Reading

FENRIR: Chapter 35

Didn't get to post this yesterday.

Some people are more surprised than others by this turn of events...

( ... one of them for different reasons... )

But why wait?

I am at Pinewoods!

It feels nice to write that for this, the first time in 2025. I am at Pinewoods and I am sitting somewhere quiet and alone and I am about to take my covid test.

(Where that place is? Somewhere with enough wifi to make my computer go. What are you, a cop? If you wanna find all the places at camp that have wifi, you are welcome to, but I'm not gonna make it easy for you because I am a Jerk, tm.)

Anyways, it's just me, my covid test, and a chance to write my words and this is a pattern I got into in 2022 and have never really wanted to leave: the quiet joy of enforced time _by myself_ where I can write my words in the middle of the day instead of trying to do so very _very_ late at night.

I am at Pinewoods for the first time of the year, and I am quite happy, even though it's a different set of people than I mostly know and even though the weather is very damp and kinda grey. But the place is still good. I have chased some dragonflies to try and paparazzi them, I have had good mealtime conversations with people I know and like.

And I have done work, because this is a work weekend! And because I am very good at what I do¹, I got assigned dishes, as in, "wash all of them". Or nearly all of them, we are skipping the camper dishes which don't want to have to be spread out to dry in the same way everything else does because jegus what a pain.

So I did two shifts today with Brenda, who is going to be the Dishwasher for the summer, and it's her Very First Year doing so! She's been a camper dish-helper before (I remember working with her and being pleased) and so it's gonna be a good move up. I think she has a great attitude for it, and got the hang of a lot of things very quickly.

I interspersed actual work things with various ideas and advice as I thought of them, some of which were like "this is technically potwasher advice". And I ran...golly I can't even begin to approximate how many loads through the (only sorta working) Hobart. The Hobart wasn't sanitizing, so part of her clean-side duties² was to run everything from clean-side over to the potwashing sinks, all three of which had been turned into sanitation sinks, and to constantly drop stuff into the solution, and then run it all around the kitchen and stack it...virtually _everywhere_.

It was a lot of fun and we got _so much_ done. Maybe six total hours work? And I got to listen to my music in the first half and her music in the second and that all felt great too.

Of course, having done such an impressive job today, there's hardly any dishes left for tomorrow, so I'll probably be back to normal work weekend tasks, opening cabins and the like. Which is honestly fine, I quite like doing so! Lots of dusting, and wiping things down, and SWEEPING, and if you're lucky, getting to do a windows run.

I'm not sure what the plan for the rest of the night is. I am feeling a little people'd out, which means I don't necessarily want to be SUPER SOCIAL for the entire evening. Maybe I will read a book in a corner, maybe I will draw more pictures (yesterday I drew a dog, link is to Bluesky)

Maybe I will go for a nice stroll between now and dinnertime (which is over an hour, jegus, so late!) because if there's anywhere in the world I enjoy just prowling around by myself, it's camp. Bring my camera, look for bugs, visit Kitty Alone, see the new bathrooms, check in on El Nino, there's lots and lots of good things to do at camp!

Another day and a half of this, and I'm very happy for it. I hope wherever you are, you are also happy!

~Sor

MOOP!

1: I am using this (very common Kat-phrase) as a double meaning right now. Because first I am literally quite good at washing dishes, and second, I am good at working my way into the hearts of The People In Charge in order to get to do the things *I* most want to do. I mean, it helps that the things I want to do are often things that other people don't, but dang, I get away with a lot of special privileges just by being very open about my wants, and wanting weird stuff.

2: Of course I was working dirty side, I nearly always work dirty side, my absolute single favourite job in all of camp is dirty-side at the window as a camper helper. See footnote 1.

Entry tags:

Blow It Up

I have been suffering from what I will describe as a mild case of musical constipation. This is a condition in which various ideas and lines drift through your consciousness, but none of them actually manage to escape and become songs. I hate this.

