now it's april i'll be posting more
it's april which means a. happy birthday 
ephemera! still and always my battybrain. ^"^ and b. national poetry month which means c. i am back on my poetry bullshit. :D the dog poem, as is traditional.
They have a daughter now. She loves us
as he and Elizabeth once loved us,
and as we still love them,
as we love all three of them now.
If there is one word a dog has the right to use
it is that one.
People pull their punches, refer to dogs' love
with words such as loyalty, obedience, or even submissiveness,
but it is love.
We take long naps in the mountain sun, now,
or try to, while the baby tugs on our ears,
covers us with leaves, grass, and dirt:
trampolines on our ribs, just to hear us grunt.
We all go for walks, each day, the five of us.
He plants trees. They both do, on special occasions:
birth-trees, birthday trees, anniversary trees -
Maple, apple, cherry, ash and lilacs;
Larch, ponderosa pine, spruce fir and cedar.
As we walk, he talks to Elizabeth about their daughter,
being thirty years old someday and seeing these trees he's
planted for her. He talks about how he'll be
sixty-five, then, and she, thirty, and how she can look at them,
knowing he planted them for her: how big they'll be, then.
He strides from tree to tree, looking up.
We will be thirty years gone, at the time of which
he speaks, casting his thoughts into the future, and sometimes,
as he walks and says these things, he forgets
to look down at us, looks only ahead and beyond.
When we sleep for good, I would like a tree.
I would like Ann to have a tree, too.
We can be side by side,
on one of the hills that we used to explore.
My tree will be bigger. I loved him more.
Ann is the one he picked first. But he came back for me.
--from The Odyssey, by Rick Bass
in other news, what a week, huh? (at least for the americans in the audience.) three kids and three adults were killed at a private school in nashville and we got the usual thoughts and prayers and "now is not the time to talk about gun control" from repubs. disney did an end run around ron desatan desantis who's been trying to get some kind of control over it - he replaced the entire oversight board that works with disney with his own handpicked toadies, but before the the old board left they managed to basically neuter the new board. so now the oversight board can't, for example, use the disney name or any disney characters, and disney can build on its own property without getting the board's approval, and these rules are in place until twenty-one years after the death of charles iii's last currently living descendant. so twenty-one years after his last grandkid is dead, THEN the oversight board gets some power back. suck it, desantis. (also, dude, disney made all this stuff public, as the law requires. not its fault you weren't paying attention.) aaaaand cheetolini was indicted in new york altho we don't know yet what he's been indicted for. they unseal it on tuesday and honestly, i love that for him.
in other news, uh, my sister recovered enough for my mom to go home which means my nights are my own again. the last curling sunday of the season was last weekend and we lost so spectacularly that the other team stopped keeping score. >.< the weekend before that we won because the other team forfeited, which gives us at least two wins for the half, both on account of forfeit. my roommate and i went passover shopping today and they did not have fishlets. MEDIOCRE. i was very disappointed.
work is work. this past week was spring break so it was quieter than usual. a couple weeks ago we had a staff lunch (admins, it, fiscal, hr) which included someone from campus emergency services giving a talk on... emergencies. his slide show was broken into sections - what emergency services even is, when to leave the building, when to shelter in place, and what to do if there's an active shooter. before each section was a (vaguely) relevant clip from tv or the movies. like, before the "when to call emergency services" section was a clip from what i assume is a tv show with charlie day playing a teacher calling 911 because another teacher is going to beat him up, and before the "shelter in place" section was a clip from the day after tomorrow showing a giant wall of water bearing down on the new york public library. (i guess if there's wild weather you stay inside.) the guy was very entertaining and i learned some things! one of those being that because my building is attached to another building, if there's an active shooter and you can't get to the stairs but you can get down a hallway and into the neighboring building, do that. ditto for, say, the building being on fire. which. well. the building is maybe 10% stuff that burns easily. i highly doubt it's going to catch fire. altho i guess the carpet could....
tonight i went over to my sister's and we watched some of s2 of the white lotus, and i like slightly more people in this season than i did in s1. also it's set in sicily which means the scenery is GORGEOUS. last weekend we watched history of the world part 1 - a total nostalgia watch altho the jokes didn't age well - i love mel brooks but it's very dated - in preparation for history of the world part 2, which is a mini-series and not a movie, very choppy, and... not that funny. which is a shame because it has some good actors in it. altho you do finally get to see hitler! on! ice! (as promised at the end of part 1.)
in other tv news i've been watching poker face with natasha lyonne and a pretty fantastic grab bag of other famous people (adrien brody! ellen barkin! joseph gordon-levitt! tim meadows! stephanie hsu! s epatha merkerson and judith light! nick nolte! which, what? i honestly thought he was dead.) every episode is more or less the same but i really like natasha's character and i love all the guest stars. it's streaming on peacock and i think i recommend it.
ephemera! still and always my battybrain. ^"^ and b. national poetry month which means c. i am back on my poetry bullshit. :D the dog poem, as is traditional.
