Honestly depends on the workspace, but ultimately Massachusetts (and especially Boston) is pretty chill about that stuff.

More so, I look at it like this: if someone doesn't hire you just because of your blue hair, you didn't want to work for them anyway.

Why 495 specifically? That's basically all the way around the outer edge of the metro region so you'd have to be more specific.

If you want to be close to a transit stop, Melrose/Malden is a pretty good spot. My family and I lived in that area for 10 years before moving further out. Lots happening here and the Orange Line is right there for those quick commutes into the big city.

I live just south of Lowell. It's pretty dynamite but it has a very sketchy vibe in many areas. That being said, it's a very popular arts and culture hub and has retained much of its history. It almost feels underdiscovered and underexplored.

We are 500 miles away from there. Smoke can travel crazy distances, but if you think residue can travel that far without coming back down to earth, you're a bit crazy.

I don't think cussing is wrong, honestly. I don't swear in front of the kids but I swear like a sailor with my wife and especially my friends. That's not the reasoning behind what I'm doing here. It's because *others* can judge for it.

For the record - my kids do know the bad words, especially the 11yo. And I totally get what you're saying – by allowing it freely in the house make it lose the appeal in general. That's actually what we do with alcohol and other things (no, they don't drink obviously, but we don't shield them from the fact that we'll go through a bottle of wine or a few beers on occasion).

I think you and I both have the same end goal in mind – to raise the kids to be respectful and smart. Mine know not to drop the F-word with their teachers or other parents or anything like that, and so do yours. That's the main objective here – there are just different ways to get there, that's all.

It's uptight, yes, but let's look at it like this: I've been very diligent with my boys (5 and 11) about not using the word "hate", "dumb", "fat", and other pretty charged words. I've made it clear to them that "oh my god" or "what the heck" just don't jive in our house either.

It's not because I'm religious. I'm far from it – I'm not atheist either, I just basically don't care either way. I'm also incredibly colloquial in my speech. It's more about raising the boys to be respectful members of the community. Part of that is in the everyday language they use.

I don't really judge people who say "My goodness, that is quite a surprising development" or "OMG what the heck just happened there?!" – but I know our society does. Better to just be a respectful, thoughtful person and that gets you halfway to the finish line with others.

>it sucks for someone like me who fucking loves snow

You sure you're from here?

No, I kid, I kid. I agree, this "winter" is anything but winter. I'm not going to get ahead of it though, we learned from 2015 very badly. There wasn't much snow up to mid-January then either, but then BLAM, 12 feet of snow in like six weeks. Boston's winter gods are sneaky that way.

I'm from Canada – Vancouver, specifically. I've been in Massachusetts 10 years now. And the quality of life here is definitely not nearly as high as where I'm from. I know this is mostly anecdotal but if someone told me that only three countries in the world had a higher HDI than Massachusetts I would absolutely NOT believe them.

As a GenXer, half of those folks look like my babysitters from the 1970s.

No alcohol allowed, but they didn't say anything about weed.