flemmings | Entries tagged with rl

Which is worse: listening to 90 minutes of jazz radio or listening to 90 minutes of jazz radio fundraising? 'If you pledge $20 a month you become eligible to be one of the guests on our two hour airplane cruise over southern Ontario!' No wonder they're falling short. (My physiotherapist stays tuned to JazzFM and today I had the full treatment.)

The highs and lows are those of a nice summer day- 14 and 24. We had a few days like that in July, but then I didn't feel the need for long-sleeved sleep shirt and flannel pants and bedsocks and sleep hoodie, and flannel sheets over the summer duvet I sleep on, and under the winter duvet I sleep beneath, because I was so *cooold*. Clearly my body thinks it's fall even if the weather doesn't agree.

Reading someone's LJ who notes she's reading The Invisible Library but wonders parenthetically why all steampunk/ AU Londons require a Sherlock Holmes figure. They don't, actually, but the ones I've read without one feel a little lacking. The fact is that Holmes *is* the embodiment of that London which is most easily assimilable into steampunk. So are Oscar Wilde and, alas, Jack the Ripper: not the real people of that name but the fictions of themselves they either created or had created for them.

I suppose this is all Alan Moore's fault. Except that long before Moore there was "In those days Mr. Sherlock Holmes was still living in Baker Street and the Bastables were looking for treasure in the Lewisham Road." Holmes defines a place and time that exists in fictional history, where gas lamps burn and hansoms run and it is always 1895

(His opposite number I think is Queen Victoria herself, an iconic real person who carries naturally over into fiction. Or maybe she too is a created personage like the Ripper? except the figure her umm publicists created then- the revered Queen and Empress- isn't at all what shows up in books where no one actually reveres the monarchy.)

Crossposts: http://flemmings.livejournal.com/815791.html

Fortunately. And not nearly as disastrously as had been thought, even if someone who wanted the day off had to come in for the last three hours. The Helium Baby came in, though her grandmother said she wouldn't; the Inconsolable Baby was away, and that at once made the understaffed day doable.

I however may have to cut my physio short tomorrow to cover the start of someone's shift, and my left ear twinges unpleasantly. Heigh ho: this is the autumn of disaster, so one must not fret at the minor inconveniences.

* there's much to be said for lyric-deafness. Whatever Oxford college's choir sang that on a long-ago LP mushed the words enough that I never realized how bleh they are.

Crossposts: http://flemmings.livejournal.com/815359.html

Middling day of sun and clouds and rain and threatened storms, muggy and insect-bedevilled. Early morning tomorrow, so am waiting for sweet ativan to work. Finished an Akitada, started the next one, within three pages Akitada had put his foot in it and exited on his high horse, possibly jobless. Do not remember Akitada being this thick in earlier works, but if he is now, I may be spared reading the series. Started instead Amy Tan's Saving Fishes from Drowning, about a dead woman in the afterlife narrating her life, which is pretty much what I want now.

Crossposts: http://flemmings.livejournal.com/815065.html

And where did September go? Most of what I remember of last month happened in August; I remember Labour Day only because I broke my routine and went to the AGO. Other breaks in routine- even, other sunny serene days- have left no trace. I know that memory hooks are totally random: one happened last spring sometime, a rainy day reading Rankin in the local Italian eatery; but nothing hooked this month. Have recommenced ginkgo biloba and hope for the best.

Possibly of course it's because most of this month was a saga of stabbing elbows and twinging neck nerves and much money spent on physio and natch lotsa painkillers. Especially when it's dank and mizzly, as today was.

Today's one accomplishment wasn't even mine. Two doors up's morose Son of the House heeded my constant prodding and trimmed my hedge into bare twiggery. I've not been able to touch it since May (see previous paragraph), but drought and ill-health prevented it from becoming a monstrosity. Now with dead wood removed one can see through it all along its length. My side has no green left at all, just wooden uprights like the back of a stage set. The other side still looks like a green hedge, more or less. Ruthless rimming may result in burgeoning green come springtime.
( September's sad stats )

Crossposts: http://flemmings.livejournal.com/814737.html

Twould blow like this through holt and hanger
When Uricon the city stood:
'Tis the old wind in the old anger,
But then it threshed another wood.

(Googling for the poem gets me lots of pictures of clothes hangers and the query 'do you mean bolt and hanger?' No, I'm really not looking for climbing equipment.)

It is fall, definitely. Red begins to spread into the trees. Grey and cream skies with occasional rifts of horizon yellow where the sun has set. L'heure bleue (or grise, if it's overcast) happens at 7 now and the evening becomes an indoors domestic thing- "Darkness outside; inside, the radio's prayer."
( Cut for the hundred-eyed screen )

Crossposts: http://flemmings.livejournal.com/814364.html

1. Rainy autumn nights are cozy. This has to do with an obscure memory from childhood, something to do with the warm lights of Bedford and the shiny black streets outside, and dinner, and homework at the dining room table, and the grandfather clock ticking in the hallway, sounding the quarter hours and playing a tune at the half ones: which always broke the sleep of school friends sleeping over. Maybe it's that particular night when Patricia came for a sleep-over and (my mind insists) my parents were out at Camelot (though I'm almost certainly conflating two evenings) and the rain drummed on the flat roof over my bedroom and we were warm under the blankets.

