post contains affiliate links*

The post A Quick & Easy Way To Hang Curtain Rods appeared first on Young House Love.

[natasjakjpriscilliamo78insu-blog]

health insurance options massachusetts

health insurance options massachusetts

health insurance options massachusetts

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health insurance options massachusetts

[zipgrowth]

Why the FCC’s E-rate Makes Funding High-Speed Internet a Slow Crawl

It’s one of the cruelest ironies in education: today’s schools must build and maintain robust high-speed, fiber-optic internet connections. But the process involved in finding funds for these upgrades can feel like a laggy dial-up modem, slow to a crawl—when it’s not cutting out completely.

For more than 20 years, the Federal Communications Commission has directed the multi-billion dollar E-rate program, which provides taxpayer-supported construction and service discounts that districts and libraries can use toward internet costs. The program isn't static, and changes big and small continue to shape its direction. In 2014, the FCC modernized the E-rate program, raising the overall funding cap to about $4 billion, making more money available for schools and libraries.

Some of the steps [the FCC is] taking to improve the program seem to be taking hold. It’s not mission accomplished yet, but it’s encouraging.

John Harrington, Funds for Learning

But along with modernization came EPC—pronounced “epic”—an online application portal, which critics say has caused numerous delays and a spate of application rejections around fiber internet construction.

Originally developed to help streamline the process, applicants charge the EPC system with losing completed applications due to glitches, being confusing to navigate and making it tough to input and sort relevant data, according to a recent anonymous survey of applicants conducted by E-rate consulting firm Funds For Learning.

“The implementation of EPC, while a good idea in theory, has contributed significantly to the increase in complexity,” wrote one applicant in the survey’s comments section. “It was not ready when it was introduced; is not operationally intuitive; and requires too much experience to use efficiently and effectively.” Another took a Trumpian tone, describing it as a “Total disaster.”

The silver lining? It’s not quite as bad as it was in previous years. In 2017, the same survey reported 44 percent of respondents found the EPC portal “difficult to use,” compared with 50 percent in 2015 and 2016. A quarter of respondents rated the system neither easy nor difficult in the 2017 survey. (2018 applications are still in process.)

Source: Funds for Learning

“Some of the steps they're taking to improve the program seem to be taking hold,” says John Harrington, CEO of Funds for Learning. “It’s not mission accomplished yet, but it’s encouraging.”

Delayed Gratification

System issues such as IT glitches are improving, and after going through the process a few times applicants are starting to adjust. “Anytime you implement a new system you are going to have challenges,” says Radha Sekar, the CEO of the Universal Service Administrative Company, or USAC, which built the EPC portal and administers the E-rate program for the FCC.

Sekar was appointed in January 2018 after her predecessor, Chris Henderson, resigned following a blistering takedown from FCC Chairman Ajit Pai on the EPC system’s shortcomings. “My immediate reaction was, since it’s a new system, there were a lot of growing pains associated with it from all parties,” she says.

Delays still plague the process. Each year the application process opens in January and closes in March. Last year, USAC expected to have all applications processed by September. Today, many remain unprocessed. In fact, some applicants are still waiting on funding they applied for back in 2016. In June, Alabama’s governor Kay Ivey sent a letter to the FCC relating to $32 million in E-rate funds her state was still waiting on. Governors in Texas and Montana have issued similar complaints.

Even more troublesome than the delays are flat-out denials, says Evan Marwell, CEO of EducationSuperHighway, a nonprofit that advocates for improved broadband in schools. As part of the E-rate modernization process, the FCC broadened the kinds of fiber networks eligible for discounts. They now include so-called dark and lit fiber leases, as well as specially construction projects to run new fiber lines.

According to EducationSuperHighway, as of last year there were more than 2,000 schools in the U.S. that still lacked fiber connections. And out of the 279 fiber projects submitted through E-rate in 2017, only three had received a decision by the Sept. 1 target date. This year, there were 347 such requests—for about $440 million in new broadband construction—and only a small fraction have received responses so far. (The organization also lists its complaints on a special website, delaysanddenials.org.)

Access Denied

In many cases we found those denials were unfair and made for spurious reasons

Evan Marwell, EducationSuperHighway

When the replies do come, they’re not always good news. Fiber proposals are often the most difficult to get approved, and they’re denied about 10 times more than normal funding requests, according to a Funds for Learning analysis.

“In many cases we found those denials were unfair and made for spurious reasons,” Marwell claims. Many rejections come down to technicalities and minor discrepancies found in a battery of complicated paperwork, according to the same analysis. Others were denied due to arcane regulations, which rarely match applicants’ actual experience getting bids and planning construction.

