A little of both? For the rabbits, the original pattern was for felt and since I don't want to use felt, the end result comes out different. For the little round guys, the end result is supposed to be an owl. But, I can't seem to make it work so I just said "Screw it. They're little rodents."
I am gonna make my own pattern next though. A little elephant shaped pillow for Dala.
Thanks to cgod's idea, I got to spend a few lovely days at a bar/cafe that offers access to their piano. It's very therapeutic and scratched that itch right and proper. The owner started encouraging everyone to give me requests after letting me hog it for a while. It's a bit weird, but he asked if it's OK, and I didn't have a good reason to say no. People seemed receptive.
Talked with a bunch of people who seemed like regulars. It's interesting to hear them go on about their stuff, though we don't have that many topics in common. Some joined in with me and played on whatever they had with them. Afterwards, they told me to come to their practice space on Thursday if I'd like. Seems unusual, but what the hell. I never played with anyone else, at least not for any significant amount of time, but nobody seemed to give a fuck. In kind, I do my best to keep the inner try-hard in check. Otherwise, it's just a new, fun experience.
Being here is a much-welcomed change in my life, so I'll probably keep hanging there for a while longer. Mixing it with contract work down the line seems like a great way to kill two birds with one stone.
Very positive week, hope it was the same for you, Hubski!
Glad to hear you liked it! Playing the piano is something I've been wanting to pick up myself lately, but despite having played a lot when I was younger, it's hard to imagine coming out of my shell enough to perform at a bar somewhere. Perhaps after a couple of drinks or something.
So, tomorrow afternoon I'll know whether or not I got accepted to uni. Hopefully I did, like, I probably did like statistically it is very very likely... But still, I'm nervous. I'm channeling this nervousness into thinking about what furniture I'll have when I move out. Or whether I need a thing to hang my laundry on, or whether I'll have room for a toaster. I feel like the people around me are starting to get tired of talk about IKEA furniture and kitchen appliances but I think they're more tired of "what if I don't get in, what if I'll feel horribly lonely, what if I don't find anyone to play boardgames with.
My girlfriend dumped me. It was only 2 months in, but I had (still have) feelings for her. It sucks. I'm torn between trying to get her back on one hand and forgetting/accepting it entirely on the other hand. I feel like she decided to quit at the first hiccup and that makes me sad.
I will be spending a month in Peru in August, so I'm looking forward to that.
Sorry to hear about the girlfriend, but have an awesome time in Peru. Be sure to do the three day hike to Machu Picchu. One of the better experiences of my life. Onward!
Thanks! We are planning to do the Salkantay Trek in 4 days with my friend. You might have done the Inca Trail and both looks amazing. Will definitely write a tripreport about my time there in september :)
I just did the Salkantay trek with my boyfriend this spring! It was great. The one thing I forgot to bring was a bathing suit for the baths on the way there.
The second day is the hardest, I thought the climb would be the hard part but I actually struggled more going downhill for like 5h. It’s really hard on the knees. Absolutely great experience :)
Great! Did you went without a guide? If so, any tips I should know before going there? How did you manage food for 4-5 days?
We were planning to go without a guide, but in Cusco we found a tour that was only about 20$ more than doing it ourselves. So we decided to do the easy route. In a group, you don’t have to worry about shelter or food since it’s already provided.
Like I said, some parts can be tough on the knees so consider getting some walking sticks.
In one week I was in China, the upper peninsula of Michigan, LA, Chicago and home in Ann Arbor again. That was a bit too much.
Back to work.
wasoxygen reported that he received an email from Hubski. That's a wonderful development. Please recheck your spam folders and mark Hubski emails as not spam.
I quit my job at a call center.
Hated scamming businesses.
Going to travel to Cape Cod next month.
- No man is an island entire of itself; every man
is a piece of the continent, a part of the main;
if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe
is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as
well as any manner of thy friends or of thine
own were; any man's death diminishes me,
because I am involved in mankind.
And therefore never send to know for whom
the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.
- John Donne
It’s been a few crazy weeks for me lately. Now that the dust has settled again somewhat, I’ve noticed I’m immediately back in a reflexive mood that earlier weeks didn’t really allow me to have. Which in my case means I’ve read three books in a single week and have been thinking out loud about them with my SO, bless her patient heart.
