Be BRAVE and TRUE

the purpose of personal morality/ethics is not to determine edge cases

your morals don't have to account for every possibility.  you can say things in absolute terms AND expect people to understand that you don't mean literally every contorted possible refuting scenario.

it's okay to say "dunno, depends probably, and i don't give a fuck"














i'm mad about everything! god damn it! the abortion debate is killing me.  fuck you, georgia!!!!!

 my lab nemesis is making the name thing an issue

it's a damn good thing that i spent half of last week having a gender breakdown and got it all out of my system because if i hadn't this motherfucker's health would be in danger

this morning i got the daily "hey [name]" when he came in, and i was like "yo fyi it's AJ"

and then in the ensuing conversation was the most fun, including hits such as "it'll take me a while to remember that" and "oh yeah [beloved undergrad] told me last week that you preferred to be called AJ and apparently i completely ignored him because now we're having this conversation were you're trying desperately to be chill and i'm being defensive and garbage"

so this evening i got the world's most exaggerated and shitty "evening, AJ"

i hate this man. so much.



also this dude randomly makes trumpet noises.  with his mouth.  in public.  toot-de-toot it's the battle hymn of the republic at full trumpet volume, today, literally today, while i was working!  at our unconscious bias training last month his straight-white-male ass tried to say that he was discriminated against because his research topic isn't well-represented in the subfield.  he uses a photo background on his powerpoint slides.  words cannot express.

fucked off from work on account of SURPRISE ANNOYING ER VISIT LAST NIGHT.  student health was all "we dislike how your EKG looks go to the hospital" so i got to sit in a waiting room for 6 hours to be told that i was fine and should lay off the caffeine.  when we finally got out at 1:30 in the morning we went to the store for ice cream and caffeine-free diet coke, and today my body is feeling normal, which is very appreciated!

hospitals are a weird place to be gay, because suddenly nobody knows again how to read you and your wife.  most of the staff were cool -- they're ER nurses, they've seen everything -- but sometimes bad vibes would creep in and i couldn't help thinking a lot about how glad i was to be married to my wife so we'd have rights if something actually serious happened.

i assembled our new cat tree -- right now i'm too lazy to upload photographs but fluff-cat likes it a LOT, even though he is kind of too big for it.  scab-cat is sleeping so he hasn't tried it yet.  also, scab-cat has figured out how to lick his scabs through his cone, so he's a mess.  fluff-cat is having one of his twice-a-year sheds so EVERYTHING IS A FLUFF now.

overall, things are better today than yesterday!  i love an upward trajectory






i can't believe i have to live caffeine-free now.  what is this healthy bullshit.  who authorized this.  fuck them.

I have the itch to try making puff pastry from scratch -- I taught myself how to make macaron shells, surely i can do kouign-amann!  I need to buy a rolling pin.  So far in my baking exploits I've been using a combination of fingers and an empty vodka bottle any time I need to roll something out, which I admit isn't....ideal.  I also really need some new silicone spatulas because scab-cat ATE not one, but BOTH of my spatulas and now I am stuck with only wooden spoons. 

Since I am too mad at Jeff Bezos to use Amazon I need to work out which stores actually sell kitchen supplies.  I know that my small protest of Amazon in particular doesn't do anything but I'm fucking pissy.  Amazon has made me forget what normal businesses are!  That's weird!  Paying for shipping is a bummer, but it turns out that I save money because I don't buy extra shit that I don't need to make it to the $50 limit for free shipping.

In other online business news, literally one time I visited the Rural King website and put in my email for free shipping because I was looking for pine pellets to use as cat litter and I heard you could get them cheaper if you bought them as horse bedding instead.  Then, stupidly, I opened ONE promotional email because they said it was Chick Month and I wanted to see if they'd literally send you baby chickens in the mail.  Yes, they will.  Amazing.  Unfortunately, this had consequences: now I get an email from Rural King literally every single day telling me to buy live rodent traps and fencing and bulk livestock feed.  I should unsubscribe from their ads, but it's so on-brand that I can't bring myself to do so.

