vital functions
Jul. 21st, 2019 10:13 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kaberettReading. What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours, which as I think I've mentioned I'm enjoying much more now I've registered that the stories are interlinked (see all my previous discussion of Short Stories Are Hard, etc). There's also the part where, particularly with literary fiction, I often end up feeling small and dull and slow and as though the shorts are trying to communicate some sort of densely-packed Emotion or Experience or Message that is just entirely inaccessible to me, that I'm incapable of getting the point of, and then I get ashamed about that, and honestly I am now wondering about the extent to which this isn't "I'm not clever (enough)" but rather "I'm not allistic", so that's something to chew on, thank you Dreamwidth.
Next up: I got some more NK Jemisin out of the library, because for all its many flaws (and in spite of the extent to which I bounced off the Broken Earth books) The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms is in fact comfort fluff for my id and the library had both sequels on the shelf and available for borrowing. (I'm also getting back towards the top of the queue for the ebook of Daring Greatly.)
Watching. Last week's Elementary; we are all very fond of Sherlock's traumababies.
Finally curled up with A (post-Elementary) and got him to watch the Truckla making-of (and commercial), because he cares about Teslas and he cares about car maintenance and he cares about building shit, and he was charmed and delighted (which, to be fair, is because Simone Giertz is charming and delightful, and also we now have a household subscription to her Patreon).
We also watched the David Tennant/Catherine Tate Much Ado! Because there is basically no version of Much Ado I won't watch at least once. And it turns out that actually I... love most of this Even More than the Kenneth Branagh/Emma Thompson show that has thus far been my canon. I... have a lot of feelings about this! The beautiful beautiful delivery of the lines! The extent to which Claudio feels like he's... not good... and from a different version of the play... and it eventually dawns on one that this is DELIBERATE CLUNKY EARNESTNESS and it's brilliant! The facial expressions! Autistic Beatrice! The spurious small child with Rubik's cube! There were several entire line deliveries reinterpreted in ways that had not at all occurred to me that were, also, perfect! I am delighted.
And then, finally, this week's Elementary, feat. Bad Ideas Sherlock and also Ferdinand Has A Crush. (I don't think I have anything particularly insightful to say about it beyond grumbling about How Working Dogs Even, but that'll do.)
Cooking. Favourite cooking of the week: broccoli-on-substrate. Steamed broccoli over jasmine rice as it was cooking; served with mirin/soy sauce/sesame oil; eaten in a pile on the sofa as a very-welcome-indeed pile of vegetable.
Still experimenting with scone, per my previous. Increasingly convinced that at least some of the problem is that our oven just is not getting up to temperature.
Exploring. Poked around The Kidneys withsebastienne as the sun set on Sunday, in the process meeting SEVERAL EXCELLENT ANIMALS, see below, yes good.
Growing. I am going to be in and out of lab a lot over the next few weeks BUT a Significant Goal is to get myself over to the allotment with a tub and pick a bunch of raspberries, because they're all coming ripe and they're super tasty and I should actually harvest them.
And: I've got up all the carpet from under the beds I'm not currently growing things in, I'm pretty sure, because A was running v late on his way back home from therapy so I stayed to do A Token Bit Of Carpet and... finished the bed in which I'd had spinach! It no longer contains carpet! I think this means that I need to lay my hands on another cordless electric drill (possibly by dint of just... buying myself one) and then I can actually finish construction of the first two beds and maybe??? get something in them??? for the second half of the year???
I think the next tool I'll be buying is a set of half-decent shears (to help me keep the grass down), and the next major infrastructure project (after the raised beds) is going to be a fruit cage (because all of my fruits sort of vanished into birds once I'd weeded them).
