The kid was sick from Friday before last to last friday. Saturday she had a swim meet. Sunday she had company. Tuesday we got a notice that there's COVID in the classroom. Today she's vomiting all day (but passed a COVID test this morning, at least). Me? I was sick from last Monday to this Monday so I'm stoked for whatever the vomits are from. Soundminer now comes with a sampler with eight voices, a quad voice mixer, a surround panning engine per voice, granular synthesis per voice and a global FX rack. I literally built up a 5.1 cloud of swirling zombies in two minutes. Fed an Atari into it and transcended into eight bit valhalla. I thought I was mixing this movie for free. No, I'm mixing it for producer points so only probably mixing it for free. Fortunately, I'm extremely good at my job, it's actually a good movie once you peel away the poo, and I have the tools to make swirling clouds of zombies. Who knows, I might get paid. I don't even remember what I was looking for but I stumbled across a phat stack of horological wheeling hobs for a pittance so I went through the "what sizes do you have" through "I wonder what sizes i need" through "I wonder if I have any random books that talk about how to calculate modulus from leaf count and diameter" through "when did I buy Malcolm Wild's Clock Wheel & Pinion Cutting" through "how the hell am I going to measure that accurately" through "oh yeah I have an Olympus microscope with a Mitutoyo stage and a metrology camera and software package" to "huh these are mostly pocket watch and carriage clock wheels but they're such a screaming bargain I should buy them anyway" in about 45 minutes and you're just finding out that in horology, it's not gears and teeth, it's wheels and leaves. Then the guy who taught me watchmaking called me up to ask for advice about learning CNC for an hour. This week I realized that my fundamental outlook on life, as taught me by my parents, is "no one actually wants to talk to you." I found myself actually noting, for the first time in five decades, that I fundamentally assume anyone making conversation must have an ulterior motive... rather than simply acting on that assumption. Called my dad for his birthday two weeks ago. Relayed how my daughter's chess timer broke for stupid reasons, and how I had it apart, had a component designed, had it printed and had the thing back together better than new in under an hour. His response? "Yeah, I never thought you'd be any good mechanically but I guess you're a halfway-decent repairman." Intellectually? I know the man has spent the past five years playing FREECELL. I have left him utterly in the dust from a tinkerin' standpoint. Emotionally? The ability to measure and calculate the modulus of a Seiko 7009 keyless works wheel from -go- in 20 minutes is, by definition, not worth doing anyway. fucks off to construct parakeet tornadoes
oh pubski things with girl a (girl from Dec.) I think I ended a few nights ago - told her I cannot be in a space with so much uncertainty, and no expectation of receiving any amount of affection/attention/affirmation, and not even knowing when i would see her again. that all of that is not a tenable situation for what i need and want. we ended with "let's figure out a timeline that's comfortable for both of us to reconnect over a cup of coffee or lunch in the future, and in the interim, not have contact". it was a challenging hour long conversation. i returned a couple of small things to her two days ago. but then last night she called me on facetime...i'm about to call her back to see why... girl b - surprisingly awesome date at one of the local spots to catch concerts, just hung out in the lounge/bar and walked around for a while after. soooo much in common. made out in the streets at the end of the night. seeing her again tomorrow night, and i kind of want to try and take things slow with her, i feel there could be potential to build something with her. trading music suggestions over text messages the past couple of days. girl c - also a fun climbing night date, going to see her again after i go on this trip to canmore, alberta, for a week of ice climbing. she's a bit older (6 years older than me) and seems to have a different perspective on some things. it's very unclear at this moment if she's looking for a climbing partner or more than that, but i'm fine with either. edit: girl d - also fun, not as physically attracted to this person I don't think(???), but super interesting, very mountainous, and is an underwater photographer for the smithsonian??? (have i mentioned all of these girls are very intelligent, driven, etc.) so, i'm managing...it's been a very challenging, emotional month of january. i've had a lot of anticipation for girl a, and now trying to not make the same mistakes twice with girl b in particular, and have also had a lot of anticipation for this trip to canmore. where it's looking warm, almost too warm...highs in the mid-30s for ice isn't super great... somebody asked me what would be my ideal for all of this dating. it made me uncomfortable to say "i want a relationship". trying to unpack why that is.
I am more invested in your emotional health/dating success than I expected to be. I really hope things work out for you. But I do think you've handled the 'Girl from Dec' saga as best as you could. You went in excited, hopeful and willing to be malleable, can't ask for much else. Sounds terrifying. Are you scaling a wall like normal climbing, but it's also ice?for a week of ice climbing.
