Reading

Entry tags:

health,
rl_25

(no subject)

Warm and dry and breezy day, a relief after the mug of earlier this week. May content myself with window fans tonight.

Woke at too early a.m., went to bathroom and then back to sleep in the AC coolness. Woken by a scam phone call several hours later ('This is VISA security. We have noticed a charge on your card for $400 on ebay this morning etc etc'-- they always give round numbers, which you'd think was a tip-off, or maybe these guys come from countries with no sales tax.) Wondered why I hadn't heard the garbage trucks which I always do hear even with closed windows and white noise. Maybe an unwontedly late pickup? Was then struck by horrid thought that maybe Tuesday's holiday had shoved everything one day along and there was my green bin out rotting in the heat. So limped downstairs and located the garbage schedule which said Thursday July 3 garbage day. Then wondered if today really was Thursday, but phone assured me on that point. Heat and isolation really do rot the brain, and I'm not sure what to do about either.

(Garbage pickup wasn't late. I just didn't hear it. And someone kindly put my bins back for me but not NND who usually does it, because theirs were still out.)

But did have an hour long massage, which helped some of the owies, at least for a while. 'Your quads are really tight, ' she said, 'and your hip flexors, and your hamstrings, and your piriformis, and and and.' Apparently my shoulders are looser than before, which isn't much comfort because my shoulders still hurt.

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(no subject)

Laundromat achieved but I'll have to go back soon because socks. Oh for the days when I didn't wear socks in the summer. Oh for the days when I felt safe on the basement stairs. But it won't hurt to do laundry in hot or warm water once in a while.

Chuffedness of the day was resetting the cordless phone's time, which had unaccountably vanished after a recharge. Chuffed because the manual was exactly where I thought it would be and the instructions clear, so go me. This after I didn't go to recycle Sunday because the bag of batteries wasn't where I thought it would be and I didn't locate it until much later.

Reading-wise, finished Saint Death's Daughter and sent it on to the waiting hordes. I liked it well enough, even if at times it reminded me of de Bodard's Aztecs. And I still wonder at the cover blurb promising love, tenderness, and joy. I mean yes, there was that too, but only after you'd waded through an awful lot of carnal, bloody and unnatural acts, accidental judgments, and a ton of casual slaughters amounting to genocide. Game of Thrones may be worse but only because it's longer.

Currently on the go are:

The Odyssey in the ancient Penguin Classics translation. If I ever do read Wilson, it might be an idea to know what she was working against. Because frankly, Odysseus is a dweeb, a fact I evidently ignored fifty years ago;

Damned, latest and last? of the Scarlet Revolution series. Should have reread Elusive to remind me where we are but I got immersed and have not got lost yet;

Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, partly as fallout from The Scholar and the Last Faerie Door, partly because a big thick book is good sitting in front of fans reading. Am finding the Stephen/ Lady Pole sections much harder going than the last two times. The Gentleman fits very nicely with Ima Ichiko's observations on the habits of youkai (ie their values are very different from ours) but though this is true, what's nauseating about the Gentleman is that he recalls the worst examples of humanity. I will note that my last reread was ten years ago when the world seemed still to be a sane place.

Entry tags:

rl_25

(no subject)

The day was pillow hot and muggy so I stayed in and ordered Vietnamese delivery. The chicken and vermicelli wasn't as good as Pour Boy's but the Vietnamese coffee was excellent. Swiftered the kitchen floor, lick and promise but better than nothing. Then as the afternoon progressed the weather turned warm and dry instead of hot and muggy, so went out with clippers to attack the hedge and whatever of the linden I could reach. Practically the first thing I did was catch my thumb in the little lock thing so I bled all over the clippers, and my back went into spasm, and the linden branches were nowhere close enough to cut. Returned to the sofa and fan and the three books I'm reading, none of them eformat so no bicycling either. Thus my useless Canada Day.

Entry tags:

rl_25

(no subject)

Any good intentions I might have had re: accomplishment went away once the heavy grey clouds rolled in and the weather page started showing 90% chance of thunderstorms. Don't know if it did or will, and the rain actually didn't start till mid-afternoon, but I wasn't going outdoors with that hanging over me. Defrosted my bar fridge and that was all.

Tomorrow I may wash the kitchen floor, get to the laundromat (will it be open?), and cut down more greenery but for now I'm on the sofa in front of a fan turned up high. The linden is at its stinky sweet stage so I might dispense with the window fan overnight, because mug and stink don't make for pleasant sleep.

Rebuilding journal search again

We're having to rebuild the search server again (previously, previously). It will take a few days to reindex all the content.

Meanwhile search services should be running, but probably returning no results or incomplete results for most queries.

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We try to host Sustained Silent Reading at least once a month...

