Hello all! I am Rubie. I don't want to be rude and butt into people's conversations. I also want my own home in the hangouts as well.

SO feel free to join conversation if you are not like me. We can chat about anything and exchange opinions between ourselves.

...I mean, not even sure if anyone will want to chat. (haha)

I just want to get more active here on the forums, and just not for events.

Well, I'll chat with you, but that would probably be easier if we knew each other a little better. What kinds of things do you like, and what kinds of things don't you like but you do like to talk about anyhow? And are you the sort of person who enjoys spirited debates or are you the sort of person who finds that tiring?

For myself, I babble a lot of nonsense which I never mind if people ignore. I love reading (mostly fiction, and some biographies, histories, and lately a lot of engineering, physics, chemistry, electrical, mathematics and biology textbooks. But mostly fiction), and talking about books, and I apparently do more cooking than is average, and don't mind talking about that either. I am very confused by most tech but will happily learn about it if you are patient with teaching me, and will probably not recognize most modern pop-culture references.

Thank you for replying. Literally laying in bed and thinking about this and realized I never really put a conversation starter in here. haha.

Let's see, I like to think I'm crafty, but I mostly end up knitting (blankets, having been brave enough to not do anything straight forward), I have tried many other crafty things (quilling, cross stitch, wax beads) and there are many more I want to try (making wreaths, crocheting, etc etc). I love reading. I read both mangas and novels (I'm more into fantasy though). I am obsessed with books. physical books. I have way too many to count. I spend all my spare money on books. save me. I will probably be okay with talking about anything even if I don't like it.
Spirited debates though, that all depends on the topic I do believe. I'm mostly light-heated with most topics I talk about, even in my real life. Only a few things boil my blood.

You seem really well versed, do you have a thing for learning/understanding of certain topics? School ruined me on that due to always being forced to read and learn what I don't want to.

ALSO TALK cooking to me. I'm on a diet and started a little slew of cooking for myself since I moved out on my own. I need to look up more recipes to try before I go grocery shopping this week; and I need to use my leftover ingredients before they go bad.

Speaking of tech: I had to train someone on a new job and she's not as tech-savvy so I end up "yelling" at her. Not really yelling it's more like "Why are you doing that?" as she does the complete opposite of what I attempted to tell her. She's very easy-going and always laugh at me and she knows I'm not serious when I "yell" at her. I trained her to do another job that happens once a week for two weeks because it took her a while to pick up on it.

Ah, we will easily find things to talk about, it sounds like!

When you were doing crafting have you heard of something called rose beads? I've been clearing out the attic of my grandparents' house and there's a letter to my grandmother's mother from her aunt, and it mentions rose beads. The letter is mostly catch-up because my family seems to move a lot, so everyone is always scattered, but primarily it was to say that the aunt's sister, my grandmother's grandmother, had died and giving the time of the funeral for if she wanted to journey back for it, and a reminder that you can make elegant mourning jewellery with rose beads since the aunt expected all of the funds would be tied up in the candy shop and they're 'as close as never mind to something from nothing' (apparently grandmother's mother ran a confectionery).
Which I take to mean that rose beads are something you make not buy.
Which means now I want to find out what they are and how to make them.
So I'm wondering if you have heard of them?

Also the textbooks are because of that same attic-clearing; my grandmother was in the field of atmospheric optics and my grandfather was in chemical oceanography, so these are their textbooks and I am reading them so I can finally understand what they spent so much of their lives doing. I am not normally quite so directed in my reading habits.

And I'm right with you on physical books! There's just something about holding an actual book and turning the pages and riffling through pages to find a spot you liked and it's just not the same experience at all with digital versions! My book budget is right up there with the utilities in importance!


Cooking-wise, what kinds of dishes do you actually like? or what leftovers are you trying to use up? It's such a broad field, let's narrow that down a little...

I have not, but then again the times are different. I'm going to place your grandma around my grandma's age when she passed away. There weren't a lot of stuff readily available so maybe crafting would be the only. I wonder if it was a popular trend then. I will do some research on it later if I find the time. I'm quite curious as well.

