v p n佛跳墙

Just saying hello! Danny and I are at home, not going out except for groceries, and doing fine. Danny has been working from home since last week.

Books I've read recently:

The Ghost Map, non-fiction about the process leading up to figuring out cholera, the famous London neighborhood water pump, John Snow and his frenemy Rev. Whitehead (would make such a good novel where they start out in severe disagreement and then become investigation partners!). More cheering than you might think as it is erudite and also comfortingly positive about Science.

Changa's Safari series. This was great -- straight up adventure as Changa and his friends roam around the world in their merchant dhows circa 14XX & have amazing adventures. I liked his dynamic with Panya.


Railhead by Philip Reeve. I loved this so much! A rogue, an android, another rogue, and sentient interstellar hyperspace going trains! OMG! It couldn't be better!

Death of a Nationalist by Rebecca Pawel - This was recommended to me as a detective novel of Fascist Spain, as I was discussing on FB how, while going through some old annontated family photo albums, I found a cousin Nino from Sicily who had fought in the Spanish Civil War and then slowly realized with horror that he was on the WRONG SIDE and then I found a little booklet written in Italian by a relative (his uncle the priest) that was about the family and it turns out also to be incredibly fascist (written in 1939 after Nino's death) and worse, was published in like 1972. I had to go immediately donate money to the national lawyers guild fund for defending antifa clients. OK, anyway, back to the book, it was a hard read as it was a hard time, and one of the two protagonists is a fucking Guardia Civil, but it came out very interesting and was worth the read.

The Secret Diaries of Anne Lister (vo1. 1 and 2) This is the version from the 80s, and if you missed this, Anne Lister is a lesbian from the tv series Gentleman Jack (which I haven't seen but am aware of from others' fandom). This is an abbreviated version of Anne's diaries (which were kept it code) from the 1820s. I'm curious to read some of her other diaries before and after of course! They start out a bit slow, plenty of juicy crushes and affairs, but by volume 2 you get into the actual fingerbanging action (sorry but true) and also they all have some sort of VD (probably trich) and are literally douching with mercury. Fabulous.

From December to Feb. I mostly read, well everything by MC Beaton/Marion Chesney, sparked by her death last year (one, I realized suddenly how much she had written, two, I didn't feel bad to pirate her books since she was dead and whoever inherits her IP is already going to make bank.) They're good if you like that sort of thing! (Fluffy Regencies, also fluffy detectives Agatha Raisin and Hamish MacBeth)

Love to you all, my friends.

I always forget about this. I am still kind of mid series of the Morland Dynasty, which i really like but warning that it's awesome all the way till book 22 or so when it gets to the U.S. Civil War. Ugh! No! Basically just skip that one (or, i'll jump back in on the next book and see if it improves)

I'm in the middle of a super fabulous book called The Tiger's Daughter - I love it!!

i was saying on my daily blog earlier today that it is mary renault-ish. i stand by that -- it is mary renault in fantasy mongolia with teenage lesbians.

While getting better from surgery I have been trying to change my eating habits a little.

By which I mean just not eating toast, or bread and cheese, 3 times a day.

By dinner time I am usually still too tired to cook or put out any effort.
But, the salad delivery for lunch has been very useful and amazing. A guaranteed nutritious salad 5 days a week is pretty great. I am also eating a little more dried fruit and figuring to make that more often fresh fruit.

Also in my plan is putting in 15-20 minute time slots for drawing and writing. It is not a lot but it would get me a little more out of the zone where I just blow time infinitely scrolling and rage-tweeting. 3 and 5 minute slots for mini tai chi and stretch sessions are also in there. Very tiny adjustments but I think they will help.

I dreamed last night that I was talking with my friend Beth who died a couple of years ago. I think of her very fondly and was thinking about her because we last spent time together around Pride weekend watching the parade on TV with lquilter. In the dream we talked about her rats and she told me about death. Complicated things about her state of mind and whether you could decide you were ready to die or not (she thought so but also thought it was very hard to tell once you were getting close) I liked that she had ratties in the afterlife and gossiped about them and their funny personalities same as ever (seeming sometimes like we were chirpy, inquisitive fellow rats ourselves in our busy-ness and curiosity) There was a moment in the dream where I told her I was sorry I had not been a better friend to her after we kind of argued. She did not really say anything big back but just carried on gossiping. It seems funny that we still have a sort of relationship even so. I miss her.

