The Raven's Roost

I'm about halfway through reading The Dragonbone Chair, which I've had on my shelves for years and never actually got around to reading. So far I'm enjoying it, and I've found it's a trilogy, so that gives me something to look for. I'm still on this project of reading books I already own, and it's allowed me to further pare down my library as I start something, decide I don't like it and won't finish it, and it goes into the "donate" box for the Friends of the Library.

When people freaked out over Marie Kondo talking about only owning thirty books and said stuff like "this woman is a monster," I at first thought it was funny, because I thought the comments were hyperbolic for the sake of humor. Then I found out they were serious and was horrified both at the vitriol aimed at her for the supposed crime of only owning thirty books, and at how badly I miss social cues. Like that wasn't even a "whoooosh" because I was nowhere near close enough to even feel the breeze as it passed by.

I know typically reading more is good, but for the last five or six years I've been setting - and hitting - a fifty book per year reading goal. After ditching GoodReads I did not set a reading goal for 2021 and so far ... I kinda like it. I'm obviously not going to stop reading altogether, but the pressure is off for the next twelve months. I can just read what I want and enjoy it and if I don't feel like reading (too tired, too scatterbrained, etc) I don't need to force myself to knock out ten pages of some boring tome I picked up because it'll look good on my friends list.

I guess it's a little like having a refeed after you've been on a strict diet for a while. I needed a period to reset. Even if the only other things I read this year are manga it doesn't matter. Manga is still reading. And I don't need to defend my intellectual status or anything by spending more time deciphering marks on a piece of paper. After I got my degree, that summer I read one book. That book was Lonesome Dove which is not an inconsiderable novel. In fact it's a heckin' big chonker. But the point stands - I took a couple of months off and when I did read a book I read an adventurous Western story. And it's a hell of a good book, too, I'd highly recommend it, and I'm not even a particular fan of Western novels.

The Dragonbone Chair is a chonker, too, around 700 pages worth. But as I said, no timetable involved, no need to finish before January 31 or anything. And I'd probably be further along but some nights I'm up gaming a little later. I mean hey, I'm on the final boss in Hollow Knight, and yesterday I switched my charms up and found a pretty good combo that allowed me to get a lot further in that fight than I've been previously. I've got a couple of good games going right now but being on the last stage of a game is kind of exciting, ya know?

I didn't get a ton of reading done this month. I'm currently reading The Shining by Stephen King - as someone who has been a fan of King since middle school, I'm surprised at myself for not having read this one. I read a lot of his early and middle-years work, up through maybe Green Mile. And I'll probably go back and start catching up at some point. I'm also reading the Discourses & Selected Writings of Epictetus because I'm a huge nerd.

I finished The Magus by John Fowles (highly recommended but with some reservations,) and Cross Creek by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, which reminds me, I need to go find that grape ice cream recipe. So far as I'm able I'm trying to read what I already have. I've been able to weed out a few novels so far, starting them and then quitting when they failed to hold my attention, rather than forcing myself to finish them. I did need to buy a book, which came today.

With everything going on right now I felt like reading something superficial. I wanted the book equivalent of a box of meringue cookies. Edward Gorey was a big fan of EF Benson's Mapp & Lucia novels, which I gather are on TV now in Britain, but that sounded like a good diversion. Unfortunately, and the reason I'd not read them before, I only had the last three books in the series. At the time I was buying them they were apparently out of print in the States and I was having to gather them from used book shops. An excellent excuse to spend weekends scouring the French Quarter. Anyway, I broke my "no book buying" pledge and purchased a collected edition of the first three novels (bonus short story!) through Amazon Marketplace. So right after The Overlook Hotel burns down, I'm headed to 1920s England.

On the gaming front, there's a Steam Sale and I picked up We Happy Few, Gathering Sky, and Shovel Knight. SN is a collected edition with all the games, including the co-op Shovel of Hope. My controller is terrible and I'm looking to acquire a sturdier, nicer X-Box style one soon. I cracked the d-pad, and I'm also looking to get a faceted d-pad replacement. For whatever reason the joystick controller doesn't feel right and doesn't seem to work well for me. I also had a brainstorm and tried Cuphead with it, and hey, I got past the tutorial. Go me. *sarcastic thumbs up goes here*

I started We Happy Few (which really works much better with keyboard controls anyway) and I'm working through Arthur's story. On Hollow Knight, I have destroyed Herrah the Beast and opened the final Stag Station, so I got to go to the Stag Nest. I'm back in Queen's Gardens, probably going to try to take on the Traitor Mantis next. I got another nail upgrade, so I'm on Channeled Nail now, and there's only one more upgrade. And I lost all my money in Deepnest, so now I have no qualms about trying some of the trickier platforming segments.

