The Mandelbear's Musings

Last week had some high points: reading the draft of N's next book, and a nice zoom reunion-ish thing. (I initially thought there were two of those, but the other was last Saturday.) Also sent several emails and made two phone calls following up (well, one and a half -- I abandoned the second after looking in my spam folder and finding the reply I was hoping for), paid our property tax, and got my US taxes done to the point where I could have filed for an extension, but determined that I didn't need to because I'm living overseas.

I'm supposed to celebrate accomplishments, even small ones. Right?

On the other hand, I only took five walks (skipping one because of pain and the other because of timing) and two short guitar-practice sessions. I can try to blame the latter on hand issues, but really (on the gripping hands?) it's mostly just laziness.

I am not at all happy with my body. See above under pain, and here under diclofenac. I'm not all that old, am I? Not happy with my brain, either -- see next paragraph.

Getting back to the zoom reunion-ish thing(s): there was a 65th reunion of my high school class last year; it was in Norwalk, Connecticut on the day after Thanksgiving, and I didn't go. Which was painful, because I'd ghosted the 50th for reasons I still don't entirely understand, although suffering from burnout may have had something to do with it and makes a convenient shorthand excuse. Anyway, enough people complained about not being to go for some other classmates of mine to organize a zoom version, which was last night. It was pretty good, although I lost the thread of what I was about to say at one point, resulting in an uncomfortable pause. See above about brain.

The reunion-ish thing Saturday didn't get called out last week, so I'll mention it here. Seems every year Carleton College has a "Coffee With Carls" event, and this year they had a virtual version for people who couldn't make it to one of the cities where versions of it were hosted. (There must be a briefer and less awkward way to phrase that.) Not bad, but it got cut short by a power outage before I had a chance to speak. Maybe next year.

Huge congratulations to this year's Filk Hall of Fame inductees: Margaret Davis, Tim Griffin, and Amy McNally! 🎉

Linkies: The system prompt for Meta’s AI model got leaked in 2 hours. The two Greatest Software Systems ever built: NASA Shuttle vs TeX.

And finally, Born on [April 15] in 1921, the Singer-Songwriter Behind the Most Famous No. 1 Hit Novelty Song of the 1950s. See Wednesday for spoiler.

( Notes & links, as usual )