Sturdy machines glide through the water

Posted on by Liz

Swimming last week 3 times a day at the hot springs place in Calistoga really got me going. I did (slow) laps in the olympic size hot springs pool, with that feeling that if my ankles and knees would stay strong I could keep swimming forever. Also I realized that because I can really swim again instead of just slowly walking around or doing stretches, the water doesn’t have to be body heat warm, maybe.

Monday I did nearly 1000 yards (a kiloyard? what is this in meters? shall i switch my fitbit to meters???) and then later felt like i was gonna die from the ankles upwards. Today I cooled my jets a little and swam 750 yards. Headphones in, waterproofed ipod shuffle clipped to my beefcake unisex bathing suit strap, feeling like a tireless otter! Trembling afterward. Noodly limbed. Felt fantastic.

I got the KT train slooooowwwwwly going up Ocean Avenue, got out at Castro, and had a burger at Orphan Andys. The naked faerie dudes were out in full force today in jane warner plaza (I have missed them) but then I saw cops pull up 🙁 So wrong… it’s our culture! Get out of the Castro if you don’t want to see some old tanning-bed-leathery guy’s junk hanging out! Have a little respect ffs!!! Annnyway I had to work (yes i worked while having a burger I had so much shit to do!!)

Then I went to Cliffs to get a diamond tipped drill bit so I can drill through the cute but deadly for the root-rot flowerpots which lack a drainage hole. And some cracked mugs that I put succulents into. But… what is this…. in the cliffs window! A hat shaped like a happy narwhal?????!!!!! I tried it on. Then a whale hat. Fun but not quite … somehow not satisfying… I looked up and BEHOLD there it was…. heavens opening and light pouring down like the gayest thing you have ever seen …. at the top of the spinning hat rack – A giant flamingo hat. Well made too with a poseable wire neck & beak, and feathery-furred wings that are flappable. Even before I got the nice bear dude who works there to get it down for me I was belly laughing uncontrollably at how this was going to roll. And yes. It was magnificent. Best thing ever. Bear clerk goes “And you know what else *wink* Inside… inside the hat… it has a SECRET POCKET!” Oh what. Someone saw into my very soul. I mean what could be better. Maybe if it were reversible and the other side was a giant satin vulva I guess. Secret pocket, good enough! “Shall I just cut that tag off for you as I think you may be wearing this out of the store?” “Why yes, ” *hysterical doubling over laughing with tears in my eyes* “Yes please! OMFG I’m never taking this hat off again!” The head and neck of the flamingo are well balanced and you can feel the weight of it bobbing gently.

Bus driver, mouth open: “What… ok now what kind of swan is that you have on your head ma’am” “A swan of ULTIMATE DIGNITY!” “It is that. Well don’t let it fly while it’s on my bus” “I just got it, across the street! What’s gonna happen, someone might stare at me, right?” *bus driver finally loses it and cracks a smile*

most people: (refusing to make eye contact because i am probably a big ol douchebag (true))

a few, good people, kindred spirits: *eyes light up and face splits into a huge grin!!!!!*

I love this hat!

flamingo hat animated

Please please let me not fuck up my legs in some mysterious screwed up way and let me keep swimming and get my legs stronger. I haven’t felt this good since 2011.

Swimming with my Camaro

Posted on by Liz

When I went to leave the house this afternoon there was a crew of guys pulling (fiber) cable under the sidewalk. I had been listening to them out the window for a while as I was working, and there was clearly one guy who was the big joker, though I couldn’t hear what he was saying most of the time he was bossing the other guys around and teasing them too. Anyway, I explained I had to open the garage door for my wheelchair, they moved their stuff to one side, then the joker started in once they could see into the garage as I had 3 wheelchairs visible (actually 5 in there or more? but 3 of them obvious and ready to go…) He was like Oh, three of them, your Mustang, your Camaro, your BMW… I told him the one I was in is the Camaro because it goes the fastest. I think we were flirting? In Spanish? In any case I like being indulgently joked with by kind workmen in hard hats. It helps fulfill my lifelong wish of being a character in Richard Scarry’s Busy Busy World (I am obviously Bugdozer). Then I had the song “Bitchin’ Camaro” stuck in my head for the next half hour. Also, excited we are getting FIBER!!!!

