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RTDNTOTO 🐻 Random Thoughts Deserving No Thread Of Their Own 19 (2024)

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I'm reading this report to develop a large piece of land. The infrastructure costs will be roughly $1 million per acre and it's about 2500 acres of land. The report reads no sewer, no power, no no no... Guess we're doing this thing.
 
Also, I'm starting to hate the term mixed use. I know that's not very planner of me, but mixed use building is okay. Mixed use zoning is not. Just come up with a new term that implies several types of uses can be done on the property like Freedom zoning or something stupid like that.
 
Big Owl said:
I just saw a click bait article that was entitled "This woman saved $48,000 by giving up alcohol". I was impressed when I thought that it was over the course of a year; less impressed when I found out it was over 8 years.
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Most of the money probably went to renting a bar stool. I doubt that she spent $48,000 drinking Hamms at home.
Happy Hour Drinking GIF
 
DVD said:
Also, I'm starting to hate the term mixed use. I know that's not very planner of me, but mixed use building is okay. Mixed use zoning is not. Just come up with a new term that implies several types of uses can be done on the property like Freedom zoning or something stupid like that.
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Hey, I know...have a zoning district naming contest! Ask the citizens to come up with their own names! Wouldn't Boaty McBoatface zones, for instance, be a cool thing to have to explain to prospective developers?
 
Figuring out dinner is, like, the most dreaded part of my household's day. We freaking hate it. Tonight I'm going to pick up a hitch hiker and we're going to......NO, NOT EAT HIM, you sickos. Make him cook our dinners. Forever.
 
ursus said:
Figuring out dinner is, like, the most dreaded part of my household's day. We freaking hate it. Tonight I'm going to pick up a hitch hiker and we're going to......NO, NOT EAT HIM, you sickos. Make him cook our dinners. Forever.
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Do what we did:
  • My wife cannot eat meat or shellfish or gluten or tomatoes or eggplant.
  • My son has gone vegetarian.
  • I'm an omnivore.
Everyone takes care of their own dinner.
 
ursus said:
Figuring out dinner is, like, the most dreaded part of my household's day. We freaking hate it. Tonight I'm going to pick up a hitch hiker and we're going to......NO, NOT EAT HIM, you sickos. Make him cook our dinners. Forever.
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Same. I hate that task. We have got to go back to doing meal planning for the week, we got out of practice over the holidays.
 
Big Owl said:
Same. I hate that task. We have got to go back to doing meal planning for the week, we got out of practice over the holidays.
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Weekly meal planning for us devolves into too long a trip for groceries and then eating out because we used up too much time shopping. :bricktohead:

I've got a notepad magnetized (correct?) to the fridge. I told the three kids that are still at home to write down things they want me to buy when I'm at the grocery store on that list. Goldie put "Tea" and Shane-boy put "Saltines". Magically, I checked and got those things when I went for milk. They were amazed. It's not even an app on their phone, and yet, it worked.
 
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DVD said:
Also, I'm starting to hate the term mixed use. I know that's not very planner of me, but mixed use building is okay. Mixed use zoning is not. Just come up with a new term that implies several types of uses can be done on the property like Freedom zoning or something stupid like that.
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I love the sleight-of-hand "horizontal mixed use" terminology. "So you mean separate uses??"
 
joscoffee said:
I love the sleight-of-hand "horizontal mixed use" terminology. "So you mean separate uses??"
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Hahah! Guilty! I've written a couple of zones that specifically allow this. Going a step further, we often allow the developer to subdivide the pad sites out, so it really is just a zone to allow a single development application to cover all of it. Ha! Look at us being developer friendly on accident!

But my rationale was always that at least we are mixing the uses, putting residential close to services, getting to master plan it; make sure there are pedestrian connections, access to the amenities, etc. It is a little shaky to consider it truly mixed use when it is all horizontal like that, still: you do what you can with what you've got.
 
ursus said:
Hahah! Guilty! I've written a couple of zones that specifically allow this. Going a step further, we often allow the developer to subdivide the pad sites out, so it really is just a zone to allow a single development application to cover all of it. Ha! Look at us being developer friendly on accident!

