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Entry tags:

purrcy,
spring

Purrcy, bees

#Purrcy was both happy and regal, sitting in my seat on the sofa with the sun coming the skylight on it. See how he smiles at me in Cat!
#cats #CatsOfBluesky

Purrcy the tuxedo tabby is lightly curled on a brocade cushion, looking at the camera with ears alert, whiskers spread wide and white, eyes light green and pupils just slits. He is clearly very happy, as sunlight shines on the cushion and most of him.

Purrcy the tuxedo tabby is lightly curled on a brocade cushion, looking at the camera with ears alert, whiskers spread wide and white, eyes light green and pupils just slits. He is clearly very happy, as sunlight shines on the cushion and most of him.

I sat out on the porch to eat breakfast today, and the local hive of feral honeybees was awake, buzzing about looking for nectar. The crabapple flowers are opening, so they seem to have their timing just right. The carpenter bees were also out, inspecting the eaves. It was really good to have that 1/2 hour, even though it was so late in the morning (I had errands to run before my stomach was ready for breakfast) that I didn't see or hear any migrants.

Fitbit will be happy with all of today's walking

Last night was the last new ep of series 3 of The Chelsea Detective *and* the first new ep of series 11 of Brokenwood Mysteries! An excellent evening of TV watching!

Saturday I went to a potluck. I made bean salad, of course, because what else do you take to a potluck? It was the local PokemonGO group's first potluck and it was being held just down the street, so I decided to go. I already new a lot of those people are *way* into PoGO, but wow. I don't think anyone talked about anything else. I left after 2 hours. They'd broken out Mario Kart on the giant screen and I got an alert on my phone that heavy rain was coming soon, so good time to exit. I'd go again, but wow.

Yesterday I got a survey in the mail - a paper survey - about my visit to the ER. *rolls eyes*

This afternoon is another hour of tabling, followed by visiting my friend N at her library and then PoGO Spotlight Hour meetup. I need to remember to put a snack in my bag. ~~I should go do that right now so I don't forget.~~ Done!

Entry tags:

poetry

Poetry month: For the New House by Ursula K. Le Guin

For the New House by Ursula K. Le Guin

May this house be full of kitchen smells
and shadows and toys and nests of mice
and roars of rage and waterfalls of tears
and deep sexual silences and sounds
of mysterious origin never explained
and troves and keepsakes and a lot of junk
and a flowing like a warm wind only slower
blowing the leaves of trees and books and the fish-years
of a child’s life silvery flickering
quick, quick, in the slow incessant gust
that billows out the curtains for a moment
all those years from now, ago.
May the sills and doorframes
be in blessing blest at every passing.
May the roof but not the rooms know rain.
May the windows know clearly
the branch and flower of the apple tree.
And may you be in this house
as the music is in the instrument.

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Calling in a Marker - Stargate SG-1/9-1-1 (PG)

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Entry tags:

housework,
purrcy

Two Purrcys; housework

In general Purrcy is *not* allowed on the kitchen counters. But he seemed extremely interested in the back corner here, so I let him jump up and poke around as part of his Rodent Control Officer duties. No results at this time, but Constant Vigilance! is his watchword.

Purrcy the tuxedo tabby looks back at the camera over his shoulder from where he stands in the corner between a tile wall and an uneven stone one. Plastic containers can be seen next to him. He looks quite concerned, but his eyes are a beautiful gray-green.

Purrcy the tuxedo tabby looks back at the camera over his shoulder from where he stands in the corner between a tile wall and an uneven stone one. Plastic containers can be seen next to him. He looks quite concerned, but his eyes are a beautiful gray-green.

Purrcy jumped up on the kitchen Chair O Love and he was feeling *feisty*! He discovered a gap between the blanket & the chair, explored it, and saw that it was Good.

Purrcy the tuxedo tabby crouches on a gray-green blanket-covered chair in a kitchen, looking a little wild.

Purrcy the tuxedo tabby crouches on a gray-green blanket-covered chair in a kitchen, looking a little wild.

