Reading

Entry tags:

montreal,
travel

I'm in Montreal

I'm visiting

rysmiel for a few days. The trip up was borin, which is good: anything exciting would probably be bad news, or at least make you late for dinner.

It is going to be hot over the weekend, so we went out for a relatively early brunch today, so we could sit almost-outdoors at Juliette et Chocolat and eat crepes. We then walked around Jean Talon market, where I bought plums, blackberries, and a cucumber.

I have np real plans for the next few days, which is fine.

Current Mood: bitchy

Entry tags:

books

Book Review

Women of Ashdon
by Valerie Anand

This historical novel follows two women of the Whitmead family and their relationship with their manor house Ashdon and the political intrigues of their times. The first half of the novel takes place during the War of the Roses and concerns Susannah Whitmead. As a young woman, she falls in love with the young knight Giles Saville, but is instead married off to James Weston instead. He is kind and good and he and Susannah have a good relationship. But it is his house Ashdon Susannah truly comes to love. She manages to hold on to the house through two more marriages and her second husband's involvement in a treasunous plot. The second half of the book follows Christina, Susannah's grand-daughter during the Elizabethan era. Like her grandmother, Christina also makes a marriage of convenience in order to keep Ashdon. However, her marriage is tumultuous, mainly due to her overwhelming passion for the house. She keeps it, but at great cost.
I quite enjoyed this book, especially for the way it focused on the lives of more ordinary people living at some distance from the powerful and from major political events. Anand did a good job of showing how those historical events affected or involved regular people. I also liked the characters a great deal. Susannah was my favorite. She was a very strong, loving woman who earnestly worked for a good life for herself and her family. I felt a ;lot of sympathy for Christina, but found her frustrating. She just could never really understand the people around her or even herself and was also a bit impulsive. The two women are an interesting pair - they both had an attachment to Ashdon, but only one of them properly understood the assignment.

Current Mood: upset

News Views

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Entry tags:

vaccines

I called RFK Jr about vaccine access

If anyone wants to call RFK Jr. to complain about him not funding vaccines, and specifically about mRNA vaccines, his office phone number is 202-690-7000. I called during office hours (8:30-5 Eastern time) and got voicemail. The message asked for a phone number, and claimed someone would call me back.

If anyone wants a script, my message was:

My name is Vicki Rosenzweig. I’m calling from Boston, to demand that the secretary restore funding for MRNA vaccines. He must make the fall covid and flu boosters available to everyone. I’m immune-compromised, and my safety depends on my family being vaccinated and not giving me a virus. My phone number is [your number here]

I got the idea and phone number from a comment by

threemeninaboat on

sonia's journal. (I also posted a version of this to

thisfinecrew)

Entry tags:

An anniversary of sorts.

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Current Mood: hungry

Wednesday Addams has a cooking channel!

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Current Mood: amused

"This is a very restrictive dress"

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Current Mood: amused

For WD

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See, Test & Treat October 25!

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(no subject)

Crosspost:

Dayum was I exhausted last night. But I'm still glad I got up yesterday in time to manage brunch with Cousin on Dad's birthday.
We also found a great mediterranean place near Union Station.
And then I drove past Billionaire Brunch, failed to find parking, drove out for a quick visit with a high school friend in town (who brought my purple charger block), got some laundry done, had to fall over for a nap, eventually got to acro at 7, didn't really do much acro, and eventually got to First Sunday Fusion.
Given the prior day's Billy Goat Trail and mostly standing near Union Station including walking to and from the Capitol from there and then to and from Kelly's (and a couple hours extra being up on account of acquiring a broken phone'd gal in the middle of breaking up with her boyfriend who Would Not Leave Her Alone)
I'm not surprised my legs were less than pleased with climbing up the stairs after the dance.
Final step count (not counting in-house time with watch charging):
Yesterday: 16,078, 173 min, 17 active hours (and no detected floors despite many)
Sunday: 17,723, 193 min, 17 active hours (and 4 detected floors despite us going down and back from the river)
Friday: 13,185, 141 min, 20 active hours, 2 floors
Thursday: 9,692, 101 min, 15 active hours, 2 floors (and now I'm trying to remember Thursday. Did I get to blues?)

I was planning on writing a lot more here, but it's already 2p and I have not done any of the stuff I'dd hoped to do for the Monument City Mutual Aid resources fair on 8/23, especially the part where I was going to cross reference the spreadsheet with groups I could list from a particular facebook group.

The broken phone'd gal eventually went off looking for the boyfriend (facepalm), leaving where we'd led her so he couldn't easily find her. I didn't accept my smarttrip card back.

The Rave Against The Regime wasn't much of a rave but was a really good discussion and later networking.
I probably pissed off some people from Delaware. Dunno. I wasn't expecting to be trying to lead groups to the capitol and back let alone lead group discussion. They'd come expecting a big thing and we'd been trying for chill on little to no notice.

It disturbs me that I'll need to look in Finch to figure out what I did on Thursday.

