A Song in the Trees

Z got back on Sunday, having enjoyed a fun weekend with his friends. Unfortunately, he woke up feeling ill the next day, and you can guess what he caught.

Thankfully, we had the basement for him to isolate in, and we ventilated as much as we could. I took a test today and it came up negative, so thanks, immune system. He was feeling pretty bad the first few days, but he is doing much better now and is much more himself :) although still testing positive at the moment.

It is a bit strange to miss someone who is a ten-second walk away, although it's not like we haven't seen each other at all - Z needed me to come take spiders outside for him, and to bring him food at first. It also becomes very easy to jump at every possible slightly strange bodily feeling. Does my throat hurt because I'm getting another random sore throat like I get sometimes/because my eyes are irritated and watery and the mucus is possibly irritating my throat, or because I have Covid? Do I feel bad because I barely ate all day or because I have Covid?

(My current work project is about the aftereffects of Covid infection in children, which let me tell you, does not make you inclined to feel good about how so many places are basically 'yay pandemic over!' despite case counts rising almost to first/second wave levels. At least school-age kids can get vaccinated now.)

Anyway, I'm hoping that Z finishes getting better this weekend and tests negative soon so we can spend time together again. And I'm glad that he didn't have a severe case.

Happy new Gregorian calendar year to everyone!

Z and I drove down to my parents' on Christmas Eve. Unfortunately, our journey time almost doubled because soon after leaving, we got a flat tire, had to call AAA (Z had no jack in his car), and then we had to go get a new tire, and of course on Christmas Eve there's only one tech in the shop... but it could have been much worse. We didn't get stranded in the cold anywhere, and we eventually made it once the tire was replaced.

Z got me a new computer mouse (as I requested - my old one had gone v. buggy) and a bunch of pictures of his cat 'hunting' the mouse xD I got him a new controller because his old one had gone v. buggy lol, and I also drew him some D&D art. He said it looked like a Neopets map haha. I am not good at drawing, but it was fun to make for him. (I also drew a ghost jellyfish for Multifandom Doodle. So much good stuff in that collection, I loved looking through it.) My dad got several books on math and ecology, and my mom received lots of coffee and mead and black licorice, which she has kindly shared with me

Then Z went back home :( I am still scheduled to meet with my new co-workers who are around on Monday, though more Covid has thrown a bit of a wrench into things. We will play it by ear. I went in for my employee health check thing, where they verified that I am vaccinated and am too boring to take drugs. They also gave me a blood test for TB - the phlebotomist, who would usually be working with children, is the most gentle and soft-spoken person I've ever had take my blood. Afterward, we checked out the nearby apartments and more excitingly, the ice rink! It's got windows!

We also went shopping several times over the past few days, because I needed work pants that actually fit properly and also work shoes. The pants we found easily - on top of normal pockets they both have secret side-seam pockets - but apparently this is not the time of year for anyone to be selling work shoes I both can wear and like. After half a dozen stores over two days, we circled back and I picked up the one pair of shoes that I had put down as a maybe - they're technically too big for me (smallest size from the men's section), but not in a way that makes them hard to walk in, and they're comfortable. I'm probably not going to be getting a ton of wear out of any of these things soon at this rate, but at least I have them.

Otherwise, it's been chilling at home, eating some delicious meals, and going for walks in the woods. And re-sending documents to HR that I have already sent to them. They have received one document multiple times now, and I just got an email telling me to bring it in my first day 😅 And also watching JP Nats - I skipped RusNats except for Zhenya's EX, which by osmosis seems to have been a good decision? Anyway, I love Yuzu's new SP and costume, although I am kind of upset at him casually talking about hitting his head repeatedly in pursuit of the 4A. You only get one brain, Yuzu, please take care of it.

I don't have any firm resolutions for this year except that I want to do well at my new job :)

I had a pretty busy week!

