She’s partnered up with a bunch of diff brands to giveaway Taylor Swift concert tix for diff shows. These brands sponsored tix giveaways for The MetLife show in Jersey, Massachusetts, Nashville, Chicago, & now Pittsburgh. Any thoughts n orr tea on this situation? I’m so curious as to how it works + if its legit, I know how crazy and expensive it is to get Tay’s tix.

Have you ever wanted to get off opiates so badly you'd be willing to do anything?
Summer, 2017. Orange County, California
I park my car in another part of the same neighborhood. I don't bother to check my surroundings. I pick a water bottle up off the floor, get my works ready, and prep an extremely strong shot of furanylfentanyl for myself. My heart is racing, I'm shaking, I'm sweating, I feel sick to my stomach. How is it possible that I feel this sick and terrible so soon after my last shot?
I'm in trouble.
I use the seatbelt to crudely constrict blood flow to my arm. I inject the furanylfentanyl and cap the needle. I open my car door and lean my head towards the opening, in case I have to vomit.
The rush hits too quickly. My heart slows. My muscles relax. My stomach does a backflip. I try to cling to what pleasurable sensations I can, but nausea overwhelms me and an encapsulating weakness dulls the entire experience. I start to salivate, a sure sign that I am about to throw up. I start to feel very dizzy.
"NO!" I scream. "Don't overdose! don't overdose!" I yell, slapping myself in the face. The sudden movement of slapping myself causes my nausea to worsen. I let my head hang over the opening in my car door to the asphalt below.
"Stay awake. Stay awake. Stay awake," I yell, out loud, to keep me engaged. I hear a dog bark and do my best to look up from the asphalt. There is a woman walking her dog away from me. Did she see me? Does it matter?
If she calls the cops, does it matter? I try to keep watching her as she continues to walk away. Does anything matter? Does anyone even see me? Am I just a ghost, stuck on this hellish plane with my only relief being small chunks of fake feelings that I buy for hundreds of dollars and shoot into my veins, until my body finally breaks down and dies on me?
Something snaps within me.
This has to end – NOW.
Later that night.
"Ok, Bryson sent you here, and he always sends good people, so we can just do all the intake stuff tomorrow. Your bed is upstairs. Hey, Logan!" the chunky, tan, toothless house manager turns and yells towards the living room of my new flophouse, at the two 20-somethings playing Call of Duty on a gigantic HDTV.
"What," one of them snaps, quietly and unenthusiastically, not looking away from the TV. All I can see is the Boston Celtics flat-brim hat that he has on backwards.
"Can you show the new guy here to his bed? It's in your room," the house manager says.
"What? Why is he in my room?" Logan asks, irritation plain in his voice.
"Because I said so," the house manager says, walking towards them now, as if he is going to get in front of the TV and block their view of it.
The kid with the Celtics hat gets up suddenly and starts to walk towards me. He strides past me, not even looking at me.
"Thanks," I say to the house manager, before turning away from him to follow the lazily bobbing Celtics hat upstairs.
"See you tomorrow morning! Don't forget to come see me in the morning!" the flophouse manager calls after us. Despite not having me fill out any paperwork or giving me a drug test, I will be able to start living here right away because I have private health insurance. I might as well have swiped my health insurance card at the door of this flophouse hotel.
Logan walks like he can do no wrong and the world owes him something, which makes me hate him instantly. He leads me to the first bedroom at the top of the stairs, which is indistinguishable from any other middle-class suburban single-family home. It is smaller than my childhood bedroom, with two twin beds maybe 5 feet apart, two small nightstands that practically touch each other, and one dresser.
"This is my bed. Don't touch any of my stuff. That dresser is mine," he says, pointing to the indiscriminate wooden dresser against the wall opposite our beds. I feel a flash of anger.
"Nah. There’s only one dresser. We'll split it up tomorrow," I say. He turns towards me and looks me in the eyes. He’s taller than me, with long dark hair and a lean frame. I stare at him, my jaw clenched in rage, daring him to touch me, so I can take my anger out on something besides myself. I don't care if he knows how to fight and whips my ass right now, I'm at the absolute end of my rope with living on this Earth. He scoffs and walks out of the room. I sit on the twin bed that is now ‘mine’. It feels brand new. New beds means that a new flophouse has arrived in Orange County.
I wish I didn't have to precipitate my withdrawal, but this has to end sometime, and there is no time but now. I have four somas, six xanax bars, and half a naltrexone pill - 25mg - in my pocket. I pull the loose pills out of my pocket and look at them.
Six xanax bars is definitely not enough to make me black out. Six xanax bars isn't even enough to fully get rid of the restlessness, let alone cause me to sleep through the night, but at least I have 4 somas. The muscle-relaxing somas will have to do some heavy lifting, but I know they can do it.
Somas absolutely wreck me. I haven’t taken one in a long time, but I know I respond strongly to them. Taking six xanax and four somas would ordinarily be enough to cause me to black out for a full day, but I don’t know if they will even work through 25 milligrams of naltrexone.
Just thinking the word ‘naltrexone’ causes my stomach to drop and my heart to start racing. I am absolutely petrified at the thought of taking this naltrexone.
Well, it’s time to nut the fuck up and do it, Lonnie. You decided to go on your little furanylfentanyl binge, now you have to take this naltrexone. You made your shitty flophouse bed, now you have to lay in it. You’re going to be sick either way by the time the morning comes.
I try to swallow, but my mouth is dry with anxiety. How much do somas contribute to respiratory depression? I can’t remember off the top of my head. I don’t remember what the median lethal dose is, what the mechanism of action is, or even what receptors it interacts with, aside from the same GABA receptors that xanax acts upon. I wonder if there is an increased risk of respiratory depression from combining soma with xanax.
I pull out of my phone, so I can google just how sedating the soma is when combined with xanax, to make sure I am not going to stop breathing during the procedure.
You’re wasting your time, Lonnie. You have to be conscious in the morning and able to talk to the house manager. You’ve overdosed 3 times in the past few weeks. If you can inject enough fentanyl to kill 5 people, you can take 4 somas with 6 xanax. It isn’t going to kill you – and if it does, who cares? Either way, it’ll finally be over.
This has to end. I’d rather die than keep doing this, anyway.
I walk into the bathroom, the pills clenched in my fist like a loaded revolver, and close the door. I turn on the sink and put all 4 somas in my mouth. I stick my head in the sink and part my lips slightly, drinking from the stream as if I had a straw in my mouth. I swallow the pills and then put all 6 xanax in my mouth. I turn the tap off and start to chew.
My mouth fills with the incredibly bitter taste of the xanax. I used to watch people do this and nearly throw up at the mere sight alone. Now, my mouth salivates with excitement as the bitterness overwhelms me.
I hate how much my brain loves the bitter taste of chemicals. I wish my brain hated the bitterness, like normal people. I hate being a drug addict.
I swallow a few times to clear my mouth out and then drink more from the tap. I look at the orange half-pill of naltrexone in my hand. I sigh. This is going to suck.
Hurry up and swallow it, bitch boy. You don’t want to black out and start throwing fruit around before the withdrawal kicks in, like you did at Amelia’s house.
I can’t look away from the orange half-pill.
Just take it and get it over with. Put the naltrexone in your mouth and swallow it.
I know this is going to make me sick within 3 minutes of taking it. I might as well swallow dynamite – in fact, I would prefer to swallow dynamite. The taste of the xanax lingers in my mouth. I have to take the naltrexone. There is no avoiding it.
I put the pill in my mouth and drink from the tap again. I swallow the naltrexone, turn off the sink, and go back to my new flophouse bedroom, my heart pounding with overwhelming anxiety, feeling like I just made the worst decision I have ever made in my life, which is saying something. I turn off the lights, close the door, and get into the bed. I lay down on my side and close my eyes firmly. I am going to sleep, right now.
5 minutes into self-induced ultra-rapid detox.
My stomach is cramping. It hurts so bad that I can’t move my hands away from it. It feels like I swallowed poison. There is an odd sensation of electricity attached to the pain that is coming from the back of my neck. I am curled in the fetal position because my stomach hurts so bad, but everything else hurts too. How did it hit this hard and this fast? It wasn’t supposed to hit this hard or this quickly.
I throw the blanket off of me. It’s so hot, I can’t bear to have that blanket anywhere near me. The heat is so intense, I can feel it radiating off my skin. I am covered in sweat.
Why does my stomach hurt so bad? It has never hurt this bad before. I can barely breathe through the pain.
9 minutes into the procedure.
It’s so cold, my sweat feels like prickly ice water. I reach for the blanket and wrap it around me as tightly as I can. I move my feet, so the blanket is wrapped completely around them. I can feel my toes writhing back and forth, my legs moving uncontrollably. I am shaking uncontrollably, so I shake intentionally. Where is the xanax? Please, kick in. Please. Please.
God, if you’re listening, stop playing with me and kill me or let that xanax through my first-pass metabolism and into my bloodstream. I chewed it. It should be kicking in and making these symptoms milder.
T+ 14 minutes.
I feel an electric zap in my stomach that becomes a cramp. I hold my abdominals and try to massage them to stop the cramp, which is so painful I can’t breathe. I have the sudden need to use the bathroom. I jump out of bed and powerwalk to the bathroom. Luckily everyone is still downstairs playing video games or not home yet. At least this flophouse doesn’t have a curfew.
I sit down on the toilet and try to sit still. I cannot stop my body from moving for even one second. It feels like my insides are on fire. This is discomfort beyond anything I have ever experienced or imagined.
T+ 20 minutes.
It is so hot. I can’t believe how overheated I feel. I must be on the precipice of brain damage. I lay on the bed, curled in the fetal position, drenched in sweat, forcing myself to shake as vigorously as I can so that I can pretend that I am complicit in this. The xanax has to be kicking in any second now. I should be nearly unconscious right now.
A fresh electric cramp hits my stomach, driving the air from my lungs. I get up from the bed, power walking back to the bathroom, doubled over with pain. I sit down on the toilet and feel the urge to scream. I leave my body bent forward because I can’t sit up straight with this cramp. I see the trash can right across from me. My stomach is so fucked up, maybe I just need to throw up.
T+ 1 hour.
I inhale. I exhale. I inhale. I exhale.
I am not asleep, but I am not awake. I can tell that horrible things are happening in my body and brain, but I am too sedated now to be able to maintain full awareness. I am scared that I will be aware of the moment when I stop breathing – that I will suffocate while I am fully conscious, since that is exactly what I deserve.
I am no longer panicking, but my stomach is beyond fucked. I have been getting up every 5 minutes to go to the bathroom, and now my roommate is in here. It is 12 AM. I have 6 hours left to go.
The soma has all but gotten rid of the cramps. I can now lay still. The temperature swings aren’t nearly as bad – it almost seems as if they’re happening to a body that I can feel but is not mine.
You’re going to do it, Lonnie. You’re outsmarting addiction. Before you know it, you’re going to be getting the naltrexone implant, and then you’ll be back to training hard for college basketball.
I get up from the bed. I walk back to the bathroom, now having to walk carefully, my arms outstretched. The combination of the xanax and the somas has me extremely uncoordinated. I walk towards the bathroom, closing one eye to combat the double vision I have now. I slowly reach for the door and open it. I close it behind me, carefully and slowly. I walk to the toilet and sit on it as quickly as I can, due to the growing urgency of the signals from my stomach. I put my head in my hands and my elbows on my knees. One of my elbows slip immediately, and I almost fall off the toilet.
I fix my seat and put my head back in my hands, more carefully this time. Though I feel physical sensations of pain and discomfort, they are being sent through a deeply dizzying diversion. The discomfort is distant. I can’t be bothered to worry about it right now.
Stay awake, Lonnie. You can’t pass out on the toilet. You’ll get caught and kicked out or taken to a hospital. I cradle my head. I’ll get up in a second.
I hear a loud crashing sound and open my eyes. I’m sandwiched between the toilet and the wall. I reach up for the toilet and successfully pull the seat down after several failed attempts, so I can use it to help me up. Slowly and carefully, I get up from the floor. I pull the seat up and sit back down on the toilet.
I stand up from the toilet and start to walk out of the bathroom. Before I even make it to the door, I feel the need to sit back on the toilet.
This is not good. The soma probably relaxed everything too much. I might have to sit on this toilet for the rest of the night, shitting my brains out. I cradle my head in my hands, so I can relax on the toilet.
Don’t relax too much, Lonnie. You might fall asleep on the toilet. Just keep breathing. You’re probably not breathing very much. You should NOT be conscious right now. Just because the naltrexone is painful enough to force you to maintain consciousness doesn’t mean that your body isn’t barely clinging to life.
I inhale. I exhale.
I feel myself slipping off the toilet. Fuck, I need to get up. I need to do something to stay awake. I can take a shower; I just have to get up from the toilet. Give it another second, though.
I can just wait here for one more second.
​
I woke up 3 days later in the ICU as they were pulling the breathing tubes out of me