One of my realizations is that I now know precisely which two factors stress me the fuck out. I don’t get phased by having a lot of work in front of me. Gimme a good axe and I’ll chop through it no problem. It’s having a lot of responsibility that gets me. There’s a large overlap between work to do and responsibility, but for me the difference is whether I’m the one who needs to figure out how to solve for x or not. Whether it’s my call or not to make.
The second factor is that if I’m responsible, I need to have some idea of how to connect the dots. Some vague (but not too vague) path from here to there. Doesn’t mean I need to have done it before - I can learn on the job - but if I don’t know how the hell I am going to solve something and it’s my responsibility to do so? That’s when I become waayyy too stressed out.
Which has happened numerous times in the past weeks. What’s also happened is that I’ve found my Get Out of Jail Free card, which is to ask for help with finding that path. It sounds simple, because that’s what it is for seemingly everyone else, but for me it’s not in my nature to do so. I’ve always solved things alone. I’ve always felt like an island, especially in my at times incredibly lonely teens. To relinquish my responsibility, my independence even in the slightest thus feels like defeat. It’s an admission of dependency that surely resembles a failure on my part to be the strong island I want to think I am.
Even though it really isn’t. I’m not here to fix the world on my own - I am part of the continent. Part of a network of colleagues who really can and do help me out when I need them. Supported by my SO, my friends, my family. Who are really there when I need them, if only I can muster the courage to just ask.
So that’s my goal for the foreseeable future. To keep asking.
My usual summer month LARPing as a carpenter is almost over. I thought I knew every square inch of this house by now, but when I was about to paint a wall I almost missed a scribble which I decided to mask off for posterity. It says ”June 8 1920 J.N” and was probably from the time they raised the roof.
Other than that I haven’t done much painting since my sister and her kids has been here for the last three weeks and there’s no point trying to paint with a two and a four year old in the house. Instead I’ve been doing finishing work around doors and windows around the house and insulating the third and final floor of the house.
I’ve got three days now of hammering flax insulation between logs and tempera painting before leaving this happy place.
I have now completed just over 5 hours of actual Spanish class time. I was hoping I'd have a slightly better grasp of the language after this amount of time. We have a very small class size, but there doesn't appear to be much structure to the lessons - we're not really following the book we are using - and my classmates haven't been doing their homework, so we spend a lot of time waiting for them to catch up. I've noticed that applewood has some nice looking resources below so I'll have to try those out! Thanks! There's an excellent study guide I found here as well!
I'm also about to embark on a 3 day wine extravaganza with my partner. We're heading to Coonawarra for the annual Cellar Dwellers event. Lots of back vintages and museum wines to try and buy. I'm very excited. It's a 5 hour drive though. We were supposed to be staying with my aunt on the way home. She forgot and has now double booked herself into something she can't get out of.
Work
My workplace didn't secure the big contract they expected (which would them to hire me full-time). They also are losing money on the contract they signed me on for.
Thus, I was told I have 3 weeks left yesterday....
Which is one week more than my fellow temps. Because I told them last month I was going back to school at the end of July, they honored the date I set. Getting that extra money in my pocket will be very nice considering the alternative.
Even though this changes nothing about my plans since coming back from Israel, it feels bittersweet anyways.
I'm still leaving on my terms, but the connotation has changed a little.
Mid-way through today I got a text from a place I interviewed near the school I'm going to for follow up (3 months later!).
I gotta say, I really like not having homework/studying in the meantime.
Relationships
Life
Things are still cruising along nicely. Getting the car in my name finally. Adulting, etc., etc.
Brushing up on my Spanish and getting into writing poetry after all this time. Trying to knock 'em both out by doing the poetry in Spanish. Only a couple verses a day. Starting solely in Spanish and thinking as such, rather than formulate the verse in English then translate.
Mild Regrets
I've been trying to eat healthier lately, but I think we can all admit that healthy eating and easy and convenient eating are two different things. The other day though, I got a protein cookie from the gas station for my second breakfast. It wasn't delicious, a bit doughy and dry at the same time and not very sweet, but I still enjoyed it. My gut though seemed to enjoy it much, much more. I don't think I've ever been so flatulent in my entire life. We're talking full blown power rips every five minutes or so for basically the rest of the day. I feel so sorry for my coworkers. So, learn a lesson from me, Pubski, if you see a protein cookie and you're wondering whether or not to give it a shot, my answer would be "only if you wanna torture the people around you."
