OK, hive mind! What was the thinking of the marketing genius who thought it wise to give my electric wheelchair the product name of Quickie*? It's written in large letters all over the chassis.
*I assume it's pronounced "Quiche".
What about looking into one of these?
I got the updated Covid booster expecting the side effects to be the same or worse than last year's booster, but so far (~48 hrs) I've only had some lingering soreness in my arm, no body ache or fever.
Going to start passing out flyers highlighting the problem of corporate greed on a street full of $1 million dollar houses. BRB.
GodDAMN it, I have covid again.
I'm completely fine, it's just like a mild sore throat and some tiredness, but I had a lot of things planned this week which now I'll have to cancel and/or postpone, and it's just massively annoying and disappointing.
Technically today is my day 5 so according to CDC guidelines I guess I could end quarantine tomorrow but the rapid test I took just now came back with a dark line within like 10 seconds so I think that going out would be irresponsible. I totally deserve to get sick too, it's entirely my own fault and I knew this would happen; I was travelling and where I was (western NY) everyone was white and no one was wearing masks and I felt too self-conscious and afraid of judgment to mask. Of course realistically no one would have cared, and even if they had, so what? Well, I'm paying for my stupidity now.
The meet up was on the 28th. I started to feel sick on October 5, so I'm pretty sure you're in the clear.
Ugh, that sucks. How long ago did you last have it?
It's really not clear to me how big a risk someone who is past 5 days but is still testing positive is. I tried to look into it, but there just didn't seem to be great data, but that was May and maybe they know more now. It really is true that the vast majority of spread when they were doing contact tracing was in those first 5 days, and it sure seems like a lot of people still test positive at 5 days, so they can't all be that contagious then can they? I don't know.
Anyway I don't think it's worth blaming yourself, the only week in the last year when I was careful about masking was also the only week where I caught covid. You can do things to lower your risk, but there's so much randomness that you might have still gotten it even if you did those things.
Got my dose of Covid a few days ago on a work trip. I don't think I really need the Paxlovid, but I'm taking it anyway. Two days ago I shared a cab with someone who is (I suspect) at much higher risk than I am. So far, he's okay.
I've heard that a brighter line means more virus. Mine was neon-bright and almost immediate.
I suppose I could be the vector, except that I never had any symptoms.
Anyway, I'm done with spreading democracy for the day.
Sympathies, jms. I'm 10 or 11 days in and gradually feeling better, but I was going to visit my mom in NM this week and I'm definitely not well enough for that so I cancelled. It's a bummer.
I am having the hardest goddamn time getting Ace's pronouns correct, and I'm genuinely ashamed and embarrassed and would welcome any advice. I can mostly remember when I'm talking to people outside our family, and I can hear it when other people get it wrong (outside the family), and correct them, but somehow inside the house I'm on the most intense autopilot.
I have no problem with other people's pronouns - I've adopted new pronouns for others with no problem. It's clearly the problem is breaking an existing habit in the most habitual of settings. I'm not batting zero, but I'm nowhere near as close to 100 as I'd like to be.
To be more specific, i can't seem to make it instinctive. It takes me a beat, and there's a lot of situations where I don't have a beat to take.
Would it help if I made "zir" happen?
I saw a Spurs billboard that had the little spurs symbol with /self after it, and as best I could figure, they were trying to make a spurself gender joke? I was confused,
Oh, ha, it's a collaboration with Self Financial. Whatever.
I was 75% convinced that I had a mild hit of COVID last week - having been exposed to the same person on Wed and Fri the week previous who tested positive, and then becoming sniffly myself - but several rounds of high-power testing seem to think otherwise, I must just have some cold. Good, I think, but disconcerting.
16: I'm not sure there's any shortcut to rewiring yourself other than the slow diligence you're doing already. It's been about a year and a half since I asked people to change, and at this point basically everyone gets it right all the time, but they were really variable in how long it took. The one person who regularly messes up without realizing is, awkwardly, my boss; he was very apologetic and crestfallen when I brought it up the other day. "I thought I was doing such a good job! I thought you were about to scold someone else!"
How are batting averages for other people in the house? How often does Ace seem to notice?
