Off the Cliff

Muggy mug and everything hurting. A bit better after acupuncture. Rain tomorrow and colder on the weekend and then a return to the low and probably humid 20s of September.

Finished Emma and Inventing the Renaissance and rerereads of Exit Strategy and Rogue Protocol. Remains only System Collapse, my least favourite Murderbot installment, but since all I really want to read these days is Murderbot, that I'll read. Brokedown Palace is proving a slog: Brust really needs a distinctive voice, either Vlad or Paarfi's, to be at his best. Have an Inspector Mcdonald in ebook and a Charles Finch in dead tree, but not really tempted by either. Maybe back to Point of Hearts since I can usually read Points books without pain.

Muggy achy weather so I didn't go out. Broke up boxes for recycle,  after a month or so, which is about the extent of Go Me for the day. If it's dryer tomorrow, will try for my 3 month blood draw and a wash on the line. This not helped by suddenly spasming adductors in my left leg. But wash must happen, either here or at the laundromat, because am running out of socks and about to run out of underwear.

Finished my umpteenth reread of Network Effect. I don't think it's just tablet reading: I can no more visualize these space stations etc. than an aphantastic can. Still makes for pleasant reading.

Continue along with Inventing the Renaissance, now I'm in the chapter about individual personalities. Did not know that both Poliziano and della Mirandola have been proved to be poisoned, though of course their contemporaries said so. Am quite willing to believe it was Piero the Unfortunate's doing though really, it could have been anyone. The amazing thing is that so many Renaissance men survived to old age, before syphilis became commonplace and cut them off in their 40s. Couldn't have happened to a nastier bunch of people, but I still *mind* about Mirandola.

Continue on also with amusing Walpole and 'grows on me' Emma. She really is the one Austen heroine we see growing morally. Elizabeth has every reason to think badly of D'Arcy: she's intellectually wrong, but not morally. Ditto Catherine. Elinor and Fanny of course are always Right but Repulsive. While Emma gets to live and learn, and one can almost say, Poor Emma.

Well, this time when they said rain, it rained. Which after a few weeks drought was appreciated, but even if the temps dropped 5C afterwards, it made no difference because dear god the mug mug mug mug. So no, no library or restaurants today, but did go to the end of the street for wine and, worse, pseudo-Bailey's. This weather will hurt me no matter what I do so might as well stay tiddly till it's over. Sunday, supposedly.

There is a waif word in the world that Murderbot season 2 a) will be based on Rogue Protocol ie MB 3;  b) will feature ART ie MB 2; and c) will give ART a female voice. Which it can't have obviously, obviously, because ART is an asshole and... females. can't. be. assholes...

That's a very interesting point. AHs are by definition male. Female ART might be snarky or superior or something, but in my world jackass is by definition (jack + ass) male. I won't watch it, of course, but-- well, that will be interesting.

Possibly the air quality, possibly the heat, possibly the mug, possibly vaccine fallout still after nine days, but I felt lousy most of today. Physio helped a bit, as did eating lightly, but will be happy when that cold front comes through tonight. Did get two heavy bags of garden waste out for tomorrow and must get the green bin stuff too, but I hold off on that because it's nicely frozen in the freezer and will melt outside in the warmth.

Nice thing today was passing Loblaws café area on way home and seeing, through the window, a guy reading an honest-to-god paperback book which was an honest-to-god Penguin Classic edition of Plato. Couldn't make out the title but I think it was the Meno and the Protagoras.

Finished The Path of Thorns, The Lord of Castle Black, and various Murderbot. Am on The Scholar and the Last Faerie Door, Sethra Lavode, and desultorily Shadows of Athens. Will probably buy Fugitive Telemetry because Murderbot suits my mood just now.

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.

I think my acupuncturist hit a nerve she wasn't supposed to, or sent a muscle into spasm, or something. Front of the hip joint is very unhappy. Hope it unspasms before I have to get out to vote tomorrow. Ah well. Reflex has got the better of me, and what will be, will be. Bridges, cross, when I come to them.