OH that sounds really fascinating. My grandparents never went beyond high school, same with my parents. If it was something I wanted to understand about someone else, then I could probably spend some time to understand it myself. It's all about mutual feelings in my book.

I love walking into the bookstore and smelling that book smell. Bookstores are dangerous for me. I have to buy at least one book every time I enter it. I' becoming worse because I go on amazon and if the price is low and I know I'll read it, or a sequel to a series I've read...or haven't. I still need to buy shelves for the room I'm calling my library.

Hmm, let's see, I got bell peppers left to use, green onions, onion, uhm, I got a thing of minced ginger. I think that's what I have left for sure. I had to pour out most of my half gallon of milk because it spoiled. I only use it for cooking and not drinking. Couldn't find the smaller size.

and if you're okay with it, I need to rant about my newest coworker I'm being petty about. I'm being so petty about it, but I can't get myself to like her and she's making it harder for me.

of course, rant, this is your chat thread/room! I can always skim if I'm in a place emotionally not to want to deal with it.


(I'm going reverse-order right now, not sure why)

Bell peppers, green onions, onion, and minced ginger sound like the start of a stir fry of some kind. Possibly an omelette? Or you could do an egg drop soup. Or leave out the ginger and do a vegetable stew. Or turn it into peanut-butter-noodles. Or leave off the ginger and use them as pizza toppings. Hm, the ginger is the hard bit to use from there, sort of. Normally it'd be super easy because ginger cookies or ginger bread, but if you're doing diet then I assume you'd rather avoid that. In which case spicy winter soups with ginger are nice. Winter squash and ginger soup is simple and good and filling. Or cooked carrot dishes with ginger in for a bit of zing against the sweet blandness of carrots. Or fried ginger rice is... not a diet dish. Right.
Er, what kind of diet was this? An anti-allergenic-foods kind of thing or one of those no-carb diets or a generic "trying to eat healthier" diet or what?
(I spend a lot of my cooking throwing things together and then tasting and amending, so recipes are hard, but I can do my best)

Yesss bookstore smell is one of the best smells! I don't have that impulse for all bookstores, just the used bookstores. New bookstores are easy for me to leave without buying anything. I always look at the prices and say, "yes but I could buy TWO used books I picked out special for that price... or a whole BOX full of random books from the library!" and then it's easy to leave without a new book. Amazon was hard at first but then I discovered the wishlists and save-for-later options and now it's not so much a vendor as it is a TBR-list organizer.
>.<
I am so happy with my house, though, in the amount of shelving space it has. That's been the very best thing about it. So many rooms are lined with shelves, it's fantastic. Of course, whenever an older family member moves in, there's a huge readjustment period of trying to integrate the libraries. But it's worth it; it's not a home until it has the books around. Which are some of your favorite authors? Do you like to go for modern ones who are putting out new stuff or older ones where you can collect them all and read them all at once?

Yeah, reading up on a subject because school tells you "you should do this" is entirely different from reading up on a subject because you want to be able to talk to someone about it, or are interested in it yourself! The incentive and rewards are just so distinct.

Maybe? Not sure how old your grandma was. My grandmother is in her 90s, and she was the youngest child. I think her mother was 37 when she was born? Something like that. She wasn't quite a change-of-life baby. If I'm remembering the timing/family history right, her mother's mother died just a couple years before the Great War. (WWI). Well, it had to be, because the sugar rationing from WWI bankrupted the candy shop, so it must have been before that. I'm just not sure how much before.

Okay, going to probably hope and keep my responses short because I am writing before I head to work, but knowing me, I tend to write too much in response.

WELL, I'm being petty and I just can't deal with her. She's 23 (I'm 26 if that helps place this) and she moved in from out of state following her boyfriend she was dating less than a year. She just doesn't know how to operate as an adult yet...she needs to grow up, but I'm slowly degrading into a petty child because of her. I'm not explaining this well but it's stupid and I come home and I just kind of feel bad, but she makes it hard for me to not be from every little thing (aka she always has her closed sign up [I work at a bank if I haven't mentioned that] and then she tried to push a customer off on me when I'm running around trying to help someone else and do my own projects [small bank, you do a ton of other work too]) so anyway, you can mostly ignore this, but oh she irritates me and I'm being so petty it bothers me. I can get along with 99% of the people I'm around, but she's not one.

