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Reading. I have FINISHED Index, A History of the (Dennis Duncan), including both indexes, including The Games Therein, and had a Great time.
Started (just now) The Rose Field, volume three of The Book of Dust (Philip Pullman). ( Grousing; vague spoilers for vol 2 )
so as I say I'm not hugely hopeful for this, but hey, maybe I'm being unfair to it.Writing. Did you know that getting knowledge out of your own head and into other people's is a specific set of skills that has very little to do with how well you know the things you're trying to communicate? TRY TO LOOK SHOCKED, PLEASE. (6.3k words, and am absolutely in an Iterative Cycle of trying to make the introduction more-or-less work. It is progressing, just... very slowly.)
Listening. I realised that Hidden Almanac was possibly in fact exactly a useful sort of thing to listen to while Wrangling Laundry, and have therefore started again from the beginning, at least in part as an attempt to actually listen to some of the episodes I dozed through while they were playing in the car...
Playing. Incomplete White Puzzle progresses. (Today I have added I think three pieces to the contiguous section, two of which I had already joined to each other as a free-foating lump, and made another couple of free-floating lump connections.)
I think we also did a bit more Inkulinati before I got horrendously distracted by Puzzle. And the sudoku fixation continues, though it is at least ramping down a little.
Cooking. I have been having A Rough Week brain-wise, but I have today managed to make some bread, and I did earlier in the week gently fry up some celery and garlic to add to the mashed potato & parsnip that we were having with Vegetables and Veg Sossij. I think that is about the extent of it.
Eating. VEGETABLES, including a couple of peppers from an overwintered plant. (Restricted diet for a week up until the Tuesday just gone, so the return of Fibre was Extremely Welcome.) Favourite chocolate stars with raspberries. Fruit With Skin On. Lebkuchen. Stollen. Seeds and nuts.
Growing. I think the nematodes (applied as a split dose a few days apart) have dealt? at least temporarily? with the sodding Sciarid Flies? for now?
Lemongrass needs pricking out. Physalis are showing zero indication that they have any intention of germinating, which is mildly annoying. There are still three not-dead Lithops seedlings, though I doubt they're the same three as last week. Orchids getting increasingly enthusiastic about their plans to flower.
Have not managed to get anything else sown, yet.
Observing. Lots of bulbs: daffodils and crocuses various and snowdrops are Definitely Underway, at this point. We are fairly convinced that the Yelling from the garden around dusk is Amorous Foxes, though we have not (yet?) bestirred ourselves to ask the internet if what we think we're hearing is in fact what we're hearing...
H/T [personal profile] https://sparkythegeek.dreamwidth.org/profilesparkythegeek https://sparkythegeek.dreamwidth.org/
1. What did you want to be when you were a kid? Writer, scientist... teacher probably came to mind.
2. What is your proudest accomplishment so far? My inner transformations.
*3. What is your dream job? *To survey and map properties for native and invasive plants, documenting the seasonal change and wild life, and helping the stewards understand the history and natural communities of their place.
4. Where do you see yourself in 10 years? I hope i am thriving with Christine in retirement, involved with local community -- native plant people? spiritual (yoga? Quaker?) community people? -- creating, caring for my body, stewarding home and yarden,
*5. What does it take to make you happy? *Awareness and looking up from my complaints.
H/T [personal profile] https://cmcmck.dreamwidth.org/profilecmcmck https://cmcmck.dreamwidth.org/ and [personal profile] https://minoanmiss.dreamwidth.org/profileminoanmiss https://minoanmiss.dreamwidth.org/ (hope that works)
1 what's your favorite kitchen appliance? My immersion blender with chopper and processor attachments
2 do you have a collection of anything? North Carolina made pottery. A small mask collection. I have large accumulations of books, plants, seeds but i'm not sure accumulation has the intentionality of collection.
3 what's the best job you've ever had? My current role is very satisfying.
4 what's the worst job you've ever had? It was the manager, not the role, that was miserable.
