Moving might have been a mistake.

I am businessman Donald Trump
I smell like i just took a dump
I am now your president

NATO power will soon go away
I will be Putin one day
I will command all of you
We'll host Andrew Tate in school 
We'll host Andrew Tate in school

Mar-a-Lago über alles
Mar-a-Lago über alles
Über alles, Mar-a-Lago
Über alles, Mar-a-Lago

Podcasters will control you
One-hundred percent supplements
You will buy all of their crap
And always wear the MAGA cap

Captured media won't report
On those suckers we deport
And they won't come back, we say
Immigrants, oh you will pay
Immigrants, oh you will pay

Mar-a-Lago über alles
Mar-a-Lago über alles
Über alles, Mar-a-Lago
Über alles, Mar-a-Lago

Now it is 2025
Masked goons rent vans to drive
It's the neck gaiter secret police
They have come to ruin the peace

Come quietly to the car
You'll look nice behind our bars
Don't resist our display of power
This should only take an hour

Bam! Throwing tear gas at the mob
We're just here to do our job
We'll deport you little chumps
When you mess with President Trump
When you mess with President Trump

Mar-a-Lago über alles
Mar-a-Lago über alles
Über alles, Mar-a-Lago
Über alles, Mar-a-Lago

We drove to Portland last week to say goodbye this weekend to a longtime friend from the days of Usenet, who also happened to be the boss who held my job while I recovered from GBS. He's had ALS for about fifteen months now and he can barely move. Watching his wife tend to his respiratory needs (he is no longer able to clear fluid from his lungs) was heartbreaking and also brought back memories when Kim had to do something very similar while I was paralyzed.  But we were both glad to be there, tell him we loved him, and also to give his wife as much support as we could.

STOP DOING TYPING INDICATORS

• YEARS OF ONLINE CHAT yet NO REAL-WORLD USE FOUND for "x is typing..."

• Wanted to see what your partner was typing in real time? We had a tool for that, it was called "talk(1)"

• "Please cause me anxiety by giving me the illusion that someone is taking their time composing a thoughtful reply" - Statements dreamed up by the utterly Deranged

"Hello please give me blinking, bouncing ellipses"
They have played us for absolute fools

turns out papadum really does puff up nice and crisp with a little oil after fifty seconds in the microwave

One of the ways I bonded early with my stepson was joining a D&D game he was in. His friend's uncle was the DM and he ran it every Friday evening (but i only played every other Friday because, well, Kim and i were still dating and I'm not an idiot). This went on for around nine years, until David went to San Francisco for college. 

I last saw John at David's wedding in August 2022 and it was nice to catch up with him and the other regulars of the game. 

A month or two ago, he died suddenly (although apparently he taken a turn in March, but refused to do anything about it; we learned during the funeral that he hasn't seen a doctor for his entire adult life). David is going to run a one-shot game in his honor with all the usual suspects. I dug in my box of mementos and found all the old character sheets from those days.

I had started riding my bike from home to the train station, and then to work, then back again.  On April 30, an unseen lump of asphalt that served as a makeshift ramp to the curb came across my path, snapped my handlebars out of my grip, and down i went on my left shoulder, neatly breaking my collarbone in half.

Saw the orthopedist today and she very cheerfully gave the situation a thumbs up.  They only operate on cases where the broken ends separate more than 2 cm, it's a compound fracture, or separation.  Cases like mine just have the broken ends heal up until they find each other and make a weird mangled bone.  I should be mostly okay in another 5-6 weeks, and i can resume riding (if i'm up to it) after 3 months.

The bruising around the shoulder is... something.

Ugh, when did i develop all these skin tags?

Finished week 2 at Google (on contract). It's quite a relief to get a job where i'm given a task and am not micromanaged (even if all my various facets of existence within the Google hivemind have yet to fully coalesce, which hindered my ability to work until this Wednesday).  I've had to thrash against the limits of my ignorance yet, after establishing the initial parameters, managed to surpass obstacles on my own, needing only once to ask for clarification.

Plumbing and electric work on the new house is nearly done, which will allow us to insure it.  The garage at the current house has been obliterated and removed, and the dogs are greatly loving the new roaming grounds.  Memo hates shovels and, when faced with the Bobcat that remained overnight (the garage demolition took two days), felt that it was his duty to bite the largest shovel he'd ever seen.

Our grandson Elliott drew some capybaras during his last visit. They now grace our fridge.

Ever since i put on a pair of my mom's heels at 11 and loved them, i've always wanted to know what my deal was, mainly because i thought it would help me figure out how to express myself in a way that i felt was true to myself, whatever the hell that means.

It looks like it would take forty years for not just me to settle down as a person but also for society to change with a whole bunch of young people changing attitudes and language enough for things to fall into place.  In the meantime, i took some baby steps by starting in 2008 to wear kilts, a heteronormative-approved skirt for men.  I started buying nicer clothes in general as a result of, for the first time, caring about how i dressed and looked on a daily basis.

Two years and a half ago, i bought my first non-kilt skirt from eShakti, which a coworker had recommended primarily for the ability to customize the garment's measurements, as she has an unusually shaped body.  As i do, too, given my typically male proportions, and the fact that most of their skirts have pockets (which i had no interest in going without), that sealed the deal.  But i still didn't know where to wear it (although i did take it out to go see Florence + the Machine for my granddaughter's birthday with her stepmom [my stepdaughter], which was a perfect occasion as i saw other guys there wearing clothes with femenine festoons), so it mostly languished in my closet.

Last year, after i started at Zoox, i decided to rip off the bandaid on Halloween (how cliché) and wore the navy skirt with these, which i'd bought in Portland on a bit of a lark in 2019 and were also looking for an opportunity to shine in public.  After that, i ended up buying a couple more skirts, and also some mid-heeled boots, and it's really feeling like it's all coming together.

Following are the skirts, in order of purchase, plus my favorite pairs of knee-high boots.

So how am i labeling myself?  I'm a cis hetero dude with femme fashion tendencies; that's good enough.

In closing, here's Neko Case.