It was pretty quick getting to Balboa Park station on the J. There were California poppies growing on the train tracks between Bernal and Glen Park. I mentioned before how the Balboa station strikes me as not being FOR people; it is for trains, and the train-ness is built around cars, as it is right next to the 280 highway in a little maze of on and offramps. At least it isn’t smack in the middle of the highway. But it is so full of fences, walls, spikey metal things, giant ramps and tracks and stairways. It is a confusing building inside and out. One thing to note if you are a wheelchair user – The accessible platform for getting OFF the J is nearly but not quite inside the station — in the trainyard itself and leading right to the interior of the station. But the platform for boarding the inbound J train is on the other side of the building.

Balboa Park itself is just lovely! All the flowers are blooming. Landscaping particularly nice. The skatepark was empty & the door was open. You know what that means!!!!!! Yes I went in and tried all the ramps. It would be REALLY fun to go with my manual wheelchair! The powerchair is less satisfying because it doesn’t go faster downhill (it stays throttled). Surely somewhere there are awesome sport powerchairs or someday…. WHILL will let folks custom program the motor controllers with more interesting options. (Or I will have another one someday and be able to hack around on it with impunity.) Feeling very pleased with myself for marauding around the skatepark…. like in reality I know it just looks a bit silly but IN MY MIND i’m aaron fucking fotheringham out there! No lie!!! Sadly there was no way to photograph this…. But here’s me smirking about it, just afterwards.

balboa park

I am trying to look up who made the sign. Maybe it says somewhere in the park. My prime suspect is Victor Zaballa who does a lot of public art and metalwork around town (he made the paper cutout (papel picado) railings at 16th and Mission). I can spot his work sometimes now, and also William Mitchell’s.

Instead of immediately going to swim, I trundled down past the park to Red Sea Pizza & Mkt, conveniently also a pokestop and Ingress portal. I had marked it down on the map along with Pineapples as a Balboa station thing to do. The yelp reviews didn’t lie — this is great pizza! 4 bucks a slice, and i got a fucking giant, fabulous piece of pizza covered with garlic and olives and 2 kinds of pepperoni. The crust was perfectly crispy. They have some sort of crust miracle going. How is that?!!!! I sat outside at their tiny tables to watch people go by someone catcalled me from a car. I looked up from my pizza & it was a tiny woman a little older than me screeching out her car window “LET’S HEAR IT FOR PURPLE HAIRED LADIES!!!” Her hair was a rich deep purple. “PURPLE SISTERRRRR!” I screamed back. We did thumbs up at each other and giggled and then it was a little awkward because the light didn’t change and we didn’t know what to do next except continue giggling. Let’s hear it for being catcalled by cute silly haired women in mini coopers! Entirely pleasant. Some teenagers came in and then suddenly ran out yelling at each other – they were running for the train. The market owner (super nice!!!) came out and laughed with me about it and said he likes to place bets every morning on the kids running after the J train. A nice place to hang out.

I am eyeing Tasty Coffee as a nice place to work after a swim… Next time. That and the dole whip at pineapples…. calling me.

Onward to the pool. It’s big, it’s new, it’s lovely! The building is just very pretty (inside and out). It’s still a giant slab of concrete but somehow is like the friendly little brother of the loud, stompy, spiky, fortress train station.

There is an accessible shower stall. Bring a lock (unless you are me and can just stuff your clothes under your wheelchair seat). The water is much warmer than any other public pool I’ve been in (thank god!) at 82′ which is the maximum they’re allowed to set it. (Says the super nice lifeguard. ) The air wasn’t bad either, and it was a chilly, rainy day. I got into the water without even a squeak! There are huge picture windows – even while swimming i could see the water tower in McLaren Park and some trees and hills & houses and a ton of birds flying by (the seagulls who love to hang out at the dump, I guess.) All the staff was so nice.

Minor complaint, the door opener buttons don’t work. . . But people sprang up to offer to open them so if you can’t handle heavy doors, don’t worry too much. (And you can bypass the locker room doors easily by just going into the pool area and entering from that direction.)

