hudebnik

Yesterday

shalmestere read aloud a post from one of her FB friends about getting rid of excess stuff so one's friends and heirs don't have to deal with it all. On this inspiration, she started triaging T-shirts: keep in bedroom, keep in attic until summer, donate to Amherst Early Music auction, give away to SCA or living-history people, give away to thrift store, throw away. (Is that technically "hexaging"?) And suggested that we start tagging our books in LibraryThing with where they should go after we're gone; I think she's already found a home for one or two historical-costume books from periods that aren't our main interest.

Meanwhile, I went to the basement. There were about a dozen screen windows that have been waiting twenty years to be put into actual window frames. I didn't install any of them, nor even measure them to figure out which window frames they would fit in, but I threw out one that was wrecked, and consolidated the rest with the screen windows in the garage so at least they can all be dealt with at once. Put some glass storm windows on the curb for recycling. Put some cardboard framing supplies on the curb for recycling. Threw out a whole lot of wood scraps. Swept parts of the floor that haven't been swept in fifteen or twenty years (cough, cough!). Put seven sliding closet doors out on the curb for recycling/composting/trash. Ditto one solid wooden house door. And a bunch of finished-and-painted plywood shelves that no longer fit the ~~closet~~ book-wall in our spare bedroom after its renovation 2-1/2 years ago. Moved some pine board-stock and long pieces of molding out to the garage, to be with their friends. Sorted the remaining hardwood board-stock by width and put it all in one corner of the basement. And then

shalmestere came downstairs and was so impressed that she threw out dozens of scraps of open-cell foam (keeping a few large pieces to use as padding in instrument cases). There's now quite a large pile of stuff for trash, composting, and recycling on the curb, and the basement (while still fairly packed with stuff) feels much roomier and more passable than 24 hours ago.

And then

shalmestere pointed out that today is MLK Day, and there will be no trash, composting, or recycling pickup today. Trash will probably get picked up tomorrow, but composting and recycling not until next Monday. I don't know whether the wood scraps and doors count as "trash".

My Benevolent Employer has decided this is the week for most people to come back to the office -- not every weekday, but typically three days a week (most of my team are planning for Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays). I've been to the office four times in the past five months, and coincidentally four times in the past two years, so this will be a big change.

Being at the office will presumably keep me more on-task: no pleasure-reading or playing video games while waiting for a long compile or test. It will also cost almost two hours a day commuting, during which I guess I can read the newspaper on my phone (at least while above ground) and do some pleasure-reading in physical books (the rest of the time).

I'll need to be more disciplined about the morning routine in order to get to work at a reasonable hour so I can leave at a reasonable hour so I can get home at a reasonable hour so we can eat dinner at a reasonable hour -- which will still be later than

shalmestere would like, and since we've had dinner later than she wanted, she'll want to stay up late, thus making it harder to get moving in the morning. Definitely need to be more disciplined about getting to bed.

The raspberry bushes have been producing 2-4 cups of berries per day, which is a problem. Yesterday I threw out about 5 cups of raspberries that had gone moldy in the fridge (and now I see this article on how to keep fresh berries), turned another 4 cups into a batch of raspberry crumble bars, and made a batch of raspberry turnovers (with filling left over from the previous batch of raspberry turnovers, which inexplicably ran out of dough long before running out of filling). Also started a batch of bread dough, which has been rising overnight and is probably ready to turn into a loaf now. And picked up a batch of stuff from the CSA yesterday, including a double cheese share to make up for a week we were out of town, so the fridge is pretty tightly packed. We know what to do with the salad greens, and have ideas for the feta, red scallions, and green garlic. Need to think of things to do with the fennel, and the kohlrabi, and the radishes.

