A very mixed week
Oct. 15th, 2021 09:52 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
highlyeccentricMy brain state has been rough this week. Still unsure if it's the ADHD meds (I seem to hyperfocus, but not necessarily on the right things, and it could be on my anxiety) or other stuff. Sleep patterns out of whack. Failing at restoring my routine. Every day is a new day, and every day I plan 'right, let's reset' and then promptly think "fuck you! Even I don't tell me what to do!" This is extremely aggravating and quite unlike me.
But I did manage to go to the medieval lecture on Thursday. It was an art history talk - Michelle McCoy, who's working on images from the Mogao Caves. She's particularly interested in astrological images on different kinds of talismans and devotional objects, looking at different cultural influences on the depiction styles - styles from Iran, local Sogdian art, India, and further abroad. Super cool, I knew nothing about these caves and although I can't claim to understand the stakes of what she showed us, they were cool. And I would like to know more about Dunhuang, as a settlement, in the Tang dynasty - and from nosing around Wikipedia it seems like it was a really interesting place during the decline of the Tang and after, with a lot of shifts of power and cultural mixing, and a significant Sogdian population. I'd like to know more about the Sogdians, for that matter - I knew a bit about them as a group who were conquered by Alexander the Great, and hadn't thought much about what happened to them after that.
More productively: I got the CFP webpage for that conference/workshop I won funding for up! I got through, uh... three work things today. That could be worse.
Also yesterday I had my hair done again, and learned how difficult my haircut actually is! Here's a photo. I switched in the spring from seeing the salon owner to one of her fully-qualified offsiders, who was really good at colour. I loved Stephanie's work with colour, although she didn't quite rival Fabienne for the cut. Anyway Stephanie's left to go and do a residential Spanish lang course and then Travel The World. Fabienne's consistently booked out, so I took an appointment with Mathilde, the 3rd-y apprentice.
First problem: Both Fabienne and Stephanie spoke English; Mathilde's English turns out to be fine for greeting / taking coats / washing hair, but not for the fine detail of haircuts. And haircuts turn out to be one of the everyday gaps in my French - PLUS a lot of everyday French I do know I'm at risk of my brain pulling up the German instead (including, as it turns out, the word 'everyday'. Tried to explain the problems with my français quotidien, brain would only return 'täglich'). I couldn't even remember the word 'veux/voudrais', so my attempts to communicate 'do whatever you'd like to my hair, just don't make it green' failed miserably. And then it turns out that beyond colour there are SO MANY decisions involved in my current haircut! My usual specs - short on the left, undercut and longer on the right, side part, short at the back - turn out to be wildly insufficient. There were lots of checks with Fabienne, either for vocab in order to ask me things, or for how-to. At one point the stern instruction to 'ne pense aux chevaux, pense au dessin!' was issued. Very can't see the forest for the trees, I guess.
But it got done and I really like it! It's not as complex a dye job as Stephanie's work (only two colours), so it will be interesting to see how it fades out - Stephanie's continued looking pretty good at 6 weeks, only got ratty at 8, I think because there was so much variation in colour. And I got to practice my French, which was nice.
Some French vocab I learned:
Degradé: turns out to mean 'with layers in'. Not degraded (I figured not) nor 'with a colour gradient', although also that, that's degradé de coleurs. Tricky!
Lisse: straight! I thought it meant shiny, or possibly supple (from its use on shampoo bottles and things). Consequently un liseur is a straightener.
Rasé, shaved, which appears to work for buzz-cut hair. Never learned that when I HAD a buzz cut.
French vocab I did not learn: the word she was using for 'wavy', as in my hair texture. I looked blank, wavy she DID know in English, and switched over. It wasn't ondulée, whatever it was.
