Rachel Coleman

I had Kodiaks practice on the evening of 30 December, which meant getting home very late as usual. I did get up and out for the last hot yoga class of my festive pass in the morning of 31 December. From there I did a run into town to pay in a cheque (a cheque!) to N's savings account on the last possible day before it expired. After I got home, I looked at how many tickets remained for the public skate I was booked on, did some subtraction and decided the rink would be too full and I was too tired, so I cancelled the Last Skate Of The Year, and had a nap instead. It was marvellous.

In the evening we had a little family movie night with drinks and snacks:

• Chicken Run (which everyone but Nico had seen before)
• Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget (which only Nico had seen before) - fun, but omg there were bad parenting choices, and excessive ~suspense~ due to even more bad choices in the final action sequence
• Wake Up Dead Man (which Nico was uninterested in, but the other three of us enjoyed)

We managed to finish the last film with about fifteen minutes to go before midnight, so I put on BBC One on iPlayer and we watched some Ronan Keating and then the fireworks from London, and then I left Ronan Keating providing background music while sending and replying to HNY messages on my phone until I decided sleep was a better plan.

This morning I got up and used a free gym pass to get to a weights class, and confirm my opinion that I want to return to a regular gym routine. I met friends M, J & K for pub drinks this afternoon, and spent a bunch of time afterwards sorting out logistics for ice hockey games on Saturday (Kodiaks 1 are away in Chelmsford, Kodiaks 2 are "home" in Peterborough).

Tomorrow I will take Nico to a pantomime in the morning, work a half day in the afternoon, and go to Warbirds practice in the evening.

Yesterday after work I did a library run (more Rick Riordan!) on the way to pick up a hire car for the weekend. Then drove with Charles over to Northstowe for the Kodiaks Christmas party at the Northstowe Tap and Social. Secret Santa, noodles buffet, attempting to introduce an American to prawn crackers - she didn't like them - and a drag queen bingo.

I left the party a little early to go to the last Warbirds practice of the year and was so glad to be back on the ice again. (Yes, in shock news, 48 hours after having a massive mood crash about having a cold forever, I was well enough to skate hard for 90 minutes. It is a weird signal, but a consistent one.) It was ten days since my last practice, and it's now ten days until my next one (Kodiaks 2 on 30 Dec). I missed it so much. Practice was just the right level of challenging that I'm really pushing myself but not feeling like a hopeless incompetent, it was just what I needed, as was seeing my teammates again.

(Charles made his own way home from Northstowe by bus)

Tonight is the last Kodiaks 1 game of the year, for which I will be herding the volunteers as usual, and rocking my lovely new manager's coat (incredibly warm knee-length hooded puffer coat, personalised with the club logo and my initials). There is apparently a post-game clubbing plan. And tomorrow morning I'm taking Nico climbing. Somewhere in there I'm sleeping, honest.

I have 2.5 more days to work this year, and I am so ready to be done. The giant Ocado order is booked for Tuesday evening. I have a very large pile of borrowed books to read, and the rink public skate schedule in my calendar. The hot yoga place had a special offer, so I also have a 12-day pass to get me through the lack of hockey practices. They are quite strict about turning up sick, and I still have a bit of a cough this morning, so I won't be using it today. But hopefully tomorrow.

I joined the university open practice last night, after encouragement from my friend who is actually part of CUIHC (I was in the club, I dropped out two years ago, I plan to rejoin again this October but right now I'm in a weird limbo - eligible to play, lots of friends among the players, but not on any of the membership mailing lists or groupchats). 15 minutes or so warmup and then a scrimmage, with a spanking pace set by the Men's Blues players. It was enormous fun and a reminder of why I do these mad late nights etc. And I got a goal! Put myself by the back door and picked up a rebound, absolutely textbook stuff, very happy with it.

So my count is now:

• 2 goals in scrimmage
• 1 goal (actually an own goal by the opposition) and 3 assists in formal games

I'd love to reach the point where a goal in scrimmage is just another Tuesday, but maybe it's time to start a spreadsheet while I still remember each one individually.

(Other good things that happened yesterday: a coffee with lnr, lunch at the Dishoom Permit Room with Mick and Joye, book shopping with Charles, having the time to just sit and read a couple of books, skating lesson and seeing my friend E briefly afterward. Basically, it was a really lovely day of leave.)

