I had a dream last night and as usual only remember bits and pieces. I was doing some kind of conservation job – I remember there were a lot of rusted materials that needed conservation, but tit wasn’t at my work. I remember a white lab space with everything laid out on trays on tables. Julie was also working somewhere different, and she was annoyed because there was a statue on her work property under her care that had gone viral. It was an old statue of a dude, on a column on a plinth in an outdoor… I can’t think of the word, but it had its own marble enclosure, kind of like the Lincoln monument, but this guy was standing. He was wearing revolutionary war era clothes with a tricorn and the flared frock coat. But if you were standing on the steps up to the statue from a certain angle, it looks like the glass column was going right up his butt. So it became known as the glass dildo statue (I guess the column was glass? Who knows – dream). She was annoyed because you had to be standing in the exact right spot to see this effect and she didn’t find it convincing and also she had to deal with all the people who were trying to come see it, as well as all the speculation about whether it was intentional by the artist, and about the dude the statue was of etc.

Somehow related to… this? Or something else? I am rapidly losing details here, but there was some kind of thing found? And then it also became like a popup event. Or maybe it was something that was made – I only have the absolute vaguest memories now of what that was about, but I know that there was a shop that was selling chocolate treats and other sweet snacks associated with this thing, and I was trying to pick out stuff for gifts for people, and I was going to get… something? But then I decided I should get something that was more directly related to the… whatever, or was made of it? Like maybe it was a ‘worlds biggest whatever made of chocolate’ and then they were selling stuff made out of it later? Anyway, I decided not to get that thing, and instead found a package of cookies that were coated in colourful chocolate. The were ring shaped and they kind of looked like blue and teal samoas. They were on a little Styrofoam tray covered in saranwrap and there were about 8 total laid out in two lines so that they partially overlapped, with alternating blue and teal cookies. And then I was looking at fudge and I wanted to get some ‘oreo’ fudge that was like a layered milk fudge (dream) and then a reaaally dark chocolate fudge on the bottom, with chunks of whole broken oreos. I’m sure there were other neat kinds, but that’s the one I saw that called to me and that I remembered. I think I was standing in line for it when I woke up.

I had a dream last night/this morning. I tried narrating it to a text to speech thing on my hone but all I got out of that was a Mess, so I'll try it here again. For context, I used to play percussion in a concert band and marching bands for yeaaaaaars, basically all the way up until I left Fredericton for good.

In my dream I was in a marching band with a bunch of people that I knew. Somehow it came out that they were also in a concert band as well, and invited me to play even though I hadn't done anything like that in a while. There were a bunch of people I actually knew in my dream bu the only ones I can remember are my friend Gale and Kennesaw, ho both played percussion with me. Also there was at least one Matt, who was a tall skinny guy with curly brown hair down to his shoulders who might have been compiled from a few different people I actually know, or just a random dream figment. I knew him in my dream, though.

ANYWAY, as with most of these things, I remember a lot of little details that I don't really know how to fit into a narrative, like how at first I thought they didn't have a base drum but then I saw it just wasn't set up, and stuff like that. We were supposed to be playing this piece and I said I could do the tympani. Only I'd gotten these bi-pride covers for them that were like flags that were supposed to go over the heads, as a surprise for Kennesaw, and I wanted to install it. It shouldn't have been difficult, but as is the way of dreams there were a bunch of stupid obstacles. At first no one could find the key, but it turned out these ones just had a slot in the top of the rod and could basic ally be turned with anything. They were like real tympani, in that the rods were weird - more like just regular bolts in some ways, and despite seeming to be in tune before I started, it turned out one of them was missing. I was messing around with all this stuff and not actually playing in the song and people who didn't know me thought I was just fucking around and didn't know what I was doing, including the conductor. At the end of the run through it turned out that there was someone outside the room (Matt! or *a* Matt anyway - it might have been a different Matt, possibly Kennesaw's brother) who was playing the part on the other set of tympani no one had told me about. So I wasn't contributing anyway and my efforts to put together the surprise were also thwarted and had to be abandoned. Also, my hands were hurting from playing the marching stuff we'd 'done earlier' (part of the dream backstory).

