freckles_and_doubt | Entries tagged with five things

I spent five days over last weekend pretty much flattened with a sinus thing, which manifested as killer headache + killer nausea, necessitating three of those days spent pretty much lying flat and wishing gently for death. It's a beautiful catch-22 - I wake up with the headache, which I can't medicate without eating something first, and I'm feeling too sick to eat. The anti-nausea meds take a while to kick in, and then kick me in the head so I sleep like the dead for about five hours, but I'm pretty good at wedging a quick slice of toast and two anti-inflammatories into the tiny window before I pass out, and when I wake up the headache has at least receded somewhat. But it wasn't a happy five days. 0/10, would not recommend.
Origin, that evil organ of the EA evil empire, celebrated my return to health yesterday by losing my entire games library, which is annoying as I'd been distracting myself during the illness bits in which I could actually remain upright by re-playing Inquisition. All of Mass Effect and Dragon Age, gone, as if they never existed. Then Origin had a hissy fit, booted me out the login, and refused to let me log in again. The usual tech-support Google search revealed numerous other people who've experienced the same thing and received only mockery and condemnation at the hands of the EA helplines. I am horribly struck by the ephemeral, conditional and precarious nature of the "things" we "buy" when such things are virtual constructs and we are simply licensed to access them at the whim of giant, profit-obsessed corporations. I hope a complete Origin re-install this evening sorts it out; if not, I may be forced to rush howling at EA's giant, oblivious ankles with an axe.
While sick, I re-read Katherine Addison's Goblin Emperor three times in six days, it seems to be pressing very specific buttons which require ritual re-immersion. On mature reflection, I think that this is because it's an intrinsically and topically anti-Trumpian narrative. The Current Disaster in the US presents the scenario of an old, complex, sophisticated structure designed to provide checks and balances on the presidential figurehead's running of the country, which has been subverted with pinpoint precision by inserting a venal, amoral toddler into the figurehead position, allowing him to co-opt, bypass and pervert the system. Goblin Emperor is an exploration, in utopian mode, of an old, complex, sophisticated structure designed to allow the figurehead (the Emperor) to run the country for the benefit of its nobles, which is joyously subverted, with pinpoint precision, by inserting an outsider, someone who has survived an abusive childhood while remaining an actual cinnamon roll, into the figurehead position, allowing him to co-opt the system into serving basic decency rather than privilege and control. I cannot sufficiently stress how satisfying it is; the more so because the novel does a more than decent job of exploring race issues through a fantasy lens. Also, for the record, Goblin Emperor fanfic appears to attract high-level writers, ability-wise, and is lovely.
I made Irish stew for jo&stv last night, because someone mentioned it in a fanfic and I suddenly had a jones. I used this recipe, mostly; the Guinness gives it a rich, dark gravy with a slightly silken texture, it's marvellous. The Jamie Oliver version does this weird thing with greaseproof paper, damped and scrunched on top of the stew for the first hour of cooking, which I've never come across before; presumably it's to keep moisture in, but it seems oddly specific. Why scrunching? why moist? It a mystery.
I hope everyone had a lovely Easter weekend! I really needed the four days off, I am still glandular and headachy after the sinus thing. My faculty also, in a hitherto unknown display of staff-centredness, closed us down at midday on Thursday, giving everyone an extra, informal half-day off. It transpires that the undergrad admin office has always done this, but no-one has ever told me about the tradition, with the net result that my unit has spent the last decade obliviously working the full pre-Easter Thursday. I am somewhat miffed about this. Fortunately my line management has just moved over to the Dean rather than the faculty manager, and the Dean's secretary is somewhat mama-bearish about staff privileges, so she carefully informed me and we all buggered off home early, rejoicing. The next three weeks are also four-day weeks, owing to voting day and Mayday public holidays, so hopefully I shall continue to gently recover. Maybe.

