We went to Max Patch and hiked the easy hike to the summit today (it’s only about a mile from where you park to the top). Max Patch is a bald mountain (no trees on top) with 360 degree mountain views. It was a gorgeous, perfect day for a small hike-- about 65F, part sun, part clouds. Here’s a pic Tom took:
When we got home I made a strawberry tart with strawberry pastry cream and a Nilla wafer crust. So, a really nice day.
Recorded keyboards for the song mentioned earlier. Limited myself to a Hammond organ patch plus two synth pads - anything else seemed like overegging the pudding.
Now I’ll have to finish the lyrics for it before I can do vocals… XD
Nice easy day recovering after yesterday’s fall. Work went better than expected and then my husband got us carrot cake 
My partner and I won IntroComp :3 (granted we were the only ones who entered, but hey, I think we did okay for a first attempt at a game). Now to spend up to a year making it awesome!
Exhausting day, but I got fun treats (Halloween black cat Hello Kitty cup, a 168$ pre-tax all organic cotton print shirt for 30$, 4 pastel notebooks in baby blue, baby pink, lavender, and teal, some hair ties with jewel toned ribbons/bows on them- they’re passable imitation copies of the 1917 but all for 15$!, a new witchy lunar cycle themed pop socket to replace my broken one, an appointment for new glasses) and despite being physically pushed beyond my limit (have severely impaired my mobility until at least the end of the week from prior experiences/guesstimation and caused a major chronic pain spike due to unfortunate circumstances in the afternoon after a long duration of illness, I literally passed out from 4PM to 11PM, and everything is agony), I’m having a delicious little fun time eating charcuterie (<3) in bed: salami, cheddar, mozzarella, pepper jack, avocado crackers, and carrot match sticks.
my gf and I went clothes shopping today to work on expanding my wardrobe (i threw out a bunch of stuff a while ago, and in general have been needing more that I actually like wearing) and it was honestly a lot of fun! I normally hate shopping for clothes bc it stresses me out but my girlfriend has so much shopping patience and very good advice and opinions about clothing so it was much better than i was expecting. AND I got an amazing dark green wool tahari coat for like a hundred dollars (an absolute steal for that brand) so very excited for winter now yippee <3
Honestly, you’re living the dream, haha. I dream of going clothes shopping with a girlfriend. XD
I think I’m done!! I’ve been working on recording this one song with my band for over a year, at an average of 12 hours a week. If I’ve sent any of you a recording of a song way before, it’s exactly that same song. Yes, I get it - shouldn’t take that long. And the best part is, it’s not a even a very good song. But… I don’t know. I’ve got some strange obsession with the song, I just can’t let it go. Even after repeatedly being told “Max, stop it, you’ve been going at this for too long.” There’s just … something not quite right about it. Not distorted enough. Not weird enough. Not clear enough. Not right enough. Not good enough.
But I think, I just think I never want to touch it again. And maybe that’s just because I’ve adjusted it into oblivion and there’s no coming back with this song.
I don’t know. But I’m happy I have at least the slightest satisfaction with it.
Not again. It’ll never be good enough.
My knee tricked out with a dislocation when I was trying to stand and use the kettle, but I managed to slide it back into place and not spill hot water all over my bare legs. Happy eating breakfast- burgers and pasta.
Also discovered that my new cup has a pink tint to the plastic at the bottom, by accidentally brewing a potion of bisexuality when drinking blue gatorade.
At first I interpreted this as you sliding the hot kettle back to a stable spot on the stove, but now I’m thinking: “Did she just snap her own dislocated knee back in its socket while holding a kettle full of boiling water? That’s badass!”
Yes, I cracked the knee back into place. It has a tendency to ‘wander’ where it slides out of place, and that tends to make me fall down- between the starburst of pain and the uneven weight distribution of your leg crumpling beneath you suddenly. I managed to drop the kettle back onto the counter and forced the knee back into position- so no hot water spills, and a narrow miss with collapsing into a heap, since I shoved it back into place before it entirely crunched up and folded beneath me.
I have permanent joint damage from destroyed cartilage from joint bleeds as a complication of my hemophilia (basically: blood leaks into the synovial fluid, which is what lubricates joints and allows them to swivel, it partially coagulates, forming small clots akin to granules of sand, which rasp away at the inner structures, provoking more inflammation and more blood rushing into the joint, in a horrible positive feedback loop) so this is fairly standard in my experience.
