quietlymagical

It's Monday!

We had a snow day today, which was very good. I managed to mostly not just play Stardew Valley the entire day straight, and actually do some grading. By which I mean, uh, about an hours worth total. Oh well. It's a start.

(I also did some nice things in Stardew).

Honestly the hour of grading I did was maybe the second most important hour of all of it. There's one more really important hour (actually enter comments) but now I'm in a much less dire place than I was. And yeah, there are several hours in between these two hours, but if they don't happen, they don't happen and everyone will live.

It is hard to care as much about Doing Good At My Job when like, fascism. Am I being kind? Am I hopefully teaching my students to be kind? I think that's probably more important than grading everything to the absolute pinnacle of my ability. Or so I'm telling myself. :/

After some grading and Stardew happened, Austin braved the Many Snow to come visit for regular Mondate! This is good! He showed me some of the things he worked on at Mystery Hunt, and we ate ice cream, and watched an episode of Leverage. It's the Grave Danger Job, which is mostly really good but the last five minutes where the team gets revenge on the drug cartel by using Homeland Security against them.......yeahhh that hits different in 2026 than it did in 2006. Blugh.

(Both Aldis Hodge and Beth Reisgraf are really good actors and able to put it on full display here. I do really like that part, and I like how good this episode is for the OT3 of all OT3s.)

Tomorrow is also a snow day, which is a very very good thing. I might walk Austin to the work shuttle, if I'm feeling very brave --I technically haven't left the house since arriving here Friday evening and it's probably time. The backyard is excitingly drifty! I don't think we have a sled anymore --I think someone borrowed it somewhere along the way and it never returned-- but fucking around on the bike path while wearing many gear seems like a noble pursuit. Maybe I will even bring a camera?

I hope you are staying safe and being kind to your neighbors and occasionally calling your politicians to yell at them. For what little it's worth, ICE's funding is going to run out unless the senate votes to extend it, so maybe like, call your senators sometime in the next day or two and tell them to fucking not?

<3
~Sor
MOOP!

xkcd_feed

https://xkcd.com/3199/

'Ugh, I'm never going to be like spiders. My descendants will all just be normal arthropods who mind their own busines and don't do anything weird.' --The ancestor of a bunch of eusocial insects

https://xkcd.com/3199/

flexagon

Things progress:

The cat is eating, the metamour is healing.

I do have a tenant! He starts March 1 and has signed an 18-month lease, though the deposit money hasn't shown up yet. Something to poke at.

I finished all my sewing/alteration projects and immediately got itchy for more. I've been intending January as a low-buy month, so there's stuff piling up in online baskets at blankshirts.com and moodfabrics.com. In the meantime I'm realizing that some of my athletic wear is still produced by black magic. I have flat seams that look like the wrong side of coverstitch machine stitches, but on both sides.

Made progress on several of my handstand exercises, and also more hand-to-hand. We're getting more used to working on it with no extra mats and no coaches.

The Montana trip is shaping up. The squirrel is going to come along(!), and we barely kept Birdie's dad from also showing up (!), and we found a surprisingly nice AirBnB very near my dad because I guess search results for groups of four are just better around there. Yesterday I told my dad the schedule and the guest list, and he took it pretty well, if with some confusion.

Things don't progress:

The NYT rejected my third crossword puzzle, which I'd had really high hopes for, with a very nice personalized letter from one of the head editors saying she was sad about them not taking it. But a rejection nonetheless. We are planning to rework it to address the feedback... but I'm feeling pretty down about it anyway. Maybe my taste in themes just isn't aligned enough with the cruciverbalist masses.

I was going to go to the Fetish Fair Fleamarket with the squirrel this year, but eventually learned that NELA itself has ceased operation and the FFF is no more. Looks like the pandemic killed it. More lost chances, another thing I attended for the last time without realizing it might be the last time. :( My gripe about this on a forum led to a discussion about Arisia also being much smaller than it used to be, about #metoo and Dobbs and covid collectively being extra hard on communities that require the genders to get along en masse.

