halojedha | Reading

Reading. ( Burch + Penman, McMillan-Webster, Wells, Davies + Jones, Hwang Carrant, Keynes + Aidley )

... all of which adds up to more pain-related reading than I felt like I'd managed this week, huh, I thought I had tripped and fallen entirely into Murderbot and EatYourBooks indexing but apparently not!

Writing. A response to the EHRC consultation, which was... several thousand words. A very, very brief response to the Pathways to Work green paper consultation ("I am too disabled to manage doing this properly. These charities are speaking for me. Please fucking listen to them.")

Watching. The first half of Fantasia, with the toddler, with my hand held through all the scary bits to reassure me, apart from the bit that was SO scary that we had to get up and distract ourselves until it was over. Which had absolutely not been flagged as one of the scary bits, and which was the deep-sea-origins-of-life section.

(I had not watched the film since primary school, I don't think? And between then and now I have played a bunch of orchestral music, for most of that time on the violin but latterly as a French horn. It turns out that when I'm not distracted by playing a completely different part, I have incredibly intense sense-memories of several of the pizzicato sections early on...)

Another Murderbot episode. (I continue Indignant.)

Another Farscape episode, this one Taking the Stone (S02E03), which I think was firmly back to early season one levels of incoherence.

Tragically we have not managed The Old Guard 2, because I have had too much migraine and there have been SO many things Happening, but... maybe this week???

Cooking. Several new things! Four from East, leaving me at 41/120 recipes still to make (two of which are "probably won't happen" for reasons of "grapefruit" and "matcha"); of those this week's meal plan includes two (aubergine larb with sticky rice; Vietnamese coconut pancakes). I appreciated the reminder that fried new potatoes are tasty, and A is notably into the chargrilled summer vegetable salad, though I was not a fan of the faff and think I prefer smitten kitchen's charred corn succotash.

Approximately zero faff was salt lassi, and A is now aware that this Special Treat is available; low faff was a cherry clafoutis with fruit from the plot, which I overcooked a bit but, hey, I do in fact like caramelised crunchy bits.

Eating. FIRST BATCH OF DESSERT GOOSEBERRIES ARE RIPE. A tiny handful of Sugar Magnolia sugarsnap peas. Misc jostaberries. RASPBERRIES. And also supermarket strawberries, because we have hit the stage of the summer where they're down to £5 per kilo :)

Growing. I have been doing small bits of harvest and failing to get support structures in for the beans and tomatoes. The outdoor tomatoes have tomatoes on. The squash are coming along; I put more squash seeds in, on the grounds that they're super late but might still do anything; I have not managed to kill all of the chillis; the pepper has flowers.

Harvested lots of dried peas for sowing next year. Am attempting to develop Plans that might actually let me have a full bed of broad beans and a full bed of peas in the interests of getting Reasonable Quantities of them. ~~If the council doesn't tell me I'm not allowed the abandoned plot next door--~~

I could get so much done if I could coax myself out there for even an hour a day but the agoraphobia is saying No, annoyingly. Gonna try to get A to chase me out more this week.

oursin

No bread made for reasons.

Friday night supper: I was intending having penne with bottled sliced artichoke hearts, except did not appear to have these in store cupboard: did a sauce of blender-whizzed Peppadew Roasted Red Peppers in brine instead.

Saturday breakfast rolls: basic buttermilk, 50:50% strong white/white spelt flour, turned out nicely.

Today's lunch: diced leg of lamb casseroled in white wine with thyme with sweet potato topping, served with buttered spinach and what really were quite tiddly juvenile baby leeks vinaigrette in a dressing of olive oil, white wine vinegar, and wholegrain mustard.

elisi

Promethia and I posted the final chapter of In the Sight of Angels (and Ghosts), our Good Omens/Dead Boy Detectives crossover. :)

Summary: The story of how Edwin Payne, Dead Boy Detective, met and befriended Aziraphale, Angel and Bookseller. And how that friendship flourished despite initial set-backs.
22k, 6/6

Also, if you wonder why AO3 was down the other day the explanation is better than you could ever hope for.

umadoshi

scruloose and I did make it to the little farmers' market down the road for its opening day of the season, and even managed to get there earlier than later! (I think it's open from 8 to 1, and we probably were there...a bit after 10?)

