Big news! I've picked a color palette for the interior of the van!

That's all really. 

Well, maybe not ALL. . .I have talked to the local who I want to put my ceiling fan in. He said he's busy, so call him in a week or two. Which I will. Moving at the speed of Delaware, huzzah!

I bought (but have not unpaked) ceiling planks. I stuck on 16 sound deading CLD tiles. I put in one batt of insulation. I have been informed that the rest of my insulation has shipped. I bought mildew proof string to help secure the insulation.

I have a late night of online tabletop gaming planned with some west coast friends (Nemesis anyone?) If I wake with any energy tomorrow, I'm going floor wood shopping. If not tomorrow, then Saturday. Or Monday.

Little by little I'm chipping away at getting this van build done.

A friend Instagrammed her journal, mentioning how much she hated writing in it but how much her therapist insisted she do it. 

We had a very big win at work today. But everytime I try to think about it, I put my head down and cry. My organization is good and does good things. But I don't. My last personal project to bear fruit was two years ago and since then, my projects have floundered.

It's the nature of the work and the nature of the field, but I find myself unable to start over with the next thing. I'm making small--if sometimes meaningful--contributions, doing routine and necessary--but not compelling--tasks. Wanting the important and interesting projects to gain traction, but certain I'm incapable of them--regardless of whether I was before.

There's a lot of thinking I need to do here but that's more than I have in me.

I’m isolating. So I took myself for a long drive into the countryside. It wasn’t an aimless drive, I had a quest. I was looking for a Mason-Dixon stone. 

The western border of Delaware southern terminus is at the Transpeninsular line, at a point half way between the Atlantic Ocean and the Chesapeake Bay, along a latitude line starting at Fenwick island. This was a mistake, it was supposed to start at Cape Henlopen, but in 1732 Lord Calvert submitted the wrong map to the presiding English court establishing the border. The erroneous map labeled Fenwick as Cape Henlopen, so the line started about 24 miles south of where it should have been. This had the effect of making William Penn’s Delaware bigger and Lord Calvert’s Maryland smaller by about 1000 square miles (which is like 40% of Delaware. Delaware is only about 2500 square miles in size today. )

Anyway, half way along this Transpeninsular latitude line is the midpoint, which I visited in a previous post.

Way up in northern Delaware, a 12 mile circle was drawn around the town of New Castle. The western border of Delaware goes from the Transpeninsular midpoint to a point tangent to the 12 mile circle. This Tangent Line does not go “true north” in longitude but slants ever so slightly westward to hit the tangent point. Once the border hits the 12 mile circle, it heads true north* to 39°43′20″ N, which is the latitude to the Maryland-Pennslyvania border. This is the Tri-State marker point, found in White clay creek park**.

Anyway, Mason & Dixon put markers down every mile along the Tangent Line, which every 5 miles dropping a more ornate Crownstone, carved with the crests of both Penn and Calvert. I decided to go look for one or two of these markers. 

So I drove out the Hickman Delaware, about 40 minutes from Dover. I had recently received a book called East of the Mason-Dixon Line by R. Nathan. The text is available online too, at https://archives.delaware.gov/wp-content/uploads/sites/156/2018/08/East-of-the-Mason-Dixon-Line_-A-History-of-the-Delaware-Boundaries-Roger-E.-Nathan.pdf

Page 95 talks about how to locate these two monuments, but vaguely - it doesn't give actual coordinates or directions. I have since found a much MUCH better source. It's called waymarking.com. Searching on MASDIX Tangent gets you all the markers and how to find them!! It's going to be a fun quest now!!!

Anywho, the Crownstone at mile marker 25

And the sad worn marker 26 one mile north in Hickman proper

Proverbs 22:28 : Remove not the ancient landmark, which thy fathers have set.

*actually, the border follows the 12 mile circle for just a wee bit more before turning north. This gives Delaware an extra 0.02 square miles. Apparently the 12 mile circle trumped the north line in the negotiations of border location.

** Today the MD-PA line goes straight to the arc, and the little wedge was given to Delaware. But that happened later, around 1920. I didn't draw that on my map sketch.

I've been sleeping like the dead. This hasn't been the case since the Violent Traumatic Event which almost killed me when I was 20. I don't like it.

