DrHugh

DrHugh t1_jeg0uc4 wrote

In your shoes, I'd suggest to your husband that he tell HR, or at least his boss, about the prying, personal questions and attention he's getting from this woman, and that he tell her that he won't be discussing his personal life or you. Because this sounds like someone who is either trying to insinuate herself into his life, or trying to set him up in some way.

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DrHugh t1_jdyf5wo wrote

They are a thing, and are very much a part of modern cosmology and astronomy. We have the ability to detect distortions of space and time, and have even imaged the halo of black holes.

Carl Sagan, in the original Cosmos TV series, had a sequence of pictures from the Lewis Carroll books about Alice in Wonderland. Ah, found the clip. That might help you understand the idea: If you had enough mass, the pull of gravity could exceed the ability of light to escape it. So you get a black hole -- black because visible light doesn't escape.

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DrHugh t1_ja84tmg wrote

If her name is on the lease and her share of the rent is being paid, she has a legal right to be there. Your flow isn't relevant; you've been enjoying reduced rent without having to cope with a roommate.

Unless you are willing to pay all the rent yourself, and suggest to her that it might be better for her to find a place on her own, you don't have much in the way of options, except moving out yourself.

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DrHugh t1_j6nr4f8 wrote

I wouldn't assume that your positions will change on this matter. This isn't like "you haven't tried this food, so how do you know?" This is something that's been thought about, and a preference has evolved.

Love is not enough in a relationship. You really have to have compatible life goals. One example I often use is children: If one person wants children, and the other doesn't, someone is going to be unhappy no matter what happens.

But even if you agree on children, there are lots of details. You've encountered one: Adoption versus having your own biological kids. You can also get into issues on how to raise kids, like what forms of discipline to use, whether they should have an allowance, and so on.

You may want to talk more about your views on what married life would be like, and what raising kids through to college (and beyond) would be like. It may be that you'd find some other differences that would give you a clearer idea on whether the relationship would work or not. For instance, you may agree on everything else, but then find that your partner believes children should move out at age 18, get a job, and pay for rent and stuff, and that saving money for college is wrong (the kid should pay their own way). If you don't hold that view, there is probably no way to reconcile these differences.

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DrHugh t1_j5x3ao4 wrote

You'd probably get that sense well above the atmosphere. There have been a lot of videos that do a Google Earth kind of "fly in" effect. If you were surrounded by such views, the sense of collision would probably be very strong, regardless of whether you had a sense of acceleration. I would suspect that different people would experience alarm at different altitude or perceived speeds.

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DrHugh t1_j5wpvx1 wrote

Gravity is towards the center of the Earth. If you are in space, in freefall you wouldn't have a sensation of "down." If you are accelerating in a direction, you'd have a sense of down from "behind" you (think of how the Apollo astronauts were on their backs on liftoff, even though the spacecraft arced out and changed angle).

In space, there is no up and down. You could identify a convention, that the "top" of the solar system is where the planets all seem to go in this direction around the sun, so if they seem to go the other way, you are "below," but that's just for consistent terminology.

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DrHugh t1_iwwxfc3 wrote

I agree, but plumbing and electrical codes can have specific things that are allowed or disallowed, and that can vary from place to place. One problem might be that to work on the washer, you would turn off water to your fridge, so you'd have to vent the lines after you turn the water back on.

For instance, a common kit in home stores is a thing with a valve that pierces a supply line, then has a coiled hose you connect to your refrigerator. I was watching an Ask This Old House video on this, where they said this was actually against code in all fifty states, because of the chance of a leak, but it didn't stop retailers from selling the kits.

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DrHugh t1_iwwus6d wrote

I don't know if the plumbing code allows that at that point, you might call your local code office to find out.

I was able to tap into copper supply lines in the basement in order to setup our new refrigerator earlier this year.

If you were going to do it with your laundry set-up, you could find some sort of T-fitting that would go in the cold water connection, with a valve off that that reduces down to the kind of line you need to connect to the refrigerator.

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