At the time, thats what we were saying. 'Why isn't the state stepping in?' But 2021? When everything was falling apart?

When schools were like 'are we remote? Are we staying home? Our town budget is gone cause we spent everything on covid stuff - lets just fire as many people as possible.

The state eventually stepped in - as far as I remember - at least I think so cause my friend is back to being the music teacher in the high school. But it took A LONG time for the state to realize what was going on and get their act in gear. It wasn't like this happened and then the state went 'no'. This happened and then there were MONTHS of virtual school board meetings with town parents losing their shit at the board and board going 'lol no'. Like I said, my sister and I zoomed in to watch the shit shows.

Every time Randolph could make a decision about their schools, they made the WORST POSSIBLE DECISION.

I have a friend that's a teacher in Randolph. The DRAMA that happened over covid. People (me and my sister) were dialing into the meetings just to watch the dumpster fire.

They just... Fired all the teachers. Then hired back like, math and English and science and history and that was IT. No guidance councilors. No music. No art. No gym. No language. No NOTHING outside the basic core corriculim.

Everyone was ENRAGED. the superintendent was like 'nope I'm god'.

And seeing as covid had started, and kids would need emotional help thru it, need guidance, need people in their corner, the teachers who knew this and wanted to be their for their students were freaking the fuck out.

But they needed jobs. They couldn't hang around and see if this got sorted. So they got new jobs.

Oh my God. It was a marvel to watch.

What are you looking for in an apartment? There are plenty of 1BR apartments available for that price. Are you limiting yourself to neighborhood amenities? Building amenities? Do you have certain expectations that youre limiting your criteria to?

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https://www.apartmentfinder.com/Massachusetts/Boston-Apartments/1-Bedroom/q/?cd=t1r75o2trHon3pghK&nr=1500&xr=2500

For some reason my brain went 'Dracut St? Like, by ashmont station?'

Not... the actual.... town of dracut.

I have no real opinions on dracut. Its kind of out there - theres no real reason to go there unless you've got a friend there. And then you leave to do something.

You can cross the boarder easy for cheaper booze.

This is such an odd question.

Quincy is big, and not all of it the same. Not everyone who's driving around quincy is just trying to get THRU quincy.

Going south Newports still a better drive than HANCOCK. Hancock has too many lights. And that fucking Taco Bell.

Boston very walkable, in my opinion. While the streets arent generally straight, the city's not BIG either - and its pretty safe, so theres not generally big industrial dead zones, so it's not that hard to walk from one side of the city to the other. In fact, I have. Dorchester to Cambridge. The only real problem is knowing the streets well enough to know where you're going and once you know that the problems moot.

I've backpacked across Europe and Roadtripped across the US as well, so I've been to LOTS of cities.

Compared to US cities, Boston is supremely walkable (cow path roads aside). The city center was designed people first. So much of the city was laid out before cars or MBTA came about. Even other big US cities struggle to say that. San Francisco, while... 'walkable' has a steep hill problem that makes things problematic for people with disabilities or arent super fit, requiring people to drive to use public transportation. I'm disabled and I've issued with their transportation not stopping at all because theyre full and im left stranded. Its not great.

European cities are walkable only because they were designed and build when walking was the only means of transportation. I've lived in Leeds. Downtown Leeds is just a giant walkable shopping district, residential neighborhoods is GARBAGE.

Things that happened that aren't 'seeing something out of the corner of your eye':

Watching an earring go down the shower drain, going into my bedroom afterwards and having the earring sitting in some water on the table beside my bed.

When I was but a young dumbass (2001-ish) I did bloody mary at midnight during a thunderstorm. Then I tried to turn the lights on the light bulb exploded. Since then if you try to put a light bulb in it explodes. its been 20+ years, we've had numerous electricians come look at it, but we still have no lights in the downstairs bathroom. Its obnoxious.

I tried to move into a bedroom on the third floor. The girl who killed herself in the room in the 70's disagreed with me and drove me out.

Back when I was in 5th grade, about 2 in the morning, February, some bricks in the chimney fell and crushed the heat exhaust causing the carbon monoxide to back up into the house. My dad had sleep apnea, so he had a c-pap machine, and had 10x the amount of carbon monoxide pumped into him. Carbon Monoxide puts you to sleep then kills you, and it being 2am we were already asleep. He woke up. He woke my mum up telling her he didnt feel good. She said 'something wrong' and got all of us out of the house and called 911, and the fire department came, took a carbon monoxide reading and said 'yeah, you should all be dead right now.'

We've had multiple carbon monoxide detectors in our house since then (1997-ish). The ones with number displays that tell you exactly what the ppm is. (The joke is that carbon monoxide is usually the cause of seeing ghosts, but the ghosts saved me from dying from carbon monoxide - which I find fucking HILLARIOUS)

Some friends and I got a ouija board. we saged the room we were in, and started asking questions. One or two of us would leave periodically to see if the conversation thread would change, to see if someone was doing fuckery - but the conversation stayed steady throughout. I think we ended up talking to 11 ghosts?

Theres probably more. I dont remember all of them, or forcibly blocked them out. I will say, my house was a funeral home for a while, and 3 or 4 people died in my house that I know of, including my dad.