Very full very good day!

SamSam is visiting this weekend, and it's lovely. They got in yesterday a bit after school let out, and so we were able to head to beginner bellspractice and help out a whole bunch there last night. I got more Owl House enthusiasm from the local 12 year old, and a little bit of musicals geekery from our newest ringer, and we rang lots of various successful rounds and hunting and it was all splendid.

Today was more bells, and very excitingly, when I last looked at the spreadsheet it said like...five people? When I checked this morning it was ten and five guests. UM OKAY COOL FINE. I can lead this practice! That's...that's normal?!

(it actually went quite well. There was handling, there was called changes, just about everybody got to try something that challenged them, I went up to see the bells with Sam and Daniel P****** who is a lovely other friend visiting, and then we all hung out in the sunshine and enjoyed the marvelous spring weather (a welcome revisitation after the summer we've had this week.)

Post bellslunch, several of us picked up necessary ingredients from the haymarket for ~dinner party~ tonight. Because Daniel P****** and April are visiting Austin and Bee, and because Sam is visiting me, and because JohnB is a lovely human, we all got together for Good Dinner And Games And Stuff.

Austin and Bee made taco fixings, and Sam and I made gingerbread (mostly Sam) and we all sprawled around the table eating good food and talking good conversation. I laughed a _lot_ tonight, there's a lot of really lovely people in this group and I liked having the freedom to feel very much myself as part of it.

We played a great many rounds of Wavelength, and then went outside to see the ISS pass overhead (we're up to Expedition 71). Signing up for those SpotTheStation text alerts¹ was one of the best decisions I have ever made, it is such a cool thing every time I get to wave at them.

Post ISS, we returned to play an arguing game (everyone has an animal competing in various sport-type events and we argue Who! Will! Win!) and then played a pretty great tile placement game called Shake the City. I did perfectly well at both, and continued to laugh a lot and generally very much enjoy being with these people.

I also drew a stunning picture of a middle aged dad doing the Abbots Bromley. This doesn't make more sense if you think harder about it. His polo shirt has a small image of an crocodile riding a horse and playing polo, and yes, I am extremely proud of that weird bullshit. I'll try and upload a photo later.

Then it was very late and so home again home again. Sam and I have two days with almost zero total plans, which is going to be _excellent_. Read books, hang out, maybe make more food, generally have a nice time of things. I have grading but obviously I am not going to work on it this weekend.

I hope your life is going well and you are finding joy.

~Sor
MOOP!

1: Huh, apparently mobile text alerts are now in legacy mode and no longer supported. I have had no problem with them, but ymmv and I should probably check out the app version and see how that works as well.

The weather finally got nice, and oh please oh please stay like this a bit, it would be _so good_ for my brain to be able to actually hang out outside for a while!

The morning started with me and Austin being lazy and happy in bed together, all snuggly and whatnot. Eventually we had to get to bells, so up and shower and breakfast and brush teeth and go go go. Not that zoomy, we just took the T instead of biking. A pleasant walk outdoors!

I was able to wear a sundress for the first time in An Age, which is a deffo good thing. And the green line continues to be _amazing_ for getting to bells --yes, we were late (about 11:40), but we also left at like...11. There's no way that would've worked out for us in the pre-GLX times.

Bells was incredibly weird, because for the first time in like...my entire tenure as tower captain, I was the baby of the band again. Ten people, all of whom could ring surprise major? And I was probably the only one who could only ring one surprise major method inside?? Yes please!

We rang a full course of CambMajor (I did _okay_ --need to get better at remembering the coursing-order) and a plain course of yet-unnamed-method (I did _great_ and actually was able to separate the place bells better than usual, especially finding a new way to think about the back work) and Dixons Bob minor (I did poorly but possibly held together longer than I have in the past?) and a couple nice minor methods. It was fun being baby again and getting to do stuff to stretch myself! Should've insisted on the Beverly instead of Cambminor though, just because I find them both pleasant but Beverly's more a challenge for the rest of the band.

