ZDL

Have you ever speculated as to why you get banned so often?

Grand Theft Autocorrect has no feelings to hurt. Has no nervous system to signal pain. Spicy Madlibs is less self-aware than an ant.

Right now, a little bit of Low Orbit.

I use so-called "eternal pencils" now. They come in various "hardness" ratings (like pencils: B, HB, H, 2H, etc.) but even my "softest" (read: darkest with broadest tip) has been in use now for a couple of years without noticeable wear on the tip. That one is guaranteed to be usable for a decade. My hardest will likely stop working when the sun dies in four billion years or so.

I've tried them. I still prefer the compressed ones, but they're pretty good, yes.

I have lived in small towns (smallest: about 3000 population) and in big cities (largest: about 14,000,000 population). I have family who live so rustically that even a small town is an hour's drive away.

I like all three situations for different reasons, albeit for the rustic life only in short bursts of two months or so.

Overall I'd say I'm a "city girl", but if I have a decent Internet connection I probably would enjoy small town life more since I'm aging and slowing down. There would be some adjustment, of course, to not being near hot spots and good restaurants and such, but it would also give me the peace and quiet to actually catch up on reading the books I've accumulated over the years and getting practice time in on the instruments I want to learn.

So you're only missing out if you really want those things. But don't think that you're going to have more time to do things in the city. As plenty of others have pointed out, the realities of traffic in most cities are such that you'll face long transit times anyway, although if you live in a place that has actual public transit that gets mitigated quite a bit; I can cross the megacity I live in now from extreme ends in just over an hour; most of the places I want to go I can be at in under 15 minutes, the majority of these being even in walking distance.

Cousin. Did I typo that?

Respect. The whole huqin family is fiendishly difficult to play.

Yes. At work, for example, I make a cup in the morning about 10AM and then keep refilling and drinking until about an hour before quitting time.

I get it straight from a collective representing the farmers in Liubao. There are some Internet vendors who sell it, though, so you don't have to move to China. I can't vouch for any of them though since, well, I don't use their services.

You don't. You finish your cup, you put the leaves back in, you pour hot water over top.

I cycle among these four randomly: