Praise then darkness, and creation unfinished

Three more random topics:

Wed, 19 Jun 2019 22:59:22 GMT

kaberett gave me "Haematite, trains, clouds."

I associate hematite with roadnotes, who had a necklace of hematite chips. She also had a similar-shaped necklace of myrrh; I have a necklace of amethyst beads of that shape, which I don't think I've worn in this century.

Trains certainly aren't something I don't know or care much about. I started taking the subway alone, daily, before my twelfth birthday, in order to get to school. Sometimes I stood between cars on the (#7) elevated trains (shown in this userpic), even when there was room inside the subway cars. People in their early teens don't have a good grasp of mortality, but I did stop leaning on the subway car doors after a few well-publicized incidents of doors opening while the train was in motion between stations. I have been to railroad museums on three different continents, including two or three in the United States (depending on whether the San Francisco Cable Car Museum, which I recommend, counts as a railroad museum). And this reminds me that I've been meaning to go ride on the Mattapan Trolley since before I actually moved to Massachusetts.

Clouds can be very pretty, and eye-catching even when they're not pretty. My favorite skies to look at lately are the bright blue skies of sunny days with a few white clouds shining against them. That somehow reminds me that one of the ways people on the Usenet newsgroup rec.arts.sf.fandom would reply to really out-there assertions was "what color is the sky on your planet?" And one day I realized that if I was asked that, seriously, the answer would be "all of them." Mostly shades of blue or gray during the day, and gray or black at night, but the sky contains all the colors of the visible spectrum, in all sorts of shades and combinations. (That's not a new discovery, of course, but it's not something most people think about much.) Come to think of it, the cloudy sky at night is different color than it used to be, since there are fewer sodium-vapor lamps.

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idonethis followup

Wed, 22 May 2019 02:16:33 GMT

I posted a couple of weeks ago about the idonethis site having told me my free account was going away.

Somehow, I now have two free email-only accounts, which are emailing me at different times of day to ask that I reply with what I've done that day, and list past accomplishment. They each have a link to click to turn the emails off, but when I clicked on that, for the more recently created one, the web page told me my free trial had expired.

This is annoying; I would like to keep getting the emails that connect to/draw on the account I've had there for years, but not the other, and I suspect that's impossible without paying them (at least) $5/month. They're both being sent to the same email address, and from the same address, so I don't think I can use email filters here, and I suspect that if I do figure out how to contact someone there, they'll turn off the emails/account I'd like to keep, too.

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idonethis

Mon, 06 May 2019 21:06:54 GMT

I've been using an odd thing called "idonethis," which bills itself as "team progress tracking" software, for several years; the pitch is that you can write down a few things in 30 seconds, so other people you're working with can see what got done and share plans. There was also a free single-user mode. The site would send out daily emails, prompting a reply with what I'd done that day, and reminding me of what I'd done a week, or month, or three or six months, earlier.

I started using this after roadnotes mentioned it; she liked it despite the ungrammatical name because it helped her remember that she had in fact done something useful or interesting most days. Sometime in the last week, they quietly discontinued the free service. I went to log into the site this afternoon, to jot down some things I'd done, and was asked for a credit card number and told that my free trial expires in three days.

idonethis is cute, but it's not worth $5/month to me, so I guess I'm done with it. Mostly, I'm going to miss the way the "what have you done today?" emails were an ongoing low-key reminder of roadnotes.

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Misc comments 58

Wed, 21 Feb 2018 13:32:12 GMT

More comments I'm reposting from elsewhere: ( not liking Christmas celebrations, what is nonfiction?, when I'll look things up for people, whether we actually change our conclusions based on new data, reading old sf, food preferences )

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memory is weird sometimes

Fri, 09 Feb 2018 13:46:28 GMT

conuly posted a link to an article called "Toothpaste Is Our New Favorite Souvenir," which I clicked on out of curiosity:

Cardamom sounded appealing (right now I'm using Tom's of Maine cinnamon-clove), thymol no, cucumber coriander mint… mastic dental gel "that's for Velma" and a momentary sad pang because of course I won't be able to share that with her.

