Urgan Shows Up, Does the Thing

[Urgan]

9/10/2019

I Got Better

 

Tasks

Clean kitchen table

Clean kitchen counters

Drive away donations

 

Practice

Crying in the Dojo - 2/16

Kanji - 0/4

Lingodeer Time - 2/15

Story Outline - 0/4

 

Behavior

Keep in Touch - 0/8

9:00 Dinner - 1/8

Cat grooming - 0/4

Too Many Curses - 2

 

Hey look it's Tuesday again. Nothing really special to mention about the daylight hours other than it was BUSY for once. I finished Furies of Calderon. It can be most kindly described as an entertaining light fantasy that would be best expected to fill the gaps between harder hitting material. Which is sorta what I am using it for, actually. I am trying to hold off on finishing the last Cherryh book I'll be reading until the new books come in at least. It's a bit more substantial than the kind of books I typically use as "buffers", an example of which would be oh, Emma and the Vampires (due in on Friday 13th if UPS decides it feels like doing its job this week...I'm not optimistic). In case you didn't know I can get by on giggling/outright laughing through an entire novel based solely on attachment to one character. Because I can. 

 

The first part of Furies raised my expectations for what the end would be like, which might be its biggest flaw; although, I do understand that everything kind of flew together to create a book climax sufficient to end one's stay in Alera, for which I am grateful. The second biggest flaw being so long as you're buddies with a watercrafter, you got the Plot Armor--at least for this book. I feel a little mixed complaining about that, since it spared the character I was interested in and allowed me to have a nice "oh yeah I get his backstory so I got my money's worth" moment. And he's got 6 books to populate with characters to possibly kill off later, can't be doing that on book 1. So you could say I'm satisfied. 

 

Here comes another Tad Williams epic, Otherland, Book 2: River of Blue Fire. It's a crazy one. He tends to not do the nice book climaxes, because as the man states reasonably it's one big huge ol' story (4 books, 600, 600, 700, and 1000 pages in length each...he has synopses of what has happened previously included in subsequent volumes that's how long and crazy this series is--thank God for it, too, because I read the first book like 15 years ago) and he can't get the publisher to bind all that up and survive in the meanwhile, but fortunately for me, I am a recovering Buy All the Books in the Series Before You've Finished the First One, sooooooooo that is not an issue. YAY. 

[Urgan]

9/11/2019

Technique is Everything

 

Tasks

Clean kitchen table

Clean kitchen counters

Drive away donations

 

Practice

Crying in the Dojo - 3/16

Kanji - 0/4

Lingodeer Time - 3/15

Story Outline - 0/4

 

Behavior

Keep in Touch - 0/8

9:00 Dinner - 1/8

Cat grooming - 0/4

Too Many Curses - 2

 

Wow there really isn't anything much to talk about for Wednesday. Blue Fire, Japanese practice, hanmi handachi sankyo. 

 

Thursday means all the meetings ever are scheduled while you wonder if your face is going to try to drain the entire time.

[Urgan]

9/12/2019

Thursday Ritual

 

Tasks

Clean kitchen table

Clean kitchen counters

Drive away donations

 

Practice

Crying in the Dojo - 4/16

Kanji - 0/4

Lingodeer Time - 4/15

Story Outline - 0/4

 

Behavior

Keep in Touch - 0/8

9:00 Dinner - 2/8

Cat grooming - 0/4

Too Many Curses - 3

 

Well not to spoil the ending but my face drained most of the day. YAY. Luckily due to the multi-day meeting bonanza happening to Other People all of Wednesday and Thursday, most of the meetings I really hate got cancelled, so. At least there was that. The first of the Book Flood arrived today, Six Not-So-Easy Pieces by Feynman. It's a little, a mere 144 pages.  Om nom.

 

The bare essentials are still in place. You know the drill. 

 

This morning somebody wanting to make a left turn pulled up and blocked my view. CurseCount++;

[Kishi]

Your response to Furies is... rather fair. Butcher gets a lot of praise in the genre circles, but I do feel like that praise isn't necessarily qualified. People tend to think that praiseworthy work is stuff that pushes boundaries and breaks the mold and all that, when really, he's just a pulp writer who's really good at executing on the basics.