They have a daughter now. She loves us
as he and Elizabeth once loved us,
and as we still love them,
as we love all three of them now.
If there is one word a dog has the right to use
it is that one.
People pull their punches, refer to dogs' love
with words such as loyalty, obedience, or even submissiveness,
but it is love.
We take long naps in the mountain sun, now,
or try to, while the baby tugs on our ears,
covers us with leaves, grass, and dirt:
trampolines on our ribs, just to hear us grunt.
We all go for walks, each day, the five of us.
He plants trees. They both do, on special occasions:
birth-trees, birthday trees, anniversary trees -
Maple, apple, cherry, ash and lilacs;
Larch, ponderosa pine, spruce fir and cedar.
As we walk, he talks to Elizabeth about their daughter,
being thirty years old someday and seeing these trees he's
planted for her. He talks about how he'll be
sixty-five, then, and she, thirty, and how she can look at them,
knowing he planted them for her: how big they'll be, then.
He strides from tree to tree, looking up.
We will be thirty years gone, at the time of which
he speaks, casting his thoughts into the future, and sometimes,
as he walks and says these things, he forgets
to look down at us, looks only ahead and beyond.
When we sleep for good, I would like a tree.
I would like Ann to have a tree, too.
We can be side by side,
on one of the hills that we used to explore.
My tree will be bigger. I loved him more.
Ann is the one he picked first. But he came back for me.
--from The Odyssey, by Rick Bass
in other news, what a week, huh? (at least for the americans in the audience.) three kids and three adults were killed at a private school in nashville and we got the usual thoughts and prayers and "now is not the time to talk about gun control" from repubs. disney did an end run around ron desatan desantis who's been trying to get some kind of control over it - he replaced the entire oversight board that works with disney with his own handpicked toadies, but before the the old board left they managed to basically neuter the new board. so now the oversight board can't, for example, use the disney name or any disney characters, and disney can build on its own property without getting the board's approval, and these rules are in place until twenty-one years after the death of charles iii's last currently living descendant. so twenty-one years after his last grandkid is dead, THEN the oversight board gets some power back. suck it, desantis. (also, dude, disney made all this stuff public, as the law requires. not its fault you weren't paying attention.) aaaaand cheetolini was indicted in new york altho we don't know yet what he's been indicted for. they unseal it on tuesday and honestly, i love that for him.
in other news, uh, my sister recovered enough for my mom to go home which means my nights are my own again. the last curling sunday of the season was last weekend and we lost so spectacularly that the other team stopped keeping score. >.< the weekend before that we won because the other team forfeited, which gives us at least two wins for the half, both on account of forfeit. my roommate and i went passover shopping today and they did not have fishlets. MEDIOCRE. i was very disappointed.
work is work. this past week was spring break so it was quieter than usual. a couple weeks ago we had a staff lunch (admins, it, fiscal, hr) which included someone from campus emergency services giving a talk on... emergencies. his slide show was broken into sections - what emergency services even is, when to leave the building, when to shelter in place, and what to do if there's an active shooter. before each section was a (vaguely) relevant clip from tv or the movies. like, before the "when to call emergency services" section was a clip from what i assume is a tv show with charlie day playing a teacher calling 911 because another teacher is going to beat him up, and before the "shelter in place" section was a clip from the day after tomorrow showing a giant wall of water bearing down on the new york public library. (i guess if there's wild weather you stay inside.) the guy was very entertaining and i learned some things! one of those being that because my building is attached to another building, if there's an active shooter and you can't get to the stairs but you can get down a hallway and into the neighboring building, do that. ditto for, say, the building being on fire. which. well. the building is maybe 10% stuff that burns easily. i highly doubt it's going to catch fire. altho i guess the carpet could....
tonight i went over to my sister's and we watched some of s2 of the white lotus, and i like slightly more people in this season than i did in s1. also it's set in sicily which means the scenery is GORGEOUS. last weekend we watched history of the world part 1 - a total nostalgia watch altho the jokes didn't age well - i love mel brooks but it's very dated - in preparation for history of the world part 2, which is a mini-series and not a movie, very choppy, and... not that funny. which is a shame because it has some good actors in it. altho you do finally get to see hitler! on! ice! (as promised at the end of part 1.)
in other tv news i've been watching poker face with natasha lyonne and a pretty fantastic grab bag of other famous people (adrien brody! ellen barkin! joseph gordon-levitt! tim meadows! stephanie hsu! s epatha merkerson and judith light! nick nolte! which, what? i honestly thought he was dead.) every episode is more or less the same but i really like natasha's character and i love all the guest stars. it's streaming on peacock and i think i recommend it.