Off the Cliff

Went to get my laundry last night and discovered that electrician had left his lamp hanging off a hook in the not-ceiling of the basement. Emailed his boss and said I'd leave door on latch for him to get in, to avoid having to limp downstairs answering doorbells when I've just woken up and can barely stand. 'It's a safe neighbourhood,' I said. Woke 9ish, did exercises and stretching, downstairs for breakfast at 10, check email while eating my oatmeal. 'Thanks for telling me,' says boss, 'I'll send him over at 8.' Blink blink. Either my air purifier or my muscle relaxants ensured I didn't notice a thing, though electrician passing through might explain why my backpack had fallen to the floor. But that backpack is badly balanced and quite capable of falling down all by itself,

Was supposed to have a root canal today but no, he needed more time and also wanted me started on antibiotics, so it's tomorrow. Which is a pain because it's a different location, way downtown, and I hurt rather a lot today. Used the walker to negotiate the office building and my but people do give you extra service when you do that. But then I had to get the antibiotic scrip filled, and walk home from the drugstore, and so I hurt even more. Maybe I'll indulge in another half ativan...

Finished?

The Last Continent
-- the UU guys are really not as funny to a Canuck as they are to a Brit. Though god knows, in my day we had wall-to-wall Brit staff in the Classics dep't (I'd say Oxbridge but the medieval Latin guy was Irish from a red-brick place) and Pratchett's breed is not unknown to me. Is maybe why I don't find them funny.

Reading now?

Reaper Man
-- still more academics, even in a Death book. Witches would be better

Plutarch, On love, the family, and the good life
-- to have it read. Usually I like Plutarch who's nicely mundane, but right now he's talking about the Flatterers, a breed that must have died out, because for sure I don't know anybody who carefully studies other people's tastes in order to ingratiate himself in their good graces. Maybe you have to be rich... but frankly, the modern ethos of Me First militates against any kind of Me Second thinking.

Next?

Not a clue, though I think I never did read Pratchett's first two. Don't even think I own them.

Dentist appointment today, in spite of flailing through snowdrifts to get to cabs, at least got me a good half hour of conversation with the hygienist about European travel and languages and whatnot. Also alas got me a referral to a very pricey specialist for a root canal on the troublesome back molar. 'The root's dead which means it's decaying and giving off gases that will cause you more pain nado nado,' so OK yes I suppose I must. Was hoping it would just calm down and stay calmed. 

What bugs me most about my knee is that it can never decide what kind of brace it wants. I'll be going along happily with a sleeve brace and then all of a sudden it's Noooo don't cover me up Imma twinge at you with every step if you cover me up!! So I go for the open brace and it's Noooo not that brace I want the *other* brace the one that supports the IT band Imma twinge at you with every step if you don't support my IT band!! And sometimes it's just Imma twinge at you with every step no matter what you do. Especially when snow is in the offing.

Finished?

Cohn, The Pursuit of the Millennium
-- thank god

Phelps, Belles Saisons: a Colette Scrapbook
-- I know not all Frenchwomen are Colette but like her, all the Frenchwomen I know are provided with as much amour as they can handle. The single woman is hard to find over there. This argues the presence of willing partners ie other people who need to be in relationships, which again I have not found to be the case over here. I couldn't handle it now but I think I could have when I was younger if I'd had a plethora of partners to choose from instead of the unwilling and the uninterested and the frankly dull as ditchwater.

Reading now?

Montaigne, desultorily

Okorafor, Ikenga
-- turns out I can so too read on the tablet if it's YA. Fun and fast.

Next up?

Hm. Probably another deadly non-fic doorstopper until my various ebook holds come in. Can't think what would be fun.

Walked to the laundromat with my rollator and it... didn't hurt as much as before?  What pain there was, was elbows mostly. So maybe those flexor stretches are doing something? My plaint that doing strengthening exercises for eight or nine months has no results is countered only by the hip flexor exercise: where you lie at the edge of the bed and let that leg trail on the floor while bending the other knee to your chest. Time was, lifting the trailing leg back up used to be difficult, and now I can do it no problem. But it seemed very little result for so much work. However am chuffed at the idea of being able to get out even after the snow falls... if I can, and today wasn't just an unachy day. And the elbows still *hurt*, and will hurt worse walking over bumpy ice. But that consideration is for later,

Finished? 

