Strong Verbs Are Just Better

Let us talk about the training I am supposed to deliver, as one of many deliver-ers.

Context: we have one (1) new person started today. He has a full caseload as of 1 May; while I was on leave, Boss G re-allocated some April work from Various Of Us to New Person. I think he has avout 2 weeks before his "deadline 2: file scanned for decision-makers" points start hitting (and deadline 1: notices of listing has already been done).

1-2 weeks before I went on leave, Boss G sourced from the team a) volunteers to cover a list of induction topics she had come up with, to match her developing Procedural Guides and b) any further suggestions.

I volunteered for "adjournments". I was aiming to avoid the "core essentials", since I had not exelled with those myself, but adjournments? I have made several "find out the hard way" errors.

Colleague L then raised "hmm, this list doesn't include evidence gathering".
Me: Agreed, although it could fit in with one of the existing topics. I also note there isn't a slot for "late papers / file management after scanning", I can cover that".

I MEANT: I think this topic would mesh well with "adjournments".

I GOT: slotted for "file managemnt and late papers", tomorrow, and "adjournments" on Thursday. I agreed, although I was a bit "hrmm": "file management" is slotted after "allocations / The Spreadhseet" and before "notices of listing", which sort of makes sense but "late papers' does NOT make sense before Notices of Listing", and frankly I would have assigned "evidence gathering" to one or other of those not grouped with late papers.

I considered: how can I make this chain? I will find out what M is doing for "allocations / the Spreadsheet" and try to orient my session around "so, let's build on that".

THEN TODAY: I realised that I am booked in to WFH on Thursday, the day I am supposed to explain Adjournments. But while I was away, a file turned up on my desk, re-allocated, in pristine "weird, a new adjourned matter" state, notices due out Thursday. I sent a TEAMS mtg invite with short agenda and note that I would leave an Example File on New Person's desk on Wednesday evening and he could look at the hard copy while walking through What one Does with it.
THEN NEXT: I explained this to Boss, who was like... "or you could move it to Friday morning? There's time".
ME: Uh... hrmm... I'll ask him what he'd rather.

ALSO TODAY: I found out that Boss had reallocated two of my files to New Person (good, that makes space for the unexpected adjourned-reallocated file). One of those has actually been administratively relisted, and I could quickly send "notice to vacate and relist" BUT it was one where I hadn't been able to contact the care facility and send them a direct notice. I am INSTRUCTED to tell/show him what to do about this file.

HOORAY, CLEAR GOALS:
First: Colleague M will show New Person what the macro-level planning looks like for "here are all your files".
Next: I will
- familiarise New Person with The Files (PREFERABLY NOT BY LECTURING HIM)
- give New Person an explicit task, ie, "send a notice of listing to this care facility"
THEN: R, who was my induction buddy, will walk him through how to send notices of listing (from scratch)

That leaves, of the things I was supposed to cover tomorrow:
- essential evidence seeking (which either M or R might cover anyway)
- Standard Late Papers (ie, what happens when your essential evidence comes in less than 7 days from hearing)
- Exciting/Alarming Late Papers (easily covered under Adjournments)

ERGO:

1. I talk to Boss G tomorrow morning and suggest that instead of asking New Person if he would prefer "TEAMS on Thursday or in person on Friday" I ask him if he would prefer "this week, or deferred to around about when your first file-due-out-for-scanning deadline is" for our second meeting.
1.a. I try to raise this in a way which exhibits my Pedagogical Wisdom but also defers to Boss G's known "good at induction and training" reputation. If I do have to, or choose to, go back to ESL teaching, I'll probably want Boss G as a referee.

2. Were I drawing up a CELTA-standard lesson plan for tomorrow it would go like this:

- Hello, my name is Edmund, and I talk too much

- The Learning Goals this lesson are: "I know what is in a file" and "I have at least one clear task for the file(s) I have inherited from Ed"

3. After providing a somewhat more normal human version of the above, I reckon I will
a) note that he has worked for NCAT before: so he knows SOMETHING about case management and files. I not only talk too much but wish to KNOW many things. Ergo: have a look at these files, tell me what you understand from them / how they seem different / what questions you have.
b) actively get up and walk away to make tea - offering him a choice from my selection of Office Tea / Coffee Bags

My thought is that item a) re-directs my Explaining Instinct toward what New Person actually knows; and item b) prevents me looming, while providing slightly more scaffolding than just leaving him alone at his desk to read his assigned files might.

