Day 11, the end of a rather tiring week

A friend to whom I was bragging about all the walking I'd done this week kind of made fun of me because he regularly walks that amount (all my week's hikes) in one round-trip hike to his job and back. However, I'm still pleased with my achievement; I'm ten years older than he and I've been very sedentary the past few years and I'm way, way overweight. (Losing pounds, though, walking does help with that!).

However, I confess I've been having thoughts of keeping the car after this trial month is over. If I do I'm going to have to start saving scrupulously for its replacement because that necessity is, if not actually looming, inevitable eventually. So that will entail more planning and work. I intend to stick with my pledge for this month, though, because its benefits are so obvious to me. The Plan, With Car, will include mostly NOT driving the car except for things like trips to the pet store for bulk amounts of cat litter, and emergency visits to friends or family (like if someone's sick, or unable to leave the house but needing something). I could still consolidate all the distance and/or bulky errands in one or two days per month. It's not like I'd be losing money (except in the usual depreciation of the car's value) because without the car, I'd still be spending money on bus and taxis, etc. I don't know. This requires more thought and pencil & paper analysis. I wonder how you quantify sore feet...

Not surprising, I knew this, but...

ye gods are you ever punished for not owning a car.  Price-wise, I'm talking. And maybe only here in Omaha where there are a great many places you can't get to by bus without a LOT of walking. My practice of buying the 42 pound size of cat litter, for example, is truly endangered by not having a car. I can't find any bus route and walking schedule that is at all realistic for that. A taxi would negate the bulk price benefit.  I knew that people without cars have a much harder time of everyday things, here in Omaha. Now I'm experiencing it and feeling vaguely guilty that this is a *choice* I have. (Though to be honest, my car is now elderly and if it dies, I would have to rely on this current plan anyway - I cannot take on a car payment. And my experience with used cars - before 2011 when I bought this one new - and particularly for the $$ I have to pay for one outright - was not good. Egads, forsooth.) So - back to smaller sizes of cat litter, I guess. The biggest available in my grocery store, to be loaded into the taxi trunk on the semi-monthly Big Grocery List trip.

This economic factor is one that is quite well known in the alternative transportation modes world. It interlocks with all the other economic justice issues that keep people poor and struggling.  I am very lucky to have the income I have, small as it is. And the health I've got, iffy as it's been (cholesterol levels, I"m looking at YOU). Cutting down on my eating to stretch my money farther because it's just plain HARDER TO GET - that won't hurt me a bit, nor will the much-increased exercise. I have been affluentin' myself to death here. No amount of list-making, resolution-vowing, self-promising can put the brakes on a late-night trip to the store for ice cream like a mile-and-a-half walk to that store, and the walk back.

All that said, I'm sitting here grinning because Yah, I knew this would be a learning experience. And Yah, I had NO IDEA...

Second bus-riding adventure: achievement locked

Ha. That's what the cool kids say. I don't know that it's locked so much as I finally got home, and fell back against the door exhausted. Well, not exhausted, but footsore and tired. A nice sitdown and half a pint of ice water later and I'm feeling perkier.

Anyway - I shank's-mared it and rode buses downtown (almost) to Spielbound to play some table top games with the nice guys in Godless Gamers. It was all guys at our table, except me. The other table had more people and at least two women, maybe three. I wasn't doing a census.

I'm glad that I shed any pride many years ago. I only today figured out that when I'm going somewhere that requires two buses, I should be telling the first bus driver I need a transfer, then I get a special transfer ticket and it costs less than charging my regular pass for a whole ride. DUH.

Also, the #3 - this confused me because their "maps" are SO highly stylized they're almost undecipherable - only goes to 40th & Farnam, then turns west and goes through the MidTown Transfer Center (that means it stops at the glass box and waits for possible riders for five minutes) then circles around to get going south again, and instead of getting to 40th & Harney where I thought I could get off, it only goes to 42nd & Harney, before diverging from where I need to go. This added two very steep blocks to my walk to Spielbound, but I still made it at exactly 1 p.m. So I know that about that route on a Sunday now. What I need to do is practice reading those schedules better!

Case in point: I mis-read the going-home #4 bus schedule. Where I thought the #4 came by 40th & Cuming at 4:28 pm, two minutes after the #3 dropped me off there, it actually didn't come by until 4:58. So I had a nice half hour on the not very comfortable bus bench. Seriously, not only is the seat hard, it *slants* toward the front so I kept feeling like I was falling off!

