allezhop

Maurice looks at Elle magazine for the girls and Ren thinks he is weird

It's frost outside. Ugh. I'm in a huge amount of cold-induced pain, and cuddling up to the space heater isn't easing that. Just going to be a miserable day, I guess. Today would be a good day for solitude, but I won't be getting any of that.

I have a backlog of daily comics I drew on paper; I haven't been able to get to a place where I could photograph them well. It's not as easy as when I do them digitally. But my laptop continues to limp along, and I need it for my graphic novel.

A friend invented a Star Trek RPG character who she described as an "apex predator" and I was having fun making jokes about the character being bitey like Typhoon. My cat's full name is Miss Typhoon F. Bites, and while I figured at the time that it was just a kitten thing, nope, she continues to cheerfully bite. I'm feeling a little bitey myself - not cheerfully like an animal with a warped sense of play, but more like a wounded animal with trust issues.

But I have a bunch of adult things to do today. I was hoping to get around to some preliminary yardwork - my neighbor has his garden beds laid out already with neat paths and piles of mulch - but I'm putting it off. Burn season is almost over. I think it ends in late March. Missed it again. Oh well.

maju

For some reason the girls have Thursday and Friday off school this week, plus my son in law is working from home today and tomorrow, so the house is the complete opposite of how it was for the first three days of the week - full and busy.

maju

Last night I tried turning my white noise machine up so it was quite loud, and it seemed to help when my son in law was walking around upstairs while I was trying to fall asleep. He didn't get up before 5 this morning so I haven't had a chance to test it in the early morning yet. I had been reluctant to turn the sound up extra loud, thinking it would be annoying or keep me awake, but it was fine.

I still have not received a 1099 from Social Security and I have no idea why, because I was a bit worried that they might have sent it to my old address, but last year's had the correct address on it so I can only surmise that somehow USPS lost it. Anyway, I downloaded my letter confirming my benefits and sent that to the tax preparer, who said he is happy to use the figures from that to complete my tax return, so I think we are ready to file the return now. Still waiting for the IRS to get back to me with a video call to verify my identity so I can pay the taxes, but maybe they will be as slow to process my return as they are to help me confirm my identity. Whatever; it won't be my fault if I can't pay my bill if they won't help me verify myself in order to do so.

ruric

Apparently having been supremely indifferent to men's fashion for my entire life I now have a burning interest in it?

I may have been glued to Threads for a while watching the pictures come through from the Oscars and pre- post- parties on Sunday and into the wee small hours of Monday morning.

I'm blaming these fools...

Click to embiggen.

There's also a hilarious video that goes with pic 2 on JR's instagram - last slide in that post - which makes me snort/giggle every time I watch it because of the awkwardness of it all.

I would like to flop tonight but I need to tick off some tasks from my endless "Do ALL The Things" list for sorting out my flat/life. Alas it is already 9:15pm. Wonder how much I can achieve in an hour/90 minutes?

What can I possibly bribe myself with as a reward if I'm a good girl and get shit done?

maju

I had trouble getting to sleep last night but I did manage to sleep until almost 5 this morning even though I think my son in law was moving around earlier than that. The dehumidifier in the basement (in the room next to where I'm sleeping) was running for much of the night. It has been running more over the last day or two because the humidity has risen, and it makes a very good white noise machine. (The wall between the rooms does not go all the way up to the ceiling.) It's a pity I have no control over when it runs, because when the humidity isn't really high it might run for a short time and then cut out, but in more humid weather it runs almost continuously, and I would be happy if it ran all night.

Yesterday I ran out of the yarn I've been using to crochet squares for a blanket (more is coming tomorrow), so I decided to use up some other yarn I've had on hand for a while by knitting a hat as that's all I've got enough for. I wanted to start with a magic circle (because I like knitting hats top down) but I couldn't seem to get the hang of it. I've used a cast on for knitting top down on hats or socks before, but it isn't a magic circle. With a magic circle you get an actual circle with a tail you can use to pull it tight so there is no hole on the top. I spent most of the afternoon looking at videos of people demonstrating this technique, but I don't learn well from videos. Eventually I found a non-video tutorial with pictures and was able to follow that. Everybody seems to have a slightly different way of showing and describing the magic circle, which is confusing for someone who is trying to learn it. Plus I couldn't find a tutorial for a left hander so I had to transpose as I went. My poor brain was very confused. However, with the picture tutorial, I think I've got it.

