The OP sounds rather like a government-supported co-housing scheme, which would be an excellent idea - co-housing is already a widespread thing in the more free-range bits of the American West. (The failure mode, I suppose, is "Magdalen Laundry".)
A family of six with one bathroom sounds like a bigger problem.
What makes the house tolerable is that it's not cluttered with all our stuff
We're feeling very stressed out about clutter (with 2 adults and one kid in 1200sf). It's not small by any reasonable measure, but it's full of stuff, and we have had a lot of difficulty making time to declutter (particularly since Mr. almost-5 generally objects to getting rid of things).
I still don't get how tiny houses are supposed to make sense except has a fetish object. The raw space of a house is not that expensive. The money is in the bathroom, kitchen, and utility connections. A tiny house might save money over a McMansion, but I don't think it saves much over must a small house. If you cluster a bunch of them together closely enough that you can save on the utility hook-ups, that would save lots of money. It would also recreate the trailer park under a different name.
I think Sears should go back to selling house kits. It seemed to work last time and it's not like anybody running Sears has a better idea.
I like the single mom's housing proposal but I'd expand it to include poor families where the father sticks around. There's no need to further incentivize deadbeat dadhood. Actually I'd like to see some sort of incentive for the father to stick around. I'm not sure how you do that but it seems like it would help.
I live just fine for six weeks or so in a van during grad school. I sometimes miss those days. I had very little stuff and I could just pick up and go anywhere on a whim. I think my ideal living situation is a nice RV parked in a warehouse where I can store my dumpster diving finds.
The poor can't afford a proper van, because airbrushed paintings of eagles aren't cheap.
Dads would be fine. Any family should be fine, just have a sliding scale to cover rents, assuming we've got plenty of supply, since the whole think is a made up fantasy. In the real world fantasy, single parents should get higher priority since this is such a popular project that supply can't keep up with demand.
I think my ideal living situation is a nice RV parked in a warehouse where I can store my dumpster diving finds.
I thought you'd found a potential plot of land and were seriously considering this?
On average, single-parent families should have one less person than double-parent families. So, you're helping more people.
If you give priority to two-parent families.
Though, I guess if there were two adults, there would be twice the chance that someone in the family knew how to make a yurt.
The raw space of a house is not that expensive
OH REALLY
Then why don't more people in Manhattan just built yurts?
As I've airily declaimed before, when Obama bailed out the banks he should have just nationalized all those subprime houses. Public housing for all! In McMansions! In Nevada and places!
Or glued together with horse urine or whatever.
Anyway I bet LB is within 100 meters of a rooftop yurt.
I think my ideal living situation is a nice RV parked in a warehouse where I can store my dumpster diving finds.
IIRC, this would also allow you plenty of space for your hobby of building and test-firing liquid-fuelled rocket motors.
Solid-fuelled motors you can just test in the RV, because you don't need all the tanks and cryogenics and crap.
Of course, any apartment with a good-sized deck would allow that.
He doesn't specify which warehouse his ideal home would be in but I think I can guess.
"We have top people working on this."
"Who?"
"Top. People."
(particularly since Mr. almost-5 generally objects to getting rid of things).
Kids are extreme hoarders. You've got to do it when they're not around.
I don't see why you can't test rockets inside a nice RV parked on the good-sized deck of your apartment.
You could build the apartment inside a warehouse, even.
It could be mobile to different parts of the warehouse.
We've done a pretty decent job of decluttering. Always a tension though in a house that has literally one built-in wardrobe and no cupboards: two cupboards, one has boiler and washing machine, the other has the air circulation/heat exchanger.
I think Mrs ttaM would like us to live in Japanese style ultra-minimalist world. We have two bookshelves, and she still talks a lot about getting rid of book (we used to have 6 or 7, in our previous place).
One could build multiple well-bedecked warehoused apartments, and drive one's RV from deck to deck as they became befouled with rocket exhaust.
Honestly, I'm surprised such developments aren't common already.
It's really too bad that there's any notion of owning land. If all land was public, and you were always renting from the government, it'd be better. And you have to demonstrate use to rent it: you can rent the space under your house, and you can rent this exact plot for your garden, but you don't get a backyard. Anyone can wander through the space around your house.
Property rights are weird, man. Have you ever really stared at your property rights?
Just wander the steppe, and pitch your yurt wherever the wi-fi's good.
