Category: Nature

BISCOTTI X 4

I have made biscotti. I am still making biscotti…. quadruple batch.  Absolute units of biscotti, they are absolutely perfect.

Some to Katie’s Mike, some to Paul, some to Tom and Peggy, some to mOm and pOp, and now I have to find shipping boxes…..

Tremendous training session with Buster this morning.

Buster has started speed running the morning training session, it’s hilarious. BUMPS LEG to start game. Paw clap x 3; run and chase x 10; jump up and catch treat single-pawed; up onto the chair paw clap x 3; PAUSE ‘I’m not chasing that’ FINALE: chases treat down the stairs THUMP THUMP THUMP THUMP crunch crunch crunch

This is all designed to maximize treat consumption; he’s figured out it’s piecework and now he just goes like spit. I stopped recording him because he hates the red light, but I really wish I’d recorded this morning, it was stellar.

cat training for people with add

A domestic scene:

I’m in the bathroom. I leave the door open a crack so Buster can get in, because he doesn’t like being locked out, because he wants to be brushed. He lifts his front paws to shove the door open; I shove it back to just barely being ajar to spare my brother (whom I have just greeted, as I do when I rise in the morning if he is awake) a view of my ample fundament, just in case he wanders by in search of tea.

I take out the metal tined brush and brush his back a couple of times, and he goes straight back to the door, mews, lets himself out.

“Do you want the other brush?” I call softly through the door.

He pushes the door open again and doesn’t come closer until he sees the brush he wants, which makes him purr as I brush hard under his chin (what he wanted in the first place.) I brush him, conclude my business and he jumps up on the toilet. (In this household, toilet lids are kept closed when toilets are not in use.) I brush him some more and when I’ve collected a fair bit of fur, I stop and wash my hands.

I say to him, “You know the brushing is all done when I wash my hands. If you want a treat, jump down.”

He looks at me and mews. I point at the floor. He jumps down and I follow him into the kitchen and start an abbreviated training session, since he isn’t much into it.

Buster has very definitely learned what ‘brush’ and ‘treat’ are, is iffy about ‘jump’, ‘up’ and ‘down’ and ‘all done’ out of the context of training (but getting it from time to time), has started to respond to hand directions without a treat, and the only thing that remains is to figure out how to get him out of my chair downstairs….

Training is all about ‘things the cat would have done anyway’, you’re merely encouraging the animal to do it both faster and in a specific order. That, as they say, is all, until five minutes later, when he’s decided he hasn’t played ‘catch the treat’ enough and initiates another training session, (bangs my left shin with his forehead is the signal) which is adorable, because he wants more treats and knows he has to jump around and make a total fool of himself to get them, and he’s okay with that.

He asked for another training session a half hour after THAT. What a cat.

Miss Margot’s been gone three years (Margot’s song)

Has it been that long? Yes…

This is just me singing in my room, so don’t expect much. Also I had to do about a hunnert takes from crying, so this is the point my mood hit the big red NO MORE button. There was a dulcimer accompaniment but it morphed into another tune.

 

she was a funny cat – she definitely had more of a sense of humour than most. And she didn’t hold a grudge…. also most uncatlike. This is her consulting on me entering ‘The Evening News’ into Finale.

 

I have gone where my friends are waiting
Don’t you worry ‘bout me
And it’s not like I could forget you
Or you forget about me

You will miss me lots
Wish it wasn’t so
When I fill your thoughts
You will know I was here
I was here a moment ago

My old bowl is back in the cupboard
And my grave’s in the yard
Your old heart isn’t made of rubber
And you’re taking this hard

All the love you felt for me
Will never go away
It’s in the universe we made between us
and it is here to stay

I have gone where my friends are waiting
Don’t you worry ‘bout me
And it’s not like I could forget you
And you will never, ever forget about me.

about my skills you may not harp

Cause I dove down and caught a carp.

Photo credit Zöe Rossman, Mammalogist. Photo shows a coyote with a bigass carp in its mouth, moments after diving down to catch it. Zöe got to watch the whole thing. I believe this is in New Mexico but given the ubiquity of both coyotes and common carp it could be almost anywhere in NA

Coyote with a large carp in its mouth
Coyote with a Carp

Two Daves

Two letters written but not posted today; it’s a Two Dave day.