A gray-green blanket is draped across a chair. The white-furred nose of a tabby cat peaks out the bottom, whiskers spread but eyes invisible.

A close-up of Purrcy the tuxedo tabby's face as he peers out from under a gray-green blanket on a worn brown vinyl chair. Only his eyes, little pink nose, and wide-spread whiskers can be seen.

Purrcy the tuxedo tabby peeks out from where he crouches in a nook made by a gray-green blanket draped over a worn brown vinyl chair. His eyes look very large and solemn, his paws very small.

People on Bluesky were discussing a tweet by a TERF called June Slater, who posted:

These trans women. Do they ever do things like women actually do, run a home, cook, put the washer on, get the kids to school, visit relatives in care homes, budget the bills, clean the house, chauffeur kids about? You know the reality of being a woman!

One of the boggling aspects of this "thinking", to me, is the way she doesn't seem to be able to conceive of MEN cooking or taking care of children or living spaces.

Katherine Dickinson said

there’s a weird expectation of childishness in men among these women to the point it’s like these women aren’t attracted to functioning adults and it’s like two steps from Why Don’t You Take A Seat With Chris Hansen territory

And I remember things I'd read about the history of housekeeping and service work that I wrote up here, and wondered:

Compared to the US & the Continent, Brits tended to be resistant to labo(u)r-saving home tech & reliant on servants for the middle-to-upper classes right up to WW2. After the War, *huge* shock of not having servants like before, & I think maybe upper-middle/upper-class men just ...use their wives?

bcuz before the War they were certainly childishly dependent, by US standards. e.g. Gentleman's service flats, in UK, were bachelor apts with cleaning, cooking, and personal valet services provided. No equiv in US AFAIK

I looked at some stats about household work, but there's basically nothing about how the lives of upper-middle-class or richer people live in different countries.

Ach, I shall quit this now and finish my Andor re-watch, so Dirk and I can watch the new eps when they drop on Tuesday.

Entry tags:

friday five

The Friday Five

1. Who was your first crush?

Ah, Brian Ames. This was back in ...we were in primary school. A playground romance. We kissed each other on the cheek every morning and then went off to do our separate things for the rest of the day. That was sixty-five years ago, and I still remember his name, his wavy brown hair, the smattering of freckles across his cheeks, and his sweet smile.

2. Are you an introvert or an extrovert?

Never quite figured that out. There's nothing I love more than hanging out with my family and friends, although I do need a certain amount of time to myself to recharge. I'm at ease meeting new people and have no problem talking on the phone to iron out a problem. But I'm also amazingly content with just myself for company. You pick.

3. What is your favorite non-sexual thing you like to do with the love of your life?

We'll dig into a few memories here since the love of my life passed eighteen years ago. I don''t have to dig too hard.
Long walks holding hands. (nope, not gonna cry)

4. What is one quirky habit your partner does that either annoys you or makes you grin?

My basket is too full to even begin on this. Let's go with - I don't currently have a partner.

5. Do you believe in monogamous relationships?

I do. I believe a person can have many relationships during their life, but (for me) the one they're currently in should be monogamous. Not for any cultural or regilous reasons, but because how can you get to know someone if your attention is split between people? Unless you don't want to know them that well. I can sympathize the hell out of that.

That said, people gotta figure out what works for them. Relationships are hard.

More British TV

I made it to bed around 3am. Much better than 5am. I have a doctor's appointment at 8am, so I'm going to try for 2am tonight; I won't even try for 1am because that's laughable.

Watched the 2nd episode of Towards Zero tonight. Looking forward to the final one tomorrow! Then I watched the first 3 eps of The Cleaner. I'm not sure how I feel about that one, but they're only a half-hour so it's not a huge time commitment. I didn't get back to Ludwig; maybe tomorrow.

Last year, I made a birthday trip to Ikea (and Jordan's Furniture). I still have one bookcase that I haven't put together, mostly because it's tall and it will be a bigger pain than usual. My therapist was asking about it this afternoon and something she said made me go, "oh, I could hire someone to put it together as a birthday present!" So I'm seriously considering that. Task Rabbit isn't super cheap but it would be really nice to have that bookcase up...

