ethelmay | Reading

Cattitude and I got up at 5:45 so he could pill Kaja, preparatory to her dental surgery. Both the pilling and the medical care went well, and she is on soft food only for 10-14 days. Therefore Molly is too, and we have to give them different treats than the usual dental Greenies. (Kaja will also be getting anti-inflammatories for a couple of days, and gabapentin for five.)

I got email from my brother about Mom's estate. He has done the necessary formwork so Vanguard can give us the money from her account there, where we are co-beneficiaries. His share is already in his account existing account. I tried setting an account up online, which apparently failed at the last minute, so I called and got a helpful person to walk me through the process again, step by step. I had gotten far enough earlier to create security questions, including some that I can actually remember my answers to, and haven't used repeatedly elsewhere. Separately, I need to talk to someone at Amalgamated Bank about the account there, a joint account with both our names on it. I hope they'll let me, as co-owner, close the account and transfer the money elsewhere, rather than sending them a copy of the death certificate, getting the account just in my name, and then closing it.

Mark also said he's thinking of going to London next month to sort through Mom's belongings, photos, and paperwork. So he wants to know whether I'm going as well, and if so, what dates worth for me. (Putting this here so I'm less likely to forget to talk to Cattitude and Adrian and then write back to Mark.)

ranunculus

Not a lot happened. Baby steps are being made in clearing garden beds and getting them replanted. Beetles are still being picked off flowers and dumped into soapy water. This morning there were only a couple of dozen beetles, not 100's. Progress! I'm finding that especially the cucumber beetles are hatching in the late afternoon and evening. If I do a round of bug removal at sunset I get most or all of them.
The cows have finally moved into the pasture around the house. Apparently there is still lots of water in the stream along with piles of feed, so no cows have hiked all the way up to the house for water. When they have eaten all the yummy (possibly still faintly green) grass near the creek, and perhaps when it gets a little warmer and they want the breeze on our knoll; I'm sure they will come up here.
To prepare for the cows the fish needed to be moved. Cows regularly drink the stock tanks, even the 500 gallon one, dry. This is not good for fish health. Yesterday early morning I bailed out and dumped the 170 gallon tank. There should have been two fish in it. There were none. I was pretty sure that one fish disappeared several weeks ago, but the other was seen three days prior. Down at the 500 gallon tank I couldn't see any of the 3 fish that should have been there even though I'd siphoned a lot of water out. The water was pretty murky. This morning there was a glimpse of one fish. Other chores came first, but along about noon I bailed the water level down to about 6 inches and eventually captured two fish. They are now getting used to cleaner water in their bucket. In a few minutes I'll go set them loose in the 170 gallon tank. It is sparkling clean having been scraped and scrubbed and refilled. As a predator preventive, and to give them a bit of shade, I'm going to put a shade cloth tent over the tank. It would probably be best to adopt out the two remaining fish, they are at about 3 1/2 to 4 inches and have become extremely enticing as lunch for a variety of critters.

I had wanted to weed whack the fence between the horse pastures and the cows, but having been sick last week I hired two guys to do it. They did a good job. I did find a downed tree that had to be cut off the fence and got that taken care of. SOP is to walk all fences before turning on the power, and then walk them again once the power is on listening for the snap of a loose connection. Yesterday, while checking the fence, I found a second tree on the fence. This morning Kim came to be my safety monitor while I ran the chainsaw. It only took a few minutes to get the tree out of the way. Kim mentioned it would be nice to have a branch that was hanging into the arena pruned up so I went off to get the pole saw. The pole saw (chainsaw) dumped 1/4 cup of gas on the driveway gravel, which it REALLY should not have done. Off to the repair shop with it! An hour later one of the two weed whackers, which was running perfectly day before yesterday, refused to start. It's selector switch: off, start, run; just flopped around. With two broken items I suspect I should drive to Cloverdale and get them into the shop.

