i hear the voices when I'm dreaming

Me: Dear brain, I know my mom is increasingly fucked, but obsessing in circles about what to do about that isn't helpful.

Brain: Okay what if I just dwell on the time in high school when you tried to be captain of the academic decathlon team, and the faculty sponsor gave y'all "practice questions" to work on that, when you got to competition, turned out to have been that year's actual questions, meaning you looked not just like cheaters but incompetent cheaters that didn't even have the intelligence to make it look plausible

Me: In actual fact, that doesn't help...

So I got an email tonight-- seen in my last check of the evening-- inviting me to beta the new Procreate. Which probably means it's a fairly broad beta at this point, because I'm nobody, but --

Um. Yes PLEASE.

I've only done a bit of playing with the new brushes but holy crap it's so good. Some of them have dynamic color interactions, behaving more like physical media. Some of them have amazing texture. Some of them would make amazing calligraphy.

I've gotten through 12 of the 18 categories in the comes-with-Procreate default library, and I really ought to go to sleep, but eeee this is so cool!

Things what have been happening:

A. My mom is an epic stress demon -- this deserves its own post but teal dear (or I guess TL;DW since it's not written up yet) early stages of dementia plus physical complications plus denial plus verbal aggression ... on top of the normal "treating me like I'm a teenager" and "calling multiple times a day" -- and I'm kind of boiling alive because stress and uncertainty

B. Speaking of boiling, today was the third day over 100F. Even with air conditioning and fans and cooling towels, it's way too hot

C. I have no sense of time any more. Everything is somehow too fast and too slow.

D. My brain is perpetually convinced I'm forgetting shit. Occasionally I actually am. But I'm basically living in perpetual anxiety.

E. Also I'm training new aides, which always sucks even when they're good

F. Phoebe is still cute af. So is Loki. The two of them are the only things keeping me halfway sane. If I can remember tomorrow I'll upload pictures.

So my G&S earworm morphed into a weird amalgam that started with HMS Pinafore --

We sail the ocean blue,
And our saucy ship's a beauty;
We are sober men and true,
And attentive to our duty.

-- only then towards the end of that song, shifted to a classical music orchestral piece that I had the damnedest time placing but that was something I knew I a) had heard within the past year, at one of the concerts I went to, probably late 2024, b) had not heard within the last month, c) had an annoying tendency as an earworm to loop (not just stick as earworms do, but literally loop back on itself), and d) had been in my head before, months ago.

It felt very much like either Tchaikovsky or Beethoven, and I was confident it was a symphony, so I went to imslp and started browsing the sheet musics. It was none of the Tchaikovsky ones, so I tried Beethoven, though I was fairly sure it wasn't the 9th. I also googled for "classical music that sounds like Indiana Jones" because some of the bit in my head reminds me of IJ music, only that confused things because the 3rd movement of Tchaikovsky'a 6th contains a (different) Indiana-Jones section. Obviously the symphonies preceded Indiana Jones, just as the 4th movement of Dvorak's New World Symphony preceded Jaws, but still. It had to have been some sort of inspiration.

Anyway I eventually found it: the beginning of the 4th movement of the 5th symphony (https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=3xUNCQ4TbN4&si=qqSWtKaUa7qsXghO) ... not the first measures, but the stretch 0:30 to 1:00 with the cascading runs down and the horns and then the bit I fondly consider the Indiana Jones section. (I think it's the modulations?)

So then I had to listen to the whole symphony, and I had almost forgotten just how fucking amazing it is. The first four notes get overused in popular culture to the point of being almost cheesy, but other than that it's just utter perfection. And listening to it makes me incredibly happy omg.

(It's one of my favorite symphonies -- my all-time favorites are Beethoven's 5th, Sibelius' 2nd, and Tchaikovsky's 4th (clearly I need a first and third to round it out) -- and it's one that, if I'm alone, I'm moving to, not just "conducting" with hands but full body emphasis. Obviously I behave at concerts, so I don't distract others, but. It's just. Good. So good.

(If you don't know it besides the duh-duh-duh-DUHHHH motif that starts the piece, go listen.)

...of course, fair warning, it does sometimes get bits stuck in your head...

[note to self -- this entry took exactly an hour to write]

Duolingo's increasing reliance on AI at the expense of human employees bothers me a lot. It's also, not coincidentally, gotten sloppy. I've noticed things in the English that feel off -- "He didn't die because he had the operation on time" should have been "in time"; "It's possible that I start going out with Francisco" should be "I'll start" or "I might start"; "She isn't tolerant with other ideas" should either be "of" or the object should be "people" (this may be regional? but for me it's tolerant *of* things, tolerant *with* or of people); "The travelers would buy at the market" should either have a different verb like "shop" or should have a direct object (I know "buy" can be intransitive but it still feels weird in this sentence); etc. If there are things that strike me as odd about the language I'm a native speaker of, how the fuck can I trust them to be correct in the language I'm trying to learn?

I currently have a subscription, partly so I wouldn't get ads and partly because I supported their stated mission. I no longer want to support them. My renewal, set to annual, renews next month.

On the other hand I have a streak of 3839 days, several friends streaks over 300, and a ridiculous number of friends quests in a row (can't find the info but I think it's around 85-90?). Also while practicing Duo mostly makes me better at Duo, I am still learning vocab, even if some of it doesn't want to stick.

