The State of the Wombat

Kiwi in her typical resting spot while I work from home

Hello World.

I’ve been working from home since March, due to COVID-19. My work sent us home about a week before the 7-county Bay Area issued their stay-at-home orders, and even though restrictions have lifted for the most part, I continue to work from home for the foreseeable future. We’d been slowly converting a now-spare bedroom into a recording studio, and I’ve been using the room as an office as well. The cat likes to hang out with me in here while I work, usually sleeping in her box in the corner, sometimes demanding attention on my lap or with her toys.

(“Toys” is a loose term here; they have included actual cat toys but also things like an empty pill bottle or a twist-tie that we overlooked when throwing away the packaging from whatever bit of audio hardware we’d just installed. I do try to keep her from playing with the rug.)

I’ve left Facebook (and Instagram, since they are owned by Facebook) for reasons that are probably obvious to most people I know. And as LJ has been a ghost town for about a decade now (I deleted that too a few years ago once they announced their content was going to be covered under Russian jurisdiction), and Tumblr just isn’t the same since they banned porn, I don’t have much outlet for my long form ramblings lately. Except… I have a blog, don’t I? And it hasn’t been getting much use lately, has it?

So here I am. I can’t promise a regular post but when the mood strikes, I’m likely to come here. For short form, I’ll try to use Mastodon.

Of course the real question now is whether anyone will actually find this blog since I don’t have a Facebook account to crosspost it to, but I think I’ve decided I don’t really care whether anyone reads it or not. I’ve been blogging on the internet since 1997 through so many different platforms, and I see no reason to stop now.

I still miss the decade of LiveJournal, though.

Cheshire Cat Cross-stitch

Finally finished my latest cross-stitch project. I’ve been working on this one for about a month. Pattern by Rocking Horse Cross Stitch, though using glow-in-the-dark floss for the grin was my own idea.

I maybe could have got a better picture of the grin if I’d dragged out the DSLR but after a little tweaking it’s at least possible to see it in the picture.