Yesterday morning was consumed by a trip to Fort Bragg to have my back worked on. Both back and my neck feel better; along with my thumb which entirely quit hurting. While at Dr Richard's I asked if there was a pet shop that sold fish. I stopped by a really clean and neat feed store and picked up 6 tiny feeder goldfish. They are happily swimming around in Firefly's water tank. They are way too small to be tempting as a meal. Once the cows are gone for the summer some of them can go to the overflow tank. That will be a month or more from now. Along with goldfish there are mosquito fish available, but goldfish are much tougher fish. Goldfish will survive long, long after mosquito fish die and they do just as good a job at eating up mosquito larva.
The most recent Dahlia to open is lopsided but really lovely. Definitely one I'll keep.

mildred_of_midgard

There are two things I was expecting to go badly this year but have surprised me:

1. Every spring, the plot of land next to our front porch erupts in weeds. I spend *hooours* pulling them up. I managed to uproot the weeds in the back the first spring, so it no longer happens there, but it took me so many weeks and left the place such a mess while I was in progress, that I decided not to attempt it in the front. The front is more than twice as big, and it's also more visible, so that the pile of dirt will stick out like a sore thumb, and we'd probably get reamed again by the Board of Aesthetics at This Condo. So I just resigned myself to breaking them off at the stems every year.

So of course, when my wife announced on April 8 that she was moving, and spring was starting, I was like, "Oh, nooo, I'm going to have to find a place to live *and* help her with her move *and* declutter *and* weed!"

For some reason, for the first time ever, we didn't get Invasion of the Weeds! We started to get a handful, and I aggressively pulled them up the moment I saw one (it helped that it happened when I was going for daily runs, so I would actually see them every day), and they never took over. Not sure if it was a function of me being so aggressive, the landscapers using more mulch this year, growing conditions, or what. But I'll take it.

I am unbelievably grateful for this small blessing, you have no idea. The last couple years at least I was listening to History of the Germans, which entertained me while I reclaimed our plot of land, but this year I have waaay too much stuff to be doing.

2. Then there was this development 2 days ago, copy-pasted from WhatsApp to my wife:

I just got my 6-month performance review, and I got the highest score!

I wasn't sure, since I haven't had the best 6 months (January I had a difficult time getting back into the swing of things, and then the very igneous stuff happened to us), and my boss said he was on the fence, but my good work in the last few weeks pushed me over into the highest category.

There are 4 categories, and most people most of the time get a 2 out of 4. I think I've consistently gotten a 4/4 since this rating system started, however many years ago.

Awesome: me

I wouldn't have protested a 3/4, and was steeling myself to expect it, but this was nice!

walkitout

It is A.’s last day of school!

I got a vegan chocolate chip cookie and vegan peanut butter chocolate chip coconut milk ice cream at a Cookie Monstah in Burlington. Both were very yummy.

I bought an alabaster “hurricane”, which I intend to put a small, rechargeable LED light in. There is space to run a small cord through the bottom, so I may get a usb-c rechargeable one and leave it plugged in all the time, control it with Alexa, and it would keep working even in a power outage. I bought it at Cabot House. It’s an “Eichholtz” and quite lovely. I went there to look at the same brand’s Terzo dining table, but they didn’t have any on the floor. It’s a candidate for the 3 bistro table combining to make one dining table idea for the new house. Not at all what I initially had in mind, but it’s got a black ceramic top and a brass pedestal base and it looks cool and might work really well. R. has some concerns it might scuff, because it is shiny.

We had lunch at Common Craft. I got the Exhibit A Porter, because it is yum, and the dumplings, which were also yummy.

R. went to the costco and came back with legos. That may be next.

The steak tips at Tavern on the Square are marinated. Sigh. A. does not like that. There’s a Shake Shack at the Mall so we got her custard and a burger there. Mall closes up early. R. and I had dinner at Row 34. We each had one of each of the 10 oysters. Yum. I had the tuna tartare. I also had the Very Olde St Nick Harvest Rye with a big rock (I asked for the big rock), and it was tasty. R. had a mezcal drink that was yummy, and I had the mocktail which was probably the best of all three. Would go back just for the mocktail. So much flavor.

minoanmiss

( You're about to view content that the journal owner has advised should be viewed with discretion. )

Current Mood: angry

walkitout

I picked up dinner for A. at Seasons 52. R. and I went to Osterio Nino. It was really good. I had two apps — the mussels and the bruschetta. He got the chicken piccata, which was apparently quite good.

My currency order at the bank was delivered, so I went and picked that up.

