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Oh yeah, I've seen that house on American Castles! They've been talking about starting those sleepovers for years now. I actually can't believe they haven't started having them yet!

 

Can you imagine going up there and sitting around with some friends telling ghost stories all night? I'm really easily scared by anything even vaguely spooky, and should never do anything like that...but it just sounds like so much fun!

Ever since a neighbor of my mom's told her that their street is built on the site of an old Civil War hospital (which, to be fair, is very probable given the location) and that the whole street/neighborhood is haunted, my mom has been afraid of ghosts. She even did a sage burning ritual because the house was giving her the willies. For a while she and my dad were also coming to me with all these bizarre stories about the spirit of their dead cat still hanging around and comforting them when they had nightmares and stuff (but I assume they wanted to believe Midge was haunting them because they were grieving for her).

 

Anyway, so because I'm a gigantic PITA, now whenever my mom tells me about a weird noise or anything else strange about the house, I tell her that it's probably ghosts (and am completely straight faced about it. And sometimes go into detail about who I think the ghosts are and how they feel). And she completely believes me. LOL. I mean, the house *does* have a weird vibe, and the area does have a lot of history. So I guess out of all the places that could theoretically be haunted, where they live is as likely as any! But I mostly tell my mom those ghost stories about the house because she gets all freaked out. Who could resist? :P

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I'd be okay in that kind of house as long as I wasn't alone. * I can get weirdly paranoid sometimes when I'm alone in a house now, and I know that no one else is going to be home for a while. I've been married too long I guess... Also I was in Gainesville, FL during the Danny Rolling murder spree scare. (Our apartment was ground floor about 1/2 a mile away from one of the murder sites). I know it's weird, but quite a few people got sort of messed up because of that. Hubby, too. He can't sleep well if he thinks the door locks haven't been checked, and we live in a really safe neighborhood. We both trace it back to that time.

 

I still remember us sleeping (fitfully and/or in shifts) on a mattress on the floor in the middle of the apartment, the other mattress across the sliding glass door, and a loaded shotgun (Hubby duck hunted, so fortunately we had one, because guns were in short supply due to everyone buying them) beside us on the floor. Since one of the victims was a rather built guy, no one felt safe. The whole town was scared shitless, and no one would tell us anything: not how he was getting in, not whether they had a suspect or any clues, not if there was a connection between the victims, nothing.

 

We stayed, but there were many parents who just came and got their kids out of the college and took them home.

 

* I'm not worried about ghosts. The prospect of crazy people however...

We lived with a ghost for a couple of years in Germany.  Nice old gentleman, except he liked to knock over our candlesticks.  Until we hung up our 2006 World Cup flag.  He didn't like where we put it, so he knocked a display cabinet off the wall and threw it six feet across the room, shattering everything inside.  He also smashed all the crystal on my sideboard.  Took ages to clean up.

 

Anyway, a few nights later, we were talking about putting the flag back up.  That night (I slept through this), he woke up my husband and explained that his family portrait had hung on that wall where we put the flag.  If we agreed not to put anything else on that wall, he would leave us alone.  My husband agreed.

 

We never put anything else on that wall.  And nothing strange ever happened again.

 

100% true story.  Most of Germany is haunted.  Every time we told a German friend our story, they believed us -- and had one for us.  Almost everyone has one.

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We lived with a ghost for a couple of years in Germany.  Nice old gentleman, except he liked to knock over our candlesticks.  Until we hung up our 2006 World Cup flag.  He didn't like where we put it, so he knocked a display cabinet off the wall and threw it six feet across the room, shattering everything inside.  He also smashed all the crystal on my sideboard.  Took ages to clean up.

 

How dispiriting is it that even after death, this person was still so petty that he destroyed your stuff and threw furniture around because of a disagreement over where to hang a World Cup flag. Worst roommate ever.