My waterproof ipod shuffle and headphones worked great and I swam a zillionty laps very slowly in the slow lane shared with a businesslike 80 year old who was there when I started and seemed ready to go another half hour after I quit.

Very different from swimming last summer when I was still not quite able to do laps. I feel stronger! My calves and ankles are definitely stronger. I can trace back over the years to 2012 when I couldn’t even get into water without ankle braces because the little currents of the water moving my ankles around ever so slightly made me want to throw up from pain. Oh man. How I ever endured those times I don’t even know (not the pool, just the whole terrible year of my ankles going kablooey in every tendon. Like being squeezed by evil snakes on the INSIDE.)

Anyway now after my epic 20 minute swim, my legs are all wobbly and wibbly & my knees hella hurt right now but I dont think it’s the going to be injured for weeks sort of hurt – I will take some pain meds and take it easy tomorrow. Feeling very optimistic about swimming a few times a week and gradually increasing the time/laps. Remind me of this optimism tomorrow when I wake up and can’t move out of bed before voltarening myself for an hour and whining a lot.

The hours for lap and rec swim also looked just great for me, big chunks of the afternoon and then early evening. I’m so excited, I’m going to swim all the time…. I remarked to the lifeguard that Garfield Pool is closer and seems to be the next in line (it’s closed for renovation) and he said he thought it was going to be really nice. Yay! Pools!!!!!!!

When I drive past the kids
They all spit and cuss
‘Cause I’ve got a bitchin’ Camaro
And they have to ride the bus

A Few Hours in a Far-Off Age

Posted on by Liz

I’m enjoying Henrietta Dugdale‘s utopian SF, A Few Hours in a Far-Off Age. Millions of years in the future, we and the disembodied narrator follow along as highly evolved humans discourse on education and the history of the Christian Blood Age. Australia sank into the sea and a new continent, Alethia, rose, though Melbourne is rising again and has this giant museum/school exhibit hall built on it with what sound like fancy study carrels next to elaborate dioramas of “torture instruments” ie corsets, low necked dresses, and high heels; or just like, men being sexist while drinking the Demon Alcohol and denying women a right to education whilst cheering on their various wars and not doing any of the housework.

The evolved teenagers (2 per family) gratifyingly listen to the smiling lectures of their evolved moms, then we weirdly follow one of them, Veritée, to her private study where she divests herself of our rational dress outer garments (loose trousers with a tunic and a short jacket, none of which are constraining in any way) to reveal her silk undergarments (similar to the top ones), does calisthenics, studies next to her giant pet tiger-dog, has some vegetarian food (delivered by the one family servant who is educated, evolved, and only works till noon after which she goes off for recreation and philosophizing, and who emerges bearing the trays of fruit and bread from a weird mirrored pillar with a spiral staircase). Veritée then has a bath (slightly creepily we see her beauteous form in the bath – better than any Blood Era statue of beauty since unconstrained by Torture Instruments and well calisthenicked.)

Some of the teenagers then fly off in an aircar (run by some sort of power plus kept safe by the Repelling Engine) to the beaches of the West Coast at 80 miles per hour. They frolic, have a picnic, and probably discuss Evolution some more. In one interlude we are treated to a description of the inventresses of the Repelling Engine (inspired by the corpses which used to rain down from aircar crashes!) They go on a test flight and then are welcomed by parades, honors, costly gifts, job offers (which they refuse unless they both get the job together) as the cheering crowds celebrate the new age of safer air travel.

Space travel is mentioned as a possible future but not really given much thought.

Henrietta does not seem to like church or the organized religion of her time, or the “myth-men” who run it, much.

I have returned to our earth. Oh, what cruel disorder here reigns! Truth crashed and persecuted! “Hypocrisy, the only evil that walks invisible, except to God alone,” flaunting in every myth temple! howling in every community! checking progress at every avenue.

Fools and rogues! You who profess so much love and reverence for your skeletons. I tell you it is all useless that you noisily rattle their offensive bones before my vision. That bright light of truth from the far-off age shines to me through your blackest screens! Go, hug your loathsome relics of a loathsome era in privacy—if you can—and say not again to my ears what you dare not utter to the Infinite in your solitude.

