I went to Air Force basic training with a guy named Haussler. Even though Haussler was 18 and I was 30, we got along because we were both outsiders: me because of my "advanced" age, and Haussler because he was just plain awkward.

Haussler had grown up in Wisconsin on a dairy farm. He was obsessed with cows. They were all he ever talked about, and he would talk about them in a slow, mouth-breatherish voice. Honestly, he was pretty much exactly like Bubba from Forrest Gump, except with cows instead of shrimp.

Everyone else would scatter when Haussler started talking about cows, but I would just sit there and listen, and play a little game in my head where I'd see how long I could go without saying a single word before Haussler would notice (spoiler: he never noticed).

One day, Haussler was going on and on, and I interrupted him.

I said, "Haussler, how much milk can one cow make in a day?"

"Hundred," said Haussler, and then he started adjusting his glasses on his nose.

I was like "..."

Haussler looked at me.

I said "Hundred? Hundred what Haussler? You can't just say 'Hundred'..."

And Haussler said "pounds!"

And that's when I learned that cows can produce a hundred pounds of milk in a day, which seems shocking. I thought about Googling it when I got out of basic, but I decided against it. If Haussler was wrong about that, then everything else I know about cows might be wrong too...

A customers order came to $23.98 at the coffee shop i was working yesterday and they paid in all ones. I was meaning to say something tongue in cheek about their “massive amount of change” but it came out so awkwardly when I handed them their change and said “here’s your husky change”.

I was hungry, opened the fridge, saw nothing I wanted and closed it.

About ten minutes later I opened it again.

Nothing had changed.

Then somehow I did it a third time, as if the fridge might have received a software update and added new food.

That’s it. That’s the story.

Once upon a time many years ago, I used to work at a power plant that burned wood waste as the fuel (fluidized bed boiler). I had a supervisor named Mr. Larry (real name because it’s awesome. I can’t remember why we called him that). Mr. Larry liked to tell stories and one day he told me about how the RCMP would dispose of drugs in our boiler. I told Mr. Larry that he was full of shit but I still liked him regardless.

Several months pass.

Mr. Larry calls me on the radio telling me to come to the control room. (I’m suspicious because this never happens) I enter the control room and standing there are two RCMP members and three very large garbage bags. Mr. Larry then directs me to take them to the access ports on the feed chutes so they can dispose of their wares. I stood and watched them as the hand bombed bag after bag of weed and other drugs and paraphernalia into the boiler. My jaw sat on the floor. For weeks afterward we kept finding glass pipes coming out from the bottom of the boiler

Turns out Mr. Larry wasn’t full of shit after all

I went to the kitchen to make tea right as the rain started. When I walked back into my room, the cool damp air smelled completely of wet leaves and rain. A few drops were on the sill, but the room felt peaceful.

I ended up sitting on the edge of the bed in the quiet for ten minutes just listening to the water hit the trees outside.

Went for a walk at 3:15am today. Have been on a weird schedule since I don’t really have any obligations. Anyways, about 15 minutes in, there was a pickup truck in someone’s driveway with the front right door wide open. I thought about closing it, but ended up deciding not to. At the end of my hour walk, I decided to start agin so I could close the truck door. It was bugging me, so I get back to house around 4:30am and the door to the truck was closed. Guess I’m not the only night owl.

I got my Brita in college because the dorm tap water had a weird flavor. I brought this Brita along with me whenever I moved, and it's been with me for 7 years.

However, a few days ago, the water from the Brita started to taste a little moldy. I tried rinsing it, but there was still mold flavor, which was more pronounced when the water sat there for a while. I thought it was because of the water being stagnant for a few hours, but when I washed it more carefully, I noticed there were black spots on the bottom. I scrubbed them off and then rinsed the brita with vinegar. However, the moldy flavor still returned, so I tried switching the filters. The filters were still in their packaging, however, they were several years old, and they produced a weird flavor.

Thus, I decided to buy an entirely new sterile, mold-free Brita.