For example, Marwell says, until recently USAC regulations prohibited schools from including slack—or a few extra feet of line—in proposals, citing it as an unnecessary cost. Yet if the lines break, slack can help pull two severed lines together, saving money in the long run. Schools are also penalized if their proposed construction does not follow the shortest possible path—even if that route intersects with rivers or railroad tracks—both of which can hike overall prices.

Those rules are all thanks to an unpublished theoretical cost model built by academics that is based on geography and cost-per-foot financial assumptions, Marwell says. “You look at the way they’re reviewing things and it makes no sense,” he adds. “It’s a lack of understanding of broadband systems that’s creating these problems.”

Speeding Up the Process

Part of the problem may lie in who is actually reviewing the applications. For E-rate, the FCC sets the agenda and makes top-level decisions, and USAC sets the guidelines for reviewing applications—work they pass along to Solix, the third-party vendor that has processed and reviewed these forms for years.

“Our sense from our interactions is that the folks at Solix don’t understand broadband networks,” says Marwell, adding that they’re mostly concerned with rigidly following regulations, even when they don’t make sense for a given situation. “We have given feedback to USAC and the FCC that Solix needs more broadband expertise. We’ve even offered to go in and train them.”

Solix declined to comment, referring all questions back to USAC. Sekar’s view on Solix was relatively non-committal, although she did say that it came as a surprise when she first realized that Solix did much of the review process around applications. She has made it a focus of her administration to train USAC staff to be able to conduct application reviews themselves.

If you take a big approach to modernizing the E-rate program, you will never be successful. So we are taking one chunk at a time and fixing it.

Radha Sekar, USAC

As to Solix’s overall performance? “They have been here 20 years, I have been here seven months. It will take me a little longer to judge how they are performing,” she says. “Are they meeting the requirements of our statement of work? I would say yes.”

Sekar’s directive to USAC to be more proactive in reviewing applications is part of a larger strategy designed to look for ways to streamline approvals in response to criticism. She pulled out half of the 35-member E-rate team to work on a long-term project to identify areas where they can improve the process. She calls them the “believers,” in that they were the ones most gung-ho about change.

The believer team is looking at user frustrations and challenges, as well as how to make the EPC system more user-friendly and to develop a quality-control system with Solix to help them make more accurate decisions while applications are still in review.

“If you take a big approach to modernizing the E-rate program, you will never be successful,” Sekar says. “So we are taking one chunk at a time and fixing it.”

Any improvements to the system won’t be immediately apparent though; major changes can’t be implemented until 2019. Yet within that limiting framework, Marwell says there are fixes USAC could make if so inclined. Many have to do with the way reviewers interpret rules.

One example: the cardinal change rule, which requires applicants to notify all the telecom companies it has requested bids from if they make a significant change to their application or its terms. Yet “what constitutes a significant change is highly interpretive and subjective,” Marwell says. He also cites districts who have been denied after the theoretical cost model deemed the telecom bids in the application too expensive—even if they received only a single bid. “The applicants have no idea why it costs so much and yet that’s the only bid in the marketplace.”

Still, the Funds for Learning survey indicates that the post-modernization application process is getting somewhat easier to navigate each year. Many, like Harrington and even Marwell, see Sekar’s leadership as cause for cautious optimism. In short, things are getting better, but the layers of red tape and delays only hurt students in under-connected areas who may not have the same perspective on time as USAC and the FCC.

“For you and me, if a connection is wonky in Starbucks, we finish our latte and leave. The kids don't have that option,” Harrington says. “I used to say we live in a connected world. That's a misnomer—we live in a need-to-be-connected world and we're not all connected. The E-rate program isn't going to solve all that but it can play a huge role.”

Why the FCC’s E-rate Makes Funding High-Speed Internet a Slow Crawl published first on https://medium.com/@GetNewDLBusiness

[vincentbnaughton]

A Quick & Easy Way To Hang Curtain Rods

Last fall we shared our trick for hanging affordable Ikea curtains so they look a lot more expensive than their $14 price tag per panel would suggest (across an entire house you can save thousands with that trick & these curtains alone!!). But since we were just replacing our old bedroom curtains when we wrote that post, we skipped the crucial step of actually hanging the curtain rods themselves. And since we just installed approximately one million curtains at the duplex (okay, 16 of them, but that’s a pretty notable amount to hang all at once) we wanted to share a new trick that we used to speed things up, keep everything looking level and equally spaced, and make it much easier and less overwhelming in general.