Meanwhile, Mercury has been commendably cuddly lately, although he retains his right to take direct action if he is insufficiently or incorrectly scritched. This evening, when I hit the wall after work (hopes of gym: fail), he became very agitated after about an hour of me napping; but he's been coping okay with being shut in the living room overnight. I'm less than enthused about the litter in the living room, but I'll leave it for another week or so before I see if it's possible to let him access living room + entry + bathroom while I'm on the other side of the bedroom door, without him losing his furry little equilibrium after a few hours.
But I did manage to go to the medieval lecture on Thursday. It was an art history talk - Michelle McCoy, who's working on images from the Mogao Caves. She's particularly interested in astrological images on different kinds of talismans and devotional objects, looking at different cultural influences on the depiction styles - styles from Iran, local Sogdian art, India, and further abroad. Super cool, I knew nothing about these caves and although I can't claim to understand the stakes of what she showed us, they were cool. And I would like to know more about Dunhuang, as a settlement, in the Tang dynasty - and from nosing around Wikipedia it seems like it was a really interesting place during the decline of the Tang and after, with a lot of shifts of power and cultural mixing, and a significant Sogdian population. I'd like to know more about the Sogdians, for that matter - I knew a bit about them as a group who were conquered by Alexander the Great, and hadn't thought much about what happened to them after that.
More productively: I got the CFP webpage for that conference/workshop I won funding for up! I got through, uh... three work things today. That could be worse.
Also yesterday I had my hair done again, and learned how difficult my haircut actually is! Here's a photo. I switched in the spring from seeing the salon owner to one of her fully-qualified offsiders, who was really good at colour. I loved Stephanie's work with colour, although she didn't quite rival Fabienne for the cut. Anyway Stephanie's left to go and do a residential Spanish lang course and then Travel The World. Fabienne's consistently booked out, so I took an appointment with Mathilde, the 3rd-y apprentice.
First problem: Both Fabienne and Stephanie spoke English; Mathilde's English turns out to be fine for greeting / taking coats / washing hair, but not for the fine detail of haircuts. And haircuts turn out to be one of the everyday gaps in my French - PLUS a lot of everyday French I do know I'm at risk of my brain pulling up the German instead (including, as it turns out, the word 'everyday'. Tried to explain the problems with my français quotidien, brain would only return 'täglich'). I couldn't even remember the word 'veux/voudrais', so my attempts to communicate 'do whatever you'd like to my hair, just don't make it green' failed miserably. And then it turns out that beyond colour there are SO MANY decisions involved in my current haircut! My usual specs - short on the left, undercut and longer on the right, side part, short at the back - turn out to be wildly insufficient. There were lots of checks with Fabienne, either for vocab in order to ask me things, or for how-to. At one point the stern instruction to 'ne pense aux chevaux, pense au dessin!' was issued. Very can't see the forest for the trees, I guess.
But it got done and I really like it! It's not as complex a dye job as Stephanie's work (only two colours), so it will be interesting to see how it fades out - Stephanie's continued looking pretty good at 6 weeks, only got ratty at 8, I think because there was so much variation in colour. And I got to practice my French, which was nice.
Some French vocab I learned:
French vocab I did not learn: the word she was using for 'wavy', as in my hair texture. I looked blank, wavy she DID know in English, and switched over. It wasn't ondulée, whatever it was.
Meanwhile, Mercury has been commendably cuddly lately, although he retains his right to take direct action if he is insufficiently or incorrectly scritched. This evening, when I hit the wall after work (hopes of gym: fail), he became very agitated after about an hour of me napping; but he's been coping okay with being shut in the living room overnight. I'm less than enthused about the litter in the living room, but I'll leave it for another week or so before I see if it's possible to let him access living room + entry + bathroom while I'm on the other side of the bedroom door, without him losing his furry little equilibrium after a few hours.
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Date: 2021-10-16 01:31 pm (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2021-10-16 10:58 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-10-17 02:51 pm (UTC)I think currently there are SO MANY THINGS that need doing that there's no see-able stop point to the anxiety, so no amount of 'okay, here's my feasible plan for the morning' helps.