 

Like you say, it's not a slam, because lots of people aren't really good at executing on the basics, and good work is better to read than pretty work that isn't good. (better of course meaning more enjoyable. Lots of people must like pretty work that isn't good, it keeps getting written, so). Based on that response, I'd say you're probably gonna need some more patience to get through the first couple Dresden Files books if you ever decide to go there because he was still figuring his stuff out. They aren't bad, but they aren't as polished either, which is to be expected given that he was just starting out.

 

That all being said, the big draw for me to his work is specifically his structure and how he draws the reader along; when I first read him, I was fresh out of college and I hadn't really been exposed to anything quite like it. Most of my time was spent in epic fantasy - WoT and also Otherlands, which, hey, cool that you're reading that one too! - which isn't known exactly for pulp-style page-turning. Even now I haven't really seen much that manages the same effect.

 

Ha, one of my friends really likes my writing but I think he expects me to turn out like a Gaiman or a Mieville, and I suspect that I'm going to disappoint him very, very much when this style shows up in my writing. Oh well. Can't be helped.

[Urgan]

10 minutes ago, Kishi said:

Your response to Furies is... rather fair. Butcher gets a lot of praise in the genre circles, but I do feel like that praise isn't necessarily qualified. People tend to think that praiseworthy work is stuff that pushes boundaries and breaks the mold and all that, when really, he's just a pulp writer who's really good at executing on the basics.

 

Believe me when I say I could really, really nit-picky in a way I'm not generally disposed to do with books I actually finish, ya know? Usually if I see these kind of issues I'm really asking myself to reevaluate how much I care about the characters. That is a point his favor that somehow he managed to get me to read the whole book lol. Even if I skipped about 50 pages of the Fort Battle. Having done so, I satisfied the one thing I really wanted to know, so all's well and all that.

 

13 minutes ago, Kishi said:

Like you say, it's not a slam, because lots of people aren't really good at executing on the basics, and good work is better to read than pretty work that isn't good. (better of course meaning more enjoyable. Lots of people must like pretty work that isn't good, it keeps getting written, so). Based on that response, I'd say you're probably gonna need some more patience to get through the first couple Dresden Files books if you ever decide to go there because he was still figuring his stuff out. They aren't bad, but they aren't as polished either, which is to be expected given that he was just starting out.

 

I can ignore a LOT of sins if I love a character. A lot. I'm picky in really weird ways and it's a logic that can be overridden with the right know-how. I really want to get lost in a world and not be staring around looking for literary seams to tug at, I swear. However, there is one thing I cannot overlook and it's not even really Butcher's fault actually. When I closed the book, I literally announced to myself when summing my feelings ATM, "Well Tolkien it ain't." Well. Who but Simon R. Green wrote a blurb that went into the inside of the paperback saying that Furies was, to paraphrase, written in the tradition of JRR Tolkien.

 

Wut.

 

No.

 

No, Simon, go back and reread the man's work and try that one again. Frankly I think his Blue Moon Rising was a better book in terms of being out of the box and with amusing, endearing characters but then I read this book in 10th grade (2002?), so All Relevant Disclaimers Apply. It can sure be a neato book and better than what Terry Brooks does, which is rewrite LotR but change all the proper nouns, but that is a bridge too far.

 

19 minutes ago, Kishi said:

That all being said, the big draw for me to his work is specifically his structure and how he draws the reader along; when I first read him, I was fresh out of college and I hadn't really been exposed to anything quite like it. Most of my time was spent in epic fantasy - WoT and also Otherlands, which, hey, cool that you're reading that one too! - which isn't known exactly for pulp-style page-turning. Even now I haven't really seen much that manages the same effect.

 

Yeah it did have a breezy flow to it that allowed me to chew through it in just a few days despite the page count, so it has that going for it for sure.

 

20 minutes ago, Kishi said:

Ha, one of my friends really likes my writing but I think he expects me to turn out like a Gaiman or a Mieville, and I suspect that I'm going to disappoint him very, very much when this style shows up in my writing. Oh well. Can't be helped.

 

Hey until you've become a writing veteran it's tricky to change from whatever style is "natural" to you. Your voice is yours and that has a lot of bearing on it. As long as you didn't sell him a bill o' goods lol.