Saturday before last, Z and I went to the Habitat for Humanity Restore because he needed a new computer desk that wasn't a cheap folding table collapsing in on itself. After we helped a couple with a baby get their new desk onto a cart and after Z accidentally smashed his finger as we moved a random marble countertop sitting on a desk, we picked one out! ...and it was about four inches too long to fit into his tiny car.

Go inside and ask them for the phone numbers for movers, I suggested. When I was buying furniture for my apartment when I first moved, they had a whole list of them on the wall. Z comes back out with a single business card. They can't help; the people they suggest can't help; the other people I google don't pick up the phone. We contemplate taking the desk apart, but get stuck on the first screw as it won't unscrew more than a quarter turn, and anyway we aren't sure that it isn't glued together. Z has no bungee cords or anything else that can help. He puts out a call for help on his Discord and nobody responds. R answers his phone, but his dad's car is too small. Finally, I go, doesn't D still live here? because Z took me to catsit for him once. It turns out that D is free and has a car that isn't tiny, so he was finally able to save the day for us. Z bought him and his girlfriend ramen from our favorite place as thanks, and we had dinner together on the roof of their building.

Z's cat now loves sitting in the big drawer. All's well that ends well.

On Sunday, the university's website finally got back up, but only if you were using their VPN. Z got his working, so I was able to schedule a COVID test. Didn't get mine working for a few days after. It doesn't quit when you close it, so I am uninstalling it now :| More importantly, I did my taxes; after I finished, I went, that doesn't look right, and called my dad for help. He pointed out the very important detail that I hadn't included my fellowship income from the spring (because the university didn't put in on my W2 for reasons I don't understand). So that all got sorted. I still need to call the IRS about my last stimulus check because I never received it; maybe now's a better time....

My package from Russia finally left St. Petersburg after 45 days of sitting in the post office, and was supposed to arrive on Monday but got delayed until Tuesday. My Zhenya cosmonaut t-shirt!! The print looks good, and while I was worried about ordering an extra-small because I... am not an extra-small, the extremely loose fit on the website's measurements was correct. I wore it when I saw R, since he is also a Zhenya stan :D

On Wednesday, I got my first ever COVID test (sorry to the person who had to walk me through it!) and picked up my fancy dancy graduation regalia. And I received a request for an interview! The job is temporary (one year), but it looks really interesting and pays well!

R had also asked me to do a photoshoot for him - this time as the model, not as the shaky hands behind the camera. I was a little nervous because my make-up skills are very basic and limited to 'cosplaying a few days of the year' and R's dress-up clothes tend towards the low-cut, but it all worked out and he had multiple extra shirts and slips and stuff already set out just in case. His photos are amazing, so I'm excited to see the results - especially for what he called the 'Midsommar' outfit and what I called the 'hippy in a cult' outfit (it was all white and very loose and gave me a 70s vibe), which was not made for my shoulders but was otherwise very fun to pose in.

Friday was our hooding ceremony. I lugged my ceremonial regalia up the hill and got dressed when I got to the top. I am not a fan of the robe color, but I am glad that they included a pocket and a pocket access slit, and the hats are very cool and fancy. Because of social distancing, they made us hood ourselves. This did not make much sense to me because first we handed our hats to our advisors, and then afterward they had each pair of us take our masks off for a moment to take photos together, and I'm pretty sure most of us are vaccinated anyway, but oh, well. I liked the ceremony! It was inside, we were air-conditioned, it was cool to hear everyone's thesis topic, and I got to see my advisor and talk with him and his other graduating student, who is doing cool work!

Commencement itself was on Saturday. They provided a lot of free water, which is good, because it is already quite warm here, and wearing a very thick polyester robe on top of normal clothes made for a lot of sweating before I'd even gotten checked in. Thankfully, a thunderstorm started to roll in but never entirely materialized, so we had a good breeze for a while. Some of the speeches were nice! Though there were lots of sarcastic murmurs around me when one of the guest speakers urged us to donate when we were rich one day - alumni donations have been plummeting for years for a reason, dude.