4. I return and
- we discuss comparative file structure
- one file I printed and loosely tucked in several "generic correspondance" emails not sent to the members: see if he knows where they belong; if not, explain; thence foreshadow conversations he may have with the stakeholders based on those emails
- I verrry lightly run over the "types of evidence and what if they're late" questions
- Zero in on "this case: I sent the vacate-and-relist notices, but I haven't called the care facility" - his one specific task is, subsequent to colleague R's "notices of listing" training (or in it!), to call the care facility and get contact info and then send them the notice

5. When shall we two meet again: would he prefer this week? Or would he prefer to postpone "adjournments" and "more details on late papers" to just before or just after his first "file out to scan" deadline?
5a. Noting that if he would like me to shadow/hover/etc while he does the Call The Care Facility step, I can do that!

WAIT: None of Boss G's advance plans involve the telephone splitter. The telephone splitter was actually an excellent part of the induction I recieved. Raise this also with Boss G.

I appear to have drafted this but not posted it. This was drafted evening of 31 March, NSW time. SOME THOUGHTS and SEVERAL OUTCOMES have happened since. Please stand by.

( I fucked up on several axes )

I do not have the werewithal to analyse this properly right now.

I can report that today I:

- sorted my budget
- talked to Shiny
- napped
- made tray-bake chicken AND endive and peach and spinach salad
- put some plants in the plant stand friend G and I assembled last weekend.

My brain state has been rough this week. Still unsure if it's the ADHD meds (I seem to hyperfocus, but not necessarily on the right things, and it could be on my anxiety) or other stuff. Sleep patterns out of whack. Failing at restoring my routine. Every day is a new day, and every day I plan 'right, let's reset' and then promptly think "fuck you! Even I don't tell me what to do!" This is extremely aggravating and quite unlike me.

But I did manage to go to the medieval lecture on Thursday. It was an art history talk - Michelle McCoy, who's working on images from the Mogao Caves. She's particularly interested in astrological images on different kinds of talismans and devotional objects, looking at different cultural influences on the depiction styles - styles from Iran, local Sogdian art, India, and further abroad. Super cool, I knew nothing about these caves and although I can't claim to understand the stakes of what she showed us, they were cool. And I would like to know more about Dunhuang, as a settlement, in the Tang dynasty - and from nosing around Wikipedia it seems like it was a really interesting place during the decline of the Tang and after, with a lot of shifts of power and cultural mixing, and a significant Sogdian population. I'd like to know more about the Sogdians, for that matter - I knew a bit about them as a group who were conquered by Alexander the Great, and hadn't thought much about what happened to them after that.

More productively: I got the CFP webpage for that conference/workshop I won funding for up! I got through, uh... three work things today. That could be worse.

Also yesterday I had my hair done again, and learned how difficult my haircut actually is! Here's a photo. I switched in the spring from seeing the salon owner to one of her fully-qualified offsiders, who was really good at colour. I loved Stephanie's work with colour, although she didn't quite rival Fabienne for the cut. Anyway Stephanie's left to go and do a residential Spanish lang course and then Travel The World. Fabienne's consistently booked out, so I took an appointment with Mathilde, the 3rd-y apprentice.