I last updated about 4 weeks ago, in Portsmouth. That was a good mini break, and I'm really glad R and I decided to do it: fun activities and good company. The heatwave hitting most of the country that weekend was less bad in Portsmouth, but despite reapplying sunscreen we both got burned on the walk back from the pier at Southsea, and didn't realise until the long (made longer by speed restrictions) train journey home was nearly over. The trains had aircon, on comfortable rather than arctic setting, so the journey was fine but stepping out into the humid heat at Cambridge came as a shock.

I took a taxi home, staying just long enough to dump my suitcase and pick up my hockey kit, and cycled (in the heat, ugh) to the rink for a scrimmage marking the last Monday night Warbirds practice, before the rink timetable change in July. Got home again a bit after midnight, and then back to work and the rest of "life as usual" from Tuesday morning.

Life as usual continues to be: work, family, ice hockey. A little cricket (playing), a little football (watching), and a theatre trip that reminded me I should go to the theatre more often.

( Family )

( Ice hockey )

( Cricket )

( Football )

( Theatre )

On the topic of both theatre and schedule, I have a livestream ticket to Phoebe Kemp's all trans/nb production of Twelfth Night (introduced by Ian McKellan); the livestream was last night but I have two weeks to watch the recording. My calendar says my best bets for time to watch it is this afternoon, or next Saturday afternoon. I'm going to try for this afternoon.

Life is basically work, ice hockey, family, with occasional reading. ( Read more... )

I had a peaceful morning in the hostel in Guéthary yesterday, before walking up to the main road at lunchtime to catch the bus to the airport. As is my habit, I got there earlier than I needed to, only to discover my plane was delayed. Ryanair were caught out by Crowdstrike too, which manifested in check-ins involving handwriting out my luggage tag and crossing me off a printed list. (The handwriting gave me time to eyeball the scales and whip a couple of things out of my checked bag to take them from 20.2kg to 19.9kg - I don't know they'd have been fussy, but I did know that I didn't want to cause even the tiniest additional delay of a discussion about it.) Biarritz airport is small and fairly civilised so I just sat and read and queued when I was told to and sat and read until it was time to go.

I landed too late to arrive at Streatham at the planned time, so I came direct back to Cambridge instead, and made a start on the laundry situation. The hockey gear got washed first, on handwash setting, and is now far less offensive to the nose, and I followed it with a fast wash of the most urgently-needed clothes for today so they could dry overnight. Today I will hopefully get through the rest of it. (I did get laundry done at the hostel - they very sweetly said they'd run it twice "because of the athletic wear, we weren't sure it was quite fresh" which is the nicest way of saying "your sweaty underlayers stink" I've ever had - but obviously wore a lot of it again and even what's still clean smells of the laundry soap they used more than I want to put up with now I'm home again.)

We have a new Baggage Logistics plan, which is that I will go to next Monday's Storm practice (if I have to go all the way to London, I may as well get some skating out of it) and swap things around then. I'm not part of Storm any longer but they're allowing non-Storm women to come to summer ice practices, and the tournament has left me enthused with wanting to keep working on my skills. So I will go on Monday, when I'm not working the next day, and the next few summer Fridays, and get both some ice time, and some people time.

I was thinking about hockey friendships and especially tournament friendships, which are a lot like fan convention friendships: you spend a few intense days in close proximity to people with whom you share a common interest, deeply enough that you give up your time and money to travel there and focus on it. Except a lot of the hockey conversations are physical/spatial/relational as much as they are verbal: learning to read my teammates' play and know where they'll be rather than theoretical discussions (although tbh there's plenty of that too, before and after and in the bar). But anyway, there's that sense of speedrunning friendship formation, and also of mild bereftness when the event is over and we all move on. I feel I was very lucky in the team I landed on, which meshed well and quickly. "On and off the ice, the vibes were spot on," as one dude put it. That specific team will never play together again, but we were glorious while we did, and at least some of us will stay friends and play together again in future.

This time I walked everywhere rather than get a bus, and as I suspected that works rather better. I'm beginning to get a bit more oriented, but I suspect it'll take a few more visits for me to feel solidly like I know my way around.