After was a fairly abbreviated lunch, since most of the ringers were rushing off to a quarterpeal attempt at the other church. I got to have a wee bit of lazy conversation with Ricky, including some fanfic recs. I headed to Advent after everyone else (nice walking in the sunshine through the city) and was able to set up on the steps of a brownstone across the street from the church with my grading and listen to the qp. It's weird listening to _that much ringing_ from the outside --I kept expecting it to come round and being surprised when it didn't.

The QP went (yay!) and I was able to join folks for ice cream after. More good conversation (including "what's the difference between a theft and a heist") and then finally all off to home, whereupon I did nothing but play video games for manymany hours. Delightful!

And now I sleep! Goodnight!

~Sor
MOOP!

Today has not totally sucked either. In fact, it's been pretty alright.

I left the house a little late to get to Advent ringing, completely forgetting that the proximity to fancy church holidays meant services would run longer than usual. I did arrive after ringing started, but by considerably less than I'd feared, and was able to pop in for a method or two before the bells had to come down.

There was no coffee hour at the church, and so after a brief muddle of trying to keep our party together, we set off to a local nice coffee shop to bolster our spirits with pastries, and give us energy for the long walk to Old North. I got a very good chocolate muffin. The walk was particularly high spirited, and when we arrived at ON, every single ringer seemed to be at least a little bit punchy.

Their services were also running long, and just after we arrived at the tower, Bee noticed that the pokegym had a particularly cool raid about to happen...but a big one! 5/8 ringers whipped out their phones and it didn't help the punchiness at *all* for us to be frantically joining a raid team and taking it out. A nice big ~mega Alakazam~ who fell quite easily to the five of us, and then we got distracted a bit by vexiloligy until the lights flash and we sprung to our actual job.

(It is, as it turns out, very easy to distract Kat with vexiloligy. I blame growing up in Maryland for it, once you've been exposed to how good it feels to have an actually interesting state flag, you start to form some serious opinions on all the other flags out there).

I ran a nice service ringing --hard not to, when we only rang like three things-- and we could collect ourselves and go for a lunch in the too-thin sunshine. Not quite warm enough to be really marvelous, but certainly nice enough for us to be comfortable lingering a bit outside, excitedly sharing thoughts.

Finally home again home again together on the T, and all parting ways. No Kyle on Sundays, so I walked home from the station poking my nose back into the book I'd started this morning, Lattes and Legends. Like so many people, I'd first heard of it as a strong recommendation from Seanan McGuire, and I'd finally picked up a copy for myself last Christmas.

I got home and kept reading, until I finished the whole thing. It's a pretty fast read, a novel but a short one (250 pages or so) and a very charming one. As says on the tin, found family, competency, lots of coffee. I think it's pretty much fluff, but very comfortable fluff --I don't feel particularly challenged by it, but I really don't regret reading it and will probably read it again sometime.

Then was time for some house chores. Laundering various hand towels and tablecloths, sweeping and vacuuming floors, cleaning the toilet, the usual un-sexy maintenance to keep the place we live from becoming an utter pigsty. My bedroom is still a lost cause these days, but hopefully I'll work on that a bit in the upcoming week.

Last part of the day was dance. I _zoomed_ on a blue bike to Alewife, only a minute late for being picked up by my ride to Demo Team practice. Demo Team had time enough for one walk through and to to-music dance throughs --our first time going through the entire program at speed. This is good, because we only have one more rehearsal until NEFFA. It was bad because there were *definitely* a few chunks of music that were not-quite-right in our practice recording.

I persuaded Beth to drive me all the way to Porter instead of Alewife, and got to cap the night off with BIDA. I was expecting that there'd be no way for BIDA to measure up to the *phenomenal* night it'd been the week before, but it turns out someone had been very clever with the scheduling, and the way to follow up to a fucking amazing bonus-band who'd flown in from the other side of the country was with a hugely expansive open band with close to twenty people onstage.

After I arrived but before I went inside, I wolfed down a granola bar, so that I was not dancing on zero calories, and as before, wound up chatting with a nice person as they also arrived. This turned out to be a person called Erica who was lovely friendly, and we established "oh yes, we'll have to dance together sometime tonight" as part of our polite conversation. That turned out to be pretty much immediately --I got downstairs a minute or two later, and had just finished tying my dance shoes when the next dance started...and found Erica in much the same boat. We wound up doing a grid square dance together, and I learned that my new friend is a person entirely made of enthusiasm. This is a good thing!