So glad I went out yesterday. The hardest part was just the pain from vibration of the car. I was having serious regrets as soon as I was in the car since I couldn't stretch my right leg out straight and the knee kept sort of grinding. I had to hold it still and wished I had an ace bandage on it. Kept thinking, I will regret this stupidity, I should have stayed home, I can't even get myself to the corner store much less go on a long cab ride across town and sit up at a concert, what if I was on the path to recovery but will now slip back a week or more or end up in the Moon Boots or some other bad mobility consequence. And I have to steel myself to leave early. Instead everything turned out wonderfully!!!!

The concert was fabulous (Bach and Telemann concertos ) I've never been to the little theater inside the Legion of Honor museum before - it's amazing like being inside a weird wedding cake - and I liked the painting on the ceiling, “The Apotheosis of the California Soldier,” painted by Spanish artist Julio Villa y Prades. Think how extra amazing it would be if the freight elevators and basement hallways were also decorated beautifully with swirly angels on the wall around the elevator to lift it up... the pianist did some very bad joke/storytelling that was still charming like some sort of Toastmasters hour from hell and only tangential to the music and I wondered how he could play so well when he seems to have parkinsons or some other sort of shakes going on. All the musicians were good. Especially enjoyed the itty bitty trumpet for the 2nd brandenburg concerto & the long viola-dominant bits.

I was less decrepit than probably 1/4 or even 1/3 of the audience all shuffling slowly in with canes and trying to negotiate the mind and ankle bending curve of the theater's side entrances in low light. We were also definitely the youngest people in the entire theater. Watching people try to "help" was agonizing usually sons or daughters of the older folks there clutching onto the upper arm, which doesn't help and just throws someone frail and limping off balance, and won't help them if they start to fall! don't do that! offer your arm as a sturdy handrail instead and let the frail person set the pace! I felt for everyone upholding their dignity and independence with such difficulty and stubbornness. I am glad I have the skills I have developed, which will be so useful when I'm 85. Danny staunchly leaped around buttling my scooter and cane and offering up his chair by the door to someone on crutches who really could not see the slope. She moved during intermission so we got to sit together again.

Afterwards we just laid in the grass outside the Palace of the Legion of Honor. I so enjoy heading down a path at full (4mph) speed and barrelling onto the grass even for a few feet.... it is very convenient spot for it. We were lying on a gorgeous field of clover with birds hopping around us eating bugs (I tried to ignore that this meant we were lying on bugs ourselves.) A blackbird landed on my leg and just hung out staring at me for a while, weather was perfect, and some guy was playing classical Spanish guitar. We smoked some weed from our evil villain glowstick vaping pens (d's: pax re:lax, mine: humboldt/dosist arouse) and listened to the noodly guitar in the distance. I inhaled like a motherfucker.... to good effect.

I had that thing happen where I can suddenly feel the correct way to breathe deeply, my chest relaxes, air hits parts of my lungs which never seem to get it from some base layer of asthma tightness and hunching over, and slowly I make a lot of small adjustments to realign my spine and hips and relax little muscles. It is amazing, and i wish i could figure out how to do that all the time. At some point I fell gently asleep. At another point I wiggled a shoulder and things all popped and ... i don't know what happened but my shoulder was back and down the way that physical therapists and pilates people and etc. always seem to think I should be able to do, and I felt a rush of warmth in my hand and the pins and needles/ants/electricity thing didn't quite stop but was SO much less. Then I did it with the other shoulder.

In between my doing this (probably looking like a weird, writhing mess on the grassy lawn) we were talking about... somehow d. was explaining his ideas about martian cryonics and we were in perfect accord with our descriptions of different visions of the monumental art of the martian cryonics halls (my brainwave was that the richer and douchier you were, the more your head-frozen monument would be like fabulous burning man art, because your artist reputation would help encourage future generations to unfreeze you for being interesting, but danny pointed out it might work the other way since they would not want to ruin the amazing head-pedestal art)

I also watched some passing cargo ships and enjoyed the foghorn & ship horns....

