moragmacpherson

Reading. I continue to work my way through the She's A Beast archives, to a degree that is not necessarily ... uh ... optimal, in terms of all the other things I want to do...

I slowed down on LIFTOFF, on account of resuming reading from the start with A, and then this evening I tripped and fell and am. More. of the way through it. again.

Finished What Is Queer Food? by John Birdsall. Ultimately the argument is that the queerness is a function of community -- the role that food plays in eating together -- though he also tries at various points for "enjoying food is queer" (among other things), which I do not think I am the target audience for. (Having said which I am now wondering what it would take to convince me of that line of reasoning, and Ideas Are Stirring. Hmm.) Overall a mixture of anecdotes from culinary history and fiction to fill in events that went unrecorded; he does hold space for people to be complex and flawed, and I appreciated the history that was actually history, but -- alas, this did not really work for me.

Writing. Words. Continue. To be. Eked out.

Watching. The 2026 Migraine World Summit is ongoing and eating a lot of my time and brain; thus far nothing has made me actually vibrate with fury and I've had a couple of useful joining-the-dots moments, so mustn't grumble there, really. And I have finally watched the talks from last year's Day 2 that I missed due to time changes, and have started transferring my digital notes from last year into my notebook...

Playing. Inkulinati: we continue Not Dead Yet in the Exploders run on Master difficulty.

The Ridiculous Colours Game.

Sudoku... appears to have let go of my brain for now?

Cooking. This evening I have been attempting to remember how to make Spätzle, and got there eventually (part of the difficulty being that this is the first time I've made them since acquiring a dedicated Spätzlebrett, and I needed to reestablish correct consistency of the dough...)

Eating. This morning we engaged in a Weekend Morning Ritual of going down to the local fancy bakery and getting brunch from them. We also got Treats for Afternoon Tea; I am delighted that they'll supply me with cardamom buns that I don't have to actually make myself.

I have also been Craving Brownies, but not enough to actually make them myself (and also The Oven Is Broken), and consequently have eaten them courtesy of both Wagamama (ritual Thursday night takeaway) and London Zoo (Saturday afternoon tea).

Exploring. London Zoo! Saw creatures! Maybe I will even go back and edit in more details about the creatures! Creatures: good.

Several bimbles around local front gardens (etc) to enjoy Spring Flowers.

Growing. Harvested (and consumed!) more salad. Transplanted some garlic. Wrangled some more weeding. Have yet to sow any more things but really want to have Actual Plants this growing season so, uh, maybe that can be a priority for Breaks From Migraine World Summit, not that that's worked so far...

Observing. THE BAT.

And then for brunch this morning we took our breakfast slightly further than usual to a different park bench, this one surrounded by daffodils, and then additionally wandered a little way down the New River (neither new, nor a river) to see if the coots were doing things yet (which I have also been checking every time I go to the pharmacy to pick up meds). The coots aren't, BUT there were TEN EGYPTIAN GOSLINGS peeping about the place!!! At least one of whom was Extremely keen on coming All the way down the bank and plapping along the edge of the bricks, presumably because they were warm and felt nice on feet? Certainly two very gentle attempts to chase it back towards its parents got them contemplating hissing at me, and only persuaded it to maybe do the thing for about thirty seconds at most, so I gave up on that and just stood back and watched them for a bit, and then was very relieved that the foolhardy baby did upon parents Alarm Calling (as best we can tell about A Passing Dog) go FWEEP FWEEP FWEEP all the way back up and into the bundle of its siblings. An unexpected and very welcome delight.

kaberett

highlights included:

the lion ROARING
glasswing (Greta oto) pupae: tiny, bright leaf green, with sparkly metallic bits (gold and silver)
the rhinoceros ratsnake (Gonyosoma boulengeri): has a NOSE. why is its NOSE pointy? no(se) idea!
turquoise gecko (Lygodactylus williamsi)

otherwise everything is still Migraine World Summit (though I have once again learned a useful thing today! neck pain can be a prodrome symptom!) and Special Interest.

mark posting in

dw_maintenance

Happy Saturday!

I'm going to be doing a little maintenance today. It will likely cause a tiny interruption of service (specifically for www.dreamwidth.org) on the order of 2-3 minutes while some settings propagate. If you're on a journal page, that should still work throughout!

If it doesn't work, the rollback plan is pretty quick, I'm just toggling a setting on how traffic gets to the site. I'll update this post if something goes wrong, but don't anticipate any interruption to be longer than 10 minutes even in a rollback situation.

kaberett

In apparent celebration of Migraine World Summit, I have spent this evening having an unscheduled migraine attack for no obvious reason. I disapprove. (Because I've been doing a lot of audiovisual processing, captions notwithstanding? Because I had my screen much brighter than usual for a while playing a colours game?* Because oven't?)

Nonetheless I have watched and made digital notes on all of 2026 Day 2, watched and made digital notes on 3/4 talks from 2025 Day 2 (which I missed at the time), and made physical notes for 2025 Day 1 and 1/4 of Day 2. I am... sort of catching up.

I am really enjoying my pens. I also find myself with the problem of wanting lots of different notebooks and, also, to keep everything in One Single Solitary Notebook, For Convenience...

