the carnival of you and me

Pandemic life
I've been relatively slack about masking lately (supermarket always; other public situations, it depends on how busy it is, how well-ventilated, and what quality of interaction I want to have). So far I've escaped unscathed. *knocks on wood* *tries not to pathologise my low-level tiredness*

Previous poll review
In the Reading speed poll, 55.8% of respondents estimate their reading speed as faster than average, which ha, is probably about right, or maybe on the low side given Dreamwidth's self-selection. One fifth of respondents went for "average", and 23.1% said "it would be faster if my so-called attention span didn't keep dropping out."

In ticky-boxes, raindrops (48.1%) came second to hugs (65.4%), followed by stripes waiting for a cat (44.2%). Thank you for your votes! ♥

Reading
Slowly listening to Borders of Infinity by Bujold, read by Grover Gardner with Andrew, mostly while doing the dishes.

The only thing I've read in text is a beginner story in Chinese about a stray cat who's found a home. It's sliiiightly above the "see Spot run" level, but not much.

Kdramas/Cdramas
We're watching the last two episodes of Miraculous Brothers tonight, and I'm really hoping it'll stick the landing. If it does, I might do a write-up. It's a good show, and I can see it appealing to people who aren't regular Kdrama-watchers too.

Still rewatching Love Scout with Pru. We're nearing the end.

And on my own, I'm watching The First Frost (Cdrama), which is pathologically repressed m/f roommates-to-lovers. Both of them are skittish for reasons, and I'm enjoying every tiny crumb of progress. I'm about halfway through. (Note: the leads are super pretty. There's probably AI-enhancement going on, blah, but I'm (thankfully) mostly oblivious to that and trying not to think about it.)

Other TV
Wow, it's been a month!! Not that we've been watching a huge amount, but still.

We finished Blocco 181 season 1 (gangs, drugs, interracial tension, m/m/f threesome), watched all of The Other Bennett Sister (really excellent! A+!) and The Tourist season 2 (Irish-Australian black comedy about a hitman with amnesia; season 1 is set in small-town Australia, and season 2 is set in Ireland), and have just started season 2 of Blocco 181 (so far plenty of gangs, drugs and interracial tension).

Sitcoms: Dinosaur (Glaswegian woman with autism and her sister), Fisk (socially awkward Australian and her law office), and People of Earth (support group for "alien experiencers," with Wyatt Cenac).

My sister and I are watching White Collar season 1, awwww.

Once we've finished Miraculous Brothers with our friend, I think we're going to try Legends (hapless customs agents vs drug traffickers in 1980s Britain).

Online life
I have five bursting-at-the-seams browser windows open, which is three too many. I'm going to give myself an amnesty and cull them. | Saw on Instagram a reference to Deepstash (socmed with factual content from books instead of AI slop). I think it was in an ad, though, so who knows? Anyone? It's paid, so I couldn't just give it a try. Not that I have time for another platform anyway. I'm already not quite keeping up with Dreamwidth (but almost). *waves to you all*

Writing/making things
I finished a flashfic (of the niche interest variety), and in the week since posting it have written approximately a dozen words of fiction, total. Like, I poked briefly at the "flashfic" I was writing before that, but mostly it's been rewatch comments and political submissions. Basically, writing and I are on a break. (But it's not long till guardian_wishlist, at which point I'll want to get my head back in the game.)

Life/health/mental state things
I got three political submissions in last week. The last one was just four paragraphs of yelling/scolding, but still.

I'm spending infinitely more time on my phone than I did pre-Chinese, and thanking the stars for my stylus. (Against the odds, I haven't lost it, but I did buy a back-up shaped like a pencil and another backup shaped like a ballpoint pen and incorporating a real ballpoint, a flashlight, and an alleged phone stand that doesn't work (but not a digital clock, because this isn't the 1980s) for $3.50 each, just in case.)

House/car
( State of car, storage/organising, and the oven saga continued. )

Language Learning
( Cut for length. )

Goals
One more political submission to go (graaaaar).
Get the oven in this year, and maybe re-carpet the living room(???).
Get my Chinese reading level up to Elementary by my birthday.

Link dump
Video clip from The Sheep Detectives on the nature of God (Tumblr, via a friend) | I'm sure there were other things I was going to put here, but I really want to get this posted.

Good things
Reading in a new-to-me language (magic!). Biking weather. The gradual imposition of order on my house. Andrew, Halle, my sister, my friends. Hope for the upcoming NZ election (it could go either way, so there is room for hope). TV-watching dates. A wealth of Asian media.

So, for reasons, access to my drains is in my neighbours' garden. And I've been waiting to get my drains re-lined for ages (old clay pipes and tree roots are not a good mix). On Sunday, the drain company texted to say they were coming on Wednesday, and I told my neighbours and said I'd get them more details asap.

