(no subject)
It's been a while! I was actually a little too busy with work straight through December, since it all caught up with me as I was developing it. Then personal stuff happened at that time, with only a little break in January before continuing until about mid-March. I spent most of March catching up, but I'm in an okay spot now where I'm at least keeping up with everything while also working on my to-do list. Um, to give you an idea, I wrote this paragraph about three weeks ago. I was crawling through my open tabs to deal with things, and finally got back to this.
I've been writing a letter to myself every five years. Not me, a version of myself twenty years in the future. Is that the same person? Or unknowably different? I'm thinking the latter, as I've got five years left to go and I'm already barely able to relate to myself from 15 years ago.
It's happening everywhere really. The gap between me and my students is growing, and sometimes I find myself surprised when they don't understand something that, in retrospect, it's fairly obvious they wouldn't understand well.
We had a bunch of snow a few days ago. Nothing too crazy, just 20-something centimetres. It was all dirty drifts and bare patches of yellow grass, so this gives us one last hint of winter's beauty. Much to the chagrin of everyone I know, who'd prefer summer to come. I'm enjoying it, though. There was a soft sprinkle of glitter in the air, mostly sunny except that the snow in the sky obscured the light. It's a very fresh feeling.
Sometimes I do this thing where I breathe as much as I can, and try to hyperventilate until I'm a bit dizzy. Then I can hold my breath and carefully focus on how the oxygen is flowing in my head, and I'll open my eyes and try to see all my peripheries, and sometimes there's a feeling like painfully stretching something that was crumpled, and then everything just means more. I've sometimes said that it seems like I'm living in my memories, just going from place to place in my house without really seeing each room. When I do this, I sometimes notice the details that are actually there. I'll see some marks on the wall with a sense of wonder as if I'm exploring it all for the first time. Sometimes I'll get an old memory, the raw feeling of being in one of these rooms for the first time, or when some specific event happened.
So yeah! December through March. Whups, there goes a third of a year. I did my usual thing of graphing my days off, and I had fallen down to 2018 levels. Not good! I was at my worst in mid-February and was in an okay spot by mid-March, but it took until now to start returning to normal. It seems I require 11 days off each month. In 2018, when I started charting this, I just couldn't get there until early 2019 when I finally reached that point.
I was fooling around in the search bar on Amazon.com and ended up finding these little nightlights. It was a pack of six, and they were fairly small and low-profile amber circles, so I figured I might as well. I ended up looking for spare sockets here and there. My fridge was plugged into an outlet where I'd never used the second plug, so I put one there. My stove has two plugs on top, and one was always unused, so I put one there. They bring a nice accent lighting to the place, and they've got a photodiode to turn themselves off in the daytime.
I ordered some oat milk, but they sent me soy instead. I complained, and they've promised to ship me what I wanted while letting me keep the soy, so I guess that's fine!
This is Earth's Own Oat Barista Blend, which is supposed to be good for foaming. It's creamer than most milks on the market, and doesn't have the gummy feel most other oat milks do, so it's my go-to.
I've heard good things about Gardein's meatless alternatives, and so I tried their fish fillets last weekend. They're actually really good! The texture is slightly different from fish, it's not quite as layered, but I think most people wouldn't even realize they were eating soy nuggets. I whipped up some tartar sauce with mayo, relish, mustard, and lemon.
I'll be trying their other stuff over time. Their "ground be'f" has a taste like wet dog food.
I feel like a lot of this has just been over the last week or two. I guess that's what happens when life picks up! More later, I guess! I tend to have time for things at the end of April or throughout May.
I've been writing a letter to myself every five years. Not me, a version of myself twenty years in the future. Is that the same person? Or unknowably different? I'm thinking the latter, as I've got five years left to go and I'm already barely able to relate to myself from 15 years ago.
It's happening everywhere really. The gap between me and my students is growing, and sometimes I find myself surprised when they don't understand something that, in retrospect, it's fairly obvious they wouldn't understand well.
We had a bunch of snow a few days ago. Nothing too crazy, just 20-something centimetres. It was all dirty drifts and bare patches of yellow grass, so this gives us one last hint of winter's beauty. Much to the chagrin of everyone I know, who'd prefer summer to come. I'm enjoying it, though. There was a soft sprinkle of glitter in the air, mostly sunny except that the snow in the sky obscured the light. It's a very fresh feeling.
Sometimes I do this thing where I breathe as much as I can, and try to hyperventilate until I'm a bit dizzy. Then I can hold my breath and carefully focus on how the oxygen is flowing in my head, and I'll open my eyes and try to see all my peripheries, and sometimes there's a feeling like painfully stretching something that was crumpled, and then everything just means more. I've sometimes said that it seems like I'm living in my memories, just going from place to place in my house without really seeing each room. When I do this, I sometimes notice the details that are actually there. I'll see some marks on the wall with a sense of wonder as if I'm exploring it all for the first time. Sometimes I'll get an old memory, the raw feeling of being in one of these rooms for the first time, or when some specific event happened.
So yeah! December through March. Whups, there goes a third of a year. I did my usual thing of graphing my days off, and I had fallen down to 2018 levels. Not good! I was at my worst in mid-February and was in an okay spot by mid-March, but it took until now to start returning to normal. It seems I require 11 days off each month. In 2018, when I started charting this, I just couldn't get there until early 2019 when I finally reached that point.
I was fooling around in the search bar on Amazon.com and ended up finding these little nightlights. It was a pack of six, and they were fairly small and low-profile amber circles, so I figured I might as well. I ended up looking for spare sockets here and there. My fridge was plugged into an outlet where I'd never used the second plug, so I put one there. My stove has two plugs on top, and one was always unused, so I put one there. They bring a nice accent lighting to the place, and they've got a photodiode to turn themselves off in the daytime.
I ordered some oat milk, but they sent me soy instead. I complained, and they've promised to ship me what I wanted while letting me keep the soy, so I guess that's fine!
This is Earth's Own Oat Barista Blend, which is supposed to be good for foaming. It's creamer than most milks on the market, and doesn't have the gummy feel most other oat milks do, so it's my go-to.
I've heard good things about Gardein's meatless alternatives, and so I tried their fish fillets last weekend. They're actually really good! The texture is slightly different from fish, it's not quite as layered, but I think most people wouldn't even realize they were eating soy nuggets. I whipped up some tartar sauce with mayo, relish, mustard, and lemon.
I'll be trying their other stuff over time. Their "ground be'f" has a taste like wet dog food.
I feel like a lot of this has just been over the last week or two. I guess that's what happens when life picks up! More later, I guess! I tend to have time for things at the end of April or throughout May.