michaelboy | Network

I've been feeling bloated and puffy these last weeks, which my ankles tell me is what I am, and anyway, mug and heat and all = summer life as normal. But I woke this morning oddly limber and decided I'd better see what the damage is, so went downstairs and weighed myself. To find I'm ten pounds/ 4.5 kilos less than I'd thought and fifteen pounds less than I'd feared. What I was last February, basically. This is what not drinking will do to you. So I need only lose 20 pounds/ 9 kilos to get to my pre-op weight, not 30.

The problem basically is that my body image hasn't really changed since my mid-30s while my body certainly has. So seeing my reflection in store fronts is a shock. Who's that short thick woman? Why, it's me.

It stopped raining mid-afternoon so I set out for the laundromat and ran into my garbage bin painters coming down the street with their newly purchased 3. So I was able to pay them then, and stop worrying about them coming some morning to roust me out of bed during one of my indulgent lie-ins. Not that I lay in this morning. My exhausted lungs took me to bed at 11 last night, meaning I was wide awake at 8:30.

Today was still not easy on the lungs but miles better than yesterday. Sinuses still fill, throat is still scratchy, eyes still itch. But laundry has been achieved, I have clean towels and hand towels and sleep pants, so count myself content.

xkcd_feed

https://xkcd.com/3100/

With a good battery, the device can easily last for 5 or 10 years, although the walls probably won't.

https://xkcd.com/3100/

brickhousewench

We have a women's Employee Resource Group (ERG) at my company. But they seem to schedule a lot of things on Friday mornings, which is when I have my weekly massage appointment. So I don't manage to attend very many of their meetings or webinars.

But today we had a fireside chat, with Meri Williams as a guest speaker. She's a female Chief Technology Offier (CTO), with a really interesting background. She's originally from South Africa, went to school in the UK, fell in love with her wife and "failed to go home." So she's a woman in tech, queer, she's also disabled and neurotypical, so we touched on a lot of different things in her talk.

When we were talking about developing people into leaders, she mentioned a program at her job, and that they'd written a post on Medium about it. I'm still looking for that one, but I found this interview while I was looking:

https://medium.com/tech-captains/cto-interview-meri-williams-the-legend-helping-to-cure-rare-diseases-7119ae02039c

Looks like their Medium "channel" is here https://eng.pleo.io/

She was probably talking about one of these two blog posts:
https://eng.pleo.io/pleos-associate-engineer-program-67da43699c8b
~~https://eng.pleo.io/learning-to-be-a-great-mentor-3-lessons-from-the-pleo-mentorship-programme-3671549556bd~~ Just read this one, not it!

rebeccmeister

My summer research team has started up today (3 students). It is going to be a good group, but is definitely going to require a lot of my time and bandwidth.

There are a couple of themes to write about from the Erie Canal trip. I want to write about Moss Island, and about all of the places where we ate food and drank coffee that were worth writing about (many!).

Also maybe about the locks we were able to check out, and learning about the original canal, the expansion about a decade later, and the contemporary canal. There are multiple canal museums along the trail, and we only visited a handful of them!

Then, we had National Learn to Row Day this past Saturday morning, where it rained cats, dogs, and elephants, but because of that I was able to tackle a handful of important boathouse projects. (and in spite of the rain we still had 44 people come to visit us!).

And on Sunday I managed to get some gardening projects done. We're well into strawberry season, although I suspect it's going to be a short season. The lavender has flowers, and the Dark Dahlia has emerged from the soil. I got a second round of branch shredding done, so now there's a newer mulch pile back by the compost. I just feel so much better with everything shredded!

Onward.

walkitout

The electrician arrived! Yay!

There is a lot of early morning banging. So, there’s that. I’m glad, but A. is miserable, and we still don’t know (but will soon, foreshadowing later in this post) when insulation is happening. Obviously, the electrician doing that work means insulation CAN happen. Which is good! Turns out google nest has discontinued the smoke alarms we use, and the replacements through First Alert (boooooo) are not yet available. R. ordered them without discussion, and we don’t even have a shipping date. Reddit is not encouraging on this topic, either. In the event, we can slap any battery powered ones up there we want to. We could get reseller google nest ones, but a lot of that is old stock.

