fred_mouse

Hi!

If you are reading this, I assume you are new to my journal. If you like what you see and friend me, I'll most likely subscribe to you and give you access, because most of what I lock is whinging/talk about workplaces. I think the only exception to that so far was someone whose most recent posts were all about things I couldn't deal with at the time, so unless you are frequently posting about far right wing politics and oppressing the working class (or other groups) that shouldn't apply to you (there is always the possibility that I'll completely fail to notice the subscription for weeks on end, or that I'll change my willingness and forget to change this note. Please don't consider a lack of follow to be commentary on you as a person).

I mostly post trivialities of my day, although I try and keep the ratio of complaints to more positive posts low. I try and post about books I read and media that I watch, and only a little about politics. I can go weeks at an end with nothing to say, and I can go through patches where I make half a dozen trivial posts a day!

And a bit about me: I'm a middle-aged parent of three, a musician, a mathematician, a crafter (fabric and yarn), a lazy gardener, and an indifferent house-keeper. I have two partners I mostly don't mention in my journal. I'm passionate about science, science fiction, and social justice. I have chronic health issues that impact on what I can achieve, and sometimes I get frustrated and use my journal as an outlet for dealing with that. I still don't know what I want to do when I grow up, but I'm hoping to enjoy the process of getting there. And I love reading about other people and their lives, learning about what interests them.

(also, I ramble. This post started as a 'very short note', morphed to 'a short note' and then ended up as you see it now)

edit, December 2025 - I have recently found and followed some authors on here; to those people specifically: I do not expect that you will necessarily interact with me! I love to hear about people writing, and I follow as many newsletters and blogs as I can find wherever they are.

regards,
Fred Mouse
(ps. I respond to both fred and mouse, as well as a host of other names)

I have not been reading all that much* lately. Since the last post I have finished three books, all of which are from the old murder mystery list -- mostly because I have them on my phone, and I've been reading them in waiting rooms. In decreasing order of how much I liked them:

The Middle Temple Murder by J.S. Fletcher. 4 stars. I didn't entirely follow the plot, and I'm not sure if I was supposed to. But it was well written and the characters were great. review
The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie. 3 stars. It's a classic, I understand why it is a classic, but I also don't think it is worth reading unless you are already a Christie fan. review
The Roman Hat Mystery by Ellery Queen. 2 stars. Unlike the Fletcher book, where me not following felt like a me problem, here I felt that the author was going out of their way to make it hard to follow. Also, all the characters are dickheads. review

* not counting a bit of short fiction, a lot of Heated Rivalry fic, and chapters out of a lot of books that I haven't actually made it to the end of because it requires focus I haven't had.

uni: sent the ethics application to supervisors on ... Tuesday. Have started setting the foundations for the next sub-project, but haven't gathered together all the notes yet. This will be hunting for kids books. I am being optimistic and also grandiose about how much I'm hoping to achieve.

annual not-goals: reading (1) and music (4) are on track; the others either I've not really done anything on or they aren't currently achievable.

medical: 7/15 treatments down; I look mildly sunburned. I'm getting the expected kinds of side effects, albeit at levels that seem higher than is warranted for such a small area of body (today I am so crashed and food is a struggle, and language is a bit wonky; I told the nurse my head was full of glue). I have found some details that help with the overstimulation: I wear non-slip socks (no shoes on the bed, no bare feet to stress the staff, no taking shoes off), I keep my eyes closed and focus on breathing except when watching the 'how much to breath' lights, I take my belt off even though I don't need to so it doesn't dig in.

craft: I have been making progress on one of the two knitting projects that I'm counting as 'active' which means that some time this year I might get to the pattern that buttonsbeadslace shared with me (which needs to be done for ... September, because b'day gift. and then a second for october, and a third for December, because I think I'm funny). No other craft has had a look in. I did do weekly drawing for a bit but didn't find the spot in the routine it fits and keep forgetting.

music: I have played some of the Hanon's exercises roughly once a week. Monday group (viola) is going well; Wednesday (violin) I've made it to more than I've missed and alternating Sundays (recorder) are also good although there is less music happening there than would be my preference (P's house guest is in the final throes of writing a PhD thesis in mathematics; P does not do math; ariaflame and I have tangentially relevant knowledge, house guest take the opportunity to talk about their maths)

Over the last two months, I've been opening all the dreamwidth posts I intend to read (at length) or reply to, and then not having the oomph to do so. At the beginning of the weekend, I have over 450 tabs open in this window. I ... am not going to read all of those. I'm slowly closing them. I'm reading bits of them, but I'm not commenting.

so, one generic post: To all those who have been through surgery / medical bullshit, I hope you are recovering well. To those who have lost loved ones, I'm sorry for your loss, my condolences. To those posting about weather: I'm very much appreciating it. Also those posting small details of lives, reading, gaming, music, etc. To those sharing your creative endeavours, congrats! (and I'm sorry: if it is writing I have no spoons to go read).