Someone, maybe Gale, suggested we move on to a different piece so I could try something else. But they were playing base and Tall Matt was on snare and Kennesaw was doing something else? So all that was left was cymbals, which was a part they hadn't bothered with before. I was keen to do because I think there is a lot of cool nuance to playing the cymbals well that's not just loud clashing (although there is that when appropriate), but my hands were so sore I wasn't sure how long I could hold them effectively. I woke up before I got to pay anything though, because my hand was actually *really* sore from yard work yesterday and then I was sleeping on it badly.

So I know where some of this comes from - I'd been talking to another friend online about my percussion background not too long ago and that's clearly still in my mind. Another friend was showing off a bi-pride horse blanket she got for riding and I'm assuming that's where that came from. The rest is more speculative, but maybe just a general sense of being underestimated and a general sense of frustration with circumstances that I think probably everyone is feeling at not being able to accomplish what we want.

In other news.... yesterday was a really beautiful day and I spent a lot of it outside trying to work more on the yard. I picked up more trash out of the "compost pile". Which is the trash heap that the previous house owners weaseled out of having to clean up by bald face lying about what it was. Hot tip: neither plastic, glass, nor electronics are compostable. I also worked on cutting down scrub trees along the fence line - mostly hackberries. Some are growing into the freaking fence. Some could be just cut with pruning shears, but some need more serious treatment and I sawed off - thus my sore hands. If I'm being generous I got about a third of them done. The trees still need further thinning but if we do that it would need professionals again. We cut down all the manitoba maples last year and it made a big difference, but I'm realizing how much more work still needs to be done. Of course the same is true of the house itself.... we've done almost none of the stuff we talked about, lol. Which is exactly why I insisted on doing my room *before* I moved in... Anyway, other than yard work, I spent a lot of time playing with the new puppy, which he deeply appreciated :) He's 7 months old today!

Hey all!

I've been terrible at doing much of anything lately. I haven't written a word since jukebox was due (I did a reveals post over here, and I think the story I wrote for my main assignment is definitely some of my best work. I'm stuck in my big complicated shawl and also the shawl that was supposed to be easy and mindless that i started because I don't have time to concentrate on the other one. My socks are going okay but I'm getting a little bored, tbh >.>

Work is just utter barely managed chaos and I feel like I'm dropping a million balls all the time. I am currently managing 7 people, between volunteers, students, and staff folks. They're all great, luckily! They're not all around every day and most of them are pretty self-sufficient. On Monday I'm lucky enough that I'll be able to start two of my volunteers in actual paying jobs (only min wage, which sucks, but better than nothing) on short-term contracts. But that is starting up a whole other major project _@

I seems to be falling into older fandoms more than anything else recently. I'm watching the original Japanese Macross series (I grew up on Robotech. Lisa Hayes was a personal role model). And of course I have fallen into a deep deep Good Omens hole after the new mini series. Unfortunately all the copies of the book in the house appear to be packed, or I'd be re-reading that too. David Tennant and Michael Sheen just really killed it, of course, but I keep wondering if I am the only one who thinks that Anathema gives off some strong Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez vibes?

Anyway, I don't have a lot to say about life.... It's otherwise about the same as ever?

I wrote a reveals post for Chocolate box. I was INCREDIBLY spoiled!

In other news, I am "finished" the shawl I was working on in the sense that it needs blocking and washing and end weaving and I have no idea when I'll have a chance to do any of that. I've started a new shawl that I got the yarn and pattern for like a yer and a half or more ago, and I'm loving it! I also cast on some socks for bus knitting.

I've come to the conclusion and also come to terms with the fact that as much as I love my Karbonz needles, they are really hard on my hand. The rigidity and texture of the carbon fiber is nice in some ways, but I wind up holding all the tension in my fingers and after a while they ache. Wood or bamboo too better at absorbing the energy, so I don't have the same trouble. I'm slowly replacing all my dpns and circs, but I'm sad about it. OTOH painless knitting is definitely worth it.

