Ugh why is chess.com premium so expensive (this is whining I actually expect it’s reasonable for the server costs etc I just can’t justify such an expensive subscription to just one game)
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The Frozen River: A GMA Book Club Pick A Novel by Ariel Lawhon 📚
Historical fiction, pretty anachronistic (our protagonists all have very modern values) but I didn’t mind that. Near the end there was a description of several young kids dying of disease that kept me up late last night though.
Happy Hanamatsuri! 🌺
Will this old fashioned watch get me to use my phone less?
My newest anti-screen acquisition is just a very cheap, waterproof Casio watch. This thing does a lot with just four buttons: it will tell me the date, has all the days of the week programmed into it, and you can set timers and use it as a stopwatch, too. I like using it enough that if I branch out into a nicer digital watch I'll probably stick with Casio so as to use the same software.
I probably will want a prettier analog watch too, at some point, for special occasions. I want one that shows the moon phase because I think those look so nice!
My justification for purchasing the watch is currently, when I want to know what time it is (I often want to know this) I pick up my phone. Then I see notifications. I remember I made a post somewhere and I want to see how it's doing! I open my phone.
Like my ereader(s), the watch is technically also a screen, but I think we all agree it's not the same.
I've not done too well on reducing my phone time the last week or so because I've been setting things up on my homelab server and needed to look stuff up, or install apps that interacted with my self-hosted programs, and ultimately screen-use begets screen-use. I'm also not actively reading a book at this moment (having just read three in quick succession). But I'm hoping to make that a focus again, maybe add more rules to my Foqos set up. I am hoping the watch helps!
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This post was last edited 5 days, 4 hours ago.
Reply by email.My children will know analog time
My baby is an excellent walker for 12 months but has suddenly realized that’s not always to his benefit. This morning he’s dramatically staggering around, bent over, looking like he’s been shot (he’s fine, if you pick him up he’s fine)
Taking our kids to the NO KINGS protests.
In the United States many of us who oppose the administration attend widespread protests called No Kings every few months. I was very pregnant for the first one, so I stayed home with my kid(s) while my husband went, but I’ve made sure to get out there every time since and take whatever family will come with me.
Online there’s a lot of debate online about whether or not it’s appropriate to take your children to a protest but on the ground at this particular gathering it’s not really controversial. The environment is very kid-friendly, which really is just a byproduct of the pains taken to make it everybody-friendly. That itself generates a new argument: how effective can protests be if they’re largely a good time?
As a mother of two young children I just — straight up — cannot attend a more radical protest. It's not a matter of childcare or responsibilities, though that's definitely a factor because not gonna lie I am very busy, but even if we had that covered my kids are too dependent on me. I'm still breastfeeding the youngest, even getting held up somewhere unexpectedly for more than probably two hours is a hardship for the both of us.
My daughter loves the protests. She's four and likes to shout at the absolute top of her lungs, and nobody stops her here! When she found out early this week that on Saturday she was going to "NO KINGS!" (she always screams it) she wouldn't stop talking about it. She was so psyched she can read one word on her sign (the word is "NO").
You have to hope she's learning the right lessons here, obviously the rise of fascism is not a party, but what I don't want her to learn is that she should be afraid, and she definitely isn't.
There was a ton more organizing from local political organizations on the ground at No Kings yesterday. My husband and I were finally convinced to do something we've talked about for a while: become voting, associate members of our local Democratic party. It's going to be hard to make the monthly meetings, because we have two young kids and we are very busy! But I hope the kids actually do notice us struggling to get this done next to everything else we need to get done, too. It's important.
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This post was last edited 1 week, 1 day ago.
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Took the family out to #NoKings Sacramento this morning
The Caves Of Steel
The Caves of Steel by Isaac Asimov 📚
This was a childhood favorite of mine, I hadn’t revisited in probably 25 or 30 years but I still remembered the mystery! It holds up better than I expected. Asimov gets a bad rap for his character writing, and certainly they serve the plot more than the other way around, but now that I’m not literally a child I am surprised to find I relate to Asimov characters a lot more, since many of them are motivated by things like maintaining their workplace reputation or getting new stuff for their apartment or hating their colleagues or whatever.
This book is genuinely pretty funny when it is parodying dramatic whodunit reveals, and clever in how it presents Elijah as our audience stand-in POV character, and then gradually reveals that as a New Yorker from the year 5000-something he is at least as alien to us as the robots or the Spacers.
This story also serves as an aspirational fantasy: though cars exist for special circumstances, nearly all human transportation is done by foot.
Watched: The Incubus 🍿
Perhaps the most incredible attempt at (what I think is) a Southern accent ever put to film
Booked my eye surgery for next month! Technically I can still turn back but I don’t think I’m going to. Nonetheless I’m semi-shocked I’m really gonna do it
My daughter is now in that mega-cute stage where she talks like me and my husband do but with some remaining little kid traits mixed in (like she says “him” instead of “he”). Pretty soon the peer influence era begins
Testing out the crossposting features of micro.blog. I believe I’ll get replies in this other app 🤔 No idea how this will display
I’m trying out this new service! I love trying out services. (Not sarcasm.)
Artie can walk now! And Dede can drum. And other updates.
Artie has been pulling to stand since a very early age, and in fact would do it repeatedly, like he was trying to do squats! He's strong, for a baby, and we often have the unsettling sensation that he's deliberately trying to get stronger. I try not to speculate and maybe inadvertently put the kids into a box, but between this and his fascination with balls it's hard not to see sports in his future.
By the time his first birthday rolled around, he had been walking for several weeks, so by then (and especially by now) he really was a pro. It's weird seeing a baby as young as he is walking so confidently, the proportions don't see quite right for that; the doctor was quite impressed. That day he impressed us again by taking all his one year shots like a pro, and hopefully has a degree of immunity to measles now.
Dede is, obviously, a pro at walking, but we've tried to expand her skills in other ways. She just wrapped up a season of basketball, and has just started a monthly taiko drumming session. (I take lessons once a week, and she is very charmed to do the same activity I do!) Lex has also introduced her to a new hobby: rock hunting.
They both are major extroverts who love getting out of the house and meeting new people. Lex and I can't understand where they get it from. But, out of respect for this, we try to get out of the house every single weekend, and I take every other Wednesdays off at work and take them someplace fun, which (at Dede's request) is usually the zoo.
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This post was last edited 2 weeks, 3 days ago.