Δαφνη Ευτυχια Αρθουρος

So to cut to the end: as it turned out I didn't need to worry about bunnyhugger's finish. She would win the B Division, and handily, not just never losing a best-of-three round but only once, in finals, even needing the third game of a round. It would overstate things to say she dominated the division --- a couple of times she won in what we call ``losing the race to the bottom'' --- but a win by some nonsense counts the same as a win by playing like a pro.

Speaking of nonsense. There was one time that I, as backup tournament director, was called in to make a ruling and that was of course for a game bunnyhugger was playing. She and her competitor were on Godzilla, her competitor had finished ball three, and she was taking her last ball facing the uphill climb of beating the 130-or-so-million of player one. And the game just went and reset, like someone had powered it off and on again.

This sort of game interruption is provided for in the rules of pinball tournaments, of course. Normally the procedure is if you can recover the scores as they stood, give a compensation ball and add that to the interrupted game's score. This is unfair if the interrupted player had been about to start, like, the Super Multiball, but what else can you do? But, in this case, the game had reset weirdly enough that it didn't preserve any of the scores, as though it forgot it had been in the middle of a game when it took a quick nap.

My inclination was that since everyone agreed the opponent had about 130 million points, give or take, let bunnyhugger play a whole game --- since nobody knew just what her score was, the game's screen somehow not being big enough for an always-on score display --- but I don't like making that the official ruling until I can back it up with the in-print rules. And I found that the actual printed rules we had were more specific; in the event of a catastrophic malfunction (the term of art here) all players are to replay. (If the game catastrophically malfunctions again it's kicked out of the tournament and a new game gets drawn.) So --- bunnyhugger's opponent a bit disappointed to lose a decent score against a tough competitor --- they replayed.

This turned out as well as we could have hoped. bunnyhugger's opponent had a better game than she'd had the first time around, so could not feel cheated of a decent score she'd already completed. But bunnyhugger had an even better score yet, taking a win and going on to the semifinals as cleanly as possible.

Fortunately that was the only ruling I had to make all night, as bunnyhugger, not being directly involved in any other games, could handle the rest. And most of those amounted to ``direct where the stuck ball's to be placed'' and ``take out Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles because it is, once again, broken''. TMNT may be an enjoyable game --- granting that nobody's figured out how to enjoy it yet --- but it keeps having issues of throwing random numbers of balls into play in the middle of tournaments.

Anyway, bunnyhugger won, and the second- and third-place finishers were also delighted, and we just had to worry about whether the A Division would finish by any reasonable hour.

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But now, in pictures of Le Grand Huit, I have to share ... pinball! It wasn't a surprise that pinball was there, to us, as I'd gone looking on a pinball map to see if anything might be in reachable range, but the games that were there ... well, when I saw them on the pinball map I thought, that can't be. And yet, here they were:

Williams's Riverboat Gambler and ... Class of 1812! This was a wild enough choice that we had to photograph it, and also bunnyhugger had to tell people on Facebonk that it was there.

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Besides Riverboat Gambler and Class of 1812 they also had in this area Party Zone, which I think I've once ever seen on location, and Lethal Weapon 3 which is, eh, that's a game all right.

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Class of 1812 is a wild game, though, with a definite vibe of ``we have The Addams Family license at home'' and that gruesome-humor vibe that's always fun.

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bunnyhugger had, like, three really good games in a row of it. Here she pauses to wait for her score to come back.

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Pinball router calling cards: the universal language? Apart from the grouping of telephone digits you could slip this under the glass of a game in the United States and not really stand out.

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A nice thing about Gottlieb games of the early 90s is they had this map of what was on the playfield and what you got for it. I didn't know they made it in multiple languages, though.

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Trivia: The second Howard Johnson's opened in 1935, ten years after the original; by the end of the year there were 39 of them. By the end of 1939 there were 107. Source: The Big Roads: The Untold Story of the Engineers, Visionaries, and Trailblazers Who Created the American Superhighways, Earl Swift.

Currently Reading: In The Shadow Of The Moon: A Challenging Journey to Tranquility, 1965 - 1969, Francis French and Colin Burgess.

This morning after breakfast, I was feeling chilled indoors. My first thought: I must be coming down with something.

My second thought: Check the indoor thermometer. Oh ... it's only 63 degrees inside the Blue and Green Cottage. Furnace thermostat was set at 71 degrees. Hmm.

Fortunately, my landlord was at my door before he got off the phone with me. We checked the thermostat and changed the batteries, which were corroding with age. But that still didn't power up the furnace.

My landlord poked around in the furnace and determined that he needed to call the professionals. (He thinks the problem may be in the gas igniter or in the control board.) In the meantime, he went to Lowe's and got a couple of space heaters, which actually are working quite well. I just hope the pipes don't freeze when the temperatures drop tomorrow.

I am extremely thankful that I live next door to a landlord and landlady who actually care that things work in this apartment. When Prince George's County opened the waiting list for Section 8 housing vouchers (for the first time in TEN YEARS!!!!), someone asked me if I was going to apply. But why? I don't want to sic the housing inspectors on my friends. And I certainly don't want to move to a crummy apartment complex with mice and roaches and unresponsive management, thank you very much.

Hi, there's an active shooter situation on my campus; I'm safe and a couple of miles away. ♥

I felt a slight disappointment when I got to our hipster bar Tuesday for pinball league finals and saw MWS there sitting at the bar. Not because it's ever unpleasant to see him, but because he was one of the eight people in the higher, A, Division for playoffs, and bunnyhugger was in ninth place. Anyone not showing up would get her into a place where she could only improve her standings. Coming in seeded at the top of B, she had to win the bracket to finish right where she started. MWS seemed my candidate for someone to stay home; it was not quite snowing, yet, but it was going to snow and heavily enough that all sorts of weather alarms were being announced, and MWS had even expressed to bunnyhugger his fears that the weather wouldn't let him drive back to Flint. As he was coming from farthest way, I thought he was the most likely to bow out for weather.

In the hour or so before the finals would start --- and bunnyhugger would arrive back from a work meeting that could not be postponed nor switched online --- I walked around, getting as much attendance as I could logged early. Also testing the machines I thought I might have to pick, or get picked against me, in finals, the only time during the season that Lansing League players choose what they play. And saw more of the other six players in A arriving. Around fifteen minutes before the official moment of finals beginning someone mentioned that MAG had not yet appeared and, oh, yes. He had missed last meeting too, and his postal job sometimes means he just can't get to league. And it is the busy season for mailing things, so he moved up to my second choice for plausibly likely to miss. He walked in a few moments later and the whole of A was accounted for.

