The Missiletoe Command Arcade & Slushy Bar

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Kricket

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It's probably a statement on how casually bizarre my life is that I'm not at all surprised or put off by a young child randomly running into my room, jumping on my bed, then promptly leaving again.

It's just... what it's like around here.

Welcome to my life. :)


Blah, I'm still fighting this cold. It goes away and then it come back. I haven't had it this bad in years.

Anyone want two little boys for a day? The Toddler is mostly potty trained. :) I need to stay in bed, but that's not really an option right now.
 

Andelana

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I categorized Smolder Ember as contemporary fantasy because it takes place in modern times, just not in the city. Most of it is located in the Midwest and the Rockies. Could that be considered rural?

Oooh, there's a proper name for it! Yes. Contemporary fantasy is definitely right. Yay! Now... why did I never know about this category before? Must go to Amazon...

And most of mine takes place in the midwest, too. Michigan :)
 

jallenecs

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Back from the hospital. Mother tolerated the procedure well. They found significant blockages around her heart, but she's a terrible candidate for bypass surgery, so they're going to try and treat it with medications.

She's very confused, and she's still pretty miserable. But she's alive another day, so I count this morning a win.
 

Reservoir Angel

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Welcome to my life. :)
Not quite. The children of your scenario belong to you. The children in mine are not my children, they are just some children.

Blah, I'm still fighting this cold. It goes away and then it come back. I haven't had it this bad in years.

Anyone want two little boys for a day? The Toddler is mostly potty trained. :) I need to stay in bed, but that's not really an option right now.
I'll pass, thanks.
 

LadyV

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Does the rural element act as a character like a city would in UF? If not, I'd just call it contemporary fantasy and be good with it.
I really don't think it does. It just the setting mostly. Now for my UF, some of the action takes place in or around London landmarks, which play a more significant role in the story.

Oooh, there's a proper name for it! Yes. Contemporary fantasy is definitely right. Yay! Now... why did I never know about this category before? Must go to Amazon...

And most of mine takes place in the midwest, too. Michigan :)
Well, my MC visits a truck stop somewhere in Nebraska and eventually makes his way to Colorado.
 
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slcboston

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A foot of snow in four hours, and my school didn't even get a snowday out of it. Stupid college...

I feel your pain. We *never* close, in part because the entire student body (more or less) lives on campus.

The *faculty*, on the other hand, is a different story. But we do not count.
 

amergina

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I feel your pain. We *never* close, in part because the entire student body (more or less) lives on campus.

The *faculty*, on the other hand, is a different story. But we do not count.

Learn to cross country ski? :D
 

Raventongue

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*storms into the room*

HUUUUURRRAAAAAARRRGGGGGHHHH!

*pulls out large blunt object, begins breaking things*

*stops only when she breaks something electrical and gets zapped/thrown across the room/spontaneously given a different accent than before*

*pulls self off the floor visibly electrified and foaming at the mouth, storms off to go box with Cthulu*

It's been that kind of day.
 
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I feel your pain. We *never* close, in part because the entire student body (more or less) lives on campus.

The *faculty*, on the other hand, is a different story. But we do not count.

Yeah, same here. They cancelled classes before 9:30, but otherwise normal school day.



In other dumb college-related news, finally found a roommate for next year; university web system decided to go down halfway through my housing registration. I hope they get it back up in the next two-and-a-half hours, 'cause that's the deadline for normal renewal.
 

Raventongue

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Hi folks :)

So, I have backread.

:Hug2:, 10s. You're not doomed, you're knocking them dead like good writing ought to do.

:Hug2:, Junely.

Wish I hadn't missed the WWII discussion.

I'm gonna hang out here for another 20 minutes or so, and then I'm going to go home to re-read some favourite books and munch baked goods. I can see why this program only runs on weekdays and am beginning to doubt whether the two more weeks of all-day... therapy stuff... I will have to go through to get into this program is going to be worth it. TGIFingF, yo.

I'm sure by Monday I'll be all nicely brainwashed and optimistic again, but today I am bitter that she has been intentionally pushing my buttons all week, telling me nothing, and only gave me a sliver of information after I finally broke down into an emotional mess which I am now told is what they've been waiting for. Great.
 
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No, it wasn't. Not on the face of it.

Had the carrier groups been there, we'd have been set back and it would have taken us far longer to recover and fight, giving the Japanese time to secure more territory, and be in a better position to negotiate a settlement. If they'd sunk the fleet in the harbor, it would have not only crippled the fleet but effectively closed the harbor and the base, too.

Least, that was the theory, and there are some good indications it was fairly sound thinking based on observations about a seriously isolationist US. Remember, most of the populace did not want to fight, and we had to be dragged kicking and screaming into the war. Even so, Japan had to know we wouldn't sit idly by forever. Better to cripple us early, and deal with the US on a protracted but predictable timeline, than be wondering about where/when the US would get involved.

