Suburb of Heaven

I'm doing a short talk on two Hogarth prints later on this semester, so I've just started reading two books on the subject of the prints, Gin: The much-lamented Death of Madam Geneva and Ale, beer and Brewsters in England: women's work in a changing world, 1300-1600. If you're interested in the topic, there are also two podcasts that relate directly, one from the BBC's In Our Time on the gin craze (the image they use is a detail from the print I'm talking about) and an episode of Tides of History where the host interviews the author on the topic of women and beer brewing.

Kiki has had her two shots and is now on her two month stretch of enforced inactivity. She can go for short walks but I predict in a few days she'll be feeling better and the short walks are just going to frustrate her. She's going to end up staring at me with pleading eyes and trying to squish herself into my lap so I know how much she is suffering.


jesse_the_k asked about three of my icons, my main one, my eclipses one, and my zen one.

My nom-de-internet is pretty old by now and comes from Saint Catherine of Siena, a mystic saint that I did my thesis on. The image is of Saint Catherine holding a lily, and is from a fresco in the basilica of San Domenico and was painted by Andrea Vanni. If you go visit, say hi to her head for me.

I didn't make my eclipses icon and sadly I don't have a note down anywhere about who made it. I know very little about astronomy, but I'm fascinated by old astronomical charts and texts and images. I adopted this icon because I just find it deeply beautiful.

My zen one is Damian Lewis from the tv show Life. I loved the show so much, and besides the great acting and fun stories it had great music too. Sadly it was crippled by the writers strike and when the two seasons finally made it to DVD they had replaced a lot of the music with lesser choices. I was not happy. Anyway, Damian Lewis's character Charlie Crews is a police officer sent to prison for a crime he didn't commit, and while he's there he studies Zen. When he's freed, he brings his slightly eccentric Zen sensibilities out into the world with him, much to the frustration of those around him. (He also has a thing for fresh fruit.)

I got to see this Peter Jackson documentary today. Documentary doesn't seem like the right word, actually. He was asked to use footage from the Imperial War Museum in a novel way. Using colorized film that has also been treated to remove flickers, age, and damage, and with interviews from veterans captured by the BBC, he shows an overview of the war from the point of view of a generic British soldier on the Western Front.

It's remarkably effective. Suddenly you find yourself seeing small details in the background. You study faces. The entire theater laughed at the clowning of one young soldier bonking his friend's helmet, because we all know that kid, or have been that kid, and we were suddenly united with him over the years.

It's also an effective way to realize, past all the deadpan "stiff upper lip" descriptions by the veterans, how absolutely like hell the time in the trenches was. You see laughing faces staring into the camera, you see corpses blown to bits. You see men clowning with a regimental pet goat, and what trench foot really looked like.

This historical period is one I read about a lot, so of course I remembered an early passage in the first Peter Wimsey novel.

"The vile, raw fog tore your throat and ravaged your eyes. You could not see your feet. You stumbled in your walk over poor men's graves.
The feel of Parker's old trench-coat beneath your fingers was comforting. You had felt it in worse places. You clung on now for fear you should get separated."

I brought jam in to work for my peanut butter sandwich. The lid came off in my purse. I now have a purse full of strawberry goo.

Thankfully there is still enough left for the sandwich.

Last night Bemo and I went out to eat at what turned out to be an ok but way-overpriced restaurant. (They're trying to be upscale but they're serving good sauces over what at a guess was Sysco chicken pieces.)

Our waitress was young and very nice but also awkward in a way that made me think she hadn't been one long and was still getting her patter and timing down. No big deal.

She drops the check off and kind of lingers at the table, and as I open my wallet to get my credit card I spot the two dental insurance cards I had printed off for myself and Bemo earlier, and say out loud, "Oh, I should give these to you before I forget." I'm addressing Bemo - looking directly at him - but the waitress says "Oh, thank you! Oh, you mean..." and she sort of trails out and I chuckle and try to cover things by saying "No, haha, unless you want my dental insurance!"

And she says "Sure!" and plucks the insurance card from my hand, puts it into her apron pocket, and leaves.

Bemo and I stare at each other in mutual WTF. At first I decide to say nothing and just print myself a new card. That way I can pretend nothing at all happened, hahaha! But given that I don't know how sensitive the info on the card really is, I gird my loins and when she comes back I ask for the return of the insurance card. She gives it back, but with a puzzled "Ok, weird customer, whatever, I guess" expression.

We leave the restaurant and now I can never return.

As my sister put it, if it had been on a sitcom I might have had to change the channel.

The newest Rivers of London book, Lies Sleeping, just came out and I promptly read it in about five minutes and then decided to go back and reread the whole series. For those of you who haven't heard of it, they're urban fantasy set in London and featuring one Peter Grant, constable, who inadvertently takes a witness statement from a ghost and ends up being the next apprentice to Thomas Nightingale, police officer and one of the last remaining British magicians.