2. Dreamed of 'Tokyo'- very vaguely, a sunnyish afternoon near the Ginza Maruzen or Yaesu bookstore where I did my research for A Garden in Paris back in '94- and my friend Grainne who in this settei had either produced Fullmetal Alchemist or written the manga; and we were saying in wonder 'That was so long ago! Twenty years already- no, closer to thirty!'
( Cut for tumblr quote )

Crossposts: http://flemmings.livejournal.com/814098.html

A truth universally acknowledged, that the first cool spell always feels excessively cold. It might dip below 10 tonight; is currently 15, less than the 6 a.m. lows of the past week; and I freeze until I remember the bit about hoodies and long-sleeved shirts. This when I was just getting used to the idea of t-shirts as rational garb and jackets as occasional necessities (and both in today's sun weren't.) No matter. Now I can put

incandescens's quilts back on the side room bed and make a cozy reading nest again.
( Peregrinations, with elevators )

Crossposts: http://flemmings.livejournal.com/813099.html

...say I'm sad (because I'm that too)
Say that health and wealth have missed me (true, for certain values of health and wealth)
Say I'm growing old (oh yes am I not) but add-

It's Friday and it's cool and I will be grateful for those.

Also that there's a Japanologist called Timon Screech. I suppose it was such a Gormenghast name he couldn't bear to change it.

But when he starts talking about manga- oh dear. Clearly confuses Hikaru Nakamura the chess master (a guy) with Hikaru Nakamura the mangaka (a woman), and says straight-facedly, 'It’s interesting to see how the work is very Japanese but the characters are given mixed-race features.' You think?

Crossposts: http://flemmings.livejournal.com/812813.html

One new baby a week for six weeks. Of the last four, three were cheerful and one is finally getting used to us. This week's is a mere four months, and we'd assumed a happy I-love-you-human-face average. No. Doesn't like bottles, sleeps twenty minutes at a time, and cries in between, at which all the others cry as well.

Oh come swiftly...

Crossposts: http://flemmings.livejournal.com/811962.html

Am at the point where every evening I think that tomorrow is Saturday. This is either age or alcohol or both together, because two ounces of vodka never used to make me come unstuck in time.

Also some small person's soother disappeared into a black hole this afternoon and she is- not inconsolable, but only to be consoled if sitting on me. This is a problem.

No, it did not reach 10C last night, but close. I slept on top of the summer duvet and under the down duvet and didn't want to leave my bed this morning because it was so cooold out there and so cooozy in here. Also I'm still not wearing hoodies or socks on account of tomorrow's low will be 20. Autumn never come.

Crossposts: http://flemmings.livejournal.com/811197.html

What a nice day! I woke from a dream of 'Japan' that happened on that non-existent highway by Heiwadai Station, involving a sort of bookstore plus community centre plus bakery, to silver sun and no rain at all. (A sprinkling later while I was having a hot turkey sandwich at Fran's, one of the few places that does that greasy spoon classic; Fran's does not provide the usual flour-thickened gravy, but does give you cranberry sauce.) Took heavy-duty cough medicine against my dentist appointment and floated through the erst of the morning in a pleasant druggy high. My crown did not require freezing and cost $200 less than I'd expected. (A quarter of that was discount, but since I always pay by debit rather than credit card, I think she can give me a discount from time to time.) A very apropos quote about dragons and librarians showed up on my FB feed. My elbow behaved for most of the day, though two babies who love me gave it a workout. And it's reached the level of 'almost cool enough to need a jacket', after I slept with the window AC on last night.
( Meme )

Crossposts: http://flemmings.livejournal.com/810936.html

It is humid and my elbows are stiff-swollen and twinging at me. Physio and ice and vodka have quietened them a bit but not completely.

Tomorrow will rain and I'm having yet another crown put in.

However. It is tomorrow where

incandescens is and tomorrow is her birthday, so happy birthday

incandescens!

Crossposts: http://flemmings.livejournal.com/810505.html

On the whole I would rather have house flies than fruit flies. The former can be persuaded to leave, or if not, whapped with a towel. The latter are uncatchable and breed from air.

It being cool, I cooked my chicken liver recipe and for lack of mushrooms, added walnuts instead. Any nut or fruit added to chicken livers automatically makes it feel Persian.

Never mind yellow leaves and dark at 8, I will believe fall is here when the temperature gets below 10 at night. They've often promised this but never delivered. I don't believe it will happen this week whatever they say. Not when Tuesday is supposed to be 28.

Crossposts: http://flemmings.livejournal.com/810376.html

A virus has been decimating our Baby section, (in the large rather than narrow sense of the verb: four or five out of ten), inducing persistent high fevers. Today it skipped to the toddlers. I've been feeling grungy all day, and since I never have fevers it may be the virus laying waste to other parts of me.

Or it may be the effect of saying 'Ah, the heat warning is off, I'll sleep with fans!' last night, leading to the muggy discomfort of air blowing on me. Too warm to be covered, too chill-feeling to be un. Wish I could simply damn the expense and run the cooling central AC rather than even the window one: which blows air inefficiently. Next Hydro bill will be worse than June-July's anyway, so why not? Since all the weather pages say that fall will never arrive.

Crossposts: http://flemmings.livejournal.com/809911.html

After a series of breathless emails from eBay, my wordtank arrives. Put batteries in. It doesn't work. I go online to contact the seller. Bought as a guest so eBay wants an access code for the order. "Check your confirmation email for your access code." I check the confirmation email. There is no access code. The packing list gives me the guy's name and snail address, which is not a huge help.

My mobile company was swallowed by the godless empire of Rogers. They keep sending me emails to select a new plan. I go to the webpage and as requested, give them my number and PIN. The webpage tells me my PIN is wrong. I change my PIN. The webpage tells me my PIN is still wrong. I call support. "We are experiencing higher than average volumes of calls." I just bet you are. "Wait times estimated as half an hour." Estimate is wrong.

And it's still hot.

