bironic

Hello! I’ve been here, keeping up with people’s posts; I just haven’t been posting myself. Let’s fix that.

Travels

I went on vacation last month for the first time in 5 years, to visit my friend A. and her husband V. and two kids for a few days in Finland, where they’re from, and another few days in Stockholm, where they live now, finished off with a few days on my own on the Swedish island of Gotland. I’d never been to either country, and it was so nice to see new landscapes and architecture and wildlife and try new foods. The weather offered welcome relief: around 21C/70F and breezy compared to this summer’s record-breaking number of humid 90F+ days at home. Two weeks after midsummer, it never got fully dark.

( deets )

Next time maybe there will be a chance to visit isagel and/or naye. I’d also love to see Lapland in wintertime and the northern lights.

COVID

I’d put off traveling anywhere besides visiting family since 2020 because I knew as well as anyone that it raises risk of contracting COVID, and I’d avoided COVID so far. But fumbled policies have left us with COVID being basically endemic, and I wanted to go abroad, so I took extra precautions before and during, bought travel insurance, and crossed my fingers.

Friends, I came down with COVID less than 24 hours into the trip. Which, if the CDC’s statistics on incubation period remain reliable, means I 100% caught it before departing. Sigh. One of many no-longer-"novid" victims of the summer surge. ( deets )

I got home and slept a lot for a couple of weeks. Would say it took one month from first to last symptoms. TBD on any lingering effects.

Health

Like, for example, how my current period has lasted three weeks and counting? More likely it’s perimenopause and/or the fibroids or endometrial hyperplasia an ultrasound found last week, after more than a year of increasingly disagreeable symptoms. The medical investigation is only just getting underway. "Hooray."

Family

My little sister is getting married this fall! Guess it’s time to accept that she’s 40 and not 12. Her boyf is a good guy. Our parents are over the moon that one of their offspring has at last found a life partner, even if there are no grandchildren on the horizon. Insert complicated feelings here about suspecting I am ace and aro + wanting parents to feel like the family line isn’t dying out + general mortality anxiety. The wedding will be fun and the right amount of quirky. It’s at the science museum on the grounds of the 1964 World’s Fair, where our families used to visit when we were kids and my dad took slides and reel-to-reel tape when he was young. I’m dress shopping. Some relatives I haven’t seen in a while will be there.

My grandfather turned 103 in June. He’s as cognitively sharp as you could hope. A lady with a therapy cat comes to visit him in the assisted living facility every other weekend. Amazing. I wish I could look forward to same, but since he’s my dad’s stepfather, the genes don’t belong to us. Best hope comes from my grandma (dad’s mom), who made it to a week short of 99. The rest died young or youngish, alas.

Pets

Pepper is still here, still cute, still feisty. She’s my condo companion and stress reliever and provider of amusement and affection. If rescue records are to be believed, she turns 5 this month. The average guinea pig lifespan is 6, but there’s a pretty big spread around that number. We’ll see. My sister’s guinea pig—adopted to be a friend for Pepper but whom Pepper categorically rejected—lived until almost 5. If memory serves, our childhood guinea pig made it to something like 8.



Work

I accepted another promotion. Been having mixed feelings about it. Good: money, learning useful new skills, a change after 10 years in the same office. Ambivalent: little time for creative work. What does it mean to focus on management and strategy after 25 years of identifying as a writer and video editor? Am I drifting further away from the ideal artist life I dreamed of, or making a smart/pragmatic decision since various factors have made writing harder as the years pass? Am I gravitating toward something I’m actually better at? What’s the plan? What’s the meaning of life?

THE END

Hello to you all. Please don’t feel like you need to respond to everything if there is one part you’d like to engage with. <3

Spring green

I don't really go to Starbucks except during a fun period of springtime when pollen and/or antihistamines give me a sore throat in the morning, which iced milky tea relieves on my way to the office. But that gets expensive fast, so this week I bought a gallon of milk and a 14-oz bag of matcha powder from the corner Korean-Japanese market for about the cost of a week of Starbucks. It is delicious and effective, and it will last … a very long time. 14 ounces turns out to be a lot of matcha when you use about one teaspoon per tall glass of latte. If I were a chinchilla, I could take a dust bath in all this matcha. It may be time to unearth some matcha baking recipes.

