hakeer | Reading

An episode that felt a bit like it was (stylishly) treading water, but in its last ten minutes did make up for it.

( Spoilers somehow have never watched a single episode of Golden Girls… )

Current Mood: thoughtful
Current Location: on the train

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When I was a kid, the Italian bakery in my neighborhood had all the usual types of fancy butter cookies and pignoli and tricolor cookies etc. but they also had a selection of less fancy cookies - like sesame cookies and S cookies and anginetti etc., and what we used to call chocolate sprinkle cookies, which may have started out similarly to butter cookies but were sturdier/crumblier, piped in a swirl, and covered with chocolate sprinkles. That bakery closed a long, long time ago (though you can still get frozen pasta with their name on it at the supermarket), and I have been trying ever since to recreate those cookies, with little success.

Today I baked the butter cookies from the Dolci cookbook (pic), though I didn't bother with sandwiching them with jam, and instead added chocolate sprinkles, and 1/2 tsp almond extract in order to try to recreate the taste of those old cookies. They are pretty close! They might need to be slightly less sweet, and probably cook a couple of more minutes, but they're the closest I've come so far. Also, I had the correct piping tip AND you don't chill the dough until after you pipe the cookies so it's a much easier proposition all around.

I also made the King Arthur small batch focaccia, but it never rises as much as they say it should during proofing. Still rises nicely in the oven and tastes great though.

The timing all worked out really well, even though I didn't plan ahead. Sometimes I get lucky since timing is generally the hardest part of cooking for me.

Ha! The announcer was like, "low event hockey, with only 5 shots" and now the Blue Jackets are getting a penalty shot! Igor stopped it though.

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Current Mood: satisfied
Current Music: Rangers vs Blue Jackets on tv

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adventures in cooking

Recently I watched a random algorithm-suggested YouTube video about that DIY house from the SomethingAwful forums and it reminded me of a Folding Ideas video that talks about the child-obliterating zipline discussion, so I'm rewatching some old Folding Ideas videos (still can't remember which one did that and I haven't found it yet). Today I watched Folding Ideas | An American Tail: Fievel Goes to Video Game Hell (Oct 4, 2018) and came across this striking quote that articulates a lot of what I enjoy about reading bad and mediocre fanfiction.

I wanted to share this with you, not because it's important or good or an underrated gem, but because it's none of those things. This game is bad. It's cheaply made, it's difficult to find, it's largely forgotten, it's not fun, and for all those reasons, it's likely to vanish entirely. And that's why I wanted to preserve it.

I believe in the value of failed art. Art that is driven by carelessness, by unchecked and untalented ego, by spectacularly low-stakes greed. It has a tendency to be novel, to be unpredictable, in a way that deliberate art never can. This is why it's so much fun to watch bad movies.

No one would ever make this game on purpose. Something in the creative process needs to be fundamentally broken to get to this point.

If you were going to sit down two decades later to make a game out of An American Tail because you actually cared about the movie and you cared about making the game, you're not going to churn out a hodgepodge series of disconnected minigames that don't work well.

It is not simply a lack of time or money that produces something like An American Tail the video game, but a profound lack of caring.

The end product of that broken process isn't worth playing for its own merits, but it is worth playing because it's worth remembering.

Dan Olson, "Folding Ideas - An American Tail: Fievel Goes to Video Game Hell" (Oct 4, 2018)

Interestingly, the fact that it tends to be novel, unpredictable, and fun, in a way that is maybe like watching bad movies, remains true even though there are probably many more pieces of bad fanfiction that aren't driven by a profound lack of caring.

