randysmith

A gentle week in most ways, although workouts were un-gentle: three private handstand lessons on three days in a row, followed by three days in a row with backbends. And yes this is more than I care to be asking of my hands and wrists, so today in open studio I took it pretty easy and avoided handstands. The sixth of those days was my last -- for now -- private walkover lesson with the tumbling coach, yesterday. I still don't have an unspotted walkover, but I'm within spitting distance again on the back one, and she taught me some cool drills for active splits and for shoulder stretching. No regrets.

On Tuesday I managed to watch Episode 3 of Pluribus with both the bug and the squirrel, making it the only episode I haven't seen twice. I wish more people were watching this show so I could talk about it more. I think I would want to join the hive mind; I'd be ragingly curious, and also afraid it wouldn't last (and I wouldn't want to miss out on the experience). But thus far I'm the only one; neither of my partners would want to.

Thursday I met a leak detection specialist over at the rental cottage, and we searched for any evidence of the leak our tenant was worried about. There was no such evidence found, but we did get locked out, so the whole thing involved a locksmith at the same time(!), followed by doorknob shopping and installation. The dead doorknob was some kind of commercial version very rarely used in residential settings, so the locksmith had to be pretty destructive to remove it.

Overall, I feel I'm preparing for the winter season in a very primal way. Laying in supplies. Looking for things I'm running out of, and buying new batches of them (lip balm, underwear, food storage containers, soap, earplugs). I took my deep-winter clothes out of storage, and stored my high-summer stuff instead, and bought two cheap pairs of joggers that feel strange -- but admittedly soft and comfy -- on my legs. The smart thing to do would be to prepare more for Christmas, but no, my body only cares that it's dark outside and feels that some kind of hibernation is in order.

Not sure if I've mentioned it here before, but I fully intend to enter a sewing phase once the condo project is fully settled down. I've been looking around at sergers and coverstitch machines, and learning a bit about things like blunt-tipped needles for sewing jersey. Somewhat amazingly, it seems there's a serger at my local library that patrons can use! So I intend to trot on over there, see if it's real and try it out before buying anything.

Still very happy. Just living my little life. Birdie's other dad visited this weekend and had lunch with us, and he burst out that he loved me and is so glad I am around and being in Birdie's life. SO CUTE. Granted he was well into the 2nd cocktail at that moment, but still.

The new condo is pretty much ready to go. ( Click if you like houses ) I also spent a while bagging up leaves in the back yard over there, and got added to the condo association bank account at Chase. I am, by virtue of sending over a sample budget based on my own house and saying I wanted the job, going to be the treasurer.

So that fix-up project won't be keeping me physically away from home so much more, which is good, because I've been away a little too much. My birthday present for the squirrel was ( yet <i>another</i> day of house stuff ) Satisfying, but tiring. He liked it... he'd wanted activities or acts of service rather than products of capitalism.

Physically I'm doing ever-better backbends, and did my TGUs at 60lb this week for the first time in 2025. My hip has been hurting from doing too much compression work and I've re-started my PT exercises for that, but I'm feeling good in general about where my capabilities are and how my athletic mojo is doing. Only acro is a little bit stalled out, and that's mainly due to my base's schedule.

I had two unusual social events -- one with a guy I lent some books to about 13 years ago and forgot about, but when he reached out, heck yeah I want my books back. And one with my friend A from the Costa Rica handstand trips; neither of us is going this year, so we met up over a giant breakfast sandwich in Boston instead. He's moving to LA, which I possibly shouldn't be sad about but am, in fact, slightly sad about. I like casting a fairly wide social net, because it's often the more distant connections that bring in the new and interesting recommendations -- plus there's more to catch up on when I don't see a given person often -- but this is one who I would have enjoyed running into more regularly. Like, I wish we'd had a weekly class together or been coworkers.

We saw a student show for the circus school, and I also watched the new Frankenstein movie (pretty, but too much cruelty for me to really enjoy).

I seem, by coincidence, to be reading a lot about Jewish stuff lately. There's The Yiddish Policemen's Union, which is fiction, and Ezra Klein's episode about groypers, which sadly isn't. I find it interesting how Jewish culture has a strong "resisting assimilation" thread to it. But some of the Ezra Klein episode made me feel weirdly naive -- like when some noted anti-semitic guy always mentioned Goldman Sachs but not Morgan Stanley, for instance. Did I just miss some class, maybe in high school, where I was supposed to memorize which last names are associated with which countries/regions/cultures? Asking because I would never have noticed that particular difference. If asked flat-out "is Goldman a Jewish name" I might have said yeah, sounds plausible. But I wouldn't have known that Sachs was, or that Morgan or Stanley weren't. I don't know how and where people learn all this.

I'm getting tired early, with the short winter day and the return to Standard Time. I'm not quite sure what to do with tired evenings -- play games, and make lists of things to do in the morning, maybe. Or just keep crunching along and accept that it'll be slower. What do you do, gentle readers?