Off the Cliff

Purolator succeeds in delivering me my tax return in a timely fashion and I succeed, I hope, in Fedexing it to Scarberia-- on a blowy chilly Novemberish afternoon--  so accountant can submit online and I can get my hefty refund in a timeliesh fashion as well. (Should you be wondering, the French for Misdirected is Malacheminé.) Not a patch on the people who file in February(!) but they, I assume, have only their work income to declare. And then I can reapply for the dental program which I profoundly hope will be still around after the election. Someone on a local forum was complaining that the advance polls were all happening on the Easter weekend. Diddums. It's not like Easter is one of the High Holidays that requires 24 hour attendance-- and even if it were, there's like four whole days and what's so special about Saturday or Monday, I ask me. Granted, Monday is a school holiday in lieu of Sunday, is how the advance poll can operate out of a school, but so, bring your kids with you.

SND put her garbage out early so I assumed she was off visiting family out west, but I just heard Oliver barking in the back yard.  So maybe she is and he's with a sitter. But I saw him doing zoomies about his yard late last night; crap, what's that thing darting about in J's yard?? (Is raccoon and coyote mating season, so yanno, worry.) But was just Ollie getting his energy out.

I've put out a full recycle bin because two weeks ago snowed, as well as what I've been intending to do for a while: half a bag of indifferent BL manga. Many more bags to go. Downsizing is not fun.

Reading this week was Murderbot 2&3 which apparently I bought in kindle. Probably the perennial Inspector Littlejohn, and the seemingly perennial High Vaultage which nears its end, fortunately. Then can start on the last Paarfi of which I have no expectations at all.

The cordless phone in the bedroom is less than satisfactory, in that I can barely hear the person on the other end. Looking at it today, I saw an unnoticed button in the corner: Spkr. You have to press the speaker button to hear anything, just as with my cell. And my question is, simply, why? What purpose does it serve? It's just another button to press. And on a cordless? The phones at work never had spkr buttons, and I'm annoyed that this one does.

All this made worse by the fact that the person I was trying to talk to- before I transferred to the study phone- was calling from the insurance company, asking questions I'd already answered before, in an Indian accent so thick I had to keep asking her to repeat things, which is embarrassing. Normally I can handle most Indian accents but I've either lost the ability or lost part of my hearing or both. She said things like GAIR-edge for garage, and I heard furnished for finished, and it was an exercise in serious cross-purposes. But at least she called me to ask about updates instead of happily waiting for me to read the new policy and call them and tell them that, seriously, the plumbing *has* been updated since 1910, though the policy itself came back not updated at all. Possibly my new roof and new breaker panel will cut something off my premiums, though I'm not holding my breath. And I could have done without her tut-tutting that I should call them any time I have work done on the place, a bit of information that no one has ever mentioned in the thirty-five years I've been paying insurance.

I grow more and more crippled so must go back to the intellectual doing of exercise, which I neglect because I'm back in the paralysis of the will that began last week, and also because I really don't want to return to those thrilling days of last summer and its three times a day of 45 minutes exercise. I'm *tired* of exercise. 'I do not like this game, I don't want to play it anymore.'

I've also been resisting the urge to read Vlad Taltos because that's a rabbit hole I don't want to disappear down. As a substitute I read Nero Wolfe, or rather Archie Goodwin, who goes down easy and has fifteen zillion ebooks to borrow and isn't quite as addictive as Vlad or even Paarfi.

Kept wondering why my NIOSH-approved N95 masks were ringing vague bells. The bell turns out to be Vlad Taltos' Loiosh. So now I can sleep peacefully.

..on account of the usual effects of Convivial Wine next door, which saw me sleeping from 8 to 12 midnight last night. An ativan got me sort of back on track, so that I only slept in to 10:30 this morning.

This Spring Forward has been harder to adjust to than past years, possibly because my sleeping habits were already edging back to 1 or 2 am bedtimes. I finally got tired of lying awake in bed and counting breaths for hours and hours so went back to reading until I got sleepy, which then meant 4 or 5 am, like back in the 90s. My reluctance to sleep is balanced by a reluctance to wake up- understandable when waking means fifteen minutes of stretch before one can even get out of bed- and the result was a lot of little bunnies sleeping in till nearly noon, perfectly happy in the warm softness of wool and pillow, but not very effective.

(Shall note as well a sudden loss of morning appetite. Don't want to eat anything. Result is I end up eating oatmeal for lunch and instead of getting hungry two hours later, as I do when I have breakfast at a semi-reasonable hour, I survive happily till dinner. Since this loses me weight, I'm not going to try correcting it.)

But today I flogged myself out to accomplish, meaning bicycling to Bed Bath and Beyond for flannel pillowcases. The ones my younger bro and s-i-l gave me thirty years ago are barely there anymore; the ones the Magnificent Helen's parents gave me fifteen years ago are soft and threadbare; the brown and green plaid ones that came with the duvet cover in 2007 open in mid-back, which means you can't flip the pillow over. Silly design, and ugy with it.

