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I guess I had this tab open two weeks and forgot about it

Well, I meant to post it then, and I guess I'll belatedly post it now - a New Year's Friend Meme!

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Sigh.

I got a set of cute little penguin pens. They're very cute. So cute.

I didn't realize that each pen has a little motto on it, or I might've not bought them. You see, one continuing annoyance since childhood is that writing on pens is always upside down if you're left-handed. Oh, you can get pens where the writing is oriented correctly, that is, for lefties, but for some reason all that writing inevitably is left-handed themed! I don't want my right side up pen motto to say something like "Only lefties are in their right mind!", I want it to say something like "Hope you are happy every day", which is the upside down motto on this purple penguin.

It's the same with left-handed rulers, incidentally. I just want the numbers to go in a sensible direction, I don't need my ruler to affirm how wonderful it is that I'm drawing lines with my left hand.

On a related note, I'm seriously considering buying another pair of lefty kitchen shears for work. I don't really have to spend much time in the kitchen, but if I am in the kitchen and using kitchen shears (almost inevitably to cut up the next day's lunch sandwiches but sometimes to cut up breakfast pancakes and sausages) I'd rather use mine than theirs, because cutting with the wrong scissors is painful and messy. But if I bring my sole pair - which is amazing, I love it, best Christmas present ever! - back and forth with me then sometimes I use it at home, forget to put it back in my bag, and then am irritated for three days until I finally remember again. I could ask them to supply shears for me and keep them in the kitchen drawer, it's a legitimate (and small!) expense, but honestly, I know from experience that righties are terrible and when they accidentally use left-handed scissors they get very confused and irritated. Amusing for me, but undoubtedly an exercise in frustration for a workplace. It's really better all around to bring my own.

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Winter Moon by Langston Hughes

How thin and sharp is the moon tonight!
How thin and sharp and ghostly white
Is the slim curved crook of the moon tonight!

*********

In fact, the moon is kinda orange just now, but I'm sure it'll grow pale once it clears the bridge.

Gosh, isn't it great

when you finally confess your love to the guy you've been pining after for half your life, and it turns out that you have a perfectly aligned and complementary set of kinks? Nobody has to compromise and agree to sometimes do the thing they're not that into or, conversely, never do the thing they're totally into. Nobody's turned off by the mere thought of any of it, every conversation is an ongoing saga of "yes, and".

I guess that's one more advantage of being fictional!

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I had the weirdest dream the other day

You'll laugh, it was that weird.

I dreamed that I was going to sleep. I had found a bed - not my actual bed, just a bed! - and snuggled down to sleep. And then I woke up a little (really woke up, not dream woke up) in my own bed, snuggled up nice and cozy, and drifted between the two beds, real and dream, for a little bit before falling back asleep for real.

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PSA

A list of weekend protests

Entry tags:

ice hockey,
travel

Prague hockey camp

I had such a good time at the hockey camp with the Women's Blues. 24 skaters and a goalie (plus two Czech goalies joined), and for most of the exercises we were divided by ability into four groups of six. The WBs captains had set the groups and they did a great job, certainly for my group - we were well-matched so the exercises all let us push ourselves without anyone being overwhelmed or left behind. And the coaching team was amazing, again.

We had five ice sessions: an "optional" skate Monday evening, and then two 75-minute training sessions on each of Tuesday and Wednesday. Plus some off-ice and stickhandling, video review, a bonus talk on "hockey IQ" and motivation from one of the coaches, and an optional visit to the nearby swimming pool. The camp posted a great reel from the first day that really captures the feel of it.

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Entry tags:

mistakes were made

In "ice is slippy" news, I have managed to bruise both my hips in hard falls this week: the left one at hockey camp earlier this week, the right at Warbirds tonight.

For preference, I sleep curled up on one side.

Ow.

Entry tags:

Poem post: stunbone

Where is there to sit exactly
If everything is shining on me

Friend, you have buttsense
you have stone buns, as your grandma says
Here in the driftwood feeling sundrunk, sunbent
Sensate among the ebb tones of the sea

I thought you said stun bone
You draw with a stick among the ebb stones
The tide wriggles up the sand grooves
Your breathing makes the subtones shimmer

You draw the water up to bait our shoes
Just for the craft of it, just because you can do it
Like a gull riding on the sky tide
Laughing at our temporary ruin

* * * * * *

Every morning very nearly without fail I solve the Merriam-Webster Blossom puzzle, and then I re-solve it to see if I can get a higher score, and if I'm not careful this becomes a kind of intellectual busywork I can use to distract myself from actual writing.

So a thing I'm trying to do (among all the other things) is to use the puzzle as a prompt. Inevitably each group of letters generates a semantic zone. Real and nonce words produce themselves. The letterset today was BENOSTU.