Then home, with a cab going through golden gate park (i tried to get the driver to go 6 blocks out of our way to go down highway 1 so i could see the ocean, but he would not....) Still the park was beautiful too. I went straight to bed while danny walked up the street to shop & then cooked us steak, potatoes, and peas. It is hard for me to just let that happen without my doing anything but i butted out and accepted that someone else can just cook the dinner while I lie in bed and i don't have to contribute.

Read the 1st and 2nd book in A. M. Dellamonica's portal fantasy series this weekend -- it's great.

My knees were much less painful in the night. The times I woke up I kind of continued my spine-micro-adjusting to good effect. This morning, I can still breathe deeply. Not a magical cure, my knees are still very painful, but I can move them better and my low back and hips are not giving me that unstable, "grinding and popping" feeling.

Anyway, that was lucky and I need to set aside time to meditate and do my small pt/pilates exercises today, first time I've felt able to really do them in a couple of weeks. I feel hopeful about improving, which is good since I need to go to my office once this week, and also, have the day off and fancy dinner reservations for my birthday on Friday so I hope for another warm sunny day by the coast. (Maybe the museum again and then I could get a fancy present for myself too)

My other birthday presents will be renewing my woolly socks (smartwool margarita + saturn, plus an experimental darn tough pair with flowers). And, if I can I will combine my office visit this week with the Ferry building because I have had my eye on a fancy striped wood cutting board there.

Last week I read Amberlough and its sequel, which I originally bounced off hard but then on my 2nd try, loved a lot. It's about an alternate, well, sort of 1930 Paris or Vienna but not either one, modern & decadent & cosmopolitan, with fascism threatening. The characters are caught up in complicated states of being secret or double or triple or quadruple agents. I liked the ways that people speaking often didn't realize how some trivial detail or gossip for them was valuable, life changing, world changing information for someone else.

Also read several, well, many, books by KJ Charles in a weird binge.

I read through a bunch of kids' books that I picked up last week out of a free box. The best ones were Roller Skates by Ruth Sawyer - fabulous. And Gertie's Green Thumb by Catherine Dexter, which is about a girl who wishes her mom would throw the vacuum cleaner away & their house would be full of plants - the house is half destroyed as magic beautiful gardens of all kinds grow through it - an alligator and a moose move in - & it doesn't go horribly wrong - instead, they enjoy it.

Also The Glassblower's Children, a fairy tale with 2 children stuck in a horrible castle - Really good witches in this one & a one eyed Raven named WiseWit.

I stopped reading Nexus because someone nice but very tone deaf showed up to explain to me why i should not say terrible things about it (it is just a bit rapey of a book in a way that annoys me) And explaining as if I just could maybe not take its amazing intensity. Since I am notorious for reading the worst fucking things possible this was super super annoying and then the author showed up to explain some more that he is truly a nice person, compounding the stupidness of the conversation. I had another crack at it but after several more stupid sexist bits and more pointless rape as character development, tossed it. (I think where the now peace loving solider dude was extendedly remembering / empathizing with this dead woman's experiences but basically it was "her rapes" which defined her completely and badly and which existed just to teach him that war is hell. I guess he just couldn't figure that out before getting the mind meld nano drug operating system installed in his brain. OK! Next.

I have basically been in bed for a week and a half with a couple of trips out to go a few blocks away. The stairs are too hard for me to handle. Having problems with my knees, which don't want to bend, and I'm in a lot of pain. Very frustrating. I would like to be out and enjoying things but trying to just enjoy our nice witchy little cottage and my front porch and the cat and hanging out with Danny who is playing a lot of Fortnite.

I got a great snail mail letter this week from beth's daughter - about our stardew valley games. She is 8 or so and fun to play with - I am a farmhand on her farm, Rocky Ridge. she is quite good at battle and ruthlessly getting to the bottom of the mines.

Now reading 2 books depending on mood - Theodora Goss short stories, In the Forest of Forgetting - and Lives of the Most Eminent Painters by Giorgio Vasari, which showed up on my kindle because Danny downloaded or bought it.