Jeff’s just asked me to go downstairs and watch a Time Team. Hope it’s something Saxon or Roman. L8r Nope, medieval and Tudor. But really interesting if you’re crazy about remodelling castles for successive waves of improvements in warfare, boom goes the gunpowder.

Alex was here recently and I’m just remembering him being happy about getting a tube shot on the Xenon game and it made me happy in consequence.

Buster was past damp into dripping wet, and filthy when he came back in this morning…. must be horrible to have to clean that crap off with your teeth and mouth blech.

Indian food delivered last night. I was very happy with the quality and quantity for the price. It’s a new place (8 months?)  that does pizza and Desi food Pasifika style, which is like, so Vancouver, it hurts.

Chuck Yeager, RIP. His autobiography is most entertaining.

Letter from Onty Mary, and I’m so glad she enjoyed the paper art I put in with a recent letter, that was cheering.

Today has been set aside for One Grim Task. I do not want this task. I do not want the cascade of tasks that will flow from this One Grim Task. I AM DISGUST, SON.

It’s 10:20 in the morning and I am still not nerved up for this gd task. I am actually hitting the old moral GPS for a recalc from my new position and fuck me if it’s not taking a bit longer than any reasonable person might expect. What is it that a reasonable person following Stoic principles might expect? I said I’d write first PHEW AN OUT, I HAVE AN OUT.

With that I must now turn my attention to the real writing I need to do today, otherwise known as Quarantine Porn. And that works whether I’m talking about the UPSUN universe or my rapidly-winding-down interest in writing porny Supernatural fanfic. (Not all of it’s porn, some of it’s just fluff.)

And if I’m not going to write that, I have to go back out into the kitchen and either work some more on The Dark Book – current section is “the Calendar” and it’s fucking MOLOCH this and MOLOCH that, as he drives his diesel dick through history and messes us all up, it’s just standard issue eschatology schlock, that’s part of the point of the poem though, disjointing the specifically English language over and past and through its various levels of inanity, legalism and perverse vagueness through to a new horrific understanding about what ‘end times’ actually means for the people living through it, and you are among those people, and what the hell is this poem anyway (this last aside for my parents, who have long since given up on trying to understand what it is I’m babbling about and reached this question much earlier) — or work on my master grocery list, and I finally figured how I can get what my grocery list looks like in my head to my actual grocery list that I use every week and reinforces how I visualize and operate in the world, but I haven’t done it yet. So I have work to do to advance this project, which will assist me cognitively as my brain declines and I’m still shopping, and which may have applications for other seniors and TBI sufferers. (I certainly wasn’t able to find anything like it on line.) So yeah, projects, in order, depending on what I’m up for mood and skill wize.

Yup, I’m going to wander off and reconfigure my reality right now, be back in a day for an update or sooner if something interesting happens.

One last thing, the ‘writing light’ in the kitchen died and I asked for help from Jeff  (my shoulder’s frozen…. that was weird, realizing it) and he touched the apparently dead compact fluorescent and it illuminated and it made me think of pOp. Also Jeff is quietly amazing, the best kind.

lazy day

I showered, did a load of laundry and slept like I was getting paid to yesterday. I guess I was processing the phone call from the clinic. A few things were cleared up and she’s sending me some literature. I can still lose 20 pounds and stave this off…. I feel like there are a million goddamned balls in the air, and I have so little control over most of them, and inconsistent control over the rest.

Pankakes and tea for brekky

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this is one of Kevin Gannon’s dogs (@thetattooedprof) and this is TOTAL MOOD FOR NOW

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This is Peter Coffey @petercoffey’s photo of an oil beetle. THEY FLOP OVER AND PLAY DEAD WHEN THE FLASH GOES OFF so he posted this pic with a complaint about how they are his new least fave thing to photograph and I’m thinking WHUT this is berloody amazin’

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Somebody mention the angel Castiel?  S’gonna be all right, my beauties.

Destiel round up (pretend this is a Private post)

sane people, pls leave – this is in response to Despair ep 18 of the last season of Supernatural.