It WAS weightwatchers...but they changed it to WW. so points points points! I did just hit and passed losing 50 lbs though! Which is kind of a miracle because I did have a really bad cheat weekend last weekend. All of your suggestion are delicious. Man, I think chicken stir fry will be for supper some night this week. That sounds so delicious. Also ginger with carrots. Never thought of that (I love cooked carrots, I either mix in some ranch seasoning or garlic with it) man, I'm starting to drool. Also stew. I have to write my grocery list tonight so man, I'll probably end up picking up too much now and not have enough to make. Oh I should probably check if my ham steaks are still good (I made an egg back with them and it was delicious)
I call the things to throw into a pot a concoction. AKA I made my own version of chili from mixing up another recipe from a texmex recipe. I just kept adding different ingredients or leaving some out.

YES, but with amazon, I keep an eye on the prices. With mangas though (gosh darn, I will never not be able to get out of reading and being addicted them. I love the change of pace between each one and when I switch from reading a heavy fantasy book to a comic it's quite refreshing) they are stupidly expensive, which I understand it's quite a niche in the bookstore, even the used book store I frequent, that I wait until the price is reasonable on amazon before I buy (aka, some of them I save $4-5 on and I can't pass that up. please save me) I need to get back into going to the library, but the rush of going to the bookstore and having your own physical copy. It's like a drug to me.

Oh man, my house has zero storage really, but luckily I live by myself and have 4 bedrooms (one's a guest, master, one is going to be craft/storage room, and the other library, but they are tiny. believe me, tiiiiiny, besides the master. that's the only reasonable size) so I have 3 extra closets for the storage. and one full room to get shelves in for books.
Hmmm, I have such a brood collection of books I like, and I really don't have particular favorite. I really do enjoy Brandon Sanderson though. I'm following his Stormlight Archive right now and I want to read his other books. He's a genius in my book. I have no clue how he cranks out such a long book in such a short amount of time. I'm also all over the place with new and old books. If I find a newer one from an author and I enjoy it, I'll try to read the older ones. But also if I find a series I want to read, I will read it regardless of it's a newey or a oldy.

So, I am out of time to type my reply so I'm just going to post this. I wrote too much. I'll edit this if you haven't replied yet when I find a time to reply.

ha ha ha, no worries about length, I can end up going on for ages myself!

Your coworker sounds pretty frustrating, but if I understand that right you're more upset about her effect on yourself (how you end up feeling like a petty child) than you are about what she's actually doing (or not doing, in this case)? Did I get that correct? I'm not always the best at picking out the core of what people are saying; have a bad habit of thinking a peripheral note is the main point. So I feel like I should check.

(It's funny... that was the bane of my existence when I was young; social situations were so very hard. Now I'm older and travel more and it's actually really useful to be in the habit of second-guessing myself because it lets me interact with more cultures and people without trouble, since I know from the beginning that I might be misinterpreting. Funny how things turn out.)

I'm not as familiar with weightwatchers. I have one friend who used and really loved it when she was trying to lose weight before a kidney transplant (worked really well for her), but when we got together we were usually talking about other things and it was mentioned only in passing, so I don't know the details of it. With that one it isn't that you're trying to avoid any particular food, right? You're just keeping track of everything you eat and trying to balance it all properly? Is that even remotely close? So really, any possible idea goes, you just might have to tweak it a little to better fit the rest of what you're eating that day?

Yeah, Amazon is definitely handy for the more specialty stuff that local bookstores don't find profitable enough to stock to the point of sales.... it's why I had so much trouble with it at first. Now I have more issues when I go to thriftbooks since those prices are usually well under Amazon's.