Jola is doing okay - thanks to everyone who left comments on my post a while back, I appreciated your kind words <3. She doesn't like the cold overly much, so that's not helping. Today was a little warmer and she practically ran out of the house and wanted a much longer walk than she has been having lately. I think he mass had another small growth spurt a while ago, and she is on NSAIDs now instead of what she was on before, but otherwise shes been stable. I go back and forth on how long I think she's got.

Work is still busy but while there isn't really less to do, and my new contract is actually going to have a lot more responsibility on paper, but I am not feeling constantly overwhelmed. I'm getting into the swing of things and the new normal. Having things be less up in the air has been really helpful. I'm feeling much less pulled in different directions and I'm happy to see things moving forward.

So, Back in November - on Woolfenoot, to be precise - I noticed that my dog, Jola, had developed what seemed to be a large swelling on her right chest. I took her to the emergency vet, thinking she'd hurt herself some how and was just swollen, or that it was a fluid edema, or something. It was not.

At my home vet, they did a fine needle aspiration, then a real punch biopsy, and blood tests, none of which were at all conclusive. They did radiography, x-rays to start, where they thought it was maybe her heart (though I am still not clear why they were looking there...), and then a CT scan which showed the large mass to probably be a sarcoma. Well encapsulated towards her head, but with "stranding" where it led further back towards her tail. They didn't see any metastasizing in her lungs at least. The differential diagnosis from the CT scan, from the radiologist was a sarcoma.

Today I went to the Animal Cancer Center at the University of Guelph to meet with member of their oncology team, to talk about where we are, what is left to learn, and options on where to go next.

Thy think it is probably a sarcoma, but can't confirm that without further tests - specifically it would require another histology test from a biopsy taken with ultrasound (to make sure they are getting a good sample) to determine what kind/level of aggressiveness. They would also want to do an ultrasound of her abdomen to make sure that she doesn't have another issue already that would make treatment of this mass pointless. I think the CT scan actually covers all the area they'd want to look at, but they hadn't received it before the appointment because of some communication issues with my vet (they don't have the CT, they don't have the software to look at it, so they sent the Cancer Clinic to the radiology peeps). I actually have the CT scan, because we have the MicroCT at work (at least physically) and very definitely do have the software to look at DICOM stacks, so I have some images, and was able to show them to the resident on my phone at least. I am not going to pay $1300 for radiography and not insist on a copy :p

Anyway. Those tests (plus a urine tests to make sure her kidneys are okay for NSAIDS) are the very next steps they would do, to identify the sarcoma, and then it would be surgery, and then a regimen of radiation therapy. All of this would need to happen at Guelph. It would be a major surgery and she might lose her leg. She would have to be sedate for every treatment, and complications could arise from it and she would be very sick, and it would have to cover a large area. I would have to take time away from work to get someone else to drive me and her to a city an hour and a half away for each treatment and test. And then at best she'd go into remission, Oh and also it would run around $10,000 for the surgery and radiation. One without the other would not be effective - without radiation it would come back, and considering how quickly it has grown this time, it could happen very quickly, and she would have gone through a very complicated major surgery for nothing.

So, I am not doing any of that. I decided that at this point, I will do my best to manage her quality of life. I will keep her on pain killers (and do the urine test to see if I can add NSAIDS to the mix), and be careful with her, and monitor her behaviour and activities and general health to try and track her quality of life as best I can, until I feel like she is suffering too much.

I think this is the right decision, I think I have done everything within reason and possibly beyond, but I'm still really really upset. She's 11, which is and isn't old for a dog her size. She'd been very healthy all of her life. She's still eating and everything else about as well as she ever has, she's still a complete and utter sweetheart. I love her very much.

I bought her a very big bone when we got back to town.



( CT scan images under the cut )

I finished the first story for my fan_flashworks bingo card! And I posted to the community for the first time in... let's just say a while.

It's here if you're curious - it's a story about butts. Well, okay, maybe just one...

Now, I think, a shower, and maybe early bed.