My ankles and knees are my most effected, though I have a weak shoulder that still dislocates if I’m not cautious about my rotation of movement, and weak wrists that can be overly strained through normal stuff like writing with a pen- making the switch to fountain pens, which require no pressure to write with, was a godsend.
The unit on genetic disorders from every biology class I’ve ever taken have clearly undersold how nasty hemophilia is. I want to blame the ageists and the censors for thinking it’s a good thing to keep kids and adolescents ignorant of the unpleasant aspects of reality, but even the college level biology class I took never said anything beyond implying a minor cut being as dangerous to a hemophiliac as an arterial rupture is to someone with functional blood clotting.
Yes, some of its complications are surprisingly played down. That is part of why many female carriers (women who have the genetic defect associated with hemophilia, depending on subtype, it impacts a different clotting factor producing gene, on one copy, but not the other, resulting in partial functionality) who can have symptoms as severe as full blown hemophiliacs (with dual defects) are not diagnosed until after childbirth, a major car accident, or dental surgery.
I’m not a female carrier- instead, I’m a somewhat rare (due to the X linked recessive inheritance pattern) female with full blown hemophilia, due to a partial deletion on one copy of the F9 gene, and a partial inversion and translocation on the other, resulting in about 39% of typical functionality. I am classified as having mild hemophilia, though I present with symptoms more typical of moderate-severe hemophiliacs, due to my repeated occasions of spontaneous internal hemorrhages, particularly into the joints, but also quite frequently in my eyes, which feels a bit like sand and grease being rubbed into them for about a week or two.
The externalized bleeding is the most flashy of symptoms- I once went into shock from blood loss from a nasty cut on my finger and painted the ceiling, backsplash, wall, and large portion of the floor red in under five minutes, and it unfortunately also does cause severe complications with menstruation in female carriers and female hemophiliacs. But the joint bleeds are incredibly painful- and often result in mobility issues and aggressive arthritis as hemophiliacs age. It’s why so many hemophiliacs wind up on pretty intense pain management regiments- further complicated by the fact they cannot take aspirin or anything in the NSAID class of drugs without worsening bleeding and increasing the risk of spontaneous hemorrhages developing internally. It’s essentially Tylenol, or opiates.
Despite being robustly researched, hemophilia has been, in my experience, poorly understood in a clinical setting. I have had countless doctors adamantly deny that I could have hemophilia, due to not being a man, (despite having had it confirmed through genetic testing, which is how I know about the nature of my exact genetic defects) and also prescribed lethal doses of NSAIDs. (Many are prescription only, in Canada.) It’s a bit absurd. But such is the way of things with genetic disorders, and other unusual patients. I’ve learned to very carefully investigate any prescribed medications and have a higher regard for pharmacists, who have often been the ones to loudly flag the inappropriate prescriptions to the doctors.
My polished rhodonite necklace came in the mail, yay! It’s a pretty, warm pink, with a clear quartz like fissure through the pink field. The cordage is much smoother than I expected, which is nice. It hangs quite low on me, though, even once adjusted- I suppose it’s a result of being quite short… But it’s a good size, nice weight, and the length will make it easier to peek out of my outfits: my shorter necklaces often get swallowed by my tshirts.
I got a new wireless computer mouse today. My old wired one had been driving me nuts as the USB connectors on my laptop are terrible and keep disconnecting. The new one also lights up in rainbow colours 
We have milk in the house again for coffee! Yay!
I have a personal VSCode server on my desktop now, so if I need to be in another room for a number hours and avoid being a noise polluter because of my keyboard, then I can put my USB drive into a computer, boot into my tiny OpenBSD distro, and log into the server from elsewhere.
This is a game-changer, because I often get these manic moments where I need to get some code done, because outside of these moments, I’m too depressed to work on anything, so if I can’t catch these moments, I’ll feel stuck for either days or months and feel awful about it.
My partners and I don’t always have the same sleep schedule, so this lets me handle manic moments while everyone else is asleep! 
Tempura shrimp and pork dumplings for dinner. :3
Found out unexpectedly that 4thewords now offers a free plan, which is fantastic news. Been puttering around with it. I’ve heard great things about it for years, though it was always a paid subscription, and I loathe those- it’s a big part of why I bought Scrivener, as it was a one and done, rather than subscription based. Really cool that they have a staunch anti-AI stance as well.
A little different but it reminded me of this