Entry tags:

Indivisible What's The Plan meeting, April 17; Edited

For some weeks now I've been attending Invisible's "What's The Plan?" Weekly discussion/organizing meetings with co-founders Ezra & Leah.

I've been taking notes on the meetings, I'm going to start writing them up to share. I'm not going to claim to meet journalistic standards, but I'll do my best to cover the ground & pull out the good quotes. You can watch the video here.

I've been taking notes on the meetings, I'm going to start writing them up to share. I'm not going to claim to meet journalistic standards, but I'll do my best to cover the ground & pull out the good quotes. You can watch the video here.

Please give me feedback on format, style, level of detail. I'm posting here first because I trust you guys most, I may post elsewhere or turn it into a bluesky thread, dunno.
( cut for length, US politics )

Entry tags:

Crossover alert! Kolchak the night stalker/SGA

This is the crossover I never expected to write.

The Highway Monster Murders (1810 words) by melagan
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Kolchak: The Night Stalker (TV 1974), Stargate Atlantis
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Carl Kolchak, John Sheppard, Rodney McKay, Minor Characters
Additional Tags: Unreliable Narrator, Timeline What Timeline, Canon-Typical Violence
Summary:

A myserious creature haunts Highway 285 leaving a trail of grisly, unexplainable murders in its wake. Kolchak sets out to investigate. This is his story.

Or - Kolchak meets a Wraith.

link: The Highway Monster Murders

Let's not do that again tonight, ok?

I didn't go to bed until after 5am. ooops. Luckily I didn't need to get up early this morning.

Tonight I watched the first episode of Toward Zero. Can't wait for the next one. Then I went over to PBS and watched 3 episodes of NOVA. I only meant to watch the one about Revolutionary War weapons - there was a submarine??!! - but you know how it goes.

I had hand therapy this afternoon for the first time, for my wrist. She thinks it's the ligament rather than the tendon. But it's all in the same area so it's pretty much the same treatment. The exercises I need to do are so much better than any knee, back, or shoulder exercises I've ever gotten. Will that actually make me do them? We'll see. Unlike the bus routes I take to the audiologist, this bus route is apparently never on time. None of the 3 different transit apps I used - one of them the official app - had accurate "real time" tracking. I spent a lot of time standing around at bus stops. Luckily it was sunny, only a little windy, and not too chilly. And I did get a lot of PokemonGO research tasks done.

Current Mood: calm

I may be jinxing myself...

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I Just Got a Kitten. What Do I Do?, by Mordecai Siegal

I Just Got a Kitten. What Do I Do?: How to Buy, Train, Understand, and Enjoy Your Kitten, by Mordecai Siegal:

Why do all these books with titles like What The Heck Do I Do With This Kitten??? insist on starting with a lengthy explanation of what cats are, how they work, and where to find them? I already have a kitten or I wouldn't have picked up this book which seemed to understand that I Just Got A Kitten.

It's a good resource if you're going to get a kitten and want advice on how to pick one and what to do once you've brought the guy home, but if you already have a kitten in hand, the last two chapters are the most relevant.

Fun Fact: The kitten on the cover of this book looks almost exactly like my kitten, though this kitten is fuzzier, and mine started out that small but has since tripled in size.

Purrcy

It was evening, and time for ... *Shenanigans!* #Purrcy had to zoom about as I went GRAR! and then there was the Tossing of Crinkly Toys. As you can see from his eyes he was very wild and fierce, not to be tamed by external forces.

Purrcy the tuxedo tabby crouches behind a wine box where it sits between a wooden and a tile floor. His pupils are blown wide, his whiskers splayed out and forward: the hunter lurks!

I'm at that point in Pesach where I'm hungry all the time because nothing feels like food. Hm. Dirk is having tortilla chips, I think I'll follow his lead ..

archery!

Geoff found a local archery club that offers adult beginner lessons, and we are taking six weeks of basic archery!

