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The last time I saw SJ Tucker perform live, so many things about my life were different.

Last time I saw her live was in 20176, at New York Faerie Fest (an event I'd really love to get back to someday, and I'm kinda bummed the timing just never works out, but end of the school year is _hard_ with burnout). I hadn't realized it was that far back --I did some checking of dates and the like, because sometimes it is very nice to have your entire history stored online¹ in an easy-to-access format.

So wow, I can add to the "things that were different last time I saw my favourite artist perform live" that I was technically still employed by the fucking private school. It wasn't just "before the weekend that Everything Changed", it was a whole year earlier than that.

The last time I saw s00j perform live, I was still dating her ex². :P

And I wasn't dating 60% of my current partners. I was still dating Sparr. I was living not in nBs or DanzaHausa but in ARSES. I did not yet have a therapist, which means Jenn is gonna get a hell of an infodump next week because have I mentioned s00j to her before? not sure!

But anyways, the me who was seeing her tonight was not the same as the me who saw her last, and yet and yet and yet. I didn't cry through the entire show, which is good (there wasn't a space for me to dance, so I couldn't manifest proper my own power to counter hers). I did cry uncontrollably through Little Bird and Wonders, which is good.

She was double-teaming with Ginger Doss, who I'd not heard before, and who has a beautiful voice, the kind that makes fellow enbies perk up and think positive thoughts about what that can mean for them. (The last time I saw s00j perform live, I didn't sing and that's such a fascinating and important shift in my own life).

And the thing that is the same between me then and me now is that she is still my favourite artist. Pretty sure if you'd asked me at any point in these nine years "hey Sor, who's your favourite musical artist" her name would cross my lips. That hasn't stopped or changed. She is still passionately important to me, and her music is still a huge part of who I am.

So it was really fucking good to see her, but honest-to-god, nothing made it as clear how much I have grown-the-fuck-up in the last decade as doing so. Because yeah, I still cried, but after I could hug her and exchange banter and be friendly (she said "hi Kat!" and even if she just got a reminder of my name from the very short guest list, that kicks ass). I'm not ever gonna match a goddess on her own turf, but I've reached a point where I no longer have to be weird about visiting her there.

It's nice to not spend the entire concert sobbing, yanno?

There's another concert tomorrow night (they said, at an hour small enough that tomorrow starts to feel meaningless) and I think it will be nice to go to that too. And it's a good reminder that there've been concerts and livestreams in between and I've been not as good about attending those as I once was, and I should really get back into it.

The me is different, and the her is different (hell, last time I saw her she had not yet made a whole-ass human) but sometimes the mood stays. The good parts stay.

(Persist, resist, and bloom <3)

~Sor
MOOP!

1: Okay, not my *entire* history, but I did see the post I made where I was first squeeing about kissing Austin, and boy, I never have really been subtle about that sort of thing, have I?

2: A thing I'm not sure I've ever connected publicly in this journal, but yeah, if you've been a long time follower and remembered some particular cryptics, that's what it was? Iunno.

SetList:
Roses in the Rocks
Little Bird
[two Ginger songs - She Wolf and Hippie Pocket]
Wonders
Believe in Lullabies
[two Ginger songs - Talisman, Gaia Lives]
La Sirene
Chalk on the Sidewalk
[Ginger/s00j collab - Ma Belle]
Wild Times
[Ginger song - Thankful]

(I originally wrote "as best as I can remember" but hey, when you are crammed up in the very front row, and you notice someone holding a notebook that looks like a setlist and then they foolishly put it down on the ground, you're gonna take a picture. The only memory part was remembering the bits s00j swapped out and what for, but I've got that)

sorcyress

I am visiting my mom, and it feels good to help them actually accomplish things around the house.

See, my grandparents died back in March, and that means that my mother currently owns a substantial amount of their _stuff_ that needs going through. Some of it is being kept, because it's cool or sentimental. Most of it is going to the thrift store because we don't actually need, like, all their clothing or whatever. This is a hell of a sorting task we've got on.

