Random Thread: Summer 2018 – Winter 2022/2023
Date: July 1, 2018
Categories: At the Top of the Blog, Random craziness
Tuesday, 23 April 2024
Life, the universe, pies, hot-pink bunnies, world domination, and everything
Date: July 1, 2018
Categories: At the Top of the Blog, Random craziness
Happy July! I’m in Turkey on excavation, and the schedule is even more rigorous than the other digs I’ve done in the past— instead of afternoons and evenings off, we get a 2-Hour break at lunch to clean up and relax and then go work in the lab until 7:30. Then we have dinner at 8 and have to go to bed pretty early to get enough sleep to wake up at 5:30. So… how about I post more about the dig on Saturday when we have the afternoon off? (We have all of Sunday off, too, that’s the only day we can really sleep.)
That’s a challenging schedule. Digging holes in Turkey clearly requires dedication.
I’m not digging holes very much, actually, I only go to the site one day a week because the rest of the time I’m working with pottery in the lab. Mostly I examine potsherds and fill out forms about their characteristics, then wait for the professors to look them over and check if I made mistakes. If I didn’t, I can type the information up and put it in our database online and my spreadsheet for future research, because I want to hopefully turn working at this site into my PhD work.
We’re in a very small town up in the mountains, where it’s very dry. It’s nice working in a dry heat and not feeling as if I’m going to die of heatstroke every time I go out in daylight, but it’s also very dusty. I really miss the beach. My supervisor says the climate is similar to Northern Arizona.
I haven’t gotten to explore very much because of our busy schedule, most Saturdays I just want to listen to music and nap, and most Sundays I just hang around. But this Sunday I went on a little hike with two other students along the road to the north of our dig house and up into the hills. We left the road to walk through the hills and went to the top of a big one– the compass app on my phone said we were 1400 meters up!
There are butterflies everywhere here, probably because there are so many flowers, especially roses. There are also apricot and plum trees all over the place, both in people’s yards and along the road. Most people save apricots and leave them out to dry on their roofs or porches in order to have dried apricots. We have both kinds of trees in the dig house yard, but walking to the trees means braving the briars and other prickly plants that grow there. (There are a LOT of prickly plants in this area, on our hike yesterday we had to stop every 2 minutes to pull them off our clothes. Still better than deer ticks, though.)
Right now I’m sitting on the porch outside of our dig house as the sun sets. It’s the dry season, so it hasn’t rained since we got here and it’s only really been cloudy one day, which means we see sunsets most days. I can see the clouds over the dormant volcanoes to the north turning pink and purple and the sky towards the south is in shades of blue, pink, cream yellow, and that illusive white-green that comes between the pink and blue parts of a sunset. On Saturdays when we actually can stay up, the stars from our porch are great, and we’ve seen satellites and shooting stars.
Hmmm, what else? It’s very easy to fall into a kind of tunnel vision with our schedule and only focus on work, then getting to the meal break, then spending your free time how you can, then getting ready for bed. We have WiFi at the lab, but we’re only allowed to use it for work, so I’ve brought books in my bag and read Steve Fossett and Phillippe Pettit’s memoirs. Today I started Sir Edmund Hillary’s. I also brought “The Worst Journey in the World” and I hope that I can finally get around to reading it while I’m here to erase the shame of being a polar exploration fan who hasn’t read the most famous polar exploration book. It’s just that it’s about a thousand pages and kind of intimidating in that way…
That sounds like a pretty idyllic life. Apart from the work and the heat, but you can’t have everything. It would be great to borrow a telescope to peer at twinklies after dark, but I suppose such things aren’t readily avaialble in Turkey.
Happy Moon Day, fellow terrestrials! I remember.
Happy Moon Landing Day!
Museblog is 13 years old today! An auspicious number.
We’re already a quarter of the way to a full deck! Many happy returns to the world’s greatest confectionery weaponry discussion forum!
Happy Birthday, MuseBlog!
So I survived the dig. It was a very structured, repetitive two months and I kind of had blinders on in terms of thinking of anything except that day’s work.
But I did finish and got lots of good ceramics data for my PhD work! And for the past week, which has gone incredibly quickly, I have been in Istanbul decompressing by walking 20,000 steps a day visiting museums and old Byzantine churches.
I’m on my little wrought-iron balcony at a small but very homey hotel run by Greeks that overlooks the Golden Horn. It reminds me a lot of the dorm I lived in during undergrad that used to be a brownstone. My room is small, mostly because it has two twin beds when I only need one, but I have a minibar, a radio, a tea service and electric kettle, and a TV that I haven’t used. (I did use the radio, though, it mostly picked up disco of all things.) And of course this balcony with its little wrought-iron table and chairs.
I can see the Galata Tower on my right-hand side— I walked by there today, not up to the tower but just in the neighborhood below, including the fish market. To my left, the sun is setting and I can see the kebap restaurant down the street, where I’ve wanted to eat but I think the owners have been away for the Islamic holiday.
I walked that way today, too— just taking in the neighborhood, I found an “Alien Café†with stickers of gray aliens on the window and CGI images of planets on the walls. It was very cute, but not open either. I got some gelato at another shop—cherry and peanut, so it basically tasted like a PB&J without bread— and bought Turkish Delight to take home for my brothers.
I’m going home tomorrow and then I guess I’ve got to throw myself right into getting ready for the school year, which starts about a week after. I’m done with classes and will just be preparing for exams with my mentor, so that will be different.
But right now I’m on my balcony watching the sunset and there’s a nice cool breeze from the water.
Sounds like a good place to be, Kai! Too bad the Alien Café was closed. Will you have a chance to try again?
Moments like that stay with you. You’ll remember that balcony when you’re ancient.
That all sounds quite lovely!
Hi everyone!
Um. So I very briefly stopped by when y’all were talking about the eclipse last year, which Google tells me was… August. So it’s been a year.
I’m graduating at the end of this year. Because I got kicked out of my direct-entry honours program a couple of years ago, I have to apply for honours this time. Finding information on our university website is difficult and it’s badly out of date. As someone who has both failed courses and done stuff like pass with a literal 50, I’m pleasantly surprised that I’ll actually make the grade cutoff.
Except. It varies within the country by at least one of university and field, so I don’t know what if anything is “normal”, but in both physics and maths here they make you find your own supervisor. The standard way to do this is to approach one of your third year lecturers, but this may well not work for me for various reasons. I had some success talking to people at a project market day thing, I guess that’s why such events exist, but it’s not a done deal. I’m probably going to have to send emails. *shudder*
Also I never did a summer research project or whatever even though it’s one of the things they recommend. The idea of writing an entire thesis is kinda scary. I’m not *feeling* scared by it because it’s hard to imagine actually getting that far, I still have half of this semester left, but still.
Hello, ML! I’m sure you’ll do whatever it takes to wrap up this chapter of your life and move on to new adventures. Just take things one step st a time, starting with those dreaded emails.
Yeah, the emails have to be sent. Thnik of yourself as Zog the Magnificent, sending a heroic battle fleet into the outer reaches of your vast empire to suppress a minor insurrection. Equip your emails well, entrust them to your finest commanders, and victory is assured.
Good luck, and don’t sweat the emails too much! *high fives* It sucks, but it’s not a weird thing to need to do- about 50% of my supervisor’s current group started out more or less cold-emailing her. If you switch fields, if you want a specific topic and just never got that lecturer- heck, I attended my future PhD supervisor’s class and I still had to email her for organisational reasons.
Admittedly, I have absolutely no idea how Australia works, but afaik you‘ll probably end up interviewing? So your email won’t be that important in the long run anyway.
As a balm to your sorrows, I‘d also like to point out that it’s generally in the interest of a group to have Master’s Students. You’re free, smart, qualified labor that can produce useful research for the group and doesn’t have the same panic-to-publish that PhD’s do. Heck, I’d sacrifice several small animals to get a Bachelor student to run some limit-case simulations for me & check them against the appropriate literature. Tl;dr you are applying to them, but they’d also be lucky to have you.
