Borrowed from the library

When I was in Cape Cod in August, I stopped at The Mystery Bookstop in West Dennis. It has a lot of mysteries (as one might expect) along with a fair amount of new young adult fiction and some beachy-type reads. I bought two books (Winspear mystery and a ~meh~ romance or chicklit type), and made note of two YA authors whose books looked interesting – Namina Forna and Jasmine Wargo. My local library had one of the books (Forna’s The Gilded Ones) and a different book by the other (Here We Are Now by Jasmine Warga). I could appreciate the craft and narrative style in both books, but didn’t really love either: it’s me, not them.

Next book up is a biography of Rosalind Franklin.

Watched The Fall of the House of Usher online. Now I need to go back and re-read Edgar Allan Poe.

Went to a bunch of open houses. Two possibles…I’m just cringing at interest rates right now. But I’m balancing that against having fewer immediate neighbors, which would be a relief.

Flu shot and Covid booster scheduled for next week. Had delayed it due to a potential labor strike at my HCP.

Wondering if there will be a government shutdown in November. I’ve got travel planned and selfishly wonder about TSA agents and FAA controllers, especially over Turkey Day. (Based on other shutdowns, I would likely be excepted and have to work, too, but can do so online.)

Don’t really know what to say (or do to help) with things going on in the world. Have so many things been so bad all the time, or was I just not paying close enough attention?

Summer travels

I didn’t travel or take time off much this summer until the end. Went to Pittsburgh for Picklesburgh, which was relocated within the city, ostensibly for crowd control and safety but it was as much of a crush of humanity as bridge versions. Great people watching if you had a space in the shade staked out.

At the end of August I drove to Maine, meeting up with a friend. We both worked remotely and did a little bit of tourism. Had the obligatory lobster at the Porthole in Portland, an excellent donut at Holy Donut, margaritas as Taco Escobarr, and whoopie pie ice cream. Best overall meal from start to finish was at Empire. Loved the Portland Museum of Art, enjoyed a craft festival and weird museum, drove to Ogunquit for lunch and to walk Marginal Way.

Headed south only to detour to Cape Cod…because why not since I had my laptop and could work from there. Visited the Whydah Pirate Museum, toured a working organic cranberry farm, fell in love with the Almond Joy latte at Three Fins Coffee.

How do the hydrangeas grow so giant on the Cape? And in Maine to some degree, but gigantic bunches everywhere on the Cape.

The drive home was not a delight – three different accidents that closed 84, 83, and 695/83. I’d visit Portland again but maybe fly. And the Cape, too, but that requires driving IMO.

Picklesburgh

Portland pier – dinner view

Fun, kitschy museum of oddities

Human Structures (24 Figures Connected) by Jonathan Borofsky at PMA’s sculpture garden

Hydrangeas everywhere! Giant blooms, these were the size of my head!

Sunset after an overcast day

Recent reads?

Eh, not much.

I borrowed an edition of selected prose of Fernando Pessoa from the library, along with a collection of poetry by Luis Camoes (there’s a tilde over the o and an acute accent over the i but I don’t know how to do them using my keyboard). I enjoyed the poetry, which had the English next to the Portuguese, but really struggled with the metaphors in translation; my Portuguese is still extremely rudimentary. For the Pessoa, some of the prose intrigued me but other was just nah. I struggle in part with the heteronym idea – fundamentally, are they just a bunch of pseudonyms like Mark Twain and Samuel Clements? Were they indicators of mental illness and multiple personalities? (The introduction alluded to this possibility for Pessoa based on some of his behavior.) It doesn’t really matter in the end. I can appreciate some of the work, enough that I’ve put his Book of Disquiet on my to read list.

Ilona Andrews is another former autobuy that I’m slowly letting go of. I still read the books, but not as autobuys and from the library if possible. Magic Claims was fine, I guess.

Picked up a couple of books of Mary Oliver’s poetry at the library yesterday.

In terms of watching things…not much there either. I finally watched the new season of Ted Lasso. It was disappointing overall. It felt like several possible interesting threads were abandoned, and like a bunch of storylines regressed or were wasted.

