MOOP!

So, today's big project of the day was NEW BED!

Specifically, new mattress, and putting some bed risers in place. Everything else is the same old same old. I guess I changed the sheets, but it's not like I got new sheets. (I continue to deeply love owning nothing but dinosaur sheets.)

See, somewhere in the last few months, both Tuesday and Austin have been all "hm, you're aware that your mattress is actually complete shit, right?" and I've been like "yeah, it's ten years old YOLO" because I am an ADHD nightmare childe. But I have tried to bear their comments in mind, and kept my brain whirring about "yeah, it's deffo time for me to replace my mattress sometime". I even made a Facebook post asking for advice, which I then completely ignored.

And then yesterday, friendChris was dropping some supplies off at my house (Chris is moving and the supplies will be donated to work) and in small talk about how the move and packing is going he offhandedly said something about needing to get rid of a mattress. "Wait, shit, what size, what condition?" said I, and upon determining that it was a full and a couple years old, said "yeah, lemme see if I can arrange for a car" and that was that.

FriendKyle was all "sure, I have a car with roof rack and some strapping, and also my Sunday timing works out impeccably with yours [as long as I come to service ringing too] and so post-bells¹ Kyle and I traipsed off to his house. It was nice to get to see how his post-moving is going, and rifle through his and Clara's bookshelf a bit, and admire some art.

In the morning, Ezri had helped me to move the old mattress (and the futon mattress it was lying on) downstairs so all Kyle had to do was help me haul the mattress down from the third floor of Chris's (I forgot to warn on this part), strap it to his car, and haul it into our first floor. Ezri had also agreed to help me get it up to my room, which was good because after I hugged Kyle goodbye, Ezri and I tromped upstairs and they provided invaluable moral (and occasionally material) support while I:

*vacuumed the box spring *wiped down the entire frame with a damp rag *vacuumed/mopped the floor under the bed *put the frame up on risers *got anti-slip stuff for the risers and also took the wheels off my bedframe. I am especially appreciative of their thoughtfulness in various suggestions about making sure my bed was not likely to fall off the risers, although some of that might just be the practicality of "their bedroom is right below mine".

And then the surprisingly simple task of "haul a mattress up the stairs" and now I have a new bed. I have not finished making it, although I will do that shortly. With the trash this week, out goes the incredibly old futon mattress that was my first bed post-college (thanks BelmHouse!) as just general bulk-trash. And then the day after goes the mattress that was my Big Adult Purchase Of A Real Bed, in...

lesseee. This is coming up on the end of year four at the MFA. One year at nBs in Belmont. Three years at Dance House in Medford, and three years at ARSES before it, and I got it right at the start of moving in at ARSES. So yeah, old mattress was rounding up towards eleven years old.

Time to find out how it sleeps (I guess before I actually throw out the old one in the unlikely event that Oh No This Is Bad.)

~Sor
MOOP!

1: We've all been a little all over the place this weekend -do not ask about our first attempt at Stedman this morn, although we did have a redemptive one later on- but it's actually been a pretty fun ringing weekend. Yesterday was a Just Delightful "of the six of us, you two both have some Serious Focus Areas so let's do that" and practice was so much plain hunt and it was _great_. I don't really know very well how to teach this late-beginner stage of ringing, but I'm really enjoying getting to be part of a supportive band for it!

Today was a good day!

I still played a lot of video games, but like...a few hours total and not like ten. I was really quite ready to ~accomplish stuff~ after several days of accomplishing basically nil, and it was pretty joyous to actually do so!

The biggest thing to accomplish was to finally unpack from Pinewoods, and to do all the post-woods laundry. Ezri had very kindly done a little bit of it for me, but that wanted putting away, and there were still two loads of everything else to wash from the PW + CA adventuretimes I've been having for the past two weeks. So now that's all clean and put away, and I even _hung up_ the closet stuff and folded and put away the sheets. I am terrifying, as long as you ignore the fact that I've been home for five days and ESCape ended like...two and a half weeks ago.

I sorta fucked up with meals --I didn't wake up until about noon (although one bonus point to me for actually getting out of bed then) and so didn't eat breakfast until then, and then basically...forgot...about eating lunch. So I had some leftovers at like six, and then dinner at like...nine? It's fine, I'm fine. Note to self: Eat more tomorrow :P

Because it is Monday night, Austin came over which was lovely. We ate dinner and walked to the pull-up bar for pull-ups and ate ice cream and watched an episode and a half of Leverage and then went outside to see the ISS pass overhead. It continues to be magical, and I encourage y'all to sign up for Spot the Station alerts and maybe set an occasional alarm for yourself when you think it's a time and height you'll be able to see.