The stories are very much from the view of the police procedural, and there's a lot of chatter about acronyms and processy stuff along with Peter's training in more magical matters. Peter is snarky and nerdy about a range of things, and it's his viewpoint voice that carries the books along in a rush of jokes and interior observations. His world is emphatically multicultural and seeing how the city and its thrum of people slide in and out of the (sometimes only barely hidden) world of magic is so much wonderful fun. The books are filled with characters from all walks of life, whether it's Dr. Walid the Scottish pathologist or Sahra Guleed, fellow police officer who may or may not be in training to be the World's Greatest Swordswoman. Meanwhile, Peter's journey and his relationships move and grow and change. (Peter probably needs to get a therapist and stop stuffing his feelings down under jokes because some really epic stuff has happened to him.)

Start with Midnight Riot (American title) and if you like it, be happy because there are many more books, plus novelettes, the occasional short story posted to the author's blog, and a series of graphic novels you can keep going with.

I have done very little that is productive over the winter break, which ends tomorrow. There has been a lot of napping on the sofa with various cats draped over me, a lot of food and chocolate, and some adventure cooking with my sister during the trip back to VA. (We made a pair of really delicious busche de Noels, by which I mean she mostly did the hard work and I helped beat eggs and piped merangue mushrooms for decoration.)

Another year without participating in Yuletide, though - I haven't written anything fannish for a very long time. Maybe this year I can get some of my writing mojo back, even though I never was all that productive.

A happy new year to all. I'm not expecting it to be a good one, honestly - I'm scared of our current political climate. But I will do my best to make it as good as possible for myself and my family and friends as I can.

It's scorching hot here (although at least it's not humid on top of it) and we have spend the day officially househunting. We've made stabs at it before but now we are more prepared (ok, prepared at all, because before we were daydreaming more than anything else).

None of the houses we saw will work, for various reasons. And our agent heard from a colleague of hers who has 15 clients searching for houses in the same ballpark price range. It's not a great time to be buying. On the other hand, we aren't in a rush, but it's annoying to think we may have to rush into a decision on a place simply because it's such a seller's market.

Two of the places were just too battered and broken for us - we can rehab to a certain extent but not to the extreme those would have needed. One was weirdly placed at the top of a hill - a ton of rickety stairs to walk up and the house itself was just oddly laid out. One was very cute, but sadly about the same size as our current tiny apartment but with even less storage space. And the final was a stunning beauty from 1915 with gorgeous woodwork but was sadly sagging in a few suspect locations.

Anyway, currently reading the sequel to The Rook. This one's called Stiletto, and I'm enjoying it just as much as I did the first. Also read Girl On The Train, which was pretty weaksauce.

I've been listening to a podcast called Overdue and have discovered a thing that I sort of already knew about myself - I get really protective about the books I love. So my first episode of the podcast was a book I hadn't read, and I enjoyed it and downloaded a bunch of other episodes, including those of books I had read and...that was a mistake. I couldn't get past the fact that some of the episodes were 90% joking about something in the book and 10% actual discussion, and also in one case I was doing the whole "no no no you're interrogating the text from the wrong perspective" thing which just made me crabby. So I'm not sure yet if I'm going to just unsubscribe, or just be careful about not downloading eps which talk about books I have a strong attachment to. But no more expecting more serious discussion about childhood favorites, or anything like that.

Also, I knew I was a bit of an anglophile, but do most people really not know about Richard III and the princes in the tower?

Nuns in Rome know where to get the good gelato. I'm sure we were paying twice as much because this was the fancy artisinal whatevers chain but oh my god, their flavors were incredible.

( There are actually more than seven hills in Rome )

I'm already trying to figure out how to get back.

I feel like writing but can't figure out what I want to write...except I'm in the mood to do something schmoopy or smutty or, or...

So I dug out this old meme that I've already dug out once before. Pick a pairing (het, slash, femslash are all okay) and I'll write a short scene where they share a kiss (or, uh, more than that.) Crossovers welcome unless they break my brain in half (although at this point breaking my brain is almost the point because this is the same meme that resulted in Bunter/Eliot from Leverage kissing, and may have been the one that resulted in a Castle/Buffy crossover that has inexplicably become a very well-loved story, so what the hell.) I will do my best.

Fandoms: Buffy, Avengers movieverse, Dresden Files, Leverage, Firefly, Constantine movieverse, Sayers, Bourne, Castle, Jennifer Crusie, Vicki Bliss, Star Wars (yes new movie has gotten me thinking), MacGyver, Heyer, Lord of the Rings movieverse. Am happy to try fandoms that are not my own but am not responsible for making you cry because of terrible characterization based solely on things I've seen scrolling through Tumblr. No refunds.