familyvalues

On Sunday, we had Ny's Online Thing. (Wake. Memorial.)

It was very good; full of singing and poetry and science facts and art and memories and sadnesses. and made me sort of/almost cry at various time periods, but because I was the Official Zoom Host I felt like I couldn't, like, take breaks, which is of course Never True. Once it finished, I ended up with a dyspeptic-and-congestion-related headache that took a bit to clear out, but it did eventually.

There were a thousand small details that I didn't quite think of, which makes sense because generally I'm not the one hosting large Zooms, or, for that matter, organizing memorials. And also, the sad.

The general inchoate "we" of the Discord have been hashing out ethical stuff about posting and/or linking to the video of the memorial. Because, it was a semi-public event, but also private, and the simultaneous chat in particular had a lot of linking up wallet names and online handles that is perfectly fine in a semi-private space, but less so in the wider world. And yet, one of the things I appreciated about Ny was that she created a life where she could, to the extent possible, be as much herself as she could, out loud, and I don't want her life's celebration muffled.

But, we didn't quite make it clear that it might be posted later, or ask people if they were OK with it being posted (see above re: small details), and in the general sense, we're fans of opt-in rather than opt-out. So we've come to a (current) compromise. I am quite positive there will be further movement later. (For all I know, someone'll make it a Project to ask everyone who was there if they're OK with it being public, or if they'd like their identities ambiguated. I'm sure not doing it, though, because I have overdue client notes to write.) But anyway, for now, we're not sending out the chat, but will send out the video. So!

If you're interested, either

a) email vicka about it, and she can send you the video. (vicka's the one with the Ny Page, which was where I originally found out about the dying-of-COVID part. Her email is findable on the wider andor pages.)

or b) PM me/comment here/email me/send me a carrier pigeon, and I can send you a link to the video, which is on Mega, which is how I got it to vicka because I decided I wasn't up to figuring out SCP. I'm not including the chat there because of the aforementioned linkages.

Or c)

gingicat is, soon, going to post the link to the announce-list, if you're on that.

elainegrey

Worried my comment about yay for low humidity seems heartless. We are in a severe drought and other parts of the state are in extreme drought. The low humidity just makes the fire danger worse and dries out the environment even more. So, yeah, the low humidity and heat are working together in a problematic way. I cut back two young redbuds yesterday i suspect of loosing significant woody growth due to the drought.

https://www.wpc.ncep.noaa.gov/exper/ndfd/ndfd.html -- see where temperatures are likely to break records
https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/cdo-web/datatools/records -- how many records have been broken (the high min points to not cooling off over night)
https://yaleclimateconnections.org/topic/eye-on-the-storm/ -- coverage of extremes with recent headlines "The world just had its second-warmest March on record" and "The year so far: hottest and driest in U.S. history"

elainegrey

I spent much time on Saturday trying to figure out why over ten hours on Friday there was a cancelled order for a $2000 Amazon gift card, three gifts of a Max account on a service i use to myself (charges pending at the bank), and my instagram account alertement me to suspicious activity and was forcing me to change my password. The all used different emails and authentication patterns and it's a struggle figuring out what happened.

It became clear that there is no way that you can get anything out of Amazon or the other company's security people. Amazon kept resetting my password when i attempted to get IP address, payment method, and what purchase system (website? app (which i don't use)? alexa(which i don't use)? I found a stack of others on reddit who had similar exploits around gift accounts

In the end i at least excluded some vectors of attack, added MFA to many more accounts and Christine will take on disputing the bank charges this morning. This morning i woke to find Facebook had changed my password because of suspicious activity.

--== ∞ ==--

I did call my dad and talk to him; it had been a week since i waved off his last minute Easter restaurant lunch. Between feeling sick and the combination of depressing venue and no reservation i couldn't bear the to join them.

--== ∞ ==--

Mowing mowing mowing all Sunday. Thank heavens for the low humidity with this ridiculous warmth. And thank heavens for the leaves now on the trees because i was generally able to be in the shade for my efforts in the afternoon.

redbird

I just attended part of the online memorial for

minoanmiss. While I was there, a couple of people talked about Ny, and read poetry. I disconnected after listening to one song, because listening to people sing over Zoom feels thin. There were some great photos of Ny, smiling.

