Weekly Update: January 14, 2020

It’s been a while, hasn’t it, friends? I posted my 2019 retrospective last week, but before that, I haven’t posted since early November.

And it’s not because I haven’t had anything to write — quite the opposite! November and December were a whirlwind of events, and I haven’t had the time to process them, let alone document them. (As much as I would like to!)

You may have seen some of what’s been going on in my life if you’ve been on Facebook or Twitter, but I’m trying not to rely on them as a source of recording memories. (They do make it so very easy, though, don’t they?)

What my “Window” menu in TextMate looks like right now: “untitled” drafts 2, 3, 4, 5, 5, and 5.

Beside writing blog posts I never finish or post, what have I been up to lately? Let’s see…

Frugalwoods’ Uber Frugal Month

Remember how I read Meet the Frugalwoods back in November? Well, every January and June, Thames/Mrs. Frugalwoods runs her “Uber Frugal Month,” where she sends an email every day guiding you through a specific frugal step.

I decided to try it this January. As I said elseweb, after the blur of spending that was November/December, I needed something that would put me back on track. I wanted to get off the treadmill of hedonic adaptation, cut back on some expenses, and work more aggressively towards my goals.

So far the big things I’ve been doing are:

  • Bringing my lunch to work every day. And trying to clear out the contents of our cupboard, in the process.
  • Finding less expensive ways to meet with my friends. Ask EB about our charming car picnic in the parking lot of Wells State Park!
  • Waiting 72 hours before making any non-essential purchases.
  • Checking my finances daily-ish. I’ve decided to get back to using Mint for tracking finances. It’s improved a great deal over when I first started using it, so that it’s to the point where it’s easy enough for me to use that I don’t avoid it.
A very boring picture of my leftovers lunch.

The big obstacles this month have been:

  • I had to buy my plane tickets and accommodations for the weekend-long game in the UK next month. I should have expected that expense, really. I did get a tidy little discount on my flight by trading in some Avios (the BA rewards currency), at least.
  • It’s Matt’s birthday, and he wanted one thing for his birthday: a 3D printer. How could I say no to something that clearly will give him a great deal of happiness? And anyway, we have enough Amazon rewards points built up that we can take the entire cost of it as a statement credit, so that’s not bad!

Despite these obstacles, I’m hoping that we will at least save a few hundred bucks, which I intend to sock away towards debt. All our debt is “good debt,” but debt is still the prison I seek to escape in my search for financial independence.

Reading

I finally finished King of Scars. (Why do all my book notes start with “finally finished?” I’m not actually a slow reader, but I am a very distracted reader!)

I liked it a lot, better than many books I read, but I felt it was on the weaker side for Bardugo’s work. One of my big complaints is hugely spoilery, and so I won’t mention it here (more on FB), but my other complaints are:

The pacing. My god, this book is leisurely paced for 90% of it, and then WHAM the last 10% is just chock full of action and Important Stuff Happening. There was so much information packed into it that my initial reaction was “I AM SO CONFUSED.” I did sort it out, eventually, but that disorientation seriously ruined the impact of the book’s final chapters for me.

It’s not really Nikolai’s book, is it? We learn a little bit more about him — I liked the story involving his childhood friendship with commoner Dominik — but honestly, it is WAY more about Zoya. Might as well call it “Queen of Ice” and be done with it. (Don’t get me wrong — Zoya is beautifully painted and I enjoyed every minute with her).

Nina’s chapters occupy a very weird spot in the narrative. They are important, but it honestly feels like a different book? It was very jarring to go from “oh Zoya and Nikolai are in danger in Kribirsk” to “let’s watch Nina try to keep springmaidens out of trouble and bicker with Adrik.” That said, her ending was much easier to grok, and thus much more satisfying, than the resolution of the main political and metaphysical plots.

Overall, it was good to be back in this world, but I had higher expectations after the virtuoso performance that was Six of Crows.

On the nonfiction front, I’ve just started listening to Anne Helen Peterson’s The Burnout Generation. You may recall that her blog post — the genesis of this book — inspired me in last year’s theme. I don’t have too much to say about the book yet, except I haven’t heard anything that really surprised me.