5 what's your favorite piece of furniture and where did you get it? I do not have a favorite piece. We have Christine's grandfather's quarter sawn oak craftsman desk that is meaningful, and the previous owner made a kitchen island with concave front, a cherrywood top and some other wood for the curved cabinet and drawers. It is a gorgeous piece no matter how many times i catch my hips on the corners which arc out.
6 what's your go-to recipe when you want to make something that requires minimal effort?
Bread and cheese isn't a recipe.... The "minimal effort" is confounding me. Minimal effort for one person is a muchness for another: i think nothing of cutting up fresh veg but it's a barrier for Christine. She makes things that require stirring which -- look if i have to do something to keep it from burning, it's not minimal effort.
7 are you married or do you intend to get married? Married for 35 years this year.
8 do you have kids? do you want them? No. "Want" seems weird to me in this context, although it seems a common enough frame for most people.
9 are you on good terms with your parents? It was very complicated with my mother. With my Dad, for a basic understanding of good terms, yes.
10 do you have siblings? do you hang out with them? My sister is near and we spend time together when we can; my brother is far and we try to make time to video conference.
11 do you vote? YES
12 what's the biggest purchase you've ever made? Our home.
13 what are your hobbies? Currently various yarden activities that are hard to delineate between hobby and maintenance and stewardship.
14 what's a hobby you'd like to get into? I'd like to return to photography, fiber arts (crochet and sewing and fabric dyeing), and visual arts. I wonder if poetry and writing are still interests.
15 do you collect anything? I am not currently collecting pottery as i have boxes that are not on display, and my mother's collection is in a little limbo. The masks and the art we have is not hung. I suppose i am collecting things that would make living comfortable if the power goes out for an extended time and yard, forestry, and gardening tools.
16 how long have you known your oldest friend? Over forty. Not doing math.
17 are you a member of any clubs or associations? The professional group IdPro. The NC Botanical garden and the NC Native plants society.
18 have you ever changed fields in your career or education? Not during education, but i have gone through a number of changes in specialist knowledge.
19 how many wisdom teeth do you have and have you had any removed? I think they are all removed.
20 what's your favorite beverage? Keemun tea.
21 do you have any living grandparents? No, but my paternal grandmother made it to 104.
22 do you have nieces/nephews/godchildren/other kids in your life that aren't yours? Niblings are in my life, more or less. I'd welcome them more in my life.
23 what's the coolest place you've visited? Is this temperature? Or hipness? Because when i was in Ohio last week is was 0°F (-18°C). But only a few places i've been to in Ohio seem cool.
24 what's your most recent degree and has it been useful to you? I have not used my certificate in GIS, but would like to.
25 would you rather own a dishwasher or a laundry machine if you could only have one or the other? Er, dishwasher, but there are not many laundramats where i live now. One five miles away, and if that didn't suit, one fifteen miles away.
26 do you make a list before going to the grocery store or just wing it? List
27 what's your favorite household chore? Erm....
28 what chore do you hate the most? Erm....
29 do you have houseplants and how are you at keeping them alive? I bring plants in for the winter, and this year they are not doing so well.
30 what's your living arrangement? who do you live with, in what kind of building, do you own or rent or other? My spouse and i live in a what i will call a cottage, although it lacks traditional cottage style elements. The weathered cedar siding inspired our front porch rework to have raw cedar log posts and live edge, rough cut slats in the railing, with "stone" facing on the masonry. Inside is cozy, cluttered, and comfortable as opposed to stylish. We "own" it, and will really own it hopefully in less time than the ten years left on the mortgage.
1 what's your favourite kitchen appliance?
I never really thought about ranking them. The kettle is probably my favorite because it gets used the most.
2 do you have a collection of anything?
Random things related to Stitch (from Lilo & Stitch)
3 what's the best job you've ever had?
Probably the one I have now.
4 what's the worst job you've ever had?
