Gemini* and Gopher

• Personal/Opinions

  • Chimarrão 🧉

    I've been trying to switch from coffee to mate — which we call "chimarrão" in Brazil, or just "chimas".

    The drink is popular only in the south of Brazil, where it's very popular. I'm from São Paulo, but I went to college in the southernmost state, Rio Grande do Sul, where I picked up the habit. I like chimarrão because of its almost religious nature: there's a ritual in the preparation, and it's often a communal drink, with the gourd being passed from person to person.

    There are also many unspoken rules: receive with your right hand and pass it on with your left. Drink until it makes noise. The first pour is for the host. Don't hoard. Don't cut in line. Don't touch the straw with your hands, and never, NEVER, use the straw to mix the herb with the water.

  • Christina's 5 questions for May 🤔

    What's a website that was legendary a long time ago but is now "a ghost town?"

    Definitely LiveJournal. It had a huge sense of community and I spent a lot of time on there. It felt like it was the future. But it got sold, and ended up as a cash cow run by awful people. I think it's still going, but I haven't been there for years. I'm on it's descendant, Dreamwidth, which I hoped would have some of the same spirit, but the community never happened for me there. And there's the centralisation thing.

  • The trials of dating as an ancient Millennial

    It feels like some kind of cosmic joke that, now that I feel incredibly confident in myself and more attractive in my thirties than my twenties, my dating life has hit a wall. I know, I know, all the good ones are taken, et cetera, but it didn't really hit me how true this was until I went on a few dates these past few months. For context, I ended a long-term relationship some five years ago, and it wasn't until last year I decided to get back into dating. So maybe it's my fault I didn't jump in the dating scene sooner?

    An example: Last night, I went on a date with someone who spent the entire time talking about... himself. His job as a bartender. How much he'd love for me to drink with him. How much time he spends at the gym, which is the only form of therapy AND social life he has. How betrayed he's been by his family. How his house was set on fire. How he loves to drink and wants me to drink with him. How his life was ruined for reasons he refused to explain. How insistent he was that I drink with him. Et cetera.

  • chainsaws are magic

    I have about 40 acres of woodland and a decent trail that covers most of it in a big figure-eight shape. I have had more dead fall and storm-dropped trees in the last year than I have in the last five. Normally I’d maintain my trails with a bow saw and some brush shears. I picked up a chainsaw last night and cleared the entire lower half of the figure eight trail. I went back out this morning and cleared most of the upper half, too. Most of the trees from the past year are too big for my bow saw. Even if the fallen trees were small enough to handle with the bow saw, I would have spent the entire summer clearing just one section of the lower loop.

  • The Black Side of the Web

    There is a certain kind of silence that only exists in rooms where no one visits.

    It is not the peaceful silence of a quiet afternoon, nor the comforting stillness of night. It is a heavy, stagnant silence—one that accumulates over days, weeks, sometimes years. A silence filled not with calm, but with absence.

    For many, this room becomes a world.

  • ritual

    one hand 
    on thigh
    then hips
    both sides
    
    
    you hold
    I stay 
    you grip 
    I sway