The Marci Rating System

*First August caturday! BIG GOALS for today, which include: relaxing, resting, doing whatever in no particular rush.

*I finished listening to the second book in Freya Marske's 'The Last Binding' trilogy yesterday, and now I am Very Curious about what happens in book 3. (Note of warning: book 1 and 2 both start with a murder, and book 1's was scary enough that I almost stopped right there. But in general the books haven't been Too Dark for me.) (PS love that Edwin got himself a house that won't let his relatives visit; A+ work babe. Also I TOTALLY called the parrot thing in book 2, which was narratively extremely obvious and yet I am unreasonably proud of myself anyway.)

*In fact, I'm looking forward to book 3 so much that I'm planning on listening to something else first, just to prolong this enjoyable state of anticipation.

*Not for too long, though, I only have the audiobook on loan from the library for another 11 days.

*Also I'm nearly done crocheting a lap blanket to take to the office with me when I have to go back in September. I'm hoping that will take some of the sting out of the whole 'forced out of my cozy home nest' thing. (lol probably would work better if I could just drape it over all of me and hide under it)

*It's cool enough this morning that the cat is next to me on her fleecy blanket, which is truly the best of ways to spend a morning <3 <3 <3

*I thought ep 9 was great

*very curious to see what the show does with ep 10!

*Sanctuary Moon y/n?

(PS very very funny to me that when Preservation decides to free a secunit in ASR, they go about it very officially, legal channels, documentation, all that stuff. Court orders! Probably actual real ones! And then in Network Effect, when ART and crew meet Three, they're all just like 'so we're going to lie about this, right? everyone in favor of plan: lie and deceive? excellent, yep')

For various reasons, I've wound up on multiple mailing lists that email me near-daily with information about books and audiobooks -- sometimes I think about unsubscribing, but sometimes I see something interesting that I want to look for on the library apps. And of course, there's the reviews!

(Also, the absolutely random spread of 'number of five-star reviews on goodreads' that get shared. Some books are like 'received over 250 five-star reviews!' and others are like 'received over 5000000000000000 five-star reviews!' and I don't really believe either of them.)

Anyway, the one-line reviews are often VERY funny, because they could be interpreted in almost any direction. My favorite ones are things like (I just made these up, because I couldn't be bothered to actually go back and look for any):

'Reading this is like waiting for a wave to break.'

'The book version of a bouncy house!'

'If I was reading in a field in Toulouse, France, I would pick this book.'

Because I can't tell ANYTHING from those. Please make all reviews as absolutely incomprehensible as possible, for me, personally. Because it's funny.

I was yesterday years old when my brain suddenly made the connection between 'Apple' as a computer company and 'Macintosh' (aka McIntosh) as a variety of apple. (well documented on wikipedia, as well as pretty much everywhere else online, lol)

My reactions were thus:

*Although I was several (many) decades late to the party, that's a great name! Very funny! I like it!

*If only they'd stuck to the 'name apple products after types of apple' thing

*I COULD HAVE HAD AN iGALA

Somehow, it's snowing again. (This seems like it should be normal for winter, but is actually boggling given that the last few years have not been snowy at all. I have NO IDEA what to do with a snowy winter, and am mostly just spending every day being glad I don't have to commute to work every day, because I didn't even get snow tires for the car.)

I was thinking about going out for a walk anyway, but got stuck on the 'what jacket to wear' question. All of my winter jackets are dark colors (so they don't show dirt as much), which also means they don't stand out much when the weather is gray and visibility is not fantastic due to whatever snow/sleet combo is happening out there right now.

Will I go for a walk anyway? IT'S A MYSTERY. EVEN I DON'T KNOW.

Full disclosure: I cannot speak in a Welsh accent. I would not even know where to begin with such a thing.

Despite this lack of knowledge and ability, I'm going to bring it up anyway! Because this book has a character who is canonically from Wales, and grew up in Wales, and I am enjoying listening to the book very much, but would also personally would be enjoying it even more if he had a Welsh accent.

Kids get a lot of great food aimed at hiding veggies in delicious ways, and I'm all about that (but for myself, lol), so I recently tried the 'Sweet Potato Littles' from my local grocery store.

The box says they are "fun shapes," which I guess is one of those 'fanciful' claims that is allowed because no one can really prove or disprove it. ARE the shapes fun? Who knows!

In this case, 'fun shapes' means there are three varieties of dinosaur, a star, and -- this is the one that really gets me -- a teddy bear(?). Maybe? I'm not sure what else it could be, but it seems like an odd choice to go with the dinos and stars. If they were picking a random shape, a cat CLEARLY would have been an ideal choice, but a winged dino would have been super logical too. (It bridges the land and the stars! IT'S POETIC.)

Here's another thing I never expected to be so challenging to do left-handed: swirling water in a cup.

There's a powdered drink mix that I like, and the best way I've found to get it to dissolve easily is to fill the cup halfway, put in the mix and swirl it around until it all sinks, then add the rest of the water and shake it up.

Lefty Shaking: easy!

Lefty Swirling: hard!

But WHY?!?

For several weeks, I've been meaning to post in celebration of a local sign that declares:

HALLOWEEN IS HERE
PANTS 50% OFF

Because it's made me laugh EVERY time I've gone by, and that's certainly worthy of celebrating.

Important Note #1: The sign is for a store that sells clothing, so it's almost certainly an advertisement of the ability to purchase pants at a 50% discount, not a directive to start removing pants.

Important Note #2: I believe these are intended to be two separate and distinct declarations. As in, Halloween items are available in the store, AND pants are discounted 50%. But the size limitations of the sign certainly make it less than crystal clear.

Important Note #3: Having worked at a store that had one of these 'place the letters in the sign yourself for infinite customization' signs, they are SO MUCH harder to work with than I ever expected. Basically no punctuation. Never enough 'S' letters. Only capital letters so EVERYTHING IS SHOUTING. The fact that this store managed to create 1) a legible message; 2) TWO legible messages; 3) a (possibly unintentional) funny joke is incredibly impressive to me.

Sadly I have no funny work email stories to share today. I wish I did! I got an unusual email request on Monday, sent a message back for more clarification, and have not yet gotten a response. I even scheduled a meeting yesterday to 'discuss the project,' but the other person never acknowledged the meeting invite and didn't show up.

It's always wild to me the swings my brain will take in situations like this, when all my communication seems to be shouting into the void. Greatest hits include:

*maybe everyone else is doing different, more important work (hi, imposter syndrome)

*maybe everyone else is having fun slacking off from work and didn't bother to tell me (hello, fear of missing out)

*maybe the world is slowly being swallowed up by a gray mist and everyone else has evacuated or disappeared (thanks so much, that episode of ST:TNG and also at least five fanfics I absolutely read on purpose even though they freaked me out; this is not-so-secretly one of the reasons I like to listen to the radio while I work, so that JUST IN CASE something is happening I'll get a heads up from my favorite djs)