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I am thinking of putting up the Christmas tree soon because I love tree season, but I need to buy new lights. Every year I tell myself the number of lights I bought so I remember how many I will need the next time, and every year I forget.
It would probably be beneficial to put a reminder in my phone to buy X number of lights on November 1st. That’s actually a really good idea, which I will implement once I figure out how many I need.
Are you a white light person or coloured? We love the coloured ones, which may not be as aesthetically pleasing as the white, but it feels more homey and comforting to me.
They have to be the warm-toned coloured ones, though, because I hate cool lighting.
Speaking of cool, the weather cooled again after a few miserable nights sleeping, but I had a very early wake-up from the unit above us drilling something very loudly, very early.
It made the whole place vibrate and scared the cats. I thought we had a noise rule here that you aren’t supposed to do loud things before 8 and after 11.
I am 99% certain that they rent the upstairs unit out on Airbnb, but it always seems like every couple of months they are doing a lot of renovation work up there, so I wonder if people trash it.
But it is very lucrative, so I imagine they won’t be switching long-term tenants any time soon. This building has a lot of short-term rentals, and when I looked them up, they are charging insane prices.
Their weekly rates are more than I pay a month, which blows my mind. I would rather stay in a hotel.
Anyway, that is my long-winded way of saying that I got shitty sleep and I have had a headache all day. Now I am going to bed and hope they don’t do this shit again tomorrow morning.
Note: Apparently Meta isn’t allowing me to share more than two links per month on Facebook without buying a subscription that would cost me $149 USD a month for 20 links. This is obviously something that I can’t afford.
I guess I won’t be posting my blog posts on there, so if you want to read them, they are on Sunday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday nights (or often early into the next morning).
You can sign up for my newsletter here, and that goes out on Saturdays with the links to my posts from the past week if you want to stay up to date. Everything is a money grab now.
Weekly Reads and Some Videos:
The trailer for the new Pride and Prejudice adaptation for Netflix. Olivia Colman is Mrs Bennet, which we all know she will rock.
Arkivism: The visual library of Alexandria. Centuries of copyright-free art, historical photography, illustration and archival footage. Find high-resolution files by describing what you’re picturing, free to use forever.
We Finally Know More About Humanity’s First Civilization
They found a chunk of Mars in the Sahara Desert a few years ago that is more than 4.1 billion years old.
Bonhams to Offer The Collection of Stanley Kubrick. Coming in February 2027.
A growing list of brands to avoid that are actively engaged in the enshittification playbook. Licensing models, post-acquisition cost-cutting, brand equity being extracted. Stick to the older secondhand versions of these brands before they went to shit.
Salon, one of the last OG general interest web publications, is shutting down. It started in 1995.
The match archive is so cool. They are like literal pieces of art. I would never have wanted to use them.
Watch 150 Classic Horror and Suspense Films Free Online: Nosferatu, The Cabinet of Dr Caligari, Carnival of Souls, Night of the Living Dead & More
This Wooden Wardrobe in Pompeii Remained Sealed for Nearly 2,000 Years. Archaeologists Just Opened It for the First Time. I need a life do-over where I finished my Museums degree. This kind of shit excites me.
SHOP THE UK LINKS
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My Christmas tree preferences are kinda tacky as hell and I’m not sorry. I also lose the Christmas tree decoration fight every single year, but some day… Anyway, if I had my druthers I would have a white artificial tree with multi-colored lights. It looks like a funfetti cake!
It is not an Air BNB story technically, but along those lines. I used to work at a company that rented a luxury apartment. It was really meant for out of town visitors to stay there but that rarely happened (the only one I remember was then VP Dick Cheney, and obviously he would be staying some place highly secure). So whenever it was not in use we were allowed to borrow it, for a total of two nights, for free. It also had a full on walk in closet stocked to the ceiling with free booze. Older employees would usually borrow it if going to see a show downtown, so they could make an event out of it. Us younger employees would borrow it to throw raging parties with insane amounts of alcohol for zero cost. I never personally borrowed it but took full advantage when other work friends did. There was one particular party where someone’s boyfriend decided to show off his martial arts skills, did a roundhouse, kicked an enormous vase and shattered it. So we had to stop to clean it. I went to a closet I thought might have a broom and discovered a stash of half a dozen identical vases, because apparently this was enough of a regular occurrence they needed to have backups. This same guy also took a bite of a styrofoam apple that was in a decorative bowl of fake fruit. He put it back and a couple of years later the lease ended and the apartment was moved to a luxury hotel. The apple with the bite mark made it to the new location. Also, in the old building, it was known that one, possibly two of the Hanson brothers (yes, Mmmbop Hanson) had apartments there, and rumored to be the same floor we were on. I remember one night heading to the terrace with the smokers and yelling “Hanson, come out to play-ay!” Hanson did not come out to play.
Sorry for the wall of text, but your AirBNB frustration reminded me of that old apartment and as obnoxious as it is on the other side of the situation, I still can’t help but chuckle when I remember those parties. (Also, on one occasion a girl left with an entire box of vodka bottles and it just went completely unnoticed.)