stuff done: Friday-Tuesday
1. Taped, sanded, and painted a fifth frame; touched up the two I painted on Thursday. Then I touched up the fifth on Saturday morning before packing them all into a laundry basket, carefully cushioned by towels, and took them down to NJ.
2. Made a packing list. Then packed.
3. Bought groceries.
4. Bought gas. (Using gas points earned by buying groceries! I accumulate them regardless -- that's just a side effect of having a store loyalty card, which I do because having one gets me useful discounts on actual grocery items -- but for most of the year they just expire unused. So it's nice when I get to actually do something with them.)
5. Prepped apartment for my departure, aka, watered my plants, set my curtains and thermostat, emptied my compost into the outdoor bin, washed and put away my breakfast dishes, etc.
6. Left Ithaca around 12:30pm on Saturday and drove to NJ.
7. Did several loads of laundry over the weekend, taking full advantage of my parents' washer and dryer.
8. Attended the G family's annual New Year's Eve party! It's always nice to catch up on what people have been doing over the year. We also always play Trivial Pursuit, though this year we were using a new 'updated' version of the game since we'd all basically memorized the question cards from the old version over the years. It was a little confusing, but I think next year we will do better. :)
Several of us also wandered in and out of a back room where the TV was set to the Fiesta Bowl. That was just a very sad game; Clemson just tore Ohio State apart. I have no loyalty to any college football organizations, but I prefer to watch games that at least pretend to have tension, you know?
9. Went bra shopping with Mom. The Target on Rt. 10 also had nothing in any useful styles (underwire, no padding, no lace touching skin), nor did the TJ Maxx, but then we hit the Sears in the Livingston Mall, and they finally had something I could stand to wear! I now own three lovely replacement bras.
(The brands are Bali and Olga, btw, and I have saved the labels with the style numbers so I can potentially order more online when some of my other old bras finally wear out.)
10. Went to see Rogue One with Susan at 4pm. I liked it a lot!
It was, of course, kind of ridiculous in some of its narrative logic (as is standard for Star Wars), and as many people have remarked, the Empire's data storage and retrieval methods are beyond belief in their impracticality, but the narrative tension is tripwire tight all the way through, unlike The Force Awakens which fell badly apart in the final third.
Also, when the Death Star fires, or the Rebels send a badly-timed bombing raid on the Imperial weapon design lab, or Darth Vader slaughters his way through a corridor full of hapless Rebel soldiers, or the entire ground and space battle sequence at Scarif, there is always a clear narrative sense of why we should care. We've previously seen the places and people being destroyed, or some of our characters have an emotional connection to those places and people, or we know what will happen if a vital McGuffin doesn't get moved to safety in time. (This was the problem with TFA: blowing up six planets we've never seen or heard of before, with no characters we know on them, and no sense of why this matters to Our Heroes beyond the abstract principle that mass murder is bad... well, it's like having somebody shove a spreadsheet in your face and scream at you to get emotionally invested, and I'm sorry, that is not how humans generally work.)
On the other hand, as Susan justly remarked, there wasn't very much of that ineffable sense of joy/wonder/boundless possibility that is the hallmark of Star Wars at its best and most inspiring. For me, the movie's virtues outweighed that flaw -- I am totally down with Star Wars attempting a gritty and morally gray war movie (the tragedy is not a departure; tragedy is a central theme of the franchise, just as much as hope) -- but judging by reviews a bunch of other people feel differently. And that's okay!
11. Packed and drove to Ithaca with Mom. En route, we listened to the first five lectures in The Barbarian Empires of the Steppes, from The Great Courses. I really must borrow that at some point...
12. Attended a paid skills training session for Not the IRS.
13. Photographed my peppers and narcissus.
14. Sent birthday cards to Mom and Cat.
15. Put out recycling. (There is no trash or recycling pickup on federal holidays, so everything got kicked back a day this week.)
16. Cut wider central holes in three aluminum foil burner pan liners for my stove, which I'd been meaning to do for months but only just now got organized enough to actually sit down and do. Explanation: I have an old stove with weird, flat 'stainless' steel liners. The aluminum liners are meant to protect the steel liners from rust, but the aluminum pans are made with tiny central holes and relatively deep sides, so I have to cut them up and then brutally flatten them in order to make them fit and not, you know, catch fire the minute I turn on my burners. *wry* It is a tedious and annoying task, but the double-layered liners save me from trying to scrub massive rust deposits off with steel wool later on, so overall it's worth the bother.