Ha! I see I “obey” and do the “work” that was commanded, for the light shines more brightly!

A dream? What is dreaming? Some explain most learnedly how it is caused by certain conditions of the body. May not some dreams cause those certain conditions?

Dream, or what else it has been, I see always the beautiful light bright with truth and hope. No one can extinguish it!

The Hostility of the Helper

Posted on by Liz

When others perceive us (disabled people) as being in need of help there can be a strange dynamic in play. They deny our agency, our perspective, seeing us as an obligation. They are forced, in their minds, to hold the door open or tie down our wheelchairs or grab our arm unexpectedly and try to steer us up the steps, forced by their concept of what is proper and even moral. It’s the right thing to do. They’re prepared to do their duty. “No, thank you” isn’t a possible answer to their concept of dutiful helping. The dark side of their duty is anger. They’re already mad, before we respond in any way to defuse or exacerbate the situation. Pre-loaded with dehumanizing forces. The undercurrent of hostility can poison the respectful interdependence that is possible between any people. They will perform their duty, and we the helped will perform gratitude. For survival, sometimes we have to accept hostile, angry, disrespectful help. I wonder how others think about this and how they keep their equilibrium, a philosophical distance or perspective maybe, and either move on or are able to change the Helper’s minds. The compliance that makes us one of the good ones while we may be burning with fury. It is no different from what most of humanity has to go through and most of us will meet it as we age.

In contrast, how much I appreciate open-hearted kindness. Moments of being treated just regular, without fuss, being seen, heard, listened to, being a person. Those moments wherever we find them from friends, family, people in our communities, or strangers, are a healing antidote, for us to treasure & keep in our core, against the hatred of people whose cruelty we have to swallow. What helped last night? The kindness of a “just regular folks” bus driver acting decent. Chatting with someone about their baby on the elevator. Hip hop dancers on the train. Reading Mc’s bus poems. Art and culture and . . . I’d maybe call it manners . . . all indescribably precious.

Hot springs here I come!

Posted on by Liz

I’m so excited to go to the hot springs, it’s all I can think about!

I re-read Sorcerer to the Crown recently & The True Queen by Zen Cho & heartily recommend them! They’re so much fun. I hope there will be more!

NOw reading Fifteen Poets of the Aztec World, by Miguel León-Portilla, and some other books – Four Masterworks of American Indian Literature, pretty interesting (the footnotes are where all the action is – I wish the footnotes were on each page instead of at the end of each work.)

What else. I’m pretty brain dead today. Milo is back from his 3 day camping LARP so I’m sure I’ll hear all about that soon! I’m going out for a drink and then plan to read until Danny gets home from LibrePlanet later tonight.

Spent some time looking over this May First stuff. Also reading about Cooperation Jackson.

Rescued by Love and Magic

Posted on by Liz

Well it finally happened — I ran out of wheelchair battery! I left the house with 21% and figured it would be fine. After getting groceries I was at 10%. A block from the top of Cortland (a huge hill that I live at the bottom of) the battery indicator suddenly dropped to 2% and then stopped me dead! I was laden with bags of groceries as I was shopping for my friend who is house-bound at the moment and doesn’t have anyone coming to help him till Tuesday. anyway, I sat there pushing the “on” button and going about 2 feet, then the battery would die again. I was probably cursing and distressed looking but I can’t even remember — I was so discombobulated.

A young couple walking by asked if I needed help. Incredibly flustered, I explained maybe i could coast from the top of the hill, or get in a cab. They said they lived just a few houses down and I could charge the battery, or they could push me!

We fiddle around to disengage the motor and I let the guy push me uphill for a block.

Y’all I was blushing. But it was so nice of them both.

At the crest of the hill the battery indicator suddenly said 4% and I was able to motor very slowly down the hill. “OMG thank you. What’s your name?” “I’m Magic.” I’ll say! “And your name?” “Um, I’m Love.”

I was literally rescued by Love and Magic today!!!!!!

Even my bad adventures have a good side sometimes! I’m a little teary eyed right now and going to lie down and experience some feelings while my powerchair battery charges up.

