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cosmolinguist

I do love reading a new Voynich manuscript solved! article every six months or so.

cosmolinguist

It's been a rough day.

( Just rough when geopolitical and systemic stuff is bad but also I'm exhausted and my tummy hurts. )

It wasn't all bad; here's three good things:

angelofthenorth asked me how I feel about road trips and I love road trips and I'm excited to help her collect her stuff for her new flat next weekend.
D got his laptop working again, better than it was before! And we used it to do an online grocery order, it's nice to have that done.
Teddy got to visit our house! As we set off on our walk we went past our house, and he came right up to the door -- just like he did yesterday but unlike yesterday there were no children the size of him in our house so we could let him in. It was very fun watching him investigate -- he briefly tried to nibble a candle but V dissuaded him from eating the beeswax. He seemed to like our house and its people.

cosmolinguist

A year and a bit ago, we acquired a weight bench (and the associated barbells, dumbbells and weights) from a transgym acquaintance. His partner was delighted to get it out of their loft and I was delighted to have it during the dark winter months when my ankle still wasn't up to walking to and from -- not if I wanted to actually do anything at the gym once I got there!

It served me well but isn't making good use of the space in my computer room now that it's easier for me to go to the gym. So today I passed it on to another acquaintance from transgym. He's so excited to have it and I'm so excited to have it out of my room! The circle of life.

I'm excited generally to be dealing with things that have been cluttering up the place. angelofthenorth said she'll take the stand mixer that we've never made enough use of.

(I know this sounds horribly middle-class of me, to be so burdened by possessions...and I am, but in my defense both of these were things I got from others, for no money.)

D and I walked Teddy this afternoon. Wintery mix overnight got us our first ice and/or snow this winter, a little of which has now re-frozen into black ice. With hiking shoes and a little of what my dad calls "duck walk" (apparently here it's called "penguin walk"!), D and I were fine. But Sylvia was so grateful that we showed up to walk the dog at all today. Which gave me the rare opportunity to be like "Don't worry ma'am, I'm from Minnesota."

cosmolinguist

Today I got to visit a dear friend I hadn't really spoken to in six months. A lot has happened, to both of us. It was great to catch up, but also exhausting, to try to take all that in and explain what's been kind of a slog of a time at work particularly.

I left just in time to walk Teddy...or so I thought. D kindly came to pick me up because I'd lost track of time a bit and it was getting a little late. But when we got to his house, it was quiet and there was no answer. Turns out it was a misunderstanding and they were there, but maybe it wasn't so bad that I didn't have to spend half an hour being dragged around by a labradoodle.

I made dinner, just pasta and sauce but I was glad to use up some of the vegetables that need using. Weird to do it myself, without D, but I'm glad I could give him a break on a rough day.

Then, because a transgym person is coming around tomorrow to pick up the weight bench I inherited from another Misfit and don't use any more -- it was incredibly useful while I was still actively recovering from my broken ankle, but now I can walk to the gym and that gives me a lot more and better options. I'm so excited to have some space back in the room where I work (even if it's also taken up with protest paraphernalia for now, the trestle table, tea urn and related supplies we take with us).

The minute, the very minute, I flipped down on the couch after I finished wrestling with wrenches, contemplating a beer, I got an email from my mom saying they were ready to talk. I hadn't been expecting to hear from them today and still don't know if I forgot her saying they'd call on New Year's Day or if she forgot to tell me, but it worked out. I had a surprisingly pleasant and coherent conversation with them.

And then I had a beer.

And now it's bed time.

denise posting in

dw_maintenance

Привет and welcome to our new Russian friends from LiveJournal! We are happy to offer you a new home. We will not require identification for you to post or comment. We also do not cooperate with Russian government requests for any information about your account unless they go through a United States court first. (And it hasn't happened in 16 years!)

Importing your journal from ЖЖ may be slow. There are a lot of you, with many posts and comments, and we have to limit how fast we download your information from ЖЖ so they don't block us. Please be patient! We have been watching and fixing errors, and we will go back to doing that after the holiday is over.

I am very sorry that we can't translate the site into Russian or offer support in Russian. We are a much, much smaller company than LiveJournal is, and my high school Russian classes were a very long time ago :) But at least we aren't owned by Sberbank!

С Новым Годом, and welcome home!

EDIT: Большое спасибо всем за помощь друг другу в комментариях! Я ценю каждого, кто предоставляет нашим новым соседям информацию, понятную им без необходимости искать её в Google. :) И спасибо вам за терпение к моему русскому переводу с помощью Google Translate! Прошло уже много-много лет со школьных времен!

Thank you also to everyone who's been giving our new neighbors a warm welcome. I love you all ❤️

cosmolinguist

"It's past my bedtime," angelofthenorth said, "why isn't it midnight yet???"

V said they'd have to go to bed soon too (it's about the usual time for them to do that).

I told them about how when I was a kid and whined to stay up on New Year's Eve, I'd see Dick Clark and the countdown and fireworks and everything, and then my parents would send me off to bed...at 11pm in our time zone.