Adulthood is fun

I had a dream that I was among a handful of people who landed a job/internship at some biotech company in Kendall Square, after arguing a dude into believing that the hiring manager had not in fact dropped me from the candidate pool. The dream included details about productivity expectations, managerial oversight and salary negotiation. This followed a dream the night before that someone at work helped me out with that RL project that got cancelled.

What the heck, brain? You used to dream about vampires and Star Trek and stuff. At least earlier this week there were dreams about Zahn McClarnon (good) and someone who was either Ben Affleck or Paul Rudd's character from Mute (not good).

In other news, in the past 24 hours I successfully coordinated flight plans with a friend to go to fanworks, booked two hotels for the vacation portion of my upcoming business trip to Switzerland (!), and did the math on the 6 short train rides I expect to take throughout said trip. Whew.

Spoiled for choice

Too many options for only one day left in the weekend. Work on the Fanworks vid whose June 4 deadline snuck up? Work on a non-deadline-driven vid? Play with a fic or original story? Sort through extraneous belongings in case I decide to move? Research local brokers? Cook and clean? Combine any of these with friend hangout? Or the likeliest option: Stew in indecision.

Well, autumn was as much of a sh@#%*show as predicted, but the two big work projects have been turned in, and with luck, December will bring some relaxation.

Things wot have been up:

Reading

The local friend group's inaugural fall reading challenge comes to a close today. I blacked out my bingo card, which was all I wanted in the world. Not sure what will fill the void now that it's over.

The challenge definitely motivated me to choose reading over other activities, to plan ahead so there was always a book or five waiting next and to finish books that I might otherwise have set aside or let drag on. Whereas the last few years I averaged a book a week, during the challenge I averaged a book almost every two days; instead of 50-55 books total, 2018 is on track to top 75. Snow days, long flights and library due dates also helped.

Favorite reads:

• Strange Practice: A Dr. Greta Helsing novel by Vivian Shaw (thanks, rachelmanija)
• Two Mates for the Dragon by Zoe Chant et al, esp. the one by Juno Blake (thanks, rachelmanija & sholio)
• The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas
• The Marrow Thieves by Cherie Dimaline
• Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? by Edward Albee
• My Teacher Is an Alien series by Bruce Coville (reread)
• The Vampire Diaries series by L.J. Smith (reread)

The bingo card also pushed me to finally crack open 6 of the unread books I've owned for many years, which was nice.

Readings

I went to several book readings in September/October. Fully intended to write them up, then did not. For the record:

Dessa @ Brattle Theater
DeRay Mckesson with Ayanna Pressley @ Old South Church
Heid Erdrich, Tacey Atsitty & Eric Gansworth @ Harvard Peabody Museum (related post)
George Saunders @ Boston University

All excellent, with the possible exception of Mckesson/Pressley—the acoustics were so awful where we sat that we couldn't make out half of what they said; we gave up when they started the Q&A. Reading DeRay's book afterwards helped clarify what we'd semi-heard.

Vidding

No matter how many vids you make, there will always be new technical challenges. I can't even talk about this one because it's for a treat I want to make for Festivids. Suffice it to say that solution #1 involved math; the math that should have worked did not work because reasons; so I devised solution #2 over the weekend. Now for the "easy" part of, you know, making the vid and seeing if it turns out well enough to submit.

Meanwhile, I have no idea what to do for my actual assignment. That will sound funny later when you find out what the source is. So far, I've come up with a concept that would take too long to make, a song that wasn't about what I thought it was about, and a spoof where a spoof wouldn't be appreciated. Now that life is quieting, I'll sit down and figure it out. Because otherwise I'm looking at defaulting and making only the treat, which would be weird in addition to breaking my streak of making at least two Festivids each year.

(Well, there's this other treat idea...)

Traveling

Having given up on postponing travel for work reasons because work never lets up these days, I went to Tucson to visit childhood friend A. More strip malls than expected in the city itself, but gorgeous desert and mountains close by, and the low humidity means you don't turn into a sweaty mess while hiking. For Thanksgiving I spent ~36 hours in NY seeing family and then ~48 hours at home alternating social time with domesticity, a hybrid experiment that turned out pretty well.

