now all the days of begging, the days of theft
Ugh work. Two more weeks and it's done. Well, all but the mop up afterwards (i.e., acknowledgement letters and post-mortem meetings and cleaning up mailing lists etc.), but things should settle back to being relatively quiet.
Also, the fluorescent light in my bathroom went out on Sunday, almost 2 years to the date of when I installed it. I thought those light bulbs were supposed to last forever! Or at least longer than 2 years. So I have to stop off at Home Depot tonight after work to pick one up. Showering by flashlight is such an odd experience.
My life is the hardest, yo.
Wednesday reading:
What I've just finished
I didn't read anything new, I don't think? But I did reread Night Watch and enjoy it a lot. I've talked about this before, but one of the things I love about Discworld is how strongly characterized Ankh-Morpork is. Sure, it's an ur-city - London, Rome, New York, Gotham - but it's also very much its own self, too. And that sense of a city, of an author being really familiar with the place they're writing about, adds a ton of enjoyment to me, especially when it seems so familiar to me, too, despite my never having been there. See also: good Batfamily comics/animation that make Gotham into a place you can believe exists (even if it probably should have been nuked from orbit years ago) even if Bludhaven seems a step too far.
I haven't really read enough Superman to know if Metropolis feels real and inhabited as well, but I find that both Arrow and Flash (also Supergirl, but it's visually different enough from the other two that National City seems like a whole different place) lack that sense of specificity of place and it's something I think that they could do, even on a limited CW budget and filming in Vancouver, to make the shows feel more real/grounded. Like, does anything exist in those cities but Star Labs/Palmer Tech/Lian-Yu/Jitters etc.? The brief glimpses of Earth 2 did a nice job with differentiating, but it'd be neat if they could bring some of that particularity to both shows going forward. It'd help break them out of the insularity they seem to be embracing, where the only things/people that matter are the characters we already know.
Rivers of London also does this really well - I've never been to London, but the city as Peter Grant describes it feels viscerally real to me.
What I'm reading now
Still Wheels Stop: The Tragedies and Triumphs of the Space Shuttle Program, 1986-2011 by Rick Houston, though I'm only 47% done with it and it's due back at the library tomorrow, so it's unlikely I will finish it, and I'm not feeling compelled enough to renew it, though the stuff about the shuttle/Mir missions and building the International Space Station is interesting. Also the stuff about launching and repairing the Hubble telescope was interesting. But I feel like some of the organization of the book must have gotten lost in translation to ebook or something because it seems to just jump from one thing to another without any clear reason why and no section breaks. Also, the transfer to ebook has left it riddled with spacing errors, which I also find annoying. *hands*
What I'm reading next
*hands*
In other Bat-related news,
devildoll sent me a screencap of a tweet regarding this NY Times article: A Renegade Muscles In on Mister Softee's Turf (see also hilarious commentary here), suggesting that this is the best quote the Times has ever published: "Let me tell you about this business," Adam Vega, a thickly muscled, heavily tattooed Mister Softee man who works the upper reaches of the Upper East Side and East Harlem, said on Wednesday. "Every truck has a bat inside."
Of course I then suggested she write me the story where Dick and Jason are undercover in an ice cream truck. The puns alone would be glorious! I would read that so hard! I am just saying. *is easily amused*
Oh, and I guess there's the monthly writing roundup for May 2016:
A Mournful Rustling in the Dark (at AO3)
Harry Potter; Sirius (Sirius/Remus); g; 785 words
Sirius's memories are a feast for the Dementors.
A Thousand Words for Water (at AO3)
Star Wars; Rey, Finn, Poe, Luke, Leia, Jessika, Chewbacca, Artoo; g; 2,925 words
Chewie howls something that translates to, "Just throw her in and hope she floats," and Artoo trills in disapproval of that strategy. "She's a Jedi," Chewie replies. "She'll be fine."
Not my highest output ever, but I'm still pleased with both of them. Chewie is the best, no lie. I should include him giving snarky commentary in more stories.
