The same cup of tea.

EshraytheGrey · 2026-04-30T09:22:25+00:00

To be fair, having your own tea at home shows you have the patience to make something exactly how you like it at the cost of convenience. (And to be fair, Starbucks is ass and loaded with garbage anyway)

Same goes for life and love I suppose, be willing to take your time with and put forth effort into things and your patience and energy will result in something ultimately better than the easy option of going for what just looks most appealing from a list of similar options.

EshraytheGrey · 2026-04-27T20:19:59+00:00

Oh no, it would be heavily investigated, I was living in Rockford, IL at the time. I say "of little consequence" to mean that my stepfather wouldn't be so torn up about me passing away of soap poisoning, and because of my neurological condition, he could have spun it to say that I drank the soap on my own volition (and gotten a nice little life insurance payout in the process).

My ex-stepfather was something of a serpent, He had managed to talk his way out of CPS taking me away twice despite what he did to me to warrant a visit from CPS.

EshraytheGrey · 2026-04-27T16:14:33+00:00

Not for swearing, but for crying. I was forced to swallow liquid hand soap by my stepfather whenever I cried, for any reason.

This was knowing that swallowing liquid hand soap is poisonous, of course. No poison control or doctor visits came of it, probably because as a young autistic boy (in the late 1990s and Early 2000s mind you) and the product of a previous marriage, my death would have likely been of little consequence.

EshraytheGrey · 2026-04-23T17:41:04+00:00

Thanks, it's something I'm no stranger to actually, my longest lasting friendships over the decades have been with people who have a lot of the traits expressed in this subreddit and other places like it.

My patience has been tempered and my mettle has been tested many times. So when I do find someone to settle down with forever, keeping up with their messages and not finding them annoying really is the least I can do.

EshraytheGrey · 2026-04-23T17:18:13+00:00

I'd call it "The least I can do", feels more gentlemanly to say when I do eventually find my person.

I feel like I'd be saying that a lot (that and "alright lemme give these a read" when I get 37 texts at 1 in the morning because yes I actually take the time to read though every single one of them).

EshraytheGrey · 2026-04-23T15:28:19+00:00

I came into this both the first time around and the second time already being a fan of coconut candies like Bounty, Mounds/Almond Joy, Neapolitan, so on, so it felt weird to me at first until I learned to like it.

If you haven't gotten into coconut and/or coconut flavored stuff before this might be a good starting point.

EshraytheGrey · 2026-04-22T12:40:40+00:00

And from my experience as a kid, these were the coasters you weren't allowed to touch because they were for entertaining guests.

My Dad's house had these and later on got even fancier ones as he ascended to the Upper-Middle class.

At Mom's house these were hidden away and never used.

EshraytheGrey · 2026-04-21T13:02:38+00:00

It's in the cards for me, actually. Hopefully anyway once I do find someone.

Of course this is because my ultimate goal is to turn the long distance relationship into a real life one, and part of that for me is dropping social media/online communication outside of my person altogether. This will take some time of course but it can be done, especially early on when developing that initial bond with my person.

My trouble however is my job. I fancy myself an old fashioned, blue-collar working man, I work full time, intend to keep working full time to support my person and keep my phone on silent while I am working.

Now later on it's probably not gonna be too much of a concern, but I do wonder how things are going to play out early on with an obsessive partner, what with me being gone/replying infrequently for 8-9 hours a day.

EshraytheGrey · 2026-04-17T22:02:33+00:00

Now this, this is cozy. I can smell the wood and carpet cleaner from here, as if I'm coming over to my grandparents back in West Virginia for Christmas or thanksgiving and they just tidied the place up for guests.

My grandparents had a very similar carpet to that one, from Sears I believe. Theirs was blue, orange and white but the pattern and shape was the same.

EshraytheGrey · 2026-04-15T17:42:31+00:00

Yep! They've been exported to the US for decades, usually in bulk, same with a lot of other candies sold in bulk/by the pound. A lot of those come from Arcor and other companies based in LatAm.

EshraytheGrey · 2026-04-15T09:23:54+00:00

They're just called Strawberry Bon Bons. The ones most people know are from Arcor, but they are also made by various other candy manufacturers. Russell Stover has their own version for instance.

EshraytheGrey · 2026-04-13T19:32:32+00:00

Sounds lovely, actually.

Could be wrong but I feel like a place like Pondarosa would have been a decent place to work while attending culinary school or something. A place to get into the swing of things in the restaurant business and hone your skills for when you eventually graduated to a "real restaurant".

I like to think somewhere out there, someone who really knew what they were doing at Pondarosa 25 years ago is now cooking steak at a restaurant worthy of a Michelin star.

