Off the Cliff

The city has hired a private company to handle recycling, and because recycling has now happened two weeks in a row, added a little line to their handout saying this week only the city would pick up regular garbage as well as the green bins. I read this on a FB page but had my doubts. With reason. Green bins went early today, garbage did not. Recycling truck came up my street at 4:15 and took the recycling from the west side only. Shall lay bets on whether they come back later. Am doubtful.

The plethora of bins and frozen snow berms made getting up the street a bit of an undertaking. Snow berms must have been from insufficient shovelling on Boxing Day coupled with cars pushing snow onto the walks, because we have no such phenomena on my block. But anyway, got eczema cream for my cracked and flaking thumb, which would probably profit from a humidifier in my room as well. I have a humidifier, I just need to get it out and fill it, which is one of those minor tasks I unaccountably drag my feet on doing.

Spent yesterday evening transferring icons from LJ to DW, now it looks like the former may shut down. It's been months since LJ let me select individual icons for my entries anyway so I won't miss it if it happens.

Having another crack at that ancient outdated book on Anglo-Saxon England. In my last conversation with Vice-fearless Leader, she opined (and I restate) that the history of any country defaults to slaughter, slaughter,  and more slaughter. Which is certainly the case of A-S England. This strikes me as a batshit way to spend one's abbreviated lifetime. But then I wonder about what people drank back in those days and was it possible that entire populations were suffering fetal alcoholic syndrome? It would certainly explain the Icelandic sagas.

But a casual mention of the Battle of Maldon sent me to Mr. Wiki to look up same. I read that in my Old English class half a century ago (and more) but nobody *then* mentioned that Byrhtnoth's ofermōd, his overconfidence, that made him give a disastrous concession to the invading Vikings, is a word that in every other appearance refers to Lucifer's attitude that led to his fall. Yeah, Tolkien was right about that one. Hubris, man, hubris.

To wit, my comments finally loaded to DW. Now if  I need cat waxing opportunities, I can go delete all those duplicate entries.

It snowed today, an inch or so of sasame yuki/ lightly falling snow. With the temps just at freezing, all the tree branches became coated in delicate white. I've never seen that exact phenomenon before. Packing snow usually just piles up on them. Wish my phone and tablet had better cameras, but the white didn't start sticking until it was semi-dark outside. 

Tried importing my LJ to DW. Tried twice, actually. It imported everything but the entries. If LJ goes down, there goes everything from 2004 to mid-2015.

This is not my week for smells. Amazon delivers the order I put in last night-- obviously had stuff on stock, unlike Canadian Tire which will show you all the details and then inform you it's on backorder. So I get my laundry hampers and electric knife sharpener in record time. And lucky I went out to empty the recyclables into their bin or the box would have sat on the porch until late tomorrow afternoon. But then I became aware of a pungent sweet smell. The other side of the box is soaked in something: not any of my purchases, but somebody's something oil had clearly broken in the van. So I put it back on the porch to air in the 80 clicks per hour wind gusts and went to have a shower.

Weird weather today. Thunder rumbling gently very early in the morning, then wind blowing in a warm front- up to 16C/ 61F after a week of just above freezing, then more wind blowing in a cold front and temps falling right back down, and either sleet or freezing rain or snow or all three tomorrow. May explain why I've been so stiff all day in spite of stretches and muscle relaxants and hot bean bags. At least I managed to sweep up the dust elephants in the bedroom, that show so clearly in the March sun, and the detritus on the kitchen floor even if I didn't manage to wash same. I really want a cleaning service but the furnace and the optometrist and the house insurance has siphoned up my excess cash. And there's still ongoing rehab coming in at over $200 a week for the next month.

So there's this stretch I do for hip flexxors, where you lie at the edge of the bed and let the leg on that side fall down, then pull your other leg to your chest. It was the one stretch that allowed me to bend my legs at any kind of angle, pre-op. My bed is high and the left leg didn't touch the floor so the stretch was really good. But it didn't work for the right side, because I couldn't keep my right leg from touching. And now, post-op, the left leg always touches the floor. Webpages assure me that knee surgery doesn't make your leg longer, but, well. But also, if I've gained a cm or so on that side, maybe I might be able to get on my old bicycle again, the one that became too high for me in the spring.

Not that this will happen any time soon. I'm grateful for two doors down Chris who said, apropos of his mother's knee surgery, 'You just have to keep working through the scar tissue to get the bend back.' I already have my bend back but I also have scar tissue that hurts when I do my exercises, and at other times as well. Took the rollator over to the supermarket today with everything twinging and cramping, especially the lower back. 'You will be able to walk unassisted after 3 to 5 weeks.' Not me, I won't. I may be developing Tourette's because when everything cramps and stabs like that I start swearing like the sort of lowlife guys I detest. The ones who use fuck as punctuation and adjective and adverb and gerund and whatall. I do it under my breath and of course no one can see my face twisting into a grimace, thank god, but it's occasionally the only way I can make it up my front steps.