Also, yesterday I went to shul with Adrian to say kaddish for my mother. Most of the service, including the singing, was in Hebrew, but I felt more of a connection there, I think because I was in a room full of people, not looking at boxes in a Zoom window.

denise posting in

dw_maintenance

I keep forgetting to post about this: we've been troubleshooting the "missing notifications" problem for the past few days. (Well, I say "we", really I mean Mark and Robby; I'm just the amanuensis.) It's been one of those annoying loops of "find a logical explanation for what could be causing the problem, fix that thing, observe that the problem gets better for some people but doesn't go away completely, go back to step one and start again", sigh.

Mark is hauling out the heavy debugging ordinance to try to find the root cause. Once he's done building all the extra logging tools he needs, he'll comment to this entry. After he does, if you find a comment that should have gone to your inbox and sent an email notification but didn't, leave him a link to the comment that should have sent the notification, as long as the comment itself was made after Mark says he's collecting them. (I'd wait and post this after he gets the debug code in but I need to go to sleep and he's not sure how long it will take!)

We're sorry about the hassle! Irregular/sporadic issues like this are really hard to troubleshoot because it's impossible to know if they're fixed or if they're just not happening while you're looking. With luck, this will give us enough information to figure out the root cause for real this time.

elainegrey

Moving personal notes above the ranting:

Accidentally got all my hair dyed pink (magenta) on Wednesday when i imprecisely asked for the usual pink highlights. Anyhow, it will be fun. And it is a good color for me, so i'm pretty confident i can carry this off. My worry is maintenance, but I can always buy some temporary dye for my roots if it grows out badly.

Replaced our range this week after the one stove eye we mainly used on the previous range died at what the internet tells me is about the lifetime. Hoping that this one, which replaces the previous "fast boil" (aka "fast burn") eye with with a grill accessory will use the elements more evenly. Also, the split oven now has a split door which seems likely to be an improvement. Need to acquire a third oven rack, though.

Also have a new weed wacker that hopefully will be better about adding new line. I was willing to switch battery systems for this promised improvement.

Must mow weeds today. The invasive false hawkweeds are about to go to seed. Then back to digging. Worked late the last two days.

--== ∞ ==--

The Artemis II mission has been a delight to monitor. I will admit joking as we watched the work to extract the astronauts that they were all catching up on the news and refusing to leave the capsule and demanding to return to space. Or that the three Americans all were applying to become Canadian citizens. When Christine muttered that there had to be a better way, i noted that if we still had a shuttle -- or the commercial projects were reliable -- the crew could have docked at the space station and been returned to earth with a landing in Florida and a dignified exit. While the shuttle did have a few "rapid unscheduled disassembly" events, that was two out of 135 missions, over thirty years. Why we couldn't build on successful work....

I note that there's less reported delight here than pointing at my great dissatisfaction and bitterness.

--== ∞ ==--

Work continues with intensity, but different focus. Work wants us leaning into AI (sigh) so i have been using AI to review existing code and document the constraints and controls that have evolved since 2007. ( Tedious ranting about communication )

Entertainingly, on Tuesday i announced to colleagues that this introvert finds talking to AIs all day just as exhausting as being in a meeting all day with people. On Friday, a colleague from that meeting commiserated with my AI complaints by noting they had read this week that introverts find working with AIs just as exhausting as with people. I just bit my lip and nodded enthusiastically.

--== ∞ ==--

The whole genocidal fascist in charge thing is also an escalation of distress that i wasn't good at verbalizing to begin with. Perhaps noticing the number of fascists who think it's wrong is encouraging? Is it no longer an Overton window but a Overton retractable roof over a mega-coliseum? I glanced at images of damage to the Golestan Palace. It has been clear to me that the racisim that underlines the attributions of Western Culture is a type of intentional ignorance. I know enough to know so much of what is considered Western Culture is indebted to Persian culture to be horrified. Ah, a quick search indicates that Iran celebrated the 2,500th anniversary of the founding of the Persian Empire in 1973. I just... https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt1w6tbv4 Ooh look, America is 250 years old.

noelfigart

So Andy Weir says his writing isn't political. *head scratch* Clearly Project Hail Mary is deeply so. One of the biggest moments in the movie is about freedom of choice and consent and when it can be overruled.

