Off the Cliff

Well, that was the year that was. It rained. A lot. Which may be why I remember virtually nothing of it aside from the downpours. New year is set to snow, though tonight will just be more rain. Was going to go to the laundromat but it looked like, what else, rain so I just stayed in. Maybe the next clear day.

Ordered a new back brace in XXL since I'm not losing the tummy weight that would make the old one fit. It's the size of a Japanese obi and about as stiff, and of course it smells. Nothing will ease my lower back pain, including the things supposedly designed to do so.  Woe woe is me.

As for reading, yes I read a lot but of course it was all detective fic: all of Flavia Alba, a lot of E F Ferrars (good for a minimum 30 vols)(ETA 47) and E C R Lorac. Did at least reread Sense and Sensibility and a good ten Pratchetts and a couple of nonfiction books. Thus my uneventful retirement.

Paupers is only having its turkey dinner on the 24th and 25th so it was today or never. (Yesterday had too much snow to go out.) Crunched out over salt and/or untreated snow on twinging feet (feet do not like boots) and had a reasonable dinner with a lot of wine because wine is exempt in the HST holiday. Then discovered the wine store was unaccountably open so threw caution to the winds and bought pseudo-Bailey's Irish Cream and will stay drunk on same until Friday.

Have finished at least two or three of Martin Edwards' collection of Golden Age detective stories. Go down easily, leave no traces. Have another on the go plus a Michael Innes, Lament for a Maker with its pleasant Scots vocabulary, most of which I understand either from R L Stevenson or my childhood or, for all I know, those Middle English classes in uni. (Which have me puzzled. I remember taking Chaucer my last year, and remember that somehow I knew Gawain in either  '71 or '72 because I remember telling the plot to a sick housemate to distract her from her acheypains, but can't for the life of me recall anything else from that course.)

Got a promising mystery from the library about a mummy in the Brit.Mus and various shenanigans attached thereto, but it began with an amateur yobbo assistant at same measuring and weighing and unwrapping the specimens. Then I come on a sentence where said assistant is vivisecting a mummy and no, I really can't go on.

So am reading Thief of Time instead. Oddly, because that and Night Watch were what got me into Pratchett finally, back in 2008, I'm finding it rather a mishmash. But second class Pratchett is still better than most people's first class, so shall continue.

This is December Dead Days weather long before the Dead Days. Because of the postal strike there are no Christmas cards to look forward to,  and because my weight refuses to drop in spite of daily bike machine usage,  there are no Christmas treats either. I suppose I must stop eating pasta but carbs, precious carbs, are all I crave in these grey dank days. Well, and wine, which I should stop as well until temps go below zero and the rotting leaves stop releasing their moldy spores into the air.

Reread A Christmas Carol because the library had the e-book on loan and I haven't read it in decades.

Discover via youtube that men have extra long colons, that being what ur-uteruses turn into in baby boys. Possibly that explains why they take so long over their BMs, something that always perplexed me. Makes up for their enviably instantaneous pees, I suppose.

Have invited bro and s-i-l out to Korean barbecue next week. S-i-l will probably not like it because, well, she tends to find fault with things, but at least she'll have her fill of protein.

Back to the first day of the month weight gain. Shall blame chocolate and gingerbread indulgence because if it's wine I shall be very sad. Mind, daily wine disagrees with me and I could well lay off it. But also have discovered a new to me pasta, mafalda corta- a short and crinkly noodle that goes very well with the beef stew I've been eating all week. I do not need a new pasta but it's winter and cold and I want starch.

Incandescens sent me a link to a bunch of detective stories, some pastiche and some not. A Black Friday weekend special that assured me solemnly on Black Saturday that said books were not available for download. Eventually realized that amazon is region restricted, like DVDs, and nothing on .com will register for me registered at at .ca. But if I try at .ca there they are so I've been reading Solar Pons all day, and very nice too. Well, also vacuumed and dishes and bike machine so it's not all vegging on the couch. And finally vacuumed the side room futon that turned into a dust trap, much to my surprise. My fault for not putting a fitted sheet on the thing. Have done so now.

My s-i-l is exercised about protein intake, because insufficient protein leads to muscle loss in the elderly. Past praying for, in my case, because the muscle vanished some time in 2021. I could try getting some back with weight training but weights are a bit difficult with arthritic elbows.