We made it home with two quarts of strawberries and one of cherries, new potatoes, a dozen eggs, and boneless chicken thighs, plus a bee balm for the garden, which we quickly tucked into a fairly open space in our little garden bed yesterday evening. (What was there before? UNKNOWN. Will I manage to reconstruct it from old posts or something? Also unknown. But hey, a plant!)

Reading: I finished Everything for Everyone: An Oral History of the New York Commune, 2052–2072 (M.E. O'Brien and Eman Abdelhadi), which was fantastic. On the fiction front, I followed it up with Tamsyn Muir's novella Princess Floralinda and the Forty-Flight Tower (not really my thing--I continue to rarely bond with novellas, I guess--but interestingly done), Sacha Lamb's When the Angels Left the Old Country (marvelous), and Sofia Samatar's The Practice, the Horizon, and the Chain (again, didn't really bond emotionally, but it executed what it was doing beautifully).

Non-fiction: David Chang and Priya Krishna's Cooking at Home: Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying About Recipes (And Love My Microwave), which is, like...primarily actually a David Chang book that Priya Krishna did a ton of heavy-lifting assisting on (which may be very normal for co-written cookbooks, but in this case she was interjecting and clarifying in her own voice as well as doing a fair bit of the actual writing in his voice, and it was all very transparent that it was being done that way, but also a little odd to read). I think I bought this as a sale ebook before hearing that Chang (the Momofuku guy) is something of an asshole, but then when I was reading it, it felt really promising as a book that might be genuinely useful for me (and even by cookbook standards, its ebook is terribly formatted), so I was pleasantly surprised to readily find a used half-price hard copy available on line, which is winging its way to me now. I've also made sure that Krishna's own Indian-Ish: Recipes and Antics from a Modern American Family is now on the wishlist where I keep an eye out for ebook sales.

And now I'm reading An Everlasting Meal: Cooking with Economy and Grace by Tamar Adler, which is a cookbook mostly in the form of essays on cooking as a thoughtful/mindful practice.

Watching: One more Murderbot episode to go in this season, and oh, I hope we get a second one. I'm going to miss this little show.

We finished watching the second season of Kingdom (the historical zombies k-drama), which I found very satisfying. The ending very much sets up a subsequent season, and there's a movie out that fills in the backstory of the person/people we glimpse at the end of season 2 who would presumably be extremely central in any further season, but I don't think we feel inspired to watch said backstory movie unless a third season of the show is ever announced and it becomes relevant in that way.

oursin

Happy birthday,

tree_and_leaf!

rejectomorph

So I noticed I didn't actually write anything about most of Friday, so I should note that it turned out to be comparatively cool and pleasant for a central valley July, and thus a good day to mourn the death of the American empire, the first in history to die in a clown car crash. Now that it has been consigned to the dustbin of history, I suppose the impending demise of it's parent will be a bit anticlimactic, but the fact that its death warrant was signed on that famous anniversary is interesting nonetheless. Reminded me of that old curse which may or may not be apocryphal, may you die in interesting times. Looks like I'll get to do that.

But Friday evening I didn't need the air conditioner, as the outdoors got cool enough by nine o'clock to allow the fan to be turned on and the windows opened, an event which was repeated this evening. Summers here would be less hellish if we could get a couple of days like this every couple of weeks. I doubt we will though, at least not this year. I was sufficiently energized by Friday's coolth to fix an actual meal, though I haven't done so tonight. I'm thinking I might open a tuna packet and have some crackers. I'd like to get to sleep fairly soon, even though I got up fairly late today. The heat is returning tomorrow, and starting Wednesday there will be a string of ten triple-digit days with nocturnal lows in the seventies. In short, sheer hell. I hope to enjoy this last night of good sleep, as I might not get another until autumn. And maybe not even then. It's the fire this time, you know.

kaberett

I have finally successfully got my head around when the local supermarket reduces the prices on its pastries, which means that we are now well-supplied for doing a batch of pistachio croissant strata to get us most of the way through the coming week. It is not going to be a tomorrow (Sunday) morning breakfast, though, because we have half a cherry clafoutis from this morning, made using allotment cherries.