But first, let’s establish some quick curtain basics:

How HIGH Should You Hang Curtain Rods?

Like anything in decorating, there’s not a hard and fast rule for this, but most people agree that curtains look best when they’re hung (say it with me!) HIGH AND WIDE. As in, higher and wider than the window itself. This not only creates the illusion of a bigger, grander window, but it also makes your room feel taller and draws the eye up. This is a 9′ room below, and you can see how nice it is for the window trim to get to breathe a little, and the eye goes from floor to almost-ceiling thanks to those long white curtains and that highly hung rod.

sofa | side table | coffee table | rug | bookcase | lamps | wall: SW White Heron | trim: SW Stone Isle

Speaking of the floor, most experts say that your curtains should usually touch or nearly touch the floor itself. This is all personal preference (some like them to hover slightly above the ground, others love a dramatic pool of fabric at the bottom) but we typically like them to graze the floor ever so slightly – like below in our showhouse’s dining room. We find this helps keep them in place better (when they don’t quite touch they tend to just hang randomly, but when they graze the ground they ground themselves and stay put if that makes sense).

Having them just touch and not be extra long and pooled makes them easier to move for vacuuming and ours don’t get all dragged around and gross on the bottom since they’re not excessively long (bonus: remember these curtains are 100% washable! In fact one of the first steps of getting them is to wash them to preshrink them so whenever you wash them again later, they don’t shrink on ya and the rod is still in the right place – more on that here).

But back to the rod. The precise placement of yours depends on a few factors (ceiling height, curtain length, trim & molding style, etc) so I can’t give you a hard and fast measurement for where your rod should always go… but generally, we like to hang ours about 3-4″ below the ceiling or, if there’s crown molding, 3-4″ below the bottom edge of the crown.

capiz chandeliers | benches | chair | marble vase | stools | pendants | sconces

This allows the curtain rod to “reside” fully (including finials) within the painted area between the window and the ceiling, which always looks SO NICE. But the important thing to note is that we’re hanging them in relation to the ceiling, not the window. It’s the assumption that your curtains need to relate to the window that causes a lot of people to hang their curtains too low. Heck we have seen rods drilled right into the window trim itself, which is just another way to make things feel really squat and cramped.

Remember, trim looks so nice when it’s allowed to breathe without any rods looming over it or being drilled right into it. That being said – sometimes the window trim is really close to the crown, and in that case we like going into the wall above the trim if possible – since the crown or the trim might look tortured with a rod sticking out. This is another picture from the showhouse we designed a few years back to demonstrate what we mean:

Your best bet is to have someone hold half of the rod up with one curtain panel attached (after you’ve washed, ironed, and done whatever else might change the height of your panel – except for hemming, that should happen once they’re hung so you can get the perfect length). If you step back and view it while someone holds it up for you, you’ll be able to decide what looks best to your eye – and using that 3-4″ below the ceiling or crown molding guideline can help.

Of course there are super tall cathedral ceilings, or rooms where the ceiling height slopes, etc – so this guideline probably works best when the ceilings are 10′ or lower without much of a slope. All super tall rooms or spaces with sloped ceilings are special cases – but again, looking with your eyeballs as someone holds half a rod with a panel on it can really help you visualize what looks best.

How WIDE Should You Hang Them?

This is another thing that’s influenced by a variety of factors, like the size of the window itself, what else is on the wall (especially if there are OTHER windows nearby), and how tight or loose you want your panels to look. Generally we like to place the rod hooks about 8-11″ from the outer edge of the window trim.

sofa | side table | coffee table | rug | lamps | media cabinet

This gives us the loose, breezy curtains we like, while still allowing us to barely cover the window molding, which is what creates the illusion that the windows are wider than they really are. In other words: THE CURTAIN PANELS ARE HANGING IN FRONT OF THE WALL NEXT TO THE WINDOW – NOT IN FRONT OF THE WINDOW (which makes it look smaller and blocks light). Sorry for shouting, but it makes such an insane difference when people stop hanging their curtain panels right in front of their windows.

We might hang the rods less wide if there are windows that are closer together than usual (like in our bedroom below – where they’re just a few feet apart, plus that one window on the right is very close to the right wall). We don’t want them looking cramped so in the instance below we didn’t go as wide with the rods – but we definitely made it so that as much of the curtain panels as possible could hang in front of the walls around the windows as opposed to blocking the windows themselves.

bed | nightstand | armchair | dresser | floor lamp |chandelier

Conversely, we might hang them even wider than 8-11″ beyond the outer edge of the window trim if we’re trying to fill a large wall space. We might even hang the rod wider on one side than the other if we’re trying to make a window look less off-center (more on that here – it can make all the difference!). So it really is flexible.

