Went to the Main Branch of the library for a low-intensity date with TYG yesterday. It’s a pretty building and they have lots of cool books.
Watched Godzilla Minus One yesterday and yes, it’s that awesome. Watched Ocean’s Twelve, which I remember enjoying in the theaters but it’s hard to see why — way too talky with not-as-cool-as-they-think dialog. Currently watching 1965’s Shakespeare Wallah (early Merchant/Ivory film) and writing this on commercial break (it’s one of those free-with-commercial streaming services).
Reading Terror, Inc., a collection of pulp thriller short stories by Lester Dent (mainly known as the writer on most of the Doc Savage series).
Making shepherd’s pie for dinner.
Dogs had checkup Thursday. Waiting on Trixie’s ultrasound/cardiac results, otherwise they’re in great shape.
Was recently out of town to visit relatives – so needing to spend today getting back in the the swing of things. Among other things, I need to see the latest Doctor Who so I can read the dozens of unread messages in my inbox – and if I can figure out why File 770 isn’t sending me comment notifications any more, that would be a win, too. Light at the end of the tunnel appearing for Hugo reading (I hope!)
Watched The Kitchen on Netflix which is a poignant slice of not distant enough dystopia with great performances by Kane Robinson aka Kano, grime pioneer (he was Sully in Top Boy) and Jedaiah Bannerman.
Still ploughing through Hugo reading & fearing I won’t make it in time! Currently enjoying The Saint of Bright Doors.
Lately I’ve been watching short SF films from DUST on Netflix. Apparently they’ve been around for years, but I never noticed them before. They range in length from half an hour to just five or six minutes. These are far from hard SF, and the stories are a bit off-beat, but the graphics are generally impressive, and they usually make you think. (Although I’m often thinking “what just happened?!”) Anyway, I’ve watched about a dozen of them, and I was wondering if anyone else has.
Today is the first Father’s Day since we adopted Travis, and it was very sweet having him give me a hug and wish me a happy Father’s Day this morning. The fact that he immediately asked for screen time didn’t really detract from it. 🙂
Walter (16 months now) has acquired the strength, height, and skill to open doors, so we’ve been putting locks on things like the bathroom doors. Anyone with a penny can unlock them, of course, but a) he won’t figure that out for a few more years (I think) and b) if he manages to lock himself in a bathroom, we’ll be able to easily get him out.
For over a year, Travis has been begging to be allowed to fire a gun. I grew up around guns, so I’m more comfortable with them than Eric is, but we’re not gun people (we certainly don’t have one in the house), and we really didn’t want to encourage this. But he persisted, so I finally told him he could only do it if supervised by the Boy Scouts.
His current scout masters don’t do this, but last month, at Scout Camp, he finally got to fire a real gun–a .22 rifle–under careful adult supervision. Here’s what the scout master had to say about his performance:
<blockquote>By the way, Travis was very proud of his performance on the .22 rifle range at camporee two weeks ago (I think he kept his targets). He’s left eye dominant and right handed which creates a dilemma when shooting rifle or archery. After switching to shooting left handed, he put 9 shots in [a bull’s eye] the diameter the size of a quarter. That’s a significant level of marksmanship. Summer camp offers the rifle shooting and archery merit badges and I would love to see Travis set a goal to earn one of these badges.</blockquote>
Pretty impressive for his first time ever to handle a firearm! We’re still not totally thrilled, but it’s important to recognize Travis’s accomplishments, and he definitely has some real talents, even if cooking, drawing, playing piano and guitar, and shooting guns make for an odd mix. (But he’d fit right into a Western, I think!) 🙂
My mother is also right-handed and left-eyed, and used to talk about how when she was at a range, the person running the range kept staring at her trying to figure out what was wrong with this image.
When golfing, she also drives right-handed but prefers to putt left-handed.
I’m whatever the opposite of ambidextrous is called. Like, teachers used to see how badly I used my right to write etc and think “oh maybe he’s left handed” and no, no, the left hand was terrible as well 🙂
I knew an archer who shot recurve right handed and compound left-handed. Pretty decently, too.
(Also famously the guy that my cat Djelibhien of the “everyone exists to pet me and I don’t care otherwise” attitude decided needed to be Chaperoned around me. Right until we broke up a few weeks later and he came by just as a friend. Then suddenly she was fine with him. She never reacted that way to anyone else I dated, during or after.)
