Get out the vote. Dog. Costume. Parade.
It's a language that allows unlimited adjacent nouns, apparently.
All dogs tolerated the costumes for the duration. Some dogs were friendlier than others. My dog had best eyebrows (as usual). Many photos were taken (not by me).
This post's theme word is festucine (adj), "of a pale yellow or straw-like color." The festucine retriever was named Layla?
There is local context which justifies this lawn sign, but I prefer to consider it as an intrusion from Welcome to Nightvale:
It doesn't feel cosmically fair that I can work all day on getting stuff done and arrive home, tired, to have my phone remind me that I haven't actually finished enough tasks today. And yet yesterday, when I effortfully tried to finish the tasks my phone reminded me of, I ended the day with an inbox full of reminders of the things I hadn't done yet. This is a Kafkaesque whack-a-mole where no amount of work, poured into the gaping maw, can sate its hunger. Someone needs to rake the yard. Someone needs to cook dinner. Someone needs to fill out insurance paperwork.
I am calming myself with breathing exercises and philosophical musings on how I might prefer alternate modes of living. My car insurance is reminding me I haven't installed their spyware on my phone yet, and that is a task that I immediately failed. I soothe myself with the tasks released on the wind like dandelion seeds. The buck does not stop with me, and I watch assigned busywork responsibility slip from my fingers.
The soft animal of my body wants only to exercise, go on dog adventures, and solve math puzzles. I am epsilon close to an optimally good life, but like Xeno I will not ever... quite... get... there.
This post's theme word is wrackful (adj), "ruinous." The completionist mindset is wrackful, woeful, and wretched.
An uphill slog. I set a timer to ring every 30 minutes so that I kept moving between tasks and not getting stuck on any time sink. More tasks got done, phone calls answered, service people scheduled, emails queued to send on Monday morning. Baked cookies for the end of the week.
End of day email tally: personal 108 (argh), work 70.
This post's theme word is euryphagous (adj), "eating many foods." Euryphagous humans live with dogs whose diets are quite the opposite.
Diverting waste often involves sorting it at the point of disposal. I've seen 5 genres of numbered of plastic, the Japanese burnable/non burnable unrecyclables, and of course there is the waste/recyclable/composting trifecta. But specific situations call for specific solutions. I had never seen a pizza-box specific waste receptacle before.
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| pizza boxes, recycling, waste |
... but now I have. I can only guess that this on-campus location is particularly susceptible to pizza consumption.
Grading, calling the insurance company, dog agility class, dog bath + blowdry. Drafted some work documents. Bemoaned the state of emails and my laggard queue for friendly snail mail.
End of day email tally: personal 65, work 68.
This post's theme word is agnoiology (n), "the study of ignorance or the investigation of the unknowable." Improving my pedagogy is an exercise in agnoiology.
More home maintenance, this time with a helping dose of "let's not flood or incinerate the basement by delayed repairs." I'm on-track to meet my rowing goal for October. Did more laundry (trying to churn up all the lingering summer clothes for storage) and got reminded that my closet storage system relies on some clothing being in the laundry at all times. I probably need to cull disfavored clothes to reclaim closet space. Paid some bills. Haircut. Very long dog walk, in the dark, contributing to the Ika fitness campaign.
Halloween decorations abound. Neighborhood favorite lawn flamingos have dressed up as the Cheshire cat and Alice:
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| "flamingo" is a fairly inaccurate translation of "velociraptor" |
End of day email tally: personal 55, work 68.
This post's theme word is ablute (v), "to wash or bathe a part of the body." One must carefully ablute after a haircut to eliminate all the tiny offcut hair pieces.
Grading (typical pastime). Cleaned the floors, did more laundry. Executed a closet update: summer clothes into storage, winter clothes out of storage, all-season clothes folded and sorted by color. Did not actually finish any task, so it's a bit demoralizing to end the day and not be able to cross off any item from my Grand To-Do List for Fall Break.
End of day email tally: personal 83, work 73.
This post's theme word is agon (n), "conflict, contest, or struggle." Ignoring the siren song of the unreplied inbox message is a continuous agon.
It's not really a break, of course. The power was out at the office, so I stayed home and dissassembled a heat pump. Then cleaned it with a toothbrush. Party time over fall break!
Very little actual work got done, but a lot of bureaucratic and maintenance tasks were accomplished. Laundry. Cooking a big pile of escarole. Rainy dog walks. Waiting on phone tree queues for customer service agents. Tickets closed.
End of day email tally: personal 87, work 81.
This post's theme word is verisimilar (adj), "having the appearance of truth or reality." The verisimilar dream meant that I actually cleaned the heat pump twice today.