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With a cold only one thing works for me... Zinc. Doesn't matter if it's the generic stuff or the Cold-eez, it  cuts my cold time down from the usual 1 1/2 - 2 weeks my colds used to take to 3 or 4 days, with the last one of those days generally functioning close to normal (I can't generally say that always with a cold). Generally on zinc I have one really bad day - that's it. And it usually only takes about 3-4 lozenges a day for two days for it to work with maybe one or two the next day just to be sure. Hubby's somewhat skeptical of the homeopathic stuff - and for many other things I can be at times, too - and he always jokes that it's a "placebo effect." Me, I say if it is, who the hell cares?! My cold is gone in 3 days... whatever works.

 

So my recommendation - Zinc... within the first day (best) or two of the symptoms. I generally have 3 lozenges around (a one day dose), so in case symptoms appear, I've got 'em. They are essential in my luggage on the Christmas holidays going to see the nieces and nephews. Just don't take 'em on an empty stomach and follow the directions (i.e suck on them, don't chew them, and don't drink for like 15 minutes after sucking them - to give the zinc time to work.) for maximum effect. It's worked every time for me, and my last cold was a doozy: still gone in 4 days.

New to this thread, but long time MBTV and TWoPer!

 

First off, from page one: yes ,7kstar  it's all your fault!

 

My husband Mick just said to me tonight, "How many shows would have held our interest for 10 seasons?" He's right, only "Supernatural" can do that. "Breaking Bad" ended at just the right time, and "Mad Men" has gone on too long, but "Supernatural" has held our loyalty for the  entire run!

 

It's fun reading about all of you buying your first house! Good God we're on our third, our "downsized now the kids are gone house", but we're old! Er...late 50's...not old at all! Right!?

What is going on with you guys and these cold cures?! The answer is CHICKEN. SOUP. Obviously. (Also, vodka and OJ).

 

Househunting sucks. Or, maybe it depends on the location whether or not it sucks, but it sucks around here. Everything is so expensive, it's disheartening. Willie Loman's mortgage'o'doom in Death of a Salesman put the scare into me back when I was a teenager, so personally, I've always assumed I'd never buy property. But atm, mortgages for a 1br around here are around the same price (or even lower) than rent for a comparable place, and there's a local program that helps people with the down payment, so I've been considering it lately (and am trying to work two jobs right now to pay down debt and get together money to maaaaaaaaybe buy a place). But Idk, it's such a daunting commitment, because even for the most modest place you can get, the amount of money you need to save/borrow is so big.

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Willie Loman's mortgage'o'doom in Death of a Salesman put the scare into me back when I was a teenager...

 

We read that in high school as well. I do not think it should be required reading for a teenager. It is just not something most teenagers would appreciate or get anything from except annoyance - at least that's how I felt when reading it. The whole time, I was like "Why is this guy doing these things? Is he an idiot?" So frustrating. We also read 1984 the same year, and that was another frustrating book for me, where any message was lost, because I just kept asking "Why are these people doing these things? It makes no sense to me. No one is happy here, so why keep doing it... so stupid." Hee - I'm sort of a control freak with my reading I guess. If the things people do don't make sense to me, I just can't get past that part. Pulitzer prizes and other awards - nope, meant nothing to teenaged me... it had to make sense to me or pffft. Heh - teenaged me was a contradiction: simultaneously arrogant in some things and totally self-conscious in others.

We read that in high school as well. I do not think it should be required reading for a teenager. It is just not something most teenagers would appreciate or get anything from except annoyance - at least that's how I felt when reading it. The whole time, I was like "Why is this guy doing these things? Is he an idiot?" So frustrating. We also read 1984 the same year, and that was another frustrating book for me, where any message was lost, because I just kept asking "Why are these people doing these things? It makes no sense to me. No one is happy here, so why keep doing it... so stupid." Hee - I'm sort of a control freak with my reading I guess. If the things people do don't make sense to me, I just can't get past that part. Pulitzer prizes and other awards - nope, meant nothing to teenaged me... it had to make sense to me or pffft. Heh - teenaged me was a contradiction: simultaneously arrogant in some things and totally self-conscious in others.

 

Death of a Salesman terrified me -- worse than any horror movie! Willy Loman is so much like a more functional version of my father, it hit way too close to home. I only saw it once, when I was sixteen. But it got burned into my memory, lol.

