drive-by update
• All that grass that was greening was covered by a quarter-inch sheet of ice over the weekend. I left work early on Friday because of the weather, and on the drive home, I had to keep the defrost on (literally) full-blast because on medium, with the wipers going, I still kept developing a sheet of ice over the window. Also, in the (normally 15-minute) 30-minute drive home, my back door froze shut, and I had to chip it open to get my messenger bag and laptop out, once I was home.
It's supposed to be 70 degrees again, this coming Wednesday.
:hands:
• Lenaia this weekend - so I suppose the winter blast is at least appropriate - and I have been off my diet and a bit loose with my responsibilities, because, well, revelry. Made some cookies and had fried eggs this morning instead of poached (my life, how indulgent) and should finish off a bottle of wine tonight. FAILED at piety early in the week - I have various bits and pieces scribbled out in various places about American paganism that I'm eventually going to need to put together, for my Personal Religion essay for my ADF dedicant's work, if nothing else - but suffice to say, for now, if I'm going to be trying to do that kind of work, I should have put something together for a presidential inauguration, and I just ... didn't. I have managed to get downtown to do some offerings to mark (a bit of) the public/civic aspect of Lenaia; I really also need to write something up, at some point, about the experience of public-no-REALLY ritual in the literal public square.
I'm still working out my feelings about, and figuring out how to deal with, people who wander up and ask me what I'm doing or if I have a dollar while I'm in the middle of things - it's one thing if you have a group, but I've got no one to act as PAO and run interference when's just me and I'm in the middle of making an offering or taking an omen. I'm still not sure whether to write off this kind of thing as just part of any work I do in that kind of public space, as much as the city trucks occasionally driving by and making hella noise, or other traffic sounds, or the kids who go by on their skateboards, sometimes - is this just one of the ways public ritual looks in an urban environment, at this point? If I give my elevator spiel and people want to continue to talk, do I encourage that, for various reasons, or do I discourage it to get back to what I'm doing? The strict, formal Roman influence in my personal work always pushes me to remain on script, with as little interruption as possible, but then, part of the point of public ritual is to be PUBLIC, yes? And if I'm doing civic-focused spiritual work at this point - particularly when the only mandate I have for it is what I've taken on myself - I feel as if brushing off part of the life of the city is ... both hypocritical and antithetical to what I'm doing?
• I've been doing a dieting thing for a couple of months, for various reasons, including some that are sort of devotional - one of the two goals I set back at Samhain was to get healthier this year, which is tied to some work I'm going to be doing with Mars later in the year, and so I've started with walking on a regular schedule. There are a couple of other people at work, who, when I say "Going for a walk!" are perfectly happy to put on their sneakers and use 30 minutes of their lunch break to snake around the various parking lots in our area with me, so it's been much easier than I anticipated to stay on track. (As an added benefit, even though I've not been keeping up my Vitamin D megadoses, I'm getting enough extra sunlight from the time outside that I haven't felt as dragged out as I usually do in the winter.) Also, I've been counting calories - I hadn't intended to make that such a big deal, I was mainly going to just focus on eating reasonable portion sizes of healthy stuff that's, you know, all actual food instead of prefab, but the My Plate app is ... a little too fascinating for my vaguely OCD tendencies, and I can't help playing, ALL THE TIME, with figuring out how long I would have to walk, or how many minutes of yoga I'd have to do, or how many flights of stairs I'd have to take to burn it off if I had some extra cheese on my lunch sandwich or some toast and jam with my breakfast eggs. TOO FASCINATING.
My sneakers were worn out, however, and I knew I needed new ones, but I put it off and ended up hurting myself - I've ended up dealing with a plantar fasciitis flareup in one heel, so I haven't walked for almost a week now, even with the new shoes I finally broke down and bought. I'm giving it maybe one more day, and then I'm going to try starting up again on Tuesday, at the latest. But I should have cut back the calorie count, since I was burning off a lot less, going from 45-60 minutes of walking each day to, well, none. And I didn't. And then there was Lenaia. So. But perhaps serendipitously, I really felt, this weekend, for the first time, that there was less of me around the middle, and also one of the regular baristas at the coffeeshop asked me if I'd slimmed down some. So, positive encouragement ftw, and it gives me the impetus to get back on track.
