Whale, whale, whale - another dang ol' shirt. Cozy cheap flannel, no major construction errors.
I've been buying a lot of women's sweaters from thrift stores and re-tailoring them. Definitely need some new buttons for this one.
Made a friend from the scraps, his name is Whaleiam. Free pattern (in German) is here if anybody is interested.
Life is pretty good, my boyfriend is coming to Chicago this weekend. Gonna go to some museums, the aquarium, a drag show, the usual.
Nice Whale Shirt. I don't have a whale shirt but I do have a bicycle shirt.
k bitchez I'm drunk. It's 6:30 at night and I"m in a 6th floor loft that used to be a Masonic Temple. I rode the tram two hours just to get away from my roommate's fucking dandruff.
There are people who sleep in tents down by the river. There are those who lie naked on the sidewalk and mutter at you incoherently. There are those who sell M&Ms for $1 on the subway to make ends meet. You are not they and they are not you and we say a silent prayer for minimum_wage and tacocat can I get a witness amen.
Last night was the mid-show party. It is the second mid-show party of the season for the season is two shows. Which means, objectively, I'm 3/4ths done. It also means I get to drink beer on the job. I had two and a swig. My partner in crime had eight. Do you get to drink eight heinekens on your job? Right. So the things I have to bitch about are kind of corner-case first-world bullshit. Right? Right.
But fuckin' A you miss your family.
I spent an hour in an isotank today. Third time. I'm beginning to get it. But my body does this thing where it saves up water and then pees it all out so I had to pee three times in an hour. Which fucked with my zen. But I sorta felt the zen for once.
I asked mk on Saturday why he's got an "unfollow all" on the settings page but not an "unmute all" or "unblock all." He said he'd code it. I'm waiting for that button. I invite each and every one of you assholes that I got into a fight with to do us both a solid and not remind me why I did it the first time.
When you live on the river and the river rises you might die. That is the reality of the 30 or so people I ride blithely past every fuckin' day. And while I wouldn't live on a goddamn river in goddamn Los Angeles for all the tea in china we're talking about people who have no tea and aren't in china and you know what? If I were a schizophrenic drunk stuck in Los Angeles yer damn skippy I'd live on a fuckin' sandbar in the middle of the goddamn LA river.
I have no point. I'm listening to Vas and wondering if Azam Ali bailed on the US like she threatened to in 2007.
There will come a day when I, and the people who matter to me, will not be a seven hour commute apart. And I will silently cry.
I'm taking a class on Coursera which was just too perfect for me to pass up, really. I think I mentioned a few weeks ago I am working on A Mission: I am trying to collect every Rolling Stones album on vinyl. There's a little nuance to the goal I haven't finagled yet, specifically whether or not "every Rolling Stones album" means "every (studio) album" or "every-every album," but I figure I don't need to decide on that one until I have every studio album first.
The course is "The Music of the Rolling Stones, 1962 - 1974." I am about halfway through. I am using this week off of work to get ahead because, well that's just a good idea right? I am really, really enjoying it. I had heard of Coursera before and even signed up for a Poetry course but never ended up taking it. Now I see that the site also offers "History of Rock Parts 1 & 2," a course I always wanted to take in college but never had the availability for. I am really excited and I am going to take these too. Sadly, although I want Coursera to be more useful, interesting, and relevant to me, there really aren't many other courses offered on the site that really pique my interest. Maybe "The Behavior and Habits of Chickens," but that's about it.
I am reading Helter Skelter, recommended by kleinbl00. It's huge but easy reading so far. I am writing a prose piece which may or may not be a mess but it will hopefully be a fun write and the story driving the piece I think is a fun story. That's what I want to do - tell fun stories. I often feel writers and especially poets are way too Serious about themselves and their Work. I don't like it.
It's NaNoWriMo now - anyone doing it? I am doing it accidentally with aforementioned prose piece. And my usual monthly goal of trying to write every day. Every month is Writing Month for me.
