Reading

Entry tags:

on pain of pain

[pain] stats (or lack thereof) on causes of chronic pain

One of the things I'm sure I've come across repeatedly in the books I've read so far is the idea that a very high proportion of Chronic Pain Cases are down to either back pain or headache. This is important because back pain genuinely is something that has a massive nociplastic component, especially in the lower back, that is unequivocally worth treating (despite myself I remain grudgingly impressed with the Boulder Back Pain Study; and, to be clear, I do myself have a grumbly section of lower back following an injury a few years ago that I am practising all my Theories on!).

This is an Important To Me framing device because my point is that treatments aimed purely at nociplastic pain/central sensitisation cannot be expected to work as well for people with ongoing or recurrent tissue damage/injury... but why it's worth using some of these approaches anyway, with the understanding of the actual scope of what effects to hope for or expect. Which means I'd like to know where they're GETTING those numbers from.

( Mindfulness for Health )

( The Way Out (... long, bonus tangential rant) )

( The Painful Truth )

... aaaaaaand it is now definitely past bedtime so I'll finish Revisiting Books tomorrow. (My notes on Explain Pain, consistent with it being generally competent, are that it doesn't go anywhere near talking about what The Most Common Forms Of Chronic Pain are; might have a quick flip through when I'm next in the same place as my copy. Also couldn't find anything in Touch. Will be revisiting the current book, Ouch!, in the morning...)

Current Mood: I follow my calling
Current Location: The Tearooms of Amalo

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Recent Re-Reading

It's surprising that sometimes the reason you had quibbles about a book the first time around is the reason you like it more the second time around.

The Goblin Emperor, Katherine Addison

Teenage Maia is stunned when woken in the middle of the night to find out his father and half-brothers are dead in an airship accident and he is now Emperor of the elven lands. But as the despised fourth child, product of an unwanted fourth, political marriage, and mixed race at that, he has spent his life in internal exile and has not received the necessary education to rule. Maia isn't ready for the elven court, but neither are the elven court ready for Maia.

I love this, I think the writing is gorgeous, but first time around I thought the neologisms were overdone. This time around it was the mention of chamomile tea, not isvret or ochor, that I found jarring.

The Witness for the Dead, Katherine Addison

Thara Celehar, cleric of Ulis, the god of death, wants little from life except to be left alone with his role as Witness vel ama, Witness for the dead in the city of Amalo. But witnessing for the dead, being able to recall their last thoughts for family, religious or legal purposes, inevitably leads to complications when your newest dead body has vivid memories of being pushed into the canal and hit over the head. But this isn't Thara's first investigation, being the Witness vel ama who solved the murder of Maia's father and brothers gives him the tools to pursue his religious duty, a duty he's already once destroyed his own happiness over.

Thara's a particularly dour kind of hero, a man who has allowed himself to be defined and delimited by his often stated I follow my calling, but all the more compelling for it.

The Tomb of Dragons, Katherine Addison

An unfortunate series of events leads to Thara finding himself Witnessing for a dead dragon haunting a mine, the site of a historic massacre of the last of the local dragon population. The problem being that doing so will put him at odds with powerful noble families, at a time of political uncertainty centred on the nobility. But Thara remains a man defined by I follow my calling. The first time around I was annoyed that Thara doesn't get an entirely happy ending, but this time I think I've come to accept that the mixed outcome is perhaps for the best, even if somewhat unfair on everyone. Thara really isn't the kind of person who gets entirely happy endings, and he definitely isn't the sort to presume he deserves one.

(I still haven't read The Grief of Stones, the second Thara story)

Soup Season

I have, today, made my first Soup of the autumn: carrot and leek and celery and a couple of potatoes for good measure (and I then added frozen peas to my portion, because I like them cold and not at all cooked and definitely not reheated repeatedly over the course of a week). Bread and cheese, fruit to follow. I didn't manage Monday Morning Soup Ritual this week, as you can tell from the fact that it's Tuesday, but. Soup.