Live in the WalMart parking lot, like Clarence Thomas.
you don't get a backyard. Anyone can wander through the space around your house.
Already the case in Scotland, as long as they don't do any damage, and they don't infringe your privacy by eg peeking in through your windows.
If they're in your garden, they can do damage and peek into windows?
9: It got sold. I need a bit bigger down payment than I have anyway, so I'm deferring the plan until my family's situation is more stable.
There's no need to further incentivize deadbeat dadhood. Actually I'd like to see some sort of incentive for the father to stick around. I'm not sure how you do that but it seems like it would help.
I had really compassionate, sensitive thoughts about this that were not anything like "wall off a section of the complex under a big sign that says TRIUMPHAL WARRIOR MAN-CAVES, NO CUCKS ALLOWED with a bunch of swords glued to the door and a big red pill painted on it; inside, wall-to-wall video screens. Then an ironclad myth promulgated that the mothers are paying for the whole thing, which actually costs the men a nontrivial amount of money, but at least it's better than writing the bitch a blank check." I manage anger super well, AMA.
It's really hard to glue a sword to a door. Unless the sword is a metaphor.
Proprietary mixture of superglue and jizz. Man, I'm raising the tone today. I think the housing complex without my emendation is a genuinely good idea and I'm not sure I even believe it would be impossible to pilot. I should no joke talk to my mom about this. They'll be overturning Roe v. Wade later this year, I trust? And the country is descending into anarchy? Time for moon shots.
At the other end of the age spectrum, I believe we need boarding houses for men, middle aged and older, who don't one single thing to make or maintain friendships but then die of loneliness. Boarding houses would solve that handily.
"Moon Shots" would be a good name for a place that gives espresso enemas. If anybody wants to become an entrepreneur.
44: Boarding houses would save them enough money to hire prostitutes.
32: That was one thing in Player of Games that bugged me, but it's clearly intentional and part of the message. Gurgeh has a lovely house he designed himself, and in a throwaway moment early on some hikers pass through and take a room for the night. They don't ask his permission, it's just shown as culturally assumed if you need space and it's available, you get it. They don't use locks either, per another book.
47: I think you're misremembering? The bit in question has a woman and her daughter arriving at his house. "Neither of them showed any sign of having heard of him; they just happened to be passing. He invited them to stay for a drink, and made them a late lunch... he advised the woman on the most scenic route to take when she and her daughter resumed their journey [which they then do; they don't stay the night]".
Why didn't he shoot them, like a normal person?
Oh, I am misremembering. But when he comes across them, are they inside the house?
And I kind of feel that just rocking up uninvited at someone's house and expecting a room for the night would be a bit impolite by Culture standards. Gatecrashing a party is certainly frowned on in the Culture.
50: no, he's at home alone, and they come riding up to his house through the woods.
And when Zakalwe is being introduced to the Culture he just asks the local Mind to direct him to a room if he needs one. There's no need to infringe on anyone's space because the Culture always has a surplus of everything.
I love our guest Murphy bed so much.
53: good point. Sma doesn't tell him "just go into any house you like and get your head down", she says "ask the Mind, it'll tell you where the nearest free room is".
Everyone that can sleep over, will?
56 to 54, though it presumably describes some faction of the Ulterior as well.
The raw space of a house is not that expensive. The money is in the bathroom, kitchen, and utility connections.
Also the land. Whenever I see a story about a tiny house, it features a youngish, childless couple living mindfully in a tiny house that seems to sit upon a large lot of land.
I like heebie's housing proposal.
Land is cheap if you don't need to be close to anything or look at anything nice.
58 describes pretty much the exact situation that my recent ancestors went to considerable trouble to escape from (youngish couple - obviously not childless - living a natural, uncluttered life in a tiny house surrounded by a large area of open ground).
You need open ground for a good clear field of fire; and if you make the house too big you and your strapping sons won't be able to man all the loopholes simultaneously.
Just mansplaining for Heebie there, in case the moonshots don't work out.
"Moon Shots®! The future of pooping."
And Ogged, your website should make the ® smaller, but doesn't. Iranian.
If you're racist to white people and brown people at the same time it all cancels out.
||
Oh fun, a huge cyberattack concentrated in a country where I routinely collaborate online with colleagues. The lucky Ukrainians get tomorrow off from work, so I imagine a lot of people are enjoying an unusually long holiday at the moment. I wonder if the timing was coincidental.
|>
The best colleagues are those too far away to see in person.
