Off the Cliff

Woodsman no.2 arrived yesterday punctual to the minute. This is the cheerful guy from the excellent but pricey company I've used before. He opines that my cherry is quite healthy, a relief, because I keep expecting they who know to say, 'That tree is about to collapse any minute, cut it down at once!' Nor did he mention the moss on the thing and I didn't ask, but noticed Prof Islamic Studies' magnolia is equally green about the gills. Ran into Prof himself yesterday when returning, wet, from the super where I'd foolishly gone in just a fleece jacket without my rain cape. Prof was being miserably cold in the springlike 12C of y'day: twenty plus years here have not yet acclimatised him to TO anythings but the most unbearable depths of summer. But he is quite willing to assemble my branch trimmer for me.

We're having a by-election mid-April and I have heard diddly about it bar one or two election signs on the street. The Liberals contacted me about putting up a sign on my property back when the snow was piled a metre high there. They contacted me again when it melted and I said, yeah sure put it up, but since then it's been crickets. Rather like the tree companies, in fact. Today finally I get my notice of where to vote delivered in the mail,  barely two weeks before the advanced polls. I assume this low-key approach has something to do with an expectation that we'll remain firmly Liberal: the Cons aren't even running a candidate. The threat from the south being exactly as it was a year ago, people will go for the competent devil we know over any alternative. It still amuses me when bots and trolls on FB insist that Carney is the face of a communist conspiracy intent on ruining Canada but there are educational failures here as well as in the US.

Stayed up late reading Poirot fanfic, The Monogram Murders, which, well. Poirot wants to find a girl he believes is in danger. How does he do this? He gets on a bus, of course! and looks out the windows hoping to catch a glimpse of her on the streets of London. Does he have any reason to think she's even in the neighbourhood? No, but he still gets on the bus. To put it no stronger, this is not the Poirot I know. And if it's just the narrator who thinks that the reason he's looking out the window is to find the girl, and not merely to look at the scenery, then the narrator needs to resign his position at Scotland Yard, because that's a ridiculous way for an inspector to think.  

Hmpf. My Thermalon heatwrap is not Thermalon but a similar product called Medibeads. Works on the same principle but is much heavier and a tad unwieldy. Certainly no good for wrapping elbows in so must be the designated downstairs heat pack. Real Thermalons are available only at amazon. I really cannot buy two non-book things from amazon in the same month. So must resign myself to no more Thermalon. Am sad. 

Woke up light-headed this morning, which is no doubt my sinuses reacting to the budding season. Still managed to shop at Fiesta before tomorrow's wintry mix, and to get down to the basement for my dark wash. We're edging into t-shirt season here but not quite yet. However today's 8C was infinitely warmer than Monday's 10C. Wind or lack of makes all the difference.

Am reading a Dr Priestley whose blurb was a spoiler for the first half of the book. So I knew going in it would be a version of And Then There Were None. Anvillicious hints suggest it will also be The Revenger's Tragedy and I'm quite sure I know who the revenger is. I shall hope to be disappointed.

In spite of the constant stream of scammers and robocalls and robocall scammers that I get, I really must stop answering my landline with a curt Yes?! because occasionally there's a real well-meaning person on the other end. As today, the third call of the morning after This is VISA security and This is doors and windows, was my doctor's locum reviewing my bloodwork from Monday. My blood sugars are up from last year when I was evidently doing something right. 'Of course the holidays see a rise in blood sugar but do you think there's some changes you might make now?' Well, I allowed, I could stop drinking Black Russians. She agreed that would do the trick. Not that I've been drinking Black Russians this week, but I have been putting vodka into my cocoa. However, the bottle is finished and I won't buy another, so we'll see in another three months. But equally I'll be moving more now that the worst of the snow is (fingers tightly crossed) over for the nonce. Exercise, exercise.

This week I finished Lost Souls etc and Strange Houses. Doubtless read some Dr Priestleys-- yes, ok, Death in Wellington Rd with the poisoned pigs, and The Domestic Agency. Rhode's problem, more apparent in the former book than the latter, is that he never gives too much information. Mystery writers ought to give us more details than we can use. If they don't, every piece of information we get is significant, so that if Chekov's Australian cousin is mentioned in chapter 2, for sure he will turn up, probably as the murderer, by the end of the book.

The other problem is a hardwarish one: Kobo's Rhodes will occasionally just hang as I'm reading and refuse to go either forward or back. This only happens on my phone, but the upstairs tablet won't load Kobo at all. This happened last week so I went and bought The Mystery of the Yellow Room to see if it happened with other ebooks. Answer is no, not, and it's a fun read even with the Belle Epoque Gallic piling up of adjectives. (Yeah, OK, Lovecraft did it too. Not just the French.) But can I quibble at a translator who talks about 'the assassin' and not the more natural murderer. Assassins in English are political murderers, not people who shoot inoffensive young women in their bedrooms.

