assorted stuff
1) Day off today (I've reverted to my usual work schedule, which means my "weekend" is Thursday and Friday). I cooked (oden, which is a long-simmered Japanese winter stew of fish products--not generally fresh fish but things like kamaboko--vegetables, fried tofu, etc., and I also roasted a butternut squash, and got ambitious and roasted the squash seeds for a snack) and ignored Halloween. I don't like kids well enough to give them candy, especially not the noisy uncontrolled children who scream and shout for hours every day and evening around this apartment complex.
2) Last week I hurt my hand from too much heavy lifting at work. I have a swelling along the tendon (I think?) at the base of my thumb. The swollen part is sore and my thumb hurts if I have to hold anything heavy. I'm trying to rest my thumb as much as possible, which isn't easy, although I did buy a brace to wear at work. (Doctor = not an option, as I have no health insurance, so please don't advise me to see one. I know I should. And I know that I don't have the money.)
3) I keep not managing to do the Wednesday reading post, but I'm reading lots! I started Maria Edgeworth's Belinda and really enjoyed the beginning but then hit my limit, for the moment, on regency novels. I read most of the rest of Charles Stross's Laundry novels despite not liking The Jennifer Morgue, and found that I like the later, more serious and less jokey ones much better. In non-fiction, I'm reading Carolly Erickson's Our Tempestuous Day: A History of Regency England, which is fun but so jaunty and gossipy that I'm not sure I can trust anything it says; it's also gratuitously fat-phobic. And I just started Andrew Roberts' The Storm of War: A New History of the Second World War. So far it looks to be the readable, just-detailed-enough general history I've been looking for. Among its virtues is that it analyzes events and puts them into context; for example, it begins not with the annexation of the Czech Sudetenland or the invasion of Poland, but with the secret 1934 pact between Hitler and the German military, through which the Wehrmacht thought it would gain control of Hitler but ended up controlled by him instead.
4) For November, my goal is to do a not!NaNoWriMo and write 500 words a day, either on the Regency romance or other projects.
5) I saw people posting about Thor 2 and got all excited, but apparently it hasn't opened in the US yet. Or at least not near me.
6) Speaking of movies, I wish my favorite actors would pick roles where they're not playing despicable characters. Not even for Benedict Cumberbatch will I watch The Fifth Estate (does anyone know if it glosses as completely over the rape charges against Julian Assange as the trailer made it appear to?). I'm thinking of seeing 12 Years a Slave, but the impression I got from a review is that it's got a rape scene in it, and I avoid movies with rape scenes. Nor do I want to watch Michael Fassbender play a rapist.
7) New Sherlock in January. I am glad. I know the show has problems, both artistically and with racism and sexism, but I still like it more than anything else currently on television. And, honestly, I do feel like Sherlock has been more singled out for its failures than it deserves--apart from "The Blind Banker," I don't think it's more faily than plenty of other shows that have slipped under the radar.
Crossposted at Dreamwidth (
comments); you can comment here or there.
2) Last week I hurt my hand from too much heavy lifting at work. I have a swelling along the tendon (I think?) at the base of my thumb. The swollen part is sore and my thumb hurts if I have to hold anything heavy. I'm trying to rest my thumb as much as possible, which isn't easy, although I did buy a brace to wear at work. (Doctor = not an option, as I have no health insurance, so please don't advise me to see one. I know I should. And I know that I don't have the money.)
3) I keep not managing to do the Wednesday reading post, but I'm reading lots! I started Maria Edgeworth's Belinda and really enjoyed the beginning but then hit my limit, for the moment, on regency novels. I read most of the rest of Charles Stross's Laundry novels despite not liking The Jennifer Morgue, and found that I like the later, more serious and less jokey ones much better. In non-fiction, I'm reading Carolly Erickson's Our Tempestuous Day: A History of Regency England, which is fun but so jaunty and gossipy that I'm not sure I can trust anything it says; it's also gratuitously fat-phobic. And I just started Andrew Roberts' The Storm of War: A New History of the Second World War. So far it looks to be the readable, just-detailed-enough general history I've been looking for. Among its virtues is that it analyzes events and puts them into context; for example, it begins not with the annexation of the Czech Sudetenland or the invasion of Poland, but with the secret 1934 pact between Hitler and the German military, through which the Wehrmacht thought it would gain control of Hitler but ended up controlled by him instead.
4) For November, my goal is to do a not!NaNoWriMo and write 500 words a day, either on the Regency romance or other projects.
5) I saw people posting about Thor 2 and got all excited, but apparently it hasn't opened in the US yet. Or at least not near me.
6) Speaking of movies, I wish my favorite actors would pick roles where they're not playing despicable characters. Not even for Benedict Cumberbatch will I watch The Fifth Estate (does anyone know if it glosses as completely over the rape charges against Julian Assange as the trailer made it appear to?). I'm thinking of seeing 12 Years a Slave, but the impression I got from a review is that it's got a rape scene in it, and I avoid movies with rape scenes. Nor do I want to watch Michael Fassbender play a rapist.
7) New Sherlock in January. I am glad. I know the show has problems, both artistically and with racism and sexism, but I still like it more than anything else currently on television. And, honestly, I do feel like Sherlock has been more singled out for its failures than it deserves--apart from "The Blind Banker," I don't think it's more faily than plenty of other shows that have slipped under the radar.
Crossposted at Dreamwidth (
comments); you can comment here or there.