The Dark Archive, especially with the coda saying We're near the end of this, guys. Sigh.

Kipling, The Knights of the Joyous Venture
-- someone on tumblr was saying 'Look, clots, if an unrepentent imperialist colonialist can put a Chinese sailor on board his Viking ship, what's your problem?' I might cavil at the unrepentent bit, but yeah: not only Asian sailors (with unlikely names) but female pirates mentioned in passing as well. Except it seems I never read that part of Puck of Pook's Hill, so now I have. Not sure if I'll read all the rest of it: much perefer Rewards and Fairies.

Reading now?

Rankin, Exit Music
-- Rebus, as ever, and Big Ger Mcafferty, sigh, but mindless reading anyway.

Picked a Japanese book from the gomi, Bijinesu Koushou Jutsu/ Business Negotiating Tactics, aimed at poor Japanese having to negotiate stuff in English. Reading the introduction and explanations because they use watercolour business vocabulary that I never got a handle on. Am not likely to remember them now either but it does reinforce the kanji study.

Rickman, The Bones of Avalon
-- not a fan of the Merrily Watson series- definite lack of a there there/ neither fish nor flesh nor good red herring-- but figured a semi-mystery about John Dee might go down better. Maybe it's because this is an ebook but so far... there's still a lack of there theres.

Next up?

Really tempted to reread The Magician's Nephew. I wasn't as bowled over by Piranesi as some-- in spite of having all my ascendants etc in Pisces, I am stubbornly an earth-and-wood Capricorn when it comes to water, esp sea water, which basically I do not like and do not trust. But The Magician's Nephew does it just right: bound water in pools in a forest, to say nothing of orchards on top of hills.

Must contact the library system and arrange for home delivery during the winter season. Can have a bunch of my holds deliveted to me and picked up for the duration. 

Well, there's hope. It snowed a little last night and when I went to sweep off the steps, there was NND's four year old coming to do it for me. Did a reasonable job too, though part of it might have been delaying tactics to avoid kindergarten.

Last finished?

Yokomizo, The Honjin Murders
-- oh John Dickson Carr, what hast thou wrought? There's locked room mysteries and then there's contrived unlikely tortuous locked room mysteries with unfollowable MOs, and this is one of the latter,  *clearly* an attempt to do JDC in Japanese. What a good thing I decided not to get him in his native language. The Inugami Curse was actually OK, but I need reassurance that his other titles aren't Carr pastiches.

Reading now?

Ovidia Yu, The Betel  Nut Tree Murders
-- I'm afraid I find these slow. Plucky girl detective wants to be stationed whetever a murder has taken place so she can observe the suspects, weary police chief wants her not to. Prefer Auntie Lee because I sympathize more with aging women, especially nosy ones with families.

Hazel Holt, Leonora
-- like Sheila Mallory, say. Though I think I spotted at least one gimmick lessthan 100 pages in. Never say that Character A finds Character B unplaceably familiar, 'reminds her of someone but can't think who' because the who is nearly always obvious. Though Holt then subverts the trope when Sheila meets a woman who looks unplaceably familiar, who then introduces herself as 'used to run the newstand in town', precisely the sort of person who is unplaceably familiar.

Still with 100 Demons, still slow, and trying not to read it till 3 a.m.

Next?

Good question. Yokomizo rattles off a list of famous western locked room mysteries I might want to look at, but none of the English ones are in eform (which I have to use now that snow has begun) and all of the French ones (Gaston Leroux) have painful translations.

October returns for a day or two, and like Pratchett's trolls I can think again. Still have little memory of the past two days because the cool was muggy as well, and I came in from a mild bout of hedge-clipping this evening soaked to the skin. Actually I was mostly pulling ground ivy, or whatever the creeping plant is that covers my front yard, off the two trees where it's climbed above my head level. This apparently is a good way to kill a tree, and since I'd be just as happy if the linden died, I hadn't bothered to remove it last year. But I contemplate having the arborists in to at least cut back the ironwood's lower branches, and for very shame must do some tree-keeping.

There's a house down Shaw that has a stand of bamboo in its front yard. This climate doesn't really support bamboo, and the plant itself I am told is the Genghis Khan of invasives, so I wonder at the (homesick, maybe?) people who planted it.
( Wednesday again )

Some advice to the depressed I came across on tumblr-I-think said 'you don't have to do everything. Just floss your teeth.' As I sink into my spring SAD, I've decided that whatever else I do or don't, I will at least floss my teeth. Supposing I can stay awake long enough because lord! but narcolepsy has me in its clutches these days.