Otherwise? I’m still plodding my way through Joshi’s biography of Lovecraft. My library hold for Holly Black’s new book, The Queen of Nothing, just came in, so I may have to read that next. I was also considering picking up Terry Pratchett’s Equal Rites, the first of the Witches subseries of Discworld books. (For reasons that will make more sense once you see my 2020 prospective post!)

ADHD diagnosis

After many trials, I finally got my diagnosis of ADHD in the last days of 2019. (ADHD-C, Combined type, which means I am both inattentive and hyperactive. Yay?)

I was somewhat surprised by the type of ADHD I was diagnosed with. My conversation with the psychologist after the testing made me think I leaned way more in the inattentive direction, i.e. my inattentive symptoms are way more noticeable to the other people in my life who rated me, and I performed more like inattentive type on the test of vigilance and focus that they gave me. But my self-report of hyperactive/impulsive symptoms counts for something, too.

Frustratingly, I haven’t actually been able to try medication yet, because when I called the psychiatrist I had intended to see, I was informed they weren’t doing new patient intakes at that time (despite the fact that when I started the process, they had been). But they put me on a waitlist, and just today I heard back from them. There has been a cancellation, and would I be able to come in to see Dr. Rezai next week? I SURE WOULD.

Still hesitant, but hopeful, in moving ahead. What if stimulant medication doesn’t work for me, or the side effects are too troublesome? Or, what if it works astonishingly well, but then I realize I’ve wasted nearly forty years going undiagnosed? EVERYTHING CAN GO WROOOOONG.

One comfort is there are so many resources out there for ADHD, including women with ADHD, or adult women with ADHD. This week I’ve really been enjoying(?) ADHD Alien’s comics. This one is the latest in “ADHD material so honest it makes it me cry.”

Is that it, Lise?

For now, yes. I hope to post my 2020 prospective some time this week, and I’m hoping to get those other languishing blog posts out into the world sometime… this… year?

But for the moment: I en’t dead yet.

Weekly Update: November 18, 2019

Winter cleaning

In preparation for leaving for England + Matt’s family visiting for the holidays, we’ve launched into a massive declutter of the house.

Eventually we would like the basement craft areas to be useable again, but primarily we just wanted to be able to find what we needed to pack, and to get the guest bedroom back in a state to host guests.

The big task with the first item was cleaning up our basement costume room, which was in a horrid state. How bad? Let’s just say we had to remove the remains of a dead snake.

As for the guest bedroom, it wasn’t too bad, but we needed to rehang the track lighting, which I’d removed in order to paint the room. We were able to finally hang the beautiful Japanese screen that belongs in there, too.

In the process I also got rid of a fuckton of books, and Matt cleared out a ton of clothes.

I felt a little bad dropping all that stuff off at the Savers — especially seeing stuff I paid Actual Cashdollars for sitting in the rain — but I also breathe a tremendous sigh of relief when I enter my home office. So it’s a price I’m willing to pay.

A mostly organized sunroom, with cleared table, neatly stacked board games, and all our larp gear packed away.

New phone, who dis?

Thanks to Matt smashing his iPhone 7 on the brick floor of the mudroom, we both got new phones this weekend. While my phone (an iPhone 6) was still functional, and didn’t strictly need to be upgraded, the battery was on its way out (as witnessed by it randomly turning off in the middle of a run earlier that day).

In the interest of being somewhat frugal, we opted for the iPhone XR, a slightly older model of iPhone. There was a slight hiccup when my phone somehow didn’t get activated while I was at the Verizon store, but soon I was up and running.

And it’s a big adjustment from the 6 to an XR! Face ID, and the lack of a Home button, are some of the biggest changes. There’s also no headphone jack, but there are adapters I can use, and I have finally found some Bluetooth earbuds that will actually stay in my ears when I run.

Fun fact: Face ID will not work while wearing a CPAP mask. I suppose that cuts into my habit of checking my phone while still in bed.

