tetsab | Reading

Of course. Too good to last. I've had Mom's phone whitelist set up for a whole month, and then they change it. The whitelist could only have 48 numbers on it, which wasn't exactly a lot. Now they've helpfully reduced it to only 32. And I got a notification of the change today, which has already beenbeen done today, and got directed to a FAQ telling me if I didn't trim the list before the change that the existing list would be wiped out and I'd have to start over. Awesome. So she's definitely been getting more spam calls today that are ringing through. And remember, this was only ever a list of phone numbers; you can't even label them. Good thing I built a spreadsheet the week after I initially set it up.

Oh, and the option to have it email your voicemails with a transcription is also wildly unreliable - I won't get any emails for days, but there's a steady stream of hangup voicemails when I call in from her phone to clear them out.

Did I mention I worked another 50 hour week this week, basically half between yesterday and today? I DO NOT have time, patience, or mental bandwidth for this bullshit.

EDIT: haha, I'm a dunce. The email says this is happening a month from now. 🤦🏻‍♀️ 32 allowed entries is still pathetically small, particularly if you want to allow things like doctors and utilities to be able to ring through.

Current Mood: aggrieved

sabotabby

Here's a series from a week or two ago that you really should check out: It Could Happen Here's "Darién Gap: One Year Later." It's four parts and I recommend listening to the whole thing, as it's some truly brilliant reporting, but if you are like me, the one that will stand out the most is the second episode, "To Be Called By No Name." It begins with a song written in 1948, Woody Guthrie's "Deportees (Plane Crash At Los Gatos)" that has horrifying resonance now, nearly 80 years later. From that jumping off point, James discusses the media coverage of the manufactured migrant crisis.

The four part series focuses on two migrants in particular, Primrose and her daughter Kim, from Zimbabwe. Primrose's family opposed the regime there and her father was disappeared; she and her daughter fled a deadly situation to try to claim refugee status in the US. The plight of migrants from African countries is even less discussed than those from Latin America or the Middle East; in detailing Primrose's story, James makes her visible, a heroic protagonist facing impossible odds, someone who lodges in your heart and stays there. It's great storytelling as well as great journalism. He refuses the objectivity of the mainstream reporters, who just don't bother to talk to migrants, let alone give voice to their names and stories.

Even posting about this tears me up. I know a lot of you reading this are doing your best to fight ICE but I want to beat every one of those bastards to death with my bare hands and by the end of this series, you will too.

sabotabby

Just finished: You Better Be Lightning by Andrea Gibson. I never had the privilege of seeing Gibson perform, other than on YouTube, so this is as close as I'm ever going to get. They really were a brilliant poet. Some of the poems lose a bit in print—they tend towards the storytelling and autobiographical, and that reads much less powerfully on the page than in speech—but this is a fairly minor critique. Gibson writes powerfully about queerness, gender, disability, and the climate crisis, and their furious energy is made all the more poignant by their premature death earlier this year.

Currently reading: Censorship & Information Control: From Printing Press to Internet by Ada Palmer. This is an exhibit based on a course that Palmer taught and it just makes me wish I could take the course. I'm screenshotting bits to text to people. Her central argument is that the total state censorship we see depicted in 1984 is the exception rather than the norm; more often censorship is incomplete, self-enforced, or carried out by non-state entities like the church or marketplace. This is obviously important when we talk about issues like free speech, which tends to be very narrowly defined when most of the threats to it have traditionally not come directly from the government (I mean, present-day US excepted, but it took a lot of informal censorship to get to that point).

The bit about fig leafs, complete with illustrations, is particularly good, as is the bit on Pierre Bayle, who hid his radical ideas in the footnotes to his Historical and Critical Dictionary in lengthy footnotes that he knew no one would read.

You can get this for free if you want to read it btw.

lil_m_moses

As a followup, I replaced both main floor bathroom fans on my long Thanksgiving weekend, and it was indeed super easy. The master one got cleaned in the process, and its flapper similarly fixed because it was also upside down and defaulting to open. The new fans are about 10 dB quieter (advertised as 1 sone quieter), which is a crazy difference. The even crazier thing is that our master bath is staying about 5°F warmer overnight - it regularly got down into the low 50s overnight in the winter because it only has 1 vent and no return, has a partial cantilevered bump-out section, and has 3 windows. High 50s is still mighty chilly in the morning, but those 3 little washers make a big difference.

I also fixed the basement bath's shower door over the weekend. The glass had slid down in its side grip so much that the bottom glass edge and the aluminum bottom guard were eating each other every time the door opened and closed. I'd been putting it off, but it turned out to be a lot easier to fix than feared, due to the magic of self-tapping screws. Just picked new spots in the rail for the holes, put some shims under the door to hold it up higher, and 4 screws later it was done. Trimming the new bottom sweep seal almost took more effort.

And tonight kiddo and I fixed the basement bath toilet, which had a leaky seal on the flush valve. She got a lesson in some very basic and easy home repair, and we had a nice dinner out together after picking up the part and while Josh worked the closing library shift.

Next up:

Fix a newly slow, noisy fill on the master toilet (probably some debris in the fill valve).

