Got stuck in a laundromat in Austin for 3 hours because of a poetry slam

I went to this laundromat off East 6th last Tuesday, just trying to do my weekly wash in peace. Turns out they host this monthly poetry slam right in the middle of the place, like between the dryers and the folding tables. Some guy read a 20 minute poem about his cat's existential dread while my clothes sat in the rinse cycle. I couldn't leave because my wet stuff was stuck in a machine that kept glitching. By the time I got out, the poetry had actually gotten good, which was the weirdest part. Has anyone else stumbled into a random event at a totally boring place?

That $200 air purifier I bought during wildfire season in Oregon worked great, but now I'm wondering if it was actually a scam.

I dropped $200 on a top rated air purifier when the smoke got bad in August, and the air quality monitor in my living room dropped from 180 to 15 in an hour flat but a buddy of mine said the whole thing is just placebo and the HEPA filter might be fake since it's the same brand that got sued last year for lying about their ratings has anyone else tested their purifier against a real sensor?

Vent: That guy at the guild meeting told me to use PVA glue for everything, worst advice ever

Some old timer named Harold at the Seattle Bookbinders Guild meeting last Tuesday told me PVA works for all book repairs. I used it on a 1920s novel with a leather spine and the glue bled through the hinges, made a mess. Now I'm stuck redoing the whole thing with wheat paste, which takes way longer. Anyone else run into bad advice from the so-called experts at these meetups?

That stretch of the Pacific Crest Trail through the Sierra Nevada wrecked me for a whole day

I hit the section near Evolution Basin last June and thought I was prepared but nope. Carrying 40 pounds of gear and bear canister through snowfields at 12,000 feet drained me in 3 miles. Anyone else hit a specific section that just took everything out of them?

Last book club I had to pick between two endings for the discussion

We were reading this thriller where the author left two alternate endings online, and half the group wanted to argue the original while the other half wanted the revised one. I ended up picking the revised version to read first, and it totally changed how I saw the main character's choices. Has anyone else dealt with a book club where the group split on which version of a story to debate?

That one week in July when my AC died in the middle of a heatwave

Sat through that entire Shane Dawson apology video from 2020 and I'm still not sure if he meant it.

I watched all 18 minutes twice and counted seven times he looked down at his notes - do you think that means it was rehearsed or he was just nervous?

That master gardener lady told me to stop watering my succulents so much

I was at a plant swap last spring and this older woman saw me holding a droopy echeveria. She said I was probably watering it twice a week like a normal plant and that was killing it. I thought she was crazy because the soil looked dry after 3 days. But I tried her advice anyway and only watered once every 2 weeks for about 6 months. Now my succulent shelf is actually thriving and I lost zero plants to rot this winter. Has anyone else gotten watering advice that went totally against what you thought was right?

TIL I was tying my lift bags wrong for two years

Had a supervisor on a job in Port Arthur pull me aside after watching me fumble a 50-foot bag lift and showed me the proper half-hitch setup, and now I'm wondering how many other little things I've been doing backwards this whole time... anyone else have that moment where you realize a basic skill was completely off?

Spent 6 hours chasing a ghost in a Cummins ISX at my shop in Phoenix

Last week I had a 2014 Peterbilt come in with this weird intermittent power loss. It would run fine for like 20 miles then just fall flat on its face. I checked fuel pressure, changed filters, even pulled the turbo actuator to test it. After six hours of poking around I finally found a tiny chunk of rubber clogging the fuel return line back near the tank. It was a piece of old hose that must have broken off years ago. Has anyone else had a small trash piece like that drive them crazy?