desperance

It's amazing that my mood depends so much on what my children remember to bring home from school.

(Yesterday, down two bus passes and a backpack, misery.
Today, all of their belongings, relief!)

hunningham

Blue badge arrived this morning, and father-in-law and I are both excited. It's going to be easier to find parking spaces when I take Bryan somewhere instead of driving round & round and doing that mental arithmetic for "how far can he walk today?"

We also got a phone-call from the vision support team, and next Thursday someone is coming to demonstrate electronic magnifiers. We have many handhelp magnifiers and Bryan can use them to read large print one word at a time, but it's hard work for him. We're still hoping that some way of reading can be found.

Vision support have recommended applying for attendance allowance, so that's another thing for my list.

Thinking about walking - I have a new-found appreciation for bubble paving. It is so helpful having the road crossing marked, especially when there is a dropped kerb. I feel as if I should drop someone a thank-you note.

Today we are going to Compton Verny to see the exhibition on The Shelter of Stories. We've found that Bryan can still enjoy art exhibitions - I just have to do a lot of narrating.

hrj

I think I now have all the data and documents and forms assembled to do my transition-to-retirement-year tax returns. Today's task was to turn last year's financial spreadsheet into my usual yearly summary, then put the relevant data from it and all the various W2s and 1099s and whatnot into my tax data template (which needed to be updated for several new types of documents and data).

Because of how my brain works best, I'm going to go to the length of printing out paper copies of the forms to noodle on, even though I'll be filing online. And I'll be reading through the pdfs of the instruction booklets and highlighting everything that looks relevant. But on my first skim through, I think this is going to be easier than I feared. The schedule C stuff (writing business) is the same as always. And although the worksheet to calculate how much of my social security income is taxable is convoluted, the instructions walk you through it step by step.

One new wrinkle is that they now have a separate "1040-senior" form, evidently to simplify the instructions for the enhanced standard deduction for seniors (which get convoluted if you're married filing jointly but only one of you is a senior). I'll compare it point by point with the standard 1040 to make sure it doesn't do anything else bizarre.

And despite the rather chaotic nature of how my withholding is set up for the various retirement incomes, I think it's still pretty close to the right amount. Once I have this year's returns done, I can probably do a mock return for next year and see what adjustments I should make on the withholding.

asakiyume

Landline

From the age of three until I went to college, I lived in the same town. We moved house once, but our telephone number stayed the same. When technology moved from rotary dial to push-button, I came to know the sound of that phone number by heart. I could "sing" it.

Even after I and my siblings left home, my parents stayed in that house and kept that number. My mother died, but my dad stayed in the house--with that number. He got a cell phone, but kept the landline too.

Now he lives elsewhere, closer to me and one of my siblings. That house has been sold, and the landline disconnected. But I still call it from my own landline from time to time just to hear the push-button tune. So far, the number hasn't been reassigned.

Reporting for Duty

Reporting for Duty is the English-language title of a Brazilian comedy cop show on Netflix, in which a gentle, laid-back guy from a sleepy district gets reassigned to be police chief in a mafia-plagued central Rio precinct. It's pretty hilarious so far. The second episode, "Good Cop, Better Cop," sees the new police chief, Suzano, and the precinct's second-in-command, Mantovani, interrogating a suspect. "Let's do good cop, bad cop," Mantovani suggests. Suzano agrees, and they go in. Mantovani offers the suspect water. Suzano follows with "Some lemonade? A soda? A cold beer?"

Mantovani is getting more and more flabbergasted. When Suzano offers a charcuterie board, Mantovani asks if she can have a word with him. Turns out he didn't recognize her good cop as good cop. "If you're more comfortable being the good cop," she begins, but he says no no no, he can do bad cop. He storms back in. "You think you're getting coffee? Well no! No coffee because the coffee machine is broken!" [established earlier in the episode]. "And no massages, either, except for maybe shiatsu for your health." --And he proceeds to massage out the guy's tensed muscles.

