Day by Day – Page 15

Breaking it down. (for SCIENCE!)

Missed this when it came out a year and a half ago – a new superglue that bonds at the molecular level, prompted by analysis of flesh-eating bacteria.

It contrasts particularly with some of the chemical screening assessments I’ve been looking at lately. The most upsetting of those cited an experiment testing a chemical compound’s toxicity, in which one of the dogs being steadily poisoned lasted for for nine hundred and ninety days before dying.

Please accept my assertion that those were not a healthy, pain-free nine hundred and ninety days, and let us move on. (If possessed of pets, you may wish to have a small time-out in which to cuddle one or pet one of them for comfort. I am doing this thing. I am also rambling all over the place.)

Continue reading “Breaking it down. (for SCIENCE!)”

Drowning in information

The last couple of days, I have not kept on top of my e-mail inbox as much as I otherwise might, in an ideal world. And I have a fair amount of e-mail coming in, what with one thing and another and follows and notifications and updates and this and that, not to mention a small spike coordinating with a couple of people for splitting shipping on an absolutely lovely jewelry sale.

I had 431 e-mails in my inbox. 303 of them were unread.

(In a fit of composure of which I am rather proud, I did not actually flee screaming from the keyboard. Go me.)

I now have only 335 in my inbox, and 210 of them are unread. Am hoping I can get the unreads down to double digits by the end of the ~~night~~ weekend.

There has got to be a better way to handle my e-mails. However, I am pretty sure that actually having the metaphorical space to implement that better way involves a through unf*cking of my inbox, and that currently feels more than a little daunting. (Plus I am running low on junk TV to put on while I work on this, so my options seem to be “get distracted by interesting entertainment” or “get bored because there’s nothing in the background”.)

(…wow, talk about a first-world problem. I will stop complaining now.)

Regrouping.

I haven’t written anything–well, outside of online communications and work-related email, which I generally don’t count–in a day and a half, which is annoying because I was on a six-day streak before that. I know why, and it’s understandable, but that doesn’t make it any less annoying.

It will not happen today. There. I have said it, so now I have to make it true.

In other news… well, there is a nineteen-and-change year-old-cat sitting on my arms while I type, gently pulsing and purring and being old and delicate and imperious. Doesn’t interfere with the typing, at least, although I do need to crane a bit to see over her to look at all of my screen. And I’ve just been reminded that vacation pay is issued upon request, which means that it’s been quietly accruing for the last few weeks.

Am finding that Night Vale Community Radio is actually very pleasant to listen to, being something between “background noise” and “actually requiring full attention”. It’s funny in a highly bizarre way, and while I can think of a few descriptors, they are a bit obscure, so I will just go with the slug that “It’s as if Stephen King and Neil Gaiman created a SimCity and let it run on its own for forty years.” The more I look at fiction, the more I find there’s a dearth of the unapologetically weird stuff. (There’s some – and there is obviously going to be a bit of disagreement over what’s “unapologetically weird in the service of the story’s mood” and what’s “bad worldbuilding” – but it’s rare. Suggestions welcome!)

Sore and tired, but trucking on.

Viciously sore throat today, and not much sleep. Plus one of the cats threw up first thing in the morning. I think it’s going to be a long day; may try for a midday nap.

On the plus side, there is a lovely softly-grey sky outside, shading from dove to slate, and the rain and thunder are at least making indoors seem cosier.

Pets are exhausting to take care of sometimes, but I will grant that they give you a sense of purpose.

A day of new things, small and satisfying

First, CanCon is coming up again! Last year was deeply informative and engaging (and may have led to a substantial acquisition of books); am looking forward to this one. And as an email that came in late last night reminded me, I have already paid the membership fee.

(The email was addressed to “Mr. $Lastname”, which I consider to be a novel but fairly unremarkable entry in the perpetual misspellings of my name.)

Second, the latest Lovecraft eZine is out. On a related note, the thirteenth issue of Innsmouth Free Press came out a few weeks ago, and they have the usual excellent mix of more recent articles as well.

It is good, sometimes, to remember to stop, breathe, and smell the flowers. Even, perhaps especially, the ones which evoke Rappacinni’s Garden.

(Sign of the times: my phone tried to correct that to Topatoco’s Garden. Someday I will properly finish customizing its dictionary.)

Cluttered time.

Like (I guess) many people, I have accounts on several websites that I’d loosely classify as being social media sites–some (like GoodReads or Pinterest) less so than others (such as G+ or Twitter). And what I am coming to realize is that I do not think there is any way on earth I can possibly keep up with all of them. Because on top of those, there’s LJ, Dreamwidth, a deliberately scattered approach to Facebook, I haven’t even begun to look at Tumblr, and then there are all the inidividual blogs and sites and and and…

Ugh.

I am breaking out in hives just thinking about it. (Alright, to be fair, I was breaking out in hives anyway, and if you want to get technical it wasn’t hives but more yet-another-bout-of-dermatographia which come to think of it is really hitting the point where I should make an appointment about it, but…)

I used to manage to keep on top of, more or less, via Google Reader. Since that closed down, I know I’ve basically missed months of content. I can’t quite bring myself to write it off, but I can’t figure out how to catch up, either.

And today I topped four hundred e-mails in my inbox.

How do you manage it? How do you track everything you’re interested in? What sites do you follow, and how often do you check in?

Bloody peculiar magazine.

Quite busy at the moment, and with somewhat depressing details to boot. Rather than getting into all that, a small and undepressing anecdote about Weird Tales magazine, specifically about the fact that a copy arrived in my mailbox on Monday.