Thanks to a giant snowstorm, there was no circus open studio today and no show to attend this evening. Only shoveling, and some stretching at home, although Birdie came over and stretched with me and cooked (we're attempting rosemary-salt bagels). A lot of things will still be closed on Monday too.

I'm having just a few feelings about being unemployed, or I guess about not being considered valuable by large powerful (rich) organizations. Some of this is about an unexpected eldercare expense, some of it is hearing about various perks provided by other people's jobs (subsidized concierge healthcare) and remembering the ones provided by my old job. Somehow the ICE stuff in Minneapolis, which oh yeah I've got to call my congress critters about, is not helping. It's a "what if nobody powerful cares about me" feeling. Of course I have some power of my own.

xkcd_feed

https://xkcd.com/3198/

'Oh, and can I borrow 50 sacks of loose flour, a pile of lithium-ion batteries, a bucket of bleach, and a bucket of vinega--' 'NO!!!!!!'

https://xkcd.com/3198/

sorcyress

I went to the doctor today! Well, yesterday, by the time I'm getting around to posting this. It was my regular yearly checkup, only my usual doc had no availability, so I nabbed an appointment with another doctor in the practice. Neither she nor I actually paid particular attention to the name on the computer screen, which meant it was a charming surprise when she walked into the room, we looked at each other, and we mutually went "......oh!" as we recognized someone who lives in the other half of our duplex.

(She kindly offered to not do the appointment if that would make me feel more comfortable, but honestly, I am very lucky in that I trust most doctors to be competent and trustworthy, and also knowing that my doc is queer is a Good Thing in terms of stuff like talking frankly about various queernesses of my own.)

( rambling details, CW medical stuff, short version is that everything is fine and I'm doing quite well bodywise )

So it was a good appointment overall and now I don't have to go to the doctor again until July. Huzzah!

~Sor
MOOP!

sorcyress

I first read the Geek Social Fallacies at a fairly young and impressionable age, and have always kinda tucked them away in the back of my head as "don't do these things!". Consider it part of my explicit learning how to be Good At Social that I've done (mostly via my mother).

Anyways, GSF#4 ("friendship is transitive") is one that I have apparently rebelled against so hard that it was a genuine and pleasant surprise to see one of the people in my discord server¹ refer to another one --someone they've never met in person and only know through that space-- as "friend". Like, I know friend can be a shorthand for a lot of different relationships, I'm not making any assumptions about Serious Intimacy or anything like that.

But gosh, while I can't-don't-won't assume all my friends are going to get along with each other, it's kinda really lovely when they do anyways. It feels good! (Community is good!)

~Sor
MOOP!

1: Free Space Dinosaur is my lovely little discord server. It's a dictatorship, with a strong cultural focus on small personal things instead of broad sweeping conversations. We try to be kind to each other, we try to ask before giving advice, somehow my very very light moderating hand has led to a really lovely little space. If you want an invite drop me a comment!

xkcd_feed

https://xkcd.com/3197/

Unfortunately, my scheme to trick NASA has now taken over a decade longer than planned and has run way over budget.

https://xkcd.com/3197/

sorcyress

I left off Satureve, I think? lots of very late dancing, which felt very good???

So Sunday continued my pattern of very leisurely late wakeup time (Arisia is one of the only times of year I just straight up guilt-free get to run my sleep schedule the way I actually want to). I got my stuff transferred from the one room to the other, and then had just enough time to hit up the art show before my goat check shift. But first.......Mount Arisia!

On Saturday,

mindways decided to try a speed run (apparently aided by wearing his very speedy pants) during the climb time, and managed to get the thirteen floors in a truly staggering time. I know that I'm not necessarily in nearly as good shape as him, was not wearing speedy pants (in fact, at that point I was wearing a lovely-but-heavy suede skirt), and critically, am quite a bit shorter. I didn't run it. I just decided "okay, if I was going to walk up these stairs like I meant it, what would I score?"

