scrubjayspeaks

More furniture moving at work. Big things are happening, which is prompting a bunch of structural changes. Remodels, equipment moves, repairs. Oh, and the weather caused a bunch of power issues, which fried various pieces of equipment. And in a completely unrelated event, a water pipe got broken and flooded part of the building, so now all that has to be repaired on a tight turnaround. I’m staring down the barrel of Saturday overtime for a while to get things done by the deadline.

Meanwhile, both the vehicles are due for smog tests, so we planned to rotate them through the mechanic’s shop over the next couple of weeks. Only mum’s truck had more issues than expected and wasn’t ready when we planned to pick it up. So she’s spiraling about that, and I’m spiraling about her.

The first flowers (daffodils and wind flowers) are blooming in the castle garden. Between the torrential rain and the freezing nights, spring is sneaking up on us.

Lewisia: 3 new pieces written

Day job: 42.5 hours

Cleaning: tub, bathroom sink, mirrors

Crafting: collected up and measured all prints that need to be framed and hung

Reading: The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy: Hexagonal Phase (the last of the BBC radio productions, more coherent than the last one was at least)

Watching: The X-Files season one, episodes 1 to 7 (why did I feel compelled to try to work through this series from the start for the first time, having only seen scattered episodes from weekend syndication in the 90s and a few streamed in the last decade? idk, man, I’m just trying to cope)

Listening: DeBÍ TiRAR MáS FOToS by Bad Bunny (I am not immune to the occasional Superbowl halftime show, incredibly enjoyable music whether one understands the language or not)

Clock Mouse: 97 minutes of planning work

Amazingly, there were no situations at work from during my vacation time. Things had been relatively quiet. They were this week as well. Which is to say, I spent nearly three hours straight on the floor (figuratively and literally), trying to diagnose a hydraulic valve issue, but that’s my actual job. Sometimes, the administrative bullshit falls away and I get to remember: oh, right, I’m a mechanic. *relieved sigh*

That being said! ( Insert some dumb work bullshit that goes on for too long, which was kind of a theme... )

Lewisia: 3 new pieces written

Day job: 43 hours

Cleaning: did maintenance on the brush hog

Gardening: several rounds of weed whacking, garden club post

Reading: Everything for Everyone: An Oral History of the New York Commune, 2052–2072 by Eman Abdelhadi and M.E. O'Brien (holy shit, it took a minute to warm up to the interview format, but then I got super into it and ended up being incredibly moved by the whole idea, scifi and hopepunk and journalism and inspiration)

Watching: finished all episodes of Revolutionary Girl Utena (I--whut...I’m not saying I didn’t enjoy it, I’m just saying I’m probably not smart enough for whatever that was, need to go rewatch the OVA and see if that makes sense now)

Listening: FOCUS by Tatsuya Maruyama (rec from both the Game Grumps, instrumental guitar, somehow every song sounds almost like a cover because the riffs feel so *correct*, I become convinced I must have heard the song before, just lovely)

Playing: Animal Crossing, where night fishing remains my nemesis in all video games...

Aftermarket Parts: one year post-surgery!

Clock Mouse: 126 minutes of planning work and 1101 words

Welcome to the January edition of Pandemic Garden Club! Growing good things in strange times!

Anyone is welcome to comment with what they're growing right now, things they would like to try, problems they're encountering, and questions they have. Share resources, answer questions, shout encouragement.

As for myself...

( Read more... )

Miracle of miracles, fun was had! My request for my birthday--oh, shit, I’m 40 now...

Huh.

Anyway!

My birthday activity request was to take a trip to Solvang--technically Danish, but still thematically appropriate for me Swedish language pursuits and general Scandinavian interests. There is a bookstore there (and Hans Christian Andersen museum) that had a chance of having Moomin books, maybe even in the original Swedish. (Spoiler: no Swedish versions currently in stock, but I bought up their stock of English versions.) So we made a day of it, with Pepper in tow.

The timing of everything was perfection. We had precisely enough time to do all the things I wanted to, plus one extra unplanned stop, and got home exactly in time to feed the horses at the usual hour. Utterly stress-free. I obtained books and stickers and a truly alarming quantity of baked goods. The place was simply overrun with grackles, a bird that was intermittently present when we first moved to our new place but have since left, so it was like seeing an old friend (or a few hundred). It was a very, very good day.

In a lovely surprise, the next day, our neighbor let mum know he was done working on her tractor. He’s been attempting to fix it for a few months now. What started as one known problem became a whole cluster of uncovered issues, a few things he broke accidentally in the repair process, and some improvements. It’s a 1955 Massey Ferguson, and while my dad had sort of kept up with maintenance on it, it was really showing its age and the need for significant part replacements. I wrecked my back trying to get the brush hog hooked up to it again, but such is life. Mum got to twirl around, doing battle with the grass armies that have overtaken everything, and the tractor didn’t have the slightest problem. Considering it previously could only run for about 20 minutes before needing to be hosed down to deal with its overheating problems, this is stunning. She’s very happy.

I’m sad to be going back to work tomorrow. My work phone was blowing up during the week with team chats that I resolutely ignored. So I’m sure I’m going to come back to A Situation. But that is still officially not my problem for a few more hours.

