Cousin and family, house history, circus...
Family drama ensued this week... ah, and here is the moment where I realize that I had a cousin drop dead last month and never told you! Well, yes, that happened, and it's extra bizarre because he was my little cousin. Age 45. This is on my mom's side and the drama didn't really start until a celebration of life was scheduled. Then we had siblings asking other siblings not to come, and those siblings being Just Fine With That, Thank You and my generation thinking those people are all being assholes. Anyway, I wasn't going to go, but now I'm going. I found a cute little capsule hostel about two blocks away from the party, so I'm doing a zip trip that should have me away from my house for less than 24 hours. Flight, party, snooze in capsule, flight. I'm going to support my other cousin, the dead one's older sister, and maybe a tiny bit to show up the rest of the family -- though in fairness, it is easier for me to bop down to DC from here. The flight is short and incurs no jet lag.
This all bummed me out a little bit, and I wasn't able to kick much ass in the evenings. I did more sitting around painting my toenails and writing an angsty card to my pen pal. I did do some delicious flexibility work on a video call with![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
apfelsingail one night though, and tried excellent new party game Venns with Benefits on another.
Had a strange deep dive into the history of my house on Friday morning, as for various reasons I finally made it over to Inspectional Building Services to look at plans for the place. They had the plans, but the file was thicker than I expected and I dug in curiously:
I took lots of photos of plans and documents. Its amazing what can be dug up, sometimes, and it's interesting how towns work also. I am at a complete loss for why I find history fascinating at times, and so viscerally offputting at others, but some of it seems to be about whether it feels relevant to me. The house's history has a clear effect on me today, clearly, as I don't sit on any roofdeck typing this.
I am finally, finally feeling good about attending open studios at LSC, after months of forcing myself back to it. The bug has come the last two weeks, as has one of my old acro/handstand friends who I'm comfortable with; and the Lions haven't shown their faces in several weeks, which is nice. Today I legitimately had fun for the second week in a row, and worked on backbends, and did a monkey roll on the trapeze (my one aerial trick. I've been trying it once or twice every week). ETA: the feeling-good was probably helped by attending a party on Saturday that had a lot of my old circus friends and kind of made me feel like I belonged.
I worked on my resume for a while last week, and also requested (and got) my personnel file from my employer; you know, For My Records.
This all bummed me out a little bit, and I wasn't able to kick much ass in the evenings. I did more sitting around painting my toenails and writing an angsty card to my pen pal. I did do some delicious flexibility work on a video call with
apfelsingail one night though, and tried excellent new party game Venns with Benefits on another.Had a strange deep dive into the history of my house on Friday morning, as for various reasons I finally made it over to Inspectional Building Services to look at plans for the place. They had the plans, but the file was thicker than I expected and I dug in curiously:
- The fire that gutted the house -- but left the frame -- was in 2001, not 2004. And when it happened, the town found an illegal fourth apartment in here somewhere! Probably the basement. There are many letters from the town to the house's owner, threatening legal action over that. And the folder contained lots of pictures of the house right after the fire, when, on top of being burned and trashed, it was evidently way less nice.
- The house used to have a 2-car garage in back, where there's now a larger parking area.
- Original plans for the rebuild included a roof deck! But we never got our roof deck, because some neighbor complained about her feelings of privacy in the Zoning Board of Appeals meeting. Neighbors also worried about a 100-year-old tree in the back, which everyone promised would not be disturbed or removed. (It died a few years ago, and we had it removed.)
I took lots of photos of plans and documents. Its amazing what can be dug up, sometimes, and it's interesting how towns work also. I am at a complete loss for why I find history fascinating at times, and so viscerally offputting at others, but some of it seems to be about whether it feels relevant to me. The house's history has a clear effect on me today, clearly, as I don't sit on any roofdeck typing this.
I am finally, finally feeling good about attending open studios at LSC, after months of forcing myself back to it. The bug has come the last two weeks, as has one of my old acro/handstand friends who I'm comfortable with; and the Lions haven't shown their faces in several weeks, which is nice. Today I legitimately had fun for the second week in a row, and worked on backbends, and did a monkey roll on the trapeze (my one aerial trick. I've been trying it once or twice every week). ETA: the feeling-good was probably helped by attending a party on Saturday that had a lot of my old circus friends and kind of made me feel like I belonged.
I worked on my resume for a while last week, and also requested (and got) my personnel file from my employer; you know, For My Records.
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