Gemini* and Gopher

• Personal/Opinions

  • Death Notes: 2024-10-29

    My dad called this evening. Family information around the death disseminated across the Atlantic then across Canada by phone call, more personal than our usual way of keeping in touch (email and WhatsApp).

    Still no word on a funeral date. Everything around my cousin's death, slow. The coroner services are as backlogged as everything else, and it'll still be weeks until a cause of death is confirmed. His partner wants a Unitarian service, and a burial. In our family of atheists, agnostics, and lapsed Anglicans, I doubt there will be any objections. Already I'm thinking of next year, our potential trip out. Along with everything else, a stop in Liverpool to visit his grave.

  • Mindfulness

    A few weeks ago I started practicing mindfulness in the form of meditation. It was something I'd heard and read about, but never pursued.

    There is no shortage of mindfulness apps out there and I gave a few a try, but I've since deleted them. I don't want to sign up for a paid subscription and it's not a game for me; I didn't like being told that I should do it everyday to keep up a streak or share and compare with my friends.

  • no degu names yet

    I haven’t come up with good names for my degus yet. I’m pretty sure I have three males and two females. The youngest are still too small for the larger cage, so they remain separated by size instead of sex. I was going to get some lexan to put in the large cage so I could move them in early, but it turns out sheets of lexan are really expensive. It would have been over $200 to line the larger cage with it. So they will stay in my smaller ferret cage for now.

  • adopted some degu pets

    I’ve been in and out of the local pet shop a few times over the course of the last six months or so. Mostly related to family pets, bunnies, and rats. But the last few times, it was for me. I picked out a couple of degu pups. But they were a male and a female set of pups and this presented something of a problem. I would prefer to not end up with litter after litter of more degu pups. But they’re social creatures, so I can’t simply split the pair up and not let them interact.

  • 🔤SpellBinding: AUILNTD Wordo: UNION

• Politics and World Events

  • The way there

    Today was my second-to-last five-hour meeting to write bylaws for a new political organization. Friends and I got anti-war presidential candidate Jill Stein on the ballot in my state. When she gets 40,000 votes, we get four years of ballot access. We meet over campfire-smoke lapsang souchong tea.

    Today the thing felt silly as fantasy baseball. Next Tuesday votes are counted. In a few weeks our first convention convenes. We'll see.

    We debated and adopted new language. Our bylaws focus tight. Silently we each grapple with our situation, what's to be done, the way forward.

• Office

  • Tasteful Use of a Highlighter Pen

    Yesterday morning, while walking around the city, I saw something that surprised and delighted me: a handwritten page out of a student's notebook, demonstrating use of highlighter pens for emphasis in a way that is different and better than what I'm used to see. I am thus enriched with the knowledge of new tricks that I might apply in my own penmanship, and encouraged by evidence that at least some of the people around me have good taste. So, here is what I learned: