The Antisocial Socialist

Technically, April 1 was Cocoa's birthday, but since I'll never know when Sabot's birthday was, I went from celebrating them both on the same day to it just being Sabot's birthday now. She had a good day! She got her favourite food, and then extra treats, meat tubes, and catnip, plus two new toys. She didn't even fight with Alice that much.

( pics )

Now she's upstairs lounging on the bed. Both of them are high as balls.

It is my cats' birthday (well, usual disclaimer that it's Cocoa's birthday—19!—and I celebrate their birthdays on the same day because I don't know when Sabot's is. Who would like to see pictures?

( cut for the sake of your phones )

I have done a second cut, because the last three pictures are lethal levels of cuteness.

( you think you can handle it but you actually can't )

So there you go! Happy birthday my babies, long may you reign.

I'm posting this in multiple places so apologies if you see this multiple times.

( pet health, serious )

I've been having some scatterbrainedness lately and I confess I did not realize it was April 1st until I ran across my neighbour's April Fool's Day prank, and therefore spent the rest of the workday feeling guilty, because...

It is the girls' birthday!

Cocoa is 17 today. Sabot is who knows what age at what day—I think she is around 11 or 12? Who knows.

They got treats and catnip and toys, which Sabot gets excited about and Cocoa does not care about, and of course a photoshoot.









They also got a big early present from my mom, which is a nicer scratching post/cat condo.

But really, the best gift is to me, because I get these beautiful girls in my life.

While I worked very hard today at marking, lesson planning, rejigging assignments to work with emergency remote learning, and listening to a 2-hour union telephone townhall, these two girls swanned around the house, finding the best possible lighting to show off their photogenic selves.

Drove up to Gravenhurst yesterday to do a workshop on night sky photography at the Torrance Barrens Dark Sky Preserve. Gravenhurst is very pretty, as is the preserve. I've never done night sky photography before and it is well out of my comfort zone of environmental and studio portraiture + graveyard photography with a 80 mmm lens at f1.8 for maximum artsy.

Overall:
+ Instructor was amazing.
+ The other people in the workshop seemed really cool and were at varying levels of skill so we could all help each other.
+ My new lens rocks.
+ It is very, very pretty up there.
+ SAW A FUCKIN DEER OMG LIKE REALLY REALLY CLOSE

- BlogTO posted about Torrance Barrens and now it is full of people. Which wouldn't be such a problem if 90% of them weren't complete assholes. There is a complete fire ban and you're not supposed to have bright lights there or camp, as it's a dark sky preserve, but did anyone pay attention? It is crawling with dickheads wanting to have their cookouts and basically endangering the whole region to make hot dogs.
- My camera has some quirks that I was eventually able to figure out but which, basically, are not apparent in the type of photography I typically do. So while I'm pretty confident with it in general, I felt like a complete n00b fumbling around in the dark.
- Tripod is okay but not great. Which, I got it for okay-but-not-great prices and in general I don't need a good one. But.
- You can't see anything when you're shooting at night, including the controls on the camera (which, okay, as I know them fairly well), but more importantly you can't see the composition of the photo you're shooting. So you just have to shoot a lot and guess.
- Y'know, I don't really like plain landscape photography as a genre. I was hoping I could do some posed shots with the night sky as a backdrop but it was just too crowded and people kept walking into the frame or swinging flashlights around.

So in conclusion I know how to do it now, but none of my shots were a m a z i n g. I'd like to do another shoot, pref. with a model, in the area but not at the preserve itself, as there are tons of places where it's just as dark but not full of wankers.

( stars and stuff! )

( bonus cats )

It's the girls' birthday today! Cocoa is 14 and Sabot is still Unknown Age. We celebrated with a meat cake and they received Enemies of the People stuffed with catnip to help them train for the revolution.









Happy birthday to my babies—I love you more than life itself.

 Cocoa turned 13 yesterday! My baby is officially a teenager! It's also, by default, Sabot's birthday. They got to celebrate with a meat cake made from four different animals, catnip, and new toys.





I think they had a good party. They're currently sprawled out, blissfully content, on my bed.

I keep being reminded throughout the day. I mean, it's pretty hard to avoid the subject. Especially when the Board sends you that general form-letter about how to talk to children about mass shootings. Seriously, that's a thing that they have to do, because the NRA is out of control.

I don't really have anything to add that hasn't been said by wiser people. This one hits a lot closer to home than most senseless mass shootings, though. I just feel sick and sad and furious and queasy, somehow.

As—once again, wiser—people have pointed out, there is no point in asking America to get its shit together. If a school full of six-year-olds wasn't a wake-up call, a club full of queer Latinx who most of their leaders seem to want dead anyway is hardly going to stir them into action. Fucking fuck. That's it, that's my contribution. Fuck all of this shit.

There was some kind of incident at UofT today. Turned out to be nothing, but multiple buildings locked down and so on. I don't usually feel unsafe, but days like these feel pretty unsafe, y'know?

Anyway here are my cats being gay and cheering me up:

It's the Forces of Darkness's birthday today! (Well, it's Cocoa's birthay—12, to be exact—but Sabot gets to celebrate her birthday on April 1st too because I don't know when it is.)

So I made them a meat cake.

( Pictures )