The rain outside is doing its raineth every day thing. Put out my garbage early but not the dead vacuum, given there's no guarantee they'll take it.

Have finished Reaper Man, a couple of Angela Marchmont mysteries, a John Norman, probably a Lorac but don't ask me which (I Could Murder Her, actually), and Daemons of the Shadow Realm 5, an e-book hold which came in today and pooh to your 'about two weeks.' Violent and lowering as ever. Am reading another Lorac and Trent's Own Case, a reread because I remember nothing of it and want to stick it in a Wee Free Library. Have two more Loracs in transit and think maybe I should do a massive reread of Rainy Willow Store before my Japanese vanishes entirely.

Thought I heard a noise this morning as I surfaced briefly from sleep. 8:30, nope, not getting up at that hour. When I did get up two hours later there was an email waiting for me. 'Your package has been delivered.' When Canadian Tire says next day, I don't expect that to mean twelve hours. So I limped downstairs to check. Yes, my Dirt Devil was there, and the kind delivery person put my large rubber garbage bin (now used for sweeping leaves into before bagging them because it's easier)  in front of the box to shield it from the eyes of porch pirates. Be sure I left a glowing review.  Thank you, Canadian Tire delivery person!

I have both Sheine Lende and Blackheart Man from the library but can't get into them at all. Mind will only deal with light stuff like Reaper Man and E C R Lorac, and even that latter drags because the ebook was scanned badly from whatever text was used. Commas missing, and probably dashes as well, because there are far too many run-on sentences. And one of the two I bought deals with a Jewish guy who is *upset* at people being put into concentration camps, dear god, so I really can't go on with it. Ah well. Pratchett it is.

As always when the temps first go below 10C/ 50F, everything feels cold cold oh so cold. I toy with the idea of turning on the heat. But checking the thermostat, turns out the heat is actually on and will kick in if things go below 15C. Thermostat currently thinks it's 20C/ 68F so the cold is pretty much psychological.

Finished Delicious in Dungeon 2-4 and Daemons of the Shadow Realm 1&2, have subsequent volumes waiting at the library, and will get them tomorrow probably. Will also return Shigidi which have given up on. It should be fascinating but the execution is so lackadaisical that I really can't be having with it, even skimming. Yes, there's a succubus in it, no you really needn't tell us how every man she meets salivates over her meticulously enumerated charms. Or what happens every time she copulates with the protagonist. A pity.

A belated happy 100th birthday to President Carter, and a happy new year to those who celebrate.

I think I'm about done with Unruly, with a fair amount of skimming. Didn't really tell me anything I didn't know and was unfortunately not much help in untangling the Anglo-Saxon kings. But of course the A-S are as difficult to untangle as their coevals, or co-evils, the Merovingians. Nasty, brutish, and short, the lot of them: and the women just as bad as the men. Why would anyone want to be a monarch? What's the appeal of power? especially when having it means everyone else wants to take it away from you. But it's like those dudebro billionaires who, not content with having more money than they could ever spend in three lifetimes, seem to want a voice in politics as well,  which will give them-- what? What is it they haven't got?

Otherwise I've finished nothing else this week. On the go is Shigidi and the Brass Head of Obalufon, of which I had high hopes. But it has switching time frames, a new one every chapter, which I find far more disconcerting than switching PoVs. And *seems* to be doing a Craft schtick in which divine power is governed by, or involved in, the stock market, which was head-hurty enough in the Craft books.

Also a couple of manga, and Chuang Tzu (why did the translator use Wade-Giles? I'm no fan of pinyin, but at least it semi-makes sense), all of which are library books and the manga at least are 'five people are waiting' ones. Will get back to Aaronovitch eventually.

Had my annual phone call from the money woman this morning, who says the money I want from them and the money they feel comfortable giving me exactly matches hurray, supposing markets don't completely crash, but also that at that rate I will run out of capital in nine years or so and will have to live on my house. Which she's nudging me to think about selling now, which hell no. Market is depressed, houses sit for weeks and months, no one's buying. We may never go back to the interest rates that fuelled the real estate bubble but they will go down eventually, enough to reassure buyers. And if nothing else, no rental will come as cheap as this place does. So I will be here for maybe another five years. If I can avoid complete crippledom, which sometimes I despair of. Maybe it would help if I did all my exercises as many times as I'm supposed to but dear god they're so dull.

