the only time i ever went to church as a kid was with other people's families and i think that only happened twice and i was uncomfortable both times.

around here they have revivals. this is a foreign concept to me.

also all of the billboards are apparently owned by a christian operation because they all have jesus-fish on the bottom of the structure.

Yeah, my roommate and I went to church with my mom when I was about 12 or so because she would buy us taco bell afterwards. They put us in a youth group or something. Anyways, there were a ton of other kids in there and when they were singing/clapping, we would throw off everyone around us' timing by clapping on the off beats. And slowly everyone's clapping would just get fucked. Plus we'd sing along to whatever words they showed on the projector, but we'd sing out of key so it would fuck with everyone else also. We had a lot of fun messing with church people. It wasn't fun when they made everyone be quiet and pray and shit though.

haha, nice. whatever keeps you busy, i guess.

once when i was working in the cave i was in "training" for giving the wild cave tours so i was tagging along with another employee and a group. the group was from some church or something and they asked the guy if they could stop and pray or something - i don't fucking know, hold hands in a circle and talk to jesus. anyway, i think the guy in the group got mad because while they did that i just wandered off on my own because i'm in a goddamn cave and that's awesome and fuck you.

my girlfriend teaches high school and several kids complain that they can't do homework on wednesdays because they have to go to church. she was bitching about this to another science teacher that she assumed was an atheist and he said "that's no excuse. i still have time on wednesday before church to get work done!"

The homework will give them a chance to test out prayer. If they pray hard enough maybe it'll be done by the time they get to school.

And I remember going to those cave tours. We have several here in Austin and they're fun stuff. Sometimes you see bats sleeping and they tell you to be quiet so you don't bother them. That's when I stomp louder as I walk because I want to see a bat fly around in the cave. But they never did wake up. How was the cave work? Was that a fun job?

dude bats in commercial caves get flashlights shined on them all day and have people take pictures. i think i'm the only member of the staff that never poked at a sleeping bat at least once. jerks. i love bats.

fucking best job ever. commercial caves are hokey as shit, but whatever - getting paid to walk through a cave all day and talk to people who aren't paying attention anyway? great. after a few months, my tours were probably 50% "standard material" that you're supposed to share, and the rest stupid shit like "this is how they cleared this passage so you could walk through it!" and "blah blah blah bats are the best blah blah blah"

and i hate other people, so instead of dicking around in the breakroom all day, i'd go find work to do. know what's great when you're carrying buckets of rocks down a hill and filling a garden with them? being told you have to give a cave tour. physical work in hot summer sun followed by a leisurely stroll through a 55 degree cave. gimme. also, the owner of the cave would come visit and catch me working every time and he liked me for it.

but it was a 45 minute drive and gas was 4 bucks a gallon and the pay was like 7.50 and i had to catch up on a lot of bills and i never had money and then i had to move back home and life sucked again.

(it's a bad idea to talk to me about how great working at a small commercial cave is because i ramble on and on forever)

also bats flying in a cave is awesome and catches you off-guard and is fun. also bats flying outside. also bats. bats. bats.

i feel like a dork because there's a silly picture my girlfriend drew me for my birthday last year that's been on the refrigerator since then. we recently moved, and i put it on the new fridge. it will probably be there for several birthdays, because:

awww

It's cool man. We have a sign up that says "HAPPY BIRTHDAY" over the entranceway and it's nobody's birthday. I change it up with new font every year on my roommate's birthday then nobody takes it down.

It's cool that you ramble on about cave stuff because it's interesting shit. Did you guys have a rock that you made everyone touch before they went down into the cave so they didn't touch all the rocks in the cave? The ones here have that and the thing is just nasty looking.

Edit: And did you ever get people who were claustrophobic and didn't realize it til they got down. Then they just freak the fuck out?

haha, no, the cave i worked at was too sandy so we didn't have stalagmites and stalactites (well, there was a few, but not anywhere people could ever go). we told everybody they could touch anything they wanted (except bats). i think a lot of people were disappointed because it wasn't all shiny stuff with crazy shapes, but whatever. fun anyway!

i don't recall any claustrophobic people on any of my tours. i had a guy that asked for the quickest way out when his girlfriend had to take a shit. i told him the way and a few minutes later somebody dropped a real stinker in one of the side passages near the exit. when i got out of that tour, my boss called me over, "did you notice anybody leave the group and come back?" "no, why?" she got close to me because it was busy, "somebody shit in the fuckin' cave!" that was a day!

my favorite tours were the ones late in the day, just before closing time, when some couple would come in and they'd end up getting a private tour. then it's more conversational than just relaying information people don't really care about.

this cave was about 1/3 developed, so we also had "wild tours" where people would have to wear a helmet and bring a flash light and get to crawl around and get muddy and stuff. that was fun, but i didn't get to do it too often (low on the totem pole!). one time i ended up taking some dude and his two kids on a caving tour, that was fun.

Yeah, the caves we have here are all shiny with all kinds of stuff coming down from the ceiling and there's a strict no touching rule. Lots of crazy formations that they have names for. I really loved taking dates down into caves because they were never thinking about how cold it would be and I could take my jacket off and put it on them. That always wins their shit over. Man, maybe I'll just give up my job typing stuff all day and work in cave. Sure it'd be a 40 minute drive every day but I wanna have fun for a job.

it was completely fun, but i don't know that working at any commercial cave would be as fun. this was a very small place (well, not the cave itself), and the manager was awesome.

all the commercial caves in virginia have all the formations and stuff, and they're all way too commercial for my tastes. luray caverns - everybody fucking loves the place, but your feet never touch the natural cave floor. also tickets are like 20 bucks and the tour guides don't know their shit.

we had to take a "knowledge quiz" in the middle of the summer and i scored better than anybody else there - people who have been working in this cave and sharing information about this cave with people for three, five, ten fucking years. jerks. i was so sad when i realized i wouldn't be able to go back to work there the following year. oh well.

know what's colder than being in a cave? crawling through a stream in a cave, haha. fun!

So im going to start turning things into stash boxes for weed. And selling them on Etsy.

Anyways, I built two poker tables last year and I had a hard time finding the right kind of felt for them. I started out going to a fabric store and I just got a 6ftx6ft square of plain green felt and it was terrible :(

It had all of these fibers and strings and hairs coming up all the time, I ended up getting this expensive green felt online, and its great but it just cost way to much.

Anyways, anyone into crafts that knows the difference with felt? I just want a big sheet of the felt that you find on poker tables in casino's or the kind of stuff they make bowlers and other clothes out of. The kind thats really soft and has really short hairs, not the kind made from compressed fibers that pull apart...

I feel like Kitsa would know :/

also, cool cave story.

cave story is pretty cool yeah

i never got past the last dungeon/level of cave story =-o

dunno about felt

I'm not 100% on this and I suck at pool but try google-shopping-searching for billiard cloth. I think that's what you want.

it looks like it's all pretty f-damned expensive no matter where you get it, though

craft store stuff is cheap and usually hell to work with, though. You want the soft, no-pill stuff that's more like fleece.

wonder if you could actually use fleece

probably not

:tear

you need wool straight from the back of a sheep that lkes to roll around in grass

thats how they've been made for thousands of years and i dont think its right to stop now

Sorry I did not know that.

Poker fabric link. I'm not sure if this is in you price range
http://www.yourautotrim.com/plsucl.html

4 kitsa and all hallowieners

what

lol

haha for some reason i had a feeling you would respond to that :(

also i found a bat one time and it was awesome it was like alittle mouse with wings

dawgs, it's real boring around here lately

i almost miss pram maven