Today, however, is my birthday (about which more later) and my subconscious decided to solve my problem as I drifted out of sleep around 6 AM this morning, apparently as a birthday gift from it to me. I started scrawling lines into my phone, putting it down, then picking it up and scrawling more lines. Before I went back to sleep, I had pretty much the whole song, save for one missing line, a couple of places that clearly needed some editing, and the missing bridge which -- while theoretically optional -- felt like it needed to be there to connect the second and third verses so that none of the listeners fell into the bottomless chasm.

I am a big fan of Jim Croce. He wrote incredibly beautiful love songs. He also wrote some of the most amazing piss off and die songs which *also* managed to be beautiful.

All this song owes to Croce is the sentiment. The bits and pieces of music that were flowing through my head as I was constructing this while not sleeping were clearly much more inspired by classic rock. I realized that when I got ready to put a tune to this beastie and lock it down, I was going to need to channel my inner McCartney. Or maybe Steve Martin. (There were a lot of very strange things going through my head this morning.) And there was still the matter of the bridge which was going to need its very own tune, different from everything that surrounded it.

So, liner notes:

Key of E, everyone, with no chord odder than B7 anywhere to be found. There is a thumping bass somewhere in the accompaniment and probably some aggressive drums. There is also a big old break after the bridge which I hope someday to hear my favorite fiddler, Amy, fill in. :)

This is not a political song, despite some of the references that will seem very obvious. It is a relationship song.

Happily, it is not any of *my* relationships...

( Lyrics inside... )

Entry tags:

talked to GI doctor: we have a plan

I just had a telemedicine appointment with the gastroenterologist. Her office called at about 9:30 this morning, to ask if I was available for a 10:30 appointment, and I said yes.

The diagnosis is collagenous colitis, which I already knew from MyChart. The good news is that it's both benign and curable. The treatment will be nine weeks of budosenide pills, starting at three/day for the first six weeks, then two/day for the next three weeks, and a final three weeks of one/day. Those are to be taken with food, and in the morning because it's related to steroids and can interfere with sleep. [I mis-remembered, it's a total of 12 weeks of these pills.]

The most common risk factors for this kind of colitis are being a woman over sixty, and regular use of NSAIDs. Therefore, Dr. Morgan wants me to talk to Carmen about whether there's a plausible alternative to me taking naproxen almost every day, but she did say there may not be, since tylenol doesn't work the same way and may not be effective for the hip and knee pain I'm using it for.

I asked about continuing the Imodium and the fiber capsules, and Dr. Morgan said I could stop using them when the budosenide starts to be effective for the diarrhea, which might be within a week. I told her that the combination of Imodium and fiber is working well enough that I may not notice a difference, so the tentative plan is to wait at least a week, then pick a day or two when I won't need to go out, and try stopping the Imodium. (Adrian pointed out that I'm currently taking two pills twice a day, so I could try halving the dose and see how I feel. That sounds plausible, but I'm going to ask Dr Morgan if she thinks that's worth doing.

Also, a significant number of people with collagenous colitis also have celiac, so she wants to test me for that. I asked, and it's a straightforward blood draw, which I can do at my convenience: I don't need to wait until after getting blood drawn to start on the new medication.

She is sending the prescription to CVS, and told me to call her office if there's any problem with the insurance company.

ETA: I looked at the doctor's visit notes on MyChart, which reminded me that I should be checking my blood pressure about once a week while taking the budosenide.

Friday's Comics

Sparks or animals

Entry tags:

This and That

No more raccoon noises as of yet. This is encouraging. There's still a trap in the attic and no one has ventured into it either.

The last critical piece of software is finally installed on my new Linux VM at work with some help from one of my coworkers. And there was much rejoicing.

K had an orientation session for her summer job today. She's also taking a CPR class, so that will be two of us in the family who have done that. I did it for the last season of girls softball.

(Bum, bum, bum, bum, Staying alive, Staying alive...)

There is a whole lot of stuff that needs to be done around the house. Perhaps we will do some of it this weekend.