Finished a couple of Maigrets. Maigret depresses me; I shouldn't read him. Think I will abandon Dark Lord of Derkhelm, which isn't doing it for me. Have David Mitchell's Unruly, and not sure I want it. There are two David Mitchells IIRC, and I think this is the wrong one. Anyway, Winter's Gifts arrived yesterday from across the pond and I'd rather be reading that.

The trees are starting to turn colour, even if we still have summer temps going. And because we have summer temps and summer allergies still, am not sure what I've been reading lately. Delicious in Dungeon with its stock RPG cast of paladin, dwarf, healer elf and light-footed lockpick, makes a nice synchrony with Dark Lord of Derkholm, except that the latter isn't really grabbing me. DWJ is not a fluffy writer. So I reread a Marcus Corvinus, Old Bones; two Maigrets, Yellow Dog which I have in French and got nowhere with,  and I now see why, and Tall Woman, which is oh well; and at some point, now forgotten, a Ferrars.

City dinged me for my property taxes this month where they usually forego them in September if they're going to forego them at all. Tried applying online and was told they've already received my application, so it didn't get lost in the mail. Insurance premium is also due in early October so may have to ask my money people for a top-up, which should ensure that the city will forgive October's installment. But I've been pretty saving this year-- usually by now I've had two top-ups with one more to come, so we'll see. At least the market is high at the moment and better now than in November with its unfortunately uncertain election.

Mh, yes, a warm September. Have been getting by with fans because my house holds the cold from the weekend but may have recourse to the window AC tonight.

Loose-ended for something to read, I grabbed a Simenon mystery last time I was at the library. It took longer to read than I'd expected, given its shortness and the fact that I can read a Ferrars of twice its length in an afternoon. Well, so, I picked up another two today. If I can get into Maigret there's enough of him to keep me going, but if we're constantly getting remarks about women's figures,  no. If I want that kind of oogey, there are more than enough English Inspectors to provide it-- Banks, Dalziel, others I have blotted from memory.

Tried a Stephen Saylor. Was not impressed. Quit about five pages in.

Back to, if not summer temperatures, certainly sumer humidity and consequent aches and malaise. Actually this is a very September thing, which I keep forgetting: the mug and brassy light and background allergies and general wanhope. Will be cooler on the weekend but will also rain. This is going to be a warmer than average autumn, they say, which is good from the pov of economy (no furnaces) but not psychologically.

Should hang up my orange Reconciliation shirt on the porch but see: rain.

Jonesing for dim sum but getting to Chinatown is... not something I'm up for. Walking is still not much fun and I'd have to walk from University because Spadina is now a parking lot, or rather, even more of a parking lot than before when the LRT at least had a dedicated pathway. Shouldn't have dimsum anyway-- too much pig.

Finished Trial by Fury, a Ferrars mystery (really, why isn't she at least as famous as Christie? lack of signature sleuth, I suppose) and Guards! Guards! because Pratchett is not merely easy reading, no matter how well you think you remember a book after umpty many readings, there's always something new. This time around, now I'm on Men at Arms, is the Duke of Eorl.

 It may have cooled off. No storms or great deluges or wind, just a cloudy day that never got much above 20. Weather probs simultaneously called for scattered thunderstorms and a POP of 5%, and it looked like rain all the humid day, so I stayed in and read. 

Finished The Djinn Waits A Hundred Years, which kind of sank into the backrooms of the brain. Abandoned What The River Knows because slow so slow so YA feisty heroine and annoying but oddly attractive male and anyway is first book of a duology. Premise of magic being real and imbuing objects was promising but not much utilised as far as I got. Also, if you're pretending to be a widow and wearing the golden ring your father sent you before he died, when a too inquisitive stranger manifests an interest, why the hell wouldn't you say, 'Sir, that's my wedding ring!' and pull your hand back in outrage? Not 'oh it's just a trinket I bought from a stall' so of course he slips it off your finger and refuses to give it back because he can see, close to, that it's nothing of the sort.

