Coconut Monkey Cornerclub

[BeardyHat]

I love modern world conveniences. I woke up and was in the mood for a fresh bagel, so I just logged into my PC and ordered half-a-dozen everything bagels and also a loaf of French bread, and 45 minutes later they were on my doorstep.

Of course it isn't without problems. I ordered Neufchatel and they sent me honey-walnut cream cheese instead, so then I had to make a grocery order because I'm just not going to eat that sweet cream cheese. Also, it's almost twice as expensive compared to driving to the bakery, but this time of day it would have been 45 minutes both ways (and it's only 3 miles away), and I'll easily spend a few extra dollars to avoid that.

Would love to do this more, but it's so expensive! We don't really even order food for delivery anymore, unless it's the Chinese place near us, as they have a $3 delivery.

But there's so many times I need like one thing from the store, but don't really want to go. Although the times I do end up going for just the one thing, I end up getting quite a bit anyway...

I'm on my way to pick up my wife, who was away for a week visiting one of our friends who moved to London a few months ago.

I had planned on getting Game Pass and playing through Starcraft 2: Legacy of the Void or at least make some decent progress in Baldur's Gate 3, but I didn't really feel like playing anything.

While it was kind of nice being able to set my own schedule and having a quiet apartment, it was also very lonely. I'm happy one of my friends was available to play games almost every day.

I now understand why my brother, who lives by himself, keeps himself so busy with social activities.

Are you me? My wife went out of town two or three times last year and all I really did was get drunk and watch TV. Though I still had to do all our daily routine stuff, so I was just as tired as I am usually...

And yeah, I miss her and am hella lonely when she's gone. Her going to Burning Man in like 2009 and being gone for a week, completely incommunicado is what sparked my proposal in the first place.

 

[neogunhero]

But there's so many times I need like one thing from the store, but don't really want to go. Although the times I do end up going for just the one thing, I end up getting quite a bit anyway...

I shop at Walmart the most as it’s the only grocery store in a 50 mile radius of me. Since that is the case, the place is absolutely packed most of the time, especially around 5pm on weekdays. I found that their pickup service is super helpful and doesn’t charge any unnecessary fees, apart from having a $35 order minimum else they tack on a $6.99 fee. Even if I only need a few things, I can think of a few more to push it over that order minimum. Saves me so much time, and you’re also able to sort your searches on the app from Price Low To High, often finding some alternatives that you didn’t know existed at the store. I can’t ever go back to not using some form of grocery pickup. When I visited my parents a few months back, I needed some things from Kroger but couldn’t bare the thought of going in during peak weekend hours, so I used their pickup service and got the same good service. Super helpful.

 

[ZedClampet]

I shop at Walmart the most as it’s the only grocery store in a 50 mile radius of me. Since that is the case, the place is absolutely packed most of the time, especially around 5pm on weekdays. I found that their pickup service is super helpful and doesn’t charge any unnecessary fees, apart from having a $35 order minimum else they tack on a $6.99 fee. Even if I only need a few things, I can think of a few more to push it over that order minimum. Saves me so much time, and you’re also able to sort your searches on the app from Price Low To High, often finding some alternatives that you didn’t know existed at the store. I can’t ever go back to not using some form of grocery pickup. When I visited my parents a few months back, I needed some things from Kroger but couldn’t bare the thought of going in during peak weekend hours, so I used their pickup service and got the same good service. Super helpful.

I'm too absent minded to use their pickup. I don't remember to go to the store

 

[Pifanjr]

I'm at our store usually 2 times a day. It's on the way to my kid's school, so I usually stop by on my way home in the morning and again after picking my kid up in the afternoon, then sometimes an extra time if my wife needs something or I forgot to get something. It's only 5 minutes by bike and even if I don't really feel like going I figure a bit of fresh air and movement can't hurt.

Are you me? My wife went out of town two or three times last year and all I really did was get drunk and watch TV. Though I still had to do all our daily routine stuff, so I was just as tired as I am usually...

And yeah, I miss her and am hella lonely when she's gone. Her going to Burning Man in like 2009 and being gone for a week, completely incommunicado is what sparked my proposal in the first place.

I was about twenty when I realised I didnt really have any close relationships. I was still living at home, but all my siblings had moved out and my parents mostly just left me alone. I hung out with my friends pretty regularly, but we mostly just played games and they had plenty of other friends to do that with. I felt like, if I moved out of my parents' house, I'd find myself just going through the motions of working, eating and sleeping without any particular goal, slowly losing contact with people as they move away and/or start their own families.