 So nice to see the snowpack from last January's dump shrinking on the mudroom roof. Yes of course it will snow again in a week-- this is March in TO after all-- but for now it's melting happily in the 14C/ 50sF warm. And will melt more in tomorrow and Monday's sun.

Am only partway into Strange Houses but either I've been reading too much John Rhode or the consulting architect has been reading too much Japanese detective fic/ weird tales. Because. Here's this house with a second floor windowless room in the center, marked Child's Room. It has its own toilet but no bath. Here's an odd unmarked space between the walls on the ground floor. Maybe intended as a pantry in the kitchen? No, no, it myst be a crawl space that allows the child to access the windowless bathroom. OK, but why must this child not be seen? My thoughts go to Holmes' Yellow Face or Cthuluan monstrosities.  The architect's thoughts go to 'the child is a murder weapon. The parents entice someone into their house, get him tiddly, suggest he have a bath, then when he's drowsy from alcohol and heat, the kid comes in and stabs him to death.' Like, this is the first thing you think of, guy? Now why would that be? I am having Deep Dark Suspicions about that architect

But of course this is Japan whose psychological reasonings are never anything that make sense to me. I await further developments

I am so over this winter. Was antsy about getting anywhere today with the snow falling all last night, which might have been why I had a nuit blanche and only got to sleep eventually by refusing to do anything but lie in the dark. After which I woke at 9:30 and reluctantly decided to forego sleeping in till noon. However the bobcats came by at some point and the sidewalks were clear when I headed out-- in a snow shower, yes-- at 2:30. But bobcats somehow manage to throw up an amazing number of pebbles, do not ask me how. No wonder I got one caught in the wheel back a bit. Only surprised it hasn't happened more often.

Came home to the wedding invite from nephew and fiancée, fastened with sealing wax and a seal with their initials. This takes me right back to the mid-60s when I used sealing wax that I can smell even yet. Still not sure if I can go to theirwedding: it's out in Oakville, which requires cars, and the reception is at a country club ditto, and there's an hotel they've booked for people who need to stay over. I believe my bro drove me to my younger brother's wedding nearly 40 years  ago, but he wasn't married then and I was able-bodied. There's an option on the invite for 'will toast from afar', which I may have to do.

As for reading: at some point finished Jurgen and started on Figures of Earth, and am questioning if I really need to reread these pale-printed volumes. Finished also Christie's The Clocks, and Joan Coggins' The Mystery at Orchard House, which stars not!the Dowager Duchess of Denver in a young incarnation.  Fun, but I do not find scatterbrained Lupin (!) as charming as her author does. Read a Dr. Priestley,  Dr. Goodwood's Locum, pleasantly twisty, even though I wonder if the murderer would be as adept at an English accent of the appropriate class as he seems to be, given that spoiler spoiler spoiler. Currently on the go have Closed Coffin, a Poirot continuation, which is... not quite what I want right now. Am at a loose end which may get sorted once I stop angsting about the weather.

It was heavy sleet when I got up and then it was heavy snow  but thankfully not really freezing rain. However heavy snow-- weight heavy, not just thick and fast-- is a pain to deal with. I scraped about four inches off the steps and shovelled the path in tiny increments because shovel was too heavy to lift. Salted same, came in and stretched, two hours later did it again, though it was only an inch or so by then. Have been hearing sirens all day, doubtless the aged like me not taking their shovelling easy. Meanwhile either a bobcat or a really public-minded and extremely strong snowblower had come along and flattened the sidewalk into walkability. Money is on bobcat because didn't see any blown snow. And if only my back wasn't such a diva I could have taken the snowpack up and cleared down to the concrete, because it lifts really nicely with the ice scraper now. Did a metre-long stretch to show it could be done, but my back really hates me.

Finished the Riddlemaster trilogy last week and went over vol.3 with the handy ebook 'search in book' function to shed some light on who and when. Am still slightly confused. Then in a bout of 'get it off the shelf' I started on James Branch Cabell's Jurgen. Cabell was probably my first experience of fandom: somehow in my 20s I stumbled on a group devoted to his works and subscribed to their newsletters and such. I haven't read him in 50 years and retained only an impression of extreme clever clogs-ishness. Which he is, and sniggering with it, though I was surprised to find that the beginning of Jurgen is actually sweetly melancholic about the compromises of maturity. Which was not something I'd register in my early 20s. Did go online to see what, if anything, people have to say about Cabell now, and was pleased to come across a reddit thread of the young'uns can't be having with him.

To take the taste of that out of my mouth I had recourse to a couple of Dr. Priestleys, only one of which was glaringly obvious. Then took a disintegrating Penguin Classic off the shelf, Poems of Heaven and Hell From Ancient Mesopotamia. Have been through the Babylonian Creation twice, with the introduction and the cast of characters, and am still confused as to who is who. It doesn't help that the pages are literally crumbling so that leafing back and forth is unadvised and difficult. Should probably move on to the next section.

Currently also reading a collaboration between John Dickson Carr and John Rhode, which reads very oddly indeed. Should also read that library book, which is in Japanese and I believe rather in demand. Since I'm certainly not going anywhere tomorrow, I may spend the day doing that.