But the exercise was good for me, the gaming was fun and the people were, as always, very nice and fun. So it was a good afternoon all around.

First round trip bus ride accomplished

I was gone from home right at 3 hours. The buses are on time, clean, and the drivers are friendly and helpful. Of course, they might get understandably tetchy in rush hours on the hottest days of the summer, but today, with a light weekend passenger load and perfect driving weather, all was serene.

I was astonished, on my last bus home, to be told by the driver that my State Driver's License does not serve for ID for my Senior 10-ride pass! This is the 5th driver - why didn't the other 4 tell me this? I was further astonished to learn that I actually have to go PHYSICALLY to MAT HQ nearly all the way downtown to get a MAT ID. So, I'll be going down there Monday to do that. I still have my game event I'm going to tomorrow afternoon, but it won't break the bank, just two rides.

I think I'm going to end up feeling like getting rid of my car (haven't done it yet, in case you're just now seeing this) was (will have been) the best thing I did since retiring. Already, today, I felt wonderfully free - though irritated no end at how human-hostile our streets and byways are.  But the idea of just locking the front door and walking out and *going* - not having to worry about gas, or parking or driving - feels very independent.

Stay tuned, we'll find out how long that lasts.

ETA: I know that this is a LOT of to-do about an activity that is utterly mundane for millions of people everywhere. It is enlightening to realize just how out of touch I have been, sealed up in my metal boxes, all these years. Out of touch with the world around me, the people around me, my own abilities ... I think this month-long test was an *excellent* idea.

It's Day One of playing "I don't have a car"!

And I realized yesterday that I'd screwed it up before I even started, by double-booking Oct. 12.  My Game Day friends and I set up that afternoon for a Game Day here, and then last week I got notice from Omaha Atheists that their fall highway cleanup is coming up, "so sign up and join us!" So I did - and THEN realized it was for 10 a.m. Oct. 12, and it's clear out west by the Platte River. NOT a walkable, busable or taxiable destination. Even the meet-up place would take me an hour or more to reach from home by bus - meaning it would also take an hour or more to get home, and there would be no guarantee we'd be done with the cleanup in time for me to get a ride back to the bus stop ... etc etc. So, Since my Game Day crew are my first priority BUT the commitment to the OA highway cleanup is a civic promise I made, I'm going to waive the No Car rule for that one event. I'll drive myself out there, and leave in time to greet my Game Day friends after getting cleaned up myself.

I decided, rather than feel like a doofus about this, I will think of it as one of the things this experiment is going to teach me: I'm going to have to be a lot more mindful about planning ahead, without a car.

AND THEN I realized that I ALSO had bought a ticket to a documentary film downtown at Filmstreans. It is a Spanish film about global transportation issues, one I greatly want to see, and last week at the Sosa documentary I told Lin, "I'll be back here next Thursday, too."  Then in the wee hours of this morning (after I finally finished William Kent Kreuger's newest mystery, Windigo Island), I realized I probably could get a bus to Filmstreams, so I wrote a note to remind myself to look up the bus schedule to do so. This morning, I went to the Filmstreams site to find out the show time. I am, I discovered, a day late. It was shown Tuesday night. Well, so there's THAT problem sorted! *dusts off hands, kisses that $4.50 movie ticket good-bye*

But otherwise, hey, everything's cool. My next adventure will simply be to get to the Swanson Branch of the library for their Friends of the Library Book Sale this Saturday between 10 a.m. and 3 a.m. to find some more *little* kids' "scary" books to hand out at Hallowe'en for All Hallow's Read night. (Don't know what that is? Here's Neil Gaiman & friends to tell you.) I've done it the past two Hallowe'ens and I was surprised and delighted at the tricksers'r'treaters' responses - they loved it! Some of them went bouncing off my porch waving their books at their parents on the sidewalk yelling, "Look, Dad! I got a book!"  Now, you can't ask for a happier outcome than THAT. I went to the library sale the first Saturday in September and got 24 books, but very few for tiny tots, toddlers and preschoolers. I'm hoping I can find a few more of those this Saturday. The All Hallow's Read site also has a selection posters you can download. Here's the one I liked best, go see which one you like:

They also have bookmarks you can download and print out, and do whatever you like with:

And that's about all the thrilling news from here for today. Until I remember something else I screwed up...

Contemplating a big life change

I'm thinking seriously about selling my car, and doing without. At my age (64), this is scary. I live alone. Usually people my age are clinging tenaciously to their car keys, sometimes even in the face of actual, factual, decline in their ability to drive safely. It's famously one of a family's hardest moments: taking Dad's car keys away.