First problem: Both Fabienne and Stephanie spoke English; Mathilde's English turns out to be fine for greeting / taking coats / washing hair, but not for the fine detail of haircuts. And haircuts turn out to be one of the everyday gaps in my French - PLUS a lot of everyday French I do know I'm at risk of my brain pulling up the German instead (including, as it turns out, the word 'everyday'. Tried to explain the problems with my français quotidien, brain would only return 'täglich'). I couldn't even remember the word 'veux/voudrais', so my attempts to communicate 'do whatever you'd like to my hair, just don't make it green' failed miserably. And then it turns out that beyond colour there are SO MANY decisions involved in my current haircut! My usual specs - short on the left, undercut and longer on the right, side part, short at the back - turn out to be wildly insufficient. There were lots of checks with Fabienne, either for vocab in order to ask me things, or for how-to. At one point the stern instruction to 'ne pense aux chevaux, pense au dessin!' was issued. Very can't see the forest for the trees, I guess.

But it got done and I really like it! It's not as complex a dye job as Stephanie's work (only two colours), so it will be interesting to see how it fades out - Stephanie's continued looking pretty good at 6 weeks, only got ratty at 8, I think because there was so much variation in colour. And I got to practice my French, which was nice.

Some French vocab I learned:

Degradé: turns out to mean 'with layers in'. Not degraded (I figured not) nor 'with a colour gradient', although also that, that's degradé de coleurs. Tricky!

Lisse: straight! I thought it meant shiny, or possibly supple (from its use on shampoo bottles and things). Consequently un liseur is a straightener.

Rasé, shaved, which appears to work for buzz-cut hair. Never learned that when I HAD a buzz cut.

French vocab I did not learn: the word she was using for 'wavy', as in my hair texture. I looked blank, wavy she DID know in English, and switched over. It wasn't ondulée, whatever it was.

Meanwhile, Mercury has been commendably cuddly lately, although he retains his right to take direct action if he is insufficiently or incorrectly scritched. This evening, when I hit the wall after work (hopes of gym: fail), he became very agitated after about an hour of me napping; but he's been coping okay with being shut in the living room overnight. I'm less than enthused about the litter in the living room, but I'll leave it for another week or so before I see if it's possible to let him access living room + entry + bathroom while I'm on the other side of the bedroom door, without him losing his furry little equilibrium after a few hours.

I still owe three poems from April, so let's just keep trundling along.

Today I looked at a delightful flat with TILE instead of wood floors, heaven for spill-prone Amys. Also I thought long and hard about 18th century urinary voyeurism, because my job is fun. (I'm short on primary sources. I'm sure I've seen amusing cartoons and things?)

Excuse the font change, I cannot face hard-coding the necessary nbsp for this one.

Hometown Litany
Aylin Malcolm

Sell gender to the highest bidder.
Curate crisis. Have
graceless breakdown
over plans made. Undo
the bed, shiver.

A day weighed down
with hashtags: new year,
                            new war.
Splinters of time
and death, mere
partitioning the river. No
one wanted this. We wanted
to push our bikes up and
down the street till sunset.

Crows by the window wait
for someone else, fly
as you arrive. Sure you didn’t
send the drones, but
you Spocked the bills
that bought the coffee.

Peeling wall
in a parking lot:
                      ALL
                THIS ART
                IS EMPTY
                  I’M JOE
You shoot the sign
on Super 8.

Forget to touch ground
before leaping again. Carry out/
take away/to go; swap names
like SIM cards. Pronouns
might be plural after all.
Pour emporter. You never learned
to check the weather.

Eat fish. Dream of fish
swimming without skins.

Today I: finalised a (small) grant application and sent it off; had continuing Out of Cucumber Errors over german "anrede" and gendered forms of address; had a nap; took clothes to the donation bin and bought coffee, which ended up being free because the barista fucked up and made me an approximation of a flat white (not a thing here) instead of a cap but I said I'd drink it anyway; did some work on my book proposal; listened to the Lafayette college lecture Shakespeare, Race and Queer Sexuality (part one).

I also took sfred's dinner idea from last week, and made baked potatoes with halloumi. In my case: cubed potatoes and sweet potato (par cook in microwave), with quartered onions, whole garlic cloves, and asparagus spears. Douse in olive oil with pepper and herbs. Add cubed halloumi. Bake. Nom.

BDE
Alison C. Rollins

God gave me a man
Who I, in turn, bodied
Had he lived, I would
Take myself more seriously.
Come what may I will
Get myself together,
I will whip myself into
The shape of a man
Who has put away
Childish things. I will
Take a woman as my toy
And pretend, in doing so,
I am highly favoured.

