Carefully Random

... "what day is it" week, "my diet has been weird" week. Also, a week with actual rest days in it. Heck yeah.

The actual day of Thanksgiving we just had Birdie over for a lot of the day; she played pretty music with heisenbug, and I guess they're similar enough level to have fun doing that with neither one annoying the other too much. It was hand-flappingly cute. On the same day, I was doing backbends at home and decided to replicate my "best ever" tight bridge photo from November 2020 -- why not? I still have the same outfit and the same yoga mat.

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So that's amusingly similar. I'm excited to be back around my "best ever", with backbands, and still feel like I'm making progress. Anyway, fairly chill. A pie was made. The day after that was the big gathering over at Blue-Green Street, and that was really nice and I had multiple conversations that I'm following up on for later. I used the whole thing as a motivator to again cast on for my double-knit hat, which maybe I'll make progress on this time.

What else?

• Got a bottle of multi-chrome nail polish from Mooncat so good that I shared, and four people are wearing it right now. It's not merely green/purple -- it can also flash blue or pink and even get a bit of amber in just the right lighting conditions. Wearing it is distracting, like having abalone or iridescent beetles on my fingertips.


• Had an extra-great date with the squirrel, in which an early Christmas present was bought for me and then I was fed an extremely good dinner at Scampo. And he paid, the rotten thing! I'm not generally much of a foodie, but they had squid ink spaghetti with cod confit and crab meat... and yeah, maybe a glass of Pinot Grigio. So that was amazing, and then there was curling up and sleeping which is my favorite hobby these days. I felt thoroughly spoiled (and complained that I will soon become all vinegary if such things continue).


• One of my besties is basically fighting a war with a roommate, and this week locksmiths were nearly summoned. It's tough. Really makes me think about the switch-flip that happens when person A entirely stops trusting person B, in all domains at once -- which, well, haven't I been there?


• Random social time included lunch with an ex-coworker, a kitten, and a virtual reunion of the people I once book-clubbed Designing Your Life with. So interesting to see all the paths people have taken over the last three years. One of them had just read Moral Ambition and therefore had a whole lot of ideas for what good I could be doing in the world now that I'm not working for The Man. And, well, maybe tomorrow, Satan, but right now I'm resting.


• Nobody has bitten on renting the new condo for a start date of Dec 1, but showings are starting to happen. Someone will bite. I've failed to get an HVAC person to look at the one issue I've found, so... I'll get back on that tomorrow morning.


• Finished up a crossword puzzle. This is my fourth to be submitted to the NYT, and I still have my fingers super crossed for the third one but this one's also a fair effort. Same collaborator as my first one.

With the new month starting, it feels like tomorrow is going to be busy. Goodnight, sweet readers.

A gentle week in most ways, although workouts were un-gentle: three private handstand lessons on three days in a row, followed by three days in a row with backbends. And yes this is more than I care to be asking of my hands and wrists, so today in open studio I took it pretty easy and avoided handstands. The sixth of those days was my last -- for now -- private walkover lesson with the tumbling coach, yesterday. I still don't have an unspotted walkover, but I'm within spitting distance again on the back one, and she taught me some cool drills for active splits and for shoulder stretching. No regrets.

On Tuesday I managed to watch Episode 3 of Pluribus with both the bug and the squirrel, making it the only episode I haven't seen twice. I wish more people were watching this show so I could talk about it more. I think I would want to join the hive mind; I'd be ragingly curious, and also afraid it wouldn't last (and I wouldn't want to miss out on the experience). But thus far I'm the only one; neither of my partners would want to.

Thursday I met a leak detection specialist over at the rental cottage, and we searched for any evidence of the leak our tenant was worried about. There was no such evidence found, but we did get locked out, so the whole thing involved a locksmith at the same time(!), followed by doorknob shopping and installation. The dead doorknob was some kind of commercial version very rarely used in residential settings, so the locksmith had to be pretty destructive to remove it.

Overall, I feel I'm preparing for the winter season in a very primal way. Laying in supplies. Looking for things I'm running out of, and buying new batches of them (lip balm, underwear, food storage containers, soap, earplugs). I took my deep-winter clothes out of storage, and stored my high-summer stuff instead, and bought two cheap pairs of joggers that feel strange -- but admittedly soft and comfy -- on my legs. The smart thing to do would be to prepare more for Christmas, but no, my body only cares that it's dark outside and feels that some kind of hibernation is in order.

Not sure if I've mentioned it here before, but I fully intend to enter a sewing phase once the condo project is fully settled down. I've been looking around at sergers and coverstitch machines, and learning a bit about things like blunt-tipped needles for sewing jersey. Somewhat amazingly, it seems there's a serger at my local library that patrons can use! So I intend to trot on over there, see if it's real and try it out before buying anything.

Still very happy. Just living my little life. Birdie's other dad visited this weekend and had lunch with us, and he burst out that he loved me and is so glad I am around and being in Birdie's life. SO CUTE. Granted he was well into the 2nd cocktail at that moment, but still.