It's funny because I had just told a few friends about my theory that people only have one or two dreams, over and over and over again. I say this because I only have one dream--or as far as I can tell I only have the one dream. So I figure we all repeat our dreams, and sometimes we remember them, but focus on the strange details that count as variation.

This week I've been having dreams that bear no resemblance to the dream I always have. It's disconcerting. They are rage-filled, anxious, and full of dead people. None of that is unusual, sadly. But they have unfamiliar settings; unfamliiar features; people I don't see in my dreams. I don't know what to make of it.

Waking up is like coming out of sedation. And that is unusual and also disoncerting. 

I'm not fine, but I'm fine. 

So I’ve been slacking on the van build. I have a ton of reasons, which I’m recognizing have slipped into the excuses realm. I'm procrastinating in starting the work. Current excuses are: I need to do the floor before I do the rest. And I need special wood for the flooring (Baltic Birch, or at least marine grade plywood, neither available in my local big box home improvement stores). And I couldn’t shop for it because I was being mom (not true, just easier to shop when you don’t have a bored kid in tow). And then I couldn’t shop for it because I’m isolating again after a COVID exposure (testing indicates I beat that rap, but still it's a 14 day quarantine) Also, I need it to be 50+ degrees so I can rustoleum the minor rust under the floor, so I can’t progress even if I had the wood.

All of which is nonsense. There is no reason I can’t do the ceiling and walls and do the floor after. I’ve been not thinking about the walls because of the floor holdups and also my havelock wool insulation as not yet arrived (but it should in a week or two.)

But I’ve had the ceiling fan for 3+ weeks, and made no movement on installing it. In my head I had to wait for the insulation before I did the ceiling fan. Now I’m recognizing this is not even vaguely the case. In fact I want the fan in before the insulation so I can insulate around it. Duh. 

I’m getting a referral to a local guy to do my fan install. I haven’t actually talked to him yet, but I'm working the smalltown referral network. The network being what it is, I have high hopes to get moving on this. I recognized that this means moving at the speed of Delaware (which is slow), but I’m still optimistic that the fan will go in later this week. Or next.

A friend gifted me a big box 2 weeks ago of sound deadening material. I assumed it was all kilmat or dynamat or similar. Turns out when I opened it, it is indeed some kilmat type stuff called CLD Tiles but also Thinsulate, Mass Loaded Vinyl, and closed cell foam. So since it's here, I’m going to put in the CLD tiles and use the thinsulate on the ceiling. I’m going to forgo the MLV and CCF - its heavy and tedious. I probably don’t have enough Thinsulate to do the whole van, but no matter, my wool insulation is coming soon. And I’ll layer that on too. 

I got up this morning all ready to put start with the CLD tiles. I even dressed in my stain paint splattered work clothes. . . it’s 1:30 and I’ve yet to get started . . maybe after I get this posted. Motivation, she is a fickle fickle mistress <-- this is my current favorite excuse

One thing of positive progress I’ve made: I’ve been buying all the stuffs. Spray glue for the insulation, rustoleum paint, roller to install the CLD, ceiling planks, extra strong folding shelf brackets for a sometimes bed, magnets for the ceiling (yes, I am planning to hold up my ceiling with magnets just like this guy  : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kfuUC88SYx0 

So hopefully the schedule is:

• Now: install the CLD tile; schedule the ceiling fan install, pick up ceiling planks
• Next: get the ceiling fan installed, cut the thinsulate to size, install it on the ceiling
• After: Put the ceiling planks on. Insulate the walls. Shop for floor wood. Rustoleum the floor. Etc. Etc.

Definition of triage

1a: the sorting of and allocation of treatment to patients and especially battle and disaster victims according to a system of priorities designed to maximize the number of survivors

b: the sorting of patients (as in an emergency room) according to the urgency of their need for care

2: the assigning of priority order to projects on the basis of where funds and other resources can be best used, are most needed, or are most likely to achieve success

==========

2021 will be harder than 2020, I think. I've had so many friends making earnest plans for the spring, even more with the vaccine approvals. And it's been easy to understand the desire, but I've not been able to wrap my head around the belief that we can have schools, and bars, and museums, and parties, and shops, and social lives again, given the people in charge and the systems in place.

I have a handful of relationships which will be okay, but I don't expect anything else. I don't expect to ever ski again. Or travel again. Or find a new job. Or make a new friend. Or throw a party. Or eat in a fancy new restaurant.