(For the record I'm just pulling up poems in the order I saved them, aside from occasionally typing out one from a hard copy - the Fryatt, for ex - so links between my particular day and the choice of poem occur at the point of posting.)

Organisational methods: built-in redundancy

I actually feel a fair bit of shame about having a leaning tower of interroped organisational tools. This NEITHER meets what neurotypical people would call efficiency, nor the usually-described ADHD-friendly (or autism friendly) functionality modes. Like many people with ADHD I find that the effectiveness of many methods degrades overtime; I think UNLIKE many people I don't drop them, but interlace them with new ones.

I need better systems for *retiring* organisational tools, but on the other hand, today I figured out that built-in redundancy works for me.

Organisational tools I regularly use:

Google Calendar: I've had this for a long time, and its uses have expanded. From about 2010 or 2011 it managed only my *irregular* commitments; in late 2012, when I was working in transcription plus taking a CELTA course plus volunteering, it started logging EVERYTHING. I mean EVERYTHING. In 2019, in Japan, it logged as two separate appointments 'contracted on-campus time' (a day long slot) and each and every class I taught. When I first started using it for irregular appointments it replaced my paper organiser (also only used for irregular appointments at that time); later I had to sub the paper organiser back in; when I got a smartphone I dropped paper; I had to bring it back for to-do-lists c. 2016. I also mark in GCal as 'tasks' hard deadlines for pieces of work to submit.
>> UNEXPECTED BENEFIT: the gcal records have come in very useful when filling in employment history, and more recently, when doing three-monthly roundups of Shit I Have Done.

To-Doist: this replaces Wunderlist, which I started using in 2011 to manage the ongoing list of Shit I Should Do. It records repeating tasks (every few weeks 'vacuum balcony' pops up), things I vaguely intend to do, things assigned arbitrary to-do dates ('18th century collections online' is one I keep postponing), and actual hard deadlines. No it doesn't distinguish between them. My psych thought it would overwhelm me and make my anxiety worse: I think I'm only now approaching that point, and it's not unsalvageable. This serves the role a 'future list' would in a BuJo, I think, along with repeater-task lists and the like.

Bujo/Planner: this replaces what used to be SEPARATE day planners and notebooks for habit trackers etc. It's a Leuchtthurm1917 Monatsplanner, although I'm not sure the actual calendar parts are so crucial given gcal. In this I currently:
> have a two-year writing plan (using the two-year six-months-to-a-spread section)
> am NOT using the project planner even though i tried
> use the month planners as I used to do use the appointment section of a week planner, AND in the notes section there enter 5 work priority tasks and 3 personal priority tasks per week.
> Weekly planner pages currently include: a stencil section that looks like your average organiser week-to-a-view, except it's narrower than A5; and a five-by-six grid of squares that was originally part of a month planner stencil, which I use to break up each day into two-hour blocks.
>> Every week, after doing the entries on the month planner, I copy the priorities to a square on the week planner, that cuts off half of sat/sun. Then I may enter bonus points notes.
>> Every day, I enter three work priorities, and often some bonuses; and three to five personal priorities (rarely bonuses there since COVID happened - they used to be 'pick up x from shop' or social things)
>> The block planner gets used to plan out chunks of the day - this works PARTICULARLY well when I don't plan further than lunch in the morning, and then regroup and re-plan after lunch. Two hour blocks allow for rearranging on a whim.
>> Also on the weekly "spread" are a habit-tracker (13 items) and a reading tracker

Toggl: This is a tool for freelancers to track their work-time allocations. I use it to record, again, what the fuck I actually did. Only focused work time goes in here, even though a lot of things that aren't "work" per se are also work-ish (reading Foucault, fr'ex), and if I were tracking in a workplace my tea-making trip would be included; it's not here. Toggl talks to GCal and gives me notifications of upcoming appointments. It also allows me to look at weekly spreads and see if I did... work... this week, and, thanks to the project-tagging, how I allocated it.