...with June's falling on this weekend. It was grand. There were four of us at final count; we sat down to read at 11:30 and didn't stop until 6:15 pm. The only time anyone spoke was when one of us got up to get more tea and asked if anyone else wanted any, too. I love that I can do this, and that I know multiple people who are also happy to spend their weekends doing this. (And it's even better now because having those other people with me means that when I sit down to read a book, I actually read the book, instead of pushing through a page or two and then picking up my phone "for just a minute" and doomscrolling updates about things I have no ability to affect for hours on end.)

I finished Kara Cooney's When Women Ruled the World, which was an incredibly frustrating book and Maggie O'Farrel's Hamnet, which was an incredibly good one (but which left me as melancholy as if I had doomscrolled the news for hours on end).

Afterwards we popped over to Near BBQ and introduced one of the SSRers to one of the employees, a Geek BBQ alum whom we hadn't seen in ages and with whom it was great to catch up. Then we walked SSRer A to the metro, with a short interlude to kill 30+ lanternfly nymphs on the way.( Read more... )

All in all, a pretty good weekend.

これで以上です。

Entry tags:

rl_25

(no subject)

Last night was thunder and rain, welcome enough in that the sidewalk up from my place has become a dog turd trap, ie some animal stepped in dog doo and meandered up the street leaving marks from here to Yarmouth. The marks are still faintly there today but at least better than it was. Also storm brought in, if not cooler, then dryer weather, so the day was sun and warm and breezily pleasant.

Back has been a literal pain all this week, doubtless from couch potatodom, and legs no better, but I made me go out to Wiener's to inquire about extend-a-cutters because the linden is becoming ridiculously umbrageous. On back order, Marty says, should be in at the end of the month. Umm, this *is* the end of the month, isn't it? so after Monday? Yeah, next week, sort of. OK, must come back next week. SND texted me to say the tree people couldn't come right away to do the cherry, so they'd decided to postpone trim until fall or maybe spring, and I foolishly said Maybe I should just get the whole tree done since lord knows it needs it, and they said Good idea happy to chip in. Which means calling up tree services moan groan tremble. But it really does need extreme cutting back.

Then had bento at my old(est) place and dropped by my secondary bank because BoM will give me fives. Except it didn't give me anything. Kept telling me to remove my card after I'd removed my card, then printed a receipt and shut down. So I had to stand in line and wait for a cashier to be free, while hoping there was a way to tell that the ATM actually hadn't dispensed the cash. Must be, surely, or else people would be constantly trying that scam? Anyway, guy had no doubts as to my honesty, voided the ATM withdrawal, and gave me my cash. But from now on I use the left hand machine only, just in case.

There's the yearly recycle event at Central Tech tomorrow. Might go down with that bag of batteries I found in the bunker, though Wiener's will take light bulbs if I remember to bring them. I must move to move but I seriously don't want to. Couch and beanbags and fan and books/ tablet is all I'm up for.

Entry tags:

reading_25,
rl

Aargh

Speaking of unlikable people: an e-book hold came in and I clicked on it because Miss Silver and her romantic young things and Inspector Littlejohn and the Isle of Man were getting a bit boring bicycle-reading-wise. But turns out Saint Death's Daughter is a 750 page thumper with two more people waiting to read it, so I must beaver away at it, because also I will forget who is who and why if I leave it. And pace the blurb, there are no warm fuzzies to be had with so far, just a lot of bloodthirsty types being bloody and mass-murdery. Not as rebarbative as Gideon the Ninth (which I bounced off of so hard I gave myself concussion), actually almost reminiscent of Flora Segunda and her Mama General, but still. Although the necromancer heroine is the nicest character around, and almost sweet with her revivified mouse skeletons.

Finally did a little gardening, mostly cleaning twigs and detritus from the front path. Still have balance problems when wearing shoes, though the spasming back doesn't help. Should probably book a massage some time. But weather remains unchancy: rained most of yesterday as coolth moved in, was supposed to rain today as heat returned, is supposed to rain tonight, nado nado.

Entry tags:

papuwa,
rl_25

(no subject)

So got out, first time since Friday, and had a conversation with an actual human being, the same one as Friday ie my physio. I am indeed growing feral: not quite at the anchorite stage yet, but not far from it.

Today was still warm but bearable: 27 is a far cry from 35, and the air was no longer the hot pillow over the face of the last three days. Will probably still use the AC tonight because it won't get under 22 until morning.

Neighbourhood FB page has people commenting on the use of a park that is not, in fact, in the neighbourhood. Complaints of people smoking, people smoking crack, people playing music, and most peculiarly, 'people praying in public'. I really wanted to jump in and comment, ' The horror, the horror!' but I may finally have learned in my old age not to poke the trolls.