My upstairs neighbor has complained to management twice about the sound of my door closing. They have contacted me and let me know they do not think there is anything I can do about the request/basically they don't really support the neighbor in his miserable existence, but they are going to come by today and put weather proofing on the door which may (probably won't) help with the noise. I am pretty sure they are doing it so they can tell the dude they tried something to help - I do not think that he will feel it improves anything, but at that point I suspect all other involved parties will say "Tough titty, dickhole. Get some earplugs and an attitude adjustment."
Maintenance is late to our appointment.
Things are pretty good, I am old now and I like it. I think 27 will be a good year for me. I'm excited. I mentioned to mk and thenewgreen and kb and 'bootz at the wedding I used to have a weird thing with compulsively determining if strings of numbers were divisible by 3. I guess a vestige of that has still carried over into adult life because I really like being an age that is not only divisible by 3, but is 3 3 3. It's just such a tidy number, to me.
Aren't people and their brains funny?
- There's a little nuance to the goal I haven't finagled yet, specifically whether or not "every Rolling Stones album" means "every (studio) album" or "every-every album," but I figure I don't need to decide on that one until I have every studio album first.
From someone who once had 1100 albums, I say that you want to collect all the studio albums. The point of having a collection like that is delving deep into the artists' psyche, study their artistic development, and hear the details of what they were able to create when they had time, equipment, and the ability to do it over and over again until they got the recording they wanted.
Live albums and other one-offs are an interesting documentary about one night (or a hand-selected series of tracks from multiple nights), but they only get one shot at the song, the crowd has an effect on their performance, and equipment/recording techniques get in the way of nuance.
So yeah, there my be one or two live recordings that add materially to your understanding of the artist, but "all the studio albums" is where my money's at.
And more Stones opinion...
No need to buy any studio past Tattoo You.
Exile On Main Street is my favorite, Get Your Ya Ya's Out is my 2nd.
My favorite song
I don't know why, Keith's vocals, it's super loose and doesn't give a fuck, talking about all the things done roughly and wrongly in the past, Graham Parsons reference, I don't know why, amongst a huge catalog of songs it's my unremarkable favorite.
I listen to the Stones rarely now a days but oh god I've listened to a lot of stones.
In a world of overly sensitive white guys with guitars relating their valuable 'wisdom' and pain the stones just rock.
I'll go back to listening to west African music now that you've baited me with completing the greatest rock and roll band of all time.
My boyfriend's trying to get all the Pink Floyd albums, but it's not as easy (or cheap) as it first appears...
Here's his holy grail right now : https://www.discogs.com/Pink-Floyd-Pulse/release/647117 about 400$!
The funny thing is we found this recording on a cassette at my parents country house a couple weeks ago. Weird because my parents barely ever listened to any music. But now that we have been playing in the car for a couple weeks, he wants it even more sigh
I wish NaNo had happened one week earlier this year. Then I could've committed to it again. I have a big bunch of word-vomit that needs to be expelled so I can get back to the core stories I am working on. But now, this week, I am just too busy with other commitments (which I wouldn't have made if I'd been doing NaNo).
So no NaNo for me this year.
The best year ever for me was maybe 2 or 3 years ago? One of the Seattle writing groups - The Hydrophobic Ducks - took over an entire Denny's restaurant, all night. At the stroke of midnight, everyone opened up their laptops (or whatever) and began writing.
Any time someone hit a goal they'd yell it out - "a thousand words!", "five thousand words!". It was fun.
I wrote until about 5:AM and put down 7k words, I think.
Talk about a healthy start to NaNo! Hit your first week's word goal in one night! Bam.
- It's NaNoWriMo now - anyone doing it?
Facebook reminded me that two years ago I was taunting all the NaNoNiNies by editing 50,000 words out of the manuscript in 30 days.
I feel like I have probably commiserated with you on this elsewhere. When I was typing out the question I actually had a thought not unlike the vegan joke: "surely, if anyone is doing NaNoWriMo this year, they would mention it in Pubski, right?"
And then I was like "Oh, right. I talk to Hubski about trying to write every day for a whole month all the time."
- That's what I want to do - tell fun stories. I often feel writers and especially poets are way too Serious about themselves and their Work. I don't like it.
It's not just writers. That's why I'm not studying theatre here-- our department is convinced that we have to do something film can't do, something that is Artistic and Serious and Affecting. You know what's affecting? Real characters that I can care about. Not a crazy woman that kidnaps some people at a party and brings them into her terrifying fantasy house.
