Maura's Illuminated Manuscript

[Alert readers may notice that I've moved my laptop upstairs to my desk. I kept the two monitors from my former employer, and the chair up here is much easier on my back.]

The Tickler showed up just in time to put on makeup and call a Lyft to Bai Tong. Good food, but they had Harry Potter-themed decor up. As the Tickler put it, they didn't get the memo.

Thence to Elliott Bay books. We didn't buy anything but caffeine, but I did extend my to-read list. And when "Under Pressure" came on the PA, we weren't the only people singing along.

The Monsters art show at Passable wasn't ready on time, so we hit Frankie & Jo's for vegan "ice cream".

But what we were really on the Hill for was the Mercury. People do bring the costumes for Halloween at the Merc. The Tickler's knees were bothering them, so we just hung out in a corner and sampled the eye candy. (The Tickler & I both admired Jessica Rabbit.) I'm OK with that. It was so crowded that I missed a couple of old-timers who were there, but one or two of them found me.

At about 0130, we left in search of food to assuage the drunchies. Lost Lake was bananas, so we ended up having nearly inedible Mexican food at Burritos California. We did eat outdoors, though, and took in some amazing people watching. And then I ended up paying a surge price to get a Lyft home. I will say this for the poor bastard driving: he earned that money because I-5 northbound was closed, so traffic was horrendous anywhere near a ramp as well as Capitol Hill.

Yes, Halloween at the Merc is fun even with all the amateurs. But next time I'm there I'm leaving early enough to take the last train out.

Today? The usual mellow Sunday with the Tickler despite the Wendling waking us up with the dirty laundry that he somehow neglected to bring up last night. Chores. And here I am.

In the midst of my recent turmoil, I forgot to write about a notable occasion: it's been six months since my facial feminization surgery – FFS in trans lingo. This means that the Sculptor's last post-surgical directive, that of wearing a hat outdoors, has finally expired. (OK, I stopped wearing a hat outdoors on Sunday. It's Seattle in late October, for heaven's sake.)

Do I like my face? Shyeah! Seriously, most of you will never know how crushing it is to look in a mirror and see an opposite-sex grandparent looking back at you, but that's over for me now. And I've had multiple people tell me that I still look like myself, as opposed to an alien, I guess. Despite the purported sexual freakiness of aliens, that's a good thing.

The last real remaining side effect is the numb patch on top of my head. It's about 5 by 3 centimeters, irregularly shaped, and shrinking. At least, I'm pretty sure it's shrinking. And from the Dept. of Oddity, the patch on the left side of my forehead that I could rub and make the top of my head tingle is also shrinking and fading. Coincidence? I doubt it. It's as if wires literally got crossed, and they've spent the last six months uncrossing themselves.

There was a lot of numbness on my chin earlier, but that's about 95% gone. There's maybe a fingertip's worth of area on my chin that's a little tingly when I touch it. Likewise, the partly tingly patch at the tip of my nose is a few square millimeters now.

Edited to add: I can still feel what I believe to be sutures just opposite my lower gums, but they're being slowly swallowed up by my own tissue. It's not uncomfortable, just a little odd.

I've sent all of the above in an email with photos as requested to the Sculptor's office. Do I want more elective knife work ever again? Hell no. I mean, as ladies pushing sixty go, I'm doing all right.

After the job interview yesterday, I had Korean dinner with bork. More skeery horror tales of layoffs, but still, it was badly-needed social time.

Mental note: try Busan Jeong at the north end of Broadway. It looks fancier, it's mobbed, and bork says it's good. Pity Funny Lady no longer lives in the neighborhood or she'd be all over that.

After dinner, wandering around the Pike-Pine corridor. Nice art & live music at Vermillion, a little vegan ice cream at Frankie & Jo's, saw a new Pynchon book called Shadow Ticket at Elliott Bay so of course I bought it, then stopped by the Merc for half an hour and one hefeweizen mainly to say hi to DJ Wrain Havoc. I didn't feel like making a late night of it.

I had absolutely perfect transit mojo as a bicyclist loading his bike delayed the departure of my bus from U District Station. It felt like a night that was meant to be.

