susandennis | Reading

We went indoor skydiving this afternoon. The husband, his sister, and I all did it - 3 sessions each of about a minute and a half each session. Two stayed low, the last one we went "high" - maybe 10 feet up - with the instructor. They were very patient and explained things well, and I had a ton of fun doing it. The husband has been known to bungee jump and leap off of buildings for fun, so this was right up his alley. He of course bought another session for the two of us, which we can cash in whenever. Not something I ever expected to do, but I really enjoyed it.

Past that slept better last night, but still not quite enough. Trying to manage the female cat's moods and movement as she gets crankier in her old age is tough. At least I managed not to trap myself under her and the comforter last night, just her and a thin blanket, which was quite warm enough.

days_unfolding

Got up at 7 AM.

On the bus to Chicago. Backtracking, I dropped the dogs off with no issues. The dogs seemed happy to be in a place with other dogs. Dropped the cats off. I forgot Lily’s ear meds, but they’re going to examine her and prescribe. I had had a strong feeling that something was going to go wrong, but it looks like I’m going on this trip! I need to have more faith in my own competence. I need to talk to my therapist about that.

Now I'm in the hotel across the street (literally) from the airport. Apparently my reservation for tonight didn't come through, but a very helpful and patient desk clerk got me registered and made the room connect with my reservation for tomorrow (which did go through). She kept on wanting to give me water, so I finally took some, and she gave me a free toothbrush! They had a grab-and-go coffee and light food place, which I headed for because I didn't really want a restaurant meal and I figured that it would be cheaper. The choices were a salad or a salad, so I picked up a Caesar salad and ate it all! The person there was very helpful too. (As well they should be for the price that I'm paying :)) The food was more expensive than DoorDash, but it was a lot more convenient. My room has a view of a runway, but it doesn't seem to be a runway that they're using right now. I saw where to catch the L tomorrow on the way to the room.

I'm not sure what to do now. I need to assemble the cane-with-a-seat, but I'm too tired to deal with it now. I think that I'll read a little while and then go to bed.

( O'Hare Pictures )

johncomic

Victoria's Pizza!

Current Mood: om nom
Current Music: Oliver Nelson - The Blues and the Abstract Truth

fauxklore

The Department of Shameless Self-Promotion announces that I will be telling a story as part of this year’s New Year’s Story Blowout put on by Artists Standing Strong Together (ASST).

Voices in the Glen has the 7:00 p.m. EST slot. The tellers will be Jane Dorfman, Joan Leotta, Lauren Martino, Tim Livengood, and me (Miriam Nadel). For free tickets (and a link to donate to ASST) see the ASST website

summersgate

Marsh on a Foggy Day. Today is a misty, rainy day.

Trying to keep busy with "important" things like sweeping, cleaning, sprucing stuff up. Though I keep veering off into stuff like painting, piano and netflix. I say, whatever! The house will be what it will be. All the family is used to me keeping a dusty cluttered house and if they don't like it they can host at their house next year! I have to say that to bolster myself up to accept that in no way can I get this house to look like a house in a magazine anyway so don't worry about it. Just try to improve it a bit and whatever I get done will be okay. I got the small box of Christmassy stuff down and found some crocheted snowflakes to put here and there. Also found the Nativity scene so I put that out too. It's very small. I covered over the front of the big shelves that I didn't want to dust with a shiny green holiday cloth. That takes care of that.

This is garbage night. Putting the chickens to bed and then taking that out is next up.

fauxklore

Oy, I forgot to post this last night.

For several years, I’ve posted a Chanukah song to Facebook every day of the holiday. Here is what I found for this year:

Night 1: We Are Lights. This is Cantor Avi Schwartz of Park Avenue Synagogue and Mira Davis, with the New York Children’s Chorus. The song was written by Stephen Schwartz, who wrote the songs for Wicked among other things.