Extended weekly checkins: I write up a week plan and currently post it to a co-working group (should start cross-posting it here) that includes Schedule; 5 Priority items; and 4-6 'Bonus Points and Background Noise' and then whatever's on the personal priority list. I also update this with reports on the PREVIOUS week. Ideally, I do 'triage list' on Thursday or Friday based on how off-track I've gotten. (This is loosely based on something Captain Awkward, or maybe AskAManager, recommended for 'managing up' with a feckless boss)

Work checkin email: The above came from something I asked my boss if we could do late last spring, to help *me* keep track of what I'm doing and increase the chances that she'd notice if I was forgetting something. It got far too overloaded, so now the work email includes only a very slimline report from the previous week (and obvs no personal life stuff).

This is a STUPID LOT of stuff. Sometimes I do it on Sunday, because it does involve non-work stuff; sometimes it chews up almost all of my Monday morning.

The 'week priorities' list gets written out FOUR TIMES. Entries in my calendar, 3-4.

I finally realised today, watching myself: the repetition and redundancy is actually productive. I start with the shortest version (the entries in the month calendar): you might think I should start with re-checking all the places obligations might be, but actually, I need to create a working model on paper, before I open my email.
Then I do Monday's day to-do-list. Then I sit down to make the extended report, and while I'm checking on last week's to-dos, I think of things, I check my emails for items missing, I check old meeting reports, etc.
The copying into the week-planner happens simultaneously, and usually shows some crossings out as I realise x CAN'T be in the top five because of Y, that I had totally forgotten.
Once ALL OF THAT is written out I write up the email that goes to the work team. Sometimes in doing that I remember ANOTHER thing I was supposed to do.

The benefits are twofold:

By writing things out multiple times, both by hand and in type, I am more likely to remember them.

In the process of writing all this up, at least four times, on Sunday or Monday, I give myself time for memory association to kick in and to remember things. Second time I write 'website' I think to ask: hey who's tweeting from the work account this week? (Me, it's me.)

I would like to streamline the system a little (one possibility is moving to-do-ist into BuJo lists, but... I've got things in there that recur YEARLY. Also I don't carry the BuJo everywhere, but I do carry to-do-ist in my phone). Definitely when I finish my current 'meetings book' I'll move meeting notes into the Bujo; maaaybe I'll do the same with my freewriting notebook, maybe not.

But the redundancy serves a purpose, it turns out.

The Brain-off-the-leash effect:

Although the Habit Tracker has a ticky for 'complete to-do-list', I do not beat myself up for not finishing the priority list in any given day, or week, or even month (oh yeah the BuJo has month plan pages too).

The week lists, with their five priorities and bonus points/background noise, are designed to encourage productive procrastination: if I don't WANNA do the thing, here's a list of other things. It... sometimes works.

What I noticed today, though, is that on days when I get to somewhere between 5 and 6 and go 'no, we are not going to complete that Big Priority Item Today, time to clock out'... in sheer relief at being freed from the Priority List my brain goes a all puppy-off-leash and sends emails, does background research, and maybe even clears off a bonus points item. This time is particularly good for coming up with New Ideas (... may be hazardous to existing schedules of commitments, granted).

It's not exactly procrastination: it's not the same thing as 'I don't WANNA do x, i must do... q and r instead', it happens when I totally meant to clock out. It's... mild hyperfixation, I guess? (Aaand I just remembered my laundry is still in the machine) Freed from The Lists, my brain remembers we are actually That Nerdy about work, and does somersaults.

(Additional data here: this late afternoon early evening phase is often a weird brain turning point. If I'm going to hyperfixate on something NOT work, it starts around here too. I can often be very anxious for an evening. Later in the spring, when it's light later, going for a run makes a good transition-energy burner.)

I need to both optimise this, and put a moratorium on the brain-puppy sending emails / writing serious tweets (immediate team excepted, they can deal with the puppy).

Go forth and see a photo on the team blog. The kittens had their own camera and a ring light and everything.