So we're doing the same thing now; close enough, it's now new year for my online pals in Germany and Switzerland and the Netherlands and Sweden and Norway, happy 2026!

angelofthenorth got out the Bucks Fizz, I delivered a glass upstairs to D who was about to get in the shower.

I've been in my pajamas since I made dinner (soup! accidentally keeping up with tradition for new year's eve), and I am looking forward to seeing an old friend for the first time in months tomorrow and catching up on what's going on in their life.

cosmolinguist

I had a fun afternoon going in to town with angelofthenorth, who wanted to visit an art gallery and a catering supply store. It's so wonderful to watch her get excited about having her own place. At a contemplative time of year anyway, and around the five-year mark of my unfortunately-timed ending my own marriage, our lives continue to parallel each other in so many ways. She is her own person of course but I can't help but think of my own story at times like this, and it makes me very grateful for what has improved for me in the last five years, even as the wider world has left so much to be desired.

Akso I bought a much-needed can opener for our house too, and if I can join her on her sojourn to John Lewis to look at kitchen knives, I might well end up getting us a set too.

Tomorrow the plan is either to go to Buxton and have fun or to go to the Trafford Centre (big mall, probably the most USian-feeling place I've encountered here) for John Lewis (which is a department store).

cosmolinguist

angelofthenorth and I had planned to go to yoga this morning, but after a disrupted night I slept through my alarm and woke up to a text from her saying that she was going to get the 10:33 bus.

It was 10:28 at that point.

I texted back an explanation and canceled my booking.

Poor thing texted me again an hour later saying the instructor hadn't turned up -- he was listed in the app but not on the staff rota.

There have been all kinds of computer problems: when we went to the gym yesterday she mentioned to the staff that she couldn't book on to the yoga session this Friday without being asked to pay (it should be included in her membership). The person anticipated this problem before she got done explaining it and said a lot of people had encountered the same thing and they couldn't do anything about it there. Really annoying how our city council handed over so many leisure centers and libraries to a CIC that grew out of another council managing theirs; it means the in-person staff can't ever do anything if there's a problem like this or an issue like accessibility.

And while I have an email timestamped 10:28 canceling my booking, it's nestled in my inbox next to one also timestamped 10:28 saying I'm a no-show and I'm going to be charged £3. For a thing that starts at 11! I'm hoping that's just another computer fail too; it seems ridiculously unfair otherwise. I can't be bothered chasing it up now so if it isn't resolved in a few days I'll yell at them but here's hoping that unfucking the computers fixes this for me too.

cosmolinguist

I've had a week and a day off and I have slept so much!!

Despite last night itself not being great for sleep, I am starting to wonder if I have actually caught up on sleep.

Because a strange feeling has overcome me this evening and I think it's...boredom? I am used to keeping myself busy after dinner doing chores, reading, or just trying not to go to sleep until bedtime.

But now I've done enough stuff for the day -- went to the gym with angelofthenorth, had a shower, fetched the now-empty recycling bin and put it back where it belongs, walked Teddy, put groceries away when they arrived -- and I'm not that tired.

Is...is this when people do hobbies??

cosmolinguist

I enjoyed the last week or so of various celebratory meals and seeing people and getting/giving gifts.

But it's so exciting to have a normal day now.

One of the recycling bins will be emptied tomorrow!

I can go to the gym for the first time in two weeks! (I didn't, I was too tired (I keep forgetting to eat! I don't get hungry but I get exhausted!) but I can look forward to it tomorrow.)

We walking Teddy again today! (They've had visitors and others who asked to do it over the holiday, he is that much of a treat to walk.) All three of us could join it today, which was really nice; D got a cute selfie of us all and everything.

I can get a delivery slot for groceries again! (Tesco will bring us stuff tomorrow afternoon!)

Most importantly, normal stuff is happening but I am still off work. I am so tired I'm still sleeping a lot and tired all day.

cosmolinguist

My alarm went off this morning (only at ten, but I needed it) to make sure I was up in time to walk Teddy before his humans were away for their Christmas lunch.

I thought I was the first person to make it downatairs this morning but while I was just getting to the bottom of the stairs I was already greeted by angelofthenorth already in her usual comfy chair saying "Merry Christmas! Do you want some bucks fizz?" (Which is basically a pre-made mimosa. Luckily I'd been reminded of this recently by being offered it after the ceremony at the wedding we were at a few weeks ago; I'd been able to ask D then to remind me what it is.)

It's a lovely Christmas morning: chilly but not cold, usually pretty sunny, and dry.

It had been a week or so since Teddy and I had seen each other so we were both very excited to do so again.

On our walk, we saw a young probably-dad-type person heading to the recycling bin in front of his house with an armful of cardboard, the boxes already broken down. We grinned a greeting at each other.

A few houses down, a woman in pajamas and a big scarf was just trying to nip out to her car in front of the house, but since Teddy wants to say hello to everyone (human or dog) and assumes every human wants to pet him, so I couldn't drag him past her before she gave in and ruffled his ears and said "Merry Christmas" to me.

As we were leaving the park, I noticed we'd just been joined by two kids with the kind of lightsabers that make the noise when you hit them against each other, and a little scotty dog that I know is called Biscuit because they were getting told off/called over when they were ignoring the humans to say hello to Teddy.