Some other bits and pieces: I have reached the stage of Squash Week where I have more recipes I want to make than I have squash with which to make them (... and one spaghetti squash) (for which I have at least some open EatYourBooks tabs). I hit refresh in my Oxfam tab aaaaaand the sale has cycled around to 30% off 3+ books. I have a chilli order ready to go as soon as my new debit card arrives OR I get over myself and see whether the credit card is actually behaving. There is a batch of onions caramelising in the Instant Pot. The current pain book is abruptly unexpectedly absorbing -- it's much more Sociology Of Pain than I'd quite been expecting, but it's potentially building to making at least some of the argument I want to from a refreshingly different angle to everything else I've come across in my background reading so far, and in the meantime in spite of my frustrations with it it's prompting lots of Useful Thoughts.

And I am wearing my Seasonal Leggings (courtesy of Mardy Bum, findable primarily on Facebook, or Instagram for a bit of an idea) and my Extremely Enthusiastic Slippers, like so. ( Read more... )

Current Mood: tired

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talking 'bout the weather

A smattering of small things

It was pouring rain when I woke up, and again, even if it didn't last long enough--I don't know what time it started, but it was pretty much gone by midmorning--it was appreciated. (Of course, I say that as someone working from home; one coworder who works onsite sometimes is in walking distance of the office, and walking to work today resulted in literally wringing clothing out in the kitchen sink upon arrival.)

That also meant it was dim enough at the start of my workday that turning on both strings of Hallowe'en lights in my office made actual sense! The purple/orange string around the edge of the ceiling is bright enough to be fun regardless, but the new string of ghosts around the window is backlit enough that actually turning the lights on makes little sense during the day. (And these years I spend so little evening time in my office, Dayjob crunches notwithstanding.)

I checked in on my freelance schedule yesterday and found out that things have been rearranged in a way that makes the rest of this month and November pretty light, early December a bit much (although some of the work due then can be done in November, theoretically), and January a bit of an onslaught. It should be fine! Just. Ooof. (At least January isn't a typical crunch time, although anything's possible.) This also gives me a bit more motivation to extend my vacation time after Christmas.

At some point today Pokemon Go rolled out its seasonal Hallowe'en skin, which inevitably charms me all out of proportion.

There were other things in my head this morning, but of course the Dayjob workday quietly wiped them away, so we'll call this a post.

Current Mood: impressed

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Belated weekly proof of life (books + tomatoes), having not been at my desk much this weekend

Reading: As of midweek, I'd read nine novels (well, eight and a novella) this month, which is very pleasing given that I usually consider that a good number for a full month, never mind just about halfway through one. (Of course, for the last few days my brain's done an about-face and decided that I'm going to be just reading a cookbook now, thanks.)

Since my last accounting, I've finished KJ Charles' All of Us Murderers (gothic murdery queer romance), Freya Marske's Cinder House (which I wish I'd realized going in--or perhaps more importantly, when I bought it at full price--is a novella, although that didn't keep me from enjoying it quite a bit), Stephen Graham Jones' The Only Good Indians (very solid, but I feel I've met my quota for books with mutilation for a while), Shirley Jackson's We Have Always Lived in the Castle (not so much my thing, maybe [whatever that is], but I sure see why it's a classic!), and E.K. Johnston's Pretty Furious (a satisfying "~good girls~ lash back at the fucking patriarchy and its associated bullshit" read).

Now I'm reading through the aforementioned cookbook, Bee Wilson's The Secret of Cooking: Recipes for an Easier Life in the Kitchen, which swiftly made its way onto the inherently-aggravating-but-complimentary list of cookbooks bought in ebook that I now want in hard copy.

Also,

scruloose and I are...maybe a third?...of the way into Fugitive Telemetry (having decided to listen to Murderbot in chronological order rather than publication order).