Temping for minimum wage in a team that chased people up for overdue loans. I was new to the UK, so my partner and I were ineligible for all benefits, and I had a lot more in common with the people on the other side of these phone calls I could hear all day long as I was becoming The One Who Could Make the Printer Work and learning to like bananas because we had free fruit in the office and I needed the calories.
5 what's your favourite piece of furniture and where did you get it?
The green couch I bought the WonderHouse is pretty good. I can't remember where it came from; V sorted it out online of course.
6 what's your go-to recipe when you want to make something that requires minimal effort?
"Minimal effort" to me is taking something out of the freezer and putting it in the oven, which isn't a recipe. I guess in terms of things that I'd call a recipe that aren't difficult (and really pay off in how delicious it is, there's always the broccoli halloumi thing.
7 are you married or do you intend to get married?
I am not. I wouldn't say I intend to but I didn't intend to the other time either and it ended up being useful for geopolitical reasons so I wouldn't rule that out again in the future.
8 do you have kids? do you want them?
No and...I do not want to have them in terms of from my own body, and I'm fine that my life doesn't seem to have brought me any, but also if it had I think that would've been fine too.
9 are you on good terms with your parents?
...yes? This kinda came up at transgym yesterday: on the spectrum between good parents and shit parents mine are kinda...shit in practice but also... I talk to them every Sunday evening, which a lot of people would consider being pretty close and my parents consider less than the minimum to be happy.
10 do you have siblings? do you hang out with them?
ahahaha I have never found a good answer to this question. Do I have siblings in that I do and he turns up in anecdotes and suchlike? Or do I not in that if I say I do people ask stuff like "do you hang out with him?" and I can never hang out with him.
11 do you vote?
I vote in two countries! I just applied for a postal vote for the upcoming by election, because I can't remember if I'd done that since I got the notifications about it expiring.
12 what's the biggest purchase you've ever made?
Technically the mortgage on my old house but that didn't feel like a purchase. Next up is my Indefinite Leave to Remain which cost me I think I calculated about £7500 -- at the time. Using the Bank of England's inflation calculator, that'd be £12,828.24, and that's not counting that the Home Office has more-than-doubled the costs of those visas and applications since.
13 what are your hobbies?
Listening to podcasts, watching baseball.
14 what's a hobby you'd like to get into?
Hiking.
15 do you collect anything?
Aches, cynicism, grudges... wait, is this a question about knickknacks?
16 how long have you known your oldest friend?
I'm not really in very good touch with anyone I knew before I moved here, so probaby 18 or 19 years (despite being partners and good friends before that, neither D or I can remember what year we actually met but it was either 18 or 19 years ago).
17 are you a member of any clubs or associations?
local Queer Club. I have a gym membership lol. I don't think anything else?
18 have you ever changed fields in your career or education?
I'm a millennial, we don't get fields and careers. Not the disabled ones among us especially.
19 how many wisdom teeth do you have and have you had any removed?
I had them all taken out at 18, I didn't want to, my dentist said I had to, they'd be causing me loads of pain. They never did. I'm still convinced he did it to get money out of my parents.
20 what's your favourite beverage?
Coffee
21 do you have any living grandparents?
I did until a year ago.
22 do you have nieces/nephews/godchildren/other kids in your life that aren't yours?
D's niblings, his sister's two kids. They are great. They're also tweens/young teens now so increasingly absent/mysterious/incomprehensible, but still such good fun when we do get to hang out.
23 what's the coolest place you've visited?
There are so many, and it's hard to compare them. At the moment my first thought is the Atomium in Brussels.
24 what's your most recent degree and has it been useful to you?
BA (Hons) Linguistics. It has been very useful to me: not in an employment sense (beyond the fact that I think having a degree made it easier to get my job), but it has been so helpful to me to be able to approach my life and the world through this lens.
25 would you rather own a dishwasher or a washing machine if you could only have one or the other?
Oh the times in my life when I haven't owned a (working) washing machine have been absolutely miserable. It's much easier to wash dishes by hand than to wash clothes by hand (or go to the laundromat even if there is one closer now than there used to be because it's where my barber was!).