In a couple of weeks I will visit synn, yay, and over winter break I will meet the new house my mom and her boyfriend acquired in rural Tennessee to retire to. Re: the above, I'll have to decide whether it's ridiculous to drag down my desktop computer for vidding or simply bring a book—Moby Dick's time may have arrived at last—and some writing materials. Still have those three unfinished Zahn-related fics.

Cooking

Since there were no Thanksgiving leftovers on account of we didn't host, yesterday I made turkey meatballs, green beans and stuffing for this week's lunches, topped with slices of that classic cranberry sauce that comes out of the can with a slurp in a single jiggly cylinder. While I was at it, I rescued a few pounds of apples we picked 6 weeks ago by turning them into applesauce with cinnamon and a pinch of brown sugar. Mm. That will accompany the week's dinners of sautéed kale, gigante beans and sausage. It felt good to put in the time in the kitchen; I hadn't cooked properly in a while.

Chilling

Only in the literal sense: Our boiler broke. It's being fixed. Meanwhile, space heaters.

...Which may or may not explain why there's a tickle in my throat today. Sigh.

Doing

I spent May working 24/7 on the vid; did little but watch TV in June; then spent three-quarters of July working 24/7 on an article for my job. Now it's back to chillin' out, by which I mean doing the minimum at work while visiting friends and family, consuming media, daydreaming and going for the occasional swim. Things will achieve balance again at some point.

Oh, and my birthday happened last week. 'Twas a pleasant one. Some friends made me dinner ♥, and some other friends and I went for fancy Italian over the weekend. marginaliana made a beautiful Star Trek and blood moon-themed card and thingswithwings wrote an Odo/Quark flashfic. Other surprise gifts included a quart of farm-fresh blueberries, a book on Hollywood Gothic and a Ravenclaw button. Happy double chai to me. The Hebrew kind, not the tea.

Going

I popped down to NYC for 24 hours to catch my beloved friend A., her husband V. and their five-year-old while they swept through three states on a business trip from Munich. The timing was terrible, but it was a joy to see them; I hadn't seen A. in three years. That kid was born a few months before we all left DC. Time flies.

My mom came to MA for a class mid-month, so I hung out with her for a few days. That was nice, although it would've been nicer if I hadn't had to work. We played mini golf, went to an art museum, walked around a lake and watched bits of the Harry Potter marathon on TV. Food highlights: lamb burger with goat cheese, sunflower seed risotto, cocktail made with local blueberries.

Next weekend is vividcon, the last before it metamorphoses into fanworkscon in 2019. It already sounds like people's emotions will be running high. I'm aiming to remain calm, set simple goals—i.e. "meet sol_se"—and not have too-high expectations for hanging out with people who will all be trying to do and feel A Lot. My perspective: It is just another Vividcon, this is not the last opportunity to see vidders, not everything has to be 'a moment.' It helps that I'm not showing any new vids amidst the glut of premieres. So far the worst I have to deal with is performance anxiety over co-modding a panel. (If you have requests for multifandom vidding topics, drop a line here!)

Watching

The movie adaptation of a play I'd wanted to see but missed, Marjorie Prime, which, like Robot and Frank, and like Westworld only less irritating, uses AI as a lens to explore age-related memory loss, how memories help construct a person, how they can be manipulated, and what happens to memories themselves and echoes of people as time passes and stories get conveyed second- and third-hand. The movie dipped in the… third quarter? But the beginning and end were wonderful.

Other than that, a string of movies and shows featuring Zahn McClarnon.

I watched six seasons of Longmire in about a month, whoops. It's a present-day sheriffing show set in rural Wyoming. Came for Zahn as the police chief of the neighboring Cheyenne reservation; stayed for him and Lou Diamond Phillips, Katee Sackhoff and some heartfelt seeking of justice. Post pending when writing about it feels less intimidating.

