Victoria Rogers 🪴

Sure, but it is a wet cold due to the lake, which makes it feel colder and makes my arthritis very angry. A hot coffee and a coat can't fix that.

Me, going to Toronto:

"it's only four hours away, it can't be that cold."

Chat, I was wrong.

You as well!

I hope you have a wonderful brunch.

I was up past my bedtime and I am very, very sleepy.

Had fun at the Interactive Ontario mixer tonight! It was lovely getting to see folks I know, folks I've only interacted with online, and meeting new faces!

Now, bed.

It really doesn't. I've gotten good at advocating for myself but it's exhausting.

I also have ADHD which contributes to the flaky persona. My body is broken and my brain is whack, I don't know what to tell you 'cept for I require grace.

I have rheumatoid arthritis.

Some days I am great.

Some days I need a cane.

Some days I can't get out of bed.

I have zero control over which days fall when. I just have to wake up and see.

I'm not flaky, I just have a broken body.

I started a new game and I am finding things I missed the first time around.

I'm having a completely different experience.

Haha. Yeah, I bought a specific fountain pen to use for this. I'm trying to do one cartridge a day of each ink, but the pen I got has a bigger than normal converter. lol. RIP me, I guess.

I got the Diamine Inkvent Calendar and I now have more ink than I know what to do with.

(I just have to write more.)

A Manticore with the caption "I am not a toy. I am not a pet. I am not a Christmas present. I am a 400 year commitment."

Consider the following before adopting a Manticore for your family

Thank you! I call them my art teacher glasses.

A person with curly blonde hair, artsy glasses, red lipstick, and an oversized black dress shirt with a mock neck smiles into the camera. They are on a train.

Yay trains.

I will be! I'm heading up to Toronto this afternoon on the train.

Also, the UI is ugly. Lol. It's a hideous looking program.

I often write on my laptop so I can be in different areas of the house, or the library, or a coffee shop. Having to switch screens when I'm in a flow state is annoying. Merely glancing downward at my notebook is easier.

I know the scrivener folks love it, but not everyone's brains work that way.

I don't use scrivener. I've tried it because many friends use it, but like you, I don't need it. It is overkill. A document with headers and a table of contents works perfectly for me. And in fact, I often just use a pen and notebook for easy reference while I am writing.

...I wonder if that's the excuse but not the reason, considering this administration's love of a previous German party.

Stories are there, but they float, and only when one begins to listen, ask, and pay attention do they land. In an era governed by the tyranny of speed, stories are always afloat because few actually care about others’ stories, and the excuse is that they don’t have time. We are governed by speed because we allow speed to govern us. The cab driver’s father-in-law’s frostbites, just like nursing assistants’ body aches, are inconsequential for us and this world but are significant for them. They embody not only the pain of their bodies but the pain of this era. Their bodies become where pain clings to so that fewer others will need to experience pain. I’d like to invite my readers to slow down, even just a little bit, and to care for others’ stories, especially the bodily ones. Ethnography has an unforgiving quality to it because when you see people in the field, you can’t unsee them; when you hear someone’s stories, you can’t unhear them. Ethnography can never be tidy because it’s so close to an ever-messy, changing, and vibrant being that is life. To try to smooth out the ethnography is equivalent to leaving out the “unpretty” people and corners. I slowed down when faced with such “unprettiness” – I dwelled on it. This is my ethnographic responsibility – to not speed up when coming across the unprettiness but to stare right at it long and hard. from Yueqi Alex Cheng, "Reinventing Care: Nursing Assistants’ Embodied Resistance Working in Public Hospitals in Changsha, Hunan" for Graduate Liberal Studies at Duke University, December 2025.

Two committee members, Anne Whisnant and Eileen Chow, and a third, Ralph Litzinger, off camera, plus the new MA herself, Yueqi Cheng

Had our first graduate thesis defense of the academic year here at Duke - for Yueqi Chen's absolutely lyrical ethnography on nurses' aides working in public hospitals in Hunan, China.

Sharing, with permission, a beautiful passage from Yueqi's thesis which I found really moving:
#everynightapoem

The biggest problem with that wacky AI floorplan isn't the amount of bathrooms, kitchens, or lack of front door. None of that matters. It's moot.

That house would collapse before any of that could be installed due to the fact that there is nothing to hold the roof up.

I think the word you're looking for is approachable. The term "low-barrier to entry" also works.

Me, a professional, at scrum:

Reminder that I'm travelling to Toronto tomorrow. I'll be hopping on the train at lunch and be working from there in the afternoon. Choo choo!

I ate too much jam. I feel sick. Lol

Going to have to use only half a jar on a croissant.

Screenshot of me replying to a picture of jam with "I slathered that entire jar on a croissant." The message is highlighted in that orange-red Discord danger colour.

I offended Discord with my jam.

I have croissants warming up and I'm about to slather that thing with some jam in a few moments. haha

Because of my adhd and lack of object permanence I now have three advent calendars:

- Lush bath bombs
- Diamine fountain pen ink
- Bonne Maman jam

I'm gonna be bathed, fed, and handwrite a novel this month.

(Who writes to word count these days? It's about using up ink samples in a day now!)

First thing in the morning. When I went to the gym, I used pre-work out because I had travel time which meant I didn't have time to make coffee.

I have equipment at home now, so coffee.

A three-tiered silver trat with various savoury pastries. A slate slav with handles has cheese, olives, jellies, crackers, and liver pate.

A bottle of brut cava and a bottle of creme de cassis on a globe bar with a Fir Royale cocktail next to it in a cut crystal champagne flute. A Christmas tree and stocking are in the background.

That time of year.