I also haven’t installed Facebook yet on my new phone. We’ll see if I want it while I’m traveling…

One challenge we’re having is that we still only have one Apple ID between our two phones, and that is becoming more and more of a challenge with each version of iOS. Clearly they want us to have two separate IDs and use Family Sharing, but we haven’t set that up yet. I’ve already had to create a separate Apple ID for Game Center just to play TES: Blades on our iPad, as all of Matt’s progress in Blades was tied to my Apple ID. I don’t even think he has an Apple ID of his own, so this will require some thought. But that’s a “when we get back from England” problem.

Speaking of which…

England!

We’re leaving this week for our semi-annual trip to Consequences (the UK theater-style larp con) plus bonus UK tourism. This year after the con we’ll be returning briefly to London to see the Tutankhamun exhibit at the Saatchi Gallery, and then we’ll be taking the train to Bath, where we’ll spend the rest of the week. We plan to see sights like the Roman Baths, Bath Abbey, the Fashion Museum, and the Jane Austen Centre, hit some Atlas Obscura sites (like Pulteney Weir and the Sham Castle), walk the six-mile Bath Skyline trail, and visit the Thermae Spa. Along the way I hope to have plenty of teas, sample some local specialties (Sally Lunns! Bath Spa Water! Gin from the Bath Gin Company! ), and maybe do some holiday shopping. (Baggage space permitting).

Reading

I finished reading Naomi Novik’s Black Powder War, the third Temeraire book. It was solidly meh. The big problem I have with this book is there’s not so much a “plot” as a “series of things that happens in a sequential order.” It has, as my writing teachers would say, no through-line; nothing that carries you through to the end. And the end, when it arrives, takes you by surprise, because it’s not clear what the promise of the book is and whether or not it’s been fulfilled.

But, you know, it’s at least well-written, and I enjoy spending time with Laurence and Temeraire.

I’ve begun listening to King of Scars, by Leigh Bardugo, which is her latest work in the world of the Grisha trilogy and the Six of Crows duology. This one, the first of another duo, focuses on Nikolai Lantsov, the new king of Ravka after the civil war. He has to deal with the politics of a reunited country, the consequences of everything that happened in the previous five novels, and some magical weirdness. Fun times!

I expected this book to tie more closely to the Grisha books than it did Six of Crows, taking place, as it — mostly — does in Ravka. But there’s actually a surprising amount that ties back to the duology. We’re still dealing with the consequences of the magic-enhancing drug that was discovered in the SoC books, and occasionally Nikolai will drop references to Ketterdam and a certain master thief he knows there. In addition, we get a viewpoint from Nina (a viewpoint character in SoC), rescuing grisha in Fjerda, and learning to harness her new powers.

The other viewpoint characters are Nikolai, naturally, and also Zoya Nazyalensky, his general and–dare I suggest?–future romantic interest? There’s definitely some suggestion of that.

And, after having been in Zoya’s POV, I certainly ship it. In the Grisha novels, and to a lesser extent in SoC, we’re always seeing Zoya from the outside, first from Alina’s POV, and then from various of the Crows (but mostly Nina). There, she’s portrayed as this beautiful, talented squaller who is all too aware of her power, and it has made her standoffish and stuck-up. Inside her head, learning her personal history? Well, you begin to see how that competence might create distance from other people, and how she might choose to use that as armor instead of as a weakness. I relate to that pretty hard, actually.

Regarding the magical weirdness… in addition to sudden miracles happening all over Ravka, we find out in the first chapter that Nikolai’s scars from the civil war aren’t only skin-deep, and are affecting his ability to do his job as king. This actually threw me for a loop, since I had read the Grisha trilogy so long ago that I had forgotten what he was up to doing the civil war. But it turns out it’s very, very relevant, so you might want to refresh your memory on that before reading this book.

Finally, I was delighted to see that Lauren Fortgang returned as narrator for this! They’ve apparently abandoned the ensemble cast idea from SoC, and I couldn’t be happier. One thing I will say about having a consistent narrator across books is that when a character recurs unexpectedly — and you recognize them immediately by the voice — there’s this moment of awesome when you realize you’ve cracked the code.