Just started watching Good Omens, in part because of the uproar that GO fans are in following the end of season 2.

Haven’t seen Barbie or Oppenheimer, mostly because I feel like everyone I know who has seen them has told me enough about them that I don’t feel like I’m missing much. Also, Nolan’s films seldom work for me.

Recent simple pleasure is the maritozzi from Doppio Pasticceria . They use chocolate cream and the brioche is faintly orange blossom flavored. (I love orange blossom, which I did not know until I had it in several dishes in Sevilla and Granada, including the Flor de Azafran gelato at La Fiorentina in Sevilla.)

Summer is half over and I have not gone to the beach. It’s scheduled for the end of the month. I’m tired of people and want to run away. I won’t, because the bank stubbornly requires that I pay my mortgage and I need a job for that. But if I win the $1.5 billion lottery, that could change. 😛

In today’s episode of Get Off My Lawn

Listening to a podcast. Host keeps mentioning the guy-er. I’m all ???. Until he says it’s a refernce to Yeats’ “widening gyre”. Except he said the name as “yeets”.

Yates. And the soft g for gyre.

I feel old.

Get off my lawn

I read a really sweet modern AU fic for Bridgerton, and thought I’d try more, including some set in the time of the books. Uh, no, back back back. Setting aside the nails on a chalkboard screech I hear mentally whenever I see apostrophe + s to signal multiples (no, just no, the plural of Bridgerton is Bridgertons, not Bridgerton’s) and similar, the anachronistic language and utter absence of social conventions makes my brain hurt. A lady in 1814 would not tell her sister that she “had always had her back”. No, ladies and gentlemen did not address each other by first name upon introduction. Sir/Lord/other titles are not interchangeable and have different conventions based on status: squire, baronet, heir to peer, etc. Basic internet research, please?

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Was out of coffee the other day. At the neighborhood store, I saw Cafe Bustelo, which some colleagues swear by. Uh, no, absolutely not to my taste. Had to run down to the store further away for Illy. Apparently I am a coffee snob? Which I never thought would be the case.

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Read Amongst Our Weapons, the new Rivers of London. I want to do a slower re-read. I liked it, but I have questions about some of the set up.

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I have tickets to the game in Pittsburgh on 4/29. Last regular season game. And maybe the last regular season game with Crosby, Malkin, and Letang, since the conventional wisdom is that both 71 and 58 can’t be re-signed and fit under the cap. Do I want to make a sign? I’m not really a sign person. And yet.

I’m off that day. My work calendar is CLEARLY marked. And my boss still scheduled a meeting for 1pm. Can I call in? Uh, sure, but I’ll be driving, so I can listen but can’t take notes, which is always the subtext of his ask.

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On a happier note: TheBiochemist finished the Boston Marathon with one of her best marathon times. \o/ And Mom is visiting Ireland again. I visited the Azores last month; so many people I spoke to were repeat visitors, and some house hunting (hmm).

Bridgerton S2

I liked it? I liked the inclusion of Southeast Asian characters via Sheffield to Sharma, but I will defer to other whether it was done with sufficient nuance – it didn’t seem offensive to me but how would I know if they’d done something awful? I thought the nod to pre wedding activities and the inclusion of patterns (paisleys) were lovely.

I did not love some of the writing for Edwina Sharma, who was inconsistent about practical marriage vs love match. I also do not love the Penelope developments.

Loved the reflections of P&P adaptations, and to Bollywood’s non-kisses.

Loved the clothes, even if they were not necessarily historically accurate. Admired the ladies’ dresses, lusted for the waistcoats.

Also: worth watching for Adjoa Andoh’s Lady Danbury. Her clothes. Her cane. Her curled lip. This line kills me: “After passion cools and fate intervenes, who else is a woman left with but herself?”

Oh, fandom, never change

Three Mark Donk/Buzz Flibbet works were posted to AO3 earlier this week. Fandom never ceases to delight me in unexpected ways.

