alierak: (Default)
alierak ([personal profile] alierak) wrote in [site community profile] dw_maintenance2025-10-20 10:11 am

AWS outage

DW is seeing some issues due to today's Amazon outage. For right now it looks like the site is loading, but it may be slow. Some of our processes like notifications and journal search don't appear to be running and can't be started due to rate limiting or capacity issues. DW could go down later if Amazon isn't able to improve things soon, but our services should return to normal when Amazon has cleared up the outage.
silveradept: A librarian wearing a futuristic-looking visor with text squiggles on them. (Librarian Techno-Visor)
Silver Adept ([personal profile] silveradept) wrote2025-10-20 12:11 am

Why Should You Switch to Linux, (Mostly) Wrong Answers Only

The Document Foundation, responsible for the LibreOffice suite of office tools, posted a blog post in anticipation of the end of Windows 10 support with 10 reasons to ditch Windows and go to Linux instead. I appreciate their advocacy for such things, but I think their ten reasons are not actually good ones for the adoption of Linux, but realizing this means that I'm probably going to have to put down a blog post about it, rather than a social media quip. So, here we go once again, and I'm going to once again be a regular Linux user about this, rather than some superuser sysadmin.

It's a Not Top Ten List more than a Top Ten List )
sorcyress: Drawing of me as a pirate, standing in front of the Boston Citgo sign (Default)
Katarina Whimsy ([personal profile] sorcyress) wrote2025-10-19 09:41 pm

(no subject)

Today I went to the Renaissance faire!

Yes, this means MD faire, _obviously_. I should maybe try out King Richard's again sometime, since I'm running on decade+ old memories, but honestly, nothing I've heard about it since has implied that I actually should try it out. So if I want to go to a rennfaire it means I pack a bag and get on the train and head down to Maryland!

I went with my mom, and my partner Tuesday, and also Tuesday's mom and sibling and sibling's-partner. We saw some shows! We ate some food off of sticks! I bought some pretty shiny things! It was a good time!

I have forgotten that I pretty deeply hate attending jousts, which is a shame. I enjoy the part where there are impressive feats of horsemanship. I really _really_ do not like the part where we are baying for the death of the competitors. Stage combat is neat and fun to watch from a technical and talent perspective! It feels...it feels pretty uncomfortable to be in the stands surrounded by people who do not seem to be appreciating this aspect of it and instead just want violence.

Also very loud and overstimulating. I would enjoy more being much further onto the edges of the crowd.

I was very happy to get a new coin necklace, and was excited by more designs than would fit on one coin, which feels hopeful for the future. I own five of them now! And also one of the new designs this year was _spider_ which feels amazing prescient for a year in which I'm increasingly using these as The One Official Jewelry I Wear Like From A Spellcraft And Ritual Perspective. Good to have a spider included!

I also bought matching fidget rings for me and Tuesday, because they're quite lovely. And two pairs of hairsticks! One set from Kathleen (although she herself wasn't present) at least in part as a reminder to go buy a bunch more from her through the internet. The other set is really nice maile flowers that I quite liked and obtained from a place near the jousting field. It's possible I shouldn't be left unsupervised for too long at faire, or I will find nice things to use to put up my hair :3

And the weather was perfect to wander around! Sitting was good, standing was good, there was nice breeze so I wasn't ever overdressed but I also wasn't chilly -I brought my gloves and didn't need them, and decided at the last minute to leave the midlevel cloak in the car (I wore the lightlevel and didn't even consider the heavy one)

We watched the Skum perform Othello, which was especially interesting because I don't actually know that one --got a much better idea now though! And later we watched Hilby the Skinny German Juggle Boy, who Tuesday and I saw when we came to faire together two years ago. He remains _extremely_ funny. I also saw a few swords get swallowed, and quite enjoyed some Piper Jones from afar.

And I stopped and had a nice conversation with Miss Nancy, and we saw Pepto in passing (with an amazing viking ship wagon for her kids), and I chatted a bit with the Beef Jerky Guy.