Suzano gives shiatsu to a detainee while Mantovani watches, flabbergasted

Suzano gives shiatsu to a detainee while Mantovani watches, flabbergasted

It's a very cute show, and the guy who plays Suzano's sidekick who's come with him from his old precinct has a style of Brazilian accent I really like and have only heard from a guy who teaches ancient Tupi on Instagram.

Diamond and Misty

One of Wakanomori's former students is married and keeps chickens now. He gave W a quartet of eggs, and the carton comes with this cute label that lets you write in what chickens laid the eggs. Ours were laid by Diamond and Misty.

egg carton label features cartoon chickens and says "fresh eggs"

egg carton label features cartoon chickens and says "fresh eggs"

Current Music: Academia da Berlinda: Dia a Dia

kareina

I got only 4 hours sleep, but woke in a good mood and headed in to work. This morning was a special uni breakfast panel discussion thing they are starting up, with regular conversations on topics connecting academia and society. When I saw the announcement for it a month ago (before we decided to head down to Coronet) I saw that it was right before the Archaeology department meeting, and so I signed up for it--free breakfast and an additional excuse to be on campus that day. Win. Breakfast was bread roll halves topped with cheese and vegetables, and mango lassi, so I was quite happy with it, and found the discussion interesting and made good progress making a belt from the Marron dragons tablet woven band I bouhht at 12th night, backed with Soft black wool twill.

The Archaeology department meeting was also interesting, and I have volunteered to help out with at least one of the long overdue reports on archaeological excavation (as in the people who didn't the excavations are retired, but the uni is still legally obliged to submit the report, since they were responsible for the dig). It sounds like a fun way to get some real archaeology experience.

I got the bill from the carpenter today for the work he's done to create the attic toilet room, and I am please to note that the cost is low enough that after paying it I still have more in house savings than existed in that account in October. Not that it is cheap mind you, just that I have been able to throw a fair bit into savings lately.

After paying the bills I had enough time to make more Garden mousse and also some blueberry mousse with the other half package of tofu, and packed it in the ice chest for food to eat tomorrow, and made some popcorn and was packing it for tomorrow as well when Keldor got home from work. He rested a bit while I cleaned the kitchen.

Then we loaded the car and took out compost and emptied the cat sand.

I was doing my yoga for the day when Þórólfr arrived, and we left as soon as I finished.

Regular edits:

18:46 depart Lövånger
20:05 depart Umeå after a short toilet pause.
21:35 depart Örnsköldsvik after a short toilet pause
22:48 cross Högakustenbrön
00:55 Toilet and refuel car at Hudiksvall
01:40 Tönnebro toilet pause

tamaranth

2026/020: Once Upon a Time I Lived on Mars — Kate Greene

What if a mission to Mars didn’t have as its main goal a barrage of scientific studies, or the demonstration that humans can build ships to send us to faraway lands and keep us alive in the harshest environments? What if it’s not driven by the fear of our eventual extinction or by opportunities afforded it by current economic systems—mining for resources, etc. Or what if it is those things, but also, in its design, it contains questions about what it means to be a human being alive and alone and unable to achieve contact with others in this universe? [p. 131]

In 2013, Kate Greene spent four months as second-in-command of the Hawai’i Space Exploration Analog and Simulation (HI-SEAS) mission, which was designed to simulate life on Mars. The six crew members lived in cramped quarters, with artificial communication delays, pre-packaged food, constant surveys for one another's experiments, and compulsory spacesuits for excursions beyond the habitat. The essays that comprise Once Upon a Time I Lived On Mars -- subtitled 'Space, Exploration and Life on Earth' -- are all rooted in Greene's HI-SEAS experience:( Read more... )

Current Mood: okay

sovay

My poem "The Principle of the Thing" has been accepted by Weird Fiction Quarterly. It is the ghost poem I wrote last spring for Werner Heisenberg: 2025 finally called it out. 2026 hasn't yet rendered it démodé.

