MOOP!

The world is complicated and there are a lot of things to have feelings about, obviously on a macro level, but for me on a more micro level as well.

But.

I spent the day with various groups of friends, and doing a bunch of knitting work and making things with my hands. And it feels very very good.

I'm happy for that. I hope you can also find things that make you happy.

~Sor
MOOP!

Today was a busybusy day, but I did manage to get my prep and stuff done before leaving the building, huzzah. The very last work thing I did was have a brief check-in with my favourite admin, which turned into a longer check-in as we transitioned from talking about a specific student to just like...propping each other up in this hellish current events. It is nice to have at least one admin who I can trust to say "yeah, the 2026 political climate is fucking bullshit" and have her already fully radicalized and on board because it sure fuckin' is.

After work, I managed to do an actually useful "I'm gonna spend thirty minutes playing dumb phone games and getting my brain to sort itself out" and then I did all my prep in time to leave for therapy. I was a couple minutes late getting home, but not badly so at all. And therapy felt as good as it can! Like, I don't think I'm doing great right now, but I think it was a good space to process some of the things that are going on in my brain and it's good to have a therapist who tells me not to borrow trouble.

Almost straight from therapy to friend Ruthie's house to celebrate her birthday! I really enjoyed getting the email invite from one of her partners the other week saying "hey, it's 2026 and logistics brain is hard so my birthday present is that I'm organizing this party for her, please RSVP and tell me your food needs" and man, I'm very pleased to have gotten a party invite that slotted exactly between my Tuesday plans. I ate too much good Thai food and subsequently not enough good cake and my stomach still feels very pleasantly full, several hours later.

Left the party just on the early end (it's an early end to the party because it's a worknight and also Ruthie has a toddler with a bedtime) so I could make it home in time for the TMC zoom meeting. yayyyy organizing Scottish dance stuff, I suppose. It was pretty painless as these meetings go.

Now I have a few hours to spend to myself and then I'm gonna try to go to bed more on time than I have been. We'll see.

I love you.
~Sor
MOOP!

Very long day yesterday. Thursdays are my busiest days at work, where I see all five of my classes rapid in a row, with just my lunch break in between. It always gets me a little bit bleary-eyed, and then today we had conferences after. At least those were scheduled in the earliest time-slot we ever do them --we move the times a bit so that different parental situations can have access at different times, and this was the 3-5 event.

Then, as Clayton-workbestie and I were walking home, I mentioned offhand "oh, and I have to go teach Scottish now". Which was actually a great comment to make, as it led us back to my absolute favourite walking-home-conversation-topic, to wit, the pedagogical and logistical differences between teaching high school geometry, Scottish country dance, or Japanese tea ceremony. We know a surprising amount about each others' niche hobbies, just from being passionate and enthusiastic about them, and willing to nurse that enthusiasm in the other, and it's really nice.

(the biggest conclusion this time was the pairing of advantages/disadvantages. I can run a dance class on a school night, because setting up and tearing down only takes me about 15 minutes on either end (plus a potentially infinite amount of prepping a lesson plan, but I can get by if that's measured in a single digit of minutes). He can't do that, needs much more time to prepare fancy snacks before and carefully hand-wash and ensure all the dishware is dry after, but if only one other person shows up to his class, they will have a marvelous and fruitful time, where I get nothing but footwork practice at that point.)

And of course, every time I say the phrase, I think about a post Tricia made years ago, about a gentle correction BDan gave her when she said "I have to go dancing tomorrow". Change "have to" to "get to". I _get_ to run my dance class on odd Thursday nights.

Really truly, it has been astoundingly consistent, that no matter how up or down I'm feeling beforehand, I have not yet had a week where I came out of class feeling bad. Varying levels of tired, but the fact that I've bent the world to my will enough to have this one little bright spot of joy and community is amazing, and I feel consistently so privileged and excited to get to witness it.

Also it's _so nice_ to have simply embraced my ethos of "do hard things badly" and just run forward with it. Another difference from tea ceremony --they have more of a set and ordered curriculum, which is lovely for them, but doesn't have as much flexibility for my style of "you've been here like twice before ever and just walked in a few minutes late? yeah, we're just gonna throw you in, do your best"

I'm also so privileged to have found-made-cultivated-developed-whatever a group of people willing to extend me grace and patience as I learn the best ways to say the things to share the idea. I still need to remember that modeling is often best, but on any given dance, I can feel myself getting better within the moment as I encourage them on. Truly, my class is spoiling me for regular teaching.