My Acer computer came back to life! I left it unplugged for about 10 days and then plugged it in and tried to turn it on, not expecting it to work. However, to my great surprise, it came to life almost instantly and has been working just fine since then. I'm very happy because it seems to connect to the (somewhat dodgy) basement wifi better than any other computer I've ever used down there.

gs_silva

It's so sunny and beautiful outside! I desperately want to go out and get some vitamin d and rake the side garden. But it's barely above freezing - single degrees C. I'm huddled against the space heater (not literally - that would be a fire hazard) with candles on the countertop (more for ambience) trying to draw more than cry.

(It's hyperbole. I don't cry easily.)

We still have juncos. They're in the hawthorn tree, doing little acrobatic moves to grab the last berries that the robins left behind. Yesterday the crows were around, possibly nesting in the same tall pine tree they did last year. I left them some cat food and it's gone now but I don't hear them today.

Even though my backyard is swampy, I walked through it and checked out the buckthorn patch that I'd started to hack back last fall. There was deer scat in it. I'm glad the deer are finding enough to eat on my property to still make their visits. That's what I'm aiming for by letting the place go native. I was reading about how to stratify turtlehead seeds, and I didn't do exactly as it said, but they've been exposed to the cold all winter, so I guess that means I can go ahead and scatter them now. Which means I need to rip up the pachysandra now. But not right now. I'll try again when it's more comfortable out there.

The storm last night was bad enough to close some roads in my town, but not my road. I only had a couple of fallen branches.

I just saw one of the cardinal couples. Last year I watched them teaching their juvenile offspring the ways of the world - they tend to hang out in the forsythia, and they'll stay there minding their own business as long as I'm minding mine. The mom cardinal especially - she was all over the bird feeder when I had it out, and we could get in and out of the car right next to her and she didn't care one bit. That's so random. I don't know.

It's my kid's birthday next week. He wants to go out tonight though, for Steak Special Tuesday at a local restaurant, so we'll do that. We don't really have a tradition of big birthday celebrations or surprises. Each of us basically states what we want, and the three of us do that, and any wrapped gifts are just incidental. It comes from living abroad for so long. We always survived on a minimum of possessions because we moved so often and wanted to be able to pack all our stuff into 5 suitcases and a couple of tote bags and not have to hire a service to move boxes of stuff. So gift-giving had to be very modest, and mostly focused on experiences.

For instance, one time we took the kid out to see Rogue One, in Phnom Penh. That was fun but weird. (The reason we chose to travel to Phnom Penh to see a single movie is that Vietnam had slapped a PG-13 rating on it, and PG-13 means nobody under 13 is allowed inside the theater under any circumstances, but we're American so of course we're perfectly happy to bring our 8-year-old to watch a Star Wars movie - he's the target audience as far as we're concerned! Phnom Penh is a lovely, crazy city and we generally had a nice time even though it was a short visit.)

Fun fact - my son actually looks like Maurice from Alien Romance. Well, he used to, right up until he was 13 or so. (He had full bangs, though, instead of the middle part that gives Maurice his signature look - ah well, small details.) Then he grew. Now I'll have to invent a taller character to be his lookalike.

***

ETA: It's Poetry Fishbowl! In which

ysabetwordsmith writes poems while you watch. Give her a prompt and/or a donation and add to the fun.

maju

The house is *really* quiet today because my son in law started his new job today. He will be working from home some of the time but today he is in New York. (He's not particularly noisy but he is just another person walking around, doing stuff in the house, playing the piano, etc. when he's here.) Unfortunately his commute into the city meant that he was up at 4:15 am and therefore I was awake at that time as well because footsteps above my head always wake me up. Sometimes I'm able to go back to sleep if I'm woken that early but not this morning. I think I'm going to have to start going to bed earlier and getting up earlier in self defence, if this is going to be his normal rising time from now on.

