liralen | Reading

Stressful day, also stressful preceding night. Bref: toilet started leaking nonstop yesterday, not gushing but chronic trickle as well as its wonted 5 second whoosh. Called plumber first thing this morning and emailed back and forth all day about replacement. Can't have the one I want because my toilet has a ten inch setback while twelve inches is more standard. But plumber comes tomorrow afternoon with new toilet and will take the old one away for an extra $125. Their practice is to leave it out front for the garbage guys to remove, but I see old toilets sitting on front lawns for weeks because the garbage guys are picky. And of course, if it's at all cracked they will not touch it because broken porcelain is sharp and the longer you leave it, the likelier it is to break or be broken.

Tell me anxiety is hereditary because boy is it. Am deliberately not thinking about what might go wrong still, but it's a battle.

Also common wisdom is that toilets only last ten years, which is excuse *me*, someone's got a sweet racket going. Mine is 19 years old so I suppose I've had good innings.

flemmings

Smoke from a not distant enough fire turned the morning sky apocalyptic. Might also have conduced to the knives in the throat sensation, though I've been having that off and on for a few weeks now. Not covid because it comes and goes, certainly allergies because I also have the itchy ears of prime allergy season. So stayed in until late afternoon when the worst of the mug was over, and then filled a bag with seedlets and stuff from the front walk. In spite of massage, back had conniptions at my daring to wear shoes. Have no idea what to do about this.

But I did rebook a dentist appt from Thursday to a week Thursday and immediately felt better, because this Thursday will definitely rain and next may not. If the weather's dry I might chance transiting to and from my dentist, but in any case I will not be trying to get taxis in the rain. I hope.

flemmings

Given the constant heat and humidity of this summer, the weather's been remarkably unthunderous so far, but today we had an actual storm. Not as bad as the ones in my childhood which were slow-moving and extremely loud: this was barely half an hour. The oddity was that I woke up to darkness and rain-- so much for that 5% chance of they were touting last night-- which had been going on for a while to judge by the puddles: and then the storm started. Luckily it was over long before I had to go out for my massage. Of course the sun also came out and the world steamed. And the sidewalks dried up except unter den linden so yes, the walker's wheels were coated with catkins and seedlings. But there were still puddles at the street corners where I could rinse them off.

I think the massage helped some, but I felt a little off-kilter afterwards. Which can happen, but usually doesn't. Had good intentions of sweeping up the tree gunk on my front path but umm no. We won't even mention the jungle out back.

Otherwise at a loose end, like everyone else on the RoL FB suffering post-Stone&Sky letdown, and in my case suffering post-JS&MN and Damned letdown as well. Yes, three winners in a row is nice (and rare) but what do you do for afters? Um well, I still have the new Points novel to go to.

(I wonder was I the only one who wondered if Abigail had been glamoured in S&S? Though I suppose that she, like Peter, has had some practice in resisting fae and genii locorum who try it on. But also, why is it called Stone and *Sky* when the biggest element around is the sea?)

$mdlbear: blue fractal bear with text "since 2002" (Default)$

mdlbear

It's been a week. Starting with my son's fortieth birthday, and ending with the fourth anniversary of Colleen's death. I started writing a "state of the Bear" post last Sunday, and will either finish it today or tomorrow, or give up on it. But productive.

I went out for a walk four days this week -- the longest was about a kilometer, and the shortest was 650m. I practiced every day, which I haven't done for a long time. And, at N's suggestion, I started a work log, to keep track of what I've done for our business. I'll write it up separately, of course, but it's been remarkably effective. See under Monday for the start, but it's all been moved out of Dog/to.do to different file and workspace, which will mostly not find its way into this log, although pieces might.

It also shows how appallingly lazy I've been for the last six months.

Not really surprising -- I've been retired for eight years, and I've allowed myself to get out of shape in a great many ways. It's probably too late to get back to where I was a decade ago, but I'll do what I can.

And of course, the best-laid plans... Friday N and I started putting together a piece of patio furniture, and wore ourselves out completely. And yesterday was Colleen's day and I actually got more done than I expected. Weekends are for catching up.

As for links, AI coding tools make developers slower, study finds • The Register. As I've often said, HTML Is Publishing, Not Code

And this is flat-out amazing: Hundreds of robots move Shanghai city block - YouTube

( Notes & links, as usual )

Current Mood: tired
Current Location: Schildhaven in Den Haag
Current Music: see post

flemmings

Just before waking dream of being at the daycare/ a daycare, two very large rooms, one for babies and the other- where I had my shift-- for toddlers. But I was early and spent my time holding a four or five month old baby. My sister was also working there and when I realized that, I thought I could have asked her to take my shift, but she'd left by then. Still, nice to be among kids again.