I missed the last couple of people checking in by going around the whole bar looking for people who might belong in league finals. But I had everyone rounded up and ready to receive instructions just as 7:00 rolled around and bunnyhugger rolled in, fresh from work and from picking up the trophies, having driven through the early parts of the storm that MWS was afraid he'd have to drive back through --- I hadn't been able to the day before because my car was getting its service --- and looking ready for action.

She took the roll --- giving one late player just the margin needed to not miss his part in finals --- and gave the instructions as quick as possible, as if that could help the event not run until dawn. And she was still there at the top of B, having to defend her position against everyone.

I told her I wasn't playing. Placing highly in the league, or even the state, just isn't that important anymore, and she would be happier bottoming out in A than I would be taking first (if all the really good players somehow knocked each other out). And one of our big problems with these events has always been traffic management, as players just do not understand who they're supposed to play in a double-elimination seeded bracket. They always try to enter their own finishes and make up their own ideas about how to play things out after their first loss, and it never goes right. Having someone at the post continuously, entering results right away and sending people where they should go, would help avoid confusion and keep things moving swiftly.

bunnyhugger wasn't having it. I tried to lay out the good reasons for this, and to stand on it, and she refused every one of them. Even the prospect of, you know, if she flopped in B Division she might see all her play this season --- which was generally quite good and just foiled by a couple other people, me included, having killer last nights --- gone to an 19th place (or whatever) finish. After she swore she would be fine with it even if she had a catastrophic night, I relented, and agreed to play. And she told other people, fairly, how she could not believe what I was trying to do there.

Finals were ready to start.

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And now in photos, we're back at Le Grand Huit and drawing closer to what we went there for ...

Crane game that for all I know could even be played, although mostly I liked the chrome styling of all the important parts.

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And here's a different crane game that still looks nice and metal and substantial.

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The hand-cranked record player on top of the crane game was up way too high to actually touch but still, interesting to look at.

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And a Wurlitzer jukebox! We didn't have the spare coins to see if that worked either but aren't the buttons stylish?

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Took a picture of some of the records on offer here. Yes, they have Kool and the Gang. And Stars On 45. (I'm not actually sure about the attributions here because The StarSisters were a spinoff group that --- look, it's all weirdly complicated.)

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``Why not come sit comfortably on the Long Pig Couch?''

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Trivia: The United States produced 400,000 brass clocks in the year 1855. Source: The Age of Capital, 1848 - 1875, Eric Hobsbawm.

Currently Reading: In The Shadow Of The Moon: A Challenging Journey to Tranquility, 1965 - 1969, Francis French and Colin Burgess.

I am having a lovely day!

SamSam is in town, and I elected to play hooky from work (more accurately, use one of my increased number of personal days THANK YOU UNION I LOVE YOU) so that we could hang out today and also because my work-brain is _fried_ and so it's a very very nice concept to just...not be there for a day. Here's some of the things we did:

*We went to Amanda's house quite early to watch the biathalon, since Amanda and Sam are in the same biathalon group chat. I find this extremely pleasantly baffling, but it was very very good to hang out on the couch with some friends and enjoy them being very excited about a thing. Occasionally they would give me context, or I would ask a question, but mostly I just got to watch people be excited about something, which I find splendid. We also watched the kittens be doofuses and just generally chatted, which was splendid!

*Home for a bit of lunch, and then we grabbed our ice skates and headed off to the rink near the school, which has open skate for a couple hours on Friday afternoons. We skated for a little over an hour and it was pretty grand! Sam likes ice skating _immensely_, which makes it a delightful sort of thing to do together, even if I'm not particularly good at it. (I don't really regret that I've fallen out of Tech Squares, but I do miss that particular part of Easthill. I want more dancing on skates!)

*After skating, we walked on to Make&Mend, which I only really went to the first time like six weeks ago. I think going at least every month or two is probably a really good idea for me, in terms of getting to see interesting crafty things and also to support something that I want my neighborhood to be.

*We walked home, which was...not as pleasant as it could be, since cold and windy, but we did swing by Saus in Bow-Street-Market on the way. So cold and windy but also french fries!

*Once home, we collapsed for a while and had good nap. Woke up enough so that they could read me some book and I could eventually make dinner, and this is all a really nice precursor to another couple days of hanging out together.

Currently I am writing words and they are brushing my hair out and we're listening to music and that's all reeeeeeally good. I am happy for this!

~Sor
MOOP!

I'm feeling really pissy with myself right now. I can't even pretend I know what I did with the last oh I don't know 4 hours. And about quarter to 7:00 I realized there was a dance nearby I could go to and then I thought about going and I didn't know who was going and I didn't get ready and then I didn't and then I thought oh I will go to the Balboa because that's only $10 and it's from 8:30 to 11:00 and at that point it was like most of it or maybe it was 8:00 I could totally have done that but now it's 9:15 and it's a half hour out to Glen Echo and sure it's not that that a price for the hour but it's a half hour drive each way and so I'm not and that's all well and good but then I'm also barely getting any exercise anymore and I miss dancing and I didn't go dancing last night and I don't know if I'll get dancing on Sunday maybe I could. Acro is late in the day for change just everything is so much tetrising and somehow all the time is gone I don't understand that either. And I was annoyed because I felt like oh God I have all this stuff I should do in the house that works better if there isn't someone here with me and then I did kind of clean some of the kitchen and then I got out to the Christmas Market and found some things or at least figured out some things maybe and I'm just tired that's probably a matter of not doing enough of my asthma drugs but it's also just I keep not doing things I keep not dancing I keep not visiting with people I keep losing time and there's only so much time you know.

And maybe I just need more water and didn't realize I need more water I don't know. And also more than a little annoyed that I have a whole lot of sparkles in my hair and none of them are visible with my hairs up like I almost always have my hair up and I went back to her and I got a lot more sparkly to put in my hair having explained to her that they don't show with my hair up

tl;dr still waiting for things

The latest on that inherited IRA is that I got two email messages from Fidelity today, one saying that I needed to do something [unspecified] to transfer the money from BNY, and one saying specifically that BNY had told Fidelity that they, BNY, needed to talk to me.

So, I called BNY, and after various annoyances with their phone tree, talked to someone. He told me that they had no record yet of receiving the form I sent by next-day mail, but that if the form had arrived late Wednesday they might not be scanned until late today or even Monday. Also that once the form is scanned into the BNY system, it may take a few days before they actually transfer the money into my name, which would be necessary in order to move it to Fidelity.

So, I can (and probably will) call Monday to check that the form was in fact been received, but he thinks I should call later in the week, maybe Wednesday, maybe as late as Friday, and ask for my brand-new account number. Once I have that number, I have to fill out appropriate paperwork with Fidelity. *sigh*

I am both annoyed that even paying for next-day delivery, this is taking several days, and thinking that if I hadn’t paid for faster delivery I would be a few days further behind.

