liv | Reading

source: Extraordinary Birder with Christian Cooper
audio: Eels, "I Like Birds"
length: 2:31
download: 306MB on MediaFire
summary: Christian Cooper likes birds.

AO3 page | YouTube link

Lyrics on AZ Lyrics

Watch on YouTube

siderea

Hey, does anybody happen to know the answer to this question?

Back when Mr B and I started doing joint grocery orders, I started analyzing our budget like you do. In the course of doing so, I discovered something I hadn't realized: about a third of my "grocery" budget wasn't food. It was:

• Disposable food handling and storage supplies: plastic wrap, paper towels, aluminum foil, ziplocs, e.g.

• Personal hygiene supplies: toilet paper, bath soap, shampoo, skin lotion, menstrual supplies, toothpaste, mouthwash, Q-tips, e.g.

• Health supplies: vitamins, bandaids, NSAIDs, first aid supplies, OTC medications and supplements, e.g.

• Domestic hygiene supplies: dish detergent, dish soap, dish sponges, Windex, Pine-sol, laundry detergent, bleach, mouse traps, e.g.

None of these things individually needs to be bought every grocery trip, but that's good, because they can add up fast. Especially if you try to buy at all in volume to try to drive unit costs down. But the problem is there are so many of them, that usually you need some of them on every order.

This fact is in the back of my head whenever I hear politicians or economists or social commentators talk about the "cost of groceries": I don't know if they mean just food or the whole cost of groceries. Sometimes it's obvious. An awful lot of the relief for the poor involves giving them food (such as at a food pantry) or the funds to buy it (such as an EBT card), but very explicitly doesn't include, say, a bottle of aspirin or a box of tampons or a roll of Saran wrap. Other times, it's not, such as when a report on the cost of "groceries" only compares the prices of food items, and then makes statements about the average totals families of various sizes spend on "groceries": if they only looked at the prices of foods, does that mean they added up the prices of foods a family typically buys to generate a "grocery bill" which doesn't include the non-food groceries, or did they survey actual families' actual grocery bills and just average them without substracting the non-food groceries? Hard to say from the outside.

When we see a talking head on TV – a pundit or a politician – talking about the price of "groceries" but then say it, for example, has to do with farm labor, or the import of agricultural goods, should we assume they're just meaning "food" by the term "groceries"? Or it is a tell they've forgotten that not everything bought at a grocery store (and part of a consumer's grocery store bill) is food, and maybe are misrepresenting or misunderstanding whatever research they are leaning on? Or is it a common misconception among those who research domestic economics that groceries means exclusively food?

So my question is: given that a lot of information about this topic that percolates out to the public is based on research that the public never sees for themselves, what assumptions are reasonable for the public to make about how the field(s) which concern themselves with the "price of groceries" mean "groceries"? What fields are those and do they have a standard meaning of "groceries" and does it or does it not include non-food items?

This question brought to you by yet another video about the cost of groceries and how they might be controlled in which the index examples were the ingredients for a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, but, as usual, not the sandwich baggy to put it in to take to school or work.

azurelunatic

I got a steroid shot in my right knee on Wednesday, and miraculously I can almost walk again.

I'm still spending a lot of time in bed, but I don't have to strategize about bathroom trips. One cane is sufficient.

starlady

source: Hook (1991)
audio: Hans Zimmer, "Drink Up Me Hearties"
length: 4:34
download: 549MB on MediaFire
summary: What's lost can be found…in Neverland.

AO3 page | YouTube link

Watch on YouTube

kaberett

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.)

seekingferret

All secrets have been revealed!

Extra! Extra! Extra (6 words) by seekingferret
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: The Paper (TV 2025)
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Mare Pritti/Ned Sampson
Additional Tags: Fanvids, Instrumental
Summary:

Misadventures in the fourth estate

I don't have much to say about this year's Festivid. I like how it came out, but it's also very much the kind of vid when you sign up for Festivids and then almost immediately buy a house and just need to make some kind of vid.

Has anyone watched The Paper? It's one of those sitcoms whose first seasons make you think, well maybe this is promising. Some of those shows get more time and figure things out, most of them just get cancelled before they can figure those things out. Its connection to The Office is mostly a funny running gag that the accountant Oscar has not escaped the documentary crew from the Office as they make a new doc about a newspaper. But I liked the idea of making a show about the futility of trying to make a useful local newspaper in the year 2025. It's delightfully quixotic, and so as much as this is a ship vid I also wanted to make a vid celebrating that noble ambition of making the community better by giving people better information, waging war against the avalanche of slop.