71 Wonder if it was coincidental with that Ukrainian intel official that got hit the other day.
Near Kyiv is the town of Brovary. How is life in Brovary, tell me?
44 without the boarding house is looking like my retirement plan. Don't loot my loneliness fund, leeches!
74: "Madame Brovary" should be the punchline to some joke or other.
Heebie, Scholar House! It's gender-neutral but only for single parents, doesn't cover all situations but is good at what it does. I've also read about housing for young adults who aged out of foster care and/or became parents in their teens alongside senior citizens in independent living who act as grandparent guides. There are lots of options. I see the benefits but I'm so glad my loud children don't share a wall or gawdforbid a ceiling/floor with anyone.
As part of a wall-sharing family, let me assure you that love makes a tolerably quiet apartment.
I say, it does seem to be time for my periodic hiatus. Thank you all for tolerating my chattiness, as always. I'll be back at some point.
80 I've enjoyed the chattiness. Take good care.
Love makes a tolerably quiet apartment but a bad tennis score.
Oh, Lurid, please don't go! We'll be tolerably quiet, we love you so!
Oh, I am the one with the problem, lurid. I'm sure with more experience I would get over it. There's no moral righteousness in living the way I do, and I assure you no particular quiet either. I will maybe be around more and it would be nice to chat if you are soon.
58 describes pretty much the exact situation that my recent ancestors went to considerable trouble to escape from
Mine too! And almost everyone's ancestors, surely...
When my [My Surname] ancestors first arrived in Upper Canada, they built a small log shanty, which they lived in for the next twenty to thirty years (two parents, and ten children, in their 1.5-room "tiny house," which rough, crude structure sat on 200 acres of Crown land). When their eldest surviving son eventually built a solid, stone farmhouse (which was hardly a McMansion by today's standards, but which was a lot larger than that shanty), that was really coming up in the world! and why would anyone want to go back to living in a shanty!? (and anyway, they needed the extra space, what with their twelve children and all).
So: what is a "reasonable" amount of square footage per person, when thinking about ideal house sizes? There's no question average American house sizes tend toward the larger end of the spectrum; and I'm sympathetic to the idea that many people could, and often do, live quite happily in spaces quite smaller than the American norm. However, the "tiny house" movement clearly takes things to an opposite extreme (and honestly? if I had to let down a Murphy bed every night before sleeping, and then fold up that bed every morning in order to have a space to sit and drink a cup of coffee, I would probably go all "cabin fever," and lose my damn mind). Is 300 square feet per person too restrictive? Is 600 square feet per person taking it too far?
I'm reading Crabgrass Frontier, a history of why American suburbs and home preferences evolved as they did and it's pretty great. Though I realize as I write this that
I'm going to actually read Return to Gone-Away, about aa family rehabilitating a Victorian mansion. I blame the strep.
The tiny house movement appears to be predominantly for people who love living simply as an abstract concept but would never dream of a trailer or prefab.
Mossy, I always come back! Thorn, it was a joke (the kernel of truth is that I'm fond of our neighbors and their little girl, who reminds me a lot of mine at that age), no worries whatsoever. I may drop you a line anyway, though.
87: ah but as one last thing: I would totally embark on a Dwelled-up midcentury modern gut renovation of a cut-rate doublewide trailer. God, so enticing. So not cheap, but so enticing.
Oh hey, Zakalwe also lived on that planet of trailer-dwellers for a while, freaking them out with his weirdly static hovel.
74: "Madame Brovary" should be the punchline to some joke or other.
Don't tease me, Bro.
It's really too bad that there's any notion of owning land. If all land was public, and you were always renting from the government, it'd be better.
This is the situation in Hong Kong.
So: what is a "reasonable" amount of square footage per person, when thinking about ideal house sizes? There's no question average American house sizes tend toward the larger end of the spectrum; and I'm sympathetic to the idea that many people could, and often do, live quite happily in spaces quite smaller than the American norm. However, the "tiny house" movement clearly takes things to an opposite extreme (and honestly? if I had to let down a Murphy bed every night before sleeping, and then fold up that bed every morning in order to have a space to sit and drink a cup of coffee, I would probably go all "cabin fever," and lose my damn mind). Is 300 square feet per person too restrictive? Is 600 square feet per person taking it too far?