The man also said that once the funds are transferred, they will send me an acknowledgement by mail, including the new account number. However, waiting for that to arrive (rather than getting the information by phone) does not seem prudent, given the IRS deadline for the 2025 required minimum distribution.

I made it! I'm retired!!

WE WON AT CAPITALISM! (Hat-tip to rmd for that wonderful turn of phrase.

If you are in the US, don't have employer-provided health insurance (hello layoffs, among others), and are thus buying your insurance on healthcare.gov or the state marketplaces, you might want to read siderea's series of posts on the subject soon: introduction, A health plan is a contract, and HSAs and bronze/catastrophic plans (so far). Technically you have until January 15 to sign up for 2026 insurance, but if you want insurance coverage in January, your deadline is Real Soon Now -- December 15 in most places, but earlier in some states. (I'm in PA where it's December 15; I haven't been tracking other places but Siderea mentions some in the introduction.)

Something I had missed is that for 2026, the government has admitted that bronze plans (with the lowest-but-still-high premiums) are inadequate, and you can now set up a Health Savings Account (HSA) with those plans. It's extra paperwork but can lead to savings on the money you were going to have to spend out of pocket anyway.

When I was still working I seemed to always have a natural wake up time of around 5 AM. This was annoying because my alarm was set for 6 and it would take me half an hour to resettle and maybe get a little snooze time.

In retirement I seem to still have that wake up at 5. Now I just get some breakfast (oatmeal!) and cozy back into bed until around 8:30. This is working for me.

And just as a reminder to you all:

Epstein files, Epstein files, Epstein files.

His victims can't forget and neither should we.

Someone anonymous bought me paid time, with the note, "I love your bird photos," which is a) kind, and b) gives me incentive to *take* some bird photos. And other photos. And, as a necessary corollary, walks.

Before that, I need to find my walking boots, one of which is in Some Bag Or Box, and also possibly buy other boots (because snow), which is always somewhat tangled because I have ridiculous calves and ankles.

But meantime, I can organize my tags! And post other things. And so on.

Anyway, thank you, Photononymous!

 Here's a series from a week or two ago that you really should check out: It Could Happen Here's "Darién Gap: One Year Later." It's four parts and I recommend listening to the whole thing, as it's some truly brilliant reporting, but if you are like me, the one that will stand out the most is the second episode, "To Be Called By No Name." It begins with a song written in 1948, Woody Guthrie's "Deportees (Plane Crash At Los Gatos)" that has horrifying resonance now, nearly 80 years later. From that jumping off point, James discusses the media coverage of the manufactured migrant crisis.

The four part series focuses on two migrants in particular, Primrose and her daughter Kim, from Zimbabwe. Primrose's family opposed the regime there and her father was disappeared; she and her daughter fled a deadly situation to try to claim refugee status in the US. The plight of migrants from African countries is even less discussed than those from Latin America or the Middle East; in detailing Primrose's story, James makes her visible, a heroic protagonist facing impossible odds, someone who lodges in your heart and stays there. It's great storytelling as well as great journalism. He refuses the objectivity of the mainstream reporters, who just don't bother to talk to migrants, let alone give voice to their names and stories.

Even posting about this tears me up. I know a lot of you reading this are doing your best to fight ICE but I want to beat every one of those bastards to death with my bare hands and by the end of this series, you will too.

So, I, uh, got my RSI/ergonomics debugged!* I then promptly lost two days to bad sleep due to another new mechanical failure of the balky meat mecha and also a medical appointment in re two previous malfunctions. But I seem back in business now. The new keyboard is great.

Patrons, I've got three Siderea Posts out so far this month and it's only the 12th. I have two more Posts I am hoping to get out in the next three days. Also about health insurance. We'll see if it actually happens, but it's not impossible. I have written a lot of words. (I really like my new keyboard.)

Anyways, if you weren't planning on sponsoring five posts (or – who knows? – even more) this month, adjust your pledge limits accordingly.

* It was my bra strap. It was doing something funky to how my shoulder blade moved or something. It is both surprising to me that so little pressure made so much ergonomic difference, and not surprising because previously an even lighter pressure on my kneecap from wearing long underwear made my knee malfunction spectacularly. Apparently this is how my body mechanics just are.

Canonical link: https://siderea.dreamwidth.org/1890494.html


0.

Hey Americans (and other people stuck in the American healthcare system)! Shopping for a health plan on your state marketplace? Boy, do I have some information for you that you should have and probably don't. There's been an important legal change affecting your choices that has gotten almost no press.

Effective with plan year 2026 all bronze level and catastrophic plans are statutorily now HDHPs and thus HSA compatible. You may get and self-fund an HSA if you have any bronze or catastrophic plan, as well as any plan of any level designated a HDHP.

2025 Dec 9: IRS.gov: "Treasury, IRS provide guidance on new tax benefits for health savings account participants under the One, Big, Beautiful Bill"

Bronze and Catastrophic Plans Treated as HDHPs: As of Jan. 1, 2026, bronze and catastrophic plans available through an Exchange are considered HSA-compatible, regardless of whether the plans satisfy the general definition of an HDHP. This expands the ability of people enrolled in these plans to contribute to HSAs, which they generally have not been able to do in the past. Notice 2026-05 clarifies that bronze and catastrophic plans do not have to be purchased through an Exchange to qualify for the new relief.

If you are shopping plans right now (or thought you were done), you should probably be aware of this. Especially if you are planning on getting a bronze plan, a catastrophic plan, or any plan with the acronym "HSA" in the name or otherwise designated "HSA compatible".

The Trump administration doing this is tacit admission that all bronze plans have become such bad deals that they're the economic equivalent of what used to be considered a HDHP back when that concept was invented, and so should come with legal permission to protect yourself from them with an HSA.

Effective immediately, you should consider a bronze plan half an insurance plan.

( Read more [3,340 words] )

This post brought to you by the 221 readers who funded my writing it – thank you all so much! You can see who they are at my Patreon page. If you're not one of them, and would be willing to chip in so I can write more things like this, please do so there.

Please leave comments on the Comment Catcher comment, instead of the main body of the post – unless you are commenting to get a copy of the post sent to you in email through the notification system, then go ahead and comment on it directly. Thanks!

We've got bonus comic strip plot recapping going on in my humor blog. That and I fail to write Christmas cards. Want to see? Sure you do:

• MiSTed: The Tale of Jimmy Rabbit, Part 17: Red Leggins
• What’s Going On In Flash Gordon? How did Ming return? August – December 2025
• Statistics Saturday: My Christmas-Card-Writing Forecast
• Robert Benchley: Read and Eat
• In Which I’m Trapped by the Expectations About Pants
• What’s Going On In Rex Morgan, M.D.? Has Rex Morgan quit the comic entirely? September – December 2025
• To Let You Know How the Christmas-Card-Writing Forecast Is Going
• MiSTed: The Tale of Jimmy Rabbit, Part 18: The Rabbits’ Ball

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Don't worry: today, we get into The Big Eight. Eventually.