Sewing
I'm working on making another rat owl, third and last one, from another old shirt. I now know how button collections get started. At the rate I'm going, I'll never run out of buttons for the rest of my life. If I recycle more and more old clothes of mine and Dala's, the same will be true for fabric. I just gotta find a way to keep things organized.
Speaking of sewing, a few different community centers around here host sewing circles. Dala goes to one from time to time and I think when possible, I'll try and join her. I know I'll enjoy meeting new people and I bet I'll learn a thing or too as well.
Geocaching
I think soon, between the books I make, the pictures I draw, and the dolls I'm sewing, I'm running out of places to keep things (let alone any real reason to keep them). I still give away quite a lot as gifts, but I'm thinking it might be fun to take up Geocaching as a hobby and using it to leave things behind.
Spanish
It's not always easy, but the learning goes on. Besides learning basics like numbers, people, etc., I'm focusing on building vocabulary around animals, food, and adjectives at the moment, because I like talking about animals, everyone likes talking about food, and you can't paint a picture with words without using adjectives. I'm struggling a bit, with everything from grammer to understanding accents to different dialects using different words, but it turns out those are common issues for anyone starting out, so I'm not too discouraged.
johnnyFive has allowed me to pm him some practice paragraphs and the feedback I've gotten from him has been super helpful. He's corrected some of my grammer for me, taught me some new words, and has given me some insightful information too. It's been fun. fletcher, if you're still game too, I think I might be ready to try some light conversations. You'll have to forgive me in advance though if my sentences are super simplistic.
All loose thoughts today.
What medium are you using for learning Spanish? I have those laminate study sheets on grammar, vocab, etc. Makes it easier to reference when writing, but sounds like you're working on conversation more.
I can scan my sheets and send them your way if you want. Its a lot of tightly packed information. Good stuff, nonetheless.
Thanks for the offer, and I hope to not offend by passing on it. I try my best to be respectful of copyright laws and such.
That said, I'm learning a few different ways. I just recently picked up two books, one on grammer and the other a direct translation dictionary for Latin American Spanish and English, both of which will go nicely with a verb dictionary Dala already owns. I definitely need help on the grammer end and obviously, there's no such thing as too much vocabulary.
As for learning it, I'm doing a few things. The majority of time that I watch Netflix now, for example, it's with Spanish audio. I don't absorb words very efficiently that way, but when I do learn words, they stick really well, like an "Aha!" type of discovery. I've learned words from bruja to lugar to ayuda this way. I also watch videos on YouTube as well. I'm a huge fan of Ana and her Butterfly Spanish Videos because she's pretty good natured and that honestly helps a lot. Easy Spanish is mostly conversations, especially with people on the street, so while it's less structured and academic, it's pretty interesting because you get to hear a lot of the different ways people talk. There's quite a few other good channels, but those two stick out as being pretty unique. The rest are your standard phrases and vocab building videos. Lastly, I try to read spanish out in the wild alongside English whenever possible. Product packaging, instructions, labels, you name it. I learn some interesting words that way, like advertencia or incendio or peso.
No offense taken at all.
I'll take a gander at Ana. A teacher's attitude really does make the difference - goes for any subject.
Regional dialects/accents can be fun to hear.
Semi-related, my current roommates are from Brazil. Their Portuguese sounds nothing like a Spanish relative to me half the time. Their cousin who came over could have fooled me otherwise.
¡Buena suerte!
Portuguese is funny that way. I can barely understand anything when I hear Portuguese spoken, but then reading it and it's surprisingly comprehensible.
It's currently 3 o'clock and I'm sitting in a coffee shop, sipping on my pint of Lugtread. It's hot outside, and feels like it's about to get even hotter. Today is my day off, so I get to do nothing, drop by the local bookstore, and then buy myself the most delicious box of donuts I ever came across - it truly does feel like summer.
Last week was spent sending out my resume to all sorts of odd places. One of them - a book binding factory near Toronto - replied yesterday, so I'm just trying to set up an interview right now. If all goes well, I will probably drive down there sometime next week and try and muster my impression of my best resume self. Even if it does not work out, I still get to walk around Toronto and ride the metro system, which is somewhat of a guilty pleasure at this point, coming from a city without one.
Hope you all have a splendid week, Hubski!