Night 2: I am a big fan of Ari Lesser, a Chasidic rapper. I was amused by his piece, Hanukkah Diet.

Night 3: There are several Jewish a cappella groups who do Chanukah songs every year. The Maccabeats are one of the best known. This year’s selection features a K-pop Demon Hunters medley. There’s another version with video, but it was a bit AI-dominated so I chose the version with the lyrics.

Night 4: Nani Vazana is an amazing singer, who sings primarily in Ladino. Ocho Kandelikas, written by Flory Jagoda is probably the best known Ladino Chanukah song.

Night 5: We’re back to another a cappella group who also chose K-pop Demon Hunters for their Chanukah song this year. Here’s Six13 with Golden

Night 6: I had to include a Yiddish song. Unfortunately, I couldn’t figure out who the singer is from the Facebook reel. It’s from a facebook group called Yiddish music lovers.

Night 7: This took me to the late great Ofra Haza with a 1974 song about Hannah and her seven sons.

Night 8: The last of the a cappella groups this year was Y-Studs, who used the Jonas Brothers as their inspiration for A Very Jonas Hanukkah.

Bonus song: I couldn’t resist including this bit from Couplet Comedy. Here's a medley about what would happen if Chanukah had weirdly sexual songs like Christmas.

bitterlawngnome

Irises from the garden, 2025. "NOID" means "no ID", that is to say, I don't know their names. The noids in this group are all three in the street island garden and were there when I inherited it; the one identified as 'Benton Deirdre' is tentative - I decided it is that based on a combination of appearance and the recent trendiness of the Benton irises. The unnamed Pacific Coast hybrid was a random seedling child of random seedlings. The name and date in brackets is the breeder and the date of the cultivar's registration or introduction to commerce.

white falls, dull gold flags, both veined with maroon
Iris Miniature Tall Bearded 'In My Veins' (Charles Bunnell, 2008) 4957
©Bill Pusztai 2025

Not far from species - pale blue-purple falls and flags, white runway with gold eye
Iris Pacific Coast hybrid 4919.
©Bill Pusztai 2025

An indefinite gold / beige / brown with striking purple and orange beard
Iris Standard Dwarf Bearded 'Dragon's Den' (Chuck Chapman, 2002) 5231
©Bill Pusztai 2025

An indefinite gold / beige / brown with striking purple and orange beard
Iris Standard Dwarf Bearded 'Dragon's Den' (Chuck Chapman, 2002) 5335
©Bill Pusztai 2025

very nearly orange butterscoithch falls and flags, bright ornage beard
Iris Standard Dwarf Bearded 'Eramosa OJ' (Chuck Chapman, 2014) 9093
©Bill Pusztai 2025

very nearly orange butterscoithch falls and flags, bright ornage beard
Iris Standard Dwarf Bearded 'Eramosa OJ' (Chuck Chapman, 2014) 9119
©Bill Pusztai 2025

white falls with deep purple dots and veining in edge, pink flags with more purple dots and veining, yellow beard ... ID is approximate
Iris Tall Bearded Benton 'Deirdre' (Sir Cedric Morris, R. 1946) 1472
©Bill Pusztai 2025

An unusually elongated antique-style blue-purple, dark falls and pale flags, yellow beard
Iris Tall Bearded noid blue 1460
©Bill Pusztai 2025

antique-style blue-purple, dark falls and pale flags, yellow beard
Iris Tall Bearded noid blue
©Bill Pusztai 2025

antique style simple bloom with deep wine-red falls, yellow beard and throat, pale violet flags
Iris Tall Bearded noid variegata 4361
©Bill Pusztai 2025

Deep wine red modern hybrid, this one spotted with raindrops
Iris Tall Bearded 'War Chief' (Schreiner 1992) 4168
©Bill Pusztai 2025

Deep wine red modern hybrid, this one showing blueish sheen
Iris Tall Bearded 'War Chief' (Schreiner, 1992) 4230
©Bill Pusztai 2025

arlie

From Jenn Dowd at Data for Health a reasonably decent substack blog in the medical space:

Does adolescence really last until age 32?