More of the melange carousel outside the building; here's your basic runabout, naturally, with the tractor behind it.

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In front is, naturally, your microbus from Pearl Forrester's years on MST3K.

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There's that horse. Note you rock it on your own power.

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And a user-spinnable cup, with a look back at the direction we came from; recognize the gondola?

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bunnyhugger gets ready to step into the building. Behind, a serving bar and some stage space.

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And first thing to greet us inside: a not-cartoony horse!

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L'art Forain, a big band organ that I don't believe was operating when we were there.

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And some floor space roped off with standees behind for purposes I can't imagine.

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Here's a collection of miscellaneous carousel or carousel-type figures. I don't know the deal with that base the ostrich is on.

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And here's bumper cars that might be from someplace that we'd recognize if we were from northern France.

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Another angle on those horses, this one making it clear one was named Herkules at least.

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And a picture of the very faded art on the carousel cover above the horses and ostrich you just saw.

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Trivia: In the early 1600s the Polish missionary Michał Boym became the first (known) European cartographer to put Chinese characters and their approximation in Roman text. Source: Off the Map: The Curious Histories of Place-Names, Derek Nelson. Wikipedia notes Boym was born circa 1612 so it can't have been that early 1600s. He seems to have first reached China around 1643. He's also credited with the first known Chinese-English dictionary.

Currently Reading: In The Shadow Of The Moon: A Challenging Journey to Tranquility, 1965 - 1969, Francis French and Colin Burgess.

supergee, aka Arthur Hlavaty, who I was never close to but enjoyed, died a day or so ago. He wrote engagingly, both on Dreamwidth/LJ and other places, apparently knew like, everyone in SF fandom. His wife's post on it, and Kalimac's reminisce.

Peace to his wife and husband, aka nellorat and womzilla.

He was very much a fanzine fan, and had a life and a half in various ways. He was quietly who he was, and lived his life as that; witness his family, for example. As I said, I liked him, in a "ships passing in the night" sense, and I'm mostly posting about it because... Well, people matter. The people who make up community, who are in the same places.

(Also, writer John Varley has probably died, though I haven't seen a definitive post on that yet. I've enjoyed what I read of him, but he was never one of the ones I really *connected* to.)

When bunnyhugger's parents decided, for weather reasons, they couldn't get to our place Sunday after buying their own Christmas tree it did save us from an awkward moment. That moment: explaining to them why our fireplace wasn't actually working. I mentioned last week how we had parts that kept falling off it, and the fireplace people weren't going to be able to get here until Tuesday.

So Tuesday I worked from home, rather than go into the office --- I'm to pay it back by going in Thursday --- and what do you know but they showed up before bunnyhugger even had to leave for her her own work stuff, meaning as it turned out I didn't need to take the day at home. But there was no way of knowing that, or knowing how long they were going to take.

Since it turned out the problem was a simple one. One of the ventilation rods up top was supposed to be slid in and catch on to something or other, and it hadn't, and the fireplace people agreed that was on them. But an adjustable wrench locked tight around them and a bit of hammering would fix that. And indeed, it was but the work of a moment until the road was placed in firm enough I couldn't pull it out by hand, and I'm confident we won't be able to knock it out by accident.

While they were here I asked about the fan noise. Unfortunately, while I hear the fan, I don't feel annoyed by the specific thing it does that bunnyhugger can't stand. They were able to take the fan out and test to see that it was spinning like it ought and didn't have any obvious imbalances or anything, which doesn't help the sound any but is at least nice to know for sure. And now that I know how relatively easy it is to take the fan out and put it back in --- it's a modular component at the base of the fireplace --- I might risk it for my own goofy weird ideas sometime.

Also I was able to ask about the pieces left over from installation. We've got explanations for everything now, including the one that is an actual tool that we can use to adjust the fan without getting our hands quite so close to the heat being blown out by it. So that was well worth knowing and hopefully we're going to see less troublesome fires to come.

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Now for some more pictures, as we get closer to entering Le Grand Huit's actual building. But there's stuff to see before getting there:

Spending a little time with a carousel that's outside the building. It's a melange, with unusual animals like pigs or swans or alligators and then some vehicles. Note in the background on the left FunHouse star Rudy.

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So here's some of the animals. Pigs aren't very rare as menagerie figures go, and goats have decent representation too. Zebras turn up elsewhere too, but alligators? That's novel.

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Note that this alligator besides being very toony has a handle on top so you can make the mouth open and close. This has got to be so much fun to ride.

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Here's, finally, a horse, but you never see ones this cartoony. The head looks to me like it's probably on a spring to bobble around with the ride.

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And here's the zebra, tucked between the alligator and a two-seater bike.

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And how about a cute little shaggy dog?

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Trivia: Thomas Edison's film company's 1896 excerpt of the stage show The Widow Jones, with the first known kiss performed on-screen, attracted enough controversy one New York City newspaper devoted almost a full page of commentary and illustrations of ``The May Irwin Kiss''. Source: With Amusement For All: a history of American popular culture since 1830, LeRoy Ashby. Wikipedia leads me to think it was The New York World published this (and in a sponsored article at that), but

Currently Reading: In The Shadow Of The Moon: A Challenging Journey to Tranquility, 1965 - 1969, Francis French and Colin Burgess.

Okay, well, it's not _done_ but my room is a damn sight _better_ and that's pretty cool.

And by "damn sight better" I actually mean "I got rid of two of the boxen that've just been sitting around taking up space all over my room since I moved in in 2020". Which is...fantastic. I'm not remotely done cleaning, either up or out, but progress is happening! That's quite grand! Someday maybe I will have everything tucked away in a place it belongs, having gotten rid of all the things that shouldn't actually be in here. What a good fantasy.

(I am being sharp and salty to cover up the fact that I am actually quite happy to have regained a little bit of space, and irritated at how long it takes me sometimes.)

I am nowhere near finished, of course. My desk is the biggest disaster area (although I've definitely made progress on it, we're like, eight inches deep of shit instead of sixteen). And there's an endless number of papers that want sorting, but that's like, a longterm plan. Not something I expect to get done anytime soon, not even if I'm procrastinating on my grading real good!

That being said, I had a point somewhere in the span of time I've lived in this room where I was trying to sort papers for about twenty minutes a day. Do that for two months and I'd have everything done, I expect. Just....you know. Consistency is hard.