Still haven't finished anything except my forgettable bicycle reading and another five or ten doujinshi. Which still give me unplaceable fantods for no good reason. It's not just the incestuous rape tropes that so abound in yaoi because even the gen ones do it. It may just be, as Finder Jean said lo these many decades, 'These people are all so unpleasant.'

Entry tags:

Sometimes life is wonderful.

Life has been A Lot this year due to work things, home things, health things, and ::gestures vaguely at the world:: things.

But sometimes it can also be absolutely lovely. A few days ago I ordered some CDs--including one from one of my all time favorite groups--from the website of a trad musician and left a quick comment in the delivery instructions box to the effect of Hey, if you ever have you guys's fourth CD back in stock, please let me know.

I hit "purchase", watched the transaction go through, and went about my evening.

A day later, an email with the musician's name in the "sender" field popped up in my inbox during an extremely trying afternoon. Surely not, I thought.

But guys. Guys. It was. It was a real, an-actual-human-sat-down-and-wrote-this email from the actual musician expressing surprise and pleasure that someone had bought these CDs, giving some updates about the group (including that one of the members had passed away two years ago--a fact I'd already known, but hearing it directly from this person who was his bandmate and friend...😭😭), and musing about the music the group had made together. The email contained both proper punctuation and grammar and proper emoji usage. The email also contained a proof of shipping photo of the packaged CDs in which the slightly messy interior of this person's car is visible. The whole thing is about as far away from social media influencer presentation as you can get and I cannot express how delightful I find this.

I replied saying that I'd been really sad to hear of the group member's passing and how much I absolutely loved their albums. He sent a second email thanking me again, adding that the group had never felt successful (PS: 😱) and that it really meant something whenever someone said they enjoyed their music.

And, just. It would be hard to overstate how 🤩🤩🤩 I am over this entire situation. I have been listening to this group for 27 years and this individual's other projects for almost as long. This group has had a HUGE influence on my own playing, stylistically and in terms of repertoire. Two of their CDs are in my in my top 25 most-played albums of all time. On top of that, this person is widely regarded as one of the best players of his instrument, in this genre, in the world. And it turns he is also a genuine and down-to-earth human being. I would never in a million years have imagined I would have any kind of interaction with him, let alone that he would act like I'm the one doing him a favor by appreciating the art he has helped put out into the world.

Seriously. This has made my week and will quite possibly be one of the high points of this entire year. So yeah. Sometimes life is wonderful.

これで以上です。

Entry tags:

japanese,
papuwa

(no subject)

Thursday is recycle day so I figured, since I'm stuck inside, it might be time to attack that stack of doujinshi that's been sitting out for yonks waiting to be sorted and trunned. This means reading through them just in case there's something I can't bear to part with: or at least to relive the greatest hits of 1993. Found that a very little goes a long way, partly because my Japanese has degraded to near unuseableness, partly because the dead past is so very dead. Not helped by trying to decipher the ones in penji-- written not printed Japanese-- which was always my downfall. Eventually I may decide that a fast flip-through is all that's required, but that day is not yet.

Entry tags:

rl_25

(no subject)

Wish being father to the thought, I keep thinking today is Tuesday. Not that tomorrow will be any cooler than today, but Wednesday will be, and I'd like it to be Wednesday. But much of the temporal displacement probably has to with being indoors three days running, which messes with my time sense.

I do very well with the window AC, run overnight and at intervals during the day, set to a conservative 21C for the latter and 18 for the former. Ran it Saturday night IIRC and thus kept the indoors from warming up. Otherwise fans work pretty well and I lounge about in my sleep shirt of thin breathable cotton. Unfortunately the brain does not want to work even in the cool house, so I doom scroll and play endless hours of solitaire and do not look at the news.

Entry tags:

(no subject)

The real heat arrives tomorrow so today was prime 'sit in front of fan and read' weather. Only of course I vacuumed, upstairs and down, because clean floors help with the depression that heat engenders. Also it kept looking like rain so I didn't go out. I kept wanting to order in but all my electronics needed charging simultaneously, and my phone- the semi-exception- wouldn't give me any restaurants on Skip the Dishes except a single Indian one. What I wanted was Vietnamese and enough to last me the three days of the heat dome. But I also have the makings of either mushroom or hamburger stroganoff and should make *that* before the heat arrives. Weather pages can't decide if it will be 30 or 35, which is a considerable difference. So yeah, in hunker down and survive mode here.

Noodle around on YouTube with Murderbot clips. Will never watch the whole thing but excerpts are nice. Only as someone else said, the theme song of Sanctuary Moon is both annoying and unforgettable, so I combat it with Holst's Thaxted.