And this is why I, as someone who is close enough to cis-het that everyone assumes I am, will loudly support those who are not because you should also be very comfortable not lying to medical providers.    Similar reason as to why if one of the four houses on my street ever does go up for sale I will be flying all the flags in my yard the moment that for sale sign is posted; because the lesbian couple and the Mexican family should have neighbors who don't make them uncomfortable being who they are. 

Late but following!

Astronomy and dnd?? Very here for this. 

Working in the troll cave and wielding a chainsaw; you hella deserve a lazy evening. 

Gorgeous!

Monday September 16 The Carmine Beast by 00Aquila00   Liam's first day today!! I met him while he was mid-PhD and I was there for the fairly doomed tenure-track job search with the impossible additional constraints of finding a spot within 12 months (tragically not wealthy enough to support the 3-5 years of applications that it normally takes), north of the Mason-Dixon line (for weather & chronic illness reasons), and in a city with a pop of 300k or more (gay in a small town is only cute in rom-coms). Him switching to muggle-type jobs was more or less the plan the whole time, but it's happening! Now the trick will be supporting him as he gets used to muggle work, and then gently forcing supporting him in continuing to publish regularly, because the lad's heart is only really happy when he's stressing over a submission deadline. So I sprained a floating rib while doing Turkish get-ups on Saturday.  Is what I told the chiro this morning, because while queers and non-monogamous people should have a doctor with whom we're comfortable speaking candidly about our recreational activities, I'm very comfortable lying my face off to my Assemblies of God chiropractor. Turkish get-ups is apparently what we call doing n-dimensional gymnastics in a hot tub grotto and then waking up with a sprained/strained intercostal muscle the next morning. Friday the 13th Chicago trip was wonderful,  for me anyway 😄. Had a lovely workout, then a meditation session and a little cannabis, then engaged the crowd primed/focused on the sorta of inclusion and exploration I wanted to practice that night. Meanwhile, a fellow who had attended a similar event and met Liam briefly in 2021 was also there and apparently had been carrying a torch for the last 3 years. Given that Liam has a reeeally hard time with asymmetrical emotional investments, and that he can get tunnel vision in socially complex situations, Liam sorta spent the evening reenacting a John Updike novel. Added a journaling column to the tracker below. Fingers crossed.  

"Despite being hemmed in by later buildings it retained its courtyard and coach house round the back, which is where, these days, they keep the jazz. Coleman Hawkins played at the Bull, as did the multitalented Tubby Hayes, beloved of my dad and Nightingale, until the early 1970s when he popped his clogs."     Date: 16/09/24   All is solved by walking Total min exercise     Walk 30-60 min             The strong anvil 5 min Hindu pushup     5 min Hindu squat     5 min  bridge             Clothes maketh the gender-neutral man Jacket and tie   Y A nice close shave   P     1.5   Dawn is friend to the muses Kept 8-10 schedule   P Kept 10-12 schedule   Y Kept 12-2 schedule   Y Kept 2-4 schedule   P Kept 4-6 schedule         3   Rest is the best medicine 6-8 hours of sleep   Y In bed by midnight   Y AM writing exercise   N AM meditation   N PM writing exercise     PM meditation     Interoception meditation            

Week 1 Roundup Main goals Seek and defeat evil: 🌟 2 swarms of mephits defeated Regain spells: 🌟  Lesser restoration: 🌟 Buff the party! 🌟🌟 Protect the party coffers:  Side Quests:  Satisfy the Alderman: 🌟   Bonus Patrol the Hinterlands:  Long Rest: 🌟 Driving home from the observatory on a foggy night listening to my Folk Horror playlist 10/10 spoopy fall vibes I don’t care if it’s still summer   ☕️ 1/5 💪🏻 1/5   Running total: 7 🌟   First week of all jobs on schedule, but between my Main Concern Student being away three days and so much choir stuff (rehearsals MTW, concerts FSS) I’m still not feeling settled into routine.    According to my phone I logged 92 flights of stairs’ worth of elevation gain this week, I guess I could have taken on the mountain climbing challenge in the West Marches after all, haha.  I forgot about all the stairs I’d have to climb from the lower parking lot to the top of observatory hill and then to the upper floor of the telescope dome! Speaking of which, pls enjoy this photo of the gibbous moon, made so much more ominous by audience members’ taillights.      The observatory is a pretty special place for me. One of the original members of my folk ensemble, her husband is an astronomer who works there, and he convinced them to let us record a CD in the visitors’ centre up there after we got super frustrated recording in churches and theatres and dealing with noise from buses and even riding lawn mowers. Up there, it’s just the planes and the occasional herd of cyclists chattily catching their breath before they defy death on the steep, winding road back down. So I’ve spent a lot of beautiful weekend hours with some of my favourite people, making wonderful music and periodically popping out to enjoy this amazing view.      This week’s concerts are actually in the telescope dome - it’s a very cool concert, figuratively and literally as they open the dome and let in the cold night air along with the chill light of the stars. Well, it’s not wide open, there’s a telescope-wide window that stretches up to the crown of the dome, but it’s freaking cool. There’s a model in the visitors’ centre that we used as a green room!     The repertoire is divided between poetic/philosophical works, sacred works, especially that talk about “the heavens”, and science-themed works, often with an emphasis on historically minimized perspectives. This year we have a setting of a 1780s letter written by one of the first women to get paid for her scientific work and a gorgeous piece about early 20thC “human computers,” women who did calculations to interpret the photo plates taken by men who got to actually use the telescopes, men who measured the difficulty of projects in “girl hours.”   Anyway, I haven’t had much time or energy for anything but practice, rehearsal, and performance but I did make time for a workout and a meditative equinox-themed yoga video. Budgeting challenge is off to a bad start for a good reason - my Reaper Bones VI Kickstarter shipping charge was finally ready (Kickstarter wrapped in summer ‘22 😅 although this is only about six months later than the projected fulfillment so don’t knock Reaper) which means in a couple weeks I’ll have Stash Above Life Expectancy in the minis department as well as yarn. Too bad I didn’t get it before we entered the dungeon full of giant ants in our Pathfinder game, but there’s still hope that my Honeythorn Lancers will arrive before we finish dealing with the giant bees whose hive backs onto the anthill (they’re at war! And in Mr. Radost’s world, “dungeons are special and levels are magic,” so we basically have to “solve” dungeons in order to progress our characters, and our best guess is that the solution to this one is “end the war.”) We’ve been on hiatus for a few weeks because of my rehearsal schedule and I’m really looking forward to a session this week!

Thanks to the West Marches campaign, I've done pretty good at reducing evening screen time, but stretching has not been happening. Planning to make that more of a focus this week.

Our weather has suddenly changed to. It's supposed to be nicer later this week. But when I got up this morning, it was cold, and I decided  against my morning walk.