Had half a notion of seeing if I could get a booster shot. Answer is no, because everyone 18 and over wants boosters and is willing to sit online for an hour to book them. And obviously I'm pretty much at the bottom of the list anyway- minimal contact with other people, minimal sorties outside, can't use transit, and would have difficulty getting to the vax centre anyway. Also it's possible I'm already in the system, because my second shot was arranged automatically by the people who gave me my first shot. We shall see if they contact me after the 22nd, which is my six months due date.

Oh LJ, how very you you are. I don't want to use your app. Stop posting to it and let me stay in Chrome.

Somewhere in this here journal I noted that the coda to Bede's story about the sparrow in the meadhall* was actually a passage from  a Russian short story by I think Gogol. Can't find it anywhere, can't think what else I might have tagged it with, cannot find it online, cannot find it.

Argh.

* "The present life of man upon earth, O King, seems to me in comparison with that time which is unknown to us like the swift flight of a sparrow through mead-hall where you sit at supper in winter, with your Ealdormen and thanes, while the fire blazes in the midst and the hall is warmed, but the wintry storms of rain or snow are raging abroad. The sparrow, flying in at one door and immediately out at another, whilst he is within, is safe from the wintry tempest, but after a short space of fair weather, he immediately vanishes out of your sight, passing from winter to winter again. So this life of man appears for a little while, but of what is to follow or what went before we know nothing at all." 

The coda is the oldest of the king's men saying 'Even in the dark the sparrow is not lost but knows her nest.'

ETA Ha! Ha! Ha! Found it, and it's Turgenev after all, Rudin:

"I remember a Scandinavian legend,' thus he concluded, ‘a king is sitting with his warriors round the fire in a long dark barn. It was night and winter. Suddenly a little bird flew in at the open door and flew out again at the other. The king spoke and said that this bird is like man in the world; it flew in from darkness and out again into darkness, and was not long in the warmth and light. . . . 'King,' replies the oldest of the warriors, 'even in the dark the bird is not lost, but finds her nest.' Even so our life is short and worthless; but all that is great is accomplished through men. The consciousness of being the instrument of these higher powers ought to outweigh all other joys for man; even in death he finds his life, his nest.’"

 Pepys is always writing 'Lay late abed' (except when he's getting up at 4 a.m. to be somewhere downriver at 8) and I fully sympathize with the feeling. Lay late abed today, reveling in the under covers warmth while the AC blew coolness into the bedroom, and dreamed a detailed bunch of things which the waking mind won't hold onto. But one was definitely incandescens coming to dinner at not!Bedford, bearing gifts, only my sibs had somehow eaten most of the food I was planning to serve and I had to order more. Sorry it turned into a frustration dream but it was nice while it lasted.

I've long known that quarantine would be easier if I were still writing fanfic and had that other world to escape into. So I read some of my old fics, from 15 or 20 years ago (!) to take me Elsewhere, as I read old LJ entries from ten years back, and that does me for a while.

 Seen elseNet:

"For those of you having the same issue as I am regarding crossposting, I received this response to my support request:

I'm sorry about the problem. LiveJournal's abuse detection systems have gotten significantly more sensitive, they're no longer responding to our contacts about this and are claiming to Dreamwidth users who contact them that they're no longer able to whitelist our IP addresses the way they have for the past decade, and we're very limited in what steps we can take to work around the blocks when they impose them. We're doing what we can to work around the issue, but I'm afraid it may be a while until crossposting works reliably again."

It's LJ that has the problem
It's D-Width that gets the blame
Rot those damn'  control-freak Ruskies
Ain't it all a bloomin' shame.

Russia is planning to temporarily disconnect itself from the Internet in order to satisfy a bill in its parliament requiring that the country and its Internet service providers take steps to give Russia greater sovereignty over its Internet

As someone said, Don't be surprised if LJ doesn't work one of these days. Not that I'm ever surprised when LJ doesn't work...

LJ has removed the option to view in old style again. Bloody enormous nav bar is back. Curses.

Oh dear god LJ not again. Now I can only view a maximum of 50 entries on my friends' page, if I set it to show 50. Nothing before that. No more skip=100. So better bookmark anything notable. Or change my style to incandescens', who is allowed to see up to skip=70. Oh munificent overlords!

Inevitably, perfect days this summer (which I know has technically only just begun, but that's not how it works in reality) are followed by forecast rain and thunder. Mind, this summer even rainy damp days are followed by forecast rain and thunder. It is a wet year. But I shall note that today was a perfect summer day, blue skies, white clouds, cool wind and warm- OK, hot- sun.