Growing: In a shocking development, our Tiny Tim tomato plant (which we bought immediately before the drought turned unmistakable official, and therefore have since watered once or at most twice since putting it in) has produced a couple handfuls of ripe fruit!

scruloose reports that they're tasty! We're over halfway through October!

AWS outage

DW is seeing some issues due to today's Amazon outage. For right now it looks like the site is loading, but it may be slow. Some of our processes like notifications and journal search don't appear to be running and can't be started due to rate limiting or capacity issues. DW could go down later if Amazon isn't able to improve things soon, but our services should return to normal when Amazon has cleared up the outage.

Edit: all services are running as of 16:12 CDT, but there is definitely still a backlog of notifications to get through.

Edit 2: and at 18:20 CDT everything's been running normally for about the last hour.

Current Mood: annoyed
Current Music: ABBA - Dancing Queen

Why Should You Switch to Linux, (Mostly) Wrong Answers Only

The Document Foundation, responsible for the LibreOffice suite of office tools, posted a blog post in anticipation of the end of Windows 10 support with 10 reasons to ditch Windows and go to Linux instead. I appreciate their advocacy for such things, but I think their ten reasons are not actually good ones for the adoption of Linux, but realizing this means that I'm probably going to have to put down a blog post about it, rather than a social media quip. So, here we go once again, and I'm going to once again be a regular Linux user about this, rather than some superuser sysadmin.

( It's a Not Top Ten List more than a Top Ten List )

Entry tags:

personal

(no subject)

( Mostly about the kids. )

Entry tags:

vital functions

vital functions

Reading. No finishes, lots of fragments.

Started: The Old Guard: Opening Fire, Rucka et al. Their faces are WRONG and I don't LIKE it. (Shared Reading Experience.) I also don't like The Smoking, and I really feel the absence of the baklava scene.

In progress: Forgotten Fruits, Stocks, which despite saying I was going to DNF I have continued working my way through, with occasional grumpy squawks; Index, a history of the, Duncan, in very small nibbles; and I'm now a third of the way through Ouch!, Kerr + McRobbie, which is much more sociology than I was expecting when I bought it, having failed at that point to register that one of the authors is a sociologist. A bunch of the neuroanatomy is irritatingly (and unnecessarily! they could have just been less specific!) wrong; we've had a lengthy case study focussing on endometriosis but as yet no indication that they're actually considering the role of ongoing tissue damage. Not ruling out that they'll get there, though.

Dreamwidth catch-up: UP TO SEPTEMBER.

Listening. Cornish waves recording.

Cooking. Ridiculous Textures Of Beetroot from The Modern Vegetarian (good, did like); mildly underwhelmed by Bengali five-spice roasted squash, a totally acceptable meal it was very pleasant to be able to stick in the oven and forget about while I did something else; and stir-fried pumpkin with cashews from Rosa's Thai Café: the Vegetarian Cookbook.

Buttermilk continues to work. Managed some bread. Baked some crabapples and then singularly failed to actually make the ginger-and-lime caramel to coat them in, so this lot probably needs composting and I'll try again next week. Maybe. (Raymond Blanc recipe, from The Lost Orchard, which I much preferred at least so far to Forgotten Fruits.)

Eating. Particularly excited this week by Limonera pears, which are apparently DPO Spanish-cultivated Docteur Jules Guyot! All of the descriptions say "very reminiscent of Williams, flavour not as good unless you get them just right", to which I add that they are sliiiiightly firmer fleshed in a way that I think is an active plus.

I am very much enjoying yoghurt + hazelnuts + a drizzle of quince syrup.

Creating. ... took some photos of some plants?

Growing. MORE SAFFRON. Still very excited by the saffron. Also the chillis. (Home saffron also now definitively coming up, in the trough if not around the fig, but no sign of it intending to flower, alas.)

Cannot tell if the windowsill lemongrass is in fact just dried out or if it's in the Growing Many Roots stage. Grumpily aware that going digging is counterproductive. Pineapple continues pineapple.

