Dorothy Grant

Still alive, still got adventures left!

[Dorothy Grant @ellipsis4short]

@ShaisTaub Your screaming into the void got an echo back!
I appreciate the effort you put into making these videos, and getting this message out.

[Dorothy Grant @ellipsis4short]

In weightlifting, and in aviation, there's the moment when lift fails.

The moment itself is very hard to pin down with numbers. We can say, in theory, that stall speed is this many knots, that max rep is this many pounds...

But in reality, in the air, the humidity, heat, and weather get a say, and there's no easy steam gauge in the cockpit to tell you that based on your density altitude and your pressure altitude and your engine health and the thin layer of dirt on your airfoils, your stall speed is now exactly this instead, and you are *here.*

On the platform, under the bar, it's the sleep the night before, the quality of your food you've been eating, are you coming back from sick or still recovering from the last training session...

In both, as you approach the edge, there's a moment when things slow down. Where you feel the first burble of the wind separating from the wings, the first shake in your muscles being pushed to their limit under load.

That's the universe talking to you, saying "This is all you're going to get. Should doesn't matter; reality has spoken."

It isn't failure, it's a warning. If you continue to demand more, the lift will fail completely - but right there, in the shakes, you're still flying, the weight's still moving.

This is a very valuable place to be - because when you've hit the edge of the envelope, the limits of capability, you now know what it feels like, and it's no longer an unknown. This is where you get wiser, and stronger.

And most importantly, it teaches you, when you hit the very limits of your capacity...

Don't give up.

[Dorothy Grant @ellipsis4short]

@mcahogarth So far in the current work, we have stir fry, hand pies, and stew in the pressure cooker... but it's coffee, coffee, and one lone tea drinker.

Last one, everybody had a favourite cookie.

Have not yet advanced to your master level of recipes in the back!

[Dorothy Grant @ellipsis4short]

This. This is why I make sure to let my husband know that not only is he loved, his efforts are valued.

[Anthony Bradley @drantbradley]

This may be one of the best explanations of male depression that I’ve ever heard. This is explains why guys are suicidal and their friends, parents, and/or wives don’t even know it. This is also why a man can be married with kids, great job, etc. & feel lonely & depressed.

[MURF @Actual1Murf]

Hard truth: If you wait until you feel better to start living, you might be waiting forever. Go live your life. Do it sad. Do it anxious. Do it uncertain. Because healing doesn't always come before the experience. Sometimes, the experience is what heals you…trust the process

[Dorothy Grant @ellipsis4short]

@TurboDad @bscholl They already are. That's what a large chunk of the taxes on every gallon of gasoline ARE - a toll that goes by gallon burned no matter the infrastructure it's on.

[Isaiah Taylor - making nuclear reactors @isaiah_p_taylor]

7 y/o (bday girl) wants to know why my helium reactors don’t float since helium is what makes her birthday balloon

So of course I told her that the density of helium at our pressure is higher than ambient air

She quickly changed the topic to cookies

[Dorothy Grant @ellipsis4short]

I've worked in the fields. I've stood there and felt the hot frustration as a farmer walked through the math, out loud, of what it'd cost him to pay me enough to harvest out of a section where the weeds had gotten stupidly thick after the rain had run off the weedkiller at the wrong time... and the math didn't add up. There was a perfectly good crop still waiting to be harvested, and the cold equations meant he and I had to leave it standing in the field.

That's a heck of a lesson to carry into business that college couldn't teach.

When I went to college, I had friends who didn't make it into classes until 2 weeks after semester start, because that's when the lodges closed for the season, and housekeeping was obliged to work their full contract... but the money they made was enough to pay for college, where I had to put mine on loans.

They taught me more about making something into a system, optimizing every move, and making every second count than any motivational speaker could.

They're good jobs... that got taken away and given to cheap labour, even as the cost of college got ludicrous, because "you can just put it on loans" and "you have to get a degree no matter what it costs, in order to get a job."

[Dorothy Grant @ellipsis4short]

@benstreeet Mad props to your wife! We all swore in sickness and in health... I didn't swear, though, to not crack bad jokes while he's healing up from open heart surgery or losing a kidney. Totally worth it when I get the faint wheezy chuckle followed by the rueful reply "Love hurts!"