And I helped out going through everything in the garage! There's now a large pile of things to go directly to the dump (which is a Saturday project) and there's one bin full of laptops/electronics that need to go to Aunt Sara to go through, and one bin full of papers that are (probably) super recycleable but might not all be. And everything else got hauled in one of two van-loads to the thrift shop! We did it! There is still heaps and heaps of this project to do, but we actually did one substantial piece of it.

I'm going to be taking just masses of pens and some pairs of scissors and a few rulers, which is wonderful to have good classroom stuff. And a few other neat things --I continue to collect my grandfather's handkerchiefs, and I may be about to own my dead-grandma-Ruth's copy of the Joy of Cooking¹, we have to check with Sara.

Tomorrow I'm going to wander over to Veronica's house to hang out and co-work --possibly that looks like doing useful digital tasks like organizing photos, plausibly that's me playing Stardew Valley while she does real work. We'll see. And then Saturday evening I'm going to an itty-bitty s00j house concert (omg so excited) and then Sunday and Monday and Tuesday are just working days again to keep going through boxen from the shed. It's a nice project to be a part of, because I am always nosy and like looking at _stuff_.

And it feels good to be helpful, yes I have it to a sin sometimes, but sometimes it's just a virtue to be able to make other people's lives easier. To look at someone and continually say "let's do something productive", to help encourage those jobs that are continually in want of being done to actually be so. It feels nice that I am helping!

That's what I've got. Goodnight, friends. Keep taking care of each other.

~Sor

MOOP!

1: Dead-Grandma-Ruth is not Grandma Brin, my grandda's second wife who I knew. She's my mom's mom, who died when my mom was in college, because fuck cancer, and never met my da or me. She was, by all accounts, fucking cool as hell.

sorcyress

Austin and I decided to do MORE ADVENTURES today!

(look, as mentioned last post, it's basically the only _weekend_ we have in common, it's nice to try and make the most of it!)

Today's plan was to do morning service ringing, and lunch with the bellringers, and then at 2:30 go to Salem on the....ferry? The weather's plan was ...not worth taking a $35 per ticket private ferry when we already have active weekend passes for the commuter rail, making the train ride essentially free. And the train left at literally the same time. We hopped on the 2:30 and were in Salem just after 3! The biggest difference between yesterday and today was that we didn't bring our bicycles today, we were operating on blue bikes only...which works, because they have a Salem/Lynn network!

(they do not have what you would call "continuous coverage" between Lynn and Boston, mind. But taking the train to Salem and then blue biking around up there is an excellent plan!)

We spent the first bit of Salem Adventure wandering around and going into little shops in order to mostly sightsee/windowshop. There was a really lovely crystal shop that was just chockablock full of shiny things that I didn't get, and then we stopped in to my absolute favourite of the witchy shops. It is one that feels most...not touristy? I mean, it's RIGHT on the main strip, but it sells way more herbs and bones and dried flowers and antler tips and shit like that than most of the competitors. Pretty sure it's The Coven's Cottage. It's where I bought the bone that sits on my altar (since 2019) and today while browsing their "random bones, $3.99" bin, one basically fell into my hand and my fingers curled around it exactly like it belonged there and that was that.

I was explaining to Austin that I don't really read spellbooks or books about magic or anything like that, because the woo I work with is pretty seriously on the "it will show itself if you let it" method. Bones that look like a knife and then slide into your hand are definitely on the right track. It will go nicely next to the little iron bell I got at the Joie de Vivre end-of-things garage sale.

We also stopped by "Goodnight Fatty" which is a cookie shop selling omg decadant cookies. (At the very end of the day we had just enough time to swing by again so Austin could get a box to take home). Delicious stuff!

After an hour, ninety minutes, of this, it was time to get bikes and go on the next stage adventure: biking up to the tip of Salem and seeing the ocean at Salem Willows beach. It was a lovely ~1.5 mile ride along mostly bike lanes (!) and very little car traffic. And the first thing we saw when we arrived was a huge arcade!