Also growing: picked up a sad cut-price live coriander from the supermarket, and am going to stick it in one of the spare planters on the patio; I don't often want coriander, and when I do I don't want much of it, so buying a bag is never worthwhile but I don't have any objection to giving a little growing room to another green thing. Mint is coming back up with a vengeance; parsley is also starting to actually competently reestablish itself, hurrah. Lemon tree continues producing flowers, small plants fromewt haven't died yet (thank youuuu), walnut tree also hasn't died yet (though it's struggling with the concept of putting out new leaves), orchid is looking really good (especially now I've trimmed the dead flower stalks), holy basil still not germinating.
Observing. Took my mother to say hi to the allotment yesterday and to feed the bin (amusingly, with it sited in the greenhouse, I'm ending up in the situation where the external thermometer has a higher reading than the internal -- 65 versus about 50). Did not, alas, see a slow worm, but did on the way back meet my first Jersey Tiger (which we almost walked past!). For bonus points, we saw the bat after dinner.
And then while driving to Oxford on Sunday (for the aforementioned Much Ado) we got an excellent close-up of the underside of a red kite that was hovering speculatively fairly close to the ground, in relative terms.
On the way to The Kidneys: a hairy molly that was wiggling across the path very industriously. (... I just looked that up and apparently that's only standard terminology in Ireland, huh.) Actually in The Kidneys: A TINY FROG. About the size of my thumbnail, all told! There was A Hopping on the path, and I thought "that's a funny shape for a grasshopper", and IT WAS NOT A GRASSHOPPER. B spotted another while scouting for wheelchair-accessible routes, which alas I did not witness, but SMALL FROB. FROB FROB FROB. DID A HOP. There was much excitement and exclamation. I continue flapping happily about it.
Poking. There... was a community day, which once again I completely forgot about and actually ended up watching Much Ado through the majority of, but hey, I caught a shiny from the sofa and got a Lucky by trading with A, so shrug emoji. Bonus: high-stat (research) Feebas and (wild-caught) Seel and Caterpie (the latter 100%, which I would be more excited about if I didn't already have... one... but there we go!)
Next up: I got some more NK Jemisin out of the library, because for all its many flaws (and in spite of the extent to which I bounced off the Broken Earth books) The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms is in fact comfort fluff for my id and the library had both sequels on the shelf and available for borrowing. (I'm also getting back towards the top of the queue for the ebook of Daring Greatly.)
Watching. Last week's Elementary; we are all very fond of Sherlock's traumababies.
Finally curled up with A (post-Elementary) and got him to watch the Truckla making-of (and commercial), because he cares about Teslas and he cares about car maintenance and he cares about building shit, and he was charmed and delighted (which, to be fair, is because Simone Giertz is charming and delightful, and also we now have a household subscription to her Patreon).
We also watched the David Tennant/Catherine Tate Much Ado! Because there is basically no version of Much Ado I won't watch at least once. And it turns out that actually I... love most of this Even More than the Kenneth Branagh/Emma Thompson show that has thus far been my canon. I... have a lot of feelings about this! The beautiful beautiful delivery of the lines! The extent to which Claudio feels like he's... not good... and from a different version of the play... and it eventually dawns on one that this is DELIBERATE CLUNKY EARNESTNESS and it's brilliant! The facial expressions! Autistic Beatrice! The spurious small child with Rubik's cube! There were several entire line deliveries reinterpreted in ways that had not at all occurred to me that were, also, perfect! I am delighted.
And then, finally, this week's Elementary, feat. Bad Ideas Sherlock and also Ferdinand Has A Crush. (I don't think I have anything particularly insightful to say about it beyond grumbling about How Working Dogs Even, but that'll do.)
Cooking. Favourite cooking of the week: broccoli-on-substrate. Steamed broccoli over jasmine rice as it was cooking; served with mirin/soy sauce/sesame oil; eaten in a pile on the sofa as a very-welcome-indeed pile of vegetable.
Still experimenting with scone, per my previous. Increasingly convinced that at least some of the problem is that our oven just is not getting up to temperature.