I'm fascinated by Coursera and other MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses). It's both surprising and not at the same time that less than 10% of enrollees (if I recall correctly from the book College (Un)bound) in these classes ever wind up finishing. Unsurprising if you take the signalling theory seriously, because these MOOCs don't hold a candle to a traditional four-year degree where you pay lots of money and get a sheepskin, so there's less payoff in the end. But the high dropoff rate is surprising because I figure that a sizeable chunk of people who enroll in these classes (a) know that it's not really going to further their career but is merely for education's, and so (b) take classes that they're genuinely interested in. People therefore must be dropping these classes because they underestimate the time commitment or they overestimate their interest in a subject. Both completely understandable, but lamentable.
Thanks for being a part of the 10%.
I love the opportunity to take these 3 music courses because, yeah, I'd wanted to take stuff like this in college but I couldn't. There is an option on Coursera to buy the course certificate so I can "officially say I've officially done it" for $50 but to your point - yeah, this is completely unrelated to anything except my curiosity and pleasure, so I certainly won't be spending my money on that.
I did pretty well on the 1st test but not that well on the 2nd. At first I thought "Oh, well, I passed," shrug and started to move on. Then I was like "But wait fuck this! Do you want to retain the knowledge that you're here trying to absorb just for funsies or what?" Like, why take a Rolling Stones course to know more about my Rolling Stones albums only to barely pass and immediately forget it? There was a definite mentality left over from college courses and grades and passing being what mattered that I had to fight a little.
For the poetry course I never completed, honestly, as I started to go through the course I became less interested as I saw the grading structure and learning expectations. Basically just 4 quizzes/exams of 30 questions or so each. I wanted to learn about poetry but I didn't want to sit through lecture and get quizzed on it, I guess I really wanted something which would have had more challenge to me and more discussion. More challenge would have meant like writing assignments, and discussion of course is an issue with online courses anyway, so it makes sense that Coursera just wasn't that good of an option.
- It's NaNoWriMo now - anyone doing it? I am doing it accidentally with aforementioned prose piece.
About the same here. I've had a tough couple of days, but I'm going to return to the intentionally-terrible prologue tomorrow. Two hundred words a day is as much as I ask of myself right now.
Best of luck with your quest! I hope you catch 'em all.
Dude time over speed. There was a time I had a heart rate monitor and it would get pissy at me because running was anaerobic according to it. It made me do this dumb damn-near-run everywhere but I discovered that just walking around for an hour was good for like 400 calories burned. Doesn't really matter how fast you do it.
Nice. I dumped some more money into my car this weekend. It's an 07 in not-bad shape, but upkeep was definitely neglected before I owned it. It's now in much nicer working order than it's probably been in years. Craigslist cars are like a box of chocolates. Meanwhile the SO has a slightly older version of the same car that is missing one of the four engine supports. If another one goes then engine-falling-out becomes a plausible symptom.
Two really really good dates and now I'm having a "drastically overthinking communication with a girl you want to keep dating" problem edit: no but really, it's like I don't know where the line is between "too much" and "not enough" anymore. ahhhhhh.
The difference between "too much" and "not enough" is tied to demonstrating that you're interested and interesting.
"I am thinking about you" qualifies if you are in a committed, stable relationship. If you are 2 dates in, "I am thinking about you" violates protocol. And yes, there's protocol, you little simps. Your demonstrable ability to communicate your desirability is the one real task of courtship and the sooner you accept that it's a shorthand for a much larger discussion the happier you'll be.
Which is why "I am thinking about doing cool shit and would welcome your participation" qualifies early in a relationship. Importantly, this should reflect who you are at your best, not who you think she wants you to be. You must be genuine because you are effectively performing you and you must give a good performance. If you attempt to perform someone else she will feel betrayed (subconsciously) as soon as you cease to be that person.