But you know what? As a car-owner, I think I'm in the tiny minority of humans who own a car. Really - there are billions of people who live their entire lives without possessing one of these metal and plastic and fossil-fuel and money-guzzling monsters.

I've stayed in my home past retirement because 1)  Good GOLLY I don't want to have to go through everything a down-sizing move would require, 2) almost everything I need (except a grocery store, and that may be changing somewhat even as I write) is within easy walking distance in Benson (a tiny old former small town that was engulfed two generations ago by Omaha), and 3) I have a great neighborhood with great neighbors. Having experienced life with horrible neighbors, I do not sell that feature short.

But now here I am, overweight, too sedentary, with some health exam test results I'm not very happy about. Here I am, I seldom leave the house more than twice a week for errands, and occasionally for social occasions, and my car, a 2001 Hyundai Elantra I bought new in July 2001 when some asshole rammed a stolen car into the trunk of my innocent Ford Taurus parked outside my house, is showing its age. It won't be long before the upkeep becomes too expensive. And here I am with a granddaughter, thinking about what global warming is doing to her future. 

I started thinking about all the alternatives to driving my own car that I have or could have. I can certainly walk, though not as far or as painlessly as in my younger days. A bus is one or two blocks away, and while Omaha's bus system is not ideal, they're working on it and if I plan ahead I could get most anywhere I need to go. I'm retired, so time isn't a problem (I can always knit on long bus trips). And I'm eligible for a bit of a discount for senior citizens now. We have taxis. And if I want to consolidate a lot of errands all over town into one day, I could rent a car. I hear one company delivers the car to your door, and will take you home when you return the car. And I checked - not having car insurance (because lacking a car) does not prohibit you from renting their cars. You can buy insurance for while you're driving it.

So I looked at how much not having a car would save me. Not a lot, it turns out. But probably enough. Dropping my car insurance would result in my losing a $300 a year discount for carrying both my house and car with the same company, but that still would save me about $80/month. And since I haven't been driving all that much, I figure I only put about $35 - $40 worth of gas in it per month. So that's about $90, let's say to be conservative, per month I could use for bus rides, taxis, and/or rental car. I can walk to the nearest full-blown grocery store - and it's all downhill! and could have a taxi take me back home for about $13 - or if I didn't have a huge bulky bunch of stuff to take home, I could ride the bus for much, much less.

And that doesn't even take bicycling into account. I'm thinking with what I could get for my car now, I could maybe get a decent used bike, helmet, and elbow and knee pads - not going to do without those!  Having a bike would greatly expand the boundaries of my carless world. Omaha buses all have a bike rack nowadays (yay!) so there's that.

It would be stupid of me to just sell the car without further ado. Therefore, I'm going to pretend during next month that I don't have a car, and see how I do. Maybe I'll have things to blog about the experience. In any case it's a good experiment! And I'd welcome tips you may have on how to live without a car.

Edited later to add: There IS a new grocery store just 4 blocks from my house! It's a tiny, storefront type place, carrying locally produced meats and vegetables and cereals, eggs, cheese, milk, handmade pastas - all kinds of goodies. It's a little pricey but I need to eat *better* and *less* so that's probably a good thing. Very friendly clerk. I got some organically-grown beef brats. Can't wait for dinner!

Getting ready for Fall

After seeing the movie "Ratatouille" a few years ago, I came home and hunted for recipes online, and found the very one they invented for the movie!

I've never even tried to make it as gorgeous - I was looking for the basics. And what I found just upended my favorite, spaghetti sauce.  Mine is more of a vegetable stew. The past couple of years I've made large quantities to freeze over the winter. It's cheap, delicious, nutritious, and versatile. The more authentic recipes, I think, use very few herbs or spices. Some thyme, maybe. So it's a great base for just about any ethnic variation you like: Italian, French, Near Eastern...

Anyway, I took myself by surprise yesterday when I got done loading the car trunk with grocery store groceries and as I got in and fastened the seat belt, thought: "Wenninghoff's." That's a multi-generational family produce farm in the north central area of Omaha. So I drove on out there and guess what, came home with eggplant, zucchini, red and green bell peppers, onions, plus a buttercup and butternut squash, a small box of tomatoes, and some little red potatoes. The squashes and potatoes will go into homemade TV dinners that I'll freeze, some with roasted chicken portions, others entirely vegetarian, to add some variety in the winter. Here's what I got:

$23.50.

