Posted on
Sep 19, 2021

Feeling Weird Now… the friday five for August 27 2021

I’m having one of those weird days. Alternately being cold and sweating with certain of my Crohn’s symptoms acting up somewhat so can’t go far from the bathroom and my head still feeling a little left over worseness from the migraine yesterday but also feeling weirdly energetic anyway. All my household chores are done, don’t have any vacuuming or washing to do… It’s so weird feeling like this. Can’t seem to concentrate on anything (even reading which is something I can usually do no matter what) and am sort of feeling like I’ve been gently wrung out and then left hanging the wrong side out… lying down feels weird, sitting feels weird, walking outside feels good but I’ve already done that twice today and it’s only 10am… So have answers to old The Friday Five questions.

1. If you could design your life exactly how you’d like, how famous would you be?

Not famous at all! I wouldn’t mind people recognizing my name in certain circumstances such as a patron of something that people associated with the organization in question would know me, but I don’t want to be famous or a celebrity or anything like that.

2. How often would you travel?

Do I still have Crohn’s Disease and chronic migraine? If yes, propably not a all. Except maybe for travelling abroad to try out treatments for migraine not available here.

If not and money’s not an issue (because I’d have all the money I could want – because if I could desig my life as I like because then I’d be rich…) I’d like to make one long trip (like 6-8 weeks or more) a year to some place I’ve always wanted to see – like visit the US/Canada and travel across the country cost to cost, seeing places like Niagara Falls, Yellowstone and Grand Canyon, New York, Miami, Los Angeles, Boston, Rocky Mountains, and many many more places. These trips would have loose plans and I’d take my time seeing all the places I want. Or alternately I’d make 1-2 shorter trips a year for maybe a week at a time, such as to Cairo or London or Paris, or even just a few days in London whenever I liked. London’s one of my favorite places in the world, and I’d love to be able to go there whenever.

3. How many people would live with you?

I’d live alone, but I’d buy a big house and have staff come in to clean and maintain etc. I’d also have a cook so I could eat proper meals every day (I prefer home cooked food, but I don’t have energy to cook regularly) and because I feel quilty if I don’t eat the food others have made for me (I have problems with appetite, made worse by being chronically tired and too often after I’ve cooked, I’m too tired to eat and/or am not hungry anymore), especially the greens and vegetables. I’d propably get a dog, maybe. I’d have to think about seriously though whether I could be a good dog mom with my illnesses and tiredness.

4. How often would you eat out at restaurants?

About once a month or every other month. I like eating out (fast food doesn’t count here) but more as a treat every now and then.

I’d be likely to do a lot more, is cafes! I don’t do cafes now at all really. Like once a year, at the most (and none during COVID-19). They’re either much too expensive, or what you get for your money isn’t that great. But I’d love to spend money in the few cafes I like, just watching life around me and meeting a friend or my Mom.

5. What new hobby would you get into?

I’d probably want to try many things because I’d have the big house where there’s a craft room or two so now I’d actually have the space to do a lot of things I don’t have the space for now, or the money to buy materials to just make them for fun, or to just try out without knowing whether I’ll stick with it. But it’s the lack of space that’s the big thing. I’d like to try jewellery making, and making acrylic rings, acrylics coasters and clocks. I can’t now because I don’t have to space to store the needed tools and materials, or have space to leave my work out to dry etc. I’d also do large versions of the things I can do now: watercolor and acrylic painting. I got to do some woodwork when I was a kid in school (woodwork was for boys, while knitting and sewing was for girls, but boy and girls had to switch around for a few weeks one year to get some experience from the other side), and liked it, so I’d like to try that again. It’d also be fun to learn to make clothes, so I’d pay someone to teach me or take classes or something. I don’t own a sewing machine, and when I looked into prices of fabrics some years ago, buying fabric to make a sheet, or a t-shirt or whatever, cost just as much or more as buying one ready-made so it doesn’t make sense now to spend money on a sewing machine.

