https://esoterictriangle.neocities.org/feed.xml

this is actually just a iframe repost. I used my immersion blender today and went hell yea

Sometime last weekend Snapdragon suddenly put everything together, realized she could stand up without a support or assist, and has begun walking freely. Since then she has not let her knees scrape the floor; crawling is over. She is, of course, falling all over the place. But she can get up and try again and is getting more and more stable; at this point she's tripping more than wobbling when she falls. It has been extremely fun to see her head at a height and location it never was before finding her peeking over and around and running about constantly just for the sheer joy of it. She's wanted this since her eyes could focus. She's attained her only goal, the one she's desired from birth. She is triumphant, flying.

Today tho. Today she experienced an exquisite pain; a wound one can only suffer when one is a walker. A horrible injury reserved for only those who know two things: how to walk... and where the Legos are.

guy who has the ability to make blades of sheer willpower that rival the finest swords and just uses it to have one less thing to wash when cooking

This is in a lot of ways related to this pair of Magnolia Siddell blueskyposts but also not because: Same Hat Magnolia. Same Hat. Hunter X Hunter is incredible and I'm always thinking about all the weird-yet-normcore ways one could use nen. It's an entirely different kind of compelling: if you were not called to Be The Best or Save The World or whatever what would you do?

So baby Snap is, of course, a baby. And therefore talks like one--dada and mama and həp (help or [h]up or both) and doll and see! and olivyew[1] and cetera and cetera, getting more and more complex as she explores her tongue. This evolution has brought her a recent commitment to dadeee instead of dada which is very good. She likes this new daddy trick so very much that she'll just walk around going dadee? daddeee. daddeee, daddee! with every inflection Perfect.

Now. Her sister's name is much harder than dad or mom or even grandma[2] and papa, so we were all very interested in her version, which has turned out to be... Well. I guess to translate to Goose's internet codename, it would be "bear bear". It is extremely funny and cute, both for the skip on the first syllables and for how she says it. Recently tho, she's been enjoying daddy so much she's branching out to "bearbie" and. auroduaotidualgd . soin eodleo. It is So Cute.

1. I love you ↩︎

2. which comes out almost exactly like mama ↩︎

I pretty much exclusively use longtail cast on. It has The Perfect Start when not resorting to a slip knot[1], it's extremely swift with just a little practice, and when tensioned correctly, it's reasonably stretchy. Tensioning correctly is all about how far apart the stitches are formed on the needle--using two needles only forms the first row too large, not the part that actually matters for stretch or even aesthetic considerations: it's all about those half hitches underneath. Using it I can make great mitts and socks and hats and anything that needs a good amount of stretch--I've even started very airy lace with it. I can't do my wife's socks with it, though. Her instep depth makes a sock need a lot of stretch to get over the heel, and increasing the size of the ribbing and decreasing after would make that section too loose when worn.

I have made her a decent number of workable socks, but I don't want workable, I want glory! On a few pairs I've ended up cutting out the ribbing and working it up from the foot[2] so I can cast off using JSSBO, then doing a provisional caston on the second sock to allow for working both directions more easily. This works, but is not exactly the nicest way to make a sock--mentally stimulating for sure, but half the joy of a sock is working it with only a quarter of your attention.

So I need a new caston. A stretchy one to rival JSSBO. As much as I adore The Principles of Knitting, Hiatt does not spend as much time going over the merits of cast ons, being far more interested in the how (or I missed it this perusal; I was short of time that day), so I trawled the internet a bit. I found lots of suggestions to use German twisted (aka old Norwegian), a small number talking about Jeny's slip knot cast on, and not much else.

As much as I love Jeny's bind off, I didn't even attempt Jeny's slipknot cast on. The name made me suspect (see footnote 1) and looking at it too I just can't see it nicely returning after expansion, and looking at working it, I thought it highly susceptible to poorly metered out runner between stitches. Maybe I wrote it off too soon but. It's not what I wanted.

German twist is laughably not it, and most of why I started this post: I want to be grumpy about it, lol. German twisted is a longtail variant that introduces a twist to the half hitch cursive 'e's that run below the first row. It's like doing the backwards loop caston with left leaning loops instead of right leaning loops.[3] The argument, then, is that this introduces extra yarn down where it is needed and extra yarn means more stretch. I argue: that's the same fallacy that leads people to say twisted rib is stretchier when it is demonstrably the opposite. In this case, any perceived gain is due to the extra motion and friction making it easier to space out each stitch. As I mentioned above, spacing out the stitches correctly is what gains long tail stretch. The problem here is as soon as a yarn is even moderately "sticky"[4], those closed loops are locking in, limiting the work's ability to expand outward, and, if stretched to the point of overcoming the stick and pulling out, are then locked into that stretched state. I'm a little mad I even gave it enough benefit of the doubt to try it (esp considering I didn't try Jeny's!).

It being out, I tried cable's gentler sibling knit cast on, which. was fine but it's not the nicest to edge and I wasn't convinced it was going to give me any more reach than Good longtail. Finally, I resorted to something I hate in the name of pursuing Glorious Ribbing: I watched a youtube tutorial. I hate youtube knitting tutorials. They're horrendously inefficient, rarely show the process in its flow state, and always always always have too much preamble. I just want to read the instructions! Look at a picture for as long as I need! Compare to what's in hand! The issue then is the cast on--Tillybuddy's--really only has several YT videos and one photo article that I could find. The photo article was not formatted for a phone and was behaving oddly. what finally broke me down to do the YT was when I saw that Tillybuddy herself had two: the Long Version and the short one.

The short one is actually short! It has minimal preamble! It shows how to start, how to do, and how the flowstate looks! Good job Tillybuddy, you know what's up. Also: your cast on is a work of art. I ended up checking out the long one to get more detail 'cuz it's so cool. I think that a) this is exactly what I need; b) it is elegant, has a strong flow state, and is nicely memorable; and c) this is the most flick knitter coded caston to ever exist--something truly delightful. I legitimately don't think left-hand-feeder could come up with this cast on. It's flicking to its very DNA.

Here's the short version, if you're interested. The edge it makes is fetchingly similar to longtail at first glance. You don't need a slipknot to start it. There is no tail length to consider. It is very stretchy and conforms to ribbing above it leaving you a nicely zigzagged edge. It works equally well for 1x1 and 2x2 ribbing (I'd wager it'd be nice for any even pairing, and if the stitch count worked I'd try it for a 5 like 2x3). Its only drawback is it has to be done in even numbers, meaning I can't do my preferred "cast on one extra stitch, slip first stitch, then work the first and last stitches together" joining method for ITR. This hardly matters because it's supremely easy to weave the end in edge pattern to close the gap of the join. (also. I could probably just do a single cable or knit co to make an odd number).

this is a great cast on

like. Super Great

these socks are gonna be glorious socks

1. no cast on needs a slipknot. Either do the longtail start or a single twisted loop oriented so the twist locks that first stitch in place. Knots are a point of hardness in something otherwise squishy. ↩︎

2. I'm a die hard cuff down sock knitter. This goes quintuply for anyone with even marginally high insteps--flaps lead to the best gussets ↩︎

3. that's not an "this is an example" 'like' it's a "this is literally the equivalent of" 'like' ↩︎

4. which includes all wool yarns, incl superwashes. And why would you spend hours on a not-wool sock?? ↩︎

We're rearranging out entire house. With two girls, the room that has been the babybedroom is getting too small[1], so we're taking it as an opportunity to make everything a little nicer before a much longer-goal plan of adding on to our already bizarrely added-to house--actually, here. Let me give you a totally dimensionally accurate floor plan:

There is a window between our room and the girls'; it is super weird (and constantly curtained lol). As far as we can figure this house had the Girls'/laundry/most of the kitchen added on. The enclosed porch off the kitchen and the NotPorch my office is in definitely were added on--neither are on the foundation (and we know when the kitchenporch was put on). Newspaper clippings indicate it's likely this house was also translocated here at some point in its possibly-close-to-if-not-surpassed-100-year-life. Apparently two or three owners ago--I still cannot believe this but the sources can be trusted--someone lived upstairs as a separate apartment. I literally cannot draw what the attics look like without going going 3D or topographical. The roof/floor distance is not conducive to living up there. How did it work?? Regardless: there is a door on our North exterior wall, one floor up. There is no stairway to this door.

I digress. We're rotating everything around. Kitchen's doing doubleduty as dining. Dining's our living room. Our bedroom will be the girls', the old living room is now our room, and their room is going to be transformed into a bathroom with an actual bathtub. It's going to be nice! We're pretty happy with how we're able to use the space in our new bedroom, we're excited for the addition space we'll have in the girls' room, and the living and dining is working just fine.[2] As an exercise in reexamining how we live it's been quite interesting and valuable too. We're very happy with what we have and it's fun to make what we have work in different ways.

One funny thing--and this is what the post is actually about--about our new bedroom location is how the West wall used to have a free standing wood stove. This means a couple square feet is brick, and there is a brick section of a wall with chimney on the other side. The chimney is actually capped and nonfunctional, and we've talked about removing the brick on the floor at least (I am not at all excited about making and sealing the hole in the wall the full chimney removal needs), but for now the brick is there due to bandwith requirements[3]. This means the head half of our bed is roughly one brick taller than the foot half. The quick solution was to just grab some bricks[4] and put the foot-end legs on those but. Our bed frame has wheels. And even locked they were happy to slide on the surface of the bricks.

