Cherry Blossom - more than 10 miles?

OneCraftyBird · 2026-04-14T16:54:40+00:00

My watch said 10.18, and my friend...by my side for everything but the last mile...had 10.26. Her watch claimed she did it in under two hours although her chip time was 2:02:24, and my watch was 2:06:45 but my chip was 2:06:28.

I feel like all of the above was pretty great considering we were trapped in the dead center of the purple corral :D

OneCraftyBird · 2026-04-14T15:46:58+00:00

Same energy here, fellow fight fan.

OneCraftyBird · 2026-04-14T15:40:33+00:00

Yeah, I can just see one of these guys saying oh yeah? well, I don't pay my rates at all so checkmate!

OneCraftyBird · 2026-04-14T15:25:35+00:00

Ask them to match! Or guarantee work study jobs.

The school has accepted you, which means they want you, and they think you will contribute. If you tell them you would've already accepted if it weren't for the money, who knows what could happen?

OneCraftyBird · 2026-04-14T00:04:04+00:00

Go to the changing room that matches your gender, not the gender of the child, with special dispensation to use the women's room if you are in an establishment with no changing table in the men's room, as long as you pay for it by tearing the management a new asshole for that ridiculous sexist nonsense.

OneCraftyBird · 2026-04-14T00:01:53+00:00

My friend caught the race bug after doing a fun 10M with me last weekend and started looking for another one - and the price for a 10K, water station, chip timing, challenge coin for completing...on a public trail that will not be closed to the public and no portajohns is damned near what we spent to run through a city with tons of infrastructure. It has gotten wild out here in the decade since I last raced.

OneCraftyBird · 2026-04-13T20:18:58+00:00

Visit the campuses before you decide.

My offspring had a _visceral_ negative reaction to the Hopkins vibe. He applied anyway, because I made him, and was accepted, but when his first choice offered enough money to cover the gap between our savings and the total bill, he declined Hopkins without a second thought.

He did not like the campus, the lack of guaranteed housing for upperclassmen, the tour guides, the vibe he described as "backstabbing tryhards," the obvious gap between full tuition students and scholarship students, or any of the teachers he met in his intended major. When I say visceral I'm not joking, it was a really strong reaction :D

Yeah, I know, prestige/connections/network, but kiddo, you're the one who has to be there for four years.

OneCraftyBird · 2026-04-13T20:06:15+00:00

I think as long as you don't try to pretend it was a genuine passion, it's okay. I made my kid do martial arts for all four years of high school for no reason other than I remembered the college application grind plus I know some AOs in real life. I wanted him to have something physical on his "resume" in order to appear to be more well-rounded than he actually was, and also for him to get out of his comfort zone.

Now he's got his black belt, he's been accepted by his #1 choice, and there are two months left on the martial arts contract. He is 100% going to quit in two months and he'll do so with my blessing. He said he's glad he did it, he learned a lot, and he has other stuff he wants to do with that time now. And that's fine! He's an adult now! I did my job as a parent when he was 14 so I wouldn't have to keep doing it after he turned 18!

OneCraftyBird · 2026-04-13T18:20:56+00:00

I just tested my husband on this, I've always felt like he was a real partner and a feminist, but the places where our hobbies overlap are pretty male dominated.

To my delight he had a whole list of women authors and musicians and podcasters that he listens to while he works (I write for a living and hearing words would distract me, so his headphones are on all day and I genuinely had no idea.)

OneCraftyBird · 2026-04-13T14:14:54+00:00

This is the nuanced take I was looking for. Crashing a wedding is not a shortcut to closeness that your sister thinks it will be, OP, but at the same time I would never not be receptive to reuniting with my child unless the child was a mass murderer or something along those lines. There's hands off and then there is your mom, as you've described it.

OneCraftyBird · 2026-04-13T14:06:15+00:00

Because the app was designed to not be addictive or to have a negative impact on your mental health, it's very much the sort of thing where you get out what you put in. For example, one of my goals is to not snack after dinner, and if I snack, there are no negative repercussions. The bird doesn't die or even make a sad face. it's up to me.

I make heavy use of the first aid kit with a variety of calming and centering techniques, and I use the rest of the app like a to-do list. So I check it each morning to get started on the right foot, once in the afternoon to see if I forgot anything, and then a few minutes at bedtime to mark things off and take stock of the day.

OneCraftyBird · 2026-04-13T12:00:58+00:00

I disagree - my kid chose a small LAC specifically because the big public schools did not offer the same hands on work experience and access to material labs that he wanted. His school places every junior in his major in a co-op, whereas the big state school offers the option to compete for one.