If there is something you want me to know about, comment here or DM me please

(This post comes with the soundtrack of Youngest asking "If You were the tax act, what word would you use for tips?" and then complaining that 'gratuities' isn't in section ten, but there is something about grape vines).

The Stars You Can't See by Looking Directly by Samantha Murray* - Complicated story about infertility, and parenthood, and bigotry. 4 stars

Arbitrium By Anjali Scahdeva - this one has quite the summary, which I think I found detracted from the story. I also found the story very clunky, with a lot of world-building passages that I didn't find particularly engaging. The main character is quite reserved, and it is very much relevant to the story, but it means that I needed some other way for the story to grab me, and it didn't. 3 stars

India World by Amit Gupta - there was a formatting glitch here, by which one is suddenly in a different scene with no transition, which threw me out of the story repeatedly. Slow moving coming of age about what love of home means when one is part of a diaspora. I really liked the ending, which is more a pause in the progression of scenes that the reader is invited into. 4 stars.

Grow by Carrie Vaughn (from 2022) - DNF I found I did not care to learn about the origin story of a teenage 'ace' (wildcard, one presumes, given that it is part of the Wild Cards universe, which I've bounced off each time I've gone near it)

Porgee’s Boar - Jonathan Carroll (from 2022) - quite chilling story at multiple levels, about art, and the power of art to show people what is inside their own head. 4.5 stars

D.I.Y. by John Wiswell (from 2022) - this is a reread, but I already had it open and I had fond memories (although I vaguely recall it making me angry about politics and bureaucracy) so thought it worth revisiting. This is a very USian dystopia of corporate greed and lone wolf ~~scientists~~ magic users. I don't like either of those tropes a lot, but it is well done. 4 stars.

* Not sure if I was actually at uni with Sam, or if I met them through people I was at uni with. I know them well enough that I read much of the story in their voice, which very much affected my experience of the story. Often I find that soothing; here I found it distracting.

Today was my second radiation treatment, and it was better than the first. ... I guess I should talk about the sensory hell that the first treatment was, and the way that it completely derailed my day (the second didn't completely derail the day, but some of my choices made it less than optimal)

( this got long, and I do not have the oomph to trim/edit )

2 down, 13 to go.

I'm reading an Ellery Queen detective novel from, hmm, the late 1920s, I think? And I was highly amused to read the following line:

“It was Friday morning and the Inspector and Ellery, garbed romantically in colorful dressing-gowns, were in high spirits.”

Methinks that 'romantically' has shifted in meaning. I can kind of work it out, but also, only at a kind of intellectual understanding rather than really getting it.

(for those not familiar, this is a parent/adult child dyad)

not much in the way of medical TMI this time, but still, content note for cancer treatment details.

Healing (external) looking good. The scar is as long as my little finger, and quite dark (almost like a lightly faded black permanent marker). It is no longer raised or itchy. Little bit red either side, possibly because it is difficult to get the breast in a position to see the scar, and it means I was pulling on the skin. I continue treating with the scar therapy gel, in hopes that that decreases my chance of it going stiff (I have a history of cheloid scarring on my knee, which the doctor that did the surgical tidy up of the scar attributed to issues with the original stitching / treatment)
Internally I'm assuming there is still a bit of healing to go because there is infrequent discomfort, mostly if I end up in an odd position and the breast is not supported. Also noticeable last night while chopping veggies, so I may need to look at what is wrong with my posture there.
I'm still wearing the surgical recovery bras; I've now moved to not using them at night because my skin was getting quite irritated under the band. Of the four I started with, I have misplaced the good one, and one is a size too large. Fortunately, I have found an old sports bra which is appropriately soft and has no underwire to wear while the two are in the wash. A couple of times I have tried wearing one of my usual, which I think of as soft, but have underwire; in each case the surgical area has become noticeably sore. I'll keep doing that every few weeks until it isn't an issue, then transition back to my usual bras. I have decided against going to the specialist bra shop to get more, mostly because I don't have the necessary time + energy.
radiation: appointment one with the radiologist, who was all 'this is your choice, ...' and then gave info that summed up approximately to 'given your age/situation, I'd do it anyway'. Also implied, I think, was the fact that there were cancerous cells further from the cancer site ('the margins'), necessitating the second surgery; my take from that is that it was moving quickly. Thus I am skipping over the expensive test and going straight to radiation. I think if the cancer site had been elsewhere in the body, it might be different, although I did not get a feel for which way the likelihood went. But being in the breast duct, there is a lot of potential for cancer cells to have moved a long way and be starting up again. Thus, radiation of the whole breast.
Appointment two with the radiologist is Monday. They can treat me at the local public hospital (literally next door to the private one I had the first surgery at). It will be three weeks, multiple sessions. Likely noticeable side-effects are sun-burn like sensation and some other minor discomfort. Slight change in the breast tissue (ongoing) may occur, so it might feel different to the other, but as it already does, eh. And there is a slight chance that a small bit of the lungs behind will be damaged, but in a way that I am not likely to perceive.