Branching off The Perceptual Form of the City (1954–59), I am still tracking down the publications of György Kepes whose debt to Gestalt psychology my mother pegged instantly from his interdisciplinary interests in perception, but my local library system furnished me with Kevin Lynch's The Image of the City (1960) and What Time Is This Place? (1972) and even more than urban planning, they make me think of psychogeography. An entire chapter in the latter is entitled "Boston Time" and illustrates itself with layers of photographs of a walk down Washington Street in the present of the book's composition and its past, singling out not only buildings and former buildings but weathered milestones and ghost signs, commemorative plaques and graffiti, dates established, construction stamps, spray paint, initials in concrete. "The trees are seasonal clocks, very precise in spring and fall." "The street name refers to the edge of the ancient peninsula. (If you look closely at the ground, you can trace the outline of the former shore.)" "The railroad, which in its day was cut ruthlessly through the close-packed docks and sailing ships, is now buried in its turn." Five and a half decades behind me, the book itself is a slice of history, a snapshot in the middle of the urban renewal that Lynch evocatively and not inaccurately describes as "steamrolling." I recognize the image of the city formed by the eponymously accumulated interviews in the older book and it is a city of Theseus. Scollay Square disappeared between the two publications. Lynch's Charles River Dam isn't mine. Blankly industrial spaces on his map have gentrified in over my lifetime. Don't even ask about wayfinding by the landmarks of the skyline. I do think he would have liked the harborwalk, since it reinforces one of Boston's edges as sea. And whether I agree entirely or at all with his assertion:

If we examine the feelings that accompany daily life, we find that historic monuments occupy a small place. Our strongest emotions concern our own lives and the lives of our family or friends because we have known them personally. The crucial reminders of the past are therefore those connected with our own childhood, or with our parents' or perhaps our grandparents' lives. Remarkable things are directly associated with memorable events in those lives: births, deaths, marriages, partings, graduations. To live in the same surroundings that one recalls from earliest memories is a satisfaction denied to most Americans today. The continuity of kin lacks a corresponding continuity of place. We are interested in a street on which our father may have lived as a boy; it helps to explain him to us and strengthens our own sense of identity, But our grandfather or great-grandfather, whom we never knew, is already in the remote past; his house is "historical."

it is impossible for me not to read it and hear "Isn't the house you were born in the most interesting house in the world to you? Don't you want to know how your father lived, and his father? Well, there are more ways than one of getting close to your ancestors." None of mine came from this city I walk.

The rest of my day has been a landfill on fire.

Current Music: Clairo, "Bags"

yhlee

print of a digital illustration by Yoon Ha Lee: poker and starships

a.k.a. "Shuos Jedao says howdy from the land of Battlefleet Gothic and pinochle trauma" - we'll see if the local game store is interested in carrying this and/or some of the other 11"x17" prints as they've carried my smaller art prints in the past.

test illustration prints

Meanwhile, back to napping (recuperating from sickness) and/or schoolwork.

kareina

Just now I saw a friend doing pistol squats, and I was impressed. So I tried it, and it worked, even getting back up, and I was surprised. Then Keldor woke me, and now I understand why it felt so easy. Everything is so much easier to do with my dream body! My first clue should have been the part where it has been more than 20 years since last I saw Marguerite..

That wake up was a little disorienting, as I truly had no idea I was asleep till he woke me, but I managed to get out the door on time nonetheless.

The fact thst my first meeting of the day was fika with my colleagues at the library, who had baked a roll cake filled with strawberries and whipped cream may had helped with motivation for that.

The second meeting of the day was only an hour, when it had been scheduled for two, so I managed to take an early bus home, and made time to shovel a little snow at Bryan's house on the way home (in part to make it look occasionally occupied, in part to make certain the postie can get to the mailbox, and in part because we may need the space for people to sleep there during our event next month, so it is good to keep the path cleared).

I even managed to get a half hour nap after I got home before getting up and doing our shovelling, finishing clearing the parking area just before Keldor got home with the car.

Then we cleaned away all of the various supplies for the renovations in progress out of the main floor of the house, so it won't be in the way when our housekeeper comes this weekend.

Then Keldor checked his armour and retaped his sword for the weekend while I ironed the Silk bliaut short tunic I finished on the trip to Stockholm (and fixed two problem seams) and started a load of laundry and also started packing everything else I need for this weekend.