Weather doesn't help. Monday I went out without gloves and regretted it bitterly (see what I did there?) Yesterday wore my winter coat and last night still had the heat on, as winds made bicycling a pain. Today was tshirt weather until the sun went in and a thunderstorm blew through. And now I want the heat on again though tomorrow will be back in the low 60sF.

Finished?
Tanith Lee, Companions on the Road
--plucked off the shelves, fairly certain I never read it, finished in an afternoon on Sunday. Everything is vaguely kimoi these days, and Lee is no exception, even though this has a happyish ending. Maybe it was the overlapping kimoi of As I Lay Dying, begun right afterwards, that coloured my experience.

Reading now?
Perennially, and getting nowhere:

Seraphina, which I must decide am I reading it or not because it's due back at the library on Saturday. Does it spark joy? No, but it's good enough. Which is good enough until it ceases to be, and then I want something else.

Edmund White, Inside a Pearl
-- subtitled 'my years in Paris.' I had no high hopes of this: expected it to be 'newly famous American author goes to Paris and is feted by the French literati: expect many famous names.' Well, not quite. White goes to Paris as a Vogue writer, having assured them he speaks French fluently, which he doesn't, at all. This would give me anxiety attacks; but White is one of those guys who thinks faking it is a lark. Except that he does then have anxiety attacks over his interviews, which, well, you knew that when you signed on, guy. Still, compared with the bumptiousness of men who go to Japan and fake things, White has a certain charm. For one thing, he works really hard at improving his French, by spending hours lying on a sofa and reading everything he can get.

His American fame doesn't open doors for him, or not for long. He notes that the literati will fete him *once*, and then move on to the next new thing once they've seen this new face that everyone must see. This doesn't bother him because he's busy with his sexual pursuits and affairs with foreigners. It's the foreign lovers who get him into film festivals and the art world, which run differently from the intellectuals, and thank god.

There's still a veil of- alright, here's that word again- kimoi that hangs over the text. Whether it's me in my current funk, whether it's the 80s AIDS crisis background to White's life, whether it's that partial memory I have of reading Caracole in Tokyo where, trust me, its bizarreness read doubly bizarre, I can't say, but I feel I have a 100 Demons' type fuzzy black Thing lowering over my shoulder as I read the list of Famous People White runs into in Paris: none of whom seem at all happy, let alone cheerful.

G.K. Chesterton, Thomas Aquinas
-- bought years ago from a guy selling his library outside the quondam Rochdale, once a counter-culture drug haven, now assisted housing. I figured I could read Chesterton without pain. Not sure I can now. To quote poliphilo over on LJ:
"Chesterton was a polemicist- which is a fancy name for pub bore- and is always banging on about his blasted opinions. He once accused H.G. Wells of having sold his birth right as a story teller for a pot of message- and if there was ever a case of the pot calling the kettle black..." And this isn't fiction, so Chesterton can rant away for pages. Can, hell: does.

Reading next?
Some ebooks may be coming from the library in time for the long weekend. Maybe I should do a reread of 100Demons or even Rainy Willow, just because.

Some day I'll fire up the desktop and not only post at length but answer other people's replies. It just feels like too much trouble, even if the html is easier than on a tablet. My mouse jumps and double clicks and won't highlight properly and it's all so vexing that even tapping with a stylus feels preferable.

Dinner at swanky French restaurant to celebrate mine and my sister's birthdays last January and my brother's today. Aches and stiffness meant I didn't manage even a card for him, and to make matters worse, both he and my sister gave me presents. The presents are alcoholic in esse and in posse (LCBO gift card) so the latter might well be repurposed as one giri no ongaeshi. People who live on tylenol aren't supposed to drink at all, and certainly alcohol hates me these days. Dinner was at invitation of my cousins, aunt's surviving daughter and husband, partly at least as thanks for weekly visits for the last six years. Which still dictate my reflexes: I automatically check the long range weather report for Saturdays and only belatedly recall that there's nowhere I have to go on Saturday.
( Wednesday )

So, my nemesis at work used all the salt we ordered specially, for stairs and such, on thawing out the toddler playground, with no thought either for the preschool ice rink or the garbage/ diaper disposal area. Consequently, yesterday I slipped on the ice in the latter and landed hard. Was resigned to being crippled today because, in a fit of fed-up-ness, I neglected to ice the knees after I got home. This morning however I woke with nary a pain in either knee nor hip. Must have shocked my body into good behaviour, at least temporarily.