There are a bunch of Ring, Alexa and other integrated smoke alarms, battery and hardwired. Some of them say things like z-wave. It’s clearly going to take a while to investigate and it’s unclear that any of this is useful in the new house, because it’s going to have sprinklers and a fire panel so it probably has commercial everything anyway. I do need to ask some questions about that, clearly.

A. wanted to wash her hair this morning, so a shower got added to the schedule, and we weren’t exactly ahead of schedule. But we did get her through that process. I didn’t have time to do much more than the minimum on Duo.

Later in the day, we got the insulation install date, so that’s something. Of course, that triggered a bunch of implementation on earlier research, because while the VOCs on this stuff aren’t too bad, they are still not compatible with being in the house while the work is being done, or for a certain amount of time thereafter. We also have to coordinate with getting R. to a hotel near Deerfield for the night before his bike race. Complications!

But it’s all sorted out, including a couple dinner reservations. Tomorrow I’ve got a long day with meetings both before and after the usual OAC / MEPFP and walk arounds. I need to figure out my morning schedule some time before I go to bed tonight.

I walked with M. at 1 pm.

Someone finally came over and picked up the two mini flashlights that take one AAA battery each! Yay! Nice guy. He’s a mechanic for another town’s DPW, and loses them all the time. Might as well lose an old one!

ETA:

The guy who picked up the Hue Bloom lights is struggling to get them to work. He’s partway there, and is being nice about it, so I’m trying to help him out. I don’t really know what to think about any of this, especially since FB Messenger is warning me this might be a scam, but I really don’t think it is.

I dusted my room while chatting on the phone with Priestess. That was lovely.

I also transferred the summer skorts and shorts to the main dresser and moved the longer, warmer pants to the secondary dresser in the closet. I really should pare some of this down, and probably will over the course of the summer.

I got out my old Kokoons, realized that I no longer pack a micro usb in my charging bag, went downstairs to retrieve one (I only use the Kokoons on transatlantics), and actually found the cord that originally went with it. That’s a sign that the volume of cords we have around is manageable, and that we’ve saved the right ones. Love it! I grabbed a spare block while I was there, altho I won’t travel with it. The combo induction charger has a usb-a in in the front and that should work fine. Probably should test it some time soon.

Oooh, and someone just came and picked something up from the bin on the porch. R. keeps turning the porch light off, and I keep having to remind him to leave it on. At the holidays, for deliveries. And lately, for late pickups from the bin.

umadoshi

Cat Herding: Our beloved Jinksy!bear turned twelve on Saturday. Twelve! He's (by a margin of a good few years) the second-oldest cat I've ever had, and continues to be just the sweetest, softest boy. May he be with us in good health for years to come.

It was also Claudia's birthday, of course, and I always think of her on their birthday. Oh, my darling baby cat.

*The oldest was Jenny, the cat of my childhood who was still with my parents for years after I moved out. She made it to nineteen, most of that time in rock-solid health, and never really forgave me for moving to Toronto and thus straight-up vanishing from her life for months at a time.

Reading: I finished reading Jennifer 8 Lee's The Fortune Cookie Chronicles: Adventures in the World of Chinese Food, which remained an interesting read right through, and read Adrian Tchaikovsky's City of Last Chances, which I think is only the second thing of his I've read? (Elder Race is the other one I'm sure of.) Having finished it, I'm in a position that's annoyingly familiar, where I liked the book quite a bit and am curious about what happens next, but am not sure I cared enough that I'll ever actually get around to picking up the sequel.

(The thing where I've almost entirely been reading books I own for years now doesn't really help, where I've often picked up the first book of a trilogy of series or whatever on sale in ebook because I've heard it's good, and then am not sure I'm invested enough to pay full price on the next one when I own literally hundreds of yet-unread books. Feh.)