That makes me feel a little better. I think Rascal is easily the worst. Ace is doing the best - they've gotten way better at catching the rest of us, compared to a few months ago when I don't think Ace actually heard it when we misgendered them. And we all catch each other a lot. I'd say the rest of us are all equally rough. I just kinda thought as a badge of honor, I'd be able to readily adapt and embrace Ace authentically.
To be fair to you, you've been using pronouns for Ace longer than Ace has been using pronouns for Ace.
I remember someone giving the rather silly advice that the trick with they is to imagine that there's a little mouse living in their pocket, and just visualize the mouse when you look at them, voila plural! No idea if this works, but you could try, and at least imagining a little mouse friend is cute and fun.
You can just give people a mouse. They sell them at the store. It's cheaper to buy one if you pretend you're going to feed it to a snake.
If you give a person a mouse, they're going to expect a cookie.
I will try 25! I'm game for little mnemonics.
Of course, lots of women's clothing doesn't have pockets.
I don't know why but having a mouse in a pocket is endearing but having one in a purse is going to look insane.
31: Because meece don't stay in pockets very long, and then hijinks ensue.
I am having the hardest goddamn time getting Ace's pronouns correct, and I'm genuinely ashamed and embarrassed and would welcome any advice.
A family we're close to went through this process about a year ago, with their kid switching to they/them. The mom told me the parents had a lot of conversations with their kid about how they were genuinely trying, but they were going to mess up sometimes because of how long they had used the gendered pronouns. And how that didn't mean they weren't supportive.
I have found it interesting how hard it has been for me to remember this kid's pronouns (we knew them for several years as he/him), in contrast to people I've met who were they/them from the start of our acquaintance.
re: 16 & 33
I have a friend that I've known for almost 40 years--we met in our first year at high school, I used to date their sister, and we played in a band together for years--who transitioned about 15+ years ago. I still can't get it right in my head. We don't physically see each other often, so our interactions are all online, so there haven't been any obvious moments when I've used the wrong pronoun, or the wrong name. But when I think of them, I still think of them first as _previous/dead name_ and then have to correct myself. I think it's hard. There's a very long period of my life when we spent huge amounts of time together when they were N and now they are J. They also look identical, too, so there isn't even an obvious visual clue to reset my thought processes.
In my defence, I don't think it's just around gender/transitioning. I have another friend that I've known even longer (friends since we were babies) who changed his name as an adult. He just didn't like his first name, so he uses a different somewhat related one. I still can't think of him as _new name_.
10: 5 days going out with a high quality kf94 or n95 mask is probably ok even w positive test. I worry about that in healthcare settings we currently let people back with a negative antigen test after 5 days, but after 10 days they let you go back to work regardless of test status. You have to imagine though that there would be a lot of variability. At the extreme end, an immunocompromised person could go a couple months. I believe our immunocompromised staff would have to be PCR neg, but they would have been treated - with a monoclonal in the past and maybe with remdesivir over 3 days now.
Currently using Straussian analysis to manage communication with my doctors.
I met somebody at church who was born female and married to someone who is cis-male. This person gave birth to a daughter. The person identified as non binary with they/their pronouns in their name tag. Recently had top surgery but no testosterone. Really likes singing and doesn't want their voice to change. The name tag now has he/him as well. I heard this person refer to himself as as homosexual, but I know they also think of themselves as non binary. It's actually easier to switch to he/him than to remember to use they/their all the time, but I'm not sure which this person prefers. I'll have to check the name tag next time I see them to see if one was bolded. They have one of those names that are commonly given to both boys and girls (Alex), so I don't think they wanted to change it.
36: This sounds interesting. Does that mean you've decided your doctors have decided you can't handle the truth, so are lying to you, but there is a code hidden in their messages which will allow you to discover the truth, but only if you are clever and brave enough to find it?
38: You're right! I'm sorry! Please don't call the cops on me!
40: I'm wrong! Should be to 39 obviously.
16: How long has it been? I mean, I think a beat is sort of okay if you're not routinely messing up, because it takes time. I've learned that given time, like a year or two, you really do start to forget the old names/pronouns/etc and they stop feeling "natural". Eventually your brain will adjust.
Is Ace upset about this?
Mainly just make sure that you are really, really sitting with the pronoun shift and making sure that you support it emotionally in your own mind as strongly as possible. If you have sad/negative/critical/resentful feelings lurking around, try to work through those and let them go. (I mean, maybe you don't have any; it's just that feelings lurk, you know.)