 

LOL my tastes were maybe the opposite to yours at that age. My main problem with 1984 was that I thought Winston was unrealistically uppity and self-confident :P.

 

My favorite out of the books/plays that we studied in school was Streetcar Named Desire. Though I also really loved Richard III. Hmmm thinking about it now, you could probably draw a direct line from Blanche DuBois in Streetcar to Norma Bates in Bates Motel, and from Richard III to Lex Luthor in Smallville. I guess you just are who you are and like what you like, huh?! Weird.

 

The worst was All the Pretty Horses. I just can't deal with Cormac McCarthy, all the macho is just bewildering to me.

The worst was All the Pretty Horses. I just can't deal with Cormac McCarthy, all the macho is just bewildering to me.

 

The only Corman McCarthy book I look back on fondly is The Road. I know, it's sometimes the most awful book and I had to put it down at times, but I couldn't just not finish it. And, it had me thinking for days and days. All The Pretty Horses did absolutely nothing for me though. I kept falling asleep reading it, so it took me weeks to get through it and when I was done I was really annoyed I wasted all that time. Blech!

 

I loved 1984! I was only 14 when I read it the first time, though, wonder if I would still like it today? I recently reread I, Robot and it didn't stand up all that well for me. It was fine, I guess, but I remember being really excited about it when I read it the first time...but then again, I was also 14 when I read that one too. Maybe that's the lesson, 14-year-old me was just too sheltered and very easily impressed. ;)

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I feel for you on the house/mortgage thing rue721.  It is such a big step, even without the prior reading.

 

The conversation about high school reading has made me wrack my brain to see if I remember anything of what I studied (high school was a very long time ago).  I know we did Shakespeare (of course~Romeo and Juliette & Macbeth) but I struggled to remember the novels.  Finally came up with some of them, I don't remember which year we did what, but I know we did Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury, The Stone Angel by Margaret Lawrence and The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton.  The only one I have any real memories of is The Outsiders. The rest either bored or annoyed me. Or both.

 

Oddly enough, I remember  novels we studied in Grade 7 and 8 much better, W.O. Mitchell's Who Has Seen the Wind and A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle.   Mind, I'd read A Wrinkle in Time several years before we took it in school (along with the three other titles in that series) so I was inclined to like/remember it.  And I guess Who Has Seen the Wind just resonated with me, even though it was set in the 30's and thus long, long before my time.  Life moves slowly in small prairie towns and I recognized the places and people he described.

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My favorite out of the books/plays that we studied in school was Streetcar Named Desire. Though I also really loved Richard III. Hmmm thinking about it now, you could probably draw a direct line from Blanche DuBois in Streetcar to Norma Bates in Bates Motel, and from Richard III to Lex Luthor in Smallville. I guess you just are who you are and like what you like, huh?! Weird.

 

Interesting - I didn't read any of those in high school. In addition to Death... and 1984, we read multiple Dickens and Shakespeare * - one of each each year, Camus (The Stranger), Old Man and the Sea (another book teenaged me did not appreciate), Jane Austin (Pride and Prejudice, the non-Zombie version), Lost Horizon (as a freshman... I was bored to tears), parts of the Grapes of Wrath (thank Karma for me we didn't have to read the entire thing), House of the Seven Gables, A Separate Peace, Silas Marner, some of the Canterbury Tales, Beowolf, three of the stories of one of the King Arthur treatments - I don't remember the anthology's name now, but the Tale of Gareth and Lynette was my favorite, Johnny Got His Gun, and some stories from The Bible **... and others that I am forgetting now... often depressing stuff. In general, I enjoyed the stuff we read in Junior High - stuff like The Outsiders and The Witch of Blackbird Pond - much more.

 

* My favorite was Julius Caesar. I related to and felt most sorry for Brutus - heh.