Original creator of the show Eric Kripke (at least I think that’s who it is) with a rainbow flag and the word COPE:

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backstory for the above, fans who only like the relationship between the two Winchester brothers are called bibros. Having Cas (canonically his name is CASS but that’s not what we do in fandom, ha ha) an actual life partner – potentially or otherwise – is making them lose their cheese.

 

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Jesus Christ this above noted post made me laugh so fucking hard

the below-noted post IS IMMEDIATELY WHERE MY MIND WENT AFTER THE SHOW WAS OVER

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Yeah NO SHIT, love this callback, although Dean didn’t actually get enough time to say anything

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no, I really haven’t, because that’s the kind of love it is, and always has been represented that way, and fuck the haters

 

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now in the fandom they’re saying destiel is what makes Putin resign, which when you consider HOW MANY RUSSIAN FANS THERE ARE is quite possibly the funniest thing about this tempest in a teacup

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above is shown the catholic reaction….

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LOLOLOL this was the Friday after the show/election

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SPN fandom above is memeified in the Avengers universe. Cas disappears during the scene, but he’s already been resurrected three times, so…

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I think @solarbirdy’s comments on the above noted complete lack of reaction are best, but she’s a filker so I won’t reproduce her speech without permission

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In other words, this represents such an upgrade to the notion of queerbaiting they’ll have to throw out their previous thesis. Also, Tumblr as a social media platform was dying and the extra hits they got as a consequence of Supernatural 15/18 were substantial

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Destiel fans often refer to themselves as clowns.

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the above-noted isn’t exactly what happened either

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nope, not this either and anyone who DOES expect skin should probably give their good ol’ head a shake. I want A HUG FOR THE BOYS that means a little more than the ones they’ve given each other so far.

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EVERY G.D. WORD O’ THIS ABOVENOTED POST

palate cleanser

LOOK UPON THE WOMAN WHO SAVED THE WORLD, now we have to survive the next two months OH PS SHE’S OUT ABOUT BEING A SUPERNATURAL FAN but we do not know how she feels about destiel and I would very much like to think that she STANS.

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WELL I THOUGHT THAT WAS IT, BUT THERE’S ANOTHER CHASER FOR THAT SHOT

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JESUS CHRIST, THIS FANDOM

 

 

writing back to the world

Yes, there was an election. No, it isn’t settled. Even if the worst happens, the world survived before, and it will keep surviving. My story isn’t done, neither is yours.

This is a long boring text-heavy oversharing post, ya been told.

Continue reading writing back to the world

everything’s got spin, and the spin is in

TFW you want to boast on social media about a gaming accomplishment — but the real point is that it would be virtually impossible for someone with early onset dementia to do what you just did. I broke 5 minutes, I broke 5 minutes AND took 20 seconds off my most recent record. yay Sherlock, my favourite puzzle game for MORE THAN 30 YEARS.

I was supposed to write somebody a letter today…. I’m going to clutch the negligibly small sore spot on my flu shot arm and plead that all I want to do today is vote. Also, there are leftovers, I got mild peri sauce Barcelo chicken yesterday and I found it absolutely delicious.

Various physical signs in my body indicate that my liver is much happier with me eating less carbs and sugar. I still don’t have any way to check my blood sugar. A diabetic friend is really happy with her implant (she’s lost weight in a healthy way, she has needle-like accuracy on her sugars) but I’m hoping to turn the boat around still, so we’ll see.

I reviewed my schedule of habits to develop and I think for the next week I’m going to concentrate on drinking enough water. So every time the clock shows a multiple of three, I should drink a third of a litre of water at minimum, and make less than half my daily liquid consumption tea. Let’s see if I can get this habit established! I’m very well established with an evening routine, so I’m happy about that, and I’ve also stopped looking at the computer at bedtime, which means sleep starts faster and I’m not doomscrolling right before bed.

In the morning, the wifi doesn’t talk to my laptop from 4 am to 7 am. I get much more done in terms of writing, editing and letter writing now during that period since I’m not making myself unpleasant on twitter the entire time. That’s usually the time I mail the letter, if I leave the house for that purpose.

Murder hornet found in BC. How jolly.

Moose eating pumpkin. 

Okay I’ll be thinking about this one for a while:

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text accompanying a ‘Lower Decks’ graphic: Star Fleet Academy should not be in SF. There’s no canonical indication that the land was ever returned and military school on stolen land is a military occupation.