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

Friends

alpheratz/maralenenok visited for a four-day weekend, departing last night. With the exception of cinco's wedding weekend, we hadn't spent significant time together in five and a half years, so this was really nice. We did many things, which is extra impressive considering how draggy we have felt of late. Two museums, a chocolate factory tour, a walk, a city-wide garage-band festival, a fan brunch, a book sale, a movie-theater movie, a little cooking and baking, much TV, and vid watching and discussion. A night staying up too late to talk, which is what you hope for when you haven't seen a friend in a long time.

Bonus: Our prolonged cold and rainy spring meant only one day of death by pollen.

I don't go online much when I'm hanging out with friends unless it's a communal laptop date, but now she is home, and we watched this week's Game of Thrones, so it's safe to come on the internet again.

Hold the U-Haul

I don't have to move after all! Landlady decided not to sell this year. Now to decide whether to apartment-hunt anyway, with the hope of making those previously mentioned living improvements. The lack of pressure could go either way: making the hunt more pleasurable and giving me more power in negotiations, since I don't have to say yes to anything… or draining the motivation to change circumstances.

TMI

Things you can't tell your teacher at the gym, or, like, most people: that while it's hard to gauge progress from week to week because the exercises keep changing, you definitely noticed how much your strength has increased when your kink buddy visited last month, ha.

Health

Having stopped therapy after two years of not getting traction on some deeply bothersome issues with regard to food and body and blood test results, and having had disappointing experiences right before that with both a nutritionist and an endocrinologist, today I took a metaphorical fortifying breath and saw a new nutritionist at our university's health center. And she seems… actually good? Maybe? She shared some facts I hadn't known before, didn't shy away from the fear-of-mortality stuff or the everything's-tangled-together stuff, demonstrated a good mix of listening and talking, and to complement our handful of insurance-approved sessions, said she would recommend a few therapists who specialize in these areas and wouldn't suck. This makes up for how she asks, "Does that bring you joy?" when discussing any specific food/meal or activity. (It's the phrasing, not the sentiment, that edges on wince-y.)

Will we communicate well? Will her recommendations work? Is this a case of trying the same thing over and over and expecting different results—placing myself in the hands of medical professionals hoping they can take care of me, only to be let down—or not letting a series of setbacks push me to give up? Only time will tell.

Oh, wow. That post the other day, when I tried once more to describe that weird thing that's happened on and off for 20 years? I went and dug up a diary entry I remembered making about it in high school, and there were a couple more symptoms mentioned in it that match the clinical description of simple partial temporal lobe seizures: ( Behind the cut if you are curious )

I'd forgotten about the stronger physical manifestations; they don't seem to happen anymore. Even though we don't have a family history of epilepsy and my parents confirm I wasn't dropped on my head as a child :), I really wonder if that's what's up! I will ask my doctor about it the next time I have an appointment (and will stop talking about it in the meantime because probably this is not super interesting to read about if it's not happening to you). Er, and hope that if this does turn out to be the explanation, it doesn't open a can of worms of tests or "preexisting conditions."

But I do want to say thanks for inspiring me to think this through and revisit those internet searches. Knowing you are there to talk to -- or to post to -- means a lot.

1. I'm going to vid the Twilight movies. Without irony. So there.

2. Staying away from Twitter/Tumblr until we've seen Star Trek: Beyond on Saturday. However, I did just pop onto Twitter to relay an anecdote about how the young man who sold me the movie tickets this evening was wearing a Starfleet uniform (red, TNG style, three pips), complete with shiny insignia. On my way out he said to his dinner-eating, non-nerd-appearing fellow employee that he was a first officer, to which the fellow employee replied without blinking, "No way. They'd stick you down in stellar cartography."

3. Monday I was treated to a hangout with ignaz as she boomeranged through town for a work thing. We caught up a bit and saw Ghostbusters, which was fine. I hadn't expected to love it as much as many friends seem to, and that turned out to be accurate, but it was enjoyable on multiple levels, from Kate McKinnon's owning of the part to the game of Spot the Boston Location to the feminist metacommentary. Primarily, I hope their taking of our money -- which, btw, $14 for a non-3D/non-IMAX showing on a weekday?! -- convinces some thick-skulled Hollywood exec that non-romance-driven movies with quirky women of various races and body types and with unspecified sexualities have a market.

Among the highlights of the evening was running into marginaliana and her +1 at the theater!