"I think it would be fun to go to the fair, would you like to come?" is a great reason to contact someone. "I'm going hiking Saturday" works, too. Full disclosure: I haven't had to date since y'all were in grade school so I'm sure that some things have changed but to my sensibility, "netflix and chill" is something you use to cement a relationship, not develop one. The test is one of silence: are your silences comfortable or uncomfortable? If only one of you stops trying to fill the pauses with speech, you are not ready for "netflix and chill" or any other low-energy bonding pursuit.
One of the great things about kids is they allow you to pursue endeavors that you would not otherwise. Wanna go to the Lego store on a Saturday afternoon? Congrats. You have an excuse. How 'bout the Aquarium? Saddle up. Relationships are similar - there's a barrier to checking out that new cafe by yourself unless you are exceedingly comfortable with solitude. However, "I'm thinking of checking out that new cafe - wanna come?" demonstrates that you are sociable, interesting and fun to spend time with.
Note that it's important to consider you and to consider her. I had a girl bring me a stuffed gargoyle from the Disney store because she'd been to my place once and had noticed that everyone else used to buy me gargoyles (it's true). This demonstrated (A) she had paid attention but not enough to notice I hate Disney (B) she was thinking of me (C) she spends a lot of time at malls. From her perspective it was a nice, thoughtful gift and I took it as such. That relationship lasted four years. Later, I started dating a girl that had never gone hiking and was coming out of a difficult marriage that drained all her resources. I bought her a $200 pair of hiking boots. This demonstrated (A) that I wanted her to share my passions without any impediment (B) that I was very much not her soon-to-be-ex-husband (C) that I was willing to spend extravagantly on her. It was a risk - that's much too big a present for early on, particularly if $200 is dear to you - but it was a successful gambit. We're going on 15 years.
"Too much" is "I'm here, reminding you that I'm here." "Too much" is the "facebook poke" of relationships. "Not enough" is "I've heard I need to be distant so she doesn't freak out." IT'S NOT THAT. It's that you shouldn't say anything if you have nothing to say.
Courtship is about imagining someone else in your life and inviting them to dream with you. If you work at it from that perspective you'll gain some clarity on a process that both genders work diligently to obscure.
- no but really, it's like I don't know where the line is between "too much" and "not enough" anymore. ahhhhhh.
"Hey, I get off work early tomorrow. You free for coffee?"
If she says "Yes," great.
If she says no cause she's busy but wants to make plans for something else, great.
If she says no cause she's busy and doesn't offer an alternative, extend another invitation early next week. If the same thing happens again, try once more. If you get the same reault, move on.
What you think is "Not Enough" is probably plenty. Avoid excessive digital communication as much as possible during early dates. Its way more likely to hurt you than it is to help you. Digital communication often lacks context and gets you into trouble because you have a poor feedback mechanism. In person its way easier to calibrate your communication.
Yeah, that's the reasonable thing to do rd95 but can't you see that I'm not in a reasonable state of mind!
Mostly just want to hear from her, but she seems like a very "in the now" kind of person and our in-person conversations are ridiculously more captivating and engaging than our electronic conversations.
So you're like, saying I should, like, talk to her today, or something.
dropping this entire thing to take your advice and flagamuffin's advice
I have literally the same thing. Second date went superb but we haven't talked more than once since. Now I don't know if I should just start conversations or not, or if that even matters.
But hey, it's more fun to overthink that than it is to study for one of my last exams ever. Really feels like jumping through hoops at this point.
- Second date went superb but we haven't talked more than once since. Now I don't know if I should just start conversations or not, or if that even matters.
Wow, same exact thing here. Talked very briefly Sunday but that's been it, does it come off as too forward to get in touch now or is it better to wait and see for another day or two is kind of where I'm at.
My last batch of Inktobers. lil you may enjoy one of these in particular.
All in all I was 28/31, and the days I didn't do them I was...shudder...being social, so what are ya gonna do. Believe it or not Aqua took me two days to bash out, one for inking, one for painting relatively haphazardly, thanks Nomura and your complex outfit designs.
It was an enjoyable experience although I don't know how helpful it was, as I don't feel I improved drastically from point A to point B, and some images were worse than others. Meh.
I got Titanfall 2 and it's been, in a word, amazing. The first time I got into a Mech, caught everyone's bullets in a warp bubble, shot it out, used a giant sword to stab another robot in the face, only to steath eject, run along a wall and shoot another fleeing pilot out of the air, I was grinning like an idiot, which I haven't done at anything, let alone a videogame, in a long while.