( Read more... )

pauraque

sunshine_revival's next challenge is:

Tunnel of Love
Journaling: The romance of summer! What do you love? Write about anything you feel sentimental about or that gets your heart pumping.
Creative: Write a love poem to anyone or anything you like.

This is a topic I've been thinking about a lot lately. As an aro-ace person growing up in a time before we really had labels for those things (and, frankly, even now when some people still just don't get it), I've had a lot of experiences of being told that the way I loved people was wrong or not good enough. I'm... well, I was about to say I'm lucky to have people in my life now who don't see my love as lesser because it isn't romantic and never will be, and that is true, but also I have worked damn hard to accept myself as I am and to put energy into relationships with people who get me. So it's part luck, part skill. :P

I recently got a formal diagnosis of being on the autism spectrum. (I promise this relates.) This was something I had suspected for a long time, but having it confirmed has led me to take stock of a lot of past experiences and shine a different light on them. I've always had intense "special interests," but early on in life I learned to downplay them because of other people's disapproval. I think I am a much more... passionate person than others might suspect? I've only been able to let it show a little in fannish spaces where it's more accepted to fall in love with a fandom, or become infatuated with a character, or be swept off your feet by a storyline. Those aren't metaphors, it's really what it feels like, and I feel that way about a lot of things!

When I was a kid one of my special interests was ancient Egypt. I remember flipping through history books and feeling a physical level of joy and contentment as I pored over photos of pyramids and papyri, because I just loved loved loved what I was seeing so much. When the prompt asks about what gets my heart pumping, I think of things like that. But I learned to hide that part of myself because people didn't get it. I want to work on changing this. I know that kind of love is still there and I can still tap into it, and I want a future for myself where I'm proud that it's a part of me. That feels far away right now, but there was also a time when being proud of being aro-ace also felt very far away, so I think there's cause for hope.

redbird

Sometime in the last couple of months, someone posted a link to a site that had interesting looking shirts made of linen, for lower prices than most places charge. I forgot to bookmark it. Can anyone point me to it? or to something else that fits that description, even if you didn't see it here?

Edited to add: A the shirts were less expensive than I expected, which is a large part of why I'm interested. Those may have been sale prices, I don't remember.

Also, the were made of either linen or a linen blend, not "line".

oursin

Is it OK to read Infinite Jest in public? Why the internet hates ‘performative reading’

You know, I was completely unaware that 'The Internet' hated upon this (whatever it is) until I came across this article and I think we are probably well into a realm similar to journo constructing a phenomenon on the basis of '6 people I spoke to in the wine-bar last week'.

Or maybe I just don't do TikTok and am missing this, but in my experience, few forms of social media are entire monoliths, what?

Why shouldn't people read in public? They're not doing it AT other people, honestly.

Can't help thinking that those who get aerated at people reading on public transport or while sitting quietly in a restaurant or coffee-shop are very likely those who think you should 'rawdog' long planeflights, sad gits.

Okay, these days I am pretty much always reading on ereader when out and about, so nobody can see what I'm reading. But back in the day I have read a lot of things that I daresay some miserable so-and-so would have considered 'performative', like Remembrance of Things Past on the Tube.

And among other things Marx and Rousseau on the train when I was commuting in from suburban Surrey.