Yesterday (Monday) I emailed the drain co. for info. Nothing. (I should have phoned. That's on me. I was distracted and thought there was plenty of time; last night I made a note to myself to chase up/call today.)

Today (Tuesday) the drain people showed up. Apparently they're going to be here for three days? My neighbours found out before I did. I'm headdesking so hard.

Ot1h, I'm super looking forward to the drains being done, finished, never have to think about them again. I've had two call-outs this year already, and the re-lining comes with a 50-year warranty.

Otoh, 1/5 stars for communication and making an awkward situation awkwarder.

Also, it's raining like the clickers of hell.™ Halle is looking disconsolately out the cat door.

I just painted the first topcoat on the replaced boards on my windbreak wall. It was sunny, and I thought, "Hey, I could just get it done." It took, like, 10 minutes plus 20 minutes getting organised.

I don't even recognise myself right now.

(Fingers crossed the weather holds, and it dries, and I can do the second coat this afternoon.)

( More achieviness! )

Reading
Read Guardian fanfic, though less this week, and listened to another chapter and a half of Not Forgetting the Whale.

Kdramas
J and I have three half-hour episodes of Thirty But Seventeen left. It is a ridiculously drama-averse show. There have been two terrible characters who appeared in one episode each and were unceremoniously swept off-stage as soon as they'd served their respective narrative purposes, and one recurring, jealous-in-a-professional-not-romantic-way frenemy, who's since been redeemed. The real antagonist is trauma, and they deal with that pretty gently too. I love it.

At the other extreme end of the scale, there's Black, which is now dead to me (ironically(?), given it's about a Grim Reaper). We got as far as episode 8, but the clunky storytelling and super-dark themes came to a head last week when ( ALL THE WARNINGS ) So we're done. Now we need to figure out what to watch instead.

One possibility was One Spring Night, which has just started on Netflix and stars my darling Han Woo-tak from While You Were Sleeping, aka Seo Joon-hee from Pretty Noona Who Buys Me Food, aka Jung Hae-in (*points to icon*) AND Na Yeo-kyung, the bookshop owner from Capital Scandal aka Han Ji-min. I really want to love it, but: it's filmed in a weirdly disaffected way, with lots of long wideshots; even the OST is devoid of joy; and I'm a hard sell on romances that start with one party in a longterm "perfectly fine but uninspiring" other relationship. Like, I tend to think they'll get bored with this new person eventually, too. (It always makes me think of Sleepless in Seattle, where Meg Ryan dumped Bill Pullman because... he had allergies?)

I've also watched a few episodes of The Greatest Hit (aka Hit the Top aka the show with zombie-girl-from-Hwayugi and the totally gratuitous time travel), but we might try that after Thirty But Seventeen, so I should press pause for now.

Other TV
Killing Eve is, wow, so messed up! Sandra Oh continues to be amaaaazing. Started season 2 of Santa Clarita Diet; how is this zombie show so awwwww-inducing?

Guardian/Fandom
I finished episode 15, but I think I need to watch it again; there's a lot to process. My writing appears to be trapped in the intense slash vortex that is episode 14 (I have two ficlets at various stages of beta/rewrites). Everything is shiny and sparkly, and I'm only about a third of the way through the 520 Day collection. ♥___♥

Audio entertainment
John Finnemore's Souvenir Programme season 8 has started, and the first episode is available on BBC iPlayer.

Writing/making things
See above. I feel like I haven't quite hit my stride again, after the exchange, but I'm getting there. I either need to get through rewrites on my Shelter ficlet before the fan_flashworks deadline or come up with something else short and less thematically tangled.

Korean study
Haha, no.

Life/health/mental state things
The roofers have finished, including the awning over the verandah! They came on Sunday to get it squared away before the WEATHER arrived, and today the scaffolders are taking down the edging. I am, ot1h, massively relieved it's over (except for taking away the old roof), and otoh, wishing I had a drone or a periscope or could shapeshift into a cat so I could see it! It's very weird to spend so much money on something so important that I can't actually look at!

Every so often I open my to-do list in the hope that I've magically/incidentally achieved something and can cross it off. Last time I did that, the only thing I could cross off was "Write 520 Day Fic". Non-fandom things are falling through the cracks into an ice crevasse and singing Canadian folk songs into a Hallows-powered energy seal...

I went to Zumba for the first time in years on Monday. The instructor's style wasn't quite to my nitpicky taste, but man, it made me realise how much I miss it as a form of exercise.

Good things
Sunshine, the internets, Shen Wei's sense of humour, Zhao Yunlan's sprawling, fandom! 147 subscribers to sid_guardian!!! The boy and cats and friends!