I serendipitied into two pairs of good pants at Suzy Shier, not a store I'd ever buy at because I don't fit women's sizes. But they have a small line of plus, and they had two black rayon 2XLs for very little, so now I'm set for everything but the hottest weather. Their 2XL is actually a mite too large, which is heartening, because I can't wear the general run of women's XL; and anything that lets breezes blow about one's limbs is to be encouraged.

Did a wash and hung it on the line and it dried in no time and only the pants had bird poo on them. Win! Tackled the hedge finally, which is now a lot lower than it was, though no healthier on my side. Vast forests of dead wood. Had I a good electric saw or trimmer I'd take the dead bits out and replant, but this will do for the nonce. And finally repotted the philodendron and added the cuttings that have been sprouting in water for more than a year. We shall see if they survive.

So a good sweaty healthy day, and now for a hot shower and hair wash.

(Oh, and LJ on my phone has everyone in my own style. I'm fond of my own style for me, but seeing everybody against a pink background is disconcerting.)
( Reading )

There's an up side to tizzies, and that's the roiling stomach. Roiling stomachs do not want food put in them and will contrive to be rid of it in double plus time. The last time I had a month of tizzies I lost ten pounds. Mindfulness and metta have stopped the current taking well short of that, but I find myself quite happy to have half a bowl of brown rice for lunch and half a cup of keffir for dinner, and look forward to seeing what the scale says in a few days time.

Everyone's flight to DW doesn't affect my LJ reading much, but oh will it put a crimp in my reading of other people's FLs, which is one of the joys of my life. Reading other people's DW circles isn't the same, mostly because the fonts and layouts are so uncongenial, and always have been.
( Reading meme )

Feel distinctly out of focus, which is partly heat, partly allergies, partly a long weekend, and partly a visiting petronia taking me to that Elsewhere my house becomes when someone else is in it. Took me also to dinner last night at the expensive Korean restaurant with the antiques. My first time for Korean barbecue: alas that my table manners couldn't measure up to the surroundings. But I can't see how anyone stays graceful eating barbecue. Yes, well, the slender fashionable Japanese who surrounded us did it, but I am not Japanese.

However on the way down there, in the muggy grey evening, we came across an excellent Front Lawn Library on Manning of-all-places (street must be gentrifying) and copped Ben Okri's The Famished Road and leGuin's Lavinia. The former I think was on the Guardian's list of 1000 best SFF, and the latter has cropped up on some other list lately. Started the Okri in spite of concurrently reading Riddley Walker and Winter's Tale, which are also a possible cause of unfocussedness.

petronia told me the best oil to use for cooking in an iron frypan, as also for seasoning it, and how to do steaks in same (preheat in a 500 degree oven) and many other useful things I shall try once coolness returns. In the meantime I rejoice in my central AC, thermostat set to 'icecube'. Slept in till nearly 10 this morning because of it, which I can't do tomorrow on account of a 9:30 shift. 'And she says Go back, go back to the world.'

(Dreamwidth translates the lj user tag as dreamwidth user. How does one make it lj?)

Chrome has these interesting little habits when displaying LJ. A page will load properly, I'll go to look at comments, and when I come back nothing written in italics is visible. Refreshing doesn't help. Today it showed the first post on someone's FL, then nothing but the headings for all the rest. Tried it in style=mine, and everything was fine. The italics thing began before LJ started futzing around, so it must be Chrome's fault.

But then again, I read a dispiriting comment somewhere about how seat-of-the-pants LJ's coding was to start with, and how much worse it became when the thing moved to Russian and all the original coders were told to leave.

Oh, LJ, LJ, LJ. I wish I knew how to quit you. So now anybody's LJ when viewed on a mobile device will be in the annoying new style. You can opt out by going to Manage settings (which is, as ever, under profile, not my journal)- Display (not mobile), and click 'Use my journal's style when viewed on a mobile device' next to Mobile view. This returns your LJ to your own style. Anybody else's LJ remains in the horrible new style. (Why yes, I read other people's journals whom I haven't friended. Don't you?)

One can opt to view other LJs in one's own style, but that means it will always be in your own style, whether viewed on mobile or desktop. There seems to be no option for 'view everyone in their own style on my mobile'-- not until everyone else goes in and clicks that box.

Give me those nice bright colours
Give me the green of summer

or rather, the blues. That was what the cataract sunglasses did. My dollar store sun glasses make the world look like photos from childhood rather than the sky of childhood itself, but it's still good. Erases the light pollution haze, deepens the greens to blue and the blues nearly to black. Climcing up the stairs from the beach at the cottage, into the green-black trees with deep blues peeking between them as they rustled in the (constant) wind from the lake. Also the streets that skirted Toshima-en in Tokyo, deep in green shadows (why there'd be trees near an amusement park, I don't know, but that's how I remember it), gold filtering through, sound of the invisible semis' piercing min-min-min-miiin. A long ago time.
( Read more... )

Oh no, oh no- I was *so* careful not to click on Use new style. And suddenly while looking at someone else's profile, the style changed. I could swear I didn't click! And now it's all horrid pale fonts and no way to change back. Ahhhhh...