He did it briefly as a teen, I think; I had a toy bow as a child, but that's it. Lessons are held once a week in the basement of a church(!) about a half-hour walk from us, and as it gets warm I hope it will be an absolute pleasure to walk there and back in the evenings.

We've had one lesson so far. There were about a dozen students and two teachers: we were probably the oldest people there, and it went down to a couple university students. Seems like a nice group; there wasn't a lot of chatting, since we were there to listen and learn and do, but everyone was fun and friendly -- and the teachers were fun and friendly and also absolutely no-nonsense, as is appropriate. They showed us how to tell which eye is dominant, distributed bows and armguards, and told us that there are twelve steps to shooting, and each week we'll learn two more; week 1, unsurprisingly, concentrated on correct posture and on the rules of the range, i.e. not shooting anybody. We got to shoot at targets from a ten-yard line, and I was pretty good! Some people were all over the map, even missing the target entirely: I ended up with one in the bullseye and a couple in the first ring around it, as well as several further out. But, as I said when someone complimented me, in week four they'll teach us to aim, and then I'll lose it completely :)

By the end of the lesson, Geoff was already asking about buying bows of our own. (The club has loaner bows for lessons, but if you want to join the club itself, shoot on their outdoor range, etc., you need your own equipment.) I doubt I'll want to get that into it; we didn't do as much hiking and kayaking last summer as we wanted to, and do we really want to buy pricy equipment to split our outdoorsy-sport-time even more? But it could happen! Anyway the club offers adult intermediate lessons as well, so we can keep going after this without having to pony up if we don't want to.

This is such a fun city sometimes!

Entry tags:

Today's medical tip

If you sometimes have blood in your urine, even just a bit, even just now and then, and you test negative for a urinary tract infection, ask your doctor if you need to see a urologist. If it happens twice (especially if you smoke), TELL your doctor you need to see a urologist.

I've just had my follow-up appointment from having a small cancerous growth removed from my bladder. I'm fine! I feel fine! My prognosis is fine! But I'm glad we caught it early and wish I had gone to a specialist even earlier.

The doctor compared this procedure to removing a malignant mole from your arm or a polyp they find during a colonoscopy, so as procedures go this was a pretty simple one.

I now have to have a cytoscopy to watch for regrowth, and after four years the frequency will go down but I'll have to have them annually for the rest of my life, just another annual thing like a Pap or a mammogram.

I would have pursued more healthcare if I hadn't been scared. So if you're scared the way I was, I'll put some details below the cut; if you're squeamish, maybe don't click that arrow.

( cut for gross stuff )

I am clearly ready for TV again

I did not get out for a walk in the sun yesterday. In fact, I didn't get out until 9pm. A little after 8, I was getting ready to go out but my mother called. This won't take long, she says. We solved her Kindle problem in about 5 minutes. She hung up after 36 minutes and only because it was perilously close to dinner time there and my father gets grumpy if dinner is ready on time. *rolls eyes*

I watched the latest ep of The Chelsea Detective while eating dinner. After my walk, I switched over to BritBox and watched the first ep of Ludwig, which conference!roomie had recommended. I wasn't sure I was going to get through the episode, but then it started to get really interesting. So I'll definitely be watching the next one and probably the rest.

New Agatha Christie rendition, Towards Zero, drops tomorrow on BritBox.

Long day today. I started chat at 10am (still on chat...). I've got a webinar at 2pm, then I need to go in to campus to pick up those books and I'm doing tabling at 4. After that, I'm going to go see my friend that I used to work with at a different library. Then there's a PokemonGO meetup. I'd probably not go to the meetup except that it's right there, one building over from my friend's library. I probably won't get home until 7:30pm. I need to remember to take a protein bar of some sort.

Entry tags:

Purrcy: birds!

I was up too late, and Purrcy definitely felt it was time for me to get to bed. He was waiting right there! Pre-cuddly for your convenience!

