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Success is not the key to happiness, happiness is the key to success

I had a fun time tonight watching D play a very silly round of Hardspace: Shipbreaker, which then got surprisingly stressful and harrowing for a game about taking spaceships apart, and then had an eventful and actually sweet cutscene.

Sleeplessness Makes ICE Melt

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strawberry follow-up

Adrian made strawberry pancakes, blueberry pancakes, and raspberry pancakes, partly because we have all these strawberries to use up, and partly so I could try cooked strawberries, after the fresh ones made my lips itch on Friday.

I ate a bite of a strawberry pancake, and found it bland and uninteresting. I didn't react to the berry, but it was one small piece of strawberry, and I don't know whether a larger amount would have been a problem.

I may yet try something like a strawberry sauce over cake or ice cream. Adrian noted that raw and cooked strawberries are almost different fruits, but it also seems possible that a strawberry sauce will taste more like raw berries than like strawberries baked into pancakes.

Current Mood: amused

They did this on purpose

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#NoKings

The three of us went out to the No Kings Yaas Queens combined Pride/NoKings demonstration today, despite my worries about my various joints. Or, at least, that was the plan. It didn't work out, but my knees, hips, and ankles are OK.

We got to Park Street and the Common, and found other people who were looking for the same event, a stage where someone was introducing the next speaker?performer?, and some tables and tents, but no focus. We wound up walking to the side of the Common next to the Public Garden, where we found the parade, smaller than we'd expected but with enough of a crowd I couldn't see much. So we went home, pausing moderately often to rest my joints and watch another bit of parade, which seems to have been heading for Government Center as originally planned, not the Common as we thought.

I'm both glad I went, and disappointed that I didn't actually make it to the first protest or rally I've felt physically capable of in too long.

I will probably update this tomorrow, to note how my joints are feeling. This afternoon, they've felt good enough for some PT exercises.

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Screm at own ankle

Ever since D's girlfriend broke her leg while roller skating last weekend, my ankle has been sore, something it hardly ever does any more and I've done nothing physical (like walk a lot) to cause it.

So I have tried yelling "Shut up, this is clearly psychosomatic! You're fine!" at it. Repeatedly.

Disappointingly, this doesn't seem to be working. (I didn't really expect it to. I'm just saying it woulda been nice if it did, is all!)

Hey AI — hands off my em-dash

My fave is the semicolon; however, I refuse to cede em-dashes or any other punctuation marks to ChatGPT.

These attacks on the em dash — a ChatGPT hyphen? How very dare you! — have in turn blazed across social media spaces populated by the kind of folks who will tell you, unprompted, that they have a favorite punctuation mark and what it is. (It is very likely the em dash.) — https://www.salon.com/2025/06/11/ai-cant-have-my-em-dash/

Entry tags:

ice hockey,
travel

In (near) Prague

On an ice hockey camp in Slaný, near Prague. I flew out on Thursday afternoon with two friends from Kodiaks. We arrived at the rink hotel in time to check in, have a little walk down to the nearby supermarket and get food, and settle in for the night. For reasons the three of us were all sharing a dormitory room the first night, and we decided the perfect film to watch over our picnic dinner was Inside Out 2 - also set at a 3-day hockey camp. I hadn't seen it before, though the other two had, and I enjoyed it very much.

Friday morning was pretty relaxed; a fourth Kodiak joined us after leaving home at awful-o-clock in the morning, and we were moved into the nicer ensuite twin rooms in pairs for the rest of the camp. We met in the dressing room at 1pm, were on ice at 2pm and again at 6pm, with a stickhandling session in between. Then dinner at 8 and falling into bed not long after.

It's excellent coaching, I'm being pushed well out of my comfort zone and the balance of drill and rest in each session and between sessions is just right. I hit my "cannot actually skate any more" limit about 3 minutes before the end of the last ice session.

Today will be two ice sessions at either end of the day, with video review (argh), optional swim+spa (yes!), and stickhandling again in between. My muscles this morning are making themselves known but I'm not exhausted. All is good. Time to go get changed.

Current Mood: unhappy

Entry tags:

strawberries

I fear that I may have developed an allergy to strawberries.