Observing. A MUNTJAC. There was, at the plot, A Great Rustling out of the plum tree on the neighbouring plot, and I looked up and thought, for an entire moment, "gosh that's a remarkably large fox with a remarkably short tail", before my brain caught up with the data it was actually being sent. Less than twenty metres away. Think that's the closest one of them's ever been to me (at least that I've noticed)!

some good things

Spontaneous(ish) brunch at the localish Gail's, in that it's a thing I have been meaning to do for A While and the weather will shortly be getting cold enough (and likely damp enough) that their outside seating loses its appeal. Underwhelming hot chocolate but I really liked the sesame-cardamom bun -- think Kardemummebullar With Bonus Sesame; I got the last one and it was way better than I was expecting. (Millennial Avocado Toast also tasty.)
Successfully acquired Discount Bread from the supermarket this evening, for the purpose of tomorrow's dinner (a recipe from Salt Fat Acid Heat which will use the cavolo nero from the fridge + some of the Seasonal Squash in a panzanella).
And I was nearly back to baseline on the walk home from same, which is a very welcome development (I have been Lingeringly Ill for the last four weeks).
Successfully read a chapter of The Old Guard comic (on loan from library) on my laptop as a Shared Activity. Consequently we are about a fifth of the way through. ~~I prefer the film.~~
I think the chilli plant I lost track of the label for might plausibly, finally, be a Trinidad Perfume??? Fingers crossed for it managing to usefully set fruit (and I really do need to bring All the chillis in from the greenhouse...)
I am listening to Cornish waves while I get ready for bed. Is good. <3

Entry tags:

picspam

did some errands

Debit card in amended name theoretically on its way to me. Two sets of Objects belonging to Players are now OUT OF MY HOUSE and IN THE HANDS OF ROYAL MAIL. And on the way back up the hill, when I was in less of a hurry, I paused to Observe Some Plants.

Ergo: Some Plants.

grey brick container merging seamlessly with floor, dark green hebe, firey autumnal decorative maple

Current Mood: pleased

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Mainly a tiny bit of posterity: Thanksgiving dinner

I somehow mentally misplaced a week when we were booking our covid/flu shots and I was looking at the last market date of the season for the little one on the corner. Unsure how my brain concluded that they were on the same day. (Market's last day is tomorrow, shots are a week from tomorrow, so it's FINE, just...odd.)

The rest of this is entirely about what we did for our little Thanksgiving dinner (with a bit of blood glucose talk), so it's going under a cut. ( cut! )

Current Mood: busy
Current Music: Louis Cole via Darren Korb - The End of Time (Unrivaled Mix)

So very much, as usual - Early October 02025

Let us begin with the fact that Reading Rainbow, a staple of many a young child of previous decades, mixing in library promotion, books, reading, and activities, is getting a new season with a new host, Mychal the Librarian. Someone who has already proven that he's perfect for the job on social media as a librarian, and who has already been working with PBS as their resident librarian for at least a year. Which continues with the way that Reading Rainbow has shows us a well-known Black man being excited about books, libraries, and exceling at things outside what certain people believe he should be good at.

Eastman Kodak is once again selling still picture film stock, but this time it will be selling directly to film distributors, who will likely be more than happy to have Kodak film camera rolls for their photography buffs.

If you are not already aware, Archive.Today is one of the more popular ways for people to get content as it appears on a website, but without any of the login walls and demands for support. It will not last forever, and it's worth supporting local and independent journalism with your currency, but there are quite a few places that believe you should have to pay up significantly just for a single article to look at.

At the end of that particular piece, there's talk about sharing the already wall-leapt version of the thing instead of the original. While the site does offer the original URL for what it has scraped, my citation scholarship kicks in and says that I should offer the original place, even if the way to read the same content is through archive.today or some other paywall jumper.

