~balise's blog (powered by TTBP)



30 june 2024

Made my dad's risotto (well, some variation of it) for lunch, for what feels like the first time in years. It's very much Non Canon as far as risotto go, but it was still tasty.

We made a "spontan" visit at the Swiss National Costume Festival parade this afternoon - it was super nice! A bit long (there's a lot of cantons in this country) but fun and colorful. I am, however, more tired than I thought I'd be.

Pierre made lemon tiramisu and it's tasty.

French elections are a dumpster fire. The national 34% far right voters was already bad. The current map of districts is worse. Granted, larger districts are reporting later, and at least some of these should normally balance things out. But, at the time of this writing, already 15 far right MPs have been elected on the first round. 12 years ago, there was two. Total. It was already too many.

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29 june 2024

Books

I finished Slow Productivity by Cal Newport. There was a few good things in there - especially about diagnosing the "problem" of using "visible activity" as a proxy for productivity, and about the associated anxiety. His first part about "do fewer things" is probably the one that spoke the most to me. I didn't like his second part at all about "work at a natural pace" because I read that discourse as "slow down, and nobody has to/will actually know", which strikes me as exactly what I cannot do, because it feels far too much like trying to trick people and circumvent (implicit) rules, which is exactly the kind of things I'm trying to do. His last part, "obsess over quality", glazes over the issue of perfectionism with essentially "... don't", which I also didn't find super helpful. However, I did enjoy the various anecdotes and stories - some people find them "padding", I definitely see their value in making his points more memorable.

Next, after much pondering, is Books and Broadwords, by Jessie Mihalik. Should be short enough but still bridge me over the first round of French elections, after which I hope I'll have a better grasp on what I'm in the mood for reading.

Went to the gym this morning - I definitely need to load this day more, because I ended up doing triple sets on my last two sets of lat pull downs. Definitely time to bump these numbers.

Went to Firehouse Subs for lunch - we hadn't been convinced when they opened a year ago, but this time around it was better. Possibly because we ate there rather than bring the food home (so it was warmer/fresher). Might try again on a Tuesday or something.

Made Ottolenghi beans&tofu with chraime sauce, it stays a brilliant recipe, omnomnom.

Switzerland is usually quiet. Except when they win at soccer against Italy. Sigh.

There, finished leveling my second timewalker toon in WoW. Next will be alliance, and apparently gnome monk.

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28 june 2024

Went for my first run in a couple of weeks this morning. I had asked Pierre to come with me (because I was feeling anxious :/), which he gladly accepted. So I was running at my slow pace while he was doing a mix of higher speed and coming back to my speed. It was mostly nice, except I started getting really out of breath around the 15-minute mark, it kind of devolved into a panic attack, and I really did not like that. I rested a bit and did the last couple of minutes of my planned 22-minute run, but this was not a pleasant experience. But oh well, I did do it, I did restart, and I did survive, soooo.

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27 june 2024

Today did NOT start well - I spilled my water bottle when taking my meds, and as I was trying to remove stuff from water, I also spilled my coffee bowl. Thankfully Pierre helped me clean up stuff and we're back, but. Later today I also stained my jeans by dropping food on them, and I dropped my laundry basket on my foot. Not my day!

A little while ago, I fucked up my bluetooth/pulseaudio stack on my work laptop. The only usage of that bluetooth thing is to listen to music with my BT headphones. I can actually do that perfectly well with my phone - the pairing is done, and the phone interface is not worse than the browser interface. Why oh why is my brain screeching at the idea of doing that, even when I want music? Makes no sense.

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26 june 2024

Saw Paula for training session this morning, and it was really good! I'm tired, but that's to be expected, and in a good way, essentially. Today's training session was two circuits. First circuit (repeated 3 times) was

Second circuit (also repeated 3 times):

Tomorrow is DOMS day :P

I finished processing my DSLR Denmark pictures! Now I need to combine with the phone pictures into a nice album, add some captions, and be happy. I also want to make a paper album, but that's also another large chunk of work...

Therapy today went well. I am making definite progress in being more aware of what's happening to me when it's happening to me, AND making more progress with giving myself more slack around that - both as a result of said better awareness (it's easier to give myself some slack if I have some idea of how my internal state is) and as a more general approach of "work with the horse you have today".

Also there was an interesting point about how much of my behaviours can be linked to the need for a "safety buffer".

Well, I actually managed to finish the Denmark web album. It's here: https://photos.app.goo.gl/2VdgocunBvaKHJzcA And I'm quite happy with it! (And with the fact that it is done less than a week after coming home.)

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