only slightly lost in the drafts folder

The Viy by Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol, Translated by Claud Field. Described as a horror novella from 1836. Uneven, didn't really get it.

Within the Wall - Patrick Kuklinski, January, 2024. This is entirely from the point of view of a rat living in a colony in the wall, but it has some interesting things to say about aspects of human society as well. 4/5

Regarding the Childhood of Morrigan, Who Was Chosen to Open the Way - by Benjamin Rosenbaum, Nov 19, 2025 - This story is doing some interesting things. I absolutely did not give a damn, and noped out, mostly because I didn’t have the brain space to track what was going on. But also because child neglect.

The person who reminds the other person to cast a spell - by Bogi Takács, December 2024 - short poem, does very interesting things with language. 4/5

The Girl That My Mother Is Leaving Me For by Cameron Reed, April 2025 - before reading: this is dystopia, so I may not make it through, but the title has me intrigued (I'm a bit hmmm about the one sentence summary though). After reading: It's clever, but at no point did I warm to the characters, and I think it would have been necessary to do so to really appreciate this. 3/5

The Specialist’s Hat by Kelly Link (undated) - this is a very clever ghost story, where exactly what happens is never made clear. 4/5

The Starlight on Idaho by Denis Johnson, 'winter' 2011 - odd epistolary fic from a person in drug and alcohol rehab; quite a lot of unreality, beautifully written. 4/5

[001: JAVELIN] - Derin Edala - this is a web serial; I'm not sure if it is finished. Far future science fiction. ... technically not short fiction, and I haven't finished it because the tab it is in keeps getting lost in the sea of open tabs

For reasons I don't remember, Youngest bought sago, and then we discovered that there was some still in the cupboard. In discussion about what to do with this surplus, Youngest commented that they didn't know how to make sago pudding*, so we set out to do so. This is a bit variant on what I learned as a kid, so I'm capturing it now, because this was much closer to what I want it to be than it usually is. It is to be remembered that this is a dessert that is more about texture than flavour, and I make it with more flavour than the family friends I learned it from. Next time, I'll try soaking the sago in the soy milk, and then add water after, because the taste was a little thin.

1/2 cup sago plus 2 cups of water, in bowl, put in fridge for ~30 hours (it was going to be less, but I forgot last night; the fridge is because I am not leaving wet starch out in nearly 40°C heat).

Cooking: I used a heavy bottom pot, which I vaguely remember is important, but I don't remember why. Started on the too high burner, which was good for getting it to the boil, but I had to move it to the medium heat once it came to temperature.

Soaked sago plus somewhere between 1/2 and 1 cup of soy milk, a tsp (estimate; it was what was left in the tub) pandan extract, and 2 somewhat heaped tbsp white sugar went in the pan (for slightly more flavour, use brown sugar; it will be a weird colour but it tastes fantastic). Bring to boil, turn heat down to gentle simmer, stir constantly, making sure to scrape down the sides of the pan regularly (do not be tempted by the idea of taking a break. This will burn in what feels like a moment if the heat is just a tad too high). I use a silicone spatula for this, so as to be sure to get into the corner of the pan. Check regularly for translucence - when all but one sago ball is completely translucent, and that one at least half done, I call it done, and pour into bowls to set. I have a lovely set of thin metal dessert bowls that are perfect for this, because they don't cool down too fast.

