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Showing posts from May, 2022

How not to sleep as the solstice approaches

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I think I actually made it to 5 hours of sleep and doing chores seemed more on point than going back to bed.  Morning sun starts early and late night snacking seems to lead to flirting with dawn before sleep comes. Yesterday was wonderful street fair. I did find myself thinking every fire station in the city should have a public restroom. Not sure how popular that idea would be with...but everyone with a bladder who rides a bug... Flowers for yesterday's birthday person

96 and counting

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A good 6.5 hours of sleep. That meant because of the going back to bed factor I did not get done all the things I hoped before going to a 96th birthday party. Such blessed company and I love the birthday person. She says "keep it up" when the phrase "good trouble" comes up. 29 COVID cases in that community! Separated from the party and I got handed an N95 mask. They said the party is not in the part of the facility where all the COVID is. I am still glad I am scheduled for booster number 2 next week. Is this a rhodie or an azalea?  

FINALLY: an acknowledgment

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Red and pink rhododendrons ALMOST six hours of sleep. Going to bed earlier might have been good, and instead a memorial blog post was taking shape. Going back to bed saved the day. Zoom worship on new laptop is SO good. Zoom was acting up for everyone today. When it's everyone scale I figure either the engineer gnomes are fixing something or someone, say the Russians have let loose spambots or some such thing.  Neither the blind professionals last night nor two worships went near Uvalde, so it was a HUGE Relief to see the program for tonight's Compline. Compline 2022 The Seventh Sunday of Easter service leaflet. Video coming Very dear to meet on the train a family going the same place I was. They thanked me for human GPS service Rain is rain but it is nice the rain probably knocked down any lingering fire hot spots. Fire department blog item about Borracchini's fire

Because why would anyone NOT grab a clip of the fire?

5.5 hours of sleep.  Anxiety more than actual lingering smoke.  The fire is a couple blocks away. No danger except smoke and I think the water got shut off in my building while they were fighting the fire. I don't necessarily object but it's not terrible to know that might happen. I think a hot spot flared up last night and it smells like another just flared as I type. Borracchini's was such an institution though I suppose the fire is one more blow after the bakery closed during the lockdown.  

Average day after a meeting brainstorms

5.5 hours of sleep. Truly not enough exercise yesterday in spite of several walks back and forth between apartment and computer lab. One of these days I WILL clean enough work area to be at home.  Eating Lucky charms with buttermilk and the rest of my rhubarb pudding seemed more on point than going back to bed. Plus the email inbox was already filling up and there were brainstorms to tend too. My partner in non-crime agitation is doing the overworked eyes headache thing. HOPEFULLY we can corral the needed info and share the work load. Happy Friday.

Legalese as in RULEMAKING and No Kidnapping involved

7 hours of sleep! Get to bed at a somewhat reasonable hour with videos on phone instead of big computer screen so less bad light I guess. Then after feeding cat and rhubarb tapioca breakfast stew go back to bed for THREE HOURS and wake up in the semi-decadent position of breakfast and starting to work based on bursting inbox mid morning. Definitely no kidnapping in today's dose of legalese and a sense of work that will matter for LOTS of people. Breathe. Breath. And holy crapSTILL need to follow up on...

Further on the not kidnapping front

 5.5 hours of sleep. Kyiv worship at 12:30 am seattle time. Missed my 9:00 an tech zoom but on balance, sleep has been a VERY good idea. As for the title, the entity that is probably the proper recipient of yesterday's serving of legalese related word salad thanked me for being proactive about ensuring that their snail mail communication did not get lostin organizational snail mail vortexes. Also one of my partners in kidnapping non-crime was more comedically willing to consider logistics of any such ventures. This partner in non-crime has Chronic Fatigue and can't run but would be willing, license or no to operate a getaway European style scooter with  sidecar. Ambassador Thwack the badly behaved white cane and anger management consultant is happy to bang into whatever I need him to bang into but definitely is nope. nope. nope about kidnapping. And the Queen of Spades, the household's feline dominatrix gets a horrified "don't even think of it" look  So kidnap

Sorry, you're not on the kidnapping list today.

Something like 4.5 hours of sleep.  Not quite sure why going to bed earlier didn't happen. I made tapioca pudding and listened to a Zoom instead of going back to bed. Zoom session was one strand of housing issues: if you're talking to a disability consortium you better expect to be asked questions about things to do with people with disabilities. And for extra grins, the title refers to a particularly legalese flavored sample of word salad that arrived in my mailbox yesterday, one of those moments where someone is clearly displaying both reasons they need housing and reasons they have trouble maintaining it.  No picture because i don't feel like posting either dancing broccoli or the brussels sprout weirdly expelling gas thing I received in return.

A ride into space or...noise canceling headphones

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7.5 hours of sleep. Between two days of activity and exercise and the absolute luxury of going back to bed after feeding the cat, I got 7.5 hours of sleep, woke up, chopped half the rhubarb from the farmer's market for the freezer, made sauce out of the rest AND started large pearl tapioca for some tapioca pudding with the GALLON of milk someone gave me. To-do list in inbox got longer while I was chopping rhubarb. Happy Monday. Good news bad news about the Digital Equity Project: STAFF to help with the inbox. Oh sigh news: I hate masking and I need some noise cancelling headphones or my own workspace so Mr. JAWS can work without bothering anyone. As for the ride into space question... it's in the inbox  Stay tuned And today's gif is what happened when I went looking first for rhododendron images in my phone's gif library and then for iris. I did not even see the Russian until my mother asked and I enlarged it. It means "this is for you my dear." I misread and

If one is falling asleep while trying to write

almost SX hours of sleep, not counting nodding off in the chair for over an hours. Eccentric diet of popcorn and cherry almond chocolate did not help. Grateful for Compline choir and other forms of Quaker heresy. 

Bloggers powwow by Zoom

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5.5 hours of sleep Enough exercise yesterday to sleep well and even wake up with a dream. Wondering what my paternal aunt was doing there.  No late night snacking probably helped. There was a short grocery run and then a friend dropped off a stunning assortment of food she is no longer eating. I was happy everything I put out to give away. Now as for the rest of the black rice ramen.... Today was SO beautiful. Who could stay indoors and do chores? But first thing in the morning, a bloggers' Zoom. I need to add a blog to my blog roll. All day bus and foot excursion including meeting TWO clumps of blind people in person. Ummm, dude,if you are going to tell me that a whole bunch of people at an event you just came back from got COVID, even if that was  a couple weeks ago, WEAR A MASK when you're not eating. Aren't I fun to be around.? I forgot to photograph so magnificent irises on the way to the bus stop, so how about another #bikeshare whine?

Five loads of wash two loads at a time.

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5.5 hours of sleep. Not enough but well exercised considering the laundry situation. Currently 2 washers and 2 dryers. Both washers but only one of the dryers accessible for wheelchair users. Payment system earns some comments elsewhere and why would ANYONE expect an audio cue when the reader has read one's payment information. Why indeed.  Laundry took until well into the night and I need to do another couple loads soon. Other than that every day, no matter how glorious and sunny, is a really good day to whine and moan about poorly, no RUDELY parked micromobility devices.  Just for fun, how many strands of RUDE does anyone see? Today's ebike parking gripe pic

There's dog TikToks to watch

4.5 hours of sleep. No freaking idea why I couldn't sleep longer and did not make it back to bed. Maybe it was the late night V8 juice. Anyway the perfect way to end a meeting, thank you to the person who brought the tale of the dog who howls to the Queen version of Bohemian Rhapsody: go watch some dog TikToks. and lundry awaits so at least I will feel exercised. 

A laptop! A laptop and connectivity at home.

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about 5 hours of sleep.  Not enough exercise yesterday. Perfect prep for 6 video conferences today?.   At new laptop is set up enough to do stuff at home. By the way happy Global Accessibility Awareness Day. #GAAD #GAAD2022 The cane that did not get to go roll around on the carpets at Microsoft because we did the #AbilitySummit virtually

Go get yourself some kiwi fruit

Just about 5 hours of sleep. Memo to self: it REALLY helps to have talking book reader and some reading to fall asleep to. Blue light from videos on phone not preferable even with glasses off. A little hair raising to wake up just a few minutes before a Zoom for a quarterly meeting. But there was half an hour of mingle in topical breakout rooms and I did manage to be properly dressed before I even signed in.  Just when I was struggling about need to write an email and feeling SEVERELY tact-challenged, I got back a response about a Zoom meeting that saved me needing to say anything. GOOD DAY. I owe one after-meeting email AND I had time for lunch and some but not all necessary tech fiddling before another meeting. And the kiwi fruit from the title is advice to someone who is REALLY proud of decades of NOT doing all the things she was tempted to do in the past. Just visualize the kiwi fruit for now.

Missed the blood moon / did not know to look for it.

7 hours of sleep! That meant going back to bed and getting up mid morning when one could be forgiven for thinking the day is half over. Yeah, now the full moon is past. I should be able to sleep better.  Trying to find a clean non-Twitter, commentary free version of the Stefania video. So weird how many pieces of one's psyche a song and touch. My other achievement for the day: basement door is back to operational at least until 5 pm. Took out a lot of paper and recyclable packing materials, the trash trash and the compost except for the life forms I forgot to wrangle in the fridge. I got congratulated by new maintenance staff for taking out my own cardboard. Apparently others just cram it in the not really operational anyway trash chutes. There is a rant lurking here but I need to rant CAREFULLY because I for one am SO glad to have staff REGULARLY PRESENT.  Okay. Turns out it was cloudy and asking Google for blood moon images yielded results I did not feel like sorting out. So just

It's almost the full moon

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5 hours of sleep on the nose. Good thing I saved the document I was editing in time before the automatic  And it's almost the full moon so... Kalush Orchestra performance of Stefania at Eurovision and here is the version recorded before the war Kalush Orchestra showed a video for the song Stefania, shot in Bucha, Irpin, Hostomel and Borodyanka, destroyed by the Russian army. They didn't want to publish it before #Eurovision not to get accused of politicizing the contest. The video ends with a call: Stand with #Ukraine ! pic.twitter.com/W5lm3gmqMD — Hanna Liubakova (@HannaLiubakova) May 15, 2022

Mentoring...and ...a marshmallow plunging into hot cocoa

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Four hours of sleep. Ugh. Anxiety. Not enough exercise. Late night videos. knocking out the last few letters of the crossword puzzle.  But somehow this amount of sleep is easier when the days are long.  The mentoring??? This is a sleep blog. Tune in elsewhere. A series of conversations and breakfast choices made this the emoji of the day for my emoji dispersal gestures. Gif o' the day

Hamburger menu: NOT the fast food kind.

about 5 hours of sleep. I was hoping it was more and then going back to bed did not happen. I woke up to kitty lecture which may be better than head butts, I am not sure.  Exercise is so helpful for sleep, but lying in bed breathing deeply has to start the sleeping. Today I have many to-do's. And I need noise cancelling headphones or my private workspace. As for Hamburger menu, it's some kind of User Interface (UI) techie term. It's on Twitter so it must be a thing ;-( . NO idea what it is. 

Good news bad laundry news

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I think I made it to six hours of sleep. If one is too much of a zombie to do ANYTHING and all the washers are in use, just GO TO BED. If I go to bed early, I wake up early. Going back to bed helped  I almost forgot about the 9:15 in-person medical appointment. Follow-up to a scan: you have rare DNA. You have things to watch but as long as nothing is acting up, how about another scan in 6 months? FINE WITH ME. Some consistent pains but the locations and the problems have a name. Blood numbers look fine. Attempting internet refinement of diagnosis and prognostication seems a fool's venture. It was a good outing in spite of rain.. The good news / bad news: we are back to having to pay for laundry. I think they got the message that debit cards won't work if too high a percentage of people are unbanked. A very bad Quaker pox on ANYONE who tried to break in and steal coins. The good news: now I feel fine agitating to get some new machines. Too mucch fun for mere  mortals.  Because t

What is the spirit trying to say?

Almost 4 hours of sleep. This involved going to bed as the sun was coming up, going back to bed, almost missing my dance with the devil, er Amazon fresh delivery, skipping TWO 9 am zoom options.  No head butts though. Maybe the cat is just glad I changed her litter box before I went to bed. Besides cat box change a lot of chocolate tapioca pudding late at night was involved. I am a VERY good cook, or a very versatile chocoholic. And there was writing when I am well-fed and it's quiet. This sleep schedule is exhilarating--once. It is not sustainable. The title came with entirely improvised music, a concept that actually is not new but modern violin is drawing on the figured bass of the baroque. And tomorrow is another day when I have to show up somewhere at 9 am. 

Three Head butts or more

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About 5.5 hours of sleep. Cat  was within rights to want breakfast.  Going back to bed did not happen mainly because I was attending a big Microsoft event virtually. Twitter is a great and glorious thing. Cat's pose of the day

What if it's a prank?

 hours of sleep. Having only 1 working dryer in the laundry room SUCKS.  Going back to bed did not help. Putin has not blown up the world though it sounds like his speech might as well have been written by a comedy writer. MAYBE he wants to go all the way to Portugal but not gonna happen. Too much of Ukraine is still going to get turned into rubble and other old claims re-opened. Wondering though whether ANYONE in Russia gets to discuss that today Putin is doing many of the sam dysfunctional things Stalin did: fire a lot of his intel resources and some other key figures. Basically burn through a lot of cannon fodder.  As for the "what if it was a prank," see another blog. I do wish I could sleep better. Oh, and I COULD put less effort into helping someone overcome an insurance denial for badly needed eye care.

Congratulations and Happy Mothers Day

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 Somewhere over 4 hours of sleep. Going back to bed did not happen. Cooking hard-boiled eggs and starting tapioca pudding did.  Also 3 different flavors of Quaker worship and a meeting for business. The FHM worship for peace isn't doing it for me and I am not sure about the timing of worship for Kyiv except on Tuesday night /wednesday morning Kyiv time. Nephew appropriately gave his mother roses 6 x 2 colors for birthday +mother's day. My mother and I flubbed transportation and guesswork about rain. My mother got a extra long unplanned tour of South King County for her ACCESS ride and we will get together another time. As for the title, add "Congratulations on the new baby to mom nad grandma and please still don't leave your shopping cart turned baby carriage parked in the doorway. Please hold in the LIGHT. And multiple other mother's day tirades possible. But thank you sister for this gif Pansies

Already the season of mangled idioms

 about 5 hours of sleep starting at an hour when the cat was already into head butts for an early breakfast. Looking at the longer days and thinking of grad school trip to St. Petersburg and drawbridges.  It was a more innocent time or a more innocent lull in average time.

Both elevators worked

Almost 6 hours of sleep. Going back to bed would have been possible but didn't happen. A shower did happen. Needed housecleaning did not. But cat food and peanut butter pretzels arrived and their bearer needed conversation. Important things arrived in the inbox. And today's travel route: 8+bank+link+40+walk+ mail one thing and pick up another+E Line+8.  Bank app was not digesting a check I needed to deposit but bank had quarters. Laundry reportedly is still free. Number of machines probably insufficient. Use of debit card one headache. Quarters are different one, easier for druggie miscreants to break in and steal. I live in terror that I will just walk off the platform at Mt. Baker. It was raining enough than a long time in train tunnel seemed better than waiting for bus in rain. Both elevators were working at Northgate. Woot. Now I must tend to all I have not gotten to yet.

Tulips

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  Tulips from Mom's trip to see tulips 5 hours of sleep in bed.  Dozing off before bed does not count, especially if one goes to sleep at an hour when the cat thinks she might be able to head butt her way to an early breakfast. Going back to bed for an hour REALLY helped. Too many things in the inbox AND I MUST go to TJ and get the cat's preferred brand. Happy Thursday.

New Lightbulb!

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about 5 hours of sleep. Best bedtime surprise: a new lightbulb TWO WEEKS after I filed a work order requesting. Working REALLY hard to be positive and make place somewhere people want to stick around. Skipped the usual Wednesday techie zoom but forwarded info about it a couple directions in case anyone wants to attend. My summer blanket  

Mr. Tuxedo

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about 5.5 hours of sleep. Not enough exercise yesterday or today. Brain cells seem to be firing anyway. At Quaker writing group wrote almost a whole piece about my childhood cat who shall be known on the internet as Mr. Tuxedo and who lived up to that moniker.  More restful than writing all the things that could make me pop a gasket. Trying to be both faithful to memory and reasonably conscientious about copyright issues

Now let's see about repeating....

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an amazing 7.5 hours of sleep. Get to bed at a reasonable hour AND go back to bed after feeding the cat.  Agreeable social interaction yesterday probably did not hurt either. Water plants. Adjust insoles in one of my not newest new shoes...high excitement but that leaves plenty of oomph for diet of disinfo and misinfo and deluge of general distress in Twitter. One especially craptastic sidewalk moment from yesterday's sojourn to Redmond and I don't even have any Redmond twitter handles on speed whine

Gonna sleep well tonight

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A solid six hours of sleep.  Worship with Kyiv Friends and Friends from Aus, NZ, Europe and Japan starting at 11:15. The Kyiv Friends sounded so grateful for our presence. Today was almost 8 hours door to door for a three hour event in Bellevue. The journey was part of the point. I should get this much exercise more often. And considering some members of my family I get to be grateful my body works well enough to even try it.  I half wish I could embrace every word of compline and the music carries me well anyway. Amazon order abundance