I Am Large, I Contain Multitudes

In general, things here are good, but lately I'm feeling more waves of "stressed and drained" or "lonely and sad" amid the normal "productive and high-energy" states. Work is intense, although at least they love and appreciate me and make it worth my while! Passover is coming, which is never my favorite, but it's good to feel that sort of renewal and spring-cleaning process.

If anyone else is still on Finch (self-care app) and would like to friend me, my code is BHRPQNLDPZ. I downloaded it last week because it seems a lot more fun to have a little round birb chirping "go do some things! you are great!" at me than it is to just sit there doomscrolling for an extra hour every morning while I tell myself "get out of bed, dumbass". I'm not sure it's actually gotten me out of bed any faster, but it is somewhat satisfying, and on the plus side, here I am writing a 5-minute journal entry for the first time in some years.

I'm also about to get out of my chair and go to the gym, but that's more a function of spring break, in the sense that it's the first Sunday in months I don't have to get up and/or roust child out of bed to be somewhere. I started up this gym membership in July of 2024 and I actually went faithfully 6 days a week for about 2 months that summer, but that fell off as soon as school started up. My therapist says "you have to make time for yourself" but my sleep has been so broken for most of that time, I didn't want to do anything to jeopardize it. It's been better in recent months, sleeping through til 6:30 instead of waking up 3:30 - so I really could get myself out of bed and use that time, but see previous paragraph about doomscrolling.

Also, the world is going to hell and it's terrifying. I am trying to plan out another visit to Boston exactly when airport security and jet fuel prices are both going insane, and I don't trust that either of these factors will blow over lightly. I am looking at bringing Ms A the first weekend of October for Simchat Torah at Tremont St., but if I could have my way, I would also come out by myself in June for a certain Beginning-of-Summer party. To say nothing of a bat mitzvah in late April and a friend's wedding over Labor Day, but those are looking less likely.

This past week was the 2026 JoCo Cruise; several people I know were on it, and I think it's fair to say that I was experiencing JoCo FOMO. I actually find that I fantasize a lot lately about traveling, not just to Boston but to other places - and that's making the above factors feel even more wistful.

I did get to Arisia this past January, for the first time since 2014, this time with 10yo Ms A in tow. It was a delight for both of us, but I'm going to punt that to (hopefully) a separate post as my timer is up.

My work IT department has apparently been doing some review of employee network use recently, because yesterday while I was meeting with one of my close coworkers, they came to his desk to "uninstall some unauthorized software" -- Spotify. Ooh, he was pissed.

And today I discover that they have blocked LiveJournal categorically on the grounds of "Adult Content" (apparently "Time-Wasters" is not a category in Barracuda). Bah.

... But not Dreamwidth. >:-)

Does this mean I will have to post more often instead of reading? Time will tell, true believers! (It certainly means my DW reading page will get more traction, since I've been using LJ exclusively up til now for reading.)

Shabbat shalom!

After some encouragement (and not specifically from me!), my dear etrace made a post introducing himself. But it's friendslocked, so if you want to check it out and get acquainted, go and add him :-)

I am going to try to get back on the wagon of posting short snippets or individual thoughts to LJ every day or two, rather than wait until I build up a "whole entry" about some more involved topic. (Three things make a post? as magid says.)

Part of the problem I have here is a natural reluctance to post more than one entry a day. If LJ or DW had an awesome "schedule post" function like WordPress has, I could pre-post five days' mini-entries in a row, and they'd be there. But it doesn't, so I don't. :-/

Facebook, OTOH, is always there for the easy link, embed, share, or micro-post. Oh, Facebook.

Anyway, so here are some thoughts I have been having ( about the Blue Hill Troupe... )

Hmmph.

sanpaku called me out recently for undermining my fiercely professed LiveJournal loyalty by actually doing most of my day-to-day posting on Facebook. He's right, and thus I am thinking that for the month of June I should make another attempt at doing a short post every day, thereby lowering the psychological bar. So here's one.

I am inordinately pleased that Men In Black 3 features Josh Brolin as young Tommy Lee Jones, because I decided years ago that I wanted to cast them in a father-son pairing, and this, if not the same idea, at least leverages the same resemblance. See this photo from the 1980s (link now fixed to copy uploaded locally, but original was from here) for evidence.

I kind of want to see it, in any case. I also still kind of want to see The Hunger Games. And Pina is still playing (in 3D?!?) at the IFC in the West Village. But the truth is, I/we almost never see any movies at all -- The Avengers being a recent (stellar) exception. #geekhotness We can't even manage to watch a movie *at home*... although we did finally sit down and watch the first episode of Slings & Arrows a few weeks ago.

Things are actually sort of settling down, though, despite the busy month ahead.

On Friday I finally managed to host a Shabbat dinner, and even though it was not officially decided until the very last minute (like Friday morning), we had 6 people and it was wonderful. I did all the cooking and justom graciously did almost all the washing-up. *smile*
( food notes )

... And maybe that's enough for today. D&D at our house this afternoon, and hahathor is coming up this evening to see our place and go out to dinner in beautiful scenic South Harlem, for which I am very excited!