Nat

Reading. ... I think I genuinely have mostly just been stubbornly catching up with Dreamwidth (at time of writing I am UP TO DATE). No, wait, I did also (via oursin) end up reading several articles about the contents of Oliver Sacks' papers and personal archive, most of which was not hugely surprising given the results of some of my previous digging, but which has resulted in me reaching the firm decision that I shan't be citing any of his examples that can't be extremely independently verified. (Thoughts about case histories for public consumption continue.) And finished one of the Periodicals I'd had sitting around, and gleefully dumped it in the recycling!

I acquired a new book (passingbuzzards flagged up that Craft Wars #2 Dead Hand Rule came out recently; apparently I've been hiding so comprehensively from my e-mail that I presumably have a Max Gladstone Newsletter languishing somewhere in there) but it is not yet on the ereader. (And downloaded a Toby Daye short from Patreon, but that's not going onto the ereader until I have stitched it into the giant whole-series single ebook). I now also have two books sitting around in Libby. So! Next up Vespertine, then Rooftoppers, then maybe I settle down with Index, A History of the and actually finish it? Since I am no longer focussing primarily on pain reading? Because...

Writing. ... the document is over 3000 words long. At the moment most of what I'm writing falls into one of two categories: structure/scaffolding, and Words I Will Definitely Be Deleting because they're currently extremely note-to-self and will require significant expansion. But there are paragraphs! And I've written a little every day so far this year (except today, which I will rectify before I put the laptop down)! (The bar for Tick This Off My List is a single word.)

Playing. As of a little earlier this evening I have All The Inkulinati Steam Achievements, admittedly by Alt+F4ing my way through the Master run (i.e. flouncing most times I was about to lose a fight) ABOUT WHICH I FEEL BAD but probably not bad enough to go back through and do it Properly.

We have also finished Monument Valley 3, we think, in that we have All The Achievements... but we were a bit confused by the way it just sort of... trailed off after completing the Hall of Memories. I am sort of anticipating a further expansion, I think?

Cooking. This evening I decided I was Sad and that we were going to have Pineapple Fried Rice. A had not previously experienced this, and was... perplexed. Also mulled apple juice, starting with apple-and-ginger and eventually adding apple-and-pear to the problem.

Eating. Highlight: Lebkuchen and mulled apple juice from a flask (well, insulated mug) at the obelisk near the square water. Have also been Greatly Indulged with avocados, and enjoying them enormously.

Exploring. Visited the square water! Which was frozen, at least at the surface! There were excellent frost patterns on moss and also shelf fungi! Several of the trees had been decorated! Excellent stonk, v pleased. Earlier in the week we did a shorter stonk (... it now occurs to me that this is probably a family-specific usage...) around some of the back roads and enjoyed Ongoing Illuminations.

Making & mending. I have fixed Adam's glove????????? I have now made approximately nine tenths of a glove for Adam?????????? I need to actually do the thumb, but after giving up on the mitten flap in disgust after winding up ripping it back Multiple Times, this time around I ripped it back even further and then Grimly and Obsessively Counted, and... it worked??? (Promptly had to frog the bind-off as well, though, having forgotten a key instruction; I checked my notebook and was dismayed to find no notes on the obvious solution there, until I triple-checked the pattern and discovered that that would be because the obvious solution is literally a part of said written pattern...) Maybe I'll get the other one done in time for April (and before they've spent a year on the needles). Maybe.

Growing. CAN CONFIRM: MYSTERIOUS YELLOW HABANERO IS TRINIDAD PERFUME. Curry leaf cutting not dead yet. Have utterly failed to get any seeds sown this week despite Best Intentions but I have at least made the propagator more approachable, and ordered minimal Bonus Seeds (and indeed opted out of bonus bonus seeds altogether, good job me).

Observing. Robins, on my bike and at the square water. Corvids misc. Several excellent sunsets! And the almost-full moon framed perfectly in the not-exactly-an-alley the building front door disgorges into the middle of, which I made A go back outside to take a look at when they got home from work on Friday.

This afternoon I have, I think (I hope I have my fingers crossed) got unstuck on the pair of mittens I'm making for A, having frogged the palm yet again; I have been having inordinate difficulty with successfully picking up slipped stitch columns consistently so as to wind up with the flap not at a ridiculous slope. I don't know why I've been finding this so hard (it was fine on the previous pair!), and I am not super thrilled with the neatness (or otherwise) of how the picking up has gone, but I'm now most of the way to done with this one, please the gods may it continue thus.

