The Brightest Light of Sunshine

Determined to walk away from a traumatic past, 22-year-old Grace Allen feels ready to take the next step in her healing journey—dipping a toe into the dating pool. Although she should probably start by making a friend or two, right?

Samuel ‘Cal’ Callaghan isn’t who she had envisioned as her first male friend in… well, forever. With an intimidating build, tattoos everywhere, eight years her senior, and a little sister under his care, the last thing she expected was to warm up to him so easily. As their friendship evolves, Grace can’t help but wonder if Cal is exactly who she’s been looking for all this time.

Cal can’t afford to lose sight of his priorities—making sure his tattoo parlor thrives and taking care of his little sister. Especially the latter. He wants to make sure 4-year-old Maddie has a healthy and happy childhood, despite their mother going off the rails and her father’s blatant neglect. There’s certainly no room for love in his life right now. But when a sweet blonde with a veiled past breaks down his walls, he finds it difficult to stick to his guns.

This is book 2 in a published series.

Not AI.

Oklahoma believes the government saying “no” to anyone is a crime against God.

The name is Martha, apparently it has been returned to its owner who lost it recently. That may be an entirely different escaped kangaroo.

Then of course, the matter of the kangaroos hopping around the courts of Stillwater…

You shouldn’t microwave water though, because there’s a chance that it could be superheated to the boiling point without looking like it and that can be dangerous.

Daggerfall is long as fuck (in universe, the adventure takes at least ten years.) The dungeons are massive serpentine mazes. Multiple guilds and factions, although they don’t feature overarching questlines - lots of radiant quests, but they never really feel boring.

It’s also fairly difficult - especially if you build a character without cheesing it with a guide. You need to be juggling multiple saves to prevent yourself being trapped in a certain death situation, mess up a quest, etc.

There’s a modern remake, Daggerfall Unity, which a lot of people say is a good way to play it nowadays. The original DOS version is quite playable through DOSBox though, and there’s lots of little quality of life tools that you can find online.

You know that discussing the Bible is not the same as apologetics?

I get religious trauma sucks, but the critical analysis of primary source texts from the ancient Near East has absolutely nothing to do with your shitty pastor giving you a hard time for being gay.

I invite you to name a 9th century BCE society that fits whatever moral requirements you think are needed to make a culture worthy of historical study.

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Yeah, I know and knew, hence not following that path. Went for teaching where I did 80 hour weeks for a little more than minimum wage instead. But we’re talking about “perfect” lives here - which for me, would be being a professor of Chinese history or math at a small liberal arts university in a small town where no one gave a shit I was trans.

I really would have liked to have become a history or math professor at a small university. Living close enough to campus to walk, getting to go to my colleagues lectures and learn new things, keeping a dozens of books checked out from the library at the same time…

It’s kinda funny how popular Angel numbers are, when they were made up in the 90s someone who freely admits they are bullshit.

Or the crisis line.

What happens is that they “triage” you, where depending on how you answer their script you get cops at your door and a trip to hell on earth, or you are on hold for 20 minutes to speak with someone who also is reading a script and doesn’t give a rats ass about you.

Maybe states that aren’t Oklahoma have mental hospitals which are preferable to drinking yourself to sleep, but who knows.

Adult Swim predicted this ten years ago.

The Fog of War is a damn good documentary. I watched it in a college class about the Vietnam War, and that class absolutely radicalized me. There was zero reason for the US to be there.

I used to travel a lot in eastern Oklahoma, and left a lot of stickers at gas stations in the middle of bumble fuck nowhere towns. Probably less smiles and more anger honestly, but fuck them. Also did some on a trip to Missouri, where I’m pretty sure it was illegal for me to piss.

“A trans person peed here” stickers in gas station bathrooms/other public bathrooms.

The Giant’s Drink from Ender’s Game always seemed really compelling to me. The emergent gameplay reacted to your state of mind and serving as some sort of arcane test of your mind.

It’s not helping that I just got this ad

They both have a close amount of syllables. A friend gifted me some extraordinary grass and the multiple counts I have made have failed on their account, but both the English and the mandarin have around 18 syllables [CI: 17-19, p<0.05]