So it was overall very good! I am pleased to be home now though, which is to say, at Cameron and Jake's place in Bal'mer. Tonight I need to finish some sub plan stuff, so that tomorrow I get to stress-free ride a train back home. (I do like riding a train, except when they have two hour delays that start late enough that mom already kicked her friends out and started driving to the station to pick me up. Looking at you, way down.)

I hope your life is also good.

~Sor
MOOP!
greenstorm: (Default)
greenstorm ([personal profile] greenstorm) wrote2025-10-19 11:42 am

Seasonal

Snow fell the last few days, and a little even stuck. Canada Post is on strike and my bulbs are in it, but I think I planted them about this time last year, and the ground isn't frozen yet. I'm hoping they arrive not too damaged after sitting in a warm spot for over a month.

The provincial public service is on strike too, which I suspect means my disability application won't be accepted or processed until they're done, and after that I imagine a backlog-- no wait, I think this was a federal one? Anyhow, neither they nor insurance has asked me for anything in the last two weeks, which is nice.

The pottery class has one more class. We did glazing yesterday and the glazing area is pretty small, so I peeled people off one at a time and we worked on their stuff while everyone else got free play time, and most ended up scultping. This is excellent, since sculpting is not my strong point, and they got to do a bunch of it without my needing to instruct on more than the principles of attaching things. I like people doing people things, I guess.

It's seed swap season (did I already say that?) and the Canadian seed swap fb groups put up all their stuff and arranged groups -- the way it works is you send in ten of the same variety to a central volunteer, and get back nine different varieties (The tenth one goes to a prize that I guess folks get entered into, or into mutual-aid style packages). So groups of ten people, none of whom have the same variety to send in, get made in all sorts of categories: paste tomatoes, cherry tomatoes, brassicas & root crops (not sure why those are together), lettuce and herbs, etc. Then the landrace organization, who I believe are now labelling themselves as adaptation gardening people, have asked for seed donations in Canada so I'll send in a bunch of stuff to them; they distribute it free. They'll get some very fun tomatoes.

All this has prompted me to start seeding tomatoes more seriously. I have trays of now-ripe tomatoes on every surface downstairs and I need to get the seeds out of them, and ideally them into a salsa or something and canned or at least to pigs. Josh will be here in a week and it would be nice if there were some surfaces not covered in tomatoes for him.

Meanwhile my sauerkraut has gone from fermenting in the cool pantry to the fridge. It's perfect, crunchy and sour and lightly spicy since I put hot pepper shreds in most of my sauerkrauts. Now there's kimchi fermenting in that spot, I have a couple more gallons to make. I have yet to sample the test batch to know how I should tweak it but was very happy to find diakon at the grocery store here.

I enjoy chattering away about the garden and wish I had the wherewithal to do more. I do want to update that three of the muscovy babies from this spring survived -- two male -- and nine ducklings, and now there are seven chicks feathering out. The muscovies from Shelly's farm are doing well here, competing for my napa cabbage and flying all over to hang out on top of things, like muscovies do. It's like having animate jewels.

I'm not fully sure how to divide the animals for winter. I'd like to get the goosehouse mucked out fully but it's slow going for me; if I do it right I can put aspen chips in it, and they're easier to muck out than straw when they've semi-composted. I'd like to use the actual greenhouse in the spring, so I want whoever is in it to not nest in it, or to have a place to go in February that's snug for nesting and predator-free in that lean time. Right now Solly is somehow getting in to sleep in it and I think she's only letting the chicks in with her. For that matter, I'd like to get the pots of frosted dead tmatoes out of the woodshedgreenhouse and put wood in there. Hopefully Josh can help with that.

