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ROOPHLOCH 2025
September 10th, 2025
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I'm sitting outside in my front yard, being occasionally harrassed by wasps looking to find food before winter sets in. It's a fairly warm day for the second week of September; the sun is shining, and the wind is gentle. My laptop is not plugged into anything. I believe that this qualifies this submission for ROOPHLOCH, and I hope I understand correctly.
I've actually already written a phlog for ROOPHLOCH last week. It was cold, and the wind whipped my hair into my face with such force that it felt almost angry. Despite this, I stayed outside for over an hour and a half writing, only for it to turn out that I had messed something up in a way that caused most of it not to display properly. It's like that sometimes.
I wrote a rather long and rambling post about my notetaking system and how I use it for writing, but decided to write a completely new phlog instead of trying to fix it. Firstly because what I was trying to do would be better off as a .txt file or perhaps markdown, and secondly because I improvized the entire thing, not using a single paragraph of the original rough draft, and I think I can do it more justice than what came out. The highlights of that post include repeatedly calling myself a "cursed number goblin," and saying "planning is just organized improvising."
I had another dream about constellations last night, large and gleaming, dominating the sky. Last year, I bought a telescope and took up stargazing, something I've wanted to do since i was very young. I have no idea if this is a common experience or if it's just me, but my subconscious seems to have fixated on stars and constellations as something to dream about frequently. A few times a week I dream about looking up at the night sky and seeing constellations, usually much larger and brighter than they are in real life. Often they are at least accurate, but it isn't uncommon for my dreams to make up fake constellations as well. There are always way more stars than I can actually see in real life - the stars here are obscured by the light pollution.
The first planet I saw in the telescope was Saturn, and the first time I saw it, I cried. We had no idea what we were doing at the time, and were just pointing the telescope haphazardly in the general direction of Saturn (I hadn't even aligned the finderscope at this point) and hoping. Once, we came across a dull yellow star, and concluded that that definitely must be Saturn. The next night we found out that it was not: the rings of Saturn are plainly visible at 120x magnification. To see a tiny star and think "that's Saturn" and then be confronted by seeing it for real was a very emotional experience for me.
Considering that that experience affected me so deeply, and that I spend quite a lot of time examining craters on the moon, it's a little odd that my subconscious has become so obsessed with stars and constellations, but I never dream about the moon or planets. What I find very interesting is that I have only ever had recurring dreams about one other thing before, and those are particularly upsetting, so my mind must think constellations particularly important to be having dreams about them.
We are gearing up for winter now. Winter stargazing is fun, because the sun goes down at 4pm and doesn't rise again until nearly 9 in the morning, giving us plenty of time in the dark. This is the only time of year where this hobby is compatible with a normal sleep schedule. The trade-off for this is that it is prodigiously cold. It can go down to minus 40, which I don't even have to specify a scale for, because minus 40 celsius and minus 40 fahrenheit are the same, but frequently hovers around minus 30 to minus 35 celsius. To stay warm, I wear multiple layers of sweaters under my jacket, multiple toques, insulated socks, and thick gloves.
The problem I had last year is that it's very difficult to adjust the small locking knobs on the focuser adapter with thick gloves. I would take them off, adjust the knobs, and quickly put them back on, but my hands would still become painfully cold. I hope to solve that problem with a pair of heated gloves - if they're actively heated, they don't have to be so thick, and I may not have to take them off to adjust the knobs. I have a pair of very thin autumn gloves that I might wear under the heated gloves as well, so that if I do take them off, I'm at least not directly exposing my hands to cold metal.
I like to draw the constellations in a notebook to help me memorize them. I had a space pen that could write in the cold, but I seem to have misplaced it, so another task on the list is to find it. I could just use a pencil, but the space pen is more fun, because c'mon, it's a SPACE PEN!
I also have a collection of insulated yeti mugs, and I will go through 4-5 cups of hot tea in a night.
I am being approached by a crow. The local crows seem very fascinated with me this year. When I go for walks, they follow me around. This one has come very close to me, and is cawing loudly. I am not sure what he wants. He occasionally makes a noise that sounds like a turkey gobbling. This went on for about 5 minutes before my neighbor's dog ran over to see me and scared the crow away. I'm not sure why the crows seem to follow me around, but they don't seem to be hostile or angry. I know crows can remember faces, so I think if I pissed them off, I'd know by now.
I quite like writing outside, and I think I'll do it more often - though we are beginning to run short on warm days, and I suspect I only have a week or two left before it will become too cold to write outside, and I'll have to wait for next year. That's the way she goes.
I wanted to go further than my front yard, but it's been a crazy month so far, and I don't think I'll have the time. Maybe next year I'll go to the local park.
Keep takin' 'er easy.
Mathpunk
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