Watch on YouTube

cosmolinguist

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...)

maju

It snowed overnight and we've ended up with maybe 1 ½ inches of new snow, but it's also very windy and although the temperature is around 12F/-11C, the windchill is more like -4F/-20C.

Did I mention that Aria asked me to teach her to crochet? I was a bit dubious since she's only 6, but I showed her how to make chain stitches and she seems to have caught on quite well. Her attention span is so short, though, that she will do two stitches and then declare that's enough for the day. She is far from holding the hook and the yarn correctly, but she does understand the basics of making a new stitch, which is a good start.

oursin

That was a week that felt a bit odd, which may have been quite a bit down to my not sleeping as well as have latterly been doing.

Also not getting out for accustomed daily walk as often as usual because RAIN.

Somewhat stunned by phonecall from friend with whom I am collaborating on various projects who has recently had some rather devastating health news.

Resumption of contact with two other friends: one of whom I had contacted after receiving what turned out to be, as I had suspected, spam email from her hacked account.

Having the February blahs, pretty much.

hunningham

This morning I have cleared up & picked up & put away. I have changed beds & hoovered & done the laundry. I have washed up & planned food for the week & done the food shopping. I have taken father-in-law out for an indulgent lunch.

And now I'm being quiet. Father-in-law is having a little nap, himself is away for the day (rugby at Twickenham), cat is off doing cat things and I have the living room to myself. I'm reading, and ignoring the to-do list.

The luxury of not doing, of being quiet in the middle of the day.

nicki

( You're about to view content that the journal owner has advised should be viewed with discretion. )

elf

From this thread at Bluesky - When people ask how to get into GA SF I always say that the right way is via some of those fat "Best Of" short fiction collections.

Long discussion, many comments, mostly agreeing that yep, the way to get people into SF is anthologies, not novels, especially "best of" anthologies rather than whatever theme-of-the-day was popular. Also many people agreeing that many of "the classics" do not hold up today, and "Heinlein juveniles + the Foundation trilogy" is not a good suggestion for a young teen who might be interested in scifi now.

So... if you were building an anthology of The Great Science Fiction, with a focus specifically on non-SF readers who might be interested, what would you put in it?

( Some limitations may be in order )

raven

the inevitable daemon AU, omgggg.

your curious body sitting on the shore (5481 words) by raven
Fandom: Heated Rivalry (TV)
Relationships: Shane Hollander/Ilya Rozanov
Characters: Shane Hollander, Ilya Rozanov, Yuna Hollander, Rose Landry
Additional Tags: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Daemons

It’s not just that Ilya’s daemon is impressive. Like… a wolf. A fucking wolf. Yeah, Shane is impressed by that. It's that hockey players shouldn’t have daemons at all.

green_knight

… or, you can play THAT on a violin?

Two Set Violin are enormously talented performers; they put the fun into classical music, they take the time to explain things, and they’re always having a lot of fun playing.

Watch on YouTube

And the best thing: I have a ticket for Sunday, March 15! I missed snagging a ticket when the first batch was released because I wanted to check availability and blam! sold out.
This time I logged on as soon as I got the e-mail and while the best seats have already gone (not that I can afford them), there was still a pretty good choice.

I, err, may be a bit of a fan.

(Yes, I have a lot of half-drafted posts that I mean to finish, a lot of other things on my plate, and never enough time; I read some of my flist but not all, and I am trying to tame a lot of things that got left undone for years.)

Moooooood excited

kaberett

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...

cosmolinguist

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.

sorcyress

So Forest appears to be enshittifying, which is a huge bummer --it had been a genuinely good app with a great premise¹. It did not need to go insane with bonus features and subscription plans. It was exactly the sort of thing that I was thrilled to have purchased, once.

(Honestly, I was even thrilled to have purchased it twice, because owning it on both iOS and Android was okay, actually).

But every single time I've opened it, it's immediately thrust a "HAVE YOU CONSIDERED TRYING PLUS?!" ad into my face. I believe this has also been the case when I finished planting my most recent tree. I have it running now, and if it does that again, I might honestly be through, because...gross. Part of the reason for buying the "pro" version was so that it didn't have ads. Ads for your own product still count as ads, fuck off.