I got tired of lifting each corner back on the bricks any time any of us nudged it, so I did this:

That's just a chunk of 4x4 with a neat little circle routed into one end. Cheap, didn't take long, and very satisfying to do--I love operating a router but don't often get a chance to do so! For this one, I used a guide I made out of the highly compressed 1/4" mdf that came as package support in the flatpack wardrobe we set up in our new bedroom. A 3" hole saw made a quick shape to route, and the guide/bit offset meant the end shape was like 2 3/4" or something. This was extremely vibes only given its purpose. I didn't even bother carefully aligning the guide before supergluing it down on each chunk of 4x4:

It worked quite nicely. I did end up having to drill an entry hole for the bit--I swear I have a 1/2" or 3/8" spiral upcut routing bit somewhere but I could not find it for the life of me. If I find some more excuses to do this again, I'll go and pick up another--if past me did buy one, that's a surefire way to get it to show up.

And find excuses to do it again I shall... routing is fun!

1. especially in terms of space to play! ↩︎

2. we do miss having our island counter opposite the sink, but it's a sacrifice we needed to make ↩︎

3. rearranging everything and planning a bathroom and painting rooms takes a big enough chunk as it is! ↩︎

4. We have a pretty large collection of them, all grabbed from piles of where they get dumped when the farmer plows the field next door. These are all just like the ones we have in our chimney. I think they're from a barn that burned down? I would assume that means the barn and this chimney were built around the same time 🤷 ↩︎

Grilled some kebabs; they turned out real nice. Marinated the steak for 3 or so hours, alternated placing the peppers and steak skewers to make sure the fat's drippings hitting the coals transferred goodness over. Meat stacked on a stick is built different, may be king of the prep options[1]

1. think about it: kebabs,,, shawarma,,, gyros,,, carnitas al pastor,,, it's the Good Stuff. Only contender may be braising ↩︎

Making pizza for the two girls has been quite entertaining; neither of them eat a ton and they both have very different (and shifting!) preferences: right now we're on lemon pepper breadsticks for Goose and cheese pizza for Snap[1].

It turns out too that the most exciting part of pizza for Snap right now is actually the sauce. She choose the sauciest pieces first and then ate them from the top.

The quantity part lead me in a funny direction for this one--for Snap I cleared a lane down the middle of the pizza to make peperoni free; once cut it was like the slice was never taken, and the long cheese pizza bar was Just There

this also ended up being a very wet dough, which meant Extremely Good Bubbles

1. for the record: pizza might've been her first two syllable (non-repeating) word ↩︎

Something little i am celebrating right now is how I've ended up being the guy who people at work come to when they have questions they perceive as stupid--the ones one is embarrassed to ask but you have to ask because your normal info gathering avenues have failed. I love those questions!! I hate being in that situation, and if I've got the answer I wanna help, and if I don't got the answer I can validate that it's a good question by being stumped. I love that I've cultivated a attitude that makes 'em comfortable to give me a call. Doubly so 'cuz that means my ongoing machinations to undo all the toxic shit they've let build up is working in the most important ways--you gotta see yourself as worthwhile to ask for change, and if I can make them feel worthwhile then hopefully soon they can see that truth themselves; and as their confidence grows community should too.

Listen,,, being a dad rules in so many ways but recently I've been able to revel in one of the Ultimate Forms: watching my kid Participate in The Arts. She's been a part of a little choir that meets every week for this last semester, and the other week they had their concert and it was Perfect. Today Em texted me a video of Goose singing with them outside of our local[1] museum--doing one of those "choir sings in a public location because that is Good" things--and. Yeah!! she's doing it! That's Art, baby!! that's my art baby!!

Her preschool put on a little play of nursery rhymes for a nursing home; Goose was little miss muffet and took great delight in screaming and running away. This also ruled. This was also art baby!! As I previously posted, she's been Making Things; she's been experimenting with drawing and paint more and more; overhearing her play more and more complex social situations with her toys is a joy. She's so cool!! She's only like 5!! She'll keep doing cool things??

Life is honestly not all good and definitely not easy for me in various ways right now but also life is good! Watch it grow! Make it grow; do Art

1. uh. relatively speaking ↩︎

I think there should be a game in the large 3rd person single player action game sphere of dark souls/zelda/monster hunter/control/splatoon where the shielding mechanic(s) takes the aesthetic and mechanical direction of a fighting game: you can hold a defensive stance and just tank a hit at the cost of a non-HP resource or you can time the stance correctly to gain advantage for a counterhit. Which is Ideally a suplex. especially if what you are combating includes oversize enemies with oversize weapons and double especially if you can suplex a dragon.

I think that fighting games have really nailed how to make a parry feel good and I think it comes down to the sound and also it being one button you either tap or hold. But also it is absolutely the stance; there is something monstrously incredible about ryu and ken's power stance that makes it so much cooler than a squid roll or a shield bash thing. More modern fighting games leaning into this with camera angles, particle effects, and time slowing are only as spicy as they are because that stance is what is burning into your eyes at that moment.

Let me go fight a monster and brush off its massive attack by standing still, powerfully. Let me time it well and open up an opportunity to do something awesome on top of that awesome. It'll be great.

p.s.
I do think there is also something to the strictness of timing windows in fighting games that contributes towards the excitement factor but I also think that in a single player game the window for a perfect parry should be tweakable. I don't know whether this is a "3D spaces make it harder to judge when something needs to occur" issue or a "fighting games have a training room that makes practicing craft easy and you can often even analyze the hitboxes themselves" issue or a "fighting games have a certain expectation of skill because progressing and expressing skill is the game whereas in a single player game story progression is generally the meta motivator" or a combo of all of these but I think making parries easier or harder at will is a good thing.

I picked up Control for a song the other day; I figured I'd be playing it pretty slowly given how few my opportunities to play games without a sidecar[1] are, but I didn't realize just how slowly I'd be starting: this game's controls are my enemy. In general, I try to stay away from using WASD/keyboard movement; my left hand RSI flares up when I do it for too long, plus I've found controllers are rather comfy. The problem with controllers is right stick camera is literally the worst way to aim accurately and I have never understood how people do it competently for shooters. Thankfully, I have a secret weapon: the power of gyros. I picked up an 8bitdo ultimate a few years ago specifically for this problem; it lets me pipe Switch input to Steam, let Steam turn that into steam input, and make my gyro point as a mouse to get the Power of Splatoon on my PC. It takes a little config[2], but I have rocked a good number of hours in Risk of Rain 2 and Deep Rock Galactic this way.

Readers, the problem is RoR2 and DRG both sort of support dual-input. Control does not. at all. In DRG and RoR2, you get some button indicators wobbling between keyboard and controller but it is otherwise fine to point with a mouse at the same time as moving and pointing with joysticks. Control, on the other hand, fully drops all inputs coming from a gamepad joystick when the mouse is engaged. To get Splatoon-like inputs relatively quickly in other games, I've just enabled gyro-as-mouse, tweaked sensitivity, and bound a button to hold to disable gyro[3]. It takes a little bit of time to identify what input I want to lose/rearrange (usually I claim rstickclick/R3 for disable gyro--I'll bind it to a back paddle and it's usually only crouch or ping or rock and stone or whatever that's easy to relocate or put under a chord of two buttons) but I've never really had to explore the full gamut of steam input options.

Gyro-as-joystick is an option, letting me stay in gamepad only mode, but less than a secohd of it told me it was just as bad as I remembered. It's hard to research "gyro controls for control" without mostly getting general gyro control information, but someone out there tried to explore the full gammut of settimgs for this mode and concluded Control is a particularly bad candidate for some reason. I just know it's really slow and wonky and non-intuitive. This means the best solution is to just.... remap all of the controller buttons to keyboard and lose the analog movement speed adjustment a joystick gives, which. While sad is not at all a deal breaker. What is a dealbreaker is what one does with the right stick--pure gyro is not a nice way to navigate, but joystick-as-mouse is nearly as bad as gyro-as-joystick. At some point you'd think I'd just give up and play keyboard and mouse given the frequency and length of play sessions will be few and short but. I love a good rabbit hole to fall down[^4].

There's another method of pointing with a right joystick that only works when you have a way to look up and down--say, with gyro. It's called Flick Stick, and it was invented by Jibb Smart, the guy who made JoyShockMapper (another gyro input option apart from Steam), Fortnite's gyro control scheme, and is a major gyro advocate in gamerspheres (and who is also another former Cohost user!) Flickstick makes your joystick a rotation compass. You wanna turn 90° left? Point the stick left. You wanna make a 180°? Point the stick down. After the initial point (the flick), you can sweep the stick along its gate to operate it as a semi-normal joystick input locked to a single plane to refine your angle/keep turning. It's funky and not how I operate under Splatoon Rules, but it seemed my best option in this scenario so I dug into how to use it with Steam.

