weekly retro #31: big pharma deez nuts
it's pretty late into the night as i type this. after 3 trips to the laundry room there was finally a machine available. i only cried once. i'm post menstrual and my thyroid hormones are abnormal again. thank god for edibles (legal) and ring dings out of the freezer.
long story short: my thyroid numbers were too far on one end so we changed my dosage. but that made my numbers too far on the other end - because my old pills were actually less potent than we thought (they were since recalled, lol). this is manageable - i'll go back to my former dose with the non-generic and in a few weeks i should be back to "normal" but holy shit whose tires do i slash about this? anyway, my week started with getting blood drawn.
as i watched the butterfly needle go in my arm for like the 3rd time this year, i thought "i could be a phlebotomist." i often think about things i'd like to try to do myself. this week i also thought i could design my own planner since my original plan(ner) didn't seem to be coming through. i know how to bind books now, i have a printer and paper. i have a book of paper where i can sketch out my future book of paper. maybe i'll use it to stay organized as i work on my phlebotomy journey.
i am not going to become a phlebotomist, at least not anytime soon. i'm also not going to become a wildlife photographer. as i stopped to take this photo of a neighbor's hydrangea, a squirrel dropped an acorn from up high and it hit me in the head. i didn't cry. i went home and launched a candle restock.
when i'm feeling really bad, i turn on the double boiler and try to play with wax for a couple of hours. it's calming, but i still have to pay attention so not to burn myself. tomorrow (9/8) marks 2 months since bugs rock went live as a store where you can actually buy things (if you're in the united states). these tariffs, on top of everything else going on because of our administration and politicians in general, are so stupid and cruel. today i found out kremer pigments was closing their ny location. i spent hours in that basement learning how to make watercolor paints and studying mediums and pigments.
this is a transparent png of my most important watercolor palette, i posted it with a few others on my tumblr the other day. i made about a third of those paints at kremer, an experience i wrote about in june 2022. it sucks they are closing and it's not to anyones benefit.
here's a selfie i took at michael's. it wouldn't be surprising for all of these big box stores to not exist in a couple of years. where will we get halloween decorations of skeletons making out with each other alongside stamp pads? i wonder what the candle-makers who use shein and temu and amazon will have to deal with. i've avoided those stores, but i'm sure the stores i do use are just reselling from them anyway and i'm the sucker.
meanwhile, pumagreg. another source of peace and joy amongst the raging hormones and raging world. when i tell him "you know i pack a chainsaw" whenever i catch him trying to go into the closet he's not allowed in, he knows i'm just goofing around.
things i enjoyed this week
- two different people sent me different limp bizkit memes and now i have rollin' stuck in my head. i know i'm most of my friends' "nu-metal friend" but i was a latecomer to limp bizkit. they should make a coffee brand so i can have their mug alongside korn's and coheed's in my cabinet.
- i've been using obsidian for about a month now, i think? and i've completely weaned myself off of apple notes and non-scheduled reminders. i am syncing through icloud and it works great. i use a kanban extension, and i have a lot more extensions to explore. on the topic of tech, i mentioned trying kagi search and when my trial was up i decided not to continue - just isn't for me.
- i really liked this video about the impact of the sears catalog on the jim crow era (you should subscribe, it's a great account). sears is one of those stores that either don't exist or are on their last dying breath and in several years there will be grownups who don't remember them. similar store names for me include caldor's, the wiz, coconuts, and fye.
- this interview with mona chalabi was so good. informative, emotional. chalabi is such a great storyteller and i find her struggle with being in a field with no accountability for its foundational principles (journalism) to be very devastating and there are parallels there with how i feel about tech. she also does a great job in centering the lies of media coverage of iraq in a discussion about how they are lying about gaza today. she once spoke at a tech conference my former employer held and i got to talk to her and...that's it, i just wanted to brag that i got to meet her.
this is going to be a very busy and logistically challenging week. i'm going to pace myself, relax when i can, and remember that a lot of what i'm doing is not so serious to warrant beating myself up. and soon my thyroid will agree.
xoxo jenn