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Transition feels like Bilbo felt when he left his house to fight the dragon.

You've got no idea what you're doing, you're clearly the wrong person to do it, and you're surrounded by all these weird new friends who make your old friends and family very uncomfortable. And yet, you do it anyway. You're a bit uncomfortable too, about these new companions, but something draws you to them. You walk out the front door and go on the adventure of a lifetime. When you finally do come back and see some of those old friends and family again, they hardly recognize you.

As you begin to settle back into cisiety as your new self, you realize that your life will never be the same. You have an experience now that, while it piques others curiosity, few around you share. You can tell the odd story over drinks and a few will listen, some may even want an adventure if their own, but most will never understand or even care.

On the odd occasion when one of your old traveling buddies shows up for a visit, you stay up all night talking and have the time of your life. Drinks are shared and stories aplenty. There's a bond there that's stronger than blood. You really don't care that your friends and neighbors look at them funny as they enter and leave your house. None of them get it anyway.

That is transition.

In 2020, the emergence of COVID-19 gave us a stark, terrifying, but very valuable lesson in how thin our collective values are once push comes to shove. Within WEEKS after lockdowns started, the op-ed class repeatedly suggested that

- We should suspend child labor laws (they claimed, incorrectly, that children weren't harmed by COVID)

- The elderly have already lived long enough and should be willing to die now to help the economy.

- The weak and compromised should be regarded as expendable.

What might it look like if we permit a mutating virus that degrades our immune systems to spread widely and reinfect people often? I don't know, it's a complete mystery. #COVID19

I've got quite the Blu-Ray/DVD collection, and I'm currently working at ripping them to a dedicated entertainment center. But I notice I don't really WATCH movies like I used to.

From about 1985-1995 I was an avid movie watcher. I'd go to a theater not to see a specific movie, but to see A movie. Just something they had that'd catch my eye. And at that age, it took some effort. My nearest theater was a six mile bike ride, or an hour on the bus. Once I had a car, things got easier, but it was about then I kind of stopped going....

I saw a lot of movies over those years but after graduating from high school, I just kind of petered out of watching movies. Same thing with reading books - I was an avid reader, and it also faded out.

I remember specifically the last movie I saw at the theater that I "picked out" once I got there was in 1995. I decided to see Powder, and walked out of the movie about thirty minutes in. I remember thinking it wasn't a very good movie and just left.

And then I never really went back. The next movie I saw in a theater was The Phantom Menace, and after that, just the Star Wars/Trek and LOTR movies and a few others here and there. I think I've seen two movie in the last year or so at a theater, COVID notwithstanding.

I've often wondered why I quit the movies/books. 1995 was when my trans-crisis hit criticality, and maybe I was just using all my energy to sort myself out and my future. 1995 was almost the last year of my life, so I'm guessing all my energy was going to to staying alive.

I never really got back into either reading or watching after things settled down. Honestly, they never really settled down, they just got a little easier to manage. Maybe that's why I'm still not going to the movies as much as that ten years in the 80s/90s.

So, while this isn't one of those outfits I mentioned as one of my "more feminine" outfits that I wear in Second Life, if I WANTED to wear roman robes in front of my long-gone pickup truck at a picnic blanket, I CAN, and no one will bat an eye at it.

In fact, this is one of the more boring looks in Second Life. ;)

This week's meal was

(1) a complete miscalculation: I bought 1 1/2 pounds of bone-in pork loins making me lose about a half pound in bone)

(2) overcooked: my meat thermometer says 170 is a safe temp for pork, but everywhere else says 145 and given that I made pork edible hockey pucks I'm going to assume 145 is right.

So we're not going to post that meal JUST yet. I'm going to redo it next week and hope it works better.

That said, ROYERS ROUND TOP CAFE's Peach'n'Pepper glaze is legit.

If cooking builds up a sweat, I'm calling that a work out.

This Week's Bread: Sadie's Bruschetta

A nice bread dish that's good hot, but sadly, doesn't keep well. Still tasty, just....it's no longer crunchy toasty.

I'd go with slightly less red onion, or slightly more salt (which is to taste, anyways). Never sure about that when dealing with red onion...my reaction to red onion is pretty strong for some reason.

# Sadie's Bruschetta

Cooking with JB & Jamie

1.0 whole tomato (diced)
0.5 whole red onion (diced)
10.0 leaves basil (chopped)
1.0 tbsp garlic (minced)
salt (to taste)
olive oil
1.0 whole loaf french bread
1.0 pound fresh mozzarella (sliced)
balsamic reduction

1 - Mix together tomato, onion, basil, garlic and salt.
2 - Let the mixture marinate in the refrigerator at least 30 minutes (we recommend one hour or more) to bring out the best flavor.
3 - Spread a little olive oil on slices of French bread.
4 - Toast bread and cut into squares.
5 - Place toasted bread on a platter and top with mozzarella.
6 - Top with a spoonful of tomato mixture and drizzle with balsamic reductions.

Drawing the "Fashion Plates" I've done so far, only one has been particularly feminine. I've gotten asked about that over the years. I worked so hard to transition, why don't I "revel" in that?

To be honest, I've had it beaten out of me. I love dresses and skirts and nice blouses...but I wear those out in public and I just get harassed and laughed at. And after a while, I toned everything way back just to be able to function in society.

I do dress fairly feminine for occasions where I need to wear something nice. Otherwise, it's pretty androgynous, wether I want to or not.

I have a much more feminine wardrobe in Second Life, cause I look exactly as I want to there, and no one makes me the evening's entertainment.

The experience of transition is a lot of little things, hundreds of tiny interactions that tell me that treating my gender incongruence was the right decision. This morning was the non-event of choosing a simple cotton dress from my closet, looking over the seams to orient it properly, and feeling a spark of joy as I toss the wide end of the skirt over my head and swim through the open V-neck on the other side. I love wearing this, and I get to do it every day. I've been doing this every day for over a year and it still makes me smile.
#trans #TransJoy

Here's some tips for all the newcomers on here:

-Introduce yourself by announcing who your least favorite professional badminton player is. It is standard.

-If you wish to verify your account, please upload a picture of your face to confirm that you are not James Corden. James is not allowed on here.

-Socialize by finding one person and commenting "others may judge you for this, but it does not make me respect you any less" on every single one of their posts.

With the enshittification of search engines & the boom in craptastic AI word-vomit machines, I'm starting to wonder if we should go back to making old-school public listings of our favorite sites, especially other ones created by actual humans and with actual valid knowledge contained on them?

Or maybe more librarians could catalog the web for us, since they're pretty expert at that kind of thing.

Because the machine-driven systems we've built are just... *bad*.

#AI #library #web #tech

Conversation between me and my best beloved:

Kate: Well, I do sometimes behave like a 12 year old.
Kathryn: I wouldn't say a 12 year old, you sometimes behave like an 18 year old.
Kate: I'm not sure that's a compliment...
Kathryn: [Long silence]

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