26 do you make a list before going to the grocery store or just wing it?
We mostly shop online. D has a kind of master list that we just tick off what we need each week(ish) when we do the order.
27 what's your favourite household chore?
Mowing the lawn.
28 what chore do you hate the most?
Cleaning things I don't know how to clean/never feel like I get it clean.
29 do you have houseplants and how are you at keeping them alive?
We have so many, I'm so lucky. V looks after them; this is something else I would be shit at noticing in time. But I love living surrounded by them.
30 what's your living arrangement? (who do you live with, in what kind of building, do you own or rent or other?
I live with my boyfriend and his partner, in a suburban semi-detached house that I think was social housing? Sold in the 80s to a builder who...did things to it himself, many of which have consequences we're still living with. Technically the mortgage is D's and I'm a lodger but in practice all three of us contribute to the bills/food/household stuff.
At some point in proceedings (depression? pain? migraine? dense technical text for the PhD? poetry?), I realise, I have gone from reading Unusually Quickly to still reading More? Than Population Norm? (75ish books last year, of which 15ish were graphic novels or otherwise not-a-novel's-worth-of-words), but no faster than I'd be able to read the text aloud -- "hearing" each word in my head, and often rereading sentences repeatedly.
This is in contrast to how I type, which is much faster than I can speak comprehensibly (... though I now recall that I am in fact often asked to Slow The Fuck Down when providing information verbally).
I have over the last little bit been tentatively experimenting with trying not to read each word "aloud", mentally, and instead treating The Written Word as something that doesn't always need to be (pseudo-)vocalised.
It feels weird. It's an active effort. I am extremely dubious about the impact on how much information I retain; Further Study Required. I think this is probably how I used to read (when?); I'm not sure what changed; I'm unsettled.
(And I want to post something to Dreamwidth before bed, and this is a thing I was thinking about a lot while almost-but-not-quite finishing Index, A History of the -- I'm at a point I'd ordinarily count as "finished" but obviously it is in this instance both important and rewarding to read the index, all two of it, so here y'go.)
This afternoon, diffrentcolours and I were watching a documentary about chemistry with Jim Al-Khalili. (D has done sterling work getting the TV to be able to talk to his file server, so it's way easier to watch random things he has downloaded for us...like this BBC documentary about the history of chemistry.)
Suddenly, out of nowhere, D said of Dr. Al-Khalili, "He has a good scientist head."
"He really does!" I replied immediately.
Then I paused.
Then I said "Wait, I don't know what that means, and I don't know why I was so convinced of it."
Maybe it's the baldness?
Bald/shaved heads are so good. This came up at transgym this morning too: I was complaining about how much sweat my hair has absorbed because it's too long now --the last haircut I had was on my birthday! 3-4 weeks is plenty for my hair to need cutting again; the one problem with really short hair is it doesn't stay that way for long. And my barber has suddenly turned into a laundromat -- seriously, it only took a month for it to be open as a completely different kind of business! -- so I need to try a new one and I haven't had time and ugh...maybe tomorrow.
Anyway, as I was complaining, I was overhead by F, a guy with a shaved head, who said "enjoy it while it lasts!" Apparently he's still in his 20s, bless him. But it got me and our friend A talking about how much we like bald guys as an aesthetic, and then D told us about the subreddit for bald people, where guys share photos of them with thinning/receding hair, all sad about it, and then photos of them bald, happy, no longer giving a fuck. I think it's that "the way to win the game of conventional attractiveness is not to play" transformation that makes this seem sexy to me.
(Not that baldness can't be conventionally attractive, but a lot of balding guys seem to think that. Even if they're just having to get used to the change or confronting their mortality or whatever they do, I don't know. But it seems to do them some good to have to come to terms about it, if not embrace it.)
(Plus obviously bald heads are sexy because a nice close shave is fun to touch, and in the right circumstances I think the stubble can feel good too...)