Address the bathroom windows. There are honeycomb blinds on the windows, which we keep closed most of the time for privacy, but between the lack of circulation and the cold humid bathroom and even colder window surfaces, there's crazy mildew all over the window frames. I cleaned them a couple of summers ago and repainted them with mildew-resistant stuff, but you'd never know it - they're super gross. So the new idea is to put some decorative privacy film on the bottom section so we can raise the blinds halfway and hopefully have less, or less long-lasting, moisture collecting on the bottoms of the frames, and still be able to see out the top when we want to. We already run a dehumidifier in there in the winter, but it's not enough. We picked this film: https://artscape-inc.com/products/window-film-colored-stained-glass-new-leaf

Upgrade the kitchen under-cabinet lights. There are 4 (actually 3) existing fluorescent fixtures hardwired in around the kitchen and controlled by a single switch. They get pretty warm, they're mounted at the wall edge of the cabinets instead of the front, and one is missing and presumed failed, all of which add up to us rarely using them. I finally did the research last weekend and ordered all the parts I need from Armacost Lighting. The plan is to install 4 small power supplies on the existing line power connection points, each driving a chunk or three of continuous LED strip at a different stretch of overhead cabinets, plus maybe one across the bottom of the over-stove microwave since the built-in light is pretty far back and dim, and I'll have enough extra connectors and light tape.

That's the dream, anyway. The reality is that it might take me a while to get to all those. I was really hoping and kinda trying to get Mom into a care facility before the snow flew, but that ship has sailed, and it sure seems like the snow might stick around from Thanksgiving on for the first time in many years. I know which place I prefer for her; I need to call them again to see if they might have the room type I want for her available (facing the nature and with a patio), which they didn't 2.5 months ago. She's going to hate anything for a while, but this needs to happen. Between me and my aunt we've been doing this multiple weekly visits thing for 2 years now, and it's a lot (Mom lives 12 miles out of town, plus another 5 of 6 for me to get to that side of town) for one person parenting and often working long weeks and another who's 80. Mom's doctors have been telling me to do this for even longer than that. But she loves her house and land and I do hate to take her from it. I'll still have to go take care of it regularly, but it'd be a less regimented schedule, and less interference from and endless repeated conversations with her while doing it.

the_siobhan

There's a store on Queen Street that has a sign out front that says "Ice-cream fixes everything."

Yesterday I walked past a bistro on my way to the gf's place that said "Wine fixes everything".

I am prepared to review their respective arguments, especially if said arguments are made via wine and ice cream.

***

Note that I said "walked" in that story, because I am WALKING again, no cane required. My physiotherapist is fucking magic. I'm still on a bit of a leash so I don't overdo it, but the gf's condo is a 25 minute walk from my house and not only did I walk there, I walked home after and my foot felt fine this morning.

Plans to set the entire world on fire may be temporarily placed on hold as a result.

***

Got my boosters last week. Spent most of my spare time for the next three days sleeping. My immune system calmed down eventually but the first day at work was kinda rough.

***

My dad is doing much better and his wife decided he doesn't need the hospital bed since it's a rental. She was planning to buy him a regular bed, but since I still have the Old Man's old bed frame in my storage locker I offered that one. My sister has a pickup truck, so the two of us hauled it over and set it up.

We're both encouraging her to look into moving to a condo but she's not really receptive to the idea. Thing is, she's also running out of the ability to take care of the place, especially since she's doing it alone and taking care of my dad at the same time. She already hires people to deal with the yard.

***

Still waiting on engineer.

***

( cut for the endless gauntlet of house shit )

***

I have the overwhelming desire to put together a playlist for my family's Xmas dinner. This desire was sparked by hearing Laibach's version of Jesus Christ Superstar on Twitch tonight.

C'mon, it would be hilarious.

lil_m_moses

Books Finished
- True Gretch by Gretchen Whitmer [e-audio] - affirmed for me that she's good people
- Cibola Burn by James S.A. Corey [e-audio] (3rd? read)
- The Time Traveler's Passport edited by John Joseph Adams [e-audio]
- Yellowface by R.F. Kuang [e-audio]
- Binti by Nnedi Okorafor [e-audio] (reread)
- Binti: Home by Nnedi Okorafor [e-audio]
- Binti: The Night Masquerade by Nnedi Okorafor [e-audio]
- Nemesis Games by James S.A. Corey [e-audio] (3rd? read)
- Carpe Glitter by Cat Rambo [e-audio]
- Remote Control by Nnedi Okorafor [e-audio]
- Class Clown: The Memoirs of a Professional Wiseass by Dave Barry [e-audio]

Library DVDs/Streaming Programs Watched
- Resident Alien: S3D1-2 [2 equiv]
- Nobody Wants This: S2 [2 equiv]
- Becoming Led Zeppelin
- Dark Winds: S3 [2 equiv]
- A Man on the Inside: S2 [1 equiv]
- Interview with the Vampire: S1 [2 equiv]
- The Great Pottery Throwdown: S8 [3 equiv]

sabotabby

There are a few hours left in Bandcamp Friday. Instead of using Spotify, why not buy some music there? Coincidentally Grace Petrie has a new EP out.

sabotabby

There has been another round of great podcasts this week, but this is not an unbiased blog, and thus check out The Fiction Lab's "The Intersection Between Activism & Fiction with Rachel A. Rosen" and hear all about how fiction and real life activism inform each other, the challenges of telling political stories, and how to make your political stories (and activism) a little less on-the-nose.

sabotabby

Just finished: The Bewitching by Silvia Moreno-Garcia. Couldn't put this one down, which is why I'm tired this morning. It's dark academia meets gothic with three rather compelling heroines who've been cursed by witches. Like most gothics, it's more about the atmosphere than the mystery, though I did really enjoy ( spoilers ). And I loved all three characters, which, in true SMG style, are very driven, to the point of alienating most of the people in their lives, and very lifelike.

I am glad I was warned for ( another spoiler )

Oh it's also super adorable to see the "ancient department heads" at Stoneridge College. This is best not spoiled.

Currently reading: Nothing, but I have a hold that should be coming in soon at the library so it's time to read all my short books.

dancingdragon3 posting in

terror_sffa

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