(that's actually not a joke --when I last taught at Cambridge Class, the biggest and much more traditional class in the branch, I found myself second-guessing and being slightly shocked at how much support these far more experienced dancers needed, and having to occasionally rewrite programs between weeks to take some challenges down a few notches. Which is really just a different culture of dance --there's much more of the "wanting to do the same things enough times to feel confident" where I'm more, as I said, be okay with doing things badly.)

Maybe I should write a continuing set of ethos up sometime, what I'm actively hoping to cultivate. Include things like "we communicate without words [except the caller]" and "we keep trying to find our spot". The compliment for the two newest dancers on the floor tonight was that both of them were very good at _not stopping_. One of them, the one who's only come two or three times before, is the one we all cornered at the end to express astonishment she does no other form of dance.

"If you're having fun, you definitely should come back, because you have a quite good sense of how to communicate non-verbally" I say (approximately) and Alex interrupts to say "if you're having fun, you should come back because you're having fun" which I appreciate. It's all a very good situation, honestly.

And it's nice to know that there's something feeling interesting and exciting and sustainable in my world, especially when some days my job is feeling, uh, not those things. This year has been very long and hard, it's important that it also has dancing.

I love you,
~Sor
MOOP!

It's Monday!

We had a snow day today, which was very good. I managed to mostly not just play Stardew Valley the entire day straight, and actually do some grading. By which I mean, uh, about an hours worth total. Oh well. It's a start.

(I also did some nice things in Stardew).

Honestly the hour of grading I did was maybe the second most important hour of all of it. There's one more really important hour (actually enter comments) but now I'm in a much less dire place than I was. And yeah, there are several hours in between these two hours, but if they don't happen, they don't happen and everyone will live.

It is hard to care as much about Doing Good At My Job when like, fascism. Am I being kind? Am I hopefully teaching my students to be kind? I think that's probably more important than grading everything to the absolute pinnacle of my ability. Or so I'm telling myself. :/

After some grading and Stardew happened, Austin braved the Many Snow to come visit for regular Mondate! This is good! He showed me some of the things he worked on at Mystery Hunt, and we ate ice cream, and watched an episode of Leverage. It's the Grave Danger Job, which is mostly really good but the last five minutes where the team gets revenge on the drug cartel by using Homeland Security against them.......yeahhh that hits different in 2026 than it did in 2006. Blugh.

(Both Aldis Hodge and Beth Reisgraf are really good actors and able to put it on full display here. I do really like that part, and I like how good this episode is for the OT3 of all OT3s.)

Tomorrow is also a snow day, which is a very very good thing. I might walk Austin to the work shuttle, if I'm feeling very brave --I technically haven't left the house since arriving here Friday evening and it's probably time. The backyard is excitingly drifty! I don't think we have a sled anymore --I think someone borrowed it somewhere along the way and it never returned-- but fucking around on the bike path while wearing many gear seems like a noble pursuit. Maybe I will even bring a camera?

I hope you are staying safe and being kind to your neighbors and occasionally calling your politicians to yell at them. For what little it's worth, ICE's funding is going to run out unless the senate votes to extend it, so maybe like, call your senators sometime in the next day or two and tell them to fucking not?

<3
~Sor
MOOP!

I first read the Geek Social Fallacies at a fairly young and impressionable age, and have always kinda tucked them away in the back of my head as "don't do these things!". Consider it part of my explicit learning how to be Good At Social that I've done (mostly via my mother).

Anyways, GSF#4 ("friendship is transitive") is one that I have apparently rebelled against so hard that it was a genuine and pleasant surprise to see one of the people in my discord server¹ refer to another one --someone they've never met in person and only know through that space-- as "friend". Like, I know friend can be a shorthand for a lot of different relationships, I'm not making any assumptions about Serious Intimacy or anything like that.

But gosh, while I can't-don't-won't assume all my friends are going to get along with each other, it's kinda really lovely when they do anyways. It feels good! (Community is good!)