This is probably more going on than I should have. My mind feels a little clearer, though I still can't remember students names from one moment to the next and when washing my hands I've been drying them before rinsing them lately. My muscles feel softer. Still off the pill, eating hurts less and is easier, though my muscles really do feel like they're made from sticks and playdough. At some point I expect my hormonal system to notice it's supposed to do things and start up again, at which point I'll rev up the pills and the various eating medications I've been given, but right now I have a little calm space.
serakit ([personal profile] writerkit) wrote2025-10-19 02:24 pm

Open-Source Machismo

So LibreOffice does not come with autosave enabled by default.

It's surprising that it took me this long to realize that, but *autorecover* comes by default (set for every half-hour, which I think is a bit long) so it hasn't really come up until I had a few crashes in ways that didn't trigger the autorecover. What I actually went looking for was whether there were backup copies somewhere, but instead I came upon a bunch of posts in various discussion places of people going "Why is this not enabled by default" and people responding, essentially, "if you can't handle saving manually go back to Windows."

It does *exist*, but you have to go like four menus deep to enable it.

There is no reason not to default to autosave being on except attitude.

Half the time I wonder if open-source people actually *want* uptake of their stuff or if they're hoping they can keep out the undesirables by making it hard to use.
mtbc: maze G (black-magenta)
Mark T. B. Carroll ([personal profile] mtbc) wrote2025-10-19 03:35 pm
Entry tags:

Popular music

I was listening to some older Blondie recently and I noticed a couple of things. One is the bass guitar line: there's often some decent contribution coming from it, at least in my amateur opinion. It's fairly rich and skilful, enough that I am glad to have noticed. Another is that, although Debbie Harry's vocal definitely helps to make the song at times, it also often sounds technically rather imperfect to me. R. suggested that, basically, she has a good voice, it's just fitting the song well; perhaps it's all as intended. (As a point of comparison, here some years back, I mentioned Chrissie Hynde in the Pretenders' Glastonbury set; I always think well of her vocals.)
mtbc: photograph of me (Default)
Mark T. B. Carroll ([personal profile] mtbc) wrote2025-10-19 03:19 pm

So much more to know

I probably mentioned that working in life sciences for years underscored for me just how little we know of biology or, more optimistically, how very much more interesting and valuable research remains ahead of us. With my current state of learning, in having half a science background across a broad range, it's also true that I know just enough to know how much more there is to know in many spheres.

The above occurred to me in the bathtub this morning. Sure, I've taken college-level physics, thermodynamics, etc. but, looking at the condensation on the cold tap, I realized: I don't know why colder air can't hold as much moisture, I don't even have an intuitive model for that. Sure, warmer air means a higher fraction of the water will be gaseous but that feels rather insufficient to explain what I see. It's not specifically a matter of much concern, just an underlining of how very much I still don't know. Perhaps it's just a matter of cranking the numbers, maybe there's more condensation than I'd expect because I'm seeing moisture from a 3d volume accreting onto a 2d surface, but it's very likely that I just don't understand it anywhere near enough. I mean, a bit hotter, then the surface doesn't seem at all damp.

Topics like thermodynamics often come to my mind because, in experiencing day-to-day life around me, it is fun to indulge in imagining what is actually happening: heat transfer in my mug of coffee, etc. I enjoy trying to model my environment.
mtbc: maze I (white-red)
Mark T. B. Carroll ([personal profile] mtbc) wrote2025-10-19 03:07 pm
Entry tags:

Living in the future

Nearly a decade ago, I mentioned here how science-fiction it felt to be using my mobile handset to be pulling up satellite imagery of my environs. At this point, the future feels even closer: I suspect that it's only my lack of spending that prevents me from having reasonable verbal conversations with AIs. After all, the speech recognition is now pretty good and, although Alexa's dumb as a rock, I can have good textual chats with models like Mistral. I mean, sure, they don't really understand anything and can't be relied on but they're impressive nonetheless and probably somehow soon coming to my home.