Turning it on is dead easy; what is not is calibrating it to actually turn you correctly so the direction you're facing corresponds with the stick. Basically, you have to match a setting's value in pixels with the number of pixels your mouse would run over to make you do a 360°[4]. That way it can do wizardmath to turn you exactly however much rotation you flick to. There's at least one calculator out there that's supposed to find this value for me, but I decided to do the calibration myslef--at least partially due to the fact the way you do it is extremely funny: you map a button to the special Steam Input "Do a 360", choose a nice edge to look at in game, and do a pirouette. If you're not looking at the same point, adjust the number lower or higher based on which way you overshot till a full spin lands you at exactly the same point. Here's where my next pitfall lay: the spin at its default settings is so fast, you don't know how many times you spun around.

I don't really get how the pixels in the setting map to the game/mouse/whatever--is it resolutionbound as well as mouse-sensitivity-settin-in-game? I have no idea. When I turned on flickstick the number was something around 20,000 and so I went "ok, let's just adjust from here" and got a number that made me return to the same point. The number is shared by a gyro setting, and it seemed gyro was surprisingly sensitive, but not so much it was uncomfortable, especially after lowong a sensitivity modifier. The part that seemed vaguely wrong was how flicking left or right didn't seem to be exactly 90° rotation. It also seemed rather wobbly/fast. So I spent a bunch of time fiddling with the sensitivity and deadzones and things and got it to a point where it felt highly sensitive but possibly playable--surely I was just sloppy and not quite accurately pointing left or right. I ran off to the next gun fight to test in action and. It. it was not playable. It was slightly nauseating, inaccurate, and made me not want to touch the right stick at all.

Recall I am doing all of this testing in short bursts, often at night[5]. I had climbed to the two hour mark on Steam and was rather confused at how my flickstick did not seem to be behaving like the gameplay-with-inputs-shown I had seen. I finally found another calibration video where the guy suggested turning on the setting that programatically applies a diamond gate to your stick so you can only flick the cardinal directions and doing quarter turns to verify four lefts make a circle. Even locked to 90° turns I was not getting a neat right angle. That was... Odd. A 360° was dead on, though, what was going on? Somewhere in playing with this I suddenly realized: Jesse was doing multiple turns. My pixel number was tremendously too large and my poor little Director was pulling off olympic level gymnastics in the blink of an eye. No wonder she had a headache.

After dropping the calibration number massively (and then upping sensitivity everywhere since it was suddenly enormously sluggish for some reason we will never know why), I felt an immense sense of calm: I could control control.

Now to get some more time to actually play it

[^4] my brain supplied "worm trail" here and. You know what? I might swap to that

1. sometimes I wonder how other gamerparents do more mature games and then I remember most people stay up late. How do they do that ↩︎

2. and almost always some sort of button layering or chording ↩︎

3. there's actually a "reset camera" input you can bind too, but I've found on a PC game it's generally better to be able to fully stop gyro--for menus especially, but you can also just stop gyro, recente your controller, and keep rolling just fine. I don't really do any advanced 180° look tricks with the recenter button in Splatoon. ↩︎

4. or. Something? The unit in Steam is pixel, and other than that I don't really get it, which is exactly why I ran into an issue you'll see in just a second ↩︎

5. and ah. at least one session on the clock. It was eating at me. ↩︎

it was a korma day

I made a guy. Its name is EGG-12:

This guy. This guy has been wiggling in my brain for a VERY LONG TIME

Way back when I first went, "hmm. Should I try building a gunpla? Is that a hobby rabbit trail I should fall down?" I saw a picture of this kit[1] and went, "ha ha. it a little egg guy". It round, it has a cavity inside for a mini robot to sit in--which gives the minibot a eggshell hat--and its stubby limbs are Just Right. I never really sought it out, but I kept seeing it here and there and always went "hehe egg". Shortly after I started really doing a lot of painting details on these, I saw in my mind's eye this weird little round robot again, with a white body to fulfill its eggly purpose. When I got the kit, I expanded my mind's eye further and went with an even more Beautiful Egg, brown and speckled.[2]

The thing is, tho. I couldn't stop there. I plotted and planned, from paint job and. Beyond.

The paint job tho--i'm pretty proud of it. I "preshaded" the arms and legs with blots of color underneath the final color to give it a subtle modulation (it doesn't really show in the pictures at all). I used a pink underlayer on the yellow and the brown to make sure they came out warm and solid. I obsessively mixed two Perfect shades of brown--one base, one for speckles--and then sponged the egg instead of brushed, intentionally overworking the paint as it started to dry to give it an eggshell texture. i went and gave the eggyolkbot inside a colorshift sensor, which was something like 15 or 16 layers of paint. On top of it all, i went and gave the limbs a high gloss finish while giving the body a carefully calibrated flattening to perfectly match an egg.[3] This is also the first guy I have fully painted every part, and not just sections! I did a good job.

So. The uh. The other thing. the Beyond part. Somewhere during the paint job I thought, "this guy has a story. it's not just a robot that looks like a egg. it is an egg. why is it an egg. what does it want. where is it going."

When you have a billion bits to paint and sometimes a million coats on those bits, you end up having a lot of time to dream. and dreams make even more things. Things like.

zines

Mobile users. You'll have to forgive me. I'm about to hijack your phone's orientation. Hopefully this works...

I used aspect-ratio to lock it into something close to a page spread, and <picture> to serve a different orientation depending on view width. I think if I put a blank section in front of the cover and at the end so it starts and ends offset and then made the page separation a little clearer this might be Just Right?

My thought was "this egg turned into a hero kamen rider style, with its powers directly entwined with the evil it opposes"--created by being forgotten on the stove for too long and as part of a sometimes harsh cycle of food, it rejects (and at first is unaware of) its dark origin and seeks to do as much good as it can. I also thought it would be funny if the zine itself was a fiction wrapper to the fiction. I am still laughing about naming the creator Al Bumen. I've been thinking a lot lately about how much I want to make a zine, so when I finally realized I could fit a small story in the tiny package of a folded 8 pager I got Very Excited.

It turns out I actually hate folded 8 pagers as a format, tho! I've made a zine or two, but always as cut & stacked folios stapled. This style is very very fast to make, but next to impossible to crease neatly once you go to fold it into a closed book shape--too much paper where the spine wants to be. Now that I have scans, I'd like to format it so I can print two copies on a sheet of paper printed front and back; I think that'll look much nicer.

Art for art's sake is a delight. I just went and yes and-ed myself six times and have a cute little guy sitting on my desk AND a little comic for it. It's great. Making things is good; I recommend it.

That's all I've got for now. Any final words, EGG-12?

1. Bandai's 30 Minute Mission EXA Armored Assault Mecha in case you need to know ↩︎

2. I almost went with a robin's egg and a different color of limb but chicken egg won out. Me and my sibling have a Thing[4] about eggs, and specifically the ones one normally eats ↩︎

3. I literally sat down with an egg in one hand and this in the other. This guy even feels like an egg. ↩︎

4. ask me about the Cult of Egg sometime ↩︎

hello. Welcome. These are my friends, the bookclub of worms. Please be mindful as you sit down.

Be sure to listen carefully to the boss. it may seem intimidating at first but I promise it is kind and conscientious despite first impressions.

The other day Goose was at the library when they were putting pool noodles behind books on certain shelves to prevent them falling into gaps or something. Goose Immediately Had A Vision upon seeing the offcuts. These are entirely built by her; Em just gave her supplies and let her go. When I got home from work she proudly hauled me over to them and declared, "it's a bookclub of worms!" Occasionally, they are also candles. Regardless, they are friendly

Please notice the mouths on each one. I have not bothered asking why the boss gets three eyes: it just seems Right to me!

I've been listening to some ska recently, and specifically poking at what makes each wave what it is. (I think I'm looking for a particular flavor of ska but I don't know what, exactly). Ska is such a fun/ny sound in the middle of so many other genres and I love it. As much as I love it, though, I don't own any albums and don't have any sorta go-to for getting a ska fix, which is what all this listening is for. It's been very fun looking up different bands and songs and there are some real gems in the oldest ska albums. The more laid back first wave is a really lovely listen, altho not what I was looking for.

in poking at the 2nd wave of british ska, tho, my rabbit trailing really ramped up; I found the music video to the Special's Free Nelson Mandela and: yeah it rules for a lot of reasons and I rolled down a lot of trails from this but today's main one is this--check out that footwork! that funk and dance! It's not the ska or a skank[1] (which I feel like does have a through line to the ska, unlike this,) but something with vim and some tap-like style and I had to know more. So I stumbled along to an interview with Jerry Dammers on recording the video, where he does mention it, but just causually, as some "crazy jazz dancing". I was able to pull along some searches with that tho, falling into a lovely world of UK 80s Jazz Dancing (or old fashioned jazz dancing sometimes?) and then to some specific hot groups like IDJ who had some Extremely Good Moves. I think it'd be a joy to be able to move like that. I love a good footwork heavy dance, and especially something with pop and pep, so this hits a sweetspot for me. In that last video there's a step where they drop to one knee in a turn and then pop up and back down and. Man! that's cool.