Crossposts: http://flemmings.livejournal.com/809682.html

Though it burns less since that deluge this evening. So now it merely steams.
( Usual memeage )

Crossposts: http://flemmings.livejournal.com/809301.html

(*I gather this crux in Catullus has been resolved by removing one of the taedets, but this is how I learned it and have repeated it in my head for nigh on half a century)

Either dry eye or age, but I can no longer read comfortably with my naked eye, which is a pain, especially in allergy season. Must wear lens and use reading glasses. Chiz curses sa molesworth.

There was a martial arts demonstration at Dufferin Grove Park with lotsa young boys in flounced gold trousers and red jackets waving poles and swords to drum usic. Could not see clearly who and what because of previous paragraph.
( Slightly better )

Crossposts: http://flemmings.livejournal.com/808242.html

Could today have been more of a personal disaster? Not unless I broke a body part instead of other things. I suppose the body part will come next.

Crossposts: http://flemmings.livejournal.com/807944.html

Oh central AC and ativan, how delicious the sleep you bring, how sweet the dreams, how gentle the wakening into a civil dry world that smells of nothing at all. One feels like a human being- one registers the way it 'sposed to be- for a half hour or so, before one leaves the house at Fartooearly.am and goes into the hazy sun and muggy polluted air, bound for a 90 minute dentist appointment.

But all things pass, and the evening wind blows, and it's currently cooler than it was last night (is why the AC was on.)
( Cut for book and RL natter )

Crossposts: http://flemmings.livejournal.com/807644.html

I had the morning off, aside from an ill-timed chiropractor appointment. Intended to go down to the Art Gallery and take in the Lawren Harris exhibit, or maybe go to Old Navy and buy what I'm assured are the only large-sized tank tops that last. But the day was muggy stinky, the sun was hot, and I had a touch of summer stomach from, well, eating when it's hot. So I bought a waterpic instead, as I've long intended to do, and may some day get around to using it.

Then did my charitable shift (for a worker who'd already put in a full day) after which my back hurt as it does when I stand for any period of time. I did at least go out for the 8:30 showing of Mononoke Hime for which I had a ticket, was assured that the doors would open at 7:30 or a little later, stood in line till nearly 8; and then asked myself, did I want to sit in a narrow chair in a full house (ticket holder line went around one corner, rush ticket line went around the opposite one) on an aching hip for two hours while watching a film I wasn't crazy about to begin with? No, I would rather go and have coffee and read my book. Which did. Tomorrow I know I can come later and still get a balcony seat for Howl, and I will be armed with muscle relaxants and cough syrup to combat the two present seasonal evils. Also, possibly, the world and its brother won't want to see Howl's Moving Castle, though I bet they do.

But it was nice, actually, to be out of an evening, watching the light fade behind the patio trees at Aroma. Last time I did that the sun was still shining when I left at 8 p.m. June does have its uses.

Crossposts: http://flemmings.livejournal.com/806629.html

Today was the kind of marathon I'm no longer up for, a mere six hours with a two hour break in between that saw me ordering a Manhattan when what I wanted was a Cosmopolitan. Whatever. Alcohol is alcohol.

But the return of a p/t body meant I had the first three days of this week off, and I profited by it to go see the wakashu exhibit at the ROM. What it says on the tin: "Four hundred years ago in Japan, male youths, called wakashu, were the objects of sexual desire for women and men. Creating a third gender, wakashu looked different from both women and adult men and played distinct social and sexual roles." So now I know how to tell the men from the women in woodblock prints. Fun enough, but they had a two minute clip from Gohatto on rerun and the voices kept interfering with my reading of the exhibit labels.

I'm also appalled to learn that our museum's collection of woodblock prints was given to the museum in 1926, but were largely left underexplored. "There were boxes that nobody had opened for years," (the curator) said. "It was very challenging because not much was on the museum database, so we had to record all of the information."

Crossposts: http://flemmings.livejournal.com/806318.html

Two days of dry cool- not that 25C is actually *cool*- just to remind us that it exists, and then back to a thankfully rare-this-year phenomenon, the muggy sunny day. Have had to close cellar door against the mold fumes, and must hang laundry I stupidly left down there for two days out on the line in the sun to get the sneezy smell out of that as well. 'At least there's a bit of a breeze,' an utter stranger remarked to me as I was pushing my bicycle up one of Brunswick's one-way stretches in a fit of unusual law-abidingness. There was, and it was well under 30C, but I was Tokyo-sopping nonetheless.

And now the blue hour is before 8:30 and it's nautical twilight* before 9, in spite of the authorities saying it doesn't happen till quarter past. I know dark when I see it, guys.

Thus am at a summer dead end, wanting a nice cozy British mystery and not finding it. Thought I'd got one for a loonie last night- The Death Pit- but failed to read the blurb about the book being 'charged with erotic energy.' Do Not Want, thank you very much. Probably should just settle on an Ian Rankin, but I Do Not Want coppers of the old school either, who hang around with criminals and beat up suspects and ignore rules. Thus I chug along with one of the Mammoth Books of Holmes pastiches, purely so I can remove the badly-edited beast from the shelves.

*Nautical Twilight: The time period when the sun is between 6 and 12 degrees below the horizon at either sunrise or sunset. The horizon is well defined and the outline of objects might be visible without artificial light. Ordinary outdoor activities are not possible at this time without extra illumination.

Crossposts: http://flemmings.livejournal.com/805673.html

1. My copy of The Prince is gone, though I had it last spring. My copy of The Midnight Court is gone, though I had it last winter. And now my copy of Full Fathom Five is hiding I know not where. I mean, I trust I really *did* buy the thing and not just get it from the library?

Gladstone does do happi endo, at least for the time being; but all the latest book's hints of what went on in the first (chronological) makes me still drag my feet about reading it ever. As does all the financial wheeler-dealery.