The extreme is presumably the Age of Sail, when you would find sailors living happily for years on end with maybe an average of 15-20 square feet of space per person. (14 inches width in which to swing your hammock.)
Weren't they often beaten if they didn't act at least reasonably content? Plus, kidnapped and such.
As I've said before, we have an 800-900 sq ft flat, for two adults and a child, and it's fine. I don't even think it's small by UK standards. Smallish bedrooms, but compensated for by a larger open plan living room/kitchen that takes up about 40-50% of the size of the whole place.
So, most of the time it feels pretty expansive. Lots of light, and the open plan space opens onto a balcony, which makes it feel bigger. if the building had a storage unit where I could chuck a few boxes of books/tools/paperwork, it'd be great.
The problem with outdoor space being limited to a balcony is that if you are sitting outside drinking beer, you can't, without being extremely antisocial, piss without going all the way back inside.
95 seems to betray a failure to grasp the potential of the empty soft drink bottle.
We mostly have cans. Risks of cuts are too high.
Anyway, having a little patio is very nice even if the three-footed deer isn't eating enough of the shrubbery that I don't have to go trim it this weekend.
It's also nice to have a door going directly from the car hole into the house.
I just discovered that you can now purchase adapters for your reciprocating saw to turn it into a fuck saw instead of having to McGuyver it yourself. God Bless America!
Broke out Player of Games. I derived my impression from where it says the pair "stopped off at Ikroh". I think I read it as "stopped in," i.e. inside the house, and interpreted the rest of the paragraph quoted above in that light. (I guess it makes fuller sense if the name Ikroh is taken to apply to the environs of the house as well as the house itself, in the style of a country estate.)
We should have more conversations about the Culture here. Perhaps a mandated 1:1 ratio with Trump conversations.
Thorn: we have something similar, I think? Ours, though, definitely feels like apartments - each family has a private kitchen, living room, and front door, as opposed to communal living. No cafeteria, no communal living room intended to largely replace a family living room. That said, it is one of the best programs I've heard of that actually successfully lifts families out of poverty.
I really like having my own front door and living room. Communities are nice, but only if you can get away.
104: I support this. Every now and then I remember there won't be any new Culture and it bums me out. The little that I haven't read yet--I think just his short story collection, now--needs to be carefully doled out.
One of the benefits of senility (a topic much on my mind since turning 40 earlier this month) will be that I'll be able to read all my favourite books for the first time again.
That's probably not true. It's more likely that your long-term memory will work better than your short-term memory. You'll remember what was in books you read 60 years ago but be unable to remember what was in the start of the paragraph you are reading until you get to the end of it. You'll not be able to read any books for the first time.
I remember being surprised to learn that not everyone had their own room. That is my first memory of privilege. The person to bedroom ratio doesn't seem as important to me as the person to bathroom ratio.
Second 107. Republican strutting and bullshitting keeps reminding me of Zakalwe dropping the mic:
That's the way they prefer to work; offering life, you see, rather than dealing death. You might call them soft, because they're very reluctant to kill, and they might agree with you, but they're soft the way the ocean is soft, and, well; ask any sea captain how harmless and puny the ocean can be.
108: My great aunt, in Alzheimered retirement, said she never got bored with her one little shelf of books, because she could read them over and over. I don't know if she'd read them when she was young though.
112: also it would lure alameida back. She's been a bit quiet.
On the subject of housing, I think what this town needs most is boarding houses for very poor single mothers,
On a sort-of related note, I just saw this (emphasis and link mine).
Sarah Berkes' dream, after graduating from the University of Washington in 2015, was to move to New York City and pursue a career in fashion. Berkes, over the phone, is bubbly and energetic -- she's the kind of person who appears to be chattering through a smile 90 percent of the time. Her college graduation gift from her parents was a one-way ticket to New York. In short order, she landed a job -- and then an apartment at a boarding house for professional women.
On topic in general and to 89: https://www.curbed.com/2017/6/27/15879034/prefab-home-designs-passive-house-go-logic These things look great, but who can see spending $340,000 plus the price of a lot for just a 1,400 square foot house.
Via 11d's Twitter.
I guess maybe you could save money on utilities because it's a passive house. Still very expensive for the square footage.
The 1,400 square foot option would be about perfect for us. We'd even had a pantry and a room for our powder.