But my rationale was always that at least we are mixing the uses, putting residential close to services, getting to master plan it; make sure there are pedestrian connections, access to the amenities, etc. It is a little shaky to consider it truly mixed use when it is all horizontal like that, still: you do what you can with what you've got.
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I love it! I worked on a couple projects where the developer did exactly what you describe, master planning and then subdividing pad sites, and it worked pretty well. Definitely much easier process with a more cohesive end product than separate applications.
There was an element of strategic phasing to it though, like leaving the dedicated trail space to be completed by the developer of the last parcel. At the time it was written everything but the hotel/apartment site was spoken for, but last I saw I think deals changed and a restaurant site is the only remaining...
 
Yep, the careful part in those more suburban, horizontal mixed use developments is the agreement and the phasing; so you don't get all the residential and none of the promised commercial. It can be really draining doing the agreements, and you can always still get burned. Slow is smooth and smooth is fast!!
 
Dinner can be hard to figure out but making a kid's school lunch at 6 in the morning is a special place in cognitive hell.

I've given up on the whole "lunch with 3-4 things in it" concept. We make pizza on Friday nights and we make a lot of extra. Faust Jr. gets two slices of cold pizza in tinfoil for lunch. He used to get a couple red pepper slices in a Talenti jar as well, but he had to bring back his "at school bag" with spare clothes in it over the break and in that bag was a jar from early fall with completely liquified red pepper slices in it. Never seen/smelled anything like that before.
 
Anyone who plans on traveling to see the eclipse needs to wait until the last possible time to ensure seeing it. Clouds and eclipses don't mix. Last time, we waited until the night before we decided where to head. It was Carbondale.

This time, Indianapolis is the closest spot but it all depends on the weather. Trust me, the two minutes of totality is worth a 5-8 hour drive.
 
TOFB said:
Anyone who plans on traveling to see the eclipse needs to wait until the last possible time to ensure seeing it. Clouds and eclipses don't mix. Last time, we waited until the night before we decided where to head. It was Carbondale.

This time, Indianapolis is the closest spot but it all depends on the weather. Trust me, the two minutes of totality is worth a 5-8 hour drive.
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FYI, Indy will have close to 4 minutes totality with this one.
 
I am writing the world's second most boring staff report this morning. I just fell asleep while typing and dreamed that my son and I were moving a couch over a weird pipe coming up through the floor and hoping nobody would notice.

I'm going to lunch and sleeping in my car. I want to find out what that pipe in my dream is for.
 
ursus said:
I am writing the world's second most boring staff report this morning. I just fell asleep while typing and dreamed that my son and I were moving a couch over a weird pipe coming up through the floor and hoping nobody would notice.

I'm going to lunch and sleeping in my car. I want to find out what that pipe in my dream is for.
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It's a pipe dream!
 
Faust_Motel said:
Blast from my 90's Past on the ol' office radio today:

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I enjoy a few Soul Coughing songs, including that one but I saw them live when they opened for DMB (Breslin Center in East Lansing, MI!) back in the fall of '96 and they were, by far, one of the worst live acts I've ever seen.
 
Hink said:
I have to hear all the people and see all the lights of the restaurant that is next to my house that I bought 10 years after the restaurant opened.

Damn planners.
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And the Sysco trucks with the backup alarms going beep-beep-beep and the dumpster lids closing... Who would have know a pre-existing restaurant would have such things? I assumed they'd only be operating in the hours when i was at work!
 
ursus said:
Figuring out dinner is, like, the most dreaded part of my household's day. We freaking hate it. Tonight I'm going to pick up a hitch hiker and we're going to......NO, NOT EAT HIM, you sickos. Make him cook our dinners. Forever.
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Just kill the man! Put him out of his misery. It's better than making him figure out dinner.
 
The gun-nut trolls and bots have alerts on their social media accounts whenever school shootings occur so they can start sh!+ posting.