Unlike my much larger undergrad, they actually handed out everyone's degrees and had us walk across the stage as the president tipped their hat at us. Afterward, my advisor surprised me by grabbing me for a hug :)

We were urged to stay through the whole ceremony, but 1/3 of the grads left immediately and the rest of us got thanked for staying. We were originally told the ceremony would be 2.5 to 3 hours, but at some point after it had been three, I checked the list and realized we weren't even halfway through the undergrads. More Ph.Ds and Masters grads had left, as had plenty of undergrads who had received their degrees. The sun was coming out again. I'd already read 20k of fanfic on my cracked phone screen because I'd run out of things to think about. The two people in front of me decided to leave. I ditched with them.

On the way out, we got free cookies! As we talked, I also found out that one of the two I'd left with was another nb person who was excited to be able to use the gender-neutral Dr title :) The ceremony ended up being well over four hours in the end. They didn't even give me an actual diploma lol, I guess since they'd already mailed mine to me - the folder I was handed just had a 'congratulations!' note inside. But it was nice to go for the first part. And now school is over for me, for real, for ever. It's sure been a ride.

After I dropped off my regalia, Z took me to pick up Greek food to celebrate (we saw a bald eagle on the way back!). Later, I watched gymnastics, although the coverage was absurdly terrible even by NBC standards. Like, showing 4 routines in the first 35 minutes, staring at an exhausted Simone pretending the camera isn't there as her ankle gets taped for at least five minutes straight, multiple reminders that Morgan was born in China!!! terrible. Anyway, that aside, it was nice to see Simone doing her vault and Morgan's new floor - much better than the one she had for five seconds last year.

As of Wednesday, I am fully vaccinated! T-11 days to full immunity! I got lucky with the side effects in that I pretty much had none; my arm didn't even hurt as much as with the first shot. (I did have a headache the morning after, but it was the same headache I'd had before I got shot #2.) The poor man waiting out the fifteen minutes in the row in front of me almost fainted, but they were super prepared - there were five medical people on him immediately to make sure he was okay. It seemed like they treat a vaccine fainting reaction similarly to when you nearly faint when donating blood. He was okay pretty quickly, thankfully.

Z, unfortunately, while being statistically less likely to get side effects, got hit by them hard that night and the day after :( Fever and body aches and everything. He is now doing much better and is currently being more affected by getting used to his new glasses - he got his prescription updated after a decade and his eyes changed a lot.

I am counting down the days until I feel safe to go skating again. Till then, I took out my roller skates again when the weather was co-operative. I've been increasingly frustrated with how quickly they started to hurt my feet... so I went fuck it and modded them myself. I have not been desperate enough to take a craft knife to the sides yet, but it turns out that you can just use a hair dryer to soften them. I made something to help expand them where they need expanding, but it was hard to get it in and the inside doesn't really heat up, at least with the hair dryer I have, so I, uh, just wore my thickest socks and laced it on my foot. While they still need more work, my right foot is no longer in spiking pain after less than fifteen minutes and I can practice mohawks and three-turns for longer, so. Progress!

A mysterious package arrived on my doorstep earlier this week. I was confused because the only package I'm waiting on is from Russia (it has been in St. Petersburg for a month! At least they finally processed it through the shipment office two weeks ago) and this was from a US book store. Turns out my mom bought me a new book as a surprise 🥰 She saw the subject - daily life in the Edo period through actual documents of the time - and knew I would love it. Can't wait to read it!

My mom also encouraged me to sign up for in-person commencement when I was hesitating - they only let me know last-second that I was even eligible to sign up as a December graduate, and the safety protocols sounded a bit obnoxious. But oh well, it's one event. I do wish they weren't so disorganized, though. They asked us to fill out this form and then it was that form instead, the hooding ceremony is on Saturday whoops no it's on Friday morning hope you don't mind lol.

Anyway... I rewarded myself for finishing another job application last night by getting the new Pokemon Snap. The game is too addictive. Some of the pokemon are super cute, and I love seeing them in their nice little fake ecosystems. It's also really fun to throw apples - sorry, fake apples that are totally fluffy and non-harmful - at their heads to make them annoyed xD Research!