We’re in a heat dome here in Arkansas, so I’m staying inside reading. The Seige of Burning Grass, by Premee Mohamed currently, which is not exactly enjoyable (a pacifist caught in a war of attrition on a fantasy world) but definitely worth reading.
So I’ve reach the first episode of the season five of Spooks where the shit hits the fan when the various aspects of the deep state in the quise of the intelligence services have gone to war against each other. Or so it seems. Fascinating story here.
I’m still listening to the Wayfarers series. Great stuff they are. And I reading N.K. Jemsin’s Hugo winning Far Sector Green Lantern GN.
I did shrimp with bell peppers and onions with udon noodles with sweet sesame sauce tonight.
EGG had his annual physical this week and much trauma was had by all. Even tranquilized, he’s hard to jam into the carrier, which he pooped in both coming and going, with the homeward trip extra-liquid. Grubby boy. They trimmed his claws, and took blood. Will get the blood results tomorrow but the exam was fine. He’s got great teeth. Last year’s results showed he’ll get kidney failure in the next few years, but as he’s almost 18, duh.
Our 43rd anniversary is this week. Not a special number, and EGG’s physical was $400, so we will be celebrating quietly with a slightly-higher-priced pizza than our usual.
I have 2 weeks more of free KU. Most of my reading has been magazines. So much good science and SF! Haven’t come across anything Hugo-worthy in the current issues of F&SF and Asimov’s, but I’ve still got Analog to go. Enjoyed several, though.
Survived helping with convocation. It was a weird mix of stuff that was organized very well such as getting grads and speakers in and out and stuff was less well organized. Usher training and directives were perfunctory.I was in theory a supervisor, although my staff weren’t on listening. This got interesting on the final day, when one of them took to blocking doors open to make it less labour intensive (his labour) to get people in and out. The event people were very firm that entry into the space had to be closely monitored and we had to make sure people who exited went where they said they were going [1]. No getting in unless a human on the inside opened the door. However, this meant at least two ushers had to be staged at intervening doors if people used the washroom, three if someone was leaving the building. (Nobody was locked in. It’s not actually possible to do that. It’s crash bars from the core to the exterior)
This guy really didn’t want to bother as he had a cute co-ed [2] he wanted to chat up so any time he went near a door it got wedged open. Unfortunately, I was in that awkward zone where I’d be held responsible if someone got in but wasn’t able just fire the guy. I ended up hiding all the door wedges. Security was like the event: some of it handled well, other parts not so well. For example, I got anywhere I wanted by being 63, putting on my tech face, and saying “staff”. Younger people got grilled and had to show ID.
1 I assume this is because of the on-going protest camp on campus.
2: She was also an usher but not one of mine. Somewhere, a supervisor was missing staff. I wonder if there were consequences?
Got an email to the effect the protesters attended a Board of Governors meeting uninvited. The police were called. Our current president takes his personal security very seriously (1) so I expect there will be fallout from this.
1: Pretty much his first reaction to the terrorist incident in Hagey was to improve security … on his office on the other side of campus. No changes to Hagey that I can see.
Winter, our elder cat and he of the urinary issues that nearly killed him last spring/summer came up limping. It, after xrays, has been diagnosed as a sprain and this means no running or jumping up on things for two weeks. We ended up buying a medium sized kennel in which poor Winter now lives in most of the time except when he can be supervised prowling around the house. Some of the funds from last year we had left over went for paying for this misadventure, although I’d had that money earmarked for a procedure the other cat needs…
I found a lump in the breast we did not examine with a fine toothed comb earlier this year. So here we go again!
The dryer broke and while Dad thinks it’s a relatively simple fix, he does have to practically disassemble the thing to fix it.
Oh, they’re finally starting the kitchen reassembly process. This involves packing out the living room, for long and complicated reasons involving paint and a three quarter high wall between the kitchen and the living room. Dad is not totally mad — he may pay the extra for the flooring guys to do the living room when they do the kitchen and hall. We’ll see, it’s all up in the air.
I haven’t been doing as much reading as I’d like, nor videogaming. It is what it is. Maybe I’ll do more when I’m trapped in a room with Tabby and not much else to do. We’ll see.
I finished reading Octavia Butler’s Lilith’s Brood and as a bonus, listened to an interview she did for public radio. Also read Thornhedge (Kingfisher) and Winter’s Gifts (Aaronovitch, Rivers of London series). Enjoyed all.