To anyone reared as an American, that's about as political as you can GET. (And Weir is an American in my generational cohort, so... Yeah)

I self published a novel many years ago, and whenever men read it, one of the invariable comments on the novel is that it is a feminist novel.

That wasn't my intent. My intent was low-fantasy with a legal code and culture sorta kinda inspired by Hammurabi's code. The society in the novel is deeply, DEEPLY sexist. Women are mostly property with a bit of leeway for the upper classes... but not much.

Yes, is it a feminist novel? Well, the female characters are PEOPLE. They have as much agency as their society allows, think, and have flaws just like any male character would have that don't necessarily revolve around the use of sex as a way to any power.

Probably anything I write is feminist because, well, I think women are people. It's so basic to my own thinking, I can't see anything I do as feminist qua feminist, yet... It's almost impossible for anything I write to be otherwise.

Circling back to Weir. I am pretty convinced that he has something similar going on. He feels like a lot of his views of power, life, and how people interact are Just How Things Are, so he CAN'T see it as political, even though it totally is.

elainegrey

It's been a couple social weekends in a row, in March, and i've come tumbling down to a sick weekend. Spring Equinox i have observed by trying to get dirt moved before the 80+degree days get too entrenched. I am feeling a little guilt today for not being more connected to my community of family in the ritual greetings at holidays.

The weekend of the 20th, my niece was in a play and the next day we had a big family meal with my nephew who was heading back to college. There were some Christine porcupine moments but we got through. The next weekend i needed to get plants in the ground and so took off work early to make progress. All Saturday was given over to more social things: my brother and father came to the No Kings protest with my sister and I, then that evening my sister's family, my brother, and Christine and i went to see Hail Mary. Christine went home (and my brother-in-law wanted to go but missed that ride) and the rest of us had a late dinner.

Then there was more digging on Sunday, Monday evening, and Tuesday evening. The raised beds are almost full as i get 50 cubic feet of soil from old compost piles and the moldered pile of wood chips that has languished in the drive for a couple of years, rich with worm castings and mycelium. I'm layering in some clay , hopefully making a good home for these plants.

Wednesday was the Artemis II launch, and then Thursday and Friday i was out of it with a head cold. Yesterday, too.

I planted the Thomasville citrangequat on Monday along with three different shrubby native mints - wild rosemaries or calamints: Clinopodium coccineum 'Amber Blush', Clinopodium georgianum 'Desi Arnez', and Conradina canescens 'Gray Mound'. I've a Clinopodium arkansanum from last year that has overwintered happily, but it's a low growing form - not a shrub. These plants aren't commonly used for landscaping, but are not attractive to deer and do have flushes of flowers like rosemary and savories. I am terrified i will kill them all because they are all sandy soil, sand hills, beach, limestone natives, but i have read they (like so many mints) adapt fine just fine. So i sprang for them and they are in the 10x10 bed between the drive and the garden plot, with the northwest corner anchored by an old apple tree.

This year was the second spring, i think, since planting that bed with the first wave of plants. The waves of cold have confused some of the daffodils and narcissus, but it's greening up nicely. The Vernonia gigantea, a type of ironweed, a tall fall blooming member of the Asteraceae with purple flowers, worries me that it hasn't survived or isn't thriving. It dies back in the winter, so i just trust it takes a while to send back shoots. (But the droughty year past makes me worry it hasn't rooted itself well enough.) The "Sunburst" St Johns wort -- a woody shrub -- was pruned by the deer last year, but i think it was to its benefit. I'm hoping the shrubby mints survive and help give some winter structure to the area.

Two more plant orders are out there, being queued for delivery. One is for the companions for the citrangequat: a yuzu and two pineapple guavas. They probably should be planted further apart, and the chestnut is rowing so fast this might not be a sunny spot soon. Worry worry and second guess. The other order has much more highly bread and hybridized plants: two colorful yarrows and "Homestead purple" verbena as ground cover for the 10x10 bed (admittedly when yarrow blooms it is taller), a hummingbird mint, "Morello" also for the 10x10 bed. Then two monarda with very similar colors, but different bloom times, for ... well, i am not quite sure at the moment.