HOME! I am home home home home.
This business of feeling feelings: so glad to be home. I think i loathe air travel. Thank goodness for e-books, enabling me to dissociate from the experience. There was a period when i was flying cross country and crocheting when audio books and crochet were my flight go tos, but between there being more of me and less room i can't imagine doing much than holding the phone. Between NC and Ohio with stops at a hub were just tiny hops in the air and back down and long stretches of sitting or lugging.
Work went well. We had an all staff meeting where our president cheer-led us in this year's theme of courage under pressure, and i think i needed to hear it. This project will take much courage. It will also be very engaging between now and retirement, and i wonder if it will exhaust me or engage me.
And there was some speaking of retirement. Our product person DH is retiring... soon? I thought it was next year but some chatter made me suddenly wonder if it's this year. I discussed that question with the engineering manager BC as he drove me to the airport. (We both thought it was further off.) BC said he was planning to retire at 60 as our employer has a health care benefit that continues then until Medicare. (He said it as if it was a long way off. Rummages in LinkedIn: hmm, he graduated from college 9 years after i did.) He thinks our employer will pay the same into our health care as they do now after retirement. I just thought we could buy into the same negotiated plan. I can take the benefit on Friday, 2028-03-31.
I don't know if it will be fiscally wise to retire then, but right now i hold that out as conceivable retirement to myself when my sense of energy flags. Working until 62 or 63 would have some financial benefits. I just don't know if i can i develop practices to take care of my physical body.
--== ∞ ==--
I did take double doses of my morning meds yesterday, unintentionally. Last day, i thought, and downed all the remaining pills, forgetting that the trip was a day shorter than planned. I found a pub med review of 400+ overdoses for the med and decided i did not need to call poison control. There's a one percent chance on paper of a bad reaction, and i am a larger person, so the impact would be diluted. I reduced caffeine, crossed my fingers, and all was ok. I have lots of other physical complaints and whining, but nothing worrisome.
Christine says she's feeling stronger and can tell she's healing.
I should move my body today, something in the yarden. Unpack. I probably have a long list of todos.
The context is Simone Giertz's Incomplete White Puzzle, which A got me partly to troll me and partly because they thought I'd enjoy it and partly because getting the bundle of all three puzzles gets you 20% off individual list prices.
Current status: 105/"500" pieces in their final positions, plus another 57 no longer singletons. I have several semi-sorted categories including (in the halves of the box) "could plausibly have come from a reasonable puzzle" and "bullshit", and (on the table) Swoopy Bullshit, Offset Noses, Weirdly Straight, Multi-Nose Bullshit, and Featureless Curves.
( THOUGHTS )
I am having a very pleasant and soothing time, and I am trying to break up the hyperfocus by instituting a rule of Get Up And Do One Unit Of Something Else After Every (Contiguous) Piece Placed, and yes that is me rules-lawyering after the fact...
Today's Teddywalk took us a slightly unusual way -- I let him choose, within reason. He didn't spend as long sniffing the grass triangle as before, and afterward when I wanted to drag him more directly back toward his house he scampered off the other way. This took us to a tree-lined residential street where he decided to poop next to one of the trees just as a man parked his land barge just behind us and the kids that got out of it were entertained by this free show.
This route also took us past a school where, even though it was nearing 5 o'clock, kids were going toward the school, with their grownups. They kinda looked like they were wearing pajamas? Some were in bathrobes or oodies. Some seemed to carry pillows or soft toys. One was almost hidden behind a Stitch that must have been fully half her size. It was adorable.
I had a pretty good day otherwise too.
Work was oddly satisfying.
A bunch of things happened to coincide today: I presented my new train report twice, first to a panel of subject-matter experts and accessibility advocates that I'm on, where people were very kind about it (especially as it was at the end of an hour and a half meeting that some people had to leave early and/or thought was only an hour long; one made sure to apologize for leaving halfway through but told me he'd read the report and it was good, which was very sweet).