Just got back yesterday from visiting with my parents - it was really great to see them again and more than worth the self-isolating. My mom tried out some new recipes on us and gave me some more tips on how to make our favorite spinach cheese pie. Most days, Z and I would play Fire Emblem 3H, then I'd do something with my parents for a while in the evening, like go for a short hike or watch a movie (my dad took me to skate around the tennis court at the park a couple of times, too - it's maintained better than the one here), and then Z and I would stay up too late playing video games some more. A very relaxing week!

For Christmas, I got my mom more coffee than I'd intended (we thought the first order got lost when it didn't and then the second arrived super fast - thanks, USPS) from a local company owned by a disabled woman, gave my dad a couple of books on math, counting, and patterns in various cultures that he seems to be enjoying, and got Z a body pillow (no embarrassing cover, at least not yet lol) and a tate-eboshi I made him :D The hats are his favorite part of the Onmyouji movies. I got a wool poncho, as my mom refuses to believe that I am not actually freezing to death up here, a couple of books, including one on self-editing writing, and a coffee spice grinder, which I asked for because beating spices up with a hammer does not actually work that well.

Also had a talk with my advisor on Christmas (he's Jewish and we only really do Christmas the morning of) about my next steps wrt to jobs or post-docs and papers and so on. My mom is also trying to help me put together a to-do list, though thankfully she stopped nagging so much when I talked with her about it. I decided I'll start in on everything tomorrow.

I was lucky in being relatively fortunate in my personal 2020 experience - I could work on my dissertation from home, I don't have any major health issues, my parents have been really careful, and nobody I know personally got sick, even the one who works at a grocery store. Didn't hit most of my resolutions other than writing the thesis, but that was a pretty big one! My Japanese goal was kind of made arbitrarily anyway and I still made good progress there.

Here's hoping 2020 is a lot less sad and anxious and awful and eventful for all of us.

Z and I had a quiet little dinner together for Thanksgiving. Not as good as one at home, sitting at the little coffee table and eating by ourselves. But we had fresh vegetables arranged nicely on a pretty plate, a spinach cheese pie (my mom gave me the recipe she always uses), and mashed potatoes in my new souffle dish with orange dogwoods on it (bought with some matching ramekins - I managed to freak out eBay with my VPN in the process of buying it, whoops). For dinner, homemade egg-white brownies and whipped cream. I had to direct, but Z did half the work and we managed to stay on top of all the dish-washing as we went along. And his cat Koro didn't eat any of it!

I am thankful that nobody I am very close to has gotten sick, and that my parents and friends are not COVID deniers.

Today, I went skating again; my edges are mostly back, I improved on spins today, and my waltz hop is more confident. Really, I'm at a place where I have enough back that I need lessons to improve again. But last I heard my coach was injured or something, plus I'm probably only going to go again once before Christmas. Z and I are thinking of visiting my parents for Christmas, so we'd be self-isolating for two weeks beforehand (no idea if it's required by law back home, but I like my parents not being dead, so). And who knows if I'll want to go again after we get back, or if the rink will even be open?

At least I can take the off-ice skates up to the nearby tennis court whenever. They still need to be adjusted a bit and edges are much trickier in them, but it's great skating with nobody else around and I can listen to podcasts if I want.

In happier news, ICE ADO TRAILER yes finally :D I'm not holding my breath on it coming out soon (maybe for 2022 Olympics??) but I want Victor backstory so much.

I spent all of yesterday and several hours this morning hunting down a very annoying bug in my code, which I found after fixing a different bug. At least it is gone now. All I had to do in the end was add a copy.copy() to a couple of lines. Might've been easier to find if I could use the debugger, but, uh, it froze when I tried, so I'll see if it's still not working after I upgrade Ubuntu again and hopefully get to a newer Python version.