Here's a less complete poem from Sunday (letterset EINRTVW):

The riverine interview of winter,
that inept vintner: cool distillate
interrogates the view, shreds and repurposes it,
turns window to vitrine
where the morning light, when it comes,
cold citrine, tobacco stain,
will ennerve us, animate the inert twin

...Not sure what I planned to do with that twin, but I will let you know.

§rf§

(no subject)

Watch on YouTube

I also didn’t expect

Such an open and bald admission that this is about the oil.

Well, I dealt with my shock and horror by getting into a very stupid flamewar at /r/englishlearning

I thought I outgrew this behavior a good two decades ago, but I guess illegal wars really get my dander up.

The conversation, such as it was, was long and pointless, but it did have this amusing, paraphrased exchange:

Them: I didn't say that you should say "ones of them", I just said that even though it sounds wrong it's technically grammatical! Go to ChatGPT, it'll tell you the same thing!

Me: No, it won't, here's the screenshot.

Them: Well! That doesn't count because it doesn't cite a rule! I did check before posting that you should go to ChatGPT, you know!

(They spontaneously claimed elsewhere that they understand the idea of descriptivist linguistics, but I think they don't understand how much of language has yet to be described, even in very well-studied languages like English.)

Protest at Times Square at 2pm

There is no chance of me making this one - I just got off of work at 8, and I need to sleep.

But as soon as I figure out what to say I'll be contacting my... my everyone. My congresscritters and anybody else.

(no subject)

What the hell did I just see on the news.

Entry tags:

Iceland recommendations?

My brother and I are planning a trip to Iceland this summer. We'll be there for just over a week, culminating in the total solar eclipse. (Hopefully the weather will permit us to see the eclipse, but even if not, it should be a great trip.)

Any recommendations for what to see and do in Iceland? Or things to avoid, be aware of, etc?

(Userpic for Europa, ice, and geology.)

White-Eyes by Mary Oliver

In winter
all the singing is in
the tops of the trees
where the wind-bird

with its white eyes
shoves and pushes
among the branches.
Like any of us

he wants to go to sleep,
but he's restless—
he has an idea,
and slowly it unfolds

from under his beating wings
as long as he stays awake.
But his big, round music, after all,
is too breathy to last.

So, it's over.
In the pine-crown
he makes his nest,
he's done all he can.

I don't know the name of this bird,
I only imagine his glittering beak
tucked in a white wing
while the clouds—

which he has summoned
from the north—
which he has taught
to be mild, and silent—

thicken, and begin to fall
into the world below
like stars, or the feathers
of some unimaginable bird

that loves us,
that is asleep now, and silent—
that has turned itself
into snow.

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Link

Only 3 years and 3 weeks until the next Presidential Inauguration

Fingers crossed! I know we can all make it that far!

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Entry tags:

Start as I mean to go on

I had Kodiaks practice on the evening of 30 December, which meant getting home very late as usual. I did get up and out for the last hot yoga class of my festive pass in the morning of 31 December. From there I did a run into town to pay in a cheque (a cheque!) to N's savings account on the last possible day before it expired. After I got home, I looked at how many tickets remained for the public skate I was booked on, did some subtraction and decided the rink would be too full and I was too tired, so I cancelled the Last Skate Of The Year, and had a nap instead. It was marvellous.

In the evening we had a little family movie night with drinks and snacks:

Chicken Run (which everyone but Nico had seen before)
Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget (which only Nico had seen before) - fun, but omg there were bad parenting choices, and excessive ~suspense~ due to even more bad choices in the final action sequence
Wake Up Dead Man (which Nico was uninterested in, but the other three of us enjoyed)

We managed to finish the last film with about fifteen minutes to go before midnight, so I put on BBC One on iPlayer and we watched some Ronan Keating and then the fireworks from London, and then I left Ronan Keating providing background music while sending and replying to HNY messages on my phone until I decided sleep was a better plan.

This morning I got up and used a free gym pass to get to a weights class, and confirm my opinion that I want to return to a regular gym routine. I met friends M, J & K for pub drinks this afternoon, and spent a bunch of time afterwards sorting out logistics for ice hockey games on Saturday (Kodiaks 1 are away in Chelmsford, Kodiaks 2 are "home" in Peterborough).

Tomorrow I will take Nico to a pantomime in the morning, work a half day in the afternoon, and go to Warbirds practice in the evening.

Entry tags:

reading

2025 reading summary

New-to-me books read this year: 128
(Note for this exercise: I count audiobooks separately from paper/ebooks. I like both experiences but they are different experiences and different "books" to me, whereas reading paper or ebook feels interchangeable to me. My default is to read ebook, audiobooks and physical books are tagged as variations from the default.)

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Rereads: 19

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If you want to know more about a specific book I read in 2025, ask me about it. Or pick a random number between 1 and 147 and ask me to talk about that book.

Books acquired in 2025 and not yet read: 19

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[1] Pre-order
[2] Audiobook
[3] Physical book