Also finished a Ferrars, Witness Before the Fact, which may have taken me two hours max. Must get to the RefLibrary some day soon. But haven't felt like moving much in the heat, which actually was hot yesterday- 32C by day's end, 90F nearasdammit. So got to the LCBO y'day morning and stayed tiddly through the rest of the day, and today as well. Nice that they're going to sell coolers in the convenis but really, all the coolers I've tried taste vile. Only theTwsted Tea is remotely passable, witha vodka top up.

NNDs are back from Oz. Returned yesterday, I think: certainly the porch light that was left on was still on Tuesday night and the house was dark. Which makes it all the more admirable that this morning one of them mowed the weedpatch their back yard had turned into.  I assume it was this a.m. because it was all done by the time of my own leisurely awaking and I could still smell the cut grass. Though if Oz works the same as Japan, return from same leads to very early mornings, like 6.

Register that they've been next door for four years now. Dear god,  where does the time go?

The library's system is down again,  though the librarian assured me it wasn't the same as last October. I couldn't use self-checkout but she was able to use her terminal for it: no writing down by hand like in the fall. Was going to say, but now I can't print out my doctor's blood request, but I can't anyway. It was in the vanished inbox of my email.

Holds keep trotting in so I have a pair of Golden Age mysteries and What the River Knows in dead tree, and The Djinn Waits a Hundred Years in ebook, and we shall see how I get on with them. There's far too much couch potatoing lately, and will be more when temps go back to hot'n'humid starting tomorrow. Must get back to the bike machine and don't want to. Surely 7000 steps is enough?

Did get out to New Gen for bento. Not as much veg as Arisu because no side dishes, but small portion of beef, ditto of rice, salmon roll, and tempura veg. That was lunch, at 3, and dinner was a banana and some peanuts, so I will call this virtue.

Was going to the super today but at the crosswalk there was a guy in a motorized wheelchair trying to maneuver around one of those big ass recycle bins, that the garbage guys had left at the curb. Add to this, the curb slopes to allow, yanno, people in wheelchairs to cross the intersection, but of course maneuvering sideways on a slope is an invitation to disaster. Is why half the time I walk on the left or wrong side of the sidewalk with my walker, because any old driveway can change my balance. So anyway I parked my walker and womanhandled the bin up onto the very tiny front lawn of the house  and guy was able to go on his way. But this is why I hope I never need a scooter or wheelchair of any description. It's bad enough gettine around on garbage days. There's one  garbage man who pushes the bins back to the lawnline (and who was all prepared to put my bin back by the porch the other week, bless him) but mostly the guys are just trying to get the work done to schedule.

I wonder if there's something up with Signora down the street. Signora gardens, and in this rainy summer her flowers ran riot. Her front yard was a profusion of pink and purple, with the trumpety flowers, whose name I don't know, growing taller than I am. (Mrs Islamic Studies has them in her yard, as does the Greek gardener, and they're growing next door to Mrs. IS in the garden of the house that's been a-renovating for at least a year, I think, where nobody is tending them at all.) But as I was coming back from shopping I stopped to say hi to Signora and-- wondered why she was in the wrong yard. Only she wasn't. She'd removed all her flowers-- every single one-- and left only bare earth. 'Too crowded', she said. Signora doesn't speak much English which doesn't stop her from telling me things, though my opera Italian usually can't make much sense of it. But it's odd how much I mind the disappearance of those lovely flowers. The walls of bonny Portmore, indeed. You'd think she'd just cut some back if she thought the garden was getting out of hand. Is why I wonder why she went scorched earth this time.

Made it to the library for a hold. My email is on the fritz: either  DDOS or a Microsoft-like update, so I don't get reminders from the library or the physio, or bills like the Hydro, she says grimly. Thus I go to the webpages and check manually, as it were. But it's supposed to rain and thunder all weekend, starting tomorrow, so I picked up a few mysteries to tide me through. We shall see what actually happens, given what a bust Debby was. I can live with busts. What I'd hoped to do was get to the AGO for the Rembrandt exhibit, and the Reference Library which holds a number of non-circulating Ferrars. Ferrars is a fast read so even I should be able to get through one in an afternoon. But of course, rain forecasted.