* NB I am a rocks nerd. My colour discrimination is ludicrously good. I am sorry that that link is weird and competitive about my ridiculous score, but not sorry enough to provide you with the bare link.

edenfalling

It has been kind of a trip living in a Minneapolis suburb these past few months, but I think on the whole I prefer not to get into any of that here.

In general, life continues. I ruthlessly yanked my little section of payroll (mileage tracking and reimbursements) out of chaos into proper organization, and then a coworker I have never personally interacted with got promoted to assistant manager and assigned all the tasks upper management had been trying to foist onto me. Which, on the one hand, I am glad to be free of a task I didn't want in the first place (to say nothing of the sweet release of not dealing with the executive director), but on the other it's annoying to have somebody else reap the fruit of my labors.

Ah well. One moves on.

I am working pretty minimal hours at Not The IRS this year, which is reasonable since I am new locally and don't have a pre-existing client base. But I have been making a good impression on various walk-ins and drop-offs and people who just scheduled an appointment with whoever's available, so next year I should have some repeat/request clients as well as clients of opportunity. I think I really must buckle down and up my certification level, as well as get our in-house small business certification, because that will make me more likely to show up as "the best match for YOU, dear client!" in our various scheduling programs. I have been lazy about testing up because my old office knew I am actually qualified to be a level 4 (or 4.5ish) tax preparer despite only officially ranking as level 3, but unofficial ranks don't transfer like official ones, alas.

I am slowly getting my new apartment in order. All the basic stuff has been done for ages, but I still have some boxes I should unpack and tidy away, my kitchen needs more organizing, and I have yet to hang a few pieces of art. But I bought a new armchair and some nice throw pillows at Ikea recently, so I am good on the furniture front. I think I keep putting stuff off because I want to kind of spend an entire weekend doing Household Tasks, but obviously I won't HAVE an entire weekend until tax season is over. It's a silly psychological block, but annoyingly persistent.

Hmm. Also I have been reading a lot of heavily trope-laden Harry Potter fic lately, sort of returning to my fandom roots. I feel ambivalent about this because, you know, Rowling and her everything (may she die in a fire), but a lot of people still writing for HP have taken an attitude of "Fuck you, you transphobic neo-Nazi asshole, you don't get to steal and destroy a huge part of my childhood," and putting in all kinds of things specifically because she's expressed disapproval of them. Which is kind of nice.

I have to be wary when looking through people's AO3 bookmarks, because a lot of the tropes I am currently wallowing in tend to come with a side of "let's bash Ron and Hermione in order to set [fill in character(s)] up as better friends for Harry!" and I cannot be having with that. There is also quite a lot of Ginny-bashing (but not Neville or Luna), which irritates me because Ginny's (still) (always) my girl and the particular flavor of that bashing leans HEAVILY misogynistic. :(

Also I am having way too much fun playing Fallen London. I did try to narrow my focus to one plot thread at a time after initially running around and sticking my nose into everything, but the game really encourages sticking one's nose into everything so right now I have about two dozen things going and I focus on whichever one speaks to me on a given day. I remain a Watchful Lady in search of my Nemesis (my brother's murderer), but I have backburnered that plot until I get up to level 7 in all the Name quests and crank all my base stats to at least 100. (Currently my Persuasive is lagging. I keep getting distracted from seducing the Barbed Wit.) Then I think I will let the Ambitious Barrister make me a person of some minor importance (I backburnered that too; she's been sitting in my lodgings for DAYS, whoops!), after which I shall at long last embark on a voyage to Venderbight in search of the brother-killing asshole who I am definitely gonna shank one of these nights. :)

Current Mood: okay
Current Location: robbinsdale, mn

kaberett

I currently have a bit of a special interest happening, right. So I spent a bit of today's therapy session talking about it, as one does, and then meandered around to one of my current Big Topics[1], and made it all the way through to the wrapping-up stage of proceedings!

... when My Favourite Metaphor About Therapy abruptly suggested itself to me and I had. A Moment.

Which is how I found myself explaining that, in a thematically appropriate coincidence, said favourite metaphor is "emotional heavy lifting, with trained spotter".

To which came the response: "... can I. borrow that."

And thus: A Good Grade In Therapy.

[1] social anxiety. it's the social anxiety.

jjhunter

I asked a women named Sonnet
director of a poet's palm conservancy
what it was like to be in asynchronous conversation
with someone who was no longer there
the poet had risen each day to meditate in silence
and wanted silence for his mornings planting palms
now many unpublished manuscripts were being found
(as were many loving post-its from his wife Paula
working around his need for morning silence)
and his late-life handwriting was slowly, painstakingly
being decoded and transcribed
was it like finding seeds waiting like time capsules
for someday growing in the forest floor
or was it like being haunted

She spoke of the hundreds of books needing care
after decades' nurturing in that humid house
opening a book of eastern philosophy almost beyond saving
riddled with holes from book beetles' eatings
and finding on the next page a note in the margins from the poet
addressed tenderly to the beetles, saying
'you can have the binding, but please leave me the pages'

