Bay 12 Games Forum

... yeah, except if you're half decent at it, it stacks easy vs. something like eating out and isn't really that involved of a time sink. My normal cooking takes <30 min* (usually ~5-10, really, and that can sometimes feed me for the whole day), post meal cleanup generally less (In this case, it's only for myself. Maybe 2-3 minutes, 4-5 on the outside, to clean what I used with soap and sponge. And that's assuming no dishwashing machine, which can make that number per meal go down even further. And that gets smaller if I'm using the same dishware across meals.), and planning and procurement has become so routine you're looking at something like maybe two hours a month, total -- including travel time! Consider it a net 4 minutes per meal. I shop maybe twice a month, sometimes less, and trips tend to take less than an hour. If you know what you're after and where it is, this is not an involved process, and if you shop for a month to half month's worth of food in one go (and I get in very regular arguments with family over this in particular, bleh. Just because you can swing by the grocery store every few days doesn't mean you should.), the overall time per meal is very small. I'd say I'm normally looking at around maybe 20 minutes per meal* in terms of everything-but-eating (and the average is probably smaller than that, hum), and if I were actually trying to optimize that on a per meal basis, it could get much smaller. In practice, I'm honestly only kind of half-hearted about this stuff, heh. _{Which really highlights to me how terrible most of the people I've observed are at this, speaking of the American population in general.}

Now yeah, something like soylant would almost certainly save some of the time cost, but the saving isn't really that drastic. You'd still be looking at a few minutes preparation and a similar degree of cleanup (hopefully, anyway, as the alternative of pre-mixed stuff would probably be pretty wasteful re: containers and whatnot). I'll give it might, say, halve the total non-eating time investment (maybe a bit more) but, well. If you're doing it with an eye towards minimizing time there's not much of that to begin with.

... so yeah, I do actually consider stuff like time cost when I'm thinking cost of food (I've had that argument trying to convince family to stop eating out so much, too.) And I'll still say... a lot of folks in the states have no bleedin' idea how to do this whole food thing. Primary cost is effort more than anything else. Biggest issue with quick, healthy, and cheap, is initial setup, not sustained difficulty -- figuring out where things are and how to utilize them. Once that's done, things get pretty routine (at least until you have to readjust to market changes or whatnot, but that generally only throws a portion of it out of whack and readjusting isn't that big of a deal.).

*Now, healthier cooking would expand that a bit if I was still cooking in the same way I do now, yes, preparing and cooking everything per meal. Switch gears to batch cooking, and you'll be doing stuff like cooking a week's worth of a particular thing in one go, drastically reducing per-meal preparation time (if you can cook everything you eat for the week in <2 hours -- and give me a reason, ha, this is not difficult. Well, reason and the money to do it, hum. -- you're looking at something like 20 minutes or so per meal, including warmup). Cook several things simultaneously and your per meal time cost gets even lower. From what I've seen, stuff only very rarely takes over or up to an hour to cook, even in large batches -- and the stuff that does involves preparation methods you can use while doing other things. Eat the same stuff for a week, bring it down to an hour's prep time on the outside and a couple minutes to reheat (if that... some stuff eats fine cold), you're looking at maybe ten minutes per mix-and-match meal.

... all I can say is the ones I've given a shot must have been repeated exceptions to the rule, then (all four or five of them, but still...). Romance novels I've ran into have all had chunks of 'em that read like they're straight out of erotica. I mean, literally. I've read both sorts, and it's like... put the relevant sections side by side and I wouldn't be able to tell which was which. It boggles my mind at times (also totes impressed by how some rampant romance fiction readers can get all indigent about stuff that admits what it is, ha). I've trudged through fanfiction lemons less explicit than that stuff

One thing I know about Jesus and Mohammed: Jesus never picked up a sword and killed people. Mohammed did.

Ah... revelations actually has a nice bit of Jesus riding around killing people, if you were looking for that sort of thing. Rider on the white horse, etc. Guess you could say, "But Revelations" to that, but hey, New Testament. Last book of it too, so far as I'm aware, which makes for an interesting parallel with the way the Quran becomes violent as it goes along...

May be alcohol anyway. From what I recall, pouring out a small measure of booze or setting some aside for the deceased is a pretty old tradition.

We've already done this at least once in the thread

You can eat pretty damn healthy, at least if you're in an area roughly comparable to where I'm at, for somewhere around 4-5 USD a day (and that's at three or two meals, really.). I actually usually eat for less, but even with varying supplements my diet's fairly unbalanced. That said, I price pretty much everything when I'm shopping and have a fairly comfortable handle on prices, and if I could stomach it I could swap tracks to something solid on the nutrition front with only a minor upward fluctuation to cost. It is a bit more in other areas, but not enough to go beyond 6-7 USD a day (price comparison between my area and Tampa was about a 150% difference or thereabouts. I'd eat for about 5-6 USD a day on the outside, including the cost of supplements.) from what I've seen. Twenty bucks a day is vaguely insane t'me, but yeah, if you're eating out that's fairly trivial to hit. Restaurants price gouge like a something or other, in almost all cases.

And it becomes especially true if you can manage a small cost efficient garden, hum. Said it before and say it again... a lot of folks in the states seem to have no bleeding idea how to shop for food.

summersummersummerhatehatehatehate

Sun, why you still out? It's nearing eight and still bright. Go away. Please.

And then don't come back until a reasonable hour. Blaring through my window before six AM is not acceptable behavior.

happens every year hate every year argh

If you go into a shop and tell the guy "It needs new hinges and the dust cleaned out, the warranty is expired" he'll usually do it. It'll probably set you back around $100 depending on the availability of parts.

Eesh, labor costs. Hinges themselves look to cost around 12 bucks. In that case... buy the hinges, do it yourself. Laptop's not too hard to take apart and put back together, just somewhat time consuming.

What do they say?

Well... that's interesting. It seems the lot of us were operating under limited information. We've not been told how we're interacting with you, or divined precisely what mechanisms it's occurring through. There's a lot missing from the picture. If you are willing, please thank the good sir Vivec for us, for shining some light on the situation.

I can't speak for the rest of them, but... apologies. Had I known this communication was a bit more direct, so to speak, my input would have been quite different, hm.

To avoid the temptation or inanity route that those preceding me have traveled down... as I said, I cannot speak for the rest of them, but if you wish me, at least, gone, I will go. Agency is important, and if you are unwilling to maintain communication then I am beholden by custom to accept that.

If you do wish to maintain communication, then we, as the outsiders, should accept the boundaries you set. What would you wish of us? We seem to be able to provide council, and information of already notable dubiousness. If asked, we would provide... if admittedly more from the motivation of self-amusement than anything else. Certainly there is no need to broker deals. You owe us nothing, we have no price that can be rendered by one in your situation -- whatever that situation may be, hrm -- and quite frankly, our advice is of quite dubious quality. What else, if anything, we are capable of is unknown at this point.

As they say... what'll be, guv'? Should we stay or should we go? C'mon... let us know.