The Wild Life and Times of a Botanical Geek

Several months ago I backed a kickstarter for a travel backpack. The logical part of my brain noted that it would fit nicely in the travel gap I currently have between my overnight bag (good for...overnight trips) and my suitcase - something for trips where I'm going to be gone for a couple of days but not necessarily warranting the full-on suitcase. The irrational part of my brain wanted it for emotional support. I got it as a promise to myself - some day, some how, I will get to travel again.

I miss traveling a lot. The last time I traveled anywhere significant was last March, when we went to Charlotte to visit Ikea. We had a feeling Something Was Up, and we wanted to get that trip taken care of before things got weird (as they did, as we all knew). I miss going places and seeing new things. There's a theory in my family that there's a hint of wanderlust among some of us, that comes out in different ways (my cousin moved around a lot, my dad got the urge to change jobs every 5 years or so before he retired). I'm pretty sure I got it too, in that I love to travel.

My backpack arrived this week, and I am. Just.

SO.

EXCITED.

I know it doesn't mean anything special right now, and we've still got a ways to go but I feel like the chance to fulfill that promise is on the horizon now. I've been vaccinated (on a side note, I can't remember the last time I had a strong reaction to a vaccine - I sprouted a full-on fever, which led to me spending the evening on the couch with Eien watching old Doctor Who episodes and mocking them mercilessly in between shivering like mad). There are signs things are starting to open up. I hope that, soon, I'll be able to break out my shiny new backpack and set out for places new.

For now, I'll keep on keeping on as I've been doing for the past year. But soon, oh yes. I have many more places to see.

I think I’ve been in a bit of a slump the past few days. I’m sure I’m not alone in this, but I think my okay-ness with this situation runs in cycles, where I have periods where I’m generally okay, and periods where the isolation and the not-normalness really gets to me. Overall I think I’m better than I was this time last month, and I think having a routine has helped with that.

I’ve found out that some things I was looking to later this year have been cancelled, though, and I think that’s contributed to the current downslump. I had a pretty good feeling they were going to be cancelled, but getting the announcement still hurts. I can’t help but feel like this is the year where no one is allowed to have any fun ever.

I’ve been trying to keep myself busy, though. I’m knitting a lot, and I’ve finished some projects and started some new ones, including my first knitalong, which is threatening to turn into an ANGER!project with the amount of restarts I’ve had to do. I think I’ve finally got it figured out and can proceed, though. I’m also working on editing a short story I wrote that I want to try and get published. We’ll see how that goes!

The urge to cook and bake has been high, although I’ve tried to keep it under control so I don’t end up with an Aziraphale-level of baked goods (If you’re a fan of Good Omens and you haven’t watched the Lockdown edition yet, do. It’s delightful). I’ve been making bread (like everyone is), and we’re in the thick of strawberry season here, so I’ve been heavy into jam (which at least will keep for a while and I don’t feel compelled to eat all at once). I’ve made strawberry jam with cherry balsamic vinegar, and blueberry jam with bourbon. I think I’m going to need to start a jam journal for myself to keep track of what I make so I know what I’ve tried and in case I hit upon something I want to make again.

I’ve started in on some gardening for this year. I’ve planted cucumbers, and I want to get some basil in because there is seriously nothing like having your own basil plant in the summer so you can have basil pretty much whenever you damn well please.

I’ve made some masks for myself and Eien, and for my family and for some friends. It took a few tries to hit upon a design I liked, but once I figured it out I think the results have turned out pretty good. I’ve used this as an excuse to break out my most ridiculous fabric, because if I’m going to have to wear a mask, I’m going to do it on my terms, and my terms are THE MOST RIDICULOUS POSSIBLE. This includes things like Dalek fabric, bacon and eggs fabric (which has gotten multiple compliments), and Gold Key Star Trek comic fabric. Because I am a classy lady.

Since I can’t work in the lab right now, I’ve also been working on honing some skills for work. I’ve been working on beefing up my R skills, and I’ve gotten myself familiar with Linux so I can work with the uni’s HPC cluster. I’ve also been learning about databases and SQL, and while I’m definitely not proficient by any means, I can at least say that I now understand Little Bobby Tables.