(The arms are another matter. I now have a certain muscular slowness in the neck region, very reminiscent of the whiplash I got after being knocked off my bike in the mid-oughties. At least I can still sit up and lie down, which then I couldn't.)

But limberness was as well, because I'd been hearing noises in the bathroom the last day or two, and since I was over my fed-up-ness, I went down to the basement to investigate. And there of course was my once-mended water pipe happily spewing water over the back basement. However I live in the future, where I can google plumbers and pick a five-star one. Who came three hours later, fixed everything in half an hour, and only charged me $250 plus tax. Call this a win.
( Memeage again )

Was home late last night because of deadly boring CPR refresher seminar, during which I had both a coffee and a Coke. So took an ativan to guard against wakefulness till 6 a.m. and slept blissfully till 10. Padded to the front bedroom to do exercises and retrieve cell phone, which promptly rang shrilly. Staff asking 'where are you?' as she'd also messaged me (twice) and left a voicemail. Seems I had an 8:30 shift that I'd totally failed to notice on the schedule, probably because if I see a name starting with J in the morning section I assume it's Jessica. 'Don't hurry in, we only have seven kids, there's only an hour left anyway and we have the student.' She was much more concerned that I wasn't lying unconscious on the road having slipped on the ice pellets that had accumulated overnight. 'You may not have to come in for the afternoon shift either, call before you start out...' 'Yes, but we still have the First Aid seminar, right?' 'Oh yeah. Right.'

So I shovelled white stuff off the sidewalk and salted it and walked down to the subway because the Christie bus can't be counted on in a storm. The Spadina streetcar also failed to materialize so I walked the three blocks to work. (And am resigned now that I can't cross Bloor on my own steam in the winter. I simply can't go fast enough for the light. This is the second time I've sought the aid of a sturdy young(er) man's arm to lean on, and still barely made it to the other side before the amber. Twenty-five seconds from curb to curb is just not long enough, guys.)

Turns out that the early co-ordinator also failed to appear, thinking she'd hired a replacement for today when it was for next week. I will say the toddler staff were very forebearing in the face of this double dereliction, since they had to take in the orphaned infants who arrived before nine. The orphaned infants of course were *delighted* to be taken in by the toddlers and didn't want to leave.

But meanwhile we had more freezing rain warnings for the rush hour period, so first our First Aid outfit called asking to cancel, and then- wonder of wonders- the St George campus decided to close early, at 3 p.m. So parents came to get their kids and I came home early. And, exerciseless all day and unmedicated for much of it, hurt like a mofo.

Tomorrow I'm off. But conscience suggests I come in anyway and help out on Horrible Thursday, when we have no students and the messiest snack of the week.
( Wednesday )

Age is upon me. Last night I did what my s-i-l so often complains happens to her: sank into a pleasant post-Christmas dinner alcoholic sleep at 11 and woke, irrevocably, at 1 am. Usually I then sink back into the flannel-covered arms of Morpheus, but not last night. Looked at the dark, did exercises in bed, changed bedrooms, looked at the dark some more, turned on light and read Lies Sleeping until I began yawning, turned off light and slept to 10. And then turned over and slept another two hours. So the day was a quarter gone by the time I got up.

I'd taken prophylactics against the usual fallout from excessive wine, but my system still didn't want to eat much. Crackers and Brie and a hard boiled egg were my brunch and tea. However, I'd bought a mini-turducken that had been thawing in the fridge the requisite 2-3 days so I had to cook that up. Mini turducken is stuffed with Italian sausage which is the second reason (price is the first) I shall never buy another. I am left with a fair quantity of Meat- and pretty dry meat at that- which might go well minced with celery and ginger and bok choy. Stuffing birds one into the other is simply not the best way to cook said birds.
( Oh, it's Wednesday again )

My copy of The Mortal Word arrived today, five and half weeks instead of the usual five and a half days after it was mailed. Am much relieved; the PO has been known to generate spontaneous black holes.