I'm not holding my breath for the post-scarcity spacefaring utopia but, at least in form, this does feel like a small landmark, even if I suspect that generative AI trained on a sea of people-output is a diversion away from advancement toward the knowledge-based reasoning for which I might hope. It's enough of a landmark that what it can seem to do is an effective distraction from what it might cost.
yourlibrarian: Butterfly on yellow flowers (NAT-Butterfly IconGreen)
yourlibrarian ([personal profile] yourlibrarian) wrote in [community profile] common_nature2025-10-17 04:44 pm

Symbiotic Friends



Found various examples in the sunflower fields of communal residents.

Read more... )
greenstorm: (Default)
greenstorm ([personal profile] greenstorm) wrote2025-10-16 12:14 pm
Entry tags:

(no subject)

Every once in awhile I cycle through thinking about how, in order to be considered properly disabled, one needs to perform misery about it. I think I'm generally resistant to performing the emotions I'm supposed to, and I'm acutely aware of the difference between difficulty or discomfort and unhappiness. Luckily this hasn't so far meant starvation or homelessness for me.

More than a week's break from the pill so far. Easy, sharp, long-lasting headaches and I can see how the ghosts of danger are going to slowly come back, but there is so much less both pan and discomfort in my lower torso that I'm going to ride this line a little longer.

Muscles sludgier than normal. There's so much to do in fall to get ready for the real cold, and I'm always behind. I've been starting the very slow, multi-week process of cleaning the house to get ready for Josh, that definitely doesn't help.
silveradept: Domo-kun, wearing glass and a blue suit with a white shirt and red tie, sitting at a table. (Domokun Anchor)
Silver Adept ([personal profile] silveradept) wrote2025-10-16 07:51 am

So very much, as usual - Early October 02025

Let us begin with the fact that Reading Rainbow, a staple of many a young child of previous decades, mixing in library promotion, books, reading, and activities, is getting a new season with a new host, Mychal the Librarian. Someone who has already proven that he's perfect for the job on social media as a librarian, and who has already been working with PBS as their resident librarian for at least a year. Which continues with the way that Reading Rainbow has shows us a well-known Black man being excited about books, libraries, and exceling at things outside what certain people believe he should be good at.

Eastman Kodak is once again selling still picture film stock, but this time it will be selling directly to film distributors, who will likely be more than happy to have Kodak film camera rolls for their photography buffs.

If you are not already aware, Archive.Today is one of the more popular ways for people to get content as it appears on a website, but without any of the login walls and demands for support. It will not last forever, and it's worth supporting local and independent journalism with your currency, but there are quite a few places that believe you should have to pay up significantly just for a single article to look at.

At the end of that particular piece, there's talk about sharing the already wall-leapt version of the thing instead of the original. While the site does offer the original URL for what it has scraped, my citation scholarship kicks in and says that I should offer the original place, even if the way to read the same content is through archive.today or some other paywall jumper.

Dr. Jane Goodall, DBE, primatologist, animal rights advocate, and generally good sport, now gets to explore the secrets of the universe at 91 years of age. We know, thanks to her, that "tool-using animal" is a bigger catgegory than just homo sapiens, and much more about the lives of chimpanzees. My first exposure to Dr. Goodall, however, was the introduction she wrote to one of the Far Side comic book compilations, where she talked about having been the subject of one of the comics and how she found it an absolute delight to have been part of humor, even with other people who wanted to take offense on her behalf. (Including the insitute that she's founded, taking offense to the doctor being called a "tramp" by a chimpanzee in one of the comics.) Her serious work with apes and chimps and such is also entirely notable, but the Far Side introduction is just a nice reminder to us that even scientsists have a sense of humor. (And, in fact, they often have a very sharp sense of humor.)

Sister Jean Dolores Schmidt, who gained a certain amount of fame as the chaplain of the men's basketball team for Loyola Chicago during an unprecedented NCAA tournament run, passed into the hands of her god at 106 years of age. 106 is an excellent innings, and from the report on her, it seems that she was someone who spent that time in the service that she dedicated herself to for her life.

