Trying something new

At the end of last year (2022) I finally was able to buy some earplugs from Loop. One set is solid and for sleep. The other set is designed to simply turn sound down while privileging conversation. The second set has been amazing. I wear them to the grocery store and I’m less stressed by the end and I can hear my hubby more clearly. I wear them when we go to busy restaurants and I can hear the conversation at the table with no problem! I’m about to put them to their biggest test yet: DragonCon.

After I realized I am sensitive to so much noise and buying the earplugs, I have been looking forward to this. I don’t tend to hang out in the busier spaces at DragonCon because of the crowds. This year I finally get to see how much of that is the noise. Especially since Loop recently came out with the Loop Link. It is like a chain but for your earplugs. It also has small magnets near the ends so when you’re not wearing them, they connect around your neck so you don’t have to worry about it falling off. This is going to be great for DragonCon because I’m not going to want the earplugs in during the panels. I was dreading having to put them away and take them out all con, but now they’ll just be hanging around my neck when I don’t need them!

I’m hoping that will mean I’ll be less anxious about the crowded spaces and be more inclined to hang out, people watch, and show off my costume for the day. I have a feeling this DragonCon will be my least draining one yet!

Strangely satisfied

Some time last year, I decided to turn my old desktop into a media server. It was just sitting there providing another option for streaming things like concerts but on my TV. I quickly found out about Plex. It’s a simple program to use and install. The tricky part is in the naming of files. Thankfully, the way I name my music files is the way they want it named. When it came to video files, it was another story. Eventually I got everything set and I could watch these files and listen to the music on my Roku and on the TV in the living room instead of just on my computer. It’s nice.

But recently the old desktop has started acting up. It is getting close to 10 years old at this point. And while it’s either been off or on light duty since 2020, it is getting old. I started to panic and started to look at NAS devices to replace it once I can afford it. Then I realized, I don’t need a separate device for this.

Plex recommends a separate device that can be dedicated to running the server because they assume that you’re running a server that you want to access from outside your house at any time. Except because of our home network security, that was never going to be the case with mine. I’ve actually been looking forward to getting a second hard drive for my current desktop to free up my larger external hard drive to turn it into a mobile Plex that I can take with me and use with my laptop so I can watch or listen to the files on the TV wherever I am. I’m never using Plex without that drive.

I realized I could set Plex up on my desktop and be fine. Eventually I’ll get it set up on my laptop so I can run it wherever without compromising home. The biggest problem this time was getting Doctor Who in shape.

I have a large 20th century Doctor Who library. But the file naming system indicated what part of the overall story it was instead of individual episodes in a given season. With the other Plex server, I just let it treat them like files and didn’t bother renaming things. But this time I wanted to get things set correctly. Today I finished renaming all 26 seasons of Doctor Who, First Doctor through Seventh Doctor, and fixed it so Plex recognized them as Doctor Who (1963) instead of Doctor Who (2005). It is so nice because Plex is automatically treating them as a TV show instead of files. I know it’s a simple thing, but it is so satisfying. So is the fact that I don’t have to shuttle files over to the server anymore. They’ll just pop in as I add them.

Now to get back to prepping for classes.

New year. New opportunities!

In the various posts friends were making at the end of the year, this one caught my eye:

I’ve been trying to think that way recently anyway, but I still love the sentiment. It’s always a new opportunity for something. Whether that be measured in months, weeks, days, hours, minutes, or seconds. It’s always a new opportunity.

I’ve set my personal goals and hopes for this year. I’m hoping I’ll be able to achieve more of them than last year, but I did have some great things happen last year and that’s what I’m focusing on.

Not only did I get a job, I got two! And I really enjoy both of them. I’m still sad I had to leave The Dragon’s Lair, but teaching is the only thing that would have done that, and well… Teaching ASL still makes me anxious, but less so now that I have one class under my belt. I’ve got a much better plan for my other class that will cover the required information and topics in a way that I think is more effective than last semester.

I did get the first draft of my dissertation off to my chair. It is far from perfect, but that’s what a first draft is for, right? Getting it done has helped me move on to work on chapters 2 and 3. And I’m feeling like getting the interviews done will be productive, finally. I just need to get around to setting them up. That’s one of my goals for this year: get the interviews done!