Gouhls.
 
If the Philosopher was correct that man is a political animal, then the planning office may be considered a shabby zoo and its activities the world's slowest natural disaster.

-- Abraham Lincoln
 
Our email addresses use the format of first initial of your official name and your full last name. We have people in our organization that go by their middle name or nick names. It wouldn't be an issue if our directory used their middle names or nick names; however, it doesn't so, it takes too much effort to figure this stuff out. Imagine how much useless knowledge that I could retain, if I didn't have to remember that Todd is Jeremy; Worm is John; Reshea is Flora; and so and so got married, but they go by their old last name.
 
kms said:
I like my meals to be piping hot.
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This made me sing an Indigo Girls song in my head, and while the snow is coming down outside on a very gray, January afternoon, the mood fell from your simple, pleasant thought like a blanket into these lyrics and now I'm pensive and sad....and still have two reports to write. sigh

I don't know if it was real, or in a dream
lately waking up I'm not sure where I've been.
There was a table set for six - and five were there,
I stood outside and kept my eyes upon that empty chair.
And there was steam on the windows from the kitchen,
laughter like a language I once spoke with ease.
I'm made nude by the virtue of decision,
and I choose most of your life goes on without me.

The Language or the Kiss, I think that song is called, off Swamp Ophelia. Haven't thought of that one in a while, but "piping hot" made me think of the steam on the windows and now I'll be singing it all evening in my head.
 
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TOFB said:
Anyone who plans on traveling to see the eclipse needs to wait until the last possible time to ensure seeing it. Clouds and eclipses don't mix. Last time, we waited until the night before we decided where to head. It was Carbondale.

This time, Indianapolis is the closest spot but it all depends on the weather. Trust me, the two minutes of totality is worth a 5-8 hour drive.
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Last time I overnighted in Columbia as my closest choice. Early morning weather looked cloudy so I high tailed myself to Festus Mo, where I joined an eclipse party at a local bar patio. Totally worth it.
 
giff57 said:
Last time I overnighted in Columbia as my closest choice. Early morning weather looked cloudy so I high tailed myself to Festus Mo, where I joined an eclipse party at a local bar patio. Totally worth it.
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My daughter in DSM headed for St. Joseph, Mo but with clouds slid east and caught the show in Jefferson, Mo. Yes, totally worth it.
 
RT keeps sending me beach photos from the Caribbean. It’s in the 30s here.
 
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joscoffee said:
View attachment 61547
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Speaking of cannibals,


I had the funniest dream the other nite that I have not told many about because it is so creepy. I talked a lot at a recent party with some others about Moby Dick and Queequeg being a cannibal and all.


So in this dream we were hosting a potluck dinner party where one of the guests was a cannibal and he was to bring some grilled forearms. (I read long ago that a real anthropologist had interviewed a real cannibal who said the human forearm meat was by far the best)


So in the dream I was warning some guests that the cannibal arriving took pride in his cooking and that we should not judge him about it.


The dream story was so amazing it woke me in the night.


If you have not read Moby Dick I still recommend it if only because it

makes grist for really funny dreams.
 
JNA said:
Just so you know - I am officially retired.

31 years with my fair city & county area plan commission.
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WOWSERS, man! We need some kind of way to throw you a retirement party. How the hell would we do that?!?

Regardless, CONGRATULATIONS!!!!
 
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fringe said:
If you have not read Moby Dick I still recommend it if only because it

makes grist for really funny dreams.
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It's probably my favorite classic. I think the prose, and the variation of such, is simply masterful.
 
The combination of the holidays and international travel has left me in a state reminiscent of an episode of The Twilight Zone. I have no idea what day or time it is. 🤔🥴😵‍💫
 
dandy_warhol said:
The combination of the holidays and international travel has left me in a state reminiscent of an episode of The Twilight Zone. I have no idea what day or time it is. 🤔🥴😵‍💫
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But do you know where you are?

That's an important part.
 
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