Journal Mostly a rest day today. After posting last night I was overcome with brain fog, which hopefully explains any dullness in my prose and the fact that I didn’t correct typos til this afternoon. Visibility has a cost. Wally was off his food today, hiding in the corners of the run like a sad little sack. As I’ve said many times before, we know not to panic at a change in behaviour but to monitor and be ready for an intervention if it continues. So we carried him out to the garden to force…

I recently bought a couple of bare root Stinking Iris (Iris foetidissima). They were good healthy clumps of thick rhizomes. Very suitable for dividing so two became nine. And the eight pounds I paid for the pair became less than a pound per pot!

Joint pain is back, it was a good run. It’s manageable for now, I’m happy with a “peppercorn” CVS-branded foldable cane by Michael Graves Design for situations like this. I predict the pain will subside by about this time next week. Stay tuned for more. BB sat in the pillow corner this morning for a while in his PJs watching the sunrise.

At around seventy thousand feet, a U-2 pilot flies with a handful of knots between the speed below which the wing stops working and the speed above which the wing stops obeying. Both walls are made of air. Both are fatal. The men who flew it named the place where those walls converge the coffin corner, which tells you roughly everything about how test pilots handle branding. Scaling companies live there too, and unlike the pilots, most of them do not know the number. The physics, briefly and…

Hello from my home in Helsinki! This is NordLetter #127, a weekly newsletter on living and walking in Finland. To follow the series, you can subscribe here. A new NordLetter will land in your inbox every Sunday. Not a fan of newsletters? No problem! You can read previous editions here. You can also subscribe to the RSS feed. You can reach out to me by replying to this mail. I am also posting on Mastodon. Week in bed,Felt great to step out.Strong wind blows. There is still a niggle in my throat.…

Some things are easier to change than others, that’s for sure. It’s easy to change the channel on TV or to change underwear. But when it comes to decisions in life, changes are much harder. We need more time and more energy to talk ourselves into change. At least I am like that. It takes me so much time to change something. Even buying something can take me weeks of thinking and ruminating. But on the other hand, when I make this kind of decision, everything else just goes smoothly. It feels…

The good folks over at Tatertot Comics & Collectibles have a fantastic store and know how to put on a great comic show. That is why I'm excited for, "Tatertot Con Year 3," this Saturday, October 17th! Held at the Fox C-6 Service Center (849 Jeffco Blvd, Arnold, MO, 63010), it will run from 12PM-6PM. Entry is only $5, with kiddos 12 and under getting in for free! With over 50 vendors, food trucks, and some snazzy guests, I'm pumped to check the show out in just two days! I encourage anyone in…

Postcard: guess what I'm knitting This is one of my postcards: short, handwritten messages—from me to you. Thank you for reading this via RSS! View this article on my website. Replies: E-mail / Fediverse / Webmention

You may or may not have picked up on the fact that I have done away with a traditional portfolio, in favor greater freedom. I now post whatever I want in whatever format feels compelling. That's what makes me feel at home in my little corner of the web and removes the mental restrictions that used to stop me from posting consistently. I believe that artists need to take back the internet from big tech, empowering people to explore the web using their own volition. I believe this so hard that I…

“Fourteen ways to be a better girlfriend.”*People are right. Pinterest is infested with the cheapest, most rubbishy AI slop that’s around. Slop that’s so crude it can’t spell or count

We have quite a few tasty traditions in Sweden. There’s the fika and kanelbulle, of course, the semla season, and pancakes with whipped cream on Thursdays. Then there’s the lovely lussebulle season, and it’s just started. A bit too early, to be honest. Traditionally, it runs from late November. That’s the thing with most traditions these days, isn’t it? It feels like they’re getting stretched each year. In a few years, we’ll take midsommarstången down on the same day as we put up the Christmas…

Below Deck Mediterranean Captain Sandy Yawn revealed that she's in contact with Nathan Gallagher. WTF?!

1. Distract YourselfDoug did just about anything he could to avoid thinking about the giant interdimensional hole in his living room. He tried mediation, pottery, weight lifting, even tai chi. His therapist told him the hole didn’t exist. Doug generally agreed, but found that position harder to maintain when an interdimensional tentacle reached through his wall and accidentally slapped him while groping for fodder to feed one of its dozen mouths. But better a tentacle than the bug-eyed gaze of…

Lots of my neighbors are super into holiday decoration, and I’m here for it.

Happily, I don’t spend a lot of time in waiting rooms, but when I do, I tend to look around rather than at my phone. These carpet tiles at my optometrist caught my eye. They might have been designed to warm me up for my upcoming exam!

