Author: Frances K R

Time is slipping away.

Wow. Sixteen days with no posts. (Coincidentally, eleven days with no writing and, barring yesterday morning, twenty-one days with no running. Correlation is not causation, but I do suspect that I am looking at some correlation, rather than pure coincidence. Will need to keep an eye on that.)

Right. Words.

…I have just, for the record, spent a good three minutes staring blankly at this screen.

Today was pretty draining; I spent eleven hours and twenty minutes of it either in transit or doing work that’s definitely useful but was (today at least) kind of repetitive and exhausting. Lunch consisted of catching up with a lot of online things, which was slightly less than relaxing, if informative. When I finally got home, the light of my life and I split dinner-arranging duties, and by the time that was done I had enough energy to go out to knit night. I’m actually really glad I did; everyone was swapping “how did you start coming to knit night?” stories, and it was good to catch at least the tail end of that.

I’m actually thinking of cutting back on my knitting a fair bit – so many of the ways I spend time (writing, knitting, puzzles, talking to people except face-to-face, gaming, reading unless it’s on an e-reader) require a pair of hands free, and I might need to start prioritizing.

(I understand this is part of being an adult, or something. When I was young, I thought adults got to stay up, like, forever, and had all the time in the world. I feel that a terrible misrepresentation is being perpetuated.)

I’m not sure if this is optimism or cynically informed pessimism. But it’s working!

So I am trying to tidy something up and get it ready to send off. And I am actually not getting this done, because the idea of revising is unnerving me greatly, to put it mildly. And as I often do in such circumstances, I turn to the light of my life, for his words of wisdom.

“What are you worried about?” he said.

“What if I make it worse and can’t tell?”

“Well,” he said in a cheer-up kind of voice, “it will probably get rejected by statistically the same number of people.”

(I confess there was something of a stunned pause on my part, here.)

“…boy,” I said in a slightly strangled voice, “are you lucky you took the knives and forks away.”

Still, you know. He’s… right, I guess?  I mean, if I make it better, it will probably get rejected by fewer people. If I make it worse, it likely won’t actually get rejected by more.

I am fairly sure that I am missing something, but since I am more looking to get unstuck than I am looking for statistical analysis[1], at least I am achieving my primary goal. Cheers!
—
[1] Which is fascinating, but often leaves me with that faintly bubbly feeling that I get when I have managed to (briefly) internalize the Monty Haul problem and the truth of the solution.

Of cats and wires

The rewards of bravery are scant and cruel.

The technician who came to fix our internet connection seems competent and pleasant, but I don’t think the salesperson he was talking to quite followed what needs to be done differently for installation sales orders.

Hoping all issues are resolved so everyone gets internet access and gets paid.

Angus very bravely came out to watch the new human, at which point Piper sat on him. (Angus, not the technician.) The rewards of bravery are scant and cruel.

Right now the cats are patiently studying the high winds outside, and I am mourning the lovely weather we were having. Nice while it lasted.

Update:

Well, the internet problem is not actually fixed, which is really annoying. Hoping it gets sorted tomorrow morning. I mean, for the moment, we at least have flaky internet access, but we had that before so it isn’t really an improvement. And the afternoon was a whole lot of fussing back and forth that just enabled us to stay in one place.

Eh.

On the plus side, the weather hasn’t gotten quite as unpleasantly chillier as I was worried it would, and we are getting some lovely windy bluster and occasional spates of rain. Combined with a warm house and extensive amounts of tea, this actually makes for a pretty pleasant afternoon.

Sticks and string (and probably bloodthirsty radioactive mutants).

I am fond of post-apocalyptic settings. I’m particularly fond of ones with a retro-futuristic styling[1]; god knows why I keep coming back to that, since it’s not as if there haven’t been some beautifully detailed and realized post-apocalyptic settings which don’t conform to that aesthetic.  I imagine it hooks into that part of my brain that always argues for finding a diner[2] if one is looking for a restaurant.

I also knit.

These two things meet in my brain not infrequently, and apparently I’m not alone. Alex Tinsley is editing a book called Doomsday Knits, which also includes lovely photos and amusing flow charts to assist you in identifying your apocalypse, and I am so there. (I think that of the patterns I’ve seen on the blog tour so far, I am particularly fond of the Fennec shrug. Am just sorry I missed the Kickstarter.)

It’ll be coming out next month. Something to look forward to.
—
[1] For those who don’t know me: why yes, this covers the excellent game settings Deadlands and Fallout, particularly Fallout: New Vegas. For those who do: yes, I’ve got my brain in Deadlands and Fallout again.  Hush. It’s just one of those things that happens every now and then.
[2] This is occasionally overruled by other parts of my brain. My brain is large; it contains multitudes. Still, I acknowledge the impulse. Tangentially: diners are apparently called coney islands in Detroit. (Also, would totally accept Detroit as a future Fallout setting. Michigan has been sadly underused. Also Ronto.)

Breathing room.

One particularly good thing happened this weekend. I’d cleared a block of time, and worked on clearing up my office. The light of my life stepped in to help when I hit the bad patch–you know the one, the “oh god, this is never going to work, there’s so much, I don’t know how I’m ever going to get it all under control.” And it’s not all done as well as I want it done, but there’s what feels like a huge difference.