[Kishi]

39 minutes ago, Urgan said:

Believe me when I say I could really, really nit-picky in a way I'm not generally disposed to do with books I actually finish, ya know? Usually if I see these kind of issues I'm really asking myself to reevaluate how much I care about the characters. That is a point his favor that somehow he managed to get me to read the whole book lol. Even if I skipped about 50 pages of the Fort Battle. Having done so, I satisfied the one thing I really wanted to know, so all's well and all that.

 

Right, yeah, like reading your reviews I was like, "Oh Lord, she's gonna put this one down, or is she." Good bit of drama to liven up my work day, TYVM.

 

41 minutes ago, Urgan said:

I can ignore a LOT of sins if I love a character. A lot. I'm picky in really weird ways and it's a logic that can be overridden with the right know-how. I really want to get lost in a world and not be staring around looking for literary seams to tug at, I swear. However, there is one thing I cannot overlook and it's not even really Butcher's fault actually. When I closed the book, I literally announced to myself when summing my feelings ATM, "Well Tolkien it ain't." Well. Who but Simon R. Green wrote a blurb that went into the inside of the paperback saying that Furies was, to paraphrase, written in the tradition of JRR Tolkien.

 

Wut.

 

No.

 

No, Simon, go back and reread the man's work and try that one again. Frankly I think his Blue Moon Rising was a better book in terms of being out of the box and with amusing, endearing characters but then I read this book in 10th grade (2002?), so All Relevant Disclaimers Apply. It can sure be a neato book and better than what Terry Brooks does, which is rewrite LotR but change all the proper nouns, but that is a bridge too far.

 

Wow. I've not really read much of Green's work, but no. This is totally not in the Tolkienin tradition at all.

 

46 minutes ago, Urgan said:

Yeah it did have a breezy flow to it that allowed me to chew through it in just a few days despite the page count, so it has that going for it for sure.

 

Right! Like at first I thought it was something that certain writers just had that others didn't; to learn that it was a skill that could be learned in turn was a gamechanger for me.

 

48 minutes ago, Urgan said:

Hey until you've become a writing veteran it's tricky to change from whatever style is "natural" to you. Your voice is yours and that has a lot of bearing on it. As long as you didn't sell him a bill o' goods lol.

 

Oh no I didn't. I think he's got that impression as he read me first when we lived together like 10 years ago and then he read a little bit of my work more recently after I'd evolved somewhat; reading Gaiman and Pratchett had informed some of that evolution, but I honestly don't think I could carry either of them off for a novel. Also I do a lot of stuff with my voice in writing that I think would annoy him. But I don't mean to write for a market of one anyway, so I'm pretty sure I can live with his disappointment.

[Urgan]

31 minutes ago, Kishi said:

Right, yeah, like reading your reviews I was like, "Oh Lord, she's gonna put this one down, or is she." Good bit of drama to liven up my work day, TYVM.

 

I didn't because it seemed some permutation of mean and pointless to do so. And you need more drama in your work day like a quarry needs more rocks.

 

31 minutes ago, Kishi said:

Wow. I've not really read much of Green's work, but no. This is totally not in the Tolkienin tradition at all.

 

Perhaps he just means he likes the cut of Butcher's jib because he too has written a series of urban fantasy. Never read that series, but it exists. Seems the definition of generic. Blue Moon Rising surely is his better effort.

 

37 minutes ago, Kishi said:

Right! Like at first I thought it was something that certain writers just had that others didn't; to learn that it was a skill that could be learned in turn was a gamechanger for me.

 

It also depends on how much detail you like to cram in each sentence. Some people have denser "voices" than others when it comes to descriptions and certain genres demand world-building explanation. Something close to our own world is easy to shorthand this sort of thing, a sci-fi story that feels like an alien environment doesn't have that luxury.

[Kishi]

12 minutes ago, Urgan said:

I didn't because it seemed some permutation of mean and pointless to do so. And you need more drama in your work day like a quarry needs more rocks.

 

Oh, no no! No worries. I've had other friends to put this down already; it wouldn't have bothered me if it hadn't been to your liking.

