Toward Camelot by the service road.

OMG, the doorbell just rang and it was a mystery box and I opened it up and offcntr made a replacement bottom for our casserole dish that I broke!

It is just perfect, too.

Anyhow, everyone should go buy dishes from Frank, they are beautiful crockery and he makes replacement parts.

We're going to have the kid's fave casserole for dinner tonight....

OK, five questions. I got these from sabotabby and up to five people may feel free to hit me up before the end of the weekend (Pacific Standard) for five questions of their own.

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Recommendations for Mastodon servers? Among other things, I'm running social (in a low-key way) for a small, basically lefty professional organization, and I'm not exactly convinced that investing in a Twitter presence right now fits well with our brand.

I'm namesquatting @ sarae at Cohost, despite synecdochic 's misgivings.

The younger kid and I are laughing so hard at the show on Twitter. I mean, it's a loss, don't get me wrong, but if we've learned one thing from these last hard years, it's that when everything goes up in flames, you might as well warm your hands.

I remain here, even if I'm not posting all that regularly, on the principle that it's a social network run by someone who's been on my holiday card list since I was in my twenties. An awful lot of what is going on in my life at the moment involves work that doesn't lend itself to online discussion, and the writing I'm getting done is either work stuff (a LOT of that) or I'm actually selling it, which is a pretty great development but precludes distributing it otherwise. And I only have so many words in me. When I'm putting a few thousand a week into material I'm getting paid for, I don't have much in the way of leftovers.

I was discussing with ladyjax earlier this week how in so many ways being Very Online ten or twenty years ago was like a lab in how to learn to talk to people from other backgrounds, and also how to write responsively. I've carried a lot of what I learned online into the discussions (and fights) I'm having now.

But, yeah: in place of the internet stuff I used to do, I have this very low-key instance, and I have a lot of fairly raucous group texts (the family group text is everything I wanted Facebook to be, honestly: pix of kids, pets, and random household happenings, and giving each other shit, and no ads), and the rest of my praxis is more "in the room where it happens" than "hey, world, I've got opinions." Which I guess is natural, and probably part of getting older? But I do miss the spontaneous bullshitting, even if a lot of that need nowadays is met by the long text threads I have with friends.

1. The next time we really need to cheese off a right wing neighbor, the Satanic Temple sells pride flags with the head of Baphomet on them (https://thesatanictemple.com/products/the-satanic-temple-logo-and-stars-flag?variant=39783748894854). Sadly they are not rated for outdoor use, but it's the kind of thing where if you need one you might only need it for a week or two.

2. People do not remember how to dance.

3. The food at queer youth center barbecues is clearly selected to be maximally unappealing at adults, and that's probably fine (I bailed and went down the way to a Thai place with outdoor seating, which was much more to my taste and which prevented me from cramping the youth's style, a thing I was also disinterested in. The youth came out of it with someone's number, which is better than I do most nights).

I don't know, right now it feels important to go out and stand in the road and refuse to be afraid of fascists.

It's as well that we're at the beach for a family reunion so I'd already walked a couple of miles along the shore this morning when I opened my phone and read the news.

I walked again this afternoon and the wind picked up, it blew the sand in great billows, up into the air and hard against my ankles, hissing into the breakers, and it made me think of a walk Cofax and I took up towards Florence, maybe ten years ago now, where the sand blew off the dunes so hard that it filled our shoes, we were both finding it in our clothes that night, after dinner, after she'd gone back to her hotel and I'd driven back to my Eugene house, and I thought about all my women friends and relatives, and the sand just blowing against us, day after day, that grit in your hair and your teeth and the straps of your sandals, rubbing your ankles raw, on and on, that sand and that wind, and the salt, and how over time it wears down even stones.

We're much softer than stones.

I'm sure that in time I will do things, but right now it's stones, sand, anger, and grief.

A colleague was telling me today how her kids have moved to Texas and it's so great there and the schools are so much better than ours and I'm standing there with the little smile I keep for these circumstances and thinking, lady, the government of Texas thinks my kids should be taken away from me and is doing sweet fuck all to keep other people's kids from getting shot.

But instead of pointing that out I just asked if she'd please let me know when she's ready to move out of her cubicle so I can come in and pick up her standing desk. I hope Texas works out okay for her, I really do.

Some days, America.

"Get up, it's 9:30, we have to go march on the fascists."

"Mmmhm, yeah."

"But the Roomba seems to be working again so hey, there's that."

Last week, an elder who I am getting to know said to me, the way we used to be taught is, where you live is where when you show up, they feed you and give you a place to rest. And maybe a fresh horse.

As you know, Bob, my laptop has been extremely jank since July, despite multiple attempts to get it fixed (the level of stupid there is at this point comical -- people have tried to get me to replace parts on the computer that the computer does not have, people have told me it is not possible to buy parts for the computer at all, even though I see those computer parts available for sale online from multiple vendors, etc. etc.) Basically I think at this point the gist of it is, computer repair dudes think that middle-aged women exist to give them money in return for bullshit. I have enough bullshit, thank you, I just want a functioning computer.

But after the latest bout of stupid, it finally occurred to me that I could buy a Bluetooth keyboard and hook it up to my tablet and that would do like 95% of what I want a computer to do -- the other 5% being "run backups for photos and music," and I think I can come up with a workaround for that involving a couple of external drives and my younger kid's desktop box.

Anyhow. I am never buying another Dell laptop, because THAT has been a total nightmare, and this workaround with existing, functional hardware seems like a win (I really can't keep swipe-typing long emails full of union business....) I may upgrade the tablet at some point, since it's 5+ years old, but there's not a lot of urgency to that. If I have something I can actually TYPE on, that can wait until Costco has a sale.

Desmond Tutu and bell hooks, in one winter.

He has always been such a hero of mine. Very faithful and such a model of a Christian life that is both moral and engaged. And of not saying what's easy, but instead what God calls you to say.

I wish I could go to church and pray for his soul but I suppose that of all people he has been welcomed into the heavenly kingdom. And I'm sure he wouldn't want me to spread the plague.

ETA: And Wayne Thiebaud. It's hard not to be angry and frustrated and sad sometimes.

The antivaxxers have bought up the nation's supply of borax to "unvaccinate" themselves, so I can't get any more for my laundry.

I wish the next whackadoodle "treatment" were something we don't need, so, I don't know, you'll unvaccinate yourself if you eat an entire carp. Head and all. The fish prions will recombobulate your DNA.

Scotch broom is also very effective at keeping the globalists from interfering with your precious bodily fluids. Pull large quantities out of the ground (preferably off public land), remove the seed pods and place them in the garbage, and pile the sticks around your house. Voila, you have owned the libs.

Well, the good news is, I saved my "I read banned books" pinback button from the moral panic of my teen years. How great that it's back in fashion for my children's teen years. It's these kind of intergenerational experiences that bring a family together.

Hey, folks, this is by way of a PSA: if, like me, you are blessed enough to own your own home (or co-own it with the bank) and you haven't looked at your loan terms in a while, it may be very worthwhile to see if it's time to refinance.

I took this week off work to do a bunch of miscellaneous household tasks, one of which was asking the mortgage broker I've worked with before for a refi quote. I was able to both lower my interest rate and shorten the loan term, which will make a big difference to the long term financial health of my household.

If you've also meant to get around to this? I definitely feel it was worth taking a couple days off to get it lined up.

No idea if interest rates on refinancing other kinds of debt have also dropped this much in the last couple of years (I last refinanced in 2018 when the divorce was final) but it may be worth checking on that, too.