Capsule summary: comparing brain scans of individuals at different ages doesn't tell you very much about aging. For that, you need brain scans of the same individuals at different ages. also, "convenience samples" of people who just happen to have been scanned are unlikely to tell you as much as you think about the general population.

The study cited was published in something call Nature Communications, which is presumably unrelated to the well-regarded scientific journal Nature.

See also the same blogger's Are We Really Aging in Bursts?.

maju

It was snowing lightly when we got up this morning, and around 6:30 am the school alerted parents that school would be cancelled today because heavy snow was forecast to start mid morning. The girls were overjoyed. Unfortunately, the heavy snow never happened; there was light snow during the morning but by the middle of the day it had turned to light rain, so the weather is just miserable. And cancelling school turned out to be unnecessary.

Although I love my granddaughters, it's hard when they're at home all the time because there is constant noise and movement and girls wanting my attention for something and by the end of the day I'm exhausted. They're better at occupying themselves some of the time than they were a few years ago, but this introvert still finds it hard. Also my daughter is an extreme extrovert who has to have a TV show or music going all the time when she isn't working, so the whole house just feels loud and overwhelming sometimes. I come down to the basement for some peace and quiet and guess what? One or more of the girls follows me. (When my daughter is working she is mostly in her office with the door closed so even if she is in a meeting or watching a video the sound is muffled, and inaudible to me if I'm in the basement.)

Eden is having a birthday party this afternoon. She and a small group of friends will be painting little ceramic cottages and/or shops, but right now they're not doing that because I have just heard a bunch of feet thundering up the stairs to the top floor (bedrooms).

I slept better last night than I had for the three or four previous nights but I'm still catching up with my sleep deficit and I feel tired and headachey today. Eden's party is giving me a respite which I'm appreciating even though I can still hear the party noise.

I've done barely any crocheting and no knitting since I moved here, partly because I've been feeling somewhat unsettled and partly because I don't have any good place to lay out crafts or sewing and because I packed up the project of multi coloured crochet squares I was working on for much of he year and sent it to storage and so now have no access to that. Today I decided to start a different granny square project with some softer yarn I brought with me and which I can replenish online. (Amazon of course.) I didn't particularly like the yarn I was using for the first project but I still want to finish it, eventually.

maju

19. Now that it’s behind you, what did you do last week that was memorable? I can't think of a single thing.

20. Where do you spend most of your time while you’re awake? Either in my basement room or in the upstairs living room. I prefer being upstairs for the light (and the sun when it's a sunny day) but I prefer the basement because it's my own space, although subject to invasion by the granddaughters whenever they feel like it.

21, What makes someone a hero? Willinlgness to do something difficult or dangerous to help someone else.

22. When in your life have you been a victim of stereotyping? I can't remember many specific examples, but one does stand out; I was at some kind of social gathering with my (then) husband. Another guest (a man) asked me what I did (the stereotypical small talk opening) and when I said I was a housewife (this was sometime in the 1980s - I wouldn't say that in the same situation now) and I instantly felt any interest he might have had in making conversation with me disappear.

bill_schubert

I got a newsletter from the Texas Humane Heroes shelter that had this in it:

Better pictures than I got. I'm guessing he isn't there any more or won't be soon. I'm not checking. But he came from the same kind of background as Beaux so he will be the most grateful little guy.

Meanwhile both Beaux and Toby are getting better. Still. My only guess is they both are suffering from allergies on top of their fall respiratory infections. Beaux is about 95% with only occasional coughing. Toby sounds terrible much of the time but is still far better than he was. He's on his third antibiotic and it is helping. He's got trachea collapse that will never get much better so he frequently sounds like he can't breathe. Sounds bad but he does not appear to be in as much distress as is Dana.