Watched Dream Scenario, Under the Skin, and Nocturnal Creatures. Mixed feelings, particularly about the last.
While I was Up Over, a family member gifted me a pair of wireless headphones. Excellent for music, and they’ll also be good for podcasts and the short films from DUST that Greg mentioned. At least some of those are on YouTube.
Kind of relieved that I’m not in the Hugo reading race, though I’ve been following the discussion and I may eventually get to more of the nominated works.
To all here: good health, fine weather, and happy times with companions both quadruped and biped.
Yes! The intelligence-versus-hierarchy contradiction isn’t extinguished. Yet. But it’s early days in the Human-Oankali alliance, the emergent properties of which are just beginning to show. The final scenes in the book are alive with potential; Butler’s command of language is superb!
Gearing up to the end of the school year. Had my daughter’s grade 7 intake meeting, which took an hour and a half, mostly talking about her strengths and strategies for helping her in school. Otherwise, all the usual routines.
Watched Godzilla Minus One, which my husband was surprised to hear me requesting. Haven’t watched the latest Doctor Who yet; maybe tonight, but knowing it’s the first half of a two parter, we may wait longer.
Also finally caught up on the end of Season Two of Loki, which… issues with the actor of He Who Remains aside, was good as a story but ultimately seemed to have the wrong tone — or maybe chose the wrong character as the vehicle. (And I don’t mean He Who Remains, though he never did become even slightly convincing as a threat). Getting even from the Loki of Ragnarok to this Loki would have been a stretch – and getting there straight from the Avengers, including with an added successful escape, just felt weirdly wrong. The worst part is that season one called out this very thing early on: “Doesn’t really sound like a God of Mischief to me…”
Also just finished reading Alexandra Rowland’s Running Close to the Wind, a pirate yarn which is very very high on my list right now of new favourites. The main character is an utter gremlin of a person, whiny and shrill and constantly horny, and yet you find yourself cheering for him at the weirdest times, even when thinking you’d absolutely hate hanging around near him in real life (or maybe you wouldn’t?). It’s ridiculously funny, everyone in it is some kind of utterly mad – and the climax of the book is, naturally, a cake competition. But it’s that kind of absurd funny that layers over a whole lot of actual substance. It’s been compared to Pratchett at least twice (a back cover blurb and a review), and while Pratchett could never have written these characters, there are definitely some resemblances.
It’s about pirates, and a stolen secret that could change the world, about how hard truth can be, about how and why we take the oaths we take and connect to the people we connect to, about how the assumptions behind colonialism in a macrocosm are reflected in the microcosm of how we treat the people who do service jobs, about scientific study, about probability and absurd quantities of luck. And so much of it is about a silly song about a rained-on cat.
I am deeply annoyed the library doesn’t have any of her works – at least I’m willing and able to spend a bunch of money on looking at her back catalogue.
Starting to catch up on Lois McMaster Bujold’s Penric novellas.
It’s been cold here, at least by our standards, but we’ve finally had enough rain that I can dig in the garden and the soil is wet below the surface layer. Finally got my youngest to the dermatologist appointment we made in February – in the four month gap the eczema that was bothering him over the summer cleared up and a whole new batch started. But the dermatologist has helped a lot – the latest round of eczema/dermatitis has been on his face, which has been very difficult for a teenager to deal with.
So one of the clivias here started bloomed last week. I’ve had it but six weeks and it had an extraordinary growth spurt nearly doubling its size in that time. I am told that it has pink blossoms by several individuals you’ve been here but being color blind in the extreme I can’t say what color they are as they look orange to me.
I think the sunshine would prolly fry them really, really fast.
