{"id":20533,"date":"2023-08-16T10:16:54","date_gmt":"2023-08-16T17:16:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/?p=20533"},"modified":"2023-08-16T10:15:57","modified_gmt":"2023-08-16T17:15:57","slug":"life-updates-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/2023\/08\/16\/life-updates-3\/","title":{"rendered":"Life updates"},"content":{"rendered":"\r\n<p>I\u2019ve been doing a bunch of stuff lately, but haven\u2019t been posting much about current status of most of it. Figured it was time to post an update.<\/p>\r\n<p>(I\u2019m not looking for advice about any of this.)<\/p>\r\n\r\n<h2>Unread-books project<\/h2>\r\n<ul>\r\n  <li>I\u2019m down to only 200 unread trade paperbacks and hardcovers! I continue to expect that I\u2019ll finish this project in late 2025, but progress has been fairly slow lately, and many of the remaining books are long, so it might take a bit longer than that.<\/li>\r\n  <li>I\u2019m continuing to try to read (or skim) a story from a Year\u2019s Best sf volume pretty much every day. I\u2019m now reading stories published in 2011. I have about 26 Year\u2019s Bests left to go, so about 1\/8 of my remaining unread books are YBs. There\u2019s an average of about 20 stories in each YB that I haven\u2019t read before, so roughly 520 stories left to read, which means if I can keep up this pace, I\u2019ll finish the YBs sometime around early 2025.<\/li>\r\n<\/ul>\r\n\r\n<h2>Music<\/h2>\r\n\r\n<h3>Guitar<\/h3>\r\n<p>I\u2019ve now at least glanced at all 2,400 songs in <cite>Rise Up Singing<\/cite> and <cite>Rise Again<\/cite>. I\u2019ve found about 35 songs that fit all of my current criteria:<\/p>\r\n<ul>\r\n  <li>I know how to play all the chords they use.<\/li>\r\n  <li>I know the tune well enough to sing it.<\/li>\r\n  <li>I can figure out the weird <cite>RUS<\/cite> chord notation well enough to see where each chord goes.<\/li>\r\n  <li>I\u2019ve tried playing and singing it, and it sounds reasonably good.<\/li>\r\n<\/ul>\r\n<p>Next step: I\u2019ll pick one of the songs, and create a version of the lyrics with chords in the right places, and print that out, and learn to play and sing it at least tolerably well. (I\u2019ve done this with a couple of songs already.)<\/p>\r\n<p>Oh, and both of the apps I was using (Justin Guitar and Simply Guitar) have been on hold while I\u2019ve been going through the <cite>RUS<\/cite> books, but I think it\u2019s now time to get back to those apps.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<h3>Piano<\/h3>\r\n<p>I\u2019m continuing to make only slow progress in the Simply Piano app, but I\u2019m continuing to play at least a little nearly every day. Currently working on songs from the \u201cArpeggios\u201d section, which are focusing on (a) different sets of notes for a given chord that I already knew, and (b) chords that I didn\u2019t previously know. (The ~10 chords that I had previously learned came easily to me, but I\u2019m finding it harder to keep track of these new ones.)<\/p>\r\n\r\n<h3>Music theory<\/h3>\r\n<p>I\u2019m learning a little more about chords and how they interact with melody from both guitar practice and piano practice, and from a guitar-playing friend, but haven\u2019t gotten around to doing a music theory class or reading a music theory book.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<h2>Constellation Press<\/h2>\r\n<ul>\r\n  <li>I have a reprint book planned, which I hope to be able to announce soon.<\/li>\r\n  <li>I\u2019m also making plans to edit an unthemed original anthology. More about that soon, too, I hope.<\/li>\r\n<\/ul>\r\n\r\n<h2>My website<\/h2>\r\n<ul>\r\n  <li>I\u2019ve copied over nearly all of the material from my old plain-HTML site into my WordPress site.<\/li>\r\n  <li>In particular, I\u2019ve now got all of the VRML (3D graphics) stuff in place; it\u2019s viewable in a web browser for the first time in about 20 years.<\/li>\r\n  <li>I\u2019ll link to some of this stuff soon.<\/li>\r\n<\/ul>\r\n\r\n<h2>Converting FrameMaker documents<\/h2>\r\n<ul>\r\n  <li>I\u2019ve created PDF and\/or RTF versions of dozens of old FrameMaker documents in the past month or so, using a trial version of FM running under Windows, running under Parallels, on my old non-Apple-Silicon Mac.