2. To balance the gas bill, the electricity bill arrives, more than double what I used for the same period last year. Yeah well, last year was a rainy June and cool July and I didn't turn the central AC on till September.

3. Living on muscle relaxants is fine, but throw an anti-histamine into the mix and one sleeps deep and unmovingly, resulting in concrete neck headache this morning. Fortunately I just took more relaxants for the back, which cured the head as well. Physio didn't hurt either, except in the wallet.

4. I pick up my Japanese copy of Kafka on the Shore, only to have an 1Q84 bilious reaction to it. Oh yeah, strange stuff happening once again for no apparent reason. Why bother? (Then again, cruising goodreads' opinions on 1Q84, I come across an amazing deconstruction of the thing- that the whole Aomame section of the book is the novel that Shingo is writing about this girl he knew back in grade school, whome he makes into a male-idealized woman who will wait for him twenty years, certain that Fate will bring them together.)

5. At the cafe yesterday I wondered why they had last weekend's sign on the counter, saying they'd be closed the 15th to 19th. As I discovered today, it's because that's this week's dates, not last week's, and we're still only the middle of August. But where shall I get my lattes now?!

Crossposts: http://flemmings.livejournal.com/803905.html

1. The coffee shop is back open again. Sometimes I get jaded by it being the only game in my neighbourhood, but after a mere five days of making do with Starbucks and Second Cup, ohh that lovely smooth latte goes down so well.

2. The wind blows and it's not as hot as before. Rain comes in and yes, it steams, but hey, rain!

3. Because it rains and I'm stuck inside (not by the rain but by the severe thunderstorm warning) I embroider a little at the spotty tank top's spots and sew some more of the ragged tank top's ragged hems. Sewing is not good for people with neck problems but does give satisfaction.

4. OTOH the problem with the Craft series is that I know nothing about the upper echelons of banking and finance and stocks. Never could understand leverage and buying on margin and short-selling; I think it's a form of math dyslexia because I've always had it. Possibly I shouldn't worry about the details and just pretend these are people attacking divine players. Just, old-fashioned gods usually had more power than mortals, and their not having it confuses something basic in me.

5. Environment Canada has somehow mislaid their stats for summer 2005, but I seem to remember something similar then, in the 'ever-receding approaching cold front'. Two weeks ago they said it would be here last week; now it's supposed to arrive week after next. As long as it comes...

Crossposts: http://flemmings.livejournal.com/803609.html

1. When I was little I thought it was called Sunday because the sun always shone that day. Clearly I had a selective memory. But today was the kind of Sun Day I was thinking of then. Fresh breeze, good for drying clothes; summer-green trees and grass all about the house (fewer/ less of both here than at my childhood home, but them's the breaks.) For a brief spell (three days) it's cool enough to leave windows open at night and have the house cool down. Heat, as ever, returns next week.

2. The one thing that makes me want to wash dishes is lavender detergent. Fortunately I have some, and it's organic as well.

3. Broke in my crockpot. Clearly this needs thought, because four hours on high does a nice job on the chicken but barely renders the carrots chewable. This one has a twelve hour option and then goes automatically to 'warm', which they don't recommend leaving on for longer than an additional four hours. I am not one to cook in the morning, so clearly I need to start the thing at 9 pm, let it go all night, and turn it off whenever I get up. This lets out the 'warm meal' feature but that's what microwaves are for.
( Read more... )

Crossposts: http://flemmings.livejournal.com/802270.html

1. Come into my house after work. Ah how cool and dark! Oh how my house retains the coolness from last night's AC! ...and today's all-day AC, because I turned up the thermostat and left it on, a detail that disappeared in the heat outside. The heat alert is now lifted, and they say it's 24C out there, but it's a humid unmoving 24C. I shan't be happy until we get lows of 15 again, unseen since the middle of June.

2. Picked up a cookbook off the boulevard, One Pot Low-cal Wonders. Which is fine up to where nine recipes out of ten call for tinned tomatoes or tomato paste, two ingredients that kill the taste of everything else.

3. I need meat and veg reading to make the lighter fantasy and mystery feel substantial. Granted, Gladstone is pretty chewy all on his lonesome, and Retold Chinese Tales doesn't provide any sense of corrective balance. But Japanese works just as well as history or biography and rather better than both, especially when it's Ima Ichiko's impenetrable Phantom Moon manga. Very very chewy and still not quite making sense.

4. The local coffee shop is closed next week, which is sad, because the other coffee shop is now a Mexican restaurant, and there's nowhere else to get my 'familiar faces' barista fix.

5. Birks have been resoled for half the cost of a new pair, but resoled they are. I should simply toss my second pair, supposedly identical to the first. But they're not. They strain my legs and back, and make me feel wobbly-unsteady (even though *they've* been resoled recently too.) Had to take muscle relaxants last night for the spasms after wearing them two days, and today had recourse to the velcro ones I wear with orthotics.

6. Stopped wearing gauze bandage on rapidly uninfecting toe. Must start again, because the urge to pick at toenails- what got me into this mess to start with- is irresistible.

Crossposts: http://flemmings.livejournal.com/801539.html

My acupuncturist- thirty years younger and at least sixty pound lighter than I- makes me happy by saying she frequently puts on five pounds overnight, all of it water weight.

Remains classically classic summer- warm dry sun, puffy clouds, cicadas. Needs only to be 5C lower at night. But this is why God made central AC.