The rest of the dance was equally lovely. I got to waltz with Iz just as she arrived, which was charming, just gossiping quietly about our respective lives, and then during the break was able to chat with Ruthie a whole bunch about the wonders of pregnancy. The second half included a *deeply* flirtatious contra with Austin (a mad robin made for some wonderfully intense eye contact, and I like that if I'm dancing with one of the very few people I actually make proper eye contact with), and ended with a silly Gemini-swapping line with Bee and Todd. Todd had never experienced a Gemini-partner(s) before, and spent much of the dance being adorkably and enthusiastically bewildered.

I closed with a waltz with the taller of the Neils, noting he didn't have a partner and vaguely remembering that he was good for that sort of thing. Oh yes! He's a blues dancer, and he's got those lovely long legs which means he actually stretches his way across the floor, and that was a very lovely dance as well.

Homeagain homeagain, where I ate some dinner (shocked it was nearly eleven!) and then went to my bedroom if not exactly to bed. Words are done now and I'm off to sleep...tomorrow will be full of its own new challenges as I catch up with whatever I wanted my lessons to be. Goodnight!

~Sor
MOOP!

[[written last night after I got home, posted this morning yay!]]

So like...as an indication of how I'm doing, I'm typing words on the school computer tonight, because Mel is still downstairs and I just couldn't be arsed to go down again and get her after already walking up the stairs once.

I am...pretty damn wiped out, from an ultimately brilliant and lovely day. Really really satisfied and happy, just exhausted.

It was Bee's birthday (well, it is on Monday) so they had decreed that after bells today there should be some celebrating. So before heading to bells, I packed up my bag carefully and made sure I would be completely ready for Adventures! Some highlights:

*Bells went really quite well today. I watched a round of Cambridge minor, paying specially attention to what JohnS was doing (because he's very good) and making my brain relearn the path, which turned out to actually work and when I got to ring it later, I only messed up a few times.

*I also rang what might've been my first ever touch of Plain Bob Minor where I was in the right spot every single blow. Like, I wasn't perfect with the timing, I was sometimes a little on the early or late side of the blow, but I distinctly and specifically knew where I was supposed to be --and was approximately there-- every time and I am proud of myself for that as long as I don't think too hard about things.

*The main adventure was BEACH! We all gathered food, met on the greenway as usual, and then split up half-by-car and half-by-T to go to Wonderland and have a nice time! The T group won the race by like 10-15 minutes, which was very excellent, although all of us were beat by Greg who had cheated by not being at ringing and therefore able to leave whenever he wanted.

*I went into the ocean twice. The first time I moved very slow but did dunk to neck. Also spent a bunch of time standing knee-ish deep and chatting with Julia about library stuff. The second time was after sand adventures (see below) and I went in more quickly and did eventually full dunk, which means my hair is full of salt. I lasted longer than I expected, and got out not quite soon enough¹, but very nearly, and so only needed a small amount of wrapped-in-towel-and-sunshine recuperation time.

*Last time I was at the beach, I dug a quite good hole, and decided to do so again this time, which proved hugely popular with the "young" set of ringers (basically all of us between 20-35). Six of us worked together to dig a fairly giant hole --and we started close enough to the wall and pavilions that we actually reached the bottom! (Did you know that parts of Wonderland beach appear to be built on cement?). It was a very lovely bonding exercise.

*Also lovely bonding? The part where we then all dug little seats around the edge of the hole and sat on them and stuck our feet in on top of each other and then obviously dragged the sand in and filled it in so we were just a circle of torsos sticking out of the sand.

*And then we played Spoons! Using seashells, natch. The last round was the "throw all the shells way out of reach so that everyone except first-person will have to go dragging themself out of the sand to get them and it will be very dramatic" which was pretty much perfect except that we accidentally lost one card. Sorry Todd! :(

*Then there was long walks by the shoreside with Austin, and a bit of juggling and volleyball and frisbee and finally we all headed back to Bee and Austin's place for birthday cake and dinner and that was all very good as well.

