Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with introductions

Being an inquiry into extant instances of prolix and lapidary prefatory remarks upon a narrative.

meadowlark lime — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 06:03:33 -0800

What are some good long-winded title pages from old books and novels? I am looking for examples of the kinds of long-winded (and ornately lettered) title pages that used to appear in novels and other books before the 20th century.

You know the kind I mean: "Being the story of a young woman who sojourns into the depths of her soul, receiving kindness from many divers and unexpected personages".

In my mind I associate this with "loose baggy monster" novels from Dickens and Thackeray, although I can't think of any novels that actually do this at the beginning. Tristram Shandy, maybe?

I am looking for suggestions, and also places where I might view scans of these original pages online. I want to see the lettering and the layout, so Project Gutenberg won't quite give me what I need.

I saw a previous MeFi post about Victorian chapter headings, but I'm looking more specifically for title pages.

How can we help facilitate our brand new kitten and our 2 year old cat to get along (or at least tolerate each other)?

etherealclarity — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 13:56:59 -0800

Although we've been following the standard advice of slow introductions, our new 14 week kitten and 2 year old cat seem to have fallen into a pattern that we're concerned will negatively impact whether or not they ever get along at all! Additionally, we have time constraints and the longer we keep them separated, the more miserable the kitten seems to be. 2 years ago I got a kitten named Ellen Ripley (Ripley for short). I got her through a rescue program but she has always had a home: her mother was the one rescued while pregnant. She's about two now and is a very sweet and affectionate cat (though sometimes a bit needy). She loves settling in laps, always greets me at the door, and has never been aggressive or used her claws with people. She gets nervous and hides around most new new people but always warms up to them with enough time.

A few weeks ago my boyfriend who lives with me decided to get a kitten. We brought an 11 week old kitten home from the shelter and named him Rasputin (Raz for short). Not a whole lot of history was known about him at the shelter (though I did notice that all of the whiskers around his face were cut short and no one could explain why). He's very friendly and extremely energetic for long periods of time until he gets tired and plops himself down near you or on you to catnap.

We did some research before bringing home the new kitten about slow introductions. Raz went straight into our guest bedroom and has his own food and litterbox there (as well as TONS of kitty toys!). Once they got used to each other's smell, we started cracking the door to let Ripley and Raz see each other. At first Ripley would hiss and growl and run away, to the point where she wouldn't even approach the door. After a while (and lots of treats and wet food incentives) she was fine with the door so we started allowing short (and then longer) periods of supervised play.

This is where we seem to have gotten stuck. Sometimes it seems as though they are just playing - Ripley will chase Raz, Raz will run and hide but then "attack", they'll swat at each other, Raz will run away again and Ripley will stalk and "attack". They do all of this without noise and seemingly without claws.

At other times, it seems like bullying - Ripley will stalk Raz to some corner and growl, he'll be startled and squeak and run some other place, and she'll stalk him there and growl, until Raz gets fed up and "attacks" but chickens out when she growls again. Occasionally she'll hiss during these interactions and more recently they'll actually "fight" and there'll be some yowling-type noises. We have a water bottle on hand to interrupt aggressiveness but the "fights" are too short to break up and we're worried about creating negative associations in the cats for each other.

They're not hurting each other from what I can tell, but I know that early interactions matter a lot in getting cats to eventually get along. I'm not expecting things to be perfect yet, I just want to know when is a good time to interfere and when we should just leave the cats alone. I'm also just concerned that it seems to be a pattern and a cycle... the more he play attacks her, the more apt she seems to be to start bullying, and the more she bullies, the more he seems to get nervous and try to make her back down (and always fails). The whole situation is rather stressful and at times I'm worried we have begun to react too quickly to what seems to be negative behavior to us.

To make matters more complicated, Raz mews miserably whenever we leave him in the guest room alone, and both my boyfriend and I have full time jobs AND go to school many evenings. We've been trying to let him out as often as we can and spend time playing with both cats, but the quicker we can keep them both in the same area together, the happier we'll all be. We are torn between trying to rush the introduction process so Raz isn't stuck in the guest room all the time, and keeping it slow and measured to ensure that they do eventually get along.

So the guidance I'm looking for is this:
1) When should we interfere if the cats aren't getting along?
2) HOW should we interfere (spraying water, separating the cats, playing with them, etc)?
3) Is it worse for Raz to be alone for most hours of the day, or for the cats to have more and more time together before they might be ready for it?
4) Does anyone know why Raz might have had short whiskers and if they grow back? (I did notice one long one that got short after we brought him home so I'm concerned that it's self inflicted.)