On one level, yes, there's an overwhelming carelessness in a lot of badfic and a lot of modern fanfiction in general - I've talked before about the changing norms around beta reading, then editing, then even spellcheck, so that now editing is vanishingly rare and an overwhelming majority of the works you see in the tags I've visited at AO3 in recent years - with the sole exception of Yuletide and other fests - are dominated by things that haven't even been spellchecked, and you're less likely to see betas thanked in the notes than to see a statement that they didn't bother to spellcheck, didn't have a beta, or will maybe proofread later but they couldn't proofread before posting because they just "had to" post from their phone on a train in a tunnel at 3 am to meet a nonexistent deadline. The current norms seem to be extremely casual, and to consider editing and spellcheck and even reading back over what you've written as a fussy optional bit of formality that isn't really needed on comfortable casual occasions like posting fic, but should be saved for very special events.

But on another, of course, fanfiction is not often produced with a complete lack of caring. There is at least an enthusiasm or interest, an effort, however small, involved in putting their ideas into words - even if they've just sort of farted out the initial form of the idea without engaging their internal filters at all, or posted a chat log and not bothered to take out the tags and add sentence-final punctuation to it, at least there was a mental spark behind it that is probably not present in the corporate greed and maze of underpaid subcontractors involved with cheap crap videogames.

In spite of the presence in most fanfiction (I say most because you will still run into things that are like 'this was actually written for my OCs and I've used find and replace with the pairing names from this list of five popular fandoms, you can read this same poorly-punctuated fart with the names from the other fandoms here!') of that animating spark, though, overall, surveying the field of badfic and, tbh, even most of the generically mediocre fanfiction that

waxjism would describe in her spreadsheet as "sub mid"... the vibes of what he's saying here hold true.

They do reek of an often fascinating level of not-caring, whether it's caring enough to use spellcheck or taking five seconds to google an incorrect fact they stuck in that they didn't have to put there in the first place. They do provide a fully perceptible class of novelty - random, bizarre innovations that it feels like nobody could have done "on purpose". They do remind you of very bad movies. And in many of them it does seem like something in the creative process had to be fundamentally broken (perhaps just the steps between the initial brainstorming and any analysis or consideration or planning).

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badfic

Today at work, they announced that we will be getting a COLA, retro back to July 1! My boss also floated a potential promotion for me (really, the work would mostly stay the same, but the title and money would be better) for after the new CEO is in place. We'll see if that ever happens. It would be cool if it did, but I won't hold my breath.

I thought I had other things to say, but I fell asleep on the couch after I logged off work and now I'm all fuzzy-headed.

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Current Mood: sleepy
Current Music: We've Got You (i - Spark) - Vienna Teng

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work

I got my driver's license today on the third test! I was fighting for my life to wake up and fully eat my breakfast and everything, actually walked to the bus stop an hour early by mistake due to setting two of my alarms wrong last night and then had to walk back, had an upset stomach after breakfast and then like three scary random situations and two big mistakes in a row in my driving lesson on the way to the test, so my teacher asked if I wanted to pull over in a parking lot and calm down. Which I did. First time that's happened in a lesson! But then the test itself was actually uneventful. No big mistakes on my part and no scary traffic situations or close calls, and I handled myself well and recovered from the minor mistakes correctly, I was just... DROWNING in stress and white-knuckling it to remain as calm as possible. The examiner told me that my main thing is just that I'm too stressed while driving and have to calm down (YUP, KNEW THAT!!!!). Apparently I was gripping the steering wheel way too hard, which I wasn't aware of but that doesn't surprise me at all.

Aaaaaanyway, on the final drive back from the test to the driving school my driving teacher told me he lived in the US for four years, and I said, oh, where? When he was 20 he moved to the New Jersey area and played on a minor team (now defunct) that feeds into the NHL Jersey Devils, actually, he said, in Albany. And I was like hey!!! I lived in (a suburb of) Albany for three years as a kid [before the disastrous life-ruining move to Alabama at age 6, I did not say, but just try going from Montessori school in upstate NY to shitty authoritarian public school in Alabama some time and see how you like it].