Writing

Fic!! Although I've been playing with Mary Sues on my hard drive here and there, it's been two years since I posted a story to the AO3 (Here rest, interred without a stone) and three years since an actor or source inspired a cluster of fics (the Inkheart trio, plus two WsIP I swear I'll finish one day). In the last month, I've started no fewer than three stories, thanks to Zahn McClarnon characters.

So far:

- 1,400 words of an indulgent Mathias/OFC dubcon aphrodisiacs story for Longmire

- 670 words of the vampire threesome flashbacks no one else has written despite the clear subtext in this one episode of Midnight, Texas

- 2,000 words of noncon inspired by a scene in the premiere of The Red Road that I watched on Sunday. I should have known noncon would overcome the writer’s block.

- Well, and 6 lines of Mathias/Cady (Longmire), but I'm not sure there's enough to hang a story on

It's both motivating and refreshingly low-pressure to observe how few AO3 fics there are for some of these characters. ( Quick examples: )

I need all the momentum I can get, being so rusty at this point and easily defeated by self-recrimination and any narrative problems that arise. disgruntled_owl and other local fic-writing friends have been great help on both fronts, offering solutions and encouragement.

Vidding

I've recovered enough from "The Greatest" to plan vids again. I'd like to make one for Longmire; given that I've been humming a particular song candidate for about six weeks, chances are it'll be set to that.

Also on the docket is the second FandomTrumpsHate vid, for deelaundry. We've narrowed it down to two options: either the opening credits to a TV show she has been imagining for a while or a remix of her "all you can kink" Tango & Cash vid.

Reading

Can wait for another post.

This morning before I even got to the office, my bank reported a fraudulent credit card charge and my phone experienced its second bizarre battery drain in as many days. Then at work, I had just retrieved from the fridge the two mini-pies left over from an event yesterday—an event that I supplied the food for, because we do rotations—when a male colleague took one of them from me, opened it up and said he was going to eat it even though I had just told him I was taking it for my roommate. WTF. While still processing that, I tried to pre-order an e-book for my dad and had to resort to the customer service chat feature in order to find out that gift purchases aren’t available on pre-orders.

Grumpy #firstworld morning, is what I’m saying.

But. When I went to that colleague’s office afterwards to ask him what he’d been thinking, he explained that he’d misunderstood my intentions; apologized; and on his lunch break bought me a Starbucks gift card.

And the other stuff is being taken care of.

Focus on the positives:

- Another colleague brought in delicious homemade lime curd bars.
- Am going to a sushi-making class tonight, a Hanukkah gift from my mom.
- Watched Queen of Katwe last night and it was good.
- The foot and a half of snow that fell on Tuesday is melting, so if luck holds, I’ll be able to drive places this weekend without worrying too much about being able to park when I get back.
- Three weeks until Montreal trip with synn. Recommendations welcome.

(That is a Muppets reference)

JAN
We have a toft in town! marginaliana and I enjoyed a leisurely brunch with her and her +1, J., before Thursday's snowstorm turned the region into barely navigable marshmallowland. We had only met once before, briefly, at Vividcon in 2010; it was a joy to expand on that.

OCT
While I was in San Francisco for a business trip, rhoboat came over to hang out for the day. We hadn't properly met until Vividcon two months earlier, and I am glad we finally did, because rho is whip-smart and funny and engaging, employed in a field adjacent to mine, and generally an enjoyable person to spend time with in museums and foodie neighborhoods.

( We visited the de Young museum )

Afterwards, laurashapiro was able to join for a delicious sashimi dinner and "yup, we're in San Francisco"-style ice cream. (I went for carrot halwa flavor.) Too brief a catch-up, but precious for its scarcity.

DEC PT 1
iggyw came to stay for a night during her own business trip! We secured takeout and chatted while Star Trek reruns played in the background. I continue to adore iggy and am glad when work or play takes one of us to the other's city.

DEC PT 2
When I lived in D.C., I used to visit deelaundry & family almost every Saturday, so it was nice to fall into old, comfortable patterns when I visited for ~5 days over winter break. Poor Dee caught a cold and I am a bad friend when people are sick because my instinctual reaction is GET AWAY FROM THE GERMS AAAAH but it appears we are still on good terms, heh, whew. Anyway, we started to put their house back together after a renovation, ate a lot of tasty food as Mr. deelaundry rejoiced in having a kitchen again, saw Star Wars: The Last Jedi and some Netflix movies, and played around with holiday gifts such as Paint by Sticker books.