What field are you doing your thesis in?
I think you might be pleasantly surprised by research projects, they‘re very different from standard classes but (imho) a lot more rewarding. Except the actual writing aspect. That’s terrible. But science first!
((This post is quite weird with the username I picked… almost ten years ago now O.O . Time sure flies…))
It’s the most…. wonderful day….
Of the year…!
Or, if you prefer:
It’s t’most…. wonderful day….
O’ t’year…!
And with that, Talk Like a Pirate Day 2018 draws to a close.
Y’arr, it warms these old bones t’see a proper pirate a-speakin’ as we once did.
Yarrr, verily.
Hi all!
I’m popping in to say hi. I’m recently 21, a month away from my 11th blogiversary, and things are going… okayish for me! Depression is kicking my butt as it has for a very long time, but at least I’m finally on prozac. I’m a history/social studies major up in Washington, although I’m probably going to graduate late because, well, you know. Hoping to be a history teacher!
I’ve been camp counseling at the Girl Scout camp I went to when I was younger – the same camp I went to with Rainbowstar back in 2011! A week long Kokonvention in the high desert. That’s been absolutely lovely – I’m apparently known as the camp storyteller, which is just nuts to me.
I’m about to start DMing a D&D campaign for my roommate, my girlfriend, and my girlfriend’s roommates, and I’m very excited! I’ve gotten into D&D in a big way the last two years. It’s so much fun. I’m especially looking forward to doing silly voices. Maybe Bunny Apocalypse was a foundation in my love of role playing games…
The reason I got inspired to post was because I was talking with a friend of mine who lives in Tennessee and discovered we had a mutual friend who went to her school! I was wondering if any of you could recall which Muser whose IRL name is “Jelo”? We talked a bit outside of MB a few years back but I’ve since lost track of them. No worries if you can’t remember/I’m overstepping!
Regardless: I’m very happy this was my first online space. It was very safe for the age group it hosted and so encouraging and fun and creative! Much love to you all. ♥
Hello Zinc!
I’m also here to say thanks for dropping by! The blog does still move at a glacial pace, but a lot of the activity has shifted to a slack that keeps up a consistent quiet buzz.
Congrats on working through the degree! Depression can be such a beast; it’s good to hear you’ve got some stability going. And teaching history is, to say the least, a noble ambition. That’s awesome.
I think the muser you’re looking for is Fireh. They’re for sure still around – I’ll make a little noise to direct their attention over here!
Oh my gosh that’s insane! Who are they? O:
Also, I’m super glad to hear that things are going okay!
Fireh, oh my goodness! Awesome!!!! You might know her as Mauve or Maeve B.? She says “my only impetus for staying in the campus LGBT group was cause Jelo was so great” so hooray! The wonders of the FB mutual friends feature – so many crazy connections and coincidences…
Welcome back! It’s nice to know you’re thriving. It’s slower here than it was, but we get the occasional old friend popping in.
Hi! It’s been ages since I posted here at all, though I too have been active in other Kokonspiratorial spaces.
Suffice it to say things are a bit rough right now — I’ll save a detailed update for when there’s anything in my life worth updating about — but I wanted to share this quotation from Black Lamb and Grey Falcon, by Rebecca West, which I think is both in Muserly spirit and says something I tried to say years ago, but much more eloquently than I did. (Our own Rebecca might remember it — my example was about barnacle geese.)
“This woman was of no importance. It is doubtful whether, walk as she would on these heights, she would arrive at any conclusion that was of value even to herself. She was, however, the answer to my doubts. She took her destiny not as the beasts take it, nor as the plants and trees; she not only suffered, she examined it. As the sword swept down on her through the darkness she threw out her hand and caught the blade as it fell, not caring if she cut her fingers so long as she could question its substance, where it had been forged, and who was the wielder… I knew that art and science were the instruments of this desire, and this was their sole justification… I knew that they were descended from man’s primitive necessities, that the cave man who had to hunt the aurochs drew him on the rock-face that he might better understand the aurochs and have fuller fortune in hunting and was the ancestor of all artists, that the nomad who had to watch the length of shadows to know when he should move his herd to the summer pasture was the ancestor of all scientists. But I did not know these things thoroughly with my bowels as well as my mind. I knew them now, when I saw the desire for understanding move this woman… she desired neither peace nor gold, but simply knowledge of what her life might mean. The instrument used by the hunter and the nomad was not too blunt to turn to finer uses; it was not dismayed by complexity, and it could regard the more stupendous aurochs that range within the mind and measure the diffuse shadows cast by history…
I remembered what Denis Saurat had said about Militsa: ‘If there are but twenty people like her scattered between here and China, civilization will survive.’ If during the next million generations there is but one human being born in each generation who will not cease to inquire into the nature of his fate, even while it strips and bludgeons him, some day we shall read the riddle of our universe…”
This sounds like an exceptionally good book.
It’s very long and dense, and not without its flaws, but it’s astonishing. This is the review that got me to read it: https : // falsemachine . blogspot . com /2014/08/black-lamb-and-grey-falcon . html
Watching the eclipse. Magic!
It really is, I watched with my family!
(Yes, yes, long time, no see, preparing for Quals in the spring and quite busy, all else is reasonably well here.)
Happy birthday, KaiYves! And Kai D, if you’re out there.
So flattered that you remember me! (It’s certainly been awhile.)
I searched this wise old blog up in boredom, and found you all here still going at it! I was even more surprised to find my name mentioned recently, so I figured I owe y’all a reply.
Thanks for the hours of ponderous chats you all provided my in my early adolescence! (and the birthday mention)
Not sure why my profile photo is linked, but the interwebs are a mysterious place…
”me in my early adolescence” not “my”
Typos… some things never change…
Good to hear from you! We’re actually going at it more vigorously on a couple of other communication channels nowadays. You’re welcome to join us. (I’ll send more information.)
Remembered Museblog today, and thought I’d see if you all were still around. I’m amazed! Reading about what all of you are doing now is incredible. I remember most of you from when I was a middle schooler, and seeing people talking about doing their PhDs now is the coolest. Growing up is weird, huh?
I got a degree in math and a master’s in teaching, and now I actually teach middle school math myself – I wouldn’t have guessed it ten years ago, but it’s pretty wonderful! I’m also married (!) to the best person I know, and I have two super cute and incredibly weird cats.
I’m so glad that you all are still here, and still doing what you do. I like the glacial pace. I’ll do my best to be back. Thank you all for the memories, and for being the friends, community, and family that I needed as a weird child. I love all of you <3
Cinnamoon,
Wonderful to hear from you! We have a couple of Slack groups that operate at a much faster pace. I’ll send you information by email or the equivalent.
“Does the MuseBlog still exist?†I asked myself in the middle of this screening of The Exorcist. Gotta say: when I saw the stickied threads from 2013, my heart skipped a beat, thinking things had gone dormant in my absence. Glad to see that isn’t quite the case.
I’m closing out my senior year at St. Olaf College, graduating with a degree in theater with a concentration in film studies. Most people ask me whether I’d like to act in film—I think it’d be fun, but my real passion is archival/restoration/preservation. (Maybe I watched a few too many Criterion Collection featurettes.) I might be getting an internship at the Smithsonian this summer doing just that, so that’s pretty swell. Let’s see, my last post here was…four years ago? Three and a half? I’ve been trying to think of what’s happened since then, but what hasn’t, really? I guess the type 1 diabetes diagnosis was a big event, but otherwise I wouldn’t know where to begin.
I think about this place often, though. Looking back, I used to post some straight-up reprehensible stuff on here (I’m often haunted by my description of my high school ex as “not girlfriend material†back in 2013 or so), but it was also the first place anyone ever called those things out for what they were. It was quite literally the first place I’d ever had the chance to openly interact with anyone who had a different sexual or gender identity to my own, and I don’t hesitate to credit you bunch of nerds for my present fervor for social justice. MuseBlog made me a better, smarter, more empathetic person. I don’t know how to begin to thank you (posters and GAPAs alike) for that.