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Fantasia etc.

Thu, 19 Nov 2015 21:22:28 GMT

The local movie theater had a few showings of Fantasia this past week, to go with the movie's 75th anniversary. cattitude and I went yesterday afternoon (and the clerk gave us the senior discount without asking). It was fun, but I hadn't remembered how much "here is the next thing you will be seeing and hearing" was in the movie, and I definitely could have done without the several-minute introduction by the conductor of the Philadelphia Orchestra, about how much he loved the movie and why it's important. That said, this is a visual spectacle, so it definitely benefits from the big screen.

For anyone thinking about Retro-Hugo nominations, I am less inclined to nominate Fantasia now that I've seen it again; there are bits that I'd count in SF/fantasy (Mickey Mouse as the sorcerer's apprentice, and some of the bits with the fairies), but most of it isn't. The history of the Earth part is of course way out of date—I was looking at the volcanoes and thinking "right, nobody in 1940 knew those things could explode sideways," and the speculations on the extinction of the dinosaurs seem odd from here—but I liked the crinoids and trilobites.

A few hours later, I was doing some of my exercises. I started a new Evernote entry to list what I was doing, typed the date at the top (as usual), and realized that it would have been roadnotes's birthday. So, a bit sad, but there are worse things than remembering the people we've lost. I went back to exercising, thinking a bit about her, and then took it as a reminder to say hello to Scraps.

I did more exercises this morning, in the fitness room; I'm pleased that between the two days, I did ~~basically~~ all my exercises, and did well on the one I sometimes have trouble with form on.
( the notes mentioned above )

And once I finish this tea, I will go outside, and get some sunshine and a bit of walking in, in the course of running a couple of errands.

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chocolates, and other things that will help me feel good

Sat, 06 Sep 2014 01:17:24 GMT

I called our old favorite chocolate shop in New York today, to order chocolates for us and for roadnotes. Mark Varsano, the chocolatier, started by taking my name and address, but it wasn't until I gave him Roadnotes's name that he recognized me. Probably some combination of there being more Vickis than Velmas, her distinctive looks, and maybe that she'd been shopping there longer.

It was interesting selecting chocolate over the phone, since I couldn't see what was in the display case today (the website gives some examples of what he carries, and then adds "and much more")—and I just remembered that I'd meant to ask for a cashew or pecan turtle. But once he had Roadnotes for context, along with my name, Mark said "you want orange peel and ginger, right?" and we went from there. Is that kind of memory normal for people who work in retail, or is Mark Varsano's unusually good?

On the other hand, Varsano's is the shop that made me think "I live in a small town, population eight million," because Mark didn't just remember that I prefer dark chocolate, he would ask after baldanders's health. And today, along with whether I miss New York, he asked whether I had a job. That wasn't random; I'd mentioned being laid off, and job-hunting, to him back in 2012. However, rather than trusting his memory, Mark is going to look at his notes to put together a box for Roadnotes, since that's a better/more detailed description of what she's likely to want than I could come up with. (I talked to cattitude in the middle of writing this post, and he says those notes were pretty sparse last winter; I wonder if I will be getting a call back.)

We chose to be optimistic about the weather and the chocolate not melting in transit, rather than spending lots of money on FedEx overnight (Mark mentioned the FedEx pp, but in tones of "I wouldn't recommend this").

I got out the trash-picked bosu (balance device) this morning, and tried standing on it and exercising a little. It was too easy, especially given that it's been over a year since I used one; when I was putting the bosu away I saw that, having been stood upon, it was visibly deflated. So, not worth keeping, but I am thinking of buying one.

