Canopyflyer

I have around 6 take offs in a Hot Air Balloon.

Never landed. Jumped, deliberately, out of each one.

You mean before it blows up in ours?

Yeah, me too, but I'm not holding my breath.

Asparagus, Broccoli, and broccolini... although to be fair, I didn't discover broccolini until about 20 years ago, when I was in my mid-30's.

Also, I found out it wasn't the veggie that I disliked, but the way it was prepared. My family boiled (ok Blanched) all vegetables when I was growing up. That's about the worst way possible to cook most veggies, especially the three I mention above.

Here is what I do to prepare them:

Asparagus: Heat oven to 350F. Trim woody ends and place them in a single layer in an oven proof dish. Salt and pepper to taste. Drizzle with olive oil. Finally top with Parmesan Reggiano. Roast in the oven for 25 minutes or when cheese is browned.

Broccoli (florets only) and broccolini (trim woody end, but leave as much of the stem as possible: Heat oven to 350F. Place veggie in a single layer in an oven proof dish. Salt and pepper to taste. Drizzle with olive oil. You can top these two with Parmesan, but I usually do not. Roast until slightly charred about 25 minutes.

I will never blanch a veggie ever again, except for green beans. There are times when you're serving a spicy dish, or something with a sauce and just need something plain to go along with it. Case in point, for my General Tso's Chicken, I serve it with blanched green beans. Otherwise, I sautee them with salt pepper and red pepper flacks and a bit of high temp oil.

Commoner Adventurer: All stats are 10. You start the campaign at level 0, no class. Throughout the campaign, the characters attain a class based on their actions.

Wrong class for the race: Halfling Barbarians, Half-Orc Wizard, etc. This can be a lot of fun, as instead of having an optimized character that can deal a lot of damage, you have to think through things and come up with strategies. I personally have always liked playing characters that are small that have to use their wits to survive in combat. Oh, I like playing a tank once in a while. Currently, I'm in two different sessions. In one, I'm playing a Dragonborn Cleric that has served as the melee support for the party's paladin. The other session I'm playing a halfling rogue Soul Knife that rides the barbarian into battle. I have a lot more fun with the Rogue.

Doing a Horny Gorilla skydive with 5 friends.

Representative photo of a Horny Gorilla not a photo of me or my friends:

We get into the formation, actually get stable and the next thing we all see is a one jumpers deployment bag, with their main parachute in it, come out from his back. Goes above the formation, then the deployment bag comes down into the middle of the formation.. goes back up.. comes back down. Lines are streaming all around and it's turning into a really dangerous situation. Getting tied up in the lines, while in free fall has a great chance of being fatal.

But it was just a surreal moment for all of us, seeing this deployment bag dancing around in the middle of the Horny Gorilla.

The person next to the jumper with the deployment bag out, reaches down and pulls the affected jumper's Pilot Chute, which is what actually deploys the main, and tosses it into the air stream. The affected jumper went flying out of the formation as his main parachute deployed. The rest of us break and track hard.

The guy actually landed his main parachute! He did not end up cutting away and pulling his reserve. The way that deployment bag just danced in an out of the middle of the formation was just unreal and we all just stared at it for what seemed an eternity.

25 years on and we all still talk about it.

Heinlein has entered the chat.

He was a hedonistic bastard, that's for sure.

If you don't take Wisconsin with you then...

NO CHEESE FOR YOU!

Acquire all Investiture.

The powers of a dead god.

It was also in "Paul" 2011 as a homage to "Close Encounters".

I have several silicon spatulas and absolutely love them. Still have some wooden spoons around though, to help break up things that the silicone is too soft for. An example is heating frozen chili on the stove top, using a wooden spoon to break up the frozen bits as they thaw. However, the silicone spatulas are far more versatile. Plus you can scrap every last drop of sauce out of a pan with them.

Longer tongs. I have a gas top stove and using shorter handled tongs can get uncomfortable if I'm cooking something for a long period of time.

Flat strainer. Essentially a spider, except the mesh is the same as a fine mesh strainer. This was a purchase that my wife made that I thought was totally useless and indeed, it sat in the drawer for months. Until I needed just one more strainer, as all the others were used already. Turned out that it is very useful and easier to use than a full strainer in a lot of circumstances. It also doubles as a spider and it is really great at cleaning up hot oil in between batches.

Spray bottle with 50/50 white vinegar and water. Great for cleaning and disinfecting the counter top, also spray it on my cutting boards after washing them to keep them from smelling like what I last cut on them.

Lastly, a really good set of thermometers. I love the Thermoworks thermometers and have the Dot, Thermopen IR, and the 4 probe Smoke for BBQ. Along with multiple types of probes for various applications. They were expensive, but have proven themselves time and time again.

Lastly my absolute favorite kitchen item and by far the most expensive is my Wolf DF304 stove. I found one on Craigslist several years ago that was being sold by a couple who were retiring and did not want to move it to their new condo. It's a heavy SOB. So I bought it for a song and it really is a serious cooking tool. It is by far the most even cooking oven and the stove top is extremely flexible. It also is standing up to me cooking on it every single day. A lot of people buy Wolf/Sub Zero products as a status item, which is a crying shame. They are well built, they are designed to be used in a commercial kitchen, and they cook spectacularly well.

54m here and when I was your age, I was in the exact same position. I'm neurodivergent, not particularly good looking, short.. Basically, if there is a popular definition of beauty, I'm its opposite. I'm not hideous, or so I'm told, but not good looking.

By the time I was 31, after a spectacularly disastrous relationship, I honestly made the conscious decision on permanent bachelorhood. I stopped even attempting to date. Oh, if some girl made overt signs, which being neurodivergent are the only signs I can pick up on, sure we'd go out on a date. However, I never made a serious effort toward a relationship. Couple of dates and I would either ghost her, or tell her we could be friends, if she was an interesting person. Which was rare and women, in general, do NOT take well to rejection... I mean at all. That was rather eye opening as I've been rejected probably hundreds of times in my life and I never behaved in such a manner as a most of these women.

One thing I did do during this time, was make sure I kept healthy friendships, which in of itself is not easy. As by early 30's most people are married and starting families, which takes all of their time. But because I participated in some team sports and I consistently worked out. NO, this is not going to turn into a "you need to hit the gym" post... It's just what I did and that turned out to be the vector where I met the future Mrs Canopyflyer. Which is a whole story in of itself, as it took the effort of my gym buddy, who is a former Navy SEAL to convince me to go out on a date with one of coworkers.

So short story long, it was because I kept up a network of friends through team sports and the gym that I finally did find that one in a million lady. Our first date was on St Patricks day of 2004, just a few days before my 34th birthday. From there, we got married in 2005 and went on to have two boys. We'll be celebrating our 20th next August.

Dating sites, Bars and all that are complete bullshit. If you want to find an actual mate, you need to network, just like finding a job. Make connections with people and through those connections you might find someone.

Ka'Dargo in "Farscape Peacekeeper War". They were on their way for Moya to pick them up. The worst of the fighting was over and BAM.

At least he went out as a warrior.