Austin talked me into "look at the ocean first" and so we sat on a bench and stared out across the rocks and seagulls to all the boats, and we waved at Beverly and generally just filled our souls.

(spoiler alert, we did several discrete rounds of that, including the one where I finally got Austin hooked into the Merlin app. He is currently two birds behind me and I fully anticipate coming back from MD to find him forty birds ahead.)

After some ocean we went to wander the midway strip and see what was there. We peaked into Kiddieland and watched some children on the car racing ride, and admired the beautiful wooden carousel. The arcade was huge and classic --maybe 1.5 times as big as the one at Scandieland, which is my usual yearly "play skeeball and throw things to knock down the clowns" event. It was a nice mix of old and new (and Austin was astonished to learn that modern arcades are all just phone games from ten years ago)

((okay _modern_ arcades are all Japanese style gachapon variety, and there were a small number of those too))

But it was also loud and crowded and overstimulating and hadn't we passed a mini-golf place back on the strip a bit ..?

Yes, we had. It was the smallest miniature golf course I've ever seen, and I was absolutely thrilled with it. I doubled par in the first half, did rather better on the back half, and got two holes-in-one in a row. There was one other family playing through, and we very much enjoyed watching them in between our own banter and fun. Seriously the course was so tight and tiny and fun!

After that, we got dinner at a place we believe is named "crab shack" which was the prime exemplar of the beast. Seriously, I had the thickest most delicious clam chowder and Austin had a delicious crab roll and there were onion rings that we couldn't finish because we were full of other stuff and I had a corn on the cob and so happy! So round! So delighted!

...and then Austin looks it up and says "well, the 'Holy Cow' ice cream parlour has amazing reviews" so OFF WE WENT to become even more full and round and happy! While standing in line looking at the flavour board, we note it says "National Ice Cream Association (or something like that) #1 flavour of the year" next to their "Ritzy AF" --a butter ice cream with toffee-ritz brittle in it. Uh. Yeah. Absolutely yes. Austin got his paired with their Key Lime Pie, I got mine paired with the Easy Peazy (as you might expect, a lemon curd ice cream that was apparently the #3 flavour), it was GREAT! Dang dang dang!

We made it back to the train in just the right amount of time, and then had a lovely cool bike ride home from North Station. I am very happy!

~Sor
MOOP!

sorcyress

Today Austin and I had an ADVENTURE!

We've been planning something for a while, because it's literally the one weekend this summer where we're both around and in town and not busy with other life things or partners or what-have-you, but our plans hadn't really coalesced until this week. Initial plan: Let's take the train to Salem (or Ipswich, whichever would be nicer) and bike to Crane Beach!

And then this morning we checked the weather and the air quality was _abundantly_ shit and it didn't really feel like a "spend the entire day outside" sort of day. So we punted and replanned and decided to take the train to Lowell instead, and explore the museums there! And we even decided in time to go to bells.

At bells, we were explaining we needed to leave early so we could catch our train to Lowell, and someone very reasonably said "oh, so you can go to the folk festival?" Cue us being all "??" and indeed, the Lowell Folk Festival was this weekend. uh, sure! We can add that to our general plan of "take a train a place and then bike around the place or maybe walk some and go inside or hang outside and kinda play it all by ear."

It turned out to be a really great plan and a really great adventure! Here's some of what we did that I remember:

*Right off the bat, we went and got lunch from this random banh mi place that was highly rated on google maps, and by _god_ was it good. Every bite of that sandwich was _excellent_, the veggies were perfectly pickled, it was absolutely delicious. Do recommend!

*I had seen on the website that one of their art vendors was a company I'd backed on pintopia last year who I was _really_ happy with, and so we went and looked at all the art vendors first. When I told the girl I really loved her pins she was SO HAPPY to hear it, and also I got a sick new Medusa pin ("Silence those who fail to silence you").