Today is another beautiful day that requires a bike ride. So I'm off.

christopher575

It's been a while since I got any new shirts to add to the tagged posts on here, mainly because a lot has changed since I amassed my original large t-shirt collection. Most of those came from a few daily t-shirt sites I followed where the shirt of the day was around $10 shipped. And they were selling tons of great designs! I just checked and TeeFury is still doing a decent deal at $13 for the day's design, but the main reason I stopped following them is that the designs started sucking.

Garrett and I both dropped a size, so I gave him most of my collection. I have a few that ran a little small and fit right now, but most of what you see in the tag this entry is under is now part of Garrett's wardrobe. Not being able to replace them via daily sites good and bad. I had a LOT of shirts before. But at least they were cool!

The other way I prefer to get a shirt is by thrifting it. I used to spend lots of time in thrift stores buying shirts and other things, but I've reached a point where I really don't need much stuff, so I don't go thrifting without an agenda. For instance, when I realized we needed a fireplace screen for upstairs, I went to Value Village looking for one, and found one. I've visited a few times over the last year looking for shirts, and it hasn't been a great experience.

Somehow they decided that the default price for their used shirts is $8.49, and they mostly go up from that price. So while you're going through everything on the rack, you'll mostly find crap, and most of that crap is $8.49. Five copies of some shirt given out at a corporate event that nobody will ever buy? $8.49 each! A really cool shirt? Actually that one's $14.49. I'm really curious how much stuff ends up pulled from the rack unsold and what they do with it when that happens.

And then of course I always see new shirts I want online and think about ordering. But when the total with shipping ends up being around $40, I just delete it from the cart and close the tab.

I saw a few cool ones at Value Village last time I was there. One had a very cool vintage design with frogs and mushrooms but I put it back on the rack because it was so worn out that the neck ring flopped over. I can't remember what the second one I put back was, but I ended up buying this one.

I think I need to check out some of the smaller thrift stores around town. I know they won't have as much to choose from, but maybe the quality and prices will be better. Or at least the quality. At this point I'm just grateful to be a remote worker who doesn't feel pressured to show up in different outfits all the time.

low_delta

My mom called to say our Christmas cookies were ready, so I went over to pick them up. What kinds are there? Yes. Peanut butter balls, peanut brittle, pecan crescents, some things with lemon frosting, some amaretto somethingsorother, some with pistachio and chocolate frosting, caramels, fudge, gingersnaps, chocolatey somethings with m&m's, and a few nondescript cookies with frosting or chocolate.

When I was there eleven days ago, she was baking cookies for church. Some cookie auction or something. She hadn't started on her own cookies yet. She got those all done last night, so tonight she was packaging them for delivery. This is only a fraction of the plates she puts together. There are fourteen buckets on the table, but I'm not sure if that's all of the different kinds she made.

She gave Cindy and I each one, though mine has only peanut butter balls and pecan crescents. She named off all the neighbors she gives to. She said she was once talking to her financial guy who mentioned Christmas cookies, so she decided to take him a plate. And she still takes them to that place, even though he doesn't work there anymore. And she'll take a plate to Dan's dad (I have no idea who Dan is), but he has bad teeth so she's worried that some will be too hard for him. Of course she'll tell Dan to tell his dad that he can soften them up by putting them in the microwave (she can hardly give you food without also giving that advice). I don't know who else. She's got to have friends to give them to. And a coworker or two. My sister, and her two kids.

And Mom wonders how much money she spends on this. She used four to five pounds of butter, but she had to tell me how cheap butter is at Costco.

bitterlawngnome

I can feel it happening. Many artists enter - usually at the end of their career - a phase where they no longer govern themselves by the rules they know will make their work intelligible to others. Nowadays I often find I just want to photograph the light sliding across the backdrop from morning to night. It won't mean a damn thing to anyone else. But it's the utter essence of photograph, the light at an exact place and time.

days_unfolding

Note to self: print off Bella and Gracie’s shot records. Buy small stapler. Print boarding pass and luggage tag (all done).