Looked up how much water I should be drinking. Two and a half litres! Um, no, not likely. I may get through one litre of water and half of other things, but no way I can add an extra litre without adding more food.

Being in a funk all week, all I finished was System Collapse, a weary slog to have it done. Should slog on through Ruin of Angels as well but I still resent having to read that in paperback.

The Graun has a series of articles on people's petty peeves. Discovered one of mine today: people at checkout who stand gazing dumbly at the register screen, or into space, while the cashier tots up their purchases and the purchases pile up at the end of the belt, and then pay for them, *and only then* start to bag their junk. No, we do not have baggers: you do it yourself, hopefully with the bags you've brought,  and if you have no bags you ask for them first so you have something to put your junk into. Any true Torontonian starts bagging the minute the first item is scanned because true Torontonians are always in a hurry. And no point in suggesting we take things more slowly because the cashiers themselves aren't allowed to, and if customers are leisurely, you'll have a huge pile of stuff at the end of the counter and shopping carts blocking the way out. As has happened to me more than once because some people won 't even move their carts out of the way.

Feast or famine, today was well over 8500 steps, what with up to cleaners with winter jacket and home, over to super for onions and gyoza and home, down to library to return Network Effect and pick up The Fox Bride and home, over to laundromat and back to super for dinner and back to laundromat and finally home. Towels and face cloths and jacket and red sleep hoodie all clean, now that I've gone to the (thin, 25+ year old) white hoodie I use in summer. 

Cherry blossom storm in the morning breeze,  tree stripped of its flowers for another year. Might explain the day's melancholy, or maybe it's just May.

April was apparently all Murderbot all the time, with only a side foray into Translation State and a couple of Corvinus rereads. Finished my second pass on Network Effect last night and am still fuzzy on what happened when. At least now I know that half the problem is the SF vocabulary, because I'm constantly confused as to whether we're on a navigator, a transport, an explorer, a capsule, or a shuttle. 

Wearying of my weak right leg, I started stair stepping yesterday, only brief bursts of 10 reps and then stop. This is a basic basic exercise but the last time I tried it, fifteen years ago, my then-weak left knee objected strenuously. And guess what: nothing has changed, because my right knee ached and panged all night. Maybe today's acupuncture has helped but I'm afraid to try any other strengthening exercise.

Must take phone down to Rogers and don't want to because the guys there are useless. Good at selling, and not always that because IIRC when I went to get a new phone in 2021 I had to go to the Duff Mall. And I must try to prise my xrays from the lab and I don't want to because they cling to them as if they were diamonds. So I did other stuff I didn't want to, like breaking down boxes and swiftering the kitchen floor. Which is quite enough accomplishment for one day.

Taxes come trotting in, of course while I was out of the house because I didn't expect them till tomorrow. Again a hefty refund yay! and needn't courier them back to the accountants because it doesn't matter if I file late. Of course it would be *easier* to courier, which only involves going up to the end of the street, the more so as I popped another cyst last night and leg has been a pain ever since.  Still will see if I can manage to get to a PO somehow to send my signature off because I don't quite trust the mail enough to just stick it in a PO box.

Finished Network Effect, Fugitive Telemetry, and Home. Also a reread of M. Corvinus, A Vote for Murder because Corvinus is easy phone reading. Though I seriously wonder at him thinking wine is a cure for thirst because no really it's not, any more than Pepsi is. And I believe the water in Rome was drinkable? Brought in from the Alban hills, not piped from the dubious Tiber. Also finished Mary Beard's Confronting the Classics, book reviews of this and that largely damning with faint praise.

Will now reread Murderbot 2 and 3 that I own in kindle, before swiftly reviewing Exit Strategy and Network Effect, which come from the library. This will hold me for a while.

This morning's lie in dream was an almost coherent From Eroica one where Dorian was throwing a birthday party for Klaus with a fancy cake, which Klaus didn't want to eat of course, and an incursion by spies of some sort, as well as a gaggle of teenage boys who were there for some other reason, and distracted Dorian was trying to keep all these things together.