I finished my application to study in Freiburg spring 2018, and I've pretty much been told by the director that I'll be accepted. So barring some unforeseen problem, I'm studying abroad in Germany! Exciting shit.
Elections for the radio Board of Directors are coming up. Our current GM is trying to remain impartial but also wants me to be the next GM, but I don't need that stress right now. I applied to be Tech again.
We had a film screening for German: Fatih Akin's Soul Kitchen. Holy shit, what a great film. Maybe my new favorite. It's about a restaurant owner whose girlfriend moves to Shanghai, so he leaves his ex-con brother in charge of the place, and comes back to find he gambled it away to probably the mob. But there's a bunch of subplots, and the pacing is really unconventional but in a good way, and it descends to a much darker place than I think most American filmmakers would have the courage to put in a comedy.
It doesn't hurt that Soul Kitchen (the restaurant) reminds me a lot of the restaurant I worked at over the summer.
E: The soundtrack is great too. Curtis Mayfield, Donny Hathaway, Jan Delay, etc
E2: whoa. I just passed a few tour groups and suddenly realized the kids in them are my age.
I love Freiburg so much. I can think of very few places I'd rather live.
I thought about going to one of the English grad school programs over there, as backup plans went it was a pretty nice one to dream about.
Drive through the Black Forest at night. Headlights optional.
Have you ever thought that maybe child prodigies are actually people who have been reincarnated with their memories intact?
Religious stuff. Skip if you’re not interested. This week Baha’is are celebrating the anniversaries of the births of The Bab and Baha’u’llah. I went to the observance last night. It’s the first time I’ve seeked out the Baha’i community in almost a decade and the first time I’ve seeked them out since I’ve moved to this city. The turn out was pretty large, which is good an to be expected because it’s an important event. They’re a bunch of good folks and they now have my e-mail address to send me event calendars and newsletters, so I’ll try to do things here and there when work permits. As an aside, I did discover that praying in private is a lot easier than praying with others. The emotional tempo is different for both situations and when I pray with others my mind wanders.
I looked up UNICEF on Wikipedia yesterday, cause reasons. I’m very much confused as to why their stance on adoption is controversial cause it seems pretty reasonable. If any of the great minds of Hubski could fill me in on what I’m missing, that’d be great, cause I don’t see it. On a related note, every single person I’ve ever talked to about these things have nothing but great things to say about Doctors Without Borders. It’s amazing that a large, international organization has been able to receive so much praise and avoid a lot of criticism. Either they’re paragons of integrity and discipline or they have a really, really good PR team.
Last week someone told me “gonna” wasn’t a real word. I told them to Google it and STFU. I know my english.
Adoption agencies end up being parallel NGOs with their own agendas. Romanian orphanages alone are a treasure trove of study subjects for the darker corners of child development.
There are ample criticisms of orphanages in the developed world. In the places UNICEF hangs out they generally fare worse.
- I’m very much confused as to why their stance on adoption is controversial cause it seems pretty reasonable.
My take-away from that summary is that in the time while UNICEF is setting up their system, other adoption options grind to a stop. So it's a short term sacrifice for a longer term goal. And that is favorite entry point for critics. (Expert politicians/hacks raise this to a new level by sabotaging opponents then claiming the ideas could never have worked)
Nothing is a "real world". Language is made up - as in, everything is up to people using it. Which is why you have regional differences, accents, people speaking mixed language etc. You can use whatever you want for whatever you want, and as long as two people understand each other, you have a human language. With that in mind, it's silly that people would try to control it like that.
I've had an enlightening argument about it with johnnyFive a few weeks ago, which triggered an identity crisis on the matter of languages. The whole purpose of what I study crushed before my very eyes as I tried to recollect whatever's left hanging into a coherent picture. The paragraph above is the result, just as the idea that I'm not doing anything of value with the education I'm getting.
- Have you ever thought that maybe child prodigies are actually people who have been reincarnated with their memories intact?