T. departed for camp.

Today is A.’s second to last, aka penultimate, day of school this academic calendar year.

I walked with M.

I had a phone convo with J.

oursin

Okay, am v depressed by all the ongoing hoohah around AI and the people using it rather than their own brains, quite aside from Evil Exploitation aspect -

- but on intellectual pollution, having been moaning inwardly, banging the floor with my ebony cane and beating my head on my antimacassar for a considerable while over the awful errors that appear in prose because the word is correctly spelt but it is THE WRONG BLOODY WORD.

That the person who created that text has not picked up on, sigh, groan.

Insert here a lament for the decline in copy-editing and proof-reading, which might have spotted this sort of thing and corrected it.

I am a little worried that we are now have generations who do not know what words actually mean, because spell-check has not said anything .

This is brought to you by having encountered the term 'itinerary' deployed for something that is not, as far as I can see, a journey, but the programme/timetable for a meeting. Perhaps there is some sense of a progression to be made???

(The mermaids signing, each to each: that is why I cannot hear them.)

conuly

( Read more... )

regshoe

I have a new obsession! And it's a bit of a surprise, because new American (/half-American) comedy in a modern setting is really not my usual kind of thing, but here we are. Étoile first caught my attention via a link to this gifset [er, big spoiler], then after clicking around a bit, finding some stuff about Cheyenne and deciding I had to know more about who she was, I decided to give the show a try. There is definitely some stuff about it that doesn't work for me, but the bits that do work really work, and on the whole it's loads of fun. Tobias and Cheyenne are, as I thought, among the highlights of the bits that work for me, but less expectedly, Geneviève has become my fave, and after watching the excellent finale I was inspired to write a little thing about her. I don't exactly know what I'm doing—live-action fandoms are not easy for me, especially one as fast-paced as this—and I'm not sure how far the ideas in this fic are really sound, but for now:

Not through words, but the first ray of dawn (1022 words) by regshoe
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Étoile (TV)
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Geneviève Lavigne (Étoile)
Additional Tags: Episode: s01e08 The Offer (Étoile), Post-Canon, Vignette
Summary:

Geneviève, the morning after.

I am beginning a slow re-watch of the show and would like to write some more stuff for it in future, so we'll see how that goes, I suppose. In the meantime reading all the Tobias/Gabin fic (there's huge amounts of it, by my standards) is being fun too!

sartorias

It's very poignant to be here again. I'm in Minneapolis so rarely that I can still distinguish each visit, but the overall sense is one of extended memory, that is not just of my own, but of anecdotes from my mother and grandmother about their lives here, my grandmother as a (very) young adult, and my mother as a kid.

Not all the memories of mine are good--the week we spent in Bloomington ranged from weird to horrific, the axis we kid spun around was the sound of my mother crying in the bathroom when my bio grandfather started his daily drinking and turned into a monster. We kids at least escaped with his bio kids (our age, his second marriage) but mom couldn't escape--we had the car.

The city that was best to them all (though mom only got to visit, never got to live there) was Red Wing. I adore that place! There's something so peaceful about Red Wing. And extended memory is very complete, as we heard ALL the stories about life on the farm, etc. But it wasn't idyllic--my grandmother and her older sister had to go--that was the conditions my great-grandmother accepted when she remarried in order to save the farm, around 1930, with the Depression really digging in. The man said he could abide the two younger girls but the sixteen year old (my grandmother) and her older sister had to get out and find their way on their own. Which they did, in Minneapolis, waiting tables.

Anyway I'm here for a con. I came a day early, knowing that getting in at one in the morning would leave me a zombie for a day. The weather is perfect--cool and cloudy. I think I'll go out for another walk.

osprey_archer

Recently I finished Robin Wall Kimmerer’s Braiding Sweetgrass, and have not yet been able to write about it, because I need time to digest it. But Kimmerer recently released a shorter companion book, The Serviceberry: Abundance and Reciprocity in the Natural World, which is a distillation of certain ideas from Braiding Sweetgrass, and also easier to digest simply by virtue of being much shorter.

The Serviceberry’s basic idea is this: our current extractive industrial economies are rattling down the road straight toward ecological catastrophe. What other economic models could we follow instead?