I was not quite a minute slower, but I am _very happy_ with my 2:15 ascension. A bit over ten seconds per floor when *not* running? Yeah, I'll definitely take that, and if we're in the same hotel in 2028, I think I'll have to at least try and beat that. I don't know if I have the stamina to full run up the whole thing, but gosh, wouldn't it be fun to try?

Having not made it up to the art show earlier, I had the vague disappointment of seeing several pieces I would consider buying, if they hadn't already sold. I think that's perfect in some ways, because it meant I got to admire them, and feel happy the artist is being paid, but not have to spend the money myself. It also meant I had a little more buffer to buy needless pretties in the dealer's hall instead, which I'm honestly quite happy about. (shockingly, I did resist the EXTREMELY LARGE d20s. Like, a size for putting on the desk and pondering. And _gorgeous_ too, too often the big ones are just kinda chintzy.)

Goat check was nice, then off to check my texts and send massive congratudolances to Tuesday upon hearing that The Providence Bureau of Invest-Egg-Ations, after placing second the last two years, has won the 2026 Mystery Hunt! Am I gonna get to see this particular sweetie ever in the upcoming year? Probably not, but I'm real happy for them regardless!

I wandered a bit and dealers halled a bit and eventually wound up eating food and hanging out with mom in their room until it was time for us to head to the masquerade. Mom always works as the backstage pirate, and I often work with them. It was...fine. Mom was lovely and the costumers were lovely and Antonia is an absolute bangup MC, and I don't think the audience could tell any of the particularly rough spots (except of course that the judges took forever, because they always do.)

Post Masque I did some lobbyconning. jere7my and I went and got Toast, and then eventually Tuesday showed up and they and I went to get more Toast. I am very pleased that by my last round of the evening, they had more cookie butter, so I could get my favourite combination.

Tues and I wandered a bit, including playing Lost Cities in person, where I did about as badly as I have ever played --I scored a total of one point. Just _brutally_ unlucky with the cards! Tuesday had like, 150 points to make up for it.

Off to bed went we, and that was that.

Monday morn was going to start lazy, but when I checked my phone, I saw a somewhat urgent message from LB saying that they'll were feeling sick and could I put a sign on their table until they could figure out how to get their supplies back. I sailed downstairs to the dealers hall and blatantly ignored the "this space is not open for another forty minutes" sign entirely. I can't summon the authority of I Am Supposed To Be Here everywhere, but I _definitely_ can at sci-fi cons. Do you _know_ who I _am_? I'm the child of Greykell and Richard, this place is in my blood!

I gathered LB's things for them, and was very pleased to see their box exactly fit in my (really, Rey's) rolly crate. So that was trivial to bring home, and I'll swing it by their place later this week. It is good to be able to help my friends and community!

Tuesday and I ate breakfast and got ready for our respective tasks --I had one last goat check shift, which was incredibly slow --apparently the snow scared people out of coming for just Monday?-- and she was off to the wrapup for hunt. I helped clean up and that was that, everything else about the con was lazing about deliciously.

More photos to come later. I hope you are having a good time of things. I hope tomorrow works out well for the all of us.

~Sor
MOOP!

xkcd_feed

https://xkcd.com/3196/

I've had countless nights where the line never left the bottom zone of the graph, but the few moments where it's climbed all the way to the top have made up for them all.

https://xkcd.com/3196/

sorcyress

It's Sunday of Arisia!

I didn't post yesterday because I was busy Having Fun (tm) so here's the things I did yesterday and today! And then my goal is, I guess, by the end of the week to make a lovely highly annotated clothing entry where I babble and post you lots of pictures of how cute I am.