No, and it doesn't sound right now that I do. People don't reincarnate, so there must be a more tangible explanation. Differences in brain structure would be one of the quickest to reach for.
Why did you spoiler out a whole paragraph on your latest religious experience?
My logic is, it counts as a real word if it's in the dictionary. If someone took the time to recognize it, define it, and record it, it's a word with value. So, "gonna" totally counts. A made up word, like "zoogoppledoo" wouldn't.
The child prodigy thing is just a small offhand thought. :)
I covered up the religious thing cause it's not always polite to talk about religion in mixed company. Since this is Pubski and not an actual thread dedicated to the subject, I figure it'd be polite to cover it.
- My logic is, it counts as a real word if it's in the dictionary.
That's not the logic linguists use. There are no "real" words because all words are ultimately made up.
- I covered up the religious thing cause it's not always polite to talk about religion in mixed company.
You shouldn't be ashamed of what you think is important or try to hide it just because it might offend someone. It's you. What others think of you don't matter.
Besides, it's Hubski. You were able to convert me, a raging anti-religious zealot, into a more thoughtful perceiver of religion and faith. Why would you think this place would shoot at you for it?
This week's been wild. The gliding club is a subdivision of a fraternity, which means that they regularly have drinks at the fraternity. Even though I would never even consider joining a fraternity, I wanted to go so last Thursday I dressed up in the required jasje-dasje (blazer+tie) outfit and tried my best to fit in. If I did my hair in a preppy comb-over and if I was more arrogant, I'm pretty sure nobody would second-guess my presence there.
It was actually fun. Not just because they had an infinite supply of beer, but also because I got to watch freshman frat groups do stupid shit like fighting drunkenly over a table. The hangover was the only part that sucked. I always get super nauseous when I'm hungover and it's the worst.
I also managed to gather 7 of my high school friends together for pizza, which was a lot of fun. On Saturday I had the last gliding day of the season and got lucky with an almost 2-hour flight that I did all by myself except for the landing. It went great even though I only got 5 hours of sleep that night. My second date went well, although I won't see her for the next fortnight because we're both studying for exams.
Joined this weekly creative group that takes on a new project every month. This month. we're gonna learn how to make scarves! Sounds like fun :)
Also, got a new (used) macbook pro, and switched to premiere pro for editing. It's a learning curve ahead for sure!
I feel like it's time to perfect my skillz, learning a little sound design and colour grading could get my videos to the next level.
kleinbl00 I installed Plex on my old laptop last night, and so far I love it. It'll be a headache to maintain iTunes on my current computer and Plex on the old one until I pull thr plug on iTunes, but I love the idea of getting away from iTunes. I think Plex will meet my needs better than iTunes. And music on the app is so much better than Apple's terrible Music app.
On my lunch break I'm meeting a guy to look at a Craigslist car. If the ad is accurate it looks like a good deal, so wish me l luck. It's a '08 Scion xD with less than 60k miles, so it is new by my standards.
I'm still at the start of sanding and refinishing dining table chairs. I thought it would be quicker, but they are at my parents since they have an actual workshop, and the last couple weeks have been busy. Hopefully I will finish them before December.
My excuse tonight for not sanding chairs is my wife's choir is performing Duruflé's Requiem Mass. It's going to be awesome. Requiem masses began with the tradition of commissioning creepy music for the funeral mass of a monarch, so the rest of the aristocracy are properly creeped out by the prince who everyone thought was shady even before the king suddenly died [citation needed].
Duruflé's is her favorite.
I don't know much about choral music, but think requiems might be my favorite. The ones I've heard really show off the range of emotions a choir can convey in one unified concert.
I've been progressing lately.
Another blowing up over a failed relationship led me to consider that it's not the girls that are the problem - it's me. I held people around me to a very high par - one that I've set for myself, one even I can't always follow - and I held them in disrespect, thinking with selfishness that they owe me much, and because they didn't give me anything I wanted from them, I resented them. I was entitled.
There's a lot I don't know or understand about people. That doesn't mean I get to slack off learning what it's like to communicate constructively - or to make someone's life more miserable. It's difficult to do, as Russian culture seems to aim for self-seclusion, lack of curiousity and openness, all of which I charge with too much for my liking.