I went first to the central library to return a book (and take out a new one, obviously), only to find it was a fundraising day, so there were cakes and books and handmade bookmarks for sale. So I indulged a bit. Then I walked over to naath's place, taking in a bit of the Abbey Gardens on the way, and got set up for self-service access at the local branch library (where I took out a couple more books).

On the train back home, I unwrapped my blind date book and took a photo of my haul:

(I managed to totally miss that the bookmark was Harry Potter themed, sigh, I'd picked it because the quote "If in doubt, go to the library" appealed, I'd forgotten that Hermione says that.)

Four weeks ago my dad visited for half-term, from Sunday evening to Wednesday morning. I was working all week as normal and had to actually go to the office while he was here as otherwise it was too tempting to sit and chat with him all day. Both kids got some good grandpa time at least.

Three weeks ago I had a day out to Bury St Edmunds to visit naath in their new home. This included exploring the local shops, finding a very nearby library branch which has self-service hours, and a decent local cafe. There are hourly trains from Cambridge, and there are hourly buses between the town centre to naath's place, but they don't actually match up very well and the local bus company doesn't accept PlusBus (which is a new and exciting first for me). When I next go (when there are not bus replacements) I'm going to explore walking/cycling routes instead. I'm also enjoying using my Suffolk library membership, thus far used entirely for ebooks, for actual physical books.

Two weeks ago emperor had a beer party, for which I had cunningly commissioned my dad to bring beer from his local brewery. The company was excellent and somehow we got home at 2am, when I had had every intention of being in bed at midnight. I did basically nothing on Saturday until I had to go to the ice rink for the Kodiaks / Women's Blues double-header. I did the official scoring for the Kodiaks game, and unofficially helped out with the WBs and managed to get home before midnight that night. That was good because I was out the door soon after 8am to go see Arsenal Women play Tottenham with lnr (extra long travel time because of going via Cambridge North to avoid the Cambridge Half Marathon, and bus replacements from Royston). The Arsenal game was very satisfying (a solid win) and the company was excellent :-)

And then last weekend was Varsity ice hockey. On Saturday I was at the rink from about 9am to 10pm and got to watch all four games from the control box: scoresheet for alumni, clock and score for development, clock for Women's Blues, penalty box for Men's Blues. The penalty box was very soothing after the previous three: I didn't have to worry about anything but opening and shutting the door and sympathising with the poor misunderstood young men sent to the naughty box. (In the gap between the Development and WBs games I went on a supply mission for my brother, who had covid, and just managed to get back in time.) On the Sunday I had Learn to Play in the afternoon, with an steadily increasing audience, who were actually arriving for the last "Varsity" game between the Cambridge Narwhals and the Oxford Vikings. At the end of our lesson, I did the fastest ever change out of my hockey kit and a very fast shower, so that I could do the scoreboard for the Narwhals without stinking out the control box.

Yesterday morning I did the last bits of grocery shopping, and a little present-shopping with offspring at the charity shop. Then my brother M came over from the hotel he's staying in, and everyone over 15 watched Knives Out together, first viewing for all of us and very much enjoyed. We had an early evening meal and then watched Glass Onion which I think didn't quite hit the heights of the first one, but was still a very entertaining watch. And it was lovely to watch together. Partly as a result of conversations around the films, we now have a complete set of Columbo on its way to the house for the new year.

After the film I called a taxi for M back to his accommodation, went to bed and slept for a few hours, then joined a friend's zoom bachelorette party. It was held in the evening in Chicago, so small-hours for me, but so nice to see the bride and many of our mutual friends. I was able to sleep in during the morning, as thankfully both offspring have become late-to-bed, late-to-rise, and then joined my stepfather and many other family members on another zoom call. So lovely to see everyone, special shout out to the youngest attendee, the newly-toddling child of one of the cousins on my mother's side.

This morning the children have tackled stockings and a few presents, and we have had the traditional salmon-on-bread brunch. I have some wrapping paper detritus to clear up, and some presents still to wrap, and at some point my brothers M and J will make their way here, and we will eat too much and talk too much, and maybe watch another film. M hasn't seen Encanto yet, so Nico thinks this should be remedied today.

Less busy than Saturday!

The login for CoNZealand programme was launched, so I got that working and spent a cheerful time browsing and making the (often difficult!) decisions about what to attend in each slot - I find this works better for me if I do it in advance rather than on the fly. I do like that the schedule software, Grenadine, lets one import all the events into my own calendar too.