Watching:

scruloose and I are up to date on Murderbot and have seen the first episode of Kingdom season 2.

In the case of the former, I'm skeptical about the nqqvgvba bs n punenpgre jub qbrfa'g nccrne va gur obbxf ng nyy--juvpu V'z abg vaureragyl ntnvafg, tvira gung gur fubj vf pyrneyl vgf bja guvat, naq V'z thrffvat fur'f gurer gb pbairl fbzrguvat gung jbhyq'ir orra gevpxl gb qb gur fnzr jnl va guvf sbezng nf va gur abiryyn. Ohg fur'f naablvat, naq V'yy cebonoyl xrrc svaqvat ure naablvat jurgure fur vf va snpg freivat jung V pheeragyl guvax vf ure cebonoyr shapgvba (rarzl ntrag znfdhrenqvat nf nyyl) be fbzrguvat zber vagrerfgvat. [ROT13] Guess we'll find out soon!

Working: Thank goodness the manga I'm working right now is (as usual) a fairly easy rewrite and not a tight deadline, because scrounging the mental energy for freelance work has been frustratingly hard recently. I'm almost halfway through my draft and have about a week and a half left with it, so it's fine, but. :/

Weathering/Householding: We've had a lot of gray days and some high-ish temperatures combined with humidity (which I hate), and the air quality, while not remotely as bad as it is in a lot of places, has been fluctuating significantly...and the AC function of the heat pumps is essentially nonfunctional. >.< This is crappy timing, given how much of the time over the last several days has required having the windows closed (and the air purifiers running for good measure, although they don't address some of the nastiness from wildfire smoke). And for bonus fun, while the heat pumps are still under warranty, the company we bought them from went under a few months ago, which complicates things. (I think possibly the main person died. :/)

That said,

scruloose made a bunch of calls today and we have reason to hope that someone can come in and take a look at them soon, if that particular company has the parts in stock. And while it's been uncomfortably warm inside some of the time because of this, at least it's not full summer yet. Hopefully we can get things dealt with by the time summer heat arrives in earnest.

And on a purely pleasant note, a couple nights ago we were in a phase of "somehow the air quality is fine outside right now, so we can just open the windows and run fans" while it was pleasantly cool and raining atmospherically and the wind was doing a wonderful job of wafting the smell of the lilacs into the living room.

Current Mood: contemplative

badly_knitted posting in

get_knitted

Hello to all members, passers-by, curious onlookers, and shy lurkers, and welcome to our regular daily check-in post. Just leave a comment below to let us know how your current projects are progressing, or even if they're not.

Checking in is NOT compulsory, check in as often or as seldom as you want, this community isn't about pressure it's about encouragement, motivation, and support. Crafting is meant to be fun, and what's more fun than sharing achievements and seeing the wonderful things everyone else is creating?

There may also occasionally be questions, but again you don't have to answer them, they're just a way of getting to know each other a bit better.

This Week's Question: We all probably have multiple WiPs, but which of yours has been hanging around longest, waiting to be finished?

If anyone has any questions of their own about the community, or suggestions for tags, questions to be asked on the check-in posts, or if anyone is interested in playing check-in host for a week here on the community, which would entail putting up the daily check-in posts and responding to comments, go to the Questions & Suggestions post and leave a comment.

I now declare this Check-In OPEN!

Current Mood: tired
Current Location: my desk

forestofglory

Here's some thoughts on media I read and watched recently

Little Thieves by Margaret Owen— This YA fantasy novel was really fun! There are lots of heists and disguises. All the moms are terrible but they aren't dead (being Death doesn't count). I really hated all italicized German words (it is not a problem that they were German I just hate it when “foreign” words are italicized, it's both othering and distracting to me as a reader) However this really sucked me in! It’s fast paced and twisty and the worldbuilding feels grounded.