4. I also had a really nice time at a birthday party the other week talking with marginaliana, verymilkytea and windtheme and getting to know them better.

verymilkytea helpfully demonstrated how Pokémon Go works; it was brand-new at the time. A coworker subsequently snapped some photos of me posing with two or three invisible Pokémon in my office. I don't play the game, but what I like about it is how its particular implementation of augmented reality makes it feel like ghost hunting or those science fiction stories where someone is slightly out of phase from normal: the idea that there's something there that you can't detect unless you have a special piece of technology that picks up some signature beyond our human senses. It's fun to pretend we're living in a reality where there's a Pokémon over your shoulder right now and you just need a smartphone camera to "see" it.

5. Busy period at work: late evenings, no lunch breaks, full and shifting meeting schedules. Still, it's better than the last few weeks, when I felt nonspecifically draggy-terrible and couldn't sleep deeply or think straight. I've got an appointment with a new doctor tomorrow with the hope of actually figuring out what's been going on in the last couple of years. TMI maybe.

Bonus 6. Bowl of falafel salad. Mm.

Fretting: I got some disheartening but not unexpected test results today re: health. Dealing with it properly will involve behavior changes and possibly-temporary pills. I am trying to approach it with a "you can do it" attitude, but it's hard. Dietary advice, for example, is all over the map. I guess we'll see what the nutritionist says at my next appointment.

I also have to figure out what to do about my knee, which has gotten unsteady, probably because I overtaxed it with high-impact activities; and now the issue has traveled up to tighten my hip, which has given me problems before. Perhaps I can find a physical therapist/massage therapist to dig in her elbow. Just, grr. I keep thinking I'm too young to be dealing with these kinds of issues left and right, but here we are, so I guess not. Maybe I'll focus on how the hip helps me empathize with Breq.

Also have been ruminating on how I'm not performing as well in my professional field as I am in fandom, and whether that's a problem, and why ego has to get mixed up in everything. That's a topic for another post.

Going: To DC this weekend for a friend's wedding, and I think it will be just wonderful. Seeing a slew of fan friends and celebrating happiness.

Watching: Whatever season of the Great British Bake-Off/Baking Show they've put up on Netflix. As people have said, it's charming and much more supportive than your typical reality competition. More attention to the craft as well. It's something nice and light to look forward to each evening. And a welcome break from Gilmore Girls. GG is enjoyable but after four seasons in a month it's time to mix things up more.

Vidding: Have four or five back-up ideas for Festivids sources. Do I start to make one before getting an assignment? It seems like something fun to do, but it doesn't seem right to work on an assignment or a treat without first knowing what the recipient is hoping for.

Reading: Finished Step Aside, Pops!, which was fine. I liked "I had fun once and it was awful". Am about 4/5 of the way through Master and Commander; it's funnier but also choppier than expected. Dunno what's next. I sort of petered out on Prydain.

Thanks a lot, every insurance company I can find in this county, for refusing me two months of health coverage to fill a gap between school and work in case I get hit by a car or stricken with swine flu, all because I had a kidney stone and a scan for what turned out to be a benign growth two and a half years ago.

This is especially irritating coming as it does a day after Obama's speech about the ideal healthcare environment in this country. It may have wanted some substance to back up its ideals, but the moral motivations can't be faulted. Also, he's an excellent speaker.

/politics

Working a lot this week. Tired. A bit demoralized. Have more to do tonight. Dreading an interview tomorrow at which I'm almost certain I'm going to be offered a job. Dreading because I don't know if I want it and I haven't been able to figure it out since this became a possibility more than a month ago. Am probably going to take it anyway, and then deal with whether it's a good fit or not -- and telling my current supervisor, who is expecting me to be around for another several months yet.

But: synn is coming tomorrow for the weekend. There may be a Tim Gunn event in person next weekend. And tonight is the premiere of The Vampire Diaries, which looks just as terrible as every other TV show that utterly misses what makes vampires compelling, but I was obsessed with L.J. Smith for about a month in high school, several years after I knew better, and it'll be really cool to see those characters in whatever mutated hypersexed teenage incarnation on screen.

("I'm going to eat you, Salvatore.")

Roses are red,
Violets are blue.
My f-list is great;
I love all of you.

ETA: Yes, yes, fine, I appreciate you more than that dinky poem suggests. Here is a tritina, coerced inspired by purridot. Pure sap, but nevertheless true (and in pentameter!):


On LJ we can squee and share our love,
bonding with strangers who become our friends
to celebrate the things that bring us joy.

In fandom and beyond, through grief and joy
alike, we've come to laugh, support and love
each other -- although far apart -- as friends.

I don't know where I'd be without you, friends.
With luck, this Valentine conveys the joy
it is to have you in my life, to love.

My love to you, dear friends, who bring me joy.