This saves me incredible amounts of money in the winter, and makes sure I'm eating a  lot of vegetables. And oh my, do I love ratatouille! It's good just with garlic bread and some parmesan on top, or over noodles, or rice (I dislike the idea of having it with potatoes, for some unknown reason), or some cooked lentils mixed in. Some ideas for variations:

French: thyme, basil, rosemary, bay leaf; with of course a baguette hot out of the oven and butter, and a green salad
Mexican: Mexican oregano, a dash of chili powder, a teaspoon of cumin seeds, some fresh cilantro and shredded cheddar on top; serve with corn bread or tortillas
Italian: a tsp or 2 of fennel seeds, oregano, basil, and bay leaf with parmesan on top; over spaghetti or penne, garlic bread side with a lettuce & tomato salad
Near Eastern: I am not very well versed in this, but I do know that za'atar - a flat bread with lots of thyme (here is David Lebovitz's blog post that turned me on to za'atar) and sesame seeds and sumac - goes very well with it indeed, even my poor imitation of za'atar

Next month is soon enough to start thinking about sealing the house up with plastic over the windows. I dread that, for eventually the house air seems stale and I start getting stir-crazy. But, it makes a significant dent in the gas bill, so there ya are.

I feel so cheated

I went to a showing of the documentary "Mercedes Sosa: The Voice of Latin America" tonight at Filmstreams. I only found out about her 4 or 5 years ago, through a duet she did with Francis Cabrel on one of his CDs quite a few years ago. I immediately knew I had to find out about the woman with this astonishing voice. I got a CD -- but I've drifted away from listening to a lot of music in recent years. Seeing this film tonight has got me scrambling for more Sosa.

That voice! That face! That golden heart! If you get a chance to see this movie, see it. Find her music, listen to it. She was famous and loved around the world - except in the US. I'm sure the lack of Mercedes Sosa music here had to do with politics, plus mainstream white America having no interest in the music of "furriners." This would fill me with rage - except Sosa was not about rage, not at all.

The Spanish language web sites I found via Bing aren't very accessible to non-Spanish-readers like me. I recommend reading the wiki article  and look on YouTube - I'm listening to a jaw-dropping duet with her and Joan Baez right now. Maybe if enough US folks start buying her music, we'll get better English web sites? So more can find her?

One little project finished!

Last week I finally finished Sock Number - well, what number is it, anyway. Way back in the deeps of time, like at the end of 2012, I started a pair of socks in Malabrigo Boticelli sock yarn, a lovely blend of reds. This would be the third pair I will have made, so Numbers 5 and 6? I finally finished the first Boticelli sock (#5) last month.

(The reds are a bit deeper than this photo shows.)

In the meantime, in February of this year, I started another pair of socks, from Trekking 474 sock yarn in a lovely scrumptious variegated colorway. 

It will be the 4th pair I will have made (anyone remember the multiplicity of tenses one alien species practiced in Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy at this point?), so Numbers 7 and 8? Except I finished # 7 before # 6. So which should have which number?


It's not important, right. The important thing is, I finally finished the 4th pair! And they're the first that really fit! I'm so chuffed.

There is something very powerful psychologically in finishing something, for me, with my chronic Startitis and unfinished projects of all sorts all over my domain. It makes me want to get busy and finish something else! Well, er, um, really it makes me want to START something else LOL, just what I need. However, at this point, I do have that second Boticelli sock to start, so that will scratch that itch.

This weekend I bought a lovely set of four tan linen napkins and seven autumn colors of DMC floss, and I'm on the hunt for nice autumn leaves embroidery patterns to decorate the napkins with. I'm sticking to SIMPLE patterns so there is some remote possibility of these napkins getting finished before I die.

A lovely, slow summer doesn't make for exciting blog posts

For anyone who may wander over here occasionally, I apologize for being even more boring than usual. I've been enjoying a pretty serene summer, which means there's not been much of interest to blog about. How's this for excitement: I've been making a real effort to read more!

*and the crowd goes WILD*

I know how annoying it is when you keep going to a blog hoping for something interesting and new to appear, and it's the same old weeks-old post sitting there decomposing. So I finally bestirred myself to find and install a "Follow by email" widget on this blog. It's over in the right-hand column. If you put your email address there, whenever I get around to making a new post, it'll show up in your email. That way you avoid the irritation of seeing the same moldy old post alla time time time.