Exploring. Poked around The Kidneys with
sebastienne as the sun set on Sunday, in the process meeting SEVERAL EXCELLENT ANIMALS, see below, yes good.Growing. I am going to be in and out of lab a lot over the next few weeks BUT a Significant Goal is to get myself over to the allotment with a tub and pick a bunch of raspberries, because they're all coming ripe and they're super tasty and I should actually harvest them.
And: I've got up all the carpet from under the beds I'm not currently growing things in, I'm pretty sure, because A was running v late on his way back home from therapy so I stayed to do A Token Bit Of Carpet and... finished the bed in which I'd had spinach! It no longer contains carpet! I think this means that I need to lay my hands on another cordless electric drill (possibly by dint of just... buying myself one) and then I can actually finish construction of the first two beds and maybe??? get something in them??? for the second half of the year???
I think the next tool I'll be buying is a set of half-decent shears (to help me keep the grass down), and the next major infrastructure project (after the raised beds) is going to be a fruit cage (because all of my fruits sort of vanished into birds once I'd weeded them).
Also growing: picked up a sad cut-price live coriander from the supermarket, and am going to stick it in one of the spare planters on the patio; I don't often want coriander, and when I do I don't want much of it, so buying a bag is never worthwhile but I don't have any objection to giving a little growing room to another green thing. Mint is coming back up with a vengeance; parsley is also starting to actually competently reestablish itself, hurrah. Lemon tree continues producing flowers, small plants from
ewt haven't died yet (thank youuuu), walnut tree also hasn't died yet (though it's struggling with the concept of putting out new leaves), orchid is looking really good (especially now I've trimmed the dead flower stalks), holy basil still not germinating.Observing. Took my mother to say hi to the allotment yesterday and to feed the bin (amusingly, with it sited in the greenhouse, I'm ending up in the situation where the external thermometer has a higher reading than the internal -- 65 versus about 50). Did not, alas, see a slow worm, but did on the way back meet my first Jersey Tiger (which we almost walked past!). For bonus points, we saw the bat after dinner.
And then while driving to Oxford on Sunday (for the aforementioned Much Ado) we got an excellent close-up of the underside of a red kite that was hovering speculatively fairly close to the ground, in relative terms.
On the way to The Kidneys: a hairy molly that was wiggling across the path very industriously. (... I just looked that up and apparently that's only standard terminology in Ireland, huh.) Actually in The Kidneys: A TINY FROG. About the size of my thumbnail, all told! There was A Hopping on the path, and I thought "that's a funny shape for a grasshopper", and IT WAS NOT A GRASSHOPPER. B spotted another while scouting for wheelchair-accessible routes, which alas I did not witness, but SMALL FROB. FROB FROB FROB. DID A HOP. There was much excitement and exclamation. I continue flapping happily about it.
Poking. There... was a community day, which once again I completely forgot about and actually ended up watching Much Ado through the majority of, but hey, I caught a shiny from the sofa and got a Lucky by trading with A, so shrug emoji. Bonus: high-stat (research) Feebas and (wild-caught) Seel and Caterpie (the latter 100%, which I would be more excited about if I didn't already have... one... but there we go!)
(no subject)
Date: 2019-07-21 09:29 pm (UTC)It has since mostly been devoured by snails, but I can have another go if you like.
(no subject)
Date: 2019-07-21 09:36 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2019-07-21 09:32 pm (UTC)YAAAYYYY carpet-free beds!!!!!!
(no subject)
Date: 2019-07-21 10:35 pm (UTC)I am having that with a book at the moment (Ada Palmer's Too Like the Lightning) and it is the worst. I am very tired of my brain's bad take on this. Sometimes people just think differently and that is okay, brain.
(no subject)
Date: 2019-07-22 08:18 am (UTC)Do you want me to try to dig out the essay on philosophy etc?
(no subject)
Date: 2019-07-22 02:04 pm (UTC)That... Might help, yes! If you have a minute. :)
(no subject)
Date: 2019-07-22 06:04 am (UTC)Huh. Was it something about the science that she got wrong (which I wouldn't have picked up on) or her handling of the disability stuff (which I did not love, no) or something else?
