daily update, Thursday Feb. 13
Things done today:
1. Remembered to bring broccoli in to work to be the vegetable supplement to my leftover storebought mac'n'cheese. \o/
2. Rental company office 9am-7pm. A slow day, so I spent most of it reading.
3. And what did I read? I finished The Clockwork Boys and read the entirety of The Wonder Engine. I enjoyed them very much!
4. Listened to two episodes of The Magnus Archives. I've been slowing down now that I'm in the back half of season four, partly because I have been spoiled for the ending and am emotionally wary, and partly because once I finish I will have to wait impatiently through the hiatus until season five begins posting.
5. Other stuff I am listening to: So, I finished the incredibly frustrating Great Courses lecture series. It did not get better. The lecturer's mono-focus on Western Europe continued (look, Eastern Europe existed during the Renaissance, the Reformation, and the early modern period! it offers interesting examples of how societies didn't wind up with Western European patterns despite being, you know, right next door, or tried to import those patterns with varying degrees of success! also the Ottoman Empire is just as European as the freaking Spanish Empire at this point in history and participated in the modern state-building process, so... maybe they should also be mentioned??? ARGH) and the lecturer's shaky grasp on facts also continued. (Like, okay, I realize English royal genealogies are not something everyone can reel off at the drop of a hat -- honestly I can't either, at least for the early bits of the Wars of the Roses and how the everliving heck the Hannoverians got into the line of succession -- but it is utterly trivial to discover that Mary II was the daughter of James II and this is why she was the obvious Protestant successor when Parliament kicked her father out for being A) Catholic and B) a would-be absolute monarch. She and William III (her husband, who was also her cousin because royalty have been weirdly inbred for centuries) were not "very far down" the line of succession. *headdesk* There were many other howlers, but that's the one that bugged me most because you can disprove it with like five seconds on Wikipedia, so it has NO BUSINESS being in a published lecture series.)
Apparently Audible now has an exchange policy where you can return an audiobook you disliked and get back either your money or your member credit. I can verify that the return worked. The refund is supposed to take several days to process, so we'll see if that works as advertised.
(The course, for the record, is The Renaissance, the Reformation, and the Rise of Nations by Prof. Andrew C. Fix. I disrecommend it.)
But anyway! I finished that mess last week and have moved on to The World of Byzantium by Prof. Kenneth W. Harl, which I am both enjoying and finding vastly more relaxing. Prof. Harl is both much better at citing his sources (did I mention that Prof. Fix basically NEVER cited sources? because he didn't) and at giving concrete details when needed, so you are never left in confusion as to who is doing what at any given point, or where events take place. :)
6. Watered my houseplants and my overwintering peppers and eggplant.
7. Steamed more broccoli, some for tonight's dinner and some for more lunch supplements. I really like broccoli, okay, and it's dead easy to cook. You just chop off the weirder/woodier bits of the stems, pop the pieces into a pot with a bit of water at the bottom, cover it, and turn the burner to high for... 5-8 minutes, probably? The timing depends on the pot size and how much broccoli you've put into it, obviously. You want the results to still be firm, but not so firm they squeak when you chew them.
I have not written anything today, and I think I may not bother. I will just go to bed at a reasonable hour (ie, 10:30ish) and catch up on my sleep.
If you want to comment on this post, you can do so over here on Dreamwidth, where there are currently (
comments)
1. Remembered to bring broccoli in to work to be the vegetable supplement to my leftover storebought mac'n'cheese. \o/
2. Rental company office 9am-7pm. A slow day, so I spent most of it reading.
3. And what did I read? I finished The Clockwork Boys and read the entirety of The Wonder Engine. I enjoyed them very much!
4. Listened to two episodes of The Magnus Archives. I've been slowing down now that I'm in the back half of season four, partly because I have been spoiled for the ending and am emotionally wary, and partly because once I finish I will have to wait impatiently through the hiatus until season five begins posting.
5. Other stuff I am listening to: So, I finished the incredibly frustrating Great Courses lecture series. It did not get better. The lecturer's mono-focus on Western Europe continued (look, Eastern Europe existed during the Renaissance, the Reformation, and the early modern period! it offers interesting examples of how societies didn't wind up with Western European patterns despite being, you know, right next door, or tried to import those patterns with varying degrees of success! also the Ottoman Empire is just as European as the freaking Spanish Empire at this point in history and participated in the modern state-building process, so... maybe they should also be mentioned??? ARGH) and the lecturer's shaky grasp on facts also continued. (Like, okay, I realize English royal genealogies are not something everyone can reel off at the drop of a hat -- honestly I can't either, at least for the early bits of the Wars of the Roses and how the everliving heck the Hannoverians got into the line of succession -- but it is utterly trivial to discover that Mary II was the daughter of James II and this is why she was the obvious Protestant successor when Parliament kicked her father out for being A) Catholic and B) a would-be absolute monarch. She and William III (her husband, who was also her cousin because royalty have been weirdly inbred for centuries) were not "very far down" the line of succession. *headdesk* There were many other howlers, but that's the one that bugged me most because you can disprove it with like five seconds on Wikipedia, so it has NO BUSINESS being in a published lecture series.)
Apparently Audible now has an exchange policy where you can return an audiobook you disliked and get back either your money or your member credit. I can verify that the return worked. The refund is supposed to take several days to process, so we'll see if that works as advertised.
(The course, for the record, is The Renaissance, the Reformation, and the Rise of Nations by Prof. Andrew C. Fix. I disrecommend it.)
But anyway! I finished that mess last week and have moved on to The World of Byzantium by Prof. Kenneth W. Harl, which I am both enjoying and finding vastly more relaxing. Prof. Harl is both much better at citing his sources (did I mention that Prof. Fix basically NEVER cited sources? because he didn't) and at giving concrete details when needed, so you are never left in confusion as to who is doing what at any given point, or where events take place. :)
6. Watered my houseplants and my overwintering peppers and eggplant.
7. Steamed more broccoli, some for tonight's dinner and some for more lunch supplements. I really like broccoli, okay, and it's dead easy to cook. You just chop off the weirder/woodier bits of the stems, pop the pieces into a pot with a bit of water at the bottom, cover it, and turn the burner to high for... 5-8 minutes, probably? The timing depends on the pot size and how much broccoli you've put into it, obviously. You want the results to still be firm, but not so firm they squeak when you chew them.
I have not written anything today, and I think I may not bother. I will just go to bed at a reasonable hour (ie, 10:30ish) and catch up on my sleep.
If you want to comment on this post, you can do so over here on Dreamwidth, where there are currently (
comments)