I mean it. I don't always do a good job at keeping up with everyone, but you're in my thoughts, and you make my life better with your conversation and your art and your passion and your wit and your ... everything. You really do. ♥

I wish I were getting an MRI of my chest instead of my abdomen today, because then I could show you my heart and do little dotted lines showing which pieces you've stolen. :D

I hope those of you celebrating today have a wonderful time, and that those of you who hate the holiday with an unholy passion don't have too horrible a day. For the rest, happy Thursday!

* Thank you to everyone who responded to my last post about fannish grad programs. Advice is still most welcome.

* Don "Mr. Wizard" Herbert has died. Man. :( I grew up on that show, settling in with my dad to watch him make glue out of milk curds, talk about the colors different chemicals make as they burn in fireworks, fill a jar to the tippy-top with ice water to show his young volunteer that water loses volume when it melts, demonstrate peristalsis by having kids swallow pieces of apple while they stood on their heads, take a piece of string to a globe to show how flight paths shorten by curving up near the North pole, lift a heavy can on a pendulum up to his chin and let it go and not flinch as it swung back because he knew it wouldn't reach the same height, shake a bunch of people's hands after he dusted his own with fluorescent powder and then wait a few minutes while they all fidgeted during a meeting and then turn on a black light to show how easily germs spread... And then afterwards, we'd often duplicate his experiments. Yeah, many happy memories. I loved his computer's black keyboard with white letters, too; I thought of it when I got my first IBM laptop years later.

* Rifling through the folder of one of my clients, whose plastic surgery practice is based in Montana, I found an email from her to one of our graphic designers describing what kind of stock photos she wanted on her website. That in itself isn't unusual—but one of her requests was "no gay cowboys."

* fallen_arazil, thank you again for that LJ gift certificate back in December! It's become the gift that keeps on giving; half a year later, I've used it to extend my LJ paid time by two months. ♥

* Sporadic kidney pain, yay! Well, the best guess so far is kidney; am supposed to get yet more test results tomorrow. Since it started last Sunday I've been treated to a CT scan and an abdominal ultrasound and lots of pokey tests and got to miss a couple of days of work and everything. Aside from the, ah, sporadic kidney pain, it's actually been fun. Getting to experience a CT was enjoyable (and fitting that it happened on a Tuesday; no MRI-of-DOOM complications*, happily), and, at the risk of TMI, I quite enjoyed the ultrasound this morning. I'm very sensitive to touch—I detest being touched by people I don't like or have just met, and relish even the most incidental touches from people I do like—synn and thewlisian_afer know what I'm talking about—and have been starved for it for a long time. The technician pressing her hand and the handpiece over warm gel just under my ribs and on my side in slow sweeps for 20 minutes was oddly comforting.

On another note entirely, how sad is it that while I waited for confirmation that I could leave, I checked out the brand of lubricant on the counter (Surgilube) and made a mental note to have House steal that from the clinic in a fic?

* ETA: Correction: Now with MRI in the future, too!

* Fruit! (No, not you.) I went to a local year-round farm stand/garden center/petting zoo (former = original purpose, latter = income) Sunday morning and picked up lots of fresh produce, and my sister and I made a fruit salad that we're still eating our way through. Strawberries and peaches and nectarines and plums and grapes and canteloupe—and, not in the mix, string beans and tomatoes and peas and giant red leaf lettuce and sweet onions and corn. These are some of the joys of summer for we-who-do-not-like-the-heat (-and-don't-get-summers-off).

* RSL presenting at the Tony Awards this past Sunday night = yay. All unkempt hair and awkward smile and almost, almost brilliant speech. There were pictures of him and Gaby and him alone backstage at the pre-show over at house_daily for those of you who care but don't watch that community.

* Last of the Mohicans was on AMC Saturday night. I didn't see that movie until a couple of years ago, when I rented it because Sebastian Roché (my favorite actor no-one's ever heard of) was supposed to be in it, only it turned out he'd been cut. I was expecting to hate it, as I expect to hate all epic romances with heartthrob lead actors such as Daniel Day-Lewis or Brad Pitt, but I absolutely loved—and still love, as Saturday's viewing proved—the climactic Appalachian clifftop scene with Magua and Alice. His face, his surprised respect. Her serenity. The music. The scenery. Chingachgook's and Hawkeye's and Cora's reactions. Everything. Mm.

* Oh yeah, this is what it's like in the real world. I have no words for stuff like this.

* I was lucky enough to be able to see a montage of the Spacey Awards in which ( spoilers for the Spaceys? and a casting spoiler for SGA S4 ) and as I said over at sheafrotherdon's LJ where she has some low-res screen shots of the brilliance, really, what's better than watching a cast you love be goofy with each other?


Okay, 'nuff procrastinating. Time to convince House and Wilson to get down and dirty. They've prevaricated for a few thousand words now; enough's enough!