That's when I decided I wanted to try to get in to a relationship, or at least find someone I could have a deeper connection with. Which I luckily found pretty quickly.

But my vision of the future seems to have been pretty spot on. Most of my friends and family don't reach out to me, as they're all busy with their own lives. My mom still visits once a week, mostly to see my daughter but also to check up on me, and I have one friend who will occasionally message me to play a game online.

If I was living alone there's a good chance I would have become increasingly isolated.

 

[ZedClampet]

RE: Isolation and loneliness

I feel this very acutely sometimes. My wife works 10 to 12 hours a day, and when she isn't working, she sits on the couch and stares at her phone. If I try to say something to her, you can see she's frustrated that she has to stop looking at her phone, and then she barely listens. You can sense she just wants to get back to watching whatever she was watching.

I tried to reach out to my brother the actor, but he works all the time doing 2 or 3 shows a day. At one time I had a friend ask me to join their Friday DnD game, but my kids were still living here, and I didn't want to do it. My only connection with anyone other than my wife is chatting from time to time with my kids over Steam. I do have some friends, all of them are out of town, who I can message every now and then on Facebook, but that's about it. I'm doing volunteer work, but I haven't really met anyone who is more than an acquaintance.

Even my dad is busy with his new wife. He was supposed to contact me this week to go to lunch, and I haven't heard from him.

I keep reminding myself that at one point in my life I didn't need anyone and could have been perfectly happy being alone forever. But that's changed as I've gotten older, as the kids moved out, etc. But I'm trying hard to get back to that attitude.

 

[ZedClampet]

Every time I started to post, a little pop-up box interrupted me and asked if I needed help writing. I thought it was a new Windows thing, but it's actually something in Chrome, which I turned off. I tested it once by writing a sentence and asking it for help, and it just gave me my sentence word-for-word, so I'm not sure what it's supposed to be for. Maybe it's just checking grammar and punctuation.

 

[BeardyHat]

@ZedClampet @Pifanjr

Sorry to hear you guys are struggling; I know we have a male loneliness epidemic going on and I'm tempted to propose solutions, but I know that's not always welcome, needed or appropriate.

In my teens and 20's, I pretty much thought of myself as a loner. I spent most of my time playing videogames and have always been an introvert, preferring to be home and by myself to interacting with others; often bucking my friends off when they'd invite me to hang out or go to a party or something so I could instead stay home and play Everquest or WoW. This changed somewhere and now I consider myself a social butterfly; I won't go into details, as I'm wary it'll just sound like braggadocio; though I still am very much introverted.

My wife continually tells me she doesn't feel like she has any friends, everyone has drifted away (which is pretty much true) and she's the extrovert of the two of us. She says she feels bad that her best friends are me and all her siblings (she is one of ten, though one passed just in September), but I try to remind her that she's lucky to be so close with all of them and just because they're family, doesn't mean their obligated to be your friend. I try to talk to my Mom once a week and my sister and I text intermittently, but that's about it as far as that goes. I'm far closer with my in-laws and see them so much more often than I do my own family.

That said, I know I wasn't going to offer advice, but I can't help myself: Hobbies are great for it. Especially hobbies that force you to gather in a third place, like a hobby shop or a larger event like a tournament. I haven't met any friends through those venues, but it's not for lack of people, it's just that I haven't tried. But this all reminds me of an article I read the other day:

The secret world of hobbyists

unherd.com

I think men of ages past had more time for hobbies and it helped contribute to us as a species being generally less lonely;I can definitely vouch for the fact that having them really pushes my friend group together in the meat space way more often than if we didn't all have it.

 

[ZedClampet]

I was walking past my wife's office and she stopped me and said that she had just been informed by the software development team that the AI they had created could do a bank audit in 15 minutes. She said, "Now I can fire half the audit team!"

I knew she was joking, but I said, "Unless your software department is filled with other-worldly AI superstars, you're going to need those auditors to correct all the AI audits." She said she really only wanted to increase the efficiency of the auditors to the point that they could possibly take on more jobs without having to hire more people.

This is kind of a follow-up to an ancient post I made where she had said that they didn't know what to do with AI, but they didn't want to be the second ones to do it

 

[Pifanjr]

My wife came down with a bad cold after she came home. She's mostly been laying in bed with muscle cramps and a terrible cough.

It's been an adjustment going from being home alone for a week to taking care of my sick wife. Luckily our kid is still at my parents', I'm not sure how I would have coped if I had to take of both of them while working.