ETA: When you enter your email address, the program will send you an email to confirm that you really want to subscribe to emails from this blog. You can decline or accept; if later you want to unsubscribe, there will be an Unsubscribe option at the bottom of each of the emails. As far as I know, I don't get a list of who has subscribed, but even if I do, I won't use your email for anything at all. The subscription provider handles all the addresses and only uses them for this one task.

Yes, this is what passes for thrills around here. I like it because I dislike drama. Had enough of that, ready for peace. Oh, okay, here's something new: I made another personal journal last week. I covered this one with denim from an old pair of jeans. It's even less perfect than the first one I made, because like an idiot I thought I knew all the steps so I didn't bother to go over onto SeaLemon's YouTube channel and review them. Oops. It'll serve, but I've put a memo in the back of the new journal to go consult SeaLemon before tackling the next one!

Mistakes: used too few pages; the front and back boards are too wide for the text block; the bookmark ribbon could be 1/2" longer... 

general lack of precision and accuracy in cutting the boards and pasting the text block in.  Pluses: well, it serves, doesn't it? It's comfortable in my hands and

I had fun using old maps for the endpapers and

  I found some photos from catalogues of some space

 flights and auroras to doll the pages up a little.

Here are the videos I referred to:

How to make a text block

How to make a hardcover book

SeaLemon includes in-video links to skills used in each video that you may not have run across, such as creating your own book cloth for binding.

And here's a page that has all the basic bookbinding video links in a list.

I really like her bookbinding videos and I've bookmarked them because I'll be making various kinds of notebooks and pads in the future.

Infrequently,

you look something up you think is going to be pretty simple, and what you find is rather astonishing.  The viral video of the guy dancing on the walking machine in the gym to Bobby Darin's "Mack the Knife" caused me to wonder about the history of the song. The lyrics have always seemed a little - poetically mysterious? - to me, for a Rat Pack song about a mafia hit man, which was what I thought it was. Hoo boy, was I wrong...

Culture...it's what you're soaked in and don't even know it.

Lyrics:

Oh, the shark, babe, has such teeth, dear
      And it shows them pearly white
      Just a jackknife has old MacHeath, babe
      And he keeps it … ah … out of sight.

      Ya know when that shark bites, with his teeth, babe
      Scarlet billows start to spread
      Fancy gloves, though, wears old MacHeath, babe
      So there’s nevah, nevah a trace of red.

      Now on the sidewalk … uuh, huh … whoo … sunny mornin’ … uuh, huh
      Lies a body just oozin' life … eeek!
      And someone’s sneakin' ‘round the corner
      Could that someone be Mack the Knife?

      A-there's a tugboat … huh, huh, huh … down by the river don’tcha know
      Where a cement bag’s just a'droopin' on down
      Oh, that cement is just, it's there for the weight, dear
      Five'll get ya ten old Macky’s back in town.

      Now, d'ja hear ‘bout Louie Miller? He disappeared, babe
      After drawin' out all his hard-earned cash
      And now MacHeath spends just like a sailor
      Could it be our boy's done somethin' rash?

      Now … Jenny Diver … ho, ho … yeah … Sukey Tawdry      
      Ooh … Miss Lotte Lenya and old Lucy Brown
      Oh, the line forms on the right, babe
      Now that Macky’s back in town.

      Aah … I said Jenny Diver … whoa … Sukey Tawdry
      Look out to Miss Lotte Lenya and old Lucy Brown
      Yes, that line forms on the right, babe
      Now that Macky’s back in town …

      Look out … old Macky is back!!

Perfect summer night!

Last Friday evening,my friend Doris and I went out to Fremont to show support for a friend of ours, Michael Jones, as he displayed his hot air balloon, Emerald City Express at a “balloon-glow” event for a church fundraiser, ice cream social/fun fair (I guess?). I took lots of pictures and even drew one! 

 A “glow,” I learned for the first time that night, is when the balloons are inflated but never leave the ground, and the operators shoot flames up inside them to make them glow - a lovely spectacle for the crowds.  But because of the winds, the four balloons were only vertical at one time for a very short period of time. The crowds - especially the little boys and the little boys disguised as grown-ups - were excited about it all anyway. I got a good upper-body workout out of it - when inflated, those things want to FLY DAMMIT and we had six people hanging onto the sides of the basket with Michael and his niece standing inside it. That was 20 minutes of strain, let me tell you. And the wicker basket sides are like a cheese grater - my knees show the evidence. But it was grand fun, I’m so glad Doris called me and invited me. I ate a hot dog, and an ice cream cone, so it was perfect. Good company, too.