Anyway, I’m only about a third of the way through, but as usual with Bardugo’s novels, I’m deep in the spell!

Meet the Frugalwoods, and financial musings

This started as another book review, but then it veered off into my own personal finance territory, so I decided to make it its own section.

I just finished reading Meet the Frugalwoods, by Elizabeth Willard Thames, “Mrs. Frugalwoods” of frugalwoods.com. Despite my love of frugality blogs, I’d actually never read this one; I picked up the book because I was looking for something nonfiction to read while visiting my mom, and the ebook was available on my library’s Overdrive app.

This book starts with something I think is sorely missing from most conversations about frugality: a discussion of privilege. Thames admits that she and her husband, in building towards their goal of buying a homestead in Vermont, were starting from a privileged position in countless ways — coming from the middle class, being college-educated, being in well-paying jobs, etc. While so many frugality writers lean on “anyone can do this if they just learn to be frugal!”, she admitted that not everyone is going to be able to follow in their footsteps.

And that? That was refreshing to hear. Reading that, I was instantly well-inclined towards the book.

For the most part, the book details their personal financial journey, from their first jobs out of college to buying their Vermont homestead and quitting their jobs to work it full-time. While the early chapters focus on the challenges they faced early on in their married lives, where it really gets interesting is when they decide to go for a goal of buying their homestead, and make a three-year extreme frugality plan to achieve it.

I really enjoyed how closely she and her husband aligned on their financial goals, and how they both had a vision of what they wanted their future together to look like. That was how they could make the decisions that allowed them to save 80% of their paychecks.

When I think about my own financial goals, what I realize is… I don’t really have a clear idea of what I want my future to look like. I don’t want to buy a homestead in Vermont, or have kids, or be a full-time blogger, like Thames and her husband wanted. I know that the goal itself isn’t important, but without something to be saving for, how do I decide if I really need this $10 game that’s on sale? How do I make a million different daily decisions?

Here’s what I know for sure:

I would really like to not have to work for money — which is not to say that I don’t want to work, but more that I don’t want to be dependent on work. I’ve been in positions where I’ve been stuck in hellish jobs because I needed the money, and let me tell you, it is utterly soul-destroying.

I would like to create stuff and solve problems. Writing, mostly. Maybe making websites. Maybe streaming.

I would like to be location-independent, meaning I can work from anywhere, and time-independent, meaning I can budget my own time.

I would like to travel and have adventures. I don’t need a ton of travel, and it doesn’t have to be to far-off lands, but travel provides a type of mental stimulation that I can’t get anywhere else.

Talking to Matt about what he sees our retirement looking like, he mostly agrees with this vision. He, like me, is a creative nerd, and he wants to keep making stuff as long as he can. But where we don’t always see eye-to-eye is on the timeframe. He feels that we shouldn’t rob today to pay for a tomorrow that may never come.

Which I completely understand! One thing I worry about is whether or not I will be in good enough health to enjoy a standard retirement, or if I’ll live long enough to make use of all the money I’m socking away in my IRA and 401k. That, in fact, is usually my argument for an early retirement.

That said, “spend now” vs. “save for later” is not an all-or-nothing proposition. I think some of the biggest gains can be made just by cutting out things we don’t value much. Which is a point that Thames makes: you can benefit from frugality no matter what part of the frugality spectrum you’re on. Just because you can’t achieve complete financial independence doesn’t mean that you can’t save anything, or that there are no gains to be made at all.

And what to do with that saved money? That’s what I need to make these decisions around, right? I might feel different if I were, say, putting it into an investment fund called “Lise and Matt’s Extremely Nerdy Early Retirement Fund,” but (aside from the amount already going to tax-advantaged funds) we are still primarily paying down debt — mainly the mortgage, but also lingering student loans, a car loan, and the balance on the HELOC.

And, at the end of the day, paying down debt is just not very sexy or interesting. Alas.

(While there’s something to be said for making use of compound interest by investing earlier rather than later, by paying down debt you’re fundamentally giving yourself a rate of return equal to that debt’s interest rate. And given the volatility of the stock market, a reliable 5% interest rate can be hard to come by in uncertain times).