[I’m getting a sense of deja vu typing this—have I said this exact thing on MB before? If so, it still holds. I’ve grown a lot since, and I still give this community kudos for planting those seeds.]
In other words: I miss y’all! If I can get in on any of those external MuseBlog havens, I’d love to. It’s been lovely to check in regardless.
I have been rather pessimistic about a number of things lately, one of which is the idea that, in the Information Age, knowledge is more secure than ever before–just upload it, and it will be there forever!
It’s becoming increasingly evident that this is *not* the case; for one, the utter glut of information only secures that there is too much for anyone to keep track of. And as a result, things are lost, either by being forgotten, or in weird glitches that are more instant and immediate than any fire.
(this became especially evident to me in the last few minutes as I was trying to find some museblog archives, etc., but is true in a general way as well–take a look at how video streaming is dominating ALL movie watching, and as a result, older movies which the video streamers don’t care about are just disappearing.)
How has technology disappointed *you* lately?
A friend of mine says that having realistic expectations about what one can and cannot expect from other people is the key to never being disappointed. I think that applies to technology, too.
That said, Museblog aside, this whole Web business has been fairly disillusioning.
Hi MB! I randomly thought of MB today and decided to check if it still existed. Glad to see it does, if only barely.
I don’t remember exactly when I stopped posting, but I think it’s probably been about a decade? Not sure how to do a life update worthy of that time gap, but: I’m now working on a PhD in computational linguistics; I still enjoy ducks and carrots, though not with the same level of obsession as in my MB days (and platypus has been my animal of choice in usernames for many years now); and I *do* still get excited about the national spelling bee every year.
Hello, Emma! Good to hear from you. We’re somewhat chattier on Slack nowadays. I’ll send you an invitation.
P.S. You last posted on a Dispatches from Collegeland thread on February 17, 2013.
Aha, I thought I might have come back once but couldn’t find where!
Happy Towel Day, one and all! I know where mine is, for sure.
Has anyone else read about Greta Thunberg, the 16-year-old climate activist who is about to sail from England to the US to speak at the UN climate talks next month, because of the carbon footprint that results from flying? She seems like a MuseBlogger who never found MuseBlog.
She is Muserly, for sure, and would have been most welcome on the blog in its heyday. But I’m afraid she would have been too busy ever to post.
I also would have given a complimentary subscription to Malala Yousafzai.
I wondered whether I might see her at the climate march in Washington, D.C., today, but of course she had gone back to New York City for the big march there.
I haven’t been on here in a long time. I just had a dream that there was a Muse podcast.
I’m a Real Adult (26 years old) now with my own job and my own dog. My neighbors are outside having a fight at 1:30 at night.
I’ve done a ton of stuff since I was last on here. It’s cool to see people from back in the day doing so much cool stuff!
I guess here are my major updates: I discovered that I’m nonbinary. I’m living my lifetime dream of living in Arizona. I did live in coconino county for a while, but it sucked. I am an elementary school teacher. In my free time, I dance and listen to podcasts.
Hi, UP! Good to “see” you. There isn’t a podcast as far as I know, but there is something. I’ll send you more information.
Happy “Talk Like a Pirate” Day, everybody!
So I dunno that anyone hangs out here enough to be of any help, but….I’m trying to help one of my friends/coworkers with her chemistry homework as she is really struggling with it.
I, however, haven’t done chemistry in about a decade so while I was good at it at the time, I’m super rusty. I *think* I’m doing things right, but I don’t want to steer her wrong. She’s currently working on limiting reagent problems, and I’m comfortable I’ve got it down for simple solids, but I think I’m overthinking things when it comes to liquid w/v % solutions.
baking soda (NaHCO3) and vinegar (active ingredient acetic acid, CH3COOH)
Chemical equation:
NaHCO3 (aq) + CH3COOH (aq) = CO2 (g) + H2) (l) + NaCH3COO (aq)
Trial B, mass of baking soda 0.75mg and volume of vinegar (5% acetic acid w/v).
Solve: Moles of CO2 if vinegar is limiting, moles if baking soda is limiting.
I’m comfortable with the baking soda part, it’s 0.00893 moles.
I’m NOT 100% I’m doing the vinegar part correctly.
My math:
We’re told we have 8mL vinegar at a 5% w/v.
w/v% = (mass solute in g)/(vol sol’n in mL) X 100
5= (mass solute in g)/(8mL) X 100
0.05= Mass/8
mass= 0.4g
mass of 1 mol vinegar is 60.052g
So we have 0.00666 moles of vinegar for our equation, yielding 0.00666 moles of CO2
Is this correct?
Hi, Luna. That’s *H2O(l)* on the right side of the equation, right?
Your calculations for the acetic acid look fine to me. But 0.75 mg of baking soda isn’t very many moles. Baking soda would be the limiting reagent by an overwhelming margin, no? I wonder whether the amount was supposed to be 0.75 g.
Yes, H2O (l) is indeed what I meant. And 0.75g not mg is indeed what the problem asks for–although it looks like I did that calculation right on paper, just accidentally typed mg instead of g when transcribing the question.
Thanks, Robert!
Hi guys, I know I showed up a while ago and said hi but then I uhhh got awkward and never replied back. I’ve been checking on blog updates and am interested in these other channels y’all mention!
An invitation to our Slack group is on its way.
Thank you! I haven’t actually seen it yet – no worries if you’ve been busy and haven’t gotten around to it, but I’m just hoping my spam filter didn’t pick this week to sputter back into life and do its job.
Please do check your spam filter. Slack won’t let me send two invitations to the same address.
Hello everyone! Glad to see there’s still some familiar faces, and that many of you have gone on to achieve amazing things. Not that academic or societal achievement is all that matters; surely your survival and continued well-being is an enormous achievement in itself. I recently overcame a pretty nasty disease, an experience which has not brought me any particular wisdom, but may have given me a little more patience and perspective.
I’m not sure what to make of my time spent on this blog, or how others might have perceived my less-developed self. I can’t say I didn’t have a good time though. Maybe that’s a reasonable way to approach things.
These days I try to always look forward, and never back. I probably won’t be attending my high school reunions. But I don’t think I’ll be able to forget MB anytime soon. Thanks for all the years of fun!
Happy New Year to everyone who ever passed through or lingered on this site! What a strange, delightful world within the world we created together.
The same to you, Robert! I feel like we need creations like MuseBlog more than ever these days.
Ahoy! Anybody there?
Just missed them, it seems. Oh, well, they’ll be back in the fullness of time, or someone else will.
Well, I’m here, but I’m not sure if that counts.
Why wouldn’t that count?
Well, I’m always here. Me and the spambots. We’ve been keeping the shelves dusted.
Speaking of whom, I’ve just thanked a few dozen spambots for their service and sent them on their way.
Hello! I was reminded of MuseBlog the other day when I was talking with a friend about something tangentially connected to Muse, although I can’t remember what, and how much of an impact it and this website had on me growing up.
I graduated Carleton College this summer with a degree in Economics and Computer Science and a minor in Math. I’m working as an RA at a tech policy think tank in DC doing various things at the intersection of those two fields (I have a paper under review at an Econ journal! I’m an adult! Ahh!)
Hoping to apply for Econ PhD programs in the fall and start that whole thing in 2021.
Talking about MB with an outsider made me really appreciate how nice it was to have this community growing up, how deeply embedded in me some of the values of it are, and how I do miss you. Thanks for everything.
Good to see you again! I feel the same way–it’s hard for me to estimate how much of an impact MuseBlog had on me, since so much of what I learned here is so deeply ingrained in me now. I really owe so much to everyone here.
Greetings, TMFA! Good to see your avatar again and hear what you’ve been up to. Welcome to the Beltway bubble!
There are not foul enough of words to express my absolute hatred of 2020.
Also travel insurance is a freaking joke.
“I wish it need not have happened in my time,” said Frodo.
“So do I,” said Gandalf, “and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.â€
That passage has been running through my mind a lot lately. It would make a good hand-washing mantra, come to think of it.
What is your travel story?