Overall, it’s mostly just trying to keep on keeping on as best as possible.

Some highlights from 2019:

--Seeing the Sailor Moon musical in DC and having a near-religious experience over it
--Planting new trees in the yard, including a dogwood and a fig that I hope will survive!
--4TH ST I LOVE 4TH ST SO MUCH
--Growing turnips for the first time!
--Trying many new recipes, including apple butter (which included actual canning for the first time like for leaving on the shelf and everything WHOA), umeshu, fig jam, and minne di sant'agata.
--I got a new computer!
--Getting back into short story writing, at least some. Enough that I actually submitted a short story to a writing contest. Didn't win anything, but I'm still proud of myself for trying

A couple of days ago I submitted a short story to a fiction contest. This all started when I wrote something on a lark, showed it to Eien and he responded with "You know, you could try submitting this somewhere." Shortly after I went, "Yeah...yeah! Why not? DAMN THE TORPEDOES" and started doing revisions, I learned about this fiction contest. And so a few drafts and betas later, here I am, having submitted the first original story I've written in a long while that I could consider sufficiently 'done', and not sitting in a state of half-formed or Extremely First Draft.

I was a mix of emotions dropping it off. I was kind of doing a Rapunzel-like cycle of "YES I did it!--OH GOD WHAT HAVE I DONE--well, maybe it's not so bad--THEY'RE GONNA HAAAAATE IT I'VE EMBARRASSED MYSELF--But some of what I wrote I'm really proud of--" etc etc etc

I know realistically the chance of winning is pretty small. Competition aside I have a feeling that the judges won't care much for some of the more unorthodox parts of my writing (It has chat log snippets, which I think really add to the story, so if they don't like it then oh well because I really like them). However I am rather proud of the fact that I actually finished something and attempted to DO something with it other than just sit on it. And I can always try revising and submitting it to something else down the road if nothing comes of this. And it's pretty invigorating to point at it and go "YEAH. THAT THING? I WROTE THAT." It gives me motivation to maybe try and write some more of the things I have knocking around in my head. Lately I've been having the sense that I should stop putting off some of the things that are on my "someday" list and just start DOING things, because there's going to eventually be a point where there are no more "somedays". It's not always easy - I don't get a lot of free time these days - but I'm trying.

I have to admit, there is something satisfying about taking down a rogue tree in your yard that's two or three times your size.

Mimosas are pretty, but good gods I wish they didn't run rampant so. And they grow FAST. I look the other way for two seconds and suddenly they're towering over the house. It doesn't help that they also can be tough to dislodge - for a lot of trees I can dislodge them through persistence, a shovel, and a good pair of branch loppers. For mimosas, though, I have to get out the axe.

We have two that are growing a little too close to the house and are a little too large for me to take down single handed, so they're going to require the addition multiple pairs of hands, a ladder, and strategy. But at least I can get rid of the smaller ones on my own before they become more of a problem.

Early this week I drove with my PI to WV to visit an emeritus professor in our field who is 96(!!!) years old. Not only is he 96, but he's still sharp and still doing research and getting out and about and holy crap I hope I'm still going strong when (if I get to) 96. He made some notable achievements, including putting together a well-known ID key for our plant pathogen, and agreed to give us not only his entire culture collection for our pathogen (including a ton of species we don't have), but also the original slides he made when making his key for us to digitize. It's a HUGE amount of work and it was surreal to be driving down a mountain with someone's 30-year body of work in the trunk.

It was interesting to get to talk to him. We'd communicated over email before but this was the first time I got to meet him in person. It was a little mind boggling to hear him say things like "Yeah, when I was working back in the 50s..." I can't help but feel like if I was talking with a tree, the conversation would go something like this, with references made to times so beyond when I existed that it takes a moment to wrap my head around I'm talking with someone who was going strong then.