 

13 minutes ago, Urgan said:

Perhaps he just means he likes the cut of Butcher's jib because he too has written a series of urban fantasy. Never read that series, but it exists. Seems the definition of generic. Blue Moon Rising surely is his better effort.

 

I mean, maybe? But you'd think Papa Tolkien would be a league of his own given his status in the genre. Maybe he means in terms of epicness of scope? But I don't think that's quite right either.

 

14 minutes ago, Urgan said:

It also depends on how much detail you like to cram in each sentence. Some people have denser "voices" than others when it comes to descriptions and certain genres demand world-building explanation. Something close to our own world is easy to shorthand this sort of thing, a sci-fi story that feels like an alien environment doesn't have that luxury.

 

Well, yeah, but I mean there's a difference between dumping information and being told something to see how the character's going to solve a problem in their setting. I mean, like, if you want to go back to Tolkien again, an awful lot of LOTR is him expositing on his world in ways that, though appreciated, don't really move the story forward very much. And that can be a real burden for writers, especially those who are writing in that Epic Fantasy doorstopper novel tradition.

[Urgan]

9/13/2019 - 9/15/2019

Vampire or All-Nighter?

 

Tasks

Clean kitchen table

Clean kitchen counters

Drive away donations

 

Practice

Crying in the Dojo - 4/16

Kanji - 0/4

Lingodeer Time - 5/15

Story Outline - 1/4

 

Behavior

Keep in Touch - 2/8

9:00 Dinner - 2/8

Cat grooming - 1/4

Too Many Curses - 4

 

I am striking kanji from the list because I find myself "making myself" do it and it isn't competing well against reading and outline writing.

 

A four book special, this weekend. I finished River of Blue Fire, nailed Six Not-So-Easy Pieces (Feynman), read the first book (Red Death) from the omnibus Jonathan Barrett, Gentleman Vampire (Elrod) and called it a day with that omnibus, and finally jumped immediately to Emma and the Vampires (Austen, et al) because going directly from one vampire book to another is what you do. Oh the joy of sub-300 pagers. Anything that demands less than 5 hours is not going to last long in the to-be-read column. The list is now at 22 books, which is about 5 books or so more than when I started my latest little book-buying spree (so far...7 more incoming), but two large books have been disposed of this weekend, which is always helpful. 

 

This book destruction required some late nights, however I have managed to keep up with Japanese practice, hit iaido class on Friday, am inspired to jot down some plot-point-connecting things, made food, brushed cats, and somehow managed to not blow up the curse count. WHEE.

[Urgan]

On 9/13/2019 at 2:12 PM, Kishi said:

I mean, maybe? But you'd think Papa Tolkien would be a league of his own given his status in the genre. Maybe he means in terms of epicness of scope? But I don't think that's quite right either.

 

I personally can't fathom putting the two names in the same sentence without a "not" or "not quite" in there somewhere, but I'm trying to interpret generously here. Giant shrug.

[Urgan]

9/16/2019

Same

 

Tasks

Clean kitchen table

Clean kitchen counters

Drive away donations

 

Practice

Crying in the Dojo - 5/16

Lingodeer Time - 6/20

Story Outline - 2/4

 

Behavior

Keep in Touch - 3/8

9:00 Dinner - 2/8

Cat grooming - 1/4

Too Many Curses - 4

 

Well, Monday wasn't so bad. I wrote, I Japanese'd, I checked in with husband about how his lovely stroll to the DMV for car tag transfer went (crickets by way of reply....), I did not curse my head off. The great thing about an outline is, while you're constructing certain aspects of the story, it's super easy to layer it in via outline in as much or little detail as you want at any point. Hanmi handachi shihonage was the night's lesson, much fumble on the tenkan because tripping your partner and breaking both your legs is so very harmonious.

 

2 more books down. I liked the first chapter and then Chapter 2 did a volte-face in tone (same character POV) that I was not digging. 4 came in the mail. For those of you keeping score, that's 24 books on the list now. I'm also interested in reading the Fruits Basket manga, which I've had....so, so many years now...I mean, I had read some of it already but stopped. For some reason. It's the end of Season 1 of the anime, I think, so the knowledge I can continue the story whenever I want is the only comfort I have in life now.

