Three of my favourite quotes from “A Case of Possession (A Charm of Magpies Book 2)” by KJ Charles, about the character Esther Gold, who is a Practitioner of magic. She is a force for good but is not someone you would want to be on the bad side of.
Dr. Gold [her husband] made a face. “Esther’s bark is worse than her bite. Well, actually, it isn’t, but she’s entitled to do some barking anyway.”
Leonora swallowed. “They’ll want me dead.” “If you tell us who they are, we can stop them,” Stephen said. “No. I mean you. You’ll want me dead.” Stephen and Esther looked at each other. “In the general way,” Stephen said carefully, “we don’t often want people dead.” “Speak for yourself,” said Esther.
“Oh God, Lucien. God. I was so frightened.” “I know. You looked a great deal less scared when we were about to be murdered by warlocks.” “That was only death. This was Esther.”
My tongue (which I keep making worse because I’m so bad at leaving things alone) feels a BIT better this morning?
Science time again! (I’m part of a study for which sometimes they want me to provide samples for a lab test. This time I can actually have a courier pick the swabs up. So much more convenient than walking around with a box that says biohazard on it…)
I sent out a sad message in Kind Words and people responded very kindly and did make me feel better even though my problem was really quite small and petty in the end.
A newly-discovered author: Ted Chiang. I’m reading the collection of science fiction short stories “Exhalation” and they are fascinating and griping.
Sitting in my room on cushions warmed by last night’s hot water bottles, with a blanket and a cat.
I discovered yesterday that walking through the park to get to the nearest shopping centre is noticeably faster and nicer than walking along the streets.
@alys I loved Ted Chiang’s previous collection! Exhalation is on my TBR pile (someone bought me it for Christmas, but you know how backlogged I am. )
Although the Royal Mail is not currently providing a full service to my address, I did finally get a much-delayed parcel today. Whew!
I’m getting new RAM for my computer which might solve its sluggish tendencies. It’s meant to be a gaming PC, but it was pretty clear from the start that we’d skimped on the RAM a bit too much. (Can’t remember what the thinking was at the time, possibly it was a budget thing or how quickly they could build it and send it to me. This was happening while Lisa was moving to the UK, after all!)
Bananabread for breakfast, in lieu of more sensible foodstuffs.
Our hot water tank is leaking and needs replacing; Jeremy was phenomonally helpful in assessing the various options with me.
Another quote from “A Case of Possession” by KJ Charles, this time about Stephen, another Practioner and an accomplished teller of white lies: Dr. Gold cocked an eyebrow. “One might wonder why Steph would enter into a, er, liaison under such unpromising circumstances.” “You’d need to speak to him about it.” “I’ll do that, the next time I want to hear a pack of bare-faced lies.”
@alys and @shanaqui: Ok, I’m sold; Exhalation acquired and the first story/chapter read. It’s great! Want to do another book club – i.e., synchronized Beeminder graphs – for it?
My gratitude entries for today, which I’m taking to be the toll one must pay to chime in in this thread:
Beeminding individual books with odometer graphs works so beautifully
Writing code with Cantor (age 11) is super fun and his onomastic superpower is seriously valuable for naming functions and variables while coding
Also @faire and our housemate, @morehavoc, are writing Mathematica code to analyze Faire’s chat messages with her friends and make word clouds of of the most common words they use, etc. It’s fun and impressive.
A friend is probably going to buy my old ereader off me at a very fair price which will give me some spending money (or more realistically, saving-toward-my-next-gadgety-need money).
The new RAM we installed seems to be making my computer a bit less of a pain in the butt.
My mum even paid half towards the RAM as a very early birthday present so I didn’t have to wait for my savings goal to catch up.
I love Exhalation - see my earlier comment being grateful for it! I’ve already read most of the stories but I’d love to have people to discuss it with! There’s a lot to say about all those stories!
Grateful for days at the beach, Peppermint Patties, and fresh berry cobbler!
It sounds fun but I will not because I’m switching between it and two other fiction books, and I don’t want to limit the switching.
Fresh bracing air after a hot shower.
Quickly followed by warm clothes.
I have a pen with a soft thing on the end that mimics a human finger on a tablet screen. I use it to turn the pages of ebooks while I’m washing the dishes.
Picking three things from my backlog of tasks to focus on per day is slowly getting stuff done. (With Taskratchet providing a bit of a push to help me commit to them.)
A preordered book just arrived, way before I expected it!
The postal service to our house is resuming as of today. I just got my mother’s letters through the 24th!
To be honest, I probably don’t need the extra Thing to Do either. :-/
I’m being really good at self care and keeping to routines and at accepting that that means that Other Things won’t get done.
While washing the dishes in hot water this morning, when I moved my hand out to pick up another item, my hand gave off steam. Yes. I have magic powers now.
I have new books coming tomorrow because a friend was very proud of me. (I got Seafire by Natalie C. Parker and The Obsidian Tower by Melissa Caruso, and I will buy the second Whyborne & Griffin ebook omnibus too, and I need to say thank you properly.)
I came out to my mother about being non-binary, and everything is okay.
We found some fabric Lisa once intended to make me PJs out of (which we thought was hippos but is probably actually rhinos), so Lisa has been spending her evening on that!
@adamwolf’s Gmail Labeler script thread for enhancing inbox zero goals, which I didn’t notice when it was first posted but it’s just been updated. This is timely because my inbox and starred posts are out of control again and I think now I can track them in the same goal!
I slept well last night, which was a pleasant change from previous nights.
)
(I got Seafire by Natalie C. Parker and The Obsidian Tower by Melissa Caruso, and I will buy the second Whyborne & Griffin ebook omnibus too, and I need to say thank you properly.)