Gemini* and Gopher

• Personal/Opinions

  • Getting My Mojo Back

    I recently found myself in a particular sort of funk. The sort of funk that I'd never experienced before.

    I'm being purposefully vague for "reasons", but lets just say it was hella frustrating and I actually started to feel concerned that I wasn't going to be able to get out of it.

    This wouldn't be a big issue if not for a new situation I was in where this particular funk was affecting not just me but someone else.

  • 5th August 2024 - Red Rose Day 3

    Today started off dry. This eas a big win over the forecast. My lot had Global day. This was a series of activities which had a vague theme. There were powered go karts, bl3nd your own smoothies using pedal power, henna, various crafts, dry stone walling and fencing. As any good leader should, I had a go on a few. Fencing was fun but bloody hard work. A 30 minute session was plenty. The kids had to complete 10 actovities in total.

  • 10th August 2024 - Red Rose 2024

    I have now returned from the Red Rose Jamboree. I am a broken, tired and sore man but I have had a great time. There was no desire to continue writing at the end of each day. A mix of the phone keyboard and tiredness made that a pain.

  • Breathing Hole cave hurt me

    Last month I tagged along with Bloomington Indiana Grotto and Central Indiana Grotto on a trip down into Breathing Hole Cave. Breathing Hole is in Harrison-Crawford Forest in southern Indiana, in the Wyandotte Caves area. Nate, the trip leader, handled the IN DNR permit. My famous 3-year-old sat this one out at the campsite with some friends, and good thing she did!

  • Anger and frustration

    The output from a recent art therapy session of mine expressed some of the anger and frustration i feel from several decades of the knowledge and experiences of myself and others being ignored, dismissed, downplayed and invalidated.

    In the early 90s i was one of the loony greenie lefties warning about climate change; those chickens are increasingly coming home to roost, and it's large numbers of people in the Global South who are bearing the brunt, suffering and dying.

    In the late 90s i was one of the lazy malingerers who developed CFS; the chickens resulting from failure to take CFS professionally are increasingly coming home to roost in the form of people suffering from Long COVID with no clear course of treatment.

  • Solitude - My Confession

    This is kind of a confession:

    The reading of "Social Hangover"[1] from Robert Birming really made me think of my social commitment and if I'm wrong or if I have a problem. And I think its the trigger for this post to get of my chest.

    The main thing is, I don't socialize very much in real life (and also not really in the online world). I live alone and the only enduring relationships I have is my best friend ever and his wife and my mom. But after the marriage of my friend they moved a few cities away and I only see them once or twice a year, although we have phone calls relatively often.

  • 🔤SpellBinding: GHLUOSM Wordo: OGRES

  • Five good things, August 10

    1. Eric has been making us happy by clapping and playing peek-a-boo. "Where's Eric?" we say when we see him holding a blanket or a towel over his face. Lots of giggling behind the blanket. "Where's Eric?" Then -- ta-da! -- he yanks off the blanket and we say "There he is!" He gets a huge smile on his face.

    I saw him practicing clapping his hands together quietly by himself last Friday and I was delighted. He didn't know I was watching and he got an embarrassed smile when he looked up and saw me. Since then he's doing it more and more, now that he realizes we all get excited when he claps.