~Sor
MOOP!

1: Free Space Dinosaur is my lovely little discord server. It's a dictatorship, with a strong cultural focus on small personal things instead of broad sweeping conversations. We try to be kind to each other, we try to ask before giving advice, somehow my very very light moderating hand has led to a really lovely little space. If you want an invite drop me a comment!

It's Sunday of Arisia!

I didn't post yesterday because I was busy Having Fun (tm) so here's the things I did yesterday and today! And then my goal is, I guess, by the end of the week to make a lovely highly annotated clothing entry where I babble and post you lots of pictures of how cute I am.

Yesterday I got dressed and ready and headed off to a shift at Goat Check. Despite mom very nearly running the thing for like eight years now, I've never actually formally worked there. But it was good to have a little structure in my life, and so I had shifts yesterday and today, and I have a short one tomorrow. Both days so far have been a very nice balance where there's never been more than one person in line at once, but also there's never been more than about ten minutes without someone coming by to check in or out their coat.

Had lots of lovely conversations along the way, with friendly Kevin (who is here from Pittsburgh and plays DnD with the wife of an SCD friend of mine) and K***** (whose name I can't remember and am big mad about because they're very cool, but hopefully I will get to see them again at YTS!) and Thrantar and BDan and whoever else stopped by. Turns out to be a good gig!

On Saturday, I zooped straight out of Goat Check and went to the Renaissance Dance that Justin dC was running. He is a fine MC and a very good convention-level teacher, and so it's always a nice joy to watch him cope with the chaos. I mostly didn't dance this time, because I wanted to work on my knitting a bit, and also because he had a very full dance floor with several good supporting dancers around. This was also good because my friend Dax wandered by, and we had a good conversation catching up with each other about the last several years!

I slunk out to go get changed and prepare for the Night Market, a first-time Arisia event that seems to have gone very successfully. It was a "stuff swap" --no money to exchange hands, but little trinkets and crafts encouraged to be given to each other. Very kid friendly, but also a nice air of mystery amongst the adults. I had a box of beautiful vintage gloves from when mom was regularly finding them on the super cheap at estate sales for me --I'd been meaning to give much of the box away for aaaaages now, and so it was a lovely accomplishment to find a corner and array them in front of me (I also had "wee beasties" --rubber dinosaurs and other little toys that I've gathered throughout my adventures for those with hands bigger than most of the gloves). I received some ICE whistles and shiny rocks and a cute little pentacle and a couple dinosaurs and some lovely prints/photos and for a few people who wanted gloves but didn't have trinkets, I traded them for Words they liked.

This is how I met aforementioned unremembered K*****, who was doing wandering calligraphy and was willing to trade a pair of gloves for a little card reading "Good Girls Aren't Here". After a series of entertaining "made-sense-at-the-time" decisions, they later wrote me for free "Patellas are not for hitting". It was very satisfying!

The market wound down, the children went scampering off with their prizes, and I declared myself very satisfied to have emptied about 2/3rds the box of gloves! Back to the room for the third outfit of the day, and down to the dance hall for the only DJ Dirge set we got this year.

I danced for most of all the time from tenPM until he shut us down a bit after 2am. He was adorably sniffly as he gave a goodbye spiel, a "I'll keep coming back to Arisia as long as they have me, but man this place feels like home" and I, at least, also teared up with happy joy. It's at least my third year in a row closing out that dance, and it feels so so good for my heart to do so. Fuck but dancing like an idiot late into the night is the thing that heals what ails me. And I appreciate the con environment so much for being completely chill and safe to like...shed shoes and socks and coat and outer shirt and just be able to dance very comfortable.

Somewhere amidst the rest of it, jere7my and I did make it up to House of Toast, so that was a good part of Saturevening as well. And now, not to do spoiler alerts, it's quite late on Sunday and I have a Tuesday who is settling into bed and I wish to settle alongside her. More about how the rest of today went later.

~Sor
MOOP!

It's the cold and dark of winter and I made the daily challenge on my discord be "Screaming", because it's sorta how everything has felt. In revenge, I had to have an annoying conversation with my boss about some (uncompensated, non-contract) responsibilities I hold have been slipping, and had one of my cabinets literally collapse in the middle of proctoring a serious standardized test. It was very dramatic, luckily it was just me and one student to be very badly startled.

