First blooms on my Xmas cactus noticed the day after Tgiving. Good job Xmas cactus! Way to start the holiday season right on time and NOT too soon!

Dwight Garner quoting George Orwell, with three important rules for tea. “I maintain that one strong cup of tea is better than twenty weak ones.” “The water should be actually boiling at the moment of impact.” “Try drinking tea without sugar for, say, a fortnight and it is very unlikely that you will ever want to ruin your tea by sweetening it again.”

‘Twere I to try to live my life over again in a different way, my current life would seep in anyway, until I found myself at the very same spot in which I find myself now.

My life travels downhill like a river finding the easiest course.

On either side are all the infinite alternative paths it did not take.

There are infinitely many better and infinitely many worse.

This one is right down the middle.

From Oliver Burkeman today: “Thus a person encounters, say, a book of practices derived from Stoicism, and rather than thinking “How useful, some Stoic techniques to add to my collection!”, instead concludes: “I’ll become a Stoic, which will fix all the ways I feel problematic, and then life will be plain sailing!””

Yes, yes, yes!

“We do this, I suppose, for the same reason people join cults or embrace rigid political ideologies: because it’s more scary to acknowledge the reality…”

No, we do it because we think there’s supposed to be a magic bullet. That everyone ELSE has a magic bullet; we’re the only ones futzing around.

As part of occasional tidying and cataloguing that I do – moreso as summer becomes a distant memory – I cleaned up and reorganized my bulletin board last month. I can better enjoy my colorful collection of sheep & goat cards.

Hate was just a legend

War was never known

The people worked together

And they lifted many stones

And they carried them to the flatlands

And they died along the way

And they built up with their bare hands

What we still can’t do today

And I know she’s living there

And she loves me to this day

I still can’t remember when

Or how I lost my way

A nice picture from 10 days ago.

Gestation of my winter project. And a bunch of crappy doodles I impulsively drew all over the place.

A coworker gave me an award. It was only worth about $20. But it came on a really bad day and I’m going to paste the words so I can save them.

“Tytania, when I think about you, I feel like a drop in the ocean of knowledge you have around our application.  I am so thankful to you for always being there to answer our questions, however dumb they may be, without loosing [sic] your cool.”