renaissance poisson

after taking a break for a while, i am going to be reading LJ again, but i think i've finally got to start using filters for groups of people, because it now regularly becomes too much, and then i have to stop entirely for a while. damn.

of course it doesn't help when i decide to look at my profile (which i only do once in a blue moon when i think i should change something) and discover i've been friended by new-to-LJ snigglers, and then trawl their profiles and find more snigglers that i didn't notice before. so now there's more people to read: betonica and offcenter_wc and masaiwarrior and owned_by_2_cats and la_penguinita (who friended me ages ago, but whom i didn't then recognize because I AM A RETARD -- the paramour recognized her handle right away). the paramour, who is unfortunately much more easily missed here than on usenet, is mayaknife, in case anyone wants to read zir obnoxious posts.

i still can't figure out who lynn_massa is. is that just more evidence of my retardation, or does she post-date my ssm participation?

*moves snigglers to default daily filter*.

my life remains very quiet, which is a good thing. this june has been the nicest i can remember for a long time; warm enough to wear tshirts but never too hot, and lots and lots of rain or just overcast days. the hermit is happy. i am not growing any new annuals this year, so no vegetables either -- the landlord said he'd bring a backhoe in to dig a ditch at the property line, and that carries a high risk of destroying my small vegetable beds, so i am sparing myself potential grief by not even getting started. everything in the front, and the memorial gardenlet is well-established perennial or self-seeding annual, so i've not done anything but weed. yay. the fruits of hard labour in prior years finally -- i've moved so much before living here that this rarely happened, so it's cool to enjoy it now. i've convinced the landlord not to take the apple tree down; i hope that works with the back hoe. it'll probably lose some branches, but i don't care as long as the main shade remains.

i've been sleeping better since banning the cats from my room, but it's still not good; i remain tired pretty much all the time. i am sorta dreading summer because heat will make it worse. but then i've also told myself that it's not really predictable, so maybe this time i'll sleep great when it's hot outside. *snrk*.

still monomaniacal about japanese. it's fun to rewatch anime now that i had watched before starting to seriously learn japanese; i do actually understand significantly more now, even though it's still mostly single words and sentence fragments instead of entire sentences. learning how to conjugate verbs has made a huge difference. i am very slow to acquire vocabulary due to the depression-related memory dysfunction; i have to look up a word many times before it sinks in, but i am determined not to let that stop me even though it frustrates me to the point of tears at times. i'm going to try and write vocab down by hand as well as typing it into my own dictionary list; that might help anchor it better.

oi, long time no post. mostly due to a really bad streak of insomnia; last night was the first good, solid sleep i've had in 12 days. i'd go to bed and then toss and turn, or doze off for an hour and then be wide awake again, and that'd continue throughout the night or day, no matter when i tried to sleep. even making myself purposely physically tired, which usually works, didn't really do the trick this time. i'd sleep for longer, but somehow didn't sleep deeply, so when i woke up i'd always still feel tired.

so today feels great; i am actually awake with the sun, and getting things done.

gave up on the i850's printhead, and since buying a new printhead is almost as expensive as buying a new printer, decided on the second option, and bought a new printer yesterday. sticking with canon, since i've had good experiences with them (the printhead failure being entirely my own fault). it's a pixma ip4300, and from my initial trials, i am quite happy with it. it was the usual cinch to set up, and actually, even accessing it from linux was a breeze (it's hooked to the big mac and shared over the network). so now the paramour does no longer need to wait for me to get my act together to print out forms.

the abominable sex drive is still with me. i'm accomodating it to some degree (insomnia helps with that), and generally make fun of it, since grousing about it doesn't help. still glad this didn't happen in my teenage years; it would have probably really fucked me up. gayboy is a slut and a romantic, a combination that would be rather painful in reality. however much he is displeased with my body, he should damn well be grateful that i have my shit together emotionally, *snrk*.

haven't done much in the garden, just pulled some weeds, and whacked the grass down in front (once it's past 9:00 today i'll attack the back). am not really in the mood to do much planting this year, but will probably buy tomato and cucumber seedlings. the flowers in the front and the herbs are all sprouting like mad on their own. the landlord wants to dig a new drainage ditch in the back, and is thinking of ripping out everything there, but i think i will resist the elimination of the apple tree. yes, it's already fallen, and yes, it doesn't have good apples, but it provides shade to the back of the house, and a handy play/escape route for the cats onto the roof. since he's eliminated the blackberry thicket on the other side, i think i'll feel better if this escape route remains, since there are dogs that run loose pretty much on all sides of the property, and there is nothing to keep them out.