It is my most curmudgeonly opinion that the internet was genuinely better when I was a child. It is also irritatingly correct. And yeah, obviously I am making this post on ~~livejournal~~dreamwidth, because nowhere else is even close to the acceptable place to do so.

(Okay, I mean, someday I'll get around to actually making my own website and that would be okay for it. But until then!)

Anyways, I really set this particular Forest timer to keep me off my phone while I try and wrap up at work and go home for the weekend, so while writing my words³ isn't *un*productive, it's also not quite optimal. Ta!

~Sor
MOOP!

1: Set a timer to plant a tree. If you use your phone for any purpose² before your timer is over, your tree withers and dies. Otherwise, it gets put in your little "forest" which you can browse by day, week, month, or year. There's also a thing where you get a little bit of "coins" every time you successfully plant a tree, and so you can use those to purchase more species and stuff to diversify your forest.

2: You can set a small whitelist of approved phone uses, so like, an emergency phone call from your parents will still get through or whatever

3: Man, speaking of enshittified websites. I stayed on the original.750words for like three years after they launched the new site, until it finally got too buggy/deprecated. And the new site is just...bad. It has so many stupid glitches and irritating quirks and I'm acutely aware of this right now because I wrote my words there, and they can't fucking figure out the difference between enter as single and double spacing, which means when I copypaste words from there to here, I have to go through and delete two extra blank rows between every paragraph.

Also I can't use tab to indent and ctrl-z doesn't work. I love the concept of the site so much, and I genuinely want to help them with their current little push of "actually we'd love to see if we can get a lot of users" by writing a nice advertisement, but your product is worse than it was in 2010 and I kinda can't promote that for you.

maju

When I took the food scraps out to the compost bin yesterday in the late afternoon, I stayed out longer to shovel some more of the snow away from the front of my car since it was still full daylight and if anything, a degree or two warmer than it had been when I was shovelling in the morning. The snow immediately in front of the car was more icy than the rest because people (including me) had been walking there and had compacted the snow, but I was able to shovel out a clear enough path in front of each wheel that I should be able to get the car out if I need to. I felt quite accomplished after that.

I slept well last night and nobody woke me up before the alarm this morning, but I did wake up just after 3 am with that ear pain, and although I went back to sleep with the ear pressed into the pillow, when I woke up in the morning the pain hadn't completely gone. I lay down again for a couple of hours after breakfast but it's still lingering, but it's not nearly as bad as usual and I feel that I can function perfectly well in spite of it.

I started reading a novel about a grandmother recounting her time at Woodstock to her teenage granddaughter, and I have to keep going to YouTube to listen to the music she talks about. I of course heard about it at the time it happened, but the actual logistics of that many people being concentrated in one place with not enough basic facilities (toilets etc) for the sheer numbers didn't register with me. Now, reading this book, it all sounds just horrible. The narrator casually mentions "going to the bathroom" in the woods, and I can't help thinking what it must have been like if even a fraction of the 100,000 or 200,000 or more attendees did the same. Plus there were two hour or more queues for food and water; the attendees were outside without cover when it rained; people were passing around bad drugs. And so on.

=========

Huh. The ear pain disappeared completely while I was writing this post. Phew.

andrewducker

For the first time this year I've left the office and it wasn't pitch black outside. Dark, but not *night*.

(Sunset was at 16:56)

tig_b

After not writing any lyrics for a very long time, I started over the weekend.
And so then I joined FAWM
Not all posted yet but 4 new sets of lyrics!!

Moooooood happy

oursin

Do I need to ask, guess the critic, given the headline on this review of the Gwen John exhibition: In a superb, mystical retrospective, the painter sheds social trappings – and her clothes – as she uses her enormous intelligence to paint purely. JJ, go and take a cold shower!

***

I am not sure that exorcism is quite what is needed in the case, unless he starts doing manifestations in galleries of writhing and speaking in occult tongues and so on: Demand for exorcisms rises as faithful want ‘deliverance from evil’. And in fact it all sounds rather low-key:

Even when an Anglican priest does perform an exorcism, they are nothing like Hollywood horror scenes with “shouting and screaming” and demonic drama.
They are “quiet and calm” affairs where a priest prays with a troubled person, usually after consultation with a psychiatrist and safeguarding experts.

One does feel that this is in the tradition of the C of E! Maybe with a nice cup of tea afterwards....

