jadia

The week started off feeling heavy, with bad health news in my network and deaths on the internet. I took a couple of days off reading news, and things got better and lightened up near the end. The guy who shot up both my squirrel's school and my school is known now, and no longer a threat. And Trump actually did two things in one day that I approve of (pushing for marijuana reclassification, and for a renewed focus on Moon exploration).

Again I think I have tenants for the new condo. Still waiting to sign the actual lease though. I also had occasion to feel bad for my downstairs neighbor over there, who finally made her condo fee payment but was confused about why the amount was different from my amount. She must have thought I was being bossy and possibly ripping her off... no, no, I just have a smaller unit than you do, lady. I explained how condos work. I also swapped out her doorknob, free labor as semi-apology, and met some of her family -- it turns out that her brother reported to me briefly at Zillian! So, small world. And I hope I picked up a bit of credibility there.

An ignominious and possibly TMI fact about my week ties in amusingly with my most high-falutin' reading. Which is to say, I got jock itch (don't worry, it's settled down). And my book, Being Ecological, talks about "a feeling of disgust that we are literally covered in and penetrated by nonhuman beings, not just by accident but in an irreducible way, a way that is crucial.... Maybe this feeling of disgust will diminish if we become used to our immersion in the biosphere". I'm actually not that disgusted, but still didn't want these particular tenants.

What else? We got rid of about 30 books in total, mostly because the bug was sorting through a box of "maybes" but also because a local cafe gives out free coffee in exchange for a donation of 10 books. In the process I let go of a few books about engineering management, and I think that felt good.

There was also good Xmas shopping with apfelsingail. Not much time with my squirrel, but we shortened our dates instead of fully cancelling them so at least I got to verify its existence.

Words I looked up: fairwater, poindexter, prima facie.
(Are these fun, by the way? I'm getting them from my web search history.)

Happy solstice. It's dark, but I've managed to make the transition to seeing it as cozy.

This week was a little less heavily scheduled. I've fallen out of the habit of recording daily snippets, and I wonder if that's part of why I had meaner voices in my head this week. The voices are adaptive and can keep up with whatever I do or don't do. Lately they are super harping on the idea that I can't work a corporate job anymore -- which, if that's even true, is true because I don't want to anymore, and obviously wanting to is a pretty solid precondition for doing it. As someone kindly said to me, Michael Phelps can't do another Olympics either, and so what? But I'm no Phelps, I'm just another crispy critter from the burnout zone that is tech. Sometimes that's scary, and sometimes I think recovery/pivots are going just fine.

Satisfying continuations on last week's stuff: I used the serger to make a cover for the serger, out of scrap denim, which felt right and proper. One thread still has a tension issue I haven't solved. And we bought a new dining table, a very beautiful refurbished teak table that will take weeks to get to us but which will probably be Our Table for the rest of our table-owning lives. I fed the new squirrel tenants every morning.

I had two catch-ups with old friends, outside of my usuals: one helping to unpack a new kitchen, and the other one playing in the friend's home gym. The friend has an aerial point with some straps, and spoke temptingly enough of straps as cross-training for handstands that I tried to sign up for straps 101 at circus school next session. Failed, but I just confirmed I can do the one cool exercise she taught me on my monkey bars in my home gym. Shrug.

Words I looked up: AIXI, philippic, sapid, abreactive, Blahaj, colliery.

Things I learned about: population axiology (not that I've finished the whole paper), gooners and gooning (those wankers are just the kind of bizarre subculture I love to read about), environmental causes of Parkinson's disease. Money quote from that last one: “The Human Genome Project was a $3 billion investment, and what did we find out? Five percent of all disease is purely genetic. Less than 40 percent of diseases even have a genetic component.” Oooof.

And just because it is the season, we now have a tree in our living room. Not decorated yet, but it smells nice.