One thing I have started already is create a new Tumblr so I can keep track of the comics I’ve read. Goodreads doesn’t have all the titles I read, so I try to keep track on a spreadsheet, but I’m not great about it. I figure if after I get the issue done, I can take a picture, and start a draft of a post on Tumblr. That way the date is in there and I can hop onto the computer to put in the basic information and post the photo. It’s an experiment I’m hoping will work. I’ve already read 6 comics from my backlog. Definitely a good start.

So, here’s to 2023; a year full of possibilities and opportunities!

But I don’t want to relax this week!

It’s weird. Sometimes someone shares something on Facebook and I’m like “Definitely!” and share it. Other times I disagree, feel triggered, or feel guilty about opposing it. I try not to let it get to me, but sometimes I feel like engaging and don’t know how.

I’m seeing posts about doing nothing this week. That you should relax and take a break for the week. But I can’t.

One reason is I do have stuff to do this week. I’m less than two weeks from the beginning of the semester and I’m still getting things ready. I really can’t do nothing this week. But it’s not like I’m only working on class prep.

The other reason is I have gotten into a rhythm that allows me to get things done daily while also taking time to relax. If I don’t keep it up, I fall out of the habit and get nothing done. Even if it’s minimal, getting something done for class and for my dissertation on a daily basis is keeping me moving forward. I can give myself the day off, but I don’t tend to want to do nothing that day. I don’t tend to hyperfocus, loosing the entire afternoon or evening to work.

I know many people who have the week off do need to just take the week. I know that I am lucky that while I do work year round (hopefully) it’s not all-consuming. I have time every day to relax and reset, allowing me to get more work done without burning out. It’s just hard to see stuff like that and not feel a little guilty over not wanting to. I don’t know why, but it affects me like that. Which is why I’m sharing this here; I don’t want my friends to feel guilty over sharing these things.

Squirrel!

Yesterday I got totally sidetracked from my original goals. I’m not panicking over it because I know it’s going to happen sometime during the week. The important thing for me is to only do it once in the week.

I got distracted by my media setup in my room/office/area/den. On my TV I have a Roku, Blu-ray player, and former desktop that I have turned into a media center. Yesterday I finally used my 6-in-1 stereo to Bluetooth the audio from the TV into the better speaker. The thing is, the stereo was at a 90 degree angle and some distance from the TV.

The distraction started by some rearranging so the stereo could be on the shelf under the TV, which involved moving the computer up to next to the TV. Then I thought about looking up how to turn that computer into a media server so I could access the media on that without having to switch inputs. Every article I found sung the praises of Plex. I’m not pushing it, but it is worth looking at if you are thinking of doing something similar. So I copied all of the music and video files onto the computer and installed Plex.

The rest of the night was taken up by getting things set up in Plex so that not only all of the files showed up, but were listed in a way that I could find them. Plex has an app for streaming devices, so there was a lot of bouncing back and forth between the computer and the Roku to get thing set the way I wanted.

I finally got things set right and I’m sitting here watching a video whose file is on the computer through the Roku. It’s so nice not to have to change inputs and make sure I’m using the mouse instead of the Roku remote. Also, I can watch and listen to things out on our main TV, because I added Plex out there too! I am going to love this! But now, I need to get back on track and get stuff done. And figure out how to get my sleep back to my usual schedule. Going to bed at 8:30 am is not very helpful in that regard.

College

Whenever I hear “Breathe” from In the Heights, I cry. I am nothing like Nina, aside from being female. I’m white. Both my parents went to college, my dad wasn’t even the first in his family to go. I didn’t feel out of place, but I still relate to Nina. I think it’s more due to grad school than my undergrad experiencce.

When I started college, it was great. I got to stop thinking so much about what everyone thought about what I was wearing and what I was into and so on. I was on Student Staff with the marching band. Oh yeah, I was at Ohio State. That meant I was part of The Best Damn Band in the Land. It was also Coach Jim Tressel’s first year. We didn’t win every game, even every home game. But we finally won in the state up North for the first time in 14 years, and that’s all that mattered.

