Whiiiite rabbit. Whuf.

Haven't been writing here! Work has been eating a lot of my brain, and also some ~other stuff~ has been eating a lot of my brain. At least one of those things I can't talk about here. Another I don't _want_ to talk about here. It's not been great.

Today's a little better though. Dirt beneath my nails, I crawl my way back from the forest. Work is genuinely going really well and I like it a lot, even if my work responsibilities for this year are keeping me _busy_. I'm a building rep for my union, which means another couple meetings a month. I'm on the Equity Team which *also* means another couple meetings a month. I'm mentoring a new teacher who's enrolled in a grad program that means _another_ couple meetings a month (weekly with them, I think there's been 2-3 so far with the program?). I'm teaching three inclusion classes this year, which means me and my co-teacher really need to formally have at least one meeting a week for planning purposes. (She and I get along so well that we are, uh, doing more than that which is lovely but also oh god, when do I prep?)

But other stuff today has been real good too. Equity Team made me go look up my Gender Presentation that I gave like seven times between Feb'22 and June'23, and then haven't done since. It's really good! Like actually entirely solid! I should apply to do that as a PD more often, make other teacher have to talk and think about gender some! It felt good to look back at something I'd made in the past and feel like it was an accomplishment.

I was a bit faffy during after-school-preptime, but I did manage to get all my copies done. Well, okay, the paper part is done, I technically have a date with a stapler sometime tomorrow to get the packets together (sigh). Hm, and I didn't finish making my lesson plans for tomorrow. That's fine, that just means early morning at school I guess.

I've been keeping up with the grading, which is surprising, but not in a bad way. I'm not quite done everything I want to be done with, but it's pretty close, and I feel like I've done a good job of all of it. Yay me!

Got home, immediately swapped out my clothes, and collected my Xtracycle (which needs a name, both my other bicycles have names²) and dragged it down to Bicycle Belle, to see if they could help me with the brakes issue (it doesn't have a front one). I chose to go the extra 0.25 miles because BB is open an hour later on Wednesday than Ace Wheelworks ever is, and also because they specialize in cargo bikes, so I figured it was a good match. Plus, most recent Wheelworks trip had the pendulum back on the "sneering at casuals and women" side of things. Not drastically so, but something about the shop was raising my hackles, and I am _thrilled_ to say that Bicycle Belle entirely passed that vibe check. Even when I was asking stupid questions, I did not feel like anyone thought I was stupid, and that's very pleasant.

Got home again, attempted to repair the flat on Vin and...uh. Huh. Apparently when we got the puncture-resistant tyres in 2019 (!), they are basically impossible to take off the rims, which means I'm pretty much assuming my two most recent blowouts (last November and last week) were just the rubber giving way on the tubes finally. I think the right answer is "purchase some tyres that are not puncture resistant and go back to being able to easily repair your own flats" but I am extremely annoyed that I will probably have to bring my stupid bike to a stupid bike shop just to do a repair that I can ordinarily do in my backyard in ten minutes. Unless someone wants to come be stronk for me and de-tyre the thing.

Wasn't too badly shook mood-wise, and then when chatting with SamSam about it, I alluded to the time that my bike (parked) got hit by a car and the wheel was all bent to shit. Plugging in my photo-hard-drive to try and dig up the photo (success!) left me sitting on the couch with my photo-hard-drive plugged in. I tagged about 400 more photos, which feels like good progress. Only 317 to go in the current batch, and then I have a hundred more batches!

I also paid Ezri for some rent (a lot of rent, both back and forward), and then I finally set up an account on YouNeedABudget, since I've been hearing good things about them for forever. I don't know if I've set it up correctly yet, but we'll see how it works out.

I ate dinner somewhere in there?

Now I should go to bed because it's nearly midnight, and aforementioned "you have to wake up early so you can finish your damn prep". Sigh.

GOODNIGHT!

~Sor
MOOP!

1: Just as crazy as before. But I am breathing, I am laughing, taking one step at a time.

2: My regular bike is Vin, named for the heroine of the Mistborn trilogy, because at the time it was the most recent Strong Female Character I'd read, and that is my official naming schema. My folding bike is informally called The Bromps (because it's a Brompton) but its formal name is RuthEP, pronounced Rooth-eep.