The surface reason I am cleaning is that SamSam is visiting this weekend, but the real weekend is that having my room be a catastrophe is a pretty strong Blues Clue¹, and also _definitely_ one of the ones that chickeneggs² me. So, having latched onto the slight mania of "you have no idea how badly I do not want to do my grading" means actually trying to get my roomspace tolerable?

We're through the long dark November. I made a note in my calendar for November first, next year and all subsequents, telling me that my brain's about to turn into shit and I might want to do something about it. What should I do? No one knows the answer to that.

I mucked with my phone so that it goes into "focus mode" for two hours each afternoon. No games, no internet. Chat is okay, because I almost never am _mindless_ and stuck about chat. So far I haven't broken it, which means that it ~cannot be broken~. Unlike, say, the timers on my various phone games that theoretically say I can only play like 15 minutes unless I go make it longer which is very easy to do. Sigh.

And I'm trying to crawl myself out of the work hellhole --the above is theoretically helpful for this. Man though, I'm looking forward to it being solstice real bad. Arise fair sun, and slay the envious moon³

I hope you are finding the ability to do the things that bring you comfort and joy. I love you!

~Sor
MOOP!

<sup>1: "what idiot called them depression symptoms instead of..."

2: Did you know that you can just say things? It's ridiculous that language works in any capacity whatsoever! I say so much entirely impenetrable nonsense, and yes, lots of the time it's partly that I'm quoting things, but sometimes it's that, like, I'm just making up weird things that maybe only make sense to me.

So, instead of finding the term "negative feedback loop" my brain decided to hand me "chickenegg", as in "which came first". Am I depressed because my room is a catastrophe or is my room a catastrophe because yadda yadda

3: Case in point, this is a reference! It's a Kate Nyx song lyric.</sup>

 Just finished: You Better Be Lightning by Andrea Gibson. I never had the privilege of seeing Gibson perform, other than on YouTube, so this is as close as I'm ever going to get. They really were a brilliant poet. Some of the poems lose a bit in print—they tend towards the storytelling and autobiographical, and that reads much less powerfully on the page than in speech—but this is a fairly minor critique. Gibson writes powerfully about queerness, gender, disability, and the climate crisis, and their furious energy is made all the more poignant by their premature death earlier this year.

Currently reading: Censorship & Information Control: From Printing Press to Internet by Ada Palmer. This is an exhibit based on a course that Palmer taught and it just makes me wish I could take the course. I'm screenshotting bits to text to people. Her central argument is that the total state censorship we see depicted in 1984 is the exception rather than the norm; more often censorship is incomplete, self-enforced, or carried out by non-state entities like the church or marketplace. This is obviously important when we talk about issues like free speech, which tends to be very narrowly defined when most of the threats to it have traditionally not come directly from the government (I mean, present-day US excepted, but it took a lot of informal censorship to get to that point).

The bit about fig leafs, complete with illustrations, is particularly good, as is the bit on Pierre Bayle, who hid his radical ideas in the footnotes to his Historical and Critical Dictionary in lengthy footnotes that he knew no one would read.

You can get this for free if you want to read it btw.

Times are trying, but my cats are on the job.

Sweetie, who now looks like a furry tabby bowling ball with legs, comes downstairs to support my efforts when I'm on the weight bench. She has learned not to walk under the moving parts (the weights) when they're moving, which means I don't get a cramp letting them back down sloooooowly to avoid her. And she tells me she loves me and would I skritch ... there? Ohhh thanks. And asks to be let into the storage room to check for mice. Why would I say no to that?

Zoomy doesn't do that, but he has taken to shoving his favorite toy mouse under the bedroom door for me at night, so that I will have it to play with if I want or to sleep with. (I don't, but he doesn't understand a lot about humans yet. He's only about 18 months old.) I give it back to him in the morning, and then find it again later. He also curls up (during the day) next to me and sighs and sleeps with only a little whuffling snore. (I'd let him sleep here at night but it would screw up my breathing; he sheds a lot. A lint roller is a must with him, for use on anywhere he's been lying.)

So I bet you're wondering What's Going On In Rex Morgan, M.D.? Has Rex Morgan quit the comic entirely? And if that's sated your curiosity about the comic strip then let me get to a double dose of pictures from our trip to France earlier this year.

Wednesday was the first one at the academic conference, and I skimped on photos of the conference itself, but we did get to something after the day's work that was wild and fun. So let's see.

So here's what an academic conference looks like, if you're in the main lecture hall for the keynote address. Details will vary but not all that much.

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And yes, that's Peter Singer, whose utilitarian approach to animal ethics revolutionized the field by making it something male philosophers took seriously. He looks a bit more ragged since the conference at the same venue ten years ago.

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And here's bunnyhugger getting started in her session, one of the first set after the event started.

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Just a curiosity: underneath the stairs was an unplugged vending machine with just a couple of apple juice packs in A26 here, and nothing else.

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After the conference we walked from our hotel to this attraction, Le Grand Huit.

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This eight isn't looking all that grand, but that's because we're on the non-fun side of it just now.

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Here's more of the fun stuff. It's got a collection of fairground and amusement ride stuff such as, here, what looks to be a gondola from a salon carousel.

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Here's bunnyhugger looking delightful inside the gondola.

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Unfortunately the rides were not operating when we got there --- it was the middle of the week, after all --- but we got to see things like this small train circle.

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And a ticket booth that looks like it's from a children's book of the 1930s.

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I can't say why this swings ride looks like all the chains are curved into the center of the platform. Probably it's not haunted.

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There's a carousel on the left, there, and carousel panels surrounding that lamp post in the center. on the right is a bar, the thing that most distinguishes this from Marvin's Marvellous Mechanical Museum.

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Trivia: John Adams's last official dinner as President, the 16th of February, 1801, was a meeting with a delegation of Native Americans. Source: John Adams, David McCullough.

Currently Reading: Sabrina the Teenage Witch: 60 Magical Stories, Editor Mike Pellerito.

My brother had some startling news. My old boss, at the New Jersey company I worked remotely for for a decade-plus, has died. My brother didn't have word on a cause of death or anything, although given that the guy was someone who'd had multiple freak scuba-diving accidents, I suppose it comes down to hard living. We didn't think he was much older than us, but we didn't really have a clear idea of how old he was.

I have a good bit to be grateful to him for, of course. First for giving me a job when I was fresh back from Singapore and completely unable to find anything. And for giving me just shy of a decade of remote working from Michigan, on a salary adequate to needs and accompanied by so few specific expectations that it was almost the ideal of just working whenever I felt like and taking off on a weeklong roller coaster trip when I felt like. There's few people who'd do that, especially for a programmer as within-normal-boundaries as I am.

I do remember asking him, right after he announced he was selling the company, if he was well, and he insisted he was. Still, I had suspicions then, and I guess it doesn't matter now. Do wonder about the exact circumstances, though.