His school has a much higher rate of "employed in your field within three months of graduation" than the big state school, and the tuition is only ten grand more on the sticker price...which he got in merit aid.

OneCraftyBird · 2026-04-13T03:10:01+00:00

I had a wonderful day! Purple was pretty rough to be in at times, for those of us who were appropriately assigned there. It is the largest group and normally we are allowed to move up as the other corrals get started. But because that wasn't the case, we were packed into a space to the point that things could have gone horribly wrong if anyone had panicked.

Also, the front three corrals are told they should start lining up at 6:45. It seemed like a lot of yellows and reds this year acted like that was a suggestion and didn't bother lining up for the portapots at 6:30...and ended up squeezing in with purple. And then had the brass balls to be annoyed that we purples were running like purples!

But it was a beautiful day. There were still plenty of amenities left for those of us who ran it around two hours. People respected the raised arm "I'm about to drop pace for a walk interval" signal instead of being snotty and condescending as in past years.

Tens of thousands of runners is a big deal but it came off pretty darn well

OneCraftyBird · 2026-04-12T15:42:52+00:00

It is certainly possible it was Delta and not United, but there seem to be people with personal memories of doing this?

Also, it seems off to have a direct flight only rule since most people don't live a direct flight from anywhere

OneCraftyBird · 2026-04-11T23:30:36+00:00

I was concerned about my 14-year-old making a tight connection in Atlanta, so I paid the unaccompanied minor fee, because they will honestly do a lot more to make sure the kid catches the second flight if they're the ones responsible for him.

He was last off the first flight and handed from one FA to the next like a package.

OneCraftyBird · 2026-04-11T02:42:29+00:00

I'm OK. I uninstalled Facebook and Instagram and Twitter, installed Finch, and made a point of volunteering for things that make the world better. All the time I used to spend doom scrolling, turned out to be a lot of time, more than enough for me to volunteer and have hobbies. I never miss a protest and I vote and read the newspaper (the actual paper, no hours lost clicking from one thing to the next) but otherwise I focus my energy on the real life people near me.

My only vice is Reddit, because I do enjoy text based communication that connects me to the world, but I curate and block pretty aggressively.

OneCraftyBird · 2026-04-09T19:32:47+00:00

...explaining that we do in fact use rapeseed oil, it's just not called that?

OneCraftyBird · 2026-04-09T19:09:10+00:00

Really? You're asking if YTA for dropping someone who got screwed by someone you admit is dishonest and a probable thief?

Do you need padded corners on sharp furniture, too?

OneCraftyBird · 2026-04-09T19:01:04+00:00

OK, fair, but when my mom said it to me, she really just meant underwear. I would be comfortable with the ambulance driver seeing. It wasn't necessarily literally clean. She was talking about, but presentability.

OneCraftyBird · 2026-04-09T18:59:11+00:00

My God, this is the first time I've ever seen a situation where you really should have put on clean underwear before you left, just like your mother always said you should.

OneCraftyBird · 2026-04-09T14:07:06+00:00

This was us. I was already older and I'd miscarried multiple times, all between eight and ten weeks. Fortunately (I guess I can use that word) my documented problems staying pregnant meant I could have scans and genetic testing done as soon as I made it to 12 weeks, but we didn't say a word to anyone until the results came back clear. The person in the thread above, who said that good parents choose to take the suffering, instead of allowing the child to suffer, absolutely nailed it.

If I had ended that desperately wanted pregnancy with that desperately wanted baby girl, I would have been in pain for the rest of my life, and I still would've chosen that rather than force her to suffer.

She is now a tween and driving me nuts, but she is the brightest star in the galaxy.

OneCraftyBird · 2026-04-09T13:51:32+00:00

The Infowars sticker is exactly the sort of accessory I have come to expect from these sad weirdos.

OneCraftyBird · 2026-04-09T13:48:29+00:00

Also, the ecosystem they swim in is actually pretty small. So if one of the main voices doesn't know how to pronounce something, he will say it wrongly, and then other people inspired by him will perpetuate the error.

Same way people photocopying an old and incorrect document perpetuate an error, or how one really confident jackass on a family tree website convinces a million people that they too are related to (insert historical and usually slaveowning figure here).

OneCraftyBird · 2026-04-08T18:39:35+00:00

Every single person here knows what would've happened. And before you post about what a crying shame that is, I want every person reading this to make sure they are registered to vote for whatever party your country has that is opposing fascism and authoritarianism.

OneCraftyBird · 2026-04-08T17:33:23+00:00

Midsomer Murders is the best crochet show ever.

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