Emchap's Shit from the Internet 09/11/19 🍠
I am halfway through my first week back in Atlanta, where I am spending the rest of September. (Remote work allows you to do fun/obnoxious things like go live in your coworkers's house for three weeks while she decamps to yours.) As I mention approximately all the time my relationship with my hometown is complicated, sometimes for Atlanta-related reasons and sometimes for hometown-related reasons. But I've been away for 3 1/2 years at this point and I wanted to see what building an adult relationship to the city might look like.
So, I've been trying to proactively do stuff I would choose to do in a new city, rather than defaulting to my old activities. There's been a lot of walking around the west side of town and drinking coffee and taking the truly mediocre trains that exist here. I spent last night at a brewery listening to cicadas and getting chewed all to hell by mosquitoes.
I'm doing my first old-life activity tonight (attending a literary event I used to go to with some regularity), and I am sure it will be enjoyable, but there is a partial chance that I'll have a panic attack and puke on my own shoes, so, we'll see how it shakes out. (My therapist very politely pointed out that it's fine if that happens, seeing as I don't live here anymore.)
I was texting with a similarly-mobile friend last night, and stumbled on the fact that I am equally saddened that there due to the constraints of space and time I cannot do all the activities available in the world all at once, and that I cannot put all the people I love (who live all over the world at this point) into my pocket and cart them around with me. My desire to chase activities is at odds with my desire to see the people I love, and my desire to do both is at odds with my desire to own a home (which one also cannot put in one's pocket). It's the first-worldiest problem, but one that has been top of mind for me as I've come down here to get eaten by mosquitoes and drink beer and eat sad desk salads.
Who wants to join my merry roving remove work coliving space? It'll be a blast.
Shit to read
Gynecology has a truly horrific track record.
Not to bum people out but this definitely could have been written by me at various points.
The Caroline Calloway article finally dropped!!!!! Do you feel like it's a poignant explanation of being the not-hot friend (sup)? Do you feel like Natalie comes off very badly in the piece? Do you feel like they're in cahoots and a third player is going to show up?
The Wikipedia summary for this game that is nominally a dating sim and descends into horror is COMPLETELY BANANAS.
TSA Pre-Check is great and fundamentally immoral.
Obviously yes I am obsessed with this piece about the monetization of the Jeremy Renner app.
As someone who has almost exclusively dated folks she met online (especially post-college), I found this piece on the death of offline dating really spot-on.
The economics of care work are horrifying.
Shit to eat
After hanging out with your parent, Lyft over to a coworker's place in a new part of town later than you meant to.
Dump all your things and scurry out the door to the Kroger that you were informed is nearby.
Mistakenly get one of the big carts with a wonky wheel, and lug it around with you the whole time in shame.
Buy a cucumber, 3 for $1 corn, a red onion, a can of black beans, and feta. Buy other things too, but those won't go in the salad. Look for cilantro and fail to find it.
When you're home, peel and soak the red onion in ice water, and drain and rinse the beans.
Chop up the cucumber into little chunks and put them in a bowl. Add the drained beans.
De-kernel the corn, and toss those in there.
Take half the red onion, chop it up, and in it goes. The other half will languish probably until it gets gross.
Dump in a container of feta (the original recipe says 2 Tbsp because the original recipe is dumb) and stir at around.
Outside of the bowl, mix together olive oil, garlic salt, and pepper. Look for apple cider vinegar, fail to find it, give up, and squeeze a small orange in there instead.
Stir it up and toss everything together.
Eat at your desk for lunch the rest of the week, feeling vaguely virtuous.
Adapted from Budget Bytes.
Shit to watch
The new Dark Crystal series on Netflix, it's so good and weird?
Shit to buy
Apple cider vinegar, if you're me.
Cake, if you're everyone else.