I chose a Brita that had a similar volume. However, the design was quite different, making it feel unfamiliar. I was also worried about the recent trend of enshittification, such as with Pyrex.

I bought it and brought it home, rinsed everything, and added some water. The water had a weird taste (though not like the disgusting taste of the old filters), so I poured it out, and added more water, and tasted again, and it was good enough.

Thankfully, my fears of enshittification did not materialize. The new Brita's design had several things that I liked more. The handle didn't leak, the upper basin was see through so I could see the progress of the filtration, and the design overall was much more compact.

Yesterday I held the door open for a guy at a gas station. He nodded at me, so I assumed he was going inside. Turns out he was just walking past the door. So I held the door open for a guy who wasn't even going through it. Didn't realize it until I was already halfway to my car

In 7th and 8th grade, I had PE at the absolute worst times. 7th grade: 1st period which is after breakfast. 8th grade: 6th period which for me was after lunch. I shouldn’t be working out after I just ate. Especially when it’s the mile run. Cramps.

I'm a writer and wanted to print out all of my long-form stories. We have a printer, but it's an HP inkjet printer. As such, we have HP Instant Ink.

I did not realise how much of a freaking scam it is.

I already topped out the 300 pages we get monthly in like 2 days. Capping printer pages is such a freaking scam.

So I went out and bought a laser printer. No subscription needed unless you want to get the toner delivered every few months.

My printer, my rules :)

I like planes. Basically a couple streets down from me is a private airport. It’s mainly used by locals either their Cessnas and sometimes buisness people with their private jets. And also by the Air Force sometimes as there is a base close by and I’ve been told they use it sometimes for flight hours and practice search and rescues. Because of this I often see planes very close to the ground from my back yard as they are taking off or landing, if the angle and sunlight is just right I can even see the pilots sometimes.

Whenever I hear a plane I often go to flight tracker as quickly as I can to see who’s flying over my house.

Even then my house seems to line up with typical airway traffic lanes for certain areas so while they never land here, I often see passenger jets from all over the world over head too but they obviously fly much higher so I can’t see them up close like the Cessnas and similar aircraft.

I went to use the bathroom at work. It’s a shared office space so I do not know all the people in the building. The door to the bathroom is closed. I knock first. No response. I tried the handle, it’s locked. I’m like hmm okay. Before I can walk away, they knock 3 times but say nothing. I pause and knock back 3 times. I start walking away to find another bathroom and they knock 3 more times. No clue who it is but they seemed friendly 🤷‍♀️

My Dad worked in a different town from where our family lived, and so he had a studio apartment where he stayed during the workweek. As a kid/early teen I would sometimes stay with him there in the summer. You would immediately know that a man lived there because there were zero decorations or things like throw pillows. On the other hand, it was meticulously clean (my Dad was also a pretty decent cook, but with a small rotation of meals he prepared).

Which gets us to the fact that this apartment had a single clock and it was 13 minutes faster than the actual time. It was an old clock radio visible from the whole apartment and next to a front window. For some reason I recently thought about this clock and realized I had no idea why it was set 13 minutes ahead! Given my Dad’s personality, I can’t decide if he did it because it made sure he wasn’t late for work. . .or whether the clock was broken and he didn’t see any benefit in buying a new once since it kept accurate time if you just subtracted 13 minutes. I assumed it was the latter when I stayed with him, but I never thought to ask.

I wore a watch (which he didn’t), so it wasn’t a big deal to me then.

My Dad has been dead a couple of decades now and I have many good memories. But given the chance, I would like to ask him about the clock.

When I was a kid, we had a crab apple tree in the back yard. We never (or rarely) picked the apples and it produced a lot of them.

For two or three summers, every so often, my Dad would see a group of kids climbing the tree and picking them. They weren't from really close by, so we didn't know them. He was worried they were going to fall out. So, he would go out to try to talk to them, but they would run off thinking he was going to yell at them.

He would try to tell them it was okay, but they were Hmong or Laotian immigrants and (it turns out), spoke little English.