I rarely get opportunities to dance, and I really don't need to go that hard, but I think I should learn how to do some smaller steps in this style. They're Good.

1. side note: what an Era this video was recorded in ↩︎

Every year around this time, the frogs wake up. It's a raucous chorus and a delight and treat and I love it. We have a pond edging up to our property that's connected to a marsh that is connected to a copse (where I hunt morels). There was once a concrete wall/dock on the pond, but the wood has long rotten away and fallen apart, leaving only a divider between marsh and pond that is rather permeable.

I ramble down to the pond and commune with my friends, the frogs who very well may have been alive as long as I have lived here.[1] I like to wade/hop from grassy patch to grassy patch to get into the marsh and stand still long enough for them to get used to me; then I can prowl around and get quite close before they side-eye and stop singing (or swim off). Some are more nervous than others, but I can often get the camera within a foot or so! This year I also saw a bluegill gliding in one of the clear water pathways through the marsh grasses. I don't know that I've ever seen a wild fish not on a hook that clearly before! The angle of the sun was good, the water deeply clear, and I got a lovely window into its world. I couldn't get a good enough picture to share, which. Honestly makes it even more magical.

Please enjoy frog day twenty twenty-six. This day is so important to me I went so far as to even uploaded videos to youtube so you could hear them.

there's a couple more videos in this playlist too

1. American Toads have long lifespans! In captivity they've lived for over 30 years. Truly delightful. ↩︎

o
to be
to be
to be

I am
you are
we are

Enjoy:
sun
light
growth and growing
frogs singing at the pond
yellow in a sea of green (stars in that sky that stretches 'neath your feet)
the smell of earth
the smell of wet
the silent bellowing sound of everything verdant opening up

o!
to be
to be
to be!

I've been worn thin lately, and also listening to Wild Child by Enya a lot[1]. Here is a slapdash tribute to it?

I woke up today, windows open, frogs going ringadingadingadingadinga down the way. I'm gonna visit them later!! o, to be, in spring

1. it has reliably gotten Snap to afternoon nap when she can't sleep[2] 'cuz tooth growing paints but also: it's my favorite ↩︎

2. cause of feeling thin? at least somewhat! ↩︎

Little Snap doesn't say "yes" or "yeah" or whatever for an affirmative. She instead does the most musical and adorable "mmm-hmm!" and it makes me want to ask her a hundred questions so I can hear it over and over again.

mm-hmm!

when you do that trick where you stand up close to the camera with your hand up and someone stands at the other end of the field so it looks like they're standing in your palm that's an optical lilliputian

I am going absolutely feral over this book

I want to eat it

I want to read it to everyone

I need everyone to read it

It is, on the one hand, a little poem describing what a snail is and how it lives. On the other hand, it is a primer on how one can pretend to be a snail. Together, it is some Extremely Capital A Art. To top it off, the art is delectable, a lush garden of moist earth and growing foods and small creatures and a child shrinking smaller and smaller under the snail's spell, hunched over, gliding along, reaching with feelers. It's a feast to look at, it's a feast to read, it's a feast to read out loud. It truly is a spell, captivating and marvelous.

it starts,

Imagine
you are soft
and have no bones
inside you.
Imagine
you are grey,
the color of smoke.

And it only goes up[1] from there. I am under the snail's spell. You should be too. You are, presumably, on the internet currently: glide over to your local library's page, open their catalog, and put this on hold. It's by Joanne Ryder and illustrated by Lynne Cherry and it will make your life richer and more wonderful.

1. or,,, down,,, ↩︎

We got to see the artemis II launch and I don't know how much it'll stick in 5 yo Goose's mind but wowwie how cool and wonderful; the team of people, planning and building and prepping and mathing and,,, it neat it cool it rad

I saw some flash cards they used to prep their moon geography for their study during the flyby and there was a little note that said something like, "don't memorize these names, just now the shape of this collection :)" and I was like, that :) is so real. Science!

Listening to them gush as they look at the moon like, "what??? this is way cooler from here???" like, road trip to the moon, please?

I hope I get a chance to show Gooseberry more live footage from inside Orion, I think that's So Cool.

zoom zip zop around the moon fwoosh woosh wowwie

I have been taking photos of food and then not posting them. Please imagine mr game and watch chef flipping these images into your brain thru your eyes like they were little LCD bacons

I love carrying contraptions. Backpacks, pockets, bags, satchels, tupperware, buckets, pots; they're all great. I would have too many backpacks if I let myself--there's something so satisfying about a thing that perfectly fits other things. One of the Best things that carries things is a quiver. There's something about a box full of arrows, a tube full of arrows, neat rows, a pile, a few arrows, a score of arrows... I feel like there are more quiver styles than there are shooting methods.

I shoot ambidextrously because a) it's fun and b) I'm cross eye dominant so neither hand Just Makes Sense. This is an issue on the quiver front, though, because (imo) the best quivers hold arrows snuggly and also snuggly to the body. Both of these things generally mean the arrows end up needing to be at a particular spot around the hip of your drawing hand to make it comfortable to grab and attached in a manner that's stable enough for the arrows to slide out. This is... inimical to using alternating hands. I have, on my mental drafting table, a plan for something that will mount centrally on three points and rotate and lock to point left or right depending on which hand but that is... overly elaborate and hard to swallow attempting to build without being fairly confident it will work the way I envision. So this week I did the way way way simpler thing and slapped together the model for a pocket quiver.

This guy can slip into a back pocket or clip onto a belt/waistband and puts the arrows right into that reachable spot. Pocket quivers are one of many quivers one can use, and lots of people like them (and it seemed perfect for my use case). I decided to make instead of buy, and modeled my own because there was only one model out there with a clip that also optimized for clip print orientation--and I wanted it even slimmer and even more optimized: like what I saw, this uses a dovetail to attach the clip without glue, but this one only needs support for a like, 2x3mm segment. instead of most of the clip. It took around an hour to model and another three to print. I have been champing at the bit to try it since, but weather and schedule conspired against me and I had to wait till today to learn

it is exactly what I want right now! It lets me keep the arrows close at hand insteada spiked into the ground and I can pop it into the other pocket when I swap hands mid session. I decided loading it outside of my pocket is easier, so I empty the target, fill the quiver, and slip it into whichever pocket is right.

I might gussy it up a bit (offsets are very tight right now, maybe I will add chamfers to each hole to make sliding arrows in even easier) before sharing the model but I would be comfortable dropping it out onto printables today, tbh. Currently I'm just excited to use it, though.

Now that Snap is really eating Big Food with Big Kid Teeth she is exploring various culinary delights.

• Salami? Very Very good
• Fruits? hell yea
  • apples
  • raspberries
  • bananas
  • oranges
  • grapes
  • if it fruit it a hit
• sausage or ground beef
• hot dogs
• cookies
  • I don't think we let Goose eat any this young; second child privilege
• coffee beans
  • yes, really.[1]
• steak
  • she's a fancy kid I guess???
• brussels sprouts were identified as a delectable little orb
  • ball! ball! she begged
  • fastest spit-it-out since greenbean pureee

1. the first time she begged for one I expected her to spit it out and she just..... sucked on it happily. Decaf, so I didn't feel too bad about it, swept her mouth when I got tired of making sure she didn't choke on it. The second time, she crunched it for a while before I did a mouth sweep. Weird little goblin behavior 😌 ↩︎

Em: "uhhh why is Snap's butt so wet?"

me: "oh--that cup she had; she was enjoying it to the fullest"

Goose: "to the emptiest"

Goose: I gotta make a quick getaway! I'll use the vents!

playing together: Goose: This is aurora! Snap: gravely baby roar

I suddenly realize: au-roar-a: we are delighted

sometimes you're riffing and joking with friends and a phrase waltzes into your mind that is immediately put on a rotating pedestal with fancy lighting

"bruise uptime is nearly 100%"

Last night, Goose crawled into bed with us[1]. I asked if she needed anything, and best my sleep deprived brain can recall, she said something along the lines of "I just want to be here". Eventually her poking into my back led me to carry her back to her room.

Apparently, when Em asked her today why she needed us she said "I tried sending you a signal. A signal that I needed toddy[2] cuz I had a stuffy nose"

...

I literally cannot conceive of a more youtsuba thing to say; I read the text from Em and--like hearing words in a certain voice--I saw the words in a speech bubble

1. except not really?? I swear she was like, curled up or crouched on our pillows directly between our heads. I do not even know how she squirreled there without disturbing either of us until that point ↩︎

2. an elderberry/honey/clove syrup, lest you think she's into hot scotch and lemon, lol ↩︎

I updated some base pages of my site! I haven't actually messed with anything outside of generating new posts in a long time. Hopefully this will get me closer to adding new things to the site[1]

I updated the home page text, the friends page, and added one thing to the about page.

I also learned about the super slick aspect-ratio css property. What a good addition to css.

1. a big computer task, which... I don't do much since that's my Job. Honestly the amount of stuff I do on my handheld computer is maybe a little impressive in some ways. ↩︎

Made some beans n rice last night; it sounded nice and then I made it and ate it and it wasn't nice. It was Ultra Super Rad.