Yesterday I got dressed and ready and headed off to a shift at Goat Check. Despite mom very nearly running the thing for like eight years now, I've never actually formally worked there. But it was good to have a little structure in my life, and so I had shifts yesterday and today, and I have a short one tomorrow. Both days so far have been a very nice balance where there's never been more than one person in line at once, but also there's never been more than about ten minutes without someone coming by to check in or out their coat.

Had lots of lovely conversations along the way, with friendly Kevin (who is here from Pittsburgh and plays DnD with the wife of an SCD friend of mine) and K***** (whose name I can't remember and am big mad about because they're very cool, but hopefully I will get to see them again at YTS!) and Thrantar and BDan and whoever else stopped by. Turns out to be a good gig!

On Saturday, I zooped straight out of Goat Check and went to the Renaissance Dance that Justin dC was running. He is a fine MC and a very good convention-level teacher, and so it's always a nice joy to watch him cope with the chaos. I mostly didn't dance this time, because I wanted to work on my knitting a bit, and also because he had a very full dance floor with several good supporting dancers around. This was also good because my friend Dax wandered by, and we had a good conversation catching up with each other about the last several years!

I slunk out to go get changed and prepare for the Night Market, a first-time Arisia event that seems to have gone very successfully. It was a "stuff swap" --no money to exchange hands, but little trinkets and crafts encouraged to be given to each other. Very kid friendly, but also a nice air of mystery amongst the adults. I had a box of beautiful vintage gloves from when mom was regularly finding them on the super cheap at estate sales for me --I'd been meaning to give much of the box away for aaaaages now, and so it was a lovely accomplishment to find a corner and array them in front of me (I also had "wee beasties" --rubber dinosaurs and other little toys that I've gathered throughout my adventures for those with hands bigger than most of the gloves). I received some ICE whistles and shiny rocks and a cute little pentacle and a couple dinosaurs and some lovely prints/photos and for a few people who wanted gloves but didn't have trinkets, I traded them for Words they liked.

This is how I met aforementioned unremembered K*****, who was doing wandering calligraphy and was willing to trade a pair of gloves for a little card reading "Good Girls Aren't Here". After a series of entertaining "made-sense-at-the-time" decisions, they later wrote me for free "Patellas are not for hitting". It was very satisfying!

The market wound down, the children went scampering off with their prizes, and I declared myself very satisfied to have emptied about 2/3rds the box of gloves! Back to the room for the third outfit of the day, and down to the dance hall for the only DJ Dirge set we got this year.

I danced for most of all the time from tenPM until he shut us down a bit after 2am. He was adorably sniffly as he gave a goodbye spiel, a "I'll keep coming back to Arisia as long as they have me, but man this place feels like home" and I, at least, also teared up with happy joy. It's at least my third year in a row closing out that dance, and it feels so so good for my heart to do so. Fuck but dancing like an idiot late into the night is the thing that heals what ails me. And I appreciate the con environment so much for being completely chill and safe to like...shed shoes and socks and coat and outer shirt and just be able to dance very comfortable.

Somewhere amidst the rest of it, jere7my and I did make it up to House of Toast, so that was a good part of Saturevening as well. And now, not to do spoiler alerts, it's quite late on Sunday and I have a Tuesday who is settling into bed and I wish to settle alongside her. More about how the rest of today went later.

~Sor
MOOP!

flexagon

This week was so much, I really wish I'd written separate posts about some of these things. It is troublesome how much good stuff and bad stuff happens at the same time -- and usually far too quickly for me to absorb, metabolize and think over the last experience before there's another.

