keep moving

Canceled my Duolingo subscription today. I've been using Babbel for Italian and I think it works better in terms of getting concepts across; Duo's basically vocab practice and trying to use it to start learning Dutch is kinda slow going for everything except pronunciation. Gonna start working on the copy of Dutch for Dummies I bought from Thriftbooks a while ago.

Meanwhile, on a different linguistic front, I am perfectly happy to allow older, sexist language to persist in the lyrics of one specific Christmas song. I've said it before, elsewhere, but it's Hark The Herald Angels Sing. This is because when I was a wee little sprog of about eight, I read C. S. Lewis' Chronicles of Narnia. All of them, all the way through, in the original order (as written, not as events chronologically happened). And that same year, we sang all the verses* of Hark The Herald Angels Sing at church. And we got to the third verse, and I hit these lyrics:

Mild he lays his glory by
Born that Man no more may die
Born to raise the sons of Earth
Born to something something something

I stopped listening at that point because I had just had the sudden experience of being informed, in church, that Jesus was born for both humans and dwarves. Given that Lewis had casually informed the reader in The Horse And His Boy that they could look up certain facts in 'any good history of Calormen at your library', this was kind of an odd moment.

My mom explained it to me later that Lewis was the only one who meant dwarves when he said 'sons of Earth', and also pointed out that 'veiled in flesh the Godhead see' did not mean the equivalent to those Jesus statues with the Sacred Heart on his chest, but... for a while there, dwarves were a thing.

So Hark The Herald Angels Sing gets to keep the male-oriented lyrics in my book. Because dwarves.




*A bit on the unusual side even at Christmas for Catholics; most Masses I've been to have generally done one or two verses of any given song or hymn, versus the handful of Protestant services I've been to where they sang every single verse of every single song

Had colonoscopy last Friday. I'd been dealing with off-and-on post-nasal dripcough, nothing serious, for some time before that. Got home, largely did okay, but by morning I was coughing and miserable and uggh and wound up with a fever. Haven't gone into the doctor's in person but when I did an e-visit and described my symptoms (including things being green that are not supposed to be green I got a prescription for amoxicillin and 'come in for an in-person exam if this doesn't make the symptoms go away'.

So, sinus infection, as far as I can tell.

I am deeply grateful for the fact that my office is WFH on Mondays and Fridays and for the fact that the office is closed tomorrow. I am in that state of recovery where I am no longer feverish and have just enough energy to sit up and do desk stuff and deceive myself into thinking I am in better shape than I actually am. As much as I want to be at the Vets Against Stupid Ass Orange Tin Plated Dictators With Delusions Of Godhood protests tomorrow to back up the veterans, it would not be a good idea for me to push myself that much. I will be sleeping a lot, assuming the cat allows me to do so.

I use Tuta.de for my email hosting and I've downloaded the Tuta app for my email client. It's set to not show images by default, just placeholders.

I get a lot of email from RPG sellers of various types. I get a RIDICULOUS amount of email from political organizations.

I do not always look at the Sender part of the message first, as the Tuta client uses a smaller font for the sender and other information than most senders specify for their default body text. Some of the senders use VERY LARGE text for an eye-grab at the top of their emails before going on to the regular lettering.

All of which is a roundabout way to say that for a few gloriously entertaining seconds I thought I had an email from the people at the Women's March that began with “WE ARE THE FURY OF THE STORM AND THE PITILESS WRATH OF ENDLESS WINTER.”

Yet again, the world I see out of the corner of my eye is way more entertaining than what's there when I look at it directly.

Proctalgia fugax and its evil cousin levator ani syndrome. ( They are not Warhammer 40k characters. They just sound like it. )

ME: *making ramen and fake meat in the microwave*
CHIEF INVESTMENT OFFICER: Hey, Cam. Which would you rather have to live on, squirrel meat or raccon meat?
ME: Are we talking about squirrels who live in proximity to human households, or deep wilderness squirrels?
CIO: The wilderness ones.
ME: Squirrel then. One, I have more recipes for them, two, my mom used to work with a guy who ate squirrel in his native country and wouldn't touch American squirrels because they mostly ate human garbage, and three, raccoons carry at least two different things on the Wikipedia article about 'diseases and parasitic infections with highest lethality rates'.
CIO: Good choice.

Worth noting, he's told me in the past that if an apocalyptic event happens he's going to try and find me because he thinks I have the best chamce of anyone he knows of surviving the apocalypse long-term.

So, got COVID last week. Thought it was just bad cold symptoms, then I realized I was feeling my shirt against my skin the way I only do if I have a fever. Since I was supposed to go for an abdominal ultrasound (possible gallstones) last Friday I got a COVID and flu at-home test and spent fifteen minutes in the bathroom.

Fever never went above 100.6 for me, thankfully. Did not lose what little sense of smell I had to begin with. I no longer have to isolate but I am now back to my all-too-familiar state of 'sinuses full of snot, post nasal drip, HORK HORK HORK coughing'. I'm taking a store-brand severe cold and sinus pill every four hours for that and drinking so much tea I feel like the goddamn harbor. Could be worse so I am not going to bitch beyond that. I'm definitely grateful my boss's first statement to me when I logged in on Monday, after dealing with a tech support issue, was 'how're you doing? Plan on working from home this week'. I wasn't looking forward to mornings of trying to assess whether I was fit to haul my ass to the ferry terminal or not.

having said this I am trying to remember where I go to edit the quote at the top of my journal page because yesterday I found out about a species of water beetle in Japan that has been documented as surviving being eaten by frogs, but only so long as the beetle is able to keep moving. The scientists tested it by applying wax that immobilized two legs to several beetle. None of them made it out in any recognizable form, whereas the others managed to get through. Longest time documented was several hours, others made it through in 115 minutes, but one beetle managed to speedrun the frog in six, which... has to have been quite the experience for the amphibian.

Mostly I just like the sound of 'keep moving. there is light at the end of the frog'.

ETA: found the customization page.

Today, on ‘Americans will measure in ANYTHING other than the metric system (even the honorary Canadians)’:

( It happened in the shower, it’s tmi-chix worthy )

of all the nameless but notable figures in the Gospel out there, I never expected to find myself identifying with the woman with the issue of blood. Yeesh.

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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