Six days from now (this coming Saturday), Mom and I were suppose to be leaving on a month long vacation to New Zealand. I spent 3 weeks there a year and a half ago, and have been looking for any opportunity to go back since then. So in September when I found out that the World Vet Association was going to hold their conference in Auckland in April, a week after my birthday, and shortly before my mom’s birthday….
It was going to be 4 weeks in paradise, the best 30th birthday celebration ever. We were going to be in a schooner in the Bay of Islands all day on my birthday. I bought plane tickets on New Years Eve, and travel insurance within a few days after (all under the guidance of a travel agent), because it would be silly to not buy travel insurance considering airfare alone is nearly 2k per person.
And in the next couple of weeks, mom and I spent most hours of my days off painstakingly planning the details of the trip, we had our itinerary completely mapped out, hotels reserved, things to do reserved, I could have walked you through the trip by memory, if asked, day by day. I’ve had a count down going on my bathroom mirror for months. We were finally in the single digits. This vacation was all that was keeping me afloat at work, all that was keeping the burnout and compassion fatigue just barely at bay. I’ve spent Thursday night, Friday night, and most of yesterday just nonstop crying.
Because when the US went end-of-world apocalypse panicked with its response (and maybe it’s justified maybe it’s not….I have no desire to talk about that), New Zealand quickly followed suit and announced Friday night that anyone entering the country, citizen or visitor, would have to self isolate for 14 days. That would have meant self isolating for the entire winter less north portion of our itinerary. And I spent all of Friday night and Saturday morning struggling to decide….do I still go? I’ll still be in paradise. No, I won’t be able to go snorkeling, or on my schooner in my birthday, or visit the islands in Auckland, or anything we had planned, but I can still lie on a beach, right? Well ultimately I made the decision, one that I’m still not convinced is the correct one, that if we had to self isolate and cancel our itinerary for the first half that it made more sense not to go.
So I spent all of yesterday sending over 15 emails, systematically cancelling all the events and things to do, that we had painstakingly planned out. And each email confirmation I received, just sent me into a new wave of tears.
And you would think, hey, at least travel insurance would help you recoup the money, but no. They specifically exclude pandemics from coverage . So even though covid-19 wasn’t even heard of when we’d bought our last ticket for things to do in early January, travel insurance won’t cover anything. It was just $500 I flushed down the toilet. And I’m not even worried about the money, because I wouldn’t have spent it on the trip if I couldn’t afford to, but it just makes me so mad. Fortunately, most things have 100% if you let them know over 24hrs in advance, but some of the hotels have no refunds. And even if they make exceptions, the exchange rate is much less favorable now than when I purchased things, so it still is a net loss.
So now I don’t know what I’ll do for my 30th. Probably spend it, and whatever time off I still take, wallowing in misery and tears on my couch
Anyway tl;dr had to cancel my 30th bday vacation and travel insurance won’t cover any of it, and I’m far more devastated than anyone should be over a vacation.
I’m terribly sorry to hear that this happened to you, Luna. The timing couldn’t have been worse. I hope you don’t spend your birthday wallowing in misery tears but will understand if you do. Meanwhile, I hope you’re taking good care of yourself and pampering yourself as much as possible.
Thanks, Robert. I’m still sad about it, obviously, probably will be for a long time, and I’m sure there will be more tears but I’m no longer feeling the soul crushing devastation and grief that I was a week ago. I’ve had time to process it and now it just kinda feels surreal. Kudos to the hotels with the “no refund†policies…they made exceptions given the circumstances and granted refunds in full (exchange rate still sucks now, but oh well) and while travel insurance won’t cover the trip, they’ve agreed to refund the cost of the policy since NZ has closed its borders entirely at this point.
Instead of having a 30 day vacation in paradise, I’m now taking a 2 week mental health stay-cation at my house, maximizing my alone time and minimizing social interactions (contrary to many, as an introvert this isolation concept is good for me mentally), and then returning to work. As a veterinarian, we’re considered essential business so while it’s not really business as usual since we’re making clients stay in the car while patients are brought inside, I’m fortunate in that after my stay-cation I will have a job to return to. Unfortunately, the necessary contact with people (or their pets which can serve as a fomite), does put me at higher risk than those able to work from home.
My birthday will be a home cooked meal at the parents house, rather than dinner out (restaurants closed to dine in state wide), which will be a change from tradition, and I’m while I will probably have moments of sadness that I’m not spending it on a schooner in the Bay of Islands, I don’t think I will wind up spending the duration of it wallowing in misery tears either.
I hope you (and any other MBers reading this) are staying safe out there.
Attention, D.C.-area MBers! I know things are strange and disorienting right now. Let me know if there’s anything I can do help keep you on an even keel. If you need someone to talk to, something delivered, a place to get out of the house, or a short-term chauffeur, I’m here to help.
Happy 29th birthday, Shadowkat!
And happy 30th, Luna!
So how else is everyone being affected by the pandemic? I’ve been working from home for the last two and a half weeks, and I’m very grateful that I’ve been able to do that. We don’t have a shelter-in-place order yet here in Nebraska, but all public gatherings larger than 10 people have been prohibited through at least the end of April, and restaurants are takeout and delivery only. I haven’t seen toilet paper in the stores for a few weeks now–there’s one-per-customer limits on it everywhere, but it still disappears as soon as it’s restocked. We’ve got a few dozen rolls left–we luckily happened to make a Costco run shortly before things got serious here. Mass has been cancelled, of course, which has been hard for us–we would go to daily Mass when we could, at least a few times a week. We’ve definitely become more cognizant about wasting food, and more creative about how we use the ingredients we have. We’ve started saving things like rendered bacon fat and the drippings from roasts to use in other meals. Our social engagements have disappeared as well, although every Thursday morning my wife still takes my grandma to the grocery store. She, as well as my parents and my mother-in-law, has been a main motivator for us in trying to avoid catching the virus. We’re young and healthy and would probably recover fine, but giving it to any of them would be horrible. Thank God, I don’t know anyone personally yet that has tested positive for it, although testing has been infuriatingly slow to ramp up around here; the state and the county have been reluctant to test anyone who hasn’t traveled to a high-risk area, even though there has been confirmed community spread.
I’ve been intending to keep some kind of a journal about this, so that our son or any of our future children will be able to learn about this really extraordinary time that we’re in right now. I guess this is a warmup for writing something more frequently. So how have you all been holding up?
I’m fine. I have a talent for self-isolation and wonderful companions (human and feline) to share it with. I try to stay busy and make myself useful.
It’s hard on me psychologically, and I think on my whole family. On the plus side, I have no excuse not to tie up all of my online loose ends, including checking back up on MB after two years away…
I got hit by burnout pretty bad last year, I had basically been in college for eight years straight, my Dad was struggling with heart disease, and my brother P. got married to another West Point grad after their graduation but my Dad got into a feud with her parents over paying for the wedding and it was just really nasty all around. I couldn’t meet my PhD deadlines, so I arranged to graduate in September 2019 with an MA in archaeology and spend a few years working in heritage management before going back in the future.
I have been living at home on Long Island since then—with my parents, my brother J., who graduated in May with a history degree and got hired as a curator at the historical museum two towns over, and Ashe, the terrier my Dad got as a service dog after he had his near-heart-attack— and applying to jobs.
I got accepted for a position as a Park Ranger this summer in DC, which is really exciting even though the start date got pushed back from end of April to end of May because of the virus crisis. I submitted all of my paperwork and I’m in contact with my supervisor, who says she can’t wait to have me and the other new hire once it’s safe for us to come. Still, I’m really excited and hopefully I will get the opportunity to see many of my old DC-area friends once we get through this.
I can’t believe it’s been nine years since I interned at NASA HQ!
Oh Koko, what else, so much else… I learned to sail this summer and volunteered at two yacht clubs in my area, first on dinghies and then on cruisers! I hope that in DC I’ll be able to get to Annapolis easily as I know that’s one of the big cities for sailing in this country after Newport.