Or perhaps I will go to the basement and do some recording.

Or both!

Current Mood: happy

Entry tags:

Medical Update (+Bonus Bunny)

Kayla will have a lot more to say about it, but she short version of our trip to my PCP today is that may A1c level is down to 7.5, which is excellent, and things are moving in the right direction.

So since I don't have much else to say, have a picture of the rabbit that was sitting near the minvan this morning when we went out to go to breakfast.

( Bonus Bunny )

Entry tags:

travel

HELLO DYING I AM DAD

I'm in Minneapolis with Steph and two round cats, and the sun is shining.

I flew through Saskatoon this time, for reasons that escape me but probably had to do with it being half the price of a direct flight. The flight to Saskatoon was pretty full; Sask-Mpls had somewhere under forty people (I counted), on a 32x6-seat plane.

Having no one else in your row in economy feels positively luxurious.

I've some homework to do today, and some to do in the next few days. I promised to make banana bread today as well. Mostly I'm enjoying the sunshine and the company.

LUCAS: You know, I think things are gonna be alright now, Joe.
JOE: Oh? And what makes you think that?
LUCAS: Who knows where thoughts come from? They just appear.
--Empire Records

Current Mood: grateful
Current Location: Schildhaven in Den Haag
Current Music: D.F.D.F coming up

Entry tags:

thanks

Thankful Thursday

Today I am thankful for...

Coffee (my stimulant drug of choice).
Dark chocolate (my cough suppressant of choice, among other things).
Tasty fish.
Framework | Framework Laptop 12 pre-orders are now open! NO thanks for websites that only function in a private browsing window.
Classic filk CDs like Keepers of the Flame — Phoenyx, back in production thanks to Prometheus Music.
Finding a moving box tucked away under a table with several things that I feared had been left behind or lost.

Entry tags:

Diminishing TV

Tonight, we watched the finale for "Chicago Fire". This means that our broadcast TV schedule is now down to the "Alert" finale next week and some undetermined number of episodes of "Sherlock and Daughter".

Time to get back to streaming!

Current Mood: accomplished
Current Location: Fernley, Nevada

Entry tags:

westercon

Westercon Bid Update

I updated the Santa Clara in 2027 Westercon Bid announcement post to include links to the filing documents from SPSF's bid.

This is the first time since 2019 (when there were two bids on the ballot at the Layton Westercon/NASFiC) that there have been any bids listed on the ballot. There was a double postponement, followed by a cancellation, Tonopah, another cancellation (both of which meant that year's Westercon happened at Loscon), then a couple of years with Direct Awards by the Business Meeting, then at Salt Lake City we had a filed write-in bid. This year finally breaks that string, even though it did take Kayla realizing that she and the SPSF folks were talking past each other and got things straightened out.

Entry tags:

proposed restrictions on covid vaccines

The clowns running the FDA have proposed restricting access to covid vaccines, to people over 65 or who have certain medical conditions. There's a public docket for comments on the proposal.

Your Local Epidemiologist has a good post about the proposal, including that the people suggesting this know that nobody is going to do the placebo-controlled tests of new boosters they want to require.

Possible talking points include:

Families and caregivers wouldn't be eligible for the vaccine, even if they share a household, unlike the current UK recommendations.

Doctors, dentists, and other medical staff wouldn't be eligible either.

My own comment included that the reason I'd still be eligible for the vaccine is a lung problem caused by covid.

(cross-posting from

thisfinecrew)

Entry tags:

[therapy] Time shifts experiences

Content Warning: non-detailed allusions to my shitty abusive ex and the shitty relationship we had

I have been working on the Inbox0 project, which sorta has two modalities:

First, the banality of daily life. Unsubscribing from things I don't care about, and mass deleting the bulks they have sent in the past. Meeting notes and invitations and preperatory emails that can safely be labeled ("highland ball" got a workout today, from when I ran it in 2017) and archived. Going through the 50 most recent emails in the inbox and trying to at least first pass all of what's happened lately.