So. Anyway. I told

waxjism this story like "Hahah, and then we met here in Finland! Isn't it funny?" but she immediately was like, "There's a Wikipedia list of all the teams that feed the NHL!" and started combing around through the internet until a few minutes later she called, "Is this him?" and showed me his headshot. Apparently he was also the captain of our local Liiga hockey team in 2015, around the time we were going to quite a few matches, and one of his kids is currently on that team. Welp.

As I mentioned recently, I was planning to buy a milk frother so I could make lattes once passing, originally. But if I can't source decaf matcha and chai tea domestically, I wouldn't be able to make my favorite two lattes (those are the two I've been dying to make myself). I have not gone looking for those yet. I should order some old-fashioned stove black (polish) for our woodstove though, although that will not be nearly as exciting. My caffeine-free trial is still in effect until early December.

The short version: visually gorgeous (I expected no less from del Toro), well acted, but alas, it reminds me of nothing as much as a certain type of fanfiction - grovelfic, in lack of a better term - I used to find annoying back in the Highlander days, aka the ones where not only Cassandra is the true villalin but Methos was the fluffiest Horseman of the Apocalypse ever and Duncan profoundly apologizes. I mean, it's not that extreme, because Victor is something of an narcissistic jerk in the novel (though not only), and the Creature, who is my favourite character in it anyway, is very much the product of unearned abuse before he starts dealing out death and horror, but good lord. What Del Torro did in his version is really the type of fanfic that absolves the favored woobie (or do we say blorbo these days?) from any wrongdoing whatsoever, thereby unintentionally taking something crucial from what makes the character away, and shoves it upon the unfavourite. And that's before we get to "hat is the geography of this story anyway?" and "why got spoiler engaged to spoiler in the first place?" Mind you, if I had never ever read the novel, I suspect I might have loved the film, beccause as I said - terrific looks and good acting - but as it is, I have to consider the adaptation aspect, and here I have to say Penny Dreadful remains uncontested champion for best rendition of both the Creature (Caliban, just that there is no misunderstanding) and Victor Frankenstein in both their flaws and virtues and (Mary) Shelleyan themes. Runner up isn't this one, but the Branagh movie, which, yes, Kenneth Branagh in his slightly megalomaniac self indulgent Coppola phase, and he softens Victor's characterisation a bit (though not to the degree Del Toro softens the Creature's), but still, of all the adaptations I've seen, it probably sticks the most to the actual novel. (While Penny Dreadful's versions of the Creature and Frankenstein stick most the the spirit and characterisation.) (James Whale's two Frankenstein movies are their own artistic creations which while founding the pop culture idea of both the scientist and the creature are really their own independent things, sharing little but names and not even those at parts.)

( The spoilery version wonders whether everyone is telelporting at different plot points )

In conclusion: maybe do an original script the next time, del Toro? I really wonder whether the crazy geography and all the other technical issues would have mattered to me if I hadn't been comparing book and film, or whether I would allowed myself being swept away by the spectacle, and the characters as presented in the movie. But I do suspect some of the characterisation questions would still have remained.

Current Mood: contemplative
Current Location: Munich

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So I'm back on my HGTV bullshit again, and I just watched an episode where Egypt and Mike designed "the ultimate bachelor pad" for a dude who plans to entertain his friends and family for cards and football games, and who has two enormous dogs, and they put a WHITE COUCH in his living room. Who DOES that?

Otherwise, it was a nice reno - the three-seasons deck especially. But a white couch just seems like a terrible idea for 99% of people, let alone a guy with 2 huge dogs.

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Current Mood: confused
Current Music: Got Me Wrong - Alice in Chains

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There were two new people at class yesterday, so due to my status as an oldie, I was separated from my usual partner/friend and paired with the lady newbie. Still can't believe Rosie trusts me to explain how to do stuff. Especially as I remain so bad at some things, like forward lunges.

We did go to the cinema on Saturday, going to see The Choral at the Odeon Metrocentre. Going in we had a quick natter to one of the workers we know there, and he said it was a twee film, and he was right, but I still enjoyed it. I also enjoyed checking out all the Christmas decorations in the malls. We missed them all last year due to James not being able to drive after breaking his arm, so it was good to take in all the sparkles.

Then, arriving home, we watched our neighbour decorating her windows with Christmas scenes for a bit. She was using what looked like a white window crayon/paint, and the results were so pretty. So much better than that spray on snow we used to use to make our own snow scenes back in the day.

Sunday we'd planned a walk, but the day got away from us. We posted two parcels of wooden art that James had sold, went grocery shopping, and dropped something off to my brother. Who wasn't actually in, but I did get a nice chat with my niece. We also checked out the near to us Aldi that had just opened last week. What I especially liked was they must have over stocked, as lots of the fruit and veg was at a 75% off discount. Which is why we had a very veg heavy casserole for tea last night.

James also found out one of his booked craft fairs has been cancelled which is a disappointment, as it's the one in our town and closest to Christmas, which would have been perfect for last minute buyers. He's put the feelers out to see if tables are going elsewhere, but as of now we've only got two fairs left this month and then nothing in December.

Today I'm on special sand litter tray watch as I need another pee sample from Murphy, but he's not providing the goods yet. He appears back to his old self, and when I can finally send a sample in, I'm hoping they test it, and he can be cleared for coming off his meds. But, as it's after four now and the vet shuts at 6, I have the feeling the test is going to be a no-go today, especially as Kayleigh was going to be on dropping off duties as James is at work until 6.

5 things make a post:

- This New Yorker profile of Costco was super interesting, I thought, as I ordered several pounds of pecans from Costco to make holiday gifts for various co-workers.

- The Giants once again had a lead for most of a game and then lost, plus their rookie QB ended up with a concussion. I texted the family group chat that that should be enough to finally fire Brian Daboll, and sure enough, today he got canned. Woof. What a miserable few seasons it's been. Hopefully whoever the next coach is (and the current interim coach) will protect Dart a little better.

- Will the Rangers ever win a game at MSG this season???

- It's the 50th anniversary of the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald, so give the song a listen. It still makes me cry every time I hear it. "Does anyone know where the love of god goes / when the waves turn the minutes to hours?"

- I don't have a fifth thing.

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Current Mood: melancholy
Current Music: Rangers vs Preds on tv

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Wax made some eclairs for me last week, after I complained that you can't get them in Finland! It took two days (she made the pastry cream a day early), and a bunch of hours, but she agrees that it's not like it's hard, just a lot of fussing around. I am now not positive but I THINK I've maybe never had fresh eclairs before? I had fresh ones Friday, then leftover ones Saturday and Sunday now. The second-day ones where the crust has softened are definitely way more familiar. The fresh ones were incredibly delicious.

Our favorite icecream shake is pistachio and vanilla combined with coffee and amaretto (we were too depressed to make it this summer, because you have to get out a food processor and do a bunch of steps) and I've been trying for years to think how to combine these flavors into a cold-weather dessert. Maybe eclairs is the answer! Amaretto-coffee icing and pistachio-vanilla pastry cream? Or pistachio icing and coffee-amaretto pastry cream?

Speaking of Wax, she updated her journal

waxjism for the first time in two years or something. Maybe because I told her I was not as qualified as she was to post about the eclairs.

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My sister texted me yesterday to let me know she's sick so I shouldn't go over there today, so I did not. So today, instead of making pie, I made Chinese pork buns (pic). I made the pork yesterday and used the leftovers today - I used boneless country ribs because they are fairly cheap and I don't like dealing with bones. I can't seem to get a good boneless pork shoulder these days - last time I ordered a bone-in one, it was supposedly 3 lbs, but it was 2 lbs of bone and 1 of meat, which is not the best ratio for the money - so I go with the boneless country ribs instead (the ones from Costco are especially good).

