Angus Maximus, sometime called "Goose"
30/8/2009 (approx.) - 8/5/2024
( Additional floof.Collapse )(Crossposted from Dreamwidth.)
- Current Mood:
sad
It's 2020.
I still have a dog, as she did not get kidney failure and die from eating mincemeat. (Which contains raisins. Which are basically concentrated grape pellets. Which are, I cannot emphasize this enough, bad for dogs.)
New Year's Eve at the emergency vet's: nobody is there because they want to be.
I'm a bit tired. Still at work, though.
(This post has been crossposted from DreamWidth)
I still have a dog, as she did not get kidney failure and die from eating mincemeat. (Which contains raisins. Which are basically concentrated grape pellets. Which are, I cannot emphasize this enough, bad for dogs.)
New Year's Eve at the emergency vet's: nobody is there because they want to be.
I'm a bit tired. Still at work, though.
(This post has been crossposted from DreamWidth)
| In Flanders fields the poppies blow Between the crosses, row on row, That mark our place; and in the sky The larks, still bravely singing, fly Scarce heard amid the guns below. We are the Dead. Short days ago We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow, Loved, and were loved, and now we lie In Flanders Fields. Take up our quarrel with the foe: To you from failing hands we throw The torch; be yours to hold it high. If ye break faith with us who die We shall not sleep, though poppies grow In Flanders Fields. - John McCrae | Bent double, like old beggars under sacks, Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge, Till on the haunting flares we turned out backs, And towards our distant rest began to trudge. Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots, But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame, all blind; Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots Of gas-shells dropping softly behind. Gas! GAS! Quick, boys!--An ecstasy of fumbling Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time, But someone still was yelling out and stumbling And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime.-- Dim through the misty panes and thick green light, As under a green sea, I saw him drowning. In all my dreams before my helpless sight He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning. If in some smothering dreams, you too could pace Behind the wagon that we flung him in, And watch the white eyes writhing in his face, His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin, If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs Bitter as the cud Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,-- My friend, you would not tell with such high zest To children ardent for some desperate glory, The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est Pro patria mori. - Wilfred Owen |
(This post has been crossposted from DreamWidth)
- Current Mood:
worried
I am reorganizing my home office. A lot.
I have considerably more floorspace, now, and have gotten rid of a bunch of old paper.
(My goodness, I have a lot of yarn and candles.)
On a semi-related note, I do think I like Solstice Scents, but repeated attempts have forced me to come to terms with the fact that Midnight Marquee meets my skin chemistry and implements the "scream, fall over, turn to baby powder" protocol. Anyone want an imp?
(This post has been crossposted from DreamWidth)
I have considerably more floorspace, now, and have gotten rid of a bunch of old paper.
(My goodness, I have a lot of yarn and candles.)
On a semi-related note, I do think I like Solstice Scents, but repeated attempts have forced me to come to terms with the fact that Midnight Marquee meets my skin chemistry and implements the "scream, fall over, turn to baby powder" protocol. Anyone want an imp?
(This post has been crossposted from DreamWidth)
- Current Mood:
cheerful
So I got Fallout 76. It mostly seems like a crafting-heavy version of Fallout, with the exception that sometimes there are other people running around. I waved to one of them, but that's about it.
It's slow, because I'm slow - I need to adjust the mouse sensitivity. But it's pretty, and mostly I don't need to deal with other people, and it's fun to explore.
Also I found two housecats.
This is probably not a big deal to most people, but cats have been pretty much extinct in the Fallout-verse for nearly twenty-one years (to me as a player, I mean; that's established in 2241, although right now I'm playing a game set in 2012). The Chosen One has never seen or heard of them, and Stacy's clearly used to people not knowing what they are when she explains her story about her cat Cuddles. Seeing one walking around alive before they all get eaten made me curse the developers for not giving you an option to pet them.
(This post has been crossposted from DreamWidth)
It's slow, because I'm slow - I need to adjust the mouse sensitivity. But it's pretty, and mostly I don't need to deal with other people, and it's fun to explore.
Also I found two housecats.
This is probably not a big deal to most people, but cats have been pretty much extinct in the Fallout-verse for nearly twenty-one years (to me as a player, I mean; that's established in 2241, although right now I'm playing a game set in 2012). The Chosen One has never seen or heard of them, and Stacy's clearly used to people not knowing what they are when she explains her story about her cat Cuddles. Seeing one walking around alive before they all get eaten made me curse the developers for not giving you an option to pet them.
(This post has been crossposted from DreamWidth)
- Current Mood:
weird
Okay. General catching up.
I still like the new job.
The not-hating my job (and the time to sleep, and the walking forty minutes a day) seems to have reduced my stress levels a lot, and I'm not writing. I'm not even really playing video games. I'm knitting and watching TV and reading, and I'm not unhappy, but apparently I have dived hard into sources of relaxation that require me to make absolutely no choices whatsoever.