Still to do:

mow the lawn ✓

refresh moth traps and/or parasitic wasps on quince trees ✓

bake bread ✓

some $TECHJOB work: I'm not on pager this week, but on a shift that needs some things done over the weekend ✓

clear the dining room table

vacuum some part of the house

contact book-rehoming people to arrange a donation

Some time in the 1990's my mother and stepfather acquired a ping-pong table, set it up in their basement, and got moderately serious about table-tennis. Not competing with other people, but watching instructional videos and trying to put the advice in them into practice. One such series of videos kept repeating the mantra "Move, don't reach" -- that is, it's better to move your whole body in order to be in an optimal arm position for the ball than to put yourself off-balance by reaching for it. And it's not just good advice in table-tennis: it frequently feels like it'll save time to reach for something, but it's usually safer to maintain your balance.

A related piece of advice, which shouldn't take a reasonably-intelligent person this many decades to learn: don't pick up things that are under or behind other things. Sure, it feels like it'll save time, but <python>fings break, dunnay?</python>

In today's lesson, we see the result of reaching off-balance while picking up something that was behind another thing, when both of the things in question were glass jars. One of them still is....

Yesterday morning

shalmestere visited the web site for our "major shopping trip" grocery store (the one that's a 15-minute drive, rather than a 5-10-minute walk) and managed to score a same-day delivery slot! (Most of her attempts have offered deliveries well into May.) So about noon, a car pulled up in front of the house and two masked-and-gloved store employees delivered a good-sized load of groceries to our front porch, which buys us perhaps another week before grocery shopping again. Which should make

marchforth2 happier....

They didn't have whole-milk Greek yogurt, but we got some nonfat. They didn't have silken tofu (which we use in milkshakes). But the majority of things on the shopping list were available in stock -- in particular, salad greens, milk, and butter, all of which were running out.

1. Are you an Essential Worker?

Not really, but (a) I can easily work from home, and (b) my work-for-pay is tangentially related to CoViD-19. To wit: I work for Google Maps, which in the past month has dealt with tens of millions of "temporarily closed" businesses, tens of millions more changes in business hours, the invention of new kinds of business hours like "senior citizens only", the invention of new kinds of geographic features such as "CoViD-19 Testing Center" (some of which the local government doesn't want publicized because it would be swamped), etc.

2. How many drinks have you had since the quarantine has started?

Two to four times a week we have a chocolate avocado milkshake at bedtime, including 2 oz. of some kind of liqueur (one "drink") in a milkshake that serves two people. So, one to two "drinks" per week.

3. If you have kids... Are they driving you nuts?

No kids, two dogs, who are LOVING the increased time with us and the opportunity to walk in the park in the middle of the day.

4. What new hobby have you taken up during this?

None, really. We have a bunch of long-term construction and home-improvement projects that are progressing slightly faster under Stay At Home than they would have otherwise.

Oh, I've planted some bean and squash seeds in the front yard and in planters in the back yard. I figure green beans and squash are both almost impossible to kill, and will produce a bunch of food with minimal tending.

And I've been lifting weights more often than before -- probably every other day.

5. How many grocery runs have you done?

Probably two a week, although we're trying to keep it down to one. The limiting factors are milk and salad greens. My mother is horrified that I'm going out that often: she goes shopping every two weeks or so under normal circumstances, and is down to once a month now. We've had a couple of grocery deliveries, mostly specialty stuff like sausages from a German butcher; haven't yet hooked up with an ordinary grocery store that can promise delivery before May.

6. What are you spending your stimulus check on?

Not expecting to get one, because we're in the top 5% of the U.S. income distribution. Revisiting our annual charity list to make extra donations to especially CoViD-impacted organizations (Meals On Wheels, City Harvest, Red Cross, etc.) Employer's matching limit has been raised for this year.

7. Do you have any special occasions that you will miss during this quarantine?

A bunch of summer early-music workshops have been postponed or cancelled. But the people who would have been running them are instead running early-music classes by Zoom, which usually works OK unless you want to hear one another in real time. Pennsic may or may not happen, and if it does, we may not go because the thought of staying in a dense tent city with dubious sanitation and people converging from all over the world is terrifying at the moment.