* not to be confused with sago pudding, which is a steamed pudding I vaguely recall, and have a recipe for that I've never used

aiii, I have gone back through my posts, and the most recent of these that I've found is from last august. I am not going to attempt to work out what I have started or progressed; I will start with 'what I've finished' and if I still have any oomph (and it is not bed time) I'll go poke at what I've abandoned. In reverse chronological order. I'm putting the list in, and then maaaaybe I'll have the cope to put a commentary. (finished today but not yet reviewed: The Murder of Roger Ackroyd - Agatha Christie)... oh, and if I notice that it is a short story, I've left it out, because I think I captured that before.

Bound by the Blood - Cecilia Tan. 4.5 stars. review - BDSM speculative erotica that is just so clever, but also very emotionally hard going.
The Quest for Corvo: An Experiment in Biography - A.J.A. Symons. 4 stars. review - presented as a biography, but it reads as a story of an obsession, and the biographical details are highlights.
The Siege of Burning Grass - Premee Mohamed. 3 stars. review - despite being well written, fantastic world building, good characterisation, passable plot I felt like I just missed the point.
The House that Horror Built - Christina Henry. 2.5 stars review - I usually love Henry's work, and yet this one just never quite gelled for me. (content note: pandemic) 5.Nest - Inga Simpson. 5 stars. review - recommended for those who like slow moving slice of life stories; each chapter is a tiny lightly sketched moment that adds to a nuanced and complicated story of getting old, making mistakes, and reconciling with your past.
Building a second brain: a proven method to organise your digital life and unlock your creative potential - Tiago Forte. 4. stars. review - some really good ideas, but dry and easy to put down and forget about it. I feel that 'less annoying than the majority of self-help books' is a low bar, but it cleared it.
Digital Sociology - Deborah Lupton. 4 stars. review - There is a lot going on with this book, looking both at how sociology as a process / research field is changed by using digital tools, and how sociology of the digital world works.
Angel of the Overpass - Seanan McGuire. 4 stars. review - very satisfying set of conclusions; well worth reading if you liked the previous ones. Possibly slightly darker horror than the last one.
The Viy - Nikolai Gogol. 3.5 stars. review - This was well written, and individual scenes are great, but I don't think I understand how the story fits together.
The Gentle Art of Fortune Hunting - KJ Charles. 4.5 stars. review - I really enjoyed this, and finished it in an afternoon.
Vertigo - Karen Herbert. 3 stars. review - I noted this as "a little thriller in a literary public service story"; I found it really hard to engage with
The Invisible Library - Genevieve Cogman. 3.5 stars. review - excessively contrived plot, adversarial workplace relationships verging on farce, well written, complex full of interesting characters.
The Coffee House Witch and the Grumpy Cat - Ariana Jade. 2 stars. review - The writing is good, but the entire thing is set up and no payoff. And for something marketed as a romance, it really isn't.
A Sorceress Comes to Call - T. Kingfisher. 4 stars. review - solidly written fantasy / horror / regency romance with a heavy emphasis on body horror and loss of control, and I don't recommend it to people who have trauma over dangerous and controlling parents
Bad Actors - Mick Herron. 2 stars. review - I listened to an interview by the author, this was the Slough House book I found in the library. Author loves their characters, but I found them so badly written.
The Sea Mystery - Freeman Wills Crofts. 4 stars. review - perfectly readable murder mystery, more thinky and less personality driven in comparison to Agatha Christie.
Once Upon a Tome: The Misadventures of a Rare Bookseller - Oliver Darkshire. 3.5 stars. review - lots of short, self-contained anecdotes. Dry and gets a bit same-old and repetitive.

Abandoned

Fly with Me by Andie Burke reason - not for me
Doing research: A new researcher's guide by Jinfa Cai, Stephen Hwang, James Hiebert, Charles Hohensee, reason - out of scope
The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness Jonathan Haidt reason - came across as disingenuous
The Pleasure of Drowning by Jean Bürlesk reason - do not share the author's sense of humour.
Unmasked: The Ultimate Guide to ADHD, Autism and Neurodivergence by Ellie Middleton reason - I kept finding myself contrasting it with Matilda Boseley's The Year I Met My Brain and finding it lacking.

.. I'm not being grumpy at all philosophy today, although I have days when I encounter bits and I have Thoughts and Opinions that can be summed up as 'philsophy sucks'. I have not, historically, engaged very well with particular bits of philosophical thinking and/or the way it is presented.

Today, I'm struggling, because I am being too literal. And because the starting point is swan == white, and then the author is extrapolating out from that. I, however, fall over at the first hurdle, because I have to stop and parse swan==white, and spend time getting out of my comfort zone, rather than starting in my comfort zone. And I get that this is Western Australia is a niche case (and, presumably, anywhere our swans have gone and set up communities) issue.

