December 7th, 2025
posted by [syndicated profile] oglaf_comic_feed at 12:00am on 07/12/2025
andrewducker: (Default)
December 6th, 2025

[personal profile] angelofthenorth gave me my birthday presents today! I thanked her and said I was surprised because it's not my birthday yet. But V and I always have a joint party - after their birthday and before mine - and that's today.

She sensibly pointed out that they won't see me for my birthday, as I'll be off doing family xmas things by then.

So, yeah, why not, today's my birthday.

ludy: Close up of pink tinted “dyslexo-specs” with sunset light shining through them (Default)
posted by [personal profile] ludy at 12:59pm on 06/12/2025
This is a screened comment postbox post for you to get in touch with me while I don’t have my mobile.

Also Happy St Nicholas Day everyone - enjoy celebrating everyone’s favourite heretic-slapping, accidentally canibalistic, patron saint of Sex Workers
ludy: big scary wooden goat (home)
posted by [personal profile] ludy at 12:47pm on 06/12/2025
I am on the train to my Dad’s and have realised I don’t have my mobile with me - argh! Going back home to pick it up would put my arrival at Stratford Upon Avon after the last bus that will drop us off anywhere “near” his retirement village (near = 15-20 minute walk away - as it’s forecast to be solid rain for the next couple of days at least we’ll have to take the 20 minute route) until Monday morning. So I’m not going to go back and will just have to re-experience pre-mobile life for the next few days

(I just forgot to switch it from pyjama/lounging-around-at-home-clothes pocket to my going-outside-in-the-wet-clothes pocket)

I do have my iPad and Kindle Fire. So writing here or email are the best ways to get in touch with me (with Teams, Zoom or Discord also being options)


I feel very stupid for forgetting - I haven’t done that in ages and of course the time I do would be for a time sensitive and very long train journey/being away from home for several days…
andrewducker: (Default)
December 5th, 2025
posted by [syndicated profile] xkcd_feed at 05:00am on 05/12/2025
posted by [personal profile] cosmolinguist at 07:13pm on 05/12/2025

I ended up stepping in to read out the questions and answers for a Christmas quiz at work today, a colleague made it but then lost her voice so needed someone else to do the talking. She got two someone elses, R and me. We traded off asking the questions, and one of R's was the name of the Wallace & Gromit movie that came out on Christmas Day in 2024.

At which point I quietly muttered "two years ago already, gosh" and R said "Erik, that was last year."

Oh! Yeah! It was! It's only 2025 now!

"It has been a long year," he said kindly, and as he's basically acted as project manager for the reports I've written he knows as well as anyone how long my year has been at work!

andrewducker: (Default)
December 4th, 2025
posted by [personal profile] cosmolinguist at 10:01pm on 04/12/2025 under , ,

Having determined that I'll need to buy my own lefse-making stuff, I finally remembered today to start my usual process of purchasing anything: asking V to do it for me, heh.

I sent them a list -- rolling pin, ricer, flat griddle, and what we call a lefse spatula the internet seems to call a lefse stick or lefse turner; I included a photo of one to make it clear -- and they did a great job; almost everything is on the way already. But it meant an afternoon looking at and thinking about the kinds of things I haven't in a while -- krumkake! which my grandma made when I was very little before declaring it too much work, which is fair enough but that means it took on near-mythical status in my mind; the other Minnesota Culture asserting itself stuff you find when you search for this because lefse has become a symbol of white Midwestern heritage. You can buy t-shirts that say "lefse ladym" modeled by someone holding a lefse spatula, but they don't sell the spatula, it's just a prop. There's shirts that say

Lefse&
Hotdish&
Pop&
Lutefisk

All these cultural markers lined up in a row. It's all both compelling and repulsive to me.

I've inherited a little money from the sale of Grandma's house -- despite all my attempts to refuse it, Mom insists that I buy something for myself with it. I'm going to make sure that she knows a bit of it is going on inferior versions of stuff that she never considered collecting for me because she refused to have anything to do with the house clearance, to make some point to her sisters that neither they nor I understand. An English friend perceptively pointed out "I'm guessing that sort of 'I'm having to buy a thing that you already had and (effectively) threw out' inflicts a very specific kind of midwestern sting." I could hardly have put it better myself. I'm not doing it to be passive-aggressive, though I imagine it'll be perceived that way.