I went to Seacompression on Saturday night. Much booze and some decent art, but not many of my favorite Burners. Last year several of them sounded kind of down on the event, so I guess I shouldn't be that surprised. Le sigh. I remember a time when Seacompression took up more of the same venue – the Seattle Design Center – and Opium, the serial winner of Bang For the Buck and Deathguilder, showed up with an unfairly attractive submissive. Those were the days.

Sunday? Mostly the four B's: buying groceries, baskets of laundry, bins, and beans & rice.

I have a job interview (Yay!) on Thursday for which the interviewers want to see a code sample. What luck, then, that I was already in the middle of redoing the Lambert House reception database and app using a real SQL engine and web pages*. That's what I spent all of today and a little of yesterday doing, and I'm maaaybe half done with it. By EOD tomorrow I can at least have it feature complete for current** day-to-day operations. I probably don't have to finish it, but it would be nice to get close.



*As opposed to Microsoft Access. Ptui!
**The existing app has some features that I wrote but that haven't been needed since the start of the pandemic. Now that we're back in the house, Ken the director says he wants those features in the new app and he's going to train the volunteers on how to use them. Rock 'n roll.

Job: So, uh, LinkedIn reminded me that I hadn't marked myself as "open to work" yet. Gosh, I thought I'd done that. I did, and now I have an appointment to talk to a recruiter in Vancouver on Friday. Go me? I'm still applying to jobs at a steady pace. Things learned:

• There seems to be a relative abundance of jobs for companies that do surveillance. Like, with cameras.
• The University of Washington, predictably, doesn't pay that well. As in, I'm not sure I could make my mortgage payment if I worked there. I'm thinking of the folks I know who've worked there, and sure enough, they were in two-income households.

And while I'm talking about jobs, darkmane, who's also looking for work – not exactly the same kind of work, thank Goddess, but related – asked to get together for coffee a few days ago. We did that this afternoon, and now I'm convinced that I could be doing some things better. There may be people out there who love job hunting and are therefore good at it. I'm not one of them. But darkmane had one solid piece of advice that's actually worked for me in the past: use your contacts.

Anyway, I decided to shake myself out of my funk last night by listening to someone else's funk at the Blue Moon. Vinyl night, which is very old sk00l house. The cute, gay-looking barmaid told me she was trying to drain a keg of stout and I did my bit – not to excess, mind you. No Brit Jean, though, at least not until after I left at a reasonable hour.

Oh: the Blue Moon's hundred-year lease ends in eight years, after which the building is likely to be bulldozed, says Brit's substitute Shaun. The city doesn't want to give it historic status. Dammit.

Job hunt stuff:

• Laptop sent back via FedEx – dropped off via Miss Indigo Bike – and delivered.
• UI applied for.
• Severance signed for.
• Resume updated and sent out for review.

To do:

• LinkedIn (ungh)
• Following specific job leads.

So I haven't been completely slacking this week. I've also run out of minor house chores like squeaky hinges.

If it weren't for the tax laws governing 401(k)s, I might be able to retire, like, soon. It's an unsavory irony.

I tried to go to the dyke biker (not necessarily Dykes On Bikes) meetup yesterday, only to find that it's been halted for the fall & winter. There was, however, one trans lady biker, and we chatted while she rolled a joint for chronic pain with some impressive paraphernalia that I'd never seen before. Just another evening in Seattle, two stops up the bus line.

I went from nothing worthy of note happening a couple of days ago to being too busy to write an entry. Finally I have some time. In brief: all the fun squeezed into one weekend.

Thursday night: drinks with the latex folks, where in Madame Zoey gave me tips about how to have fun at the annual Vancouver Fetish Weekend in the summer. Thence to Time Warp, the video arcade bar lovingly decorated in a sci-fi theme, to wish a happy birthday to A-the-Mercury-regular and check out the DJing of her German joyfriend. (It was gawth, natch.) Time Warm sells instant ramen, complete with hot water. I got the last available cup, which happened to be vegan and Korean. A, who actually is vegan, was delighted to learn that vegan instant ramen exists. Success!

Friday night: cheap eats with the Tickler followed by the B-52s and DEVO. TL;DR: they reminded me why I fell in love with Nu-wave forty-mumble years ago. It was hugely entertaining to see B-52s fans (over-the-top glammed up women, people in lobster onesies) and the DEVO fans (often black, with so many energy domes).