A place all to yourself sounds really nice even if it is small. Of course, when you say "tiny" I immediately think "Tinyhouse! I know someone who makes those!" but I suspect you don't mean quite that small?
I used to keep a lot of my books in a dresser, since really, how much space do I actually need for clothing? Not much, really. Books are far more important. Then I got this house and could move all the books onto shelves instead of drawers, and just got rid of the dresser altogether. It's a funny house, but I really love it. I just wish the crow rookery nearby wasn't quite that noisy in the morning. They're better than any alarm.

I've read some of Brian Sanderson but not the stormlight archive. I read Elantris, and then the first of a series with these metal-eating magic workers, only there was a long hiatus between the first and the rest and I sort of lost track of him as an author until recently, and then I only managed to grab something called Alloy of Law? Something like that. So I know from that one that I'm very out of date, but haven't caught up with his others yet.

Yes, you are correct there. Today wasn't as bad. As long as she doesn't find her closed sign. She did irritate me a little because my boss gave me something to show her and another coworker and she was messing on her phone when I was trying to show her. Apparently they both knew how to do it so I don't know why I was showing them? But at least pay attention when someone is trying to show you something?

Oh, you travel? I wish to travel the world, but it will probably happen further into my future than now. Gotta make the money first...and save it...

Well, this is the 3rd time I've used it. It's weird. the first time I did okay with it, but you had to count points for everything. Second time was online only so it didn't stick with me. This time, they completely changed it. You can eat as much as you want of certain foods, which is making it a lot easier this time around. like 99% of vegetables and fruits are 0 pts, which means I can make a healthier and more filling meal without using all of your daily points. You are not trying to avoid anything in particular (except fish, because I don't like fish), Yes, it is mostly tracking and trying to keep everything proportionate, or I think of it this way, If I REALLY want to eat this candy now, I can't eat dessert before bed. OR, you can plan your day around a particular meal. Like my lunch is 99% the same thing every day, unless I cook up a big pot of chili or precook chicken before, so if I figure out my supper, I can decide now if I really want to eat something that's more points earlier in the day knowing I have enough to eat lunch/supper the rest of the day. Hopefully that all makes sense. My coworkers don't really understand it. One will bring stuff in and be like "it HAVE FRUIT IN IT IT'S GOOD FOR YOU!" and I'm just like "yeah, that doesn't mean piddly squat." because of sugar and stuff.

I went to my local used bookstore and I'm just so picky. Like the books I would have got were either too yellow for my tastes or I already have them, sadly, but the few I would have got were only $2, which could be $2 saved, but my view of money sucks because I'm addicted to buying books... I did get my nephew some books. Oh, but I'm also indecisive because I really want to read some mystery novels, but their mystery section is so big (their fantasy is tiny, I need to go to their original store some day) so I can't decide what one to pick.

Oh no, it's a normal size modern suburb house. Really too big for one person, but I really wanted a room specifically for books and another for crafting. and I wanted to live in a two story house...but man, they make bedrooms so tiny. my house growing up was tiny, but the rooms were bigger than this, and I would know, I shared a room with my sister.
OH man, I need to have my books on display, even if it's just for me. I stored a lot of them in boxes, and now all but a few are in boxes until I buy shelves. sigh. I'm afraid I will fill them up supper fast.
Also have never heard the term crow rookery before.

Oh, I haven't read the others, but if you ever get the chance, they are really love books, over 1000 pages each. I need to figure out what books of his I do have because I tend to buy even without the time to read it. I wish there was more time in the day to read. It's actually really surprising I didn't find any of his books at the used bookstore. I want to get the first two books of the stormlight archive in hardback (I only reserve buying hardback books in series I really like and I usually have to back track in buying the older ones).

I was at the library today and they didn't have any of the Sanderson books on the shelf, they were all checked out. >.<
Oh, well, I'll check again next time!

Sorry, this response is going to be a lot shorter; there's a lot happening here right now and it's hard to concentrate. I can do the mindless stuff but actual conversation requires a little more focus than I can do just now!

(How did you do with Grog's visit this time? Did you get enough donuts for your goal that visit?)