Conversations using only words ranked 6,001–6,100

Okay, Mika, I've got the oven on and I already made the crust. Look at it. Golden, buttery, perfect.

Wow, it actually looks professional. Did you use a cutter for those little edge shapes?

Yeah, that star-shaped cutter your mom gave me. I finally found a use for it.

She'll be thrilled. Now, fruit. I washed the strawberries, and I've got one bunch of grapes... though I should warn you, half of them are past their best.

Let me see. Yeah, this grape is basically soft and starting to rot. Straight in the bin.

Sorry! I forgot they were in the bag. But the good ones are so juicy, taste this.

Mm, that is juicy. Okay, while you slice, I'll heat the jam glaze on the stove.

Careful, that pan on the stove gets hot fast. And there's some grey scum forming on top of it.

Got it, I'll skim the scum off with a spoon. Nobody wants cloudy jam on a beautiful tart.

Very fancy of you. Should I add cinnamon to the cream, or is that weird with berries?

No, a little cinnamon is lovely. Just a pinch, though. Last time you basically buried the dessert in it.

That was one time! Oh no. A. Look at the counter. There's jam everywhere.

And on your sleeve. That's going to leave a red stain if you don't rinse it right now.

Cold water, cold water. Okay, I think I caught the stain in time. My kitchen looks like a crime scene though.

We'll clean it after. Let's take the tart outside and eat it in the garden. The air's really crisp today.

Perfect. Crisp air, warm tart, and you still owe me the juicy story about your date on Friday.

Ha, of course that's why you invited me. Fine, bring two forks and I'll tell you everything.

Deal. Best baking afternoon in ages, sticky counter and all.

Mika, take it slow on these rocks. They're slick with all that green stuff.

Whoa, you're right. It's like walking on wet soap. Beware of the flat ones especially, they're the worst.

Noted. So, are you actually getting in today, or just sunbathing again?

I'm swimming! I bought a new bikini for this trip, so it has to touch the water at least once.

Fair enough. Hey, put your mask on and take a peek under that ledge. There's a whole city down there.

Oh wow, so many little fish. Wait, what's that big shadow moving near your leg?

Where? Oh no. I saw a fin. A definite fin, Mika, cutting right through the water.

Get out, get out! Why are you laughing? Is this a prank?

It was a fish this big. Sorry, sorry! Your face was too good.

I nearly screamed loud enough to make the whole beach roar. You owe me an ice cream.

Deal. Come look at this instead. There's white quartz in the rock here, shining like glass.

Pretty. And this pool is warm! Are these tidal pools always this full?

Only when the tide is coming in, which... it is. Look, our bags are almost swimming.

Our towels! Hustle, hustle! Grab my sandals!

Got them. One dry towel, one very salty one. Not bad for a day's work.

Same time next weekend? But no fake sharks. Just fish, rocks, and ice cream.

Whoa, hold on. Is that you under that haircut?

It is me! I walked past the salon on Friday and just went in. Totally spontaneous. No appointment, no plan.

That's not like you at all. You routinely book things three weeks ahead.

I know, but the awards dinner was Saturday, and my old style felt so flat. I wanted something that pointed upward, you know? Short at the sides, a bit of height on top.

It looks great. Very stylish. Did the stylist talk you into it?

She said this cut is very much in vogue right now, and half her clients are asking for it. So I said yes before I could panic.

And the clothes? You said you bought something too.

A soft grey jumper and a long skirt. Warm, comfortable, and respectable enough for a room full of my bosses.

A jumper to an awards dinner? Bold.

It worked, I promise. And I found this thin silver bracelet on the sale table for eight pounds.

Let me see. Oh, the edge is a bit uneven, isn't it?

That's the point! It's meant to look irregular, like hammered metal. Nothing perfectly matching.

Okay, I take it back. So how did the big night go?

Three people asked where I got my hair done, and my manager didn't recognise me from behind.

That's the highest praise there is. Maybe I should stop planning my life and just walk into a salon.

Do it. I'll come and hold your hand while you cry about your fringe.

Very kind of you. Coffee first, courage later.

Mika, you look like you've been fighting the freezer again. How's the messy experiment going?

Honestly? Chaos. But beautiful chaos. We finally got the first numbers back on the gut bacteria study.

Wait, already? I thought you were still stuck taking baseline measurements before anyone touched the diet.

We finished those last month. Everything gets compared against that baseline, so if it's wrong, the whole study is garbage.

No pressure at all. And the dietary part? You're feeding people something strange, right?

Not strange, just high fiber. The dietary change is simple, and the supplement comes in one capsule a day with breakfast.

One capsule? People can handle that. My grandmother swallows six every morning like it's a snack.

