flexagon | Heat, covid, river, cooking, weird progress...

Overall: heat wave, with the bug briefly testing positive for covid but me not getting it, followed by a pretty nice weekend. It felt like a lot of time went to chores and things while the bug was sick, but a lot of good stuff and progress happened regardless:

Last week's heat wave did a number on my plants, which crisped up and lost a lot of leaves. There's another one coming, though not as bad as last week's, and I guess I'll water them more often this time but I'm starting to doubt they'll survive the summer. It's only June, ffs. I finished the stump and planted a new plant in there, though, and that's pretty cute.

Some cooking beyond just meal kits: apricot quatre quarts pound cake which came out really, really good. Might make again. Might even buy the proper pan! Then I also made beef bourguignon for a friend whose cat is dying, because it's her favorite... and I also had no idea how long it was going to take. Ahahahahaha, "what's her favorite recipe?" Famous last words. She was glad to have it though.

The new session has started at circus school! I've got my Friday nights back, but am doing a walkover miniseries with the tumbling coach on Thursdays and the first lesson was fun. I just need a reason to keep backbending so that I don't lose it.

Medical stuff: dermatologist on Tuesday (I talked them into slicing off a mole I disliked), and an ultrasound on Friday. The ultrasound was for a lymph node in my groin that had mytseriously remained swollen for 3 months in the absence of evident infection or sickness, which they really aren't supposed to do... welp, the ultrasound showed a dumb little subcutaneous skin cyst right over my normal, healthy lymph node. The little thing had everyone fooled, including my RN. So learning that it's essentially nothing is great news. I also had an eyelid-puffing thing that started on Thursday, got worse through Friday night and is now getting better. Mysteries.

Finished Chants of Senaar with the bug on Tuesday, and Frieren Season 1 with the squirrel on Wednesday.

Went kayaking on the Mystic River with apfelsingail and my squirrel! Super fun. We had temperate weather, clouds and a calm river.

Not sure what to say about my progress creating a crossword, but my collaborator for the 2nd time thinks we have a gimmick & theme combo worth digging in on, and we are Doing Spreadsheets in pursuit of same. I also, separately, downloaded and played around with Ingrid, the latest crossword construction software, which has been fun. Digging through wordlists gets me into some really random corners of language -- like, did you ever notice that BOVINE TUBERCULOSIS contains both VINE and TUBER? No! I bet you hadn't!

OK, and here's one more thing that's weirder. I passed a message to Lioness, who hasn't really responded respectfully to me in five years, and got a perfectly reasonable response back! I am astounded. Passing the message through a mutual friend we both trust is apparently what made the difference. I think that what I care about here is that a) she responded, instead of insisting ~~I don't exist~~ I'm not part of her life, and b) now I know for sure that she knows that Lion is trying to re-start some level of friendship with me. The actual content of her message was the usual "I don't care" bullshit, but that doesn't matter to me as much as a) and b) do, because I already know she's avoidant. I wanted the meta-message, and to be a little less scared. So here's to long shots and making strange requests of distant connections, I guess.