It reached a high yesterday of 9 2 f. (33 f.) and was a comfortable, for me only I suspect, 86 f. (30 c.) in the apartment. Not sweating and not feeling heat really is interesting. That part of the brain really cud get severely damaged. Now listening Iain M. Banks’ The Hydrogen Sonata which has early one of the truly weirdest musical instruments in SF. Love to a drawing of it, or see it built
###
At sunset above the plains of Kwaalon, on a dark, high terrace balanced on a glittering black swirl of architecture forming ea relatively microscopic part of the equatorial Girdlecity of Xown, Vyr Cossont – Lieutenant Commander (reserve) Vyr Cossont, to give her her full title – sat, performing part of T. C. Vilabier’s 26th String-Specific Sonata For An Instrument Yet To Be Invented, catalogue number MW 1211, on one of the few surviving examples of the instrument developed specifically to play the piece, the notoriously difficult, temperamental and tonally challenged Antagonistic Undecagonstring – or elevenstring, as it was commonly known.T. C. Vilabier’s 26th String-Specific Sonata For An Instrument Yet To Be Invented, MW 1211, was more usually known as “The Hydrogen Sonata”.The elevenstring was an acoustic instrument – usually bowed though occasionally plucked – of considerable antiquity and even more notable size. Standing over two metres tall, one metre across and more than one and a half deep, it required its player both to straddle it and to sit within it; poised on the small saddle forming part of the base of the hollow around which the rest of the instrument bulked like a giant deformed ring, the player used both legs to create two-thirds of a supporting tripod for the instrument, the final third being formed by a single spar protruding from its base like an inelegantly substantial walking stick.
The first examples had been made of wood, though later versions had been constructed of plastic, metal, grown shell and artificial bone; the one Vyr Cossont owned and was playing was mostly carbon fibre, which had long been the most common and traditional material.
Cossont reached the end of one particularly taxing section of the piece and took a rest. She stretched her back, flexed her aching feet inside her slippers – the elevenstring required that its player use two small pedals to tamp certain strings, while their heels balanced the weight of both player and instrument – and placed the instrument’s two bows across the front of the little saddle she sat on.
Good news about EGG. Personality-wise he seems a lot like our Casper, who moans & groans all the time, except while sleeping. I’m hungry, I’m bored, I need someone to roughhouse with, I wanna go in the garage and see if there’s a cockroach to kill. One of our previous cats (the one next to my shoe in my avatar) was also chatty, but she wasn’t bellyaching so much as making polite conversation. She was a sweetie.
Camestros Felapton 
34 responses to “Susan’s Salon 16-17 June 2024”
Went to the Main Branch of the library for a low-intensity date with TYG yesterday. It’s a pretty building and they have lots of cool books.
Watched Godzilla Minus One yesterday and yes, it’s that awesome. Watched Ocean’s Twelve, which I remember enjoying in the theaters but it’s hard to see why — way too talky with not-as-cool-as-they-think dialog. Currently watching 1965’s Shakespeare Wallah (early Merchant/Ivory film) and writing this on commercial break (it’s one of those free-with-commercial streaming services).
Reading Terror, Inc., a collection of pulp thriller short stories by Lester Dent (mainly known as the writer on most of the Doc Savage series).
Making shepherd’s pie for dinner.
Dogs had checkup Thursday. Waiting on Trixie’s ultrasound/cardiac results, otherwise they’re in great shape.
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Was recently out of town to visit relatives – so needing to spend today getting back in the the swing of things. Among other things, I need to see the latest Doctor Who so I can read the dozens of unread messages in my inbox – and if I can figure out why File 770 isn’t sending me comment notifications any more, that would be a win, too. Light at the end of the tunnel appearing for Hugo reading (I hope!)
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Watched The Kitchen on Netflix which is a poignant slice of not distant enough dystopia with great performances by Kane Robinson aka Kano, grime pioneer (he was Sully in Top Boy) and Jedaiah Bannerman.
Still ploughing through Hugo reading & fearing I won’t make it in time! Currently enjoying The Saint of Bright Doors.
LikeLiked by 2 people
Lately I’ve been watching short SF films from DUST on Netflix. Apparently they’ve been around for years, but I never noticed them before. They range in length from half an hour to just five or six minutes. These are far from hard SF, and the stories are a bit off-beat, but the graphics are generally impressive, and they usually make you think. (Although I’m often thinking “what just happened?!”) Anyway, I’ve watched about a dozen of them, and I was wondering if anyone else has.
Today is the first Father’s Day since we adopted Travis, and it was very sweet having him give me a hug and wish me a happy Father’s Day this morning. The fact that he immediately asked for screen time didn’t really detract from it. 🙂
Walter (16 months now) has acquired the strength, height, and skill to open doors, so we’ve been putting locks on things like the bathroom doors. Anyone with a penny can unlock them, of course, but a) he won’t figure that out for a few more years (I think) and b) if he manages to lock himself in a bathroom, we’ll be able to easily get him out.