Who are Mark Donk and Buzz Flibbet? Well…Courtesy of hockey Twitter

And they pop up every so often now. This year Evan Rodrigues is the Mark Donk for the Penguins. Last year it was Radim Zohorna. Who knows who’ll be the next Flibbet?

Year in review – 2021

Well…2021 was another year.

Still working from home. It’s not mandatory, but there’s not much point going in to the office – no one is going in willingly, mostly because they have to either drive and pay to park or brave public transportation, which is a petri dish of colds and flu at the best of times. Right now, we are tentatively going back in March 2022, making two full years of working from home. [HR and senior management have pushed back that date four times now, most recently pre-Omicron variant, so I guess we’ll see.]

Resumed some normal things, pre-Omicron. Numbers are down, compared to 2019 and earlier but are an improvement over most of 2020.

Travel:

• Road trips (2) to Western PA.
• Week in WV, spent mostly offline. Utterly delightful.
• Visit to Houston to cling to The BioChemist – 2020 was only the 3rd Thanksgiving I’ve ever NOT spent with her, so it was nice to resume.
• Then on to Seattle. In part to go someplace new, and in part to check another team/venue off my hockey bucket list. Two thumbs up both to Climate Pledge Arena and Seattle generally.

Relatively few concerts or sporting events:

• Game 5 of the PGH-NYI series in May (ugh, 2OT, what WAS that, Jarry?!?).
• Opening night for the Penguins (sorry, not sorry, Flower)
• The Hot Mess that was the PGH-MN game (lost in a shoot out after leading for the entire game).
• Coyotes vs. Capitals with The BioChemist and The Chemist.
• Penguins vs. Kraken in Seattle.
• Frank Turner acoustic – two live shows.
• John Oliver at the Kennedy Center.

Reading: LibraryThing says I read 37 books this year, including a few DNFs.

Once again, I was reminded that affectionate memories of books read in my younger years should probably be left as memories. Marion Chesney’s Six Sisters series has not aged well. Nora Roberts’ Waiting for Nick likewise has not aged well for me. Despite knowing better, I keep borrowing JD Robb books from the library, then having to refrain from ripping them in half in rage (since they aren’t my books) due to the horrendous criminal procedure and blatant civil rights violations.

On a happier note, I finally read the MurderBot series and loved it, it was the best fiction of the year for me, with Black Water Sister as a runner up. Best nonfiction was a toss up between Game Misconduct and The Cult of We.

Watched:

• New season/series of The Expanse (loved)
• Ted Lasso (I have Opinions about some of the story lines)
• GBBO – new series and a re-watch of the older series on Netflix before the disappeared on 1/1/22. [Dear Paul Hollywood, no one from the country that reveres sticky toffee pudding and treacle tart has any room to criticize USian pies as being sickly sweet.]

Really enjoyed Seattle and would absolutely go back. Despite spending a lot of time there, I feel like there were stores and nooks at Pike Place Market that I missed. And I could have spent much more time at the Chihuly museum. Had great meals at Betty and The Pink Door. Enjoyed the underground tour of Pioneer Square. Am still trying to figure out how to afford and where to put a chandelier seen at a glassblowing collective. Did a glassblowing experience at Kobo Art Garden that has prompted me to sign up for lessons locally.

A few photos below. Sorry, but I couldn’t figure out how to do the “hide and read more if you want to” using WP’s newish UI.

Not my favorite overall as glass art but I love the reflection of the Space Needle.

Iconic. Totally worth visiting.

Results of the glassblowing experience I signed up for.

The Space Needle, taken as I climbed up Queen Anne.

Recent reads

The Other Half by Jordan Castillo Price – part of the ongoing PsyCops series. This installment absolutely does not stand alone, and the plot was sort of slow to develop. I like Victor Bayne as narrator, and his voice is what kept me reading. So it was fine, but not a good starting place for anyone new to the series.