He also had some moments of sheer hilarity. Not five minutes after we arrived at his place he was offering us whiskey and scotch and saying "LET'S DRINK." We ended up spending the rest of the evening chatting about science and the people he's worked with. It was a bit of a rough trip at times (the unfortunate decision was made for us to head back at 4:30PM. We got back LAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAATE ow I think I'm still recuperating a little), but I'm really glad I went. Opportunities like this don't come around every day.

Well, I dunno about you all, but I think I'm ready to leave 2018 behind. For one thing, I'm desperately hoping that 2019 is a little cheaper (my GOD this year was expensive - hopefully not having to buy a car and an oven will help with this upcoming year), and there were some changes in my life that were at times pretty difficult to deal with.

It wasn't all rough and tumble, though - I went to Europe for the first time, and started learning Japanese, and got to see my pal mindsplinters at my very first 4th Street (which was a BLAST) and Deltarune came out which I flailed a lot over and I tried lots of new recipes and knitted lots of things and read lots of books. So those were pretty awesome!

So I guess I'm facing 2019 with hopeful trepidation, if that's a thing. Things I want to do in the upcoming year include hopefully keeping up with Japanese and making more headway on getting my thesis published (I know, I know - I'm working on it, I swear, but double checking columns upon columns of pairwise comparisons is excruciatingly mind-numbing and that makes things go incredibly slow). I also hope to go to 4th Street again and then of course there's going to see the Sailor Moon musical (omggggg still so psyched about that!). So I guess I'll be looking forward to those things and taking the rough patches as they come. Although I guess that's always how it is, isn't it?

I don't know what it is, but lately I've had a horrible case of startitis. I'm not sure if I'm just feeling the weight of my stash or if I've spent too long finishing up the last couple of projects but I'm feeling an intense need to start some new things.

I kinda sorta already did in that I got an advent calendar this year and have started using the yarn to make a scarf (it's gonna be a...big scarf, I can already tell). I also plan to make some socks for Eien, and I've got another scarf project I want to start so I can learn continental, and and and...

My knitting queue is infinite and eternal.

Well, it took me several years to get around to it, but for once I actually tried my hand at NaNoWriMo! By the end of yesterday I had managed to write...just over thirteen thousand words. On one hand, I'm a little disappointed, because I was really hoping to get a good bit of the way to fifty thousand. On the other, November has been a BUSY month (Thanksgiving aside), and I feel like all things considered, that's not a bad first attempt. I mean, it's over a quarter of the way there! The story isn't done yet, but I at least got a good chunk of it out of my head and written down.

And lemme tell ya, hoo boy is it a first draft. If I plan to do anything with it (after, y'know, actually finishing writing the first draft) it's going to require a TON of work. I need to work on plot and really get the characters fleshed out and get a better sense of how they relate to each other. But it does feel good to get some of it out. The story's been knocking around in my head for a while, and I feel like now that I've started it I have a greater chance of actually doing something with it.

If nothing else, it made me more aware of how easy it is to really bang out the words if you put your mind to it. I'd write a few paragraphs, check my word count, and be all "WHOA I managed to write a couple hundred words! It's a lot more than it looks!". It reminded me of how you can really work your way through something even if you're only doing a few paragraphs per day. A lot of it really does seem to be all about practice and persistence. I mean, I kinda already knew that, but doing this really kinda put that back into the front of my mind.

If I can, I'll probably try to do it again next year, and maybe see if I can break my record. If nothing else, it was an adventure!

You know, I realized that I should probably post the one thing I managed to finish this past year!

I'm HELLA RUSTY, and I had to do some hard thinking and some diving into old forums in my attempt to get the characters right, but hopefully I didn't mangle anyone too badly. This is something that's been knocking around in my head for a while, and I have to admit it's a bit of a relief to finally have it written down.

NOW MAYBE I SHOULD DO THAT FOR THE REST OF THE THINGS KNOCKING AROUND IN MY HEAD HINT HINT SELF.

Kingdom Bandom AU: Knight in a Fluorescent Orange Jacket: Space Monkey's drummer finds herself in over her head. Luckily, she has someone watching out for her.