8. Are you keeping your housework done?

No better than usual.

9a. What movie have you watched during this quarantine?

See this post. No others that I recall.

9b. What are you reading right now?

Too much news.

9c. What video game are you playing?

Turn-based civilization-building or empire-building games like FreeOrion, FreeCiv, FreeCol. Entirely too many hours.

10. What are you streaming with?

FiOS, which comes with phone and Internet as well as a few hundred channels of TV. We haven't historically watched enough TV to make any of the strictly-TV services worth the cost.

11. 9 months from now is there any chance of you having a baby?

No.

12. What's your go-to quarantine meal?

One thing I've been making more often than before (because I have more time between waking up and work-for-pay) is custardy oatmeal. Boil 1/2 cup of water, add 1/2 cup of old-fashioned rolled oats (plus salt, honey, cinnamon, whatever), and cook for a few minutes while beating an egg or two and microwaving 1/2 cup of milk. Drizzle the milk into the egg, beating constantly. Add to the oats and cook for a few minutes more, stirring constantly until it thickens into custard.

Oh, and I've been baking a loaf of sourdough bread every ~5 days, up from every ~10 days before the pestilence.

13. Is this whole situation making you paranoid?

No. I don't see any evidence that anybody's out to get me or us in particular, or even that there's much of an intentional conspiracy, only a rare confluence of greed, corruption, mendacity, and incompetence that was bad news even before the pestilence.

14. Has your internet gone out on you during this time?

Nope.

15. What month do you predict this all ends?

Some face-to-face businesses will be able to reopen in a month or two, with restrictions, but we won't be back to the status quo of six months ago for at least two years. On the bright side, the next few cold-and-flu seasons may be less bad because everybody has developed habits of hand-washing, social distance, and mask-wearing. Also on the bright side, the economic shutdown may have bought us a few weeks' delay in global warming.

16. First thing you're gonna do when you get off quarantine?

Dinner out and a concert.

17. Where do you wish you were right now?

Actually, I'm pretty happy where I am right now.

18. What free-from-quarantine activity are you missing the most?

Dinner out and a concert.

19. Have you run out of toilet paper and hand sanitizer?

No. We had a decent amount of TP, and installed a "hand-held bidet" a month ago that has reduced demand for it. We didn't have hand sanitizer before, and still don't.

20. Do you have enough food to last a month?

Perhaps, including all the dried and frozen stuff. It would get a little weird towards the end of the month as we got down to the ingredients in the backs of the cupboards that we'd forgotten about years ago. Storage space, particularly frozen, is a limiting factor. We seriously contemplated getting a small trunk freezer last fall, but it would have required calling an electrician to put in a new line, and we didn't get around to doing that before the Pestilence.

21. Anything else?

We're basically enjoying the stay-at-home situation. The air is cleaner than usual, the streets are quieter than usual, there's less traffic than usual, and we're not spending hours a day on mass transit. We're both still employed and doing something resembling our usual jobs, so we're not suffering economically, and we're both sufficiently introverted to be not suffering socially. Feeling a bit guilty about not suffering enough.

OK, we finally got to the theater to see "Coco" yesterday, and it really is as well done as everybody said. Since everybody else on my friends list has already seen it, I don't need to describe it, do I? Interesting parallels to "Kubo and the Two Strings", and "Like Water for Chocolate". Fabulous computer animation, from the vast panorama of the City of the Dead to the title character's wrinkled face. I didn't grow up in Latino culture, but it appears very lovingly respectful of that culture, treating its dead ancestors with the same mix of reverence and goofy affection that Latino culture itself does.

We also bought a year's membership in the NYC public swimming pools (hey, 'tis the season to make resolutions to get in shape, right?) and I swam 16 laps. We're hoping for once a week; let's see how often we actually make it. Problem is, there's no swimming pool in walking distance; the closest is a ten-minute drive away, in Flushing Meadows Corona Park, so it's not something we can do entirely on the spur of the moment.

