Traffic lights were hand operated.
The small town where I grew up had one pedestrian traffic light for crossing the main road. There was a small brick shed next to that traffic light with no windows and a little door. When I was little I was convinced that was an operation’s center where someone worked to turn the lights red or green.
In reality it was a power substation for the neighborhood, but I was seriously convinced that behind that door was a man looking at a TV screen and operating the traffic light at the right moment.
When we went to a larger town nearby, where there were traffic lights without a convenient mysterious building nearby, I told myself that the traffic light people were most likely working under ground, peeping through the drains.

I… was good at making up answers for myself instead of just asking my parents.

The first house in my city is from 1976, the entire city is built on reclaimed land. It went from 100 residents back then to more than 220,000 now.

A fun fact is that they still find stuff in the ground from old shipwrecks to crashed WW2 bombers.

I have two ways of explaining. The first one is just saying “I work with data” followed by some hand waving and shrugging.
The other is where I really go into detail and explain everything. Going gaga over some minute aspect that I find awesome but couldn’t even interest one of my coworkers.
Neither seems to really work, but I don’t get follow up questions which suits me just fine :)

In Dutch it’s called a trouwring, which as a verb literally translates to wedding ring, but as a noun also to loyalty ring.
Which I find rather sweet.

I don’t know about over there, but here they’ve started selling them with paper straws. Making it even more impossible to puncture that stupid little hole while ruining the straw in the process.

And of course it’s the only thing my daughter wants to drink. I’ve had to resort to using a nail file to open those things.

Fair enough :)

Those are a lot of assumptions you’re making:

• No one said the necromancer wanted a minion
• No one mentioned anything about a smelly cave
• I never said I’m a boy
• Maybe I would love the solitude

Anyway, no one said that the necromancer needed a guardian for some smelly cave. I like to think the necromancer got lonely and just wanted a friend to chat with. Even if what you say is true, cave guarding is for low-level chumps like skeletons or ghosts. Vampires are middle-management at least :)

Also, how on earth can you tell me I have to look exactly like I did when I was alive - which is still pretty :P - while you apparently can transform from human corpse to a drake?
Following your rules, the necromancer would be trying to assemble a drake using human bones, creating some weird facsimile of a dragon. The “drake” would spend its time jumping out from behind rocks shouting “blergh”, while falling apart at the slightest touch. Wishing some adventurer would put it out of its tortured existence instead of just pointing and laughing.

A vampire. Since it’s a necromancer raising me, instead of another vampire, I won’t be enthralled and will have free will.
Then there’s all the wonderful abilities and the fact that I’ll still look good for an undead (it’s a pretty movie vampire, not one of those creepy ones)

I hate sitting in the sun, which is the opposite of most of the country. The heat and light make me feel super annoyed and uncomfortable.
In contrast, most of the people here are sun worshippers. Sitting outside in direct sunlight as much as possible.

May you start every sentence with “Like,”

This joke was passed on to me from my mom:

What is black, hides in a tree, and is extremely dangerous?

In Dutch it’s whey-whey-whey.

I still remember when companies started mentioning their websites in commercials.
It was one big torrent of whey-whey-wheys.

Edvard Grieg - In the hall of the mountain king.

🎶Dum dum dum dum dum dum dum, dum dum dum, dum dum dum🎶

I’m so sorry about your duck, I wish you the best and hope you’ll feel a bit better soon.

Here’s an epic tale about vikings, metal and marching bands. It really is one of my favorites.
https://youtu.be/VtYEz4OKCn8?si=rDTnwVIY7cs_t46-

I hope it helps.

Happy Birthday!
Sorry to hear about your birthday money, I hope you’ll still get to have nice day in spite of it!

“The planet Arrakis, known as Dune”

My very first experience with a sound card was watching the Dune 2 intro on my dad’s friend’s computer. I was so amazed, I just sat in awe as that intro movie played.
On the drive home I tried to remember if what I heard was real, and I just couldn’t imagine it. When I tried to recall what I saw and heard, I could only imagine hearing that tinny internal speaker making bleeps and bloops instead of the actual sounds. It just seemed so unreal at the time that I could not recall what I had heard only a few hours earlier :)

On a side note, I don’t think any studio in the nineties made as memorable tunes and sounds as Westwood did. There was always something enchanting about them. Dune 2, the Kyrandia games, they all had excellent music that really played into the strengths of what was available back then.
Of course I’m talking with pink tinted nostalgia goggles, but still… good memories :)

Yes, I remember these! Countdown And Tex Murphy: The Martian Memorandum come to mind. I remember being amazed at the sounds suddenly coming out of our internal computer speaker. It even had something close to speech!
The manual also came with some info on making the sound even better using some alligator clips, but that went waaaay over my little head at the time :)

When I was a kid our family went on vacation to the US. Everyone kept asking if I was Dutch, which I thought was German (Deutsch).
So I kept correcting them, saying I was Netherlandish :)

Arriving home with my newborn son. It was the first moment when it really sank in that I’m a parent and we have to take care of this tiny little thing.
It wasn’t a warm feeling but more of a fuuuuuck! What do we do? What do we do?! feeling. The enormity of the responsibility just overwhelmed me.
I somehow got through it and the post-natal care lady that visited a few hours later really helped with grounding the situation.

Anyway, it’s not a crazy situation for most of you. But for me it really felt like a “I can’t believe this is happening!” situation.

Yawn. If you pronounce it while sleepy, you actually yawn. And the yawn will sound like the word yawn.

Maybe I’m just sleepy, but I like the word :)