Dee was scheduled to work the last two days so I hitched a ride into the city to see cinco and her +1, R. Because they got married after I'd moved away, I mostly know R. through what cinco posts about her. As above, it was great to spend a few hours getting to know her a little more, from culinary expertise to diatribes about education policy. And I always love the chance to have substantive conversations with cinco. We browsed a new-to-us wing of Kramerbooks before embarking on a Thai and chai tour of 17th Street. My only regret is I have but one life to-- missing alpheratz and the rest of the D.C. crew. Next time.

AUG
Okay, whatever, sometimes I think people are scary, and hollywoodgrrl and ohvienna are so cool that I had put them in the "too cool to hang out with" category at Vividcons past, but this time, this time I promised myself I would unload all of that onto them in a hopefully amusing way and then see if they wanted to have lunch. Which they did! The three of us and corbae went for ramen between panels/vidshows and talked about I don't even remember what, but it was fun. While they are still effortlessly cool, I am pleased to report they are not scary.


In conclusion: fan friends in other cities \o/

Also: fan friends in this city \o/

Hi, friends. Thanks for voting in the poll! Indecisiveness combined with a general suspicion that everything I say and write these days is stupid banal can lead to extra-long periods of not posting.

I have been all right. Going to the gym 4+ days a week is not my natural inclination, and I still hurt in many places, but it is clear the activity is keeping my mood afloat, helping me sleep better and, yes, building strength and stamina. I took tonight off to browse the local library book sale -- $2 for Neil Clarke's Best Science Fiction of the Year vol. 1 and Whale Rider on DVD, yay -- and write a post.

My sister came to visit over Columbus Day/Indigenous Peoples Day weekend. (Wow, it looks even worse to put those side by side than to use one alone. Wish we could just say Indigenous Peoples Day now, but it hasn't permeated the culture yet.) We went to a book event featuring chef Jacques Pépin, daughter Claudine and granddaughter Shorey. Having grown up watching Pépin, Julia Child and the Frugal Gourmet on PBS, it was a real treat -- especially since he came out twenty minutes early, plastic cup of wine in hand, to do photo ops with anyone who wanted.

The discussion itself was quite funny. Claudine, the moderator, got teased by her dad, but she dished it right back. "Never work with family," she quipped at one point. They told stories about things like how PBS timed its filmings so if Claudine wasn't a fast enough learner at rolling out dough or whatever, Jacques would elbow her out of the way and do it himself. Whereas when he partnered with Julia Child, she just told the film crew, "We're going to make this dish and we'll tell you when we're done," meaning some poor editor had to trim 110 minutes down to 20-something. Nor did they work from recipes, so airings were delayed because the producers had to reverse engineer them.

We also went to the county fair in the rain, figuring the crowds would thin out. Incorrect! Nonetheless, we enjoyed many animals, vegetables and minerals crafts. A pair of goats tried to eat our plastic ponchos, and once again the rabbit and cavy tent drove me to look into how feasible it would be to get a couple of guinea pigs to cuddle at home. (Space, climate control and frequency of cage cleaning & feeding are the main concerns, i.e. I could not be away for more than about a day without arranging for care. And I don't know if I trust my ability to maintain the energy levels to do what's needed. This was easier growing up when we had four family members to share tasks.) LOOK AT ITS LITTLE TRIBBLE TUFTS.

Work has been work-y. We were urged to apply for some awards in our field, which took up most of the last three days. I've won a few in this job, so I'm a bit hopeful. Otherwise just trying to keep my head down and enjoy the aspects of this career that I enjoy while our office's overall stress rises and morale dips. Pretty sure [coworker] is about to quit.

Good news is we still get financial support for professional development. Next week I'm flying to San Francisco for a conference. If any of you have food recommendations in the Union Square/SoMa area, especially for breakfast and lunch, share away. I'm already set on returning to a couple of takeout places in Chinatown for tasty tasty dim sum. Still dreaming of the shrimp and leek dumplings from my first visit there a year and a half ago.

