Sometimes it's better to light a flamethrower than curse the darkness

D and I got talking to one of my favorite transgym people after circuits tonight, and as regularly happens when the two of us talk to someone who hasn't known us long/well, I had the realization of just how nonsensical we must sound. With our shared brain and our running jokes (including the one about whose brain it is that we're sharing) and almost two decades of shared references, I really feel for people that we inflict ourselves upon.

Like just now, I nipped into the bathroom to grab some lotion while he's in the shower, and by the time I'd done it and left, we'd already established that a butt seen in the mirror is the worst kind of butt because that's ass-backwards, that Ass Backwards sounds like a comic book villain name, and he was saying "Condiment is such a good word anyway."

D has been doing sterling work with getting our household on solar energy: not just getting four or five quotes and comparing them carefully (of course they're all slightly different), but researching the minutiae and also explaining things in a very accessible way to me, who it turns out doesn't know much about how electricity works.

This afternoon we had a final video call with the guy from our chosen provider, which was very pleasant -- the guy was friendly, it's always fun to see D as happy as the prospect of getting most of our energy from the sun makes him -- and after that we officially went forward with that proposal.

I thought I'd written about six months ago -- though actually I'm not surprised that I didn't -- that after my grandma died and my grandparents' house had been sold, my parents got a third of that money and they put a chunk of it in my bank account (despite my protestations that they keep it all; Mom said she knew I'd say that and it was no use arguing, so I didn't argue). Mom wanted me to put it toward something for the house, something big and good, rather than have it just trickle away on bills and stuff.

I was at a loss what to do about it at the time, but of course here's something wonderful. The cost of our solar energy installation is about half on the battery and half on the solar panels, and the money I think of as my grandma's will cover one of those halves.

Mom happened to ask a couple weeks ago if I'd thought of anything to do with it, so I told her about the solar panels, and she seemed pretty happy with that. (My dad was if anything a little jealous; of course the funding for such things has been stripped away from the U.S. (though Minnesota seems to be trying to do what it can so hopefully that'll change soon.)

(Of course, being my mom, she asked exactly the same question again yesterday, because she does not actually take in the information I tell her or that she has specifically requested, and when I answered it again, this time she was like "oh, yeah, whatever, it doesn't matter what it is, as long as you've spent it on something..." The first time was much more fun!)

Not only did diffrentcolours greet me this morning with "Happy Minnesota statehood day," this evening he got me blueberry muffins.

Because the other day when he looked up Minnesota's state soil (when the polycule was talking about gardening and V and I were waxing poetic about how amazing soil is, as we do) he saw that a) this date was coming up and b) the state muffin is blueberry!

(Of course states are bullshit, the United States doubly so. Land back! But blueberries are tasty.)

Perfect weather! Mid-70s(F), and I still can't get over how it's not humid and there's no bugs to bother us outside here in the spring/summer.

D and I spent the day in the best way possible: going for a gentle walk around with some people he knows from the internet and two Good Dogs (Toby and Biscuit), followed by a pub lunch.

Then, after a short rest to recharge D and his phone, we went into town for more day-drinking to celebrate a friend's birthday. We got home about 9pm which felt so late but still left me with time and energy to change my bedding (I don't know about D but I was sweating last night), have a shower (so much more sweat in the walk this morning, in the direct sunlight of a cloudless beautiful sky), and dig out the fan from where it's stored over the winter to where it lives in my room when I need it. I worried it'd be a bit unnecessary yet but the fan is fancy and has a temperature indicator on it which said it's 20 (C) in here; yeah that's too hot for comfy sleeping.

Yesterday ended up so unexpectedly nice, I wanted to record it.

D messaged me mid-afternoon to say that circuits was happening again that evening. I used to love transgym circuits, I did that as well as lift club almost every week and I've never been happier. But then our usual awesome trainer stopped doing circuits, which is fair enough but I was/am so used to their style and so comfy with it, and then the replacement started doing more of a boxing style fitness class, which was not to my taste (or accessibility needs: my lack of depth perception was posing too much of a problem) and then I kept being busy on those nights or whatever and I just stopped going some time last fall I think.