I have an infected toenail which has rendered my toe various shades of puffy red and purple. It's much less dramatic after a night's sleep with Polysporin, but back to Guignol after two hours of work, what with various babies stepping on my stockinged feet and me banging my toes on high chairs and what all. Shall go to walk-in clinic tomorrow, since my doctor is on vacation and Triple-strength Polysporin doesn't seem to be working.
( Wednesday meme )

Crossposts: http://flemmings.livejournal.com/801166.html

The tropic-dwelling will think I'm barking, but for this Canuck, a low of 20C is nowhere low enough for comfortable sleeping. Dry, I can manage, but give it a little mug and I want the AC on.

I ache in odd places after yesterday's cleaning, unless I just ache from the mug. Plans for trimming hedge and cutting up dead wood branches have been put on hold.
( Cut for July stats )

Crossposts: http://flemmings.livejournal.com/800893.html

Resigning myself to the truth of that age-worn dictum, 'The best cure for feeling futile is to clean something,' I attacked the side bedroom and its heavy furniture and rousted out the dust elephants. And I still feel futile, because

1. I was sure the cover of my cell phone had slipped behind the bed and it hadn't;

2. I was too tired at the end of it to heave the futon off the platform, remove the mattress, replace it with the Ikea mattress cover, replace the futon, and send the mattress into the outer darkness. Of course, next week isn't a mattress taking week, so there's still next weekend;

3. Dust balls kept turning up no matter how often I vacuumed, and I discovered at last that the Dirt Devil wasn't sucking them up, it was just blowing them around. So I need a new Dirt Devil. For $60, I got a good four years from it, but still...

Crossposts: http://flemmings.livejournal.com/800527.html

Unusually a cool grey wet day, with civil showers that still don't wet the ground under the trees. It feels like another year. I could be curled up reading the latest Gladstone, except I'd forgotten how foreboding Gladstone is. I want something cheerful right now, like The Armor of Light, but will probably just go back to Cellini getting religion is prison. Which would make a cat laugh except *he* believed it.

I'd feel less scratchy if my body would stop losdropping a kilo plus of water weight so my clothes fit comfortably, and then putting it all back on plus overnight so they don't.

Bought a crockpot yesterday. Will make crock in it once the weather turns properly cool, not the present hot&dry / cool&humid / fans at all times Toronto summer.

Crossposts: http://flemmings.livejournal.com/800302.html

Long weekend. Supposed to be cooler, but not at night so much. Barring acts of god, will probably be quiet and dull.

Crossposts: http://flemmings.livejournal.com/800150.html

In these days of Trump and Black Lives Matter, reading Dalemark and its homicidal despots is not terribly fun. But I slept in to 11 this morning so I could continue a dream about it, except the dream turned into an animated Dalemark virus that took over my computer and I couldn't get rid of the screens with the cartoon on them because my computer screen was the side of a wall ten feet wide and fifteen high and the little x was way out of my reach.

Did buy the new Max Gladstone, even though I haven't finished the last Max Gladstone. There's a long weekend coming up and my 100 Demons has still not arrived after three weeks, though it was sent air.

Half a tooth crumbled at dinner and the raccoons were back in the yard this evening. Should have kept spraying those trees. Assembled one of the raccoon scarers, but it may be too far away from the plum tree where they're roosting now, and the ultrasonic sound may not bother them a bit.

Crossposts: http://flemmings.livejournal.com/799520.html

With my new found riches I decided damn the expense, I shall INDULGE!! And turned on the central AC and left it running *all night.* Saturday was a scorcher, but the house stayed cool all day nonetheless. This is what happens when you have dry heat. Then I indulged again last night even though I could have gone with just fans. And within two hours of turning the thing off today's mug had crept in through crannies and cracks to make all hideous. Thus Toronto, ever.

I also indulged in clothes. Needing new tank tops and wandering into a sale at the Mall, I bought two rather-more-upscale-than-I'm-used-to items. And one is shaped to the male body and hence too tight, and the other had writing on it about No Coffee no Work, which was amusing in that tired way: but getting it home I see I missed a few letters and it says No Coffee no Workee. Yes, well: can I even give it to Goodwill? Even if you're hot and sweaty, try things on first. (I did try the 2XL tank tops at Mark's Wearhouse and put them back on the rack: they're shaped too and cling to my sizable corporation.)

Cellini- oh, Cellini. Why does anyone read him? 'I made these bowls that were the finest anyone had ever seen and then killed this man and fled to Siena where I made these medallions that were the most inventive anyone had ever seen and then killed this man and fled to Rome where I killed another man and *then* made these dies for the papal mint that were the most delicate anyone had ever seen'. "And he can go on like this for pages. Can, hell- does."

Crossposts: http://flemmings.livejournal.com/799100.html

(Apparently that's supposed to be the sound hoses watering the lawns that don't grow naturally in Los Angeles. I thought it was summer insects. The cicadas have already begun here.)

1. Even though I've read several of Henry James' novels, I'd have to go back and reread, or read anew, to find out if this is satire or an injoke or a reasonable interpretation. And I still wouldn't, probably, because I had no idea what was going on in The Wings of the Dove when I first read it and wouldn't have now. A friend once casually said 'and then when Kate sleeps with Densher' and I was 'She does? Where? How can you tell"! So I doubt I'd recognize a gay man, even a dramatic one, if James presented him to me.

What amazes me is that *anyone* can tell what's happening in a James novel.

2. So, dry warm weekend, what shall I read? The plow stuff- Cellini, Murakami's Kafka, or a committed dive into Terra Nostra? Or The Dalemeark books from Spellcoats on so I can finally read The Crown of Dalemark? And get them all off the shelves because I never cared for that cycle at all. Or The Book of Life, so I can get *them* off the shelves before the end of the month.
( Cut for RICHES beyond belief )

Crossposts: http://flemmings.livejournal.com/798854.html

One of the card slots in my wallet is ripped on the side, so I don't put cards into that slot. And it was from that slot this morning, when I opened my wallet to pay for a latte, that my old library card fell out. /cue Twilight Zone music

The only thing to read after Cannonbridge is Ackroyd's Dan Leno and the Limehouse Golem (golems, Marx, mid-Victorian London.) Ackroyd is an oogie read, as ever, but at least if I get it done (started in 2012) I can file it as a 'get it off the shelf' read, like the Brennan, and pass it on to... something else.