Otherwise we stagger through the last eight working days till Christmas. It is not I who am working ten hour shifts without breaks, presumably voluntary; and I hope those who are have a lovely ten day break. God knows they deserve it.
( Can I even remember what I've read? )

Odd disquietening thing happened yesterday. Went to my acupuncture studio down Spadina, locked bike to bike stand by the curb, had appointment. Came out, bike was no longer there. It was leaning against the store next to the studio building, and the open lock was sitting on the carrier. No idea how, because the keys were in my pocket, but the rubber casing had been twisted around which has happened before when people tried to meddle with it. So... someone unlocked my bike but decided not to take it after all? Just to show that they could? (For once I *know* I didn't leave it leaning against a building with the lock open. I will sometimes wonder if I actually locked my bike to the stand, because on occasion I've succeeded in locking the bike to nothing but its own frame. That usually happens if there's another bike there with a short lock that makes it hard to angle my own in. But I do turn the key on the lock and I'd never leave it leaning against a building.)
( Wednesday again )

Is it still full moon? Does that explain the three testosterone-poisoned loonies on bikes encountered this evening, zipping round corners, passing me on the right, zooming past me on the left only to brake abruptly in front of me when the light turned red. Add to that one pedestrian oaf ambling into a red light and not bothering to stop when I rang my bell and missed him by inches.

And the worst of it is that all of these goofuses are still alive, in spite of their evident death wish.

Just finished?
WJ Burley, Wycliffe and the Last Rites
-- a series, but not an inspector who really grabs me that much. Probably as well: autumnal will-less reading of British Inspectors is a bad habit.

Agatha Christie, The Sittaford Mystery
-- on the tablet, where it didn't parse very well. Well enough, I suppose.

Nalo Hopkinson, Brown Girl in the Ring
-- reread from 2010 and even better than I remembered. Helps to have a little knowledge of voudoun under one's belt and not just a vague awareness that there's a loa called Baron Samedi. As a regionalist, I'm for once delighted by the specific Toronto locales. They work because the book is set in a post-societal breakdown world where the well to do have fled to the suburbs and downtown TO is left to the mob and the cast-outs.

Reading now?

Still with Tell My Horse. The horse in question is the voudou priest that a loa takes possession of and 'rides'. The loa passes on messages by saying 'Tell my horse' ths and that, and when the priest comes back to themself, the onlookers do jut that.

There's someone who's reading through Shakespeare a few scenes at a time, which tiny morsels approach might work for me and my doorstoppers. So possibly I'm still reading Piers the Plowman while still not convinced it's worth it. As middle English goes, it has neither the fun of Chaucer or the strangeness of Gawain and the Green Knight and I'm probably reading it for sheer nostalgia's sake when I can't even remember which university course it was that I was *supposed* to read it for.

Next?
Forest of a Thousand Lanters by Julie C Dao.

Abandoned?
Raymond Buckland, Cursed in the Act
-- the one with Bram Stoker's stage manager and walk-ons by paper-thin historical people. Henry Irving has been poisoned! Henry Irving is not sufficiently poisoned that he can't go on tonight. Harry Rivers says, 'We must first find out who poisoned Henry Irving.' No, really? Not the most intelligent of books, this.

Mark Chadbourn, World's End
-- oh dear oh dear. As many Goodreads reviewers note, the premise is amazing. "All over the country, the ancient gods of Celtic myth are returning to the land from which they were banished millennia ago. Following in their footsteps are creatures of folklore: fabulous bests, wonders and dark terrors: there are dragons buzzing jet planes and shapeshifters on industrial estates, but their existence threatens the very fabric of the modern world." The execution OTOH is- oh dear oh dear.

Finished?

Agatha Christie, Evil Under the Sun, Death in the Clouds, Towards Zero
-- all quite satisfactory

Nina George, The Little Paris Bookshop
-- um well. Quite aside from the mysteriously appearing obituary for someone the protag didn't know was dead at the time but somehow stuffed into a copy of Proust, there's my Anglo reaction of 'but people don't *do* and that.' 'That' being 'experience overwhelming love and mutual understanding and perfect sexual compatibility and and and.' I mean, maybe they do. The characters' attitude that love is just something that happens to everyone all the time chimes with what I know of French people, but the sublime apotheosis aspect felt a but odd until I found out that the book was written in German. Oh, that's alright then: just the German Romantic tradition at work. You can find the same thing happening in Dick Francis, just toned down for Anglo sensibilities.

