One of my cats, who has mixed feelings about me, let me pet his perfect orange belly and purred about it. 😻

The concept is interesting, but the execution is stressful just to look at. My brain already feels scrambled and chaotic inside, no way I could function with a scrambled and chaotic exterior environment. Also that pattern would hide dirt and grime so well that how would you know when the surfaces are clean? Scrub forever? Yikes.

Same. I like/tolerate well-trained dogs, but those are basically nonexistent these days.

Where I live, dog culture is really strong. People here violate leash laws all the time. When you gently but firmly raise a knee to keep a big jumping dog off your chest, the owner acts like you just did a heinous crime. If you complain about not wanting to be jumped on/knocked over by a giant dog that weighs more than you do, you’ll be told to seek therapy for your phobia.

Bad dog owners have ruined dogs for me. Training is considered taboo, something close to animal abuse. Which boggles the mind, because the psychology of dogs is such that they need training and maintenance discipline to be well-adjusted. IMO, not training your dog is animal abuse. But here we are, with untrained dogs running around bowling people over and sticking their tongues in strangers’ mouths.

My main floor has real hardwood (oak, I guess?). It’s OK, but as I look at replacing the carpets in other parts of the house, I’m leaning heavily toward bamboo. The oak (or whatever it is) floor hasn’t been a good value for what we spent on it. I like to go barefoot at home, and I’ve never felt a synthetic floor that didn’t make my skin crawl. Bamboo seems to be much sturdier than regular hardwood, and the samples I’ve touched have felt pleasant against my bare feet. The only thing holding me back is choosing a color that’ll transition well to the existing floor.

Nah I used the PF tek which was a fair bit more complicated. Wish I’d known about uncle ben’s last time I grew. I kept the grow tub on top of my dresser, so not too much space.

I started learning Japanese in early 2020, and gave up on Duolingo a couple months ago because of changes that made it a bit less helpful to me.

Otherwise your method seems pretty similar to mine: a couple sources for grammar points, Anki for vocab, and J-dramas and YouTube for listening practice.

I also try to write a little bit every day, even just a sentence or two to fill up blank space in my planner. (I can barely speak, but I have word-finding problems in my native English too, so I suppose there’s not much to be done about it.)

I don’t know about sourcing the finished product, but growing my own turned out to be less work than I expected. I was working long hours at OldJob and pretty burned out, but once the grow got to the point of needing daily attention it was less than five minutes morning and evening to mist and fan my grow tub, and I ran the food dehydrator overnight as needed. YMMV but, for me personally, it was doable during a time when I was dragging myself through every day.

Yet another Reddit refugee checking in. I find much of the modern social internet overwhelming and exhausting (looking at you, Discord…) so I was glad to find out about Beehaw. I have entirely too many interests and hobbies, which I tend to rotate through as the whim strikes me. At the moment, it’s mostly Gunpla kits, Nintendo Switch (I am the filthiest of casuals), and container gardening (50/50 chance I lose interest before I get a single vegetable).