This guy was a lot of fun. The line it's from, MGSD[1] combines chibi proportions with a larger size and mechanical complexities (sliding panels, moving pistons, etc). I find their proportions to be pretty ideal--not nearly as "oops all feet and head" as the most extreme SD gundam nor as gangly as the normal proportions sometimes are. I find the proportions to be similar to my much-adored mobile suit ensemble gacha guys, just... significantly upscaled. This guy is just under 5 inches tall; the other kits I've built have been around 6; the MSE guys are like 2.5"

I actually received this kit as a gift! The subreddit for gunpla hosts an annual secret santa; it's got rather strict requirements and is extremely carefully managed to make sure everything is done well and no one gets left out, and... it turns out gundam builders really love sending giant stacks of kits to people. The sender also included a 3rd party kit that's a giant pair of claws, which included waterslides--that's where all the purple is from.

I don't really feel as if I tried anything new building this guy, but I did feel as if what I was doing has become pretty refined: I'm managing paint viscosity, I'm stopping myself from adding new layers too soon, and worrying less and enjoying it all more. Waterslides, as ever, remain incredibly fun. I did pick up a purpose-made solvent for them partway through; I had been using nail polish remover, which... works but is very hot and liable to melt the decals too much.

Ok ok I did try one new thing, but it wasn't regarding the build process: I poked at touching up the photos using my (ancient, non SAAS) copy of photoshop. I did some automatic white balancing that worked but I feel like was a little inconsistent[2], plus I removed the stand in that last photo to try and make it look like he was standing on one foot unassisted. I think my angle coulda been better and I ended up needing to crop the toe due to some bluriness in the photo stack so it didn't end up like I saw in my head.... but I did an OK job removing the stand?

I also darkened around the very tip of the barrel of the massive rail gun thing in that photo--it ended up blending too much with the background and that did the trick. I think photo software is why I don't do much photography, tbh. It feels both too zoomed in and zoomed out to clean up a photo? IDK; I think I like trying to set up a photo more than messing with it after.

1. Master Grade Super Deformed ↩︎

2. the inconsistency could be due to the photos themselves? I did keep all the settings the same across each photo, but it was a partly cloudy day so the light shifted a fair bit ↩︎

We've been playing Tears of the Kingdom again. I forgot all the rules to cooking and tossed a frog in with food ingredients, netting a fine plate of dubious food.

Today at supper, Goose wasn't a fan of the chillimac I made: "Dad, you put a frog in this"

Today I made a nice big pot of beef korma; less for the product (altho: hell yea it good) and more for the process of it. As I was cooking i was all "ahhhh, healing curry" but I didn't say that

We sat down and Em went, "ahhh healing curry" referring to the process and we're so in sync

1. We went to see Les Miserables. What a neat show. Theater is Good. Les Mis is Good. The stage and props and lighting Is Good. Making a Big Art with a bunch of people is Good. Participating in the art as the observer is Good.

2. We got a fancy water table for Snapdragon for her birthday last month. We're getting our first spring tease, so we're finally able to enjoy it. Water is a kid magnet, but water when there is a hand pump and little toys and paths to run the water down??? Gooseberry is probably enjoying it to the fullest but a lil babe Just Splashing is of course also enjoying it to the fullest.

3. I vacuumed one Million cheerios out of our van and did nothing about the mud everywhere and it still feels a billion times cleaner; cleaning a thing is a good way to enjoy a thing.

4. I was printing some honeycomb pegboard stuff to fit a very narrow vertical strip of wall over my desk[1] and I wasn't really paying attention to how low the spool of PETG was getting. I returned to my final section of honeycomb seemungly complete, no filament on the spool, and no filament poking out of the PTFE feeder tube. I verified the finished piece was the same thickness as the others and then pulled off thelfeeder tube to collect the very very small amount of filament left: I won yarn filament chicken

1. for sticking a bunch of gundam on ↩︎

Here is my finished painting from the other month: a crawling Snapdragon! I had to commemorate her most adorable lurching goblincrawl, and decided to give painting another go at the same time. I had a lot of fun! I constantly feel like I'm Missing Something and am not totally happy with balancing pigment and water in the brush[1] but the end result is good and I enjoyed doing it. Trying things is good! Making things is good! babies is good!

1. and don't know how much of this is due to the cheap paints ↩︎

it's getting brighter out. The sun has been shining the last few days, and I'm really starting to feel it, which is one part glorious and two parts "time to remember where I've come", which this time of year apparently means "yeah SAD is subtle, pervasive, and mean but remember when you almost died?" I'm really glad I got through this darkest part of the year, and that darkest year of the year.

I think one day I'll untangle this far enough to weave a real story out of it[1]; I even sat down and wrote a much longer Thing about it, but it wasn't quite right. 12ish years ago I spent somewhere between six months and a year with nonstop suicidal thoughts ranging from "you should die" to "here's how, let's do it Tuesday". I don't even know how long it was due to the severety of depression building up to it! At the time, I struggled a lot with the why--why did I feel so wrong, why was I depressed, why was I suicidal, surely if I found the why I could push a button and be fixed. Depression, unfortunately, has no button, and cause is complicated. I think at this stage I actually do know why--or as much as one can know anyways--which is why I'd like to weave its narrative, but it's hard. A lot of it has to deal with living in a cult, and even worse, being autistic in a cult. When a cult is built on a religious document, you find further belonging through that document, and then the reason you slowly extricate is the very same document, it gets difficult quickly. How much is too much info? What is the arc my narrative takes? What's the conclusion I want the reader to leave with? I like to be able to ask all these questions, and to see where I was and where I am now and see how, despite how much "this cannot get better" felt like a bedrock statement, I actually did get better.

Since I started doodling with this thought again on Thursday I have had a little chime vibrating inside, a perfect little tone, joyful and true: i live

The days are getting longer. I outlasted this season's SAD, and i'm pretty sure I'll keep doing that. i'd like it if you did too.

1. assuming the memory loss component doesn't render it all into static ↩︎

it still goblin week

when I told Gooseberry it was the week of drawing goblins she immediately knew what she wanted: "I'm gonna draw a cat... with three legs"

I love how her first instinct was to a) modify an animal to get a goblin and b) work off of what she's confident she can paint. The second page shows a nice pivot too; she started the goblin in the upper left side as another goblin cat, but wasn't happy with the face so she gave it a lumpier head and even more arms. Then drew the cat she envisioned (but sleeping) to the right. 8 is not her favorite number (that's 10[1]) but I think she was really enjoying the swooshes of the paintbrush, and that's one step away from the swooshes of an 8 so here we are

1. and also a thousand and a million, altho I don't think she knows what either look like... I should show her. She'd get a kick out of all the zeros I bet ↩︎

there are two categories: dog and cat. cats, are of course cats. Dogs, dogs. Bunnies? Cats. Beavers? Dogs. Minotaurs? Cats, surprisingly.

it goblin week

I'm trying a new thing! Composite photos stacked to allow the entire object to be in focus. I especially wanted to do it for the lance this guy has, but I did all of these this way just 'cuz it was fun

It turns out this is easy to do!! I took 6-8 photos using my galazy s21+'s Pro camera to let me manually focus. Braced against the table, I incremented the focus a bit each photo, then took them all to photoshop to combine.[1] I found instructions online here to make a focus stack and slapped each of these together. I color corrected/whitebalanced two of them, poorly. And here they are!

This robot is the "exclusive" version of the Real Grade Crossbone gundam. I had to get this p-bandai recolor version because it had a lance, and I think the ideal giant robot combat situation is a joust. I was waffling on trying some gradients and space effects on it, but then saw this amazing space paint job[2] and it pushed me to Try New Things and I think I did good.

As an RG this one has more details, movable parts, and color separation compared to the HG kits I usually build--while still being roughly the same size. I loved building and painting with all the teenytiny parts! It was a lotta fun.

The best part of this guy tho is how he's a pirate and a giant robot at the same time. That's just Correct.

1. past me used student pricing to buy an adobe 5.1 suite. I think adobe can pry this out of my cold dead hands and I will try to run it in a VM if it ever breaks in a windows update. ↩︎

2. I saw an earlier wip post; linking the complete job 'cuz it's so cool ↩︎

We've entered a renaissance I think?? She spent most of yesterday painting, off and on. Em left the watercolors on the table and Goose came back every so often to have another go. Our table and fridge are covered in bunny eared guys. She's started adding rainbows overhead. Now we've got a bunny riffing off of the success of the cat.

And finally, we have a full departure into territories no man has gone before: not people, not creatures, but outer space. Not even just a starscape or a planet either; we are treated to the solar system, complete with lines of motion for the clestial bodies!! She pointed out the planets when showing off; which one was which was not consistent but she rattled off all the planets except uranus and pluto at least once in her explanation.

I keep thinking about these and glowing a little bit

Last night me and Goose ended up having a little painting party. I was working on a watercolor, so she joined in on her own. Mine is going pretty good, but you don't get a WIP, sorry! This is all about Gooseberry's delightful work. There are two significant strides in this: new imaginitive features and a break away from tadpole people. Animals, it seems, get bodies!