still immersed in japanese and learning a lot. deep into conjugating verbs. i'll probably make a post on that now that i've pretty much figured out the system. this part is very easy compared to other languages i've learned; very very regular, and the list of irregular verbs is short enough to actually memorize over time (those verbs except for 2 are also regular in their irregularity :). what makes japanese difficult is that generally nothing i know grammatically maps precisely onto it. that's also kind of fun though; it's challenging to build a new mindset, and it's bound to be good for my linguistic brain to be used in new ways.

why does LJ never save an autodraft when i actually need one? *gnarg*. i should go back to composing in an external editor.

so in the first iteration of this post i was moaning about how the one bad thing about living with the paramour is that we often have such different schedules, since zie just went to bed, and i am a few hours past my own sleep window, feel like blasting music real loud and singing along in bad japanese, and vacuuming the house.

but since the *poing* doesn't get here until mid-afternoon on saturday, there's still time for the cleanup part of that. and in the meantime there are headphones, and i just sing quietly.

not like i've been much present here lately, but from saturday on i'll be even less so, for about a week. i'm glad the paramour is actually here this time; i always like it when all three of us can geek out together, and we haven't been able to do that in a couple of years now. we might drive out to the west coast of the island for a couple of days, and maybe be in time to see a few tens of thousands of brant geese migrate. and it looks like spring is actually here finally, even though we still had frost last night -- all the early bloomers are out now.

however depressed i might get, i never forget just how incredibly awesome my partners are, and how lucky i am to have found them. occasionally i get wistful about the bloody long distance, but hey, i take it any day over the alternative.

oh, those of you going to alt.polycon -- i hope you have a wonderful time. i'll be thinking of y'all.

today's japanese manga text instantly recognized, and found very appropriate to the occasion: 俺も好きだよ (ore mo suki da yo) - i like you too!

after i fell off the "do things on that huge list every day" wagon due to disruption by sleeping a lot, i've been having difficulties getting back on. i've just been faffing about, starting something here and there but not feeling in the least goal-oriented about any of it, and therefore not finishing anything. except for dishes, but that hardly counts since only one sink was half-full.

the only positive that's come out of this faffing is that i've started to put together some of the scrumbled pieces for the freeform vest. i keep dithering between two basic approaches -- make lots of scrumbles first and then put them together, versus start with a few pieces and make the other ones up as i go. i am leaning towards the latter because that way i can impose a little more structure, and i think i am more comfortable with that.

oh, and i "invented" a crochet stitch. i am sure many other people have invented it before me, but i've never seen it before, not in any of the books i have. it's a tunisian variant, and it lightens the normally very stiff tunisian fabric and gives it more stretch, but retains the look of the basic tunisian stitch quite well, especially the strong verticals. pictures tomorrow (also research to find what the stitch is called).

i also started up my laptop. it is sadly still defunct in the screen department, but emitting just enough light that from a certain angle i could very dimly guess what's displayed in the file manager (it helps that i know my partitions well). managed to share everything that matters, so i can smbmount the data on mighty smite.

and last but not least, i made dinner plans with P and managed to keep them. woohoo! it was really nice, actually; a good conversation ranging far and occasionally deep. one-on-one conversations don't wear me out like multi-party ones do. and i felt good that i could hand over a checque for more boat work. and made plans to come work on the boat myself next week. *hoists self back onto wagon*.

the crowning glory of the day was getting a letter (a LETTER! hand-written!) from the *poing*. that is one of those things that happens once in a dark blue moon.

i have bananas that are screaming to be made into banana bread. hm. *checks recipe file*. it's late, but surely not too late for that. there's still the colbert report to watch. and south park. and i got a movie from zip.ca, eternal sunshine of the spotless mind.

yup; stayed up late again and didn't get up early enough for the ferry. oh well. all the same people will be at port moody next weekend, maybe i'll be on a better schedule then. so, i was lame, but got a bit done around the house -- vacuumed the corner in my room under the new shelves, moved the newly acquired drawer units in, and started to move craft supplies into them. polymer clay into small drawers on top, yarn into the large drawers. i still can't believe i got these units at half price; what a stroke of luck that sale was. i might go and get one more.