Then we finished the Leverage, which means we have finally finished season two! I forgot that season two finishes at basically the nadir (although at least most of the team is deffo together right now). I'm really happy that we've been working on this for the last year or so, and I am hopeful that we will make it the rest of the way through eventually (I've still technically never finished season five of Leverage, shh, no spoilers!)

I will have earned a die today for the first time in a _long_ time. This is not even "oh I've been traveling" long time, it looks like the last time was before the school year let out. Hahahah noooo you get horribly burned out every year at work and need months of brain reset time in which you do nothing. (I love my job. These things are both true.)

I hope you are having a nice night and a nice day and getting to see things you enjoy, like spaceships and good television!

~Sor
MOOP!

Today has not totally sucked either. In fact, it's been pretty alright.

I left the house a little late to get to Advent ringing, completely forgetting that the proximity to fancy church holidays meant services would run longer than usual. I did arrive after ringing started, but by considerably less than I'd feared, and was able to pop in for a method or two before the bells had to come down.

There was no coffee hour at the church, and so after a brief muddle of trying to keep our party together, we set off to a local nice coffee shop to bolster our spirits with pastries, and give us energy for the long walk to Old North. I got a very good chocolate muffin. The walk was particularly high spirited, and when we arrived at ON, every single ringer seemed to be at least a little bit punchy.

Their services were also running long, and just after we arrived at the tower, Bee noticed that the pokegym had a particularly cool raid about to happen...but a big one! 5/8 ringers whipped out their phones and it didn't help the punchiness at *all* for us to be frantically joining a raid team and taking it out. A nice big ~mega Alakazam~ who fell quite easily to the five of us, and then we got distracted a bit by vexiloligy until the lights flash and we sprung to our actual job.

(It is, as it turns out, very easy to distract Kat with vexiloligy. I blame growing up in Maryland for it, once you've been exposed to how good it feels to have an actually interesting state flag, you start to form some serious opinions on all the other flags out there).

I ran a nice service ringing --hard not to, when we only rang like three things-- and we could collect ourselves and go for a lunch in the too-thin sunshine. Not quite warm enough to be really marvelous, but certainly nice enough for us to be comfortable lingering a bit outside, excitedly sharing thoughts.

Finally home again home again together on the T, and all parting ways. No Kyle on Sundays, so I walked home from the station poking my nose back into the book I'd started this morning, Lattes and Legends. Like so many people, I'd first heard of it as a strong recommendation from Seanan McGuire, and I'd finally picked up a copy for myself last Christmas.

I got home and kept reading, until I finished the whole thing. It's a pretty fast read, a novel but a short one (250 pages or so) and a very charming one. As says on the tin, found family, competency, lots of coffee. I think it's pretty much fluff, but very comfortable fluff --I don't feel particularly challenged by it, but I really don't regret reading it and will probably read it again sometime.

Then was time for some house chores. Laundering various hand towels and tablecloths, sweeping and vacuuming floors, cleaning the toilet, the usual un-sexy maintenance to keep the place we live from becoming an utter pigsty. My bedroom is still a lost cause these days, but hopefully I'll work on that a bit in the upcoming week.

Last part of the day was dance. I _zoomed_ on a blue bike to Alewife, only a minute late for being picked up by my ride to Demo Team practice. Demo Team had time enough for one walk through and to to-music dance throughs --our first time going through the entire program at speed. This is good, because we only have one more rehearsal until NEFFA. It was bad because there were *definitely* a few chunks of music that were not-quite-right in our practice recording.

I persuaded Beth to drive me all the way to Porter instead of Alewife, and got to cap the night off with BIDA. I was expecting that there'd be no way for BIDA to measure up to the *phenomenal* night it'd been the week before, but it turns out someone had been very clever with the scheduling, and the way to follow up to a fucking amazing bonus-band who'd flown in from the other side of the country was with a hugely expansive open band with close to twenty people onstage.

After I arrived but before I went inside, I wolfed down a granola bar, so that I was not dancing on zero calories, and as before, wound up chatting with a nice person as they also arrived. This turned out to be a person called Erica who was lovely friendly, and we established "oh yes, we'll have to dance together sometime tonight" as part of our polite conversation. That turned out to be pretty much immediately --I got downstairs a minute or two later, and had just finished tying my dance shoes when the next dance started...and found Erica in much the same boat. We wound up doing a grid square dance together, and I learned that my new friend is a person entirely made of enthusiasm. This is a good thing!