 

[ZedClampet]

My wife came down with a bad cold after she came home. She's mostly been laying in bed with muscle cramps and a terrible cough.

It's been an adjustment going from being home alone for a week to taking care of my sick wife. Luckily our kid is still at my parents', I'm not sure how I would have coped if I had to take of both of them while working.

Tell her you heard about a study on the radio that showed that people who did 100 percent of the housework recovered from colds 3 days faster than people who just rested in bed.

 

[neogunhero]

My wife came down with a bad cold after she came home. She's mostly been laying in bed with muscle cramps and a terrible cough.

It's been an adjustment going from being home alone for a week to taking care of my sick wife. Luckily our kid is still at my parents', I'm not sure how I would have coped if I had to take of both of them while working.

Hope she gets better soon. There has been something really nasty going around my town recently. Lots of people I know are getting very sick and having to stay in bed. One of my coworkers has been out for an entire week. I keep taking my vitamins and drinking lots of water hoping it will protect me, as well as keeping a bottle of sanitizer on my desk. As much as I enjoy being at home, when I'm forced to because I'm sick, it starts to drive me crazy after the first day or so.

 

[Frag Maniac]

I've never had COVID, but the last chest cold I had made me wonder. It came with the worst cough I've ever had and I now know what it means when people say your windpipe can "rattle" from a bad cough.

It's something I wouldn't wish on anyone, so I hope your wife recovers soon and you can all be at home together again without such problems.

 

[neogunhero]

Do you guys ever get nostalgic over a certain smell? Or smell something that immediately takes you back to a specific point in time?

I feel I’m more sensitive to this than others, at least to those I know. At least once a month I will get a whiff of something random, and immediately my mind races to some point in my past where I may have smelt that.

I think it’s common for a lot of people, especially when it comes to food, but in my case it happens a lot with random different scents. Just today as I was locking the office up I smelt something that took me back to living with my friend and his mom right after graduating high school. And another time I remember thinking back to my grandpas old house. Maybe I’m just very familiar with different house smells lol.

 

[ZedClampet]

bitdefender is a little too hysterical about security for me. It's constantly giving me messages I have to ignore, and then it started blocking, without asking for consent, my automated pulls from github and huggingface. It wasted two hours of processing time because it wouldn't let my PC have the data it kept requesting. So, anyway, I just deleted it. I only downloaded it to test it on something, anyway.

 

[Pifanjr]

Do you guys ever get nostalgic over a certain smell? Or smell something that immediately takes you back to a specific point in time?

I feel I’m more sensitive to this than others, at least to those I know. At least once a month I will get a whiff of something random, and immediately my mind races to some point in my past where I may have smelt that.

I think it’s common for a lot of people, especially when it comes to food, but in my case it happens a lot with random different scents. Just today as I was locking the office up I smelt something that took me back to living with my friend and his mom right after graduating high school. And another time I remember thinking back to my grandpas old house. Maybe I’m just very familiar with different house smells lol.

They do say that smell is the strongest trigger for memory.

Hope she gets better soon.

I hope your wife recovers soon and you can all be at home together again without such problems.

Thank you. It seems she's at least not getting worse, so she's probably through the worst of it. I just hope I can avoid catching it as bad as she has

 

[February's Ghost]

Do you guys ever get nostalgic over a certain smell? Or smell something that immediately takes you back to a specific point in time?

I feel I’m more sensitive to this than others, at least to those I know. At least once a month I will get a whiff of something random, and immediately my mind races to some point in my past where I may have smelt that.

I think it’s common for a lot of people, especially when it comes to food, but in my case it happens a lot with random different scents. Just today as I was locking the office up I smelt something that took me back to living with my friend and his mom right after graduating high school. And another time I remember thinking back to my grandpas old house. Maybe I’m just very familiar with different house smells

I think we all do. Scent has one the strongest trigger to memory.

For me one of my strongest is the smell of a dry, powderlike deodorant for women. I think something like Secret. Always instantly takes me back to making out with my girlfriend in my mom's car at a drive in movie because that's what she smelled like.

Also, a lot of places that serve cheap, greasy fast food like burgers and hot dogs (a concession stand at a ballgame for instance) will take me back to sitting at a fireplace near the concession stand at the park I used to ski at when I was kid.

 

[ZedClampet]

Do you guys ever get nostalgic over a certain smell? Or smell something that immediately takes you back to a specific point in time?

One day in my thirties, I was out of town on a business trip, and I had forgotten some basic things and went to a convenience store next to the hotel. One thing I wanted was mouthwash. They only had one brand, Scope, which I didn't remember ever having tried before. I figured that was better than nothing and bought it. That night I opened the bottle, put some in my mouth and was instantly transported to another time.