Ninety-five years after the completion of her thesis, Oxford University awarded a posthumous Master's of Philosophy to the first Māori scholar they had admitted to their ranks. From the excerpts of her diary that one of her descendants shared, she seems to have been an excellent person full of an interesting life.

The online academic article and scholarly research repository JSTOR has opened their doors to non-institutional researchers, allowing a limited number of article viewings per month to registered users who are not affiliated with institutional subscribers.

There's always more inside, from bad decisions to kidnapping squads and the use of truly shady surveillance software )

Last out, suggestions on where to go to get good programming and intersting shows if you've decided that you want less corporate oligarchy in your life. If you are thinking about taking up embroidery, there's a stitch bank that may be able to help you find and practice new techniques.

A prescient delineation between what the purpose of the library and the librarian is when it comes to a person's relation to information, and what the purpose of the ad company with a search engine or the LLM with inexhaustible confidence and (at best) an approximate knowledge of some things is for the same. Those who have lived through this era will not be surprised to find that the purpose of the LLM and the ad company is not to help you understand what you actually want and get you relevant resources, but instead to show you ads.

And finally, a searchable index of verious symbols that, when clicked upon, will copy the correct Unicode code point to your computer clipboard for easy pasting.

(Materials via [personal profile] adrian_turtle, [personal profile] azurelunatic, [personal profile] boxofdelights, [personal profile] cmcmck, [personal profile] conuly, [personal profile] cosmolinguist, [personal profile] elf, [personal profile] finch, [personal profile] firecat, [personal profile] jadelennox, [personal profile] jenett, [personal profile] jjhunter, [personal profile] kaberett, [personal profile] lilysea, [personal profile] oursin, [personal profile] rydra_wong, [personal profile] snowynight, [personal profile] sonia, [personal profile] the_future_modernes, [personal profile] thewayne, [personal profile] umadoshi, [personal profile] vass, the [community profile] meta_warehouse community, [community profile] little_details, and anyone else I've neglected to mention or who I suspect would rather not be on the list. If you want to know where I get the neat stuff, my reading list has most of it.)
siderea: (Default)
Siderea ([personal profile] siderea) wrote2025-10-16 06:16 am
Entry tags:

Venezuela and the US: the Last Two Weeks [cur ev, war, Patreon]

Canonical link: https://siderea.dreamwidth.org/1885137.html


Content Advisory: US government classified and controlled unclassified info leaked to news outlets, within.

[Previously: The Essequibo (Buddy-ta-na-na, We Are Somebody, Oh): Part 1]

Now, when looking at these strikes being carried out in the Caribbean, shockingly, I think there's not been a ton of coverage on this. CNN, for one, their Pentagon reporters, have been some of the only ones consistently covering what's happening in Venezuela. CNN and the New York Times right now, I would say, are the two that are kind of all over this and have been for a while. I don't know why it's getting so little coverage elsewhere, but it is. So, normally I would like to look at these, uh, these reports and source them from multiple different outlets and we just don't have that because there's so limited coverage around US military operations in SOUTHCOM right now.

— Preston Stewart [PrestonStewart on YT], 2025 Oct 15, "American Bombers Send A Message To Venezuela"


[...] I know that the people of the United States are attentive observers and the people of the United States are very aware of what is being attempted against Venezuela is armed aggression to impose regime change.

— Nicolás Maduro, 2025 Oct 3, via Times of India via AP via VTV, "Venezuela Deploys Army & Tanks After Another Deadly U.S Attack, Fighter Jet action"


I am still desperately trying to pull together Part 2 of this series, but in the meanwhile, more things keep happening. I keep checking in with my focus group, aka, Mr. Bostoniensis, about what he is seeing in the news, because my own algorithms are, uh, rather peculiarly trained at this point, and the answer seems "rock all", so I thought I'd post a news round-up of some of the developments over the last couple of weeks. (Holy crap it's been two weeks.)