Just read an article about the impact of aircraft fumes on people. Just the thing to read when you’re about to take a flight.

Kept hitting snooze on my alarm and got up at 6:30 AM. I’m thinking about going back to bed for a while. I am so not a morning person. I did go back to bed but couldn't sleep.

Had a bit of a panic when I couldn't find my phone, which I need for two-factor identification at work, this morning. I finally found it still plugged in by my bed. Whew. (And I need it for travel too!)

Now I can't stop yawning. It's another gray day. (My light box is supposed to come today.)

Ran my errands. Deposited cash at the bank. Ran into a snag at the post office. They wanted $71 to send the box with the blanket to

zhelana in Scotland, and I said, "No". Apparently the cashier goes to Scotland regularly. She said that last time she had to keep running around, and I said that I'm a "sit in a cafe and watch the world go by" kind of traveler, and she said that we should go to Scotland together.

I'll look for something for

zhelana off of her Amazon wish list. Anyone want a plaid throw blanket (US Only)? I think that it has paw prints on it. (I got it from the Humane Society.) Oh for god's sake. It said that my credit cards were ineligible to buy things off of her wish list. But I could use them overseas!

Got a pedicure and manicure. The color that I wanted broke, and the color we used for the pedicure is kind of a peach color that I don’t like. I picked out a mauve color for my fingernails, and that I like. Picked up a small stapler (for the luggage tag for the cruise) at Walgreens. Picked up my printer ink and cell phone charger at Best Buy. Picked up some feather toys for the cats at Walgreens.

I didn’t know that Tim Curry played Mozart in Amadeus, which I saw on Broadway.

Changed the printer ink and printed off the boarding pass and luggage tag for the cruise. I need to gather a few things, start a load of laundry, and go to bed.

bitterlawngnome

( You're about to view content that the journal owner has marked as possibly inappropriate for anyone under the age of 18. )

summersgate

Bubble Confusion. Just one of those kinds of pictures where I needed to get something quick done at the end of the day so I can go to bed and feel like I've fulfilled my art-a-day mission.

11 pm now. I did get some useful stuff done today. Cleared away a big build up of mail and other clutter off the one living room table, folded and put away 4 baskets of clothes, finished up the weaving part of Rowan's blanket and put that away for now - I'll piece the blanket squares together later. Took a long nap. Tomorrow I need to deep clean, sweep and vacuum.

maju

Ugh, it took me a couple of hours to fall asleep last night. Once I got to sleep I slept well though. The alarm dragged me awake - I heard and felt it vibrating several times before I woke up enough to turn it off. This has never happened with this particular alarm before; usually I wake up at the first vibration (as far as I can tell). My cold is following the usual course of a cold and I'm snuffly and sneezy today but not feeling too bad. I took a Sudafed PE nighttime pill last night and it seemed to dry things up for an hour or two, but after that I think it wore off. I had been thinking of taking a second one after four hours if I happened to wake up around the right time, but when I did wake up during the night I didn't feel like wrestling with one of the horrible child-safe blister packs the pills are in.

I also took a couple of the daytime Sudafed tablets during the day today and I think they helped slightly with the congestion. However, I'm afraid they might have affected my cognitive abilities even though they are supposed to be safe for daytime use. I took my car for a drive after lunch (maybe an hour or two after taking one of the pills) because it was more than a week since I'd last used it, and at one point I found myself quite unconsciously driving on the left instead of the right. Luckily I was on very quiet low-speed neigbourhood roads, but I was unpleasantly surprised when a car came around a corner on the same side of the road as me and I instantly realised I was the one in the wrong. This has happened once or twice before, plus once when I was in Australia I found myself unconsciously driving on the right. On busy roads there are plenty of cues as to which side of the road I should be on, but on deserted or nearly deserted roads it's all too easy to default to the wrong side.