(I told Michael to strike an intrepid pose. I think he needs an aviator cap, goggles, and a white scarf, don't you? Or maybe a top hat.)

Michael’s niece Heather Jones, Michael, his nephew Allen Jones and *his* wife, Kat - the ground crew that night.

These things attract attention even when they’re lying down!

The giants are awaking…that’s Michael’s beauty in the front; Emerald City Express! I was trying to walk and take pictures at the same time, dummy me.

Looks scary, but everything’s OK. You can feel that heat from 150 feet away, though.

Now there are THREE waking giants.

After that, I got busy trying (feebly) to help get Emerald City Express vertical, and keep her on the ground. The three balloons (the fourth was deflated before the other three got vertical) were only vertical for a few minutes; once they were standing up they interfered with the wind such that the middle one was bobbing around impinging on the other two, so there was only a brief Glow display and I wasn’t taking pictures. 

But it was a grand evening complete with hot dog and ice cream, what could be better? Oh yeah - a yard sale - and Doris and I hit the one on the main drag heading toward the fun fest on the way there.

Then on Sunday I hosted another Game Day for my buddies Linda, Sharon and Doris. We had a great time playing a new game that I got by supporting its Kickstarter campaign, called "paperback." 

As usual half the fun was figuring out how to play the darned game. I think some developers forget their customers aren't all experienced gamers. But we worked it out to our satisfaction and it IS a really fun game. Then we played a game of Forbidden Island - I think that's one of the group's very favorite, so far. Food was et, and a good time was had by all. 

Updating my US travel map

I've added a couple-three states since I last posted it in 2011:

visited 29 states (58%)
Create your own visited map of The United States or Triposo world travel guide for Android

aughhhhhhh

Just wrote a check for over $6000. Having AC system and hot water heater replaced today. How kind of them to decide to fail me at the same time.

I'm going to escape into a book for the rest of the day.

A regretful admission

I am *not* going to get *any* of the books read for the Once Upon a Time Challenge that I so rashly announced here.

It was one of those impulsive ideas that I tend to sign on for and then beat myself up for once I realize it was never going to happen.

I'm trying not to beat myself up for this failure. I mean, it is of no consequence to anyone, not even me. So I shall apply my rational mind and put this behind me. No harm done.

*dusts off hands* Now off to that PhD I never even applied for... (not really).

First I fallen behind then I catchen up

Lots of putzy stuff going on in the umpteen days since my last post. Mostly house and yard-keeping. Some fun stuff, too.

I got the director's chair camp chair re-canvassed for my adventurer's bedroom:

I got low-cost (what I thought was) canvas from the Hancock's upholstery remnants. Turned out, it stretches a bit. I didn't know that until I sat in it. It's OK to sit in but I wouldn't bounce around much. It's mostly just for show anyhow. I was pleased with how it turned out.

It took me forever to get around to mowing my back yard (I love it long and going to seed but heh heh I don't think my neighbors do) but now that it's done (last Sunday!) it'll be easy to keep it mowed weekly. The front's looking pretty good. I planted a bunch of lavender Ageratum, white annual begonia with bronze leaves, some dark purple petunias and white petunias, in the little bare spots in the front boomerang and along the side of the garage.

I've been watching out for fireflies but haven't seen any yet. I wonder if the temps have been a little cool so far. It'd be nice if they'd show up for my son's and family's (how *do* you punctuate that?) visit next week.

I finally got to see "The Triplets of Belleville" on Netflix (meaning N. finally got it bought) - not at all what I was expecting. What an odd, weird, film. Still deciding whether to buy it for my French movies library... I also bought "The Night of the Doctor" off Amazon. I think that might be the best acting job Matt Smith ever did in that role, and that is saying a lot, IMO. It will require additional viewings, like all the big DW's do.

As for reading, I just finished The Way of Herodotus by Justin Marozzi:

I really enjoyed it. I knew nothing about Herodotus but now I want to get his "Histories" and dig into them like crazy.

I'm currently reading "Full Dark House" by Christopher Fowler:

It's the first in the "Bryant and May" London detectives series and I'm really loving it.

I'll be learning all about vegan cuisine while the kids are here, looking forward to that.

And that's about it. Lovely weather we've been having, all is well and I am among the luckiest people alive, rich in friends and family.

ttfn

And furthermore...

Seems like I just discovered I have a blog, LOL. But it occurs to me I should share a couple of fantastic women whose blogs and wonderful, amazing thinking and creativity has been enriching my life and world view lately. I'll go in chrono order of when I first came across their web sites.

