We Can't Rewind, We've Gone Too Far

I got my booster shot yesterday, which has knocked me out like all the others. My immune system would like to know wtf I'm playing at.

Current pandemic obsession is embroidery, and at the moment specifically needlelace (modern explanation, Victorian explanation), which is something like embroidery without the cloth. It's also much more manageable than bobbin lace; if I tried to set up a lace pillow covered in pins and things hanging from strings around Pepper terrible things would happen.

I have been throwing myself into that with all the enthusiasm of someone who is avoiding preparing for the new semester and also has a bunch of Agatha Christie audiobooks on Libby, but in the interests of avoiding eyestrain, and also because I just had a shower and am now utterly out of energy, have a meme.

( AO3 Averages Meme )

I can't speak for how they're treating faculty and staff (my program's student advisor seems extremely overwhelmed, but that may not be new), but at least in terms of interaction with students my college's conduct during the pandemic has been exemplary. Primarily, we get clear communication, a full semester in advance, how classes are going to work. (That is, since May - it's not like they could have given us a semester's notice for summer classes.)

Almost everything has been online and the campus is almost entirely locked down. This has the negative effect that more of the cost is put on the students, who have to buy lab equipment for themselves that would otherwise be provided on campus, but for me it's still well within the range of my OSAP grants.

On a less systemic level, every professor I've asked for an extension has immediately said "Yes, of course, no, I don't need to see a note," which has been nice.

That said, this is a technical college, and there are in fact some programs, like, for example, Aviation, that cannot be taught entirely virtually. So I have one in-person electronics lab course this semester. Due to failures of preparation and communication on the part of the provincial government, they had to add a bunch of sections after students had already signed up, with the result that my lab is on Sunday afternoons and only has nine other people in it. And then a 2km walk home in January because it's not really worth taking public transit right now.

The first couple labs were very straightforward "Have you forgotten how circuits work in the last ten months" exercises, but this week we were doing something slightly more complicated and I got to spend almost two hours cheerfully doing science in a space made for the purpose and with no interruptions. It was great.

It's reasonable; I was thinking last night, when I remembered that oh, yes, we know what's causing the recent physical issues, that I have a lot of very reasonable causes of stress, and then I remembered two more really obvious ones this morning, but I'm so tired. And there are neat things that I can do or have been doing, but also there are school things.

And school things were so much easier when I was just straightforwardly in a room where I had nothing to do except make circuits for two hours. I have ideas to rearrange things so I can do this more easily at home, but, yeah. Tired.

And one day off a week, unless someone in government realizes that possibly we should actually do something about skyrocketing case rates.

And when Canadian elections are coming up I have a habit of making nice informative posts full of links to Elections Canada/Elections Ontario, but it's so much harder to do that for American elections. Which of course is also why it's more necessary to do that for American elections *facepalm*. But this year I am not actually employed by any election organization, and maybe that will help me let myself off the hook. Here's 2018's, and apparently Stephen Colbert or someone is doing state-by-state videos?

I have enjoyed reading other people's, so here we are.

( Read more... )

So.

My college is switching to online classes, except they haven't done this before in the middle of a semester and also half of my classes have really important lab components which can't be done from home. They're saying the semester will end when scheduled; I kind of doubt that. They're supposed to have figured out how this works by Monday, and until then I get to review and be anxious.

All of my work's clients are cancelling their inventory counts, obviously. I am not seriously financially affected by this.

My 79-year-old father decided to fly to Texas last weekend. He's back now where we have free healthcare and my stepmother is in an AirBnB so that's resolved, ish, but wow, Monday night was not fun.

Unfortunately being stuck at home with my mother all day is not ideal for my mental health, but ... there's nowhere else to go and if there was I'd have to go on public transit. And it's still too cold to spend much time writing in parks. But I'm generally doing okay. Lots of knitting.

The problem with saying "use the time to write!" is that this is a major disruption of routine, with bonus anxiety, which does not actually lend itself to increased creativity. I don't have that much focus for reading, either, including my DW list, which come to think of it is probably a warning sign (so, now I know). There has nevertheless been some writing. Kate Bornstein is a treasure.

I am sort of doing more on twitter, but I would not really recommend going on twitter if you don't want ALL CURRENT EVENTS ALL THE TIME.

Recommendations for podcasts accepted, no horror or true crime, without frequent interviews or changing guests every episode. Basically I want to listen to a small fixed group of people talking about things they are interested in that will not give me nightmares. Examples are Jay and Miles XPlain the XMen, Lingthusiasm, and usually Sawbones.