Today's Fox's birthday (yay!) and we're not really doing much. I'll be making a pizza later, and we have some key lime cake. Tomorrow I'm probably going to do my last yard cutting of the year, but today I'm just cooling it. I pulled my calf muscle again, but it feels almost normal today so I might try a short run tomorrow. And I mean it really feels almost normal, not "almost normal except a little tight." I hopefully have given the thing enough time to heal up properly. It feels weird not running all this time.

And I upgraded my phone, but as usual, it's surprising what things don't automatically work. And I lost my house in Neko Atsume so I have to start that over. But I like the new phone, it's a lot lighter weight than the old one, so it won't be as much of a nuisance to run with. My Garmin actually will play music and run GPS at the same time but it will drain the battery fast. So for long runs, I'll carry my phone for music. If it's a shorter run, then I don't mind killing my battery quicker.

It's a gorgeous afternoon here so I'm thinking of getting my bike out of storage and pedaling around the yard some. Depending on how solid the sand feels on the road I might ride down to the turn. I'm just tired of being cooped up inside with the miserable hot weather, and I've played video games so much today my thumb is sore. But I got to take the Last Stag back to where he was hatched, so that was great.

It has been a busy couple of days here. We spent a lot of time tearing down and rebuilding a fence. When Kitty was still around, and for a little while after, we had dogs, so there's a disused dog run, and building off that is the veggie garden. When we put up the fences, Fox was working alone and so it was, unfortunately, not the best job. So we pulled up the posts and tore down the fencing around the dog run, built up a stable new fence around the garden beds, and got most of the work done. But when we called it quits on Sunday it was insanely hot and we'd been at it since early that morning.

Then the tap in my shower failed and was allowing water to leak everywhere, so that was a late-night, too late for Home Depot thing we had to take care of the next day. I like the new tap though, I didn't realize how much I was having to twist and wrench the old taps to just get the water to shut off. And Fox ended up needing to go to the neighbor's again to re-run some CAT cables because her dog chewed through the ones he ran back in March. She's still working from home and needed that on Sunday as well, but it's not that hard and Fox doesn't seem to mind helping her out.

It's almost August, which means it'll be September soon, which means it's almost October. I started looking around for some October reads, hoping for some new horror/thriller stuff. The top comment on this Reddit post is a gold mine. I like Stephen King just fine, but I've also been reading King novels most of my life and want something different. I will probably see about picking up the anthologies mentioned. I've read some pretty long works recently, just finished The Poisonwood Bible, and currently on The Priory of the Orange Tree.

I took a couple of days off from running last week, as I thought I might, but I'm back to it this week. If nothing else, it allows me to eat more than if I were more sedentary. And I think I'm definitely going to run a personal half marathon that weekend, just around here, and see how much my time has improved. Fox said for a more authentic RunDisney experience, he can always chase me around on the tractor with some balloons tied to the back so I can panic thinking I'm about to get swept. Then go home and eat my own bodyweight in pancakes. HUZZAH.

Earlier this year I wanted to do a deep dive into yoga, upping my practice sessions and studying both asanas and the philosophy behind it more. To that end, a book I picked up was the heckin' big chonker, The Yoga Sutras of Patañjali, translated and commented upon by Edwin Bryant. It took me about five months to get through it, though it was actually quite interesting. I would have admitted before reading it that I knew very little about Hindu or Vedic thought, and while I'm sure I still don't know a lot, I know more than I did! The sutras actually give very little space to asana practice, which in the West we tend to think of as being the vast majority of yoga. So it was enlightening to read about the moral and ethical codes yogis were expected to adopt, and the religious and philosophical underpinnings of yoga.

I also finished off Ursula LeGuin's collection of novellas, The Found and the Lost. She apparently was directly involved in the collection before she died. It ends with a couple of stories from Earthsea, so highly recommended there, and a series of "Werelian" tales - I think I am spelling the name correctly. They're fascinating meditations of both race and gender. There is another volume similar to this one, but of her short stories, which I'd like to pick up soon.