Dr. Jane Goodall, DBE, primatologist, animal rights advocate, and generally good sport, now gets to explore the secrets of the universe at 91 years of age. We know, thanks to her, that "tool-using animal" is a bigger catgegory than just homo sapiens, and much more about the lives of chimpanzees. My first exposure to Dr. Goodall, however, was the introduction she wrote to one of the Far Side comic book compilations, where she talked about having been the subject of one of the comics and how she found it an absolute delight to have been part of humor, even with other people who wanted to take offense on her behalf. (Including the insitute that she's founded, taking offense to the doctor being called a "tramp" by a chimpanzee in one of the comics.) Her serious work with apes and chimps and such is also entirely notable, but the Far Side introduction is just a nice reminder to us that even scientsists have a sense of humor. (And, in fact, they often have a very sharp sense of humor.)

Sister Jean Dolores Schmidt, who gained a certain amount of fame as the chaplain of the men's basketball team for Loyola Chicago during an unprecedented NCAA tournament run, passed into the hands of her god at 106 years of age. 106 is an excellent innings, and from the report on her, it seems that she was someone who spent that time in the service that she dedicated herself to for her life.

Ninety-five years after the completion of her thesis, Oxford University awarded a posthumous Master's of Philosophy to the first Māori scholar they had admitted to their ranks. From the excerpts of her diary that one of her descendants shared, she seems to have been an excellent person full of an interesting life.

The online academic article and scholarly research repository JSTOR has opened their doors to non-institutional researchers, allowing a limited number of article viewings per month to registered users who are not affiliated with institutional subscribers.

( There's always more inside, from bad decisions to kidnapping squads and the use of truly shady surveillance software )

Last out, suggestions on where to go to get good programming and intersting shows if you've decided that you want less corporate oligarchy in your life. If you are thinking about taking up embroidery, there's a stitch bank that may be able to help you find and practice new techniques.

A prescient delineation between what the purpose of the library and the librarian is when it comes to a person's relation to information, and what the purpose of the ad company with a search engine or the LLM with inexhaustible confidence and (at best) an approximate knowledge of some things is for the same. Those who have lived through this era will not be surprised to find that the purpose of the LLM and the ad company is not to help you understand what you actually want and get you relevant resources, but instead to show you ads.

And finally, a searchable index of verious symbols that, when clicked upon, will copy the correct Unicode code point to your computer clipboard for easy pasting.

(Materials via

adrian_turtle,

azurelunatic,

boxofdelights,

cmcmck,

conuly,

cosmolinguist,

elf,

finch,

firecat,

jadelennox,

jenett,

jjhunter,

kaberett,

lilysea,

oursin,

rydra_wong,

snowynight,

sonia,

the_future_modernes,

thewayne,

umadoshi,

vass, the

meta_warehouse community,

little_details, and anyone else I've neglected to mention or who I suspect would rather not be on the list. If you want to know where I get the neat stuff, my reading list has most of it.)

some good things make a post

did eventually get myself out to the plot (after aborting the first attempt and going back to bed when I realised I'd made it almost to the main road without my bike helmet). successfully acquired More Saffron.
cooked a lot of beetroot, most of which I grew, for dinner -- one of the books I acquired from Oxfam just for interest, The Modern Vegetarian, has a "textures of beetroot": keftedes, tzatziki, a bulgur pilaf and a salad using the greens. I had a mix of colours, and the ombre gold-to-pink were very pretty in the salad. (and picking over the leaves very, very carefully yielded a tiny snail! who is now in the viv.)
I am continuing very slowly on the mend from the probably-a-cold from nearly a month ago: today I didn't get any active minutes walking up and down inside the house to hit step goal.
the post brought Fancy Chocolate. even some of it is Fancy Chocolate in my preferred flavour of same!
I have somehow achieved having my accounts almost agree with reality about how much cash is in my wallet! and I think I've found the remains of at least one Missing Receipt in the back pocket of a set of trousers, which does at least provide an explanation. it is very satisfying when I actually manage this.