[Mistr]

3 hours ago, Urgan said:

Well, Monday wasn't so bad. I wrote, I Japanese'd, I checked in with husband about how his lovely stroll to the DMV for car tag transfer went (crickets by way of reply....),

 

Hehehe. The glacial pace of progress on car stuff. Dumbledore and I discussed cars this weekend and he agreed to be responsible for selling both the Honda and the Mazda. He also clarified what he is looking for in a car. Something reliable, unremarkable and on the smaller side. One of my coworkers is selling a Scion xD that needs new paint. I suggested doing an art car job on it and Dumbledore was . If we do decide to buy that car, we are budgeting for a professional paint job. Oh, and the "friend" who wanted to buy the Mazda has not been seen or heard from in weeks.  

 

3 hours ago, Urgan said:

Hanmi handachi shihonage was the night's lesson, much fumble on the tenkan because tripping your partner and breaking both your legs is so very harmonious.

 

Oh yes. Done that and sprained a toe dropping my partner on my foot. Do not recommend.

[Urgan]

46 minutes ago, Mistr said:

Hehehe. The glacial pace of progress on car stuff. Dumbledore and I discussed cars this weekend and he agreed to be responsible for selling both the Honda and the Mazda. He also clarified what he is looking for in a car. Something reliable, unremarkable and on the smaller side. One of my coworkers is selling a Scion xD that needs new paint. I suggested doing an art car job on it and Dumbledore was . If we do decide to buy that car, we are budgeting for a professional paint job. Oh, and the "friend" who wanted to buy the Mazda has not been seen or heard from in weeks.  

 

He missed an unspoken requirement for the "new" car...no fixer-upper tasks. Considering the expense of registering a new car with The Government, this is understandable. I somehow get the sneaking suspicion your buddy there doesn't want to buy your car lol.

 

49 minutes ago, Mistr said:

Oh yes. Done that and sprained a toe dropping my partner on my foot. Do not recommend.

 

Almost did that with aiki otoshi, only the lucky joint would have been my knee or ankle. File that one under Truly Stupid Self-Harm.

[Urgan]

9/17/2019

WHO DID THIS

 

Tasks

Clean kitchen table

Clean kitchen counters

 

Practice

Crying in the Dojo - 6/16

Lingodeer Time - 7/20

Story Outline - 2/4

 

Behavior

Keep in Touch - 3/8

9:00 Dinner - 3/8

Cat grooming - 1/4

Too Many Curses - 4

 

Another hum-drum day. Monday and Tuesday I need mention I have been poking at my outline--I'm not going to log every time I do this, the point is I do this at least once a week, preferably a lot more than that. I also forgot to mention I'm working on the first book in the omnibus Chronicles of The Black Company (Glen Cook), which could be accurately described as a bunch of scoundrels or rogues that are only halfway lovable if you squint just right. The implicit promise is this group of guys (and one female child...she stands somewhere between adopted daughter and pet that so far only one of the group really likes/takes care of) is running around doing Morally Ambiguous Things until The Chosen One appears and they're going to switch sides or be redeemed or something. Nobody tells about their past, everybody has a very Charming Nickname like Croaker or Goblin or Elmo, for some reason. It's one of the more light-hearted ways of telling a dark story I've seen in a while--like, really bad stuff happens all around but they don't drill down into the grisly details to the point that it drags the atmosphere into the gutter. We are (Dysfunctional) Family, us Imperials against the Rebels and the other Imperials and the Elements and Ourselves Even, Sometimes. If that makes sense. Anyway, a 217 page book is hardly a life commitment, but the format means it's taking a bit longer than I'd like. Oh well. 

 

Sleep has been garbage, headaches are too common, but I did make myself stop shy of my goal of hitting page 100 (stopped at 90...) so I would turn the light off at least a few minutes earlier than usual. Very much like to finish this Thursday, but that might be too aggressive given I'm reserving my hour break at work for napping. At some point I'm going to have to walk this thing back...

[Kishi]

I've seen Chronicles just about everywhere I've gone; I'll be interested to hear how you like it.

[Urgan]

21 minutes ago, Kishi said:

I've seen Chronicles just about everywhere I've gone; I'll be interested to hear how you like it.