This would not even warrant a mention if it weren’t for the fact that I don’t have either a running subscription (mine expired a couple of years back) or a single unfilled order for the magazine in question.

It was definitely addressed to me (I checked), so I am not depriving anyone of their copy. And I mean, it’s free genre reading material, so I am not complaining. I’m just confused. I checked with my mother and the light of my life and neither of them got me a subscription, and no-one has mentioned doing any such thing. I doubt very much they’re doing mailouts to try and get former subscribers to resubscribe, since there was no note or flyer or anything along those lines in the envelope; just the magazine.

Someone I know did get a small interview in the pages, and I’m wondering if he asked that one of the contributor copies be sent my way. That’s about the only thing left that I can think of that might have caused this to happen; otherwise, I’m simply going to assume that there was a glitch in the system. Might actually call them and check; if it is a glitch, they would probably like to keep it from happening again.

(I like two of the stories rather well, but had to grind through a third. Will finish the magazine later.)

Books, again.

I’ve been culling our bookshelves for a couple of weeks now. While I’ve collected a fair number to get rid of, perhaps fifty, it hasn’t made a huge difference. I have a lot of books. Most of them still aren’t in Goodreads (and I get that funny guilty twinge whenever it recommends a book I’ve already read and have on the shelves to me). And given that Goodreads lists about six hundred books on my “owned” shelf, and yes, I really did mean most of them still aren’t in the system…

…I have a lot of books.

It’s easier to cull them this time than it was in times before, and it’s nothing to do with not wanting to read. On top of the books, I have a particular attitude: I don’t want to be the kind of person who gets rid of a book. I have had this attitude for a long time.

I’ve had it since before we bought our house.
I’ve had it since before I rented my own place.
I’ve had it since before I moved out and went to university.
I’ve had it since before I went to boarding school in Switzerland[1], and that was for ninth grade.
Like some of the books I still own, I’ve had it since I lived in London as a kid.

I think it’s very easy to embrace absolutes when you’re a kid. And it’s easy not to question those absolutes, especially when they’re not overtly harmful. I don’t want to be the kind of person who lets go of a book. Because books are awesome, dammit. I mean, that hasn’t changed for me–books are amazing, books make me happy, new ones can be a wonder and old ones are a comfort and I don’t see this changing. I love (the best of) my books, and I love the idea of books, and I have a respect for the physical integrity of books (even ones I don’t like) that’s… quite hard to override.

When I developed this attitude, I didn’t understand certain things that I understand now.

The fact of limited space in housing, and how sheddy long-haired cats can be, and how books can pile up and collect dust.
Shared space, really shared space, and the importance of not having someone you live with made uncomfortable by your housekeeping.
The low-level cringe that a cluttered room induces.
The embarrassment of finding you already own a book you just got[2]–fortunately I’ve never bought one and had that happen, but there’ve been friend loans and library loans and… yeah, it’s not a good feeling.

I’m still not the kind of person who gets rid of books casually. But I don’t want to look at myself and say I’m the kind of person who won’t get a book out of her house if it’s making her unhappy to have it there. There’s nothing noble or devoted about that.

That’s damaging, albeit in a low-level constant-background what-weight-do-you-mean-oh-this-weight-I’ve-been-carrying-this-weight-so-long-I-don’t-hardly-notice-it-no-more, and I am, finally, too old for that shit.
—
[1] In a former tuberculosis sanitarium.
[2] This is totally different from buying a replacement for a battered copy, or deliberately picking up a second copy for love or loaning purposes. On this note, you should all read Days by James Lovegrove, Stand on Zanzibar by John Brunner, and Mystic River by Dennis Lehane. Seriously.

Keeping moving.

Today felt a lot longer than Tuesdays usually do. I didn’t sleep well, which I imagine is part of it, and it took me a while to wake up. And most of the day seemed to go on strictly Sisyphean tasks; laundry when more clothes will be worn, dishes when more meals will be cooked and eaten, cleaning the litterboxen, and on and on. It was raining this morning, which was actually kind of lovely, and I wasn’t able to make it out for that; in fact, with one thing and another, I wasn’t able to make it out until after dark, which always feels a little as if it doesn’t quite count.

Still. I did make it out, and the house is cleaner than yesterday.

I’m hoping to sleep better tonight (a goal which I am sure I will get to a lot more quickly if I stop typing, but I also want to get this finished), and for tomorrow… not sure. Thinking I may need to start blocking out specific chunks of time for specific tasks in order to keep the day from slipping away.

On the plus side, the collaborative writing project I’m in seems to have started slowly unstalling itself, which is nice. Touch wood and hope it carries on.

Blinking at the calendar

Wow, it’s been a long time.

Most of February was taken up with some acute household health stuff (everyone’s fine, life carries on, thank god the crying jags were mostly staggered in timing because I think that if we’d had them all happening at the same time it would have been harder to get through). March was tied up a lot with some temporary work. And I can’t believe it’s halfway through April, good grief, where does the time go?

I spent a chunk of last night trying to update my CV to reflect something that I’m good at but that I’m not usually hired to do, and it’s a little scary. Besides that, there’s not much really going on. I’m tired and I realized today that I’ve dropped the ball on something, and I’m trying to get it back together rather than bolting in the opposite direction throwing excuses behind me. Should be manageable, really.

Piper’s having trouble walking, so I’m sitting with her in the living room and going to get through as much as I can today without leaving her alone for too long. I foresee a lot of laundry in my future today. It won’t be so bad, if I can get to the doing rather than the talking about.