Slush and other opportunities
Aug. 23rd, 2026 08:03 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
flexagonSome opportunities came up early in the week, and I enjoyed being able to jump on them. One of these was small -- helping to set up the new small studio space for my circus school, for a couple of hours. The other turned out to be a lot bigger: helping to read the slush pile for the inaugural Protopian Prize in science fiction. The idea being: let's publish stories showing an achievable, optimistic future characterized by continuous, incremental progress (in other words: realistic optimism). To date I've read 59 stories -- a few of which were good, although most are not. I like it! I used to read slush in college, and this seems like a good cause.
Circus: I had a good backbend lesson with a new "best", and then a good acro lesson. The teacher pointed out a couple of things my partner could do to make my life easier, and with those changes plus good-faith jumping on my part we got our hand-to-hand back out of lines at last. I wonder how many times I'll need to learn that partner acro is a two-person endeavor and that it's rarely all my fault? Anyway, that felt great, and now all the closures and break weeks are over with. Hopefully my handstands can be fixed soon too. And to lower the stakes a little, I've signed up for juggling 101 withapfelsingail; that should be fun and I am not setting any goals related to it.
I spent a bit of time on houses, including mine (fine, I just installed new key racks) and stayed on top of email. Much of which came from my dad, who whined all week about his virus and coughing; but he seems to be on the mend now. This weekend I had extra time because there was no open studio, and I'd been feeling some discomfort around my wardrobe and other stuff; so I spent those couple of hours going through books, clothes, earrings and nail polish. Getting rid of stuff is wild -- even when I feel like I've cut pretty deep, there's always so much left.
Floof: saw Perse in a series of one-act plays! She was in two of the nine (?) plays, which were overall better than last year's and was a stone-cold killer in both. And speaking of that family, I finally got to curl up with my squirrel for the first time since Montreal, which was... five weeks ago? Dates with the bug have also been fun; we're watching Widow's Bay which is more comedy than I usually like in my horror, but which is entertaining.
Circus: I had a good backbend lesson with a new "best", and then a good acro lesson. The teacher pointed out a couple of things my partner could do to make my life easier, and with those changes plus good-faith jumping on my part we got our hand-to-hand back out of lines at last. I wonder how many times I'll need to learn that partner acro is a two-person endeavor and that it's rarely all my fault? Anyway, that felt great, and now all the closures and break weeks are over with. Hopefully my handstands can be fixed soon too. And to lower the stakes a little, I've signed up for juggling 101 with
apfelsingail; that should be fun and I am not setting any goals related to it.I spent a bit of time on houses, including mine (fine, I just installed new key racks) and stayed on top of email. Much of which came from my dad, who whined all week about his virus and coughing; but he seems to be on the mend now. This weekend I had extra time because there was no open studio, and I'd been feeling some discomfort around my wardrobe and other stuff; so I spent those couple of hours going through books, clothes, earrings and nail polish. Getting rid of stuff is wild -- even when I feel like I've cut pretty deep, there's always so much left.
Floof: saw Perse in a series of one-act plays! She was in two of the nine (?) plays, which were overall better than last year's and was a stone-cold killer in both. And speaking of that family, I finally got to curl up with my squirrel for the first time since Montreal, which was... five weeks ago? Dates with the bug have also been fun; we're watching Widow's Bay which is more comedy than I usually like in my horror, but which is entertaining.
