The week, otherwise

• No good trip goes unpunished -- one of my friends said "this is the most tan I've ever seen you!" and nah, fam, that's just straight-up sun damage. I have freckles on my face, my décolleté has peeled, and my face broke out a little bit (in a perioral dermatitis way, not an acne way) and needed to be soothed with antibiotic lotion from last time. That said, I'm feeling just fine -- two of the people in our cohort of four managed to pull a hamstring, and I sure didn't do that.


• Someone from the ACLU had coffee with me, primarily as a thank-you for the big donation earlier this year (which wasn't all that heartfelt or carefully chosen, I just wanted to milk Zillian for their donation match before I left and the ACLU seemed obviously "good enough"). She showed me a whole slide deck of good stuff they've been up to, and I learned a bit about how they like to use MA as a place to set legal precedent because apparently we have no Trump-appointed judges in our first circuit. I was straight with her about not having that kind of income anymore, and she gave me some follow-up things to look at regarding activism, which I was grateful for.


• The crossword taught me that salmon go from alevin to fry to parr to smolt, and finally adult salmon. Don't confuse smolt with smelt though -- that's a different species. Also, the pia mater is the innermost and most delicate membrane of the three meninges that surround the brain and spinal cord...


• Minor surgery as the date finally arrived to take a blue/purple mystery bump out of my inner lip. Odds are good that it was a venous lake. Whatever it is, it's out now and I have stitches. Stitches in my mouf! They are the dissolveable kind. Out of four, I think one of them has untied itself so far, but the pain and bruising are incredibly minimal and I think it's probably okay. I was even able to attend contortion handstand class the same night as the procedure, with no evident pain or interference. The procedure itself was quick also, although the first shot of anesthetic hurt like a mofo and brought tears to my eyes.


• Spousal scans also ensued, as it turns out my poor bug has a 3mm kidney stone. Oof, and ouch. There's not much I can do about that except be supportive, and encourage him to live his life when it isn't hurting.


• Handstands with Tiny Coach, oh my god. Yeah, I had my first private lesson and my first private group lesson. She teaches handstand abs the way some people do physical therapy, getting way up in my belly and hip muscles, asking me to activate things under one hand but not under the other. Or activating the deep muscle but not the shallow one. She doesn't cue "open your shoulders", she cues "drag your chest up the wall" (or "across the floor", depending). She says "psoad" instead of "psoas" and "thoradic spine" for thoracic. And when doing cobra stretch she says to "get in touch with your inner fern". Friends, I didn't even know I had an inner fern, but now that I know, I am there for it. And this is because I'm admittedly a little besotted with Tiny Coach. But also, she might really be able to teach me to press? Her way is so different. When she starts me out in a tight pike, and has me do ab-lengthening exercises a few times and then put my hands on the ground while she helps me lift my hips, it feels weird but it feels light. Whatever's going on here, I want to learn it.


• I'm trying to spend an hour or so per day on house-type stuff, when circumstances allow. I did a couple of sessions of cleaning up the front hallway with Magic Eraser and an audiobook, and it was quite soothing and rewarding. Then the weather got nicer and I spent similar time tearing landscapers' fabric out of a few square feet of yard so that we can have a little more greenery along the side fence; that turned into a whole lot more Ripping Out Tree Roots than I'd realized when I started.


• I finally tried making gallo pinto, aka Costa Rica style rice & beans, and it turns out to be pretty easy. How pleasant.


• In date night media consumption we finally watched "Common People", the first episode of the latest Black Mirror season, and it was just as dark as advertised. Holy crap. The vast majority of episodes don't live up to the name and just come across as plain SF to me... so... moving along to Love Death + Robots.

I remember reading, in some work context, about "opening loops" and "closing loops", where loop was some kind of corpspeak for "project". I think today should be a loop-closing day.