It was a good experience for me to seriously think about what I want from a person and relationship. I do, however, remain bummed about how that conversation went down and how it feels like I saw two very different versions of the same person. Going to talk to therapist about that. It will be terrifying and will look like this! https://www.mountainproject.com/route/107112924/grotto-falls But I'm also going with this guy (and a bunch of others): https://www.outsideonline.com/health/training-performance/steve-swenson-mountaineer/
God, I'm glad you enjoy it. I wondered about picking up climbing, there's a cool venue in my city dedicated to it and those I know who do it, absolutely love it. Scaling shit? Exercise? Mad forearm pumps? Hell yeah. Would my weight be a struggle, do you think? I'm certainly fit in a general sense, but I know climbing is something else entirely. I'm like, 95kg usually and I can do pullups with ease, but not sure that would transfer well to actually climbing a wall. I assumed I'd have to lose weight and drop my overall strength to actually do it.
Unsure! How tall are you?Would my weight be a struggle, do you think? I'm certainly fit in a general sense, but I know climbing is something else entirely. I'm like, 95kg usually and I can do pullups with ease, but not sure that would transfer well to actually climbing a wall. I assumed I'd have to lose weight and drop my overall strength to actually do it.
You’ll be totally fine. Unless you want to be a world class climber, you can get up some very challenging, engaging, and/or just plain fun stuff at a gym and outside with your build. Strength will be really helpful but it’s a lot of technique, flexibility, and muscles that you don’t use in a lot of other scenarios.
I'm no climbing expert, but i've once seen a beginner (as in never climbed in her life) lady absolutely brute force up a wall and leave all other beginners in the dust - looking like an absolute beast stuck to the wall all muscles engaged the whole way. It was impressive. Climbing is lots of technique actually so while strength and flexibility are a factor, i feel anyone generally fit can get a start. The easier routes are almost just going up a ladder type exercises.
doing a lot of learning, doing a lot of squirming inside the belly of the beast: I'm happy to say that I'm learning a lot and I'm squirming with vigor my plan is to take the JLPT test at the end of the year - in all likelihood n2, but if your girl decides to be an ultra overachiever then n1. it's the certification that says you're near fluent or fluent in japanese that businesses use to hire foreigners an der Nihon. with some studying i should be able to pass and the next exam is december so there's time i might be moving out of where I'm at, and maybe out of the state altogether, within the next year and a half or so. maybe by this summer depending on how things shake out. I've lived here since 2018 and in michigan all my life so I'm very excited and very nervous - i have no idea where we might be going but i might finally follow my destiny and make pilgrimage i feel like I'm a little closer to god than I've been before for a lack of a better phrase - a little bit closer to synthesis on some stuff. not close enough yet to put it into words, but more consistently clearheaded than maybe ever. potentially dangerous, but dangerous in a new and different way than the usual danger, so i welcome it I've been working a little under 40 (37) hours a week for the last month or so and it's an interesting experience to not be a sack of shit. I've had my tears walking home and my shitty days but my boss says I'm doing a great job, very professional, and that I'm sorely needed on the days that i don't work, so it seems like a win tomorrow i get together with a therapist to unwrangle the latest knot of insurance bullshit so hopefully this year i can get my skull split and my face chopped up (oo-da-lolly) I've been telling everybody that i feel so old and wouldn't you know it but every day i wake up i'm a day older than i thought I'd be I'm living in Bonus Round
First day back on the wagon - made it trough my month of no drinking! I'm quite proud of myself for sticking to it, I feel it was a good and much needed reset and it gave me some good perspectives. I had lots of engaging conversations with my family. I'm sure having the first being born grandchild helped but it's been nice to feel this closeness and family pattern introspection with everyone. Like everyone is recallibrating and finding their place in their new roles, super cool. Had lots of meaningful hangs with the friends too, and with new friend groups. Everyone was really supportive and it's reassuring to know I have the same solid group of peeps with me if I want to keep it wholesome :) A few awkward moments sprinkled in there, I think I've inadvertently gotten used to be surrounded by a big community of people that know and care about me. It happened slowly and I didnt realize in most social situations people know more of me than I know of them. So showing up at new parties where I was a stranger was really unsettling. I felt like a fish out of water, didn't quite know how to even start a conversation or introduce myself. But I think I'll get my mojo back once i'm back traveling on the road at hostels. I used to be a professional small talker after all. On the downside, I don't know if it's the seasonal funk or the lack of work and structure - but motivation even on the getting outta bed level has been hard lately. And not having the excuse of a hangover puts it at the forefront. I expected to be MORE productive sober but in the end i think i was less so. My major "to-do" points are in order so i'm all good. But all the optional things that are supposed to make me feel good instead of scrolling are picking up dust and I don't know how to kick myself in the ass to get going.