I'm close to finishing Why We Sleep by Matthew Walker. I'm late to the party on this one, but it's still interesting to me as someone who is constantly fiddling with their sleep conditions and sleep hygiene in search of better quality sleep. One thing I learned so far is that I am actually giving myself ample "sleep opportunity" each night. That is to say, my time in bed is more than adequate. But I tend to sleep restlessly and move around a lot, so I'm not getting as much actual sleep as I may need. Typically I get around seven hours each night and while that seems to be all right, I can't help but wonder how I could more consistently get eight. Last night I did, but I was also exhausted from having had a much shorter night's sleep on Friday - less than six hours, which is bad for me. Six and a half is okay, but seven to seven and a half seems to be the sweet spot. But I don't think I've consistently slept eight hours a night in my life.

I also learned that, contrary to what I was always told, that yes, children and young adults can and do have insomnia. Often caused by ... (wait for it) ... anxiety! It annoys me that I was always told as a kid, "You can sleep just fine, you just don't want to go to bed when you're told," or "kids don't have trouble sleeping." Okay but I hear the clock in the living room chime all through the night. But anyway, aside from being extremely interesting, I have not so far picked up any extra tricks for sleeping better. I may want to try cooling my room more, but I already try to avoid screens within an hour of bedtime, have a set and consistent sleep/wake time each day, don't keep electronics in the bedroom, and even stopped bothering with melatonin when I realized it wasn't actually helping me any. I may try to take some to Japan next time we go to deal with the jet lag, but heaven help me if they catch me with it.

Last, and as yet not cracked open, is The Gray House by Mariam Petrosyan. It's another heftychonker, but this is a fantasy novel that came highly recommended from a book Reddit I follow. There's actually a sub-reddit dedicated to discussing it. The English translation came out in 2017 apparently but the original Russian novel was published in 2009. It features disabled kids and teenagers in a large house/group home in Russia, multiple unreliable narrators, multiple story lines, and a hefty dose of that Russian surrealism I love so much. Sorry but I have a major hearthtrob for weird-ass Russian writers. And the thicker the book the better - I like big books and I cannot lie.

Nothing special, exactly. I have a thirty minute tempo run today, strength training, and yoga this evening. We're replacing some of the outdoor cameras and Fox will be doing a tower climb. I'm probably going to start direct composting a different garden bed, and I need to get my pumpkin seeds in the ground.

I'm making a pizza, which isn't unusual in and of itself. Today, it kind of is. I didn't follow the exact volumes on this recipe because that's way more dough than just the two of us need. But I am going to try the skillet trick and see if I can make us more of Blaze-style pizzas. I have some arugula, Violife feta, and plenty of mushrooms for mine. Hopefully we'll get two crispy personal-ish size pizzas. I've had the dough in the fridge for three days now and was just setting a reminder for later to take it out so it can start warming up again.

I'm reading Desert Solitaire by Edward Abbey, and regretting that my one trip to that part of the country was with my ex-husband, who was an awful travel companion. I didn't want to go at all, mainly because I didn't want to go with him. (Very strict on scheduling and intolerant of delays, packed way too much and had no concept of traveling light, etc.) Anyway, this is going to be followed up with Blood Orchid by Charles Bowden and Coyotes and Town Dogs by Susan Zakin. I've been reading up on things like anarcho-primitivism, human rewilding, and environmental philosophy lately. And yeah, I know I'm reading about anarcho-primitivism online? With a computer? Well shit son, next time I need to contact someone I guess I'm just gonna write my message on a coconut and send it to them by swallow. (Yeah, there was a troll in one of the sub-reddits, LOL) I came around to this topic through looking at primal movement. The problem is that, like everything else any more, almost everyone with information has put it behind a paywall. Buy a coaching plan, buy a subscription. Ugh. That being said? Naturaletics YouTube channel seems to have a lot of good info, even if they haven't updated in a while. I intend to download these in case the channel goes bye-bye.

For something interesting on this topic, try The Dark Mountain Manifesto. Their books look gorgeous and fascinating. But I need to remember I'm saving my "mad money" for the Etherington Brothers Kickstarter.

What about the Olympic marathon trials taking place in Atlanta? Check that out here. Nike is giving away Alpha-vapor-fly-something shoes to all the trials runners, but I also read something interesting recently that said "regular" runners, as in non-elite everyday runners like Yours Truly, not only would not benefit from these super-fancy shoes but that it might alter their gait enough to be a problem.

Anyway, that's what I'm up to. I'm looking forward to a more relaxing weekend now that I don't have medical stuff dangling over my head.