I was lucky enough to attend the SailGP catamaran races in NYC back in June— as a spectator, of course— and had a conversation with the league director, Russell Coutts, who gave me his ballcap and signed it! I also see that Greta Thunberg and the Malizia II were mentioned back in August— I followed their journey across the Atlantic on the online tracker and I did visit the boat at North Cove Marina in Manhattan about a week later. I did not meet Ms. Thunberg, but I did get to take a photo with the Malizia crew.
I asked if they needed anyone to come back to France with them because I knew how to sail dinghies and was ready to start a new adventure in my life after graduating.
They said no.
P., as I said, got married, so now A. is my sister-in-law, which is crazy, I always wondered what it would be like to have a sister and didn’t expect to get one at 26. I feel like we don’t know each other as well as we should as she and P. were sent to Georgia for their tank training right after graduation, so I’ve only seen her since at Christmas and then Valentine’s Week when we went down for their graduation.
(That was fun, I got to see my Aunt Paula, Uncle Mike, and Cousin Neil, who are really intelligent and artsy and nerdy— I think I’ve talked about them on MB in passing a few times. We went to the Jimmy Carter National Historic site which had me crying, and in Atlanta we went to the aquarium and saw the whale sharks, which was amazing. The only downside is that we got almost no sleep sharing hotel rooms with my Dad because he snores.)
So… I guess that brings us to now? The rainy days in quarantine are the worst, I wake up and have no energy at all. Today it’s been raining all day and I’m still in my pajamas at 9 PM.
When it doesn’t rain, J. and I have been going hiking with Ashe, trying to find obscure trails that won’t have too many other people. I’ve been cycling a lot on the backroads, too. Outside it feels almost normal, the magnolias and cherry blossoms are starting to bloom, and sometimes I bike to a beach and see ospreys. I don’t really go anywhere otherwise— there isn’t anywhere to go.
Piggy, sorry to be late with this, but I’ve been offline. I hope you had a happy birthday.
Thank you very much! I did. I took the afternoon off and completely reorganized the garage. It was very satisfying, and the little bit of woodworking I do will be so much easier and smoother now.
Happy Towel Day to the universe! This year I’m just a few feet from where ALL my towels are.
Happy Towel Day to you too! We celebrated by, er, watching some of Return of the King. I presume Douglas Adams wouldn’t be too offended.
Hello! I am a CBer so I decided to check out MB, but it appears to me as if it’s not very active….?
Things are quiet here nowadays, but we’re still around. When old-time MBers happen by, we direct them to other sites where veterans of the blog hang out. Many of them are still in touch.
What is this CB whereof you speak?
The Chatterbox from Cricket. Basically we just talk about books, writing, art and musicals.
I remember the Chatterbox! I’m glad to hear that it’s thriving. Books, writing, art, and musicals are some of my favorite topics.
Museblog was most active between 2005 and 2015. The participants were fans of the original Muse, the one that featured Larry Gonick’s cartoon Muses. Most of them are in their 20s now, and a few are in their early 30s. You can read some of the threads they created, but most of the blog is now password-protected.
An also, for some reason the smileys and tricks page here doesn’t work.
Really? Not even or or ? How disappointing.
Hey all! It’s sure been a minute. I was talking about MB with another ex-Muser this afternoon and thought I’d stop over and check how things have been here, and how everything has landed.
I hear “extremely online” people talk a lot about forums like this, where we went when we were kids. As far as I can tell, our stories are pretty similar: we discovered them almost by accident, we made our first and best online friends there, and then one by one, people started drifting away; and eventually we drifted away, too, and found other sites and eventually social media, and grew up.
I do think MuseBlog was something special, though, and is something special, not least because I’m still friends with at least three people I met on here. I still consider MuseBlog to be the place where I learned how to be a person, and especially to be a person around other people. Being thirteen is an inherently kind of solipsistic condition, I think, and there are so many “weird kids” out there who never really have an opportunity to find their way out of that solipsism – who find conversation and middle-school politics for whatever reason an intolerable obstacle, who find articulating themselves to other people to be a goal so far out of reach that it’s not worth bothering to try.
I think all kids’ forums help with this; it’s easier for a lot of kids to write things down than to use other forms of communication, and it certainly was for me. But what I remember about MuseBlog, and what I hold onto from MuseBlog in my adult life, was that it felt less organized around a certain book or movie, or a certain activity, than a certain set of values. Like – that anything worth doing was worth doing thoughtfully; that other people were infinitely variable in their interests and knowledge, and worth paying attention to, and worth caring about; that above all, curiosity was a virtue, not because it made you smart, but because it made you kind.
I’m doing okay these days, myself; I live in New York (I haven’t been affected too badly by COVID-19, luckily, I only know a couple people who’ve gotten it and my antibody test came back negative), and I have a good day job and good friends, and! I’m a published fiction writer! – okay, it’s two stories, but there’ll be more, if I have anything to say about it, and books, too. I want to write kid’s books. I always say to myself, I want to write the kind of book I would’ve liked to read when I was a kid. What I think I mean, though, is that I want to write the kind of book we would’ve liked to read, the kids on here, the kind of book that would’ve made us laugh or given us some escapism or made us happy. I think that’s something worth doing.
Anyway: thanks to all the GAPAs, and to everyone who’s still here. I hope you guys are doing really well.
Nice to hear from you, and glad to know you’re thriving.
I can’t speak for the other GAPAs, but Kingswinford still exists. Blighty is in its usual chaotic mess, but we still have tea and castles.
Hi, everyone! I was talking to my friend about telling stories with people as teenagers, and I got really nostalgic for this place and decided to come do a postcard from the future.
I graduated a year ago now, from Knox College with a degree in Creative Writing. I haven’t really gotten settled in the adult world, and haven’t made much progress toward it since pandemic kicked off, but I’m surrounded by very good people, so that’s been a comfort.
I don’t know what else to update on! There’s so much overall and so little right now that it’s weird. So I guess I’ll move on to the part where I say I was thinking about how good this community was for me as a teenager, just having this place full of kind, thoughtful people doing their best and being silly and being so, so sincere about everything. I love the memories of the stories we told and I still adore authors I picked up recommendations for here and I just genuinely believe I was better off for being in this place as long as I was.
I’d love an invite to the Slack group, or direction to whatever other spaces are out there – I miss you guys!
Greetings!
It’s good to know you’re thriving. Don’t worry about adulting. Musers rarely settle fully into adulthood. We have too many crazy ideas.
If the email address that is stored in the Secret Museblog Vaults is still current, I can squirt you a Slack invitation. If Robert doesn’t beat me to it.
39- Thanks! I do have hope for my future of Being an Adult but you’re right that I shouldn’t worry too much, yet!
And yes, that sounds lovely! That email should, indeed, still be current, if it’s the one I’m thinking of
Your invitation has been sent. Prod us if it fails to materialise.
Hi! I was just thinking of this place in a fit of nostalgia – it’s been many years, but I decided to see who was still around. Glad to see that there are still people checking in periodically, and it seems like maybe more often on Slack or another platform? Hope everyone is keeping safe amidst everything.
Hail, Bookworm!
Hey all. It’s been a hot minute. I’m sort of here by happenstance, having accidentally clicked on the MB link that’s still in my bookmarks bar, but I’m glad for it. It’s touching to see this main thread acting as a guest book of sorts for us as we think back and wander in. I don’t know that I was ever an active enough poster to really have a presence here—I remember replying to a lot of posts but rarely posting my own—so I’m not sure how interested anyone will be in an update, but I’m now 26, four years out of college and into a job in book publishing in NYC. I love the work and hate the super-low salary and expectation of working unpaid overtime, and equally hate the response that usually elicits of “but you’re doing work you love!” I do love it, but I would like to be fairly compensated for my labor. Still, it’s cool and great to get to work with books and words and stories professionally and I feel very lucky to be here.
