I had 2 days off, I was going to leave the house and go do ...something.. I did not.

Now dinner is almost ready and I really don't want to eat it. M made stew in the crock pot and it should be ok but it tasted funny.. not bad just some off seasoning and then he added some things and it tasted not like that but weird. Almost sweet.

Because he added honey to it. And I want to add some hot sauce to try and balance it out but he said he doesn't want to because his mom doesn't like anything hot. And really the only thing it tastes like this point is kind of muddy umami sweet flavor.

Hey there, hello, howdy, hi. Long time, little check in. I spend too much time on FB and IG...need rehab from Reels.

I'm looking forward to the opportunity to spit on Covid. I've only had one test so far, self-administered even, and I do not look forward to that again.

There are adults in America who have not served on a jury? I get my notice every two years + two days, on. the. dot. My strategy is to carry a copy of Colin Tipping's "Radical Forgiveness." It works almost every time.

I'm happy to report myself safe from the MASSIVE wingnut rally at the Capitol that turned out to be smaller than the average queue outside the opening of a new donut shop on the Hill.

The most exciting thing coming up is my plan to rent a movie theatre for the opening of Dune. It's the one thing I've been most enthusiastic about in ages.

Aaaand, it's my national Please Throw an Entrepreneur a Bone season. The last day, in fact. Please check Beep Me if you'd be willing to spend 15 seconds helping me reach people who need my brand of support. Cheers.

askye, put hot sauce in your bowl, or transfer some to a pot and season it until you like it.

Timelies all!

Other than buying groceries for the week I haven't done much today.

I got a negative test result from a rapid PCR test I had to take today to be on a production site on Monday. Kristin and I are still waiting on the results from the test we did on Thursday afternoon.

It's so frustrating. There is so much data showing that tests that take more than 24 hours are really not useful.

I slept the morning away after a very frazzling Friday workload, then worked all afternoon today. Upside is I've finished everything I really have to get done before Monday, so I can enjoy the rest of the weekend if I want instead of working ahead. I predict tomorrow is going to be a VERY lazy Sunday.

Yay lazy Sunday Matt. Go you with the not procrastinating like I would!

I’m bored. And there’s nothing going on. And I’m not feeling interested in tv or super into the books I’ve got. Took the dog to the dog park. I believe David’s word is “futless”

I had TMI issues this morning that pretty much killed any prospects of productivity or fun stuff today. We even had to cancel pickleball lessons, boo. Feeling much, much better now, but bummer.

Still have lunch with friends tomorrow, though, so that should pull the weekend out of the dumpster.

Knitters and Crocheters - I am trying trying trying to get back into knitting and my brother is doing some fundraising Knit and crochet - alongs starting in a few weeks. If anyone is interested, I am rlboston on Ravelry. The group is End Aids KAL/CAL. I can get you linked up then to his Instagram that has videos explaining the plans.

Boo TMI issues and plan-canceling! But yay feeling better and the prospect of visiting with friends.

beekaytee, I've already voted for you, and also gotten regular jury duty calls. Usually twice a year, because I get one in my married name and another in my birth name (I'm still registered to vote as JZ, not JS, and I don't really want to change it because I like still having an excuse to sign that name every now and then). The most recent time was a few months ago, but I totally forgot it due to family stuff and never checked in even once (in SF, you call a potential juror hotline once a day for 5 days in a row to see if you're supposed to come in and sit in the call room, and if you get called in one day but don't get chosen or never get called in at all you're off the hook for the next year, or the next 6 months if you're me). I'm pretty sure that if they'd actually called me in and I'd failed to show I would've been pinged by now about failure to show, so I assume I'm free for another few months.

The weekend thus far: Visited my oldest friend for coffee and conversation, which ended in a lot of tears because her sprog, just about a year younger than Matilda, is not only brilliant and beautiful but neurodivergent with multiple other complicating factors and the entire family is stretched to the brink of snapping. I'm deeply angry at whatever roll of the cosmic/genetic dice landed them all here, because they're all such good people and deserve infinitely less struggle, but of course nothing on this stupid plane of existence has much of anything to do with what anyone deserves.

Then visited with my mom, who was in town for her 60th high school reunion, which was much less stressful and sad. She and Matilda enjoy each other so ridiculously much. And we got to hear the story of how she managed to graduate from high school with the help of her math tutor, a dreamy college boy from the neighborhood who on tutoring days would come roaring up to the parking lot of her Catholic girls' high school on his motorcycle, tell her chubby dorky self to wrap her arms tight around his waist, and then zoom off with her leaving all her classmates in a jealous swoon. Her social capital quadrupled that year!

Hec has requested that I report my workday faffing-around activities from earlier this week, when I was working remotely from the campus library. On Wednesday I was walking to one of the carrels on the third floor near the emergency medicine historical documents section, and passed the 1940 Selective Service recruitment standards handbook, Volume 6: Physical Standards. So, as one does (provided one is Plei or channeling her), I plucked it up and spent most of the afternoon skimming through it to see whether I could figure out where Steve Rogers might have been marked 4-F.

My conclusions: surely underweight, chest likely too narrow, possibly asthma, remotely possibly scurvy or some other dietary deficiency adversely affecting endurance and muscle development.

It was really a pretty interesting read, including not only the specific qualifiers and disqualifiers but, for some areas, long sections on how to catch malingerers--usually healthy dudes trying to avoid service would fake eye or ear problems, so the handbook offered specific tests relying on responses to stimuli that *will* happen with genuine deficits but seem totally counterintuitive so fakers would absolutely miss them. But there was also an appendix listing all the medications that could be taken off-license to fake everything from anemia to epilepsy, as well as anecdotes about people pouring condensed milk on their penises to fake STDs and the like.

Also also, there were counter-malingerers, people exactly like Steve Rogers who knew they were 4-F and lied about it, and how to spot when someone was lying about TB or asthma or COPD. Most of the counter-malingerers were assumed to be doing it "from patriotic motives," but the handbook also noted that some of them were doing it in hopes of getting someone to diagnose them during boot camp so they could get an honorable discharge and affordable medical care. Because that has clearly always been an issue in this stupid country.

There were also absolutely weird distinctions--you could still qualify for some kind of military service if you'd lost three fingers on one hand but not four, or if you'd lost one thumb but not both; you still qualified if you had any STD except syphilis; you still qualified if you wet your bed a little, but not a lot; you still qualified if you had mild or moderate scurvy, but not severe; Addison's disease was an automatic 4-F. Which made me run to Google, where I discovered that JFK wasn't diagnosed until 1947; what would've happened if some alert MD had put all the pieces together before he enlisted? No military career, no Profiles In Courage, no war-hero best-selling-author shine all over him; his dad certainly had the money and the influence to push one of his kids into national prominence no matter what, but would it always have been Jack? What other ways might it have gone if it had been another sib, or if it had still been him but later?

Also, being gay was a definite instant 4-F, but it was notable among all the other 4-Fs in having no explanatory note at all. Most of them had appendices explaining why this disqualified someone, why the recruiter would have to say no, but in 1940 being gay was not just taboo, but so taboo that it was listed only as "Sexual perversion," with no explanatory note at all. Not even a warning about malingerers. It was so taboo at the time that it never entered any recruiter's mind that anyone would claim it if it weren't so (a blind spot which the Vietnam generation would take full advantage of a quarter century later).

Anyhow, it was a totally unproductive but thoroughly satisfying work afternoon, and Hec insisted I share it here because of Steve Rogers.