Hwooof, that was a tough week, but this weekend was the best that's happened in a while, so all's well that ends well, I guess.

(It was just a trough of stress. Political stuff, work stuff, probably body chemistry stuff. I am finally getting started with seeing a therapist and then I missed an appointment because I was so discombobulated I thought it was the next day. I had never missed a doctor's appointment before. I felt so stupid until deelaundry said a kind thing that hadn't occurred to me: When I said, "I look like a flake," she countered with, "You look like someone who needs help." Self-compassion is a thing it would be nice to learn.)

The good stuff:

Socializing: In support of this year's goal to get together more often with friends I like to talk to and/or want to get to know better, a few of us went to a play yesterday and had a satisfying coffee shop chat afterwards, and then I accepted an unexpected invitation to another blossoming friend's low-key Superbowl dinner. All good.

The play was called Trans Scripts, a synthesis/melding of interviews with trans women from the US/UK/Aus. It was elegant, illuminating and well acted -- two cast members were particularly strong -- although I thought it faltered in a few spots when it shifted from "showing" through anecdotes to plain proselytizing. marginaliana wrote up some of her thoughts.

A phone conversation the previous night:

95-year-old grandpa: Oh! I didn't expect you to be home on a Saturday night. I thought you'd be out with your friends.
Me: No, I'm boring. Well, I'm going to see a play tomorrow, but it's a matinee.
Grandpa: Oh, yeah? What is it about?
Me, bracing myself: It's based on interviews with transgender women about their lives.
Grandpa: Oh. You know, there's this woman I know from the temple, who lives with another woman, and it turns out they're--what do you call it--lesbians? Lesbians?
Me: Mm-hm!
Grandpa: So that's very interesting! I just knew them as women from the temple, you know.

#NotAllGrandpas

Doing: Had a computer-free day Saturday involving a mall run, errands and two movies. In addition to some necessaries for work and winter weather, I treated myself to a grommet-studded cut-out shirt that I probably won't wear anywhere but at home and Club Vivid (because I am me) but love anyway.

Reading: Was delighted by Unbeatable Squirrel Girl vols 1-2: plucky, witty, metatextual, intertextual, often involved the defusing of supervillainy through psychology/sympathy rather than fisticuffs. The '80s horror of Paper Girls turns out to be not as much my aesthetic, although the introduction of overlapping timestreams in vol. 2 is getting interesting.

Watching: Saw Moonlight and Lion. Loved the first and really liked the second; cried through them both; my heart aches for Chiron. Hope to see I Am Not Your Negro and Hidden Figures this week. Catching up on what I missed in Dec-Jan when too much else was going on.

Vidding: I remain in the planning stages of the two auction vids, and am figuring out if I can make the multifandom Club Vivid vid I've been preparing since the fall or if it'll need to wait another year. I watched all the festivids -- slim masterlist this year, half the usual total -- but haven't commented on any or recced any here because I'm afraid the gaps would give away what I made, and the thought of doing fake comments/recs to throw off the scent makes me tired. I'll probably just post the rec list after reveals.

Cooking: A pleasurable week is in store of chicken breast and goat cheese sandwiches for lunch and stuffed cabbage for dinner. Also, the supermarket was selling chocolate-covered banana chips, which I didn't know was a thing but I am all over it, mm. Banana chips were such a treat when I was a kid.

[warning: stress dreams involving violence]

Awake brain: I know I have work and vidding deadlines, but I feel pretty good.

Unconscious brain: Ha ha ha! Have some dreams about bears, and a horse peeing on you, and performing as Captain Kirk in a Star Trek play but you forget all your lines and musical cues so everyone has to cover for you, and experiencing people's startled reactions to your face after you lose most of it in an accident, and forgetting to buy a dress and write a speech for your sister's (nonexistent) wedding, and missing your trains to get downtown!

...Yet I still feel pretty good? Well, less good now that the work deadline looms and the time I set aside to vid keeps getting diverted to procrastination activities ranging from cooking to watching long-ago completed vids. :/ I did finish the Elf one, as you may have seen, but that still leaves the four festivids-in-progress.