October 2nd


It comes out that the Trump administration has literalized the 'War on Drugs'. [CW: 'controlled but unclassified'] )

US terminates diplomatic relations with Venezuela )

October 3rd


Fourth US strike on a boat in Venezuelan waters is announced by Trump admin )

October 6th


Venezuela announces it foiled a false-flag plot against the US Embassy in Venezuela )

October 8th


Democrats in Senate try to limit Trump's war powers but fail )

October 9th


The Venezuelan opposition leader wins the Nobel Peace prize )

Venezuela requests emergency intervention from the UN Security Council )

The US asks Grenada, 100 miles off Venezuela's coast, to allow US military installation )

October 10th


The Nobel Peace Prize winner dedicates the prize to Trump, confusing a lot of people who haven't been keeping score )

It comes out that Maduro had been trying to negotiate his way out of US demands for his outster by offering up 'a dominant stake in Venezuela's oil' )

UN Security Council has emergency meeting per Venezuela's request )

October 13th


Maduro closes Venezuela's embassies in Norway and Australia )

Venezuelan activist and political consultant in exile in Colombia were shot )

October 14th


US bombs fifth boat off Venezuela, six killed )

US announces Admiral in charge of US SOUTHCOM visiting Antigua and Barbuda and Grenada )

Which brings us to today. (Well, it was today when I started writing this.)

October 15th


Trump has authorized covert CIA operations in Venezuela [CW: 'highly classified'] )

Three US Air Force B-52 bombers buzzed Venezuela for four hours; Venezeula scrambles an F-16 in response )

It comes out that the boat of Colombians bombed in September was not bombed by mistake, but was deliberate )

Nobel Laureate Machado exhorts Trump to rescue Venezuela from Maduro )

Trump is musing aloud to the press about airstrikes on Venezuela )

This post brought to you by the 220 readers who funded my writing it – thank you all so much! You can see who they are at my Patreon page. If you're not one
of them, and would be willing to chip in so I can write more things like this, please do so there.


Please leave comments on the Comment Catcher comment, instead of the main body of the post – unless you are commenting to get a copy of the post sent to you in email through the notification system, then go ahead and comment on it directly. Thanks!
asakiyume: (miroku)
asakiyume ([personal profile] asakiyume) wrote2025-10-15 06:36 pm

shoes for an offering

[personal profile] wakanomori ran in the Cape Cod Marathon over the weekend--in the teeth of an approaching nor'easter! While he was slogging it out, I wandered the coast, nibbling rose hips and admiring plants like this one, with soft, enticing seed heads. I found out it's called "groundsel bush," also sea-myrtle or saltbush (Baccharis halimifolia)

Baccharis Halimifolia (groundsel bush)

These patent leather shoes grabbed my attention, tucked just so on the other side of the wall separating the beach from the sidewalk. No one was walking barefoot on the beach except gulls and cormorants.

shoes for an offering

They look like shiny eggs in a nest.

Or like an offering. In The Snow Queen, Gerda gives her new red shoes to the river, believing that the river has taken her playmate Kay, and that by offering the river her shoes, she can induce it to give him back. But the river hasn't taken Kay.

These black shoes aren't near enough to the ocean to really count as an offering to the waves or tide, I don't think.

So if they're an offering, to or for whom?

Or maybe someone just doesn't like their patent leather shoes and has left them for someone else to claim.
greenstorm: (Default)
greenstorm ([personal profile] greenstorm) wrote2025-10-14 08:59 pm

(no subject)

Tonight I have more access to my emotions than I have for awhile. This is maybe five or so days off birth(er, actually PMDD hormonal) control, though I'm still on the sertraline stabilizer. I had missed having visceral access to this huge breadth of love. I'm curious how it will relate to my energy use (did I mention they've developed a technical medical term, "energy envelope"? I always appreciate when language cateches up with me).

