Promiseland

[Fetian]

Yesterday, dad texted me to ask if it was alright if he and my sister stopped by today, and I told him it was fine if he came after 2 (because recording at 1). He hasn't responded, so now I just, wait around all afternoon not sure whether or not people are going to be coming over

[Fetian]

Alright, I am enrolled, I've paid what's left over after the grant, I've gotten the assigned textbooks for free because I'm a filthy pirate -- the only nervousness left is that the Canvas system still doesn't have my course listed in it, but the class starts in a month so I can presume that's just not set up yet.

[Fetian]

Looks like they let you take the GED online these days, so I suppose if I ever wanted to do that I could, now

[Fetian]

Got a text from Des at about a quarter to 3 saying she and dad were running late and asking if it was still alright for them to come over. I said it was, and about an hour later got a call from dad saying they wouldn't make it today and asking if tomorrow would work, and I said yeah and we agreed on 'around noon' which is probably going to mean later in the afternoon. But so that didn't happen today

What I did do was sweep out part of my back patio, and hang a decoration in a tree out back for ash, and then I made some cookies. Shortly after that it was time for ash to make dinner, so we hung out and I read to him, and then while we were waiting for dinner to finish cooking Erika got onto ESO so I jumped in there to confirm friend request and send presents, but then I needed to actually eat the dinner

After dinner, and watching some youtubes with ash, I did hop on to ESO to do some real playing for a couple hours, and then I stopped to eat more and get a lemon-honey-water ready. Once that's cooled, I'll drink it and do a solo recording -- the weather has my voice super scratchy when I try to do that character, hopefully the water helps.

I bought a new water bottle at the beginning of the month -- I think I mentioned -- because my old one broke, so I've been waiting around for that to get here. Coincidentally, our mailbox is currently broken, so mail is getting held at the post office until that's fixed. So, of course, the water bottle arrived today but is at the post office, where it's going to remain until after the weekend.

Like, it's not a big deal, it's just a water bottle, but also it's annoying.

Uhhhhh I think that's about it. Gotta get to bed at a reasonable hour so I can be ready to wait around for guests, so once I get the recording done I'm probably going to hop straight into bed.

[Fetian]

Dad and sister did successfully come over! They dropped off a christmas ham, which is apparently what they've been doing all weekend, is driving hams out to people (I'm unsure on the details of where the hams come from, but it's happened occasionally over the years, just someone dad knows has a ham source). They couldn't stay for long, had other hams to deliver, but we chatted for a while and I gave sister the box of snowglobes to hand off to niece, who was supposed to come pick them up uhhhh two years ago, so that's finally taken care of. They're a collection of Disney snowglobes that belonged to mom, that ended up in my possession by virtue of my taking the furniture they were stored in, and I'd rather they stay in the family somewhere but not my house specifically, so. Niece wanted them, she gets them, hope they bring her happiness

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ash and I finally finished the christian propaganda we'd been reading through, to make fun of it, and are back to reading Wizard and Glass. It's nice to be back to it, and I think I am enjoying it more than I did in high school, though I'm not sure where I got to in it, back then. I am pretty sure it was past where we are, but not positive, but so it's possible that my opinion on it turns negative again as we go along. I do know I'm picking up on more than I did back then, though.

Been a pretty low-key day; I slept really heavily last night and have been groggy all day as a result, plus it's been raining. Gonna keep it low-key for the rest of the night and then get stuff done tomorrow

[erikavonkaiser]

[Fetian]

Here is what my sleep schedule is like these days:

-Encourage Oz to eat as late as possible in an attempt to prevent the following from happening
-Go to bed an hour or two later than I should because I don't feel like I'm getting enough done during the day
-Get woken up between 7 and 8* by Oz trying to eat my pillowcases, scold her
-Get up and put her food back down so she can eat more
-Wait for her to finish and put her food away again
-Getting up has woken up Cael, who decides it's play time
-Lay in bed trying to ignore the cat romping around everywhere and scolding him when he decides to romp into Oz
-Finally go back to sleep around 9 or 10
-Sleep in too late, spend the day tired and groggy, and start it all over again

I am very glad Oz is generally actually eating all of her food, or near enough -- I've started giving it to her all at once in the morning instead of spread out over multiple meals, and that seems to be helping -- but I'd really like it if she'd finish it all before I go to bed.

 
*Today Oz woke me up at 6 and then again at 8, which is a new and exciting development

[Fetian]

Alright, in the next few days, I need to: shower, do laundry, wrap christmas presents, start upgrading the desktop, call my doctor

[Fetian]

Just spent a silly amount of time comparing Gavle Goat statistics to the US presidency

Overall, the Gavle Goat is destroyed 69% of the time, and 58% of that is when a Republican is in office. However, 75% of the Gavle Goat's destructions have happened during election years.

[Fetian]

The library took back my (digital) copy of Babel, so I have to stop reading it for a while until it comes back around to me. I was enjoying it! The premise is that "silver" is a material with magical properties, and if you transcribe a word onto one side of a silver bar, and the translation for that word onto the other side, then the bar will create an effect out of what is lost in translation between the two words -- a Mandarin word which is often translated as 'invisible' but also has meanings of intangibility and nonexistence, used along with 'invisible' will cause the user of the bar to vanish, for example. There's clearly some other details in how it all works that is kind of handwaved, there's a lot of study the characters do in etymologies and language families to find ways to link the words together to do what they want to happen, but the idea of the 'what is lost in translation' part is very neat and is what is mostly focused on

So the plot follows a Cantonese boy who is adopted by a British scholar when his family dies of cholera -- we (as far as I've read) do not learn his original, real name, but is given the English-sounding name Robin Swift so that he'll draw less attention to himself as a foreigner -- this is set in the 1800s, by the way. Robin is put to learning Greek and Latin and then sent to Oxford, where he starts learning both about silver and translation work, and also about the state of the world in general because it turns out that Britain is benefiting quite a lot from all this silver and other countries are being harmed by that colonialism. There is a plot with Robin joining a revolutionary group who intend to steal silver from Babel (the translation institute of Oxford), and a lot of Robin and his classmates -- a white girl, a black girl, and an indian boy (possibly gay? Definitely getting gay vibes from the boy but not sure if it's wishful thinking) -- experiencing varying levels of racism and misogyny. This latter is done really well, we see it all from Robin's perspective, so there's no -- like, it's called out explicitly as awful, and is only as awful as it needs to be to get the point across. We get a good variety of reactions and coping mechanisms from the cast (Robin is fairly white-passing so his defence is to keep his head down; Rami's more obviously indian and is more in-your-face about it, for example).

There's a plot developing about a previous student who died under mysterious circumstances, and of course there's a lot to do with just the students being students and taking their exams and so forth.

I look forward to getting back to it -- in the meantime the library has given me A Master of Djinn, which I think was on my list because it was the next book that podcast I like was going to talk about. So I've started that tonight and we'll see if I like it -- another hold is coming due in about a week if I don't.