Another thing that sticks with me from Meet the Frugalwoods is Thames’ discussion of “insourcing,” i.e. learning to do more things themselves, and being more self-reliant. She gives a famous example of watching a Youtube video about cutting layers in long hair and then writing up a bulleted list for her husband on how to cut her hair. She got a decent haircut (at least she says she did!), but more importantly, she felt it brought her and her husband closer together in the process. Learning to do something new together is a great way to reinvigorate those novelty feels in a relationship, I would think.

Since “self-reliance” is part of my 2019 prospective, you can bet this is something that resonated with me. I think I’m going to follow her advice for frugal holiday pictures and Christmas cards, for example. I’ve said I want more creativity in my life — why then should I pay someone else to take this opportunity away from me?

Picture of the week

Enough heavy financial talk–instead, enjoy this picture of two of my cats:

Two happy cats snuggling on the couch.

We call these two — Burnbright and Brianna — the “buddy Bs” because they often snuggle like this. They did not always get along this well, either, so we definitely savor moments like this when we see them!

Weekly Update: September 8, 2019

Peach picking, getting back to editing, my talented friends and their awesome books, and NATURE.

It’s been a while — I spent a big chunk of August on vacation. I’m working on a longer travelogue, but in the interest of writing regularly, here’s what I’ve been up to since I got back, or stuff that was tangential to my vacation.

Peach picking

Last weekend I went peach (and raspberry, and blueberry) picking at Carlson Orchards in Harvard, MA. In addition to crossing it off my 101 goals in 1001 days list, it also meant I got to spend some time with my excellent friends Becky, Arnis, Kim, and Dave.

In the process I…

  • Learned how to tell a peach was ready to be picked. (Half yellow/half pink, with the ridges on the top yielding to the touch)
  • Had some fantastic falafel from Chez Rafiki, a Mediterranean restaurant that has a food truck at the orchard.
  • Discovered that the orchard plays alarm calls of certain birds in their raspberry patch — presumably to keep birds from eating the fruit. What a great idea!
  • Bought a case of their amazing Shandy Stand, which I tasted and loved at the Johnny Appleseed Beer Festival.

Now I have SO MUCH FRUIT to eat…

Reading

I of course got a ton of reading done while traveling!

I finished (at last!) The Unbound Empire, the final book of my pal Melissa Caruso’s Swords and Fire trilogy. That it took me so long to finish is not a mark against it; once I was able to sit down and concentrate, it was engrossing! I kept wondering how various things were going to resolve — the love triangle, Ruven’s machinations, etc — and I can truly say that it delivered an end to the series that was surprising, but, in retrospect, inevitable. I’m truly, truly pleased with the conclusion, and I’m excited to see more of Vaskandar in the new series.

In continuing adventures of “I have incredibly talented author friends,” I finally read Django Wexler’s Ship of Smoke and Steel, the first book in his YA fantasy trilogy, the Wells of Magic. I actually had read part of it already, it turned out; he’d sent it to me to critique back when he was still calling it “Deepwalker.” It’s the story of ruthless mob boss with combat magic, Isoka, who gets thrown onto a giant ship/city, Soliton, and has to figure out how to commandeer it in order to save the life of her sister.

ANYWAY it’s just fantastic. I agree with the reviewer who said that the action scenes are cinematic — in particular I thought the dredwurm fight, with mushroom spores flying around, was particularly colorful. It’s also paced beautifully, pulling you from one adventure to another with curiosity about the magic system, this ginormous ship, and wtf is going on.

Isoka is also a fascinating character; she starts out kind of a terrible person, which is something that’s super rare for a female, first-person protagonist. But her ruthlessness is a tool that she uses to climb the hierarchy of Soliton, and that? That I looooved. (Also she is marginally less awful by the end of the book, in ways that totally make sense).

There was… kind of a love triangle? Although I felt that if you’ve read anything of Django’s, you knew exactly how it was going to end 😉 I was rooting for Zarun, either way. I like my charismatic assholes.

