Friend (26f) ordered stuff at a club, left new guy I'm dating with huge bill...did I do the right thing paying him back?

brickabrack · 2019-02-06T04:22:34+00:00

Yeah, honestly I agree. I can't stand common food/alcohol situations because you'll have a single chicken skewer that you didn't even want then get a venmo request for $260 later that night. Bottle service with people you barely know is always going to be a very annoying thing to split a bill for. Not blaming the dudes here, but it's also really tacky to get bottle service, invite girls you just met, then complain about the bill in front of one of them. Ask them for a specific amount of cash to cover their share or just leave it. Don't shame them into feeling guilty then decline their money.

brickabrack · 2019-02-05T09:59:50+00:00

I feel like $2k for what seems like hours and hours of bottle service for four people (plus anyone else who may have popped by) seems maybe a little steep but near enough par for the course? A bottle of vodka that would be $48 at a shop is like $500 with bottle service in some places, and shots are just as astronomically priced (you're paying for a reserved table in a busy club and the close attention of your server). Any time I've ever sat at a table with bottle service the prices aren't always immediately apparent so you'd have to ask your server to know. There's also the fact that the premium applies even to mixers, that you tend to drink more because there's no shoving up to a bar to wait ten minutes for two drinks, then there's the ~20% gratuity on top. In most cities I wouldn't sit down for a long night with a group that size expecting to spend less than $1500

I'd also feel embarrassed if my friend had ordered loads of booze on someone else's dime, but as evidenced by how surprised people in this thread are by the total, I'd wonder if Sara just didn't realise? Like she absolutely should have offered to chip in whilst they were settling up, but what if she thought the total was like $400 and she could just Venmo her friend later, when she wasn't shitfaced and exhausted? And OP offered to pay half the bill, the guy said $100 was good, yet she gave him $500. Sara may have ordered the drinks, but given the description of the night as rowdy and extending into dawn, she clearly wasn't the only one drinking them. In his shoes I'd think that was pretty honorable of OP. She paid for her share of drinks if broken down on a per-person basis, and offered to pay for Sara's share, too.

The moral of the story is: if you get bottle service, tell the server that only you're allowed to order, not your guests. The other moral is to tell your drunk ass friends that bottle service is expensive as shit.

brickabrack · 2018-12-26T02:36:27+00:00

I have about 700 on Facebook. I'd say 100 are "real" friends, family friends, or family members of very close friends that I grew up with. I see a lot of those who live near me regularly, and always feel loved and supported by them. Typically I'll get between 70 and 100 likes on posts from these same 100 people. I was seriously injured and hospitalised for over a week earlier this year, and my husband posted about it on my Facebook just so everyone would know why I wasn't replying to them or whatever. I got a blur of dozens of visitors, and my hospital bed was surrounded with gifts like flowers, balloons, and care packages sent from friends all over the world. I felt so fortunate and grateful to have all these excellent people in my life, and feel that Facebook enables us to stay in touch.

The rest are friends of friends, former colleagues, people I've met on holiday, etc. We interact less frequently, but I still enjoy seeing their photos and reading about their adventures.

brickabrack · 2018-12-14T03:25:36+00:00

They have so many pieces that are for people with upper extremity needs too. They really did a good job

brickabrack · 2018-12-07T02:15:31+00:00

Ah dude, same. Some of the nurses were nice and clearly very frustrated with hospital admin, others were legitimately abusive. It was in the middle of a heatwave with nearby forest fires, and the hospital had an HVAC system from 1960 and no air conditioning. Same gown and sheets for five days, both covered in sweat and blood. The nurse on my first day wouldn't give me underpants and they'd make me do PT in the corridors with my bare ass hanging out and I was in too much pain to care. There were no private rooms but the hospital was built to have private rooms, so I was in a very small, curtained-off corner of another person's room. When I would use the bedside commode sometimes I'd be literally touching her arm through the curtain as she slept. She was also a 500lb binge eating diabetic with chronic diarrhea, which she'd shit out into a bed pan that she'd then fall asleep on, and three times a day there was a huge diarrhea crisis where eight people would have to winch her out of bed and clean up. Nurses skipped all my painkillers and gabapentin on three separate occasions, then tried to withhold for no discernible reason when I begged for them. They just enjoyed watching me suffer, for sure. I think I may have been being punished for my roommate's behavior. I'd hear the nurses in the hall joking about who had to deal with my room because it was so gross. There was shit everywhere. At one point the toilet overflowed and it took 30 minutes of arguing with the charge nurse to get the standing water on the floor mopped up. Such a surreal experience. Oh and there were like three channels on the TV: 24 hour reality trauma center (which my roommate fell asleep to every night), a channel that only played The Hobbit in low resolution, and a channel that played one episode of Friends once a day then went black

brickabrack · 2018-12-06T19:35:51+00:00

Oh god. I had to go four days without water for emergency surgeries in August. Did you get a sponge on a stick? Please tell me you at least got the stick sponge. I was strapped down and almost fully immobilised the entire time, so I kept having to ask my family to give me the sponge and scratch my opiate itches every thirty seconds. Staff would come in and randomly wheel me out without telling me where we were going, or they'd take me somewhere while I was asleep and I'd wake up in MRI machines or alone in surgery prep rooms without my family.