But BB&B have them on sale this season, and as the store is only just south of College and Yonge, I thought I'd suss them out in person instead of buying online. And yes, well, they're flannel pillow cases in unexceptionable beige or off-white, which go with everything, and a lot better than the reindeer logos in the online store. But oh dear, what a trip to find them.

College and Gerrard both have bicycle lanes, but they also both have condos a-building which, surprise surprise, pre-empt the bicycle lane. So after weaving through traffic on my drunken bike (it lists badly, and March winds don't help) I arrived at Yonge and Gerrard and a big sign for the store- but no entrance into the building except for one that takes you to the food court in the basement. No, one goes round the corner to the main entrance on Yonge and up the escalator, and then gets lost.

The walls of bonny Honest Ed's may be down to the ground, but his spirit lives on in BB&B. 'Come in and get lost!' as his signs used to proclaim, and one does. There's signage but no store map, and section follows section, around corners and into nooks, and cul-de-sacs with ?barbecue equipment? and tchotchkes and scented candels, and at last one finds a body that wrks there and she leads you, because telling is too complicated, to where the flannel pillowcases are: a very small selection.

But pilllows? We have pillows coming out of our ears. Now, one is supposed to repace pillows every 2-3 years, which, if I've paid $200 for a pillow, I do not. But the sirens sang about my ears: the dream of the perfect pillow, that won't hurt one's neck, is alive and well there.

Unfortunately, what I did end up buying was a wooden shoe rack because my old one is dead; and not even the one I wanted, which wouldn't have fit on the bike. Yappari, I should just have transitted over there.( memeage )

The first Family Day February holiday was ten years ago, and I remember it clearly because I spent it hacking ice up and down Christie St, where the snowplows had left great banks of frozen slush that covered half the narrow sidewalk. This year was a grey and mizzly late March, not as warm as they said it would be (my hands froze in their single wet gloves) but delightful with the unfamiliar freedom of clear streets and a bike. I dressed up and went to the AGO for a late lunch.

'Dress up' is something I almost never do, and it involves wearing my one 'good' pair of pants, currently 20+ years old, which are the same cotton-polyester as everything else I own and have an elastic waist-- the ups and downs of menopausal weight don't permit of fixed waistbands. I'd buy a dozen more pairs if I could find them anywhere; ubiquitous through the 80s and 90s, no one makes them anymore. To this I added a wool-blend three-quarter length top, picked up off the boulevard, and a mystery because the size label says M. I don't fit anyone's Ms ever, let alone a woman's dress. Possibly it *is* a dress, intended for a shorter person than I, but that doesn't explain the shoulder width. Since a fleecy is infra dig, I wore a cherry-coloured cardigan over it, bought in 2006 in what has always seemed a moment of bad decision because the thing has no pockets. But as ever, hold on to the bad decisions and they will find their moment. The cardigan is the same colour as the scarf Incandescens gave me for Christmas, and I wore that to cover the slipping shoulders of the top (as I say, an oddity for a size M) that threatened to reveal my camisole straps. And since it's the AGO, I ditched the backpack for my shoulder strap purse.

So all in all, I looked quite respectable amid the hordes of children and adults and strollers in the AGO lobby, and even respectable at the AGO Bistro, where I had made a reservation and was thus greeted by name in a very Lady Teldra way. I had a Dubonnet and the famous $22 hamburger, which is, well, a hamburger, slightly better than some, with good frites and alas garlic mayonnaise. 'Home made pickles,' says the menu, meaning pickle singular, because this is the AGO Bistro; and the cheapest wine ($13) and only a coffee to follow, because their eclairs have fruit on them instead of chocolate, in this case caramelized apple. The damage was a mere $50, of which I will not complain. It was a very pleasant experience; and going home in the October grey fog and drizzle, I met the twins and their dad and their dog out for a walk, which was also pleasant, so I will remember this holiday weekend when I have forgotten most of the others.
( While I have this work computer and its keyboard )

One oddity of this round of weight loss is that my feet have shrunk. Right foot sloshes about in its boot, birks fall off even with socks. I keep buying new socks that are never thick enough to keep things on. This is gratifying, yes, even if it's water weight, because I have chronic edema and water loss is just fine by me. Shall use the full_length orthotic until feet start sweĺing again in the spring.

New chuffedness re tablet is youtube, which delivers me Woxin Changdan in, supposedly, fansubs. Not sure if they really are because it took me a while to figure how to turn subtitles on, but it makes an amazing difference having the action six inches from one's nose rather than six feet.

Wonder if I can meme with this? No, actually, because this keyboard has no angle brackets. No matter, because I've finished nothing but *Jhegaala* in the last two weeks, dropped *Athyra*, and may be about to drop *Dzur* or possibly just skip all the food bits. Reading this year is a bust.