Still not that hot but muggy muggy ohh so muggy. Walking to library and my tony Korean restaurant, I had to put my backpack in the carrier because of the sweat: and that with a thin rayon top and cotton bra.  Nothing works in mug but gauze, which soaks up the wet. And no one makes gauze tops but this woman I used to go to in Stratford 45 years ago. I've never even seen the material for sale.

But sweat and allergies do mean I drink copious amounts of water which might, eventually, debloat my heat-bloated body. Otherwise all couch potatodom all the time. Though my phone gives me huge numbers of 'heart points' just for walking in the mug.

The rainy summer hasn't produced the 2008 effect of making TO look like Ireland, but it's encouraged the wild flowers to run rife in that narrow space that doesn't have a name, between the outside of people's fences and the sidewalk. Cosmos, lavender,  black eyed Susans need to be held in by twine or else their leaning stems take up half the pavement. May also be why the allergies are so bad this year.

It seems that all it takes to fantod me is a reread of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. Why he fantods me is anyone's guess, but yeah. Have more Ferrars mysteries and The Science of Discworld 2 to take the taste out of my mouth.

Brief respite from the heat and possibly longer respite from the rain saw me sleeping with the window fan last night and hanging a laundry on the line this morning. Turns out I didn't have that much line laundry, having forgotten the two shirts I wear over my tank tops that get drenched with sweat. Shall do them in hot at the laundrette. But I was running low on socks and underwear, having also forgotten the socks I'd left on the furnace room lines. Anyway, hung my underwear on my new clip dryer, which has many many clips. Which means they can all go on the one but also that they don't dry as easily as on the round hangers. The Korean super didn't have them any more, and amazon didn't have them at all, and I can no longer bike down to Chinatown where I'm perfectly certain the stores do have them. So the square hanger it is. Am tempted, in NND's absence,  to hang the thing on the line and let the sun and wind do its worst, or best.

The articles that my browser suggests for me suggested a drink, purportedly Brazilian, and  I wish it hadn't. It's one part cold coffee, one part chocolate milk, and two parts cola. Not excessively high in calories if you use diet pepsi, but I can't have it after about 6 p.m. if I intend to sleep before 4 a.m., and I want it.

An oddity in Elizabeth Ferrars' mysteries is how many people have grey eyes. I thought grey was even rarer than blue. The other oddity, though it wasn't at the time, is how much people in the earlier mysteries smoke. Tired? Light a cigarette. Upset? Light a cigarette. Thinking? Light a cigarette. Oh, and everyone also drinks a lot. This gets lampshaded in the Virginia and Felix books from the 80s, where Virginia thinks Felix smokes too much and Felix thinks Virginia drinks too much but neither does as much as the protagonists from the 40s.

Bardcore has a medieval & renaissance take on We Did Not Light the Fire. It bothered me that it wasn't even remotely chronological until a commentator pointed out that it duplicates the rhyming scheme of the original.  Also mentions a whole buncha people I never heard of, some of whom are apoarently known through a video game series Civilization.

https://youtu.be/drDs-Y5DNH8?si=SSzTtRgfP0sdrYNn

The answer to cab tsuris is evidently to order it the night before and hope the forecasted train of thunderstorms will have passed by the time of arrival. Being me, I took myself out on the porch fifteen minutes early to gently spitting rain, and wondered if the badly parked grey car that was sticking out into the street just down from me would hinder my cab driver in any way. (There's a fire hydrant right across from me which stops cabbies and delivery people from pulling up onto the sidewalk.) The hedge blocked my view of the car's roof or I'd have seen the diamond sign on it. My cab, a quarter of an hour early, so great. We chatted as he threaded his way downtown, taking the side streets to avoid both construction and everyone else coming out post-storm. Apparently various hill streets like Mt Pleasant have flooded in their dip parts. Which is no wonder, since we got more than a month's worth of rain in the three thunderstorms between 9 and 12.

But since I'd ordered the cab for an hour and fifteen minutes before my appointment, to allow for non-appearances, mistaken addresses, and people stealing my ride, I had over an hour's wait. Which I spent in College Park, looking at shirts to see if anyone had something long sleeved long-line in cotton. They didn't so I had an iced coffee at Tim Horton's and read The Brides of High Hill on my phone.