Well, the sun was shining and tomorrow is supposed to snow and I need milk so out I went in my warmest coat and fleecy trousers and longjohns. No idea what the city has done with respect to the sidewalk clearing. They put down salt all up my block so I had no trouble getting to physio last week, but going *down* the block we were all back to snow berms and cratered packed snow. So it was still heave the walker up and down for half the journey, almost as bad as ten days ago. But anyway, now I can have my cocoa again, my one treat, and I did *not* buy any pastry or pasta meals so go me, I suppose. Also bought more chocolate soy milk because my shopper last week bought me cappuccino flavour, in spite of the wp saying 'many in stock' about the chocolate. I won't say 'men' about male Instacart and Uber shoppers getting my orders wrong because male Voila shoppers get things right, but Voila has those big ass trucks that are a hassle in winter. Otherwise I'd be ordering from them.

Started rereading the Riddlemaster trilogy, untouched for nearly half a century for some reason. Was having a hard time with my hardcover vol 1, again for no reason I could discern. Got it from the library in ebook and that was not only readable but had the advantage that I could consult the map in the hardcover on the frequent occasions when I had no idea where Morgon was at any point. This never bothered me in my 20s but now I hate not knowing where a fictional here is. And in ebook I can highlight and search a name on the frequent occasions when I've forgotten what the story on Kern or Yrth or whoever is-- and lord were there many many of those.  I've heard tell that there are indications that the trilogy is actually SF rather than straight fantasy, which I will ignore because I don't want anyone Severianing my fantasy, thank you.

Rabbit, rabbit.

Slightly warmer today, with sun, and I had thoughts about going out and shovelling more snow off the bins, but instead sat on the couch with hot beanbag wraps and finished Flora's Fury. I'm a little sad that she didn't finish the series but on balance, maybe not. Flora is really hard to take for long. Impetuous characters who never stop to think are so not my bag.

I distinctly remember buying lean hamburger once and registering it as a mistake because it was too dry to make good fried rice with. Something must have changed in the rubrics because I used lean to make beef stroganoff on Friday and it was so fat I had to soak it up with paper towels. Couldn't drain it because I added it to the vegetables I'd sauteed first-- mushrooms, onions, broccoli and cabbage. If I eat meat, it's going to be well padded with veg. Maybe if I'd served it with rice or noodles but I'm still trying to keep the starches low.

To which end it seems I lost 5.7 pounds in January (that's 2.5 kilos more or less), so my modifications are working. Yes, no alcohol works wonders. No, I still hate it.

A balmy 'feels like -9 / 16F' out there so, having survived the high winds and -20 of yesterday, thought to try my luck getting up to Loblaws, because of course tomorrow is Moar Snow. Again, not forecast to be the huge dump of elsewhere. 7-10 cm ie 2-4 inches, like Wednesday. But not easy to be out in and possibly making home delivery a problem, what with snow berms on either side of my street.

Walking wasn't too bad. Ice ridges in the street where snow plows dumped their loads but the corners themselves flattened enough to be passable. A few houses on my block had cut narrow passages for the able-bodied, a few hadn't shovelled at all, but the next block was clear all the way. Except it was clear because someone-- and it must have been the city's contracted snow cleaners because no one else has that kind of largesse-- had dumped piles of salt every few metres and then spread a cm over the entire sidewalk. I do not understand how any of this works, and I'm not even sure the city is still contracting their cleaning out.

Being on a Dr. Siri roll and having exhausted the paperback versions, got the next one in ebook from the library. (Parenthetically, this is a typical winter in that getting dead tree from the library is suspended until at least March.) But either the format or the actual three-strand plot of I Shot the Buddha had me beat. Half way through I had to go back and start again, and when finished, had to go back and reread several passages a third time.  Almost as bad/ good as Diana Wynn Jones or early Ima Ichiko for twistiness. I think there are only three more of these so on I go.

Snow and freezing temps. I suppose I should go down to the basement and run a dribble of water to prevent freezing pipes, also to get my underwear before I run out. But hardy!Canuck me thinks it's wimpy for pipes to freeze at a mere -12C/10F and anyway I have underwear till Friday.

Finished a single Dr. Priestley,  name and plot forgotten. (OK, Murder at Derivale, about a no-gooder killed by an obscure poison in the back of a truck.) Also vols. 2 to 4 of Siri Paiboun. Am rereading these as a 'get them out of the house' strategy. I know to skip  the one set in Cambodia but did wind up reading the other I wanted to pass over. They have a lowering effect, not surprising in a series set in late 1970s Laos. Works as an object lesson, I guess: you think *now* is bad? Look how much worse it can get. But still, I should take a break. If I want mysteries entwined with weird bollocks, I now have the complete Max Carrados, in e-format yet, thanks to incandescens.

Continue with Da Vinci, a few pages at a time because I might actually learn something from it, just, the process is not being fun.

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

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

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

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

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