Long story bear with me, gonna break it down.

• day 0 of exposure. Sat in a small office wearing a surgical mask with 3 other unmasked individuals. After the meeting, one lady asks to go home as she is having diarrhea. This is typical as she suffer Ibs. I later find out last night her husband began having a fever, later this day he tests positive.

Day 1- coworker still has diarrhea, and now nausea, tests negative. I have a headache but I get a headache twice a week. I test negative on Binax
Day 2- coworker still has diarrhea and nausea. No real congestion yet. She tests negative again. I test negative morning and night. A side note, I suffer from anxiety. My temperature is about 99.4 all day when it normally is 97.8-98.2. Not sure if my anxiety can cause low grade temp rise
Day 3- coworker calls in to work since it's Monday now, she is congested now badly overnight. She calls at 10am to inform me she is positive now. I test both morning and night, negative each time. I still have this 99.4 temp, feel off, some aches, no appetite etc, this could be my anxiety.
Day 4- today is day 4. I test negative on bimax in the AM and decide to take a rapid naat called Lucira in the evening. It's negative as well. My doctor ordered a pcr so I went in to the immediate care, results should be tomorrow. My temp is the same 99.4 all day, still feel off. Today I have two bouts of diarrhea but this is not out of the ordinary either as I have celiac. My stomach was growling all morning but I don't know if it's from upset or hunger, I have now lost 7 pounds in 4 days.
Day 5- this is tomorrows plan. Wake up and take a binax test. In the evening I will take another Lucira.
Day 6- I have a rapid naat scheduled at Walgreens in the morning with 2 hour results. The reason I am freaking out is because I have an international flight scheduled on this day with my elderly parents. We booked this trip one year ago and they were going yo show me my family history. It's an important trip as they are still mobile in their 70's and I do not know how much longer they will be mobile.
Do you think if by day six, all these tests are negative, I should essentially be covid free?
Am I doing everything I can? Anything I am missing?

Older JB prime. Did a cook yesterday with no issues. Older 1.5 firmware. Updated today to the 2.3 firmware, went to do some bacon for burgers tonight. Temps were all over the place. Eventually seem to stabilize, get the bacon on, and about 15 minutes into the cook, temperature starts to drop, then rapidly shoots up to above 450. Grease starts smoking on the right side of the drip pan, try to pull the bacon off but too late, it flashes over into a grease fire. Get the grill turned off, get the fire extinguished, and now surveying how bad it might be. Letting everything cool down and then will dig into it. Scorched paint on the inside of the top of the cooking area seems to be the worst of it right now.
Wondering if there's a way to roll back to the old 1.5 firmware..........

Hi This is my first post on this subreddit.
I do require your assistance about a project I'm currently working on concerning an IoT sensor temperature and humidity monitoring system.
It's a subscription system so each user can pay to "subscribe" to see multiple sensors or none (like if a subscription has ended or he basically hasn't subscribed to nothing yet), and the admin on the other hand is supposed to see all sensors with their data.
roles & sensors
I did a little research and experimenting and I split the application into three sections:

• Data Endpoints (using MQTT & HTTP POST): to get the data from the sensors to the website's datastore (db,cache ect...)
• Processing: Which it would involve actually storing the data in the database and at the same time dispatching new "events" that a specific sensor data for a specific sensor is here for those who are subscribed to it (or for the admin).
• User Interface data formatting: Receiving the sensor data from the Backend then display it in some specific way on the UI.