Of the good: Made it unexpectedly to most of Boston Fannish Brunch today; there will be a roga in town for the beginning of Hanukkah; going to visit deelaundry and family for Xmas; going with disgruntledowl the next day to a National Theatre Live screening of Patrick Stewart & Ian McKellen's latest play, followed probably by New Year's Eve hangouts with old movies.

Ah, that's the oven timer. Round one was meat for the week, round two is veg, round three will be baked apples (with much less sugar). I've been peeling, coring, slicing and baking apples with a simple dusting of cinnamon afterwards, so am attracted to this recipe that involves only coring, even though baked apple skin looks to me like death.

(Dear brain: That is not an invitation for another stress dream.)

ETA: The apples are delicious, like an inside-out crumble, although I wouldn't say they're less work than what I was doing before; maybe because I don't have a melon baller or apple corer. I used about 1 tsp brown sugar and a generous shake of cinnamon along with the oats.

I don't even know what to say. You all see what's happening too.

How I've coped this week:

Reading, Watching, Sharing, Doing
I've been taking in as much news as I can handle, which varies by the evening. Since it's all too easy for me to think about things and stop there, I've also made efforts to transform that intake and mental processing into actions. Things like setting up monthly rather than annual charity donations, signing the subset of petitions that have a shot at going anywhere, and building a spreadsheet of local, state and federal representative contact information plus specific issues to thank them for supporting or urge them to oppose. I haven't psyched myself up yet to, uh, actually make the phone calls, but I'm working on it. Still unsure which outreach efforts are most effective when I live in a Democratic state with kickass reps who are already writing joint statements and introducing bills to prevent or reverse the most atrocious developments.

Working
Nobody at our office got anything done the day after the election, but by the next day I was ready to bury myself in work. My monthly productivity is now on track to be one and a half to two times normal.

Vidding
thedeadparrot, stultiloquentia and disgruntledowl came over at various times last weekend for communal laptopping and to talk or not-talk about our government-to-be. I made a festivids treat draft in 24 hours and picked at a few others. Current plan: four Festivids and one Christmas vid. Ha. Ha ha ha.

Cooking
Vidding only worked as a distraction through Saturday. Sunday I tried to sit in the computer desk chair but kept drifting into the kitchen to start some other cooking or baking project. By the end of the day, there was curried pumpkin-apple soup, pumpkin bread, an onion and feta frittata, baked sweet potatoes, roasted vegetable lasagna and lemon-basil haddock with spaghetti squash. It's kept me in leftovers for the entire week, plus extras in the freezer, and one loaf of the pumpkin bread fed my coworkers.

Reading
Not much fiction. Finished the Young Miles compendium -- enjoyed the Dendarii parts, gradually lost patience with the rest -- and am wrapping up Vampire Romance 2. Starting to do proper research into the paranormal erotica short story market. I did go to book club last Thursday despite only having read a few chapters of the book months ago (The Goblin Emperor), and was glad to have done so, for the company.

Writing
Picked up a high school- into college-era (!) orig fic last night and added 1,200 words in 60 or 90 minutes, which, if you've been keeping track, is a lot for me these last few years. Want to try some more tonight and over the weekend. There is a sequence of scenes I daydreamed about back in the day that for some reason resurfaced, matured with time, a couple of nights ago, and I'm trying to get them down on the page. A sort of recovery story, years after the hurt I put the hero and heroine through: probably another form of self-comfort this month to go with the blankets and hoodies and warm drinks and toast.

Watching
Not much besides current events. thedeadparrot and I did go to see Arrival last Friday and it was great; haven't enjoyed a new SF movie that much since Interstellar. Oh, and Westworld. I'm still ambivalent about it but there's more to enjoy than it seemed at the beginning. This week's episode had one particularly delightful scenario and one great twist. Still, laughably Dark and frustratingly male-POV even when it's focusing on Strong Female Characters.

Dreaming
Starting last Tuesday, I went from having never dreamt about politics or politicians in my life to dreaming about them almost every night. Am ready for this phase to pass.

And so another week comes to a close. How are you all holding up?