***

Knepp: Wilding from the Weald to the waves:

After inheriting the estate from his grandparents in 1983, Charles Burrell soon realised that large-scale farming was impossible on low-lying clay land. So, in 2002 he and his wife, author, and journalist Isabella Tree, embarked on what has become a pioneering rewilding project converting pasture into a patchwork of grasslands, scrub, groves, and towering oaks. Now home to storks, beavers, and nightingales, to name a few, Knepp’s ever-evolving experiment is open for all to enjoy.

Call me a cynical old bat, but I can't help feeling that this is in a Grand Old Longstanding Tradition of landowners doing whatever is The Latest Thing with the estate they inherited. And these days it is not either, tart it up like unto the gardens he saw on his Grand Tour in Italy, introducing various invasive species animal and vegetable, or, set up a funfair and safari park as a remunerative enterprise to enable him to pay off the crippling death duties the iron heel of Clem Attlee and Co has imposed, but to get acclaim for this absolutely on-trend thing to do with his land.

***

This is a different kind of heritage: Heritage Unlocked: Birmingham’s Unique Municipal Bank:

Birmingham Municipal Bank (1919-1976) was unique as the first and only local authority savings bank in England. Unlike other savings banks (such as the Trustee Savings Banks), customers could borrow money through the House Purchase Department to buy their home. Unlocking the Vaults, has been uncovering the Bank’s history and how it helped shape Birmingham’s story. The Exchange (opposite the Library of Birmingham) was once the head office for the Municipal Bank, and it lies at the heart of this project with many projects and events taking place in the historic Vaults.
Historic black and white photo of the Birmingham Municipal Bank, showcasing its grand architecture with tall columns and detailed facade.
....
A key finding of the project has been the significance of the Municipal Bank, not only as a financial institution but also as a cornerstone of community life, with local branches established on high streets across the city between the 1920s and 1970s.

***

The rise of ‘low contact’ family relationships - in fact, point is made in there that perhaps what there has been is a rise of is families being all up in one another's business because of Modern Technology and tracking devices, family group chats, the ability to know where family members are and what they are up to at all hours of the night and day.

Because I would not at all describe my own family as 'low contact', we just did not live in one another's pockets and need to be constantly informed and have opinions about each other's lives. Weekly phone-calls - occasional visits- etc etc.

I'm not surprised people feel smothered and overwhelmed when I read some of the shenanigans that families do but then, am introvert to start with.

wildeabandon

I got my exam results yesterday, and they were slightly disappointing, in the "virtually anyone would be fucking delighted, but they were all on the low end of what I was expecting" sense of the word disappointing. I got 15/20 in Catechetics, 16/20 in Anthropology, 17/20 in Psalms & Prophets, and 18/20 in Hebrew II and Ugaritic. The first two are entirely understandable - I wasn't particularly keen on either course, and whilst by no means neglecting them completely, I didn't put in a particularly high level of effort. I'm happy enough with the 18s. They were both challenging courses, and 18 is a bloody good mark.

The one that's bugging me is the Psalms though. I thought I understood the material well, and that I'd had some interesting and insightful things to say. I know that I got 18/20 in the paper that makes up half the mark, which means that I only got 15-16/20 in the exam. Hardly the end of the world, but it's the only one where I don't understand why I didn't do better. I've emailed the prof to ask for feedback, so with luck I'll get something useful. (ETA: Apparently marks get rounded down, not up - I got 8/10 and 9/10 in the two exam questions, and the 8 was because he had to prompt me a couple of times, and since at least one of those time he prompted me for the thing I was about to say anyway I am now feeling a lot less bothered by the overall mark.)

One result though which is positive in a sense is that my overall grade is now almost guaranteed. My average is currently 87%. The top grade boundary is an average of 90%, which had seemed in reach before these results, but would now require me to get 20/20 in all but one of my remaining courses (and 19/20 in that), which isn't really plausible. The grade boundary below is an average of 85%, and whilst the fact that there are just more numbers between 0 and 87 than between 87 and 100 means that there's more scope for my grade to be dragged down than up, I would have to do quite a bit worse than I have been for that to happen. Anyway, the sense that there's not a lot that I can do to change my overall grade means that I can concentrate more on learning for the sake of learning, which in the long term is almost certainly better than chasing grades.

andrewducker

1998: Geoffrey Robinson loan affair

Peter Mandelson accepted a £373,000 unsecured interest-free loan from businessman and fellow minister Geoffrey Robinson to buy a house. He did not declare this loan or inform Prime Minister Tony Blair about it, or his permanent secretary. As the story emerged, he gave false and misleading statements to the Commons Committee.
This led to his resignation as Trade and Industry Secretary.