<\/li>\r\n  <li>It has gone mostly pretty smoothly, and I think I\u2019ve done all of the most important such files now.<\/li>\r\n  <li>There are still a lot of files to go, but I think most of the remaining ones are unimportant, and I may just give up at some point.<\/li>\r\n<\/ul>\r\n\r\n<h2>Duolingo<\/h2>\r\n<ul>\r\n  <li>My streak is at 137 days now, though there\u2019ve been a few streak freezes mixed in there.<\/li>\r\n  <li>I\u2019m currently learning about indirect-object pronouns in Spanish.<\/li>\r\n  <li>I\u2019ve been pleased that I can understand some things that I see in written Spanish lately, such as some spam.<\/li>\r\n  <li>But I\u2019m still very far from fluent. And I\u2019m still not doing the speaking exercises at all\u2014I\u2019m more interested in the written part.<\/li>\r\n<\/ul>\r\n\r\n<h2>Dealing with old links-to-post<\/h2>\r\n<ul>\r\n  <li>I completed my first pass of posting links from my big backlog-of-links-to-post file. The links that I posted in that pass were the ones that I had marked as low-effort.<\/li>\r\n  <li>I\u2019m now partway through the medium-effort links. Progress is slower, but continuing. I expect to finish that sub-list in a couple months.<\/li>\r\n  <li>At that point, most of what\u2019s left in the file will be high-effort links (where I feel like I need to do a fair bit of looking things up and\/or a fair bit of careful framing), which I may or may not ever get around to posting.<\/li>\r\n  <li>There are also a whole bunch of Words & Stuff links, which mostly aren\u2019t high-effort but which I somehow never get around to posting.<\/li>\r\n  <li>I\u2019m also posting new stuff as it comes in, to avoid adding to the backlog.<\/li>\r\n<\/ul>\r\n\r\n<h2>Boardgames<\/h2>\r\n<ul>\r\n  <li>Kam and I have continued playing the boardgame version of <a href=\"https:\/\/boardgamegeek.com\/boardgame\/370591\/dorfromantik-board-game\">Dorf Romantik<\/a>, sometimes joined by a friend. We\u2019re fairly close to unlocking all of the special tiles and cards.<\/li>\r\n  <li>I\u2019ve acquired the new boardgame <a href=\"https:\/\/boardgamegeek.com\/boardgame\/358124\/mists-over-carcassonne\">Mists Over Carcassonne<\/a>, which is the official cooperative version of Carcassonne, but we haven\u2019t had a chance to play it yet. I\u2019m kinda dubious about it; I suspect that I\u2019ll end up thinking that Dorf Romantik is more like what I want cooperative Carcassonne to be. But we\u2019ll see.<\/li>\r\n  <li>I\u2019ve been occasionally playing <a href=\"https:\/\/boardgamegeek.com\/boardgame\/245476\/cubirds\">CuBirds<\/a> with various people on Boardgame Arena lately. Fun, lightweight, a fair bit of randomness. The physical version is expected to be available in the US in a month or two; I\u2019ve preordered that.<\/li>\r\n<\/ul>\r\n\r\n<h2>Sorting-old-papers project<\/h2>\r\n<p>Very slow progress, but still progressing.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<h2>Family-history projects<\/h2>\r\n<ul>\r\n  <li>Hoping to see a cousin sometime soon and hear more about some aspects of my mother\u2019s family.<\/li>\r\n  <li>At some point, I\u2019ll get started on transcribing the letters that my grandfather George wrote to my grandmother Helen during WWII.<\/li>\r\n  <li>I have a set of photos to get digitized that I set aside to deal with later months ago and haven\u2019t gotten back to yet.<\/li>\r\n<\/ul>\r\n\r\n<h2>Food<\/h2>\r\n<p>I\u2019ve been making food at home a lot more in the past couple months than I ever have before. In particular:<\/p>\r\n<ul>\r\n  <li>I\u2019m making brown rice in my rice cooker fairly often, and learning that I really like brown rice. (I\u2019ve <em>eaten<\/em> it all my life, but more out of habit than anything else; it wasn\u2019t until recently that I discovered that I actively prefer it to white rice.)<\/li>\r\n  <li>I\u2019m using that rice to make burritos for myself fairly often. Yum.<\/li>\r\n  <li>A couple of times now, I\u2019ve made coconut rice (with white rice). Once, I then made peanut sauce from a package, and added it to some fake meat, and had that with the coconut rice; worked pretty well. Hoping to try that again sometime soon.