I’d definitely want to own my own (computer) server! So I’d be able to have as much space I want/need for my sites, and still be able to make sure the server is powerful enough to serve the sites fast. So it could be pricier than what I can do now.

Posted on
Sep 18, 2021

The Friday Five for September 17 2021

Can’t believe it’s been a month since I last posted anything!

Snagged this from The Friday Five @ Livejournal.

1. Are you looking forward to Autumn (or Spring, if you are in the other hemisphere)?

I don’t have to look forward to Autumn – we’re in the middle of it 😀 But yes, I always look forward to the Autumn through a summer.

2. What is one thing that marks this season for you more than anything else?

Cool, crisp air and feeling I can breathe again. Trees are also so pretty when their leaves turn to orange and red.

3. If the months are indicative of your age, with January being your birth and December being the
end of the line), what month are you in?

This is a difficult queston! Depends really on how my chronic illnesses, especially Crohn’s Disease advance (there’s a higher risk of colon cancer). If I were healthy, I’d propably be in June or maybe July. But my illnesses could make it so that I’m already in August or September… could go either way!

4. Do you welcome the cooler/warmer days or mourn their loss?

I welcome the cooler days!

5. What is absolutely one thing you have to do in the Autumn/Spring?

There’s nothing, really. Closest would be seeing my Mom on Christmas Eve and eating Christmas foods, but that’s in winter.

The Friday Five for 13 August 2021: A Family Set
Posted on
Aug 13, 2021

The Friday Five for 13 August 2021: A Family Set

Answers to today’s questions at thefridayfive@dreamwidth.

1. Did you grow up with your parents together as a unit?

For the most part. My Dad died of cancer in 1989 a month before my 15th birthday, but until then my parents were together. Mom later told me that Dad had suggested a divorce when it became clear that the cancer would get him, so we wouldn’t have to watch him die. My Mom wouldn’t hear of it. They had a good marriage.

2. Did you reach adulthood with four living grandparents?

On my mother’s side… only my Mamma who was my maternal grandmother. She lived until I was 25, in the late 1990s. Maternal grandfather died about a decade before I was born/adopted so in the early 1960s. My paternal grandparents… I’m not sure… I think one of them was alive when I was a toddler, but I don’t really remember… I have this faint memory of meeting a strange (as in unknown to me, not weird strange) woman when out shopping, and Mom introducing her as Dad’s mother but I don’t really remember them at all. I think I was about 4-7 years old at the time. I think there was some visiting sometimes during my toddler years, but so few and far between I never remembered/recognized them. But I’m pretty sure I reached adulthood with only one living grandparent: Mamma.

3. Is your extended family a close one or not?

I’m adopted and an only child and I don’t have a spouse, so I don’t have an extended family in that sense. I have cousins, aunts and uncles. Technically, I have biological brothers and sisters but I don’t consider them family nor have I ever met them, or my biological parents.

No, we aren’t close at least on this side. My Mom had two brothers; Mamma and my uncle who lived with her (we always saw them most) are dead, we hardly ever see or hear about my other uncle and my cousins. I do like my oldest cousin (a woman) a lot – whenever we see each other it’s like we’ve never been apart, but the other two are more of strangers.

I’ve never really known my aunts and uncles on my Dad’s side although I remember that they occasionally came to visit when I was small. My Dad had 8 brothers and sisters and we saw some of them sometimes when I was a kid, but they lived a long way away and I guess my parents and them were never close and over time contact stopped. I don’t know if any of them had children/grandchildren. I do know two of Dad’s brothers were sent to Sweden to be safe during the war with Soviet Union and they never came back, instead were raised in a family there. One the of other the brothers lived in Helsinki and one sister in Harjavalta and them we visited like once or twice a year. It was always a full day trip when we went. I remember loving the car rides but seeing the relatives? I didn’t really care about that one way or another. Huh, I think I should ask my Mom about that side of the family! I don’t really remember much, especially about my paternal grandparents. It’d be nice to know if I ever met them! Mostly I remember my Dad’s side from old photos, except for those two live in Helsinki and Harjavalta – them I remember “live”.