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On to photos. Most of Tuesday was a travel day, so there's only a couple pictures of interest, and many of them are from a supermarket in Rennes where we got some dinner.

The track for Bar-sur-Aube, the direction facing away from Paris (and Rennes). I could not get over how much this could have passed for, like, the Matawan station.

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In comparison here's Paris's Gare du ... Somewhere ... and the mall that spits out trains on one end of things.

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In Rennes! We had the same hotel as a decade ago and they had the same crest over this stairway mirror that we couldn't quite figure out. Parsing the words was okay, but the meaning eluded us.

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The supermarket had this self-service bread-cutter that fascinated me. We didn't see anyone using it.

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When FurAffinity happens in real life!

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And what we ended up getting, a veggie bacon sandwich called Le British for some reason and crunchy ghost snacks.

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Trivia: Thomas Fortune Ryan, who organized the Royal Typewriter Company, had previously formed American Tobacco and the Southern Railway out of mergers of smaller companies. Source: The Wonderful Writing Machine, Bruce Bliven Jr.

Currently Reading: Sabrina the Teenage Witch: 60 Magical Stories, Editor Mike Pellerito.

Once my mom got from the hospital to a rehab facility, she got a lot more There. (I mean, still has dementia, so not *that* there, but conscious and coherent.)

And, turns out, what actually actually happened, contrary to my last post, is that she sort of did have a stroke, but not really. A former stroke, in essence.

( Medical details and muttering, but nothing gross. )

My dad is like, "I don't need help myself! So why should the light housekeeping people come just for me!" so I'm going to call him tomorrow and basically go, "They can help arrange the house for when mom comes home," which is, after all, true. But they can also help 89-year-old *him*, too. Cough.

All in all, I dislike this phase of things.

I went out in the cold today, took a shuttle buses that was replacing the central part of the green line, and walked into a Fidelity office to get the medallion signature I need on the BNY form.

They provided the medallion for my signature, but the woman who handled that told me she thought I would need to redo the _Fidelity_ forms once BNY had transferred the funds, because the inherited IRA would need a brand-new account, not the one I created for the purpose a few weeks ago. Having printed and signed those forms, I asked her to keep them, in case they are usable. (She may have been thinking I'm trying to move the money into an account that already has money in it.)

She also said I do need to put the form with the medallion signature in the mail to BNY, Fidelity can't send it to them electronically. I brought the medallion-ized form home with me, but before I put it in the mail I'm going to scan it and upload the scan to the Fidelity website, in case the previous advisor is right and they can do this electronically.

So that will be another outing in the cold, to a post office, in the hope the letter gets to BNY in good season despite both Christmas packages and the Republican effort to destroy the postal service. Fortunately, there are post office branches at this end of the green line, the part that's still running trolleys.

ETA: I scanned the document, and just uploaded it to the Fidelity website, with a message explaining that I will be mailing the hardcopy to BNY tomorrow.

We had our first real snow last week. It actually stuck around & is still looking nice.

Saturday we went to a "cut-your-own" Xmas tree farm and brought back a lovely tree. I've never had a tree so fresh it still had snow on it, so that was fun. It's also the first time we've had a full-sized tree here.

Next, what started out as a quick dash to Home Despot for appropriately-sized lights, rapidly turned into an epic trek for brunch in town, British foods 45 minutes up the road, and finally Home Despot. We decorated the tree - we do NOT have too many ornaments, we still have hooks left! - and settled in for a nice quiet Choresday on Sunday. The cats are interested in the tree, but haven't climbed it or broken anything that we know of.

Today, the snow is melting a little, and we can see loads of animal tracks across the back yard.

This is also my last Monday on earth of working. In a little over 4 days' time I will be a free human being!

Canonical link: https://siderea.dreamwidth.org/1889543.html


Preface: I had hoped to get this out in a more timely manner, but was hindered by technical difficulties with my arms, which have now been resolved. This is a serial about health insurance in the US from the consumer's point of view, of potential use for people still dealing with open enrollment, which we are coming up on the end of imminently. For everyone else dealing with the US health insurance system, such as it is, perhaps it will be useful to you in the future.

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Understanding Health Insurance:
Introduction

Health insurance in the US is hard to understand. It just is. If you find it confusing and bewildering, as well as infuriating, it's not just you.

I think that one of the reasons it's hard to understand has to do with how definitions work.

Part of the reason why health insurance is so confusing is all the insurance industry jargon that is used. Unfortunately, there's no way around that jargon. We all are stuck having to learn what all these strange terms mean. So helpful people try to explain that jargon. They try to help by giving definitions.

But definitions are like leaves: you need a trunk and some branches to hang them on, or they just swirl around in bewildering clouds and eventually settle in indecipherable piles.

There are several big ideas that provide the trunk and branches of understanding health insurance. If you have those ideas, the jargon becomes a lot easier to understand, and then insurance itself becomes a lot easier to understand.

So in this series, I am going to explain some of those big ideas, and then use them to explain how health insurance is organized.

This unorthodox introduction to health insurance is for beginners to health insurance in the US, and anyone who still feels like a beginner after bouncing off the bureaucratic nightmare that is our so-called health care system in the US. It's for anyone who is new to being an health insurance shopper in the US, or feels their understanding is uncertain. Maybe you just got your first job and are being asked to pick a health plan from several offered. Maybe you have always had insurance from an employer and are shopping on your state marketplace for the first time. Maybe you have always gotten insurance through your parents and spouse, and had no say in it, but do now. This introduction assumes you are coming in cold, a complete beginner knowing nothing about health insurance or what any of the health insurance industry jargon even is.

Please note! This series is mostly about commercial insurance products: the kinds that you buy with money. Included in that are the kind of health insurance people buy for themselves on the state ACA marketplaces and also the kind of health insurance people get from their employers as a "bene". It may (I am honestly not sure) also include Medicare Advantage plans.

The things this series explains do not necessarily also describe Medicaid or bare Medicare, or Tricare or any other government run insurance program, though if you are on such an insurance plan this may still be helpful to you. Typically government-run plans have fewer moving parts with fewer choices, so fewer jargon terms even matter to them. Similarly, this may be less useful for subsidized plans on the state ACA marketplaces. It depends on the state. Some states do things differently for differently subsidized plans.

But all these different kinds of government-provided health insurance still use some insurance industry jargon for commercial insurance, if only to tell you what they don't have or do. So this post may be useful to you because understanding how insurance typically works may still prove helpful in understanding what the government is up to. Understanding what the assumptions are of regular commercial insurance will hopefully clarify the terms even government plans use to describe themselves. Just realize that if you have a plan the government in some sense is running, things may be different – including maybe very different – for you.