It rained quite heavily last night and the forecast was for possible rain during the day today, but so far it has been very foggy but not raining. It's also weirdly warm (12C/53F when I got up) but we're supposed to have a couple of nights below freezing from tomorrow.

Aria has been helping me with the cat jigsaw puzzle, and I'm very impressed with her visual skills. When I complimented her on how well she was doing, she said "I've done puzzles before".

ruric

I had a whole weekend at home - for the first time in 4 weeks! Remind me never to organise/volunteer for things that mean I have to work 3 Saturday's on the trot because that is exhausting. On the plus side I have a chunk of flexi leave to take.

So quick summary:

HOME: deep cleaned kitchen and sorted out a bunch for a recycling and tip run today. Next week it's deep cleaning the bathroom, and chipping away at the chaos and decluttering/#orjenising in the bedroom and living room. I have detailed bullet point lists and daily/weekly targets!

HEALTH still a bit FUBAR'd but improving. Finally took myself off to Toni and Guy's on Friday where a very firm hairdresser chopped off a significant amount of my hair. It had almost reached my waist and had way too many split ends. I got a free treatment (whatever product they used smelled awesome and made my hair super silky) and I now have a really simple cut - still long enough that I can put it up when gardening /at the gym, but short enough to wash and go and no danger of overnight knots. Today I got my piercings back - found a great piercer locally and I was just going to get single studs in each ear but happily we discovered 5 of my old piercings were still open! She popped new studs in those - because I have no idea where my old studs are - only the tons of dangley earrings on the board in my bedroom. She redid the middle piercing on my left ear and now I have all the shiny jewellery back. Once the current ones have settled down I'm going back to get my helix piercing redone - might get one each side.

LIFE ADMIN: still planning to move from Gmail once I've decluttered it. Applied for a postal vote as I'll be working local election day (7 May) as a poll clerk in Richmond so won't be around to vote locally. Have to make time to complete training for that and it will be a long day (5am to midnight including travel to/from) polling station.

DIGITAL DECLUTTER: have kept email at mail at 11,000 but not managed to reduce it; staying on top of transferring To Keep items from tablet to dropbox, my phone images storage is a mess.

GARDENING/ALLOTMENTING: nope - too cold and/or wet and lacked motivation.

COOKING/EATING: reboarded the takeaway train over the last week - there just seemed to be no time at all, long work days!

READING/LISTENING: LOL. Thank you Rachel Reid - read Game Changers, Heated Rivalry, Tough Guy, Common Goal, Role Model and The Long Game and now re-reading Heated Rivalry matching book chapters to rewatch episodes. What do you mean obsessed?

WATCHING: Heated Rivalry - 4th rewatch. Everything else is having to fit around that!

CREATING/LEARNING: several, projects on the go/nearing completion - spring wreath, Halloween blanket, granny square blanket, hexicardi, granny square bags x 2. Might get one or two done by the end of the month.

CATS: all good.

VOLUNTEERING: one new task to complete as of meeting last week.

SOCIALISING: a 3 hour call with

gingerpig consisting of two hours of Heated Rivalry squee and one of catching up. A formal "WiLlYoUCoMeToMyCotTageThisEAsTer" invitation extended to

ravurian - because, thanks to Show, I'm never going to be able to invite anyone to the cottage unless I adopt concussed-and-ever-so-slightly-high Shane's rhythm of speech.

WORK: much improvement - BRAG quarterly meeting went well, the Seed Swap was a success, the three consecutive Saturday's of work are over until 28 March which is my next weekend day of work. I've started the current round of inspections which is generating a ton of admin (which is this coming week's issue), I need to carve out some time to dealing with financial year end (how is it almost the end of March?!!!) and reprofile the capital budget.

It's going to be a long work week - think I'm going to work from home tomorrow as I should be able to plough through a chunk of admin uninterrupted. Tuesday through Friday lunchtime will be office days and site visits. Then I've got 30 bags of compost to shift from a site wide delivery down to my plot on Friday afternoon - say a prayer for my knees and back! Keeping my fingers crossed for sunshine and blue skies next week.

ruric

LOL I am all up in everything HR so much so that it's not even funny. :o)

So the last time I posted I was 5 days in, had watched it once, bought the books and was just about to start a second rewatch - that was last Saturday.

I read all 6 books in 2.5 days, completed a second rewatch, randomly watched eps 3-6 across 4 nights (because why not?) and then decided it would be fun to match reading the relevant chapters of HR and then watch the relevant episodes. I got as far as ep 3 and then got distracted by more cast interviews and HR insta and threads.

Yeserday I disappeared down the YouTube rabbit hole of fan vids - so now I have 193 open tabs across 2 browser windows, there's music playing, I have no idea where it's coming from and I'm in the middle of curating playlists on my YouTube. I need to remember how to DL from YouTube because I want a good chunk of those vids accessible to me at all times and never worry about them being pulled.

I may be curating playlists on Spotify for my gym workouts because HR bvidders use great music for their vids. And...um...I have a bunch of meta posts bookmarked to go back and read properly after the current rewatch.

Still noticing new things - all the subtle little whispered remarks that weren't obvious on first or second viewing. I need to see the whole series on a screen bigger than my tablet.

I'm catching up on the cast interviews which I'm finding delightful and astonishing. I mean the 3 minute social media sound bites, wild humour and meeting fans where they live was an absolute gift - but the long form interviews with their openness, vulnerability and in depth discussions are just blowing my mind.

Still steering clear of fanfic - because there are only 24 hours in a day - and I'm not sure I have time for an "Inception" level fandom event in my life - though I suspect I'm fighting a failed rearguard action there. Inception inhabited my brain for 2.5 years and with S2 of Heated Rivalry not airing until '27 and (please god) a potential further season - it's quite possible I'll be fully consumed by this until 2028.

Around all of that it's been super busy at work and I've been making a bunch of appointments/ running errands which come under the heading of "Get Your Shit Together" but for the first time in months I feel like I'm fully firing on all cylinders.

Not sure how much of that is down to the Little Canadian Hockey Romance That Could or whether it's due to the fact that we've had more than a few days of sunshine, warmth and blue skies (and not the dreary grey, wet and miserable days we've had since before Christmas) - whatever! I'm running with it.

gs_silva

Ella is still trying to figure out what costume Maurice's oversized sweater is supposed to be.

Ella realizes that Maurice does not want to stay at the party and gives him permission to leave

Ella realizes that Maurice does not want to stay at the party and gives him permission to leave

Maurice reaches into his pocket and gives her a bottle of hot sauce

Ella cant decide what outfit to wear with the witch hat but hears people shouting happy birthday

maju

I was almost completely lazy yesterday although I did do some mild bouncing on my rebounder. The weather forecast was predicting strong winds and temperatures not much above freezing so I decided against going out for a walk because I find wind chill factor very unpleasant, but by the end of the day I was regretting being such a slug. Today I was feeling better than yesterday and I decided to go for a good walk even though it was equally cold (but not windy) and was very glad I did.

A couple of years ago I started watching one of the spin-off movies of Downton Abbey but I didn't like it and didn't finish it. Yesterday I discovered a later spin-off, "Downton Abbey - The Grand Finale" which I watched and enjoyed. Then when that finished another one showed up, called, I think, "Downton Abbey - a New Era" so I started watching that and so far it's ok. It's about a film company proposing to make a movie (silent) at Downton, and of course everybody is horrified at the very idea. It's a bit strange watching this after the grand finale one, because this one is set a few years previously.

gs_silva

These pop up on the 3rd weekend of each month, and I always participate because I love crossovers and comics jams! Today's jam only has me in it so far. Pretty lonely

Go check out Creative Jam, leave a prompt maybe, or even answer a prompt. I usually do mine in my usual comic format, but I chose illustrated prose instead. Come join me! Make me less lonely.

I need to post about it sooner next time. It's only a 48-hour event and started last night. I was up until 1 am doing mine because I like to be first, not realizing I was going to hurry up and wait.

gs_silva

Hello new readers! I do have some personal journaling in this personal journaling - sometimes in locked posts, sometimes at the end of my webcomic posts. I try to add a little commentary too, because there's a ton of backstory by now, but questions are welcome. I also include a transcipt because one or two of my friends use screen readers. Transcripts also give me an excuse to translate any French dialogue - Cathy is only beginning to learn English, in spite of being a main character. It's in pencil for the time being because my laptop has been struggling, and I need it to stay functional because I can't afford to replace it. If you scroll down, not only will you see older comics, but most of them will have digital art and probably be easier to read.

We're in the middle of a story arc where Ella is throwing a big Halloween/birthday party for herself, and in true Alien Romance fashion, many little things go wrong.

Ella enters her bedroom to get into her costume but Maurice has been hiding in there

Ella enters her bedroom to get into her costume but Maurice has been hiding in there

Transcript:

Ella is rifling through her closet when she turns around and notices Maurice behind her. "Oh! Arzy! I didn't know you were in here."

"Sorry," he says, slinking toward the door, "I'll leave." He's wearing a sweater far too big for him, falling off one shoulder and the sleeves bunching up, and a t-shirt under it.

"Entirely? Wait," says Ella. She's remembering last year when she asked him to run and get some beer and he never came back, and she's been begging him not to ditch her this year. "You can hide in here after I... hey, help me find something that goes with the hat."

"Sure," Maurice agrees, looking over her shoulder as she checks out the outfits hanging up in her closet.

"...What kind of witch should I be..." muses Ella as she searches. She finds her old baseball jersey, number 5.

"Baseball witch?"

"Eh, maybe," sighs Ella. "So, what are you dressed as?"

Maurice holds up his hands, hidden deep in his overly long sleeves. "Ren," he states.

Ella laughs. "Haha! No, really."

***

Maurice is my other MC, newly married to Cathy. He's Vietnamese/Russian/American, and Cathy is from Lyon, France.
Ella and her brother Jon are their close friends, and Ren is their roommate. Ren is very tall. He's dressed up as the Fourth Doctor. Cathy, who is very petite, ended up with the bat dress Ella was planning to wear, and is currently hostessing the party outside Ella's bedroom door.

***

My mother and I spent the morning at a local cafe and... wow, that's it. It's a nothing Saturday. Still cold. The sun came out earlier but we didn't bother to go out for a walk because it only looked warm.

mark posting in

dw_maintenance

Happy Saturday!

I'm going to be doing a little maintenance today. It will likely cause a tiny interruption of service (specifically for www.dreamwidth.org) on the order of 2-3 minutes while some settings propagate. If you're on a journal page, that should still work throughout!

If it doesn't work, the rollback plan is pretty quick, I'm just toggling a setting on how traffic gets to the site. I'll update this post if something goes wrong, but don't anticipate any interruption to be longer than 10 minutes even in a rollback situation.

maju

I've been working away at that cat puzzle, placing just a handful of pieces each day. It has 1000 pieces, but it feels harder than any other 1000 piece puzzle I've ever done. It's one of those puzzles with each piece marked with a letter of the alphabet on the back, so I've resorted to sorting the pieces into their letter groups to make it a bit easier. It feels like cheating, but really, once the pieces are grouped by letter I still have to find their place in that section of the puzzle, so I guess it's really like working on several smaller puzzles which happen to be connected. In spite of the fact that I can't shake the cheating feeling, it's more fun working this way because it's far less frustrating. I originally tried sorting the pieces into colour groups, my usual way of tackling a bigger puzzle, but it didn't work well because there are so many blue pieces in various different places not related to each other.

Earlier Eden came and asked me for my car keys so her mother could drive my car to the library. That was about three hours ago I think, and she's still not back so I'm guessing she was not only going to the library. (Which is a mile away.) I'd been thinking of suggesting that she or my son in law drive the car occasionally since I so rarely need to go anywhere; this is the first time the car has left the driveway since we had that big snowfall towards the end of January. Now that winter seems to be waning I will probably start going places (random driving) just to keep the car in running condition.

I've been sleeping well for the last two or three nights but I feel tired today and I've got a slight headache which is annoying.

gs_silva

Ella shouts directions to everyone as the party is about to begin

Cathy is putting icing on cupcakes when Ella demands she go get dressed. Does Cathy understand her? Probably not immediately, but someone surely escorts her to Ella's bedroom and hands her the bat dress.

Ella, sans bat dress, holds her gigantic witch hat. "I can still wear the hat," she muses. "I just need another outfit to go with it."

She knocks on her bedroom door. "Cathy, almost done? I need to get dressed too!"

Cathy exits, flaunting the fancy, lacy black dress, her arms raised to show off the enormous sleeves. On her head is Maurice's rubber spider mask that Ella hates so much.

Ella facepalms. "Why do you do this to me?" she laments.

Jon, in his wheelchair and still not dressed because he's been doing party setup and he can only do 27 things at a time, remarks, "I dunno, Ella, I think it's pretty hot."

***

I'm still doing it by pencil. The entire Halloween/birthday story arc is done, in pencil. I'll try to switch back to the more legible digital art at some point, but hopefully for now the transcriptions will clear up any visual confusion.

***

Gardening notes: not much today. The backyard swamp turned into an ice skating rink overnight, but not a very safe one because the yellow grass makes it very bumpy. My lettuce seeds are sprouting in the tray on the windowsill. It's a small tray, but a big windowsill, so if I get a bigger tray, maybe I can have year-round lettuce all winter next year.

The potato eyes I planted in the other tray are a loss, but something is sprouting in there. Backyard weeds, most certainly, because some of the soil was dug out of my backyard.

***

By the way, I know a lot of my readers here have works of fiction you're working on, and characters you think about. If an Alien Romance comic ever makes you conjecture what your characters would do in a similar situation, I'd absolutely love to hear about it. I live for that kind of connection.

Or if you know what you would do in a situation! But I already get a few comments along those lines. Those are some of my very favorite comments.

maju

It started snowing around 4 pm yesterday and kept it up for a couple of hours , but as the temperature was a few degrees above freezing it didn't stick. There was a dusting on the grass this morning but it didn’t last.

I love the way my granddaughters will curl up next to me (when they can sit still long enough) and sometimes give me spontaneous hugs, but often I still feel empty and lonely because S is not here with me. Violet is now 5 ft 3, the same height as S was; it would be so good to see them together literally seeing eye to eye.

This morning I received the email equivalent of those annoying hold messages telling you how important your call is to them… the email was from the IRS ID certifying place and reassured me that they hadn’t forgotten about me, it was just that this is a busier than usual time, and I should be patient.

gs_silva

"Do you have your costume yet?" Jon asks Maurice.

"Probably just the spider mask," Maurice figures.

From off-screen, Ella howls, "Noooo, no spider mask, Arzy! Be a mummy instead!" His friends call him Arzy because it's short for Arzamastsev.

But Maurice doesn't want a high-effort costume.

Ella howls again. "My bat dress! It doesn't fit! It musta shrunk. Can Cathy take it out for me?" She's holding a fancy, lacy black dress with sleeves so big they look like bat wings when the wearer raises her arms. It has appeared before.

"Take it out? Is that possible?" Maurice wonders.

"Or I can lend it to her," Ella muses.

maju

I seem to have made some progress on my ID verification with the IRS. I've successfully uploaded my two required forms of identification and now I'm waiting for an agent to email with next steps to proceed with a video call - which might take two or three days. On the website it says verification via a video call will take 10 to 15 minutes; it doesn't say anything about having to wait two or three days for it to happen.