Even in the 1980s and before when we still had more or less regular contact, whether that contact happened once a year or more often, we never had “clan gatherings” where the whole family would get together.

4. Does your family have a ‘black sheep’?

I don’t think so but since we aren’t close I would know. My Mom’s other brother, the one who lived with Mamma, was a little weird but I don’t think he was a black sheep. These days I guess he’d be called developmentally challenged, but back then he was just a little weird. Although I might be one – unemployed, chronically ill, unmarried/not in a relationship of any kind, childless, into fannish things. All things that people look more or less down on. But I don’t feel like a black sheep, so I don’t care.

5. What is your first memory of a family member that is not your mother(s) or father(s)?

I don’t have a memory of that, but when I think about it I feel it’s Mamma. Just because we saw her the most – a lot more than anyone else. We visited regularly, and she visited us regularly. I also went over to hers by bike alone or with my best fried sometimes. So it must be Mamma.

Posted on
Aug 9, 2021

Roomba + Weather + Fountain Pens & Inks

About 3 months ago I filled in a website usability test at my local energy company’s website. I never win anything so I had forgotten all about it until when in early June I got an e-mail that I had won their main prize: a Roomba robot vacuum cleaner!

I’ve now been the proud owner of a Roomba for almost 2 months and it’s such a life saver 😀 I’ve always loathed vacuuming, and never did it weekly like you’re supposed to at least. But especially since I got sick and became a spoonie with daily exhaustion and pain, vacuuming became a really hard task for me because it takes so much of my energy, and makes my chronic migraine worse (there’s something about the arm motions and the back/head posture of vacuuming that aggravates my chronic head pain) and so it went down to bottom of things I need to do when I realized I can’t do everything as often as I used to do them I was healthy. But now with the Roomba I can get my floors vacuumed every week, or even more often if needed :mrgreen: I’d always been doubtful about Roombas but after just a few weeks I can’t imagine my life without one now 😀 The Roomba is maybe the best gift I’ve ever gotten, it’s that good!

Now I can’t say I never win anything either 😉 

Also in other happy news – looks like the heatwave is really over! It’s been two weeks now of 18-24 degrees (Celcius) and lately it’s rained quite a bit, and it promises more of the same for the next 10 days at least. I’m happy :mrgreen:  Weird how 24 degrees has felt relatively cool now, it used to be way too hot for me. I guess this summer calibrated my hot-o-meter somewhat.

Finally was able to buy the TWSBI Eco Smoke Rose Gold. I’ve been salivating after it since it was released earlier this year. It was really difficult to decide what nib to get. I like M(edium) nibs the best so far, but I also got one Eco in B(road) and I’ve been liking that more and more this year. So I decided to go with a B nib for the Smoke Rose Gold. Can’t wait to get it! Also bought some inks at the same time, mostly notably to me the Sailor Shikiori Yamadori. I got a sample of it, and fell in love with it immediately. It flows and writes perfectly, and I love the teal & burgundy sheen combo :mrgreen:  Teal is one of my favorite colors. Also got some J. Herbin cartridges in that order to use in my two Jinhao x750 pens.

Also got a blue Kaigelu 316A fountain pen on the way from esybuy on Etsy, heard a lot of good things about it and it looks so pretty in pictures. It’s shipped from China and the estimated delivery is in September-November. It’s already shipped so we’ll see how long it’ll take! The two PenBBS orders I done during COVID-19 took 4 weeks both, but TheWashiTapeShop.com order took only 2 weeks and all those shipped from China too. I’ve bought from esybuy once before but I can’t remember how long it took to get it – propably around 4 weeks because that’s what my orders usually take from China or USA to get to Finland, and I don’t remember there being anything unusual about that time.

