infinitejest | Recent Curiosities

scruloose and I have our covid/flu shots booked for next weekend! There were earlier slots available, but not in walking distance. It'll take us right to the little corner market, and next weekend is its final day for the season. Convenient!

We finished season 1 of Silo a couple nights ago. (I've been intermittently earwormed with its OP theme music, which is fortunately a good piece, but I still would rather not have it [or anything else] stuck in my head.) That was a very solid season finale. Now to decide if we want to immediately go to season 2 or watch something else first/alongside. (Can anyone tell me, without spoilers, a] how much of the book[s] season 1 covers, and/or b] if the show is finished or if a third season is expected/hoped for?)

I went along for the drive when

scruloose ran a few errands this morning: a purchase return, two stops for local produce (blueberries, cranberries, broccoli, and a giant sweet potato; no luck getting baking apples), and picking up an order of Thanksgiving baked goods from Sully & Porter (née the Old Apothecary). We are now in possession of six adorably tiny tarts (half pumpkin, half lemon meringue) and six hefty cookies that I hope will freeze reasonably well so that they can be eked out.

Tomorrow evening will probably be when we throw together a Thanksgiving dinner of ham*, cranberry sauce, and some mix of roasted veggies. I consulted How to Cook Everything on the matter of the ham, and it gives an oven temperature and an estimated cook time and basically says "heat until hot, then eat", and it doesn't get much simpler than that.

*The most token little ham! I'm not actually sure how much I'll like it, as ham was never my thing growing up, so we didn't want a huge one to swamp us with leftovers. We'll see! I know it's possible for me to enjoy ham, as we've been to a couple of group meals where I did. (I can think of one here and one in Toronto, so the hams in question were cooked by two very different friends.)

Current Mood: okay

umadoshi

It's a Friday off and I got some manga work done, so here's a bit of book-logging:

Her Halloween Treat (Tiffany Reisz) is a straightforward, enjoyable romance that has almost nothing at all to do with Hallowe'en. It takes place when the female lead is home for her brother's wedding, and his partner has always wanted a Hallowe'en wedding, so they're having a themed costume Hallowe'en wedding. It's also the female lead's birthday, but they checked with her and she's fine with it, so there's no drama there. Nothing of what I've just written is at all spoilery for the main plot or emotional arcs or anything.

The Drowning House (Cherie Priest) is almost not a ghost story at all--the supernatural elements are something else--but ghosts flicker around its edges. I enjoyed it, although there's a piece of the story that I feel the epilogue was intended to shine a light on and...it didn't do that. (Alternatively, that wasn't the author's intention, but if so, I feel like it should have at least nodded to that specific thing? Or something?)

Specifically [ROT13], gur rcvybthr vf n tyvzcfr onpx ng gur '50f jura gur gjvaf ner cynaavat gb xvyy jung'f-uvf-snpr, naq vg qbrfa'g fnl nalguvat nobhg jul Zef. Phycrccre (arneyl) frag ure fvfgre gb ure qrngu, be vs fur npghnyyl zrnag gb qb gung, naq qbrfa'g tvir nal uvag gung gung'f tbvat gb unccra, vagragvbanyyl be bgurejvfr. Vg'f whfg na vagrenpgvba orgjrra n cnve bs fvfgref jub qba'g ernyyl trg nybat nf gurl cercner gb qb gur guvat gurl'ir qrpvqrq arrqf qbvat.

It's one thing that I'm not really a horror reader but read the occasional horror novel anyway, and quite another that I'm deeply squeamish about eyes (and just about everything to do with eyes) and yet after someone recced it, I bought The Eyes Are the Best Part (Monika Kim) a while ago when it popped up on sale...and then proceeded to actually read it this week. This book is very clear from the cover alone that it involves cannibalistic eyeball consumption in loving detail. It is not the book's fault that I am 1000% not the intended audience and yet read the whole thing in one sitting anyway when really I should've just read the rec (whenever that was) and not bought the ebook, sale or no sale, never mind read it. (But I don't begrudge the actual sale, however much an on-sale ebook purchase actually helps an author.)

Now I'm taking a bit of a break from trying to read ~seasonally~ and am a few chapters into KJ Charles' All of Us Murderers.

I've also finally finished Daniel Sherrell's Warmth: Coming of Age at the End of Our World, which is...fine? I forget if I've actually mentioned that this book is a letter to a future child Sherrell may or may not ever have (a question he's wrestling with the ethics of), talking about the climate catastrophe and his work as a climate activist and how he tries to fortify himself and find meaning in the face of it all and what he hopes to learn/pass on to any child he may one day have.

Current Mood: hungry

umadoshi

I'm not in deadline danger, but I'm also still not where I'd like to be with my current rewrite; I've also been sleeping badly and Dayjob has needed somewhat more brain energy than usual (for a non-crunch time) this week. So I'm taking tomorrow off to go with the Thanksgiving long weekend, and we'll see what can be done. Wish me luck!