Ok, But Now For Our Curtain Rod Trick That’ll Save You Time (On Video)

The reason for all that mumbo jumbo is because knowing the width (your desired distance from the window trim) and height (your desired distance from the ceiling) is what makes this easy trick possible. John demonstrates it all in this video below (also watch for my super cool footwear cameo). There are more photos after the video for those who can’t watch right now, but I’d strongly recommend coming back to view it when you can – things are so much easier to “get” when you see them in action on video – and this skill is handy to have forevermore.

NOTE: If you’re viewing this in a feed reader, you may need to click through to see the video. You can also watch it here on YouTube.

Step 1: Determine Your Measurements

John and I determined that for the duplex we wanted to place our curtain rods 10.5″ from the outside of the window trim (weirdly specific, I know) and 3″ down from the ceiling. I should note that these are our measurements to the screws (the top screw, to be exact) since we find it easiest to work with the measurements of where you’ll actually need to drill. Watch as John models exactly what I mean below:

Step 2: Make Your Template

We used a scrap piece of cardboard to make our template – marking 10.5″ from each side and 3″ down from the top. This was actually the cardboard that came in the curtain package, so you might have something like it on hand already! Once we marked our lines (you’ll see them labeled below), we lined up the curtain rod hook and marked the two screw holes on BOTH 10.5″ marks.

3. Drill Pilot Holes

You can pre-poke holes along these two marks, or you can just do it when you mark your first window. Load up your power drill with a small pilot hole bit (we used a 3/32″ one) and hold your template above your window with the edge lined up with the outside edge of the window trim and the top held flush to the ceiling. Then you can just drill small pilot holes through your two template marks.

Now, a note about keeping things level: CEILINGS AREN’T ALWAYS LEVEL (I’m looking at you, duplex) so using the ceiling as your guide might seem ill-advised. What if your ceiling is sloped and your curtains end up being sloped too?!

Well…. we have actually found that when you’re hanging the rod close to your ceiling, you actually want the rod to follow any slope in the ceiling exactly! It will be your eyes’ closest reference point for a straight line, so it will appear level even if it isn’t!! Meanwhile if you hang the curtain rod level but the ceiling slopes, the rod will actually look wrong! Or emphasize that the ceiling is wrong! So yeah, using the ceiling as your guide actually works well for wonky ceilings (again, the duplex has plenty of those – as does the pink house!).

4. Drill Larger Holes & Add Anchors

Next you’ll want to make your pilot holes on the other side the window using the other half of your template (this is why you marked 10.5″ from BOTH sides of the cardboard) – so you can use it as a template on both sides of each window. Assuming you don’t hit any studs, you’ll need to add anchors after making those pilot holes, so swap out your drill bit for the correct size that works with your anchors (the provided anchors for our rods needed a 3/16″ drill bit) and drill into each premade pilot hole to make larger holes that fit your anchors. Bonus – the template acts as a great way to catch drywall dust. John was very excited when he discovered this. Just look at the joy on his face.

With all of your anchor-ready holes drilled, gently tap in your anchors in with a hammer or mallet. As I passionately interject in the video, your anchor holes shouldn’t be too loose or the entire curtain rod will be rickety and won’t hold up. And you shouldn’t be able to push your anchors into the wall by hand or the holes are way too loose (which can cause your rod to sag or fall out of the wall). So using the correct drill bit size for your anchors is important. It should be indicated in your curtain rod’s instructions or on the box that your anchors came in.

5. Screw Your Hooks To The Wall

The rest is pretty straightforward – hammer in your anchors and secure your curtain rod hooks to the wall using the provided screws. I insisted on filming John as he demonstrated this part too, so if you want to see it in action you can catch it in the video above. Truly I think watching these things get done in real-time is worth a thousand blog pics & words – so check out the video whenever you have a second.

Bonus Tip: Correct Any Rod Sagging

I’m gonna throw in another little hack here. Depending on your rod and how wide it is, you may notice that it appears to sag a little bit in the middle – especially where the smaller rod piece connects into the larger ones. Even if it’s super secure to the wall, it’s just that the skinnier middle rod looks like it’s sloping down to your eye – and I’m Type A to notice this and hate it. Your package may come with a third hook to hang in the center of your window if you reach a certain span with the rod, but often ours aren’t super wide so another support bracket would be overkill – so we rely on this weird little hack instead. Emphasis on WEIRD.