[Dorothy Grant @ellipsis4short]

I'll respectfully disagree with your interpretation of romance for men, based on all the men who read my romances. (Although I acknowledge full well that the context of the original conversation may have been completely different.)

Male fans are a joy, a delight, and deeply confusing sometimes... and there's nothing quite as touching as realizing the combat vets have christened my work with an acronym, because of course everything in their world they care about has an acronym.

The difference between what they like to read in romance and what they really don't care for isn't even the spice... I deliberately put out my solitary spicy book under a pen name, so they wouldn't accidentally read it, only to find my male readers reading it anyway, and openly telling me they want more in the series.

No, the basic difference is that in the romances they like to read, it's stories with men and women who are both are deeply competent, and chase each other until they catch each other... and it's them against the world.

In the romances they can't stand to read, the Heroine is incompetent, or worse, the narration states they're highly competent and then they're never shown to be so in any way they think or act unless plot point depends on it... and far worse, spends most of the time waffling on whether or not she likes him or will keep him. They have an especially vitriolic hatred of the story if the Hero similarly wavers in competence and conviction.

In ones they love, the world is the danger to the relationship, whether it's the drawing rooms of regency England or military scifi.

In the ones they hate, the greatest danger to the relationship is the participants themselves, especially in lack of communication, acting on unverified assumptions, and plots that could only be coherent if the characters are passing a ball back and forth that makes them a drooling idiot while they hold it.

Critically, *nothing* will make them wall a book harder and faster than cheating. Not just physical, no - any hint of mental wandering from either party, and they're noping out of the book so fast you can hear the sonic boom.

On the other hand, put in a throwaway scene of a very hard man whose family died years ago (not the love interest) taking the time to help the injured heroine brush out her hair where it's gotten tangled and matted in the hospital, while making her laugh by telling her about the time he had to do the same for his daughter, after she got chewing gum in her hair?

They yell at me about "onion ninjas" and "awfully dusty in here!" and then are INCREDIBLY insistent that I need to write his book and give him his own happy ending.

[milkbar @milkbarpl]

Poland’s Royal Sigismund Bell (Dzwon Zygmunt), cast in 1520 and first rung in 1521, tolled over Kraków today at 4 PM as a mark of mourning for the victims of Saturday’s mass shooting in the Main Market Square.

The nearly 13-tonne bell hangs in the Sigismund Tower of Wawel Cathedral and is one of Poland’s most important national symbols. It is traditionally rung only on major occasions: key Catholic holidays, national holidays, papal visits, the start or end of wars, and times of national mourning or major disaster. It takes a team of 12 men to swing it.

Its rare sound marks moments of deep national significance.

[Dorothy Grant @ellipsis4short]

@BorjomiDrinker Here, a good brain cleanser:

[Dorothy Grant @ellipsis4short]

Is it a work function? If so, then it's standard for no alcohol, because liability... If it's a strictly unofficial employee-led get-together, then just specify if it's BYOB (which frankly is pretty common, because hosting a party is expensive enough without having to drop significant amounts for alcohol) or no-alcohol event.

Which, frankly, is pretty common when you're being considerate to recovering alcoholics, or you have that one coworker who can't hold their liquor and no one wants to deal with it at the party or the fallout at the office, even out here in spirits-soaked country.

Don't let fear of what other people think stop you from having a good time. Truth is, most of 'em won't even notice, and as long as you provide a clear guideline one way or the other, the rest aren't gonna care.

And if you do manage to find one person who does? The standard answer, whether they're being picky about the food, the booze, the location, the neighbor's dog that won't stop barking, or the make and model of the BBQ grill... the answer is "Fine, you host the next one, and show us how it's done!"

[Dorothy Grant @ellipsis4short]

@Mandatoryfunday Dude, some of the best teachers and profs I've had were former military!

Best flight instructor, too. "Kid, calm down. We've got a mile of runway, and it's flat. No one's shooting at us. This is nothing like a hillside in Laos! This is easy!"

[Dorothy Grant @ellipsis4short]

@jbransonx If you're not the pilot flying, you're the pilot monitoring. I always watched, because that way I knew that it was done, done right, and didn't have to spend a spare brain cell wondering or worrying when I was busy running the checklist against anything else that might go wrong.