*I also got an absolutely *gorgeous* weird oil painting from a strange little artist who was incredibly excitable and kept trying to negotiate her art cheaper entirely unprompted by me. It's a stag beetle with an eye in its back, and Veronica is nodding along immediately, because she's maybe one of the only people here who knew me well enough both in high school and now to see how that's the perfect piece of art for me. I'm so excited to add it to the wall of weird art!

*Later we wandered the streets and wound up spending like 10-15 minutes at the booth for the Kinetic Sculpture Race they have in September, and it sounds ENTIRELY DOPE! The dudes running the booth were all in on enthusiasm and goofiness and the human instinct to do very stupid things because we can. I am incredibly excited to go see this event (September 20th!) because it sounds fun as hell, and they said audience is welcome/encouraged to bike alongside the track to watch!

*We stopped in a weird little witchy shop that would've been one hundred percent at home in Salem (except that it was more spacious than the best Salem witchy shops, which tend to feel crammed in the best way possible). I did not buy a hundred crystals (despite them being quite reasonably priced). Austin did quite possibly buy me a chrimbo present that I've been wanting for _fucking ages_. We'll see when I get that!

*We made it to the very end of Solas's Irish set, which was delightful tunes. Later we were off to try and catch the bluegrass, and instead encountered Cecilia, a Quebequois band that absolutely slayed. Austin and I waltzed on the sidewalk and polkaed in the street and I couldn't really keep from dancing. (I did also get to polka with Laura a bit when we ran into her, which was grand!)

*There was also lots of other really good ambient music just everywhere as we wandered around, and that was really lovely! Street festivals with good music or different music or interesting music are a delight!

*We found a train car cum museum maintained by the Boston & Maine rail society, and Austin especially had a wonderful time poking around the inside and looking at everything they had. They had a telegraph playing on a loop, which was a reminder of how utterly impressive people who are _good_ at Morse are (I could get 2-3 letters and then absolutely couldn't differentiate fast enough to find the spaces). As we were leaving, and examining the rest of it, we heard a passerby say "that's how you can tell the real train nerds, they're the ones looking UNDER the train!" which was very charming.

*Also in absolutely primo stranger relations, while hanging near the booth of a bookshop, a man decided I was the correct person to ask "do you know which pride flag this is?" about one of the many pins on display, and I did! (It was the aromantic one, and yes, I am very proud of myself for looking sufficiently queer that I was judged "the right one to ask")

*I did the biking parts of our journey (about 11 miles, all told) on my Brompton folding bike that I got a year ago as part of cleaning out Grandpa Perks's things, and hadn't actually touched since receiving it. She rode very well, and it meant that when we parked our bikes in Lowell, we were able to join two other bikes at a rack that was clearly meant for Red Bikes Only. I even folded her to take her upstairs to Old North, which was nice to be able to do. She needs something to join her a little better when she is in folded mode (the clicky-together-bits don't quite work) but other than that, she's a beaut.

It was a real great adventure day and I am sleepy and sticky from sunscreen and sweat but very satisfied.

~Sor

MOOP!

sorcyress

So here's a thing!

In the streets of Providence this morning, Tuesday and I found these cards lying mysteriously on the ground.

Image Description:A deck of a hundred blue and purple cards each with a question on it.

They seem to be some sort of "getting to know you" game, probably aimed at tweens. Tuesday didn't want them, I don't particularly want them either but having picked up the litter I now want to make art out of it. Here's my concept!

If you get me your address¹, I will write it in my rolodex. I will select 1-5 cards. I will mail them to you, in an envelope, with my return address in the corner! All I ask is that you someday answer at least one of the questions in a way I see it².

Your deadline is "eventually". I will send cards to people until I run out of cards or get distracted (but I think I can guarantee sending them to anyone who gets me their address before Aug 14th.) I may or may not put this post onto other social medias as well.

Have fun!

~Sor
MOOP!

1: Sending Address: the comments on this post are screened, my email address is kdsorceress, gmail, you can text/Signal me if you know that number, whatever.

I'm happy to have international addresses. Please include a "good until" date if you know your address is subject to change.

