Monday

I got up early on my day off to get the window repaired. Moved my bed, chased the dog out, settled in downstairs so they’d be able to work. But they left minutes after they arrived without fixing the window. They don’t have what they need. Friday, they tell me, is the soonest they can be back. I have a backup appointment for Wednesday with another company, but this is really starting to be a problem. I can’t keep clearing my schedule for someone to show up for 2 minutes and not so any work.

It’s time for episode 2 of Important Things with Demetri (M)artin. I’ve been waiting impatiently for it all week. I’m not sure what to expect but based on the first one and some previews from earlier this year I’m excited to find out.

Accomplished actual work at robots today with BC. I think we’ve got a plan for the basic motion. And we have already written most of the components necessary to drive them. Hopefully on Friday I can get the USB camera working and map this year’s targets into the Vuforia config, so that BC can start drive code on Saturday. Or perhaps I should find a minute to do that mapping before Friday. But it’s still my weekend until Wednesday so definitely not until then.

S is still worried about the meeting, but he can at least acknowledge that other people aren’t and so maybe it will be okay. Which is good because his anxiety was starting to get on me — yesterday I had to talk myself back into believing I can apply the appropriate amount of guilt to people using a sign up clipboard and the power of my dissatisfaction with the concept of hierarchical human organization. Which obviously I can, or even if I can’t I’m utterly uninvested in the outcome.

B is thinking about adopting they/them pronouns and it has Shanda worried. It’s not the content of the change so much as the concept of any change in social identity. She says it’s the same feelings she has about names which means it’s hard in some way that she hasn’t been able to communicate precisely, but has something to do with being imperfect and the implications that making any change has on the concept of perfection. But she liked my name change, so I offered to change my pronouns for practice. My main feeling about gender identity is that I’d like to opt out of expressing a specific one, just like most other supposedly mandatory identities. Opting out is often a good plan if you’re trying to minimize your social visibility, but I doubt that’s true here. I could be convinced that being aggressively gender noncompliant is a way to be a particular kind of invisible, but I’m not sure what I’d do with that power so I’m not willing to put much effort into it. I mean, not unless someone is offering a cool wardrobe.

Sometimes when I feel like these aren’t long enough I’m tempted to understand it as my life not being full enough. But busy is a bad proxy for full, and I had a nice day with robots and the dog and a new strain of weed. And tomorrow Shanda is taking time off so we can lounge together. And that feels full enough.

ZiB