I am sound in tooth and jaw, hurrah, and a good thing too because just a cleaning cost me almost $300. They asked about insurance and I don't know if they meant private or Seniors' Dental, but since I have neither I said no. The sun was out and I went to Fran's and had meatloaf, which comes with mashed potatoes and a generous helping of green beans and carrots,  and if they're frozen veg I'd like to know the brand because they crunch like the real thing.

Then it was debate: try to get a cab or use transit. Trains were bypassing Union Stn- how, I wonder?- because of flooding which you'd think would short the lines. But that meant everyone would be trying for a taxi, and westbound College wasn't moving much faster than eastbound that was totally backed up. Thus I walked over to University where the elevators are and got on the Spadina line. But of course two streetcars' worth of passengers flooded the platform while I was waiting so yeah, crowded car. And young dork with his ebike was taking up most of the space opposite the door where I wanted to park my rollator. Did anyway and held on to the bar. There was in fact a priority seat free right next to me, but it was one of the jump seats that are a bitch to get up from-- too low and nothing to hold on to and no space for the walker, so I politely refused any offers to let me sit in it. But a thoughtful young person behind me put a watchful hand on my back whenever we rounded a curve or stopped too suddenly just in case I was going to fall over.

What I really need to do is get the brakes on the walker fixed so *it* doesn't slide around on corners and at sudden stops.

Of course I'd intended to get on the e-w line at St George but considering the time- summer rush hour- thought better of it and went up to Dupont. Where traffic was also backed up in both directions  so hell, I can walk from Spadina to home. Because I'd taken a purse instead of my backpack (purses fit better under rain capes) I didn't have my pharmacopoeia with me and between that and the mug and the involuntary tensing in the dentist's chair,  my everything was very unhappy by the time I got in. Have been sitting on the couch ever since, wishing vodka was purchasable,  but it's not. This is going to be a long dry summer.

I am going to make it through this book/ month/ year if it kills me. The second two will take care of themselves but the first... I dunno. I succeeded in finishing a mystery on the weekend but I had to renew the loan to do it. Abandoned another book unfinished but because it's July I can't remember what it was. Elizabeth Ferrars are fast reads between the slog of Chinese ghost stories (which I also had to renew) but then I can't even remember what the plots were. Reading this month is like dreaming: wake/ finish, and it's gone.

Today has been the remnants of Beryl. I slept late so missed the morning downpour. Radar weather said more downpour at 2, and I had a 2:30 appointment up the street. So fine, I'll leave at 1:30 and sit in the lobby. Wore rain cape to be safe but there were dry patches under the trees when I left. And half a block from home the heavens opened again. But I had my sturdy rain cape and draped the front over the seat so it would stay dry. Reader, it did not stay dry, and the water sluicing down the cape went straight into the basket. So I stood in the lobby and dripped into an out of the way corner.  

A couple came down, he with cane, she leaning on the arm of a Filipino aid worker. We watched the downpour pour down with no signs of stopping. When it eased off a very little, aid said 'I'll go get the car and bring it round.' 'But you'll get wet!' 'It's ok, I have my hoodie,' and off she ran. Woman turned to me and said, essentially, 'Ah, youth!' 'We were young once.' Indeed. I remarked on the tendency of July in TO to dump a month's worth of rain in an afternoon and she nodded. And then the car came and aid emerged with an umbrella and I went off to physio.

Physio commented on how muggy today is-- cooler, finally and briefly, but obviously humid. 'Toronto's always muggy,' I gloomed, which it is, and she said, 'But not like Japan or Korea.' True. In Japan I'd get soaked just walking downstairs from my room, and I can well believe Korea is the same.

Prime sit in front of fan and read mindless mysteries weather. Unfortunately a short-term loan came in and I clicked accept, not realizing it was umpty many pages.  Phone says 1262 but phone is weird. Anyway, Year's Best SF and Fantasy for 2018. And the stories are so far all excellent but also, well, oogie. Maybe that's the heat talking because there's nothing really oogie about them-- bar the one about Thomas More's head, and the oddity of Carmen Maria Machado's whatever it was-- but I have the same vague horripilation as I get from Ishiguro. So I wade onwards with the thing,wondering if I should just send it back and wait till fall.