Coffee Prince ep 5-20— I finished this classic of crossdressing girl media. It was cute and fun! I got a great comment on my post about crossdressing girl media about how crossdressing allows women to form friendships with men on more equal footing. This drama really leans into that and the pleasure of being ‘one of the boys” without having to justify oneself.

This did the best job of “The MC thinks he’s gay because he likes the crossdressing FL” that I’ve seen (Though I haven’t seen many) it could be even better but I was pleased with it nonetheless.

(Content note: Blink and you'll miss it miscarriage and fertility issues)

The Sapling Cage by Margaret Killjoy— Somehow no one told me that it is a crossdressing story but trans. That is, the main character is a trans girl who starts the book thinking she’s a boy in disguise. Interestingly she "disguises" herself as a girl so that she can go out into the world and become a witch (mostly crossdressing men in media are trying to access "inner" spaces). The author even thanks Tamora Pierce in her acknowledgments, so it's very clearly part of that tradition.

What people did tell me about this book is that there are a bunch of meetings, in fact I was expecting more meetings based on how much people talked about them.There are some meetings, but they don’t drag out and are often summarized. But I was not expecting it to be quite as brutal as it was, there was a lot of fighting and some killing, and also quite a bit of phillosy about power and making choices. Definitely a book that gave me a lot to think about.

I don’t often go seek out reviews after I read a book, but this one I really wanted to see what other people said about it. I really liked Roseanna’s review.

The Truth Season 3 cases 4-5— I continue to really enjoy this show! I especially liked the set of costumes that looked part of a production of Midsummer Night’s Dream. Also they have been playing with the format in fun ways with these two cases.

osprey_archer

The university where I work happens to have a bronze cast of Degas’ “Little Dancer Aged Fourteen”, so before I read Camille Laurens’ book of the same name (recommended by

troisoiseaux), I went to have a good long look at the sculpture.

It’s less than life-size - perhaps two-thirds, one-half the size of the actual fourteen-year-old dancer. You can see the bronze creases in her stockings at the ankles and knees, the places where socks begin to wear out. Her forehead slopes back sharply, more sharply really than I think the human forehead can. Her hair hangs down her back in a rope braid, which is tied with a golden satin ribbon. A real ribbon, fabric rather than bronze.

She wears, too, a cloth tutu, and the curator told us (when I visited with my parents months ago) that the tutu has to be replaced every now and then, always to great debate about exactly how it should look, as the tutu on Degas’ original statue (wax, not bronze) was long gone when collectors decided to make a metal cast. How long should it be? What color? What kind of fabric?

The one at my university is about knee-length, much pleated, creamy pale layers of some fabric that might be tulle, the outer layer purposely frayed for the bottom quarter inch or so. The dancer’s feet are in the fourth position, but her hands are behind her back, and seem rather large for her size.

Thus prepared, I dived into Camille Laurens’ Little Dancer Age Fourteen: The True Story Behind Degas’ Masterpiece, translated by Willard Wood. Laurens is attempting to write a biography of Marie van Goethem, the girl who posed for the famous sculpture, but as there is very little material about Marie, it becomes a hodgepodge of other things, including a partial biography of Degas (and indeed it’s filed under his name at my library).

The book is also about the historical conditions of the young dancers at the Paris Opera, who were called rats and generally assumed to offer sexual favors on the side, giving the ballet a scandalous vibe that most 21st century viewers probably don’t pick up from looking at Degas’ pictures, since nowadays ballet is seen as a refined high art. (Is a picture, or a sculpture, worth a thousand words? Or can it tell us anything that we don’t already know?)

And it’s about the initial reception of Little Dancer Aged Fourteen, which more or less universally appalled viewers when it was first exhibited. Was it because Degas modeled the sculpture’s head to fit what was then considered the physiognomy of criminals? (Hence the sharply sloping forehead.) The association of ballet dancers with prostitution, which perhaps becomes a little queasy-making when you look at this flat-chested statue of a child?

Or the fact that the original statue was modeled in grayish wax, so the little dancer must have looked just a little corpse-like? A completely different viewing experience than the bronze cast I studied so carefully.

