The Fluffbucket Diaries

Maybe it’s just me, but Alexi Lalas is what I imagine a younger, more lucid Bill Walton would be. ⚽

I respect the whole vegan thing, but this seems like a bit much.

Long work week with several late nights of working into the wee hours. Now bracing for a late night of prepping for Sunday’s CCD class.

Meanwhile, I’m getting enough of a late start on Christmas fudge and baking that I’m starting to worry that I’ll need to scale back on that this year. Fingers crossed that I won’t need to do that.

Posting this here so Mastodon can actually verify me.

It hasn’t even been 2 weeks since I joined. and I already want a break from the old Mastodon machine.

NYT Spelling Bee enthusiasts: Should people post their “Queen Bee” status if they make it clear that they used a cheat resource for it? I’m seeing a few folks doing that on Mastodon, and it’s kinda bugging me (and not because our household has yet to achieve that level).

I hate that it’s too cold to wear shorts IN THE HOUSE.

(And yes, we have central heating. Still feels too damn cold.)

Down to my last couple of Korean instant coffee packets. Hoping to squeeze in an H Mart visit this week to replenish my stockpile.

Now I know why they sell these things in boxes of 100.

Our first attempt at kolacky looks like a murder scene – and then we put powdered sugar on them.

F: “Now it looks like a murder scene in winter.”

Hello, Amazon customer service? I’d like to register a complaint.

Good morning. Here’s a gratuitous photo of our cat Raymond watching a ballgame, which I wish I was doing right now. ⚾️🐱

Been spending entirely too much time this Thanksgiving Day on social media and Sling for soccer – sorry, football – and dog shows.

Also been prepping my Hobonichi Weeks for use starting next week and trying to figure out how to use my old $8 pocket planner through the rest of its lifespan, which runs through the end of June 2023. Most likely will use it to log a quote a day, a la Austin Kleon.

Got another couple of hours to kill till our 5 p.m. reservation at our favorite Polish buffet. The place has been our standby for Thanksgiving over the past 5 years, at least (not counting 2020 during The Plague That Shall Not Be Named). Have only consumed iced tea, a diet ginger ale, and a fistful each of pork rinds and SmartFood.

Neither productive nor terribly healthy. But I’m okay with that.

THERE IS NO MALTESE IN THE NATIONAL DOG SHOW. Why am I even bothering to watch this, then?

Happy Thanksgiving to those who celebrate.

On this late Thanksgiving morning, spending too much time lingering in bed with a headache. Back hurts. Otherwise glad for time to relax.

The most I’ve accomplished today is burrow into Mastodon and text friends and family. Time to grab some Advil and coffee and get going.

I’m not a soccer (sorry … I mean football) follower, and I understand that this year’s World Cup is particularly toxic.

But part of me really wants to go back and watch those Japan and Saudi Arabia upset games. ⚽

I have not missed frosty mornings.

Found the first presence of far-right crackpots on Mastodon — an entire domain that purports to have “noagenda” (one word per its usage). It was like finding a giant nest of antisemitic, anti-vaxx hornets that spit InfoWars tropes at you.

Blocked it. Need to report it.

Been spending way too much time on the old Masto site. Already thinking of getting a second account on a Catholic-oriented instance to align with my dormant Rosa Mystica commonplace site based on Micro.blog.

Not a ton of Catholic content, not like on Twitter; though Catholic Twitter could be toxic and obnoxious, it had the kind of orthodoxy that aligns with my basic beliefs. On Mastodon, I’m following an awful lot of Anglicans and Episcopalians, with a smattering of other progressive Christians. It’s at once refreshing and challenging.

Would love to see on Mastodon some of the priests I follow elsewhere, like Frs. James Martin and David Abernethy; Catholic tweeters like Tommy Tighe, Greg Hillis, and Matt Swaim; and other thoughtful Christians such as Beth Moore and Joy Clarkson.

Right now, Masto feels like a progressive Christian echo chamber, and that bothers me as much as the “rad trad” Catholic crowd on Twitter.

Been on Twitter longer than my daughter has been alive. But I’m gonna have to find new sources for breaking baseball news, which for me is the only thing it’s been good for.

Between here and Mastodon (@garciabuxton@home.social), I’m getting as far from Space Karen as I can get.

My initial introduction post on Mastodon. Even with 500 characters to play with, I still didn’t have enough room. Tweaking it periodically.

Welp, I’ve only been on Mastodon for 2 days, and it didn’t take long to have my home server (or “instance”) to stall and crash a while. I’m neither surprised nor terribly upset, given the recent stampede of Twitter users to the platform.

As I said in my initial post there (I refuse to use the Mastodon term “toot”), I really don’t need another social media platform. But I liked the idea of a larger alternative online community.

As much as I’ve appreciated Micro.blog over the years—and I have no intention of leaving it—I never felt I clicked much with the community or truly found a tribe there. It’s a friendly bunch, for the most part, but (a) I never quite found enough commonality to click deeply with others, and (b) even for all its self-satisfied sense of civility, I still ran into some judginess (my speculation about my own neurodivergent state comes to mind) and twee political correctness that increasingly annoyed me. Plus it still hasn’t widened much beyond the primarily affluent White middle-aged Apple fanboy male demographic it started with, which—literally and otherwise—can get kind of old after a while. (That group butted heads with the equally outspoken PC users at the forefront of the whole pronouns-and-social-consciousness-on-your-sleeve thing, and the civility dwindled down to hurt feelings and stomping away.) So, I only post very occasionally to the timeline there.

Twitter, of course, wasn’t that great with social connections beyond the people I knew in real life, either. But I came to expect that, even at its most cordial during its early years.

So far, Mastodon beats M.b in sheer numbers and potential for genial conversation and sharing of common interests. I’m holding out hope that I can connect with even a small handful of fellow travelers, if not an outright tribe.

My only other hope, shared by many Masto users I’ve found, is that the influx of Twitter exiles doesn’t turn the place into the festering hellhole of shitposting and screaming that we all are leaving behind.

Okay, I caved and became part of the Great Twitter Migration of 2022. You can now find me at Mastodon, but so far I haven’t done much with that account yet. Will probably broadcast from here and post directly on Mastodon. Maybe. Dunno.

Still not scrapping my Twitter account yet.

So much Mastodon talk. I’m glad it’s there as a Twitter alternative, but it seems like more work than I’m willing to do when Micro.blog suffices as an online platform — even when I don’t post to the M.b timeline, which is most of the time.

F and I both home sick on a snowy day: F with flulike symptoms (but negative COVID test) and me with post-COVID booster ickiness.

Watching “Steven Universe” with F and can’t decide yet if I like it.