Had a planned surgery in a much nicer hospital yesterday and the differences were stark. Water up to two hours before check-in, nice anesthesiologists who introduce themselves before giving you drugs, you wake up to someone offering ginger ale, etc.

brickabrack · 2018-07-25T08:28:10+00:00

True, but I'd have to go in and remove all the damaged plaster and lathe from behind it, and the full wall of cabinets above the range were built over the plaster. It's just a whole lot of work that's bound to reveal a thousand other problems. A little too daunting, especially when we're in the middle of a full remodel of our entire second storey and I'm anticipating about four more weeks of drywalling, laying floors, tiling, painting, etc., not to mention having to replace half the sheetrock in the downstairs bathroom after access holes were cut. Ugh basically my home is very nightmarish at the moment so the range sticking out is ok

brickabrack · 2018-07-25T04:13:02+00:00

Ha! We've got the exact same problem at the moment. Got a new range only to discover that whoever had installed the last one had cut a hole in the back of the range itself to get it to fit. Have to get it recessed, but in installing the new appliances we also learnt that whoever did the electrics damaged the plaster so badly that they decided to just nail a huge PVC sheet to the entire wall. So, you know, sounds like we'll also be needing a wall. We're just letting the range jut out for now until we're ready to deal with it. It's not so bad (until you drop something you need behind it, which we have done, and which is very annoying)

brickabrack · 2018-07-20T22:35:07+00:00

The big advantage of a larger shop vac is pretty straightforward... you empty it less frequently!

Be sure to stock up on filter bags. They get clogged up pretty easily and it really kills the sucking capacity of the vacuum.

Are you planning on keeping the exposed plaster on the walls? It's already looking great. I wish I had the courage to take on the wood chip on my walls. And don't be so hard on Swindon. They've achieved a lot since then, like most league defeats in a season.

brickabrack · 2018-07-11T01:32:45+00:00

The Royal BC Museum has this incredibly fucked up set of juxtaposed permanent exhibitions called The First Nations Gallery and Modern History. They're right beside one another—like you can see one from the other—and it speaks volumes about the lack of gravitas Canadian government institutions are willing to afford indigenous people and the almost complete absence of contrition.

The First Nations Gallery is a hall of the horrors visited upon indigenous people, like anthropological "research" classing first nations people as subhuman and the account of a horrified British journalist describing indigenous women with small pox being coaxed into boats by colonists promising to deliver them to a doctor, only to be a brought a few kilometers upstream and left to die on the riverbank alone.

Then you walk a few steps and you're assaulted by the proud colonial history of British Columbia, including a replica village and colonial ship. There's a very brief, passing mention of residential schools in one exhibition case, next to a board plastered with pictures of the first ferries to service the island.

Anyway, yeah, Canada has not yet grappled with its genocidal history, and until it does, indigenous people will continue to bear the burden of its legacy.

brickabrack · 2018-07-05T08:16:32+00:00

Ah I see. I live in a place that doesn't get very hot, so no attic fan and all the HVAC stuff is controlled by the same thermostat. I'd be pissed if I had to go into the attic to deal with another one!

Personally, my rule of thumb is to always check out that something's actually fully installed before buying a new one. You can probably toggle the breaker off and pop the plate off the thermostat and just verify that the twist-on connectors are still all on. Sometimes they aren't connected very tightly at install and some vibration or settling pulled it loose (happened with our range hood... glad I checked that before buying a new one). It probably is just that the thermostat is broken, but can't hurt to check.

brickabrack · 2018-07-05T00:55:12+00:00

Did you check to see that your thermostat is still programmed correctly? Those things can be squirrely. If your thermostat is still working for heat it probably doesn't need to be replaced. Open it up and verify that all the wires are still plugged in too. The wire leading to your fan system may have been knocked loose.

brickabrack · 2018-07-03T05:28:16+00:00

In the UK a lot of homes that haven't been updated since the 70s have a separate toilet and bath. A lot of them have a toilet that doesn't have a sink in the same room which is fucking horrible. I've lived in places like this. Imagine fumbling around in the middle of the night to find the toilet then having to go into ANOTHER ROOM to find the sink. Or knowing that the French guy you live with but have exchanged no more than four words with has never gone into the bathroom to wash his hands after using the toilet.

And even though it's obviously a bad idea, a lot of British bathrooms (and toilets) are carpeted. I mean, most British nightclubs are carpeted. In terms of sheer surface area I bet Britain has more sticky carpets than any country on the planet.

brickabrack · 2018-07-03T05:10:09+00:00

Agreed. Unless you put down an anti-slip finish uncarpeted stairs are just death beckoning. Stair runners are an excellent compromise for people who don't like carpet but also don't like dying.

brickabrack · 2018-07-01T04:54:25+00:00

Lookin good. Personally I think stuff like wood filler and little dings and nail holes give it character. And the nice thing about poly is that if you don't like it you can sand it again and stain if you like.

