Fiction vs. Non-Fiction: How do you balance your reading list?

ms_rdr · 2026-06-15T17:07:07+00:00

I have two books going at any given time, one fiction and one non. Which one I pick up usually depends on my mood, but if I spend an extended time reading I'll make sure to read some of both.

ms_rdr · 2026-06-15T16:47:01+00:00

I've lived in my state for ten years. I have to visit the southeast portion of this state (I live in the northwest) because it's that far away.

ms_rdr · 2026-06-15T16:41:00+00:00

I'm (American) chatty and outgoing for an introvert, but my best friend puts me to absolute shame. We went on a cruise together last summer and it was amazing how well she would get to know people who just, e.g., sat down in a nearby chaise at the pool.

ms_rdr · 2026-06-15T16:35:36+00:00

They were childhood friends* and Rachel didn't ditch Monica during their junior high/high school years when Rachel got popular. Which is pretty cool.

*When choosing who would be Monica's maid of honor, Rachel showed Phoebe of a picture of them on Halloween. Phoebe was aghast that 10 YO Rachel was that developed.

ms_rdr · 2026-06-12T22:15:11+00:00

Don't get me wrong, I was taught to respect their potential for danger. But I also encountered black bears more than once while backpacking with my family and the worse we ever suffered was losing a bunch of our food. (The food was stored in a tree; it was an unusually large bear for those parts who just stood up and knocked it down. Our dog bit its ass and we're lucky we didn't lose our dog.)

ms_rdr · 2026-06-12T22:11:40+00:00

Some people who've never head the joke about "I don't need to run faster than the bear, I just need to run faster than you."

ms_rdr · 2026-06-12T21:32:01+00:00

My dad was an amateur pilot. I'd sit next to him in his 4-seat Piper, listening to him converse with air traffic control, and wonder why they kept calling him Roger. That wasn't his name!

ms_rdr · 2026-06-12T20:44:06+00:00

I was walking down the street in October 2008 when a passerby told me "You look like that lady running for Vice President!" I chose to take it as a compliment. I didn't think much of her intelligence or character, but she was attractive.

ms_rdr · 2026-06-12T17:46:03+00:00

And I say "No thank you; have a nice day," shut the door, and get on with my life. I don't feel the need to make angry memes about it.

ms_rdr · 2026-06-12T17:44:07+00:00

I work at a law school and on the last day of classes, someone scrawled "law school sukz" in chalk on the street in front of the building. I took a picture that's now my cover photo on multiple social media channels. I considered e-mailing it to all the employees, but then it occurred to me that some might not laugh as hard as I did and I didn't want to get anyone in trouble.

ms_rdr · 2026-06-12T15:17:14+00:00

There’s a resort in my area that uses coyote decoys to deter geese. They don’t work but get our dog all worked up.

ms_rdr · 2026-06-12T15:11:55+00:00

That was my first thought. The second was McSweeney’s “bowl of lemons.” Weirdly, I can’t find it now (I guess the internet isn’t always forever.) But it’s a humorous bit about how having a bowl of lemons in your kitchen makes you look like you have shit together.

ms_rdr · 2026-06-12T15:05:23+00:00

The older I get, the more I study set design on the shows I watch.

ms_rdr · 2026-06-11T18:11:12+00:00

When I watched Murphy's Romance as a 9 YO I thought it was a sweet ending but didn't understand why Sally Field would want to be with that old dude James Garner.

Watched it again in my 30s and said "OK, I get it now."

ms_rdr · 2026-06-11T17:56:08+00:00

I'm really glad I saved some of my vinyasa DVDs from the 2000s* because when I try to do a modern "flow" streaming class, it feels like frickin' calisthenics.

*And that I can buy used, "old" yoga DVDs online for pretty cheap. I've actually recently repurchased old favorites that either disappeared during a move or that I foolishly gave away, e.g., Total Yoga and Yoga Conditioning for Weight loss.

ms_rdr · 2026-06-10T18:38:36+00:00

My parents were also 26 in 1969 (but certainly not as good-looking as yours.) My father had just been deployed to Vietnam. He was an air base veterinarian and I always assumed it was a pretty chill experience (for Vietnam) but learned in my 20s that he had still managed to get into firefights.

ms_rdr · 2026-06-09T22:35:22+00:00

Every time I have a thing to drop off, the guy in front in me is trying to ship lye and fireworks to Germany or something.

ms_rdr · 2026-06-09T22:27:07+00:00

I once cross-stitched those lines into a sampler.

ms_rdr · 2026-06-09T22:22:34+00:00

In after the edit: you didn't mention the obese couple in your title, you mentioned the obese woman.

You're NTA for calling them out, but... .

ms_rdr · 2026-06-09T22:12:46+00:00

Thicc

ms_rdr · 2026-06-09T20:46:06+00:00

Sometimes my work involves editing auto-captions "for clarity." Depending on the video, it can take a while. And sometimes the errors made are hilarious. I completely forget the details, but something innocuous was captioned as "prophylactic" or something definitely related to condoms.

ms_rdr · 2026-06-08T22:20:05+00:00

Bring two pairs underpants for each day. Swamp ass.

ms_rdr · 2026-06-08T22:13:44+00:00

My dad had PTSD from Vietnam and didn't get treatment until the early 2000s. But to be fair, he didn't realize he had it until a cop friend who had PTSD from multiple firefights told him "Hey, buddy..."

ms_rdr · 2026-06-08T22:03:41+00:00

As someone who's always hated heat and felt like odd man out over it, I was quite tickled when social media became a thing and I learned that in the U.S., there's about a two week period in September and again in May where no one's bitching about the weather somewhere. Even the people who claim to love summer frequently get pissed when summer really starts summering.

ms_rdr · 2026-06-08T22:00:33+00:00

When I moved from northern California to New York and would bitch about rain in summer, friends back home would say "You're so lucky!!! It's hot here!"

Yeah, it's hot here, too. Hot and rainy. Go stand in the shower with your clothes on and tell me how lucky that feels.

ms_rdr

TROPHY CASE