New Moon
Newest sliver of new moon that I’ve seen in a long time!
Newest sliver of new moon that I’ve seen in a long time!
Mostly, any locations in my dreams that are recognizably real places are from my childhood, by far the most common recognizably real-life people are my parents, and very little that is recognizably from the recent real-world makes it into my dreams. Even now there have only been a couple dreams in which respirators make any appearance. Even the place I’ve now lived in for 29 years is a very rare setting compared to my childhood bedroom. Mostly, my dream locations and dream characters are not apparently drawn from real life at all.
But I am a woman in my dreams now whenever anything makes it apparent if I am or not. I never was in pre-transition days.
I had a really amazing dream last night. I was sitting on the family room couch in my childhood home, with my dad (who died in 2004) sitting at the other end of the couch. My mom (who died in 2017) was doing some sort of minor cleaning in the room while I talked to her. Dusting furniture that has now been in my living room since about 2000. I was telling her that living as a woman is wonderful, and I wondered what it might have been like to have been able to grow up as a girl. What things might she have taught me, what things might we have done together?
It was a really nice dream.
So I was watching this YouTube video of a guy showing off his fire extinguisher collection, because I love looking at people’s collections. It then dawned on me, huh, fire extinguisher collectors, I hadn’t really thought about it but I’m sure there’s a whole community, complete with weird drama and everything. I’m not judging, not only did I watch the video, I have, for example, a collection of radioactive items, I understand weird collections.
After going through all the fire extinguishers on display in his display case, he moves on to showing the various extinguishers that are in working order and scattered around his house for use in case there’s a fire. I suppose it shouldn’t be a surprise that a fire extinguisher collector is very prepared for fire, has a lot of fire extinguishers all around his home. But, uh, I looked up at the fire extinguisher I have in view of where I was sitting and remembered that if I lean forward there’s another one at the other side of the room, and there’s two others in two other rooms. It’s not a very big apartment. Maybe I’m on track to become a fire extinguisher collector myself?
I took the week of Christmas off from work and I bought a box-o-wine since I figured, living in Wisconsin, I’d want to drink. I used to buy bag-in-a-box wine quite a bit but more recently I have not because I’m not drinking as much as I used to. (I’m happier now, as a girl.)
So anyway as I got toward the end of it I experienced that box wine problem, trying to get the last of the wine out of the bladder. It’s as if the wine has prostate problems!
You are welcome, for this observation. I’m here to help.
After reading Maya Deane’s Wrath Goddess Sing and realizing that reading novels feels different to me now, I pulled my very yellowed copy of C.J. Cherryh’s Gate of Ivrel off the shelf just to see what I thought of it now.
I feel emotions now, on estrogen, in a way I never did before in my life, so that’s one thing that makes reading stories feel very different from before. Also, it’s been probably near 35 years since I’d read Gate of Ivrel and it’s interesting how while I remember the general concept of the series I remember very very little of the specifics after all these years! And now I’m part way into Well of Shiuan.
I remember liking the Morgaine stories, but I think now I’m realizing why in a way I did not understand as a teen.
Vanye did not exactly have a happy childhood, did not get along well with people generally, and ends up forced out entirely alone, where he meets Morgaine, who is completely alone. They end up setting off together and barely talk to each other, and Morgaine pretty well never explains anything to him, he can only obey whatever scattered instructions she gives him. Along the way here and there they’ll meet someone whose life is going downhill so fast they feel that joining this pair is their best option, going on some painful, frightening mission that they don’t understand.
That is to say, it felt very realistic! Just like real life! The usual stories always had all these people constantly talking to the protagonist, telling them stuff. Totally unlike how real life worked for me. I assumed it was a story-telling thing, you have this very unrealistic thing of everyone talking to the main character constantly, and maybe all the characters always talking to each other, so that the reader has something to read.
Now, as a woman, people actually do talk to me, tell me what’s going on. It’s very strange to suddenly realize that maybe the part of the story where people are telling each other what’s going on was not meant to be basically like the part of the story with the dragons, as far as how similar to the reader’s real life it is.
Wake up babe, new Carl Willis video just dropped
A long time ago, when I was still a kid of some age I don’t remember with any accuracy, but it had to have been before high school, as part of some sort of organized program that was probably a summer sciencey thing of some kind, our class went to Argonne National Laboratory in suburban Chicagoland (not far from my home at the time) and we got to see a research reactor there. Now and then I remember this and wonder which reactor that was exactly.
I was looking at some Argonne history recently and tried to figure it out, and I think it had to have been Juggernaut. It was built in 1962 and shut down in 1970, and I wasn’t even born yet then, but it wasn’t dismantled until 2004. It would have had to have been idle for something over a decade if it was what I saw. My hazy memory is that they said it wasn’t being used anymore. They also said it contained graphite blocks reused from the very first (human made!) nuclear reactor, Chicago Pile 1. Juggernaut, indeed, contained graphite from CP-1. Memory is hazy after all these years, but I think this photo looks about right. I remember our teacher went up to the upper level to take a look at the top, but we could not because although the radiation level up there was very low the rules for exposing children to radiation for no good reason are very strict.
Lots of detail about Juggernaut: Design Summary Report On The Juggernaut Reactor
An old overview of operations of several reactors at Argonne: History of Argonne Reactor Operations
If you don’t feel quite like watching a period drama, perhaps you can find a semicolon piece instead.
I was looking through my Youtube recommendations and saw a video titled “Youtube Will recommend anything at this point” so I had to watch it:
Posted 5 December 2024 by Natalie
December should not be the month for talking about “X of the year” or “Y wrapped” or anything like that. All those discussions and summaries should happen in January. The year is not over yet. Get your act together
It’s even worse than that, I feel that it’s like Christmas, gradually creeping earlier and earlier in the year! I saw end-of-the-year-wrap-ups back in November! Soon, like Christmas, the end of the year will be co-existing with Halloween!