We're still not hitting 35C or anything above it except in the humidex. But muggy, yes, it is muggy. Window AC at night and fans during the day work just fine so far, but the indoor coolness as ever makes the outside feel like breathing wet flannel.

It rained yesterday, as forecast, so I stayed in all day and did very little. Stopped in the late afternoon but didn't feel like going out in the muck, even though I need to stock up against the rain forecast from Monday through Wednesday. Did that today, in spite of Sunday crowds who all seemed to be using baskets rather than carts. No baskets by the rack where they're kept, so I found a lone one by a checkout desk. Then later as I was unloading my stuff a woman came up and asked could she have my basket. Clearly Fiesta needs to buy more of them if people are going to keep on boycotting Loblaws up the street. 

Made me get out of bed at 9:15 when I woke up so I could do a white wash and get it on the line. Socks are hanging off the chandelier. I don't need ankle socks since I ordered a 20-pack of them for summer use but it's as well to have them done. Then I can sheep and goats the ones that keep coming off and use them for dusting, I suppose, along with the ones that have lost their mate. 

Also washed bathroom floor and stairs. Was disturbed to see that when the whooshing sound comes from what I'd assumed was next door, the water in my toilet gets disturbed, suggesting that it's something on my side. But I am in no psychological shape to be dealing with plumbing mysteries just now.

Very loose-ended yesterday I read a bit more in Tengoku Ryōko, which is about a failed suicide in a forest. Not difficult Japanese per se but not fast-moving either. Then finished System Collapse, but it'd been so long since I started it that I couldn't recall what REDACTED was. That's another slow-moving wade-through. It might be better on a second read, but it seemed to me there was an awful lot of description of places that I couldn't envisage at all, so I'm not in a hurry to do it.The current Flavia Albia is all about gangsters, which doesn't hold my attention either.  Maybe I should resign myself to DNFing the works on the go and start something completely new. But if my mood is what's making the reading unsatisfactory and not the other way round, I should stick to rereads. It's almost June and thus the start of the Lost Months, the 'grit teeth and endure' season.

Well, that could have been more painful. The direct line the physio gave me was 'this number is not in service,' the booking dep't goes to lunch at 12:30 not 1, and I somehow got the MRI people not the CT scan ones. But I wasn't on hold for much more than ten minutes when I called at 1:30 and they don't play muzak. I have an appointment now in October (gulp) which she apologized for but apparently it's a much in demand service. So that's  done.

Finished Yangsze Choo's The Fox Wife, very pleasant as her books tend to be. Also 100 Demons 31, not all about the Niigata family but still with Ritsu trying to finish up his master's thesis.

Currently on Emily Wilde's Encyclopedia of Faeries, a short term loan that I must persevere with, and the most recent Flavia Albia, whose blurb is a major spoiler, and Equal Rites, another 'somehow never read' Pratchett.

DNF Only a Monster: intriguing premise but lacklustre treatment and of course YA with mandatory love triangle, Y oh Y? Because mandatory, I suppose.

Have a Japanese novel waiting for me at the library which I can probably renew easily if it takes me longer than three weeks since no one has a hold on it.

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 trued 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.

Met SND out with her new pup, name of Oliver. The theory is he's part chihuahua but his markings are, I'm told, more Jack Russell terrier. To my untutored eye he looks like nothing more than a miniature beagle. J says one can do DNA tests on dogs now: always a market. I'd only do that if I suspected herd dog DNA so as not to be surprised by herding behaviour.

Spring. After weeks and weeks of only crocuses and snowdrops, daffodils and tulips come up in sunshiny spots. A cherry is blooming down on Barton. I am moved to do some dusting and mopping and furniture polishing upstairs, to take advantage of the bright unfiltered sun before the trees burst into leaf. But I also rerereread Agatha Christies: zoomed through Lord Edgeware Dies and Curtain and Cat Among the Pigeons. I owned a copy of the latter as a twelve year old and read it so often that I have much of it memorized.

Had a pleasant dream the other day of being back in Tokyo and out at night with Finder Jean and Mary senpai, on a broad street that was partly University Ave here and partly some unnamed boulevard seen from a taxi, back in 2001, with Fearless Leader. In the dream we were, as ever, heading for an archetypal Tokyo bookstore, but I believe some people stopped us and talked us into taking their baby.