2001: The Hinduja passports affair

Peter Mandelson, then a government minister with responsibility for the Millennium Dome, denied any personal involvement in supporting successful UK passport applications made by Srichand and Gopichand Hinduja, super-wealthy businessmen brothers, who had expressed an interest in contributing to the costs of the Dome after their initial passport applications had been refused.
Mandelson is revealed to have lied, and is forced to resign for misleading conduct.

2009-10: Epstein relationship

Peter Mandelson downplays and minimises his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein in ways that were shown to be false around 2019-20, when press investigations revealed that he had had multiple meetings with Epstein, had stayed at his home, and had been introduced by Epstein to major figures in global finance. This relationship was shown to have continued after Epstein’s conviction.

2024: Keir Starmer appoints Peter Mandelson as British Ambassador to the United States.

2026: Keir Starmer expresses shock and outrage that Peter Mandelson lied to him.

goodbyebird

Mitski is playing in London in May and I don't have enough internet to do so much as open the ticket site.

My plague of ill concert happenings, I swear.

sorcyress

Very long day yesterday. Thursdays are my busiest days at work, where I see all five of my classes rapid in a row, with just my lunch break in between. It always gets me a little bit bleary-eyed, and then today we had conferences after. At least those were scheduled in the earliest time-slot we ever do them --we move the times a bit so that different parental situations can have access at different times, and this was the 3-5 event.

Then, as Clayton-workbestie and I were walking home, I mentioned offhand "oh, and I have to go teach Scottish now". Which was actually a great comment to make, as it led us back to my absolute favourite walking-home-conversation-topic, to wit, the pedagogical and logistical differences between teaching high school geometry, Scottish country dance, or Japanese tea ceremony. We know a surprising amount about each others' niche hobbies, just from being passionate and enthusiastic about them, and willing to nurse that enthusiasm in the other, and it's really nice.

(the biggest conclusion this time was the pairing of advantages/disadvantages. I can run a dance class on a school night, because setting up and tearing down only takes me about 15 minutes on either end (plus a potentially infinite amount of prepping a lesson plan, but I can get by if that's measured in a single digit of minutes). He can't do that, needs much more time to prepare fancy snacks before and carefully hand-wash and ensure all the dishware is dry after, but if only one other person shows up to his class, they will have a marvelous and fruitful time, where I get nothing but footwork practice at that point.)

And of course, every time I say the phrase, I think about a post Tricia made years ago, about a gentle correction BDan gave her when she said "I have to go dancing tomorrow". Change "have to" to "get to". I _get_ to run my dance class on odd Thursday nights.

Really truly, it has been astoundingly consistent, that no matter how up or down I'm feeling beforehand, I have not yet had a week where I came out of class feeling bad. Varying levels of tired, but the fact that I've bent the world to my will enough to have this one little bright spot of joy and community is amazing, and I feel consistently so privileged and excited to get to witness it.

Also it's _so nice_ to have simply embraced my ethos of "do hard things badly" and just run forward with it. Another difference from tea ceremony --they have more of a set and ordered curriculum, which is lovely for them, but doesn't have as much flexibility for my style of "you've been here like twice before ever and just walked in a few minutes late? yeah, we're just gonna throw you in, do your best"

I'm also so privileged to have found-made-cultivated-developed-whatever a group of people willing to extend me grace and patience as I learn the best ways to say the things to share the idea. I still need to remember that modeling is often best, but on any given dance, I can feel myself getting better within the moment as I encourage them on. Truly, my class is spoiling me for regular teaching.

(that's actually not a joke --when I last taught at Cambridge Class, the biggest and much more traditional class in the branch, I found myself second-guessing and being slightly shocked at how much support these far more experienced dancers needed, and having to occasionally rewrite programs between weeks to take some challenges down a few notches. Which is really just a different culture of dance --there's much more of the "wanting to do the same things enough times to feel confident" where I'm more, as I said, be okay with doing things badly.)

Maybe I should write a continuing set of ethos up sometime, what I'm actively hoping to cultivate. Include things like "we communicate without words [except the caller]" and "we keep trying to find our spot". The compliment for the two newest dancers on the floor tonight was that both of them were very good at _not stopping_. One of them, the one who's only come two or three times before, is the one we all cornered at the end to express astonishment she does no other form of dance.