After I marked it as “read” on Goodreads, though, I made the mistake of reading some reviews of it and… man, there are some people willfully misreading the romance in that book. It left me with a combination of “did you read the same book as I did?” and “DING DONG YOU ARE WRONG.” Ultimately I think a lot of people don’t know what to do with a female protagonist like Isoka.

I’ve already preordered the next book, which comes out January 2020, so I think that tells you my ultimate opinion 😉

While I was in Stratford, I also read Jeannette Walls’ Half-Broke Horses, which she describes as a “true-life novel” about her grandmother, who was a homesteader, horse trainer, bootlegger, and teacher in New Mexico and Arizona in the early 20th century. I liked this way better than I did The Glass Castle, which was way too intense for me. It turns out, I just really like stories about people homesteading and being self-reliant! This was definitely a story I wanted to linger in.

Writing

I have been getting back to editing Lioness. Still on draft 3, as I have been for the past… year? Two years? (Too long!) Every time I’m away for any significant period of time, I have to do what I call “reuploading the manuscript into working memory,” which is basically just re-reading it. At 120k words, that takes a bit of time!

However, this reupload, I was pleased to make two discoveries: 1) there were bits that I didn’t remember writing that I found quite clever! and b) I was further along in my edits than I had thought. So that was heartening.

Still, editing continues to be painful. It feels like closing the doors on so many possibilities.

Mead chronicles: the meading continues!

Batch #1, the semisweet mead per Ken Schramm’s The Compleat Meadmaker, is still in secondary fermentation. It is supposed to remain there until it clears and all fermentation has stopped for two weeks. It has cleared, but fermentation is still going, verrrrrry slooooowly, so I’ve left it there.

I’ve picked up a few goodies for bottling it, namely some swing-top bottles, and some Saniclean/iodophor, because I’ve heard so many negatives about sanitizing with bleach.

Last week I put on a new batch of quick mead, cleverly called batch #2, using the recipe from the Elder Scrolls cookbook and a spice blend of my own imagining: cardamom, cinnamon, ginger, juniper berries, and grains of paradise. I have no idea how this will turn out! It may be utterly undrinkable! But at least I only have to wait another week or so to find out.

The mystery mead! How will it turn out??

iNaturalist, and a recent walk in the woods

I’ve become utterly obsessed with iNaturalist, an app and website which allows you to engage in citizen science out in the wild and get feedback on your observations. I started using it when I was up in Canada, and then went through MY ENTIRE CAMERA ROLL and uploaded every nature picture I had, getting identifications for most of them. I just started using it in mid August, and I’ve already logged 80 observations, most of them flowering plants, because that’s kind of my thing.

What I’m beginning to discover is that no matter how many times I tread a certain path, there is always something new to discover — even if it’s just opening my eyes to something I’ve overlooked a million times. For example, I went for a walk today at work, along the Cochituate Rail Trail — a path I probably walk at least a hundred times a year — and saw velvetleaf (Abutilon theophrasti), which was entirely new to me. (And, unfortunately, an invasive species). I’m also starting to branch out (haha) into tree identification, and suddenly I notice Eastern redbud and witch hazel and shagbark hickory when I pass them.

(P.S. I’m lisefrac on iNat, if you want to look me up there).

Anyway, this past weekend Matt and I went on a long ramble through the Hickory Hills woods and Lunenburg Town Forest, visiting some parts we’d never seen before. It’s kind of amazing how quickly it changes from a dense undergrowth of heath (mountain laurel, partridge berry, wintergreens, etc) to… well, almost nothing, in the parts to the north of the lake. Probably a sign to how recently different parts have been reforested, I would guess.

The bugs were pretty awful — and I was covered up pretty well, due to the high risk of EEE in Massachusetts right now — so it was not the most pleasant or comfortable walk in the woods I’ve ever had. However! I did see some species I’d only read about before, like downy rattlesnake plantain, or cardinal flower.