We also watched the David Tennant/Catherine Tate Much Ado!
Oooh. *opens tab*
And: I've got up all the carpet from under the beds I'm not currently growing things in
OMG GO YOU
Poked around The Kidneys
Sounds painful.
Actually in The Kidneys: A TINY FROG.
This, however, reminds me of that Tumblr post exhorting people to drink plenty of water for the sake of their frogs.
FROB.
(no subject)
Date: 2019-07-22 08:25 am (UTC)Combination of disability stuff and THAT'S NOT HOW ROCKS. I seem to recall being particularly irritated that 1. the naming scheme for orogens was inconsistent, and 2. they all had super common mineral names even though that's wildly unlikely, along with 3. okay so what ARE you going to do when it comes to the names of minerals that in this world are e.g. named "cummingtonite", are you going to carry over the (hilarious) names of mineralogists and petrologists from this world and if not YOU CAN JUST MAKE NAMES UP, FOR FUCK'S SAKE, THERE'S NO WAY YOU HAVEN'T RUN OUT OF MINERALS. >:(
Also I just... really didn't like any of the characters.
However! Since I tried reading them I've seen people talking about the ways in which it's a Very Compelling Portrait Of Compound[ing/ed] Trauma, and that's the kind of thing I often... miss... (cf Buffy)... and parse instead as just bland lazy characterisation with no distinguishing features from an everyperson... for some reason...
So I am intending to go back and have another go and see if I get on with it better this time, but... I'm going to get a bit further through the current reading stack first. (There's the rest of the Inheritance trilogy, and I picked up a copy of Half of a Yellow Sun from a charity shop for 50p at the point at which I had to return the library ebook unstarted, and at the same time I got a copy of Andy Weir's Artemis that is in fact currently on loan to my dad, and...)
Oooh. *opens tab*
It is SO GOOD and I would very happily give them money for better-quality video than is on YouTube.
(no subject)
Date: 2019-07-22 08:25 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2019-07-22 07:13 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2019-07-22 08:19 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2019-07-22 02:52 pm (UTC)SMOL FROB. \o/
(no subject)
Date: 2019-07-22 02:58 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2019-07-22 05:13 pm (UTC)Ohhhhh. Thank you for sharing this thought! It never occurred to me before that the reason literary fiction rarely works for me might have to do with not being allistic. Oh, wow. I'm going to think about this...
(no subject)
Date: 2019-07-22 07:08 pm (UTC)It came to me as I was typing and is in no way a developed thought, but I... think it is very noticeable... that Sally Rooney (which is all very explicitly about trauma) works for me, where most of it... does not...
(no subject)
Date: 2019-07-22 07:32 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2019-07-22 08:40 pm (UTC)*image searches*
I met one of them (or a close relative) on Thursday! Halfway up a crag! I had to shout excitedly about them to my belayer!
Methinks that the Jersey Tiger
Date: 2019-07-22 09:41 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2019-07-23 02:11 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2019-07-23 03:18 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2019-07-23 06:10 pm (UTC)This reminds me of how I often feel about poetry. A sort of, other people find this Meaningful but I just don't get it and what am I missing and why.
(no subject)
Date: 2019-07-23 07:11 pm (UTC)I definitely feel this way about some poetry! Even poetry that friends-whose-tastes-I-generally-share Feel A Lot Of Feelings About! And I try to get them to explain why and they go "well it's just Good" and I'm quite "..........." about the entire experience. So: sympathy.
(no subject)
Date: 2019-07-24 08:30 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2019-07-24 09:29 am (UTC)IT IS SUCH A GOOD MUCH ADO.
The hairy molly was VERY FIERCE and did a TERRIFYING THREAT DISPAY at my front caster. I was extremely intimidated. It did a very thorough job of scaring me off. It was great. :D