And as a model, Kimmerer offers the serviceberry itself. As she notes, Western economics is founded on the idea of scarcity. But while scarcity is a condition that occurs in nature, it’s not a constant. In the natural world, abundance is just as common as scarcity. A serviceberry tree after a rainy spring has more than enough berries for birds and squirrels and humans.

Serviceberries are thus one model of a gift economy. They invite humans to understand “natural resources” not as a source to be exploited but as a gift from the earth, which like all gifts creates a reciprocal relationship between the giver and the receiver. We take, but also give. (In the case of the serviceberries, by spreading the seeds.)

And, furthermore, Kimmerer suggests, modern society could use traditional gift economies as a model for one possible way forward out of our current economic race toward climate catastrophe. There are already small-scale attempts in Little Free Libraries and free farm stands and Freecycle and the Buy Nothing movement, everything from the traditional mutual aid in churches to the new forms of digital gift economy exemplified in, for instance, fandom.

This last is not something Kimmerer discusses, but fandom is my own most extensive experience with a gift economy, where people write fic or draw fanart and post it with no expectation of direct payment behind perhaps a few comments - but also the more diffuse payment of helping create an environment where other people also post their fan creations for everyone to enjoy.

Now, at this point in my life, I’ve mostly moved over to selling stories for regular old money, because we have not (yet) learned how to leverage the gift economy so that it can pay for, let’s say, a two-month road trip. But, on the other hand, so many of the friends that I stayed with on that road trip were people I met through fandom, or through book reviews or nature photos on Dreamwidth or Livejournal. The road trip would not have been possible without the money, but it also would not have been possible without the web of relationships created by the gift economy.

***

While I was reading The Serviceberry, I discovered a couple of serviceberry trees on a street near my house, in a location that made it clear they had been planted by the city. Visions of serviceberry muffins dancing in my head, I went out to pick some berries - keeping a weather eye on the road, as picking berries from a public tree felt vaguely illicit.

But berry-picking is an absorbing occupation, and I didn’t notice the man walking his dog until he was almost upon me. “What are you doing?” he asked, curious, with some slight accent I didn’t recognize.

“Picking serviceberries,” I explained. “Would you like to try one?”

He would and he did. “It’s good,” he said, a little surprised. “Better than blueberries.”

And we said good evening, and I went back to picking serviceberries as he and his dog walked on.

james_davis_nicoll

The corebook + the ICONS adventure trilogy from Free League.

Bundle of Holding: Coriolis Mercy of the Icons

james_davis_nicoll

Very nice and punctual but they've basically learned nothing in the year they've worked at the theatre. Not where to stand, not which row is which, or the general location of a given seat. The last two really matter during reserved seating shows. Whatever side that usher is on is going to have lines, and people may end up in the wrong seats.

So I was discussing the situation with my boss and I said my current approach was that each shift would be to pick one thing that usher does not know, and do my best to ensure they know it by the end of the shift. Last shift was "where to stand", for example. My reward is, I think, that usher is now _my_ special project who I will be working with whenever I HM.

I did assure my boss I do remember a previous HM who grilled ushers on seat location and would ding them a quarter hour for minor uniform infractions and that I wasn't going to use them as a model. Well, I do, but only in the sense of asking myself if the way I want to handle something is how that person would, and if it is, I do something else.

james_davis_nicoll

An artisanal cheesemaker's attempt to save her precious cheese cave lands her in the middle of an interplanetary crisis.

The Transitive Properties of Cheese by Ann LeBlanc

oursin

Happy birthday,

ase!

spiralsheep

I was listening to Rhapsody in Blue by George Gershwin this morning and thinking, "I should post a poll!" Then Tom McKinney on the BBC Radio 3 breakfast show answered my question, lol.

Poll #33244 Yes, I was tempted to call him Tim McKinlay

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 4

View Respondents

So...

View Answers

André Previn
3 (75.0%)

Andrew Preview
2 (50.0%)

Andreas Ludwig Priwin
0 (0.0%)

Current Mood: never blue
Current Music: were you not paying attention? :D

redbird

Last week:

*Cattitude read Blue Moose, by Daniel Pinkwater, aloud to us, because it's one of his favorites and Adrian had never read it. I've reread the book several times, and was happy to hear it out loud.

