The Trading Post

[WolfDreamer]

 

Welcome to the Adventurers guild. This is what we like to call the trading post. This is the place where Adventurers and guests can gather for general chat and for trading ideas, motivation, music, and stories of your adventures. 

 

 

If you're new to the Adventurers or here as a guest, welcome to our guild and please introduce yourself. The guild leaders are myself, @Sylvaa, and @Teros so please feel free to message one of us if you have questions about the guild and the forum.

 

[annyshay]

[WolfDreamer]

On 5/24/2018 at 6:49 PM, annyshay said:

 

[WolfDreamer]

 

[Leigh]

Because I accidentally derailed Chant's thread with 4 questions about books I'm going to move it over here and ask more random questions!

 

1. Best non fiction book you have read recently?

2. Favourite book you have read recently? (not an all time favourite, just the best fiction you've read in the last few years or so)

3. The worst assigned reading you had in school?

4. Scariest thing you've ever read?

 

5. What's the most ridiculous thing you believed as a child?

6. If you could have been born in another time period when would you want to be born and why?

7. Which would you rather lose: your voice, your hearing or your sense of taste AND smell?

8. Which would be more horrifying: never seeing a sunny day again as long as you live, or never seeing stars again? Why?

 

9. You wake up tomorrow, but it's not tomorrow, it's the first day after you finished high school (or whatever the equivalent would be in whatever country you live in) It's the same year it was when you finished basic schooling. You cannot do the same thing you have already done before, what do you think you would do?

[Leigh]

I should actually answer these questions I guess (skipping the first four since I've posted my answers in Chant's thread)

 

5. I honestly thought that I got to have the summer off for my whole life. My mom was always home when I was home as a kid, except for rare events where she had plans or I was off visiting my Gramma, so I thought she had summers off like I did with school. Turns out she just made sure I had stuff to do outside of the house (summer camp, hanging out with my friend at their house, etc) so she could work and I would be looked after, and then she just took a lot of time off when I was out of school because it was less costly to stay home than it was to work and pay a baby sitter

 

6. I would have wanted to live in the last bit of the previous ice age. I would rather have my whole life have purpose but be more risky than live like I do today. Oddly enough mostly because it would have been rare to be surrounded by so much stupidity and waste when life itself was so damn challenging. I find things like boredom, obesity caused by laziness and cheap junk food, depression (like feeling crappy for a while because life it's kind of shitty, not stuff like PPD, or chemical depression) and substance abuse are all a shitty side effect of modern living. I never feel bored when I am at work, I'm always doing something that needs to be done so I never feel bored. Living in the stone age wouldn't allow for enough idle time to really ever be bored outside of horrible storm weather days. Without the means of mass producing food or storing it for long amounts of time things like junk food wouldn't exist. And I only ever feel like I'm depressed when I have a really strong lack of purpose for a while in my life.

 

Living back then would require that I work with the people in my community so that we all survive. Because so many little luxuries would be far more scare I would really, and I mean really appreciate things like raspberries in summer soooooo much more than I do now. And while life was a hell of a lot harder and the risk of dying from so many things would be horribly increased I'll take potentially falling to my death on a hike or dying in childbirth or from an infection that today would be a joke to fix rather than anything the modern world has to offer (other than music, I like music now way too much haha)

 

7. I would hate to truly lose my hearing and the voice would just be the most frustrating thing in life to ever go without (so easy to communicate with speach) but I wouldn't mind losing my sense of taste and smell at all. It would make life a little bit tricky because I wouldn't ever notice if my deoderant had worn off, and food could be dangerous because I wouldn't notice that things smell off, or taste strange. I also wouldn't ever really enjoy any food which could make life really bland. But I wouldn't ever have trouble walking through a department store, or my brother's hockey team locker room ever again so there is that

 

8. Never enjoying a sunny day wouldn't bother me in the slightest, but never seeing the stars at night? That would be honestly horrifying. All that black empty space up there would be just that, empty space. I've always been fascinated with space and what we are constantly learning about the galaxy out there, that never seeing it again would almost be more horribly than I can imagine.

 

9. Well I went to college for computer technology so that's officially off the table I'd go for a diploma in health and nutrition. I always thought food science was neat

[Sylvaa]

1. Probably Chi Marathon. Most of my non-fiction reading is related to my job, so it's pretty dry and boring. But I enjoyed this book and it makes me want to run a marathon.

2. The Hate U Give. So good. It made me cry and think and all those things that good fiction should. But at the same time, it was real. It made me think about some of my own personal thoughts and actions and how they may be perceived. 