Reading?

Christie, Murder in Mesopotamia
-- must have one's Poirot

Poirot's Early Cases
-- though Poirot shorts are nowhere near as good as Poirot novels

Next?

-- have Karen Lord's Redemption in Indigo on hold, should be in soon.

Not sure if I'm going to read The Elegance of the Hedgehog or not, even though it *was* written by a Frenchwoman. The first paragraph did not pull me in.

Current tsurises: washing machine at work broke down yesterday. Amazingly, repairman came this morning, said the whole thing was foutu, our administrator put in an order for a new one and it arrived this afternoon. Of course it's a terrifying digital thing that I do not trust *at all*, but at least it's there.

Have been having heart palpitations when I lie down, for what seems like several months now. Webpages say to stop taking certain of my herbal supplements, stop drinking caffeine, and stop drinking alcohol. The first I've done, the second I might manage, just, the third is 'I'd rather die.' Last time I had this it accompanied a sinus infection, so maybe I'll wait to see what happens after the allergy season is over.

There are many advantages to baths over showers- loosening of muscles, ease of washing feet, ease of shaving legs, general well-being from lying in water up to one's neck. One more advantage for me is that it gives me an opportunity to brush my teeth. Of course, I could do it in the half hour I save when having a shower, but then I don't want to. Whereas running a bath requires me to be in the bathroom to monitor depth and temperature, with nothing else to do. So yeah, I can then pick and floss and electric brush for two minutes, with no feeling of time wasted.

(Monitoring depth and temp is needed because I can't actually get into a bath of my preferred hotness. Evidently blood never reaches my feet because they're ice cubes always, and never more so than when dipping into a hot bath. So it has to be merely warm to start, and not too deep, so that I can fill it up with hot water once I'm in.)
( Memeage )

Bicycling about the Annex and looking at the massive trees still lying about after being uprooted a week ago is a sobering sight. Most of them are thick-trunked things, replete with leaves, and all of them are rotten inside. Makes one wonder about the local four-storeys high flora.

The cherries are ripe and the raccoons are back. One was splayed, uncomfortably I would have thought, on the ridge of the neighbours' garage this evening. I wondered if it was ailing, and hoped it wouldn't die where it was. But no, it was just waiting for the rest of the family to show up.

Google's tablets give you suggested new stories. Wish they'd get with the program and realize that I don't want to read anything about sports, or anything to do with Meghan Markle *or* Princess Diana, or the weather in Edmonton or the newest Android phone and especially not an article first published in Lord Almost's National Post. (Lord Almost is Conrad Black and there's a long story about the soubriquet which I won't bore you with.)
( The usual memeage )

When did reading become something I just don't do unless it requires no effort? I could read Brust-- or reread Brust-- but everyone else is Too Much Work. Easier to play Yukon solitaire and read the random news stories my tablet throws up at me. This is depression, I recognize that, but it's the cozy depression that keeps everything same and low-key; and it still carries depression's theme song of Why Bother? Why Bother has been a recurring motif in my life, which is why I have no resources to combat things like Trump's Rapture and my increasing physical limitations.

Of course the 18th century thought the best thing for depression was work, which works just fine for me until I get home. But today I did at least do laundry and bagged up the unpleasant outdoor cushions for the garbage. (It's not the cats that sit on them as the squirrels-I-think that drop white pooplets on them. Except it doesn't look like the squirrel poo I see on the fence at work, which is roundish and never goes white. All the mice have been poisoned, and anyway it's bigger than mouse poo. Must be squirrels, but how...?) Anyway, this summer the cushions come inside when I do, which should preserve them.

Also did finish a book:
Pratchett, The Shepherd's Crown
-- yes, it goes downhill in the last half, with more repetition and more italics than it needs, but the first bit is the genuine thing, and I'm glad to have it.

Reading now?
Melissa Scott, Point of Sighs, if I could stop playing Yukon soitaire long enough to do it.

Jane Bowles, Plain Pleasures, on my shelves since forever and 'how hard can it be to read short stories?' Hard enough when you get into some git in Guatemala being gittish and everyone else looking insane to his gittish eyes. Sometimes too I wonder what's the point of short stories, when they aren't telling an actual story like Kipling does, but just being watercolour opaque thin slices of a not very exciting life. Like poetry, perhaps, an acquired taste; or like music, something you need to be trained to appreciate.