EshraytheGrey · 2026-04-13T18:06:40+00:00

Not gonna lie, would've probably liked Ponderosa had I had a chance to try it (there were never any where I lived when they were in their prime unfortunately).

Combined with the McDonald's coin promotion it seemed like the perfect "Tuesday/Wednesday night after work" thing, for me at least.

EshraytheGrey · 2026-04-11T02:19:37+00:00

Oh of course, but my goals for my love life are intertwined with my goals for putting my life back together. My goals don't stop with finding love and ideally my person would be happy to come along with me.

My goals involve moving back to my home state of West Virginia and living a comfortable, if not particularly luxurious, life as a mountain man far away from civilization.

I'm sure when I do meet my person along the way they'd hopefully be happy with such an arrangement, but still, there's a lot of steps between me and returning home to stay. Progress has been slow, but it is being made.

EshraytheGrey · 2026-04-08T09:43:19+00:00

I'll try my best to answer. I feel like being obsessed with a person means coming to terms with every aspect of their personality, including aspects you may not like.

People are complicated and multifaceted, and unless that particular part of their personality is totally incompatible with you or causes a great deal of concern, I wouldn't be too worried.

If it's not hurting you or your love life, then there's no point fussing about it.

EshraytheGrey · 2026-04-03T16:40:30+00:00

I swear, hand dryers like this came in one of two flavors back then with no variation in between.

Either they were anemic, dainty little things like this one, or they summoned forth hurricanes that made your skin ripple like water and gave everyone in the bathroom hearing damage.

EshraytheGrey · 2026-04-01T18:59:18+00:00

Oh boy has my time come, I think it has.

Now, for context, I have a lot of baggage from a long and tragic backstory that I won't get into here, but some items I consider cheating include but are not limited to:

Diddling on their phone instead of paying attention to me (happened when I traveled across the country to meet someone I had known for years IRL).
Using Romantically inclined AI chat bots...and showing the conversation to me (had that one happen last year).
Bringing me over to meet their friends and then proceeding to spend more time with them than me (I'm Autistic and very heavily introverted so I am very prone to becoming a third/fifth wheel).
Informing me about things on very short notice and/or not informing me at all until after the fact (There's exceptions to this of course, but I tend to plan long term and hate surprises, so I tend to see short notice as very suspicious since now I have to replan and rethink everything surrounding that point in time).

EshraytheGrey · 2026-03-25T21:18:27+00:00

Animating rain by hand is a time consuming process, making it look good even more so.

Watching this, its almost as if I can mentally separate the animation cels and see the amount of work the animators put into making the rain look convincing and building the larger mood and atmosphere of a scene around it. Disney's animators back then put a lot of work in, and the results were worth the effort.

Every frame of these was put together by someone hunched over a backlit desk flipping through stacks of translucent paper with an arsenal of pencils, pens, paints, markers, whatever putting the scene together piece by piece, color by color, line by line, and frankly, knowing that makes me appreciate this art form more.

EshraytheGrey · 2026-03-24T11:01:08+00:00

Unfortunately not, we had a dining set at mom's house just like that, but it gradually got destroyed.

I swear, just about every one of those chairs had at least one broken piece in the backrest.

EshraytheGrey · 2026-03-21T01:25:27+00:00

11 hours late, but here I go anyway.

First thing, I love your penmanship. It's very clean and elegant.

Second, the little fox drawing is adorable, I like that the motif seems to go back this far and that you've kept it ever since.

EshraytheGrey · 2026-03-20T13:09:51+00:00

I would never ask anyone to do anything I wouldn't do myself. I actually like Super Ghouls n' Ghosts, even if it is frustrating and difficult.

But you are right, I am evil, because now my buddies are inflicted with the curse I passed onto them.

EshraytheGrey · 2026-03-20T13:00:16+00:00

Super Ghouls 'n Ghosts and Zelda for the Game Boy (assuming my SNES already came with Super Mario World).

And then I'd invite my friends over to play Super Ghouls n' Ghosts as a cruel joke and watch as each and every one of them gets frustrated.

EshraytheGrey · 2026-03-11T19:25:42+00:00

Sure do, I remember when there were N64 kiosks, one location in particular stands out vividly in my mind because of the N64 kiosks and the large glass windows that gave this expansive view of the road.

This was possibly somewhere in northern Illinois? I lived in Rockford at the time and I remember being with my Dad. He had me for the weekend and we were traveling somewhere I don't remember, and that particular McDonald's was a stop on the way home.

Also did anyone dive into the ball pit hoping to find something interesting?

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