I did not grow up with beach adventures in my childhood, not really but this has proven to be a fun thing to try for the summer! Lots of sunscreen is necessary of course, but I really enjoy the parts that feel sort of universally human --jump in and over and around the waves, pick up cool shells to show each other, and dig big holes.

Anyways, it is late and I have to be up early for tomorrow's adventures. Ta!

~Sor
MOOP!

1: I have a growing familiarity with the fact that my body can't handle cold water for very long. I did the bad thing and stayed in way too long once, a couple years ago, and then found myself in the thoroughly unpleasant situation of standing around wrapped tightly in a towel (or two?) in 80+ degree weather on a sunny day, with my teeth chattering so hard I couldn't talk. That was no good, and the goal now that I've learned the limit is to not actually push past it again.

Accomplishments:

Work:
*Roughed out the rubric for my Data Analysis students' final project.

Bells:
*Did not make a QP, but at least that was a whole-band thing and not just a me thing
*Did get to ring treble to just *bunches* of different stuff, that was a lot of fun!

Social:
*After bells, we all headed over to Dale and Emily's new house for their housewarming! Their house is SO GOOD! It is full of twisty passages and closets and easy to get lost in and it was totally great.
*Played with small children a ton, which is A+
*Also chatted with adults I like a ton, which is also A+
*Then I went to my dance-mom's surprise 60th birthday, which was a roaring success!

Dance:
*Got to do some spontaneous random contact-improv with Harsh, who I described to a mutual friend as "yeah, we just have very compatible body-grooves" or something like that. I think it's a good way of saying it --there wasn't even any music, but the two of us have very cooperative dance brains which makes it a ton of fun to dance with him.
*Got to dance Tuchas Long Enough, which is the objectively best dance I've ever helped write (sorry Pinewoods Eel).
*Called the Scottish Country Dances for a room full of mixed modern-English-International-etc dancers. They went really well! My sheer force of will for teaching beginners continues to serve me well.

Personal:
*There are no good accomplishments here. But such is life, alas!
*(I did write my words)
*(I did then write an accomplishments post)
*(I will try to do some email, and certainly do it tomorrow if not).

~Sor
MOOP!

Accomplishments

Work:
*The usual
*Was subject to a very friendly coup by my second period. We did the first half of the class, with the discussion in preperation for the data sample we're gonna look at, then the kids convinced me that instead of going to the computer lab and doing the rest by themselves or in partners, that we should all do it together as a class and have more discussion. You know, to show our visiting researcher from the EDC how it's done. It was pretty cool, and one of the kids did lead the class passably well. He gets a super-rare bonus participation point.
*There was a much less exciting meeting about how we're making so much great progress in our new school culture implementation stuff, paired with a helpful roadmap of what we're gonna accomplish next year! It is super vague, I don't feel like there are any serious or good conclusions, and I'm kinda in hella-cynic mode this week.
*On the plus side, I got to talk to Side-Boss about potentially running the Algebra 1 SEI class differently next year, and she was super into it and said she'll talk to Real-Boss and this could be really great.
*Also got to help queer-culture English teacher who I love do some digital stuff she wasn't good at and I'm pleased.
*Went to Diesel (eventually) after school and did 2.5 hours of grading! Yayyyyy. There is still so much to do, oh gods.

Body:
*Did not get more'n six hours sleep, did not get up on first alarm (but did second I believe --woke with unremembered anxietynightmares, which always makes me inclined to curl back up and rewrite them.) Am still working on it, I think?
*Forgot to mention yesterday, but called in meds prescription. Like a week late, and it's _really_ hard for me to build a backlog, gotta get better!
*No highland, but lots of pretty great biking from Diesel to home to Charles-area for dinner with bellringers

Personal:
*Did the emails for today, day 145 of words.
*Played some Heroes of Might and Magic 3, which is a generally soothing activity.
*Social'd it up with the bellringers, despite skipping bells, which is definitely a soothing activity. So many lovely people! I'm gonna have to struggle so much to not be *insufferably* smug to Magus next time I see him about how awesome it is that we now have Dale and Emily up here in Boston.

Still amused at my therapist calling me out yesterday. I think at this point I'm doing the accomplishments list out of spite.

~Sor
MOOP!

Original Tags: accomplishments