 

Halfway-ish through Book 1 and the personalities are sufficient to carry it so far. There's a schizophrenic more or less leading the Company. If you want verifiably female characters, you're gonna have to wait awhile (there's one on the cover and mention of one or two of them as Existing Somewhere). I am rather entertained.  

[Urgan]

9/18/2019 + 9/19/2019

Dodging Post-Marathon-Meeting Commute Like

 

Tasks

Clean kitchen table

Clean kitchen counters

 

Practice

Crying in the Dojo - 8/16

Lingodeer Time - 9/20

Story Outline - 2/4

 

Behavior

Keep in Touch - 5/8

9:00 Dinner - 4/8

Cat grooming - 1/4

Too Many Curses - 4

 

Well. Wednesday featured test night where I punched a red belt during randori for his qualifier (not hurt him, got in there around 3 other bodies and got him right in the abdomen, which is tricky if you've ever tried it), stepped right on an anthill in my front yard trying to help my deaf neighbor whose even deafer wife was asleep and he had no key to get in the house. He didn't understand that I knew who he was and I'm pretty sure he had no idea about the ants. That was something. 

 

Thursday I worked from home. Thank God I did because there was a meeting that ran 20 minutes over time to leave. I left feeling it had little to do with me whatsoever.

Finished Book 1 of Chronicles and let me just say. Read It. As to why:

 

Let's commit the minor literary crime that Green committed with respect to Jim Butcher: I'm going to orient this recommendation against Tolkien's work. As you do. But the story and the atmosphere and the characters' personalities are nothing whatsoever resembling Tolkien's style. No, imagine if the man told Cook his general intention for LotR, and Cook cribbed the bit about the Tower and Nazgul, except he added one bonus Nazgul and changed the name of that witch club to "Taken." Same principle applies--they're powerful people who are now undead servants of the lord of the Tower. Except. 

 

Now imagine if LotR was told from the POV of Sauron's forces. And pretty much everybody's Definitely Not Amazing. And there's no mcguffin here, just some powerful personalities throwing their weight around and burning down civilization. As you do when you're a bunch of magical barbarians (see Note below). The plot could be compared to a forest fire that destroys darn near everything and leaves a small green shoot sticking up out of the ash. That green shoot could be hope that a prophesy is going to be fulfilled. It could be your curiosity. Up to you, really. It's the first of at least 5 books, so the story doesn't end there by a long shot. Even if you aren't curious to read on, it does tie things up enough that you could say you had a good time and are ready to move on (but it's obvious from the ending alone that it's got a sequel). Don't make a decision on this point around pages 100 - 150. Just wait a bit. Spoiler for general tone information, not plot details:

 

At this point I wasn't sure I would continue on, because it gets kind of depressing and I was afraid Cook was going to kill everybody off because you'd swear that's the direction he was going in.

 

Press onward, it's not that kind of book. Somehow.  

 

Note: this is not a civilized place, lots of bad things happen. The POV character literally states for the record (because he is in fact the chronicler) he is sugar-coating some parts of the Bad Things Black Company Does for the sake of not ratting on family. All the bad things you can think of, I know you have a good imagination. In contrast, the most powerful forces living on either side are also female. They may be exceptional, but they're also kind of the biggest deal. 

 

 

And then I started working on A Force of Nature (Richard Reeves). Aside from darn near every scientist whose name you'd recognize (Einstein, Bohr, Geiger, the Curies, the list goes on...), I learned that there is one man who in fact did slip on a banana peel, and it's the man who discovered the existence of subatomic particles and established physics as a science, Ernest Rutherford. The darnedest thing, really. Rutherford had his hand in a bunch of stuff--radio, radioactivity, physics in general, sonar....the first sonar testing he did by literally holding ankles of some guy to keep his head underwater to test underwater microphones. Because the British Admiralty refused to give Navy research a submarine to do antisubmarine testing with. A wonder WWI went the way it did, really. The 1910s were a crazy decade. I'm about halfway through 

[shaar]

On 9/20/2019 at 10:35 AM, Urgan said:

stepped right on an anthill in my front yard trying to help my deaf neighbor whose even deafer wife was asleep and he had no key to get in the house. He didn't understand that I knew who he was and I'm pretty sure he had no idea about the ants. That was something. 

