elainegrey

Daily journaler is seeking other daily journalers. I'm looking for other diarists that share some aspect of their daily life, whether it's limited to a narrow aspect of creativity or concern or is wide ranging. The diarist should be open to reading my entries and ideally is already reading the entries of folks in my circle.

ETA: Diarist should have high tolerance for typos.

2020-10-23 Ha, the future is here. Adding five more years to keep this at the top.

Bluebirds are fledging, we found out as any household member outside got dive bombed by bluebirds. Carrie and Marlowe were kept in while the birds seemed on the offence in the back, just in case. I saw flutterings out the front window, watched Christine go out and get bombed, and watched the fluttering go towards the garden -- and then get caught in the fence? I went out and  Christine stood near,  getting all the attacks, and gently removed the fledgling from between the rabbit fence and deer fence. So happy with the story this year. I love our carnivores but i hate when they act on their nature.

 ( Read more... )

I have a new mastodon account for my professional life in identity management. The only reason i bothered is because i wandered into it after reading a newsletter and wandering into details.... Under the weather mental meandering. I chose https://federate.social/about (and my usual public name handle). This server seems maybe a little on the more moderated side than i would want for a personal account, but for my professional account it's OK.

On the other hand, i think slack instances for tech have been working for me. The channels for a topic are more agreeable to my wandering about.

--== ∞ ==--

I understand that most children don't want to think about their parents as sexual beings, probably a useful taboo. My sister gets very distressed with my Dad's giddiness around his dating. Both of them are still grieving more than i. (I think i could probably get worked up about feeling guilty i'm not grieving? I dunno.)

While i am not emotionally reactive to my Dad's dating, it sure isn't something i really "get". He's such an extrovert and i would like to hide under a rock, thank you. I *feel* judgemental and eye-roll-y but i'm not sure why. He's not aware how big a rebound he's on? He's not particularly reflective while wanting to talk talk talk?

I will confess a certain wicked pleasure in hearing of him dragged out of his comfort zone to a nice restaurant, and sad that instead of him stretching, he's pondering whether the person has too expensive taste for him.

--== ∞ ==--

Grump: ( Grumble )

Monday night and yesterday a small swirl of uncertainties with Grandmámá, who had stayed in bed and not eaten all Tuesday, but did rally yesterday. ( Swirl )

How did i ever get through the day? Especially when more people were writing here? I keep being surprised by finding entries i missed reading when i thought i read. I feel like my "morning quick tasks" and catch up reading take ALL MORNING.

Happy notes:

* i have not developed a lingering cough from the cold i have (still experiencing drainage). Yay for my desultory use of the lung steroid.

* i have identified where i will plant the ten bare root saplings that are arriving soon. I have a little clearing to do for some, and one i am planting deeper in the woods near the one rock outcropping we have. It's an American Linden which will be the core of some future Swedish woodland garden. I did get haresbell seeds too. Anyhow that will begin a deer exclusion test because apparently deer like lindens.

* i'm beginning to have hope that winter rye might grow enough in the woods to fight stilt grass? It's too soon, but i am hoping. There's also a plant called hogs peanut (Amphicarpaea bracteata). I've found a selected variety that is supposed to have high yields, and Lee Ritch of NY state says, "Even non-native, invasive Japanese stilt grass and garlic mustard can’t hold their own against hog peanuts." I assume that deer can obliterate it, though, although most documents refer to voles as the harvester of the peas. (That's what was distracting me earlier this week.)


Perplexed notes: i can't find documentation of what nurseries have to do to get the certification. I am in a invasive fire ant quarantine county and i can find how one treats the soil used in potting plants and -- wow, that looks non trivial. There's also record keeping (i have the records of most all of my purchases and plantings, so that is not a worry immediately), but other than the records outlined in the fire ant quarantine documentation ... whut to do? Fortunately there are three resources we can avail ourselves of. I may leave this as an assignment for L.

Impatient notes: i can't wait for Friday and visit with L. There's a Feb 11 convention at the county convention center for landscapers and plant professionals. I wonder about attending or sending L. Or waiting A WHOLE YEAR for next years.

Perplexed notes - more: now back to thinking the lumps on my forearm are from some inflammation from Marlowe grabbing me with her claws.