And not only do I struggle when I encounter this damn thinking. But I get annoyed. Black swans have been known about *in Europe*---the source of most of the philosophy I try reading---for at least 150 years (the Swan River Colony was established in 1829, there were French and Dutch explorers in the vicinity before). These explanations don't start with 'let us assume that there are only white swans' or anything acknowledging this. Or at least, the ones I remember encountering don't.

I hate not being able to grasp the foundational thought on which the next n pieces are built. It makes it so hard to read. I suspect I'm going to skip this chapter and see whether the next one (different authors) is better.

I've done my approximately-annual tidy up of dreamwidth subscriptions. I've stopped following a set of blogs that haven't updated in ~2 years, left roughly half the communities I was in, and changed a few other details. The main exceptions on keeping people who don't post are people who comment often enough that I remember; at least one of those I've left their access but unsubscribed. The other exception is people who I'm very much hoping will turn up again one day (and one who, sadly, will never be back, but whose name makes me smile to see it in the list).

If, as happens with this, I've managed to remove your access and you are someone who does actually want to see the occasional locked post, please comment on this post. I'll put a locked post up shortly; it will read 'test' or some equally inane thing.

I've managed to winkle out some of the books that didn't get spotted while I was doing the catalogue check in 2024 (which finished, for logistics reasons, in about February 2025).

And I've just looked at the number of tags that I have (>2K) and decided that is ridiculous. The first pass I'm doing is changing all the old location tags to [year] - last seen (not the 'unchecked/not yet seen' ones, those I'm going to think about some more). Because where any book was in 2021 (etc) is obviously not right, or I would have found it there in 2024. Once I've done that for all years prior to 2024, I'm going to go poke at the various 'unchecked' tags and see what is there.

other things I've noticed that I want to reorder

mythology should be mythology - [country]
awards should be awards: [name]
I have juvenile and kids and junior fiction and possibly some others, as well as a set of age: [...] categories; need to think what I want to do here.

hopefully this storygraph link goes to the public option, not the for me specifically option.

I'm choosing to not look at what was planned; I've already posted about my 5 star reads and some other thinking. This is me just reading through and having feelings.

The first (We Were Dreamers, Simu Liu, biography) and last (The House That Horror Built, Christina Henry, horror) sure are an interesting juxtaposition
The 'mood' graph seems weird and I wish it wasn't there
Going back to study had a noticeable effect on how much I was reading, which is not a surprise
I hate the way that storygraph does 'genre' because my top five are fantasy, science fiction, short stories, LGBTQIA+, and horror, only three of which I consider to be genres.
15 days per book as an average just shows how much my reading is an overlapping thing.
'top authors' - Katherine MacLean was 4 (that can't be right, there were 8 short stories, I must not have tracked them all), Premee Mohammed (3 stories, hmm, something odd there as well), and Dave Warner (3 books, that's a trilogy)
average rating 3.75 - probably because the DNF/0 don't get counted; I gave 11 2 star ratings, which seems more than I would have expected. Most frequent rating of 4 is also higher than I would have expected.
somehow there were 52 'new to me' authors, which is interesting because I felt like I was sticking to comfortable stuff.
DNF - 22 books; not sure if that feels high
read 24 of my books - I bet that this is an undercount, because I don't always mark books as owned, particularly if I only have them as ebook.
it is weird that my highest rated reads tend to be non-fiction, because I read so little of it

I clicked through to the more detail

most commonly applied tag is 'borrowed', applied to 21 books. 21 borrowed + 24 owned =/= the number read
I need to update the tags on some, because they don't have the -read suffix added

Yesterday, I was having a conversation with Youngest about (SF) con-running. The topic was international guests, and what the timelines are for inviting them.

I said something flippant about 'well, that timeline would be doable these days, because everyone has email, at least we don't have to write letters'. And there was that moment where I could see Youngest's world view shift in real time, so we talked in a bit more detail about my memories of the first con I was involved in running*. That in 1996, when we were approaching people to be guests, email addresses were not ubiquitous**. That our primary method of contact was letters. And then I talked about the fact that we had to assume a best case scenario of a month turn around on anything we sent.

What I didn't think to say, is that because of that, there is a reasonably high chance that there is a letter from Douglas Adams in the WASFF archive. The reasons there might not be is that it might be from their agent, or it may have been lost when various documents were transferred to the archives.