I love these 'cuz a) they are all paintings of Goose and Snap together (except the yellow one at the top--that's Em) and 2) she gave everyone bunny ears. Em asked how she learned to do bunny ears and she said "at school! They're like an 'm'". I'm intuiting she means she learned 'm' at school, and connected that to bunny ears, but also there could be a fad at preschool around bunny ears altho her delivery seemed to indicate that was not the case. Regardless: I love each and every ear. The grey one at the top is a further experiment, linking more 'm' ears together to make a crown. Nice! I'm fairly certain the looong arms curving over Snap's head on several drawings are to make the sisters hold hands.

This is a landmark. She has drawn some hercules beetles with two segments, but those are different somehow[1]; this to me is the first time she's given a guy a body. I said, "oh!! look it has two arms and two legs and everything": she forcefully corrected me that those are all legs cuz cats don't have arms. My mistake. Once complete she looked at this and went, "oh! I could make it a cat bus??" but then decided to save that for another drawing, which makes me wonder what she had in mind to modify this one--more legs? A door on the tummy?

I'm extremely tickled

1. for one, they're bugs. For another, she doesn't seem to treat them as "head and body" but just "this is how you draw a hercules beetle"--based off of a wildkratz episode? ↩︎

Something I regularly worry about with this blog is accidentally replacing a file by naming another file the same thing. Since I'm uploading these to my phone via github, there's a very real chance I'll forget I named an image something, upload a new version of the image, and some old post will be confusing forever[1].

It turns out I have already made this mistake, and in an incredibly poetic way. When I was testing out how 11ty would work and getting a feel for how it compiles pages into lists I made three sample posts. And then left them there when I went live because I thought it was funny. The files are named one.md, two.md, and three.md. When I realized my site turned one, I excitedly wrote a post about and named it... one.md. I can see in my git history the change.

I found this out scrolling back thru my posts and seeing how the final page of posts starts with 2. Wondering where one went, I took a look in github and: lo and behold. I could fix it and split them but... this is also funny? Maybe I'll make a RIV post complete with a tombstone to commemorate it.

Most posts should theoretically not hit this problem since they all reside in Obsidian, which yells at me when I name something the same but. There are outliers, as this shows. (plus the problem of images, which are scattered)

1. or at least until someone points it out. ↩︎

Speaking of yotsuba&!, there are two Perfect Comics about childhood: Calvin & Hobbes, which is about the inside looking out and Yotsuba, which is about looking from the outside in. Both are Perfect.

You can often tell how much Gooseberry vibes with something based off of how much she wants to be the main character. If she's suddenly luigi, you know luigi's mansion is good. If she's Hercules, you know the 1997 disney animated feature clicked. If she's a goblin and I'm a skeleton, you'll know we've read Nobody Likes a Goblin recently.

It should, then, be absolutely not surprising at all to learn it only took two chapters of Yotsuba&! to have a little yotsuba running around the house looking for rocks. Little did she know we already had a little yotsuba running around the house looking for rocks.

We made gyoza from scratch last night, a delightful exersize. It's a lot of work, but also worth it--especially for the fresh ginger. We ate them with the sauce Em and I invented, which is Always a Great Choice

Half for now, half frozen for later

What's uproariously funny about this post is how I threw it up having not yet talked about an incredible moment earlier in the game that pushes the bounds of what a DS puzzle can be further than I thought possible and is actually Peak Gaming. I didn't even know you could do what the puzzle asks you to do and I'm so glad I'm playing these on an actual DS.

in the hit 2010 DS title The Last Window: The Secret of Cape West you get to throw a chair through a door using your stylus. For hopefully obvious reasons, this is Peak Gaming

Gooseberry! You're home! tell me about your first day of choir! What did you do?

I played venomous snake family!

Yes, she's the one who instigated this game. Yes, her new friends joined in. There is not anything more perfect in this world. Absolutely quntessential Goose; Perfecto in this snake family (who are venomous)

Little snapdragon's really become a crawling fiend[1]. She also knows where daddy works when he's at home. These days she beelines over to my office every chance she gets to say hi and to take another stab at The Step--a maybe 3" height difference between the house and the weird enclosed porch room Thing I use as my office[2]. She has almost figured out how to overcome the insurmoubtable gap; I'll have to babyproof in here soon.

1. idk if I have mentioned it yet but it is so funny. She has to be on one knee for stability, but the other leg has to stick straight out for Maximum Power when scooting a long in a weird not-quite-tripod clunkaclunka crawl ↩︎

2. It is carpeted and (poorly[3]) insulated and even has hip faux wood paneling, but it also has a external door leading to it and has a window looking into it from the house proper. ↩︎

3. honestly what the real issue is is probably the single pane windows and the fact the actually external door is what amounts to an interior door--and a cheap hollow core one at that[4]. But it does have mystery drafts at the floor too. This is an old house that has--based off some old newspaper sleuthing--been transplanted at least once and seen several renovations of questionable technique[5], which brings some Excellent Character, a byproduct of which is building character calvin's dad style ↩︎

4. we're waiting for the replacement to come in; its dimensions are... Weird ↩︎

5. and according to anecdotes the was and the is don't entirely align either... I wish I could get photos that convey the absolute majesty that is the attic mystery ↩︎

Snapdragon has been waking up early with me the last few days. I don't really turn on a lot of lights in the morning--just the under-cabinet lights and a lamp where I sit to drink my coffee on the couch. She evidently prefers a bit more light than that, cuz she keeps asking for more: she'll point at the lightbulbs she wants lit and... sing?

She's got a little song she does that goes ~a a a a a~🎵 and she'll let loose for a light. I was scratching my head and then it hit me: every time I turn on a light for her I say ~shiiiiiiiine~* which is, of course, singing. So how do you ask for it? By also singing!

isn't it funny the impulse is go "look it's pooh" and not "look it's winnie"

I was gonna leave it at that but then I got wondering how Milne refers to pooh in his poems; it's been a very long time since I've read one, tbh. Is using pooh instead of winnie something that has occurred since inception or has it morphed to this and if so when?

Last night we put away all the christmas decorations--tree outside, floors vacuumed/swept from the aftermath of that, house patrolled for the little bits everywhere, ornaments all wrapped and put away, strings of lights sorted, everything down into the basement even!

After we finished, we all flop on the couch and Em goes, "wow, I can't believe you kept going! I was like, 'well okay I'll do one more thing 'cuz Seth is doing something still...'"

I had to laugh: I was thinking the exact same thing! We tricked each other! Is this what they call codependence[1]

1. no. ↩︎

You roll out of bed. The first thing you hear is your 11 month old say, "hi daddy I love you"

"Daddy what do you call that game you play where you're building?"

"uhhhh on the computer or on the switch?"

"the switch! you build with blocks and then it falls down"

*lightbulb*

"tetris?"

"yeah!!! I'm playing tetris on my phone[1]."

1. her hand ↩︎

Every day is a new year but it's easier to see it when the earth is waking up with you: solstice is past and the days can only get longer, brighter, fresher. We have a responsibility to fight and grow and live and live and live, so breathe in the air of another chance to do so

Em made us ropa vieja to walk into the next year full and warm and cheery. Whether you feel it or not, there's hope. Keep eating keep living keep fighting be growth and light, find joy even--expecially--in the smallest of corners. Keep turning pages, keep putting out new leaves, keep being you

May you be full in the new year

I suppose isolating just the voice tracks of a song is indeed technically a capella, but it is certainly not what I was expecting

at least the instrumental tracks are good (What It Sounds Like does mostly work with this method but the others? eesh)

I got curious: we have a van that can play media from a thumbdrive--both music and movies[1]. So along with your bluetooth connection (music only) and CDs and DVDs, there's also a meaty media option. I think this sounds fun to play with, especially when Goose gets a bit older and we give her the power to pipe whatever to her little screen/headphone jack[2]--put on a fistful of movies or a season of a show, some Good Albums, a themed vacation mix tape... lots of possibility here! The thing is, the USB slot designated for this function is at a really bad spot. Like "guaranteed to get whacked out and likely snap the drive any time anyone puts their bag in the foot well/designated bagzone" bad. I guess you could get a female to male cable to move the stick/provide relief, but I leapt straight to thinking low profile USBs should exist--either with a right angle connector or like, half size, or whatever, right?

...

I guess I'm old and still stuck in the 512mb days or not a dreamer or whatever cuz oh my goodness these are so so so funny to me--you can get a 128gb (or more!) flash drive that's no bigger than a mouse/peripheral wireless dongle. I literally laughed out loud when my search immediately returned hundreds of teensy tiny usb dongle flash drives. Information storage vs physical size is insane, a delight.

1. I think it can even pipe one thing to the headphones in the back while playing another thru the speakers cuz that wouldn't be overwhelming audio crimes at all ↩︎

2. technically speaking, she could do so now... But I'm not telling her that till she can read ↩︎

sometimes you sit there playing lego and you go, "yeah! it's a space cat! Like--wait. hang on. Have you ever seen the poptart cat?" and of course she hasn't it's nearly a decade older than her so you pull up nyan cat and hold a giggling five year old for three minutes and thirty-six seconds listening to that looping miaowmiaowmiaowmiaowmiaow

kimbap has been on the mind again, possibly but probably not likely[1] due to kpop demon hunter's opening airplane scene

Back when Em and I were single[2] there was a time we were making and devouring kimbap weekly or possibly even more frequent. We've played with a lot of different ingredients over the years and somehow I think this is the first time using ground beef despite that being The Classic Protein in my mind. Every time we do this I still go "wait how do I even roll these good??"

