Today was my turn to clean the preschool afterhours. We are about to leave this school, and have had a lot of mixed feelings about it. It is such a shame, really. This place has so much potential to be something very cool. A part of us feels like we should stay to realize that potential there, but we have realized that our energy is better spent on things that directly involve our kids, as opposed to trying to weed out the roots of that school's problems. There are some really great people here, though, and it makes me sad that it didn't work out for us.
Life goes on, though. Our homelife is much better being there all together. I don't like having my time with my daughter reduced to the margins of going to or coming back from school. We all feel better being able to lean back into our natural rhythms a little bit. Well, as natural as they can be during a pandemic~
I have been wanting to get some friends and acquaintances writing on gemini, so I started translating the gemlog.blue codebase into Korean. I'm still working on getting it polished and tested, but it seems like it's ready to go. Looking forward to cultivating a little Korean corner of geminispace.
Lately my 17 month-old has been making a lot of progress in speaking, which makes things a lot easier for all of us. For the past several months we have dealt with quite a lot of squealing and squaking from this frustrated little guy who understands but can't quite use language himself. It's a relief to have him communicating verbally. Earlier he was asking to have one of his little puffed barley snacks. He ran up to me and asked for one, which he does often, but what was cute is that to make sure I was listening he first said "look look." Then once I did look he said extra gently and clearly, "puffffff."
What really surprised me is that he said thank you and goodbye to the clerk at a neighborhood shop we frequent. The man always says bye to my son, but he never responds. Today after the clerk handed me back my card, my son suddenly chimed in with a "thank you" out of nowhere. When the man said goodbye, my son said goodbye back and did a little bow :b I'll take this as a good omen for 2021~
I spent a lot of energy this last year toiling away at a dissertation that has yet to materialize. I was already burnt out on school, and 2020 pushed me a little too far. If I learned anything last year, it is that finding and abiding our own pace of life must be a priority. A part of that is actually taking time to do things that are enjoyable and meaningful. This includes taking time to take care of our health, by meditating, doing yoga, riding bikes (weather permitting), etc., but more importantly, I think, it includes taking time to make things--music especially.
So our goal this year is to release an EP or mixtape for every season. I am always writing a handful of songs at any given point in time, usually on guitar, so I have a lot to work with. But I want to experiment with processes and styles that I have little or no experience with. A related goal is to write more about music and my experiences with it. Once I start making music regularly, I'll be wanting to talk about music all the time, so expect posts about music to take over this capsule.
We finished painting our livingroom and hallway. Our daughter suggested we paint it a full on rainbow, so that's what we did. And it's AWESOME. I can't imagine having done it any other way! Now when I come home, the first thing I see is our bright citron yellow hallway wall, and it makes so much of a difference. The prep suuuuuuuucked (I think the technical term is that it "sucked balls"), but the result makes it all worth it. I don't want anything to do with drywall putty ever again, but it was worth it.
So, on a whim I decided to shave my head. Not with a razor, but with a set of electric clippers used to shear animal fur. I haven't shaved my head since I was a child. And I'm not totally sure why I decided to do this. I just felt like I needed a change, any change, and going from having long blond locks to looking like a tall Herb Kazzaz is quite a shift.
What was cool though, and I wasn't expecting this, is that it felt like I was getting to know myself again in some way. It's very humbling seeing yourself totally bald, to see the shape and contours of your skull. I think I really needed that. To feel more like myself. Plus, it's just nice to know my head isn't as weirdly shaped as I always thought it was.
The past couple days I've been home prepping a couple walls to paint. This has involved a lot of sanding, and way too much putty. One of the walls is concrete, and very crudely poured concrete at that. It is very porous and has lots of bumps, notches, and other irregularities. I covered the whole thing in putty and sanded it and MY GOD THE DUST! It's everywhere, even inside of me; in my tear ducts, my pores, my skull...
But it's worth it, I guess. We are painting the main wall in our living room a full on rainbow. Because why not. If we're going to be home all the time, we might as well feel good being here.
I've been more-or-less "inactive" around smolnet proper lately. The weather has been better here, and now that things are blooming, we find ourselves outside much more for a change. I've been lurking and reading, of course, but not making much noise. Your welcome :b
Spring is just the best, and early spring especially--just before it's really "Spring." I can not get enough of the spicy fragrance of the plums and apricots here. I love the mood so much this time of year. I love that it is warmer now, but that it's still cold enough for the nights to be peaceful. You can sneak off and feel alone with the blossoms while everyone else is cozied up indoors. And if you've got a little plum wine, well, that's a bonus!
I got a 'wild hair up my ass' as they say (though I don't know why they say it), and wrote a script to get Korean weather from OpenWeatherMap.org. It was a fun little project, and could use a lot of improvements. Right now it is just a wall of text. Some tables and graphs would be nice, but I am really not sure how to go about normalizing CJK text in a way that would ensure clients display it properly (so that the textual graphs and tables don't break!).
I think next I will try to mirror some Korean news sites, or at the very least source some headlines. That way I can stay abreast on Korean current events without leaving my server. But I have other projects dangling in the wind, so I guess I should get to those first!
Well, the cherry blossoms have come and gone, but we are enjoying lots of other blooms in their wake. One interesting thing about spring is that it brings shade. It feels nice to walk down a path with a lush canopy providing shade for a change! Especially on those overcast spring days where the sky becomes an almost flourescent gray, the contrast of the cool shade is very stark--and inviting. It feels so calm and dark beneath the branches of the new growth. That juxtaposition with the relative business of spring is interesting. I always want to sprawl out in the clover under some tree and just be lazy as everything thaws and bustles about.
And don't get me started on the lilacs.
Just can't get enough of these blossoms.
And there are still lots more to come. The Azaleas are starting, and dandelions are everywhere. Pretty soon their flood of down will have us all daydreaming.
Pssst... circumlunar.space has a zine... check it out:
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