Purrcy the tuxedo tabby sits in loaf position facing the camera not quite directly, pupils wide, ears alert. He's sitting on a red blanket on the bed, a blue blanket can be seen behind him. What a cute guy.

Purrcy the tuxedo tabby sits in loaf position facing the camera not quite directly, pupils wide, ears alert. He's sitting on a red blanket on the bed, a blue blanket can be seen behind him. What a cute guy.

This was actually from a few days ago. Last night I made every effort to go to sleep early, because both Mr Dr Science & I had to get up early (for us) to call the Well Manager people & see if they could come repair our system. Or at least I was doing that, Dirk was going down to see if he could get water out of the tank to flush the toilets.

Huzzah! We were in luck! They were able to come over and do all repairs by 10:20. What a relief! There is NOTHING that I miss about modern life more than running water, NOTHING. My back has been hurting to the point of crippling me today because I moved too many gallon jugs yesterday, even one at a time.

Today's weather was really nice after a run of cold and wet, and a band of storm across the southern US that kept migrants back. So a bit after noon I saw Purrcy was looking out the window and I saw a Tufted Titmouse really rollicking it up in the bird bath:

grainy picture of a Tufted Titmouse bathing exuberantly in a red granite bird bath

grainy picture of a Tufted Titmouse bathing exuberantly in a red granite bird bath

and then a bit later my first warbler of the year, a Yellow-Rumped of course, a male in full breeding plumage, getting the grime of travel off his feathers. That was really cool. I also saw that the Carolina Chickadees are definitely going in & out the bird house I cleaned out. Seeing the Yellow-Rump, I went & sat on the front porch with my binocs, and in an hour I also saw a Palm Warbler, Yellow-Bellied Sapsucker, Brown Creeper (early for here!), and heard a Pine Warbler, as well as most of the Usual Suspects -- at mid-day, which is usually nap-time for birds. It was extremely restful and happy-making on a day with too many non-happy-making events.

More TV

Still not 100% but pretty damned close. If only the terrible tinnitus would just go away. At least my head is feeling more normal.

I watched the latest episode of The Chelsea Detective, though I believe the next one is available today. Then watched Ellis, which was a great series and I hope there's a second one. And last night I watched a new(er?) version of Agatha Christie's And Then There Were None. Which I don't think I'd ever seen or read before because I'm quite sure I'd remember just how fucked up that story is; not exactly Poirot or Miss Marple. Perhaps not the greatest choice for before bed viewing, though I don't think I dreamed about it.

The weather has once again warmed up and the sun it out, so I'm going to try to get out for a walk before dark. Lately I've been going out around 8pm, which is still dark at this point. I did go out during the day yesterday, but it was cold and cloudy and the rain was coming.

I do have some books to pick up at the library, but I'm going to campus tomorrow, so I'll probably do that then.

Entry tags:

house,
purrcy

Purrcy & the "joys" of home ownership

With well-trained staff one can lounge comfortably and have exciting playtime brought to *you*!

Purrcy wanted a little light frolicking, but not enough to actually get up and move.

Purrcy the tuxedo tabby lies on his side on his carpeted cat rest, reaching up with his paws to bat at the leather strings flying about from a wand toy. An open woods stretching down to a road is visible out the window behind him.

Purrcy the tuxedo tabby lies on his side on his carpeted cat rest, reaching up with his paws to bat at the leather strings flying about from a wand toy. An open woods stretching down to a road is visible out the window behind him.

Well, we had a bunch of things planned for today. At least Mr Dr & I got our sheets changed! [gold star!] Then we discovered that ... there was no water ... [investigation montage] it turns out the pump that moves the water from the well management tank (which holds the water as it's slowly pumped up from our feeble well) to the house has died. On Sunday, of course.

Eventually I got hold of someone from the company who can fix it, but too late in the day for them to come today, so I have to wake up early in the morning to call them or meet them or something. And I had all these plans about what I was going to do or write today, but they've been totally destroyed.

My brain is just ... wet noodles. I'm going to lock this down, go to sleep, hope tomorrow works out better.

Entry tags:

real life

Random Update

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