Ada Palmer is a scholar in Medieval and Renaissance history, at Texas A&M University in College Station, TX. She's also a genre fan, a writer, and composer and many more "-ers'."  Her blog "Ex Urbe" is fantastic. She has a series about Machiavelli that in addition to being fascinating, completely upended everything I'd ever heard about him. Her geekness is that period of history, and she's not only written music and blog posts - she did her PhD dissertation about it. And she's a science geek. This is a song she's written about real-life space exploration. Caution: may require hankies. I love, love love this, and she has a permanent fan in me.

My newer find is Felicity Ford, a soundscape artist (never heard of one? Neither had I. Wow, has she picked an enthralling career!) who is also a knitter and textile designer, and has one of the most infectious sunny enthusiastic attitudes I've seen in years. She lives and works in Reading, UK (I hope that's how you write that.) Just watching her Kickstarter video for her new book on designing knitting patterns had me grinning, as they say, ear to ear. (Of course I contributed, how could I not?) Her web site is The Domestic Soundscape and you must, must, must set aside an hour to go visit it. Luscious knits and sounds, and delightful creativity and humor.  (I'm writing this at 1:30 pm CST - there are only five more hours to go on the Kickstarter campaign so if you think you're interested, you'd better get over there! The book will be available once it's published, of course, but why not get in on the ground floor (with some lovely supporter rewards)?  She also (as if this all wasn't enough!) has a bi-weekly podcast called KnitSonik! It's available free on iTunes, too.

The few things I've said about these two women are just a tiny fraction of the areas they explore and the things they have accomplished, and the terrific projects they've got going.

ETA "Renaissance" to Ada's specialties.

They're falling like dominoes, I tell ya

Finished another book last night, this one for the mystery book club at the library. It's The Janus Stone, by Elly Griffith.

 

I really like this one a lot. It's the second of three (so far) in a series about a forensic anthropologist, Ruth Galloway, in Britain, called in to determine if a small skeleton found under the door of an old Victorian mansion, now being demolished for new apartment buildings, is modern, old, or ancient. I like Ruth a lot. She's an almost-40, not-thin, not-hot, professional woman with flaws and strengths (more than she knows), passions and prejudices. She's smarter than I am about when to shoot off her mouth (or punch some asshole) but when she does stand up, look out. Her relationship with her friend, Det. Chief Insp. Harry Nelson, is a source of warmth and oh boy complications, for both of them. The book has quite a few laugh-out-loud spots, which are always welcome. The story line is dark, twisted, and sad, and there are excerpts from an unknown perpetrator's disturbing diary at regular intervals, steadily ratcheting up the anxiety level. 

So there's another book read and reported. Last night I picked up the most recent Flavia DeLuce novel, The Dead in Their Vaulted Arches.  I devoured it the instant I got it home a few weeks ago, and then went back and re-read the whole series. This is my second, slower, reading. I love it as I love all of the Flavia books, but something - a rather major something - that struck me falsely the first time, did so even more this time. I won't write about it in my review because I don't intend to give out spoilers. I'm hoping to find someone who's read it who would be willing to talk about this point privately, though. 

Lagging behind with my reporting, here

Did a spate of sewing last week; this:

is the latest grocery tote project. Only two more to go and I'll have replaced all my venerable old (1985!) grocery sacks with these new, pretty ones. I'm finding that sometimes grocery clerks are hesitant to assume they're for my groceries, even though I plunk them on the conveyor belt ahead of my groceries. It's no surprise that female clerks commenting outnumber male clerks commenting by about 5:1.  I have to say, I haven't seen any prettier grocery totes than mine in any store I've been to. LOL this retirement gives one lots of time...

In the book-reading realm: Still none read for the Challenge (see right column and a few posts ago) but I have been working on my giant, teetering TBR pile steadily. I've re-read: Louise Penny's A Trick of the Light (for the library mystery club), and Alan Bradley's Speaking from Among the Bones, just because I love Flavia.* Well, and Inspector Gamache. I dearly wish we could get the Canadian Gamache TV specials series here on Netflix, sigh. I suppose it'll come around eventually, but really,  Nathaniel Parker as Gamache??? swoon

      

I've also partially read a non-fiction book that kind of disappointed me. I did get about 3/4 through before I realized I was Slogging, and quit.  Now, I loves me some biogeography - deeply, madly, truly I love it. So The Monkey's Voyage by Alan De Queiroz was totally my cup of tea. 