I always wanted to garden but I've never really been able to. At my parent's house, the garden was mom's domain. Help with the weeding and don't complain too loud about the fifteenth loaf of zucchini bread. I killed a few houseplants in college, a few more as a young guy living alone.
A short while ago we started accumulating plants and I'm growing rather fond of the little guys'n'gals.
My fiancee got this cute lil guy as a birthday present. He was forgotten, alone on the window sill for a few weeks until I noticed he had dropped a few petals. He sat happily in the shotglass sized pot he came in for a few months and I just repotted him two weeks ago. There's a little shoot coming up from the root bundle and I think we're going to get a whole extra flowering stalk.
This is a Pesto Party basil and I love it, use it in marinades and on top of grilled meat all the time. I bought it because my nose pulled me into the farmers market stall and led me right to a pallet full of them. If you so much as nudge a few leaves aside to put water in the pot the whole thing erupts with spicy perfume. 10/10, waiting to grow more of this ish when it goes to seed eventually. I actually really badly overwatered it when I first got it and the stalk started to rot a bit. I cleaned it up, repotted with better soil and it's been healthy and happy ever since.
This is grocery store basil that I saved from being tossed in the garbage. It almost died twice for the same reasons as the other one, whoops, lessons learned. It doesn't smell as nice and vigorous as the pesto party but it's less spicy, more traditional, so it gets used in different applications. There are a few separate stalks and I've braided three of them to see if I can encourage them to grow in fun shapes. Did you guys know that when you pick basil leaves you're supposed to pick small leaves and let the big ones alone? The big ones have less flavor than the smaller ones and the plant is dependent on them for mass photosynthesis. The more you knoooooow.
This is lettuce doing things I've never seen lettuce do. It started off purple. Then they grew green leaves. Then the purple leaves fell off. Then one of them grew more purple leaves, which then fell off. Now the two on the right have decided to become small trees. I haven't even tried eating any of it, they mostly just confuse me. The hope was nice bushy little salad bowls and I've ended up with weeds. ???
These are succulents. If you know the name of the species, hit me, I've been too lazy to turn my google lens at the darn things. I think they look nice and I've been trying to think of how I want to repot them for long term growth and display. The little ones are going to be turned into a present for a friend I think.
This is my pride and joy though, the Plant Monster! I'm a little frustrated with how hard it is to get a good photograph of it, this one doesn't really show the scale of the hanging basket and the vines coming off the thing. The same day that I found the pesto party I came across a guy selling hanging baskets. This was the only one of its kind, had a card on it that said $10 and I loved it. I asked the vendor what it was called and he said he had no idea, it didn't have a card or anything. I bought it, took it home and hung it up in the bathroom. In the process of transportation two little shoots broke off, and on a whim I stuck them in some potting soil, and wouldn't you know it, one took root really well, so now I have two of them!
When we first got the big one it had only a couple small vines coming off of it. I'm really looking forward to watching it flourish and fill it. I have a vision of it draping all over my bathroom, possibly trying to throttle you during some late night bathroom journey. Maybe I've been reading too much r/imsorryjon, who knows.
I'm really enjoying how my appreciation for both enjoying art/artistic things and participating in art/artistic things grows with age. I hadn't really thought of this as a creative venture until I got a compliment on my windowsill arrangement. It's a nice feeling, especially because I've considered myself limited to musical expression up to this point. However! Music is art! Food is art! Gardening is art and science! Baking is necromancy!
Some friends got engaged last week on the 4th of July after 9 years of dating then we all spent the weekend on Lake Huron before they left for 4 weeks in Europe. Summer is bubbling along nicely. One day soon I'll make a cohesive post about cardiac rehab but that's for another time.
Cheers pubski, I'm going biking (And staying in the air conditioning and listening to a book while I do.)
Those succulents are nice. Can’t help you with a name though. I’ve been on a big succulent kick for a while. I was bummed because some props that I’ve been growing for the past few months got totally roasted in too much sun/heat the other week. I’ll see if any make it. If not, I guess I’ll just snatch some more leaves from corporate landscaping.
That's a shame to hear that those babies got cooked, hopefully you have some real fighters in the bunch.
I found the prop lifting subreddit the other day and was pretty darn impressed with the stuff that some people have managed to cultivate from scraps.
Life, uh, finds a way.
When I decide to put the ones I have in a different pot what should I look for for potting mix? Is there a bag labeled just for succulents?