ice! This is my first winter in Austin, having moved there ~6 or so months ago from Florida (born n' raised). Seeing ice on the trees this morning was legitimately magical, and I took waaaay too many pictures, my favorites of which are: pottery And it was also the first day of staring a weekly pottery class, with the goal of eventually getting good enough to make things at home and send them off occasionally to austin kiln club to be fired. Thanks to the ice, the roads were scary. There were fallen branches, power was out at a few lights, and (maybe unsurprisingly for you northerly folk who know more what to expect) the place ended up being closed so I had to turn right back. Next week for sure :) Already got big plans for trying to make the tiles from Azul into coasters, and some sort of mug with a face for storing pencils. Wasn't a waste of time though, because the drive took perfectly, exactly, the right amount of time to listen to ed buys houses so that the last song faded out right as I was parking. Always feels so good, like my life is a movie. music And speaking of Gish / Ed Buys Houses - finally getting good enough at guitar to play the most song's parts individually. Step 2 is to figure out loopers to put them all together, and then the worrying prospect of trying to sing :p She's also opening for the Beths in a few months which I'm really looking forwards to! work it's fine. boardgame cafe Still plugging along, slowly but slowly, at this. Lots of ruminating where I want to be after the lease is up in June. I have no regrets moving to Austin because it's 1. not my parent's place in Florida 2. I'm roomates with a good friend / extrovert which is always a good time :) With that said, despite making a bit of an effort still have no real ties here other than him. And Austin does have the key problems of being expensive, kinda mid-tier cool, and in Texas, the only place giving Florida politics a run for their money. My sister, and several of my high school friends are up in Seattle, so might go there next? Or maybe Pittsburgh or St. Louis, two conspicuously boardgame-cafe-free cities. (Though, the thought of moving somewhere all alone is a little terrifying) Regardless, the thought hasn't died yet, and the lease being up seems a good self set deadline for either coming up with a more complete plan & moving somewhere specifically to make that happen, or not.
Heatwave! 30 degrizzles Celsius. Might not sound bad to some, but in New Zealand, that roasts you. I'm sporting sunburn on my noggin from 30 minutes in the sun yesterday. My application to wear shorts to the office, is still pending. Work is.. Fuckin' wild. This week alone there's been hospitalizations, Covid cases, full blown fights between departments. AND YET. The new staff are amazing. One woman arrived from Germany late last year, applied and got the job, and she's just thrown herself into everything. Figures it all out. The staff love her already. Making me feel far better about my own job, having awesome people to look after. As an update: I did just get into a shouting match with a lecturer, who is super stressed but also just said the wrong fuckin' thing to me. One of my staff supports him directly, and was admitted to hospital yesterday. Now having an operation, so it's obviously urgent. But still.. He said.. "You need to do better." Ohhh my dude, I am not getting into a pissing contest with an academic. If you disappear? The program continues with another academic in your place. If I disappear? 6 departments, of 12, go tits up and fly blind for half a year trying to figure out how everything worked. It's like fucking with the people who handle your food. You just don't do it. He sent me an email an hour later apologizing. So that's nice. Still, I'm wary of him now.
I've focused on chess recently and hadn't been fitter. Done well enough in last four tournaments to seriously aspire to the rank of candidate master, but it's not exactly a priority. Being realistic here, it would be months of hard work to get a new badge and briefly see my name in the rankings before I lose interest and drop out of the ass end of Poland's top 500. Kinda dread going to work again, but I need some kind of metronome in life to not go into a near-autistic spiral on some topic. Work from home will be possible, but I probably shouldn't indulge that for a while. It's a shared office in a sense that a room you could play badminton at is divided into five desk areas and a shared printer. I'll be requisitioning a chalkboard instead of a greaseboard the moment I can, though. Apart from therapy, there were too few constants, and even though I require fewer meds now, fixing biochemistry isn't the same as unscrewing my head. I found folks to play Delta Green with. We're thinking of porting it to Poland, because our knowledge of the US federal systems is... elective. Enough to wing it, but we know more about UB/SB alone than all your three-letter agencies combined. The foot now only hurts while running, so that's good.