Which phase of my life I was reminded of by a review headed 'A darker side of Lawrence Durrell' - I was not aware that there was any other side, actually - I habitually got in the same compartment of the same train each morning and there was the same young man making his way veeeeery slowwwwly through the volumes of The Alexandria Quartet. Months and months of Balthazar.

oursin

Happy birthday,

stillsostrange!

rmc28

Books on pre-order:

Queen Demon (Rising World 2) by Martha Wells (7 Oct 2025)

Books acquired in June:

and read:
1. Playing for Keeps by K A Findlay (Kim Findlay) [7]
2. The Charlie Method (Campus Diaries 3) by Elle Kennedy
and unread:
1. Dying to Meet You by Sarina Bowen
2. Sort Your Head Out by Sam Delaney
3. The Pairing by Casey McQuiston

Borrowed books read in June:

Raising Hare by Chloe Dalton
The Domino Pattern (Quadrail 4) by Timothy Zahn [8]
Judgment at Proteus (Quadrail 5) by Timothy Zahn [8]

Annoyingly, when I thought I'd cancelled my KU subscription in May, Amazon thought I'd suspended it for a month, so I got charged again in June. And as the above makes clear, I didn't really get my value for the month of it. The Timothy Zahn Quadrail series is really fun (Trains! In Space! And also galaxy-spanning conspiracy and action adventure with really interesting aliens!) and I'm glad I got to finish it, but I have now definitely and for real cancelled the subscription until further notice.

I don't expect to read much this month either, with the women's football Euros running most of the month. Farocation is running again and I didn't yet get through all the books from last summer, so I'm being even pickier about which ones I decide to pick up this summer.

[1] Pre-order
[2] Audiobook
[3] Physical book
[4] Crowdfunding
[5] Goodbye read
[6] Cambridgeshire Reads/Listens
[7] FaRoFeb / FaRoCation / Bookmas / HRBC
[8] Prime Reading / Kindle Unlimited

rydra_wong

A whole world of games not playable on Mac has opened up to me, and it's Steam summer sale time!

Please rec me your favourite games, bearing in mind that I have very limited reflexes/co-ordination.

(I'm not completely ruling out games involving them, but the threshold for entry has to be very very low. I am currently enjoying Refunct because it allows me to try some simple platforming in a very chill and pleasant environment with no time pressure and no penalties for taking several hundred tries to get a jump.)

kaberett

Freegle has both provided (a 4'x8' piece of 6mm plywood, which I am intending to press into service as A SHED FLOOR) and taken away (a bag of used Jiffy Green padded envelopes).
I have discovered to my delight that I do not have to wait for a submitted indexed recipe book to actually be approved before I can ask for (and be assigned) the next one. My submitted queue is currently two deep; I'm working on another of the very short books now, and will be entertained if I manage to get it three deep. I am finding this data entry very soothing. (Though I am also having an entire moment over the vegan cookie recipe entitled "Rrraw", developed in collaboration with the Rrraw Cacao Factory, featuring raw chocolate and raw cocoa powder and raw cacao nibs, that is then baked at 160°C.)
........... the internet just Provided someone's photo of a pet rabbit with googly eyes along its side. This is so perfectly engineered to A's interests that I'm kind of surprised it showed up in my feed because someone I actually know, who is not A, shared it.
I think I had somehow not previously ever spent a significant amount of time removing dried peas from their pods? But one of this evening's ~~distractions~~ jobs (while A was removing the ratchets from the plywood in service of removing the plywood from the roof bars) was removing the pods from all the extremely dried-out peas for the purposes of being able to sow more of them next year, and... they go ping and twirl themselves up into neat little curls for broadcasting purposes? if you just look at them a bit funny? I somehow had NO IDEA about this and it's GREAT. (Somehow: all my attempts at growing significant quantities of drying peas have thus far failed dramatically.)
While double-checking the series-internal order for Murderbot because I needed to remind myself which novella came next, I discovered the existence of another short story I had inexplicably been entirely unaware of... because apparently it's being published on the 11^th (and possibly in Reactor Magazine on the 10^th? According to at least one misc website...).
A, eating tonight's curry, suddenly went "... oh :( I meant to stop off at the supermarket opposite the pharmacy and get some lassi :(" (the last several places they have expected to be able to get salt lassi from having Not Provided). I, who had been aware of the Why Will Nobody Sell Me This problem, had been vaguely intending to get around to just making some and, up until this sad oh-ing, had been singularly failing to actually, you know, do so. But five minutes later A had acceptable salt lassi, and it was really nice to be able to Just Produce a Treet.
First couple of really good blackberries, and lots more raspberries, while at the plot. (There have been blackberries for a week or so now provided you didn't mind that despite the fact they were black they weren't actually quite done ripening... but apparently Just Enough more time has now elapsed!)
Facebook showing me the Mayor of London emphatically posting, as a caption to a photo containing at least 44 Progress Pride flags, "In our city you are free to be whoever you want to be, and love whoever you want to love. We must take a stand against those seeking to roll back hard-won rights."
Tomorrow morning's elaborate breakfast plans are cherry clafoutis, with allotment cherries. (And then while the oven's on I'll bake the bread.)
We are doing a pretty good job this week of remembering that mutual social grooming is good for us, and therefore actually managing brushing each other's hair first thing in the morning. Which for bonus points I am attempting to actively engage with as somatosensory rehabilitation, because I am having Thoughts about my constant background headache, and doing science on myself is my idea of a good time.