Still out of creative words post 40k of emotionally intense fanfiction.  I edited two original stories and sent them out again -- they're both ones that have gotten a lot of rejections, but re-reading them convinced me that they're good, just bad fits for a lot of markets.  They're not written in what I've been calling "genre prose," and I think that hurts my chances for publication.  On the other hand, I'm fucking tired of writing genre prose.  I know how to do it and it's not actually that literary or sophisticated.  Being "lyrical" isn't one of my main goals.  I want to be clear, compelling and insightful.  I want my prose to reflect the POV character's voice.  My dialogue aims to be distinct and different from character to character, reflecting personality and not just whatever seems the most bleak or punchy or plot-required. Salty post incoming about Clarkesworld.

Fed the fish yesterday.  Unfortunately this is not just sprinkling flakes into an aquarium.  It took ten hours to feed the whole scientific zebrafish facility -- longer than usual because one of the systems' automatic water management computery-bits have broken and I had to do all of it manually -- and I came home exhausted and extremely crabby and reeking of brine shrimp and paramecia.  I won't have to do it for another 6 to 12 months, and that's the only blessing.

just sent the last files for the Monster Project along to my boss, including an update that she sent me last minute.

my heart is going like i've been running flat out for several blocks.  definitely have shakes. i'm happy to say i didn't have any crying breakdowns in front of my computer while working on this godawful thing, but getting that last comment of "i think it'd be good to add..." at the 11th hour pushed me pretty close.

i won't feel good until it all gets turned in tomorrow and it's not my problem for at least a couple weeks, but my to do list is empty.

phew.  phew.  haaaah.  jesus.

current reference count: 144 166
sections still lacking references: 3.5 ZERO
purposely inflammatory attempts to start science fights: 2
abstract: NOT WRITTEN LATER PROBLEM
conclusion: NOT WRITTEN ALSO LATER PROBLEM
revisions to address mentor's comments: half-assed one more really irritating one done
chrome tabs: we don't talk about chrome tabs right now DUMPED THAT SHIT INTO ONETAB

second draft in mentor's inbox. i still need to do a lot of work but that was definitely the worst of it!!! which is good because it was very much the worst! 

(okay not as bad as writing the draft but. bad.)

since Thursday i haven't done any of the grad school things i'm currently working on (i went to lab meeting on Friday and that was IT) but i have done a ton of other things so i'm going to list them here to make myself feel good!

i went to the doctor and got a prescription for that pesky ADHD problem.  i was super nervous about this -- the last psychiatrist i went to said he was absolutely not giving me anything for it.  re-read my neurological testing results; they're hilarious.  almost everything is in the 95-99th percentile (i do very well at all standardized tests) and then there's the sustained attention test and i am....1st percentile.

the sustained attention test is torture, okay!  they set you up with a laptop and headphones and a lady tonelessly says ONE or TWO every several seconds while at the same time the screen flashes ONE or TWO every several seconds and you are supposed to click only on the twos.  And then it goes on for fifteen minutes!!!  FIFTEEN MINUTES!  HELL ON EARTH!  i got distracted by: the proctor grading the previous sections of my test. the wall.  maybe there was a bug on the wall.  a pencil.  the proctor again.  the audio would startle me and i'd click by accident.  i got distracted by not doing well on the test and worried about what that meant.  the carpet was interesting.  for literal ages.  anyway 99 percent of people who take that test do better than me.

then i went to therapy and complained about not getting enough work done and hating myself about it, still, and apologized for having the same problem, still.  he is very patient with this.  i suspect the above unsolved ADHD problem is...contributing.

then i was emotional support for my adopted sad undergraduate.

we got back all the clothes from the laundry service, and, okay, here's the deal about paying someone else to do your laundry.  it is extravagant.  it is expensive.  it is also the best goddamn fucking thing ever.  the washer and dryer in our building are three long flights of stairs away, and it takes sixteen quarters to wash+dry each load, and i hate doing it.  it's okay to spend money on something that makes your life better.