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I shouldn't have been so enthusiastic the other day about how much better I've been sleeping, because of course, on Friday night, I had a terrible night's sleep, tossing and turning and just unable to stay asleep after several hours of trying to fall asleep. Last night was much better. *hands* Sometimes, it just be like that.

While I was lying awake, I was thinking about Dungeon Crawler Carl, as I have been wont to do lately, and trying to figure out his relationship with Bea, because I find it kind of baffling. ( spoilers through book 7 )

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Current Mood: thoughtful
Current Music: Rams vs Niners on tv

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Pluribus is the new show Vince Gilligan created, and whose first two episodes premiered on Apple TV, with Rhea Seahorn as the main character. After her stunning performance as Kim Wexler in Better Call Saul, it seems Gilligan felt inspired, and no wonder. I still think her not winning any awards of what she did with Kim is one of the great injustices of tv world. Anyway: While the show is set in Albuquerque like Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul, it belongs to a quite different genre and in a way has Gilligan go back to his X-Files roots. With the stunning cinematography of BB/BCS, and some (based on those first two eps) great twists on the whole invasion/hive mind/zombie tropes and genre. Also, Gilligan's and his fellow artists ability to quickly create three dimensional feeling side characters with just a few minutes of screen time shines, and the way he can connect visceral emotion and horror on the one hand and black humour otoh.

( Spoilers are wondering just what saving humanity really means )

I'm really looking forward to seeing more of how the show continues to deal with those questions. Well done, Gilligan, I'm hooked!

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In other news, having recently made a trip to Vienna, I posted a gigantic historically themed pic spam here!

Current Mood: bouncy
Current Location: Munich

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( You're about to view content that the journal owner has advised should be viewed with discretion. )

Current Mood: achey

Once again it's been literal years since I last posted...

Got really into ellipses in the meantime... just trailing off... like my journaling...

I don't even want to recap the past two years,

cimorene has kept everyone apprised. The cat situation has changed (had to give Anubis back due to circumstances, Snookums died, got a new cat named Sipuli), but also not changed (somehow still cat divorced). We had a plumbing/sewer calamity that went on for over eight months but is finally resolved at great cost but also not as great as we feared so yay I guess. The horrors are always lurking, but nothing super extra unbearable right now. I don't feel great but I'm not completely comatose with depression either.

I've also been more Fannish than I've been in a while. Previously on this channel I was into Roswell, New Mexico, but that sort of fizzled semi-quickly due to the show getting immediately cancelled and also because I did not vibe with the last season. I wallowed in my fandomlessness for a while, watching a lot of random movies and shows without a lot of engagement. Then in July last year, for reasons I can't remember, I decided to unblock a tag on tumblr. I previously did that for RNM with good results. This time it was 9-1-1. Totally worked, it took me reading maybe two fics (by someone I already followed) and watching one clip and it was off to the races. So firefighters it is. And this show has Not been cancelled yet! They did kill a main for the first time (in season 8, crazy work), so maybe my curse is real. The monomania is pretty strong still after 15 months and counting. I've tentatively made some friends. I'm also tentatively trying to write, almost for real for real, which I haven't done in (checks notes) fifteen years. I've read approximately 2200 fics in the fandom, which I know because I've kept track in a spreadsheet. I make notes on the episodes as they air. I wake up early on workdays to watch before work! Engagement. My tumblr (

waxjism) is wall to wall gifs of Eddie Diaz (#mycharacter). I unblocked a tag and everyone who followed me had to immediately block it ha ha. As is tradition!

Other things... The other day I made eclairs. Didn't notice until too late that the recipe I used was for like 20+ actual eclairs, and there's only two of us. I did cut it in half last minute, but now I have a bunch of leftover pastry cream bc I'd already made the whole batch.