Second, the weight of history. I have had the same email address since 2005, so that sure is, uh, twenty years since January 15th. It's not everything I've ever gotten (see above about bulk-deleting bullshit) and I do have like, a more professionally wallet-named account, but even that sends its email into the main box.

And the weight of history can be _exhausting_. That's part of what makes this game difficult, trying to motivate myself to be exposed fully to some of my worst ADHD sins, or the parts of my personal history where the Big D went on the word depression. Have I mentioned lately I went through an abusive relationship for most of the year 2007? Yeah, uh. That still has bits and pieces lying around it sure does.

But mannnnn one of the benefits of hindsight and being an actual friggin' grown-up and stuff is the ability to look at some of those bits and pieces and see just how much I have grown and improved and gotten better. I can have a lot of grace for myself (I do genuinely like myself, regardless of how much I whine I am a really spectacularly awesome person) and part of the reason is that recognition of the work I have done to reach better and better heights as time goes on.

Or, like, to read an email in which this guy I was totally into was basically breaking up with me, in part because he was not interested in being in a polycule with my shitty boyfriend. Boo hiss, this should be real sad. But it's _not_ because it's been twenty freaking years, that guy I was totally into has developed a lovely sounding life for himself on the other side of the world and I've made a polycule that has an absolute dearth of shitty boyfriends anywhere in it. And so I can read stuff like this...

However, I talked to ksatyr....he is *way* over-reacting. You think you're not ready for a relationship? I'm sorry, but this is a demonstration of not being ready for a relationship.

...and scream lovely modern "YASS QUEEN SLAY¹" because BOY HOWDY it is good to remember that there were people who were willing to say to my face "yeah, your boyfriend ain't shit because shit at least provides fertilizer and causes growth²". I mean, I didn't listen sufficiently at the time, but it turns out it never gets old to listen to folks drag my shitty partners, even if I didn't necessarily realize it at the time.

So yeah. The history is rough but it's also nice to see the growth that goes alongside it. And it's nice to get reminders that however fucked up current-right-now Kat is, they're not (correctly) getting dragged by a twenty year old for acting like a sixteen year old³.

~Sor

MOOP!

1: This is almost certainly ironic as it's not language that has actually gotten into my lexicon yet.

2: Okay sure, I suppose you could argue that kSatyr caused growth _in me_. As a different shitty ex once said "-99 points for everything, +1 for making a better Kat for the rest of us". But just because it causes growth doesn't mean I particularly want to be covered in shit. :P

3: September party! I will finally be the age my abusive ex was when he dated me! WOOO!

things I didn't get

Two of these from my childhood happened to pop into mind almost simultaneously.

1. When my parents first played for me the original cast recording of 1776 (a musical they'd seen in the theater, and bought the record of partly because they knew I'd be interested in the history), I heard the opening song, "Sit Down, John," and turned to my mother in puzzlement and asked, "What does '40-S' mean?" Huh? "Well, he keeps singing that: FOR-ty ess, FOR-ty ess." It was "Vote yes: VOTE-uh yes, VOTE-uh yes."

2. I saw a singing group on tv billed as "Tony Orlando and Dawn." There were three of them: a man in the middle and a woman on either side. I figured that one woman was Toni (I hadn't seen the name written), the man was Orlando, and the other woman was Dawn. Realistic believable given names, right?

Wednesday's comic

SHREEEIIII

FENRIR: Chapter 34

Bad things had happened...
( ... were still happening, actually... )

Oh, yes.

Entry tags:

wiscon

Wiscon

I just bought a membership in this year's Wiscon, which is entirely online, so I don't have to worry about energy levels, or covid risk, and all I'm paying for is the con, not airline tickets and a hotel room and all.

Entry tags:

Five Baby Raccoons

Having heard babies in the attic after Momma Raccoon was taken away, a different fellow came to set a trap for them in the attic. He was very thin though and realized that he could shimmy into the narrow space above our vaulted ceiling in the attic and then reach the baby raccoons with his grabber. He collected all of the baby raccoons that he could find and put them in the traps. The four of them were *extremely* cute when he brought them down.