I wish that I could go through the web interface to control and move around the contents of my kindle but no.... you can only remove a book permanently. Why is there no interface to do this in batches from the web. Alas. Very annoying to do them one by one from the Kindle itself.

My main blog is still broken and I hate FB as much as everyone else does so, hi.

Considering exporting FB posts and just slamming them into my WP blog. Or here. Why not both.

Doc today said the epic bleeding of dooooom is likely from the pills and I should not take them continuously because some people react like that to continuous hormones -- instead of suppressing the period it means you are always having it. So, I have to stop them, which means probably a difficult next few days of basically, a tidal wave and worse cramps. Maybe after I see Star Wars, because I would prefer to be able to leave the house without leaving footprints. Or, you know, tire tracks. Whatever, I'm not going to stop taking it till tomorrow night!!!! So, then a week off and then start taking them again (but in the more usual pattern of 3 weeks on, one week off.) Relieved to hear this opinion from a sensible, somewhat bohemian, non surgically focused gynecologist.

Moomin ranting tonight a bit (charmingly) about wishing his class was broader than just European fairy tales but he also appreciates that it is focused and grounded in particular history.

I was thinking how I came up against that wall around the same age, a bit earlier, and went looking for "world" stuff or just anything not English, US based, "western culture" wanting to see anything possible. Anthologies were good or looking by specific country or ethnicity. I would root through any library or bookstore. Encyclopedias too. The indexes of books were super instructive. It took just years for me to have any real handle on the depth of the problems of histories but it was clear from the beginning that A LOT WAS WRONG. I didn't go into that (right now it is better if I listen to him than talk about my own thoughts)

Anyway! I'm so, so proud of Moomin and his excitement about scholarly things. I feel like no matter what he does in life he will have that kind of love of books and knowledge and stories.

He also really loved Gilgamesh so I am going to show him those awesome debates online between Hoe and Plough, Fish and Bird, etc.

Cannot quite work up the oomph to fix my various Wordpress problems.
Yesterday was a nice office day, tho my face still hurt I had a good afternoon there.
The smoke blew away from here over night and now it's foggy and rainy. I can't find my face mask.

I'm on 100mg neurontin at night for the face nerve pain from shingles. Taking it at 7pm isn't quite early enough (i am still groggy and weird feeling now) I'd like to go off it by the end of next week or decrease the dosage. My face really hurts..... and is cold sensitive. I need one of those microwaveable pillows.... my old one got moldy I think. the actual heating pad is huge (the size of my entire back) and rough textured. My eye is twitching.... it feels tired. I guess all the muscles around my painful face are tensing up. The skin is not too bad now but the pain has moved to a deep ache in my jaw like a toothache.

Working in little fits & starts on my new writing project (a novel)

Actual work still looming though right now I have a little bit of a break. (mid cycle, no dot release so far for 56, the lull before a big push to release 57)

Nazi rally in Gainesville is pissing me off. Hundreds of cops mobilized for this bullshit. It just helps militarize the situation even more.

Reading - Squirrel Girl novel, which was beautiful! Last night read The Lucky Stiff by Craig Rice and this morning The Fourth Postman. Hardboiled detective. But also funny! Craig Rice is Georgiana Craig.

First super super hot day here. If tomorrow will be like this I need to find the fan in the garage.

I just shaved about a pound of side hair off (it is thick) and have put it in the worm bin. Good compost aeration! And, felt happy I had cleaned and organized the closet weeks ago as I easily found my little box of house dresses.

I'm wearing this amazing reversible soft linen sleeveless dress, with a pocket for my handkerchief, that I got from Flax on skud's recommendation a few years ago (converting me fervently to linen) And my hair has been up in a top of the head ponytail all day (now much more effective with the side hair shaved off.) I think of skud affectionately whenever I wear this amazing dress (maroon on one side and lavender on the other). The pocket handkerchief is daintily printed with violets. I ironed it the other day, as I enjoy doing.

Now you know everything. All my secrets. Dresses, ironing, and the fact that I have that chicken yodeling song stuck in my head.