Switched to a new, protein-high diet, and cut out all the junk food. Slowly getting used to using the energy more effectively. Hunger is more often than I'm used to, but it's also weaker, so I don't feel as much discomfort from it. Because of the lower energy supply, I'm becoming more conscious about when and how much I eat. Background headaches don't bother me: they may be an accumulation of both less sleep (changing my sleep pattern slowly) and less energy from food, and in the end, it's going to be worth it. I will, of course, be careful with the changes.
A surprising part of the change is both how little I can do with and how expensive some healthy things are. A 140-gram pack of mixed nuts - cashew, peanutes, almonds, Brazil nuts - costed me a bit more than 200 rubles (~$3.15). On the other hand, a 12-meal pack of buckwheat is just 50 rubles (~$0.79), and a nice pack of bananas is about 70 rubles (~$1.10). If I put more effort into cooking, I can actually settle a week's worth of varied food for less than a thousand rubles (~$15.75), which is a third of my lofty weekly allowance.
Alan Watts' invocation about choices and how there are no mistakes, only things we do, resonated with me greatly. My anxious worries about things disappeared as soon as they've started today, and it feels amazing.
I moved to Lake Louise this past Saturday and I'm still working on getting settled in so I don't have much to say at this point. I like the job which comes in really handy when you fly across the country for it. Eventually I'll have pictures to share but they really don't do this place justice.
Finally taking the time to tackle my back pain.
Got x-rays, blood tests, and seemingly no severe / degenerative conditions. Went to the physical therapist and they gave me an answer to the effect of: "nothing is injured anymore, the pain is psychological", but also my back is clearly way weaker on one side / the other side compensates for certain motions. So supposedly I just need to make my body understand that using that muscle shouldn't trigger pain. Now I just need to get comfortable sitting on the floor in lab and doing an upward dog-esk stretch 4x a day.
Lab going well, finally got the biologically-meaningful results that I'd been working towards for 8 months. Went to repeat it yesterday and it turned out I'd mixed up my cells when splitting them and the receptor of interest had disappeared. But if things going well next week I should have enough data to turn my thesis proposal into an NIH grant proposal!
Haven't tried Tai Chi, but Yoga's been on and off for the past three months. But while upward dog feels amazing (and is basically the stretch I've been assigned to do 4x10 times a day), forward fold will make things hurt in under 10 seconds. And that's been in spite of hamstring stretches twice a day for the past two weeks.
V late to the party but have some assorted ramblings to put down.
Got another CVE conference this weekend and I'm not sure if this is a conference thing or a Kosovo thing, but if the point of the conference is evaluation of the strategy, why did we leave that til the last day of the conference which is in another city besides the capital and most people are just gonna ditch the last day because it's a half day anyway?? but my boss is throwing me an easy bone and having me do a small speaking portion to thank certain international groups for their contributions and also to introduce me as the Secretariat's point of contact for internationals so that's good.
Albanian is a stupid language. Why would you put your definite article at the end of the word?? DUMB.
I've been back into lifting pretty regularly again. Not every other day like I should be but 2-3 times a week which seems to work just fine for me. Weird things happen in gyms though. Yesterday I was doing squats and this guy wordlessly came over and strapped a barbell pad to the bar while I was resting?? because I'm a gal presumably?? it was weird. there was also a golden retriever jus chillin minding his own biz.
had 2 interviews yesterday for jobs back in the states. biffed one and aced the other which I wanted more anyway so a win overall i think
doing a really shit job at maintaining my blog. things keep building and happening and i like to process a bit before writing which just means more things happen so i have more to write about and more to process. kind of frustrated with myself and i know my family is probably more frustrated because people are probably asking them all kinds of questions they don't have answers to
FOR THE LOVE OF GOD MONTRESOR! ARE THE CUBS GONNA TAKE IT OR WHAT?!?!!?????
E: :)))))))))!
Went to a career fair today. Seems like all they're always looking for are juniors and seniors. Gonna send out some emails today to some mildly interesting prospects. At least I have one internship opportunity in the bag, in case any of this stuff doesn't work out.
I feel bad for the people who can't get jobs after dozens of applications like this. This is only for internships!