where are your gloves and your helmet?

Today was cold, wet, rainy, and foggy. My pants are still damp from the knees down from riding my bike to the ferry and then from the ferry to the office.

However, up until about three minutes ago I had little to no perception of tinnitus, and what I am hearing now is very minor compared to the usual, so hey, that's a win for Ferry Rides And Whatever Is Necessary To Take Them.

Nine phone calls today, the majority of them to my representative because there's a lot of stuff going down in the House, specifically.

Should probably have done more but I don't like to take too much time away from my desk to make these calls unless it's lunchtime. Maybe a few more later if I'm feeling angry enough but tbh I'm dealing with cramping that's either day 10 of my period or the aftermath of a biopsy yesterday and I have about enough energy left for either exercise or Congressyelling, not both.

EDIT: Make it eleven. The new ones were to Governor Healey's office and the Mass. Dept. of Elementary and Secondary Education, where I *hope* I left a message with the right commissioner's office re the April 3rd Title VI compliance letter about 'give up DEI programs or your school funding goes away'.

Less yelling on the non-Congress calls. Still did about fifteen minutes of tai chi afterwards.

Boston Gun and Rifle, in Dorchester.
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Make that 242. Would've been 243 but when two calls for the day are 'dear representative please vote no on H.R. XXX which I have already told you twice that I disapprove of' then I feel justified in combining them both in one phone call.

and yes, I do make repeat calls on the same subjects quite often. Carthago delenda est.

Bought the shoe building kit. Also some toluene free glue because the kitmakers don't sell glue, it's not a safe or easy thing to ship. Printed out the instructions, will be watching the instructional video later.

Also bought a bunch of Nicholas Cage vinyl stickers. Some mierenneuker has been putting up anti-Ukraine stickers on the backs of signs near me and I am not tall enough to scrape them off but I think I have a chance of covering up a good portion of some of the stickers with Mr. Cage's face if I really try.

The red-winged blackbirds have been audible around here for several days now, and today marks the fourth or fifth day in a row that I've heard cardinals singing their courtship songs. I've had a raven sighting or two as well, although I admit one was in Holliston and may not count as a Harbinger of Spring since I don't know how common Raven is out there.

Now that DST is in effect I'll be at the shore more often keeping an eye put for returning shorebirds, and hopefully the channel marker ospreys as well.

Debating getting a Zipcar and heading to Holliston this weekend. Depends on the weather, I think. Haven't been out that way in ages. It's that or go buy camping supplies at the nearest Cabelas and honestly I don't really feel like spending an hour debating which one-burner propane powered stove is my best option.

Got myself set up at bluesky. Had to use the name camwynya as someone with a lot of Korean characters in their profile already had the name camwyn. I'm also at mastodon, as camwyn, on mstdn.social. Working on getting myself set up at pixelfed, although I still have accounts on Instagram because my family members have accounts there.

Debating setting myself up with Signal. I know I used to use it and then got rid of it and I can't remember why.

I'm not leaving here, you understand. I'm just mentioning the other places in case folks I know happen to be there too.

When I used to live in New Jersey I would occasionally have this weird sleep issue involving the curtains. Basically I'd be partway to sleep, or I'd have been asleep for a little while and wake up, and either way I'd be viscerally freaked out- racing pulse, fast breathing, you name it- because my brain was absolutely convinced that there was a mouse or mice running up my bedroom curtains. Understand, please, that there had never in my life been a mouse in my house or my apartment to my knowledge, and in at least one case of this occurring, I was living in an apartment with two cats that both had really good murder impulses. Edge-of-sleep brain didn't care. Far as it was concerned, mouse in the curtains, even if it wasn't making any noise and I couldn't see a recognizable mouse. I don't think I ever saw more than a half-imagined motion in the upper parts of the curtains.

Fortunately, half-asleep brain is relatively easy to fool. The answer to the mouse issue was always 'grab the lower part of the curtain and tie the curtain in a knot higher than bed level, and the mouse will not be able to go lower than the knot'. Half-asleep brain did not think mice jumped or got off on windowsills or scrambled over to the other curtains. Just 'if there is a mouse in the curtain then tie a knot and it won't be able to come down and you will be all right'. Every time.

I bring this up because the night before last I was subjected to a variant on this that I was really not pleased to discover. Namely: as I was trying to fall asleep I hit heart-pounding freakout, pulse audible in my ears, and there is a dark object on the ceiling and it is scrambling around and it is a SIZABLE dark object and it is not a BUG it is a BAT because I live in NEW ENGLAND and we do not have LIZARDS and I do not think MICE can scramble on the ceiling so there is a BAT crawling around on my ceiling and I can see it MOVE and how do I report this to the LANDLORD and-

Can't tie knots in the ceiling to keep the bats from coming down. Best I could do was lie there and try to determine what it was going to do next, and then determine that it was actually the dark spot on the ceiling where my old smoke alarm had been located - about four inches to the right of where my current smoke alarm is mounted. I mean, half-asleep brain was QUITE SURE that the spot had been moving around, but half-asleep brain was, as I have said before, previously convinced that mice were in my bedroom curtains and could not get past a knot.

Took forever to get my pulse back down to normal, and longer to get back to sleep.

No idea if this is related to exploding head syndrome but eesh it wouldn't surprise me.

I hit a thread on /r/radiology that had the same vibe as Things That Never Mean Anything Good In An Obituary. This one was something on the order of 'things you don't want to hear when having an X-ray'. A few of my favorites:

( I picked up an appreciation for the kind of humor many in the medical profession use to keep themselves sane some time ago, but since y'all may not have, I'm putting it behind a cut. )