[Dorothy Grant @ellipsis4short]

@BowTiedCrow What is life if not there to be lived?
I will never regret the flying I've done.

[Dorothy Grant @ellipsis4short]

@profornery @SamuraiShibaJP I've warned my Calmer Half that if he goes first, he's going on the mantel so every morning so I can make incoherent greeting noises at him on my way to the first cuppa. He just laughed.

[Dorothy Grant @ellipsis4short]

Trust me, there are a lot of people who who feel exactly the same way. Countries with centralized health care negotiate the price at which they buy the drugs from the companies, just like insurance companies do here... but they can negotiate even larger discounts, given they're negotiating the purchase for an entire country.

It has long been a point of extreme friction for citizens of the US to watch an American company sell a drug to another country for $5, and then sell it to us for $200 retail, but only $44 after copay.

It is then an even higher point of contention that it is illegal to buy the same drug from a pharmacy in Canada for $6 and bring it or have it shipped back across the border.

If you want to go down that rabbit hole, the key words are "most favored nation pricing"... or we can just all agree that it sucks worse than seeing a lenticular cloud over the mountains right where we were planning to cross, and go back to talking about flying!

[Codie Sanchez @Codie_Sanchez]

Before I got married, I asked my parents what actually makes a marriage last.

And the more pregnant I get, the more I realize just how critical the man you marry really is.

My parents have been married 50+ years.

Here's what they told me...

1. Make your own money. Marry someone funny.

My dad always said this. Life is hard. Really hard. My parents still make each other laugh 50+ years later. Find someone who can make you smile even when life isn’t giving you much to smile about.

2. But is he kind?

I’d tell my mom all the accolades of my potential gents. Successful, handsome, smart, ambitious. She’d only ever respond, “But is he kind to you?” Good reminder.

3. Find a man, not a boy.

My dad can hunt, cook, fix anything, ride horses, motorcycles, redo an engine and play dang near any sport. He always told me to look for a man, not a boy. Men do manly things.

4. Protectors before providers.

Success is great. Money is great. But when someone breaks into your house, does he stand in front of you or behind you?

5. Look at his circle.

His friends are a reflection of him. Maybe that’s why my husband’s friends would be some of my first calls in a moment of crisis.

6. Porching it.

My parents had this idea. Imagine the two of you decades from now, sitting on a porch. No phones. No entertainment but each other’s conversation. Are you happy? Because eventually that’s what marriage looks like. Better like the person sitting next to you.

7. You’re his first. He’s yours too.

Above your parents, friends. Even your kids. Choose your husband first. My parents always made it clear that they were a team before anything else. Kids grow up but the marriage stays.

8. Watch the little things.

Does he open doors? Shake hands with your parents? Look them in the eye? Pick you up on time? Keep his word? Small respects compound. How someone does the little things is often how they’ll do the big ones.

9. Be best friends.

My parents are. They tell each other everything. They genuinely like spending time together. Somewhere along the way people started acting like your spouse shouldn’t be your best friend. Why the hell not?

10. Secrets are cancer.

Don’t keep them. Little lies become big ones. And as my dad always says, “The truth is always easier to remember anyway.”

11. Respect him.

My parents always believed men want respect more than women often realize. Don’t belittle him. Don’t nag him. Being strong yourself doesn’t mean you have to compete with your husband.

And ultimately, do you.

I don’t know if these rules are universal. I just know what I’ve seen.

My mom and dad. Both sets of grandparents. My aunts and uncles. No divorces. Just decades of choosing each other, over and over again.

I guess I didn’t realize growing up how rare that was.

And now, as I’m about to become a mom myself, I realize something else. The person you marry isn’t just the person you build a life with.

They’re the person you build your family with.

And I can’t think of many decisions that matter more.

[Dorothy Grant @ellipsis4short]

1. Become aware of the problem.
2. Define the problem. This is not the same as complaining, though it can look like it.
3. Look for solutions.
4. Implement potential solutions, gather data, try a more refined approach.

Here's a starter set for "Boys aren't reading":
https://t.co/7i3qViUkoH

[Raconteur Press, LLC @raconteur_press]

https://t.co/mxQbHCxxQD