I said last time that I hoped to have a couple of days in which to get more creative. So let's start there -- I got them! I finished my exercise video, and also got on with various sewing repair/alteration projects. That's been amazing because having a serger is amazing. The way it cuts as well as making a seam means I don't have to be very precise at all about cutting out pieces, as long as I'm precise when feeding fabric into the machine. So among other things, I 100% finished the project I thought would be the most daunting: adding size to a T-shirt by opening the side seams and adding racing stripes. And I got a little artsy with another one, where I was trimming down a loose dress and decided to try out some reverse applique with the leftover pieces of fabric. That was surprisingly fun, and came out very cool too. I asked Perse to draw on the dress, and went home and stitched around the drawing before snipping it out with scissors, and none of it required measurements or much planning. (Am I getting more punk, here in my middle years? Yes.) I enlarged the arm holes of a tunic, and am turning another tunic into a T-shirt, and am generally having a great time. Once the repairs are done, I'm going to maybe get into reverse applique in earnest. Blank T-shirts are cheap.

Circus continues to be good or great. We got our first standing hand-to-hand completely away from the safety mats, on Monday, and quite a few more on Friday.

The new condo: I got overconfident, and maybe a little bit antsy, and decided to get an official lead inspection. I thought the odds of finding lead were approximately zero, given the recent gut renovations to that house, but I didn't realize that the inspector would also look at the exterior of the building; yup, we've got some lead on exterior basement window sills, and now we have to disclose that to tenants and I'll have to find a deleading place. And I will get on that tomorrow, because for the rest of the week I was busy with the next things. It should all come out okay in the end, since there's a $3000 tax credit for bringing a unit into lead compliance, but in the meantime what a pain.

Pasta?? Yes pasta, I attended a fresh pasta cooking class at Dave's Fresh Pasta with the squirrel and it was a good time. We actually made pasta from eggs and durum flour, rolled it, and cut it into spaghetti and fettuccini. They fed us a lot of snacks plus salad, sandwiches, and our own newly made spaghetti, and the squirrel had a marvelous time. I forgot all about the idea of Dry January, and had a couple tiny glasses of the nice white wine they were serving; so much for my dedication to sobriety.

Cat. This was the worst. Early in the week Caltrop, the impetuous 3-year-old cat, simply and abruptly stopped eating. This took a while to notice and be sure of, especially since I usually feed the cats their wet food while

heisenbug usually feeds them dry food. So on Monday she got her annual checkup and I said everything was great, but she'd actually already stopped eating, and on Thursday I was back for an urgent set of X-rays and fluids and anti-nausea and appetite stimulant. Ugh. Which barely worked, and also she freaked out and decided her brother was a stranger and we had to separate the cats and it was all a giant pain, so on Friday we went back for bloodwork too, but after that she started eating a bit. Dry food only so far. But it's been more every day, and today I found a couple of "moist" meaty options she will also eat. A vast improvement. I'm not sure if I just spent $1000 for nothing, or if we just saved her life, or something in between; or if she had acute-onset pancreatitis (which the blood test might still tell us) or a Mysterious Cat Thing. She still won't eat her normal wet food.

Metamour. Overlapping this, on Friday, Perse had her third abdominal surgery in four years. So Friday was just the squirrel and me sending worried text messages back and forth about our creatures. We gave up on saying "Everything is okay" and settled on the more plaintive, but more accurate, "Some things are okay... so far." But her surgery went well. We were planning to visit her in the hospital on Saturday, but as we drove there we found out they were discharging her early (!), so the "visit" turned into picking her up and taking her home! Discombobulating, given that they said 2-4 days initially, but positive.

Tenant? For the third time, I have someone halfway through signing an 18-month lease on my new condo. Hopefully this one will finish signing.

In the meantime I'm just tired. And glad that my cat is eating. And also tired.

sorcyress

I'm at Arisia, yay!

My brain has been kindof a mess lately, and I subsequently overpacked (which is fine, it means I have lots of nice clothing options) and then spent the entire trip to the con cussing because my bag situation was annoying (it being entirely my own making didn't make it less annoying).

But! I am at the con, and after a brief initial interlude in the room getting prettified, I was able to pretty well relax into it. It helps that I started with a completely stunning outfit that bewitched the youth! (Seriously, I looked great and got a lot of nice comments from everyone, but there were a distinctly higher-than-normal number of teenagers looking at me with stars in their eyes, which felt good. I like being proof that you can be weird and wild and everything you were dreaming of when you were young.