(When I saw the cardinal flowers, I was, no lie, about 100 feet away, and this flash of brilliant red caught my eye. I had a brief moment of hope — because this was the right season for it, if nothing else — but then almost brushed it off as “nah, it’s probably just foliage of some sort.” But as I got a little closer, it seemed more floral in shape, so I went bounding, literally into a marsh, to take a picture of it).

Weekly Update: July 18, 2019

In which I make mead, attend Readercon, discover a new podcast, and nearly lose a stuffed dino.

Mead Again

I put on my first batch of real, two-stage, “long” mead on Monday based on the recipe in Ken Schramm’s The Compleat Meadmaker.

I only made one gallon, rather than the five gallons he gives the recipe for, mostly because it’s hard to sanitize a five-gallon carboy when you don’t have a working bathtub. This is intended to be a basic semi-sweet mead — 3lbs of honey and a little less than a gallon of water, and no flavorings. This one uses a wine yeast, Lalvin 71b-1122, which Schramm recommends for leaving some residual sweetness. This is also my first time using Fermaid K as a yeast nutrient.

And yet here we are, some… 56? hours after I started, and I still haven’t seen bubbles in the airlock. Hm.

Of course, it will take longer to start fermenting than my quick meads. The ratio of yeast to must is smaller, and there’s a greater ratio of air in the pail to displace (1 gallon in a 2 gallon pail, vs. a half gallon in a half gallon glass jug). Plus the plastic walls can expand a bit.

But still. I worry. Pointlessly, because the worst thing I could do is open up the pail and look at the must.

I’m just not sure at what point I’m like, okay, this thing is not fermenting, what do I try now?

(I’m also worried because some of the tools I ordered for this batch turned out to be utter crap — a racking cane that doesn’t hold enough pressure to siphon, a thermometer that seems way off. Maybe the yeast is old, or the pail has air leaks?)

(Alsoalso the starting specific gravity measurement was very slightly lower than where it should have been — 1.109 vs. 1.112. Worry worry worry…)

Readercon 20 and Writing Feels

I was at Readercon last weekend! I saw lots of writing friends! I attended panels about translation, curating a personal library, and the existentialist philosophies of Lloyd Alexander! I went to the Viable Paradise dinner! I ran into some newfound acquaintances!

I also spent a good chunk of time in my hotel room, playing Prison Architect, because SFF/writing cons give me Hard Feels sometimes. For more about that, see this Twitter thread:

However, I’m happy to say that I’m getting back to the editing of Lioness (again), regardless of these feelings. This last edit has really been more like a rewrite, moving a bunch of stuff that should have been upfront in the novel, but wasn’t, into the beginning chapters. Of course that has a butterfly effect on eeeeeeevery scene that comes after it…

But after this is done: that’s it. Both my therapist and I have agreed that, for my mental health, this needs to be the last edit. I may run it by one or two people for “pointing out glaring-but-easy-to-fix errors” duty, but the last thing I want is someone else to tell me I need to rewrite it.

Reading and Listening

I finished listening to Scott Westerfeld’s Behemoth, which I greatly enjoyed. Will probably read the final book at some point.

For now, I’ve moved on to listening to Stephen Fry’s Victorian Secrets, an Audible Original. I’d describe it more as an audio-drama-slash-documentary than an audiobook; Fry narrates parts of it, but he also talks to historians and other experts, and there are mini dramatizations of certain historical events, i.e. the trial of a Forty Elephants kingpin.

All in all, it’s amazingly entertaining, but one disappointment is that in the chapter on Victorian pornography, it’s not Fry who narrates the example of gay smut 😉

I also started listening to the new-to-me podcast Ephemeral, after hearing it advertised on other Stuff podcasts. It’s about “those things that were just barely saved, and in some cases not saved at all,” which is so sublimely On Brand for me — someone who has talked before about being a memorial, of remembering things that other people have forgotten. It should be no surprised that I binged the first six episodes while driving back and forth to Quincy for Readercon.

So far the most moving episode has been episode 2, “Diaspora,” which talks about music from the Ottoman diaspora in America in the 1910s and 1920s. The songs they play are hauntingly beautiful, and you know the only reason they are not more better known is… well, racism. It also tied in well with the alternate history of 1910s Istanbul that I’d been exploring in the Leviathan series.