He was still sitting in his truck outside when there was more noise from the attic above the living room, which was noticed because Gretchen and K hadn't gotten out of there yet. This meant that he could be asked to return to the attic and not long after that the fifth baby raccoon had been collected.

We now believe that there are no more baby raccoons.

We hope we are right.

And *someone* has gotten a very good review...

This week on FilkCast

The Chromatics, Karen Willson, Chris Conway, Joe Bethancourt, Judith Hayman, Boogie Knights, Julia Ecklar, Katt McConnell, Moss Bliss, Vanessa Cardui, Diana Gallagher, Gernsback Continuum, Gravity's Rainbow, Gwen Knighton

Available on iTunes, Google Play and most other places you can get podcasts. We can be heard Wednesday at 6am and 9pm Central on scifi.radio.

filkcast.com

(no subject)

Progress is being made.

I want to be very clear (and whiny) that I'm still burnt out. That hasn't gone away. Roundabouts July 15, is when I stop having Immediate Plans, and go back to comforting vagueness. I am probably going to book the entire week after Pinewoods on my calendar as "do not schedule, do not interact, this is entirely mine and I will maybe do things on an hours notice or less, but definitely not otherwise).

But progress is being made. Having Tuesday come over this past weekend and body double me while I worked on my room was a truly wonderful help. My room still has an infinite of little projects and organizations and puttings-aways, but it is SO MUCH BETTER and because it is not a series of fucking huge piles of undifferentiated stuff shutting my brain down the moment I look at it, I have actually been able to do maintenance level cleaning on a regular basis. Like, just take five minutes to put away several things where they belong instead of dropping them back into The Pile. It feels very good.

I've also returned to the Inbox0 project after basically 11 months of not touching it. I'm not yet at my lowest-ever¹, but I have archived or deleted about 2000 emails in the last two days, and most of those were unread. GOOD PROGRESS.

I didn't really do any work progress, which was partly because I had a series of Good Individual Conversations instead. One of my favourite students came for 2.5 hours in the morning (it's a testing day, so weird schedule) and I helped drag him through most of the last six weeks, getting his grade this quarter to jump from about a 20% to an 84%. It's amazing how much quizzes are weighted if you _haven't done any of them_. I also had decent planning conversation with Clayton, and saw a couple other students for brief periods. Tomorrow, I teach one class, and have to proctor the test for ninety minutes, but it should be otherwise pretty mellow.

I should probably medialog sometime soon, especially because I have actually been reading --I've actually read a fair amount, although most of that was my recent murderbot reread. It's still good! It still hits hard! I was pretty vehement that I didn't want to see the tv show (I don't want to rewire my brain in how it visualizes or thinks about different characters, this happened with That Fucking TERF's books when I watched the movies and I didn't like it) but I've seen some pretty excited reviews, so hmmmmmmmmmaybe.

Also I earned a die yesterday, and I'm on track to earn one today. I'm happy to have this ADHD-brain-game maybe working for me again? Especially because it looks the like previous reset was _November_ meaning it took nearly six months to get 31 full-score days on my daily chart. Auuuguh. Yipes.

(gee Kat, what possible reason could your brain have for going all sideways and fukt-up since November of 2024?)

So yeah, it'd be cool if I can get through this batch, uh, a little faster. I liked the version of the game where I was going through about four rounds a year, it feels reasonable to say "I will get full points on a third of the days". Heck, it's still possible for this year if ~I only believe~.

(we build habits as best we can to support ourselves when the things fall apart)

Anyways, nice to have projects in my life that are seeing progress, even if it's just small and silly number-goes-down. I hope your life is also seeing progress.

~Sor

MOOP!

1: Technically my lowest ever was the long span of time through 2019 and 2020 where I actually maintained inbox zero pretty consistently. This is possible to do! It's just hard to get back to.