Also luckily, my anti-Nemesis (comrade? buddy? hero?) was able to quickly swing by, and as he always does, he made my life demonstrably better. Huzzah! Now, when can we have a building that doesn't use the cheapest possible materials? We have not been present long enough for things to be literally falling apart.

Before the mild disaster, I managed to do a bunch of what my therapist yesterday called "productive avoidance". Genuinely good things! Things that need done! I checked some serious stuff off my todo list! None of it was the stuff that's the highest priority right now, which not surprisingly, is also the stuff that's stressing me out right now. Maybe tomorrow I will finally do some grading? Hahahah oh god.

I dunno man, it's the cold and dark of winter and also it's the cold and dark of fascism. I should probably be texting a lot more often with my sister who's currently in a city overrun by government thugs. I hope she's okay. I hope she stays okay. I hope we all stay okay. That's not just sisters, I hope we all stay okay.

***

I wrote all the above during the department meeting, when I was still kinda sad and frustrated, but then Geometry PLC was quite good, and Clayton and I were able to walk home together and that was _excellent_. It's always pretty good, it's so _so_ valuable to have people I genuinely like to work with, but this time was also especially fun because he was filling me in his theory that Moby Dick is just an anime. It's very charming when he gets into things like that!

This evening has been...not terrible? Not amazing. Played a lot of video games, which is sometimes very good, and sometimes very avoidant. It wanted to be the really big push for packing for Arisia, since tomorrow night is dance class and I will be less inclined to do any packing work then. I did a non-zero amount of packing! It's nowhere near complete, but it was good progress! I also, critically, did all the laundry, so I'm actually set _up_ to do more good packing tomorrow.

And I helped Rey buzz her hair short which was quite fun --I always like a chance to play with the clippers! And I washed all the dishes, which is good --I've been only an intermittent dish fairy these past few weeks, so it felt good to do it proper.

I still need to update my dailies list, which I'm trying to pay better attention to this year than last. I think I sussed out it was ~130 days that I actually logged things last year? Which is...not great. I'd like to do better this year, I'd like to see if I can at least get 2/3rds of the days gone. Using Habitica too, helps. Having the double things to log is actually quite nice, they scratch similar but not-quite-the-same itches.

I hope you are well and happy and stay that way.

~Sor
MOOP!

LB asked a few days ago, because I never did elaborate about Kale Pudding in here during the actual summer. So here is a story from Pinewoods this past July!

***

The Kale Pudding was a Pinewoods adventure, and I'm surprised about the part where I didn't give details any time this year, except of course I didn't, I have been _so shit_ at updating Dreamwidth. Oh well.

The shortlong version: At Pinewoods dance camp Scottish Sessions, we have a big auction to raise money for camp. Because we raise fucktons of $$ (like, basically always five figures, this year was a record in the ~27,000 range), the crew of Pinewoods are often willing to donate various goods and services that they don't really offer to other sessions which split their $s between camp and the parent orgs (or don't donate to camp at all). One of these services, for several years, has been "the head cook will let you choose what the dessert for the last night of camp is".

We've had creme brulee. We've had sticky toffee pudding. We've had cheesecake. It's chances for the kitchen crew to flex on the fact that food at Pinewoods is _way_ outside the league of "camp food" anywhere else. And in...let's say 2021 or so? In about 2021, when the bidding started, I made a bid just to get things going and loudly announced that I was bidding on "kale pudding" for dessert. No one knew what that would, but they recognized it for the thread it sounded like, and outbid me.

Continue the running joke for several years. Cue 2024, at which point Geoffrey, who had frequently outbid me in the past, comes up to me and says "I've got $300 for you this year, I think it would be funny if you won". And so did someone else. Oh-ho-ho, with shadowbackers, I have an actual chance! Bidding gets to just over a thousand dollars before Terry says "okay, raise your hand if you'll throw in $50 for NOT kale pudding". (he then wasted it on Pot de Creme, which is a delicious chocolate treat that I just do not like and also that the kitchen like, regularly makes at camp? So it's not like you couldn't get it at Pinewoods in general? DO SOMETHING INTERESTING WITH YOUR DESSERT CHOICE, THE CREME BRULEE YEAR THE KITCHEN CREW GOT TO BORROW BLOWTORCHES THAT WAS AWESOME!)