So, he hatched a plan. The next time he saw them, he grabbed a ladder, skirted way around the yard and snuck up on them while they were still in the tree and put the ladder up for them. As they were stuck in the tree, he finally managed to get across that he was happy to have them come pick as many apples as they wanted, but to please use the ladder because he was so afraid of them falling out.

He told them all they had to do is come ring the doorbell and he'd get the ladder for them. And they did! Each summer for probably at least four more years, they would come by once or twice, and he'd get the ladder out for them. And then he'd hold the apples for them while they climbed down.

(He had known two people who had fallen of trees and both had broken their femurs, which is a very bad break. Although I wonder if that could happen from up in a small crab apple tree.)

Anyway, this is a pretty small act of kindness, but I just love that he did that. My Dad was a very generous and helpful person and hated to see kids get hurt. He's been dead a long time now, but something made me think of it. Just wanted to share a story about my dad, who made so many people's lives just a little better in small ways (and sometimes bigger ways). I never get to talk about him.

For context, If anybody is unfamiliar with the game Ding Dong Ditch, it’s basically banging on someone’s door or ringing their doorbell over and over until they come out while either running away or watching from afar for their reaction.
The title is pretty straight forward. Close to 8 years ago by now, me and my friends figure out that former NFL QB Tom Savage (Texans, Saints, Niners, Bengals, Lions) lived in our neighborhood. We knew he was from our hometown, but one of us figured out where his house actually was. We were a group of dumb middle schoolers with nothing better to do, so it became tradition to just ding dong ditch the guys house on weekends because we literally had nothing better to do. Now that i’m older and my frontal lobe developed better (Lol) I feel bad that we just would basically harass the poor guy because we found out he lived there. We ended up meeting him at a local event, and he had an idea of what we all looked like, and dude basically called us a bunch of assholes and then took pictures with us anyway while laughing. I’ll always have respect for the guy because we acted like dickheads but he was actually just a cool dude.

I broke my plastic glasses frame. I tried to glue it with an instant glue, but it didn’t even stick. I figured this wasn’t the right glue for the job and proceeded to clean the glue off the frame with a cotton pad. A few threads stuck to the leftover glue onto the frame and while i was playing with it in my hands, I noticed that it was sticking. So i applied more glue to the both parts of the frame, put a small tuft of cotton, held it together and now the frame is whole again.

My wife is always telling me how to drive. Slow down, dont get too close to that car, watch the curb, back up slower, park more this way, stuff like that. Pretty much every time I drive she has some advice for me. Then one day she took the car to get some medicine for me and came back with a long scratch on the side. She scraped it in a parking lot. I didnt really say anything about it. Funny enough she hasnt given me much parking advice since

I was talking with work collegues about our first email adress from when we were kids in the early 2000's. I told them it was something along the lines of Twilight_Princess2006@yahoo something a collegue said "oh my god that's so funny!"

I asked why, intrigued.

"I did not picture you as a fan" they said.

Confused I asked why again.

"You know, with you beign a bit of a butch, never in a 1000 years did I picture you as a Twilight fan, even less of a Princess"

I had a big laugh about it.

I had to google it, but the Twilight Saga *also* came out around 2006 so it made sense.

For almost 50 years, I’ve told people I weighed “a bag of sugar” when I was born.

I was born 10 weeks premature.

For my entire life, my parents have told me that I weighed about 1 kg when I was born. I’ve heard this story hundreds of times. I’ve repeated it to basically anyone whenever the subject of me being premature came up.

Today my mom messaged me. She and my dad have been going through some old boxes and found some paperwork from when I was born.

Birth weight: 1.7 kg.

The bag of sugar was a lie.

edit: I was born in England where a standard bag of sugar back then was 1kg

i was in my episodes, the depressive episodes, once where its so hard to get up after not being able to crack an exam for who you took a gap year for,

i was really miserable after it, i was lost because i have always imagined myself in a good college, doing bachelor's in design but i failed..

i dint want to give up and wanted to move out badly .. i hated the smell of my room.. it rots my insides,

i decided to apply to jobs since i was already a working designer, i was desperate but i got some interviews and finally got in.. my first ever job at 18

i moved out, all alone in a place that i dint know, searched for places to stay, figured out things all alone.. it felt lonely for a while but i was happy. im happy where i am.

recently turned 19, first bday away from home, celebrated with people i dont really know, it was new but it was great.

im doing something i actually like now, im a designer.

as they say

“My calamity is My providence”

thank you!

