Aimless Ramblings

I am always surprised, though I guess I shouldn't be, that even blind people who have never driven can be so car-brained.

But it disappoints me nevertheless.

Today at work I watched a video where the head of a U.S. blind org, in his first Waymo, exclaimed something like "this is the first time in history that blind people can travel long distances independently without inconveniencing anybody else!"

I mean...I regularly travel hundreds of miles independently, on trains. I have traveled thousands of miles independently, on planes!

I have a whole rant about what people even mean by "independent."

I might have to add "what do crips mean by inconveniencing someone."

Not only do I not think that I'm inconveniencing assistance staff by "making" them help me get on a train or plane.

I also think that private cars do inconvenience a lot of other people! (Waymos (or other self-driving cars) arguably more than the human-driven cars.) Cars just outsource most of the inconvenience to people you don't know!

Earlier this week, I read the headlines of the Ipsos Mobility survey, and one has been haunting me ever since:

For many, having a car is an essential part of their life.
Forty-three per cent of drivers across 31 countries feel it would be impossible for them to live without their car. This feeling is highest in the US (65%), France (64%) and Canada (59%). Forty-three per cent of drivers say they could live without their car, but would prefer not to.

They would prefer not to because car-centric design ensures that everything is easiest, makes most sense, or sometimes is only possible for people in private cars. Cars end up being an essential part of people's lives when they're essential to everything you might want to do: work, school, shopping, errands, fun stuff... I know it's asking a lot for people to see that a bunch of systemic changes will address this better and more thoroughly than their individualistic solution of just getting another car, or a bigger car, or a car with brighter headlights, or an electric car, or a self-driving car...

Not before breakfast, but also I felt like I was doing the impossible things, not just thinking them...

Work was a lot; I had meetings all afternoon, overrunning into each other, beset by people missing the point. I think another way the power dynamic of people with no (disclosed) disabilities who have to consult disabled people for their work... sometimes someone missed a crucial bit -- we're not just ranking these on their effectiveness but also their difficulty of implementation -- and sometimes one person thinks we need every detail of the specific symbols on the Berlin U-bahn and/or S-bahn maps (this is a breach of the maxim of quantity: as much information as is needed, and no more).

That latter person talked so much at the end that I missed the first train home that I wanted.

And as these meetings were going on, I also had to get something to my manager (artificial sense of urgency!) which I was really unsure of, something I've never done before and am not sure I'm doing right, so that was stressful. I almost think it was easier trying to do it at the same time as the meetings, since it kept me from being able to get too anxious about it; I just had to go "good enough!" and send him the documents at some point.

By the time of the second one, V had put dinner in the oven which meant I didn't have to cook, which was nice (we keep frozen meals around for precisely this kind of day; D was sleeping and V had already used a lot of spoons they didn't really have today and I wasn't home yet).

I just had time to eat that and watch the first inning or so of the Tigers-Twins game (which I didn't have high hopes for because it was a Skubal start, but it apparently went well! (has something happened to the Tigers?? silveradept, you doin' okay?)) before it was time to go help angelofthenorth get two heavy pieces of furniture down two flights of stairs.

I figured it was the kind of thing that would either be pretty quick or pretty grueling, and it was pretty quick. We didn't break anything, including ourselves. I rehydrated a little and walked home because buses are disappointing that time of night; the walk was actually nice: it was still warm even after dark (I'm not used to that yet!), it was clear and quiet, and the exercise was probably good for my muscles. I still struggled to even get myself into the shower when I got home though, heh.

And now painkillers and bed!

Very sad to realize that I have to start caring about bedtime again.

I've had a pretty great bank holiday weekend though.

• Tried to skive off work a bit early to go for a drink with D in the sunshine. It ended up not being that sunny by then, but we had a nice time. And I got us ice-cream cones from an ice-cream van as we walked home!
• We did indeed go out for Best Friday, which was lovely if slightly overdoing it for D
• I made it to transgym, sent good wishes back and forth between D and the gymgoers, and got my gloves back that I accidentally left in a friend's car when they gave me a lift home...and then proceeded not to see said friend for the last couple of months. I've been thinking about those gloves every so often: I got them in Stornoway so they're nice and warm, fair-isle type colorwork, and most important for me fingerless. I don't need them now but it's very nice to have them back!
• our friends Alex and Ian came over that evening, yay. It was so so lovely to see them. We got pizza.
• We were invited for afternoon tea at angelofthenorth's yesterday. Little sandwiches and sweets and many pots of tea (and I had coffee), beautifully showed off her new table and chairs!
• We bought some more plants, and when we got home I did some dad chores: added air to the car tires that needed it, cut back a tree that's overhanging from the neighbor's yard, started in on the ivy that has already claimed a couple of fence panels, and then sat outside with a book and a cold beer, in shorts and sandals (it's only about 60F, but thanks to testosterone I've become the guy who needs to wear a sleeveless top and sandals and shorts when it's 60F...)

