Tell us what's happened to you recently (that's interesting)

Welcome to the club! 6 years ago I did the same thing. Feels good, doesn’t it?

A laudable goal! Though don’t be afraid to take a bit of time to relax before launching into a self-improvement program.

It’s tricky, I think. I am inclined towards laziness, so I will have to be careful.

Also, in the past when I’ve had a block of time away from work I start getting antsy after 3-4 days. I am not one to take on home improvement projects so I start needing something to do.

Anyway, when we retire we will sell the house and live in apartments. There won’t be much home improvement to do.

My mom just did that. Her dream for the last 20 years has been to live in “The City” - last year she sold her suburban condo and moved into a tiny apartment with an epic view in the heart of the city. And guess what! There’s a whole list of apartment-improvement projects she’s got in mind…

I live with one of those people. I will do what I’m told to do. I think for the first few years we want to be mobile, though, so I doubt we do much in the way of home improvement.

Mobile, like, in an RV?

Mobile, like, in apartment hopping. You can go month to month in some places, or get short-term leases.

We hope to live in Europe but the visa could be an issue. We can do 90 days on a tourist visa in the EU but then we have to go somewhere else. We could hop over to the UK then and do 90 there. I may end up working half-years back in St. Louis but that remains to be seen.

There are people who string together Air BNB stays and travel for months. If you can find Air BNBs for $50 per night that’s $1500 per month, which isn’t too bad. It’s hard to find them that cheap in major areas like Paris, but get a bit away and you can find them.

Here’s an apartment in the historic center of Florence for about $800 if we wanted to rent it for all of May this year.

https://www.airbnb.com/rooms/33306102?location=Florence%2C%20Italy&adults=2&check_in=2019-05-01&check_out=2019-05-31&guests=1&s=WB81EBIA

Seems a bit too good to be true, actually, but there seem to be bargains out there. I could spend a month in Florence. I could live there for a year. It’s a lovely place. I barely scratched the surface of the museums there.

Edit: Oops, not in Florence but somewhere else in Italy. Sometimes when you do searches they don’t take you where you think you are being taken.

That would stress me out to no end. But if it makes you happy, all the best!

The key is to not have much stuff.

My parents are doing this right now! I got the video tour but they haven’t made their way up to Michigan yet so I can see it in person. Fully expect that to happen this summer sometime, though. Or maybe I’ll join them for a week or two when they happen to go going through Yellowstone or the Grand Canyon.

What kind of gas mileage do they get in the RV?

I haven’t asked…I will next time we talk…but when they were browsing the RV options, most of them were a bit under 20 MPG. They weren’t looking at the really big ones, which as I understand it are closer to 10.

You probably don’t want to know. It would also vary based on what kind of RV it was, a 21’ or a class C 34’. But I think for the most part you can be safe in saying not very good. The old 21’ we had access to probably did no better than 10 mph.

This discussion brings back memories. My grandparents used to take my cousins on me on cross-country trips in the summer towing an Airstream trailer, stopping at KOA campgrounds on our scenic route from Louisiana to California. They’d get so outdone with us that we just wanted to read comic books rather than enjoy the site. But man, there ain’t nothing to see in Texas, and there is a whole hell of a lot of Texas.

Oh neat my Journey gets RV-esque gas mileage!

My father used to tow this 35’ long thing behind a Ford F350 dually (how is that spelled–meaning having 4 tires on the back instead of 2?).

Anyway, that thing used to get about 5 MPG at the best of times. I have no idea how big the gas tanks were, but I know it had side-saddle tanks, and he still had to stop all the time.

Got messaged for the first time in a while on OkCupid yesterday. Turns out to be a model-attractive Korean lady, who at least putatively is into videogames, board games, and other nerdy pursuits. Already skeptical that someone like that would be reaching out to a beardy fat nerd like me, but fuckit, worth a shot, right? She’s not super great with English but claims to be a recent immigrant, doesn’t fully or responsively answer some of my questions but I mean, English is tough right? Getting serious red flags when I notice a discrepancy between profile and something she said in messages about where an aunt lives, but she wants to do a video call and I figure that ought to solidly confirm or deny what’s going on. The lady on the call does appear to match the profile pic, but there’s no audio and it doesn’t seem like she’s reacting to me, and then she starts taking out her breasts (this while I am in a car with friends, and said so). I am like whoa, that is not normal. She asks if I’m alone, and no I am not and I just said so. So she says maybe when I get home. Get home, and am like “dude, let’s not get taking clothes off maybe 12 hours into this whole thing and frankly you are not convincing me you are who you say you are.” She brushes these things off and talks about how bored and horny she is and sorry her mic isn’t working. I decline multiple video calls she attempts and go to bed. She initiates contact again this morning and I just finally block her. Got a text threat over lunch claiming that they have my cock on video and telling me “don’t hang up the call” and I had better deal with them or they’ll post it to my Facebook. Obviously they have no such thing and I don’t give a shit what they post, I will just delete it if they bother, but. Yeah. That was definitely… interesting.

Yeah, that’s the thing. I thought a video call would be dispositive and it wasn’t. Maybe it has to specifically be FaceTime but, y’know, no Apple phone here.

The no audio thing, though? super fucking shady.

Holy shit. This whole online dating thing has some serious land mines. If I were to find myself single again (and I’m not catholic, but I’m crossing myself right now) I don’t know if I could do it.

There are other ways to meet people. Online dating is annoying.