But I've really missed circuits; I love circuits. It feels like such a good workout for me: I can do even exercises I hate for a minute or two at a time, I never get bored, and I feel at the end like I've really Done Something. I used to have to bring bandanas to tie around my head to keep from getting too much sweat in my eyes, and I forgot to do that last night and really missed it! Because it's hard work.

And most of the people there weren't our usual old circuits people but people I knew from lift club who hadn't been to circuits before (or, did it like once a very long time ago or whatever). Including one of my favorites, who I said I'd meet outside and go in with together. I was really excited for him because I thought he'd love circuits and he did.

And, when I suddenly found myself with plans to be out for the evening I thought I'd start dinner prep right after work -- i did this last Friday when I went to yoga. But as I was still peeling sweet potatoes, D came downstairs, having finished work earlier than usual, and offering to help. So we just made all of my very easy plan for dinner (bangers and mash) and I had plenty of time to eat before going to the gym. It was lovely to spend the time together, it made an easy thing easier but also just so much more fun: being silly together in the nice sunny kitchen (I'm still not used to it being that bright at dinner time! it wasn't totally dark when I was getting showered after the gym, at about 9pm! bliss).

And I'm very glad I was able to eat beforehand: even with V warning me as I left the house "take it easy! you're out of practice!", even though I did take it easy, I was so sore by the time I got home. I knew not to sit down before I got upstairs and in the shower because I'd never stand up again. But I was so happy, too -- and it wasn't just the endorphins making me think that.

In today's team meeting when we were talking about the upcoming week, my boss (gently!) made fun of me for not realizing that next Friday is a bank holiday -- the other day when I was talking to someone about a thing that had to be rearranged from another day next week, they suggested Friday so I told my manager she could do Friday and he had to tell me Friday's the bank holiday.

To add to the making fun of me, I said it was extra bad of me to not know this because it's D's and my anniversary. That made my manager properly laugh, heh.

Then he asked "How many years?" and I just made an "oh god..." kind of noise, which sounds suitably middle-aged like who's even counting any more. But really all it means is that the long run-up of being good friends makes it feel like we've been together longer than the technical answer (seven years now). I will always treasure the memory of when we'd been dating only like three months, getting a train home at night, a young woman who needed help gravitated toward the table we were sitting at and we got chatting. She asked where my accent was from and I told her and we talked about that, she looked at D and asked him if he'd ever gone with me, and he said "not yet!" (which was true, it'd be another four years before he did!). She'd clearly been assuming that we'd been a couple for ages, and I don't blame her at all because I do think we gave off that vibe. So then she asked how long we'd been together. And I was delighted by D's casual answer, "a few years," splitting the difference between the technical reality of three months or so, and the vibe of people who'd been close for more than a decade.

I tried to channel that spirit to answer my manager's question, split the difference, especially when he added "estimate!" I think I said "fifteen?", dragged out to have about fifteen e's in it, and as many question marks at the end.

This afternoon, diffrentcolours and I were watching a documentary about chemistry with Jim Al-Khalili. (D has done sterling work getting the TV to be able to talk to his file server, so it's way easier to watch random things he has downloaded for us...like this BBC documentary about the history of chemistry.)

Suddenly, out of nowhere, D said of Dr. Al-Khalili, "He has a good scientist head."

"He really does!" I replied immediately.

Then I paused.

Then I said "Wait, I don't know what that means, and I don't know why I was so convinced of it."

Maybe it's the baldness?

Bald/shaved heads are so good. This came up at transgym this morning too: I was complaining about how much sweat my hair has absorbed because it's too long now --the last haircut I had was on my birthday! 3-4 weeks is plenty for my hair to need cutting again; the one problem with really short hair is it doesn't stay that way for long. And my barber has suddenly turned into a laundromat -- seriously, it only took a month for it to be open as a completely different kind of business! -- so I need to try a new one and I haven't had time and ugh...maybe tomorrow.