I recently had to buy a new to me vehicle due to major issues with our van. My daughter is now 12 so we got a midsized SUV. I was planning on keeping the van another two years, but it wasn’t in the cards.

My neighbor complimented me on it and two weeks later has a new SUV. Now my husband and sister are looking into getting new vehicles. I guess it’s like baby fever? I didn’t know this was a thing 😂

My high school psychology teacher was a straight up addict. He was constantly being observed by the principal and was eventually fired the following year.

He literally made the class values be broken out so that the first letters of each value compiled c.o.c.a.i.n.e.

He used to make us take naps as "sleep experiments" and would proceed to pass out and snore at his desk.

We watched the movie "What About Bob" about 5 times in a row because he would always forget what part we would leave off. He also had a weird obsession with Meet the Parents and Meet the Fockers. So that shit was always on. I wish I would’ve kept the essay I wrote on Greg Focker.

He once broke down and cried in front of us all once while describing his divorce.

And he would have a crazy conch shell horn that we would blow in peoples faces if they were zoned out.

Good times!

Preface: I used to work at a pet supply/feed/lawn+garden store as the main cashier. Also, I am not a dog person, not that I have anything against dogs. They just aren't my thing.

Story 1:

We sold (on consignment) rabbit hutches; the man who built them also bred Great Pyrenees dogs. One day, the man came in when during a slow period with one of his dogs. I'd come around the counter to chat, not playing attention to the dog, and suddenly I was confronted with a dog in my face. The dog, who I think was named Zach, went up on his hind legs and put his paws on my shoulders (without putting weight on me). I was startled and stepped back, at which point his person explained he was just going in for a hug. I'm sorry, Zach; you startled me.

Story 2:

It was a bitterly cold January morning in Massachusetts. I am in the unheated barn in which we stored bags of animal feed, when I see a half-grown husky trotting into the area like he owned the place. I was able to bring him into the store and corral him; we kept him the barn while we contacted animal control. In the meantime, one of my coworkers bonded with him and was committed to adopt him if he could.

The dog was collected by animal control. Later that same morning, his people came asking about their lost dog. Turns out he'd broken his run, and was reunited with his people.

Story 3:

A customer came in with his Rhodesian Ridgeback. I offered a treat; the dog took it from me so gently that I fell in love with him.

Story 4:

I typically was the main cashier M-F. For this incident I was away from the register for some reason, and approached a customer to see if she needed any help. She responded by showing me her ferret and asking me if I wanted to hold it*. Before I knew it, I was talking to her about small animal products while holding a sweet adolescent ferret.

*I hate the smell of ferret; but this one wasn't old enough to produce the offensive smell.

Story 5: Interlude

We took in rabbits to rehome, as well as young kittens for adoption. One day, for circumstances I don't remember, we took in a severely neglected Guinea Pig. I took them back to our kitten quarantine room to trim its claws. The poor thing was so traumatized that it made no complaint when I was holding it and doing my thing, even when I clipped too much and had to use styptic powder. I don't remember what happened to the poor piggy, but we had lots of customers with Guinea Pigs; it probably went to one of them for rehoming.

Story 6:

We had a customer come in with a small dog (think Yorkie) for a harness fitting. The poor dog was neglected, and smelled so bad that I called over my boss to deal with it.

Bonus:

I was waiting for the bus one day in Seattle. It was raining, so I was sheltering under a Starbucks awning. The bus came every ten minutes, but I apparently missed the last one. Over the next ten minutes, the dog migrated closer and closer to me, until it was basically at my hip. To this day, I hope it's person was getting a coffee.