One of the imaginary barriers that get in the way of my writing is to express everything. It seems like the more time that passes in the day—the more I experience, talk, and think—the more I want to express. That’s part of why writing as early as possible in the morning feels easier to me. Nothing has happened yet, so I can really tune in to what I want to say. Writing every day helps remind me that it’s really not that important to say everything, or even to sound smart. It’s more useful to…

On the left, the Aura Estelle I’ve been using all year. On the right, a great system with the Owl Paper Co and Lauren Phelps A6 notebook that just didn’t work for me. Only two weeks into my October Planner Set-Up where I changed everything, I realized it was a mistake. Not that the planner was bad but that I had a system in place. When I say system, I mean I had a personal process that I used in how often, when and where I used the planner. So I want to start by saying, the issue was NOT the…

There’s this funny little dynamic between my father and me where we try to gauge whether the other person actually needs to go to the bathroom or is just trying to sneak off and pay for the meal. This time, I managed to beat him to it. The waiter told me it’s the same with him and his father, and that he likes it because he sees it as a sign of love. That was cute. Then he came back to the table with me to say goodbye to everyone and told us that he’ll soon be leaving Germany because he’s…

8714/21633More thoughts on Twitter�€s part in my downfall, after my initial decision to stop using it.Good on the British Comedy Guide for picking up on the sea change in podcasting. Sad to see Pappys and All Killa go, though understand the reasoning I've also noticed a few great stand ups posting about low ticket sales on their tours, which might be part of the same basic trend. The bigger name comics have always commanded the audiences, but perhaps it's skewing even further that way now.

Previous posts in the series: On being a new parent, one year in, having a second kid, and five years in. It’s been nearly three years since my last parenting update, so I thought it was time for another one. Now that AI is better than me at everything I used to take pride in, my experience raising kids is maybe one of the only things I still bring to the table in life, so I may as well write about it, right? Kidding! I’m fine, really. Totally fine. 😅 Anyway… Here are some random thoughts about…

I don’t know if there is a God in this world. I am trying to figure that out myself. I do think that the ultimate path to God is the discovery of truth. God is truth, and in truth lies God. I am not a profound religious thinker. I don’t know the shape or size of God. That is also why I don’t think I am lucky. I don’t believe in something called luck. There is serendipity. There are lucky coincidences, whatever that means. But I do believe I am blessed. Being lucky means experiencing an event…

I'm on the second day of an adverse reaction to the latest vaccination. Yesterday I did practically nothing, and today has been weird- a dreamy morning with my laptop doing all sorts of music editing that I'd normally be far too impatient to do. It would have been nice to be able to sing today, but I'll have to wait for that. It would have been nice to take some exercise, but ditto.I did manage to change my browser to Duck Duck Go. Sorry Googs, but I tried to search a track that Gideon Coe…

Continuing the tour of our rental Noovo Plus van, this is the last of four posts:The exterior (Monday).The interior (Tuesday).Exterior details (yesterday).Electrical & plumbing (this post).Control panels above the door; Victron electrical on top, Rixen heating system bottom left, awning bottom right, and a button for the gray tank heater:Starlink modem and power supply tucked away in a cupboard:Smoke detector:Carbon monoxide alarm:Max air ceiling fan:Water filters under the sink:Electrical AC…

In addition to reminding me of a Seinfeld episode, a question at Miss Manners also helped me appreciate personal growth in an area that used to cause me unnecessary worry.The writer is a nail salon customer who can't seem to shake the feeling that she is being talked about in the native language of the staff, and asks what to do. The nut of Judith Martin's reply is:[Y]ou could simply acknowledge that people can talk among themselves, without eavesdroppers assuming ill will.And even if they were…

It is autumn now –the winds are not the same as they were a short time ago. But I am fine.I am not sure how the transition came or went or how the sun began to sink much faster now. But like the Good Preacher says after his sermon, “as it was in the beginning, is now, and will be forever,” to which I say, “amen.” My side of the world is cooling down and the four seasons are always looking to prove themselves to us in the Northeast.We are moving away from the sun, incrimentally, and yes. I know…

Do you remember your dreams when you wake up? I usually do, and I enjoy thinking about and building upon them throughout the morning, as I often dream crazy stuff with elaborate plot and incredible scenery. I also go through periods of nightmares, and that's less fun. I love a horror book just like the next witch, but seeing horror stuff? No thanks! The other thing I like a lot is trying to figure out what does dreams mean, even if they do not always correlate with what's happening in my waking…

📷 271/365 - Someone left the garage door open.

Girl on the Net (I will call her GOTN moving forward) wrote about the Cornell rape allegations. There’s plenty to read on her website and in the Wikipedia page if you want the details — it’s unfortunately a familiar story in American colleges. What moved me to think was this part: Far harder to start an awkward conversation. One-on-one or in the group chat with your guy friends. Somewhere there aren’t any women to show off to. Yeah. I know exactly what she’s talking about. I’m an IT guy. I work…

[Zip codes starting with “9” instead of “0” should have a real clue.] If not for the whims of a penny, there would be a Boston, Oregon, to go along with Boston, Massachusetts. Instead, Oregon’s largest city is named Portland, after Francis Pettygrove’s hometown of Portland, Maine. A couple centuries later, that fact resulted in ads about Maine’s Senate race being incorrectly shown to hundreds of thousands of Oregon residents, who were no doubt bemused and/or amused.Link:…

It's the quintessential symbol of Halloween: the Jack-O-Lantern. Fortunately, it's also one of the easiest designs for a baker to make. Just take one round cake, ice it in orange, add a cartoony face, and...voilá! AAAEEIII!!Er. Heh, sorry. Let's try that again.Voila! That's...not a cake. [rolling up sleeves] Voila! Is that...plastic?Cheater. Voila! A Pumpkin Poo-nicorn. Well. That's a first. [through gritted teeth] Voi-la. What the...what IS that? Come on, seriously, there's no way you could…