Loving Sports When They Don’t Love You Back by Jessica Luther and Kavitha Davidson. The title pretty much says it all, doesn’t it? I read this in small chunks because some of it is pretty ugly. But it is worth reading for the Serena Williams chapter alone. Would very much recommend to any sports fan.

Alone in the Wild by Kelley Armstrong. New installment of the Rockton/Yukon series. It was kind of convoluted, plot-wise. I’m kind of done with pure/strict procedurals, even when there is no big police force and everyone involved is a dubious character to begin with.

Recipe for Persuasion by Sonali Dev. DNF. I borrowed this because it was mentioned on Twitter as a sort of modern Persuasion AU with non-White characters. I just didn’t find any of the characters particularly sympathetic or interesting, so DNF.

We Own This City by Justin Fenton. True crime narrative about Baltimore’s profoundly corrupt Gun Trace Task Force. I have a lot of tangential opinions about policing and Baltimore and qualified immunity that impact my perspective of this book. But I appreciated how Fenton laid out what was going on with the GTTF at the same time and after Freddie Gray’s death, and the epilogue from COVID times that touches on Baltimore activists’ handling of protests for Ahmaud Arbery and George Floyd. Also: the irony of the mention of the city’s lead prosecutor as community crime fighter back then; news broke on Friday that she and her husband (head of the city counsel) are being investigated by federal authorities related to campaign finance abuse or other financial issues.

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Last week was the anniversary of a years working from home. It was not a happy anniversary. Everyone at work is stressed out, and work is only increasing. Almost everyone is stressed at home as well.

I’ve been thinking hard about where I want to be physically in the next few years. Home wise, I mean. Because my location is convenient in a lot of ways, I love my neighborhood, and it is affordable, but I’m struggling with the community that is my building. Little things, like people not cleaning up after pets or themselves in common areas, are beginning to really wear on my patience. So do I want to stay here? If I don’t, where to I want to be? And given the general success of telework, is the location as going to be as limited as it was in the past? I don’t know yet. More to come.

Wrapping up 2020

I’ve done a summary post of the books I read, places I visited, etc., for the last couple of years. 2020 has very little to recommend for itself looking back. The early months were pretty good, but later not so much.

Travel:

• Terceira in February (highly recommend)
• Pittsburgh for hockey (first week of March, just pre-lockdown)
• Antietam/western MD for a weekend in July
• Cape Cod for an isolated and quiet trip in September

Music:

• Online only – several Frank Turner shows, not much else.

Movies/TV:

• Can’t remember if I saw anything in the theater early on.
• Signed up briefly for Disney+ in order to see Hamilton and the first season of The Mandalorian.
• A lot of Netflix, including Schitt’s Creek (meh), Derry Girls (like it), and Bridgerton (not sure I’d bother with future seasons/series).
• Currently watching the new season of The Expanse on Amazon. I love Chrisjen Avasarala as a character.

Reading:

I finished 33 books. The highlights were Megan Whalen Turner’s The Return of the King and Ben Aaronovitch’s False Value. There are two former autobuy authors who finally tipped over the edge for me to not even being library borrows, and a lot of ~meh~ mixed in. I tried a couple of self-published works from writers I’ve found via fandom(s); sometimes the original fic works for me and sometimes not, which is perhaps a function of the canon and backstory in fandom that requires more work to establish in original fiction. I’ve been letting myself read Obama’s memoir in bits and pieces, as a comfort, so I started in 2020 but it will finish as a 2021 read. (It’ll be a highlight, I’m pretty sure.)

Books I’m looking forward to in 2021:

• Anna K. by Jenny Lee, a YA retelling of Anna Karenina. I haven’t read Anna Karenina since high school and my memory of it is such that I’m curious to read a YA adaptation.
• We Own This City by Justin Fenton. Non-fiction account of the Baltimore City Police Gun Trace Task Force, whose members have been federally indicted for a variety of crimes, including racketeering, drug dealing, and illegal searches and seizures.
• The new installment in Kelley Armstrong’s Rockton Yukon series.
• What Abigail Did That Summer, a novella in the Rivers of London series by Ben Aaronovitch.