Crossposts: http://flemmings.livejournal.com/798178.html

So there's this thing in my neighbourhood called Porch View Dances, where various families agree to do a choreographed dance on five days in July. People are led from venue to venue by a group leader in an outsized Mad Hatter's hat, which makes him easy to follow. The local playwright across from me did it in 2014 with two of her girls. This year a family up the street, on the next block, signed up. I heard the music faintly last Wednesday, then went to listen to it Thursday and again today. The dancing is charming, of course, though my eye was on the eighteen month old who wandered happily through his older sisters' leaping and scattering flowers. A volunteer gave me the pamphlet for the do, from which I at last learned that the resonant music was Aaron Copland's. I went home humming it, trying to get it fixed in my head.

Googled his oeuvre when I got home, figured the opening must come from Overture for the Common Man, and so it was. Listened to it through. But the piece that follows it- the one the actual dancing happens to- wasn't there. And having listened to Overture, now I've forgotten the tune.

(There's a last performance tomorrow, and *maybe* I'll be through my acupuncture in time to catch it. Maybe.)

In happier domesticities, I finally decided that a blender with no lid was more of a pain than I wanted to put up with, and bought a new one. It's all plastic, it's light, it's wide and easy to clean. And then my Loblaws gets its house brand soy powder again after a mere seven years' absence. So I'm happily back to soy shakes for breakfast, happily because I was doing this on a temporary bridge that fit badly. Bridge is now permanent, but hot weather makes me want soy shakes rather than cereal and berries, and now I have the wherewithal to make them again.

Crossposts: http://flemmings.livejournal.com/797754.html

Every indication of a cold starting. No surprise after the ins and outs of ice cube AC and 35C burning sun for the last three days. Thank heaven for the weekend.

I shall hope that the current lethargy and achiness, not to mention the wanhope, is due to the sore throat and plugged up nose. It makes my current reading a touch nightmarish, though. Why did I put Cannonbridge on hold in the first place, when everyone I look at howls about it? And why didn't I remember it was Hamill's Forever that I wanted to make active? And why did I put Forever on hold? I should make a note of my references, because I have no idea who I was reading two years ago that suggested either. (Starting another Barbara Vine was plain suicidal, and i knew it at the time.)

But mostly, what happened to my library card? I take it out of the left hand side of my wallet for the automatic checkout and put it back immediately, always. But yesterday I was at the chiropractor's, whose swipe-card I also keep in the left hand tier, and noticed the blank spot where my library card should be. Vanished in a puff of smoke, only without the smoke. So I got a new one, but with a different number.

So now my holds are no longer shelved mid-rack under 1934 but down near the ground at 9627. This makes me sad. True, I won't miss looking for my stuff amid the many many volumes that bibliomaniac 1917 puts on hold, and true 9627 is more easily remembered than 1934. I wasn't alive in 1934, but Feb 7 1996 saw me, I insist, buying Silk Roads at an English language bookstore in Ebisu.

Crossposts: http://flemmings.livejournal.com/797583.html

I seem to have gone back to summers as I knew them in the early 80s: warm, happy, blue-skied and invigorating. (Not the *late* 80s, mind. Those were simply hideous.) More recent hot years present themselves to me as muggy oppressive grey-skied ordeals-- climactic coshings. I could say we haven't had a *real* heatwave yet, which to me is 35 and up. Some of this might, oddly, be down to the anti-kuyo pills which allow me to live in the moment without worrying about what the weather will be doing next month and how we'll fill the shifts next week and who'll be teething or howling tomorrow. Makes the present much easier to take.

So does having working central AC, I must say. So does the prolonged absence of various work nemeses. Mustn't wish them not to come back, because that presents other problems: but maybe they won't come back without my wishing for it.

And we had mail today, since the gov't hasn't yet locked out the postal workers. One could be forgiven for thinking they had, since the last mail I got was a week ago. No 100 Demons, but a low gas bill and a notice that the gov't has raised my property tax rebate by about $120, which is nice, since they've raised my property tax by more than twice that. But I am grateful for what I get.

Crossposts: http://flemmings.livejournal.com/797081.html

Banded dark clouds above the black-turning trees. Without saying 'pathetic fallacy', the weather at least suits the universal mood. Oh, and lightning. Let's shut down the computer and take off to the AC.

With one cheerful parting note:
http://xkcd.com/1704/

Crossposts: http://flemmings.livejournal.com/796362.html

Treated myself to Italian dinner last night. Took a bite of the crusty bread and something went crunch. My temporary bridge shoved up against the gums. Cracked, as it turned out, and today got a replacement- my dentist giving up her lunch to provide it. Felt fine in the office but is now way too high, and sensitive with it. No matter: I shall eat slops until the permanent comes in next week.

But triumph was the kitchen light back on, and Prof Islamic Studies calling out to me as I was spraying the cherry with CritterRidder, 'I think it's working. Haven't seen the raccoons around for a while.' (Yes, sir, but you were away Thursday to Sunday.) 'Bet they've got a For Sale sign up on your tree.' Well, still, triumph! and was it worth all the money I spent on expedited delivery of those ultrasonic alarms if mothballs and ammonia would do the trick? Oh, probably. No one says they're gone for good.
( Wednesday's little body is a-weary of this great world )

Crossposts: http://flemmings.livejournal.com/795711.html

My kitchen overhead fan/ light will not light. It lit Thursday night. It did not light Friday morning. The fan that runs from the wall switch beside it worked. So I took the globe off and removed the bulb and tried it in another lamp. It worked. So I went and looked at the fuse box, but the fuse for 'kitchen- west wall' looked fine. And anyway, the fan works...