The palms he spent his life planting
and the poems he spent his life planting
and the pages of all those silent mornings seeding words
we are eager to hear now
may they continue growing in their season
may William and Paula Merwin's names stay living on our tongues

===

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

kaberett

Via divers alarums and excursions we have established that the oven seems to trip All The Electrics... when it hits A Certain Temperature. ( Read more... )

But. BUT. Today I SAW THE BAT for the first time this year (having been doing a questionable job of actually managing to watch for it at bat o'clock over the last several weeks); and my Special Interest In Moving My Body went surprisingly well; and A curled up on the sofa and did some more Reading About Special Interest with me; and I am actually doing alright.

kaberett

Back at the beginning of January beadsbuttonslace wrote up some reflections on this book, which interested me enough that I put in a hold on my library's only digital copy, which was an audiobook, and then I managed to listen to it in under a week, and now I am subscribed to Johnston's newsletter (and reading its archives) and also trying to work out whether I want to buy a physical copy or a digital copy for my own library.

Which is to say: I liked it. A lot.

( Read more... )

And some final notes:

it was only earlier today that I realised that an article that did the rounds a little while ago, The new MacBook keyboard is ruining my life... is BY THIS SAME PERSON
at least two of you will be delighted to know that in the Epilogue, she ( spoilers... )

kaberett

Reading. I confess I have tripped and fallen into a special interest and am therefore currently primarily working my way through the archives of She's A Beast. BUT.

This was all kicked off by A Physical Education: How I Escaped Diet Culture and Gained the Power of Lifting, Casey Johnston, inhaled; more comprehensive notes on this topic currently part way through being typed up.
I am also about half way through (reading!) LIFTOFF: Couch to Barbell, also Casey Johnston, and am having fun starting to play with moving my body in ways.
Continuing the theme of Moving Bodies In Ways and What Even Are Muscles, I have also started Science of Pilates (Tracy Ward).
I also continue to work my way through What Is Queer Food?, John Birdsall, and am nearly done. Probably more thoughts on this at some point in the upcoming week.

Writing. Words continue to, very slowly, go up.

Listening. More Hidden Almanac. Very close to being caught up to the point I've theoretically listened to with A (some of which I wound up being asleep during)...

Playing. Inkulinati Exploders run on Master difficulty continues. We have now broken a quill (DEMONS :|) but we do continue to progress...

Another round (well, most of one) of The Little Orchard, this time with The Child deciding that we SHOULD turn the Bothersome Crows back over and put them back...

Cooking. New recipe! Meera Sodha's leek & chard martabak. Unlikely to make again but not sorry to have made.

Exploring. Adventures this week have included:

Wood Green Mall, which contains PRIDE STAIRS, and the Community Diagnostic Centre, which contains GIANT WATERFOWL MURAL
the walk between Wood Green underground station and Wood Green Mall, feat. ACORN BOLLARDS
went for a bit of a Cross Walk one evening earlier this week (brain said AAAAAAH) and discovered along the way a fantastic white-with-pink-stripes camellia
generally Going Out To Run Errands is currently accompanied by Many Flowers and that is nice, actually

Observing. flowersss.

jjhunter

Pick a thing or two that sums up how you're doing today, this week, in general, and tell me about it in the 5-7-5 syllables of a haiku.

=

Signal-boosting much appreciated!

kaberett

( Read more... )

kaberett

a frenzy of daffodils, with ridiculous doubled frills; the one in the foreground has a green streak

About twenty metres up the road is a front garden that is, at this time of year, full of ridiculous daffodils. It is an Annual Delight. I took this photo yesterday, and then I dragged A out to visit it at lunchtime today, in glorious weather. It has been a good day.

kaberett

This evening I am having A Headache. It's an annoying headache; it's definitely a distracting headache; but it's "just" A Headache. No other symptoms that I'm noticing.

... except that it's Exactly The Right Time For A Migraine, and yesterday I had a bunch of migraine prodrome symptoms. (Being Too Warm. Wanting to close my eyes a lot. Nausea. Overwhelming despair.)

I find myself Wondering whether my regular menstrual migraines actually started on 1^st January 2021, or if that's just the point at which symptoms tipped over into very obviously photosensitive migraine. At that point I was on continuous acute pain relief, and it is slowly dawning on me that An Annoying Headache with no other symptoms distinguishable from background noise (anxiety, depression, thesis-related stress, ...) is the kind of thing I'd have just merrily ignored, and for that matter that I'd still be ignoring if I weren't now Keeping A Headache Diary...

S	M	T	W	T	F	S
					1	2
3	4	5	6	7	8	9
10	11	12	13	14	15	16
17	18	19	20	21	22	23
24	25	26	27	28	29	30
31

Like Trying to Hide the Daylight From the Sun

vital functions

zoo!

Performing some traffic maintenance today

miscellany

various things make a post: work, other work, home decor, fanfic, and Fallen London

A good grade in therapy, something that--

Poem: "Memories of Merwin"

apparently we also need a new oven

[books, movement] A Physical Education, Casey Johnston

vital functions

How Are You? (in Haiku)

[food] the courgette and tofu thing

have a daffodil(s)

[migraine] a belated realisation

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January 2016

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