Also try to avoid the "oooh I know I just can't get it right, look at me trying and failing" mental cycle, since this just reinscribes the old pronouns. It's easy to create a narrative about yourself as someone who just can't make the change and then that narrative takes over.
My dad took a long time to adjust when one of our old family friends transitioned and honestly I think had some resentment around it but he always gets her pronouns and name right now. And he is no spring chicken frolicking in the meadows of woke pronoun use.
IME it's harder to remember a change in pronouns than it is to remember to use the right pronoun. The colleague who has kept the same gendered name but has switched to "they" is tricky; new-to-me students who use "they" present no problems, because my brain isn't trying to overwrite a previous pattern.
I'd tell Ace that you love them, that your brain will mess up the pronoun sometimes even though you support them and it doesn't mean anything, and that they're allowed to correct you (money in a swear jar/pronoun jar)?
So, I'm now traveling where everyone is white and no one is wearing masks except for some of our people. I'm wondering how long people will keep wearing masks or if I'll get covid.
In my defence, I don't think it's just around gender/transitioning.
I still have a very hard time with my friend who became a monk and got a new name, even though it was 25 years ago. But we were intense friends before and now I only see him every several years, so I'm still not entirely caught up. It can be hard.
everyone was white and no one was wearing masks and I felt too self-conscious and afraid of judgment to mask.
I just went through this same thought process in actual northern California* and I'll admit the fact that people in that area headed into coup territory in response to mask rules factored into my decision making. But also I looked up the case rates there and they've been really low as an absolute measure, and since I was traveling alone and doing outdoors things, I didn't spend a lot of time indoors with others. Still going to test in a few days even if I feel ok.
*around Redding, not fake northern California, meaning the Bay Area
My last big out-of-Bay trip pre-pandemic was to a place not as far north as Redding, but more remote, a town of less than 1,000. There was a Fourth of July parade, where I overheard an older woman badgering someone else on why they didn't watch something Trump-associated on TV - possibly the 2019 Salute to America earlier that day.
During the Obama years, there were billboards on I-5 in that area that just read: "Where's the birth certificate?" I don't know if Obama noticed.
Where I was I saw a few "Let's Go Brandon" lawn signs, which was disquieting because I'm so used to inhabiting a smug blue bubble. But the most numerous sign, by a wide margin, was "Re-Elect Allen Diggs 2022." I had to look it up.
49: I had to look up Allen Diggs too, and it took me a while to sort of understand. I guess it's not as odd Bernie Kosar for President t-shirts.
How many of those Allen-Diggs Bills become Laws, though?
49: On a back road to a kayaking place yesterday was met with one place with a very large and well-made wooden signs reading "God, Guns and Trump" and "Jesus is my Savior, Trump is my President." It was right before the turnoff to the even smaller road to the somewhat obscure launch point which had a semi-official looking sign (painted metal) that read "Your GPS is wrong this is not an entrance to [Rec Area]." And at the end of that road where a narrow but well-graveled road led down to the water and a place to launch (no ramp or other improvements but a gravel parking lot and official ACE signage) another small metal sign that read something like "Does not lead to any [Rec Area] beach, dock or boat ramp." We persevered but I did entertain some thoughts about how vigorously I was willing to assert my rights to use an Army Corps of Engineers Recreation facility. Saw no one on the lake and had a nice paddle. Packing up, a man and a woman showed up and asked if we had seen the eagles (yes). He related that the road had only recently been made passable again (the gravel was pretty fresh) so the signs were likely a good faith attempt to dissuade folks (at least originally). But maybe I should have played golf instead.
On the way out on a different back road, saw an extremely large "Fuck Joe Biden" sign in someone's front yard.
Had some "smart home" technological follies last night. Was binging Bad Sisters with my wife and daughter when the stream gave out on our TV. Still seemed to working on the web and in the course of trying to get Apple play to display on the TV from the phone my daughter noticed some device she did not recognize. So yes, we did briefly have the audio for "Bad Sisters" coming out of my "smart" thermostat (which I had heretofore used only in normal dumb ways).
||NMM to the prosecution of Adnan Syed.|>
NMM to Art Laboe. This is going to be a tough one for California's incarcerated people and those who love them.