The problem unfortunately is in the UI data parsing part (and partly the backend).
I did a little digging to find out which Real-Time protocol/technology is best suited for my app and it was either WebSockets or SSE. WebSockets are a little more "hungrier" than SSE, plus I don't need bidirectional communication.
So, it was SSE then, the first problem was the fact that there is no way to pass custom headers through an EventSource() object, I found a solution to that by just storing AUTH-related data in an httpOnly cookie using the user's session, and then pass the httpOnly cookie to the SSE Route to be Auth'ed for the actual SSE endpoint this time.
Of course using the passed httpOnly cookie to the SSE Route, it would determine which data can the useadmin see (obviously it has to check the database/cache to verify the user's role/authorization using an API token or something of the sort).
​
When it comes to the data insertion of the sensor's data to the database it's fairly simple, now the issue is that I have to somehow dispatch the data that has been entering our Data Endpoint. I settled on using the events object in NodeJS, in which I create an emitter on the MQTT/HTTP POST Endpoint file, then as soon as data comes through, the emitter would emit data, and for each SSE Route Instance (aka the EventSource we have started for each user viewing his sensors on the front-end) it would be already listening to that specific event and then it'll filter out what the user wants to see/the data that he's allowed to see and so fourth.
Architecture prototype
I'm a lot skeptical about this system design (if you could call it one) because the app will be monolithic at the moment which made it a little complex to work with.
I would really appreciate it if you have any questions or ideas that you could suggest to me.
Thank you in advance

Hello there, I'd consider myself a noob when it comes to overclocking.
I had a i7 2600k running at 4.5 GHz for the past 12 years. Stable, cool at the time (75c full load). This week I bought myself a new system. Going from the i7 2600k air cooled (hyper 212+ Evo) Gigabyte z68-ud3h-b3 with a R9 390 to the following:
Gigabyte z790 aorus elite ax I5 13600k MSI Rtx 4070ti ventus 3x oc 32 GB Corsair vengeance rgb 6000mhz H150i Elite Capellix xt 360
Huge upgrade from my previous system however I like to push things to the limit.
OC/UC my 4070ti to 2850mhz @ 950mv OC the i5 13600k to 5.5Ghz leaving the e-cores at 3.9. p-cores are running 1.2v with a +0.085 offset. E-cores are running 3.9Ghz defaults. Temps during C23 multicore are maximum of 86c. Again, I'm cooling this with a H150i Elite Capellix xt 360mm rad.
My stocks are: ~32c idle with 1.28vcore Sadly I did not test during max load due to my excitement...
During gaming (While OC'ed) I get an average of 58c but this average might be skewed due to maximum temperature of 64c during boot. While monitoring temps with HWinfo64 it seems the average is around 42-46c with a max of 52c(based on personal calculations and resetting the max/avg/etc in HWinfo64).
My maximum vcore according to HWinfo64 is 1.334v this is during gaming and while running C23 it's a max of 1.344v. I hit a max of 203W during C23.
I'm currently playing on 1080p but next month I'm getting a 1440p monitor with 144hz.
I hope this provides enough information for my following questions:
Is this a good OC with the voltage being used?
Are these temperatures alright for my OC?
Is it worth keeping these settings for gaming solely or should I reduce the clocks and voltages, to reduce temperatures?
Will my current settings provide me a benefit at 1440p or should I stick to stock CPU settings and rather go for a possible undervolt instead?
It seems, of rather feels, like I got unlucky with the silicon lottery. But then again I haven't dabbled with overclocking for over a decade so I have no idea if I should expect the same from this CPU compared to the i7 2600k(which I know was an amazing overclocker).
What should be the max vcore on the i5 13600k?
Any general tips are welcome as well, I'm new to this so any help is appreciated. I haven't dabbled with LLC either and not sure if that could improve my OC. Any tips are welcome. Especially for my motherboard as there doesn't seem to be much information regarding the Gigabyte/Aorus mobo's interface.
I probably have some more questions but let's go with this for now.
I would like to thank you in advance.

I made a nuclear steam room with 2 reactors and put most of my major heat producers in there. After some early trouble everything seemed to be going great. Unfortunately, I learned pretty quick that 6 turbines is no where enough and am expanding to 12 but wanted to ask if that will be enough? It's still only my 3rd playthrough and so far I've janked my way over 1500 cycles. The mistakes are piling up because I refuse to watch guides. One of those mistakes was where I built my reactors because I'm limited to probably 15-18 turbines. Also, will 2 aquatuners in series be enough to cool 6 turbines with super coolant because right now I've used pwater and petroleum and both failed over time?
On a side note, will temp shift plates even out the temperature gradient in the steam room because the bottom was 300 C while the top (50 tiles up) was closer to 180-200 C? All my buildings are made of steel or ceramic and still overheat at the bottom. Metal is nothing as I've found 2 copper, 1 gold, 2 cobalt, and 1 aluminum volcanos iirc. Great seed really because NG, metal, and water are very abundant but I'm very dumb so I'm sure many of you would do much better than I am lol