Bonuses (oh hey this practice is working): pink gooseberries -- plus yoghurt and hazelnuts, but also by themselves. tomatoes setting fruit. Murderbot novellas. fiddling with pens as fidget. The Fan made this afternoon's 28°C (or at least the bits of it I was awake for) much less unpleasant. A has just set the bat detector up and it's Detected A Bat!

elisi

Came across this clip of James Akaster on Seth Meyers... Should start at 12:42 when he begins to talk about the No Kings Day:

Watch on YouTube

His basic argument is that kings aren't a bad thing. Go on. Kick out Trump and re-join the Commonwealth! ;)

cimorene

It's taken five years to caulk the seam between the two pieces of butcher block on our counter, so I had to dig a bunch of breadcrumbs out of it first with a fruit knife (it's right in front of the toaster). We also re-caulked the seam between the butcher block and the stainless part of the counter by the sink. (The sink is only a few cm from the edge of it, which is very bad design, and the edge of the butcher block there has inevitably suffered and swollen, as the caulk was never going to be adequate; there was no easy way to get the whole counter in stainless, but we should have figured it out anyway. Or alternately, just called up the companies that make tiles and fireplaces out of Finnish soapstone until we found one that would sell us a counter, even though none of them make counters.)

We also oiled the hinge of the bathroom door - the one modern, new door in the house - which has been squeaking for years (unlike all the other doors, which are from 1950 and work flawlessly). And then we glued the aluminum threshold down over the tile floor at that door - it was already loose when the contractors left because the initial adhesive they had used wasn't in contact with the front face of the cement under the tiles, because the tile sticks out a few mm proud of the subfloor. I scraped a layer of gummy glue off the back of the threshold (glue which had never stuck to the tile and instead became impregnated with dust and dirt), then applied some construction adhesive. It's extremely stinky upstairs now as it dries, even with the windows open.

But anyway, all that didn't even take all day. We've done a bunch of laundry and sat on the sofa cuddling cats in between. Can't believe it took us five years.

maevedarcy

( You're about to view content that the journal owner has marked as possibly inappropriate for anyone under the age of 18. )

umadoshi

At the start of the month I entertained the fleeting thought of trying to post every day in July, especially with

sunshine_revival (in which I have in no way participated) going on, but. Well. *gestures at current date* And as we all know, something-something-only-perfect-results-matter, etc. etc. etc.

But here. It's Friday. The world is terrifying, but at least for this moment the sun is out. I spent most of my workday in a style guide meeting, which was genuinely pretty fun; tonight we're seeing Ginny and Kas because this week it's better for them than our usual Saturday hangout.

Tomorrow the (very) wee farmers' market that's only a few blocks away is getting underway for the season. I have ambitions of actually rolling out of bed and walking over in hopes of strawberries, even though tomorrow and Sunday are also Eevee community day in Pokemon Go, so I'm also hoping to leave the house those afternoons. Leaving the house twice in one day is not exactly a thing that happens often, and as a result, the prospect of it is exhausting. ^^; But here's hoping!