Anyway, as I was complaining, I was overhead by F, a guy with a shaved head, who said "enjoy it while it lasts!" Apparently he's still in his 20s, bless him. But it got me and our friend A talking about how much we like bald guys as an aesthetic, and then D told us about the subreddit for bald people, where guys share photos of them with thinning/receding hair, all sad about it, and then photos of them bald, happy, no longer giving a fuck. I think it's that "the way to win the game of conventional attractiveness is not to play" transformation that makes this seem sexy to me.

(Not that baldness can't be conventionally attractive, but a lot of balding guys seem to think that. Even if they're just having to get used to the change or confronting their mortality or whatever they do, I don't know. But it seems to do them some good to have to come to terms about it, if not embrace it.)

(Plus obviously bald heads are sexy because a nice close shave is fun to touch, and in the right circumstances I think the stubble can feel good too...)

At various points today while I was slaving away over a hot laptop, I heard various Bruce Springsteen songs floating down from upstairs.

He said on fedi: "I have often noted similarities between the musicians, but I desperately want to hear New Model Army covering Bruce Springsteen's 'Further On (Up the Road)'."

(It was when he first said that he wants them to cover "Badlands," and Springsteen to cover their song "Vagabonds," that I figured I'd probably made a proper fan of him, if he could see the overlap between Bruce and a band he likes as much as he does New Model Army.)

He also sent me a link to what Springsteen said after Renee Good was murdered and then a YouTube playlist centered around Springsteen being in the Kennedy Center Honors of 2009. Which I think must be where I heard those songs from.

My newest library book, has been acquired after I heard the author, Steven Hyden, speak briefly on a short podcast series about Springsteen that D found and recommended to me (and actually listened to, which is amazing because he normally can't/doesn't want to listen to podcasts!). I found his book, called There Was Nothing You Could Do: Bruce Springsteen’s “Born In The U.S.A” and the End of the Heartland, and honestly I can hardly imagine anything more Me.

Thanks for the nice comments on the previous entry. They, along with just writing it out in the first place and D holding me tight (normally I am the big spoon but he did a great job at it last night!) helped me have an okay night.

D had asked me, after we turned the lights off, if there was anything I wanted to do today -- the family had no real plans beyond making the homemade vegan wellington for my birthday dinner that D's sister had suggested and I'd gotten excited about before I remembered quite how much work it was last year, oops. But D and I helped and it felt a lot less of a production this year.

Anyway, before that we had no plans and I thought it might be nice to get out of the house and see something of Birmingham. We didn't actually make it as far as the city centre but the local high street allowed D to browse charity shops while I got a long-overdue haircut (I went from the longest hair I've had in quite a while to the highest skin fade I've maybe ever had, so it feels like a dramatic difference!), and we went for a very nice birthday lunch.

My birthday present from D might still be trapped in DRM hell but he told me what it is, and The Feminist Art of Walking by his old pal Morag goes very nicely with the birthday present I've already gotten from angelofthenorth, of short walks/hikes around Greater Manchester. I also got a bookshop.org voucher from D's mum, which can be added to the one that comprised the other part of my birthday present from Miriam, so I have to decide what to get there too, which is so fun.

Weirdly, my birthday also marks a year since Gary died. It feels so long ago but also I can still conjure him so clearly in my memory, and there probably hasn't been a day all year that I haven't thought of him. I still miss him so much.

I've had a much better day, and I'm looking forward to being home tomorrow.

After the (amazing!) support act Karkasaurus, we went back to the bar and the first thing D said was "I have got to improve my cardiovascular fitness." (I wasn't expecting this at all, so I burst out laughing.)

His ear plug came apart when he tried to take it out, and it's still stuck in his ear. I got to put a teaspoon of olive oil in his ear now that he's in bed, which might help it find its way out. Protecting your hearing is important, but what a nuisance this is!