After the lemon bar that I'm going to have, to justify continuing to sit here in the coffee shop.
• Got a "promotion" at work, which was really just a title upgrade so that my title more accurately matches my duties. Now, if only we had the money for a raise to go along with my "promotion." I suppose if it was that important to me, I'd be in the private sector, eh?
• Writing continues, although perhaps not apace. I'm about 2/3 done with the rewrite on Chapter One of the book - which ought to be freaking easy, as about half of Chapter One is simply rewrite on the initial scene of the original story that became the book. Yeah. Anyway, I want to get that done by the end of the coming week and thought about putting it up, tailor-flocked, if anyone wants to see it. But I also wanted to try getting an original short story written during the first quarter of the year, and I haven't even started on that - I need to, this week, decide which idea I want to tackle. More on that later, maybe.
• I have abandoned Plato this past week, in favor of Aristophanes, who is really no better. I always forget how much he's a distilled ball of Ancient Athenian Fandom Wank liberally flavored with pretentious asshattery. And then I go back and read The Frogs again. Oh, Aristophanes. You're lucky you only got brought up on slander charges, and not punched in the face.
That's what you get from oligarchs with overdeveloped mockery skillz, I suppose.
Next up, Menander's Dyskolos. At least it's supposed to be a grouchy
old man shaking his fist and telling the kids to get off his lawn.
• On the fannish front, I continue to be distracted by the Hobbit kinkmeme, although less so with the proliferation of a handful of tropes that either do nothing for me or actively squick me. I can't seem to quit the hobbit-dwarf soulbonds, MAJESTIC yet directionally challenged Thorin, any Bofur possible, Dwalin domming the fuck out of whoever he manages to get his hands on, or poor elfish, unattractive Kíli pining over dwarfish underwear model Ori, tho'.
Also, I kind of want to feed Richard Armitage cookies and do bad things to Dean O'Gorman. Things that involve leather.
• Soup Tuesday last week was garbanzada; this week will be Tuscan bean soup. More possible later.
This entry was originally posted at Dreamwidth.
It's supposed to be 70 degrees again, this coming Wednesday.
:hands:
• Lenaia this weekend - so I suppose the winter blast is at least appropriate - and I have been off my diet and a bit loose with my responsibilities, because, well, revelry. Made some cookies and had fried eggs this morning instead of poached (my life, how indulgent) and should finish off a bottle of wine tonight. FAILED at piety early in the week - I have various bits and pieces scribbled out in various places about American paganism that I'm eventually going to need to put together, for my Personal Religion essay for my ADF dedicant's work, if nothing else - but suffice to say, for now, if I'm going to be trying to do that kind of work, I should have put something together for a presidential inauguration, and I just ... didn't. I have managed to get downtown to do some offerings to mark (a bit of) the public/civic aspect of Lenaia; I really also need to write something up, at some point, about the experience of public-no-REALLY ritual in the literal public square.
I'm still working out my feelings about, and figuring out how to deal with, people who wander up and ask me what I'm doing or if I have a dollar while I'm in the middle of things - it's one thing if you have a group, but I've got no one to act as PAO and run interference when's just me and I'm in the middle of making an offering or taking an omen. I'm still not sure whether to write off this kind of thing as just part of any work I do in that kind of public space, as much as the city trucks occasionally driving by and making hella noise, or other traffic sounds, or the kids who go by on their skateboards, sometimes - is this just one of the ways public ritual looks in an urban environment, at this point? If I give my elevator spiel and people want to continue to talk, do I encourage that, for various reasons, or do I discourage it to get back to what I'm doing? The strict, formal Roman influence in my personal work always pushes me to remain on script, with as little interruption as possible, but then, part of the point of public ritual is to be PUBLIC, yes? And if I'm doing civic-focused spiritual work at this point - particularly when the only mandate I have for it is what I've taken on myself - I feel as if brushing off part of the life of the city is ... both hypocritical and antithetical to what I'm doing?
