Camestros Felapton

FELAPTONL

Susan’s Salon: 2020 July 5/6

The first open thread in July, for people to just chat about whatever. Posted early Monday Sydney time (still Sunday in most places) . It’s OK to be sad, worried, angry or happy (or all of those things at once). Please feel free to post either troubling news or pleasant distractions in the comments for this open thread. [However, no cranky conflicts between each other in the comments. Links, videos, cat pictures etc are fine – be nice to one another!] Whatever you like but be nice to one another 😇

Wear a mask while posting a comment.

camestrosfelapton

40 responses to “Susan’s Salon: 2020 July 5/6”

  1. I posted my happy smiling masked face for you on twitter, but in the interests of transparency, as I keyboard these words, I’m not masked. On the other hand, I’ve never heard of the COVID virus getting inside the web. 😉

    Liked by 3 people

  3. Enjoyed the fireworks last night, but tired today. The neighbors behind us put on a real professional level show from about 10 to 10:40 pm. Doesn’t really get completely dark here until about 10 so it can’t be any earlier. Knew I had to be up early, but wouldn’t be able to sleep. So I just watched and resigned myself to drinking lots of coffee today.

    Re-reading Monstress vol 1 – 3 before starting vol 4. I treated myself to the nice omnibus hardcover edition. Just started Deeplight by Frances Hardinge. Glad we now have an extra week to read since the Hugo voting deadline has been extended. Hope they do finally get it open by the promised July 8th.

    Like

  4. Just came back from a short vacation yesterday. I reread the first three books of Scalzis Old Man Wars and found out that it’s YA sort of. I’m sugar shocked, now (in a literary sense). I need to compensate – Bodard‘s new novella came handy and I have some Tiptree stories running.

    Like

    • Well only the fourth “Zoe’s Tale” was marketed as YAish. The first 3 and the latest two OMW novels are for adults.

      Like

      • I don’t really care how it is marketed. I analyzed it wrt to characterization, language etc. and that was my conclusion

        Like

  5. Cam, this is kind of advertising so feel free to send me down to join The Phantom in spam filter hell…

    Finally figured out a way to run our canal boat holidays in Covid safe way and will finally start working at the beginning of next month. It’s still going to be a horrible year financially, but maybe less so if this idea works out.

    Liked by 1 person

    • Ooh! My father has been on two canal boat holidays and loved both of them.

      Like

      • Around a third of our usual guests come from Europe, North America or the Antipodes so hoping that the UK is a safe holiday destination next summer.

        The English canals are lovely. It’s been very strange to see them so quiet for the last few months. The hire boats were finally let loose last Saturday and we’ve already had two of them bump our boats as they went past.

        Like

  6. For the second time in fourteen months, I’m in-hospital being treated for a severe Staphylococcus infection. That means a stay of forty three days (at a minimum) provided the antibiotics do their job. I also destroyed my right knee crossing the street which meant it got rebuilt and then I shattered it all over again by falling in my flat three weeks ago and shattering every bone in the knee.

    Thank the Summer Queen for iPad technology so I can not only keep maintaining the WordPress sites I get paid for, but also as a way of staying connecting to, well, everything. And of course I’ve got it loaded with books to read as well as access to several streaming serviceS.

    Like

  7. Like lots of people, I watched Hamilton at the weekend. I did enjoy it very much but I’m not writing a review because there are a gazillion reviews around and I don’t think I have anything to say that hasn’t already been said better. Great story, weak history, great fiction…

    Like

  8. Been a busy weekend, so naturally I’ve been entirely unproductive today lol. My friends have gotten me hooked on an online Risk game (Warzone – it’s basically risk except simultaneous turns ala diplomacy and no dice by default) which has taken up way too much of my thinking. On the other hand, long turns are perfect times for me to listen to audiobooks (currently Lori Lee’s “Forest of Souls”) so it’s productive procrastination!

    Also I read an advance copy of The Worst of All Possible Worlds yesterday, Alex White’s capper to his Salvagers space opera trilogy which is just so much damn fun – I’d intended like all books that long to split it over 2 days, but binged it in one instead. Oops.

    Like

  10. Fireworks are illegal here but it hasn’t stopped the neighbors from making noise every night for weeks now. Last night there were at least some pretty sparkles to go with. Booms continued till after 1 AM. Watched the impressive NYC fireworks on TV. Awakened by a few crackle-booms this morning. When one lives in a neighborhood where many residents have ancestral connections to either Mexico or China; one gets fireworks. The credentials don’t mind. The cops were off in the more flammable and/or richer areas of town and I didn’t hear a fire truck or ambulance so everyone must have been all right. Got a nap earlier today.