Since I started doing acrostics and stopped playing online solitaire, my tendinitis has... improved, at any rate, and my sense of futility has decreased a little. Acrostics take longer than solitaire, but there's an ending to them, unlike the mindless misery of one game after another.

The effects of cortisone shots is usually: month 1, free as a bird, I fly; month 2, twinges now and again especially on achey days; month 3, back to normal levels of crippledness. I am a week from my next shot, and the month 3 symptoms have only just started. This makes me happy. OTOH, they *have* started and the bike that allows for mobility at such times is not usable: so it's going to be a long and activity-curtailed week.

Woke at 8 this morning from ativan sleep (needed for the unpleasant things I did to my leg yesterday, wearing grippers on the wrong boot) turned over and went back to sleep until 10, in which time I dreamed I was at an Italian hotel in the mountains on a group or family tour, and there were no toilets in the bedrooms or the public washrooms. Other guests didn't seem to be bothered by this, but I was growing increasingly perplexed by the vanished facilities. Turns out the owner had hidden them all from us because the last time our business co-ordinator booked rooms for a staff holiday, back in 1990 when C didn't even work for us, she'd cancelled some reservations without notice or shorted him on something, and this was his revenge.
( Meme )

So, because I can walk- a fact I still don't quite believe- today I walked from my aunt's over to Indigo Books in the Manulife to spend my book token on, hopefully, those missing Brusts (Phoenix, Jhegaala), or at least some new acrostics. There's a way to get to the Manulife underground from Bay station but I couldn't find it; largely because, as I discovered when coming back, that entrance to the subway is closed. And yes, you can get from the Manulife to the subway underground, but bring a compass with you because the way isn't marked. For my future reference, it involves going through Holt Renfrew on the north side, and then veering west to get to Cumberland Court.

This should have prepared me for Indigo, which has moved all its books to new locations and then understaffed the store, so old ladies with canes (besides myself) were wandering about piteously trying to find stuff. When I found a staff and asked for the crossword section, she had to take me there because, as she said, 'it's hard to explain.' Basically, it's tucked into an alcove back of Teen Fiction, a very logical location.

And they had no acrostics- which is fine: I should have remembered how many books I still have- and no Brusts beside the last two, which is typical. They want you to order online. I shall try Bakka instead.

We still have an extreme cold warning on, but I double-bagged me and went grocery shopping. Returning, I was loathe to go inside and take my boots off, stash everything, put boots back on and go out again. The benefits of -17C was that I could drop the milk, the ham slices, and the bag of frozen raspberries in my blue bin outside. (Thought it best to put the bag with lettuce and avocadoes inside the front door.) When I came home, the milk was fine, the raspberries felt a bit soft (!) and the ham was frozen. Never believe a weather webpage.

Meanwhile, this stabbing not-quite-a-headache might, just might, be the effect of no caffeine since Wednesday. Hope it is, because then I know how to make it go away.

I will stop reading Vlad. I've finished Dragon and need to let the backstory sink in a bit. Also the next one is Teckla, a downer, and I don't have Phoenix- and neither does anyone else, not in paper form, and I know that will bug me.

So of course I'm reading The Paths of the Dead instead.

Vallista was very entertaining. Unfortunately it's left me with the desire to reread the whole series again, in my lazy end-of-year snowed-in fashion.

Not sure if we *are* snowed in, or if it will stop at 2-3 inches. But the tendinitis went ballistic today, turning into worrying and painful neck twinges, and I won't be exacerbating it with shovelling. Should not be exacerbating it with typing even, so must stop here.

Merry Christmas to all who celebrate, and to all a good night.

Dunno. Haven't felt like reading lately. Finished Brust's Tiassa, am waiting for Hawk to come from the library, and Vallista, whichever comes first. Reading Brust reminds me of May 2012 when I reread his up-to-then oeuvre in toto and also, flow-wise, had dinner with a visiting Petronia. So there's that nostalgia factor.

But what I do instead is clean. Largely in a spirit of inquiry: how often does one need to vacuum before one stops picking up dust? The answer would seem to be, every other day: because once a week fills a canister quite happily. As demonstrated with the bedroom and upper hallway that were pristine just last Wednesday. Those vents really need to be cleaned out. Meanwhile, living in a tidy house makes me feel like someone else. We shall see how long this lasts.

