michael

The damn things continue to overlap

• surgeon appointment: nothing new, but the margins on what was removed aren't big enough, back in surgery - that's my Friday.
• the next step in the candidacy paperwork was in fact not my responsibility, and I now have an email to say I've passed that hurdle (here it is called 'Milestone 1').
• Last Monday rehearsal of the year was this week; I tried bowing for one line of very long/slow notes and ow, nope, not yet. Was, however, good support for the other viola player, including singing some of the bits where the viola has the melody. We had a new violin player! I hope they come back, they seemed to be having fun.
• Today was my last day on campus for the year. I will be working some over the shutdown, because I'm supposed to have my ethics drafted by mid January, and I still don't know what I don't know. Treated myself to curry and a fizzy drink for lunch.
• Finished Building a second brain (Tiago Forte), which I've gained some useful ideas from. Recommended if you are needing a way to organise the information that is coming in to your life; not elsewise.
• Youngest went bouldering with co-workers on Monday, and is learning yet again about not relying on hyperextended elbows to do the work (their grip strength isn't, and their forearms hurt "weirdly")
• have woken up twice this week having done Something Stupid in my sleep. Monday it was the right hip not quite in the right place (went back in during rehearsal, I staggered in looking awful, I gather) and today it is something with the muscles of the right shoulder and halfway down the back -- I could barely move the shoulder this morning, and it has settled down to 'about half the time one or more muscles are spasming'.

These are all from the same auto-transcription closed captioning.

• rosary phone (rotary phone)
• content scripture (content description)
• gaming council (gaming console)

This was from a presentation by an Irish group who teach cyber safety in schools. I don't remember how pronounced the presenter's accent was, but ah, those sure are some interesting errors.

• surgical recovery continues apace. The incision has mostly healed, although the knot of dissolving stitches at one end got caught when I was trying to clean it and pulled it slightly open, so I've now cut off the knot, put a fancy steri-strip over it to hold it together, and a little circular sticking plaster over that. Internals still noticeably sore, externals are itchy; have been putting 'scar therapy gel' on which seems to help (it was in the cupboard; I do not know what any of the ingredients are). I see the surgeon on Tuesday for follow up.
• reviewers comments for my candidacy proposal are in (received late on Friday). I'm not actually sure what the next step is -- I'll work it out tomorrow. I think it said 'no edits' which is a surprise, given that I have been reading and annotating weekly since submitting, and there are a lot of 'this could be clearer' and 'what did you mean here?' notes. Also, I found another answer to one of the reviewers questions from the presentation about why books and not films/tv, which is that I'm hoping to get a wider range of cultural influences (and I have a paper from Italy in which almost all of the TV/movies that the kids reported was from the USA, which very much supports my 'this would be an issue' argument)
• there was an HDR and supervisors lunch run by the school I'm in on Monday. This was very interesting and I met a lot of people. Including one who I was unsurprised to discover is an acquaintance of Youngest. Very queer (not very surprising) and neurodiverse (should not have been surprising) bunch that I met.
• weather has been Warm. To the point that artisanat has been volunteering to put the air-con on.
• There have been some changes to the mix of South Asian grocers on High Road. One of the two north of Bunnings has gone (and the one still there no longer stocks palak paneer in their shelf-stable preprepared meals; not the regular nor the tofu/vegan option. They do, however, still have some vegan options). There is a new one that is further south than the ones I was aware of -- nearly to where the petrol station is. To the point that it is still so new that not all the shelves are stocked; we couldn't find the box meals there at all, but we had to rush because we ran out of time. Thus there are still three that I'm aware of.
• Monday's rehearsal I went with the intention to play pizzicato, which was mostly fine, but I got there to discover the C string broken (spare was at home) so had to transpose some of the work up an octave, which ah, that needs practice. As does one of the sections we hadn't got to that I'd failed to realise has a lot of fast notes.
• craft has stalled
• reading - one of these week's I'll get around to doing another reading post. Over on the Book Club of Habitica Discord I've joined the TBR Bingo challenge for Dec/Jan and set myself a bingo card of 16 books from my 'paused' list. So far, I've finished 1, which is progress but not as fast as I want.