2: The subtext here is "write me a letter or postcard with your answer", but you could just post it too if you want.

sorcyress

Time to write my words!

Today has been a good day! Albeit a fairly low-key one.

I slept in until nearly ten, which feels...luxurious and stuff? I dunno man, Tuesday had to leave the house by like 7:30am so ke could get to work on time, which is very early for a non-teacher. (in contrast, Austin can leave after 9, as long as he's got his bike, or just before if he's walking to the shuttle). But I did not get out of bed at the same time! I stayed floppy and happy and snoozy and had weird edges of dreams and it was _great_ frankly. 10/10.

Got up, fucked around Tuesday's apartment, ate some snax, mostly played a bunch of Stardew because _obvs_. Managed to just begin an experiment with Camping Out, and now my next day is going to be waking up next to the skull mine and charging through it as deep as I can. Mua ha ha and stuff! (I possibly shouldn't have done this on the day I need to harvest my snowmelons (powdermelons?) but that's fine, it's fine, I can just be a day late with them since I don't really want to spend all my pinecones on more anyways, so maybe I'll just leave them lying around).

Tuesday got home around five, and we snuggled a bit and then walked off to a farmer's market not too far from ker place. We bought neat art! I got horrible barbie-arm earrings and I love them _so much_ already, and also earrings that might actually be a gift for Alys now that I think of it, and also talked to a very enthusiastic artist who makes acrylic rings (!) and they are so bright and chonky and wonderful and I'm going to use them as hair rings for my braids. She was completely charmed by the idea, and so I took one of her cards and promised I'd send a photo. So now I actually have to do that, but it'll be fun and I have all the right tools for it.

(At the yard sale SamSam and I went to over the weekend, I also bought more things to be hair rings, so I really am due a proper fun braiding).

We also stopped by a little food truck and got borgers¹ and a different food truck for fries and enjoyed the stunning weather --warm but breezy and very pleasant in the shade. There were children and families and the occasional dog, and some kind of theatre happening, and it felt really good to be hanging out in A Community (even if it's technically not my community).

Also on the way home we saw a cat, who Tuesday gave much adoration to, and I finally got my Merlin app set up enough to put in some birds that I saw. I now have Two Birds on my life list, so I assume that's most of them².

We got home in plenty of time before my much-delayed "weekly watch Taskmaster with Tailsteak" date, which we are currently _very_ behind on. We have now seen episode 3 of UK season 19, please no spoilers, yes it's a very good one. I think there's a series of NZ being uploaded to the YouTube now, that's certainly next, and then we should line up and ensure we're caught up on all the various English speaking ones. Maybe someday we will venture into the wonderful world of subtitles? I know at least a few are on official YouTube, and they do tend to have pretty good subtitles for the English ones, so I have hope!

Anyways, seeing Tailsteak was really good because he's my bro and it's nice to have someone I can fistbump (metaphorically) and brag to and gas up and also analyze the comedy and figure out how we could do it better. And then he disappeared halfway through, because there was a thunderstorm, and it's plausible I have narrowed down where he lives to the circle on the outage map for his city. He did not confirm or deny, but it's possible he ignored my message because I sent it while he was no-internet.

What no, I'm sure he wouldn't give his address to me, a total stranger from the internet, I might be some sort of creep.

ANYways, he did make it back online, and we did finish the episode, and now I am doing words and soon I am going sleep. Tomorrow I take the train back to Boston and, I dunno, fuck around a bit? Austin and I have a maybe train-and-bike-adventure-plan for Saturday, which I'm looking forward to!

<333

~Sor
MOOP!

1: congratulations Ezri, you have in fact ruined my vocabulary in this way, "burgers" actually sounds wrong now, I love having a family that influences my familect <3 (that second part is entirely sincere, I really do love my weird little house-family so much!)

