Attached Entry: Theme 419

Theme of the Week now is in the Discussion Forums! Each week I will open a thread for the week's TOTW. You can link your TOTW-related entries there! Comments are turned off for this diary. To submit your topic ideas message us!

 

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What has Bloop meant to you? Have you met anyone from here? Has Bloop helped you get through your dark times and has it inspired you?

 

theme Submitted by LittleUn »

 

How do you get on with your in-law's? Do you have any funny meet-the-parents stories? Any advice for those who are about to meet-the-parents?

 

theme Submitted by Theme of the Week»

 

If you could have your dream job, what would it be and why did you choose it?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Submit a theme idea. » Submit your entry to the TOTW circle.

Attached Entry: 1,154 TOTW, Option 1

theme Submitted by A Red Sox Fan »

What has Bloop meant to you? Have you met anyone from here? Has Bloop helped you get through your dark times and has it inspired you?

Bloop has been a home for me since about 2003/2004. Not even sure! It's been my safe place to write about things that I have gone through, feelings I have/had, thoughts, and writings. And I got to read others who shared their thoughts and feelings and life struggles as well. Made me feel not so alone in the world.

I've never met anyone from here, I'm too shy around new people in person. But I have friended quite a few of my faves on Facebook so even though we all have taken a long hiatus from this site, we keep track of each other still.

Bloop has helped me through all kinds of times in my life by being here for me to come to, express myself, and no one judge me too harshly. It's inspired me to keep writing, even when I had writers block, by having features like TOTW. In November we had NOJOMO and that also helped me get back into writing (of course, its the same month as Nanowrimo so both sites help in November for me).

My hopes is that we revive this site, bring back the homey feeling while bringing it into recent times! We have a like button now, and you can share your entries on FB, Twitter, and Whatsapp if you want. The forums are back! And eventually the chat will be back. We're doing great things here and I hope it pays off!

Attached Entry: Theme 419 - Option 3

theme Submitted by Theme of the Week»
If you could have your dream job, what would it be and why did you choose it?

This all depends on what time of life you're talking about.

Youngester Mark
When I was a kid (so I have been told...) I always wanted to be a vet. I still very much like the idea of making sure that animals are not in pain and all that good stuff however I do not like the idea of having to go into schooling for half of my adult life to be able to work at the level that I would want to.

While also thinking about it, I am not so sure that I would be able to do it due to the gore levels etc. I am not too bad with gore, don't get me wrong - but doing it every day I am not so sure that I would really enjoy that.

School Age Mark
During my school years was when I gained my interest in computing. Throughout my time at school my likes and dislikes when it comes to computers somewhat shifted.

Middle School
During middle school I was picked as one of four to be working during assembly time on learning website creation - this was back in the day where all websites were centre-aligned for the entire page, scattered with awfully pixelated GIFs that took about 45 seconds to download via dial-up connections and bubble fonts.

Towards the end of middle school I finally managed to work out how tables worked in HTML, not that I was any good at time, and I did not have the intelligence at the time to understand the theory behind nesting tables etc - but I got there. With a mixture if iframes and tables, I was actually doing pretty good (at least, that is what I thought so at the time). Looking back now, good lord. But I suppose you have to start somewhere, huh?

I recall during one of these sessions I won the rosette for something (not that I can remember what it was for now). But I won it. Normally you would walk up to the front of the assembly when your name got called up and you would be given the rosette and then just go sit back down - but because I was in the IT room doing silly stuff on my little webpage I of course did not turn up when my name was called. One of my teachers realised that I was in fact at school but just in the IT room so came through and got me - but this wasn't for quite a while and she walked me into the gym (which is where the assembly was held). Because it was after everybody else had already sat back down from collecting theirs (I think there was one per school year) the entire assembly was put on hold while I was awarded my rosette... on my own... I felt so embarrassed, I don't do public speaking etc - it still freaks me out to this day haha!

High School
High school hit and I did not touch websites again for a while. I was more into gaming at this point. There was a few games that went around the network shares that was able to run on the schools computers (Doom anyone?). I spent just about every break, lunch and usually some time after school in the IT room. Going on websites, playing games, tinkering with a few things here n there.

Final year of High School
This was the year that I properly met @Steve, who at the time was a student IT-tech. He was making a taskbar (many visual similarities to the taskbar at the top of Bloop now actually) for the school to replace the logout system that was already in place. I was mesmerised at what he was able to do in Visual Basic 6 and I just had to know more! I'm quite sure that I was somewhat annoying to him - but I kept asking more and more about it. I even ended up working on some VB6 projects myself (Network EMail was one of them - which was an IM/Chat system. Loved it!).

It was around this time that I was told about Bloop, and I was told that I should sign up - so I did! I was addicted to writing, I was writing entries more often that I properly should. I miss writing - but I have lost the drive to do so - I have had a drive to do so lot more lately, especially now that I have been tasked with fixing and updating Bloop

Attached Entry: 1,156 TOTW: Meeting the In-Law's

TOTW: Meeting the In-Law's

theme Submitted by LittleUn »
How do you get on with your in-law's? Do you have any funny meet-the-parents stories? Any advice for those who are about to meet-the-parents?

You're gonna think I have the world's shortest memory but I mean I've been with my husband 18 years. Marcin and I started to "hang out" in the beginning of July 2002, just after my ex-fiance broke off with me to go back to his ex-girlfriend (side story: they're married with a kid now). He went to England with his mom for 2 weeks and then came home and she stayed for another month or month in a half. She spent from June to late August in England and Europe every year visiting her daughter, cousins, brothers, etc. So I didn't meet her until a month after we started dating officially.

Wait....I remember. We didn't meet until my birthday. We went to Labamba Mexican Restaurant and we seemed to get along. Shortly after my birthday we moved in together. Yes we met each others parents and moved in with each other within the first 2 months. Fast, I know, but hey look! It works! He was living with his mom until then and I don't think she was happy about him leaving. She didn't say anything but you can tell.

She loves being center of attention and throwing parties and playing hostess. She treats Marcin and I as her personal help. I started to feel like I was only invited to help with her parties. She would constantly call with some problem for him to come running home to help her with. We didn't live right around the corner from her at the time.

When we got married I thought she would settle down now that we were permanent officially. She'd make comments here and there (I for the life of me don't remember what was said and probably good for us now) and one time my husband gave it to her about how I was his wife and she just had to get used to it.

We did this dance for years until 2015 when some asshole took advantage of her and stole $200K plus from her and we had to call the police. We rallied around her and I think her and I had a breakthrough in our relationship. We had moved her to a hotel for a few weeks because the guy kept coming to her house and calling her. She would take his calls behind our backs. So we needed to wean her off him. Her daughter and niece was here (daughter from England and niece from Maine) staying in the hotel with her (she and my sil got to stay in the Presidential suite - it was really nice!).

We walked to Applebee's one night from her hotel and after dinner we left the restaurant to walk back. We didn't get 10 feet from the restaurant when she started to get emotional. Ya'll, this is a BIG deal for my MIL. She never gets emotional. We always have to wonder what she is feeling or thinking because she doesn't show it. Voluntarily. She must have had too much wine. Or things finally just hit her at that exact moment. She grabbed my hand, she had tears in her eyes, and in front of my husband, sil, and cousin-in-law says to me that she loves me and is glad I'm part of the family. Then she hugs me. Everyone was in shock. She even held my hand the entire walk back.

Ever since we have gotten a long a lot better.