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the thing they dont tell you about working with little kids is it wrecks your vocabulary. you hear a kid phrase something bizarrely in a way only a 5 year old can and now any time you lose shit youre like "it dissed appear"

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ermm I bought csp a few days ago and Im trying to get used to it x]

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I wanna be saaaaaaaved!!!!!

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Murderbot: This is my favorite human, Dr. Mensah. She can go wherever she wants and do whatever she wants

Also Murderbot: This is my best friend, Dr. Ratthi. He has to stay in the shuttle. Unless I'm breaking and entering, in which case he's specifically invited

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My "the greatest gift I can give you is 100% of the information you may ever need in this easy-accessible self-updating database" versus my boss's "the greatest gift I can give you is myself in your office asking you every question in-person because databases are impersonal and overwhelming"

Fight

for real tho she's ADHD and I am an INTP and there was a Failure of Value Systems this morning because I want everything in the Database and she wants everything on the Sticky Notes. She values human individual conversations and human follow-up and I value efficiency of information flow and ease of access to that information (involving no humans if possible.) Generally, we complement each other's work styles but... this morning I pitched creating a system that is incompatible with her workplace value hierarchy and her rebuttal was incompatible with my eight years lived experience doing the thing I'm creating the system for. So.

I should probably check that we're ok this afternoon because like 99% chance we're also both PMS'ing.

#Adventures with Baby Boss

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Yesterday was incredibly fun 4H meeting that involved collecting fossils and a first sculpting lesson. Two kids made horses, two kids made mushrooms, one kid made a chair, one kid made one of those round baby bouncer things (he has baby siblings at home). Kiddos did awesome. Even the ones who didn't save a clay project this time still did the challenges: make something with an internal space (cup, bridge, etc.) make something that stands on legs (table, animal, person) and make something that has an imprinted texture (hand print, leaf print, etc.) Most of our 4H kids are 1st or 2nd grade, technically too young to do "real" 4H but they all spent more than an hour digging fossils and then another hour and a half sculpting.

In a couple months I'm going to an even more remote location populated by less than a dozen full-time residents and with zero elbow room unless you want to scale granite cliffs and dodge grizzly bears. I'm taking my writing computer and my drawing sketchbook and that's about it for five months.

I might actually get some writing done!

#I am trying to prioritize the in-person relationships and opportunity while I have it #I am not going to have it for about five months this year #this is why we also have People-Free hobbies! #My AO3 account is a direct result of social isolation #who knows it may get some attention again!

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Something something 'either die a hero-' phrasing for this but it's not working out quite yet. But the heart of it is:

Either learn to love the neighbor-stranger across the street/wall/tracks or disregard them long enough to believe them your enemy.

#brought to you by neighborhood nonsense #but also by the part where i have coworkers on both sides of three conflict zones right now

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On the other end of the reading spectrum, am half way through Martha Wells' Witch King for the 2nd time and it's absolutely worth the three-month library app wait.

The problem is my library has that one, Murderbot series, and like book 2 of one of her older series and nothing else by her. It should be illegal for a library to stock only the middle book of a series. It's incredibly unfair.

And... I'm still a few weeks out from System Collapse.

#my library is a tri-county library #but all three counties are rural and poor #its selection is optimistic for its resources but libby is cruel and lets me see the things I cannot have

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Just finished a relatively decent emerging-adult (it's YA but with 20-something year old protagonists? IDK not that different) fantasy novel that I am reasonably certain was either two very different books or was edited heavily after completion.

All scenes where the protagonist is not with her nemesis/love interest she's described as unusually tall and strong for a woman, very thoughtful, analytical, always has an escape route and weapon, survivalist mentality, an incredibly well-trained fighter, capable of killing career soldiers in single combat.

Scenes where the protagonist is with her nemesis/love interest she's described as being a full head shorter than him, gets picked up and carried, oblivious to surroundings, gets caught off-guard, defensive and needs to be rescued, easily harassed and tossed around by random guards.

I get the sense that this was two different stories- one about a 20-something exiled survivor-princess trying to reclaim the throne of her tyrant family - and a different one about a plucky teenage girl falling in love with the bad-boy price next door - that somehow wound up in the same book. It was... odd.

#I'm like 99% sure this was traditional teenage YA before the author re-wrote the first few chapters and aged everyone up. #but I'm also not into it enough to go prove that assumption. #protag being from the Evil Empire was neat tho and her learning that bitter truth piece by piece along the way was well done

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Happy 25 years of Half-Life!

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crotchet cat blanket 🐈

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Baby Boss's "words are just sounds and if we say enough of them eventually the right meaning will surface" versus my "words have specific meanings and if you said it out loud you meant it literally"

fight

Not really, we've gotten along very well but she's gotten used to me re-stating things back to her all the time to clarify if this or that word was intentional or just sounded similar to what she meant to say! She's very open about her rather strong ADHD causing her to mix up words all the time and I'm very open about requiring specific and accurate language/direction in order to understand what's needed next. Far as I know, we've always been good!

#baby boss skipping town actually #and I get a New Boss in January I think #but yeah her ADHD and my Very Literal Brain did not always understand one another!

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I'm moving across the street into a house that's functionally identical to mine but circa 1980 instead of 2015. it's less than half the rental cost and I don't care about carpet color, etc. and I'm one person so I don't need the World's Biggest Kitchen. But man, it is a chore to move yourself when you're a single adult with multiple physical-art-based hobbies and also nice furniture. Like, I bought couches. Tables. Book cases. A Desk. I am not living in a dorm room and I'm not living with whatever random castoffs the last resident left behind. But now everything's gotta go out one door up a hill up the steps and into another door (and up a staircase half the time) and oof. My back hurts.

#But I did throw away the Millennial Box of Outdated Bank Statements #and the Millennial Box of Old Instructions for Stuff #but I kept the Millennial Box of Installation CDs because I need to reformat the laptops those go to #The Millennial Box of DVDs stays tho #my internet is crap for streaming

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absolutely. truely. positively. zonked.

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Had the best interaction with four random 15 year old girls today. They were helping a coworker at a local cafe and stopped by my office to pick up some stuff about the point where the eclipse was at its max for our area.

Me: So you are enjoying the eclipse?

Girl 1: What's an eclipse?

Girl 2: Is it tonight?

Girl 3: That's where the moon goes in front of the sun, right?

Girl 4: Will the sun come back out again afterwards?!

We gave them eclipse glasses and made their day. They all now know what an eclipse is and were very pleased to discover it :)

#happy kiddos were thrilled to see something new #not their fault they'd never encountered celestial phenomena before. #Now they have! And they'll never forget it

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Tired of not being able to find a nature crafts book that is a) accessible to a middle-grade audience b) doesn't contain a dozen random specialized no-one-owns-this supplies c) isn't 50% cultural appropriation d) isn't specific to temperate forest locations.

Guess what my new writing project is.

#am I going to finish it #unlikely #but I'm going to have a lot of fun making the crafts I want to put in it #also this is the next year's 4H lesson plan :P