* I went to public school, but we had The Bible as literature in our sophomore year. Kind of weird, since in some ways our high school was kind of liberal while also not in others. For example, classes were on a strict schedule and no leaving the grounds, but at the same time, the students were allowed to smoke in the courtyard, no questions asked. I was a teen at a weird time (the late 70's early 80's).

 

Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury

 

I haven't read this one (I read Dandelion Wine, Something Wicked This way Comes,  and The Martian Chronicles), but in general I enjoy Ray Bradbury, especially his short stories, some of which I love and can evoke more feeling in me in a few pages than whole novels of other people's writing. Speaking of rue721's being terrified by Death of a Salesman, there was one Ray Bradbury short story - "The Small Assassin" - that creeped me out so bad (but in a good way) and likely is part of my "creepy little children" thing I have. Sadly we didn't cover Ray Bradbury in school though, so I read that on my own.

AwesomO4000  sounds like you and I are from the same era.  My experience was a little different though, as I was at a all-girls Catholic high school for grades 9-11.  The Bible was just part of well, everything, but smoking not so much ;D I switched to a public school for Grade 12 and things were different.  Officially students weren't allowed to smoke on campus, but there was a smoking area and the staff just avoided it (don't ask, don't tell I guess).  And the Bible was just not mentioned.

 

I have to say Fahrenheit 451 is probably my least favourite Bradbury tale, but that might be because my high school English teachers managed to suck all enjoyment out of everything we studied.

 

{And it seems they also managed to avoid teaching me anything about proper grammar ~edited to fix some issues}

Edited by Altered Reality
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I feel so grateful for my public school education. Seriously.  I had the best Advanced English teacher in the world. He had the driest sense of humor. But man did we have to read some stuff

 

A Sampling:

--Catcher in the Rye

--Beowulf

--Farewell to Arms,

--For Whom the Bell Tolls ..which started the greatest long running gag in the history of that class.  We had to read excerpts aloud in class and it became difficult to differentiate between the words "who" and "whom" ...so in my infinite effort to be funny one I decided to pronounce it like "whomp" without the p (or wom) it became For Whom (wom) the Bell Tolls.  No kidding. To this day I want to say whom as wom..  It's funnier in Enochian.

--So many Shakespeare plays

--Death of a Salesman

--Walden's Pond ( DEAR GODS THE MOST BORING BOOK EVER. I wanted to shoot myself trying to read that)

 

so many more.

--

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OK OK wait guys. If we're going to make a Most Boring Assigned Reading of All Time list, I nominate Paradise Lost. We had to read it in 10th grade. It SHOULD have been really good! But omg.

 

Hey, thinking about it now, we also did Heart of Darkness, Frankenstein, Faust...lots and lots of hell imagery that year, I guess!

 

I feel so grateful for my public school education. Seriously.

 

Agreed.

Edited by rue721

Well, growing up in Germany, it was the German classics we were tortured with. And, since it is somewhat topical, Goethe's Die Leiden des jungen Werther. (The Sorrows of young Werther) was assigned reading in school

He was the original woobie who crushed on this girl who married someone else because he never actually told her how he felt. And then he killed himself. Bored me even as a teenager. It was supposed to be romantic. And semi-autobiographical. Ugh.

It's one of the few books that I never actually read through. After about a third, I skipped to the end and never actually read the whole damn thing. It's no surprise I eventually gave up becoming a literature major after that. Goethe's Faust is awesome but his novels, ugh. At least, Werther was short. I had to read Wilhem Meister's Lehr und Wanderjahre in university and that decided that German lit was not for me. Two overlong books of self-realization. My eyes glaze over just remembering.

Jedi, I loved A Separate Peace.  I am not sure how I would feel about it now more than 40 years later - I was 12 at the time and teachers were impressed that I liked it.  To tell you the truth I think I detected some hoyay between Finny and Gene, and I think that is what attracted me, long before I knew what gay/homosexual/hoyay even meant.