2: Like, how many birds total are there? Ten?

sorcyress

Here's the Stardew footnote! Does Dreamwidth have Spoiler Tagging? ( like, maybe, but I'm just going to put it under a cut instead. Spoilers are below but also please try not to give me additional spoilers very much, I am trying mostly to figure things out on my own! )

There's probably more things I could say, but that feels good for now. I am enjoying this video game!

~Sor
MOOP!

sorcyress

I am on a train to Providence!

Yes, my summer is _extremely_ flitting about from place to place and partner to partner. I am okay with this, mostly, although I do really wish I had a bunch of time to just...rest and do nothing? I think that's the short span of time between "home from Maryland" and "pre-the-thing".

(don't worry about the thing. I can't remember whether I've mentioned it explicitly on socials, and it is a good thing, but I'm superstitious and it's a complicated good thing. I'll tell y'all in late August.)

Despite the fact that I desperately would like to do Absolutely Nothing With My Life Except Play Stardew Valley¹, I did actually write myself a short list of normal goals and stretch goals for "what needs to happen before I go to Providence" and then I made progress on literally _all_ of them, including the stretchy ones! Here are some things I did today:

*Finshed unpacking from Pinewoods

*Packed for Providence

*Did partial packing for Maryland, by which I mean, made a pile of stuff on my floor. But it has probably enough clothes and a few other things I'll need? I don't think I will need a particularly large amount of stuff in MD, although I should a) remember to tell people I'll be in MD and want to hang and b) bring extra packing space because part of the point is helping mom clean out/sort all my grandparents' old stuff and some of it I might want to claim.

*Vacuumed the downstairs. It was a subpar vacuuming job, but I got a noticeable quantity of cat hair off the floor/furniture, so I'm counting it as a win. (I swept the kitchen yesterday).

*Cleaned the toilet and rinsed out the sink. I didn't like...bother to actually spray the sink with cleaner like I should've. I am a master of "half-assing a job is greater than no-assing a job" is what I'm saying.

*Brought my bike to the bike shop. It has been a while! It has also been a while since I've ridden my bike, being as I got a flat in like November and went "welp, that's it for the season" and just dumped my bike in the garage until the weather got warmer and then couldn't get the tyre off the rim. So. It will be some work. I will not get it back in time for the weekend, but they are okay with me leaving it in the shop until I return from Maryland.

*Went to the pharmacy and got a thing and didn't get another thing but know what date I can theoretically get the other thing (Friday).

So that's lots of good tasks, and then I rode on a train and played three days of Stardew and wrote most of the above (and the next post). Now I'm at Tuesday's house and we have eaten snax and watched good stuff with the initials BB². I am happy to be snuggling with my sweetie!

Not sure what my next plans are. Fuck around. More stardew. Maybe some photo organizing or other digital projects. Sleep. Is good. Happy summer.

~Sor

MOOP!

1: You know how sometimes you start to write a footnote and it becomes a whole _thing_? I'm just gonna make a separate post about Stardew.

2: We started Blues Brothers a couple weeks ago and then couldn't finish it because it turns out to be really fucking hard to get seats together on the train when you're not boarding at a terminus, so we finished that, and then watched S1E5 of Black Books, which is the one with Bernard getting locked out (a masterpiece, honestly).

sorcyress

I am having a lovely evening with Austin!

We ate dinner outside in the nice weather, and then we began a cooking adventure, and we watched an episode of Leverage while the shortbread cooled (it was the Ho Ho Ho Job, which is...a little uneven (Parker being THAT enthusiastic only kinda rings true to characterization; Chaos is a complicated part of the plotline) but ultimately a stupid fun episode, as opposed to a clever fun episode. I like both, and Leverage does both well!).

Now I am doing words and Austin is making caramel to put on the shortbread.

I have lots of things I should write about here, but I am somehow out of the habit. I would like to start that again, and especially to start reading here again. (I have picked up a little bit of Tumblr again, and that feels marvelous --it appears to be in order, and doesn't insert people I don't follow now that I figured out what settings to turn off. And saving images is just...easy, unlike Facebook. So that's grand!)

I hope you're well, and I will write more soon.

~Sor

MOOP!