I also liked episode 3, “EphemaWHAT?!?, where he talks with a material culture studies professor, Sarah Wasserman, about ephemera as “items that contain with them their own eventual destruction.” There’s something so incredibly Zen about that — and, I feel, relatable to writing practice.

The producer of the show, Alex Williams, is the sound editor for other Stuff podcasts, so unsurprisingly his focus is very audio- and music-driven. That’s fine, but if I have one complaint, it’s that I’d like to see more episodes that speak to the original meaning of “ephemera,” i.e. paper, or print.

Links

In Parting

I nearly lost my beloved stuffed dinosaur, Instegra Helsing, this week! My husband cleverly snuck her into my suitcase for Readercon, but I not so cleverly left her in the bed at the Quincy Marriott. Luckily thehotel overnighted her back to me, and she arrived home yesterday. My husband snapped this pic to send to me while I was at work.

Instegra Helsing, back in her natural habitat. Also: Can you spot all the geeky things in this picture?

Look at her face. Doesn’t it just say, “I had the best adventure!”? That, or “local stegosaurus in great mood today!”

Links and accomplishments, 7/26/15 to 8/1/15

I’ve decided to start keeping track of my weekly accomplishments, like my pal Phoebe does — she owes some of her incredible productivity to that metric, I fancy.

To temper it with something that’s not all about me me me (because no one but Phoebe wants to read that much about me), I’ll add some links to stuff I’ve found interesting throughout the week.

Accomplishments

Writing

– Wrote 1796 new words on Lioness
– Submitted “Remember to Die” to DSF

LARP
– Signed up for Silverfire game 2, and got in!

Media
– Finished watching season 7 of Psych (ugh. I hate the trope of “create conflict with a completely unlikeable character who makes the protagonists’ lives miserable.” I hated it in House, and I hate it here, with the Trout plotline).
– Watched the RiffTrax of Megaforce (the ascots! the uniforms!)
– Read “The Litany of Earth” by Ruthanna Emrys (highly recommended, as a subversion of the othering in HPL, overlaid on WWII paranoia)
– Finished the main quest in ESO with my character Falanu
– Listened to Writing Excuses 10.30, “Q&A on Middles with Marie Brennan”
– Listened to Happier with Gretchen Rubin ep. 22, “Creative Habits with guest Rosanne Cash”

Crafts
– Cut out the paper pattern and selected material for the mockup of a second Ianthe underdress

Cooking/Household
– Made SO MANY FRIDGE PICKLES
– Made beet, toasted walnut, and bleu cheese salad

Links

A lot of people have been talking about emotional labor lately — what it is, how it disproportionately falls to women, and what to do about that.

Surprising no one, I find this absolutely true and utterly fascinating. It reminds me of my recent post–I would argue, more eloquently today, that most of the things taking women away from creativity are emotional labor.

I’ve also realized that my defense of small talk, and its importance in human conversation, is a defense of emotional labor, too. Small talk is hard — it’s literally finding stuff to talk about with people you don’t know well enough to suggest topics of mutual interest — and many geeks (male geeks in particular) have never learned to do it.

(I’m currently reading the fabulous fantasy novel The Goblin Emperor, by Katherine Addison, and it’s telling that the title character, having grown up in obscurity, never learned how to make small talk, and suffers for it when he rises to power. I consider this lack as great as his ignorance of the political current, and as narratively interesting).

Despite all this, I’m actually kind of rubbish at emotional labor myself, so many of the reminders about how are good for me, too.

On a lighter note, The Man’s Guide on How to Smell Better. Please, please, please take this to heart, oh nerd guys. It will improve your life to not smell like dirty laundry.

On my VPeep Beth T’s recommendation, I’ve been browsing 16th-17th century household guides — I thought I would find interesting stuff for Lioness in there. The Good Huswife’s Jewell is particularly intriguing. Mostly it has suggested terrible, wonderful things to put on the various Lucern tables we see. (Not lamprey pie, though. I’m leaving that all to GRRM).