17. Responded to all the comments on my Yuletide fic and my Daredevil Secret Santa fic. \o/
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2. Made a packing list. Then packed.
3. Bought groceries.
4. Bought gas. (Using gas points earned by buying groceries! I accumulate them regardless -- that's just a side effect of having a store loyalty card, which I do because having one gets me useful discounts on actual grocery items -- but for most of the year they just expire unused. So it's nice when I get to actually do something with them.)
5. Prepped apartment for my departure, aka, watered my plants, set my curtains and thermostat, emptied my compost into the outdoor bin, washed and put away my breakfast dishes, etc.
6. Left Ithaca around 12:30pm on Saturday and drove to NJ.
7. Did several loads of laundry over the weekend, taking full advantage of my parents' washer and dryer.
8. Attended the G family's annual New Year's Eve party! It's always nice to catch up on what people have been doing over the year. We also always play Trivial Pursuit, though this year we were using a new 'updated' version of the game since we'd all basically memorized the question cards from the old version over the years. It was a little confusing, but I think next year we will do better. :)
Several of us also wandered in and out of a back room where the TV was set to the Fiesta Bowl. That was just a very sad game; Clemson just tore Ohio State apart. I have no loyalty to any college football organizations, but I prefer to watch games that at least pretend to have tension, you know?
9. Went bra shopping with Mom. The Target on Rt. 10 also had nothing in any useful styles (underwire, no padding, no lace touching skin), nor did the TJ Maxx, but then we hit the Sears in the Livingston Mall, and they finally had something I could stand to wear! I now own three lovely replacement bras.
(The brands are Bali and Olga, btw, and I have saved the labels with the style numbers so I can potentially order more online when some of my other old bras finally wear out.)
10. Went to see Rogue One with Susan at 4pm. I liked it a lot!
It was, of course, kind of ridiculous in some of its narrative logic (as is standard for Star Wars), and as many people have remarked, the Empire's data storage and retrieval methods are beyond belief in their impracticality, but the narrative tension is tripwire tight all the way through, unlike The Force Awakens which fell badly apart in the final third.
Also, when the Death Star fires, or the Rebels send a badly-timed bombing raid on the Imperial weapon design lab, or Darth Vader slaughters his way through a corridor full of hapless Rebel soldiers, or the entire ground and space battle sequence at Scarif, there is always a clear narrative sense of why we should care. We've previously seen the places and people being destroyed, or some of our characters have an emotional connection to those places and people, or we know what will happen if a vital McGuffin doesn't get moved to safety in time. (This was the problem with TFA: blowing up six planets we've never seen or heard of before, with no characters we know on them, and no sense of why this matters to Our Heroes beyond the abstract principle that mass murder is bad... well, it's like having somebody shove a spreadsheet in your face and scream at you to get emotionally invested, and I'm sorry, that is not how humans generally work.)
On the other hand, as Susan justly remarked, there wasn't very much of that ineffable sense of joy/wonder/boundless possibility that is the hallmark of Star Wars at its best and most inspiring. For me, the movie's virtues outweighed that flaw -- I am totally down with Star Wars attempting a gritty and morally gray war movie (the tragedy is not a departure; tragedy is a central theme of the franchise, just as much as hope) -- but judging by reviews a bunch of other people feel differently. And that's okay!
11. Packed and drove to Ithaca with Mom. En route, we listened to the first five lectures in The Barbarian Empires of the Steppes, from The Great Courses. I really must borrow that at some point...
12. Attended a paid skills training session for Not the IRS.
13. Photographed my peppers and narcissus.
14. Sent birthday cards to Mom and Cat.
15. Put out recycling. (There is no trash or recycling pickup on federal holidays, so everything got kicked back a day this week.)
16. Cut wider central holes in three aluminum foil burner pan liners for my stove, which I'd been meaning to do for months but only just now got organized enough to actually sit down and do. Explanation: I have an old stove with weird, flat 'stainless' steel liners. The aluminum liners are meant to protect the steel liners from rust, but the aluminum pans are made with tiny central holes and relatively deep sides, so I have to cut them up and then brutally flatten them in order to make them fit and not, you know, catch fire the minute I turn on my burners. *wry* It is a tedious and annoying task, but the double-layered liners save me from trying to scrub massive rust deposits off with steel wool later on, so overall it's worth the bother.
17. Responded to all the comments on my Yuletide fic and my Daredevil Secret Santa fic. \o/
You can also read this entry on Dreamwidth, where there are currently (
comments)