I finished A Wizard's Guide To Defensive Baking, which made me cry at the end. Good book, recommend. Sourdough familiar and gingerbread golems, and a teenager who quite reasonably points out that it should not be left up to her and another child to save the day, lots of people have failed their responsibilities if that's the case. (It reminded me that I have a shorthand with some work colleagues of "no heroics!" when planning out work. Much better to have a system that is boringly reliable and predictable, than the adrenalin rushes of Being A Hero.)

Kaffeeklatch signups opened at 14:00 my time; I had picked out five I really wanted, and it looks like I have got into them all (there was a bit of confusing behaviour by the signup page, but later on my status had changed to Registered).

I failed at an attempt to deploy the general-purpose weedkiller on the garden (this is a preparation step for New Mulch coming soon) because I couldn't get the dispenser to work as described: whether this is my incompetence, unhelpful instructions or a faulty device is not clear. I've asked Tony to take a look and give me a second opinion at some point this week.

I visited hilarita for in-person conversation (outdoor distanced, etc etc)! Yay for friends not onna screen!

And then I pottered around doing typical weekend bits of housework and paperwork until it was bedtime.

This is articulating a lot of stuff I've been thinking over, especially the last month or so, about my priorities as I start getting "back to normal".


1. Health and fitness (content note: exercise, weight, mental health)
( Read more... )

2. Immediate family
The children have coped admirably with all the disruption and uncertainty, but they're both showing reaction in different ways. I want to give them lots of security and support and attention and stability. I plan to take a good look at our daily and weekly and seasonal routines with that in mind. 

I suspect some additional goals and tasks will come out of couples counselling.


3. Work
The cliché is that a brush with death provides revelation and motivation to chuck in the job and go follow a long-held dream etc.  My revelation from being ill so long is that I really like my work and I miss my job and my colleagues very much, and I want to go back as soon as I feel able.  Probably in a phased-return way so I don't go from zero to full time immediately.  Anyway, the time to start that conversation with work is probably a week or two into next year when this chemo cycle should be finished.


4. Studying
I'm studying with the OU under transitional fees and the qualification I'm working towards will be discontinued at the end of 2017. It is just possible for me to finish on time if I work hard from now until September 2017, and especially hard for the nine months Sep 16 - Jun 17. I've decided to give that plan a try but drop the workload if it's too much.   If I don't manage to complete by September 2017 much of my course credit is transferable to the replacement qualification anyway.


5. Family, friends and community
The care and support I've received while ill has been amazing and much appreciated.    I've found it too easy to let connections slide, especially when busy.  So I'm going to put some time and effort into maintaining connections (socialising, letters, emails, calls, blogs, even dratted Facebook), and into making that work part of my daily and weekly routines.



Two things notably absent from the list above:

1. Reading.
I won't stop reading entirely, it's too much part of me to read whenever I can. But studying will take up much of the time and effort I'd otherwise spend reading, and that seems a fair trade-off for now.


2. Politics
I'm finding it very hard to engage with politics at the moment: anything more than the most superficial attention to current events leaves me emotionally drained and exhausted.  Maybe that'll improve as I recover, but I don't think the five things I am choosing to prioritise will leave me much time over anyway.

A few weeks ago there was Ellie's hen night, which she has already written up.


I got home from that to meet up with my dad and Tony accompanying Charles to the temporary funfair on Parkers Piece, on its last day:


Dad stayed for a couple of days, looking after Charles while J was on her holiday and both Tony & I had to work. He also managed some delicious baking and some useful jobs around the house, all of which was much appreciated.

And then there was DWCon, which I think we all enjoyed very much. Tony and I both got to a few events, but mostly there was lots of socialising, and children playing together and swimming. The children were collectively adorable, and lovely parents let me have lots of tiny-baby snuggles. Babies don't keep and it's a long time since Charles was that small. A migraine knocked me out on Saturday night so I missed the AFP Hedgehog Party, but was kept at bay on Sunday & Monday with copious painkillers (and surprisingly-effective cuddles from Charles).



And finally, yesterday's doctor kindly reissued my migraine meds prescription and referred me for a foot xray (to take place Monday). She also told me to keep off the foot really As Much As Possible, so I am trying harder.