Degas, Laurens notes, was upset about the restoration attempts on a famous painting in the Louvre, a Rembrandt if I recall correctly. It was not the quality of the attempt that he objected to, but the fact that an attempt was made at all. Art, Degas thought, is a living thing; and like all living things, an artwork has its time to die.

conuly

Every day is perfect, if
when you wake, you hear birds
in the garden, in the yard. Birds

up and down, ushering in one more day
in all the houses on Shaker Way. Birds
on telephone lines, light posts. Birds

twit, twittering on trees
hailing fellow birds
with a nod of beak—gray kingbird;

top-hatted, streamertail
tuxedoed, doctor bird—
busy-bodied hummingbird

tucking in, out, of pink, red ixoras
punch-drunk in love. Birds
preening for, chatting up other birds—

the oriole, the grass quit, in mid-song
on the lawn, in a dance of birds
an all-day-long conference of bird;

red-headed woodpecker
—drummer boy, or girl bird
in this daily symphony of birds

—an orchestra on Shaker Way
in serenade of each perfect day with birds—
from the very first mockingbird

heralding, in solo warble
one more day, filled with birds—
brightened, lightened, trilled by birds:

precious, diamond-throated
sweet song, miracle-toting birds
the-gift-of-day-is-here birds.

Bird, bird, bird. Hello bird.
You lift me up bird.
You sing the day beautiful, bird.

***********

_Link

stonepicnicking_okapi posting in

1word1day

sniglet [snig-lit]

noun

1. often humorous word made up to describe something for which no dictionary word exists

examples

1. One might say I'm even a disciple of Tom Poston, a description for which a "sniglet" has been coined: "Tompostle" POSTON NOTE Toby O'B 2005

2. Embarrassingly, I remember the sniglet (remember sniglets?) for the place in the atmosphere where missing socks go when the disappear from the dryer: it's called the hozone. Coleman Camp: The Missing Ballots Don't Exist; Officials: Yes, They Do, 2009

origin

introduced by comedian Rich Hall in the 1980s TV comedy series "Not Necessarily the News."

conuly

Rok continues to be the best at everything, and deserves all the hugs. Though I remain baffled how ST thinks they can on one hand have post-scarcity nearly everywhere (including, one presumes, in places just outside of the Federation where they can easily abscond with probable Federation citizens) and also have seedy underbellies everywhere as well. The problem is that they never actually worked out how it all works, and I think the only solution is to ditch the idea that even the Federation really has no currency and is totally post-scarcity. Everybody has their basic needs met, I'll agree is supported by the writing. Anything past that, no.

Anyway, Rok's friend in her tragic backstory was clearly no more able to leave that situation than she was and though I can see there's too much plot for that to happen in canon I really hope they could rescue him.

Speaking of tragic backstories, I cannot believe a. that Dal tried to say his was the worst and b. his version of being "the worst" absolutely skips past the part where ( Read more... ) But seriously, dude, you grew up as a slave on a mine full of child slaves. It's not a situation people get into because their life was just so great beforehand. If everything was hunky-dory, none of you would've been targeted in the first damn place. You all have a terrible backstory, you don't need to prove it!

Moving on, Murf continues to also be the best, but ffs, can somebody get him an AAC? Or a whiteboard, at least? Teach him sign language? This is a solved problem even in the real world, surely Starfleet can figure it out!

Nothing to say about Jankom, he's just there. *shrug* And I feel kinda ditto about Zero, tbh. I mean, I like them, but....

Ma'Jel, between her cool hair and her increasingly consternated expression as the turbolift got more and more crowded, is clearly not one of the most unemotional Vulcans out there. (I don't care what Vulcans say, the opposite of "logical" is not "emotional", it's just "illogical".) I feel like she and our darling T'Lyn would have a lot to talk about.