Flu and covid vaccinations are rolling out provincially (just announced this morning), and hopefully we can get ours scheduled for fairly soon. (Which isn't actually urgent, given how little exposure risk we have, but I'd still like to get it done.)

Part of my brain seems to really think there can never be too many mugs or too many blankets. I'm not sure how it came to this conclusion, when storage space (perhaps especially kitchen cupboard space) is finite and while both mugs and blankets can be used in rotation, it can get excessive fast. I wonder if this is the same part of my mind that believes I can actually follow everyone who strikes me as interesting on any social media platform.

Last year during post-holiday sales I bought a Hallowe'en blanket that then spent nearly a year waiting for the season to come around again, and now I have it out as a lap blanket in my office. It is extremely warm and ridiculously soft and cozy on one side, which is great, except this week started out with, frex, a high of 29°C or so on Monday. At this point the temperature's much more reasonable for fall (high of 9°C today), even if it's warming right back up to highs of 16°-ish over the next few days. Not exactly classic October temps, but hopefully we'll be free of full-on summer heat after this.

Other parts of the province got some actual significant rain last night, which is a relief. Only 2mm or so in my area, but I'm glad a good amount wound up in the regions that desperately need it this time.

Tori has a new album coming out next year (with accompanying tour), with info on the front page of her site. (My feelings are the now-usual ones: I don't expect to fall in love with the new music, but I'll gladly buy it to support her and be ready to be wrong about the assumption; either way I'm so glad that she's still making music, even if it's been a long time since any of it punched me in the heart.)

Current Mood: drained

umadoshi

Suddenly I'm on the other side of the fall crunch at work, early enough that I somehow feel at loose ends even though regular full-time work continues and I have freelance work that badly needs tackling (plus, y'know, the endless litany of things I should do and want to do and only ever make slow progress on).

Despite the crunch, I've gotten some tidying/organizing done in my office; it could still use a lot more work, but I've cleared some surfaces that haven't seen the light of day in a long time, so that feels good. And a couple bits of autumnal decor have crept out here and there around the house, but maybe this weekend we can do a more serious job with that sort of thing.

Quick book notes: I don't think I've specifically mentioned that I did finish and enjoy Caitlin Starling's The Starving Saints (mind the cannibalism, though); I've made further slow, slow progress on Warmth: Coming of Age at the End of Our World; last night I finished Silver and Lead, the new October Daye book, which was a solid installment; and last night I also started reading, for a total change of pace, Her Halloween Treat (romance, Tiffany Reisz), which I presumably saw recced somewhere when it was on sale (I think around this time last year, but I didn't get to it before last Hallowe'en), and which I'm only a couple of chapters into.

I don't generally make a big stab at seasonal media, other than trying to watch a couple of Christmas movies the last year or two, but since I have a few seasonally-appropriate books, that's as good a way of choosing "what next?" as any.

And with the crunch over, I imagine

scruloose and I will soon be back to listening to Murderbot books.

Current Mood: sleepy

umadoshi

Silver and Lead, the newest October Daye book (and the first one published by Tor) is out today!

The ebook came to about $25, and I just bought it, but OUCH. Just. Ouch. Since the Toby books started getting initially published as hardcovers, I've been buying the ebooks initially and then getting paperbacks later, but this might keep me from rebuying in hard copy going forward. >.< We'll see.

I expect I'll start reading Toby today (it's a day off), but up to this point, for the last week or so I haven't been trying to get my brain to engage with a new story of any kind, what with the work crunch. I've mostly stuck to watching things with

scruloose when there's been a chance. We're caught up on The Summer Hikaru Died (and I think the most recent episode might've been the season finale? Anyone know offhand?) and made more of a dent into season 1 of Silo.

Other than that, I watched a couple episodes of Leverage on Friday (late season 4, and finally into the chunk of episodes I know I haven't seen; I think from here on the only ep. of the original show I've previously seen is the series finale) and I've been sifting through cookbooks.

C&Ped from elsenet, posted yesterday:

After months of not getting around to it, I just ordered a heap of danmei (and one manga volume) from the Beguiling in Toronto (a fantastic comic store to begin with, and I appreciate them enough now for maintaining a masking policy that I'd rather order from them even though free shipping requires a $300+ order).

I always enjoy seeing (and envy) people's danmei shelves, but nearly all of my danmei is in ebooks a) to save both money and shelf space and b) because I'm much better at actually reading things that way. But the Rosmei danmei doesn't have that option, and they licensed some priest titles, so hard copies it is!

[Yesterday's] order: Coins of Destiny 1, The Defectives 1, Drowning Sorrows in Raging Fire 1-2, Global Examination 1, Kaleidoscope of Death 1-2, Silent Reading (Mo Du) 1 special edition (one of my hard copy exceptions from 7S), and Kaze Hikaru 33.