So now I've got a challenge, a target, and a goal. And a whole bunch of people also into The Joke. At LCFD weekend, right at the start of the summer, I warn Amanda the head cook. I'm serious. I'm going to campaign. "And part of my campaign is predicated on 'I trust Amanda to make something _good_' so, uh, good luck babe". ESCape rolls around, the session immediately before Scottish, and some friends do actual campaigning for Make The Scots Eat Kale Pudding fund¹. I don't just have shadow-backers anymore, I have straight up donation-matchers. Like, more than one of them.

So at Scottish Sessions, I go ahead and start collecting a list of people I think it would be funny to get money from. A big ol' list of collaborators, and also making it clear that anyone could bid shadow-wise, and not have anybody but me know that they were in. I will be the fall guy for this BUT ALSO if anyone can make Kale Pudding taste good it's Amanda. Believe in them, you know? Auction night rolls around. Me and Geoffrey make a plan --he'll be the face guy for the ESCape part of the fund, and bid against me to make the $$ go up if necessary. We're gonna spook people, then he's gonna hit me with the "well, ESCape wants to be on the winning team" and throw in his funds so we can crush the competition.

...except no one else wants to bid on the dessert. The joke has just about hit its limits, and I have successfully either convinced everyone that Amanda is really good at their job and it'll taste good, or have intimidated them into thinking they're not going to bother. So Geoffrey and I have a (brief) screaming match of "I bid 1000...for kale pudding" "oh yeah? Well I bid 1500....for kale pudding!!!" until we reach $2500 and agree to go in together and then we gave Pinewoods camp a $5000 donation² in exchange for making the Scots eat kale pudding for their last night dessert.

Which Amanda made as "pot de brassica", a sort of violently neon green creamy pud, served with lemon curd, tasted sharp and interesting and yes like kale and delicious. Most people enjoyed it, or at least found it "good enough". Very few people didn't like it, but honestly, I don't like pot de creme which everyone else finds The Shit, so it's all normal.

And I assured a great many people that last year was the last year of the joke anyways, so it's going to be very very funny if the new kitchen head [Amanda has retired after their triumph] offers this same auction item and I bid any amount. What, I just want some lemon meringue pie!

AND THAT IS THE TALE OF THE KALE PUDDING!

~Sor

1: "Why should you care what some people a week from now eat for dessert? First off, you shouldn't. Second off, because it would be funny. And third off, because the money goes to a good cause..."

2: It is important to note that Geoffrey works in SF with computers, and we had a _lot_ of shadowbackers and donors. I did not pay anywhere near this amount myself.

Today was a day of very many games! And playing them with various people. And that's basically it. _____@

I got to see Veronicaaaaa and play games with her, which is the Best Ever. And I saw Cameron and MaccyTu and Jonny!!!!! and Tuesday and Mom and played games with all them as well! Busy day!

We played:

Pit: I did very well in general, but I always do.

Hot Streak: Several rounds, I tended to do poorly, but had a very good time because it's very stupid fun!

Agricola: I came in first! It was a hardfought, and I never quite got my engines working the way I wanted, but I did manage to frantically make a whole bunch of fences in the last possible moment.

Kingsburg: Came in solidly fourth, c'est la vie, but I did not get killed by the demons, so that's a good start!

Space Base: Came in _painfully_ last place, like, fourteen points below second last, and I ended the game with 4 (the game ends when someone crosses 40). But I had a nice time!

I think that's everything we played? I also did some rounds of knitting, and much chatting and bomping my head into my friends and occasionally eating things. Tomorrow, Tuesday and I ride a train for many many hours. I am planning to listen to music and do some knitting and maybe actually touch my day job? Grading and the like? Aaaaah!

I will have to pack up tomorrow morning, I expect. Hm. Maybe I need to actually start to get my sleep schedule back into wack, so that I can go to work on Monday. Sigh!

That's me. I hope your life is also nice and full of friends and stuff.

~Sor
MOOP!

Wednesday, December 31st, 2025!