I think ours is 1900 square feet, several rooms of which don't get used much but will eventually. It turns out it's going to be quite economical to get the outside painted, which is what matters the most to me right now.
I was going to put this in the other thread because Teh Stupid, but it fits better here. They don't tell you about all the dangers of single parenting.
For those who don't keep track of guns very carefully, a Desert Eagle is what Dirty Harry would have carried if it were made 15 years later.
I think later on, when Gurgeh is on Azad, he gets a 'postcard' from home in which there's evidence of people staying in his nice house (where the roof slopes at the same angle as the mountains and the rain is refreshing and the air clear). And it annoys him, perhaps because he has internalised Azadian concepts such as ownership.
125: Yeah, they're not doing a lot of shooting if they thought a book was going to stop a .50 AE. A standard bullet weight for that .50 is 300 grains. The 9mm loads we carry for duty are 124 grains.
125: If I were planning to video a stunt in which I shot a loved one and the bullet was stopped by a book, I might do a test run or two first with just the book, and a sandbag or something behind it, to be absolutely sure it would work. But that's just me.
This sort of idiocy isn't limited to one country of course:
Best bit of that article:
The hearing heard that at first he [the victim] was reluctant to report the shooting.
He said: "I did not want the RAF Regiment to look like twats, which is what it would do, because the Army would love to hear we shot one of our own lads."
Unfortunately, aircraftman, the ship "HMS The Army Thinks The RAF Regiment Are Twats" first set sail shortly after the foundation of the RAF Regiment. Though you have to admire the esprit de corps of someone who tried to cover up the fact that he had been shot in the stomach for fear that it would make his regiment look bad.
"And he stopped off in Tushka at that "Pop's Knife and Gun" place
Bought a SKS rifle and a couple a full cases of that steel core ammo
With the berdan primers from some East Bloc nation that no longer needs 'em
And a Desert Eagle that's one great big ol' pistol
I mean .50 caliber made by badass Hebrews
And some surplus tracers for that old BAR of Slayton's
Soon as it gets dark we're gonna have us a time "
-- James McMurtry, "Choctaw Bingo"
SAC Johnson said Gadsby had initially pointed the pistol at his head, despite his complaints. Gadsby had said: "I have done it loads of times mate, stop being a p***y"
Also, may I second 125 and 127? That's a comically huge calibre for a handgun.
Really the only reason that they built the Desert Eagle .50 is "because we can". There's no reason to have a handgun in that calibre at all. What, are you shooting buffalo in the head with it or something? If so (and you might be), take a revolver so you can carry a .44 Mag load, which is just as good and more accurate, and still have a comfortable grip rather than that ludicrous thing the Desert Eagle has. It's daft for combat (virtually no military uses it), dangerous overkill for self-defence (and only 7 rounds in the mag), ungainly for hunting, unnecessarily limiting for target shooting and too bloody loud.
I have a relative who owns one. It's a collectable.
Anyway, they did do a test run with another book, apparently. My guess is that they forgot the sandbag part and didn't think the reason the bullet didn't go through the first book was because the book could move.
There is also the Dessert Eagle, which is a hand-gun shaped torch for melting sugar on your crème brûlée.
132.2: I am sincerely surprised that there are books out there that can stop a .50AE round, whether they can move or not.
The Dessert Fox knows many things, but the Cheese and Pineapple Hedgehog knows one big thing.
134: Chuck Tingle uses a lot of words.
134 The OED?
You shouldn't need anything bigger than a .454 Casull.
I have a 1910 edition of a comprehensive English dictionary that's about 10 inches wide. I'm pretty sure it could stop a bullet of significant energy. Not going to try it because chickenshit.
Chickenshit is the better part of valor, at least when it comes to things done for YouTube hits.
In Marsh's library in Dublin they have, or had, an exhibition of books that were hit by bullets in the 1916 rising. Some hit side on, and some directly, so you can see how far the rifle bullets made it through.
If there was YouTube in 1916, the Easter Rising would have worked.
Also, if YouTube existed in 1916, the Franco-Prussian War would not have happened. Once you start messing with the temporal order, you get unexpected results.
"This one brigade charged. You'll never believe where."
Depends to a very large degree on the round that is going into the book. Mythbusters tested phone books against .22 long rifle rounds and found you needed 400 pages to stop one. And a .50 AE round has about ten times the energy of a .22LR. They tested a .357 Mag round too - went straight through.