I’m holding up okay during COVID. I’ve stayed in Brooklyn rather than going home to NC because I didn’t want to get stuck at my parents’ house for endless months, and because my girlfriend is only about a 20 minute bike ride from me here. We’ve been together for about a year and a half, and she’s wonderful and it’s teaching me a lot about how to be a person in a healthy adult relationship. I see her mostly on weekends. My roommate left to go be with family in March and hasn’t come back yet, so my weekdays have been spent largely alone. I’m grateful to have a lot of solo and indoor hobbies, but I’m missing people a great deal. I’ve always thought of myself as more of an introvert who happens to like people, but now I wonder if I’m really more of a socially anxious extrovert who just needs some solo downtime. I guess it’s a pretty false dichotomy between the two anyway.
I know I’m on the Kokonspiracy Slack page but I always forget to check it—maybe I’ll pop in later after my workday ends. Just wanted to leave a a note saying hi and more importantly how much I still think of you all. MuseBlog was really foundational to me as a teen, and you all broadened my world and bettered my life. This was the first place I came out and the first way I was able to connect with people all over the globe, with all different experiences and worldviews and lives. Thank you for that, and all my love.
We are delighted to see you, Tesseract, now and always.
Aw, thanks. True to form I 100% forgot to check the Slack but I have now done so and see that I have about a year of messages to catch up on. Overwhelming! Oops!
Hi, Tesseract! I had a dream last night that I met you. There were a number of MBers at some kind of hotel or convention somewhere or other…. Anyway, most of the time we were there, no one recognized me, and I just kind of watched, but as everyone was getting ready to leave, I decide to introduce myself to you. I thought we had met somewhere once already, but you didn’t remember that. Then I woke up. Not much of a dream, really, but it’s been a while since I dreamed about MuseBlog! I’m glad you’re hanging in there.
Piggy! I was thinking about you the other day. Nice to run into you in dreamspace, haha. Glad you’re hanging in there too
Hi guys! Me and Rosebud2 just reconnected on a Lemon Demon fan chat and I thought I should drop in.
I’m 22 rn and got my bachelor’s degree in technical theater last year, mostly lighting but I’ve done bits of set construction and stage managing. I work at a small theater and have designed a few shows I’m pretty happy with! Unfortunately theaters are closed due to COVID-19, so I’m working in retail and living with my family for the time being. I still play keyboard and ukulele a bit and I still love Doctor Who and H2G2! We also have a cat now, Zoe (named after Washburne). I’m really into baking, sewing masks, and Adam Ruins Everything as of late.
Being on MB during difficult years seriously meant a lot to me. We were really all just on here posting age-inappropriate XKCD comics and confessing to life struggles way above the GAPAs’ pay grade and trying to doxx ourselves to plan Kokons and they just had to deal with it, you guys basically raised me from ages 11-13. I’m super grateful and happy to be able to check in on everyone and I’d be interested in joining the Slack if I can 👀
Hi, R*S! Good to see you! It was a pleasure and a privilege to know you in your tweens and early teens, and I look forward to hearing more about what you are doing nowadays.
Happy birthmonth, Choklit Orange, Catwings, Juliette, TMFA, Castle, Sweet Melpomene, Zinc, and Bookworm, wherever you are!
Hey, the ‘Blog is back! It was invisible for a while, at least on my computer. Maybe it came into contact with someone with covid and had to self-quarantine for two weeks. Happy October, everyone! Who’s picked out their costume for the Halloween Ball?
A software upgrade left its various components unable to talk with one another. They’re *mostly* better now.
So… happy birthmonth, Gimanator (9th), Ebeth (12th), Paul (13th), and Kagcomix (16th)! And happy 11K Day to Sweet Melpomene on the 29th.
Hi everyone! I hadn’t been back here in probably a couple years but Robert mentioned getting it working again on the slack and I see there’s lots of wonderful long updates!
Happy Hagfish Day! In case you’ve forgotten how to celebrate, here’s a reminder:
http://whaletimes.org/?page_id=171
Happy birthmonth to Anne, Cinnamoon, Clara, Enceladus, Fireh, Kiwimuncher, and Kyra!
I’ve joined the covid club! *fireworks and confetti* We don’t have it too bad, fortunately, and I’ve been working from home since March, so there’s not too much disruption to my daily life. I had a fever for three or four days, though that’s mostly gone today. The strangest thing is the loss of smell and taste. I can still taste some things, but only faintly–it’s like everything is watered down, almost translucent. My smell is mostly gone, though. We opened a new package of diapers yesterday, and apparently they smelled overwhelmingly like baby powder, but I had no idea until my wife commented on it. It’s very strange! I had some bourbon last night, too. I couldn’t smell anything at all, and I could barely taste it–I could taste that it was some sort of corn whiskey, but it just seemed like watered down moonshine. But our symptoms are relatively mild, and we’re not particularly high-risk for complications. It did hit us at a bad time, though–my sister and her family are coming up from Texas on Saturday to visit for a few weeks, and we’ll be stuck in quarantine for most of it. I told her to come visit us from across our lawn or something, at least. We were supposed to have our son’s first birthday party on Sunday as well, but I guess that’ll have to be postponed a bit. He has no idea what strange times he’s growing up in…. Well, he can still have a cake, and we already got his presents, so we can still have a little party on the proper day.
Anyway, here’s a few haiku from Basho for the season, as translated by Sam Hamill:
Autumn approaches
and the heart begins to dream
of four-tatami rooms
Already sorrowful,
now you add loneliness too,
old autumn temple
Weary of travel,
how many days like this?
The winds of autumn
All along this road
not a single soul–only
autumn evening
Piggy,
Best wishes for a speedy recovery! I hope your senses of smell and taste have returned quickly (perhaps you can write a few haiku about that experience) and that you will all avoid long-term repercussions. Please send further reports.
One of my nieces had Covid in August. Temporarily losing smell and taste was her only symptom. What a weird bug this is.
(Sorry that it has taken me so long to reply. The most recent software upgrade here seems to have disabled some of my moderating powers. To post anything at all, I have to log in from my desktop computer, a device I’m seldom in a position to use nowadays.)
Thanks, Robert! We’ve all recovered now, and we got out of quarantine early enough to spend a few days, including Thanksgiving, with my sister’s family. My sense of taste came back after about a week, as did my sense of smell, although I think that’s still a bit muted. We aren’t getting out of breath anymore, either, which for me was the scariest part of the illness. I would just walk up the stairs from the basement at lunchtime and pick my son up, and I’d be winded, panting to get my breath again. I’m very glad that’s not happening anymore. Our fevers stuck around for about two straight weeks, which was the most frustrating part of quarantine–towards the end, we felt perfectly fine otherwise, but just couldn’t shake the fevers. My wife was starting to go crazy, cooped up inside the house for so long–she’s very much the extrovert. For me, it really wasn’t much of a change from normal–I’ve already been working from home, and I don’t tend to get out much apart from that anyway, so it was mostly business as usual.
I think it did give both of us a better appreciation and empathy for the homebound, especially the elderly. When you can’t really leave the house, and you’re depending on other people to help with groceries and such, you do start to worry about and pay much more attention to things that would otherwise seem inconsequential. That’s one of the hardest parts of helping elderly relatives or neighbors, or people in nursing homes–they seem to get so fixated and anxious about little things, like what time someone is coming over, or whether the garbage has been picked up yet, or any other little thing other people would pay no attention to. But I remember a few weeks ago, when we were expecting my parents to bring us a few groceries, I had to fight the urge to keep texting them to ask if they were still coming over, whether they were on their way yet, what time they would be here. I knew they were coming and that they wouldn’t just fall through on us, but when you don’t have any control over things like that, it’s hard just to let them happen how they happen. So I think it will be a little easier to be patient about that.
But life is back to normal now, or as normal as it’s been this year. I hung up Christmas lights on Saturday, before the temperature plummeted on Sunday. And I picked up an oil painting off Nextdoor for ten bucks, of a bouquet of sunflowers, in the style of Monet. It’s really beautiful! About three feet wide, maybe two and a half high, and judging by the canvas, probably eighty or a hundred years old. There’s a few little tears in the canvas which I think we can repair well enough. The frame cuts off half of the signature, so we don’t know who painted it, but it’s beautiful. My wife’s the painter, not me, so I think I’ll let her cut out some patches of canvas and glue them on, and then it can be proudly displayed above the couch–surely the highest place of honor for such a masterpiece.