Called my parents the other day, and despite the nothing that has been happening, managed to have a solid half-hour chat with both of them while I was waiting for my chickpea curry to cook. My mom just got approval to go back into work, since there's nobody else in her lab, but she's only planning on going for a couple hours at a time to do things that she can't do at home. She's also only teaching online next semester, because all courses need to be half online anyway and it sounds like it's going to be really obnoxious to do in-person teaching. At least she already has experience teaching online, so she has some idea of how to adjust her classes. Good luck to all the teachers out there. (I am hoping our seminar is online so I don't have to go into campus and get tested every other week.)

Oh, and the test results came back from my blood donation. As of Monday last week, there are no detectable COVID antibodies in my blood. I celebrated by going out to grocery shop (I got delivery after I went to the protest, just in case) and thankfully hit the store when almost nobody was in there.

My foot is still mysteriously hurt (get better already, damn it) and so I'm trying to rest it, but I've exercised every day this week so far anyway. I want muscles :| The stretching I've been doing has also been working - I was doing a variation on the dancer's pose the other day and found that when warmed up, I can now touch my foot to my head :D I only did it for a second because I don't want to hurt anything. A haircutter spin will be mine one day... if I can learn how to balance in a layback position first....
( I've been watching The Untamed and also watched Disclosure on Netflix; cut for length )

Well, my first food delivery arrived yesterday, with only a minor hiccup (they got the wrong kind of bread) that didn't matter that much. My free tea samples from the local shop also showed up in the mail. And so then I went out shopping for the rest of my groceries at the local store.

I'd actually had a nightmare the previous night, about how I was forced to go through a maze of stores with impossibly tight shelving, full of people who didn't care much about socially distancing - and at some point I'd lost my mask. It wasn't quite that bad in real life, but there were more people at the store than last time I'd been and I was pretty anxious, especially since there are a few bottlenecks where it's impossible to stay six feet from someone if they don't stop to wait, or where it's hard to tell if someone is coming up behind you.

I also started getting stomach pains on my way there; by the time I got back, they were so bad that I took off my mask, washed my hands while hoping the lightheadedness didn't make me faint, and then went to lie down for an hour in hopes that they'd go away. They kind of did, eventually, at least enough that I could stand to be vertical long enough to put my food away. They were on and off the rest of the evening and to a much lesser extent this morning. I haven't eaten anything unusual, so no idea what caused them. Weird.

Anyway, I had another meeting with my advisor today. He okayed my basic plan, and on one subject of contention, mentioned that he's on my side but that I'm the one who, in the end, has to come up with a justification and put my foot down about it, which is true. Will do my best. (And also funding is pretty fucked after summer, so. Better hurry it up.)

Wednesday reading:
Have read: Textbook about behavioral ecology. It was very interesting and written in an accessible style. Helped me pull together some concepts that I'd encountered separately and put them into one framework.

For more fun reading, I finished reading the scans of Boku Ga Watashi ni Naru Tame Ni, which I've bought in ebook form; it's an essay manga about the author's experience as an MTF woman undergoing SRS in Thailand and what it's like being transgender in Japan, mostly from a procedural standpoint, with a few observations on the nature of gender. The art is cute and the sense of humor is hilarious. There's this one part with a tofu metaphor.... Would've been nice to see a bit more of the author's emotional perspective, but from the author's notes, this wasn't the point of the manga for her, which seems fair.

Also read what's available of Kanojo ni Naritai Kimi to Boku. It's about a girl, Hime, who just entered high school alongside her best friend and secret crush, Akira, who is attending school as a girl for the first time. It's partially about Akira's difficulties socially (especially since her parents aren't allowing her to physically transition even as much as growing her hair) and Hime's efforts to defend her, partially about their relationship, which is more fraught than it first appears, and partially about Hime's exploration of identity and her own view of her gender and her social role. The art for this one is also cute and I've enjoyed the various aspects of identity it touches on, and the relationships feel realistic. However, all the side characters, even the other high schoolers, are too capable of spewing wise speeches of advice, which I found tiresome after the fifth or so time, and as of the last few chapters, there's too much love triangle drama going on that I don't find interesting.