So, until LJ gets its 'revert to default icon in comments' glitch sorted out, the best fix is to hit the 'preview entry/ more options' button-- supposing you managed to keep that one as well-- and reselect the icon you want. (The preview reverts to default too, but once reselected, it stays reselected.) This obviously has it all over 'edit comment' in not sending two emails to your recipient, and is a nuisance only to you, not to everyone.

A big thanks to archangelbeth for the info.

Oh nooo LJ, no no no. Change the profile page so all my useful drop-down menues are gone (and the text itself is pale grey and unreadable.) Where's 'edit entries' now?

telophase says there's a workaround; which doesn't work for me either, even the random clicking, but again may be down to ancient Firefox. I'd cross-post from DW, but with no edit entries button, I can't change the icons.

Damn damn damn damn damn.

ETA: Evidently Telophase's question mark takes you to what, for me, was an occasionally appearing pop-up that says Hey we changed LJ tell us what you think! (That button takes you, quite rightly, to the 'report a bug' feature.) Under that is a 'return to old style' button. Pray that we remain changed to the old style.

My FFL tells me that 2007 was when Daylight Saving moved to the second weekend in March from the first weekend in April. It seemed longer ago than that, but no mind. I still disapprove of the change, largely for nostalgic reasons: clocks forward was always of a piece with really, no *really* spring and Easter and whatall. The second Sunday in March is more likely to be snowbound as springlike; I mean, it's still officially winter even by the calendar.

But this year I have the extra problem of morning shifts. As I discovered today, when it gets light at 6:30 I'm quite happy to be up and doing. When it's dark, as it will be at next Monday's version of 6:30, I want only to be under the covers, and spend the rest of the day yawning if I must be up then. If I could bike there'd be no problem: up at 8 (the old 7) for a 9 o'clock shift-- no need to brave the rush hour if transitting or allow 45 minutes if walking. But this second Sunday in March is indeed supposed to snow.

Oh well. It's money, as I keep telling myself.

(Maybe my old browser, but LJ is suddenly being a pig about letting me edit entries.)

Ah well, posted 29 days out of November's 30. Not perfect but respectable; especially in view of LJ's tendency to give error messages ('the connection has been reset') whenever one tries to access LJ.

To mention, I also made that leek carbonara recipe I posted a while back. Organic leeks to be on the safe side, but a disappointment. For sure they need to be blanched more than 30 seconds or else sliced much finer than my knives can manage, because leeks are hard to chew and will choke you given half the chance. Being six inches long counts as half a chance in the leek mind. Pancetta is much saltier and crispy than bacon, but also a pain to slice. And the sauce doesn't stick as it does to real pasta. So not likely to repeat.
( Cut for November stats )

Have tried with two browsers and both show LJ's colours on the friends' page borked- or defaulted to black- and the posters' names unreadable. Neither of my browsers is terribly up to date, though. Anyone else experiencing this?

Rivers of London to be televised! (Aaronovitch has already done his fantasy casting. Wonder if he'll do the scripts as well.)

And for added squeefulness, Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell is also a TV drama. Must see if one can watch that on the computer.
( Cut for branelessness )

I'm a little... bemused, I suppose, reading American writers' comments on Rivers of London. LMB was apprehensive that Aaronovitch would kill off Nightingale-- because so many fantasy writers kill off the mentor-- and pleased that he didn't. Kate Elliott was delighted that Peter actually has to work to master Newtonian magic, instead of being a spesshul chosen one who can yanno *just do it* because he's spesshul chosen, or fae, or whatever.

Maybe I don't read enough fantasy. But seriously, it never occurred to me that Aaronovitch would do either because, well, it's just not that kind of world. Maybe it's the fact that it's Newtonian magic which predominates: suggests order, logic, and reason in the human world. (Genii locorum are another matter, of course.) Peter's not special. He's a rookie cop who nearly became a paper-pusher until it turned out he was qualified to become an apprentice mage. Become. So of course he has to learn, and of course he needs someone to teach him, someone who won't be killed in the first book because then where'd Peter be? British ensemble cast, is what this feels like. Much more so than, say, Kate Griffin; and you don't relentlessly prune your cast every season (or book) to leave the shining hero still shining (as Griffin does, grump.)

(grimly) pitas.com is down. I suspect that means pitas.com has vanished, and with it a chunk of my past. And of course I can't find the .doc backup I made of paleaswater's blog so long ago.
( Cut for much recent reading )