Just before 20:00 I realised that I wasn't going to get as far as dealing with my armour and sword, and was feeling stressed about it. The armour is packed in its chest where it lives, and I am certain it is fine, but after the sixth time Keldor said that I really need to actually check it, I decided that no, this is for fun, and I don't need that stress, so I wrote their Highnesses to explain that I won't be fighting after all this weekend, and my stress levels felt instantly better.

Now the car is as loaded as it can be tonight, I have done my yoga, and most of the clutter is out of the way. In the morning we both head to work, then home, toss in the last of the stuff, meet Þórólfr, and start on the long drive south. We need only go as far as the Realm of Krake tomorrow night, so Friday will be an easy day.

tamaranth

2026/019: Helm — Sarah Hall

There they are, the exuberant, flamboyantly dressed couple, petting beneath a gargantuan inflammable. Helm is buoyed by the aerial company, and oddly nauseated. Something about the creepy, crêpey surface of the inflatable, and the oo of the balloon, and the balloon itself, its potential to burst and issue forth a loud, deflationary, unfunny raspberry. Cue, globophobia. [loc. 1090

A luminous wild tale whose protagonist is Helm, Britain's only named wind, an accident of geology and meteorology who's as vivid a character as the humans with which Helm interacts. (Helm's pronouns are Helm/Helm's.) After an intensely lyrical opening that depicts Helm's existence before the coming of humans, the novel skitters backwards and forwards in time ('Time happens all at once for Helm, more or less') focusing on a handful of individuals. These include a Neolithic seer, a medieval warrior-priest, a nineteenth-century meteorologist and his wife, a neurodiverse child growing up in the 1960s, a glider pilot, and a researcher studying microplastics in the environment.( Read more... )

Current Mood: jubilant

stevenpiziks

I started writing fantasy 35 years ago. (Oi!) Back then, and right up until about ten years ago, it was death by rejection if you tried to set your novel in a video game. The awfulness of the movie TRON only reinforced this. You were also told to never, ever write a book set in a world created for a fantasy role-playing game on the grounds that the world will be too simplistic by nature, and editors gleefully rejected such books.

Now?

It's suddenly the cool kid on the block. People are rushing to imitate Dungeon Crawler Carl, and the market is becoming flooded with these books.

I think a part of it is that video games have become in recent years a lot more immersive. The games hire actual writers and build actual worlds and tell actual stories. We've come a long way since Atari's "Adventure" game had you move a little square around the TV screen.

I haven't tried writing it and don't intend to--I think the genre and setting are a crutch for writers who can't build worlds or plot effectively--but I don't begrudge Matt Dinniman and his character Carl their success at it. Anytime an author succeeds in this market, go them! What bothers me are the self-published imitators who flood the market with drek until you can't find anything worth reading.

jacey

Audiobook narrated by Dominic West.

Clem used to be in charge of policing in the sleepy northern village of Watersmeet, now he’s 62 and a special constable, working under a boss who hates him. The feeling is mutual, but Clem gets on with being a community copper and puts up with it for the sake of his job. It’s all he has left since his wife died. A pair of grisly murders within a few days of each other sets the whole village in an uproar. Regional police get involved and there’s a lot of posturing and media preening from Clem’s superiors. They’re sure it’s a drug-gang to blame, but Clem knows better. A little girl sees a monster lurking in her back garden and Clem goes in search of answers. Could a local legend be true? Is the River Man on the prowl, and if so how can Clem prevent more deaths? Suspended from his job over a disagreement, he takes matters into his own hands. It’s his village and he’s going to sort it whatever the challenges. This is a murder mystery with supernatural elements. Dominic West reads this brilliantly; the characters are well delineated and the pacing is spot-on. An excellent listen.