The rest of the dance was equally lovely. I got to waltz with Iz just as she arrived, which was charming, just gossiping quietly about our respective lives, and then during the break was able to chat with Ruthie a whole bunch about the wonders of pregnancy. The second half included a *deeply* flirtatious contra with Austin (a mad robin made for some wonderfully intense eye contact, and I like that if I'm dancing with one of the very few people I actually make proper eye contact with), and ended with a silly Gemini-swapping line with Bee and Todd. Todd had never experienced a Gemini-partner(s) before, and spent much of the dance being adorkably and enthusiastically bewildered.

I closed with a waltz with the taller of the Neils, noting he didn't have a partner and vaguely remembering that he was good for that sort of thing. Oh yes! He's a blues dancer, and he's got those lovely long legs which means he actually stretches his way across the floor, and that was a very lovely dance as well.

Homeagain homeagain, where I ate some dinner (shocked it was nearly eleven!) and then went to my bedroom if not exactly to bed. Words are done now and I'm off to sleep...tomorrow will be full of its own new challenges as I catch up with whatever I wanted my lessons to be. Goodnight!

~Sor
MOOP!

[[written last night after I got home, posted this morning yay!]]

So like...as an indication of how I'm doing, I'm typing words on the school computer tonight, because Mel is still downstairs and I just couldn't be arsed to go down again and get her after already walking up the stairs once.

I am...pretty damn wiped out, from an ultimately brilliant and lovely day. Really really satisfied and happy, just exhausted.

It was Bee's birthday (well, it is on Monday) so they had decreed that after bells today there should be some celebrating. So before heading to bells, I packed up my bag carefully and made sure I would be completely ready for Adventures! Some highlights:

*Bells went really quite well today. I watched a round of Cambridge minor, paying specially attention to what JohnS was doing (because he's very good) and making my brain relearn the path, which turned out to actually work and when I got to ring it later, I only messed up a few times.

*I also rang what might've been my first ever touch of Plain Bob Minor where I was in the right spot every single blow. Like, I wasn't perfect with the timing, I was sometimes a little on the early or late side of the blow, but I distinctly and specifically knew where I was supposed to be --and was approximately there-- every time and I am proud of myself for that as long as I don't think too hard about things.

*The main adventure was BEACH! We all gathered food, met on the greenway as usual, and then split up half-by-car and half-by-T to go to Wonderland and have a nice time! The T group won the race by like 10-15 minutes, which was very excellent, although all of us were beat by Greg who had cheated by not being at ringing and therefore able to leave whenever he wanted.

*I went into the ocean twice. The first time I moved very slow but did dunk to neck. Also spent a bunch of time standing knee-ish deep and chatting with Julia about library stuff. The second time was after sand adventures (see below) and I went in more quickly and did eventually full dunk, which means my hair is full of salt. I lasted longer than I expected, and got out not quite soon enough¹, but very nearly, and so only needed a small amount of wrapped-in-towel-and-sunshine recuperation time.

*Last time I was at the beach, I dug a quite good hole, and decided to do so again this time, which proved hugely popular with the "young" set of ringers (basically all of us between 20-35). Six of us worked together to dig a fairly giant hole --and we started close enough to the wall and pavilions that we actually reached the bottom! (Did you know that parts of Wonderland beach appear to be built on cement?). It was a very lovely bonding exercise.

*Also lovely bonding? The part where we then all dug little seats around the edge of the hole and sat on them and stuck our feet in on top of each other and then obviously dragged the sand in and filled it in so we were just a circle of torsos sticking out of the sand.

*And then we played Spoons! Using seashells, natch. The last round was the "throw all the shells way out of reach so that everyone except first-person will have to go dragging themself out of the sand to get them and it will be very dramatic" which was pretty much perfect except that we accidentally lost one card. Sorry Todd! :(

*Then there was long walks by the shoreside with Austin, and a bit of juggling and volleyball and frisbee and finally we all headed back to Bee and Austin's place for birthday cake and dinner and that was all very good as well.

I did not grow up with beach adventures in my childhood, not really but this has proven to be a fun thing to try for the summer! Lots of sunscreen is necessary of course, but I really enjoy the parts that feel sort of universally human --jump in and over and around the waves, pick up cool shells to show each other, and dig big holes.

Anyways, it is late and I have to be up early for tomorrow's adventures. Ta!

~Sor
MOOP!

1: I have a growing familiarity with the fact that my body can't handle cold water for very long. I did the bad thing and stayed in way too long once, a couple years ago, and then found myself in the thoroughly unpleasant situation of standing around wrapped tightly in a towel (or two?) in 80+ degree weather on a sunny day, with my teeth chattering so hard I couldn't talk. That was no good, and the goal now that I've learned the limit is to not actually push past it again.

It Saturday!