First, I take some of the protective plastic end caps that come on the curtain rods (they’re just packaging) and use a utility knife or scissors to cut off some small slices.

Then we tuck a piece inside the curtain rod at whatever connection point is sagging. It’s important that you put it on the TOP side of the rod and if you can’t slide it all the way in, just rotate your rod slightly so it’s hidden from view because no one is viewing your rod from the top. I know it’s REALLY weird, but it has been an easy way for us to correct a little bit of rod sag which makes my heart very happy. Just trust me – there is a noticeable difference and it no longer looks like it’s sad and droopy. Plus it’s free and I’m scrappy. So yeah. Five stars, would recommend.

That should pretty much do it for hanging the actual rod itself. And again, you can check out the post from last fall with our tips for actually preparing & hanging these inexpensive white curtains themselves. Between this post and that one you should be able to add curtains that are extra affordable (and washable!) along with tackling a whole bunch of windows at once, which might have felt overwhelming or nerve-wracking before. And you’ll definitely be faster with our little template trick too ;)

sofa | coffee table | rug | lamp |bookcase

Oh, and the curtain rods we typically use are either these oil-rubbed bronze ones with these ring clips (ordering them online means you don’t have to run from store to store to find enough that all match) and sometimes we grab these Allen + Roth rods from Lowe’s in person if they have enough (their stock is often spotty).

When NOT To Use Curtains

“Wait, what if I have baseboard heaters or a built-in bench or something under my window?

I get this question a lot so I couldn’t end this post without touching on it. Some spots just aren’t great for a curtain panel. If it can’t hang all the way to the ground, sometimes it can make a room feel awkward to hang a not-quite-full-length curtain panel. There are definitely exceptions where cafe curtains can look really sweet, but we generally just go whole-hog (full curtains from floor to almost-ceiling) or skip curtains entirely in that spot. Take our dining room, for example, which has two heat registers right where curtains would hang, as well as a window that’s super close to the corner – so the panel would cover a lot of the window instead of having a wall to hang in front of:

capiz light | stair runner | entry table | glass jug

We just skipped curtains in there and went with woven shades. The room still flows nicely with other rooms nearby, since we kept the woven shades consistent throughout the first floor of our house.

For example, these are the same shades in the kitchen (you can read more on our curtain reno here):

Clearly we couldn’t have long curtains hanging down from those kitchen windows since they’d hit the counter – so we just went with the nice warm texture that shades added.

And here’s the living room, which DID have room for nice long curtains (and we love the softness they add), so we did BOTH in here. The woven shades tie into the other spaces that also have them with or without curtains…

sofa | chairs | side tables | marble table | floor lamp

… like our home office, which also has both.

desk chairs | parson desk | rug | bookcases

Our home office is actually a nice room to use as an example that you don’t have to treat all windows in the same room the exact same way. See how the windows along that right wall wouldn’t have room for curtain panels and the cork board (they’d basically cover the area where the cork board is, if we hung them wide so they didn’t entirely block the window?). So we just skipped them on that wall. Still looks fine having them around the bay window and not around those front windows, which also have heat registers that the curtains would have blocked on both sides. So it worked out just fine. It’s kinda like the bay window is the star, and the front windows are just supporting actors.

My closing lesson would be: general curtain rod guidelines and a trick to hang them more easily & quickly can be handy, but when it comes to the whole “what would look good in here” question, every single person might have a different challenge, layout, etc – so it’s really smart to have someone hold things up and step back and trust your eye. Try different heights. Stare at a picture of a certain window shade on your phone while standing in that room and looking at the window. Really try to picture things before you commit. Heck, you can even try photoshopping different solutions or printing out a photo of your room and drawing right over it (color blinds or curtains right onto the pic – this is the original photoshop – ha!).

And don’t forget to consider woven blinds or even a pretty patterned roman shade (like this) for certain spots where curtains wouldn’t quite work – and remind yourself that it’s ok to just take your time and figure things out as you go. So many of our rooms have had curtains or blind changes while we figure it out – so don’t beat yourself up about it if it takes a second try.

P.S. Wanna know where we got something in our house (or what color’s on the walls)? Click here. And we made the same masterlist of sources & paint colors for the beach house too for ya. And we’re pulling together a source lis for the duplex – it’s not very thorough yet, but a lot of the stuff we have there is on this page for ya – and there’s more to come.

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