3. A Separate Peace. I'm not disagreeing with anyone who didn't like The Lord of the Flies, but I figured I'd go with something else. I thought it was really boring. Also, I'm pretty sure I read this during a feminist phase, so I liked it even less since we didn't read any comparable feminist literature during the same year. 

4. Lullaby was super creepy. For me, the more "real" a story could be, the more scary (more so than Steven King for example). So the idea of this book is just eerie.

 

5. Uhh... that as an adult, my life would be a lot more organized and together than it really is. 

6. I don't care so much about the time period, but the way of life. I would want to live on a farm, being self-sufficient, without the benefits of technology.

7. My voice. There are so many other ways to communicate.

8. Never seeing a sunny day. I love the nights too, but the warmth of the sun is essential to my happiness and I am cold blooded. 

9. This is really hard for me. Because any alternative decision I take would probably result in not having my daughter. But it would probably to stay at home and go to college right away (instead of waiting until I was older). 

[Leigh]

21 minutes ago, Sylvaa said:

9. This is really hard for me. Because any alternative decision I take would probably result in not having my daughter. But it would probably to stay at home and go to college right away (instead of waiting until I was older). 

 

The parent's ultimate dilemma it seems... But the way I see it, if you had woken up tomorrow, suddenly 18 again it creates a split in reality, so in our actual reality, your kids exist, your life as you know it exists, the sudden change waking up tomorrow results in a totally separate time line, this one continues, your daughter still exists, there's just a duplicate of you that you are in control of

[Sciread77]

1 hour ago, Leigh said:

Because I accidentally derailed Chant's thread with 4 questions about books I'm going to move it over here and ask more random questions!

 

1. Best non fiction book you have read recently?

2. Favourite book you have read recently? (not an all time favourite, just the best fiction you've read in the last few years or so)

3. The worst assigned reading you had in school?

4. Scariest thing you've ever read?

 

5. What's the most ridiculous thing you believed as a child?

6. If you could have been born in another time period when would you want to be born and why?

7. Which would you rather lose: your voice, your hearing or your sense of taste AND smell?

8. Which would be more horrifying: never seeing a sunny day again as long as you live, or never seeing stars again? Why?

 

9. You wake up tomorrow, but it's not tomorrow, it's the first day after you finished high school (or whatever the equivalent would be in whatever country you live in) It's the same year it was when you finished basic schooling. You cannot do the same thing you have already done before, what do you think you would do?

 

The first four are copied from the other thread:

 

1.  Performing Under Pressure: The Science of Doing Your Best When if Matters Most. Also Radium Girls: The Dark Story of America’s Shining Women. It could also be Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York but I’m not done with it yet (it’s big and sadly was packed). 

 

2. Oh. I don’t even know. There are so very many. The following have all been my favorite book at one time or another : Brave New World. The Harry Potter series, especially 3 and 6. Jurassic Park. Helen of Sparta (by Amalia Carosella).  Holes. The Heir to the Empire trilogy. The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. The Book Thief. The Phantom Tollbooth. The Twenty-One Ballons. The Time Traveler’s Wife. Treasure Island. The Hitchhiker’ Guide to the Galaxy. The Time Machine. Journey to the Center of the Earth. Around the World in 80 Days. 11/22/63. Dead West: West of Pale. The Book of I.F. 

 

3.  The Great Gatsby (a shallow book about shallow people, made worse by the potential to actually be something but failing) or Moby Dick. 

 

4.  The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany. It was terrifying to me to see go a practical, skeptical, hardscrabble society like that in Germany could be so very easily sucked into the control of Hitler and his ilk. At 14, I was incredibly concerned about it happening again, especially Gobbels-style propoganda techniques I was already seeing in our society as well as the remarkably dedicated underground far right movements waiting under the rocks across the world. 

 

5.  Probably the most ridiculous thing I believed as a child was that there were only a few hundred or few thousand Christians and that everyone else was either atheist or pagan. 

 

6.  I would likely choose some time in the future. I’d like to be able to visit the past but I think most of the romantic fantasies completely ignore the reality of the past. 

 

7. I suppose my voice? I can’t smell very well in any case, but I love the taste of food. Losing my voice sucks, but having a voice whilst being unable to hear is less useful than hearing without a voice. Blindness is what really scares me anyway, and is part of what drives me to work so closely with a nonprofit providing reading services and audio description for the blind. 