So I reviewed contacts: electrician or handyman? If the fan had somehow jiggled a wire loose, which should I use? There's a dual switch for the light and I can't tell, when the light's not lighting, whether the current's on or off. An electrician would pull the fuse before looking at it, and surely a handyman would know to do so, but one hears stories where this has clearly not happened. Also electricians cost and do not like small jobs. And so, and so.

Thus kuyoing I went by Weiner's Home Hardware to get plastic scrub pads. WHH is staffed by a bunch of oyaji who've been there thirty years and more, some of whom may even be older than me: Weiner III, Santa Claus, Chinese Marty, and the black gay oyaji. The last of whom was there today and at leisure. I posed my problem to him. Hmm, he opined. 'You tested the light bulb? You tried the other switch? Overhead fan, does it have a switch on the fan itself someone might have pulled?' No one in the house but me, I say, and I didn't pull any of the fan switches recently- two weeks back to change the fan direction, that's all. 'Electrician,' he said, and I went to work calculating costs. Came home, and just to be sure, pulled the fan switches. One changes direction, one changes speed, and one-- turned on the light.

I am pleased, yes, but puzzled. Either I have gremlins or someone came into the house and turned the light on from the hanging switch, not knowing the wall switch would do it. Possibly I should go back to locking my front door.

Crossposts: http://flemmings.livejournal.com/795551.html

Before the next round of Heat Alert Bingo, I will note the perfect beauty of yesterday evening. The refreshing breeze in the evening's cool, the sun on green trees, the coffee house that stays open to 8. Archetypal summer, which for me was 1980. I have the memory even though the feel of it is gone, as phantom recollections of other times do go.

One hot evening last month someone was burning wood and for a moment I was five years old at my cousins' 300 year old house in France, the summer of 1955, the adults drinking grapefruit flavoured soft drinks on the back terrasse looking out over the garden which to me stretched for miles with a multitude of winding lanes in and out of the bushes and trees. Adult me would have expected a ruined folly or a grotto with a picturesque hermit in it, 18th century wise. What there was was a kind of- rounded wigwam made of bent branches? way at the bottom of the yard, where there were slugs. Adult me could try to figure out how big the garden really was, but why bother? Let it stay enormous.

The soft drink was called Pschht! I believe, onomatopeia for the gassy noise it made, but very unfortunate in English.

Crossposts: http://flemmings.livejournal.com/795366.html

The PO union has promised no strike till Wednesday so I at once ordered two ultrasonic repellers, due Tues or Weds. Then made myself get up at too early a.m. and limp out to Can.Tire. Yes the computer says there's one bottle of the effective spray in the store and no it's not on the shelf where it should be, and two clerks, when consulted, said 'Oh it's discontinued' shrug nothing-we-can-do. Possibly I should have said 'There's *one* bottle here in the store and I'm not leaving till you find it', but well-bred Canadians (we're not talking entitled yuppies/ Rosedalites here) don't do that. And besides I bet it doesn't work anyway.

However, since the raccoons are evidently pooing under my brother's kitchen overhang, I shall cease to worry about that particular problem. Otherwise have spread (tangerine scented) epsom salts around the base of the cherry tree and sprayed the trunks with CritterRidder. Next up: the moth balls and the coyote spray: though I doubt urban raccoons have the first notion what a coyote smells like.

I want, in descending order of want, to find my phone case and my copy of The Prince and my copy of A Distant Mirror. Today I found the last. A hopeful omen? But really should go on chugging through Campbell before I tackle a work not quite of my period nor of my territory. But now I can replace Mirror on the want list with Cellini's Autobiography.

Crossposts: http://flemmings.livejournal.com/794713.html

A Canada Day that began cool and damp, blew in a dark and stormy uhh storm, and ended with a windy blue evening too cool for just a t-shirt. If only my good weather memory was as precise as my bad weather one: this evening is what we had very frequently all through June. Sometimes warm blowy and sometimes cool but always invigorating. Memory however fixates on the 33C weekends and forgets mid-month that saw me in hoodie and bedsocks.

There are raccoon repellers that customers say work. They're sold through amazon and guess who's having a postal strike probably next week? amazon.jp ships Fedex always, the swine, but amazon.com lists only postal rates. Thus I must rise early tomorrow and head for the farthest east where a single Canadian Tire has the last bottle of a raccoon repellent spray that customers say works and that has been discontinued by its maker. Because I went out early this evening to drop a week's worth of namagomi into the recycler and found four young raccoons moseying about the back garden. Nocturnal, my left hind foot.

At the greengrocer's this afternoon two Asian men, old and young, approached me and asked did I know what rockets were, or neiborus? Older had a list written in katakana so I opined, in Japanese, that neiboru were navel oranges and they agreed yes, they must be, and they were over in the other part of the store. Rocket was niggling at my brain: I thought it might be a synonym for those garlic shoots we don't have here whose name I can't remember either. Turns out it's arugula.
( June reading )

Crossposts: http://flemmings.livejournal.com/794398.html

Everything is going wrong but the Happy Pills seem to be working because I find myself quite cheerful. One reason is C back at work, even in the painful fallout of her father's sudden death. Place doesn't function without her, is why it's dangerous to have an irreplaceable person in any organization. Or a position no one else wants to take, so that whoever has the position becomes irreplaceable. Other reason is going down to the laundry room and finding all the sheets and blankets neatly folded and put away in their baskets, which means Melanie has been at work. Even I, the Laundry Queen, can't be arsed to fold sheets, and *especially* not the infants' fitted ones. 'She's a keeper,' the cook agrees, and if only we could; but her career path is the biosciences, and she only works with us for fun.
( What, Wednesday already? )

Crossposts: http://flemmings.livejournal.com/794006.html

The 6:30 can-you-work-for-me? text is much easier to take than the 6:30 phone call. Doesn't rip one from sleep in quite as traumatic a way. But after a seven and a half hour day with one 30 minute semi-break I find myself bloody-minded and out of charity with half the staff. Quick, happy pills! Find the good side in this!

