Eagles Over the Kennebec

. One of the great things about AO3's subscription feature is that you can be promptly notified when an author adds a new chapter to a fic you really liked that last got a new chapter nearly twelve years ago. ( Read more... )


. Quite some time ago, I took my car in for a check-up and was notified, among other things, that at least one of the tyres needed to be replaced. I said I would get right on that, and then proceeded not to, because I'd never dealt with a tyre shop before and I'm very bad at inserting myself into unfamiliar situations even when the situation should just involve saying "Hello, I would like to pay you to do the thing that you advertise that you do." ( You can probably guess where this is going... )


. We had a weekend gaming session in which we played a couple of games of Raptor and then a couple of games of Ticket to Ride: Legacy. We've unlocked the entire map now, and should be finished with the whole campaign in one more session.


. At the usual weekly gaming session, we played Feed the Kraken. ( Read more... )


. I went to the doctor for a check-up, ( Read more... )


. Another set of out-of-town relatives visited, which was nice.


. It occurs to me, as I adjust the height of the monitor, that I don't think I got around to mentioning it when I bought one of those spring-loaded monitor arms that allow you to move the screen to any height and angle and it will stay there. I originally decided to get it to simplify repositioning the monitor when I had friends over and we wanted to watch a show from the sofa (I don't have a TV, and watch all my shows via DVD or online streaming), but it's also so good for the basic task of setting the screen to a comfortable height that it's become one of those bits of technology that, now I have it, I wonder how I ever managed without.

#14: A book with a higher average rating than the previous book

Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania by Erik Larson. A "narrative non-fiction" account of the final voyage of the trans-Atlantic passenger liner Lusitania, which was sunk by a German U-boat in 1915 with massive loss of life.

( Read more... )


#15: A book whose cover is the next colour in the rainbow (or a complementary colour if the previous book's cover isn't a rainbow colour)

Neuromancer by William Gibson. The iconic cyberpunk novel; a washed-up cyberspace cowboy is recruited to an eccentric group of criminals who have been gathered to perform a mysterious heist.

( Read more... )

. It's been a social whirlwind by my usual standards. On the long weekend, all the family members who live in the vicinity had lunch together and watched The Princess Bride. Later in the week, another family member came to visit and we all got together again for a breakfast in the park, where we admired the varieties of waterfowl, which included several kinds of duck (including a striking one with a black head and a brown front that I think from subsequent research was probably a chestnut-breasted shelduck) and some large white ones with red faces that might have been some kind of goose. I also went to a concert (the kind that exists largely as an excuse for a social event, and on that basis I'm inclined to be charitable about the quality of the music), and toward the end of the week one of my friends from the board game club had a dinner party.

. As usual there was also the weekly board game club meet, where we played Betrayal at House on the Hill, Guillotine, Forbidden Desert, and Uno: All Wild. In Betrayal, we successfully fought a giant snake. In Forbidden Desert, we wound up being buried by sand a couple of turns before we would have made good our escape. It was the first time I've played Uno: All Wild, which despite the name is significantly duller than the usual version of the game.

. Later in the week, I went for an early morning walk and saw a lot of birds that I wouldn't normally see about the place later in the day.

. Rehearsals of You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown are continuing. At our most recent rehearsal, we got as far as fitting together the various harmony parts on one of the songs, and it sounded really nice.

. The way I've chosen to shelve my library, with all the unread books together on one bookcase, means I have a visual indicator of how large the to-read collection is. Over the past couple of years I've been focusing on reading books I've already got rather than acquiring new books (and also trying to get better at looking at a book I've been holding onto for years and deciding I'm never going to actually read it), and as of this week I've cleared an entire shelf's worth. The shelf is now being used for part of my DVD collection. We will, for the moment, overlook the fact that many of the books that were on the shelf are still in the room, in a big pile on the floor composed of books I've decided to get rid of but not yet decided how.

. Due to time zones, I had to choose between going to Parkrun or staying put to watch the Artemis II splashdown. I decided to assume that everything would go uneventfully, and went to Parkrun.

. On the weekend, there was a busy bee at our old and increasingly ramshackle community theatre to deal with a number of maintenance issues. I got to wield a hedge trimmer and took a hand at helping to re-paint a ceiling. I did not entirely get the hang of removing excess paint off the brush before lifting it above my head, and wound up with a large white deposit dripping down my temple that made it look rather as if we had giant pigeons to deal with on top of everything else.