A meanwhile spent the afternoon cleaning fountain pens, and was willing to do one of mine while I was at it, so the dip-fill that got done when the nib was reground has now been cleaned out and TOMORROW I can fill it with Its Intended Ink and THEN I will... get to see how much I hate the intended combination of colours, heh. (I am contemplating doing some inline journalling, with slightly different colours of ink for todo lists vs Recountings Of Feelings About Day.)

I am also pretty much caught up with Dreamwidth, by which I mean "I haven't finished reading all of today's posts, and I'm probably not going to before I sleep, but I am, like, at one day behind now", which is a joy. Along the way I have discovered that a new Craft Wars book got published while I was hiding from my many (many) e-mails; been baffled that uk.bookshop.org just... doesn't sell English-language Max Gladstone ebooks, as far as I can tell; and made slow progress on remembering that commenting is a good thing now, actually. (I've been leery of it while Significantly Behind in case Things Had Gone Bad in the interim, but I've been significantly behind since April, so I have some relearning to do.)

What else what else? Snow, a smattering thereof, or possibly just Very Enthusiastic Frost; finally managed to point out the octopus topper on one of the localish post boxes in such a fashion that A was able to observe it; there is a fresh batch of yoghurt to go in the fridge overnight and then get decanted in the morning; I have not today managed to sow the various grow-on-indoors seeds I want to get started in the propagator before it's time for Everything Else (pineapple physalis, lemongrass, ... oh no what's the third thing) but, hey, Perhaps Tomorrow. Many things. For now: rest.

I have, over the past twenty-four hours or so, been pulling cards from my various tarot and oracle decks (by which I mean "all three of them"), and the set I got from The Golden Wheel was particularly striking:

(The Eight of Wands, The World, and The Fool. The sky seems continuous across all three cards; the Eight of Wands faces right, and The Fool faces left, both leaping toward The World, mirror images of one another.)

Over the last few days I have been reading lots of Dreamwidth; I'm now caught up to the 19^th of December, which is as up-to-date as I think I've been since April.

I have also had a toasted sandwich lunch on a park bench with A, under a clear blue sky; quietly played several games; and, eventually, made a start on setting up next year's notebook.

Thank you for sharing your lives with me. <3

Reading. Me, a few days ago:

... I picked up the bad and naughty book I'm not supposed to read after 8pm because it's too annoying It was annoying

So that's how The Story of Pain (Joanna Bourke) is going. ( Read more... )

I have also made a tiny bit more progress on Index, A History of the (Dennis Duncan), read one and a half magazines sent to me by Organisations Various that I feel bad recycling unread but which have a tendency to Accumulate in that state, and some of a Libby sample of Cloistered (Catherine Coldstream) based on one of you mentioning it mid-November, which I have just about got up to on my reading page. Also, I am up to mid-November on my reading page.

Added to the queue are Vespertine (Margaret Rogerson; courtesy of someone mentioning it a while back, probably skygiants, and my library Acquiring A New Copy), The Long Journey of English (Peter Trudgill; a present from my mother, in her capacity as a linguist), and Terry Pratchett: A Life With Footnotes (Rob Wilkins; a loan from my father). For the sake of my spreadsheet of books (with the increasingly inaccurate filename books-2011.ods) I am probably going to be trying to finish rather than start things for the rest of the calendar year (not the Bourke) but we'll see how that goes.

Listening. ... an episode of Elementary that a relative was watching...

Playing. Scrabble! Monument Valley 3. Inkulinati (having another go at beating my head against a run at Master difficulty).

Cooking. Another batch of the quince and squash stew. Two days' worth of minestrone (with bulgur wheat because we are apparently out of tiny pasta, but not that), which worked well as Some Lunches. I think little else of note.

Eating. So much of my mother's cooking various, including a few last tomatoes from her greenhouse (!!!). Also my father's mince pies.

Exploring. Several stonks around Cambridge, including visits to some little free libraries and to various likely locations for snowdrops (mainly the grounds of Churchill, up at the chapel end, where they do indeed exist). Brief trip to Anglesey Abbey, which also has snowdrops coming out and one very enthusiastic daffodil; winter garden remains lovely.

Growing. The pineapple leafs are taller than the (remaining, trimmed) originals, as of... two weeks ago? Ten days? But I think I hadn't yet mentioned and it's still making me smile.

There is one (1) curry leaf cutting that is Not Yet Dead.