Well, if I can still move come tomorrow morning (no guarantees) I may be doing many more shifts than ~~I want to~~ I had thought possible. Which means more money from the Canada Pension Plan. Why, just last Friday they sent me a note to say that since I'd continued working after 65, my CPP payment would be upped by $1.15 a month, and I was due for a lump retroactive payment of- wait for it- $9.05!!!

Yes, well. Maybe I'll try bed with the AC on high.

Crossposts: http://flemmings.livejournal.com/793581.html

1. Bought a blade pruning saw last week intending destruction upon the scraggly pine bush in front of the porch. Half of it is dead wood whose very sharp spines catch at all who pass it, meaning the mail carrier and the poor flyer deliverers. I was looking at a dauntingly expensive weapons-grade clipper with the blade that conquered the Amazon*; clerk said I didn't need anything so hi-falutin and handed me a much more compact jobby for less than $20. I attacked the bush Saturday (and got a six inch gash for my pains) and succeeded in opening up large gaps in it. Contemplated removing the whole right half of the thing: it doesn't shield the porch from the view of passersby on the sidewalk, nor does it block the sun more than the ironwood tree does. Began sawing through a main trunk and the tool came apart in my hands.

Form following function, it looks like there should be a nut and washer holding the handle and blade together, but nary a sign of them could I see anywhere. Prof Islamic Studies came over to look with me and found nothing either. (He did however finish sawing the branch for me with his own proper saw.) Did I keep the receipt? No, naturally not. Shall take it in tomorrow anyway and see if they can suggest a nut and bolt. They'll probably suggest I buy another cheap pruning saw.

* We had a Trinidadian staff who periodically went back to visit family and came home one time with a machete. Customs had this and that to say about it: 'This is called an offensive weapon.' Rick shrugged: 'At home, we call it a domestic implement.' They let him keep it.
( More )

Crossposts: http://flemmings.livejournal.com/793151.html

I am tiddly on my brother's rum, which I consider a reasonable state to be in on this erm 'interesting' afternoon. (I did live in a world before the EU, and as a Canuck, have always needed a passport to travel in same, but my foreigner's impression was that pre-EU Britain was an insular shoddy place to be. Mind, pre-EU was also pre-Thatcher and in many ways a happier more generous time.)

In pathetic fallacy fashion, my bicycle either has a slow leak or someone has been letting the air out of the tires. But I did solve one universal mystery today. 'Tell me where all lost socks are.' They're inside duvet covers. There. That's settled.

Crossposts: http://flemmings.livejournal.com/792818.html

Oh, skunks, skunks, skunks. You pick tonight to sally forth into battle, when I was hoping to get by on window fans? Fine. I will close all the windows and turn on the AC, which I would otherwise not do for lows of 18. (Except that 18 happens at 6 am, and until then it'll be in the 20sC/70sC.)

OTOH while May was all mauve and white/ lilacs and lily of the valley perfumes, June is all mock orange (for the three days before it goes off) and jasmine sweetness, with occasional boosts from the petunias. The jasmine twines about a hydro pole down the street and probably does the concrete no good, but oh is it a gorgeous breath of elsewhere as I pedal by it.
( Reading natter )

Crossposts: http://flemmings.livejournal.com/791856.html

Continuing in the spirit of Do All The Things (though a little more gently than Sunday's marathon because who knew that moving furniture and vacuuming strains the IT band?) yesterday I gave the hedge a trim. Not as neatly as I'd have hoped: bits still stick up, and anyway the hedge is getting very sparse and woody and things that shouldn't grow in it are growing in it, like maple shoots which are impossible to remove. I may have to hack bits of it down somehow. Then went and had acupuncture and my acupuncturist scolded me for trimming the hedge. 'Next time at least wear elbow and wrist braces.' My extensors didn't hurt especially this morning, but they generally don't on the next day. Anyway, I had the luxury of a hot bath last night, which always helps.

Today I did nothing but see my doctor. And because I was woken by the damnable thigh cramp in the middle of the night, and because I had to be up two hours before my usual wake up time, I was a zombie most of the (quite splendidly sunny and cool) day. But also because the numbers at work were a third of the usual, once again I had the day off and consumed calories at Starbucks while dutifully ploughing through Burckhardt. Burckhardt hints at monstrous things various popes did or said, but wiki reports no horrors. Possibly what 19th century Germans thought was unforgivable in a Pope (writing mild pornography, thinking better of what the German princes wanted and siding with the Italians instead) is a trifle to us.

Starbucks' marble cake is a chronic temptation, but so is Ryvita sesame rye crackers. With butter alone, or avocado, but worst with the newly discovered soft cheeses that taste as Camembert did in my 20s, which Camembert no longer does. I like to think cake is my downfall but in the long run it's actually starch and fat. Luckily my doctor's scale suggests that my lower-weighing balance scale is more correct than the highly variable and occasionally nonsensical digital one. Those chickens have not come home to roost yet.

Crossposts: http://flemmings.livejournal.com/790949.html

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