while moving yarn, i am winding some into balls for which i already have plans. i love fondling my yarn. these units have translucent drawers, so i am sorting it by colour, and it looks great. ah, rainbows of yarn and clay. :) i also came across a sock experiment about which i had forgotten; it wasn't terribly successful, but the yarn had a good feel for a sock cotton, and i'm going to frog it and start over with a different pattern.

picked what calendula was still blooming before it goes to waste, and while i was at it also some red clover that was still blooming; i want to dye some of the red heart "baby teri", a nylon/acrylic with these two and see what i get. the acrylic won't dye, but the nylon will, and that should give a nice heather -- the yarn is fluffy, which will enhance that. yes, i actually own red heart yarn, *snicker*. their acrylics suck horribly, but lately they've been shaping up their line, and this yarn is not bad at all. it'll make great cancer caps; it's very soft and easily washable, and custom dyeing will make it unusual.

cut up a few old decrepit boards for firewood, since i went through my reserve yesterday. just to take the edge off.

chatted with both my capsicums tonight on IM, which was a good thing. i miss them; my life is almost entirely banter-free right now, and that is so very, very wrong.

who says we have no fall colours? :)

i didn't think today was going to work up to much, and it didn't. but i got the new shelves put up in the living room, and am now moving books over there. it's always so nice to free imprisoned books from boxes in which they were held for much too long.

also bought catfood. and found the copies of lapidary journal i was looking for on ebay, very cheap (cheaper than buying a reprint of the articles i need, if i could even get those yet). so, three items off the list (two of which weren't previously on it :).

but i am very sluggish. i think i'll just vegetate in front of the telly, resisting the bloody game those pushers epi_lj and serenejournal are peddling!

went to the bank to deposit checque (yay, we shall live another couple months thanks to our small company contract whose owner is fantastic about paying, while the big company screws us over some more). stopped by the little asian food- and giftstore to buy curry and some other random goodies, like coconut spread, kimchee, and japanese "calpis water" (which was, contrary to its somewhat unfortunate name, très yummy, albeit not carbonated as the store owner claimed). and to chapters, to look for farthing and the virtu. they didn't have either, *mope*, though that means i'll be able to calm down about the latter, and make myself wait until it comes out in paperback. the paramour bought up almost their entire stock of kakura puzzles. and of course i couldn't walk out without buying something; that'd be the day.
( small haul here if you care )

also went into canadian tire to see whether they'd have a kickboard, but no win. bought two thick noodles instead, with which, in combination with a piece of lexan yet to be acquired, i am hoping to fashion myself a see-through kickboard.

and now i go swimming with the noodles to inaugurate them. i love floating in the water, looking below at all the life in the intertidal zone. neap tide!

janet asked for it, and so i went out this morning to take pictures (usually we go late in the day when it's too dark for that, but the cats like it). clicking on the thumbnail will take you to the gallery, which is sequentially ordered and annotated. and as a bonus, there are cats!

the paramour woke me up in time for some mutual abuse, since i had drifted off while reading iron sunrise (no reflection on the quality of the book, *heh*, i was just sleepy), and then we went outside to look at the stars through the newly cleaned telescope. the last few years it's been raining at new year's, so it was a pleasant surprise that just above us the clouds had moved aside in a wide circle, leaving the milky way blazing in the centre. the paramour attempted to take pictures through the lens (which will be illustrative of just how fast the earth actually rotates), while i came inside to cuddle the somewhat distressed cats (stupid noise), and wish the *poing* a HNY. a pleasant way to start it all, even though it no longer is a true starting point for me. not entirely sure why not, and whether i need to find a new one.

may it be a good year for you and yours.

so for the last several weeks it's been unseasonably cold here; below freezing every night. we've been muttering under our breath about the firewood not being here yet, and putting on another layer of clothing. yesterday the landlord comes over and says "oh yeah, the firewood: i finally talked with the guy, and he's gonna deliver it next week, probably even tomorrow". yay, we go. and he did; the paramour heard the tractor when it was still on the cross street. we just got done stacking up 3/4 of a cord. we're getting good at this; we put it away pretty fast.

and wouldn't you know, last night a warm front moved in, and it's now above freezing. it was raining when the wood was delivered. it always rains when the wood is delivered; just so that we hurry up and stack it instead of taking our time. one can almost hear the dry wood slurping up the moisture. *sigh*.

if all goes according to the fate with the penchant (pension -- *heh*) for irony, it'll now keep raining into february.

also, the paramour cleaned zir telescope. i think that is probably directly responsible for fog and rain moving in.