1. lie ↩︎

2. aka pre-children ↩︎

happy winter solstice; may your days be happier and brighter

watchin' kpop demon hunters:

"Rumi! are you okay? Can we get you some water?"

"I just need to take five"

Gooseberry: ".... why does she need five water bottles?"

I will forever and always love language acquisition and the magic that not having a vocabulary of idioms brings; connections I just... can't make anymore get made and it is a delight every time

I've been knitting socks again, which is great--they're a nice combination of satisfying, easy to Just Go Knit, and highly portable. Use a self-striping yarn and they're extra fun when finished, too! I have a lot of pairs myself, so the first pair here was for Em, and the second's gonna be gifted to her mom. I am... terrible at remembering to snap photos of socks when I finish them, because I usually go "nice!" and immediately cast on another pair. But I remembered twice!

on a whim I decided to print this boko camp chest Switch cartridge holder this weekend. I can't do anything by halves so I stippled it into rocky texture, darkened all the cracks, painted a couple more, and printed the eyes in translucent pink... then painted the back side metalic pink and then glossy black... then gloss coated the front sides too... then did a little gentle glow effect painting. Cuz that's not enough I also wrapped the handles in a little embroidery floss, too.

source

I just realized I never posted these as I meant to; through the magic of backdating, I just did! (21 Dec)

We got another Great Snow; at one point our horizon was completely washed out and the sky and ground became one so I think I get to call this a blizzard

This is an ootheca; probably for Tenodera sinensis, the Chinese Mantis[1]

1. these guys are pretty much everywhere in the US--or at least the eastern half I'm most familiar with--and are the huuuge mantises that get to be 5 or so inches long ↩︎

We got a huuuge snow over the weekend and then a little more on Monday. It is, as always beautiful to behold.

I was able to sneak out and get a little solo walk in before Goose took over and rightfully insisted on being snowdressed and playing and shouting and throwing and sledding. If I could bottle the sound of snow absorbing sound I would; it is not at all like any sound-absorbtion-paneled room I've ever been in[1]; the expansiveness of the open air and the directionality of the sound being eaten is unparalleled. It changes the shape of everything around me just as much--and in a very similar way--as the snow leveling and smoothing out the landscape

1. and I've been in a decent number hash tag musician ↩︎

slice!!

I've been thinking about a haircut for a while 'cuz my hair was getting longer than I liked to deal with. This of course led to "what if I cut it all off", which I am fairly certain is a relatively common impulse. We landed on a middle ground I wouldn't have been able to (easily) get to from my pre-long hair pseudo-undercut. I say we 'cuz Em cuts my hair and she does an incredible job. My hair is how swooshywooshy and peppy

is there a gutsier statement than

and it delivers, too

septic ovefflow(?) breaking all trust in plumbing; a true existential crisis (also a gross mess)

this is super gross and about poop, you have been warned

Over the weekend we had a massive septic tank and/or pipe clog that caused our toilet to reverse and overflow when our clothes washing machine drained its basin. This was, and please do not imagine it, disgusting and horrifying. We had been noticing issues draining all over the house, but it had never been quite bad enough to overcome the effort of organizing a visit from the plumber, but the morning of The Incident we were going, "wow it's so bad" to the point of needing to plunge the toilet. This meant I was Very Aware of the moment the water level in the toilet basin reached the height required to spill over and onto the floor. I immediately sprinted for the shopvac, flung its paper filter into the void, and got to work. it was gross

it was gross

it was gross

Of course, while I was doing this, Gooseberry was quite naturally breaking down: her trust in a fundamental aspect of our house was shattered, betrayed by every poop flushed suddenly returning with a wet vengeance. She was sobbing that we would have to move; Snap was sobbing cuz the shopvac was running and big sister was sobbing, and Em was on the phone looking for a plumber. It was Certainly an Event.

I'm very thankful my parents-in-law live directly next door; I do not know what we would have done without being able to walk over to use their toilet for the two days till someone was able to get over to snake all our drains to buy us time before the septic guys could come out to ensure the tank was also clear. This was an event that makes you immediately and deeply aware of the fundamental structures of life you take entirely for granted: of course you can just use the toilet whenever you need to and within moments of noticing your need.

We're all clear now

Sometimes, you're reading a bedtime story, and sometimes your kid goes "what's that??" and the Thing is a paper airplane, and you know showing her immediately would Prevent Bedtime so you say, "hang on" and make an alarm for the following morning to remind you to show her, and then the next morning you do and it of course is just as great as you anticipated 'cuz paper airplanes are great and Good.

Sometime I'll be able to show her how to fold her own and then we'll be living in a paper airplane hanger instead of a house 😌

to her two aunts: "Do you want to play TWO husband moms and dads!?"

upon asking for clarification: her aunts would indeed be her husbands. When her aunt's partner came in? He was also to be a husband, of course.

a new game for me is using the "make offer" button on ebay when a listing has it; I find myself going there to find niche things there more and more often[^1] and have been giving myself 10% discounts with it. It makes me wonder: how low could I go? Should I be taking advantage of the five offer limit and barter my way to 20% by offering 30 or 35% off? Would asking for an entire 50% bother the person so much they'd say "full price or gtfo"?

money is fake but everyone has their price; finding it is so funny to me, esp with old things with arbitrary value/no msrp & production costs to consider. How close to garage sale price can I get? Do I have the nerve and/or gall to lowball in case the seller Just Wants It Gone? Am I overthinking this (positive) or over thinking this (negative)?

Regardless, I bought Em a real fun tool for christmas; I could probably tell yall but on the off chance she decides to read this I'll save that for anyone curious enough to DM

[^1]like, twice a year lol

When I was making yesterday's country fried steak, I called Gooseberry over and said, "hey check it out, it's just like cooking mama!" as I was dredging everything in flour, egg, and bread crumbs. She watched for a minute, and then was like, "hey, yeah! I've done this before!"

dropping cooking mama on my DSi's SD card is the second best thing I've done to it, after installing custom firmware. It shows off a ton of prep for how one makes lots of food... plus it's just extremely fun to watch her play and slowly get better

My MIL has two pairs of socks I knit her at the start of this decade. I'm working on another pair, because it's high time she got some more... and in checking the others to confirm my length is good I realized just how high time it was: one hole, 7 bare spots across the two pair. I still need to darn the other pair, but the pair with a full on hole is all tidy now:

Each spot repaired/reinforced takes about 45 minutes of TV, give or take. Well worth the time: mending is a holy activity

We don't have much left of the quarter cow we bought last year, but what we do have left is a fair number of cubed steak. Em likes a good country fried steak, and I dare say I can deliver:

I decided to use our smaller plates cuz the last few (non-fried) steaks have felt like there was a lot of white space around the food. These uh. Might be a little small, but it did make this feel like a feast.

big magnetic storm!!

This one was the brightest and deepest I've seen yet. Nothing directly overhead, but off to the West there were bands deep enough to be blocked by the corner of our house. Its back face is due North so those bands woulda been directly overhead if we were further West!

Goose: "Can you fix my [lego] nutcracker?"

*I fix it*

"He needs to say something."

"I'm listening!"

*in a goofy southern accent, while operating the nutcracker mouth*: "thank you for savin' my life!"

gooseberry looking at the back of Hunter x Hunter vol 36 (it has Tyson's guardian spirit beast)[1]:

"huge eye guy movie book"

...

I really wanna know if "movie book" is a "comic is at the tip of my tongue but look what we got instead" moment or something else entirely but as a 5 yo she does not have the self awareness to delve into that

1. a giant poofy heart shape with four tiny wings, some sort of orrifice at the point of the heart, and one huge eyeball. It's not even the weirdest one by a mile; probably the tamest one, even ↩︎

curry curry it nice to cook a curry

one of the fun things about ramen is you can put whatever you want in it. A splash of lime juice? yea go for it. Sesame oil? Highly recommend. Marinated egg? Classic. Pickles? sure. Summer sausage? Why not. If it's nice to eat, you could probably put it in your ramen

So in cars and model cars and gundams there is apparently a painting technique known as candy coating. It's an ultra shiny ultra luxe job with deep rich color and depth. Normally it is done via aerosol; in the gundam world usually that means airbrush altho I think I have seen some examples done entirely with rattlecans. The end result is very pretty; it's moody in some lighting, flashy in others, and deserves to be spun around real slow on a turntable, even if the thing that got painted is a 3,000 lbs automobile.