Wandering around

Posted on by Liz

In the morning I did some house cleaning and then worked at looking at my expenses and money to think about how to save more and all that kind of thing. Then off to Rockridge BART which I will review later. The ride over was enlivened by some kids with their aunt, going to Antioch which was going to be a long ride. I showed them Pokemon on my phone and then let them play it (they did trainer battles while I provided a running commentary) And they were just adorable – the younger one, maybe 5, was very into trains so we had discussions about which station we were at, excitement at coming out of tunnels, etc. and he liked he BART stickers (old boi, new boi) on my chair. Their aunt was nice and also hilariously trying to get them to bet her money they weren’t going to stand up for the entire hour and a half long ride. “How much do you want to bet?” “A thousand dollars” “Show me…. show me that thousand.” “A hundred dollars” “OK, show me that hundred” “5 dollars” “You’re gonna show me the five, right? Lay it down” Super charming kids.

I wandered around Rockridge & then over to my sister’s house, ate more cake, went through some piles of stuff for donating and had a fish taco & then back to the city for a party at Queerious Labs which is a new hackerspace in SOMA. Had nice conversations with people about hacking yeast to make it produce insulin, inserting genes into plants to make them glow and how you can special order send stuff off to labs to have them insert stuff with CRISPR (??!), some people having a meeting about their Julia project which uh, something LISPy that um something with AI or I couldn’t really hear and it was over my head anyway, but neat and I think it was tentatively called “Fifth”; lee’s monome and accompanying norns gadget which was extremely beautiful, and which you can program with supercollider; another sound and light project which I don’t remember the details of; icelandic sagas (!!!!!! ) me and claire being very excited to find anyone who would talk about sagas at all !!! (That giant red book with the eagle thing on the cover with all the norwegian ones! Grettirs saga! Njal’s! I enthused about Freydis and her beating her breast with a sword in battle while she was like 9 months pregnant. We then all talked about culture and dreams and how queer migration is with san francisco and the bay area in general and the sort of tech dreams people pursue or just wanting to be in a center of culture and art and creation and how to be a good home for that.(kill rock stars; no gods no masters)

On my way out of 24th St. BART going home at midnight, I was rushing to go across 24th and so were 3 other people, a young woman and 2 guys with her and they were saying “we won’t make it and she was saying “we’re gonna make it!” As I whooshed past them I said “We’re totally gonna make it” and we did. She then (a bit drunk or high, joyous, anyway) was like “SEE! SHE KNEW! SHE BELIEVED ME” and the guys were like, . . . wut ? She then veered off laughing like she was going to cross the street with me where I was about to cross mission while they were continuing down the sidewalk. “We don’t have time for this!” they told her. “I’m just saying there’s a GENDER THING” she yelled, giggling. “RIGHT!?” (turning to me again). I started laughing. Dudes faces were so confused. This girl is sick of their bullshit! hahaha! I was like, “Don’t worry, you’ll teach them how!” She high fived me as we crossed the street. “Well yes I will but i’t going to TAKE A WHILE” she yelled into the night to the dudes who were confusedly following us across Mission. “What… are you insulting us? What is this? What??” said the guy who was probably her boyfriend. “HAHAAH!” she said. “HHAHAHAAHAHAAH” i cackled uproariously, veering off to get into position for the approaching 49 bus. Argumentative whinging from both young men. “CACKLING WITCHES IN THE NIGHT, YOUR WORST NIGHTMARE!” I hollered cheerfully, still doubled over in wild laughter. “WEIRD LITTLE PURPLE HAIRED CYBORG LADIES! IT’S WHAT THIS CITY IS ABOUT!” “THAT’S RIGHT!” yelled my drunk friend in our amazing consciousness raising session!!! (another high five) Giggling bystander getting on the same bus as me thru the back door: “Oh my god. Thank you for making this city fun.”

I can rest easy tonight knowing I have nobly done my part.

Firefox release, diner interlude, gingerbread

Posted on by Liz

After some especially intense weeks at work (leading up to this week’s Firefox 66 release) we then had to respond to the Pwn2own exploits. It went pretty much like last year when we also released in under a day; everyone worked hard and some people worked long hours to make it happen. I’m so proud to be part of Mozilla and get to work with such smart and dedicated people.