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On to the first important idea: Health Insurance is a Contract.

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When we got an artificial tree to decorate the upstairs last month, it was with the confident assurance that now, we wouldn't have the bother and potential doubling of our time out in cold or rainy or worse weather finding and cutting down a Christmas tree. So, of course, the Tannenbaum God laughed and arranged for today to start with several inches of snow. This prompted bunnyhugger's parents to cancel their plan to come up to the Christmas tree farm near us and, as is their custom, buy the first tree her father sees and then wait for us to cut down two trees. But, if we should be willing to get a tree for them and drive it down to their home, if the roads seemed secure enough, that'd be great.

The roads were surprisingly good, at least outside our street, which doesn't rate plowing for a mere three inches of dry powder. It was, for once, seasonally appropriate weather for early December in mid-Michigan, which is not to say I didn't miss the times it was in the mid-50s. One of those times was when I slipped on a patch of snow-covered ice a mere ... 135 seconds ahead of the tractor pulling a carriage full of people to farther regions of the tree farm. What could I do but shrug as the riders went past, grinning that it didn't happen to them, yet?

Happily, we found a lovely tree for downstairs almost right away, and got it trimmed, bundled up, drilled for a center spike, and put in the car --- parked in literally the closest non-handicapped-reserved spot on the lot --- and could go back for another. bunnyhugger's father had told us that her mother wanted a small tree, like five or six feet, and a Frasier fir, even though they really don't tag trees that small. They didn't have any precut that short. But they did have an area with pretty near everything tagged, apparently as they expect to tear out everything and plant a new crop next year. We went searching there and in a forlorn field of snow and the remnants of once-wanted trees found a couple candidates that were between six and seven feet, although not very broad.

bunnyhugger called her father, offering to e-mail a picture of the tree and me standing beside it so they could approve the tree's height and breadth before we did anything irreversible. But her father was adamant about trusting us and that there was absolutely no reason to send a picture. It was only after we got to their house that we realized why this: bunnyhugger's mother hadn't heard anything about this ``get a really short tree'' plan. She would attribute it to her husband's desire to get a tree that she could decorate entirely herself. (They share an e-mail for reasons of they got their e-mail set up once and are afraid to ever touch it again.) Also we established that a concolor, like we get, would have been fine, so maybe next year we'll be better-informed. If the weather is just bad enough to keep them from going up and buying the first tree her father sees in the pre-cut lot.

Anyway, this let us get an extra little trip to see her parents in their home, and their dog (disappointed that bunnyhugger did not take her for an extra-long walk) and cat (wondering when all this fuss will end), which was all pleasant. It also relieved us of the terror of not having enough of the house cleaned up to let anyone else see, although it also removes the motivation to get cleaning-up done. So that's a mixed good.

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Next on the photo roll is a relatively minor thing, the travel day, getting from Dolancourt to Rennes for the conference the next day. So ...

Little picture of our hotel's seats and the balcony outside that I'd spent Monday morning in, at least until I got tired and fell asleep forever.

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And you can see the terrible mess we made of our desk what with the ... two bottles and a post-it note scattered around. Please note my snazzy new suitcase there too.

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And here's the balcony, seating area, and bed after we'd trashed the room.

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A peek down the windows in the breakfast room, showing the water mill's workings. I don't know when they last operated.

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And now we're at the train station, back in Bar-Sur-Aube, which I've since learned was a more interesting town than we'd seen from its minor-stop-on-the-NJ-Transit-Line station here.

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But, turns out, train station displays of historical eventage are a universal language.

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Trivia: Although organized baseball has always required batters to come to the plate in a specified order, they did not originally specify where the order started in a new inning. In 1876 Henry Chadwick wrote that the custom was that, if the third out in an inning was made on a base runner, then the next inning started with the person after that base runner's, rather than (as has been the rule since 1878) the person after the last complete at-bat. Source: A Game of Inches: The Story Behind the Innovations That Shaped Baseball, Peter Morris.

Currently Reading: Sabrina the Teenage Witch: 60 Magical Stories, Editor Mike Pellerito. I was not positive, when I picked this up, that I didn't already have it because I got a collection of Sabrina stories from her 50th anniversary and of course the first couple stories, including Sabrina's slightly weird introduction story, are repeats from that. But, no, this is a different collection, and I can know that for sure because the other book I got before this one's 2022 publication and also I believe most of its stories are line work only, no color.

Thought to myself "I should go make a dreamwidth post", and holy shit, I knew it had been a while when I posted the anniversary post, but I hadn't realized it's been basically a _month_. Blugh. Blugh!

(we just figured out Blues Clues, y'all. :P)

Here's some stuff that's happened between Racheline and Patty's wedding and now:

*I have been struggling pretty hard with brain stuff, which is okay and happens, but is annoying! It's all the usual culprits come out to play --don't wanna do any grading or actual work, just want to burrow and hibernate because that's the correct way to do things when the sun goes away.

*I am real sad about living in the world I live in in 2025. I am sad that capitalism. I am sad that transphobia. I am sad that rampant xenophobia that's fucking up the lives of my students. I am sad, and it's hard and weird to just go on as normal.

*Tonight the polycool went out to see Club Drosselmeyer! I've been vaguely aware of this weird little Boston tradition since 2017, when I saw their unrelated show Save the Munbax, but never actually managed to try this one. It was fun! It's a lightweight puzzle hunt mixed with immersive theatre mixed with a dance floor. We had a very nice time, I think, and appreciated that we could sorta split up in ways that let those of us who wanted to just chill and work on puzzles do that, and those that wanted to go chat up all the characters do *that*.

*Thanksgiving was really good --Tuesday and I did it jointly with our collective families, down at my parents house. It worked out unsurprisingly well to have Cameron be in charge of the kitchen, with me providing big-sibling-bossiness as backup to their decisive understanding of what needed to happen. The driving from here and back was much less good, and I'm excessively grateful that I have train tickets for the next big trip.

*I don't know what else I've had in the way of ~adventures~ it's mostly just been the everyday. I liked the snow this morning, that greeted me when I went to bells. I've been trying to work on some projects, like actually getting the downstairs closet resorted and bringing some stuff I don't need to the school for coat drives and clothing swaps and the like. I'm teaching SCD this month at Cambridge class, so that's exciting! My weird tiny dance that I run is also really exciting, even if it's not as flashy --I feel good about it though!

My life is mostly good, but the ADHD and the seasonal stuff have been harder than usual. Millions of little ways to improve on that, I suppose. I picked up Habitica again, and that was helping for a time, but has maybe slipped out of grasp some. Hopefully tomorrow (don't look at the time, I mean Sunday when I say that) will be a good chance to catch up on a little bit of that.

Goodnight, I love you

~Sor
MOOP!