 

8.  Stars. I’d really miss the sun. But I’d miss the rest of the stars more. 

 

9. Believe it or not, I have this planned out pretty well and have for years. I have an investment plan that will put me in the decamillionaire status within a few years. I’d find largely but not entirely different college friends, drink a lot less alcohol, and study a pure science with the intent to research while also becoming involved with the local theatre scene. I’d find my wife and her friends about 5 years earlier. We’d lock eyes across the room, I’d make my way over to her, buy her a drink, and ask her tons of questions and just listen. I’d want to know everything. I’d ask her to go to an Indian place I know for dinner the next night. She’d be busy with a show but free Monday.  We’d continue to hit it off. We’d travel the world as exchange students and in our careers, but never have to worry about money or limited choices, and when we began having kids (same time frame as we did) we’d quickly take them around the world too. 

 

I have a LOT more detail for question 9, but most people aren’t going to be interested in the actual investment plan or other details. 

 

 

[Sciread77]

4 hours ago, Sylvaa said:

9. This is really hard for me. Because any alternative decision I take would probably result in not having my daughter. But it would probably to stay at home and go to college right away (instead of waiting until I was older). 

 

I’m operating under the assumption that the same kids will come, just potentially at different times. Because the answer is “exactly the same things” if it meant losing my family. 

[Aquarii]

7 hours ago, Leigh said:

Because I accidentally derailed Chant's thread with 4 questions about books I'm going to move it over here and ask more random questions!

 

1. Best non fiction book you have read recently?

2. Favourite book you have read recently? (not an all time favourite, just the best fiction you've read in the last few years or so)

3. The worst assigned reading you had in school?

4. Scariest thing you've ever read?

 

5. What's the most ridiculous thing you believed as a child?

6. If you could have been born in another time period when would you want to be born and why?

7. Which would you rather lose: your voice, your hearing or your sense of taste AND smell?

8. Which would be more horrifying: never seeing a sunny day again as long as you live, or never seeing stars again? Why?

 

9. You wake up tomorrow, but it's not tomorrow, it's the first day after you finished high school (or whatever the equivalent would be in whatever country you live in) It's the same year it was when you finished basic schooling. You cannot do the same thing you have already done before, what do you think you would do?

 

This looks fun...

 

1. It has to be a toss up between The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck and Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself

2. I have only read a handful of fictional books in the past few years, so I will have to go with Waking Up Screaming: Haunting Tales of Terror, a collection of short stories by H.P. Lovecraft

3. Math problems

4. Ummm, probably the medical guide I use to read for fun when I was in middle school. It was a book, 30 years outdated, of basically all the diseases that could kill you in gory detail

 

5. I was a hypochondriac as a very young child (not caused by that medical guide, haha, this predates that), so I basically constantly thought I was going to die of some terrible disease or tumor or something. 

6. I like this time period, if I could have been born in another time period, I still would have picked this one

7. My sense of taste and smell. It would suck, I actually know an elderly man who has basically lost his sense of taste and smell, and he hates eating because he can't taste anything (it is all about texture at that point). But, I cannot sacrifice my hearing and my voice; as a professionally trained singer, that would be sacrificing a piece of my identity.

8. Never seeing a sunny day. I get noticeably more agitated and depressed when it is gloomy for too many days in a row. I have grown up near major cities, so I can barely see the stars most of the time anyway, thanks to light pollution

 

9. Well, I certainly wouldn't want that to happen, since the road I took is the road that brought me to who I am, who I know, who I love, who I am marrying....but, I guess I would have chosen biotechnology or computer science as a major and gone directly to a university instead of a community college and then a university (my way in reality was better, graduated debt free, yo)

[Thilde]

Oooh, fun!

1. Best non fiction book you have read recently?   "The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F***"  - it was the right book for me at the right time.

 

2. Favourite book you have read recently?  Ready Player One -- I sadly had never heard of it before, but when I started it I could. not. stop.  Hands done one of my top 5 reads ever.

 

3. The worst assigned reading you had in school?  The Scarlet Letter.

  

4. Scariest thing you've ever read?  I just finished a book about a mom whose child was abducted.  "What She Knew."  The idea of living a week of your life with a close loved one just...gone....is utterly terrifying to me.

 

5. What's the most ridiculous thing you believed as a child?  That there were real alligators at the foot of my bed.  Not under the bed, but literally up on the mattress with me, under the covers, at the foot of my bed.  How these alligators managed to, I don't know, NOT BE VISIBLE LUMPS UNDER THE BLANKET, is beyond me, but hey.  I was 6.

 

6. If you could have been born in another time period when would you want to be born and why?  I would opt out and stay right here in this time period.  I really like medicine, science, and watching Supernatural.  I don't want to live in any time period that does not have penicillin, the ability to land a spacecraft on a comet, and Dean Winchester.