Recently at the library, I checked out a copy of Born to be Posthumous: The Eccentric Genius and Mysterious Life of Edward Gorey by Mark Dery. So far it is absolutely living up to expectations and, if you're a Goreyphile, I would definitely recommend it. I developed a fascination with Gorey's drawings when I found a copy of a collection of ghost stories he'd illustrated (not The Haunted Looking Glass) and of course a collection of his own books. I also had a diet of pen-and-ink illustrators and engravers that I consumed as a kid, so Sir John Tenniel, James Montgomery Flagg, and Thomas Nast also contributed to my tendency to scritchy-scratchy hatched and crosshatched styles. Having a digital tablet has only provided a minor correction to that habit, but it allows me to draw scritchy-scratchy crosshatched things in a vast range of colors.

Anyway, reading that led me to pick up a copy of Aesthetes and Decadents of 1890: An Anthology of British Poetry and Prose edited by Karl Beckson. I used to have a copy of this but have had to replace due to Ex Husband keeping it. He also kept my Norton Shakespeare, not that I am at all bitter or still ruminating over how he kept my Shakespeare, that fucking jackass. (Ex Husband, I mean, not Will.) So my copy is an updated 1990s edition that, unfortunately, has been annotated and scribbled in by someone else. Their observations seem decent so I'm not as bothered by them, but it was the least written-in and least damaged copy they had. Many of the others all seemed to have a break in the spine, all in the same spot. I typically manage to read without cracking the spines, but it requires a certain amount of care in opening and flexing the book and I know not everyone is as ridiculously obsessive about it as I am. ANYWAY. It also includes some of the poets who're considered "Uranians," and the obligatory Aubrey Beardsley drawings, so on the whole a worthwhile purchase if you're so inclined.

Relentless Forward Progress by Bryon Powell and Finding Ultra by Rich Roll also made it home with me, since there's no better way to spend your non-running time than by reading books about running. I will never be that fast, and I will never likely be considering even remotely "elite," but unless something catastrophic happens to me, I intend to continue running until something forces me to stop. I'm not in this to merely lose weight or be healthy. Running has been one of the best things I have ever done for the my horrendous mental health and my almost non-existent self esteem. I like finisher medals, I like racing, and I like the excitement leading up to an event, but even if all that stopped I'd still keep running just for the sheer physical, animal pleasure of it. As I said, I'm not that fast, and my form probably looks less like a sprinting cheetah gracefully bounding over the grasslands and more like a housecat having a seizure, but I am having fun.

Then there is Sangharakshita's commentary of the Noble Eightfold Path, Vision and Transformation - he's normally a very scholarly and somewhat dense to wade through. And finally, a Barnes & Noble edition of the complete Sherlock Holmes short stories and novels, in their standard order, starting with A Study in Scarlet, and breaking between volumes one and two with the story where Doyle tries to kill off Holmes, but then has to bring him back because Sherlock fans are always going to be Like That.

The main thing I can see with Aesthetes and Decadents is that they switched the cover drawing from "The Stomach Dance" to "The Peacock Skirt," so it no longer has Salome with her tits out on it. Actually, I'm fairly biased on this, since "The Peacock Skirt" is one of my favorite Beardsley drawings, along with another from the same play, "J'ai baisé ta bouche, Iokanaan" both of which can be seen in insanely high resolution Here.

 I don't know why I'm surprised that people are people. But I'm also pretty far from where I'd have been even five or ten years ago when I'd have said, "Everyone sucks and everyone's an asshole." Nah, we're just people - every single one of us is human, and humans will be humans. You just have to let them do it and not feel like everyone's got to be a certain way for your happiness. Nothing in particular prompted this observation - no one did anything to me or said anything, so I'm not trying to "vague blog" about anyone. 

I was trimming hangnails last night and cut one on my right thumb - actually, I managed to take a sizable chunk out of the flesh next to the nail. It bled a lot, and this morning it stings, especially since it's right along the edge that I typically hit the space bar with. Yay :)

 Last night I was also poking Reddit a little and one of the subs I'm in is for book recs. I'm actually in a couple of book subs, but thinking of ditching the main r/books. Anyhoo. Someone was wanting or listing good detective fiction and one of their points was "Sherlock Holmes/Solar Pons." So, a bit of my backstory - I grew up a massive Holmes nerd. Like, fandoms weren't even a thing in the 80s the way they are now,  but as people have pointed out, Holmes fans have been "like that" since Conan Doyle was alive. My parents made the grave mistake/brilliant move of gifting me a set of complete Holmes for Christmas one year. I devoured that, read it multiple times, found BBC and movie adaptations, wrote some awful fanfic and generally was just my obsessive little self. Dad even bought me a deerstalker hat once, but a couple of years later one of the cats destroyed it.

