the blog is back
Sometimes the internet points me in strange directions.
Now I want a scythe to mow the lawn.
I’m hesitant to get it because impaling yourself during a pandemic seems very avoidable by not getting a scyth.
I am content to want and not have. I can mow the lawn easily (but not well) with a weed whacker.
I had a good busy feeling May day.
ET creature and I went to the park.
We didn’t try to go swimming. My friend Rhea have us masks. I bought groceries from the restaurant supply place that does curbside delivery. My friend Joseph stopped by and sat in the yard and we chatted from the porch. My mom’s handy man came over and didn’t mow all my newly planted strawberry plants. We had Thai takeout for our weekly exciting food night. I like weekly takeout. I want to support all the wonderful restaurants near me.
In job news, I got furloughed. So I won’t be paid for a week this month or next. I took a vacation day for today and I totally did work. I can’t do that when I’m furloughed. That is going to be hard for me. My job doesn’t consume my identity, I don’t need it, but damn do I enjoy it. I miss my physical library, but there is much I can do for the institutional repository from home. I have taken on a number of practicum students. Much will get done, much will be taught and learned. I’m excited about it. Being furloughed feels extremely inconvenient on a number of fronts.
Most everyone I know are having a hard time of it. I’m worried about a number of my friends, especially the folks with depression. It feels like gravity has been turned up, and they’re the folks who tend to be carrying the most.
I had a busy and beautiful day. I’m tired. This is my almost 3am post. Time to return to head to bed! Good night internet.
My mom got me fifty strawberry plants. I planted most of them.
In the future I may damn well need a dehydrator.
I am a reluctant gardener, but digging was soothing.
I realized I can sit outside during my work break. When I was physically at work I will sometimes walk around the stacks and look at books. I miss the library.
I tried to garden and while being inept I got a tiny bit of glass in my finger. To encourage it to escape my flesh I wrapped my finger after applying a baking soda paste.
Now I have a true friend and confidant.
I played Ticket to Ride (the app of the boardgame) on Monday with my friend Joseph. The game has a basically unusable chat feature and while I enjoyed the game it highlighted what I was missing (hanging out with my friend) more than it scratched my itch to game. It did reignite my desire to game.
Last night, I played Die Crew on weird unwieldy software mostly in German (http://brettspielwelt.de/Community/Download/) remotely with friends in both Madison Wisconsin and New York City. We paired the software with Google Hangouts for voice and face viewing. The game is a cooperative trick taking card game with a space theme. I like it! And I look forward to playing it more.
Today I played two player Tsuro, which is a wildly different game at two player. With more players (it plays up to 8 beautifully) and it is light but feels much more like chance than strategy. Two player gives room for deeper strategy. I played this with card board bits face to face with my husband creature and it was wonderful.
This evening we began playing a legacy game which we bought back in 2018 after Joseph described it with such glowing praise that I bought it before the conversation was finished.
How did the first game go? Well we (ET, Rose and I) messed up and didn’t actually play the first legacy game, we just played normal pandemic. We won! Winning was wonderful. I look forward to playing more.
Is it in bad taste to play pandemic during a pandemic?
These appeared on my porch. I think they are local, but they may be invasive?
I don’t know what to do if they are a breeding pair? I’m worried about exponential gnomes.
But mostly I feel loved and seen and understood. And deeply deeply curious as to the origin story.
Mystery gnomes!
My electrician found me a tuck pointer and I’m feeling hopeful. I got a few bricks trying to escape and my chimneys are grumpy.
I am hopeful it’ll get fixed in a couple weeks. Home owning is exciting times.
I cried real hard. Snot escaping at velocity hard. I want to see my friends, I want to go out, I want to be able to focus. I feel guilty about how good I have it. I hate that I feel like I’m buying my safety from a supply chain that doesn’t support the people doing the hard work, I’m meaning Amazon and instacart but also parcel delivery folk and grocery store employees.
Today is going better. The stuff getting to me is still getting to me, but crying loosened something in my heart and I feel better for it.
My dad’s shrinks office called and he can have a telepresence meeting with him. This is good news as now would not be a good time for him to be manic (which is how he got a shrink).
All my previous new hair pictures were from before I re-did my hair dye. Which I did because I said I would on this blog.
I really like that on camera my hair looks pretty much like it used to, but in person, whoa, punk rock.
Pet worms. In my kitchen, but sometimes they go on field trips to my office. Today was bring your worms to work day!
Working from home is weird. I don’t think I would mind it if it wasn’t a pandemic.
Vermiculture is cool. I checked Worms Eat My Garbage from the open library. I got a early edition https://archive.org/details/wormseatmygarbag00appe/mode/2up