For over a year, Travis has been begging to be allowed to fire a gun. I grew up around guns, so I’m more comfortable with them than Eric is, but we’re not gun people (we certainly don’t have one in the house), and we really didn’t want to encourage this. But he persisted, so I finally told him he could only do it if supervised by the Boy Scouts.
His current scout masters don’t do this, but last month, at Scout Camp, he finally got to fire a real gun–a .22 rifle–under careful adult supervision. Here’s what the scout master had to say about his performance:
<blockquote>By the way, Travis was very proud of his performance on the .22 rifle range at camporee two weeks ago (I think he kept his targets). He’s left eye dominant and right handed which creates a dilemma when shooting rifle or archery. After switching to shooting left handed, he put 9 shots in [a bull’s eye] the diameter the size of a quarter. That’s a significant level of marksmanship. Summer camp offers the rifle shooting and archery merit badges and I would love to see Travis set a goal to earn one of these badges.</blockquote>
Pretty impressive for his first time ever to handle a firearm! We’re still not totally thrilled, but it’s important to recognize Travis’s accomplishments, and he definitely has some real talents, even if cooking, drawing, playing piano and guitar, and shooting guns make for an odd mix. (But he’d fit right into a Western, I think!) 🙂
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I’m right-handed and left-eyed too and I probably couldn’t do that well then or now. Tell Travis I’m impressed.
Show us the new tall Walter, pretty please?
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My mother is also right-handed and left-eyed, and used to talk about how when she was at a range, the person running the range kept staring at her trying to figure out what was wrong with this image.
When golfing, she also drives right-handed but prefers to putt left-handed.
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I’m right-handed but I shoot arrows left-handed and throw knives the same way (not well in either case)
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I’m whatever the opposite of ambidextrous is called. Like, teachers used to see how badly I used my right to write etc and think “oh maybe he’s left handed” and no, no, the left hand was terrible as well 🙂
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I knew an archer who shot recurve right handed and compound left-handed. Pretty decently, too.
(Also famously the guy that my cat Djelibhien of the “everyone exists to pet me and I don’t care otherwise” attitude decided needed to be Chaperoned around me. Right until we broke up a few weeks later and he came by just as a friend. Then suddenly she was fine with him. She never reacted that way to anyone else I dated, during or after.)
LikeLiked by 1 person
We’re in a heat dome here in Arkansas, so I’m staying inside reading. The Seige of Burning Grass, by Premee Mohamed currently, which is not exactly enjoyable (a pacifist caught in a war of attrition on a fantasy world) but definitely worth reading.
LikeLiked by 3 people
So I’ve reach the first episode of the season five of Spooks where the shit hits the fan when the various aspects of the deep state in the quise of the intelligence services have gone to war against each other. Or so it seems. Fascinating story here.
I’m still listening to the Wayfarers series. Great stuff they are. And I reading N.K. Jemsin’s Hugo winning Far Sector Green Lantern GN.
I did shrimp with bell peppers and onions with udon noodles with sweet sesame sauce tonight.
LikeLiked by 3 people
It’s been blessedly cool this week. In the 70s.
EGG had his annual physical this week and much trauma was had by all. Even tranquilized, he’s hard to jam into the carrier, which he pooped in both coming and going, with the homeward trip extra-liquid. Grubby boy. They trimmed his claws, and took blood. Will get the blood results tomorrow but the exam was fine. He’s got great teeth. Last year’s results showed he’ll get kidney failure in the next few years, but as he’s almost 18, duh.
Our 43rd anniversary is this week. Not a special number, and EGG’s physical was $400, so we will be celebrating quietly with a slightly-higher-priced pizza than our usual.
I have 2 weeks more of free KU. Most of my reading has been magazines. So much good science and SF! Haven’t come across anything Hugo-worthy in the current issues of F&SF and Asimov’s, but I’ve still got Analog to go. Enjoyed several, though.
LikeLiked by 3 people
Survived helping with convocation. It was a weird mix of stuff that was organized very well such as getting grads and speakers in and out and stuff was less well organized. Usher training and directives were perfunctory.I was in theory a supervisor, although my staff weren’t on listening. This got interesting on the final day, when one of them took to blocking doors open to make it less labour intensive (his labour) to get people in and out. The event people were very firm that entry into the space had to be closely monitored and we had to make sure people who exited went where they said they were going [1]. No getting in unless a human on the inside opened the door. However, this meant at least two ushers had to be staged at intervening doors if people used the washroom, three if someone was leaving the building. (Nobody was locked in. It’s not actually possible to do that. It’s crash bars from the core to the exterior)
This guy really didn’t want to bother as he had a cute co-ed [2] he wanted to chat up so any time he went near a door it got wedged open. Unfortunately, I was in that awkward zone where I’d be held responsible if someone got in but wasn’t able just fire the guy. I ended up hiding all the door wedges. Security was like the event: some of it handled well, other parts not so well. For example, I got anywhere I wanted by being 63, putting on my tech face, and saying “staff”. Younger people got grilled and had to show ID.