Current Mood: sleepy

Busy, busy days. Some media consumed in the last weeks were:

The Diplomat, Season 3: I was afraid the same would happen as with The West Wing - which series creator Deborah Cahn had also been involved in - , i.e. the reality I live in would make it impossible for me to watch a show in which the people working for the US administration might be fucked up in varying degrees, but all sincerely dedicated to the common good in terms of their motivation, and by implication the US public would not vote a creature like the Orange Menace into office (twice). (Hence my personal impossibility of a WW rewatch right now.) This turned out not to be the case. By and large, I enjoyed the season, though its global dangers not withstanding, I would still rather live in that reality (where the US President might ( do spoilery things ), but would not want to change the US into a mixture of ultimate corruption and theocratic autocracy, and the British PM is still a Boris Johnson expo with the thinnest of egos, but at least Nigel Farage doesn't exist. (BTW: it's not clear where The Diplomat's timeline departs from ours; resident Rayburn was clearly a Joe Biden avatar when the show started and there is some occasional talk about restoring the US image abroad, but they never say from what, and whether the Orange Menace's first assault on democracy happened or whether something else did.) Seaosn 3 deals with the fallout from season 2's cliffhanger ending, throws in some new twists (and characters), andwhile wrapping up its seasonal storyline again throws in a tag scene with a big new reveal/hook, while playing to its two strengths, i.e. bringing its central character into a series of convoluted political situations in which she has to extricate not just herself but others (including the US and GB), and her screwed up but intense relationship with her husband. ( More spoilery observations to follow. ) In conclusion, I continue to like this entertaining AU. I hope it gets another season, though if it doesn't, this finale despite its last moment reveal would also work as a finale.

The Fantastic Four: First Steps : Which I missed in the cinema but which is now on Disney +. Personal state of knowledge: I saw none of the earlier Fantastic Four movies, to which this one isn't connected anyway; the comicverse characters I encountered a) in an historical AU version via the comics 1602, and b) in the comicverse Civil War storylilne, which means I hardly saw them at their best. (Unforgotten: Reed Richards fanboying Joe McCarthy.) I'm happy to report these latest MCU versions are a delightful bunch, living in a canonical alternate universe (818) in the 1960s, and keeping in trend with both MCU Spiderman and the latest DCU Superman, we're not going through the origin story again but the movie introduces us to the character(s) when they're already superheroiing, albeit not that long. The cast includes Vanessa Kirby as Sue Storm, Pedro Pasqual as Reed Richards, and Joe Quinn, since Stranger Things a Geek celebrity, as Sue's brother Johnny, with the unknown-to-me Ebon Moss-Bachrach playing Ben Grimm. Something that struck me as very sympathetic is that the movie treats the four as a true ensemble, i.e. Johnny and Ben aren't the sidekicks, and that the central dilemna when it's revealed ( and which is spoilery )

Current Mood: busy
Current Location: Munich

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Kelli Storm, Desolate: Mia is a witch in a world concealed from but intertwined with mundanes; her ADHD makes her powers unpredictable. When things are going badly for her at high school, she accidentally sends herself back in time, which creates further problems both magical and romantic. This was too YA-ish for me, but I think it could work for an actual teenager who would empathize more with the emotional stakes.

Patricia Lockwood, Will There Ever Be Another You: A memoir-ish thing about surviving covid with a brain injury, dealing with a husband’s illness, and trying to write a TV show based on her previous book Priestdaddy. It conveys the hallucinatory disjointedness of brain fog, but for that reason was mostly inaccessible to me.

KJ Charles, All of Us Murderers: In 1905, the reclusive heir to the family fortune calls his potential heirs to him, offering everything to whoever marries his young ward. One of the heirs has ADHD and thus has found it difficult to keep a job, especially after being discovered in flagrante with his lover—who turns out to be the heir’s personal secretary. Everyone else in the family is a nasty piece of work, and then strange things start happening in the gothic pile in which they are trapped by mists. It’s fast-moving and very (gayly) gothic.