The girls were all excited this morning because Eden was opening her birthday gifts before school. This afternoon her mother has taken her out of school for the final couple of hours, and tomorrow after school she is having a party. Very exciting times.

rejectomorph

The rain has slowed to a sprinkle for now, but more showers are expected this afternoon, and rain is to continue off and on through Friday. In fact the region remains under a flood watch until then. There was actually a flood warning Sunday afternoon and evening, along with a high wind alert, but despite a fairly relentless rain and a few episodes of stormy downpours my apartment stayed dry and we didn't lose power.

The forecast is now saying Sunday and Monday will be mostly sunny, but if they are I'm sure we will suffer shock and perhaps many cases of temporary blindness as the unaccustomed light floods this place that has endured fog or rain for over a month now. I suspect that the population has a record number of cases of Seasonal Affective Disorder. I'm pretty sure I've got one myself. A couple of days of sun probably won't be enough to cure it, and we'll be back to rain after that brief respite, clear into the new year.

There are onerous tasks I need to do later today, and I'm currently indulging myself with an extra donut, as partial compensation. Safeway had a buy-one-get-one sale on my donuts this week, and so I have twice as many as usual. That should help me get through the next few days of grey. I also have Mexican cocoa, and a fresh bottle of brandy to pike it with, so my continued survival might not be entirely tragic, for the nonce.

What the hell is a nonce anyway? It sounds vaguely insulting. Oh, well, I guess it doesn't much matter, not at this late date. Not worth the effort of a Google. I'm just going to enjoy my extra donut and pretend that's all there is to life. Donuts and brandy-spiked cinnamon cocoa. Certainly Paradise enow?

bill_schubert

I got Dana another smart watch. The first one I got her was not very smart at all and it died. The one I just got her looked like it was better but it was run by an app called VeryFit. I occasionally get annoyed with the Fitbit app but now I love it by comparison. VeryFit is VeryCrapful. It throws advertisements and offers at you right and left and has so much noise on it there is no way to figure out what is useful. It lasted a day. Dana and I had a talk and I upgraded her to a Fitbit watch. I'm the one that has to manage the app which is why she has an Android rather than an Iphone in the first place. So her replacement will be a delayed Christmas present and someone will get a good deal on a VeryFit watch through Amazon returns.

She really does need the pulse and O2 readings. It will help her a lot. She doesn't do enough movement for the steps to matter but hope springs eternal. Maybe she will one day.

Today was a pickleball day and I didn't play very well at all. I did exchange notes with a PB friend about getting a lesson for the two of us together. It is a good way to do it. She and I are pretty good partners and getting a lesson together will help us individually and as a team. On the one hand I don't think I'm ever going to compete with any real intent of winning something like a tournament. On the other hand I really should be looking to improve a little bit anyway.

It is warm today and will be even warmer until Friday when it will nearly hit 80 degrees. Gonna be a lot like last year, I guess. I don't mind. Older I get the less I like the cold anyway. It would be fun to see Beaux in the snow but not sure he'd like it much.

It is a quiet week here. We have zero plans for Christmas something about which I do not much care at all. They had Christmas music on at the PB courts. I've managed to avoid it so far but this was unavoidable. Another thousand times around the track with the Chipmonks and Alvin. Sigh.

I underslept last night so I'm about to make up for it. Beaux and Toby are already ahead of me so I need to catch up.

Friends

Dove

Cruise - 4 Days: Chicago

something I am grateful for today

New Year's Eve Storytelling

tuesday

Chaunkah Music

(no subject)

Signal Boost: Someone else's comments on bad science

(no subject)

365 Questions 2025

I'm guessing he's gone by now

Mark down and make more

Christmas cookies

(no subject)

Last Day of Work This Year

(no subject)

monday later

(no subject)

52/298: Noncy

Not a fitbit

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