1 I assume this is because of the on-going protest camp on campus.
2: She was also an usher but not one of mine. Somewhere, a supervisor was missing staff. I wonder if there were consequences?
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Got an email to the effect the protesters attended a Board of Governors meeting uninvited. The police were called. Our current president takes his personal security very seriously (1) so I expect there will be fallout from this.
1: Pretty much his first reaction to the terrorist incident in Hagey was to improve security … on his office on the other side of campus. No changes to Hagey that I can see.
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It’s been an interesting couple of weeks.
I haven’t been doing as much reading as I’d like, nor videogaming. It is what it is. Maybe I’ll do more when I’m trapped in a room with Tabby and not much else to do. We’ll see.
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(crap, forgot to hit the clickybutton)
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Sorry to hear about 2. Hope you get an all-clear.
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Rough week. Best wishes. I’ve had experience with confined cats and it’s no fun.
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Yeah, we’re already discovering that he likes to sleep in his litterbox. Once he’s healed up, he’s going to get a bath whether he likes it or not.
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We were able to avoid that at least.
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Oh. So many hugs. And it’s stupid hot there too.
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I finished reading Octavia Butler’s Lilith’s Brood and as a bonus, listened to an interview she did for public radio. Also read Thornhedge (Kingfisher) and Winter’s Gifts (Aaronovitch, Rivers of London series). Enjoyed all.
Watched Dream Scenario, Under the Skin, and Nocturnal Creatures. Mixed feelings, particularly about the last.
While I was Up Over, a family member gifted me a pair of wireless headphones. Excellent for music, and they’ll also be good for podcasts and the short films from DUST that Greg mentioned. At least some of those are on YouTube.
Kind of relieved that I’m not in the Hugo reading race, though I’ve been following the discussion and I may eventually get to more of the nominated works.
To all here: good health, fine weather, and happy times with companions both quadruped and biped.
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The last book in Lilith’s Brood is my favorite.
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Yes! The intelligence-versus-hierarchy contradiction isn’t extinguished. Yet. But it’s early days in the Human-Oankali alliance, the emergent properties of which are just beginning to show. The final scenes in the book are alive with potential; Butler’s command of language is superb!
LikeLike
Gearing up to the end of the school year. Had my daughter’s grade 7 intake meeting, which took an hour and a half, mostly talking about her strengths and strategies for helping her in school. Otherwise, all the usual routines.
Watched Godzilla Minus One, which my husband was surprised to hear me requesting. Haven’t watched the latest Doctor Who yet; maybe tonight, but knowing it’s the first half of a two parter, we may wait longer.
Also finally caught up on the end of Season Two of Loki, which… issues with the actor of He Who Remains aside, was good as a story but ultimately seemed to have the wrong tone — or maybe chose the wrong character as the vehicle. (And I don’t mean He Who Remains, though he never did become even slightly convincing as a threat). Getting even from the Loki of Ragnarok to this Loki would have been a stretch – and getting there straight from the Avengers, including with an added successful escape, just felt weirdly wrong. The worst part is that season one called out this very thing early on: “Doesn’t really sound like a God of Mischief to me…”
Also just finished reading Alexandra Rowland’s Running Close to the Wind, a pirate yarn which is very very high on my list right now of new favourites. The main character is an utter gremlin of a person, whiny and shrill and constantly horny, and yet you find yourself cheering for him at the weirdest times, even when thinking you’d absolutely hate hanging around near him in real life (or maybe you wouldn’t?). It’s ridiculously funny, everyone in it is some kind of utterly mad – and the climax of the book is, naturally, a cake competition. But it’s that kind of absurd funny that layers over a whole lot of actual substance. It’s been compared to Pratchett at least twice (a back cover blurb and a review), and while Pratchett could never have written these characters, there are definitely some resemblances.