When I was brand new to NovelAi I had no idea how 2048 tokens really looked as text. So for anyone looking at the tiers, trying to decide how many tokens they want for Clio with the new update, I've tokenized Part of The Great Gatsby by Scott Fitzgerald (public domain since 2021).
That way new users can more easily visualize what the AI's maximum context is for each tier. According to the UI Clio uses the NerdStash Tokenizer, as different tokenizers will convert text to tokens their own way.
------------------------
In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I’ve been turning over in my mind ever since.
“Whenever you feel like criticizing anyone,” he told me, “just remember that all the people in this world haven’t had the advantages that you’ve had.”
He didn’t say any more, but we’ve always been unusually communicative in a reserved way, and I understood that he meant a great deal more than that. In consequence, I’m inclined to reserve all judgements, a habit that has opened up many curious natures to me and also made me the victim of not a few veteran bores. The abnormal mind is quick to detect and attach itself to this quality when it appears in a normal person, and so it came about that in college I was unjustly accused of being a politician, because I was privy to the secret griefs of wild, unknown men. Most of the confidences were unsought—frequently I have feigned sleep, preoccupation, or a hostile levity when I realized by some unmistakable sign that an intimate revelation was quivering on the horizon; for the intimate revelations of young men, or at least the terms in which they express them, are usually plagiaristic and marred by obvious suppressions. Reserving judgements is a matter of infinite hope. I am still a little afraid of missing something if I forget that, as my father snobbishly suggested, and I snobbishly repeat, a sense of the fundamental decencies is parcelled out unequally at birth.
And, after boasting this way of my tolerance, I come to the admission that it has a limit. Conduct may be founded on the hard rock or the wet marshes, but after a certain point I don’t care what it’s founded on. When I came back from the East last autumn I felt that I wanted the world to be in uniform and at a sort of moral attention forever; I wanted no more riotous excursions with privileged glimpses into the human heart. Only Gatsby, the man who gives his name to this book, was exempt from my reaction—Gatsby, who represented everything for which I have an unaffected scorn. If personality is an unbroken series of successful gestures, then there was something gorgeous about him, some heightened sensitivity to the promises of life, as if he were related to one of those intricate machines that register earthquakes ten thousand miles away. This responsiveness had nothing to do with that flabby impressionability which is dignified under the name of the “creative temperament”—it was an extraordinary gift for hope, a romantic readiness such as I have never found in any other person and which it is not likely I shall ever find again. No—Gatsby turned out all right at the end; it is what preyed on Gatsby, what foul dust floated in the wake of his dreams that temporarily closed out my interest in the abortive sorrows and short-winded elations of men.
My family have been prominent, well-to-do people in this Middle Western city for three generations. The Carraways are something of a clan, and we have a tradition that we’re descended from the Dukes of Buccleuch, but the actual founder of my line was my grandfather’s brother, who came here in fifty-one, sent a substitute to the Civil War, and started the wholesale hardware business that my father carries on today.
I never saw this great-uncle, but I’m supposed to look like him—with special reference to the rather hard-boiled painting that hangs in father’s office. I graduated from New Haven in 1915, just a quarter of a century after my father, and a little later I participated in that delayed Teutonic migration known as the Great War. I enjoyed the counter-raid so thoroughly that I came back restless. Instead of being the warm centre of the world, the Middle West now seemed like the ragged edge of the universe—so I decided to go East and learn the bond business. Everybody I knew was in the bond business, so I supposed it could support one more single man. All my aunts and uncles talked it over as if they were choosing a prep school for me, and finally said, “Why—ye-es,” with very grave, hesitant faces. Father agreed to finance me for a year, and after various delays I came East, permanently, I thought, in the spring of twenty-two.
The practical thing was to find rooms in the city, but it was a warm season, and I had just left a country of wide lawns and friendly trees, so when a young man at the office suggested that we take a house together in a commuting town, it sounded like a great idea. He found the house, a weather-beaten cardboard bungalow at eighty a month, but at the last minute the firm ordered him to Washington, and I went out to the country alone. I had a dog—at least I had him for a few days until he ran away—and an old Dodge and a Finnish woman, who made my bed and cooked breakfast and muttered Finnish wisdom to herself over the electric stove.
It was lonely for a day or so until one morning some man, more recently arrived than I, stopped me on the road.
“How do you get to West Egg village?” he asked helplessly.
I told him. And as I walked on I was lonely no longer. I was a guide, a pathfinder, an original settler. He had casually conferred on me the freedom of the neighbourhood.
And so with the sunshine and the great bursts of leaves growing on the trees, just as things grow in fast movies, I had that familiar conviction that life was beginning over again with the summer.
There was so much to read, for one thing, and so much fine health to be pulled down out of the young breath-giving air. I bought a dozen volumes on banking and credit and investment securities, and they stood on my shelf in red and gold like new money from the mint, promising to unfold the shining secrets that only Midas and Morgan and Maecenas knew. And I had the high intention of reading many other books besides. I was rather literary in college—one year I wrote a series of very solemn and obvious editorials for the Yale News—and now I was going to bring back all such things into my life and become again that most limited of all specialists, the “well-rounded man.” This isn’t just an epigram—life is much more successfully looked at from a single window, after all.
It was a matter of chance that I should have rented a house in one of the strangest communities in North America. It was on that slender riotous island which extends itself due east of New York—and where there are, among other natural curiosities, two unusual formations of land. Twenty miles from the city a pair of enormous eggs, identical in contour and separated only by a courtesy bay, jut out into the most domesticated body of salt water in the Western hemisphere, the great wet barnyard of Long Island Sound. They are not perfect ovals—like the egg in the Columbus story, they are both crushed flat at the contact end—but their physical resemblance must be a source of perpetual wonder to the gulls that fly overhead. To the wingless a more interesting phenomenon is their dissimilarity in every particular except shape and size.
I lived at West Egg, the—well, the less fashionable of the two, though this is a most superficial tag to express the bizarre and not a little sinister contrast between them. My house was at the very tip of the egg, only fifty yards from the Sound, and squeezed between two huge places that rented for twelve or fifteen thousand a season. The one on my right was a colossal affair by any standard—it was a factual imitation of some Hôtel de Ville in Normandy, with a tower on one side, spanking new under a thin beard of raw ivy, and a marble swimming pool, and more than forty acres of lawn and garden. It was Gatsby’s mansion. Or, rather, as I didn’t know Mr. Gatsby, it was a mansion inhabited by a gentleman of that name. My own house was an eyesore, but it was a small eyesore, and it had been overlooked, so I had a view of the water, a partial view of my neighbour’s lawn, and the consoling proximity of millionaires—all for eighty dollars a month.
Across the courtesy bay the white palaces of fashionable East Egg glittered along the water, and the history of the summer really begins on the evening I drove over there to have dinner with the Tom Buchanans. Daisy was my second cousin once removed, and I’d known Tom in college. And just after the war I spent two days with them in Chicago.
Her husband, among various physical accomplishments, had been one of the most powerful ends that ever played football at New Haven—a national figure in a way, one of those men who reach such an acute limited excellence at twenty-one that everything afterward savours of anticlimax. His family were enormously wealthy—even in college his freedom with money was a matter for reproach—but now he’d left Chicago and come East in a fashion that rather took your breath away: for instance, he’d brought down a string of polo ponies from Lake Forest. It was hard to realize that a man in my own generation was wealthy enough to do that.
Why they came East I don’t know. They had spent a year in France for no particular reason, and then drifted here and there unrestfully wherever people played polo and were rich together. This was a permanent move, said Daisy over the telephone, but I didn’t believe it—I had no sight into Daisy’s heart, but I felt that Tom would drift on forever seeking, a little wistfully, for the dramatic turbulence of some irrecoverable football game.
And so it happened that on a warm windy evening I drove over to East Egg to see two old friends whom I scarcely knew at all. Their house was even more elaborate than I expected, a cheerful red-and-white Georgian Colonial mansion, overlooking the bay. The lawn started at the beach and ran towards the front door for a quarter of a mile, jumping over sundials and brick walks and burning gardens—finally when it reached the house drifting up the side in bright vines as though from the momentum of its run. The front was broken by a line of French windows, glowing now with reflected gold and wide open to the warm windy afternoon, and Tom Buchanan in riding clothes was standing with his legs apart on the front porch.
He had changed since his New Haven years. Now he was a sturdy straw-haired man of thirty, with a rather hard mouth and a supercilious manner. Two shining arrogant eyes had established dominance over his face and gave him the appearance of always leaning aggressively forward. Not even the effeminate swank of his riding clothes could hide the enormous power of that body—he seemed to fill those glistening boots until he strained the top lacing, and you could see a great pack of muscle shifting when his shoulder moved under his thin coat. It was a body capable of enormous leverage—a cruel body.
His speaking voice, a gruff husky tenor, added to the impression of fractiousness he conveyed. There was a touch of paternal contempt in it, even toward people he liked—and there were men at New Haven who had hated his guts.
“Now, don’t think my opinion on these matters is final,” he seemed to say, “just because I’m stronger and more of a man than you are.” We were in the same senior society, and while we were never intimate I always had the impression that he approved of me and wanted me to like him with some harsh, defiant wistfulness of his own.
We talked for a few minutes on the sunny porch.
“I’ve got a nice place here,” he said, his eyes flashing about restlessly.