Okay, Christmas was good in the "too busy to actually post about it" kind of way. Mostly because I had Pixies for two weeks and <3<3<3. I technically had time for a yearly wrap-up post on the first, but I would have had to do it on my phone, so no. I got in Saturday night and spent most of yesterday knitting and catching up on Dreamwidth, because the next while is going to be busy.

I start class tomorrow. I was not actually intending to start college in January. I was intending to start in May, and then they were like "you can still sign up for January!" and I was like "...okay." (Not doing Yuletide this year was a very good idea. Oof.) So that's happening. In a month or so I will have a better idea of how this is going to work and whether I will have any writing time.

(Also, I am keeping an eye on my spelling but I am rather drunk at the moment, because warehouse shift today. So.)

The problem with thinking about writing at work is that if I figure out how to finish a chapter I don't want to have to count another box of brand name hoodies, I want to go home and finish the chapter. Oh well.

In the last couple weeks I finished This Is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone, which is spectacular and amazing and omg, the language, omg. And also Proper English by K. J. Charles (normally I can't get into her books, but this one worked, so maybe they just start slow for me. Or maybe I like lesbians better.) (also breathedout if you ever feel the need for a light romance/murder mystery, this one is set at a hilariously terrible house party and I feel you will appreciate that) and Hither Page by Cat Sebastian, who I usually mostly like and did here as well. I am all for this thing where queer romance authors are doing Agatha Christie, that is great and can keep going forever.

Who knows if I will have reading time in the near future, but I do have You Look Like a Thing and I Love You: How Artificial Intelligence Works and Why It's Making the World a Weirder Place by Janelle Shane, which looks good.

What else? I have a new piercing (because the one Pixies got me several years ago grew into the one next to it, so I needed to get it redone), yay new piercing!

Onwards!

So my medium-term plan is to go to college to become an electrical technician (we're calling this Project Tesla). In order to do this I need to take grade 12 math, since I skipped it the first time round because it was optional and I was really into literature and also for reasons we won't go into I missed a lot of junior high math so I didn't have the necessary background to do well in math in high school.

I started doing that in an online course last week. I was worried about this because I do not trust my ability to self-motivate, but so far I've done at least an hour of math every single day for over a week now.

And earlier today I had a lot of free-floating anxiety and then I went, "Okay, I'm going to do my math homework." And I did. And then I felt better.

It's reasonable: I focused on something specific with no emotions attached for a fixed length of time--but it's so far from what I expect of myself.

And Mom's in Italy right now and I have been calmly cooking and doing the laundry and picking up the mail and so on. While working and also seeing people. For that matter, I have a medium-term life plan right now.

It's not perfect--the next two weeks are going to be busy and work keeps changing my schedule on me and it's concerning. But I can look at the pros and cons of, say, going to the climate protest tomorrow morning, and be reasonably confident in what effect it will have on me and that I can deal with that effect.

This is because I am properly medicated and had useful therapy earlier this year. But it's so weird.

"Oh God," muttered Ford, slumped against a bulkhead and started to count to ten. He was desperately worried that one day sentient life forms would forget how to do this. Only by counting could humans demonstrate their independence of computers.
...
Ford carried on counting quietly. This is about the most aggressive thing you can do to a computer, the equivalent of going up to a human being and saying "Blood ... blood ... blood ... blood ..."

--Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

Kettle: *boils*
Vi: *enters kitchen*
Jean Claude: Human! Do you know what time it is?
Vi: It is 3:58.
Vi: *makes tea*
Jean Claude: ...and what happens at 3:58?
Vi: Nothing. Nothing in your fuzzy little life has ever happened at 3:58.
Jean Claude: It is TIME TO FEED THE CAT, HUMAN.
Vi: *takes tea away to consultingpiskies*
Jean Claude: No! Wrong direction!

RTSPI: It is Shitpost February, or alternatively


The cat has taken to sitting on my laptop, usually but not always when I've left the apartment; this is objectionable but understandable given that it radiates heat. However, this results in him hitting the keys. And the mouse buttons.

Typing would be fine. I remember to close Scrivener when I leave, he can't do anything drastic. But in January Pixies and I went to see Spider-Verse (liked it well enough but it made me desperately crave a Cindy Moon movie) and we came home to find that Jean Claude, apparently objecting to Old City Hall, had changed my desktop background. (He won: the photo was stored weirdly so it wouldn't let me just change it back, so out of laziness I've kept it on the landscape he picked.)

Today he opened a Notepad file on my desktop with a draft exchange signup from several years ago. Do you want me to write more Holmesfic, cat? Is that it?