When I was about 10-years-old, I went to boarding basketball camp at a university out of town. My mother packed up all this stuff for me. I didn't really use mouthwash when I brushed my teeth (I think it's standard these days), but she had given me a bottle of Scope mouthwash. Determined to be adult-like while away from home, I used the mouthwash twice a day that week.

Suddenly I was remembering even the smallest details of that week. Other smells and tastes have brought back some memories or reminded me of something, but this was, for just a few moments, like I was actually back in that old dormitory at basketball camp. It was an amazing experience that I haven't since duplicated.

I bet that if someone walked past me wearing the perfume my first love wore that I would have a reaction, but that would mostly be of fear because she was a psychopathic sadist who would have been a serial killer if only she'd been born a male. You think I'm joking. I kind of am, but there was no doubt she was a genuine psychopathic sadist. I put up with it because she was also very good at something.

 

[Zloth]

Tell her you heard about a study on the radio that showed that people who did 100 percent of the housework recovered from colds 3 days faster than people who just rested in bed.

A.R.T. - Active Recouperation Technique!

View: https://youtu.be/52EEzBNn48g?si=yMVql5rtQlBoAT19&t=22

 

[Frag Maniac]

Do you guys ever get nostalgic over a certain smell? Or smell something that immediately takes you back to a specific point in time?

That's kind of an uneasy question for me right now, as I just finished watching the movie Heretic. I'll just say the "pie" is a lie.

 

[BeardyHat]

What a coincidence! We have sickness going through our house right now too. I was sick last week and still have some congestion and drainage; been to the point where I'm still waking-up every morning with a sore throat and then hacking of phlegm.

My oldest just came home early from school yesterday, as they were vomiting. After getting home, they did nothing but vomit until about 12pm, when they finally dried out and managed to go to sleep. I'm disappointed, as they were supposed to go on the once a year field trip today and they got to pick which group to be in, because they're the top student in the class. They'd been looking forward to it all week and now won't be able to go.

But Mom & I promised we'd take them and a friend on some other special thing in the future.

Do you guys ever get nostalgic over a certain smell? Or smell something that immediately takes you back to a specific point in time?

I feel I’m more sensitive to this than others, at least to those I know. At least once a month I will get a whiff of something random, and immediately my mind races to some point in my past where I may have smelt that.

I think it’s common for a lot of people, especially when it comes to food, but in my case it happens a lot with random different scents. Just today as I was locking the office up I smelt something that took me back to living with my friend and his mom right after graduating high school. And another time I remember thinking back to my grandpas old house. Maybe I’m just very familiar with different house smells lol.

Often.

Whenever I smell diesel exhaust, I get a whiff of nostalgia for the airport. There's definitely other scents, though I'm hard pressed to name any at the immediate moment.

 

[February's Ghost]

Whenever I smell diesel exhaust, I get a whiff of nostalgia for the airport. There's definitely other scents, though I'm hard pressed to name any at the immediate moment.

Ah, diesel takes me back to my company's motor pool from when I was in the army.

 

[ZedClampet]

Ah, diesel takes me back to my company's motor pool from when I was in the army.

My mother would have wanted me to tell you to stop huffing fuel.

 

[February's Ghost]

My mother would have wanted me to tell you to stop huffing fuel.

It was pretty much required. I was communications and my radio shop was attached to the motor pool's main garage.

 

[Kaamos_Llama]

About 20 years ago I knew an old guy who was a gardener. He was 6'4 and built, from Essex south of London and he sounded like a character from a Guy Ritchie film, real character. He told me when he was learning his trade as a kid his manager at his first job was an old Major from the army, apparently back in the day on the army base when they were trying to control the weeds around the buildings and on the driveways on the base they didnt bother buying any weedkiller, because they had a ton of diesel on hand and not a lot to do with it all. 'Put down a bit of diesel nothing ever grows there again, marvellous stuff'.

He was also hilariously really scared of any animal bigger than him, like horses. Told me why. Apparently he went to Spain on holiday and took a horse ride, but the horse got a bit panicky. 'So. I punched it in the side of the 'ed'.

 

[Frag Maniac]

Just saw one of these on a car in front of me today while waiting in line to go through the tunnel wash. It cracked me up, Mandalorian is a great show, and a needed standout success for Disney with so many of their Star Wars films not doing so well. I keep thinking it's no doubt because Jon Favreau had more to do with it than Kathleen Kennedy.