The Marsh's library thing is interesting, but you have to wonder how many of those books that stopped bullets were several volumes in from the direction the bullet was coming from... I mean, if you fire a bullet at a shelf of books end on, one of them is going to stop it. But lots of others are going to fail to stop it first.
Supposedly, Teddy Roosevelt's speech was thick enough to slow down a bullet. He got shot, but not shot dead.
Maybe paper was thicker back before photocopiers and laser printers?
Anyway, I agree with our main point about it being good to assume that a book isn't going to stop a bullet.
School books should have a sticker warning "This odds that this volume will stop a bullet are almost nil." They could put it right below the sticker about how evolution is just a theory.
"Evolution is just a theory but if you have somebody shoot you while you are holding this book to stop the bullet, you'll qualify for a Darwin Award (unless you got the woman who fired the gun pregnant before she shot you)."
145, 147 Paper definitely used to be denser (measured in GSM: grams per square meter). Also paper made from rag (cotton) has longer fibers and is stronger than paper from wood pulp and wood pulp paper breaks down and weakens over time due to hydrolysis. So it matters a great deal what kind of paper you're shooting at.
145, 147 Paper definitely used to be denser (measured in GSM: grams per square meter). Also paper made from rag (cotton) has longer fibers and is stronger than paper from wood pulp and wood pulp paper breaks down and weakens over time due to hydrolysis. So it matters a great deal what kind of paper you're shooting at.
A hardcover copy of On the Origin of Species is apparently 6cm. thick. Wouldn't stop much at short range.
Roosevelt's spectacle case also got in the way of the bullet. It ended up hitting him on the right side of his chest, fairly far to the right, and embedded in the muscle rather than going through the chest wall (someone jostled the shooter's arm). So it was a combination of short-sightedness, verbosity and sheer good luck.
"At the other end of the age spectrum, I believe we need boarding houses for men, middle aged and older, who don't one single thing to make or maintain friendships but then die of loneliness. Boarding houses would solve that handily."
I feel like draft- style mandatory socializing would be great. 10 hours per week of being in a band or playing team sports. Half the time can be done by playing with kids.
I believe we need boarding houses for men, middle aged and older, who don't one single thing to make or maintain friendships but then die of loneliness. Boarding houses would solve that handily.
OH, YES. MY SISTER AND I HAVE BEEN WORKING ON VERY SIMILAR LINES FOR SOME TIME NOW. IT'S ONE OF OUR LITTLE CHARITIES, YOU KNOW.
Half the time can be done by playing with kids.
Possibly it is for unfair reasons, but very often parents aren't eager to have their kids around middle-aged and older men who are of the sort that they have not been able or willing to maintain friendships.
|| Re-posting from a less active thread: ttaM, please email me. |>
The other thing I miss is having two separate ends of the house for hanging out.
During the thousands of years when I lived in a studio, I used to always whine that I wanted to live in more than one room again because if you're in a bad mood in one room, you can go into the other one.
We are lucky to have as much space as we do in a horrible, horrible housing market. On the other hand, I hate everything outside the apartment so it's what you'd call a mixed bag.
You probably thought that was just a ficus tree.
161 Probably for the best. It's light enough to read out there.
Semi-related to Iain Banks, which series of Octavia Butler's should I read? I have (gulp) agreed to spend almost 2 weeks with my father and 12-year-old niece and nephew in Alaska this summer and need a big pile of books.
Parable of the Sower/Parable of the Talents.
The part with all the bear attacks.
You'll need to be a lot more specific than that, especially this year.
165: also the Wild Seed / Seed to Harvest books. And Xenogenesis/ Liliths Brood.
Fairbanks to Denali to Anchorage, then a ship to Vancouver.
It's the ship where you need to watch for the bears. Very few can save enough for passage, but those that can are killers.
171: Yeah, you'll definitely need a big pile of books then.
173: Just when you think you understand a continent/large island.
174: My father initially decreed that the kids couldn't bring a phone or tablet because he didn't want them staring a screen the whole time. Good luck with that, Pops. You can entertain the kids on the 5-hour train rides and 10-hour flights. I'll be over here reading all the library books I downloaded.
(I shouldn't sound so obnoxious about it. My father's being incredibly generous and the trip will be a lot of fun.)