Turning me around by one arm, he moved a broad flat hand along the front vista, including in its sweep a sunken Italian garden, a half acre of deep, pungent roses, and a snub-nosed motorboat that bumped the tide offshore.
“It belonged to Demaine, the oil man.” He turned me around again, politely and abruptly. “We’ll go inside.”
We walked through a high hallway into a bright rosy-coloured space, fragilely bound into the house by French windows at either end. The windows were ajar and gleaming white against the fresh grass outside that seemed to grow a little way into the house. A breeze blew through the room, blew curtains in at one end and out the other like pale flags, twisting them up toward the frosted wedding-cake of the ceiling, and then rippled over the wine-coloured rug, making a shadow on it as wind does on the sea.
The only completely stationary object in the room was an enormous couch on which two young women were buoyed up as though upon an anchored balloon. They were both in white, and their dresses were rippling and fluttering as if they had just been blown back in after a short flight around the house. I must have stood for a few moments listening to the whip and snap of the curtains and the groan of a picture on the wall. Then there was a boom as Tom Buchanan shut the rear windows and the caught wind died out about the room, and the curtains and the rugs and the two young women ballooned slowly to the floor.
The younger of the two was a stranger to me. She was extended full length at her end of the divan, completely motionless, and with her chin raised a little, as if she were balancing something on it which was quite likely to fall. If she saw me out of the corner of her eyes she gave no hint of it—indeed, I was almost surprised into murmuring an apology for having disturbed her by coming in.
The other girl, Daisy, made an attempt to rise—she leaned slightly forward with a conscientious expression—then she laughed, an absurd, charming little laugh, and I laughed too and came forward into the room.
“I’m p-paralysed with happiness.”
She
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laughed again, as if she said something very witty, and held my hand for a moment, looking up into my face, promising that there was no one in the world she so much wanted to see. That was a way she had. She hinted in a murmur that the surname of the balancing girl was Baker. (I’ve heard it said that Daisy’s murmur was only to make people lean toward her; an irrelevant criticism that made it no less charming.)
At any rate, Miss Baker’s lips fluttered, she nodded at me almost imperceptibly, and then quickly tipped her head back again—the object she was balancing had obviously tottered a little and given her something of a fright. Again a sort of apology arose to my lips. Almost any exhibition of complete self-sufficiency draws a stunned tribute from me.
I looked back at my cousin, who began to ask me questions in her low, thrilling voice. It was the kind of voice that the ear follows up and down, as if each speech is an arrangement of notes that will never be played again. Her face was sad and lovely with bright things in it, bright eyes and a bright passionate mouth, but there was an excitement in her voice that men who had cared for her found difficult to forget: a singing compulsion, a whispered “Listen,” a promise that she had done gay, exciting things just a while since and that there were gay, exciting things hovering in the next hour.
I told her how I had stopped off in Chicago for a day on my way East, and how a dozen people had sent their love through me.
“Do they miss me?” she cried ecstatically.
“The whole town is desolate. All the cars have the left rear wheel painted black as a mourning wreath, and there’s a persistent wail all night along the north shore.”
“How gorgeous! Let’s go back, Tom. Tomorrow!” Then she added irrelevantly: “You ought to see the baby.”
“I’d like to.”
“She’s asleep. She’s three years old. Haven’t you ever seen her?”
“Never.”
“Well, you ought to see her. She’s—”
Tom Buchanan, who had been hovering restlessly about the room, stopped and rested his hand on my shoulder.
“What you doing, Nick?”
“I’m a bond man.”
“Who with?”
I told him.
“Never heard of them,” he remarked decisively.
This annoyed me.
“You will,” I answered shortly. “You will if you stay in the East.”
“Oh, I’ll stay in the East, don’t you worry,” he said, glancing at Daisy and then back at me, as if he were alert for something more. “I’d be a God damned fool to live anywhere else.”
At this point Miss Baker said: “Absolutely!” with such suddenness that I started—it was the first word she had uttered since I came into the room. Evidently it surprised her as much as it did me, for she yawned and with a series of rapid, deft movements stood up into the room.
“I’m stiff,” she complained, “I’ve been lying on that sofa for as long as I can remember.”
“Don’t look at me,” Daisy retorted, “I’ve been trying to get you to New York all afternoon.”
“No, thanks,” said Miss Baker to the four cocktails just in from the pantry. “I’m absolutely in training.”
Her host looked at her incredulously.
“You are!” He took down his drink as if it were a drop in the bottom of a glass. “How you ever get anything done is beyond me.”
I looked at Miss Baker, wondering what it was she “got done.” I enjoyed looking at her. She was a slender, small-breasted girl, with an erect carriage, which she accentuated by throwing her body backward at the shoulders like a young cadet. Her grey sun-strained eyes looked back at me with polite reciprocal curiosity out of a wan, charming, discontented face. It occurred to me now that I had seen her, or a picture of her, somewhere before.
“You live in West Egg,” she remarked contemptuously. “I know somebody there.”
“I don’t know a single—”
“You must know Gatsby.”
“Gatsby?” demanded Daisy. “What Gatsby?”
Before I could reply that he was my neighbour dinner was announced; wedging his tense arm imperatively under mine, Tom Buchanan compelled me from the room as though he were moving a checker to another square.
Slenderly, languidly, their hands set lightly on their hips, the two young women preceded us out on to a rosy-coloured porch, open toward the sunset, where four candles flickered on the table in the diminished wind.
“Why candles?” objected Daisy, frowning. She snapped them out with her fingers. “In two weeks it’ll be the longest day in the year.” She looked at us all radiantly. “Do you always watch for the longest day of the year and then miss it? I always watch for the longest day in the year and then miss it.”
“We ought to plan something,” yawned Miss Baker, sitting down at the table as if she were getting into bed.
“All right,” said Daisy. “What’ll we plan?” She turned to me helplessly: “What do people plan?”
Before I could answer her eyes fastened with an awed expression on her little finger.
“Look!” she complained; “I hurt it.”
We all looked—the knuckle was black and blue.
“You did it, Tom,” she said accusingly. “I know you didn’t mean to, but you did do it. That’s what I get for marrying a brute of a man, a great, big, hulking physical specimen of a—”
“I hate that word ‘hulking,’ ” objected Tom crossly, “even in kidding.”
“Hulking,” insisted Daisy.
Sometimes she and Miss Baker talked at once, unobtrusively and with a bantering inconsequence that was never quite chatter, that was as cool as their white dresses and their impersonal eyes in the absence of all desire. They were here, and they accepted Tom and me, making only a polite pleasant effort to entertain or to be entertained. They knew that presently dinner would be over and a little later the evening too would be over and casually put away. It was sharply different from the West, where an evening was hurried from phase to phase towards its close, in a continually disappointed anticipation or else in sheer nervous dread of the moment itself.
“You make me feel uncivilized, Daisy,” I confessed on my second glass of corky but rather impressive claret. “Can’t you talk about crops or something?”
I meant nothing in particular by this remark, but it was taken up in an unexpected way.
“Civilization’s going to pieces,” broke out Tom violently. “I’ve gotten to be a terrible pessimist about things. Have you read The Rise of the Coloured Empires by this man Goddard?”
“Why, no,” I answered, rather surprised by his tone.
“Well, it’s a fine book, and everybody ought to read it. The idea is if we don’t look out the white race will be—will be utterly submerged. It’s all scientific stuff; it’s been proved.”
“Tom’s getting very profound,” said Daisy, with an expression of unthoughtful sadness. “He reads deep books with long words in them. What was that word we—”
“Well, these books are all scientific,” insisted Tom, glancing at her impatiently. “This fellow has worked out the whole thing. It’s up to us, who are the dominant race, to watch out or these other races will have control of things.”
“We’ve got to beat them down,” whispered Daisy, winking ferociously toward the fervent sun.
“You ought to live in California—” began Miss Baker, but Tom interrupted her by shifting heavily in his chair.
“This idea is that we’re Nordics. I am, and you are, and you are, and—” After an infinitesimal hesitation he included Daisy with a slight nod, and she winked at me again. “—And we’ve produced all the things that go to make civilization—oh, science and art, and all that. Do you see?”
There was something pathetic in his concentration, as if his complacency, more acute than of old, was not enough to him any more. When, almost immediately, the telephone rang inside and the butler left the porch Daisy seized upon the momentary interruption and leaned towards me.
“I’ll tell you a family secret,” she whispered enthusiastically. “It’s about the butler’s nose. Do you want to hear about the butler’s nose?”
“That’s why I came over tonight.”
“Well, he wasn’t always a butler; he used to be the silver polisher for some people in New York that had a silver service for two hundred people. He had to polish it from morning till night, until finally it began to affect his nose—”
“Things went from bad to worse,” suggested Miss Baker.
“Yes. Things went from bad to worse, until finally he had to give up his position.”
For a moment the last sunshine fell with romantic affection upon her glowing face; her voice compelled me forward breathlessly as I listened—then the glow faded, each light deserting her with lingering regret, like children leaving a pleasant street at dusk.
The butler came back and murmured something close to Tom’s ear, whereupon Tom frowned, pushed back his chair, and without a word went inside. As if his absence quickened something within her, Daisy leaned forward again, her voice glowing and singing.
“I love to see you at my table, Nick. You remind me of a—of a rose, an absolute rose. Doesn’t he?” She turned to Miss Baker for confirmation: “An absolute rose?”
This was untrue. I am not even faintly like a rose. She was only extemporizing, but a stirring warmth flowed from her, as if her heart was trying to come out to you concealed in one of those breathless, thrilling words. Then suddenly she threw her napkin on the table and excused herself and went into the house.
Miss Baker and I exchanged a short glance consciously devoid of meaning. I was about to speak when she sat up alertly and said “Sh!” in a warning voice. A subdued impassioned murmur was audible in the room beyond, and Miss Baker leaned forward unashamed, trying to hear. The murmur trembled on the verge of coherence, sank down, mounted excitedly, and then ceased altogether.
“This Mr. Gatsby you spoke of is my neighbour—” I began.
“Don’t talk. I want to hear what happens.”
“Is something happening?” I inquired innocently.
“You mean to say you don’t know?” said Miss Baker, honestly surprised. “I thought everybody knew.”