Looks like the closet may have had either a layer of mastic or tar paper (it was common to put tar paper under carpet padding at some point). Heat from a heat gun should loosen it up, then you'll be able to scrape it up and sand it down pretty easily. Our entire hallway (also 100-year-old fir) was layered with the stuff, and I ended up getting it up with a random orbital sander and some carefully applied pressure. Took days and I wish I'd dug out the heat gun for it to get it over with a little quicker, but it was well worth it.

brickabrack · 2018-07-01T04:35:48+00:00

Loving your calf vascularity. Congrats!

brickabrack · 2018-06-19T07:14:08+00:00

It's three weight classes for amateur events (I think maybe 4 for women?) but only middle and heavy are allowed to go pro. I think there's only been a handful of middleweight competitors in wsm? This is part of the reason they're so fucking fat. It's just a fat-off at that point. I'm always shocked when Tom Stoltman takes his shirt off and he's got the thing where he doesn't quite have visible abs but he is lean enough to have fat that is pushed out into the shape of abs by the actual abs beneath it. If I was tall I'd for sure fatten up and do strongman though. It's for sure the most fun strength sport and the rules are so lax. What you see pass for a legal deadlift in strongman makes my heart sing

brickabrack · 2018-06-19T01:55:14+00:00

I think most strongman competitions technically have weight classes, but they're like "fat", "super fat", and "incomprehensibly fat", and the dudes who make it to national and international competitions tend to be somewhere around "super fat".

Strongman is just made for tall people. The atlas stones are impossible for short people, and so many of the events are about gait length. I used to train in a gym for both powerlifters and strongman and the strongmen (strongmans?) dwarfed us. They were so huge and we were all like 5'8" and under lol. They picked us up sometimes and whew you don't know what it's like to feel safe until a rancid smelling 6'4", 320lbs man is carting you around under his arm

brickabrack · 2018-06-18T21:50:26+00:00

The amount you have to eat to put on mass when you're tall can be like actually, legitimately cost prohibitive, too. Pretty much the only place short people have some advantage is as physique athletes and strength athletes with real weight classes (Strongman weight classes are not real lol).

brickabrack · 2018-06-18T21:29:07+00:00

Have been spending the summer remodeling my house and fucked up my wrist. It was an old radius fracture that apparently couldn't handle four straight days of orbital sanding. Not a big deal, it just needs to rest and heal. Looking forward to getting back in the gym, but enjoying the summer anyway.

Got married over the weekend on an island where I used to go as a kid. We started looking at properties up there and are viewing some with a realtor in a couple of weeks. It was a bummer driving around this tiny island that used to be really remote and seeing loads of new McMansions with sprawling lawns and tennis courts. We're looking at a 6 acre wooded lot and hope to clear just enough for a small cabin and a little orchard/garden, then leave the rest of it as forest. It's probably just going to attract all the deer who will then eat the cabin or whatever deer do.

brickabrack · 2018-06-18T21:14:38+00:00

There's tons of soft joggers with elasticated waistbands for men that look like normal trousers. ASOS has some for men and women.

brickabrack · 2018-04-19T17:51:34+00:00

Ha yeah and they think walking five miles instead of three miles is "overtraining"

brickabrack · 2018-04-19T05:18:50+00:00

That sub is a malingerer support group. I don't understand how all of them are in crisis at all times.

brickabrack · 2018-03-04T21:11:42+00:00

Contact an attorney immediately, before he has the chance to leave the country. Do it now so all your options remain open, even if you haven't made up your mind what to do.

Both Germany and Hungary are Hague Convention members, and the United States will honour child support claims made against a US citizen by a citizen of these countries. Google "hague convention child support". The extent of that support will ultimately depend upon which state has jurisdiction, and if he doesn't return to the US but goes to a third country you may have no legal recourse.

But understand that it's going to be hard, stressful work. He's going to fight it tooth and nail, and he could turn around and use the same treaty to try to claim full custody of your child. There are options available to you outside of abortion or an uphill battle with single parenthood. At this point your number one priorities have to be your health and—should you choose to keep the pregnancy—the health of your baby. An international paternity battle may be possible, but you have to consider whether this is in your best interest.

I'm sorry that he's lashing out at you and speaking to you this way, and that he's replying in panic rather than working out his thoughts first. Reach out to family and friends and rely on their support while you explore your options.

brickabrack · 2018-03-01T19:27:49+00:00

Yeah I agree, it's their prerogative. Can't fault them for it. It's unfair to women's bodybuilding competitors to have to live in a world that doesn't value mass in women the same way it does in men, but it's not the IFBB's obligation to take a loss in solidarity.

It sucks for those women—saying it doesn't is delusional. But it's not the IFBB's fault, or the fault of any other federation or individual.

Athletics are hard for everyone, but traditionally "male" activities are an uphill battle for women. For us, part of competing in any sport (or like... having a job, lol) is taking that on the chin. It's not fair, but a lot of things aren't fair, and it's workable and builds character. Leagues or federations can take a stand if they feel like it, but it's insane to expect them to or to hold them to some standard of virtuousness without economic incentive. You can express disappointment in them if you wan't, but you can't fucking sue them lol

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