At my new employer, I have no office: I have a desk, a computer, a chair, and enough room for maybe half a dozen books. And people tend to move from one desk location to another every few months, so they're not encouraged to put down too many roots.

So today I went to my University office (for the first time in months) and spent six hours triaging books: discard, leave with the department, or take home. Somewhat to my surprise, the three categories turned out almost exactly equal in size.

This exercise entailed throwing out a lot of proceedings for theoretical-CS conferences I attended and was very interested in at the time, but I realistically haven't done any TCS research in fifteen years. And if I did somehow get back into TCS, it would be easier to find the papers on-line than in a printed volume anyway. But throwing out the proceedings (except the few in which I had papers) carries an air of finality.

My research for the past fifteen years has been mostly in CS Education, so I had three shelves of proceedings from CSE conferences. I kept the ones in which I had papers, and left the rest to the department, on the theory that somebody on the CS faculty will be interested in them. Again, leaving this stuff is a final acknowledgment that (a) my research in CSE will be limited if I'm not in a classroom regularly, and (b) a lot of this stuff is on-line anyway.

I threw out most textbooks older than 5-10 years, except a couple of "classics" and those of which I have particularly fond memories. I left recent textbooks to the department, as above.

Still, I have five good-sized boxes of books in the car for which I haven't found homes in the house yet.

I just informed my University that I'm staying at Google and resigning my academic position.

<LawrenceOfArabia>It's going to be fun.</LawrenceOfArabia>

A week or two ago, my employer hosted one of the stops on Marie Kondo's book tour promoting her book the life-changing magic of tidying up. Ms. Kondo was apparently the sort of girl who cleaned not only her own room but her siblings' and the rest of the house, much to the annoyance of the rest of her family, but she's turned it into a profession: she's a home-tidying-and-organization consultant in her native Japan.

Naturally, the difficulty of tidying and organizing your home is a supralinear function of how much stuff you have, so the majority of the book is a collection of psychological tricks to enable yourself to get rid of stuff. I haven't tried much of this yet, but they look very sensible and practical (even the sorta mystical ones like "thanking an object for its good service before sending it on its way"). Some of the more prominent ones:

Major decluttering is a special event, not an everyday habit: Yes, you need to keep things tidy day by day. But getting rid of large amounts of stuff needs to be done in a concentrated block of time; don't try to get rid of a thing per day.
Work by categories, not locations: Don't say "I'm going to declutter Room X," but rather "I'm going to collect all the objects of Category X in the whole house, put them in one place, and decide which ones to keep." This way if you turn out to have essentially the same object stored in several different places, you'll find out about it and can eliminate duplicates. Of course, if "all the books" or "all the clothes" is a dauntingly huge category, you can pick small enough subcategories to fit the block of time you have.
Take everything of the chosen category out of wherever it is, put it on the floor in a big pile, pick up each individual item, touch it, and look for a visceral response: "does it spark joy?": Putting everything on the floor serves two purposes: it shows you graphically how much stuff you have in this category, and it forces you to actively choose to keep each individual object, rather than passively leaving them where they were. The question "does it spark joy?" aims towards the goal of a home in which everything around you makes you happy. If it doesn't make you happy, and isn't necessary to life, it's not pulling its weight and doesn't need a place in your home.
Start with emotionally-easy categories, to develop discriminatory skill, and work up to the harder categories.: She recommends the order "clothes, books, documents, miscellaneous items, mementoes," although I'm sure different people have different degrees of attachment to these categories. The point is to get practice making the "does it spark joy?" decision on the easy cases, and have an experience of success getting rid of things that don't, before moving on to the emotionally wrenching ones.
Talk to your things: Your things don't enjoy sitting on the shelf (or in the bottom of a box) unused. When a book has taught you all it's going to teach you (including, possibly, the fact that you don't like the subject or the author), thank it for its good service and send it off to teach someone else. When an article of clothing has become, at long last, unwearable, thank it for its years of service and send it into a well-deserved retirement. And so on.