It a _really good day!_

Today started with scrambling out of bed as subtly as possible in order to not wake up Austin, then going to the online photography class I'm taking. (Photo class is honestly mostly just an impetus to take more pictures, since that is a thing I actually like in my life, but frequently forget about. But I also get to see lots of pretty photos taken by other people, and I get to see some of my faraway friends, and I do get to listen to someone who is an expert talk about stuff (which is _always_ a good thing!))

After photo class, I went and jumped on Austin so he'd be awake, We had a nice leisurely morning, with lots of Steven Universe and eating breakfast, and doing a yoga. Finally around three we got ourselves together and left the house, to go on a bike-and-hike adventure!

Masks safely on, we went waaaaaay down Trapelo road, basically into nearly Waltham, and did some wandering around a green space that had _shockingly_ few people for how nice the day was. I took a huge number of photos (some of which might even be good for photoclass next week, yay!!!!) and it was a very nice time for the legs.

Also we saw these wildlifes: red-winged blackbird, dark-purple-headed-bird-that-is-otherwise-black, robin, geese, GOSLING!, duckduckduckducks!, duckfuck¹, bumblebee, firefly (unlit), fireflyfuck, chipmunks, squirrel, really big seagulls, AND A MUSKRAT!!!!

Also a small mummified mammal of some sort, on the steps to the possibly-haunted-but-definitely-full-of-asbestos abandoned hospital. It's pretty clear that some weird ass-teenagers left it there in a fake satan ritual. It was cool as shit and no I did not touch it.

So long walk around and looking at aforementioned abandoned hospital and also the water tower _covered_ in graffiti, and then we got on our bikes and biked way into Waltham proper so we could go look at train infrastructure. Look, Austin was patient with me while I photographed all the bright coloured graffiti and pointed out every single bumblebee I saw, I was patient with him while we wandered on bits of gravel road and behind buildings because it used to be a train tracks. He and I are pretty good at the buddy system and I am very happy for it.

We biked home along the Charles bike path, and it was only marred by me having weird PrivateSchool feels (we were very close to parts of my commute from a long time ago), and also by it having been _four and a half hours_ since we left and we were starting to flag.

Luckily when we got home, Austin was willing to take point on dinner --I washed dishes and helped sous chef and stuff, but it was really nice to have him in charge of the mental load for that one-- and we made Ash's really wonderful Ethiopian lentil recipe, with added potatoes. Putting the whole thing over rice was an Excellent Decision as well! Gosh that's good. It turns out spices are awesome ;)

And then post dinner we had a really nice time on the couch where I played some Animal Crossing (mom came over! Yay mom!!) and he worked on his secret train project and both of us just...rested together. It was _really_ lovely.

One of the nice things about him coming to visit on weekends is that it really does make them feel like _weekends_, like a chance to get away from the rest of my life and rest and do some things different. Tomorrow we might make a cake (we've been meaning to for ages) and we will probably go outside again for a while. Definitely do yoga, they lied. (actually, we're pretty good when we're both in person and reminding each other to do it, it's just really hard to keep track when we're apart.)

I love you, and I hope your days have had something nice in them, despite...everything else.

~Sor
MOOP!

1: Maybe? It appeared to be one duck humping another duck while they were in the water, but it also appeared to be two male mallards. I am not judging?

ACCOMPLISHMENTS:

Work:
*The Usual
*Actually caught up on attendance, which I missed yesterday, and writing seven billion cut slips sigh. Still need to do participation.
*Also graded a random Calc assignment, which means I only have two more assignments for them before I'm totally caught up. And some random participation and entrance tickets. Sigh.
*Worked with favourite student for an hour-plus after school today! That's always fun, I like her a lot.

Physical:
*Walked to therapy, because my bike is borked. Beat the 91, but only barely.
*Took a shower in the morning
*Went to squares and did a bit of dancing! Also I'm going to lead the grand march. I have not done this yet, so we'll see how it turns out.
*Added: The grand march went totally fine! We went up and down staircases! Somehow nobody died!
*Wrist is mostly feeling better. Still keep tweaking it, booooo.

Social:
*Went to squares! Chatted with random people
*Got called rude on the internet for telling a white man I wouldn't keep arguing with him unless he paid me. His retort was "should I invoice you for my valuable time then?" and then making ten more comments in the thread to other people. I am laughing my fucking _ass_ off.
*Gonna go curl up with Austin and do sleep! I guess this also counts as physical?

Personal:
*Wrote words without accomplishments list. Day 151 in a row, day 127 this year.
*Did some nice friendly social on dumb phone game. I liked it!
*I have now checked my email and done read-response for everything for two weeks in a row. I haven't made any forward progress on the endless pile of unread things, but for two straight weeks I've not made negative progress. I kinda like this!

~Sor
MOOP!