Cattitude came home from the farmers market with two quarts of strawberries, so we sat down to eat strawberries this evening. Adrian washed a plateful of the berries, and we all started eating.

They're very good strawberries, but I realized after eating a few that my lips were starting to itch. They were tasty enough that I had four or five more before saying anything. When I did, Adrian suggested I go wash my face. I rinsed my lips with plenty of cool water, took a benadryl, complained about the situation, and got Adrian to make me herb tea. I hope I haven't developed an allergy to a fruit I like, after eating them without problems for more than fifty years.

ETA, after responding to people's comments:

It may not be just strawberries. Raw kiwi makes my mouth itch, and I think I remember having a problem with the kiwi on a mixed fruit tart. Possibly-underripe figs also made my mouth itch once, but cooked figs (fig Newton cookies) are OK, and a fig that was ripe enough to fall off the tree at my feet was fine. I think I need to do some reading.

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talked to the GI doc

I had telemedicine with the GI doctor this morning. ( mostly for my own reference )

Torbay

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Current Mood: pleased

I should do this more often

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Current Mood: cynical

Help me talk to my parents

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Murderbot Day

* Interview with Sue Chan, the production designer:

https://filmstories.co.uk/news/murderbot-designing-a-future-world-that-doesnt-look-like-alien/

“I started out by taking the most ancient societies on each continent – Etruscans, Asian, European, and African cultures,” Chan tells us. “I looked at the most fundamental motifs and gathered them into a bible, then asked my team to imagine 100 generations from now, when the diaspora of Earth have chosen to live together in society. How would they evolve a unified set of symbols? A language that really honours where they came from.”

This informed the alphabet that can be seen in the decoration painted across the otherwise grey, corporate habitat the PresAux crew are leasing. At the same time, acknowledging how much of the crew is queer and polyamorous, the colours of the rainbow are also entwined into their decorations.

“All of that is mashed up but it has a fundamental logic to it,” says Chan.

* Interview with Akshay Khanna (Ratthi):

https://squaremile.com/style/akshay-khanna-murderbot-actor-interview/

I’m incredibly excited for people to watch Murderbot on Apple TV+. Sci-fi has been my favourite genre by a country mile forever, and being on a show like this has always been a career goal of mine. Frankly, I had too much fun filming that show, and getting paid to do it constantly felt like I was getting away with something on set.

And the show is just so good. I can confidently say it’s fantastic – and if you don’t like it, then I would gently tell you that it’s OK to be wrong sometimes.

* Interview with Sabrina Wu (Pin-Lee):

https://www.autostraddle.com/sabrina-wu-interview-murderbot/

And then once I got the role, I read the books and I was legit just blown away at how funny the books were. I just haven’t seen such a dry sarcastic sensibility with this kind of hero sci-fi stories. And then I also just really liked that it was in the tradition of I felt like Octavia Butler, where it’s like, “oh, this is a queer imagining of the future.” So I don’t know. I just thought it was a really sweet, funny, different world. I also, obviously every comedian who becomes an actor, their dream is to get to work on something with action to move beyond an It’s Always Sunny kind of comedy. I believe there was already an opportunity for me to be in a spaceship and shoot guns, and it just made me happy that it was genuinely funny source material.

* Video interview with Tattiawna Jones (Arada) and Tamara Podemski (Bharadwaj):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NllgfEekw9s

* And a video interview with Noma Dumezweni (Mensah)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ZpigqUqZXQ

* and a video interview with Noma and David Dastmalchian (Gurathin)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=361cKOujISE

* And a video interview (with a transcript) with Alexander Skarsgard, Jack McBrayer, and Paul and Chris Weitz:

https://collider.com/murderbot-alexander-skarsgard-jack-mcbrayer-creators-paul-weitz-chris-weitz/

* And there is a profile of me in The New Yorker (!!)

https://www.newyorker.com/culture/persons-of-interest/do-androids-dream-of-anything-at-all

Current Mood: contemplative

A couple of thoughts about work

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it's been a busy day

Cattitude and I got up at 5:45 so he could pill Kaja, preparatory to her dental surgery. Both the pilling and the medical care went well, and she is on soft food only for 10-14 days. Therefore Molly is too, and we have to give them different treats than the usual dental Greenies. (Kaja will also be getting anti-inflammatories for a couple of days, and gabapentin for five.)