I should try to get myself out past some of the traffic.

Entry tags:

boston,
food

Peach ice cream

Of local interest: JP Licks has fresh peach ice cream.

They didn't make any last year, because there was no local peach harvest, and I'm ery glad to see it this year: they make really good peach ice cream. Not all their flavors are as good as this, and I shop there primarily for this and the cucumber ice cream, when those are available.

Entry tags:

stitching

a tiny bit of progress

I made a tiny bit more progress on Upon A Star. I’ve been super burnt out lately, but there is a weekly Reddit thread where people show off their WIPs so I was moved to spend some time on this today.

Entry tags:

Unorganized

The Boston Film Festival has a terrible interface. You select which movie you want info on from a pulldown menu, which is bad; the movie pages don’t have information on which dates the movies are playing, which is lame; and the pages for each individual date don’t have links to the movie description pages. Buh. The film list helps a little but not enough.

Anyhow, it all starts tonight, and I would be remiss if I did not point out a few movies.

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[Crossposted from Population: One; go here for the original post.]

Entry tags:

Looking backwards

I just unloaded a bunch of FanTasia pictures from the camera in preparation for GenCon; my blog is the beneficiary of this wealth. It wasn’t a heavy picture-taking trip for me but I got a few good shots. Please keep in mind that Montreal is much prettier and funkier than one might think from my photography.

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[Crossposted from Population: One; go here for the original post.]

Current Mood: thoughtful

Maybe weekends need to be 3 days long

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Current Mood: curious

I wonder if I can do this

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Current Mood: entertained

I have no idea what's going on here

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A very "squirrel!" weekend so far

I'm not saying we have a chronic attention span shortage in this house, but... oh, whom am I kidding, the only reason I've never said that is because I never noticed.

Yesterday Mister Diane and I did our traditional Friday-night grocery shop. Among other things we bought blueberries and a couple pounds of cherries (I like to make the most of cherry season).

Today we made the trek to Costco, which is close to 90 miles, and about an hour and 40 minutes of very scenic driving. Where we ALSO bought blueberries, strawberries, and Even More Cherries - all in Costco quantities of course.

I'm not sure how, but we got everything to fit in the fridge. (He's going to be a little surprised when he finds the BabyBels in the produce drawer under the tomatoes.)

Thank **** we got eggs at Hannaford last night. Costco "yet another size of egg tray" would NOT have worked.

The best bit? While at Costco WE FORGOT TO GET GAS. We rolled into our local magic Citgo on fumes.

Today was a day

There were some good things, like happening to notice I'd been added to the mutual Aid Facebook group I tried to join on Tuesday and finding that there was a pantry that was going till noon and almost making it and they were willing to talk with me and interested in putting information about the mutual Aid fare on the 23rd and they've got an event on the 9th ...

Of course I was on 4 and 1/2 hours of sleep and now it's past 2:00 and I had told Joe I'd like to go hiking with them but I also have to somehow be back in time for working Rave against the regime at Union Station which starts at 6:00 for the public. I've handed over the glow sticks...

We had a night walk and it was a really good group and we didn't actually really interact with people but we put up a lot of flyers for tomorrow

And I've made a whole lot of flyers

And I was so tired and yet I have not yet gone to sleep

But when I turned on the car to go to Eastern market that's when I learned the corporation for public broadcasting is shutting down

And I think it was earlier today that the jobs report came out and it was not good and it was revised to be worse and Trump fired the person who compiled it and then one of the fed governors retired unxpectedly.

I'm working on putting together this Mutual Aid Fair and that wasn't expecting to but
I've been saying that my main talent is keep it sing. As in you're playing this thing but maybe this should happen? And so I wasn't going to join the meeting and I joined the meeting last night and it turned out that
I changed some of the trajectory.

I'm not making a ton of sense. I posted that it's hard to stay positive and it's true.

I've enjoyed spending the time with basil and with ira and vanilla

I need to figure out the weekend of the 23rd. A friend is having a 60th birthday and would like me to fly out there if I'm willing. It's been a while. It's also opposite sunburn.

Somehow I need to get to sleep. Joe and Bernadette want to pick me up at 11:30.

Entry tags:

outdoor shakespeare

Shakespeare on the Common

The three of us went to a play tonight: As You Like It, on Boston Common, presented by the Commonwealth Shakespeare Company. My beloveds bought seats in "tall" (normal-height) chairs for me and Cattitude, and a shorter chair for Adrian; the company sells a few of these in advance, an rents out additional short chairs while supplies last, for people who don't want to sit on the ground, which is free.

The weather was excellent for this, except that I was underdressed because it cooled off sooner than I'd expected. At intermission, I went over to the merchandise booth and bought a blanket. The blankets are intended mostly for sitting on, but I wrapped it around myself, over my hoodie, and draped it over my legs for warmth.

It's a good production, in a straightforward way. I liked the use of music, and the clowning and the choreographed fight scenes were good.