Five things...
So back in the day when I got my car, keyless entry was not as near-universal as it is now, and it seemed kind of unnecessary to me. Like, oooh, I'm too special to put a key in a lock like everybody else! But it was what came with the car, so fine. And then I realized that it was awesome and I did not ever want to go back to having to push buttons and unlock things manually again.
My point is, I went to see the new How to Train Your Dragon movie with elishavah and eregyrn last weekend - liked it, though not as much as the first - at one of the upgraded AMC theaters with the enormous electric reclining seats. And it was awesome. Not so much because it was comfortable - I mean, it was, but I'm small enough that regular seats are fine for me - but because I wasn't cheek-to-jowl with my neighbors. It was so so nice to have that tiny but ongoing stressor removed. (I spent about half an hour of my first viewing of Cap 2 with a girl twirling her hair in my peripheral vision. I asked her to stop and she said she had to twirl her hair to watch the movie, which, fine, maybe she's got a necessary fidget or something, I asked her to do it on the other side where her viewing partner was sitting and she said she couldn't do that either. Except then she stopped completely about ten minutes later, so I am retroactively skeptical about her statement that she couldn't possibly stop being *extremely distracting*.)
Downtown is still more convenient for me, since I don't have to drive, but for movies where I expect the theater to be full the drive might be worth it.
The flowering quince I planted last fall came back and leafed out this spring like gangbusters, but it looks like it got girdled somehow in the last couple of weeks - our local bunny, rubbing against a neighboring shoot in the wind, our not-as-it-turns-out-very-knowledgable lawn guy and his weed eater, I don't know - so I assume that's a goner. There are a few leaves on shoots other than the main one, so hopefully they'll be able to hang in there and store up enough over the next few months to get through the winter despite how small they are. I'm sad about it, though. That definitely puts flowering off another couple of years; I'd hoped to get flowers on the shoot in question next year.
I would say that I got the most entertaining response ever to a review memo at work, which can be summarized as "but for me to know what to do I'd have to read the memo, which I can't possibly do!" except that it was superseded by the email the person in question sent to others a couple of days later that made it clear that they had neither read my response nor, STILL, the memo. I mean, thank goodness they CCed me so I could correct it I guess, but if this is some sort of passive-aggressive attempt to get me to spoonfeed them in the future the answer is no, and the unit supervisor has said she'll back me, because COME ON. They're paid enough to read ONE PARAGRAPH listing documents to be sent on elsewhere. You can do it! You don't need a bulleted list!
(What series am I thinking of there? [name] and the [noun]. I suppose it could just be Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day, which does fit with Bucky's life, so.)
I have a fanon complaint. (Well, I have multiple fanon complaints, but I've already mentioned the "to the end of the line" thing and the "Bucky was drafted!" thing is perfectly fine with me as a choice, it's just that I very much doubt the number from TFA is a carefully researched serial that's meant to indicate something about Bucky's method of joining the Army and also I thought the name, rank, and serial number thing was from the Geneva Conventions, which postdate WWII? But whatever, I'm being unnecessarily grumpy, and also possibly wrong about that last thing.)
ANYWAY! I have a fanon complaint. Which is this: I don't actually have an issue with the idea that Bucky has a darker side than Steve does, it's a perfectly valid interpretation, but look, there's basically nothing in the MCU canon to date that backs it up. Bucky shot a guy who was a threat to Steve without appearing to feel bad about it, fine. Steve has also killed a whole lot of people on-screen without looking like he feels bad about it. Frankly, based on MCU canon Steve is the more instinctively violent of the two of them - he's the one who has a history of starting fights that Bucky clearly thinks are ridiculous. (I may possibly be a little impatient with the occasional idea I see that Steve is a sweet golden flower turned into a weapon, because come on, dude loves his punching as a problem-solving method.)
Steve is canonically more concerned with Doing What's Right than Bucky is, seeing as Bucky doesn't show any particular interest in the larger moral picture onscreen and Steve does. Inasmuch as we get any idea what Bucky wants, "Steve = okay" and "I = no longer a prisoner of war and medical test subject" seem to be his primary motivations. (Well, also "dancing = fun.") I guess I'm just being cranky about Steve's choices not counting because he's Steve. And I love Steve! Steve is my favorite! But Steve is also violent as hell when he's sure he's right, and it's by the grace of God and his place in the Marvel universe that he isn't a much darker character than he is. There's this quote from Civil War - which I have not read, but the quote goes around tumblr a decent amount, cited approvingly - where Steve talks about how his job is to be the one guy who stands up against the whole world and tells them to be the ones to change. Which is lovely but also kind of terrifying, because a whole lot is resting on Steve making good moral choices there.
Uh, that went a little astray. Anyway, point is: Steve is the best and I have Absolutely No Desire to actually see him get grimdarkified, but MCU canon really doesn't support the idea that Bucky has a dark side that Steve doesn't.
Charles C. Mann's 1493: Recommended. I had no idea the death toll from malaria was that high in the first Europeans in the southern US. How do you even get people to keep coming? Lie to them and/or recruit people mired in horrible poverty, I suppose.
Jo Walton's Tooth and Claw: I enjoyed it, in the sense that I wanted to see what happened, but I found the practicalities of the world very difficult to envision. I had to shove my head over into fairytale land, where dragons wearing top hats and...farming? Somehow? ...made more sense.
Bruce Schneier's Beyond Fear: I've been stuck on this for about a month now, because I'm finding it dull. If I were a better person I'd probably abandon it, but MUST FINISH.