Between the release on Tuesday and the security-driven release on Thurs/Fri I spent a bunch of time going over and summarizing the various problems & uncertainties. It is very interesting to try and judge importance, impact, and “risk” in a software release. On the one hand you are offering a lot of improvements and fixes but you will inevitably also break something else for some other population of users. Is it an overall improvement for most users? Is some particular population (that may not be a majority) impacted by a new problem? All users of a particular site will crash with the new version, but with the old version, everyone editing a document with a Korean keyboard can’t use their backspace key. The different issues don’t cancel each other out, but still have to be compared and weighed. You start out reading bug and crash reports, and end up pondering epistemology and trying to steer a course in decision making through rocky waters — the geography of operating systems, hardware, web sites, and standards where nothing ever stands still. In the end the pattern seems to remain the same: cautiously release, pause and fix the worst new problems as best we can, then go full throttle. It will never be rock solid, like how you’d have to be releasing software for NASA, though, amazingly, that seems to be what people expect.

By the way, my boots came out great! I stripped off the glaze and brown dye with acetone, dyed them with Angelus red and wine-red and a bit of black, mink-oiled them, put on a Resolene sealant coat, then a coat of neutral polish. Now, I can look down at my boots and think YAY! RED! rather than seeing a sort of yucky ochre.

red boots

Ended my work day early (after pulling long hours for a while) and headed out to my sister’s house for the afternoon. BART continues to entertain me. I had a nice look at Oakland 19th street station and its beautiful deep varigated blue tiling. At first I thought they were bricks, but they’re actually thick tiles laid over a wire mesh. I may make this station the “Water” artifact puzzle for the game in honor of the lovely tiles. (Originally that was going to be Lake Merritt, but it needs to be a station on the Red line.)

Realized on the way that I hadn’t had lunch and barely had breakfast – I stopped at Mama’s Royal Cafe & had a biscuit sandwich and endless cups of decaf. The waiter spotted me playing Ingress and turned out to be a long time player on my same team (the Resistance or blue team)! I tried to work on my game a bit, but didn’t get far, too fried to really think things through. This is a great cafe — relaxing, gorgeous, cozy, good food.

At Laura’s I helped my nephew make gingerbread for his school bake sale (5 cakes’ worth so we mixed it all up in a huge pot.) I then ate like half a pan of gingerbread (for dinner I guess). Laura and I worked on our wordpress sites – I needed to change the theme of mine and she was just setting up a new one. Also, a couple of years ago I migrated in some way that broke all my images from past posts. That is now fixed! Huzzah! I also ended up minorly hacking this new theme to force it not to do post excerpts, which I fucking hate. Just let me scroll forever and read other people’s long posts! But no… the fashion is so heavily for showing excerpts and making people click a zillion times and load new pages. Bah. I don’t CARE if you’re on your phone – you can scroll! It’s been a long time since I even looked at php but, reassuringly, it all came back to me.

gingerbread mixing

It was my son’s 19th birthday on Friday as well and he had a final and then was heading off to a weekend camping LARP with his dad. I’ll see him next week! But, I have to admit I went and looked at pics of him from babyhood on in a sentimental way. He’s so grown up and wonderful, and I’m so so proud of him.

milo-hashtag-sweater

That time box

Posted on by Liz

In the BART elevator at Embarcadero station the guy in there with me got confused when we stopped at the MUNI level. “It’s MUNI” I said helpfully. “You probably want the one higher up to get to the street.”

“Oh! Yeah! Right! You know it’s partly the old age and partly that I’m really, really high a lot of the time!” He looked out at the MUNI platform, pleased with life.

I chortled appreciatively.

“It’s funny how everything really far back is so clear. Everything now, I forget! But 59 years back is clear as day! I’m old, but I’m also a stoner!” he said.

“Yeah it really does start to all become one thing, as I get older I really feel like it’s time travel and time is all in one big moment that all exists at once!”

He side eyed me.

“I’m not even high! Ahahaha, I just talk like that! When it seems like people are open to it.”

We then agreed memory is time travel. The elevator is very slow, so there’s plenty of time to chat. I did not mention the TARDIS. We emerged from the elevator doors as boldly as if we were all the Doctors and Companions.