(I have asked around and apparently this is kind of a normal reaction having a source of stress suddenly removed, but no lie that it's been a bit weird.)
I'm hoping it goes away soon, and in the meantime reminding myself that I am having a good time even though I'm not writing.
(I sound cool with it. I mostly am cool with it. This is still totally the kind of thing that I'm going to bring up in therapy.)
=====
I watched The Umbrella Academy, and I am very engaged with it. It does something that is not-quite a superhero narrative pretty much the same way that The Wire does something that is not-quite a police show, and has the added detail of (almost) every single character charging headlong into deeply deeply understandable but horribly flawed choices.
(Plus it has a fantastic soundtrack.)
Also I'm... maybe eighty-three percent sure that the one thing that I absolutely didn't expect, that was a genuine surprise, was telegraphed in a kind of quiet in-joke way in the first episode, and I love that.
=====
I also watched Weird City, and that was an entirely different thing, but still a lot of fun. And I found a horror author who wrote a short story that I like so much that I promptly went to buy his collection from Amazon, which is an option I generally skip if I can do anything else.
Speaking of horror, I sat down and watched Velvet Buzzsaw. It's interesting - the idea of horror spreading that way is fairly rare. It's not unique - you can see similar stuff in The Ring and In The Mouth of Madness and Smiley - but it's rare enough that that I don't really have a vocabulary for it yet. I'll think about it some more and maybe come back to it.
=====
I inked up the fountain pen that I bought with the gift card from my sister - the Monteverde Invincia Nebula. This thing is a brick - everything is steel and brass and glass, everything screws firmly together instead of snapping into place. It weighs nearly three times as much as my Lamy Safari, and while it's not uncomfortable to write with, I definitely notice it.
(This post has been crossposted from DreamWidth)
I still like the new job.
The not-hating my job (and the time to sleep, and the walking forty minutes a day) seems to have reduced my stress levels a lot, and I'm not writing. I'm not even really playing video games. I'm knitting and watching TV and reading, and I'm not unhappy, but apparently I have dived hard into sources of relaxation that require me to make absolutely no choices whatsoever.
(I have asked around and apparently this is kind of a normal reaction having a source of stress suddenly removed, but no lie that it's been a bit weird.)
I'm hoping it goes away soon, and in the meantime reminding myself that I am having a good time even though I'm not writing.
(I sound cool with it. I mostly am cool with it. This is still totally the kind of thing that I'm going to bring up in therapy.)
=====
I watched The Umbrella Academy, and I am very engaged with it. It does something that is not-quite a superhero narrative pretty much the same way that The Wire does something that is not-quite a police show, and has the added detail of (almost) every single character charging headlong into deeply deeply understandable but horribly flawed choices.
(Plus it has a fantastic soundtrack.)
Also I'm... maybe eighty-three percent sure that the one thing that I absolutely didn't expect, that was a genuine surprise, was telegraphed in a kind of quiet in-joke way in the first episode, and I love that.
=====
I also watched Weird City, and that was an entirely different thing, but still a lot of fun. And I found a horror author who wrote a short story that I like so much that I promptly went to buy his collection from Amazon, which is an option I generally skip if I can do anything else.
Speaking of horror, I sat down and watched Velvet Buzzsaw. It's interesting - the idea of horror spreading that way is fairly rare. It's not unique - you can see similar stuff in The Ring and In The Mouth of Madness and Smiley - but it's rare enough that that I don't really have a vocabulary for it yet. I'll think about it some more and maybe come back to it.
=====
I inked up the fountain pen that I bought with the gift card from my sister - the Monteverde Invincia Nebula. This thing is a brick - everything is steel and brass and glass, everything screws firmly together instead of snapping into place. It weighs nearly three times as much as my Lamy Safari, and while it's not uncomfortable to write with, I definitely notice it.
(This post has been crossposted from DreamWidth)
First day at the new job!
Everyone seems very kind so far. My chair doesn't fit quite right, but I'm fiddling with it. I'll need to bring in a few things, but picking them up will be an excuse to step out at lunch, which I'm going to need just to breathe and quietly flail.
Everyone is in a meeting right now, so I'm reading documentation. They have documentation, people. It's a dream.
(In other news, I'm catching up on grading.)
(This post has been crossposted from DreamWidth)
Everyone seems very kind so far. My chair doesn't fit quite right, but I'm fiddling with it. I'll need to bring in a few things, but picking them up will be an excuse to step out at lunch, which I'm going to need just to breathe and quietly flail.
Everyone is in a meeting right now, so I'm reading documentation. They have documentation, people. It's a dream.
(In other news, I'm catching up on grading.)