"If you're having fun, you definitely should come back, because you have a quite good sense of how to communicate non-verbally" I say (approximately) and Alex interrupts to say "if you're having fun, you should come back because you're having fun" which I appreciate. It's all a very good situation, honestly.

And it's nice to know that there's something feeling interesting and exciting and sustainable in my world, especially when some days my job is feeling, uh, not those things. This year has been very long and hard, it's important that it also has dancing.

I love you,
~Sor
MOOP!

oursin

Happy birthday,

rymenhild!

redbird

A few days ago, I ordered a pair of snow sneakers that I thought would probably be too big, because the places I looked online were sold out of everything in my size.

They arrived today, I tried them on after dinner, and they seem to fit. Adrian helped me adjust the fastening so the left shoe isn't too tight around my calf. They fasten with velcro rather than shoelaces, which may be an advantage: the laces on my shoes tend to loosen as I walk, so I have to stop and retie them moderately often. (Flat laces are a bit better than round ones, double-knotting makes no difference, and please don't try trouble-shooting this in comments.)

Apparently I take a men's size 8 extra-wide in LLBean boots, which may be useful: more shoes come in a men's size 8 than size 7, and the selection of wide shoes is larger in men's sizes/styles than in women's.

nanila

[phone rings in my hotel room]
Me: “Hello?”
Concierge, sounding very uncertain and slightly bemused: “Um, hello, is that Nanila, who just checked in with us today?”
Me: “Yes, that’s correct.”
Concierge: “Um…I have a gentleman on the line who would like to speak to you. I…I think he’s your father? I’m so sorry, I’m really not sure.”
Me, chuckling: “That sounds like him. Did he say his name was [Firstname Lastname]?”
Concierge: “I couldn’t understand him when he said his name. I think it’s my phone line.”
Me, drily: “Please don’t be sorry. That will be one of two things: his accent, or he hasn’t got his teeth in.”
Concierge, now relaxing a bit and giggling: “Would you like me to put him through?”
Me: “Please do, thank you.”

*pause*

Me: “Hi Dad, how are you doing?”
Dad: “I tried to call you but I kept getting the prison! Where are you? Are you in XX hotel?!”
Me, patiently: “Yes, Dad, I’m in the hotel.”
Dad: “What room are you in? I need to write it down. Are you sure? Are you okay?”
Me: “Dad. I’m in Room NN. I am fine. And if this is the prison then it’s had a tremendous facilities upgrade.”
Dad: “Oh, okay. Was the traffic awful? Are you very tired? When do you want to meet for dinner? Should we go to the sushi place? Do you remember the sushi place? I need to put my teeth in!”
Me: “Yes, yes, whenever you want to eat, yes, yes, and yes, you do.”

For anyone who has met me in person and has thought to themselves, “This woman has no idea how to hold a conversation like a normal human being,” this is 100% where I got it from. Thanks, Dad.

pensnest

Lovely rehearsal this evening, with lots of singing, though we did spend a little while working on the new song. When we sang Good Vibrations, we danced!

I didn't go to rehearsal last week because on Wednesday I had to leave my lentil soup and chips rather hurriedly in order to do some highly dramatic vomiting. My ribs hurt all the next day, so I didn't want to sing. Neither my homemade lentil soup nor chips has ever had that effect on me before, and I didn't care for it.

*

Yesterday, funeral for one of my chorus members. The chapel was gratifyingly full. I had to stand, not because I was too late for a seat but because a fellow chorus-member was standing next to me and I knew she has back problems. Managed to sing two of the hymns more or less convincingly, but the third I did not know at all. It has been a very long time since I was in church for anything other than tourism or a funeral.

*

I have been listening to The Wordsmiths of Gorsemere, the fabulous BBC Radio 4 production featuring Simon Callow as Colerick (or possibly Cholerick) and Miriam Margolees as Stinking Iris. It is very funny indeed. Dorothy Wordsmith is so devoted to William, and his fiancée/wife Mary never gets to finish a phrase. Several literary associates have dropped in to Vole Cottage with varying degrees of success, but Quinine is currently resident there.