I expect to miss all the celebrations and funerals. I expect to wake up in 2022 older than my mother was at my age.

Bought myself a new Kindle (I know) because the old one won't hold a charge anymore. I still can't concentrate enough to read, but I have a reading list from a colleague (a heavy terrible reading list, but there it is). Of course, those mostly won't be available from the library for e-readers.

Otherwise. It's a new year. 304 days since I've been in a bar or restaurant or museum. I've managed to see friends and family in the park. We've done take out and I've ordered online and picked up in local shops. But otherwise, I've been to the grocery store and the park.

I miss the CTA. I miss my friends. I miss my parents. 

Can we get to the part where Tr**p no longer occupies the top headline spot in almost every news outlet? Will this start to happen after the Electoral College confirms Biden's victory? After January 20th when Biden is sworn in? What additional BS does he have up his sleeve? How did such a malignant narcissist get elected to begin with?

OK, that's off my chest. Just having a moment of frustration.

Spent time online last nightwith my Dummies. Spouses (surviving--hi! Grim joke!) hopped on and off, but mostly it was me and these two wonderful friends. 

Today, Spouse and I did very little. Some laundry. Some video games. Food. TV. I signed up for the #MakeDontBreak mailing list, but did not notice it until I was too far into the Glogg to make today. 

Like many, I'm trying not to place too much weight on the new year--nothing, after all, has changed. I'm not putting any pressue on myself, honestly. I've made it this far; that's good enough.

I'll try to do more yoga. Try to walk more. Get back on my bike (even without replacement fenders). Get back into making sure my budget numbers are reconciled each month. Be more kind. Be more patient. Get my vaccine as soon as I can.

Let's start off with my album of the year: I Like Trains's KOMPROMAT. These once gloom-rockers are fucking pissed and this album is start-to-finish political criticism, from straight-up mockery of British elites to creepily anthropomorphizing social media algorithms.  Their first single, "The Truth", is huge and the video is great.  It is a new step in the evolution of their sound and i'd love nothing better than to travel to Europe in 2022 and attend a live show of theirs while i'm there.

Albums (alphabetically by artist):

• Compasses, Sotavento — A Venezuelan group composed music in the various national styles, with a prog/fusion bent.  They earned a Latin Grammy nomination for this.  Fun music and top-notch musicianship.
• Fleet Foxes, Shore — More of their pastoral sort of indie rock.  Apparently their last album was considered a bit of a downer and this is a departure, tonally.
• Junebug, Too Late to Love You — The adventure computer game Kentucky Route Zero is a lovely piece of interactive storytelling that was released as five acts (the final published in January 2020), and the music by Ben Babbitt was integral to the experience.  In the middle of the game, one of the characters, an android named Junebug, performs a great song titled "Too Late to Love You".  Babbitt has hinted for several years that he'd make a whole album as Junebug, and it dropped in the middle of the year.  The album itself is just okay, but true to the character.  Really, play KRZ.
• Kaki King, Modern Yesterdays — More guitar wizardry fom King.
• Yo-Yo Ma, Stuart Duncan, Edgar Meyer, Chris Thile, Not Our First Goat Rodeo — The followup to The Goat Rodeo Sessions is not quite as amazing as its predecessor, but you can't go wrong with this crew.
• Bob Mould, Blue Hearts — Bob is still pissed, but also hopeful.  A return to form in my view, his best since Silver Age.
• Nine Inch Nails, Ghosts V: Together and Ghosts VI: Locusts — Simultaneously released ambient electronica soundtracks of hope and anxiety, respectively.  Still available for free download.
• Patty Larkin, Bird in a Cage — Her best since Regrooving the Dream, she sets many of her favorite poems to music.
• Pearl Jam, Gigaton — Their best since the self-titled avocado album.
• Throwing Muses, Sun Racket — Just weird, which is a funny thing to say about a TM album.
• Wu Fei & Abigail Washburn, Wu Fei & Abigail Washburn — Guzheng and banjo performing Chinese and American folk tunes.  Really nice stuff.

EPs and singles: Midnight Oil's The Makarrata Project (they reunited, but just lost their bassist to cancer) is a collaboration with various Aboriginal artists, Andrew Bird's "Capital Crimes" is Bird at his most political, Venus Hum put out five new singles (plus a Christmas song) for the first time since 2009, and Elana Stone's "Permanent Limbo" is a perfect pandemic pop jewel.