It’s about pirates, and a stolen secret that could change the world, about how hard truth can be, about how and why we take the oaths we take and connect to the people we connect to, about how the assumptions behind colonialism in a macrocosm are reflected in the microcosm of how we treat the people who do service jobs, about scientific study, about probability and absurd quantities of luck. And so much of it is about a silly song about a rained-on cat.
I am deeply annoyed the library doesn’t have any of her works – at least I’m willing and able to spend a bunch of money on looking at her back catalogue.
Starting to catch up on Lois McMaster Bujold’s Penric novellas.
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I think I remember when she was in kindergarten, which makes me feel old.
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I remember before she was born… though sometimes I feel like I barely recall what that was like.
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It’s been cold here, at least by our standards, but we’ve finally had enough rain that I can dig in the garden and the soil is wet below the surface layer. Finally got my youngest to the dermatologist appointment we made in February – in the four month gap the eczema that was bothering him over the summer cleared up and a whole new batch started. But the dermatologist has helped a lot – the latest round of eczema/dermatitis has been on his face, which has been very difficult for a teenager to deal with.
LikeLiked by 3 people
So one of the clivias here started bloomed last week. I’ve had it but six weeks and it had an extraordinary growth spurt nearly doubling its size in that time. I am told that it has pink blossoms by several individuals you’ve been here but being color blind in the extreme I can’t say what color they are as they look orange to me.
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I see it’s warm enough by you that your plants could be living outside this week!
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I think the sunshine would prolly fry them really, really fast.
It reached a high yesterday of 9 2 f. (33 f.) and was a comfortable, for me only I suspect, 86 f. (30 c.) in the apartment. Not sweating and not feeling heat really is interesting. That part of the brain really cud get severely damaged. Now listening Iain M. Banks’ The Hydrogen Sonata which has early one of the truly weirdest musical instruments in SF. Love to a drawing of it, or see it built
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At sunset above the plains of Kwaalon, on a dark, high terrace balanced on a glittering black swirl of architecture forming ea relatively microscopic part of the equatorial Girdlecity of Xown, Vyr Cossont – Lieutenant Commander (reserve) Vyr Cossont, to give her her full title – sat, performing part of T. C. Vilabier’s 26th String-Specific Sonata For An Instrument Yet To Be Invented, catalogue number MW 1211, on one of the few surviving examples of the instrument developed specifically to play the piece, the notoriously difficult, temperamental and tonally challenged Antagonistic Undecagonstring – or elevenstring, as it was commonly known.T. C. Vilabier’s 26th String-Specific Sonata For An Instrument Yet To Be Invented, MW 1211, was more usually known as “The Hydrogen Sonata”.The elevenstring was an acoustic instrument – usually bowed though occasionally plucked – of considerable antiquity and even more notable size. Standing over two metres tall, one metre across and more than one and a half deep, it required its player both to straddle it and to sit within it; poised on the small saddle forming part of the base of the hollow around which the rest of the instrument bulked like a giant deformed ring, the player used both legs to create two-thirds of a supporting tripod for the instrument, the final third being formed by a single spar protruding from its base like an inelegantly substantial walking stick.
The first examples had been made of wood, though later versions had been constructed of plastic, metal, grown shell and artificial bone; the one Vyr Cossont owned and was playing was mostly carbon fibre, which had long been the most common and traditional material.
Cossont reached the end of one particularly taxing section of the piece and took a rest. She stretched her back, flexed her aching feet inside her slippers – the elevenstring required that its player use two small pedals to tamp certain strings, while their heels balanced the weight of both player and instrument – and placed the instrument’s two bows across the front of the little saddle she sat on.
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EGG’s bloodwork all came back great for any age, let alone his advanced one. The liver enzymes were very slightly off, but not to be worried about.
The celebratory pizza was good, though EGG nearly starved to death while no hoomanz were available. Complaints continued after food.
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Good news about EGG. Personality-wise he seems a lot like our Casper, who moans & groans all the time, except while sleeping. I’m hungry, I’m bored, I need someone to roughhouse with, I wanna go in the garage and see if there’s a cockroach to kill. One of our previous cats (the one next to my shoe in my avatar) was also chatty, but she wasn’t bellyaching so much as making polite conversation. She was a sweetie.
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As TYG sums up this attitude: “Many years ago, a pet waited patiently for their food without getting any. We will NEVER forget!”
Cool EGG’s doing so well.
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