Can I say I'm still reading Rose Tremaine when I haven't got past the first three pages of the first story in Evangelista's Fan, and that three weeks ago?

Next?
Paul Cornell, Witches of Lychford, in hopes that it isn't as harrowing as the Shadow Police series.

We're having a thaw- lows above freezing, possible high of 9 tomorrow. They said 'risk of freezing rain this afternoon' which didn't happen. When I left work in the rain, after an on-and-off nine hour day, the sidewalks were merely wet, while Christie's wet had the occasional melting ice patches. But as I started up my street my feet slid out from under me and I landed on hands and knees. Invisible sheer ice. And I couldn't get up. No traction for hands or boots, just the flattest of flat slipperiness. Very disconcerting. So in high dudgeon I sat down on the not particularly wet ice (no, I have no idea why it wasn't wet- it was raining, after all), pulled open my backpack and wrestled the ice gripper onto my boot, which careful me had put there this morning in case of just such an eventuality. So was able to get to my feet as a helpful Samaritan came up, but still slid in a couple of spots before reaching my adequately-salted domicile.

Still don't know where the ice came from: must have been very localized freezing rain.
( Wednesday )

They were cutting down the Bloor-facing sign at Honest Ed's this afternoon. Many people were out with cell phones and video cameras to record them doing it. Honest Ed's frontage had a million lights that twirled cheerfully about the red and yellow signage. Yes, it was garish, but it was an innocent garish, as the hokiness of Ed's signs was an innocent hokiness. The suits on Bay St would never do such a thing, and never would have done such a thing, and that's why Ed was a Toronto institution and the suits are the reason non-Torontonians spit at the mention of Toronto.

Also I have lost my watch, unless the backpack of holding has swallowed it again. I took it off at acupuncture last night and failed, as I often do, to put it back on; and as I put it in the open side pocket, the odds of it slipping out are very good indeed. People nowadays use their phones; I can only say, there's no comparison.
( Meme )

Someone on a friends' friends feed was musing about horror:

"Horror can stop working as horror if the reader has a sufficiently different cultural background from the author, because what horrified the author may be mundane to the reader. Alternatively, what the author accepts as good and right may horrify the reader in ways the author never intended. This can happen over time as well as across borders.
...
And then there's H.P. Lovecraft, who wanders freely between cosmic horror of "man was not the first, and won't be the last being to rule the Earth, and they will return when the stars are right", the existential horror of losing your identity to undeath, body-theft, gender-change, or species-change; and the racist's abject horror that Those People live in his neighborhood, possibly even right next door!."

At which two things ran through my mind:

1. I do not get the cosmic horror of not being either the first nor last to rule the earth- supposing there's an earth left for those older beings to rule once we've done with it- nor do I get the horror involved in 'and they don't care about us!' News for thee, bunny: viruses don't either, and they're already here.

2. Many people amongst my neighbours to the south of us this year are registering abject horror that H.P. Lovecraft is living in their neighbourhood, possibly right next door to them, and so they should.
( Memeage )

I thought last November was a bust but it's nothing like this one. Mind, last year was pure post-election funk, and this is... extreme tiredness, largely, from all the work I'm doing, and achiness from November and the perennial hurty in the lower back that nothing seems to cure. For a change, reading isn't my main activity, so I do very little reading. Yeah, OK, some of that is funk still: what's the point of reading challenges or challenging reading in the Latter Days? I just want to be elsewhere for a bit, and elsewheres are hard to come by. However-

Last finished?
Brust, Hawk. Vlad can't ever catch a break, can he? Vlad doesn't deserve a break: discuss.

Reading now?
Still with the Kipling strange short stories. His attitudes may occasionally curl my hair, but. But. It says something that I can read him with ease and pleasure and not feel in the least futile while doing it, which I can't say about anyone else these days: so he's probably as masterly a short story writer as Gaiman says he is.

Next?
Adam Thorpe's Ulverton is on its way from the library. Am hoping to find it a stylistic tour-de-force on the lines of Joyce's Ulysses but not so culturally-freighted.