I had a Sunday with few commitments, so I decided to dip a toe in the water today. I picked two small categories -- computer accessories and old electrical appliances -- and threw three keyboards, two mice, about twenty cables of various descriptions (generally keeping one representative of each equivalence class, e.g. USB-A-to-USB-mini-b, VGA-to-DVI), a toaster, a food processor, a DSL modem, and a wireless router into the recycling bin. There are still a lot of computer CDs that I'll realistically never use, but I haven't looked at them yet. There are at least two computers in the basement, but I think I can wait to take them somewhere that actually recycles computers. It's a tiny step, but I have a feeling of accomplishment.

Just listened to this CBC story about Emily Yoffe, who drew a lot of fire for writing a Slate article suggesting that college women can reduce their likelihood of being raped by not getting blind drunk.

There's a fine line between "blaming the victim" and empowering potential victims to not be victimized. This applies not only to rape, but also to domestic abuse, addiction, obesity, depression, burglary, fraud, etc. In each of these areas there are factors the victim can control, and other factors (s)he can't. You can ignore the former and say “there's nothing you can do but hope and pray,” or ignore the latter and say “it's your own damn fault; quit whining.” Both are unproductive; if you actually want to solve the problem, you might look to the old adage “Grant me the will to change the things I can, the patience to accept the things I can't, and the wisdom to know the difference.”

Of course, “accept” in this context doesn't mean “this is OK,” but rather “this is a fact I need to deal with.” Yes, there are rapists and abusers, and society needs to address that problem. But while you're waiting for society to address that problem, you may find yourself in the presence of such people, and you'll need a more effective tactic than just saying “society's to blame” while you get raped or abused.

Likewise, there are genetic and societal conditions that make addiction, obesity, and depression more likely... but while we wait for cures to those conditions, there's probably something we can do ourselves to avoid or ameliorate those problems in the short run.

And there are societal conditions that make burglary and fraud more likely, but while I wait for those conditions to be improved, I'm going to at least lock my doors and not answer phishing e-mails.

Last week, after ten years of "putting it off" and a month of scheduling delays, we had some workmen in to replace the bedroom ceiling. The acoustical tiles (which had been hung poorly, so they'd been sagging since we bought the place) are gone, and replaced with drywall. The overhead light fixture, which was a couple of wires, has been replaced with a proper junction box, braced to hold 250 pounds or so (I saw one of the workmen doing pullups on it).

So over the weekend we went to Home Depot, bought a ceiling-fan-light fixture, and installed it. When we flipped the circuit breaker, there were no sparks, no smoke, no explosions, and the fan started turning. When we turned on the light, it lit up. The bedroom is both more attractive and more comfortable.

Since we had moved some of the furniture out of the bedroom in preparation for the ceiling repair, we're taking the opportunity to finally put down some quarter-round where the baseboards meet the parquet floor we installed three years ago.

This morning I took the car to the body shop to have the hood repaired after a misunderstanding with a truck on the LIE. It was a gorgeous day, so I loaded my bicycle into the back and came home that way. The car should be ready in two or three days.

And I've confirmed a reservation at a B&B for the first night of our trip to Ireland. There are a bunch more reservations to be made, but this is a step in the right direction.

Current Mood: satisfied

I just attended a talk by Mark Bauerlein, author of The Dumbest Generation and other works exploring the effects of digital media on thinking.

In 1910 (he says), about 10% of the high-school-age population in the U.S. were actually in high school, and 1% of the college-age population were in college. The remaining 90% and 99%, respectively, worked under the supervision of adults. They spent very little time in the company of other teenagers. As a result, there was no such thing as "youth culture", no "peer pressure" (because they seldom interacted with age-group peers), no "generation gap" (because there was more intergenerational than intragenerational communication).

