ELSEWHERE

Went to church again today -- tried to get there early for a pre-church meeting but got the time wrong, so I was very slightly late. It was nice despite that, we talked briefly about UU history and then talked more about the Beliefs & Principles. These are regularly reviewed and updated, and the time for that is coming up so we talked a bit about the process of that and what's being talked about in regards to potential changes, and then were encouraged to come up with foundational beliefs that we might want to be seen reflected in the Principles.

Shortly after that was the sermon, which was on the importance of doing things to benefit the future, and then there was coffee and donuts on the patio. I didn't feel like trying to insert myself into people's conversations so I sat at a table and chatted on discord.

At noon they had a talk about depression and comedy that I wanted to sit in on, but didn't know how long it was going to be and needed to be able to tell Lee when to come get me if I wanted a ride, so I gave myself a cut-off time where I'd leave even if the show was still going, which is what happened. I also needed to get home to pill Oz, so needed to not hang around either way

But the talk was fun -- four comedians gave their tight five and then they sat down to answer questions about their experiences with depression, I saw all of the former and then had to leave shortly after the latter started. I do think the comedy would have served better by being more about mental health or depression but they did sort of very basic stand-up. Which was very funny, but just felt like it didn't have much to do with the theme.

I'd have liked to have seen the whole thing but I also don't think I would have gotten very much from the rest of it -- depression is not a new topic to me and they're not going to say anything I don't already know and have experience with. So at 12:40 I ducked out to the parking lot and Lee and I went home.

At home I pilled the cat, emptied the dishwasher, watered my plants, and now I'm sitting around for a bit. In a minute I'll have lunch, and then I don't know what I'm going to do with the rest of my day, yet.

Just got an email from the UUSS board, they've elected to reduce COVID precautions, have already stopped checking vaccination status at the door and are going to lift masking requirements in two weeks

Let me just check something,

Ah yes, we're still at 1000 new cases a week and twenty deaths a week

So god damn tired of feeling like I can trust someone to take this seriously and getting betrayed for it. Can't wait to get an email in a few months like 'woops we caused a super-spreader event'

Haven't decided what I'm going to do about it yet.

They're also implementing 'mask-only sections' which, I didn't think I'd find one of those in person, they're so obviously a joke of a concept. It's, airborne? Air doesn't stay in one part of a room?

They actually had an awesome system at the depression talk where they had speakers set up for the patio outside and invited people to go out there if they needed a "mask break".

Welp.

Current feeling is that I'll participate in outdoors events and not attend indoor events, though with winter approaching that's not feeling like a particularly durable decision.

There is progress generally being made on more permanent responses to COVID, maybe they'll appear soonish and we can all finally stop worrying about all of this.

Oz is a good baby and let me sleep in until noon

 
Last night I got a bug to start working through the dot hack series, and what ended up happening was I spent a couple hours getting the controller plugin to work properly. It now crashes the emulator if I try to modify the settings while a game is running, but that's okay because the settings are actually working now and the controller responds to input like it should. But I even did the thing of downloading a fix, remembering having used this fix before and it breaking my computer somehow but not remembering exactly what it did, trying it anyway, and breaking my computer. Luckily reverting the problem was easy this time and when the fix was doing what it was supposed to it did help the controller problem, though it caused a different problem that then required yet another solution to figure out.

So by the time I'd done all that it was honestly too late to be playing video games, but I'd put in all that work and damned if I wasn't going to get to enjoy some of the fruits of my labor, so I was up until four playing game and then up until five listening to podcast just because the episode I was on was interesting.

Which means I'm a little short on sleep even though Oz was a good baby but it's good enough. It also means I'm going to hyperfocus on video games for a while, but maybe I'll actually finally fucking finish .hack//Infection. I've only been playing the beginning over and over again for almost twenty years, it'll be about god damn time

Feeling despondent today

Malaised

<3
Those are very good words, but I'm sorry you're feeling them

Listening to a very frustrating interview with a man who made a documentary about marriage, and it's full of a lot of "women want this" and "men want this" and "homosexual relationships should be between a masculine person and a feminine person"

At one point he says to the interviewer something like, 'I'm going to tell you how to improve your relationship right now, today, in fifteen minutes. When you go home tonight, say to your wife, 'Kara, how was your day?''

It says a lot that this guy is assuming that whoever he's talking to doesn't already do that. This is such basic shit and that for him it was a mind-blowing revelation like, what, you should listen to and engage with your partner? Impossible!

Like my dude, have you considered that maybe the key to any successful relationship is just, asking the other person what they want instead of treating them like they're a different species and a puzzle that needs to be solved?

No wonder this guy hasn't had any successful long-term relationships himself

Thought maybe going for a walk would make me feel better, get some exercise in, get some sun, see some interesting things. So I walked up to one of the nearby parks, hung out for a bit, and then walked back. Can't say it helped, though.