Thinking about this all afternoon has led to feeling so immersed in things I miss so much. It's been kinda sad and tiring.

andrewducker: (Default)
andrewducker: (Default)
posted by [personal profile] andrewducker at 07:31am on 04/12/2025 under
Opening up my YouTube Recap so I can find out what nonsense Gideon has been watching this year.

(Sophia is on her own account, but for technical reasons Gideon can't be yet.)
December 3rd, 2025
posted by [syndicated profile] xkcd_feed at 05:00am on 03/12/2025
posted by [syndicated profile] questionable_content_feed at 09:53pm on 03/12/2025

You know you had a bad day when the next day [personal profile] angelofthenorth brings you coffee as soon as she gets home, saying "well your blog post from yesterday made me think you'd need it!"

I actually had a much better day at work today: no meetings to speak of and I even started messing around with the slides for the presentation I have to give on Tuesday. Plus, Tuesday turns out to be the London staff's Christmas lunch and I can go to Wahaca (yes, that's how they spell it) with them, they're all excited about Taco Tuesday.

I was able to slip away from work early enough to walk Teddy before D and I went to see Pillion, which was well-acted and horny (even in the audio description!) and had some genuine funny moments but is a little too Fifty Shades of Gay in that its basic message that being a dom makes you a dickhead who is incapable of healthy relationships. But I had fun and I'm glad we had time for a pint in the twinkly outdoors before coming home to delicious homemade stew and dumplings.

And before I'd finished eating, [personal profile] angelofthenorth offered cinnamon tea and when I made interested noises brought me some in the clear glass mug with the flower petals between its two walls which V bought in the Hebridean Tea Store, and then D asked if anyone wants a mince pie, so I had my first mince pie of the season with the perfect tea pairing for it.

Before bed I unloaded the dishwasher so V could load it up again, emptied the food waste bin, locked the doors, turned off the little plant lights, and changed my bedding. How nice to be in such a functional house, doing my little bit to reset, maintain, upkeep.

All this made me think of Kurt Vonnegut saying:

My uncle Alex Vonnegut, a Harvard-educated life insurance salesman taught me something very important.

He said that when things were really going well, we should be sure to NOTICE it. He was talking about simple occasions, not great victories: maybe drinking lemonade on a hot afternoon in the shade, or smelling the aroma of a nearby bakery; or fishing, and not caring if we catch anything or not, or hearing somebody all alone playing a piano really well in the house next door.

Uncle Alex urged me to say this out loud during such epiphanies: "If this isn’t nice, I don’t know what is."

So I do the same now, and so do my kids and grandkids. And I urge you to please notice when you are happy, and exclaim or murmur or think at some point, "If this isn’t nice, I don’t know what is."

Thanks to BorrowMyDoggy, we've connected with a neighbor who lives ridiculously close, a retired couple who need help walking their 3-year-old labradoodle. Teddy was named by a tiny grandchild and it's the perfect name for him: he's got the softest curly fur and he loves everyone; when we went over to meet him he almost immediately snuggled into Vee and fell asleep pressed up next to them.

The two of us took Teddy for a small walk on Friday when I was done with work, just as it was getting dark, and Vee did a walk over the weekend while D and I were out and yesterday at the same after-work time but I wasn't able to join this time thanks to an overrunning meeting and counseling at 5:30.

I just got back from walking him now; we didn't go far but I left him sniff around for about 20 minutes. It was really lovely to be walking a dog again.

We met a couple of humans in the park who I didn't recognize and a dog that I did; they know Teddy well and gave him lots of pets, and they thought they recognized me -- "was it a jack russell you had?" Aww. I explained why a dog they knew was being walked by a human they didn't; Teddy's dad is going to have a knee replacement very soon. These two could tell that he's been having more trouble walking. It's lovely how the dog people notice and look out for each other.

andrewducker: (Default)
December 2nd, 2025

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