Daily Photo: Week Three (Patreon)

Monday, January 15

As is habitual, I forgot to take a self-portrait today. OR DID I? Because I did take this picture of my hand in the hole of our busted grocery bag in order to emphasize the extent of the damage and- last I knew- my hand is technically part of me so really I guess I did take a self-portrait after all. Anyway, accomplishment of the day: stitched up this busted-ass grocery bag. 

Tuesday, January 16

My Mother-in-Law and I had a French phone date today! She is French and has always gently encouraged me to practice with her over the last 19(?!?!?!?) years that Matt and I have been together, but I've just been so embarrassed of how basic my abilities are that I only took her up on her offers a couple times and only very briefly because, again, I'm embarrassed. WELL. About five months ago I decided "Godfuckingdamnit, I want to learn French again" so I've been mainlining every form of Learning French I can get my dirty hands on, from audiobooks to apps to a real human tutor, and now I have finally, finally, set a reoccurring date with my belle-mère to practice the fine art of real time conversation. My favorite part was coming up with the phrase "bateau dans le ciel" ("Boat in the sky") when I was trying to say "spaceship" ("vaisseau spatial"). You have probably surmised from context clues that I was using my broken French to tell her all about Scavengers Reign and how their big boat in the sky broke, leaving the survivors stranded on an alien planet. She said she's gunna go check it out!

Wednesday, January 17

When I am operating at my peek (peak? No, it's peek) performance, I work for 25 minutes, take a five minute break to do something physical (push-ups, reverse dips [seen above], sun salutations, jog up and down the stairs, etc), and then work for another 25 minutes, over and over. The last several weeks I have not been operating at my peek- wait, no, it IS "peak"! Ahem. I have not been operating at my peak performance because my body and brain have just not been... working? Just, a constant fog. And other stuff. Anyway. Today was not all that different, but I did force myself to do a couple rounds of my 25-mins-work-5-mins-exercise practice and I did actually get some meaningful work done. Oh, also, I am wearing a blanket because our house is 111 years old and is cold as balls because Portland is in the middle of a legit winter storm. Sheets of ice literally solidified on the inside of our windows from the condensation freezing!!!!!!!!! 1) Ice shouldn't freeze inside the house and 2) there shouldn't be enough condensation on the windows to freeze actual sheets of ice in the first place!!! This is all very distressing!!!! AND COLD!!!!

Thursday, January 18

To keep the cold at bay, Matt and I kept all our curtains closed so what little heat our house has isn't leached out through our single-pane windows (and we have a lot of windows). Every day I continue to get frantic messages from the local bureau  of transportation begging people to please not get on the road please for the love of god and all that is holy because the streets are just glass. So that means Matt and I have basically been locked in our freezing house with very little natural light for about a week now, I think. Has it been a week? It feels like a month. It's probably just been a couple days. Very Early Pandemic Lockdown Vibes. Nonetheless, Matt saw that a local eatery said it was open so we decided to trudge out in the (freezing) rain just so we could get some fresh air and see some new environments. The ice was actually worse than we'd expected and by the time we arrived at the venue just after noon, we were met with this:

On the way back we heard this strange, rhythmic vmm-vmm-vmm noise, like a distant lightsaber battle. No such luck for running into a Jedi battle, though, because it turned out to be a transformer (or something?) in the process of exploding(?). I missed filming the electricity actively arcing off of it, but I did capture some fire:

Not too long after the fire trucks showed up our house did lose power for several minutes, but it came right back on within a surprisingly fast amount of time.

Friday, January 19

honk.

Saturday, January 20

So, here's the thing: I don't know how to write fiction. Non-fiction is no problem because everything that happens in the story already actually happened, so all you gotta do is smooth out the rough edges and bam! Story. But to make something up? How do you... even... do that? Which is fine, because I've had plenty of non-fiction stories to tell, so it was never an issue! But now I do have a fictional story I want to tell (Well, actually, it's based on real stuff, but the message will be better conveyed through fiction- which, I believe, is where most fiction comes from, anyway) and I just... don't even know where to start. So! I hired a really talented and experienced colleague-friendly-aquiantance who I've known for years and he's teaching me how to make shit up. It's been fascinating. Bonus: this has been a great excuse to upgrade from colleague-friendly-aquiantance to Actual Friends! WIN-WIN!

Sunday, January 21

Even though Matt thinks the roads are safe enough for me to drive on, I refuse (I've never driven on snow or ice) so a member of my Historical Costuming Club Thing is going to pick me up on her way to our monthly meeting. She should be getting here in ten minutes. I am nervous? There's literally no reason for this. I'm just super nervous before any meet-up I'm supposed to go to lately. Humans are such weird little creatures. We don't make sense. How did we survive this long as a species?