I got home, opening the door to the lovely smells of angelofthenorth already well into the process of cooking our amazing Christmas dinner.

cosmolinguist

I wrote and sent (luckily could retrieve in time!!) an email to them from my erik@ address, rather than the Gmail address I've had since 2004 and use for bank stuff and parent stuff and... that's about it now.

I have never even started to do such a thing before, I don't know what happened here! I'm feeling fine today, so for my brain to be so addled is very weird!

Luckily (??), emails sent from the erik@ account from my phone often bring up an error message that means I have to fiddle around a bit to get them sent, and when that happened this time my blood ran cold and I quickly deleted the email altogether. It never got from "outbox" to "sent" so that should be okay!

But sheesh what a near miss!

It was an email about my birthday present too so very obviously from me, I couldn't say it was just spam or something.

cosmolinguist

I started introducing it this way in 2023:

The questions here sometimes feel random and sometimes aren't very relevant to me (how many one-night stands, bless; that feels like such a fossil of the height-of-LJ days when I first encountered this meme), but I do like it as a way to think a bit differently than I normally do about my life, and some things that had a big impact on me (like what a dog-hospital year it was for Gary) barely show up here. I do find myself at random points through the year noting things I do that I haven't done before, or wondering what my musical discovery might be, or whatever.

So here we go for 2025

1. What did you do in 2025 that you'd never done before?:
Wrote an extensive as the writer and basically project lead on a report at work -- never did this before, did it three times in a row this year. Met a person from the internet and ended up having sex with them the same day. (Sorry if this is tmi, there will be no more details about it.)

2. Did you keep your new year's resolutions, and will you make more for next year?:
I didn't call it a resolution but when asked later about what I'd like to have this year that I lacked the previous one, I said

Another sexual and/or romantic partner? This feels impossible but so do the last four years' worth of things and they all happened!

Like three days after I wrote this I started talking to somoene on the social media site that's basically a kinky version of Facebook which, like regular Facebook, you can only access if you have an account and I was getting memes and events linked to by a friend until I got fed up and made an account. Six months later, I got a random message from someone who wrote a comment that I'd "liked" (as with Facebook, it tells you when people like your shit and then you can go look at their profile and all that) and in August I met him and it was fun to have a no-strings arrangement with a friend.

Will I make more for next year? I'm not sure, I think the coming year is more about keeping what I have stable: work, house, relationships, friendships, life....

( +47 )

50. What are your plans for 2026?
Laat year I wrote

Try to help everyone survive it with as much comfort and joy as we can manage, especially in the U.S. but everywhere really.

And I don't think I can improve on that answer either.

In a lot of ways it's been a rough year: the quick and steep decline of human rights in the U.S. has been hard to watch and harder to be affected by so personally. Work has been so difficult. I've had such a miserable experience trying to get referred for top surgery -- in the process bringing up so much medical fatphobia that I haven't even blogged about the whole saga, I can barely even think about it without panic or tears. Even my escapist hobby of MLB has been reminding me that billionaires can be foolish or greedy and face no consequences.

But in other ways it has been a good year: it was really nice to be able to provide a safe landing place for angelofthenorth and Mr Smith, it was nice to get through a November without anything (new) and terrible happening. Connections with the local queers have been deepened and I'm delighted that D and I are now on the small committee of people who've taken over from the two founders who have reasonably been able to step back and enjoy the thing they made as the ordinary attendees the rest of us have gotten to be the last two years.

Current Music: "Christmas Dirtbag" is playing on the Doof

cosmolinguist

Thanks for the nice comments on the previous entry. They, along with just writing it out in the first place and D holding me tight (normally I am the big spoon but he did a great job at it last night!) helped me have an okay night.

D had asked me, after we turned the lights off, if there was anything I wanted to do today -- the family had no real plans beyond making the homemade vegan wellington for my birthday dinner that D's sister had suggested and I'd gotten excited about before I remembered quite how much work it was last year, oops. But D and I helped and it felt a lot less of a production this year.

Anyway, before that we had no plans and I thought it might be nice to get out of the house and see something of Birmingham. We didn't actually make it as far as the city centre but the local high street allowed D to browse charity shops while I got a long-overdue haircut (I went from the longest hair I've had in quite a while to the highest skin fade I've maybe ever had, so it feels like a dramatic difference!), and we went for a very nice birthday lunch.

My birthday present from D might still be trapped in DRM hell but he told me what it is, and The Feminist Art of Walking by his old pal Morag goes very nicely with the birthday present I've already gotten from angelofthenorth, of short walks/hikes around Greater Manchester. I also got a bookshop.org voucher from D's mum, which can be added to the one that comprised the other part of my birthday present from Miriam, so I have to decide what to get there too, which is so fun.

Weirdly, my birthday also marks a year since Gary died. It feels so long ago but also I can still conjure him so clearly in my memory, and there probably hasn't been a day all year that I haven't thought of him. I still miss him so much.

I've had a much better day, and I'm looking forward to being home tomorrow.

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