There's been zero doubt for a long time now that my only actual investment in Pokemon Go is the pursuit of shinies, and community days are the best chance to get shinies of a given critter, and Eevee, see, has EIGHT possible evolutions, so if there's any faint hope of ever having a full set of shinies of those, well, it's this weekend.

(I can't remember if I've said here that this is a crystalized perfect demonstration of why it's really, really good that I don't gamble. I'm usually pleased when I catch a new-to-me Pokemon, but it's pretty minor. But rather than setting the game aside, since it mostly hasn't resulted in me actually getting outside and walking much more than I had been, the hope of catching a shiny critter keeps me opening it back up. Nobody get me into slot machines, okay? [That sounds facetious, but I mean it very seriously.])

That's all I've got right now. Stay well, friends.

Current Mood: pensive

oursin

What I read

Finished The Islands of Sorrow and it is a bit slight, definitely one for the Simon Raven completist I would say - a number of the tales feel like outtakes from the later novels.

Decided not for me: Someone You Can Build a Nest In.

Started Val McDermid, The Grave Tattoo (2006), a non-series mystery. Alas, I was not grabbed - in terms of present-day people encounter Historical Mystery, this did not ping my buttons - a) could not quite believe that a woman studying at a somewhat grotty-sounding post-92 uni in an unglam part of London would have even considered doing a PhD on Wordsworth (do people anywhere even do this anymore) let alone be publishing a book on him b)a histmyst involving Daffodil Boy and a not so much entirely lost but *concealed unpublished in The Archives* manuscript of Epic Poem, cannot be doing with. (Suspect foul libel upon generations of archivists at Dove Cottage, just saying.) Gave up.

Read in anticipation of book group next week, Anthony Powell, The Kindly Ones (1962).

Margery Sharp, Britannia Mews (1946) (query, was there around then a subgenre of books doing Victoria to now via single person or family?). Not a top Sharp, and I am not sure whether she is doing an early instance of Ace Representation, or just a Stunning Example of Victorian Womanhood (who is, credit is due, no mimsy).

Because I discovered it was Quite A Long Time since I had last read it, Helen Wright, A Matter of Oaths (1988).

Also finished first book for essay review, v good.

Finally came down to a price I consider eligible, JD Robb, Bonded in Death (In Death #60) (2025). (We think there were points where she could have done with a Brit-picker.)

On the go

Barbara Hambly, Murder in the Trembling Lands (Benjamin January #21) (2025). (Am now earwormed by 'The Battle of New Orleans' which was in the pop charts in my youth.)

Up next

Very probably, Zen Cho, Behind Frenemy Lines, which I had forgotten was just about due.

***

O Peter Bradshaw, nevairr evairr change:

David Cronenberg’s new film is a contorted sphinx without a secret, an eroticised necrophiliac meditation on grief, longing and loss that returns this director to his now very familiar Ballardian fetishes.

ailbhe

-Doors and windows all closed
-Blinds and curtains all drawn when sunlight falls on the glass
-Mylar foil on the windows
-External shade on the windows and walls where available (we moved a potted tree)
-Margarine tub of water frozen to make a huge ice cube for the flask-with-tap of water, takes longer to melt than same volume of smaller ice cubes so keeps water cool all day
-Cooling scarves
-Drinking water from bottles means we drink more
-Linen clothes
-Watering plants with Baumbad bags and only at night
-Portable aircon units *simpsons meme*

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gajumaru

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gajumaru

Reading

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vital functions

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Weekly proof of life: mainly media (shocking everyone)

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52/154: Respite's End

[pain, food] victory!

Sunshine Revival Challenge #2

looking for a link/website

I don't think there is any 'The Internet' in this sense, really

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To-read pile, 2025, June

I am now the proud owner of a secondhand Steam deck! Rec me games!

ten good things

Independence Day?

Wax's summer vacation, the only time we can do renovation tasks

FanRecFriday: #hextechtrio edition

Idle Friday post that turned out to be half about Pokemon Go

Wednesday will be taking place on Friday this week

It's hot

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January 2025

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