I would not have believed until it happened the sheer level of relief occasioned by the arrival of a new lightning cable for my Ipad. The old one had semi-disintegrated, it had worn at both ends to the point where the only way I could transfer Stardew Valley files between the Ipad and the desktop was to seize the neck of the Ipad end (already taped up with duct tape and toothpicks to keep it straight), wiggle it until it beeped, and then hold it in exactly the right position with my right hand while I frantically and ineptly transferred files on the pc with my left. Also, charging the Ipad entailed laying the cable out in a straight line and moving it millimetre by millimetre until the charge bar went green, then putting heavy things on everything to hold it in place and fence off the cats. As I darkly suspect that the weakness at the cable ends is a deliberate Apple ploy to make us buy more overpriced specialised peripherals, I have wantonly researched and acquired the most durable, by internet review, non-Apple replacement. (FWIW, Anker). *makes rude signs at Apple*.
Work is very boring, which I think is a combination of work actually being very boring (we're in the post-curriculum-change-period doldrums), and my state of health - I am still very glandular and sinusey and perpetually exhausted. I think a 'flu bout may be incoming, but in addition, following, weirdly enough, someone's Tumblr post diagnosing pre-serum Captain America, I am mentally resolving to research CVID and go and see an immunologist or rheumatologist or some such fancy specialist. Because the constellation of symptoms was startlingly familiar, and, frankly, bored.
Jo&Stv have inveigled me into attending the Grahamstown arts festival in June/July! I have not been for many, many years, the one time I did was in early postgrad, that epic five-person camping expedition with various Andrews and an elderly family VW Combi which blew a head gasket in PE on the way back, stranding five broke students for an extra two nights in the middle of a minor social meltdown. I remember Grahamstown being fun, but cold. Jo&Stv have booked a house and we're flying, so, water restrictions permitting, I confidently expect this to be a far more grown-up event. Also, they are generously standing me the plane ticket as a birthday present, because they're lovely that way and I'm kinda broke.
I spent part of the weekend re-reading Katherine Addison's Goblin Emperor, mostly because dragonlady has been blogging her responses, and it reminded me how much I loved the novel. It's becoming a comfort read, that must have been my, what, fourth or fifth re-read? It's incredibly interesting world-building, but mostly it's a deeply emotionally satisfying read in the same way that I find Jane Eyre or Fanny Price satisfying: gentle, empathetic main characters whose horrible experiences of abuse have not eroded their basic core of steely resolve to be decent. I love watching them triumph against the structures and bastard individuals who try to oppress them. It's the kind of vindication of decency that's very consoling in our current state of general global political fuckwittery. I recommend the novel. keeping the names straight will bewilder you, but it's worth it.
Gosh, this seems to be sort of working. Go five things structure. Also, it gives me happy early-internet flashbacks to be coding the bulleted list in basic HTML. I used to put up my own websites via FTP and with files coded in HTML in Notepad. Backwards. Uphill both ways. Through the snow. There is something pleasingly structured about HTML tags, I always enjoyed their logic and found it intuitive. Probably because, weirdly enough, of a typing course I did in my last years of high school, which left me touch-typing but also introduced me to very early word processors, all green screen and WordPerfect (remember WordPerfect?). WordPerfect used anglebracket commands rather like HTML, I remember at one point diligently coding substitutions for ten green bottles hanging on the wall to end up with ten purple marshmallows sticking to the ceiling, which somewhat disconcerted the teacher. Of such things is our early imprinting made.

I am stealing a format from Scroob, with thanks, because I am finding it difficult to blog at the moment and I think her five things approach may help. It's a pleasing combination of structured and random, and has the potential to address the almost complete absence of mental energy which is currently preventing me from assembling a sustained post. I am, alas, in the usual post-registration doldrums, the semester has quietened right down with precipitous suddenness, catapulting me from "over-extended" to "bored" on the turn, which always has the effect of shutting my brain and energy right down, possibly into recovery mode. Psyches. So weird.
I trundled off to see Captain Marvel with my sister yesterday morning, in my favourite 9am Sunday slot because the maximum of about five people in the movie theatre always soothes my misanthropic soul. I wholeheartedly recommend the movie: at last, a female-led Marvel film, whose female direction, scripting (Kelly Sue DeConnick consults) and costume design were palpable throughout. Not just a worthy female lead, nicely cast and played, but an intrinsically female narrative: her fight is against very male forces who manipulate, gaslight and suppress her at every turn, and her eventual triumph is deeply satisfying. Also, great special effects (her powers towards the end are amazing and very shiny), music (90s!) and humour (her interplay with Nick Fury is gold). Also, flerken. I'm just saying.
My personal possibly-flerken are doing fine. Jyn has apparently recovered completely from the Mysterious Mouth Abscess of Doom Which Baffled Vets, and has regained her customary swagger. It was a weird place for an infection, right back on the hinge of her jaw, and we can't work out what would have caused it, there's no way it could have been a bite, animal teeth aren't long enough, unless someone has been breeding sabre-toothed moggies locally. Best guess is that she got jabbed with a bit of stick from one of my potplants, and it got infected. Most mysterious.
Load shedding has been temporarily suspended, calloo callay, it was getting very tedious. Although apparently it could start again at any moment. This city is feeling more and more dysfunctional, the current school holiday season is making me realise how incredibly horrible the roads are during rush hour when schools are actually in session. Not just because they're overcrowded, but because road manners have deteriorated to the point where people jump robots almost at will. It's very eroding to my sense of safety and belonging, it feels as though the social contract is dissolving - which, given that the city can't currently supply adequate lights or water, it really is.
Tumblr has vouchsafed to me Nathan Pyle's Strange Planet, which is a reflective, poignant, happily strange little exercise in unperturbed defamiliarisation. Go read. And imagine pleasant nonsense.