Entry tags:

vital functions

vital functions

Reading. ( Brosh, Woodin, Saunders, Stocks, Duncan )

Watching. Another Farscape, while bleaching A this morning. ( Read more... )

Playing. The Tukoni: Forest Keepers demo. Once again a very soothing delight: potter gently about making other forest creatures happy, in a setting of gorgeous art. Exactly what our frazzled nerves needed.

Quite a bit of Fluxx.

Cooking. A butternut squash and quince stew with pipián, courtesy of the Wahaca cookbook.

Eating. A picnic of misc takeaway from Hammersmith station complex on Saturday afternoon! Ben's Cookies! Strawberries! Pizza Express this evening because No!

Exploring. The Autumn London Pen Show, where I spent only the planned amount of money on the planned thing and was delighted with the outcome. :) Little bit of a poke around Hammersmith followed by the Westfield centre thereafter.

Growing. Spinach! So much spinach! I am starting to harvest it. I am very pleased by this. And of course SAFFRON of which there has been LOTS (i.e. I might have enough home-grown saffron to make one or possibly two recipes, which is vastly more than I've ever had before and Extremely Exciting).

Observing. The bat! Possibly even two of them this evening, definitely not gone to sleep yet.

Entry tags:

stationery

[stationery] ... oh NO I love it

Went to the Autumn London Pen Show! Got the Lamy 2000 EF nib ground down to a needlepoint by Thomas Ang! Did not properly notice until settling in to play with it properly that it's got this amazing slightly stubbish character to it! And he also tweaked my Platinum UEF nib to be slightly less Horrendously Dry (which had somehow not occurred to me as a solution), and... having now settled down for a bit more writing for the evening, I think I might actually really like having two UEF/needlepoint nibs to use different colours of ink in.

The idea was to reduce the number of pens in regular use by dint of retiring the Platinum, not increase it. Oh no.

Some other things! The Rudi Rother Pelikan is even prettier in person; I still do not get the appeal of Leonardos (though to be fair I think my sense of their general appeal is massively skewed by That One Very Active Person who thinks they're The Most Beautiful Pens In All The World); the Visconti Van Gogh series do not impress me any more in person than they do in photographs; next time I can justify buying another TN insert The Inked Paw are delightful and we had an excellent chat and Trying Each Other's Pens while I was in Thomas Ang's queue (and they slightly discombobulated me by asking me if I had an Instagram when I flipped through my notebook to show what I use the UEF for...)

... yeah no I am just absolutely delighted by this ridiculous pen, EXCELLENT outing + date activity, Ben's Cookies also successfully acquired, Very Happy.

Current Mood: okay

Entry tags:

Saturday mishmash, with the second half largely food-related

scruloose and I have our covid/flu shots booked for next weekend! There were earlier slots available, but not in walking distance. It'll take us right to the little corner market, and next weekend is its final day for the season. Convenient!

We finished season 1 of Silo a couple nights ago. (I've been intermittently earwormed with its OP theme music, which is fortunately a good piece, but I still would rather not have it [or anything else] stuck in my head.) That was a very solid season finale. Now to decide if we want to immediately go to season 2 or watch something else first/alongside. (Can anyone tell me, without spoilers, a] how much of the book[s] season 1 covers, and/or b] if the show is finished or if a third season is expected/hoped for?)

I went along for the drive when

scruloose ran a few errands this morning: a purchase return, two stops for local produce (blueberries, cranberries, broccoli, and a giant sweet potato; no luck getting baking apples), and picking up an order of Thanksgiving baked goods from Sully & Porter (née the Old Apothecary). We are now in possession of six adorably tiny tarts (half pumpkin, half lemon meringue) and six hefty cookies that I hope will freeze reasonably well so that they can be eked out.

Tomorrow evening will probably be when we throw together a Thanksgiving dinner of ham*, cranberry sauce, and some mix of roasted veggies. I consulted How to Cook Everything on the matter of the ham, and it gives an oven temperature and an estimated cook time and basically says "heat until hot, then eat", and it doesn't get much simpler than that.