Your grandmother is tougher than our whole team. Anyway, we're sequencing the bacterial genome from each sample.

That's where the mess comes in, I bet. One dirty pipette and you've got contamination everywhere.

Exactly. We lost four samples to contamination last week, so now the tools get sterilized with gamma radiation before anything.

Gamma? Fancy. Are you also still measuring the gas the cultures give off?

Yes, and the methane emission is the interesting bit. The high-fiber group shows a much lower emission than we expected.

That sounds like a real finding. Is your software logging all of it automatically?

Half of it. The gas readings I still type in manually, at eleven at night, with cold coffee. Our technician offered to build a script for me.

Take the offer. A good technician can save you fifty hours. So, is your boss celebrating already?

He wants to announce it, but I told him that's premature. Twelve people, six weeks, no conclusions yet.

Good for you. Premature headlines are how careers get embarrassing.

Right? Give me three more months and clean data. Then I'll buy you dinner and brag properly.

Deal. And I'll bring the cold coffee, for old times' sake.

Hey, Yuki! I've been sitting in the quad for two hours pretending to work. The sun is out and my laptop is closed.

That sounds like a perfect afternoon. How's the dissertation going, though? Be honest.

Chapter three is fighting me. I'm trying to explain one theorem in plain language, and I can't make it sound human.

Ah, the classic problem. If your reader can't comprehend it in one pass, the math isn't the issue, the sentences are.

You sound like my supervisor. I feel like an apprentice who keeps getting handed better tools and still hits his own thumb.

We all hit our thumbs. Did you download the formatting template from the graduate school site?

There's a template? I've been setting margins by hand like some kind of monk.

Oh, Ken. It saved me a whole weekend. And the workshop on it is compulsory now, so you probably missed an email.

I miss all the emails. My inbox has more letters in it than the alphabet has, and I read about three of them.

That's a beautiful excuse. Also, they want an official transcript with your submission, so order it early.

Right, the paperwork never ends. My sister keeps telling me the same thing about her hospital residency.

At least nobody's paging you at three in the morning. Come on, coffee's on me, and then you open that laptop.

Deal. If I finish chapter three today, you get naming rights to my first footnote.

I'll hold you to that. Let's go before the sun makes you philosophical again.

Mei, we go live Friday. Please tell me you're not panicking.

I'm not panicking, I'm caffeinated. There's a difference. But honestly, we can't afford any slack this week.

Agreed. So let's split things up. What if I take the database side and you take the front end?

That works, except our jobs overlap on the login screen. We'd both be touching the same code.

Fair point. Then let's appoint one person to own the login: you. You wrote most of it anyway.

Fine, I'll take it. And I'll delegate the testing to Ken. He's been asking for more work for weeks.

Perfect. He's been pretty much idle since the last project got pushed back.

Poor guy. He put a little rocket sticker on his laptop the day we announced this launch, and he's still waiting to use it.

That's adorable and slightly heartbreaking. Okay, what about the client's IT team? Are they ready?

I emailed my counterpart over there this morning. She's incredibly responsive. She replied in four minutes.

Four minutes? Can we clone her?

I asked. Legal said no. She wants a demo of the full functionality on Thursday: search, reports, everything.

Then we deploy to the test server Wednesday night, so nothing blows up in front of her.

Exactly. And if something does break, we smile and call it a new feature.

Bold strategy. I'll bring coffee Wednesday night.

Bring two. And a rocket sticker for Ken.

Deal. Friday we launch, Saturday we sleep.

Mika, quick question. What's the longest you've ever driven just to look at something?

Six hours. And you were in the car, so you know the answer already. That famous lookout point, remember? We left the city on that wide boulevard with the trees on both sides, and after that it was just grass.

Grass for hours. One huge tract of farmland after another, and I kept promising you a hill.

There was no hill! The prairie just rolled on and on. Flat, then a little bump, then flat again.

And then the road turned to gravel. I can still hear those little stones popping under the car.

You slowed down to about ten miles an hour. So bold, so fearless.

It was a rental car, Mika! Anyway, after that we climbed into the highland and everything changed. Hills, sheep, cold wind.

And the rock up there looked so odd. Dark and full of little holes. That was volcanic, wasn't it?

Completely. The sign said the whole ridge came from eruptions thousands of years ago. Then, totally unexpectedly, we came around a bend and there was the lookout. No warning at all.

I actually gasped. That vista, though! Valleys, a silver lake, and sky going on forever.

You were waving your arms wildly at me to stop the car. I thought something was wrong.

Something was very right! And then we had to climb over that huge fallen tree limb on the path to the edge.