The blog post, by boss MF, is a post on teamwork and COVID-19 and talks about the (unusual for the humanities) 'team manual' and her schedule of team and mentoring meetings. I have praised MF's structured team management a lot on Twitter but not so much here. It is Good, Actually.

Thursday and Friday... happened.

Work: On thursday I finished the skeleton slash jigsaw pre-draft I promised MF. Some reading. Some annotating. Today was more reading and annotating - this time in the cemetery (morning) and the Coffee Fellows in the shopping mall (afternoon), because my capacity to cope with the landscaping machines right outside my flat had disappeared.

I also answered an email from It Guy about self-hosting wordpress, in which I did a lot of 'okay but how do I ACCESS the server I don't get it', and then I went and found myself a sufficiently For Dummies instruction set (the standard ones assume that you know that 'install wordpress software on your server' involves a FTP transfer client, for ex) and now I think I know SORT OF what I will be doing.

Misc: Did groceries today, on account of avoiding the landscapers. This turns out to have been wise, since tomorrow is a public holiday and I somehow forgot.

I have stocked up on shelf-stable essentials to take with me on holiday next week. Catch me trekking on the trains with my carry-on backpack and my wheely trolley full of gluten-free food, and my Good Stick, which is now sanded down enough to hold without feeling like you're holding something just pulled out of the undergrowth, but which still *looks* like I just pulled it out of the undergrowth. I'll continue sanding tomorrow: the last of the bark does NOT want to come off.

I thought the plants were getting wet feet, and put off watering them until tonight. In the middle of a heatwave. Several of them would like to register objections about this.

Otherwise... I had forgotten how much of summer in Switzerland consists of 'fighting a losing battle against flies in the kitchen'. The little fuckers are in the BATHROOM now. What could possibly be in the bathroom that pleases fruit flies??? I have installed more fly traps; hopefully four days of shut windows while I'm away next week will kill off enough generations to give me a slight edge. I'm also catching pantry moths - in the fruit fly traps. Haven't found any actually in the food yet. I installed some moth traps a week or so ago, and they have caught two, while the fruit fly traps are catching many. Mysterious.

In conclusion: my kingdom for fly screens on windows.

I had grand plans of reading or crocheting tonight, but instead I... scrubbed the shower floor with 'schmierseife'. It remains to be seen if this has any better effect on the calcum stains than anything else I have tried.

Well, I'm still not winning at attention span, but I got a number of smallish things done today!

Work:
- sent out the sign up form for study day.
- some work on the phd book
- some more re-reading of Patience Agbabi's Tales
- library mission, checked the non-existent mail in the office
- figured out the geneva libraries are open again, shortlisted books to obtain

I did not succeed in joining the library of Exact Sciences, since it turns out they only have their service desk open in the mornings. Next week I shall attempt that, and possibly also a mission to Basel.

The reading was done drinking café freddo outside Tibits. Worse things have happened to me, that's for sure.

Household:
- Went to Migros and Migros DoIt+Garden seeking garden frogs (uh... they're plastic water reservoirs with clay spikes, and the reservoir is shaped like a frog). Didn't find them in Migros, and got so distracted in the garden store i forgot about them.
- Did purchase a jug with owls on it, a fly-net for picnics (also with owls), and a different kind of fly trap in Migros
- In the garden store, obtained: a decorative pot to hold the pot that's on the back table, so it stops spilling out of its tray onto the wood; what I THOUGHT was a 40cm planter but turns out to be an outer pot you hide smaller pots in; another planter pot same size as the table one; a pot of daisies; another pot of basil; a smaller screwdriver; a 'Christmas Tree' aka triple adaptor.

Admin:
- More email to the psych assessment service sent.
- flagged up holiday plan to MF
- posted the spare binder to the queer charity in Lausanne. Got told off for addressing the envelope wrong: turns out in Switzerland they don't take the BIGGEST or CENTREMOST address, but the bottom one, and I had put the return address bottom right because I didn't quite leave enough space top left.
- took blue suit in for dry cleaning. Discovered I can't spell my name in German. (I was not winning at transactions today, as you can see. Both Migros purchases involved an item that had no price sticker or a faulty sticker on. At least I managed to buy coffee.)

