1. Got my OHIP card renewed this week. Took 45 minutes all told. I seem to recall last time, in 2010, reading most of a chapter of some late Aubrey/ Maturin book. So, faster, yes ( Read more... )

I was ready to push off on my bike but had to wait for a pickup truck moseying up the street and taking its own sweet time. Passed me, I saw it was full of bits and pieces of stuff, guy jumps out several doors up and goes to inspect a barbecue left out for the garbage pickup. Light dawns. I peddle up. 'You take scrap? I have this window screen and ( Read more... )

Breaking news! Melissa Scott is working on the Points series again. A novella called Point of Knives now, that happens between the two existing books, and a novel called Fairs' Point to follow! Christmas comes early this year ( Read more... )

So after a little episode Wednesday night of scatter-brain and Johnson Spot Blindness ('Where's Silver Diamond 3? I know I brought it upstairs because it's not on the downstairs shelf any more. But it's not in the bedroom. It's not in the study. It's not on the kitchen table. Ohhh what did I doooo with it?') Thursday evening I picked it off the ( Read more... )

2010 was not a good year. Nothing terribly wrong, nothing at all right until the fall, and then I think I went a bit hysteric with relief. Am glad it's over, whatever, even if Eeyore here doesn't expect 2011 to be any better ( Read more... )

1. People have been putting up their Read This Year lists, and their Memorable Book of 2010 lists. I have no memorable books per se, but I did read eight Aubrey/ Maturins this fall. And then kickinpants sent me a Winnie the Pooh e-card this morning (the real Ernest Shephard Pooh and not the evil Empire's cartoon version.) Which was lovely, but I found myself ( Read more... )

I detest the song Walking in a Winter Wonderland. Also Have a Holly Jolly Christmas, and OMG most definitely Santa Baby, and I hear them everywhere. But let's not talk of unpleasantnesses. The reality of a winter wonderland is yappari not bad at all ( Read more... )

Jo Walton has a lovely explanation of why time goes elastic in Patrick O'Brian. For the uninitiated, there's not enough Napoleonic War for all the Aubrey action, so that several voyages of many months if not years all happen between 1813 and 1815. Her reasoning-- Stephen's almost mute assistant Padeen, who can speak well enough if it's Gaelic and ( Read more... )

I wish time was geographical, so one could go to the 60s for a week's vacation. This because of the sudden realization that autumn cities I have loved no longer exist. Yes, Pau and Paris and Tokyo are still there, but they're not the cities I saw. The feel of them has changed; and in Tokyo at least, the buildings have changed as well. Almost as bad ( Read more... )

Because everything exists on the internet, somewhere there must be a Patrick O'Brian concordance with explanations of all those nautical terms, and in time I shall go looking for it. For now, I rest bemused by the fact that 'cracking on with all sneer' is, evidently, not a typo ( Read more... )