Ahoy-hoy!
I found MuseBlog at 15, and it was how I knew that “It gets better.” Not necessarily just re:homophobia, though I did out as bi here before anywhere else, but better for people generally with curiosity and passion. I’m 28 now and still love you all, thanks for so much.
I’ve been living in Brooklyn the past few years, working as a “research scientist” at a fine art studio & publisher. I’m proud to say some of the work I made as a “ghost artist” is in museum permanent collections, and I really loved getting access to actual experts in materials science. On the other hand my experiences with artists were very mixed, and the art world in general is filled with capricious personalities. Interacting with millionaire and billionaire collectors was certainly radicalizing! My partner, A, was also having a bad time working at a large non-profit, so we were primed to leave NYC- then the first wave of the novel coronavirus hit our neighborhood especially hard. Anxiety, depression, and anorexia were weighing heavily, plus I kept getting peppersprayed by cops. So we left NYC, and now A & I are holed up in a cabin high in the Front Range. We’re got a few months to figure out where to go next…
I’ve been up to some other fun stuff too! I apprenticed at an Olympic/America’s Cup sailing center and spent thousands of miles offshore, I got certified as a pyrotechnician to learn how to design firework shows, and I’ve picked up a decent bit of glassblowing skill.
See you on Slack?
As has become traditional, I missed my MuseBlog anniversary yesterday. Fourteen years I’ve been here! A small lifetime!
Pies to you!
Wow, thank goodness for the list of “who’s here” so I could remember my old username.
As others have said, this was such a safe online world compared to everything else out there, and for a weird kid in New Zealand it was pretty cool to have a weird little network of people from a magazine I picked up in the library once, I’m very grateful for the time that was put into it.
I have a funny story about MB which I don’t think I ever shared here so I will now (it’s been over ten years so I think the person in question will forgive me) – I think I stopped coming on this blog my first year of high school which was also the year an American girl started at my school. Having seen someone on here say they were moving to NZ from NJ, I went up to her and asked if “hot pink bunnies” meant anything to her. Clearly mortified, she said she had no idea what I was talking about, and later came up to me and told me she did know, but not to tell anybody ever. We were in wildly different social groups for the rest of our school years, but did end up at a science camp (oof…) together as the only two from our school, and spent the entire night talking about MB, and the world and our lives – and then going back to pretending we didn’t know each other at school. I was always slightly bemused at the whole situation, but now looking at the “who’s here” list, which is not that big, I really can’t believe two of us ended up at the same school, in a tiny city at the bottom of the world?!
Anyway, to leave an update like everyone else has, after living overseas for a few years I’ve recently come back to work in NZ, where I feel very grateful to be given what 2020 has thrown at us all. I hope everyone is doing well, it’s hard to believe I even recognise some of these usernames!
I would love to be added to the slack group, if it’s around still!
Welcome back, Elwing! What a wonderful, improbable story.
An invitation to the Slack group is on its way.
I find it deeply and beautifully ironic that I was just introduced to Slack last week, as our colleagues now use it for quick communication at the Virtual Campus. And now I learn there’s an MB Slack channel. I erupted from the Internet Void at just the right time, it seems.
I can’t even remember the last time I checked the site, and it’s amazing to see it is still alive. It’s been almost exactly 15 years since my first post here. I’m now 27, and thinking back to when I was 12 and first joining the blog feels like a lifetime ago. This place was my first introduction to online communities, and having been involved in so many others since, and taken on the role of moderator in some of them, it makes me appreciate more and more with time the amazing job the GAPAs did as stewards of the community here. I cringe a bit thinking back and remembering how I acted at times, but I suppose that is part of growing up.
If the Slack group is still active, I’d love to be added as well, and catch up more with how everyone is doing nowadays.
The Slack group has also been quiet lately, but it is still ticking along and can flare into activity at any time. I’ve just sent you an invitation.
Just found this site, and I’m legitimately sobbing right now. So many memories have come flooding back – it’s been nearly 10 years since I last touched Muse, but the memories have shaped me so heavily it’s insane. Just remembered it, and immediately slipped into a pool of nostalgia.
May the Muses continue to inspire you in your life.
Thank you, Iris! And may the Muses always be with you as well. Some of the old gang are hanging out on other sites nowadays; I’ll send you an invitation to one of them. Meanwhile, please pardon the tardy reply. I’ve had an unusually large number of IRL things to take care of lately.
Just the occasional check-in to see what’s going on here, and I was surprised I couldn’t find myself in this thread anywhere, I was sure I’d posted in the last 5 years. Guess not.
I don’t know where the drive to visit old internet haunts comes from, but it hit today, on this lazy morning packed in with loads of snow outside (I live in Maine now), the cat wandering around the house bored, and my partner making us pancakes for breakfast. Later on I’ll probably do some crafting, and I’ll check on the tarp over my boat and look forward to sailing it when the weather warms up. But right now this color scheme and this comment box take me right back a shocking amount of years, in the very best way. It almost feels like I could sent a message to my younger self, as though time went both ways here.
Hello, Fiddler! Always good to see you here or anywhere. I see that you did comment in 2018, in a conversation with KaiYves on the previous Random Thread: https://musefanpage.com/blog/?p=16743#comment-498823 .
Hello, Fiddler! If there were a place where we could talk the other way through time, it would be here. Hope you’re doing as well as the boat and the pancakes make it sound.
Which raises the question: if you could talk to your younger self, what would you say?
I’m really not sure. I think I turned out alright despite the lack of advice.
Other than investment recommendations, I think I’d encourage myself to keep it up and spend more energy on the pointless things, the hobbies no one else has, the hours that make memories. I’d tell myself not to keep waiting to find someone else that would bring me happiness, that the joy only grows from within outward, not the other way around. I’d ask myself to put more effort into maintaining friendships, which I’ve always lost through negligence. I’ve never had any falling-outs, but I’ve had many falling-aways. I’d tell myself that I should ask for help, and that there are people who want, really want, to give it. I would urge myself to be humble and accepting of myself, because pride is just coping for shame. I’d try to make myself see how short life is, and that it’s already happening every day.
I’ve definitely thought about this, but I still don’t have a set answer. So many things I could say to try to improve growing up, but how much wisdom needed to be embodied before it could be learned? Wouldn’t it bounce off just like advice from a parent?
So instead, for the moment I’ve settled on: “You’ve got so much to look forward to; the future is SO COOL! *lists major scientific advances and cultural landmarks of the past 15 years*”
Oh, heck. I suppose I’ll finally go to the effort of posting something here. I lurk well enough on the slack, but regularly visit here too to see if we’ve had any of those rare flurries of activity. It marks several years now that I’ve told myself I would post, if for no other reason than to thank Piggy for keeping the place active.
Piggy—I’ve found there to be a kind of austere beauty to your continuing to return amid the rest of the (mostly) empty landscape. In a funny way, I feel as though putting myself back on here punctures the effect, almost like cutting down the tallest tree to count its rings. But, lest I seem dedicated to aesthetics over people: there are many different Goods, and making contact with old friends is surely among the Empyrean.
I thought of you all and this place particularly recently because I just made a stop at the Field museum and felt compelled to pick up a recent kids’ book on dinosaurs (Abby Howard’s Earth Before Us: Dinosaur Empire, for the curious). And then, as a bonus, I watched Fire of Love and was reminded of KaiYves’s museum costume! Too rarely do I pause to marvel at just how incredible the world is. Better for people in my position to foster a touch more perpetual childhood, I think, which is one of the things at which this crowd (has) excelled. (Robert—I still owe you thanks for expressing something similar when we walked together at the zoo!)