Happy Beaver is good hot weather reading. It passes the time, keeps the attention focussed, and leads nowhere in particular. For a London-set series, it reads unnervingly unEnglish. Aaronovitch and Griffin present me with what feels like Londoners, however urban magical they may be; but Carey's people seem to belong to some generic and semi-American series. The way they talk, the things they feel, the amount of time they spend in cars, all negate the place names that were so grittily and grottily London in Griffin's books. Nor is there any of that half-feyness or slight battiness that Aaronovitch's Peter doesn't even know he possesses. (True, Felix is supposed to come from Liverpool. That only makes it worse. Am trying to hear his lines in a northern accent and not quite succeeding.)
( We won't mention his manners, because he has none. )

So Ben Aaronovitch mentions the Happy Beaver (ie Felix Castor) novels as works that did not, in fact, influence Rivers of London. Hm, said I, exorcist in London Town, sounds good. Biked to the irritating Sanderson library down Bathurst (irritating because it sits on a very large corner lot and its front entrance is both cunningly hidden and quite unmarked, so one tramps a fair ways in blistering sun trying to find it) and got vol 3, the only thing available at any nearby library. Read some in UofT's Starbux, then went to Bakka and got vol 1. Not that it's as riveting as Rivers or Angels at first glance, but it seems to be set in the same universe more or less and I think will repay investigation.

Then, because I am nothing if not perverse, went on reading The Paths of the Dead. Heat should break some time tomorrow and I too shall break out of the paths of least resistance reading.

Have finished Tiassa. This is not, repeat not, the signal to read The Phoenix Guards, Five Hundred Years After, or The Viscount of Adrilankha. Well, maybe The Viscounta because I was punchdrunk when I read it last and remember nothing of what happened.
( Neighbourhood thieves )

I know we had no rain to speak of in May, but did we have to make up the deficit all in one day? With umbrella-twisting winds and floods in Union Station?
( May reading-- all fantasy all the time )

Ben Aaronovitch was at a panel the other day: "a round table discussion about London based urban fantasy with China Mieville, Suzanne McLeod and Kate Griffin." Sounds like it'd be fascinating. Possibly a transcript online somewhere?

Had not heard of Suzanne McLeod. Anyone know if she's any good? Or only if you like vampires?
( Equally... )

I like the Vlad Taltos books well enough, but I'm not sure I'm up for the marathon reread, in chronological not published order, that I've set myself. Still, a refresher on who did what when is useful, as I discover on rereading Taltos itself, which clearly sets up half the later spoilers of the series. (Remains to be seen whether Jhereg, written five years earlier, does too; I rather doubt it.) But I need to bookmark with post-it notes every time there's an unexplained something, because actually finding any passage, in what I recall as a triple-stranded narrative, is impossible. And Dragon is not much better.

Shall maybe bog down in the later lacklustre Cawti Conspiracy books, but that's for then.

Someone's lj entry about preferring the less famous works of famous writers cited Brust's Agyar as more memorable than the Vlad books, or even most of Paarfi. Got it from the library, read twenty pages, and returned it to the library today even though the library is closed for Canada Day. Don't want that thing in my bag or my house longer than necessary. Now maybe if one keeps on, it turns into Lolita, unreliable narrator and all. But I couldn't read Lolita either. Some things are just inherently yuck, deconstructed or not.

Is it reasonable, or am I thinking too precisely on the event, when I find myself less than enthralled by Brust's To Reign in Hell because the characters are presented as let-us-say Caucasoid? ( Cut for grumps )
( Cut for thoughts on dragon poetry )

So camwyn writes that May 9 is her thirty-second birthday and I think- the first thing I think- is 'You're only celebrating for thirty seconds? Is this a New York thing?'

Finished Sethra Lavode yesterday. There is no more Paarfi, and even worse, no more Brust. This is sad. However I will express my gratitude to Mr.Brust for letting me be a Musketeer, finally. I've wanted to be a Musketeer ever since I was thirteen but Dumas wouldn't let me, le maudit phallocrate. (Now tell me phallocrate is feminine. Le con, la phalle, la phallocrate. Sure, why not?)

Should watch the last two DVDs of Samurai Champloo and check if there's anything grabworthy in Bleach vols 8-11, was it? since I dropped a hundred bucks plus on said DVDs and manga. But I think I'll take my sinuses to bed instead.

The grave gives up its secrets and the sea gives up its dead sooner than Gunma PO gives up the packages entrusted to it. Nonetheless someone seems to have struck their rod on the ground and commanded the waves, because Tues to Thurs of this week has seen the arrival of

--a package of books with Salty Dog 4, various Koori no Mamono, and the latest Saiyuki ep
--a lone Papuwa episode
--which next day reveals to have been *last* month's Papuwa ep because this is this month's, plus FMA; and
--five count 'em five packages of batteries. shiny_monkey, I'm assuming you didn't in fact send those all at the same time? No, I thought not.

My extreme gratitude for all of this.

Meanwhile I chug merrily into The Paths of the Dead. It's refreshing to see Morrolan, free of Vlad's colloquialism, displaying the semi-doltish comprehension skills that Paarfi's style imputes to all its subjects. I am also reminded of the Musée d'Orsay. ( Why, you ask? )