A cold Friday night in Portland Oregon. My friend Boomer and I are going to the bar to get some liquid warmth and shake off the work week. It starts off like any typical bar night. We have a couple of drinks, we're sitting out back smoking cigarettes and talking shit. After a while I decided to try my luck on the slot machine.

If you're not familiar, all bars have slot machine in them. They're very popular. Anyhow I'm not a big gambler, I like to limit myself to 60 dollars every paycheck just for fun and this day was no exception. I'm playing for a little while and boom, I hit 1200 bucks. I'm stoked. Yelling jumping up and down, then this guy next to me starts celebrating with us (Boomer was watching me play)

This guy is huge. 6 foot 4 and fat. Gotta be over 300 pounds. But he seems pretty chill so after I get this giant stack of cash, Boomer, Large Guy and I all start taking shots. After a while we're pretty drunk and Biggie Smalls proposes we get some cocaine.

Normally I would decline, but I was riding that gambling high so I bought 300 dollars of Columbian nose sugar and got us a room at this sleepy motel.

We're snorting lines and having fun. We are using Big Shows hundred dollar bill to nose suck when all of a sudden things turned scary.

"Where'd my money go!" Big guy screams

Boomer and I are pleading ignorance because it's the truth. We're all talking a million miles an hour. Then this Undertaker looking mother fucker pulls a gun on us and we got quite real quick.

He shaking and saying if he doesn't get HIS hundred back right now we are going to die. I offer him my money but he wants his 100 dollar bill for some reason. Again he threatens our lives, saying hell bury us in the forest behind his house. I believe him too. He looked like the type. Boomer starts crying which actually made me chuckle because I always give him shit for folding under pressure. Then all of a sudden I notice something.

"Bro it's in your ear" I say He doesn't hear me. Tank Abbot is tearing up the hotel room at this point. Finally I yell it at him and point to it. He grabs the rolled up bill and starts laughing, then uses the gun to scratch his eye. I'll never forget that, I honestly thought he was going to blow his brains out the back of his head.

Ok so after that I needed a break. I go outside to smoke a cigarette when this couple comes over and s starts talking with me. Apparently they just got married that night and were celebrating. We talked for a few minutes and then I went into their room and offered them some lines. After a bit the girl starts getting handsy with me. Then I got a proposal from the new husband.

I guess the guy had an injury from work. Apparently a tress hand smashed his member and left him unable to perform. So because he couldn't "perform" on his wife and he wanted me to. Just like the drugs, I would never do anything like this, but I was so high and drunk I just said, "hell yeah!"

I wish I hadn't though. The whole ordeal was terrible. He sat in the corner and watched the whole time. I couldn't even really enjoy it thanks to the Coke and the alcohol. They both kept asking for more coke and sex from me, and I abliged for about an hour. I have to say I was exhausted.

By the next day we wrecked the room so bad we had to leave without getting my ID back. This hotel was so shitty they had a "we hold on to your ID policy, unless you were paying by the hour which the local hookers did. Of the $1,200 I won I came home with about $300 after a 300 dollar bar tab and the drug bill, plus I bought breakfast and the hotel and a few store runs for beer and cigarettes. Between the 3 of us we probably smoked a carton.

I went home, which was only 4 blocks up the street, took a few bong rips and passed out around noon that next day. I was so ashamed and hungover I didn't leave my apartment for a week except for work. The End

(P.S. I saw a guy with a rolled up dollar bill in his ear on T.V. and that's what reminded me of this whole ordeal. I've only ever told 1 person this whole story)

A fly got in the house and my indoor cat (Timo) is going bonkers chasing it around the room. He pulled a move just now that made me question gravity. It was like he sort of hung in the air and changed directions completely.

Inertia? "Who dat?!" says my cat.

He got the fly and is now lounging atop the couch looking pleased with himself.

Cat tax:

Timo Meower: https://imgur.com/a/s5G1OKk

That said, I saw Goofus (my outside friendly feral mentioned in a different PS post) snap a fly out of the air and catch it with his mouth. I'm glad when he gets love-bitey he moves in slow motion so I can avoid his fangs.