i drew a whole illustration for the cap_ironman RBB!  i have one more picture i could add, but there's no time pressure now.  also now i have a bingo card!

i wrote a couple of meta-y posts on here; i am now super super behind on my DW inbox but i'll get caught up eventually!

i made BREAD.  i did a rosemary one that was super super good and easy.  there was a minor yeast fuck-up where our apartment is chilly as fuck and the yeast wouldn't foam because the water wasn't warm, so i had to add more water and more yeast and more salt and then i had an extra cup of activated yeast, so...i had to make another bread.  i decided to finally try one or those no-knead simple bread recipes and BOY HOWDY, the advertising on those things is VERY MISLEADING.  it's a huge pain in the ass!  overnight rise, then another rise, and it's sticky and you need a fancy pot and SO ON and basically you're stuck thinking about bread for 24 hours.  it had better be good.

then i made cookie dough because i wanted to eat that for dinner, and froze all the extra.  and we went to the grocery store and the pharmacy and now i have ice cream and all the things to make vegan chili.

my to-do list for today includes "write more fanfiction," "give self haircut," and "put away clean clothes," which probably won't all happen but that's cool, there's time tomorrow.

boss says the writing of the draft is really good!  so good, wow, the edits will be really easy!  she honestly told me that she didn't think there was anything she could teach me about scientific writing and that she thought she could learn from me.

friends, i was deeply boggled but went with it.  then after my meeting with her i was so relieved i thought i might cry!  i kind of feel like i might cry again now, it's been really a hell of a week.

i feel a sort of bewildered gratitude that i can compensate for having a somewhat difficult set of brain health problems by being...very good at things.  the d20 of the universe gave me a hell of a good toss on INT.  i spend two months in paralyzed agony until a deadline crawls up my butt and threatens to turn me inside out, and then my last minute scramble produces something that is, apparently, impressive.

the lack of consequences does not motivate me to improve my procrastination habits!  (i hear my therapist in my head telling me that maybe two months of paralyzed agony is a consequence, and maybe it would be nice to consider that as well as the end deliverable.  to my therapist i say: fuck off, i'm going to the doctor to talk about adhd meds in two weeks)

the point of this post is: i worked hard and i am proud of myself for pulling my own ass out of the fire.

in other news: scab-cat's skin infection is getting worse again, despite the cone.  he has a horrible flaky scab on his nose that is obviously itching at him, and his only desire it to scrape it off on the edge of my laptop.  it's fucking cold out and i wish the shower in our apartment could get hot instead of struggling its way to warm over the course of the first ten minutes and then, inevitably, losing the battle and going tepid within ten more minutes.  i wouldn't even care about the positively flaccid water pressure if it was at least steamy-toasty-hot.  found my giant warm scarf though: that was good.  made really excellent french toast using the homemade loaf of poppyseed challah that was going to go stale otherwise; i ended up with enough leftovers to probably make french toast casserole sometime this week.

i have more writing to do, obviously, and some figure-drafting, and i'm going to have a little time in between to write fic some more, (remix exchange fic is 5k and i am almost to a really really good part), but tonight i'm going to watch PUBG streams and go to bed early.

 
These fucking donut holes are my favorite part of every single holiday.

In 2019 I will eat home-cooked desserts, and also hostess cupcakes.  Between five and ten cats will make my apartment their temporary home while we nurse them back to emotional and physical health.  (Cats get sad and lonely and scared and mean too, and can need a little help.)  I will make the same number of typos as I did this yeara.  I will spend time laughing and drinking with friends.  There will be cool bugs to look at in the spring, and weeds whose names I know will grow along my walk to work.  I hope the bull thistle by the trolley station and the redroot pigweed that lives on the curb by the frat houses and the used bookstore will grow back when it gets warm.