I had a bad night (again!) last night; when I went to bed I couldn't manage to fall asleep so after an hour or so I got up and played on my tablet for a while. I think I might have eventually fallen asleep by about midnight (after first going to bed at about 9:20 pm). While I was lying awake I started becoming aware of flashes of light which I realised were actually flashes of lightning. After a while there was a particularly bright flash followed by a loud burst of thunder, and after that nothing more. This morning it was obvious that there had been quite a bit of rain during the night, but of course down here in the basement I didn't hear it.

gs_silva

I woke up to a light rain and an insistent cat. Typhoon wanted to be let onto the catio RIGHT NOW. She loves watching storms. She wants a front-row seat. This isn't really a storm, but it appears to have been a lot of rain cumulatively - the stubborn backyard snow is almost gone, replaced by a veritable swamp. I don't have adequate footwear for wading through swamp. It actually is a swamp - it's been filled for development but the untouched patches of my neighborhood are still fully functioning swamp. I think I'll go for a walk with my mother soon and check out the budding skunk cabbages. They're thick and purple and they don't smell any worse than the surrounding swamp, but they're teardrop-shaped, like a skunk's tail. So maybe that's how they got their name.

The neighbors' little girl pointed out the crocuses in their front yard while I was hacking at the burning bush yesterday. We had one feral crocus last year; I haven't had the chance to scout out more. I should give the neighbor kids fictional names. Let's see. How about Mia and Ennio. Mia is four, I think, and is starting to develop social skills just like her brother's - talking rapidly at anyone who will listen with whatever crosses her mind, and a lot crosses her mind. When Ennio used to do that, his grandmother would come up to us and say, "Sorry, he's a little bit autistic. Ennio, stop bothering the nice lady."

And I'd say, "It's fine! He's interesting. I'm learning something." And Ennio would beam.

But then the next time we were outside simultaneously, it would happen again.

Once, he was playing music on whatever little device his grandparents had gotten him, and I could hear the strains of "Rainbow Connection" from their yard. So I sang along. I don't know if Ennio was impressed or put out; he had to tell me all about "Rainbow Connection" and that he was listening to the cover version by Blink 182 or somebody, I don't know, I wasn't paying that close attention. Kid, I learned it directly from Kermit the Frog, and I learned it well.

I haven't seen Ennio around lately. I heard that last summer the kids went to England, and the grandmother promised that they'd tell me aaaallllll about it, but I didn't see them again until Halloween, and then they were too busy to chat. I suppose Ennio is busy with school and activities now. I hope Mia can be allowed to putter idly around the yard for a while before she also gets sucked into the busy-kid lifestyle. As a second child, she seems like the kind of person who doesn't like to play alone.

I did a little bit of early spring clearing yesterday. The burning bush in the front, although now it's just an ugly stump and I'll have to get down into the root base before it replaces itself with new growth. Then I moved to the backyard where I hacked at the Japanese quince next to the bulkhead. What a terrible place to put a thorny shrub! I suppose it's 20+ years old, and when it was small it seemed like a good idea to someone. Its blossoms are very pretty, but I have four of the things, and this one is by far the oldest, and I've been cutting it back for the last 2 years (as long as we've lived here) and I really should get it out once and for all.

But even a small amount of labour wears me down, so now I'm in a lot of pain and will take this storm as an opportunity to rest.

I have more notes about my health, but it's just for my own reference so I won't do it here.

Haha! My phone autopredicted that "it's just for my own" should be followed by "navel-gazing." Yeah, phone, I don't think so! It's still better than the autopredict my Huawei phone in China had. I swear the English in that phone was programmed by people who had learned English by watching a bunch of 80's action movies.

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allezhop

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Reading

Alien Romance, the daily comic strip

(no subject)

(no subject)

HR - Oscars and parties

(no subject)

Cold spring / gardening

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Weeks 9-11 - this year is zooming by!

Heated Rivalry update

Alien Romance, the daily comic strip

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Creative jam

Alien Romance, the daily comic strip

Performing some traffic maintenance today

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Alien Romance, the daily comic strip

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Alien Romance, the daily comic strip

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Gardening/health

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March 2026

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