I'd heard of Solar Pons, of course, but for whatever reason never sought out the books. We didn't live anywhere near a good used book shop, and the only other way to obtain books was either to score them at the library, or literally actually fill out one of those forms in the back of another book and mail it in. And seeing the name last night on Reddit made me think, "Why did I never read those?" I still don't know why I didn't, but after browsing a while this morning I may look for them, because it sounds like I might enjoy them.  Pons was the creation of August Derleth - yeah, that one. And while the stories are basically pastiche of Holmes - everyone fills the same roles but has different names and they all live in America - they have a fan following for a reason. Which, apparently, is that Derleth managed to create an entirely new character who isn't a Holmes clone, but a similar type of person with an entirely separate personality. One blog I read describes him as being more lighthearted and less prone to brooding, and pointed out that some of the stories are crossovers, and that those are often humorous. There are crossovers with HP Lovecraft and with the guy who created Dr. Fu Manchu. So ... sounds like fun! 

And since I don't really watch much television, I never quite got into the series with Bareback Cumberpatch. I did get a kick out of the BBC series, and it took a long time, but finally got to see some of the really old ones with Basil Rathbone. I also saw the movie with Robert Downey, which was pretty good, IMHO.

Anyway, got another page of comics knocked out, and rewrote the rest of the story so that it's now ten pages. Nothing much scheduled. Fox's work sent him an email forbidding him to travel to China. ROFL he wasn't planning on it, but like me, now that they've said he can't go he kind of wants to go. Fox doesn't really need to travel for work much, since they can do just about everything remotely. I kind of keep hoping they'll send him to India, because I could probably find a way and a reason to tag along on that.

Long time no see, DW. I'm sorry about that but I keep procrastinating on updating this, and it seems like something is always coming up.

Here in the northeast part of Florida we had almost no real weather from the recent tropical systems. Dorian made it windy one day, but that was it. Today we finally are getting some drizzly rain and the weather is slowly starting to change. It's sometimes in the 60s at night and the daytime highs aren't murder. I've also noticed some trees beginning to change, different changes in animal behaviors (Droopy the Crow is coming around more often now and checking out the corn feeder), and we're starting to see Orb Weaver spiders building webs, which normally doesn't happen until fall is immanent.

We're about five and six weeks out from some major running events. I'm specifically looking at the Black Creek 10k, where I'm hoping to PR. The week after that is Disney Wine & Dine, where Fox and I are doing the Two Course Challenge - the 10k and half marathon. I feel like they missed a great opportunity to call those races "Dine & Dash" but no one asked me. Anyway, I'm looking forward to the upcoming fall and winter not only for some cooler weather but because running training kicks into a higher gear. I'm currently on a slow cut to get to racing weight for my 10k, then as we go into the time of year when there's lots of yummy, high-calorie foods, I'll be in Dopey training so I'll actually have a good reason to eat more. I'm carb loading. That's my excuse, and I'm sticking with it.

I also just finished reading For Whom the Bell Tolls. It's one I've meant to read for years and just haven't. My first husband was also a huge Hemingway fan and that really put me off even more, though I never really developed a taste for H's writing. I liked the book much better than I expected to, however. Despite all the obvious problems it has, H's glorification of war and violence and idealizing of romantic love, not to mention his weirdly choppy sentences, it was rather good. Although I would not describe it as "muscular prose," but rather like a distracted interior monologue. The entire book reads similarly to the way your thoughts get when you're anxious and have literally nothing else to do but think.

Anyway, it went well with having read Dan Simmons' The Abominable, and currently Donna Barr's Stinz comics. But my next fiction pick needs to be a palette cleanser - something light and maybe funny. Something like a dish of spumoni between rich, heavy servings of roasted meats and pasta. 

I'm also about to order a jar of steamed chestnuts. I'm sick of going to Publix and paying through the nose for bags of chestnuts, only to get them home and find they're all moldy inside. A waste of my time and money when fifteen bucks will get me almost a pound of nothing but the nut-meats, ready to go. I plan to make dorayaki, possibly with ice cream or whipped cream and chestnut paste. I don't know if the ones I had in Tokyo had ice cream or whipped in them, but they were in the ice cream case, so I assume some sort of ice cream. It'll be easy enough (hallelujah!) to find a good non-dairy vanilla ice cream that can be spread when soft. If I'm remembering correctly, cashew ice cream has a softer texture. LOL I might need to sample some dairy free ice creams - research! Yeah, research. And carb loading. That's it ... 

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