(This post has been crossposted from DreamWidth)
- Current Mood:
chipper
Okay.
(1) The job thing. I've mentioned it around, but: I have a new job, it starts Monday, the last week at my current job is being weird and quiet but not unpleasant.
(2) I'm teaching an SF course at Algonquin. I'm having a lot of opinions about the slide decks for the course. I can go on about them quite a lot.
(2b) ...apparently scrolling through Pinterest calms me right the heck down when I'm... I don't know if hyper-focussing is the right word, but I ca't think of a better one. This is actually super useful to know.
(3) I am actually feeling like I have more time right now. It's very odd, and part of my brain keeps going "It's a trick. Get an axe." On the flip side, I actually got to play The Flame in the Flood for a little bit this weekend past, and it was lovely. Also Weyrwood is utterly charming.
(4, for the future) My Kobo battery is being wonky (spontaneously hitting zero, dropping from 41% charge to 20% charge after 1 minute of use), so I'm going to look at places that might replace the battery, and at saving up for a new one. Also need to look at saving up for a new phone; I got a replacement when my old one died, but the warranty is nearly up, and when I need to get an actual new one it'll be less of a pain if I've saved for a bit.
(5) I'm knitting a sweater! I'm knitting this sweater, in fact, in purple. It's going okay.
(6) I'm... working on cleaning things up, I guess? Clearing out stuff I don't use (bless the CDA and their pickup) and going through what I already have, rather than getting Yet Another new thing that will go into the pile of unread/unknitted things. It's more of a guideline than an actual rule, but it's a good guideline.
(7) Contemplating getting a notebook for Monday. Might be nice to have my own, but that could be over-egging the pudding; I could probably do just as well by making sure that my pens are inked up. Will figure it out.
Anyway, that's most of where I am right now.
(This post has been crossposted from DreamWidth)
(1) The job thing. I've mentioned it around, but: I have a new job, it starts Monday, the last week at my current job is being weird and quiet but not unpleasant.
(2) I'm teaching an SF course at Algonquin. I'm having a lot of opinions about the slide decks for the course. I can go on about them quite a lot.
(2b) ...apparently scrolling through Pinterest calms me right the heck down when I'm... I don't know if hyper-focussing is the right word, but I ca't think of a better one. This is actually super useful to know.
(3) I am actually feeling like I have more time right now. It's very odd, and part of my brain keeps going "It's a trick. Get an axe." On the flip side, I actually got to play The Flame in the Flood for a little bit this weekend past, and it was lovely. Also Weyrwood is utterly charming.
(4, for the future) My Kobo battery is being wonky (spontaneously hitting zero, dropping from 41% charge to 20% charge after 1 minute of use), so I'm going to look at places that might replace the battery, and at saving up for a new one. Also need to look at saving up for a new phone; I got a replacement when my old one died, but the warranty is nearly up, and when I need to get an actual new one it'll be less of a pain if I've saved for a bit.
(5) I'm knitting a sweater! I'm knitting this sweater, in fact, in purple. It's going okay.
(6) I'm... working on cleaning things up, I guess? Clearing out stuff I don't use (bless the CDA and their pickup) and going through what I already have, rather than getting Yet Another new thing that will go into the pile of unread/unknitted things. It's more of a guideline than an actual rule, but it's a good guideline.
(7) Contemplating getting a notebook for Monday. Might be nice to have my own, but that could be over-egging the pudding; I could probably do just as well by making sure that my pens are inked up. Will figure it out.
Anyway, that's most of where I am right now.
(This post has been crossposted from DreamWidth)
[img: notebook and pen on wooden desktop with "GYWO 2019" printed in large white letters with a black shadow. under that, "writing decathlon" in handwritten white letters with a black shadow.]
GetYourWordsOut: Year Eleven!
Pledges & Requirements | GYWO.net
(This post has been crossposted from DreamWidth)
- Current Mood:
hopeful
It's that time of year again. I have a fountain pen, a kind of ridiculous number of stamps, and many (?tasteful?) cardboard rectangles.
If you didn't get a seasonal card last year and would like one, please let me know.
If you did get a seasonal card last year and this year you just don't want one, please let me know. (It's okay! I would hate to send you something you didn't want.)
If you got one last year and your address has changed since, please let me know. (I mean, obvs don't worry about this if you've already told me you don't want another one, that's fine.)
(This post has been crossposted from DreamWidth)
If you didn't get a seasonal card last year and would like one, please let me know.
If you did get a seasonal card last year and this year you just don't want one, please let me know. (It's okay! I would hate to send you something you didn't want.)
If you got one last year and your address has changed since, please let me know. (I mean, obvs don't worry about this if you've already told me you don't want another one, that's fine.)
(This post has been crossposted from DreamWidth)
Comments
:D