 

7. Which would you rather lose: your voice, your hearing or your sense of taste AND smell?  My voice, for sure.  I could still hear my loved ones and taste and smell food, and I could communicate still with sign language and writing.  I had a professor once who lost his sense of taste and smell for 6 months due to a medication he was taking, and it was scary.  He went into a deep depression and lost a ton of weight.  Eventually the senses came back for him after he'd been off the meds for awhile, but he said it was unreal how much the inability to taste and smell anything impacted his whole life.  

 

8. Which would be more horrifying: never seeing a sunny day again as long as you live, or never seeing stars again? Why?  The stars -- because seeing them is seeing worlds that exist beyond earth.  Sunny days are beautiful but to me the night sky is way, way more preferable to look at.

 

9. You wake up tomorrow, but it's not tomorrow, it's the first day after you finished high school (or whatever the equivalent would be in whatever country you live in) It's the same year it was when you finished basic schooling. You cannot do the same thing you have already done before, what do you think you would do?    Go to a secular state university instead of a private religious one.  Work through college instead of taking on a ton of student loans.  Get a degree in entomology.  Do bug science for work and become hobby beekeeper.  Live in Northern California.  Become a derby skater.

[Thilde]

3 minutes ago, StarlordPhoenix said:

 

This looks fun...

 

1. It has to be a toss up between The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck and Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself

Ha!!  Yes!  "The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck" was my answer too!     

[Aquarii]

5 minutes ago, Thilde said:

Ha!!  Yes!  "The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck" was my answer too!     

 

There is a reason why it was rated THE top book for 2017 on Amazon and a few other lists. I think it was the number one seller as well.

[WolfDreamer]

19 hours ago, Leigh said:

Because I accidentally derailed Chant's thread with 4 questions about books I'm going to move it over here and ask more random questions!

 

1. Best non fiction book you have read recently?

2. Favourite book you have read recently? (not an all time favourite, just the best fiction you've read in the last few years or so)

3. The worst assigned reading you had in school?

4. Scariest thing you've ever read?

 

5. What's the most ridiculous thing you believed as a child?

6. If you could have been born in another time period when would you want to be born and why?

7. Which would you rather lose: your voice, your hearing or your sense of taste AND smell?

8. Which would be more horrifying: never seeing a sunny day again as long as you live, or never seeing stars again? Why?

 

9. You wake up tomorrow, but it's not tomorrow, it's the first day after you finished high school (or whatever the equivalent would be in whatever country you live in) It's the same year it was when you finished basic schooling. You cannot do the same thing you have already done before, what do you think you would do?

 

1. Tie between We Stood Upon Stars and My Best Friend's Funeral, both by Roger W. Thompson

2. See above answer. 

3. The Scarlet Letter

4. Newspaper headlines... seriously, what's going on in the world today is much more terrifying than any book or story. But if I had to pick a book or story... The Mist by Stephen King, maybe? Or Revival, also by SK? I'm not usually scared of the supernatural. It's the very real human elements that scare me. Like Annie Wilkes from Misery. She's terrifying because she's believably real.

5. Oh, where do I begin...Columbus discovered America, the pilgrims and the Native Americans had a peaceful Thanksgiving together, Abraham Lincoln freed all the slaves... but that's probably not what you meant. How about... thunder is the sound of the angels bowling in heaven. Is that more like it?

6. Ehh... I don't know... I'm glad I was born when I was, but if you twisted my arm and made me answer, I guess I would say 1920's maybe?

7. I'd go with voice. I talk too much anyway. As a teacher, I would have to find another way to communicate, but I could manage.

8. Never seeing a sunny day again because I need the sun's energy to survive.

9. Either military or get a degree in Biology.

[Leigh]

On 6/2/2018 at 10:58 AM, Wolfen said:

5. Oh, where do I begin...Columbus discovered America, the pilgrims and the Native Americans had a peaceful Thanksgiving together, Abraham Lincoln freed all the slaves... but that's probably not what you meant. How about... thunder is the sound of the angels bowling in heaven. Is that more like it?

 

The first parts are not so much "the dumbest things you believed as a kid" but "the dumbest things you were taught to believe as a kid" so that's find, but the Thunder idea is just adorable!

[WolfDreamer]

12 hours ago, Leigh said:

the Thunder idea is just adorable!

 

I just remembered another one. I used to live near railroad tracks, and I believed that when trains came by at night if they caught you with your eyes open you would have nightmares, but if you were asleep or at least if your eyes were closed you would have good dreams. No one ever told me this, it's just what I thought. I remember squinting my eyes shut so tight some nights because I wasn't asleep yet, but I would hear the honk of a train engine and be so scared. I wasn't afraid of trains during the day, but at night was a different story.

 

 

 

 

 

[PinkNinja]

Have any of you guys hiked up Mt. Whitney?

I'm planning a trip.

[Drake Alexander]