 

Listen buddy you're deaf not blind ok jeez situational awareness here Gerald

 

[Urgan]

3 hours ago, shaar said:

 

Listen buddy you're deaf not blind ok jeez situational awareness here Gerald

 

 

Long live Gerald. In his defense it was pitch black out, and I sure didn't see them lol. Woof. He was so stuck on assuming I was scared of him to listen carefully I guess.

[Urgan]

9/20/2019 - 9/22/2019

A landmine brought me down

 

Tasks

Clean kitchen table

Clean kitchen counters

 

Practice

Crying in the Dojo - 8/16

Lingodeer Time - 10/20

Story Outline - 2/4

 

Behavior

Keep in Touch - 7/8

9:00 Dinner - 4/8

Cat grooming - 2/4

Too Many Curses - 6

 

Friday was a spectacularly awful day. Thursday middle management sprung some out-of-left-field priorities that turned Friday into a fire drill. People threw their weight around. There was a lot of pressure to get things ready to go by end of day. Pretty much the best way to end a week ever. It seems like these weeks and months are competing to be the worst week I can remember. Neat. 

 

Saturday was a sub-par gym day--probably a combination of fallout from the stress of the week and the lack of the sleep. I went to bed at a relatively "decent" time for Saturday, 2AM.

 

Sunday I did a thing I have been avoiding--changing bed sheets. Otherwise a very standard Sunday aside from me finishing reading at 11:10 and turning out the light at 11:35. Bossman planned an early meeting out of meanness and I was tired anyhow. Except I didn't get to sleep a whole lot earlier than usual because I wasn't sleepy. Why. Body.

 

 

Book shenanigans: a book came in, I finished A Force of Nature, the second Black Company book, Sourcery (Pratchett), and got started on the last Black Company book in this omnibus. There's another, God help me. I have come to hate omnibi. They're big and therefore seem harder to get through than is reality, and when you finish what is in fact a whole book there's nothing to mark off or put back on the shelf until you finish the entire omnibus. 

[Urgan]

9/23/2019

I Spoke Too Soon

 

Tasks

Clean kitchen table

Clean kitchen counters

 

Practice

Crying in the Dojo - 8/16

Lingodeer Time - 11/20

Story Outline - 2/4

 

Behavior

Keep in Touch - 7/8

9:00 Dinner - 4/8

Cat grooming - 2/4

Too Many Curses - 8

 

That time when I said Friday was awful and every week is automatically entered into the Worst Week Competition? Yeah well I didn't think an early-meeting Monday designed to dump responsibility nobody else wants onto me would be hard to top. BUT NO. 

 

At 4PM, a mere one hour before time to leave, one of my coworkers got out of his chair to specifically direct me to look at a post someone made inside a Microsoft Teams channel I can't unsubscribe from/leave about how QA is useless and/or incompetent. The gist of the joke is "QA tests every useless edge case possible and doesn't test valid functionality any idiot would expect to be included, causing a major deployment catastrophe." Two of my team "liked" it and the guy who showed it to me did so because he thought it was funny. I replied saying nobody could agree on what the heck was attempted to be built (because that's the joy of software development--sometimes we agree there's a need, but all too often implementation can become bizarre....) and followed up a bit with the guy who thought this was a great thing to show me, capped off with #whatilearnedtoday half my team are apparently assholes. N e a t.

 

So yeah. That was my Monday. We did jiu waza at night. Didn't do anything at home because see above. Now I have to deal with this revelation.

[Kishi]

Huh. Black Company sounds very much like the kind of book my brother would read. He's big on exploring alternate points of view and he's a very surprisingly serious student of history. I'll have to check out some time, after I've read enough highfalutin stuff to get my lit snob friend off my back. (which might be never, so, maybe I'll read this next?)

[Urgan]

9/24/2019

Sending Signals

 

Tasks

Clean kitchen table

Clean kitchen counters

 

Practice

Crying in the Dojo - 8/16

Lingodeer Time - 12/20

Story Outline - 2/4

 

Behavior

Keep in Touch - 7/8

9:00 Dinner - 5/8

Cat grooming - 2/4

Too Many Curses - 8

 

Well I ended up talking to my boss about the public digital humiliation and he took the post down, agreeing it wasn't a thing that needed to be happening on our board. I sorta hoped he'd take down the whole channel (it's literally called "Off Topic"...they could get the same effect with a group chat), but we can't have everything, I guess. Now I may not know who actually respects me/my role at this company, but I know who doesn't and I gave them all the coldness I could generate while still remaining a warm-blooded mammal. I don't believe any cursing actually took place, not sure how I managed it.