In my life over here, I’ve let things grow mundane. I’m not exactly sure what happened to me at the end of my studying music at the conservatory, but it’s plain that reality made itself known and felt: among the select crowd of composers securing a livelihood with a professorship, my current impression is that few have an idea how they ended up there and wandered in blindly. I suppose that would be fine, permitting I was open to the possibility of struggling by other means (teaching little kids, taking a day job, working in ancillary music jobs, &c.), but even that seems discouraging when one’s output is plainly middle-of-the-road at best. Maybe, as seasoned music folk suggested, I wasn’t as ready to sacrifice my standard of living as I thought?
Either way, I let momentum take its toll and found myself working as a paralegal for 3 (!) years. As of less than a month, I’ve finally left that job and have begun preparing for a coding boot camp which will start in a week. It’s hardly what I expected to be doing and the difficulty is more emotional than anything (am I really ready to step away from music more decisively? should I just be studying these things on my own?), but it also provides a welcome sense of direction I certainly didn’t have when I took the last job. Nothing at this point is so final, I tell myself, that there’s not room for additional pivoting down the line (an economics or math degree, perhaps?). In the mean time, merely picking myself up out a nadir is wondrous, and CS is very enjoyable to boot!
Oh, and I’ve grown pretty comfortable with being a trans lady, I suppose! I don’t recall how much I’ve said about that here or elsewhere, so I guess it merits mention. Nearly at… 3 years or so since coming out more widely.
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But enough of my nostalgia and personal blogging. Let’s at least offer a little bit of subject matter:
I recently took a pause from my typical reading itinerary (I’ve a queue I work through, dominated today by philosophy books and remedial math) and read The Life of Samuel Johnson. In recent years I’ve taken the unfortunate position that wide swaths of older lit are of dubious value. Okay, actually, I think I still hold that position. My reasoning was that a lot of work is buried in traps of misguided epistemology and irrelevant detail. Just how worth it is spending my time on prolix misconceptions, much of which would be dismissed prima facie today? So goes the balancing act: material desultorily gathered always has the chance of yielding exceptional insights simply because everyone else has ruled it not worth drudging through. The conservative heuristic, then, is never bother with material not designated exceptional. And… I suppose the prospector’s heuristic is to trudge through as much material off the beaten path as possible, in the hopes of striking it rich.
Life of Johnson straddles the designation—a classic, but enough a curiosity and tome that I wonder if it still sees much attention. It succeeded in making me reconsider my stance, I think mostly by dint of the sheer amount of the time period it captures. Think archaeological records: sometimes the most unexpected inclusions tell us the most because they gesture to the otherwise unrecorded quotidian. For the Life that means seeing how the world of the eighteenth century was constrained by several things, namely the social hierarchy, the postal system, and very decentralized publication (You really think someone would do that? Just publish a book and tell lies?). What a rhythm of life!
At the same time, I spent about six weeks getting to know two very frightful humans (the subject and the author, who has made himself a co-subject, if not the primary one, by routinely focusing on his friendship with Johnson), who were dedicated in varying degrees to sexism, racism, and monarchism. Among my other boring takes, older literature tends to convince me further of how horrid previous times could be and how precious modern developments are.
A worthwhile read? I don’t know. But I’m a little more open now to spending my time on books that manage to inadvertently capture their era, regardless of their content. Any recommendations, denizens?
As you note, the past is not for the faint of heart. But it is where most human beings have lived and died and, in my opinion, is worth exploring for that reason alone.
I’d recommend Mark Twain’s Life on the Mississippi (and not just because my great-great-grandfather Benton Coontz makes a cameo appearance in chapter 56). It may be better known and more deliberately composed than what you are looking for, but it’s absorbing and describes familiar places just long enough ago for them to be dramatically different.
Oh, I can live with deliberately composed! It sounds like an ideal companion for the spare moments in the next three months of 10 hr/day study. Consider it added to the list.
Hello there! Welcome home. Austere beauty is my middle name, which caused me no end of grief in elementary school.
Having barged my unqualified way into a computorial scientific career myself despite a liberally artistic education, I can say that I’m glad I never burdened the frail wings of my philosophy with paychecks and insurance forms. I would feel guilty forcing the responsibility of breadwinning onto a haiku or a sonata. Maybe that’s one path to perpetual youth: let it stay free and unattached to the lower necessities. Your inner child hasn’t gone anywhere, they’ve just been tasked with acting like a grown-up. Maturity is when a creature has reached its fullest stage of life. As for myself, I intend to stay immature until the day I die, growing fuller and fuller all the while. That’s my excuse, at least. If mundanity is a problem, that never means life or the world is too boring; it only means you aren’t looking closely enough. If Thoreau can spend pages writing about the bubbles frozen into the ice on the surface of Walden Pond, maybe we should also lie sprawled out on our stomachs sometimes to see what’s usually under our feet. The cold would wake us up a little, at least.
As far as books, I’d be more excited to find a book that didn’t inadvertently capture its era. It’s a hard thing to avoid doing, and the older the book, the easier it is to detect. Everyone has made all kinds of assumptions without knowing they’ve done it, and it’s hard to hide something you’re not aware of. That’s always an interest of mine: noticing the assumptions. It can even take away some of the sour taste of old books, just knowing that some prejudice or belief may be truly and faultlessly unintentional. Father, forgive them, and all that.
Recommendation-wise, Asimov’s I, Robot comes to mind for some reason. Sci-fi has a tendency of basing its wildest and most fantastical creations on exactly what’s already lying around when it’s written. And with AI getting talked about so much lately, I think it’s a timely book again.
I’m not sure I know the details of your career path these days, Piggy. Would you be open to saying more about it?
On books bound to their era, I suppose that seems expected enough, but I’m a little skeptical. Some books seem too focused on simplicity to make space for the noise of the day. I think of plenty of modernist work as trying to strip all markers out, reducing things to their elements alone (La Peste, say). But maybe I’m just not far enough removed from modernist lit to see my distance from it. Or maybe I just don’t read enough books that have been properly aged!
I do certainly remember Jade’s (I think it was, anyway?) request for recent sci-fi, given how tiring Heinlein’s obvious prejudices had grown. I suppose that suggests sci-fi as an ideal metric for cultural change. Perhaps the units would be Vernes?
I, Robot will be a re-read (one a long time coming!), but certainly a worthy addition. On the list for the next three months it also goes.
It’s about as arbitrary a career path as you could hope for, I guess. After getting a degree in classical languages (mainly Latin), I briefly entered a monastery, worked as a parish secretary for a while, went to a seminary for two years, and then got hired at a local mid-size company pretty much solely thanks the recommendation of some friends of mine who worked there. The interview was pretty much just the owner of the company giving me a tour of the building, deciding how glassy-eyed and clueless I seemed, and then saying, “We’ll figure out something for you to do; what were you thinking as far as a salary?” The company makes equipment for chemical analysis, so I started out doing software testing and unilaterally moved myself into a software engineering sort of position, just teaching myself as I went. I’ve been there five or six years now, and I really enjoy it. This past week I finally got started on a project that’s been on my list for a while now, trying to take a major part of our software that’s been sort of gradually cobbled together over years in one product and rewrite it as something well-designed and cohesive and able to be used in different ways in different products. It’s definitely the largest and most complex thing I’ve written, and it’s kind of exhilarating to have this intricate, multi-layered design in my head and see it come into existence on the screen. Anyway, in the meantime I also got married, had a couple kids, and moved into a 130-year-old farmhouse out in the country, where I now work from home (thanks, pandemic!). I also self-diagnosed and then got officially diagnosed with ADHD and autism, which has given me a huge amount of self-understanding and perspective on the past. Life has been very generous to me.
Now the blanks have been filled in for me! Very glad to hear things have landed so well. The common wisdom that we drift into our jobs half by chance and half by personal connection always seems to have floated in the air—but it’s rather a different thing to experience the impact on one’s own life when it arrives, no?
Did you/the family settle on a name for the farm in the end?
Not officially, no. Privately I’ve been calling it Hackberry Hill, though mainly for purposes of local DNS record configuration; hh
happens to be an unused top-level domain, so I can give the various services I run locally some nice, tidy URLs.