I dislike two things: using aerosols and people saying I can't do something. Airbrushing looks really fun, and I bet I'd like it both for models and for drawing but I just can't drum up the entusiasm for a machine you really need both a fume extractor and a face mask for if you're gonna use it frequently. People say you really need the airbrush to get a smooth enough coat of paint to get even OK results. I keep coming back to what makes paint level and going, "OK I think I have all I really need actually"

So the last couple of days I've been putting coats of paint on some spoons[1] to see what works and it's been some extremely pleasant playful experimenting... With some Quite Acceptable Results:

I am once again lamenting my inability to put video here; seeing these in motion really helps to show their depth. But even without it: pretty good for a first try yeah? This wasn't lacquers or otherwise organic solvent'd hobby paint. This wasn't even hobby paint for the pigments. Not only was this hand brushed, this was done with the dirt cheap materials I've been using:

Yes, you're reading the large bottle correctly: that is floor polish. I've mentioned this a couple times here, but it continues to tickle me: floor polish is a well-loved finish for modelers. It is also used in recipes for washes and glazes and thinners for acrylic 'cuz it's got a surfectant and other extras for self-leveling. The glazes bit is what got me really thinking down this trail: in a typical candy coat you do three layers before topcoating with high gloss: a black base, a metalic middle layer, and then layer after layer of what the gunpla builders all call "clear color"--a transparent medium with a bunch of pigment suspended in it. It is, in essence, a highly specialized glossy glaze. What is quickshine but a highly glossy transparent almost-medium?

I've loved this idea for a while since a) don't tell me what to do, surely I can brush paint an acrylic candy coat, b) I already have everything I need and c) what I have on hand is the junky cheap stuff that tickles my gremlin brain and keeps my compulsive hobby-of-hobbies from getting too out of hand. So this week at work[2] I've been using this experiment as my in-between-tasks cooldown. Paint dries while I work, paint is applied while I break. I'm really quite pleased. I've learned a bunch of new things about acrylic mediums, more on how this effect ticks, and build a list of more things to try.

Things I've learned:

• As great as quickshine is, it's really poor on the uptake of pigment: color likes to settle faster than I would like, leaving brush strokes of color inside the neatly leveled coat of polish. Solution? Use acrylic medium as a binder! I used 1:1 paint/matte medium.[3]
• When it comes to the metal mid layer, It is even more vitally imperative that must you must do this don't touch the paint after you brush it on. In general you really don't want to do this--it is THE reason you get paint strokes but in the case of metal medium thinned a little with floor polish you gotta be ultra sure your paint is dry before another coat or you will lift paint and it will Be Bad
• I probably don't need as many layers in the metal layer! I have been trying to get a Solidly metal suspension colored layer but I don't know if that's actually giving the amount of depth I'm aiming for. It's good but. it could be better.
• How textured or not textured the primer is doesn't really matter when there are this many layers of paint. How streaky the metal layer matters, but the primer and black? Not so much. I did some of these stippled for the primer and one of the black layers I put all the strokes perpendicular to every other stroke I made: neither made a difference.

I've already got list of things to try on my next three spoons. It is very fun to just noodle around and go "what if..." and "yes and..." and "ok but...". Puttering around is important, I think.

1. Knitting has swatches, drawing has scrap paper, woodworking has cheap and/or soft woods... Model makers have plastic spoons. They're roughly the size of the larger sections of a gundam limb, are dirt cheap, amd behave similarly enough ↩︎

2. yay days working from home ↩︎

3. I wonder about trying a satin or gloss medium, but I don't think it really matters? They're all transparent, and the gloss coat on top is overriding any tendency the mix has towards matte... which isn't a lot to begin with since the acrylic tubes and the polish are both gloss ↩︎

playing with a lego construction crane (singing): "that's captain hook's hand! they took it off~"

Some friends have been raving about KA's cinnamon roll focaccia, so I've been meaning to give it a go. It's such a shoo-in good idea: focaccia, a Peak Bread, plus the glory of brown sugar and cinnamon. Today was our annual potluck-in-our-machine-shed harvest party, which was the perfect excuse to Make It So.

Reader, this bread is absurd. Absolute perfection. You know how cinnamon rolls tend to dry out quickly and are really only best shortly out of the oven? This does not have that problem. You know how sometimes a cinnamon roll's bread is too dense (which is even worse dry)? This does not have that problem. You know how good the cinnamon filling is in a cinnamon roll? This has that in spades... on top of a bread that actually does it justice. Also by nature of the bread, this is like, at most, a third of the effort! Focaccia just needs time to chill out once the dough is strengthened, and it's easy to strengthen with intermittent folds. No rolling, no cutting, just a bunch of waiting followed by dimpling and crumbling a topping. This bread is so good.

it.

so.

good.

I've been thinking, and I've decided the best way to describe Snapdragon's talking is animal crossing sounds[1]... But to write it there is only one option: rmv ll vwls

When she mumbles that she's seen a cat, that's kttyct. When she shocked me today naming the stuffy she was playing with it was dnl tgr. When she she has places to be it's g, when she wants something its gt.

She's surprisingly articulate, she is.

1. and specifically Timmy and Tommy in New Horizons--she perks up whenever they speak like, "who's copying me so well!?!?" ↩︎

I bought a lego set the other day. Given that it arrived in October, Goose was hoping it was a late birthday present for her, and was a little disappointed it wasn't, but not tooo put out cuz it's still lego and we all know we play with those.

Today tho, looking at the lego box and the partially built set she suddenly exclaims:

"oh!! it is my package, they just wrote my name wrong!"

Guess I'm not building this crane for myself anymore

Snapdragon hs been experimenting with eating more and more: If we're having soup I'll give her a mouthful; she's had a few kinds of cereal. She's a little too fast going for bugs or carpet fuzz for anyone else's comfort. A few weeks back she insisted on drinking from my water glass (and is surprisingly good at it??), and today that extended to wanting to taste my chai with a lil brown sugar. It was cool enough, so I dipped my finger in so she knew what she was getting into... and she latched onto my finger like she's never really done since true infancy and begged for more. So uh. maybe she's gonna be one of those kids who likes bitter right out the gate

Goose has been introduced (again? idk, feels like it's new) to the concept of the Classic q/a joke. This means she also is now contributing:

why couldn't the lamppost poop?

because it was dead![1]

Why couldn't the tapirs eat any ants?

Because there weren't any left!

1. editor's note: this is particularly funny to me because "dead" here is a stand-in for "inanimate" ↩︎

about the time Martin the Warrior performs oral surgery with his sword on a hedgehog who was sad he could no longer eat pudding

when you search all your pockets and hoodie pockets and jackets and bags trying to find your wallet and then search under the shoe rack and weird hidyspots and under the seats of the car and van and finally find it: yes ha ha ha yes

For at least a week Gooseberry has been hosting semi-nightly "scabes". On the first night she announced it was time for the scabe and we went, "Okay, what do we need to do?" and she got extremely confused: surely we should know what a scabe is???

Eventually we got an explanation. A scabe is a nighttime party. You have to turn off all the lights. And that's when the flashlights come out. In practice, it often also includes a little tikes story dream projector, but that does not replace doing story time at bedtime a few minutes later. Given the fact days are getting shorter[1], I imagine this will continue to be a celebration and it will slowly creep earlier and earlier. Perhaps we'll even get to have a dinner scabe?

Regardless: you too can have a scabe. I think I recommend it even.

1. and this may be a major influence on the concept: a month ago we couldn't really have a scabe before bedtime, it is required to be Dark ↩︎

Me: "I should probably only give her a few at a time so she doesn't choke, right?"

Gooseberry: "Oh, they're disposable. Do you know what that means? It means they fall apart. She[1] can eat as many puffs as she wants."

1. a stuffed bear ↩︎

sometimes I think my camera roll is near 50% pics of curry.

I have no regrets in life

me looking at a texted picture of gooseberry and snapdragon at the local orchard/pumpkin farm: "ahahahaha Goose looks like the all powerful queen of the pumpkins"

Em, responding, "She literally declared she was the pumpkin queen"

Snap in the bath, using her raspy babygrowl goblin voice: "bubble."

Me: what do you think Elephant Bananza will look like?

Goose: hmmmm.... probably an elephant with boobs.

She was right, of course

I am having fun painting teeny tiny details. A lot of times, I think I feel the poison of "do it for the likes/attention", but I think sitting with the details that no one will really comprehend is a nice antidote for it[1]. Plus it meshes with the deepest desires of my little goblin brain that adores teeny tiny things. I'm painting another gunpla, and it has these little mounting points all over its body. These can either hold additional blorby-orby drones or just kinda sit there, but to achieve these two states there are two separate parts you can attach to the model for each state--one with a flat top or one with a peg on top for the drone bit.

The kit comes with stickers, but they're pretty meh wrt how they're cut so the fit is guaranteed to be a little lackluster. Plus there are some details on the profile of each mount that could also be painted...

Do I need to paint these, especially when the versions with posts will be occluded by the drone bit? Absolutely not. But the joy of learning better brush control and trying a two-part painting method[2] compel me and I am greatly enjoying this madness

1. I think another antidote is just Not Talking About them or at least not in specific places (online), but I also do like to talk about the tiny things!! details are Neat ↩︎

2. I painted these almost entirely green to start, and now I'm covering it all up with the grey. This lets the green be shiny without worrying about doing a bunch of precise layers to ensure the green is solidly colored. ↩︎