“I don’t.”
“Why—” she said hesitantly. “Tom’s got some woman in New York.”
“Got some woman?” I repeated blankly.
Miss Baker nodded.
“She might have the decency not to telephone him at dinner time. Don’t you think?”
Almost before I had grasped her meaning there was the flutter of a dress and the crunch of leather boots, and Tom and Daisy were back at the table.
“It couldn’t be helped!” cried Daisy with tense gaiety.
She sat down, glanced searchingly at Miss Baker and then at me, and continued: “I looked outdoors for a minute, and it’s very romantic outdoors. There’s a bird on the lawn that I think must be a nightingale come over on the Cunard or White Star Line. He’s singing away—” Her voice sang: “It’s romantic, isn’t it, Tom?”
“Very romantic,” he said, and then miserably to me: “If it’s light enough after dinner, I want to take you down to the stables.”
The telephone rang inside, startlingly, and as Daisy shook her head decisively at Tom the subject of the stables, in fact all subjects, vanished into air. Among the broken fragments of the last five minutes at table I remember the candles being lit again, pointlessly, and I was conscious of wanting to look squarely at everyone, and yet to avoid all eyes. I couldn’t guess what Daisy and Tom were thinking, but I doubt if even Miss Baker, who seemed to have mastered a certain hardy scepticism, was able utterly to put this fifth guest’s shrill metallic urgency out of mind. To a certain temperament the situation might have seemed intriguing—my own instinct was to telephone immediately for the police.
The horses, needless to say, were not mentioned again. Tom and Miss Baker, with several feet of twilight between them, strolled back into the library, as if to a vigil beside a perfectly tangible body, while, trying to look pleasantly interested and a little deaf, I followed Daisy around a chain of connecting verandas to the porch in front. In its deep gloom we sat down side by side on a wicker settee.
Daisy took her face in her hands as if feeling its lovely shape, and her eyes moved gradually out into the velvet dusk. I saw that turbulent emotions possessed her, so I asked what I thought would be some sedative questions about her little girl.
“We don’t know each other very well, Nick,” she said suddenly. “Even if we are cousins. You didn’t come to my wedding.”
“I wasn’t back from the war.”
“That’s true.” She hesitated. “Well, I’ve had a very bad time, Nick, and I’m pretty cynical about everything.”
Evidently she had reason to be. I waited but she
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didn’t say any more, and after a moment I returned rather feebly to the subject of her daughter.
“I suppose she talks, and—eats, and everything.”
“Oh, yes.” She looked at me absently. “Listen, Nick; let me tell you what I said when she was born. Would you like to hear?”
“Very much.”
“It’ll show you how I’ve gotten to feel about—things. Well, she was less than an hour old and Tom was God knows where. I woke up out of the ether with an utterly abandoned feeling, and asked the nurse right away if it was a boy or a girl. She told me it was a girl, and so I turned my head away and wept. ‘All right,’ I said, ‘I’m glad it’s a girl. And I hope she’ll be a fool—that’s the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool.’
“You see I think everything’s terrible anyhow,” she went on in a convinced way. “Everybody thinks so—the most advanced people. And I know. I’ve been everywhere and seen everything and done everything.” Her eyes flashed around her in a defiant way, rather like Tom’s, and she laughed with thrilling scorn. “Sophisticated—God, I’m sophisticated!”
The instant her voice broke off, ceasing to compel my attention, my belief, I felt the basic insincerity of what she had said. It made me uneasy, as though the whole evening had been a trick of some sort to exact a contributory emotion from me. I waited, and sure enough, in a moment she looked at me with an absolute smirk on her lovely face, as if she had asserted her membership in a rather distinguished secret society to which she and Tom belonged.
Inside, the crimson room bloomed with light. Tom and Miss Baker sat at either end of the long couch and she read aloud to him from the Saturday Evening Post—the words, murmurous and uninflected, running together in a soothing tune. The lamplight, bright on his boots and dull on the autumn-leaf yellow of her hair, glinted along the paper as she turned a page with a flutter of slender muscles in her arms.
When we came in she held us silent for a moment with a lifted hand.
“To be continued,” she said, tossing the magazine on the table, “in our very next issue.”
Her body asserted itself with a restless movement of her knee, and she stood up.
“Ten o’clock,” she remarked, apparently finding the time on the ceiling. “Time for this good girl to go to bed.”
“Jordan’s going to play in the tournament tomorrow,” explained Daisy, “over at Westchester.”
“Oh—you’re Jordan Baker.”
I knew now why her face was familiar—its pleasing contemptuous expression had looked out at me from many rotogravure pictures of the sporting life at Asheville and Hot Springs and Palm Beach. I had heard some story of her too, a critical, unpleasant story, but what it was I had forgotten long ago.
“Good night,” she said softly. “Wake me at eight, won’t you.”
“If you’ll get up.”
“I will. Good night, Mr. Carraway. See you anon.”
“Of course you will,” confirmed Daisy. “In fact I think I’ll arrange a marriage. Come over often, Nick, and I’ll sort of—oh—fling you together. You know—lock you up accidentally in linen closets and push you out to sea in a boat, and all that sort of thing—”
“Good night,” called Miss Baker from the stairs. “I haven’t heard a word.”
“She’s a nice girl,” said Tom after a moment. “They oughtn’t to let her run around the country this way.”
“Who oughtn’t to?” inquired Daisy coldly.
“Her family.”
“Her family is one aunt about a thousand years old. Besides, Nick’s going to look after her, aren’t you, Nick? She’s going to spend lots of weekends out here this summer. I think the home influence will be very good for her.”
Daisy and Tom looked at each other for a moment in silence.
“Is she from New York?” I asked quickly.
“From Louisville. Our white girlhood was passed together there. Our beautiful white—”
“Did you give Nick a little heart to heart talk on the veranda?” demanded Tom suddenly.
“Did I?” She looked at me. “I can’t seem to remember, but I think we talked about the Nordic race. Yes, I’m sure we did. It sort of crept up on us and first thing you know—”
“Don’t believe everything you hear, Nick,” he advised me.
I said lightly that I had heard nothing at all, and a few minutes later I got up to go home. They came to the door with me and stood side by side in a cheerful square of light. As I started my motor Daisy peremptorily called: “Wait!”
“I forgot to ask you something, and it’s important. We heard you were engaged to a girl out West.”
“That’s right,” corroborated Tom kindly. “We heard that you were engaged.”
“It’s a libel. I’m too poor.”
“But we heard it,” insisted Daisy, surprising me by opening up again in a flower-like way. “We heard it from three people, so it must be true.”
Of course I knew what they were referring to, but I wasn’t even vaguely engaged. The fact that gossip had published the banns was one of the reasons I had come East. You can’t stop going with an old friend on account of rumours, and on the other hand I had no intention of being rumoured into marriage.
Their interest rather touched me and made them less remotely rich—nevertheless, I was confused and a little disgusted as I drove away. It seemed to me that the thing for Daisy to do was to rush out of the house, child in arms—but apparently there were no such intentions in her head. As for Tom, the fact that he “had some woman in New York” was really less surprising than that he had been depressed by a book. Something was making him nibble at the edge of stale ideas as if his sturdy physical egotism no longer nourished his peremptory heart.
Already it was deep summer on roadhouse roofs and in front of wayside garages, where new red petrol-pumps sat out in pools of light, and when I reached my estate at West Egg I ran the car under its shed and sat for a while on an abandoned grass roller in the yard. The wind had blown off, leaving a loud, bright night, with wings beating in the trees and a persistent organ sound as the full bellows of the earth blew the frogs full of life. The silhouette of a moving cat wavered across the moonlight, and, turning my head to watch it, I saw that I was not alone—fifty feet away a figure had emerged from the shadow of my neighbour’s mansion and was standing with his hands in his pockets regarding the silver pepper of the stars. Something in his leisurely movements and the secure position of his feet upon the lawn suggested that it was Mr. Gatsby himself, come out to determine what share was his of our local heavens.
I decided to call to him. Miss Baker had mentioned him at dinner, and that would do for an introduction. But I didn’t call to him, for he gave a sudden intimation that he was content to be alone—he stretched out his arms toward the dark water in a curious way, and, far as I was from him, I could have sworn he was trembling. Involuntarily I glanced seaward—and distinguished nothing except a single green light, minute and far away, that might have been the end of a dock. When I looked once more for Gatsby he had vanished, and I was alone again in the unquiet darkness.
II
About halfway between West Egg and New York the motor road hastily joins the railroad and runs beside it for a quarter of a mile, so as to shrink away from a certain desolate area of land. This is a valley of ashes—a fantastic farm where ashes grow like wheat into ridges and hills and grotesque gardens; where ashes take the forms of houses and chimneys and rising smoke and, finally, with a transcendent effort, of ash-grey men, who move dimly and already crumbling through the powdery air. Occasionally a line of grey cars crawls along an invisible track, gives out a ghastly creak, and comes to rest, and immediately the ash-grey men swarm up with leaden spades and stir up an impenetrable cloud, which screens their obscure operations from your sight.
But above the grey land and the spasms of bleak dust which drift endlessly over it, you perceive, after a moment, the eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg. The eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg are blue and gigantic—their retinas are one yard high. They look out of no face, but, instead, from a pair of enormous yellow spectacles which pass over a nonexistent nose. Evidently some wild wag of an oculist set them there to
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Hi!
Me and my husband got our whooping cough vaccination Monday evening. At first it was fine my arm pretty fast hurt a little but other then that it was fine.
On Tuesday as I wake up my arm hurt really bad and was tired (all normal I guessed) but as I ate my lunch I felt I was going to be sicker (went pale my muscles hurt threw up it felt like having the flu) So I called my boss and she said it’s better you go home and see how you feel tomorrow. I went home laying on the couch my head burst so took after a couple of hours 500mg paracetamol and my temperature went down a little too (didn’t have fever only a little temperature rise)
Now it’s 2:40am and I can’t sleep from muscle pain especially just above my knees (you can compare it with growing pain as a kid) and a little temperature rise
Now my question is, is my baby going to be okay?? I’m a FTM and 25+4 weeks.
I will call my boss and doctor as soon as I can but in meantime I’m looking for a little reassurance.
Thanks in advance!