Not much to report today, so let me first mention that yesterday I answered What’s Going On In Flash Gordon? How did Ming return? and then get into the rest of our second day in France, the one that we'd thought would have been at the amusement park. In the evening I went out for another walk, by myself, and I ended up going down near Nigloland to see what I could see of the closed park.

The rear, parking lot, entrance to the hotel. I was captivated by the license being in accord with the loi de 24 Septembre 1941.

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Out back of the hotel; this is where our start had been.

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Here's that charming house I'd seen earlier, but with the camera shoved through the grate so you can sort of see it unobstructed except by dark.

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And the center of town with the bus stop, underneath an almost-full moon.

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The park's gate! Or, well, actually the gate for the management office, it looked like. But there is that turnstile sugesting maybe sometimes you can use it as an exit.

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I believe that's the management office in there.

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And one of their work vans. Also the best view I got of the park's logo and its hedgehog mascots.

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Over by this entrance, the Eden Palais Carrousel Museum, it says. This is the best view I got of any specific thing in the park besides the drop tower and the Ferris wheel.

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And this was just something under construction that I don't remember if it was even part of the park. I think it just struck me as interesting to see the only thing under construction in town (that we saw).

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The park sign we'd encountered coming out of the vineyard earlier, but lit up. I'm surprised how good it looks by night.

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I went back for another picture of the carrousel museum shot because it revealed there was the hedgehog statue beside.

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And while walking back to the hotel I encountered this exquisitely bothered cat.

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Trivia: In a mobilization exercise in 1917, before the United States entered the war, found the Navy Department able to successfully use only Bell Systems facilities for all communications between headquarters in Washington, all naval yards, stations, and ships. Source: Telephone: The First Hundred Years, John Brooks.

Currently Reading: A History of the World in Seven Cheap Things: A Guide to Capitalism, Nature, and the Future of the Planet, Raj Patel, Jason W Moore.

First: The cat in question seems to be basically well.

So, cattitude has been worrying on and off that our cat Kaja was getting skinny. A few days agp. that got to the point of calling the vet and then taking the cat in for a check-up.

At the exam, the vet told Cattitude that Kaja has not lost weight; if anything, she has gained an ounce or two. What's going on is, the cat has lost some muscle mass, which has led to some redistribution of her weight, and what Cattitude noted was that her legs were thinner. The vet said it was probably arthritis, drew blood to test for some more serious problems, and sent her home.

We got the results this morning, and they are reassuring: Kaja's kidney function, liver function, and thyroid are all fine. So is her blood sugar.

The email said we could have them do X-rays to check for arthritis, but that would require sedating the cat.

Or, they can assume it's arthritis, and give her monthly injections of a pain-killer to treat that, and see how she's doing in a few months.

The third choice is to just monitor the cat's health for now, and give her omega-3 supplements. We need to discuss the choices, but it's Saturday, and none of them involves "so call the vet and set this up right away."

Do you not have enough to be stressed about and messing up your evenings? Why not try having neighbors?

So our neighbors on one side, the one that's still a rental rather than an AirBnB, had the bright idea to get some chickens. This turned into a fiasco earlier this year when they had a rooster that would not shut up although, to be fair to our neighbors, it only annoyed the people who could hear it. At the point she was getting into fights with everybody she gathered the whole bunch up and sent them off somewhere we don't have to feel guilty about.

But then she got a new bunch of chickens, young chicks this time (as the original ones had been). But they were young and not making noise and so all we had to worry about was the day when one of them might turn out to be a rooster and might start crowing. I couldn't offer anything to console bunnyhugger against this possibility, as I tend to be a person who doesn't worry much about a problem before it actually occurs.

Well, last week, bunnyhugger told me it occurred, complaining that one of the growing chickens was a rooster and was crowing. I hadn't heard anything and she explained it wasn't loud. Yet. It would get louder. I still didn't hear it, though, nor did I hear it when she said it was crowing when she was trying to take a nighttime bath before bed.

I did finally hear it this week, when we were outside swapping cars around. It was something like 11:00 and there was the rooster, crowing with not much intensity but still. Making a racket at all, and making it way past sunset. bunnyhugger tells me she's heard it as late as 3 am, which is the sort of thing you hear ominous legends about, like that you're getting a basilisk or there's an apostle denying you to everybody.

We can hope that the neighbor, having discovered yet another rooster in her mix and one that has some delayed-sleep-phase disorder, is trying to arrange some guilt-free place to send him, and just hasn't because you can't do these things at the drop of a hat. But, yeesh. This whole chicken-raising thing of theirs seems like it's been mostly trouble and I don't think they've even gotten eggs from it, except those thrown by angered neighbors.

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Now I share the last pictures of our walk that afternoon. Not to worry, I'd go back out and walk some more by myself later and you'll see all of it.

I think there's something really nice in how bunnyhugger looks, shaded by the buildings around under a beautifully sunny sky.

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What might have been ... even here we couldn't help seeing the tower, which Wikipedia tells me is the highest drop tower in France, the mysteriously-named Le Donjon de l'Extrême.

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We did a small bit of walking around town. This was just a very attractive other building that looks like the place the rich person in a cartoon lives.

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The center of town. From the bus stop there's a ride that runs into a neighboring town with, like, a grocery store and restaurants ... once a day.

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A church that looked pleasant and inviting, although it was closed.

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And a monument to the town's war dead.

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Trivia: Apollo 16's Lunar Rover travelled a total of about 16.6 miles, slightly less than Apollo 15's. Source: Across the Airless Wilds: The Lunar Rovers and the Triumph of the Final Moon Landings, Earl Swift.

Currently Reading: A History of the World in Seven Cheap Things: A Guide to Capitalism, Nature, and the Future of the Planet, Raj Patel, Jason W Moore.

 There are a few hours left in Bandcamp Friday. Instead of using Spotify, why not buy some music there? Coincidentally Grace Petrie has a new EP out.

Quick reading log

Read in October:
Redshirts by John Scalzi
When the Moon Hits Your Eye by John Scalzi
The Bones Beneath My Skin by TJ Klune
No Bad Parts: Healing Trauma and Restoring Wholeness in the Internal Family Systems Model by Richard Schwartz


Read in November:
Interim Errantry: Three Tales of the Young Wizards by Diane Duane
Sonnets of Dark Love & The Tamarit Divan by Frederico Garcia Lorca
Brigands and Breadknives by Travis Baldree
Uptown Local and Other Interventions by Diane Duane

On this Bandcamp Friday, I have purchased the entirety of Dessa's discography; made a loaf of bread for potluck Shabbat services tonight; gone to the makerspace to continue sanding the drawer divider pieces I made with the laser cutter earlier this week; picked up my CSA box; nearly froze to death waiting for the bus home.