*The most token little ham! I'm not actually sure how much I'll like it, as ham was never my thing growing up, so we didn't want a huge one to swamp us with leftovers. We'll see! I know it's possible for me to enjoy ham, as we've been to a couple of group meals where I did. (I can think of one here and one in Toronto, so the hams in question were cooked by two very different friends.)

Entry tags:

proof of saffron

Another nine strands today. :)

a saffron crocus in flower, petals somewhat chewed

(Photo actually from Wednesday 8th, of the first one!)

Current Mood: hungry

Entry tags:

recent readings

Recent readings: A stab at reading seasonally for Hallowe'en

It's a Friday off and I got some manga work done, so here's a bit of book-logging:

Her Halloween Treat (Tiffany Reisz) is a straightforward, enjoyable romance that has almost nothing at all to do with Hallowe'en. It takes place when the female lead is home for her brother's wedding, and his partner has always wanted a Hallowe'en wedding, so they're having a themed costume Hallowe'en wedding. It's also the female lead's birthday, but they checked with her and she's fine with it, so there's no drama there. Nothing of what I've just written is at all spoilery for the main plot or emotional arcs or anything.

The Drowning House (Cherie Priest) is almost not a ghost story at all--the supernatural elements are something else--but ghosts flicker around its edges. I enjoyed it, although there's a piece of the story that I feel the epilogue was intended to shine a light on and...it didn't do that. (Alternatively, that wasn't the author's intention, but if so, I feel like it should have at least nodded to that specific thing? Or something?)

Specifically [ROT13], gur rcvybthr vf n tyvzcfr onpx ng gur '50f jura gur gjvaf ner cynaavat gb xvyy jung'f-uvf-snpr, naq vg qbrfa'g fnl nalguvat nobhg jul Zef. Phycrccre (arneyl) frag ure fvfgre gb ure qrngu, be vs fur npghnyyl zrnag gb qb gung, naq qbrfa'g tvir nal uvag gung gung'f tbvat gb unccra, vagragvbanyyl be bgurejvfr. Vg'f whfg na vagrenpgvba orgjrra n cnve bs fvfgref jub qba'g ernyyl trg nybat nf gurl cercner gb qb gur guvat gurl'ir qrpvqrq arrqf qbvat.

It's one thing that I'm not really a horror reader but read the occasional horror novel anyway, and quite another that I'm deeply squeamish about eyes (and just about everything to do with eyes) and yet after someone recced it, I bought The Eyes Are the Best Part (Monika Kim) a while ago when it popped up on sale...and then proceeded to actually read it this week. This book is very clear from the cover alone that it involves cannibalistic eyeball consumption in loving detail. It is not the book's fault that I am 1000% not the intended audience and yet read the whole thing in one sitting anyway when really I should've just read the rec (whenever that was) and not bought the ebook, sale or no sale, never mind read it. (But I don't begrudge the actual sale, however much an on-sale ebook purchase actually helps an author.)

Now I'm taking a bit of a break from trying to read ~seasonally~ and am a few chapters into KJ Charles' All of Us Murderers.

I've also finally finished Daniel Sherrell's Warmth: Coming of Age at the End of Our World, which is...fine? I forget if I've actually mentioned that this book is a letter to a future child Sherrell may or may not ever have (a question he's wrestling with the ethics of), talking about the climate catastrophe and his work as a climate activist and how he tries to fortify himself and find meaning in the face of it all and what he hopes to learn/pass on to any child he may one day have.

Entry tags:

food

[food] ... cursed

You know the way I just said -- I just said -- that I had worked out how to make wagamama's current menu yield something I was actively enthusiastic about eating?

WELL GUESS WHAT. THIRD TIME UNLUCKY.

I had really not expected the pad thai to vanish in a menu overhaul, okay, what on EARTH.

(So we came home and ate butternut squash & quince stew instead, and maybe by the next time it is Ritual Wagamama O'Clock I'll have resigned myself to eating something that isn't The Thing I Just Worked Out.)