So 2019 is upon us.

I'm not super looking forward to going back to work next week, but it does feel like I've had a real break, and I'm glad it's only a three day week ahead of me.

Jola is getting a CT scan next Sunday. She seems fine but the swelling is not getting any better, and is, if anything getting worse. She's on some pain meds that seem to help - I haven't seen her limping much except right in the morning or in the evening before they get refreshed, or if I cave and take her on the too-long walk she demands. She's been a bit more sookie lately, but only for her. However we confirmed over the break that she has been peeing in the basement, generally when she can't get someone to take her out, and are looking for a solution o she can let us know when she needs to go. Probably we'll try the old 'bells on a rope by the door' trick, which she used to know and should be easy enough to go back to.

Maze is okay. I need to take a urine sample to *his* vet at some point soon, but its so friggin *far*. I think my best bet would actually be to walk it down after work some day and then bus home from there. I'll let him out of kitty jail after the tree is down and general Christmas Debris put away. Every time I think I'm doing better with his boxes I find out that I am not, so, uh, I really need to do better. At least (other than the ego table), the other things we thought were him are *not* him. However this means that the toilet in the downstairs bathroom is leaking :p

In non-pet news, I did basically no knitting over the break, even though I'm really pretty close to finishing my shawl and super close to finishing my headband. I *did* do a ton of writing, which was nice. After not really feeling it, I got very into the yuletide spirit when it came time to help the tag-mod team with story checking. I finished my assignment and wrote two treats, and everything seemed pretty well received, with a bunch of comments on everything. I'll do a separate reveals post. I also did noms for chocolate box... I talked to Nary and Longpig and we decided to nom and request a bunch of Diablotin stuff, even though really we'd just be writing for each other if we get matched to it. I'm excited! I should do my signups...

What else, hmm. I'm not really much one for resolutions or anything like that, but I have some general goals. I'd like to write more, and journal more. I want to focus on some more original fiction, but I also just want to make time more consistently for writing. Writing everyday would be great but I'm not sure its reasonable or not. Maybe? Maybe I can start carrying a writing journal and just writing... whatever in it. Release myself form the idea that it needs to be coherent or complete or relevant. Just anything. Maybe I'll use the journal Nary got me for my birthday for that. I started poking at a bigger project yesterday but I have no faith in my own staying power there, so we'll see. It's all good practice, right? I also finished an AW fic I started before yuletide and posted it, which also feels like good momentum.

How are you all, internets world? Any fun projects planned for the new year?

Also, does anyone know any good ways to crosspost form DW to pillowfort yet?

I'm on mobile so this will be a mess.

I'm visiting college station and I just had a stress dream so bad that I woke up crying.

Do I have issues with my PhD experience? Gosh maybe.

The dream was very much inspired by reality but with heavily fantastical elements. I wasn't really me at all, I was a character, but that character's experience was similar to mine, especially on an emotional level.

As part of this program, we were supposed to make a dinner for the faculty to express ourselves in some way. I'm not sure what they expected - that was part of the problem. No one had really explained this to me. There was one person who went before me (who was an amalgamation of real school and LARP people I know. She put on this bug feast aytslked about the meanings of all the dishes as metaphors and I left to sulk and freak out because even if I had ideas and understood the expectations, I had no time to prepare because I was so busy. I'm leaving out some of the cool background fantasy things, like the moose and dragon wars, and the setting, but there were a lot of background politics about everything going on in the background too.

Eventually I went home to see my parents, and my mom (not my actual mom, clearly) and dad (who were divorced in this dream even if they weren't my real life parents) didn't have any good ideas or help anyway. Like many real-life situations where someone who doesn't really have the full context is trying to help but their suggestions just aren't practical. One if them suggested that I take the faculty out to the woodlot that my dad (my actual dad) owns and talk about that, for example, but that would have entailed getting them out there and still serving them dinner, and I didn't feel like the hike would have gone over well when what they really wanted was for students to suck up to them with food.

Some of the faculty were real people too, proffs from my last two degrees, haaa.

