other random things, variously weird

• My cellphone, in a particularly arcane manifestation of my techno-jinx, has been unable to connect calls for the last six months or so. Everything else works; calls ring, I can swipe to answer them, but there's no actual sound when I connect. I have been forwarding all my voice calls to the nearest landline for months, which is non-ideal but hasn't been a particular issue because I really don't get many voice calls, and most of them are spam, and it's far more satisfying to hang up on a sales call with an actual handset that you can thunk down with extreme prejudice. When I finally got around to doing something about the problem, the lovely lady in the MTN shop tested it, went "Hmmm", and gently pointed out that calls worked perfectly fine if you put them on speaker, which means that the actual phone speaker was fucked (apparently the calls-on-speaker one is separate). New phone time. As I have every intention of shaking the dust of this country from my feet one way or another in the next year, I didn't want to upgrade and lock into a two-year contract, so I madly bought myself an advance-Significant-Birthday-Present new phone, which arrived yesterday, in, according to the inscrutable workings of the techno-jinx, the middle of a thunderstorm. I have spent the morning happily switching phones, and crooning gently to myself about how cool technology is when it works. (The new phone is Large and Glossy and the Samsung switch programme is a dream to use, happy little obedient functional thing).
  
• I found myself, however, weirdly and genuinely choked up when it came to shutting down the old phone for the last time. It was my first smartphone, and led me gently into smartphone ways, and was fun and small and sweet and worked for years, and I played Avengers Academy obsessively on it for months, and it was a reasonably constant companion I had just started to train myself not to leave behind, and I shall miss it. I thanked it affectonately in the approved Marie Kondo fashion, but it was still a sad parting. And, really, humans are very weird about anthropomorphising tech, increasingly so as tech becomes more active and complicated and thus easier and easier to anthropomorphise. I had a very entertaining conversation with the GPS lady driving into Woodstock to pick up the phone yesterday, we had Certain Disagreements on the route. Or maybe it's just me and I'm just weird.
  
• I am, also weirdly given my usual state of hermitlike introversion, seriously looking forward to the Arts Festival trip this coming week. (The Jo's Infinitely Expanding Social Circle was employed by her to good effect in that she found me a house-sitter, who is called Landi and is lovely and who my cats like immediately. It is something of a relief.) Possibly the anticipation is more acute because the faculty is Exerting Reproach, with a strong subtext of You Should Cancel Your Leave, at my absence from Significant Meetings, the more so because the otherwise lamb-like deputy Dean has decided to fuck off on sabbatical suddenly and without warning and also won't be in the meeting. I have stuck to my guns, with increasing irritation, and have spent chunks of the last week rustling up and training replacements, and trying to talk down the faculty manager from a flat panic. I am assuaging the inevitable guilt by promising to be on WhatsApp for the significant few hours, in case they absolutely can't do without me, but really, are they toddlers? Seriously, life's too short to hold the faculty's hand for ever, and they bloody well have to get used to doing without me because I Do Not Intend To Stay Here Much Longer.
  
• I enjoyed this Buzzfeed article about making yourself more desirable to men, which may seem weird given that making myself desirable to men is something I haven't been interested in for at least a decade, but becomes less weird if you actually read the article. "Instead of shaving your arms weekly, add more hair to them and become a human blanket for your boyfriend in the winter. Or remove every strand of hair from your body and scream through the night like an infant. Really embrace having baby-smooth skin." I also haven't shaved my legs in over a decade, the resulting fur is useful in our current cold snap; I occasionally shave under my arms, in a desultory and intermittent sort of fashion when it randomly occurs to me to do so, mostly because I can do it in under a minute and, weird unpleasant smooth-skinned youth/baby fetishisation aside, the thing which narks me most about male-focused expecations of female grooming is how much bloody time it expects you to devote to it. Bugger that for a game of soldiers.
  
• I am living in something of a Good Omens haze, the fanfic is increasingly adorable and, in large tracts, weirdly domestic. It's almost all Aziraphale/Crowley, and a lot of it is steamy, but there's a larger than usual subset of asexual fic, which I'm enjoying because that's my personal headcanon for the angels. Also, the wingficcers are out in force. I loved this in particular. I also recommend Michael Sheen on Twitter for righteous takedowns of bigotry. And the Christian group's misguided petition is hysterical.
  
• It's not at all weird that Jo&Stv are hauling me off to Overture for a birthday lunch tomorrow, because excuse for Overture, duh. I am Looking Forward To It. A lot. And the Nicest Ex-Supervisor in the World is taking me out to lunch at the Cellars on Wednesday. Ditto. I have lovely friends. But you knew that. Lots of them are you.