Then in the afternoon I presented it to a group of lived-experience campaigners, a group I attended back when I was a volunteer who didn't have this job yet. They did their usual thing of wanting to vent their spleens on any tangentially-related topic, but I'm used to that and I kinda love it. Afterward, my colleague who runs these meetings messaged me to thank me and say she appreciates that I always handle the questions so well. I didn't think I'd done anything special! But despite that (or actually because of it!) this was really nice to hear.
And as well as feeling particularly competent with the different audiences my work is for, I also had a quick one-to-one(ish) with my manager which indirectly addressed the stuff I've been stressing about lately and where seemed much happier than I'm used to hearing with the work that I have done in the last year and the stuff that's coming up this year.
It's funny because the other day, on our way to the theater, D pointed out where transgym yoga had moved to: one of those "not actually far away but hard for me to find/get to on a bus" places. So I actually looked at yoga on the transgym website and not only was it on this Friday (it's every other week), but it was back at its old location! My hips are so much happier now, and it'll be good for my brain too.
And now, after a week that was really truly about a month long, it's the weekend! We have basically no plans, and the fascists aren't even yelling at the hotel this Sunday!
So many good things.
Duras, Marguerite: Abahn Sabana David. Open Letter Books. 2016.
I've bought this years ago in a bundle with several Duras-books and I must say, I've no idea what I read here. I think the word one uses for something like this nowadays is: word salad. At least it was short.
Riddle, John: Contraception and Abortion from the Ancient World to the Renaissance. Harvard University Press. 1992.
This was delightful. I actually bought this for fic research, but I thoroughly enjoyed it even apart from the excellent info it provided. The author's thesis is that - contrary to popular belief - people in antiquity and well beyond had very detailed knowledge about contraception (and abortion). Later, this knowledge was lost. The assumption is that this loss was caused by Christian religion and its rigid moral standard. Fascinating!
Steinbeck, John: The Grapes of Wrath. Penguin. 2006.
I read "Of Mice and Men" as a teenager and was absolutely blown away. I always meant to give Steinbeck another go and find a few more favourites. I went with "The Grapes of Wrath" because this is argueably his magnus opus. And boy, did I hate it. Maybe it's an unpopular opinion, but this book didn't age well. The most interesting thing about it is the fact that it's widely popular and acclaimed in the U.S. despite its openly communist agenda. (Mind you, not that there's anything wrong with a communist agenda, per se - but my understanding is that the U.S. and communist ideas don't mix well.)
Donaldson, David Santos: Greenland. Amistad. 2022.
This was such a missed chance. The blurb says this is a novel within a novel about E.M. Forster's love affair with an Egyptian tram conductor, but I learnt basically zero about that. Everything about Forster and his affair read like an author self-insert (or maybe a protagonist self-insert, since the protagonist is also the author of the book within a book). I took basically nothing away from the read expect maybe the info that black gay men in New York are obnoxious and annoying. (Sorry to all N.Y. gay men ...)
Moore, Kate: The Radium Girls. Simon & Schuster. 2016.
God, this was painful (pun intended). This is such an important book with such a strong sujet, but the execution wasn't even mid it was infuriatingly bad. The writing had the level of a romance book you buy at a whim at a train station. It was that bad. Moore clearly wanted to write a kitschy novel - every character here (and there are way too many) was introduced by bodily features. Women have dazzling smiles and men have strong arm muscles. Paired with the subject matter of the book this approach made me gag. The book needed to be written, but Kate Moore was the wrong woman for the job, sorry.
Johnson, Denis: Train Dreams. Picador. 2012.
I had never read anything by Denis Johnson but right after finishing this I bought another of his works. This was so good! It deals with the life of a man in the Idaho Panhandle throughout the 20th century. It starts in 1917 and ends in the 1960s with his death. In the nostalgia this evokes it reminded me a little of Harrison's "Legends of the Fall" which is equally panoramic in its approach and shows a time not too long ago but ultimately lost and absolutely alien to us now. Fantastic read!