He discusses the ongoing controversy raging between the "far-flung species totally coulda rode accidental natural rafts to remote island sites" camp, and the "species on remote island sites got there when Gondawandaland (or was it Pangaea?) split up WAY before then" camp. It held my interest as long as it stuck with the bio- and the geo- - but it seemed to devolve into a certain amount of axe-grinding and personality conflicts (which engender so many of those delightfully entertaining shitstorms in Letters to the Editor columns in scientific journals) ego-stroking and petty bickering.  Ho-hum. Life's too short.

Yesterday, I finished The Geographer's Library by Jon Fasman.  

       

I really enjoyed reading this thing. It reminds me more of The Club Dumas than what it's been compared to, or rather slotted in next to, which is Dan Brown's The DaVinci Code. It interleaves descriptions of fifteen ancient objects that were stolen from the library of (an actual, historical) Muslim polymath, adventurer and traveler in the early 12th century in northern Europe. Latvia, I think, and/or Estonia. It gets confusing. Anyway, Those are alternated with a Today story of a young, kind of aimless small town reporter who haplessly crosses paths with the seriously dangerous people who are trying to find all these things, when he takes on the writing of an obituary of an old college professor at his alma mater. Naturally the flaky old guy turns out to be something other than what he seemed. Whoa Nelly, WAY Something Other. A mysterious and alluring woman a few years older than he, one of his own former professors, a likeable oafish but really brilliant cop, and of course the aforementioned Bad Guys make this a real page-turner. However ... after finishing it, some questions came to mind that made me realize that it could have been a lot *better*. It doesn't really fulfill its promise and potential, and that's all I say about that. I loved it while I read it, and maybe I'll entertain myself by imagining what *could* have happened. 

Last night, I finished Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer.  

It's the first in a trilogy, the other two volumes will be published later this year. It's a science fiction mystery/horror kind of thing, and I have to say, the first couple chapters were seriously creepy. Readers have complained because it's so obviously the first in a series, but I don't care as long as they get those other books out here SOON! Fascinating, horrifying premise and if the thing is what it seems, it's a gratifyingly original take on what "aliens" could be like - nothing like any I've seen or read about before. Nothing like anything I EVER want to meet in person thank you very much.

So that catches me up on the reading front. And the sewing front. 

ETA: the pretty book cover pictures, and the note, below. 

* Please note, I'm putting live links to these books' amazon.com pages not because I'm an affiliate (I'm not) but because for the most part, I find amazon.com the most useful site for good images of the covers (and any interior images they may post in their Look Inside dealie-bobber) and because there are usually a good mix of reviews pro & con each book.

Ahem, well, yeah. About that

reading challenge. Haven't read a single book for it yet. But, I have plenty of time, right? Until the end or middle of May, isn't it? Yeah. No worries. Heh.

More immediately, Saturday is International Table Top Game Day, which I and my little band of brave ladies, will be observing. Observing, but not really "participating" in because the people running the web site with the big map, with the pins for all the locations all over the world that are participating? That web site is set up for people with 1s and 0s in their very DNA. It is damned awkward and confusing to access, for me, a humble individual who was NOT nurtured by the soil of Silicon Valley since conception. Also, the web site assumes you are a business who wants ALL THE PEOPLE TO COME TO YOUR PLACE and play games Saturday - so they REQUIRE your address. I'm not putting my address on there. I did leave a query to their help desk, saying "I'm a private individual hosting a private game day for some friends and I don't want my address on the WWW, but we'd love to have a little flag in the general vicinity of the place so we feel like we're being included and counted. And we'd post a picture or two of the revelry. JUST LIKE THE PROMOTERS CLAIM YOU CAN DO, by the way."  What did I get? An email signed by someone with only a first name, saying "No worries, just sign up and we'll take care of all that."

?

Is s/he fucking KIDDING ME???

So we won't have our little flag or be able to post a picture but we're going to play the hell out of some game/s Saturday and eat good food and have a blast and I'm even going to print off the little Wil Wheaton and Felicia Day standup cartoons, and a copy of their ITTGD trophy, and put them all on cardboard and have them around (and our winner will take the trophy home. She will not be given a choice. Get it out of here.)  And I'll continue to enjoy Wil Wheaton's Table Top Games web program. But I am disappointed in the annual event's web site. They should do better by the private folks they claim to welcome. You shouldn't have to have been on the internet before you were born to understand how to sign up, and there should be a "private party" option that doesn't require your address. Oh well.