I got email from my brother about Mom's estate. He has done the necessary formwork so Vanguard can give us the money from her account there, where we are co-beneficiaries. His share is already in his account existing account. I tried setting an account up online, which apparently failed at the last minute, so I called and got a helpful person to walk me through the process again, step by step. I had gotten far enough earlier to create security questions, including some that I can actually remember my answers to, and haven't used repeatedly elsewhere. Separately, I need to talk to someone at Amalgamated Bank about the account there, a joint account with both our names on it. I hope they'll let me, as co-owner, close the account and transfer the money elsewhere, rather than sending them a copy of the death certificate, getting the account just in my name, and then closing it.

Mark also said he's thinking of going to London next month to sort through Mom's belongings, photos, and paperwork. So he wants to know whether I'm going as well, and if so, what dates worth for me. (Putting this here so I'm less likely to forget to talk to Cattitude and Adrian and then write back to Mark.)

Entry tags:

language,
whimsy

Something fishy!

Today for work, I saw someone spell fisticuffs as "fisty cuffs" and a) that is adorable and b) it also makes me realize what a strange word fisticuffs is!

So naturally I looked it up.

c. 1600, fisty cuffes, from fist (n.) + cuff (n.) "a blow", with the form perhaps in imitation of handiwork.

Well! That's such a boring etymology, but... nice to see the spelling returned to something more like the original!

I said this on fedi and a friend's response has been delighting me ever since:

I always misread it as fishticuffs, so always had an image in my head of some kind of betta fish boxing, complete with gloves over fins

That made me giggle. They're an artist so I asked if they would draw this some time. I am wondering how a fish gets boxing gloves on its fins...

Current Mood: angry

LA Protests and WH military response

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Wednesday reading

Last week:

*Cattitude read Blue Moose, by Daniel Pinkwater, aloud to us, because it's one of his favorites and Adrian had never read it. I've reread the book several times, and was happy to hear it out loud.

*I read Isabella Nagg and the Pot of Basil, by Oliver Darkshire. Decidedly weird, funny fantasy. A lot of the humor is in the footnotes, which seem to be at least a quarter of the text. Also, the title does in fact describe the book. Isabella lives in a poor, out-of-the-way village, whose wizard keeps the local goblin market in check, until one day he doesn't. The goblins sell one thing, unnaturally tempting and dangerous fruit.

*Did not finish: Girls Against God, by Jenny Hval. I don't remember where I saw this recommended, and just couldn't get into it.

Currently reading:

*Installment Immortality, by Seanan McGuire, the latest book in her InCryptid series. I started it late last night, and only read a few pages before turning the light out.

*Twelve Trees, by Daniel Lewis, nonfiction about trees and climate change. I picked this up at the libraru, as a "book with a green caover" for the summer reading challenge.

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They say I got brains

My ex-husband knows and thinks and cares so much about Brian Wilson that I feel like I shared a polycule with the man.

Wandering around the house tonight, doing the last chores of the evening while the Doof is finishing up, I hear "I Just Wasn't Made for These Times" and I still know all the words, still remember the pained 20somethings Andrew and I were when we met and he introduced me to this weird lonely musician and all his feelings which were also our weird lonely feelings.

There was always something terribly melancholy for me in Brian Wilson's music -- there's a demo of "Still I Dream of It" that used to make me so sad that just thinking about the song made me cry uncontrollably -- and all the more once I left my marriage and never really listened to the Beach Boys any more. And the odd time I hear them, on the radio or like now, I'm always a little thrown by how weird the commercially-released songs sound, without all the unreleased versions layered over them in my mind because those were more common in my marital home (like I said: Not a parasocial relationship for me, but a parasocial metamour).

D made sure I heard the news, and I texted Andrew once I did. I just couldn't let such a thing go by without saying I was thinking of him.

I think both Brian Wilson and Andrew eventually "found the thing they can put their heart and soul in to," as the song goes, and I'm really glad for that.