Storm Dave aside, we had good weather this weekend, even great today -- and this is the opposite of what bank holiday Mondays are usually like. And it's not even dark at 8pm now; I'm so relieved.

Well, as I'm always saying at work -- and I learned this from trans activists, if you don't have access to public toilets, you don't have access to public life.

This article, no doubt among others, points out that if we don't have access to space toilets, we don't really have access to space.

It’s very funny, because toilets are funny, but I also find it touching because it’s so relatably human. Space missions are filled with impossibly genius men and women achieving scientific feats far beyond our intelligence, discussing them with indecipherable jargon and initialisms, and then they’re talking about toilets. Hey! Toilets! I use those things too. Everyone needs toilets. ...

It took NASA six years and $23 million to design the Universal Waste Management System, and it was first installed on the International Space Station in 2020. The UWMS—invariably referred to by everyone at NASA as simply "the toilet"—uses suction to keep waste from escaping, and captures and filters the urine it collects to return to the craft's water supply. Just as importantly, it is capable of handling what NASA calls "dual ops—when they’re doing both defecation and urination at the same time,” said Melissa McKinley, the toilet's project manager.

I'm charmed that the toilet status is right at the top of this pleasing website where you can track the mission.

Before the crew settled in for their first sleep, ahead of a perigee burn Thursday morning, Koch called down with a question: The astronauts would like to pee before bed. Are you sure this thing is safe to use? Houston offered reassurance. "Christina, you are good to use toilet all night."

It's so lovely go to bed knowing that the toilet is there for you, any time you need it.

Work kinda sucked today -- my manager was micromanaging me at in, I made lunch at 1 but I couldn't eat it until 3:30 because I didn't realize how many cameras-on meetings I had in a row -- and after work I fell asleep for two whole hours, but not in restful, refreshing kind of way, in the way where you wake up feeling off-kilter and gross. I just hope it didn't mess up my sleep too much tonight.

Two dozen people from my workplace, which is national so we normally work in all kinds of places, schlepped to London for two days together in the head office today.

Only for the office to have to be closed by lunchtime in the first day because there's a flood in the building. Ominous rumors about toilets and smells abound...

We spent the first half of the afternoon trying to find somewhere to decamp to.

I don't even know if we'll be allowed back in the building tomorrow, lolsob

Today is brought to you by diffrentcolours, who rescued me from missing lift club by offering to drive me there when I slept through my alarm and woke up ten minutes before we'd have had to leave the house.

(This also means that we could deliver the outdoor cat shelter, which is no longer needed by our neighborhood cat, to a friend who's in the process of being adopted by what had been his next-door neighbor's cat.)

And then this afternoon he drove V and me to the garden center to buy compost to re-pot a giant houseplant and straw mulch (it's called Strulch!) for the outdoor gardening season. And then to B&M to buy a bag of rocks. V is working on making a barrel pond for the backyard, which leads to some funny purchases -- last time I bought three random biggish rocks, called "rustic slate."

And then sadly D was too wiped out to go to a gig tonight that we'd been kinda planning to, which is a shame but probably would've meant that if we hadn't done errands this afternoon we wouldn't have gotten much further than the bus into town before he was wiped out. Still calibrating as recovery goes on.

And I was pretty tired too, having lifted all the bags around. The rocks were tricky because we couldn't get a shopping cart so I just had to fireman-carry the bag around the store. It wasn't super heavy but it was really awkward, and I was worried about tearing the bag. Plus the rocks were cold, seeping the body heat out of me. The bag was labeled "North Sea cobbles" and I feel like they remembered their chilly home while pressed to my shoulder.

So I made easy dinner (bangers and mash) and we watched the Twins second game. Which they won! But I was so pessimistic the whole time, D made fun of me. The bullpen didn't collapse! Royce Lewis had a great game! It was weird but I hope this happens every day!

It was a nice day. And tomorrow we have D&D -- the DM spun up a character for me last time, but we ended up just watching the movie (sadly without audio description this time!), but I offered to come along this week as a couple of the usuals won't be there because they're sick. I'm a fighter, my favorite thing to be, and the DM described the niche as Utility Himbo so that's basically his name. Bo, for short! So I'm looking forward to that tomorrow.