(the one day of the year when I feel slightly weird about keeping my cron to 6am instead of midnight, but it's okay. Nevermind that it's technically already almost midnight-thirty. Congrats, we made it to '26!)

Anyways, I haven't been writing much here, and that's a shame. I'd like to change that for 2026 maybe? I think my official New Years Resolution is to update my dailies spreadsheet more often than I did this past year. (I should probably collect the data on how-many-days at some point).

2025 was bullshit nonsense on a global and USA level. It was a kinda weird year on a personal level. I coped with the fact that I'm now the age my shitty abusive boyfriend was, and that it's officially been half my life since I was last raped. I got rid of my uterus, and then was copied by my mother (except I skipped the cancer part). I started my ninth year of teaching at The Dream Job, with an adorable bright-shiny-new mentee teacher, and an endlessly-patient co-teacher.

I have the same number and arrangement of partners as I started the year with, which is pretty grand. I like it when my love life is stable! (there's one small change, but I'll make a bigger post about it sometime. It's a good thing.) I have the same roommate situation as I started the year with, which is DEFINITELY grand. I have the same job, which I'm still happy with.

Last year I was part of the bargaining team for some excellent and groundbreaking contract work. This year I'm a building rep and I'm holding my bosses feet to the fire wherever possible about actually enforcing the things we won.

A couple months ago I started a new hobby, and I think knitting is Very Good For Me. It's fun! It's a lot of counting! I get to touch things! It's hopefully eventually going to supplant some of the phone games instinct and replace it with something better?

I started the year with ADHD, and I still have ADHD. I finally _finally_ about a month ago set up the focus-mode on my phone, and now for two hours every day my phone becomes an inaccessible brick where I can't do anything distracting. Not coincidentally, it's set to start about half an hour after my work day ends, or about when I'd be getting home from bells. It's working surprisingly well! Let's hope it continues, so written so true.

Dancing is really fucking good. Having _my dance_ is so fulfilling and joyful and I'm real happy that I have established my dance pedagogy ethos: "Do Hard Things Badly". (sometimes I manage to apply this ethos to my knitting and other hobbies as well). We've had enough people to do _some_ kind of dancing, every time we've had class, although we've learned a lot of five-person dances along the way, at least two of which are marvelous and I've been bringing to the wider world as much as possible.

My own dancing hasn't been happening as much, but I'm trying to bring myself to do more of it. (It doesn't help that the yeeterus took me out of dancing for a couple months, and then it was the start of the school year and frantic). I need to run through my program dances for the night of Scottish Pinewoods I am MCing this year, and I need to sign up for ESCape (since they asked me to teach again and all, iirc).

I have friends and have sometimes been a little better about keeping in touch with them? At the very very end of last year, I got back in touch with Tho, and we email sometimes. Veronica and I have calls every other week or so. Tailsteak and I watch Taskmaster most Thursdays, except for the ones where one of us is super busy or the ones where we just spend two hours shooting the shit and chatting about our lives. My work bestie has bought a house and now somehow lives even closer to me. There are neighbors and friends I love and I'm happy to see and hang with them.

I sang in my first ever choir, my first time in my life doing formalized SATB. We did Vivaldi's Gloria, and it was the high school choir and orchestra combo, with a smattering of teachers enthusiastically invited to join. I'm a tenor! Austin and Phoebe came to see me, and then we walked around the student art show with our jaws on the floor because of how stunning and talented the kids at my school are.

I don't know. Probably other good things happened this year. Kale pudding! Some weddings! Thanksgiving with two families! Absolutely no peal attempts and I don't even think I tried any quarters!

(And as Vicki looks over and says "what are you typing anyways?" I am reminded that in 2025, I wrote my words on 365 days. I have a streak that is 1,227 days long. I have missed 0.15% of the days since November 25th, 2018. That's pretty fucking cool, honestly.)

I love you. I end a lot of posts with that phrase --I think I started the habit in 2020, when we were all re-adapting how we related to the world, and then I decided I liked it. It's true though, I love people and humanity and beings and the spark and interesting things inside us all. I love _you_.

Happy new year. As I've been telling people, may your 2026 be better than your 2025 was. I'm starting the year curled up on the floor next to some lovely people from different eras of my life, playing board games and happily bickering. It's _delightful_.

<3
~Sor
MOOP!