Work continues OK at the moment. An intense two weeks digging into some details.

Bruno and Marlowe continue to slowly come to terms with each other. Bruno is clear that he gets to sit with me in the living area in the morning while Marlowe is outside or escorted to a sleeping Christine. The doors separating them are open more often, even overnight. There are hissy fits, and Bruno still flits like a silent shadow to safety, but a future where we aren't negotiating seems possible.

kayre

Words I heard today: "Mom, I've just been tail-ended, and there's no one in the other car!"

She was exiting a parking lot, and a parked car rolled into her. It's electronic, and the owner might have been in range of it with the fob-- but how does an electric vehicle get out of park with no weight on the driver's seat?

No one is hurt, and the car is driveable, but with quite a bit of damage-- the other car's bumper rode up over hers and hit the back hatch. Everyone was good-natured about it, even the police. One of the other owner's children was very excited about saying "hello" to the body cameras!

julian

I'm a Unitarian Universalist, not quite birthright but almost. (We started going when I was about 4.) My parents are both lapsed Episcopalians, and wanted somewhere to give me a community and a religious upbringing, so they went with the Dedham Unitarians.

At that point, in the mid-1970s, the UU Church as a whole had much more of the Christian vestiges than it has now, but they were also very much connected (I feel) to the Spirit of the 60s, as well. The denomination has since become Less Officially Christian, which is (for me) a Good Thing, though some individual churches are more steeped in it. (I just don't attend those, because I don't mix well with Christianity on an ongoing basis.)

While I'm pagan and find my spirituality in nature and in intent, I first found it in community and liberal religious faith, and have the UU church in my blood and psyche. I have spent some years of my life not involved in a church, and some years involved, and it always makes me feel better about life to *be* involved in community with others, so I've been casting about, past month or two, to see which UU church will work for me, locally. (My town doesn't have one.) I'm currently going with, basically, checking out some of the ones within about 15 miles/25 minutes' drive. (I may look at a few others slightly further out, like Fitchburg or Bolton or Harvard, but only if I can't feel OK with any of the three I'm considering now.)

There's one in Groton (MA), which would have the advantage of being on the way to/from work, so I could maybe sometimes drop in on evening activities on the way home. Unlike a lot of places I've been at, they do do a *lot* of non-Sunday stuff, which is cool if mostly unworkable with my current work schedule. On a less good note, their minister's been there for *20 years*, which is a long damn time. This worries me, tbh; I might like her a lot and then she'd retire soon, or it might be that the place has calcified around her, or, you know, many other possibilities. The one time I went on Sunday, it was a perfectly nice and very welcoming place, but I miscalculated/didn't read the webpage right, and the minister was off that week. Also it's a freakin' classic Old New England Church Building (which is what I grew up with and am bored by) and feels pretty suburban as a community. I'm leaning toward no, but I do want to meet the minister first.

I enjoyed the Nashua (NH) church when I went, but it's more urban than I like, and also, they do Joys and Concerns in a stupid way, so I will use this as a reason to Not Go There More.

Um, let me restart that. In some Christian churches, they have weekly prayers for people, and the Episcopalians (with whom I have nodding acquaintance) often read them aloud during service. (I know other denominations do too, just, I don't know as much about, for example, Methodists.) The UU Church instead has incorporated a thing (at many parishes) where, at Sunday services, they have people who want to talk about a good thing or a stressful thing in their lives come up and light a candle, and (briefly) talk about it. (And the rest of the folks there that day can send them hope, love, congratulatory or concerned expressions, supportive energy, or a kind thought.) I think this is neat and, among other things, can decentralize the minister as the sole focus of the service, and can also let people get to know each other more.

Anyway, so Nashua does it by having people write down their joy or concern, and the lay worship leader then reads them out, instead. Nope! Dun' like it. Impersonal and hierarchical. So, no.