jacey

Audiobook narrated by Michael Page

This is a revisit of one of my favourite books via Audible. Set is a second-world in a city not unlike pre-industrial Venice with alchemy and one specific type of magic, the Gentlemen Bastards are thieves with a difference, and Locke Lamora, The Thorn of Camorr, is their leader. He’s got a devious mind and a talent for deception and false-facing. Unlike the other cutpurse gangs, the Gentlemen Bastards have been educated by (the late) Father Chains to be more ambitious, and to run elaborate cons. This they hide from Capa Barsavi, the city’s crime boss and their supposed overlord, but when the Grey King starts to murder Barsavi’s gang-leaders, Locke and his little gang are dropped in it up to their necks and beyond. While trying to run a con to part a wealthy Don from his money Locke gets involved in both sides of the Grey King’s plans, and the Grey King has a Bonds Mage at his beck and call, a man so powerful that he can kill with a thought. Caught between the Grey King and the city’s Spider (head of the Duke’s Midnighters) Locke and his gang are in big trouble. There are plenty of exciting twists, and Locke goes through the mill (several times). Michael Page reads this well enough, though I could have wished for a little more excitement in the voice, to match Locke’s mercurial personality.

jacey

Audiobook narrated by Joanna Scanlon and others.

A short, darkly comic soliloquy from Allison, an elderly-care nurse on the cusp of requirement. She reflects on her life and nursing career, her previous partners and the gambling ring she ran in the hospital. And then there’s the analgesics… There’s a twist. Joanna Scanlon narrates, with other narrators doing voices.

jacey

Audiobook narrated by James Anderson Foster

Media tie-in of one of my favourite TV series, Firefly, masterminded by Joss Whedon. Captain Mal Reynolds is kidnapped from a rough bar on Persephone and spirited away to a kangaroo court of Browncoats who’ve been told he’s a traitor. The crew, Zoe, Wash, Book, Jane, Simon and River scurry about trying to find a clue as to where he’s gone, while on board Serenity, five crates of dangerously volatile mining explosives are heating up towards a big bang. James Anderson Foster narrates the story well.

jacey

Audiobook narrated by Kaylin Heath

Fairy-tale-ish story about Rhea, a low-born miller’s daughter, who is engaged to be married to sorcerer Lord Crevan against her wishes. When he demands she come to his strange house in the woods she discovers he already has six wives, only one of which is dead. Befriended by the wife-cook who used to be a witch, Rhea discovers that Crevan takes something from each wife, witchy power from the cook, sight from one of the others. He’s planning to take Rhea’s youth just as soon as they are married. However she can put off the awful day if she completes each of the strange tasks he gives her. This strains Rhea’s resourcefulness to the limits as, aided by a clever hedgehog, she completes task by task – until there’s one she will not complete and the wedding looms. Rhea has to rally the remaining wives and visit the Clock Wife in order to defeat Crevan. Kaylin Heath does a good job on the narration.

kareina

Worked from home, which meant I was here when the contractor finished the door on the loo in the attic:

Now we need to decorate it! When talking with him he pointed out that if we also close off the front of what will become a closet next to the loo, where the plumbing pipes run through what will be floor, after the project is done, then we could heat that space and the loo itself, and have the plumbers back to install the toilet even before we finish the full bedroom. I think this is a plan.

Working from home also gave me the chance to do a quick bit of experiment in the kitchen, which resulted in [[Garden mousse]], which is really yummy. 100% recommend.

Life with two kids: No memory to speak of

Interesting Links for 13-02-2026

Navigating disabilities

Drumroll please

landline, Reporting for Duty, Diamond and Misty

A long day followed by a road trip

2026/020: Once Upon a Time I Lived on Mars — Kate Greene

Interesting Links for 12-02-2026

Can you see me? I'm waiting for the right time

drive-by art post

Packing for the weekend

2026/019: Helm — Sarah Hall

Interesting Links for 11-02-2026

LitRPG

Booklog 17/26: R.B. Croft: The River Man – Audiobook

Booklog 16/26: Scott Lynch: The Lies of Locke Lamora – Gentlemen Bastards #1 - Audiobook

Booklog 15/26: Peter Bradshaw: Mercy

Booklog 14/26: James Lovegrove: Big Damn Hero – Firefly #1 – Audiobook

Booklog 13/26: T Kingfisher: The Seventh Bride – Audiobook

nice to work from home

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November 2017

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