Caitlin Rozakis, The Grimoire Grammar School Parent Teacher Association: After her five-year-old daughter is attacked and turned into a werewolf—a severe breach of werewolf law—the protagonist, her daughter, and her husband move to a tony Connecticut suburb full of magical creatures, where her daughter may be able to get an education among people who understand her. But the new school is full of traps—high-stakes testing, Mean Girl moms, financial shenanigans, and a pesky prophecy that might involve her baby girl. I liked the fact that the issues were driven not so much by magic but by people trying to game the system (as rich Connecticut denizens are known to do).

T. Kingfisher, What Stalks the Deep: Another short Alex Easton novel, this time set in America, where a strange sighting in an abandoned mine heralds something very creepy indeed. Avoid if “gelatinous” is a no-no for you.

Deborah Tomkins, Aerth: Novella about an underpopulated, cooling world that discovers Urth, on the other side of the sun, which has similar languages and human beings but is hot and overpopulated. The noninterventionist, consensus-based culture of Aerth seems healthier than the headlong rush to authoritarianism of Urth, but that doesn’t stop its inhabitants from feeling choked by their obligations, and there might be a few secrets in its past too, though Tomkins isn’t very interested in that except as background. It wasn’t for me.

The End of the World As We Know It, ed. Christopher Golden & Brian Keene: A collection of stories set in the world of Stephen King’s The Stand. (They all seem to have agreed to go with the date of 1992 for the plague instead of the initial 1982; there are therefore fewer anomalies/more actual engagement with the world in 1992 than in the revised version of The Stand, though I did note a character who was not online using “FAQ,” for an anachronism in the other direction.) Most of the stories are set during the collapse and therefore don’t add a lot, and more of the stories than I’d hoped are set in the US. There’s one story set in Pakistan that is quite interesting—this is all Christian nonsense to them—and one UK story that really gets the vibe right.

Naomi Novik, The Summer War: Novella about a girl—daughter of an ambitious lord—who accidentally curses her brother when he leaves her behind after renouncing his family because of his father’s homophobia. In her attempt to fix the curse, she allies with her remaining brother and tries to navigate a political marriage, but otherworld politics complicate matters. It’s a pleasant variation on Novik’s core themes: Epic people can be very hard to live with; power must be used to serve others or it is bad; loving other people is the only thing that can save us.

T. Kingfisher, Hemlock and Silver: A king seeks out an expert on poisons to treat his daughter, Snow, who is mourning the deaths of her mother and sister Rose and keeps getting sicker. There are apples and mirrors and magic in the desert, as well as a little romance among the very practical people. It’s nice that the healer was a scientist even dealing with magic, and the imagery is genuinely creepy at times.

Melissa Caruso, The Defiant Heir: Second in a trilogy. Amalia, heir to an Italianate ruling family, continues to fight against the planned invasion of her empire by the neighboring mages. I could wish for a bit more Brandon Sanderson-style working out of the magic system, but it was still a fun read.

Freya Marske, Sword Crossed: Luca, a con man on the run, becomes the sword tutor of Matti, heir to a noble house. (This is romantasy without magic—just nonheterosexist family structures and different gods than were historically in place.) Their connection is problematic because Matti needs to get married to save his house, and he hired/blackmailed Luca into being his “second” in the expected challenge by a disappointed suitor. So falling in love with Luca is really inconvenient. Marske’s best work is handling the arranged marriage—they like each other fine and Matti’s intended has rejected the suitor who won’t take no for an answer. But I wanted magic! If you are fine without it, then this is probably more enjoyable.

Will Greatwich, House of the Rain King: Really interesting, unusual single-volume fantasy. In the valley, when the Rain King returns, the water rises until a princess comes from the birds to marry him (and die), and then they recede. A priest, an indentured servant, and a company of foreign mercenaries all get caught up in the struggle to make the Rain King’s wedding happen. There are also undead guarding treasure as well as fairies and marsh-men, who have their own roles to play.

Nghi Vo, The City in Glass: Short novel about a demon whose city is destroyed by angels; her parting curse sticks with one angel, who keeps hanging around as she slowly decides whether and how to build/love again. Dreamy and evocative.