Additional Info: Both cats are fixed. We got Raz about 3 weeks ago. Pictures of both cats if you're curious... Ripley and Raz. Both seem healthy and haven't been engaging in any stress behavior like spraying or middening. We pay lots of attention to both cats whenever we are home to make sure the older cat doesn't feel jealous, and we often give them wet food while they're out together which sometimes helps temporarily. We also just purchased a Feliway diffuser a few days ago but haven't seen any results yet.

How to introduce kids to a new SO?

RajahKing — Thu, 14 May 2009 12:04:34 -0800

Tell me the best way to introduce my kid to new significant others. I am the father of a 3 and a half year old daughter, and I am separated from her mother.

We've been living in separate apartments for about six months, though the separation has been for more than a year. We live very close to each other and both see our daughter almost every day. Its an amicable separation, but as we each develop our lives more fully and have both been dating a little, I want to get ahead of the curve and get some advice on how one should go about introducing your kid to a new girlfriend or boyfriend.

Here are a few sub-questions on SO-Introduction Best Practices:
1. I have a lot of adult friends I introduce to my daughter; would I need to be more descriptive than this is a new "friend"?
2. How does the young age of my daughter effect this? Would we be more clear with an older child?
3. Do any kids of divorced parents remember their experiences with meeting a new SO?
4. Do you think that the fact we've only been living apart for six months would effect such an introduction? I don't see it happening too soon for either parent, but its definitely possible as we've both been dating.
5. Should we ask anything of the introduced SO? Should they act / not act a certain way?

Thank you so much, in advance.

Introduction Excercise for Business Meeting

SpiffyRob — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 08:14:17 -0800

What's a good introduction activity for a group of 30 people? I've got a department meeting coming up, and I've been tasked with creating an activity for the people involved to introduce themselves/one another.

Details:
1. There will be about 30 people. 20 of these people work together everyday and know each other well, and the other 10 work in different locations. As such, my fallback activity for things like this, where everybody introduces somebody else, might not work so well.

2. Everything after this activity will be very business-meetingy, so I want to make sure these introductions don't clash too badly with the comparatively dry content of the meeting. Most stuff I've found online has been a little too much on the team-building, trust exercise side of things.

3. That said, I want it to be engaging and successful. I tend to be a little curmudgeonly about these sorts of things, so if it can win over the cynic in me, it'll likely work out well.

How does one... mingle?

Effigy2000 — Thu, 07 Jun 2007 21:32:06 -0800

How does one mingle effectively? I suck at mingling, which is bad, since I go to a lot of functions for work (often attended by many important people) where mingling is expected. So often I tend to hang out with the few people I do know, before making a quiet exit. This is because I tend to be more comfortable around those people (I often say I’m an extrovert except around people I don’t know) and because I can’t see how I can just insert myself into a conversation already in flight without looking rude or looking like a stunned mullet while I stand around waiting for an ‘in’ on the conversation.

So I'd like to learn to mingle more effectively. So please, share your tips for mingling! How do I start a conversation with a group of people I don't know (or barely know) while they are in mid-conversation without looking like a putz? How do I overcome what is obviously a level of shyness in introducing myself to people who are often quite important?

How to prep cats for introductions

routergirl — Mon, 12 Jun 2006 09:06:09 -0800

Four cats, soon to be living together in one house. I'm looking for suggestions as to how to introduce them. Help me help them play nice. [more inside] I've seen suggestions in other threads about introducing new cats to a household, but this will be a new household to all cats involved.

My mom and I are moving into a house together. The house currently has no animal residents, so there should be no left over scents - it's a blank slate, really. She has a crazy female Siamese (think Lady and the Tramp's Siameses) and a lazy male tabby. I have a lazy female tabby and a snooty female Bengal. Her cats get along great with eachother, and same goes for mine, obviously. All cats are spayed/neutered.

While I understand nothing is guaranteed when it comes to animals and how they will like eachother, is there anything we can do to help the process? The move is in a month's time.

There will be dogs, too, but we are already introducing them to each other and giving them play time in neutral areas. Our dogs visit each others houses regularly, too, so they have sort of met the cats as well. I considered having our cats go meet at each other's houses, but cats are so weird about new places I thought that might be more stressful and make it worse.

Networking with Alumni

moooshy — Fri, 21 Jan 2005 13:26:16 -0800

What is the proper way to use an alumni directory when inquiring about internship positions? More specifically, what should be in the contents of a letter to an alum who has a cool job but whom I've never met -but potentially could offer a position based on our shared experience at a campus newspaper?