Leaves First; Lights Later

I have a love-hate relationship with this time of year.

I love the season and the change in weather.

I hate the fact that we change our clocks. I don’t care that we “gain an hour” or some nonsense. Can we just pick a time and stick with it? But all that aside I am here for keeping the windows open and breathing in the fall air and just generally being able to breathe after the overwhelming attitude of summer.

And in these first few weeks of True Autumn, here’s what’s happened in my neck of the woods:

One day I was assisting someone at work and they asked

“Is that a pronoun pin?”

“Yes, that’s my nonbinary kitty and on the other side I’ve got they/them.”

“And they’re on a Pusheen lanyard; that’s too cool!” 

“If you move just a little to your right you can see more Pusheen in my cubicle.”

“Oh my soul so many! Well this has been delightful.”

“You’ve made my day, too. Thank you for commenting.”

But that night, I think that night I had the stupidest dream I ever had.

I spent far too long dreaming I was arguing with a hotel clerk that an IP address was not the same thing as a registration confirmation number. I definitely did not wake up refreshed from that. 

In recounting it to a coworker the next day, I was asked “so, who won?”

The answer is me. I won because I woke up.

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This week is election day, and sadly I feel that the elections that will most directly affect me are foregone conclusions. That doesn’t mean I didn’t vote, it just means that I strongly suspect the results will skew in a direction I’d rather they not go.

This week my city is also holding a town hall regarding the purchase of ShotSpotter. This makes me somewhat angry, because while shootings have undeniably gone up in our town, purchasing software with a sordid history is not the solution. For example:

• The software has come under scrutiny for inflated “shot reports”, which increase the frequency and cost of false alarms.
• The methodology hasn’t been peer-reviewed or independently evaluated, raising the likelihood of the data being excluded from court and/or convictions being overturned on appeal
• there exists evidence that human analysts have changed reports at the request of law enforcement. The exact example I recall is the sound of a helicopter being reclassified as a gunshot when not shots had, in fact, been fired.
• the company is often accused of “[using] misleading assumptions and a misleading accuracy calculation” to show effectiveness.
• As one report concluded “The use of evidence in court derived from AI algorithms raises severe issues of transparency, accuracy, and fairness.”

In fact, there was such negativity associated with the brand they’ve had to rebrand as SoundThinking. 

Different Name; Same Problems

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But that’s enough negativity, let’s get back to positive things like 

THE RELEASE OF 1989 (TAYLOR’S VERSION)

Yes, I played it on repeat for about two days. Of the Vault Tracks, I particularly like “Now That We Don’t Talk” 

However, I apparently didn’t play it enough to change my overall music stats on Spotify, which currently look like this:

We’ll see what my 2023 Spotfiy Wrapped looks like . . .

Once again, I was the Headless Horseman for All Hallows’ Eve

I had a great interaction with one guest that went something like this:

Man: “I heard the headless horsemen was a Hessian, so why aren’t you talking in German?”

Me: „Wenn ich Englisch spreche, bekomme ich mehr Hilfe.”

Man: “wow they really do go in for historical accuracy”

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I recorded a podcast episode about cosplay and gender identity and the host gave her cat a pat for me on Cat Day and it was glorious.

Halloween/Samhain was a very affirming time as well.

At work for Halloween I went as Belladonna, my D&D character.  

And there were lots of people doing “reverse trick-or-treating” so I came away with lots of unexpected candy.

I took November 1 off this year as I have now been doing for several years now. Among the many self-care activities I allowed myself that day I made apple pie

I also made kielbasa and fried potatoes in the cast iron skillet

And speaking of food, Krystal and I were invited to a Stone Soup event, where everyone brought a soup ingredient and everything went into a big cauldron with lot of broth and such.

It was a great couple hours getting to know knew people. 

And then there’s the folks I’ve come to know quite well. We finished our Vampire the Masquerade story arc (where I played Attie) and we’re getting ready to start a new D&D campaign on November 10 or so. This story will be taking place a couple hundred years or so after the events of our big campaign that wrapped in May (where I played Bryn and Garrett) and 8,000 years or so after the short story arc we played this summer (where I played Belladonna). In this campaign I’m planning on playing Kai Copperspark, a Fire Genasi Oath of Glory Paladin. We’ll see how it goes.

But this month our DM sent us a group photo we took back in May that none of us had seen before:

And one of our group tagged us all in a post asking who folk’s best friends are. As someone who has struggled to make friends for most of their life, the fact that anyone would call me their friend makes me weepy.

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What have you been up to?