(I know because I would've looked at myself with stars in my eyes, and that's a good thing to remind myself of sometimes).

I wore the outfit to the Bridgerton Ball, which had rather more dancing than last year (which is to say, any). Antonia was calling, and among other people, Clara was playing. It was a pretty nice time! Speaking of teenagers with stars in their eyes, I danced with two separate people who I'd guess to be in their early to mid twenties, both of who seemed super excited and happy to dance with me. Felt good!

After, I did a bit of lobbyconning --I apparently haven't quite figured out what my angle on how to have charming semi-small talk with people I haven't seen in ages-- I ate some snax and had a bit of room quiet time. I've arranged with mom to volunteer some for Goat Check, which I'm actually looking forward to --I won't actually do any grading, but I like the idea of pretending to.

I hope you have nice plans for your weekend. I'll try to keep updated with pictures and things. Under the cut are a few for tonight!

( honestly it's mostly just photos of me looking cute )

Goodnight!

~Sor
MOOP!

xkcd_feed

https://xkcd.com/3195/

Welcome to the International Space Station Exclamation Point!

https://xkcd.com/3195/

sorcyress

It's the cold and dark of winter and I made the daily challenge on my discord be "Screaming", because it's sorta how everything has felt. In revenge, I had to have an annoying conversation with my boss about some (uncompensated, non-contract) responsibilities I hold have been slipping, and had one of my cabinets literally collapse in the middle of proctoring a serious standardized test. It was very dramatic, luckily it was just me and one student to be very badly startled.

Also luckily, my anti-Nemesis (comrade? buddy? hero?) was able to quickly swing by, and as he always does, he made my life demonstrably better. Huzzah! Now, when can we have a building that doesn't use the cheapest possible materials? We have not been present long enough for things to be literally falling apart.

Before the mild disaster, I managed to do a bunch of what my therapist yesterday called "productive avoidance". Genuinely good things! Things that need done! I checked some serious stuff off my todo list! None of it was the stuff that's the highest priority right now, which not surprisingly, is also the stuff that's stressing me out right now. Maybe tomorrow I will finally do some grading? Hahahah oh god.

I dunno man, it's the cold and dark of winter and also it's the cold and dark of fascism. I should probably be texting a lot more often with my sister who's currently in a city overrun by government thugs. I hope she's okay. I hope she stays okay. I hope we all stay okay. That's not just sisters, I hope we all stay okay.

***

I wrote all the above during the department meeting, when I was still kinda sad and frustrated, but then Geometry PLC was quite good, and Clayton and I were able to walk home together and that was _excellent_. It's always pretty good, it's so _so_ valuable to have people I genuinely like to work with, but this time was also especially fun because he was filling me in his theory that Moby Dick is just an anime. It's very charming when he gets into things like that!

This evening has been...not terrible? Not amazing. Played a lot of video games, which is sometimes very good, and sometimes very avoidant. It wanted to be the really big push for packing for Arisia, since tomorrow night is dance class and I will be less inclined to do any packing work then. I did a non-zero amount of packing! It's nowhere near complete, but it was good progress! I also, critically, did all the laundry, so I'm actually set _up_ to do more good packing tomorrow.

And I helped Rey buzz her hair short which was quite fun --I always like a chance to play with the clippers! And I washed all the dishes, which is good --I've been only an intermittent dish fairy these past few weeks, so it felt good to do it proper.

I still need to update my dailies list, which I'm trying to pay better attention to this year than last. I think I sussed out it was ~130 days that I actually logged things last year? Which is...not great. I'd like to do better this year, I'd like to see if I can at least get 2/3rds of the days gone. Using Habitica too, helps. Having the double things to log is actually quite nice, they scratch similar but not-quite-the-same itches.

I hope you are well and happy and stay that way.

~Sor
MOOP!