I got to keep being a band geek. I had somewhere to fit in. I also had the room to be myself and do my thing. It was Ohio State after all, it’s not like it’s a small school. That’s part of why I loved it. I finally got to be myself.

Like I said, the opposite of Nina except for being female.

But something hit me while watching “Breathe” in the film adaptation. There tends to be extra support for people who are first-generation college students because they don’t have a parent to look to who understands what they’re experiencing. I don’t disagree with this. But I think all incoming college students should be told that no one is going to understand what they’re experiencing. Even if you go to the same institution a parent did, it’s going to be different. Time changes things. We all have to find that place where we feel like we have a community to belong to. For some people, it’s the college itself. Small colleges can be that for some students.

For me, it was band. I didn’t stick with student staff after my freshman year. I spent the next three years a part of Athletic Band where, honestly, I had more fun. It wasn’t a job, it was fun. Being a part of TBDBITL is a job for everyone. I missed just having fun. Athletic band allowed me to play my trumpet, get introduced to and fall in love with the flugelhorn, and attend volleyball, basketball, and hockey games for free. We played during breaks and it gave me something to do in addition to watching the game. I was part of the Women’s Basketball Tournament band all three of those years. I got to travel and watch the Lady Buckeyes kick some serious ass! Since we were the women’s team, we got less press attention, so we could relax and be students at the games. Also, the women’s team was doing better and going farther in the tournaments than the men’s team was during those years, so we were playing longer than the other tournament bands (because hockey’s tournament started before basketball did).

I was lucky. I had premade communities waiting for me in college. There is a place for everyone on any given campus. Sometimes you have to search for it, but it’s there. There just should be a road map with it all clearly labeled so everyone can find their spot and make college better.

A Positive 2020 Retrospective

Yes, 2020 started with the continuing wildfires in Australia and the early days of a global pandemic. It is easy to focus on all of the negative things that happened last year. But I prefer to remember the good and positive things that happened in my life.

Parasite won the Oscar for Best Picture. Okay, this wasn’t personal, but it was a big positive! It won a number of other Oscars, including Best Director and Best Foreign Language Film. But the fact that not only a film with no white people, but a foreign film won Best Picture is huge and awesome. Now if there could be more diversity in the award shows in general, that would be great.

I finally bought a new bike. I had been wanting to buy a bike for years now. I finally got things together, went to the local bike store, and bought a bike – and some accessories to make riding the bike safer and easier. I may not have used it nearly as much as I wanted to, but I have it!

Hamilton came to Disney+. This is one of the many media-related things that I am grateful for this year. Because of the pandemic, Lin-Manuel Miranda and other producers decided to release the filmed version of the show from 2016 early and on to the streaming service. I already had Disney+ for other reasons – like the Disney vault. This was huge for me both as a fan and as someone researching it and the reach it has.

I learned about Adam Lambert. In June, the documentary The Show Must Go On came to Netflix. And, since it was a documentary about Queen, I had to watch it. I had been on the fence about Adam Lambert fronting Queen, because it’s really hard to be able to handle their catalogue. That doc not only changed my mind, but started me down the path to full-blown fandom. His music has been very uplifting and inspiring, especially during this year. If I hadn’t watched that doc, I would have missed out on my opportunity to buy my first new Queen album ever!

I have been able to focus! After spring semester was over, I was finally able to focus on my dissertation the way I need to. I’ve been able to do reading and research without having to worry about things for other classes or professors who mean well but aren’t on my committee and don’t know what I’m working on.

I have learned more ways to teach. While I had to scramble to move my class online for the second half of spring, I got to teach the same class – in a slightly abbreviated way – over the summer. Teaching that class helped me prepare to each it online for the fall. Now I’m adapting again to teach it virtually for the spring.

I am still here. Normally I wouldn’t list this, but after this year, it deserves to be said. This has been a challenging year to get through. That is why I have been focusing on the positives. What I got done. The good that happened. Yes, there was a lot of negative and problems this past year. But a lot of good happened.

Now, if we can just get things going in the right direction this year, we just might survive all of this mess that we’re in right now. Including getting vaccinated!