• I've been doing a dieting thing for a couple of months, for various reasons, including some that are sort of devotional - one of the two goals I set back at Samhain was to get healthier this year, which is tied to some work I'm going to be doing with Mars later in the year, and so I've started with walking on a regular schedule. There are a couple of other people at work, who, when I say "Going for a walk!" are perfectly happy to put on their sneakers and use 30 minutes of their lunch break to snake around the various parking lots in our area with me, so it's been much easier than I anticipated to stay on track. (As an added benefit, even though I've not been keeping up my Vitamin D megadoses, I'm getting enough extra sunlight from the time outside that I haven't felt as dragged out as I usually do in the winter.) Also, I've been counting calories - I hadn't intended to make that such a big deal, I was mainly going to just focus on eating reasonable portion sizes of healthy stuff that's, you know, all actual food instead of prefab, but the My Plate app is ... a little too fascinating for my vaguely OCD tendencies, and I can't help playing, ALL THE TIME, with figuring out how long I would have to walk, or how many minutes of yoga I'd have to do, or how many flights of stairs I'd have to take to burn it off if I had some extra cheese on my lunch sandwich or some toast and jam with my breakfast eggs. TOO FASCINATING.
My sneakers were worn out, however, and I knew I needed new ones, but I put it off and ended up hurting myself - I've ended up dealing with a plantar fasciitis flareup in one heel, so I haven't walked for almost a week now, even with the new shoes I finally broke down and bought. I'm giving it maybe one more day, and then I'm going to try starting up again on Tuesday, at the latest. But I should have cut back the calorie count, since I was burning off a lot less, going from 45-60 minutes of walking each day to, well, none. And I didn't. And then there was Lenaia. So. But perhaps serendipitously, I really felt, this weekend, for the first time, that there was less of me around the middle, and also one of the regular baristas at the coffeeshop asked me if I'd slimmed down some. So, positive encouragement ftw, and it gives me the impetus to get back on track.
After the lemon bar that I'm going to have, to justify continuing to sit here in the coffee shop.
• Got a "promotion" at work, which was really just a title upgrade so that my title more accurately matches my duties. Now, if only we had the money for a raise to go along with my "promotion." I suppose if it was that important to me, I'd be in the private sector, eh?
• Writing continues, although perhaps not apace. I'm about 2/3 done with the rewrite on Chapter One of the book - which ought to be freaking easy, as about half of Chapter One is simply rewrite on the initial scene of the original story that became the book. Yeah. Anyway, I want to get that done by the end of the coming week and thought about putting it up, tailor-flocked, if anyone wants to see it. But I also wanted to try getting an original short story written during the first quarter of the year, and I haven't even started on that - I need to, this week, decide which idea I want to tackle. More on that later, maybe.
• I have abandoned Plato this past week, in favor of Aristophanes, who is really no better. I always forget how much he's a distilled ball of Ancient Athenian Fandom Wank liberally flavored with pretentious asshattery. And then I go back and read The Frogs again. Oh, Aristophanes. You're lucky you only got brought up on slander charges, and not punched in the face.
That's what you get from oligarchs with overdeveloped mockery skillz, I suppose.
Next up, Menander's Dyskolos. At least it's supposed to be a grouchy
old man shaking his fist and telling the kids to get off his lawn.
• On the fannish front, I continue to be distracted by the Hobbit kinkmeme, although less so with the proliferation of a handful of tropes that either do nothing for me or actively squick me. I can't seem to quit the hobbit-dwarf soulbonds, MAJESTIC yet directionally challenged Thorin, any Bofur possible, Dwalin domming the fuck out of whoever he manages to get his hands on, or poor elfish, unattractive Kíli pining over dwarfish underwear model Ori, tho'.
Also, I kind of want to feed Richard Armitage cookies and do bad things to Dean O'Gorman. Things that involve leather.
• Soup Tuesday last week was garbanzada; this week will be Tuscan bean soup. More possible later.
This entry was originally posted at Dreamwidth.