The wall of my office furthest from the door is (obviously) the first thing I see when I walk in. It used to have a couple of things stacked up against it, and the edge of my desk that was up against that wall had clutter on it as well. And now neither of them do, and when I walk in through my office door, I see it looking better, and it’s just such a quiet relief.

I have been a fairly regular follower of UfYH (page title uses NSFW language) for a while now. I knew intellectually that the bit about “clutter makes it harder to think” is true. But it’s kind of awesome to actually notice it because I can feel things getting better.

I had somehow missed this.

There’s an article in the Balder & Dash section over on Roger Ebert’s site. Written by Laura Bogart, it’s called The Trouble With Carrie. It’s thought-provoking, to say the least, and I’m still processing it.

Short version of the article, which you should go read: Carrie is remarkable because she does not kick ass for anyone else. She does it for herself. Sarah Connor–oh, my god, please understand this isn’t an indictment of Sarah Connor, who by the second movie has become a brilliant and much-beloved-by-me character in what is assuredly one of my favourite albeit not watched-to-tatters movies–does what she does for her son. Ripley is unremarkably motivated by survival (does not count; this is about doing more than what you need to do to survive), but goes above and beyond that, moving from rescuing cats to the iconic “Get away from her, you bitch.” Laurie Strode is babysitting children she needs to take care of. Kick-Ass does what she does because her father tells her to. When Nancy Thompson is done being motivated by survival, she comes back to help the other children.

But Carrie, as of the latest version, does it because this should not have happened to her, and it was not fair, and she has fucking had it.[1]

This sounds selfish.

And kind of glorious.

Scott Lynch once quoted H.L. Mencken as saying “Every normal man must be tempted at times to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats.” Not for someone else’s sake. Not because it’s easy to afford. Not because other responsibilities demand it. But because sometimes, dammit, you just want to say that it’s not okay to need to eat so much shit.

I am working a lot harder to make time for this movie, now.
—
[1] To be clear: this “it is not fair” motivation is not unique. It happens a lot in the rape/revenge subgenre if the victimized woman survives. I generally don’t watch that genre, because Reasons I Do Not Feel Like Unpacking Now; I just wanted to note that Carrie is not something utterly new (and no, I’m not saying her movies are an example of r/r either, and now I’m getting back to the main post).

Always it is the zombies.

There’s a nifty little running app called Zombies, Run! It assembles a playlist from music on your phone (I can’t remember if it uses WinAmp specifically or if that’s just how I use it), and then it intersperses the songs with radio transmissions from a camp of survivors after a zombie outbreak. You become Runner 5, one of the camp’s couriers, going out on assorted survival missions and not incidentally dealing with plot twists and betrayal and (speaking as someone who has not played very far in) another Runner who I think is just being a teeny bit too gleeful about the prospect of shooting me as a lying traitor.

(Okay, she probably wouldn’t use a bullet if she could avoid it. That would be wasteful.)

Anyway, it is a pretty awesome app for encouraging running–you get a cute little radio play mixed with your favourite workout songs, and then there’s also the option to have intermittent hordes of zombies show up and encourage you to really run, what with the slavering and the groaning–and I’m very sorry I took a break from it as long as I did. But I picked it up again today, and…

Eh. I have done worse. Mostly by not trying to go out for exercise walks at all, but I have done worse! So that was a productive exercise moment in my day.

Catching up.

I have been stress-inducingly behind on a few things lately. The last couple of days have resulted in my managing to clear up some of them; hope to continue to make progress (touch wood, smile, move along to other topics before something comes up to throw a wrench into the works).

I’ve found I do fairly mechanical things (knitting, sorting, or repetitive coding) much better when there’s a familiar movie in the background, so I was able to make fairly good progress on a day which involved two run-throughs of Trick ‘r Treat (mentioned back here), a playing of Coraline, and a playing of The Shining. (I may not use The Shining for this purpose again; the soundtrack is too prone to blaring.) The length of a movie also provides an excellent cue for when it’s definitely time to get up and take a break.

I’ve drinking a mix of teas from David’s Tea lately–a place that sells fairly normal blends, and interesting herbal blends, and then blends which have little gold sugar confection decorations or pieces of popcorn or candy sprinkles. This is quite lovely, except for the bit where a fair number of the blends are tea, which is not a caffeine-free substance, and thus is not conducive to drinking in great quantities a few hours before bed. (I’ve recovered. I’m sure someone with a less ragged sleep schedule than me could come up with something quite pithy to say about (1) tea and (2) the sun never setting on the British Empire.)

I read Stephen King’s Doctor Sleep in three days, and yes that is an unusually long time for me to take at it. Pleased overall, looking thoughtfully at a couple of details, more thoughts in a bit.

I read Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s This Strange Way of Dying and really quite loved it, just saying. Dreamy, dark, sharp, and oh dear god I need to get back to writing proper reviews again because this one so deserves it. (It’s here on GoodReads, for those so moved to add it to their shelves.)

Several more things I am hoping to get done today; am going to take a short break (possibly until the tealight in my cute bat holder finishes burning down; it’s chilly and rainy and dark and wet out here, and candles do improve the mood), and then get back to it.