The adults on the ship - this show is clearly trying to walk a fine line between keeping them competent and allowing the kids to run circles around them. I'm not sure it always works, but I appreciate the effort, and also I appreciate how they were careful to make it clear that the adults, whether they're being strict or a bit Too Much, are only acting the way they do because they're sympathetic. (Frankly, all the kids could stand to appreciate their new situation a bit more - except Rok, she already gets it - but I understand why they're struggling a bit.)

( Gets a bit spoilery )

**************

( Ugh, the news )

prettygoodword

Another theme week -- following on 'all' prefixes with 'large' prefixes, and following on the universe with the:

macrocosm (MAK-ruh-koz-uhm) - n., the universe considered as a whole; the total or entire complex structure of something; a complex structure, such as a society, considered as a single entity that contains numerous similar, smaller-scale structures.

Coined in Medieval Latin (and taken into English via French around 1600) from Ancient Greek roots makrós, large/long/far + kósmos, the universe -- which sounds like a redundancy: The universe already contains all, so why additionally specify that it's large? That last sense is the key one, as philosophers needed words for the concepts of macrocosm and microcosm, that the whole is reflected in its parts -- that as on earth so in heaven, and that there's correspondences between, for example, the human body and the heavens:

Thanks, WikiMedia!

This is a very common concept in ancient philosophies worldwide, including Ancient Greece, and theorizing about it continued in the European Middle Ages and Renaissance. Other words with macro- include macrobiotic ("prolonging life") and macrometer ("large/long measurement"). (I was going to use macron, but that's not a prefix but rather noun use of the neuter of makrós, and not prefixing anything.)

---L.

totchipanda

The start of a weekend always feels so hopeful. Most of the time. Boss and coworker wanted to go to the Oilers store near the arena and I tagged along for funsies. It was hopping! But when we got back and I checked my phone, there was a message that my partner in crime N's dad had passed away not long before. He was admitted to the hospital the day before and eventually diagnosed with an obstructed bowel, but the doctor was not hopeful AT ALL that he'd even make it through the night. The family was hoping to buy enough time for a cousin to be able to make it in to say goodbye. He lived about 10 years longer than anyone thought he might, and he will be dearly missed.

Hockey game went to a second overtime period. I fell asleep before the second one started and woke up an hour later to find that the series is now tied. Game 3 tonight in Florida, obviously rooting for my guys! And I won't fall asleep again hahaha. Thursday is game 4 and M and I are going to the watch party at the arena. Gonna be fun.

On Saturday I said YES I am GOING TO CUT OUT TROUSERS. And then cut out a dress instead whoops lol. While opening bins for bottomweight fabrics, I found the massive chunk of chambray and said yes, this is perfect for a swooshy ruffly dress! I got the bodice all assembled but for lack of bra rings/sliders to finish the straps, and ripped all of the panels needed for the skirt. An unfortunate slub in the warp had me rip a long section vertically D: Not a complete waste of time/effort, it was sufficiently almost centered to be used for the back panels. I calculated the length of the hem and then divided by the width of the material to get the panels to be full-width rather than cut and having a loooooooooooooooooooooooooong leftover strip, plus then I didn't have to finish edges by using the selveges.

Aforementioned lack of bra hardware. The straps etc. are of course inset before the lining is done which means I can't really continue on that until I have them. But it was OK because the zippers arrived! So the green dress is now all done minus a hook and eye at the back neck. Photos to come bc so far I've only put it on my dress form and the background items are horrid lol.

Sunday I decided to work on the skirt. It was exactly as boring as 9x 44" wide panels can be. I thought that I'd rather try out the ruffling foot before stitching a gajillion gathering rows, so out came Jenny the Janome and the modern (c. 2011) ruffling foot. First test was quite tight, and second test was inconclusive bc the little blade that controls the ratcheting motion snapped off! GDI! FINE well I have two more, one older than the other. Honestly not sure which one I grabbed, but only one small adjustment had the gathers pretty much perfect. Charm helpfully included the gathering ratio of 2:1, and it was 3 and 6 panels so. Pefect.