    The JKR meltdown has me contemplating re-reading Diane Duane’s FAR superior “Young Wizards” series. IIRC she’s only amusing on Twitter, and believes all sex/gender lives are valid. Give those books to the younger set instead. The “Millennium Edition” versions have such exotic things as computers and there’s always been POC heroes, unlike Potter. And kitty and alien wizards.

    Agents of SHIELD brought all the feels and some sad this week, but still some laughs and next week’s preview looks like fun time is back. I love it when a TV show gets to go out on its own terms.

    @Cat E: I am distressed on your behalf! How terrible. At least you have streaming and plenty of time to do it in. And people around you don’t object to masks and handwashing. May you always have maximum bars and battery charge.

    We plan to watch “Hamilton” when the local streaming traffic thereof dies down. It’s not like I don’t already know how it ends. 🙂

    Liked by 1 person

  11. This week’s SFF reading was Andy Weir’s Artemis. I had low expectations but while it’s not great literature, I enjoyed it.

    Meanwhile, I have begun the process of applying for Turkish citizenship which means I have a summer of painful and byzantine bureaucracy to look forward to.

    Liked by 1 person

  14. I spent the (American) holiday weekend up in far northern California and southern Oregon to get a couple county high points. Apart from missing out on Del Norte’s high point due to navigation failure (“you are in a maze of twisty little Forest Service roads, all alike”) it was a fun weekend away from everything! No fireworks and no noisy neighbors.

    The downside is that with all the driving and hiking I didn’t have time to read — planning on starting The Rosewater Redemption after work today. With the extended deadline I’m hoping I might finish Series after all, although that’s really going to depend on when the library’s copy of Luna: Moon Rising shows up.

    Like

    • That took them a long time. They’ll have a lot of refunds to handle I should imagine.

      //The Dragon Awards, a fan’s choice awards program to recognize the very best in science fiction and fantasy literature, comics, gaming, and filmed entertainment, will continue as planned. //

      That answers that question 🙂

      Like

      • You can roll over your membership to next year, which is what we did.
        “In its place, Dragon Con will hold a live-streamed convention free to the universe and featuring classic panels and original programming for 2020.”
        Now I’m curious as to what makes a panel classic. I should start a betting pool on who appears in these panels.

        Liked by 3 people

  17. The Dragon Awards are still on for this year.
    “The Dragon Awards, a fan’s choice awards program to recognize the very best in science fiction and fantasy literature, comics, gaming, and filmed entertainment, will continue as planned.”
    Blech

    Liked by 2 people

    • I can’t find their boilerplate “sweepstakes” verbiage. Maybe it’s self-isolating.

      Also can’t believe they waited this long to cancel and even spent any time considering throwing a smaller event.

      Dis no way to run a choo-choo.

      Liked by 1 person

  18. Discovered a yellow jacket/ wasp nest behind the outside window frame on a second storey window yesterday. They were going in on both sides (although it was mid-day and I still only saw a couple of them, so I am hoping it’s not too big). They have a date with doom on Friday at 11.

    …. and then I remembered the honey badger video from 2011 where honey badger sticks his head in a house of bees and gets stung like a thousand times and doesn’t care. I had to go watch it again. Yep, that deadpan voice-over commentary still makes me laugh.

    Liked by 1 person

    • Eek! Followed by LOL.

      We’ve suffered an invasion of ants, I had to get out fresh plates for the credentials’ breakfast and spray mammal-safe stuff around. So the whole house smells like rosemary. I miss the spray we used to get that smelled like mint.

      Liked by 1 person

      • I spent like an hour watching wasp nest removal videos on YouTube — fascinating and horrifying all at once, and now that I know something’s going on there, I feel like I hear buzzing all the time. Wasps can chew right through your wall and into your house! Gah! Tomorrow can’t come fast enough. (Sorry Nature! Bees still welcome though).

        And my pandemic summer of diverting funds from travel to home improvements continue. All shower heads and tub faucets replaced and upgraded this week. Window and door screens washed and repaired. And … most happily of all… the landscape designer turned up today and took measurements for my massive front and back yard landscape re-do. So excited! Weedscape begone! All invited for appropriately distanced sangria and guac in September!

        Liked by 1 person

  19. I’m terribly proud of myself for having written this, and am sharing it forthwith. It’s a lost adventure of Mr. Peabody and Sherman, as they go back to Whitechapel, London, in the year 1888 to meet that notorious cut-up, Jack the Ripper.

    Liked by 1 person

Blog at WordPress.com.