* I was Treasurer for SwanCon 23 in 1998; that committee then did a quick reshuffle and ran SwanCon 25 in 2000. I started my committee habit early -- I was on the UniSFA (UWA SF club) as Fresher rep ('92), President ('93) and IPP ('94).

**We got into a side discussion about how rare email addresses were in 1992, when I got my first email address, when the uni I studied at decided to do the somewhat radical thing of provide an email address to any student who requested one, regardless of faculty. I'd love to know what the thinking was and whether it was 'this is going to become essential knowledge' or if it was something more.

I stalled out last year on the drawing practice, because I tidied up my sketchbook and pencils, and it was so frustrating not to be able to find them that I abandoned the project. But I was in OfficeWorks the other day, and bought myself a $5 pack of 12 sketching pencils and a $2 tiny shitty sketchbook.

Two days ago, I attempted to draw something from my screen, and was too sore/tired/grumpy, and gave up after about three lines. Today, I realised that the worst part of drawing is working out where to start. So! I have a simplified goal. Attempt to draw my hand at least once a week. Today's effort was about 5 minutes worth, I got the thumb, some of the palm, and two of the fingers before running out of oomph. I've worked out that I'd rather do a stack of detail in one place than try and sketch the whole shape before getting started. And it wasn't fun, but it wasn't awful.

share selfish on Instagram or Facebook

suspicion: bit by autocarrot. However! This was an academic journal article; it makes me a little concerned about the editing.

Medical details ahead.

( possibly TMI )

Previous: 2024, 2023

I don't yet have the reading wrap up; I'm doing this earlier than I did last year, because I'm working my way through 'end of the year' tasks that I brainstormed, and right now I have the oomph to be typing.

These are in reverse chronological order; links are to reviews, if I wrote one.

Long works

Nest by Inga Simpson
Within Prison Walls: Being a Narrative of Personal Experience During a Week of Voluntary Confinement in the State Prison at Auburn, New York by Thomas Mott Osborne
The Deep Dark by Lee Knox Ostertag
The Magic Fish by Trung Le Nguyen
Passing Strange by Ellen Klages
The Witness for the Dead by Katherine Addison
The Salt Grows Heavy by Cassandra Khaw
Alien Clay by Adrian Tchaikovsky
Points of Departure: Liavek Stories by Patricia C. Wrede, Pamela Dean
Firebird by Elizabeth Wein
We Are Okay by Nina LaCour

Short stories

Model Collapse by Matthew Kressel
Dragonsworn (Part 1) by L Chan
Tantie Merle and the Farmhand 4200 by R.S.A. Garcia
Stitched to Skin like Family Is by Nghi Vo
Where Oaken Hearts do Gather by Sarah Pinsker

I said to myself earlier today 'last year's goal setting wasn't fabulous, let's not do that this year. ... I haven't quite managed to make myself believe that zero goals is the right number. Unlike last year where I allowed multiple goals for many topics, and separated them out, I'm going to allow myself 10 minutes (and yes, I've set a timer) to put 10-12 believable goals

Read >25 non-uni books. This one is going to be tricky to track because I put all the books I read into Storygraph; I'm going to have to manually count. (book: published physically as a single; short stories don't count)
Do my milestone 2 - this is a university requirement at about the 18 month mark; because of the way my school does things my choices are October (early) or February 2027 (late). Thus, I am aiming for the October one with the understanding that it is a large ask.
Eldest's quilt - at this point I would be happy with the quilt top being done
Continue playing with at least one of the community orchestras
Go to at least one of the Sunday morning sessions I have been invited to.
Spend time with friends and family. Reach out to friends I haven't seen in a while. Spend time with K&D, given they are going to be in the state and this will be the first opportunity I've had to actually explore what it means to be siblings.

... my time is not up, but I'm finding I don't want to put more. There is a reading, there is a uni, there is a music. There is a craft, and it is very specific, but I'm going to have to stop with the being obsessive. Do I think I'll stay on track with this? No. But also, I'm not going to attempt to track it through the year; it is a snapshot of what I thought I wanted.

Sticky: Short(ish) sticky note to welcome new people

Reading notes

Small updates

(no subject)

short fiction - january & February 2026

Radiation treatment notes

Language shift

Breast update

short fiction - november & december 2025

Recipe notes: Pandan Sago pudding

Reading notes

Today's grump: philosophy

Subscription tidy up

Catalogue check (2024) update

2025 reading wrap up

(no subject)

Drawing practice

Typo du jour

State of the boob

2025 5 star reads

No Goals 2026

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March 2026

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