My legs were shaking by then, half from the cold and half from six hours of driving.

Worth it, though. Twenty minutes of looking, twelve hours of driving.

Let's do it again this autumn. Same route, better snacks.

Deal. But I'm driving the gravel part this time.

Nina, look at that guy in the mosaic. He's raising his hand like he's about to salute someone.

That's a soldier greeting his commander. Honestly, I'd salute him too, just look at the size of that spear.

It's taller than I am. I'd throw it and it would land on my own foot.

Read the sign. This one room covers almost a millennium of history.

A thousand years in one room? No wonder my feet already hurt.

And someone had to chronicle all of it by hand, year after year, on clay and paper.

Speaking of clay, come see this pottery. That bowl has a crack in it and it still looks nicer than anything in my kitchen.

The little painted cups are my favorite. Somebody drank wine from that two thousand years ago.

Okay, next case. It says he was a tribune. So he was elected to protect ordinary citizens?

Right. He'd stand up in front of the crowd and argue for them whenever the rich pushed too hard.

I like him. Every era needs a tribune.

This next part is darker, though. These were captives brought home after the war.

Captive kings, paraded through the streets in chains. That's rough.

That was the whole point. The parade was about domination, showing everyone exactly who was in charge.

Power was basically the creed back then. Believe in strength, believe in the empire.

Not for everyone, though. People of every creed lived in those cities, different gods, different temples, all on one street.

Which reminds me, where's that oracle exhibit you wanted?

Just around the corner. People walked for weeks to ask her about their future.

If she's still open for business, I have questions. Mostly about my job.

Ask her where the café is first. My prediction: cake.

Now that's real wisdom. Lead the way.

Hey Yuki, did you catch that news report about the military scandal last night?

The one about the contracts? I heard the end of it while I was making dinner. Something about digging equipment?

Yeah. The army paid about ten times the normal price for machines to dig one trench at a training base.

Ten times? For a long hole in the ground? That sounds really shady.

That was my reaction too. And a colonel working inside the Pentagon signed off on every single invoice.

I always forget that building really is a pentagon: five straight sides, five floors, five rings.

A perfect shape for going in circles. Anyway, prosecutors filed a formal indictment yesterday.

A real indictment? So it's not just a quiet slap on the wrist inside the army.

Not at all. The judge even mentioned the severity of the charges: fraud, false documents, years in prison if it sticks.

Wow. Was he doing all this by himself?

That's the interesting part. He had a confederate, an old school friend who owned the equipment company. They split the extra money.

Naturally. So what's his lawyer saying?

The usual tactic: blame the paperwork. He says the whole thing was a misunderstanding about the budget forms.

A nine-million-dollar misunderstanding? I've made mistakes on forms, but never that creative.

Right? And he's completely unwilling to name anyone above him, even for a lighter sentence.

Loyal to the end. Or just scared.

Probably scared. The reporter said he's a first-time offender, so some people expect the court to go easy.

Hmm. Somehow an offender in a uniform gets more sympathy than he deserves.

Agreed. Well, we'll find out in March when the trial starts.

Text me that morning. I'll bring coffee and we can be outraged together.

Deal. On that bench under the shady tree in the park, like proper retirees.

Perfect. Save me the shadiest spot.

Okay, you've been staring into that latte for a solid minute. Where did you go just now?

Sorry! My gaze drifts when my head is full. I had a session with my psychiatrist this morning.

How did it go? Last time you said she wanted to talk about your sleep.

She did. And my moods. I've been so moody lately. Laughing one hour, snapping at everyone the next.

That sounds exhausting. Is there something sitting underneath it?

Yeah. I finally told her I'm bisexual. It's not news to me, but saying it out loud to another person felt enormous.

That is enormous. I'm glad she was a safe person to say it to.

She was so respectful about it. No strange questions, no big reaction. She just listened.

Good. That should be the bare minimum, and yet people still get it wrong.

Right. I told Mika too, and she went quiet, then made a joke I really didn't love.

Ouch. After all these years?

I know. Now there's this fracture in the friendship, like a tiny crack in a bone. Nothing snapped, but I feel it whenever I move.

Honestly, what you're describing is akin to grief. You're mourning the friend you expected her to be.

That's exactly it. And some days everything feels meaningless: the songs, the emails, all of it.

But you're a songwriter. Doesn't all this mess usually end up in a song?

Eventually. Right now my brain wants quiet, not stimulation: no crowds, no noise, no ten new ideas at midnight.

Then we sit right here and drink overpriced coffee in peace.

Perfect. Thanks for not trying to fix me.

Wouldn't dream of it. Same table next week?

Same table. I'll be the one staring into a latte.