By the 1950's, however, teens and twentysomethings spent much of their time with their age group, and one could talk about "teen music", "teen literature", "teen movies", as opposed to their "old-fogey" analogues. In 2012, teenagers exchange an average of 3500 text messages and hundreds of phone calls per month, almost entirely with their age group; they're unaccustomed to talking with old people (i.e. over 30). In addition, since social media tend to create homogeneous communities that confirm rather than challenge one's beliefs, they're unaccustomed to talking with people who disagree with them.

Information technology makes it extremely easy to find, quickly and efficiently, exactly the facts you're looking for, without distracting you with "other books nearby on the shelf", or the font in which a newspaper was printed, or something jotted in the margins by a previous reader. When you want information retrieval, it's great -- but learning is not information retrieval. Sometimes the branches along the way are more interesting than exactly what you started out looking for.

Bauerlein sometimes assigns his students to look up some definitions and turn them in -- written in longhand, with a pen or pencil. This not only prevents simple copy-and-paste, but forces students to spend at least a second or two on each word, and it adds some haptic feedback, all of which increases the likelihood that it'll stick. Likewise, he sometimes assigns students to transcribe a chapter of Walden, in longhand, to get the rhythm and style of Thoreau's words into their heads. It reminded me of the "slow food" and "mindful eating" movements.

Posted via LiveJournal app for iPhone.

I attended a live-webcast-seminar on dealing with Asperger's syndrome at the college level. I went into it thinking "I have an unfair advantage, because Aspergerish behavior is almost normal in my field; what's to deal with?" But I figured there would be some useful tips for recognition, accommodation, and referral.

On recognition: one slide showed kids fighting with boffer swords and shields; another showed a table of the Klingon alphabet; another mentioned odd clothing "such as a cape, elaborate jewelry, scarves or embroidery"; D&D, WoW, LARP, and anime were mentioned by name, as were "odd interests" such as car motors, Victorian door hinges or vintage toys. The presenter hastened to point out that not ALL Aspergerians do these things, and some are offended by being lumped in with those people. Notable by its absence was any suggestion that not ALL people who do those things have Asperger's.

[I'm trying to think of people I know who don't do any of these things....]

On accommodation: six slides in a row on being clear, concise, and consistent. Each slide was illustrated with a "do" statement of 5-10 words, and a "don't" statement of 40-60 that said the same thing wrapped in a lot of qualifiers and softening particles. Seriously, would anybody prefer the latter? I guess this is the old tact-filter phenomenon again.

We're past the one-hour mark, I can't think of anything substantial I've learned yet, and I have to catch a train. I guess I'll have to skip the "referral" section.

On my feedback form I expressed a wish that the webinar itself had been more clear, concise, and consistent. :-)

Posted via LiveJournal app for iPhone.

There are a few more fruits on the red pepper plant, and dozens on the orange pepper plant, but they're all green. We'll see whether they get a chance to ripen at all.

A lot of basil plants are not expected to survive the winter, and have therefore been asked to make the ultimate sacrifice for the sake of pesto or something.

Posted via LiveJournal app for iPhone.

So we got about 4" of snow yesterday morning, then it stopped for enough hours that I could shovel the front steps and walk. Then around 8 PM it started again. By 11 PM, when we took the dogs for their bedtime walk, there were a few more inches on the ground and the air was thick with rapidly-falling snow. This morning I measured 11" on the front walk, for a total of 15" in the last 24 hours (which matches the City's report of snowfall in Central Park).

shalmestere's employer and mine are both closed for the day.

Oh, and it's my birthday.

We had an appointment to take Thing Two to the vet this afternoon, but I don't think that'll happen.

It's a gorgeous day. Maybe we'll go sledding in the park.

1) Got a letter from the IRS yesterday. Not the "Guess what, we're auditing your return" letter, but "Guess what, you missed a credit and we owe you $xxx" letter. The good kind of letter from the IRS. (If any of you likewise failed to notice the Making Work Pay credit, go look it up. It's worth $400/individual or $800/couple for most middle-class Americans. This has been a public service announcement.)