 

In unrelated news, I had a scalp ache most of the day. That was neat. Came home and husband is sick now. Made black bean soup, which he ate--usually when he's sick his appetite is the first to go. So I'm just marking time before I have to take off sick as well.

 

Totally forgot to do weapons practice, this was completely unintentional. I'm within 60 pages now of finishing Black Company, so far (640~ pages in) it has been a very good series but if you've ever read a book before you know that's plenty of space to hose an ending. 

 

22 hours ago, Kishi said:

Huh. Black Company sounds very much like the kind of book my brother would read. He's big on exploring alternate points of view and he's a very surprisingly serious student of history. I'll have to check out some time, after I've read enough highfalutin stuff to get my lit snob friend off my back. (which might be never, so, maybe I'll read this next?)

 

Why torture yourself for someone else's opinion? GTFO Lit Snob. Unless you actually want to read whatever it is. Just a note, the first few pages establish the tone but said tone is an acquired taste, you know? Give it the old 20 - 50, that should be a good gauge on whether you will have a "good" time with this series. Scare-quotes because ain't nobody having a good time here lol. It's like fantasy Murphy's Law up in here.

[Kishi]

4 hours ago, Urgan said:

Why torture yourself for someone else's opinion? GTFO Lit Snob. Unless you actually want to read whatever it is. Just a note, the first few pages establish the tone but said tone is an acquired taste, you know? Give it the old 20 - 50, that should be a good gauge on whether you will have a "good" time with this series. Scare-quotes because ain't nobody having a good time here lol. It's like fantasy Murphy's Law up in here.

 

Well, it's not torture, and I am wanting to broaden out a bit and touch on literary stuff, but my thing is if I go down that road and start reading that stuff, he'll try to pull me further down that road too. Not out of any sense of dismissal of my tastes so much as his own enthusiasm for the stuff he reads. How far do I really want to go? I do not know.

[Urgan]

9/25/2019

You Were Warned

 

Tasks

Clean kitchen table

Clean kitchen counters

 

Practice

Crying in the Dojo - 10/16

Lingodeer Time - 13/20

Story Outline - 3/4

 

Behavior

Keep in Touch - 9/8

9:00 Dinner - 5/8

Cat grooming - 2/4

Too Many Curses - 9

 

I've been turning out the light sooner on average than I have been and it seemed to have helped out my squat and rack pull. Work was a circus because hoooooooly cats all the clowns showed up, let's leave it at that. Husband stayed home from his work, I checked in on him and dad. I totally called it that we'd be doing maegiri tonight, practiced that. I don't outright contradict black belts, but sometimes we're taught some certain way how to do a technique then another black belt come along and be like no no, you do it this way and I'm like cool except we were taught this way so we're reflexively going to default to trying to do it this way. Black belt consults video which is inconclusive as his copy on his phone was corrupt (the video file) so we had to collar another black belt in which my point was made. When in doubt I am definitely willing to admit being wrong but not when I know somebody of equal or higher authority just has a different opinion. We've learned there's more than one way to skin cats several times. 

 

Went home and finished Black Company. It was a really good trilogy, highly recommended. I discovered my other omnibus in this line is actually book 6 which, if you do the math, means there are two books between what I have read and what is sitting on the shelf. Right now I'm suspecting reading more (right now?) in this series might be just too much, I'm just not sure which biases me toward No. I may have bought Pride and Platypus (Jane Austen, et al) as a $5 eBook and I am not sorry. Yes it will give you tonal whiplash to jump between Black Chronicles and Pride, but that's how I roll. Apparently. 

 

In unrelated news, the job market is garbage and I am at an all-time high of 122.6lbs while not exactly feeling amazing in the gym. Lots of gas. Not sure what I'm doing (not sleeping enough, eating something I shouldn't?) that's specifically causing this, but I'm working on it.