Then as I was sitting on the couch there was a tremendous banging at the door, which left me uncertain if it was my door or NND's. But then Guy (it's always guys who bang on the screen door; women ring) found the doorbell and pressed that, so yes, my house, and what does he want so insistently? He wants me to sign for my 100 Demons, is what, so how lucky I answered the door.

Meanwhile the next installment of Murderbot arrives at the library so off I trot to get it. Then drop by Ninetails coffee shop for a cold brew and look, today they have the smoked salmon and yuzu mayo croissant, so I get one of those. Barista says 'you can sit down, I'll bring you your coffee' and I say I'm outside, where I've parked the rollator, and he says he'll bring me my coffee anyway. This is pleasant.

White haired woman in sunglasses stops as she's leaving the café to ask what I'm eating, so I tell her, and consequently get a slice of her life story about how her teenage rebellion against her fisherman father took the form of refusing to eat fish and she still doesn't but now takes omega-3 capsules even though she doesn't trust most supplements but needs to keep her brain in good order because she lives alone and now she challenges herself mentally by for instance setting up her new modem and router herself which she didn't want to but two years ago she'd just have hired someone to do it and this year she managed it alone. I do miss conversations, which this wasn't, it was someone talking at me. Yes, old women living alone are starved for human interaction: but I'm an old woman living alone and you don't see me buttonholing strangers to talk about my cinnamon tablets and turmeric. Which said, just about the only people in TO who will talk to strangers are indeed old women.

The croissant btw is nice enough but the yuzu mayo is loaded with wasabi so shall not repeat.

Roused myself this evening to make the chickpea, spinach, and coconut curry I've been intending to for the past few days. Is very good but if I ever do this again shall use light coconut milk because regular makes things very greasy.

Library holds continue to trot in with no regard for 'four weeks wait' notices. Thus Murderbot 3 appeared yesterday, which is a problem since my hold on Murderbot 2 was still showing umpty many weeks wait. But amazon gave me a credit for my delayed envelopes so I got 2 for about five bucks. At which point library tells me 2 is in transit. Oh well. Cancel that and proceed with Artificial Condition. Only it appears that what I thought was no.3 is actually no.4 and the real no.3 is 'eleven weeks wait.' (Really, Murderbot titles are as bad as Dick Francis' for confusibility.) Do I believe them and buy the kindle edition for 15 bucks, or do I trust that it will come in before my no.4 is due back at the library?

Bro was by on Saturday to pick up mail, which was not tax stuff, since he's already done his taxes, but an application for some government program that my accountant deals with for me. Weird that Service Canada would send his T5s to the new address but not this. Governmental right hand not knowing what the left does, even within the same ministry. But that aside, bro says he does an hour of duolingo French every morning, which amazes me. Quite apart from finding Duolingo annoying and thinking my French is better served by actually reading French, I can't summon the discipline for even mild language study. It seems pointless now. I know I'll never go back to France and certainly never to Japan so why bother? S-i-l was doing Russian because she intended to go there before Putin happened and for all I know still intends to after history deals with him, but my s-i-l is not a Johnson.

My front yard is covered in easy care ivy, which is fine by me, but I notice that the ivy has deserted the front third of the yard. Maybe there's too much dead wood,  or maybe-- as I noted today-- the ivy prefers to grow up the birch tree instead. I was happy to let it do that because ivy strangles trees and that would solve my problem with the birch. But not if it's going to denude my front yard. So have pulled down a good swathe and will pull down more once I get the clippers out because it's climbed out of my reach and clings tenaciously to the upper trunk.

Was feeling hungry on my morning erranding and not disposed for my pricey restaurants-- accountants must be paid this month so economy is advised. Thus I stopped by the Tim Horton's down by the subway station and stood in the very long line and listened to the babble of conversation around me in, conservatively, about five different languages I don't know. The Korean grammas like to congregate there, but there were also a goodly number of turbans and saris, also what I thought were niqabs but couldn't be because Eid isn't till this evening. Although the possible niqabi may just have been with the white guy who was ordering. And this is why I really don't want to move away from this area.