2) Went yesterday to inspect a cargo trailer we read about on Craigslist. We seem to be buying it, in hopes of being able to
a) pack more cool furniture, instruments, etc. for SCA events and living-history shows, and
b) pack for said events in advance rather than after work on Friday, so we can get on the road faster.
I'm not sure whether we should decorate it with Gothic tracery and/or a Latin motto around the top....

3) Got an e-mail today inviting me to join AARP. Seriously, folks, I'm 46 years old; isn't that jumping the gun a bit?

4) I think we've finished recording and selecting tracks for

shalmestere's audition CD. The bathroom will no longer be a recording studio.

5) I have a bunch of homework to grade, and I need to write three final exams, in the next week.

6) Still don't know where we're going for vacation in June: it was going to be somewhere in Europe, but we're not sure the volcano will let us. We might end up in California. Or maybe Europe after all.

So we're all stressed and cranky from the news yesterday that B. died, and associated drama. It's my first day of classes, and I'm under-prepared. One of the classes is at 9 AM so we both have to be out of the house before 7:30 -- which we've done thousands of times before, but not in the past six months so it's a change in routine. People are having emotional reactions to things that they would normally shrug off. It's rainy and windy and grey. On the way to work, I got a strong gust of wind just as I stepped on a rain-slick metal grate, slipped and fell, scraped my knee, and put a hole in the nice grey washable-wool pants that I pulled the tags off an hour ago. And it's not 8 AM yet.

About a month ago we ordered a couple of quince bushes to put in the front lawn. They arrived yesterday (the nursery doesn't ship until they go dormant in the winter, or something like that), so I decided to plant them first thing this morning.

Planting quince bushes is not particularly complex or difficult, but removing the previous occupants of that space -- a pair of 20-30-year-old boxwood (?) bushes was decidedly more involved. I got the second baby tree into the ground around 11:15, then started cleaning up. I have now had lunch -- a sort of desperate get-food-into-my-body-before-I-crash affair -- and it's nap-time. There are pictures, but I'm too tired to deal with uploading them right now.

Current Mood: tired

I am thankful...

for walks in the park on a beautiful November day with shalmestere and the Things

<arlo>for a Thanksgiving dinner that couldn't be beat</arlo>, which we cooked together

that shalmestere and I, despite countless failures of communication, are still together and still trying to understand one another

that both shalmestere and I have jobs which
- we believe in, i.e. the world is better with somebody doing this job than without;
- pay a livable wage;
- we're reasonably good at; and
- we mostly enjoy.

that we can afford pretty much everything we need, and a fair number of things we want

that among all the centuries I might have been born into, I'm privileged to witness the Information Revolution (and therefore I have easy access to learn about the other centuries too, and email, and LJ, and programming languages, and...)

that although all four large mammals in the house have minor health issues, we have nothing serious

for friends and family, however eccentric

that I live in the US; as much as I kvetch about the way it's being run at the moment, there are many worse places I could be living

that I live within fifteen minutes' walk of groceries, non-blockbuster movies, doctor, dentist, vet, bike repair, library, barbers, post offices, banks, restaurants, drugstores, public transit that works, and a square mile of forest

(especially on Thanksgiving evening) for automatic dishwashers

Current Mood: thankful

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Entries tagged with life hacking

Death cleaning

Heigh ho, heigh ho, it's off to work we go

To Do with What's Left of the Weekend

Basic lessons of having a corporeal body

shopping

OK, I'll play...

movies and exercise

Transitions

The deed is done, the die is cast.

Decluttering

On blame and empowerment

Little life improvements

Slow thinking

Seminar on Asperger's

Bringing in the harvest before the frost

Snow day

Odds and ends

Must be Monday

gardening

Thanksgiving stuff

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May 2025

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