It's old but I have been wanting to listen to it for years, and Beast got it for me for Christmas.

kaberett

some washi tape I wanted has restocked at a UK retailer! Possibly a second one also! So as and when the website works out what's going on with Desired Tape #2, it is time to place a stationery order for meeeeeeeeeeeeeee
Progress With Preposterous Puzzle! I now have all the edge assembled (I think I wound up with only one piece having been Actually Wrong) and even I have managed to start filling in very slowly (I am up to... about 5 pieces placed so far? which is a further 1% down!)
I got a hug from the Child while saying goodbye this evening!
I have worked out an acceptable Wagamama order from the current menu and am feeling pretty good about my dinner.
Bread for tomorrow (anise, fig, hazelnut, copied from the local fancy bakery) is looking Extremely Promising.

cosmolinguist

On such a nothingburger of a day like this, where I feel like I don't have anything to talk about because it was really normal (awake, work, walk Teddy, make dinner, try to stay awake till bedtime), I am challenging myself to think of three good things.

Having taken off my clothes last night and added them to the unacceptably-large pile of liminal clothes I need to decide to wash or put away, I told myself I'd deal with it all this morning. And I did! With about five minutes before a meeting. Feels good; it was starting to weigh on my mental/emotional state having my room be untidy like this.
We saw neighbor G outside on our way to walk Teddy. We don't see as much of the neighbors now we're not standing in the driveway/on our end of the road with Gary any more; it's one of the things I miss. G is cool. He has started working at the bakery at rhe big Tesco! He said he likes it, though he also said it's very unsociable hours of course.
As I was starting to type this up, having gone to bed early for a Doof night because I feel kinda gross (I didn't get to sleep until well after 3am last night, and I think I was just sleep deprived after powering through work), D unexpectedly came upstairs to "make my back go click," as he says. It feels so much better when he's pressed some of the tension out of my muscles and spine, mmm. He's so nice.

tig_b

To get back into posting.
I've been writing new songs this month.
Instead of editing my books.
At least I'm writing.

Moooooood hopeful

jesse_the_k

I love some green veg at lunch. Commercial frozen green veg are hard as rocks and nastily overcooked. Here’s how I bulk prep fresh swiss chard for my lunches

( Read more... )

maju

My exciting day: I shovelled more snow from in front of my car, a strip perhaps slightly bigger than the strip I shovelled yesterday. At least it got me outside; I didn't feel like walking but I had used the rebounder for an hour so I was well exercised. I think I'm getting addicted to rebounding.

I need to start going to bed earlier so I can get up earlier, because there are many mornings when I'm woken up around 4:30 am or even earlier by my son in law moving around in the kitchen. I originally started getting up at 5 (instead of my previously normal 5:30 am) because whenever I stayed here I was woken around 5 by the son in law; now he seems to be up and about even earlier than he used to be.

wychwood

I had a birthday! It was low key (Mum is still not up for even small adventures) but involved a lot of eating. I had lunch with Dad, and then dinner with S before choir although I was still so full I managed half a starter and a bit of her dessert. Then choir, and we had some cookies in the break. Tomorrow I have post-swimming coffee and cake before work and then office snacks (three flavours of interesting cheese crackers! I thought that was more fun than cake).

Nearly everyone gave me vouchers as per my request and I have so many Steam vouchers now. That will be fun for when my wishlist items go on good sales! Also my dad gave me a scented candle but that was more of a "please get rid of this thing I don't want" than a present as such :D It appears to be a branded corporate gift from his old work, but it smells OK and my candle order has been "on its way" from the parcel facility less than twenty miles away for ten days now, so I'll take it.

Choir was also interesting because it was the first rehearsal of the second conductor candidate we're auditioning. So far I like him - probably better than the first one, although he was OK - but we'll see how it goes. I had demanded that S make sure I was sung happy birthday (before we realised it was the new guy's first night!) but she managed to make it happen anyway. Deeply mortifying in the moment, but also I really wanted it to happen! It was the 22nd anniversary of S and I joining the chorus (no prizes for guessing why I can remember exactly what date it was...) and we've been friends ever since.

writerlibrarian

Health stuff

I am much better. The pain has gone down to a 6 and it’s tolerable. My chiropractor does miracles. But I have learned my lesson. Not driving for more than an hour in traffic. It does stupid things to my back.

Teacher stuff

Last week’s Zoom session went fine. We added a session for next week to focus on the mapping of the processus of Reader’s advisory. I am making them use paper and pencil, even colour pencil. No computer, no application, no AI. Old school. My reading for the next class is done. I have to write the content now. I’m still a week ahead. I’m proud of myself that I did not procrastinate.