Lewisia: still on break

Day job: none hours with left beef

Cleaning: attempted to fix the weed whacker but it’s still having problems of a mysterious nature

Crafting: finished attaching the “antici...pation” patches to the battle jacket and reattached the one I took off to make room for them, finished the dorky little cotton washcloth I’ve been crocheting for three thousand years

Gardening: watered all the succulents for the first time in *mumblety* months, first pass of weed whacking the castle garden

Reading: Mislaid in Parts Half-Known by Seanan McGuire (a bit of a transitional book, trying to do a bunch in multiple threads of the series, and the charm of all the characters makes that work just fine, a bit of a road trip story)

Watching: Revolutionary Girl Utena episodes 30 to 34

Listening: Dan Avidan and Super Guitar Bros volume 1 (yep, that sure is what it says on the tin, I have now finished the process of living backwards through this particular series), the self-titled album from bbno$ (he guested on the Game Grumps, I wanted to know what his music was like, the answer is “frantic ADHD swagger,” which is apparently something I like [see sbassbear’s album], and he’s also vocally pro trans and queer people, earworms the whole way through)

Playing: Animal Crossing still, la la la, creating island decorating projects for myself, thinking about redesigning a massive area, living my best, most pointless life

Clock Mouse: 125 minutes of planning work

She collected extinct foods--not expired, thank you, though she recognized the natural overlap in the two categories--whose manufacturers had abandoned them as outdated relics or failed experiments. Her huge chest freezers and pantries contained foods in mint-condition packaging, sorted by date of last production, ranging from Squeezafroos (June 3, 1993) to canned Cream of Carp soup (February 25, 1904) to limited edition Forager Style Spam (September 12, 1938). With one bite, she would be transported by more than mere nostalgia to another age, somewhere along the timeline of each lost food, and she could wander as a gustatory time traveler for however long the taste lingered on her tongue.

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LL#1362

1. What type of hair do you have? (Thin, Normal, Thick, Frizzy, etc.)
Fairly thick hair that falls somewhere between wavy and curly.

2. What color is your hair currently?
It's more or less my natural color, medium brown, all over, except for a stripe down the middle of the crown that I bleach and dye. The stripe is currently orange/copper.

3. What colors have you dyed/highlighted your hair?
I've gone through the rainbow with the stripe. I used to dye it seasonally, but I've gotten out of the habit for various reasons and have been sticking to the comparatively understated copper streak.

4. If you could dye your hair any color, what would it be?
I would love to do the stripe in a proper rainbow, front to back, though I'm not sure it would end up looking like much because of the short length. I've always wanted to get a really good mossy green going, but green fades pretty much as soon as you look away from the mirror.

5. What is your hair's length?
The sides are shaved so that what I have is a tapered mohawk type arrangement, though I've never spiked it up. The remaining hair is short (above the tops of my ears at its longest point) and pushed over to one side. Depending on how I style it, it's somewhere between a mohawk, a low fade, and a comb over/side part.

To be clear, what it *actually* is is me with a couple of mirrors, clippers and scissors, and a total absence of shame or good sense. I get what I get, yes, but after quite a few years of doing this, what I get is a hatchet job that is nonetheless broadly acceptable to me.

Even in a generally friendly forest, not all trees are pleased to have visitors, however polite, and he had managed to choose poorly on every possible level when he decided to carve his initials somewhere. The strategically dropped seed pods and small sticks failed to deter him, and even a wind-whipped branch across the backside only made him fumble the pocket knife for a moment. Even cranky trees may have friends of their own, though, and the creature that padded up behind him on silent paws was quite happy to leave some marks of its own in retribution for its arboreal associate.

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LL#1360

In partnership with the Society for Retired Knights and Swordspeople, the community center will resume its training sessions in nonviolent resistance for those involved in protest and community organization. Even if all you feel is a nameless, restless urge to do something to fix what is broken, these sessions are an excellent opportunity to connect with the people already doing that work. That work may go on forever, but for now, consider starting with an afternoon at the community center.

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LL#1358

It took the adults a long time to notice the correlation: the little boy would drop his blocks or markers or lunch, head popping up to scan the horizon, at the same moment a cloud of birds would rise up shrieking from the trees just outside the preschool fence. Compared to strange little boys and flocks of starlings, the adults weren’t very observant, and their ideas of what counted as a red alert danger mostly concerned parking lot etiquette and the misplacing of bake sale proceeds. By the time they were whispering about distractability and assessments, he knew seventeen separate distress calls and had been practicing his wheeling and diving patterns for the day he joined the murmuration.

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LL#1357

While the ground is frozen and there is little for gardeners to do but wait, the temptation may come to try growing things in unusual, climate-controlled locations. If you have a greenhouse, cold frame, or suitable windowsill, this can be an appropriate outlet for your gardening impulses and will, at worst, result in some premature seedlings. Please resist the urge, however great, to plant seeds in your partner’s coffee mug, the office break room sink, your car in an elaborate raised bed arrangement on the dashboard, or in any other places you would not wish to eventually deal with a full-grown marigold shrub, pumpkin vine, or ambulatory tree sapling.

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LL#1355