I have no more problem solving or day-to-day thinking capacity. The grocery store was using a different door while they painted outside their normal one; I went in, couldn't figure out what to do, where to go, or what I wanted despite having a list so I got a random item and bought it because I was in some kind of autopilot. I still can't reliably get the sequence of bathroom-->toilet seat up-->pants down-->pee-->toilet paper-->flush toilet-->wash hands as much as I'd like. But I can feel the feeling of missing people.

And I can do narrative better. Siri and Whiskey seem to sense that it's a rough night and are staying close, protectively.

The big sky is coming back for the winter. There's ice on the north side of the house that will probably still be there in April. My bedroom is warm and comfy. While, surprisingly, being off the pill has removed all pain below my belly button, I'm getting stronger and more reliable pain in the window an hour to three hours after I eat. It's a stupid metaphor for loneliness, pain after the brief pleasure of eating or company.

I remember now that love and loneliness are two sides of a single coin for me. Access to one seems to mean access to the other. And yet, here I am loving my home and my self and my life at the same time.

Poly means always being lonely for someone, or is that just a human thing? I don't think most people feel it often?
sorcyress: Drawing of me as a pirate, standing in front of the Boston Citgo sign (Default)
Katarina Whimsy ([personal profile] sorcyress) wrote2025-10-14 06:27 am

Ashanty notes!

Had a _really_ lovely weekend with SamSam's family. Highlights:

*Nine of us biked to the beach together, me taking the tail with my giant ass-cargo bike. The roads were mostly dirt, sand, and gravel, it was a terrible choice, I had a wonderful time. Seeing the ocean was real good and I liked also watching the hermit crabs run around in the tide pool --there were so many!

*Later four of us biked to the cranberry bog to pick berries. This would've worked better had we not gradually realized that every batch of berries was comorbid with a small little section of poison ivy. We rinsed our hands and managed to all avoid getting rashes, but then we had to decide what to do with the berries we had already gathered. Sam was first to get rid of theirs, and tossed them into the pond. YES GOOD SUCH GREAT NOISES, the rest of us immediately followed.

*Ben and I managed to drag four total beginners through ringing Erin on bodies. Ringing on bodies is _the best_ and I had forgotten how much easier it is to do with dancers, and that's so good. I took some notes about how to do it, so hopefully that will go better in the future. I still have not yet internalized what direction to set up/start plain hunt though (we walked the wrong way to begin and had to switch the orientation of the set)

*Elanor and different-Ben wrote a little fifteen minute play for us all to perform. I believe there was only one person who was consistently in the audience, the rest of us all kept running up and down to/from the stage for our parts. There was one table-read and zero rehearsals. My script got caught in the curtain while it was opening so I had to awkwardly lean behind me to look at my scene-partner's. It was very stupid and delightful! It felt _excessively_ Melendy (honestly, a lot of the weekend did, and now I'm craving rereading a bunch of those).

*After, Steve taught us a game at a pool table that involved trying to roll the cue ball (by hand) to hit the single other ball before that other one stopped moving. Once you got them to hit, it was the next person's turn to grab the cue ball from wherever it was, and send it off. We played largely non-competitive and got eight of us going in a little cycle for a while. Extremely satisfying game!

*I played Crokinole yesterday morning with Sam. I'm _rubbish_ at it, but it's a very tactilely satisfying game so now I want to play more. I wonder if I can become a secret crokinole sharp using common household items?

*Thom and Liz bundled me and Laurel off after dinner on Saturday to Plan Their Wedding Dance. It was very cute to be in that space with people I love and doing something I have a lot of expertise in *and* bouncing that expertise off someone else with a lot of expertise. I think it'll be a nice little dance! There's gonna be a small group of Scottish dances for people who know what they're doing first, and it was _extremely_ funny for Thom to name dances, me or Laurel to go "wait how's that one go?" and Liz to immediately start singing the tune, which is not...*not* how they go, but is absolutely not what either of the callers were requesting.

There's probably more, but that's the big things I can remember this morning. Now it's time to head to work and do some of the grading I completely neglected.

~Sor
MOOP!