I was thinking of putting up some socially conscious material today, because what’s going on across North America is very damn important and I haven’t mentioned any of it here.
BUT
I haven’t mentioned any of it here because I’ve been attending to it elsewhere. I have a sufficiency of privilege that I am able to withdraw when it becomes too much to bear, keeping this space as one of my redoubts. Frankly, watching a 75 year old man getting what might be a fatal head injury and then be studiously ignored by those who gave it to him… yeah. I need a little break, and I suspect others do too.
Thus, a retreat into childhood.
I bless him for using butter rather than margarine. I don’t know that I’d brown it, though, and that seemed like an awful lot of salt. I do absolutely agree that making marshmallow is over the top (and, to be honest, it’s sort of like playing with lava– I want to make treats, not engage in the less fun aspects of glass-blowing).
† As we gear up at The Regular Job for post-COVID operations, there’s been some shuffling, and one of the effects this has upon me is taking both barrels in the face of this question: “You don’t mind covering the front desk over lunch, do you?”
It’s not a big deal, but the Selfish Artist trope who is among the multitudes which I contain is grumbling. I still have, technically, the full length of my lunch break, it just doesn’t start until 12:45. However, acting upon that seriously truncates the afternoon. I think I may have mentioned that I am extremely busy with Real Job lately?
This is likely to become less of a problem as we get back to more usual staffing levels (like many, I desperately hope that COVID marks the turn of an epoch, and the world will not simply return to status quo ante, but at a personal level… more people on-site to help with the lifting at Regular Job, please). It’s also not what I’m used to, and that is frequently enough to make a thing onerous.
† In any normal year, filing on 5 May would be disastrously late, even in Canada (15 April? Why that, US?). In this plague addled year, though, I’m three and a half weeks ahead of the deadline. This is mainly because the government agency tasked with scraping money off of us is also responsible for handing it out to the unemployed and underemployed; the plague has complicated the hell out of that side of their duties. It’s as much to give the employees of the Canada Revenue Agency some hope for bathroom breaks as it is for the rest of us to figure out what’s going on with our personal finances.
And because I don’t make a lot of money, and because Wife and Son make none at all, I am getting a refund on what has been skimmed from my pay and also on the Carbon Tax we’ve been put under, as an incentive to not use internal combustion transport and natural gas heating.‡ This will, hoorah, be about enough to buy a new computer, allowing me to maybe update my site.
Eventually. The CRA is quite busy, and delivering refunds is yet another aspect of handing out the money they otherwise draw in. I understand this. It’ll come in due course.
‡ I certainly would like to get my hands on an electric vehicle and a ground-sourced heat-pump powered by solar generation. Alas, the carbon tax rebate meant to encourage this (even if you’re not buying gas, you still get the rebate, so ka-ching!) isn’t anywhere near enough for that sort of thing.
As the pace of work on “Ancestral Curse” suggests, I’m still having snoozy issues which may be related to the stresses of the current plague. I know that failing entirely to post the preceding is down to that stress, atop extra month-end stress brought on by the departed co-worker, about which I have previously whined.
Also, I got into a small creative froth, which I explain the genesis of in a post on my writing site, and so my whole attention yesterday was given over to frothing.
Um.
No, actually I’ll leave it. Anyway, it didn’t really strike me until I was lowering head to pillow that yesterday was Thursday. I can’t really blame that on COVID, since the ticking of my weekly clock goes on as ever it has.
Let me not break with Friday tradition, however, now that I’m aware it is Friday. I know a lot of the home-stuck are looking for projects to divert themselves, so here’s one.
Back in the late 1980s, when the interwebz was hardly even present in the fiction of William Gibson, I tried to do this following instructions in books. Now that I see, in motion, how it’s done, I realize how close I was to accomplishing the goal. I was, alas, even closer to losing an eye through the failure of the not-quite-really-a-bow.
Today’s Pen: Sheaffer Balance Statesman
Today’s ink: Skrip Black (which, by pure coincidence, is what I loaded it with when I last used it, somewhat more than a year ago).
You would be correct to chastise me for not bowing to one of the great commandments of writing. The first of the (oh, dear) three stories underway this week took a turn into “Two People Talking in a Room” which can make for a good story, but it’s quite what I’m after. The second is one that frankly hasn’t had time to gestate properly, despite how long ago I dumped the first draft out of my head… so I started yet another today. It, happily, is unrolling in a willing manner, so I should be able to stick with it until it’s ready for someone else to tell me what needs fixing in it.
†I would like the Department of Heroic Effort to take notice of this, because it happened despite incipient cold and a migraine which spread itself across three days.
Looking back at some of it, now that a semblance of coherence has returned, I’m surprised to find that this weeks production is actually pretty good. Perhaps I should do all my writing while breathing through one nostril and wearing a slowly tightening belt over one eye…
The light, at least north of the equator, is as scant as it will be for a whole year. HOORAH!
To observe the day, and lower us all gently into the last shopping Saturday before Christmas, some films. First, for the unreformed Scrooges of the world, here’s a look at the worst jobs to do with the season (some, for you who hold the reason for the season to be axial tilt, are from pre-Christian Europe)
And in keeping with the theme… more or less… I’ve been pursuing this month with ghost stories just because it’s the dark time of the year, here’s another Blackwood story, told by someone else entirely.
If you’ve been out in the cold too long, this is a very… familiar… story.
There’s always a lot of controversy about when Christmas carols should start up (my position: after 11 November, damn it!), no one talks about Hallowe’en music.
This might be due to a lack of it. There’s a very low limit to how much “Monster Mash” anyone can take. However, I’ve lifted a couple of films for this week’s installment that have some Hallowe’enieness about them. One classical, one modern, one all of a natural piece, one a… perverse union of sound and image, we’ll say. I leave it to you which order you listen to them in.
We’re out to select our pumpkin on Sunday. If we survive the terrors of the garden market, I’ll see you all next week.
What's up at Ravens March. 