My parents essentially told me they couldn't think of anything either. My dream-parents (and it was my dream-parents who delivered this) didn't think I was interesting enough to have anything to express to these people.

Waking-up but still semi dreaming me decided that the best solution was just to serve them plain ramen, and to tell them that what they got out if me entirely related to what they put in, and so this is what they got. Maybe I would have things they could put in it with me and they could try and earn it, but this was basically a protest anyway, because is was an absurd expectation.

Anyway, it was stressful and upsetting and I do think that the fact that I'm in CS is related. Ugh.

However real life me doesn't have any plans to spend any time with my department other than my friend Megan, who I saw last night and is really the sole reason I came to town.

I had *really* weird, elaborate soap-opera-y dream last night and I'm scrambling to write down the bits of it I still remember. I haven't had a weird dream like this is a looong time. I blame... reading through bits of my sister's 20th anniversary edition of Changeling: The Dreaming yesterday, and the number of amusing Thor things that I've been seeing on tumblr lately.

It involved the Addams Family (kinda), and Thor (kinda) and Hela form Marvel (kinda), and my friend C (kinda).

The basic gist is that someone came to the Addams' to help them bring people back to life who had been dead for years. This involved putting them into other people's bodies and some kind of rite where they had to marry children (like, older children, who had to 'agree' to this)? It was really *really* elaborate. Like, seriously it was watching some weird soap opera with whole different generations of stories. Things I remember:

-This was all taking place in some kinda southern gothic plantation mansion house
-The three people being reincarnated were Hela, Thor, and some woman with chin length black hair named Janet
-There was a little white terrier of some kind with brown on its face that later became a plot point
-Possibly there were time-travellers? Or something?
-Theoretically everyone was acting together to bring these people back, but in practice there were different factions who wanted their person awake first. Only Morticia and Wednesday really knew how to do things, and everyone else was sort or scrambling to figure it out or guess. I don't remember why the Addams' agreed to do this.
-This had been done or tried with Hela before? she didn't have much presence in the dream, except people were scared of her and she had some associate with Wednesday. Either Wednesday married her, or she was reincarnated into her? Maybe the kids who 'married' the people were the actual hosts?
-While Hela was basically Marvel Hela, Thor was not, or he was more entitled arrogant early-first-movie Thor who did't really question what he had or why he had it
-Thor got done first. The person whose body he'd gotten reincarnated into had a loyal and dutiful servant who was mistreated and used as comic relief, and didn't really understand what was happening to his master. -When Thor got reincarnated into his body he a: was a kid and b: didn't know who he was and was kind of mean to him and it was sad.
-At that point they were basically in a fight of some kind and Kid Tho was like: Oh a fight! Fetch me my hammer! His servant had wanted to be his second, but Thor'was like 'lol you can do my laundry' or something along those lines and he was crushed.
-Possibly this whole thins was an elaborate plan to get control of mjolnir? They didn't have the hammer, but I think they needed either Thor or Hela to get it back in this battle.
-Janet (or whatever/whoever she really was) was only brought back as a secondary consideration, because someone (possibly Morticia) had insisted she would be important, or had just cared for her/missed her sort of thing. Like if this was the plan of some evil overlord, and she was his rebellious daughter that he loved and wanted back even though she was a goodie two shoes. Something like that. Maybe they just needed to do three for Reasons? Oh - maybe she was supposed to be Jane, from the Thor movies, only.... highly filtered :p
-Her ritual didn't get brought back until the others were already awake, because she wasn't a priority and the people who were in her 'faction (one of who might have been Rupert Giles, or looked like him), knew the least about what to do and had the most moral quandaries about all of it. There were people at the house who cared for her and were genuinely worried about what was going to happen to her in his scenario.
-Predictably when she was brought back she was confused and horrified, but she wasn't as powerful as the others.
-The others were off at the fight, but she was still weak. Someone came to report that there was 'some Inuit girl' (WHAT BRAIN) collapsed on the grounds.
-It was my friend C (who is... not Inuit IRL, nor was she in the dream? But people thought she was?).
-Janet had apparently known her in life and insisted on being brought out to see her. I don't actually remember what information she was acting on in he dream - if she just wanted to go see the hurt person or what.
-She was helped/carried out to where she was lying, and then freaked out because it really was C only way older than when she'd seen her last (they were childhood friends?). She healed her some and they talked a bit about what she knew was happening which was not much.
-They wanted to help each other more, but it was deemed too dangerous, and Janet thought that if C were brought to the house she'd probably be killed (though someone was arguing that she might die anyway, I think? But maybe they were lying?), so C had to run away to...wherever she'd come from (still unclear)
-Later I was in the heads of two people who'd been sent to figure out what was really happening, if the rumors were true, or what.
-They had known some of the people involved, especially Janet, but also some of the behind-the-scenes folks, in an earlier generation (i.e. the bad guys).
-When they came to the door, the dog (who had also been de-aged? Or brought back?) recognized them and was SO EXCITED to see them! So they were able to convince the people who had come to the door to give it to them by saying it was theirs and they had lost it (?). This was close to when I was waking up so the logic was extra shaky. Like the people at the house were afraid that if they didn't just give up the dog they would get caught out somehow, but the people who'd come to check them out were like "omg its totally [dog] but de-aged into a puppy again so we can totally prove this is happening!" Neither of these arguments really hold up to scrutiny of awake-logic. I think the people at the house felt that no one would believe them that the dog was de-aged even if they knew, and that it was better to let them take the dog than to stay around the house. And they couldn't pretend it was a different dog because it was clearly so happy to see them in particular. So both sides were pretending to believe the lies of the visitors about the lost dog? That makes a little more sense, ish.
-the dog was Janet's though, and I think they were going to use it to show people and recruit allies. Janet was sad to lose her friendly little doggo, but glad that it got away to friendly people
-That's really all the details I can pull?