Especially with Japanese aims in the Philippines.

Going ahead with the attack when the carrier groups were not in the harbor was the bad call, but the decision to attack Pearl was a necessary and inevitable one.



Well, with hindsight bias it seems pretty dumb, but it actually makes a lot of sense, as Bos says. We were totally unprepared for the attack, and if they'd met all their goals we would have been in deep shit, even with our superior industrial base. Even assuming a three-month period for putting out a serviceable ship(which is drastically over-estimating the navy yard to my knowledge), that's still a lot of time when we don't have a significant fleet. They can raid the shit out of our remaining naval outposts. Plus, all ships are different, and even with a trained crew, it takes time to acclimate to a ship.
 

jallenecs

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Tangential to the WWII discussion:

My dad was 4F, thanks to the cerebral palsy, but was recruited out of Johns Hopkins to work as a civilian attache with the Navy during WWII. He never saw any action, or even got out of the country. He was working with Naval Intelligence as counter-espionage, which, according to him, SOUNDS a lot more glamorous than it actually was. Mostly he hung around the waterfront bars in Baltimore, and listened to sailors talk. He heard anything weird, he called it in to the Shore Patrol, and that was the end of his involvement. He never gave us too many details beyond that, and we didn't press. He said the cerebral palsy acted as the perfect disguise. Nobody would suspect a crippled man to be working for the government, right?

He said he saw a lot of drunks, saw a lot of bar fights, and heard a lot of stories during his tenure in Baltimore.

One of my favorite stories was from a guy here in our own area. Two valleys over is an place called Durbin. And, back then, they brought a whole new meaning to "backwoods." No electricity, no running water, they worked the land and hunted the woods and the farthest they ever traveled was the 20 miles to Catlettsburg for supplies.

(Okay, fair enough, our valley wasn't any better.)

Anyway, one of these boys got called up in the draft, and got sent out into the Pacific. He landed on this tiny little island in the middle of nowhere. He said he hadn't even gotten out of sight of the boat when he was accosted by two big Marines. They were brothers, from Burnaugh, when is the next valley south of Durbin. They recognized him right off and were thrilled to see him.

"You gotta come with us, John," they said. "We're going hunting."

"For what?"

"Snipers," said Brother One.

"Yeah, it's easy!" said Brother Two. "It's just like hunting squirrels back home!"

And Daddy's comment was always that, generally speaking, squirrels don't shoot back. But that's a story that's always stuck in my mind, and one of these days I'm going to use it in a story.
 

aliwood

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Anyway, one of these boys got called up in the draft, and got sent out into the Pacific. He landed on this tiny little island in the middle of nowhere. He said he hadn't even gotten out of sight of the boat when he was accosted by two big Marines. They were brothers, from Burnaugh, when is the next valley south of Durbin. They recognized him right off and were thrilled to see him.

My grandad was somewhere in Italy. He gets talking to some bloke in the mess and the chap asks him where he's from, tiny little village the guy has never heard of.

'It's near Leicester', explains my grandad.

Voice from behind him says,

'Who's that taking the name of my birthplace in vain?'

Turned out the guy lived around the corner from my grandad and they'd been in school together. They were in totally different regiments and coincidence had them eating the same rubbish in the same canteen.

The chap borrow some money off my grandad that day and when the war finished he took my granddad down the pub for a couple of rounds to say thank you as the money had helped him out in a game of cards.
 

jallenecs

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My grandad was somewhere in Italy. He gets talking to some bloke in the mess and the chap asks him where he's from, tiny little village the guy has never heard of.

'It's near Leicester', explains my grandad.

Voice from behind him says,

'Who's that taking the name of my birthplace in vain?'

Turned out the guy lived around the corner from my grandad and they'd been in school together. They were in totally different regiments and coincidence had them eating the same rubbish in the same canteen.

The chap borrow some money off my grandad that day and when the war finished he took my granddad down the pub for a couple of rounds to say thank you as the money had helped him out in a game of cards.

See, I love stories like this. Wars and geopolitics and all that, it all boils down to people, just people.

My cousin Jack used to tell me about how he had leave in the Army, and he had two choices: he could go to Heidelburg and get some lovin' from his German girlfriend, or he could go to Nuremberg and see history being made. He went to Nuremberg and watched the sentencing at the War Crimes trials.

One of my friends told how her dad and his best buddy were only a few weeks from shipping out to the Pacific, and they got a three day pass. They did the obvious thing that a couple of young bucks from Chicago would do: got blitzed and hired a couple of hookers. Two hookers, two boys, they switched back and forth for the entire weekend, having a hell of a party.

On the day that they were ship out, the base physician pulled the pair of them out of line and said, "You're not going. You both have syphilis." One of the hookers had been infected, and now all of them were infected. So the ship sailed without them, while they got in trouble for, well, getting syphilis.

Their boat was sunk with all hands. Getting the Syph saved their lives. How's that for weird?
 

jallenecs

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I got another one, from my mother this time. My mother is the baby of her family; her oldest sister was fifteen years older than her. At the time of the War, she was already married with children. Mother was 14, and was taking the train from Mt. Sterling to Ashland, to spend a few weeks with her sister, help her out with the baby and chores and such, because my aunt's husband was gone to war.

So Mom is this big, tall, gangling 14 year old girl, traveling alone on the train, and this soldier sits down beside her. He's young, too, not more than 19, and he's on his way back to base after a thirty day leave to see his family. They talked for a while, and he said, "I'm shipping out as soon as I get back to base. I have no girlfriend, nobody to write to me. Will you write to me?"

Mom agreed, got his address, and for the next two years, the two of them corresponded. There was nothing romantic about it, they were just friends and pen pals. But after the war, they lost track of one another, and she never heard from him again.

About three years ago, I was in church with Mother, and, during The Peace, she took my arm and led me to the back of the church, where an old couple were sitting. The man stood up and smiled at me. And Mom said, "Junie, this is Prentiss Rhymer. He was the boy on the train that day."

After all those years, he had just turned up in our church. He had kin in the area, and had retired here to be close to his family.
 

aliwood

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See, I love stories like this. Wars and geopolitics and all that, it all boils down to people, just people.

Their boat was sunk with all hands. Getting the Syph saved their lives. How's that for weird?

Yeah, exactly, people. and it is weird indeed.

My grandad (the same one) got his teeth shot out by a sniper in North Africa (my grandad wasn't in Italy at this point, just in case you're wondering how good that sniper was!)

The bullet went straight through right cheek, right hand teeth, left hand teeth, left cheek. His front teeth were perfectly fine. So they clean him up and stitch him back together and he gets to visit the army dentist (who is also the army doctor). There's only one option, so they pull all of his teeth out and give him a set of falsies.

According to my grandad, army issue false teeth come in three sizes, large, medium and small. He gets a set and my grandad says

'I can't get 'em out'

'Don't worry, give then a couple of days, you'll be fine.' He's told.

Fast forward to 1985, the top plate of my grandads false teeth breaks clean in two top to bottom.

My dad: Who's yer dentist dad?

My grandad: Ain't never needed one since the army.

I kid you not, he's wearing the same set he was fitted with in 1943!

So, the nice new dentist does one of those mouth cast things and sets him up with a nice new set.

A few days later he complains that they don't feel right? Dentist is very confused as they should fit perfectly. It turns out that they do, but my grandad is used to the army issue ones that rub in all the wrong places and pinch and generally make him grumble.

So the dentist gave up on modern medicine. He took a mould of my grandads original army issue set of teeth and gave him those. Problem solved and my grandad loved them.
 
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Back when my grampa ran sleep-away camp out in the boonies during the war, they had a fellow home on leave who had been a counselor at the camp and reasonably popular. He's been around for a few months now, and one day a car shows up. Two men in suits get out, and they come up to my grampa, and they show him a picture and wanna know if anyone's seen this fella around. And my grampa tells these men that no, nobody's seen this fella. They don't believe him, and they search around for awhile and then they leave having not found him. A day or so later he asks for some money and he disappears. The guys come back a few times, but never do find anything.

Government really doesn't like it when you disappear on leave.
 
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I got another one, from my mother this time. My mother is the baby of her family; her oldest sister was fifteen years older than her. At the time of the War, she was already married with children. Mother was 14, and was taking the train from Mt. Sterling to Ashland, to spend a few weeks with her sister, help her out with the baby and chores and such, because my aunt's husband was gone to war.

So Mom is this big, tall, gangling 14 year old girl, traveling alone on the train, and this soldier sits down beside her. He's young, too, not more than 19, and he's on his way back to base after a thirty day leave to see his family. They talked for a while, and he said, "I'm shipping out as soon as I get back to base. I have no girlfriend, nobody to write to me. Will you write to me?"

Mom agreed, got his address, and for the next two years, the two of them corresponded. There was nothing romantic about it, they were just friends and pen pals. But after the war, they lost track of one another, and she never heard from him again.

About three years ago, I was in church with Mother, and, during The Peace, she took my arm and led me to the back of the church, where an old couple were sitting. The man stood up and smiled at me. And Mom said, "Junie, this is Prentiss Rhymer. He was the boy on the train that day."

After all those years, he had just turned up in our church. He had kin in the area, and had retired here to be close to his family.



I read the first line of the second paragraph, and and all I could think was "Dixie Chicks!" Of course, the guy in the song died, and other small details, but apparently this single soldier asking some random girl to write to him was a pretty common happenstance?
 
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