Week ending 5/23/2021

Chrome Tabs : 68 → 80

Gmail Inbox : 62 → 74 Unread, 66 → 77 Total

I’ve been hoping to do some on-foot neighborhood explorations with friends for quite some time. The pandemic put that somewhat on hold (although as a mostly outdoor activity, we managed it a bit). Previous outings focused on pastries, but we decided to go for a bit more balance on this most recent outing, and it was a lot of fun! We actually walked around basically in my own neighborhood, but a part of it I haven’t explored much on my own. We started with a ton of pastries, then stopped by one of my favorite local nurseries, explored the whole of Solano Ave, and ended up on local lookout point Indian Rock. It was a pretty great day! Pictured: pastries and the photographers who love them. :smile:

I finished listening to Bill Bryson’s “The Body: A Guide for Occupants” and thoroughly enjoyed it, as I have most of his work that I’ve sampled. Obviously if you’re deeply passionate or otherwise interested in the details of a specific subject, there are better authors for the job, but I personally find his overviews and little amusing bits of trivia along the way to be just a delight to listen to. A real balm for the curious but over-stimulated mind. Mary Roche has a similar-ish approach, but I’ve so far found a notable preference for Bryson, for whatever reason.

I got my second vaccine shot, wooo! I’ll be “fully” vaccinated around June 1st. I had the shot around 11AM and felt normal throughout the day. But as I went to bed I started to get a bit of a chill, and couldn’t get warm for hours. Around the middle of the night I then was too hot for the rest of my attempted sleeping hours, and I woke up with head and body aches. I took some ibuprofen around when I’d normally get up at 7:30 then slept a couple more hours and by the time I woke up I felt fine. In fact I almost felt better than normal the rest of that day!

The hummingbird eggs hatched! They look bizarre and adorable, like little half-completed Muppets (see below). I am documenting as they grow, which is quite quickly, and I’m hoping to see them open their eyes soon. I feel so fortunate to have this happening right in my back yard. :blush:

I got into a somewhat challenging (but good) political discussion with a friend who has a lot of more conservative friends than I do. He’s more of a liberal himself, in fact something of a Bernie supporter, but he also feels like we’re going about the process of trying to convince conservatives (or argue with them) in the wrong ways to actually be successful. And… I basically agree with him, at least on that. But as far as how to actually do it “right”, it’s more of a complex conversation. Anyway, this connects with some ideas I’ve had in the past about working to “communicate progressive ideas with conservative language and values”. I hope to write more on that some day, but what’s notable here is I realized he might be a really valuable sort of “barometer” for the effectiveness of anything created with that approach, because he maintains an interesting open-mindedness to conservative ideas and concerns…

Man, so, I’ve been single basically for years now. I’ve had a few short little flings here and there, and they’ve been fun - explorations and feeling out new relationships with interesting people I enjoy and respect, and I’ve remained friends with them all. But in theory I’ve been trying to date more seriously for ages, and the truth is I don’t put a lot of effort and energy into it. Honestly I find it super draining. So I haven’t updated some of my dating profiles - OK Cupid in particular, because it was the longest (because they let me :smile:) - for a long damn time, basically since the pandemic began. Also, of course, the pandemic. Anyway, I finally did it! OK Cupid in particular I got reasonably up to date, with current photos and everything. So that feels pretty good. No major results from it so far, but hey, at least I did it. Let’s see how it goes.

I visited my mom again this past week, and was able to bring her a butterfly chrysalis that I knew was about to emerge. It came out the very next day, and she got to enjoy about a half hour watching it get ready to fly, with it on her hand. It was just very sweet to be able to bring that kind of experience to her. :slight_smile:

After watching a video testing a supposedly innovative and wildly popular new Kickstarter-funded “cobbler” shaker design, and seeing at least one miserable flaw (jump to about 9 minutes in that video to see what I mean), I got inspired to come up with my own design. I don’t think I’ll ever actually do anything with it, but it’s fun to play with. I actually got a bit distracted putting time into refining the design and procrastinated some other, arguably more important things, but it was good exercise for the mind, so…

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