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Record yourself reciting your lines and put that on an iPod or CD, etc. Make each line or section its own track and listen to that while you're walking or driving.
Also, signifiers. Associate each beat, line, gesture with something external. Helps to create a continuity between the line and your life as you live it.
Good luck, man. I know your fear well.
Just found out my roommate's uncle was my childhood bishop and that I grew up with her cousins.
The world. It is small.
Mental note, when someone shows you a picture of their family, don't say their daughter looks familiar. ESPECIALLY if she looks familiar from your college daze.
Even more so if you two had some rather, uh, wild and crazy times.
Not sure if you mentioned this before. Is your roommate Mormon?Quote:
Originally Posted by Mara
Yes, she is. It tends to make a small world rather smaller.Quote:
Originally Posted by EyesWideOpen
Did you specifically look for a Mormon roommate when searching for roommates? I don't remember if you ever mentioned your past trouble one's being Mormon.Quote:
Originally Posted by Mara
I do, pretty much. It's a good shorthand for finding someone who will obey the house rules which might otherwise seem arbitrary-- no boys staying over, no alcohol, tea or coffee in the house, etc. Besides which, it's just a really good networking system, so if I mention I have an opening to the right person, people looking for housing will find me.Quote:
Originally Posted by EyesWideOpen
My difficult roommate was nominally Mormon, but she rarely made it to church or had any real church involvement. She was easily offended by absurd things ("My friend looked at me funny today at church. I AM NEVER GOING BACK.") She generally worked nights and/or weekends so she never made it to 10 a.m. church. But she'd also get oddly pious about some things. She had a completely screwed-up family of mostly non-observant Mormons who would get really mean about random stuff (like insisting well into her thirties that she sit at the kid's table at Thanksgiving because she hadn't gotten married yet.) So... her relationship with the church was complex.
A nice thing has been that so far in Maryland, none of my roommates have attended the same congregation that I do. I like having that bit of space between my home life and my church life.
Why don't you allow tea or coffee in the house?
Damn, that is one icy burn.Quote:
Originally Posted by Mara
That whole no-coffee-no-alcohol thing just flummoxes me. An entire group of people will never realize how freeing dependencies can be.
Coffee is atrocious.
I guess I don't drink alcohol either.
I drink a lot of both.They are good things.
It would be a mighty rare day of my life to go by without drinking coffee, tea, or alcohol.
I hate to break it to you, Mara, but I don't think you and I are ever going to be roommates. I know this comes as a big blow to you, but given time, you will realize it is for the best.Quote:
Originally Posted by Mara
And just when I was looking forward to the amusing laugh track driven CBS family oriented sitcom featuring the two of you as roommates. Darn.Quote:
Originally Posted by transmogrifier
They're rules of the religion. Muslims don't eat pork or drink alcohol. Mormons don't drink alcohol or coffee.
I enjoy alcohol and coffee. A lot. But it's not like we can pretend outside of its good-times social (and, if you react to alcohol the right way, good feelings-making) quality it is really good for us physically. It's pretty bad for us, actually. Drink too much and it makes you sick or kills you. Destroys your liver over time. Alters your behavior and you might get a crippling dependency.
Coffee ain't so bad, but you can get a pretty demanding dependency to it in a short period of time. I guess there have been reported health benefits, but there are also health drawbacks as well, and it's bad for your teeth, and can mess with your nerves and your sleeping. If it weren't straight up my favorite-tasting thing in the world, I'd probably quit it myself. But I love it and I'm not quitting it until I'm trapped on a desert island (without coffee beans) or the surgeon general personally advises it to me, personally.
When Mormons say they don't drink tea, most just don't drink black teas. Mint and herbal teas are often on the table. There's a lot of variation on that. Just like I know several Mormons who've found it feels okay to them to drink coffee or even have a glass of wine now and then, and find a personal way to reconcile this with the official position of the Church. The vast majority don't do this, but there's a larger variation in practice and belief in Mormonism than you might guess from the outside.
I'm aware. It's hardly one of the more confusing things I find about Mormonism. I just didn't understand why she cared if it was in her house if she isn't being forced to drink it.Quote:
Originally Posted by Sycophant
That's a good question, and I'm not sure how to answer it. It's sort of like how if a Jewish person has been taught that eating pork is unholy, they would just sort of have a natural aversion to it. Similarly, although I don't think too much about coffee and alcohol being consumed around me in the world, having it in my home would feel invasive-- almost like having it in my own body.Quote:
Originally Posted by Winston*
I had a good roommate and a bad roommate once, and the bad roommate would deliberately break the house rules to piss us off. Once she brought home a bottle of alcohol and left it on the counter. The good roommate and I just sort of stood in the kitchen, looking at it, and looking at each other, in stupefied silence for a really long time. Like, we really didn't know what to do. It could not have been more baffling if she had brought home roadkill and left it in the kitchen.
In all fairness, though, I do have a small bottle of cooking wine that I use in sauces sometimes. Also, as Sycophant mentioned, I drink herbal (non-black) tea regularly.
Also, from a personal perspective, although brewing coffee smells nice, leftover coffee grounds smell like death, and alcohol has such a disgusting, vomitous smell that I actually can't be around it. My roommate and I were having dinner in a pub a couple of weeks ago and a waitress dropped a beer bottle near us, and the smell was so atrocious I had to leave. I won't even get into the smell of cigarettes. Anyway, religion aside, I'm not sure I could ever get into any habits that smell so bad.
No boys staying over?Quote:
Originally Posted by Mara
Everyone seems very shocked by these rules. See why I tend to stay within the faith for roommates?Quote:
Originally Posted by Dukefrukem
That's because they are very shocking rules.Quote:
Originally Posted by Mara
Not to me. And not to the dozen or so roommates I've had over the last fifteen years. In fact, it almost goes without saying... to the point where I actually said them when interviewing my current roommate, she gave me a very funny look... like I'd said, "And no roadkill on the counters." "O...kay. I wasn't planning on it."Quote:
Originally Posted by Dukefrukem
Old employees who can't hack it anymore but aren't old enough to retire - what do you do?
Got a guy who supervises a dept but is now hurting business more than helping. Not getting back to customers, falling behind in daily work, screwing up orders, etc. He is a really nice guy but it's starting to become untenable.
He's 66 years old and can't really send him packing because he'd never find another job at this point. Busting him down to "hired laborer" status and reducing pay would not only be incredibly insulting, I also don't think he can handle it physically.
Fucking seniors. How do they work?
For the first time in my life, I am proud of the place where I live.
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