Did the lower tier first, and then the second, which got squirrely at the end bc it wasn't gathering anymore. I shortened the stitch length which did work but I wasn't assed to do the entire last panel AGAIN and ehhhh it's fine. I'll fudge it along. That ended up being just as annoying as it sounds, and the gathers (which are tiny pleats, really) still needed some fussing to lay properly even when the foot was working well.

Probably would have been smarter to do the hem before everything was attached but... whatever. That worked out just fine too even if by then I was running low on the main thread colour and could have avoided that entirely by doing it first lol. Would have cared less what colours were in the seams as they wouldn't be visible.

Even busted out the serger to finish raw edges galore, who is she!! I've been wanting to move it from its home to be closer to where I do most of the work, and it still needs some adjustments to the stitch length and ratios as I STILL get skipped stitches, but it was fine for this. Probably needs a new blade too, it's been probably 18 years since it had a new one.

But for the upper gathering, which I WILL do the "regular" way, the skirt is done. I am considering a line of navy rickrack along the seams ala the pattern photos (which is piping) and that would be easier while it's all still separate. Just holding the skirt up against myself, it's delightfully fluffy. Very excited to wear it.

So tonight, being game night, will be the usual round of dishes and dinner while I listen. I need a singular can of coconut milk to make my planned meal, which is a Thai curry soup. I got kale and bok choy in my veggie box this week, plus with the carrot and peppers and onions I've gotten in the previous boxes will make a fine soup indeed! I pulled out a length of teal twill for the trousers but am, of course, doubting that as the best choice. Also waffling on sizing bc trousers don't fit like skirts do! I really ought to make a mock up first and I'm so tempted to just #yolo it but if it's WRONG then its WASTED. Thanks brain, for that unhelpful line of thought. Jury is out on that for the time being.

Speaking of the veggie box, this week's "mystery item" was no less than THREE heads of garlic. WTF am I going to do with three heads of garlic (before they go bad) lol. I recall a recipe of some sort of basically baking them in oil. That shall be a project for my looong day at work doing... not much.

lydamorehouse

We are at Bearskin!

Moon over Bearskin

The moon (and traces of Northern Lights) over Bearskin (from Cabin 1)

Yesterday, as usual, we stopped at several sites along Highway 61. We had a late lunch at the “world famous” Betty’s Pie. I do not know if this pie is truly well-known throughout the world, but it was, as they say, damned good pie.

The three of us at Betty's Pies.

As has become typical of us, we stopped to do some agate hunting about a mile north of Two Harbors at Flood Bay. We had to backtrack from Betty’s, but we didn’t care. My family simply cannot be hurried once we’re in vacation mode. Once we’ve made it to Duluth (to-du-loot!) vacation mode has fully activated. “Oh? The thing we wanted to see was back there? Sure, let’s turn around!”

Mason and me agate hunting at Flood Bay

Me and Mason agate hunting at Floor Bay.

I’m not ever sure what an agate looks like when it’s not polished. Not that it matters to any of us. Shawn hands out plastic baggies and we find a nice spot and start hunting. On this trip, it was extra windy. It was already decently cold, maybe mid-50s F/ 10 C. We joked that the windchill made it below freezing! Shawn had to hike back to the car for extra layers.

But, we had a great time just relaxing and sifting through the rocks on the shores of the world’s largest freshwater lake. (And, as Mason loves to point out, a lake so cold that if you’re shipwrecked in it, you don’t rot!)

Mason beach combing

Next was a pitstop at Gooseberry Falls. Sometimes, like a lot of travelers this time of year, we only stop long enough to do our business and then push on. This time, however, Mason and I decided to make the short trek up to see both the high falls and the low falls. Shawn, meanwhile, saved her knee (which is mostly doing well, but technically still in recovery,) for the next beach and hung out in the gift shop looking for, among other things, sweatpants for Mason who—for reasons all his own—decided not to pack any pants for the trip. Only shorts!

Gooseberry Falls, in my opinion, is almost always worth the detour.