*I read Isabella Nagg and the Pot of Basil, by Oliver Darkshire. Decidedly weird, funny fantasy. A lot of the humor is in the footnotes, which seem to be at least a quarter of the text. Also, the title does in fact describe the book. Isabella lives in a poor, out-of-the-way village, whose wizard keeps the local goblin market in check, until one day he doesn't. The goblins sell one thing, unnaturally tempting and dangerous fruit.

*Did not finish: Girls Against God, by Jenny Hval. I don't remember where I saw this recommended, and just couldn't get into it.

Currently reading:

*Installment Immortality, by Seanan McGuire, the latest book in her InCryptid series. I started it late last night, and only read a few pages before turning the light out.

*Twelve Trees, by Daniel Lewis, nonfiction about trees and climate change. I picked this up at the libraru, as a "book with a green caover" for the summer reading challenge.

james_davis_nicoll

Have never worked a show run by human golden retrievers...

sovay

I got home to find the day's mail had brought my contributor's copy of Not One of Us #83, containing my poem "Below Surface." It is a poem of empire; I wrote it at the start of the third week in January after shouting, "I ran out of curse tablets!" It bears about as much relation to the realities of the Emperors who died at Eboracum as the medieval Welsh legends of Constantius and I see no reason that should impair its efficacy. The issue it belongs to is gone, showcasing the elusive fiction and poetry of Steve Toase, Christian Fiachra Stevens, J. M. Vesper, Vincent Bae, and more. John and Flo Stanton contribute interior art as well as the reliable spirit photography of their front and back covers. You might as well pick up a copy before it disappears.

I photographed some ghost windows. I bought myself some white chocolate peanut butter cups.

selkie's gift of tinned mackerel with lemon did not survive the night.

Current Music: Billy Bragg, "A Pict Song"

oursin

What I read

Gail Godwin, Getting to Know Death: A Meditation (2024) - rather slight, one for the completist, which I suppose I am.

Robert Rodi, Bitch Goddess (2014): 'told entirely through interviews, e-mails, fan magazine puff pieces, film reviews, shooting scripts, greeting cards, extortion notes, and court depositions', the story of the star of a lot of dire B-movies who has a later-life move into soap-stardom. I hadn't read this one before and it was a lot of campy fun.

TC Parker, Tradwife (2024) - another of those mystery/thrillers which riffs off true-crime style investigation - somebody here I think mentioned it? - I thought it went a few narrative twists too far though was pretty readable up till then.

On the go

Apart from those, still ticking on with Upton Sinclair, Wide Is The Gate (Lanny Budd, #4), boy I am glad that I am reading these in e-form, because they must be monstrous great bricks otherwise. In this one he actually ventures back to Germany, his marriage starts to crumble, he continues his delicate dance between all the various opposed interests in his life while managing to get support to the anti-Nazi/Fascist cause, Spain is now in the picture, and I have just seen a passing mention to Earl Russell being sent down for his Reno divorce (that wasn't quite the story, but one can quite imagine that was what gossip might have made of it 30 years down the line).

Up next

New Literary Review.

The three books for the essay review.

I think more Robert Rodi might be a nice change of pace from Lanny's ordeals.

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ethelmay

June 2025

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Page Summary

redbird - it's been a busy day
ranunculus - Update
mildred_of_midgard - Two things that are *not* igneous
walkitout - Thursday in Burlington
minoanmiss - LA Protests and WH military response
walkitout - Wednesday dinner at Osterio Nino
oursin - Think the rot set in with spell-check, honestly
conuly - Finished Prodigy
regshoe - Fic: 'Not through words, but the first ray of dawn' (Étoile)
sartorias - Minneapolis
osprey_archer - Book Review: The Serviceberry
james_davis_nicoll - Bundle of Holding: Coriolis Mercy of the Icons T
james_davis_nicoll - So, there's an employee I dread managing
james_davis_nicoll - The Transitive Properties of Cheese by Ann LeBlanc
oursin - (no subject)
spiralsheep - In which there is a rhapsody that was bohemian
redbird - Wednesday reading
james_davis_nicoll - People who say they like golden retrievers
sovay - And then we shall dance on your graves
oursin - Wednesday somehow agitated the feelings of a small dog in the park

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