Friday evening I went to Eden at New Hall. Unfortunately for covertmusic, they cancelled Inferno at fairly short notice; fortunately for me and others, they attempted to compensate him with "as many guest tickets as you want". I assume that at some point they'll refund my largeish cheque, but will give them until after May Week to get out of headless chicken mode.

lusercop came up Friday afternoon and after a bit of faffing at mine, we wandered over, arriving around 5:30 or so. Almost the first person we saw was my old NatSci DoS, and we had a pleasant conversation with him. There were strawberries and cream, and Pimms, and lots of non-alcoholic drinks, and burgers and hotdogs and icecream and candyfloss. There was some timeless period when I sat on the grass listening to live music, watching Matthew devilstick and enjoying the glitter of light and the patterns of movement, and it was good.

mobbsy and pjc50 turned up in due course, and we had more pleasant conversation, while lusercop gave impromptu lessons to random passersby. Later still, acronym arrived just as I was attempting a guided tour of my old College and its artwork for Pete, and we returned from that to find j4 & addedentry. Because Inferno had been cancelled, Eden was extended until 10pm, after which Janet and Owen went home and Matthew, Andrew, Andrew and Pete came back to mine, where we hung out and gossiped. I eventually gave in and got some sleep, and left Matthew as temporary house occupant to continue being hostly.

Saturday dawned gorgeously. We sat and gossiped for a bit, and then I attempted to deal with the piles of to-do list. We had a lazy lunch, which I serendipitously started cooking just as jdc39 emerged blinking into the day after Robinson Ball. After this I did some working from home, fixing the problems I hadn't had time to fix before leaving on Friday. Most of it was the kind of fiddly, repetitive, careful work that gets immensely tedious but can't be automated. We listened to CUR1350's coverage of the Bumps, after which there was Dr Who and a very pleasant meal at the Thanh Binh. Sunday I spent rather more of the day working, interspersed with conversation with Matthew and Jonny. I finished bang on 5:30 when I really had to stop, so that fanf & I could go to the CUMC Centenary Dinner. This turned out to be excellent fun despite the heat, with a huge turnout of past members, some impressive beards and a fine after-dinner speech. It was fun showing Tony off introducing Tony to my climbing friends, and especially pleasant to see Andy B (and finally meet his girlfriend) back from Durham for the event. Lots of people I knew had been on the club week-long meet in Cornwall, which I missed due to having lots of work and a wedding to plan. Tony and I will go next year, if at all possible.

I slept very badly last night, but did get into work reasonably early. I migrated my package of fixes for testing by mid-morning ... and got back a shorter list of new bugs by lunchtime. Sigh. Must code better. I then took an extra-long lunch in order to pick up fripperies for the wedding, and was really a bit too hot by the time I got back to the office. It took quite a while and a lot of water before I felt able to think straight again. When I got home this evening, all good intentions to do useful things vanished in the face of being hot and tired, so I read a book instead. I probably should go to bed, but the upper floor is uninvitingly hot. I suppose I could read another book.

fanf and I are getting two cats shortly after we get back from our honeymoon. This is probably excessively couply or something (although possibly not, compared to being married). We're getting Kat's cats as mentioned here. While Tony is used to having pets, I've never lived with any animal until davethedog started visiting regularly. But that has gone well, and I usually get on with other people's cats, and I am prepared for the probable dealing with dead things. I am going to keep my room off limits to them and try to keep them downstairs at night.

I've talked it over with Keith who is amenable, and antinomy who had lots of good advice, and have thought it over a lot with Tony before definitely deciding and I'm now getting quite excited about it. Keith and I have been talking about where to put their things and where to feed them and so on. I want to find a "how to look after your cat" book (yes, I know it's probably reasonably easy but I've never done it and I like having a manual). Any recommendations gratefully received.

Otherwise I'm a bit zogged today after a dash into London to meet damerell in the Oakdale for some drinks last night. emperor and I took the wussy non-cycling option and caught the train back that arrives shortly before midnight. I crashed a bit on the train, but woke up sufficiently cycling home that I couldn't settle to sleep and was still up when fanf got back rather later on the next train. But at least I was failing to sleep at home rather than kept awake elsewhere.