<\/li>\r\n  <li>I recently found half of a big bag of lentils in a cabinet. I always think of lentils as kind of scary to cook\u2014I somehow think of them as involving hours of soaking followed by hours of cooking, possibly in a pressure cooker (which I don\u2019t have). But, encouraged by some recipes, I tried something very simple: boil 3 cups of water, add 1 cup of lentils (and a bit of salt, I think), reduce to simmer for about 20 minutes. And it worked! The resulting lentils were quite edible. Next time, maybe I\u2019ll look up lentil recipes in Mary Anne\u2019s <cite>Feast of Serendib<\/cite> cookbook, and buy some relevant spices and other ingredients, and do something a bit fancier.<\/li>\r\n  <li>I recently discovered that I can make perfectly good smoothies and milkshakes in my vegetable chopper (like a super-basic mini-blender). I\u2019ve found that the smoothies taste at least as good as the shakes to me, so I\u2019m mostly focusing on those. My usual approach involves fresh berries + frozen berries + half a banana + a tablespoon of honey + a tablespoon of peanut butter + some milk, all blended together. Tasty!<\/li>\r\n<\/ul>\r\n\r\n<h2>Fiction writing<\/h2>\r\n<p>I hadn\u2019t done any in a long time, but recently got interested again in a particular story-in-progress, and have been poking at that intermittently. It\u2019s possible that at some point I might finish it and submit it somewhere. We\u2019ll see.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<h2>Other projects<\/h2>\r\n<p>I have half a dozen other projects that I haven\u2019t listed here because they\u2019ve been more or less on hold. I hope to get back to some of them as I wrap up some of the ones I mentioned above.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<h2>Socializing<\/h2>\r\n<ul>\r\n  <li>Continuing to have calls with some friends.<\/li>\r\n  <li>Continuing to fail to get in touch with other friends. (Sorry, all! Not intentional.)<\/li>\r\n  <li>Have seen a couple of friends in person lately, either going for walks in local parks or sitting in my backyard. I continue to mask, even outdoors, as I work on figuring out what\u2019s comfortable for me.<\/li>\r\n<\/ul>\r\n\r\n<h2>Health<\/h2>\r\n<p>I still have COBRA coverage. Not sure how long I\u2019ll continue that, though, so I\u2019m trying to do appointments and such sooner rather than later.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<h3>Physical health<\/h3>\r\n<ul>\r\n  <li>Next week, I have a hearing test, after which I hope to be able to get prescription hearing aids.<\/li>\r\n  <li>Also next week, I have an optometrist appointment.<\/li>\r\n  <li>I\u2019m continuing to take eye drops to manage glaucoma. Seems fine so far. And so far, I don\u2019t think I\u2019ve had the side effects of my eye color changing or my lashes getting extra-long.<\/li>\r\n  <li>At some point, I need to schedule an annual physical, which will presumably require me to pick a new primary-care doctor.<\/li>\r\n  <li>Probably time to get a flu shot sometime soon, maybe next month.<\/li>\r\n  <li>As usual, no particular physical health issues other than the glaucoma.<\/li>\r\n<\/ul>\r\n\r\n<h3>Mental health<\/h3>\r\n<ul>\r\n  <li>I continue to have my usual anxiety about the usual things.<\/li>\r\n  <li>But mostly it\u2019s been pretty muted in the past few weeks. It hasn\u2019t been particularly intense, and there\u2019s been nothing particularly stressful.<\/li>\r\n  <li>I haven\u2019t had a lot to talk about with my solo therapist lately.<\/li>\r\n  <li>I may be switching to seeing her every other week instead of every week sometime soonish.<\/li>\r\n<\/ul>\r\n\r\n<h2>Job search<\/h2>\r\n<p>No progress yet. Sooner or later, I\u2019ll get back to working on my r\u00e9sum\u00e9, but I\u2019m currently in no rush.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20533","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-life-updates"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20533","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20533"}],"version-history":[{"count":16,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20533\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20549,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20533\/revisions\/20549"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20533"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20533"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20533"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}