Moon Festival moon peers in the window. Cool breeze follows unseasonably warm day. Unseasonable warmth will return on Saturday. 'Cast not a clout'- do not put the fans away until the first snow falls.

Not a good day to dine in Chinatown, obviously, so I went to the Art Gallery's Members' Lounge to see what they had. They had a tiny portion of baba ghanoush for nine dollars. Ah well, have done that and need not do it again. Would have gone back to the exhibitions but my bloody hip was hurting too much to walk happily. This after acupuncture. Not sure what to try next: maybe strengthening abdominals?
( And still Wednesday keeps recurring )

Haven't posted because nothing has been happening aside from the usual- work and wandering aches. Lower back/ lumbar at the moment, making walking unpleasant. Have had this pain before, many times: it recurs in spite of chiropracty, physiotherapy, acupuncture, and weight fluctuations. Can't remember what if anything made it go away the last time, and the time before, and back in 2015 when it seriously interfered with meditation, and and and.

But today I went down to the AGO to see what 2018 calendars they have. Not many and nothing that says 'This is IT!!' like last year's Emma Haworth calendar with its long distance views of London. Hokusai, Carr, and O'Keefe, of course; a whole calendar devoted to sections of The Garden of Earthly Delights which I have hanging over my bed and don't need to see in greater detail; and a Canadian artist who does odd representations of animals, so far the best bet. (Midoco had a Hasui calendar with all the warhorses, most disappointing. Maybe when they get more stock in... I mean, I always buy next door a Mucha calendar- the man was beyond prolific- and have no idea what to do if they stop producing art nouveau calendars.)

But being there decided to eat in their restaurant: a $15 Long Island Tea and a $15 appetizer of smoked slamon and marble bread (two slices, I grant you) plus assorted obscure small vegetables. Wish I was rich enough to indulge in a $25 hamburger which has no meat in it, being- as I understand it- a portobello mushroom with trimmings and fries on the side. Pretentions go- well, a lot farther in fashionable restaurants, I believe- but for a sort-of common person's venue like the AGO, that's pretty pretentious.

( Wednesday )

"August continues to be August, I hope you are well."

Last finished?
Peter Dickinson, Skeleton-in-waiting
-- sort of sequel to King and Joker. Lacks the dislocating feeling of K&J, now that one has the alt-history and new Royals straight. Not as focussed in plot, which all happened in one place in the first book, and the denouement was a bit too Dickinson for my total satisfaction. I like Poirotesque 'unmask the villain and untangle the plot' in a grand finale of detective fireworks. This one has after the fact deduction, which is nowhere near as fun. Does however have the alt-Royals in the 80s still having to deal with the constant bogey of Mrs.T.

Hugh Greene ed, The Rivals of Sherlock Holmes
-- cads, cracksmen, and confidence men. Baroness Orczy's stories are the standout, with actual detection in them.

I.N.J. Culbard, The King in Yellow
-- mangaization of Chambers' stories. Truly, why bother?

On the go?
Still with the mysterious Mr. Quin, pleasant bed- and mealtime reading.

Pratchett, I Shall Wear Midnight
-- later Pratchett, sometimes heavily sincere; but still, Pratchett and Tiffany.

Possibly I shall finish the Sandman prequel, though online sources say Do Not Start Here. But I doubt very much that I'm starting anything.

Next?
Erm. I have The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: the omnibus edition, which, it turns out, may not contain anything I haven't read.

I could go back to my perennials, or go on with the third volume of the Rivals of Sherlock Holmes. What I thought would be my next book- Sherry Thomas' A Study in Scarlet Women, was abandoned ten pages in. Dull dull dull.

My acupuncture studio had its third major leak in its four year tenure last week, and has decided to close for good. Apparently they were going to do it anyway when the lease was up early next year because Fearless Leader #2 has been offered an opportunity out in Scarborough, but the landlord's refusal to repair his building forced their hand. So that's it. It was bad enough when Fearless Leader #1 left two years ago, and I was sad when the studio moved in 2013, but I always hoped to have the community care. Ah well. There are community studios still, one down at Spadina and Dundas which is a much easier transit than to Dufferin and College (and feels closer because it's closer to work, even if technically Dufferin is nearer to me.) But still... Ash and Daryl cured my neck fubars and kept my knees from crippling me completely, and I shall miss them.

Also I suppose a leak in the roof is better than a fire next time.
( Wednesday )