The ladies whose singing powered the B-52s, Cindy Wilson and Kate Pierson, have withstood the ravages of time remarkably well. Less so speak-singer Fred Schneider, but wevs.

And apparently being slow-burn angry, self-aware, punk wise guys like DEVO also keeps you young. The Tickler in particular was upset that they played "Mongoloid"; that was one blemish in what was otherwise a terrific show. They played three songs that I'd never heard before.

I think I now have to buy DEVO's Something for Everybody as well as the B-52s' Cosmic Thing. I already have earlier DEVO, but no B-52s, because I basically memorized their first two albums while driving to Seattle from Florida. The B-52s have produced a great many irresistable ear worms, but DEVO makes me bounce off the walls like no other band.

Came home, crashed, had dairy-free breakfast in bed, then lunch at Made In House. I've ridden my bike, and will hit a Burner-flavored thing tonight. All. The. Things.

My little iPhone 12 was starting to have trouble running apps without hesitation. It was five years old, and due to go out of support in a year or so. (It's maddening and scuzzy that Apple doesn't publish a firm date.) So, what better time to upgrade than right after I took my phone to Burning Man, exposed it to lots of dust, shot pictures with it, and juiced it up with solar power for the first time?

How'd the upgrade go? Not badly. The only hiccup was that I couldn't restore from the backup on my Mac immediately because, ironically, the new phone needed an update to iOS 27 to catch up with the old phone. Once that update was done, I pulled the data from the old phone to the new via Bluetooth in about 45 minutes.

I was worried about the authentication apps, but they were fine. That's a relief, because I need those for work. Fun fact: Signal wants to do its very own data migration, which I might not have done had tickets for a certain event not gone on sale yesterday.

And once I was done, I found out that Congolese have been asking people to boycott Apple, presumably over the horrors of the cobalt and copper extraction there. There really isn't any ethical consumption under capitalism.

That was pretty much my evening: Dancer had an early evening function, which I knew, but it ran so long that by the time she was available for me, it was late and, let's face it, we were both tired. Maybe if she didn't live in Ta-goddamn-coma now I might have insisted, but no. And there I was dolled up in a newly clean house with the furniture in my living room moved around. Ahem.

All my stuff has been either washed or wiped with vinegar, allowed to dry, and put away. Next: get the playa stains off my floors, walls, counters, and railings before Dancer shows up on Friday evening. Oy.

I've been so busy with Burning Man cleanup that I neglected to mention my Saturday night: Pony, where I searched unsuccessfully for Riz Rollins, and the Merc, where I got to hang with the regulars at Our Table. Haunting the usual haunts was just what I needed right then.

Oh: Burning Man, or more accurately packing for it, has inspired me to get rid of stuff I don't want, and am unlikely to want in the future. No, I don't need a couch cover that you replaced in 2023, and so on.

Remember that Hebrew writing that I saw in blue tape on an RV at Burning Man? Transliterated, it read, "Duvdev naki."

Duvdev is the nickname of Infected Mushroom's bouncy front man, Amit Duvdevani. "Naki" means "clean" or "pure". And since Hebrew, like other Semitic languages, lacks a word for "to be", "Duvdev naki" means "Duvdev is clean" or "Duvdev is pure."

Yes, the word "naki" has connotations in Hebrew that are similar to those of its English glosses. But Uncle Google can't find any mention of any criminal accusations against Duvdev, not even for minor drug infractions.

Here's what I think it really means: all of Infected Mushroom is Israeli. They're the most successful and visible musical artist to come out of that country. Thanks to Bibi's war in Gaza, IM has had several shows cancelled by promoters, notably in Australia.

Is that fair to IM? Wayell, they've taken no public stance on the war that I've heard of, or on Israeli politics generally. That probably makes them like the vast majority of artists. IM moved its home base from Haifa to LA well before the war, presumably for business reasons. So no, I don't think the cancellations are fair to them.

A postscript to this postscript: at some Burn prior to 2018, most likely 2016, I went to the giant Opulent Temple sound camp early in the evening. There weren't many people there. A tall, shaven-headed man walked up in a white robe, which when paired with his accent made him appear to be a biblical prophet of dance music. He did say he was from Israel. I now suspect strongly that this was Duvdev, but he never gave me a name. IM did play at the '16 Burn, most likely at Opulent Temple where I saw them this year.