Hydro bill came in today, something ridiculous like $14 because I overpay in the warm months. I'd been expecting to be dinged a good $100 even with overpaying, but then reminded myself that June was cool-- and then reminded myself again that the last ten days of it were anything but-- that was when we had the heat dome-- and I'd certainly run the fans and AC a lot then. So I overpaid again because the nights are still not cool enough for just a window fan. July is a hot month, period.

Though when I woke this morning the room was, if not warm, at least not as cool as the 18C/ 65F I'd set the AC for. But that was because the curtain had fallen back across the unit as a result of my midnight thrashing about, I assume. Must anchor it better in future.

Otherwise I sit indoors and read Stone and Sky, very pleasantly, though whether it will stay pleasant with the North Sea oil shenanigans remains to be seen.

mdlbear

Colleen died four years ago, at 04:30 Pacific time, so probably around the time I finish this post. It seems like a long time ago, or maybe just a few days. Or two moves. I'm surrounded by memories. Memorabilia. Every so often I'm struck by how many of my things have stories attached to them; many of them involving Colleen. To be expected -- we were together for half a century.

The world is very different from what it was four years ago, mostly not for the better; there are many things that I miss. And of course people. Too many people.

It's 1pm; we lit a candle for Colleen an hour ago, and toasted her memory, and talked for a bit. N found some purple flowers in the front planter to set in a bowl next to the candle. A candle makes a good focus for giving her a silent update. It's been a nice, quiet remembrance.

I'm going to post this, and sing a couple of songs. See whether I get through Eyes Like the Morning without falling apart.

Colleen, I will always love you.

Current Mood: quietly grieving
Current Location: Schildhaven Centraal - woonkamer
Current Music: Eyes Like the Morning

flemmings

Evidently if I walk 10,000 steps one day, next morning I will wake up blissfully untroubled by that damnable left hip flexor that likes to turn into concrete. This was nice, but of course it didn't survive even my morning exercises. Still, a possibility for the future.

Then one of my former coworkers texted me, asking would I be up for a visit. 'I'll bring lunch and coffee!' Not today, because I had to go to physio, but maybe tomorrow. Of course *then* I took stock of my untidy house, hardly conducive to a pleasant meal together. So after physio I tackled the front room dining table, moving stacks of CDs to, well, somewhere else, and various papers to either the blue bin or the bag to be shredded. Physio alas didn't help the lower back, so much sitting and stretching was needed. And of course tomorrow is recycle so I had to bag up a bunch of manga and doujinshi from the bedroom. Place is moderately tidier than it was, but must still vacuum and wash a load of dishes, when what I want to do is veg in front of the fan.

Books finished last week? Damned, a nice ending to a good series. I was pretty sure of a happy ending but I have some kind of inherited anxiety, or even for all I know generational trauma, about the French Revolution where things can never ever end well. So I'm glad they did, even if I wondered how magic worked out for Eleanor afterwards.

A Littlejohn mystery or maybe two: popcorn reading, ostensibly for bicycling to, only I haven't been bicycling. This is what happens if I stop for a day or two after finishing my last e-book, because summer inertia is deadly like that.

Otherwise nothing else, still moseying along in JS&MN, and determinedly not reading The Odyssey because Odysseus is now back in Ithaca and behaving like an utter prat.

flemmings

30C and dry is far more bearable than 25 and humid. Today was the latter, and of course this was the day I decided to go down to Harbord and Spadina to pick up my copy of Stone and Sky. Made it, did not die, must have sweated off a good kilo. Then after an hour's vegging on the sofa, did a shop because tomorrow is supposed to rain just about the time I'm up the street for physio. Which put me over 10,000 steps, first time this year, I think.

The neighbourhood lindens are casting their yellow pollen/ whatevers all over the sidewalk. Swept some off the steps with my unsatisfactory broom, reminding me that I'd intended to stop by Wiener's to see if they had straw brooms and/or extend-a-cutters. But of course I turned north from Bloor three blocks away from there. Mug does not conduce to mindfulness.

I still don't know who put my bins back last week-- both NND and SND's were still out when mine were tidily put away. But I recall that the front path was strewn with twigs from the high winds last week, and then suddenly the twigs weren't there and my path was swept clean. I rather suspect Signora down the street of tidying up because I know my messy front garden troubles her soul, but I wish I knew for certain.

flemmings

We're having what us effete Canucks define as a heat wave, meaning anything over 30C/86F so not much is happening here. Got out to tony Korean restaurant on Friday for disappointing cold noodles (I want Japanese tenzaru soba, and this was...not it. More veg than zaru soba has, but not the same taste.) Saturday was physio because my physiotherapist took Monday to Wednesday off, which always messes with my time sense because Wednesday is physio day in my mind. She says my legs are much looser than they've been in a while, for which I may thank that massage on Thursday. And got a load of socks and underwear washed at the laundromat and hung from my chandeliers, so I am well supplied for the next few weeks.

AGO is open tomorrow, a special occasion to celebrate the Group of Seven. But tomorrow is also supposed to rain, so doubt that I'll make it.

$mdlbear: blue fractal bear with text "since 2002" (Default)$

mdlbear

It doesn't feel like a very productive week, but I have gotten a few things done. Five (short) walks, four (short) guitar practice sessions, some patio furniture assembled (one Adirondack chair fully assembled, the other partly assembled, table unboxed).

The Adirondak chairs each have a curved, removable leg-rest. It's not exactly an ottoman, so I've decided it needs to be called a nottaman -- hence this post's music.

The weather has gone from unpleasantly hot to pleasantly cool (with a reverse or two) over the course of the week; we are now enjoying a light rain. Or at least I am -- I'm the one who sits closest to the sliding door in the living room. It opens to half the width of the house, and fortunately has a screen behind it. Because cats.

Between ADT and anemia, my body's temperature sensing has become very wonky; I feel like I'm freezing at temperatures that the rest of the household thinks are too hot, but if I put on something warm I quickly become overheated. It is not conducive to sleeping well. I don't so much mind having the cats wake me in the middle of the night, because my bladder is also wonky, but it would be nice to be able to get to (or back to) sleep in a reasonable amount of time. On the flip side, if all goes well I won't have to talk to a urologist until November.

Not much to say about what's going on in the US. But One Million Rising: Strategic Non-Cooperation to Fight Authoritarianism · No Kings looks like something you can do.

And go watch The FIRST images from the RUBIN observatory! - YouTube

( Notes & links, as usual )

Current Mood: between calm and worried
Current Location: Schildhaven in Den Haag
Current Music: Nottamun Town

reviews_and_ramblings

Top Form is adapted from one of my favorite manga, Dakaichi: I'm Being Harassed By the Sexiest Man of the Year. Already the title of the manga let you understand there is a controversial episode in the original story: the young actor, Jun, forces the older actor, Akin, to have sex. Of course it's a romance, therefore Jun and Akin fall in love at episode one and from them moment one it's a slide towards happinness, actually I cannot say if it's an happily ever after, since the series is ongoing, but it's a given. For the drama adaptation, they used the flashback in the manga to fill the first episodes of the story (with little adaptation) and the famous (or infamous) sex scene that is in the first volume of the manga, is actually just a request for an hug in the drama; sex will arrive a little later. Aside from that I have to say they managed to maintain the light comedy style, with little drama. I found a little disconcerting to see it in a Thai drama, instead of a Japanese adaptation, but that is just a visual effect. Both the Thai actors they choose for the drama are good and their chemistry together is really good. The moment of intimacy don't feel akward at all. A little pet peeve of mine, I would have liked some more budget spent on the sideline effect like setting and wardrobe, but indeed the music is really nice. HEA. You can see it on WeTV. Heat Level: 5/6.

Heat Level:

1/6: glances, caress, hugs, no kisses

2/6: kisses, closed mouth or camera angles

3/6: full kisses, clothes on

4/6: full kisses, some clothes off, hands above the waist, pants stay on

5/6: most clothes off, they have sex, but it’s masked, no sexy sounds

6/6: full nudity mostly hidden by camera angles, they have sex, sexy sounds

totient

Part of an occasional series on superpowers. My superpowers are all Mystery Men level superpowers, but they're real.

I have what I'm told is called in motorcycling an Iron Butt.

Partly that's literally being able to sit for a long time with no side effects. I bicycled 3700 miles across the United States, averaging 8 hours a day in the saddle for a month and a half, and did not get any saddle sores.

But also with only a little bit of adjustment to my hydration and caffeination routine I can go 8 hours without a bathroom. This means when I drive the limiting factor on how far I go between stops is almost always the range of the vehicle I am driving. I rented a particularly fuel efficient car one time and drove it 450 miles without taking it out of gear. It hated this and kept trying to get me to take a coffee break. In less fuel-efficient cars sometimes I will refuel at a full service gas station and go two tankfuls between getting out of the car at all.

Being able to drive anywhere in my general region that much more quickly is a big factor in how I choose to make medium-distance trips. Beyond the question of how long the travel takes compared to a train or airplane, I'm sure I'd also find driving less enjoyable if I needed more stops.

I have actually rather a lot of superpowers, some inborn and some developed (or perhaps, I am told, earned). This one I suppose is some of each.

flemmings

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.

mdlbear

Today I am thankful for...

Rain, and a change in the weather. Hot weather is part of why I'm glad I left San Jose. But there are still a lot of things I miss.
Spreadable blue cheese. Gazpacho in hot weather. A fridge with a working ice maker.
Pipes (in the Unix sense), bash, and grep. Honorable mentions to locate, column, and units.
Cuddly cats.

Current Mood: grateful
Current Location: Schildhaven in Den Haag
Current Music: Nottamun Town -- no idea why

flemmings

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.

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