One pen I’ll get at some point is the new TWSBI Swipe because sometimes I need a cartridge pen for ease of use when out and about and I love how TWSBIs write the most. I’m just not sure about the two colors available at the moment – the Smoke looks so much like Go and I don’t like the looks of the Gos, and the Prussian Blue isn’t among my favorite colors. I hope TWSBI will come out with other colors for Swipe, preferably soon!

The first fountain pen I ever bought was the EU version of Pilot Metropolitan (it and TWSBI Ecos are recced for beginners usually,) with an F(ine) nib, but turned out I hate the feel of that pen in my hand and that I like a wider nib. It wrote really well but I just didn’t like to use it. Luckily it didn’t go to waste though – I gave it to my Mom who’s now been using for about six months! I also gave her one of the little Tomoe River paper notebooks I made along with some blotting paper. She’s still on her first cartridge (Diamine Syrah) though because she mostly uses it to list the books she’s read this year. She says she used a similar pen but a dip one when she was a kid in school in the 1950s but never one with cartridges/converters. I’m trying to get her to use it for other things as well such as shopping lists etc. where it doesn’t matter if the paper isn’t that great.

Posted on
Jul 28, 2021

More Computer Woes (But Not Mine!)

Picture from Pixabay

So we ended up emergency going out and buying a new laptop for my Mom and her SO. She called me yesterday evening that their laptop was throwing up an errors, and eventually it wouldn’t boot at all. She managed to take a photo of the error one time, and googling lead me to the conclusion that – considering the laptop was going on 14 years old – its hard drive was dying. We’d already been talking about buying a new one for a couple of years because it was so slow and probably wouldn’t even be ab, and Mom said she didn’t like to use it because of that anymore, and that she’d like to be able to watch Yle Areena video web service (it’s all jerky and stopping entirely after a bit on the old laptop) on the computer because they don’t have a smart tv yet (she wants one of those too now). But her SO wasn’t keen on a new laptop because they use it so little. But hard drive dying  solved the problem, and now they have a shiny new Acer Aspire 5 that has Windows 10 on it and is Windows 11 ready and can run Yle Areena without any problems. Their old laptop had Linux Mint on it, and Mom wants it on the new one too (Windows gets on her nerves while Linux is smooth sailing once its all setup), but it took all the time and energy we had today just to make the Windows ready for them so we happily left Linux Mint for the next time.

It was a good thing I’d already talked to them about needing a new laptop sooner rather than later, so Mom had been looking at them somewhat already and they were both mentally prepared for the idea already. I do all the installing and help a lot with the choosing when it comes to phones, televisions and computers for my Mom so I spent this afternoon installing Windows and getting it how we like it. I have to say that I love how fast the initial install is now – just only about 20-30 minutes and I can start setting all the custom programs up. What I don’t love is the need for the Microsoft account but I guess I can live with it, although my Mom hated it – luckily I remembered she has Skype so we were able to use that. The new laptop is an Acer Aspire 5 and 15”, their old one was 17,3” so it’ll take some getting used to having a smaller one. 

Now we only need to get my Mom a new phone – she dropped her Doro smartphone a few months ago and it’s never been right after that. Keeps turning off, or heating up. At first we thought we’d pick up Doro 8080 at the same time as the laptop, but then she decided that it’s too much mentally to get both a new laptop and a phone the same day, and also that she’d like to get it from the regular department store instead of a specialty store like the laptop. So we didn’t get one today, but I expect it’ll happen during August. She really into Doro, and want the fingerprint reader like I have in my Huawei, so Doro 8080 looks like it’ll be the next.

The heat wave is over for now 😀 and it rained a lot today 🙂 It’s so humid though my head didn’t like it, and it was made worse with the sudden need to go computer shopping and then getting it all in working order made my heart hurt worse because of the stress. Not sure if it’s gonna be a migraine attack, could go either way.