Reading

The Apothecary Diaries v.2 which I’m reading in French. These are the light novels series. It’s completely, totally and desperately addictive. Onward to v. 3, it should be arriving at my library branch today.

Bassin déversant. Émilie Bélanger. Poetry in prose. I cried. I got teared eyes. I laughed. It is an emotional read about the relationship between a grand daughter and her grand father. Nature, maternity, losing oneself as we grow old and how to say goodbye. I took notes and copied verses.

Mon très cher F. Le fantôme de l’Opéra v.1 by Mio Nanao. This is an adaptation of Gaston Leroux’s classic The Phanthom of the Opera in manga. It’s an alternative adaptation. The setting is the same, the names are the same but the story is inspired by the original but not tied to it. It’s interesting.

Watching

I have one new currently airing cdrama. The Inner Eye. It’s a legal drama. I like Xin Zhi Lei, she always brings something more to dramas.
I am rewatching The Ingenious one while knitting. I need an easy yet interesting cdrama to watch and I want to watch series 2 after.

Crafting

I’m knitting a baby blanket as fast as I can. I have a deadline of February 13th. I did xstitich a little but not much. It’s knit, knit, knit.

diffrentcolours

(backstory: I asked the GP about an ADHD diagnosis in Spring 2023, got given some forms to fill in, sat on them for about a year, filled them in in March 2024, returned them in April, got rejected by the Adult ADHD service for not talking about my childhood symptoms enough; got given a different survey to fill out, returned that in April 2025, got accepted by the Adult ADHD service in September 2025 and put on a 7+ year waiting list)

Last October, cosmolinguist looked into getting a private ADHD diagnosis and compiled some notes for me. In January I managed to force myself to look through them and do some other research. I asked my GP to refer me to CareADHD for an assessment under NHS Right to Choose. The assessment will cost me about £400, which is a lot cheaper than some of the other providers. About a week ago I heard back from the GP saying that they'd done that. I haven't yet heard from CareADHD and obviously now it's not my turn to do something I'm really impatient about it! But I'll give it a little while longer before getting in touch to establish a timeline - it'll probably be another couple of months before I get the diagnosis appointment.

I'm having a lot of feelings about this. I know that getting ADHD meds has been a literal life saver for friends, and I'm hoping it'll help me with my current situation, where lack of concentration is making me suck at my day job and many other things in life. I'm hoping it'll help complement the therapy work I'm doing, where we've been talking about emotional dysregulation and my anhedonia - if I can't enjoy things, I'm significantly less motivated to do them and seek shiny dopamine diversions.

I'm trying not to get my hopes up too much. This won't be a magic bullet that'll solve everything overnight. It might not even help much at all, or it might be a painstaking process of adjusting medications and dosages (and dealing with ongoing meds shortages in the UK, particularly post-Brexit). In the short term it may even make things worse. But the possibility of breaking the decades-long cycle of overcommitment and burnout is so tantalising...

diffrentcolours

Last night, after a very pleasurable theatre trip with cosmolinguist, I ended up messing around a bit with the smart plugs I bought ages ago.

I have actually been using these plugs somewhat. They're on the house WiFi and that lets me remote-control them through a browser and set timers for them. They also have a mechanical button if you want to interact with them in a more traditional manner - that's basically a hard requirement for any home automation stuff I do, after the time I visited a friend and had to poop in the darkness because the bathroom lights couldn't be switched on until he reinstalled a Raspberry Pi.

But having resurrected Home Assistant on my fileserver I figured it was time to actually get these things talking to each other. I still find HA overly complicated, and I'm not quite sure what the difference is between an "app" and an "integration". I hit a few dead ends following this guide but eventually got to the point where I could use the Home Assistant web UI to control the plugs rather than the built-in web UI.

That doesn't sound like much of an improvement but it's actually quite exciting, because now anything I can do with Home Assistant, I can do with the plugs. I installed up simple speech-to-text and text-to-speech integrations in HA, and now I can talk to the HA app on my phone, tell it to turn the plugs on or off, and it does so! And tells me it's done it in a northern voice called Alan!

It's another small step on the HA journey and I'm still not thinking about temperature monitoring around the house, but it gave me a nice little dopamine hit.

(by this time it was 2am and E prodded me to come to bed, so I excitedly demonstrated this to him and then went to sleep)

Liv's pals

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