Administrivia: so, i don't see tags in exported journal entries. I'm going to duplicate tags in titles. My regrets for the annoyance.

For the first time in months -- February or so -- i have gone through my "ticklers," tags i put on Evernote entries to either indicate i should throw them away at that point (easy) or consider them at that point (oof). The tags are for the first or fifteenth of a specific month, so loosely it's intended to be an every two week exercise. Past ElaineGrey really is optimistic about how much free time current ElaineGrey is going to have, i tell you.

This process is good, because if i do the ticklers in a timely manner i am reminded "Cherries are in season and this is a good place to order them from in Oregon to have shipped to my grandmother to remind her of her childhood there." There aren't many things that i think she enjoys but the cherries are a wonderful treat for her.

But it's bad (stressful, time consuming), too, because suddenly a stack of "to do"s suddenly show up, and my memory is refreshed regarding the importance. All the things i was carrying around in my head as being important suddenly get crowded by past ElainGrey's speculations of importance. It seems easier just to ignore everything than examine each to see what to do with it.

But that's what i spent much of the weekend doing. There are all the sorts of things that are important but so-not-critical, like getting carbon credits for driving miles,and how does that compare to other things on my list? I made progress on that (finding a place to buy the credits from as the link i had from some years back didn't seem reliable any more - no links to it from the organization's main pages).

I have to say, i appreciate past ElaineGrey when she had time to put an expiration date on things. I'm slowly getting into a habit of recording when i thought something went on a list and when i think it should be removed (as well as, when relevant, a get-done-by date). I'm slowly training myself to not think about it if there's a removal date in the past and remove it. There will always be more articles to read, more birthdays to celebrate*, and not my documentation of reading and gardening and what not will always be incomplete. (That's not all the things on the list but it's a sample.)

I looked ahead a little: the tag for the first of August doesn't seem very heavy. I'm heading to Ohio shortly after that. Anyhow, it seemed an incredible investment of time, but i hope if i can return to the habit it will ease things. Lists will get shorter, things done.

Inhale, ..., exhale. Inhale, ..., exhale. It may seem impossible and overwhelming, but it will be what it is. Ditto the yard. I went out yesterday at 7 pm and was soaked with perspiration just picking beans and okra. I'm feeling a huge wave of doubt, as the stilt grass reaches up and the goose grass smothers wild flowers, and so on. But there are little flowers here and there, surviving deer and Japanese beetles and competitors and neglect. And i am getting a meal of garden vegetables today at lunch. Let me affirm it's progress.

Somehow i need to find the spoons to harvest potatoes, whether i plant things there or not.

And of course i bought fall seed, which should be started soon.

* well, not _always_.

Before tags, journal entry titles were pretty important to me, but since ....

Christine just showed me some video of a child in a New Zealand zoo kissing the glass separating her from a male lion. The lion sat back on his haunches and rapidly beat on the glass with his front paws. (The girl, unfazed. Some adult, "I think he's asking you to step back.") The caption described this as the lion "freaking out" with which i take exception. Cat owners know what a cat freaking out is like: this was not that.

So i muttered my exception, then i muttered about click bait titles, and then i declaimed THE WORLD IS COMING TO AN END.

Why do i care about click bait headlines? What offends me so? Maybe i should try titling my entries with click-bait style. There's no commitment to keeping the subject and the entry aligned with clickbait style titles, right?

Well, i clicked through the agreement page having read other's routes to some assurance. However, if you are posting on Dreamwidth, i've dropped you on LJ. I also dropped a whole stack of communities and folks who have disappeared.

If i dropped you, please feel free to let me know!

I need to make a post that points to Dreamwidth that's visible if you aren't logged in. I may start posting comments with my Dreamwidth account if your journal allows that. Haven't sorted that out in my head.

So, that's the latest administrivia.

For reasons, my last two posts didn't make it to LJ. That's been fixed.

Tags and Titles: when one uses the "export" function, http://www.livejournal.com/export.bml or http://www.dreamwidth.org/export , the tags are not exported.

This is a little maddening to me: the assistance in keeping tags a consistent vocabulary makes it a very useful source for data mining -- but i can't get at it easily.

Thus, i am ensuring that as of 2013, tags are in my title field.

I'm sure that someday i could figure out how to fetch the tags -- crawling the tag index is conceivable -- but it isn't really what i wanted to have to do.