House:
- Was still feeling energetic this evening, so I set up the bigger plant stand. As usual, I cannot screw screws properly - in this case, it SHOULD be easy to screw screws through pre-drilled holes in metal, but, er, no. Not happening. Nevertheless the main structural bits are sound (they winched up with an alan key) and the rest is more or less together. I then discovered the shelves are too narrow to take a lot of pots - the rectangular 'outer pot that hides other pots' just fits, but it's decorative base doesn't. Only small round pots fit. Also, I need to find some things to put on the bottom shelves to weigh it down, but what? That spot is not going to get much light.
- Laundry happened. I STILL can't work Washing Machine 2. I think it hates me.
- I have a letter from the régie about the smart home system, but I don't fully understand it and google translate doesn't help because the words i don't understand are stupid words like 'Multitaster' (multibutton?). I have a number of things that could refer to, I do not know which is which. I shall have to email or call and ask.

... 100 days, welp.

Work: I continue to be stretching out how much I can concentrate in a day (typically doing better at the beginning of a week than the end). Pay-off is I seem to be 'tired but wired' at the end of it, which is annoying. Powering through readings, teaching prep for next semester coming underway, thesis>book rewrite is starting to look like an actual project (albeit one on which very little has been done). Have plans to start sketching out, lol, the NEXT book tomorrow. Meeting with MF last week went well, bit of a mid-year project summit. Tomorrow is my assigned mentoring meeting. I'm also making headway with the website, and the counter-intuitive content hosting platform.

Also sent a long email to someone MF put me in touch with, a former student of hers - we've been having very spaced out email chats about matters academic, and this time she asked for citations. I had nothing SPECIFICALLY what she wanted so she got a LOT of things with annotated notes instead... I have not changed, evidently.

House & Adulting: My basils have spider mites, and the petunias have either those or something else. Something small and greenish-yellow and smaller than a sesame seed all over their leaves. I've cut back the worst affected stalks, and am watering them a lot and spraying them with soap. We shall see.

IKEA delivery came today; I have a PROPER MATTRESS. It still smells kinda funny as it expands. I have not assembled any of the other things yet.

Discovered today that AGAIN I screwed up the new Postfinance bill-payment system, and end result is my credit card never got paid off last month. I did not notice because they just... let me sail over the spending limit. Ugh. I assume there will be fees for that. Anyway, it seems that the bill system is configured for people who pay bills on due date or after, not for little ole me, who wants to pay bills on '27th of the month', that is the month BEFORE the bill is due, not the month WHEN/AFTER the bills are due. Because I get paid on the 25th and the c'card bill comes in on the 26th. Chalk THAT up to Special Amy Moments, and this is what I have a stupidity money buffer built into my budget for.

Health: Okay? I mean. I actually went running three days after LAST going running, that's progress. Bought some disposable masks, too, having worn one at the hairdresser last week and found it much less hateful than the ones I sewed.

Hobbies: brain like a sieve has decided crochet isn't enough stimulation for evening podcasts/audiobooks anymore, and it will only stay trained on audio input if I'm ironing. I don't have enough things to iron to uphold this requirement! I did iron another hem on the tablecloth-in-progress, though I haven't sewn it yet.

Identified an easy looking crochet doily I wish to make, as a break from the endless squares, but have not yet convinced brain to start it.

The back belt loop on my favourite trousers is... fraying? Not tearing at the anchor point, literally wearing away from the belt leather. I am going to have to replace it, as these trousers fit well and aren't in stock anymore. I do not know what kind of fabric I need for that; I have looked online and ???. I have identified a fabric store and will betake myself there, I guess.

Languages: missed a german class on Sunday, but have had two since. A1.2 continues to push my capacities, but as I'm filling in the last few classes in A1.1, I can tell I was ready for the switch.

On the other hand I tried to speak to my neighbour in French today and totally failed, also failed to Normal Human. Ho hum.

Forgot to mention that last week I made a diary twitter for my stuffies, in order to make practising German more cute.