Also in the self-care/maintenance department, I stopped at the supermarket pharmacy a couple of hours ago for a flu shot. I had a few minutes' wait after I asked for the vaccine, read and filled out the form, and gave the clerk my insurance card. The injection itself went smoothly. Like last year, it's costing me nothing (the insurer is paying $30), and they gave me a coupon for a discount on groceries. [ETA, for reference: I was given Fluvirin. Trivalent, which this season is A/H3N2, A/H1N1, and B.]

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Decluttering

Mon, 02 Jul 2012 02:45:13 GMT

I have slowly been getting rid of papers I don't need anymore, where "slowly" includes going through some stuff and then stopping for long periods. Last weekend I was talking about this, and some of what I had done recently, and that I had hit an entire box full of old letters, and hadn't even taken a deep breath and checked whether it was that or another ten years of extremely out of date bank statements.

papersky started to offer me advice/support about not needing to keep so many old things, and I explained that I knew this already and being told again didn't help. But it turns out not to have hurt, either. With a few days more time between me and opening that box; the desire to stay in the air conditioning today; and an attitude-shifting post from green_knight, I took another stab at it. Green_knight's suggestion (which wasn't intended as such, she was posting about her own current decluttering) is not to set any goal of how much to get rid of or how much will be left, but to think in terms of looking at things, with "decide later" as explicitly allowed, and counting any amount > 0 of things gotten rid of as an achievement, rather than having to get rid of at least a certain amount to count the project as successful.

I didn't open most of the envelopes, just looked at who they were from. I kept a bunch of letters from my best friend from high school, who I hadn't even thought of in years, and threw away everything from other people I knew in high school. I saved a few letters from my grandparents, a couple from someone I dated in college, and a few others. A lot of other people's letters, I didn't feel the need to keep: I hadn't so much made a deliberate decision back in the 1980s, as thrown a lot of things into a box. (Mostly it's letters from specific people, but I also found a grade report for a college course I took my senior year of high school; I thought briefly about hanging onto that and then remembered that I have my B.A., so transfer credits don't matter.) The startling thing wasn't the random "why do I have a postcard from this person?" but "who is this person who I keep finding letters from?" Names that ring no bell at all, but apparently 25 years ago we corresponded regularly enough that I've got a dozen envelopes with their return address.

At some point I may look at the letters I kept; for now, it's enough to know that I have these. But right now, a third of a shoebox full seems to be enough, at least from that epoch. (Maybe I'll flip through the stack of fanzine letters of comment on the bookshelf and try consolidating.)

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Plumbing, an amusing financial maneuver, and the gym

Tue, 25 May 2010 01:56:51 GMT

Our toilet has been malfunctioning for a couple of days: it rarely flushes properly when we use the handle (maybe 1 time in 10), and is running constantly. (This at least means that we aren't dealing with unpleasant or unsanitary overflows.) We left a note for the super yesterday; he called me about 9:30 this morning. Since I was already at work, I arranged for him to come tomorrow at 9 a.m. I then walked over to my boss, explained the situation, and before I could ask she told me to work at home tomorrow because my "productivity would be higher," presumably compared to, say, showing up at 11 if the plumbing didn't take long. So, I have both emailed myself the files and brought them home on a thumb drive (along with a few relevant photocopies).

When I got my most recent credit card bill, it showed that Delta had refunded the change fee they should never have charged us. Since Mom paid for my tickets, including that added charge, I emailed her to say we had a refund. She asked me to put it in her New York checking account. So I wrote a check for $250 to my mother, turned it over, wrote "For Deposit Only" on the back (that always reminds me of my grandfather, who wrote that on every birthday check he mailed any of us), signed my name, put the account number on it, and filled out a deposit slip. This is a joint account (though I almost never use it; she set it up that way so I could do banking stuff for her), so this isn't actually unreasonable, but it feels a little odd to write a check to someone else, then turn it over and endorse it myself. Even though I suspect I could have signed it "John Wilkes Booth" and nobody would have noticed.

After work, I went to the gym: a shorter workout than often, but varied.

( cut to avoid boredom )

Also, I got email this evening saying I won the auction for those hand-knit socks.

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