It was waaaaay more complicated than that, with the multi-generational thing and the ritual near the beginning and everything

Remember when I used to scramble last minute before midnight to try and make a daily post? Let's try something like that because I feel out of touch.

Work is entering a phase of being bananas that is likely to last quite a long time. We just got in a collection of about 2000 boxes (may not refer to actual boxes), many of which need to be repackaged/rehoused pronto, including/especially some of the boxes that didn't quite make it through the move. Amazingly, the move was finished before about 3:00 today, having started at 8:30. I actually had the easy part, overseeing things leaving the other facility, as opposed to the stuff coming in on our side. But everything about the collections is My Job, or my job to organize (I don't have to physically do it, thank goodness), and that's on top of my regular work. Fortunately I seem to have a decent amount of help at the moment! but there a bunch of other stuff going down along side it too that makes it all extra cray cray.

I went to a Pi Day Pie Party tonight! I made my poison pie (chocolate almond cayenne), which I managed to make totally gluten free! I made an almond flour crust which turned out really nicely, and I subbed 2 tbsp of cornstarch for the flour in the filling, and used a non-glutenous chocolate. A piece was saved for someone who wasn't able to make it and I hope it doesn't kill her! It needed more cayenne, though :(

What else what else... Games continue to all be awesome! I have been reposting my GM's game writeups on my tumblr for pathfinder under "the fuck squad" as a tag. My other games are all online text ones and the logs are on the rocksfall wiki. The sessions are all broken up into scenes and there are summaries for each, if ever anyone was curious.

I've been having issues with my hands lately so I haven't been doing too much crafting. I did a little weaving to use up some stash yarn and made a dish towel and cloth, but they wound up narrow. I've been working on the same pair of basic socks for ages because I keep having to take breaks. And I'm still working on Skara Brae... But it is coming along pretty well now that I am giving it attention again! And I'm just about to start the gusset on my second sock, so really they are almost done. I already have a next sock pattern lined up too...

I think that's basically my life? It is march break and Wererogue's mum is up visiting for a few weeks so I am having to adjust to having an extra person around, though she is't staying with us. I mostly see her in the evenings. I think Longpig is pretty thoroughly DONE though. Two more days - you can make it!