A memorable watermelon.

Like the last watermelon I got of the summer season was just gigantic -- it honestly filled up both your arms, if you carried it that way -- and, I do have to say, though I feared if it would be of good quality, it was actually the best watermelon that I had all year.

It was just crisp perfect watermelon through-and-through, like every single bit of it, and it was gigantic, to the point where it visibly pressed down the white metal rack in my refrigerator, when I first put it in there and it just sat out on a dinner plate, to catch any fugitive juices from the disc-opening that I'd carved out up on top so I could scoop out the flesh from there and then rest the rind back on top, to sort of cover it.

The whole thing cost only ten dollars, too.

The next time that I see that (Mexican- and Mexican-American) farm family, I'm going to let them know how good it was, and that whatever they did with that watermelon with seeds and growth and whatnot, they should do it again, because it was truly a watermelon to write home about.

Livestreaming.

When I recently threw an event, I of course didn't expect that everyone I knew and invited could make it, but I was surprised about the number of people who asked about whether it would be livestreamed (easily like 3-5 people).

I don't blame them, but that was just a layer of organization above and beyond the event that I wasn't willing to take on, especially since I'm just not that good with stuff like that.

Also, I think some stuff just doesn't communicate -- for some things you have to be present, and be immersed! -- and I'd rather make something like that special, where you really have to be there.

On professions (2 of 2): The future.

It's interesting to me how like the past 3 years I've had no sense of a long-term future.

Most people, if you ask them, they have a professional path, are saving for a house, have to work while their kids are in school, etc.

But me, people ask, and it's like, "I don't know."

Like, I can tell you maybe what I hope to work on with projects for the next 1-2 years, and I expect I'll be at my job and in the area that I live in for at least another year, but beyond that, I really have no idea.

My one (half British) (half Sudanese) friend (the brother of the brother-sister pair) was reflecting on this like half a year ago.

He was saying that everyone knows that your past shapes your sense of self, but no-one talks about how the future does too, and it's very disconcerting not to have anything like that in front of you, but just this big blank space that you can't even provisionally fill in with any relative degree of certainty.

On professions (1 of 2): Payscales.

Like over a month ago I saw an ad for training program for various trades involved with highway construction, including what you start at, how many years of apprenticeship, and then what you can get up to in terms of money and benefits.

What you can get to is definitely higher than what I make now, but, believe it or not, what you start at with hourly wage is right around how much I make now as a waiter at a very local restaurant with a solid business.

Like, if that type of job fits you, go for it, but it's still astonishing to me how oversold so many professions are -- "the trades" are a big thing that people recommend, but it's a long runway for training and then takeoff!

I mean, if you have to spin your wheels someplace and make a living as you move up, of course you do that in that type of job; that's what I thought that I had in eldercare.

But still, it's just astonishing to me how there's like this huge clump of jobs now with mushy wage scales and not that much differentiation between them.

A sign of the new front upstairs neighbors:

A pizza-box just sitting on the top of everything in the recycling-bin, and when I open it up, there's not only grease-stained wax paper still left in it, and a lot of crumbs, but also a half-opened and half-eaten pizza-dipping sauce with a ton of this yellowish-white sludge-y dip still inside, just right in there in the recycling bin.

Response of a native (Portuguese) speaker...

...when I emailed that one (former) (visiting student) (gay) (Afro-Brazilian) (STEM) student with some questions about the use of auxiliary verbs in (Portuguese):

"Ter" otherwise can work as an auxiliary verb as in "eu tenho feito muito exercícios" (I have practiced a lot of exercises), "eu tive pensando como você mamou aquela rola enorme" ( I have thought how you sucked that big dick) 

I don't know if "I have thought..." Makes sense for you... 

. . .

Another artist observation I've heard...

...from when I was talking with my one (art school) colleague who wears (women's clothes), about how I do all this good stuff in various realms but it's like never my moment:

He just observes that there's always the innovators who truly do new and interesting stuff, and then there's the "second generation" people who swoop in and popularize and get all the credit in the public-eye, though the people "in the know" know who was first.

. . .

(It really is rare that I hear this type of reflection from anyone else other than all the artists in my life.)