The Stress of Not Knowing

We are living in a world where we don’t know what tomorrow will look like. We never really knew what tomorrow would look like, but there were certain elements that we could count on being there tomorrow. Not anymore. It is stressful. It is stressful not knowing if it’s even safe to go outside. It is stressful not knowing if you’re going to wake up feeling healthy.

It’s a level of stress that our bodies are not accustomed to having on a daily basis because we haven’t had to worry about that as a culture as a human race for a very long time, possibly ever. I didn’t realize how much it was effecting me until some of it went away.

When DragonCon announced last month that they were going to allow for people to roll over their memberships to next year, our friends contacted us and said they were going to roll over. We immediately rolled things over and decided to join them in not going. Just knowing that we were not going gave me a sense of relief. Then, just a few weeks ago, DragonCon was finally able to cancel the 2020 convention. That led to another sense of relief, knowing that everyone would be safe from this damn pandemic.

I know I’m probably preaching to the choir right now, but in watching Gov. DeWine address the State of Ohio, I want to echo him and say please wear your mask or social distance if you can’t! If we all do our part, we can flatten that curve and keep more people from dying.

Combating this virus is more important that keeping businesses open or being able to go out shopping without a mask. Yes, the federal government needs to step up and do the right thing. But with this ass in charge, that is not going to happen. We, the people, need to step up and do the right thing in its place. Just wear a mask and social distance. It’s not that hard. We can get things back to “normal” in regards to our social freedom if we are willing to “give it up” right now.

Long-term changes

I was think about this same thing today when I ran across it on Facebook. While there are many changes that are happening right now that are not good in any sense of the word – just look at how COVID-19 is affecting different populations – there are changes that we as individuals, states, nations, and a world are making that can continue after this pandemic is over and we are not longer forced to stay inside.

Personally, I have been working on making my life more sustainable and shrinking my own footprint. I have been lucky enough to continue to have a job, as well as having some more expensive events cancelled. This has given me the opportunity to invest in some greener, more sustainable practices that I have been putting off because I could not afford it.

I was able to buy a good bike and buy equipment for it so I can make a shopping trip or go for a long ride. It will help me reduce the amount of time I spend in my car, as well as increase my exercise in general.

Because I am now forced to teach online, I don’t have to drive up to campus multiple times a week, which cuts back on my fuel consumption and emissions, which are both good for the environment as well as my wallet.

I now have the time to work with using GladRags’ pads and pantiliners and see what direction I want to go in regarding those products. Since I am home for a few months, at least, I have the time to figure out how to best use them and not worry about getting a little messy.

While this is a stressful time for all of us, there are things that we can control. There are changes that we can make that will be good for our lives after this time of quarantine is over. Even if it’s just going through boxes of things, throwing out what you no longer need, and organizing what you keep so you can find them later. Or making changes to the way you eat. Or whatever it is. We can start to make little changes for the better now, while we have the opportunity.

Upgrades day 3

I’m done! I’m done with all the upgrading and rearranging that I have been meaning to do!

Yesterday, I finally went out and put the phone holder on the handlebars and the bike lock on the bike! I also have an awesome bag that not only expands to hold even more stuff, but I can take it off and take it in with me because it has a shoulder strap! I can put stuff right in it and then put it on the bike and go home. My bike is ready for a trip to the store or a nice long ride without getting lost!

I also swapped two sets of storage for better use. I took the storage pieces I had been using to store my clothes and swapped it with a wire shelving unit in my room. My clothes don’t need smaller spaces, and actually work better on the open shelving unit. The storage pieces are helping to contain my clutter and smaller things than the wire shelves, and really helped declutter some of my room!

Today was the last piece of the puzzle. There is a former record storage unit that we’ve been using as extra kitchen storage since we moved. Before that it was our bar. Now it is back to storing records on its bottom shelf and my binders from my masters and core binders from my PhD. That freed up two wooden crates on my desk for display and storage. Now I have a bunch of wall-space in the right-side and above corner of my desk!

Things are really shaping up in here! It’s feeling better than it ever has!

Now I can hopefully get focused more on getting work done on my dissertation, keeping up with my students, and work on my Oracle chapter!