I've seen the resemblance for a long time, but that's because Robert Downey Jr. could be my great uncle's identical twin (well, aside from the huge age difference!), and Jeffrey Dean Morgan looks so much like my uncle that it's eerie to watch him onscreen sometimes. So tbh, I just saw the resemblance between RDJr and my grandma's brother, and JDM and my grandma's son :P

 

Yesterday and today I've had two pieces of bad news:  yesterday, it turned out that I have to get a major emergency car repair, and today it turned out that I didn't get a job that I really wanted (and came SO CLOSE to getting goddammit!). Bad things come in threes, don't they?  So now I'm just dreading what might happen this afternoon. Am I going to trip and break my jaw on a run? When I go out to dinner tonight with friends, am I going to start throwing up all over the dining room? OMG THIRD TERRIBLE THING JUST HAPPEN ALREADY I can't stand the suspense.

 

And I guess Who Has Seen the Wind just resonated with me, even though it was set in the 30's and thus long, long before my time.  Life moves slowly in small prairie towns and I recognized the places and people he described.

 

I've been thinking about this, and realized I felt the same way about A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. Even though it's from long before my time and (thank god) I didn't have to drop out of school to work in a home-based artificial flower factory or anything even similar. Something about the world of the book just felt "normal" :). Even though I didn't read it until I was an adult, I felt similarly about Call It Sleep by Henry Roth. Such a good book, one of my favorites.

 

My favorite book growing up, though, was A Secret Garden. Whenever I'd stay with my grandma, she'd read it aloud to me at bedtime. Of course my favorite character of all time was crotchety, sour little Mary Lennox. :P

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(edited)

Happy Mothers' Day!

 

My favorite Odes To Moms:

 

The sweetest song in the world, Kanye West's Hey Mama:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lf0Xx4TMxCM

 

The music video is so adorable in this one (Jay Z's Anything):

 

ETA:  LOL just rewatched the video for Anything, and the parts of it that are adorable aren't when everyone's getting shaken down by the police, etc (hahahaha), they're the scenes like when the guy drives his mother out to a mansion and shows her this old drawing he made her as a child and...oh just forget it. But still watch the video, you'll like it!

 

Anyway, SALUD to everybody who is a mother and/or who's ever had one :P.

Edited by rue721
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Well, I just bought a ticket to my first Supernatural convention, coming to Minneapolis in August.  Nobody I know is into the show enough pony up the money to attend with me.  Hopefully the fellow attendees are as friendly as the TWOP and Previously TV posters!  I didn't dare buy tickets to an autograph sessions because I would do something utterly embarrassing and faint or something. :-)

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Where do we go for TV fandom therapy?!

All these season finales are making me unstable. It doesn't help that all my shows are wrapping up in a highly hormonal week, lol. SPN finale hasn't even aired yet and I'm all anxious.

Does this forum have a therapy board? ;)

Well, somewhere there's a board for posting pictures of cute kitties and puppies (people post photos of their pets) would that work?

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Where do we go for TV fandom therapy?!

All these season finales are making me unstable. It doesn't help that all my shows are wrapping up in a highly hormonal week, lol. SPN finale hasn't even aired yet and I'm all anxious.

Does this forum have a therapy board? ;)

 

A couple of months ago Robbie Thomspon, after reading the end of the season in scripts, promised to bring alcohol and a couch to VanCon to conduct fan therapy sessions. 

Follow Jason Fisher on twitter, https://twitter.com/JasonFischer77. He's in SPN production.  He immediately started pouring internet drinks after the Charlie episode. And tweets themes of the day.  Robbie tweeted every day during Hellatus.  

 

Personally I come here and twitter.  I need the support. 

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Personally I come here and twitter.  I need the support. 

 

I've never tweeted in my life and don't have an account and wouldn't know how *... otherwise I'd send a positive tweet Jared's way. I hope he's okay and/or doing  better. Considering #AlwaysKeepFighting is trending with well-wishes for him, there are plenty who are doing the job anyway.

 

* I don't have facebook either or anything similar either.

 

 

I'd be lost without my SPNFamily: PTV branch. 

 

Agreed. I look forward to coming here and discussing with all you guys... especially after a particularly concerning or frustrating episode. I can always get some more optimistic perspective from someone here to make me feel better.

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