So I'm trying to decide:

Option 1: cancel subscription and delete app. Up side: cheaper and more ethical. Down side: realistically I'm not going to find an easy Spanish-practice alternative.

Option 2a: cancel subscription but keep "playing" until I reach a pretty streak number, then quit. Up side: cheaper, though ads mean they're still profiting, and I get to leave on a pretty number. Down side: ads, plus im still planning on breaking the streak.

Option 2b: cancel subscription and keep playing indefinitely. Up side: still get Spanish practice. Down: ads, blech.

Option 3: keep subscription for another year. Up: practice, no ads. Down: I'm paying money for dubious AI.

If I take one of the streak-breaking options -- either now or in 161 days (which is, uh, 5 months and change, so December? -- and then regret it, I'll have lost the chance to make the long streak longer. OTOH it literally can't go on forever anyway, and I don't like supporting AI. OTOOH one subscription isn't noticeable really, so they won't care.

...I hate making decisions...

(Side note: my phone's predictive texting really wants to decapitalize I. If I type "i wo" it of course autocaps i to I, but then doesn't suggest "would"/"wouldn't" for the next word, but instead suggests "i would" which changes the I back to lowercase. Is this inherent to autocorrect or am I doing something wrong?)

(see tag for details)

I got an email from the art dude announcing that he's temporarily opening registration to his courses.

(Still full price, just you usually can't sign up, just get on the waiting list. Which I had not explicitly done.)

I unsubscribed. Grumpily.

I can understand his logic -- entering a contest to get X indicates interest in X -- but this wasn't opt-in, and it should have been '

I dreamed last night about a magic school lesson on teleportation, except a demon transported into the middle of one of the students. (Not a "100% evil" demon, more an extraplanar entity?) The professor calmly said "don't worry, I've got this handled" but when she (magically) disentangled them, the girl had the demon's creepy mouth with pointy teeth and he had her mouth. That got fixed but it turned out some of his demonic powers had stuck to her also and couldn't be removed as easily, so she had to get lessons from him on How To Suddenly Be Part Demon.

It's the sort of dream that I'd want to turn into a story, only any sort of "magic school" will look like a rip off of Harry Potter. (Yes I know the trope existed before HP, but still.)

Last night was weird, partly because I got really sleepy fairly early and tried to go to sleep around 10 ... but then didn't get to actual sleep until about 3

but partly because of the dream I did have when I eventually got there

where I went to a horror movie that ended up involving audience participation... in the middle of a scene it went black, and when people started looking towards the projection booth in back, the guy had just been shot by two men who then came in to terrorize the audience

except instead of being at all afraid, I was having epic amounts of fun, because I immediately grokked that this was part of the movie experience and therefore completely staged, and so I was certain there was zero danger

(except maybe my mom -- I'd come with my parents but sat in different places in the theater-- saying something to indicate we were related, because I was pretty sure she thought it was real and going "no don't hurt my daughter" would give them ammunition to make her even more freaked out)

so I was sassing the hell out of them, utterly delighted, while in my head composing a livejournal post about how this particular movie had IRL aspects.

...just. What? lol.

The pain when breathing is improving: there was only the one night of lost sleep, the pain now mostly occurs on deep breaths only and is like a 3 on pain scale. Ended up going to urgent care on Monday (in retrospect going Sat would have made sense, but deliberately didn't go Sun because I didn't want to miss gaming) and got chest X-rays that ruled out some of the scarier options. It seems to just be a Bodies Do Weird Shit, Yo category thing.

I keep having moments of "why am I so tired" (especially around 4pm-8pm) and then remember ... missed a whole night's sleep and also pain is draining and also 2h at urgent care is hard especially when you are sleep deprived and hurting and having to be your own advocate.

Anyway now my jaw is being cranky on the left side and I hope it's not the start of anything big. Bodies, what can you do, amirite.

To be posted to reddit if I can figure out which sub:


My roommate and I -- both pretty much middle aged -- have very different sleep schedules. I don't do mornings well, whereas that's his prime time of day. He loves the sun especially, and likes opening the blinds; not all the way, just a bit, but it's enough for it to wake me up. No matter how much I tell him it bothers me, he just ignores my request and keeps doing it.

Generally he's a good roommate, and he gives fantastic cuddles -- platonic, I promise there's nothing going on between us -- but sometimes it's like he thinks he owns the place and can just expect to do things his way, with no consideration of my needs. He practically walks all over me!

And honestly, sometimes I feel more like his mom than a roommate. For example: He has allergies that make him sniffly and sneezy, and his doctor suggested OTC allergy meds, but did he bother getting them? No. I'm the one that got some for him and I'm the one making sure he takes them. And although he hasn't directly asked me to clean up after him, but he just leaves his shit for me to clean up.

He's not a horrible guy; he's a great listener, he's pretty quiet (except for crying during a 3am existential crisis), he doesn't take up much space, and I like his company. I just don't know what to do about the morning sun thing. If I bring it up, he stares at me like I've grown a third head, and nothing changes.

I don't know if it's relevant, but I know he's adopted. He doesn't talk about the past so I don't know if he has any lingering issues.

(Oh, and he's a cat.)