***
This entry at DW: http://musesfool.dreamwidth.org/845884.html.
people have commented there.
Also, the fluorescent light in my bathroom went out on Sunday, almost 2 years to the date of when I installed it. I thought those light bulbs were supposed to last forever! Or at least longer than 2 years. So I have to stop off at Home Depot tonight after work to pick one up. Showering by flashlight is such an odd experience.
My life is the hardest, yo.
Wednesday reading:
What I've just finished
I didn't read anything new, I don't think? But I did reread Night Watch and enjoy it a lot. I've talked about this before, but one of the things I love about Discworld is how strongly characterized Ankh-Morpork is. Sure, it's an ur-city - London, Rome, New York, Gotham - but it's also very much its own self, too. And that sense of a city, of an author being really familiar with the place they're writing about, adds a ton of enjoyment to me, especially when it seems so familiar to me, too, despite my never having been there. See also: good Batfamily comics/animation that make Gotham into a place you can believe exists (even if it probably should have been nuked from orbit years ago) even if Bludhaven seems a step too far.
I haven't really read enough Superman to know if Metropolis feels real and inhabited as well, but I find that both Arrow and Flash (also Supergirl, but it's visually different enough from the other two that National City seems like a whole different place) lack that sense of specificity of place and it's something I think that they could do, even on a limited CW budget and filming in Vancouver, to make the shows feel more real/grounded. Like, does anything exist in those cities but Star Labs/Palmer Tech/Lian-Yu/Jitters etc.? The brief glimpses of Earth 2 did a nice job with differentiating, but it'd be neat if they could bring some of that particularity to both shows going forward. It'd help break them out of the insularity they seem to be embracing, where the only things/people that matter are the characters we already know.
Rivers of London also does this really well - I've never been to London, but the city as Peter Grant describes it feels viscerally real to me.
What I'm reading now
Still Wheels Stop: The Tragedies and Triumphs of the Space Shuttle Program, 1986-2011 by Rick Houston, though I'm only 47% done with it and it's due back at the library tomorrow, so it's unlikely I will finish it, and I'm not feeling compelled enough to renew it, though the stuff about the shuttle/Mir missions and building the International Space Station is interesting. Also the stuff about launching and repairing the Hubble telescope was interesting. But I feel like some of the organization of the book must have gotten lost in translation to ebook or something because it seems to just jump from one thing to another without any clear reason why and no section breaks. Also, the transfer to ebook has left it riddled with spacing errors, which I also find annoying. *hands*
What I'm reading next
*hands*
In other Bat-related news,
devildoll sent me a screencap of a tweet regarding this NY Times article: A Renegade Muscles In on Mister Softee's Turf (see also hilarious commentary here), suggesting that this is the best quote the Times has ever published: "Let me tell you about this business," Adam Vega, a thickly muscled, heavily tattooed Mister Softee man who works the upper reaches of the Upper East Side and East Harlem, said on Wednesday. "Every truck has a bat inside."
Of course I then suggested she write me the story where Dick and Jason are undercover in an ice cream truck. The puns alone would be glorious! I would read that so hard! I am just saying. *is easily amused*
Oh, and I guess there's the monthly writing roundup for May 2016:
A Mournful Rustling in the Dark (at AO3)
Harry Potter; Sirius (Sirius/Remus); g; 785 words
Sirius's memories are a feast for the Dementors.
A Thousand Words for Water (at AO3)
Star Wars; Rey, Finn, Poe, Luke, Leia, Jessika, Chewbacca, Artoo; g; 2,925 words
Chewie howls something that translates to, "Just throw her in and hope she floats," and Artoo trills in disapproval of that strategy. "She's a Jedi," Chewie replies. "She'll be fine."
Not my highest output ever, but I'm still pleased with both of them. Chewie is the best, no lie. I should include him giving snarky commentary in more stories.
***
This entry at DW: http://musesfool.dreamwidth.org/845884.html.
people have commented there.