Currently reading: An obscure 80s shoujo sports manga (in Japanese - I figured out how to get de-DRM-able Japanese ebooks :D) and Guardian, the cnovel. I'm halfway through the first volume and I... have to say that if I hadn't heard about it from the hype, I would've stopped reading it by now. The story so far is okay but not that interesting, and the translation is supposedly edited but still pretty bad. It's full of comma splices, wrong word choice (anti-social does not mean socially anxious, ffs), incorrectly punctuated dialogue, and tense problems. I know from experience that translation is difficult and these are just fans, but most of the issues are basic English grammar problems. There was also one scene where I had difficulty figuring out what was going on. I'll at least finish the volume, but I'm not sure I'll continue.

To read: Not sure!

Today, R sent me a preview of a video I helped him make - he was doing a photoshoot with his friend, and I handled the video camera (shaky hands and all). I finally got to see more of the photos (they're really good!) and it was interesting to hear him talk about his methods and inspirations for taking different kinds of pictures.

Have noticed some improvements in my flexibility, even without stretching as often as I've been meaning to, and improvements on my ability to do some exercises. Still miss skating, though. I am thisclose to buying the cheapest decent pair of quad skates I can find - all the ones aimed at ice skaters are sold out, of course. They're good enough for artistic roller skaters, right? Maybe it would at least help me feel better to skate around an empty basketball court for a while. I could even listen to a podcast without worrying about running into anyone!

(I have also discovered that my balance board is significantly trickier on the kitchen tile than the carpet and that the microwave is just the right height to put my laptop for reading when I'm balancing on it. Nice way to make things slightly less dull while reading for my thesis.)

Have Read: "The Evolution of Culture in Animals" by Bonner. Accessible and easy to read, with a little personality. A bit outdated in some areas given the publication date, but interesting ideas. A lot of it is not strictly about culture but about related ideas such as flexible responses and learning/teaching.

Am Reading: "An Introduction to Behavioural Ecology" by Davies, Krebs, & West. I was going to read it through the library, but the only option was the literally unusable ProQuest site so screw that. (The ProQuest site disables all keyboard navigation, the bottom button on the browser scrollbar, and any ability to 'grab' the pages. This means that, at least for something as long as this book, it is almost impossible to maneuver through the book in such a way that you can, you know, see all the text on a page.) This one has a slightly drier writing style, but is also clearly written.

Will Read: IDK, will have to see what I feel like after wading through the rest of my academic to-read list.

After much confusion, I finally have a confirmed proposal date!!! No more stressful emails! Only the actual presentation! I did a practice run with my advisor yesterday, and he said it was great! Just a few more slide adjustments. (He is also now very confused about my graduation scheduling and funding, but he said he would email people about it himself, so I am just going to keep on trucking.)

I went to the pharmacy and grocery store this morning. It was unexpectedly anxiety-inducing to be so close to other people again, although I did my best to stay 6+ feet away from everyone. Traffic on the roads is a lot lower than normal. The pharmacy had a security guard next to the door (for people throwing fits about the paper good limits? for anyone who comes in hacking up a lung?) and the grocery store is still out of TP and half-gallons of milk (but is full up on gallons). And also the frozen pierogi. I've been thinking of making some with my sweet potatoes anyway. I now have fresh fruit again and am stocked up for at least another two weeks.

The park across the street is still open, though there are tatters of caution tape hanging at the entrance for some reason; they caution taped every single bench, the playground, the pavilion - it honestly freaked me out the first time I walked in and saw it, and now that I know it's there, I can see it from my office window. Quiet streets I've seen before, sure, but not that.

Anyway, I've spent the past couple of days either working or banging my head against my desk trying to denoise some 1980s anime (Hikari no Densetsu) so I can gif the thing without it looking absolutely terrible. I've been thinking of writing fic for it for Be the First since the main character and her main rival are v. shippable, in which case I'd probably better get on with writing it, haha.

And if anyone needs more isolation streams to watch, the Bolshoi is putting up streams of their ballets; "Swan Lake" is already up. I believe this is the same video I watched in the theater.