Goosberry Falls 2025

Image: Gooseberry Falls

I only remembered after we’d left that I forgot to get my State Park passport stamped! We decided, however, that we would stop in as many State Parks as we could on our route back. Mason and I are also planning a day trip out to Devil’s Kettle, so I have be sure to remember to bring it with me to that hike!

I had advocated for a stop at Iona’s Beach this year but changed my mind after experiencing the wind at Flood Bay. Maybe the weather will be more cooperative on the drive home. Instead, we decided to pull in at Silver Bay to get a gander at "Rocky Taconite."

Image: Rocky Taconite at Silver Bay.

Our last beach of the trip up to the cabin was Cutface Creek Pullout (14 miles north of Lutsen, mile marker 104.) This beach is famous for its thomsonite. Again, I have no idea what thomsonite looks like in the wild (although this might be the year I may have found a piece. I’m going to try polishing it up when we get back home), but this beach generally has cool rocks because it has a ton of mini geodes.
Again, we dawdled. I have no idea how long we spent combing the beaches and listening to the waves. This beach was less windy; it was much more of a natural windbreak/cove.

We managed to miss official check-in at Bearskin (6 pm), which we often do (even leaving the Twin Cities at 9 am), and so followed the instructions to get the cabin key for check-in the next morning. It was still light enough out that Mason and I made the walk up to the Lodge to pick up the aluminum canoe that they on the beach for us out for us. We paddled it to our dock, bungied it up to our private dock for the night, and then settled in for a dinner of brats on the grill.

I fully failed to make a decent fire our first night, but luckily both Shawn and Mason are better skilled at this than I am.

This morning (Sunday) we woke up to rain.

Shawn and I walked down to the Lodge to check in. Because of all of the forest fires that are active in Minnesota right now, the Forest Service has been doing a lot of clearing of what they call “ladder trees,” but also underbrush. The place looks… a little devestated. At least in comparison to what we’re used to. I have been excited to resume my hiking of the ski trails this year and so I wanted to be sure to ask the staff about good trails for less… husbandry, we’ll say. They nicely pointed out where on the map they thought the Forestry Service hadn’t gotten to yet. So, after a quick jog back to Cabin 1 to make sure I had my inhaler, I headed off. I’d intended to slowly get my “sea legs” back, but I missed a turn off and hiked all the way to Rudy Lake.

Rudy Lake 2025

Image: a pristine lake (Rudy Lake) in the middle of nowhere.

Oops.

It is cool, however. Like, this is a lake you simply can not get to without walking to it. There are no roads to get you here.

However, I am a little sore and may have overdone it already on day one. Hopefully, with a bit of rest and Aleve, I’ll be back at it in no time.

Image: trout lily

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this is also why i play my least-favourite song during sex. for science

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June 9th, 2025

June 9th, 2025: TCAF was this weekend and it was, as always, a great time. Thank you to everyone who came by to say hi, and I hope we can do it again soon! I also hope you grabbed a lot of rad comics, I KNOW I DID!!

– Ryan

http://www.qwantz.com/index.php?comic=4341

torachan

1. I had another quiet day at home, though I did go out for two nice walks, including a longer one in which I stopped for ice cream to cool off. (It wasn't that hot today but it was late afternoon and quite sunny and muggy.)

2. Molly is a super cutie.

mellowtigger

For what it's worth, I've been watching this NBC live news feed for the last 2 hours or so.

Watch on YouTube

I had other things to discuss for the upcoming Moody Monday post. I wanted to talk about the Border Patrol helicopter that circled over my house for 2 hours, then the next day was the ICE raid and community response here in Minneapolis. Something else always takes precedence, though. The absurdities arrive fast and furious, don't they?

And, yes, of course they're shooting reporters again, just like they did in 2020 in Minneapolis.

conuly

Or, anyway, I glanced at the headlines and oh fuck no. Can I just go back to bed, and somebody wake me when things improve?

atherleisure

I finished the kids' Christmas ornaments early this year. These are the second half of the "Christmas Village Ornaments" kit. Once again I left off the cording so these would match the first three from 2023.