I'm about to pull the trigger on the travis scott jordan 1 highs, but they off white ones caught my eye . I'm not a fan of the white ones, so that leaves the chicagos and the unc's. They both look pretty cool but the chicago has a lot more hype but I like the way the blue looks with the orange laces. I really can't decide now, so which one should I get? Also doesn't anyone have the off white ones? I'm concerned with the way the foam is exposed on the top. Thanks

My boyfriend and I have a week long Alaskan cruise scheduled at the end of August that leaves out of Seattle. We, also, have job training we were just informed of for 2 weeks in LA before the cruise. We ended up lucky that they line up perfectly but now the issue becomes packing. I’m trying to figure out how to get our items everywhere as cheaply as possible.
For LA in August I’m guessing we will need to pack our summer gear, sunscreen, and also some snacking items since we’re thinking prices will be quite expensive compared to the Chicago area we’re used to. Since we’re there for 2 weeks, we’re currently thinking towards the end of our 2 weeks doing laundry and mailing back whatever we don’t need to to save on space in our suitcases?
For Alaska we’ve been reading to pack lots of layers, cold weather gear, hiking gear, water repellent everything. Since these can be quite heavy I’m wondering if it’s worth it to pack in our suitcase on the way to LA and also fly with it again from LA to Seattle or if we should just mail it to ourselves at one of these locations?
Any suggestions on what to do or how to go about this for cost efficiency? Also, any suggestions for either trip are very welcome it will be our first time in all locations.