Imagine my excitement at reading this interview with Bob Mould this morning: How Bob Mould rediscovered the great, lost live Husker Du record not because of Hüsker Dü, whom I liked but didn't love, but because he mentions that Sugar reunited. I LOVED SUGAR!!! If I Can't Change Your Mind is 3 minutes of PURE POP PERFECTION and one of my top 5 songs of ALL TIME. Back in the 90s, I saw Bob live solo at least twice (once pressed right up to the stage beneath him and his guitar at...Irving Plaza? I think?), and saw Sugar in concert at least once (maybe twice?). Copper Blue is full of great songs, as is Bob's first solo album, Workbook. (Black Sheets of Rain was also good but less accessible, imo.)

If Sugar actually tours, I might leave the house to see them!

I have other, less fun, work news, but I should probably save it for a locked post sometime later. Sigh.

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Current Mood: excited
Current Music: standing on the edge of Hoover Dam, I am

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bob mould,
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I got offline early yesterday as I didn't want to see the Celeb Traitors spoilers. The finale was mistakenly shown a day early in Canada, so it would have been all too easy to unwillingly see the outcome. As it was, I was glad I did go in unspoiled. ( cut for spoilers )

I've really enjoyed watching the show, and while it was frustrating waiting a week between some episodes, doing so kept people talking, and I liked that.

Today I've been for a walk to one pharmacist to pick up Kayleigh's script, and then to another to get James'. While there's no bright sunshine, it's still mild so it was nice to walk through the falling leaves and get some fresh air.

I also talked to Pauline, who phoned asking if we wanted to meet up next Wednesday for a lunch out to celebrate James' birthday. Now, that's not until the 1st, so yet again she's arranging stuff really early. But hey, he's off that day and I guess there's no reason not to celebrate that early.

Tomorrow, for the first time in a few weekends, we don't have any craft fairs so we're off to the cinema. I don't even know what to see yet, but something. I may even buy myself my first Christmas Costa of the season. I quite fancy a gingerbread latte with a tiny gingerbread man balanced on top.

Sipuli can now touch a target and also touch it by sort of standing up on her hind legs. That did take extra training and I am giving another verbal cue, but it's really the same trick and I'm not sure what to do next. She sits most of the time by default, which would make that hard. Maybe lie down, or turn in a circle?

I started training Tristana yesterday too (the sessions are about 5 minutes, so it's not really a burden), and she is getting better about touching the target but doesn't fully understand yet.

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cats

Alas, despite me getting up early this morning, the cleaning ladies did not come! They did say last time that my regular appointment might need to be moved going forward, but then I got the confirmation email for today and figured maybe that wasn't happening. But they did not show up so I emailed the company and they were very apologetic, and now they are coming on Saturday at 9 am.

on Sunday, I'm going to my sister's to make the apple pies for Thanksgiving, since my brother-in-law, who does all the holiday cooking wants to simplify* what needs doing on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, which has traditionally been the day we make pie.

*"Simplify" should be in quotes, because for Christmas, at least, we keep telling him we're good with an apps and dessert style menu (personally, I keep advocating for pajama!Christmas) to no avail. He gets about 90% of the way there and then is like, but what if someone wants ziti? or ham? so idk. He also won't cut back on the antipasto, which is what everyone ends up filling up on, so then no one wants the big meal that follows.

On Thanksgiving, I personally would prefer a roast chicken to turkey, but truly, as long as my brother brings the stuffing and there's pie, I don't really care about anything else. The fancy cranberry relish is nice, and I won't say no to a dollop of mashed potatoes, but overall, I really do only want the stuffing.

Anyway! I took Monday off since we are off Tuesday for Veterans Day, so my plan is to make char siu again on Saturday and then finally try to make pork buns on Monday. We'll see how that goes.

*

Current Mood: full
Current Music: Bastards of Young - the Replacements

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