I went to the Milford (NH) church last week, and they're the leaders in the clubhouse at the moment, despite being in entirely the wrong direction for the rest of my life. Milford's a larger town than Groton, and feels more funky-urbanish even though it's only 16,000 people or so, and there's a domestic violence support organization right next door to the church, which is neat (for my particular interests, anyway). Unfortunately, the pagan store I finally was able to go to, after a few attempts to find it open over the past couple months, was literally closing for the last time that day. (I mean, at least everything was 50% off? Also, they're going to be keeping going via an online presence.) But it's still a reasonably off-kilter town even so.

Unlike my other two exploratory visits at Nashua and Groton, the minister was actually there, which was a pleasant change. This was the 1st anniversary of her starting ministry in Milford, and the church had had some major (unspoken in the service) divisions, and she came out of retirement to take over and, basically, help heal them. (After having a major accident of her own that she's still recovering from, so, healing and recovery not just one way.) All the readings/meditations were based around the theme of growth and coming together, and she basically opened the sermon up by talking about how she came to be minister to the church, and then invited parishioners to talk -- about a moment of beauty in their lives, or a moment of reconnection, or a moment that encapsulated the church, for them. And some people talked about their private lives, and some people talked about church stuff, and it all worked rather well.

And then afterwards they had a rainbow potluck. (With some of the foods being rainbow-y, and some being one specific color of the rainbow.) Which, entertaining. Plus I met some neurodiverse pagan SF geeks, so that was *also* nice.

Anyway. Not decided yet, but... leaning.

julian

I wish that abused people who become/became centers of community would stop dying on me.

I'm sorry, that sounds callous, but it's true.

badfaun, who I first met in roleplaying MUSHes, died in the wee small hours of today, of metastatic cancer. They'd beaten breast cancer, and then it came back in their brain and ultimately, spread to the cerebrospinal fluid, which again, is impressive in its inventiveness, but really not what you want out of life.

Anyway. I met her on GarouMUSH, and they came to an offshoot RP MUSH vaguely based on original Whitewolf games, with the then-Pink-House-Crew. Eventually I started hanging out with her and Various Friends on an offshoot non-RP MUCK, and then Discord, and just, you know, things. I met her and her then-partner-eventual-husband

aerynvale back in 2002, when I went on my Long Trip across the country, and they still lived in San Diego. I sort of always had vague ideas about seeing them in Seattle but Oh Well.

I am not as rip-roaringly angry and shocked by Leah dying, as opposed to

minoanmiss, where it was unexpected liek whoa, so I for some reason don't feel like encapsulating her life in small bits, but: poet, writer, fierce intellect. Earth scientist, finding a way to volunteer and study locally when she could. Gender was a prison and a construct and cancer and its after effects were a different kind of prison, and the abuse by her father led to so many different kinds of fatigue and physical and emotional fuckery, but she, too, kept pushing and trying, until the cancer wouldn't let her.

To sum up: Am sad. The end.

redbird

I was going to have my teeth cleaned next week, but the dentist's office called yesterday to tell me that the hygienist wouldn't be in that day, and asked me to reschedule either for today, with the next available after that being in June. So, I went over to Watertown this afternoon.

Before cleaning my teeth, the hygienist took a full set of X-rays, because it had been a couple of years. The dentist looked at them, and said that there are no cavities, but some of my old fillings are no longer doing their jobs. So, he wants to do two crowns (at least). This will involve some drilling, apparently, but no root canals. I have an appointment in two weeks to do the work on at least one tooth, possibly both, depending on how I'm feeling after the first. To my surprise, my current dental insurance is covering 100% of the cost.

Also, after a complicated office maybe-move and name change, that dentist is consistently seeing very few patients at a time: there's often nobody [else] in the waiting room while I'm there, which is reassuring given that I can't wear a mask while having dental work.

I stopped on the way home at Lizzy's and got a quart of ice cream. It's a few degrees above freezing and overcast/drizzly, so I didn't want to be outside eating ice cream, but that also meant I could leave the insulated bag home.

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stupid ethics, making life ... minimally more complicated (Ny stuff)

(morning writing)

(morning writing)

memorials

The case of the missing notifications

(morning writing, work, fascism, rant, 5.home)

When the Author Doesn't Get It

(morning writing, f&f, health, garden, cats)

Weirdness

church explorations

Fuck cancer some more (RIP Leah/badfaun/faun/Heart)

unexpected dental visit

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May 2015

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