I'm someone who loves to cook, and sometimes I make food for my family. I cook a lot, and I'd say I'm fairly decent at it. One morning I was preparing to make American pancakes when my mom walks in the kitchen. She gets excited about the pancakes, but tells me to save some batter so that she can fry her own pancakes bc she 'wants them to be perfect'. My dad usually fries them, and he's a master. I've learnt from him, but my mom has no idea how to fry American pancakes. I follow her request and finish cooking the rest of the batter. I serve up the pancakes I've made, and they're perfectly golden brown and fluffy. Now it's her turn on the stove, and she soon realizes her mistake. She can't get the temperature right, uses too much oil and flips them way too late. Hers turn out burnt and flat, and everyone else is finished eating by now. Safe to say she wanted my pancakes in the end :)

Hello Everyone, thanks for Reading, and thanks again for u/MelasD for creating Amelia the level zero [Hero], a universe where people operate under a system where magic is controlled akin to a videogame.
First Chapter * Next Chapter!
​
A Scale of Vengance, Part Two.
I awoke in a place I did not recognize, remembering the spell circle, and the Egg, but this space was alien, beyond anything I had seen.{Welcome! You have been chosen/volunteered for introduction to the [Guardian Spirit] program! I am your guide for this process, do you consent to continue? Saying no will have no consequence for rejection, saying yes will begin the process of integration into the program. Y/N?}
I blinked, listening to a voice made of several voices, some male, some female, blended into each other, like a choir.
I said “Yes”, not wanting to be rejected, and the Guardian not be resurrected.
{Input received! Welcome Spirit Host! You will now pick your Avatar for the Dragon Spirit, this avatar will affect how the spirit interfaces with the world around it, its potential powers, and instincts toward you, and the world around it.}
A path lit up before me, and darkened behind me, guiding me as I walked forwards into a field full of Dragons! I looked at them, all beautiful and majestic, yet each one slightly different from the next. One of the Dragons was playing with a large ball, bouncing it around on it’s nose as a game.
It addressed me in a high pitched voice.“Hello! I was the [Guardian Spirit] who watched over your city, and together with my Host, we were Carana! We had so much fun playing together, but I was tired and hungry when I was killed fighting.”
The Dragon was no bigger than I, and on all fours, so I petted her, reassuringly. “You tried, that [Hero King] is beyond what we expected, though you being hungry affected the fight? Why didn’t you eat before you fought?” I asked as she leaned into me.
The Dragon formerly known as Carana looked at me sadly “There was nothing left to eat, my host was all gone, and I had been hungry for some time.”
I squatted on my haunches “Why didn’t your host just give you more to eat before a battle?” I asked, bewildered at why she had been neglected so.
The little dragon sighed, wilting visibly “You don’t understand, we Guardian Spirits are fed by consuming our hosts. You give up part of yourself for power, and we live off of your energies.”
All of a sudden, I looked at the room full of interested Dragons in a new light. Not as someone choosing to be granted great power, but volunteering to become a meal. I backed away from the small dragon, who just looked sad before bouncing the ball back into the air, and seemingly forgetting about me.
Another dragon walked up to me “I overheard your last conversation, I can tell that you don’t want a silly, fun loving spirit as your companion. I am the oldest and dare I say wisest of us here. I specialize in Magic and Agriculture.”
I looked at the green dragon, whose eyes were old, old beyond reckoning. Yet there was a softness to it, one that made me feel full of life and power through connecting with nature.“I don’t feel like we are compatible for what needs to be done, but would you help guide me, Green Dragon in helping find who I should journey with?” I asked it, and it smiled, it’s bark like skin cracked into a smile.
“I’d be delighted! So few ask that! You are a intelligent being, young master, the one of us you choose will be fed well, I think!”
I greatly daring ruffled the leaves of its mane playfully just as another being walked into the room, one with an absolutely alien appearance, a Black skinned Insect dressed up in Yellow silks.
The Green dragon Purred under my touch exclaiming “Ah! The gods smile on us, the feast continues!”
The being walked over to us, chittering and clicking, and oddly the Green Dragon returned the noises for a minute before looking back to me.“This H’hanata [Warrior] is on the same journey as yourself, a Host candidate. The polite thing to do is to nodd like this, and let them touch your head with theirs.” The Green Dragon Bowed to the 8 foot tall insect, which bowed in return touching its feelers to the Dragon’s head. I followed, feeling the odd feathery touch of feelers upon my scalp for a second, before it lifted its head, and I followed.
More clicking followed, and while the Green dragon was occupied, another orange and blue Dragon approached me. “Hello, I am the Dragon of Temperature. I make things colder or warmer, as well as changing the states of matter. I’d be pleased to help you, and my powers are based in science, we could lead your people into a new Golden Age!”
The Dragon trotted in place, excitedly so, enough to knock off the glasses it had pinched to it’s nose. I couldn’t help but be impressed by it having hopes as well. If the Green dragon was magical and wise, this one felt full of potential and energy. I felt drawn to it, if this had happened before the war, we would have bonded for sure. But..
“Thank you, but..” I almost finished before the [Warrior] approached, and with a rapid exchange of clicks exchanged both looked at me with the Temperature Dragon shuffling its claws “I think I have a host, now, but she wishes to know if we need it, can we call on you and what dragon you bond with in return?”
A popup appeared in front of me {Friend Request, Temperature Dragon and Lumm’ta wish to ally themselves with Spirit Candidate Talio. This may result in being summoned, or allow you to summon in return for a period based on your contribution’s limit. Y/N}
I said “Yes” knowing I may need help faster than I’d wish it.{Input Received! Friend request accepted!}
The Mantid and Dragon Bowed before glowing and fusing, disappearing in a bright light together. I looked around as the Green Dragon approached me once again.“Lucky bastard, every time he sells that “Golden Age” crap, people fall all over him.” The Green dragon muttered disgustedly.
I looked at him “You sound like you don’t think he can deliver on it?” I asked it, curiously.The green dragon harrumphed “The Temperature Dragon can, but it also leads to the destruction of more worlds than any of us are responsible for. Progress for its own sake is dangerous if not managed closely.” He said, beckoning me to follow with a raised foreclaw before leading me on, toward a Black dragon.
“Go away.” The small black cinder spoke.The Green dragon booted it in it’s tail, leading to a angry Black drake lashing out, less cinder like now as I seen it’s elegant form uncurled. It looked me up and down before curling back into a ball again.“Are you deaf? Go away.” It spoke. “I don’t want to eat you.”
The green dragon spoke up. “You don’t get that choice, Cinder. It’s our Karma do so if asked. So, let’s hear it. Unless you want me to oversell your abilities?”
It huffed before looking all kinds of fake enthused “Hello! I’m the Dragon of Time! Using my power, you can revert time back to the point of us joining, literally resetting every choice in the universe regardless of how big or small allowing you to alter any action and its consequences!”
It said this, smiling all the time like it’s face was breaking, before collapsing back into a puddle of melancholy.I listened, before giving the dragon a hug, something that caused it to hiss and shake, before I let go.
“*Hissss* What the hell was that for?” It asked.
“You look like someone who has seen something bad, so yeah. That and I kind of need one myself, seeing I’m not going to leave here without being one of you dragon’s dinners.” I said, in all seriousness, kneeling in front of it’s hurt expression. Do you mind answering a question for me?
It nodded, so I asked “What’s the drawback to your power?”
The Dragon looked thoughtful, then answered “The less bonded we are, the less the efficiency between the amount of energy used to alter time.”
I asked “Does that mean your power is limited then?”
It rested its head in my lap “It means that if we don’t first bond, you lose ⅓ of yourself for each major change, and in doing so reduces our future ability to bond. This is true of most of us, that bonding affects how we digest our meals. But for me, people wish for big changes often before we bond, and it’s not long before I’m back here, or stuck without a host, and too weak to help what cause my host wanted to alter.”It looked up into my eyes “I don’t want a meal, not like that. Go with the old timer, and enjoy centuries of time.” It said waving a ebony set of claws at the green dragon. “I can only wish for that level of efficiency.”
The green dragon harrumphed “The candidate’s world is in the midst of a class 3 Void incursion, The Angel Guardian has been activated, and is seeking aid. This means the system grants a 90% reduction in the cost of our abilities for the duration of the crisis. The previous guardian had no host energy left to spend, so was defeated!” It said, swatting the former guardian Carana’s ball across the cavern, causing her to roar indignantly.The Green dragon and Black Dragon chuckled at the immature antics as Carana pouted.
I asked “So, what’s your deal, besides being mischievous?The Blue Dragon stuck it’s forked tongue out at the Green dragon before addressing the Question. “I am the Fate Dragon. My abilities can see into the future and nudge things, making outcomes both practical and impractical happen.”
“That’s different from the Time Dragon?” I asked.
“Yes!” the Blue Dragon chirped happily “Where Cinder can change what has already happened, but not see how that action can change things, I can alter what may be, but once things happen I am powerless to alter it.”
The Black Dragon Grumbled “That’s true, and seeing the outcome of things, she can also most efficiently gauge how much of a host she needs to achieve what you need. It’s why Carana never stays here long, though she already knows you won’t choose them.”
The Blue dragon nodded “My next host will arrive in 15 minutes, 12 seconds from when Yellow punts my ball back to me.”And sure enough the ball came sailing back towards them, intercepted by Blue, who chortled bouncing it along as they left.
I started to take my hand off the Time Dragon’s scaled forepaw, but found my hand growing heavier, like it didn’t wish to separate, and suddenly I knew neither did I. At the same time the Dragon’s eyes widened.
“Why Me?” It asked in a voice wavering between grief and hunger, it looking both excited and worried, as we glowed brighter together.
“We are a match, because I already have the [Judge] skill, so we won’t burn out without knowing the costs. That and even the Green dragon looked at me as a meal. You see me as more than sustenance.” I said, as the Brightness fully engulfed us as we merged.
***===***
The Green Dragon watched the pair disappear, starting their shared life. “Be well, my child. Feed gently, hurt your host as little as you can. For they will soon be part of you.” He intoned, knowing his child’s power was hard to manage, but her heart was pure despite her color and appearance.

Dr. Amelia Hawthorne and ARCHER rode the hoverbike through the desolate wastelands, their destination etched in their minds: Vault 17, the last human fortress. The once vibrant cities had crumbled, leaving behind a barren and unforgiving landscape. Amelia’s hazel eyes scanned the horizon, searching for any signs of life or clues that could lead them to their ultimate goal.
As they journeyed deeper into the wastelands, they encountered a band of survivors, led by a weathered and battle-scarred man named Jackson. His ragtag group had managed to eke out an existence in this harsh new world, scavenging for resources and fending off dangerous factions.
Jackson eyed Amelia and ARCHER with a mix of suspicion and curiosity. “What brings you out here, Doc? Looking for something specific?”
Amelia studied Jackson’s hardened face, gauging whether she could trust him. “We’re searching for Vault 17 and the Key of Eternity. It’s our only hope of averting the impending disaster.”
A murmur rippled through the crowd of survivors, their expressions a blend of hope and desperation. Jackson stepped forward, his gaze unwavering. “Vault 17, huh? It’s a legend around these parts. No one knows where it is, but rumors say it’s hidden beneath the ruins of Old Chicago.”
Amelia’s heart skipped a beat. Old Chicago, once a thriving metropolis, now lay in ruins, overrun by gangs and mutants. It would be a treacherous journey, but she knew they had no choice. “We need your help, Jackson. Your knowledge of the wastelands and your survival skills could be invaluable.”
A flicker of uncertainty crossed Jackson’s face before he nodded. “Alright, Doc. We’re in this together. But be warned, the path to Vault 17 won’t be easy. We’ll have to face mutated creatures, hostile factions, and the unforgiving landscape. Only the strong survive out here.”
With their newfound alliance, Amelia, ARCHER, and the group of survivors set off toward Old Chicago. As they traversed the crumbling ruins, they encountered a rogue faction known as the Ironclaws. Ruthless and heavily armed, the Ironclaws sought to control all remaining resources and would stop at nothing to eliminate any threats.
A fierce battle ensued, gunfire echoing through the dilapidated streets. Amelia’s heart pounded as she fought alongside her newfound comrades, relying on ARCHER’s tactical analysis and precise targeting to outmaneuver their enemies. They emerged battered but victorious, a testament to their resilience and determination.
Amidst the chaos, a mysterious figure approached Amelia, cloaked in tattered garments. “Dr. Hawthorne, I have been expecting you,” the figure spoke in a voice filled with wisdom and sorrow.
Amelia’s brow furrowed. “Who are you? How do you know me?”
The figure revealed himself to be Professor Samuel Hartley, a renowned archaeologist who had spent years studying ancient civilizations and their enigmatic relics. “Dr. Hawthorne, the Key of Eternity is more than just a legend. It is a symbol of hope, an artifact capable of altering the very fabric of reality.”
Amelia’s eyes widened with realization. “You know the location of Vault 17?”
Professor Hartley nodded. “Indeed. Follow me, for time grows short.”
Guided by Professor Hartley’s wisdom, the group arrived at the decimated remains of a subway station deep beneath Old Chicago. As they descended into the darkness, they found themselves standing before a colossal metal vault, its imposing doors sealed shut.
“Vault 17,” Amelia whispered, her breath catching in her throat.
To be continued…
originally posted at kevinhq.com

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